A Step Out of Line stars Peter Falk, Vic Morrow, and Peter Lawford, a fairly lustrous lineup for a humble TV movie. The trio of leading men portray average Joes, all Korean war buddies, plagued by a string of bad luck. With creditors hounded them at their very fireside (so to speak), Falk, Morrow and Lawford decide for the first–and last–time in their lives to resort to dishonesty. Pooling their military skills, the boys plot and plan to knock over a bank safe.
Tag: USA
An unstable man named Jim spends the summer in an empty mansion. There he meets a mystical woman, a real estate agent, and a man called Mick Prophet. Over the course of time, a series of strange and disturbing events occur as punks, serial killers and witches cross his path.
3-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep, Swoosie Kurtz, and Jill Eikenberry star as former classmates at a reunion seven years after their graduation from Mount Holyoke College, who assess whether they have achieved their youthful goals. In a flashback, the friends – all part of a group dubbed “uncommon” because they were expected to be “amazing” before they reached thirty – relive their senior year and examine the influences that shaped them. Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein’s first play illustrates facing adulthood at the height of the women’s movement.
FIGHT was based on improvisations developed by Charles Rydell and Brigid Berlin. In FIGHT the actors play a New York couple locked in a hell of relentless combat and intimacy. Conceived by Andy Warhol.
In this short by the British animators Derek Lamb and Jeff Hale, a music hall performer detaches his arms, legs, ears and eventually his head for the amusement of the audience. There’s a wry humour to his performance, but also a striking sense of detail in his movements and gestures- Lamb and Hale were both veterans of the animation world by the time they collaborated on the short. Their style will likely be familiar to anyone who watched Sesame Street during the 80s or 90s- cartoons by both Lamb and Hale were in regular rotation on the show.
Arguably Larry Gottheim’s most exuberant experiment in the single-shot, single-roll format (and his first with a soundtrack), HARMONICA trains the camera on a friend improvising a tune in the backseat of a moving car. Held out the window, the harmonica becomes a musical conduit for the wind, while Gottheim’s film transforms before our eyes into a playful meditation on wrangling the natural elements into art.
Melvin Van Peebles, director of the landmark independent film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, embraces the new age of digital filmmaking with his picaresque comedy, shot using DV equipment and taking full advantage of its creative possibilities. Van Peebles plays a fanciful version of himself, growing tired of life at home when he’s only ten years old and deciding he’d rather see the world than read about it in books or hear about it from his mother. Melvin runs away from home and hitches a ride from a friendly truck driver, but things take an unexpected turn when gangsters kill the trucker and the boy is tossed into the river with just an inner-tube for company.
DIFFERENT DRUMMER is a short documentary directed by Edward Gray about Jazz great Elvin Jones. In it he talks about his early days with John Coltrane (with whom he’s seen performing in a ’60s film clip) and pianist Bud Powell. He also performs drum solos and an original piece, “Three Card Molly,” with Ryo Kawasaki (guitar), Pat LaBarbera (sax) and David Williams (bass).