Movie City Indie Archive for July, 2005
Accepting The Devil's Rejects: about those 3 stars
For those unclear on the concept, here’s how Roger Ebert ends his 3-star celebration of The Devil’s Rejects: “OK, now, listen up, people. I don’t want to get any e-mail messages from readers complaining that I gave the movie three stars, and so they went to it expecting to have a good time, and it was the sickest and most disgusting movie they’ve ever seen. My review has accurately described the movie and explained why some of you might appreciate it and most of you will not, and if you decide to go, please don’t claim you were uninformed.”
Spreading Billy Bob: John Anderson's cosmopolitan cracker
Nice lede in the Voice from John Anderson trailing our B-Bob: “The most cosmopolitan cracker ever to play Santa Claus and Davy Crockett, Billy Bob Thornton is a walking contradiction, reconciling the conflicting aesthetics of Northern and Southern truth and fiction. In person, he seems to have fewer of those sharp, hillbilly angles than appear on screen.” [Nice rhyme in the Kristofferson allusion there.] “He has skin that could advertise an L.A. salon (despite the scrollwork of tattoos up and down his arms). And while he’s wearing cowboy boots, he bought them… in New York City! “But they’re made in Texas… All the good boots are made in Texas. Some in New Mexico, but mostly Texas. I used to go to this place in Soho called . . . uh . . . Buffalo Chips, it was called. They sold Western wear. They had these boots made for me. The little diamonds are brown lizard.” [More fungo at the link.]
Post-piracy: peddling Asian DVDs in the US
There’s a survey of how US distribs are bucking already-imported Asian DVD titles with their Amercan releases, from Video Business’ Susanne Ault: “Asian DVDs are as hot as ever, but suppliers and retailers still tread carefully when dealing with the often-pirated genre. During the last year, extreme horror and arthouse cinema from Asia have found a place beside still-popular anime and martial-arts titles… U.S. movie fans, …versed in Chinese and Japanese films, are now branching out into discovering work from Korea and Thailand as well.Yet many of these films have been available on DVD for years in Asia. Consequently, discs have often found their way to the U.S. from distributors who may or may not have legitimate domestic home entertainment rights. American suppliers of Asian content, including Tartan Video, Palm Pictures and Ventura Distribution, are developing tactics to prevail over piracy.” [Figures ‘n’ facts at the link.]
PR Home Companion: fluffing Altman's Powdermilk Biscuits
Give that PR-ista a bonus: the NY Times follows the beaten path to a Minnesota door with their own on-set of Robert Altman‘s currently shooting Prairie Home Companion. “A thin young man [he’s 35] kept popping up on Mr. Altman’s shoulder during shooting recently, offering bits of advice. Paul Thomas Anderson, director and Altman-phile, is ostensibly on the set for insurance purposes; Mr. Altman is 80, so a backup director is part of the package. But he [also] said, “it is invaluable to spend as much time around Bob as I can.” He has no position as to whom the movie belongs to, other than that it is not his. “Whatever chef is going to take credit for it, it is going to be a very spicy dish that I will be more than happy to dine on,” Mr. Anderson said.” The Times’ David Carr, who obviously studied the paper’s internal memo to mention suburban and rural religion as often as possible, asserts, with disingenuous gooeyness: “A Prairie Home Companion is, to many, a kind of secular religion.” Altman himself is a tad more irascible: “Garrison’s audience is like the Mel Gibson Jesus audience… This movie is going to play for two weeks in places like Chicken Switch, Arizona, because the program has such strong rural appeal.”
War of War of the Worlds: Maybe that's the job of a critic
Stephanie Zacharek of Salon did not like War of the Worlds and does the art-vs.-life thing in comparing her reaction to that of close colleagues.
“Tim Noah wrote an impassioned essay decrying Steven Spielberg’s abuse of 9/11 imagery… and singled me out as one of the only critics… who were similarly appalled and troubled by the picture. Then on Wednesday Slate[‘s] David Edelstein — who, in addition to being my friend, is also a critic I admire and respect above nearly all others — responded to Noah (and, more indirectly, to me) with a vigorous and carefully reasoned defense of the movie as a valid response to 9/11. He did refer to my and Noah’s reaction… as “screwy” …. In any event, nothing Edelstein, or anyone, can say will change my mind about “War of the Worlds”: My screwy position is, at this point, more firmly and defiantly screwed in than ever…. The response I had… was immediate and visceral…. I’ve gotten a few letters from faithful readers of both Salon and Slate who were puzzled (or at least fascinated) by the idea that Edelstein and I could have such divergent readings of the same picture. I don’t think the difference in our responses is all that remarkable; what’s more interesting, I think, is how strong our feelings were, in comparison with those of so many other critics across the country. …That alone is proof that if you sit down in front of a movie and open yourself wholly to it — maybe that’s the job of a critic in a nutshell — you run the risk that it’s going to hit you right where you live.”
