Month: November 2010

Congrats to the 15 feature-length docs that have been short-listed by the Academy: (1) Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, d: Alex Gibney; Enemies of the People, d: Rob Lemkin, Thet Sambath; (3) Exit through the Gift Shop, d: Banksy; (4) Gasland, d: Josh Fox; (5) Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, d: Michele Hoze, Peter Raymont; (6) Inside Job, d: Charles Ferguson; (7) The Lottery, d: Madeleine Sackler; (8) Precious Life, d: Shlomi Eldar; (9) Quest for Honor, d: Mary Ann Smothers Bruni; (10) Restrepo, d: Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger; (11) This Way of Life, d: Thomas Burstyn; (12) The Tillman Story, d: Amir Bar-Lev; (13) Waiting for ‘Superman’, d: Davis Guggenheim; (14) Waste Land, d: Lucy Walker; (15) William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, d: Emily Kunstler, Sarah Kunstler.

Lamentable Omissions (possibly due to technicalities or whatever): Errol Morris‘s Tabloid, Kate Davis and David Heilbroner‘s Stonewall Uprising; Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector; Werner Herzog‘s Cave of Forgotten Dreams; Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg‘s Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work; Don Argott‘s Art of the Steal and Leon Gast‘s Smash His Camera.

Late last night’s Collider‘s Steve Weintraub posted a high-calorie, extremely nutritious q & a with London Boulevard director-writer William Monahan. The weird part is that Weintraub has seen the crime drama but declines to post a sidebar review despite the fact that it’s opening in London eight days from now, on Friday, 11.26.

Weintraub says “it’s a great first film,” “it’s going to surprise people,” and that Monahan has proven “he knows how to tell a story visually, and can definitely shoot action…this will not be his last time behind the camera.” Very glad to hear this, I said in an e-mail. Good news. I can’t wait to see London Boulevard when it opens in the U.S. next spring.

But I still don’t get why Weintraub didn’t post a review with the British opening so close at hand.

Weintraub explained that he was shown London Boulevard as a friend/admirer of Monahan and not as a critic, and that he’s simply respecting Monahan’s request not to review it. “You’re hedging,” I replied. “This movie is presumed to be troubled on some level and is about to be reviewed by all of London, and you’re holding back on the specifics of your admiration because Monahan is a pally? I’d understand if the opening date was a couple of months off, but EIGHT DAYS?”

At one point in his excellent interview Weintraub asks Monahan about his “feelings on the test screening process,” which is a friend-of-the-filmmaker way of asking why the numbers haven’t been all that terrific, and why additional shooting was reportedly done as a result, and why the film didn’t appear at the Venice/Telluride/Toronto trifecta.

“Ninety people walked out of Goodfellas,” Monahan replies, “which is what I think about test screenings. But they’re also irresistible, test screenings, because you want to see the film with an audience and watch the audience. We tested twice, and very well, for an R-rated British film, in Sherman Oaks, of all places.

“On The Departed, when we tested in Chicago, the audience wanted to know the same things the studio had been asking, on behalf of a projected audience — who’s the father of the baby, and what’s in the envelope. Marty’s position was: fuck you, this is art. This is the way Bill wrote it and it’s why I did the picture. I love audiences, but they’re not there to drive the bus. Whenever you ask opinions or anticipate opinions you can get pretty terrible art, or non-art. You need a single guiding intelligence, even in a collaborative form.

“People can get on exactly the same page, which I think we all were on London Boulevard, but it’s rare and difficult. Bands where every member exactly gets it, like the Stones to a certain point in history, are freak and magical occurrences. You’ve got to go it alone.”

No one will be happier than myself if it turns out that London Boulevard works. I love Monahan’s writing, and I’ve been totally queer for London gangster films since the ’70s. But Monahan and Weintraub know that the word on this thing is dicey, and that the general feeling is that it’s a bleeding groaning bear with a bullet in its side. If Weintraub really likes it as much as he says he should be a man and tell the world how good it is — clearly and specifically and passionately.

Everyone presumably remembers Joe Queenan‘s 7.28 Wall Street Journal piece that called 2010 the suckiest movie year ever. No surprise hits, no out-of-nowhere dark horses, and no cunningly hyped film “that either exhumes a noted actor from the grave or greases the skids so some solid journeyman can ascend to the ranks of the Oscar Winners of yore.”

