Movie City Indie Archive for May, 2005
Symmetry, Morose and Drunk: Cannes Just Loves This Korean
No way I would try to improve on that headline in Chosun for a frank interview with South Korea’s too-little-known Hong Sang-soo, whose sixth movie, Tale of Cinema was a last minute add to Cannes. Of his dovetailing structures, Hong says, “I wanted to break the traditional structure of a drama. Isn’t single progression a framework that Hollywood has perfected over several decades? I wanted to avoid that, so one of the things I found was symmetry. I did four films in that style, but I got sick of it, so I tried single progression with Woman is the Future of Man. Having done that, I’m back to symmetry with this film.” Stars Kim Sang-kyung, Uhm Ji-won and Lee Ki-woo get pretty drunk… You did the same thing in past films. What’s the greatest gift alcohol gives you? “We drank a lot during Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors and Turning Gate. Before, everything was soju, but these days, I drink baekseju (a considerably weaker drink). I quit smoking, too, about two months ago when the two packs a day I used to smoke started hurting my heart. Booze brings people together and allows them to spend time with one another. It’s another level of exchange.”
Why are all the movie moms momzers?: Ella Taylor asks
In LA Weekly, Ella Taylor separates the moms from the momzers, as part of a study of Jane Fonda: “Monster-in-Law may be warmed-over camp, but, just in time for Mother’s Day, it does have one thing going for it. Though hardly flattering, it’s the most affectionate and forgiving celluloid portrait of a mom I’ve seen since Albert Brooks’ far superior Mother. Even a cursory rummage through recent American cinema feels like a ride through a maternal hell peopled with timid, neurotic, controlling or critically absent mother figures. Consider the smiling ballbusters played by Ellen Barkin and Debra Monk in Todd Solondz’s Palindromes… or Emily Mortimer’s overprotective single mom in Dear Frankie. Howard Hughes’ mother appears as a 60-second bookend at either end of The Aviator, just long enough to set her up as the cause of all his troubles. Meryl Streep gives a delicious performance as the conniving bitch ruining Liev Schreiber’s life in The Manchurian Candidate. As a vagina with teeth, she is outshone only by that nice Mrs. Goebbels in Downfall, calmly popping cyanide pills into her sleeping children’s mouths so that they can follow the beloved Führer into eternity… Mean Girls has one of those cringe-making mothers who want to dress like their daughters and be their girlfriends. In Tarnation, Jonathan Caouette’s childlike, manic-depressive mom is at once the love and the scourge of his life. And my 7-year-old recently asked me why all the children’s movies we see — Lemony Snicket, Finding Nemo… begin with dead or fled mothers. Not to mention the wicked stepmothers, or godmothers, like the scheming, blue-rinsed fairy in Shrek 2.”
Non-Dogme-atic Van Sant
Gregg Kilday has a nice Q&A with Gus Van Sant in the Reporter: “Some of the rules… do come from Dogme 95, but they’re not really rules, they are just adopted aesthetics. In Dogme, they have rules, but we’re not as dogmatic. We have aesthetics that we like, but if we need a light, we’ll just pull in a light—we don’t have a rule to break. But we’re not using lights, which is one of the Dogme rules. One of the things Dogme does allow, which we’re avoiding, is cutting. We’re trying not to cut in a traditional manner. We’re trying not to go over people’s shoulders or show a point of view. We’re trying to do tableaus, I guess you’d call them, which is our own kind of aesthetic. … in Dogme, you use scripts, we’re not using scripts. We’re also trying—but sometimes failing—to not use well-known actors. We’re trying to get away from the traditional grind, where you have the three recognizable stars and everyone is cast around that. We do have music we put in, which is against… Dogme… but when we put music in, if we start a song, we have to play a whole song… We don’t just use a small little music song cue that just picks up… The same with what we’re looking at and whatever we’re hearing. If we’re looking at something, we really want to look at it. We just don’t want to cut away to it for a second.”
