Michael Cieply‘s N.Y. Times story about a controversial decision to close a Motion Picture and Television Fund old folks’ home in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley is, stunning surprise, a portrait of greedy corporate priorities leading to less-well-off folks possibly getting tossed into the street. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.) All I know is that my mom is in an assisted-care facility, and while it’s a very nicely run facility with caring assistants, there’s kind of a creepy waiting-for-the-end atmosphere in these places that really doesn’t feel right. I would much rather keel over on a busy street in Paris at age 77 than slowly wither away in one of these homes and die at age 89 or whenever. Seriously.

There are days when I feel as if I’m covered with liquid chewing gum or taffy or gelatin or something. I try to think and type and shift gears and get to my check-list of things to do. But something stronger than myself has hit the slow-motion button or something. I have trouble lifting my arms. Or my eyebrows. So much to do that I can’t seem to do anything. And then this thing turned up a few minutes ago. No matter how hard you work to make your point understood with precisely the right English and emphasis, most people are going to convert what you write into slogans and cheap ghoulash.

I’ve watched and re-watched this Lovely Bones trailer, and I’m still locked into two basic impressions. One, Alice Sebold‘s novel has been heavily milked, which is to say given a florid Jacksonesque tone (’70s-era impressionism mixed with a kind of otherwordly photo-realism) with plot points heavily telegraphed. Jackson isn’t going to let anyone imagine anything for themselves — he’s going to damn well point stuff out.

And two, there’s an excellent reason for the florid vibe considering the post-mortal vantage point of Saoirse Ronan‘s character. So there’s a certain rhyme and reason to it all.

I never felt that the story told by Terrence Malick‘s The New World really worked, particularly the last third, but I’ve always been in love with the primeval splendor of the thing. As I tried to explain in my initial review: “[During] those first two thirds, The New World is a truly rare animal and movie like no other…a feast of intuitive wow-level naturalism that feels as fresh and vitally alive as newly-sprouted flora.”

Which is why I intend to purchase the forthcoming New World “Extended Cut” Blu-ray. For those first two thirds, I mean. It runs 172 minutes (despite the Amazon page stating otherwise) or 22 minutes longer than the 150-minute version that had a brief theatrical run in late ’05 before New Line Cinema honchos freaked and leaned on Malick to trim it back to 135 minutes for a somewhat wider release that began, as I recall, in late January.

I have this feeling that more and more people are coming around to this point of view. That despite the disappointing last-third turn The New World is one of the greatest dive-in-and-live-in-the-realm movies of all time. A movie clearly uninterested for the most part in telling a gripping story but one that atmospherically mesmerizes in such a way that it feels like somebody put mescaline in your tea.

Gary Tooze‘s DVD Beaver review of the forthcoming Blu-ray puts it nicely:

“It is so refreshing to see such poetic images that can speak luminous volumes in a modern epically proportioned film. Based on the classic Pocahontas and John Smith legend, director Terrence Malick scripted this penetrating drama of conflict between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th century ‘New World’. The heart of each film in Malick’s sporadic oeuvre must be cinematography. This is shot in Virginia by Emmanuel Lubezki, and continually overwhelms us with beauty, wild detail and washes us clean like a breath of mountain air. With organic precision [and] the grace of your senses, ‘masterpiece’ seems an understatement.”

What was wrong with the last third? I believed in the current between Colin Farrell and whatsername who played Pocahantas, and I felt betrayed when he suddenly bailed on her and went back to England. And I resented Christian Bale stepping in and trying to take Farrell’s place. And I couldn’t have cared less about all that royal court in England stuff. Pocahantas dying young didn’t seem to mean much. It’s what happened, yes, but it’s not what I wanted to see.

Some of us don’t remember how badly The New World was ripped by several big-name critics when it first opened.

Salon‘s Stephanie Zacaharek said Malick “may not care much for people, but he never met a tree he didn’t like.” (Somebody previously said this when The Thin Red Line came out, only they used “leaf” instead of “tree.”) Zacharek called it “so much atmospheric tootle” and said Malick’s “idea of using actors in a movie is straight out of ‘Where’s Waldo?'”

The L.A. Weekly‘s Scott Foundas calls it “suffocating…a movie less interested in expanding the boundaries of narrative cinema than in forsaking them.”

The hands-down funniest blurb was from Mike Clark’s USA Today review: “That sound you’re about to hear is the cracking of spines as Terrence Malick enthusiasts like me bend over backward trying to cut The New World a break.”

Second prize went to e-Film Critic’s Eric Childress: “Between the Smith-wanna-poke-a-hontas relationship, the seditious behavior back in Jamestown and the fear of the naturals that their kindness may be turned against them, a story as vast of The New World should serve as more than just a footnote in American history and a stain on the art of storytelling for all eternity.”

I wonder if any of these critics or anyone who dismissed The New World four and a half years ago have started to come around to it?

It will be a travesty if the Massachusetts political process somehow fails to quickly appoint a liberal, public-option supporting replacement for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy — obviously the thing to do in the wake of his passing last night. Kennedy’s greatest legislative dream was to enact meaningful health-care reform. For his voice not to be posthumously heard during the Senate roll call would be an obscenity.

