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August 30, 2006
Brutal realities: distributing Mutual Appreciation
Promoing indieWIRE's "Undiscovered Gems" series, indieWIRE's Brian Brooks ekes a squeak or two out of Andrew Bujalski, director of the painfully sly, 16mm b&w pic Mutual Appreciation. [indieWIRE opens the Harvard-spawned filmmaker's endeavor starting September 1 at NYC's Cinema Village and LA's Sunset 5 and Pasadena's Playhouse 7 on September 8. What lead [sic] you to filmmaking? 
"I was obsessed with movies as far back as I can remember (Rocky III, Star Trek II, etc), [and] never really considered doing anything else with my life. Wish I could be a musician but lack any apparent talent. Also wish I could be a novelist; same problem. Also painting. Or, I don't know, even dancing. They all sound good to me." Bujalski "studied film as an undergrad at Harvard, which has a tremendous program where you really get an opportunity to 'handmake' films, which doesn't make you particularly employable but does give you delusions of autonomous grandeur, which I've managed to hang onto since... Distribution is a pain in the ass. Most of the people in that business are very friendly and affable and nice to talk to, but the business itself of course is brutal." [For an alternative take on Bujalski's film, sample Becky Ohlsen of Willamette Week: "I wanted to walk right into this movie, like Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo—only with a machine gun. Or maybe a hatchet. Then I'd kill every single character while laughing with glee. The most painful example of gutless, nutless indie-rock awkwardness I've ever seen... drifts aimlessly through the lives of an aspiring musician from Boston, his best friend and his best friend's girl. All three of them are loathesome, inarticulate, self-absorbed, unoriginal, bumbling, insubstantial wastes of skin who can't even make crippling neurosis mildly interesting." [Ms. Ohlsen was attacked with a pie earlier this year by a Portland exhibitor for a relatively innocuous mention of his theater.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
Six Moral Reviews: considering Rohmer
The epochal Criterion edition of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales is under the microscope. First, in Slate, Stephen Metcalf says that he's realized Rohmer's his favorite auteur, 
writing also, "The default state of mankind is bullshitting, or the foisting of our self-deceptions onto others. For Rohmer, film was a uniquely apt way of putting this fact before an audience, though he did so without a tincture of contempt, either for the elaborate evasions themselves, some of which... are quite beautiful, or for the animal need being evaded by all the persiflage. Rohmer, a late bloomer, 
had started out a teacher and a critic, and by the time he ceded his life to making movies, he was well into his 40s. He once described his method this way: "When filming, it's usually: 'Camera,' then 'Clapper,' then 'Action.' I did the opposite. First I said, 'Action!' Then if it was going well I tapped the cameraman and he started filming." He is still a vigorous presence in international film at the age of 86, thanks to a very Rohmerian contradiction: His love of people and ideas has always exceeded any affection he may or may not have for the monomaniacal cult known as "cinema." More: At Senses of Cinema, Tamara Tracz offers a career summary. A selection of brisk thoughts on Rohmer from the likes fo Adrian Martin and Philippa Hawker is here. Click here for the 1978 National Film Theater retrospective brochure. And of course, here's the Criterion page on the boxed set.
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2006
Kazakh to where you once belonged: Borat vs. Nazarbayev
Editor & Publisher notes the intersection of Borat and the Kazakh leader on the Washington Post's front page. The story, writes E&P, "profiles an upcoming visit to this country by the president of Kazakhstan, an accused thief and "autocrat" who, nevertheless, will soon be receiving a warm welcome both at the White House and the Bush compound at Kennebunkport. With this fresh publicity, he may now be the second most famous Kazakh in America, though still trailing far behind Borat Sagdiyev, the comic creation of Sacha Baron Cohen... [N]ormally one might suspect that the Kazakh leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has timed his visit to help boost the movie debut of a favorite son. However, the Kazakh government has blasted Cohen in the past, and threatened legal action, for allowing Borat to, among other things, make fun of his homeland, demean women, slander gypsies and (in a famous song) urge listeners to "Throw the Jew Down the Well." The article notes that Nazarbayev "runs a nation that is anything but free and who has been accused by U.S. prosecutors of pocketing the bulk of $78 million in bribes from an American businessman... Nazarbayev has banned opposition parties, intimidated the press and profited from his post, according to the U.S. government. But he also sits atop massive oil reserves that have helped open doors in Washington." 
Nazarbayev, 66, has led Kazakhstan since 1990." As more than one internet source notes, at least "Nazarbayev's regime does not boil people in oil like that of his neighbour in Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov." [Borat's MySpace profile—MySpace, like Borat distributor Fox, is controlled by Rupert Murdoch—currently lists his hometown as "Kuzcek, 3 mile north of fence to Jewtown"; Here's an unofficial Borat site from a UK obsessive.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 09:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yes Men, we have no housing today: the sequel
Too true to be good: "A prankster posing as a federal housing official took centre stage at a New Orleans event with the city mayor and the governor of Louisiana, controversially promising to throw open closed public housing to thousands of poor former city residents," Reuters reports, via The Scotsman. Oh-oh: are the Yes Men in town? 