200 movies in 24 days: Seattle
While many eyes are turned toward Cannes, the Seattle P-I outlines the insanely long Seattle Film Festival, which runs through June 12. “The Seattle International Film Festival has gone through a long process of development in which it has varied wildly in terms of venue, format, emphasis, length and number of films..But by the mid-’90s, it hit upon a satisfying template that founding festival director Darryl Macdonald thought “worked for SIFF,” and which it’s been repeating, with slight variations, ever since: 200-plus films over 24 days at five basic locations.” William Arnold offers an overview of the melee.
European film capital moves from Cannes to Cluj
A very optimistic headline for a dispatch about the May 27 opening of a film fest in Transilvania: “Outstanding titles, important guests, photo exhibitions and special screenings are about to conquer the town of Cluj-Napoca, the heart of Transilvania… organized by Romanian Film Promotion…” The heartwarming lineup includes Oldboy, Lukas Moodysson appearing with his horror A Hole in My Heart and Todd Solondz with his kindly Palindromes.
Pistol-whip me for the camera: Craving Shane Black
Jason Anderson, in Toronto’s eye weekly does the Canadian survey thing but has other, entertaining things on his mind (and belly): “When not sitting in a dark room, I devise ways of eating and drinking in fancy hotel restaurants for free, a pursuit hampered by my lowly status among the global press corps and my inability to introduce people to anybody famous and/or rich. I do my best not to be distracted by the presence of a celebrity, even if the celebrity is Armand Assante. My sole concession to the rampant starfuckery that surrounds me is getting my picture snapped while standing next to someone who is rarely asked to be photographed. Two years ago, it was Sherman’s March director Ross McElwee. Last year, anime master Mamoru Oshii. This year I’m gunning for Shane Black, who, as the screenwriter behind Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight, became a hero to potty-mouthed teens everywhere. He comes to Cannes toting his directorial debut, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a blackly comic noir thriller starring Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. Maybe if I ask Shane nicely, he’ll pistol-whip me for the camera.”
A Certain Ratiocination: Rosenbaum sees stars
In an otherwise unrelated omnibus review of Crash, Mindhunters and Monster-in-Law, The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum elucidates an unlikely weighting system for the parceling of stars. “Watching Monster-in-Law, I admired the gutsiness of… Fonda playing an unsympathetic character who’s her own age and looks it (3 stars)… But I’m appalled by the strident sitcom overkill that surrounds Fonda on every side (no stars)… [Michael Vartan’s] prospective wife, played by Jennifer Lopez, an actress I immoderately adore (3 stars) despite the dumb parts she keeps accepting (no stars) and the excessive press… she gets (immaterial)… is a boring simp… (one star). And I’m only half-amused (1 star) by the mother’s black assistant (Wanda Sykes).. This averages out to little more than one star, but less than two. I’ll stick to one, since to raise this [film] to “worth seeing” would make me feel like a publicist or simply a dope.” [More math at the link.]
Brainless anti-Bushism? Podhoretz takes a Sith
Former New York Postie and conservative columnist John Podhoretz droops a thumb and cracks a few Sith fingers at the National Review’s blog, “The Corner.” “I saw [Revenge of the Sith], and here’s the thing: It’s unbelievably bad… While the movie critics of my long-ago youth were middlebrow snobs suspicious of populist entertainment, today’s critics have turned into toadies. They are afraid of being on an audience’s bad side, afraid that a movie they will pan might really strike a chord…The movie’s plot is so confused that it doesn’t really matter. At one point, Natalie Portman complains that ‘this war happened because of a failure to listen.'” Podhoretz tries to suss Lucas-logic: “But the war she’s talking about was started by the good guys! It was the Jedi who secretly built the Clone army… And, of course, the Rebellion that Luke Skywalker joined… was conducting a war against the Evil Empire which included blowing up Death Stars and arming Teddy Bears [caps sic]. Evidently 25 years into the Star Wars empire, George Lucas decided he just doesn’t like war… The whole confusion is reminiscent of the last Matrix movie, which is all about a noble truce between our heroes and the computers that have been using all of humanity as batteries. So that a few people could survive to have orgies in the underground city of Zion, billions of people had to remain in the Matrix. Inadvertently, both Lucas and the Wachowski brothers (who wrote and directed the Matrix movies) reveal with their brainless anti-Bushism the essential cowardly vapidity of pacifism.” [If the link doesn’t work, search on any bit of contumely quoted above.]
