Author: Andrew Rostan

Mr. Rostan at the Movies: This Column is Called “Electric Boogaloo.”

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

Australian filmmaker Mark Hartley shot to notice with Not Quite Hollywood, his 2008 doc about his country’s run of over-the-top exploitation movies in their film industry’s nascent stage. Now, working with Warner Bros. and producer Brett Ratner, Hartley has created a hilarious, natural follow-up on an even greater scale about one of the biggest rises and falls in movie history with Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.

Golan and Globus

With the 80s in Mind, Indeed

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A Primer for the Concert for Chicago

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Friday, September 18 at 6:30, Chicago hosts one of its best annual free events. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra will perform their “Concert for Chicago” at Millennium Park with two classical masterworks from the nineteenth century. It will be a great night for wine-and-cheese picnics and quality time under the stars (or the Pritzker roof if it rains), but some people may feel unsure about attending a show where they know little to nothing about the performance. Hence, the Addison Recorder offers this handy primer!

chicago-symphony-orchestra-david-bearden

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: Movies For Grown-Ups

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

One of the greatest moments of 2015.

One of the greatest moments of 2015.

The weather turns cooler, American football begins, and movie theaters transition away from four-quadrant effects-laden corporate blockbusters to more personal visions. The Oscar season begins in earnest, and I’ve often noticed how the first films to get released in the weeks after Labor Day are among the smaller, less sweeping pictures: films more Sundance than Telluride or Toronto and with less appeal for the younger moviegoer. These are movies for grown-ups, built around minutely observed characters and tight dialogue. This week I caught two movies of highly varying quality.

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The Body Beautiful: Edgar Degas

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Edgar Degas was the odd man out of the Impressionists. He exhibited with them as a reaction to the Salon and the French art establishment and shared many of their qualities, but he detested their experimentalism, plein air, and preference to create in the moment; his carefully composed and structured, mostly interior canvases were to the other Impressionists like a Damien Hirst in a field of Rembrandts.

He was also a priggish, reactionary, anti-Dreyfus man who didn't date because he thought an artist should have no personal life. Fun times with Edgar!

He was also a priggish, reactionary, anti-Dreyfus man who didn’t date because he thought an artist should have no personal life. Fun times with Edgar!

But he was no less a genius, and the current miniature exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, Degas: At the Track, On the Stage is an ideal reflection of his prowess.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: The Power to Believe

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

Buckley and Vidal

Two of the finest documentaries released this year concern themselves with the power to believe, which is crucial to human existence. We believe in things instilled in us after being passed down through generations, and these things, be they faiths or ideologies, help us integrate into society. We also believe in ourselves, which on the one hand is vital to our well-being; self-confidence and finding a worldview that help us deal with existence are important. But it also can be dangerous to if we elevate our ideas too highly, for sometimes they have the power to infect society.

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In the Heart of the Nation: The Titanic Spectacle of Taylor Swift

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The first impression is a memory from high school. My mother and I attend a sold-out performance of Mamma Mia! and cursory examination reveals I am one of a dozen men in the audience. Rarely in my life have I felt like such an interloper.

Taylor Live

Saturday night was this multiplied by fifty-five. Soldier Field is jammed with women and girls, wearing a mix of official merchandise, homemade T-shirts, and their finest dresses. There is plenty of red lipstick and homemade electric signs casting light in the darkening sky. This is Taylor Nation, and they have come to experience the biggest singer-songwriter in the world.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: Death Stories, or, “Amy” and “The Little Death”

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

amy-winehouse-010-original

Amy Winehouse was not talented; “talented” was too weak a word. She was a phenomenon, one of the most exceptional vocalists of our age, and a person not even the most gifted actress could imitate. Even in the steps of removal that film necessarily creates, Winehouse, both in public and private life, had a presence that could entrance anyone and make them feel she was the only other person in the universe. Asif Kapadia all but resurrects this presence before our eyes in his indisputably essential documentary Amy.

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“We will get by, we will survive.” The Last Concert of the Grateful Dead

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Glide

They were there for hours that hot summer day and I know because I was there for hours, too, walking through the greenery by the Field Museum and the south parking lot. I saw people begging for spare tickets holding up signs reading “I need a miracle.” I saw people in dirty khakis sitting on the grass playing acoustic guitars and selling everything from bottled water to jerk chicken burritos, from jewelry to bowls. I saw tailgaters who gave anyone who liked their little set-up a free beer. I saw elementary school girls bravely dressed in teddy bear costumes. I saw more tie-dye and vintage T-shirts (not thrift store vintage but owned and lived in for years, cherished vintage) then I’ll ever see in one place again.

It was the largest audience in the history of Soldier Field – 71,000 people – and they had gathered to see history that was not just Chicago’s but America’s. They came to see the last performance of the Grateful Dead.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: Restoration Dramas, or, Ten Picks for the Gene Siskel Film Center’s “Recently Restored” Festival

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

master

If the rest of the summer film season offers nothing that looks like it could match Fury Road and Inside Out, then the Gene Siskel Film Center at State and Randolph is here to help, with a festival whose calendar made me pant with excitement. The Recently Restored series, running from July 3 (or today) to August 16, showcases films from around the world, carefully returned to how both their original audiences saw them (in the finest picture and sound quality) and as their makers intended them to be seen (with the return of cut, damaged, or previously lost footage). It is a wonderful opportunity to see intriguing pictures you’ve never heard of before or check some masterpieces off your list.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: “Inside Out” and Pixar’s Ambitions

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, but he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

Inside Out

One of the most indelible memories of childhood moviegoing was twenty years ago, watching a cartoon the likes of which I had never seen before called Toy Story. Since that day in 1995, Pixar has given the world a gift of extraordinary all-ages films from studio chief John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and others that have redefined both the style and substance of modern filmmaking. However, Pixar post-2010 has fallen into a rut, mostly producing films of lesser quality. Inside Out, the new feature from Docter (who also helmed Monsters, Inc. and Up), is a sign that this trend is about to change.

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