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January 31, 2006
Smiling at The Science of Sleep
I like these three people standing on this street in Paris: Michel Gondry directs Charlotte Gainsbourg and Gael Garcia Bernal in dreamy Sundance treat Science of Sleep.
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We'll have fun in my Trierhouse: Lars at IFC
indieWIRE reports on Lars Trier's iChat the other day at NYC's IFC Center: "When asked about his experience as a guinea pig for IFC's new technology, von Trier responded that it was nice to participate in the iQ&A from the basement of his own home, [except] for the actual discussion... "I hate talking to people."
Posted by pride at 01:02 PM | Comments (0)
Sundance's biggest story...
... on Tuesday morning may be a year and a day late and all about right now: Terrence Howard's nomination as Best Actor in Sundance 2005's Hustle & Flow.
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January 30, 2006
Brokebucks Mountain: BBM year's most profitable?
WSJ's John Lippman tracks the marketing strategy of Brokeback Mountain: "I'm more proud of what we didn't do with this film, as opposed to what we did do," says James Schamus, co-president of Focus Features, explaining the contrarian marketing and distribution strategy behind the $14 million film.... How did "Brokeback" break out? By surgically targeting where the movie would play in its initial release; selling it as a romance for women rather than a controversial gay-bashing tale; and opting out of the culture wars rather than engaging them... "We will never turn the release of the film into a political circus act -- ever," says David Brooks, the studio's president of marketing." [More figures and facts at the link.]
Posted by pride at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)
Sundance on Ice: The Escape
PACKING FOR SUNDANCE each year, I tote along a valuable guidebook about the history of the Sundance Festival's hometown, called "Park City Underfoot." I leave it on the coffee table of the condo, and no one ever consults it. The first draft of history is more urgent. Who needs backstory when there's a hailstorm of privileged moments. Still, there's a wealth of backstory in this mining town, not limited to the past 25 years of the festival or the last decade or so of exurban sprawl. Whenever I pass this cemetery on the edge of town, which is largely populated by children, I think of the movies and hopes and careers that have been interred at festivals past: call this portrait "Sundance Class of 96."
Joseph Smith's wilderness is easier to escape now, especially on Sunday morning on the way to the Salt Lake City airport (SLC, tagged on luggage parked in foyers, mud rooms and basements nationwide).
And it's especially easy if you're being ferried by Town Car.
The packs thin toward the last several days of the festival. Still, writers and reviewers gather to fashion consensus.
The swag shacks up and down Main Street are shuttered, the freshly stenciled logos freshly scraped off, such as Hollywood Life(less) House.
Lush, fluffy snow fell for a few hours on Saturday, as this view from inside the hospitality suite.
Inside hospitality, interviews still. I have no idea who's parked in the Cowboy Seat.
Earlier, I saw a geometrically satisfying composition of a newshen and her camerabear against the backdrop of the nearby hills, but didn't catch them in time: quickly, he turned his bright light on my oh-just-taking-shots-of-the-sky-doh! act.
If Hollywood is a place where you can die of encouragement, is Park City where you can languish from detours?
Or from simple YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE?
Utah's not another country: the Burger King stars-'n'-stripes droop and drape here as well.
From the multiple screens of the "anterior" press tent during the closing night awards, Terrence Howard is natty, speaking fluent Howardese.
And Miguel Arteta wears a goofy t-shirt and goofier grin.
In the din of the underpopulated after-party, colleague Robert Koehler and I are shouting about So Yong Kim's prize-winning mood gem In Between Days and move on to Claire Denis' L'intrus and Hou Hsiao-hsien's underrated mood piece, Millennium Mambo, when a quartet of women schooled in twirling light up one of the party's favors, streaking Hou-like neon colors across the drab confines of the tent.
Posted by pride at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2006
Sundance on Ice: 26 January
More images with another promise of words to come: the mind comes to bloggerheads with all the overlapping information about the same events, the same films, the same disappointments and the rare elation.
Walking down the hill from the Racquet Club after SHERRYBABY.
Talking and shooting while introducing the Slamdance distrib seminar about FOUR-EYED MONSTERS..
Outside the Eccles after FLANNEL PAJAMAS.
Vinyl bike.
Still, there are some Park City wooden buildings... for now.
After an episode of Chefdance at Harry O's.
Chimney.
Every schedule's buried under tonight.
The Reeler likes the colors he sees.
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January 23, 2006
Sundance on Ice: 23 January
Layers and layers of information: thin what?
This drink is not yet served
Sunset obscured by mountainside.
It's sunny 6,000 feet up.
While the peripatetic photographer sits beside the brass bear, the Tromadance Marching Band noises up, with one wrecked accordion in the sound mix.
At a booksigning at Dolly's Bookstore, a blurry timelapse of Roger Ebert as he discourses on why P. G. Wodehouse is popular in India. The woman's throw is a lovely drape. Partly in response to the fifth photo at this link.
Behind Dolly's Bookstore as Mr. Ebert signs.
At the ITVS anniversary event; filmmakers vs. grantors..
The waitstaff at IFC's Coyote pour for Kirby Dick's This Film is Not Yet Rated were the nicest bunch. [More pictures here.]
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January 22, 2006
Sundance on Ice: 22 January
After seeing the deeply disturbing, angry, vital doc The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends (by Patricia Foulkrod), about the abandonment of Iraq War veterans by the US government, I was hypnotized by the flag waving behind Cisero's, at a pour for filmmakers and journalists. Nearby, Mexican director Carlos Reygada (Battle of Heaven) and his crew are conspiring in Spanish and Kirby Dick and Eddie Schmidt (This Film Is Not Yet Rated) are talking about censorship.
Behind me, inside Gateway Center, music pours from the Queer Lounge's three events.
Everywhere, the creation of content.
Liz Phair, playing a selection of her filthier work at the Los Angeles Times' The Envelope. Too many people were singing along with "HWC."
M. Doughty at a songwriters' showcase at Sundance House.
Condo by night.
Main Street ends at the bottom of the hill.
At the Writers Guild pour, women tower over the men. Are all male writers so short?
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January 21, 2006
Sundance on Ice: 21 January
Glimpses of the environment.
The night clouds above the hills above Main Street and its fairy lights.
Paper's passed day and night. Cards exchanged: some lost, some dropped. At the bus shed outside the library, this seemed uncommonly sad.
A sign nearby announces the six condo units replacing this ruin.
Itch, meet scratch.
FILM.
Rose's uploading is done.
Pictographs are fundamental.
The snow began on Friday just as I took the train to the airport. A delay of only an hour-and-a-half.
Posted by pride at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 20, 2006
Sundance on Ice: 20 January
THE CRICKETS ARE A-BLOGGING. Itineraries and hope-filled paragraphs are starting to litter the internet. If the five inches of snow threatened for Chicago doesn’t dump in the next three hours before my flight to Salt Lake City, I’ll join the chorus tomorrow afternoon. Sundance wasn’t in the cards for me until several weeks ago, and the wholehearted lack of expectations that came after giving up on it should be a small, healthy thing. Starting Saturday morning early with a new Canadian documentary on Leonard Cohen should set a grown-up mood for the rest of the festival. There’ll be notes here on Sundance and Slamdance movies, panels, interviews and party-parlay, as well as photographs, through to the bitter end.
Giddy graf of the morning: Shawn Levy in the Oregonian: “The day began cold but clear, and now the sun is blasting down on Park City, reflecting off the snow and taking your breath away. Come out of a 9am movie and walk into it and it's like a merry bomb in your head. I'm currently bunkered down at the Queer Lounge, a lively room at the foot of Main Street where interviews and foto shoots are being conducted, and waiting to talk to the cast of the British comedy Kinky Boots." [Ah, the wondrous world of WiFi.]
