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NEWS OF ATHENS’ CINEMA SCENE
The Latest Predilection: The career of Dario
Argento is one I've intended to look into for
a long time and have only recently gotten
around to; the Italian director's seminal gial-
los and supernatural horror thrillers are surely
committed to many of your memories, but
for me, this stuff is pretty new. I'd watched
Suspiria (1977) and Mother of Tears (2007)—
the far-apart bookends of Argento's "Three
Mothers" trilogy—a few months ago when
both were aired on late-night cable, and when
Tenebre (1982) showed up recently in the
ICE-Vision series (which I can never attend
because I work Thursday nights), I decided
to put together a little Argento festival at my
house. Innumerable decapitations, straight
razor slashings and meat cleaver murders
later, my mind is irreparably polluted and Mrs.
Film Notebook is starting to look at me a little
differently.
and composition are already well developed
here and beautifully on display in an excellent
Blu-Ray DVD from Blue Underground. Dunno if
that's available for rental locally or not, but
Video Link and Vision Video both have plenty
of Argento titles to choose from, and Link has
a fairly extensive giallo section, as well.
Campus Tour: This Wednesday, Nov. 17, there's
a free screening in UGA's Baldwin Hall, Rm.
264 of A Genesis Found, an independently
produced feature from Alabama that's being
taken on a tour of campuses across the
Southeast by its director, Lee Fanning. It's a
mystery-adventure-drama about the discovery
of "an anomalous skeleton neither animal nor
man" that "could be a direct link to God." I
haven't seen it and don't know anything about
it beyond what the film's website says, but
if the filmmakers are going to the trouble of
Never Let Me Go, starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield, opens Nov. 26 at Cin£.
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While Argento's "Mothers" films—Inferno
(1980), which he describes as one of his
"most sincere and purest films,* is the sec
ond-may be his most personal and singular
achievements, the gioUos (or gialli, I sup
pose), wnich as far as I can discern comprise
the main body of his work, have been more
interesting based on my admittedly prelimi
nary investigations. The unusually fixed con
ventions of giallo, a natively Italian genre of
slick, stylish and violent mystery-thrillers, had
been well established for some time before
Argento's 1970 directorial debut, The Bird with
the Crystal Plumage. The film adopts several of
them, most notably a foreign visitor to Italy
who becomes an amateur but deeply commit
ted investigator after witnessing a crime, and
a killer in a black raincoat and leather gloves
with a penchant for beautiful, well-dressed
female victims. But Argento also takes playful
relish in the absurd and contradictory ele
ments of his set-up. Some of the more colorful
characters who assist the protagonist (the
magnificently handsome Tony Musante) in his
sleuthing include a guileless, stuttering pimp
with a nervous tic of infusing his conversation
with outbursts of "So long!,* which is also
his nickname; an almost Runyonesque two-
bit hustler with the defining trait of saying
exactly the opposite of what he means; and a
police analyst of micro-photographic evidence
who appears to be a blind man.
Argento's roaming camera exhibits its tense
combination of inquisitiveness and careful
concealment, and his graphic senses of color
hauling it around the region and screening it .
for free, it might seem reasonable to do them
the courtesy of checking it out Take a look at
www.agenesisfound.com if you're curious.
A Meanwhile, Back at Cin6: On Thursday, Nov.
18, Cin6 will donate Si from every ticket sold
to It's Kind of a Funny Story to Nugi's Space,
the local mental health resource center. The
film, written and directed by Ryan Reck and
Anna Boden and starring Zach Galifianakis, is
a comedy-drama set in the mental health ward
of a Brooklyn hospital... The poor, misguided
souls behind "Bad Movie Night* don't appear
ready to give up any time soon. The latest
atrocity they're foisting upon the unwitting
public is something called Alien Private Eye,
a direct-to-video release from 1987 for which
they've lovingly crafted a trailer, available
at www.athensrine.com. The whole movie
will be shown for free (thank goodness) at 8
p.m. Nov. 17... Showing through Nov. 24 is
Inside Job, in which Charles Ferguson, who
exposed the frightening political relationships
and realities behind the Iraq War in No End
in Sight, does the same for the global finan
cial crisis. I'm also pretty eager to see Never
Let Me Go, opening Nov. 26. It's a haunting,
unconventional sci-fi drama based on the very
popular novel by Kazuo Ishigurp and featuring
a very impressive roster of British actresses:
Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, Charlotte
Rampling and Sally Hawkins.
Dave Mart fllmOflagpoie.com
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