So in addition to buying stand-alone, multi-region Blurays of Stanley Kubrick‘s Barry Lyndon and Lolita as well as a French-language-only Bluray of Rififi during a half-week stopover in Paris following the Cannes Film Festival, I’ll also be visiting the Stanley Kubrick exhibit (now through July 23rd) at the Cinematheque.
North American rights to Woody Allen‘s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger have been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics. A fall release is planned, but this seems to indicate that the London-shot film — which stars Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Freida Pinto and Naomi Watts — will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. A little man in my chest is telling me that Allen’s untitled next film, which will roll in Paris this summer with Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard and Carla Bruni co-starring, has a certain apartness or special-tude. No reason, just a gut thing, etc.
I had never IMDB-checked the European locations where Inglourious Basterds was filmed before this morning, but watching this Quentin Tarantino-on-Late Night with David Letterman video made me laugh. All right, chuckle. Because he says that they shot a bit of it in Paris and…hello?…the two “Paris” locations in the film (i.e., Shosanna’s movie theatre and a cafe) look like sets built on a Los Angeles sound stage.
It seems to me that the point of Inglourious Basterds, in keeping with the idea that it’s all happening in Quentin’s head, is to not portray the various European locales with any recognizable realism (let alone period realism) except for the Nazi uniforms and such. Locale-wise this movie is so completely unto itself that it could have been shot in the Washington/Oregon region. One of the elements that work, in a way, is QT’s near-flaunting of the idea that the film isn’t really happening in 1940s Europe.
After watching Annie Hall last night, Vanity Fair.com’s Julian Sancton is wondering if Funny People is Judd Apatow‘s attempt to similarly veer off in a more grounded reality vein.
Well…obviously, of course, yeah. But it doesn’t flatter Apatow to bring up Allen’s 1978 coming-into-his-own film. Nor is it fair, really, as Funny People is about how a talented but selfish egotist manages to gradually edge toward menschhood after a serious brush with death while Annie Hall grapples with a much more touching and universal theme — i.e., that the reasons people get together tend, paradoxically, to be the same reasons why they break up.
“At 41, Apatow is exactly the same age as Allen was when Annie Hall was released, in 1977, when he was considered as Apatow is today the top comedic filmmaker of his time. And just as Allen did with such goofy farces as Sleeper, Bananas and Love and Death, Apatow amassed enough political capital in Hollywood with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up to convince studios to allow him to spend it all on a more serious passion project.
“In each case, the filmmakers wrote what they knew, what they obsessed about, which happened to be the same two things: comedy and women. Each film gets both laughs and pathos by focusing on the existential angst of a standup comedian, and on his ultimately fruitless efforts to rekindle an old romance. The films actually overlap directly on a few plot points, such as with the smarmy foils played by Tony Roberts and Jason Schwartzman, who, in Allen and Apatow’s films respectively, both sell out by starring in second-rate sitcoms.
And “most importantly, both films stubbornly avoid the happy ending,” Sancton states.
Really? Funny People‘s conclusion isn’t “happy” but it does end on a tone of decency and mutual respect and rapprochement between Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen‘s comedian characters.
Unfortunately Apatow delivers a bummer epilogue at the end of the piece.
“It’s possible, however, that Funny People will be more of a detour in Apatow’s career than a new direction,” Sancton writes. “When I spoke to the director recently about some of the more emotionally difficult scenes in his latest film, he seemed hesitant to revisit that kind of pain anytime soon.
“‘The dramatic scenes were so painful to make that it made me respect people who can do that for an entire movie,’ he told me. ‘Just watching Adam prepare and get in the mindset to make a very difficult and sad scene was almost more than I, personally, could handle. All I thought the whole time was, After this I need to make a really stupid movie. Next time you may say this was the broadest thing I have ever done.'”
Imagine Allen saying the following to an interviewer just before the release of Annie Hall:
“I don’t know…I’m not sure about my creative direction because those dramatic scenes were really rough. It brought back all the stuff I went through with Diane in our real-life relationship. It was almost more than I could handle. I’m thinking I might want to make another Bananas or Take The Money and Run and just…you know, recover from this thing.
