Viewing: Straub-Huillet's Europa 2005–27 Octobre

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The final film by the difficult-to-see Straub-Huillet, an unsigned 12-minute short by Jean-Marie Straub and the late Danielle Huillet. In Cinema Scope 29, publisher-editor Mark Peranson noted Huillet’s passing: “As the year ends, we are already seeing an increase in the number of cinema “celebrity” deaths, by dint of the fact that as the 20th century progressed, the number of celebrities increased exponentially. Danièle Huillet stands above them all. Her death must be considered the most significant film event of 2006. And I say this having only seen four of Huillet and Straub’s films—the latest, on a German-subtitled print with which I had to follow along using an English dialogue list.” [More at that link.]

Canadian animator Ryan Larkin dead at 63

Canadian film animator Ryan Larkin, subject of Chris Landreth’s Oscar-winning 2004 short Ryan, is dead at 63, writes Lee-Anne Goodman of Canadian Press. “Larkin, who was himself nominated for an Academy Award in 1969 for his psychedelic animated short Walking died on Wednesday in St-Hyacinthe, Quebec. “He was not only an artistic inspiration but he was very charming—he captivated a room; he was always the centre of attention,” Laurie Gordon, his friend and manager, said… “He just had that magnetism. He really had something; he had the ‘it’ factor. He could have been a rock ‘n’ roll singer.” Larkin was a celebrated animator and filmmaker [at] 19 when he started working for the National Film Board of Canada in 1963. His work during his 14 years with the film board earned him dozens of awards… But Larkin later succumbed to a combination of creative block and alcohol and cocaine problems, taking to the streets of Montreal as a panhandler.” I hope a Canadian colleague who commented thusly does not mind so much: “He was a talented artist, a mean drunk, a dirty pervert, and a tragic loss.” [Details on Larkin’s recent efforts, persisting after his diagnosis of lung cancer, at the link; you can read more about his shorts for MTV and his unfinished final film in this December 2006 dispatch from CBC.]

Seven true Lives of Others

Real-life stories of how the East German Stasi, or secret police, recruited informers, amplifying the story in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s The Lives of Others, is the subject of a lengthy piece by Hannah Booth in the Guardian. “It’s more than 17 years since the Berlin Wall fell, that chilly night on November 9 1989. To the sound of car horns and cheers, East Germans fled to the west in their thousands. Those skinny teens in stonewashed jeans and leather jackets dancing on the wall will now be approaching their 40s; those boxy Trabants streaming through the Brandenburg Gate, now Audis and BMWs. But the past hasn’t been entirely forgotten. In fact, Germany is currently experiencing a resurgence of interest in what life was really like in the German Democratic Republic. After years of silence followed by sugary nostalgia (“ostalgie”) for kitsch food brands and clothes, former East Germans are taking a harder, more critical look at life under the constant gaze of the Stasi… Both East German citizens and West German politicians were spied upon by the Stasi, who recruited an extraordinary one in five of the civilian population to act as unofficial informers. Little surprise, then, that even with the archives open, a national paranoia remains over who was victim and who collaborator.” [Seven victims of the former communist state tell their stories at the link.]

Glimpsing the divine: Is Anna Faris God?

Reid Rosefelt at Zoom-In shares that fair delusion and a big Smiley Face, and he thinks Gregg Araki‘s newest is the Citizen Kane of stoner pics. He compares his reaction to Borat: “I had a wonderful time, but watching that film for me was like encountering Will Ferrell’s bare butt—always a welcome sight, but you’ve seen it before. Cohen I knew; Faris stoned was new. And that girl had me at first toke. I don’t think I’m giving away too much to say that Smiley Face is 84 minutes of Anna Faris walking around LA completely baked… There are some moments of high drama–whether she should eat her nerd roommate’s cannabis-laced cupcakes, and at a certain point in the plot she comes into possession of a first edition of the Communist Manifesto… Faris takes this thin-as-a-Matzoh premise and with nothing more than her gaping Lucille Ball rubber-mouth, her glassy-eyed stare, her wacked-out inventiveness, and her complete absence of vanity, spins something awe-inspiring out of what would have been a really stupid movie… I can easily imagine her slapping John Cleese with a fish. We can never have enough funny people.”

