| Profilo di movies filter b...movies filterFotoBlogElenchi |  Strumenti  Guida |
|
31 maggio Gentlemen Prefer Hawks
I've sung his praises so many times but dammit if he doesn't deserve them! Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule flat-out rocks my movie obsessed world and that's all there is to it.
Here's his latest, a discussion concerning legendary auteur Howard Hawks, who would have been 113-years-old yesterday. After listing the filmmaker's remarkable pictures (some of them, personal favorites of mine), he ends his post asking the forum question: "Is Howard Hawks the greatest director ever?"
As Dennis asserts:
"The Dawn Patrol, The Criminal Code, Come and Get It, Twentieth Century and, of course, Scarface (now on DVD) are all terrific movies. But just look at that period from 1936 to 1948, starting with Come and Get It and ending with Red River. Not counting the uncredited jobs, has any other great director ever had a 12-year streak like that one? Maybe Ford. Maybe Bunuel. Maybe Altman. Maybe Godard. When a baseball player goes on a streak like that, one of the things said about him is that he’s 'unconscious.' But there’s nothing unconscious or automatic about any of the movies Hawks made in this period. And he still had The Big Sky, Monkey Business, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Hatari!, El Dorado and, most importantly, Rio Bravo still in his deck."
Read the entire post, take a gander at the master's movies and enjoy the various answers to Hawks' greatness by many other terrific film writers and bloggers.
As for me, I'm still trying to answer the question, but looking at Hawks' oeuvre is leading me to a possible yes.
--posted by Kim Seth Sez
Great interview with "Knocked Up's" Seth Rogen at The Onion AV Club.
Here's a choice bit that I found both surprising and positive:
"AVC: Knocked Up is nearly as raunchy as 40-Year-Old Virgin, but the earlier film was a sex comedy, and this one is about parenthood. Was anyone at the studio wondering, 'Hey, can't this be more family-friendly?' Or were you given license to do whatever you wanted?
"SR: No, we were given license. They knew what it was we do. The studio people know me personally pretty well, so they know where my sensibilities lie. And I'm sure it was never surprising to them, the jokes I was making. And they let us go for it. To their credit, we never heard word one about toning anything down at all."
I mean, it could simply be the whole "sex sells" idea but still...we know that a scene in which Rogen is afraid to have sex with the pregnant Katherine Heigl because he might poke her baby in the womb isn't exacly "sexy." Well, maybe for some it is, but that's another kind of audience.
Read the entire interview here.
--posted by Kim 30 maggio Vintage James TobackFrom back in the day.
Iconclast filmmaker James Toback on Rex Reed's movie reviews:
"Second rate re-runs of 'The Gong Show.'"
Hey, James, I love ya but don't diss "The Gong Show." Paul Reubens (aka Pee Wee Hermann) was on "The Gong Show." J.P. Morgan rules. And Chuck Barris is a genius.
To be fair, he's claiming Reed a second rate version so perhaps Toback is a fan of Barris and Company after all. He sure seems like he would be.
Watch the rest of Toback's interview here. Many thanks to ScreenGrab for highlighting this Toback gem.
--posted by Kim Unlikely Leading Men
If you really think about it, most movie stars (ones we truly connect with, anyway) are, in some way or another, not "matinee idol" good-looking. From Fred Astaire's elfin features to Humphrey Bogart's hound-dog face and slight lisp to Tom Hanks' guy-next-door normality to Jim Carrey's rubbery insanity, there are reasons why such characters are not relegated to merely characters. And thank goodness. How boring if all our leading men resembled Rudolph Valentino or Robert Taylor or Brad Pitt. There's plenty of room for a Steve Carell.
