BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC YOU’RE GONNA MISS ME (2005, directed by Kevin McAlester, 91 minutes, U.S.) A MILLION YEARS OF KENN KWEDER (2007, directed by John Henderson, 119 minutes, U.S.) Its title, taken from the sole hit of the Texas psych-rock outfit The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, is sadly untrue — the world had forgotten the brightly-blazing talent of their lead singer, Roky Erickson. A glaring injustice, that, because Erickson was the Real Deal, a man with hell hounds on his trail who had a naturally blood-curdling howl to rival Van Morrison’s raw vocals with his early band Them. Mental […]

Between “The War” and “Dancing With The Stars,” anyone leaning toward the “total nerdbucket” end of the cultural scale will be at home in front of the ‘tube tonight. No worries, that just means more room for you at the International House, which at 7 p.m. shows the rare 1968 Japanese rock film Go Forward! BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The Beatles are so ubiquitous 37 years after their break-up that their music finds ways to wriggle into your life whether one invites them or not. So where can a fan go after they’ve worn out their records and the […]

EASTERN PROMISES (2007, directed by David Cronenberg, 97 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Except for a few memorable side trips, Canadian director David Cronenberg spent the first 25 years of his career as a feature film maker chronicling his characters’ relationships with reality and their own mysterious and ill-functioning innards. Around the turn of the century he made eXistenZ, whose plot revolved around video games you could plug right into your spine that dissolve reality. eXistenZ seemed to be the perfect summation of all of Cronenberg’s icky preoccupations with guts and the nature of reality. Since then, Cronenberg […]

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC While the popular narrative cheers New York City’s revival in the 1990s, lovers of fringe cinema bemoan Times Square’s transformation from the sleazy world capital of grindhouse cinema into Disney-Come-To-Manhattan. Tonight’s Video Vault resurrects the Times Square our parents warned us about, the former glamour hub of the Big Apple, whose blinding lights were illuminating a semi-lawless open air market of unconventional sex, hard drugs and many other things not on sale in the suburban mall. These three exceptionally rare films tell the story of the street (affectionately called “The Deuce” by its denizens) from […]

THE HOTTEST STATE (2006, directed by Ethan Hawke, 117 minutes, U.S.) NO END IN SIGHT (2006, directed by Charles Ferguson, 102 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC For a guy who has been acting in films for over 20 years, something about Ethan Hawke remains uneasy on the motion picture screen. The characters Hawke specializes in are often cocky, moping cads who suffer easily and whose angst-ridden intellect has not won themselves any inner peace. My feelings toward the men he portrays has inescapably bled over into my thoughts about the actor as well, sensing him strain for a […]

New Wes Anderson film, starring Owen Wilson, comes out out November 23rd.

THEM (2006, directed by Xavier Palud & David Moreau, 77 minutes, France) HALLOWEEN (2007, directed by Rob Zombie, 109 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC In my gloriously misspent youth, I lived for a time in a tent and worked in a fish cannery in Petersburg, Alaska. One night a woman from our camp was cleaning the fish gutting machine when her hand became clamped in the conveyor belt and like a particularly nasty Chaplin gag she was dragged kicking and screaming across the slippery gutty floor all the way down the line towards “the header,” a blurry pair […]