Here it is three and half months later and Queenan looks like a shoot-from-the-hipper with egg on his face. If anything 2010 is feeling more and more like an avalanche of riches — The Social Network, Black Swan, Inside Job, The King’s Speech, Inception, Blue Valentine, 127 Hours, The Tillman Story, Toy Story 3, Biutiful, etc. David O. Russell‘s The Fighter may not be an out-of-nowhere dark horse, but it sure is a hot late-season arrival. The Social Network has clearly greased the skids so that solid journeyman David Fincher is now looking like the most likely recipient of the Best Director Oscar. And if you want a surprise hit, look no further than Ben Affleck‘s mystifying popular The Town.

And what about the praise that continues to be showed upon Banksy‘s Exit From The Gift Shop? And the sudden and surprising critical embrace of Matt Reeves‘ Let Me In (despite the idiotic general-audience response). And the punch-through accomplished by Olivier Assayas‘s epic-sized Carlos? And the avalanche of world-class docs besides those already mentioned? Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Countdown to Zero, Tabloid, Restrepo, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work and Smash His Camera.

On Tuesday, 11.16 Radar Online quoted Inferno director Matthew Wilder as saying he’s basically ready to pull the plug on Lindsay Lohan portraying Linda Lovelace. “Although [Lindsay] is still our number one choice, we do have a Plan B if she cannot film Inferno,” he said, alluding to possible longer-than-anticipated court-ordered rehab requirements. “[Because] we have had a great response from other people who really want the part too.”

In other words, Wilder has probably chosen Lohan’s replacement.

So that’s it — Lohan will have to rejuvenate her acting career in some slightly less humiliating way. As A.V. Club’s Sean O’Neal noted yesterday, “The news probably will come as some relief to Lohan once she sobers up and realizes that her life was once in such disarray, she was considering smearing semen on her face and fucking a dog as a way of relaunching her acting career.” Consider some of the lines that Lohan would have said if she’d actually played the part.

Last July Wilder promised he would delay production until Lohan’s release, issuing the following statement: “This is a sad chapter in the ongoing tragicomic circus between the tabloid media and the ‘justice’ system. An outrageously outsized sentence garners attention for all the players involved, but brings only sadness to the poor soul who has to serve it. I am 100% behind Lindsay and can say the same for everyone involved in the production of Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story. Indeed, we are proud to have this remarkable artist work on our film.

“And as for the haters relishing this moment, I can only quote Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ: ‘And those who are laughing now…will be crying after.'”

I was led to Jonathan Levy‘s hip-hop Yakuza trailer (posted roughly seven months ago) after writing Tuesday’s “Japan-phobia” piece. It doesn’t blow you away, but Levy at least reminded why Sydney Pollack‘s 1974 Japan-set crime thriller is one of the best of its kind. Plenty of swords and robes and flesh-slicings, but with a tone of existential cool. You have to use restraint and watch the fetishy stuff when visiting Japan.

The Yakuza Trailer from Jonathan Levy on Vimeo.

This other Levy trailer, a celebration of Jacques Tourneur‘s Out of the Past, isn’t so hot. It starts out beautifully with those flash-impact titles, and then cuts to that brilliant image of a trench-coated Robert Mitchum framed by vertical iron bars outside Kirk Douglas‘s Lake Tahoe mansion. And then it falls apart. Just a series of visceral, raggedy-ass, occasionally slow-mo clips that emphasize the primal and ignore the undercurrent. Out of the Past is a bitter and profoundly sad film about fate and resignation, and yet Levy’s trailer seems to go out of its way to ignore that. Fail.

OUT OF THE PAST Trailer from Jonathan Levy on Vimeo.

The best newly configured, jazzed-up trailer for a classic film remains Cameron Arragoni‘s Psycho trailer:

You’re damn right I ordered The Outfit today. I had to after belly-aching for the last five or six years that it wasn’t available on DVD. The Movie Godz are, I think, probably fairly satisfied with this. No special delivery so that means seven to ten days, I’m guessing.

