Truman Show

I’ve seen Bennett Miller’s Capote (Sony Classics, 9.30) twice now, and I’m afraid I’ve got it bad. I love this film…so much that my reasons for feeling this way are a bit more personal than usual.
Why get into it now, a little more than four weeks before it opens? Because I’m in Toronto and for me, the festival has begun (advance screenings are happening left and right for local press), and because everyone will be giving Capote pats on the back once the festival starts on 9.9 so I might as well pat first.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the conflicted, terrier-like Truman Capote in Bennett Miller’s Capote (Sony Classics, 9.30)

I’m taken with Capote partly because it’s about a writer (Truman Capote) and the sometimes horrendously difficult process that goes into creating a first-rate piece of writing, and especially the various seductions and deceptions that all writers need to administer with skill and finesse to get a source to really cough up.
And it’s about how this gamesmanship sometimes leads to emotional conflict and self-doubt and yet, when it pays off, a sense of tremendous satisfaction and even tranquility. I’ve been down this road, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
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But I’m also convinced that Capote is exceptional on its own terms. It’s one of the two or three best films of the year so far — entertaining and also fascinating, quiet and low-key but never boring and frequently riveting, economical but fully stated, and wonderfully confident and relaxed in its own skin.
And it delivers, in Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as Capote, one of the most affecting emotional rides I’ve taken in this or any other year…a ride that’s full of undercurrents and feelings that are almost always in conflict (and which reveal conflict within Capote-the-character), and is about hurting this way and also that way and how these different woundings combine in Truman Capote to form a kind of perfect emotional storm.
It’s finally about a writer initially playing the game but eventually the game turning around and playing him.

Hoffman is right at the top of my list right now — he’s the guy to beat in the Best Actor category. Anyone who’s seen Capote and says he’s not in this position is averse to calling a spade a spade.
I’m not talking about Hoffman doing a first-rate impression of a famously effeminate celebrity author of the ’60s and ’70s. I’m speaking of his ability to make us feel the presence of Capote’s extraordinary talent and sensitivity and arrogance…a self-amused cocky quality born of extraordinary smarts and a feisty temperament that could suddenly veer into aloofness or even cruelty and at other times devolve into childlike vulnerability.
There’s always a sense of at least two and sometimes three or four rivers running through this character at once, all of it vibrating and churning around in Hoffman’s liquidy eyes and, when things get especially difficult, his nearly trembling pinkish- white face, and in the way he walks and gestures and shrieks with laughter at parties, and in the way he occasionally just stands utterly still. It’s an astonishing piece of work.
A friend thinks Hoffman isn’t small enough to play Capote, who was about 5′ 2″. Other naysayers may be heard. There’s a tradition of straight actors portraying flamboyant queens (I’m thinking way back to Cliff Gorman’s performance in William Freidkin’s The Boys in the Band) that hasn’t dated all that well, but Hoffman is doing so much more in this film that the comparison isn’t worth mentioning.
I can’t stop re-running my favorite parts of Hoffman’s performance. There are so many lines and moments, but to describe them would only muck it up. Maybe later…

Truman Capote, Kansas Bureau of Investigation chief Alvin Dewey, and Dewey’s wife Marie in ’60 or ’61.

Capote is fundamentally about “In Cold Blood,” Capote’s groundbreaking non-fiction novel that came out in early ’66.
The book was about the murder of the four members of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and their killers, Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.). The film is about Capote’s researching and writing of the book, a process that lasted from November 1959 until the summer of ’65, and which pretty much tore Capote to shreds.
The core material has to do with a kind of love affair that happened between Capote and Smith during the death-row interviews conducted by Capote from the time of the murderers’ conviction in early 1960 until the hangings of Smith and Hickock in April ’65. Capote fell in love with Smith because they had shared similar traumatic upbringings (alcoholic mothers, family suicides) and because Smith had certain poetic-artistic aspirations.
“It’s like we grew up in the same house, except one day Perry went out the back door and I went out the front,” Capote tells his longtime friend and confidante Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
He really feels for Smith…you can see it, feel it…but Capote is scrutinizing enough to step back at every juncture and eyeball his relationship with Smith in literary terms. After persuading Smith to let him read his diaries, Capote tells Lee that this sad, doomed, hugely conflicted man is “a gold mine.”
The fascination is in watching Capote play Smith like a pro while getting more and more caught up with him emotionally. He gets the two killers an attorney following their conviction so he can get their execution delayed so he can get their full story. And then he lies to Smith time and again.

Mark Pellegrino (left, seated) as Dick Hickock and Clifton Collins, Jr., as Perry Smith in Capote.

The real Hickock and Smith, upon their arrival in Kansas in early January after being arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada.

And after he’s gotten most of their story he begins to acknowledge that he wants them executed so his book will have a finale, even though his feelings for Smith have always been, as far as it goes, earnest.
There’s a nice scene when Capote tells Kansas Bureau of Investigation chief Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper) that he’s decided to call his book “In Cold Blood,” and Dewey says, “Is that a reference to the crime, or the fact that you’re still talking to the killers?”
When their long-delayed death sentences are finally at hand, Capote’s feelings come to a boil. His last meeting with them, moments before the end, is choice. Tears flooding his eyes, Capote tells them both (but particularly Perry), “I did everything I could…I truly did.” Which was true, in a manner of speaking.
I never figured Bennett Miller would direct Capote quite so well. He’s never directed a feature and has mainly confined himself to TV commercials, although he directed a very fine 1998 documentary called The Cruise, a black-and-white portrait of the great Timothy “Speed” Levitch.
To me, Capote feels as controlled and precise, as emotionally on-target and penetrating as any film by Louis Malle. You could run it with Damage and Atlantic City at the Museum of Modern Art, and it would feel like the exact same guy calling the shots.
I was especially taken with Miller’s decision to shoot Capote in widescreen Panavision (2.35 to 1). Stories of this sort — internal, intimate, dialogue-driven — are usually shot in 1.85 to 1 (or on video). Was Miller thinking about creating some kind of visual relationship to Conrad Hall’s widescreen photography in Richard Brooks’ In Cold Blood, even though that 1967 film was shot in black and white?

And a sincere tip of the hat to screenwriter Dan Futterman, who worked on the screenplay for a long time before getting it right. It’s based on Gerald Clarke’s “Capote,” which is probably the best Capote biography.
Futterman has known Miller since they were twelve, and they’ve both known Hoffman since ’84 (i.e., the year Capote died of alcoholism) when they met at a summer theatre program in Saratoga Springs,
Every performance in Capote feels rooted and lived-in…nobody seems to be “acting” in the slightest.
Clifton Collins (previously best known as the gay Mexican assassin in Traffic) is as good as Hoffman. He plays it subdued and far less animated, but he lets you see into Smith’s tormented soul, and I didn’t think once about Robert Blake’s strong performance as Smith in the 1967 film.
Keener’s Lee is restrained and exacting and yet she’s fully “there.” And Cooper’s Dewey delivers just the right mix of gruff Midwestern conservatism and emotional suppleness. (He’s a tiny bit warmer than John Forsythe’s Dewey was in Brooks’ film.) Dewey’s wife Marie, a friendly and sophisticated soul, is warmly and agreeably captured by Amy Ryan. And I love Bob Balaban’s small but succinct performance as former New Yorker editor William Shawn, who was in Capote’s literary corner the whole time.
The lesser lights are Bruce Greenwood, as Capote’s significant other Jack Dunphy, who hasn’t much to say or do, and Mark Pellegrino’s Hickock, who isn’t nearly as emotional or gregarious as Scott Wilson was in the Brooks film, although he seems like more of a killer than Wilson did.

Gravesite in Garden City, Kansas — a mid-sized city to the east of Holcomb.

Photo in June 1960 high-school yearbook.

Capote may not sell as many tickets as Crash did, but it will be astonishing if people of taste or discernment don’t see it and tell their friends, etc. I realize that the number of people who read books, much less those who remember “In Cold Blood” or who remember Capote from his talk-show appearances, is relatively small. But if the word-of-mouth is good…
The challenge to Sony Pictures Classics is to keep the inevitable talk going into Oscar season and keep flogging it with the Academy.
After I send this column off today I’m paying a visit to a bookstore and buying “In Cold Blood” again. I haven’t read it since I wrote a book report about it in my senior year of high school.

Mafia Rules

I have this idea for a piece I’d like to run on Friday. I’m going to need write-in replies sent no later than midday Thursday.
The idea is, if Hollywood were run like the mythological mafia and you, the reader, were the boss of all the families with absolute control, whom in the Hollywood filmmaking game would you decide to whack for the good of the industry?
Not because they’re not nice people or aren’t skilled or have nice smiles, but whom would you eliminate in order to strengthen the industry and discourage bad tendencies, etc.? Remember that being the boss is a lonely job because somebody has to make the tough calls.

“I ask you, Don Corleone, please…spare Michael Bay.”

If I was Don Corleone of Hollywood and Hollywood was a real mafia society, I would put a general preemptive contract on anyone planning to make a film like Love Actually.
I would also put a contract, no offense, out on Johnny Knoxville. Somebody needs to pay for The Dukes of Hazzard, and Seann William Scott gets a temporary pass because he’s trying to redeem himself by making Southland Tales for Richard Kelly.
I would also take out Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, the 007 producers.
I don’t think I need to say this, but I don’t believe in whacking people in the real world. I don’t even like stepping on bugs.
If I were an actual (i.e., actual mythological) mafia don I would build a secret private jailhouse — a maximum security prison out in some remote corner of the world — and then I would kidnap the guys who need to be whacked and send them to this jail, and they’d stay there with three hots and a cot until I died or got whacked myself.
My inspiration for this piece is Anthony Quinn’s Col. Andrea Stavros character in The Guns of Navarone.

David Niven, Gregory peck, Anthony Quinn in poster art for J. Lee Thompson’s The Guns of Navarone.

Quinn, Gregory Peck and David Niven are discussing the fate of Anthony Quayle’s Lucky character, who was broken his leg during a climb, and they’ve come up with two possible scenarios — take him with them on their mission to blow up the guns, or leave him to be found by the Germans.
And Quinn says, “There is, of course, a third option. One bullet now. Better for him, better for the mission.” Quinn is not playing a monster, just a hard-nosed commando.
And I’m channeling this spirit because, as Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz would undoubtedly agree, doing the hard necessary thing is not always an act of kindness.

Hooligans

“After reading your take on Lexi Alexander’s Green Street Hooligans, I felt I had to give you a UK perspective on the movie. I watched what has been re-titled Green Street for UK audiences at a London preview last week.
“To me, and to most of the preview audience I saw the movie with, football hooliganism is old news. It was a hot button issue in the 1980s (when Alan Clarke’s The Firm was made) but since then most of the biggest firms have been busted.
“Thankfully, hooliganism has been mostly stamped out by no-tolerance policing, video surveillance at all games and better intelligence. It still exists, but it has gone underground.

“I grew up in a mainly working class neighborhood in a city called Portsmouth, on the south coast of England. Much like the movie, Portsmouth had a poor football club (although they’ve gotten a lot better) and an infamous firm of football hooligans (the 657 crew). Hooliganism was born out of a culture of binge drinking and violence.
“The idea forward by the movie that these firms only ever targeted their counterparts in rival firms is at best a simplification and at worst a glamorization of what they did.
“Often hooligans would simply pick off hapless away supporters who got lost in a strange city. If Pompey lost a match, hooligans would often run riot through the city vandalizing property and beating up any rival fans they could find, or failing that, anyone who wasn’t white.
“For a good drama about football hooligans, which exposes the hooligan’s links to British neo-nazi groups, I recommend I.D.’ (1995) directed by Philip Davis. I realize that the `stand by your friends whatever’ code that Green Street espouses is appealing, but please don’t confuse this with the mindless thuggery of real football hooliganism.
“I must also take issue with the way you characterize ‘this bizarre world of Brit football fanaticism.’ Football hooligans are not true football fans; they are in it for the violence. If you want a picture of Brit football fanaticism as opposed to hooliganism then check out the original version of Fever Pitch(1997), directed by David Evans.

“As for the movie itself, while the action sequences do have a real energy to them, the flat dialogue scenes in-between fatally hamstring the film. This is best illustrated by the opening scene in Harvard which, as you admit, `isn’t a very convincing beginning,’ and by the clunky scenes in which Matt Buckner (Elijah Wood) is tutored in cockney-rhyming slang. These scenes had the London preview audience chuckling and shaking their heads.
“The other problem is Elijah Wood’s inability to be convincing in his fight scenes. Although his character starts out as useless, after he becomes a seasoned member of the Green Street Elite he is supposed to have toughened up and learned to give and take a punch. However Wood continues to flail around in an embarrassing fashion in all his fight scenes, which may explain the director’s decision to shoot most of his fight in slo-mo (to try and disguise this).
“I agree that Charlie Hunnam is the real star of Green Street. He certainly makes the film watchable. I was surprised to learn that he is British though as I had assumed from the movie that he was Australian. His is a charismatic performance, but his London accent frequently slips into a bizarre almost Aussie accent. I guess your have to have lived in London for a few years in order to pick up on this, but I was wincing in places.
“Alan Clarke’s The Firm is a great film, which I strongly urge you to see. Like Scum it acknowledges the attraction that violence holds for some young men while simultaneously exposing the rotten culture that spawned it.” — Clive Ashenden
“Alan Clarke’s The Firm, which you mentioned in your piece about Green Stret hooligans, is a superb portrait of hooligan life (and probably more relevant, as the `80s were the pinnacles of English football hooliganism), featuring Gary Oldman’s best performance, before he took a liking for expensive scenery.

The U.S. release one-sheet (l.) and the British release version (r.)

“I’m not sure about the Green Street Hooligans flick. During the `70’s and `80s English hooligans were the worst — real scum who killed and maimed across Europe. Since all English clubs were banned following the Heysel tragedy, English football has come a long way, with a more family atmosphere at the grounds and less trouble at matches.
“For those who don’t recall, the Heysel disaster of May 29, 1985, led to the deaths of 39 fans and a five-year blanket ban on English clubs in European football.
“Juventus fans were given tickets adjacent to the Liverpool contingent who began by throwing stones and bottles, then charged the very thin blue line of under-equipped, poorly trained Belgian police. A section of Liverpool followers then stampeded towards the rival fans.
“A retaining wall separating the Liverpool followers from Juventus supporters in sector ‘Z’ collapsed under the pressure and many were crushed or trampled when panicking Juventus fans tried to escape.
“Thirty-nine Italian and Belgian fans died and hundreds were injured.
“I’ve been abroad and in the company of English hooligans. There isn’t a family/loyalty/ love equation going on. They use the cover of football support and rivalry to justify fighting with anyone and everyone who crosses their path. I’ve seen cars packed with holidaying families assaulted by `fans’ for the crime of hooting their horn.
“It’s just a booze-fueled, pack-animal mentality. Nothing more, nothing less.

The lads doing what they know, love and do best in Lexi Alexander’s Green Street Hooligans (Odd Lot, 9.9)

“Do we need another hooligan movie? I think not. No matter how hard any director tries, these films ultimately serve to sate those who wish to glorify and glamourize the worst side of our national sport.” — Dylan Glover, UK.
“The Firm, like a lot of Alan Clarke’s work, was commissioned by the BBC. This is when the Beeb wasn’t afraid to premier new, once-off dramas by Mike Leigh, Ken Loach et al. on a weekly basis and around the time when the broadcaster fell afoul of the establishment with its astonishing Sunday night drama one-two punch of Alan Bleasdale’s The Monocled Mutineer and Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective.
“It’s been a long while since I saw the firm but Gary Oldman’s portrayal of the main protagonist, Bex, really made punters and critics sit up and take notice. Shot on video, there’s little overtly cinematic about The Firm but its status as a cautionary tale of the Thatcher era — moneyed-up working class males in a more feminist-minded era take to soccer hooliganism as proxy warfare — stands unchallenged.
“I recall that The Firm (never released theatrically) played well across ages and interests because it didn’t stint on the violence, its origins or its consequences. Leach/Loach repertory player, Lesley Manville, was also top notch as Bex’s wife. Oldman himself was profoundly influenced by Clarke when he made his directorial debut, The War Zone, and it’s just a shame he’s been unable to find a script of its ilk since them.” — Neil King.

Grabs

Bloor Street facing east, downtown Toronto — Wednesday, 9.1, 11:25 am.

Coming into Toronto on Continental Airlines — Tuesday, 8.30, 12:55 pm.

Adjacent to Metro North train platform in Bethel, Connecticut — Sunday, 8.28, 1:40 pm.

Lexington and 54th — Monday, 8.29, 6:50 pm.

Brill building lobby (reverse angle of shot that ran in last Friday’s column).

Has the ripple effect of the failure of The Island extended to the sales of “Island Puma” shoes that Ewan MacGregor and others wore in the film? I have no hard data to back this up, but I do know that Puma’s of this sort sell for $90 or $100 bucks, and yet these black-and-white Puma’s were being offered on sale last week on 14th Street…these plus another pair for $80.

Late in arriving, but very well said by Elbert Ventura in The Australian: “Although everyone knows what they’re in for — ‘No nudity…no violence…unspeakable obscenity,’ as the tagline states — there is uncertainty about whether we all share the same threshold for outrage. At the outset, the first mentions of taboo sexual acts inspire a smattering of sniggers. As the movie keeps going and the language, impossibly, gets worse, the guffaws become less muted, the atmosphere less tentative. And on it goes, until, eventually, there is a collective mood of giddy surrender, as the Boschian depravities multiply at a rate too fast for sensibilities to be checked and upheld. That feeling of conspiratorial mischief gives The Aristocrats its giddy kick.”

Curtis Hanson’s In Her Shoes (20th Century Fox, 10.7) is on the longish side (a bit more than 140 minutes) but don’t let that temper your enthusiasm, says an overseas distribution guy who saw it a couple of weeks ago. “I really, really liked it,” he says. “It’s very well-written” — Jennifer Weiner’s book has been adapted by Erin Brockovich‘s Susannah Grant — “and down to the bone and extremely well made. Women will absolutely love it because they will recognize themselves in any of the three main characters.” He was speaking of Cameron Diaz’s flakey irresponsible sister, Toni Collette’s irked-at-Diaz, much more conservative older sister, and Shirley MacLaine’s grandmother whom Diaz goes to visit at an old folks’ home in Florida. “But guys will love it as well,” he says. “It’s extremely well acted and very well directed by Hanson, and it’s clear that Fox gave Hanson the autonomy to adapt the way he saw fit because it sticks very close to the Weiner book. Fox had a plan to release it in May or June, but it was so well received in research screenings they decided to hold it back for awards season. There is definitely, I feel, a Best Suporting Actress nomination in the wings for Shirley MacLaine, partly because she’s so honest in how she looks her age.” In Her Shoes is playing the Toronto Film Festival, of course, so we’ll be seeing soon enough.

I don’t care that much one way or the other, but the new Bob Iger-led Disney has apparently smoothed things over with Pixar and the word is that reps for the companies are negotiating the fine points of a fresh new deal, so it looks like Pixar and Disney won’t be separating after all. Take it with a grain, but that’s I’m hearing.

It’s ironic to say the least that with the divorce between Harvey and Bob Weinstein and Disney about to be over and done with and in effect, the talk is now that Disney is finalizing a deal to handle overseas distribution for four films made by Bob and Harvey’s new outfit, The Weinstein Co., and that the deal will be signed within the next two or three months. The Weinstein Co. films we’re speaking of are Derailed, Breaking and Entering, Scary Movie 4 and the Sin City sequel.

What’s more pathetic? Director Martin Campbell and producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli still trying to figure out which semi-acceptable (i.e., not a complete unknown, and faux-studly in the Sean Connery mold) candidate they should sign and turn into the next James Bond, or the fact that journalists are still writing articles about this embarassing process? The latest indication of the latter is this article (“Search for a Swoonmaker”) from Australia’s The Age, which actually proposes casting Hugh Grant. Nobody ever mentions it, but there is only one trying-to-cast-the-new-James-Bond story, really, and it’s an oldie: nobody who knows the score or has anything career-wise on the ball wants to work with Wilson and Broccoli. They are stoppers and turkeys and micro-managers and caretakers of the lowest order, and this, I’m told, is at least one reason why Hugh Jackman, “evidently at the instigation of his wife, actor Deborah-Lee Furness,” according to the Age story, is reported to have refused a deal to make three Bond movies.

I’ve just come from Bennett Miller’s Capote (Sony Pictures Classics, 9.30). It’s an amazingly rich and resonant thing. It’s largely about stillnesses and intimations, and yet it’s very precise and careful in conveying a defining chapter in the life of author Truman Capote. It lets the actors — particularly the great Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who plays Capote — tell us what we need to feel and understand. I know someone who’s seen it and has said he’s not sure about Hoffman being a likely Best Actor nominee. (Although he’s very enthused about Clifton Collins, Jr.’s performance as Perry Smith, the sad-eyed Clutter family murderer, and a possible Best Supporting Actor nomination.) All I can say about Hoffman not necessarily being a shoo-in is the word “please.” No, I can say more than that: there’s a certain vividness of detail and a certain pitch to live-wire performances that turn up in Oscar-bait movies, and, trust me, Hoffman’s is one of these. It screams Oscar worthiness. It’s a summation, a crescendo…a master stroke. (Jesus, that sounded a bit like a quote from “Eric” something-or-other, the “publicist’s friend” who used to be a regular fixture in the opening pages of the National Lampoon in the late ’70s.) I’ll get into this more next week but Hoffman is so fantastic and rock-solid delightful I’ve decided to go see Capote again as soon as possible. I think there’s another screening on Monday evening…

It doesn’t aspire to high art or try for the sort of emotional engagement that makes you choke up, but Lexi Alexander‘s Green Street Hooligans (Odd Lot, 9.9) is nonetheless a very intense emotional hybrid thing, which is to say a sports movie and a bloody gang-violence movie mashed into one.

The lads doing what they know, love and do best in Lexi Alexander’s Green Street Hooligans (Odd Lot, 9.9)

I don’t know how well this mostly London-based film is going to do in the States given the exotic milieu and the thuggish attitudes (i.e., the world of boozed-up, ultra-violent British soccer fans), but it’s vibrant and original enough to warrant being seen and grappled with. It sure as shit is an experience and an education.

And it’s absolutely a career springboard for British actor Charlie Hunnam, who steals the show with a second-banana performance as a violent, in some ways immature, soccer fan who is nonetheless man enough to bring a sense of balance and compassion to an otherwise loutish lifestyle.
Hunnam starred in Nicholas Nickleby, and was in Cold Mountain, a Katie Holmes thriller called Abandon and the British TV series Queer as Folk, but who noticed? Now this 25 year-old has punched through.

The superficial tag is to call him a younger Brad Pitt with a Brit accent. What matters is that he conveys an inner groundedness and conviction on top of a sense of basic decency that you find yourself recognizing and responding to right away.

Hunnam is not just the star of Green Street Hooligans — he’s a star waiting to happen. Maybe. If he’s lucky and has the right agent and can do an American accent. (There seems to be some question whether or not he appears in Robert Towne’s Ask the Dust, which will debut at the Tellruide Film Festival in a few days). Whatever happens, he’s got it inside.

Charlie Hunnam

Green Street Hooligans is a story about a young American (Elijah Wood) on a visit to London who gets caught up in the violent world of English soccer fandom by joining a “firm,” which is a term for a gang that asserts and defends the honor of a given soccer team by parading around after soccer matches and confronting other firms and kicking their ribs in, or vice versa.

It sounds repulsive and cro-Magnon on one level, but European guys take soccer (which, of course, they call football) very seriously. And a lot of British working- class dudes are extremely furious about…well, I don’t know what precisely but apparently a lack of opportunity within a still-fairly-restrictive social caste system and having to make do with certain economic terms. I’ve been to London a few times and have felt this. The social-rage levels over there are much more intense among the disenfranchised than they are here.

And there are elements that go with being a firm member…tribal love, loyalty, security…that you’re not ever going to find vegging out in front of a computer or a TV, so there’s something to be said for it.
If you’re at all receptive to the values I’m speaking of and you can roll with fairly realistic depictions of street violence, Green Street Hooligans is affecting in a hormonal, territorial way. If it doesn’t exactly speak to Americans where they live in terms of being avid sports fans, it certainly is different and bracing and a movie to kick around and talk about and send your friends to.

Unless, that is, you happen to be one of those absent-sports-gene types who just doesn’t feel it or get it, in which case it may seem too exotic and what-the-hell?

The U.S. release one-sheet (l.) and the British release version (r.)

I’m kind of in this camp (my favorite spectator sports are tennis and baseball), but I get what the film is putting across and I respect the effort and the craft that Alexander and co-screenwriters Dougie Brimson and Josh Shelov have put into making this world come alive.
The German-born Alexander, a late twentysomething who grew up with football fandom and knows this universe fairly well, has made a name for herself with Hooligans and has already gotten a gig out of it — a thriller for Disney called Labor Day.

When you`re watching Hooligans…I’m sorry, Green Street Hooligans …you have to keep telling yourself, “A young woman directed this, a young woman directed this.” But then Alexander is a former World Kickboxing champion who used to scrap with a Mannheim, Germany, firm for three years, so…

Green Street Hooligans won both the grand jury prize and the audience award for best feature at the South by Southwest festival last March, which should indicate something.

(It used the original British title of Hooligans at that Austin venue, and I can’t quite understand why the distributor, Odd Lot Releasing, feels that adding the words Green Street makes the film more appealing to U.S. audiences.)

Wood’s character, a Harvard journalism major named Matt Buckner, is the audience’s tour guide into this bizarre world of Brit football fanaticism. He gets into it by getting kicked out of Harvard only three weeks or so before graduation when his snotty fortunate-son roommate arranges for him to take the rap for cocaine found in their dorm suite.

(This isn’t a very convincing beginning. In Josh Shelov’s original script Matt gets the boot after he and some classmates are accused of having cheated on an exam, and he is specifically ousted because his friends don’t stand up for him — an issue of loyalty that is dealt with later in the film.)

Matt flies from Logan to London to visit his sister Shannon (Claire Forlani), who’s married to a steady-seeming guy with a vaguely pissy attitude named Steve (Marc Warren). But Matt has arrived on a day when Steve is taking Shannon to see Chicago in the West End, so he’s temporarily placed in the care of Steve’s wild-assed brother, Pete (Hunnam).

Suspicious of this wimpy-looking yank, Pete reluctantly takes Matt to his local pub to meet his crew, who are called the GSE — i.e., Green Street Elite, a two-fisted firm devoted to the West Ham soccer…I mean football team.

Matt is regarded with some distance but then wins the respect of the firm when the GSE gets into a street fight with another firm and he throws himself into battle with real ferocity.

I had trouble with watching this at first, with Wood being so small and sensitive-seeming with those big watery eyes of his. But then I understand and sympathize with his having wanted to de-wimpicize and add some machismo to his persona after playing Frodo in the Rings films. (Has there ever been a more dewy-eyed, super-weenyish lead character in a major franchise?)

Trouble arises when a GSE member named Bovver (Leo Gregory) uncovers evidence that suggests (without actually proving) that Matt may be an undercover journalist secretly writing a story about the firm. This leads to all kinds of betrayals and soul-searchings and double-backs, and eventually the GSE gang going up against an especially hated firm whose leader has been nursing a particular rage against Pete’s family for years.

Hunnam again…seemingly two or three years ago.

It’s not hard to step back in the middle of all this and ask yourself, “Why don’t these guys just chill and pull back from this stupid-ass gang attitude that necessitates getting into fights all the time?” It seems so primitive and stupid and unenlightened, etc. I understood the meaning of it and felt it to a certain extent, but it wasn’t exactly coursing through my veins.

Then I read Lexi Alexander’s explanation for the behavior of these guys (who are legion over Europe), and I started to feel it a bit more. As I mentioned earlier, she was part of a firm in Mannheim, Germany, for three years (accepted by the males because of her black belt kick-boxing abilities) and knows the turf.

“Reliable. Protective. Loyal. Consistent. That’s what I remember most about the firm…which was more than you could say about any of our parents,” she writes. “The firm was our family. What we missed at home, we found in each other..in our firm. The riots were about proving our love, because obviously a bunch of guys don’t walk around telling each other, ‘I love you, man.’

“Standing next to your friend when you’re facing thirty guys who want to punch your face in — that’s love.

“Coming back for somebody who fell or was left behind, despite the fact that you’re most likely going to get your ass kicked — that’s love.
“Watching your mates out of the corner of your eye in a fight, and making sure you come to [their] rescue when needed — that’s love.
“Getting arrested and not remembering anyone’s name when the cops question you — that’s love.”

The message of this film, she says, is never abandon a friend when the chips are down.

Green Street Hooligans director Lexi Alexander, star Elijah Wood at Austin’s Draft House after South by Southwest screening last March.

“When your friend is sick, don’t run. When your friend has a crisis, don’t run. When your friend is going through a streak of bad luck, don’t run. When your friend is being treated unjustly, stand behind him/her, or better yet, stand in front. And when you become successful, don’t leave your friends behind.”

That gets me. I know that if I had a dollar for every fair-weather friend I’ve ever had, I could buy a new 100 gig computer. I know I could certainly use a friend or two with a “firm” attitude. Couldn’t we all?
On the other hand, I haven’t punched or even shoved anyone since I was in the seventh grade. And I need my fingers to be agile and unswollen because I have to type all the time. And British blokes can afford to lose a couple of teeth now and then because they have a good national health care system to turn to — I don’t.

There’s a 1988 Gary Oldman film called The Firm (dir: Alan Clarke) that covers the same territory. Here’s the Amazon page for a buyable Alan Clarke DVD package that includes The Firm. I hear it’s strong and worth seeing. Anyone…?

Toronto Feed

“I read your mention about showing caution when it comes to Michael Caton Jones and particularly his Shooting Dogs, which will show at the Toronto Film Festival.
“Well, I saw it in Cannes and it’s very good — a decent, solid drama about the Rwanda massacre of ’94. It’s a fuck-Schindler-Benigni kind of film. No heroes, no innocent little girls, no redemption. And the carnage is great.
“I’ve read ‘A Time for Machetes,’ the Jean Hatzfeld book about the massive killings, and MCJ was pretty precise about a lots of things.

Hugh Dancy, John Hurt in Michael Caton Jones’ Shooting Dogs.

“Otherwise…
“Cronenberg’s History of Violence, as you know, is splendid. This thing grows in your brain (nyuk-nyuk) many days after the screening. I loved it. You have to see it again.
“Free Zone: Crap. Arghh. A cheater. Kiarostami without the ideas, Panahi without the balls. Step aside, you don’t need this.
“Cache: Amazing. Dry, cool, disturbing. Did you saw Haneke’s Code Unknown, which was one of the major influences on the 21 Grams narrative? This thing has the same eerie feeling. It’s funny, it works like a twin film with the Cronenberg piece. Besides, Auteuil and Binoche are the best married couple I ever seen in the screen in years. They just nail the atmosphere of ten-years-of-marriage in a way that Kidman-Cruise-Kubrick never did.
“L’ Enfant: It’s not as good as Rosetta, but…hmmm, I don’t remember anything good as Rosetta, so…nut it’s very good, it’s worth a look and the only problem is the age of the principal actor. I will leave you to discover on your own what I mean by this.” — Daniel Villalobos, Santiago, Chile.

Just Six

“Dunno if you get the Encore cable channels but Stuart Samuels’ Midnight Movies doc, which is playing Toronto, has been airing there all month.
“It’s an interesting movie that I caught late one night, and while I had hoped it would cover a broad spectrum of films it actually focuses on just six films — El Topo, Night of the Living Dead, Eraserhead, Pink Flamingos, The Harder They Come and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
“While it’s something I enjoyed watching on TV, and I like five of the six movies, I would’ve felt a little let down if I’d seen it in a theater. It’s not bad, it just didn’t tell me much that I didn’t already know. Still, I always enjoy John Waters interviews and this one has plenty.” — Neil Harvey.

Grabs

Thursday, 8.25, 7:50 pm.

Fifth Avenue strollers from various walks of American life and of different faiths and political persuasions contemplating the notion of being gay and up for action — Friday, 8.26, 4:20 pm. I took a series of these photos, and for nearly 30 seconds an older woman and her daughter — tourists, I was fairly certain — who happened to be approaching stood to the side and waited for me to finish. It didn’t occur to them that someone shooting a street scene might be cool with a woman or two walking in front of the camera just as he/she snaps a photo. It could make for a more interesting shot…who knows? But this didn’t occur to them, and so they stood there for almost 30 seconds waiting for me to finish. That’s mainstream America for you. Very polite.

Sixth Avenue and 47th Street, or something like that — 8.25, 5:45 pm.

While speed-marching over to Dolby Screening Room (1350 Ave. of Americas) to see Lord of War — 8.25, 5:42 pm.

Iraqi War 101

“I believe you’re familiar with our Iraq doc Gunner Palace. Last week I devoured your column about the upcoming slate of 9/11 and terror films. It was a needed piece. For me especially, as the theme of reality vs. fiction has been at the top of my mind lately.
“Last May I was invited to a DGA panel discussion where they screened parts of Gunner Palace ‘against’ Iraq-themed episodes of ER and JAG as well as the pilot for Bochco’s Over There. Without going into critic mode, I must say it was surreal to sit in a theater watching fictional scenes from a reality that I was preparing to return to in ten days.
“In the last six months, GP has become something of an Iraq War 101 for creative execs. As you must know, there are at least 10 Iraq projects floating around and development people are looking for interesting takes on Iraq, so every so often we get a call.
“In the beginning I was resistant to the whole idea of fiction — that is, until I had the experience of trying to market a distinct reality to a tabloid nation. We’ve had a fantastic run with GP –I’ve only been home six weeks since January — and the film has been held up as emblematic, but we’ve also been keenly aware of both an audience disconnect and war fatigue.

“However, at the same time, I’ve sensed that the disconnect comes largely from an emotional inability to relate to the subject, a faraway reality, and I’ve perceived a certain hunger to understand the war beyond the rants of pundits.
“Your 9/11 piece raised interesting questions. In regards to this ongoing war, I’ve asked myself, when is soon too soon? Perhaps now is the time — and the public doesn’t need a decade for collective memory to simmer — rather, perhaps there is an urgency to get it right, to tell it like it is.
“I found this Roger Ebert quote the other day:
“‘Whether we are for the war or against it, we all know it is a terribly complicated struggle. There is a desperate need in this country for a film that will depict the war in honest terms.”
“I have not been one for emotional button-pushing, especially about a war that has become all too personal to me, however, as flawed as fiction often is, it has the ability to evoke very real emotions. The Deer Hunter comes to mind. Inaccurate? Without a doubt — down to the last detail — but it captured the emotional essence of an experience. From another war, another time, came The Battle of Algiers — fiction, yes, but a fiction so steeped in reality that it was banned in France. Something to aspire to…no?
“So I surrender to fiction and the urge to at least get it right, to answer Ebert’s call to arms, remembering what a 19 year-old soldier had to say about his experience in GP: ‘For y’all this is just a show, but we live in this movie.” — Mike Tucker

Out There

“Those Walk the Line wildpostings are all over San Francisco too. I saw them the other day and thought, isn’t that opening like months from now? I really like the look of it, and the heavy use of graphics over photos. Seems unorthodox for a biopic.” — Tom Kelly, San Francisco, CA.

Grabs 2

You don’t have to put a caption under every damn photo.

The lobby of the famous Brill building on Broadway and 48th (or is it 49th?) I took this last night around 7:35 pm, just after slipping out of a preview screening of Pride and Prejudice upstairs. A romantic breakup scene in Alexander MacKendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success was filmed right here roughly 48 years ago. Susie Hunsecker (Susan Harrison), terrified sister of ruthless columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), has just called it quits with jazz musician Steve Dallas (Martin Milner). Dallas and his manager Frank D’Angelo (Sam Levene) walk down the hallway and out of the building as a glum-faced Susie leans against the wall near the elevators. As they’re standing outside on Broadway, Milner says to Levene, “Look inside and tell me if she’s still standing there.” Levene looks. “She’s still standing there,” he says.

This newspaper ad on behalf of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man is apparently aimed at the March of the Penguins crowd. You almost want to pet this guy. Timothy Treadwell, the “star” of Grizzly Man did, in fact, pet a few until one day…

A block or two west of CBGB’s — Sunday, 8.21, 4:40 pm.

Thursday, 8.25, 5:55 pm.

Tracking says the biggest earner this weekend — oddly, given the buzz — will be Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm. Awareness last weekend was at 76%, definite interest was at 41% and those saying it would be their first choice stood at 17%.

Change of Season

The winding down of the ’05 summer is fortunate in two respects: it’s getting a tiny bit cooler in the city (there was a transcendent breeze travelling southward down Broadway Monday night around 9:30 pm), and it gives me something to write about during a flat week.
It felt to me like an above-average summer. At the end of each year I always come up with a list of 40 or 45 films that were good, very good or excellent, and here we had a summer providing about 21 first-raters, or just over five per month. (I’m going by the perimeters of May 1st through August 30th.) Not bad for a season that’s thought to be mainly about flotsam and popcorn and yeehaw.

Ralph Fiennes in Fernando Mierelles’ The Constant Gardener (Focus Features, 8.31)

I’ve written enough about the good ones in past columns, so I’m going to have more to say about the problems and irritants. But starting at the top…
GOOD AS IT GOT (in the following order): Hustle & Flow, The Constant Gardener, Cinderella Man, Last Days, Crash, The Beautiful Country, Grizzly Man, Wedding Crashers, Batman Begins, Mad Hot Ballroom, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, The Aristocrats, Broken Flowers, Kingdom of Heaven, The White Diamond, Layer Cake, Cronicas, My Summer of Love, This Divided State, Tell Them Who You Are, War of the Worlds.
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That was the good news, although I’m presuming very few even had the option of seeing The White Diamond, a Werner Herzog doc I wrote about in the June 8 column, or Mark Wexler’s Tell Them Who You Are, a feisty portrait of the director’s relationship with his overbearing dad, the award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler.
The lesser films were tedious, grueling or worse. I am one who feels especially dispirited by cheesily commercial films made by directors and writers whom I know are capable of delivering much smarter and craftier stuff, and…well, I guess I should leave Judd Apatow and The 40 Year-Old Virgin alone. (I’ve been warned by readers.)
But this isn’t an obsession thing of mine. It’s a sum-up piece and Virgin has made a big splash, but it’s really not fit to lick the boots of The Wedding Crashers and deserves to be called the SUMMER’S MOST OVER-PRAISED SO-SO COMEDY.

Russell Crowe, Renee Zellwegger in Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man

Just gonna zotz out the rest…
PUTRID, REPUGNANT, MALIGNANT…NOT TO MENTION ONE OF THE MOST BREATHTAKING CAPITULATIONS & SELL-OUTS IN HOLLYWOOD HISTORY BY A TALENTED DIRECTOR WHO KNEW BETTER: Doug Liman’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which way too many people gave a pass to with the rationale that it was harmless fluff.
MOST ATTENTION-GETTING WIPEOUT & ACROSS-THE-BOARD CAREER DAMAGER: The Island. The bitch-slapping of Michael Bay may not have been such a bad thing for the guy. The only way Bay is going to do better work (and I know he’s capable of it) is to be woken up from the narcotized pipe dream of being Michael Bay (muscle cars, bimbo girlfriends, parking in handicapped spaces, etc.), and it’s a safe bet that the staggering failure of The Island has made him reconsider his whole program. Producer Walter Parks got slapped around also when he said insufficient star wattage on the part of Island costar Scarlett Johansson was one of the reasons the film tanked; the take-no-guff Johansson fired right back and set him straight.
MOST LOATHSOME BIG-STUDIO RELEASES AFTER PREVIOUS TWO: The Dukes of Hazzard, Star Wars, Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, Bewitched.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

SEX SCENES SO BORING AND UNAPPETIZING THAT THOUSANDS OF COUPLES MIGHT HAVE BEEN PERSUADED TO PUT ASIDE SEXUAL ACTIVITY FOR A BRIEF PERIOD: Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs.
NOTEWORTHY ON-SCREEN IMPROV: After Kieran O’Brien playfully blindfolds Margo Stilley in 9 Songs, she says, “I can’t see!”
A MOVIE THAT PERSUADED ME TO THINK NEGATIVELY ABOUT A BIRD SPECIES THAT I’VE HAD NOTHING AGAINST MY ENTIRE LIFE: March of the Penguins. You can sing the praises of this doc all you want, but those Emperor penguins spend way too much time trudging across Antarctic wastelands and sitting on unhatched eggs during blizzards. The success of this film was mainly driven by women and old people. Tell me one regular guy you know who went to this thing on his own (or with his regular-guy friends) and came back going, “Amazing!” I don’t want to see any animals suffer, but it would have enlivened things if a few more penguins had been eaten by predators.
AS A LIVE-ACTION DIRECTOR, IT’S TIME TO FACE THE FACT THAT TIM BURTON MAY BE OVER: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
NOT ENOUGH: Monster-in-Law, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, Bad News Bears, Dark Water, Asylum, The Chumscrubber, Lila Says , Rize.

Christian Bale in Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins

FLATLINERS: The Longest Yard, Madagascar, Kings and Queen, Lords of Dogtown, Must Love Dogs , Fantastic Four, Stealth, The Brothers Grimm, Heights.
WANTED TO SEE ‘EM, MISSED THE SCREENINGS, COULDN’T SEE FORKING OVER TEN BUCKS, ETC.: Howl’s Moving Castle, High Tension, The Devil’s Rejects, November, Mysterious Skin, Murderball, The Edukators .
WOULDN’T SEE ‘EM AT THE POINT OF A KNIFE: The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, The Honeymooners, Herbie: Fully Loaded .
NOT HALF BAD: Yes, Red Eye, Four Brothers, Reel Paradise, House of Wax, Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist, The Great Raid, The Last Mogul , Me and You and Everyone We Know, George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead.
BIGGEST ACTOR BREAKTHROUGHS: Rachel McAdams (The Wedding Crashers, Red Eye), who could wind up doing it all. Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow, Crash), who deserves a Best Actor nomination hands-down for his Memphis pimp. Vince Vaughn (Wedding Crashers…can’t wait for his tortured deejay movie for director David O. Russell). And Amy Adams (Junebug), although she needs to move beyond that sweet and trusting magnolia-blossom thing.
LEAST INTRIGUING NEW ACTOR (and a possible speed-bump for Clint Eastwood’s Flags of our Fathers): Jesse Bradford , the costar of Heights who, in that film, wore a fixed expression that said, “I’m not really getting what’s going on…I’m not sure what to say or do…maybe if I just stand here long enough looking like a stubble-faced bowling pin with legs, events will sort themselves out.”

Jesse Bradford at Sundance Film Festival, looking a lot less clueless and confused than he does in Heights…so maybe it’s not a terminal problem.

SUMMER’S BIGGEST STOCK-DROPPERS: Tom Cruise and Will Ferrell. Will Cruise ever get back the lustre he had in the wake of Jerry Maguire, or are emperors forever disempowered once the public has seen them without their aura of mystery and velvet robes? When Ferrell came out of the shadows of that bungalow to talk with Owen Wilson in that third-act scene in Wedding Crashers, you could almost hear the film’s energy collapse and an instant consensus form in the audience that he didn’t belong and was way overdoing it. Plus he was ickily unfunny in Bewitched . This sounds incredible for a guy who’s only been a marquee draw since Old School, but he may already be heading downhill.
COLD-SHOULDERED, UNDER-ATTENDED, INSUFFICIENTLY LOVED: Cinderella Man, Kingdom of Heaven, Tell Them Who You Are, My Date With Drew.

Toronto Jam

This year’s Toronto Film Festival (Sept. 8th through 17th) is a big problem in the best way imaginable: there are too many good films to see in only nine days. I gripe about this every time the schedule is announced, but this year is really a bitch.
I’ve come up with 69 films I’d like to see (or in some cases, see again). If I run around like an animal and the screening times mesh perfectly with my column-writing schedule (which never happens) and I don’t get shut out of any films (which happens a lot at this festival), I’ll be able to catch four per day or 36 films.

That means I’m going to have to forget about seeing 33 films that I’d definitely see under free-and-clear circumstances. This means I have to start crossing a lot of ’em off…a tough but necessary task.
Imagine a filmmaker having just finished a film into which he/she has invested every last drop of blood, sweat and tears, only to read some journalist talking about taking a few whiffs and calibrating the angle of the dangle and going, “Naah, I don’t think I’ll see that one.”
I’d like to hear anything from anyone out there because these lists are always changing, but at first glance here’s what’s doing. The films I’d like to see but have doubts about are italicized; keepers (i.e., films most likely to connect with paying audiences because they look commercial or will prove aesthetically exceptional) are boldfaced.
WORLD CINEMA (4): River Queen, director: Vincent Ward. (financing problems, Samantha Morton problems…a sturm und drang movie); Shooting Dogs, director: Michael Caton-Jones (always approach an MCJ film with caution); Le Temps qui reste, director: Francois Ozon (haven’t heard anything to quicken my pulse); Tsotsi, director: Gavin Hood (Athol Fugard source material…being schmoozed into seeing this by Donna Daniels and Emily Lowe.) Keeper total: 0.

Jason Statham in Guy Ritchie’s Revolver

DIALOGUES: TALKING WITH PICTURES (4): Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, director: Stuart Samuels (talked to Samuels in Cannes even though I hadn’t see it…love the subject but I may miss it again); My Dad Is 100 Years Old, director: Guy Maddin (maybe, but The Saddest Music in the World didn’t do it for me); Open City, director: Roberto Rossellini (never seen a decent print, I’d love to see it with a hip crowd, and I’ll probably blow it off); William Eggleston in the Real World director: Michael Almereyda (not feeling it). Keeper total: 0.
DISCOVERY (1): Stoned, director: Stephen Woolley (missed the market screenings in Cannes…I was told it wasn’t so hot…I’d like see it anyway because it’s about the death of Brian Jones). Keeper total: 0.

The White Masai

MASTERS (11): Breakfast on Pluto, director: Neil Jordan (seeing it here Friday); Brokeback Mountain, director: Ang Lee (will someone please arrange an impromptu screening of Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s Lonesome Cowboys during the festival?); Bubble, director: Steven Soderbergh (for the last few years Soderbergh has been like Mickey Mantle during one of his slumps…the fans in the stands going, “Hit one out of the park, Mick!” with their fingers crossed); Cache, director: Michael Haneke (missed it in Cannes where it almost won the Palme d’Or…have to see it); L’ Enfant, directors: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne (the Palme d’Or winner at last May’s Cannes Film Festival); Free Zone, director: Amos Gitai (saw it in Cannes, wouldn’t mind catching it again… fascinating road movie that takes you through Israel and Jordan…fine Natalie Portman performance…satisfying in a minor key); Iberia, director: Carlos Saura (waiting to hear something); No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, director: Martin Scorsese (how can I miss this?…then again, one wonders what fresh new aspect of Dylan-the-sourpuss can Scorsese be expected to uncover?); Tideland , director: Terry Gilliam (there’s no missing a Gilliam); The Best of Our Times, director: Hsiao-hsien Hou (maybe); and Takeshis, Takeshi Kitano‘s latest about a celebrity confronting a double. Keeper total: 7.

Cameron Diaz in an alleged still from Curtis Hanson’s In her Shoes

MIDNIGHT MADNESS (2): The Great Yokai War, director: Takashi Miike (maybe); Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, director: Liam Lynch (liked her in The Aristocrats…she played the nagging-bitch girlfriend in School of Rock). Keeper total: 0.
REAL TO REEL (6): a/k/a Tommy Chong, director: Josh Gilbert (definite interest so far); A Conversation with Basquiat, director: Tamra Davis (ditto); The Devil and Daniel Johnston, director: Jeff Feuerzig (heard good things when it played Sundance); Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, director: Lian Lunson (gotta catch this one); Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela, director: Thomas Allen Harris (definitely intrigued); and Why We Fight, director: Eugene Jarecki. Keeper total: 3.

Dame Judi Dench in Stephen Frears’ Mrs. Henderson Presents

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS (18): Art Project: Ghosts of Woodrow, director: Graeme Patterson (waiting to hear something); Bee Season, director: Scott McGehee, David Siegel (Tom Luddy having chosen it to play Telluride Film Festival ought to mean something); Capote, director: Bennett Miller (seeing it in NYC this week); Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, director: Michel Gondry (Chappelle’s flake-out/disappearing act a while back…does that make this film more or less intriguing?); Everything Is Illuminated, director: Liev Schreiber (might see it here); The Notorious Bettie Page, director: Mary Harron (essential for the period trimmings and sexy-photo stuff alone…Harron did an excellent job with American Psycho); Oliver Twist, director: Roman Polanski (can’t blow off Polanski, although I suspect he probably shot his last meaningful wad with The Pianist); Romance & Cigarettes, director: John Turturro (can’t bypass a singing James Gandolfini); Shopgirl, director: Anand Tucker (I’m hearing not great but fairly decent); Sketches of Frank Gehry, director: Sydney Pollack (gotta show respect to Pollack and Gehry); Slow Burn, director: Wayne Beach (waiting); Thank You For Smoking, director: Jason Reitman (sounds a bit obvious, but maybe): Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, directors: Mike Johnson, Tim Burton (Burton is better with puppets than people, but it looks like The Nightmare before Xmas again); Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, director: Michael Winterbottom (9 Songs didn’t do anything for Winterbottom’s rep, but this is supposed to be fairly good); Trust the Man, director: Bart Freundlich (always approach a Freundlich film with caution); Vers le Sud, director: Laurent Cantet (waiting to hear something); Wah-Wah, director: Richard E. Grant (ditto), The World’s Fastest Indian, director: Roger Donaldson (good buzz from Oz exhbitors about this one during their recent Australian Gold Coast convention, but Donaldson being from New Zealand suggests it should probably be taken with a grain). Keeper total: 10.

Charlize Theron in Niki Caro’s North Country

VIACOM GALAS (15): Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, dierctor: John Gatins (any movie with the word “dreamer”…holding off for now); Edison, director: David J. Burke (waiting to hear something); Elizabethtown, director: Cameron Crowe (essential); L’ Enfer, director: Danis Tanovic (don’t know anything); A History of Violence, director: David Cronenberg (missed about 20 minutes worth in Cannes when I nodded off…want to see it again anyway); In Her Shoes, director: Curtis Hanson (exhib calls it an above-average chick flick and a little on the “commercial” side…Hanson-as-director means this has to be seen, but a serious film maven must always approach any film starring Cameron Diaz with a certain caution); The Matador, director: Richard Shepard (Sundance buzz was fairly good but nothing spectacular); Mrs. Harris, director: Phyllis Nagy (Bening and Kingsley…essential viewing for these two alone); Mrs. Henderson Presents, director: Stephen Frears (there’s no blowing off a Frears film); The Myth, director: Stanley Tong (skeptical); North Country, director: Niki Caro (return of Whale Rider director is an exciting prospect, but true-life story about a sexually harassed mine-worker sounds like a snooze, even with Charlize Theron in the role); Pride and Prejudice, director: Joe Wright (seeing it in NYC this week); Proof, director: John Madden (seen it, wrote about it); Revolver, director: Guy Ritchie (guarded optimism…post-Swept Away Ritchie requires extreme caution); The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, director: Tommy Lee Jones (fell for it in Cannes, looking to see it again); Walk the Line, director: James Mangold (saw it a few weeks ago, looking to go again just for the enjoyment); Water, director: Deepa Mehta (heard nothing); The White Masai, director: Hermine Huntgeburth (based on autobiographical book by Corinne Hofmann about a European white woman who falls head over heels for a Masai tribesman, blows off her boyfriend, uproots her life, etc.) Keeper total: 9.

Actual Bettie Page (i.e., receiving discipline) and not Gretchen Mol portraying the famous ’50s pin-up girl in Mary Harron’s The Notorious Bettie Page

VISIONS (6): 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous, director: Stewart Main (no hints); L’ Annulaire, director: Diane Bertrand (ditto); Brothers of the Head, directors: Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe (return of the Lost in La Mancha guys); Mary, director: Abel Ferrara (respect must be paid to Abel Ferrara, despite all the crap); The Piano-tuner of Earthquakes, directors: Timothy Quay, Stephen Quay (no hints); Wassup Rockers, director: Larry Clark (no clues). Keeper total: 2.
Add ’em up and at this early stage we’re looking at a grand keeper total of 31. Truth be told, I rarely seem to get to more than 25 or so films during a typical festival, although I’d love to crack 30 this time.

Grabs

Through windows of Dean & Deluca, SE corner of Broadway and Prince — Sunday, 8.21, 8:20 pm.

Only in New York City do you get this kind of stark aesthetic juxtaposition…one of the most beautiful dining-room decoration stores on the planet on the inside, and all kinds of heavy scaffolding and splattered paint and cheap-ass graffiti on the mailboxes outside.

Martin Scorsese, Matt Damon on set of the upcoming The Departed

James Mangold’s Walk the Line won’t be out until 11.18, but the 20th Century Fox marketing team is plugging it like a sonuvabitch. The Johnny Cash biopic has tribute pieces running in this week’s Time and Newsweek (particularly about Joaquin Pheonix and Reese Witherspoon’s performances) and now Fox has wild-posting all over Manhattan construction sites…which is fairly unusual for a film that won’t be opening for another three months.

Journos and industry types know Eamonn Bowles as the president of Magnolia Pictures, but he’s also the head of a kick-butt Iggy Pop-ish bar band called The Martinets. I saw them play last night at the Knitting Factory Tap Bar on Leonard Street (between B’way and Church), and was blown away — they’re really fast, tight and rock-sharp. The sound is raw and catchy and they all play like pros. Bowles sings like a mad banshee and plays electric guitar like a ringin’ a bell. It’s not just the usual bar-band “noise” but crafty, well-shaped material with intellectually pointed lyrics. I asked Bowles if Mark Cuban, the part-owner of Magnolia and a guy who reportedly gets around, has dropped by to catch the act. Bowles said nope.

All the milk that’s about to go bad and turn into cottage cheese, they send it to grocery stores in my Brooklyn neighborhood. I bought this last Sunday. The guarantee said it would be good until 8.25, and the next day all these gross little white globs poured out while I was trying to put milk in my coffee.

Playground at Spring and Mulberry — Sunday, 8.21, 5:45 pm.

Rice to Riches, located on Spring near Mulberry, is a stand-alone store that sells flavored rice puddings. Fantastic tasting, very filling, etc.

Facing south on La Guardia (I think…memory’s a bit hazy) — Sunday, 8.21, 7:15 pm.

The latest Telluride Film Festival lineup is as follows: Robert Towne’s Ask the Dust, Be With Me (from Singapore), The Bee Season, Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, Liev Schreiber’s Everything is Illuminated, Live and Become (a French-Israeli production), Merry Christmas, Paradise Now, John Turturro’s Romance and Cigarettes, and a film from Cameroon called Sisters in Law. The festival runs from Friday, 9.2 through Monday, 9.5. I never manage to get there because it’s too costly, but someday…

There doesn’t seem to be any denying that the buying of movie ads in newspapers is starting to taper off and that the studio marketers are looking more and more to digital ads on niche internet websites. In last week’s Nikki Finke column (“Hollywood to Newsosaurs: Drop Dead”) in the L.A. Weekly, it was asserted that “every major movie studio is rethinking its reliably humongous display ad buys in [newspapers] because those newsosaur readers are, to quote one mogul, ‘older and elitist’ compared to younger, low-brow filmgoers — so it makes no sense to waste the dough.” Finke also claimed that “at least two Hollywood movie studios have decided to drastically cut their newspaper display ads as soon as possible.” And then came a report by Joel Topcik in today’s New York Times that pounded the nail in further. Topcik observed that while “web advertisements will not eclipse print and broadcast ads anytime soon” (the industry spent about 2.2 percent of its 2004 ad budgets online), there’s a kind of sea change underway in which “blanket ad purchases seem ready to decline in tandem with box office receipts with studios [looking] more and more to the internet to find audiences. Westport, Connecticut-based marketing consultant Joseph Jaffe says buying online ads with the right sites is “the opposite of buying a spread in a newspaper or a slew of 30-second slots on TV…studios need to stop trying to reach the most people and focus on reaching the best people.”