Which is why Seth Rogen is so wonderfully cast in Judd Apatow's acclaimed "Knocked Up," a relationship, regular-guy sex comedy that, like his previous "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," is a lot smarter than it has any right to be. Though many audiences might not recognize Rogen, the Canadian- born actor is an Apatow regular, a guy who made his mark on Apatow's excellent, insanely underwatched TV series, "Freaks and Geeks," and the director's massive hit, "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." But Rogen wasn't the lead in any of these; he never has been the lead -- until now. With his dry wit and average one-of-the-dudes qualities, Rogen seems an unlikely choice to headline "Knocked Up." Surely the studio pressured Apatow for a bigger-name star. If that was the case, thankfully Apatow stood his ground. We need to watch someone else lead a movie for a change.
This refreshing change got us thinking about other leading men in movies who seemed unlikely. Though it's a debatable topic and requires more than one list, we're presenting seven still-working actors (some who are legendary, some who are emerging) who qualify as distinctly unconventional leads -- seven actors who we not just love but, to quote Woody Allen in "Annie Hall," in many cases "lerve." Vive la difference!
Bill Murray
Audiences and informed movie critics have adored Bill Murray in movies, even in bad movies, for going on three decades now. His cinematic persona is so real and yet so decidedly inscrutable that in every performance, one wonders just what Bill Murray is really thinking. And though he might play a supposed "loser" in a movie like "Stripes," you still get the feeling that he's a good deal smarter than most people, and he's just cynical enough to know being a "winner" doesn't mean much. This all adds to Murray's mystery, something that's intriguing, magnetic and disarmingly attractive -- all requirements for a legendary leading man. So why did it take so long? His first stab at being taken seriously as a dramatic actor came with 1984's "The Razor's Edge" -- an adaptation of the famous W. Somerset Maugham novel that had previously starred Tyrone Power in the lead role. No one bought it (unfairly so), and the gamble kept him away from truly exploring his more serious self. So when Wes Anderson cast Murray as the melancholic, bitter -- though, in the end, life-affirming -- Herman Blume in "Rushmore," a collective "it's about time" was issued by Murray fans everywhere. After that brilliantly touching performance, Murray was seen as the object of Scarlett Johansson's affection in "Lost in Translation," in which you never once doubt why she would be attracted to him; and soon after, in Jim Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers," in which you never once doubt why all the women were attracted to him. He's, in a word, poetic. That's a fact ... Jack. --posted by Kim 29 maggio Pirates Booty (Hey, I Couldn't Think Of Anything Else)I almost forgot!
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Curve" (wait. that's a Jan and Dean song). I mean, "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" was the box office winner over Memorial Day weekend. What a surprise.
Luckily, some decided to spend that extra day off with the William Friedkin freak-out "Bug," an infinitely better decision and a less destructive way to celebrate the weekend. Though, I have no room to judge. Not only did I do stupid things at age twenty, I watched "Man of the House" this Saturday.
1. "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"--$115 million
2. "Shrek the Third"--$69 million
3. "Spider-Man 3"--$18 million
4. "Bug"--$3.3 million
5. "Waitress"--$3 million
--posted by Kim
'Country' SnubResponding to the Cannes winners, MSN's Dave McCoy has a few things to say. Specifically, what's with shutting out the Coen Brothers?
Writes Dave:
"My first thought was, 'What about 'No Country for Old Men'?!' Along with the Palme d'Or winner, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's '4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days' (a very smart and justified winner; it was the second best film I saw here), the Coen brothers' 'Old Men' was the only other film the critics agreed on during the last two weeks. And yet the jury, headed by Stephen Frears, snubbed it entirely. Now, I probably wouldn't have been as shocked by this had other strong contenders won instead. But I saw 'The Mourning Forest,' the film that took the second-place, Grand Prix prize, and I guess the jury and I saw different films. I love everything Japanese, but 'The Mourning Forest,' while gorgeously shot, falls flat on every emotionally conceivable level.
"Special jury prizes were given to two other films that vastly divided viewers: Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's animated tale of Islamic revolution, "Persepolis" and Carlos Reygadas' 'Silent Light.' But nothing for the Coens. Again, I was too sick to attend the jury junket after the awards, but I hope someone asked something about this oversight. Here's an odd thing: Last year, my favorite film of the year was 'Pan's Labyrinth.' It played In Competetion at Cannes and also got nothing. This year, I doubt I'll see a better movie all year than 'No Country for Old Men' and it too was shut out. Go figure..."
