Film Fatale

Stupidest outdoor ad campain ever.

The signs hung on a bridge support beneath I-93 north of downtown Boston, above a bridge in the South End, above a train station entrance in the Back Bay, on a Fenway Park stadium entrance, and at 34 other locations in Boston and Cambridge.

At night, the Lite-Brite style, battery-operated signdepicting AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE glowed cutely and distractingly above eye level -- yet another unstealthy street promo campaign waiting to be noticed or ignored.

Viewed from the sidewalk, and in 8:00am daylight, these signs their exposed wires and crude power packs (black electrical tape over a few C or D batteries) might have looked like vandalism. Or something more sinister. (Ray at MovieCityIndie has a shot of the sign with the electrical tape removed)

If the Massachusetts State Police Bomb Disposal squad and Boston Police response seemed to lack the edgy, larky underground/stealth spirit in which the Mooninite promos were erected, maybe they're still a bit mirthless about their colleague BPD Officer Jeremiah J. Hurley, who was killed in 1991 while attempting to defuse a bomb in the city's Roslindale neighborhood. (His untimely death was captured by local news cameras and then shown on national television, all in the interest of public safety, of course.)

As the Boston Globe reports:

For hours, police treated the signs, about 1 by 1-1/2 feet with protruding wires and batteries, as potentially dangerous until they found one in a darker area, where the cartoon character pattern was clearly visible, triggered by an absence of sunlight. A Boston Police analyst later recognized the cartoon, and it was proclaimed a hoax -- drawing far more publicity than Turner Broadcasting System Inc. ever contemplated.

Boing Boing broke the news around 3pm that the objects weren't a hoax or political statement but part of street/outdoor ad campaign for Cartoon Network's AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE, which airs late at night on Adult Swim block. (The animated series about a laid-back trio of friends -- a milkshake, a package of french fries and a hamburger meat patty - is also coming to cinemas; First Look will release a 86-minute feature film version of AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE on March 23.)

An Arlington, Mass. artist -- who bears a remarkable resemblance to Aqua Teen Hunger Force character Frylock -- was arrested Wednesday evening and is expected to be charged in Middlesex County Court on Thursday morning. Police questioned Peter Berdovsky, 27, for two hours at the home of his lawyer, and then perp-walked him in front of waiting TV cameras. Police said that the suspect was helping authorities locate all the signs, and that all signs were "inert" and harmless. UPDATE: A second suspect, Sean Stevens, a 28 year old artist/electronics expert from Charlestown, was arrested late Wednesday night. Both men are now being arraigned on charges of placing hoax devices and disorderly conduct--CNN and Fox have live footage of police perp walking them, like, two blocks from wherever they parked to the Charlestown courthouse.

Berdovsky's attorney, who is also a family friend, told TV reporters that the 26 year old video and installation artist emigrated from Belarus at the age of 17 and attended the Massachusetts College of Art, had recently obtained his Green Card. His client, he said, had been hired by the Cartoon Network to place numerous signs around the metro area and he was cooperating fully with authorities.

As of midnight Jan 31, Berdovsky's website was still up and running, complete with a stylish CV, work samples and multimedia presentation. There are even clips of him and and a friend efficiently hanging the 'toon Mooninites up on buildings, bridges and walls. You can find the site link by looking at the Globe story - they've pulled some photographs of Berdovksy and friend at work.

As pissed off as I was to be locked in traffic for few hours, I would rather hear that the network and their promotions companies - -not any clueless local contractors -- bear the cost of reimbursng the state and city for this massive annoyance.

The ad agency contracted to do promotion for the show, Interference, Inc is offering no comment this evening and their website is offline. The Globe and other Boston sources report that the Arlington artist phoned police early in the day and the media to explain that there was no bomb, that this was an ad campaign, and that he had placed the signs. The Feb. 1 edition of the Boston Globe has an interview with Berdovsky, who says, "It's pretty commonsensical to look at them and say this is a piece of art and installation."

Meanwhile, Turner and Cartoon Network took far too long -- until 4:30pm -- to issue a statement of apology. And this was hours after their cartoon characters -- the Mooninites, surly little videogame figures from AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE, had been glimpsed on TV -- in plastic bags and the gloved hands of Mass. State Police Bomb Squad employees. (Mayor Thomas "Mumbles" Menino, still fuming this morning, said that the network's statement was an apology only -- it did not give the locations of the signs.

From these websites for Glitch Crew and for Beatfix Studio -- collectives for digital and technological artists (I think) you can find biographical notes on Berdovsky and Stevens and descriptions of their work.

There's an email contact for each. Maybe the network and the ad agency -- or you -- would like to throw them a few bucks to fund their defense.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From JoBlo via Cinematical:

For too long, the pasty-faced ghost girls of Asian horror have terrorized us by hanging lank hair in their faces. They send sent their castoff locks through the plumbing, clogging sinks and bathtubs. And we say, Use some product, girls. Flip it. Iron it. Get a nice blunt cut, some soft layers - they'll bring out your delicate features and frame your face...