On 10.23.73 Roger Ebert called it “a classy action picture, very well directed and acted, about a gangster’s revenge on the mob for the death of his brother. An outline of the plot would make it sound pretty routine, but what makes the picture superior is its richness of detail. We don’t care much about what happens; the same things are always happening in action movies, and when you’ve seen one car burst into flames you’ve seen them all. But the people in this movie are uncommonly interesting.

“The lead is a guy named Macklin, played by Robert Duvall. He and his brother made the mistake some years ago of sticking up a bank that was owned by the outfit. In revenge, his brother is wiped out by a couple of stone-faced gunsels. (And this is, by the way, the first movie in a long time to resurrect “gunsel,” that great piece of 1930s slang. Maybe it was suggested by Elisha Cook, who has a bit part here and was the archetypal gunsel in The Maltese Falcon.)

“Anyway, Duvall gets out of prison and hitches up with an old partner in crime, Joe Don Baker. They also take along Duvall’s girl (Karen Black), but mostly she just gets to ride in the back seat. Like so many movies of the last five or six years, this one is essentially about a relationship between two males. Duvall and Baker make it work better than usual by suggesting real, fundamental friendship and mutual respect.

“No, these are just a couple of old pals who are quick and mean and very professional. And Duvall is reasonable, too; he doesn’t want total vengeance, he only wants a quarter of a million dollars. The outfit takes in more than that before noon, on a good day — or so observes Robert Ryan, who plays the mob chief. But Ryan double-crosses Duvall, and then it turns out that for $250,000, he would have been getting off cheap.

“Duvall and Baker raid a series of mob operations, including a gambling club and a bookie wire room, and finally they raid the mansion of Ryan himself. The nice thing about all the raid sequences is that they’re carried out realistically; no James Bond gimmicks or impossible heroism, just a few well-executed plans.

“John Flynn, who wrote and directed the movie, fills it with a series of supporting characters who are allowed to seem complex and real.

“I especially remember a couple of dealers in hot cars and the nymphomaniac wife of one of them (Sheree North). And Marie Windsor, as Baker’s wife. And Ryan, in his next-to-last role, playing a man with great strength but very little happiness. The scene at the farm of the two stolen car dealers is handled with such attention to character detail that it could stand by itself; with a few small strokes, Flynn gives us three characters and their relationship, Instead of just throwing in some stock dialog.

“There’s something else that’s good about the movie: The relative restraint with which Flynn uses violence. Instead of going for a lot of fancy gunplay, Flynn more often than not examines the way in which violent situations tend to be clumsy and confused. A scene in a skid row mission, for example, comes alive when Duvall and Baker, trying to escape a couple of hit men, set off a fire alarm. Bums and firemen and cops and killers all mill around trying to find the fire; it’s exciting, but it’s fun too.”

What I need to make myself feel whole and fulfilled and to take away that awful feeling of stalled emptiness is a Rat Pack coffee-table book that will set me back $650 bills. Edited by Tony Nourmand, written by Shawn Levy and art direction/design by Graham Marsh, this is the ultimate Rat Pack nostalgia cruise for the man-child in your life who has everything but not quite, and who owns a pair of black suede pumps and drinks martinis and owns a DVD of Doug Liman‘s Swingers and all that.

Levy, whose regular gig is critic for the Oregonian, has invited me to a special Soho House party for the Rat Pack book, put on by Real Art Press, on December 7th. I’ll be in Morocco at the time so I guess I’ll never be able to leaf through the damn thing, but really — who shells out $650 for a photograph book? There’s a market for this stuff, obviously. The obnoxiously wealthy, I suppose.

“They had it made. The booze, the broads, the banter. The handmade suits, the swimming pools, the automatic welcome into backrooms of restaurants owned by men of discretion. From Las Vegas to Palm Springs to Miami, they lived in a world of endless sunshine. Nothing surely, could be as much fun as the life of the Rat Pack at the dawn of the 60s. The more they drank onstage, the more they indulged a liking for the obscure in-group nonsense, the louder the audience cheered.

“During one four-week season at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, 34,000 people flocked to see Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford exude the glow of an effortless hedonism, behind which flickered the shadows of organized crime and political corruption. — from Richard Williams‘ 10.7.10 Guardian article called “When The Rat Pack Ruled Supreme.”

The guy who has everything but not quite wishes he could have hung and swung with Frank and Dino and Sammy and Peter and Joey in ’58 or ’59 or early ’60, when things were about as perfect as they could have been for those guys. Oh God, I missed the glory time and here I am stuck in 2010 with my iPhone and my iPad and hundreds of channels and nothin’ on and no broads — only women of varying levels of cultivation.

Clearly, many millions have some kind of primal need to put royalty on a pedestal and then show obeisance before that power and that mythology. Women are the most susceptible, it seems. (Particularly those who watch “Dancing With The Stars” and read www.popeater.com.) “Kneeling before power” is built into our genes. It’s mostly satisfied by the worship of certain celebrities, but now England’s royal family is competing for attention with “the new Diana” — i.e., Kate Middleton — engaged to marry Prince William, the heir to the heir of the British throne. Poor guy — 28 years old and he’s all but egg bald.

Obviously a huge hit waiting to happen, but half of the trailer is awfully dark…no? Ford is obviously playing more than a walk-on part. Good for him. He needs the juice. I would honestly like to buy and own and wear one of those blue-light alien wristband things that Daniel Craig is wearing.

I don’t sympathize with yawners either. Especially the ones that make no attempt to muffle it. It’s rude. But honestly? I’ve had yawning attacks myself. Sometimes expressions of boredom or impatience come out without a person meaning to clearly express them. They just happen. I’ve been accused of loudly exhaling during meetings, and I didn’t even know I was doing that.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment design guy: “So what about the Ishtar Bluray jacket art? I’ve roughed out some ideas.”

SPHE marketing director: “No ideas. Boilerplate. Use the art from the VHS. Tweak it or re-do the titles, but we’re not spending nickel one on re-design.”

Design guy: “The VHS art…? But we’ve got all this material.”

Marketing director: “We don’t care. It’s a loss leader. Just re-do the lettering. Fuck it.”

Design guy: “What about a critic quote?”

Marketing director: “Use the Mike Clark one from 23 years ago.”

Design guy: “Have you read the Richard Brody one?”

Marketing director: “The what?”

Design guy: “The quote from Richard Brody. From last summer. New Yorker guy. A very smart, well-respected dweeb critic with a big brown Leo Tolstoy beard.”

Marketing director: “Average people don’t want to hear from guys like that. Just keep it simple. ‘Undeniable hilarity.’ The dumbest person in the world gets that.”

Design guy: “But…whatever you want, I’ll do it, no worries. But they’re putting this movie out after not putting it out for all these years because it’s become a cult film, and Brody…”

Marketing director: “I don’t want to hear this.”

Design guy: “But they’re not putting this movie out because it’s just another comedy. It has a special kind of dry humor. It’s called no-laugh funny . And Brody is articulating the new view. He gets the new Ishtar coolness.”

Marketing director: “‘No-laugh funny’?”

Design guy: “It’s the new comic aesthetic.”

Marketing director: “What’s the quote?”

Design guy: “He called it ‘one of the most original, audacious, and inventive movies — and funniest comedies — of modern times…it isn’t just a movie worth rescuing for a few choice bits…it’s a thoroughgoing, beginning-to-end masterwork.'”

Marketing guy: “Too long.”

Design guy: “We can cut it down. ‘One of the funniest, most original, audacious, and inventive movies of modern times.'”

Marketing guy: “Sounds intimidating. More like an art film than a comedy you can just laugh at. If I was just looking to just flop on the couch and chill out, I’d watch something else. Something stupid.”

Design guy: “But the people who want to watch Adam Sandler films will never watch Ishtar. That’s the point. It’s a cult film. That’s why they’re putting it out.”

Marketing director: “A cult film that maybe 800 or 900 people in the country will respond to by buying the Bluray. Big deal. The rest of the country just wants to have a good time. Use the VHS art and the Clark quote. Next?”

The Social Network as directed by Wes Anderson, Michael Bay, Quentin Tarantino and Frank Capra. The Anderson-esque rendering of Erica Albright’s break-up moment is perfect. The Bay riff is…well, okay. The Tarantino thing should have been worked on a bit more. The Capra is pretty good. We all get the basic idea, I think.