The Reeler

« March 2006 | Main | May 2006 »

April 30, 2006

Let's Take This Outside: The Reeler Crashes Tropfest@Tribeca

In keeping with the robust sense of community that the Tribeca Film Festival has established this week in New York, I pretty much invited myself to Friday night's Tropfest@Tribeca reception at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. And sure--I admit to being a little cynical about Tropfest when it was announced last fall. But the fact of the matter is that the short film program--adapted from the wildly popular Australian series of the same name--was easily one of the festival's best events so far.

The lights go down on the Tribeca's outdoor screening venue on the Hudson (Photos: STV)

More than 5,000 people attended Friday's free outdoor screening at the World Financial Center, where the films were well-made and as long as you brought a blanket, the riverside atmosphere was hard to beat. The Daily Show's Ed Helms hosted (prompting a quiet chorus of, "He's so much funnier on TV" among the crowd), while celebrity judges including Naomi Watts, Matt Dillon, Darren Aronofsky and Famke Janssen (whom I am proud to have recognized this time around) handed out the first-place hardware to Matthew Bonifacio's drama The Watering Hole.

The judges met up at the Tribeca Grand reception beforehand, joined by Watts's boyfriend Liev Schreiber (below), Melvin Van Peebles and Tropfest founder John Polson, who started the festival in 1993 when he needed a means of exhibiting his own short film. He has since established himself in Hollywood (he directed Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro in Hide and Seek); moreover, he has parlayed the event's success into an Australian cultural touchstone--in 2006, upwards of 150,000 people attended Tropfest screenings in six cities around the country.

"There's a lot of talent out there that we don't know about," Polson told me. "Just a lot of people with a lot of ideas and a lot of raw talent. And the great thing about Tropfest in Australia--and I hope here--is that it's a level playing field. You can spend $50 on your movie or $150,000. It really doesn't matter to us. It's not going to get in or not get in based on that. It's really about, 'How good is your idea?' and, 'How well did you execute it?' We've got a lot of examples of films that cost $500 winning and people going on and getting careers out of it. It's really a backlash, I suppose, in some ways, against film schools and institutions. It's a way of saying: Look, sure those those places have a place, but sometimes breaking the rules is a good thing, too. And sometimes coming from a lot of backgrounds or taking a different route to being a filmmaker can be a great thing."

I asked Watts and fellow Aussie actress Gia Carides about their own experiences with Tropfest. "Gia was at the very first one, weren't you?'

"Yeah, I was," Carides said. "I was a judge."

"It was at a little café in Sydney called the Tropicana," Watts continued, "where we would all frequently go for our coffees and focaccias. John Polson made a short film, and how many others were there?"

"Half a dozen, maybe?" Carides said.

"About half a dozen of his mates," Watts said. "He had friends and locals; he said, 'Let's all make a short film.' And so they had a coffee shop that was less than a third of the size of this room. He had the first one and everyone loved it. And it was in the spirit of, 'Let's share our work.' A couple of hundred people attended at this tiny café in a groovy, sort of hip part of Sydney." Watts paused, then slumped a bit. "I didn't see that one; in fact, I'm embarrassed to say that this is my first Tropfest ever.

"Are you serious?" Carides asked, stunned.

Watts shrugged. "I'm serious!"

I would have told Watts to join the crowd, but 30 minutes later, she did. And hopefully there are more where this one came from.

For a little more... conventional Tropfest coverage, check out my other recap over on The Huffington Post.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 01:56 PM | TrackBack

Heartbreaking News From Seitz's House Next Door

This is sad, stunning news that I heard Friday but have not had a chance to note or even try get my head around until now: Local critic and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz's wife Jennifer Dawson passed away suddenly April 28. She was 35. Alan Sepinwall has more information on Seitz's blog The House Next Door.

Words always fail me in the face of this kind of tragedy, but my deepest condolences go to Matt and his children Hannah and James. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

(Photo of Jennifer Dawson and Matt Zoller Seitz: Brooklyn Schoolyard)

Posted by stvanairsdale at 11:56 AM | TrackBack

April 28, 2006

Deal Day in NYC: Tribeca Sells its First; Universal Goes Gray

Wow, that was fast: The first sale of Peter Scarlet's "retail, not wholesale" Tribeca Film Festival went down Thursday, with Strand Releasing picking up the French drama Backstage (right). The film, which premiered Wednesday, looks at the intersecting lives of a pop star (Emmanuelle Seigner) and an obsessive young fan (Islid Le Besco). "We loved the performances of the two lead actresses," said Strand co-president Marcus Hu in an e-mail to The Reeler. "The film deals with the obsessive relationship the public has with celebrity culture and Backstage is a perfect film to address that." Hu added that Strand plans on a fall release.

And I guess it also bears mentioning that Universal handed over the cash this week for the distribution rights to James Gray's still-in-production We Own the Night. As noted here a while back, former Gray players Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix reteamed with the director for the story of New York cops who are forced to defend themselves and their families against the Russian mob. The distribution deal also reunites Gray with Universal production president Jon Gordon, who worked with the filmmaker on his last Wahlberg/Phoenix collaboration, The Yards. The world just gets smaller and smaller, doesn't it?

Posted by stvanairsdale at 12:23 PM | TrackBack

Post Gossips Spend Fun, Fact-Filled Day at the Movies

The Post's gossip apparatus is all about New York cinema today, with Liz Smith leading the way with hottttt casting updates from the streets. Evidently Samantha Morton is out as Pride and Glory's Abby Tierney; the Colin Farrell-Nick Nolte cop vehicle will instead welcome "the beautiful daughter of stage legend Rosemary Harris - Jennifer Ehle. You may remember her from 1999's Sunshine." Or... not. Smith also reports that Robert Duvall will replace Christopher Walken in We Own the Night, which may have been true, like, four months ago--before Duvall, Joaquin Phoenix and Eva Mendes were locked into James Gray's police-vs-Russian mob drama. Maybe if Smith went out more she would have a better read on these things.

You know, like her colleague Cindy Adams, whose first-rate reporting and masterful incomplete sentences reveal the "news" that film production in the city is soaring:

Hugh Grant sings and dances in Music and Lyrics By, the thing he's making with Drew Barrymore and the guy who played Ray Romano's brother in the series. ... So, with more trailers around than there are Starbucks, any locals complaining? You bet your MetroCard. Those who are inconvenienced. Can't reach certain streets, can't use favorite parking spots. But, they're told, the city in general benefits. People use their delis, workers get employed. Etc., etc., and yadda yadda. And then there's those who are sniffing about Mission: Impossible III anchoring this downtowny New Yorky film festival when not one foot, not one frame, was shot uptown, crosstown or anywhere in this town.

There, there, Cindy, no need to get sniffy. After all, she did have the privilege of attending Vanity Fair's annual Tribeca Film Festival party, from which Page Six scored what were probably the only real scoops of the night:

Pretty blond former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson was the star attraction at Wednesday night's Vanity Fair party for the Tribeca Film Festival in the State Supreme Court Building on Centre Street. Just a few hours earlier, Karl Rove (who is derisively referred to as President Bush's brain) testified in Washington before a grand jury investigating how she was "outed" as a CIA agent in 2003. ... Also there was Mickey Rourke, who's looking forward to making a movie that will be directed jointly by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. One will helm the first half, the other the second half.

Stop the presses! Mickey Rourke? A Tarantino-Rodriguez collaboration? Do tell!

Oh, wait.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 11:14 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

'Stadium Story' Survives Bumpy, Brilliant Ride on West Side

I know I have been a little scarce around these parts; the day the subway offers wi-fi will be the day my productivity soars while theater-hopping around Manhattan. That said, I thought I'd refer you back over to The Huffington Post, where I've documented A Stadium Story's Tribeca premiere (at the AMC Theaters on 34th Street, natch) in all of its loud, turbulent glory.

To wit:

Viewers applauded anti-stadium leader John Raskin's first appearance and hissed at the introduction of deputy mayor and pro-stadium godhead Dan Doctoroff. Union boss (Jim) Mahoney greeted at least one of Raskin's allegations -- that union protestors were paid to lobby Albany the day of the deciding vote -- with a throaty cry of "Bullshit!"

Consider this link your jump to the rest of the piece.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 09:25 AM | TrackBack

The Doc is In As Tribeca Heads Into First Weekend

Two full days into the Tribeca Film Festival, my gut instinct (and the word on the street) tells me that this year's documentaries are going to outrank their narrative peers by at least a couple of weight classes. I have yet to even check out buzz-hoarding titles like The Bridge and The War Tapes, but when I find myself recommending docs on something like a four-to-zero basis, my bad knee says that is a sign.

Jonestown director Stanley Nelson at his film's April 26 premiere (Photo: STV)

But most people seem to agree it is a good sign. "This festival, I gotta say, this thing has come of age," said director Marc Levin, whose own docs have earned festival accolades for years and who sits on a decidedly formidable International Documentary Competition jury. "It's fantastic that documentaries have risen to a place at major festivals where they are a major focus of discussion, and people want to be involved in it. It's great that they have such a high-powered jury. I've certainly looked at the list of films; I thought United 93 would be, 'OK, if I can survive that…' But I looked at the list and there's Jonestown and The Bridge--there's some amazing stuff."

Indeed. In the meantime, NY, NY Documentary Competition juror (and esteemed New York Magazine film critic) David Edelstein sends word that the one doc he's seen so far--Kristi Jacobson's Toots--is delightful. "It's all a wondrous new adventure to me," he said this morning in an e-mail to The Reeler. "I look forward to arm-wrestling Rosie Perez in the jury room, though." And while I have made my case previously for both American Cannibal: The Road to Reality and A Stadium Story, here are a few more winners from The Reeler's preliminary Tribeca documentary survey:

--Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple: Unapologetically direct in its retelling of the suicide/massacre that claimed more than 900 lives, Stanley Nelson's documentary explores more than just the unqualified psychosis we have seen in God knows how many A&E chronicles of Jim Jones's religious sect--it illuminates the vulnerability that sank Jones and all of his followers. Nelson exquisitely intercuts survivor interviews with stock photo and video footage of the dead, reconstructing a human tragedy whose scale, devastation and avoidability has no contemporary analogue. Anyone with a heart should bring Kleenex.

--Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos: Is it too long? Absolutely. Does it shove soccer's global appeal down American throats? Perhaps. But directors Paul Crowder and John Dower also adore their subject, the professional soccer franchise that emerged from the imaginations of New York media titans like Steve Ross and Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun to become the talk of a tortured town in 1977. The anecdotes run from hardscrabble goalkeepers posing nude to Cosmos star Pele mistaking the green spray paint on Downey Stadium's field for a fungus when it showed up on his feet. "You know this is going to be like Rashomon, don't you?" a former Cosmos executive warns the filmmakers. Of course we do, and we should be grateful Crowder and Dower have the acuity to put all the contradictions into such entertaining focus.

--Tell Me Do You Miss Me: You could argue that Matthew Buzzell's you-are-there chronicle of Luna's 2004-05 farewell tour will probably boast little appeal beyond the band's fan base. And to some degree, you are probably right; Tell Me's best moments revolve around the 12-year-old Luna's history of underappreciation and every artist's implicit dread of dying with a whimper. But Tell Me also exposes the agony and ecstasy of touring, where for every hour-long show one faces grueling travel, lousy pay, cynical critics, intra-band squabbles and other challenges to longevity. Luna's leader, Dean Wareham (right), acknowledges that the problems posed by the rock life are not the worst you can have, but that they can only be endured for so long. Tell Me examines that tipping point in a sober, scultpted spotlight befitting its moody subject.

