Bloody death photos of Osama bin Laden will come out sooner or later, but not officially. President Obama decided yesterday that the photos would only agitate and wouldn’t prove anything, etc. But photos of other guys killed in the compound, posted yesterday by the Guardian, offer the viewer a pretty good idea of how Osama’s corpse probably looked.
There’s no dignity in being ripped apart by bullets and then photographed in repose. No dignity at all.
Last night N.Y. Times guys Mark Landler and Mark Mazzettireported that last Sunday’s Navy Seals’ assault upon Bin Laden’s Pakistan compound was “chaotic and bloody [but] extremely one-sided, with a force of more than 20 Navy Seal members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden.”
The only shots fired by the opposition came, in fact, “when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding.”
The professional film dweeb fraternity has been up in arms about Dan Kois‘s “Eating Your Cultural Vegetables,” which ran in last weekend’s N.Y. Times Sunday magazine. But allow me to remind that I posted a somewhat similar piece 12 years ago, called “A Little Bit Boring.” Here it is:
“Quality movies flirt with being boring from time to time. A good kind of boring, I mean. Nutritional, Brussels-sprouts, good-for-your-soul boring.
“It’s important to understand the degree of boring I’ve speaking of here. I don’t mean sinking-into-a-coma boring. Or regular boring. Or even mildly boring. But a little bit boring.
“All John Sayles movies are pretty good — some have been excellent — but they’re all a wee bit boring. David Cronenberg‘s eXistenZ was a smart, mostly cool movie, but a bit boring at times. The Red Violin is a teensy bit boring. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is slightly boring. The scent of boredom can be detected, like the aroma of wet paint, in the margins of Cookie’s Fortune. Lovers of the Arctic Circle — liked it, thought about dozing off once or twice. Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Besieged was sensual, delectable, and a bit of a nod.
“My point is, it’s often a mark of quality if something is a little bit boring. But I do mean a little bit. Too much of it and you’ll go to sleep. There are dozens of films released every year that are wonderful sleeping aids. I’m not talking about those. I’m talking about films that are laced with boredom. Like a couple pinches of salt in a bowl of egg salad. Just the right amount of it is usually an indication that a film is doing something right.
“Atom Egoyan‘s The Sweet Hereafter did a lot of things right — it was mesmerizing, quietly powerful — but it was ever so slightly boring. The English Patient was a bit boring. So were The Wings of the Dove, Seven Years in Tibet, Kundun, Washington Square. All of those fine Merchant-Ivory films, all those Jane Austen adaptations. I mean no disrespect to Carol Reed‘s The Third Man (1949) when I say, good as it is, that it’s a teensy bit boring. Same for some of the great silent classics like Way Down East, Greed and Sunrise, etc., which I respect and admire and blah-blah.
“But I’m always glad after seeing a high-quality, slightly boring film, because I can then say to myself or someone I happen to meet that I’ve just seen one, and because of this my soul is richer and my horizons have been broadened. I never feel this way after seeing a big-studio, high-velocity idiot movie. Does anyone?
“Face it — most of us are peons when it comes to upscale, slightly boring movies. We don’t want to know from complex or sophisticated. We just want to sit there and get stroked.
“This is probably our fault, to some extent. Maybe movies just seem a bit boring at times because we’ve lost the ability (or the willingness) to stay with movies that require a little patience or concentration. The cliche about today’s kids not having the attention span of a flea is reaching out to the older age brackets. Even the over-40s seem to be losing interest in movies with even a minute meditative edge. It’s not just the kids who play video games — it’s all of us.
“So clearly, in the backwash of all this cultural deprivation, ‘a little bit boring’ is a serious compliment these days. You just have to mean it (or hear it) the right way.”
Mary Murphy‘s Hey, Boo (opening 5.13 at the Quad Cinema) is one of those gently incisive personal-portrait documentaries that covers all the bases except the one you want to know the most about. It’s about Harper Lee and the creation and lore of To Kill A Mockingbird, and is quietly absorbing and perceptive and nicely composed. But how does anyone (especially a writer) cruise for 51 years, doing essentially nothing, after writing one very moving and popular book?
Lee never wrote anything of any size or ambition after To Kill A Mockingbird. She just kicked back and chilled and lived off her Mockingbird money, which has never stopped pouring in. I’m sorry but an artist can’t do “nothing” for half a century. All artists are inclined to say more or less the same thing over and over — I get that — but a writer is about more than just saying that one thing well. Writers live to write and write to live. It’s a faith and a discipline. You don’t resign. You’re committed for life. It’s like being in the mafia.
And I’ve never been persuaded, incidentally, that Lee wrote every line of To Kill A Mockingbird all by herself. I think she had some editing help from her childhood pal Truman Capote. I don’t care what Murphy or anyone else says about this. I’ve heard things and suspect what I suspect.
And why didn’t Lee talk to Murphy for the film? Seriously — she does nothing for 50 years and then a serious filmmaker wants to compose an affectionate tribute and Lee blows her off? And yet Lee came out of hiding to accept a Presidential Medal of Freedom Award from George Bush in 2007 but reportedly declined to attend some kind of similar White House ceremony when she was invited by Barack Obama ? Is she a Republican or something? She’s a rural Alabaman so that would fit
Nobody but nobody is going to remember the title of Sean Durkin‘s Martha Marcy May Marlene (Fox Searchlight, 10.7.11). They’re going to call it “Martha May Mary…something.” Yes, the word-of-mouth will be very good and it’ll be necessary for everyone to carefully inspect Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister of the Loathsome Twins.
But there’s still the matter of that ending, and Durkin really needs to fix it over the next two or three months. This is a movie about a malevolent cult and residual brainwashing and suppressing bad memories. It ends with the bad guys coming back into the world of the 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?'”
EW’s “Inside Movies” columnist Adam Markovitz has posted a Fox Searchlight clip from Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life. It’s basically a dreamy suburban yesteryear thing with three kids chasing Jessica Chastain around with a live lizard….the spirited reveries of adolescence, etc.
The Tree of Life was seen and considered and dismissed by the distribution community last year, and it’s going to be screened all over the world concurrent with (or immediately following) the Cannes screening. So seeing it in Cannes isn’t going to feel all that special to anyone who’s flown thousands of miles to be there. I’m nonetheless ready to fall head-over-heels in love. And I can’t wait for the whispered narration passages. I’m also ready to get my hate-on. It’s up to the film. I have no dog in this.
I reviewed Jodie Foster‘s The Beaver on 3.16 from South by Southwest, and am re-posting a portion of the piece to synch with Friday’s opening.
“The Beaver is more of ‘heart’ thing about healing and family and forgiving,” I said. “And it uses lots and lots of closeups of Mel Gibson‘s lined and weathered face and his graying, thinning hair. What he does about 70% of the time is look forlorn and gloomy and guilty about his shortcomings. Foster is making a film, after all, about putting demons to bed and climbing out of our personal foxholes. So at the end of the day The Beaver, which is essentially a chick flick, guides Mel’s Walter character, who goes through major hell in this film, back to health and vibrancy.
“So it’s a nice soulful movie, a film that cares and gives hugs and feels sad for poor Mel during his aberration period when he goes absolutely everywhere with that brown hand puppet and acts peppy and talks like an Australian Ray Winstone. But the Beaver scenes, unhealthy as they may be for Mel’s Walter character, give the film its sass and vigor, and when the Beaver goes away near the end, the movie loses its fuel and its raison d’etre.
“As everyone knows, The Beaver is about Gibson’s Walter being depressed and on the verge of suicide, but then snapping back to life when he surrenders his identity and personality to the Beaver puppet. The Beaver takes over and Walter is alive again — his wife (Foster) falls in love with him again, his toy business becomes revitalized, he and The Beaver go on a lot of talk shows and appear on magazine covers, his younger son loves his aliveness….although his older son (Anton Yelchin) hates the whole Beaver routine and thinks his dad is an asshole.
“I took Gibson’s decision to hide behind the hand puppet as a metaphor for the way all of us hide the weaker, softer, more vulnerable aspects of our personality from society and the business world especially. Gibson isn’t ‘himself’ during his Beaver phase, but his Beaver personality is alert and creative and crackling, and he’s walking around all day with a spring in his step and paying his employees and steering a winning ship, etc. What’s so bad about that?”
Six weeks later I feel the same way. Gibson’s Beaver personality in the film isn’t relaxed or soulful or wise or warm, but he’s definitely a live-wire and in a hell of a lot better shape spiritually than the tens of millions out there who walk around like zombies at the mall and who hate or sleepwalk through their jobs and zone out in front of the tube on weeknights and weekends.
SPOILER WARNING!
So the “problem” that Gibson’s Walter character is dealing with in The Beaver isn’t that bad of a problem. It sure as hell isn’t so bad that he has to resort to a table saw to fix things.
With the appearance of this poster, the intrigue factor among Cannes journalists for Bertrand Bonello‘s L’Apollonide has risen slightly. Why deny it? A drama about prostitutes shutting themselves off from the world after one of their own is disfigured by a client, period pic runs 122 minutes and cost $4 million to make. It costars Hafsia Herzi, Jasmine Trinca and Adele Haenel.
White House press secretary Jay Carney laid out the Osama bin Laden facts earlier today: (1) Bin laden didn’t use a woman as a human shield, (2) Bin Laden’s wife “rushed the [Navy Seals] assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed”; (3) “Bin Laden was then shot and killed, and was not armed”; (4) “Another woman on the first floor was killed in crossfire,” which may have led to assumptions that a person in Bin Laden’s bedroom was shot and killed with him.