As Sarah Wheaton reports this morning in the N.Y. Times, “One of Senator Kennedy’s last public acts before he died on Tuesday was an emotional plea to Massachusetts state lawmakers that they replace him quickly upon his death.

“Though he did not cite any issues specifically, his note was viewed as an acknowledgment that his absence would leave uncertain not only the identity of his replacement, but also the essence and fate of health care reform, his most cherished legislative goal.

“In the letter, dated July 2, Mr. Kennedy asked lawmakers to amend the state’s rules and grant the governor the power to appoint his successor until a special election could be held.

“‘It is vital for this Commonwealth to have two voices speaking for the needs of its citizens and two votes in the Senate during the approximately five months between a vacancy and a special election,’ he wrote.

“While Massachusetts voters would likely vote in another Democratic senator, any delays caused by a special election could hinder efforts by the party to corral the 60 votes needed in the United States Senate to move health care legislation forward.

“But the effort to find a quick replacement for Mr. Kennedy may prove complicated. In the week before his death, reaction to his request on Beacon Hill ranged from muted to hostile. The state’s Democrats found themselves in the awkward position of being asked to reverse their own 2004 initiative calling for special elections in such instances.

“Until that year, Massachusetts law called for the governor to appoint a temporary replacement if a Senate seat became vacant. But when Senator John Kerry, a Democrat, was running for president in 2004, the Democratic-controlled state legislature wanted to deny the governor at the time — Mitt Romney, a Republican — the power to name a successor if Mr. Kerry won. The resulting law requires a special election within 145 to 160 days after the vacancy occurs.

“‘The hypocrisy is astounding,’ the state House minority leader, Bradley H. Jones Jr., told The Boston Globe on Thursday. ‘If we had a Republican governor right now, would we be getting the same letter?’

“Even if Mr. Kennedy’s death prompts a change of heart, the state legislature is not set to return until after Labor Day.

Originally posted on 5.15.09 in Cannes: “I don’t know what I was expecting exactly from Ang Lee‘s Taking Woodstock (Focus Features, opening today), but what I saw didn’t deliver. This backstory saga about the legendary Woodstock Music Festival of ’69 works in spots and spurts, but it too often feels ragged and unsure of itself, and doesn’t coalesce in a way that feels truly solid or self-knowing.

At best it’s a decent try, an in-and-outer. Spit it out — it’s a letdown. I wish it were otherwise. I’d like to be more obliging because I love many of Lee’s films and fully respect his talent. I remember and cherish the spirit and the legend of the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival. And I appreciate what a massive undertaking it must have been to try and recreate it all within a dramatic prism.

James Schamus‘s script is based on the story of Eliot Tiber, the artist who stepped in and pretty much saved the disenfranchised festival by finagling a land permit in Bethel, New York. (The source is a same-titled book by Tiber and Tom Monte.) The story is basically about how a closeted gay Jewish guy got over feeling obliged to help his parents survive by helping them run their rundown El Monaco motel in White Lake, N.Y., and freed himself to live his own life.

This story comes through but it feels analagous to a story of the D-Day Invasion that focuses on Francois, a closeted young man in his 30s who doesn’t want to work at his parents’ Normandy bakery any more. “Merci, General Eisenhower, for allowing me to finally move to Nice and be openly gay!”

And the Eliot story is weakened, in my book, by Imelda Staunton‘s strident and braying portrayal of Tiber’s mother-from-hell. I’ve known my share of Jewish moms and I didn’t believe her. Nobody is that humorless or stupid (in terms of recognizing economic opportunity) or dark-hearted.

And as noted, the big sprawling back-saga of how the festival came together — the element that audiences will be coming to see when it opens — too often feels catch-as-catch-can. It doesn’t seem to develop or intensify, and there’s no clean sense of chronology.

And there’s at least one glaring inaccuracy when a random festivalgoer declares a day or two before the event begins that “it’s a free concert, man…haven’t you heard?” My recollection is that it wasn’t declared free until the concert had begun and the fences had come down and the organizers realized they’d lost control.

Taking Woodstock should have been dated here and there like The Longest Day. That way, at least, we’d have an idea of how many days are left before the festival begins, a sense of “okay, getting closer, things are heating up.”

Lee references Wadleigh’s 1970 doc by using the same split-screen editing style and by shooting it with a semblance of ’70s grainy color. But no Woodstock concert footage is mixed into Lee’s movie, and this just seems unfulfilling somehow. It’s a shame that Lee and Schamus (who also produced) and Focus Features couldn’t have worked out a cross-promotional deal with Warner Bros. that would have allowed for this. I kept telling myself that it’s Eliot’s story, not Woodstock II, but I wanted glimpses of the real thing, dammit.

Comedian Demetri Martin is steady and likable as Tiber, although too much of the time he’s been directed to look overwhelmed or mildly freaked. (This was a man of 34 who’d been around a bit — Martin plays him like Dustin Hoffman‘s Benjamin Braddock.)

