The V for Vendetta London premiere took place last night (Wednesday, 3.8) at the UCI Empire Cinema in Leicester Square, and here’s a link to some video coverage.

If you live in L.A. and have masochist-adventurist leanings, get over to the American Cinematheque Aero Theatre on Saturday, April 1st, for a 7:30 pm screening of a restored and uncut print of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, which clocks in at faucet-dripping 219 minutes. This version has been on DVD for a long while, but this is one of those appalling creations you have to experience in a theatre on the big screen to fully appreciate. I was there, you see….at the evening press screening of this bloated, turgid western at Manhattan’s Cinema 1 theatre nearly 25 years and eight months ago. And I remmember very clearly how it played with the crowd I saw it with, and no amount of F.X. Feeney reimaginings are going to change that. Seeing Heaven’s Gate that night was like death from asphyxiation…it was oxygen being sucked out of the room….like being buried alive in the lower chamber of an Egyptian pyramid. And yet…and yet…it had something. A display of monumental indulgence that I’d never felt before that fateful night, and haven’t since. “When it was released, many critics reacted to the hoopla and negative hype, instead of the actual content of the film,” the program notes say…which, trust me, is revisionist horseshit. The notes are partly accurate, however, in saying that Heaven’s Gate “has undergone significant re-appraisal and its considerable virtues are now widely recognized,” except for the word “widely.” People have bought into the Feeney view of this film, although I can’t remember which contrarian film critics have signed aboard. The restored print will be introduced at the Aero screening by Sony film preservationist John Kirk and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and I am strangely attracted to the idea of coming and watching it again. What does that mean?

There’s a guy I spoke to last night who complained that I’ve spoiled his enjoyment of the first episode of the new Sopranos season by saying something heavy happens in this episode (debuting Sunday, 3.12, on HBO). I provided no details at all…not the slightest dandelion-fuzz of a hint…but for Mr. Bitch-and-Moaner just knowing something or other will happen is a serious problem. Well, he also needs to call Variety‘s Brian Lowry and let him have it. Lowry’s review of the first four episodes, posted late yesterday (Wednesday, 3.8), gives almost nothing away but it does say “there is a genuine surprise in the premiere.” And USA Today‘s Robert Bianco has referred to a “shocking and yet completely in-character twist that propels Sunday’s premiere” in a 3.9.06 review. And the Paul Brownfield has written that “Sunday night’s debut ends in stunning fashion.”

I’ve asked a lot of well-connected guys if the can help me get a copy of the shooting script of The DaVinci Code, and they all said it’s too much of a lockdown thing…can’t happen. Does anyone anywhere have a copy? In the meantime, I just received the illustrated version of Dan Brown‘s best-seller by messenger.

“You’ve probably heard this from others, but supposedly there just isn’t that much extra footage to add back to that director’s cut of Crash [due April 4th on DVD]. I was at a screening several months back where Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco spoke for about an hour after it ended. They mentioned the low cost and speed at which they had to shoot it, saying that basically most of what they shot is on the screen and that’s that. Who knows how honest they were being with the Creative Screenwriting crowd, but this may be the answer to your question.” — Josh Roessler.

“Though it needs to be cut drastically, George Gittoes‘ Rampage is a power-packed documentary with lots of potential,” Screen Daily‘s Peter Brunette wrote out of Berlin on 3.7. “Set mostly in one of the worst black ghettoes in Miami, the film, which was shot over the course of several years by the Australian-based Gittoes, is lively, insightful and even shocking. Festival programmers and buyers of docs for television, who may think there’s nothing new to be seen or said about black American ghetto life, should give this film a serious look. Once its two-hour running time is shortened to a punchier and less repetitive 90 minutes, it may even manage to snag theatrical distribution in the US and elsewhere.” Does anyone know of any upcoming U.S. festival screenings?

Haiti, Sex, Death

Before last Sunday night I thought of Haiti as a hopeless Caribbean shithole, one of the worst places to live in the world because the government corruption and the politically-motivated beatings and killings never seem to stop, and because the poverty levels for most of the citizens are beyond belief.
I still see Haiti as an island most foul, but a knockout documentary called Ghosts of Cite Soleil, a kind of Cain-and-Abel story that was filmed just before, during and after the overthrow of Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide in March 2004, has added a new dimension.

