Operating out of a small space on Fairfax, the nightclub Largo quickly became more a legend than a venue. Intimate and loose, part of the appeal of Largo is that you literally never knew (I only use the past tense as the club has moved from its Fairfax location to a larger venue on La Cienega in the past month) what, or who might turn up. Largo's where Jack Black and Kyle Gass did some of their earliest work as Tenacious D; Jackson Browne's dropped in to sing a few songs. John C. Reilly has hosted casual, extemporaneous chat shows there; composer Jon Brion (best known for his work on Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love) has held shows where he alternates constructing songs out of intricately arranged loops of instrumental figures he records live and composes and conducts on-stage with spirited cover versions of requests shouted out from the audience.

Co-directed by Largo manager and co-owner Mark Flanagan and Andrew van Baal, Largo recreates the Largo experience; loose, smart, random and unique. Mixing concert musical performances with snippets of comedy, the final film makes you feel like you've been to Largo, even as the more elegant notes in the black-and-white composition and the vignettes of the club's rhythm and tempo between the acts make it abundantly clear you're watching a film that was constructed and not just a tape that was turned on.

Frank (Shane Andrews) is coming back to L.A. after some time away. He looks into a job, where the supervisor Larry (Seymour Cassel) says he can have the position " ... on account of you came all this way and you ain't drunk." Frank goes to the apartment he shares with his girlfriend, Rita, but she isn't there. He leaves her a note every time he steps out, but she doesn't seem to be getting them. And as Frank gets from point a to point b riding the busses and walking the sunburnt streets of Los Angeles, we have to wonder where he's going and where he's coming from. ...

Written and directed by Ben Rodkin, Big Heart City consciously evokes the 'beautiful loser' cinema of the 1970s, from the unrepentantly conflicted nature of Frank's character down to the presence of longtime John Cassavetes collaborator Cassel. Shot on 16 millimeter film -- a rarity in the digital video age -- Big Heart City not only has the grit and grain of old-school technology but the grit and grain of old-school storytelling. Frank goes to work; he goes to the track; he rehearses the stories he tells Larry, although we can't be sure if he's trying extra hard to convince Larry or convince himself. And the longer Frank waits for Rita, the more we see him bend and break under the strain of cruel hope.

After the record-breaking success of Night Watch and Day Watch (and an early film for B-movie maven Roger Corman, Arena), Khazakstan-born, Russia-based director Timur Bekmambetov makes his English-language big-studio debut with Wanted, a bruising, brawny action film starring James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie. Bekmambetov spoke with Cinematical in Los Angeles about making the jump to big-money moviemaking, the hidden world of secrets behind Wanted's look, the action-film apprenticeship of James McAvoy, working with Angelina Jolie and how " .... we (film makers) are all vampires. ..."

Cinematical's podcast content is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

In Wanted, rapper-actor Common plays The Gunsmith -- a cool, deadly expert marksman who mostly lets his bullets do the talking. But meeting with Cinematical in Los Angeles, the veteran of films like Smokin' Aces and Street Kings is warm and obviously enthusiastic about his experiences, talking about everything from his preparation process for playing what he calls "a Samurai warrior" in Wanted to the challenges facing African-American actors -- plus what's good to drink in Prague and how holding a real gun to James McAvoy's head can get you in the moment for your scenes.

Cinematical's podcast content is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

Before the pre-festivals press screening of Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, the new documentary about the life and death of Republican political operative Lee Atwater, two separate Rolling Stones songs were running through my head. "Street Fightin' Man, " possibly inspired by Atwater's reputation as a dirty trickster of the higher order, and "Sympathy for the Devil," perhaps springing from Atwater's deathbed renunciation of many of the things he'd done; both associations sprang from the little I knew about Atwater. Thanks to the work of director Stefan Forbes, I now know a lot more; I now know so much, in fact, I'm not sure what to think.

Combining archival news footage with interviews from people who knew Atwater and some who, interestingly, only knew him through the public ramifications of his work, Boogie Man paints a complex portrait of a complex figure: A race-baiting political operative (Atwater may or may not have been behind the infamous 'Willie Horton' ad that cost Michael Dukakis the election in '88) who nonetheless loved to listen to, and play blues music; a man who sprang from the South who helped elect Eastern elites like George H.W. Bush; a man whose pupils in the modern political art of war, Karl Rove and George W. Bush (who worked with Atwater on his father's campaign) turned their back on him as he lay dying.

