Ray Pride

What's for Bleak Fest, mom? A terrifically spirited selection of dystopian fact and fiction, that's what. As part of the Humanities Festival, Facets has programmed over a dozen movies under the festival's "A Climate of Concern" rubric, mostly brilliant, about the terrors that underlie our modern world and the times to come, the terrors that lie outside of propaganda and fear. Start with the Charlton Heston-starring "Omega Man," positing one "Woodstock"-worshipping survivor in a monster-ridden, barren Los Angeles landscape (the same material is the source of the upcoming "I Am Legend," with Will Smith). Nicolas Roeg's classic "Walkabout," with two children left by a suicide parent in the Australian outback, is one of the great slabs of fear in a landscape, and Peter Watkin's 1971 "Punishment Park" imagines a roundup in the desert of counterculture kids by the National Guard after the declaration of a form of martial law. (Watkin's paranoia is timeless, sad to say.) Great eruptions geysering with fire, with the potential of melting the landscape? Go to Malibu, or try Werner Herzog's "La Soufriere," or maybe the goony fantasia of earth from alien Brad Dourif's perspective in "Wild Blue Yonder." Take a bite out of the frightening "The Future of Food," or Nikolaus Geyrhalter's otherworldly "Our Daily Bread," which makes the terrifying apparatus of industrial food production somehow lovely and haunting. "Who Killed the Electric Car?" is incendiary; "The Devil's Miners," about child labor in South America, is heartwrenching. "Darwin's Nightmare" is a documentary about the desiccation of an African lake from overfishing and the dark doings, including gunrunning and prostitution, that are the unintended consequences of greed at work. And did we mention Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men"? Here's a masterpiece that will last: bold, iconic, suggestive, goofy, haunting, hopeful. It's this kind of artistic imagining of terrible things that inspire a better world to come.

The programs begin Monday at Facets. For date, time and full schedule, www.facets.org

(2007-10-23)

Also by Ray Pride

Hannah and Her Brethren
No one can say what it means in the mutating media universe, but it's nice to see a theatrical release for "Hannah Takes The Stairs," the third feature by one of Chicago's most prolific filmmakers, 26-year-old Joe Swanberg
(2007-10-16)

Tip of the Week
South African director Gavin Hood made his name with the Oscar-winning "Tsotsi" (2005), with its visceral evocations of the lingering effects of apartheid-era repression. His first U.S. picture, "Rendition," is an attempt to make honorable drama out of the terrible reality of "unlawful rendition," or the kidnapping and "disappearing" of alleged evildoers
(2007-10-16)

Tip of the Week
Autumn is upon us if the sere, severe, serious likes of "The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford" and James Gray's brutal, assured third feature, "We Own The Night" are filling American screens. In his earlier features, "Little Odessa" (1994) and "The Yards" (2000), the 38-year-old demonstrated his affinity for the grand canvas upon which an intricately orchestrated tale is told
(2007-10-09)

Do You Feel Lucky?
There are about forty movies that I've either seen or know enough about to heartily recommend. A movie year should be this lucky, let alone a festival filled with these postcards from around the planet
(2007-10-09)

Cheeseball
(2007-10-08)

There’s Something About Queefing
(2007-10-05)

Commissioned
(2007-10-02)

The 43rd International Film Festival
(2007-10-02)

Tip of the Week
(2007-10-02)

The Life Sub-Asian with Wes Anderson
(2007-10-02)

Heart of Larkiness
(2007-09-25)

Tip of the Week
(2007-09-25)

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