Screengrab’s “Ten Best Nude Scenes of ’06” piece amounts to two goodies — Gretchen Mol‘s outdoor nude scene in The Notorious Bettie Page and Sophia Myles in Art-School Confidential — and eight so-sos.
Nine days ago this foreign-shores guy listed the 10 greatest speeches and monologues, and every last one was an AFI cliche that nobody wants to be reminded of ever again.
He even gets the Trainspotting speech wrong, which he excerpts as follows: “Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends… Choose your future. Choose life.”
That’s okay, but nowhere near as good as the rant that plays at the very end, to wit:
“So why did I do it? I could offer a million answers, all false. The truth is that I’m a bad person, but that’s going to change, I’m going to change. This is the last of this sort of thing. I’m cleaning up and I’m moving on, going straight and choosing life. I’m looking forward to it already. I’m going to be just like you: the job, the family, the fucking big television, the washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electrical tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure-wear, luggage, three-piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing the gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.”
The Permalink doesn’t work but Screen Grab posted a short item yesterday about Francis Coppola having begun to screen Youth Without Youth. The low-budget, European-shot film “was shown to invited guests at Lucasfilm’s headquarters in the Presidio” within the last couple of days, the copy reads. Here’s the uh-oh part: “The filmmaker’s invitation stressed that the movie, Coppola’s first in 10 years, is intended to be particularly personal, in keeping with ‘the great cinema of Europe and Japan that had first inspired me to become a filmmaker myself.”
In other words, a possibility exists that Youth Without Youth — I’m very sorry to say this but I know the signs — is a Nuart one-weeker waiting to happen. It may not be this at all, of course (and I hope it isn’t), but the warning buzzer has sounded. When a filmmaker says to his friends (forget the press) that they need to adjust expectations before seeing it, you know it’s probably an incomplete salad of some kind. A director saying “it comes from my heart” always means trouble. I wish it were otherwise.
If a movie is in the zone, you don’t need to say anything. It is what it is and you don’t need to lay down special silver or fine-cloth napkins.
The official website synopsis says that Youth Without Youth stars Tim Roth “as Dominic Matei, a professor whose life changes after a cataclysmic incident during the dark years prior to World War II. Becoming a fugitive, he is pursued through far-flung locations including Romania, Switzerland, Malta and India.” The themes of the film, says Coppola, are about “time, consciousness and the dream- like basis of reality. For me it is indeed a return to the ambitions I had for my work in cinema as a student.”
YWY also stars Alexandra Maria Lara (Downfall), Bruno Ganz (Downfall, The American Friend, Nosferatu), Marcel Iures (Peacemaker, Hart’s War) and introduces Alexandra Pirici. The IMDB page says Matt Damon has a small role of some kind.
One could deduce from Coppola’s remarks that Youth Without Youth may not have some or perhaps any of the usual qualities of strong narrative cinema — a punchy-grabby beginning, story tension, a gathering thematic weight, a great ending (surprising, darkly ironic, gently meditative) and so on. Or maybe it does and Coppola is just being coy. The film may be wondrous on some level. Coppola has said that creatively he feels like he’s 17. Maybe it’s a new L’Avventura of some kind. I don’t want to be cynical about this. I just know that whenever a filmmaker says, “Before you watch this film…,” it’s cuidado time
Youth Without Youth costar Bruno Ganz
Somebody who was at the screening (or who heard from someone who was there) said that “all the talk at the party — in awestruck tones indicating that Coppola’s aim had been fulfilled — was about imagination and metaphor and vision.” It’s probably better to wait until someone who really doesn’t care one way or the other has a chance to see it and share a straight-from-the-shoulder reaction.
“The thing about America, is that it is without walls. You can get almost anywhere if you insist upon it. There are no credentials for [talk-show hosting]. There’s no kind of credentials to be president! Except age and place of birth. It’s kind of a low bar. I hope that next time people go to the polls they vote for the guy who can read rather than the guy they’d rather have a beer with.” — Real Time‘s Bill Maher talking to Time‘s Ana Marie Cox.
Wells response: As Maher knows, red-state cultural conservatives — particularly the religious types — have pretty much one goal in mind when they vote for President, which is get a person into the White House who will uphold and reaffirm right-thinking, God-fearing cultural and religious values in this country, and thereby help to stop the once-great U.S. of A. from sliding into the crawling green swamp of liberal anything-goes values, the most odious of these being (a) gay marriage, (b) stem-cell research and pro-choice, and (c) buying into the “myth” of global warming (which, if it really catches on, will keep hard-working people from burning all the fossil fuels and punching as big a hole in the Ozone layer as they damn well please, because it’s their absolute God-given right as free Americans to destroy the world if they so choose).
That is why so many red-state Mensas out there use the “Dating Game”criteria. They’re interested in what kind of person the candidate is deep down. Does he/she a reasonably modest and humble sort? Does he/she believe in a higher power? Is he/she decent, compassionate, folksy? Does he/she understand and empathize with the values of regular working people as opposed to the rich blue-state elites? This is why Barack Obama may have a real chance — because he’s very sincere and dug in on the Christianity-God stuff, and because he doesn’t radiate effete east-coast power-broker vibes.
Of course, many in the rural red-state genius camp are suspicious of people of non-Anglo pigmentation and couldn’t possibly vote for a President whose middle name is Hussein. “What’s in a name?” William Shakespeare once wrote. “That which we call a rose would smell as well by any other name.” I don’t keer whut yuh say — I ain’t votin for no guy with a name like that to run this country.
Here’s a podcast chat I did the day after the Oscars with The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil. It won’t make your underpants fly off, but it plays okay.
I haven’t seen Chris Rock‘s I Think I Love My Wife (Fox Searchlight, 3.16), but there’s a fundamental problem with the basic premise. Rock, who directed, co-wrote and stars, plays a bespectacled, suit-wearing husband (Gina Torres is the wife) who develops an extra- marital itch for a hot lady (Kerry Washington). The problem is that I don’t believe Rock could get worked up about anything other than some matter that immediately affects the business fortunes of Chris Rock.
Some actors project empathy, vulnerability…a regular-guyness. At best, Rock projects the vibe of a whip-smart, slap-happy alien.
I don’t believe that Rock (or any permutation of him) could ever really be in any kind of recognizable marriage — to me, he always seemed totally married to his act. I’m not even sure I can believe Rock as a guy who has sex. With anyone. It’s even a struggle to imagine him jerking off. Rock is about being on-stage and kicking ass — energy, nerve, focus…how to deliver a joke in exactly the right way. This combined with his obvious intelligence is why he’s so good.
I believe Rock as a guy bristling at the conventions of marriage, which is partly what his character seems to be about. But I don’t believe him as an regular shmoe capable of being committed to a wife , and definitely not a guy who would care enough about sex (extra-marital or otherwise) to go after it with any effort. I don’t know Rock at all — I’ve had exactly one 12-second discussion with him at a party. But I honestly feel that HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey projects more humanity.
A smart salute for Mark Ruffalo, an actor with a solid-gold attitude who shudders at the idea of ever going “waah, waah, waah” over anything. CHUD’s Devin Faraci asked him about the tension that reportedly kicked in when fellow Zodiac costar Jake Gyllenhaalwas asked by director David Fincher to do dozens of takes for certain scenes. Here’s an excerpt:
Ruffalo as Det. Dave Toschi in David Fincher‘s Zodiac
Faraci: “Some of your strongest scenes in the movie are with Jake Gyllenhaal. What’s he like to work with?”
Ruffalo: “He was good. I’ve known Jake for a long time, and it was good to work with him. It was fun to see him really kind of stretch his wings with somebody like Dave Fincher. They were tough scenes, and they took a lot of building, but I’m happy the way they ended up. It’s a good performance, and I think it’s one of his best. As much as he talks about being put through the wringers, it paid off for him.
Faraci: “Was that your experience with Fincher as well? Jake talked to the New York Times about how difficult the process was for him, and Fincher is known for being very exacting. Was your experience similar to his?”
Ruffalo: “I can only respect an artist like Fincher. I can only respect somebody who puts that kind of demands on himself and the people around him. I can only respect a man who doesn’t think good enough is good enough. So I didn’t see it the way some people saw it — to me that’s ‘waah waah waah.’
“I mean, to me, we get paid a lot of money and there are people who work a lot frickin’ harder…most everyone on the set. If you had to do a few extra takes…to hear that makes me cringe. Please, God…don’t think we’re all like this.”
Here’s an Eddie Murphy observation from someone who was at the Kodak. I’m not trying to beat a dead horse — it’s just that this person doesn’t agree with the descriptions about Murphy bolting in some kind of fuming, petulant fashion.