Report Peter Henderson and Matt Daily, "The stunt, which the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development called a "cruel hoax," was the latest by an activist group known as "The Yes Men" who have previously masqueraded as World Trade Organisation officials announcing they were disbanding the body. Activist Andy Bichlbaum, pretending to be HUD "Assistant Deputy Secretary Rene Oswin," told hundreds of businesspeople at a forum the agency would reverse policy and reopen housing units now targeted for replacement by mixed-income development. He promised to "fix New Orleans, not just for the benefit of a few but for everyone." The audience applauded the speech and the moderator thanked "Oswin" for the "dramatic announcement." A cruel hoax, indeed. "Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin gave the preceding speeches at The Gulf Reconstruction and Hurricane Preparedness Summit, although neither was on the podium when the bogus official spoke... Later, the group provided barbecued chicken and ribs to contractors at an open public housing development while a brass band belted out New Orleans jazz.... Mike Bonanno, the second "Yes Man," told Reuters the hoax was a bittersweet achievement. "It's helped us to become the people we wish we could be to correct the problems," he said." Here's coverage by The Times-Picayune's invaluable NOLA.com. The documentary The Yes Men does a fair job of showing the pair's brass; their website is here.
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2006
Stoned to deaf: Saddam and South Park?
Via Scotland's DigitalSpy, 
a report that Saddam Hussein has been forced to repeatedly watch his cartoon debut, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. Writes David Cribb. "According to the film's co-creator Matt Stone. The former Iraqi leader is portrayed in the movie as a homosexual who is in a relationship with the devil, and Stone claims the prisoner is being forced to watch it "repeatedly" as he is held by US Marines.... "I have it on pretty good information from the Marines on detail in Iraq that they showed him the movie. That's really adding insult to injury. I bet that made him really happy."
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)
L.A. confidence: Ellroy returns west
On the eve of what may or may not be closure on the eve of The Black Dahlia's release, James Ellroy ruminates at length in LA Times' Sunday supp, West, about his return in a piece filled with his crackling staccato prose, entitled "The Great Right Place." [In a recent interview, he told me this essay is his last venture in self-revelation; it's novels from here on in, and interviews only about the novels.] 
In spring 2002, "I was midway through a three-year crack-up. It was the upshot of long transits of overwork and emotional seepage held in check by near-insane ambition. Brutal sleeplessness and panic attacks. Sobbing jags and weightless plummets... My marriage was burning down. My nerves were shot. My mind ran in obsessive circuits. I was strung out on sedatives, sleeping pills and herbal uppers. I flew and drove around L.A., staring at women. I crashed and tried to slake my king-size sleep deficit. I was afraid that I'd lose my mind..." He had returned to a city "[f]or picaresque grifters, dollar-driven D.A.s, well-hung gigolos, hollow-eyed strumpets, hophead jazz musicians, pervert cops, alcoholic private eyes, sadistic studio heads, laudanum-lapping layabouts, homosexual informants, religious quacks and an uncategorizable array of stupes with indefinable psychopathic mandates and plain inconsolable despair." Ellroy moved on. "Suburban New York. Five more novels in five years. A flowering knowledge of craft. Transference writ large. Long-term dissipation channeled into the work-ethic supreme... I moved from New York to Connecticut to Kansas City. My work habits were megalomaniacal. I guzzled large carafes of coffee and wrote 300-page outlines for my novels. My books were monumental models of construction. My book tours were epic journeys. My friends warned me to slow down. I ignored them." Later, he wrote "My Dark Places." "It was my mother's life, my life, Bill Stoner's. It was all real. It was my best shot at L.A. thusly. It was another media glut. I told my L.A. story 2,000 more times. Every retelling was a notch on forthcoming burnout. The film version of "L.A. Confidential" was released. I told my L.A. story 2,000 more brain-broiling times." ... I was writing the sequel to "American Tabloid." I was burning a warehouse of candles at both ends. I was fully determined to make "The Cold Six Thousand" the single greatest novel ever written and fully convinced that I could accomplish the task... This essay is a travel document and a homecoming brief. It will stand as my final autobiographical statement. The gist is simple: My birthplace made me, I ran away, I ran back... I moved back to L.A. three weeks ago. It's the only place I feel safe. I've got a slick pad near my old prowling turf and an arriviste sports car. I want to live here, I want to work here, I want to end my days here. I want the all-new and wholly familiar stimulation that only L.A. provides. I want to reclaim L.A. with a revitalized and mature imagination." [Photo from the link; Credit: Damon Winter, LAT.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:52 AM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2006
Gathering Woollen: the kindest cuts
Via Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker, the home page of Mark Woollen & Associates, whose recent work as 
trailer cutters include Brick, The Constant Gardener, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Hard Candy, Hollywoodland, Lord of War, March of the Penguins, The Last King of Scotland, A Prairie Home Companion, The Science of Sleep and Syriana, as well as the evocative mini-movie that is the trailer for Todd Field's highly regarded second feature, Little Children. [Frame source.] The end credits of that coming attraction reveal that Leon Vitali, who was Stanley Kubrick's assistant on The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, in which Field acted, is an associate producer; Vitali is also credited with the role of "Oddly Familiar Man," to add to his CV, which includes Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon. [Matt Dentler points out that Woollen directed a doc that debuted at SxSW, Jam.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2006
Indie returns Monday
Technical issues, plus? It's kind of nice out-of-doors.