“For the last few months I’ve been nursing this idea for a widescreen black-and-white film called Manhattan — another difficult-relationships film — but I’m now thinking it would be better to just relapse back into a silly comedy and…you know, have a good time and make people laugh. I mean, I’m an entertainer, right? And that’s what people want me to be.”
Martin Provost‘s Seraphine, a fictionalized story of painter Seraphine de Senlis that no one talked about during the Toronto Film Festival (certainly not in my circle), has won seven Cesar awards. The ceremony ended in Paris two or three hours ago. It won best picture, best original screenplay (Martin Provost), best actress (Yolande Moreau), best cinematography (Laurent Brunet), best costume design (Madeline Fontaine), best original score (Michael Galasso), and best set design (Thierry Francois).
Some kind of intense drama is happening with Toronto Film Festival screenings of Adria Petty‘s Paris, Not France, a documentary about Paris Hilton. Two out of three public screenings have been cancelled, and both press screenings have also been jettisoned.
The reason why is partly explained in this 8.29 Stephen Zeitchik/”Risky Business” story in the Hollywood Reporter. (Thanks to cjkennedy.)
The film has a festival website page that says three performances of Paris, Not France are (or were) scheduled — on Tuesday, 9.9, at the Ryerson at 6:00 pm, on Thursday, 9.11 at the same venue at 3 pm, and on Saturday, 9.13, at the AMC 2 at 5:45 pm.
But an updated slate of public screenings shows that only the Tuesday, 9.9 screening is now scheduled. And the updated press screening list has no Paris, Not France showings.
Persons who recently tried to order public tickets to the Hilton/Petty doc were sent an e-mail stating that “due to unforeseen circumstances, there will be only one screening of Paris, Not France [on] Tuesday, Sept. 9, 6pm, Ryerson.”
The e-mail went on to say that “an additional public screening of Lymelife will replace the second public screening of Paris, Not France [on] Thursday, Sept. 11, 3pm, Ryerson” and that “an additional public screening of Lovely, Still will replace the third public screening of Paris, Not France [on] Saturday, Sept. 13, 5:45pm, AMC 2.”
If Paris doesn’t want the film shown at TIFF for whatever reason, why hasn’t it been yanked altogether? Why stick with that one Ryerson showing on Tuesday, 9.9? I sense a lack of resolve.
The French-language trailer for Christophe Barratier‘s Paris 36 (known in France as Faubourg 36) tells you it’s an “audience film” — broad, good natured, a little bit square and perhaps Amelie-like. Which is totally fine. Variety reported yesterday that Sony Pictures Classics has acquired distrib rights to the film in the U.S., Scandanavia and “Australasia,” which is located to the northeast of Freedonia, the country featured in the Marx Bros. film Duck Soup. Barratier’s film opens in France on 9.24.
Posted exclusively at www.funnyordie.com a little after 2 pm today.
See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die
Update: I stilll say that the new John McCain ad suggests that Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, who represent two-thirds of the dumbest, emptiest and most repulsive celebrity trifecta in the history of western civilization, are endorsing the trashing of Barack Obama. Others are saying the ad equates their shallow celebrity status with Obama’s, but that is not what this ad implies. At the very least the ad is ambiguous enough to suggest that Spears and Hilton (both of whom are known or believed to be conservative-minded) are in cahoots with the McCain campaign. Here’s the link to the official website.
I don’t know if Spears is narrating or not (doesn’t sound like her) but it’s definitely not Hilton. Anyway, the visuals are all of Obama and the narration goes like this: “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead? With gas prices soaring, Barack Obama says no offshore drilling? And says he’ll raise taxes on [something]-tricity? Higher taxes, more foreign oil — that‘s the real Obama.”
A friend just called to suggest that the ad equates Obama’s celebrity with the legendary shallowness of Hilton and Spears. In other words, it’s trashing these two along with Obama. That wasn’t my impression at all, but to each his own. Throwing in clips of Spears and Hilton and then having a young-sounding female read the narration clearly implies they’re endorsing the ad’s negative Obama assessment
I finished Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Bastards this morning at 2:30 am, and yesterday’s opinion (based on having read the first 80 pages) is basically unchanged. I’m still calling it a categorically insane World War II attitude comedy on top of a quasi-“exploitation film” about angry Jews paying back the Nazis for their many atrocities. It begins and ends in QT’s movie-nut head, and is very entertaining for that.
