Day: April 6, 2013

Everyone understands, of course, that Marc Forster‘s film having had its third act re-written and re-shot matters not to 97% of the audience out there. So it’s not the calamity-waiting-to-happen that some think it is. Most of of the paying public hasn’t read about it and doesn’t want to know. They’re committed to being as ignorant and/or ineducable (in a pre-release sense) as they feel like being, and that’s how the big studios like it. I suppose in my own way I’m guilty of the same. But not really.

What do I really know? Maybe the third act really works now.

I’ve long felt that Terence Fisher‘s Horror of Dracula (’58) is scarier, grabbier and definitely sexier than Tod Browning‘s Dracula (’31). And that Christopher Lee‘s bloodsucking count is far spookier than Bela Lugosi‘s. The original British title was just plain Dracula — it was re=titled Horror of Dracula for the American release. The U.K. Bluray, in any event, is at the top of my list.

Surely some regulars have seen Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color by now. If you’re among them please share impressions. Here’s yesterday’s re-posting of my Sundance reaction. And here’s Carruth’s explanation of what the film is basically about, as posted by Filmmaker magazine’s Scott Macaulay:

Upstream Color costar Amy Seimetz.

“What I wanted to do was have a story where I break some people apart and make them have to figure it out all over again — what it is that they are, how they see themselves and how they behave. They’re going to wake up — whatever ‘wake up’ means — in a ruin of some kind, and they’re going to have to understand or explain to themselves what happened to them. That was sort of the kernel of it.

“I wanted to explore the concept of trying to recognize that you’re in a narrative, one that you may have made up yourself, or one that was [impressed] on you from an outside force. Thematically, this is everything in the film for me.

“And then you have a potential romance in the midst of it all, and I found that incredibly compelling. I think I had The Hustler on repeat last year for months. That’s where it comes from, the romantic possibility that exists when everything has been stripped away. I don’t know a better premise for a love story that that.

“And then, I needed this mythical cycle to be happening around them. They’re not aware of it, because if they are, then that changes everything. Then they know that their story is affected by it. I wanted these mythical elements to be there, but that [the two central characters] not touch them. Once I knew that, then it’s like you get to play with these things.

“You’ve got a Thief, you’ve got a Sampler and you’ve got the Orchid Mother and Daughter as the three points of this continuing cycle’s triangle. The Thief is clearly a pretty negative force, for the most part. The Orchid Mother and Daughter don’t know what they’re doing. They’re just cogs in the machine. They’re completely benign. And then, you’ve got The Sampler, who is a complete unknown hanging in the middle, this character we can read into. Is he just observing, or is he gaining something from his observance? Is he saving people from this worm that is constricting and controlling them? Or, is he just using this device to grow his own fishbowl full of emotional experiences?

“I’m trying here not to talk about God; it’s like, that is what we’re talking about. There is an offscreen force that we attribute things to that we can’t explain. Anyways, that’s way too many words, but that’s where that story came from.”

Sometimes writing this column is a huge blast, and sometimes it’s drudgery. Sometimes the back-and-forth gets really funny or passionate and sometimes angry, but it’s always an adventure. I always try to cut the fat out and get down to the nub of things as a rule. I can be mouthy and egoistic at times, but you know what I never do, ever? I never go after another columnist or critic or reporter and say, “God, that person is a waste of skin” or “Jesus, what a slimy disreputable jerkwad” or words to that effect.

Unless they go after me first, of course. Then all bets are off. But I never take the first shot because I don’t believe in hating on fellow journos unless, you know, they’re lying or being slanderous or are dealing heroin or molesting minors.

But I get hated on all the time. Every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Haters on comment threads are part of the rough and tumble — you have to roll with that — but what kind of a journalist/columnist/critic likes to shove a sword between the ribs of somebody who works on the same side of the fence? Life is hard enough, guys. I mean, seriously…how do you grow your uglies into a permanent tumor? I read one of their comments and I ask myself, “Oh, so I’m really bad, huh? Okay. So am I supposed to…what, stick my head in an oven? Throw myself on the steps of the nearest church and beg for forgiveness?” And then you have to stifle an urge to write them back and say something even snarlier.

