Night of the Living Dead + Day of the Dead (August 1^st)

Trust the Astor Theatre to host the perfect tribute. George A. Romero, who passed away on the 16^th of July, was one of the most defining figures to work in the Horror genre. He singlehandedly defined everything we would come to associate with the Zombie film all the while injecting his pictures with the kind of potent social commentary that all great Horror has.

Lipstick Under My Burkha – Indian Film Festival of Melbourne Opening Night (August 10^th)

Hailed as a victory for Indian women, Lipstick Under My Burkha is a black comedy film written and directed by Alankrita Shrivastava that’s drawing all the right kinds of controversy. Following four women as they each experience their own starkly different sexual awakenings and reawakenings, Lipstick Under My Burka was denied certification in India on the grounds that “The story is lady orientated, their fantasy above life. There are contagious sexual scenes, abusive words, audio pornography and a bit sensitive touch about one particular section of society” which sounds more like an endorsement to me…

Fantastic Planet with Original Live Score by Krakatau (August 10th)

Not to be confused with the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, Fantastic Planet written by Roland Topor and directed be Rene Laloux is a stunningly unique animated sci-fi film first released in 1973. Consistently ranked one of the greatest animated films of all time, and winner of the Grand Prix special jury prize at the ’73 Cannes Film Festival, it’s an experience that’s truly unforgettable. See it at the Melbourne International Film Festival with an original live score by Melbourne prog rock group Krakatau.

MIFF 2017 Sci-Fi Marathon (August 12th)

From 9:30 PM ‘til midday the next, get ready and comfortable for this year’s sci-fi marathon brought by the Astor Theatre and the Melbourne International Film Festival. Including some of the stranger, lesser-known and under-appreciated films of the genre, from Tetsuo: The Iron Man to David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, even the biggest sci-fi fans have got something to look forward to here.

I Am Not Your Negro – Melbourne Premiere at MIFF (August 13^th)

One of the most famous and widely respected public intellectuals, when such a thing wasn’t a rarity, to live, James Baldwin only grows more relevant with every year that passes. Long overdue for a proper documentary portrait, I Am Not Your Negro has been sweeping up awards from festival to festival. Don’t miss it, and go buy Go Tell It On The Mountain while you’re at it.

The Astor’s brought out of the big guns this time. With a run of Kubrick, a run of the Coen Brothers and a run of Hitchcock classics, if that was all there was it’d still be a ripper of a calendar but of course that’s not the case. As always, this list could be twenty entries longer but here are my top five sessions not to miss this time ‘round.

North By Northwest (July 20th, 7:30PM)

It’s kind of hilarious that one of the most iconic Hitchcock films (and iconic Cary Grant performances, for that matter) was written solely because they couldn’t crack the thing they were supposed to be writing. Facing writer’s block, Alfred Hitchcock simply started flinging sequence ideas at screenwriter Ernest Lehman and it was up to him to make it all work. From the sequence at the United Nations, the Crop Duster, to Mount Rushmore, as Lehman said himself “Since I never knew where I was going next, I was constantly painting myself into corners, and then trying to figure a way out of them.” North By Northwest is the perfect example of how sometimes making it up as you go along is the best thing you can do.

Rope (July 27th, 7:30PM)

If you don’t know Rope, it did the whole “film in one shot” thing a lot earlier than Birdman and it did it in 1948. Starring Farley Granger and John Dall as young arrogant too-smart-for-their-own-good Nietzsche loving murderers based on real-life Leopold and Loeb, Rope is Hitchcock at his suspenseful best. Like Lifeboat, Rear Window or North By Northwest, Hitchcock was a master of painting himself in a corner. He used self-imposed limitations to bring out everything he had as a filmmaker and the results speak for themselves. There’s a reason Hitchcock’s been so widely mimicked for over half a century.

Badlands/Days of Heaven (July 30th, 7PM)

For a while people wondered if these two masterpieces would be the only films Terrence Malick would ever release, and while I’m not nearly as negative about his post Thin Red Line work as some people, if these two were the last I wouldn’t complain. Badlands will always be my favourite, and Days of Heaven always my very, very close second. These films manage to be both accessible, concise and familiar as well as deeply thoughtful, philosophical, rich and inventive. Two of the finest examples of the New Hollywood era of American Filmmaking.

Dirty Harry/Magnum Force (September 3rd, 7PM)

While it may be Sudden Impact that gave us the second enduring Harry Callahan quote in “Go ahead, make my day”, it’s Magnum Force that stands as the only truly great Dirty Harry sequel. While the original had uncredited rewrites from both Terrence Malick and John Milius, Magnum Force finally gives Milius a screen credit along with a then-unknown Michael Cimino. With Milius moving on to Apocalypse Now and Cimino on to The Deer Hunter, what better writing duo to tackle the king of all tough guy cops.

