If Isle of Dogs makes one thing unmistakably clear, it’s that director-cowriter Wes Anderson truly adores Japanese culture. The food, the clothing, the ancient drums (“taiko”), the language, the architecture….you can just feel how much he enjoys the immersion.
How strange, then, that Wes is getting beaten up for not enjoying Japan in the right way. Or, more to the point, in the wrong way. His crime, it seems, is (a) not using subtitles when his Japanese characters speak and (b) creating a blonde American activist character, Tracy Walker, voiced by Greta Gerwig, who plays a significant role in bringing about the rescuing and re-acceptance of the Trash Island dogs. What didn’t he invent a fucking Japanese activist instead?
The crime is cultural appropriation, and at least four name-branders have been slapping Wes around for this since yesterday — L.A. Times critics Justin Chang and Jen Yamato, Slant‘s Steve McFarlane and Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday.
Anderson’s reply: “The movie is a fantasy, and I would never suggest that this is an accurate depiction of any particular Japan…this is definitely a reimagining of Japan through my experience of Japanese cinema.”
For a woman just turning 47 (her birthday is today), Karen McDougal looks pretty great. Genes, diet, exercise, “work”. McDougal, an admitted conservative who says she voted for Donald Trump and may even approve of his handling of the Presidency so far, is almost exactly eight years older than Stormy Daniels, 39, whose birthday was six days ago.
Stormy’s affair with Trump happened 12 years ago, when she was 27. McDougal’s relationship happened around the same time, between ’06 and ’07, when she was in her mid 30s.
Class, character and poise-wise, McDougal strikes me as a level or two above Daniels, who seems…what, a bit scampier? On the other hand Daniels seems to have a better sense of humor about the media circus that she’s performing in. She seems to grasp the vaguely comedic aspects, I mean, while McDougal sounds seriously guilt-ridden (“I know it’s wrong…I’m really sorry”). Her big emotional moment starts at 11:15.
McDougal and Daniels have both spoken with Anderson Cooper for the money, of course. Not direct payment for sitting down and sharing intimate details of their relationship with Orange Orangutan, but for the money they’ll probably earn in one way or another down the road. (Right?)
The Stormy chat won’t air until Sunday on 60 Minutes, but she looks seriously pissed when Cooper says “I guess I don’t know why you’re doing this.” There’s a very slight note of disdain in Cooper’s voice and facial expression when these words pass his lips.
Instead of critics seeing films first in the Grand Lumiere at 8:30 am with black-tie gala screenings occuring later that day around 6 or 7 pm (or with Salle Debussy press screenings at 7:30 pm followed by gala screenings the next day), Fremaux said he wants gala and press screenings to happen simultaneously. That way critics, who always tweet immediately and then post reviews four or five hours after press screenings, won’t be killing the buzz on dicey or questionable films hours before they screen for the swells.
If a movie is said to be great or very good or mezzo-mezzo or shitty, the word always gets out right away in Cannes. But at least the new simultaneous screening policy means that viewers in tuxedos and gowns will henceforth see films without knowing what the often crabby critics have already said.
Critics and journalists will catch films in the Debussy theater at the same time that guests inside the main auditorium watch the evening world premieres. Fremaux toldLe Film Francais that removing the early-buzz factor from morning press screenings will “revamp the attractiveness of and gloss to gala evenings…at 7 p.m., the press will see the film at the same time at Debussy, [and] the suspense will be total!”
As for films premiering at 10 pm, the press will catch them the next morning. Afternoon screenings of films selected in competition or Un Certain Regard will mix industry-ites, journo-critics and locals.
Producers are mostly happy with this new arrangement, to go by trade articles. Critics will now have to bang out some of their reviews between 10 pm and 1 am, in addition to all the other deadlines and pressures.
The Tarantino drama, which starts shooting this summer, will use the 1969 Manson murders as a backdrop to a story about a pair of struggling actors, to be played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. It’s presumed that Margot Robbie will play Sharon Tate. And Tate’s 65-year-old sister is pissed, she toldVulture, because Tarantino has “yet to reach out to me to talk to me about anything to do with my sister or her depiction in his film. Why? Because I believe it’s negative. If his depiction was positive, he’d have a dialogue with me.”
Wrong! Tarantino doesn’t do research. He doesn’t do realism or history. Everything he’s ever written and directed has been pulled straight out of his ass.
Posted last July: “As intriguing as this project sounds, Tarantino is incapable of playing it even semi-straight. He’s not a docu-dramatist — he’s a creator of alternate Quentinworld fantasies. His last three films have mined the past — Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight — and each time he’s reimagined and re-dialogued history in order to transform his tales into his own brand of ’70s exploitation cinema. Why should QT play his cards any differently with the Manson family?
“Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman said this morning that location-wise he wants Tarantino to deliver an exact duplicate of everything we know about the Manson geography (Spahn ranch, Haight-Ashbury, etc.) but ‘make it feel new.’
Nobody cares what I think about Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs (Fox Searchlight, 3.23), which opens tonight. I’m not even sure I care all that much, and I’m sitting right here. Anya and Yanna are staring at me now, and their eyes are saying “well…?”
Okay, I’m an animation hater — I admit that. But Isle of Dogs isn’t “animation” — it’s an extremely refined Wesworld realm by way of immaculate stop-motion canines — so exacting, so detailed, so balanced and dead center. And defined by an intense fixation upon (a) Japanese culture, (b) mountains of smelly garbage (white worms, fleas, half-eaten dumplings, piles of empty Sake bottles…thank God it wasn’t projected in Aromarama) and…I’m getting off on the wrong track there. I sound negative, but I didn’t honestly feel that way as I watched it. I felt respectful but distanced, and that’s not a bad thing per se.
Isle of Dogs is a tidy fable about good, soulful dogs joining forces with good, thoughtful humans in order to push back against the schemes of ugly, scowling humans. It’s about calmness, humanity, compassion and love. I was glad I was there last night (inside theatre #1 at the Westside Landmark) but I wasn’t…how to say this the right way?…enormously transported in a deep-down sense as much as technically impressed by how exactingly composed it all is.
Loved the Japanese drums! The drums are 90% of Alexander Desplat‘s score.
It certainly feels like another realm, this creation, this latest visit to Andersonville. You don’t feel as if you’re watching a movie as much as visiting a stop-motion art exhibit in a museum with seats.
So I couldn’t quite fall into Isle of Dogs but I was telling myself (and I mean this right now) that I might have really enjoyed it if I’d dropped a tab of LSD a half-hour before it began. Except I haven’t dropped acid since my early 20s, and if I’d actually done that last night…uhhm, I’d better not think about this any more. But Isle of Dogs is an LSD movie of sorts.
I admire the effort that went into it, and the devotion of incredible focus and discipline that it demanded of Wes, or should I say vice versa? There’s no way to put it down (and I wouldn’t want to do that anyway) except to say (a) I was unable to lose myself in it and yet (b) I studied it very closely and (c) was never less than politely fascinated.
L.A. Times critic Justin Chang has complained that Anderson has marginalized the Japanese characters by (a) having them speak their native language without subtitles and (b) having his dog characters (voiced by Bryan Cranston, Liev Schriber, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Liev Schreiber, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Balaban) speak English.
Well, it is a dog movie so naturally the dogs are going to converse in the director-screenwriter’s native tongue, and with erudite, English-speaking dogs being the basic template of comprehension it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to subtitle the Japanese (i.e., the only humans except for Greta Gerwig‘s Tracy Walker, a visiting activist American), and the only way to avoid that would be to have the Japanese speak English with Japanese accents, which would be ridiculous.
In an interview yesterday (Wednesday, 3.21) with CNN’s Christine Amanpour, Cate Blanchett was asked how she squares her support of #TimesUp with being silent about the re-ignited allegations against Woody Allen.
I’ve posted Blanchett’s response as well as a video of the interview, but boiled down she basically said (a) I haven’t been silent about Woody, (b) I knew nothing of [Dylan Farrow‘s] renewed allegations at the time of filming Blue Jasmine, (c) the issue has been handled by “the courts” (i.e., investigated twice by two state agencies, Connecticut and New York, resulting in a decision not to prosecute for lack of evidence and an element of doubt), and (d) “I’m a big believer in the justice system” so do the math.
What Blanchett said, in essence, amounts to an oblique defense of Woody. She said if evidence comes to light that warrants prosecution then a prosecution should result, but if the evidence isn’t there…well, you know, maybe the Robespierres should settle down, take a breath and direct their energies elsewhere.
I’m guessing Blanchett would like to say more, but given the social media pressures, she can’t. In case there was any misunderstanding about her views, Blanchett said that social media is great for raising “awareness about issues,” but it’s “not the judge and jury.”
The Vulture guys ran a real Robespierre headline a couple of hours ago, to wit: “Blanchett Says She Didn’t Know About Allegations Against Woody Allen Before Blue Jasmine.” That is not the gist of what she said to Amanpour, assholes. That is a fragment of what she said. This is one of most full-of-shit, deliberately misleading headlines I’ve read in a long while. The author of the Vulture story is Hunter Harris.