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The ache of human impermanence: Manohla ♥ Terry; we ♥ Manohla
Lyrical movies elicit lyrical writing: why aren't we all this goddam good? Don't know whether to be mad at or mad about Manohla Dargis when she writes this way on the daily film beat at NY Times, on The New World: "Birds and passion still soar in the latest version of The New World, Terrence Malick's rapturously beautiful [film]... Lovers of the film can rest easy; both theatrical versions are satisfying and devastating in equal measure. (It's promised that the DVD will contain both the 135-minute version and a three-hour edit, bringing the number of director's cuts to three.) Although I miss the drifty interludes in the longer edition that sweep us along in the dream, it's also a relief that Colin Farrell no longer registers quite as much like a new age Hamlet—to be with Pocahontas or not to be. This Smith is slyer, cagier (watch his eyes) and much less of a moral question mark... In the 1950s, the young turks at Cahiers du Cinéma advanced an idea that cinema is not literature, but instead expresses itself visually through the mise-en-scène. The image of laundry hanging on a line or of a pair of empty shoes in a film by Yasujiro Ozu matters as much as the dialogue; those are no more decorative than the image of birds taking flight in The New World. The images don't exist apart from the narrative; they are the narrative, adding layers and moods, imparting philosophies of life. In one film, the shoes convey a sense of profound loss, the ache of human impermanence; in the other, the birds speak to the idea that the world is not ours for the taking... Something I didn't fully appreciate until [this second viewing] was how Mr. Malick uses physical space to contrast two separate world views. Indeed, the entire meaning of the film is conveyed in a single sublime edit that joins a shot of the grubby settlement as it looks from outside its walls—and framed inside an open door—with its mirror image. As the camera looks through the same door, this time pointed out, we see how the settlers would have viewed the beautiful wide world from inside a fort that was every bit as much a prison as their own consciousness."
Posted by pride at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)
Breaking the Invisible Waves: Pen-ek Ratanaruang's new pic with Chris Doyle
At Bangkok Post, Kong Rithdee interviews director Pen-ek Ratanaruang about Invisible Waves, his latest collaboration with actor Asano Tadanobu and cinematographer Christopher Doyle. "The jet-lagged trance the director will have to endure" on his way to Berlin and back, writes Rithdee, "is is perhaps the same feeling his audience will have while watching Invisible Waves, Pen-ek's darkest film to date. Its stark, mouldy look is a cushion to the story full of noirish twists and guilt-plagued characters... Once again, Pen-ek's leading man is a Japanese chap lost in Southeast Asia's subconscious terrain. Asano plays Kyoji, a Macau-based chef who flees to Hong Kong and Phuket on a mysteriously deserted cruise ship after he's murdered his Thai boss's mistress. On the ship he meets a half-Thai, half-Korean woman... and runs into a jolly hitman sent to whack him. Kyoji first wanders the labyrinthine bowels of the ship, then gets stuck in an old Phuket hotel before his final destiny is decided once and for all." Says Pen-ek, "I didn't mean it as a continuation [of Last Life in the Universe], but... I've had the same team... back to work with me—Asano and Chris Doyle especially —we feel like we've already started something together and we should go on doing it... I thought we all could improve what we did in our previous effort.... Everything I do is inevitably an experiment... I have no intention of setting myself on a course to making darker pictures. Many depressing things happened to me around the time I tried to get this movie made. I had the script ready, but the process of financing it and trying to get all the diverse elements together was so complicated. My love life, too, wasn't exactly satisfying to say the least! I guess all these things were channelled into the tone of the movie. I didn't mean to make a dark film, but if it turns out to be one, then that's what it is... It's a story of self-punishment. I was thinking a lot about guilt, maybe because I felt guilty all the time. As a director, you're trained to be selfish person, since everybody has the job of satisfying your demands - to give you the script you need, the location you want, the image you have in your head. But at a certain point, I felt wrong about it all. And then I realised I was shouldering all this guilt. Perhaps the story in the film, about this man who feels guilty for the crime he's forced to commit, says something about my state of mind too.... I've been travelling a lot and I have a lot of friends in different countries who speak different languages. When my film is shown in Thailand, there are people who like it and who don't like it. When my film is shown in, say, Bolivia and Somalia, there are people who like it and who don't like it. I've had less belief in race or nationality, in the colour of your eyes or the language you speak. So, for me it's easier to classify humankind not according to countries but to taste, and more than ever people with the same taste in movies, music or books feel they belong to the same race."
Posted by pride at 09:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Prelude to a rave: Mick LaSalle's New World
Another loving review trying to make words from the images of The New World, by Mick LaSalle in SF Chronicle: "In those first moments, Malick realistically depicts the colonists' arrival and creates a wistful dream of it, a dream in which we know everything that is to come. He shows us a moment of greatness, of incalculable historical importance, and also of tragedy—for the Indians who stand there in complete innocence. This is the beginning of everything and the end of everything, and to see it all so distinctly, presented with such a full-hearted understanding of the event in all its meaning, is almost too much to bear. There will be people who will walk into this film cold and within five minutes find themselves sobbing, without quite knowing why... Frankly, I find it impossible to imagine how Malick made this movie, how he saw it in his head, how he put it together, how he dared hope he could succeed artistically. How did he know that when he put this film together it would even make sense? It's rare in commercial cinema for a director to go this far out, to that no-man's land that Hemingway described. It's yet more rare for one to come back with something this beautiful." [Trailer here.]
Posted by pride at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2006
Masters of Horror and Miike's stillborn Imprint
Where Showtime's "Masters of Horror" series let Joe Dante work blunt political burlesque with Homecoming, whose final cut would lead them to finally dropping an episode scheduled for January 27? Why, Miike-san, of course. Reports Dave Kehr in the NY Times, Imprint, directed by Takashi Miike on his Japanese stomping grounds rather than in Vancouver, the twelfth of 13 episodes was thrown out. Why? Dead fetuses. Showtime's scrubbed it from its site, and roduction company IDT Entertainment, contrary to the Times report, has also deleted the trailer from its own site. "I think it's amazing, but it's even hard for me to watch," said Mick Garris... creator and executive producer... "It's definitely the most disturbing film I've ever seen." 
It will now be released directly to the DVD market through IDT's home video subsidiary, Anchor Bay Entertainment, along with the rest of the episodes in the series... "Definitely, at the script stage we made comments about the aborted fetuses," Mr. Garris said. "We made it clear that we were going on American pay cable television, and even though there wasn't as much control over content, there still were concerns. And then when we got the first cut, it was very, very strong stuff, and we made some suggestions on what might help before we showed it to Showtime. The Japanese made the changes they were comfortable with, and eventually we arrived at a film that he was happy with and we're all happy with. But Showtime felt it was not something they were comfortable putting out on the airwaves... It is what it is... It really was, let's try and not hack this up."
Posted by pride at 12:17 PM | Comments (1)
Sundance songline dreamtime: Dargis begets
On the ride up the hill on one or other public conveyance to Park City from SLC, Manohla Dargis takes the Times to perspect past Sundance toward future pix: "You may catch up with these films later on DVD, but where is the fun—the collective experience, the images bigger than life—in that? All of which is a roundabout and admittedly grudging way of saying that despite the hype and the frigid climes Sundance remains invaluable—wildly annoying, but invaluable. The American independent film movement may be a fiction, but it is the fiction we now live by... Every year Sundance programmers unearth work that is aesthetically and sometimes even politically venturesome—work that is truly independent in the best, most unburdened sense of that oft-abused word. [In 2005], some of the most thought-provoking, soul-stirring films at the festival remained lamentably under the radar, including Robinson Devor's Police Beat, Travis Wilkerson's Who Killed Cock Robin?... and Andrew Wagner's Talent Given Us [pictured]. Sundance had them even if not everyone noticed. Mr. Wagner went on to distribute his film himself; the rest remain without distribution. Here is hoping that one day you get the chance to see them too." (Sweet.)
