What P’ve Been Watching, Too!

Kevin Lalonde, Arts Editor

Jesus Camp — Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady.

An exploration of the impact of the modern day Evangelical church movement, the documentary Jesus Camp examines a Pentacostal children’s camp, ironically located in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. The film is insightful, more-or-less objective, and 100 per cent mindblowingly shocking. The camp’s founder, Becky Fischer, sums up the tone of the film very well:

“Tt’s no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have—excuse me, but we have the truth!”

And...

“T can go into a playground of kids that don’t know anything about Christianity, lead them to the Lord in a matter of no time at all, and just moments later they can be seeing visions and hear the voice of God, because they're so open. They are so usable in Christianity.”

You get the idea.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated — Directed by Kirby Dick

Another excellent documentary (?'ve been watching a lot of them lately to learn stuff), This Film Is Not Yet Rated takes a look at the machinations of the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings system, and the lack of translucency therein. Director Kirby Dick hires a private investigator to identify the anonymous raters of the MPAA, which serves as an interesting parallel to the dozens of interviews with film directors like Kevin Smith, John Waters, Atom Egoyan and Matt Stone, as they argue that the MPAA strips filmmakers of a process of accountability when “this film gets an R rating for sexual content, but my film gets an NC-17 for a woman’s two-minute orgasm.”

As each director weighs in on the MPAA’s inconsis- tencies, Dick comes closer and closer to submitting his own film to the ratings board, and his subsequent appeal. I'll give you a hint about the outcome: He loses his appeal.

ag tL) muckraking documentary at might just shake up the world of movies

Farce of the Penguins — Written and directed by Bob Saget

This direct-to-DVD satire of March of the Penguins man- aged to fly under the radar, and its distribution has been very small as a result of its relatively low budget, but it’s highly worth a look. Narrated by a very vulgar, very sexu- al Samuel L. Jackson, the film follows two penguins, voiced by Bob Saget and the Daily Show’s Lewis Black, as they journey to their herd’s breeding ground to, obvi- ously, get laid. Along the way, they encounter other walk- ing-hard-ons played by Jason Alexander, James Belushi, Jason Biggs, Dane Cook, Gilbert Gottfried, and dozens of others. Awesome, yes, but most of the illustrious comics listed in the film’s trailer are limited to one or two lines each.

No satire would be complete without poorly-pro- duced, cheesy-but-not-funny musical segments peppered with terrible visual effects. Do they get old? Yeah. Do we forgive Christina Applegate for it because she’s still pretty hot? Yeah...

me Sua

8 THE OTHER PRESS FEBRUARY 15 2007

ARTSsENTERTAINMENT

Rapture Rapes My Muses

Of Montreal w/ DJ Trevor Risk at Richard’s on Richards

(Feb. 7, 2007) Chelsea Mushaluk, OP Contributor

Having read the Pitchfork coverage of the first few Of Montreal shows on their recent tour, was looking forward to a night of pop. Glitter. Whimsy. All of those things that their first sha here in September wasn’t quite. So with an open mind and money for merch, I entered Richa on Richards Wednesday night ready to have my mind blown.

The mind blowing was off to a slow start. The place was empty, the music sucked, and the smoke machine was making me cough. The last time that they stopped in Vancouver, DJ Tre Risk was the opener. For Wednesday’s show, the promoters tapped him for a repeat perform- ance. While listening to a remix of “You Can Call Me AI” is kind of cool, listening to Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Pt. 2” is not. With the exception of the people in the front row waitis to be sweated on by Kevin Barnes, the dance floor was empty. Sorry, Trevor. I guess that was one “risk” nobody was willing to take.

Trevor Risk played (spun?) for what seemed like forever. The “band name game” we were playing to kill time was getting boring. However, just before 11, Of Montreal finally hit the stage. Having a DJ open the show must have been strategic, because I was so ready to see peo ple actually play music. One of the best parts of the Of Montreal show is the costumes, and t ones for this tour were even better than the last. Kevin Barnes’ slightly risqué mime outfit was definitely my favourite.

The band ran through some earlier stuff first, with a crowd pleasing smattering of Sunland Tvins material. They also played a fair bit of Satanic Panic in the Aitic, including “Chrissy Kiss th Corpse” and “Rapture Rapes the Muses,” which were both awesome. It’s a given that “Requie for O.M.M.2” and “The Party’s Crashing Us” tend to get the loudest screams. However, they didn’t play “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games,” which was surprising. Wait, you might know that one from the Outback Steakhouse commercials. Yeah, that one! The actual lyrics are even better than the ones about steak.

The last part of the show was where the mind blowing, though not to the extent I expecte happened. Kevin Barnes’ requisite costume change into alter-ego Georgie Fruit involved a sa kimono. He also stood on a ladder covered in silver fabric, wearing the same fabric and a hat. The giant dress was totally better than David Byrne’s big suit. The band’s standard, almost mechanical handling of encores (there will be one, no matter what, but that’s it) was made be by the token cover that Of Montreal live shows are known for. This time, it was Love is All’s “Make Out. Fall Out. Make Up”. They got to exercise their rock prowess, which is something [I’ve neither heard nor seen from the band before. Barnes exuded Bowie, while the band playe boozy rock decadence to a tee.

And then it was all over: We stood, smiling and sweaty, in the coat check line and waxed poetic about the show. We also waxed poetic with Of Montreal guitarist Bryan (a.k.a. the Late B.P. Helium) about the night’s events, and while I didn’t attend the second show the following evening, I wish that I had. I got the pop, glitter and whimsy that I came for. In fact, Fgot Gar’ Glitter too. Lucky me