On the Edge
by Rob Nilsson
from KOCH LORBER FILMS
A once-promising runner who was unfairly banned from amateur competition twenty years ago sets out to recapture his lost glory and begins to train for one of the toughest races in America, the Cielo Sea.
Heat and Sunlight
from KOCH LORBER FILMS
Photojournalist Mel Hurley arrives home expecting to find his lover Carmen waiting at the airport. She's not there and over the next 16 hours Mel examines their relationship - equating his personal struggle with the story behind the photos he took during a civil war over 20 years ago. Winner - 1988 Sundance Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize.
WORDS FOR THE DYING
from Microcinema DVD
A revealing cinema verité portrait of the former Velvet Underground musician, John Cale, in creative collaboration with Brian Eno. Director Rob Nilsson follows them to Moscow, London and Wales for the recording of a new album, Words for the Dying, built around four Dylan Thomas poems. This is not your typical ""making of"" documentary. Once in Moscow, Nilsson discovered that Eno wanted no part of the filming. The film becomes a clash of wills as Nilsson tries to cajole Eno back into the project. It is a subtle internecine battle, the camera crew tiptoeing through a minefield of bursting egos.
Signal 7
by Rob Nilsson
from KOCH LORBER FILMS
A day in the life of two middle-aged San Francisco cab drivers, Marty and Speed, both who are living in a state of turmoil, unable to shake the anger, loneliness and anguish of the lives they didn't live. This was the first feature film to be blown up from small format video to 35 mm and distributed around the world.
Town Has Turned to Dust
by Rob Nilsson
from Mti Home Video
More of a frontier Western with futuristic trappings than a science fiction film, you can see why this made-for-cable morality play from the pen of the late Rod Serling remained unproduced for 40 years. Infused with the strong character writing and inventive details that enlivened his best Twilight Zone scripts, it nonetheless suffers from Serling's key weakness--playing his allegories so close to the surface that it overpowers the story. Earth in the future becomes so polluted that the human race has left save for two communities: the "dwellers," a ragtag group of off-worlders who mine the planet for its only resource (scrap metal), and the "drivers," a tribe of Native Americans living on the outskirts of the dwellers' rusting city, Carbon. As Carbon's ambitious entrepreneur Ron Perlman (playing the populist leader to the hilt) makes his bid for power by appealing to the mob instincts of his racist township, principled but weak-willed sheriff Stephen Lang faces his fears and the secret that keeps him trapped in inertia. Director Rob Nilsson shoots this drama of racism and mob violence in the murky colors of junkyard, giving the town an appropriately overwhelming ambiance of rust and dust. More importantly, he grounds the film in the personalities of its cast. The film creaks under the overwrought symbolism of Indians and settlers to explore the politics of hate, but the dramatic clash between Perlman and Lang resonates with their excellent performances. --Sean Axmaker
A Town Has Turned to Dust
More of a frontier Western with futuristic trappings than a science fiction film, you can see why this made-for-cable morality play from the pen of the late Rod Serling remained unproduced for 40 years. Infused with the strong character writing and inventive details that enlivened his best Twilight Zone scripts, it nonetheless suffers from Serling's key weakness--playing his allegories so close to the surface that it overpowers the story. Earth in the future becomes so polluted that the human race has left save for two communities: the "dwellers," a ragtag group of off-worlders who mine the planet for its only resource (scrap metal), and the "drivers," a tribe of Native Americans living on the outskirts of the dwellers' rusting city, Carbon. As Carbon's ambitious entrepreneur Ron Perlman (playing the populist leader to the hilt) makes his bid for power by appealing to the mob instincts of his racist township, principled but weak-willed sheriff Stephen Lang faces his fears and the secret that keeps him trapped in inertia. Director Rob Nilsson shoots this drama of racism and mob violence in the murky colors of junkyard, giving the town an appropriately overwhelming ambiance of rust and dust. More importantly, he grounds the film in the personalities of its cast. The film creaks under the overwrought symbolism of Indians and settlers to explore the politics of hate, but the dramatic clash between Perlman and Lang resonates with their excellent performances. --Sean Axmaker
+++