Watching Paper or Plastic?, the new documentary about the regional qualifiers and Las Vegas final of the 2007 National Grocery Bagging Competition, I was surprised to note the presence of something that's hard to come by in 2008: Sincerity. I don't mean just that Paper or Plastic? never mocks, knocks or condescends to the seven contestants from every corner of America the finale brings together -- although it never does -- but more that co-directors Alex D. da Silva and Justine Jacob not only found an event to observe but also a spirit to celebrate. The seven contestants we meet want to win; their friends and family support and surround them; they're part of a long tradition of competition. And da Silva and Jacob gradually, gently pull us into the world of competitive grocery bagging until, by the end of the film, I was literally at seat's edge watching a contestant race to beat the clock thinking Oh, God, don't forget the Life Savers ... they deduct points for that. ...

But while you're being entertained by Paper or Plastic?, you're also getting a fairly solid glimpse at modern life. One grocery executive notes that the "courtesy walk" taking a customer's well-bagged groceries still matters: "That's the last place Mrs. Consumer still has an impression of the store." And as freaky as the phrase "Mrs. Consumer" sounds in this day and age (all I can imagine is Donna Reed, with apron and pearls), you also realize he means it. Another grocery executive fan of the Championship notes "It's like American Idol; you never know where the stars are. ..." you realize that while what he's saying is a subtle comment on our modern celebrity culture, he, too, also means it.

How do you jump from one of New York's best-loved insightful film blogs to a L.A.-based weblog better known for bite than brain? What's it like to blog the Oscars for Vanity Fair? What will it take to have big-studio publicity recognize the online world? And what are some of the standout films and special selections at this year's Los Angeles Film Festival? Joining us this week live from one of L.A's most hallowed cultural institutions -- The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf -- to talk about all these topics and more is Stu VanAirsdale, Senior Editor at Defamer and the founder of The Reeler. Cinematical's podcast is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

If Tolstoy had lived in our time, he might have expanded on his famed quote from Anna Karenina to note that happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way ... and that's demonstrated through their documentary. Following in the archival-confessional mold of such documentaries as Tarnation and Capturing the Friedmans, filmmaker Morgan Dews has created Must Read After My Death -- or, rather, assembled it, from decades of photographs and home movies and Dictaphone recordings found in his grandmother's home after her passing. Dews doesn't interject himself into this material; at the same time, he's made the decisions that shape it -- the inclusions, the deletions, the things we linger on, the things elided over.

Must Read After My Death is, first and foremost, a portrait of the marriage between Allis and Charlie. Allis is a mother and home maker, but the need to be perfect chances at her, chokes her; Charley travels for work, a charmer and hearty man's man whose easy charm makes it entirely too easy to ignore his family. Hoping to make Charley's distance more tolerable -- or, at least, more entertaining -- the family purchased a Dictaphone, and sent audio recordings back and forth. These recordings -- made in quiet contemplation or moments of anger, some heavy with things unsaid, some thick with the sounds of rage and desperation -- are the aching heart and wounded soul of the film.

When Wanted was announced as the opening night film for the Los Angeles Film Festival, there was a mild outbreak of head-scratching over the choice; why start a film festival loaded with independent and foreign film with a big-studio action movie? The fact is that the opening-night LAFF premiere of Wanted -- directed by a Kazakh director who made his name in Russia, loosely based on a series of comics by a Glasgwegian Scot, starring America's most notable movie starlet opposite a Glasgow-born lead actor and shot with Prague standing in for Chicago -- doesn't say much about the LAFF as a film festival and doesn't say a single thing about L.A. as a real city, but it says plenty about L.A. as a company town with a global span. Wanted's a corporate product, but, thankfully, it's an excellent one -- the two-fisted, double-barreled high-octane guilty pleasure summer action movie you've been waiting for. Wanted is speedy and spiffy and shiny as a bullet, and it's got about as much actual weight when it stops moving.