Day: August 18, 2009

I wasn’t even invited to see David McKenzie‘s Spread, a nookie-and-moral-reckoning drama with Ashton Kutcher and Anne Heche. It opened last Friday and got killed by the critics. But Andrew O’Hehir‘s Salon review made me want to see it anyway. So I’m thinking about buying a ticket. Naah, I can’t do that. It would hurt too much if it sucks. But maybe I can get a screener from whomever.

“The indie-film hipoisie are likely to spurn it,” O’Hehir wrote, “[because] there’s no Diablo Cody nudge-nudge-wink-wink quality to Jason Dean Hall‘s screenplay, and it doesn’t exactly reverberate with wrenching, low-budget sincerity either.

‘But Mackenzie is a consummate stylist, one of British cinema’s emerging 21st-century talents, who has displayed a remarkable ability to make interesting movies that get in their own way and never reach wide audiences. [And] with Spread, Mackenzie follows the London-to-L.A. flight path of many British directors before him, and focuses his withering Scottish gaze on the soulless sexuality of the Southern California rich and wannabe-rich.

“The results suggest a mixture of early Paul Verhoeven and Tony Richardson‘s legendary film version of Evelyn Waugh‘s The Loved One. So, yeah, Spread is too clever by half to be an actual hit, while also lacking snob appeal. Too bad about that. Still, if the very funny, very dark and very precise thing that Kutcher and Mackenzie pull off here floats your boat, then getcher tickets right now — or just wait six weeks, because this one’s likely to go right through the theatrical ecosystem and onto DVD lickety-split.”

Despite Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu‘s Biutiful being listed by the IMDB as attached to Focus Features, a rep tells me it’s not a Focus Features domestic title and that the film doesn’t have a domestic distributor just yet. She added that CAA’s Beth Swofford is handling all requests. I called and left a message, etc. I also asked Inarritu directly…zip.

Javier Bardem , Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu.

The loglines — “a man involved in illegal dealing is confronted by his childhood friend, who is now a policeman” plus “a man (Bardem) who has recently lost a lover” — and the Barcelona shooting location indicates a smallish Spanish-language character drama. Javier Bardem is the star but I don’t even know if he’s the cop or the dealer. (Anyone?) Sounds like a 2010 release with a possible Cannes debut (AGI is one of their favorites) next May. So much for the ’09 Oscar Balloon, which was only based on spitball presumption in the first place.

Matt Zoller Seitz‘s video compilation of luscious, lip-smacking Quentin Tarantino dialogue highlights from the last 17 years is great stuff. It makes me nostalgic for the good old pre-Inglourious Basterds days. And it reminds that there’s nothing in Basterds that compares to these gems. Choice Basterds dialogue in a nutshell: “So it seems, to my great disappointment, zat you are not telling me everyzing dere is to know. Certain hints and indications have aroused my suspicions. And by the way, may I have another glass of your delicious milk?”

Seitz writes: “From Abernathy in Grindhouse describing how having sex with a dude named Cecil would rule out the possibility of being his girlfriend, to the title character of Kill Bill Vol. 2 defining the essence of superheroes as a prelude to revealing why Superman does not fit the paradigm, to Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction debating the implied carnal intent of a foot massage and the relative merits of pigs and dogs, the director’s films prefer verbal spectacle to the physical kind.

“Tarantino doesn’t just explore language’s capacity to reveal and conceal motives and personality, he shows how people pick words and phrases (consciously or subconsciously) in order to define themselves and others, and describe the reality they inhabit (or would like to inhabit). Even low-key and seemingly unimportant exchanges are as carefully choreographed as boxing matches. Clever flurries of interrogatory jabs are often blocked by witty responses; the course of conflict can be shifted by deft rhetorical footwork that re-frames the terms of debate.”

I missed Peter Howell‘s 8.5 scoop about the Tokyo Film Festival shunning The Cove. The Toronto Star critic got it the day before from Cove director Louie Psihoyos during a Toronto promotional visit. Psihoyos had been told that very day — August 4th — that Tokyo wasn’t taking The Cove. He said he’d been warned by a Tokyo festival director that the film might not make the cut for political reasons.

Howell tried to get a reaction from the Tokyo people…nothing. “It seemed like a done deal then,” Howell informs, “and I haven’t seen anything either online or off that contradicts my Aug. 5 report.”

So now the ball really is in Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu‘s court. If the festival changes its mind about The Cove, fine. But if not, as I wrote earlier today, Inarritu’s serving as jury president will be seen, at the very least, as an unfortunate gesture. It will indicate that he’s more or less down with the festival’s decision. Or is certainly not disputing it in any meaningful way. Definitely an unseemly situation. He should really think this one over. What’s right is right.

Update: In Contention‘s Kris Tapley has pushed this thread along and contributed his two cents.

It’s such a Guatamelan sweatbox outside I almost don’t want to go into Manhattan for screenings. It’s that bad. I can roll with Palm Springs heat. Bone-dry cactus heat is actually kind of pleasant if you’ve got a drink in your hand and an air-conditioned store to pop into when you need a break. But jungle-sweat Eighth Avenue heat is awful. You’re walking down the street and going “oh, man” with every other step. It affects your attitude, the sharpness of your thinking…everything. You feel two or three steps away from suffocation while standing on the West 4th street subway platform. Imagine what New Yorkers went through before air-conditioning came along.

