From from HE reader Colin Biggs, an appraisal of a film that has already connected: “Wes Anderson is an acquired taste. His cavalcade of eccentric loners has spawned some of the most fervent fandom and some of the most bitter vitriol. Even previous works like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, two of Anderson’s best, have their detractors. So it seems the young romance and warm, yellow tints of Moonrise Kingdom invite remarks of being ‘too twee’ and ‘reeking of hipster-ism’, but at the end of the day Anderson’s seventh directorial effort is one that looks at childhood from the faraway distance of an adult mind.

“A mail correspondence between Sam (Jared Gilman), a very efficient boy scout, and Suzy (Kara Hayward), the product of two intellectuals, initiates a love that soon sets a town asunder. Suzy and Sam abscond away from their respective families in a New England town to make a life for themselves. Their living in the wild is not as far-fetched as it would be for star-struck lovers as Sam is an expert in the outdoors and Suzy is too cool to care about the problems that come with living in a forest.

“Moonrise Kingdom serves as wish fulfillment — a yearning for a time when children could experiment with this and that without the worries and anxieties that come with adolescence in 2012: updating relationship statuses, sexting, pregnancy worries, etc. The island these two have created is infused with all of the positive feelings of the sixties before they were ripped away by the Manson murders and Vietnam. A scenario like this just could not play out in modern-day America.

“Eventually the freedom that Sam and Suzy have must end as a hurricane threatens to wash their kingdom away. Scoutmaster Ward (a delightfully neurotic Edward Norton) organizes a search and enlists the aid of Cousin Ben (Jason Schwartzman) to find the children. Suzy’s mother sends Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) out to find the children as well. Parents and adults in Anderson films are often wildly irresponsible, but Norton and Willis serve as beacons for excellent background characters. These men are not without their own problems, yet they take to the call of action with ease.

“For those unaccustomed to love in an Anderson tale, don’t assume the romance is sickeningly sweet. Confronted with Suzy’s mentions of love, Sam responds by noting ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ When the adults enter the tale, then the fleeting romance becomes clear: love doesn’t always last. Suzy’s parents, Walt (Bill Murray) and Laura (Frances McDormand) entire relationship can be summed up in this exchange. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Laura tells Walt. “Why?” he asks. A loveless marriage can sometimes spring out of the universal condition, but that is not this film’s concern.

“In Moonrise Kingdom all of the wonder, terror, and bliss of youth can be experienced without the worries of what comes with age. What Anderson gives us is pure unadulterated joy without all of the neuroses. It’s a slice of life from a simpler time, if just for a moment.”

In a July 2008 riff inspired by David Carr‘s Night of the Gun, I wrote the following about my own adventures with reckless behavior:

“Carr’s book reminded me of the ‘farewell, my dignity’ aspect of drug use. Constant assaults on your self-esteem, stains on your sheets and your soul, humiliations unbridled. One way or another, if you do drugs you’re going to be dragged down and made to feel like a low-life animal. Because that’s what you are as long as you let drugs run the show.

“Drugs didn’t exactly ‘run the show’ when I was 22 or 23, but they sure were my friends. I saw my life as a series of necessary survival moves, spiritual door-openings, comic exploits, adventures, erotic intrigues — everything and anything that didn’t involve duty, drudgery, having a career and mowing the lawn on weekends. Pot, hashish, mescaline, peyote buttons, Jack Daniels and beer were my comrades in crime.

“(I’m going to leave aside discussions of my Godhead Siddhartha discoveries with LSD, and I’d just as soon forget my relatively brief encounters with blithering idiot marching powder from the late ’70s to mid ’80s.)

“The particular story that David Carr’s book brought back was me and my upper-middle-class friends’ flirtation with opium and, for a brief time, heroin.

“The way we saw it, smack was much hipper than your garden-variety head drugs. Opiates were more authentic, we figured, because guys like William S. Burroughs and Chet Baker had done them. Where today I see only the danger, the depravity and the recklessness, back then we saw only the contra-coolness.

“I was never much of a user, but I did flirt from time to time. I was a candy-ass in junkie circles because I confined myself to snorting and smoking the stuff. One thing I learned pretty quickly is that ‘chippers’ (casual users) have to be careful because heroin will make you throw up if you smoke or snort too much because your body isn’t used to it. Which mine never was because I wasn’t…you know, dedicated.

