Doc Corner: 'Don't Be Nice'

By Glenn Dunks

Youthful enthusiasm can get you a long way and that is something that Don’t Be Nice has in spades. First-time director Max Powers injects his own vigour and excitement into this story of slam poets in preparation for the national championships (yes, they exist). He does this through captivating editing (he was formerly a documentary editor) and some well-used vignettes, styled after music videos. But ultimately the success of this debut comes down to its subjects - they all have a spark on camera as well as in their words and Powers gives them all the star treatment at some point across Don't Be Nice's zippy 95-minute runtime.

The doc's title comes from the idea that in slam poetry, one mustn’t be nice, but be necessary. Say what you mean and don’t lighten it up for those who don’t want to hear it...

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"David Niven: a Villanelle"

I've become so enamored of all of the participating "Best Shot" writers that I miss people when they don't show up and stalk their blogs. Peter Swanson of Armchair Audience recently joined the informal "best shot" group and when I noticed no Singin' in the Rain post last Wednesday, I started clicking around his blog only to discover he's a published poet, and a fine witty one, too. He often writes about the movies and is currently completing work on a sonnet sequence about all 53 Alfred Hitchcock movies. 53 !!!

With his permission I'm sharing his 2007 poem inspired by Oscar winner David Niven which was originally originally published in The Vocabula Review. 

"David Niven: a Villanelle"
-by Peter Swanson 

There is a better world to live in: 
Dressed for dinner in black tie, 
Debonair like David Niven. 

With shoulders wide and sun-browned skin, 
The mustache trimmed, the bluest eye. 
There is a better world to live in, 

Where formality’s a given, 
A place where you, in black, and I, 
As neatly dressed as David Niven, 

Drink silver cocktails shaken 
Very cold and very dry. 
There is a better world to live in, 

Of string quartets, of My Blue Heaven, 
Of clouds and girls that never cry, 
Of men that look like David Niven, 

Or close enough, something akin, 
Beneath some starry, starry sky. 
There is a better world to live in, 
Dead and gone like David Niven.

Twins: The Poetry of "The Twins"

Are you enjoying the twins series? I can't tell but if not, what do you have against Geminis?

Pre-Cogs

A few days ago my mind flashed violently back to Minority Report (2002). I blame the recent screening of Prometheus (2012) since both films belong to the school of Gah!mazingly Art Directed Sci-Fi Movies that are nonetheless problematic given their collisions of greatness and "really?" moments. The other thing tying them together is one Not Entirely Human performance (Samantha Morton as "Agatha" / Michael Fassbender as "David") that is so damn enjoyable and smart that you can forgive a lot just for the pleasure of watching the actor do his or her best genre thing.

Fact: Samantha Morton and Michael Fassbender are inhumanly great actors.

Twins have always fascinated non-twins and not just from the visual double takes. Their assumed psychic connections suggest all sorts of telepathic supernatural and psycosomatic implications once you let your mind wander.  [The poetry of twins after the jump...]

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Best of Year Pt 3: Nathaniel's Top Ten List

Best of Year Pt 1: Thirty-two flavors and then some. 2011 Treasures, guilty and otherwise.
Best of Year Pt 2: Tree of Life, Midnight in Paris, Young Adult, Pariah, The Housemaid, Shame.

NATHANIEL'S TOP TEN OF 2011

And so we reach the top ten list about which I endured my usual personal angst until I finally gave up the flip flopping, the future hindsight worrying and all the old ways and accepted the new sabremetrics of the game since I had accidentally shoved 11 films in. I ran out of time outs and it was either hit publish or forfeit my chance to play this beloved listing game.

MONEYBALL (Bennett Miller)
Columbia Pictures. September 23rd.
Who knew that a film about sports strategies and mathematic calculations -- two things I personally find enormously difficult to understand and care about even less -- could be so stirring?  Thank the typically sharp writing of Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian, the assured unfussy direction from Bennett Miller who really knows his way around these sharply focused biographies (see also Capote) and an intensely pleasurable star turn from a perfectly cast Brad Pitt as a former golden boy trying to up his own game before his time runs out.
[Review]

CERTIFIED COPY (Abbas Kiarostami)
IFC. March 11th.
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, than so to is the worth of any piece of art, whether it's a bonafide original or a copy. The worth of Kiarostami's dizzying intellectual game of a movie will vary greatly from viewer to viewer depending on whether they think the movie transcends its intellectual exercize. It's worth may even vary from screening to screening. For example, the first time I saw it I was riveted by the dialogue and Binoche's face though I thought it outstayed its welcome but the second time I was slightly annoyed with its archly comic tonal shift late in the film but also more impressed with its visual intricacies. Certified Copy spends a day in Tuscany with a weary antique shop owner (the exquisite Juliette Binoche as "She" --her character is never named) and an author by the name of James Miller (opera star William Schimmel). They are ostensibly strangers and their conversation about originals and copies (the subject of Miller's book) gives way to an increasingly complicated sense that the two of them are either play-acting at being lovers or are actually estranged spouses whose current union is a disappointingly inferior fascimile of its original form.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE (Sean Durkin)
Fox Searchlight. October 21st

Martha Marcy May Marlene
With Lizzie, John Hawkes, Durkin's Team
A Perfectly Titled Time Machine
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Incantation. Puzzle. Dream.

[Review, Interview, Comic Strip]

BRIDESMAIDS (Paul Feig) Universal. May 13th
MELANCHOLIA (Lars von Trier) Magnolia. November 11th 
You're invited to a wedding. Don't start throwing rice yet. They're meant to be happy events but god do they try the patience. Especially when the bride or maid of honor is enormously depressed -- apocalyptically depressed even!

Brides, drivers and romantic troubles after the jump...

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