Monica Nolan's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from writer and filmmaker Monica Nolan, who has full bio on her website:

PFA won hands down as the rep venue of choice. On the one hand I feel lucky to have the PFA within reach; on the other hand, it's frustrating that I have to travel an hour and a half (bike to bart, bart to berkeley, bike to theatre) each way, when I think of the rep programming that was available in years past at the Castro and Roxie, much closer to hand. If it wasn't for the various festivals, my visits to both of those venues would be far and few between. But I shouldn't be too hard on them--after all they don't have the vault that the PFA does to draw from!

1. Accatone (PFA). It's nice to be reminded that there are still unseen classics from the past that can shock and stimulate you. Plus, this tale of pimps and layabouts was the perfect antidote to a family Thanksgiving!

2. Remember the Night (Noir Xmas, at the Castro). Mitch Leisen lights the young and beautiful Barbara Stanwyck! A match made in heaven.

3. Women's Prison (Noir City 8 at the Castro) This beat out the Burt Lancaster prison break movie at the PFA, although Hume Cronyn wins "most sadistic prison warden" over Ida Lupino.

4. Love Letters and Live Wires, shorts from GPO film unit (PFA). Including Night Mail, a short by Cavalcanti, and a Norman McLaren animation, yet my favorite was the wonderful Fairy of the Phone.

5. The Servant (PFA). Kind of jaw-dropping, especially when I kept expecting it was about to end and it kept continuing. How low could James Fox sink? I'm even more intrigued now that I know Somerset Maugham's nephew wrote the book. Was he thinking about the relationship between his Uncle Willie and Uncle Willie's secretary/lover Gerald?

6. My Hustler (Frameline LGBT Film Fest at the Roxie). All these years I've been underestimating Warhol.

7. Senso (San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro). I know The Leopard is the worthier movie, but this was just as beautiful and awfully fun.

8.Bitter Rice (PFA). This was in the Italian neo-realism series on the thinnest of excuses in my book, but who cares? A gangster melodrama, with shots framed like the covers of pulp novels.

9. The Crimson Pirate (PFA). A completely ridiculous and mediocre movie redeemed by Burt Lancaster's energy and the beauty of the technicolor print.

10. Maedchen in Uniform (the 1958 Romy Schneider version, Frameline LGBT Film Festival, at the Castro). I'd always heard this disparaged in comparison with the 1931 version, and was surprised at how well it stood up.

Lincoln Spector's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from critic Lincoln Spector of Bayflicks, where this list has been cross-posted:


Half of these were silent film screenings. This was a great year for silents–dominated by Metropolis and The Passion of Joan of Arc. I saw two silent films accompanied by full orchestras this year. That’s as many as I’ve seen in my previous 40 years as a silent film fan. And this year, they were better movies.

10 Marwencol, Kabuki, May 2. Serendipity sometimes leads me to the best festival screenings. I saw this documentary about a brain-damaged artist only because was that it was in between two other docs I really wanted to see at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It turned out to be better than either of them, and the best new film I saw at the festival. I’m glad it got a theatrical release in the fall.

9 Mon Oncle, Pacific Film Archive, January 20. Until last year, I’d never seen this particular Jacques Tati comedy. With this one screening, it instantly became my favorite, quite possibly the funniest visual comedy made since Charlie Chaplin reluctantly agreed to talk. Bright and colorful, it works both as a satire of modern materialism and a great collection of belly laughs. Too bad the PFA presented a print dubbed into English, although with Tati, ruining the dialog doesn’t do much damage.

8 Rotaie, Castro, July 17. There’s nothing like discovering an old, wonderful movie that you’ve never heard of. In this 1929 Italian drama, a young couple, broke but very much in love, find a huge wad of cash and start living the good life. We can see the character flaws that left them destitute in the first place, and will leave them that way again. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival screened the only known existing print, with intertitle translations read aloud and Stephen Horne accompanying on piano and other instruments.

7 Cinematic Titanic: War of the Insects, Castro, August 3. I’ve been a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for a long time. Here was a chance to experience it live. From the opening shot of an H bomb explosion, with Mary Jo Pehl’s comment, "Sarah Palin’s first day as President," the jokes flew thick and belly deep. There were times I couldn’t breathe.

6 The General, Oakland Paramount, March 19. I’ve seen Keaton’s Civil War masterpiece countless times, in classrooms, museums, theaters, festivals, and home. I once rented it on VHS, and have owned it on Laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray. Yet this was probably my best General experience. Why? A great, 35mm print, terrific accompaniment by Christoph Bull on the Paramount’s pipe organ, and an enthusiastic audience of symphony goers who didn’t know what they were in for and were very pleasantly surprised.

5 The Gold Rush and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Davies Symphony Hall, April 16. I finally saw Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush properly—a good print with live musical accompaniment–by the San Francisco Symphony, no less. The only problem: Davies Hall really isn’t built for movies.

4 Kurosawa All Over the Place. Akira Kurosawa was born in 1910, so last year saw a whole lot of retrospectives of my all-time favorite filmmaker. Naturally, considering my East Bay residence, I stuck to screenings at the Pacific Film Archive. I started my own personal retrospective, watching the films on DVD late in 2008. The PFA allowed me to finish them in 35mm, on a large screen, and with an audience.

3 Metropolis, Castro, July 17. Setting aside my own experiences, the restored "Complete" Metropolis was the motion picture restoration event of the year. I’d already seen it in New York before it played the Castro in the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, but the Castro screening was the better experience. Part of that was the theater itself. But more credit goes to the Alloy Orchestra’s very electric score, which brings out the film’s overall weirdness and the third act’s excitement better than any other Metropolis score I’ve heard. Too bad that score was not, as was announced at the festival, included in the Blu-ray release. (You can buy it separately from the Alloy Orchestra’s web site.

2 Three live presentations at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Castro and Kabuki, April and May. I’m putting these events together for brevity’s sake. Three of my top, living, English-speaking, cinematic heroes got a chance in the spotlight at this year’s festival, and the results were as entertaining and educational as any movies screened. Editor and sound designer Walter Murch gave the State of the Cinema Address. Screenwriter/producer/studio head/Columbia professor James Schamus answered questions from B. Ruby Rich and the audience as the winner of this year’s Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting. And Roger Ebert was honored with this year’s Mel Novikoff Award.

