Word: mcbrides
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GLEN AND RANDA. Post-atomic desolation in the U.S., with hippies as the new cavemen. Melancholy, inventive sci-fi by young Film Maker Jim McBride...
With a less skillful choreographer, or a less disciplined troupe, Bach's music might have inspired little more than energetic exercise or personified precision. Robbins has caught the passion that underlies Bach's formal rhythms, notably in the serpentine, body-entangling duets of Patricia McBride and Helgi Tomasson, which are to the sophisticated eye more erotic than anything in Oh, Calcutta! Small human touches abound: John Clifford, as the leader of a group, suddenly stands motionless in seeming awe as dancers twirl and leap around him; an acrobatic quartet of male dancers cartwheels and somersaults like refugees from...
Using a rigorously unadorned style, Director Jim McBride, who was also coauthor of Glen and Randa's script, conveys a sense of primitive desolation, transforming contemporary landscapes into primeval heaths. Although the film is unsparing in its apocalyptic vision, its dour brutality is frequently alleviated by a cool eye for satire. There is, for instance, a fine and funny sequence in which Glen decides to be (as he puts it) "see-villized" and sits down like a good suburban husband with his pipe and newspaper in front of a gutted television...
...easy enough to quarrel with McBride's resolutely gloomy portrait of the future. But there is no disputing his distinctive cinematic flair or the definitive excellence of his relatively unknown actors-Steven Curry as Glen, Shelley Plimpton as Randa, and Garry Goodrow as the manic magician. McBride, 29, made Glen and Randa on a slender $480,000 budget, without help or hindrance from the major studios. Austerity and autonomy, combined with genuine talent, have produced one of the best and most original American films of the year...
...Diary, the quasi-existential journal of a filmmaker who tries "to make sense" out of his life by collecting private everyday images (and sounds) which, we discover in the final credits, are really just made-up banalities (as opposed to "real" banalities), scripted, acted, shot, and directed by Jim McBride and several other people. Available Light, by contrast, reiterates the factual relativism of every image, explicitly calling attention to the manipulative process going on, forcing us to constantly redefine our relation to the screen. Are events staged or accidental? Scripted or "real life"? And how significant is the difference, given...