My first reaction when I read about all the thousands of European flights grounded by the huge plume of ash from the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano was one of vague relief. I’m glad it’s happening now, I mean, rather than 22 days hence when the Cannes Film Festival begins. My jet might not even leave New York under these conditions.
The eruption “was continuing as of early Sunday morning and possibly intensifying, with the ash plume rising to 30,000 feet,” a N.Y. Times report says.
“The cloud had extended as far south as Spain overnight, prompting the closure of airspace in the northern part of that country, according to Eurocontrol. Airports across most of the continent were expected to remain shuttered at least into Sunday afternoon, though a few countries, including France and Switzerland, had opened at least parts of their airspace to allow overflights above 35,000 feet.”
The death of legendary editor Dede Allen, 86, naturally requires an acknowledgment of her innovations. Those would be (a) shock or jump cuts and (b) running sound from a forthcoming scene before actually cutting to it — i.e.. “pre-lapping.” And yet the biggest feather in Allen’s cap has always been (and always will be) her cutting of the country-road massacre finale from Bonnie and Clyde. Still a knockout but truly astonishing back in the day.
I’ve never forgotten and never will forget that clip of a briefly exhilarated Faye Dunaway looking up at the flying birds just before the roar of gunfire. My favorite description of the carnage what followed was from Pauline Kael — i.e., a “rag-doll dance of death.”
The irony is that Allen allowed assistant Jerry Greenberg to do the actual cutting on this sequence. Allen supervised, of course, but “she let him do that,” says Warren Beatty biographer Peter Biskind.
The legend is that Allen borrowed her jump cuts and shock cuts from French nouvelle vague films. And yet Biskind says Allen told him this wasn’t so. “She said she never watched very many French new wave films and that she basically got these techniques from working on TV commercials,” Biskind recalled this morning.
I’ve spent the last half-hour searching around for a visual tutorial that explicitly shows how Allen applied her innovations, but no dice so far. You’d think someone would have cut one together by now. Allen has been on the map since 1961, after all, when she landed her first solo editing credit on Robert Rossen‘s The Hustler.
In the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s Allen’s name was a signifier of elegant class-act cinema. Her credits beside Bonnie and Clyde and The Hustler included significant films by Arthur Penn (Alice’s Restaurant, Little Big Man, Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks), Paul Newman (Rachel, Rachel, Harry & Son), Warren Beatty (Reds, which was co-edited by Craig McKay), Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Wiz), George Roy Hill (Slaughterhouse-Five, Slap Shot) and Robert Redford (The Milagro Beanfield War).
From 1958’s Terror From The Year 5000 through ’08’s Fireflies in the Garden, Allen edited or co-edited some 31 films. She bailed on editing 1992 to 2000 after taking the job of head of post production at Warner Bros.
Claudia Luther‘s L.A. Times obit says Allen “was the first film editor — male or female — to receive sole credit on a movie for her work,” and that “this honor came with Bonnie and Clyde.” Okay, maybe…but why does Allen have sole credit as the Hustler editor on the IMDB? I was home I’d run the DVD and double-check. (I’m currently sitting in a motel room on Route 7 in Ridgefield, Connecticut.)
I’ve always loved the opening-credit sequence in The Hustler, which I presume Allen had something to do with. It basically used footage from various scenes throughout the film (which a first-time viewer obviously wouldn’t have the first contextual clue about) and freeze-frame them when the credit pops up — i.e., “directed by Robert Rossen.” I don’t know for a fact that Allen came up with this idea, but it would fit into her profile if she did.
Last night I sat through — endured — a good portion of Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn‘s Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, which will play the Tribeca Film Festival on 4.24. I wanted to leave right away but I stuck it out for an hour. It reminded me of a decision I made after listening to a couple of Rush tracks in the mid ’70s, which was to never listen to anything by these guys again — ever.
Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage is a fairly dishonest film in that McFadyen and Dunn, friends of this long-running Canadian rock band, make an effort to persuaded uninitiated viewers that Rush is a respected, generally admired group that makes reasonably engaging music.
