Soundtracking: "Best Worst Thing..."

Soundtracking is our newest wekly series, with Chris Feil talking music in the movies! The Tony Awards are this weekend, so here is a documentary on a Broadway flop...

Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened charts the making and failing of Stephen Sondheim / Hal Prince collaboration Merrily We Roll Along. The musical charts the decades-spanning friendship of three showbiz types, but told in reverse and with teenagers playing the roles. It was high concept and it was a notorious bomb - but with one brilliant and emotionally involving score.

If you’re unfamiliar with the musical and its complicated backwards plotting, Best Worst Thing does a pretty snappy job of quickly explaining the show’s concept before focusing on the cast left out in the cold by Merrily’s failure. What sounds rather niche for a documentary subject is actually quite moving and emotionally accessible, and still touches on some hefty themes. The film, directed by original cast member Lonny Price, is personal but not cloying. It’s a documentary about the hard truths of growing up into a world that isn’t all you were promised, - and it consistently finds deeper context for the music.

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Pride Month Doc Corner: 'The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin'

For pride month, we're looking at a new queer-themed documentary each week beginning with The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin, which continues to play festivals around America.

“I’d like to tell you about the first time I had sex.”

This is a like spoken by the one and only Armistead Maupin in Jennifer M. Kroot’s documentary The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin. It’s spoken by him as he sits in a relaxed chair on a plainly adorned stage in front of a crowd of predominantly gay men. It garners a laugh from those in the audience there (as well as presumably the audience at home; I did), but it’s a moment that is quite indicative of the film around it.

Kroot’s film is not one that is shy about sex. It couldn’t possibly be. To do so would be to deny the essence of what made Maupin such an important figure in both literary and queer history. Sex was an important part of him and his work. To hear it spoken of with such ease in this documentary is a relief – and that’s before even getting to the part where he details where and how he met his future husband, a moment that adds a wonderful dash of gay modern reality to a story so rooted in the allure of 1970s gay life.

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Doc Corner: Awards Hopefuls 'Abacus' and 'Last Men in Aleppo'

by Glenn Dunks

First off, apologies for the sporadic columns over the last two months. My day job for this time period has been behind the scenes of a film festival and there’s something about working 14 hours a day that just makes coming home and doing more writing somewhat less alluring? As a soft apology, here is a look at two films. They have next to nothing in common other than that we may see their names pop up here or there come award season.

The first is Steve James’ Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, a film about an institution – the Abacus Federal Savings Bank of Chinatown, not even one of the top 2000 banks in the country if I saw the stats correctly – that became the only American bank to be criminally indicted in the wake of the financial sector crisis of 2008. The modesty of its subjects, both corporate and human, clearly rubbed off on James who has crafted a standardly assembled yet no less enthralling documentary about what is now a particularly peculiar footnote in the history of American law...

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Doc Corner: An American Tragedy in 'Casting JonBenet'

By Glenn Dunks

Casting JonBenet is a dozen films in one. At only 80 minutes, that’s a lot; and yet it never feels over-stuffed, overwrought, or like it is collecting and abandoning subplots (a frustrating trend of some recent documentaries). At its most basic level, Kitty Green’s film is a documentary about the casting of a film about JonBenet Ramsey. It is also a documentary about the Ramsey family and an investigation, of sorts, into the case. It’s a prank, a look into the making of a (seemingly) fake movie. But that's not all...

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Netflix Screengrab Roulette (May 2017)

Just one of these months we'd love a slight surprise and for Netflix to throw a bone at the movie fans they built their empire on. I'm considering cancelling my streaming service and going DVD only -- the exact opposite of what the rest of the world does but I need my movies and, FACT, they just aren't providing them any more. Pickings gets slimmer by the month. Consider that this month they've literally added only two titles made before 2000s, one Bollywood picture and Forrest Gump. That is insane and, well, lame. They don't care about movie fans now that they have popular TV shows of their own to produce. 

Nevertheless we'll do a screengrab roulette of a few titles. First image that comes up gets posted, no cheating... 

Look at these lips. Those are kissable lips."

Don't Think Twice (2016)
I keep hearing this is good. Time to watch!

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