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2006
Come and See: what another generation saw
In the Telegraph's valuable "Film-makers on film" series, Christopher Smith, the director of a new UK horror film, Severance (which has its North American debut at Toronto), admires Elem Klimov's indispensable war masterpiece Come and See: "We all get scared of nightmares, but then there's the euphoric moment when we wake up. Those up and down emotions are why I grew up loving horror films," the director says. "Smith realises that the "gore-bores" raving about Severance on the internet might be a bit perplexed by his chosen film. Described by J G Ballard as the greatest war movie ever made, Come and See is a harrowing, monumental epic set during the Nazi invasion of Belarus... 
"I haven't seen any of [Klimov's four other films]," Smith says. "He's not part of the canon and he's not known outside Russia like Eisenstein or Tarkovsky. That's why I'm so keen to get people to see this." And for the best part of the following hour, he explains why at high speed. "It's not one of those films where everyone's on their way to a big battle, and it's not about solving a mission... We have no idea where the narrative is flowing, and this free-form structure is how I think war would be. The madness of war is a cliché, but Come and See truly captures it." ... "Klimov also used live ammunition. In one sequence, the boy and girl are skipping through a forest, all in one long take, and real explosives start going off within 20ft of them.... " As a film student, Smith wrote his dissertation on the Holocaust in fiction and says he's obsessed with the Second World War." One scene of Severance "involves a plane being shot out of the sky with a rocket launcher. "I was told by the financiers that it would make the film un-releasable in America. Well, we took Severance to Cannes and the Americans were the ones who were laughing the loudest there and who immediately signed up to buy it."
Posted by Ray Pride at 01:15 AM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2006
Larry Clark's latest Kid: There's no mystery
"Larry Clark is used to his work shocking other people," Stephen Applebaum writes in the Guardian about Impaled, the photographer-director's documentary contribution to Destricted, which auditions teen boys for a hookup with a fortysomething porn star. 
Here's how Clark describes the sexual oddities of his young wannabes: "There's no mystery. You fuck, you pull out, and you come on the girl - that's the way to have sex. It's shocking to me. I had no idea, I swear to God. But it makes sense," he reflects. "If kids see that they think that's the way to do it." Consequently, anal intercourse is also high-up on their sexual desiderata, especially [his star's]. However, accidents will happen, and poor Daniel's fantasy turns into something resembling a porno blooper reel. ... "While Clark's critics frequently accuse him of exploitation, he regards himself as a truth teller. Impaled is art, not pornography, he argues, "because I'm an artist and I made it and it works". [Photo © Leah Missbach Day.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)
Add color, remove smoke: Turner classic moves
Two complaints by one viewer in the Old Smoke have prompted Turner Broadcasting to scour its 1,500-title Hanna-Barbera catalog of images of smoking. Writes Mike Collett-White for Reuters, "The review was triggered by a complaint to British media regulator Ofcom by one viewer who took offence to two episodes of "Tom and Jerry" shown on the Boomerang channel, part of Turner Broadcasting which itself belongs to Time Warner Inc. 
"We are going through the entire catalog," Yinka Akindele, spokeswoman for Turner in Europe said... "This is a voluntary step we've taken in light of the changing times," she said, adding that the painstaking review had been prompted by the Ofcom complaint." The offenses, reports Reuters? In "Texas Tom," the hapless cat Tom tries to impress a feline female by rolling a cigarette, lighting it and smoking it with one hand. In the second, "Tennis Chumps," Tom's opponent in a match smokes a large cigar." ... Akindele said cartoons would only be modified "where smoking could be deemed to be cool or glamorized," and that scenes where a villain was featured with a cigarette or cigar would not necessarily be cut. "These are historic cartoons, they were made well over 50 years ago in a different time and different place... Our audience is children and we don't want to be irresponsible."
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2006
Blood money: Saw III's special affect
From the Land of the Mixed Metaphor: Lionsgate reports their 2005 blood drive saw 10,000 pints donated and want to triple that with the upcoming release of Saw III. And what's up with the highly stylized posters over there? Even if you were to hold some of the product out of the House of SAW in contempt (such as, mmm, Hostel?), the arty posters are a jarring touch o' class. [More posters at the jump, and even more at the link, where details about the blood drive are promised.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2006
Snakes on a Plane (with bacon)
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 17, 2006
All the rage: NP Thompson hates Slate
MediaBistro reprints a blistering e-mail from Seattle freelancer N. P. Thompson to the 
cricket herders at Slate, and manages to work in a plug for one Armond White while at it: "Stephen Metcalf and Dana Stevens are two of the worst writers on the face of the planet. They are dull, incompetent, lifeless, and narcissistic. Nathan Lee and Michael Agger are scarcely less so, although Agger manages a self-effacing blandness that in the context of Slate emits the fumes of a virtue... 
