Before yesterday I would have simply described Haiti as one of the worst hell-holes to live in with some of the worst people in the world running the government. I don’t know what to say now except that life on this planet can be disproportionately cruel. I’ve always been thankful I wasn’t born there, but I’m extra double glad of this today.
If there’s a Haitian relief fund of any kind I’ll probably drop some money in. And you know that the same Haitian thieves who’ve been stealing all along will take a chunk of that relief fund and send it to their bank accounts in Bern.
My third or fourth reaction is that the worst may not be over. The authorities have said they don’t have facilities to handle the wounded, much less deal with the 100,000-plus bodies. The latter poses a terrible potential for an outbreak of disease and more death if it’s not taken care of quickly. I’m thinking of Humphrey Bogart‘s second reaction to the death of Robert Morley in The African Queen. After expressing regrets to Katherine Hepburn, he says, “Sorry to mention this, ma’am, but with the climate and all the sooner we get him into the ground, the better.”
In today’s N.Y. Times, director Douglas McGrath ( Infamous, Emma) makes a case for Doris Day, now 87, receiving a special career-honoring Oscar. McGrath writes persuasively and with feeling about Day’s special qualities. She committed to her light-comedy roles, held her own with the likes of James Stewart, Kirk Douglas and James Cagney, etc. But there’s one negative he can’t wave away.
I’m speaking of Day’s ghastly performance in Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Man Who Knew Too Much. I love aspects of this 1956 thriller (the murder in the Marrakech marketplace, the assassination attempt in Albert Hall) but Day’s grating emotionalism makes it a very hard film to watch. She cries, shrieks, trembles, weeps. And when she isn’t losing it, she’s acting pretentiously coy and smug in that patented manner of a 1950s Stepford housewife. Or she’s singing “Que Sera Sera” over and over again.
I’ll give her credit for almost everything else that McGrath brings up, but she’s so awful in Hitchcock’s film that this single performance almost tips over the entire apple cart of her career. (The shrieking and moaning kicks in around the two-thirds mark in the clip above.) The same thing goes for Linda Hamilton‘s shrill acting in Terminator II: Judgment Day (1991). I tried watching it the other day for fun, but I couldn’t stand her spitting rage.
Aaah, whatever. If the Academy wants to give Day a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, fine. There’s no reason to strenuously argue against it. I can bury my issue. She was great in Lover Come Back, Young Man With A Horn and Love Me or Leave Me. I remember something true and tolerable about her performance in Young At Heart, in which she played the love interest of a dark-hearted Frank Sinatra.
And yet it’s hard to think of another living veteran of ’50s and ’60s cinema who is more of an icon for uptight middle-class values and zero sexuality. I know I suddenly liked Day a lot more when I heard that rumor about her having had a hot affair with Sly Stone — but that turned out to be bogus. Day did apparently have a fling with L.A. Dodgers base-stealer Maury Wills.
Doris Day in The Glass-Bottomed Boat
Day’s Wikipedia bio says that “both columnist Liz Smith and film critic Rex Reed have mounted vigorous campaigns to gather support for an honorary Academy Award for Day to herald her spectacular film career and her status as the top female box-office star of all time.”
It also says “while Day turned down a tribute offer from the American Film Institute, she received and accepted the Golden Globe’s Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in 1989. In 2004, Day was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom but declined to attend the ceremony because of a fear of flying. Day did not accept an invitation to be a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors for undisclosed reasons. Day was honored in absentia with a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement in Music in February 2008.”
Alleged conman Simon Monjack, who’s come to be widely despised in the wake of the recent death of his late wife, Brittany Murphy, has spoken to the Daily Mail‘s Paul Bracchi in a 12.26 article, which has been echoed/reflected in a 12.26 Daily News piece by Soraya Roberts.
Simon Monjack
Both articles use George Hickenlooper‘s HE-posted opinion about Monjack (which appeared on 12.20) as a prosecutorial centerpiece.
