Reeler Archive for June, 2006
Jami Bernard's Blog Debuts at MCN; Devastated Daily News Reaches Out to Fanboys
Dave Kehr will be so pleased: On the morning when critic Jami Bernard’s blog debuts right here on Movie City News, Bernard’s former bosses the New York Daily News have given one of their general assignment reporters a Web-only fanboy column.
That is not a misprint. “Ethan Sacks Unmasked” will feature the author’s biweekly stroll through the subculture of comic-clutching, Tolkien-fellating, pajama-swaddled 35-year-olds, getting out all the latest updates about “genre entertainment, including comic books, sci-fi, fantasy, kung fu flicks, anime and video games” that will have his readers creaming their X-Men underwear. (For the uninitiated, The Reeler has an understanding-fanboy-culture cheat sheet here.)
It should be noted that Sacks is not replacing Bernard; rather, his work symbolizes the News’s shift from supplying reasonably useful film writing to a shining new era in condescension. In fairness to the paper’s efforts to draw younger readers, I should probably add the obligatory “At least they are trying.” But you could also deduce from Sacks’s bio that they are trying a little too hard:
Ethan Sacks has worked at the Daily News for almost ten years; he has been a fanboy geek for most of his thirty-three years on this planet. His proudest moment? Having Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee dub his daughter “an official Superheroine, forevermore entitled to wear the colors and insignia of the fabled House of Sacks. So hath it been stated. So shall it be.” A close second was the actual birth of said daughter….
So. Excited yet?
Stoned to Death: Paramount Takes on Filmmaker Who Bootlegged 'WTC'
Kudos to my colleague Ray Pride for landing the plum role of Exhibit C in the case of Paramount Pictures vs. Chris Moukarbel, which pits “one of the world’s leading creators and distributors of motion pictures” (per the ‘Mount’s lawsuit) against a 28-year-old Yale artist who shot and uploaded to the Web part of a “bootleg script” for Oliver Stone’s upcoming World Trade Center.
The video–a far more accomplished and encouraging piece of work than just about anything in the official WTC trailer–wound up linked to Film Threat, the Filmmaker Magazine blog and, eventually, on Pride’s Movie City Indie page. Nearly three weeks later, the ‘Mount is fighting back:
12. Upon information and belief, Defendant has distributed and caused to be distributed to the public the infringing Picture, either directly or by hyperlink, on at least the following websites:
http://www.pointsofdeparture.net
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/blog/2006/06/advance-copy.php
/archived/mcnblogs/mcindie/archives/2006/06/world_trade_cen.html …
14. Upon information and belief, the Infringing Picture is described on these various websites as: “a 12-minute film adapted from a bootleg script of Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center and its post-collapse setting,” which is “pre-empting Oliver Stone’s forthcoming World Trade Center.” (emphasis added).
While not named in the lawsuit, Film Threat actually has a copy of Paramount’s injunction pasted where the film used to be (if you can get the page to open; my efforts have yielded one crashed browser after another). And one final shout-out to the ‘Mount, which, with one legal brief, has drummed up more interest in Moukarbel’s film than anyone ever had in Stone’s. At least they are marketing successfully for somebody.
(Photo: Chris Moukarbel / Witte De With)
'Brave One,' Part II: Jordan, Howard Wait it Out Uptown
A few hours after watching the NYPD make good on the city’s promise to tow away cars that would dare interfere with the making of Jodie Foster’s latest film, The Reeler stopped back by the set of The Brave One yesterday to check out director Neil Jordan’s progress.
A tipster on 88th Street informs me that Foster herself was not at the location, where Jordan was shooting a traffic jam sequence featuring Brave One co-star Terrence Howard. The Hustle & Flow star chatted with the script supervisor and passed out love to his stand-in while Jordan roamed the street semi-aimlessly, half-surveying his set-up and half-restlessly pacing around the prop police car. At one point he approached the B&B Marketplace at the corner of 88th and Third Avenue, a few feet from where I stood observing the scene.