Posted by pride at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2006
Mo-better blues
Admittedly, David Carr's Carpetblog entry is about awards "momentum," but isn't there someone at the NY Times copydesk—despite having an apostrophe in the proper place—who could have found a better bit of slang to head a graf that's also about Brokeback Mountain? "Mo" could be short for something else at a quick glance, couldn't it?
Posted by pride at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Why We Fight and David Denby has always been at war with Oceania
Doc-maker Eugene Jarecki articulates a thing or two about Why We Fight to Rob Nelson in the VOICE: "There's a tendency to lay all our problems at the feet of George W. Bush, to want to see him as taking a radical departure from the traditions of U.S. foreign policy. But Bush wasn't born overnight: He's the product of decades of movement by this country away from its origins and ideals, and toward something more aggressive, more arrogant, more imperial. The Iraq war certainly isn't the first time that the reasons we were given to go to war have turned out not to be the real reasons why we went. Ultimately I think it's a political distraction for us to be obsessed with Bush or any other single figure. The larger forces that the film examines are those—including the military- industrial complex—that are undoing the very fabric of the democracy we're fighting for. It's what Eisenhower meant when he said, "We must avoid destroying from within that which we are trying to protect from without." It's an articulate position, even before reading David Denby's pissy notice in The New Yorker: "Isn’t it time to retire the collage method of making documentaries? A phrase or two clipped out of some policy expert’s discourse, followed by a bit of stock footage of jet fighters lined up in rows, followed by some candy-sucking kids... and, wham!, you’ve got an indictment of American militarism and imperialism. Except you don’t; you don’t have much of anything but tawdry film-editing technique... Why We Fight argues that we are at war in Iraq because we have been at war, someplace or other, on some pretext or other, under every Administration since Harry Truman was President, and we have to be perpetually at war in order to stoke what President Eisenhower, in his famous 1961 farewell address, named the “military-industrial complex.” ... In order to be great a documentary must discover something.... A documentary filmmaker, at the least, must be a journalist seeking to unearth, and not a collagist who assembles miscellaneous footage in order to support what he already believes."
Posted by pride at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)
There Will Be long takes: the new P. T. Anderson
As surmised last March at Movie City Indie, Paul Thomas Anderson's got a gusher. In the Reporter, Anne Thompson reports he's ready to produce and direct the Daniel Day-Lewis-starring There Will Be Blood, a "sprawling period piece, which Anderson... spent several years writing... loosely adapted from Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel "Oil!" The $25m production is part Miramax and part Par, with former Anderson agent (at Endeavor) and now Par Classics head John Lesher averring, "It's an ambitious film and a compelling, relevant story about family, greed, religion and oil," Lesher said. "Paul is an incredible talent, exactly the kind of filmmaker the new division wants to be in business with." [Scott Rudin is also part of the compact.] Image source.
Posted by pride at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2006
Nader in '06: the spoiler takes Park City
Millionaire former activist Ralph Nader is ascending the slopes of Park City to view the doc on his life and role in the election mayhem of 2000, An Unreasonable Man on Sunday. PRs the film's publicist: " Nader's appearance will mark the first time the political pundit and consumer activist has seen the film as well as the first time he has attended the film festival itself... To some, he is an icon of rare idealism, while others see him simply as the political spoiler of the last two elections... This exhaustive... film by Henriette Mantel and Stephen Skrovan includes... archival footage and newly shot interviews with Nader himself. Numerous extended interviews with former colleagues.. The film begs the question, when do we speak for what is right without compromise, and when do we surrender one battle for the sake of the war?"
Posted by pride at 08:04 AM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
Battle in Park City: Heaven's school crossing
Explicit sex scenes get Carlos Reygadas' Battle in Heaven pushed from a planned screening at Sundance's largest venue, the Eccles Theatre, which is part of a complex shared with a local high school. Its January 20 slot was vacated when "school officials found out about the film’s now-infamous scenes of graphic sex and voiced their objections to the festival," PRs the film's publicist, as the noon screening time is within school hours. "Officials contacted the Sundance Film Festival who informed Tartan Films, the movie’s U.S. distributor, of the situation. Sundance moved quickly to relocate the first public screening to the Library Theatre." At its 2005 Cannes debut, the release continues, suggesting the acronym FFF, "many critics were agog at Battle's opening and closing scenes of full-frontal fellatio. But perhaps more remarkable than the explicitness of sex is the directness with which Reygadas addresses issues of class, race, and religion in contemporary Mexico. The film, a critically acclaimed and aesthetically stunning journey through the labyrinth of life and death in present-day Mexico City."
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January 14, 2006
Redford: Paris Hilton is not about anything
Sundance founder Robert Redford says "the festival's programmers still have the same strategies they had 20 years ago and that all the dollars flowing down Main Street have altered only one aspect of what Sundance is about," writes Daniel Fienberg of Zap2It.com. "Once it started to roll and you had the success of films like Sex, Lies, and Videotape and other films... more people began to come... Then the merchants came. When the merchants came, then the celebrities came and the actors came, the talent came. Then the paparazzi came, and then the fashion came. And it's like a pebble being dropped in a pond, but these ripples come out... And when a media person comes in and looks at the festival, but from an outer tier, they're going to see a completely different picture than the one we're programming. They'll think it's about Paris Hilton, which is not about anything."
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From Mumbai: M. Nine Shyamalan?
From Asian Age, news of a feature being made by a 9-year-old, passed without comment. "He says "start", "sound" and "action" with such ease, as he wields the camera on the sets directing "Uncle Jackie". Nine-year-old Kishan HR, a student of Camlin School in Bangalore is [setting] a world record as the youngest director in film history to direct a feature film in Kannada titled Care Of Footpath. "The film stars Jackie Shroff in the role of a chief minister along with Saurabh Shukla. The [130] minute film has been made on a budget of Rs 70 lakhs and will be released in April. Kishan was moved by the young urchins selling newspapers at traffic signals. He asked his father why they were selling papers and not going to school. "This culminated into a story. My father told me that they are poor children who have to work for their living. I wrote the story and showed it to my father, who in turn showed it to his friends. They encouraged me to direct a film... I have learnt the ropes of filmmaking on the sets. My parents showed me DVDs on filmmaking and have read out books to me. I observed the director placing the lights and the camera positions. But learning about camera angles and shot divisions took more time," he adds. We ask Jackie how it was to be directed by a child. He says, "It is an amazing experience. The kid is brilliant. He has realised his dreams and it’s nice to work with a child basically because children have no egos. When I met this child, I was amazed by his experience and talent. I told him that he should make a film and promised to work in it. He came to me a few months later with his story and asked me if I would work for him," says Jackie."
Posted by pride at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2006
Shreveport doubles 1965 NYC: Factory Girl
Was it really like that? Shreveport, LA is doubling for 1965 NYC. "Texas Street became Lexington Avenue, New York circa 1965, for a scene in the movie, Factory Girl", about Edie Sedgwick (played by Siena Miller). "With 60 extras dressed in the time period clothing, and yellow cabs driving the streets, [co-star Edward] Herrmann praises Shreveport's ability to blend. Herrmann says, "they did an extraordinary job of making this look like Lexington Avenue in 1965 or 1966"... Herrmann tells us he's enjoying Shreveport, especially after dinner at Shreveport's Noble Savage Tavern. Herrmann says, "I was invited to a table with the locals to sit and from there we went to a number of places I can't remember". The cast and crew say Shreveport is up and coming in the movie ranks."
