W.K. and McDowell Fuel Manic Week at the Pioneer

Late word from the Pioneer Theater promises a dynamic duo of subversion crashing the room in February. First up is Andrew W.K., who will be introducing two late-night screenings of his new concert film, Who Knows?, Feb. 3 and 4. Bring the party and make sex! Or something.
Mere days later (Feb. 6, specifically), the one and only Malcolm McDowell will grace the Pioneer for a screening of his cheery, true-crime horror film Evilenko. McDowell portrays the title character, a notorious Soviet serial killer who, according to the theater’s blog, “mutilated and devoured more than 50 children” while resolving to “live, die and kill as a communist.” That is all fine and good, but The Reeler will buy the first two rounds for the ballsy bastard who can get the old Droog to join him or her afterward for drinks up Avenue A at Korova Milk Bar.

TGIF @ NYP: A Rich Helping of Cinematic Tabloid Goodness

Friday always represents a special day for the New York Post–the one day of the week when the tabloid’s big entertainment and gossip guns really blast together at full strength. But some Fridays–today in particular–resonate a little more powerfully than others.
It is not just Liz Smith’s putative inside track to this year’s Oscar nominations, which she claims to have extracted from someone “fresh from Hollywood, sitting down with (people) such as Steven Spielberg, etc.” Nor is it Cindy Adams’s dispatch from Wednesday night’s Bruckerrific Glory Road premiere, to which she “schlepped” through the rain to schmooze with Josh Lucas, Mehcad Brooks and “another gorgeous black guy,” Derek Luke. Nor is it Page Six bounding between lukewarm AVN award plants and Chuck Norris jokes (which, in fairness, are sort of funny). Nor is it Vinnie Musetto’s verrrrrrrry cautious non-review of the new gay-giography, That Man: Peter Berlin. Nor is it the Post bumping Lou Lumenick’s Last Holiday pan–headlined “DONE TO DEATH”–up against Paramount’s skyscraper ad for the same film.
Nope. Today’s greatest hit has to be this single determination in summing up a potential fistfight between Lindsay Lohan and Scarlett Johansson:

The cause: Maybe it’s because Scarlett gets all the critically-acclaimed roles, like Match Point and Lost in Translation, and Lindsay’s last movie was about a talking car. Or, Lohan’s still sour that she’s bedding Jared Leto, Scarlett’s sloppy seconds.

Granted, the authors predict a victory for Lohan. But I have to ask: If the New York Post drops the “sloppy seconds” bomb on you (in your name, at that!), can you ever really be a winner? Can even a three-day weekend be enough time to rebound from that kind of ignominy?
I guess it could always be worse: Caryn James of all people could show up in The Times telling you how to re-edit your movie. I am sure a shamefaced Terrence Malick is booking an Avid suite as we speak.

Dual Purpose: Blanchett and Weaving's Inexorable NYC March

Unless you count Ruth Vitale’s use of a contract, today’s news that First Look Pictures landed U.S. distribution rights to the Australian hit Little Fish (right) reveals nothing especially out of the ordinary. Director Rowan Woods’s junkie-crime flick has scored big on the awards scene down under, and you could make far riskier wagers than betting on anything featuring typically brilliant work from Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving.
But there is an even more brilliant parallel here in New York, where Little Fish‘s March release date coincides with Blanchett and Weaving’s stage pairing in BAM’s Hedda Gabler. Their production is, in fact, another Australian export, having flummoxed Sydney Theatre Company audiences in 2004. And as of right now, a sort of unofficial, intra-Gotham, Gabler/Fish double feature might not be out of the question–BAM reps confirmed this morning that tickets are still available to some of the 28 performances scheduled at the Harvey Theater from March 1-26.
So, anyway, coincidence or not, this kind of star-crossed convenience does not happen everyday. You might consider clearing a little space in your calendar right about now.

'Grizzly Bear Man': The Best Film Herzog Never Made

While I really liked about 80 percent of Grizzly Man, it is the other 20 percent–particularly director Werner Herzog’s own narrative and historical liberties (“Destroy this tape,” for example)–that first leap to mind when I think about the film. Evidently, I am not the only one: Spoof geniuses Travis and Jonathan have detonated their classic parody Grizzly Bear Man on the Web like a dirty bomb, showcasing the fundamental lunacy of Herzog’s transgressions and daring to look under the only rock the great filmmaker left unturned. To wit: Treadwell, another batshit adventurer in thrall to his dreams, actually out-Herzogs Herzog by dying for his art. And in Grizzly Man, Herzog shows up to collect.
But damn if Grizzly Bear Man does not do the best job yet of exposing the whole thing as not some complex, man-versus-nature riddle, but a full-on cosmic joke–and a very absurd, funny one at that. Check it out here.