Then there is the second tier: Saint of 9/11, which tells the story of NYFD chaplain Mychal Judge, who perished during the rescue effort at the World Trade Center on 9/11; The Cats of Mirikitani, which tells the powefrul (if meandering) story of homeless artist-turned-civil rights symbol; and Once Upon a Time in Marrakech, the chronicle of Hunter College film students joining a Marrakech Film Festival master class with Abbos Kiarostami and Martin Scorsese. In all honesty, the latter film is probably only half-watchable; the Kiarostami short that precedes it plays like an almost laughable, interminable screensaver-meets-soliloquy, full of lukewarm bromides like: "The road is the expression of the man's journey in search of provisions. … Whoever neglects his pack animal wil never reach his journey's end." But then you get to the master class, where Kiarostami and Scorsese do supply about a half-hour of introspection that will have cinephiles mouthbreathing in minutes. Added bonus: Look for an appearance by Man Push Cart auteur Ramin Bahrani, who scored the plum gig translating Kiarostami for the Americans. I always knew that guy would make it someday.

(Wareham photo: Franck Dewannieux)

Posted by stvanairsdale at 08:40 AM | TrackBack

April 27, 2006

'American Cannibal' Claims Premiere Audience in East Village

More than a handful of this year's Tribeca selections have evoked that most puerile of criticisms in me: the one that shakes my head and insists to myself and anyone who will listen, "Jesus Christ--I can make a better movie than that." And then there are the few exceptional films that I not only enjoy but also ruminate on for hours or days afterward, thinking, "Jesus Christ--not only can I not make a better movie than that, but I should fucking distribute that film."

The inner distributor in me is particularly excited about the documentary American Cannibal: The Road to Reality, which premiered to an enthusiastic New York crowd yesterday at the AMC Village. Local directors Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro (above) spent more than two years taping the professional lives of Gil Ripley and Dave Roberts, a writing team whose fruitless story pitches find a more receptive audience with Kevin Blatt, the C-list pornographer responsible for the Paris Hilton sex tape. Insistent on developing a reality TV show, the trio's working relationship challenges Ripley and Roberts's personal standards while tempting them with the overdue payday they both need.

Blatt latches on to Ripley's joking suggestion for a series entitled American Cannibal, a show that would plunk starving contestants on a desert island to determine the lengths they would go to survive. When Black bankrolls the show, Ripley and Roberts sign on against their better judgment. They assume increasing responsibility for their unwanted child, clash with production heads and all but smoulder with resentment as the reality parade approaches its nadir on a rocky beach fringing Puerto Rico.

Grebin and Nigro's triumph stems from their assiduous, unswerving filming regimen; while American Cannibal started out as an industrial project aimed at helping film students learn to pitch stories, it became a bruising reality exercise of its own as it narrowed its focus to a writing team wracked evenly with ambition and crisis.

"People were not pitching the way they normally pitch," Grebin told the audience during Wednesday's Q&A They weren't coming in with sitcoms and dramas. Everything had switched to reality."

"There were two writers who emerged from the group who were a little more interesting than others and had more wild ideas," Nigro said. "It was more entertaining to watch them. So once we figured out we kind of had something of a documentary on our hands, we just kept going, because we thought (the team's original pilot) Psychotic Episodes was going to be brilliant and it was really going to propel these guys. But we had nothing. But we realized that there's much more to be said for reality than for traditional work--at least at this time. So why not follow? Of course, once we'd met Kevin Blatt, things just started rolling."

The desperation depicted in American Cannibal resonates from one act to the next, from one subject to another. A director "specializing" in reality TV signs on, followed by reality host George Gray. Casting sessions gone awry lead to angry outbursts and cast members covering up physical ailments for the shot at competing on television. Ripley and Roberts risk everything they have, and watching them lose it day-by-day is as brutal as any of the trials facing their castaways. Which, naturally, is the point: These guys are the castaways, as is the entire creative industry subjugated to the reality craze.

Roberts acknowledged the toll the experience had on his emotions and family life. "There were definitely things that I'm glad are not in there," he said from his seat in the middle of the audience. "They didn't 'Michael Moore' me or Gil, and I'd have to say that the jerk I look like up actually is me. They were very fair."

But the fact that Grebin and Nigro could be where they were when they were almost feels unfair; that they could edit their footage into three cohesive acts with an ending that does justice to the dramatic tension that precedes it almost defies belief. Judge for yourself what these guys' souls are worth, and when--not if--the festival marketplace puts its own value on an American Cannibal distribution, believe me--I will pass along the news.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 11:58 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

'Da Vinci Code' Radiation Smothers NYC Area; PR Zombies Walk the Earth

Just when I thought I was going to be able to bypass the entire Da Vinci Code craze on account of its essential non-New Yorkiness, a deluge of related news and notes flooded my beleaguered inbox over the last 24 hours. It would be bad enough that The Times gave Tom Hanks the run of its Web site for a tribute to his retiring makeup man, but these latest heads-up raise the bar on ancillary excess--and put our fair city in the position of swatting mosquitoes before summer has even started.

The trouble began early Wednesday, when something called Chosen People Ministries fired off a press release evidently intended to be printed out and affixed to your computer monitor like a big, cross-shaped Post-It Note:

Message to Da Vinci Code Author, Film Makers & Fans: Don't Forget Jesus Was Jewish!

NEW YORK, April 26 -- The Da Vinci Code has caused an uproar in many Christian circles, since it claims that the traditional Church has suppressed the real story of Jesus. The best-selling book and movie also assert the New Testament documents in the Bible are unreliable. There have been numerous, substantial responses from Catholic and Protestant circles, but none from Messianic Jews (Jews who follow Jesus as Messiah) which is striking, considering that Jesus and his first followers were all Jews.

"Messianic Jews bring a unique perspective to The Da Vinci Code debate, yet their voice is being completely overlooked," says Dr. Michael L. Brown, a biblical scholar and the author of the multi-volume series, Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus. ...

Many believe the time has come for Jewish people and especially Messianic Jews to also reclaim Jesus as one of the greatest Jewish leaders.

"If there is a conspiracy, it is that somehow Jesus has been separated from his roots and is viewed apart from his Jewishness," said (CPM president Dr. Mitch) Glaser. "This is something Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code author [sic], completely missed in his book and the movie will not do anything differently."

So there is your message of conscience for the day: Give Jesus his props as a Jew, and buy Michael Brown's multi-volume series. Also attempting to enlighten your spiritual and beach-reading agenda are director Jonathan Stack and author Dan Burstein, whose documentary collaboration Secrets of the Code had a preview last night at the Tribeca Film Festival. While I will abstain from commenting on what I have not seen, you have to appreciate the pair's highbrow-lowbrow marketing savvy:

From glimpses of the sacred feminine in a prehistoric cave in France, to musical mysteries hidden in a chapel in Scotland, and from a Templar tomb in London to the catacombs of Rome, the film takes the viewer on an intimate journey along the paths traveled by The Da Vinci Code novel. ...

"(T)he overarching issue," (Burstein said), "the one that ties all the other fascinations together, is the one that novelist Dan Brown alludes to throughout The Da Vinci Code in the persona of his fictional character, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon: the human desire to understand man/woman's place in the universe and to create stories that become the basis for powerful myths, religions, and belief systems that seek to provide answers. Jonathan Stack's interpretation of these issues turns Secrets of the Code into a film that is its own independent, entertaining, and thought-provoking meditation on the themes of The Da Vinci Code."

But for today's most ambitous-if-not-overbearing Da Vinci Code offshoot, drop in on Rahway, N.J., resident Martin Goldberg's Leonardo's Code 57. The Web site does amazing work pairing fill-in-the-blanks philosophy with all the poetic grace a place like Rahway will allow; a quick glimpse at Goldberg's home page will have Ron Howard scrambling to add a $50,000 "Goldberg epigram" line to The Da Vinci Code's post-production budget:

Now it's time to take a look,

at a very popular book,

portending that The Holy Grail

is actually a divinely inspired girl. ...

Pray tell, Leonardo, what hath thou in mind?

In the mirror shall we look?

Are you a genius or a kook?

Simple this just cannot be

reflecting on life's mystery.

Yeah, well, it seems simple enough. Tomorrow, noted theological experts will debate the implications of the "live black crucifix" going down in Los Angeles. Operative phrase (I am not making this up): "I'm impressed that many people seemed not to be shocked at the sight of a black Jesus!"

Will the next person who comes across Dan Brown slap him, please? For me?

Posted by stvanairsdale at 09:31 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 26, 2006

New York Film Snobs Take to the Airwaves

My good friend Lawrence Levi--he of the swell film blog Looker--joined David Kamp on WNYC yesterday to discuss their recent collaboration, The Film Snob's Dictionary. And as brilliantly as their meditations on diageses segue into hairsplitting of the Mean Streets soundtrack, I do not know if the interview could have yielded a more rewarding conclusion than this caller who recounted sitting near Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson during a screening of Takashi Miike's Audition:

JIM IN MANHATTAN: The torture section? Where the hero has his eyeballs poked with needles? The two of them got up and left because they were I guess, I dunno, too freaked out or something.

KAMP: This is the man who wrote "Venus in Furs."

J.I.M.: Precisely. And I was so emboldened by that moment that the rest of the film was just laughable. You know? It was like, "I can't believe that Lou Reed couldn't take this movie."

There are about 26 additonal minutes where that came from, and you already know the book is totally fucking great, so check out the rest here. At least the listening will not cut into your valuable on-the-clock Web surfing like all this reading I always force on you.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 11:12 AM | TrackBack

Tribeca by Moonlight: The Reeler Joins Huffington Post's Festival Orgy

The drugs must be really good over at The Huffington Post, where somebody had the batty idea of inviting me to contribute to the blog's daily Tribeca coverage. There are something like 14 or 15 of us on the reporting team, including former FishBowl NY editor Rachel Sklar, who provides an introductory overview here. Expect maybe a little overlap between my HuffPo and Reeler dispatches, but I mostly intend to keep them separate. Mostly.

This morning I have a look at the wonderful Colour Me Kubrick--in particular, New York Times power broker Frank Rich's real-life run-in with Kubrick impersonator Alan Conway and the incident's portrayal in the film. Suffice it to say that actor William Hootkins--best known as Star Wars' doomed X-Wing pilot Jek Porkins--plays Rich. Goddamn, this can be a cruel world.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 09:37 AM | TrackBack

'United 93' Bows, Tribeca Finally Open For Business

While I really do look forward to checking out the overwhelmingly well-reviewed United 93, I was, for whatever reason, turned away from covering its premiere Tuesday evening and even from viewing the film at its Loews Lincoln Square overflow theaters. "You can wait if you want," a festival flack said, nodding toward the door. "We're totally full." Two sources who did manage entry corroborated at least a near-capacity crowd in e-mails to Reeler HQ last night; for the three of you concerning yourselves with the outcome of yesterday's Lloyd Grove vs. Tribeca Film Festival pissing contest, here is hoping that provides some closure.

Among those who covered the premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater, the Hollywood Reporter's Gregg Goldstein receives The Reeler's red-carpet blue ribbon for the quick turnaround and general thoroughness of his dispatch:

(E)ven amidst the smiles and pleasantries in the lobby, mixed emotions were very close to the surface when audience members were asked about the film they were about to see. ...

Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro began the evening's series of introductions by acknowledging the audience's difficulty with the subject matter, something Universal is facing as it prepares for the movie's release Friday. "Given our festival's founding after September 11, for many of us, the story is difficult," he said. "We applaud the participation of the family members -- your participation means a lot."

De Niro's characteristically brief remarks were followed by Rosenthal's appearance. "The film exemplifies the highest form of the human spirit," she said. "It leaves us with a new memory that is uplifting." ...

But perhaps actor Gabriel Byrne best summed up feelings about the film: "I can understand why some people don't want to see the film, and I can see why there's a compulsion to confront it, because in many ways we still haven't confronted it."

Goldstein also features cameos by MPAA boss Dan Glickman, former U.S. Senator (and 9/11 Commission head) Bob Kerrey and some guy named Greengrass. The festival starts in earnest today, which means I must beg your pardon while I put my running shoes on and wolf down another dose of speed. No days down, eleven to go.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 08:35 AM | TrackBack

April 25, 2006

'Made In NY' Money All But Gone; City Council Rides to Rescue

Also today in Variety, Andrew Barker contributes the latest update about the "Made in NY" tax incentive program's wild success. While his colleague Addie Morfoot had pretty much the same story last December--explaining that the $50 million trough was just about empty--Barker's version arrives with a weird sense of forboding that implies no good deed goes unpunished:

Less than a year and a half after incentives began, the city has reached the $50 million limit allocated to the initiative.

"Productions which shoot in New York can still take advantage of the state's 10% tax credit," says Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting. "Mayor Bloomberg supports a continuation of the program, and the next state legislative session will determine its future."

Applications are still being accepted for the 5% credit, although it is unclear when or if the city's coffers will be refilled.

Enter City Council members David Weprin, David Yassky, Vincent Gentile and Domenic Recchia (representing Queens and Brooklyn, natch, home to three separate studios) who extracted their cheerleader outfits from the closet yesterday for the Daily News:

Saying it will generate more jobs, a group of City Council members called yesterday for $30 million a year in tax credits for film and television production in the city.

Under a law passed two years ago with the backing of those Council members, the city now spends $12.5 million a year on giving a refundable 5% tax credit to filmmakers who produce 75% of their work within the city.

"You're not really just benefitting Hollywood," said Councilman David Weprin (D-Queens), one of the prime boosters of increasing the film production tax-credit pot. ...

They've also expressed concern that some of the tax-break money is going to production companies that would have worked in the city even without the tax breaks. ...

"It's too soon to say 'Cut!' to the film tax credit," (Yassky) insisted. "We can't let the tax credit end up on the cutting room floor."

Insert groan here. The NYDN's Frank Lombardi goes on to report that the councilmen atribute the delay to political snags in Albany, where budget squabbles have paralyzed the plan's advance. Meanwhile, the current funds are locked up through 2008, so do not go thinking Ethan Hawke has relinquished your parking space just...quite... yet.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 01:22 PM | TrackBack

Variety (Hearts) NY, Has the Hundred or So Stories Today to Prove It

With Tribeca '06 commencing in seven hours, Variety has chosen April 25 as the day of a thousand New York film culture articles. OK, so it is really only, like, a few hundred, and some are a little more impressive than others, and if it is indeed the thought that counts, then this might be the most generous consideration the trade will throw our way this year.

While you already know all about Eamonn Bowles' band The Martinets from The Reeler's deafened coverage of one of their shows last January, Lily Oei reprises a few licks from the offices of Bowles' Magnolia Pictures. In other news, we also learn that Lili Taylor considers 42nd Street and 11th Avenue "uptown" and that producer Lee Daniels likes Butter (as in the nightclub). And he has his own inspired impression of New York's crude, cruel vitality:

The city provides you with the fundamental foundations to create from because of your interactions with people. It is a constant struggle. People here will step on you in order to get where they have to go so and it really brings something to you as a person that you are able to create from.

It must do something more for him than it does for me; after all, this guy is voluntarily producing Mariah Carey's follow-up to Glitter. At any rate, another Oei contribution looks at P.S. 260, the post-production house whose server exploded after editor Robert Ryang's Shining trailer parody flooded the Web last fall. This time, however, the spotlight is on co-founder J.J. Lask feature directing debut On the Road With Judas, which Lask recently wrapped and which Ryang will edit this summer.

David Hafetz offers probably the best read in the package with his sober survey of this year's crop of 9/11 movies. Hafetz backs away from hero-hype and too-much-too-soon twaddle to look at the specific phenomenon of society via cinema--and in 9/11's case, the acute, aestheticized perception of politics, culture and history. That sounds a little higher-brow than it probably should, but that is why Hafetz gets the big bucks and I just point you his way:

For all their controversy, both United 93 and World Trade Center occupy familiar Hollywood terrain. Against the backdrop of terror and tragedy, the movies tell stories of individuals facing dire situations and tapping unknown strength and courage to survive or fight back.

Ironically, the films provide an almost affirming message to a country caught up in unsettling times. ...

It is still uncertain whether American audiences want to see stories about Flight 93 and the Twin Towers on the big screen. Whatever the answer, these films, though daring in their own right, somehow suggest a more innocent time.

Speaking of innocence, Anthony Kaufman has a list of Tribeca's "high buzz" and "moderate buzz" films here. Watch Cindy Adams say she reported them first yesterday. Typical.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 12:13 PM | TrackBack

'United 93' Premiere Begs Question: 'Is That Seat Taken?'

In today's Daily News, Lloyd Grove stirs the shit about tonight's United 93 premiere having potentially been underbooked. While Grove writes that local celebrities are expected to round out the low-key nexus of the Ziegfeld Theater, he details a bitchy (and, naturally, anonymous) give-and-take between a pair of sources speculating just how packed the Lowes Lincoln Square's overflow venue will be:

"Despite grand hopes for massive attendance, it seems they were having trouble filling the seats and had to send out last-minute invitations to B-list invitees," said my source. "There's a lack of appetite for watching something so gruesome and something we already know so much about."

But a festival organizer scoffed: "You have bad information. Our overflow screening is full."

As for suggestions that Universal Studios might have overestimated the demand, the festival type said: "The phones have not stopped all day for tickets to this."

A little probing this morning from Reeler HQ revealed the latter to be closer to the truth, even if 6,000 guests are quite a lot for anyone to expect to draw at two theaters for a docudrama about one of 9/11's hijacked plane. But if no less an authority than Peggy Siegel says the screenings are the source of crowded "high anxiety," then I guess we can probably expect people sitting in the aisles. "I guess we'll see," Grove concludes; I have my money on the festival.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 09:30 AM | TrackBack

April 24, 2006

Reed, Fishburne, Cuban and the Juries That Ate Lower Manhattan

"So STV," you ask, "What was the deal with Ken Burns and Trudie Styler (among others) at the Tribeca press conference earlier today?" Great question--one I should have answered in the post before I got carried away with all that quoty goodness.

Anyhow, Burns, Styler, Oren Jacoby and nearly three dozen other New York boldface names make up the members of this year's Tribeca juries. Awards will be distributed in six categories through the International, NY, NY and Short Film Competitions, and judging by the names on some of these panels, the 2006 selections face some hard, hard graders. Take the International Documentary Feature jury, for example: Burns, Jacoby, Robert Drew, Whoopi Goldberg, Rory Kennedy and Marc Levin. Or the Narrative Short jury: Mark Cuban, Laurence Fishburne, Samantha Morton, Gayle King, Shelly Lazarus, Julia Stiles and Lou Reed. Mark Cuban, Laurence Fishburne and Lou Reed on the same jury? Fuck J.J. Abrams; they should sell tickets to those discussions.

A few other notable jurors include Craig Newmark (the "Craig" of craigslist, judging student shorts), critics David Edelstein and Glenn Kenny (judging NY, NY docs) and Melvin Van Peebles, who represents the godfather of the International Narrative jury. Look for the complete jury lists after the jump.

International Competitions

Narrative Feature Jury -- Ed Burns, Terry George, Josh Lucas, Kelly Lynch, Antonio Skármeta, Trudie Styler and Melvin Van Peebles

Documentary Feature Jury -- Ken Burns, Oren Jacoby, Robert Drew, Whoopi Goldberg, Rory Kennedy and Marc Levin

NY, NY Competitions

Made in NY Narrative Feature Jury -- Thelma Adams, Michael Atkinson, Candace Bushnell, Wyclef Jean, Georgia Lee and James Truman

NY Loves Film Documentary Feature Jury -- Victor Buhler, David Edelstein, Glenn Kenny, Moby and Rosie Perez

Short Film Competitions

Narrative Short Jury -- Mark Cuban, Laurence Fishburne, Samantha Morton, Gayle King, Shelly Lazarus, Julia Stiles and Lou Reed

Student and Documentary Short Jury -- Joe Angio, Deborah Forte, Michael Graves, Craig Newmark, Charlotte Ronson and Andy Spade

Posted by stvanairsdale at 04:48 PM | TrackBack

Fifth Annual Tribeca Press Conferences Officially Underway

The Reeler retuned to Lower Manhattan today, where Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and a few high-profile pals met the press to chat about the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. There was not a whole lot of Earth-shattering new information to pass along (Tom Cruise is still taking over New York in a week, programmer Peter Scarlet is still condescending), but on the whole, all signs indicate a fairly powerful buzz attending the festival’s fifth year.

The Tribeca Seven meet the press (L-R): Oren Jacoby, Ed Burns, Josh Lucas, Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, Ken Burns and Trudie Styler at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center (Photo: STV)

“In 2002, in the wake of Sept. 11, we launched a film festival in 120 days and wondered if anyone would come,” Rosenthal said in her introduction. “Four years later, we have attracted over a million people to Lower Manhattan. In the process, we’ve screened an incredible range of films that have gone on to earn international acclaim. … While we have expanded, the heart and soul of our festival is Tribeca.”

Tribeca itself was a popular subject among other filmmakers in attendance, with The Groomsmen writer/director/star Ed Burns toasting the festival and its co-founders’ impact on the city. “I’m a New York-based filmmaker,” Burns said. “I’m here for the third time in five years, like Jane said. And speaking with other New York-based filmmakers, we love the fact that we now have our film festival. I love the fact we no longer have to schlep to the mountains of Utah for an independent film festival. So there’s that.

“The second thing I want to mention is that as a resident of Tribeca from before the festival, I’ve seen over the course of five years what the festival has meant to my neighborhood. Especially in the years immediately following 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how people were going to start to move out of Tribeca, restaurants were going to close, retail shops were going to be vacant. Walk around the neighborhood now and you see the opposite is true. There’s construction on every corner, you can’t get a reservation in a restaurant and there are shops all over the place. And I think you have to look at that and a big part of that has to do with this festival—(with) Jane and Bob turning it around 120 days after 9/11 to get this thing up and running. I just want to say thank you to them as a resident of Tribeca.”

De Niro, bless his heart, appeared touched by the festival’s reception, even as photographers filled each of his pauses with a full-bodied torrent of shutters and flashes that eventually drove him and his prepared speech back to his mark upstage. He was even more succinct in, um, discussing the programming of United 93 as this year’s opening film. “Flight 93 [sic],” he said, all but retreating from the podium. “If it were not opening the festival, it would seem strange. That’s really all I have to say.”