Posted by pride at 11:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
David Lynch: Every day begins to feel like Saturday morning with your favorite breakfast
In the new Arthur [not online], Kristine McKenna talks meditation with David Lynch—whom she's known for 25 years. Lynch had just returned from his university speaking tour on behalf of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness Based Education and World Peace."You begin waking up more and more when you meditate, until finally one day you're fully awake... This is the potential of every human being and if you visit that unified field twice a day, every day begins to feel like Saturday morning with your favorite breakfast, it's sunny, and you've got the whole weekend ahead with all your projects that you're looking forward to doing." [Photo source.]
Posted by pride at 11:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 12, 2006
Stomping crickets: Peter Rainers down on hot and spicy entrees
Peter Rainer's only recently become film cricket of the august Christian Science Monitor but he's got an embarassingly exaggerated, WTF?!-level fume about how moviegoing manners among his colleagues disappoint him, as a professional, that is. [In breaking news, the "anguished sigh" remark may refer to Pauline Kael, who retired in 1991 and has been dead for almost five years.] "I happen to be one of those people who don't like a whole lot of hubhub, least of all inside a movie theater. Because I'm a professional film critic and attend hundreds of screenings a year, this presents a distinct problem for me. Many of my screenings are for critics only, so you would think I have a comparatively easy time of it. The press, as we all know, is so well behaved. Think again... For example, there is one group (whose identity I won't divulge except to say that it dispenses Golden Globes every year) that's notorious for smuggling hot and spicy entrees into screening rooms (often poorly ventilated) while pursuing a line of nonstop chatter in heavily accented English. Then there are all those critics who pull out their lighted pens at the drop of an insight... New school is bringing your laptop into the theater and typing your insights as you go along. If enough of these typists are in the theater, the collective sound is like a squadron of rats clacking across a linoleum floor. Critics also enjoy impressing other critics by venting aloud for all to hear. One famous critic used to belt out an anguished sigh whenever she found a film too drippy; another regularly rocks the room with a laugh pitched somewhere between a croak and a whinny. At film festivals like Toronto and Cannes, the one-upmanship often takes the form of instant mini-dissertations, as in "That tracking shot is so Tarkovskian!" That example is so... apocryphal. A chart of Movie "dont's" is appended for those who've made it through the clumpy gruel, including don't "[kick] the seat in front of you."
Posted by pride at 06:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wes Studi wants his cut: The New World
While only a few folks have seen the re-edited version of The New World, Indian Country Today's Jennifer Hemmingsen is not impressed. "The melodrama is thick, the internal monologues are endless and the soap operatic overuse of the thousand-yard stare is absolutely maddening... The story is tired... It's not really a love story... With Smith playing the colonizer and Pocahontas the ''good Indian,'' it's actually a metaphor reinforcing the tragic inevitability of the conquering of America—a story we've heard too often already... ''It's not my cup of tea,'' said Cherokee actor and activist Wes Studi, who plays Opechancanough in the film. Studi, who is also a spokesman for the Indigenous Language Institute, said he got involved... because of the original script (the final cut of the movie is missing most of his character's development) and the historical research that went into it. The production team hired language expert Blair Rudes to research the indigenous language and use it for much of the film's Native dialogue. The resulting lexicon is being used by the Pamunkee trib [but] it wasn't much used by [the filmmakers]. ''I'm a bit disappointed that so much of that reintroduced language wasn't used in the film,'' Studi said... What will it take to write a new story about the ''new world''? A different director? Another 400 years? ''What it would take is for me to edit it,'' Studi said."
Posted by pride at 06:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Shear gall: Caryn James cuts-'n'-trims the latest styles
"The commonsensical view that an audience might actually have a better experience if the film were tauter is rare among directors, especially this season when some of the most prominent movies are needlessly long," writes noted, lauded filmmaker Caryn James, adopting a condescending tone hardly heard since a certain past critic would recast movies to his tastes in his reviews. "These films achieve their bloated status for different reasons: the old New World and Brokeback Mountain... take too much time getting started. If the audience knows that the English settlers will land and the cowboys will turn out to be gay, the movies shouldn't waste 15 minutes getting there. Both Peter Jackson's popcorn movie King Kong" ... and Steven Spielberg's ultraserious Munich... seem slacker than they should, probably because their powerful directors can do whatever they want... As Mr. Malick realized, the issue is not length itself, but what works on screen." The original version of The New World, Ms. James coyly suggests is filled with what "others might call travelogues: pretty pictures of birds flying, water flowing, trees growing... Those preliminary scenes, which slowed things down, have been trimmed, and the voice-overs—interior monologues in which Pocahontas and Smith meditate on their lives—are less likely to accompany picturesque views of nature. Instead, [co-producer Sarah] Green said, the voice-over "pulls you into the next scene." The editing was the kind of snipping that, like a good face-lift, should be inconspicuous if it works. Besides, Mr. Malick can put it all back (and more) in the DVD." [Ultraserious. Shit! Who wants to see that? Yes, and it's lonnnnnnng. And it's full of... Nature. Yike-ums.]
Posted by pride at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
Branding Sundance and "White Noise"
You feel a vague foreboding... I kept seeing myself unexpectedly in some reflecting surface... I shopped for its own sake, looking and touching, inspecting merchandise I had no intention of buying and then buying it....From the novel, "White Noise," by Don DeLillo.
The 2006 Sundance Film Festival sponsors are Hewlett-Packard, Entertainment Weekly, Volkswagen of America, Adobe Systems, American Express, Delta Air Lines, DirecTV, Intel, Sprint, Aquafina, Blockbuster, L’Oreal Paris, Moviefone, The New York Times, Sony Electronics, Starbucks, Stella Artois, Turning Leaf Vineyards, the Utah Film Commission and CESAR Food For Small Dogs.
Posted by pride at 09:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Korine cinema: Cat Power in Nashville
Austin filmmaker Margaret Brown, whose Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt produced Harmony Korine's latest: she "returned from [Korine's hometown of] Nashville, where she produced the new music video for Cat Power. The racy video for Power's song 'Living Proof' is directed by the intractably avant Korine... and shot by Be Here to Love Me and Slacker cameraman Lee Daniel. Korine is showing the video to MTV this week in London, with hopes the channel will air it."
Nashville Scene's excited about local vid production, too: "Hey, what’s this we hear about Jim Jarmusch scouting out Nashville locations for a White Stripes video? And about Harmony Korine shooting a Cat Power video here? That’s as awesome as the time Wim Wenders went to the Opry."
Posted by pride at 09:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Altman's Oscar: "It's okay with me"
Posted by pride at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2006
Sundance 2006 premieres: Sneaks
Seventeen movies, including world premieres, starting with one of at least three Sundance entries concerning themselves with sleeeeeeep, Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep, in a world premiere. Here's the incomplete official site.
Baltasar Kormakur's followup to 101 Reykjavik, the Wisconsin-set mystery A Little Trip to Heaven. with Forest Whitaker and Julia Stiles. Here's Variety's bio of Kormakur, as well as the trailer for the new film.
Nick Cassavetes' Alpha Dog stars Emile Hirsch and Sharon Stone; the Russian trailer is here. It's a drama about a suburban drug dealer, Jesse James Hollywood, who became one of the youngest men ever to be placed on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential is a second collaboration with graphic novel whiz Dan Clowes, after Ghost World.
Here's a production profileof Zwigoff from the Reporter.
Trailer for Clive Gordon's Cargo here.
The camera supply house behind Finn Taylor's The Darwin Awards, with Winona Ryder, gives some background here and SF Chronicle has a making-of
Wim Wenders has a page on his personal site for the Sam Shepard collaboration, Don't Come Knocking; the trailer is here.
Variety describes the deal-making behind opening night's Friends with Money, by writer-director Nicole Holofcener.
The British Films catalogue synopsizes Kinky Boots, directed by Julian Jarrold. BBC Northamptonshire does a polish on "the feature film about Northampton's boot and shoe industry"; the trailer is here.
Prodco Bona Fide's latest is Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' Little Miss Sunshine.
