Reeler Archive for August, 2006
Lynch, Coppola, Apichatpong Among 28 Chosen For NYFF '06
Get your highlighters out, film geeks: The 44th New York Film Festival lineup is locked, with 28 films screening at Lincoln Center from Sept. 29 to Oct. 15. There are a few of these selections we saw a mile away–Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (right), David Lynch’s title-tweaked The Inland Empire–as well as a few surprise omissions: There is no Fountain or The Departed to be found, nor is Babel making an appearance. Nevertheless, the European and Asian contingents are typically well-represented, with everyone from Michael Apted (49 Up) and Manoel de Oliveira (Belles Toujours) to Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Syndromes and a Century) and Johnnie To (Triad Election) finding spots in the schedule. Todd Field’s Little Children rounds out the rather paltry American premiere contingent, while Warren Beatty’s Reds will be featured alongside Lino Brockia’s 1976 Insiang and Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso in the festival’s Retrospective program.
The full lineup follows the jump–I’ll look for you at Lincoln Center.
And Somewhere in the City, Scorsese Chokes the Last Breath From a Warner Bros. Marketer
I never thought I would say this, but I am in full agreement with Ain’t It Cool News’s assessment of the recently unveiled one-sheets for Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, a disheartening grotesquerie of typefaces, type sizes and photographs:
This feels like they were going for a retro feel, and waayyyy missed the mark. Ended up with something that looked cheap instead of evocative. It reminds me of the title sequences for BARNABY JONES or THE STREETS OF SAN FRANSISCO. “The Departed – A Quinn Martin Production! (in Color)”. Whatever.
All I know is that just because someone broke through with a movie poster semicolon this year does not mean we get to go willy-nilly now with fucking phonics. I mean, what–did Marty veto 
at about 725 points?
'It Doesn't Excuse Itself': Refn's 'Pusher Trilogy' Screens for First Time in New York
“Trilogy” is such a pretentious word. Everything it carries and implies–magnitude, breadth, conceptual rigor-cum-excess, finality–presumes an abstract necessity that its proponents can rarely fulfill, let alone sustain. Did Ingmar Bergman really need to earmark three consecutive films–Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence–to get his and his viewers’ heads around the nature of faith? Why not four films, or 40 (as so much of Bergman’s canon could ultimately be construed)? Are we really supposed to confine Gus Van Sant’s mortality fixation to Gerry, Elephant and Last Days–the formal “Death Trilogy” that even MoMA officially recognized in 2005? A trilogy like The Godfather–the last film of which nobody but its studio wanted (and even then would barely pay for)–is even worse off, with its retarded prodigal sibling tottering behind it like Ted Kennedy in a neckbrace (or like Fredo Corleone in a tuxedo, for that matter).
Zlatko Buric stars as Milo, The Pusher Trilogy‘s drug kingpin in crisis (Photo: Magnolia Pictures)
So anyway, when I learned a couple of months ago that the Danish export The Pusher Trilogy was soon arriving in America (Friday at Cinema Village, to be specific), I winced. Nicolas Winding Refn’s five-hour-plus, decade-in-the-making, interweaving saga about drug dealers in Copenhagen, cast in part with real criminals(transgressive!) and name-dropping Hamlet in its press notes, Pushers I, II and III all but alienated me even before the first thundering credit sequence or heroin deal gone bad. I admit it: I was worried.
And I was wrong.
Raw, uneven and quite frequently astonishing, Refn’s films in fact make up a totally incidental trilogy: easy to categorize and market, conferring all the status that trilogies symbolize in arts and letters, yet eschewing a thematic whole in exchange for a sordid, continuous reality. That a half-dozen or so of Pusher‘s characters come and go between films inclines it not toward some finite, Godfather-style mythos, but rather a TV-style tableau. In other words, don’t think of it as a franchise–think of it as a parallel universe, and a visceral, compelling one at that.