Now nothing can prepare us for deadly power of EXTE: HAIR EXTENSIONS

Once a long-haired girl, always a long-haired girl. And her hair extentions are angry.

EXTE! Snarling Japanese cinema projectors Feb. 17.

JoBlo - Scott Carmichael

Thanks to Scott Carmichael for the updated link to the film site -- go there to view out the EXTE trailer (Windows Media, 512K) and what appears to be a music video tie-in (Scrunchy tie-in--you don't want to frazzle the extensions, girlfriend) (512K).

Cinematical
http://www.cinematical.com/2007/01/29/the-horror-of-hair-extensions/

http://www.exte-movie.jp/

Trailer
http://www.toei.co.jp/meta/exte/512k_exte_yokoku.asx

Song about hair
Windows Media Player 512k
http://www.toei.co.jp/meta/exte/myhear_512k.asx

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sundance 2007: Magic Men, Weightless Women, Drawn in Black and White

This report appeared in the Observer (UK) in a slightly different form - read the original here.

HOUNDDOG
Director/screenwriter Deborah Kampmeier

USA. 2006. 98 min. 35mm.
Dakota Fanning, Robin Wright Penn, David Morse, Piper Laurie, Afemo Omilami.
No distributor information/release date as of Jan. 28

BLACK SNAKE MOAN
Dir/scr: Craig Brewer
USA. 2006. 118 min. 35mm. Paramount Vantage (In theaters Feb. 23, 2007: Official website)
Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake, S. Epatha Merkerson, John Cothran.

Another year, another programme of great films - little wonder Hollywood's big shots were stalking chilly Utah in search of the next big thing to fill cinemas (from me - Justine Elias -- the original report appears in the London Observer - Jan. 28, 2007. You can read the original, shorter version in print or online.

Independent cinema fans once came to snowy Park City, Utah, in search of obscure films and renegade directors such like Quentin Tarantino or Jim Jarmusch. But in recent years, indie films have gained profile and box-office stature. Now Hollywood suits flock to the festival looking for crowd-pleasers like Little Miss Sunshine, a Sundance hit last year that went on to earn $92m worldwide and four Oscar nominations. Coming into the festival, the movies that got the most attention weren't light -- but they were nearly weightless.

As in tossed around, carried off, like naughty white ladies of HOUNDDOG and BLACK SNAKE MOAN, two overcooked portraits of the American South (Weather forecast: Humid sultriness, lurid lightning. Conditions will deteriorate).

In the former, 12 year old Dakota Fanning commands the screen as Louellen, an Elvis Presley obsessed girl, grooving through a fecund, faux-Faulknerian landscape (Humid, sultry). Though the film's rape scene made Hounddog notorious before it was screened here, writer/director Deborah Kampmeier keeps the depiction of the assault relatively brief (Lurid, lightning). What's really risible is the way that the young heroine and her kinswoman "Stranger Lady" (Robin Wright Penn, fluttery) are dumped into the path of their neighbor, a never-too-busy-to-care, near-magical African-American stablehand, Charles (Afemo Omilami (IDLEWILD, GLORY ROAD) -- who has impressive connections to both the snake-wrangling and music communities: Big Mama Thornton (Jill Scott) and band rehearse in his hayloft.

Wesley Morris, a film critic for the Boston Globe, attended the public screening and the filmmaker Q&A--he has a far more succinct reaction on this and the Right to Sing the Blues issue: Take it away, Morris.

Louellen, grown up too soon, her Presley-inspired gyrations weighing heavy on her heart and narrow hips ("I can't shake no more," she says) guts out her own, soul-deep, little girl version of "Hound Dog." What comes out is a high, girlish, wide-vibrato lilt that we haven't heard before: she sounds, for once she sounds like a child. It's an off note: the otherwise preternatural Fanning's cri de coeur sounds, just then, too trained. (The film may be set in 1955, but for a moment I thought: Charles! You're a genius. Thirty five years too early for the Broadway premiere, maybe, but by golly, I think you've found the new "Annie." )

How lucky it is, in Hounddog's Good 'N' Gothic galleria, for all people pink and white on the outside (but feeling licorice on the inside), that African Americans (comparatively few in number, yet remarkably well acquainted with each other) are so willing to share their secret soul-sustaining culture.

"You have to understand," said one national magazine critic afterward. "A film like this would have no traction outside of Sundance. Because no one would have seen it." Another, who was sitting by the exit, said he counted thirty walkouts from the press and industry screening -- those were the ones who got away.

While not being creeped out by racial politics served with creepy intimations of incest and rape (like, 90 percent of the movie), I was quite impressed by some of the performances, particularly those Fanning and her playmates, (Cody Hanford, who looks and emotes like the kid from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and Isabelle Fuhrmann as a pinafore-wearing princesa.