The real-life 2pac and Lele as they appear in Asger Leth’s Ghosts of Cite Soleil

I now see Haiti as less of a Ground Zero for abstract political terror and more of a place where people on the bottom rung are trying to live and breathe and create their own kind of life-force energy as a way of waving away the constant hoverings of doom.
In short, this excellent 88-minute film, directed by Asger Leth (the son of Danish filmmaker Jorgen Leth), adds recognizable humanity to a culture that has seemed more lacking in hope and human decency than any other on earth. I saw it at the Wilshire Screening Room two and a half days ago, and it’s been a kind of growth experience for me. I feel like I almost “get” Haiti now, and I haven’t stopped telling people about it since.
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Everyone will say that Ghosts is City of God but in ‘real’ verite terms…and it is that, of course. But it’s less about violent street crime than stink-from-the-head Haitian politics, and it explores an unusual romantic triangle between a white French female relief worker namd Lele and two gangster brothers, 2pac and Bily (not “Billy”), and it has a tragic ending that touches you as much as any well-crafted Hollywood tearjerker could…and yet it happened all on its own.
2pac and Bily are in no way the “good guys,” but in a way they are. They wave guns around and talk all the time about defending their territory or making an enemy back off or perhaps having to kill each other, but somehow the film makes them seem like half-sympathetic pawns…somewhat vulnerable sociopaths desperately trying to escape from their cage.

The brothers were leaders of gangs (there were five altogether, all of them known as “the Chimeres”, which is French for “ghosts”) who were being paid big money by the Aristide government to rough up or in some cases eliminate political oppo- nents. Director George Hickenlooper (Factory Girl), who invited me to Sunday’s screening in his capacity as one of the doc’s exec producers, said 2pac and Bily received “hundreds of thousands” of dollars.
When Aristide was finally forced out of office 2pac and Bily were suddenly targets of the new guys in power who wanted to get rid of all remnants of Aristide’s reign, including the “muscle.”
What was special in the making of Ghosts of Cite de Soleil was that Leth had totally open access to both brothers (as well as their government opponents), and also that life played out like a story written by a skilled dramatist.
This is precisely what Ghosts of Cite de Soleil could be the next time — a dramatic movie shot on location in Haiti with actors, a script, grips, electricians, etc.
On Monday I spoke with Cary Woods, the doc’s executive producer, who agreed that Ghosts of Cite Soleil could become a mainstream feature because (and this is primarily me talking) it has all the Shakespearean elements: poverty, political warfare, corruption, the cycle of violence, Cain and Abel, a romantic triangle, and a tragic finale.

And as a scripted feature it could get a bit more into the warring-brothers- sleeping-with-the-same-woman thing, which the doc doesn’t really run with.
Woods told me that a certain big-name actress has expressed interest in playing the Lele character if and when a script is written and a film is up and rolling, and then producer Seth Kanegis called me from somewhere in the Caribbean Tuesday afternoon and said Woods is looking to hire a distinguished, big-name writer to do the screenplay.
This would be a perfect feature for Oliver Stone, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Werner Herzog…any director who could take the grit and social squalor of Haiti’s Cite de Soleil and reenact the story with feeling and realism.
The thing that needs to happen right now is for Ghosts of Cite Soleil to be accep- ted into the Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight section so the festival-scout community can see it and talk it up. And then it should go to Toronto Film Festival in September, which would probably lead to some kind of distribution deal.
A film like this can only do what it can do. Film buffs and admirers of hot-button filmmaking and drama-in-the-rough will go for it, but some movigeoers would probably have a bit of difficulty with a film of this sort…a raw-looking, hand-held video piece about killings and squalor and interracial sex.

Ghosts executive producer Cary Woods

The feature that could come from this — that’s the thing. But there are miles to go before that happens…if it happens at all. Life is a gamble and movies are about rolling stones slowly uphill.
I haven’t mentioned the Wylcef Jean hip-hop on the soundtrack (the Haitian-born musician is also one of the film’s exec producers) and 2pac’s seeing himself as a burgeoning hip-hopper and his dream of becoming a musician-star. A Wyclef Jean soundtrack CD of some kind would, I understand, be part of the Ghosts package when and if it opens theatrically. I’m not 100% sure about this, but it would make sense.