People everywhere have been guessing/presuming that Murphy’s death was somehow Monjack’s fault. The thinking as I understand it is that no good can come of a marriage to an overweight scumbag with thinning hair and beard stubble, and that somehow Monjack’s allegedly skanky ways (nefarious wheeler-dealing, stealing from Peter to pay Paul, etc.) poisoned Murphy’s body or soul, and that in some curious roundabout way this contributed to her having a heart attack in the shower and dying soon after.
“My problem is that I do not look like Ashton Kutcher,” Monjack told Bracchi.
And he’s right. If you look like an undisciplined fatass people are going to presume the worst if — a big “if” — you hook up with a slender young actress. People are going to say, “Look at that bloated fat-ass…what’s his story? Why in God’s name would a famous actress hook up with a guy like that? Look at him! What is he, some compulsive cheez-whiz eater looking to advance his prospects by marrying her?”
Hollywood types also “don’t like the fact that [Brittany] married someone who was not famous,” Monjack added. “Here, stars like stars to marry other stars.”
There are reasons to consider that Monjack is some kind of scumbag apart from the fact that he looks like one. The lesson is that if Monjack did look like Kutcher, he’d be a lot better off reputation-wise. People see sloth and they assume the worst.
Warwick Thornton‘s Samson and Delilah, an Aboriginal love-on-the-run drama as well as Australia’s official submission for ’09’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, won five Australian Film Institute awards last night, including Best Film. Thornton also won for Best Direction, Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography, and costars Marissa Gibson and Rowan McNamara were co-recipients of the AFI’s Young Actor award. On top of which Samson and Delilah has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating.
Marissa Gibson, Rowan McNamara in Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah
So why wasn’t I doing cartwheels in the Grand Palais after seeing about 45 minutes worth in Cannes last May? Because Samson and Delilah doesn’t exactly rev its engines with rousing action and story tension during the first act, and because…I forget but I probably had another film to catch or an interview to do or a story to file. There’s always something nipping at your heels during that festival. Maybe I was simply letting the impatient, foot-tapping aspect of my Cannes personality run the show. My judgment isn’t infallible, and fatigue sometimes has a disproportionate influence.
It was obvious from the get-go that Thornton was (a) a serious and talented filmmaker and (b) investing in character and mood before putting his story in forward gear — i.e., before the lovers decide to steal a car and hightail it. Last night’s win, in any event, has persuaded me to watch Samson and Delilah again, jetlag-free. A screener, I’m told, is on its way.
You can respond to Fantastic Mr. Fox as an auteurist thing — a dazzling and charming representation of the mind and spirit and stylistic exactitude of director Wes Anderson — and as a movie you pay to see with an $8 tub of popcorn in your lap. I responded to it both ways — in effect with two heads. Which left me feeling great and not-so-great.
I loved and worshipped the auteurist aspect — the luscious autumnal colors, the every-other-frame movement that Anderson and his team used to create Fox’s particular stop-motion look, the “moving” fox hair that resulted from this, the deadpan Anderson humor, Mr. Fox’s courdoroy wardrobe, the tasteful pop-tune soundtrack (Brian Wilson‘s “Heroes and Villains,” “The Ballad of Davy Crockett”) and all the other typical Andersonian goodies. But I was unmoved and even disappointed by the campfire movie aspect.
The fact that 95% or 96% of the paying public will be responding to the latter and not caring all that much about the former (despite the fact that the elites — guys like Kent Jones, Village Voice critic Scott Foundas, New York‘s David Edelstein and New Yorker critic/columnist Richard Brody, among several others — are tickled with delight) may result in a commercial problem for 20th Century Fox, the distributor.
Edelstein calls it “a dandy’s movie,” and that it is. Which, as noted, is what gives my inner movie dweeb such pleasure. I intend to buy, watch and occasionally re-watch the Fantastic Mr. Fox Bluray when it comes out next year. But most American moviegoers are not dandies. They’re slugs and lugs, and I know, trust me, what’s going to happen when they watch it on screens this weekend.
It’ll be the same reaction I was sensing from the swells last month during the London Film Festival premiere in Leicester Square. During the early stages they’re going to go “yeah, yeah, this is glorious, really good, immaculate craft, wonderful colors and details” and so on, but somewhere around the 45- or 60-minute mark they’re going to begin saying to themselves, “Wait a minute, what is this? Nothing’s happening. It’s staying on the same level.”