Read the rest of Dave's final Cannes dispatch here.
--posted by Kim 27 maggio Happy Memorial Day, One Day Early
A lot of incredibly nice folks from all over the world come to this blog and bid me well, give me kudos or try out their English. To all of these people I say, thanks for reading, thanks for the kind words and...can I stay at your house in Milan next summer? You can help me with Fellini, I'll walk you through some John Ford. I kid, I kid. Well, not really.
Anyway, because of my frequent non English speaking comments, one Canadian reader asked, "Why does everyone love America?" Well I don't know exactly the reasons for others but for me, there are many. We'll just start with icons like Robert Johnson, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Hank Williams Sr., Bo Diddley, Otis Redding, Elvis, Marlon Brando, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hawks, Sam Fuller, James Cagney, John Garfield, Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard, James Dean, Robert Mitchum, Lee Marvin, Nicholas Ray, Sam Peckinpah, Sinclair Lewis, JD Salinger, Wegee, John Dillinger, Jim Brown, Edgar Allen Poe, David Allan Coe, Tennessee Williams, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, James Ellroy...oh this could continue forever. And I haven't even started with film noir, muscle cars, architecture, landscapes or my favorite cafeteria in Los Angeles, Clifton's.
And this isn't to slight anything outside of America. If you know how much I love Serge Gainsbourg, Godard, Polanksi, Bergman, Fassbinder, Takashi Miike, Kinji Fukasaku, Mario Bava, The Rolling Stones, Syd Barret, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Graham Greene, Beethoven, Debussy, Lars von Trier, Alfonso Cuarón, Picasso, Wong kar-Wai, Ringo Lam, Kurosawa, Julie Christie, Alain Delon, Werner Herzog, Sergio Leone and more and more and more, you'd understand where I'm at. All over the map.
But look. Whatever you think of our current adminstration and what's really destroying this beautiful country (I'll just say a chain of ugly superstores that wipe out nearly all of our charming small towns), America, artistic, amber waves of grain America, can be pretty damn great.
With that, let's celebrate a man who represents the true American spirit, Wild Bill Hickok, who was born today in 1837. He fought in the Union Army during the American Civil War, was a famed army scout, and most notoriously, a lawman and gunfighter. He was also, unknown to many, one of the earliest supporters of equal rights for blacks during the winding down time of slavery.
And it terms of cinema (and really, this all has to tie into movies) he was also played by that other iconic American, Charles Bronson in J. Lee Thompson's "White Buffalo" and another sort of American icon, Jeff ("The Dude") Bridges in Walter Hill's "Wild Bill."
So in honor of Memorial Day and Wild Bill's debut and just America in general, Happy Birthday Wild Bill. And Happy Memorial Day.
--posted by Kim
Rosie Whine"God these women embarrass me. In the catfight heard 'round the water cooler, Rosie O' Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck memorably lashed tongues on that televised coffee klatch (but with real issues! And "hot topics!") in yet another display of whiny one-up-manship that placed the art of debate at another low. Yes, I know, it's The View. I'm not going to find Gore Vidal or William F. Buckley or Tony Blankley or Christopher Hitchens flexing wits after a spirited segment on bathing suits that flatter every figure. Hell, I'm not going to find that anywhere, really. But this argument (about the Iraq War, or so it began) became so personal, so grating, so decidedly female, that I cringed for my entire gender."
Read my entire take on the ridiculous drama at The Huffington Post.
Cannes Palme D'Or Announced
The Palme d'Or went to Romanian director Cristian Mungiu for “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” his look at an illegal abortion in Communist-era Romania.
