Batman director's brother on murder charge over killing of businessman in Costa Rica

 The brother of the British director of last year’s Batman film The Dark Knight has been arrested on suspicion of murder.
London-born Matthew Nolan, 40, whose younger brother Christopher directed the blockbuster which took more than £300million worldwide, was arrested in Chicago by the FBI last week in connection with a killing in 2005.
Nolan is accused of murdering Florida businessman Robert Cohen in Costa Rica.
According to reports, Nolan and alleged accomplice Douglas Mejia went to Costa Rica to try to reclaim a £5million debt Mr Cohen owed to another businessman.
Nolan is charged with Mr Cohen’s kidnap and murder.

Dark Knight: Christopher Nolan  (left) directed Christian Bale as Batman . His younger brother Matthew faces a murder charge

He was being investigated by Chicago Police for an alleged £400,000 cheque fraud scam when they learned the FBI were seeking him for the Costa Rica murder.
Mejia was arrested shortly after the body of Cohen was discovered and convicted of the murder during a 2006 trial in Costa Rica, but Nolan allegedly fled back to the US.
A spokesman for Chicago Police said last night: ‘Matthew Francis Nolan has been arrested on a charge of first-degree murder and is being held without bail. He is now in jail awaiting extradition proceedings against him by Costa Rican authorities.’
Nolan’s brother Christopher, 38, is one of Hollywood’s most successful directors.
The Dark Knight was the highest-grossing film of last year and earned a posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger as The Joker.
Nolan also directed the cult hit Memento and the earlier Batman film, Batman Begins, in 2005.
He is currently shooting the sci-fi thriller Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio.
A third brother, Jonathan, is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter.

It Came From Kuchar Review(2009)

 

It Came From Kuchar (2009) dir. Jennifer M. Kroot
Starring: George Kuchar, Mike Kuchar, John Waters, Bill Griffith, Buck Henry, B. Ruby Rich, Wayne Wang, Guy Maddin, Christopher Coppola and Atom Egoyan.


Over the years, whenever I have asked young filmmakers whose work they adore, and more importantly, what work they find especially cool, I always get the same pathetic responses: Christopher ("One Idea") Nolan, Wes ("Geek Chic") Anderson, Quentin ("I finally made a genuinely Great movie") Tarantino, Noah ("My generation is so downtrodden") Baumbaugh and, God Help Us, George ("I used to make cool movies before Star Wars") Lucas.

On rare occasions, I breathe a sigh of relief when someone mentions David Lynch.

However, when I mention the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky, John Waters, The Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmajer, Ulrich Seidl or Doris Wishman, their faces become as blank as a white sheet of paper. More disturbing to me, though, is that when I mention the Kuchar Brothers (George and Mike), their faces seem to dissipate into some sort of optical effect of nothingness that reminds me of Claude Rains transforming into "The Invisible Man".

This was and is truly depressing.

Why?

The answer is simple: The Kuchar Brothers are as important to cinema as any genius iconoclasts like Dovzhenko, Eisenstein, Welles, Corman, Altman, Bergman and among others, yes, even Quentin Tarantino (post "Pulp Fiction").

And guess what? The Kuchars aren't only important, they're cool.

And Thank Christ Almighty, someone has finally enshrined these cool cats in a feature length tribute worthy of their status.

"It Came From Kuchar" is a finely honed and entertaining documentary that also carries with it a considerable degree of import to burgeoning filmmakers as well as cineastes. Some documentaries are important for content, some for form, and yet others for both. The fact that this documentary focuses so winningly upon their work, their influence and their personal lives is enough to make it a must-see motion picture.

I'd even argue that cinephiles aren't the only people who might derive considerable pleasure from this picture - by so clearly introducing the movies and the men behind the movies, there's a considerable chance (if they get an opportunity to see the doc) that even some relatively "normal" audiences may want to see the Kuchar pictures.

Such is the filmmaking dexterity of the doc's director Jennifer M. Kroot. Granted, she is one of the converted - she was, after all George Kuchar's student at the San Francisco Art institute where he became her mentor, but she goes out of her way to paint both a loving portrait and a movie with a strong narrative arc that draws audiences magnetically to its subjects.

The first portion of the movie simply, seamlessly and amusingly places the Kuchars within the context of 20th century cinema. First and foremost, we get a sense of their place as filmmakers with a series of introductory interviews with the likes of Buck Henry, Atom Egoyan, John Waters and Guy Maddin - interviews that are laudatory, to say the least. We get a nice taste of the whole underground cinema scene of the 60s and most importantly, we get a strong sense of what influenced the Kuchars.

