Black White + Gray, Cthulhu

Another day, another couple of movies. I've been skipping a lot lately -- last year I was doing 3-4 movie days every day of the fest, but this year it's just not working out that way, either due to laziness or burnout. I am in fact seeing less movies with a full series pass this year than as a ticket-holder last year, which is notable however the convenience of the pass is very nice and would likely spur me to purchase another next year if possible.

So here we go again with Black White + Gray, another poorly produced mediocre documentary entry into the festival. This movie was essentially like watching a slideshow with narration. The majority of the subject-matter revolves around Sam Wagstaff and his passion and knack for curating an amazing photograph collection which he then later sold to Getty Images, as well as his influence on infamous photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Patti Smith was also part of the trio as a housemate, and each one of their careers blossomed at roughly similar times, however her role in the movie for the most part involved speaking about the other two.

Production-wise, this movie flopped big time. It was shot in 4:3 for presumably a broadcast audience, which is bizarre considering the obscene and sometimes very gorey nature of much of the photographic works. The interview material is extremely poor with Patti Smith's footage being the worst and noticeably grainy, and some of the interviewees being recorded without any additional sound mics causing the quality of each successive soundbite to differ considerably. Then a bulk of the visuals for the movie are taken up by Ken Burns-ish photographic displays, the difference here being that the movie provides nothing in the way of additional comment on these photos, so instead the effect is like watching a simplistic Powerpoint presentation. However the force of these photographs is so powerful that it is doubtful people would notice this, which is a strong argument for having a unique subject focus for a documentary.

The only things this movie really did for me were, 1. to appreciate production quality, 2. to appreciate the strong role of pre-production, 3. to continue to hate talking heads, 4. learn who Sam Wagstaff was and the role he played in inflating the photograph market by deeming it "art", 5. to make me want to go shoot some b&w photos again. The latter is not a testament to the influence of the movie as much as a testament to the power of the photographs displayed within the movie.

Cthulhu was a last minute add to the schedule that I passed up on several initial runs through the SIFF schedule originally but decided to attend anyway. This was the world premiere night, so there was a lot of enthusiasm in the air and a lot of crew and friends-of-crew in attendance. These are always fun screenings to attend because there is just a lot of joy from people who have just completed a feature film which to me sounds akin to giving birth to a new baby. There was also a lot of skeptical posturing about Tori Spelling's role and how that would pan out and everything.

For about the first quarter-to-half of this movie, I absolutely hated it. 1. Lousy slow-to-start script, 2. lousy acting direction (who told the actors to talk so slowly and meaningfully?), and 3. Lousy overall shot direction. I find it hard to blame the director of photography for this 3rd one because the photography was absolutely beautiful given what he had to work with, so instead I blame the director for throwing in such cliched shots as, 1. the camera tracking the yellow road marker to show driving, 2. the hand wiping the foggy mirror to reveal the person behind, 3. the rear view mirror shot to show driving, 4. the slow parallel track down the grocery aisle. There are half a dozen more that I noted but have since now forgotten, and while I understand some of these are necessary to establish scene, it plays into my overall opinion that this movie was dull and provided nothing in the way of cinematic innovation that it potentially had at its disposal. And perhaps a large part of noticing these cliched shots was in fact because the photography was so rich that I expected a bit more and got nothing.

The movie's primary subject deals with his father who is unhappy about his gay lifestyle. He soon discovers a larger, evil force at work and must figure out what this force is and what is happening to the people in the city. It is essentially a horror film, but it never gets to this point until about halfway or so through the movie. At the point that it finally gets to this, the acting improves a great deal, Tori Spelling's character is introduced, the production quality increases a notch, and things are a little more interesting overall. Even the script gets a little better in certain segments, throwing in a couple of good one-liners that the audience howled over. But in other areas, it still fails to come together for some reason. The movie is not campy, but it's not slick either, and it's overall meaning seems to want to shout itself out but still somehow seems very obtuse as if the screenplay can't decide which direction it wants to take. I did find this second half to be far more interesting of a movie, but it continued to fail to hold my interest completely.