Month: July 2010

I’m reminded of Jean Luc Godard‘s intriguing assessment of Rio Bravo, which is basically that it’s a better film than High Noon because the exceptionally good things in Rio Bravo can be ignored, and therefore may be unnoticable to a good-sized portion of the audience.

“The great filmmakers always tie themselves down by complying with the rules of the game,” Godard wrote. “Rio Bravo is a work of extraordinary psychological insight and aesthetic perception, but Howard Hawks has made his film so that the insight can pass unnoticed without disturbing the audience that has come to see a Western like all others. Hawks is the greater because he has succeeded in fitting all he holds most dear into a well-worn subject.”

I hold Godard’s theory in much higher regard than I do Rio Bravo. But I’m now asking myself which films of the last few years have lived up to Godard’s standards in this regard? Which recent movies, in other words, have delivered escapism by way of same-old-shit genre cliches (over and over and over again) while at the same time exciting and arousing the highbrows in such a sleight-of-hand way that Joe Popcorn, dumbass that he is, doesn’t even realize that a double-tracking thing is happening?

The initial title of Tuesday’s Lindsay Lohan post was “Throw The Key Away.” I wrote this on my iPhone early Tuesday evening while waited for a screening of Kisses to begin at the Tribeca Grand. The thought was “this woman has shown herself to be all but hopeless and needs to be slapped awake or she’ll be dead in ten or fifteen years, so don’t slap her on the wrist — hit her hard and pretend to throw away the key. Maybe that’ll get through.”

So the headline didn’t quite say it. But it was close, and sometimes you just need to go with what seems right before the screening begins.

After thinking things through the next morning I decided that I had to plop in a new title. Lilo needs to live and breathe and create and have a future. The point of pretending to throw away the key was to wake her up to the point that she might start to consider that she’s Errol Flynn-ing and Tallulah Bankead-ing and needs to turn it around. So I went with “The Crowd Roars” — generic but workable.

In response to which a couple of HE readers complained, saying that I lacked the stones to stick to the original headline. I responded as follows:

“I can and will change anything I want, whenever I want, if and when the mood changes or suits or whatever. I am the Lizard King. I can do pretty much anything. And it’s all about keeping things in flux, being adaptable, being open to whatever tremors or instincts or subliminal urges occur. I’m not the managing editor of the Kansas City Star in 1957 with a deadline approaching and final edits being applied downstairs before the presses roll. This is a fluid and sometimes cantankerous Thelonious Monky jazz column. I always reserve the right to tweak, modify, edit, change, add and, yes, sometimes, if the urge is strong or persistent enough, wimp out.

“Wimping out is part of human nature from time to time, so the freedom to wimp out is one of the tunes I might play — and so is the freedom to decide later on that I shouldn’t have wimped and thereafter a decision to restore whatever it is or was that I may have wimped out on in the first place.

“That said I stick to 97% of the stuff I put down initially. Make that 98%. Oh, and if I decide to edit this very post I’m writing right now then I will do that. Live with it or leave or whatever.”

I’m way late to the table regarding Lance Daly‘s scruffy and charming and very well-acted Kisses, which Oscilloscope Laboratories is opening on July 16th. And yet it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in 2010. It’s not without issues, but it has this honest, no b.s. young-love groove that I believed and fell into in a sort of Ken Loach-y way. The problem is that it’s been around forever and I can’t expunge that fact from my mind.

It may seem too inside-baseball to go off on this, but it does feel a bit funny to call Kisses a 2010 film considering it was shot between late ’06 and ’07, premiered at Telluride and Toronto almost two years ago, is regarded by the IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes as a 2008 film, and played theatrically in England last summer.

For whatever reason I missed Kisses at Toronto’s ’08 festival. I don’t even remember hearing about this occasionally twee but engaging and natural-vibey Irish kids-on-the-run film, but whatever — Oscilloscope Laboratories saw it, got it and acquired it for theatrical. And then sat on it for the better part of two years.