“I don’t think I’ve stayed silent at all,” Blanchett told Amanpour. “At the time that I worked with Woody Allen, I knew nothing of the allegations. At the time, I said it’s a very painful and complicated situation for the family, which I hope they have the ability to resolve. If these allegations need to be reexamined which, in my understanding, they’ve been through court, then I’m a big believer in the justice system and setting legal precedents. If the case needs to be reopened, I am absolutely, wholeheartedly in support of that.”
Wes Anderson‘s Isle of Dogs opens on Thursday night. Several critics reviewed it yesterday (95% Rotten Tomatoes rating, 83% Metacritic), but I haven’t been invited to a single screening. Today I asked to be afforded that privilege. “Hi, guys…sorry to bother you, heh-heh, but any chance I could, you know, attend a last-minute screening of a film by a major-league guy whose stylistic signature is known worldwide, and whom I’ve personally known for close to a quarter-century?”
Wes and I have had a couple of spats, but not for several years. He’s always been polite and responsive whenever I’ve reached out. He’s never not wanted me to see Isle of Dogs, or at least he didn’t indicate this today. I don’t think this is on him. Okay, I’m not a great lover of animation, but I was cool with and fully respectful of old-fashioned stop-motion and the way this technique was used for Fantastic Mr. Fox so what’s the big issue? What critic goes invite-less if he’s been mixed or mildly negative about a couple of films by a certain director in the past?
Tuesday evening update: FS finally invited me to a screening — tomorrow night at the West L.A. Landmark.
I’ve known Wes for nearly 25 years. I wrote the first L.A. Times “Calendar” profile piece about Wes and Owen Wilson; it was published on 11.7.93. For over two decades I’ve been a respectful admirer (okay, with reservations) of his films. That respect has been reciprocated for many years. I attended Fox Searchlight’s Fantastic Mr. Fox junket in England in 2010, and their Grand Budapest Hotel junket in Berlin in ’14.
True, I’ve been nursing ambivalent reactions to Andersonville — i.e., that carefully tended, super-exacting realm of his — since The Royal Tenenbaums, which popped at the N.Y. Film Festival 16 and 1/2 years ago. On one hand I love (as always) the Anderson stamp…that feeling of dry but immaculate control of each and every element. And of wry humor. And of atmosphere and attitude. Andersonville is a place as distinct and precisely ordered and unto itself as Tati-land or Kubricktown or Capraburgh. And on the other hand I’ve sometimes felt frustrated by it.
Over the last 22 years my only serious Anderson loves have been Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Grand Budapest Hotel. The rest I’ve been mixed-positive or mixed on. But at least there were those three, and tomorrow’s another day.
Gary Barber, the narrow-faced, George Washington-resembling chairman/CEO of MGM and MGM Holdings Inc., has been whacked or, put more politely, “asked to leave.” Deadline‘s Anita Busch has reported that MGM Holdings deep-sixed Barber, who had run the company since 2010 and had four years to go on his current contract, “over disagreements on strategy about the future direction of the company,” whatever that means.
Hollywood Elsewhere says that Barber’s dismissal is an emotionally satisfying thing. Barber may have rejuvenated MGM to some extent and he may have been loved by his now-former employees, but he was an arrogant asshole when it came to the faith and creed of film restoration. For at least the last four years Barber stood in the way of the way of Robert Harris‘s attempt to independently fund a restoration of John Wayne‘s The Alamo — a thoughtless and callous act from any responsible perspective.
(l.) Former MGM chairman & CEO Gary Barber; (r.) George Washington sometime during the French and Indian War.
Yes, outside the Alamo situation Barber appeared to be a smart, aggressive, well-organized exec who knew how to get things done. Great. Then why did he show such callous disregard for the condition of a not-great but generally respected film that could have been saved in its original 70mm form, but is now lost for the most part? What kind of South African buccaneer, unwilling or unable to spend MGM’s money to restore the 70mm version of Wayne’s film, refuses to allow a restoration of said film to be independently funded?
12.26.14 quote from a “Save The Alamo Facebook page: “Gary Barber is the worst thing to happen to MGM since Jim ‘The Smiling Cobra’ Aubrey systematically sold off the old company in the early 1970’s. Worse, the film library is at stake this time. MGM seems intent on not only having no interest in restoring and preserving [The Alamo], but in actively seeing it destroyed. Unbelievable that this kind of practice is still going on.”
