w /F/ Stop Fitzgerald
directed by Michel Gondry
starring Gael Garcia Bernal & Charlotte Gainsbourg

Stephane is an artist/inventor living in his mother’s apartment (the first they’ve seen each other since his father’s death) and works in a calendar assembly studio, which isn’t quite the artistic avenue he believed he was going down. Gondry continues the recent tradition of the “boy meets girl but the boy’s kinda crazy�? plot, but Sleep doesn’t touch on any of the clichés of a traditional love story, no matter how close it gets.

This movies’ strong suite (because it is also Gondry’s) are the beautiful and stunning animated sequences. In a way Gondry is Stephane, because all the illusions, which he invokes in his dreams and realities, are merely what Gondry does throughout the whole film. The dream sequences are among the best cinematic representations of dreams I have ever seen, and the widespread use of stop-motion and other film animation styles are tasteful and elegant.

As I said before, Stephane moves home for a job, which isn’t what he expected, and certainly not the arena for his creative outlook. It is impossible for him to communicate his ideas because 1. His coworkers don’t care, and 2. He speaks terrible French. This second point also brings up one drawback of the film, which Stephane brings up himself, that being spoken to/at in several languages makes him “feel schizophrenic�? (the film is set in France, Stephane lived in Mexico, but everyone can speak English).

w/ Peter H. Zimbicki & Devin Ross

Here it is boys and girls, the movie review of the week with special guest reviewer: Devin “Human Candle�? Ross. This week, we headed over to the Beavercreek Theater and checked out Martin Scorsese’s latest talkie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Vera Farmiga, Anthony Anderson, Alec Baldwin, and Martin Sheen…a lota hotties. This movie had a bunch of cops and a bunch of gangsters. They all wanted to know about each other, spies are involved. About twenty people get shot in the head and it’s messy. Review done.

Ok so but really, we didn’t know what to expect out of this flick. We knew that this would be a movie about things, but what things, we were unsure. In any event The Departed was quite a movie. Out of all of the movies we’ve seen for Antioch, I could easily say that this was the best of them. The story is that Jack Nicholson raises Matt Damon to be a snitch in the Massachusetts State Police. Leonardo DiCaprio is a rich kid who wants to be a Statie and ends up becoming an undercover agent for them. Then throughout the film, the two snitch back and forth, ruining each others stuff until they figure out about the other one and hilarity ensues.

You should see this if you wanna see a lot of the hotties with their special Irish ascents, bein’ tough. Leo took a lot of pills and punched things because he was upset on the inside, Devin liked that. Only one woman was allowed in this movie.

w/ Peter Zimbicki

Alright, round two for the movie reviews and I really gotta start seein’ better movies. This week, thanks to a couple of friends, the movie I saw was Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Beginning starring Jordana Brewster, Taylor Handley, Andrew Bryniarski, R. Lee Ermey, Heather Kafka and directed by Johnathan Liebesman… man we shoulda seen Open Season.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy lots of shitty movies, especially in terms of horror flicks, but this one’s really just not worth the drive over to the theater. The movie starts out with a nauseatingly obvious montage of I think blood, cutting up stuff, maybe some people and generic newspaper headings and dates. Not a great start but my friends and I were still optimistic. The beginning scene involved a slaughter house’s manager being killed with a hammer and it was a welcomed though sort of surprising stint of violence. Well after that, we were all psyched up for a good time, but that good time never came.

Despite the expected sexism, racism, homophobia, blah, blah, this movie still just didn’t do it. From what I can remember, the story line is the exact same as the previous crappy Texas Chainsaw, but with different crappy actors. Although The Beginning does keep you anxious for the entire 90 minute fiasco, it’s less because you’re scared for the characters and more that you’re just ready for it to be over. Now I had expected that the amount of gore might balance out the low points of the film but again I was left disappointed. Although people did get killed and beaten, it really wasn’t so cool or gross. There was a lot of indirect gore: on the walls, dripping off the table, out of focus, in the dark and not disturbing enough to make me happy. And to top it all off there was a little half a rape just to fuck it all up even more.

w/ F/ Stop Fitzgerald

Shot in High-Def video by auteur director Robert Altman, A Prairie Home Companion is the big budget version of what Garrison Keillor has staged for years…his very last show. This time, though, he augmented actual folksy singers and performers with actors who do a better job. To be fair, there are several cameras on the set at any time during these performances performed “live,�? as it were, so the regular radio personalities had little chance at competing with the seasoned camera targets; GK himself appeared the most natural, even though he (maybe)played a caricature of himself.

Since the movie plays out as a false history (and not documentary style at al), it’s no wonder why certain fantastic and outrageous elements were incorporated. A woman in a white trench coat walking around backstage turns out to be a ghost, originally killed by Garrison’s maiming of a joke about penguins. She comes to symbolically kill off the show, as well as its oldest patron, and finally the Axeman who is responsible for the troupe losing its Theatre. This last hit is anticlimactic revenge, for in the end the show goes on and ends, the set is striked and Guy Noir plays a sad piano lullaby, which transitions to a diner scene with the main cast talking about “putting the show on road�? and such, when all of a sudden…