Son of a badge: Tony Scott reads those who Cannes
In the NY Times Cannesblog, Manohla Dargis awaits WiFi (or “weefee,” as she’s heard the French call it), and, A. O. Scott deciphers film fest status, ending on an egalitarian note, while only hinting at the color of his or Dargis’ i.d.s: “…Hierarchical color-coding turns Cannes into a seething cauldron of class resentment and status anxiety. Wearers of blue and yellow badges must wait for the better part of an hour, herded together behind a cordon, as their pink- and white-badged brethren swan in at the last minute to grab all the good seats. Those privileged folk, flush with a mixture of entitled complacency and liberal guilt, are acutely aware of their (okay, our) own caste distinctions… It is startling how heavily those badges figure in festival lore. There are tales of writers from the same publication given different badges, of a reporter with a better badge than the editor who was her boss, of slow upward mobility and precipitous demotion… We are all prisoners of the screening schedule… that the more compulsive attendees spend the first day entering into their PDAs or plotting out on graph paper. There is, nonetheless, a freedom to be found… rarely enjoyed by critics… which is the freedom to walk out… As reviewers, we are honor-bound watch everything to the end, but here, if something is bad or boring enough… there is always something else to see, or a few moments to be stolen in the Mediterranean sun, which shines on everyone, regardless of badge.”
A lot of unexpected charisma: Gus van Sant & Kurt Cobain
As his Last Days debuts in Cannes, van Sant writes in Liberation about his last encounter with Kurt Cobain: “Kurt sat a couple of places away from me and just stared down the table, in a very odd way. I [guessed] that maybe he had just gotten out of a rehab, because of his short haircut, and his wide-eyed stare, which was particularly open and fresh and innocent, which can happen when people just get out. I remember him sitting there not saying anything, but the presence in the room was tilted all of a sudden, like the big rock star had entered and was sitting at the end of the table not saying anything. The others were perhaps used to it, I wasn’t… I pretty much just listened and started to realize that I was really fascinated by Kurt. And at the same time, realizing some of this fascination was probably what drew everyone to him. He had a lot of unexpected charisma. While the piece at that link is in English, Philippe Garnier’s vivid making-of is only in French. Van Sant and cinematographer Harris Savides experimented with video formats, but wound up shooting in 35mm. “You always return there!” Van Sant joked to Garnier. Caravaggio is cited as a visual influence, but also Chantal Akerman’s 1976 Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Of that lengthy study of the everyday, Savides noted that only one or two camera positions were used, which led to Last Days having no reverse angles: “Only the result will be seen,” is how he describes the choice. Garnier notes van Sant’s “temporal loops, these Mobius strips he’s used since Elephant, refusing to use the syntax of the simultaneity of action which has dominated the cinema since Griffith.”