And even a literally necessary one, to hear Refn tell it. In 2004, he was eight years removed from the original Pusher, which follows the grueling trail of drug dealer Frank (Kim Bodnia) as he sprints from bust to score to a particularly implosive transaction that puts him in the crosshairs of Serbian kingpin Milo (Zlatko Buric). The film and its 24-year-old director earned international renown, but Refn’s subsequent films in Denmark and America–1999’s Bleeder and 2003’s Fear X, respectively (Refn called the East Village home for several years and actually co-wrote the latter film with Hubert Selby Jr.)–fared incrementally worse.
“Basically, I owed a million dollars and had to pay off the debt,” he told The Reeler during a visit last month to New York. One of his executive producers suggested a sequel to Pusher. “I was like, ‘How dare you even say something like that? Me? Going back to my original format? And I’d always vowed never to do another gangster film, and blah blah blah, and artists should not be dictated by greed. and money. You know, all those stupid things you believe in wehen you’re young. But it did get me thinking, because I was desperate. I really was. And I said, ‘Well, what if I were to do this? How can I make it a challenge more than a necessity? How can I challenge myself in this situation?’ And by that time–I’m a very big television junkie–I basically went back and saw the first one again, which I hadn’t seen in years, and I said, ‘What if I took this as a television concept? I have this familiar environment that I could redo that would work, and then I could do episodic stories about people’s lives.’ Like television, but keep everything the same familiar range and style. So I went back and said, ‘I’ll do II and III.’ That was basically my challenge.”
Independent Film Week '06 Locked in with Montiel, 'Four-Eyed Monsters' and More
IFP yesterday announced its plans for Independent Film Week 2006, which is actually more like four days but can feel like two weeks depending on your panel choices and your luck viewing unfinished films at the at the IFP Market. But I digress: The week features a NY Times-sponsored panel discussion warming up the action Sept.13, then fires up in earnest with the Sept. 18 premiere of Dito Montiel’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and the first-ever IFP Filmmaker Conference.
IndieWIRE mentions the event’s new “DIY Series,” featuring screenings of The Guatemalan Handshake and Four-Eyed Monsters, and a side note confirms the resumption of $6 admission available to all filmgoers at BAM, the ImaginAsian, MoMA, the Angelika and elsewhere around town. And while I know you already have Sept. 18 and 19 blocked for The Reeler’s screenings of Jesus Camp and Heights, feel free to take advantage of those discounts on the 20th and 21st. I know, I know, you’re welcome–team player is in my job description.
Eulogizing Bruno: New Yorker Kirby Dead at 57
As pretty much everyone who writes about film on the Internet has noted by now, veteran character actor (and native New Yorker) Bruno Kirby died Monday from complications imposed by leukemia. He was 57. Naturally, his passing has inspired a surge of recollections from legions of fans he likely never knew he had, but that, as they say, is showbiz.
Silent, terrified, terrifying: Bruno Kirby as Clemenza in The Godfather, Part II
Now, for your browsing convenience, find below a handy guide to those who miss him, what they say made him officially famous and their own favorite Kirby role.
S.T. VanAirsdale, The Reeler
“Kirby was best known for…”: City Slickers
“But my favorite Kirby role is…”: The Godfather, Part II
Sample praise: “For a guy with more than five dozen screen credits in 35 years, Kirby will be best remembered as young Pete Clemenza, backed against a wall and pointing a revolver at the door through which that New York cop could enter… at… any… moment. Silent, terrified and terrifying. And indelible.”
Nikki Finke, Deadline Hollywood Daily
“Kirby was best known for…”: City Slickers, When Harry Met Sally
“But my favorite Kirby role is…”: Between the Lines
Sample praise: None
Erik Davis, Cinematical
“Kirby was best known for…”: City Slickers, When Harry Met Sally, Good Morning, Vietnam
“But my favorite Kirby role is…”: City Slickers
Sample praise: “I will never forget about that performance, and we will never forget about Bruno Kirby. Farewell my good man. Farewell.”
