RCRD LBL

Jason Reitman is one of the most promising young film directors today. The 31-year old son of “Ghost Busters” helmer Ivan Reitman, Jason has steered two very different ships to success in “Juno” and “Thank You For Smoking”. Raised in LA, Reitman listens to KCRW as we do so we were all ears when he shared his love of music in a recent radio interview and played tunes that have influenced him over years, especially during the making of the two aforementioned films. 

Who would've known that Steve Winwood's "I'm A Man" was a driving force during the making of "Thank You For Smoking". While that tune didn't make the film soundtrack, the attitude of the lyrics permeated the film in more subtle ways. Makes one wonder what the film Juno would've been like if the main character was cast as a punk music fan instead of a lo-fi band lover?

Given his age, Jason Reitman should be creating great films for years to come. And anyone who lists RJD2 in their playlist is a friend of ours. Tune into KCRW to hear how intrinsic music is to Reitman's creative process and how he uses radio as his record store to discover songs that influence his film projects.

Jason Reitman's Playlist:
1. Steve Winwood - "I'm a Man"

Album: The Best of Steve Winwood (Island)

2. Yo La Tengo - "You Can Have it All"

Album: Juno B-Sides: Almost Adopted Songs (Rhino)

3. Moldy Peaches - "Anyone Else But You" 

Album: Juno - Music From The Motion Picture (Rhino)

4. Noel Zancanella - "Lovely"

Album: Stereo: A Fantasy for Electromagnetic Tape (Sonom Records)

5. Penguin Cafe Orchestra - "Telephone Rubber Band"

Album: Penguin Cafe Orchestra (Astralwerks)

6. RJD2 - "Good Times Roll pt. 1 [Explicit]"

Album: The Horror (Def Jux)

The Visitor is this year’s little film that could. It's based on a true story in which two very unlikely paths cross in the megalopolis that is NYC.  A middle aged and bored Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins/Six Feet Under) comes home one day to find two new residents in his apartment: Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a Syrian man, and Zainab (Danai Gurira), his Senegalese girlfriend. Learning that they're victims of a real estate scam, he befriends them and allows them to stay.

Moved by this, Tarek, a drummer, insists on teaching Walter to play the African drum. The instrument captures Walter's spirit and so begins a friendship between the two men. The differences in culture, age and temperament disappear.

In what can only be described as a dark twist, Tarek is pulled up by the NYPD on the Metro after returning with Walter from a lunchtime drum circle practice. Tarek is arrested as an undocumented citizen and held for deportation. As the situation moves from bad to worse Walter departs his sedentiary existence and enters the brutal world of immigration deportation policy and detention centers.

What's interesting in this film, apart from the inside look at immigration policy and it's systemic deployment after 9/11, is the film's sophisticated and special use of music. As the central characters get to know each other through playing music, both of the characters undertake a transformation. Music is used as a method to communicate and as a way to cross language and emotional barriers. The score to the film is created by Polish born Jan A.P. Kaczmarek and lends the film a soft and gentle side to the harsh realities undergoing Tarek. But the director Tom McCarthy (Station Agent/The Wire) doesn't stop there, in using “Je'Nwi Teni” (Don't Gag Me) by Fela Kuti as their drum practice song and as the only song in the film, the director is more than judicious with his use of music and therefore makes its use all the more powerful. Somehow the use of this song reminds us of why we all share the same planet.

"Help meeeee! Heeeeeeelp meeeeeeeee!" Put David Cronenberg, Plácido Domingo, Howard Shore and David Henry Hwang together and they'll give you something to remember... "The Fly: The Opera". Dopeness abounds in this sickly 80's scarefest reworked to the LA Opera scene. Time magazine described "The Fly" as "a profound parable on love and loss." And we say Cronenberg is the king of body horror and what better way to revisit this lonely, dark sterile look at the 80's than Placido Domingo producing the Opera version. In its metamorphosis into an opera, this dark romantic tragedy presents a Kafkaesque meditation on man's uneasy relationship with technology. As the doomed scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) and his girlfriend Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) battle some big issues with back hair.... I know an old lady who swallowed a fly...perhaps she'll die.

"The Fly: The Opera" takes place at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown LA.  Click here for tickets.

PRODUCTION DATES - LOS ANGELES
Sunday     September 7, 2008     2:00 p.m.
Wednesday     September 10, 2008     7:30 p.m.
Saturday     September 13, 2008     7:30 p.m.
Tuesday     September 16, 2008     7:30 p.m.
Saturday     September 20, 2008     7:30 p.m.
Saturday     September 27, 2008     2:00 p.m.

The Tribeca Film Festival just wrapped in New York.  It being NYC and the birth of hip hop, its kinda poetic that The Wackness made its premiere at Tribeca.  Instead of a Hollywood cliche coming-of-age film with music as a backdrop, The Wackness really captures the role that music plays in a teen's life. And, as The Wackness is set in 1994, it's all about 90s hip-hop! Shapiro, the main character, makes mixtapes for his sweetheart. That's real. We’ve all done it before. Tribe Called Quest, R. Kelly, Biggie, Raekwon...long before the iTunes gift playlist we were diligently making mixtapes for our crushes and our friends.

Shapiro is our kind of guy - he's never without his headphones, he loves the ladies, but he might love hip-hop more. Method Man also plays a Jamaican in the film. Trailer to the film is above.

Also at Tribeca, Adam Yauch screened his previously reported film “Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot”.   Mark your calendars for that local release, kids, this one is going to be hot.