I saw Richard Fleischer‘s Mandingo with a couple of friends at one of the New York repertory cinemas (probably the Carnegie Hall or the Bleecker) in the late ’70s. Unavailable on DVD in this country, it’s a piece of rank steamy pulp about a slave (Ken Norton), slave-owners (James Mason, Perry King) and inter-racial shtupping (Susan George being a significant participant).

Mandingo had originally opened in ’75, but by the time I saw it the cool-cat revisionist attitude had settled in. It wasn’t a hoot as much as a howl — one of the most appalling sexual soap-operas ever made, but also a knowing wallow. It was a cinefile’s version of mud wrestling or Tijuana donkey sex made extra-laughable by cheap social criticism. The stamp of “produced by Dino de Laurentiis” made it all the more delicious.
I don’t remember laughing or even smirking. (Although one of my friends did.) I don’t remember it being a turn-on, even. I’ve repressed most of the experience (the mind flushes this stuff out as a kind of survival mechanism), but I do remember the repulsion. I’ve seen my share of exploitation films, but my lingering impression was of a film that truly stunk from the head and the groin.
I was young at the time, however, and I didn’t have the perspective to appreciate Mandingo‘s undercurrents. To hear it from N.Y. Times resident film-dweeb Dave Kehr, Mandingo, to be screened this coming Saturday as part of a mini-Fleischer retrospective at the annual Film Comment Selects series at Lincoln Center, is Fleischer’s “last great crime film” as well as “a thinly veiled Holocaust [parable].”
Kehr’s auteurist-revisionist view is a classic case of “believing is seeing.” Ignore the experience of the film and whatever primal reactions you may have had to it. Consider instead the director’s thematic tradition, and focus on the high-minded intent that hangs suspended above the swamp.

“When Mandingo was released, many critics erupted with rage over its aggressively tasteless portrayal of the slave-owning South,” Kehr begins, “which seems in retrospect both a desired and appropriate response. More than a portrait of social decadence, Mandingo is Fleischer’s last great crime film, in which the role of the faceless killer is played by an entire social system.
“For the French critic Jacques Lourcelles, one of Fleischer’s most articulate admirers, the recurring theme of his work is society slipping into decadence. Fleischer’s most provocative film on this theme is the still potent Mandingo from 1975 (Feb. 23, Walter Reade Theater), an anti-Gone with the Wind that treats the pre-Civil War South as a swamp of degradation for white masters and black slaves alike.
“Rattling around a tumble-down Tara of peeling plaster and near-empty rooms, James Mason (Captain Nemo in Fleischer’s children’s classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) presides over a human breeding farm. He is as occupied with finding a suitable stud for his prize female slave as with finding a bride who will give his lame son (Perry King) the male heir he requires.
“The treatment of humans as so much chattel, to be bought, sold and cruelly abused regardless of their social position, makes Mandingo a thinly veiled Holocaust film that spares none of its protagonists. More than a portrait of social decadence, Mandingo is Fleischer’s last great crime film, in which the role of the faceless killer is played by an entire social system.”
DVD Availabilty Update: Pete Hammond reports he bought a DVD of Mandingo and Drum at Ameoba two years ago. The DVD distributor is Blaxfilm, he says.
Hammond says that copies are available on E-Bay.

In a piece about Chloe Sevigny‘s personally designed clothing line on view at Manhattan’s Opening Ceremony, the Guardian‘s Ryan Gilbey writes that while “the 33-year-old Sevigny is tall and slender in tight, dark jeans, black boots and baggy leather jacket, she walks with a slight galumphing awkwardness, planting her feet purposefully as she goes.

“Her face is long and elegantly pointed, offset by a formidable jaw on which you could crack open a bottle of beer. Her droopy-lidded eyes can lend her a docile vagueness, which came in handy during an early run of movies set in the white-trash hinterland (Gummo, Boys Don’t Cry, Julien Donkey-Boy), in which she played characters for whom a move to the arse end of nowhere would have represented unimaginable social promotion.”

“Will there be a good movie this year?,” Time‘s Richard Corliss asked yesterday. “Do we have to wait till November for Hollywood to unveil the niche prestige items that it saves for Oscar consideration? Is every movie till then doomed to be aimed at the all-important 8-year-old-girl-to-14-year- old-boy demographic?
The Best Films of 2008…hands down, take ’em home, in this order: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, In Bruges, The Band’s Visit, Cassandra’s Dream (second-tier Woody Allen, but not at all bad with a superb Colin Farrell weak-loser performance) and — I know this sounds like a stretch — Sylvester Stallone‘s Rambo, which is one of the most stupidly exhilarating wastes of time I’ve ever paid good money to sit through.

In a 2.17 N.Y. Times piece about some especially memorable Oscar moments, Anita Gates‘ list of big surprises somehow omits Roman Polanski‘s winning the Best Director Oscar for The Pianist in ’03. That was stunning. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
Gates recalls (1) Pollock‘s Marcia Gay Harden winning over the favored Kate Hudson for her performance in Almost Famous, (2) L.A. Confidential‘s Kim Basinger beating Titanic‘s Gloria Stuart for Best Supporting Actress, (3) Linda Hunt‘s winning the same prize for her acting in The Year of Living Dangerously, (4) The Goodbye Girl‘s Richard Dreyfuss taking the Best Actor Oscar from Equus nominee Richard Burton, (5) West Side Story‘s Rita Moreno “beating out grandes dames Lotte Lenya, Fay Bainter, Una Merkel and Judy Garland” in ’62, and (6) Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Greatest Show on Earth taking the Best Picture honor from High Noon and The Quiet Man.