Metcalf, the most brazenly untalented and unsubtle in this quartet of sixteenth-wits, writes like an ape that has just discovered a bone will suffice as a murder weapon... The dyspeptic hipster [Nathan] Lee (who doesn't write so much as he postures) and the doddering Dana Stevens aren't far behind... I did not bother to sully myself with Metcalf's recent revisionist assessment of John Ford's The Searchers, though I glanced at blogger Clive Davis'... reaction to it. But I can (and will) tell you this: smearing or otherwise spraying graffiti on an established classic is the easiest and most obvious kind of hackwork to fob off as criticism... What takes genuine courage on the part of a critic is to swim against the tide of the highly praised swill of the present, and this, I suspect, is a type of courage unknown to Metcalf. Where are the much-needed voices of dissent against such garbage as Lost in Translation, Capote, Sideways, The Squid and the Whale, and the collected works of Miranda July and Clint Eastwood? ... As Slate will sometimes publish a book review or commentary by Armond White or Stanley Crouch, one gathers that toothlessness in a writer isn't always a condition of employment... Meghan O'Rourke gives the impression that living in a Manhattan or Brooklyn neighborhood (preferably Brooklyn, and the more gentrified, the better) is pretty much the lone criterion of worth, and that if one lives outside the bubble, then she isn't going to read what a writer submits, nor will she even consider looking at a writer's clips, and beyond that, neither she nor Bryan Curtis will have the slightest interest in making a new discovery. What we have at Slate are editors hell-bent on preserving the shittiest, shallowest aspects of the status quo by slamming a door on anyone capable of upstaging their friends and neighbors, or their lovers." [No, that's not all. More at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:42 PM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2006
Where is it? When is it? Crispin Hellion Glover tours What Is It?
The auteur tours, the PR tells us: "Veteran actor Crispin Hellion Glover, who has appeared in over 30 films, including RIVER'S EDGE, 
CHARLIE'S ANGELS, THE DOORS, WILLARD, DEAD MAN, BACK TO THE FUTURE, WHAT'S EATING GLIBERT [sic] GRAPE, WILD AT HEART, THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT the upcoming BEOWULF, THE WIZARD OF GORE, and BOB BAILEY'S DISCO BALLS will tour his debut feature film as a director, WHAT IS IT? with an in-person tour... Glover's appearances in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles will include a q & a after the film screening and a presentation of his "Big Slide Show" which features illustration and commentary from eight of his books, followed by a signing of his books RAT CATCHING, OAK MOT, and What it is, and how it is done... Known for creating many memorable, incredibly quirky characters onscreen as an actor, Glover's first effort as a director will not disappoint fans of his offbeat sensibilities and eccentric taste. Featuring a cast largely comprised of actors with Down's Syndrome, the film is not about Down's Syndrome. Glover describes it as "Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home as tormented by an hubristic racist inner psyche." In addition to writing and directing WHAT IS IT?, Glover also appears in the film as an actor in the role of "Dueling Demi-God Auteur and The young man's inner psyche." Fairuza Balk voices one of the snails." Glover also notes that "WHAT IS IT? is part one of a trilogy. Parts two, IT IS FINE EVERYTHING IS FINE...! is currently in post-production. On part two, Glover collaborated with Utah writer-actor Steven C. Stewart, who also appears in WHAT IS IT? Stewart passed away from complications from cerebral palsy in 2001." [The schedule appears below.]
October 20, 21, 22: Castro Theater, San Francisco
November 3, 4, 5: Northwest, Film Forum, Seattle
November 10, 11,12: Anthology Film Archives, New York
November 17, 18 ,19: Music Box Theater, Chicago
December 8, 9, 10: Egyptian Theatre at the American Cinematheque, Hollywood
Posted by Ray Pride at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2006
MyFoxBoratSpace: A very big chocolate cake, I also like to start fires
That crazy Kazakh, Borat, canny conniver that he is, seeks friends and playmates on MySpace: "My hobbies: trampoline, table tennis, sitting on comfytobale chairs, disco dance and shoot dog. I also like look on picture of America things example swimmingpools. I like sex. I also like to speak on telephone - I have make over eighty conversation calls. One day I would like to eat a very big chocolate cake... with a toffee, and have my name 'Borat' made with 'toffee'. I also like to start fires. Interests: Music, I like very much Korki Buchek, and bald homosexual Elton John... Movies: My favourites movies is 'Pluto Nash'. 'Robot cop'. 'Womanman Doubtfire', 'Little Lord Fontelroy', 'Almaty Summer' starring Viktor Hotelier [he my goodfriend ladies!], and of course, Transsibirskiy Ekspress. Also 'The Bridges of Madison County' 'Titanic'. 'Geraid Mcguire'. 'Robinhood Prince of Thieves'. I also like watch porno." [Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan opens November 3.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:35 PM | Comments (0)
Spoiler alert: MPAA divulges Number Two
Quoth the MPAA: Jackass: Number Two is rated "R for extremely crude and dangerous stunts throughout, sexual content, nudity and language." Once more: giving it all away and having a gay old time doing. Quicktime trailer here.
