Month: June 2009

11 days and counting until the N.Y./L.A. platform break of Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker. No Metacritic reactions are posted but the current 89% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating is probably indicative of critical reaction to come. Will it matter? Will the no-Iraq-movies-under-any-circumstances crowd stick to their guns? Will the idea that it’s actually a suspense thriller by way of Aliens take hold? Tick, tick, tick, tick…

One of the best reviews so far was written by Time‘s Richard Corliss nine months ago, way back at the Venice Film Festival. It’s titled “A Near-Perfect War Film.” The last two graphs read as follows:

“On his first mission, Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner) releases a cloud of smoke, protecting him from sharpshooters but obliterating his comrades’ view of him. (There’s another company ready to cover him closer to the action.) A taxi has just edged toward the suspected device; he tells the driver to back out of the area. No movement. James walks closer, repeats the order; stillness. He puts his gun against the man’s head: ‘Wanna back up?’ The car slides into reverse. ‘Well, if he wasn’t an insurgent,’ somebody says, ‘he sure is now.’

“Finding a string nearly buried in the street dirt, James finds it attached to seven bombs and matter-of-factly snaps the wire for each. OK, that’s done. Piece of cake, seven slices.

“It’s a creepy marvel to watch James in action. He has the cool aplomb, analytical acumen and attention to detail of a great athlete, or a master psychopath, maybe both.

“A quote from former New York Times Iraq expert Christopher Hedges that opens the film says, ‘War is a drug.’ Movies often editorialize on this theme: the man who’s a misfit back home but an efficient, imaginative killing machine on the battlefield. Bigelow and producer/screenwriter Mark Boal aren’t after that. They’re saying that, in a hellish peace-keeping operation like the U.S. deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan (James’ previous assignment), the Army needs guys like James.”

The N.Y. Daily News is reporting that a right-wing South Carolina activist named Rusty DePass was busted last Friday for writing a charming remark about Michelle Obama on his Facebook page.

And a few proud U.S. citizens are planning to stage a “Fire David Letterman rally” Tuesday afternoon (i.e. tomorrow) at 4:30 pm in front of the Ed Sullivan theatre (i.e. where Letterman tapes the show). “Press contacts” for the event, listed on an apparently official site, include New York State Assemblyman Brian Kolb, attorney Gwendolyn Lindsay-Jackson, and rightwing radio talk-show host John Ziegler.

Here’s an intriguing account of reactions to Michael Moore’s just-released teaser for his upcoming financial meltdown doc, written by a guy who caught a showing last Friday night.

I’ll be attending the first six days of the 2009 L.A. Film Festival this year — Thursday, 6.18 to Tuesday, 6.23. Which means I won’t be around for what could potentially be a fairly newsworthy event — i.e, a discussion with Jon Voight just prior to a “Behind The Scenes” screening of John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy on Thursday, 6.25, at 7:30 pm at the Billy Wilder theatre.

You know what I’m going to say now, right?

If I could attend I’d damn well ask Voight about the rightie rhetoric he’s been spewing about Barack Obama over the last year or so. And I’m suggesting here and now that in my absence that someone should man up, stand up and ask him to explain the facts and attitudes behind his views.

Voight obviously has a perfect Constitutional right to say whatever he wants and yes, he’s a fine actor who delivered a legendary performance in Midnight Cowboy (and in several other films including Coming Home, Runaway Train, Enemy of the State and Ali), but isn’t it fair in a q & a setting to respectfully question the guy about certain belligerent remarks he’s made?

Remarks that Obama is a “false prophet” and that his leadership is making us a “weak nation” and that his leadership will cause the “downfall” of the country,” I mean? And that stuff Voight said last summer in a Washington Times piece about Obama having “grown up with the teachings of [the] very angry [and] militant Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and Rev. Michael Pfleger” and that “we know too well that [he] will run this country in their mindset”?

Especially given the rightwing-nutter hate killings that have occured in recent weeks and how guys like Frank Rich and Paul Krugman are concerned about how intemperate and questionable remarks by rightwing demagogues may be enabling the haters and fanning the flames?

If no one brings up Voight’s Obama rants and Thursday’s q & a focuses entirely on a movie that was made 41 years ago…well, fine. It’s a film festival setting and why cause trouble, right? But if no one does there will be a huge elephant in the room. Don’t you just hate those discussion-session vibes when there’s something that everyone wants to ask about and get into but nobody brings it up because they don’t want to seem impolite or ungracious?

I obviously didn’t make it to Cinevegas this year but Indiewire reported this morning on the prizewinners. Kyle Patrick Alvarez‘s Easier With Practice, concerning a lonely-guy author who falls for a mysterious phone sex caller while on a road trip to promote his unpublished novel, won the feature competition Grand Jury Prize. (Who promotes unpublished novels?)

Writers Cory Knauf and Joseph McKelheer and director Robert Saitzyk won an Exceptional Artistic Achievement Award for Godspeed, a dramatic thriller “set in the lingering light of the Alaskan midnight sun,” per press notes. The doc award went to Douglas Tirola‘s em>All In: The Poker Movie.

