NYDN: Fanning Abused For Art's, Oscar's Sake?

Today’s Daily News is your unlikely source for variously harrowing film bits, including more conjecture about the controversial NYFF-opener The Queen and Paul Colford’s dispatch from those rescuer-friendly preview screenings of World Trade Center (“They had it – down to the dust,” said PAPD union president Gus Danese). But then there is the little matter of Dakota Fanning, whose latest film Hounddog receives a disturbing close-up from Lloyd Grove:

The screenplay for Hounddog – a dark story of abuse, violence and Elvis Presley adulation in the rural South, written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier – calls for Fanning’s character to be raped in one explicit scene and to appear naked or clad only in “underpants” in several other horrifying moments.

Fanning’s mother, Joy, and her Hollywood agent, Cindy Osbrink, see the movie as a possible Oscar vehicle for the pint-size star. But despite Fanning’s status as a bankable actress – whose movies, including last year’s War of the Worlds, have earned more than half a billion dollars since 2001 – the alarming material seems to have scared off potential investors from the under-$5 million indie project.

“The two taboos in Hollywood are child abuse and the killing of animals,” a source close to the situation told me. “In this movie, both things happen.”

I guess it would be presuming too much to attribute the dish to Hounddog co-star and executive producer Robin Wright Penn, whose candor and feline defensivenesss so captivated Grove at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. At any rate, Grove also discloses that Fanning’s rape scene has already been filmed, and that the completion funds came through in the end–the film wraps Friday.
In the meantime, while you know I’m not much for Oscar prognosticating, I would bet that on-camera sexual abuse puts Fanning near the top of Vanity Fair’s cover-girl picks for ’07. Annie Leibovitz is checking her calendar as we speak.

'Last Western': Filmmaker's Pioneertown Portrait Screens at Makor

Not too long ago, filmmaker Chris Deaux thought it too odd to believe: Could there really be a abandoned movie set evolved into a small community out on the fringe of the Mojave Desert? Could a photogenic Western stomping grounds established 60 years ago by Hollywood cowboys still exist as a dusty, creaking oasis two hours outside Los Angeles? This place called Pioneertown–is this for real?
Indeed it is, Deaux and his camera soon discovered.

All quiet on the Western front: Pioneertown as seen in Chris Deaux’s documentary The Last Western (Photo: DeauxBoy Productions)
“It just sounded like something more out of the Twilight Zone,” said Deaux, whose Pioneertown portrait, The Last Western, premiered last spring at South by Southwest and screens tonight at Makor. “Real western façades, old saloons, a jail–all that stuff left over from the ’40s and ’50s that people had actually moved into and settled as this functioning town of sorts. I drove out there for the first time a few years ago, and that’s pretty much what I found. The people who live there fit the bill: Non-conformist, escapist, very colorful and very passionate about their sense of freedom and the American West.”
Deaux paused. “With quotation marks around ‘American West,’ ” he added.
Shot over several months on Deaux’s days off from his his full-time television gig, The Last Western works to reconcile the conventions of old Hollywood with the contemporary notion of community. The filmmaker reveals the drug-and-gang infestation that accompanied Pioneertown’s eventual disuse, a development mirroring the demise of the movie industry’s romance with the Western. You can probably see where this is going: Revisionism follows, with Pioneertown sheltering a new generation of outsiders and their own 21st-century refractions of the Wild West’s tastes and mores.
“One of the dilemmas and beauties of the film is that there are two stories,” Deaux told me. “There’s the history of the town, which is completely odd and unique in itself. We could have made a whole film just focusing on the town and its history, with the people being secondary. And then on the other hand you’ve got the people; there are so many interesting characters that there’s no way to make it just about the town. So it ended up being a very strong mix. A pretty strong chacter profile and a very strong historical piece about the town–blended together.”
But the adaptability of a joint like, say, Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace to modern times (musical acts including Robert Plant and Shelby Lynne have played shows there since a group of young business partners from New York took the place over) contrasts wildly with the town’s stubbornly antiquarian standards. “They’re part of San Bernardino County, but they don’t have any electric board or anything,” Deaux said. “They have their own ZIP code. They’re a complete anomaly. San Bernardino County doesn’t know what to do with them. They don’t meet any modern-day codes. The houses aren’t set back from the street properly, there are no sidewalks, no streetlights–anything that a typical town has, it doesn’t.”
Particularly the encroaching specter of its own obsolescence. The town comprises a mostly older population, and Deaux said the tourist appeal is limited; a few residents’ gunfighting shows are more a hobby than a marketplace. Deaux emphasizes a turn toward “commercial preservation,” but notes that you cannot necessarily buy a postcard there.
And of late, with wildfires engulfing huge swaths of San Bernardino County and threatening the tiny entirety of Pioneertown (at least 30 homes have burned there so far), The Last Western has assumed a bittersweet timeliness. “They’ve been talking about Pioneertown on the news like it’s Disneyland–without any real explanation of what Pioneertown is,” Deaux said, adding that many of the townspeople worked with firefighters to protect the area’s most historic buildings. “It’s just part of the vernacular. ‘Pioneertown this, Pioneertown that.’ People have called me from all over the country to say Pioneertown is burning. It was just very odd. They talk about it mostly like they’re talking about it in the film: It’s the place Gene Autry built.”
Meanwhile, The Last Western supplies the extra dimension as it searches for an audience. Deaux anticipates a television distribution deal rather than a theatrical release for his 65-minute film, which makes tonight’s Makor screening even more of a treat. Deaux will be on hand to discuss the film afterward, and IndiePix will host a reception to follow. And because this technically is not a godforsaken-Los Angeles film, your attendance has The Reeler’s full blessing. And encouragement, for that matter.