1. Voices of Light & The Passion of Joan of Arc, Oakland Paramount, December 2. This was definitely the greatest film/live music experience of my 40+ years as a silent film aficionado. It jut might be the greatest experience I’ve had sitting in an audience. Not only was it a brilliant film (and one I’d never seen before theatrically), but it was accompanied by Richard Einhorn’s "Voices of Light, An Oratorio with Silent Film," and a great work in its own right. Mark Sumner conducted the 22-piece orchestra and approximately 180 singers from multiple choruses. The overall effect was powerful, entrancing, awe-inspiring, frightening, and beautiful.

What I'm Thinking About This Week

Ten years ago at this time I was living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, teaching English at a local high school. It seems like such a long time ago, but the impact of spending a year and a half living and working in a foreign country did so much to change my perspectives on the world, and my place in it, that I still feel very close to the experience. I'm sometimes wistful that I've lost touch with all of my former students and fellow teachers, and indeed most of the friends I made while living abroad, but returning to my native city where I've resided ever since, has not made me feel as if I've completely lost touch with Thailand. I cherish my mostly-fond memories of the country, and still try to keep up with major current events there, as depressing as they often may be (as they have been lately).

Cinema has been a major component of my feeling of connectedness. While in Chiang Mai I first tried my hand at criticism, penning a monthly video review column for a local English-language news magazine catering to the British/Australian/North American ex-patriot community. At the time, I wrote mostly about the latest Hollywood films, because they were the ones widely available in rental shops. It was easy to experience the cultural artifacts of my own culture while abroad. Now I'm lucky to live in a place where I can more than just vicariously experience some of the benefits of Thai cinema's resurgence and global emergence over the past decade or so. Between all of the film festivals and alternative screening venues that exist here on Frisco Bay, there are usually a few opportunities a year, and sometimes as many as a half-dozen or more, to view Thai films in 35mm prints on the big screen; of these I've missed only a scant few over the past decade. I've been able to keep relatively current with the work of directors I was first exposed to during my time in the Land of Smiles- Wisit Sasanatieng, Nonzee Nimibutr and Pen-ek Ratanaruang (the latter's latest Nymph was not among the best films I saw at the latest San Francisco International Film Festival, but I was extremely pleased for the opportunity to view it, and particularly its nearly-supernatural opening camera move, in a cinema in my own town.) I've been able to discover from afar the work of newer talent like Uruphong Raksasad, who makes his digital quasi-documentaries in the region of Thailand I'm most personally familiar with, or Anocha Suwichakornpong, whose Mundane History was my most truly transcendent highlight of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival earlier this year.

The constant Thai cinematic presence over these years as a Frisco guy who left some small piece of his heart in Thailand, however, has been Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who ten years ago was seeing his first feature film, Mysterious Object At Noon, travel the global festival circuit. I first heard his name in 2001, shortly before the film played to a small audience at the Pacific Film Archive. Since then, thanks to the SFIFF, SFIAAFF, and other local venues tapped into international cinephile dialogue, I've been able to watch most of his film and video work, much of it repeatedly. How much of a debt do I owe my affection for and fascination with Apichatpong's filmmaking to my stint in Thailand? I can't be sure, but it's been heartening to feel like I've been following this still-young director over the past decade as his visibility has increased among film-lovers everywhere. I was so thrilled and surprised on Sunday, when his latest feature Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the first such win for an Asian film since films by Shohei Imamura and Abbas Kiarostami shared the honor in 1997. Of course I have not yet seen Uncle Boonmee (although I was delighted to see his companion short video piece Letter to Uncle Boonmee at the SFIAAFF in March) and perhaps I'll even find it a letdown compared to his three masterful 35mm features, Syndromes and a Century, Tropical Malady, and Blissfully Yours. But I feel glad that this high-profile win will surely secure a chance for Frisco Bay Apichatpong fans to see the film eventually, and hopefully sooner than such an opportunity would otherwise be likely to occur.

In the meantime, I'm all the more excited to plunge into the viewing opportunities that have been laid upon my table. One certainly doesn't need to be an Apichatpong Weerasethakul admirer to be excited by chances to see Andy Warhol films, but it supplies another reason; Apichatpong has often named Warhol, along with Frisco Bay experimental film legend Bruce Baillie, as favorite filmmakers and key inspirations for his work. SFMOMA will screen confirmed Apichatpong favorite The Chelsea Girls on July 8. And the longest-running lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender film festival in the world, Frameline, has announced as part of its upcoming program next month a large-scale focus on Andy Warhol. It consists of screenings of a new documentary, Beautiful Darling, the Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar, a clips lecture by Ron Gregg, and two programs of shorter Warhol films selected by Gregg, including Vinyl, which adapted Anthony Burgess's a Clockwork Orange with Gerard Malanga six years before Stanley Kubrick did it with Malcolm McDowell.

In addition to the Warhol films, Frameline selections I'm anxious to see include I Killed My Mother by Xavier Dolan and Spring Fever by Lou Ye, both of which come highly regarded by those who have seen them at festivals over the past year, and Géza von Radvány's 1958 version of Madchen In Uniform, screening as an archival selection. Frameline veterans from Cheryl Dunye to François Ozon to Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman each will have new films presented at this year's festival, but the full range of filmmaking, from documentary to short form to a robust selection of South America's New Queer Cinema cannot be adequately summarized in a paragraph of preview, so I urge you to browse the full schedule before finalizing your festival plans. I know I will.