King of the Empties

I’m developing an idea that Matthew McConaughey is a kind of anti-Christ. I’m 35% to 40% serious. He may not be the Satanic emissary of our times, but I honestly believe if and when the real devil rises up from those sulfur caverns and begins to walk the earth, he’ll look and behave exactly like McConaughey.
He’s not just the absolute nadir of empty-vessel pretty boy actors. I’m talking about an almost startling inner quality that transcends mere shallowness. It’s there in McConaughey’s eyes…eyes that look out at the wonder and terror of life but do nothing but scan for opportunity…something or someone to hustle or seduce or make a buck off. Eyes that convey a Maynard G. Krebs-like revulsion at the idea that life may finally be about something you can’t touch, taste or own.

Matthew McConaughey and fan

He has the soul of a Texas bartender who dabbles in real estate and has an overly made-up and undereducated girlfriend who drops by at the end of a shift to give him a lift home, except that he tends to ignore her when there’s a good game on and all his empty-ass buddies are there…a bartender who will clean shot glasses for 20 minutes before looking in your direction…a guy with a thin voice and a hey-buddy Texas drawl who sorta kinda needs to be stabbed with a screwdriver.
I’ve known guys like McConaughey all my life, and I feel I’ve come to know them as a predator tribe. Guys with fraternity associations and shark eyes and quarter-inch- deep philosphies that tend to start with barstool homilies like “the world is for the few.”
Because of this I can easily wave away his respectable performances in Dazed and Confused and Reign of Fire and focus on the void. I agree about these standout performances and his being tolerable in one or two other films (U-571, etc.), and because of this I was able to handle his being in movies without cringing for years.
But then came the double-whammy of Two for the Money and Failure to Launch, and now the mere mention of his name…
McConaughey is the emperor of the so-called vapid squad. He can kick Paul Walker’s ass with one hand tied behind his back, in part because Walker is now off the shit list after his sweat-soaked danger-freak performance in Wayne Kramer’s Running Scared. Forget the unfairly maligned Matthew (a.k.a., “Matt”) Davis, who gave a genuine and unforced performance as a decent-guy football player in John Stockwell’s Blue Crush…next to McConaughey he’s almost Brando-level.

With Sarah Jessica Parker in scene from Failure to Launch, which earned $24.6 million this weekend

I forget who the other contenders are but none of them hold a candle to Matt because they haven’t got that deep-down emptiness, which is what it’s all about. Not a matter of craft or affability, but essence.
Here’s some of the reader commentary so far…
“All of McConaughey’s roles fit into one of two categories,” wrote Richard Swank. “He’s either ‘Happy Go Lucky Matt,’ playing a kind of blissed-out stoner that seems to be fairly close to his offscreen persona (Ed TV, Dazed & Confused, Failure to Launch), or he’s ‘Serious Matt,’ where he plays a toned-down version of same who’s a little more intense, but with no more depth ((U-571, A Time to Kill).
“However, there’s one exception that is so out-there that it turns the rule completely on its head: Reign of Fire. Seriously. It may be a goofy sci-fi b-movie about dragons, but McConaughey’s performance in it is so over-the-top, so obviously committed, that it really calls into question whether he has to be the crummy actor he is in everything else.”

McConaughey in Two for the Money

“McConauughey is Pauly Shore with better genes.” — Bill McCuddy, Fox News movie guy.
“McConaughey seems like an affable guy in real life, hosting the college football champion Longhorns and squiring the Ashley Judds around. However, like George Bush, he compensates for depth with a gigantic dose of Texas hubris. But women like him, and that’s the foundation of his popularity. And I agree with you about Don Johnson being just about the most vomitorious actor ever.” — Arizona Joe
“To me, Matthew McConaughey is the acting equivalent of a karaoke machine,” says Toronto Star critic Peter Howell. “The viewer projects into him what they want to get out, and the result is occasionally amusing, yet it always feels false. Remember that his fame started as a total fraud: a Vanity Fair cover when he’d done absolutely nothing to warrant such attention.”
“He’s the Bob Cummings of our age.” — Lewis Beale
Journalist James Sanford interviewed McConaughey during his Sahara tour “and found him to be a genuinely pleasant, dedicated and surprisingly insightful guy. If I had been able to look into the future to see Two for the Money and Failure to Launch at that time I would also have asked him why he has such bad taste in scripts, but what can you do?