Frears's 'Queen' to Open 44th NY Film Festival

The New York Film Festival announced late Tuesday that Stephen Frears’s The Queen is confirmed as this year’s opening-night selection. Featuring Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, the film explores the reaction of England’s royal family following the 1997 car crash that killed Princess Diana; its Sept. 29 screening will be a North American premiere.
According to the Post’s Vinnie Musetto, Britain is aghast at the film’s portrayal of the slumbering queen “awakened by a chambermaid.” Surely, such decadent scandal will roil jaded New Yorkers to a long, loud yawn. At any rate, a fearless Miramax is going ahead with The Queen‘s Christmas release date and an official press release has studio chief Daniel Battsek, NYFF boss Richard Peña and all involved absolutely platitudinous with joy.
The remainder of the 44th annual festival’s program is expected in mid-August, but a source close to the festival says to also expect Pedro Almodóvar’s Cannes favorite Volver to make the cut. >Shocking, I know.

Hustons, We Have a Program: MoMA Planning Family Retrospective in August and September

The gang at MoMA sent late word Monday about a kind of staggering program planned to close out the summer: The Huston Family: 75 Years on Film, featuring a total of 42 films directed by and/or starring Walter, John, Angelica or Danny Huston. The selections comprise a spectrum of studio benchmarks (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Chinatown) and more recent indie titles (Buffalo 66, The Proposition); many of the features are paired with original trailers, newsreel interviews and rarities. And admit it–you know you have been clamoring for Walter Huston’s Texaco Star Theater rendition of Septemeber Song since at least 1960.
Anyway, the exclusions of films like Under the Volcano and even The Bible kind of surprised me (2006 is John Huston’s centenary year, after all), although MoMA did score the North American premiere of the upcoming Danny Huston-as-Orson Welles thriller Fade to Black, and the museum is springing for a new print of D.W Griffith’s 1930 film Abraham Lincoln, starring Walter Huston. Meanwhile, Anjelica Huston will be on hand to introduce her 1996 directorial debut Bastard Out of Carolina on Aug. 19.
Follow the jump for the full schedule and program (for whatever reason, MoMA’s film and media HQ offers only a partial listing of titles), and expect additonal coverage on The Reeler as the series approaches next month.
(Photo of John and Angelica Huston, 1963: Berlinale)

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Night Shift: The Reeler Checks in with Shyamalan and Co.