“I was living in a crash pad in Southport, Connecticut. My sole source of income at the time was working part-time for a guy who ran a limousine driver service. Business guys looking to go to Kennedy or LaGuardia or Newark airports would call and I’d come over and drive them to the airport in their car, and then drive it back to their home. It doesn’t sound like much of an idea, but there were definitely customers calling from Westport, Weston, Easton, Wilton, Georgetown, Redding, Southport and Fairfield.

“My deal with my boss, Peter, was to be on call at all times. A guy leaving for the airport in a couple of hours would call Peter, he’d call me, I’d drive over and so on. So one afternoon — a Sunday, possibly — a friend and I happened to have some of that snort-smoke stuff, and had retired to a barn out back for a little indulgence. We rolled a nice fat joint and soon I was royally Baker-ed. But just as we got back to the house the phone rang. It was Peter telling me to dress nicely and be at a certain client’s home in 45 minutes if possible, certainly no later than an hour. A trip down to Kennedy.

“If I were less of a fool I would have said then and there, ‘Sorry, Peter — no can do.’ But I was broke and needed the money. Go for it, I told myself. I figured I’d take a quick shower, change into a dress shirt and sport jacket, and be relatively straight by the time I got to the client’s house. But the shower didn’t help and I looked like a wreck. My pupils were little black micro points. So I put on a pair of deep-black shades and then had the inspiration to put on a cowboy hat, the idea being that the manly-conservative cowboy vibe might rub off and make me look less drugged out.

“But I was feeling way too wasted as I got into my car so I got my friend to drive me over in his. I figured the stuff would wear off sooner or later and I’d be okay.

“I started to feel more and more nauseous as we drove over. When I realized with a jolt I was going to be sick, I rolled down the window and lurched halfway out and spewed. Except we were moving at a good clip — 40 or 45 mph — and so the vomit splattered along the side of my friend’s bright red car.

“You need to imagine yourself raking leaves on the front lawn of your beautiful Southport home, your toddlers playing nearby and birds chirping in the trees, when all of a sudden you see this ratty red Impala rolling left to right with some guy leaning out the passenger window and spraying clam chowder. You have to think of it in those terms.

“It was all we could do to keep the client from calling the police once he saw me — pasty-faced, straw cowboy hat, unable to stand straight, slurring my words, flecks of vomit on my sport jacket. I was screamed at and, of course, fired by Peter. Never before had I felt like such a piece of detritus, and nothing has happened since to equal this. It was so humiliating that the opiate-usage thing ended very soon after. I told myself I was the rebellious but capable son of suburban middle-class parents who led productive, organized, reasonably moral lives, and here I was acting like a complete degenerate.

“The purple rage on Peter’s face, the look of contempt in the client’s eyes, my own self disgust. If these things didn’t wake me, nothing would have. But they did. Thank you, hand of fate.”

Cheers at the very least to Les Miserables dp Danny Cohen, who also shot Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech as well as Shane Meadows’ This Is England (’06).

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Last night I was feeling so distraught about Criterion’s upcoming 1.85 fascist Bluray of Elia Kazan‘s On The Waterfront that I went on iTunes to buy the special edition 1.33 to 1 DVD version (the one that came out in 2001). So I bought it for $9.99 and…good God! It’s the 1.85 Bob Furmanek version!

It appears that Sony restoration honcho Grover Crisp and Sony Home Video are pre-emptively circulating the newbie in advance of the Criterion, perhaps to familiarize the public with a whacked-down Waterfront as a way of managing an end run around traditionalists like myself.

TCM has allegedly been screening the 1.85 version for several years but you know what I mean…the powers that be are trying to eliminate all traces of the good old boxy version. They can’t send out memory police to physically seize all existing copies of the 1.33 version so they’re focusing for now on iTunes. Pretty soon Crisp and Criterion and friends of Furmanek will be able to say “1.33 Waterfront…what’s that?”

I repeat: Crisp invited me to see the 1.33 version at a Sony screening room (I went with my son Dylan) sometime in the early aughts, and he was very proud and satisfied with it. But then Furmanek and the 1.85 fascists showed Crisp (or people close to Crisp) data about Columbia chief Harry Cohn mandating a 1.85 aspect ratio in all non-Scope Columbia films from April 1953 on, and Crisp capitulated.

But here’s the thing and I don’t mind admitting this, given my extreme distaste for the fascist mandate: director Elia Kazan shot his 1.85 version of On The Waterfront with skill and finesse and a nice sense of balance, and so it’s not that painful to watch. Most (roughly 80%) of the shots look “right” without a sense of vital or interesting information having been chopped out.