Brave One director Neil Jordan hits the street (Photos: STV)
“Going OK?” I asked him.
“Kind of busy right now,” Jordan replied.
“How’s the Upper East Side treating you?”
“Hot,” he said, stalking away.
“Dude, where’s my car?” I shouted.
OK, not really. The guy was working, folks. He’s Neil Jordan. Anyway, the whole crew had packed up and disappeared by early evening, making the neighborhood safe again for vehicle owners to ignore parking regulations. And to take your clothes to the cleaners. And to get a flimsy slice at Roma Pizza. I can sense the relief from here.
'Great New Wonderful' Premiere Has its Cake and Eats it Too
Danny Leiner’s ensemble drama The Great New Wonderful premiered to a packed house at the Angelika last night, with most of the attendees cruising to the Lower East Side afterward for a party at Libation. The Reeler has no Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stephen Colbert or Edie Falco sightings to report from its time at the event, but their fellow castmates Olympia Dukakis, Jim Gaffigan and Judy Greer did indeed make an apperance alongside Leiner.
Olympia Dukakis hides behind her cake after GNW co-star Jim Gaffigan tries and fails at his breathy, sensual rendition of “Happy Birthday” (Photos: STV)
The night doubled as a 75th birthday party for Dukakis, who reportedly recoiled with shock when her age was announced prior to the screening but who was in a little more celebratory spirit when an immense cake appeared from the morass of the VIP area. Modeled after one of Gyllenhaal’s towering gourmet pastries from the film, the cake was a dense chocolate almost too rich to eat. I should probably stop here before I breach Lloyd Grove / “dessert victim” territory.
Anyhow, I have a podcast interview with Leiner on the way later today or early tomorrow, and I would count The Great New Wonderful among this weekend’s recommended picks. But more on that Friday.
On Their Tows: 'Brave One,' NYPD Make New Fans on Upper East Side
Good morning, New York–especially those of you on the Upper East Side! I know it can be kind of tough to get up and at ’em on such a sluggish, sultry day, but a few of you might take a cue from the NYPD, which arrived in Yorkville at 7 a.m. to tow your cars before Jodie Foster and Neil Jordan showed up to work on their new film The Brave One.
Consider yourself warned (Photos: STV)
The parking enforcement unit and the production company had posted some pretty conspicuous notices around the neighborhood sometime last weekend, politely if not directly warning residents that any cars parked on East 87th, 88th, or 89th Streets and the bordering stretches of Lexington and Third Avenue on the morning of June 20 would be subject to removal–towed to the “nearest legal parking space.” And they were not messing around: By 9 a.m., a pair of tow trucks had relocated at least a half-dozen vehicles to Third Avenue just above 90th Street.
“There is no cost or penalty to owners of relocated cars,” read the notices supplied by Redemption Pictures (IMDB lists Warner Bros. as the attached studio). “In the event that your car is relocated, contact either one of our parking assistants or your local police precinct. With a description and/or a plate number, they will tell you where your car can be found.”
Good morning, gentlemen. Who wants to make a movie?
So with all of this in mind, who are Jodie Foster’s biggest fans this morning?
The owner of this Pathfinder will be thrilled to have had this tow truck driver in his car, just as nearby residents were overjoyed by the two minutes of car-alarm noise that resulted at 8 a.m.
To the driver with the New York license plate DJV 9746….
… and the driver with the Florida plate A54 2IE …
And the owner of this Toyota Sienna from Pennsylvania, FSM 3911 …
… your cars are a few blocks uptown.
Really, it didn’t seem like anybody parked on East 88th Street had heeded the yellow notices the city had posted, but it seemed unreasonable that the NYPD would devote two trucks to towing every car parked between Third and Lexington–easily more than 20 in all. I asked a member of the film crew how the drivers decided which cars they would take away.
“They’re taking all of them,” he said.
“All of them?” I asked, stunned.