The film has been largely well received and predicted to be the winner by many critics. Dave McCoy discusses all the winners from his Cannes dispatch: "The low-budget, naturalistic film about a student who goes through horrors to ensure that her friend can have a secret abortion beat out 21 other movies in competition for the Riviera festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or. "The grand prize, considered the festival's No. 2 award, went to Japanese director Naomi Kawase's 'Mogari No Mori' (The Mourning Forest), a movie about two people — a retirement home resident and a caretaker at the center — struggling to overcome loss. "Best director went to American painter-director Julian Schnabel for his French-language film 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,' based on a memoir by a French magazine editor who became paralyzed after a stroke and learned to write again by blinking his eyelid into a sensor. "The jury awarded a special prize for Cannes' 60th anniversary to Gus Van Sant, who already won the festival's top prize in 2003 for 'Elephant.' The American's impressionistic 'Paranoid Park' focuses on a teenage skateboarder whose life turns upside down when he accidentally kills a security guard." Read more honors here. --posted by Kim 26 maggio Breaking! Kevin Costner Thinks Madonna Is Neat AgainMy gosh. You'd think an old War buddy finally apologized for deserting him in the jungle all those years back.
From an interview with Kevin Costner in the LA Times:
"In the 1991 Madonna documentary 'Truth or Dare,' while greeting the singer backstage in Los Angeles on her "Blond Ambition" tour, a hapless Costner describes her concert as 'neat,' causing Madonna to bristle noticeably and, unseen by him, feign shoving her finger down her throat. 'Anybody who says my show is 'neat' has to go,' she says after he beats a hasty retreat.
"Asked how the incident affected his life, right at the moment his star was riding the highest, with the wolves circling somewhere out beyond the fire, Costner doesn't give the answer that's expected.
"'Yeah, I was embarrassed by it and kind of hurt by it,' he says. 'I just went back there because I was asked to go back. And I found the best word that I could. I never called her on it or whatever. 'But she did a really beautiful thing. She was performing [in L.A.] about three or four years ago, so I decided to take my daughters to see her. I just thought this is somebody they should see. I didn't call anybody for tickets, I just got tickets and we went down….
"'And about the third song in, the lights were down, and she said, 'I want to apologize to someone.' And all of a sudden my face starts to get hot…. And she says, 'I want to apologize to Kevin Costner.' She just said it very simply. Ninety-eight percent of that audience didn't know what she was talking about. But I really respected that, and it showed me the power of just keeping your own counsel for a long time…. Whatever possessed her, whatever was inside her, she came to her own decision. And a bigger thing came out of some kind of humiliation. 'I never wrote her to say thank you, but I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart, and that meant more to me than you could ever know.'"
Dude. I bet ninety-eight percent of her audience over 15 completely got it. If you pay that much for a Madonna concert, you've seen "Truth or Dare" and you do not forget that scene. It's an iconic moment. Right up there with Dylan ignoring Joan Baez in "Don't Look Back." Though Dylan clanking away on his typewriter while Joan caterwauls is a lot cooler. And as nice as Joan seems, the diss is more understandable.
--posted by Kim 25 maggio Marty's Master Class
Alright, Alright. I now, officially, wish I was at Cannes.
This is what editor, friend and lucky b-word Dave McCoy got to attend while taking in the sun, celebs and movies. Movie talk with Martin Scorsese. According to Dave, very few journalists attended. Um...why? Do these people like movies or not? Anyway, here's Dave's full report (including a Tarantino dig, and not dig in a good way) on what sounds like a memorable moment with the master:
"After 'Ocean's Thirteen,' I rushed over to get in line for the one thing I had circled on my Cannes calendar months ago: a film class taught by Martin Scorsese. Because, let's face it, when you're burned out on movies after eight days of a film festival, who better to recharge your batteries than Martin Scorsese? Only, when I arrived, I found a huge line of ticket holders but not many press members lined up. There was a ton of camera and video crews but not much print press. I got in with ease and was shocked. I settled into my third-row seat and noticed something odd: two chairs on stage and a table. Two chairs? Wasn't this supposed to be a lecture? In fact, Cannes pulled a switcheroo on us (or duped us, depending on your point of view) and the event was NOT a film class or a lecture but a 100-minute-long interview with Scorsese along the lines of 'Inside the Actor's Studio.'
