Movie City Indie Archive for October, 2007
5 minutes with Harmony Korine
Les inrocks has a short, blunt interview with Harmony Korine, whose Mr. Lonely will be released in a few months. The site’s in French; the interview is in English (with subtitles). “Basically, I was like, maybe 8 years ago, I just started, um, I was getting really fucked in the head. My brain wasn’t working correctly. I just was in a very, uh, dark spot in my life. I was writing screenplays about pigs.” More about the never to be made “What Makes Pistachio Nuts” and other tidbits at the link. [An earlier entry with a link to the only long interview I’ve seen about Mr. Lonely is here.]
[LOOK]: Trailering Carlos Reygada's Silent Light
{Via Karina Longworth at Spoutblog.]
The Darjeeling Limited (2007, *** 1/2); Hotel Chevalier (2007, ****)
ANY PICTURE THAT OPENS WITH BILL MURRAY WEARING A TRIM, TOO-SMALL FEDORA POKED ATOP HIS HEAD WHILE IN SUIT AND TIE IN A GETAWAY TAXI THROUGH THE CROWDED, COLORFUL STREETS OF A CITY IN INDIA is showing all the right signs for pleasure to come.
In fact, Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson’s serio-comic follow-up to the (at least to these eyes) disastrous The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (written with co-star Jason Schwartzman and second-unit director Roman Coppola) is the best thing he’s done since Rushmore. Storybook preciousness of color and frame recur, as does the sight of thirtysomething male characters working out wounds bequeathed by their fathers. Still, there’s an intriguing growth in temperament. While some elements still might make the construction of the movie seem not everything but the kitchen sink, but a kitchen sink full of kitchen sinks, matters deepen, moods darken.
Three brothers are brought together a year after the death of their father by Francis (Owen Wilson, whose head is garishly bandaged for most of the movie), the emotionally tone-deaf, millionaire control freak of the family. Jack (Jason Schwartzman) is a writer, and Peter (Adrien Brody), well, he just looks like he’s always ready to burst into tears, except at the prospect of purchasing a poisonous snake. This is mismatched casting of siblings that is almost as bold as Luis Buñuel having two actresses interchangeably play the same role in That Obscure Object of Desire. Yet their constipated, passive-aggressive pissiness is of a suit. Soon you are convinced by this trio, this Larry, Curly and Moe with the vapors.
To The Nines: John August shares his script
Generous screenwriter-blogger John August has advice and downloads on his site; the latest is The Nines.
Lust, Caution (2007, ***)
LUST, CAUTION IS A BOLD NON-CAREER MOVE: to make a film of its own style and pace, but within a budget that allows it, instead of ruining its financiers, to use the goodwill earned from a movie like Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, drawn from a short story by Eileen Chang, adapted by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon co-writers Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus (who co-produces and is also the head of distributor Focus Features), is a Chinese-language art movie and proud of it, as well as its NC-17 rating. Some reviewers dismiss the movie as the equivalent of Michael Cimino following The Deer Hunter with Heaven’s Gate, but it’s not an apt comparison, even starting with the lower budget that’s likely already amortized across all its international revenue streams. “Lust,” is an espionage thriller set in World War II Shanghai, for the most part, and makes literal invocations of Hitchcock, among other filmmakers. But the noir elements have a blush, in the sexual grappling between a young Hong Kong acting student, Wang Chia-chcih (Tang Wei) who is sent to befriend, to bed, and to kill a political figure in charge of torture, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung). The sex scenes were shot on padded sets as in the filming of hand-to-hand combat, if that’s any indication of how the issues of power get depicted. Wei has slightly wonky eyes in a round face, and her expressions are sometimes more evocative than the clean, simple lines of the narrative. (Her eyes tend to travel a bit when her character dissembles, followed by a purse of her small mouth.) Still, there is an explosive moment that follows the key, definitive decision of one of the characters, that all the talk and fuss (and mah-jongg games) add up to: I will simply say it is like the launch of a rocket and is the most masterful instant of a well-observed, luxuriously mounted, committedly languorous movie. There are details galore, including a usage of the backs of characters the way Carl Dreyer did (a favorite of Schamus); Wei weeping at a close-up of Ingrid Bergman in a battered 16mm projection of Casablanca; the interiors of cafes and bars that emulate lost Kowloon; and the last shot holds its breath, and shadow, for the proper, illuminating moment. [Ray Pride.]
Into the Wild (2007, *** 1/2)
SPEED RACER’S HAIR IS STILL AS BLACK AS NIGHT. It’s only a few hours after Emile Hirsch has finished shooting the Wachowski brothers’ 2008 Speed Racer movie in Berlin, and he’s promoting Sean Penn’s bravura epic, Into the Wild in Chicago. The 22-year-old actor showed his brooding side in Nick Cassavetes’ teen-kidnapping-gone-wrong Alpha Dog, and hardly cracked a smile in Catherine Hardwicke’s Cali skater tone poem Lords of Dogtown. In person, the slight actor is affable, and at a post-screening audience Q&A after our interview, it was hard to stop his storytelling. (I wish I’d recorded the anecdote about the son of legendary Bart the Bear, who shares a scary scene with Hirsch.)
