“The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves but wiser people are full of doubt.” — Bertrand Russell quote embraced by Bill Maher to call attention to a new Maher-produced documentary about the state of religion in the world.

The Chinese government censors are so relentless…like termites, like beavers on amphetamine…and they just don’t quit with the lame-ass no-no’s.

Gyorgy Ligeti, a Hungarian composer who created one of the trippiest motion picture scores of all time with his work on Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey , died today in Vienna at age 83. If you don’t remember the 2001 score, listen to an excerpt here and it’ll come right back to you.

Props to N.Y. Times columnist David Carr for not just sticking it to arch-conservative “hate-monger” Ann Coulter in the usual way…hah!

“Certainly one advantage of ‘youth’ in the arts is ignorance, to know so little as to be fearless. To not grasp that certain things one may dream up are actually impossible to do. When I finished Apocalypse Now I of course thought, ‘If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have even tried [this].” Certainly old age brings ‘experience’ and that is not to be discounted, but in the arts, fearlessness is a more desirable genie than experience . Fearlessness is cousin to innovation, whereas experience can be the parent of fear. Once you’ve fallen out of the tree a few times; felt the pain of those bruised knees and suffered the embarrassment of the inevitable ridicule — it’s much more difficult to be as daring in what you do, or even what you attempt to do. So…I’ve decided the best course is to become an amateur and accept that I know next to nothing and love almost everything . Recently I realized that the favorite decade of my life was 50, a wonderful age for a man — at the peak of his health and experience, yet flexible enough to enjoy and also temper it. So reluctant was I to give up being in my fifties, that I began to call myself ‘fifty-ten’ or ‘fifty-eleven ‘. Now I’m ‘fiftysixteen’. And so today, like some inflated East European currency that gets two zeros lopped off, I’ve decided to lose the ’50’ and just be sixteen. Next year I’ll be seventeen, which is exactly the age that I was when I very seriously began to direct plays.” — Francis Coppola on certain dilemmas he’s faced in recent years, writing on his Youth Without Youth site.

“We are not here to be liked,” 20th Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman tells N.Y. Times reporter Laura Holson. “We don’t work for talent agencies. We work for Fox. Our job is not to worry about agents who jibber-jabber to reporters, who worry about headlines.” Co-chairman Jim Gianopulos tells Holson that that currying favor “is not tolerated around here from anyone; you are not going to get ahead scheming.”

Coming Home

Carl Colpaert’s G.I. Jesus is the first truly exceptional Cinevegas film I’ve seen so far.
Compared to the pickings over the last two days, this psychological domestic drama almost feels miraculous. The reception may be more muted out in the real world…who knows? But it’s certainly good enough to play at the Telluride or Toronto Film Festivals, and with some minor refinements it could even end up being distributed.

(l. to r.) G.I. Jesus costar Joe Arquette, director-writer Carl Colpaert, costars Telana Lynum and Patricia Mota following Sunday night’s screening — 8:05 pm.

This is a partly real, partly hallucinatory homecoming story that feels connected to a guilt current that seems to be popping up left and right these days among Iraqi War veterans. At times G.I. Jesus plays like a kind of Coming Home for the 20-something veterans of that conflict.
You know the drill: war veteran comes home, feels alienated and haunted, doesn’t relate, picks up evidence of marital infidelity, freaks out. But G.I. Jesus is trippier and more complex than that.
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G.I. Jesus doesn’t unfold from a perspective of a conservative career officer like Bruce Dern’s Cpt. Bob Hyde, the Coming Home character who was heavily invested in the rightness of U.S. handling of the Vietnam War. It stems, rather, from the head of an obviously intelligent young Mexican-American Marine Corporal named Jesus Feliciano (Joe Arquette) who’s haunted by his actions during his time in Iraq.
G.I. Jesus is basically about ghosts from that conflict hovering around Jesus, and a growing feeling of betrayal and apartness between himself and his “Dominican princess” wife Claudia (Patricia Mota), whose materialistic ambitions seem, from his perspective, to be creating a gulf between them.

The signatures at work here are “honest,” “unforced,” “thoughtful.” G.I. Jesus has been shot on live video stock (so that it would blend with some real Iraqi war tapes provided by the BBC), which I found exciting, and it’s been extremely well cut by Wayne Kennedy and Nick Nehez, and nicely scored by Carlos Durango.
But there’s a dreamscape element running through the film (as it’s largely happening in Jesus’s head), and because of a decision by director-writer Colpaert to jettison a certain narrative line at the two-thirds mark, the ending, for me, doesn’t quite bring it all home.
I’m always a little bit thrown by movies that inject fantasy into a reality that’s been carefully constructed. Maybe there’s more to it than I realized and I need to see it again.
The key thing, it seems, is that Jesus’s Iraq memories haven’t been erased at the finale (far from it) and the hauntings continue. I’m not entirely sure if all the story strands have been fully dealt with by the finish, but it’s at least a debatable call, and there’s no dismissing the things in G.I. Jesus that succeed.

