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Editorials

AUGUST EDITORIAL 2000

By • Aug 1st, 2000 •

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Hope you’re enjoying Films In Review‘s new format. We’ve been getting excellent responses, but we’d love to hear from all of you, so don’t hesitate to drop us an email.

This month should see the inauguration of our FIR Archives, delving back into Films in Review’s past for articles by our worthy contributors as well as contributions from filmmakers themselves, back when there were no other publications where they could make themselves properly heard.

Chris Noth (left) and John Gallagher on the set of The Deli. Photo by Abbott Genser.

Indefatigable indie filmmaker and occasional FIR contributor John Gallagher is at it again, with Blue Moon, his latest feature, using his usual ensemble NY cast for the first act, then isolating Ben Gazzara and Rita Moreno in a cabin in the woods for a surrealistic piece of confrontational therapy whose unique nature I won’t give away. It’s a haunting story about marriage as impacted by age, regrets, and, hopefully, the process of coming to terms with human shortcomings. Gazzara is quite wonderful in the film, I can reveal, having caught it at a ‘friends only’ screening, so I’m counting on John not to hold it against me for putting this advance teaser in print. I’m also informed that his recent film, The Deli, is soon to be released as a special edition DVD via Synapse. There will be extra footage and a commentary track.

The New York Film Festival is fast approaching, and Ken Geist will cover many of the films debuting at that event. Nicole Potter is on the lookout for more interesting filmmakers to interview. And I’ll be rooting out the best in home entertainment. Our ever-provocative Victoria Alexander, currently in Peru looking for signs of extraterrestrial life, will be back before long to shed new light on the late summer theatrical releases. And we should have a chat room going this month, too. So keep visiting.

A last word. I caught the terrible Scary Movie recently. It’s making a fortune so I know many of you saw it too, and a few of you probably even liked it. That’s taste. What really did move me about the film, outside of a few of the parody scenes which at least visually captured their subject, was the scene when the girl in the movie theater so incites the other patrons by talking out loud and then getting indignant that they’re telling her to shut up, that they kill her. This transcended parody and rose to the realm of satire, and for me it was a rather cathartic affair. I know lots of people who experience road rage, but the closest I’ve come in the last several years to real violence was in movie theaters under just such circumstances. If only it would serve the purpose satire aspires to, which is social change. But I’m afraid those moronic theater goers that Scary Movie depicted so accurately would not even recognize themselves in its frames, let alone be moved to do something to moderate their behavior.

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