Reeler Link Dump: Failure to Multitask Edition

Believe me: Jan. 12 will go down in my personal history as one of my most productive days ever. Just not… here.
But all is not lost! For example:
—Manderlay director Lars von Trier will discuss his latest film–via iChat–with viewers at IFC Center at the end of the month. Think of it like Web porn, only he is fucking you. Again. (via indieWIRE)
–Lindsay Lohan released a statement saying Vanity Fair “misused and misconstrued” quotes provided for a profile in its February issue. Rumor has it that while preparing her libel lawsuit, Lohan called Roman Polanski asking if she could borrow a certain bloody kitten. (via Teen People)
–On the bright side, Lohan found a true friend in past VF cover girl Kate Moss. Scarlett Johansson, not so much. (via Gawker)
–Queen Latifah returned home to Newark, N.J., Wednesday night to premiere her new film, Last Holiday. As the AP reports, ” As she walked along a red carpet laid in the middle of a parking lot Latifah said she was happy to be back in Newark.” However, the story does not say if Latifah ever located her car. (via Yahoo!)
–Just when you thought David Carr had the ultimate NBR awards coverage, Rush and Molloy reveal the true scope of the drunkenness at hand. I stopped reading at the part where Philip Seymour Hoffman crawled on all fours. (via NY Daily News)
–The 2006 NYC Horror Film Festival is offically welcoming submissions. Hurry up, though: The deadline is only eight months away. (via Fangoria)
–Iraq war documentary (and Oscar short-lister) Occupation: Dreamland takes another spin tonight at the Steinhardt Center. Directors Garrett Scott and Ian Olds will join former soldier Joseph Wood–perhaps their film’s most memorable subject–for a post-screening discussion. (via 92Y Blog)
–A few major NYC news outlets out author JT Leroy as a fake composite, and all of the sudden he disappears from Gen Art’s Starbucks Salon online roster at Sundance. Do not worry, though: Anthony Rapp is still slated to attend. Insert relieved sigh here. (via Variety, Gen Art)

Theron on 'Ice' with Berney, Picturehouse

Things just get more and more proletarian for Charlize Theron, who today’s Variety reports is signed on to play “a heroin addict and the single mother of a mixed-race child” in the screen adaptation of Mark Richard’s short story, The Ice at the Bottom of the World. Perhaps more notably, Theron will co-produce with Picturehouse guru Bob Berney; the pair’s last partnership (at Newmarket Films) yielded distribution for Theron’s Oscar-winning serial-killer turn in Monster.
OK, OK–North Country notwithstanding, “proletarian” might be understating things a bit:

Just as Theron was a hands-on participant in that project, she has been similarly enterprising on Ice. The film is set up to be bank-financed through New Line and handled as a negative pickup. In the deal orchestrated by One Entertainment and her attorney Steve Warren, Theron will wind up owning the negative.

To which I say: Great. It is about time Aeon Flux paid off for somebody.

Sundance Swag Cannot Cripple Kaufman's Conscience

I caught up on some overdue Sundance reading this morning, from my colleague Ray Pride’s carefully cultivated list of film trailers to Jonathan Bing’s foray into the merciless corporate culture ensnaring the festival in its web. This latter point was reinforced yesterday by NYC film writer Anthony Kaufman, whose blog elaborated on last year’s well-documented woe with an even more earnest indictment for 2006:

Crass commercialism is a way of American life, but no where is the situation more egregious than the run-up to the Sundance Film Festival. … (H)ere are a few of my favorite gross, materialistic marketing tactics that continue to chip away at the integrity of the films at the festival. Those crimes perpetrated by the Sundance Film Festival itself are marked with an asterisk. And this year, I thought, why not avoid giving them any more publicity than they richly don’t deserve. Comments in [italics] are mine. …

— This year celebrities will indulge in the most decadent lounge in Park City. Celebrities and select press will enjoy an open bar while being pampered by famed skin care specialist XXXX XXXXXXX with oxygen facials and services. Then get lavished with over $25,000 in high-end gifts from XXXXXX, XXX, XXXXX, XXXX & XXXX, XXX XXXX and much more. [Now, why, please tell me, do celebrities need $25,000 in high-end gifts? Why not give $25,000 in gifts to some of the 94,000 children living in poverty in the state of Utah?] …

* XXXXXX Canine Cuisine, one of Masterfoods USA’s leading brands, announces the first ever XXXX Spa at the Sundance Film Festival taking place in Utah this January. In the XXXXX Spa, small dogs and their celebrity owners will get pampered and primped for the Sundance premieres, parties and entertainment. … [My God, is this what we’ve come to as a culture?]