Rosenthal said that Tuesday’s premiere at the Ziegfeld will host 91 family members of the eponymous tragedy’s victims; invitations were also sent to 9/11 victims and their families around the tri-state area. The Reeler followed up on the lack of public tickets available for Tribeca’s triad of mega-premieres (United 93, Mission: Impossible III and Poseidon), asking Rosenthal if any seats would, in fact, open up.

“We’re venue-challenged,” she said. “In terms of M:I:III, we have some screenings in Harlem and Tribeca, and again, there’s just so many people you can fit into venues. We just don’t have enough venues. Even though some people don’t believe us when we say it, we’re still a struggling festival in terms of our finances. In the past, we have put screening facilities—projection facilities into Stuyvesant High School or at Pace University or put up a screening at the World Financial Center. We do what we can.”

Fair enough. In between snapping about festival selection criteria and what audiences should go see in a festival that some say is overprogrammed if not totally overextended, Tribeca executive director Peter Scarlet offered a genuinely spirited endorsement of the event’s revivals. “Some of the classics of cinema were shown here, and we’re showing more each year,” he said. “It’s a valiant effort to stem the tide that you may not all be aware of--that about 60 percent of the films that are made don’t exist anymore. So archives and people who are pouring money and time and attention into saving the past sort of deserve our support, and now we’re not just showing films from just Martin Scorsese’s collection, we’re showing films from major archives around the world.”

“We talk about independent filmmaking in New York,” he added a moment later. “It started with a man named Lionel Rogosin, whose film On the Bowery, made in 1956, has been restored by Cineteca di Bologna. We’re showing a fantastic new print, and when you see this film, you see it was the origin. It was before Cassavetes, it was before Robert Frank. It was at the origin of American independent cinema.”

And then they were off. I stuck around. Maybe I should just stay down here. Anyone have an open couch?

Posted by stvanairsdale at 02:37 PM | TrackBack

Wheat Ripped From Chaff as Cindy Adams Previews Tribeca

Cindy Adams made seven film publicists very happy this morning when she devoted the majority of her column to one of her quintessentially probing festival previews. As I am positive that Adams--like yours truly--sacrificed a bleary-eyed weekend viewing screener after screener after screener while her mutts yapped and pissed themselves into convulsive shock, I am bumping her esteemed selections right to the top of my list.

Because you really need no more endorsement of Driving Lessons than "Harold and Maude without the sex," or of Jason Patric as both Julia Roberts' ex and Jackie Gleason's grandson. Or of... oh, the hell with it. Read for yourself:

Cocaine Cowboys ... A sweet little tale of transplanted New Yorker Jon Roberts, who unloaded $2 billion worth of cocaine and another kindly dude, Mickey Munday, who smuggled more than 10 tons of coke from the Medellin Cartel into the United States.

And there's Torte Bluma, the 14-minute short that already won the Palm Springs and Los Angeles festivals. Director Benjamin Ross has a Golden Globe for the HBO film RKO 281 and is also the nephew of Brit p.r. great Freddie Ross Hancock.

That's about all I'll mention now since there are 174 films, 800 screenings, a 48-page guidebook, and this little downtown film festival is now more spread out than Kirstie Alley.

Only in New York, kids--though we would be happy to share custody of Adams if you want her.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 10:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

New York Magazine Film Section Brings In the Specialist

It looks like a good week for film coverage in New York Magazine: David Edelstein offers typically thoughtful yet fevered praise of United 93 ("It's a frantic paralysis"); Logan Hill cogently previews Tribeca (as teased here last week); and producer Lynda Obst--NYM's unofficial West Coast film bureau chief--offers a fresh diagnosis of what is eating away at movie audiences.

Not that you need a genuine industry authority to tell you that lavishly bejeweled turds like Cinderella Man ain't gonna save Hollywood:

So we can’t put a bad blockbuster over anymore, as in the golden era of 2002, when The Scorpion King could open at $36 million, or Blade II at $33 million. And we have to kill our singular addiction to teenage boys. We need to diversify the meaning of “our audience.” We have a few audiences. Baby-boomers have a movie habit and an IV hooked up to pop culture (look at Inside Man or The Interpreter). You would have thought that Something’s Gotta Give proved that older women were worth making movies for, but one strike with In Her Shoes and we’re out. Young girls, reliable last year, have been rationalized off the screen (their tastes this year considered to be entirely driven by boys).

Obst continues on to sort-of state the obvious posit, "It’s the movie, stupid. Not the marketing. (Though marketers shouldn’t gloat yet, ’cause they can still kill a good picture.)" Can they ever. At any rate, her analysis is worth a look, if only for the refreshing admission that the "good old days" of mass-produced sequels and unquestioned theatrical superiority are waning--if not behind us.

UPDATE: An astute reader sends this observation: "Obst trashes the idea that videogame adaptations geared toward teen boys have a long shelflife. Then what's number 1 at (the) box office the day it hits stands? Silent Hill. Can't win for losin'."

Posted by stvanairsdale at 09:18 AM | TrackBack

April 21, 2006

Screening Gotham: April 21-23, 2006

Some of this weekend's worthwhile cinematic happenings around New York:

--Fatty Arbuckle was a lot of things: An actor, a filmmaker, a mentor (to Buster Keaton, no less), a classic clown, a literal (300-pound) and figurative (dozens of movies per year) giant of the silent film era. But more than 80 years of myth and rumor has somehow cemented Arbuckle as the one thing he never was: a killer, charged with manslaughter in 1921 and blacklisted for more than a decade after his acquittal. Arbuckle's tragedy provides the shattering counterpoint to MoMA's Rediscovering Roscoe: The Careers of Fatty Arbuckle, a three-and-a-half week retrospective as exhaustive as any undertaken in the film legend's name. This weekend's programs highlight Arbuckle as the "Box Office Star" and "Sophisticated Director" he became in 1914-15; it peaks Saturday with a program featuring early Arbuckle/Keaton collaborations The Butcher Boy, The Rough House and Coney Island. Ben Model's organ accompaniment provides the pulse, but as it has done off-and-on for almost a century, Arbuckle's work provides the light.

--The wordy cinephiles at Reverse Shot appear to have stormed the theater at Makor, where they plan to spend the next week running the Reverse Shot Presents series of new and gently used films. Saturday night's opener features the Rob Zombie tandem House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, followed by a chat with the latter film's Ken "You Fuck Chickens?" Foree. Next week's selections are not too bad either, with the New York premiere of Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert's acclaimed documentary A Lion in the House wrapping things up April 30.

--I should not have to say it again, but the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival has its shit together and you absolutely should go. BUFF's comedy shorts program Oh My God! goes off at 10 tonight, and ShootingPeople.org and Rooftop Films are buying the drinks for at least part of the dance party that follows. If you survive, there is tomorrow's Music Showcase at Northsix and another two days of screenings to keep you busy in the run up to Tribeca. Try to behave yourself.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 04:32 PM | TrackBack

Tribeca Survey: What NYC Media Are Saying About the Festival

Admittedly, Reeler HQ is abuzz with the Tribeca vibe even as it is deluged with what has become a succession of dodgy and dodgier program selections. As such, I have been branching out to other local writers' perceptions of what this year's festival has to offer; Tribeca represents the coin of the critical realm at The Times, New York Magazine, the Voice and Time Out New York, and while the overriding ethos behind the coverge seems to be cautious optimism, some publications' hometown pride fakes the funk a little more than others.

Take TONY's ubiquitous Anthony Kaufman, for example, who found time between his RES 9.2 feature about Rachel Boynton and all that life-draining blogging at indieWIRE to write this week's Tribeca cover story:

Indeed officials praise the festival for fueling the city's economy and advertising New York as a Hollywood on the Hudson for filmmakers. "Last year, the festival generated $77 million in economic output for the city as a whole, says Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting. "This is a draw not just for the five boroughs, but people from all over the world." Proving that point, more than 2,000 volunteers from as far away as Brazil and Singapore, will work at this year's gathering.

But then there are the Tribecans who worry about screening venues' diffusion uptown, anonymous distributors bitching about films' quality and festival executive director Peter Scarlet actually calling Tribeca "a retail, not a wholesale festival." And whither Robert De Niro? Despite TONY handing over its cover and feature well to the actor and his festival, his only appearances are a few minor quotes via e-mail. Co-founder/producer Jane Rosenthal chimes in a little more ebulliently, "The city's been through a lot, it's spring in New York--let's celebrate."

Yes, let's!, writes the Voice's J. Hoberman:

Like the city it celebrates, Tribeca has proven resilient, but like New York, it's far too sprawling and abrasive to ever attain the grooviness of SXSW or the exclusivity of Telluride. Marketing—yes. Market—we'll see. Tribeca is very far from rivaling Sundance (or Toronto) as the place at which to sell or launch a movie. True, Oscar nominee Transamerica did have its premiere at the last festival—but only God and Harvey Weinstein know if the Weinstein brothers weren't already planning to make that acquisition. ...

Perhaps such inside baseball is irrelevant. Tribeca executive director Peter Scarlet, longtime head of the San Francisco Film Festival and former director of the Cinémathéque Française, has brought an urbane, genuinely cosmopolitan quality to the selection—choice restorations, an amazing assortment of documentaries, any number of movies wrested away from New Directors/New Films and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival ...

The Voice's critical cabal has at a few specific selections, recommending 40 of the festival's 174 features while Dennis Lim favorably reviews United 93 and director Paul Greengrass, "who may yet emerge as the Maya Lin of cine-memorialists." Meanwhile, in other helpful comparisons, Jim Ridley (!) pegs the Luna documentary Tell Me Do You Miss Me as "a grubby indie-rock scale down of The Last Waltz" and Michael Atkinson classifies The Yacoubian Building as "a Cairo-based Gone With the Wind." Scarlet makes another appearance, actually saying "We don't break kneecaps" when Lim asks about Tribeca's proximity to other high-profile festivals:

There are festivals that take place just before us: Full Frame, South by Southwest, New Directors. I think the cards are on the table for the filmmakers to decide what the advantages and disadvantages are.

Yeah, gang, so don't fuck this one up. And hey, look! There's Scarlet again in The Times, actually comparing Tribeca to Berlin:

"New York is a big town and has the biggest of everything, so it should not be daunted by having a huge festival," said Peter Scarlet, the executive director, who pointed out that Berlin, a much smaller city, has a festival with twice as many movies. By sheer numbers TriBeCa can be a bit of a crapshoot: choose unwisely and you could end up in the cinematic equivalent of a table in crowded restaurant next to a really obnoxious, self-impressed grad student who doesn't know how to tell a story.

That second half, of course, is the Father of The Reeler, David Carr, who contributes a more scattershot, sensuous survey of the festival ("If you've had enough of the industrial-strength stuff," Carr writes, "get a folding chair and a bottle of beer in front of the Ear Inn in SoHo; on a warm spring night it is one of New York's seminal experiences, with or without a film festival") while NYT tour guide Ben Sisario provides helpful hints on navigating 15 venues flung from Tribeca to the Upper West Side.