June's going to be a crowded month of filmgoing however, even with Sex In The City 2 virtually* dominating the Castro Theatre from now until Frameline opens there June 17. After a near-month of hiatus, the Pacific Film Archive reopens this weekend. The venue's regular projection space (at least until 2014 or so) at 2575 Bancroft Way has its first screenings of the summer tomorrow evening, when a double feature of Whistler films you may or may not have seen at the Roxie's I Still Wake Up Dreaming B-noir festival, play. As does the 1975 King Hu martial arts extravaganza The Valiant Ones. The latter kicks off a remarkable series of recent acquisitions to the PFA film collection, which reminds us that Berkeley's most-revered film exhibition venue has roots much deeper than mere exhibition. (So that's what the 'A' stood for!) Films by Hayao Miyazaki, Agnès Varda, Alberto Gout, Robert Gardner, Judy Irving and others round out the eclectic series. Tributes to Mexican science fiction, the Romanian New Wave and the Residents ensure a little something for everyone, but surely the centerpiece of the PFA's summer is the complete Akira Kurosawa retrospective being held in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Completists are already drooling over the chance to see rarities like Sanshiro Sugata I & II and the Quiet Duel on the big screen, but Berekely is not the only place to get an A.K. fix in June. On this side of the bridge, the Embarcadero will screen a new print of Kurosawa's most famous color film, Ran for a week beginning June 4th. And four of the master's most noirish black-and-white films will play in 35mm prints at the still-new VIZ Cinema at Post and Webster Streets that same week: Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, the Bad Sleep Well and High and Low are the titles, not a samurai sword among them. The VIZ lineup for June is truly jawdropping for those of us who can't get enough classic Japanese cinema. After a week of Kurosawa films, the Japantown venue will bring four Yasujiro Ozu films including his most-widely-acknowledged masterpiece Tokyo Story, his following film Early Spring, and two earlier films I've been wishing to see return to Frisco Bay since I missed them during his PFA centennial six and a half years ago: The Only Son and Record Of A Tenement Gentlemen. As if that weren't enough, VIZ will screen four Kenji Mizoguchi masterpieces (I confidently say this not having seen all of them) June 19-24: Sisters of The Gion (pictured above), Ugetsu Monogatari, Street of Shame and Utamaro and His Five Women (the one I haven't seen yet). This is a truly special set of twelve films VIZ is bringing in June, each with multiple playdates, so go to as many as you can while you can, and tell your friends, if you want to encourage future screenings of Japanese classics on this side of Frisco Bay, where they've been pretty scarce in recent years.

VIZ Cinema, which until recently focused on screening the films of its affiliated DVD label almost exclusively, is obviously stretching its programming muscles, and if this keeps up it will rapidly become one of the most exciting venues on Frisco Bay. Also to play there in June are two programs with a South Asian, rather than East Asian, focus: 3rd i's Queer Eye, an outpost of LGBT films presented by the folks who bring the South Asian Film Festival to town every November, and the locally-made Indian diasporic film Bicycle Bride.

What else is happening in June? The previously-mentioned "I Still Wake Up Dreaming" series experienced rush line level crowds for some of its 35mm screenings, as well as some technical difficulties in the sound quality of certain of the 16mm prints it showed, so programmer Elliot Lavine and the Roxie Theater decided to reprise some of the affected films from June 4. I wholeheartedly recommend the June 6th double-bill in particular, featuring the two best films I saw at the festival: Phil Karlson's luckless boxer nailbiter 99 River Street, and the sultry policier Cop Hater. Everyone seemed to love the cameo-studded rat pack gangster film Johnny Cool but me; it plays June 4 if you want to see for yourself. (For me, it couldn't live up to its theme song.) The Fearmakers, Jacques Tourneur's 1958 expose of the communist infiltration of Washington, D.C. publicity firms is not among the director's great films, but it's an interesting time capsule worth a look in 35mm; it plays June 6th along with a 35mm print of Nightmare, which I missed the first time around. I also missed the three 16mm prints that suffered the worst sound problems, and which will play on a triple-bill June 7th, for free for those who attended their prior screenings and for $11 for the rest of us. Gustav Machatý's Jealousy sounds the most intriguing of the trio.

Oakland's Paramount Theatre begins its summer film series the same weekend, with a June 4 screening of the late Lynn Redgrave's defining film Georgy Girl. Other films scheduled to screen at Frisco Bay's largest, most opulent (if intermittently-utilized) movie palace are the original King Kong July 9, E.T. July 23, and the great Howard Hawks film To Have And Have Not August 6. The Rafael Film Center will play the 1937 Prisoner of Zenda as a special presentation with Oscar winners Craig Barron and Ben Burtt on June 13. SFMOMA screens Clint Eastwood's first directorial effort Play Misty For Me June 10. And the Red Vic has a new calendar on the streets with its usual combination of second-run, repertory, and special event bookings. The documentary on influential filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar (the latter of whom gets a rare solo show at Artists' Television Access June 5) called It Came From Kuchar makes its landing June 14 & 15. Bong Joon-ho's Mother plays June 16 & 17 (his The Host plays the PFA June 18), the sheepherding documentary Sweetgrass appears July 12 & 13, and Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop closes the door on this particular calendar August 6-9. Along with the theatre's annual anniversary screenings of Harold and Maude (July 25-28) the Red Vic celebrates its 30th year of operation by showcasing three winners of a recent audience poll of its favorite repertory films. The winners: Alejandro Jodorowski's El Topo (August 1 & 2) takes the bronze, Dead Man (August 3 & 4) the silver, and Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (July 18 & 19) the gold. I'm a deep admirer of all three of these not-quite-canonized films. Congratulations to Red Vic patrons on your discerning and non-conforming taste!

The Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto still has a few more weeks left on its appetizing current calendar, which ends with a Josef Von Sternberg double-bill (Morocco and The Devil Is A Woman) June 16-18. The day after that, another southerly film venue plays another Sternberg film, this time one of his most highly-regarded silent films, the Last Command. The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, tucked in a lovely corner of Fremont, will present that Oscar-winning film with Jon Mirsalis providing musical accompaniment on Kurzweil synthesizer. It's part of the Silent Film Museum's busiest month of the year; the first weekend in June is given over to Charlie Chaplin Days, honoring the most well-known actor to have worked in Niles back when Hollywood's supremacy as California's movie-making hub was not yet secure. The Gold Rush and other Chaplin films will screen. The final weekend of the month brings a festival named for a cowboy star who was every bit as well-known as Chaplin in his day, but has become something of a footnote today. This year's 13th Annual Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival features seven different programs of features and short subjects starring figures once famous to all, but now forgotten to most moviegoers, such as Wallace Reid, J. Warren Kerrigan, and G.M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson himself. An early (1920) King Vidor-directed film, the Jack-Knife Man promises to be a high point of the weekend.

Frisco's own Silent Film Festival has announced its program as well; expanded to a four-day event for its 15th edition, the festival has really outdone itself in lining up well-known and rare silent films, musicians, and special guests for the July 15-18 event. I will surely have more to say on this festival in the weeks to come, but in the meantime, Lincoln Spector has covered some of the highlights. This marks the sixth time I've contributed a contextual essay for the festival's program booklet, a copy of which will be handed to every attendee at the Castro that weekend. "My" film, this time around, has been Dziga Vertov's magnum opus Man With A Movie Camera, which will screen on Sunday afternoon, July 18th, with the Alloy Orchestra performing its critically-acclaimed musical score based on Vertov's 1929 instructions. Familiarizing myself with the history of early Soviet film-making, and sorting through the mountains of material written on Vertov in particular, has made for one of the most challenging and rewarding research projects I've attempted yet. I hope that the end-products (a pre-screening slide show, as well as the essay) prove valuable to festgoers. I have no doubt that the screening and musical performance will be entertaining and eye-opening for people who have already seen Man With A Movie Camera, and for those who haven't. If there was ever a film that deserves repeat viewings, this is it.

