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Being longer and whatnot, this is a much fuller taste of Scott Derrickson and Tom Rothman‘s The Day The Earth Stood Still (20th Century Fox, 12.12) than the trailer that appeared a few weeks back. I’m cranked, but at the same time vaguely depressed that no one in this town seems the least bit interested in depicting the arrival of a great and powerful alien spaceship without summoning memories of Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (and, to a much lesser extent, Roland Emmerich‘s Independence Day).

Indeed, TDTESS seems to be literally flaunting its Spielbergian-ness. The question is why? Why do such stories have to be depicted with the totally cliched visual sensibilities of a once-great director whose hot wunderkind period peaked 25 years ago? It’s like we’ve all been sentenced to a life-without-parole term in Spielberg prison, located in upstate New York. Think of the tingly excitement if this film had used another kind of film language, another set of references. But no — the masses have to be drugged and placated.
Just as tourists are offered the chance to stay in corporate Ramada Inn-style hotels when they visit Prague or Dubrovnik or Tel Aviv, 20th Century Fox is telling moviegoers that they will not be challenged in the least, that they have nothing unusual to fear, that TDTESS will be — trust us — just another family visit to Spielbergland in Orlando. (Thanks to Brad Brevet‘s Rope of Silicon for the embedded code to the new product reel.)

Uli Edel‘s The Baader Meinhof Complex, the terrorist drama I wrote about yesterday, has been selected as Germany’s candidate for the Best Foreign-Language pic Oscar. Produced and adapted by Constantin Film’s Bernd Eichinger, the period drama is based on Stefan Aust‘s book about the New Left gang of commie-guerilla outlaws who kicked up dust from the late ’60s to mid ’70s.

Weary of AOL’s bullshit bean-counter attitude about in-depth film coverage, critic/editor Kim Voynar has walked away from Cinematical. She’s back in Seattle and weighing offers — she’ll be fine. (For purely selfish reasons I’d like to see Kim back at a regular berth as soon as possible.) But what about Cinematical‘s critic-commentator James Rocchi?
If this episode were to be made into a mid 1980s movie, Voynar would be played by Sally Field, the AOL bosses would be played by Ronny Cox (as he was in Robocop) and Paul Reiser (as he was in Aliens), and Rocchi would be played by Kevin Costner…no, Sean Penn.

My favorite dialogue clip from John Huston‘s Beat The Devil, lasting all of 17 seconds.

Watch this trailer for Uli Edel‘s The Baader Meinhof Complex and tell me it doesn’t look like an exciting, tough, complex “ride” movie, and not just some dense political drama. Based on the book by Stefan Aust, it’s about the infamous German terrorist group behind all kinds of bombings, killings, robberies and kidnappings in the late ’60s and ’70s.

Martina Gedeck in Uli Edel’s The Baader Meinhof Complex

The word on the film has been iffy ever since Constantin Films and its German p.r. agency, Just Publicity, tried to threaten German and other European critics with heavy fines if they reviewed or even spoke about The Baader Meinhof Complex prior to an embargo date of 9.17.08 (for the film’s 9.25 German and Austrian openings).
And yet I’ve been told by a buyer-distributor whom I know and trust that Edel’s film is better than pretty good.
And the top-notch all-German cast, he says, is totally killer — Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek, Bruno Ganz, Simon Licht, Jan Josef Liefers, Alexandra Maria Lara, etc. And yet The Baader Meinhoff Complex didn’t show at the Toronto Film Festival, and the Telluride Film Festival’s Tom Luddy wasn’t even shown it for possible consideration.
And although It’s opening in Europe this fall, starting in Germany and Austria ten days from now, Baader Meinhof has no U.S. distributor and the people at Summit Entertainment, who are said to be handling int’l (and, for the time being, domestic) sales for Constantin Films, which produced the film, haven’t returned calls all day. I spoke to Summit’s corporate spokesperson Paul Pflug, but that didn’t go too far because he’s not in the loop.

The trusted buyer, a “name” guy who saw Baader Meinhof last spring before Cannes, said “it’s amazing….a really good movie with crazy details that I didn’t know about. A huge expensive action movie with a great cast [so good that] you want to hire all of them. But because it’s in German and because of the tough lefty politics of it…and maybe because Americans won’t understand the context or because they may be turned off by the politics and the exotic ’60s climate, the buyers are skittish.
The Baader-Meinhof gang “had public support and manipulated the German government from their jail cells…they were vicious. There’s a great scene when they go to train with the early-on Middle Eastern terrorists, except the Baader Meinhof gang is very much into the ’60s commune ideals and so there’s a culture and values clash.”
All I know is that I would have made a point to see this film at Toronto, and it wasn’t even there. I would love to see it right now and write about it and maybe nudge the buzz along, but the Summit people won’t pick up the phone. Constantin’s Bernd Eichinger is said to be concerned and perplexed that he can’t sell The Baader Meinhof Complex to a U.S. distributor, but nobody stateside seems to be doing very much about it. Or at least, not so you’d notice.
Are they (Constatin plus whomever would like to distribute) planning a Sundance opening and an early ’09 opening? One can only guess.

Update: A letter from Richard Huffman, webmaster of a first-rate Baader-Meinhof site, came after I published earlier today.
“I wanted to follow up with you on your story about the Baader-Meinhof movie,” he began.I “n addition to being a major Jeff Wells fan, I happen to have the odd distinction of being one of the world’s leading experts on the group (you can visit my site at www.baader-meinhof.com). I am personally interested in seeing this film because West German terrorists targeted my dad when he was serving at the head of the US Army’s Berlin Bomb Disposal unit while the Baader-Meinhof Gang was active.
“Anyway, I can tell you that the story of this group is stunning and as cinematic as one could possibly imagine. One of Germany’s leading journalists decides to leave her kids and and life to become a terrorist. A group dedicated to violent revolution that actually had the support of up to 20 percent of the German youth, and which brought about a horrible bombing campaign that maimed and killed dozens of Americans and Germans.
“As someone who has studied this era in amazing detail; watching clips from this movie sends absolute chills down my spine. it’s like looking through a time machine.
“If you go to my homepage you’ll see a brief clip from a history channel documentary that myself and Baader-Meinhof Komplex author Stefan Aust appear in from last year about the group.”

20 years, six months and 15 days ago, Tim Burton‘s Beetlejuice opened. Great ending, more than a few great scenes, classic absurdist film. And with primitive special effects! Tim Burton was hip and happening and relatively fresh meat. Michael Keaton had been down but was now back up again in the cool role of his lifetime. And Alec Baldwin was thin and puppydog cute.

17 year-old Winona Ryder was just breaking through. Geena Davis was enjoying her last career surge (Earth Girls Are Easy and The Accidental Tourist were soon to follow). And it seemed as if Michael Dukakis might be the guy to beat George H.W. Bush.

This 23/6 “speed campaigning” piece isn’t bad either — “all your negative ads in 5 seconds.”

And by the way, the lack of interest in (i.e., response to) this John McCain voicemail message is mind-blowing. It’s one of the funnniest bits I’ve heard in weeks.

Amazon is accepting advance orders for the DVD of David Zucker‘s An American Carol (Vivendi, 10.3), which will hit the shelves on January 6, 2009. 83 minutes long, by the way, and presented in a Scope aspect ratio of 2.35 to 1.