The bottom-line thematic truth about Fantastic Mr. Fox is that it’s about as deep as a Road Runner cartoon. It’s all about how it looks and sounds and how they made it, and nothing about what it actually is. It’s pure Wes, pure whimsy, pure style, pure technique, pure stone-skimming-across-the pond. I get it and I love it, but my inner meathead was saying “yeah, and so what?”
Based on the Roald Dahl children’s book, Fantastic Mr. Fox is about the troubles and turmoils that befall a sophisticated adult fox (George Clooney‘s Mr. Fox) and his family (Meryl Streep, Jason Schartzman) when he decides that a life as a gentleman newspaper columnist isn’t enough — he must revert to raiding coops and eating chickens.
Mr. Fox and and his opossum friend Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky) decide to raid the farms and warehouses of three ruthless agribusiness types — Boggis, Bunce and Bean (Michael Gambon). The story is basically about Fox and friends enjoying the upper hand against these three, and then Boggis, Bunce and Bean striking back with machine guns and John Deere super-diggers and whatnot, and then the Fox clan figuring some way around their latest maneuver, etc.
Except it’s not “real.” The immutable laws of probability and outcome don’t apply. No foxes get killed despite ridiculous automatic-weapons odds against them. (It’s a little bit like Sylvester Stallone never being winged in Rambo II.) Life can sometimes be brutal in actuality and sometimes very tough decisions have to be made, and sometimes people stumble and fall and die and go to jail, but in Fantastic Mr. Fox life is an ironic bullshit thing…a hip romp…a lightweight goof.
Mr. Fox is chicken-raiding behind the back of Mrs. Fox (Streep) as he’s promised her he won’t attack and slaughter any more, despite the fact that he and Mrs. Fox are shown doing a chicken-raid in the opening scene. Presumably Mr. Fox collects a handsome salary as a newspaper columnist (enough to afford a nice home inside a big tree) and when it comes to vittles he and Mrs. Fox presumably go to a fox supermarket to buy frozen chicken paties. The main point is that hunting is out.
Except none of this is explained or explored, and it struck me as more than a little bit wacko. The common lore of foxes is that of chicken-coop raiders — it’s what they do. (They actually hunt and eat rodents, snakes, you name it. They eat about 2 pounds of food each day.) So what kind of screwy-headed fox wife tells her fox husband that he has to give up chickens, like he’s some kind of alcohol or gambling or oxycontin addict? I don’t get it. In fact, I reject it. It’s just not a very persuasive or compelling story.
I mean, what’s the metaphor here? That it’s cool to be a thief, or that thieves have to be true to their natures? That it’s good to have family and friends to help you steal chickens and apple cider? I didn’t hate the story but what is it? Nothing, really.
In short the Fantastic Mr. Fox style is great to savor in dozens of aesthetic ways, as noted, but in rudimentary terms it’s just a mild-mannered outdoor Anderson picnic. It’s Clooney having fun portraying a canny, urbane, ethically-challenged fox and Schwartzman doing his usual young-neurotic guy, nobody-values-me shtick. And Murray being glib and cool. And Owen Wilson coming in for a brief cameo, and Anderson voicing a weasel, and Willem Dafoe playing a rat.
Compare the whimsy in Fantastic Mr. Fox to the rich thematic delivery in WALL*E or Up or The Incredibles, and you’re talking about a very minor thing. I’m sorry but the Anderson decline continues. I want that old Bottle Rocket/Rushmore current back. And if I can’t have that I want more than just dandified style. I want Wes to remake Jean Luc Godard’s Weekend, or make some kind of 21st Century film noir or….I don’t know but some kind of bold-swan-dive-into-fresh-territory type of film.
Honestly — if Fantastic Mr. Fox wasn’t directed by Anderson and didn’t feature the voices of Clooney, Streep, Schwratzman and Bill Murray (playing a badger), would anyone be paying attention to a film like this at all? I wonder.
