NYC's Asian Film Guru Hendrix in Company of 'Wolves'

Over at the sweaty film orgy that is Cinemarati, Andrew Grant recently had a go at the controversial new film Valley of the Wolves: Iraq. A churlish little curio that The Times disclosed is the most expensive Turkish picture ever made, Wolves has earned more than its share of stateside criticism for anti-American depictions of torture, civilian deaths and Turkish prisoners of war. Better yet, actors Billy Zane and Gary Busey have drawn fire for their roles in the film–the latter as “a Jewish doctor who removes organs from Iraqi prisoners and sends them off to patients in America, Israel, and the UK.”
But while Grant references an episode of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country in which Catholic League president William Donahue wanly protests that such actors would “sodomize their own mother [sic] in a movie, if asked to do so,” he omits one mega-important factor: Also joining Donahue and Scarborough was Grady Hendrix–blogger extraordinaire, co-founder of the New York Asian Film Festival and the segment’s official Sacrificial Liberal Lamb.
And bless his heart, Hendrix journaled every last detail of the encounter over on Kaiju Shakedown:

They told me there’d be cookies. That’s what the producers promised me. “Oh, you’re in Media 3? We’ve got great cookies there.” But when I showed up what did I find? Three lone chocolate chip cookies on a paper plate sitting at the reception desk like something left out for Santa Claus. With only three cookies I couldn’t bring myself to take one, it would be like taking the last piece of cake. These cookies weren’t a yummy treat. These cookies were a trap for the unwary. Sort of like the show itself. …

Honestly, Hendrix’s deposition is one of the funniest and most engaging things I have read online in months. Grab a few more prime nuggets after the jump, and make sure you get the full-on, talk-show clusterfuck experience at MSNBC’s Web site.

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BREAKING: Oscars May Feature Surprises

While you were drinking yourself to sleep Wednesday, the night desk at the New York Daily News was hard at work on the scoop that is sure to supplant vice-sniper Dick Cheney on front pages far and wide:

It is not such a bad story, really, if the clinical analysis of upsets like Hamlet over Johnny Belinda and Chariots of Fire over On Golden Pond is your kind of wonkish wet dream, or if you feel like taking Brokeback Mountain producer James Schamus’s droll contradiction of conventional Oscar wisdom at face value:

“(I)f you go back and do a statistical analysis of all that talk about momentum and whatever, then line it up against the outcome of the Oscars themselves, you’ll find the relationship of those things is completely and utterly serendipitous. There’s no cause and effect. There’s no science to it.”

Or value, or class, or relevance, etc. But that is between us; God knows I would hate to upset the neighbors over all this.

ImaginAsian Synergizes All Over Itself With New Distribution Arm

Come on–you did not think the folks behind the ImaginAsian Theater and its sister TV and radio networks would cap their burgeoning empire with last month’s launch of ImaginAsian HomeVideo, did you? A recent press release now informs The Reeler that the Manhattan-based media upstarts are crossing “theatrical distribution” off their markets-to-corner list:

ImaginAsian Pictures’ first-ever acquisition is Green Chair (right), one of 2005’s most acclaimed Korean films, directed by veteran South Korean director Park Chul-soo and a Grand Jury Prize nominee (World Cinema – Dramatic) at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. ImaginAsian Pictures will release the film first to theaters, then to home video, video-on-demand (VOD) and pay television, and finally broadcast television.

What, no day-and-date? But what about all that vertical integration buzz and bling? Hello?
Anyway, calls to ImaginAsian’s front office seeking release dates and markets have not been returned, but if/when those details come through, I will pass the revolution along posthaste.