Yesterday I posted a little note called “Little Marty Nudge” in which I asked the great and powerful Martin Scorsese to try and give a little thought to the Shane aspect-ratio scandal, which I wrote him about a week ago. It was just a thought so I posted it…big deal. And in response Newark Star Ledger critic Stephen Whitty tweeted the following: “Is there anything more sadly self-aggrandizing than ‘An Open Letter To’ someone who’d never take your call?”

The fuck? I’ve never been dumb enough to call Scorsese for that reason, but after I’ve received no response to a note I wrote a week earlier I don’t see what harm a little nudge-note amounts to. The shape of a Bluray-ed Shane is an important issue that I’m sure Scorsese has a strong conviction about so what’s the problem? Is Scorsese too important to be addressed in this manner? Does he poop Tiffany cufflinks? Is he given to secrecy and subterfuge and would therefore be grossly offended by an open letter?

I can tell you that if Whitty ever writes something that I don’t agree with, I will never tweet that he has disgusted or appalled me. Not my style.

An hour or two earlier JHoffman6 tweeted that “I can’t deny that I’m a little impressed Woody Allen weighed in on wellshwood’s windmill tilting.” In response to which Kris Tapley tweeted, “Yeah, but if he knew what we know…” What kind of a shitheel do you have to be to throw little dingleberries like that? “Yeah, we know better about what a problematic ayehole wellshwood is,” blah blah. Allow me to respond by saying that Tapley is a cranky, judgmental sourpuss who’s always looking to piss on something I’ve written or throw some kind of “nyah-nyah” or whatever. That is the kind of sour and diseased attitude I never fire at other journalists…unless provoked.

All I know is that there are some journalists who seem to live in order to condemn others in their field. It gets them off on some level. These are people who have Alien acid blood running in their veins. And I really get sick of this from time to time.

None of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival prediction pieces have even toyed with the possibility of James Toback and Alec Baldwin‘s Seduced and Abandoned, a documentary about the film business and financing in particular, being one of the attractions. Shot during last year’s festival and featuring encounters with numerous industry hotshots, the now-completed film sounds to me like a semi-likely inclusion. Perhaps in some kind out-of-competition slot or under Director’s Fortnight or Un Certain Regard.

James Toback, Alec Baldwin.

“The movie business is the worst girlfriend in the world,” Baldwin said in Simon Dang‘s 5.31.12 Indiewire article about the film. “You go back again and again and again. You go back with another chance to do something that you want to do in moviemaking or moviegoing. You are seduced and abandoned over and over again.”

I’ve been hearing this and that person say “I obviously don’t know anything but this is starting to feel like a bit of a weak festival.” The only way to shake that feeling would be to bring in a major fall awards contender, and that would be Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska…right? Remember that No Country For Old Men vibe when Joel and Ethan Coen‘s film debuted at Cannes six years ago? That “whoa, stand back” feeling? That’s what we need to lift things up this year.

I’ve already indicated a general lack of enthusiasm for Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling‘s Only God Forgives, which is looking like a likely inclusion. I’ve written so much about Joel and Ethan’s Inside Llewyn Davis (including a March 2012 script review) that it almost feels like I’ve seen it.

Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind the Candelabra is said to be likely. Ditto Sofia Coppola‘s The Bling Ring and Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past.

I wouldn’t mind catching JC Chandor‘s All is Lost, the Robert Redford survivalist drama. Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s Diana would be welcome. Ditto Jonathan Glazer‘s Under the Skin, Guillaume Canet‘s Blood Ties and Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive.

I was really hoping for Alfonso Cuaron‘s 3D Gravity but that won’t be completed until sometime this summer, I’m told by a top-dog source. Yes, even though it test-screened early last November at the Sherman Oaks Arclight.

I would be down with Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale (which I still haven’t seen), Spike Jonze‘s Her, James Gray‘s Lowlife, Luc Besson‘s Malavita and/or Roman Polanski‘s Venus in Fur.

My “Dream Cannes” picks include Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips (wny not?), Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave, Jason Reitman‘s Labor Day (which was test screened two or three months ago), and Spike Lee‘s Oldboy.

Nobody in the U.S. press pack will express great enthusiasm much about Baz Luhrman‘s The Great Gatsby as it will have opened commercially in th U.S. five days earlier. The period drama will open the festival.

The 2013 Cannes film festival runs from 5.15 through 5.26.