The Conversation/Three Days of the Condor (September 6th, 7:30PM)

Here are two of the finest examples of a genre that I really miss, not like I was even alive to see it at its height. Whatever happened to the Paranoia Thriller? The Conversation and Three Days of the Condor are absolutely gripping from start to finish, they’re unpredictable, they’re terrifying and they’re so meticulously plotted that, while you’ll feel your fair share of unease, you’ll never feel like you aren’t in good hands.

And it’s that time again when we get ourselves a new Astor Calendar! A little shorter than usual but just as fantastic. So, for what it’s worth, here’s a little list of my must-see films for the next two months.

-The Last Waltz (10^th of June):

One of the best concert films of all time. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz documents The Band’s last concert with guests like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters and more… Shot with the help of Vilmos Zsigmond and Lazlo Kovacs, this features some all-time great performances by some of the world’s greatest musicians.

-Heat (17^th of June):

I don’t think there’d be many people who’d argue against me saying this is Michael Mann’s masterpiece. The first film ever to set Al Pacino and Robert De Niro face to face, this is a film that’s so sharp it still feels fresh 22 years on. Don’t miss the greatest heist film of all time now in a stunning 4K restoration.

-Do the Right Thing (23^rd of June):

If you judge a film by its title sequence, you better love Do the Right Thing. Back before Spike Lee was in a perpetual beef with Quentin Tarantino, he was just as inventive and energetic as QT himself, perhaps even more so. While there’s any number of Spike Lee’s early films that demand to be seen, Do the Right Thing is the one you cannot miss.

-Goodfellas (5^th of July – 35mm):

Easily one of Scorsese’s best, based on the life of real life gangster Henry Hill, there’s no better way to see Goodfellas than on the big screen. Anyone who’s seen it knows how frenetic and wild a ride this flick is and in 35mm on the big screen it’s unforgettable… Just don’t call Joe Pesci funny…

-Fantasia (16^th of July – 35mm):

There’s never a day I’m not in the mood for Fantasia. For those few who don’t know it already, Fantasia is Disney’s attempt to pair beloved classical music from Bach to Beethoven, Dukas to Ponchielli, with the best animation they’ve ever achieved. While today Disney may, in the minds of some people, make one think of “dumbing down”, this is absolutely not the case here. Disney rise to the music’s level and give us some of the greatest animation ever put to film.

It was tough to restrict myself to only five, but things like this have a tendency to get a little out of hand for people like me…

A new version of The Lion King was announced back in September last year and we were wondering who Jon Favreau would hire to voice the main characters. We now know two of the cast, with James Earl Jones as Mufasa and Donald Glover taking over the role of Simba.

Jones, of course, voiced Mufasa in the 1994 animated film, and there’s really no one else you can hear saying the character’s lines and Glover, who has been on a roll recently after securing the part of young Lando Calrissian in the Han Solo film and winning awards for his TV series Atlanta is more than able to bring the needed energy to his role as Simba.

While it has been called the “live-action” Lion King (there are, after all, no human characters, and all the animals will be brought to life using the technical effects used on Favreau’s Jungle Book), we can only imagine how heartbreaking it will be to see this new version on Mufasa pass away. I don’t think I’m ready to relive my childhood trauma. The new film doesn’t yet have a release date but we will wait in eager anticipation.

Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar was made just as Hollywood was beginning to, very slowly, resemble the system we have today. The days of screenwriters all locked up together in a script farm of bungalows, of directors being forced to hand their films over to editors they may well never meet like a factory production line, and where studio tyrants like Louis B. Meyer wrote long and strict rulebooks for filmmakers to adhere to seemed to be ending.

It’s at this time, in the early 1950’s, that the identity or style of a film began to be tied more to the director than to the studio. While once people identified an “RKO picture” or an “MGM picture” as a brand, now they began to recognize a “Billy Wilder” or a “John Huston” or a “Frank Capra” picture. “Cinema is Nicholas Ray” said Jean-Luc Godard. Nicholas Ray, of Rebel Without a Cause fame, is astounding for just how singular in style and form his films were, even though they were made when the Studio System still reigned supreme.

He made exciting action films like Flying Leathernecks with John Wayne, haunting Film Noir flicks like In A Lonely Place with Humphrey Bogart, and films like Bigger Than Life with James Mason that I swear is a distant uncle of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver… but through all of these, nothing else was quite like Johnny Guitar.

Nicholas Ray’s Trucolor Western, starring Joan Crawford, Stirling Hayden, a very young Ernest Borgnine and the holy-crap-why-have-I-never-seen-her-before Mercedes McCambridge, is guaranteed not to be like any Western you’ve ever seen. It’s hyper-vivid colour palette and almost fantastical set design hits you immediately, but what soon takes the lead is the power of the script.

I was knocked out at the first confrontation between Joan Crawford and her nemesis played by Mercedes McCambridge. The strength of their performances carries the film throughout, helped no doubt by the fact that they apparently could not stand each other at all, so much so that Nicholas Ray said that mutual loathing was “heaven sent”.