2005 meets 2046: Wong Kar-wai
“When asked, though, what he might do if he weren’t making movies, [Wong Kar-Wai] doesn’t waste time,” writes LA Times’ Scott Timberg on the eve of the US release of 2046. “I’d like to be a bartender… It would be very specific: It would have to be happy hour, or else very late at night. People go to bars to speak up—to tell you their stories.” Happy-hour patrons would be full of boasting, flirting and good cheer. “And by the time it was late, they would be quite drunk,” perhaps overcome by loneliness and despair. “They would tell you something quite deep — or else nonsense.” … [Cinematographer Christopher] Doyle, who has had several legendary fallouts with Wong, isn’t so sure the process is quite so typical: “Thank God there is no one else in this world who works this way.” … As for the making of poetic, philosophical movies like his: “I think it will happen — always,” he says. “Because don’t forget, the first reason people are attracted to this business is their passion for expressing themselves through images. Some of them will make it and some of them won’t. But we know those people are always there.”
Kurt, Harmony, Bernardo and Michael: Nevermind
Michael Pitt, the lead of Gus van Sant’s Last Days, marvels at Bernardo Bertolucci’s tastes in Gaycitynews: “The strange thing was that when I had my first meeting with Bertolucci, he asked me questions about what kind of films and music I liked… He was a really big fan of Harmony Korine [who is in Last Days] which I thought was kind of amazing, based on the fact that he was nearing 60 and knew about this really young, obscure filmmaker. He also brought up Kurt Cobain and when he first saw him he said he thought, ‘This is like a fallen angel.’ I thought that was very strange, coming from Bertolucci, and this was before I even knew about this project.”
Keeping Kontroll: where Nimrod found his muse
Nimrod Antal, the Hungarian-American director of the stylish thriller, Kontroll
set in Budapest’s underground, reveals his inspiration: “I wanted to make a film cheaply and I knew I could use existing lighting… I knew I’d be able to create a very strong production design in a given location without investing thousands and thousands of dollars. And while there were symbolic elements in the film, and certain things I wanted to get off my chest, I was mainly trying to make a [John] Carpenteresque B-movie thriller–a remake of The Thing or The Warriors by Walter Hill.”
Snow job: Gordy Hoffman's directorial debut at Locarno
The only US entry in the video competition at the Locarno International Film Festival, A Coat of Snow, is the directorial preem of Love, Liza writer Gordy Hoffman. The producers’ press release describes it: “Set in present-day Los Angeles, dramatic story deals with a bachelorette party unraveling over the course of a night until the bride disappears. Digital feature had Hoffman casting unknowns to maintain the look of a home video, followed by an extensive script workshop stretching over a 3-year period. Actors operated the camera throughout the shoot, with final edit containing 29 cuts and no music. Harrowing finale is a 12-minute shot, captured in one take.”
Drawing Burton: I find if I think too much, I start to confuse myself again
The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman riffles through Tim Burton’s sketchbooks: “Undoubtedly, his stylistic consistency owes much to his wonderfully weird sketches for his films. He used to storyboard his entire movies, shot by shot, but now really uses them more for himself: “They help me think more than anything else. They calm me down and, also, they’re a way for me to think subconsciously. I prefer to act out of my subconscious – I find if I think too much, I start to confuse myself again.” As if to confirm this, he makes another grab at his hair. They are also, he says, a way for him to get a measure of his crew: “It’s like a test, you know? Working out who isn’t intimidated by a crude drawing, or competitive about it. It helps me to see whether I’m dealing with an intuitive person or a literal-minded person, you know what I mean?”
Knowing Saint Jack: Bogdo still banned in Singapore
Peter Bogdanovich‘s 1978 Saint Jack is getting a new history, acorrding to Channel Newsasia’s Yong Shu Chiang. “Based on Paul Theroux’s novel about an American pimp hustling for a living in Singapore… the film is still rather obscure and is banned in Singapore, although it did play once at the Singapore International Film Festival in 1997. And to this day, Bogdanovich… still regrets having had to deceive the local authorities…” Singapore-based British author Ben Slater, “formerly a film curator in England, had originally intended to make a documentary… “I think Singapore has a really rich and interesting recent history. What I found researching the book is that it’s not easy to get in touch with that history… Saint Jack represented the ends of two eras really. It was the end of the era of Singapore as an exciting, vibrant old port – the ex-colony that was a kind of Wild West town.” … Slater, who curated a programme at the 2003 SIFF that included a film about decaying movie stock, said he was writing the book, to be published by a “major regional publisher”, to bring to attention the number of movie gems that fade into obscurity over time.”
