Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Two Takes By William Greaves
Resonance DVD review, issue #53, 2007

Baffling yet strangely engaging, the rarely-seen 1968 experimental feature Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One turns the process of moviemaking inside-out and obliquely poses questions about sexuality, race and power along the way. Documentary filmmaker William Greaves assembles a crew in Central Park and divides the cameramen into three groups; one to film a pair of actors performing a short, emotional scene, another to document the first, while the third covers the entire process and any extraneous activity that occurs nearby. The crew, confused by Greaves' intentionally-vague explanations and irritated by the histrionic script (a shrill argument concerning homosexuality and abortion), follows instructions but later stages a passive-aggressive coup in which they film themselves privately debating the validity of their director's plan -- or if there is indeed any real plan at all. Greaves weaves this mutinous footage within shots of actors pondering motivation, cameramen loading magazines, and a loquacious drunk who stumbles out of the bushes for a climactic rant against society. The film was never properly released, although retrospective screenings in the 1990s inspired Steven Soderbergh and Steve Buscemi to sign on as executive producers for a 2003 sequel, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 1/2. It's more of the same, starting off with some unseen footage from the original shoot, then returning to Central Park with three camera crews (this time armed with digital video equipment) to film the same actors playing the same characters thirty years later. Both "Takes" are included on this Criterion double disc, but the new version can't replicate the unique experiment of the first, and even the original is more interesting conceptually than in execution. Still, meta-minded cineasts should check out this adventurous package, which includes an in-depth documentary on Greaves, a pioneering African American artist whose career deserves greater attention. FRED BELDIN

Fateless
Resonance DVD review, issue #52, 2007

Two abstract video pieces for your next freakout, soundtracked with the shiny harmonic drone of Australian electronic composers Martin Ng and Oren Ambarchi. Vigilance lulls one into boredom for endless minutes with vibrator hum and vintage-1983 video game graphics. Don’t worry, there’s an ambush ahead, as random sniper bursts of sound/light liven up the piece and send it careening off into more interesting places. 8 Seconds of Weightlessness follows with a similar simplicity, but this time the images rivet themselves into the retina. A palpable urgency suggests that communication is the goal, that we’ve intercepted some kind of indecipherable extraterrestrial code. Is it a message of goodwill or aggression? Fred Beldin

Pan's Labyrinth
Seattle Sound film review

Where do fairy tales come from? Director Guillermo del Toro finds the seeds within the collision of imagination and tragedy in the mesmerizing Pan's Labyrinth. A lonely, bookish girl, thrown into the maelstrom of civil war, learns that she is the reincarnation of an immortal Princess of the Underworld when a visiting faun charges her with three magical tasks that must be completed before the next full moon. Meanwhile, her cruel Fascist stepfather leads his army to a blood-drenched confrontation with freedom fighters, and our heroine must maneuver between the two worlds of fantasy and reality. Del Toro paints Pan's Labyrinth as a dark fairy tale full of ash, mud and stone, as graphic in its horrors as it is wide-eyed in its innocence, a haunting yet hopeful fable with one of the most disturbing happy endings of recent memory. Fred Beldin, 11-2006

Black Snake Moan
Seattle Sound film review

Director Craig Brewer makes high-ideal exploitation films, using the syntax of 70s-era drive-in flicks to redeem his low-caste characters. But while Hustle and Flow was a feel-good, fist-pumping tale of relative redemption, Black Snake Moan's ratio of storyline to sleaze means more thrills but less heart. Brewer tries to have it both ways, crafting a sympathetic portrait of a sex addict while depicting her half-naked in tight panties, covered in mud, blood and bruises and chained to a radiator. That's Christina "That Darn Cat" Ricci, a half-shirt festooned with guns and flags as accessory, flipping the bird to anyone who questions her career choices. Both dare the audience not to be aroused by this poor, suffering wretch, so when a troubled farmer and former bluesman played by Samuel L. Jackson nurses her back to health against her will, his temptation to take advantage is all the more palpable. It's another career-topper for Jackson, whose face betrays an inner struggle with earthly impulses even as he is steadfast to God, as badass as ever but never more righteous. Still, there's a thick coat of white trash fetishism that's hard to wipe off Black Snake Moan, making it far more effective as hillbilly grindhouse fare than thoughtful drama. Fred Beldin, 2-2007