The Museum of Natural History rolled out the blue carpet Monday evening for filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan (right) and the premiere of his spooky-ish “bedtime story,” Lady in the Water. I had anticipated the event for days, mostly by practicing Navy SEAL hydration exercises that would keep me sharp and upright despite the soul-shrinking heat along Central Park West. Continuing my preparation, I also surveyed the recent film-press literature abusing Shyamalan like a fraternity pledge; his outsized self-awareness, self-promotion and a new book detailing his split with Disney have all somehow made the filmmaker even more infamous than his middlebrow oeuvre ever had.
Certainly, in these sweltering days leading up to Lady‘s release, Shyamalan senses this overheated player-hating as well as anyone. And having not seen the new film, I had little else to talk about when I caught up him last night outside the museum. “Your films have made over a billion dollars,” I said. “But you’re also one of the most controversial blockbuster directors going.”
“I know, they really get pissed off, don’t they?” Shyamalan said.
Indeed they do. But why?
“I don’t know what it is,” he told me. “What I’ve watched in other careers is that when there’s an early success that was not preordained–it just happened, you know?–there’s a long period of earning that respect. And so there’s a great suspicion that hangs over you for a long time. With the media, I’m saying. You know what I mean? And so they’re like, ‘No, he’s not the real thing. He’s not the real thing.’ You know, maybe one day when I’m an old man they’ll be like, ‘All right.’ But maybe they won’t. Maybe they won’t, you know?”
Sure, but–spoiler alert–doesn’t Shyamalan kill a film critic in this movie?
“Well, let’s not tell everyone that. Something happens to him.”
OK, fine. Was that for any specific reason, or–
“Well, the movie is about storytelling,” he said. “And so, you know, the idea’s about honoring storytelling again and giving it reverence. And this particular guy who thinks he’s an expert on it is leading people in the wrong way.”
And so he must pay the consequences?
“Well, you check it out.”
It is on my Netflix queue, Manoj. Meanwhile, I followed up with leading Lady Bryce Dallas Howard, who had worked with the director previously on The Village and who, as Ron Howard’s daughter, grew up in one of the hackiest filmmaking households around. Also a Lars von Trier alumna, she confessed to The Reeler a certain predilection for reviled–or at least challenging–directors.

Lady co-stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Paul Giamatti take the heat Monday night (Photos: STV)
“It’s fantastic,” she said of Shyamalan’s love/hate reception. “The kinds of movies I want to be a part of–more than anything–I want them to be unignoreable. His films truly are. Everyone goes to see them. And you’re right–they do polarize people. And I think that’s because he’s truly an auteur. His vision is never diluted. It’s truly a unique opinion on cinema and a story and how to tell a story. So I’m very, very proud to be a part of that.”
Howard’s co-stars Paul Giamatti and Bob Balaban also cruised the carpet, occasionally turning from the media line to greet the crowd boxed into bleachers on the museum steps. A cheerleader rallied the spectators to applause as one would a studio audience, but after an hour or so of irrepressible spirit, they just started looking woefully hot. Furthermore, they totally let me down, sitting on their hands when a true star made the evening’s most remarkable, latecoming entrance.
“Uh-oh,” Shyamalan said at the sight of ace cinematographer and Reeler hero Christopher Doyle, who took a break from carousing around Asia long enough to shoot Lady in the Water in the director’s beloved Pennsylvania, and who dispensed with garish premiere formalities by arriving a few minutes before the film started. As unpretentiously as possible, of course: He crept along a shuttered lane of traffic with his dates (“Dates”? Plural? Well, yeah.) and greeted Balaban and Shyamalan from the sandbags-and-sweat side of the guard rail.

Genius cinematographer Christopher Doyle with the Li girls, Rain (right) and Xin
“Hello, hello!” Doyle said, breaking off one of Balaban’s interviews and continuing on with a few seconds worth of unintelligible mutterings. I reintroduced myself, too caught up in the moment to remember I had wanted to ask him about all the shit he flung at The Departed, Martin Scorsese’s remake of the Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs. I met his lovely companions Rain and Xin, and wished them a happy screening.
“Hell,” Doyle said. “If we don’t enjoy it, who will?”
Good question, Chris. Good question.

'Groomsmen' Premiere Footage Better Than the Actual Movie

After its world premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Ed Burns’s peculiar chick-flick-for-guys, The Groomsmen, opened in Los Angeles and New York last Friday. The film addresses the maturity issues facing a group of old pals reunited for their friend’s wedding, and despite the writer/director/star’s insistence on forcing some kind of catharsis into every scene (while fishing or drinking or garage-rocking, natch), I admit finding occasional pleasures in its middling, meandering banter.
Alas, as per usual, the real show appears to have unfolded last week on The Groomsmen‘s L.A. red carpet, where a hapless intrepid soul from upstart video site Iklipz withstood a wobbly barrage of nonsense from all indie comers:

Brittany Murphy: “The character I play is… is… is pregnant. She’s very pregnant. Although… and she’s real sensible during her pregnancy. And very strong-willed. (She) keeps a very good head on her shoulders, and while her husband’s having a bit of a–or her husband-to-be–is having a bit of a meltdown–Eddie’s character–she keeps everything pretty clear and pretty stable. She’s kind of the rock.”

Jay Mohr: “What friend am I? He’s like one of these guys. He stands around. He’s one of these guys from the neighborhood who tawks like dis. ‘Fuh-get it.’ You know. ‘Whaddya gonna do?’ It’s a hot day. I wore the black suit. I figure if you wear black and you act like you’re nice and cool, everyone will go, ‘You know what? Maybe it’s not that hot outside. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Cousin Mike is right.’ “

Selma Blair: (on romance): “Probably getting married was the most romantic thing. But now I’m getting divorced, so… Ha! Screw that.”

The outtakes are best viewed live, obviously, but for those of you whose online work-dodging extends solely to the written word, this should hold you over until you can enjoy Burns’s enthusiastic “Twisted Shister” invocations for yourself. You’re welcome.

This is Not a Test: Paramount to Screen WTC For 9/11 Rescuers

The latest update on World Trade Center has director Oliver Stone previewing the film this week for 9/11 rescuers in New York and New Jersey, a mildly interesting development considering a Paramount representative told me late last week that the film is not even finished. A gaggle of Gotham’s higher-ranking critics screened the rough edit prior to Saturday’s Stone/Nicolas Cage/Maggie Gyllenhaal press junket (your trusty yet lowly author did not quite make the invite list), after which I was told the film would go back for fine-tuning.
Naturally, with more than three weeks remaining before WTC opens, the quick succession of this week’s screenings begs the question: Is Paramount soliciting the rescuers’ feedback before locking a final cut?
Absolutely not, the Paramount rep told me this morning. While the invitees will not likely view a completed film, neither will they be attending anything resembling test screenings. Rather, the rep said the studio scheduled the screenings as a courtesy to the rescuers, many of whom advised Stone and his producers throughout the making of WTC and whom the filmmakers felt were owed the privilege of seeing the film first. That is to say: After Jeffrey Lyons, but before the film bloggers. Which, agreed, only seems fair.
Meanwhile, the union representing Port Authority rescuers has advised its members that the film could trigger depression, panic attacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder–which could probably go for anyone who witnessed or helped out after the 9/11attacks. And God knows there is no excising that from the final cut, so consider yourself warned.
(Photo: Francois Duhamel/Paramount Pictures)

Seeing the Sea in Brooklyn with Yo La Tengo

The latecomer’s vantage point: YLT churn along with Painlevé in Prospect Park (read more below) (Photo: STV)

NY Asian and Latino Film Festivals Hand Out Love, Money

The organizers of the New York Asian Film Festival sent word of the 2006 event’s Audience Award winner: Always: Sunset on Third Street, the big-budget period drama that opened the festival and whose director, Takashi Yamazaki (right), introduced its premiere at the Japan Society. The Korean War epic Welcome to Dongmakol finished in close second place, with the unclassifiable mindfuck Funky Forest: The First Contact claimed the third spot. Kudos to the winners and thanks to all who played.
More congratulations go to filmmaker Hugo Perez, whose script Betty La Flaca, about a young Latina struggling with her body image, claimed the top spot in the New York Latino Film Festival‘s Short Film Competition. For his efforts, Perez receives a $15,000 grant from festival sponsor HBO for the thankless task of shooting his script in time for this year’s festival–which begins July 25. Hell, if we’re going for quality-inhibiting gimmicks, why not just make a whole feature in 11 days? After all, I hear HBO needs the content.

Weinsteins Join Forces With BET Founder; Sony Responds in Blackface

It turns out The Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin and Laura Holson were mostly on the money Thursday with their scoop about Our Stories Films, a partnership between the Weinsteins and BET mogul Robert Johnson to produce “urban content.” Minus a wobbly analogy or two (“Last year, the Weinsteins raised about $1 billion in financing and debt, or about the yearly budget of a movie studio like Warner Brothers Pictures”), the authors’ story is confirmed this morning by a press release just slipped under the door at Reeler HQ. The latest news is that JP Morgan Chase will kick in $175 million in production financing and that the eventual output–comprising “titles in the African-American family comedy genre”–will be distributed by the Weinsteins’ Dimension Films genre banner.
Naturally (and in unison, evidently), the Weinsteins exulted about their latest partnership that allows someone else to do the heavy lifting:

Bob and Harvey Weinstein stated, “We are proud to be behind this venture and are confident in Bob Johnson’s taste and his ability to identify projects that will be successful. We are committed to releasing a slate of films focused in the African-American family genre and to working with Our Stories to launch their exciting new brand.”

Stop laughing. Think of it this way: Even if the Weinsteins are going through the motions, at least they are not pulling the condescending stunt that Sony choreographed in its own “urban content” announcement, which hit the wire just in time for the release of the Wayans’ latest lower-intestinal bulge, Little Man:

Sony Pictures Digital has reached a promotional deal with the web’s first online urban community, GoUrban.net, allowing the studio to tap the growing urban Internet audience and create hype for its latest movies. …

The current promotion is a sweepstakes offering web visitors the chance to win their own bling-bling with a $1,000 hip-hop jewelry shopping spree and a $500 gift certificate from GoUrban.net. The new online community is a comprehensive website that features urban apparel, music, electronics, a nationwide events calendar and an interactive social network.

Moviegoers interested in winning some “ice” of their own should register at http://www.gourban.net/contest.

Wow. You hella “fly,” Sony, but do not think you will get over on the Weinsteins that easily. Expect the brothers to throw down the funk-faking gauntlet as the first Our Stories films come to theaters; they may be counting on “Bob Johnson’s taste” in selecting projects, but you will know you are fucked when Harvizzle shows up at a premiere with gold caps and a clock around his neck, or when Bob arrives with his diamond-encrusted “B-Dub” bling. Do not tempt egregious, patronizing fate with these guys–you just cannot win.

Call it a Day: Yo La Tengo Does Painlevé Tonight at Prospect Park

The pride of Hoboken meet the suffocating humidity of Brooklyn tonight as art-rockers Yo La Tengo drop by Prospect Park to perform their soundtrack to the mystifying underwater films of Jean Painlevé. Loyal YLT listeners will know the music from its debut five years ago at the San Francisco Film Festival and the CD release that followed later in 2001 (samples are available on the band’s site).

Aqua-auteur Jean Painlevé and aqua-interpreters Yo La Tengo (L-R: Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew) (YLT photo: Michael Lavine)
This is a rare enough–and good enough–event that you should at least consider knocking off work early and navigating through the shit weather with a blanket and a six-pack (you can always count on The Reeler for short notice, but only because I can always count on you for short memories). Opener Samara Lubelski kicks things off at 7:30; the dreamy, sweltering show starts at sundown. Tell the boss your summer cold is acting up, hit the train and get a good spot early.

Dillon, 'Factotum' Land Midsummer Test-Spin Tandem in NYC

Because it is never too early to get one’s front-running shoes laced up for the ’07 Oscar race, Matt Dillon is hititng the publicity trail–hard–for his new film Factotum. As the alcohol-sponge antihero of Bent Hamer’s Bukowski adaptation, Dillon has had a dark horse awards push behind him since the film was in production; now IFC Films is ramping up the NYC buzz with a pair of Dillon-attended screenings next month on the Upper West Side.
The first one goes off Aug. 3 at Makor, with Dillon sitting down afterward with film critic David Sterritt. The $25 ticket price is less than half of what you will pay to attend the Aug. 4 event set for Lincoln Center. Of course, the latter screening includes a beer-and-wine fueled reception more likely to mimic the atmosphere in Factotum, thus allowing you that perfect opportunity to slur on and on about your Dillon crush from way back, steal a kiss and wrangle that long-awaited autograph on your old copy of Tex. I mean, anything to get your $60 worth.
Tickets are still available for each event; The Reeler will pass along a little more sober coverage of Dillon’s New York whistle stops closer to Factotum‘s Aug. 18 release.

Jolie to Play Pearl's Widow, Stick Another Pin in Aniston Voodoo Doll

How slow a news week is it in New York? Try this out: Angelina Jolie scored the role of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s widow in the upcoming Pearl biopic A Mighty Heart. Based on Mariane Pearl’s book of the same name, the film also has Michael Winterbottom attached to direct and should get underway not too long after Jolie fulfills her trenchant voiceover work in the upcoming Kung Fu Panda.
All of which is relatively yawn-inducing info until you come across this little tidbit buried in the Guardian’s Jolie-as-Pearl dispatch:

A Mighty Heart will be backed by Paramount Vantage, the art-house adjunct of Paramount Pictures, and will be co-produced by Jolie’s off-screen partner, Brad Pitt. Jennifer Aniston, Pitt’s previous partner, was originally tipped to play the role of Marianne [sic] Pearl.

This is a joke, right? Because, you know, if Winterbottom can just snag Vince Vaughn to potray Daniel Pearl, this could be the greatest pop cultural middle-finger flip since… well, nevermind.

The Reeler Will Return Thursday

Recommended viewing for the day: The New York premiere of Time to Leave, Francois Ozon’s sublime (if not mildly contrived) exploration of ego and mortality. The film screens at MoMA as part of the museum’s two-day Ozon at the Beach series, also featuring the more obvious selections See the Sea, Under the Sand and 5×2. I will see you back here tomorrow.

'13 Tzameti,' Babluani Warm Up For NYC Opening at Core Club

Get used to this face (and the chest hair and sunglasses, I guess). It belongs to Gela Babluani, the Georgian filmmaker whose thriller 13 Tzameti has caused a stir pretty much everywhere it has screened since premiering (and claiming the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize) this year at Sundance. Last time I saw him, after a wintry flight delay had made him late to the awards show in Park City, he shuffled through the crowd stunned, having virtually no English vocabulary to respond to the teeming hordes congratulating him on his triumph.
Babluani eventually made it to New York for the film’s inclusion in the New Directors/New Films lineup, and I caught up with him again Monday night, when he introduced a private screening of Tzameti for an audience at the Core Club. He demonstrated a delicate grasp of the new language he had been practicing in anticipation of the film’s upcoming American remake; Palm Pictures will release the haunting, harrowing black-and-white original–about a young man accidentally caught up in one of recent cinema’s more sinister rackets–July 28 in New York.
“I hope that you’re going to like this movie,” he said, gesturing to the screen. “I don’t want to talk much about the movie. He talks by himself, if he can talk about himself. Thank you to be here.” Babluani smiled. “Good projection.”
Yeah, well, if Palm can carry the buzz over to awards season, it will probably only get better. Just a guess.