Film Fatale

Variety provides yet more daily, international coverage of Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer's struggle to make VALKYRIE, the story of the plot to kill Hitler from within.

"Operation Valkyrie" is one of WWII's more fascinating "what if" stories -- a July 1944 conspiracy by top level German military men to kill Hitler and seize power. (These were ultra-patriotic elite officers distressed about the losing direction of Hitler's military strategy -- professional soldiers who'd been shut out of the Fuhrer's inner circle of advisors.)

German government and film commission officials, though, haven't been receptive to the idea of the film. Location permits have been denied, and one of Stauffenberg's sons opined that the actor -- who actually looks rather like photographs of the man he's playing -- should "keep his hands off my father."

The Bendlerblock building which as we all know, "ist ein historischer Gebäudekomplex in Berlin-Tiergarten" where the anti-Hitler conspirators, including von Stauffenberg, were executed after torture.

How close did Stauffenberg and his cohorts come to killing the Fuhrer?

Not very, according to a recent book by Joachim Fest.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 02:35 PM | Permalink

Remember all that banter on Oscar night about how international the American film business has become? (Look Three Amigos! directors from Mexico making acclaimed and successful films like CHILDREN OF MEN and BABEL, and English-as-second-language stars like Penelope Cruz and Djimon Hounsou up for acting awards -- it's almost as though moviegoevers don't care who makes a movie, as long as it's good.

Hang on a minute. It's still a rough landing for many international talents -- especially acclaimed directors who get a first chance to make a US studio film.
As this Guardian piece by Patrick Goldstein points out, more than a few have been hired and then bounced from their own projects -- or pretty much left out of the post production process.

Ang Lee's Chinese language films (from PUSHING HANDS and THE WEDDING BANQUET) have nearly all won critical acclaim and international awards. His studio films have not: RIDE WITH THE DEVIL, a post-Civil War combat film was uneven but ambitious in scope -- and THE HULK turned out to be an expensive letdown to fans and the studio that bankrolled.

But the Guardian doesn't point out that Lee wasn't unfamiliar with the US way of working -- he'd long ago emigrated from Taiwan and was a resident of upstate New York. Others cited in the piece, though, were newcomers: Oliver Hirshbiegel of Germany won acclaim for DOWNFALL, a 2005 Academy Award nominee -- he'd also made thrillers back home. But while in charge of THE INVASION, another remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, the studio brought in the Wachowskis (of MATRIX fame) and James McTeigue (V FOR VENDETTA) to handle reshoots.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Milla Jovovich and Wes Bentley in The Claim (2000): Thomas Hardy in the Old West

Jeremy Kay of Screen International, reporting from Berlin, has news that's sure to make fanguys brains completely explode.

"Paul Verhoeven (BLACK BOOK) is ramping up production on his long-gestating tsarist
Russian crime romp The Winter Queen, now called Azazel. Shooting is set to begin this summer in St Petersberg and London after Peter Hoffman's Los Angeles-based Seven Arts Pictures finalised
pay-or-play deals for Verhoeven and Milla Jovovich (RESIDENT EVIL). Jovovich's official website, MillaJ.com, has more information on the author, the novel and its sequels. (Via MillaJ, here's the review of The Winter Queen from the New York Times)

Kay reports that Verhoeven's long-time co-screenwriter Gerard Soeteman, who co-wrote BLACK BOOK, adapted the screenplay for the forthcoming film from the Russian novel "The Winter Queen," by Boris Akuninn. The story is set in the late 1800s in St. Petersburg and London, and the main characters, according to Verhoeven, are a "charming...diabolical and seductive woman" and a "handsome, gifted and very lucky young detective."

[Shoutout to Hollywood Bitchslap's Peter Sobcynski: it's like they reached into your mind and created a film just for you, isn't it?]

And before anyone gets snotty about Jovovich, the sci fi/horror/action heroine, making like Christian Bale and carrying a historical suspense film -- recall that she did, not all that long ago, give an impressive performance in THE CLAIM, Michael Winterbottom's take on The Mayor of Casterbridge, set in the late 1800s in the American West. (Frank Cottrell Boyce adapted Thomas Hardy's novel)

Not only did Jovovich hold her own opposite critic's darlings/character actors Peter Mullan, Nastassja Kinski and Sarah Polley, she did right by her character -- a saloon and brothel keeper -- in a way the author could never have foreseen-- giving her a resilience and dignity even beyond what was written in Cottrell Boyce's thoughtful screenplay.

Continue reading "Milla Jovovich: Verhoeven's Russian Queen of Crime" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 11:32 AM | 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

Continue reading "Abroad: Where The Female Directors Are" »

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

The UK Observer's glossy magazine is all about India this week, with a lavishly illustrated profile of Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan (NEVER SAY GOODBYE) and an essay on the international cinema by Amit Chaudhuri, on why he loves and loathes Hindi films.

One element that's big--really big--in Hindi film is fate. No matter how light and pop-ish the music may sound, the characters are swept along by the relentless pull of destiny. "Unlike Hollywood, Hindi film is not an innocent genre - it knows that the notion that we control our destiny is a myth. This isn't just the wisdom of the ancients; it's a realism quite different from anything in Hollywood. This doesn't mean Hindi cinema is fatalistic - its exuberance is indispensable to its conviction that life is an unrecognisable rather than categorisable thing."

