Herein lies select responses and some commentary following a roundtable interview with James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem frontman, and more importantly for the sake of this interview, the original score artist in writer/director Noah Baumbach’s newest film.
Wantonly neurotic, fresh off of a mental breakdown, and finding himself once again in his family’s Hollywood hills mansion after having a pre-mid-life in Brooklyn (or, because he has to be more specific: Bushwick) – Roger Greenberg, of Noah Baumbach’s newest, Greenberg, rarely feels comfortable operating in the present tense, preferring instead to relish in the comfort of nostalgia. A similar sentimentality runs through many of the songs by James Murphy and his celebrated electro-rock outfit, LCD Soundsystem.
Baumbach, who got to know Murphy musically and emotively after he first heard ‚”New York I Love You.” It isn’t a stretch to imagine a character like Roger listening to a band like LCD Soundsystem. When the director started to consider what kind of soundtrack would be appropriate for Greenberg, he called up Murphy. What began as mutual respect and admiration between the two artists quickly became an amicable (and kind of adorable) professional relationship.

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The Bushwick Food Coop is screening ‚”The Power of Community ‚Äì How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” tonight at Tandem Bar.

Here’s the story:

‚”When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half ‚Äì and food by 80 percent ‚Äì people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call ‚”The Special Period.” The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis ‚Äì the massive reduction of fossil fuels ‚Äì is an example of options and hope.”

Beers are $3, door donation is suggested at $5, doors are at 7 w/ the film at 7:30.

by Dave Thomas

Chloe starring Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried
This month offers a surprisingly good mix of potentially solid mainstream and indie fare. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of crap to go around, too.
March 5
Wide
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Tim Burton sequel to the Lewis Carroll adventures. With Johnny Depp, of course.
WILL IT SUCK?
Tim Burton is a visionary in the best sense of the word. Screenwriter did Lion King and Beauty and the Beast. Depp as the Mad Hatter seems a slam dunk, and he’s joined by Helena Bonham Carter, Crispin Glover, Anne Hathaway, Stephen Fry, Christopher Lee, Michael Sheen, Alan Rickman, and Timothy Spall. Looks like the first bona fide event movie of 2010 worth checking out.
Early buzz is good.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Green Zone the following week has a sliver of the same demo, but this will dominate the month. $207mil.
————————————————-
BROOKLYN’S FINEST
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Three cops’ (Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke) paths intertwine in an undisclosed New York borough.
WILL IT SUCK?
From the director of Training Day, and this is supposed to be better (according to IMDb). Also stars Wesley Snipes, Lili Taylor, Ellen Barkin, Will Patton, and Vincent D’Onofrio.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Snagged w/in 24 hours of premiering at Sundance last year, so somebody thinks it has potential, enough to buy a Super Bowl spot and give it a wide release, two things that almost never happen with Sundance buys. Still, don’t know if that will translate into wide release money. $26mil.
————————————————-
Limited
THE SECRET OF KELLS
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Kid looks for a book. A really, really important book.
WILL IT SUCK?

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The MoMA is screening a 31-minute film today at 4pm and 7pm about the residential transformation of Williamsburg over the past few years. It’s called Open House, and is directed by Diane Nerwen.

In recent years, Williamsburg, one of the most visibly transformed neighborhoods in New York City, has seen a host of new residential construction and glass-and-steel structures spring up on blocks long defined by factories and modest row houses. While the housing bubble was deflating across the country, forty-story luxury buildings were being erected along the Brooklyn waterfront at an unprecedented rate. Chronicling developers literally tearing apart the neighborhood and frenzied property owners desperate to cash in before the market collapses, Open House reveals an urban renewal project on a scale not seen since Robert Moses’s ‚”slum” clearance of the 1960s.

Diane will lead a discussion with the audience following the screening of the second film, Behind the Iron Gate, which is a 55-min Polish documentary about Za Zelazna Brama, “one of the biggest housing estates built in the center of Warsaw between 1965 and 1972.”
If you miss it tonight, an encore screening will be tomorrow night at 7pm. For tickets and more info, visit MoMA. Here’s the trailer:

Some designers aren’t too psyched on the “forthcoming condo-ification” of the Domino Sugar Plant, so, they made this fun little movie poster.
Curbed writes: “It’s from the gang at by-encore, apparently no fans of the makeover of the old sugar refinery. To be fair, the Williamsburg waterfront has been well on its way to becoming a sci-fi freak show for years now.”
Enlarged image after the jump.

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Brooklyn Boondoggle is a short documentary by my friends at Meerkat Media detailing and humanizing the eminent domain issues that the gargantuan Atlantic Yards development brings up. I caught the flick at a small screening at a bar that would have to be bulldozed for the Atlantic Yards (although not without a fight) and thought the movie was pretty spectacular. Now its online!

Brooklyn Boondoggle from meerkatmedia.org on Vimeo.

We can’t wait to see it:

Certainly you’ll recall the big cool quotient around Machete, that famously fake trailer by Robert Rodriguez from Grindhouse. It was considered the single best thing about that Weinstein Co double-feature flop that also included Quentin Tarantino’s pic. Rodriguez’ fake trailer hinted at a good story (Mexican day laborer is set up, double-crossed, and left for dead — then starts everyone’s worst nightmare) and carried an even better catchphrase (“They just fucked with the wrong Mexican.”) Machete’s YouTube video alone has 1.4 million views, which wasn’t lost on Hollywood. The result was 6 studios all very interested in domestic distribution rights to Rodriguez’ latest.

via

by Dave Thomas

Brothers
While nothing this month stands out as an awards season frontrunner, there’s lots of potential Oscar suitors to choose from, and isn’t it more interesting that way?
DECEMBER 4
Wide
ARMORED
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Armored truck guard (Columbus Short) agrees to inside heist with his co-workers (Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Jean Reno, Skeet Ulrich), but changes his mind when someone (Milo Ventimiglia) gets hurt.
WILL IT SUCK?
All eyes on Kontroll director Nimrod Antal, who failed to impress with his American debut, Vacancy. Also not encouraging, the let’s-reveal-everything trailer. A little more pressure added since Antal’s directing Predators, until you remember that Predators probably isn’t a good idea to begin with.
HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Not much action to compete with. $57mil.
WILL ANYBODY REMEMBER IT AT OSCAR TIME?
Maybe if Sidney Lumet directed.
BROTHERS
WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Guy (Jake Gyllenhaal) comforts his recently widowed sister-in-law (Natalie Portman) like, you know, Biblically. Then his brother (Tobey Maguire) returns from the war. Turns out he wasn’t dead after all. Awk-ward.
WILL IT SUCK?

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I just wrote a snarky little listicle for Vice:

To be released by Criterion is the benchmark of excellence. Their 25-year-old catalog includes indispensable work from masters including Cocteau, Renoir, Maysles, Kubrick, Cronenberg, Godard, Kurosawa, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Sturges, and, of course, Fellini.
It’s an impressive list of talent, which is why you can imagine my surprise when I arrived at the director responsible for film #40 in their catalog. Michael Bay. That’s right, Michael Bay, the dung beetle of cinematic vapidity, best known for his unparalleled skill at rolling oversized balls of shit into our nation’s cineplexes. If you’re not familiar with his work–is this possible?–Bay is responsible for Bad Boys I & II, Pearl Harbor, and Transformers, not to mention the career of Megan Fox. (She hates him too). Currently, Bay is remaking The Birds, which I’m assuming will be re-imagined to include a bikini-clad Maxim covergirl who blows away blood-sucking zombie pigeons with a grenade launcher.

Check out the list here.