Month: April 2011

Most of my life I’ve been somewhat interested in seeing Robert Frank‘s Cocksucker Blues (’72), a 93-minute doc about the Rolling Stones‘ Exile on Main Street tour in ’72. But it’s never been a burning obsession and I’ve never quite gotten around to it. This morning, however, I discovered that it’s on YouTube, and in what looks like fairly good quality.

My first aesthetic reaction? Franks’ camerawork is sloppy, scattershot and raggedy-assed. I hate it when photographers are always going for the jumpy-antsy closeup and seem indifferent to even trying to deliver formal, Eisenstein-like framings.

This, in any event, is a note of gratitude to Bill Wyman, whose 4.19 Slate article about unlimited access to music (“Lester Bangs’ Basement”), for tipping me off.

Restrepo co-director and Vanity Fair contributor Tim Hetherington, whom I met and questioned during a Lincoln Center q & a last June, has reportedly been killed in Misrata, Libya, while covering the fighting there. I suspect that if given an either-or choice, Hetherington would have opted for this while in his 60s or 70s rather than dying warm in his bed at age 87. He was a war junkie. But it’s a deeply sad thing, of course, and I’m very sorry. Sincere condolences to his friends and colleagues.

(l.) Tim Hetherington, Rachel Reid during 6.19.10 q & a at Manhattan’s Walter Reade theatre.

The initial report came from a Facebook posting by photographer Andre Liohn. Hetherington and three colleagues were hit by mortar fire.

4:29p pm Update: CNN has reported that Hetherington’s colleague Chris Hondros has died.

Previous Update: A NY Times story by C.J. Chivers reports that Hetherington’s colleague Chris Hondros, “an American working for the Getty photo agency, suffered a severe brain injury and was in extremely critical condition, according to Mr. Liohn. He had been revived and was clinging to life in the evening. A later update from Mr. Liohn said that Mr. Hondros was in a coma at the medical center, which is located near the front lines.”

Hetherington reportedly tweeted from Misrata shortly before he was killed, and described heavy fighting taking place outside the city, to wit: “In besieged Libyan city of Misrata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO.”

(l.) (l.) Sebastian Junger, (r.) Tim Hetherington during filming of Restrepo.

What are the odds that a Texas skating-rink movie set in the ’80s called Skateland (Freestyle, 5.13) would open within three weeks of a somewhat well-regarded dystopian horror flm called Stake Land (IFC Films/Midnight, 4.22)? I’ve known about them both for weeks and have been marvelling at the idiocy of the timing. You can’t make this stuff up.

Producers of both films presumably eyeballed each other and figured it wouldn’t matter if they opened this close to each other…amazing. They actually decided that moviegoers wouldn’t feel the least bit confused or uncertain? Any idiot, you’d think, would calculate that one of these films should delay or move up their release date so they’d be six or nine months removed from the other.

Anthony Burns‘ Skateland wlll probably suffer a bit due to following Jim Mickle‘s Stake Land by three weeks, but maybe not. They’re obviously appealing to different demographics. Skateland is apparently the more nostalgic, wholesome and emotionally winning of the two, etc. But it still seems weird.

And what about those two African lion docs — Dereck Joubert‘s The Last Lions (National Geographic, 2.18) and African Cats (Disney, 4.22) — opening two months apart? How many African lion docs have opened theatrically over the last half-century? And suddenly two open within eight weeks of each other?

TheWrap‘s Brent Lang is reporting today that over twenty big-name directors and producers — including James Cameron, Michael Mann, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro, Gale Ann Hurd, Michael Bay, Brett Ratner and Hangover director Todd Phillips — have signed a letter urging studios to reverse their much-debated VOD plan that would release films on DirectTV 60 days after their theatrical release.

The argument for the plan is that anyone with a pulse is going to catch any new film worth seeing in a theatre within three to four weeks, or more likely within one to three weeks, and what does it matter if it hits VOD after eight weeks? Most films are completely over at the box-office after five or six weeks. The argument against is that moviegoers outside the hardcore urban areas will now be more likely to skip theatrical exhibition altogether, knowing it will only be two months before a given film will be available on demand.

People in the hinterlands have long argued that smaller, highly recommended films never even show up at their local theatre, and that early VOD windows would therefore be very welcome and a life-saver of sorts. I can understand that. I’ve heard this complaint over and over among HE readers.

Discouraging moviegoers from patronizing films at theatres could indeed by disastrous for exhibitors. The filmmakers are probably right when it comes to major-league, well-reviewed, high-interest features like the ones that Mann and Del Toro and Cameron make — they shouldn’t be VOD’ed 60 days after release. But what about the not-so-great mezzo-mezzo films?

Theatre owners have arguably done much to already discourage attendance by failing to compete with the high-quality viewing experience available to anyone with a 50″ high-def screen, a Blurayplayer and a sound system of some kind. It seems to me that if smaller, cooler, more interesting films like Super are available day-and-date (or close to that) by IFC Films and Magnolia and others, it might not be fatal for lower-rated movies that most of us wouldn’t see in theatres anyway to be viewable on home screens after 60 days.

Lang summarizes that studios “have privately maintained that premium VOD is the best way to stabilize the home entertainment market and reestablish a price point that’s been depressed by dollar rental kiosks and subscription rental services such as Netflix.”

The filmmakers’ letter reads in part, “As a crucial part of a business that last year grossed close to $32 billion in worldwide theatrical ticket sales, we in the creative community feel that now is the time for studios and cable companies to acknowledge that a release pattern for premium video-on-demand that invades the current theatrical window could irrevocably harm the financial model of our film industry.”

As Lang reports, “The premium VOD platform kicks off on Thursday with the release of Just Go With It. For $30, DirecTV customers can rent the title for 48 hours. Four studios — Fox, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Universal — are making their films available through the new windows.”

Yesterday The Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth reported about Sacha Gervasi‘s My Dinner With Herve, a drama about a 1993 interview Gervasi did with Herve Villechaize (“The plane! the plane!”) days before the dwarf-sized Fantasy Island actor killed himself. The director of Anvil! The Story of Anvil is looking to snag James McAvoy as the journalist; Peter Dinklage will play Villechaize.

This story gives me an excuse to post a clip of Villechaize’s gay cowboy scene in Robert Downey, Sr.‘s Greaser’s Palace (’72). I saw this film in its entirety once sometime in the early ’80s, and I’ve never forgotten the silly sexual current in this scene. Stanley Gottlieb‘s performance as Villechaize’s cabin-partner “Spitunia” is a classic. Villechaize was 28 or 29 when this scene was shot; he killed himself at age 51.

Sidenote: The Greaser’s Palace Wiki page claims that Robert Downey, Jr., “the son of the writer-director of the film, has an uncredited role as a Quasimodo-like child.”

So what’s the actual down-and-dirty motive for Mark Cuban having put Landmark Theaters and Magnolia Pictures up for sale? What’s the real “real” reason, I mean? And what’s the connection between this and TheWrap‘s Steve Pond having written about the difficult task of Film Independent replacing the Academy-bound Dawn Hudson without throwing in names of possible candidates? I’ll tell you the connection. Neither of these stories has nutritional value.

Before reading about his death earlier today, the last time I’d even thought about actor Michael Sarrazin was when I ran into him at Barney’s Beanery ten or eleven years ago. He was a very friendly guy with a nice easy laugh, but I couldn’t help feeling badly that he was hanging out at a joint that’s only a couple steps up from a dive.

Sarrazin had a strong jaw and gentle eyes and a face that exuded vulnerability and a slight but persistent sadness. His two strongest performances were in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and The Flim-Flam Man. Okay, you can add Sometimes a Great Notion. He and Jacqueline Bisset were lovers for some 14 years (’68 to ’82), and that ain’t hay — any relationship that makes it past five or six years is something to point to with some pride. Sarrazin’s final appearance will be in Walter Salles‘ On The Road. My condolences to family and friends.

“Fake Armond” is my favorite Twitter voice. I smirk almost every single time he posts. What I don’t get is why the Real McCoy doesn’t chime in with his own stuff. “Fake Armond” has upped his fame/notoriety factor and created a Twtter springboard.

The same five or six stills from Pedro Almodovar‘s The Skin I Live In are all over the web. Clearly a metaphor for certain social tendencies and surgical practices of our time, and most certainly not a horror film. Pedro doesn’t do “genre” — he does Pedro movies. Although it seems to contain echoes of George Franju‘s Eyes Without A Face and, to a lesser extent, William Wyler‘s The Collector.

“Richard Lafargue (Antonio Banderas) is an eminent plastic surgeon haunted by dirty secrets. He has an operating theatre in the basement of his chateau and keeps his partner Eve (Elena Anaya) imprisoned in her bedroom, a room he has equipped with an intercom and 300-watt speakers through which he bellows orders. Lafargue humiliates Eve by forcing her to perform lewd sexual acts with strangers while he watches through a one-way mirror.”

The 64th Cannes Film Festival competition jury is as follows: Robert De Niro (honcho), Jude Law, Uma Thurman, Argentinian actress-producer Martina Gusman, Chinese producer Nansun Shi, Norweigan critic/writer Linn Ullmann — daughter of Liv Ullmann) and directors Olivier Assayas (Carlos), Mahamat Saleh Haroun (A Screaming Man) and Johnny To (Exiled, Election).

The one I feel closest to and who seems the most vital among this bunch is Assayas, mainly because of Carlos. De Niro is Mr. Cash-In, Law is thought to be either over or fading, Thurman has been fading since Kill Bill, and To is a respected action-crime guy, etc. I regret to say I don’t really know Haroun or Gusman or Nansun Shi, and I’ve ever never read a single article by Ullmann. I have a little learning to do.

Is Gary Busey now in danger of becoming afflicted with Stephen Baldwin disease and thereby find it harder to get work in this town, for obvious reasons? And what happened to his face? I keep thinking how he looked 24 years ago in Lethal Weapon.