Forest Whitaker and 50 Cent (a.k.a., Curtis Jackson) playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in another adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, with Abel Ferrara directing? This is the worst idea I’ve heard in months. It sounds awful. It would be one thing if the actors looked vaguely similar or at least had similar physiques. These guys don’t even look like cousins. We all want Ferrara to keep body and soul together, but of all the things he could do…

Lou Ye‘s graphically gay Spring Fever didn’t arouse me pro or con or any which way. I tried tapping out a reaction last night but nothing happened. I walked around and shot video instead. I tried again this morning, couldn’t get it up. So I’m deferring to Derek Elley’s 5.13 Variety review, which I fully agree with.

“Three years after tweaking the nose of China’s Film Bureau with full-frontal nudity and direct references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident in Summer Palace, mainland helmer Lou Ye is at it again — this time with lashings of gay sex — in the five-way ensembler Spring Fever,” he begins.

“Pic circumvents the bureau’s five-year filmmaking ban on Lou by being registered as a Hong Kong-French co-production, though beyond fests (especially gay ones) and the hardcore arthouse crowd, this over-long, very Euro-flavored Spring won’t make many B.O. wickets bloom.”

Fish Tank star Katie Jarvis “was having an argument with her boyfriend across a train platform at Tibury Town station in the East of England when she was approached by a casting director,” writes Indiewire‘s Eugene Hernandez in a piece called “The Discovery of Cannes (so far): Katie Jarvis.”

“Jarvis, who’d never acted before, didn’t believe she was actually being approached for a film and intially declined to give over her phone number. Later, when asked to dance during an audition, she also declined. But dancing is crucial to the young character of Mia in the film, so the room was cleared and she danced alone in front of a camera. ‘We were looking for a real girl,’ Arnold said this morning in Cannes.

“Well, in Katie Jarvis they certainly found one. Jarvis’ bio reads simply: ‘Katie makes her acting debut in Fish Tank.'”

A “real girl,” I would add, in the instinctual Bristol Palin sense of the term. Jarvis isn’t in Cannes because she gave birth last weekend. Frankly? If Jarvis was into acting or at least trying to make the most of her opportunity, would she have decided to have a kid just as filming was ending, or soon after? (Fish Tank was shot last summer.) If she was committed to having a child this early in life, you’d think she’d at least wait a year or two and see what might come from the acclaim and attention. Kids are expensive.

Prior to last night’s 7pm showing of Lou Ye‘s Spring Fever at the Salle Debussy, journalists were treated to high-quality video of celebrities arriving for the red-carpet premiere of Up, which was happening next door. Watch and listen. I heard swooning sounds when Aishwarya Rai appeared.

We’re all struggling to get over and break through into something or some realm that will make us feel happier or less miserable. Teenagers, of course, struggle and suffer the most, at least in their own heads. I went through emotional hell from age 13 to 18, and the only thing good about it, looking back, is that I grew past it. It could’ve killed me but it didn’t.

Katie Jarvis in Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank.

I know that if a gifted filmmaker had made a study of this period in my life and turned it into a two-hour drama, the result would most likely have been depressing. This kid is a near-goner, film critics would say. Smart and loves movies, but no hunger or vision or interest in building his life into something. Defined mainly by anger at his father and partying with his friends.

But I had, at least, caring, literate, well-off parents of good character who instilled a disciplined approach to living and working, and who kept urging me to stay focused, etc. My life eventually panned out but it was definitely touch-and-go for a while, largely due to effects of my father’s alcoholism (which, to his credit, he eventually dealt with by joining AA). We all have our sad tales to tell, but God help the kids out there now with issues like mine but who have dreary parents with self-absorbed attitudes, or are growing up in bad-influence, trash-culture neighborhoods in which everyone is just going through the motions.

The central question in any teenage-struggle drama is not just “do you believe in the reality of what this kid is going through?” but “does this kid have some ace in the hole that might save him/her?” Because if they don’t — if it’s just cigarettes and booze and rage and kicking around with no end-game in mind, and with no mentor in sight — then it’s hard to emotionally engage because you know (or strongly suspect) where this kid is headed.

You don’t have to believe that a kid might get lucky and pull through somehow — not every hard-knocks drama has to end with a sense of hope or salvation — but there’s something in all of us that pulls back when we see a slow-motion tragedy in progress. It becomes a kind of dull horror story — interesting if the director is a gifted observer and has a good eye, but only in spots and spurts because the central issue has been all but decided.

Arnold (l.) and Fassbender at this morning’s Fish Tank press conference — 5.14, 11:35 am.

This is more or less the case with Andrea Arnold‘s admirably tough and grim Fish Tank, which screened this morning in the Grand Lumiere. It’s about Mia (Katie Jarvis), an angry 15 year-old who loves to dance but has no support system of any kind. She lives with an all-but-worthless mom and a plucky kid sister in a dirty and cluttered apartment in a low-income British hellhole. (The film was shot in Kent, England.) And you just know she ain’t goin’ nowhere, barring some miracle.