Mike Kuchar talks about how they adored going to the movies in the 50s and he describes movie theatres as "temples" which, of course, they were. This was long before the age of the multiplex - where one could be sitting in a packed-to-the-rafters picture palace (many of which boasted thousands of seats). The movies the Kuchars adored were garishly colour-dappled melodramas by the likes of Douglas Sirk or such overblown Hollywood star turns like "Butterfield 8" with Liz Taylor.

Kroot also wisely focuses on introducing us to the underground cinema scene of the early 60s where in contrast to the picture palaces, young hipsters went to tiny hole-in-the-wall joints like The Bridge in New York City to groove on ultra low budget experimental works. Many of the projects were super cerebral and contrasted the narrative qualities and huge entertainment value inherent in the works of the Kuchar Brothers.

I especially love the simple, direct way doc director Kroot juxtaposes the films of the Kuchar Brothers with the blockbuster soap operatic features they loved. Seeing samples of such works as "The Craven Sluck" or "The Devil's Cleavage" up against their loftier influences such as "Imitation of Life" and "Butterfield 8" respectively displays how much they loved movies. This for me, is one of the things I personally always loved about the Kuchars - their almost slavish devotion to motion pictures, yet placed within the context of worship.

The Kuchars were funny, but their renderings of the likes of Liz Taylor did not, for me, fall into the often despicable form of spoof or even parody - the pictures they made had a satiric edge wherein they overplayed the conventions of melodramatic mainstream cinema, yet did so not to mock the cinema itself, but to expose innumerable truths found in everyday human behaviour and relationships.

What is so astounding about the work of the Kuchar Brothers is that for all the lurid details, the shock value, the intensely overblown melodrama, the cult-ish qualities, these movies are so uniquely personal that they are often extremely moving. One alternates between laughing and crying - and sometimes, both laughter and tears mingle with a force that one seldom sees in the cinema.

One of the few relatively contemporary films that manages to do this is David Lynch's "Eraserhead" which, in spite (or because) of the nightmare qualities brings us smack into the narrative wall that is inescapable - that this is ultimately the harrowing portrait of a single parent struggling with a sick child.

The Kuchars, however, manage to do this magical blend of the grotesque and heartbreakingly emotional truths again and again and again.

These guys are true Masters.

These guys are the real thing!

And certainly, one the things I love about this documentary is seeing and hearing how the Kuchar Brothers' love of melodrama created their own unique work, which in turn, inspired the next generation of filmmakers. When I hear Guy Maddin waxing eloquently about George's use of makeup - especially on women - wherein their eyebrows are ludicrously inflated to look like "chocolate bars", I can only smile and recall Guy's own unflagging boldness in applying raccoon-eye styled makeup on all his female characters. Guy also cites the "aggressively stylized voices" of the actors, I can only think of the same voice style employed by John Waters and even Guy himself, though in his repressed, muted fashion.

The Kuchar Brothers were born in New York City at Bellevue Hospital, which as George notes in the doc, is known as the hospital where 50s/60s heart-throb Tab Hunter was also born, and most notably as a hospital devoted to treating the insane. A few years later, the Kuchar family moved to the Bronx - a neighbourhood of blasted-out empty buildings and endless vacant lots. This is where George and Mike (twins, though neither knows if they are identical or fraternal) really discovered themselves. They loved the Bronx and using their bountiful imaginations, they turned this seemingly grotesque world of the abandoned into a veritable paradise - Disneyland for the sons of working class Eastern Europeans.

Their Dad was a handsome, rough and tough truck driver of Hungarian descent and Mom was a gentle, supportive book binder of Ukrainian descent. Dad had an eye for the ladies, or as George says in the doc, he was "very carnal". This resulted in continual friction, but the boys dismiss it as typical family squabbling. I especially was fond of George's recollections of how his own Dad eventually came around to partially accepting their love of filmmaking when the boys started putting lots of nudity in the work. Dad, as it turns out, was an avid collector of "Red Reels" (8mm porno films for home consumption) and he avidly encouraged the boys. Gotta love it when fathers and sons find common ground. That said, George drew a line at refusing his Dad's request for some private porn requests.

Very few stones are left unturned in Kroot's documentary. We get generous footage and background on George's work as a film professor and mentor at the San Francisco Art Institute, a tremendously moving section on George's creative and romantic relationship with the late filmmaker Curt McDowell, some wonderful early recollections on George and Mike's career as graphic artists on Madison Avenue (yikes!) as well as George's friendship with Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffiths that led to his work as a cartoonist in Arcade and Bill Griffiths's astounding revelation that Zippy the Pinhead was partially inspired by George. Mike's illustrations of gay porno comic books, George's incredible Weather Diaries, the brothers' devotion to caring for their aging (now deceased) Mother and even the differences in approach to storytelling when the brothers work apart are all on the table.

