The Movie List 2 (of Many)

Dinner Rush – Bob Giraldi
“Am I an artist?” Asks Summer Phoenix's waitress of the famous and winging art critic. The established artists with him shake their heads: “The minute you doubt it, it's gone”. “You're an artists if you say you are,” the critic agrees, “you're a successful artist if...” “He says you are,” the established artists joke. You can hear the writers Rick Shaughnessy and Brian Kalata telling each other this as they worked on this perfect script. Every performance is just right and the ending never fails to startle.

Dogtown and Z-Boys – Stacey Peralta / Craig Stecyk
Everything you need to know about life, but will never be able to apply here in England to yours. This was the bunch of middle-school drop-outs who defined modern skateboarding and extreme games. Which is why they practiced all the time, worked hard on their moves, knew that “style is everything”, encouraged each other, could clean out a dirty swimming pool in four hours, dodged the cops, and when the commercial opportunities came along, took them. It helped they had Craig Stecyk to publicise them and document their activities, and it also helped that Jeff Ho and Skip Englbloom were true mentors. Oh, and as a movie, a story, it is as good as any other on the screen.

Unser Taglish Brot – Nicholas Geyrhalter
Bear with me here, this is a documentary about European industrialised farming, and if your jaw doesn't drop on the floor at some of the things you see, you're not paying attention. Who invented the machine for gently sweeping chicks onto a conveyor belt? Or the cow-milking turntable? Did you know what the vaults of a deep salt mine look like? The scene involving a bull, a cow and a man with a test tube is, well, maybe that's too much information already. Watching this movie is part of your education. Don't be a townie who thinks that tomatoes grown in their packing any longer. Oh and the editing, the rhythm, the colour, the warm detachment of it? Flawless.

Basquiat – Julian Schnabel
Films about the art world are few and far between, films about the art world made by an actual artists probably number this one. The first time I saw it, I felt alive for a couple of days. The script is endlessly quotable and it's one of those films you can watch for “bits” - my favourite being the painting-in-the-cellar sequence. The performances are excellent, the ambience feels right, though Basquiat's behaviour and the sheet extent of his drug consumption is only hinted at. Also to judge from the photographs in the various biographies, Courtney Love and Claire Forlani are a lot prettier than the actual women. Apparently Basquiat's estate refused to lend his paintings for the movie, so Schnabel painted the “Basquiats” himself.

Jazz On A Summer's Day – Bert Stern
I saw this at a now-defunct cinema on Baker Street when I was seventeen. It has everything from hard bop to Bach – the cellist with the Chico Hamilton band plays the Prelude from Bach's first Cello Suite. There's a goodly cross-section of the 1958 jazz scene, a truly awful mis-match of sound and vision as Sal Salvador plays guitar, some nice films of yachts and some beautiful photography. It's a look back at a different country – when jazz was at the height of its virtuosity and was the music of the hip of all colours. It isn't now, but it was then.