While looking through libraries and archives, trying to better understand the conditions under which Vertov's films were screened for the public in his day, I found a collection of program notes from The Film Society Of London which thrust my imagination back into early 1930s art-cinema exhibition. The Film Society had been founded in 1925 by Anthony Asquith, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, and H.G. Wells among other original members. In early 1931 the group screened Man With a Movie Camera on a program with a Silly Symphony (Artic Antics), a set of color (excuse me, colour) photography tests from British and American companies, an Austrian puppet play (The Dragon Prince), and a section of Alberto Cavalcanti's Little Red Riding Hood. Later that year, the same venue played Vertov's first sound film, Enthusiasm with the director personally in attendance; this was two days prior to Charlie Chaplin's famous pronouncement: "Never had I known that these mechanical sounds could be arranged to seem so beautiful...Mr. Dziga Vertov is a musician. The professors should learn from him not quarrel with him." In late 1935 Vertov's following film Three Songs About Lenin screened on a bill with Cavalcanti's GPO documentary Coal Face and Len Lye's Kaleidoscope among other short subjects.

I find it thrilling to learn such details about a bygone era of cinephilia, in which leading playwrights, novelists, and economists rubbed shoulders with animators, documentarians, film technologists, and avant-garde filmmakers from home and abroad. I do wonder what the membership requirements of The Film Society of London were like-- did one have to be a living legend to gain access, or are those simply the member names that have been handed down to us? Is there an equivalent of that activity today amidst the film festivals and venues right here in this town? I know that there are others who would disagree with me, but I just love that the SF Silent Film Festival programs films of diverse types, from all the corners of the world it can, alongside the justly classic and unjustly obscure entertainments from the Hollywood studio era. An 'us vs. them' attitude about independent and foreign filmmaking no doubt existed among some American film producers of the era, but in some corners of film appreciation, it feels like boundaries (national, stylistic, genre, etc.) are being patrolled more fiercely than ever. The Film Society Of London appeared to smash these kinds of barriers in its day, and from what I understand, early programming at places like SFMOMA did the same in the 1930s, mixing the avant-garde, documentary, an popular animation from various countries of origin, all on the same program.

Eighty years ago feels like a world away, but another little discovery made it seem just a little bit closer: on the back of the program for the Three Songs of Lenin screening was a list of films that had their British premiere at The Film Society in 1934-5, and it included (along with Jean Vigo's Zero For Conduct and Basil Wright's Song of Ceylon) a title I saw at the Pacific Film Archive a year and a half ago, Douro by Manoel de Oliveira. A silent, poetic documentary that was clearly made by a man who was then a young contemporary of Walter Ruttmann, Joris Ivens, and Vertov, Douro is almost certainly the only remaining silent-era debut film made by a director who is not only still living, but still making films, at 101 years of age. And here was his name listed amidst those of long-dead filmmakers who it's hard not to think of as belonging to a long-dead era.

While Oliveira's latest film just debuted alongside Apichatpong's in Cannes (Dennis Lim found the pair comparable highlights), his previous one is poised to make its first appearance here on Frisco Bay, also in June, at pretty much the only major local film venue I haven't yet mentioned in this post, the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts. Called Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl, on June 24, 26 & 27 it wraps up what looks to be an extremely strong month at the venue that has allowed me to see more Apichatpong Weerasethakul films than any other. No, YBCA hasn't announced plans to screen Uncle Boonmee yet, but they will be showing, in addition to the Oliveira, three films any serious cinephile will probably want to experience: Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers June 3-6, Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay June 12-13 (both of which have been among the most contentious new films of the past year's film festival circuit) and Catherine Breillat's wonderful Bluebeard June 17-19. If Apichatpong, Korine, Mendoza and Breillat can be counted as contemporaries of Oliveira (and why not), and Oliveira was a contemporary of Vertov, Vigo and Chaplin, then the boundary between contemporary and "old" cinema is obliterated. What a refreshing thought!

SFIFF Short Films

As usual, some of the best things I've seen so far at the 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival have been in the shorts programs. I've watched three of the curated sets thus far: The High Line, Solitude Standing, and Pirate Utopias. Each of the three programs was well worth my time and attention. The cliché line about festival shorts programs is that if you don't like a particular film, don't worry, it'll soon be over and the next one is likely to be better. While this is a perfectly valid way of approaching these kinds of collections, I've been struck this year that two of the three groupings I've viewed so far have been so consistently strong even when presenting a highly diverse array of filmmaking approaches, subject matters, and international viewpoints, that it doesn't really apply.

Pirate Utopias, which has its final screening tomorrow (Saturday) at 9:15 PM, was simultaneously the most stylistically diverse and thematically unified. A being who had never witnessed a motion picture and wanted to absorb, in less than an hour and a half, the full range of possible ways to arrange moving images, could do much worse than to stumble into this program, which includes rapidly-cut surreal comedies and music video, fizzling hi-def, mock-documentary earnestness, various kinds of animation from Busby Berkeley-esque geometrical motion to pure abstraction, and more. Certain motifs did get repeated throughout the selections, however; I don't think there was a single entry in the set that didn't include mirrors/reflections, or accented phallic symbols (or phalluses), or in some cases both! I would never have guessed that filmmakers as varied as Guy Maddin, Max Hattler, the Zellner Brothers, etc. might all be tuned into a similar wavelength this year?

Somewhat typically, my favorite in the group must have been the one that created the most divisive reaction in the audience, judging from the vocal hissing emitted from the rows behind me. Called Release, it's the latest video piece by Bill Morrison, the found-footage re-architect behind Decasia, Light Is Calling, and a number of other previous SFIFF selections. It's very much a conceptual piece built around a piece of newsreel footage of an event that, for the sake of potential viewers of the film, I will not name. It's an incredible piece of footage however; a single shot that makes at least a 180-degree pan from one side of a city street to the other, on one side of the street a collection of onlookers awaiting the event, and on the other, the action of the event itself. Morrison repeats the shot at least thirty or forty times, each time adding a few frames of footage to either temporal end of the unit of image at hand. It is not until the final iteration of these repetitions that the last second or so of image is revealed, and along with it the full nature of the event. (Perhaps you can see why I'm being vague- who knew there were such things as spoilers for experimental films? If you really want to know a bit more check out Jay Blodgett's complete roundup of the festival's experimental shorts, and the Tribeca Film Festival has given away the surprise entirely.) Until that last repetition, the audience has more than the usual opportunity to ponder the image, the repetitions, and Morrison's intentions.