And yet (and this is IMPORTANT) the famous taxicab scene with Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger looks quite cramped and claustrophic; ditto that Hoboken bar scene between Brando and Eva Marie Saint. The faces are there and you’re getting what you need to understand the story and appreciate the mood, but you’re not being shown what looks classic and true.

The 1.33 version of On The Waterfront will always look better. It breathes with smoky, smoggy air and all kinds of beautiful headroom, and it shows you more of the Hoboken world of 1953 and ’54 than the 1.85 version does. It looks like life as it was lived and felt and understood at that time, and the 1.85 version look like Furmanek and his pallies are doing a not-unpleasant science experiment.

In the highly unlikely event that Criterion decides to issue its On The Waterfront Bluray with both aspect ratios (1.85 and 1.33), I wouldn’t hesitate for a second in watching the 1.33 version every time.

MILD SPOILER CONTAINED HEREIN: Both Variety‘s Justin Chang and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy sound underwhelmed in their just-up reviews of Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus (Friday, 6.1), although not to the extent that you’d call either response a pan. They’re both more or less saying “very decent, at time very stirring and technically impressive but with a rote scary-alien finale and some philosophical questions about the origins of man…meh.” Or something like that.

At least they were kinder to it than Le Monde‘s Isabelle Regnier.

McCarthy: “Prometheus, a visual feast of a 3D sci-fi movie, has trouble combining its high-minded notions about the origins of the species and its Alien-based obligation to deliver oozy gross-out moments. Ridley Scott’s third venture into science-fiction, after Alien in 1979 and Blade Runner in 1982, won’t become a genre benchmark like those classics despite its equivalent seriousness and ambition, but it does supply enough visual spectacle, tense action and sticky, slithery monster attacks to hit the spot with thrill-seeking audiences worldwide.”

“As the survivors are pared down to a precious few, the grisliness and gross-out quotient increases; a self-inflicted Cesarian section may be a screen first (certainly the result of it is), while Fassbender’s fate is similarly imaginative and far funnier. This project started life as an intended prequel to Alien but morphed into something else. Unfortunately, the closer it comes to a climax, the more you feel the elements being lined up to set the stage for a sequel to this film, most of all in a coda that feels like a craven teaser trailer for the next installment.”

Chang: A mission to uncover the origins of human life yields familiar images of death and devastation in Prometheus. Elaborately conceived from a visual standpoint, Ridley Scott’s first sci-fier in the three decades since Blade Runner remains earthbound in narrative terms, forever hinting at the existence of a higher intelligence without evincing much of its own.

“Technically, Prometheus is magnificent. Shot in 3D but without the director taking the process into account in his conceptions or execution, the film absorbs and uses the process seamlessly.”

A day before today’s French debut of Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus, Le Monde critic Isabelle Regnier trashed it. I’m translating it word for word as we speak, but the headline reads as follows: “Prometheus – Alien betrayed by his own creator, Ridley Scott.”

The snippiest quote in the 5.29 review doesn’t read all that eloquently (blame Bablefish) but here it is : “In the role of a company man being paid handsomely for his work, Ridley Scott follows the typical commercial road map. His mission: ressurect the Alien franchise and give the audience something a copy of something they like, nothing more.”

Wells to HBO publicists: How would you feel about sending screeners containing the first two or three episodes of Aaron Sorkin‘s The Newsroom to me in Prague? That wouldn’t be such a big deal. An int’l Fed Ex form instead of a domestic one and a bit more money. I really don’t want to be behind the eight ball on this one.

HE reader John English found Men in Black 3 “a fun, fluffy return to form for the franchise,” he writes. “It buries all those bad Men in Black II memories, but honestly, ten years later, who remembers anything about all that specific about that decade-old film? But enough of generalities. This is about age gaps.

“The present day in MiB3 is firmly established as 2012, and the time Agent J travels back to is firmly established as 1969. That’s a 43-year difference. Now the only time anyone gives their age is Young Agent K (Josh Brolin) who reveals he’s 29. It’s a funny line. K apparently ages quickly. This also means that Current Agent K is 72. Okay, I can accept that. In real life Brolin is 44 and Jones is 65, so Agent K aged horribly in his 20’s, and then it slowed down. Like Walter Matthau.

“But then we have Current Agent O (Emma Thompson) and Young Agent O (Alice Eve). Thompson is only 53 years old, but Eve is 30, not 10. Okay, so maybe K and O are the same age? You’re telling me Thompson’s okay with playing a 72-year-old with no aging make-up?

“And then there’s Will Smith‘s Agent J. Smith is 43, but with the events in this movie, that means Agent J is really over 50 years old. And J does not act like he’s over 50.