It's all fascinating material.

And while the wealth of information in this movie is staggering, it NEVER feels like everything but the kitchen sink. Each piece of information, each recollection, each clip, each interview, each piece of the puzzle that is the Kuchar Brothers is meticulously placed and honed to move the story forward in an entertaining and informative fashion.

Most importantly, we are blessed with George Kuchar's secret to providing the exquisite turds on display in so many of his movies.

My life is now complete.

"It Came From Kuchar" begins a limited run in Toronto at the fabulous rep cinema The Bloor and can also be seen in festival and other special screenings all over the world.

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Minority Report

Minority Report (2002) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Tom Cruise, Max Von Sydow, Samantha Morton, Colin Farrell, Peter Stormare, Tim Blake Nelson

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Oh what promise... I remember the excitement this combination of story, star, genre and director conjured up when first announced. Steven Spielberg doing a pure sci-fi action picture with then respectable, pre-couch jumping Tom Cruise, from a story by high concept master Philip K. Dick. Unfortunately Spielberg’s inability to edit himself results in a needlessly engorged and extended movie which goes on half an hour too long.

For two thirds it’s a marvellously executed genre-film. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) as a near future cop who leads a team of pre-cognition crime solvers who use a trio of soothsaying human vegetables to predict murders before they happen. Using images retained from these fractured memories and a pretty darn cool interactive editing system John becomes a 21st century sleuth. But when precogs predict the next murder to be committed by Anderton himself, it’s the hunter being hunted. The chase is on, with a number of thrilling set pieces pushing the film forward toward its overly twisty glorified whodunit mystery.

‘Minority Report’ succeeds a technical exercise and an excuse for Spielberg to craft a number of creative and visually stunning set pieces. None better than the opening scene when we see John execute his skills at cyber sleuthing, running, chase, tackling. Spielberg’s uses some familiar Hitchcockian cinema techniques to ratchet up the suspense of whether John can make it time to save a cheating housewife and her lover from getting knifed to death by her vengeful husband.

When John finds himself on the run, Spielberg engineers at least two more stunning action sequences. One, a very long running and car chase which has John fighting off his old colleagues zipping around in jet packs and ending in a fist fight in a robotically controlled automotive plant. The other features John getting an eye transplant at the hands of a seedy underground doctor played memorably by Peter Stormare and then being tracked by a group of robots spider sentries.

Unfortunately everything else in between these scenes creatively dull and tedious. Virtually all of the dialogue is information and exposition about who is who and what the fancy gadgets do what. Colin Farrell’s presence as a devout internal affairs wonk who is morally opposed to the procedure of imprisoning people before they commit crimes engages in some interesting existential discourse, but under the blockhead writing and Spielberg’s hurried direction, these themes are conveyed to us with zero subtlety.

The actors talk as wooden as their dialogue. Max Von Sydow, assuming the slippery and thus evil European bigwig role is just awful. Tim Blake Nelson who plays the quirky archivist is robotic and just plain creepy for no good reason. Lois Smith as the elderly woman who created the precognition system has only exposition to spew out and has much trouble masking this dubious narrative purpose.

If the movie ended squarely on that one hour and 45min mark when John discovers he is indeed the murderer he didn’t think he could be, Spielberg would have had a perfect ending. Killing Leo Crow not only puts the film and its lead on a precarious moral tightrope, it hits home the dark sci-fi cynicism which makes Dick’s material so thought-provoking. But Spielberg lets everyone off the hook and neutralizing this moment with another twist which sends the film in a completely different direction. The revenge of John’s son’s death represents the highest emotional gravitas for the lead character, and so when it’s revealed this as a red herring for a considerably lesser significant betrayal by John’s boss for political reasons, it’s a buzzkill of monumental proportions.

The final 30 mins involves so much catch-up, backtracking, and exposition it’s a strain for everybody involved to keep up. And by the end, a good film is wasted by Spielberg’s inability to say cut, print, call it a day.

‘Minority Report’ is available on Blu-Ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.

Elephant

Elephant (2003) dir. Gus Van Sant
Starring: Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Timothy Bottoms, Elias McConnell

****

By Alan Bacchus

Like Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, in Elephant Gus Van Sant magnificently manages to create great art out of great tragedy. Indeed, both works of art are comparable. From the bombing of the city of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, Picasso rendered his most recognizable painting. For Gus Van Sant, his inspiration for Elephant, his universally celebrated Palme D’Or-winning film, was a reaction to the Columbine school shooting – a seminal event in recent US history. Years from now when we look back on his career, this might be his crowning achievement.