Paul Feig‘s Bridesmaids (Universal, 5.13) may not be as screamingly, howlingly funny or fast-paced as some might prefer (especially if you think like Variety‘s Joe Leydon) and is perhaps a bit sadder and darker than you might expect, but it’s way, way deeper, smarter and more realistically grounded and character-driven than any female ensemble comedy since…ever.
And it’s the best straight-up female-relationship movie since I-don’t-know-when. And it’s wiggy and a bit strange and scatalogical. And riddled with knowing tough dialogue. And about as naked (in the Mike Leigh sense of the term) as this kind of confection can get.
Yes — the term “wiggy” was a pun. Because Bridesmaids also reps a major career breakout for star and co-writer Kristen Wiig, who gives one of the most honest and believably grounded female comic performances in a long, long while. (Peter Sciretta‘s SXSW prediction that she’ll almost certainly be nominated by the HFPA for Best Female Comedy/Musical Performance was dead-on.)
In short, Bridesmaids is nowhere close to being dumb or primitive enough to become a big hit. The young girly-girls who like going to Kate Hudson comedies are going to be saying “what…?” But women with careers and smarts and a little life experience under their belts are probably going to get it big-time, just like the late twentysomething ladies who were sitting next to me at the Arclight last night and laughing all through it.
Bridesmaids is not so much about feuding bridesmaids as a portrait of a meltdown by Wiig’s Annie character. As Maya Rudolph‘s best friend she’s asked early on to be her maid of honor. Except the wedding sends the unstable Annie into a self-destructive downswirl. Annie has always been her biggest problem, we’re gradually informed, but to see her actually become this in action is something else.
An attractive but not-quite-knockout type in her mid to late 30s, Annie is a cupcake-and-dessert chef whose retail business has crashed. And who has a couple of idiotic -and-obnoxious overweight British roommates (which kinda makes no sense). And is in a one-sided fuckbuddy relationship with a glib asshole (Jon Hamm). And who starts to feel really bad about Rudolph’s wedding, and then feels worse when Rose Byrne‘s girly-girl character does everything she can to elbow Annie out of her slot as Rudolph’s best friend, but who also meets a nice-guy cop (Chris Dowd) who gets her and whom she likes but of course pushes away, etc.
About 1/3 of it is really funny, 1/2 is half-funny and the other 17% is fairly dark material (but in a very well written and well-acted way).
Nobody overacts in Bridesmaids. It’s “funny” but it stays on a realistic level. Most of the characters come through in a three-dimensional way…even Byrne’s villainess. I’m told that the adult comic tone is all about the “keep it smart and real” comic sensibility of the Groundlings, where a lot of the principals hail from. I don’t know what to compare this film to but it never really wallows or panders to cheap or common slapstick or sentimentality…it doesn’t lower itself.
Even I laughed out loud a few times, and that’s saying something because I’m primarily a LQTM type of guy.
When Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy and I and Pete Hammond and a couple of others were talking about it after last night’s screening, one of the things we said was ‘what is Joe Leydon’s blockage on this thing?’ Why did his Variety review pretty much flat-out pan it? From a certain perspective flat-out panning a film this tonally and uniformly together, and one this intelligently focused and which understands itself and has integrity and so on….you can’t pan a film like this!
Okay, it feels a bit too long. It runs about two hours and it probably should have run 100 or 105 minutes. Okay, 110 minutes. But Apatow’s movies always go long so whaddaya gonna do?
Here’s how I put it in an e-mail to Apatow last night:
“I’m sorry, dude, but except for the slightly sloppy and not-quite-perfect ragtag ending with [a well-known ’80s musical group], Bridesmaids is — don’t get mad — better than Funny People. It really works, is really good almost all the way and has, as you obviously know, EXCELLENT comedic writing. But it also has the courage to not be funny and even go moderately dark at times.
“Wiig is going to be nominated for something — this is a real performance and not an assemblage of SNL bits and comic attitudes. I especially loved her raging-meltdown scene at the Paris-themed shower. And Maya Rudolph and Melissa McCarthy (giving one of the best supporting performances by a calorically-challenged comedienne I’ve ever seen) and Chris O’Dowd…all great. And the bridal shop crap-in-the-street scene — a classic.
“Given that you have such a smart, stand-out, very grown-up female comedy, Universal is, I’m fairly sure, sick with worry that Bridesmaids is one of those ‘so good and mature it’s not going to make very much money’ comedies. It’s being sold as a much lower-level thing than it actually is. I know that when I like a comedy it’s always a bad sign. ‘Oh, no….Jeffrey Wells likes it!,’ a Universal exec might very well say in the next marketing meeting. ‘The kiss of death for a hopefully broad-appeal chick flick! Now we’re in real trouble!'”