So this is basically a female Billy Elliot with no hope, no shot, no Julie Walters to teach and encourage, no father willing to break his back in order to pay for his son’s education at a London arts academy, no Marc Bolan singing “I Love To Boogie”….none of that. (Well, okay, there’s a cut of “California Dreamin'” by…crap, I’ve forgotten his name.) Fish Tank is extremely well captured with a powerhouse performance by Jarvis, but it’s all about the shit end of the stick.

The story is about how Mia gets it in her head that her mom’s new boyfriend, a handsome, good natured security guard named Connor (Michael Fassbender), may have a bit of what she needs. A friendly smile, a kindly attitude, a positive paternal-ish influence. And for a while he seems like a good thing, especially with his encouragements about Mia’s dancing, which he says is “great.” But then you know what happens. And if you can’t guess you need to think harder.

The grimness in Fish Tank is, I think, vaguely similar to the mood and material in Tony Richardson‘s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Tom Courtenay played an angry resentful teen who winds up in a borstal for thievery, but his ace in the hole — i.e., being a good long-distance runner — is used to deliver a jolting dramatic turn at the finale, and one that said something profound about nihilism among working-class youths of the early ’60s. Fish Tank‘s story never even begins to build into anything remotely similar. It pretty much stays in the pit from start to finish.

The chops in Fish Tank are accomplished and impressive. Arnold, who directed and wrote, knows exactly what she’s doing — she’s the real deal as far as having a voice and a vision of life is concerned. I liked that she and cinematographer Robbie Ryan shot the film in 1.33, which is usually a result of an intention or a deal to air it on analog TV. Fassbender, a very hot guy now, is natural and believable, charming and genuine. Ryan’s hand-held camera work is unpretentious and the images are appropriately plain — i.e., naturally lit but not excessively grim.

It feels right all the way, in short, but it didn’t leave me with much save the quality of the work. It didn’t so much remind me of how I felt at that age as much as return me to that mindset with even grimmer circumstances. I was angry but Mia is so furious she’s close to emotional idiocy.

Note: It was announced at the press conference that Jarvis isn’t in Cannes due to having had a baby last weekend.

One super-efficient way to blow euros during an eight or nine day visit to the Cannes Film Festival is to eat out every night. It’s much cheaper to (a) work late and (b) eat fruit, paninis, party food and bring home bottles of beer. But it’s great to wander around and watch. Makes for a mildly dull video, I admit, but I’m glad I shot this. Mild contact high.

In his just-posted review of Francis Coppola‘s Tetro, which will open the Director’s Fortnight program in Cannes, Variety‘s Todd McCarthy has at least one unqualified thing to say, which is that the film will “likely be most remembered for introducing a highly promising young actor, Alden Ehrenreich.

18 year-old Tetro costar Alden Ehrenreich.

“Allegedly first noticed by Steven Spielberg in a homevideo played at a bat mitzvah and subsequently discovered by longtime casting ace and producer Fred Roos, the 18-year-old Ehrenreich manages the remarkable feat of resembling by turns three of the leading actors from The Departed.

“When he first appears, he looks like the younger brother of Leonardo DiCaprio; then, at certain moments, his smile and the look in his eye recall Jack Nicholson, while his head and facial shape are reminiscent of Matt Damon.

“Not only that, he has a winning screen presence and proves entirely up to the role’s dramatic requirements.”

While the film itself is “markedly better than [Copppola’s] previous small-scaled, self-financed film, Youth Without Youth, Tetro is still a work of modest ambition and appeal. Gloriously shot in mostly black-and-white widescreen in Buenos Aires, Coppola’s first original screenplay since 1974’s The Conversation hinges on the tension between two long-separated brothers dominated by an artistic genius father.

“The angst-ridden treatment of Oedipal issues makes the picture play out like a passably talented imitation of O’Neill, Williams, Miller and Inge, and thus it feels like the pale product of an over-tilled field.

“Coppola has spent much of his career, as well as a great deal of his own money, seeking the ideal state of truly independent filmmaking. The trouble, as always, is in being careful what you wish for, since when he finds creative nirvana, he frequently has trouble delivering the full goods. Tetro represents something of a middle ground in that respect.”

The Playlist‘s Rodrigo Perez has posted a riff and some links about an alleged homoerotic subcurrent in Guy Ritchie‘s Sherlock Holmes. It feels like a dicey presumption, but there’s at least a possibility that Holmes could knock Humpday off the bromance pedestal.

“The dreaded ‘bromance’ term has been brought up several times in discussions surrounding Guy Ritchie‘s action tentpole, Sherlock Holmes,” he begins. “But even more explicit — much to the chagrin of producer Joel Silver, to be sure — are claims from the actors in the film itself, who not so subtly have already suggest the ‘gay’ word in referencing the very-tight relationship between Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and his trusty sidekick Watson (Jude Law) Not an appellation you probably want associated with a blockbuster.