Respected and admired as this trio may be in certain perverse circles, they’re a deeply unpleasant band to listen to, or watch even. The fact that they’re especially big in Middle America should tell you a lot. Their music is shrill, excruciating, repellent, un-catchy, and about as un-melodically melodic as anything I’ve ever heard. They make you want to leave the room and run as fast and far as you can.
Lead singer and bassist Geddy Lee‘s high-pitched voice, especially, is a demon wail of an epileptic cat with cancer — a banshee on helium. And Rush’s lyrics strike me (and would strike anyone) as poetic sci-fi fantasy-visionary babbledygook glop-slop. Plus they’ve been into Ayn Rand and call/have called themselves Libertarians? Which means what…they have a soft spot for this or that aspect of conservatism on top of everything else?
The doc is decently made — I’ll give McFayden and Dunn that. But Rush dispenses pain. They’re among the most loathed bands of all time by the measure of most respected rock critics. I could take and even half-enjoy Anvil’s music, but not Rush. And yet they’ve been going since the late ’60s, and have millions of true-blue fans. Go figure. All I know is, the time I spent with this doc last night was a minus experience. It took from me and left me with less than what I had when it began.
With a certain portion of HE readers now having seen Kick-Ass, are there theories as to why it collected a mere $7.5 million yesterday (per figures supplied last night by Nikki Finke) and may not even crack $20 million by Sunday night? Even if it reaches or slightly crests that figure, it’ll still be way short of the high 20s tally that some were expecting.
Obviously these numbers reflect marketing perception and not the film itself, but compare what happened yesterday to the initial groundswell of excitement that came out of the first South by Southwest Kick-Ass screening. Clearly something didn’t quite translate, but why? Apparently the Joe Popcorn crowd (including the under-25s) looked, sniffed, thought things over and went “maybe,” “meh” and “okay but tomorrow night or Sunday or something…no rush.”
How commercially over-esteemed is the cult of comic-book genre geeks, who’ve always been pronounced in their affections but seem increasingly devoted to hyper-violent realms and myths that aren’t just separate from but seem more and more opposed to the shape and terms of the actual world? Inspiring CG-infested films seem more and more repetitive, more and more about themselves and pathetic geek-boy fantasies. Has the worm turned? Are genre geeks beginning to be seen for what they are (or at least are starting to become) — i.e., the Branch Davidians of the moviegoing public?
Tracking indicated that Kick-Ass would trounce Death at a Funeral , and fairly decisively. But the apparent reality is that while Death will come in second, it’ll be only a couple of million behind instead of an expected margin of at least five or six million, if not more so.
I’ve only skimmed the first few pages of Spike Lee‘s Brooklyn Loves MJ, which was completed last February, but this Brooklyn ensemble piece feels like a return to the neighborhood personality and street attitude of Do The Right Thing.
“There are no giant flowers or pink clouds in Chris Nolan‘s dreamworld. Chris was very adamant that the dreamworld should feel real, and even if these are different layers of one’s consciousness, it all relates back to that person. So we took a hard look at every scene in this movie and made sure it had validity and weight to it, no matter what was going on.” — Leonardo DiCaprio speaking about Inception in the current Entertainment Weekly.
“A film about regular people with no superpowers that become real-life superheroes”? This cartoon is allegedly copied from a Boston Herald original, but the art that Nikki Finkeran doesn’t have a direct link or give credit to the artist. (And I couldn’t find a link when I went to the Herald‘s site.)
I’ve never seen Avatar in 2-D, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing the Bluray version on general principle. Why 2-D? Because I want to see how it plays and feels without the 3-D boost. Avatar‘s four-act story is the reason it works, as I explained in this 12.18.09 post. The eye-pop was secondary. It was the myth, metaphor and fable paying off in a single symphonic voice.
Harrison Ford will do a q & a following a special 30th anniversary digital screening of The Empire Strikes Back at Hollywood’s Arclight on Sunday, May 30th. I remember with crystal clarity the first time I saw the only truly decent Star Wars film in the entire series — a midnight screening on opening day at Leows’ Astor Plaza.
What a moment! What an after-vibe! George Lucas was king of the world back then, and look at him today.
“Death at a Funeral is one of the funniest films I’ve seen this century, as surprising, consistent and laugh-out-loud hilarious as any movie in the past 10 years,” writesMarshall Fine. “The original 2007 version, that is — the one directed by Frank Oz, with a British cast.
“The new remake of Death at a Funeral, the one with Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence and a who’s who of African-American actors — well, that’s another story. I mean, it’s the same story, practically scene for scene. And it’s funny with a handful of big laughs. But it’s not nearly as funny as the original.
“Unfortunately, the reality is that many millions more people will be drawn to this broad, raucous version of Dean Craig‘s script (directed, incongruously enough, by misanthropic playwright/filmmaker Neil Labute) than ever saw Oz’s version, which barely cracked the arthouse market. And they’ll laugh hard at surefire jokes involving hallucinogenic drugs, dead bodies, public nudity and poop.
“But Labute’s Death is the equivalent of one of those Hollywood translations of a Francis Veber farce from the 1980s and 1990s. Veber would craft a weightless French comedy starring, say, Gerard Depardieu and Pierre Richard — and then Hollywood would translate it into a ham-handed lump starring, say, Nick Nolte and Martin Short.
“Yes, Labute’s Death is virtually a photocopy, in terms of the story it tells and the comedy beats it hits. Yet everything in this version is coarser and more obvious, aimed at a lowest-common-denominator audience.”
In all fairness, I must point out that the opening graph of Fine’s review reminded me of the opening graph of A.O. Scott’s review of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, to wit:
“The Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II has inspired a splendid movie, full of vivid performances and unforgettable scenes, a movie that uses the coming of war as a backdrop for individual stories of love, ambition, heroism and betrayal. The name of that movie is From Here to Eternity.”
Focus Features’ decision to open Anton Corbijn‘s The American — the Italy-set, George Clooney-as-a-secret-assassin drama — on September 1st means they primarily regard it as a sophisticated high-end thriller and that’s all. If they saw it as having any kind of award-season potential they would obviously open it via Telluride, Toronto and Venice, but a Labor Day opening is almost the same thing as a mid-August debut.
The American star George Clooney, director Anton Corbijn during shooting last fall
“It’s just a cool-ass adult popcorn movie,” Focus seems to be saying. Which is also a roundabout way of saying “if a 2010 Clooney film is going to attract any awards heat, it’ll be Alexander Payne‘s currently-shooting The Descendants….if it comes this year, that is.”
Consider this Publisher’s Weekly synopsis: “Booth’s brilliantly creepy psychological suspense novel follows a so-called ‘shadow-dweller’ (a technical weapons expert who creates and supplies the tools for high-level assassins) to a rural village in southern Italy where he poses as ‘Signor Farfalla,’ a quiet artist who paints miniatures of butterflies and has traveled to the area to capture a unique native specimen.
“As the artist, whose real name is Clark, settles into the local scene, most of his new acquaintances accept his enigmatic alias, with the notable exception of Father Benedetto, the priest who pushes him to reveal himself in a series of confessional conversations over glasses of Armagnac. Between painting the minutely detailed butterfly studies and preparing for his next job, Clark carouses with a pair of local prostitutes, Dindina and Clara, eventually slipping into a serious affair with the latter.
“As he gets weapons specs and begins constructing a new gun, he learns that his latest customer is a woman whose next target may be Yasser Arafat. Suddenly he senses another ‘shadow-dweller’ on his trail; this anonymous figure remains a mystery to Clark until their climactic showdown. The lazy, languid setting is an eerily effective backdrop for the fresh and beguiling murder intrigue, and the flashbacks into Clark’s cold, brutal past are cleverly juxtaposed against his budding romance with young, naive Clara.”
The ancient Italian village of Castel del Monte, where The American shot last fall.
“With first-rate characters and a gradual buildup of suspense, Booth constructs his most focused, tightly written novel to date, reminiscent of William Trevor‘s classic ‘Felicia’s Journey’ and the late Patricia Highsmith‘s Ripley novels.”
For me, Martin Ruhe‘s black-and-white photography of Corbijn’s Control was the stuff of legend — it was the most deliciously composed monochrome film since Gordon Willis‘s Manhattan. Ruhe also handled The American‘s widescreen (2.35 to 1) color cinematography.
The American shot for 33 days last fall in Castel del Monte, a commune in the province of L’Aquila in Abruzzo, Italy.
