VHS Tracking Newsletter #4
New VHS Tracking issue, Return To Oz at Luna Leederville, Phenomena at Goolugatup gallery, and more!
Welcome to the VHS Tracking Newsletter!
What is happening in the world of VHS Tracking? Read on to find out! A new zine, more fun screenings, and movie recommendations.
New VHS Tracking zine… Issue 25: Dreams!
A new issue of VHS Tracking zine is now available!
VHS Tracking is a zine of movie recommendations that I regularly self-publish and put out, which is risograph printed by Neighbourhood Press. Different writers contribute to each issue and this issue’s theme is Dreams! Contributors testifying about their favourite movies to explore the subconscious include: Tom Vincent, Dwayne Tillman, Abby Reeves, Alex Lines, Kenta McGrath, Thomas Earnshaw, Mia Quartermaine, Will Jones, and me.
Artist Lauren Salt illustrated the fantastic cover, which is based on a British folk horror film, Penda’s Fen (1974).
If you’re a resident of Boorloo/Perth, VHS Tracking zine is free to pick up from participating stockists. Otherwise you can order it online to cover the postage fee from our Big Cartel shop.
Return To Oz (1985) at Luna Leederville
Friday 28 March 9:00pm
Disney Studios had a ‘dark period’ where they were releasing animated and live action movies during the 1980s, trying to compete with the prevailing trends, and awaiting the success of The Little Mermaid (1989), which would get them back on track. There’s some intriguing movies produced during this period, some of which are still not available to stream on a Disney Plus, like the Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce starring adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983). One cult favourite that emerged, and celebrates its fortieth anniversary is the sequel to The Wizard Of Oz, Return To Oz (1985).
With Trash Classics, we screen movies that were ‘trashed’ upon release and eventually became classics like Return To Oz, which received mixed reviews and poor performance at the box office. Starring Fairuza Balk as Dorothy Gale and directed by Walter Murch (who was editor and sound designer on films like The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now), the film fits in with other productions like The Dark Crystal (1982), The Neverending Story (1984) and Labyrinth (1986). In Return To Oz, there’s the magic of practical special effects, imaginative costumes and sets intermingled within a somewhat darker tone, with scenes that were nightmare fuel to its target audience (the Wheelers, the hallway of heads, etc).
We are screening Return To Oz for one night only at Luna Leederville, and this is a great opportunity to see it on a cinema screen. Tickets have been selling fast - get yours quickly!
Phenomena (1985) at Goolugatup Heathcote gallery
Wednesday 16 April 6:30pm
For the next VHS Tracking Presents screening, we are excited to have talented artist Sean Morris select and introduce Dario Argento’s supernatural sci-fi horror film, Phenomena (1985) starring Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasance.
Sean Morris is such an awesome artist and illustrator, one of my all time favourites, and it’s exciting to chat to him before the movie about why Phenomena is a strange and wicked experience. It’s a free screening inside one of the gallery’s rooms, with a cash bar and free popcorn available. Register your attendance to avoid missing out on a seat!
If you have attended any of the VHS Tracking Presents screenings, which are free screenings organised by Goolugatup, please send an email to them expressing your appreciation, a short testimonial if you feel like it, to heathcote@melville.wa.gov.au. The great people at the gallery would appreciate the love and it would help with future screenings.
Movie Squad Podcast: Mickey 17, Black Bag, Grand Theft Hamlet, Being Maria director Jessica Palud interview
This was a bumper episode of the Movie Squad podcast where Simon Miraudo and I shared our thoughts on the latest Bong-Joon Ho sci-fi film, Mickey 17, starring Robert Pattinson, and Simon reviewed the latest Steven Soderbergh flick, Black Bag. We also discussed the Mubi streaming release, Grand Theft Hamlet, and Simon interviewed the French director Jessica Palud on the film Being Maria about actor Maria Schneider and her experience making the controversial Last Tango In Paris.
You can subscribe to the podcast through your favourite podcasting app, or stream it direct from the RTRFM website!
Review: Sparrow (2004)
I have become a fan of Hong Kong action director Johnnie To and his Milkyway Productions, specifically films like Election, Drug War and The Mission. I was very keen to track down his movie about pickpockets, Sparrow (2008), which was impossible to find. Thanks to Chameleon Films, they have released a remastered edition on Blu-Ray, which you should check out.
Movies in love with the movies. Johnnie To began making Sparrow over three years in between other projects, most of them crime movies about cops and/or gangsters like Election and Exiled. There’s an element where it feels like Sparrow was another lane for the director to escape into, and even though it is still about crime, the focus on a quartet of pickpockets is used as a catalyst for a throwback caper romance. While a femme fatale named Chun-Lei (Kelly Lin) eventually charms each of the pickpockets, the romance is bigger than that, a romance with the city of Hong Kong itself and of course, a romance with movies.
Citing Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg as an inspiration, Sparrow falls into that sub-category of non-musical musicals. There’s no singing or dancing, just the jazzy score by Xavier Jamaux and Fred Avril, and the way sequences eschew dialogue for silence and symbolic communication. Such as when the leader of the pickpockets, Kei (Simon Yam), is picked up by Chun-Lei in an open-top convertible and they drive into the night, neon reflected in the windscreen. A flirtatious bit of business with a cigarette shared between them is milked for all of its playfulness. Yam is charismatic and playful as the debonair pickpocket leader, and the character’s interest in photography, cycling around the city taking photos works as a metaphor for the director himself. In accompanying interviews, To talks about his push to make Sparrow was about documenting a Hong Kong that was disappearing, and it’s a strong city movie, predominately in characters chasing each other or encircling around one another in public squares, open streets and alley ways.
Similar to other To movies I’ve seen, like The Mission, the quartet of thieves which includes Gordon Lam, Law Wing-cheung and Kenneth Cheung are efficiently drawn with enough personality to distinguish them, but function as a unit, playing off each other with familiarity and cheeky brotherhood. Their day to day grind is upended by Chun-Lei’s presence who wants help separating from a wealthy benefactor who keeps her under close watch and has her Chinese passport locked away in his vault. Sleight of hand reaches a crescendo in its slow-motion climax where pickpockets are pitted against each other across crosswalks during the rain, a collection of opened umbrellas competing for visual attention. While I was watching this sequence, I just thought, what else is like this? There’s something so beautiful and elegant about it all, even within just constructing a sequence around the magic of walking through a crowd in a rainy city.
Thank you for reading! Catch you at the movies!
Sincerely,
Tristan Fidler
VHS Tracking | Trash Classics