Short answer, Anthony: Yes. But do not despair. You have an ally in me, who had planned to take along an empty suitcase just to fill with free swag from my first trip to Sundance. But after a change of heart, I have decided instead to pack up one of Utah’s 92,000 impoverished children for the return to New York. I know I will probably have to check a bag that size at the airport, but whatever–for once, I am doing the right thing, and it never felt better. Thanks for the inspiration.

Andrew Sarris Now Officially Repeating Himself

In the interest of preemption, I just want to say that I am not the type of lazy, bloodless blogger inclined to construct posts entirely out of other people’s quotes. The Reeler is far from perfect, but at least it tries to approach its beat with some intact sense of imagination.
Which brings me to Andrew Sarris, the quintessential old-school critic whose influence I totally understand but have never really felt. And while I think Pauline Kael had him pegged right as a bit of a “list queen,” even his lists now appear positively vibrant compared to the critical brain death that precedes them in this week’s Observer:

While I was trying to decide how I would introduce my customary list of the past year’s achievements and non-achievements, I consulted what I wrote last year—and I was struck by how applicable it was to this year. So simply by changing a few numerals, I can repeat last year’s introduction, secure in the knowledge that 2005’s releases were neither appreciably better nor appreciably worse than 2004’s.

Ha ha, Mr. Sarris. Really, though, what can you say about 2005? Brokeback Mountain, Munich, Cache, History of Violence… There are some pretty good, challenging films out–wait. What was that? You were serious?
From the Jan. 10, 2005, New York Observer (via LexisNexis):

As far as I can determine, 2004 seems to be neither the best nor the worst year for movies, at least as far as the proportion of good (low, as always) to bad (high, as always) is concerned. Of course, the technology keeps changing — often to the consternation of the Luddites among us — and there’s also that mindless nostalgia for an idyllic past, in which all the bad movies have been mercifully expunged from memory. After all, I’ve been in the year-end 10-best business since 1958, when Jonas Mekas graciously allowed me to share his “Movie Journal” column in The Village Voice with my 10-best list, which I’m now ashamed to remember failed to include both Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. But that was 46 years ago, and I very much doubt that I will be around 46 years from now to second-guess my Top 10 lists for 2004. So with little fear of afterthought and without further ado, here are my considered preferences for the year past(.)

And then this from the current, Jan. 16, 2006, issue:

As far as I can determine, 2005 seems to have been neither the best nor the worst year for movies, at least as far as the proportion of good (low as always) to bad (high as always) is concerned. Of course, the technology keeps changing—often to the consternation of the Luddites among us—and there’s also that mindless nostalgia for an idyllic past, in which all the bad movies have been mercifully expunged from memory. After all, I’ve been in the year-end 10-best business since 1958, when Jonas Mekas graciously allowed me to share his “Movie Journal” column in The Village Voice with my own 10-best list, which I’m now ashamed to remember failed to include both Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil–but that was 48 years ago [sic], and I very much doubt that I will be around 47 years from now to second-guess my top-10 lists for 2005. So, with little fear of afterthought, and without further ado, here are my considered preferences for the past year, which, by my count at least, accounted for 480 releases in New York theaters(.)

Well, at least Sarris was able to cobble that “480 releases” kicker together. But maybe we should give him a break; after all, the guy has been doing this for almost five decades. You try coming up with an original introduction for a piece you have written 50 times. I told you these Top-10 circle jerks could get exhausting.

Hoffman Driving 'Capote' Steamroller to the Upper East Side

FLASH! Paper alerts readers to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s latest Oscar campaign stop New York awards-week appearance tonight at the 92nd St. Y, where the trophy-circuit butterfly will be discussing both his character and his work following a screening of Capote. Added bonus for literary wonks to whom allusion is the ultimate aphrodisiac:

(G)et this fated freakiness: Kauffman Concert Hall is also where Truman Capote did his first public reading of In Cold Blood. Whaaaa? And, Capote depicts that very reading. Whaaaa whaaa? Okay, maybe it’s not that huge of a coincidence. No, wait. Yes it is. We’re not backing down on this one. Our minds our blown.

Mine too–so much so that I cannot even muster the strength to carry my weary body six blocks from Reeler HQ to the front door of the Y. Or maybe that is just my Kryptonite-like, withering Heath Ledger/Damian Lewis/Cillian Murphy loyalty. Anyway, I am more than happy to run a recap tomorrow from any lucky ticketholders who make the trip; I am all about equal opportunity as long as I do not have to endure Capote a second time.