And finally, The Reeler got its hands on New York Magazine critic Logan Hill's "Tribeca by Numbers." The piece arrives on newsstands next week, but in the meantime, it provides a useful glimpse at a festival where ambivalence and ambition share a near-blinding spotlight. While Hill heartily recommends Jonestown, Driving Lessons, Once in a Lifetime and the "must-see" restoration of Lionel Bogosin's On the Bowery, he reveals a more disheartening truth about the "retail festival" that Scarlet praised to TONY:

0 When Tribeca announced that it was adding [Tom] Cruise’s M:I:III to its premieres of Poseidon and United 93, Daily Variety blasted the news across its front page, noting that the fest would be “putting Tribeca’s regular auds through some wrenching emotional gyrations—from viewing real-life tragedy on-screen to watching manufactured disaster and derring-do.” Variety needn’t have worried, because there are exactly zero public tickets available to the premieres of these films. Meanwhile, only M:I:III has made talent (director J. J. Abrams) available for a panel talk.

But amid all of this--all of the mixed reviews before the festival has even begun, all of the hype and red-carpet anticipation, all of the eagerly awaited independent titles--there really is only one essential Tribeca factor to remember. One quality that subsumes the rest. Just remember, no matter how breathlessly excited you are--Robert De Niro is thrilled.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 02:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

'The Offence': The Reeler Shares Sidney Lumet in Brooklyn

As much as I wish I could, I cannot add the two-and-a-half hours spent Thursday evening in a theater with Sidney Lumet to the life-changing 56 seconds I spent talking to him last month. His appearance at BAM--for a super-rare screening of his other, cop-not-named-Serpico-suffering-an-existential-crisis film of 1973, The Offence--instead culminated in one of the institution's regular post-screening chats with Elliott Stein, and I had to share the Q&A with a dozen or so other reverent moviegoers.

Sidney Lumet relives the grand old days of television and self-pitying action stars with BAM fixture Elliott Stein (Photo: STV)

Like it matters. As always, it is the little things that count, like glancing at Lumet in the row behind mine, where he sat with his wife viewing Sean Connery's implosive tour de force for the first time in 20 years. Or watching him squirm at the recollection of the film's British crew calling him "governor" rather than "director." Or defending Connery and Vin Diesel against "snobs who have things against action heroes." Or corollating The Offence with his recent Find Me Guilty even further by calling them "the two worst distribution jobs I've ever had."

"The whole premise--and this was understood from the beginning--was that there was a wonderful theater in London then called the Putnam," Lumet told Stein. "It was a wonderful arthouse; the expenses were very low in it. And so you could put a picture there and it would stay for weeks and weeks and find an audience. And we were supposed to open at the Putnam in October or something like that. And all of the sudden we weren't opening there; we opened at the Odeon Leicester Square on Christmas. Now, I don't know if you know what the Odeon Leicester Square is, but it's a combination of Radio City Music Hall, the Paramout, the Strand--all of those. It seats like 4,000 or 5,000 people. You put Star Wars in there. It's that kind of theater. And we were out in a week. And then with that happening, the American release was even worse."

The Offence's grim, working-class cop drama could not have helped matters, especially with Connery's James Bond persona still dominating the pop-cultural mind (Connery, who took no salary on the picture, received United Artists' green light only after agreeing to make 1971's Diamonds Are Forever). Imagine dropping by the theater in 1973 and seeing 007 recast as Detective Sergeant Johnson, a haunted investigator charged with finding a serial killer who has been abducting and murdering schoolgirls. Imagine recoiling in your seat as Connery's demons consume him before moving on to his long-suffering wife (Vivian Merchant), his superior (Trevor Howard) and finally claiming his chief suspect (a leering, lascivious Ian Bannen). Imagine the moral specter of Dirty Harry plunged through the prism of British kitchen-sink dramas like Look Back in Anger and This Sporting Life, and then get the hell out of the way of a fairly lethal (if not mildly pretentious) cascade of self-loathing.

Characteristically for a Lumet film, the acting is first-rate, the direction natural--especially for a film mostly comprising long, two-person set pieces once-removed from the stage. "It's a very complicated, worked-out, thought-out movie technique," Lumet said. "As you know, small spaces have never bothered me, from my first picture on. When we did Long Day's Journey Into Night, that was four people in one room for thee and a half hours. It's just a combination of lenses, lighting, camaera elevation. It's complicated."

Stein eventually came around to asking about the influence of Lumet's famous live television background on quick, dirty productions like The Offence--shot in less than a month for under $900,000. "I did a half-hour melodrama called Danger on Tuesday nights, and on Sundays, I did a show called You Are There. I did two half-hour shows a week--live. And what happens as a result of that is that first of all, you learn to really split your concentration. It meant I had to carry eight shows in my head: The shows I was doing right then and there; the casting for two shows for next week; the physical sets, props and production of the shows two weeks down the line; and working on the scripts of the shows three weeks down the line. So you're doing eight shows. Terrific. Highly recommended.

"And what it taught us was that it's a television show. There's another one next week. Now, that may sound disrespectful. Quite the reverse. It's a wonderful attitude in the sense that you relax, and every piece of work isn't life and death. People always say, 'Oh my God, look at the large number of movies you've done.' I don't know how many movies I've done. Terrific."

"Forty-two," Stein said.

"Forty-two? I think it's more," Lumet said winkingly. "But it's important to not think about everything being for history, or if it's art. All those big words--history, art." He shrugged, waved, swatted the words out of the air. "Just do your work. The rest will take care of itself."

Ha. Will it ever.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 10:33 AM | TrackBack

April 20, 2006

Brooklyn Underground Film Festival Fires Up at the Lyceum

The Brooklyn Underground Film Festival commenced its fourth year last night at the Brooklyn Lyceum, where a near-packed house dropped in for an opening night party and stuck around for Adán Aliaga's documentary My Grandmother's House (right). Having endured the close-ups of anti-fungal pedicures yet appreciated the film's rambunctious poignancy, I caught up with program director Josh Koury to see what else he had up his sleeve for 2006.

"We have a great variety of work," Koury told me. "The beauty of our program is that we have a little bit of everything for everybody. We have touching films that are more personal, we have very comedic films that are heavy and funny, and we have outlandish films and films that are very political and very timely. That's the importance of this festival, I think: hitting all those those little buttons and attracting all those different crowds."

So what specific "little buttons" do the BUFF organizers have in mind? Try Tally Abecassis's taxidermy doc Lifelike, or the surreal Japanese clip show Super Happy Fun Monkey Bash, or Zipora Trope's requiem for a dead Israeli punk rocker, Looking For the Lost Voice. Then there are the shorts--66 of them, including a quasi-tribute to Kirsten Dunst and a block of 11 student films.

And then there are the parties, most notably Friday night's Meet the Filmmakers dance extravaganza and Saturday night's music showcase featuring Har Mar Superstar and Five O'Clock Heroes among others. "I think that film festivals are almost always half-party and half-festival, but we really marry those two quite well," Koury said. "I mean, we're an underground film festival. We attract great people. We can throw a great party but also represent when it comes to film. And that's important."

Tonight, the Lyceum hosts the documentaries Clever Monkey Pinochet Versus La Moneda's Pigs (a series of vignettes retelling the atmosphere around Pinochet's 1973 Chilean coup) and Letters From the Other Side, while the "Lost and Found" shorts program boasts Talmage Cooley'sd brilliant blind-street-gang chronicle Dimmer. Phillipe Diaz's The Empire in Africa closes BUFF Sunday evening--just a few nights before another well-known local fest's shadow overtakes the city.

"You're always fighting the big festivals like Tribeca and all the other ones around," Koury told me. "But the idea that we're our own entity, we're all in one space, we're all here together and it’s a community--I think that's the real backbone of this festival. When you come here, you feel that. Nothing against other festivals, but you miss it, you miss more than just what's on the screen--you miss something special. And I think that tonight was a perfect example of that."

Posted by stvanairsdale at 11:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Cannes Lineup Locked Even if Pictures Are Not

We had a clue where the Cannes Film Festival selections were heading a while back when the Hollywood Reporter's Charlie Masters broke out his crystal ball. But lest you need official word before you start squaring your bets, the festival this morning revealed the 19 films making up its 2006 competition lineup.

And although surprises are always fun, you are not likely to find any here: American films include Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation and Richard Kelly's long-awaited Southland Tales, while international masters Kaurismaki, Almodovar and Loach will also debut their latest. John Cameron Mitchell is racing to cut together all the amateur New York sex promised for Shortbus--which will premiere alongside Election 2 and Guisi in the festival's Midnight section--while X3 helmer Brett Ratner is having new business cards printed with "Director of an Official Non-Competition Selection at Cannes" emblazoned in gold beneath his name.

The festival runs May 17-28, and I am sitting this one out. For any Cannes-goers who have always dreamed of contributing to The Reeler, consider this post and my e-mail address (stv [AT] thereeler.com) your engraved invitation.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 09:37 AM | TrackBack

Reeler Ticket Giveaway: Opening Night of Independence World Cinema Showcase

The Reeler's friends at the Museum of the Moving Image are what you might call busy--a Beastie Boys retrospective here, a Robert Altman retrospective there--and they are only getting busier this weekend as they launch their weekly Independence World Cinema Showcase. And in keeping with their generous spirit, I have a pair of tickets to Friday's opening night film Black that I feel privileged to give away to a lucky reader.

OK, so "luck" may have little to do with it. All you really need to do is be the first to answer a question about director Sanjay Leela Bhansali's acclaimed 2005 tearjerker, in which Bollywood icon Rani Mukherjee portrays a blind deaf-mute who learns to see the world through the instruction of her hardened (but loving!) teacher Amitabh Bachchan. The film won eight Indian Oscars and further expanded its stars' international legends, with Mukherjee in particular going above and beyond by wearing dark contact lenses that discolored her famous eyes.

Which leads me to the Big (if Simple) Question: What color are Rani Mukherjee's famous eyes? The first to respond accurately in the comments wins the tickets to Friday's series opener in Astoria.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 08:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 19, 2006

Dick, IFC Bring 'Not Yet Rated' to NYC Audience

The Reeler spent a few hours Tuesday at IFC Center, where the theater's Stranger Than Fiction series wound to a close with a preview of Kirby Dick's muckraking doc This Film is Not Yet Rated. It was one of best turnouts of the series' spring session, with even Michael Moore dropping by for at least a word with Dick and glimpse at the first few minutes. Oscar-nominated Street Fight filmmaker Marshall Curry was also in the house, as were Not Yet Rated producer Eddie Schmidt and IFC's executive producers Alison Palmer Bourke and the one-and-only Evan Shapiro.

NYU's Thom Powers (left) grills This Film Is Not Yet Rated director Kirby Dick (center) and producer Eddie Schmidt (Photo: STV)

I had seen probably two-thirds of the film at Sundance, and at the time, a little more languid cut and an overriding sense of indignance left me a tad ambivalent. But after some tightening, the film looks to emerge as a viable challenge to the mysterious MPAA ratings board--or perhaps we should call it the "once-mysterious MPAA ratings board," considering Dick's relentless revealing of its members' identities.

"We never had a problem with releasing their names," Dick said during a discussion following the screening. "What the raters are doing is making decisions that are in the public interest of everyone, really, in society--certainly all parents. And so everyone should know that process. It should be a transparent process; it's a transparent process in every European country. Everybody knows who judges are, for example, or school board members. The MPAA claims that the reason they do it is to protect these people from influence. But of course, the people who are in direct contact with the industry people--the people who directly influence these raters--are these senior raters and (ratings board boss) Joan Graves.