Rapp Party: Gen Art Toasts Bloodless 'Winter Passing' in Chelsea

Big news on the party front tonight as playwright Adam Rapp’s film directing debut Winter Passing gets a Gen Art preview and hoochie after-bash over at Crush. And think of the bargain: Just $25 for all this:
–Beverages from 9-11 p.m. provided by Johnnie Walker, Smart Water, Smirnoff, and Stella Artois;
–Rapp introducing the film in Chelsea and reminding at least a dozen autograph seekers that no, he is not his brother Anthony;
–The long, slushy, post-screening walk to Crush, about a million miles removed from anything in what should look and feel like Siberia by the time the open bar closes;
—Winter Passing itself, sort of a perfect storm of anemic indie conventions: An ingenue daughter (Zooey Deschanel) estranged from her famous, tortured writer dad (Ed Harris); a sensitive retard played by an A-lister (Will Ferrell); cats with leukemia; a 1,000 mile bus trip; bad 20-something sex; lurching dinner table epiphanies; nature montages impaled on folk medleys; and the quasi-familial pastiche that reconciles everything in a third act as graceless as wet cement.
While Passing does not quite float up from the same burbling gastric swamp responsible for, say, Flannel Pajamas, it implodes spectacularly enough as Rapp’s rambling drama-ectomy removes any sense of conflict the way one might remove an opponent’s spine while playing Mortal Kombat. It seems unlikely–if not impossible–that such inoffensive principals could be so repellent together, but you would not expect the vice-president to shoot someone either, so chalk it up to bad chemistry or a misaligned cosmos or whatever. Shit happens.
At any rate, just make sure you get that wristband from the Gen Art folks, because you will need the Scotch, vodka and beer afterward, and probably all at once in a signature cocktail called the Rapp Party. Who said $25 does not go a long way in New York?

Ich Bin Ein Greenwald: Chaos, Spin Ensue as 'Wal-Mart' Doc Four-Walls Berlin

You have to hand it to red-assed documentary maven Robert Greenwald, whose Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price has grown from its humble, shit-stirring New York roots to being an international cause publicité at the Berlin Film Festival. The rancor between Greenwald (right) and his retailing nemesis (first explored on The Reeler last fall) appears to have gotten hyperbolically worse as the doc snags one European distribution deal after another; now the director alleges that when Wal-Mart reps are not attempting to record the film on their cell phones, they are running around Berlin attempting to put the fear of God into helpless foreign distribs:

“We have experienced some scared theatrical distributors,” Greenwald insisted after a Wal-Mart screening here. “They are afraid that their other movies will be pulled from the (retailer’s) shelves if they distribute my film.”

Wal-Mart spokesman Olan James countered in an interview: “To say that we’d retaliate against a distributor for carrying this film is simply preposterous. … (W)e’re confident that the public will be able to spot the glaring inaccuracies throughout the … film.” …

Lightning Entertainment’s Richard Guardian said initially eager buyers from Brazil, Japan and Mexico, where Wal-Mart is a growing retail force, said they were worried that buying the film could have negative commercial repercussions for their DVD distribution business. …

“The response here at the Berlinale has been unbelievable,” Guardian said. “The film addresses global issues, and people are fascinated with the U.S. society and culture.”

It is nice to see all involved challenging the common economic stereotypes you might derive from this story: America as prolific exporter of fear; Wal-Mart as evil empire; desperate international trade partners cowering with indecision; so on and so forth. Then there is Greenwald, who has found his PR power stroke at exactly the right time against a Wal-Mart monolith that probably could not care less about DVD distributors in countries like Mexico, where the checks assuring future development cleared years ago. But I guess it is fun to watch them fight, if staged grudge matches fought in the Hollywood Reporter are your idea of “fun.” You sick freak.

Bogdanovich Epilogue: A Word About Biskind and Cher

Because everybody loves a nice, incestuous film blog reach-around (especially on Valentine’s Day), allow me to direct you to my good friend Looker, who follows up my Peter Bogdanovich/Targets dispatch from last week with perhaps an even more rewarding batch of comments smuggled out of Film Forum’s post-screening Q&A.
And once again, Peter Biskind absorbs the brunt of a filmmaker’s hot auteur wrath:

On Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls:

That book is so full of shit. It’s not to be believed. I leafed through three pages of it—I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach, and I never opened it again. Coppola wanted to put a hit out on him. I’m not kidding. I spent seven hours with that guy over a period of days, and he got it all wrong. He believed everything my ex-wife (Polly Platt), who at that time was a drunk, said.

Cher gets a little lighter love tap in Bogdanovich’s assessment of Mask (except for that part explaining, “She liked Sonny after he died.” I mean, go ahead–shudder. Take as long as you need), which you will need to click through to browse in its entirety. Now, if you do not mind, I think it is time Looker and I had a cigarette.

Valentine's Wishes From Otto, Brooklyn's Hottest Feral Cat

I can hardly believe I have gone this long without wishing all of you a Happy Valentine’s Day. However, as a sworn enemy of Feb. 14 and all it connotes, I think I will leave it to Otto, a feral cat from Brooklyn who happens to be spreading the romantic fervor quite pleasantly over at Film Threat. “I knew that I needed to put my own face on the Internet if I ever wanted to truly connect with a stranger one-on-one,” Otto tells us. “So this is why I’m putting this valentine online. Are we connecting?”
Oh, Otto. I wish I knew how to quit you.