While Nicholas Ray and screenwriter Ben Maddow play freely with the tropes of the Western genre, they do so not without taking a step to the left, and not without elevating it all so that every single element feels purposeful, put there to serve a greater message…

So, what’s that message? Johnny Guitar follows Joan Crawford’s saloonkeeper “Vienna” as she comes head to head with mistrusting townsfolk, scared of the change that Vienna and the coming railway represent. They are blinded by hate for what they don’t understand anything of other than that it promises to upend the way things always have been and ought to always be.

This witch-hunt serves as a perfect metaphor for the real-life Blacklist that tormented its screenwriter. Ben Maddow’s name is nowhere to be seen in Johnny Guitar, instead, Philip Yordan’s name’s the one up for all to see. Maddow, like Waldo Salt, Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner Jr. and dozens of others, fell ill of the almost-too-satirically-titled “House Un-American Activities Committee” set up to make sure anyone who’d ever, for even just an afternoon, bore communist sympathies would never work again.

Johnny Guitar was made right at the height of this when the names on the list just kept stacking up and stacking up and stacking up. “A lot of people didn’t find work, some people died, some people committed suicide,” Waldo Salt said later “I wish that we had done something to deserve us being blacklisted, I wish we had that much influence on film, or on the politics of the time… but we didn’t.” People from all professions within Hollywood were affected, they had to take on other names, move to television, or leave the country to have any hope to work again. This didn’t end until finally, Dalton Trumbo had his name up on the big screen again with Otto Preminger’s Exodus in 1960.

Johnny Guitar is a time capsule holding a style of filmmaking long gone, one of Joan Crawford’s best performances, a criminally underrated actor in Mercedes McCambridge, a connection to no question the darkest chapter in Hollywood’s history and so much more… Something makes me think that maybe, with the social climate at the moment, a film like Johnny Guitar might just be becoming relevant again.

WRITTEN BY :  Tom May

Database Productions is excited to introduce it’s newest documentary series “Racey” that is due to begin production this month.

Racey explores the issue of Interacial Relations both in Australia and abroad, in the context of intimate relationships. How are these relationships perceived? How do our families react? How does it affect the relationship? Why are people so afraid of something different?

We take a close look at the struggles faced by these couples in their daily lives and how hard it can be to overcome racial prejudice, even in the face of something as pure as love. We ask the hard questions but try to encourage honest communication and growth, we are one world, yet still remain so separated and in a country as multicultural as Australia, why is this even something to be questioned?

This production is an open interview style documentary and although we currently have a full list of participants if you are also interested in taking part, feel free to email info@thedatabase.com.au for more information we would warmly welcome any new participants that are passionate about this topic, to speak either in a couple or on your own.

This coming Sunday (the 5th of February), The Astor is bringing back the best ever double feature in rich 35mm. Mike Hodges’s Get Carter and John Boorman’s Point Blank. Two of the finest examples of a sub-genre that seems to have almost disappeared. Crime films that are simple in their plot, stylish yet stripped of all excess, with foundations to withstand a nuclear blast. At a time when a crime film seems to require a labyrinthine plot, accompanied by a dozen sub-plots, and convoluted character intentions and schemes, to have gut-punch films like these is a huge breath of fresh air.
Both films are ferociously unflinching, intoxicating and immaculately crafted from their script to their cinematography to their score. But while Get Carter is a prime example of the genre, the best of the best, Point Blank is where things get really interesting.
Point Blank is incredibly inventive. While at its core it’s a simple, strong, easy-to-follow revenge story and was always set out as such in the screenplay (written by Alex Jacobs, Rafe Newhouse and David Newhouse, which I highly recommend any screenwriters out there read), the film begins chaotically. Segments of scenes are edited together so rapidly and so seemingly discordantly you feel as though you’re trying to remember a dream or some past trauma. I understand how purple all this sounds, but I’m not really sure how else to explain this movie without getting into flowery language and vague metaphors. A film like this, so dense in symbolism and avant-garde filmmaking techniques (this film owing a lot to the French New Wave), seems to ask for it…
Point Blank at every moment forces you into the mindset of its protagonist, Walker, played by Lee Marvin in (if you ask me), his best performance. When he’s disoriented, the editing, the camera work, and the sound design all work together to ensure you are too. The film is laden with voice over and sound effects that almost echo, sounding as though they were recorded in a large hall. Everything you’re seeing and everything you’re hearing feels like a recreation from his mind.
Like the best of its genre and its stylistic roots (Film Noir and the French New Wave) Point Blank only adds to the pile of evidence that argues that to be inventive and fresh, you don’t need a series of convoluted twists, misdirections and seemingly impossible camera moves… All you need is a rock hard, waterproof screenplay and a visionary director.

Author: Tom May of Database Productions

Meetings, the newest film from Database Productions, is coming soon. Meetings is an office drama about the complications of colleague relationships in the business world. The stakes are high and the pressure is on as Brad and Sarah come to realise just how what they’re doing is effecting them and their work.