Eschewing creative pride: how Peter Morgan types

Last King of Scotland co-writer and The Queen screenwriter Peter Morgan talks toolbox with with the Reporter’s Martin Grove. “Morgan told me he’s “an early morning man (and writes on) a computer. I use Final Draft. In this instance, I did a bit of research and then I worked only from my imagination. I wrote the film how I wanted it to be and then I did the research to fact[-]check my imagining. I didn’t really do all the research to find out which way to go because I find that way I can lose the wood for the trees, as it were. I actually need to have a view beforehand. I write what I’m hoping it is or how I’m imagining it is and then I go and fact check that. And if it’s wrong, then I’ll change it. If it’s right and in sequence, great. But it allows me to keep the broad sweep of my own imagining.” Does he structure his screenplays using note cards on a board? “No, I don’t do that at all… But I do work from an outline and I just constantly revise the outline. The reason I work from an outline is that it’s somehow less heartbreaking to tear an outline up than it is to throw a screenplay away. I can cope with any amount of structural failures on an outline. They don’t dent me or prick my confidence whereas if I was to hand in a screenplay that had profound structural problems that would become exposed and that would become clear. That would be devastating and it would be hard to go back whereas I have no creative pride invested in an outline.”

Penn's station: Arthur's available

Vet director Arthur Penn talks to the Reporter uponan honor at the Berlinale: “Did you consider yourself part of the counter-culture? I did. I was. I knew all these people. But I also could see their dream would not be fulfilled. What do you think of cinema today? The British are making some good films. “The Queen.” “Venus.” What directors working today impress you? Jim Jarmusch. Stephen Frears. Wes Anderson. Still available for hire as a director yourself? Sure.

Tortuously entertaining: the mind behind 24

New Yorker’s Jane Mayer has an epic 8-page profile of Fox’s 24 majordomo Joel Surnow and the depiction of torture, edging into the tale in the magazine’s fashion. “Surnow is 52, and has the gangly, coiled energy of an athlete; his hair is close-cropped, and he has a “soul patch”—a smidgen of beard beneath his lower lip… Surnow’s production company, Real Time Entertainment, is in the San Fernando Valley, and occupies a former pencil factory: a bland, two-story industrial building on an abject strip of parking lots and fast-food restaurants. Surnow, a cigar enthusiast, has converted a room down the hall from his office into a salon with burled-wood humidors and a full bar; his friend Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio host, sometimes joins him there for a smoke. (Not long ago, Surnow threw Limbaugh a party and presented him with a custom-made “24” smoking jacket.) … In 24, “[f]requently, the dilemma is stark: a resistant suspect can either be accorded due process—allowing a terrorist plot to proceed—or be tortured in pursuit of a lead. Bauer invariably chooses coercion. With unnerving efficiency, suspects are beaten, suffocated, electrocuted, drugged, assaulted with knives, or more exotically abused; almost without fail, these suspects divulge critical secrets [unlike in the real world]… Surnow, who has jokingly called himself a “right-wing nut job,” shares his show’s hard-line perspective. Speaking of torture… “Isn’t it obvious that if there was a nuke in New York City that was about to blow—or any other city in this country—that, even if you were going to go to jail, it would be the right thing to do?” … “In many episodes… heroic American officials act as tormentors, even though torture is illegal under U.S. law.” Mayer makes a thorough catalog of the style of torture in the series and its implications. “Howard Gordon, who is the series’ “show runner,” or lead writer, told me that he concocts many of the torture scenes himself. “Honest to God, I’d call them improvisations in sadism,” he said. Several copies of the C.I.A.’s 1963 KUBARK interrogation manual can be found at the “24” offices, but Gordon said that, “for the most part, our imaginations are the source. Sometimes these ideas are inspired by a scene’s location or come from props—what’s on the set.” Gordon worries when “critics say that we’ve enabled and reflected the public’s appetite for torture. Nobody wants to be the handmaid to a relaxed policy that accepts torture as a legitimate means of interrogation… But the premise of ‘24’ is the ticking time bomb. It takes an unusual situation and turns it into the meat and potatoes of the show.” He paused. “I think people can differentiate between a television show and reality.” [Much compelling reading at the link, including complaints by the miliary about the licensing of torture in the series, as well as Surnow’s new Fox News Channel satire series, “The Half Hour News Hour,” positioned as a conservative riposte to Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”]

