Movie City Indie Archive for December, 2005
Tortured sentence for today: NYT does WTC
Writing (again) on Oliver Stone‘s forthcoming 9/11 feel-good tragedy, World Trade Center, the Times’ David M. Halbfinger inscribes, “The producers allowed a reporter and photographer from The New York Times to visit the set in hopes that the first images of this staged ground zero would be placed in context, rather than risking that unauthorized photographs hit the blogosphere devoid of any explanation.”
OK Blogger: Radiohead re-scoring A Scanner Darkly?
Blogs David Hudson at Greencine: “I’m going to be ridiculously irresponsible (but you know, life is short) and pass along an unsubstantiated rumor:
Radiohead may be this close to signing on to do a new score for Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly. Even if that turns out not to be true, in some parallel universe, that film is screening and it sounds lovely.”
Charming: Snakes on a Plane, the Neverending Story Part 2
Variety’s Dave McNary catches up with Snakes on a Plane, and while mentioning the many thousands of Google hits for the late summer release, also manages to cover almost all the same items as Movie City Indie’s October report, citing several of the same items as little Indie. (We salute those who link, like Cinematical.)
Blogs McNary, “Though New Line has done no publicity and the thriller is eight months away from release, buzz has reached epic proportions… The title alone has already inspired songs, merchandise and growing use of the phrase to signify something on the order of “It could always be worse.” … The Topatoco Internet boutique, for example, is selling T-shirts picturing a pair of snakes flying an airplane… Screenwriter Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds)… gleefully posted his reaction on his blog: “I love Snakes on a Plane. Love it. It makes me giggle like the fat, lazy schoolgirl I am.”
King Kong: Indeed it is
In the Observer, Philip French finds the ape is great, but offers up with a lovely vignette with his reservations. Peter Jackson‘s King Kong, French writes, “rather confuses the complex web of meaning—political, psychological, sexual and moral—that has grown up around Kong over the years, starting with the double-edged appeal he had for Depression audiences as a symbol of the destructive chaos of capitalism and the revenge of the people against the system. I remember emerging from an early-evening screening of King Kong at the National Film Theatre in the Sixties and meeting the distinguished Jungian analyst Anthony Storr, who was going in to see it for the first time. ‘You’re in for a treat,’ I told him. ‘It’s right up your street.’ He grinned broadly, rubbed his hands together, and said: ‘You mean real archetypal stuff?’ And indeed it is.”
Depression impression; director Annie Griffin on Groundhog Day
Festival director Annie Griffin talks a little like Harold Ramis as she praises Groundhog Day: “I think it is the most brilliant image of depression… Yes, the film is funny, but it’s also so profound about depression. Bill Murray’s character, Phil, hates everything. He’s just bored – he’s bored with his life, with himself above all. The plot device of that endlessly repeating day very effectively creates that depressed feeling that every day is the same, nothing changes in life…
“The ritual of Groundhog Day itself revolves around the small animal being yanked rudely out of hibernation. If he sees his own shadow that means he’ll retreat back into his cave. “He always sees his shadow, he always says there will be six more weeks of winter,” says Griffin. That end-of-winter desperation is clearly something Griffin identifies with. She grew up in Buffalo… not far from Groundhog Day‘s small town of Punxsutawney, and talks… of “that sense of what am I doing in this dump, this is Nowheresville, nothing happens here. And also I know those really tough winters, that feeling of being locked up, of longing for winter to end. Thinking, fuck it, this just sucks. I suck, my life sucks. All of that… The film doesn’t ever try to explain why the day repeats itself, we can project so much on to it and bring all kinds of associations to that experience… It’s really about the ability to change. Phil is very much a middle-aged man who hasn’t made it in his career, and he has that feeling of, ‘Oh, I’ll never be somebody who can play piano’, and then he realises he can do anything. It’s wonderful that one of the first things he wants to do when he realises there will be no consequences is to eat too many doughnuts…The ‘why not?’ that he discovers is the lightness of it. It’s almost that the lightness takes him out of the day.”
Richard Pryor, RIP
There’s a thin line between to laugh with and to laugh at…
Everyone carries around his own monsters.
A 2004 Guardian profile is here.
Flatulence and fog: the images of Jack Cardiff
Ace eye Jack Cardiff talks to the Independent’s Chris Sullivan as his “Magic Hour” memoir is reissued. “I think starting with Michael Powell would be a nice idea, wouldn’t you?” suggests the wonderfully loquacious 91-year-old director-cinematographer Jack Cardiff. “One day as I worked on second unit for Michael Powell shooting all the dull stuff on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I was asked to photograph this large wall full of animal heads. I heard a voice saying, ‘Very interesting.’ It was Michael Powell. He then asked if I’d like to photograph his next film. That was in 1943 and I was 29; but I had to wait another three years to do the job on A Matter of Life and Death—but I suppose I had been waiting all my life… My first job as crew was on the last big British silent movie, The Informer, in 1928… It was my job to be on hand all day to supply the director Dr Arthur Robison with a glass of Vichy water to help with his flatulence problem.”
… “Michael really encouraged suggestions,” says Cardiff. “In the beginning of A Matter of Life and Death when David Niven sees this long shot of a beach and thinks he’s in heaven, in the script it says ‘Fade in’ and Michael said, ‘This sounds so corny. I wish I could do something different.’ So I said, ‘Michael, look through the camera.’ He did, and I went to the front and breathed on the lens so that it went foggy. After a few seconds it cleared. Michael was absolutely delighted.” [More at the link.]