One is invited to look for clues everywhere: by trying to read the signage on the street, to scrutinize the makeup of the gathered crowd and the clothes they are wearing, etc. At first I was focused on the bits of new information being given at the beginning and ending of each repetition, but after perhaps a dozen of them I found I was more surprised by what details from the middle chunk of footage, which I had seen most frequently, I began noticing more carefully- the young boy running along the front of the crowd, for instance - where did he come from? I didn't remember seeing him at all the first several iterations. In this way, Release becomes Morrison's argument for the value in rewatching movies to see something new in it, or perhaps his way of pointing to the pointlessness of it when all we in the audience really want is that final narrative "release" at the end of a film, that telegraphs to us how to interpret all that we've seen before. It's probably worth mentioning the electronic music soundtrack (there, I mentioned it) and the fact that the director has affixed a digital mirror to the archival footage he's decided to use, so that the center line of the widescreen frame becomes a shape-distorting pair of reflected frame edges itself, somewhat reminiscent of a powerful gimmick favored by Nicholas Provost in several of his videoworks, including 2004 SFIFF Golden Gate Award-winner Papillon d'amour. I haven't teased out Morrison's reasoning behind this strategy, other than to simply make the piece even more visually interesting than it already is.

Release is up for a Golden Gate Award this year, and is probably the one I'd stump hardest for if I were on the jury. Although, any of the five in the New Visions category would be a worthy winner. I guess I slightly prefer the Pirate Utopias competitors (also including Martha Colburn's action-packed One And One Is Life and Félix Dufour-Laperrière's M) to Lewis Klahr's Wednesday Morning Two AM, featuring the Shangra-Las and Klahr's trademark comic-cut-out animation, or Kerry Laitala's digital 3D (sorry, Roger) Afterimage, though like just about everything in the The High Line program, I enjoyed them quite a bit. I'm not sure if it's purely coincidental that my favorites in this animated shorts program, playing again on the afternoon of Thursday May 6th, were the three projected in 35mm prints rather than digitally. Those were: Tussilago, by Jonas Odell, by now a SFIFF regular having contributed Never Like the First Time! and Lies to recent editions; Alma, a creepy not-really-Pixar confection that makes good use of the porcelain features of state-of-the-art human likenesses on the other side of the uncanny valley, and the latest Academy-Award-winner in the animated short category, the deliriously entertaining and even cathartic Logorama. A few notes on other shorts in The High Line: The Incident At Tower 37 slips in that zone of slick computer animation that's not quite slick enough to technically impress in 2010, but I appreciated its scenario's clever way of suggesting that humankind is wreaking so much destruction on other species, that some of them might evolve a means to take revenge. And is it just me, or was the "Operation Chatter" referred to in Kelly Sears's quasi-historical Voice On The Line a none-too-veiled reference to twitter? Either way, I approve.

Finally, there's only one film I really want to talk about from among the Solitude Standing set of SFIFF shorts, and I don't want to say much more than: See It! I speak of Jay Rosenblatt's latest collage of spectacular images culled from industrials and educational films, music, and brilliant voice-over narration: The Darkness of Day. Its heavy topic, suicide, has cropped up in a number of the feature-length films I've seen thus far at the festival, but this twenty-five-minute short treats it with far more probing sensitivity and emotional power than in the other films, which for all their merits shall for the moment remain nameless so as not to seem unfairly, rather glibly dismissed by my claim. The image at the top of this post is a screen capture from the film. Solitude Standing plays just once more, on Wednesday afternoon.

Four Lists of 53rd SFIFF Titles

The San Francisco Film Society publicly unveiled the full line-up of the 53rd edition of its annual SF International Film Festival yesterday. The full program is available online. I'm in the midst of a cross-town move: as I write this sentence I'm sitting on a hardwood floor in a room without chairs. But as the SFIFF is the average Frisco Bay cinephile's most feverishly anticipated showcase of new films each year, I don't want to forego a weigh-in on this year's program before tickets start going on sale outside the film society membership circle tomorrow (April 1st- by the time you read this, probably today!). Once I settle into my new place I hope to post some more extended thoughts on the lineup overall, as it looks from this pre-festival distance. But for now, the fallback of any blogger: listing.

Spread-The-Love; I've seen these four films before and can recommend them. Highly.

Intermission in the Third Dimension is one of two confirmed short films playing as part of animator Don Hertzfeldt's April 23 tribute and Persistence Of Vision Award presentation, though "surprises" are promised as well. The other, I Am So Proud Of You has eluded me thus far, as I've been waiting for a good opportunity to see it projected on film as nature intended it. Presumably the shorts accompanying this Hertzfeldt tribute will be shown in 35mm prints, to counter the irony that this animator who works exclusively in the material world of film, without the assistance of computer technologies, has amassed through Rejected, Billy's Balloon, etc. a great following of fans who have only seen his films bootlegged on the internet.
Julia, Erick Zonca's long-awaited 2007 follow-up to 1998's the Dreamlife of Angels, is not as nearly perfect as the latter film, but it features a colossal must-see performance by Tilda Swinton. It plays at the Castro Theatre May 1st as Mel Novikoff Award winner Roger Ebert's selection to accompany his on-stage tribute. Errol Morris, Philip Kaufman, and others are expected to attend the on-stage tribute as well.
the Music Room is easily the greatest of the five Satyajit Ray films I've seen thus far in life. Made in 1958 between installments of Ray's famed "Apu Trilogy", it plays in a new restored print at the Castro May 1 and the Pacific Film Archive May 2.
Utopia, Part 3: the World's Largest Shopping Mall was a short film that premiered at Sundance 2009 and that I caught at the Exploratorium several months ago. It's a mind-blowing meditative piece lingering in the space of a titanic, but nearly deserted, China mall. On April 25, this short will be incorporated, along with other images and a live performance aspect, into Utopia In Four Movements Sam Green and Dave Cerf's contribution to the festival's Live & Onstage" sidebar.