Paul McGuigan works to get Quebec's Wicker Park out of his system with a NYC mob murder thriller; here's the Russian trailer for Lucky Number Slevin
Here's the official site for Jonathan Demme's Neil Young Heart of Gold, including the trailer for the two-night perf at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium.
For the $17 million The Illusionist, Neil Burger was talking it up while promoting his 2002 Interview with the Assassin; here's the Sundance catalog copy.
The Business of Strangers director Patrick Stettner collaborates on an adaptation of Armistead Maupin's novel, The Night Listener, starring Robin Williams. Maupin's site is here; prodco Hart-Sharp describes the movie like this.
Spanish director Isabel Coixet collaborates again with Sarah Polley in The Secret Life of Words, in which "a nurse forgoes her first holiday in years, opting to travel to a remote oil rig, where she cares for a man [Tim Robbins] suffering from severe burns.
Here's the trailer on Coixet's site.
Plus: the trailer for Jason Reitman's Thank You For Smoking.
Posted by pride at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)
Dargis on Satantango and the sacred contract between film and filmgoer
Manohla Dargis sketches a keen appreciation of a little-seen masterwork in the NY Times. "There are, of course, a few other things you could do in the 420 minutes it takes to watch Bela Tarr's 1994 masterpiece Satantango, which begins a six-day run today at the Museum of Modern Art... At seven hours, not including two scheduled 15-minute breaks, this Hungarian film is one of those unusual works of contemporary art that demand from the audience a concentrated commitment - the luxury of time. Satantango traces the fate of a small, isolated community that attaches itself to a mysterious messiahlike figure of dubious character. The opening scene, which seems calculated to weed out fainthearted viewers, tracks a herd of cows as they meanderingly exit a barn and enter the muddy yard of the near-desolate village, with its cracked building walls and prodigiously strewn trash. As he does throughout the film, Mr. Tarr shoots this luxuriantly paced scene in long shot, using his beautiful framing and richly gradated black-and-white tones to find beauty in every miserable and mundane corner... Mr. Tarr [has] explained his predilection for long takes: "The people of this generation know information-cut, information-cut, information-cut. They can follow the logic of it, the logic of the story, but they don't follow the logic of life." In "Satantango," life is beautiful and grotesque by turns, and never less than mesmerizing... Plans are apparently afoot to bring the film to DVD, but as with Mr. Tarr's gorgeous long takes, these sounds of life are best appreciated in a theater like that at MoMA, where the sacred contract between film and filmgoer has yet to be broken."
Posted by pride at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)
Woody Allen's favorite joke
As told to Rob Feld in Written By magazine: Do you have a favorite joke? I have a favorite joke, but it's slightly long. Do we not have time for it? You won't like it. Try me.It's about a guy who buys a horse. The horse seems to check out when he's buying it, and the owner says to him before he buys, “I have to tell you one thing though. He's got a bad habit. He likes to sit on grapefruits.” And the guy buying the horse says, “Okay, that's the only thing wrong with him?” The owner says yes. The guy thinks, “He said grapefruits—all right,” and he pays for the horse. He's taking it home with him. And they're going across a stream and suddenly the horse sits down and won't get up. The guy doesn't know what to do. He runs back to the guy he bought it from. “I bought a horse from you, you tell me there's one thing wrong, that he likes to sit on grapefruits. He's sitting in the middle of a stream, I can't get him to move.” And the guy says, “Oh! I forgot to tell you. He also sits on fish.” I told you you wouldn't like it. I don't dislike it, but why that one? ... The Dada-ness of it. The absurdity of it is funny because it's sort of like a perfect little joke. It encapsulates the utter meaninglessness of human existence and of the world."
Posted by pride at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2006
Munich and the Cinea cock-up
The Guardian reports a regional encoding goof will likely cost Munich any notice in the upcoming BAFTA awards. "...The preview DVD sent to the academy's members is unplayable on machines used in the UK. As a result the majority of BAFTAs 5,000 voters will not have seen the film... and can hardly be expected to recommend it for acclaim.... The company coordinating [the] campaign blamed the mistake on human error at the laboratory where the DVDs were encrypted. "Someone pushed the wrong button," she said... The problem, it appears, was partly down to teething troubles with the limited edition DVD players issued last year to BAFTA members. Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD "screeners", but prevent the creation of pirate copies. Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe." The DVDs were late already, having "missed out on the first round of voting on January 4... A previous batch mailed out before Christmas were reportedly held up by customs officials in the UK. "It's been quite a cock-up," said one BAFTA member, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We were promised that they were going to send screeners before Christmas, but they never arrived. Now we finally have a copy but there is no way we can watch it." [More politicking at the link.]
Posted by pride at 07:48 PM | Comments (0)
Getting in line for the sketchy taco: Josh Friedman blogs again
In 2005, Josh Friedman, screenwriter of War of the Worlds and Brian DePalma's forthcoming Black Dahlia began a funny, profane blog called "I find your lack of faith disturbing." Some of it is about screenwriting, most of it is deliriously rancorous rants, and he's thrilled about the prospects of Snakes on a Plane. Then he was gone for a while. Now he's talking about cancer. "This is not fun for me, nor do I think it'll be fun for you, either. You won't learn much, because I'm a fucking ignoramus. I never did like research and I certainly didn't start for this shit. Some people want to know all they can about their disease, but I figured it would only keep me on the phone longer explaining it to my friends. Besides, [my doctor] Fish told me to stay off the internet. So I did." But still, there are reasons we love John Friedman, who has been sick but not sad. "Without being too dramatic about it, there is a very good chance my bout with food poisoning saved my life. Which goes to show, if you see a taco stand and it looks even the least bit sketchy, get in line... As an infinite monkey I have little choice but to bow down to the powers of natural selection and mutation, even when it's happening inside my own body. There are those who suggest a greater power must be looking out for me. But the greatest power I know was doing last minute post-production on Munich so I didn't bother calling on him, either... I did not fight cancer and I certainly did not beat cancer. One night cancer came and grabbed me hard by the arm, yanked me down the stairs and stood over me on the landing while I begged for mercy and waited for the rain of blows to come. Some did, enough for me to know I couldn't have withstood the whole barrage. And then without explanation it disappeared. And let me live. Like some monsters do. Thank you everybody."
Posted by pride at 06:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Running with The New New World
The official new runnning time: 2 hours, 15 minutes and 14 seconds. In City Pages, Matthew Wilder is the newest acolyte: "No contemporary filmmaker, not even Robert Bresson (who died nursing a dream of a film based on the book of Genesis), has removed everyday psychology from movie acting as Malick has here. By creating often wordless scenes in which his actors are focused on arduous physical tasks, Malick moves us back to a place discovered by the pilgrims of Christian portraiture: the revelation of the soul as the unselfconscious subject. In the magical alchemy between editing, music, and the guileless faces of his performers, Malick finds an inner light. Yesterday I ran into... critic F.X. Feeney on the street, and he couldn't contain his enthusiasm for The New World: "It's as good as Dreyer's Joan of Arc or Sansho the Bailiff! It's as good as anything!" ... 
There is something thrilling about watching the 62-year-old Malick trying to equal and exceed not his peers in the movie-brat generation, but Romantic opera, Whitman, and the Bible. Like [Walt] Whitman, Malick views his work as a nature-based Book of Life, a complete almanac in which wisdom is available for every living soul at every stage of life, the entirety of experience contained within a platter of film."
Posted by pride at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)
January 09, 2006
Weather or not: the light of many Worlds
Variety profiles 2005 lensers, including Declan Quinn; Phedon Papamichael; Rodrigo Prieto and Janusz Kaminski.