EW Can Blow Me, and Other Bruce Willis Bons Mots

Considering the record snowfall that smacked New York last weekend, you tell me what you think would have been a more grueling way to spend Sunday: Shoveling out of Reeler HQ all afternoon, or waiting an hour for Bruce Willis to show up at a press conference to discuss his new film 16 Blocks.
It is a closer call than you might imagine, if we are to believe parts of the transcript provided by CHUD’s Devin Faraci:

Q: You are one of the few major Hollywood stars who are proud to be Republican…

Willis: Let me stop you right there. I’m a Republican — and everybody write this down because I’m sick of answering this fucking question.

Q: Can I continue –

Willis: You can continue, but let me answer that part of it. I’m a Republican only as far as I want a smaller government, I want less government intrusion, I want them to stop pissing on my money and your money, the tax dollars that we give 50 per cent of or 40 per cent of every year, and I want them to be fiscally responsible, and I want these goddamn lobbyists out of Washington. Do that and I’ll say I’m a Republican. But other than that … there’s tons, billions and billions of dollars that are just being wasted. Okay? I hate government. I’m apolitical. Write that down. I’m not a Republican.

Q: I thank you for this.

Willis: There you go. Now you can finish your question.

Q: Can I change my question?

Willis: Go ahead. I just need to get that Republican shit out of the way.

The decision gets even tougher after the jump.

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Bookish Bedfellows, Guerilla Gold: Focus Features in the News

When you are hot, you are hot, I suppose, and nobody knows this better right now than the folks over at Focus Features. Variety tunes readers into no fewer than three Focus tidbits this morning, starting with the revelation that Universal’s specialty boutique is no longer just in bed with Random House, but actually fucking the publisher. In the first sweaty throes consummating the pair’s late-2005 deal, Focus has settled on two politically themed books for development in 2006: Yasmina Khadra’s suicide-bomber mystery The Attack and Bob Drogin’s US intelligence indictment Curveball.
And then there is the sweet PR newsflash that Focus distribution cap’n Jack Foley is in line to receive the Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens’ humanitarian award at the group’s annual get-together June 14. No word yet if this is connected at all to the provenance of those Brokeback Mountain shirts whose auction has drawn $20,000 in pledges so far to the charity’s LA wing–not that that matters, I guess. Congrats to Jack!
Speaking of Brokeback Mountain, the Carpetbagger may have had it right this morning when he mentioned that Universal’s flagship Munich could be drilling a hole in Focus’s Oscar dinghy: Check out the smashing new Brokeback promos littering L.A., for example. Spielberg gets the full-page Times ads, and Ang Lee gets a Depression-era canvassing job right out of The Bicycle Thief.
But hey–that is quintessential Focus spunk, right there. Co-presidents David Linde and James Schamus did not get where they are for nothing, although they might have been wise to parlay the proceeds from their film’s shirts into renting out a biplane to drag their huge FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION… banner over Hollywood for a day or two at the end of the month. That thing has been sitting in Schamus’s office since Thanksgiving, for Christ’s sake.

Wenders to Go 'Knocking' Around West Side in March

OK, Wim Wenders fans, listen up: Makor just confirmed that the filmmaker is officially set to join a discussion of his latest film, Don’t Come Knocking, following a Steinhardt Center preview screening March 9. This establishes sort of an auteur trifecta next month, with Steve Buscemi (previewing Lonesome Jim) and Ira Sachs (post-morteming Forty Shades of Blue) also crashing the West Side to chat up their respective pictures.
Don’t Come Knocking was one of the Sundance short-listers I never got around to seeing in January, and I still do not know if Wenders’ dodgy charms will woo me in March. Nevertheless, you could probably come up with worse ways to your early-spring spare time. Let me know how it goes just in case, would you?

Page Six, Medved Will 'Che' Anything to Get at Soderbergh

While beady-eyed conservative ideologues have long been the Post’s stock in trade, it takes a special kind of hack to tee off Page-Six style on Steven Soderbergh. The gossip insitiution, which test-drove over the filmmaker’s reputation last fall for no apparent reason (and inaccurately, at that), continues its reactionary blastback today with right-wing critic Michael Medved lashing out at Soderbergh’s Che Guevara biopic, which is now shooting in New York:

“I think to romanticize a mass killer and commie thug is terribly sad. With The Motorcycle Diaries [a recent release about the young Che], at least they could say it was about when he was a young man – before he had power and abused it. But it sounds like this film will be like the 1969 Che movie, with Jack Palance as Fidel Castro and Omar Sharif as Che, which was one of the worst movies ever made.”

