Month: March 2010

In the wake of the final demise of At The Movies, I’m once again calling attention to an idea I posted last October — i.e., a David Susskind-like, movie-discussing online show featuring critics under the influence.

“It would be a mixture of At The Movies and the Dean Martin variety hour that ran in the mid ’60s to mid ’70s,” I wrote. “Martin always pretended to be slightly bombed on that show, and I don’t think viewers cared if he actually was or not. The point is that the show was loose and friendly and convivial, and there’s obviously one way to usher in that kind of vibe.

“I don’t know what substance would work better, alcohol or marijuana. But if there was a weekly movie-reviewing show featuring fizzy-headed or moderately stoned critics, people would watch it like they watched Howard Beale in Network. Because they’d know going in that the critics wouldn’t be dispensing the usual-usual. It’s a catchy gimmick — you have to admit that.

“Nobody wants to see respected critics make fools of themselves, so the trio we’re speaking of would need to be very careful with the intake. But they’d be just irreverent enough to loosen up and say what they really think about this or that film due to reduced inhibitions and being slightly more prone to using colorful language and…you know, not seeming overly poised and regimented, which is what every movie-critic show tends to feel like.

“Cold-sober people obviously have stirring discussions every day, but the liveliest ones — admit it — do seem to happen in the evening among friends after a drink or two. Or after passing a joint around.

“I realize there are laws prohibiting on-camera imbibing, so such a show would have to be launched online. But you’d probably want your critics doing the show while sitting at a bar on stools. And the show would have to be lighted semi-darkly, like Charlie Rose.”

Edward D. Wood, Jr. has returned to earth in the body of James Nguyen, the “visionary” director-writer of Birdemic….argh! The reputedly entertaining, so-awful-it’s-strangely-watchable horror film has been written about by N.Y. Times reporter Dave Itzkoff, and will play midnight shows this weekend at Manhattan’s IFC Center.

The appeal of the movies that are so bad they transcend their awfulness and become occasions for howling laughter among semi-hipsters has always eluded me. I’ve never actually watched Plan Nine From Outer Space, although I have seen Egah!. If you ask me these films are basically about allowing people to feel smugly superior. “Boy, is this guy clueless or what?,” audiences may be saying. “We’re so much hipper and sharper it’s almost not funny..and yet it is!”

My favorite flick in this realm is Woody Allen‘s What’s Up Tiger Lily?, although that was a different bird — a ridiculous-Japanese-film-within-a-film made by a director who was in on the joke.

“The 43 year-old Nguyen will be the first to tell you that it is far from a perfect film,” Itzkoff writes. “But, as he said recently, ‘If it was perfect, in every angle and the visual effects and everything, maybe it wouldn’t be where it is today.’

“Since Birdemic was discovered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival — where Mr. Nguyen brought it anyway and showed it in bars after it was rejected by the festival’s selection committee — it has become a cult hit on the midnight movie circuit.

“Crowds in Austin, Tex., Phoenix and Los Angeles have thrilled to its stilted dialogue, substandard production values and young heroes who defend themselves with coat hangers. (A Birdemic national tour is currently booked through the end of May.)

“As Birdemic arrives in New York for late-night showings at the IFC Center on Friday and Saturday, it has spawned a discussion about why, of all the Z-grade movies that are made each year, has this particular one found favor with audiences?

“‘It’s something unexpected,’ Mr. Nguyen said. ‘Maybe it’s meant to be like that.’

“Evan Husney, who now works for the independent distributor Severin Films, was also at Sundance in 2009, where he spotted Mr. Nguyen driving a beat-up sport utility vehicle decorated with a prop eagle and fake blood, and blaring bird noises from its stereo.

“‘On the side of his car,’ Mr. Husney said, ‘Nguyen had spelled the name of his own movie wrong. He had spelled it ‘Bidemic,’ without the R.'”

In other words, Nguyen is quite possibly a garden-variety bozo who may actually be less gifted (or certainly a slower study) that the legendary Ed Wood. God help us all.

Ramin Bahrani‘s 18-minute short is brilliant, touching…full of feeling. Note-perfect narration by Werner Herzog.

The Museum of Modern Art’s film department hosted Wednesday night’s launch party for New Directors/New Films 2010, although the program is co-sponsored by MOMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The opening-night film was Richard Press‘s Bill Cunningham New York, a likable, open-hearted, intensely New Yorkish documentary about the legendary N.Y.Times fashion photographer (i.e., “On The Street”).

Author/journalist Peter Biskind (Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America), Film Society of Lincoln Center executive director Mara Manus — Wednesday, 3.24, 9:55 pm.

Current under-the-table bookings at the Coliseum on 181st Street.

The main attraction of MOMA’s Tim Burton exhibit.

Publicist Donna Dickman; Beautiful Darling director James Rasin. (The doc’s full title is actually Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar.)

In my book A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips were sharp and engaging co-hosts of At The Movies, but the bottom-line Disney-ABC execs didn’t like their ratings so they’re not only whacking Scott-Phillips but pulling the plug on the show. That’s it, finito, all she wrote — the final program will air on Aug. 14th.

I’m sorry. I really liked watching these guys do the At The Movies shpiel. But honestly? I only watched them twice. I was actually trying to find an embed code of their review of Greenberg this morning, but the Disney-ABC webmasters don’t provide them.

Nobody wants to listen to a couple of witty, knowledgable big-city guys riff on the latest films because…well, obviously because film critics are an endangered species coast-to-coast so why should a TV show starring two critics be any kind of success? The internet has given millions of film fans the idea that they know just as much as the smarty-pants types, etc. It’s a new world with new rules.