The talk about MGM being in desperate financial condition and on its last legs has been going on for so many months that today’s news about Harry Sloan having surrendered his CEO position is almost a “yeah, so?” The reins will now be held by motion picture group chief Mary Parent and chief financial officer Bedi Singh. Sloan will continue as ceremonial chairman. I don’t even know why I’m posting this. Strictly Nikki Finke/Sharon Waxman/Kim Masters/Anne Thompson territory.

“Sloan, who was named to the CEO post in October 2005, was a disaster after inheriting MGM’s killer $3.7B debt and couldn’t tell the truth about how bad the studio’s situation really was,” Finke wrote this morning. “I hear he was naturally upset about being fired as CEO ‘but has come to terms with his removal.’ Parent and Singh, meanwhile, have kept MGM afloat by making a slate of movies with financial partners. I hear Mary Parent could have had walked out the door with her contract paid off. But she decided to stay and keep her fingers crossed. ‘Everyone’s linked arms and we’re full steam ahead,’ an MGM insider tells me. ‘We’ve got a fighting chance.'”

“We must have a public option,” President Obama said in one of his weekly addresses. “Must,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reminds. “But now he’s changed his mind on that apparently.” So now we’ll have “no public option, no single payer, no national health plan. Maybe some insurance reforms, maybe not. Depends on what else the Republicans want, probably.” This is damn disappointing.

A crudely written post on a blog called Racialicious makes what seems like a fair point about District 9, claiming that the subplot involving Nigerian gangsters has a racist thrust to it. My impression was that director Neill Blomkamp was just going for the usual gritty/scuzzy venality that all bad guys are obliged to exude in futuristic/sci-fi films these days. But given the film’s racial apartheid metaphor I can see how some might be irate about some of the gross particulars and associations.

HE reader Sabina (i.e., “DeafBrownTrashPunk”), who sent the piece along, claims that the outrage of the author, Nicole Stamp, over the Nigerian thugs killing and eating aliens (or “prawns”) is a racist imagining. In fact, a 4.9.09 BBC article reported that Albino Africans have been kidnapped and killed by gangs because some”witch doctor[s]” believe that albino human parts are magical and offer good health benefits.

The article said there was an Albino sanctuary built to protect Albino African kids from being kidnapped and cannibalized. Here’s another BBC article about the same thing, published a month earlier.

You need to wade through nearly two minutes of Ricky Gervais rambling on about his upcoming 11.5 Carnegie Hall gig, before he gets to the one funny bit. (Sorry, but a publicist claimed the video is “hilarious.”) The show will be part of the five-day New York Comedy Festival (11.4 to 11.8). Tracy Morgan, Dane Cook, Bill Maher, Patton Oswalt, Andy Samberg, Artie Lange, Mike Epps, Bill Burr and Mike Birbiglia will also perform at “more than 10 venues,” etc.

Ricky Gervais from NY Comedy Festival on Vimeo.

This morning I wrote director Alejandro Gonzlaez-Inarritu (Biutiful, Babel, Amores perros) about two articles that may result in a problem starting next month, depending how things shake out. One was yesterday’s Variety piece announcing Inarritu’s position as jury president for the Tokyo Film Festival (10.17 through 10.25). The other was an 8.7 article by Salon‘s Katherine Meiszkowski that stated at the finish that the festival “recently decided not to screen The Cove,” the doc about the wretched annual slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan.

A festival spokesperson quoted in the Variety story, written by Mark Schilling, has “denied that a decision has been made [about The Cove]” and said that the festival is “still in the process of sorting out [its] lineup” and that “there will be an official announcement in September.”

So obviously the situation isn’t clear. But one must at least consider that Meiszkowski wouldn’t have flatly written that the festival “recently decided not to screen the film” without qualifying or hedging (i.e., “sources allege,” “it is rumored that,” etc.) if she didn’t have reason to believe that what she heard is solid.

Yes, she may have heard it wrong. It happens. So let’s chill down for the time being. But what if the Tokyo Film Festival in fact intends to blow off The Cove for what would be the most logical or likely of reasons, i.e., political pressure from the fishing industry and/or supporters of the Taiji tourist/fishing industry?

Inarritu, whom I know personally, knows what goes and doesn’t miss a trick. But just as China’s economic support of the Darfur government led Mia Farrow to urge Steven Spielberg to withdraw from a gig as the producer of the Beijing Olympics games lest he be seen as “the Leni Reifensthal” of that event, Inarritu may want to regard his Tokyo Film Festival gig along similar lines. Again, if.

Just as Ric O’Barry, the lead protagonist/hero of The Cove, has been asking Americans to boycott dolphin water shows to protest the dolphin slaughter in Japan, it seemed fair to ask Inarritu to consider declining to serve as the jury’s president if the festival in fact doesn’t screen The Cove. I mean, it can’t hurt to at least mull things over at this stage.

If and when the alleged blow-off turns out to be true, Inarritu serving as jury president would be seen, at the very least, as an unfortunate gesture. It would seem as if he was cool with the festival’s decision. Not to sound like a hard-ass, but it might even be claimed in some quarters that Inarritu — again, if — was deferring to Japanese economic forces that have kept the Taiji dolphin slaughter under wraps for many years. I know this sounds rough. But he knows what I’m getting at.

I’m guessing that this matter will be quietly addressed with back-channel discussions between Inarritu and the festival fathers, but if the festival officially declines to show The Cove and he serves regardless it will look awkward all around. Obviously his call. I wasn’t trying to go all eco-dolphin-nuts on him. I was just sayin’.