I’ve emerged from my second Robin Hood screening with my initial reactions intact — it’s an expertly made, handsomely shot, very well acted film with a story that deserves at least some favor for not doing the same old Robin Hood sha-la-la.
And I was even more taken this time because the projection and sound at the Salle Debussy are unmistakably better than at Manhattan’s Lincoln Square, where I saw it the first time. It really does matter if a film looks and sounds its very best.
Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood is the first screening of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, starting at 10 ayem. Give it another go or hunker down in the Orange press room and wait for the 12:45 pm press conference? Scott won’t be there due to knee surgery, but I intend to ask Russell Crowe about perceptions that it’s a tea-bagger movie, or at least that it panders to tea-bagger sentiments.
If I was a commercial airline pilot, I would dodge the Iceland volcanic ash by flying to Europe in the style of Slim Pickens’ Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove, maintaining an altitude of no more than two or three hundred feet. “If we was flyin’ any lower we’d need sleighbells on this thing…”
It was decided at last night’s La Pizza gathering that Quentin Dupieux‘s Rubber, an 85-minute film about a killer tire with psychic powers, is probably worth seeing. It’ll be shown here as a special Critics’ Week screening (La Semaine de la Critique) sometime soon. Just don’t ask me to supply the date, time and location. I got enough aggravation.
Dupieux directed, wrote and shot it. The cast is headed by Stephen Spinella, Roxane Mesquida, Jack Plotnick, Wings Hauser, Ethan Cohn and Charley Koontz.
“I’m still na√Øve enough to believe that there is still room for unconscious and format-free films,” Dupieux says. “The too formatted films, structured as emotional machines, annoy me. I like the idea of doing a film on a living tire, with no narrative structure nor dramatic stakes. It’s possible!
“Also, The budget was very limited : I conceived the script, taking into account our means, and I like working like that a lot.
“Rubber is the story of a serial killer tire that refers to his youth: Around the age of 12, my father’s video camera made me feel like filming. Then I discovered horror movies in video clubs and I instinctively needed to remake some fragments at home. And why a tire? I can’t answer questions starting by why. Life is full of mysteries. Why don’t we see the air around us? Why a tire? This is the same question.”
After two or three hours of half-sleep on the plane, the basic strategy when you first get here is not to take naps and stay up until 11 pm or midnight so you’ll at least sleep through the night. I stayed up until just before 1 am last night, and then awoke at 4 am — brilliant. My New York body doesn’t know what’s happening. The little apartment, at least, is quite pleasant. It’s been repainted and re-furnished, and the wifi is much better than it was last year.
Of sleep, I mean. On last night’s NY-to-Nice jet. Sleep so near to waking it barely deserves the name. And then the Nice-to-Cannes A8 bus line decided not to provide extra buses to accommodate the influx of festivalgoers. (Naturally!). So after hanging around for an hour or so the bunch of us split two cabs. 80 euros divided by three — jacked.
And then I picked up my press pass and got the keys to the apartment and so on. That’s it — there’s nothing to say beyond that and I’m too shagged to think stuff up. Maybe later.
Posted by Moises Chiullan: Just as Jeff boarded a plane to Cannes, Deadline Hollywood posted the news that Bob Berney abruptly resigned from his post at Apparition.
This came completely out of the blue, shocking Bill Pohlad and the entire Apparition staff. Apparition has abruptly cancelled plans to attend Cannes as a buyer, since Berney was the only one empowered to make deals. This means au revoir to Apparition touching anything, in the market or otherwise. According to Finke’s sources, Tree of Life is still an Apparition movie and coming in the fall as planned.
My wild, unfounded speculation: could the sudden nature and timing of this be related to the now-expected Burkle/Weinstein/Miramax deal being announced in the coming days?
Gate 6, Delta Airlines, JFK, 9:06 pm. Several Cannes-bound journalists waiting for the same flight to Nice — Eric Kohn, Richard Corliss, Anthony Breznican, Ann Hornaday, Anne Thompson, Jim Hoberman, Lou Lumenick, Duane Byrge, etc. Plus Oliver Stone, N.Y. Film Festival honcho Richard Pena. Boarding has nearly begun. Radio silence until 7:30 am New York time or thereabouts.
Last weekend New Orleans radio/movie guy Dave Dubos discovered a 1980 issue of Films in Review in which he found a review by yours truly of Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining. At the time I was working as a host at a Lincoln Center restaurant for money, and writing reviews for nickels and dimes.
Last night Matt Zoller Seitz asked his Facebook pallies which movies, foreign or domestic, past or present, do they think were most strongly influenced by Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis? Blade Runner, Brazil and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, of course…but what else?”
Certainly the most glaring in today’s realm is Steven Spielberg‘s Minority Report. And the image of those guys trudging along in grim formation inside the big factory was also appropriated by Spielberg for the finale of Close Encounters when he showed those red-jumpsuit drones preparing to board the mother ship. It made no sense at all (many things in Spielberg’s films fail to make sense or add up) except as a Langian thing.
Metropolis was also a major influence upon Klaus Nomi.
The most completely and fully restored version of Metropolis so far is now playing at the Film Forum.
Delta/Air France has delayed my Nice flight by three hours — an 8:30 pm departure rather than 5:40 pm. That’s okay, I suppose. It affords a little more time to attend to last-minute clean-ups and tweedly-deedlies. My Nice arrival will now be at 11:10 am Tuesday. 2:35 pm update: Delta now says the flight is leaving at 9:30 pm tonight and arriving in Nice at 12:10 pm. Do I hear a 10:30 pm flight and 1:10 pm arrival? Can we go for 11:30 pm departure and a 2:10 pm arrival?