Eugene Levy is quite good as Max Yagur, the kindly but shrewd dairy farmer who leased the land to Woodstock Ventures. Liev Schreiber delivers a mildly amusing turn as Vilma, a blond-haired cross-dresser whom Eliot hires to provide security for the El Monaco, but his character has no real function or arc — he’s just providing Greek-chorus commentary. Jonathan Groff does a decent job as Michael Lang, the most well-known of the concert promoters, playing him as a serenely confident Zen type. (I loved the way he gets around on horseback in the second half of the film, whether or not that’s accurate — it’s a good bit.)

Emile Hirsch, Ang Lee during shooting.

It may be impossible to have characters speak in ’60s cliches without the effort feeling tiresome, but that’s what happens here. I realize that people actually used the terms “groovy” and “far out, man” back then, but every time you hear them in the film…God!

Taking Woodstock was just too big an undertaking, I suppose. In the same way that Lang and his partners instigated but couldn’t control the enormity and chaos of the ’69 festival, Lee was also overwhelmed. Tough fame, tough call, I’m sorry. Better luck next time.

In the old days negative critical word was naturally regarded as a bad thing. If a majority of film critics said a certain film really stinks this was definitely thought to be a harbinger of box-office calamity, and more often than not the box-office tallies tended to bear this out. Nowadays, of course, the Eloi and the Joe Popcorn crowd will pay to see whatever the hell they want to see regardless of good or bad critical buzz. True, within a certain rarified strata of moviegoers (i.e., that miniscule micro-minority that actually cares about seeing good stuff), the views of critics and online columnists matter. But as far as the mob is concerned it almost doesn’t matter what is said about a film as long as a film gets talked and argued about.

In other words, the kiss of death these days is not being talked or argued about at all. What matters for a film, marketing-wise, is to be “in the national conversation.” What’s being said about a film (i.e., the substantive yea-nay verdict) is really a secondary consideration. Therefore all the dumps that I took on Inglourious Basterds mattered not. What mattered is that guys like me were talking about it all the time (along with the endless stream of talk-show appearances by Quentin and Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz). And it became a film that everyone was talking about and which had to be seen. This is more or less how things work now, I think. Agree?

Observe how Conan O’Brien becomes more and more uncomfortable as Bill Maher gets more and more adamant about how stupid people are and how President Obama needs to just push through health care and ignore the crazies, etc. Seriously, look at O’Brien. The man is obviously in pain. Maher says toward the end of the stint that “your eyes are watering.” Pathetic.

Here’s an over-cranked music sequence from Ashutosh Gowariker‘s What’s Your Rashee?, which will show at the Toronto Film Festival. Imagine how this seqence could have played if the guy (Harman Baweja) had played his guitar in a natural, sitting-in-a-car sort of way and just sung along with his own unamplified voice. This is the Bollywood-influenced aesthetic that has made Indian films into unwatchable junk.

The pretty girl, by the way, is Priyanka Chopra, who plays 12 diferent parts in the film. Notice how she refuses to look at the road for long stretches of time? If only David Cronenberg had directed…

And by the way that isn’t a damn “driedel” — it’s a plain old spinning silver top. I’m not Hassidic and I didn’t go to school in Tel Aviv. They’re called tops. That’s what they used to call them in Westfield, New Jersey, where I grew up was a kid and a young teen.

I took some time earlier today to think about my contribution to Peter Howell‘s annual Toronto Star “Chasing the Buzz” feature, in which a selection of hardcore know-it-alls get to pick three Toronto Film Festival films they’re most looking forward to. That’s pretty limiting in itself but you also have explain why in one sentence…Jesus. I might change my mind but right now my faves are Jason Reitman‘s Up in the Air, Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man and Rodrigo Garcia‘s Mother and Child. I’ll figure out the copy later on.

Mother and Child director Rodrigo Garcia; dopey 3 Amigos art

Howell won’t let me adequately explain the Mother and Child thing so I’ll do so here and now. All I’ve read is that it’s about an older woman (Annette Bening), the daughter she gave up for adoption 35 years ago (Naomi Watts), and an African American woman (Kerry Washington) looking to adopt a child of her own. I also know that Garcia, based on the evidence of his earlier Nine Lives, is excellent at getting into the souls of women and divining their relationships and so on.

But it’s mainly because one of the shorts in Nine Lives — a piece called “Diana” with Robin Wright Penn and Jason Isaccs — is one of the most intensely emotional portrayals of an unresolved relationship that I’ve ever seen. Here‘s what I wrote about it four years ago.

On top of which Mother and Child has been produced by the Cha Cha Cha guys — Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

And here, by the way, is an excellent all-in-one, wheat-separated-from-the-chaff lineup of all the best-looking films showing during the festival. It’s been painstakingly assembled by Greg Cruse, described by Howell as “a blogger, film buff and fellow buzz chaser.”

The story and results from Howell’spoll will be published in the Saturday, Sept. 5 edition of The Toronto Star, and also appear online at TheStar.com the same day.

Originally posted on 8.22 by Movie City Indie‘s Ray Pride. who took it from Ben Stiller‘s Facebook page and Twitter postings (Twitter.com/RedHourBen).