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2006
I coulda been a constrictor: Sam Jackson high on Snakes' low
"There are some movies that deserve criticism," Samuel L. Jackson tells the junketeers for Snakes on a Plane, as transcribed by LA Daily News' Bob Strauss (who implies he hasn't seen the film). "They want people to know that it's a great dramatic accomplishment and has some great performances in it. But, c'mon. Yes, you will have some fun if you go see Snakes on a Plane. Snakes are biting people—and they're biting them right on screen. There's nothing to review. It's not 'Snakes on the Waterfront.' You don't have snakes going, 'I coulda been a constrictor.' No. Hell no. It's Snakes on a Plane.'" [SOAP got 14,500,000 Google hits as of this posting; image from Snakes on a Blog, the many links from which include "Snakes on Clare Danes." ]
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Two faces of Criterion: a burst of merch
Portable goodies to go along with your film school in a box: Launching the Criterion Collection Store, Along with t-shirts bearing their new, minimalist logo, the prestige DVD producers are offering a second choice to splash across your chest, the nostalgic yet still evocative logo of the Janus Collection. The Four Hundred Blows and Wild Strawberries wore it, wouldn't you?
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 12, 2006
Quote horrors: Pulse is Dittman's bestest ever!!
Quote inflation is the march! In an ad on page E2 of the LA Times' Saturday edition, Mr. Earl Dittman of Wireless magazine says that Pulse is the "SCARIEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR! Unlike any horror film you've seen before or will ever see!" I'm not sure if the second line means you "will ever see" the Wes Craven-shepherded Weinsteinco-Dimension remake of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 original or not. Pulse was not previewed for crickets, but here's a look at the next step in quote inflation: taking language from the boilerplate of Hollywood contracts. "The scariest movie ever seen in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed or devised throughout the universe in perpetuity!"
Posted by Ray Pride at 06:52 PM | Comments (1)
August 09, 2006
To sleep, perchance to Meem: Michel Gondry v-logs
Primping for his Science of Sleep, writer-director Michel Gondry is teaming with new website Meem, to circulate videos about dreams—his own and those of whomever wants to contribute. [The frames are from Car Plane Pharmacy Dream.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)
Stone unturned: Oliver S. on WTC
A few words about iconography and how historical events are best observed once they're over in my interview with Oliver Stone over at MCN. We talked a few weeks before World Trade Center's decidedly diverse opening day reviews. Why such a confined story following just a few characters? "[T]here was a script and once I came aboard, I, I, promised and delivered that I would shoot the parameters of this script. We would try to improve things inside the script, but this was the script. It was twenty-four hours, and the script was written. The style of the film was a subjective style, we would follow these five people. So we’re inside, John [McLoughlin] and Will [Jimeno]. Neither John or Will saw the planes hit, ergo Will felt a brief shadow on the wall at 42nd Street there [in an early scene in the movie]. You have to follow those [events]. They saw the buildings fall from within and the wives only saw the television [coverage], and presumably saw the building fall, and I wanted to explain what the fall inside looked like from the outside. It wasn’t necessary to show the plane, which is an incredible shot, true, but it’s like the Zapruder film, y’know, it just wasn’t necessary, to the, we know, it’s said repeatedly that the plane has struck the building." [More at the link, of course.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:35 PM | Comments (0)
Look at me, I'm a disaster!: Gilliam tips Tideland
"For good measure, Tideland also includes a bedroom scene between a 20-year-old man with learning difficulties and a little girl," writes Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian; a rotting corpse that makes one relieved the film doesn't come in smell-o-vision; a harrowing train crash; the disturbing sequence in which a troubled taxidermist... guts and stuffs the corpse of a former lover and then lays out the mummified remains in a place of honour on the bed. There is even a talking squirrel, which for some is the most disturbing thing... 
Like Lewis Carroll's ["Alice in Wonderland], it features a little girl plummeting through a rabbit hole into an intensely imagined fantasy world; like Hitchcock's film, it includes footage of a bewigged parental corpse in a chair (an image that Gilliam lingers over longer than Hitchcock would have dared)..." But "Gilliam [insists] that this is the most tender film he has ever made... How on earth did Gilliam get money for this project, particularly given that his last but one project... so far has only had one cinematic result - a documentary about how the filming went, in cinematic parlance, catastrophically tits up? And, furthermore, that the Minnesotan has such a wild reputation that Warner Bros nixed him as JK Rowling's first choice to direct Harry Potter...? "Good question," he laughs as we sit in his Notting Hill production office. Gilliam, with all due respect, looks a wreck. There are blood stains on his shirt, one of his feet is bandaged and his writing hand is still strapped up following a gardening accident in which he cut through a tendon while changing a lawnmower blade. "Look at me, I'm a disaster!" If you were a producer you would give Gilliam not money for a film, but the price of a cup of tea... 