Indiewire called HOUNDDOG the "Showgirls" of Sundance, which makes it sound like far too much fun: There is no room for Crystal Bernard in Deborah Kampmeier's movie (though there were, according to a Variety review, three cinematographers—one of whom was sent outside into the "lightening"). All the "darlin's" and shotgun-toting grannies are deadly serious. Indeed, some non-ticket buyers who stayed for the full experience actually hissed, as though -- why? They wanted their free back? How could it be shock, when Hounddog had been so thoroughly pummelled prior to Sundance?

Weirdly, the press and industry screening for the slightly more accomplished but still sucktastic BLACK SNAKE MOAN drew a hearty round of applause. And I don't believe that 8:30am, Thursday audience was clapping in a "thank you, movie, for finally ending" way. This was high altitude, oxgyen-deprivaed love. Director Craig Brewer, who made the pimp-friendly HUSTLE & FLOW -- and in doing so gave the dashing Terrence Howard his overdue breakthrough role – has built up so much critical goodwill that his not even the trampsploitation/swamp-o-delic trailer for his second film (lurid, humid, sultry) can dissuade some from believing that that movie, too, isn't crap.

In Black Snake Moan, bitter bluesman turned farmer Samuel L Jackson makes a Pygmalion project of nymphomaniac Rae (Christina Ricci) -- a tweaky, scrawny gal whose motor runs too hot for her infantile soldier boy husband (Justin Timberlake) -- by chaining her to the radiator of his house. 'Why do you let mens treat you like that?' one man character asks, before the truth becomes apparent: the hero, a never-too-busy-to-care, mystical African-American -- is merely offering avuncular aid to a bruised, raped, sexually transgressive white woman.

On the plus side, sort of, there emerges, amid Brewers's bizarre vision a compelling, even entertaining character for Jackson to play. Gradually, Jackson frees Lazarus of his familiar snapping-turtle mannerisms and embarks on a tentative romance with a local pharmacist (S. Epatha Merkerson) -- convenient, that, with all Rae's aches and bruises. who's been interested in him for a while. Because the pharmacist is played by Capt. Van Buren from LAW & ORDER, who always knows what time it is, it's hard to imagine that she doesn't notice the pecular goings on at Lazarus' house. She gets an eyeful, finally, of the unchained Rae and goes "Is that your niece?"--Funny! That niece/knees joke kills me every time. Because Rae's often on her knees, setting her weary head on Lazarus' knee as he sings, bluesily, about the mean, straying woman who brought him to his knees; Lazarus gets down on his knees to bathe poor "rutted and beat on" Rae after she's been scrabbling about in the corn field, half naked and detoxing.

Most of the kneecap-cracking ordeals – spiritual and physical - in Black Snake Moan, though, are Rae's: Ricci's mucho-naked, grovelling toward grace performance is something to behold and will become, no doubt, a formative and repeat experience for shy men interested in one day venturing outdoors and meeting a real, live woman whom they can abduct, chain to a radiator and share their mix CDS with.

Though Brewer begins the movie with a freeze-frame that suggests a reclamation of the drive-in era, what unfolds seems slightly more punitive those of long ago. (I could be misremembering those Corman / American International movies. Were they ever this nasty? It's possible I can't get this movie – at all. We see the world as we are, and my blues are not The Blues, more like Major Clinical Depression. Ah, a man in uniform.) There is, in this story of Lazarus' rising and Rae's Blues Mama boot camp endurance training, a grinding, lies an unpleasant echo of an old familar theme: that African-American people (comparitively few in number, but well acquainted with each other) can be relied upon to share their private soul-sustaining culture with hurting non-African Americans. And there will be those who deride or perv on Ricci for doing this role. She's earned her Blues Mama shoes at the end, all right, but Black Snake Moan ends with one hell of a punchline about about who's her weepy little blues baby.

Listen close. When Black Snake Moan hits cinemas, the appreciative audience -- and there will be one -- might be cheering to conceal manful tears.

More BLACK SNAKE MOAN reviews from Sundance.

Film Comment, by Nathan Lee.

Screen International/Screen Daily. by Patrick Z. McGavin.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 07:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Meet the moppet Miró, the kinder Kandinski.

You will -- one of the more engaging documentaries at the 2007 Sundance Festival is MY KID COULD PAINT THAT, director Amir Bar-Lev's look at the controversy over child artist Marla Olmstead, whom some gallery owners called a prodigy, and whose abstract work some critics compared to Paul Klee and Juan Miró.

Sony Pictures Classics announced this week that it had acquired the rigths to the film for $2 million, and festival reviews - including this one from the Hollywood Reporter - are enthusiastic.

Remarkably, the director asked the Olmsteads to participate in the film, and they agreed -- even after the authenticity of their daughter's work had been challenged in a Feb. 2005 installment of 60 Minutes. Over the course of filming, writes the New York Times, ""Mr. Bar-Lev begins to have misgivings and finds his role as family familiar and advocate morphing into something darker. The movie is a transparent rendering of the journalistic process, and the picture is none too pretty."

When Bar-Lev started work, the young artist was already a sensation -- she'd had her first solo show, sold several paintings, and a Birmingham, NY area reporter had broken the story.
By October, 2004, Gaby Wood of The Observer (UK) became one of the first international print journalists to visit Marla Olmstead en-suite -- at the studio of gallery owner Anthony Brunelli.

That summer after young Marla's first show, Wood reported, the artist's canvases were fetching $1,500 each. ."Three weeks ago they had gone up to $6,000, and on my arrival at the gallery the one piece remaining had been priced at $15,000. What they'll be worth by the time you read this is anyone's guess."

Gaby Wood continues:

"I am greeted at Anthony Brunelli's loft - two floors above his gallery - by Marla's extended entourage: her mother, her brother, her grandmother, her aunt, and her gallerist's wife. (Brunelli and Marla's father are downstairs, bringing her latest work in from the car.) They are sitting around a huge open-plan space with exposed brick walls and all the mod cons a small star could hope for - plasma TV, vintage arcade game, supersized jars of sweets on the kitchen counter. Marla, a lovely-looking slip of a girl wearing a blue tar tan miniskirt, is tucking into a bowl of jelly beans. Her two-year-old brother, Zane, has nearly finished his, and zips around, talks over her, grins at the slightest opportunity. Marla, by way of greeting, offers a wide-eyed stare.

I tell her I like her paintings.

'What do you say when someone compliments you, Marla?' her mother calls from the other end of the room.

'Thank you,' she says obediently, and looks down at her jelly beans.

'What's your favourite colour?' I ask, bending down to look at them with her. Rarely has that seemed a more loaded question.

'Pink,' she says, automatically. There isn't a pink jelly bean, nor is there really any pink in her paintings. Her answer is the same as any four-year-old girl's. Of course. What did I expect her to say - international Yves Klein blue?

----------------------
Again, the link to Gaby Wood's "http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1334512,00.htmlWhat I Did Today" in the Observer.

And again, a photograph of the artist, then four years old, from the Sundance press site. Her parents must be extremely proud of her.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I spent about ten minutes reading through the nominations and being shocked. Then I had to go. No DREAMGIRLS for Best Picture....I don't get it. [Major analysis in next day Los Angeles Times.]

ACTING
Come back in a decade, thirtyish actors. Quota's been filled. No room for:

Christian Bale, THE PRESTIGE, as a magician whose sleight of hand makes his own life disappear. (Edward Norton, another of this year's screen magicians in THE ILLUSIONIST is apparently too young, and too prolific with his subtle, strong performances to score enough votes--the same goes for Matt Damon (THE DEPARTED) and Derek Luke (CATCH A FIRE), who convinced me that there had to be a second, South African actor, an older man, and not the same Derek Luke, American kid, whom I'd seen in BIKER BOYZ a couple of years ago. How cool for Leonardo DiCaprio, who's outstanding in both THE DEPARTED and THE BLOOD DIAMOND, to be nominated.) But bad for...
Adam Beach, FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, as the most traumatized of the Iwo Jima Marines, the man who's destroyed as much bigotry as by what he saw during and after he served in WWII.
Michael Sheen, THE QUEEN, as a youthful, scheming/sly politician named Tony Blair - a man who seems to have a little crush on a mysterious older woman: the ruler of Great Britain.
Also missed:
Laura Dern, INLAND EMPIRE, who continues to explore uncharted territory as an actress, in the role (roles?) of a lifetime in David Lynch's psychological thriller.
Bill Nighy, the English sex god of un certain age in NOTES ON A SCANDAL, as the husband and father and the one character who says what's the audience's mind: "What the hell were you thinking?"

Best Pictures, Not In English
Unfortunately for these foreign-language film entries, there were 61 submissions and at least a dozen titles that'll be more memorable than the Best Picture nominees. Keep an eye out for:

TEN CANOES, Australia (Palm Pictures)
THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING, Egypt
BLACK BOOK, The Netherlands (Sony Pictures Classics)
REPRISE Norway
VOLVER, Spain. (Sony Pictures Classics)

BABEL
It's going to win, isn't it? And I still won't like the vague voidyness of the script. But I did love the way film's director, Alejandro González Iñárritu cracked the best joke in California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's face to start off his Golden Globe acceptance speech ("I swear I have my papers in order, Governor" before waxing eloquent about movies, communication, bridging differences in language through film.

MovieCityNews Awards Central
http://www.moviecitynews.com/awards/awards_central.html

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CHILDREN OF GOD: LOST AND FOUND(Slamdance)
A haunting, rigorous exploration of youth in exile -- for good reason -- from their families, from the communities that raised them, and saddest of all, from faith

Born in Brazil to members of the Children of God evangelical Christian cult, director/writer/interviewer) Noah Thompson -- one of eleven siblings - left at the age of 21. Several of his younger siblings have since followed. The story begins with begins with contrasting memories: disturbing, then horrifying news footage (c. 1990s) of the cult leader's exposure as a pedophile, and Thompson's own rigidly cheerful snapshots and home movies--despite the being raised in a regimented commune where fathers and mothers--young, attractive, fresh faced hippies-- went fishing, flirtily, for more followers, and nannies watched over the kids. When Thompson reminds his mother of the "flirty fishing," and that that he and other children had sex with some of those young-ish nannies, the voice on the other end of the line gets a little nervous. "I hope you're not going to make me look like a slut," she says.

Pity that mother for being drawn into an uncomfortable conversation with a camera and audiotape running. Maybe it was my imagination, but there seemed to be a great many people with her on the line, hoping to dissaude the filmmaker not from making the movie. Or maybe it was the audience's communal sorrow at Thompson's next remark: he was only trying to make some sense of his isolated/early-sexualized/accelerated childhood by speaking to other ex-Children of God who'd been raised as he was. What follows isn't a hit piece but a filmmaker's coming of age. As he locates his spiritual siblings - scattered now from Manhattan to Texas to Costa Rica to Brazil - he becomes a compelling figure before the camera, a compassionate listener with reluctant subjects who, paradoxically, seem to have been waiting all their lives to speak.

What they say is heartbreaking. "Look at how cute we were," remarks one young woman, who with her brother, suffered unspeakable treatment by the cult's leaders. "No wonder we got abused."

The cult once bended toward the rapey, criminal enterprise delusions of its leader--but the followers -- now calling themselves The Family International are now merely an isolationist religious cult.

HBO will be airing Children of God: Lost and Found "at a later date," according to the film's publicist.

This is one of those films that leaves you - in a word - stunned. Even if you know a few kids who grew up in really isolated religious groups. What to do afterward: weep or find a bar with a television showing the final minutes of the AFC Championships. Why not both? And this being my first time in Park City, I started down the hill on Main Street and ended up standing there on a Sunday night snowstorm, hearing the news that the New England Patriots had just been scored upon and would not be going to the Super Bowl, and this guy, skinny, good looking in an elfin, angular way, stops next to me and says, "Do the numbers on this street go up or down?"

Still reeling from the documentary, and being only a couple of days in town, I hadn't figured out that while the Main Street hill goes up, the street numbers go down. So I continue despairing (Patriots, cults, altitude), and shrug at this somehow familar looking man and say--like a total upspeaking cinematard: "I don't know. I'm hopeless. Down?"

I walk down the hill. The guy walks up the hill. And that's when I realize it: That man was Kevin Bacon.

One hour later I see him on CNN talking about SixDegrees.org a social networking site that raises money while matches people with others who care about the same charities.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thelma Adams, via the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, in the Huffington Post, writes:

"The suspense builds in BABEL and we watch, intently, on the edge of our seats, like motorists crawling past an auto wreck.

Slapping our foreheads, we ask: How stupid can these people be? (Spoiler alert: Pretty stupid.)"http://awfj.org

(Thanks to Jennifer Merin at the AWFJ for the link--read more essays and extensive Sundance coverage at the AWFJ site.)

A direct link to Adams' essay: is here The Huffington Post:

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In her Risky Business column for the Hollywood Reporter, Anne Thompson notes that twelve of the 61 directors in the foreign-language film category are female. "Check their resumes, and many of them are veterans who have been churning out films for years," writes Thompson "Around the world, somehow, women find it a lot easier to make movies than they do here in the U.S. The feminist movement in this country has come and gone, leaving many women striving to make their way in the workplace, yet in Hollywood the state of support for women directors remains woeful. Even when someone brilliant comes along like Karen Moncrieff, who wrote and directed the 2002 Sundance hit BLUE CAR and this year's just-released THE DEAD GIRL it's hard to summon up much optimism for her future."

It's true, of course, that there are far fewer working female directors than their are male ones. And as Thompson writes, "Even the most talented women, who usually establish themselves with low-budget indie fare, somehow wind up directing movies for television, lame romantic comedies or studio family films that no self-respecting male would touch."

What she doesn't mention is that the foreign language submissions, many of them, benefit from arts subsidies, tax breaks and direct funding. And some foreign language entries are similar in scope, tone and story to U.S indie dramas.

URL:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/columns/risky_business/e3i70a5636dd36012c71b35f2a1bbd8fe4d

Whatever happened to Martha Coolidge, Joan Micklin Silver or Penelope Spheeris?

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 01:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The advance buzz about MEIN FUHRER: THE TRULY TRUEST TRUTH ABOUT ADOLF HITLER, which opens in Germany Thursday [Jan. 14], has been almost uniformly negative, with German critics and commentators proclaiming the film naïve, bizarre, vulgar and — most damning of all — not funny," writes the New York Times. Perhaps it was inevitable that the first German-made film comedy about Hitler would get a mixed reception in Germany — a country still haunted, six decades after the fall of the Third Reich, by the mystery of how this strange madman once held it in thrall."

This movie is wrong in so many ways.

What's even more wrong is that Germans haven't had a chance to see MR. SHOW WITH BOB AND DAVID, especially this 1998 sketch called "Hitlers" (from show 401), which dispenses in two minutes, the idea of what to do, comically, with Hitler.

In this sketch, a takeoff of THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, clones of Adolph Hitler are created by the thousands--emerging from the laboratory full-grown and sent forth not to do evil, but to live as servants, performing menial tasks (cleaning, child-minding) for the relatives of Holocaust victims. In no time, they're like part of the furniture--shut into closets when they're not needed.

But they're treated humanely, these old men, even given an evening off: there they are at a clone honky-tonk, drowning their sorrows and complaining about their lot in life. "It's impossible to get a date," one sighs. "Once they find out you're Hitler, it's over. Forget it." (Listen to the country and western tune on the jukebox: it took me a while to notice that the lyrics-"Ja, ja...schnell, schnell..."-are an approximation of the classic cowpoke song, "Git along, git along....Little dogey"

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Writers Guild of America Announced its nominations for 2007 and Mark Harris of Entertainment Weekly notices something strange about the list: no December releases. What's up with that? He thinks it's because WGA members don't receive DVDs --they're supposed to see films in theaters or at guild events.

The nominees include

Original Screenplay

BABEL, Written by Guillermo Arriaga. (Paramount Vantage)

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, Written by Michael Arndt (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

THE QUEEN, Written by Peter Morgan (Miramax Films)

STRANGER THAN FICTION, Written by Zach Helm,. (Sony Pictures Entertainment)

UNITED 93, Written by Paul Greengrass (Universal Pictures)

Adapted Screenplay

BORATCultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham & Dan Mazer, Story by Sacha Baron Cohen & Peter Baynham & Anthony HineS & Todd Phillips, Based on a Character Created by Sacha Baron Cohen (Twentieth Century Fox)

THE DEPARTED,
Screenplay by William Monahan, Based on the Motion Picture Infernal Affairs, Written by Alan Mak and Felix Chong (Warner Bros. Pictures)

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, Screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna, Based on the Novel by Lauren Weisberger. (Twentieth Century Fox)

LITTLE CHILDREN, Screenplay by Todd Field & Tom Perrotta, Based on the Novel by Tom Perrotta. (New Line Cinema)

THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, Screenplay by Jason Reitman, Based on the Novel by Christopher Buckley. (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

ANIMATION (Any length, one airing time): No SOUTH PARK! Didn't Kenny and Cartman submit any episodes?
The worth nominees are:

"The Italian Bob" (The Simpsons), Written by John Frink; FOX
"Who's Your Daddy" (The Life and Times of Juniper Lee), Written by Marsha Griffin; Cartoon Network
"Church Hopping" (King of the Hill), Written by Jim Dauterive; FOX
"Kiss Kiss Bang Bangalore" (The Simpsons), Written by Dan Castellaneta & Deb Lacusta; FOX
"Simpsons Christmas Stories" (The Simpsons), Written by Don Payne; FOX
"Girls Just Want to Have Sums" (The Simpsons), Written by Matt Selman; FOX

COMEDY/VARIETY — (Including Talk) SERIES: Where is the nomination for The Stephen Colbert Show? Did all the HBO writers feel obligated to nominate one of their shows, even though it's crap?
The nominees are:
"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" COMEDY CENTRAL
"Late Night With Conan O'Brien" NBC
"Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" Showtime
"Real Time With Bill Maher" HBO
"Saturday Night Live" NBC
Sebastiano, T. Sean Shannon, Robert Smigel, JB Smoove, Emily Spivey, Jorma Taccone, Bryan Tucker; NBC

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 08:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

24-hour man Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) returns to defend the world from yet another apocalypse in Fox's madly addictive suspense serial.

Jack's mood on Day Six: aggrieved but unbroken. The nation's: aggrieved and freaked out--the USA is under attack--again.

Naturally, the hero's no worse for wear after twenty months in an Asian prison (at the end of season five, Jack Bauer and his cellphone voice were subject to extraordinary rendtion -- by Chinese, not US, government agents -- due to his role in a Season 4 attack on China's consulate in Los Angeles. Without giving to much away: the first four hours of '24' echo both ROAD TO GUANTANAMO and the capture and trial of Saddam Hussein -- right up to the final, most gruesome HD video and cellphone images. (Time to feel bad about someone's neck? Not your own, anyway.)

Writes Matthew Gilbert of the Boston Globe: "24" perfectly captures the mood of America, so poised between global eruption and political farce. The New York Times' Alessandra Stanley also succumbs to the Fox network's real-time drama

Along with constitutional rights, the show dives into questions of detention camps, torture, vigilantism, working with terrorists, and suicide bombing. It's button-pushing at its most provocative. Even the opening shots of Jack fresh from 20 months in a Chinese prison have controversial echoes, as they sample the images of a bearded and bedraggled Saddam Hussein just after his capture. Also Sunday night, we see Jack torturing a guy while a huge American flag hangs behind them. That'll get your heart going. But, much as I am compelled to watch "24," and admire its craft, I find that I can't take it seriously"

Yeah, yeah: Mobile-phone service is miraculously clear, CTU and enemy surveillance powers are godlike, and who knew that every President and key federal operative has mission-critical child, ex-lover or sibling who's sleeping with a someone who might be a traitor.("Are you sure you haven't told another living soul about this. Perfect. Tell me where you are-I'll be right over there to get you."). Who knew that the American people would elect a second African-American president in a single decade-- and the new guy's so confident about his prospects that he dares to wear facial hair, a modified Fu Manchu,: a slim, sexy goatee.

Hilarious.. And essential TV.

Fox, Sunday, Jan. 14, 8-10pm, continues Monday Jan. 15 8-10pm.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch master of action (ROBOCOP) and erotic thrillers (BASIC INSTINCT), returned to the Netherlands to make a WWII action-adventure movie. BLACK BOOK won't be out till early March, but it's already been hailed as his best movie in twenty years. (It's a Golden Globe nominee and a likely nominee for a foreign language film Academy Award) The heroine, a Dutch/Jewish chanteuse (Carice Van Houten, in a riotously unself-conscious performance) avenges her families' betrayal at the hands of WWII collaborators. Joining the resistance, she finds love, lies and brutality on both sides.

"It's a much more personal story for me than the films I made in the US," Verhoeven tells the UK Telegraph. "It has the resonance of youth. I was seven years old when the war ended, and the emotional resonance of being occupied is something you take with you your whole life."

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Babel's Rinku Kikuchi : Words Fail, Voids Remain

The smart young film critics of Reverse Shot get mad -- feisty mad -- at "Eleven Offenses of 2006" -- 11 movies that have been over-praised. These writers - who include Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times -- insist that they are not "trying to be contrarian" - but when they cite their twentysomething ages and bark like this, I imagine a pack of Scrappy Doos nipping at the heels of Armond White's wise and lordly Scooby. (Marmaduke?)

Darn it, these kids are cute with their sharp teeth.

And some of these eleven titles ought to be smacked down -- as DP wrote -- "with the smugness of the average bright film student". Smacked hard because they're the same caring, drastically competent studio freight that comes out every fall, bearing a worthy message, all but demanding critical respect and major awards.

Or smacked hard because they're needlessly pretentious, fractured and convoluted, like BABEL and THE FOUNTAIN. (After the jump)

I cannot agree with Michael Koresky's outraged reading of BABEL -- he's way off base when he attacks the absurdity of one character. Of course the film is winning awards and rounding out lists of nominations -- BABEL has little something for every critic and award voter - and not too much nothing for everyone else. No one can say that BABEL isn't a reflection of some aspect of life - or another, more cohesive film. With the film's title, aren't the filmmakers giving us a clue to the arrow they've shot in the air? (Genesis 11:7 "Bajemos a confundir su idioma, para que ya no se entiendan entre ellos mismos" -- ie "Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."

What Koresky doesn't realize is that the deaf-mute Japanese teenager portrayed so feelingly by Rinku Kikuchi-- the girl who, in "a desperate bid for connection, flashes her privates in cafeterias, puts her dentist's hand on her vagina, and, in her ultimate humiliation, strips naked in front of a much older police detective" is a completely authentic and believable character-- merely because she is in a movie.

How dare anyone object to what one movie character does, if the film is enjoyed, praised and wins awards?

By the way, have you -- arrogant, uncreative critic -- mad e a film, or do you just sit back and criticize them?

Maybe it is your problem if you don't get it. Maybe that's what BABEL, by presenting these disparate characters, without judgement, comment or connection to anything but light and sound, is trying to say. (Unless it's trying to say, "See me. Hear me. Give me a prize."

So, lazy, provincial American who rips on BABEL, have you ever been anywhere ? Do you speak a language other than English? Have you travelled to Mexico or Morocco or Japan -- have you searched Tokyo high-rise apartment dwellings like those in the film and found in them NOT ONE beaver-flashing, school uniform wearing hearing-impaired Japanese teenage girl?

No way could this character be what you, over-educated, jargon-using, feminist-influenced movie reviewer, call a "male construction. This character could exist. Somebody believes it. So she does. She is.

And for a girl like that , it's probably completely normal to behave as though her "naked vagina" and pert, ripe unclothed physique can articulate human speech in much the same manner that blonde, hairless women from northern Finland (where the reindeers come from) express their equally valid cultural heritage through sinuous dance movements. Lapdancing, I believe it's called.

If you won't even try to open your heart and mind to the folkways of foreigners, mister, then you can't do serious film criticism, you can't comprehend BABEL, and you will certainly never understand Oscar.

Anyway: THE FOUNTAIN.

For ninety soul-draining minutes, until a mighty tree grew out of Hugh Jackman's midsection -- a mindblowing, $18 million- worthy concept, I'll warrant you -- THE FOUNTAIN seemed to be about a scientist (Jackman) whose vaguely unwell wife (Rachel Weisz) kept saying "Honey, come for a walk with me, it's going to snow). Honey, come for a walk with me, it's snowing! Honey, come for a walk with me -- it's snowing snowflakes" While he blows her off to work on an Eternal Life formula. Until I wanted to say: Rachel Weisz, go for a walk by yourself. Your genius husband's not coming home. No matter how many times you wear soft, drapey sweater sets in the bathtub.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Who were the ancient Mayans?

Why did their empire fall?

Within the next ten days, we'll know the answer to an even bigger question: will APOCALYPTO defy expectations and earn any Academy Award nominations?

Mel Gibson's heart-removing historical adventure movieis up for just one award so far this season -– a Hollywood Foreign Press Association Golden Globe for best foreign language film. (The HFPA gives out its prizes on Jan. 15.)

The various guilds, though, have been properly awed by APOCALYPTO's visual splendor -- the captives' journey into the dying Mayan metropolis is spectacular. Director of photography Terry Semler has been nominated for an A.S.C award. The evocative hair and makeup -- including those otherworldly, PREDATOR meets SHOWGIRLS headdresses on the villains -- Best Makeup? (It's on the Academy's award shortlist

What do you think: Is there any hope for some violent Mayan mime and dance number during number during the Oscar broadcast? )

Or will this man be the last to rock a radical hairstyle on the red carpet? In 2002, THOTH, the Central Park/street performer from Sarah Kernochan's Oscar winning short subject documentary (2001), agressively entertainmed the arriving nominees from A BEAUTIFUL MIND and MOULIN ROUGE. Most of them looked quite alarmed. When his name – the film's name – was announced, I'm pretty sure he bounded onto the stage, fiddle in hand, with the audience still wondering who the hell he was. Thoth will live forever in Chuck Workman montages.

APOCALYPTO'S imaginary Mayan's owe a style debt to a TV player whom we'll be seeing onscreen this summer in THE SIMPSONS MOVIE:

A man called SIdeshow Bob.

Sidekick.
Villain.
Fashion
Trendsetter.

Thoth, looking more like a figure from a hieroglyph.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

NPR's Terry Gross talked to Sacha Baron Cohen this week about life before and after BORAT -- the film's two Golden Globe nominations, the difficulty of making future films when he and his characters are now so popular and recognized in the U.S. Though there's little talk about the lawsuits filed by people saying they were duped or hurt by appearing in the film, Gross and Baron Cohen do talk about the way that his characters get at the thinly veiled bigotry, anti-Semitism, and homophobia of the people he meets.

There's one very interesting question from Gross about the difference between Baron Cohen, who's Jewish, playing a character (Borat) who says horrible, ridiculous anti-Semitic things, and Baron Cohen, who is straight, playing the character Bruno, the flamboyantly gay fashion reporter for Austrian TV.

"Well, I'm not gay," says Baron Cohen. "But I have had a another man's testicles lying on my chest, so make of that what you will." Referring, of course, to the the prolonged naked wrestling scene between Borat and his producer. He also points out that the fey, foreign Bruno is often treated cruelly both in and out of the fashion world. "It seems like homophobia is the last taboo."

Listen to the entire interview at NPR's website for Fresh Air, Gross's weekday interview program.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am blinded - blinded! - by the sleek silver elegance and warmed by sunlit accents of Entertainment Weekly's EW.com redesign.

Bookmark EW.com's Popwatch blog (the writers include Gary Susman, Scott Brown and Whitney Pastorek) and the direct link to movie news.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The past nine Januarys, David Edelstein -- once of Slate, now of New York magazine, used to round up a posse of film critics to talk about the year in movies. Now that Edelstein's left the pack, Slate's Dana Stevens chairs the discussion, and she drops a bomb on day one:

She doesn't like war movies. She doesn't get war movies. She goes into a "dissociative state" during war movies. As she tells Wesley Morris (the Boston Globe), Keith Phipps (The Onion), Carina Chocano (the Los Angeles Times),

"God, war is strange. … Large groups of men in uniforms trying to kill other men in uniforms, in service of an abstract concept … How could anything so horrible have happened once in the history of humanity, much less be happening all over the world right now? … I wonder if the American death toll in Iraq has passed 3,000 yet … Oh shit, Giovanni Ribisi is gonna get it now. … Please don't show his guts."

If I ever meet Dana Stevens, or anyone else who quails at the thought of seeing a combat movie (and not all war movies are combat movies), I will say: you know that girly-girl movie PRIDE & PREJUDICE? The old one, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson.

Greer Garson was more famous for starring in another film, MRS. MINIVER, a war movie set on the home front. And please read THE WORLD WAR II COMBAT FILM by Jeanine Basinger. I know I'm not the only woman who loves war movies, and not merely because they're so ferociously gay.

The photo above is from FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, a confusing, ambitious war movie about the aftermath of combat and the real men behind a famous propaganda photo.

To me, the movie has too many messages, too many stories, underlined too many times. FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS was overlong and advertised like it was going to be a chore to see. Adam Beach's performance as a man broken down by combat and bigotry stays in my mind.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)