“The screenwriters really wanted the year to be 1969 so they can have the moon launch and the hippies and the clothing and Andy Warhol (nice one, Bill Hader), but it feels like a script that was written six years ago, when the ages would have been less of an issue. Even so, why does Emma Thompson take a role that says she’s over 70?”

HE reader Jesse Crall caught Rupert Sanders‘ Snow White and the Huntsman (Universal, 6.1) last Saturday, and has sent along some impressions. Pic currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 83%. It opens tomorrow in the UK and Friday in the States.

“Shot largely in desaturated gray palettes, Snow White and the Huntsman makes impressive use of gothic imagery best exemplified by a stone castle rising high above a raging sea. The set design, spare in detail, conjures up an atmosphere both medieval and otherworldly.

“It begins as a supposed prisoner of war named Ravenna, played with biting ferocity by Charlize Theron, marries a benevolent king and promptly murders and usurps him. She imprisons his daughter, the fair Snow White (Kristen Stewart), and begins a reign of terror so poisonous the entire kingdom withers and blackens.

“Theron storms about with caustic nastiness; she screams and browbeats but her performance isn’t campy. It’s as if Young Adult‘s Mavis Gary turned her attention away from Patrick Wilson and toward despotism. With raccoon make-up and intricate hair-braiding, she looks stunning at her best; at one point, she descends bare-backed into a massive vat of milk and emerges with the appearance of being cast in white chocolate.

“But her obsession with preserving her youth and beauty drives the plot. A witch or sorts, given the power of immortality by her mother, Theron’s Ravenna stands to lose her powers should a fairer figure come of age. When Snow White does so, Ravenna sends her lackey brother to bring her to him, prompting an escape, a chase, a mission, planned revenge and the usual usual usual.

“Once Snow White escapes, the story turns to the titular characters, the latter played by Chris Hemsworth. Hemsworth brings a rakish edge to his character’s depressive self-destructive tendencies, and he and Stewart make a fine pair in their storyline. While she’s received criticism for colorless turns in the Twilight series, Stewart does an excellent job with Snow White, giving her ethereal character a steely quality that makes her a worthy heroine for the film.

“Overall, Snow White and the Huntsman deals in an interesting mix of rugged action and feminine burdens. Theron’s anti-aging paranoia gets played with utter seriousness, but it reads similarly to her scenes of excessive primping in Young Adult. Stewart holds the center of the film’s second and third acts, and the script admirably holds the focus on her as an individual. The film’s universe needs her to ascend to the throne but Snow White never needs a king to do so.
       
“Visually the film thrives when its tone trends toward enchantment. One scene, shown briefly in trailers, features Stewart wandering into a meadow filled with mythical creatures like mossy turtles and a pair of coltish fairies set against luminous greenery. It brings to mind Pan’s Labyrinth in its strange splendor, a considerable feat indeed. 1st time Sanders holds complete control over his bizarre universe, which moves from dark age castles to enchanted forests to gruesome skirmishes large and small with impressive handling.

“The 2.35:1 aspect ratio absorbs the dramatic landscapes effectively, far more so than The Avengers, which felt cramped in 1.85:1. Snow White maneuvers the widescreen views and more intimate stagings with equal effectiveness, allowing for the more taciturn scenes of quiet menace to help amplify the brutal action.

“A trope of the film involves moments of repose getting broken up by bursts of severe carnage. Like The Hunger Games, it engages best through intimate moments between its actors, whether they be Theron and her own insecurity or Stewart finding security through Hemsworth. But once the film shifts its tenuous balance toward the volatile realm of CGI havoc, it loses itself. The ending isn’t difficult to predict and it follows two hours of myth-building that feels under-explained. Theron’s actual powers and how they specifically relate to Snow White aren’t clear until the end; I don’t get the impression that the filmmakers intended to be so cryptic.
       
“Unlike recent blockbusters like The Hunger Games and The Avengers, Snow White contains an entire story within its singular time frame. It concludes, if shakily, with an almost admirable finality as opposed to working as a set-up for a larger narrative framework.

“Snow White also marks Stewart’s first truly involving turn as a leading actress. Stewart never performs like she’s working for tips, staying within the dour nature of the film’s tone. Eschewing lazy verbal laments, the film instead relies on Stewart’s melancholy body language to remind the audience that she’s lost her mother and father to tragic circumstances before getting her childhood robbed by Theron. After years locked away in a castle, her sudden brush with pastoral beauty and a wondrous white stag forces her face open.