Gilliam decided to make the film after finding Mitch [the] novel lying on a pile of unread books... "Mitch had sent it to me asking for a quote. I happened to pick it up and read it straight off. My quote? You wanna know? 'Fucking brilliant!' (In fact it says just this on the back of the the film tie-in edition...). What did you like about it? "It portrays childhood innocence in a recognisable way. Not in a Hollywood way." So she's not crushed by the twin traumas of her parents' deaths...? "That's the point. Adults don't understand children. They think of them exclusively as things that need to be protected from everything. My 12-year-old son is now afraid to go to the shops in Highgate... because he's raised by TV to believe it's filled with rapists, murderers and muggers. It isn't. Hunter Thompson described America as a panicky ship. Today everywhere is a panicky ship. If Lewis Carroll and Baden Powell were around today they would be strung up." [More, of course, at the link; Gilliam talks to Tideland novelist Mitch Cullin in this MP3 download.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 08, 2006
Corn porn: Soderbergh allows
"What sort of porn are you watching?" Scott Indrisek asks Steven Soderbergh over at the Believer, in a lengthy, offbeat chat from the print edition, in its entirety. (They also made a short film together as part of the deal.) "I’m not interested in the well-produced porn with good lighting. That ruins it," Soderbergh says. "Maybe there are people for whom that takes the onus off. I like the amateur stuff. It’s fascinating—as much of it as there is around, in our culture at least, it’s still so powerful. The portrayal of these acts, the documentation of these acts—people are sort
of numb to watching violence, but sexual activity is still as strong as it ever was in terms of generating response... You wish people wouldn’t become so numb to violence. Everybody has sex, but not everybody is experiencing violence. I feel like porn is such a better marker…" And about taking a chance as an artist: "[Y]ou’re going to make some mistakes. Every time you make something that somebody likes, your impulse is to remind them that if you hadn’t made some of these other things that they hated, you wouldn’t have been able to make the thing that they liked. The attitude toward the stuff they don’t like is so extreme because they don’t understand the role that it has in your development."
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)
Indie returns later today
Uploading and other issues....
Posted by Ray Pride at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)
August 07, 2006
Awake in the Dark: How's Roger doing?
At Roger Ebert's site, his wife Chaz offers an update: "We have been getting many requests asking for an update on Roger's health... Roger was making good progress and was ready to go to his next phase of treatment, which would have been physical therapy to regain his strength.... [Sunday] night Roger had minor surgery... The doctors remain optimistic about his recovery, however, and say that the physical therapy will be delayed for only a few days... [I]f you had seen him last week, even yesterday, when he was doing so well. We were secretly back to using his computer. He wanted to surprise everyone with messages... 
I know it sounds corny to some, but please keep visualizing him enveloped by warm, bright, healing light! That, along with Roger's medical dream team, should ensure his full recovery." More at the link; his new book, "Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert" is due in November from U of Chicago Press, which blurbs thusly: "Roger Ebert has been writing film reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times for nearly forty years... [H]is wide knowledge, keen judgment, prodigious energy, and sharp sense of humor have made him America’s most celebrated film critic.... No critic alive has reviewed more movies than Roger Ebert, and yet his essential writings have never been collected in a single volume—until now. With 'Awake in the Dark,' both fans and film buffs can finally bask in the best of Ebert’s work. The reviews, interviews, and essays collected here... span some of the most exceptional periods in film history... If Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris were godmother and godfather to the movie generation, then Ebert is its voice from within—a writer whose exceptional intelligence and daily bursts of insight and enthusiasm have shaped the way we think about the movies."
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)
There's something about Mary and Mel: three fingers are pointing back at you
First Patrick Swayze, and now Chicago Sun-Times Commentary page sob sister and speeding advocate Mary Laney types a column demanding that we accept Mel Gibson's apologies for his racist outburst, rather than dangerous drunk driving and re-examine our own lives as well. The column's riveting banality and sudden swerve into Irish history are almost as comical asher own 2004 vehicular dustup in the state of Wisconsin. First, Mary on Mel: "What is it with kicking someone when they're down? Why do so many people want to jump on the bandwagon of wagging their fingers? ... 
Last week Gibson apparently went off the wagon, drank too much, was pulled over by police and let loose with a string of prejudicial comments against Jews. Remember, he was drunk. I've heard people when they're drunk say all sorts of things... There is little truth that comes out of a drunk... [I]t was wrong to say what Gibson said, including the alleged sexual insult he made to a female officer, but he has apologized sincerely, said the words do not reflect what he truly feels, and has asked for help to overcome any demons he may have inside... Were these people just waiting for a chance to get at him? ... Was it because he undertook a Christian movie,The Passion of the Christ—that no studios would back—and turned it into a huge success? Does it feel good to kick a famous person and feel famous just by doing so? ... We all have to forgive people at some times in our lives. If we don't, we just carry anger around with us and the only person that anger hurts is ourselves. There's an old saying that when you point your finger at someone, three of your other fingers are pointing back at yourself." Bizarrely, Laney then gets angry on behalf of the Irish. "You may be guilty of [prejudice] as well. Oh, you doubt it? You say you've never said anything prejudicial in your life? Ask yourself this: What do you call the large police vehicle that hauls away multiple people police arrest? Do you call it a squadrol? Or do you call it a paddy wagon? If you are among those who call it a paddy wagon, you are guilty of using a very prejudicial term." A mini-history of Chicago's Irish immigrants follows, with this conclusion: "This is far more than many others who have besmirched an ethnic group have done. Take him at his word. While you're at it, examine your own words, thoughts and deeds. This could lead to a new and better world." Kumbayah, Sister! Let's blame it on others and omit the salient fact that HE WAS DRIVING DRUNK AT HIGH SPEED. 
