Month: May 2006

“I have always had a voice and always known I could sing, but I was too shy to let it come out. I think that is the hardest thing you can do, to sing in front of people. When I finally let go and did it, I realized it is what I am most talented at and what I love to do the most” — Paris Hilton

There are more to movies than just form — content counts for a lot. I could list 100 well-regarded movies off the top of my head, docs and features alike, that you could arguably call boring or so-whatty in the way they’re shaped and/or paced, and yet they’re compelling as hell because of the current inside them. And yet here’s a columnist saying Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim‘s An Inconvenient Truth is “boring” and “not a movie“, “feels like it was pretty much assembled, not directed“, “Castor Oil is good for you…but that doesn’t make it taste any better” and so on. Sam Fuller often said the essence of a good movie is emotion, and it stuns me to consider that some can see Truth and just not feel it. As the Guardian‘s Jonathan Freedland put it in today’s edition, this film is “extraordinarily gripping…those who have known the arguments [about global warming] for years, intellectually, suddenly find themselves moved emotionally by Gore and stirred into action.” An emotional response to a portrait of a world being climactically suffocated and only ten or fifteen years shy of total devastation is not required of anyone — by all means, fly your blase flag, it’s a free country — but honestly…

Two witnesses have told me that Pan’s Labyrinth received the longest standing ovation of any film that played at Cannes when it showed last Saturday night. And now Salon‘s Andrew O’Heir is calling it “hands down the most exciting and original film I’ve seen here, and the one that had me in tears during its final scenes. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro is best known as the director of such fanboy classics as Hellboy, Mimic and Blade 2, which are cool enough in their way. Pan’s Labyrinth is something else again, and something far more powerful and original. Combining a fully convincing fantasy universe (drawn from a lifelong obsession with classic fairy tales) with a completely realistic story about the endgame of the Spanish Civil War, this film features a heart-rending performance from young Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, the teenage stepdaughter of a vicious Fascist officer (Sergi Lopez), who’s fighting a ragtag band of Republican guerrillas in a remote mountainous area. Ofelia’s ailing mother tells her that she’s too old for fairy tales, but the array of friendly and terrifying creatures she meets in the woods don’t seem to agree. If she can face a series of trials against the various monsters and demons of the region, she can prove herself as the King of the Underworld’s long-lost daughter. But neither the giant evil toad nor the eyeless child-eating gargoyle is as frightening as her stepdad, with his spit-shined shoes, his cracked watch and his revolver.”

For me, the Shohei Imamura film that seeped in deeper than the others was The Ballad of Narayama. The 1983 film is concisely summed up in this IMDB sentence: “In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die.” Not what I’d call an enjoyable or soothing film, but an unforgettably strong one. I’m mentioning this because of the news of Mr. Imamura’s death from cancer, at age 79.

A sublime little Italian place on rue Lepic, mainly frequented by the Montmartre locals and almost directly across from the apartment building where Vincent Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo (54 rue Lepic) from 1886 to 1887 — 5.29.06, 5:55 pm.

And (a) there aren’t enough blue doors on the front of apartment buildings in the U.S. — Monday, 5.29.06, 4:45 pm; (b) rue Lepic facing west in the late evening — Monday, 5.29.06, 11:25 pm; (c) menu at another Italian place in Montmartre — Monday, 5.30.06, 5:45 pm; (d) remnant of Monday evening’s dinner at an African place — Monday, 5.29.06, 10:45 pm; (e) Amelie cafe on rue Lepic, south of rue d’Abesses; (f) electricite — Tuesday, 5.30.06, 5:50 pm; (g) Corner of rue Damremont and rue Tourlaque, facing north — Tuesday, 5.30.06, 6:05 pm.

L.A. Times writer Deborah Netburn delivers a sum-up of Marie-Antoinette reactions, including one from yours truly.

Director Clint Eastwood has promised that Flags Of Our Fathers and Red Sun, Black Sand, which will both hit screens later this year, “will attempt to show for the first time the suffering of both sides during 36 days of fighting in early 1945 that turned Iwo Jima into a flattened wasteland. He describes Red Sun, shot in Japanese and with a largely Japanese cast, as his attempt to understand the country’s soldiers. ‘I think those soldiers deserve a certain amount of respect,’ he said. ‘I feel terrible for both sides in that war and in all wars. A lot of innocent people get sacrificed. It’s not about winning or losing, but mostly about the interrupted lives of young people. These men deserve to be seen, and heard from.'” — Justin McCurry in Tokyo, writing for the Guardian in a piece than ran two days ago.

You can now scroll down through the entire present-month’s output (in this instance, May’s) by clicking on “Choose Month” in the search engine just above “Discland”. I’m mentioning this only because you couldn’t access all of May in one fell swoop until yesterday. Thanks again to the tireless Jon Rahoi of San Francisco for putting this function in.

Yesterday’s Omen forum was fairly interesting. What about Michael Mann‘s Miami Vice? Here’s the trailer…watch it and tell us what you’re thinking deep down. Does it look like $180 million or $125 million? Impossible to gauge, obviously, but the word “priceless” could also apply. For me, an urban-based Mann film is a near-guarantee of a first-rate, high-style mood piece. Unless he’s wildly off his game, I anticipate seeing this thing three or four times.

Such is the deep-dish appeal of black-and-white CinemaScope (i.e., 2.35 to 1) films, especially when they’ve been well-mastered for DVD, that even the relatively mediocre ones like The Longest Day stir my interest. Especially with this verdict from DVD Savant that says Fox’s Cinema Classics Collection DVD of the film, which came out almost two weeks ago, is “a great improvement over their previous non-enhanced transfer.”

The comments that came in yesterday about The Omen (20th Century Fox, 6.6) show that HE readers are down on it. But something tells me that Average Joe moviegoers are going to give it a $20 million-plus opening . It might die the second weekend (if it’s what I think it might be, I think it’s reasonable to predict that it will die 11 days in), but it didn’t cost very much to make, and there’s something about the novelty of that 6.6.06 opening that people may get into, or are into already.

Columbia Pictures has hired DaVinci Code screenwriter Akiva Goldsman to adapt Dan Brown’s ‘s “Angels and Demons”, another complex European potboiler about brainy Harvard professor of religious symbology Robert Langdon (i.e., Tom Hanks‘ DaVinci character) uncovering a dark plot. A Guardian story says that “no deals have yet been reached for Hanks and director Ron Howard to work on the film, but it is understood that both would have first refusal of the film.” Earth to Guardian: Hanks and Howard won’t come within ten city blocks of this thing. Their careers weren’t hurt by The DaVinci Code, but those $320 million worldwide DaVinci bucks aside, they sure as shit weren’t enhanced either. It’s possible Hanks and Howard enjoyed being mocked and torn down by critics and would like to repeat the experience, but I doubt it. Consider this “Angles and Demons” Amazon synopsis: “Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is shocked to find proof that the legendary secret society, the Illuminati — dedicated since the time of Galileo to promoting the interests of science and condemning the blind faith of Catholicism — is alive, well, and murderously active. Brilliant physicist Leonardo Vetra has been murdered, his eyes plucked out, and the society’s ancient symbol branded upon his chest. His final discovery, antimatter, the most powerful and dangerous energy source known to man, has disappeared — only to be hidden somewhere beneath Vatican City on the eve of the election of a new pope. Langdon and Vittoria, Vetra’s daughter and colleague, embark on a frantic hunt through the streets, churches, and catacombs of Rome, following a 400-year-old trail to the lair of the Illuminati, to prevent the incineration of civilization.” I mean, good God!