Manny in Manhattan: Farber's painting

Retired film cricket Manny Farber is a reknowned painter as well, and he’s included in the show “High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-1975,” as reviewed in NYTimes by Roberta Smith. The curator, she writes, “has done her best with the academy’s galleries, carefully sorting artists who stuck to canvas on stretchers and those who set out for points unknown, including the floor and the video monitor. Yet the show demonstrates that certain techniques endured. Important among them was the propensity to get very physical with paint and to take into new terrain the pours and drips of Jackson Pollock and the staining technique of Color Field painting. In one large gallery stain painting is rebelliously pushed off the stretched canvas in vibrantly colored and variously two-sided, sewn, beaded and torn works by Manny Farber, Alan Shields and Alvin Loving.” [More about the exhibitions at the link as well as here; the show ends April 22. National Academy Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street. 212.369.4880.]

Into the Breach with the Oscar speech: Billy Ray

“I think about Oscars all the time. Academy Awards mean the world to me,” Breach director Billy Ray confesses to St. Paul Pioneer Press’ Chris Hewitt. “The writers and directors I measure myself against—Francis Ford Coppola, Spielberg, Bob Fosse—all won Oscars, and I want to be on that list. Those awards are hugely important to me, and anyone who knows me will tell you I talk about them all the time…. I don’t think I’ve ever been without an Oscar acceptance speech… Whatever I’m working on, I’m always fantasizing I’ll get to do it. That’s why you work so hard in this business—to get to make that speech.”

Cut from the gut: contra rapid edits

Should film editing slow down? Todd Longwell surveys in the Reporter. “[W]hat was once daring is now commonplace. Today, aided by the speed and ease of nonlinear computer editing systems… editors routinely have films jumping back and forth through time and scrolling swiftly through multiple plots without visual or narrative signposts to indicate where they are in the story. And viewers raised on the dramatic juxtapositions of music videos, video games and other high-impact visual media barely blink an eye.” Says Blood Diamond editor Steven Rosenblum, “I cut from the gut, essentially… Whatever interests me is how I go… [T]here’s the scene where we see the boys indoctrinated into the (Revolutionary United Front). It’s a musical sequence with African rap music playing, but if you look at the montage itself, it is nonlinear. It goes back and forth in time and in structure, but the emotional tone of the piece is consistent, and therefore, audiences just accept it completely.” Thelma Schoonmaker: “We use it where we need it, but we’re not for it all of the time. Scorsese’s always saying, ‘Whatever happened to the shot, the beautiful shot like Kubrick makes? It can last for a long time, and you can watch it for a long time.”‘ Great directing, she says of a specific set of choices in The Departed, is “knowing when to a use a close-up and when not to.” [A neat example from Children of Men is also cited.]

Cremater: Matthew Barney ship ablaze

BBC reports that Matthew Barney‘s Drawing Restraint 9 co-star, whaling ship Nisshin Maru, burst into flames in the Ross Sea at dawn Thursday. “About 120 crew members were taken off the vessel but 30 stayed behind to tackle the fire while one is still unaccounted for… There are fears the vessel could cause some environmental damage…. New Zealand maritime officials – whose country is responsible for search and rescue operations in the area – said the blaze had nothing to do with whaling protesters [two to three days’ sailing distance away] but was possibly caused by a mechanical fault… New Zealand Conservation Minister Chris Carter said that while the safety of the whaling ship’s crew was the top priority, “we are also gravely concerned about the environmental risk to Antarctica’s pristine environment, if the ship is sufficiently damaged to begin leaking oil”.

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Lord of Dogtown: Hickenlooper slangs Zimmerman in St. L.