As for Laney's speeding rap in Wisconsin, here's Journal Times' columnist Rob Golub [link above] on Laney's own sense of entitlement behind the wheel: There's "an Illinois columnist who complains that Illinois drivers are treated unfairly in Wisconsin... Chicago Sun-Times Columnist Mary Laney also complained in her column... that when she was allegedly racing down Interstate 94 and got pulled over, she was unfairly frisked and hauled off in a squad car." The "speedy Chicago Sun-Times columnist" is quoted by Golub: "Take this as fair warning: If you're planning on driving north to Wisconsin on Interstate 94 and your car bears Illinois plates... be prepared to be pulled over, fined and, even if you have a clean driving record and legitimate driver's license, have your car towed and be taken into custody. It happened to me." ... "I was over the limit," she writes. "But so, too, were the cars right in front of me." "Ah, the mob mentality," wrote Golub. "That's always a good defense... Deputies are required to frisk anybody they put in their cars, to protect deputies from harm, said Sheriff Robert D. Carlson. The deputy on the scene explained this to Laney. She writes, "So, as cars slowed down to watch, I submitted to the frisk and the humiliation." Do Wisconsin authorities target Illinoisans? "Absolutely not," he said. "We are targeting people operating their vehicles illegally as this woman was by her own admission." ... Deputies say Laney was doing 83 mph in a 65 mph zone when she got busted on April 24, the incident that led to her column. She faces a $230 fine. And for her to write that she has a clean driving record is arguably, well, a fib. It was not the first time this particular Illinois resident got clipped by cops in Wisconsin. According to records kept by the Wisconsin Court System... she's twice paid fines for speeding on a freeway in Wisconsin since 1999."
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2006
Meeting Manoj, dissing Chris: Bamberger says I felt a powerful force coming off the guy
I’m not quite halfway through the horror show of “The Man Who Heard Voices,” Michael Bamberger’s 
mash note to his man Manoj Shyamalan and his illumination of destiny for all mankind (or at least for Narfs who must return to the Blue World beneath the earth but are rescued by eagles who soar into the sky with them). But I had to pause for his “Enter, chased by a beer,” for cinematographer Chris Doyle, which suggests that the author does not care for the man. (Doyle anecdotes are pretty much the only reason I want to finish reading this haggard hagiography.)“He asked Paula to get him a cup of coffee with “this much” whiskey, holding his bony thumb and index finger about an inch apart… Doyle was wearing a faded green short-sleeved turtleneck (Who knew that turtlenecks came in short sleeves?) His arms were hairless and tanned. For shoes, he wore bizarre zipper contraptions, thick green rubber pads that might have served as loafers for moon dwellers, unzipped so they flapped around his heels when he walked. His black goggle-style glasses—chic in Soho and few other places—hung around his neck on a black cord. No jewelry. He was just a slip of a man, not much bigger than a jockey, with a weathered face. He looked like Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, all weathered. He wore his hair in the Lyle Lovett manner, an abrupt updo shaved nearly to his scalp on the sides, then puffy and curly on the top.” Contrast with the writer’s introduction to Shyamalan: “And then there was Night, with his drooping earlobes, bug’s-life eyes, curling lips, nasal voice. He was slender and boyish, with gym-built arms and jet-black hair that had a few silver strands hanging just over the tops of his ears. He was wearing high-fashion jeans and a short-sleeved, post-nerd untucked plaid shirt, wide open at the neck… He was warm, friendly, interesting—amazingly energetic. He laughed readily, as if you were saying funny things… I go down the New Age road skeptically, but I felt a powerful force coming off the guy.” Pop quiz: whose company does Bamberger prefer?
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 03, 2006
My Blueberry friend: blogs stalk Wong
The Reeler serves notice on indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez that he who stalks last stalks best as he links to 
Hernandez, who sighted Wong Kar-Wai near NY's Chinatown as the HK director shoots My Blueberry Nights [at both links]. Writes Hernandez, "After midnight, I observed for a bit and then snapped a quick pic from across the street as WKW leaned up against a doorway to plan a shot inside a bakery." Reeler unspools, "[D]rop back by here over the next few days to see if The Reeler's own eventual WKW stalking expedition yields any berries of its own." It's Wong's first English-language feature, shot by Darius Khondji and starring, among others, Norah Jones, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman. A 2007 release is mooted, so expect it in the closing hours of Cannes 2009.
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:46 PM | Comments (0)
Spoiler alert: MPAA divulges Snakes tricks
No press screenings planned, but the charmers at New Line offer this brief press release: “Snakes on a Plane has received an “R” rating from the M.P.A.A. for “language, a scene of sexuality and drug use, and intense sequences of terror and violence.”
