DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Kevin Clash performing for local children in Baltimore in 1975. Courtesy of Submarine.Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey
What it is: The surprisingly thought-provoking story of the man behind Elmo: a symbol of love and affection, or a homewrecker?
Why you want to see it: You might not have Elmo on your short list of Good Feature Length Documentary Subjects. But after seeing Being Elmo, directed by Constance Marks & Philip Shane, you may wonder why it took so long. Kevin Clash was barely nine years old when Sesame Street made its broadcast debut in 1969, instilling in young Kevin a love for puppetry and a resourcefulness for making his own. Little did he know that this childhood enterprise would lead to his life’s work. It wasn’t long before Clash made his living in puppets: from the Baltimore children’s show Caboose, who hired Clash when he was still in high school; to a puppeteering and acting gig with Captain Kangaroo at 18; to the obscure fuzzy red muppet that he was fated to take over in 1984 at the ripe mid-career age of 25. It’s an inspiring success story. A young African-American simply doing what he loves to do, goes from working class Baltimore neighborhood Turner’s Station to New York fame in less than a decade. But the film also shows an underside to Elmo, one suggested in Clash’s 2006 memoir, My Life as a Furry Red Monster. As Elmomania grew worldwide, so did the demands placed on Clash for public appearances — and the strain on his family. Clash misses his daughter’s first day of school, his marriage fails; fast forward to a letter Clash receives from his daughter asking that he spend some time with her before she goes to college, and you get a distance that not even personalized birthday greetings from Jack Black and LL Cool J can overcompensate for.
Clash’s career arc is certainly an inspiration to the creative working class, but the personal sacrifice is high. Being Elmo offers no armchair psychologist to wonder about the emotional disconnect of a man who, as more than one talking head suggests, is most himself when he’s behind a puppet. But one sequence puts the sacrifices made for this symbol of affection into conflicted perspective. The Make a Wish Foundation fields many requests from dying children who long to meet the red tickler. We see Clash on the Sesame Street set in traditional muppeteer’s stance, facing away from the dying child as he manipulates Elmo. The puppet takes the emotional force head on to give the sick girl a hug. Being Elmo is an effective, moving, and in some respects uplifting documentary about the man behind the muppet, but its fascination goes much deeper than fleece.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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Edie Sedgwick13 Most Beautiful … Songs for Andy Warhol Screen Tests
What it is: The wigged one’s silent screen tests of Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed, Dennis Hopper, and others, with live accompaniment by Dean and Britta.
Why you want to see it: You’d think that with an artist who used reproduction like a toothbrush, Andy Warhol’s much discussed films would be readily available. But it was not until the 2009 release of 13 Most Beautiful .. songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests that any of the films he directed got an authorized DVD issue (unauthorized editions are another story, as are readily available titles like Andy Warhol’s Bad, which he didn’t direct) The hottest movie in town this week is at the National Gallery, which presents selected Warhol screen tests with a live performance by former Luna members Dean Wareham and Britta Philips. The screening is free, but line up early. Way early. The Gallery has also been screening Warhol’s 16 mm films, and this weekend happens to feature the document of a band you might have heard of. The Velvet Underground and Nico (originally subtitled, A Symphony of Sound) is a must see for fans disillusioned with Loutallica, but be forewarned. This early VU performance is short on songcraft and structure, and, frankly, compelling cinema. A static camera lens moves in a series of awkward zooms that try the patience of even those who might be curious about the epic Warhol films like the eight-hour Empire. Speaking of which, walk down the street to the Hirshhorn for the exhibit Directions: Empire^ 3, which displays Warhol’s work alongside Douglas Gordon’s “Bootleg (Empire)” (1997), a videotape of an Empire screening, and “Empire 24/7” (1999-2004), a sequence of still images of the building by artist Wolfgang Staehle.
View the trailer for 13 Most Beautiful …
The Velvet Underground and Nico screens Saturday, November 12 at noon; 13 Most Beautiful screens Saturday, November 12, at 4:00 pm. At the National gallery of Art. Free.
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Courtesy of the Hirshhorn Under Control
What it is: a deadpan look inside the atomic power infrastructure of Germany and Austria
Why you want to see it: It looks like a stylish science fiction movie with the latest in soul-sucking modern office spaces. But this is a documentary, and it’s nuclear. Director Volker Sattel finds abstract beauty in nuclear power by examining its infrastructure, dryly documenting control panels, smoking reactors and safety-suited workers as if they were players in the theater of the absurd. In the tradition of photographers work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose Typologies document Germany’s industrial structures, Sattel makes art out of a forbidding technology and never loses sight of what makes it forbidding. The director will appear in person at Tuesday’s screening.
View the trailer .
Tuesday November 15 at 7:oo pm at the Hirshhorn. Free.
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The Bodyguard (1979) Uzbek Rhapsody: the films of Ali Khamraev
What it is: A brief survey of this unheralded showman from the other side of the world.
Why you want to see it:The Freer and the National Gallery of Art present fhe first North American film series dedicated to Uzbek director Ali Khamraev. The Freer will be showing three titles: Without Fearr (1972), in which an Uzbek Red Army officer in the 1920s is charged with modernizing his village; “crackerjack Red Western” The Seventh Bullet (1972), and The Bodyguard (1979), in which a grizzled mountain trapper (is there any other kind?) escorts a prisoner through rough territory. As World Cinema Foundation director Kent Jones, quoted by the Freer, writes, Khamraev’s “best films burst with criss-crossing energies and insights, like a fireworks display. [He] is a towering figure, a wizard with landscapes (they all seem charged, often enchanted) and an instinctual genius with actors.” Which makes him sound like a thinking man’s showman, so if you’ve had enough of American showmen like Brett Ratner, try on an Uzbek master for size.
Watch the retrospective’s extended trailer.
Without Fear screens Friday, November 11 at 7:00 pm; The Seventh Bullet screens Sunday, November 13 at 1:00 pm; The Bodyguard screens Sunday, November 13 at 3:00 pm. At the Freer. Free. The National Gallery screens Khamraev’s Triptych (1979) with White, White Storks (1966) on Sunday November 13 at 4:00 pm with director Ali Khamraev director in person.
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What it is: The rooftops of 1962 Paris are alive with the sound of sassy Spanish maids.
Why you want to see it: Violins and flamenco guitar compete for cultural real estate on the soundtrack of this French farce, which asks the burning question, do we have something to learn from people different from us? Director Philippe Le Guay wrangles an ensemble cast led by Fabrice Luchini (recently on area screens in Potiche) and Sandrine Kiberlain, with a supporting role from Almodovar regular Carmen Maura. It’s cute to hear “Itsy bitsy teeny weenie yellow polka dot bikini” blaring from a transistor radio in French, but the war between sassy Spanish maids and the French upper class simply boils down to more sophisticated example of what I call getdownism. If the thought of stiff Frenchpeople learning how to get down brings a smile to your lips, go for it! The film is a perfectly well made machine, but it could have learned to get down a little itself, n’est ce pas?
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema.
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Also opening this week, a double-bill for the ages. Lars von Trier follows up his polarizing Antichrist with Melancholia., starring Kirsten Dunst; and Al Pacino wants to play twister with Adam Sandler’s sister (Adam Sandler) in Jack and Jill;We’ll have full reviews of both tomorrow.