“Sherlock star Rachel McAdams has already said the film is, ‘kind of the love story, actually. I play supposedly Sherlock’s love interest, but it’s really Watson.”

“In [a] recent interview in USA Today, Jude said the homo-erotic overtones, filthy language, and bare-knuckle fighting are ‘quintessential parts’ of the Sherlock Holmes film (sounds like quite the rollick indeed).

“Or at least that’s how a lot of gay-friendly sites are positioning his quotes, and it’s not the first time. Put in ‘gay’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes’ in Google and you will get plenty of responses. It’s as if the gay community wants to adopt the film as there own.

“And hey, there’s nothing wrong with that at all, and the filmmakers are probably wry enough to acknowledge this too. But Silver and the studio? Hmm…”

In view of LexG having posted a teardown video of jeffmcm on the Hot Blog, is this the beginning of a YouTube flame war between these two? I’m not in this, but you can’t say it’s not faintly amusing.

Funny People (comedy, Universal,7/31/09) — R, “language and crude sexual humor throughout, and some sexuality.” Bruno (comedy, Universal, 7/10/09) — R, “pervasive strong and crude sexual content, graphic nudity and language.”

This Michael Fleming story in Variety is nominally about a western called Unbound Captives, which is set to begin filming at the end of this year with Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz and Robert Pattinson in the leads. The heart of the story is about how Madeline Stowe, the once very-hot actress who (no offense) has been pretty much over for the last six or seven years if not longer, not only co-wrote the script but will now direct the feature. Read about her for twice turning down a huge go-away payday and tell me you don’t respect that.

The animated 3D Up (Disney/Pixar, 5.29) is a comic adventure fable of a very high order. Even by Pixar’s high standards it’s a notch or two above the norm. Visually luscious and spunky and intriguing at every turn, it’s an amusing (i.e., somewhat funny), sometimes touching, briskly paced film that’s about…well, pretty much everything that relatively healthy, forward-thinking middle-class people care about.

Like finding your dreams, making a family, dropping your guard, warming your heart, and standing up for your friends, for starters. As well as the finding of courage and fulfillment, the blooming of love, nurturing the past (as well as letting go of it), and embracing the now.

It revels in all this, and in a peppy, delightful and at times Chaplinesque way. (Particularly in a silent sequence that tells the story of loving marriage over the course of seventy years or so.) And without going cheap or coarse. It’s about as good as this sort of thing gets.

The story — a really cranky old guy and a cheery obese kid bond during the course of a balloon trip to a remote area in South America which holds enormous emotional significance for the old guy — is way off the ground. It’s kind of crazy-surreal in a sense, like a weird dream. It makes you wonder if director Pete Docter and co-director and screenwriter Bob Petersen get high at all, or at least used to get high. (Once you’ve turned on you never lose that stoner sensibility.)

And yet it’s a fairly square and tidy thing as the same time. It’s not meant as a putdown to say that Up is too immersed in buoyant punchiness and mainstream movie-tude, which basically boils down to Pixar’s always-front-and-center task of giving the family audience stuff to laugh at and go “oooh” and “aahh” about, to finally matter all that much. It’s too entertaining, in put it another way, to sink in all that deeply.

And yet it’s almost too good for the family market. You just know there’s a significant sector of that crowd that will be saying to each other after they see it, “What’s with the old guy? Where was the truly-over-the-top fantastical stuff? Where were the cheap junk-food highs? Why didn’t it throw in a little toilet humor to round things out? Why didn’t they go with a manic-nutso chase sequence of some kind? You know…why didn’t they thrill-ride it a bit more?”

(l.) Charles Muntz character in Up; relatively recent shot of Kirk Douglas.

I’m not saying that people who like lowbrow entertainment talk like this (if they did they wouldn’t be lowbrow) but if they did they’d probably continue the thought by saying, “It’s not like we don’t appreciate quality-level movies but Up is almost too nutritious for us. It’s good stuff — bright, funny, lots of fun and amazing-looking — but it feels like it was made by people who went to college and eat vegetables and exercise two or three times a week, unlike us.”

Then again they might relate to it due to the lead adolescent character, Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai), physically resembling a high percentage of American kids today. I don’t care what anyone says — I think Docter and Petersen knew this would strike a chord out there.

I sure didn’t see it as a metaphor for anything in my life, I can tell you. It’s just a high-strung story with a lot of gee-gosh stuff going on and some recognizable issues propelling the two main characters.

So what am I saying, boiled down? That it’s really quite well made and has an almost stoner sensibility in portions but may be a little too good for the lowbrows and at the same time isn’t really deep and resonant enough to penetrate with quality-cinema buffs? Something like that. I realize what I’m writing (and re-reading) may sound a bit contradictory but there it is.

The only other thought I have is that the face of an old explorer character named Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer) seems to have been inspired by Kirk Douglas. Or at least on Douglas’s cheekbones.

Note: The title of this piece means I’m down with this film, that I’m cool with it. That’s obvious from reading the review but some might interpret it to mean, you know, “down” with it as in “off with its head.”