Into the Wild is an adaptation of Jon Kracauer’s 1995 nonfiction bestseller about Christopher McCandless, who, after graduating from Georgia’s Emory University in 1992, hit the road without telling his parents or sister, abandoning his plans for graduate school, forsaking possessions, giving his $24,000 education fund to Oxfam and burning cash on the side of the road. He wants to hitchhike to Alaska. Does he want to find himself? Some deeper meaning to life? Was he naïve? Did he make choices that could mean he was a little unsettled mentally?
The Heartbreak Kid (2007, 1/2 *)
The Heartbreak Kid, a remake of a memorably bracing Elaine May comedy, is directed by the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, whose biggest success was There’s Something About Mary (1999) with its pinched-testicle and semen hair gel jokes. The Jackass crew and Sacha Baron Cohen, among others, upped the gross-out ante since then, and extended what the MPAA allows in its R-rated movies. While the source material is respectable, the Farrellys do desperate things in hope of a career comeback after the sweet-tempered but low-grossing Stuck On You and Fever Pitch. The result isn’t outrageous, but almost insanely repellent.
John Ashbery on working with Guy Maddin
In the current Stop Smiling Magazine, poet John Ashbery poet John Ashbery talks about how movies overlap with his work, and his ongoing collaboration with Guy Maddin: “It was fun participating in the live performance of 
Brand Upon the Brain! and rather exciting being in the orchestra pit along with an orchestra, Foley artists and a soi-disant castrato, who certainly didn’t look the part and whose voice was apparently piped in from somewhere. I had watched the film several times on DVD and was wondering how to read the text in a way that would contribute to the gesamtkunstwerk envisioned by Maddin. By chance, on the afternoon of the performance, I was absentmindedly watching the film Ed Wood on TV, which I had seen before, and suddenly remembered the role played by the “psychic” Criswell in Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space — “Are you ready for the revelation of grave robbers from outer space?”. This seemed the perfect tone for Maddin’s text and I found it easy to channel Criswell’s whiny delivery. I share Maddin’s fascination with the clunky poetry of so many silent movie titles.”
Redacting out: an NYFF report [UPDATED AGAIN 9:03pm]
[UPDATED 9:03PM] A commenter with a DGA email address writes, “The DGA did NOT rule against Brian De Palma — that statement is entirely false. An arbitrator ruled the company could use redacted photos in the film, rather than the unredacted photos Mr. De Palma wanted to include.” BRIAN DEPALMA’S EARLIEST MOVIES, LIKE THE ANTI-VIETNAM WAR COMEDY GREETINGS, showed an acute awareness of the theater of the streets outside the confines of the 35mm frame. Filmmaker Jamie Stuart drops a line about the possibly contrived yet provocative goings-on at today’s New York Film Festival presser for DePalma’s latest men-in-war/media dissection Redacted: “In the middle of Brian De Palma’s NYFF pc for Redacted earlier today, as he began discussing the film’s use of actual war photographs and their graphic nature, Eamonn Bowles from Magnolia began shouting from the rear of the Walter Reade theater to refute De Palma’s claims that Mark Cuban was trying to, well, redact them from the picture’s release. Then, just as the press conference was coming to a close, producer Jason Kliot rushed the stage and grabbed moderator Jim Hoberman’s mic to offer the crowd his version of this distribution controversy. I was left wondering how spontaneous this all was or whether they knew it would be immediately blogged upon to stoke media attention.” [Consider this an affirmative reply of sorts.] [YouTube link via IFC.]
A look at the video, which I hadn’t seen yesterday, clearly suggests, “Look out, Brian, it’s real!” Eamonn Bowles has kindly offered his perspective on the incident: “there was absolutely no calculation involved at the press conference yesterday. depalma has been on a toot about how we’ve compromised his film, and then he stated publicly at the official nyff press conference that in no uncertain terms mark cuban, for aesthetic reasons, wanted the photos out of the film. i had just arrived and this was one of the first things i heard. in an almost tourette’s like moment, i just blurted out out that it wasn’t true. the thing that really frosts me is that we’ve been incredibly above board and have funded and continue to unapologetically support this incredibly incendiary film. the sole reason that the photos are redacted, is that it is legally indefensible to use someone’s unauthorized photo in a commercial work. any claim to the contrary is either hopelessly naive or willfully false. And any indemnification does not preclude getting sued, and considering the asset bases of cuban and wagner versus depalma, there’s no issue about who’s purses will be attacked (not to mention the presumption of agreeing to the image of one of your loved one’s mutilated body living on in the world wide media). the fact of the matter is, none of the companies that have released depalma’s work in the last 30 years would ever touch this film. and because our company, which has had it’s fair share of controversial, uncompromising films, actually was the one stupid/brave/committed enough to do so, we end up being the evil force trying to shut down a director’s vision. file this under no good deed goes unpunished.” [Photo by Jamie Stuart.]
5 Comments »
[LOOK]: John K.'s Mighty Mouse Night On Bald Pate
Crazy is; crazy does.
Indie returns over the weekend
Oh, ’tis the silly season of screenings, festivals, deadlines… and 75 degree nights in Chicago. And a Friday screening line-up of Things We Lost In The Fire, Control, We Own The Night and 30 Days Of Night. Plus the Chicago Film Festival is… I’ll stop here.
[LOOK] John McNaughton
From last weekend’s IFP/Chicago gala.