Van Sant’s determined minimalist style is so very deceptive and wholly cinematic. It’s cinematic in the sense that the languid and quiet pace creates an eerie tension. This serves to establish realism and makes us believe that the high school and students depicted in the film could actually exist – a high school with nameless, faceless kids free of all preconceived notions of a movie ‘high school’. But it also establishes a sense of boredom, which disarms the viewer to the inhumane tragedy about to unfold.

The film is a technical touchstone of cinematic technique. Harris Savides’ steadycam achieves some rather unique accomplishments, moving both inside and outside the school with complete unity in the lighting and depth of field. Whether or not you notice this specifically, the fluidity of the camera that creates a feeling of elegant motion is front and centre. The visual design of placing his characters in the centre of the frame moving through hallways might even connect, whether purposefully or subliminally, with the point of view in which computer games are played by the two killers in the film. Or maybe Van Sant intended to echo the eerily cold feeling of the overlook hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Look closely to follow the shifting point of view. In mid-shot, Van Sant often moves from a tracking shot following a character to a reaction shot of other characters looking down the barrel of the camera. This occurs specifically when the handsome jock turns the heads of the nattering bulimic girls in the hallway.

If there’s a false note in the film it’s the depiction of Alex and Eric as emotionless stone cold killers. When the film switches to their stories, he’s clear to show their inane and confounding activities prior to the carnage, including their planning process, executed without an ounce of remorse or self-doubt, or an acknowledgement of their fate. There’s also the gay shower scene, which creates even more confusion and questions. Regardless of how the Columbine killers conducted themselves before their rampage, their detachment from reality is frightfully terrifying.

The massacre scene that fills the third act admirably does not sensationalize the murders. The depiction of death and the often confusing actions of some of the kids just before death feel so utterly real. Benny, for instance, skulks around the school like a brainless zombie thinking he’s immune to the killers’ weaponry. And his death, so undramatic and thoughtless, is difficult to comprehend or make sense of, yet it makes sense given the way Van Sant plays out Benny’s movements.

That said, Elephant is not meant to make sense of any aspect of this tragedy, other than, like Guernica, an abstract instinctive visceral reaction from the soul of an artist.

Wednesday Hump Dump 2

Winter Light (1963)

While I’m not a big fan of Ingmar Bergman’s work, I’ve always been fascinated by . Returning to it again, I still find myself struggling with Bergman’s style, but the material of this film is so provoking and so good that, too a degree, I’m able to look past some of my difficulties with Bergman’s style in order to engage in the fantastic conversation Bergman enters into through the idea of the silence of God.
Thomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand), pastor of a small church in a smaller town, finds himself plagued with spiritual doubt and despair. It makes his attempt to console a local man, Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow), thinly veiled attempts to work out his own issues. Compounding all this is the affections of Märta Lundberg (Ingrid Thulin), an atheist and schoolteacher who’s deeply in love with Tomas and constantly dotes on him even as he broods.

It’s the relationship between Märta and Tomas that sustains most of the film as both are desperately caught up in this desire for love in a loveless life. Yet both are looking in difference places. Tomas looks to the divine, but finds himself distraught over the silence of God while Märta hopes to find it in Tomas, a man who is her opposite in so many ways her affections seemed doomed from the onset.
While the silence of God is the obvious thematic crux of the film and there are some compelling conversations that flesh out the argument, it’s the lack of love that continues to compel me. It makes me think about a passage in the Bible that’s extremely apt: “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” from James 2:17. Tomas throughout the film never once shows a true work of love and as a result it is seen that his faith is completely dead. He can go through the motions, hold the sacraments, but he cannot escape his dead faith.

Gunnar Björnstrand’s fantastic performance does a great job at conveying the spiritual anguish and self-absorption that consumes Tomas. He spends so much time brooding in self-reflection and becomes so caught up in his own affairs that he begins to emotionally implode. In moments where one expects a pastor to convey empathy or love, one is only left with Gunnar’s soulless gaze.
Where I take umbrage with the film is Bergman’s stifling visual formalism. This does create a more introspective aesthetic which makes for some fantastic and bold images, but I find it becomes suffocating and limiting after a while, almost constructed to a fault as there’s this constant awareness of precise composition. Therefore, Bergman’s aesthetic becomes anti-naturalism and begins to intrude against the immersion into the narrative and characters.

The film builds to this great ending where finally a voice of insight pierces through this shroud of doubt and darkness. An unlikely character makes a deep insight that speaks directly to Tomas’ struggle. Instead of Bergman using this point as a place for character resolution, it’s simply a provoking thought which bridges into the closing moments of the film.