And yet I love the way it’s all been done. It’s a huge kick on that level. Really. So if you can watch it from that inner sanctum and stay there and keep yourself from slipping into a sweaty and bothered state after the 45-minute mark (like me), you’ll have a very cool time with it. And you can meet Kent Jones and David Edelstein and Scott Foundas and Richard Brody for drinks afterwards. Cool all around. Movie happiness is where you find it.
Hollywood and Fine‘s Marshall Fine is callingJonathan Parker‘s (Untitled) “a laugh-out-loud satire with a dry-martini wit [that] manages the neat trick of poking wicked fun at the worlds of experimental music and art — from all angles — even as it gives a humorously sympathetic look at the plight of the serious artist working far outside the commercial mainstream.
Adam Goldberg in (Untitled).
“His name is Adrian Jacobs (Adam Goldberg) and he’s an experimental composer in New York, whose brother, Josh (Eion Bailey), is a successful painter. But both men have artistic frustrations.
“Adrian works in the realm of atonal music, using sounds like shrieks, squeaks, tearing paper and a chain being dropped into a metal bucket in his compositions. His concerts are ill-attended — with even fewer people sitting through the whole thing. His music earns laughter as often as it wins applause.
“Josh, meanwhile, earns big paychecks painting large, innocuously amorphous swatches of color that are sold by art dealer Madeleine Gray (Marley Shelton) to hotel chains and hospitals as decoration. Josh begs her for a show at her trendy gallery, saying his goal is to be a great artist.
“‘That’s not a goal — it’s a gift,’ she tells him, coating harsh words with sweet tones. And it’s a gift he doesn’t possess.
“Adrian falls for Madeleine but finds himself appalled at what passes for art in her Chelsea gallery. She sells Josh’s paintings out of the back room for wads of cash to keep her gallery afloat — but devotes her display space to outre efforts by of-the-moment emerging artists whose work is as much about the theory as the execution. Madeleine doesn’t blink when someone refers to Josh’s work as merchandise — but explodes at Adrian when he refers to her gallery as ‘your store.’
“It’s that dichotomy between creativity and commerce, between art and product, that Parker nails again and again in smart witty ways. Yet even the people he pokes fun at are treated affectionately — like the clueless collector (Zak Orth), who is unfamiliar with Matisse (‘I’m only interested in art of my time’) and is using art to diversify his investment portfolio: ‘Art doesn’t look as good when its value goes down,’ he notes at one point.
“No one is spared the needle of the script Parker cowrote with Catherine di Napoli. Adrian is a sympathetic figure, a seeker struggling to take his own work seriously in a world that treats him as a joke.
“At one point, he sees his future when he attends a concert by his idol, an elderly experimental composer — and listens to self-appointed critics ask this legend the same kind of stupid questions they routinely ask Adrian. Yet even Adrian is given to pompous pronouncements like, ‘Harmony is a commercial plot to sell pianos.’
“The script finds all the humor it can in art-world pretension — but also recognizes where the comedy lies in the raging insecurity, frustration and self-doubt of these characters.
“Goldberg is particularly good at making Adrian funny — not because he’s a fool but because he’s not. Shelton brings a calculating sexiness to the role of Madeleine, while Orth, as the collector, and Vinnie Jones, as a preeningly overconfident artist (whose work incorporates hilarious pieces of taxidermy) steal all the scenes they’re in.
“Intelligent and provocative, (Untitled) is consistently surprising and funny without pandering for laughs.”
Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man was named the best narrative film of the Toronto Film Festival in a just-posted Indiewire poll of attending critics and bloggers. And Erik Gandini‘s Videocracy was named best documentary.
Narrative runners-up were (in this order) Chuan Lu‘s City of Life and Death, Jason Reitman‘s Up In The Air, Jacques Audiard‘s A Prophet, Giorgos Lanthimos‘ Dogtooth (respectful disagreement!), Lee Daniels‘ Precious, Luca Guadagnino‘s I Am Love, Bruno Dumont’s Hadewijch, Tom Ford‘s A Single Man and Samuel Maoz‘s Lebanon.
The doc runners-up were Chris Smith‘s Collapse, Don Argott‘s The Art of the Steal, Leanne Pooley‘s The Topp Twins, and Micheal Tucker and Petra Eppperlein‘s How To Hold A Flag.
