CineNiche

Battles , Belle & Sebastian , Dirty Three , Grinderman , Octopus Project , The Gossip , Animal Collective , Saul Williams , Daniel Johnson , Yeah Yeah Yeahs , Mogwai , Hawk & A Hacksaw , David Cross , Iggy & The Stooges , The Boredoms , Fuck Buttons , Sonic Youth , Akron/Family , Mars Volta , Portishead , Les Savy Fav , Patty Smith , and Grizzly Bear Sounds like a newbie Indie kid's Amazon wishlist, instead these are the artists that populate ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES . This suedo-documentary is great in its conception, but fails to give us enough of each band or a straightforward plotline (though one is never needed in a music film). It is conceived from fan footage/found footage during different Holiday Camps sponsored by various musicians. I don't ask a lot from music docs, except for music and in this area it delivers almost too much. Each band gets less then two minutes of face time, so it plays like a guessing game. While the inbetween footage is fu

Preface:   Not a normal Niche review, because GREENBERG is getting a lot of press, but Baumbach's genius here is not in creating something for the masses it is creating something far too human. And so it begins... Noah Baumbach does it again. By it I am referring to his simple ambiguous style he refined in SQUID AND THE WHALE and continued in MARGOT AT THE WEDDING - both films contain a feeling that is never conveyed within the narrative. He never hands us his characters - though he used to i.e. KICKING AND SCREAMING (1995). His characters create themselves on the screen and we are given a glimpse at their psychology but pinpointing them or stereotyping them is impossible - because they are ‘real.’ Roger Greenberg is 40, lost, and recovering from a mental breakdown. This said mental breakdown is never given description or reason which is what makes it human, sure a shortcut would be Roger has lead a life without any direction until it finally collapsed upon h

Prior to Milos Forman's groundbreaking adaptation of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST , he made a wonderfully radical film called TAKING OFF which featured extreme hippy overtones. This film has never received a wide DVD release and thus is holy grail to find. I viewed a VHS of it recently and it still lives up to what it was in 1971. The basic plot is simple: a married couple Lynn and Larry Tyne cope with their runaway daughter. What makes this so interesting is how they cope. The Tynes' have decided that their daughter shouldn't be the only one having fun and seize the opportunity to relinquish their parenting duties to dance, drink, smoke pot, gamble, and be merry. Among the twenty films in Forman's repartee, the Czech born director has achieved international acclaim with only a select few. First with FIREMAN'S BALL (1967), then ONE FLEW... (1975), AMADEUS (1984), and finally MAN ON THE MOON (1999). Each one with its own independent theme and feel.