Month: May 2009

Yesterday evening I attended a meet-and-greet at HBO headquarters for Burma VJ, a doc by Danish director Anders Ostergaard. A portrait of bravery and spirit in the face of repression, it portrays the 2007 “Saffron Revolution” in Burma/Myanmar through smuggled footage taken by Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), the independent journalist group.

At yesterday evening’s HBO party for Burma VJ, three Burmese Monks who led ’07’s Saffron Revolution (l. to r.) — Venerable U Agga Nyana, Venerable U Pyinar Zawta, and Venerable U Gawsita.

Burma VJ director Anders Ostergaard.

Oscilloscope Laboratories is theatrically releasing the much-praised, award-wnning doc throughout the summer (including a 5.20 booking at Manhattan’s Film Forum and a 5.27 one at L.A.’s Sunset 5). HBO will begin airing it in early 2010, presumably in concert with some Best Feature Doc Oscar momentum.

I spoke with Ostergaard as well as David Fenkle, partner and co-founder of Oscilloscope Pictures, but my recordings of both conversations are muddy sounding due to party noise, especially the one with Ostergaard. But you can make some of it out.

Fenkle’s view, boiled down, is that Burma VJ, which yesterday won the Golden Gate Award for best investigative documentary at the San Francisco Film Festival, has an excellent shot at being remembered come Oscar time given (a) the quality and (b) the incredible personal bravery that went into shooting and smuggling out the footage.

Burma/Myanmar has been ruled with an iron hand by a military junta (a.k.a., the State Peace and Development Council) since 1988. The Burmese dictators are world-famous for their brutality.

The 2007 Burmese anti-government protests (a.k.a., the Saffron Revolution) began on 8.15.07. They happened due to “the unannounced decision of the ruling junta to remove fuel subsidies which caused the price of diesel and petrol to suddenly rise as much as 66%, and the price of compressed natural gas for buses to increase fivefold in less than a week,” according to a Wikipedia account.

This Regan MacNeil Exorcist figure looks like a class job — correct colors and fabrics, realistic bedpost wrappings — and costs a mere $36 and change plus shipping. But where would you put something like this? On your fireplace mantle? On your dresser in your bedroom? Inside a specially constructed glass case in your den? Imagine looking at this thing every day for the rest of your life.

Time‘s Richard Corliss has declared that Pixar/Disney’s Up “will, like last year’s WALL*E, prove to be one of the most satisfying movie experiences of its year. The story of a septuagenarian grouch who uses his cane, hearing aid and dentures to thwart all evildoers; a buddy movie whose pals are separated by 70 years; a love story that transcends the grave — has there been a movie like this in the history of feature animation?

“Extending the patented Pixar mix of humor and heart, this is the studio’s most deeply emotional and affecting work, sending the audience on a journey in two new directions — penetratingly inward and exaltedly up.”

I spoke yesterday with a Los Angeles friend who saw a flat version of Up a day or two ago (as opposed to the 3D version that will show in Cannes and in select venues once it opens on 5.29) and he was very thumbs-up also.

Pixar and Up co-directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson to Worldwide Audiences: This is Russell, the lead adolescent in our film and our idea of a cute kid. And let’s not have any jabs about his weight — it’s who the kid is inside that counts. Corpulence doesn’t matter. Besides, obesity is normal among American kids these days so why not reflect that?

Disney/Pixar’s Up will open on 5.29.

Russell, you can assume, eats loads of fast food, sits around a lot and, barring a major attitude change, will eventually grow into an full-sized Jabba who will face myriad health problems and a diminished life expectancy. And that’s fine. Because the size of your body isn’t as important as the size of your heart. And backing us up on this point are thousands of internet chat-room types ready to rip into anyone who suggests that presenting obesity as a normal and accepted adolescent condition is some kind of cultural problem. It’s not! Embrace the balloon-ness!

“With J.J. Abrams‘ reboot of the Star Trek franchise about to hit theaters, critic and new L video essayist Matt Zoller Seitz muses on the appeal of Mr. Spock, the duality of man, all that stuff” — Preface to “Vulcan: The Soul of Spock” on L site, posted two days ago but unannounced by Seitz until this morning.

Sasha Grey‘s redefined coolness factor, nicely established by her appearance at Brandeis last week, just dropped about 15 points.

Like In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, I saw Angels and Demons last night also. But I’m not reviewing today because I thought there was some kind of embargo in place until next week…no? Tapley has written that he decided against reviewing because “the idea of tearing a film apart just doesn’t quite appeal to me, believe it or not.”

It’s cruel and heartless to publish high-quality telephoto-lens shots of over-40 actors and actresses in bathing suits on the beach. The attitude behind it is pure Day of the Locust. You’re on a beach in Maui and notice a woman of 42 or so in a bikini who’s had a couple of kids, and it’s nothing. But put a photo of same in the Daily Mail and it’s deliberate aggression on the part of the publishers and readership alike.

Arizona Star film critic and feature-writer Phil Villarreal has just been zotzed out of his movie job. He’s been informed that he’ll henceforth be on “general assignment on the Metro desk” and that they’re “not replacing the [film critic] position.”

My point earlier today about the porn industry being icky [and] filled with untalented and under-educated people didn’t convey the whole equation. The other half is that a fairly healthy percentage of the people who watch porn aren’t exactly sophisticated either. The proof is that not one porn film to my knowledge has ever been shot in black and white. The reason is that porn producers are afraid black-and-white films wouldn’t make any money because they know full well that most of the fans are commoners — no offense.

I’ve said two or three times before that my feelings about porn would change if the films were occasionally shot, lit, staged and acted like Ingmar Bergman‘s The Silence. But porn has never been about luscious silvery eroticism by way of Sven Nykvist; it’s about milky obviousness and fake shrieking and donkey ramming and bright colors saturated all to hell. It’s a kind of prison, porn is. And that fact tells you a lot about people who watch it.

Gay political blogger Michael Rogers was recently threatened with a physical beating during an on-camera interview by Washington, D.C.-based talk show host Doug Mckleway, of Channel 8’s “Let’s Talk Live!” Rogers is a principal talking head in Kirby Dick‘s Outrage (opening 5.8 in several cities), and Mckleway was expressing his extreme anger and discomfort at the idea of outing closeted Washington, D.C. legislators, which is what the film is about.

Without hinting or suggesting anything, please watch the clip and offer thoughts about what is suggested by Mckleway’s telling Rogers that he’d like to take him outside and punch him in the face? Why would Mckleway be this enraged about anti-gay Republican legislators’ right to sexual privacy? Obviously he has some kind of dog in this hunt.

In my 4.25 review of Outrage, I said that it “seems to me like an exceptionally tight and disciplined and truthful testament. It’s ballsy and straight and coming from a healthy place. It’s certainly one of the best-made films I’ve seen this year, and without question one of the toughest and bravest.

“Dick’s aim is to expose a bizarre psychology on the part of closeted politicians who’ve voted against gay civil rights as a way of suppressing their own issues. Bluntly and unambiguously and without any dicking around, Outrage names names. Dick seems to have done his homework; you can sense discipline and exactitude and what seems like solid sourcing all through it. I came away convinced that it’s better to look at this tendency frankly and plainly than to just let it fester.

“I still feel opposed to personally outing anyone, but Dick’s motive is clearly to let air and sunlight into a series of Washington, D.C. situations that have been about shadows for too long. That’s what kept hitting me over and over as I watched — i.e., that Outrage is doing a fine job of persuading me that it’s all about telling the truth. I believed it, I believed it, I believed it.”