Up Wolf Creek: Craig McLean back down under
Before its premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival, (and its fall release from the new incarnation of Dimension Pictures), Wolf Creek‘s Craig McLean has coffee and toast with The Australian’s Lawrie Zion: “Not everyone can see past the film’s grisly moments. One American reviewer said [the movie] would be nothing without its violence. “That [critic’s] an idiot, because the point of the movie is not violence,” McLean says. “What I’m fascinated with is the unbelievable randomness of [violence], that your life can be suddenly ended.” … McLean names British social-realist director Mike Leigh as an influence. “In a different way, if Mike Leigh shows a dramatic experience between people, the camera doesn’t just pan away from it. It will actually sit on the awkwardness of the moment where the characters don’t know what to do. I thought, what if you apply that kind of directorial technique to a B-grade slasher movie? So you take a B plot in which three kids go into the bush and get killed, which is every slasher movie in history. You shoot it like a Dogme film so it feels more real than real, and you make the acting like a Mike Leigh movie. At the same time you don’t shy away from the fact that it is incredibly Australian, and that it draws all its inspiration from true Australian crimes that we all know about… What it has going for it in the global marketplace is its point of difference. We’ve all seen lots of Australian movies where you get in a nobody American star to please some investors somewhere and try to make a half-American movie in Australia. As if you’re going to please someone by being more like them.”
Scottish play: John Sayles in Edinburgh
A few choice quotes from John Sayles in the Scotsman as Silver City opens there: “Despite the fact that Bush won a second term, the director reckons it was important that his film, as well as documentaries such as Fahrenheit 9/11, played in US cinemas last year. “I think there are definitely people who voted because they saw Fahrenheit 9/11. I also think that culture is a conversation and whenever that conversation gets too one-sided it’s important to put in some voices from the other side. At the time we made Silver City it was almost considered treasonous to ask a question.” … It’s tempting to view Sayles as someone who has been… marginalised for his political beliefs… “Because I’m self-employed I don’t risk being fired,” he says. “The usual reason that you don’t get money to make a film is that your last one didn’t make any. It actually doesn’t have that much to do with politics.” … Gathering dust on his shelf is a script about the Philippines insurrection of 1901, which he describes as America’s first Vietnam. “They’re both movies that, because of their scale, would cost a lot more than our usual $5 million…” Couldn’t he just sell the scripts to Hollywood? “Believe me, nobody wants to make those scripts in Hollywood.”
Born-again Polanski
Reuters’ Mike Collett-White makes a startling revelation in a piece about Roman Polanski’s libel lawsuit against Vanity Fair: “Polanski, 71, is fighting the case via video link from Paris, because if he came to Britain he would risk extradition to the United States where he is wanted after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. He cannot be extradited from France, where he was born.” Ah! Le pianiste! Mais oui!
Enigmas and populism: more of van Sant's plans
David Weissman, codirector of The Cockettes talks to fellow Portland director Gus van Sant about enigmas and big-budget movies: “Enigmatic is probably pretty true. I guess enigmatic would just mean hard to read. But if I say something like, “I want to make a movie about these street hustlers in Portland, Oregon,” and I’m talking to somebody that just got out of merchandising who’s working at Sony as a junior executive, they just go, like, “Uh-huh,” and I become enigmatic just because what I’m saying is too off their charts, not because I’m really enigmatic. Sometimes people just think you’re enigmatic because you’re not a Republican Christian and they’re not understanding your ideas.” Would van Sant make another Good Will Hunting? “When I made those films, I had read this essay by Jamake Highwater. He had drawn this wild timeline of art and artists. How in Greek times images on vases were not about the artist per se but about representing things that would be understood by the whole community. And then, through the centuries, art started to be relegated to represent biblical stuff, and eventually it gave way to portraits of people that were wealthy enough to afford the portraits, and so the subjects became the rich guys. That gave way to artists making pictures about commoners and then making their own expressionist creations. Until eventually you reached a time where the artist’s name was the only thing – whatever you were looking at was more about the name then it was about the representation… Good Will Hunting [was] an example of populist art. Like it was made to be recognized by the general population, and one of the reasons that I made it was just reading this [essay]. The same with Forester. So, yeah. It still appeals to me.”
