Day: July 20, 2009

“How did you get stahted with this stawrey?,” a junket journalist asked Thirst director Park Chan-Wook early this afternoon. “What was the creativity in makin’ this film?”

A few seconds later this same journalist asked me not to take photos of Park because she was sitting right next to him and didn’t want her face in the picture. I took a few shots at the get-go because I didn’t want the usual posed-smiling shots. I never thought about including any face-shots of any journalists sitting nearby, but being asked by this woman not to do this tempted me to think otherwise.

I always have these feelings when I attend junket round-tables. I half-pay attention to what the talent is saying about him/herself and the film he/she is promoting while bracing myself for the awful junket questions that are sometimes asked.

Here’s an mp3 of the whole sit-down, which lasted around 35 or 40 minutes.

Based on Emile Zola‘s Therese Raquin, Thirst is a grotesque morality with some extremely hot love scenes. The lovers are a Catholic priest (Song Kang ho) and a repressed housewife (Kim Ok bin). The priest is tortured by his vampirism; the housewife feels liberated by it. I loved the sensual abandon that came out of Kim’s performance, but felt a little dragged down by Song’s moral writhing.

Just as Stanley Kubrick was slavishly devoted to the ethos and plot points of Arthur Schnitzler Traumnovelle, Park Chan-Wook is devoted to the moralistic fatalism and plot points of Emile Zola‘s Therese Racquin — at least as far as the priest character is concerned.

Here’s how I put my question to him, and here’s how he answered through his translator..

Except no one today believes that people suffer absolute damnation and death for their sins. People who’ve done something “bad” or criminal rarely pay the price. If they pay the price they get past it and move on. They atone and compartmentalize and reinvent themselves and write a book or star in a reality show or become born-again Christians in prison. There’s a world of difference between the emotionally propelled vampires in Twilight and the guilty priest vampire in Thirst.

I don’t have to explain any particular stinking reasons about why I posted this. Okay, here’s one. It’s interesting in hindsight how this one scene created a vivid (one could say racial) stereotype — the scheming predatory sociopath with the wild eyes and evil grin. The Treasure of Sierra Madre was released 61 years ago, and this type of villain — i.e., so deeply in love with his evil nature that he can’t help flaunting it — is still with us. “I don’t care if you think I’m a bad guy. Because I am a bad guy — I admit it. And I love it\ besides.”

I’ve seen Cold Souls. It’s intriguing and mildly amusing at times, but for a comedy in which a New York actor literally plays himself (in this instance Paul Giamatti) it’s no Being John Malkovich either. My usual reaction to seeing a comedy that doesn’t entirely work is to complain that they should’ve toned down the schtick. But Cold Souls could’ve used a bit more schtick. Odd — I never thought I’d hear myself say that.

I’m saying there’s something a bit too dry and studied about it. The director/writer, Sophie Barthes, isn’t into fooling around for its own sake, but this is exactly what Cold Souls needs. It need a little Buck Henry or Sarah Silverman or David O. Russell attitude. But it’s not half bad.

My only other thought is that Giamatti needs to (a) stop losing hair follicles and (b) get back to his Sideways weight. He needs to be Miles again — seriously. He needs to make time stand still. He needs to dip himself into amber and just be that guy for the next 50 or 60 years.

HE reader James Kent was at the Harkins Tempe Marketplace cinema in Tempe, Arizona last weekend, and observed the following: “My wife and I walked passed the theater entrance to Bruno and noticed hey had a big sign posted in front that absolutely no one under the age of 18 would be permitted without parent or legal guardian. They even posted an usher to check IDs at the door. There was also a big sign up at the main ticket counter. Now, just two doors down there were no such signs in front of the R-rated The Hangover or three doors down at Public Enemies. Homophobia in this super-conservative state is clearly alive and well.” Not to mention Navan, Ireland.

“I don’t know how much you follow the Emmys,” writes HE reader Matthew Morettini, “but something noteworthy came out of last week’s nominations. Entourage‘s Jeremy Piven, winner of three Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series awards for three years straight (’06 through ’08), wasn’t even nominated. And there are six nominees! My guess? His fellow actors were appalled by his walking thermometer Speed-the-Plow shenanigans and decided to send him a message about professionalism. David Mamet couldn’t have written it better.”

It takes a special improvisational Thelonious Monk-like approach to running a website business to forget to renew your domain name. Everything’s jake now but my aversion to Sir Thomas More-like regularity made for a truly delightful morning.

And now I’m running to a Thirst junket that I’ll probablly be a few minutes late for. All kinds of to-do’s are piling up as I speak. No further filing until mid-afternoon. A screening of The Ugly Truth happens early this evening.