Reeler Archive for March, 2006
Reeler Link Dump: Sinus Headache Edition
In case this dizzying head pain strikes me dead before I can get my antibiotics prescription filled, check out the latest New York murmurings from around the Web:
—Murderball co-director Dana Adam Shapiro (left) has signed a deal with Paramount to adapt and direct the film version of his 2005 novel The Every Boy. Brad Pitt’s Plan B shingle will produce, while Roger Friedman will continue to fuck Shapiro’s name up no matter who or what is attached.
–indieWIRE notes that director Bennett Miller will be signing Capote DVD’s tonight at 6 at the Tower Records on Broadway at West 4th Street. Miller’s underappreciated 1998 debut The Cruise will be available for sale and signature as well, but just because you have not heard of it does not mean you get to go haggling a buy-one-get-one-free deal out of the guy. This is an Oscar nominee, after all. Behave yourself.
—David Spade did lunch with Boldface’s Paula Schwartz Monday at the Four Seasons, laughing it up over a former assistant’s stun-gun attack and trailing off nonsensically about Tom Cruise:
“I’ll go after who I go after,” he said. “I don’t care.” Then: “I just, the only problem is that it’s been done, it was done well by. …” He paused. “We just got to think of a new angle.”
It is peculiar to see Spade keep his cards so close to his vest, especially considering that Comedy Central should be recalling it to wardrobe any day now after it cancels his show. Nevertheless, you have to admit that the terror in his eyes is kind of cute.
–In New York Post business news, booze and stripper stocks declined after a day of light trading on the East Side. Futures were mixed.
–If you thought Liza Minelli’s career renaissance was nothing but an archive-aided fluke, the genius behind the blog fourfour has a wake-up call for you.
(Photo: The Age)
March of Tribeca Continues With Midnight and Showcase Selections
The Tribeca Film Festival is back on the offensive today with another 37 new titles in its Showcase, Rereleased/Rediscovered, Midnight sections. And before you go joking about sloppy seconds or whatever in the Showcase category (subtitled, “New to NY, these films have been highlights of other festivals”), check out the pedigree of this year’s selections: Patrick Creadon’s wildly entertaining documentary Wordplay; Toshiaki Toyoda’s acclaimed suburban drama Hanging Garden; and the Pixies reunion chronicle loudQUIETloud.
The Midnight section features the world premiere of Mandy Stein’s Ramones tribute concert rockumentary Too Tough to Die; the adults-only gay teen movie spoof Another Gay Movie; the SXSW fave (and DreamWorks muse) Air Guitar Nation; and some drug flick called Cocaine Cowboys, whose makers evidently have either no respect or no knowledge of the similarly named Andy Warhol/Jack Palance masterpiece from 1979. I am sure an anguished lawsuit is imminent.
The Rereleased/Rediscovered lineup offers an encore of last year’s Lincoln Center coup The River and painstakingly restored prints of Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bowery and Joseph H. Lewis’s cult classic noir, Big Combo. The Spotlight program–announced last week–also features a pair of new additions, including the Michael Winterbottom’s newly bought The Road to Guantanamo and excerpts from the Maysles Brothers’ 27-years-in-the-making documentary about The Gates. Sure, you probably know how it ends, but Tribeca is hosting a discussion with Albert Maysles and Gates artists Christo and Jean-Claude as a little added incentive to check it out anyway.
As always, for the full program listings, follow the jump.
Cannes Do: Filmmakers Under the Gun For 2006 Festival
The last time I took someone’s word for it regarding putative film festival selections, I wound up applying aloe vera to my blistered skin for a week. That said, I am rolling the dice with today’s Hollywood Reporter dispatch revealing some of the favorites and unofficial locks for slots at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Charles Masters’s survey is an occasionally fascinating read, reporting Sofia Coppola (Marie Antoinette), David Lynch (Inland Empires) and New York’s own Prince of Perverted Sophistry, John Cameron Mitchell (Shortbus), as virtual shoo-ins for the event this May. Masters also reports that Richard Linklater could sneak in with the long-awaited Fast Food Nation, while Darren Aronofsky may have his time-warped historical epic The Fountain finished–at last–just in time for programming.