The film is going to seem loony-tunes to some, and that’s good. The Cinema Paradiso section (pretty young Jewish refugee running a Paris cinema, changing reels, not smoking for fear of burning the stored silver nitrate film reels) goes on a bit, page 50 to 100, give or take. A lot of bodies hit the floor from page 100 to 165. A lotta blood and bullets. The violent finale is wackjob. It’s either insane beyond measure or wildly imaginative in a good way, or both.
Oh, and the actor who gets to play the role of Colonel Landa (a.k.a. “the Jew Hunter”) is going to have a field day. Brad Pitt‘s “Aldo the Apache” part should be beefed up a bit; he’s too peripheral over the last 30 or so pages.
The numbers guys are saying the new Sleuth is already dead (it opened in 9 theatres this weekend and will only average about $4000 a print). Question is, does having seen the ’72 original — directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier starring — improve or diminish the current version (Kenneth Branagh directing a Harold Pinter adaptation)? Worth a looksee. Joe Leydon is alerting the world to an airing of the oldie tomorrow night.
Julie Delpy‘s 2 Days in Paris (Samuel Goldwyn, 8.10) is an above-average relationship meltdown film — part comedy, part “heart” movie, part Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff? (Okay, not that dark…but nearly.) It ends on a moderately hopeful note (i.e., one of resignation and acceptance), but nothing that smacks of pat or soothing. And for that alone it has my allegiance.
2 Days in Paris director-writer-costar Julie Delpy in modestly-proportioned second-floor room in the Four Seasons hotel — Monday, 8.6.07, 1:25 pm
It’s about un-cute rancor between an American-born boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) and his French-born girlfriend (Delpy) as he gets to really know her during a brief stopover in Paris as he realizes she’s a lot more complicated than he figured, and that she’s got way too many ex-boyfriends, and that he’s lacking in that laid-back European cool that comes in handy when you’re grappling with ex-boyfriend jealousy. And that he really hates Paris, or more precisely Parisians.
I hated Paris the first time I visited way back when. I got so frustrated and angry with my inability to understand or recognize the necesssary nouns and verbs that I eventually freaked out and decided to pretend to be a deaf mute, or at least a guy with terminal laryngitis. I would go into restaurants and bakeries and point to my mouth and indicate my inability to say anything in any language. I would then point to this and that rather than ask for it pigeon French, which always led to trouble.
I’m explaining why I both liked and didn’t like Golberg’s performance. I related and didn’t relate. It wasn’t altogether comfortable or uncomfortable — it was in-between. Which is what I half-liked about it. I respect Delpy, finally, for not trying to make me like or love this film 100%.
Delpy directed, wrote, costars in and did the music for 2 Days in Paris. I spoke to her about it for about 20 minutes this afternoon. It was another one of my nothing- special interviews — at times stimulating, blah at times, an in-and-outer. But I fell in love with a photo I took of her, and so I’m happy with the whole thing. As I hope she is.
- All Hail Tom White, Taciturn Hero of “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Roughly two months ago a very early draft of Eric Roth‘s screenplay for Killers of the Flower Moon (dated 2.20.17,...
More » - Dead-End Insanity of “Nomadland”
Frances McDormand‘s Fern was strong but mule-stubborn and at the end of the day self-destructive, and this stunted psychology led...
More » - Mia Farrow’s Best Performances?
Can’t decide which performance is better, although I’ve always leaned toward Tina Vitale, her cynical New Jersey moll behind the...
More »
- Hedren’s 94th
Two days ago (1.19) a Facebook tribute congratulated Tippi Hedren for having reached her 94th year (blow out the candles!)...
More » - Criminal Protagonists
A friend suggested a list of the Ten Best American Crime Flicks of the ‘70s. By which he meant films...
More » - “‘Moby-Dick’ on Horseback”
I’ve never been able to give myself over to Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee, a 1965 Civil War–era western, and I’ve...
More »