CALGARY UNDERGROUND FEST: a/k/a TOMMY CHONG and THE DISTRICT! (NYOCKER!)

First things first: because of the way my email program is in an upgrade beta phase, it’s really slow, and even more so on the computer here. So responding to emails is probably not going to happen.

The opening night of the fest was in a bar, rigged up into a makeshift movie theater, with the screen being projected simultaneously onto two separate walls as well as a screen at the front, so that wherever you were in the bar, you could look any direction and see the movie. Sound was surprisingly good, and patrons were asked not to smoke or talk during the film. Nothing was said about cell phones, but I didn’t hear any go off. Obviously I’m not in California any more.

a/k/a/TOMMY CHONG is a straightforward documentary about Tommy Chong’s recent arrest for selling “drug paraphernalia.” I imagine anyone reading this site knows the whole story, but basically his family had a business selling, uh, “water-pipes” with Chong’s likeness on them. This was fine, except there are like three states where you can’t do that, one of which is Pennsylvania. So what happened is the Feds tried to entrap the company into shipping to Pennsylvania, and after being repeatedly told no, the decoy customer finally said he’d come to their warehouse and buy the stuff there, which they agreed to. The guy shows up, buys a ton of stuff, and then says “I can’t take all this home. Just mail it to me.” So they did, and that was what got them busted. A huge raid was staged, though it is pointed out taht no-one was hiding anything or trying to escape.

Chong got 9 months in jail. It was part of a larger sweep in the Ashcroft regime’s “War on Drugs = War on Terror” campaign, but Chong was the only one who did time, which he agreed to do as part of a plea-bargain that would keep his wife and son from being charged. Chong seems convinced that the government is coming after all the icons of the counterculture, retroactively fighting Nixon’s battles. When people ask him what jail was like, he responds, “You’ll find out.”

The movie’s value varies according to how much of the story you already know. The parts that relayed stuff I’d heard already were boring, but any information that was new to me I found interesting.

THE DISTRICT! (NYOCKER!)

This is simply the most ground-breaking movie I’ve seen all year. An animated feature from Hungary, it combines rotoscoping, 3-D and 2-D enhancement, and cel-shading. Also it’s a musical set to Eastern European gangsta-rap, and the plot could best be described as TRAINSPOTTING meets A SOUND OF THUNDER. Occasionally the plot flounders a bit, but the visual style and kinetic storytelling keep you with it.

Things kick off with a montage suggesting the criminal underworld life that goes on in an area of Budapest called The District, where cops are corrupt, whites and gypsies feud, and the kids are all wannabe gangsters. Hoping to get laid, one of the kids figures out that he needs money, and in a rather unique scheme, he recruits his science nerd friend to build a time machine, with which they travel back to the ice age, and using a nuclear bomb they got from Osama bin Laden (don’t ask!), make a giant crater in the ground, and lure a stampede of mammoths to their death in it. By the time the kids get back to contemporary Budapest, those mammoths’ remains have become oil.

But once you’re a country with oil, the world powers take notice, and that segues into appearances from the Hungarian prime minister (whose face is always pixilated), Tony Blair (in a Darth Vader mask), Vladimir Putin, and of course Dubya, who opts to bomb the place.

Oh, and remember it’s a gangsta rap musical. One of the numbers is about how tough it is to be a slut.

I’m not sure what copyright issues might be — there’s a kid who always wears a Britney Spears T-shirt, and at one point he hallucinates being with her; the Darth Vader helmet might also be an issue. But someone needs to pick this up for U.S. distribution quick. It’s unique, and should find favor among the Nuart crowd.

My college radio interview is tonight.

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