Medved continued: “I don’t imagine this film will be a smash with [Cuban exiles] in South Florida, where many people know about the real Che Guevara and his legacy.”

The Page Six crew also grabs reaction from a jaded Cuban-American National Foundation spokeswoman, who gives Soderbergh a typically Post-y, backhanded benefit of the doubt:

“Even in history books, these things aren’t properly documented, so we’d be surprised if this movie does portray the truth accurately. But [Soderbergh] is a great filmmaker, so we’ll wait and see.”

Right. The New York Post, on the other hand, clearly has Guevara’s (and Soderbergh’s) legacy “properly documented” and burnished to a glowing crystalline luster. Let us hope that whoever is handling “historical consultant” credits for Focus Features is paying attention.

'Brokeback' Shirts, Diesel's Pants and Six Other Decisions You Just Never Want to Have to Make

OK, so at 8 p.m., a children’s charity in Los Angeles is going to kick off an auction in which you can bid on the actual bloody, scuzzy shirts that get Heath Ledger all messed up at the end of Brokeback Mountain. “Everyone who has watched this movie–the biggest hit among this year’s Best Picture Oscar nominees–knows the emotional significance and impact of these shirts in this unforgettable film,” squeals the press release, presaging (if not outright guaranteeing) a weekend of spendy gay madness.

Yeah, I know those are the Brokeback shirts. But Vin Diesel’s ass was right… there… (Photos: Variety–The Children’s Charity)
However, before you go stealing a car stereo or robbing a bodega, a little investigation reveals that this charity is giving us an awfully tough selection of other items to choose from as well:

–ANNAPOLIS SIGNED DIRECTOR’S CHAIR – JAMES FRANCO + MORE

–AUTOGRAPHED PHOTO FROM JUST LIKE HEAVEN – JON HEDER

–ANNAPOLIS – AUTOGRAPHED POSTER – TYRESE GIBSON + MORE

–2 SHOWEST ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY CONVENTION TICKETS

–ATTEND A VIP TAPING OF REBA – MEET THE CAST UP TO 4 PPL

–MOTOCROSS PANTS WORN BY VIN DIESEL WHILE FILMING XXX

–THE RINGER AUTOGRAPHED POSTER – JOHNNY KNOXVILLE + MORE

You know there must be another press release not too far behind imploring buyers to consider the “emotional significance” of Jon Heder’s autograph, or to remember the wrenching lost climax of XXX: Uncensored and Interminable Director’s Cut–the one during which Augustus Gibbons slides open a desk drawer to reveal Xander Cage’s delicately folded motocross pants, pats them, sniffs them, whispers, “Triple X, you sweet, sweet motherfucker,” under his breath before lurching out into the tumbleweed flatlands of Washington. See? Huh? Not so fast on those shirts, right?
Anyway, you have until 8 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 20, to think about it, but speaking from experience, you are going to want to start selling crack, sex, blood plasma etc. a hell of a lot sooner than that to raise this kind of cash.

Alexis L. Loinaz and The Great New York Film Adulation Takeover

For eight months now, all I have wanted is to guard my turf and defend my NYC film-cheerleader authority against nefarious outsiders. And while I thought I had prepared for every possible breach and incursion, I obviously overlooked the Oscar-season assassin who is Alexis L. Loinaz.
Come on, you know him–Alexis? Alexis Loinaz? From the Phillipine Daily Inquirer, which Wednesday ran the most overreaching, anthemic New York cinema tribute since… Jesus. Since ever:

On Jan. 31, nominations for the 78th Academy Awards were announced. Of the major nominees, 10 are from New York. And although New Yorkers love to poke fun at the whole gown-and-bling-bling parade—“so tacky,” “so flashy,” “so LA”—deep down inside Manhattanites are rooting for the hometown’s bets. …

Best Actor nominee Heath Ledger and his fiancée, Best Supporting Actress hopeful Michelle Williams, live in Brooklyn. Their nominated Brokeback Mountain director, Ang Lee, lives in Manhattan and is a proud graduate of New York University’s film school. Another Best Actor contender, Philip Seymour Hoffman, is a West Village fixture. Fittingly, he is nominated for playing another famous New Yorker, author Truman Capote. …

As far as we’re concerned, New York celebs are just like the rest of us, and we like cheering for the hometown folks because we see them as actual people. We walk on the same sidewalks, pass by the same homeless guy sleeping next to the subway entrance, smell the same garbage stench, hear the same deafening ambulance sirens, and try to avoid the same mobs of tourists who insist on monopolizing street corners by walking side by side. …

And sc–w you if you pull some Hollywood power trip in New York! We have equal rights to that cab, that sidewalk space and that subway seat. Don’t believe me? A friend of mine once sat next to Susan Sarandon.

