The Screengrab : julian schnabel

Screengrab Review: "Guest of Cindy Sherman"

Nick Schager — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Guest of Cindy Sherman fixates on a peripheral nobody residing in the orbit of a somebody, a tack that allows for an intimate, unguarded view of said luminary while simultaneously casting into sharp relief the wrongheadedness of its focus. Beginning in 1993, Paul H-O made a very minor name for himself as the host of Gallery Beat, an off-the-cuff public access television program in which (as director and host) he attended premiere shows and interviewed artists with an enthusiasm and candor that helped deflate the scene’s air of self-importance. A devoted fan who nonetheless refused to simply act the sycophantic PR mouthpiece for those he covered, H-O hardly qualified as a journalist but nonetheless provided a modestly unfiltered view of the art world. His gig eventually brought him into contact with celebrated photographer Cindy Sherman, who, bucking her usual protocol, let down her media-shy guard for a series of interviews with H-O and, later still, became his girlfriend and the frequent subject of his incessant filming, of which this absorbing yet lacking doc is primarily comprised.

Guest of Cindy Sherman’s narcissistic opening tracks the rise of H-O and Gallery Beat, a trifling success story that’s propped up by H-O’s forthrightness even as it fails to register as anything more than a footnote – albeit a sometimes amusing one, as when a confrontational Julian Schnabel denigrates Gallery Beat and, in the process, makes himself the epitome of artistic pomposity. This early material, however, is mere prologue for H-O’s developing relationship with Sherman, whose illustrious photographs feature her embodying various female roles and disguises – a means of confronting, among other things, issues of female/gender power dynamics – and whose public persona is that of the mysterious recluse. H-O’s on-camera chats with Sherman for his program are thus somewhat revelatory, showing a charming, understated personality far different than one might have expected on the basis of her often-confrontational work. It’s that friction, as well as Sherman herself, that soon proves most transfixing, and considerably more intriguing than H-O’s career recap of his famous ex-girlfriend, which indulges in lazy, tossed-off family-history psychologizing and talking-head analysis (from colleagues, friends, and editors and critics of Artforum and The New York Times) that only manages to skim the surface of both the artist and her art.

Though it’s Sherman who clearly warrants an in-depth non-fiction portrait, Guest of Cindy Sherman remains diligently focused on H-O, whose own marginalization in the relationship (and the glamorous, ritzy life that Sherman leads) comes to dominate the proceedings, as well as lends the film its title. H-O’s struggle to exist in the shadow of Sherman’s spotlight is a losing battle. And moreover, it ultimately derails his doc, which quickly devolves into off-putting egomaniacal boo-hooing, with H-O – and the similarly ignored and/or disrespected husbands of Elton John and Molly Ringwald (?) – recounting their trivial woe-is-me anecdotes about being cropped out of red carpet photos and seated at remote dinner tables at galas. Shallowly attempting to cast these second fiddle-plights as case studies of the flawed male ego, Guest of Cindy Sherman instead simply reduces itself to a vain investigation of a former affair in which listening to H-O complain (on radio, or at a public speaking gig) about the disproportionate paparazzi love showered on his star girlfriend is to hear someone mistake themselves as far more engaging and noteworthy than their life story indicates.

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "Guest of Cindy Sherman"

Phil Nugent — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The documentary Guest of Cindy Sherman is the unchallenged hot-gossip item of the Tribeca festival. The film, which credits Paul H-O (that's "Paul Hasegawa-Overacker" to his mama) and Tom Donahue as co-directors, uses a lot of footage from Gallery Beat, a New York public-access show that Paul H-O starred in during the 1990s, applying a snarky, "in" tone to coverage of the local art scene. Over the years, Paul — I don't really feel comfortable acting as if I'm on a first-name basis with the guy, but I'd just feel silly calling him "H-O" — became an accepted fixture of the New York art scene from barging into galleries on opening nights and shoving a microphone into people's faces, which may say something about how small and in-bred the scene is, though some would probably insist that it says something about how important New York public access broadcasting was in its glory days. Anyway, after the art star Cindy Sherman agreed, to the surprise of everyone, Paul included, to appear on the show, she and Paul became a couple, to the flabbergasted bewilderment of everyone, Paul included. All seemed to be going well in Paul's world for quite a while, as well it might, considering that Sherman was rich, acclaimed, beautiful, sweetly nurturing, and to judge from the photographic evidence available here, has aged less in the past twenty years than Paul has in the last two. But Paul, who had tried to crash the scene by making his own career as an artist before public access called out his name, felt increasingly self-conscious about the fact that his significant other was a big, big deal and he was a measly little nobody. (To give him his due, it does sound as if this situation was brought to his attention through some pretty cringe-worthy slights.)