Kaminski: "It has to feel real to me... The biggest challenge to any cinematographer is to tell a story that reflects the written material and to have the ability to fully understand what the story is about and then find the cinematic style and the individual storytelling that the cinematographer brings into the process. The trick is to fully immerse yourself and be able to enrich the story through nonverbal language, which is what cinematography is. Occasionally you see a movie that is completely inappropriate visually, where somehow you feel you are looking at romance, but there is no romance onscreen. Or you feel that you are looking at a movie about beauty and there is no beauty in the photography... Frequently as a cinematographer you end up restraining yourself."
The New World took advantage of inclement weather to an unusual degree, writes Variety's Anthony D'Alessandro, with the shoot surviving "four hurricanes, a tornado, floods, gale-force winds and a Virginia heat wave. All of these conditions contributed to Malick's design for capturing the harsh environment encountered by the natives and settlers. "The motto of the film was to allow accidents to happen; to capture the slowness of life, the changes of season, the awareness of rivers flowing and the shifting of clouds," says World lenser Emmanuel Lubezki. When Lubezki interviewed for the job, he convinced Malick that the only way to achieve a naturalistic look was to shoot the exteriors without any lights. "Terry's response was, 'Are you crazy?'" ... But hurricanes gave way to gorgeous skies. And the soft light from overcast conditions proved perfect for capturing actors' faces... Above all, the least of Lubezki's worries was matching shots. "There's an absolutely incredible shot where big clouds with thunder and [lightning] are rolling in, and the camera slowly moves into Pocahontas' face. The frame tells you everything that's happening inside of her." [Jon Bonné of MSNBC has an overview of Malick's career here.]
Posted by pride at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
Shanghai's surprises: lo-fi filmmaking in the east of the East
"Last month, in a smoky basement bar at the heart of old colonial Shanghai—the legendary Bund—an assortment of young amateur filmmakers gathered for an improvised short-film competition. The event organizer, Juan Vargas, had come to Shanghai from Colombia... and turned to film production after realizing the potential in the market. ""We are trying to encourage people to make films," Vargas told Ilan Carmel for China Business. His new prodco, Mei Wen Ti, had just finished its first feature for 3,000 Euro and on ten days notice, banded the filmmakers together for 15 shorts... These amateur filmmakers toiled day and night for 10 days to produce 15 short films, each several minutes in length, just so they could get their foot in the door and mingle with the rising small community of independent filmmakers in China's eastern metropolis. One of these entrepreneurs was Frenchman Severin Bonnichon, who, like most of the contest participants, had used equipment from home to shoot... The short, slightly intoxicated Bonnichon said he had made a few short films back in France, but in Shanghai he was at a disadvantage because he did not have access to proper equipment...
"Tthere are two sides to the film industry in Shanghai," writes Carmel, "the independent film sector, which is barely in its infancy; and the government-run Shanghai Film Studio, which has been releasing mainly propaganda films that are embarrassing even relative to typically low-quality features produced by China's domestic film industry.... "Beijing also supports much better universities and training institutes for film production," said Liu Haibo, a lecturer in film and media studies at the Film and TV Institute of Shanghai University. "There is no comparison between the quality of the training centers of Beijing and the talent they attract [and] what is available in Shanghai. Shanghai is open only in terms of its economy, infrastructure and its position as a financial center; in terms of arts and culture, it is a very conservative society and environment." ... As still another reason for the weak film industry in Shanghai, Liu mentioned the state policy of allowing only big investors to enter the business, as well as artificially directing investments to big studios in Beijing. Furthermore, Shanghai has seen a high turnover in its pool of film professionals and a brain drain since the early 1990s, mostly to the benefit of Beijing's studios and production companies." [More history, money woes and restrictions on depicting "the negative aspects of modern urban life" at the link.]
NEWSWEEK TOOK their own Shanghai snapshot recently. [Image from this site.]
Posted by pride at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)
Reeling in Chris Doyle: sipping at Cipriani's
Over at the Reeler, cinematographer Chris Doyle has some post-New York Film Critics Circle Awards banter. "And speaking of Doyle's next film, there was a rumor going around... that he might be working with Anton Corbijn on the Ian Curtis/Joy Division biopic "Control. "Is that indeed the film the two had planned? "No, no, no, no... yeah, yeah," Doyle said. "Yeah! We even went to the U2 concert together... 
Anton is a very discreet person, to put it mildly. I think that there's some... I don't know. You work with someone like me and we just talk about everything. I think that people need a certain... What's the word? Reticence about their form to make it purer to them, and I think that's what Anton is like. He has to step back to find out where he's standing, whereas someone like me—or any cinematographer—we just step in and make a mess and work it out from there. You know. We're slightly different personalities, which I hope will work." OK, but what about Wong Kar-Wai? He was hanging around Cipriani somewhere, and I know Doyle had mentioned in the past that 2046—their seventh collaboration—would likely be their last film together. But tonight was the night for his change of heart, right? In which he and Wong would join hands and pledge each other loyalty for the rest of their careers? That estrangement talk was all bullshit, right? "We'll see," Doyle said, laughing again. "I feel that tonight is going to be the Brokeback Mountain of critical awards. Should I lick my hand first? What do you want me to do? I think you're right. This is... What can I say? I am where I am because of Wong Kar-Wai. There's no question about it. We will go further, and we do care." So there you have it. Gene Seymour will go to war for the summer comedy, "Control" will get made and Chris Doyle will once more stem the rose with Wong Kar-Wai. I think I can die now."
Posted by pride at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2006
The times, they are a Chang: WKW's art director, editor, costume designer
Wong Kar-Wai's art director, costume designer and editor William Chang Suk-ping gives a rare interview to Alexandra A. Seno in the Herald-Tribune: "With a reputation in the industry as a shy and quiet genius who almost always declines to speak to the press about himself, Chang is best known as Wong's frequent collaborator... "Editing is about proportion, rhythm..." On his career as Hong Kong's most brilliant art director-costume designer, he said simply that he begins by asking: "What is the ambience?" Chang, whose soft-spoken manner belies his firm opinions about many things, creates worlds as he thinks they should seem: just the right interiors in which he can see the actors, wearing just the right clothes...
"Actually, I don't like period that much, but I can do it," he said with a laugh. His secrets: research on eBay and watching old films on local television and the Turner Classic Movies cable channel. For ideas, he said, "I just walk around, watch TV, just live and let things come." ... Chang also works extensively as an interior designer, in private residences and commercial spaces. He recently created a very modern foreign teachers' dormitory at Guangdong's Shantou University for Li Ka-shing, whom Forbes calls Asia's richest businessman, and he's currently working on an urban spa in the heart of Hong Kong's business district... Chang, 52, rarely gives interviews because he thinks he is just repeating himself. "I haven't changed. Inside I keep the same passion for films..." At home, he said, his entire personal wardrobe consists of T-shirts, four pairs of jeans and four jackets, including the neon-yellow windbreaker he was wearing. He owns only two pairs of footwear at an given time: a pair of sports shoes that he uses until they fall apart, and a pair of black leather ones... "for film festivals." ... "I don't like fashion. It's transitory."
THE CHINESE FILMMAKING BOOM gets a look-see by David Eimer in the Independent.
PLUS, AT LOSSLESS, loving, lovely Wong Kar-Wai-inspired calendars are posted each month by members of wongkarwai.net. The link is for the January calendar page; later entries will be here.
Posted by pride at 01:50 PM | Comments (1)
The End of Boredom: Mark Cuban Bubbles
Maverickpreneur Mark Cuban daydreams about "the end of boredom" and Blackberries all about it: "Portable media devices... iPods... phones with all their features... have solved what has been a generations-old nuisance for all of us, boredom. We have our little devices and now we are never bored. We don't find ourselves staring off into space unoccupied, wondering what to do.