"So that point of influence exists, and there's absolutely no reason not to open this process up except (that) the MPAA wants to keep control of it. And the way they do it is by keeping as much secrecy around it as possible, which is why all these filmmakers that you see in our film all thought they had an 'R' rating. These are people who had run films through the ratings system before, thought they were making an 'R' film, and it turns out they weren't."

Not that the ratings board does not want to be your friend or anything. "I think they know probably that filmmakers have this built in animosity," Schmidt told the crowd. "So they figure that if they play it nice, then people will kind of come down in their anger. So it's censorship with a smile, I guess."

I plan to write more specifically about the film as its Sept. 1 theatrical release nears, but I will say that this time around, for whatever reason, I had a little less difficult time reconciling the MPAA's censorship issues (as outlined by ratings board victims John Waters, Kimberley Peirce, Atom Egoyan [featured at right, with Dick] and others) with its assiduous attempts to out the board members. Scenes in which Dick and private eye Becky Altringer rifle through garbage and stalk raters at lunch possess a perverse entertainment value all their own, and their confinement to a subplot almost felt like a disservice. But the new cut portrays each a little more evenly (or maybe I just perceived it that way--I did sleepwalk through much of Sundance's second half), dovetailing the threads into a conclusion you cannot help but appreciate despite seeing it coming a mile away.

Much of that foreshadowing has to do with Altringer, the intrepid investigator whose minivan exploits must be seen to believed. "We submitted the film (for a rating)," Dick recalled. "And then Becky called and said, 'I want to go back one last time. I want to get one last piece of information.' And I said, 'Well, I don't think they'll be watching the film until the next day, but you're going to take a risk.' So she said, "OK, I'm going to do it.'

"She was out there, and it got dark. She told me she needed this license plate, and in order to get it, she had to go down and sit on this sidewalk. And she sort of pretended she was a homeless person. She didn't pull that off quite as well, and then a guard came up and recognized her because I guess they had screened the film that afternoon. He called up and said, 'She's out here.' Becky ran back into her van, which now was a new van--not the van you saw--and instead of driving away like a sane person would, she just watched Joan Graves and these guards come out and race around all over searching for her."

As if that did not reflect the MPAA's desperation enough , Dick also described how the rabidly anti-piracy trade group broke its own rules in plotting its damage control tactics. "Actually, they sort of pirated a copy of the film," he said. "Prior to submitting the film to get rated, I thought, 'You know, if I submit this, they're not going to want to give it back.' So I called them up and asked them, 'Who's going to see the film, and can they promise me that they won't make a copy of the film?' And they assured me that only the raters would see the film and they wouldn't make a copy of the film.

"Sure enough, we find out a little later that Greg Goeckner, the (MPAA) attorney, has seen the film, and after that, we found out (MPAA president) Dan Glickman has seen the film. And then the attorney called me a few days later and said, 'You know, I have to tell you, we have made a copy of the film. But don't worry. It's safe in my office.' And we sent them a letter insisting that they send it back, and they said, 'No we have a right to keep it.' So that's the MPAA for you."

(Egoyan/Dick photo: Chain Camera)

Posted by stvanairsdale at 12:43 PM | TrackBack

Through a Magazine Darkly: RES Returns With its "Going Places" Edition

Leave it to the jokers at RES Magazine to host their new issue's launch party in a space so dark you cannot see where you are walking, let alone read the damn thing. But that is pretty much what happened Tuesday evening at Movida when the gang unveiled its March/April "Going Places" edition, a typically classy product featuring the 2006 RES 10--a selection of up-and-coming artists, musicians, filmmakers and other digital wonks boasting a bold flourish of genius that makes them "creators to watch" in the year ahead.

Partygoer Seth Philips basks in the expertly crafted stylings of RES Media's resident DJ goddess Megan Newcome (Photo: STV)

The issue also spotlights writer/illustrator Daniel Clowes and his upcoming Art School Confidential as well as Our Brand is Crisis filmmaker Rachel Boynton. Most notably, the back of the book offers the newest of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch's many self-effacing Q&A's detailing the making of his group's masterwork, Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!:

My favorite shot in the movie is a guy with his shirt off, rocking a Jewfro and a gold chain... and then sitting next to him is an older woman praying! When I saw that, I was like, "Wow! That is one diverse crowd." It's like Horshack hangin' out with Weezy!

Indeed--just like that. (The photo of Yauch's auteur-ego Nathaniel Hörnblowér is of particular, um, interest.) At any rate, RES is out and about at discriminating newsstands around town, so you might as well go pick it up. And find a well-lighted space.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 10:28 AM | TrackBack

'They Will Be Proud': Archerd Probes Meyer on 'United 93'

"Hollywood's original blogger" Army Archerd recently had an "always-pleasant" chat with Universal boss Ron Meyer, who continues to toe the sensitive company line regarding too-much-too-soon criticism of United 93:

(Meyer) readily admitted he is "not surprised -- this is a very powerful story -- and the word 'powerful' is an understatement." He promises when audiences see the film, "they will be proud of being Americans." And yes, he admits that the studio was "very careful" not only in the telling of the story but in its advertising, that is, the trailer. "But everyone (at Universal) felt that this story needed to be told."

Archerd notes that Universal will donate 10 percent of United 93's opening weekend grosses to families of the flight's victims--roughly $1.5 million, if I had to make a guess. And in keeping with that tradition of American pride, a corpulent Universal will pocket the rest in perpetuity, maximizing the can-do tradition of exploitation and greed that has motivated our nation's film industry captains since, like, ever. I, for one, am virtually shitting myself with pride.

Jesus Christ, I sound like Anthony Kaufman.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 09:36 AM | TrackBack

April 18, 2006

Big News For Altman Freaks: Moving Image Retrospective is Official

This just in: The Museum of the Moving Image is planning a fairly immense Robert Altman retrospective to run April 29 through June 8, bookended on each date with appearances by the filmmaker discussing (respectively) Kansas City and A Prairie Home Companion. Other selections include a few rarely screened titles such as 1972's Images and 1996's Kansas City spinoff Robert Altman's Jazz '34, not to mention the entire Tanner '88 miniseries and its 2004 reprise Tanner on Tanner. The old standbys are here as well--McCabe and Mrs. Miller, M*A*S*H* and The Player among numerous overrated others. Oh, yeah--and his masterpiece Nashville screens the weekend of May 13-14.

(Photo: Defamer)

Posted by stvanairsdale at 05:21 PM | TrackBack

Lange at Lincoln Center: Gala Tribute Toasts 30-Year Career

While viewing the clips comprised during Monday night's Gala Tribute to Jessica Lange at Lincoln Center, I experienced a reaction I hardly anticipated. In a nutshell, I started to wonder if Lange might be the American actress most taken for granted--the one we know is out there, whom we know is good but whom we just expect to churn out one tight, powerful performance after another. Not that I would say she is consistently brilliant (though it should be noted that her noble tries in crap from King Kong to Hush are worth infinitely more than the sum of the parts surrounding them), but she might be our own Catherine Deneuve--a gorgeous utilitarian icon who works when she wants to, usually choosing good roles and all the while defying fear, age and easy categorization.

Belle of the Ball: Jessica Lange soaks in the love at Monday's Gala Tribute at Lincoln Center (Photos: STV)

Whatever that means, right? You would have to go back through the films in their entirety to get the nuance (the relatively histrionic nature of Lange's clips represented the running joke of the evening), but the versatility and the accomplishment is there: an Oscar for "basically playing a girl" in Tootsie, (as longtime Lange friend and colleague Charles Grodin described her onstage); another Oscar for her volatile turn in Blue Sky; nominations for her wildly divergent leading roles in the biopics Sweet Dreams and Frances; and, last night, the Film Society's accolade, awarded in a low-key celebration inching closer to a canonization with each reverent speaker.

"I love the organization and I love what they stand for," Lange told The Reeler before the event. "It's great to be a New Yorker and to be singled out for this particular honor."

Fair enough, but have you been to one of these before? Do you know what you are in for?

"No, I don't yet, but--"

A publicist interceded. "Don't tell her!" she said. "Don't tell her about the water balloons!"

OK, fine. Three days shy of her 57th birthday, the typically stunning actress occupied a first-tier box in Avery Fisher Hall with a family entourage led by beau Sam Shepard (left), while pals Grodin, Kathy Bates, Joan Allen, Alan Cumming and Amy Madigan appeared in support and admiration. All of them spoke in Lange's honor, with a particular gravity overtaking most. Shepard's tribute was especially touching, with the playwright and actor stopping just short of tears with his declaration, "I tip my hat to her as an artist, and I love her with all my heart." Cumming's recollection of shooting Titus with Lange yielded its own awkward "romance"; his praise of her breasts garnered her reaction, "Honey, if your hand wasn't there, it'd be halfway around my back."

Bates and Allen lightened things up with their own schtick--"the stick and the olive," as Bates put it. "Now you might think from watching these clips that Ms. Lange lacks a sense of humor," she said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

"The Jessica that we have come to know and love is a barrel of laughs," Allen said.

"What were some of the fun things that she did?" Bates asked Allen, refelcting back to their experience shooting the upcoming Bonneville. They thought it over. And thought. And thought.

"Oh, I remember!" Allen said. "Remember the time we were in her trailer and she told us not to buy any gas from Exxon because their profits were too high?"

"And when she walked into the glass door when we were filming on the houseboat and broke the whole crew up?"

"No, that was you, Kathy. You did that."

At least they tried, right? Closing out the night, Lange was not to be outdone. "It's an amazing moment when you sit and you watch bits and pieces of 30 years of what you've done, because it still feels like I'm just barely getting started," she said. "I'm just beginning to learn how to do this incredibly mysterious thing called actiung. And when I hear people talking about how they've seen my work or perceived my work over the years, it's incredibly touching and emotional for me. Because the truth is I never know really how it's going.

"But I want you to know," Lange added, pausing. "I really can do comedy."

Posted by stvanairsdale at 11:13 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Martin Does Page Six; World Laughs on the Inside

Now that pretty much everyone and their doormen have weighed in on the extortion controversy afflicting Page Six freelancer Jared Paul Stern, we can finally sift through the pile-up to sort the dead. For example, Gawker compromised its unofficial "Payola Six" reporting leadership by allowing Stern a weekend editing gig, which he handled about as elegantly as he stammered out his $220,000 request to Ron Burkle. And then there is Art Buchwald, whose evidently terminal unfunniness (he wrote from hospice) persisted Monday in The Washington Post with ruminations like, "In any case, I liked the story because it had nothing to do with leaks from the White House."

But the most mangled casualty to be dragged smoldering from the cultural collision might be Steve Martin, who wrote up his own parody of Page Six for The New Yorker. Loaded with "full disclosures" and other in-"jokes," Martin's piece has swept the Web as some sort of piercing satire; but as much as I wanted to be amused, I found myself reading it with a waning enthusiasm not dissimilar to the ethos guiding Martin's film career.

I mean, is this what passes for funny in The New Yorker?

Later, Late Show

David Letterman, the poor man’s Alan Thicke (full disclosure: Dave refused to match our Oscar gift basket), made a snide joke on his show about Page Six appearing not on page 6 but on page 12. Yeah, well, so? The reason that Page Six appears on page 12 is that we are getting a regular envelope under the door from the Committee to Promote the Number Twelve, and it would be too confusing to our readers to change the name of the column to Page Twelve, and, anyway, we are also receiving a tasty monthly contribution from the Society to Promote the Number Six.

