Day: October 18, 2011

Sean Durkin‘s Martha Marcy May Marlene (also known in some circles as Martha Marlene…Uhm, Whatever) has been cruising along on the bearded hipster festival circuit for almost ten months now, starting with last January’s Sundance Film Festival, which is where I saw it. Everyone except David Edelstein has been pretty much on his or her knees with awe or admiration or deep like. I’m an ardent fan myself, as far as it goes.

(l. to r.) Borderline Films’ Josh Mond, Antonio Campos and Sean Durklin during last weekend’s Martha Marcy May Marlene junket.

The word-of-mouth will be very positive, I expect, and it’ll be necessary for everyone to carefully inspect Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister of the Loathsome Twins.

But an unsettled feeling is also going to kick in when Joe and Jane Popcorn sit down with this film three days hence. The smooth asphalt road of the last nine and a half months is going to become a little muddy and bumpy once they watch that ending.

All the things that are eerily good about Martha Marcy May Marlene are still going to be there in front of paying audiences. Joe and Jane Schmoe are going to feel chilled and entranced by the last few minutes, but — this is an important “but” — they’ll also be having a problem with it.

And they may, like me, feel a little frustrated with Olsen’s Martha character, specifically her inability to do or say anything that might somehow alter or transform her situation.

Olsen is playing a very young (and, it must be said, seemingly not very bright) woman who’s been so abused and traumatized by her experience with a Manson-like cult family in the boonies of New York State that while she manages to escape from the group, she can’t talk about them. She’s afraid to mention them for fear of…I don’t know what. All I know is that I was ready to roll with her inability or refusal to share her experience with her older sister or anyone, really, for the first two acts, but once act three began I wanted her to do something, dammit…anything. Woman up!

But she doesn’t. She won’t. She can’t. And that pissed me off. Because it’s not Martha who’s keeping silent — it’s Sean Durkin.

An actor or actress who doesn’t do anything will always have a hard time landing an acting nomination. Because people don’t just vote for the performance — they vote for the character.

I wrote last spring or summer that Durkin “really needs to fix the ending over the next two or three months,” and as far as I know this hasn’t happened. Martha Marcy is about weird oppressive brainwashing and the suppressing of terrible memories. And it ends (or so it seems) with the bad guys coming back and invading the world of Olsen’s hiding-out protagonist. Except, as I said during Sundance ’11, “the mildly creepy finale hints at what might be happening — maybe, sorta kinda, probably — but it leaves you up in the air and scratching your head. I walked out saying to myself, ‘Wait…what happened?’

Last weekend I talked to Durkin and his two partners, Antonio Campos and Josh Mond, who co-produced Martha Marcy. They’ve formed a company called Borderline Films, which is based in the Bedford/Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. A 10.16 New York profile by Jada Yuan said “they’re essentially a collective, or maybe a band. One directs while the other two produce, and then they rotate. If one of them needs time to write a script, the other two will make commercials and music videos and split the money three ways. The idea is to be completely self-sustaining, three amigos against the world.”

Anyway, here’s the mp3 of our chat. It was a nice discussion, they’re cool guys with a dry sense of humor, they’ve made a film that’s different and curiously affecting despite the two weak elements I’ve mentioned, and it deserves your attention and patronage.

The conference room stuff isn’t “funny” but it’s not half bad. The idea is humdrummy (i.e., we’re all mediocre) but the Jack Black routine kicks it up some. But the ending totally gets it. You just have to hang in there.

Yesterday afternoon I announced Hollywood Elsewhere’s Tyrannosaur fundraising campaign with the idea of raising $2000 to cover the rental of a screening room that Strand Releasing doesn’t want to pay for. I’m happy to announce that just shy of $700 — more than a third of the amount required! — is now in the safe. So I’m asking again for all believers to step up and throw in $20 or so to help pay for this. Tyrannosaur power!

Send your Pay Pal dollars to Jeffrey Wells (gruver1@gmail.com).

The backstory behind this bizarre but encouraging turn of events is right here.

Strand has told me that BAFTA will probably offer their facilities for a screening under their auspices, but that they also appreciate HE’s efforts and will work with me to set up this tastemaker screening, which will presumably happen next week or the week after.

Here’s a link to all my Tyrannosaur stories over the last nine months or so

“The most original adult love story I’ve seen in ages,” I wrote during Sundance 2011. “Easily the biggest shock of the Sundance Film Festival so far. I didn’t see this one coming — it’s a much stronger and more focused film than I expected from a smallish British drama about an older working-class guy with a temper problem. It curiously touches.

“Tyrannosaur is a drama that deals almost nothing but surprise cards — a tough story of discipline, redemption and wounded love. Cheers to director-writer Considine for making something genuine and extra-unique. He’s not just an actor who’s branched into directing with a special facility for coaxing good performances — he’s a world-class director who knows from shaping, cutting, timing, holding back and making it all come together.”

“I didn’t mention the actors — Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan — but their performances simultaneously stand alone and reach in and grab hold. In fact each and every performance (and I mean right down to the dogs) is aces.

“The beast of the title is Joseph (Mullan), an alcoholic, widowed, violence-prone rage monster who lives alone in Leeds. He all but melts when he encounters Hannah (Colman), a kind and trusting shop merchant who shows Joseph a little tenderness. Hannah talks the Christian talk but is just as close to alcohol, which she’s turned to as a sanctuary from her ghastly marriage to a homely, ultra-possessive monster of another sort (Marsan) who brings violence and subjugation to Hannah on a constant basis.

“Once Mullan and Colman have formed a kind of friendship, the inevitable final conflict with Marsan awaits. One naturally expects (and in facts savors, truth be told) some sort of howling, knock-down, face-gashing fight between Mullan and Marsan, but…well, I’ll leave it there but it’s more than a bit of a surprise what happens.

“I was so taken with Tyrannosaur in the screening’s immediate wake that I shared my reactions with a young freelancer I’d spoken with in the cattle tent. He’d just seen it as well, and basically went ‘meh.’ My mouth almost fell open. ‘You think what we just saw is just okay?,’ I thought but didn’t say. Jeezus Christ. It takes all sorts and sensibilities to make a world.”

Just another $1300 to go! Please give if you can.

I’m looking to add a person or two to a large Park City apartment I’m co-renting with a colleague during Sundance 2012. I asked a columnist friend to join. “I can’t imagine attending Sundance since January is so heavy, Oscar-wise,” came the reply. “I usually have to be camped out in front of my server which continually crashes around that time of year.”

My response: “You should try Sundance once. It’s stimulating, loads of fun, euphoric at times…and it gets you out of the Oscar penitentiary for a few days, which is AGONY by the time January rolls around. You can’t keep writing ‘will The Descendants beat War Horse or The Artist?’ over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. People get sick of that stuff.”

In Bressonworld, casual cruelty and inhumanity are visited upon a saintly little donkey. In Spielbergland, bombs explode at night, pretty photography commences, John Williams‘ music swells, and everyone falls in love with Joey-the-adorable-horse. Or so the trailer indicates.

It was my hope that Steven Spielberg, needing to replace the wondrous effect of the pretend horses in the stage show, would shoot War Horse as a total horse-POV thing, allowing us to see our carnage and compassion anew through the eyes of an innocent. Dashed!

I spent almost two hours yesterday futzing around and then downloading iOS5 onto my old rickety iPhone 4.0 (purchased in October 2010), and it definitely seems slicker, spiffier and faster now. I’m kind of wondering if it’s worth $300 to get an iPhone 4S just so I can have a 1080 video camera (which I have anyway in my Canon Elph 300) and talk to Siri. I would absolutely get it if they would allow users to download a Douglas Rain/HAL 9000 Siri voice.

Mouse — Monday, 10.17, 3:05 pm.

On 10.14 N.Y. Times tech columnist David Pogue reported that Siri is “one funny lady.”

“Man, I thought I was brilliant asking Siri, the new iPhone’s virtual assistant, funny questions like ‘What is the meaning of life?

“Turns out she has an assortment of answers to that question, including:

“”I don’t know. But I think there’s an app for that.’

“‘Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in and try to live in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.’

“‘I give up.’

“‘Life: a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings. I guess that includes me.’

“‘Life: the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter including the capacity for growth, reproduction functional activity and continual change preceding death.’

“‘I can’t answer that now, but give me some time to write a very long play in which nothing happens.’

“And my favorite:

“‘All evidence to date suggests it’s chocolate.'”