And if worse comes to worse for any of the above, a rough cut always goes over well with the Cannes crowd. Here’s wishing the filmmakers all the crunch-time luck in the world.
That's 'Chicago': Richards Kindly Asks Miramax to Fucking Pay Him Already
According to the Associated Press, Chicago joined Crash Monday in the pantheon of Oscar-winning films whose producers want to rip each others’ throats out. Which would not really raise an eyebrow around Reeler HQ if two of those producers were not named Harvey and Bob Weinstein. And the aggrieved plaintiff were not badgering the Weinsteins’ old home base Miramax for low eight figures.
Gotham-based Marty Richards–whose own Producers Circle Co. shingle produced Chicago with the Weinsteins in 2002–claimed the film’s Best Picture prize on his own the following spring. But three years and $300 million in grosses later, Richards argues that he has the trophy in one hand, his dick in the other, and that is about it:
Richards says he and his company were victims of Hollywood-style accounting in which two types of accounting occur at the same time: One type is for financial reporting purposes, and the other is for calculating how much individuals will get.
Those who get “gross profit” deals earn huge sums while those who get “net profit” deals — money that is left after many deductions and expenses — generally get nothing from a film’s profits, court papers say.
The lawsuit says Miramax is trying to impose upon PCC a “net profits” deal that it never agreed to.
I am totally speculating here, but a seasoned producer like Richards seems about as likely to sign a net deal with Harvey Weinstein as Dakota Fanning is to “star” in a Roman Polanski film. Then there is the cut from DVD sales, cable deals, foreign distribution earnings, you name it–Richards says his partners owe it all.
Miramax would not comment, and word around town suggests the exiled Weinsteins are far more concerned whether Renee Zellweger is fuckable enough to play Beatrix Potter. I will let you know when they settle out of court.
Universal: Tweaking the Media, One Journalist at a Time
Q: What does Hollywood Reporter insider Anne Thompson have in common with Reeler editor S.T. VanAirsdale?
A: Universal has ruled both out for tonight’s Inside Man premiere.
AIVF: Another Crisis Looms For Local Indies
Notwithstanding Ethan Hawke shoots and the occasional transit strike, you will find the Association of Independent Video and Filmmmakers’ budget shortfall among the more insidious crises facing New York cinema. Not that it is really news–the organization has barely been scraping by for a while now–but an interesting post over at Paul Harrill’s Self-Reliant Filmmaking blog offers a fairly level-headed perspective of the situation at hand:
As anyone who’s worked in the non-profit sector can tell you, a Board of Directors is often loaded with wealthy supporters of the organization. These individuals help support it directly (i.e., give money) and/or support it by raising money for the organization. Well, AIVF is in trouble because most people on the BoD are filmmakers. Independent filmmakers. That is to say, they don’t have money. And if they’re able to raise money, they’re raising it for their own projects. Hey, I don’t blame them — but you can see how this has turned into a problem.
Harrill has more at his site, and I will have some additional background in the days and weeks ahead. Meanwhile, if AIVF provides a service you use or have the potential to use as an independent filmmaker in New York (or anywhere in the country, for that matter), sources tell The Reeler that you might consider sending a check sooner than later. Like, a lot sooner than later–say, by the end of the week.
Mysterious 'Speakeasy Cinema' Program Debuts Tonight in Tribeca
The Reeler just got late word about tonight’s inaugural Speakeasy Cinema event in Tribeca. Organized by Call It Democracy director Matt Kohn, the event features a film screening followed by a discussion “in the mood of the Algonquin Roundtable.” Which sounds enjoyable enough, except there is an arousing twist: The event’s special guest host–in this case, actor/filmmaker/occasional Huff Post blogger Tom Gilroy (above)–will select a mystery film whose identity viewers will not discover until the lights go down.
There is no need to worry, however: Kohn assures potential viewers that Rape of the Soul is not among the films being considered, and he throws down the law that participation is a must but “industry talk is verboten.” And at $5, you will not find a better moviegoing deal in town tonight unless you have tickets to the Inside Man premiere at the Ziegfeld. Which, face it, you do not. “Algonquin Roundtable” always had more of an irrestistably sexy, urbane ring to it anyway.