Look on the bright side: At least David Denby can rest easy knowing he is, for once, not the magazine's most insipid contributor. A thank-you card must be in order.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 08:37 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 17, 2006

Museum of Moving Image Preparing to Legitimize Video Blogs

The Museum of the Moving Image sends word that April 23 is the big day for its "Video Blog Explosion" event, which will feature New York's own Amanda Congdon and Andrew Michael Baron (Rocketboom) and Jakob Lodwick (Vimeo) going over the technologies, perils and passions of their respective enterprises. Also featured is Boston's Ravi Jain, who tapes his daily Drivetime vlog during his one-hour commute to work.

The museum is obviously roling the dice that people interested in this medium would dare leave their homes (especially for Queens--on a Sunday), but at $10, the knowledge is almost too good a deal to pass up. And those lingering hangovers should be well-past by 4 p.m., so your excuses to miss it are fewer and fewer. Or vlog it yourself for the perfect, head-exploding meta experience of 2006. Or not. Just an idea.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 12:53 PM | TrackBack

Jane Fonda: Now Taking Out Anti-War Angst On Southern Fish Population

Jane Fonda hit town today for a wide-ranging, non-penetrating chat leading up to tonight's appearance at IFC Center, where she will attend two benefit previews of the anti-Vietnam doc Sir! No Sir! And if you think you might just wait until her next New York party-crash to throw either kisses or water balloons filled with urine at her, you might think twice--it could be a while:

"I wanted to do a tour like I did during the Vietnam War, a tour of the country," the Oscar-winning actress said Monday on ABC's Good Morning America. "But then Cindy Sheehan filled in the gap, and she is better at this than I am. I carry too much baggage." ...

Fonda said that during a recent national book tour, war opponents -- including some Vietnam veterans -- asked her to speak out.

Alas, Fonda is going back to Atlanta, where the government evidently could do without her but where amicable relations with ex-husband Ted Turner mean golden years chock-a-block full of outdoorsy fun:

"He's my favorite ex-husband," the 68-year-old actress said. "We get along great. I love to fish, and he has some beautiful property down there."

Rest assured that somewhere in the afterlife, Roger Vadim is soothing his battered ego with a four-way.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 12:35 PM | TrackBack

Cruise to Hijack Tribeca; De Niro Looking Forward to it Like a Vasectomy

As woefully out of the loop as I have been this month, you can imagine I am playing serious catch-up in my coverage of this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Really though, despite world premieres of sure-to-be-worse-than-shitting-blood disaster films like Flight 93 and Poseidon, and despite the word on the street that has most of the other, smaller titles faring not a whole hell of a lot better, and despite a May 2 music showcase featuring an increasingly erratic and unlistenable Nellie McKay, the 2006 festival promises at least one event of a sparkling, life-affirming magnitude that this puny blog could never hope to contain.

And though by now it is somewhat old news, do not even think you are going to tell me it does not continue to swell your sex organs with blood:

Tom Cruise, the most exciting and successful action star in the world, returns to one of his signature roles, Secret Agent Ethan Hunt, in the summer’s most highly anticipated action thriller, Mission: Impossible III--and Cruise will celebrate the U.S. premiere of the film on May 3 at the Tribeca Film Festival with a full day of screenings and events throughout Manhattan as part of “Mission: NYC.” ...

“We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City,” said Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Robert De Niro.

“Having the support of Tom Cruise and Paramount is a gift to us and the community," said Jane Rosenthal, co-founder of the Festival. “We are delighted to host Director J.J. Abrams, Tom and the cast as we celebrate our own mission impossible--the fifth Tribeca Film Festival in only four years."

The inevitablity of such a stunt--starting in the afternoon with Cruise's appearance on TRL and ending six hours later after a boat/car/train/helicopter/motorcycle pentathalon of retardedness--was nothing anybody could not see coming. The same can be said for the film's multiple screenings: Cruise will hit Tribeca and Harlem before exhaustedly crashing into the the Ziegfeld for the official premiere.

However, you cannot likely explain (or defend) Robert De Niro's complicity in such garish antics, nor can you picture him actually uttering the words attributed to him in this press release. In fact, as I struggle with the reality of the whole apocalyptic package, I must withdraw to my imagination and ask: Which De Niro are we dealing with here?

1. COMPLACENT DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”

2. INVALID DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”

3. SUICIDAL DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”

4. FURIOUS DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”

5. HAUNTED DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”

6. CONDESCENDING DE NIRO: “We’re thrilled that Tom Cruise is bringing M:i:III to the Tribeca Film Festival and New York City.”








I hate to think the guy is even partially responsible for any of this--that his only "fall from Grace" occurs after a late-night bedroom bender. Alas, shit happens, and I think a particularly astute Cinematical reader named Nana said it best about the powerful phenomenon at hand:

I can't wait even if I'm not living in America! lol

Tom Cruise litteraly invent premieres!

I read Dianetics by curiosity: it is dangerous because it is so beleivable and facsinating.

May 3, gang--plan your days off accordingly.

(Photo #5 by Mathias Bothor)

Posted by stvanairsdale at 10:46 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

'Scary Movie 4': Weinsteins Gorge on Reheated Easter Leftovers

Could I have possibly returned to the daily grind with a more heartwarming story than the latest triumph of les frères Weinstein? While Miramax nickle-and-dimes its way through Harvey and Bob's attic to help supplement Kinky Boots' debut, the new-ish Weinstein Company and its lowbrow label Dimension Films witnessed their Scary Movie 4 have the single biggest Easter opening since Jesus's tomb.

The parody's $41 million take is also the second-largest April launch ever, trailing only the memorably dynamic Jack Nicholson/Adam Sandler ass-stiffener Anger Management. So far, the Weinsteins have not commented on their studio's first-ever number-one opening, but Reeler HQ hears that Dimension boss Bob Weinstein is already making "I'll-buy-you-fly" jokes with his brother about the next year's lunch arrangements. Congratulations, fellas!

Posted by stvanairsdale at 09:21 AM | TrackBack

April 13, 2006

The Reeler Will Return April 17

UPDATE: As mentioned in this space March 31, an unplanned trip to the Reeler Family Compound in California threatened to stifle my NYC film coverage for the first part of April. The last week has proven a particular disappointment to me as I am sure it has to you, and I apologize. Alas, this hiatus has been unavoidable, but its conclusion is near--The Reeler will resume normal operations Monday, April 17, following my return to town.

Thank you for your continued patience. -- STV

Posted by stvanairsdale at 12:32 PM | TrackBack

April 07, 2006

Screening Gotham: April 7-9, 2006

--I have no idea what to tell you about Ilya Khrzhanovsky's new film 4 (right), which opens today at Cinema Village for your general exhilaration, puzzlement and frustration. Probably more famous for its troubled backstory—co-written by famed Muscovite novelist Vladimir Sorokin, shot over four years on a shoestring budget and subsequently banned in Russia for its relentlessly bleak portrayal of peasant life—than its aesthetic magnitude, 4 nevertheless reveals a talent to watch. Khrzhanovsky's off-by-this-much mise en scene and meandering narrative bring to mind Lucretia Martel haunted by the Soviet ghost; the camerawork loosens as the film rumbles along, fusing the sound of industrial wreckage to a handheld camera on loan from the Dardennes. Then there are the doll faces made from chewed bread, the roaming pack of four dogs, random quartets of trucks and ribald peasant women who take turns drinking and stripping. That you have never seen anything like it is kind of a given; whether that is a good or bad thing is totally up to you.

--Speaking of distinct backstories, Amos Gitai's latest, Free Zone, is the first Israeli film ever shot in Jordan. It is also the Natalie-Portman-crying film to end all Natalie-Portman-crying films, with the soon-to-be-shorn starlet the subject of the single longest sob take in the history of cinema. That said, she is quite good as an American on the outs with her in-laws and subsequently thrown into a road trip with a single-minded Israeli woman (Hana Laszlo) traveling to the commercial hub of Jordan's "free zone." Gitai's flashback sequences are a thing of beauty--exquisitely directed dissolves comprising as many as eight points of view at a time—and Laszlo's edgy work earned her Best Actress honors at last year's Cannes Film Festival.

--The Gen Art Film Festival is evidently carrying on without me this weekend, with Steve Anderson's FUCK, Scott Glosserman's Behind the Mask and Bruce Leddy's Shut Up and Sing taking the screen in Chelsea. Naturally, Gen Art is picking up the drink tab at the film's respective afterparties, so call that cheap date you have been meaning to plow since your last payday and get to work.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 05:17 PM | TrackBack

'Lucky Number Slevin': Noir Goes Cute

For a while there, Lucky Number Slevin looked doomed. The bravura discomfiture of its prologue trips on an eventual binge of quirk-for-quirk's-sake, star Josh Hartnett smirks through nearly the entire first act wearing nothing but a towel, and even Ben Kingsley suffers the indignity of a vaguely Brooklyn Hebrew accent more clumsily calibrated than an old Corvair. Before the slow, successive unfolding of the twists that redeem it, Slevin's hybrid of noir, screwball comedy and gangster picture comes within minutes of choking to death on its own smugness.

At least they tried: Liu and Hartnett bring the sensitivity in Lucky Number Slevin (Photos: The Weinstein Company)

That said, Slevin's redemption is rich, rewarding viewers with gambits tidy enough to recall the rush of films like The Third Man and The Usual Suspects. Both represent direct, powerful influences for writer Jason Smilovic and director Paul McGuigan, who team up here for the story of Slevin (Hartnett), a young man snagged in a case of mistaken identity that indentures him to warring crime lords The Rabbi (Kingsley) and The Boss (Morgan Freeman). Elsewhere in the mix, the assassin Goodkat (Bruce Willis) slips through the shadows in a mysterious, stoic quest for revenge, and Lucy Liu appears as the girl next door (literally) whose involvement with Slevin plants her in harm's way.

The conventions surprise nobody: The gangsters yield all the conspicuously wise, hard-boiled observations their authority implies; Liu's vulnerability feeds her lilting cynicism; a police detective (Stanley Tucci) bristles at Slevin's ostensibly unwitting interference with his investigation; and Willis's wraith-like hit man springs up everywhere without warning or announcement, never more effectively than in an opening sequence where he establishes the film's backstory for a stranger at an airport. Of course, no one is just a "stranger" in noir, and the violence that follows--too tortuous and ultimately too climactic to detail here--bleeds into Slevin's flawed but inspired threads of love, death and revenge.

By the same token, like its contemporary Brick, Slevin is noir once- or perhaps even twice-removed from its deepest genre roots. Liu jumped to Smilovic and McGuigan's defense when we recently spoke about the story's eagerness to experiment with tradition. "To be honest with you, I think that both guys are very original and unique people," Liu said. "And just like most of the artists I know, I don’t think anyone tries to come in and reinvent anything. They just come in with their vision and their thoughts and they do what they want with it. You know what I mean? I don’t think anyone thinks, 'This persons's trying to reinvent himself in this particular thing.' It's just another facet of who they are."

And hooray for facets--when they are smooth. Liu herself is especially underserved in the filmmakers' schema, with her and Hartnett's interminable meet-cute interlude collapsing under what feels like hours' worth of exposition. The way McGuigan tells it, a script as complex as Smilovic's required him to find the scene's spontaneity in Liu's physicality. "When I saw (Liu) in rehearsals doing what she was doing," McGuigan told The Reeler, "I was like, 'We've got to capture this--we've got to capture this incredible spirit this girl has.' We had to redesign sets and relight everything so she could go wherever she liked and just let her go free. That is when you do your job well: when you can see that and you observe it and you go, 'OK, I've got to capture this,' rather than saying, 'Oh, can you be really funny again? Can you be bubbly again?' I mean, that would be the worst direction you could ever give. So we just let them go. And then Josh, therefore, will react to her rather than react to me."