The film is an unquestioned triumph in the matter of Arquette (a very young Latino who’s costarring in Andrew Davis’s forthcoming The Guardian) and Mota’s performances. I believed every word and gesture from these two; everything they say and feel seems genuine.
Probably because the investment seems so complete. Jesus and Claudia have a young daughter, Marina (played by a 9 year-old firecracker named Telana Lynum), a home in a trailer park, and a texture to their characters — sexual attraction, emotional ties, credible backstory.
G.I. Jesus is certainly probing and complex, and the politics behind it are obviously of a leftist humanitarian bent. There’s a shot at one point of a painting meant to evoke the glories of the Bush policy in Iraq. I, for one, found it extremely spooky.
The program notes call G.I. Jesus “an ethereal journey of one man’s struggle…to let go of the pain and agony suffered in combat in order to get on with his life.” That’s not bad, but check out the trailer on the Cineville site for a better taste of it.
Colpaert is the founder of Cineville, and has executive produced several above-average films, including Swimming with Sharks, The Whole Wide World, Hurlyburly, One-Eyed King and The Velocity of Gary. Born in Europe (Belgium, I think) and an American Film Institute grad, Colpaert began as an editor working for legendary producer Roger Corman.

G.I. Jesus costar Joe Arquette. (The only decent shot I could find of the equally dynamic Patricia Mota is on the IMDB, and they don’t allow you to copy and paste.)

I’ve never heard of anything Colpaert has directed before this, but now that I’m stoked I’d like to see The Affair, which he directed and released in ’04.
I mentioned “minor refinements” at the beginning of this piece. Just cosmetic stuff, mainly.
There’s a white Fu Manchu moustache worn in the film by a uniformed American Colonel that I didn’t believe for a second. (Conservative Oliver North types wear only Clark Gable-type moustaches.) Another wrinkle is a young Marine recruitment officer whose hair is too long in the back. Maybe these style choices can be rectified digitally.
I took some pictures of the cast and crew at the Brenden Theatre #5 last night, and I was going to hit the after-party. But I made the mistake of going back to the room to start writing this and took a break on the bed for a second. That was it…out like a light.

“I would love to go off and make a picture like Capote or George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck.” — Steven Spielberg mouthing the equivalent of creative crocodile tears to Peter Bart and Peter Guber during a segment of AMC’s “Sunday Morning Shootout” that aired this morning.

“Remember — all sequels are whore movies. You do the first one because you want to do something wonderful. You do the sequel for money.” — guy with heavy credits who’s done some laps around the track.

Haven’t seen the latest Entertainment Weekly with the story about the most controversial films ever, but good for Nikki Finke having written that while she “has no real problems with EW‘s list, it’s as if only the post-Star Wars prequel generation came up with it.” If, in fact, EW is deliberately skewing its reporting toward a younger demographic (as they seem to be), they’re surrendering whatever cinematic historical authority points they may have accumulated in past years. The story reportedly leaves out Brokeback Mountain, and also blows off (according to Finke) Carnal Knowledge, Easy Rider, Straw Dogs, Apocalypse Now, I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, Dr. Strangelove, Gentlemen’s Agreement, Bad Day at Black Rock, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Midnight Cowboy . “Not to mention the original Manchurian Candidate which after the JFK assassination was withdrawn from circulation for 25 years?,” Finke adds. “Or Song of the South, which is still Disney’s biggest embarrassment for showing “happy slaves” onscreen. And since they’re counting foreign films (Triumph of the Will is included), then where’s L’Age d’Or, for that matter? I could go on and on.” What about Birth of a Nation?

Confusion hovers over the release of David Fincher‘s Zodiac, one of the most highly anticipated dramas of the fall and a personal can’t-wait for yours truly. The IMDB has an 11.22.06 U.S. release date but Coming Soon has it coming out January 19, 2007. There’s also a Robert Downey fan site that’s reporting the release date as 1.19.07. It says that Fincher is doing some reshoots (which Downey is involved in) and will resume filming reshoots sometime in late June. There’s no reason that additional shooting in the mid-summer should cause a film with a skedded late November release to delay opening until January 2007. Something’s wrong. I’ll check with Paramount publicity on Monday morning, but if anyone knows (or has heard) anything, please write in.

“My loyalty never dies,” Anthony Pellicano has told L.A. Times writer Chuck Philips. “You’re not going to see me take the stand against the clients and employees and other people that are going to be testifying against me. I didn’t rat them out. You understand? I am never going to besmirch a client or any other person that I gave my trust to or who gave their trust to me. I’m never going to do that. I am going to be a man until I fall — if, in fact, that happens.” It’s not a hip thing to say in liberal-wank circles, but there are very few people who stand up and refuse to roll when pressed by the law. Say what you will about Pellicano, but he’s part of a fraternity of honor in this respect.