Kisses scored an 83% positive when it opened in England in the summer of ’09, but still no Oscilloscope action. It’s finally beginning a city-by-city break on 7.16 and good for that, but — I know I shouldn’t be harping on this so much — the time-passage element makes it’s hard to feel the full-on jazz. The two barely pubescent leads — Shane Curry and Kelly O’Neill — were 10 or 11 at the time, and are now 14 or 15 and several inches taller, I was told after last night’s screening. Jett commented as we were leaving that the roller-wheel sneakers the kids buy at a Dublin mall during the film’s second act were happening about four or five years ago, but no longer.

It’s stuff like this that slightly ages a film, sometimes in ways you can spot and sometimes in ways that you can’t; it also underlines a point I made a year or two ago that you need to get a film into commercial circulation no later than 18 months after filming, and preferably within a year. There has to be a feeling that the audiences seeing a film at a given point in time are sniffing the same cultural pollen that the filmmakers did when they did principal photography. I mean, this film was shot well before anyone was even starting to talk about Barack Obama being a semi-credible candidate for the Democratic nomination.

You could speak dismissively and say Kisses is a short film that runs feature length, and that its story of two kids, Dylan (Curry) and Kylie (O’Neill), who, traumatized by abusive families, decide to run away together to Dublin on Christmas eve, isn’t developed enough. And that it over-works the Bob Dylan references, and goes for the “endearing moment” once or twice too often.

But when it’s good, it’s really good. Curry and O’Neill deliver the most unaffected and emotionally sincere performances of unhappy kids I’ve seen in a long, long while. The shooting and cutting are mostly lean and down to the bone (except during the occasional seizure of the “cutes”). And Daly’s going from black-and-white to sepia-toned color to full color and back to monochrome again is…okay, obviously the old Wizard of Oz playbook, but for my money Daly makes it work all over again.

It’s very worth seeing, it’s definitely above average, it’s among the best I’ve seen this year and thank God for the occasional subtitles. (There’s really no understanding the Dublin accents without them.) But why was this…okay, somewhat flawed little jewel of a film kept on the sidelines for so long?

It’s true, apparently, about Criterion Co. offering a visual hint in their latest newsletter about their intention to release James L. Brooks‘ Broadcast News (1987), presumably in DVD format only but Bluray would be extra nice. I tend to regard the passage of time in terms of acts or chapters or movements rather than years, but even with that buffer in mind it feels…well, not exactly queer or curious to think of this film being 23 years old. But damned if it ain’t.

There’s also been a recent indication somewhere within Criterion’s Facebook page that Alexander McKendrick‘s Sweet Smell of Success (calling Carrie Rickey!) will also soon be released.

New York City’s sweatbox agony will soon be over. It was 103 yesterday and right now — 3:15 pm — it “feels” like it’s 101, although the thermometer is actually down to 96. Thursday will be in the high 80s and on Friday the average may actually settle down to the 70s.

I know that the climate in Manhattan yesterday felt like Abu Dhabi mixed with Panama mixed with a hot frying pan, and with everyone afflicted with an energy-depleting virus . The air felt trapped and uncirculated and unholy, as if a sadistic God had plugged in a giant reverse air-conditioner. Everything was happening in slow motion. Every couple of blocks I would visit a store I had no interest in visiting, just for the a.c. comfort.

In a response to last week’s Greatest Insults video (which I posted on 7.1), Philadelphia Inquirer critic Carrie Rickey yesterday voiced a preference for ridicule with “more polish and less profanity.” Like, for example, Burt Lancaster‘s kiss-off to Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success (1957): “You’re dead, son. Go get buried.”

That is slightly incorrect. The line is actually “You’re dead, son. Go get yourself buried.” No biggie in itself, but Rickey used the quote in her headline. So I wrote her yesterday afternoon at 5:48 pm (sitting in Fanelli’s, using my iPhone) and explained her excusable error. She wrote back at 9:37 pm with a dispute. “According to imdb.com and an Ernest Lehman essay I cross-checked with, I have it right,” she said. “Of course, they could both be wrong. Next time I watch SSoS I’ll listen extra-hard.”

Yeah, do that. Because the IMDB has the quote as “You’re dead, son — go get yourself buried. Wikiquote has the quote as “You’re dead, son — go get yourself buried.” And I have it as that in my head, having watched Sweet Smell of Success something like 12 or 13 times (including three times in a theatre). Sorry, Carrie, but I got this.

Lindsay Lohan has been sentenced to 90 days in jail — yes! suffer! — followed by 90 days of rehab in a lockdown facility of some kind. (I think.). In a pre-sentence statement she was tearful, submissive, pleading, plain-spoken. “I have to provide for myself…I have to work,” she said. “I’m not taking this as a joke. It’s my life, it’s my career.”

I love it when people who’ve lived upper stratosphere lah-lah lives get taken down and have to submit to Average Joe rules and regulations. It’s extra wonderful when they cry upon hearing the bad news, as Lohan did yesterday afternoon. I heard the news yesterday afternoon and saw the TMZ tapes last night. I always wanted to see something like this happen to Mia Farrow‘s Daisy Buchanan in the 1974 film version of The Great Gatsby, and now it finally has.

There’s also the matter of Lilo’s acting talent (which she has a fair amount of) and the fact that her addictions have been taking her down and that she really needed a combination wake-up and face-slap. She’ll do about three weeks (the average sentence on raps like this is about 25%), and plus 90 days of rehab. Speaking as the son of a lifelong alcoholic and a guy who had a vodka-and-lemonade problem in the mid ’90s, I know that’s a good thing. I’ve seen it all and I know that the lives of people who make constant whoopee always turn tragic — hurt careers, disease, early death, financial issues. That judge did LiLo a huge favor, and all she could say was “what?….what?”

Is Lohan more marketable now? Will raising the dough for Inferno be a tad easier? I would think so.

I’m iPhoning and therefore can’t embed a link, but Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet is reporting that Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life was screened for the MPAA within the last couple of weeks and has been rated PG-13. The big news, he reports, is that Bill Pohlad‘s Apparition wasn’t listed as the distributor.

Rope of Silicon‘s Bill Cody has ripped into Restrepo co-director Sebastian Junger by (a) noting the film’s non-political, no-bigger-picture viewpoint, which bothered me greatly in my own review, (b) noting that Junger has recently advocated a pro-war position on TV talk shows (stay the course, send in more troops), and (c) wonders if the lefties who’ve praised this film really understand what it (and Junger) are saying?

“Did Sebastian Junger sucker Sundance into supporting an Afghanistan War with no end in sight?,” the article begins.

“Junger lucked into a perfect storm when Restrepo, his feature documentary about a fire base in Afghanistan opened the same week General Stanley McChrystal was forced out as the Commander of US troops in that country

“Junger was already slated to appear on many TV and radio shows promoting the critically acclaimed Sundance Jury Prize Winner, but when Afghanistan became the biggest news story of the week Junger was added to several guest lists including a well-publicized panel on NBC’s Meet The Press. On each of these shows Junger was asked his opinion of the ongoing war and each time he argued for more time and more troops. In other words, more war.

“As I watched Junger on these shows I wondered aloud if this is what the programmers at Sundance had in mind when they promoted Junger’s film earlier this year and heaped awards and praise on it.

“They made no bones about pushing their anti-Iraq agenda in 2006 and 2007. The Festival handed out awards to Iraq In Fragments and No End In Sight while Geoffrey Gilmore gave interviews about the ability of documentaries to change the world. Sundance also helped produce and fund Iraq In Fragments and made no bones about the festival’s take on the Iraq War. They were against it.

“Now they’ve supported a director who is very pro-war, albeit not the Iraq War. Perhaps they didn’t understand what Junger and co-director Tim Hetherington were trying to say with this film? Or did the charming Junger and his modern-day Hemmingway shtick just take them in?