Reader comment bonus: “Ah man, that’s terrible news. ‘Baby fishmouth!’ always makes me laugh. RIP, Mr. Kirby.” — Scott Weinberg
Joe Leydon, Moving Picture Blog
“Kirby was best known for…”: City Slickers, Good Morning, Vietnam
“But my favorite Kirby role is…”: “I’ll Be Waiting,” from the Showtime series Fallen Angels
Sample praise: “‘When I was casting this role,’ [director Tom] Hanks told me years later, ‘I wanted someone who looked like he was a shoe salesman – but who could break your thumbs if he had to.’ If other directors had been as audacious as Hanks, Kirby might have had a very different career.”
Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere
“Kirby was best known for…”: The Godfather, Part II, City Slickers, Modern Romance
“But my favorite Kirby role is…”: None
Sample praise: “A sad thing… sorry.”
Reader comment bonus: “If I were ever asked for a list of my favorite character actors, Bruno Kirby would never have crossed my mind; but hearing he’s died is like losing a piece of my childhood because he was just one of my favorite people in movies, and I plain took him for granted.” — “Hallick”
Edward Copeland, Edward Copeland on Film
“Kirby was best known for…”: A dozen films, evidently, including The Harrad Experiment, City Slickers and Tin Men
“But my favorite Kirby role is…”: The Freshman
Sample praise: “He wasn’t just about comedy though — he also played the closeted coach in The Basketball Diaries and appeared in Donnie Brasco as well.”
(Copeland and Leydon via GreenCine Daily)
Kang Moves Out of 'Motel,' Onto 'West 32nd' with Korean Giant CJ Entertainment
South Korea’s monolithic CJ Entertainment has been flirting with a stateside operation for a while now, and according to Variety, the relationship is now official: Production began Monday on the $2.4. million Koreatown gangster film West 32nd, with The Motel filmmaker Michael Kang getting the directing call and Teddy Zee (Saving Face) producing.
“So far, so good,” Kang told The Reeler this morning from the set. “We’ve got a great cast and a great team putting this together. Teddy is producing, and John Cho [Harold and Kumar] and Grace Park [Battlestar Galactica] are in it, along with some Korean actors you probably don’r know but who are really well-known in Korea.”
Which is perfect for the gang at CJ, who plan an early 2007 distribution date in both the US and South Korea Kang said he has been developing the project with the studio since last March. “They read the script, and Teddy Zee made the formal introductions,” Kang said. “We went out to Korea and met with them. It just seemed like a perfect fit, and I’m really excited to direct their first American production.”
Terrific news all around. Best of luck to Kang on the shoot and to CJ on its American bow.
Now They've Done It: Slate Spoils 'WTC' For All and None
Providing a mildly counterintuitive entry into its “Spoiler Special” feature, Slate on Monday featured an interesting podcast discussion of World Trade Center between critic Dana Stevens and editor Bryan Curtis. I admit that the chat offers a dearth of the pitched histrionics that attended my own WTC piece Aug. 9, but it is just as well; Stevens and Curtis lean toward liking the movie, yet never quite shake the sense of “pondrousness and sanctimoniousness” that, in Stevens’s words, seems to have impelled Stone to “err on the side of feel-good patriotism.”
NB: For the reactionaries keeping score at home, that is an assessment of World Trade Center‘s tone and not an armchair-filmmaker fusillade against the marketing campaign movie you hold so dear. Please gauge carefully where the podcast falls on the spectrum between review and commentary, and attack accordingly.
'Volver,' 'Pan's Labyrinth,' 'Reds' Announced as Early NYFF Choices
The folks at the Film Society of Lincoln Center just kicked a note under the door naming Volver, Pan’s Labyrinth and Reds as the Centerpiece, Closing Night and Retrospective selections of the 44th New York Film Festival starting Sept. 29. I cannot say Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver (right) is any big surprise–I had it confirmed back when The Queen was announced as the Opening Night selection–but its appearance as the Centerpiece seems somewhat generous considering how Almodóvar’s previous film, Bad Education, earned similar placement in the 2004 NYFF.
At any rate, Warren Beatty’s Reds is a nice choice on the 25th anniversary of the film’s release, and the Film Society notes that it will indeed screen with a newly restored print. Dates for each screening and their corresponding filmmaker Q&A’s have yet to be announced, but expect those and the remaining NYFF schedule to arrive at Reeler HQ later this week. You will have them as soon as I do.
Gosling's Tuxedo Shirt Conceivably the Only Thing Wrong with His Work on 'Half Nelson'
Pound for pound, I don’t know if there is a better blog on the Web than Drunken Stepfather. It is totally pseudonymous, tasteless, fearless, juvenile and consistently funnier than anything else I read, but its oversexed proclivities toward anything but New York cinema leave few opportunities for me to ever feature editor Jesus Martinez’s discriminating insights here on The Reeler.
So imagine my eye-bulging joy at this new revelation citing Half Nelson‘s Aug. 2 premiere in Tribeca (with star Ryan Gosling pictured at right). I admit I am throwing you right into the deep end of the cesspool here, so consider yourself warned. And then admit that at the end of the day, the guy kind of has a point:
Ryan Gosling….you are not a conformist, we get it. You are one of those guys who decided that you would never give into society by wearing a suit in your life. You became an actor so you could live the bohemian life with a lot of money in your bank and you let everyone know this by wearing a Tuxedo T-Shirt to all the black tie events you attend. You are subtle in your irony. We get it. But I would rather you be obnoxious in your irony. Instead of rocking the gayest fucking t-shirt ever manufactured, I’d like to see you hire the dirtiest looking crackwhore you can find. One who smells of piss, shit, vomit, rotten cunt and semen with no teeth and a stained party dress, a pair of mismatched shoes and who is coming down from a 3 week meth binge. That would be a better way to give the big “FUCK YOU” to the black tie events you are asked to attend. It’s much more effective than the passive aggressive “Fuck You” in the tuxedo shirt approach. What I am trying to say is that I am like this Ryan Gosling motherfucker. I don’t wear suits or like suits. I rock an old pair of jogging pants, a stained t-shirt and I don’t shower daily, but if I was asked to attend some sort of function, I would suck it up and put on a shirt and tie. It’s called having a little fucking decency. If I wanted to make a fucking statement, I would do it the right way. I hope this met your standards my reader.
Find more of Martinez’s painstaking cultural criticism and fashion advice you-know-where.
'Jesus Camp' Joins Reeler Screening Series Sept. 18 at Makor
The way I see it, if nothing conventionally newsy is going to happen in New York today, I am just going to have keep pressing on with updates about the Reeler Screening Series. And this is some kind of update: Word just over the transom confirms filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady will be on hand Sept. 18 at Makor to preview their controversial new documentary Jesus Camp.
Happy Camp-er: One of the subjects of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Jesus Camp, featured Sept. 18 at Makor as part of the Reeler Screening Series (Photo: Loki Films)
An acclaimed look at the journeys of three kids to an evangelical Christian camp in North Dakota, Jesus Camp has followed perhaps one of the more turbulent roads of any documentary featured at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. After drawing praise and stirring debate among religious conservatives, secular liberals and pretty much anyone yielding any ideology inbetween, distributor Magnolia Pictures sought to preserve the film’s nonpartisan cred by yanking it from Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival.
We know how that turned out, but hey: It’s in the past, and I am thrilled to bring it back to New York for a sneak preview and Q&A/discussion. Tickets should be available at the Makor Web site later this week; I’ll point you in that direction when time comes. Meanwhile, save this date and the following night’s Heights screening at the Pioneer Theater to your calendars–I hope to see you at both.
(Thanks to Alexandra Siegler at Makor and Eamonn Bowles and Jeff Reichert at Magnolia Pictures for their help in organizing this event.)
'His Spikiness': Lee Gets Exhaustive NYM Treatment
Almost 20 years to the day after Spike Lee released his seismic feature breakthrough She’s Gotta Have It, the filmmaker sits for a pair of in-depth profiles anticipating his upcoming Hurricane Katrina documentary, When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. And while Newsweek’s Allison Samuels might echo a bit too much of the Lee profile that owned the front page of the Observer last March, check out Ariel Levy with the 4,800-word Lee family opus in this week’s New York Magazine–its own epic adventure bounding from New York to New Orleans and headlong into Lee’s cinema:
The heavy-handedness that critics have objected to in some of Lee’s movies is absent from his documentaries. In Lee’s fictional films, you can sometimes feel the case of kingitis that [Jungle Fever actress] Veronica Webb diagnosed in action: Lee just can’t seem to get enough of himself. … To be fully affected by Lee’s fictional films, you have be into his vision, his aesthetic, his Spikiness. To be fully affected by his documentaries, you really just need to have eyes. The four hours of When the Levees Broke fly by. It is an astounding piece of work. The full nightmare of Katrina becomes palpable and unavoidable in a way it hasn’t yet in art. I tell Lee this, and he offers me a first and final pleasantry. A text message that says THANKS.
The only thing Levy doesn’t ask is why Lee no longer appears in his films–a character void you can’t say did not nag at you while watching 25th Hour. Or maybe she did ask, and I just have to go back through the story with a flashlight and a canary. Does anybody else know? This question does not rank especially high on HBO publicity’s present-day list of unsolved auteur mysteries.
At any rate, When the Levees Broke premieres Aug. 21 and 22, followed by a full four-hour airing on the Aug. 29 anniversary of Katrina’s landfall.
(NYM photo: Tim Richardson)
From Premiere Trenches, Valiant Carr Takes Up Battle for Journalists' Honor
Following up on The Reeler’s indignance at the journalistic indiscretions splattered all over Woody Allen’s Scoop, David Carr today has a more comprehensive look at the cinematic trend pegging us reporters as “tarts, drunks or crooks.” Clearly not as optimistic about this portrayal as The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi was two weeks ago, the Father of The Reeler took his outrage a step further than my recent grilling of Scarlett Johansson: He went straight for the money man and demanded answers, just like they taught us in J-school:
At (Scoop)’s New York premiere last month, I buttonholed James Schamus of Focus Features, which distributed the film, and asked him why journalists generally ended up cast in movies as tarts, drunks or crooks. He slowly backed away from me, smiling all the while, saying that the film “had a good heart.”
Easy for him to say. Movie producers are generally cast by their own industry as philistines or cokeheads — usually both — but they are compensated by all that glamour and, well, all that money.
For decades, journalists, whose pay is generally as low as the regard they are held in, have been largely depicted as moral and ethical eunuchs.
Ouch! But if you think that is bad, wait until the spectrum of pajamas and pasty, unwashed flesh that will attend the first wave of blogger films. If mainstream journalists are eunuchs, then we new media types must be rocking an extra chromosome and a monthly bus pass. Where is Alan Pakula when we need him?
Screening Gotham: Aug. 11-13, 2006
A few of this weekend’s worthwhile cinematic happenings around New York:
–This weekend, Sony Classics begins warming up audiences for Pedro Almodovar’s exquisite new Volver by launching Viva Pedro, an eight-film touring retrospective of some of the director’s best-loved work. In lieu of his incomparable early triumph What Have I Done to Deserve This?, a few only slightly inferior titles are planned for the next two months at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, among them the perverse, brilliant sex-and-death romp Matador, the gorgeous coma-soap Talk to Her, and this weekend’s melodrama-of-choice, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.
Talk to him: Antonio Banderas and Nacho Martinez in Matador, one of eight films selected as part of Sony Classics’ Viva Pedro series, opening this weekend in New York.
Viva Pedro is too immense and marvelous (and, yes, flawed) a program to profile in this space–or in any space, for that matter–but for all its unsurpassed technique, narrative ambition and humanity, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better summer offering. Art on this level feels like a privilege.
–It wasn’t so long ago I urged you to take in Margaret Brown’s documentary about Townes Van Zandt, Be Here to Love Me. Everything nine months old is new again, I guess, as the spare, intimate doc gets a revival at Makor. The bad news is that you won’t find one of Makor’s customary director Q&A’s (Brown is based in Austin), but on the bright side, you have two weekends to get over to the Upper West Side for a look. Procrastinators, rejoice.
–For the four or five of you who did not pile into BAM the other night to check out The Reeler’s Half Nelson preview, you are also in luck: It hits theaters today. Be the first on your block to forecast an Oscar nomination for Ryan Gosling; somebody seems to think it’s that time again.
Reeler Link Dump: 'The Week That Wasn't' Edition
Wherein the editor rubs his eyes and begs your forgiveness for everything he is not and can never be. Or at least for not playing close enough attention to these news nuggets when they were actually news:
–James Gray inches ever closer to ownership of New York’s all-time crime-cinema pathology with his next project, the undercover-journalist saga Alphabet City. Gray, who just wrapped the mob flick We Own the Night for 2929 Entertainment, will rewrite Steven Knight’s script (based on his novel) and shoot next spring for the Strike Entertainment and Universal Pictures.
–Speaking of journalists, Roger Friedman is a bad one.
–The Tribeca Film Festival announced Thursday that it will partner with the brand-new RomaCinemaFest for a film-exchange program at its debut in October. Next spring, we get a slate of premieres from Rome. This is an incalculably shrewd move: I hear Italian cheese importing is huge in these parts.
–Matt Dillon was at his monosyllabic best a week ago at Lincoln Center, where the Film Society’s Young Friends of Film screened Factotum and welcomed him for a Q&A. A few displeased fans told Page Six “he didn’t even say ‘thank you'” for individual praise that followed the screening. Take it from someone who knows: Matt Dillon can only love one man. Drink your $60 wine and shut up.
–Holy shit: I guess Lou Diamond Phillips can get arrested in Hollywood after all.
–The lovely folks over at the upstart blog Blank Screen direct us to Home Movie Day, a national event enjoying its New York incarnation Saturday, Aug. 12, at Anthology Film Archives. The bad news: No video allowed, so your amateur porn is of no use. The good news: Your parents’ 8mm sex footage from 1975 might have just enough grainy, ironic value to pass muster.
This Week in Weinstein: 'Sicko' Promises, Paltry 'Feast'
Perhaps the most conspicuous and devastating casualty of my pathetic time-management skills has been the maintenance of my Weinstein Company Infancy Scrapbook, which has attenuated to nearly nothing as the fledgling shingle approaches its first birthday. No single post can make up for such lost time, but Harvey and Bob’s recent activity indicates the summertime blahs are over and the baby teeth are coming in:
–Variety reported Sunday that the brothers are touting Michael Moore’s upcoming Sicko to potential financiers as a $40 million earner. Not only did Moore hint that he was flattered yet dismayed by the resulting high expectations, but he also intimated that all the fun has gone out of muckraking: “There has been a 100% success rate of the people we’re filming of getting whatever they need from the HMOs, pharmaceutical companies, whatever.” Yes, indeed–that’s entertainment.
–Screen Daily (via Cinematical) reported Tuesday that TWC picked up distribution rights to the $35 million “Kazakh epic” Nomad. The jokes here make themselves: In a fit of Borat counteractivity, the government of Kazakhstan ponied up 80 or so percent of its gross domestic product for the sweeping film’s budget, resulting in what insiders have referred to as the “Kazakh Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Fittingly, the producers brought in Jay Hernandez and Jason Scott Lee to act alongside Kazakhstars like Dilnaz Akhmadieva and Ayana Yesmagambetova. Much dubbing ensues, and maybe distribution–The Reeler hears Chen Kaige already has a release date pool going on this one.
–John Gulager, whose horror film Feast was the subject of Project Greenlight‘s third season, will get the ultimate TWC tribute next month: A Las Vegas casino premiere, two nights of large-market midnight screenings and an unceremonius dump onto DVD Oct. 12. “We are thrilled to be able to bring this film — an incredible accomplishment for a first time filmmaker — to audiences everywhere,” said Bob Weinstein in a statement released Tuesday, pausing momentarily to swallow Gulager’s ego before indulging a deep, satisfied laugh and a two-hour nap.
–Finally, we learn what a billion dollars in venture capital really gets you in 2006: Peter Weller running from lions. “What a gyp,” cries Wall Street, turning its framed photo of Harvey 180 degrees and sizing up the window ledge.