The four-day total for Jumper is projected to be roughly $28,557,000. Step Up will make about $22,846,000, The Spiderwick Chronicles will earn $20,400,000, and Fool’s Gold will take down $16,410,000, give or take.

The old melting, tried and true, whatever works.

I’m a fool for photos of Times Square marquees from the ’20s onward. Color, black-and-white…anything that looks sharp and clean and well-framed. I’ve heard about a coffee-table book devoted to such photos, but if anyone knows of any websites with a good assortment or even a site with a single decent shot of any of big marquees announcing any classic film (the Astor showing On The Waterfront, King Kong at the Radio City Music Hall or the Roxy…anything like that), please inform. All I’ve been able to find so far are inky dupes like the one below.

Here’s one passed along by Edward:

Jose Padilha‘s Elite Squad, described in a Beyond Hollywood review last fall as “a kind of the anti-City of God following the Rio de Jainero police rather than the criminals,” has won the Golden Bear at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival. The Weinstein Co. will distribute in the U.S., although they haven’t set a release date.

Errol Morris‘s Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure won the Silver Bear. Paul Thomas Anderson won the Silver Bear for best director for There Will Be Blood, Jonny Greenwood‘s Blood score was honored for artist contribution, and Wang Ziaoshuai won for his screenplay for In Love We Trust.
Elite Squad is about a government-created special paramilitary force known as BOPE (Battalion for Special Police Operations) charged with dealing with the drug gangs,” the BH review says. ” With their symbol being a skull flanked by crossed swords and a pistol, it√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s no secret what these guys are about.
“Fast paced and engaging, the film employs a similar episodic narrative structure (complete with chapter breaks) and deadpan narration that keeps the energy high and the story moving forward. And like √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚ÄúCity of God,√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù it doesn√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t shy away from showing the grim realities of the conflict between the police and drug gangs.
“It offers a scathing portrayal of the corruption that is engrained in The System which prevents the wheels of justice from turning. Each division commander has his own scam going, be it collecting protection money from the local strip clubs or selling confiscated guns back to the drug gangs. There√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s even a hilarious sequence where each division keeps moving the dead bodies from a gang shoot-out to another division√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s jurisdiction so their field reports look better.”

Missed this two-day-old Variety story about John Landis directing a movie about EC Comics Mad magazine publisher William Gaines called Ghoulishly Yours. Mad was great in the ’50s and early ’60s but you can’t go home again. No one will care outside of the boomers and baby- busters who read the legendary rag when they were young. Sorry, but a bad idea for a theatrical feature. An HBO film at best.

With the Vanity Fair and Elton John Oscar after-parties cancelled (along with the late-night Oscar party hosted by Rick Yorn, Brent Bolthouse, Patrick Whitesell and Mike De Luca), the Governors Ball has become “the undisputed, hot-ticket, must-go-to after-party,” says Variety‘s Bill Higgins.
Also eighty-sixed are Ed Limato‘s annual Friday before the awards party, Dani Janssen‘s Academy Awards party for the over-70 crowd, the Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg Oscar-eve luncheon for Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.
All that leaves, according to Higgins, is the annual Night Before party on Saturday, 2.22, the Night Before the Night Before on Friday, and Saturday’s Film Independent Spirit Awards on the beach (which always includes the hugely crowded Shutters party that follows). There’s another thing that Higgins doesn’t mention — an Oscar-nominee party being thrown by Miramax, happening in a cool, high-up place.

This 2.16 N.Y. Times story by Don Van Natta Jr. and Jo Becker goes into pretzel-like contortions in order to not say what’s really going on, but it comes into focus if you settle into the quotes and the careful parsings and hints and whatnot. Bottom line: unless she pulls off a total nuclear blowout in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton is toast.
Van Natta and Becker’s report about a decision by Al Gore and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others to “remain neutral for now in the presidential race in part to keep open the option to broker a peaceful resolution to what they fear could be a bitterly divided convention” is, don’t kid yourself, a slapdown to the Clinton team’s proclaimed intention to purse a backroom winning strategy via superdelegates.
It is particularly a rebuke to that statement by Clinton’s communications director Howard Wolfson that the Clinton campaign will “not concede the race to Barack Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and if necessary [to rely] on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top,” as reported two days ago.
This story doesn’t read like much at first, but read it over a second time and let it settle in. Trust me, it’s the next thing to a death-gong.
Hillary could blow Barack out of the water in Texas, Ohio and Pennsvlvania. She could but she almost certainly won’t. Barack will probably match her in Texas delegates, and he could even get more votes. The notion of the space aliens in Ohio and Pennsylvania voting in a radically different way than the way the voters in Virginia and Maryland have just doesn’t figure. It would be just too weird.
And by the way, John Edwards is still acting like a squishy, calculating old-school candy-ass. The man is pathetic.

Agreed — this Verizon FiOS commercial is the cleverest, most likable piece of filmmaking from the hand of Michal Bay since The Rock. Because it has a theme. Because it’s half-sell and half-personal confession. By embracing his rep as the shallowest big-name director around, Bay has almost transcended it. He’ll make his first truly rich and mature (and possibly even moving) film ten years from now. Maybe sooner.