![]() Why isn’t The Sleepy Time Gal getting a theatrical release? According to B. But in a movie the excessive pontification threatens to overwhelm everything else - as it did in Hartley’s Henry Fool. The extinct form of live TV drama exemplified by Studio One and Playhouse 90 during the 50s and early 60s, where the audience shared the same existential moment as the actors, might have been all that was needed to put this didactic material across. Even the heavy-handed media satire concentrated in the character of the Boss - satire whose premises I agree with but whose delivery makes me want to defend American TV news - might have worked had it used the direct address of a play to put across its points. Could it be merely a coincidence that the mad scientist is named Artaud? His monologues and the monster’s might work beautifully onstage - and are certainly well performed, especially by Burke - but they come across in the film as clunky and strident. Despite a few attractive Icelandic landscapes and a striking rhythmic use of close-ups in the final sequence, his material seems much more suited to the stage than to film. The press book for No Such Thing notes that Hartley has recently been staging and restaging his first play, Soon, in Europe and California, which helped me pinpoint what I find unsatisfying about his new feature. Eventually the monster, his designated assassin, and Beatrice return to Iceland to negotiate their collective destiny. Beatrice is following in the footsteps of her journalist boyfriend, who disappeared with his crew, but she manages to achieve an uneasy truce and friendship with the monster and brings him back to New York, where it turns out Artaud is being held in captivity by the Boss. The monster is tracked down by Beatrice (Sarah Polley), a young New Yorker working for a sensationalist TV news program produced by another kind of monster known as the Boss (well played by Helen Mirren), who thrives on violence and catastrophes. Artaud (Baltasar Kormakur) knows how to accomplish. Its allegorical and satirical story concerns a savage and murderous monster (Robert John Burke) in the wilds of Iceland who’s older than humanity, which he despises, and who wants only to be destroyed - something only a missing mad scientist named Dr. It premiered at Cannes last May, and the only buzz I heard about it was unfavorable for the most part it was ignored. ![]() I saw No Such Thing for the first time last week, when it was screened in 35-millimeter. (”Edited on film,” the final credits note proudly, reinforcing the idea that a video of a film edit, or an edit seen on a TV screen, may be only an approximation.) A recent second viewing on video reminded me of some of the film’s virtues and flaws without clarifying what its strengths as a big-screen movie might be. Now I can only wonder if I’ll ever be able to - and if I can’t I’ll never be able to decide how good it really is, because Munch’s films all have a sense of spectacle that depends in part on the size and definition of the screen image, as well as on the way the images are edited together. I first saw the Munch film, about a woman dying of cancer, last fall on video at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and I remember looking forward to seeing it on the big screen. Chances are, a lot more people will see the Munch film, though they’ll have to be subscribers to the Sundance Channel or have a friend who is.Ĭonsidering these two films together is a breach of reviewing etiquette: movies that premiere in theaters are supposed to be in a different category than movies that premiere on TV. Hal Hartley’s No Such Thing - not one of his best movies - will open at Pipers Alley, and Christopher Munch’s The Sleepy Time Gal, which I prefer, will premiere exclusively on the Sundance cable channel. On March 29 two new American independent features of some importance will debut. Faison, Carmen Zapata, Peggy Gormley, and Seymour Cassel. With Jacqueline Bisset, Martha Plimpton, Nick Stahl, Amy Madigan, Frankie R. With Sarah Polley, Robert John Burke, Helen Mirren, Baltasar Kormakur, Paul Lazar, Annika Peterson, and Julie Christieĭirected and written by Christopher Munch From the Chicago Reader (March 29, 2002).
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