Work began on the film when the two were still together, and there must have been a point when Sherman at least gave the impression of wanting to encourage Paul to make it; otherwise, it seems doubtful that the filmmakers would have had such easy access to many of the interview subjects who've worked with, or for, Sherman. But by the time the documentary was finished they'd broken up--or, as Paul puts it, he was "downsized" out of her life--and in the movie itself, Paul muses that Sherman may have begun to feel differently about his little make-work film project after it dawned on her that someone might actually see it. The film attracted considerable buzz in the days leading up to its first Tribeca screening, and this past week Sherman herself sent out a disclaimer: "As my name is in the title and my work and self are so abundantly represented, I would like to counter any assumption that I am or wish to be personally associated with it. I am not a participant in any events related to the film's screenings in this festival or future presentations. I apologize to all those who participated, thinking they were doing me a favor in giving interviews and otherwise assisting in the fabrication of this film. Against my better judgment, it was clearly unwise to cooperate with the project at it's inception."

It's easy to sympathize with Sherman's queasiness over having her ex-boyfriend showing their home movies in theaters and charging admission, but it must be said that Guest of Cindy Sherman adds up to more than a public display of ungentlemanly behavior. Sherman herself actually comes out pretty well in it, both as a person and as a counterweight to the preening macho men with whom she competed for attention in the 1980s, such as Julian Schnabel (seen here in an especially ludicrous clip from an old British TV documentary) and Robert Longo (who's glimpsed in an old TV interview wearing a hairdo that looks like an H. R. Giger creation that's eating his head). Paul himself comes across as a likable jerk and a schnorrer, with a surprisingly sharp grasp of who the trendy, market-driven art scene of the '80s and '90s worked. (The falsest touch, and the part of the movie that most smells of bad faith, has nothing to do with Sherman and their relationship: it's an eleventh-inning lament that Paul delivers about the hollow, corrupted values of the art scene today. It's not that what he says is wrong so much as that nothing you've seen up to that point has convinced you that he ever actually cared that much about art for itself. I do believe that he cared about Sherman, though; the movie may feel painfully personal to those whose lives he documents, but it's in no way a slag job. And maybe because of the discretion that Paul himself shows in his depiction of Sherman, she retains her distance from the camera; at the end she seems attractive, likable, even hard to resist, but essentially, mysteriously unknowable, while Paul is happy to cariacture himself as an insecure party crasher who got lucky, for a while. For all its flair and smart talk, Guest of Cindy Sherman ends on a note of genuine sadness and loss.

DVD Digest for April 29, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week: Criterion caters to the kids, Anthony Mann's final historical epic gets the deluxe treatment, and a pair of critics-turned-DVD-distributors unveil their latest hidden treasure.

DVD of the week: Winning awards at both Cannes and the Oscars in 1956, Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon has, in the last fifty years become a short-form classic. It's long been a classroom staple throughout the world, and the film it inspired, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon is currently playing in limited release to enthusiastic reviews. The Red Balloon makes its DVD premiere this week as the centerpiece of the latest Criterion box set, Three Children's Classics. The set also includes Lamorisse's 1953 short White Mane and William Mason's 1966 film Paddle to the Sea, both of which are also making their DVD debut. At a time when most entertainment geared to kids seems concerned primarily with feeling current, these three films are in the tradition of classic family entertainments that stimulate their imaginations without pandering or condescending. Even if you don't have children of your own, they're well worth buying for yourself.

The week's other classic coming to DVD is the Weinstein Company's release of Anthony Mann's Roman epic The Fall of the Roman Empire, as part of their "Miriam Collection." Produced by super-producer Samuel Bronston, the film was one of the last mega-budgeted historical epics (and box-office flop), and one of the most interesting aspects of the seeing the film is simply to marvel at its sheer largesse. The Weinsteins include a commentary and a number of documentaries on both the "Two Disc Special Edition" and the "Limited Collector's Edition Gift Set," but of primary interest is the film itself. If nothing else, it should be interesting to compare Mann's film to the Oscar-winning Gladiator, which tells much the same story using CGI effects.