So where will I be on Oscar night, March 5? I’ll be home in Brooklyn watching New Yorkers step onto that West Coast red carpet with the effortless élan of an East Coast sophisticate. Whether or not the hometown folks win, here’s something New Yorkers already know: When it comes to time zones, Oscar winners or anything else, New York is always ahead of the rest. Now, the envelope, please …

And that is only a sampling of the Gotham cinema swagger Loinaz is throwing down over on the Inquirer Web site, leaving nobodies like The Reeler and David Carr broken in tear-streaked piles of quivering, also-ran shit. Although Carr seems to be rebounding all right:

The only way New Yorkers can possibly survive not being at the absolute epicenter of the universe for a week is to maintain a claim on the homies who are there. In this funhouse world, both Ang Lee and Heath Ledger are New Yorkers to the core. If they are, let’s hear ’em give a shoutout to Queens instead of their entertainment lawyers.

I am still too shaken to respond, but when I do, I only hope I can muster as fearsome and unequivocal a battle cry as Loinaz’s “Sc–w you!” I mean, he obviously means business.
(via The Carpetbagger)

Indiana Jones and The Road to Irrelevance

So the other night on The Daily Show, a defeated-looking Harrison Ford trudged through an entire interview with Jon Stewart just to finally slump forward and half-joke about his new film Firewall, “I will be home under the covers, waiting for them to hate me.”

Who, pray tell, will ever put the “Ha” back in Harrison?
Well, Michael Atkinson’s review in this week’s Village Voice suggests that Ford will not be waiting long:

Figuring we spend February either catching up with Oscar nominees or never leaving home at all, studios use the season to empty their lots of remaindered bringdowns like so many ’94 Jettas. As used cars go, the latest and possibly last Harrison Ford thriller, Firewall, is no deal: It runs rough, stalls frequently, smells like the stale sweat of four dozen older movies, and handles like a blind mule. … Throughout this limping techno-heist rotework, Ford seems irritated to have to work at all at an age when other professionals, with less expensive support teams and alimonies, are eyeing retirement.

Good Lord, Michael. He said “under the covers,” not “under a cold white sheet.”

(The Return of) Screening Gotham: Feb. 10-12, 2006

Some of this weekend’s worthwhile cinematic happenings around New York:
–It brings me extraordinary pleasure to resume this weekly Reeler feature by recommending a film like In a Glass Cage, screening this weekend as part of Lincoln Center’s Films in Catalunya series. Not that the movie has any shred of joy; to the contrary, Agusti Villaronga’s ghastly 1987 effort is about as fucked-up as movies get.

Too close for comfort: David Sust shaves Gunter Meisner in Villaronga’s In a Glass Cage
And I am not talking about those outer circles of transgression comprising, say, Miike’s incestuous necrophiles or Noe’s epic anal rapes, either. Instead, I am talking about a film that unflinchingly confronts the legacies of fascism without invoking, a la Pasolini’s Salo, literary myths or hyper-stylized oppression. Really, all I can say is that Cage relates the small tale of a young man whose relationship with an incapacitated former Nazi perpetuates a cycle of death and depravity that pretty much defies belief. Villaronga’s depiction of how inhumanity transcends moments, generations and, ultimately, civilization yields some pretty severe emotional consequences if you think you can handle them–and you absolutely should try. It is one of contemporary cinema’s most powerful confirmations that the extremes of what we see are no match for the extremes of what we feel.
–Attention Oscar completists: Your first chance to catch Best Foreign-Language Film nominee Tsosti is tonight at the Museum of the Moving Image. Short notice? Probably, but some of you are fanatical about this stuff, and I figure the least I could do is put out the heads-up, you know? Do not despair should you miss it, however; BAM’s Best of the African Diaspora Film Festival series will host the film’s offical NYC premiere Feb. 19. How is that for early warning, eh?
–And if nightmarish Spanish and social-realist South African cinema just are not doing it for you, feel free to drop by IFC Center for a midnight screening of GoodFellas. But that’s kind of playing it a little too safe, is it not? Of course, if you can believe we are a generation removed from GoodFellas‘ original run, you can imagine there are a crapload of young ‘uns out there who have never seen Scorsese’s gangster genius on a big screen. In which case this might be a top priority. Scratch that–it is a top priority.