Whacks On: Clooney's NBR Heroism Never Ends

Not that this will scuff too much of David Carr’s National Board of Review luster or anything, but The Reeler’s scandalous red-carpet allies at Open All Night just filled in the gaps around the remainder of George Clooney’s acceptance speech:

George Clooney brought up Good Night, and Good Luck co-writer Grant Heslov, and then made his own detour. “I don’t want to do any damage to the (Samuel) Alito nomination, but Grant and I were at a midnight screening of Brokeback Mountain last night. Judge Alito was there. He had been there since, like, 3 o’clock, I think. Wearing chaps. A big cowboy hat, chaps and that funny bolo tie thing.”

No. He. Didn’t.
Anyway, George, there is no way that could have been him. Everybody knows Alito is a Cruising guy.

'Night' Owls: Phoenix and Gray Re-team For NYC Crime Drama

Production Weekly (via Cinematical) confirms today that Joaquin Phoenix and director James Grey–who last collaborated on 2000’s dodgy Queens-noir The Yards–are set to reunite in February for Gray’s follow-up, We Own the Night.
Gray (right) had sort of casually mentioned the new film last month while talking up his re-cut Yards DVD, noting that Night would be the last of the unofficial “crime trilogy” begun in 1995 with the acclaimed Little Odessa. Indeed, We Own the Night will revisit his debut’s Russian mafia themes, featuring Phoenix as a nightclub owner trying to save his father and brother (both cops) from a narcotics gang hit squad in the ’80s. Robert Duvall and Eva Mendes co-star; shooting starts here in town Feb. 20, probably squaring up for a Toronto/NY Film Festival push and a little Oscar-season love in 2007.
Whoa–wait a second. Did I just invoke Oscar ’07? Jesus Christ–it must be the contact high.

Carr Crashes National Board of Review Awards, Lives to Tell

As you have probably heard, the National Board of Review hosted its annual awards dinner last night at Central Park’s Tavern on the Green. But while the event’s rigorous security mechanism (in short: three hansom cabs, a publicity intern and Radioman) effectively thwarted my gatecrashing attempt, I lost no sleep over any of it.
Why? David Fucking Carr, that’s why!

The National Board of Review did the awards watusi last night at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. As celebrity events go, it was a nice hang. Open bar for the duration, good food and the A-List was abundant and accessible, so much so that even a blind pig like the Bagger found a nut or two. Because the winners were already determined, it was like a modern day kindergarten, where everyone was a winner and the mean kids were forced to imitate human beings or go to a corner. No frozen smiles from the losers, just crowned victors clutching Lucite plaques. …

Today the Bagger is going all NBR all the time, not because it will have a profound effect on the Oscar race but because he went so you didn’t have to.

I think this is what my great-grandmother meant when she used to say, “Everything happens for a reason.” To wit: I got to split and go check out an advance of the brilliant, Nick Cave-scripted The Proposition, and the Carpetbagger packed knee-high rubber boots lest the bullshit ruin his tux:

We’d like to forget…

…Jane Fonda, the Career Achiever who wasn’t doing press as long as the reporter’s last name ended in The New York Times. And the PMK bodyguard who made sure it stayed that way.

…Stephen Gaghan, who won for best adapted screenplay, for trotting out the same jokes he has used in screenings, which include a tick-tock of the number of locations, languages, and continents he shot on. Writer, heal thyself with some new jokes.

More treasures from Carr’s choice dispatch (including a way, way too mellow Weinstein sighting) lurk after the jump.

Read the full article »

15th New York Jewish Film Festival Settles in at Lincoln Center

Festival season is officially back in swing in the city, where the New York Jewish Film Festival fires up tonight at Lincoln Center. For 2006, the event’s programmers have locked up two world premieres, five U.S. premieres and 16 New York premieres from more than a dozen countries–not bad for a festival that started 15 years ago screening eight films over the course of a week.
“I’m really excited about this year’s program,” festival director Aviva Weintraub told The Reeler in a conversation late last week. “I mean, it feels extremely international–which it always is–but we’ve got some entires from countries that we don’t often have represented. We have a terrific short from Mexico (Jai), and our opening film, Live and Become (above), is beautiful. The director, Radu Mihaileanu, was born in Romania, but the film is a French-Israeli co-production, and it’s about an Ethiopian boy who’s sent to Israel. It’s a very moving drama.”
Adding to the international mix are the festival’s two world premieres, both documentaries looking at the Iranian Jewish experience. Love Iranian-American Style follows good-humored filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian around New York and “Irangeles” as her family pushes her toward marriage, while Ramin Farahani’s Jews of Iran looks closer at the lives of Persian Jews who stayed in Iran after 1979’s Islamic Revolution. Farahani’s presentation of his film will mark the first-ever appearance by an Iranian filmmaker at the festival.
Among the New York documentary premieres are Erik Greenberg Anjou’s A Cantor’s Tale–about a Brooklynite who inherits the celebrated cantorial tradition of Eastern Europe–and Jerry Blumenthal and Gordon Quinn’s follow up to their 1988 New York Film Festival entry Golub. The duo’s latest, Golub: Late Works Are the Catastrophes, chronicles the last months of the trailblazing artist’s life in 2004. Another notable New York doc, Ira Wohl’s Best Sister, returns to the family thread Wohl followed through his Oscar-winning Best Boy and Best Man.