What defines a spiritual film? In my dictionary it’s any movie in which the main character is constantly communing with (i.e., pondering, meditating, wondering about) his/her inner life or more particularly that voice that seems to be talking to him/her in such a way that the main character is haunted, bothered, unsettled, off-balance and searching for the right thing to do or the right way to be.
In this sense Paul Schrader‘s First Reformed (A24, 6.22) — an absolute must-see — is a spiritual film in spades. But then so is Taxi Driver, which Schrader wrote some 43 or 44 years ago. And so are a bunch of others.
I don’t want to sound like an easy lay, but I regard Field of Dreams as a spiritual film. I think The Exorcist is a spiritual film, at least as far as Damian Karras‘s character is concerned. Days of Heaven is a spiritual film; ditto The Tree of Life. Obviously Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ (the screenplay for which was written by Schrader) and Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, but not — I repeat, not — Scorsese’s Kundun. (Too suffocating.) It would piss me off to hear someone call Batman Begins a spiritual film, but I suppose the argument could be made.
Is Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Little Buddha a spiritual film? I haven’t decided. Is Moby Dick a spiritual film as far as Gregory Peck‘s Captain Ahab is concerned? I’m still mulling that one over.
I got into this after reading a 3.15 Den of Geekinterview with Schrader, the director-writer of First Reformed, and star Ethan Hawke. The sit-down happened last week in Austin during South by Southwest, where First Reformed (A24, 6.22) screened once or twice. It was showered with hosannahs last fall when it played the Venice and Telluride festival; it also played Toronto.
Make no mistake — First Reformed is Schrader’s best film in ages.
From my 9.1.17 rave: “I can’t over-emphasize how amazing it feels to watch a fully felt, disciplined, well–ordered film by a brilliant guy who had seemingly lost his way or gone into eclipse, only to be startled when he leaps out from behind the curtain and says ‘Hah…I never left!'”
How many superheroes elbowing each other in Avengers: Infinity War…22 or 23? Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Mark Ruffalo as Hulk, Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Tom Holland as Peter Parker, Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther and Paul Bettany as Vision…that’s ten.
Plus Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, Anthony Mackie as Falcon, Sebastian Stan as White Wolf, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Idris Elba as Heimdall, Benedict Wong as Wong, Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Dave Bautista as Drax, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Vin Diesel as Groot, Bradley Cooper as Rocket, Chris Pratt as Peter Quill / Star-Lord…that’s thirteen or 23 total.
Plus Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Josh Brolin as bad-guy Thanos and Peter Dinklage as you-tell-me.
All of these hot-shots trying to out-quip each other. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. What’s the running time, 165 minutes? Longer?
Posted four years ago: Nobody remembers Richard Franklin‘s Link (’86), but it was a witty, better-than-decent genre thriller with a nice sense of tongue-in-cheek humor, and shot with a great deal of discipline. Clever, dry, smarthouse. And nobody saw it.
Shot in Scotland in ’85, Link was basically about a watchful, intelligent and increasingly dangerous chimpanzee who develops a sexual obsession for a junior zoologist played by young Elizabeth Shue (who was 22 or 23 during filming).
A Thorn EMI production that was acquired by Cannon, Link costarred Terrence Stamp, was fairly well written by Everett De Roche, and was very carefully composed. Franklin (who died young in ’07) shot it with a kind of Alfred Hitchcockian style and language. I wrote the Cannon press notes and in so doing interviewed Franklin. The then-39-year-old director worked very hard, he told me, to put Link together just so. Franklin made no secret of the fact that he was a lifelong Hitchcock devotee.
Unless you own a Region 2 Bluray/DVD player, you can’t see Link under any circumstances. You can buy a decade-old Region 2 DVD, but no NTSC version. And you can’t stream it on Amazon, Netflix or Vudu.
Boilerplate: “Jane, an American zoology student, takes a summer job at the lonely cliff-top home of a professor who is exploring the link between man and ape. Soon after her arrival he vanishes, leaving her to care for his three chimps: Voodoo, a savage female; the affectionate, child-like Imp; and Link, a circus ape trained as the perfect servant and companion.
“A disturbing role reversal takes place in the relationship between master and servant and Jane becomes a prisoner in a simian house of horror. In her attempts to escape she’s up against an adversary with several times her physical strength, and the instincts of a bloodthirsty killer.”
I helped out with Link screenings at Cannon headquarters on San Vicente Blvd., and I remember playing The Kinks “Ape Man” (a portion of which is heard in the film) as a kind of overture for invited guests.
Terrence Stamp, who starred in Link, told me during a Limey interview in ’99 that Franklin was very tough on film crews.