“The tragedy of Tarantino is that he could have been so much more than the Schlock and Awe merchant that he has devolved into,” writesLondon Independent columnist Johann Hari. “If he had stopped mistaking his DVD collection for a life, he — to borrow a phrase from a real film, etched with real pain — could’ve been a contender.
“When I remember the raw force of Reservoir Dogs, I still hope that he will. It’s not too late. He could do it. How about it, Quentin? Step out into the big world beyond celluloid, and use your incredible talent to tell stories about it. As Mr. Blonde says, ‘Are you going to bark all day, little doggie — or are you going to bite?'”
I was writing post-Jackie Brown comedown pieces like back in ’98 and ’99. It’s hard to think of ’99 as ten years ago but it was. In any event, as I mentioned yesterday, I don’t have a crying need to keep the Tarantino/Inglourious Basterds hate going but Hari’s piece is well written and I like the ending and…what am I making excuses for? Because of the scolding stridency of the pro-Basterds brigade. Well, they’d better grim up and deal with reality. In a way the folks who shouted “FAIL” after Inglourious Basterds premiered at Cannes are like the French resistance. They’ve gone underground since it opened big last weekend, but they’re still holding meetings and planning stealth attacks.
In Contention‘s Kris Tapley‘s hasn’t read the script for Chris Nolan‘s Inception, but a source has so KT has decided to pass along a second-hand synopsis of the plot. He says he can’t be 100% sure of the particulars because WB publicity won’t comment “but it all seems fairly legitimate to me.”
The Big McGuffin, he says, is that some kind of ability/technology used by a team of shady espionage operatives led by Leonardo DiCaprio‘s “Cobb” to nefariously dive into people’s dreams and extract information.
Leo’s team members (this will eventually become a kind of Mission Impossible-like TV series with operatives hired each week to solve a problem by mind-scanning this and that “mark”) include Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s Arthur, Tom Hardy‘s Eames and Ellen Page‘s Ariadne, a college student studying in Paris.
Jacob’s team, says Tapley, “creates” the dreams and Ariadne is an “architect” or “engineer” of sorts. I’m already lost. If Team Leo is diving into people’s dreams and extracting info, how and why would they want to create dreams? Wait…perhaps they don’t just steal information from people’s minds but implant information of their own? Information that is (a) designed to manipulate and (b) may or may not be false?
Jacob’s team enters this and that dream via some kind of injection, and the technology can easily be transported in a suitcase, Tapley says. “In one scene (featured briefly in the trailer?), the team actually enters a person’s dream while on an airplane,” he writes.
Cillian Murphy stars as Fischer, “a business-type who is soon to become the head of a company. Jacob’s team is attempting to insert an idea into Fischer’s mind to compel him to separate the company into two smaller companies.
Ken Watanabe plays Saito, a character who’s blackmailing Jacob. Aside from Watanabe there is no classic villain in the story, but Cobb’s wife (Marion Cotillard) causes some trouble.
“Cobb and wife at some point find themselves stuck in many levels of a dream and she tries to convince him to stay in that world, that it is much better than real life. However, Cobb wants to return to his children and the real world.
“This plot point is a bit unclear, but I’m told that Lisa commits suicide in the dream in order to return to the real world. When Cobb himself returns, he is charged with his wife’s murder and has to flee with his children.
“The film will not be typical sci-fi fare at all,” Tapley conveys. “It’s set in the present-day real world” but with “virtually all of the ‘action’ scenes taking place in the dream environment. This should go a long way toward explaining the ‘Your mind is the scene of the crime’ tagline that accompanied the trailer. Ultimately it seems like a grounded, more tangible blend of Minority Report and The Matrix.”
“If you are splashing around with a bunch of guys who are 93 percent white, an average of 45.62 years old and look as if they’ve done this before, you must be swimming in the studio directors’ pool,” wroteMichael Cieply in yesterday’s (8.23) N.Y. Times.
“Such is the profile of studio filmmakers, based on a survey of those who directed the 85 or so live action movies that have been released, or will be, in 2009 by the six biggest film companies — Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios and Warner Brothers.