Brave One crew members cordon off East 88th Street, which will be used, however ironically, as the location of a traffic jam
The man nodded, inducing me to wonder who pays for all of that. Surely, the Mayor’s film office, which provides free police presence for film shoots and hands out location permits like Chinese restaurant menus, could not be so generous as to pick up the tab for a pair of NYPD tow truck drivers at roughly three hours each. Indeed, a film office spokeswoman told me this morning, the production company incurs the cost, but she said she did not have the specifcs on what that amount might be.
Next I called the NYPD, from whom I figured I could get a ballpark figure or even a few charges for previous films. I also thought New Yorkers might want to know how much money is outstanding while the city waits for reimbursement. Alas, after 10 minutes on hold, I was required to leave a message.
So–anyone want to place any bets on the going rate for a morning’s worth of parking enforcement? And does anybody have any fun stories about your own cars being relocated for the sake of cinema?
UPDATE: OMG! OMG! Fuck the car! It’s Terrence Howard!
Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series Returns, Brings Puppets
I have written about these events a few times before, but this is one I think we all absolutely must check out tonight: The Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series has bumped up its screening schedule to twice-monthly, and tonight it spotlights films starring puppets. The shorts String Dance, Neo-Noir and Jeffrey and Humphrey Movie (about “two snaggle-toothed puppets, Jeffrey and Humphrey, and their love of hubcaps, hidden treasure, and hip hop”) precede the evening’s feature–are you ready?–The Lady From Sockholm.
And it is free. I would keep going, but I think you have reason enough now to drop your Stanley Cup Game 7 plans and hit Park Slope instead. At least I do.
Wall Street Journal Nudges Reeler's Stock Higher; Also Reveals Lukewarm Iger and Sonnenfeld
Big thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s Julien Vernet, who today included The Reeler among the three indie film sites profiled in his Blog Watch feature. Along with GreenCine Daily and The IFC Blog, your humble editor has been singled out for “serv(ing) up longer critiques and on-the-scene reporting” as well as “tak(ing) advantage of the city’s rich film scene to interview industry players and attend local events.” The only thing that could make this a prouder moment would be being able to afford a WSJ subscription and thus find the link to Vernet’s lovely praise. Oh, and one of those engraved illustrations they always use in place of photos. Alas, you can find the hard-copy edition on page R14. Some blogger I am.
Coincidentally, Disney CEO Robert Iger also gets another WSJ close-up today, this time transcribed from an interview he gave a few weeks back at the Journal’s “D4” Conference in Calrsbad, Calif. And this is hardly the Iger who was publicly clashing with National Association of Theater Owners head John Fithian last year in this same paper; rather, this is the guy whose publicist and maybe one or two influential shareholders evidently spiked his coffee with a double dose of Banal-Exec Lite before he went on the record:
I think the movie experience, the big-screen, multiple-person experience, is actually a pretty good experience. I think the whole industry should get behind improving that experience. …We create a lof of value with the initial big-screen release. So I like the notion of keeping that where it is. How long that lasts in some exclusive window, I don’t know. It seems pretty obvious that windows are going to compress.
Oh, come on, Bob! Where is that street-fighting man who came out to the Journal last December to say he saw windows slimming down “by force more than negotiation or diplomacy”? The Mouse does not back down (except to Harvey Weinstein), and neither do you!
Also in the Journal, director Barry Sonnenfeld says windows should, in fact, get longer as a way of building up the social experiences of theatergoing and buzz-building:
People need to have things they want to do. They need to have events. … To me the embracing of the Internet is not a good thing. … [Studio heads] all fear the Internet. They all fear that it’s taking time away from their core stuff. “We don’t know what the Internet is, but we’re going to throw a lot of stuff up in the air, and maybe some of those things will be really good.” But maybe by doing that, they’re hurting what they know how to do, which is television or electronics or movies.