“Like Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games, Stewart opts for reality over charm and affects viewers more deeply in the process.
       
“Instead of a starting point for a slew of sequels, Snow White and the Huntsman showcases its talented veterans like costume designer Coleen Atwood, Theron, and composer James Newton Howard while previewing the budding skills of Stewart, Hemsworth and Sanders. It’s a flawed but intriguing film that succumbs to convention only in the broad structure of its plot. Within its individual scenes and performances, it engages more deeply than any blockbuster yet this year.”

Boil down Steven Zeitchik‘s 5.28 L.A. Times piece about the impact that the 2012 Cannes Film Festival may have on the Oscar race, and you’re left with one solid: Michael Haneke‘s Amour will be a major contender for Best Foreign Language Film. (Unless the foreign language committee finds it too dispiriting.)

I would like to think that Leos Carax‘s Holy Motors would also figure strongly in that competition. (Unless the rank-and-file dismiss it as too hallucinatory.) That’s what everyone always says when a unmistakably fine film is about to open in the U.S. — i.e., how will the older slowpokes respond?

Yes, Garrett Hedlund has stepped up and out of the box with his Dean Moriarty/Neal Casady turn in Walter Salles‘ On The Road — it’s a bracing, live-wire performance — but it’s destined for Spirit Awards attention, at most. I haven’t seen Mud (many thanks, WeAreFilmNation) so I obviously can’t get into Matthew McConaughey‘s admired performance in the titular role. What about Marion Cotillard‘s exacting but subtle work in Rust and Bone?

HE reader Jenny Frankfurt submitted this Cannes-related guest piece yesterday — one that may not endear her to women who’ve complained about the lack of a female-directed film at this just-concluded gathering. She’s basically saying that discrimination is a problem, but that it serves a kind of Darwinian purpose. Frankfurt is with the LA-based High Street Management, a division of Bohemia Entertainment. [Note: I trimmed the original down a bit.]

“There has been some discussion that none of the 18 films chosen for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival were directed by a woman,” Frankfurt begins. “The suggestion was that festival organizers might have deliberately shunned such films. Perhaps, but perhaps there weren’t any female-directed films that were good enough for Cannes.

“Granted, it’s harder to make it as a female director than a male. Studios are less willing to take risks and for anyone, male or female, independent financing is difficult to find. Some have made it through and the road has been long for their films to be recognized by commercial audiences or even to get anything but very limited distribution. Kathryn Bigelow, Nicole Holofcener, Lisa Cholodenko and Debra Granik have made it through, but many more female filmmakers throughout the world are making films that are not getting seen. Why?

“I just have to throw out the idea that perhaps, in this male dominated business of
filmmaking, men make better films. It is still a ‘male sport’ and women are catching up. I know many females who have graduated from film school and haven’t produced anything of great note. It might be worth considering that there is something called ‘positive discrimination.’

“The head of Women in Film and Television has said that the gap between male and female filmmakers is a ‘cultural thing’, and that it will take time for women to catch
up with men for many reasons. One is that women make more short films as calling cards, because ostensibly they are not given the money for a feature or cannot raise it. Can an independent producer not raise money on the back of a talented female director? I hardly think so. I have represented female directors and they have worked. I have represented male directors and they have not.

“Women directed 7% of last year’s 250 top grossing films. The year before that is
was less and the year before that it was less. So as slow as it may be, as in every
industry, it is building. Women started off at the back of the bus and are working
their way forward. It takes time for every minority to catch up.

“It is mostly ardent feminists who call out what they describe as discrimination
of women at Cannes, and while they are not wrong in that there were no female
directed films, I challenge them to find one that should have been there but wasn’t and really should have been there. There is never any point in laying blame; one always has to look within when something is seemingly amiss. One cannot always blame those in charge for having tunnel vision; the creatives have to produce material that is of quality, and because there are more male filmmakers, more men get recognized.

“It must be known as well that this is a worldwide issue. All films this year that won
awards were not from the U.S. so it is not a Hollywood issue but as mentioned, a
cultural one. And yes, it is a problem.

“Hollywood and the rest of the international filmmaking community need to be open to women, but I don’t believe they are closed. I am in it every day and the door is open, it’s just that the talent has to be strong enough to walk through it.”

I’m pleased to report that Petr Slavik of Bontonfilm.cz has graciously accepted my rsvp for a screening of Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus on Friday, June 1st. So at least I’ll be up to speed on that score. The film opens in Prague on June 7th, or one day before the U.S. release. It opens tomorrow in Paris, Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland.