“As pervasive as the internet has become, so has the notion that free content must be free for others to take,” read the tag line. The “Blogger Centipede” panel, which began at 5 pm in the Austin Convention Center, was about a general lack of ethics in certain corners of the web, and what, if anything, can be done about it. The panelists were (l. to r.) William Goss, Pajiba’s Dustin Rowles, Gordon and the Whale‘s Kate Erbland, Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and the well-regarded Matt Patches.
Knowing full well that very few movie stars have a more toxic image than The Beaver star Mel Gibson, Summit Entertainment and Participant Media are trying to spin the South by Southwest premiere of Jodie Foster‘s new film (which will screen here on Wednesday night) with a “social action” campaign meant to highlight the various pitfalls and possible remedies for mental illness. What, Mad Mel’s? No — mental illness in general.
The press release reads, “As [The Beaver] depicts the devastating effects of mental illness on one family, Participant designed the Social Action Campaign to provide audiences with tools, resources and opportunities to heal the pain of those suffering from mental illnesses and their families and friends,” and blah blah.
It also promises that “on 3.17 at Lambert’s Downtown Barbecue in Austin, an afternoon celebration of the Social Action Campaign for The Beaver will take place,” and that musical headliners will include Pepper Rabbit and Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers. The Beaver director/star Jodie Foster and co-star Anton Yelchin will also take the stage.
So Gibson isn’t going to show up in Austin, or has Summit/Participant simply decided not to announce his intention to do so in their press release? If he appears, it’ll be a circus. If he doesn’t appear, it’ll be a bigger circus.
The Beaver will open on May 6th.
Augustus Owsley Stanley III, by any yardstick one of the key promoters and launchers of LSD use in the mid to late ’60s (equal to the influence of Timothy Leary, Jimi Hendrix‘s ‘Are You Experienced?‘ album and the Beatles), died yesterday in a car crash in Australia at the age of 76.
Everything you need to know about the hip factor at The Hollywood Reporter is contained in this headline for their Stanley obit.
If you accept, as I do, that spiritual satori by way of LSD in the ’60s triggered the spiritual revolution of the ’70s and introduced a whole new level of comprehension about mystical enlightenment (the concept of which, before the mid ’60s, hadn’t even penetrated U.S. culture, given the general tendency to regard spiritual matters in terms handed down in Sunday church services), then the death of Stanley is, in a sense, like the passing of John the Baptist, St. Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther or any other major spiritual figure of the past.
Stanley’s Wiki bio says he was “probably the first private individual to manufacture LSD. Between 1965 and 1967 he produced more than 1.25 million doses of LSD — a catalyst for the emergence of the hippie movement during the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury area, which one historian of that movement, Charles Perry, has described as ‘one big LSD party.’ Stanley was also an accomplished sound engineer, and the longtime sound man and financier for psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead.”
“‘[Stanley] made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honor,’ former rock ‘n’ roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoir ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’
“Hendrix’s song ‘Purple Haze’ was reputedly inspired by a batch of Stanley’s product. The ear-splitting blues-psychedelic combo Blue Cheer took its named from another batch.”
Last night /Film‘s Peter Sciretta caught Paul Feig‘s Bridesmaids (Universal, 5.13) as part of a double-feature presentation following a 10 pm showing of Greg Mottola‘s Paul. Sciretta says that while Feig’s film might technically be called a chick flick or romantic comedy, it “reaches levels of hilarity and heart that these types of films haven’t reached in over a decade.”
Sciretta also says (and this is significant, I think) that last night’s film- and tech-geek crowd, which he guesstimates was at least 80% male, “walked out praising [this] Judd Apatow-produced chick flick over Paul, the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost nerd-serviced sci-fi alien comedy,” which by any measure would have to called “a major achievement.”
Written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, Bridesmaids is about feuding bridesmaids played by Wiig and Rose Byrne (Damages). Maya Rudolph plays the bride. Melissa McCarthy, Jon Hamm, Matt Lucas, Ellie Kemper, Dianne Wiestand, the late Jill Clayburgh and Chris O’Dowd costar.
“Wiig delivers a career-best performance that proves she can do much more [than] sketch comedy and funny characters. I’d be shocked if Wiig isn’t nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical at next year’s Golden Globes (a la Emma Stone/Easy A). McCarthy also kills in every scene she’s in.
Bridesmaids “takes the Apatow formula and applies it to a film populated by funny women,” Sciretta notes. “I’m sure it will be criticized for being misogynistic, even though it is much less so than his other films, on top of being much, much less misandristic than most romantic comedies.
“I’ve also heard a couple complaints that it’s overly long, [but this] might be due to the movie not having begun until a half-hour past midnight.
“The movie has some great set pieces, the centerpiece of which is not afraid to mix women with potty humor, and does so not just for the gross-out laughs, but at the service the story and in a way which escalates to a brilliant crescendo.”
During last week’s initial (and most likely only) viewing of Battle Los Angeles, I kept wondering what those canvas or cloth flaps on the front of U.S. troop helmets were for. I did a little poking around this morning with various search terms, but uncovered no hints or clues. All military gear is about functionality, but I can’t imagine what these effing things would be for. “Hey, soldier…where’s your rolled-up cloth helmet ornament?” Somebody must know.
Earlier this afternoon I saw Rodman Flender‘s Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop at Austin’s Paramount theatre. It’s a smoothly assembled, well-honed capturing of O’Brien’s 32-city “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television” tour that he embarked upon last year following his sudden departure as the host of NBC’s Tonight Show. The doc’s undercurrent is explained in this clip of O’Brien’s post-screening remarks.
A video clip of no consequence whatsoever — zilch. I just took it after snagging my passes this morning inside the Austin Convention Center, and after chatting briefly with critic/feature writer Michelle Orange.
In Eric Kohn‘s 3.13 N.Y. Times profile of Paul helmer Greg Mottola, the bespectacled, bald-headed director of Superbad and Adventureland, describes his latest as (a) “ridiculous” and (b) “silly but also smart” in a “high-low comedy” sense. And yet he’s “worried” about the latest Paul trailer portraying the alien “as an extraterrestrial frat boy.”
Never, ever funny. In fact, moments like this make me want to puke.
“Probably every puerile joke is in there,” Mottola tells Kohn. “They’re obviously in a different context in the movie because the character is irreverent. He doesn’t respect authority.”
So this “silly, ridiculous” movie has “puerile jokes” that Mottola included of his own (and the producers’ and the studio’s) free will, and Mottola is afraid that people will, like, get the wrong idea?
There’s one thing that can’t be said too many times. Supposedly comic moments when characters scream “aaaggghhh!” as a way of conveying panic and terror are never funny — not before, not now and definitely not tomorrow. They’re merely emphatic and repetitive. And yet mediocre comedies always seem to include them.
I saw James Gunn‘s Super (IFC Midnight, 4.1) last night…what a surprise! I went in hoping it might not be too painful and that I might get through it without walking out. I came out singing its praises, admiring the hell out of Gunn and his script, worshipping Ellen Page‘s balls-out performance and wondering what could be wrong with the critics who dismissed it at last September’s Toronto Film Festival.
Super is partly a dark and bracing satire of superhero movies, partly a withering “eff you” to T-shirted ComicCon culture dweebs who live for superhero fantasies, and partly a violent, surreal-ish Troma comedy. However you want to slice it, it is not selling the same old bilge about a lonely neurotic dork finding transcendence and salvation by adopting a super alter-identity and kicking criminal ass and getting the girl of his dreams, etc.
The fact that it’s dopey-funny in a dry and anarchic way doesn’t change the fact that Super is, deep down, a rather harsh and unsparing portrait of marginally sociopathic comic-book readers-and-dreamers (as represented by Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page‘s characters) who are so full of rage and caught up in absolutist fantasy themes that they can’t really process reality, and who hand out severe bloody beatings in an oddly giddy but mean-spirited way.
Gunn’s movie, which also delivers sincere-anguished-weeping and praying-to-God scenes, is really quite the original thing. By my standards Super is way, way better than Kick-Ass because the latter was made with an underlying affection for superhero movies & mythology while Super mostly feels contempt for it. It’s the closet approximation I’ve ever seen of my own view of superhero films and fans of same. I now have another fantasy to resort to apart from my dream of strafing the ComicCon faithful in San Diego in an F-14 Tomcat.
It’s about a glum short-order cook (Wilson) who decides to become a vigilante superhero called The Crimson Bolt after his unstable former-addict wife (Liv Tyler) succumbs to the temptations of a of a local drug dealer (Kevin Bacon). Wilson soon after partners with a hyper, semi-delusional comic-store clerk (Page) who dress up in yellow and green outfit and calls herself Boltie.
Super star Rainn Wilson, director-writer James Gunn during post-screening q & a at Austin’s Paramount theatre.
It never occurs to Wilson and Page that the kind of justice and punishment they mete out to lawbreakers and selfish ne’er do wells is just as bad and dangerous and socially threatening as anything that riled them up in the first place. When Wilson gets into fights he clubs his adversaries with a wrench, crunching skulls and splattering blood and sending them to intensive-care wards, and Page’s delight and ecstasy when she delivers similar-type woundings is both hilarious and appalling. She’s really quite the loony firecracker in this film — it’s a wicked, super-spirited, no-holds-barred performance.
JoBlo’s Chris Bumbray wrote last September that Wilson and Page’s third-act assault on Bacon’s headquarters “is almost like the superhero equivalent of Taxi Driver” which was precisely my thinking as I watched it last night. In part because I never believed in Taxi Driver‘s post-shoot-out aftermath of Travis Bickle being called a hero in N.Y. Daily News accounts and receiving a thank-you-for-saving-our-daughter letter from Jodie Foster‘s parents and Cybil Shepherd looking at him admiringly and longingly as he drives her home, etc.
The divorcement from reality was total and absolute in Martin Scorsese‘s epilogue, just as the comprehensions of Wilson’s character in Super are saturated with visions of delusion. Okay, at the very end there’s a glimmer of self-recognition and acceptance of the way things really are, but mostly Wilson is DeNiro’s Bickle and vice versa. An excellent thing, that.
Super costar Elllen Page.
I couldn’t land a SXXPress pass for tonight’s 10 pm screening of Greg Mottola‘s Paul (Universal, 3.18), and I haven’t tried to contact the film’s p.r. reps so the hell with it. I don’t want to see this thing anyway. Not with those dumb-ass gags that I’ve seen (i.e., guys fainting backwards together, Paul referring to Reese’s Pieces) in the trailer. So I’m going instead to the 9:30 pm screening of Spencer Susser‘s Hesher, which has been recut since its initial viewing at Sundance ’10. There’s also an after-party. Eff Paul.
Next is a 1:45 pm screening of Rodman Flender‘s Conan O’Brien: Can’t Stop, followed by a 6:15 pm screening of Nicholas Lopez‘s Fuck My Life. This film and Hesher are both showing at the original Alamo Drafthouse Lamar, which means I’ll be crossing the river and going slightly south for the first time since arriving in Austin.
The South by Southwest program notes for It’s About You, a documentary about John Mellencamp touring in ’09 and recording No Better Than This, explain that the film “is told through the eyes of the father/son filmmaking team of Kurt and Ian Markus, neither of whom had ever made a film before.” They also say that “the entire 90-minute film is shot on super8, to stunning effect.”
I saw It’s About You a couple of hours ago, and it needs to be said that the super8 effect is not “stunning” — the correct terms are “underwhelming,” “exasperating” and “aesthetically futile.” The idea in using this format, I’m guessing, is that Markus figured that super8’s raw realism correlates to the gritty, balls-out, unpretentious honesty of Mellencamp’s music. But the photography is so golfball grainy and murky and lacking in intrigue — everything captured by Markus and his son looks like shit, and the only thing that comes through is Markus’s belief that super8 is delivering some kind of primal truth that digital couldn’t hope to capture or simulate.
At one point Markus remarks that a special blimp encasement had to be built to suppress super8 camera noise during his shooting of Mellencamp recording his album. He also mentions that the camera, per super8 norm, had to be reloaded every few minutes. And you can’t help but ask yourself, “So these guys were so convinced that the coolness of super8 imagery would be worth it in the end that they put up with all this hassle? Why didn’t someone step in and say, ‘Guys, no one will care…in fact, some people will wonder why you bothered with super8 at all because it looks like crap and brings next-to-nothing to the table’?”
Secondly, Markus and his son’s filmmaking inexperience shows. Markus is a respected still photographer, but his instincts (and those of his son) are dull and listless, and their shooting technique (which includes an occasional inability to focus the lens, or a lack of interest in same) is strictly amateur hour.
Thirdly, Markus conveys very little in his narration except for the fact that John is his friend and that America and iife in general sure have changed since he was young, but basically that his friend is such a fascinating subject that all he and his son have to do is point and shoot. That’s a rather naive view.
Markus is also annoyingly stingy with facts. There’s a scene in which Mellencamp and his now ex-wife Elaine Irwin Mellencamp don white robes and receive holy baptism in a small pool inside a church. Markus isn’t making a film about celebrity, but it feels dishonest that he doesn’t identify Irwin or (I realize this is a stretch) perhaps mention the fact that Mellencamp announced on 12.30.10 that he and Irwin had separated, and that since then Mellencamp has copped to a relationship with Meg Ryan.
After 15 minutes or so I began to be convinced that the South by Southwest team accepted this film solely because of Mellencamp’s name and the fake-cool pedigree of super 8mm. They couldn’t have watched this thing and gone, “Aaahh, yes!…something fresh and real and heartland-y!” They had to know it was cornbeef hash out of a can, and decided to try and sell it as SXSW-approved farm fresh. I know that sounds cynical but what other explanation could there be?
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