“I was at the Oscars, sitting towards the front in the orchestra, and I watched Eddie Murphy leave the auditorium. He passed less than twenty feet away from me and I watched him very carefully because I knew the loss for Best Supporting Actor had to sting and was hoping he was just taking a short break and would return soon.
“For the record, he did not ‘storm out’. He did not ‘leave in a huff’. Those phrases imply a mien of anger and agitation that were simply not present. To the contrary, Eddie was composed and polite and waited patiently for those in front of him to exit the theater first. He was as cool and gentlemanly as a person could be under those circumstances.
“The phrases ‘storm out’ or ‘leave in a huff’ may be figuratively true (it’s arguable), but they are absolutely false in any literal sense. Anyone who repeats those phrases is misrepresenting what actually happened at the moment when Mr. Murphy left the auditorium, and perpetuating a falsehood. There are enough lies in Hollywood. Let’s not add one more to the pile.”
A long ways down the road is The Long Play, a movie driven by the re-teaming of Martin Scorsese and Departed screen- writer William Monahan. Paramount Pictures is funding the development of the script, which reportedly follows two guys “through 40 years in the music business, from the early days of R&B to contemporary hip-hop.”
What’s that…the late ’50s to the late ’90s? No way…no way in hell. Two friends getting older, grayer and fatter as the years roll on and the music gets shittier? The evolution of great pop music from the early ’60s to the present (which would obviously be seen as a history of the changes in U.S. culture from the time of late Eisenhower/early Kennedy to post 9/11 George Bush) it its own epic. A six-hour documentary would have trouble making sense of it. A single narrative 120 or 140-minute drama can’t hope to capture or encompass such a saga.
The Long Play is a good title, though.
Monahan is also working with Leonardo DiCaprio on an adaptation of a late ’06 Hong Kong thriller called Confessions of Pain, with Warner Bros. cutting the checks. The IMDB says the Hong Kong original is about a detective helping a friend to investigate the mysterious death of his father.”
If you were studying Peter O’Toole just before Forest Whitaker was named the winner of the Best Actor Oscar, and then at the precise moment that it happens, it’s clear O’Toole wanted to hear his own name very badly (who wouldn’t?) and that he was pretty much primally shattered when he didn’t. It’s a look of “oh dear God, it’s happened again.”
O’Tooler recovers quickly and applauds Whitaker like a gentleman, but those facial spasms got to me. He wore that same haunted look in 1980 during the curtain call for a critically-despised Old Vic production of Macbeth that O’Toole was starring in. (Some in the audience were booing; others were half-clapping at best — the rudest crowd I’ve ever been a part of.)
The sly old goat should have won on Sunday night. The reason he did (apart from his enervated campaigning and the fact that he started too late) is that Venus didn’t deliver any lump-in-the-throat moments and wasn’t that widely liked.
Hilary Clinton‘s main problem is that she appears too cautious, too calculating and over-scripted. If you ask me she’s demonstrated this in an unmistakable way by having recently told CNN’s Bill Schneider and Douglas Hyde that her favorite all-time movie is Casablanca.
Anyone who says Casablanca is their all-time favorite film is deliberately trying to sound bland and unsophisticated
What a totally softball, timid-ass thing to say…Casablanca! A perfect film of its type (I still enjoy it from time to time), but way too sanctified and high-pedestal-ed. All you can say is, “That’s the best film she could think of?” Casablanca is on the level of The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind and The Sound of Music, for God’s sake..
If I were Hilary and I wanted to choose a film that would reflect something a little about myself but also wouldn’t offend potential supporters, I’d go for Network or Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison or From Here to Eternity…something smart and tight but not so oppressively bronzed. Anything but Casablanca. This totally settles it — I’m voting for Barack Obama. Wait, I’ve already indicated that.
Sen. John McCain has lost his mind over supporting the Iraqi troop surges, but I totally respect his best-film choice — Elia Kazan‘s Viva Zapata (’52), about Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata (Marlon Brando) and his rebellion against the dictatorship of president Porfirio Diaz in the early 1900s. (Isn’t Zapata supposed to come out on DVD via Fox Home Video sometiime this year?)
This is mildly disturbing only because the global-warming deniers and the reactionaries are going to use stories like this to justify careless consumption across the board. That said, Al Gore, no matter what his individual carbon footprint might be, needs to reconsider how such stories will affect the overall green effort. He probably needs to live in a much more spartan fashion. Besides, he’ll lose weight that way.
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