In conjunction with the Jewish Museum‘s Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama exhibiton, festival organizers also programmed a pair of little-seen Bernhardt films from 1912 (Queen Elizabeth and Lady of the Camelias). But even the rare Bernhardt pictures have likely been viewed more frequently than some of the festival’s more contemporary selections. “We try to show as many premieres as possible,” Weintraub said. “Any film that’s had a theatrical release, we don’t show in the festival. Our emphasis is always on bringing new films to New York, and some of them do go on after the festival to have theatrical releases. For some of them, we turn out to be the only venue to have presented them.”
Aditional screenings branch out into the Jewish Museum and Makor as well, so get your running shoes on and plan ahead–you have 16 days to take advantage, and it goes fast. And you know it is never too early to get back in shape for that long festival grind. At least not in this town.

Current TV: Gore's Guerilla Film School Introduces New Faculty

Current’s DIY filmmaking tutorial, featuring Sean Penn and Jonathan Caouette
For all the shit Al Gore takes for the myth saying he claimed responsibility for the Internet, he actually did help create the Current TV network last year. Blending broadband technology with a user-generated content free-for-all, Current is not quite yet what you would call totally watchable. However, the AP reports that Gore and Co. have gone off and recruited some fairly heavy cultural hitters to motivate your ass:

To help would-be contributors, the network has just produced a “survival guide” that it is making available online that includes advice on journalism and storytelling from (Robert) Redford and (Sean) Penn, along with academics, authors and filmmakers.

“We, and by we I mean everyone from a Hollywood director like me to a teenager in rural Texas, can all tell stories about our hopes and fears,” said Catherine Hardwicke, writer-director of the movie Thirteen.

“Every day I’m intrigued and sometimes outraged by things that no one talks about,” Hardwicke said. “Current is a chance to be heard, and send think-bombs out into the world.”

Right. That is “think-bombs,” as opposed to just plain old “bombs” like The Lords of Dogtown or… well, never mind. The point is that when you get past the grave platitudes of guys like Sean Penn, there are actually a few interesting tidbits from NYC faves Sarah Vowell, Jonathan Caouette and graffiti laureate Bonz Malone, the latter of whom equates Current’s open submission policy with the “white train” of his spray-painting dreams.
Elsewhere on Current’s Web site, novice filmmakers can find tutorials on editing, sound, framing and a dozen or so other Film School 101 lessons. So, to paraphrase Caouette’s segment, there really is no excuse not to know the basics and get your story out there. Getting viewers, of course, is another question. But look at it this way–Gore is surely inventing them as fast as he can.

Porn to Run: The Times Visits the AVN Awards

After all of last weekend’s highbrow preening–from the South American cinema dispatches of Larry Rohter and Alan Riding to Dennis Lim’s profile of the woefully underappreciated Andrew Bujalski–today’s New York Times succumbs to the silicon-and-spotlight bloodrush of the 2006 AVN Awards.
In other words, the Gray Lady does porn:

The 23rd AVN awards presentation here was a campy mix of Hollywood cliché and X-rated clips watched with 3,000 of your closest friends and industry insiders. The acceptance speeches tended to be brief, befitting a film industry with little emphasis on dialogue. …

Saturday night … was an unapologetic, hearty celebration, with a flashbulb-drenched red carpet entrance and awards presented in 104 categories, including best performances in a wide range of explicit acts and sexual positions. The more conventional were for best director, supporting actor and actress, screenplay and the most anticipated award of the evening: best feature.

The Times’s Matt Richtel delivers most of the standard adult-film industry factoids you would expect–a record $4.3 billion in sales in ’05, porn audiences are tired of the pizza-man-tipped-with-blowjob cliché, etc. However, click on the multimedia links to the left of his story for a more revelatory, almost hypnotic video piece about the growth of porn-on-demand and other developing technologies.
It is all quite amazing stuff, although Richtel leaves out the essential point that jacking off on one’s video iPod indeed voids its warranty. Just trust me on this one, gang.