Indie spins: Microsoft and the Thought Thieves
Greg Allen‘s unearthed some corporado cognitive dissonance with a short film contest sponsored by Microsoft UK, called “Thought Thieves.” As minions of The Gates write, “The theme of your film should be about how intellectual property theft affects both individuals and society. Think about it: what would a world look like without protection for intellectual property?” Entrants have until July 1 to make something 30-45 seconds long in a Windows Media Player format. What’s the kicker? The entry form’s offhand boilerplate: “…Should I be selected as a finalist in this competition, I confirm the following… I will formally license on terms acceptable to Microsoft, all intellectual property rights in my film and agree to waive all moral rights in relation to my film if requested to do so…”
Breaking the silence: Korean director Ki-duk Kim
The Reporter’s Cannes coverage includes several dialogues with non-US directors, and South Korea’s Ki-duk Kim offers this telling perspective on his often-wordless work, with many more words than he would allow in one of his films: “I have enjoyed foreign movies at many film festivals even though the movies were in the languages I didn’t understand. There I learnt that explanatory dialogue is not necessary in storytelling. But the characters in my films are not dumb. They just don’t believe in verbal communication, or else they have deserted it because they are hurt. Sometimes I intend to delete lines to stress the visual images and context of the movie. [Sometimes] I put little dialogue in the movies because I am afraid an incorrect translation might hurt the flow of my work. I often ask viewers after the movie whether there were essential lines [missing], but they all seem to comprehend the movie without many lines. I think that laughter and crying are the best dialogue. But… I want to do a movie full of dialogue some day. The longer you live, the less you believe in the spoken word. Talking is the most convenient thing for humans to do. I wish to show human behavior and human nature rather than show talking. I think actions are a more powerful media to deliver my message. There are no lies in the movements of human beings. They are honest, no matter whether it is good or bad.”
Final cutting father: Telling Wexler father and son apart
In the Reporter, Martin Grove has one of his extended takeouts on the making of Mark Wexler’s Tell Them Who You Are and his relationship with his father (and subject), the cinematographic great Haskell Wexler: “I spent like 18 months with my dad. I didn’t have to, but I chose to… and I think the camera acted as… a buffer and a shield between us.” But, he adds, “It allowed us to be around each other that long and grow closer… I really do think as Jane Fonda says in the movie… someone needs to take the first step before it’s too late. I mean, my dad’s in his 80s and who knows how long he’ll be around and I’m getting up there… but you never know what can happen to people. One of the great things about the movie, I think, is I’ve showed it… and invariably 2 or 3 people will come up after the movie ends and say, ‘I haven’t talked to my dad in 10 years and I’m going to call him now because of your movie.’ As a filmmaker, it doesn’t really get any better than that. [That] makes all the difficulty making this kind of movie well worth it.”
Arnaud Desplechin: Why not use Emily Dickinson?
The Village Voice’s Dennis Lim has an extended, thoughtful interview with the French director about his marvelous new film, Kings and Queen: Does he think his work is theatrical, or novelistic? “It’s funny, I read an interview with M. Night Shyamalan where he said that with his films he was trying to make novels. And actually, you think about it, Unbreakable is sort of a novel, The Village is sort of a novel. But I think of my job as the opposite—use any form, any tool to build a film. If there’s something I like in a novel, just steal it. Something from a play, from a stupid TV show, from classical music or pop music, take it—take all these elements and make a pure film. In Kings and Queen, people are always quoting poems, obscure ones, French ones, American ones. And the point is, why not? Why not use Emily Dickinson? Why not use Apolinaire? As for theater, people forget, almost all of… Lubitsch’s films were adaptations…—and To Be or Not to Be is about the theater. When you look at John Ford, the influence of O’Neill is so obvious. And one third of Hitchcock’s films are based on plays. In America at least, there is no difference between theater and film, just East and West coast: You had these wonderful writers on the East coast doing experimental stuff on stage and these studios would say let’s make a film with that. It’s an American tradition, and the cinema that has influenced me the most is American.”
Sex and coke and Cock and Bull
Michael Winterbottom‘s in the edit suite with “A Cock and Bull Story, his adaptation of the novel “Tristram Shandy,” but he shares a pause with The Age to talk about the rock-‘n’-roll, drugs and sex in 9 Songs: “It’s not as if actors don’t have to do intimate things on film… They might be in bed together they might be kissing they might be stroking each other’s bodies they might be naked. There’s a whole set of rules, and boundaries, about how to do it. [This makes it] very hard to get any feeling of honesty or feel like you’re capturing anything that could be equivalent to the intimacy involved in making love to someone you love… I thought it was interesting to try to capture the intimacy of them really making love, rather than pretending to.” And what of the lines of cocaine the actors seem to be snorting? “I think ‘No comment’ is my response to that,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve got enough problems as it is.”
