Movie City Indie Archive for September, 2011
ONE BIG SOUL: An Oral Biography Of Terrence Malick
Coming in the next few weeks from Paul J. Maher, Jr.
The Netflix-Quiksters Blast Out A Quickie Video Out By The Pool (3’24”)
Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Don’t Talk” For Alamo Drafthouse
Cinema Scope Roundtables TIFF
Canadian cineaste quarterly Cinema Scope roundtables TIFF11 with publisher Mark Peranson and contributors Robert Koehler, Jason Anderson, Adam Nayman and John Semley. Opinions and imperial pints stand tall. Four more parts below the fold.
Review: STRAW DOGS
A near-fatal miscalculation in reformed film critic Rod Lurie’s sixth feature as writer and director is James Marsden’s performance as David Sumner, a screenwriter immersed in completing a sprawling Hollywood epic about the Siege of Stalingrad, who brandishes a Harvard Lacrosse t-shirt as if it were the sheepskin itself. Marsden’s dancing eyes practically patronize his leaping cheekbones and protruding eyeteeth. Uptight and unsympathetic, the character is intractable as a middlebrow wannabe-hipster who is valiantly, decisively uncool and unfunny. What does it mean to him to “be a man”? The question is more, what does it mean to come across as even human? Kate Bosworth is another matter as his wife Amy, the local cheerleader come back South, her lightly freckled features and markedly mismatched eyes gentle until the steel behind her perkiness rises urgently to the surface. Physically, Bosworth’s is an impressive performance, where consensual teasing that’s kittenish congeals at repeated rebuffs from her increasingly indifferent husband. With native instinct, Amy dresses in tops and shorts for the swelter, best described as “rompers,” as if she shopped at Lolita-on-the-Square. Still, Bosworth’s quirky delivery of lines like, “Honey, you know a lot, but you don’t know shit about southern daddies and their daughters,” hits unexpectedly telling notes. [See the rest of my review at Newcity.]
Postering WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN Down Under
[Via IMP Awards.]
The BLADE RUNNER Convention Reel Resurfaces
“One of the Blade Runner Convention Reels featuring interviews with Ridley Scott, Syd Mead and Douglas Trumbull about making [the] Blade Runner universe. This 16mm featurette, made by M. K. Productions in 1982, is specifically designed to circulate through the country’s various horror, fantasy and science fiction conventions.”
That 9-Minute GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Trailer
Glistening, gorgeous: the crystalline light in the nine-minute trailer for David Fincher‘s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was the consistent aspect that kept me gawping after Wednesday night’s Chicago all-media of Straw Dogs. And Lisbeth Salander’s “FUCK YOU FUCKING FUCK” t-shirt, sported as soiled sleepwear is as immediately iconic as the stray cardboard carton with an IKEA logo. Whatever combination of digital formats Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth are wielding, hurrah. Swedish eggshell-to-matte-gray light allows color and dimension to pop in almost every image in the product reel. (There’s a gray-black-orange-pale red sunset over a vista of Stockholm’s Soldermalm neighborhood like part of a slow dusk that would take hours to fall.) While it’s intended to introduce audiences who know neither Stieg Larsson‘s three books or the Swedish trilogy to the teeming dramatis personae, it’s comforting in a different way if you know the material: ah, this. Ah, that. (Unembarrassed grin in half-darkness.) A detail-fixated film director takes on a surly Aspergian protagonist with ample, similar skills? Ah, that. Here’s a streaming 7’26” of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross‘ score. Twitter account @mouthtapedshut solicited those with a free Thursday evening in seventeen cities to retweet for the chance to be invited to…most likely a sneak of Straw Dogs brandishing the same nine minutes. [Images via the film’s “viral” Tumblr MTS.]
Apparent GIRL WITH THE DRAGON Twitter Sneaks Quickly Fill Up
Sneaky-sneak sneaks…
The John Calley Tribute Reel For Thalberg Award (4’36”)
RIP Richard Hamilton
“Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?”
Postering MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE en España
[Via IMP Awards.]