"We don't find ourselves muttering about how bored we are sitting on the train, or on a plane, trying to do anything to make the time go by more quickly. Our little mobile devices are so popular because they are the ultimate, continuous distraction. They are the easiest cure for boredom.... When we leave the house now, it's keys, wallet, phone/pda/iPod, lock the door.� The minute we have nothing better to do, or our mind starts to wander, regardless of where we are, meetings, events, elevator, exercise bike, walking down the street, out it comes.... We are going to become increasingly dependent on these devices not because we think they are amazing or wonderful, but because they are there. They do their job. They distract us...Portable video will be successful not because it will siphon off viewing from traditional tv. Portable video sells and will sell in increasing numbers because its a better cure for boredom... Daydreaming and zoning out aren't dead and gone, but they now have a soundtrack and� a video."
IN OTHER 2929/HDNET/CUBAN/WAGNER/MAGNOLIA/LANDMARKING, The Parkersburg, WV News and Sentinel's Evan Bevins comprehensively anticipates the first pop of Steven Soderbergh's locally-produced Bubble and its Thursday night premiere at the historic Smoot Theatre. "We can only accommodate a certain number of people to the premiere," said Felice Jorgeson, executive director of the Smoot. "This will be good for the other people." Regal Cinemas, the company that owns the movie theaters in Vienna and Marietta, will not show the film because it is being released concurrently in theaters, on DVD and on cable [network] HDNet... "It was fantastic," said Debbie Doebereiner, a 47-year-old Watertown resident who makes her acting debut in Bubble in the role of Martha. "Steven is brilliant and he's very, very understanding... He made our job really easy, because there was no tension or pressure whatsoever when we were making the film. He would give us points to start with, points to hit on and where to end, and how we got there" was up to the actors... Doebereiner, who had worked at the KFC in Parkersburg's Traffic Circle for 24 years, was approached by the film's casting director at the restaurant's drive-thru window. "It was the most wonderful five weeks of my life...They cater to you; you feel like a princess. I pinched myself every day, because I just couldn't believe I was doing this." ... To add another layer of realism to the movie, the actors were trained in the jobs their characters would have at the Lee Middleton Original Dolls Factory in Belpre... A limited edition doll, April Memories, was produced during the filming. There were only 250 made and Doebereiner purchased one of them." [More WV lore at the link; the Bubble trailer is here.]
Posted by pride at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
Steve Martin on beauty and girls
Steve Martin blabs to John Hiscock of the Telegraph as Shopgirl opens in the UK, pondering the small matter of beauty: "In times of crisis like Hurricane Katrina, beauty and the arts seem very insignificant, but in times of calm, they become very important to us and give us a kind of secular reason to live... Everybody has their own taste and what makes it all go round is there's somebody for everybody.
"I remember once I was in Texas doing a film with Liam Neeson. We were sharing a house, and we were going for a walk in the afternoon and two girls came walking by. "By the way, this was 20 years ago," he hurriedly adds. "I said to Liam, 'Wow, I thought that girl was so beautiful,' and he said, 'I liked the other one.'" Martin smiles and shrugs. "That's the way it works."
Posted by pride at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2006
Toasting Skoll: Participanting pictures
There's a lengthy profile of billionaire producer and activist Jeff Skoll and his Participant Productions by Gaby Wood in the Observer: "Skoll describes Participant as a venture that straddles business and philanthropy. He's not trying to buck the system, he's trying to help it, in the form of what he calls a 'virtuous cycle: the movie helps the non-profits, the non-profits help the movie.'
"[Robert] Redford is one of the Seventies 'heroes' to whom people constantly refer when they speak about Participant's current crop of films. Yet one of the surprising things about Skoll is that he does not fit into the liberal tradition of Hollywood. In a move that cleverly removes him from the knee-jerk backlash against Hollywood lefties, he has said that, although he is Canadian and therefore doesn't vote in America, had he been a US citizen he would have voted for Reagan, and for Bush Sr as well as for Bill Clinton. He calls himself a 'centrist' and has asserted that he would be equally open to making films that speak to conservative moviegoers... Meredith Blake explains how they decide to make a film: 'We have a pretty unusual three-step review process,' she says from their office in Beverly Hills. 'First the creative team looks at it, then finance, and then I do a social sector review.' Blake... greenlights films on the basis of the issues they raise. A project will only move forward if she finds it has a valid social or political message. She also selects the non-profit, corporate and media partners that will help audiences to get involved... John Boorman, veteran director of political films, thinks Participant's work is less like the movies of the Seventies than those of the Thirties and Forties, when studios produced 'problem pictures' intended to combat alcoholism or racism." [More nitty and more gritty at the link.]
Posted by pride at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)
Tim Robey loved it: Match Point and quality nookie
"There's just one problem," Telegraph cricket Tim Robey says, "and it's announced with a typically audible Exposition Clunk: "What's a beautiful young American ping-pong player doing mingling among the English upper-class?" The ping-ponger is Nola (Scarlett Johansson), a struggling actress, brazen hussy and bulging bag of neuroses who's dating Tom but soon becomes Chris's bit on the side. For Allen, Johansson is just the latest pert muse—she's already signed on for his next, also British-set, project.
"But she's meanly served by this one, which turns Nola into one of the least palatable of all Woody's staple women: the chain-smoking mistress from hell. If there were a film equivalent of the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award, it would surely go to their blouse-ripping, blindfold tumbles here, before juggling financial security and quality nookie pushes Chris to truly desperate measures." PLUS, ALLEN TALKS TO HISCOCK, John Hiscock, about why he and London are having a third go: ""It's very easy to film there... and the weather is cool and grey day after day, which I like very much and is good for the photography. I had no problems at all. The crews were as nice as could be and the city was completely co-operative."
Posted by pride at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)
Andrew Bujalski in the Times: quality of a puppy dog or a child
VOICE film editor Dennis Lim gets some more quality time in the NY Times, profiling marvelous micro-moviemaker Andrew Bujalski and his two features, Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation: "Instead of being motormouths, his characters speak in half-sentences that trail off into excruciating silences. Compared to Richard Linklater's earnest philosophers or Noah Baumbach's poised wiseacres, Mr. Bujalski's sheepish drifters are mortifyingly tongue-tied. But their verbal tics, taken together, could stand as a fumbling generation's poignant cri de coeur: "I guess," "I mean," "I'm sorry," "I don't know." 
"Both films are slow-burning comedies about the fear of adulthood made by someone who isn't yet inclined to sentimentalize or belittle these threshold years. As Mr. Bujalski presents it, the quarter-life crisis is an inherently funny condition, but it's not necessarily a laughing matter... Robb Moss, a documentarian and Harvard lecturer who lent Mr. Bujalski a Steenbeck editing machine for Funny Ha Ha, said, "One of the charms of Andrew's films is that they spend no energy convincing you of his ambition." An even more entertaining (and sweet) quote comes from Bujalski's website, where veteran filmmaker and professor-mentor Dusan Makavejev avers, "This film does not leave me. I do not know why. It simply comes back from time to time. It has this great camera-created film glue. Quality of a puppy dog or a child—film has 'look at me' quality."
Posted by pride at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
Alex Cox loved it: Fanny & Alexander's posh tosh
Filmmaker and classy curmudgeon Alex Cox has his way with Ingmar Bergman's corpus in the Guardian: "Part of the problem may be the length of the film: paradoxically, that it may be too short. This feature version of Fanny and Alexander is apparently a knock-down from a 5-hour TV movie, so far broadcast only in Sweden. What I've read of the longer version makes it sound tedious in the extreme, but maybe the heartwarming scene in which doomed dad demonstrates to Fanny and Alexander "the nature of storytelling with a simple chair" somehow helps the film to make more sense.