Hartnett really does neither, however, until the end of the film. His death-defying resolve resonates in ways that his earlier, smart-ass posturing cannot, and he looks painfully out of place in his towel and slippers during his lengthy introduction to Liu. The overheated irony of Hasidic Jewish thugs and stoogy black enforcers somehow neutralizes Hartnett even more. Not until Smilovic and McGuigan show Slevin's cards is he so much as two-dimensional, and only in the film's final 15 minutes does Hartnett brandish chops that come close to standing up to talents like Kingsley, Freeman and the particularly fine, brooding Willis.

It remains to be seen if Hartnett will earn his leading-man cred, but at least he says the right things. "As I've gotten older," he told me, "I've started to see the value of complex and really well-written, fully-developed characters, and working with great directors who will help you kind of get through that. And working with great actors, obviously, if you can get there--if you can find those people. Now I choose a little bit more carefully. I've got a couple of movies I've done in the last couple of years that just have better characters. And when you find better characters, you do better work."

Ben Kingsley, Slevin's source of seething rage and lousy accents

In theory, anyhow--at least it worked for Kingsley and Freeman, who share one remarkable scene as titanic archnemeses at the end of their respective roads. Kingsley recalled to journalists at the film's New York premiere how nobly he and his colleague regarded each other, and how the set adopted a reverential hush as they prepared to shoot. McGuigan acknowledged the scene's challenge, confessing a somewhat reactive change to the aproach he had taken on the rest of the film.

"Usually when you're directing you're trying to go about a scene, and the first few takes may not be what you're looking for," he said. "That's when you really DO direct, whereas this one, straight off the bat, these guys were raising your game up so high that you actually have to start directing them in a more positive way, if that makes any sense. 'Yeah, that was great, but ... ' The positive nature of it. But the worst thing you could ever do to actors like those guys--or any actor--is to say, 'Yeah, that was really great, but can you do it again?' Because that's not directing. That's just hoping the shit will stick if you throw enough of it. That's not directing to me. You have to keep correcting yourself and thinking, this is really good, but how do I make it better? How do I make it the scene I want to make it? And these guys look at you like they want you to do your job. They're there for you, you know?"

Without them, Lucky Number Slevin may have sunk, and judging from his conceptions of the film's best and worst scenes, McGuigan obviously did the best he could with what he had. For all of its angular complexity, Slevin is about frailty; as their criminal swagger melts into an acute sense of panic and even mourning, Kingsley and Freeman emphasize that quality more powerfully than the romance and revenge subplots combined. That they saw and fulfilled the film's promise goes a long way toward validating it; that McGuigan manages an emotional payday despite its convolution makes it an appreciably intriguing find.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 11:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 05, 2006

'Coogan's Bluff': East Meets West at Film Forum, is Killed Instantly

Film Forum's Don Siegel series builds its skull-cracking crescendo tonight and Thursday, with Siegel's 1968 tandem Coogan's Bluff and Madigan sharing a twin bill on the way to the series' climactic Dirty Harry engagement this weekend. And while neither of the first two films mythologize their New York locations to the extreme Dirty Harry did for San Francisco, both offer gleefully cynical views of an urban counterculture that the later film would implode once and for all.

And though Madigan is probably the superior New York film in strict narrative, technical and geographical senses, Coogan's Bluff is the selection that really must (and should) be seen to be believed. Clint Eastwood stars as Coogan, an iconoclastic deputy sheriff from Arizona who must travel to New York to extradite the fugitive Ringerman (Don Stroud) from East Harlem's 23rd Precinct. Of course, the tactics Coogan uses to stop crime out west (deftly illustrated in an opening set piece spotlighting revisionist-cowboy-vs.-humiliated-Indian) do not translate to New York, although his resistance to authority--in this case, Lee J. Cobb's bureaucratically browbeaten lieutenant--hardens into unbending defiance within minutes of his arrival.

Coogan travels to Bellevue, springing the acid-addled hippie Ringerman from his bed and heading to the crown of the Pan Am building for their flight back to Arizona. Alas, the captive's screeching partners in crime steal him back following an assault on Coogan, thrusting the cop and his cowboy hat into the city on a quest for justice. The archetypes are all here, and anyone with any rough familarity with Siegel's canon can foretell the rule-smashing lengths his hero will go to settle his score--stepping outside the mainstream as a means of salvaging it.

But the cultural breach in Coogan's Bluff is by far the most pronounced of any Siegel film: Eastwood's journey through New York takes him into Day-Glo Hell, the domain of hippies in thrall to songs and dances like "The Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel" and sprawling apartments where Edie Sedgwick-esque trust-fund ingenues go to get wasted, laid and ultimately overdose in disgrace. Coogan's ownership over this cohort is never really in question, as Siegel's near-parodic indictment of their freewheeling standards plays in contrast to his protagonist's own rebellion. Eastwood's iconic virility is its own weapon here, to be replaced three years later (and for the remainder of his career, perhaps) with Harry Callahan's .44 Magnum; his Coogan is the American West's answer to James Bond, subverting a garish, feminine antiestablishment with a mainline shot of macho convention.

Anyway, what is primarily appealing here is that while his contemporaries creatively reacted to Vietnam and other political threats stemming from communism, Siegel's cop trifecta takes it straight to the long-hairs. Madigan may emphasize their psychotic danger (what could be more terrifying, after all, than the enemy stealing our weapons?), and Dirty Harry may torture and kill them, but with Coogan's Bluff, Siegel underscores their novelty's spectacular uselessness in light of tradition. Its tactics may be raw, dated--even laughable--but two generations later, they are absolutely worth a closer look.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 11:06 AM | TrackBack

April 04, 2006

Cindy Adams Subject of Annual NYT Old-Gossip Lament

Invoking my temporary relocation "3,000 miles away from the media loop (lucky bastard)," a loyal reader sent The Reeler a link to Monday's NY Times profile of Cindy Adams. Indeed, I would have missed Andrew Jacobs's tongue hyperactively coating Adams with sycophantic slobber, delineating the tricks of her trade for anybody who cannot divine them from one of the gossip goddess's six columns per week.

While Adams admits her certifiable dog-adoring dottiness (only her second such acknowledgment to The Times in, oh, 17 months), and while Jacobs emphasizes her relevance in relation to blogs (only the second such Times writer to moralize about old gossip in, oh, a year), there is some eye opening stuff here:

(Adams said,) "I hate to go out to parties and openings. I'd rather have a quiet dinner with the people who are making the news."

Mrs. Adams, it should be said, rarely dines alone. During one recent week, she said, her dining companions included Joan Rivers, Barbara Walters, Judge Judy and an erstwhile jurist, Sol Wachtler, the former New York State Court of Appeals chief judge whose career ended with a prison term for harassing a former lover. ...

"I don't judge," she said when asked about her close relationship to people like Leona Helmsley, Imelda Marcos and Dewi Sukarno, the tantrum-prone wife of the former Indonesian president. "I just report."

Newsmakers, indeed; this would also inch us incrementally closer to understanding her late-night phone tryst with mover and shaker Matthew Modine, while her reluctance to judge accurately reflects her classic confusion over The Film Snob's Dictionary's assessment of Tom Cruise and Legend. But we all know Adams is being a little disingenuous about how she brings the pain: Do not think for a minute King Kong has forgiven her for squelching his coming out party last year. Non-judgmental animal lover my ass.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 09:36 AM | TrackBack

April 03, 2006

'Baseball and American Culture': Opening Day at MoMA

The good news about being stuck in California this week is that I will be able to watch my beloved San Francisco Giants live on TV as they flail into their 2006 campaign. The bad news is that I am going to miss out on at least a third of MoMA's Baseball and American Culture film series, which starts today and runs through April 30.

The program includes a dozen selections dating back to 1920, from a restored print of the Babe Ruth myth-umentary Headin' Home to Dan Klores's 2005 Latino player chronicle Viva Baseball. You can probably conjure most of the remaining titles without too much strain, The Jackie Robinson Story, Bang the Drum Slowly, The Natural and Field of Dreams probably being chief among them. And while clumsy entries such as A League of Their Own and Cobb apparently outclass notable omissions like The Pride of the Yankees and The Bad News Bears (and even Major League, which I know will never have an audience at any museum ever but deserves a second look anyway, if only for Dennis Haysbert's classic turn as voodoo-obsessed slugger Pedro Cerrano: "Jesus, I like him very much, but he no help with curveball"), it is nice to see the museum dust off the Ray Milland gem It Happens Every Spring, and Aviva Kempner's documentary The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg never really gets old.

Not coincidentally, Terrence Rafferty has a lovely little essay about baseball and the movies over at The Times, featuring a particularly astute assessment of why Ron Shelton's Bull Durham endures as the genre's finest film:

This movie is about success in failure, surviving your dreams rather than about fulfilling them, which gives it an appealing, and kind of sneaky, modesty: it's all bunts and hard slides and singles slapped through holes in the infield, and it winds up beating the swing-for-the-fences baseball epics of its era by a country mile.

The series starts tonight, featuring a Babe Ruth/Jackie Robinson-biopic double feature, to be introduced by Brooklyn Dodgers expert Carl Prince. Consider checking it out, assuming baseball's actual opening day does not take the precedence it probably should.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 10:18 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Viewers, Marketers on the Defensive as 'United 93' Trailer Hits NYC Theaters

The Daily News this morning features the first of what promises to be many stories on what we might as well call the United 93 frontlash--visceral negative hype against a film about which everybody seems to have an opinion without having seen it. While I am far more preoccupied with known quantities--e.g. the film's hacky, self-aggrandizing director Paul Greengrass--than with smacking United 93 down one month before its release, a trio of NYDN reporters hit area theaters to do the next best thing: gauge reaction to the film's new trailer.

And, oh, the humanity:

At least one theater on the upper West Side has yanked the harrowing trailer for Universal Pictures' upcoming United 93, saying it reduced one patron to tears.

"I personally received a couple of complaints. Some people were pretty upset," said a manager at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square 12 theater on Broadway. "We pulled the trailer last weekend." ...

"I covered my eyes. I couldn't watch it," said upper East Side retiree Gloria Harper, who volunteered as a Ground Zero relief worker shortly after 9/11. "I won't see the movie. I mean we lived through it."

The trailer, complete with heart-pounding surround sound, had a similar effect on some moviegoers at the Regal Battery Park theater - located virtually across the street from Ground Zero.

"It was disturbing. It's always painful and brings back memories," said Aida Sotelo, 47, a Manhattan homemaker who was working a block from the twin towers on 9/11. "It's still hurtful to see. And it will always be too early for me."

The piece also features a few endorsements: At least one victim's relative invokes the film's potential to help future generations grapple with the horror of 9/11, and no less an authority than Universal Pictures marketing director Adam Fogelson is 100 percent behind United 93's trailer:

"We didn't use any footage that people haven't seen before, and we didn't enhance it," he added. "It's truly horrific. So we're not shocked to hear that some people find it uncomfortable."

Translation: Get over it, New York.

Posted by stvanairsdale at 09:25 AM | TrackBack