HiQi Film Series
Oct 5-11
Clinton Street Theater

Yeah, yeah. The title of HiQi Film Series: Where Music Meets Film makes it sounds about as exciting as an in-depth museum exhibit on photosynthesis. However, the film series, which runs at the Clinton Street all week, includes eight different films documenting diverse subsets of music culture. Check out The Blank Generation (Oct. 6), which shows early footage of Patti Smith, Talking Heads, and Blondie, or Try This at Home (10/9), a feature about Oly’s indie scene. See page 35 for showtimes.

Friends Forever, Sun Oct 7
Driver 23, Thurs Oct 11
In the world of rock and roll, musicians will often go to any length to prove
they’re not “sell-outs.” And sometimes? They go too far. Take the case of the
protagonists in Friends Forever, a documentary about two friends who
travel around the country–and literally–play shows out of their van. They
do this in order to recapture, what they call, the “true spirit of rock and
roll.” These shows consist of smoke billowing out of the van (which is bedecked
by flashing lights), dressing up in outrageous costumes, and playing unrehearsed
noise rock (which they freely admit they don’t play very well).

Now, you won’t find a stronger proponent of DIY than myself. However, it gets pretty damn annoying when people expect accolades for being DIY without putting in any rehearsal time. The film itself lopes along with no real rise or fall in its storyline, and instead of trying to find out what makes these guys tick, we’re supplied with three separate vomit shots, and tons of glib remarks. Boring.

A far better film (and representation of DIY), is the AWESOME Driver 23, showing next Thursday. This documentary is about Dan Cleveland, an obsessive-compulsive guitar god wannabe whose heavy metal band is a failure. However, the difference between these two films is that Dan TRIES. Regardless of the shit, running around in his head, he proves to be an unstoppable force of nature, and far more worthy of respect and admiration than a couple of clucks showing off in a van. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY

Rockers, Fri Oct 5
Ever wonder what life is like in Jamaica? Well, this film attempts to show you
what it’s all about by featuring a band of reggae rockers who don’t really have
jobs, other than playing gigs or recording once in a while. The main guy, Leroy
“Horsemouth” Wallace, plays in Burning Spear and is the typical no-good man
stereotype. His wife stays home with the kids, and he pops in every once in
awhile asking for money, or where his turkey pot pie is. He also flirts with
all kinds of other booty in his spare time and spends the family’s savings on
a motorcycle for himself. Sadly for him, his cycle gets stolen, and in order
to get back at the mafioso who stole it, Horsemouth gets his crew together and
they rob the mafioso blind. This film is extremely hard to understand because
of the poor sound quality, thick Jamaican accents, and crappy subtitles that
blend in with the film. It’s also extremely boring for the first three-quarters,
and then slaps a goofy plot together at the end, which makes Horsemouth the
hero. But he’s a big dick, so what kind of hero is that? KATIE SHIMER

Word, Mon Oct 8
Word, a documentary about New York’s underground hiphop culture, has no
one specific story to tell, nor any real clear theory to uncover. Instead, it’s
a tribute to the director’s love for the struggling underground, from hardcore
thug crews (M.O.P.), to earthy urban feminists who spit spoken word at the Nuyorican
(Infinitee). The director never spends a lot of time talking to any one person
(with the exception of Melle Mel), but shows how almost everyone, from M.O.P.
to Sistahood to Kinetic to Company Flow, says exactly the same thing about their
lyrics: that they’re “really talking from the streets.” If there’s any message
in the film, it’s that gangsta rap is stupid–even Capone (of Capone-N-Noreaga),
in his interview from prison, denounces thug lifestyle. When the director contrasts
viewpoints, the documentary is at its most powerful–just watch him talk to
the awesome political group Dead Prez, then cut to some gross producer saying
he wants to capitalize by making this guy “the Puff Daddy of Latin America.”
But there aren’t enough of those scenes, and the film is like one big long roll
call of unknown hiphop groups, with not enough live footage. However, for fans
of hiphop or underground culture in general, Word is worth checking out.