This coming from the guy who went from being one of his generation’s best cinematographers to directing Big Trouble and RV. At any rate, there are two types of movie lovers, and they DO have their respective events. One is called a film festival, where the anticipation and experience of theatrical viewing is communal and essentially sacred (hell, even RV premiered at Tribeca). The other is called the DVD release, which has cornered its own market on hype and which promises the blend of interactivity and authority (e.g. director commentaries, director’s cuts, etc.) that the digital age has conditioned us to expect.
And do not think Sonnenfeld has not prepared his extras for the semi-autobiographical RV‘s DVD, either. It will be out before you know it, and, you know, people need events.
UPDATE: My pal Bennett over at Open All Night has maxed out his credit cards for a WSJ subscription and thus sends along this link to today’s Blog Watch featuring The Reeler. Show-off!
Has-Been Seagal, Horny Hawke: At the Movies with the New York Post
I am such a slouch. On an unproductive morning during which I must now rush off to check out Superman Returns, I feel like I have left you hanging. But let me introduce you to your substitute, the New York Post, which spent virtually all weekend unearthing the glimmering jewels I have been too neglectful to polish for you myself.
Page Six is back in particularly vicious sniper mode, peering through its slender crosshairs at all sorts of cinematic targets. The ever-popular Steven Seagal takes the bloodiest hit by far, with the Sixers dubbing him “Action Zero” for his commitment to sigh autographs alongside “Rowdy Roddy” Piper, “Captain Lou” Albano and “the guys who played Michael Myers in Halloween and Jason in Friday the 13th” at this weekend’s Big Apple Convention and Geek Puppy Pile. The item fails to mention, however, that Seagal and his band Thunderbox are going to rock New York at BB King’s, a far more terrifying trauma about which readers need adequate warning. Like a potential Ron Burkle payday, consider this another opportunity missed for Page Six.
The coverage gets far tamer from there: Ethan Hawke memorized Salinger to get laid; Harvey Weinstein dumped a few million bucks (not Weinstein Co. capital, he swears) in some Euro-trash dating site; Disney has taken the trend in withholding press screenings one step further by not testing Pirates of the Carribean 2 (“We didn’t think we could gain anything by research screenings,” a Disney spokesman said, but they are refurbishing the Disneyland ride just in case); Kevin Spacey modeled Lex Luthor after Kenneth Lay; and former Luna frontman Dean Wareham is back onscreen in Matthew Ross’s short film Lola.
But the real credit goes to noted ideologue and critical trailblazer Liz Smith, who has the semi-latest on Mike Nichols’ next project:
With some movie studios canceling projects right and left, it’s comforting to see Universal stepping up to the plate with a meaningful idea. Oscar winners Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom Hanks and Broadway’s current box-office darling Julia Roberts, will be together doing Charlie Wilson’s War, based on George Crile’s book about a rogue congressman and a CIA agent secretly arming rebels against the Russians in Afghanistan, circa 1980. The intellectually gifted and charmingly disarming Mike Nichols is to direct, and The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin is the screenwriter, so this one seems really worth the wait.
“Comforting” indeed–follow the links until I return, kids, and I will try to be back with a note or two this afternoon.
Late, Not Breaking News: Brooklyn Int. Film Fest Unloads Hardware
My plans to cover the ninth annual Brooklyn International Film Festival fell through at every turn, so fuck it: Follow the jump for the winners, including recently revealed Audience Award recipient Crossing Arizona below, by Brooklyn’s Joseph Mathew and Queens’ Dan DeVivo) and His Brooklyn Excellency (no, really), studio magnate Doug Steiner. As with so many things–festival coverage especially–there is always next year.
A scene from Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo’s Brooklyn International Film Festival award-winner Crossing Arizona (Photo: CrossingAz.com)
Screening Gotham: June 16-18, 2006
A few of this weekend’s worthwhile cinematic goings-on around New York:
–The Museum of the Moving Image features a pair of nifty-sounding screenings tonight and tomorrow. First up is Strangers With Candy, which does not open in theaters for another two weeks but is hitting the New York preview rounds pretty hard in the meantime. The film’s creative duo Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello will stop by afterward to answer your probing questions. Heads-up, however: Tonight’s event will be hosted at the ImaginAsian Theater on the Upper East Side (not at the Museum’s Queens headquarters), and its hosts tell The Reeler it is sold out. Which naturally means a little more creative crashing scheme is in order. I have faith in you.
Meanwhile, the museum returns home tomorrow to screen Full Metal Jacket with Matthew Modine in attendance. Feel free to ask him how he applied his lessons from Kubrick to his performance in the recent Tribeca shit-stack Kettle of Fish. Or just gasp and sob and blubber into the mic. Same difference.
–Speaking of Tribeca, the festival unofficially marches on with a series of films about office life. Just what you wanted over the weekend, I know, but at least they are free. Tribeca Cinemas unspools the Fonda/Tomlin/Parton parable 9 to 5 tonight and the cult classic Office Space Saturday; both films start at 7 p.m. and seating is first-come, first-served.
–The very wonkiest of New York’s cinema wonks should be taking over Film Forum right about now as the joint unveils its restored print of G.W. Pabst’s silent “erotic masterpiece” Pandora’s Box. Featuring Louise Brooks as Lulu, the bobbed, class-straddling siren of Weimar Germany, the film confirmed the star as one of the great screen icons of her era–hell, of any era, but primarily after her career was well over, the French had revived her work and she wrote her 1982 memoir Lulu in Hollywood. This weekend’s 7:45 shows feature live piano accompaniment, while Film Forum repertory programmer Bruce Goldstein may beatbox over the late screenings if you ask nicely.
Bacon Turns to Ham in Latest Directorial Effort 'Loverboy'
Kevin Bacon pretty much admitted it: There was something a bit odd about Loverboy, the Victoria Redel novel he and wife Kyra Sedgwick bring to the screen today as director, co-producer and co-stars. In its poetic ruminations about Emliy (Sedgwick), a woman so traumatized by her girlhood alienation that she has a child for little more than possession’s sake, Bacon told a press gathering last weekend that he found an intriguing (if undefinable) appeal in its jumpy storyline and creepy, faltering relationships–both of which he and Sedgwick sought to apply to their adaptation.
Row, row, row your lukewarm family drama: Kyra Sedgwick and Dominic Scott Kay star in Kevin Bacon’s Loverboy (Photo: ThinkFilm)
I think I knew what he was talking about, but not because I had the same experience reading Redel’s novel (in fact, I have not read it). Rather, it is clear that Bacon’s film refracts a workable enough conflict–haunted mother cannot let go of her 6-year-old son–through an assemblage of characters too one-dimensional to resolve anything. There is no antagonist in Loverboy, only a parade of victims: Take Emily as a girl, for example (played by Bacon and Sedgwick’s daughter Sosie), whose parents’ exclusive love for each other leaves the youngster dangling in a honey-hued swamp of ’70s kitsch. Or Emily’s son Paul (Dominic Scott Kay), who is aware of and helpless to remedy his captivity, and whose performance arcs consist of cycles of hysteria, fantasy and soft-focus innocence. Or the well-meaning outsiders (played by Matt Dillon, Blair Brown and an excellent Oliver Platt among others) whose attempts to befriend the pair result in a succession of melodramatic and ultimately tragic meltdowns.
In other words, Loverboy asks you to buy into its archetypes, and then banks on nuance to attract your sympathy. Net yield? Zero. So I asked Bacon: Is this the oddity he had in mind?
“Both as an actor and a director, I’m much more into gray than I am in black and white,” Bacon told The Reeler. “The black and white has got its place in certain kinds of movies, and certainly, I’m the first guy to cheer when the bad guy gets it. I’ve made movies and played those parts that really fit into that mold. With a film like this, though, the lead character is the perfect example: Here’s a character who’s on her way to commiting this heinous crime and yet along the way, I wanted you to see the magical side of her, the funny side of her, the sexy side, the romantic side of this character. She is, in her own way, a victim–a victim of her own kind of crumbling psyche and a victim of some of the pain she suffered as a child. And her parents, they’re not the baddies. That’s a lot more like life to me.”
Me too. If only life was detectable in the film. That said, complaints I have heard about it being a Bacon/Sedgwick vanity project are somewhat off-base; Sedgwick looks like a million bucks, but Loverboy hardly represents the chops showcase she scored in Personal Velocity or even on The Closer, if only because Bacon and screenwriter Hannah Shakespeare disallow Emily from stepping outside the proscribed realm of romance and neurosis. Bacon is serviceable as young Emily’s father, but his direction reflects an amateur’s stifling micromanagement: Dutch angles, slo-mo mother-and-child montages and, most gratingly, Hendrix-as-Pavlov flashback music to remind you what mood you should be in when Emily’s fantasy mom (Sandra Bullock) shows up on camera. I mean, hasn’t this guy been in half of the movies released since, like, 1984? Didn’t he work with Herbert Ross and Rob Reiner? Shouldn’t he know from cliches by now?
At any rate, “vanity project” at least implies “interesting failure” (think the Ritchie/Madonna remake of Swept Away, or Beatty/Bening redoing Love Affair), and Loverboy is less interesting than abjectly boring. In retrospect, maybe it was not “weirdness” that Bacon sensed while reading Redel’s work–it could have just been his better judgment being bludgeoned to death.
Reeler Link Dump: 'Actual Sex' Edition
–The Hollywood Reporter’s Gregg Goldstein has the scoop on the Shortbus deal, which will bring John Cameron Mitchell and ThinkFilm together in rosy coital bliss and which sets up a come-spattered art-porn fight to the death with IFC Films’ own smut showcase Destricted. Goldstein’s emphasis on Shortbus‘s “actual sex” alone makes this both an entertaining and informational read, but even more intriguing is the anonymous distributor who said Mitchell’s $500,000 asking price was totally fucking crazy for a film that cannot be advertised and cannot play in 97 percent of theaters and will never see the light of day in video chains or at big-box DVD retailers or on basic cable a little rich for his blood. But all parties wished Mitchell and ThinkFilm a long, lubed and happy union.
–Not-so-newsflash: AIVF is no more. According to a letter passed along by indieWIRE kingpin Eugene Hernandez, the filmmaker support organization will cease operations June 28 but will attempt to continue its house publication, the Independent, in the months ahead. The July issue will feature a best-of selection cherry-picked from AIVF’s 33-year history; the status of future issues has yet to be determined. This especially sucks for some of AIVF’s senior board members, who must now find a new benefactor to milk in support of their own personal networking. You know who you are. The Reeler sends its condolences.
–David Lynch, he of meditative serenity and institutionalized incomprehensibility, has filed for divorce from Mary Sweeney, his producing partner and wife of–wait for it–one month. It was Lynch’s third marriage, and papers filed this week in Los Angeles Superior Court revealed “irreconcilable differences” to be the grounds for ending it. Look for a high-profile custody battle to follow: Lynch and Sweeney have a troubled 4-year-old named Inland Empire that needs all the love it can get.
–Yeah, it is short notice, but if Christopher Hitchens, free beer and the premiere of American Zeitgeist are not compelling enough reasons to change your plans tonight, then you have a cold, craggy void where your heart should be. Filmmaker Rob McGann promises a balanced ratio of blood, spittle and vomit in the post-screening debate between Hitchens and Eric Margolis; protective eyewear is strongly advised for those viewers up front.
New York Looks on in Awe as 'Spider-Man 3' Heroically Swings From Crane
It is true: For a guy who blogs all day about New York film, I have been irredeemably derelict in not covering Spider-Man 3‘s incursion into Manhattan. Maybe it is the knowledge that The Times already delivered the earth-smashing scoop, or maybe it is that I am so deep into my podcast phase that even a tight-assed, mouthless, Halloween party cast-off is not enough to get me out on the street.
But thankfully we have Many Highways, with its recent photoblog entry documenting one of the film’s recent shooting days downtown. It is anybody’s guess what this scene could be about, but the presence of the crane in the background indicates that, yes, that really is a post-lunch Tobey Maguire under all that Spandex, doing his own stunts.
And what is this? MH has video as well? Thank God someone is doing some work out there.
Shortz Circuit: 'Wordplay' Premieres, Subject Sits Down For Reeler Podcast
As an avowed fan of the film and a sucker for yesterday afternoon’s circulating rumor that Bill Clinton might stop by, I made the trip to Wednesday night’s Wordplay premiere party at IFC Center. In the end, Clinton was a no show, but to hell with him; who needs an ex-president when you have New York Times crossword editor (and Wordplay hero) Will Shortz making the celebrity rounds?
Taking one with the team: Will Shortz (center) celebrates Wordplay‘s opening night with producer Christine O’Malley and director Patrick Creadon (Photo: STV)
Everyone who was anyone in the puzzle doc joined Shortz under the billowy IFC big top: Tyler Hinman, kicking back vodka tonics in his crossword puzzle necktie; champion solver Ellen Ripstein, looking resplendent in a black ball gown; Trip Payne, who said Wordplay might win the documentary Oscar if it adds the subtitle, “The Long March to Freedom”; and the married directing/producing team of Patrick Creadon and Christine O’Malley, who were excited as they were anxious about their film’s upcoming opening weekend.
I do not think they have much to worry about, especially here in New York and especially with a mascot as beloved as Shortz doing his part to get the, ahem, word out. He even took a few minutes yesterday to speak with me for yet another Reeler podcast, which you can find linked below. This is required listening for anybody who wonder how Shortz himself might do on one of his puzzles or if he has considered seeking a restraining order against Jon Stewart.
Actually, it is required listening for everybody, dammit, just because I say it is:
Will Shortz podcast — June 14, 2006
Oh, and Wordplay opens Friday, June 16, at IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza.
Standing-Room-Only Premiere Opens NY Asian Film Festival (Sort Of)
I guess technically I was wrong yesterday when I mentioned that the New York Asian Film Festival was kicking off Wednesday night with Takashi Yamazaki’s epic post-WWII drama Always–Sunset on Third Street. Rather, the screening at the Japan Society was something of a warm-up for Friday’s official opening–a sold-out, buzzed-about, turn-away-dozens-at-the-front-door test spin, but a warm-up nevertheless.
Those with the good fortune to get through the door were treated to an introduction by Takashi himself (above), whose Best Director prize was one of 13 Japanese Academy Awards Always claimed in 2005. He explained that he originally had little interest in making the film, but a producer obsessed with 1950s Tokyo would not take “iiya” for an answer.
“Mr. (Shuji) Abe had produced my first two films–this would become my third film,” Takashi said through a translator. “He told me, ‘Only you–because you have been a talented visual effects supervisor and director–you’re the only one who can recreate 1950s Japan today.’ Which, of course, really upset me because he wasn’t buying my skills as a director at all but just as a technician. So I said, ‘Never, never, never will I make this film.’ Even as it was, people around me kept saying, ‘Just go back to doing visual effects,’ which was mind of an insult to my films. So in the midst of that kind of uncertainty and anxiety, for a producer to say, ‘I need your technical mastery’ as opposed to my directorial mastery was very insulting.”
By that point, I was wondering if the translator had her tongue as far into her cheek and Takashi’s was in his own. “He was so obstinate and so persistent,” the director continued, ” and he had let me make two movies that I’d wanted to make, so I figured that it was about time that I owed him this one. So I made this film. And now that it’s turned into such a monster hit, I feel kind of conflicted emotionally.”
The good news for anyone shut out of last night’s barnburner is that Always will re-screen July 1 at the Imaginasian. The bad news, of course, is that Takashi will have jetted back to Japan by that time, and you will be deprived the winning introduction recounting his hometown stardom and his parents’ consideration of him as a “golden prince.” But like I told you yesterday: Do not believe the hype–not even the directors’. This is about the movies.