"Time reveals this to us gradually as individuals, and the way Bollywood reveals it to its audience is through a series of devices: for example coincidences, doubles, brothers separated at birth. These devices make the Hindi film embarrassing but also, at its best, very moving; sometimes they make it embarrassing and moving at once."

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When the story broke last Sunday that the onetime KGB man, later a prominent critic of the Russian government, had been poisoned the day he'd eaten lunch in a London sushi restaurant, there'd been the inevitable references to James Bond and John LeCarre. As in, Who knew the Cold War was still on? Let's show a clip of CASINO ROYALE.

Then the family of Alexander Litvinenko released this photograph.

Outside of a London hospital this week, friends and family of the Russian ex-spy gathered before reporters to deliver an extraordinary statement: a dying man's defiant goodbye-- and his accusation that he was being murdered on the orders of his former boss, Russian premier Vladmir Putin. Litvinenko, a 42 year old former KGB officer who defected in 2000 and became a British citizen, succumbed to radiation poisoning on Nov. 23.

Standing beside Litvinenko's grieving father, Walter, and translating for him, was filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov (SPRINGING LENIN, LUBOV AND OTHER NIGHTMARES, CHILDREN'S STORIES: CHECHNIA).

Nekrasov wrote of their final conversation for the Times of London.

One of Litvinenko's most dangerous accusations involved the Putin regime's involvement of a deadly 1999 Moscow apartment building bombing.

(Look on CNN and the BBC. The date was Sept. 9, 1999) Nekrasov's 2004 documentary DISBELIEF, which played at Sundance in 2004, explored the frustrating and risky attempts to uncover the truth.

Russian authorities quickly blamed the attack on Chechen separatists--so quickly that some suspected it was a ruse by Russian hardliners to justify further military action against the rebellious (and mineral-rich) state of Chechnya (The FSB Blows up Russia, Litvinenko's book, accuses the Russian security services of causing a series of apartment block explosions in Moscow in 1999 that helped to propel Putin into the presidency.

Nekrasov's 2004 documentary DISBELIEF, which played at Sundance in 2004, explored the frustrating and risky attempts to uncover the truth.

Here's another story about DISBELIEF from a film magazine called Kinokultura and the notes from a 2005 Russian film festival in Pittsburgh.

The film's website is at www.disbelief-film.com

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 01:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The faces of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are known the world over. Their voices aren't. In many countries, their films are are dubbed rather than subtitled -- and there's an elite class of voice-over actors in Europe and Asia who handle the starring roles. The Guardian has interviews with several of them -- I wish they'd included audio clips so we could hear how the Angelina Jolie of France sounds.

Sometimes the international voice-casting is pitch perfect. When THE TERMINATOR first came out, the first chance I had to see it was in Germany--in German. I was sure that the distinctive voice of the Terminator belonged to the same guy who played CONAN THE BARBARIAN--but when I had the chance to ask, years later, James Cameron was pretty sure that Arnold Schwarzennegger hadn't had been available to dub his own role in his native tongue.

The dubbing of the smaller roles, though, was bizarre: the police station banter between Lance Henriksen and Paul Winfield was performed as if it were a scene in LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. Twisted.

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The best of new French cinema comes to Boston's Museum of Fine Art for the eleventhFrench Film Festival (July 6-23).

Director Patrice Chereau (INTIMACY, THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN is the guest of honor, and he'll introduce GABRIELLE starring the Pascal Greggory and the fabulously versatile Isabelle Huppert. The redheaded actress also headlines a contemporary political thriller called COMEDY OF POWER, based on a recent, real-life government scandal.

The Boston festival is a great chance to see how influential and international the French film industry has become. The hot title of this year's lineup is 13 (TZAMETI), a black and white suspense movie that you'd almost mistake for a 1960s film noir, if not for the brand-new Volkswagen Beetles on the streets. Director/writer Gela Babluani is Georgian. "Tzameti" means the number thirteen in his native tongue, and the word takes on a horrible siignificane as the story unfolds. I think the movie will hit you harder the less you know about the plot, but this is how it begins: a down and out laborer working in France (George Babluani) overhears plans for a high-stakes event, sees a chance to make big money, and is drawn into a life-and-death struggle.

When GOING SOUTH/VERS LE SUD screened at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2005, you should have heard the huffing of male film critics.The combination of a hot French director (Laurent Cantet of TIME OUT), a hot-button subject (sex-tourism, with women rather than men as the sex tourists), and an incendiary actress (Charlotte Rampling) had of course packed the theatre. Think that would have happened if the genders had been reversed, or if we'd been seeing grown men paying for sex with underage boys, and we'd been seeing a realistic take on the subject?

Ick...no. Reactions ranged from the reflexive--Cantet is taking a gratutitous swipe at America--to the sexist (some nasty remarks about the less-than-nubile appearance of one of the lead actresses, Karen Young.

But female critics have seen something more in HEADING SOUTH, which opens this weekend in New York and in selected cities this month. Check out reviews by Salon's Stephanie Zacharek and the New York Times' Manohla Dargis.

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