Jessica Oreck‘s Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo won a Special Documentary Jury Prize for Artistic Vision. Destin Daniel‘s Short Term 12 won the CineVegas Short Film Jury Prize . Justin Nowell‘s Acting for the Camera won a special Grand Jury Prize in Directing.

No more beating around the Year One bush. It opens Friday and it’s time to deal with it. Harold Ramis‘s animal-skins comedy preems tonight in Manhattan; the local all-media showing is on Wednesday. I was told by a semi-trusted source a while back that it’s “staggering.” That could be an okay thing if that’s the case. You’re supposed to feel a bit giddy and off-balance after seeing a comedy.

The curious thing about the trailer is how Jack Black and Michael Cera seem to start out as cavemen and then time-travel a few thousand years into a kind of Romanesque Fellini Satyricon realm. How does that work, I wonder?

Twelve hours ago CNET News’ Daniel Terdiman reported that ‘as the Iranian election aftermath unfolded in Tehran — thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to express their anger at perceived electoral irregularities — an unexpected hashtag began to explode through the Twitterverse: ‘CNNFail.’

“Even as Twitter became the best source for rapid-fire news developments from the front lines of the riots in Tehran, a growing number of users of the microblogging service were incredulous at the near total lack of coverage of the story on CNN, a network that cut its teeth with on-the-spot reporting from the Middle East.

“For most of Saturday, CNN.com had no stories about the massive protests on behalf of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was reported by the Iranian government to have lost to the sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The widespread street clashes — nearly unheard of in the tightly controlled Iran — reflected popular belief that the election had been rigged, a sentiment that was even echoed, to some extent, by the U.S. government Saturday.

“‘The Obama administration is determined to press on with efforts to engage the Iranian government,’ the New York Times cited senior officials as having said Saturday, ‘despite misgivings about irregularities in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.’

“Yet even as word of the urban strife, seemingly led by those posting to Twitter, spread next around the world on news networks like the BBC, NPR, and the Times, CNN remained mostly mute. Even when the network’s Internet site finally posted a story late Saturday, the network’s first ‘story highlight’ was, ‘Ahmadinejad plans rally after winning second presidential term.'”

“If you can’t shove some real reform down the [Republican’s] throats now, when? Obama needs to start putting it on the line and fight the banks, the energy companies and the health care industry. What he needs in his personality is a little George Bush. Obama needs that some of that smug insufferable swagger that says ‘suck on it, America.’ [He] needs more audacity.”

Criterion’s Bluray of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal comes out Tuesday. “Love is the blackest of all plagues…if one could die of it, there would be some pleasure in love, but you don’t die of it.”

…with the sounds of chanting crowds and screaming women and the whup of billy clubs and the roar of burning buses. It’s where the action is, Anger Central, the flames of freedom flashing. And yet Americans, this afternoon, don’t seem to be paying all that much attention. Not as far as I can sense. I’m detecting more interest in the Yankee-Met game going on right now. It’s Sunday, bro…chill. The Hangover is #1 again. Zach Galifianakis!

Here‘s N.Y. Times reporter Roger Cohen discussing the suspicious aspects of Iran’s contested election.

In a review of Sony Home Video’s “The Jack Lemmon Collection,” a DVD package of five Columbia-produced films, N.Y. Times columnist Dave Kehr summarizes the “recurring predicament” of Lemmon’s screen characters as “that of the desperate conformist who ultimately discovers that conformity comes at too high a price.”

Very nice. Exactly. Kehr’s description is so clean that I’m envious. I’ve also begun to wonder how many other name-brand actors have experienced the same recurring predicament time and again? Actors and actresses who are so well known for a particular personality and character-type that screenwriters have adapted and wound up writing the same kind of story for this actor/actress, over and over?

How, for example, would one describe the recurring predicament of the classic Clint Eastwood character? “That of a low-key, steely-mannered nonconformist who tries to just get along, is challenged by ne’er do wells, and is always pushed into settling his scores by violent means.”

Jim Carrey? “That of an anxious but free-spirited eccentric who finds that expressing a heretofore suppressed side to his personality or experimenting with alternate values is fun for a while but ultimately makes things worse.”

Julia Roberts in the ’90s? “That of a spirited, independent-minded single gal who initially tries to breeze or arm’s-length her way through a relationship (or an adventure of some kind involving an attractive guy), only to eventually fall in love and put her serious emotional cards on the table.”

Seth Rogen? “That of an extremely bright but immature slacker-stoner who’s constantly being challenged by life’s complications to crawl out of his pot-smoking, lay-around conch shell and become an active, reality-facing, decision-making adult.”

Jeffrey Wells? “That of an enterprising and impassioned movie columnist whose daily opinions and musings are constantly challenged and sometimes belittled by internet trolls, this forcing a daily metaphorical shoot-out on Main Street with one or more of these hecklers.”

Shia LeBouf? “That of a plucky and somewhat irresponsible young guy trying to have fun and chase girls, only to be thrust into super-threatening situations involving supernatural life forms that force him to put away young-guy things and stand up and be a man.”

All interesting characters are defined by the three Ds — desire, deception and discovery.