“All of [the] power is lying in the last third of the movie, and you’re slowly ratcheting up the tension along the way,” Wicker Man director-writer Neil LaBute has told Coming Soon’s Edward Douglas. “You have to be very patient and say that I’m making a movie that people can watch and enjoy, but it’s not something that’s going to keep rattling the cage every few minutes. It’s just something that’s constantly twisting, twisting itself so that you’re very caught up in it.
“It’s knowing the genre, knowing how you want to approach that and how you want to surprise with it. You set up situations that look like very familiar ones where audiences are like, ‘I know what’s going to happen.’ You’re going to get close to that girl and then her eyes are going to open to try to spook me, and when that doesn’t happen, you go, ‘Now, why did they do that?’ Because you’re always trying to reward expectations and reward the audience a bit later with something. I tried to know that genre well, and then play against it a bit as well.”

The more Martin Scorsese‘s stock as a great American auteur has plummeted, the more he’s focused his energies on celebrating cinema culture by doing interviews and providing commentaries for DVDs. I realize, of course, that Marty is one of this country’s most devoted, impassioned and knowledgable cineastes, and that he’s probably done more than any other working director to preserve and restore great films and hail to that…seriously.
But deep down I think he’s investing in his cinematic-historian thing as compensation for the lack of genuine electric current in his strivings as a narrative filmmaker.
Let’s face it — the two best films Scorsese has made since Goodfellas have been docs — My Voyage in Italy and No Direction Home: Bob Dylan. When I think these days of the Marty I love and truly respect, I think of the guy who directed the great old ’70s and ’80s stuff (i.e., Goodfellas being the last high-water mark), and who edited and assembled these two fine docs. And I certainly don’t think of the guy who directed The Aviator and Gangs of New York and The Age of Innocence and the godawful Kundun.
It’s therefore all part of a downward-spiralling career trend that Scorsese has been hired as a Direct TV film critic “after complaining about Direct TV’s movie review system,” according to this Hollywood.com story. This is strictly an elder-statesman emeritus busywork activity. The Departed director will write a monthly column for On DirecTV, a magazine and program guide for people who subscribe to the service. Scorsese’s focus will be on overlooked films (i.e., get ready for torrents of prose about Samuel Fuller, Budd Boetticher, Nicholas Ray, etc.).

I sifted through my DVD screeners last night trying to find my copy of Al Franken: And God Spoke (Balcony, 9.13), the Chris Hegedus-Nick Doob doc about Franken’s political adventures over the last two or three years . The doc became a bit of a hot news item yesterday thanks to the censorious instincts of right-wing harridan Ann Coulter, as this Anthony Kaufman/Indiewire item explains.
My intent was to find that debate scene between Franken and Coulter taped at Hartford’s Connecticut Forum on 5.14.04. It’s being cut from the final release print because Coulter and/or moderator Steve Roberts (most likely the former) won’t sign a release form, and I wanted to at least provide a visual recording of this scene.
But I can’t find the damn screener…great. And nobody, surprisingly, has yet posted the video clip on YouTube.
The apparent reason Coulter has refused to okay the footage is because she looks small-minded in a clip in which Roberts asks she and Franken which historical figure they would like to be. Coulter says she’d like to be Franklin D. Roosevelt so she could prevent the New Deal, and Franken says he’d like to be Adolf Hitler so he could prevent the Holocaust. Critics have allegedly been advised to “not mention this scene in your reviews or coverage.”

We all run into films every so often that seem exceptional in a deep-down way. And not just in a particular-personal vein but smacking of some kind of profound life-lesson and/or greatness of theme that seems to reach out and strike a universal chord. Or they deliver an emotional connection that seems to reflect our commonality in some rich and resonant fashion. And yet — here’s the rub and the shock — much or most of the world doesn’t agree. Almost everyone you know and nearly every other critic seems bored, unmoved, mocking, snide.
And it just throws you into a funk. What’s going on here? I know this film nails it — why isn’t this more widely recognized? There are some who fell heavily for Phillip Kaufman‘s Quills, Gus Van Sant‘s Finding Forrester and Steven Soderbergh‘s Solaris…and they must have felt terrible when the world pretty much sneered and turned its back. Maybe we can hear some stories along these lines. Everybody’s got one or two or three.

With Roger Michell‘s Venus (Miramax., 12.15) now slated to play Telluride this weekend as well as Toronto, and all the talk about Peter O’Toole giving one of his career-best performances, you’d think the film would have its own website by now. But there’s nothing. Miramax needs to get the lead out. (And apologies for the fatigue that resulted in Harvey Weinstein being ID’d last night as the Venus distributor.)

Peter O’Toole, Jodie Whittaker in Roger Michell’s Venus (Miramax, 12.15)

Ross Johnson‘s nicely written, shrewdly-observed piece about the indefatigable Robert Evans, appearing in Wednesday’s N.Y. Times. Evans thrives, persists…will persevere until the end! And beyond that even! Evans!

This coming Friday is something like a Labor Day clearance sale with The Wicker Man, Crank, and Idiocracy — all opening on 9.1 — not screening for the press, and in the case of Lassie, barely screening for the press. (Nobody cares one way or the other.) Crossover , the basketball movie from Screen Gems, is screening this week. And of course, Kirby Dick‘s This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated has been screened a lot since debuting at Sundance last January. I called around today and tried to at least arrange to see The Wicker Man this coming Thuirsday night (there’s some kind of radio promoton fan showing somewhere) but Warner Bros. publicists won’t assist. Director Neil Labute is having a Thursday-night pally screeing in Manhattan. How bad can it be?