Follow-The-Leader; I don't have to read the catalog descriptions to know I want to see these films; their directors have proven their track records with me to the point where I'll try to see any new film they put out.

Around A Small Mountain by Jacques Rivette, French New Wave master behind Celine And Julie Go Boating.
Cyrus by Jay and Mark Duplass, who have made (along with many terrific short films) only two features but one of them was the Puffy Chair and the other was Baghead.
The Darkness of Day by Jay Rosenblatt, the recently-appointed program director for the SF Jewish Film Festival's 30th anniversary edition this summer, but more pertinently to my interest in watching this, the found-footage maestro behind the likes of Human Remains and Prayer. This film appears in the shorts program Solitude Standing.
Ghost Algebra by Janie Geiser, whose short-form shadowboxes such as Immer Zu and the Fourth Watch have me begging for more. It plays on the shorts program Something Like A Dream.
Nymph by Pen-ek Ratanaruang, whose last film to play local screens was the wonderful Last Life In the Universe.
Senso by Luchino Visconti; not a new film of course but a new restoration of the 1954 Italian classic beloved by Martin Scorsese and others.
Vengeance by Johnnie To, whose prior film Sparrow was, I felt, his best in years. No faint praise.
White Material by Claire Denis, who made (arguably) the best new film in last year's SFIFF, 35 Shots of Rum.
Wild Grass by Alain Resnais, another great survivor of the French New Wave heyday. Je t'aime, Je t'aime was a highlight of a recent retrospective of his past work at the Pacific Film Archive.

Follow-The-Followers; When I linked to the Film Festival program website on twitter yesterday, I was the lucky beneficiary of more than a dozen recommendations from some of my twitter friends from the East Coast, who had seen SFIFF films at previous festivals such as Toronto. One title proved divisive amidst this crowd, but otherwise this relative outpouring of responses served as a validation of the SFIFF selection team's programming acumen. I'd like to share their collective tips with my blog readers here:

Air Doll was the divisive title, but Hiokazu Kore-eda fans and detractors alike may be interested in the opportunity to engage with the director in a q-and-a session following the film's screenings, as Kore-eda is listed among the international guests expected to attend the festival.
Alamar, a Mexican feature competing for the New Directors Prize. Director Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio is also expected to attend the festival.
Between Two Worlds from Sri Lanka is Vimukthi Jayasundara's follow-up to The Forsaken Land, which played on the currently-in-limbo SFFS Screen a year and a half ago. He is on the expected guests list as well.
A Brand New Life, once again from a New Directors Prize contender expected at the festival, Ounie Lecomte.
Colony, a documentary on disappearing honeybee popoulations made by Ross McDonnell and Carter Gunn.
Everyone Else, Marin Ade's second feature, a German relationship drama coming particularly highly-lauded in the twitterverse.
Father Of My Children by Mia Hansen-Løve, who also directed 2008 SFIFF title All Is Forgiven.
Hadewijch, the latest from controversial French auteur Bruno Dumont. Said to be the kind of film to turn around negative opinions of Dumont, which I confess I share.
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, a documentary constructed from the reportedly jaw-dropping footage surviving from Clouzot's uncompleted 1964 big budget film starring Romy Schneider. Clouzot directed Wages of Fear and Quai des Orfevres, of course, and this presentation was put together by Ruxandra Medrea and Serge Bromberg- the latter perhaps best known to Frisco cinephiles for presenting programs of early French film at the 2001 SFIFF and the 2007 SF Silent Film Festival, where he lit a fragment of nitrate film on fire on the Castro stage.
I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton and directed by Luca Guadagnino, who apparently drew inspiration from his fellow Italian forebear Luchino Visconti; the sole screening of this selection comes directly after the screening of Visconti's Senso at the Castro.
Last Train Home, a documentary on Chinese mass migrations directed by Lixin Fan, who is expected to attend the festival.
Lebanon, an Israeli film set inside a tank during the latter country's 1982 invasion of the former. Director Samuel Moaz is expected to be on hand.
Lourdes, Jessica Hausner's film about a wheelchaired pilgrim to the legendary French shrine (which Mary Pickford, among many millions of others, is said to have visited). SylvieTestud plays the pilgrim.
Northless, another New Directors Prize competitor from Mexico. Rigoberto Perezcano joins the list of directors currently expected to attend the festival.
The Oath, a documentary by expected festival guest Laura Poitras, that focuses on two former associates of Osama bin Laden.
La Pivellina, an Austrian/Italian co-production. If it wins the New Directors Prize it will be first time two co-directors will share the festival's honor.
The Portuguese Nun, directed by American-born transplant, now a very well-regarded French filmmaker, Eugène Green. I've been wanting to see one of his films for several years now, and this is the first Frisco Bay opportunity I've noticed.
To Die Like A Man, speaking of Portuguese, is a portrait of a drag queen made by Lisbon auteur João Pedro Rodrigues, who made Two Drifters and O Fantasma.
Woman On Fire Looks For Water, a recommendation that didn't come directly to me, but from Daniel Kasman via Ryland Walker Knight. It's directed by Woo Ming-jin, whose feature debut Monday Morning Glory had its world premiere as part of the Malaysian focus of the 2005 SFIFF.

Odds-And-Extras; Other titles I'm seriously intrigued by, for one reason or another. This is just a start; I'll be keeping my ears pricked for more buzz on the selected films