Posted by Ray Pride at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
Severe clear: the fiction and fact of 9/11
Nearing the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, all manner of fact is being released alongside the fiction of United 93 and World Trade Center, which attempt, in different ways, to portray confined bits of the confusion, emotion and heroism prompted around the world by the events of that day. 
Slate recently republished a September 10, 2002 account of the survivors pulled from the World Trade Center by "60 Minutes II" associate producer Rebecca Liss, which appears to be primary research for several events involving the rescue role of Marine Dave Karnes as portrayed in the third act of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. The Federal Court in Alexandria, Virginia, which convicted conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, have made 1,202 exhibits from the trial available online; a summary by the Washington Post's Jerry Markon is here, including the observation, "The explanations that accompany them are almost clinical at times, including "photograph taken on September 11, 2001, of a human body part located at the intersection of Albany and West Streets in Manhattan." 
Michael Bronner, who was an associate producer on United 93 has written a story for Vanity Fair drawn from thirty hours of NORAD recordings of the events of that morning, and suggests that the audio demonstrates misrepresentations of the day's events by various arms of the military and government.. [This is the story that some early pundits seem to be expecting from Oliver Stone, rather than the earnest, heartfelt film he's actually made from Andrea Berloff's script.] "The recordings are fascinating and chilling," Bronner writes, "A mix of staccato bursts of military code; urgent, overlapping voices; the tense crackle of radio traffic from fighter pilots in the air; commanders' orders piercing through a mounting din; and candid moments of emotion as the breadth of the attacks becomes clearer." Unlike the magazine article, the linked online version accompanies most of its transcriptions with the compelling actual recordings, such as
9:40:57
ROUNTREE: Delta 89, that's the hijack. They think it's possible hijack.
DOOLEY: Fuck!
ROUNTREE: South of Cleveland. We have a code on him now.
DOOLEY: Good. Pick it up! Find it!
MALE TECH: Delta what?
ROUNTREE: Eight nine—a Boeing 767.
DOOLEY: Fuck, another one—
"In his bunker under the White House," Bronner writes, "Vice President Cheney was not notified about United 93 until 10:02—only one minute before the airliner impacted the ground. Yet it was with dark bravado that the vice president and others in the Bush administration would later recount sober deliberations about the prospect of shooting down United 93... Cheney echoed, "The significance of saying to a pilot that you are authorized to shoot down a plane full of Americans is, a, you know, it's an order that had never been given before." And it wasn't on 9/11, either." [The first photo is of actor Michael Peña alongside the man he plays, Will Jimeno, and Nicolas Cage with John McLoughlin; the third still is from United 93.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 08:14 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
August 02, 2006
Making the GreenCine: where do crickets come from?
Before Daily GreenCine majordomo David Hudson took his family off for summer vac, he asked questions of a number of online acquaintances, and he was kind enough to 
include me in his "Summertime Questions". "I'm very glad I asked him: 'If you hadn't become a film critic, what might have happened instead?'" Here's how the piece starts: "I grew up on a couple-acre patch of green amid rolling farmland in the west of Kentucky - I spent 18 years there one week, the tired joke goes - and didn't grow up with movies. I grew up among people. People who talked. And talked. Stories were everywhere. Histories were spoken aloud. Women and men in their eighties and nineties who had sat on the lap of Civil War veterans when they were small..." [More at the link; the cow's name is Milky.]
Posted by Ray Pride at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)
A cricket recants, ignites Roberto Benigni
The Guardian surveys to see if any crickets want to take back an old song, and here's what The Independent's Anthony Quinn thinks about Life is Beautiful today: "It's an occupational hazard to overrate movies. There's so little of merit that when a half-decent film comes along the surprise of it tempts a critic into excessive praise. But the only review I would amend is of Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful. I generally deplored its Chaplineseque sentimentality, but in conclusion gave him the benefit of the doubt and acclaimed his "exuberant humanity and foolhardy courage". How wrong can you get? When I read David Denby's incandescent review of it in The New Yorker I felt ashamed of my fence-sitting. So, for the record, it stinks - and I wish I'd said so."
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)
Touching the doc: Kevin Macdonald on interviewing
One Day in September and Touching the Voice director Kevin Macdonald talks to the Times of London about what makes great documentaries: "[T]here are often things that are provided by chance, gifts from the heavens. It’s about hovering between imposing your vision and accepting what you’re given... There are interviewers who arrive with every question laid out, and those who just let the person talk. I’m the second type: I prefer people to reveal their character through talking about what they choose to talk about. I see the interview process as like psychoanalysis, and the camera is the catalyst to get them to say things they wouldn’t otherwise [say]."
Posted by Ray Pride at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)
Looking to borrow a cup of Wifi
Almost one hundred degrees in Chicago again and no breeze. The power's been off on my block for twelve hours, and of three internet cafes, one lacks air conditioning and WiFi and two others are closed. So Indie's going for ice cream...
Posted by Ray Pride at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)