Full details–including address, time and ground rules–follow the jump.
'Rape of the Soul': Catholic Documentary Burns Up the Multiplex
While local reviewers last week digested the religious sentiment motivating The Passion of the Christ‘s new spinoff doc The Big Question, a much tinier film sneaked into the New York market brandishing some intense God fever of its own.
And if the title of the hard-right-wing Catholic “documentary” Rape of the Soul does not get your heathen ass to the movie theater, then maybe this mouth-breathing mouth-watering press release will:
Rape of the Soul documents and extracts pornographic and satanic images embedded in religious art, and presents shocking evidence that a major contributing factor to the rising incidence of priestly abuse can be attributed to prolonged exposure to the strategically placed images found in the everyday religious art that surrounds them. …
“Artists from DaVinci to Botticelli have embedded subliminal images into their art for centuries,” said producer/director of Rape of the Soul, Michael A. Calace. “In this case were found penises on crucifixes, occult symbols, swastikas, demonic faces and in modern works even the word ‘sex’ embedded into the images. The works in question include modern artist’s [sic] work currently on the covers of hymnals that at this very moment sit in the pews of churches throughout the U.S. and on children’s religious teaching aids.
“In my opinion, sex and horror is the fuel that promotes the scandalous behavior in the Church. Church leaders don’t have to look very far because the problem is coming from within the Church itself,” says Calace.
Calace, whose production company Silver Sword International boasts a mission to “merge media with morality,” also wants you to know he has packed his film with only the most knowledgeable “experts from the fields of clinical and child psychology, hypnosis, spirituality, and deceptive advertising.” And despite your first impression, this is not a hoax–Calace’s film is actually playing downtown, in White Plains and in six other markets nationally. The MPAA has supposedly smacked it with an “R” rating–that hallmark of family entertainment–and Calace is positioning Rape of the Soul as the early ideological alternative to The DaVinci Code. You have to love the guy’s ambition.
Anyway, I have long suspected the subliminal religious overtones behind Divine Interventions’ Jackhammer Jesus dildo (above), so it is about time somebody summoned the nerve to investigate. And while I doubt I will get the opportunity to check this one out before the Rapture (or before the print is recycled–whichever comes first), I will happily run a review if any of you lapsed Catholics out there have a chance to give it a look. It may not be a Gibson-level, dead-language epic smash, but never underestimate the entertainment value of an undersexed priest.
'Totally An "M" Thing': Jeff Wells Vs. NY Times in Sound-Effect Battle Royale
The Reeler would like to take this opportunity to thank Jeffrey Wells, the Hollywood Elsewhere gadabout whose close reading of the Sunday New York Times yielded an essential distinction:
Charles Solomon’s N.Y. Times piece about how annoyingly verbal animated features have become refers to Chuck Jones’ Roadrunner [sic] /Wile E. Coyote cartoons as an example of the non-verbal, all-visuals approach that used to rule in the old says. But hold on…Solomon says the Roadunner [sic] cartoons “took place in a silence broken only by music, sound effects and an occasional ‘beep-beep.'” Inaccurate, dawg. The Roadrunner sound is an unmistakable meep-meep. Listen to one closely. At no time do you hear the “b” consonant — it’s totally an “m” thing.
As the unofficial arbitrator in all Times Movie Section corrections, I must side with Wells on this. A quick listen–not even as closely as Wells requests–indicates that Solomon not only mischaracterized the Road Runner’s signature sound, but also truncated it; if we include that tongue-whip thing at the end, we get something along the lines of “meep-meep puh-THUNG-kitty-thung-thung.”
That neither Solomon nor Wells upheld their usual, thorough factchecking standards here is a severe disappointment, but as we should expect, Wells regains his swagger with journalistic trash-talk like “Inaccurate, dawg” and “‘it’s totally an ‘m’ thing.” And for the first time since before the Oscars, I feel alive again on a Monday morning.
Killer Spotted in L.A.: Vachon Brings Indie Shingle to West Coast
It is not what you think, Variety swears in this morning’s story about Killer Films going California: Christine Vachon’s beloved NYC production company recently established an official bicoastal operation, with producer Jocelyn Hayes running a Los Angeles office and Vachon herself jetting back and forth to monitor development and financing and nurture relationships for future Killer projects.
Never mind that Vachon is leasing office space on the Warner Bros. lot–the shingle remains independently headquartered downtown on Lafayette Street. It is just that after Killer’s decade of prosperity and growth, the West Coast emerges as one of those gruesome, necessary evils:
“We are a New York fixture,” Vachon admitted to Daily Variety, “but I also feel like we’re always trying to work both coasts. While we’ve been absolutely stellar at covering the New York film, literary, theater and musical scenes, we’ve never quite attempted to penetrate what was happening in L.A.
“What makes New York so great is that it’s such a cultural stew. I think the same is true of L.A. You may just have to dig a little deeper.”
Yeah, well, Paul Haggis has some of the cleanest fingernails in Hollywood, and look where it got him: stroking his Oscar, laughing so hard that he just spit his orange juice across the breakfast table. But Vachon is far more optimistic than she is naïve, and if, by extension, her new L.A. address means more potential opportunities for film in New York, I guess we will take it. Just say a prayer for the woman, will you?
Screening Gotham–International Edition: March 17-19, 2006
A few of this weekend’s worthwhile cinematic happenings around New York:
–Fuck the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day and go to MoMA, where the museum’s Canadian Front program rolls on today with a trifecta of premieres from our northern neighbors with all the universal health care. Carl Bessai kicks things off with the U.S. premiere of his Unnatural and Accidental, followed by Amnon Buchbinder’s Whole New Thing (right) and Allan King’s nursing home documentary memory for Max, Claire, Ida and company. And Sunday, you can really make things multinational as French Canadians Denis Côté and Denise Filiatrault crash the party with their respective premieres Drifiting States and My Life in Cinemascope/Bitter Memories. You may have to read a few subtitles, but it beats stepping in some hungover junior investment banker’s vomit.
–Anthology Film Archives this weekend offers up the complete work of China’s young master Jia Zhangke. A lot of critics will jump behind Platform as kind of the be-all, end-all of contemporary (and even classic) Chinese cinema, but I think I will have to go with The World for its shattering view of youth working at a Beijing theme park, swallowed by distorted visions of world-famous tourist attractions. Slow, cool and revelatory, with a mind-blowing opening shot foreshadowing the desperation to come, it is cinema of the highest order.
–So let’s say you are like me and got shut out of last summer’s wildly popular engagement of The Conformist at Film Forum. You are in luck: The Leonard Nimoy Thalia will screen Bertolucci’s masterpiece in all it colorful glory Sunday afternoon. Plan now, leave early and do not screw this one up.
(Photo: Chris Reardon)
Go West, Old Man: Shepard and Wenders Reteam For 'Don't Come Knocking':
As far as self-loathing, semi-allegorical, brooding revisionist Westerns go, the new Wim Wenders/Sam Shepard collaboration Don’t Come Knocking might represent the gold standard. It still has a ways to go before achieving any sort of dramatic harmony, or before establishing an identity singular enough to break away from the pair’s 1984 triumph Paris, Texas, and it occasionally shuffles along on a skinny horse named Incoherence. But there is a personal cinema here, and just when you think it belongs to no one you know, Wenders and Shepard sneak in to disassemble the myth with all the subtle force of a bronco.
Relax, recline, regret: Sam Sheaprd as Howard Spence in Don’t Come Knocking (Photos: Donata Wenders)
“When we had the character of Howard, we didn’t know what job he had,” Wenders told The Reeler during a recent vist to New York. “Sam suggested that he be a Western actor, and I was all opposed to idea. The last thing I wanted to do was a film that was a film inside a film. I didn’t like it. So he said, ‘Let me write it, because I know you will like it in the end, and I know I’m on the right track.’ So he wrote the first scene, and I read that the guy was running away from the movie set. I could live with that. It’s really not a film that deals with film itself.
But it broadens into the world of the Western, and as we’re writing the story, I realized the Western was really the only genre out there that deals with people who are trying to find where they belong. And that is exactly Howard’s struggle: He doesn’t know where he belongs, and he missed his life. And (with) all these Western heroes, there’s always the scene where they’re with the woman of their lives and they say, ‘I’m gonna come back,’ and they ride away, and you know they’re all wasting their lives. So I figured the Western was the real background of the film, even if it’s contemporary.”
And the inside joke does not end with a lost movie cowboy. Sure, Shepard’s aging Howard Spence flees his Utah movie set on horseback, and he lathers on the symbolism (and at least nominal self-reference) early when he trades his glimmering Hollywood wardrobe and muscular horse for the shabby “true west” get-up of a blitzed ranch hand he encounters in the desert. As the prodigal son, he roams to Elko, Nev., where he reunites with his mother (a mesmerizing Eva Marie Saint) and takes refuge from a fastidious bounty hunter (Tim Roth) charged with returning Howard to the production. But before long, Howard is the prodigal father, fleeing north to Butte, Mont., in his own father’s old Packard, poking around for a son he conceived while shooting his first film 30 years earlier.
Linde Off to Uni; Focus's Heart Will Go On
Well, the rumors were true: Focus Features co-president David Linde is on his way to the Mother Ship. IndieWIRE’s Eugene Hernandez sends word that Linde will join Marc Shmuger as co-chairman of Universal Pictures, replacing recent DreamWorks defector Stacy Snider. This breaks up Focus’s wildly successful Linde-James Schamus tandem, which scored from New York with Brokeback Mountain, Lost in Translation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Constant Gardener among other critical and commercial knockouts.
And, in the truest Hollywood spirit of adding insult to injury, Linde must relocate to Los Angeles for the job effective immediately. I do not know whether to offer congratualtions or condolences. Either way, best of luck to Linde on the new gig, and here’s hoping he has the leverage to kill Evan Almighty even before his plane lands
More Tribeca Titles as Fest Unveils Discovery and Spotlight Selections
Another day, another programming announcement from the gang at the Tribeca Film Festival. This morning brings word of the festival’s Discovery and Spotlight (neé Wide Angle) sections, comprising 38 world premieres from more than a dozen countries. Sydney Pollack’s Sketches of Frank Gehry (previewed last November on The Reeler) is in there somewhere, as are films by Guy Maddin, Chris Marker and Ed Burns.
Also look for the premieres of Chen Kaige’s delayed-to-death The Promise and Claude Chabrol’s Comedy of Power–yet another Isabelle Huppert collaboration, but one that boasts the undeniable appeal of “(d)elighting in the permutations of human stupidity.” A few New Yorkish titles are scattered in the mix, including John Dower and Paul Crowder’s pro soccer doc Once in a Lifetime and George Gallo’s art-tinged coming-of-age flick Local Color.
Tribeca also announced the selections for its new NY Specials program, featuring Gerald Fox’s documentary glimpse at filmmaker/photographer Robert Frank (Leaving Home Coming Home) and Rosie Perez and Liz Garbus’s chronicle of New York’s Puerto Rican culture, I’m Boricua, Just So You Know! Animation geeks will be excited to know that Bill Plympton has programmed the work of 12 local filmmakers in NY Specials’ “Animated NY” section.
Read the full list of NY Specials selections after the jump; check out the TFF site later this afternoon for the complete Discovery and Spotlight programs.
Lumet: A Rich Pain in the Ass is Better Than No Pain in the Ass
If my 56 seconds with Sidney Lumet did not provide the comprehensive background you need to get behind his new film Find Me Guilty, you might consider dropping in on Lou Lumenick’s more 10-minute-esque chat running today in the Post. It features not only complete sentences and token introspection, but also offers an ambiguous bit of “praise” to Guilty producer (and Crash also-ran) Bob Yari:
“I honestly don’t know what the studios are looking for these days,” says Lumet, whose new film was financed not by Hollywood but by Bob Yari, the controversial real-estate mogul behind the Oscar-winning Crash.
“It’s a very peculiar financing time in Hollywood right now,” the director says. “It’s terrific there are people like Yari who made money elsewhere and find movies a very glamorous place to invest. But they’re a big pain in the ass because they don’t really know what they’re doing.”
Jesus Christ–first the Producers Guild, now Sidney Lumet. Look for Yari’s doctor is double his patient’s dosage right… about… now.