On the new-release front, this week brings the DVD debut of Julian Schnabel's acclaimed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Buena Vista), which garnered nominations for best director, best adapted screenplay, and best cinematography at last year's Academy Awards. Also of note this week: The Golden Compass (New Line, also Blu-Ray), which is being released in both single- and double-disc editions; Katherine Heigl in 27 Dresses (Fox, also Blu-Ray); and the Denzel Washington-directed and -starring The Great Debaters (The Weinstein Company).

Finally, a shout out to our friends Andrew Grant and Aaron Hillis, critics-turned-proprietors of the upstart distribution shingle Benten Films. For their third release, Grant and Hillis have selected Todd Rohal's Slamdance-winning indie The Guatemalan Handshake. Not content to shine a light into overlooked corners of American independent cinema, Benten seeks to give its releases the first-class treatement, and Guatemalan Handshake arrives this week in a two-disc edition that includes commentary, a music video, behind-the scenes footage, short films, and an essay by filmmaker David Gordon Green. I'm looking forward to checking out the film and all subsequent Benten releases.

"It Doesn't Matter What I Think I Am, It Matters What I Do"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Julian Schnabel, director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, talks to the Guardian's Francine Stock. And talks. And talks. And talks.

Schnabel has always had a reputation as...well, a polite person would say "somewhat difficult". An impolite person would say "a complete asshole". Since making the transition from visual artist to filmmaker -- a transition which he still won't discuss in anything but the thorniest terms -- he certainly hasn't lost his ability to be really contentious, as this interview (conducted at the British Film Institute Southbank) makes clear. He argues with Stock over the proper attribution of a Pablo Picasso quote, consults an eleven-year-old boy on the possiblity of a film adaptation of Kerouac's On the Road, asks "Whoever heard of the Coen Brothers?", and generally behaves like the tyro he used to be when he was just a New York scenester.

On the other hand, he does grace us with a fun story about being heckled by a drunken Sean Young, so at least there's that.

Paul Clark Predicts the Oscar Nominees

Paul Clark — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

"Nobody knows anything." Screenwriter William Goldman immortalized that phrase a few decades ago, and it's as true this Oscar season as it's always been. Perhaps even more so — not only are many Oscar races still wide-open, but the status of the ceremony itself is up in the air. But for now the show is still happening, which means the nominations are set to be announced tomorrow morning. Here are my hasty, shot-in-the-dark predictions in the top six categories:

Best Picture:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Into the Wild
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men

I think we can all agree that No Country is in, right? Beyond that, it's something of a crap shoot. Michael Clayton is the kind of classy star vehicle the Academy usually responds to, and audience favorite Juno has become too big a word of mouth phenomenon to ignore. At one point, Atonement was looking like a front-runner for the win, but its Oscar buzz has subsided. On the other side of the coin, There Will Be Blood may be too bleak for the voters to embrace — it would have a better chance were it the year's undisputed critical champ, but with No Country in the mix, PTA's masterpiece could be shut out here. Instead, I'm predicting The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, an acclaimed true-life story that's only gaining momentum, and Into the Wild, the year's most Oscar-baity film directed by a respected actor, which is something that tends to go over well with the actor-filled Academy membership.

Best Actor:
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

Even if the Academy decides to overlook There Will Be Blood, they won't be able to deny the awesomeness of Day-Lewis' blazing performance as Plainview. Likewise, Clooney and Depp have recently become Academy favorites, and I dare say that had Sweeney Todd done more business Depp would've been the one to beat here. Hirsch is a bit iffier here given his age, but he carries Into the Wild on his capable shoulders, and if the film gets nominated I'm guessing he will be too. With the recent groundswell for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I think Matthieu Amalric should be seen as a contender here, although not nearly as much as if he was an American star. Instead, I'm going with Mortensen — Eastern Promises didn't exactly set the world on fire, but his performance was the highlight, and I think voters will take the opportunity to honor him not only for this role but also for his overlooked turns in A History of Violence and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Best Actress:
Amy Adams, Enchanted
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart
Ellen Page, Juno

Throughout this awards season, three names kept popping up in this rare — Christie, Cotillard, and Page. So it's pretty safe to assume they'll make it in. That leaves us two spots in a relatively weak year for buzzed-about performances (sadly, Black Book's Carice Van Houten has no traction whatsoever). With very little competition, Jolie should make the cut — the film didn't make much of a dent, but her stardom has kept her in the race. The final spot is anyone's guess. High-profile star turns (Jodie Foster in The Brave One, Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age) have flopped at the box office, while respected performers in independent films (notably Laura Linney in The Savages) have been lost in the year-end shuffle. That leaves Amy Adams in Enchanted, a star-making performance by a previous nominee in a hit movie that's still fresh in people's minds.

Best Director:
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Sean Penn, Into the Wild
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

At this point, Best Director is the Coens' to lose. Even if someone else takes home Best Picture, I think it's still their year in this category. I also think the Directors Branch will be impressed by Sean Penn's metamorphosis into serious filmmaker, as well as Schnabel's unconventional, inspired filmmaking choices in Diving Bell. For this year's semi-obligatory non-Best Picture-nominated director, I'm predicting Anderson, a respected maverick whose filmmaking chops in There Will Be Blood are undeniable even if the film itself is too much for some audiences. Of the two remaining Best Picture nominees, I think Gilroy has the edge over Juno's Jason Reitman for two reasons: (1) crowd-pleasing comedies tend to get shut out of this category, and (2) Gilroy is a veteran screenwriter makes an impressive directorial debut. But don't be surprised if another "lone director" — say, Sidney Lumet for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, or Tim Burton for Sweeney Todd — gets the nod instead.

Best Supporting Actor:
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tommy Lee Jones, No Country for Old Men
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

In a year without Bardem, this race might have come down to Grand Old Actor Holbrook vs. veteran character actor Wilkinson. But Bardem casts a long shadow over this category, with Chigurh the creepiest villain in an Oscar-feted film since Hannibal Lecter. Charlie Wilson's War wasn't the Oscar juggernaut that it was predicted to be, but I still think Hoffman's scene-stealing turn will make it in. I think this year's biggest surprise will be the absence of Casey Affleck's performance in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Affleck's the only serious competition Bardem has had among the precursor awards, but Jesse James was a box-office flop and Affleck's performance could give voters the willies. Max Von Sydow's affecting turn in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly might have had a chance here — as a means of honoring one of the world's most esteemed actors and, by extension, his recently-departed longtime collaborator Ingmar Bergman — except that he might not have enough screentime to be a contender. Instead, I'm giving the edge to Jones, an Academy favorite who came roaring back this year to give two acclaimed performances after a decade's worth of commercial crap.

Best Supporting Actress:
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Catherine Keener, Into the Wild
Kelly MacDonald, No Country for Old Men
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Once again, three names keep popping up in this category: Blanchett, Ryan, and Swinton. I think they'll all get nominated, though who will win remains to be seen (early shot-in-the-dark prediction: a Swinton upset). The other two spots are less certain. But consider that, more than any other category, the Best Supporting Actress nominees are largely composed of performers who starred opposite other Oscar nominees. In this respect, I think contenders such as Ruby Dee in American Gangster, Marisa Tomei in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and especially Saoirse Ronan in Atonement, are at a disadvantage here. Instead, I'm predicting the fourth spot to go to Catherine Keener, getting her third nomination in this category for her moving turn in Into the Wild. The final slot comes down to Jennifer Garner in Juno and Kelly MacDonald in No Country for Old Men. Despite Garner's greater name recognition, I'm giving the edge to MacDonald, both for No Country's frontrunner status and for playing one of Oscar's favorite characters, the supportive, long-suffering wife. But honestly, it could go either way.

Watch for the Oscar nominations tomorrow, January 22. And remember, nobody knows anything.

Take Five: The Betrayal of the Body

Peter Smith — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Julian Schnabel, who's proved to be a much more interesting film director than he was a painter, has caused quite a stir in France with his latest, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Opening in limited release this weekend, the film deals with a French fashion magazine editor who suffers a paralyzing stroke and is forced to communicate with the world — telling tales not only of his internal imprisonment, but also of his rich interior life — the only way he can: by blinking out the words with his left eyelid, the sole part of his body he can still control. The idea that the human body is as much a prison as a vehicle is as old as Shakespeare, and it's likewise yielded a number of fine films, particularly from directors who've had their own bodies betray them, or those of their loved ones. When the mind is still sharp but seems to exist solely as a captive of a body, without which it cannot survive, but to which it is frustratingly bound, some outstanding, if terribly depressing, dramatic situations can ensue. Here are five films dealing with the ways in which the mind can become a prisoner of the body — and the ways in which those minds seek escape.

JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (1971)

For many decades, a number of prominent directors had sought permission to make a film of Dalton Trumbo's stunningly powerful anti-war novel. Trumbo (a longtime victim of Hollywood's anti-Communist blacklist) always refused, saying that only he could properly translate the novel — which deals with a WWI veteran who loses his arms, legs and face to an exploding shell and desperately seeks a way to communicate his rage at the futility of the loss to the world — to film. When he finally did, it was an odd effort, to say the least, but it featured many of the book's most essential themes and powerful scenes. (A remake, based on a recent stage adaptation, is currently in the works.)

THE FLY (1986)

David Cronenberg's films have a number of common threads, but if one attitude hovers above them all, it's the simultaneous attraction to and revulsion at the human body — its vitality as well as its decay. Although the theme is present in almost all of his movies, nowhere is it more purely realized than in his remake of The Fly, where scientist Seth Brundle's slow disintegration and dehumanization as he transforms into a monster is both subtly and explicitly compared to the progress of those suffering from deadly diseases like cancer and AIDS. In a number of the movie's most telling and memorable pieces of dialogue, the director's fascination with the body's potential and the horror at its easy disintegration are obvious.

MY LEFT FOOT (1989)

Christy Brown's childhood could have — should have — been a brief, sad nightmare. Born with crippling cerebral palsy, he was barely expected to live, let alone thrive. But his fiercely determined mother refused to believe that there wasn't a lively mind inside that shattered body, and kept at the young Irishman to grow and to think, until he eventually learned to read, to write, and to paint with the left foot of the title, his only working limb. Borne to lofty heights largely on the strength of a terrific performance as Brown by Daniel Day-Lewis, My Left Foot was the directorial debut of Jim Sheridan, who went on to make other well-received, Oscar-nominated films such as The Field, In the Name of the Father and In America before somehow landing at the helm of 50 Cent's vanity project, Get Rich or Die Tryin', after which he presumably died of shame.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME (1991)

Master documentarian Errol Morris wisely assumed that audiences wouldn't be entirely enthralled by a straightforward discussion of the heavy-duty astrophysics contained in scientist Stephen Hawking's book of the same name. So he wisely chose to focus as much on Hawking himself as on his theories; Hawking is an endlessly compelling figure; despite having developed Lou Gehrig's disease in his early twenties, which has confined him to a wheelchair and made him incapable of speech or all but the tiniest movements, he is widely considered a scientific genius on the level of Albert Einstein. Morris presents some of Hawking's theories and, like the book that gives his film its name, attempts to make them accessible to the causal viewer, but likewise presents the enigma of the man who made them and asks us to consider the power of a the mind that occupies that nearly useless body.

FRIDA (2002)

Julie Taymor's biopic of the notorious Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is plagued with problems — spotty performances, a suspect script and more hoary clichés than you can shake a paintbrush at. But it's visually inventive, well-framed, and as good a cinematic look as we're likely ever going to get at the singular Ms. Kahlo. The brilliant, temperamental Frida was involved, at a young age, in a horrific accident that left her scarred for life and in constant pain, and while she became a celebrity, a heroine, and a towering figure in the arts of her homeland, she was never able to escape the wounds, both physical and psychic, left to her by the trauma.

— Leonard Pierce

Schnabel Speaks

Peter Smith — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:00:00 GMT

After Julian Schnabel made his directorial debut with the 1996 biopic Basquiat, the art critic Robert Hughes called it a movie about the worst painter of the 1980s, made by the second worst. (Because Schnabel cast it from the ranks of all his fashionable New York character actor friends, he also made it possible for The New Yorker's Anthony Lane to describe it as the kind of movie in which "Christopher Walken passes for normal.") Rather surprisingly, Schnabel has kept at it, and now, seven years after his remarkable second film Before Night Falls, he's back with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on the acclaimed memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby.

The movie, like the book, recounts Bauby's struggle with near-total physical paralysis after he had suffered a massive stroke. Bauby wrote the book by "dictating" it, one letter at a time, by blinking his left eye. He died, at forty-five, days after the book was published. In the movie, he is played by Mathieu Amalric, of Munich and Kings and Queen, widely known among U.S. audiences as "that guy who looks like Roman Polanski's nicer brother."

This Times article tells the story: the producer Kathleen Kennedy had originally bought the rights to the book and was set to make it with Johnny Depp in the lead, and Depp, another celebrity friend of Schnabel's, brought him in to direct it before being forced to abandon it himself, due to his commitment to what Schabel calls "that pirate thing." Kennedy stuck with Schnabel, though, even after he insisted on making the film with a mostly French cast, and in French, which the studio probably thought was a hell of a consolation prize for not getting to make it with Johnny Depp. It all seems to have turned out all right; Schnabel won the best director prize at Cannes, and the movie's glittery trailer looks beautiful and even, in a strange way, kind of joyful. The only problem is that Schnabel, who is stubbornly atached to his identity a painter, is now becoming known to some, much to his dismay, as a movie maker. The good news is that he tries not to hold it against them. "I don’t think that people know too much about painting. I don’t think that they really understand what it is. I mean, I don’t want to put anybody down. I just think more people understand the language of movies than of paintings." Sadly, the question of whether he thinks Robert Hughes might be one of those people either never comes up in his interviews or has yet to yield a printable response. — Phil Nugent

Trailer Roundup: Jumper, P.S. I Love You, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Peter Smith — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Jumper

Okay, looks like there’s two ways this could go — entertaining silly or dumb silly. But either way, chances are pretty good that it’ll get silly, which is fine with me since too many big-budget action movies take themselves way too seriously. But then, how do you play a movie about guys who teleport (or "jump") with a completely straight face? The one thing that has me a little uneasy about Jumper is the presence of Hayden Christensen in the lead role. Sure, he’s attractive and in good shape, but when you’re casting the role of a self-centered guy who uses his super-power for his own benefit, you should probably cast someone who possesses more edge and sexual danger than a Ken doll. Jamie Bell, on the other hand, looks to be having a lot of fun, and at the very least the trailer seems to promise the Christensen vs. Samuel L. Jackson battle that was denied to them when they were playing Mannequin Skywalker and Mace Windu.

P.S.: I Love You

Now that Hilary Swank has won two Best Actress Oscars for the two good movies she's made to date, Hollywood seems committed to turning her into a major movie star, despite the fact that she’s not especially likable or charismatic. So after the inspirational-teacher drama Freedom Writers and the supernatural horror of The Reaping earlier this year, she's ready to unleash her inner Meg Ryan with P.S. I Love You. It would be one thing if this was merely sappy-looking, but the problems I have with this movie run a whole lot deeper. Like it or not, pop culture does influence our dreams and fantasies, and the idea of a movie in which a young woman's dead husband has penned a series of letters to help the woman he loves move forward after his death strikes me as more than a little dishonest. Most widowed spouses have to deal with a mountain of unfinished business and unanswered questions following the death of their loved ones, without the benefit of magical posthumous missives to guide them every step of the way. Some move on, some don’t, but they must learn to do it on their own. Besides, what fatal disease affords its victim plenty of time and energy to formulate an intricate plan to be carried out after his death? Wouldn’t he have been busy, y'know, suffering?

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Normally, I dislike trailers for foreign-language films that avoid showing any subtitles. But in this case I’d say it was the right choice, since Diving Bell is the latest film from artist-director Julian Schnabel, whose films emphasize visual flair over memorable dialogue. There’s no mention of Schnabel until the very end of the trailer — strange considering that by all accounts he's hardly the self-effacing type — but between the unique imagery and the portrait of a tragic artist, there’s no mistaking who was behind the camera. And it’s nice to see Matthieu Amalric in a meaty, high-profile role like this. I know it’s been said before, but when a filmmaker decides to make The Roman Polanski Story, Amalric's really the only logical choice for the lead role.

— Paul Clark