The producers should have gone with my idea for a film-critic boxing show. Two critics holding opposing views on a new film wouldn’t debate or explain their views — they’d fight it out and bow to the will of God. They’d put on trunks and gloves and go three rounds in the ring, and the one who has the most points (or is still standing) at the end would be presumed to have the wisest and most perceptive view of the film in question. Isn’t this how Spanish land disputes were settled in the days of El Cid?

“This was a very difficult decision, especially considering the program’s rich history and iconic status within the entertainment industry, but from a business perspective it became clear this weekly, half-hour, broadcast syndication series was no longer sustainable,” said Disney-ABC Domestic Television in a statement released late Wednesday afternoon.

A 3.22 Brent Lang Wrap article uses dog-eared box-office data to remind that Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Cameron Diaz, Michael Cera, Sean Penn, etc. have starred in several weak earners, and therefore don’t seem to put arses in seats. Even Christian Bale has toplined his share of wipeouts outside the Batman franchise. I think we’ve heard this one before. If the public smells a stinker or a rental or what-have-you, stars mean nothing. It’s the bolt, it’s the buzz — i.e., what the film has in its heart or its head. Stars are tinsel.

I finally got around to reading that ALL CAPS David Mamet memo to the writers of The Unit, which got cancelled last year. The part that I agree with the most reads as follows:

“QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, ACUTE GOAL.

“AND SO WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES OF EVERY SCENE THESE THREE QUESTIONS: (1) WHO WANTS WHAT?; (2) WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY DON’T GET IT?; (3) WHY NOW?

“THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS ARE LITMUS PAPER. APPLY THEM, AND THEIR ANSWER WILL TELL YOU IF THE SCENE IS DRAMATIC OR NOT.”

Oliver Stone‘s South of the Border will be domestically distribbed by Cinema Libre Studio. The doc preemed in September 2009 at the Venice Film Festival, and then showed weeks later at Lincoln Center. It also played last month at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. It’ll be released in New York on 6.25, and will open in nine or ten cities after that. Here’s my admiring review, posted on 9.24.09.

36 hours ago N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply posted a what’s-up-with-this? article about James L. Brooks‘ How Do You Know (Columbia, 12.17), a relationship dramedy about a softball player (Reese Witherspoon) involved in a kind-of love triangle with a nice business guy named George (Paul Rudd) and a professional baseball player named Manny (Owen Wilson). Jack Nicholson plays Charles, George’s father.

Triptych stolen from New York‘s “Vulture” site.

It’s a little weird for a film to have a title that’s a question (like Quo Vadis?) but spelled without a question mark. Cieply leaves off the question mark, and so does a draft of Brooks’ script that I’ve had on on my desktop since last August. Remember Tom Hanks “there’s no crying in baseball!” line in A League of Their Own? Well, you can’t leave off question marks at the end of a question, movie title or not…kapeesh?

No, I haven’t read the script. Okay, I’ve read 35 pages or so. I didn’t finish out of concern that reading Brooks’ well-honed dialogue might ruin my enjoyment of the finished film. But I can share one thing — Wilson’s Manny has clearly been conceived on the page as a superficially likable but chauvinistic ego-jock in the Tiger Woods vein.

“How Do You Know started…five years ago, when Mr. Brooks…became fixed on the notion of making a film about a young female athlete,” Cieply writes. “Not untypically, he spent hundreds of hours interviewing women who excelled in various sports before settling on softball as good cinematic turf, according to people who worked on How Do You Know and spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with studio executives and others.

“The plot is rooted in an encounter between two people who meet on the worst night of their respective lives.

“Early on, Mr. Brooks became convinced that only Ms. Witherspoon could play his lead character, Lisa Jorgenson, who, at 27, is just past her sporting prime. Fortunately Ms. Witherspoon shared his conviction: she spent a year doing three-hour daily workouts to prepare for the role.

“Along the way Mr. Brooks became fascinated by the dilemmas of contemporary business executives, who are sometimes held accountable by the law for corporate behavior of which they may not even be aware. This brought new research into the lives of people who run companies, work for the Justice Department, or, in at least one case, have spent time in jail.

“From that slowly cooked stew came two new characters, one of whom is now played by Mr. Rudd, the other by Jack Nicholson — a Brooks regular who took the role only after Bill Murray, the first choice, declined.

“To complicate Lisa’s love life, Mr. Brooks created a professional baseball pitcher, now played by Mr. Wilson.

“Mr. Brooks, famously private, disclosed little about the project, which was widely described in news reports as a romantic comedy set in the world of baseball. But the sport only occasionally figures in a film that is actually about people trying to figure out exactly what, for each of them, matters most.

“Mr. Brooks began shooting last summer in Washington and Philadelphia with a team of producers that includes Julie Ansell, who is the president for motion pictures of his Gracie Films; Laurence Mark, who was recently a producer of Julie & Julia and worked with him on As Good as It Gets and other movies; and Paula Weinstein, a film veteran whose credits include Blood Diamond.”

If Steve McQueen had kept on, he’d be 80 friggin’ years old today.

I don’t know what owesies or side favors are involved, but the Weinstein Co. has just picked up U.S. rights to John Wells‘ The Company Men, a corporate downsizing drama that was generally seen as a dud at Sundance 2010. (Here’s my 1.23.10 review.) It’s not a “bad” or poorly made film per se, but, as I said two months ago, “this drama of layoffs and despondency affecting three Boston-area white-collar guys (Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper) plays like an intelligent funeral in a nicely furnished minimum-security prison.”