Cieply’s tally “does not count animated films, which are born by a different, more collaborative process, or the independent-style movies released by specialty divisions like Fox Searchlight Pictures or Focus Features.
“Rather, it is a scan of what is on the big studio schedules: comedies like The Hangover from Todd Phillips and I Love You, Man from John Hamburg; action films like Fast & Furious from Justin Lin and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen from Michael Bay; and the increasingly rare drama, like Shutter Island, which was on tap for October from Martin Scorsese (but has just been moved into 2010).
“What the count shows is that Hollywood directors are pretty much what they have always been: a small brotherhood of highly skilled craftsmen — more than 90 percent this year are men — who could hit or miss with any given film, but who tend to have solid experience. This year’s directors appear to have made 6.1 movies, on average — and probably have more in common with one another than with the increasingly diverse population around them.
“There’s no single process or pattern for deciding who will direct any given picture. The choices are born of an often awkward consensus among executives and producers, with plenty of lobbying from agents and occasional input from the movie’s stars. A filmmaker might write an attractive script and then insist on directing it as a condition of sale, or could simply be hired based on a great track record.
“Though Hollywood’s power structure remains heavily white, it has opened the ranks to far more women in recent years. But that shift does not yet appear to have changed the makeup of the studio directing pool.”
It’s worth suffering through this Dobie Gillis clip for the appearance of Warren Beatty, who’s onscreen from 3:15 to 4:23. The 22 year-old actor played the snooty jock Milton Armitage, Gillis’s romantic nemesis, for six episodes during the ’59-’60 season. The interesting thing is that Beatty, obviously in agony, didn’t use his own scruffy offbeat charm in order to steal the scene. He’s playing a rich and arrogant smoothie in a very immersive and low-key fashion. The affected blue-blood accent is the only concession to comedic sitcom acting.
I refuse to illegally download films for any reason. It just seems sacrilegious. On top of which I can’t abide watching films on my desktop or laptop. Not visually satisfying, and certainly not after banging away at the column all damn day. I guess I”ve become spoiled by watching films on a 42″ plasma so it’s that way or the highway. (Unless you’re talking a 52″ LCD, which I now wish I’d sprung for.)
When the option to download Bluray-or-better quality movies from an Apple TV-like box becomes widespread and affordable, maybe. As long as extras options (commentary, making-of docs) are also offered.
But honestly? If I could easily download my favorite missing films now (Betrayal , The Outfit, Play It As It Lays, etc.) from a pirate site, I might conceivably change my tune. That is, as far as these particular titles are concerned. Because they’re not obtainable any other way. Not from Warner Archives or any other site along these lines. Unless I’m missing something.
And we all know where that could lead. For “once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing,” wrote Thomas de Quincey, “and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.” I could go there, in short, despite my general opposition. The thin end of the wedge.
Which is why I feel at least a measure of sympathy for Farhad Manjoo‘s 4.17 Slate piece on illegal downloading, called “My Mythical Online Rental Service for Movies — Why Hollywood is so slow to catch up on offering all of its movies and shows online.”
“I would gladly pay a hefty monthly fee for [a Pirate Bay-like] service,” he wrote, “if someone would take my money. In reality, I pay nothing because no company sells such a plan. Instead I’ve been getting my programming from the friendly BitTorrent peer-to-peer network. Pirates aren’t popular these days, but let’s give them this — they know how to put together a killer on-demand entertainment system.
“I sometimes feel bad about my plundering ways. Like many scofflaws, though, I blame the system. I wouldn’t have to steal if Hollywood would only give me a decent online movie-streaming service.
“In my dreams, here’s what it would look like: a site that offers a huge selection — 50,000 or more titles to choose from, with lots of Hollywood new releases, indies, and a smorgasbord of old films and TV shows. (By comparison, Netflix says it offers more than 100,000 titles.)
“And don’t gum it up with restrictions, like a requirement that I watch a certain movie within a specified time after choosing it. The only reasonable limit might be to force me to stream the movies so that I won’t be able to save the flicks to my computer. Beyond that, charge me a monthly fee and let me watch whatever I want, whenever I want, as often as I want.”