Day: March 21, 2013

Movies succeed because they fit into the culture of the moment. Because they express or reflect something recognizably true about the values, customs and traditions that people in a given culture are living by. When David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock made Rebecca in 1940, the naive, submissive attitudes of Joan Fontaine‘s character — literate, daydreamy, intimidated by the swells — struck some kind of chord with romantic-minded women of that era, all of whom had gone through the Depression and many of whom had presumably read Daphne du Maurier ‘s novel.

And by the standards of 1940, Laurence Olivier‘s Maxim de Winter wasn’t as much of an arrogant and insensitive chauvinist as he would seem today to any confident, forward-thinking woman watching the Hitchcock film.

All to say that a remake of Hitchcock’s film (and not an adaptation of DuMaurier’s book) by DreamWorks, director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair), screenwriter Steven Knight (Eastern Promises) and producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner sounds like a dicey idea. Presumably they’re going to make it as a ’30s period film but what woman would be able to relate? Maxim is totally impossible, and that world (Manderley, servants, George Sanders, Mrs. Danvers) existed 70-plus years ago. Our world has no ties or connections to it, or none to speak of.

All you could do to juice up the new version would be to strengthen “Danny’s” lesbian attachment to the dead Rebecca.

The important thing for everyone to remember is to never visualize Rebecca — no actress, no flashbacks, no dialogue. Keep her abstract and ethereal.

For the last two or three years Andrea Riseborough, the 31 year-old lead female in Eran Creevy‘s Welcome to The Punch (IFC Films, 3.27), has been an industry “comer”, which is one level down from industry star and one or two levels down from being a name among ticket buyers. She’s obviously talented and kinda Streepy on a certain level, but the right role — the one that puts her over — hasn’t happened yet. I’d say she has two or three years to find it. Okay, four.

Riseborough’s best role so far was in Shadow Dancer, the 2012 IRA spy drama that came out last year (and which I saw and loved at Sundance 2012).

British critics are starting to post reviews of Danny Boyle‘s Trance, which opens in England on Wednesday, 3.27. (The U.S. debut is on Friday, 4.5.) The friendliest response so far is from Indiewire‘s Oliver Lyttleton, who calls it (a) “twisty” and “mind-bending,” (b) a “return to the darker crime fare of Shallow Grave” and (c) “Boyle’s most satisfying and coherent [film] since Trainspotting.”

“In its basic set-up — the battle for loot between a trio of protagonists, not all of whom, or indeed any of whom, are entirely sympathetic — it [has] a playfulness and tricksiness to the material that feels like pure Boyle,” Lyttleton writes. “The vibrant, hyper-kinetic look (once again courtesy of cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle) is a more natural fit here than it was in Slumdog Millionaire or 127 Hours — that so much of the film revolves around the mind, or the tricks it can play, means Boyle’s style feels more earned.

“We heard a few comparisons to Inception knocking around as we left the theater, and they’re not unfair ones, the plot hinging on the unlocking of James McAvoy‘s psyche, and the secrets that it holds within. But if anything, it all feels a little more plausible and authentic than in Nolan’s film; the style might be more jittery, but it seems more fitting to the damaged synapses and dark recesses of its protagonist’s brain.”

I’m not saying the subtitles are incorrect but how did everybody discern what Lindsay Lohan was saying to her attorney during her umpteenth court appearance two days ago? Lip reading? She looks as if she’s probably saying this stuff, okay, but you can only hear the faintest of whispers.

The presumption is that Lohan will be dead by the time she’s 30 or thereabouts. The downside is that she’s only 26 (27 in July) so we may be stuck watching Lilo-in-court TMZ clips for the next three years and perhaps longer.

Slow suicides can take a long time. Usually because the slow suiciders are somewhere between not that dedicated and ambivalent. It took Montgomery Clift ten years from the time of his 5.12.56 auto accident to his drug-related death on 7.22.66 . But then Lohan isn’t behaving and self-destructing like Clift as much as following the standard whoo-hoo-party-on path taken by innumerable rock stars as well as roly-poly wild men like John Belushi and Chris Farley.

Lohan may live into her mid 30s or so, but she surely died a spiritual death after the premiere of Liz and Dick. It would be nice if she at least modestly scores in Paul Schrader‘s The Canyons, but the word on that one, let’s face it, hasn’t been good.

Portions of this new Star Trek Into Darkness trailer have appeared before, and I’m a bit more persuaded that the story is basically about a nihilistic campaign of revenge launched by Benjamin Cumberbatch‘s John Harrison. Who seems, based on these fragments, to be a variation on Javier Bardem‘s Raoul Silva villain in Skyfall — i.e., “You caused me great pain and now you’re going to suffer for that big-time.”

If this is the case (and I’m not saying it is — I’m saying this is a distinct impression given by the trailers) then the real villains, no offense, would be screenwriters Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof.

Anyway, being more than familiar with this kind of plot and looking around for diversion, the only clip that really got me happens at 1:36 and involves Alice Eve — sorry.

Paramount will release Star Trek Into Darkness on 5.17, at which time I’m going to be running around the Cannes Film festival. Hopefully it’ll be viewable before I leave. If not, okay.

All I can recall about Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi‘s Baise-Moi, which opened stateside in the June ’01, is that (a) it was more controversial than good, (b) it was more invested in violent male-hate than anything erotic or half-porny, and (c) it was shot with somewhat primitive video equipment without supplemental lighting and therefore looked extremely crude. I’m only mentioning it because Arrow Video is hyping a new Baise-Moi DVD (out Monday, 3.25) in an unusually honest way.

While some critics thought the low-budget look “added to the film’s uncompromising style, others strongly disagreed with the New York Post [stating] that it ‘looked like hell,'” Arrow’s press statement says. “It is because of the film’s production techniques that Baise-Moi will never be released on the Bluray format. While some distributors may have looked to cash-in on an ‘improved’ Bluray version, the original digital print of the film is not high quality enough to ever look any better than this DVD version, regardless of the medium it is shown on.”

That statement alone almost makes me want to buy the Baise-Moi DVD. I probably won’t have to as I’ve written the Noble guys and asked for a freebie, but either way this kind of honesty is pretty much unheard of in video marketing circles. I’m also partial to any film released in 1.66.

“I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done.

“You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans — my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

“Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam,and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

“I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to ‘liberate’ Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues.

“Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region.

“On every level — moral, strategic, military and economic — Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love.

“I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.” — Open letter posted a couple of days ago by dying Iraq War veteran Tomas Young.