“When I was a theater manager in 1994 and we were showing Dazed and Confused, I predicted he was going to become a major star — again and again people came out of that film asking who McConaughey was and what had he done before. He has a kind of effortless, laid-back cool that seems to drive women crazy. He can also be pretty funny (i.e., his crazed performance in Bill Murray’s Larger Than Life or the nutcase he played in the abominable Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But finding the right material for him seems to be difficult.
“It might be wiser to find projects for him that could challenge him to develop his dramatic skills. He also needs to work with a diction coach; he is also handicapped somewhat by his strong Texas accent, which makes absolutely no sense when he’s playing someone from Staten Island (How to Lose a Guy…) or Baltimore (Failure to Launch).
“One thing he definitely has going for him is honesty onscreen: For better or for worse, he can’t fake his emotions — as evidenced by his utter lack of chemistry with Sarah Jessica Parker (whom he reportedly did not get along with) in Launch.”
“I basically agree with you about McConaughey, but the guy pretty much gets a free pass from me because of Dazed and Confused . Hell, can you point to one minute in his career when Keanu Reeves was that fun to watch? And they still let him make movies. Maybe McConaughey should have packed it in after Dazed, knowing that he’d peaked and it was all going to be downhill from there.” — Phil Napoli, Clifton, NJ.

Brokeback Mountain not winning the Best Picture Oscar hit the film’s director Ang Lee in a soft spot, and it left some kind of bruise. He said in a TV interview that aired yesterday (Wednesday, 3.8) that promoting the film was “an arduous process” and that losing to Crash was a disappointment-and-a-half. “We’ve won every award since September, but missed out on the last one, the biggest one,” Lee said. But feeling disappointed “is human nature. And it wasn’t for myself. I led a whole team of people.”

Sales of the old Crash DVD (i.e., the one that went on sale last September, and not the “special edition” coming out 4.4) soared after the Paul Haggis film won the Best Picture Oscar Sunday night. In one day (aaah but which day?…Monday, 3.6 or Tuesday, 3.7?) Lionsgate sold 17,500 copies.

Another story about Bob Yari‘s lawsuit over being denied producer credit on Crash, and I’m not precisely understanding how it moves things along to hear Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, say that Yari has a tempestuous nature and a Producer’s Guild attorney say more or less the same thing.

I’ve finally heard an explanation as to why Mozart and the Whale costars Josh Hartnett and Radha Mitchell didn’t show up for the Santa Barbara Film Festival screening a month ago. The no-shows, I’ve been told, were basically about giving a fuck-you message to Avi Lerner, the film’s Israeli producer. The principals are angry because Lerner apparently wasn’t happy with a longer and allegedly better cut of Whale and, being the big-cheese producer, had it re-cut it into the shorter version I saw in Santa Barbara. I happened to enjoy and admire what I saw (as did Variety’s Todd McCarthy), but the longer version is said to have been a fuller, worthier film. I called Lerner’s office this afternoon to get his side of it, but neither he nor his assistant were available and no call-backs. My Mozart review called it “a Rain Man-type love story with a jumpy heart…jumpy as in child-like, energetic, anxious. A romanticized, tidied-up version of a complicated real-life love story, Mozart is nervy and provocative in more ways than one. Not calming or swoony like other love stories because the lovers are always in a fairly hyper and unsettled state, which feels a bit challenging, Mozart and the Whale nonetheless seems real and fairly honest and is obviously on a wavelength all its own. At first you’re thinking it needs a regular-guy character (like Tom Cruise‘s selfish prick in Rainman) to provide stability and perspective, but then you get used to the manic energy of it. And then you start enjoying more and more the vigorous cutting and the funky European-style tone (Norway’s Petter Naess directed), and particularly Hartnett and Mitchell’s performances, which feel wired and fresh and unlike anything I’ve ever gotten, tonally, from a love story before. I guess this pogo-stick element isn’t striking a chord with very many others since Mozart and the Whale has been having difficulty finding a distributor.”

I’m told by a trusted source that Lauren Bacall intended to wear her glasses during her appearance on last Sunday’s Oscar show, but at the last minute she didn’t (we can assume why) and this is why she had difficulty reading her copy. Sounds odd (Bacall never heard of contacts or laser eye surgery?) but a well-placed guy tells me that’s how it went down.