Afterimage. I keep missing screenings of Kerry Laitala's stereoscopic short films. This is her latest; attendees of the animated shorts program The High Line (which also includes new work by Kelly Sears, Jonas Odell, Martha Colburn, Lewis Klahr, and more) will be provided 3-D glasses at the door. Sight unseen, it's sure to be more interesting than the recent Alice In Wonderland, or How To Train Your Kraken, or whatever that one was called.
All About Evil. I expect this locally-made horror premiere to be the first to sell-out once tickets go on sale. That is, if the Film Society members haven't snapped up all the available Castro seats already. Joshua Grannell has yet to prove himself as a filmmaker in my book, judging by the short films I've seen. However, stakes were higher for this first feature that includes performances by Mink Stole and Natasha Lyone, and creative contributions from a good chunk of Frisco Bay's creative community. Even if the movie doesn't match expectations the pre-show is certain to be a must-watch for any self-respecting Peaches Christ fan.
Gainsbourg (Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus). I'm a biopic skeptic but the subject (Serge Gainsbourg, naturally) and the director (Joann Sfar, better known to some for his involvement in the current Francophone comics renaissance) certainly pique my interest.
The Little White Cloud That Cried. Guy Maddin's shorts are always worth a look and sometimes end up among my favorite films of a festival. This one, a Jack Smith tribute, sounds divine. On the shorts program Pirate Utopias along with films by Martha Colburn, Bill Morrison, the Zellner Brothers, Max Hattler, and more.
Nénette. Nicholas Philibert, director of the documentary To Be And To Have (I've seen no other of his films) has found a fascinating-sounding subject for his latest doc: an aged orangutan living in a Paris zoo.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Unlike the last couple SFIFF pairings of silent film and live rock soundtrack, I'm not particularly familiar with the chosen musician this year- I've never seen Stephin Merritt perform in person, and I only have one of his albums (Holiday). But I can't resist the fact that he's involving regular Castro Theatre pre-film organist David Hegarty in his mix, and I'm more than game to see the 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne's adventure novel on the big screen, having never seen it before at all.
Wake In Fright a.k.a. Outback. This newly-restored 1971 Australian thriller stars Donald Pleasance and was featured in the recent documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (Don't mean to shout, the exclamation point is part of the title.) It was directed by Ted Kotcheff, who would go on to make Who Is Killing The Great Chefs Of Europe?, the original John Rambo movie First Blood, and Weekend At Bernie's, and who is on the festival's expected guests list. How can I pass that up?

Twenty Years South

Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive has a new calendar out, full of goodies. Oakland's Paramount has plans to show Wait Until Dark, The General and Captain Blood in March. San Rafael is getting a rare Jan Troell retrospective February 27-March 6. Even Sepastapol has its annual documentary festival March 5-7. And here in Frisco we've got a new SF Cinematheque season underway as well as festival after festival after festival: first Noise Pop, then German Gems, then the Disposable Film Festival, and then my own favorite festival of the season, the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival, which has been amply previewed by Michael Hawley. Before you know it, the San Francisco International Film Festival will be around the corner; Frisco Bay's most prominent film festival has already begun announcing festival events, namely the 1916 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Stephen Merritt, Daniel Handler & David Hegarty providing musical accompaniment, the presentation of the Kanbar screenwriting award (by John Waters!) to James Schamus, best known for his collaborations with Ang Lee; their film Ride With the Devil, will screen May 1st.

Where does this leave the South Bay? Well, the SFIAAFF does run one weekend of films in San Jose, at the Camera 12. And the Stanford Theatre is still in the first week of a diverse Akira Kurosawa retrospective, including some of his most famous as well as some of his most obscure films, samurai-centered and otherwise. The Seven Samurai plays through Friday, so you haven't missed any of the series (which ends March 30 with Ran) yet.

But you probably live under a rock, or else north of the southernmost BART stops, not to realize that the South Bay's biggest film festival of the year, the Cinequest Film Festival, begins its 20th anniversary program tonight with a screening of international co-production the Good Heart starring Brian Cox. Dennis Harvey of sf360 has written an overview of potential festival highlights, but let me add my own voice to the conversation, even if there's a good deal of overlap between his picks and mine.

Though intriguing films like Bong Joon-ho's Mother and Ilisa Barbsh & Lucien Castaing-Taylor's documentary Sweetgrass are promised to screen in Landmark Theatres around Frisco Bay, the majority of Cinequest films are not guaranteed to play anywhere else locally. That includes what must be the must-see of the festival, French master Alain Resnais's latest Wild Grass scheduled for a single screening on March 4th; though it has a distributor, a local theatrical release date has not been set yet. Babnik, the third feature from Alejandro Adams to play Cinequest in as many years is another important draw for those of us who've been intrigued to see what the maker of Around The Bay and Canary has in store next.

I've seen three of the films playing already. The two silent films Dennis James is slated to accompany behind the California Theatre organ are both seen far too infrequently. Erich Von Stroheim's the Merry Widow does not match his masterpiece Greed in either ambition or impact, but any of Stroheim's films are of serious interest to cinephiles. Ernst Lubitsch's the Student Prince of Old Heidelberg, on the other hand, may just be his greatest (and most delightful) silent film, as anyone who saw it open the 2007 San Francisco Silent Film Festival might be inclined to agree.

I've also seen, on a screener DVD, one of the new films in the lineup, with a title inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. If you're sick and tired of the hip but nowheredly-mobile characters glorified by a certain movement of no-star, low-budget filmmaking that peaked in critical attention a couple ago (yes, that one that rhymes with 'Dumbledore') you may be in the target audience for Jarrod Whaley's Hell Is Other People (fully reviewed by Richard van Busack). There's no way around it: Whaley has created in underground psychotherapist Morty Burnett one of the most pathetic, non-glorified, unappealing characters I've seen on a screen in quite a while. He's likely to truly test an audience's sense of empathy. Though Hell Is Other People doesn't bear enough technical dissimilarity to prevent some observers from distinguishing it from the genre-that-must-not-be-named, those who've been paying close attention might just agree that Whaley has launched a counter-movement of his own, that now just needs a catchy name to spread like wildfire. So then, what rhymes with 'Voldemort'?

Sean McCourt: The Boys

Last year, Sean McCourt interviewed for Hell On Frisco Bay the director of the English Surgeon, a documentary currently playing at the Red Vic. And on Friday, another doc that Sean caught but I missed will open on Frisco Bay (at the Metreon). Here's Sean:

Although Robert and Richard Sherman might not be household names today, chances are it would only take a fraction of a second for someone listening to one of their songs to instantly recognize it and immediately be transported back to their youth, all while singing along to every word.

For 50 years now, the Sherman Brothers have been writing some of the most well-known and beloved music ever produced for film, television, stage and even amusement parks. Ranging from Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to Winnie The Pooh and "It’s A Small World," the output of the two musically gifted siblings has been absolutely astonishing—and because of the fact that they have produced so much work together over the years, and the tunes are almost universally upbeat and inspiring for children, the true story behind their tumultuous personal relationship with one another is doubly fascinating.

The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story is a new documentary looking at the lives of these two award-winning men, produced and directed by their two sons, cousins Jeffrey and Gregory Sherman, who didn’t know each other growing up even though they only lived a few blocks away from one another.

The world premiere screening of the deeply moving film took place in San Francisco on April 25th at the theater in the Letterman Digital Arts Complex, George Lucas’ new high-tech headquarters in the Presidio, the former army base that will also be home to the new Disney Family Museum later this year.

