Art Film Round-up: Meek's Cutoff / Underwear Party at the Church of Malt Liquor

With the release of Thor next week, the summer blockbuster movie season is officially upon us. We love watching Greek gods and superheroes and giant robots fight each other as much as the next guys but, as scenesters, we also have a more sophisticated cinematic appetite that can only be sated by "films" that are a little more artsy and obscure. So in this new series we'll focus on a few such films.

First up is Meeks Cutoff, the new "feminist-western" by Kelly Reichardt, who brought us Old Joy (that one was hip because it starred Will Oldham) and Wendy and Lucy (that one was hip because it had very little dialogue and consisted almost entirely of a woman hunting her dog).

Rolling Stone's Peter Travers writes of Meek's Cutoff:

"Fans of Michael Bay's jack-off epics will run for the hills at first exposure to this tale of bonneted women on the Oregon trail, circa 1845. No one strips, twitches her ass or licks her lips, except out of thirst. This is Kelly Reichardt territory."

Chip: "I'll admit that I've jacked off to several Bay films, but I find bonneted women arousing as well. I'll see this AND Transformers 3 this summer."

We dig the poster:



















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Now that Larryville's newest concert venue, the Church of Malt Liquor, has received coverage both here and at I Heart Local Music, it's fast losing it's hipster cred, so you better see a show in a hole in the ground as soon as you can. We're not sure if there's any real way to know who's playing there or when, so we suggest you just show up every day and hang around. It's out behind the train station somewhere. Rumor has it that townies smoke crack out there.

In the meantime, you can live vicariously through this video of Dean Monkey and the Dropouts performing in the hole and in their underwear: