Film Fatale

The Boston Globe reports today on one of its former film critics, Michael Blowen, whose post-reviewing life has taken a surprising turn. A horse lover, he learned that many retired racehorses were sold for slaughter. (He saw the practice firsthand as a volunteer stableman at Suffolk Downs, where older, losing thoroughbreds went to their doom for mere $500.)

So after Blowen left the Globe, he founded a nonprofit organization called Old Friends to fund retirement home for old racehorses.

Read about Old Friends, Dream Chase Farms, a true paradise for horses -- and a truly standup guy, Michael Blowen.

"There's even a movie star on the farm. Popcorn Deelites was one of eight horses who played Seabiscuit in the Academy Award-nominated movie. Pops - as Blowen calls him - is in every scene where Seabiscuit breaks from the gate."

Continue reading "Horse-Happy Film Critic Rescues Racehorses" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Get ready for the revenge of the Revenge Movie.

Two trailers -- very similar -- catch your attention. The movies don't promise the same depth or quality: THE BRAVE ONE, starring Jodie Foster and directed by Neil Jordan, looks far more intriguing and troubling, while DEATH SENTENCE, with Kevin Bacon, looks like a formula picture.

Check out the trailers, posters and tagline: the genre never fails to go for the gut. From THE BRAVE ONE, there's complexity - conflict. "We're on your side," says Terrence Howard, the sympathetic detective. Replies Foster: "How come it doesn't feel like that?" And her voice over - she's going over the edge. "It is astonishing to find inside you there is a stranger." There's a great trailer line for Foster, who can't help but sound badass: "I want my dog back."

Were there trailer lines before blaxploitation movies, Clint Eastwood and Dirty Harry?

Continue reading "Revenge of the Revenge Movie: BRAVE ONE, DEATH SENTENCE" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 02:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When THE NANNY DIARIES came out in 2002, authors Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus insisted that the icy Mrs. X -- the employer in their roman a clef wasn't based on any one of their several real-life past bosses.

Nevertheless, a Manhattan guessing game ensued -- and the acid-tinged gossip was captured thats pring by New York Times Styles section writer Alex Kucyzynksi.

Now that the movie's out, and Laura Linney embodies the icy socialite Mrs. X, NANNY DIARIES producer Harvey Weinstein (according to the New York Post) was overheard offering some "well connected socialites" $100,000 to unmask the "real Mrs. X." Has he and everyone else this thing called TimesSelect (or Google) to spark the memory? Suspect No. 1 was the author of THE PREPPY HANDBOOK.

(How nasty can Mrs. X be, anyway? If Laura Linney's playing her, I know I'm going to come away respecting that bitch.)

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:17 PM | Permalink

Nicole Kidman's paranoia gets an aerobic workout in INVASION.

In this summer of sequels, threquels and remakes, one title is actually kind of intriguing: INVASION - yet another imaging of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.

Though the new film has not been seen by critics (uh oh), the trailer is effectively unnerving, with nervous thoroughbred Nicole Kidman freaking out while her neighbors and friends become strangely emotionless. (Thank you, Jeremy Northam, for your suave Eurovillainy. Don't trust that guy for a minute, Nicole.)

In the Sunday New York Times, Dennis Lim looks back a the various iterations of this marvelously paranoid tale, from the original Jack Finney novel (mid 1950s, naturally) to the Cold War paranoia Don Siegel film (1956), to the psychotherapy-cult weirdness of the 1978 of Philip Kaufman's 1978 update. Abel Ferrara's BODY SNATCHERS (1993), set on a military base in the American South, made the heroine into a moody teenager, was unsettling in a different way: she was trapped and powerless even before the pod people arrived.

Interesting, isn't it, that Kidman already played a Cassandra in a remake of a paranoid thriller? The ill starred STEPFORD WIVES of a couple of years ago. To her credit, she was damn funny as a stressed out TV executive in that movie's first 15 minutes. But STEPFORD, unlike INVASION, did not stand up to re-examination.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Perhaps in recognition of the release of STARDUST -- a film with the most unsettling trailer I have seen since MAC & ME -- Film.com celebrates the Trippiest Movies Ever Made For Children.

Exhibit A is the recently rereleased LABYRINTH (1986), with David Bowie as a Goblin King who kidnaps the baby brother of pre-teen Jennifer Connelly, sending her off on a journey through creepy Muppet-land. Oh, it's weird. But Bowie cuts loose for a few amazing songs.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matt Damon, BOURNE to run.

In the Observer, here's a profile of director Paul Greengrass -- the man behind UNITED 93 and the two most recent BOURNE movies.

He's not nearly as shaky as his camera.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With THE DEPARTED - nominated for five Academy Awards -- is back in movie theaters, the Miami Herald's film critic Rene Rodriguez took the time to obsesses about Boston gangster drama. In Rene's blog Reeling, he writes that director Martin Scorsese, in homage to SCARFACE (1932) put the the sign, design and letter X throughout the film --- and he's got the screengrabs to prove it.

How sharp and tense each image is--gorgeous if you follow the actors' eyelines - or the direction they are moving - you can see how the X's help to guide your eye and make each frame balance.

As has been discussed at length elsewhere, the film is based on the screenplays of the three Hong Kong-made INFERNAL AFFAIRS crime dramas written by Andrew Lau. Journalist turned novelist turned screenwriter William Monahan spoke to the Associated Press about his Oscar-nominated screenplay, the possible sequel and dialogue that was cut from the film

Continue reading "THE DEPARTED: The Letter-X Rated Version" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Continue reading "Thelma Adams: The Suspense Builds on BABEL" »

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

Two film critics I always enjoy reading, Ty Burr and Wesley Morris, talk about the year in film in today's Boston Globe (Dec. 31, 2006).

BURR
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2006/12/31/the_year_in_movies_1167422244/
Old Joy
Duck Season
Miami Vice

GUILTY PLEASURES
A Good Year, The Lake House, Slither, Snakes on a Plane, Step Up, The Lake House
MORRIS
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2006/12/31/the_year_in_movies/

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"I am made of blue sky and golden light and I will feel this way for another 15 seconds."

How about that sensual, insinuating orchestral score for the film adaptation of Patrick Suskind's literary thriller PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER?

Director Tom Tykwer knows that music well--he composed it, writes Richard J. Wright of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. That's yesterday's edition, Jan. 1, 2007.

You can tell that Wright, like Tykwer, is a musician. Not that the piece was esoteric. But I wish I'd written it. I couldn't have. I'm not a musician. But I tried anyway.

So there is this piece in today's Boston Globe, as it touches upon director Tywker (and his co-composers) effort tocapture the essence of Suskind's lush, ironic prose, and screenwriter Andrew Birkin's lush, ironic screenplay.

As the reporter of that story, I regret that I was unable to deliver only a cursory impression of the Tykwer hair (spikey/vertical), his nervous habits (styling product deficit? Beethoven audition later that day?), and his connection to the score (he done it, in collaboration with his usual collaborators.)

Go to the movie's website and tell me if the score (and the film, should you see it) doesn't work on you after you've fallen asleep.

I did speak to the lead actor, Ben Whishaw, who was recently cast in Todd Haynes' I'M NOT THERE, a film about Bob Dylan, and Bernd Eichinger, the film's producer, whose tenacity and passion for this extraordinary novel, had much to do with getting PERFUME to the screen after so many years in print.

Eichinger, who cowrote DOWNFALL, is now producing three more films, an adaptation of THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES, based on the novel by Michel Houellebecq, a drama about the Baader-Meinhof gangwhich terrorized West Germany from the mid 1970s to mid 1980s,

Continue reading "Senses of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fly IDLEWILD, the other flashy-cool musical of 2006.

Stephanie Zacharek of Salon put it on her year's ten-best list.

"Messy and extraordinary, Bryan Barber's Prohibition-era musical, starring OutKast's Andre 3000 and Big Boi, is a dream history of black pop culture, and a testament -- to paraphrase a line from Stanley Crouch -- to the ways that inventing, borrowing and refining can bring us closer to the lives we want to lead. One of the most beautiful-looking pictures of the year (the cinematography is by Pascal Rabaud), "Idlewild" slipped out of theaters before most people could see it on the big screen. It deserves an immediate rep-house revival."

Continue reading "Fly 'Idlewild' - The Other Flashy Musical of '06" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Watch the 50 greatest cartoons of all time, from a poll of 1,000 animation professionals conducted by author/film historian Jerry Beck for a 1994 book.

Each cartoon should have an active link.

Bookmark this page. And go crazy.

Continue reading "Best Cartoons Ever: A Gift List From Jerry Beck" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another year end critics poll: Film Comment surveys film writers and critics, asking for twenty top films and the 10 best movies still unreleased in the U.S.

Martin Scorsese's Boston-set crime drama THE DEPARTED led critics picks, followed by Romanian Academy Award submission THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU, and the old-but-new Melville noir ARMY OF SHADOWS.

Here's a poll in which an early 2006 release (TRISTRAM SHANDY) wasn't forgotten, and cool pop movies like CASINO ROYALE make a strong showing.

What's up, though, with the unreleased film list? Many of the unreleased titles are scheduled for North American theatrical distribution in 2007.

Spike Lee's searing New Orleans documentary, WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE, shown on HBO in September, was probably seen by more people than some of the top 20 movies -- and it's now on DVD. (The six-hour documentary played at Toronto Film Festival, but only after it had debuted on HBO

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The annual Village Voice film critics poll moves over, with Dennis Lim and Michael Atkinson, to Indiewire, and the No. 1 film is a surprise: THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU, a Romanian drama about life and death in a hospital.

Explore the whole poll, starting with the list of films, directors and performances that earned the most votes.

Here are the critics who participated. Movie City Indie guy Ray Pride and me, Justine Elias, are in there.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a to-do list from the Observer that'll have cine-cultists clamoring for revival screenings and overdue DVD rentals: fifty overlooked English-language movies thought ought to be more widely available.

I just saw ACE IN THE HOLE (1951, Dir. Billy Wilder for the first time on the big screen -- and the same day as Kirk Douglas' 90th birthday -- and I'd love to see the Observer's top two picks, SALT OF THE EARTH (1953, Dir. Herbert Biberman), PETULIA (1968, Dir. Richard Lester), the same way. Turner Classic Movies is all right, but nothing beats Kirk Douglas, bigger than life, sneering over the line to to New York.

Lucky New York: Film Forum will play Ace In the Hole Jan. 12-18.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Break out the formal wear and the surgical scrubs. The fight for Academy Awards is a "bloody one," writes the always- sanguine David Carr of the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/movies/07viol.html?em&ex=1165726800&en=595ca621b40371ba

“These are bloody, serious times," said David Thomson, film historian and author of “The Whole Equation,” among other books. “There are extraordinary cruelties out there in the real word — bodies hung on bridges, Daniel Pearl being murdered — and I think that’s why torture has come into our entertainments in a serious way. There is a truthfulness to it that audiences seem to be responding to.”

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In recognition of World AIDS Day, Showtime cable TV network is airing two independent films, THREE NEEDLES and BEAT THE DRUM – two films about the global pandemic with an international focus. Three Needles played at festivals and is now in theatres in a few North American cities, but far more people will see the film on the premium cable network. Wherever you are, check them out.

THREE NEEDLES explores the lives of three people after they come in contact with the HIV virus. Director Thom Fitzgerald (THE HANGING GARDEN) is reported to have revised the film since its debut at the Toronto Film Festival. In the Chinese story, a blood smuggler (Lucy Liu) unwittingly unleashes a deadly plague in a farming village. In Canada, a struggling porn actor (Shawn Ashmore) fakes his HIV status in order to keep working. And in South Africa, a religious novice (Chloe Sevigny) strays from her mission to raise a family of AIDS orphans. (Showtime, Mon. Dec. 4, 9pm). Also look for replays of BEAT THE DRUM, a South African-made drama that premiered on Dec. 1. Director David Hickson tells three stories of three people: an orphan (Junior Singo) who leaves his AIDS-ravaged village for Johannesburg, a truckdriver whose on-the-downlow detours endanger his wife's life, and a wealthy lawyer who learns he is HIV positive.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Shelagh Crabtree of the Los Angeles Times talks to cinematographer Dean Semler about the technical aspects of making APOCALYPTO (Buena Vista, Dec. 8). Semler is the Academy Award winning DP of (DANCES WITH WOLVES). The Times piece is a fascinating look at the how -- not the why -- of making this visionary, batshit, balmy, balls-out (and about) fascist-romantic adventure film.

(I hadn't intended on posting my review till Monday, but there it is in brief.

Semler and his crew used digital video cameras for 98% of what's onscreen. But at least one visual effect was achieved in camera with a trick that's as old as moviemaking itself: reverse action--something that Gibson learned when playing the lead in Mad Max for director George Miller.

"Mel is a master of pulling off optical tricks in-camera that he learned from George," Semler says. "He taught the actors on 'Apocalypto' how to do it too. He would walk or run in slow-motion to achieve the desired speed and they followed." In fact one scene was acted out backward and in slow motion: Gibson had Rudy Youngblood, who plays Jaguar Paw, run backward and pull a spike ball out of a tree for a scene in which he is attacked by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo)."

Continue reading "Apocalypto: LA Times On How (Not Why) They Did That" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 05:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Has 2006 really been a great year for actresses?

Christopher Goodwin of the Times of London thinks so. There are so many great leading parts for women this year." he writes, above and beyond the the frequently mention big names like Helen Mirren (THE QUEEN), Penelope Cruz (VOLVER) and Meryl Streep (THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA), "that other favorites may end up competing in the best supporting category.

And who are these women? He names Kate Winslet as an adulterous housewife in LITTLE CHILDREN, Sienna Miller as Edie Sedgwick in FACTORY GIRL, Beyonce Knowles in DREAMGIRLS, Nicole Kidman, who plays Diane Arbus in FUR, Annette Bening from RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, Abigail Breslin, the little girl from LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, and even Julie Christie who has a relatively small role as an Alzheimer's sufferer in AWAY FROM HER.

What's notable about these roles, writes Goodwin, is how well written they are. "The perennial criticism of the major Hollywood studios — for not creating good parts for women, and for not making films that women (and I don’t mean teenage girls) want to see — is still valid. In 2005, for example, women were not the protagonists of any of the films nominated for best picture. Reese Witherspoon won best actress Oscar for playing June Carter Cash, the endlessly supportive wife of WALK THE LINE's real subject, Johnny Cash. And the only actress over 50 to win an Oscar in either acting category in the past two decades is Judi Dench, best supporting actress for SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE in 1999."

"It’s Hollywood’s fault,” says Pedro Almodovar, the Spanish director of VOLVER, who knows a thing or two about creating great roles for women. “In other countries, we encourage diversity and want to tell stories about all kinds of women. In the past decade, you can count the number of Hollywood dramas that have revolved around women. The studios have forgotten that women are fascinating, more than just mannequins.”

Goodwin also gets into the profitability of these films, which appeal to an underserved market. "Producer Laura Bickford (TRAFFIC, FUR) believes that, lamentable as the studios’ neglect of the female audience is, it may be the main reason we are now seeing so many terrific films starring women. “As the studios have become more intensely focused on male-oriented blockbusters, it has opened up a huge area for the independents to exploit. Clearly, the studios have underestimated the potential buying power of the adult — non-teenage — female audience. .. And the thing about the baby-boom female audience is that if the price is right, it is very lucrative.” The Devil Wears Prada, for instance, which was targeted strongly at older women, has taken $125m at the US box office, much the same as Mission: Impossible III, which cost five times as much to make. You do the maths."

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BORAT'S bear has not sued the producers. Yet.

Funny, those RV-rocking South Carolina fraternity brothers seemed so eager to discuss women, minorities and the long-ago South.

But being in BORAT bites, say the two out of the three garrulous, beer-drinking So they're suing the film's producers, 20th Century Fox, for fraud and misappropriation of their likenesses, claiming that they signed the release to appear in the film when they were drunk. They are seeking unspecified damages.

Though the lawsuit doesn't identify the aggrieved parties, FHM has an interview with one of the three, David Corcoran, a Chi Psi brother who says he didn't know who Borat was until a friend looked him up on the internet. "My first thought was, 'What if my mom finds out?'" (That's all in November FHM with Jeri Ryan on the cover. The issue's theme is, apparently, boobs.).

ABC News Radio also spoke to Corcoran, in a story dated Nov. 10. ABC's item notes, "Corcoran's recollection largely coincides with the plaintiffs' account" of how they were talent-spotted and signed up by the BORAT producers.

Continue reading "When Frat Guys Go Wild: 2 Sue, 1 Says "It Was Fun"" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Carol Cadwalladr, a writer for the Observer, visits Kazakhstan and discovers that despite BORAT's slurs, the former Soviet state is not nearly as dictatorish and flooded with fermented horse urine as she expected.

That's nice.

You, too, can experience the beauties of this exotic land by viewing A LEADER IN CENTRAL ASIA, a 30 second ad that's run on ABC and CNN. Pretty horses!

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No film could have stood up to the film festival hype that was piled onto DEATH OF A PRESIDENT, a faux documentary about the crimes against justice committed after the assassination of the U.S. president -- President George W. Bush.

Though many political pundits are having a hard time believing this, the film's "what if?" form is a means to get people thinking about what's happening now--not an excuse to do evil, whenever.

With its incendiary subject matter and election-year timing, Death of a President was bound to be in the spotlight. Then festival programmer Noah Cowan, in his notes on the film, wrote that Death of a President is "easily the most dangerous and breathtakingly original film I have encountered this year."

So like hundreds of other reporters and critics at the Toronto Film festival, I lined up for at least two hours to make sure I got into the first press and industry screening of Death of a President -- I heard that at least 150 people were turned away. (WHEN CRITICS SWARM! If only the Fox TV reality show cameras had been there. It wasn't pretty.)

I spoke to Gabriel Range this week about why he believes his approach, the "what if?" docudrama, can attract a larger audience than a straight up documentary about the Patriot Act (which is what his movie's really about.) The interview is in Sunday's New York Daily News. The film opens Friday, Oct. 27.

Continue reading "Playing Politics With 'Death of a President'" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Was it Joe Queenan who wrote an essay why so many movie heroes are architects?

In the Guardian this week, Paul Arendt takes another look at the cinematic obsession with architects: this time, the movie hero is a photogenic Jude Law in BREAKING AND ENTERING, whose job shows that he's brainy enough to have attended graduate school, rugged enough to show him getting his hands dirty on a building site, but artistic and sensitive enough to stay late at the office doing sketches, collages and model-making.

Personally, I always thought movie makers love architects because they get to commission cool miniatures of the the hero's dream project -- which they can then destroy, preferably with the main character's fists ("Why, God, why?") scene when the heroes hopes and dreams are temporarily destroyed.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 07:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since the departure of David Edelstein, Slate's film section hasn't had a single, strong critical voice. But it's had a series of intriguing essays about various aspects of cinema, including this week's look at the best film composers.

Writer Jan Swafford looks at the work of Max Steiner (KING KONG, DARK VICTORY), Bernard Herrmann (PSYCHO, TAXI DRIVER) and Toru Takemitsu (WOMAN IN THE DUNES, RAN).

Whose film music carries you away? Whose soundtracks have you sought out, even when the film doesn't live up to the score?

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

How I love to see my adopted hometown in the movies. Even though THE DEPARTED is a remake of a Hong Kong film, INFERNAL AFFAIRS, screenwriter William Monahan and director Martin Scorsese give this cops-and-gangstah thriller the vicious-to-the-ears accent that I grew up making fun of, but miss whenever I'm a way.

Newsweek picks the best films ever shot -- or at least set -- in Boston

Some picks are predictable: Geography is destiny in both THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE and MYSTIC RIVER, two decent movies. But some of Newsweek's movies seem like list-filler.

I'd put MONUMENT AVENUE, directed by the late Ted Demme, on the list and raise JAWS out of the honorable mentions. Around 1982, Cambridge-based independent filmmaker Jan Egleson made a superior coming of age drama called THE DARK END OF THE STREET, which I still have on VHS somewhere. It holds up better than the incredibly dated THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR.

While GOOD WILL HUNTING may not have amounted to much more than an after school special with razor-sharp dialogue, the MattandBen breakthrough movie did give a real sense of how working class white Boston guys live and speak. (Remember the almost wordless scene of Affleck's character showing up, styrofoam cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee in hand, at his buddies' houses to drive them to work--wicked early, way too tired for small talk? Grow up in Greater Boston, you know those guys. But until Good Will Hunting, I'd never seen them on film.)

A friend reminds me that I was, as a kid, absolutely terrified by COMA, which gave anaesthesia -- and the Xerox building on Rte. 95, Waltham -- a bad name.

At least LOVE STORY didn't get on there. Ewwww.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By the time BORAT breaks big in U.S. theaters on Nov. 3, the central Asian nation of Kazakhstan will be the biggest joke in movies--or maybe the second biggest. Ugly Americans come off far worse than Sacha Baron Cohen's sabre-sharp portrait of a post-Soviet journalist touring the West.

Even so, the country's humorless government has struck back with a PR and tourism TV ad campaign designed to paint Kazakhstan as modern, beautiful, progressive land of men, women, and horses. Horses--who of course have the right to vote in this glorious nation. All the campaign lacks is a truly memorable slogan. Something like, "Kazakhstan: Come for the culture and natural beauty, Stay for the human rights violations."

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sir Malcolm Arnold wrote 132 film scores, but you probably know this one best: his music for THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI.

Arnold, called a "rogue genius," suffered from schizophrenia and alcoholism, died this week at the age at age 84. In addition to his Oscar-winning score for David Lean's BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, he composed the music for WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND (1961), SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER (1959), INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS (1958), and HOBSON'S CHOICE (1954).

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

British GQ comes up with some of the better movie knowledge quizzes. Google the James Bond one of a couple of years ago -- the one they gave to Pierce Brosnan -- it's excellent.

This month, the slick men's mag challenges readers on their knowlege of cinema's baddest bad guys. But you've got to work fast -- each level is timed.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Slate's Brendan I. Koerner reports that IMAX's biggest hit is the long running paeon to NASA entitled THE DREAM IS ALIVE, which has earned more than $150 million since its 1985 debut. It's also kind of a snooze--despite some breathtaking shots of spacewalks and Earth views (yes, the astronauts really did lug an IMAX camera along on an early 1980s space shuttle mission). Writes Koerner, "these sublime moments are sandwiched between scenes of shuttle crews learning how to don their spacesuits and tedious footage of mission-control geeks with their endless rows of buttons. Every so often, narrator Walter Cronkite checks in with a corny declaration like, "Now that we know how to live and work in space, we stand at the threshold of a new age of discovery.'"

The NASA doc's sustained popularity is due in part to the fact that IMAX theaters are attached to space-themed attractions, like the National Air and Space Museum and the Kennedy Space Center. For schoolchildren, these movies are often part of a field trip or family holiday. Another space exploration documentary, ROVING MARS--the first IMAX feature to use extensive animation to tell its story--got great reviews earlier this year, and it, too, is likely to have a long life as an educational film.

In 1992, IMAX theatres began showing regular features on their screens. As Koerner reports, some movies are being tailored specifically for the 70mm screen: SUPERMAN RETURNS had about 20 minutes of 3-D effects added during a remastering process.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"I will put a round precisely through your medulla oblongata, which is located at the base of your brain, straight through a point mid-distance between your upper lip and the bottom of your nose. And you will be dead from the neck down. Your finger won’t even twitch. Do you believe that?"

Well, do you, punk? Film Fatale asks an expert -- a forensic pathologist with the city of New York -- to go see the movie and drop some science on us.

While many major film critics got horny for Miami Vice's sensual (if sometimes non-sensical) pleasures, audiences went wild for the most memorably badass line of dialogue -- which was, interestingly enough, not spoken by either of the film's lead actors. It's such a hero/trailer line you'd think a star would demand to say it.

And the fact that a star doesn't say this line is doubly odd because one of them -- the Tubbs character (Jamie Foxx) -- is standing right there during the tense standoff in which Det. Trudy Joplin (Naomie Harris) is held at gunpoint by some meth-dealing Aryan nation types. One of them dares the cops to kill him -- saying he'll die pulling the trigger on his gun and the switch on an explosive around her neck. But it's Det. Gina Calabrese (Elizabeth Rodriguez), not Tubbs, who calls his bluff:

"This is what's going to happen," she says. "This is what's going to happen. I will put a round precisely through your medulla oblongata, which is located at the base of your brain, straight through a point mid-distance between your upper lip and the bottom of your nose and you will be dead from the neck down. Your finger won’t even twitch. Do you believe that?"

So, what is the medulla oblongata and does she locate it correctly?
Pretty much, I'd say. I'm used to looking at the medulla oblongata when the brain has been removed. So a sharpshooter is taking a different perspective.

Would a person, getting shot there, be dead from the neck down?
Oh, yes. You'd be dead from the neck up, too.

What about that promise that his finger wouldn't twitch?
I wouldn't -- I couldn't -- guarantee anything like that. Someone who understands what sort of gun and trigger he was holding could address the risk the police were taking.

So, if she were to ask you again: do you believe that?
I would believe anything that woman said. It's a great line.

More appreciation of MIAMI VICE:

Boston Globe's Wesley Morris

New York Magazine's David Edelstein

New York Times' A.O. Scott

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 03:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Paul Farhi of the Washington Post takes note of Scarlett Johanssen's portrayal of a bumbling student newspaper reporter in Woody Allen's SCOOP and concludes, "TV journalists might be prettier and better paid in real life than their ink-stained brethren and sistren, but on screen there's no contest about who comes off better."

Sure, Scarlett's character is a naif corners a film director (Kevin McNally) in a hotel lobby in search of an "exclusive," then sleeps with him without getting an interview, gets a tip about a murder suspect and sleeps with him, too. (She may be inexperienced, but even a seasoned pro like the New Journalism heroine (Allison Lohman) of WHERE THE TRUTH LIES (2005), the luridly entertainingly, lurid at a showbiz scandal, has pretty much the same M.O.: sleep with everyone and sort the story out later.)

But at least she's not a corrupt, ratings-obsessed TV reporter or executive. From the nutcases of NETWORK (1974) to the dim local TV personalities of ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY, these are not people you trust.

The portrayal of Washington Post metro reporters Woodward and Bernstein in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976) made print reporting seem exciting and noble. The Post piece cites the heroics of these real and ficitional scribes:

Denzel Washington in THE PELICAN BRIEF (1993)
Sam Waterston and Haing S. Ngor THE KILLING FIELDS (1984)
Mel Gibson in THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (1985)
Humphrey Bogart in DEADLINE USA (1952)

Looking for an admirable TV reporter? Except for a few cynical thrill junkies (photographers and camera men) in war movies, the front-of-camera talent is usually portrayed as bubbleheaded compared to the real men doing the fighting.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So many filmmakers, from Jarmusch to Tarantino, pay homage to Japan's classic Samurai movies that it's sometimes a shock to find that somebody's still making the genuine article. Yoji Yamada, the seventy year old director who earned an Academy Award nomination with THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI, returns with another elegant tale of traditional warriors in conflict with a changing world.

In HIDDEN BLADE, a sword-for-hire (Masatoshi Nagase of MYSTERY TRAIN) longs for love that's out of reach (she's of a lower caste) and faces an enemy he doesn't understand (they use guns and cannons). He's a hero whom John Ford and Sam Peckinpah would understand.

Tartan Films is known for importing the the classier Asian horror films, but this indie outfit is also known for bringing the best Asian drama to US screens (the "VENGEANCE" trilogy from Chan-wook Park) and some of the more adventurous European independents, too. They've got the DVD of Michael Winterbottom's 9 SONGS and Richard Jobson's SIXTEEN YEARS OF ALCOHOL.

Read a few more reviews of HIDDEN BLADE:

New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis
The Onion: Keith Phipps of The Onion
Village Voice: Michael Atkinson

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At least Uwe Boll has some sense of humor about the bad reviews he gets. (A twisted, bullyboy sense of humor...but it's there.)

M. Night Shyamalan, however, has no no sense of perpective --or humor -- whatsoever: in his next film, he mauls a movie critic.

Still smarting from the bad reviews and not-so-great fan reactions he got for THE VILLAGE, Shyamalan moaned about how Disney executives -- who'd backed his breakthrough movie THE SIXTH SENSE, his follow up film UNBREAKABLE and the spooky/ridiculous/aliens-sans-culottes saga SIGNS, didn't "get" his vision for THE VILLAGE.

Casting himself as a wronged auteur--but one unable to cope with the possibility that upon his shoulders fell the responsiblity for this disappointing, derivative movie- Shyamalan collaborated with writer Michael Bamberger in the whine-all book, The Man Who Heard Voices, Or How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale. (Penguin USA, $27. 50) It'll be out the same week as Shyamalan's new film, THE LADY IN THE WATER, the don't-mention-Splash drama in which Paul Giamatti finds a "sea nymph" (not at all a mermaid) in his swimming pool.

I have only one hope for this book: that it might become this decade's equivalent of the Klaus Kinski autobiography ALL I NEED IS LOVE. (1988), The late actor's petulant, crazy-ass, unintentionally hilarious monomania monologue classic, first published in 1988, was republished in the in the US as KINSKI UNCUT (TK, 1997). (Cintra Wilson writes of the Kinski experience in Salon. Sample quotes: "I am like a wild animal born in captivity, in a zoo. But where a beast would have claws, I have talent." and "I VANT AMAHNDA!" (Amanda's roommates: "Amanda's not here, Mr. Kinski? She's not here.")

Fingers crossed. But an actor on a lifelong sex tour doesn't quite compare to a profound business and creative disagreement between film studio executives between a talented writer-director who hasn't heard the word No lately.

Which voices does the title refer to, when the only voice Shyamalan listens to is his own?

Continue reading "M. Night Shyamalan: WATER Baby" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Don't sweat the lack of quality horror films coming out this month.

If you're in Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque has assembled a shiver-worthy series of classic British screamers for the scary movie fans.

John Patterson, who's usually smacking around the new U.S. releases for the Guardian, has an overview of the films--from Hammer to Jacques Tourneur--in the current LA Weekly.

Highlights include the rare screenings of WITCHCRAFT (1964) a tale of witches and warlocks who take umbrage at the bulldozing of their private burial ground (it's not on DVD) and THE GORGON (1964), with Barbara Steele casting her steely gaze at all who...piss her off.

I haven't seen I START COUNTING (1969), but it stars "a very young Jenny Agutter" as a Catholic schoolgirl gone wild and/or homicidal, which is a can't miss plotline if I've heard one.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF BRITISH HORROR: 1955–1975. American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater. Through June 25.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By the end of UNITED 93, it seemed most critics were too shattered to mention the one off-key note in this superb but almost unbearable to watch thriller: the portrayal of one passenger-- the ginger-haired German-accented man--on the doomed flight as not merely unwilling to participate in the uprising against the hijackers, but arguing "We should talk to them! What about...Mogadishu? What about...Somalia."

Which left me thinking: What is this guy talking about? Why now?

Gosh, I thought UNITED 93 was a docudrama. I hadn't realized that in addition to the four hijackers someone else aboard the plane was a great big pussy.

It turns out that the German guy-who was, like all the other people portrayed in the film, a real person-was not actually, as the Guardian puts it, a "surrender monkey."

Director Paul Greengrass, who has made several superior docudramas about justice denied and deferred (THE MURDER OF STEPHEN LAWRENCE, OMAGH, BLOODY SUNDAY), said (in interviews and in theatrical trailer-previews) that he'd gained the cooperation of the families of those killed on the doomed flight that set off from Newark airport on Sept. 11.

But the Guardian reports that Silke Adams, the widow of Christian Adams is "believed to have refused to cooperate on the film, saying that the memory of her husband's death was still too raw. This has left the film open to charges that Adams has been set up as the story's fall guy, the token cowardly German amid a band of brave Americans."

"United 93 is based on transcripts from the phone calls made by the passengers on board the plane, but much of the drama was improvised on set. "Surely one of the passengers didn't phone home to point out that there was a cowardly German on board who wanted to give in?" wondered the Sunday Times critic Cosmo Landesman. So far there is no evidence to suggest that Christian Adams did not support the other passengers, or refused to storm the cockpit."

I don't know where that "believed to" comes from, or how it can be substantiated, but the Adams of the film does stand out -- not as a pacifist but as kind of a 'tard who learns that the crew and other passengers have been murdered 20 feet away from him, sees their blood on his seatmates clothing, yet still thinks it's time for a chat.

Indiewire's Anthony Kaufman saw United 93 at the Tribeca Film Festival in May and was as perplexed by portrayal of the Euro-Pacifist. When he cited this as a major flaw in the film, he took a beating from respondents on Alter-Net.

As moved as I was by UNITED 93, I agree with Anthony, even though he told me he thought that the pacifist was Dutch. Look, AK--you've got to get down with your Northern European stereotypes: the Dutch are treacherous, kinky collaborators, the Germans are either treacherous Nazis, treacherous collaborators, or treacherous pork-eating perverts

Continue reading "United 93's Euro-Pacifist Passenger" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

When daily print critics get erased, do movie audiences disappear, too?

Or does the average daily newspaper critic (see photo at right) using the time-honored critical method (see photo at right) offer anything more than a predictable Friday beatdown of whatever genre movie wasn't screened early enough for them to respect?

Isn't everybody who cares about what critics think already turning to the many excellent alt-weekly and online film critics -- professional and non-professional -- who post informed, funny, vibrant, sometimes deranged opinions?

Anne Thompson of the The Hollywood Reporter writes today about the effect that critics can have on specialty (meaning arthouse) films, and mentions the recent ousting, or re-assigning of some prominent film critics. Three of the best are:

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News.
Michael Wilmington, the Chicago Tribune.
Charles Taylor, one of Salon's original film critics, and one of the most knowledgeable and passionate writers about the arts.

Anne Thompson mentions the buyout/retirement of Kevin Thomas. I don't believe his departure has undercut the arts coverage in the Los Angeles Times. For years, Thomas rarely encountered a movie he couldn't summarize and, like a proud godparent, say something far too nice about.

Sony Classics executive Tom Bernard says the changes have effected ticket sales for arthouse and specialty films in Boston, Seattle and Miami.

"When audiences lose faith in a paper," says Bernard, "they end up doing something else."

Yes, they stop reading and subscribing to the print edition of the newspaper. And they don't want to go to the movies because 1) the theaters, no matter how new they are, reek of human funk, Cheez Wiz and microwaved popcorn (see this Sunday's Observer: Peter Bradshaw goes off on movie "munchers") and 2) even if the some movie sounds interesting, it's not so interesting you can't wait three months to see it on DVD.
I'll leave it to David Poland to talk about whether or how much theater attendance figures are down. Surely it can't help that big cities have fewer screens showing art and true independent films.
If your hometown has anywere to see decent movies, where do you go?
Who do you read?

Continue reading "When Print Critics Get Erased" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

"How Gay Is Superman?" asks Alonso Duralde of The Advocate.

The cover shot: Brandon Routh in costume SUPERMAN RETURNS, directed by Bryan Singer. (June 20, Warner Bros.)

Instead of trying to quantify or measure The Gay contained within Bryan Singer's summer blockbuster- to -be, Duralde, the magazine's entertainment editor, begins a personal essay about becoming a comic book fan as a sixth grader in the 1970s.

"So why was I drawn to these heroic tales of adventure and derring do?"

The Advocate's free site ends there. Read the magazine or subscribe to find out.

But I'm guessing it's got something to do with

1. A kid's identification with the superhero's life of artifice and hiding - half of the time - his unique qualities from a world that is obsessed by them. Yet sometimes the world persecutes and banishes him for these same heroic qualities.
(see: 8 million fan sites, Queer Theory, PhD dissertations on popular culture)

2. Good stories, cool pictures, EZ reading.

Should anyone at The Advocate require my opinion: when I look at the contemporary Superman, I think I'm seeing a fair amount of gay. Proud, strong and present. That's just me.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)