“Junger is a star,” Cody reminds. “The kind of star voted Sexiest Author by People magazine in 1997. The kind of star that Sundancers eat up. A Vanity Fair-contributing, hipster bar-owning, best selling author kind of star. And the movie isn’t supposed to raise questions about the war. It’s supposed to get you to support the troops. To get the country to pony up more men and more treasure in the future.

Cody, who has a military history, says he personally “wouldn’t give a platform to someone like Junger who obviously has an agenda. He did reporting from Afghanistan in the ’90s and doesn’t want the Taliban to come back. I’m not sure he told Sundance that when he pitched his movie to the powers that be at the festival. But I do know that’s what he’s telling Charlie Rose now.

“So I ask, is Sundance in favor of this war? Or did they just fall for Junger’s handsome face?”

My only issue with Cody’s piece is his assumption that the people running the Sundance Film Festival actually “take” political stands, or that they present a unified political front on this or that issue. They’re a leftie organization, of course, and most lefties are appalled at the waste and the sense of floundering that the Afghanistan War represents. But I’m sure they’d say that if they found a first-rate conservative-minded documentary, they wouldn’t hesitate to program it — as they didn’t hesitate to program Restrepo.

I’m just glad that someone else is saying “consider the pro-war current” in this film. I was feeling kind of alone there for a while.

Marshall Fine has posted a top-ten half-time assessment of 2010 films. I throughly agree with his putting Greenberg, The Ghost Writer and Toy Story 3 on the list. But we part company after these. Not in a Grand Canyon sense — more like we’re standing on opposite sides of a creek.

I liked When You’re Strange as far as it went, but it wasn’t anything to jump up and down about. (Never saw the Johnny Depp-narrated version.) I gave Conor McPherson‘s The Eclipse a 7 — nice mood, gripping vibe at times, horrible emphasis on Aidan Quinn‘s boorish-and-boozy-Irish-writer character. I hated most of The Red Riding Trilogy (particularly the first one, 1984, with Andrew Garfield), in large part because I couldn’t understand half of it. I never got to see Exit Through The Gift Shop — nolo contendere.

Shutter Island is way too obvious and emphatic — a feverish, ultra-labored atmospheric dream by way of thunder, lightning, heaving seas, jagged rocks and round sweaty faces. Winter’s Bone is about Jennifer Lawrence‘s lead performance — the film is grungy and draggy and vaguely depressing with too many middle-aged beard-os in plaid shirts sucking down cigarettes. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an airport-lounge movie — plot, clue, plot, clue, plot, clue, plot, clue, plot, clue.

My best of the year so far are Lee Unkrich‘s Toy Story 3, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Biutiful (Cannes), Doug Liman‘s Fair Game (Cannes), Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos (Cannes), Aaron Schneider‘s Get Low, Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg, Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer and Philipp Stolzl‘s North Face. I presume I’ll be putting Chris Nolan‘s Inception to this list fairly soon.

The best docs are Charles Ferguson‘s Inside Job (Cannes); Amir Bar Lev‘s The Tillman Story; Alex Gibney‘s Untitled Eliot Spitzer Film; Kate Davis and David Heilbroner‘s Stonewall Uprising; Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector; and Don Argott‘s Art of the Steal.

I begged again this morning to be allowed to see Inception at this afternoon’s Manhattan screening. You could hear a pin drop. After yesterday’s love-in, I’m wondering how to approach Chris Nolan‘s film without any kind of attitude. It’s a natural thing. All those ecstatic critics, all that moisture. Something tells me MCN’s David Poland will attend tomorrow’s screening with a bit of an “oh, yeah?” mindset.

I actually feel good about having grilled folks who’ve seen it, and having learned all about the third act revelations, and asked several logic-driven questions. As part of the fourth wave, I’m fully prepared and ready to rock. The first wave hit Omaha Beach at the late-June Inception junket. The second wave splashed into the waters last Friday night and went ashore yesterday afternoon at 3 pm. The third wave is getting wet today and tomorrow on both coasts. And then the clean-up crew — the engineers! — will land next Tuesday night.