Clip (2012/Artsploitation DVD)/Dragonslayer (2012/First Run Features DVD/Documentary)/A Portrait Of James Dean – Joshua Tree, 1951 (2013/Wolfe DVD)

 

Picture: C+/C/C+     Sound:  C+/C/C+     Extras: C+/C-/C+     Main Programs: C+/C+/B-

 

 

Now for a recent trilogy of provocative releases that try to show the dark side of living and how business and vice, legal and illegal, affects that…

 

 

Maja Milos’ Clip (2012) is a full-length feature inspired by the endless parade of junk video clips on the Internet that show very young people in countries like Serbia (the focus here) partying and acting goofy with nothing else to do.  Like a Larry Clark film, this also includes plenty of drugs, violence and sex, the latter of which is often graphic, yet also stylized in a way that actually undermines narrative credibility in its repetition and plasticity.

 

Still, several parts of this work, including the less sensational moments of exposition that give us the truest insight into who these people are, especially the focus of the script, Jansa (Isadora Simijonivic) who is particularly unhappy with her life.  The other problem is the parts we have seen before in more than just Clark’s work.  I give Milos points for trying to create a female discourse here, but addressing a fragmented world of soulless video shorts on the Web works counter to that and that makes this all uneven.

 

Extras include a well illustrated booklet on the film including informative text, an essay by Travis Crawford and Simijonivic interview, while the DVD adds Trailers and a Making Of featurette Hollywood & Vice: Maja In L.A. interviewing the director, who is very well spoken.

 

 

Tristan Patterson’s Dragonslayer (2012) has nothing to do with the 1980s fantasy film, but is about skateboarding and specifically Josh “Skreech” Sandoval, a skateboarding legend out of Fullerton, California, a suburb in decline made all the worse by the latest series of economic downturns.  With its short 73 minutes, we see more about Sandoval, his friends, family and antics than anything resembling a deep, probing look into economic tragedy leaving good people behind.

 

Instead, we get an update on the skater culture of today, which is the same exact culture it has been and in many better fictional and non-fictional films and programs on the subject.  Yes, the young ones with nothing better to do get involved with drugs, drinking and sex that might not be as safely practiced as it should be, but this is all repetitive.

 

As well, the makers do not try to find something new, do not ask new questions, come up with any new ways to approach what is going on, never begin to dare to ask about how the economy got this way and don’t even try.  They just tape what they can.  Maybe if there was more ambition, this would not have been so short, but it is what it is.  Many questions, even simple ones, go unasked.  The worst thing is that there are some untold stories here.  Guess they’ll stay that way for now.

 

Text on the director, a text director’s statement on the documentary and trailers are the only extras.

 

 

Finally we have Matthew Mishory’s A Portrait Of James Dean – Joshua Tree, 1951 (2013) taking a look at the life of the short-lived actor in a fictionalized version of his life (played here well enough by James Preston) as we are shown his private life as a bi-sexual man, the then-closed, secret gay male world he lived in and how his existence might have worked in the period he lived.

 

The attempt to create a mood, atmosphere, era and say something about it all is more successful to more of an extent than I have seen in an independent production in a while, the script is well written enough, scenes never overplay their hand and it is a character study of the time as much as the people.  No, it is not a literal story, but somewhat metaphoric and more successful than I expected.  It also helps that James Franco does not show up, shoring up its credibility further as a work that takes the audience and any alternative discourses seriously.

 

Extras include the Original Theatrical Trailer and Mishory-directed short film Delphinium: A Childhood Portrait Of Derek Jarman that examines the openly gay British filmmaker in abstract, sometimes brutal and literal terms, including visual references to his various feature films and turns out to be not bad either.

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.1 X 1 image on Clip is an HD shoot and that includes have many flaws and blur issues on purpose, but the POV shots of cell phones becomes almost laughable and very repetitious interrupting the narrative flow.  The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Dragonslayer is the softest here, has many more detail issues and more softness throughout, so it rates lower, but the usually black and white, anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Dean is pretty good throughout and by a very slim margin is the best-looking presentation with the most character.

 

The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Clip and Dean are sonically the best here, though that does not always mean great sound as Clip has all kinds of location audio issues, but some are on purpose, while Dean is dialogue-based and so the soundstage on both are limited.  However, the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 sound Dragonslayer has more actual location audio issues, is barely stereo, often collapses into monophonic sound and has audio issues every few scenes, so it can be trying in its playback.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo