ThinkFilm will be putting Keith Beauchamp’s The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till into theatres nationwide in October. The doc will have an early exclusive run at the Film Forum starting on 8.17. I’ve seen Beauchamp’s doc, and to be honest I found it an incomplete portrait of Till and the horrible crime that ended his life at age 14 in the summer of 1955. While visiting relatives in Mississippi from his native Chicago, Till was killed by at least two rural white guys (others may have been involved) for the sin of having made a sexually suggestive comment to one of the guys’ wives. The film acknowledges that Till may have unwittingly provoked this woman by flouting social taboos, but accounts of what he allegedly said to the woman are much more matter-of-fact in at least one other account of the case that I’ve read. (Check out the site for the PBS “American Experience” doc called The Murder of Emmett Till.) Beauchamp looked into the case for roughly ten years and made an effort to uncover new details behind this ghastly event, which helped to launch the civil rights movement. A press release says that Beauchamp’s research on the film led to the Justice Department reopening the case on 5.10.04. And yet The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till barely explores or even seems concerned with the fact that no follow-up measures or investigations occured after Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam admitted to having killed Till (after being acquitted of murder charges in a Mississippi court) in a January 1956 issue of Look magazine. It’s a good film, but I must say it’s not a brilliant or even-toned one because it is too heavily invested in the martyrdom of a chubby kid who accidentally stepped into it.

I’m seeing The 40 year-old Virgin this evening, at which point I’ll fully consider Henry Cabot Beck’s claim
about costar Catherine Keener in Sunday’s N.Y. Daily News, to wit: “Few actresses can step into a high-testosterone comedy and single-handedly turn it into a heartfelt experience, but that’s what Keener does [here].” This is another film that has been all but killed by the trailer giving away what feels like too many of the gags and then cutting and compressing them so severely that they’re not even faintly funny. Paul Rudd and two other guys try to get the virginal Steve Carrell laid, and he endures several horrible dates and other misfortunes before things finally go right with Keener’s character…right? Having seen the trailer something like eight or nine times, I’m half-convinced there’s almost nothing the full-length feature can do or show me that I haven’t already digested or smirked at. It feels used up, like I’ve already seen it on an airplane.

Broadway’s latest jukebox musical — Don Scardino’s Lennon — opened last night and, as expected, was critically savaged. Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono had her hands all over this, and if you know how things usually work you know any kind of tribute piece (movie, stage musical) about a deceased artist that’s been approved by a surviving wife of family member will always be maudlin. I love Ben Brantley’s opening graph in his New York Times review: “In the immortal words of Yoko ono, ‘Aieeeee!’ A fierce primal scream — of the kind Ms. Ono is famous for as a performance and recording artist — is surely the healthiest response to the agony of Lennon, the jerry-built musical shrine that opened last night at the Broadhust theatre.” Oh, and I learned from this review that “lucullan,” an adjective, means “lavish, luxurious, or relating to Lucullus or his luxurious banquets.”

This originated around 7.25, but a Lebanon-based blogger named Matthew who doesn’t like readers to know his last name (“Matthew in Beirut”) has posted a series of frame captures taken from a worse-than-usual bootleg DVD of Revenge of the Sith, and it has some English-to-Chinese and then back-to-English subtitles that are quite…uh, well, idiotic but funny.