"The difference here was we were spared any inane questions from the audience, and the French dude who conducted the interview was definitely less annoying and fawning than James Lipton. Scorsese wasn't asked what his favorite swear word was (hell, we all know that answer anyway!). Instead, French dude took us through Scorsese's entire career, asking questions the director had selected and showing clips that Marty wanted to discuss. How could you tell, you ask? Well, the clip choices were downright odd. There were six. The first was the opening sequence of 'Mean Streets' and the second was an in-ring moment from 'Raging Bull.' But after that, things got wonderfully weird. 'After Hours,' 'The Age of Innocence,' 'Casino' and 'Kundun' followed ... no 'Taxi Driver' or 'Goodfellas' or 'The Departed.' It was great and unexpected, and allowed Scorsese to riff on his filmmaking techniques and subjects like interrupted narratives and voiceover narration (this was a big one that he defended and came back to time and time again ... and damn, if he didn't win this critic over). Along the way, Scorsese name-dropped approximately 90 directors and/or films that inspired him (I lost count) and took special time to address the crowd on select titles and say 'See this!' I was in cinema heaven. Wait, I should back up. I didn't even set the scene, did I?
"Before Scorsese entered the theater, Quentin Tarantino entered and created buzz and a blinding barrage of flashbulbs. No autographs once again, though this time he had a handler who spoke to the unwashed masses so Tarantino didn't have to. When finally one of the festival directors jumped on stage to start the proceedings, he took the time to introduce QT to us lucky folks (and some other important French dude I didn't recognize). QT stood, wearing a muscle T-shirt that revealed things no one needed to see, and blew kisses to all of us. Ah, Quentin. Oh, and then, about halfway through the interview, I turned around to see if anyone had bolted. And surprise, surprise, the world's most self-promoted film geek was nowhere to be found. Great photo op, though. When the master entered, the place went nuts. Scorsese looked humble as a massive standing ovation erupted before he finally begged the crowd to sit down. And off we went ... "There were many film students in the audience, many sitting next to me, and Scorsese's biggest bit of advice to them was simple: 'You have to be crazy to do this. Obsessive. I'm sorry, but it's true. I mean, other people can have lives and relationships, but I can't do it.' He spoke about the biggest problems when making movies ("Trains, boats, children and animals"), he remembered the night he met De Niro, he discussed destroying the tyranny of Hollywood narrative, he told us he learned to move the camera through his love of American musicals and he talked about sex and violence. Violence was easy to explore he said, but sex ... 'I don't know how to shoot a sex scene. I'm looking forward to shooting a sex scene one day. I have some ideas,' he laughed. Never has 100 minutes seemed so short. I felt, probably like the 1000 or so fortunate enough in attendance, blessed.
Oh, one last thing. The funniest sight of the day was turning around to see Brett Ratner sitting in the crowd. The 'X-Men: The Last Stand' auteur was shockingly not announced to the crowd, however. But let's hope, for all our sakes, that he at least learned something during those 100 minutes. You can't teach talent, but knowledge can be passed on. Well, I'll give him this: At least he stayed until the end."
Read more from Dave's Cannes dispatches (including "Ocean's Thirteen") here.
--posted by Kim
Five Friedkin Classics
William Friedkin is back and I’m here to ask the 70’s auteur to please stay. Just keep going. Though his image has been tarnished through the decades with critically mixed pictures like "Jade," "Blue Chips," "Rules of Engagement" and "The Hunted" (pictures that remain interesting, especially "The Hunted"), 20-odd years ago he was one of Hollywood's most courted directors. Creating two bona-fide American classics, "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist" and some misunderstood masterpieces, "Cruising" and "Sorcerer," Friedkin’s work can be fearlessly visceral and cinematically ingenious (his use of sound is often brilliant, and his collaboration with wizard Jack Nitzsche is especially virtuoso). When Friedkin is on his game, he’s under-your-skin profound.
Provocative ideas have always been central to Friedkin's vision, and he's jumped genres to find them. Among other films (including Sonny and Cher's "Good Times"), he's adapted stage plays, such as Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party" (1968), about a lodger harassed by two strangers, and "The Boys in the Band" (1970), a biting, soul-searching night in the life of gay friends and the police thriller "To Live and Die in L.A." (1985), which exposed both sides of the law's moral ambiguity even further than "The French Connection."
His newest study of insanity and horror, "Bug" (starring Ashley Judd) finds Friedkin venturing into a smaller though no less explosive milieu, adapting Trecy Letts off-Broadway play for a claustrophobic, paranoid thriller. With this, I'm looking at the best of Friedkin's work— work that helped shape a period of darker, more challenging and often more shocking movies. Here are five of Friedkin’s greatest—superior studies of flawed humanity, tension, fear and, of course, some wicked cool car chase sequences.
"The French Connection" (1971)
A tour de force of stylistic, kinetic editing, sweeping hand-held camerawork, savage realism and natural, anti-heroic leads, "The French Connection" won that rare honor in Hollywood, Academy Awards for best picture and best director and for an “action” picture. Within this complex police story exists wonderful hard boiled acting, ingenious cinematography, one of the best dirty cops in filmdom (Popeye Doyle, played by Gene Hackman at his porkpie hat hottest) and one of the grittiest, most exhilarating chase scenes ever filmed. To top it all off, a beautifully subtle yet tough Roy Scheider is Hackman’s partner, and Roy Scheider is great in just about everything.
--posted by Kim
Shiver Me...Oh Whatever
As much brilliant work he's done in movies like "Edward Scissorhands," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Ed Wood," I truly think Johnny Depp should win Oscars for his Jack Sparrow role in the "Pirates" pictures (read my short Oscar ode to Depp here). Not only is he clever, entertaining and subversive, he's the best thing about all of the movies--combined. He is, in fact, the only thing that drags me to those loud movies in the first place. And I like loud pirate movies. Anyway, as usual, Johnny delights, the movie (that's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"), not so much. Critical consensus is split right down the middle at RottenTomatoes. Still, the Keith Richards cameo is a memorable one. But come on people, lay off the so very tired Keith Richards-looks-like-a-corpse jokes. He's looked like that for years. I now think he's morphing into something else. What that is, I can't say. But who cares? He's one of the coolest men on the planet. And he's alive! Not many truly "cool" men left. The last one I met was 69-years-old and working at a gas station. --posted by Kim 24 maggio Dying, Dancing. Cagney Can Do It All...
--MSN's essential, classic gangster pictures. A solid list that hits all the majors. Still, check out even more gangster greats (and lots more James Cagney) with "The Roaring Twenties," "Public Enemy" and "Angels with Dirty Faces." --ScreenGrab's greatest cinematic deaths (in four parts). Bonus points for including the non obvious (but perfect) death scenes of "Barry Lyndon," "Live and Let Die" and "Bambi." But to add my inflated 65 cents, where's "Suddenly Last Summer," "Sunset Blvd." and one of my favorites, "Don't Deliver Us From Evil" (yes, obscure but one hell of a death scene)? And also, to repeat myself, "Angles with Dirty Faces." And to repeat myself again, "The Roaring Twenties" which ends with Gladys George's poignantly hard-boiled epitaph for James Cagney: "He used to be a big shot." --And while I'm on the subject of that pugnacious genius James Cagney, here he is dancing, not dying. He really was something. --posted by Kim
23 maggio Starry And Bleary Eyed"Seventeen hours in a darkened theater not so far away? Welcome to the 'Star Wars' marathon.
"A free showing of all six 'Star Wars' movies began Wednesday morning at the Los Angeles Convention Center and was expected to end at 2 a.m. Thursday. The event kicked off a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the release of the original film. Several thousand people showed up for the screening, which included brief intermissions." So that means all of these people (and I mean all several thousand) TiVoed tonight's season finale of "Lost," right?
Someone should run down there and ruin it for them. "John Locke is really Jack's father!"
He's not, so far as I know. And about leaking the "Lost" ending, I'm only kidding. Kind of.
