One of my reactions during the watching of Funny Games last night was a strange political resonance. In a baroque, very specific way, Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet — the polite but completely psychopathic fiends who, we come to realize, are focused on delivering a terrible fate to a house built upon love, health and a semblance of sanity — struck me as twin metaphors for the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Consider the following: (1) Just as HRC is now “in the house” and won’t leave, despite many reasonable people imploring her to do so because of the destruction she’s threatening, Pitt and Corbet’s tennis-outfit-wearing killers are also literally in the house and won’t leave; (2) Like Clinton, Pitt and Corbet are smiling, “well-mannered” and very persistent; (3) they have haircuts similar to Clinton’s — medium-length, swept-back blonde hair; (4) Pitt and Corbet are clearly monsters, a term that has recently been used to describe Senator Clinton by former Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power and writer Seth Graham Smith in a 3.9 Huffington Post piece; (5) Pitt and Corbet are without a shred of conscience or remorse about their destructiveness, as one could reasonably say about the Clinton campaign and their racially-tinted, bomb-Dresden, burn-the-house-down campaign at this stage; and (6) Pitt and Corbet’s actions make Funny Games a kind of horror film, which is how political columnist Andrew Sulivan has described the Clinton campaign in a 3.9 London Times article.
See? Not as much of a stretch as you thought. Think about it.

Mark Olsen‘s 3.9 L.A. Times interview with Funny Games director-writer Michael Haneke mentions British-based producer Chris Coen buying the U.S. remake rights, but it doesn’t explain why the people at Warner Independent saw it as a worthwhile film to distribute. If it had been my decision, I would have said no.
Consider, for example, what a guy who calls himself “Mr. Mystery” wrote earlier today about seeing a Funny Games preview last weekend at a suburban theatre: “Total silence until the end when someone said ‘fuck you!’ to the screen, [and] the audience applauded.” What loon would say to him or herself, “Now that‘s a film I want my company to distribute.” I respect Funny Games for what it is and I admire Haneke tremendously, but what could Warner Independent president Polly Cohen have been thinking?
Olsen writes that Haneke “insisted on casting Naomi Watts — he said he would likely have not made the new film if she had said no.” But why is Watts listed as the film’s executive producer? What was that about? Did she agree to cut her price to nothing so she could have a juicy role to play?

“If this movie knows it’s merely a movie, and concedes as much, why should we honor its mayhem with any genuine fright?,” asks New Yorker critic Anthony Lane about Funny Games.

“When Michael Pitt turns to the camera and asks, with a smile, ‘You really think it’s enough?,’ or ‘You want a proper ending, don’t you?,’ we don’t feel nearly as chastened or ashamed as [director Michael] Haneke would like. We feel patronized, which is one of the worst moods that can beset an audience. Would Psycho have been a more profound film if Norman Bates had turned off the shower halfway through, adjusted his dress, and said to us, ‘Don’t worry about the blood. It’s chocolate sauce‘?”

Michael Haneke‘s Funny Games (Warner Independent, 3.14) is simultaneously the ugliest and most repulsive violent melodrama I’ve ever seen (including the thoroughly disgusting I Spit On Your Grave) and the smartest and nerviest critique of sexy-violent movies in the bang-flash vein of Quentin Tarantino, Tony Scott, Oliver Stone, Eli Roth and other purveyors and marketers of homicidal style.

A fair percentage of those brave enough to see this Warner Independent release this weekend are going to walk out on it — trust me. It’s a hateful and infuriating film, no question, and yet it has a worthwhile point. And you can’t not respect Haneke for this.
It’s certainly one of the ballsiest movies ever released by Warner Bros. (technically Warner Independent) in its 90 year history. I mean this in a sense that average people might come out of showings feeling enormous hate for Warner Bros. for having done so. Seriously. If the final effect wasn’t so stunning and dispiriting I could imagine people beating up ushers on the way out.
It’s basically a chilly, creepy home-invasion horror story about two young, ice-cold psychopaths (Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet) who terrorize a couple (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Devon Gearhart) and their young son with the intention of gradually killing them. No theft, no ransom, no rape…just sadistic mind games followed by brutal maiming and then awful death.