"As it is, the only real cohesion comes from the art department, with its fixations on over-done sets, excessively pretty exteriors, and chandeliers. The chandeliers are especially weird: even the austere Bishop's place—supposed to be a total contrast to the Ekdahl residence—is lit by glittering gold candelabras. Maybe everybody lit their homes with chandeliers and had 10ft Christmas trees in Sweden in 1907. But I doubt it." At his own website, Cox offers a free download [warning: PDF link] of the annotated manuscript of his 1978 book on spaghetti westerns, "10,000 Ways to Die."
Posted by pride at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
Brokeback broken in SLC
A Salt Lake City "Megaplex" that's part of the holdings of the car dealer who also owns the Utah Jazz yanked Brokeback Mountain past the last minute this weekend, report the Salt Lake Tribune's Sean P. Means and Sheena McFarland. "Carol Adams just wanted to watch a movie and have a burrito. is their memorable lede. "But Adams learned Friday the movie she wanted to see... Brokeback Mountain, had been pulled from screens at the MegaPlex 17 at Jordan Commons. Management... decided late Thursday afternoon not to open Brokeback Mountain on Friday as scheduled. Word of the decision arrived at... newspapers by e-mail at 5:39 p.m. Thursday, too late for Friday papers that still listed MegaPlex's screening times." Adams has been a resident of the area for only a year, moving from Washington. She tells the reporters "this is the first time I've been slapped in the face with what I believe to be closemindedness... This movie has gotten stellar reviews, and it's already up for boatloads of awards. Not showing this film says bigotry and fear."
Neither theater management nor Jordan Commons' owner, auto magnate and Utah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller, returned calls.... The only official explanation was a typed message posted at the MegaPlex ticket window: "There has been a change in booking and we will not be showing 'Brokeback Mountain.' We apologize for any inconvenience." In a radio interview, "taped Thursday afternoon and aired Friday, Miller said booking a movie like Brokeback Mountain was a business decision. "It's something that I have to let the market speak to some degree," Miller [said]. "I don't think I'm qualified to be the community censor." ... Miller was unaware of the storyline...
"...until [the host] described it to him Thursday, less than two hours before the schedule change was announced." The article then notes without undue comment the two R-rated movies that did open at Mille's Megaplex 17 on Friday: "the marijuana-fueled comedy" Grandma's Boy and sado-porn Hostel.
Posted by pride at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)
January 06, 2006
The New New World
Got a press invite for Terrence Malick's latest cut of The New World, which will be released starting January 20; it'll be 16-20 minutes shorter; the version reviewed earlier, and on (or off) of critics' 2005 year-end lists and up for Oscar consideration, is now described as... the "Academy Version."
Posted by pride at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)
January 05, 2006
We are going to take back the cockpit: teasing Flight 93
Abstracting horror: the teaser trailer for Flight 93. A production interview with director Paul Greengrass is here.
Posted by pride at 06:01 PM | Comments (1)
Tailgator: looking back at Heavy Metal Parking Lot and Jeff Krulik
Brendan Murphy at Ottawa's Hour checks in with Heavy Metal Parking Lot's auteur before a retrospective this week.
"Jeff Krulik is, depending on your level of cinema geekdom, either a doc god whose career you've been following for 20 years, or someone you've never heard of. If you fall into the latter category, you've been missing out. Krulik is still best known for his 1986 cult classic Heavy Metal Parking Lot, an incredibly funny and insightful short documentary about, well, exactly what it sounds like: A bunch of metal fans in the parking lot getting all tuned up before a Judas Priest concert... Krulik approaches his craft from a sympathetic angle that is noticeably removed from today's standard. Unlike the humour in Daily Show interviews or the Michael Moore unrelenting-asshole-doc approach, Krulik doesn't go for the ambush."I do love some ambush humour, I think The Daily Show is great and I'm a big Howard Stern fan, I've just never felt comfortable in that approach. I don't think I'm very good at it. But you know, I'm more of a Candid Camera type guy from the old Allen Funt days... I'm currently working on my sequel to Obsessed With Jews, and I also just started a documentary about an 86-year-old accordion teacher. I'm ploughing through the endless short projects I've got gathering dust on my shelf." Thank God, or Krulik rather, for that. [More at the link, as well as at Krulik's site, where you can order the Parking Lot series as well as find more photos like Krulik's bar mitzvah pic, above.]
Posted by pride at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)
Grisly man: Lionsgate topper on how to make horror bucks
AP has a long take-out on the death of self-referential horror, with this from Lionsgate prexy Tom Ortenberg: " This particular kind of horror movie is alluring because “it’s got touches of realism that audiences today can relate to. We’re never going to outspend the competition in the marketing or production of a movie. Were not going to blow people away with the latest million-dollar special effects. We’re never going to do that better than the studios... What we can do as well or better than the studios, perhaps in retro fashion, is a realistic, gut-level, visceral horror movie that doesn’t rely on special effects, and audiences are responding to that.” ... These movies can be enormously profitable. Saw had a $1 million budget and grossed $55 million-plus; the sequel cost $4 million and grossed nearly $87 million. “Our economic model is much different than the studios... When a Rob Zombie movie like The Devil’s Rejects grosses $17 million, or Eli Roth’s first movie grosses $20 million, that’s very successful for us.”
Posted by pride at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)
The Best Film of the Past Two Years: Rosenbaum's 2005
Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Best Film of the Past Two Years" is the cover story of Friday's Chicago Reader; you can download it as a PDF file here. The Reader's hed: "And 24 more picks from what the industry thought us yokels could handle in 2005." "I'm at the mercy of studio heads, distributors, and publicists," Rosenbaum writes, "whose decisions about what to release and when defy comprehension." Among the villains: DreamWorks for platforming Match Point; Disney, for making encrypted DVDs playable only on Dolby Laboratories' Cinea system; and Cinea, for its player being incapable of reading DVDs encoded for other regions.
The first 11 on his slate: The World, Jia Zhang-ke; Not on the Lips, Alain Resnais; A History of Violence, David Cronenberg; Ten Skies, James Benning; Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul; Howl's Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton; Yes, Sally Potter; Capote, Bennett Miller; Michelangelo Eye to Eye, Michelangelo Antonioni; and Saraband, Ingmar Bergman. Rosenbaum offers a side note on Noah Baumbach's The Squid and The Whale (not on his list), offering that "once the shock of it wore off I didn't find its negativity as clarifying as I would have liked." [Lots more at the download link.]
Posted by pride at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
January 04, 2006
No sex scene in all of movies is more eloquent: Renoir's Day in the Country
In the FT, Alastair Macaulay has keen impressions of Jean Renoir's country manners: "Jean Renoir was the son of the painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir... As he grew up, one of his best friends was Paul Cézanne, the son of that painter. Few directors have had so painterly a sense of light and shade, and in Une partie de campagne the way he recaptures the impressionist sense of light is nothing short of miraculous... Nothing leaves a stronger memory here than the various conjunctions of water, light, and leaves...
"From the first, the camera travels with the characters as if it is in or around their heads. There are breathtaking moments: the view of the visitors (the women on their swings) from inside the inn, and the view of the local voyeurs from outside the window, the close-up of Henriette swinging (it swings with her), the enchanting seduction of Mme Dufour by Rodolphe (who frisks about her like a faun with pan-pipes), the dazzling brightness of the river through the trees as Henri leads Henriette to hear see the nightingale. But when the climax comes, as Henri makes love to Henriette, the camera finds its most marvellous masterstrokes of all. There is a close-up of just half her face, wide-eyed and apprehensive, but cradled in his hand... And then the camera, now as if inside her head, turns to the view of nature, and, for a full minute, shows a series of 13 takes, none of them with a single human being in. The river flowing fast, the trees straining against the wind, the clouds hurtling by and changing shape, rain starting to fall upon the river. And then the camera travels fast with the river: the flow, the rain, and the wind all become exhilarating, upsetting, sensual, imagery of resistance and responsiveness as the most natural and life-changing things in the world. No sex scene in all of movies is more eloquent."
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