The packed event, part of the 52nd annual San Francisco International Film Festival, brought out all sorts of film-goers, ranging from small children to grandparents, including a sizable group from Disney that filled the middle section of the seating area.

Composed of several different types of cleverly woven together footage, including current interviews, clips from films, vintage behind the scenes home movies, personal family photos and more, The Boys starts out by giving some background on Robert and Richard Sherman’s family, particularly their father, the famous Tin Pan Alley songwriter Al Sherman.

Providing a backdrop for some of the brothers’ early influences, the documentary makes it clear that the two always had different personalities and interests, which were only widened when the elder Robert went off to fight in World War II and was wounded in combat. His physical injuries and the emotional scars from his time in the European portion of the conflict are slowly brought up over the course of the film, shedding light on his outlook on life, particularly when it is revealed that he was among the first Americans to liberate the Dachau concentration camp near the end of the war. He is clearly still haunted by what he saw, and he talks about how creating joyful art helped "make the horror go away."

Robert and Richard Sherman, now 83 and 80, respectively, are interviewed separately throughout the film, with Robert now living in London, while Richard still resides in Southern California. Many of the sequences segue from current interview footage to nicely rendered, almost three-dimensional restored photos from the past, while the interviews continue as voice-overs. 

In addition to interviews with the Sherman Brothers and their sons, the film features words and thoughts from other family members and several people who have worked with them or admired their songs over the years, including Dick Van Dyke, Julie Andrews, John Landis, Angela Lansbury and Ben Stiller, who served as an Executive Producer on the project.
 
Tracing the story of their music career back to when they were getting ready for college, the film details how Robert had already made up his mind to major in writing, while Richard wasn’t sure what he wanted to do until one day while walking down the street he found himself with a tune running through his mind that he didn’t know where it had come from. Running home to the family piano to figure out how to play the melody he heard in his head, his father walked in on him, asked what he was doing, and when he was told, he immediately suggested to his son that he should become a music major.  
 
After the two graduated and moved back to southern California, they shared an apartment, living together out of economic necessity, with both concentrating on their own muses—Robert on writing a novel and poems, while Dick wrote and played music. One day their father suggested they work together on something, which they did; their first published song was "Gold Can Buy You Anything But Love," recorded by the legendary Gene Autry.

The documentary shows how this was the impetus for their continued teamwork, and then details The Sherman Brothers’ first big break with Disney, when they wrote "Tall Paul" for Annette Funicello in 1959.
  
Both brothers obviously still love Walt Disney and appreciate the opportunity that he gave them; as they talk about their first meeting with him, and how they got their job, they start to choke back tears a bit, and later on in the film they do the same when recalling the last time they saw Disney before he passed away in 1966. They relate the story of going to a movie premiere with him, and that at the end of the night, he came up to them and said, "Keep up the good work, boys"—something that he had never done before.

In a further touching tribute to Disney, the documentary then shows a still photo of him, with the camera panning towards the sky where a drawing of Mickey Mouse is crying. The scene then shifts to home movies of Disney throwing seeds to a flock of birds, all while the song "Feed The Birds" from Mary Poppins is played. Richard Sherman explains that Disney always asked them to play that particular song if they were in his office at the end of the week, that it was one of his favorites.

Among the interesting background stories and insider’s looks into how the some of the songs they wrote were originally created is one about how Jeff Sherman came home one day from school to find his father struggling to work on a new song for Mary Poppins. Robert Sherman looked up from his work, and asked how his son’s day had been, who related that he and the other students had to have a vaccination. Robert then asked if it was given through a shot, to which Jeff replied that they had "just taken a spoon and poured the medicine over a sugar cube" for them to eat. A current shot of Jeff imitating his father is then shown, nodding his head in thought, and then saying, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down…"

Many, many other clips from movies and songs are used throughout the lively 100 minute film, including Charlotte’s Web, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Snoopy Come Home, The Jungle Book, and "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room."

Interwoven into these wonderful snippets of their work is a gradual attempt at explaining the story behind the Sherman Brothers’ eventual personal estrangement—the case for one reason in particular is not made, but rather it seems that years and years of little things building up led to their current situation, among the factors being marital problems, financial considerations, and the general outward personalities of the two—who continue to work together across a long distance, thanks to advances in technology—but they just can’t seem to reconnect on a personal level for themselves, or for their families.

At the end of the documentary, the two filmmaker cousins show their trip to the recent premiere of Mary Poppins The Musical, and in voice-overs discuss how they had hoped that through the making of the Boys, they could convince their fathers to reconcile and re-form their personal relationship. A sequence of the two brothers greeting each other cordially on the red carpet is shown, but then one of the sons comes back on to finish the narration, saying "unlike a Sherman Brothers song, not all stories have a happy ending."
 
After the screening, Richard, Jeff and Greg Sherman appeared in person for a question and answer session, walking to the front of the theater to a standing ovation.

One of the questions posed for Richard Sherman asked about how he felt when he was riding "It’s A Small World," or was in a place where one of their songs was being played, and people were enjoying it, but didn’t know that he was one of the people who had created it. He said he a good answer for that, that he would share a story from his childhood—when he went to a big football game with his father, during halftime the marching bands came out and played "You Gotta Be A Football Hero," a song that his father had co-written. The crowd was all cheering along and clapping to the song, and as a kid he asked his dad how he felt, to which his father replied "It feels good, kiddo."

Richard Sherman then looked around at the audience at the Letterman Theater, smiled, and said, "That's how I feel, it's feels good!"

Another question asked of the two filmmakers was what they had learned while making the documentary. Jeff Sherman, Robert’s son, began talking about how he really started to get to know his father, but he started getting a little overwhelmed, and had to choke back tears. Richard chimed in, saying, "See, we Sherman’s are an emotional bunch!" which drew supportive applause.

Shortly thereafter, the three were talking about all of the people that helped them with the film, and Richard mentioned that two of the people in the picture had recently passed away after filming their interviews—he then started choking up himself, and he said, "See?"

Jeff Sherman then looked at his cousin, and said, “You’re next!” Greg looked over at him, back at the audience, and then grinned a little, pointing at his head, quietly staying, “Sports scores…sports scores,” giving away the fact that he was trying to think of other things to stop the flow of tears coming.
 
Overall, The Boys is a very well made documentary, and is a must see for anyone who grew up listening to the Sherman Brothers’ unforgettable songs, though it may not be entirely suitable for young children due to some of it’s highly emotional scenes.

The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story opens May 22nd at the AMC Metreon in San Francisco.