Christopher Smith‘s Severance (Magnolia, 3.07) , a reputedly witty horror-thriller, shot to the top of my Toronto must-see list earlier today when I found out it’s being screened at this weekend’s Telluride Film Festival. I don’t know when a horror film of any kind last played Tellruride, but obviously it wouldn’t have been accepted if it hadn’t been two or three cuts above the norm.

“Personally I think that horror comedy is veyr hard to do really well,” says a buyer who saw it at Cannes last May, “but I think Smith really nails it. And it’s intelligent to boot.”
I’m told that if you’re a fan of Dilbert and “Dilbert humor”, you’ll enjoy Severance‘s brand of humor a bit more fully.
Severance is about an international arms dealer who treats his six employees to a mountain retreat getaway in Eastern Europe. And of course, they all get knocked off one by one…but not by a monster. They’re attacked by a renegade band of mercenaries looking to settle a score with the arms dealer because he screwed them on a deal.
I haven’t quoted a review from the IMDB in a long time but fuck it. It’s from Kris60 from Berkeley, and it starts off by saying that “yes, it’s a slasher movie by definition: people meet horrific ends through discomforting means. But unlike slasher movies with sophomoric scripts, this one get points for smart dialogue, strong political perspective and a high humor quotient.
“The title might persuade some that it;s a reference to losing one’s job. And upon hearing it’s a slasher film, one might think the reference cuts more towards Marie Antoinette. Both are borne out, yet the title’s other reference — which comes quietly but cleverly to light at the conclusion — is somberly delightful.
“For the squeamish, give this one a pass — you won’t make it past the first bit of nastiness. For those who are a little braver, but wouldn’t usually attend a film in which most of the cast is guaranteed to wind up sprung from this mortal coil, do give this one a go. You’ll be pleasantly surprised! ”
The screenplay is by Smith and James Moran, and the costars are Danny Dyer, Laura Harris, Tim McInnerny, Toby Stephens, Claudie Blakley, Andy Nyman, Babou Ceesay and David Gilliam.

Kazu Workman of Crescenta, California, has passed along a review of the Ridley/Russell ‘s A Good Year, posted by Kellvin Chavez from Latino Review, And okay, all right…A Good Year may not be Oscar-caliber but at least there’s a notion afloat that it gives fans of quality acting and gorgeous cinematography something to look forward to.

A persuasive argument piece by MSNBC’s Sarah Bunting that Steve Carell deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work in Little Miss Sunshine…hail to that. (He and Alan Arkin have been topping the list of Best Supporting Actor possibles in the Oscar Balloon since last spring.)
But the thing you really want to look at on the same page is that MSNBC slide show of Oscar bait movies …hah! The banner copy says that “Martin Scorsese‘s The Departed will take on Clint Eastwood‘s Flags of Our Fathers“…hah!! (Which is the reason why Warner Bros. isn’t bringing The Departed to Toronto — because it’s such a tangy Oscar contender.)
Of the eleven films listed by MSNBC as likely Oscar bait, exactly four are rock-solid contenders for Best Picture or Screenplay or some level of acting award — Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu‘s Babel, Todd Field’s Little Children, Flags of Our Fathers and Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver.
And there are two likely-possibles as far as the acting categories are concerned — Phillip Noyce ‘s Catch a Fire (i.e., Derek Luke as a Best Actor contender…maybe) and Ryan Murphy‘s Running with Scissors (i.e., a possible Best Supporting Actress nod for Annette Bening).
The list also includes Chris Nolan‘s The Prestige but my gut tells me this is more in the realm of an entertainment than Oscar glory…but maybe not. (Disney publicists are convinced it’s their ’06 Oscar missile.)
Anything’s possible, but I will eat both of my loafers if any of the following four films, listed as hotties by MSNBC, significantly distinguish themselves in the derby: Ridley Scott‘s A Good Year, Steven Zallian’s All The King’s Men, Brian DePalma’s The Black Dahlia and The Departed.

“I’m very confused personally,” actress Karen Young, 47, says to the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Ron Dicker. “I feel like I was in this generation of women who were supposed to take care of ourselves, supposed to be totally self-sufficient and even support a husband. There was a lot of talk about being that way, and I don’t think it actually transpired. We kept our names, but that was about it.” — from Dicker’s 8.27 profile of Young.

I met Young at last year’s Toronto Film Festival when her latest film, Laurent Cantet‘s Heading South (Vers le sud),was first being shown. She’s also pretty good in Factotum, but me Young will always be FBI agent Robyn Sanseverino. She’s been kicking around since the early ’80s and that, so far, is her definitive role.

For some reason I never watched “How Scarface Got His Groove Back“, this trailer mash-up from editor Steve Kenny, when it surfaced last June. It’s not bad except for Brendan Raher‘s narration. He sounds too much like the guy who lives across the hall who just broke up with his girlfriend — trailer narrators always sound a little bit like slick Martians. (Editor’s Note: I came upon this Trailer Mash site — all trailer mashes, all the time — becuase David Poland linked to it this morning. That means Poland owns all links to this site in perpetuity.)