--posted by Kim 'Paranoid' Praise
Speaking of Gus Van Sant, my editor and fellow Van Sant fan Dave McCoy has word on the Portland filmmaker's newest, "Paranoid Park."
Not surprisingly the word is good--all good--and now I have another long, painstakingly crafted picture on my hands that I can't wait to see.
From Cannes (where the film screened), Dave writes:
"Gus Van Sant's latest was called his 'most experimental work' by the daily trade here in town. It's not. That'd be either his last one, 'Last Days' or 'Gerry,' a film in which two guys get lost in the desert -- the end. 'Gerry' marked Van Sant's return to his indie roots after Hollywood success with 'Good Will Hunting' and 'Finding Forrester,' and 'Paranoid Park' continues in that experimental, short-on-plot-big-on-atmosphere vein. It's also his first time back to Cannes since winning the 2003 Palme d'Or for 'Elephant,' the Columbine-inspired look at a day in the life of a high school.
"In many ways, 'Park' (also In Competition) feels like a sequel to 'Elephant.' It too concerns teens and high school and that time in your life where you seem to float around, ungrounded and where time and events don't follow a rational order. Like 'Elephant,' 'Park' is a simple story told in a non-linear fashion and stars only non-actors (Van Sant cast the film through his MySpace page). The 'plot' is barebones: A teen skater from a soon-to-be broken home, Alex (shaggy-haired, golden find Gabe Nevins) spends his days at Paranoid Park, a skate park located in a downtrodden section of gloriously gray Portland, Ore. One night, he runs off with a stranger, and accidentally kills a security guard. And he says nothing to anyone about it. Instead, it eats at his insides and affects his life, presumably forever. The end. Along the way, however, Van Sant focuses his Super-8 camera on kids skating (a great visceral experience) and his 35-mm camera on teenage life in 2007. First-time sexual experiences, the monotony of high school, trips to the coffee shop, talk of the Iraq war ... it's painful and it's gorgeous and it captures a teen's world better than any film since his own 'Elephant.' And it takes you away ... if you let it."
And yes, you read that right, in a bold act of modern neo-realism, Van Sant cast the film from his *MySpace page. Hmm...wonder what Richard Schickel and all his artless blogging jeremiads would say about that?
*And this is truly a great way to use MySpace. And while I know there's plenty of fine people benefiting from that site, communicating, making friends and writing good stuff there, I can do without the cruising, the frequently horrid confessional blog entries (I love long walks on the beach! And cheeto's! And making love real slow...) and general nakedness. Most people, with obvious exceptions, shouldn't be naked, physically or "poetically." Unless they are Emily Dickinson or Anne Sexton. Which would be mad hawwwttt!
--posted by Kim Transfixing Tarr
I am one among Béla Tarr's "small, cadre of of fans" so news of the Hungarian directors latest, "The Man From London" (showing at Cannes) is exciting to me. And though "excited" and Béla Tarr are not usually uttered in the same breath, I am again a Tarr enthusiast and would be thrilled sitting through Tarr's very loooong "Sátántangó" (7.5-hours long in fact). I'm OK with the fact that I would more than likely sit through that epic experience alone and with no one to talk to afterwards.
Evidence of my lonliness comes via Mike D'Angelo's astute Cannes report on Tarr's new picture:
"Nothing gets 'driven' in a Béla Tarr picture — save for the impatient viewer, who will surely be driven mad. (I haven't seen this many walkouts at a Cannes press screening since The Brown Bunny.) Moving their camera one baleful centimeter at a time, Tarr and his D.P., Fred Kelemen (an accomplished director himself), take events that might occupy a single page of text, or even less, and transform them into slow-motion symphonies of light and shadow, movement and stasis. The Man from London was based on a novel by famed French mystery novelist Georges Simenon, but it evinces no interest in narrative, character or psychology. Instead, it's a virtuoso exercise in cinematography, using Simenon's story (said to be very internal) as a pretext for a series of expertly composed b&w images.