Seen you in your underwear: Amy Adams
Living up to the old saying that you get no respect back home ‘cos folks have seen you in your underwear, St. Paul Pioneer Press brings wonderful Amy Adams down to earth: “Former Chanhassen Dinner Theatres actress Amy Adams may be headed toward March’s Oscars…
Adams, a Colorado native who appeared in productions such as “Good News” and “Crazy for You” at Chanhassen, went directly from here to Hollywood… the “Gurus of Gold” at the www.moviecitynews.com site are picking her as one of a dozen actresses with legitimate shots at a nomination.”
Ang Lee: I just want to love everyone
David Gritten in the Telegraph is the latest to have his pulse stirred by Brokeback Mountain and gets Ang Lee on an interesting track. “I read the last paragraph of the short story,” he recalls, “and I got choked up. It’s a story I didn’t quite understand, but because I got choked up I felt there must be something there. Then I read the existing screenplay… and had to let it pass with a lot of regrets, because I was on my way to make The Hulk…. When I finished it, I assumed [it] must have been made. I asked… James Schamus, ‘How did it work out, is it a good movie?’ …” Students of Lee’s work will discern a familiar pattern here. Making films in America or Britain, he casts himself as the inquisitive Taiwanese outsider who, despite having lived in New York for 25 years, does not quite understand the codes of societies portrayed in his films. Thus his presence has the effect of subverting the genres he touches… He shrugs… at this idea of subversion: “It would be vanity to say that. You may have that thought at first, but it won’t last the year you need to make a movie. So I don’t think it’s a factor. It’s excitement: [tackling] something I don’t know about…. Every movie is an adventure for me. It ought to be exciting.”
After Hulk however, “I told James Schamus, if you want me to make this, don’t make me angry. I just want to love everyone on the set. No personnel to make me angry. I don’t want any stress, other than the weather.”
Harvesting the Nation: Klawans on Ramis
The Nation now makes Stuart Klawans‘s movie reviews available online. While the fireworks of Manohla Dargis and the great expectorations of Armond White get more pixels of comment these days, Klawan’s assured words about the virtues of Harold Ramis‘ unappreciated gem remind how little-appreciated he is as a critic, even in the slot once held by James Agee and Manny Farber: “What makes The Ice Harvest stand out is the crispness of the dialogue, the sureness of the pacing and the unexpected depth of feeling that comes through. “Guys of our age,” begins a sentence spoken at one point by [John] Cusack to a very drunk buddy (Oliver Platt) who functions as his chubby and disheveled double. Platt is married to Cusack’s former wife, lives in what had been Cusack’s house, acts as a not very capable stepfather to Cusack’s children and boisterously, sloppily, hilariously voices the desperation that Cusack would now be feeling, if he weren’t hopping out of his skin with anxiety… If [Billy Bob] Thornton is the tougher self that Cusack is trying to become, then Platt is the self he wants to escape–a desire that plays as both funny and poignant. By the calendar, Cusack is hardly ready to be one of the “guys of our age,” but his face in The Ice Harvest is more wan and puffy than you’ve seen before. His management of a perpetually quarter-drunk state is convincingly practiced; his demeanor before his children, appropriately subdued; his stabs at flirtation with Nielsen, the stuff of middle-aged shame… The ending may be the best thing of its kind since Joe E. Brown’s immortal “Nobody’s perfect.”
Comedy is you fall in an open manhole and die: Schamus on happy Brokeback set
The Reeler ropes choice quotes from the makers of Brokeback Mountain, including this analysis from producer James Schamus: “It’s funny,” Schamus replied, smiling. “Most of the great comedies are made by people who are having nervous breakdowns. It’s weirdly vice versa. We were all making this horribly tragic, moving experience, and yet sheep jokes abound.” [The headline refers to part of Mel Brooks’ definition of tragedy vs. comedy.]
Off with her bed: Marie Antoinette
Kirsten Dunst is Marie Antoinette; trailer scored to New Order for Sofia Coppola‘s fall 2006 film. Um. Okay.
Day and date and jargon: Parson's parsing re TW
“Windows are inevitably going to collapse over time,” [TimeWarner topper Richard] Parsons told reporters, Variety writes “I don’t know if everything will be day and date. But managing that transition in a way that is respectful of our distribution partners is the challenge.” Further wordyiage, which a CEO is paid well for at events like this, the Credit Suisse First Boston Global Media Week Conference: AOL “came a little late to the advertising side of the party… We’re talking to people about how we can kickstart that business… AOL is not an albatross around our neck but a valuable part of our business.” Reports the Reporter, ” the industry will “get close to the day-and-date paradigm.” (Babelfish does not yet have a jargon-to-English translator; no estimates on how long this will take.)
Blogging Syriana: Gaghan goes for it
“My first blog…. I’m on a plane. I’m drinking bad coffee. I’m promoting a new film, Syriana, that I’ve spent the last three and half years writing and directing, cutting and scoring, agonizing as recently as three weeks ago over details like the font and point size of the end-title scroll – I chose Highway Gothic, considered in some circles to be the new Helvetica,” muses Stephen Gaghan at Huffington Post.
“Since this is an inaugural blog and it’s clear skies at 37,000 feet, I thought I might write a brief primer on corruption,” which the writer-director proceeds to do. “Corruption is the inducement of a government official to allocate state assets at a price below market value…
“As Tim Blake Nelson playing Danny Dalton, says in Syriana, “Corruption is just government intrusion into market efficiency in the form of regulation… that’s Milton Friedman, he got a goddamn Nobel Prize.”… Remember that if a culture can spring into existence on the banks of the Potomac that makes it seem perfectly okay to accepts multi-million dollar gifts from private business, that same culture can be changed, induced, if you will, to turn those gifts down and represent all of the people instead of a tiny, super-wealthy minority.”
Defining the trailer-maker's art
The definition of a talented maker of coming attractions trailers?
Someone who can make you salivate at the prospect of a new Spike Lee Joint like Inside Man.