Factory Girl‘s George Hickenlooper talks to hometown cricket Joe Williams at St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “George Hickenlooper wants to set the record straight. He never had to reshoot any footage…The sex scene between Sienna Miller and Hayden Christensen was not real. [And] Bob Dylan is an arrogant jerk. “You can quote me on that,” says Hickenlooper… “He had his family threaten to hurt me,” Hickenlooper says. “But I don’t give a damn about Bob Dylan. I never even liked his music, except when his songs were covered by the Byrds.” …Hickenlooper says he did re-edit the film, but only to accommodate some budget changes and the looming Oscar deadline. And he is adamant that the controversial sex scene was just an example of some very good acting… [h]e also confirms that certain members of cast and crew dabbled in hallucinogens to reproduce the vibe of the psychedelic ’60s. But Hickenlooper says he wasn’t one of them. “Making a movie looks glamorous when you’re growing up in St. Louis,” he says. “But making a good one is a lot of work.”

Sundance's globomobo: bitty pics on the mobile

Sundance is big, it’s the pictures that got small: The Sundance Film Festival Global Short Film Project debuts five short films made for cell phone users. Per the PR, “Sundance Institute & GSMA unveil ‘made for mobile’ short films at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. “I believe mobile viewers will be surprised and delighted by the diversity of these films,” said Bill Gajda, Chief Marketing Officer at the GSMA. “Ranging from the comic to exquisite, the radically different creative styles of storytelling play extraordinarily well to the unique, viral nature of the mobile medium.” The filmmakers are Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris; Jody Hill; Justin Lin; Maria Maggenti and Cory McAbee. The full release is below; access to the shorts is explained here.

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H'wd feels Canuck'd by les pirates Canadienne

Globe and Mail reports that a coalition of US bigs cites Canada as one of the Axis of Pirates, along with China, Russia, Indonesia, Ukraine and Belize. Writes Barrie McKenna, “Canada’s chronic failure to modernize its copyright regime has made it a global hub for bootleg movies, pirated software and tiny microchips that allow video-game users to bypass copyright protections, the International Intellectual Property Alliance complains in a submission to the U.S. government… “The disturbing thing is that the Canadian government doesn’t seem to take this very seriously.” … Officials at Industry Canada, which oversees copyright laws, would not directly address the U.S. industry’s concerns yesterday, nor would they say when new legislation might be ready… “The problem of unauthorized camcording of films in Canadian theatres is now nearing crisis levels,” the group complained. It estimates that in 2006 as many as a quarter of all bootlegged films sold worldwide were made in Canada. Unlike in the United States and most other developed countries, videotaping movies in theatres is not illegal in Canada. Likewise, there is no law in Canada that specifically bans mod chips and other piracy tools, as there is in the United States.” [More at the link.]

Word and Image: Hoberman on Whitehead

Peter Whitehead‘s a key filmmaking observer of the 1960s, and J. Hoberman describes his Anthology Archives retro in the VOICE: [T]he High Sixties are the historical moment on which no one has any perspective—least of all those who lived through it… As much scene-maker as filmmaker, Whitehead personified the late-’60s breakdown of boundaries in postwar Britain. This working-class Cambridge grad was the original rock’n’roll documentarian; with reckless camerawork matched by tumultuous editing, he plunged into London’s sex-drugs-and-protest counterculture with a frenzied there-ness.” Hoberman surveys the near-complete survey, including a Led Zeppelin concert film. “Made in collaboration with artist Niki de Saint Phalle, Daddy… is an elaborate psychodrama in which the elegant, imperious de Saint Phalle revisits the moldering gothic site of her childhood. The artless style suggests early John Waters and so does the material, which—genteel but shocking—restages de Saint Phalle’s childhood abuse before careening into an elaborate s/m fantasy that involves setting up Mummy as a whore and humiliating “Duddee” as a dog. Payback reaches its uncomfortable climax when Niki tantalizes her nemesis with schoolgirl jailbait (Mia Martin, a teenage model-cum-heiress who was Whitehead’s current inamorata). Spanking and masturbation verge on the pornographic until Niki decides that Daddy, already killed off a dozen times, is “just a girl in disguise.” Face painted, he gives birth to some broken dolls. This unforgettably unpleasant movie—more cathartic for de Saint Phalle than the viewer—was Whitehead’s last to receive any American notice… A few years later, Whitehead would reinvent himself as a falconer, employed at one point by the House of Saud.”