But it’s not a movie that pulls you into the story and persuades you to suspend disbelief and blah, blah. It’s strictly a “game” piece — an exercise film that feels real and naturalistic as far as it goes until it periodically pulls back, stops and tells you (in three instances with Pitt literally talking to the camera), “We’re wanking you off and trying to get you mad…get it? We’re making a point about all the violent gunplay movies you’ve enjoyed ad infniitum for the last 30 or 35 years, starting with The French Connection but particularly since the start of the Tarantino wave in the early ’90s. Violence is horrible, ghastly, reprehensible ….and it’s time for the all the little moviegoing children out there to wake up to this simple fact.”
Funny Games is a shot-by-shot, line-for-line remake of Haneke’s 1997 Austrian- based original. (Which I’m going to watch on DVD this weekend.) In the press notes Haneke says that “when I first envisioned Funny Games in the middle of the ’90s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch this movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema, its violence, its naivete…the way American cinema toys with human beings” and the way some of them make “violence consumable.”
What happens in the first 30 or 35 minutes of this film is so ugly and stomach- turning that I was starting to suffer an anxiety attack. I wanted to get up and walk into the movie, Purple Rose of Cairo-style, and shoot Corbet, whose face enraged me. His eyes and mouth especially. (If I see this guy on the street I’m going to have to take a breath and count to ten to keep from taking a poke at him.) I was muttering to myself, “This is the best argument for gun ownership and the NRA I’ve ever seen in a movie in my life.”

I’d love to get into particulars (there are ten or twelve aspects I’d love to sort through and dissect), but I’ll just get yelled at for spoiling. Fair warning: I’m going to discuss every damn aspect of this film that I feel like discussing, no holds barred, sometime on Sunday. No spoiler whining or squealing will be tolerated. If you want to get into it, see it on Friday or Saturday (a good idea regardless given the likelihood that this film is going to be gone very quickly) and get your ducks in order.

Edward Norton is reportedly fighting with Marvel’s chairman David Maisel and production prexy Kevin Feige over the final shape and tone of The Incredible Hulk. Quelle surprise! Norton has been getting into post-production scraps off and on for ten years now, starting with American History X. He’ll always be a collaborator and never just “an actor for hire” — and anyone who hires him knows this. Besides — arguing over a film’s final cut is a very healthy way to go. Better that than an atmosphere of complacency and mutual masturbation.

The hard-luck Chapter 27, the killing-of-John-Lennon drama that’s been kicking around for two years now, will finally open on 3.28. Jared Leto (as Mark David Chapman), Lindsay Lohan, etc. A screening invitation for New York screenings arrived today; nothing yet for LA. Not in my inbox, at least.

The beginning of this Paul Thomas Anderson mash-up is absolutely rancid, dreadful…I wanted to strangle the guy (going by the name of “barringer82”) who cut it. Then it turns into a first-rate thing — exquisitely cut, thought-through, avoiding the easy jokes. Except, like Magnolia, it goes on too long.

A stern argument against Hillary Clinton‘s claim that she has passed the “Commander in Chief test,” posted today and written by Greg Craig, former director, Policy Planning Office, U.S. State Department.

Showest, the longstanding exhibitor convention, kicks off in Las Vegas today. Exhibitors attend because…I don’t know, ask them. It’s basically a dog-and-pony show (stars, speeches, product reels). Trade journalists attend for exhibition stories, for the relationship-fortifying schmooze opportunities, and to report on the product reels (or the occasional debut of a new trailer that hasn’t gone online yet).

I haven’t attended since the mid ’90s. I had a perfectly miserable time. Vibe- and energy-wise it felt like the exact opposite of being, say, at a great big-time film festival or even a small cool one — like I was marooned on another planet with a bunch of chowderheads who didn’t know any more than I did and were basically there to kick back and maybe enjoy a nasty experience on the side. (Which is what all middle Americans imagine they’ll do when they visit this grotesque town. And which 99% of them don’t have the balls to even attempt.)
I wouldn’t dream of going again. I hate Vegas anyway, and I can get whatever news that may come out of it right here at my desk.

Ever since Hillary Clinton failed to correctly pronounce the name of Russian president Dmitri Medvedev (“Medvuh.. vuh-devah, whatever”) during that Ohio debate, I’ve been wondering how to say it myself. And now longtime Herald Tribune and N.Y. Times foreign correspondent Serge Schemann has written a piece that includes a phonetic spelling (courtesy of Voice of America): “mehd-V(y)EHD-yehf.” Say it over and over (I’ve done it about 20 times now) and it gradually begins to feel half-negotiable.

Israeli film blogger Yair Raveh (a.k.a., Cinemascope) has posted an mp3 of a song called “One More Word,” a tune from a well-regarded low-budgeter film called Strangers. Favorably reviewed after a Sundance showing two months ago by Variety‘s John Anderson, the film will next be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The tune was written by Israeli musician Eyal Leon Katzav but recorded by Once stars and Best Song Oscar winners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in the Czech Republic a week or so before the Oscar telecast. Strangers is said to be a bittersweet drama in a Romeo and Juliet vein about an Israeli guy and a Palestinian gal, etc. Co-directors Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor plan, Raveh says, to shoot Hansard and Irglova for the music video.