"That'll probably be more than enough to satisfy Tarr's small but loyal cadre of fans, who've endured a seven-year wait since his last feature, Werckmeister Harmonies. Personally, I run hot and cold on the guy — his legendary 7.5-hour Sátántangó, for examples, strikes me as about four hours of masterpiece and 3.5 hours of deadly self-indulgence. Since then, his self-indulgent side seems to have taken over. Several of Man from London's few dozen shots left me breathless, but the film as a whole feels oddly mummified; it's almost as if Tarr filmed his idea for the movie rather than the movie itself, if that makes any sense. If you've longed to see Tilda Swinton badly dubbed into Hungarian, however, you may never have another chance."
Hey, I've longed for that. As he said, it's been seven years since his masterpiece "Werckmeister Harmonies" (which made my top ten in 2001 at my old paper The Oregonian) so I'm as revved up to see his newest complex series of tracking shots as I am to watch Bruce Willis scale another skyscraper. Nothing says summer like Béla Tarr! (I just yelled that out the window to total indifference).
But I do understand why others don't take to Tarr. Just as I see why some can't get on board Gus Van Sant's Tarr influenced art films "Gerry," "Elephant" and "Last Days." As a friend once told me (the friend who lives in my head), these films that I love so much (including Van Sant's) are for photographers, windbag snobs or, in my case, people who are transfixed by the washing machine. That spin cycle is never long enough.
--posted by Kim Mighty Big of PearlWow. I'm not entirely surprised but Marianne Pearl really is a person with grace:
"In the film A Mighty Heart, a reporter is seen asking Mariane Pearl (played by Angelina Jolie), the wife of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, whether she had seen the tape of her husband's beheading. At a news conference Monday at the Cannes Film Festival where the film was screened for the first time, a reporter for Bloomberg News shocked those around him when he addressed Pearl, who was seated next to the filmmakers, and remarked, 'I was one of the reporters who covered the Danny Pearl murder in Karachi. I was the one who asked that question. ... Could you -- have you -- maybe now -- have you -- maybe -- forgiven me for that question, which I regret?' Pearl replied, 'I accept your apology.' The exchange triggered a murmur in the crowd of reporters, who had never previously seen such an exchange during a film festival news conference."
--posted by Kim 22 maggio Feeling Brucey
There can never be enough praise for my favorite Bruce, Bruce Campbell.
"At a recent press screening of SPIDER-MAN 3, a friend of mine overheard the one and the only Rex Reed say to one of his cronies, 'When will the Sam Raimi fans realize what a fu**ing awful actor Bruce Campbell is?' Now, as far as I'm concerned that's a real "consider the source" kinda quote, especially when you consider how Bruce Campbell's cameo is easily one of that film's highlights. It's especially funny if you know Bruce and his work, but even if you don't, it's still a great scene; the audience I saw the film with certainly thought so. But Reed's boneheaded observation does remind me that Bruce Campbell has been, and probably always will be, something of an acquired taste. After all, he'd be a heck of a lot more popular if he wasn't, wouldn't he?"
Get even more (the Old Spice Commerical is pretty freaking great) Brucey here. Yes, I feel oddly comfortable (though a little sick to my stomach) with the term Brucey.
And, in case you were wondering, that's his lovely wife Ida at right. Only a wife would stand with such cool demeamor while Bruce Campbell was making that face. And, for lack of a better word, it's pretty damn cute. Oh! Sick again.
--posted by Kim Reel RussiansLeo Tolstoy had a rocky marriage? No way!
To showcase this past, real life, literary drama, Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep are set to play Mr. and Mrs. Tolstoy in "The Last Station."
As much of an intriguing life Tolstoy led (and "Anna Karenina" is a page-turner--it really is), I'd like to see the story of my favorite Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky put to screen. There's lots to cover. Epilepsy, near death via firing squad while exiled in Siberia, money problems, the whole influencing modernist writing and existential philosophy...
And come on, how many other Russian writers are considered a "Problem Gambling Pioneer" by the American Gambling Association?
--posted by Kim |
|
|
