The Screengrab : the pianist

Set Your DVR! December 22 - 29, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I don't know if your Christmas week is anything like mine (if you even have a Christmas week, that is), but every year, I spend an inordinate amount of time on the couch. It's a good way to be with family without having to, y'know, talk with anyone. I usually lay there, using my mind only to ponder how full my belly is and wondering how long it will take me to digest enough to make room for another slice of pecan pie. But this year, instead of mindless entertainment, I intend to engage with some movies! Maybe that will take my mind off of food. For a little while, at least. Here's what's good this week, in the central/eastern format. I'm also moving overnight movies to the prior day write-up, which is my policy from here forward.

Monday, December 22:

Monday offers two flicks about evil and naivety! What could be better than considering evil during the final weeks of the year? Au Revoir, Les Enfants is Louis Malle's examination of life in a French boarding school during the Vichy occupation. Our young protagonist seems to be going through normal kid issues, but his innocence is threatened by the War and his growing suspicion that a schoolmate might be a hidden Jew. The Quiet American is based on Graham Greene's novel about a not-so-well meaning journalist encountering a CIA agent in 1950s Vietnam. Strangely enough, the CIA agent may be the more naive of the two.

12:30/1:30 pm: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC.
2:30/3:30 pm The Quiet American on IFC.
2:30/3:30 am: Enemy Mine on AMC.
5:05/6:05 am: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC.

Tuesday, December 23:

Tuesday's full of anti-war sci-fi in the AM! Maybe it's not great sci-fi, but it's (probably) worth a viewing, especially with impressionable young minds around you. Enemy Mine, one of my favorite movies when I was 13, is about setting asides differences in the face of a hostile universe. I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I recall that it had a strong anti-war and pro-cooperation message. A far better movie (with far less latex and, well, mostly the same message) is the original The Day The Earth Stood Still, an untouchable classic that only a fool would attempt to remake. Finally, The Day After is a good way to wrap up the morning with some schlock that originally aired on TV when I was exactly the right age for a nascent political awakening (that would be 1983, when I was 11). In light of the dramatic depiction of the harshness of life after a nuclear attack on the US, I remember my shock and disbelief when I overheard President Granddaddy Ronald Reagan on TV pushing for more nuclear weapons. He lost my vote that day.

In the afternoon, there's John Ford's 3 Godfathers, which is like a Western version of Three Men And A Baby, only with death and despair. Awesome! Then Roman Polanski's The Pianist offers a little more death and despair. And finally, as a salve to all of this suffering, Lubitsch's The Shop Around The Corner is the sweetest and bestest romantic comedy that ever graced celluloid. (Note: the overnight movie discussed here rather than on the prior day for thematic purposes.)

2:30/3:30 am: Enemy Mine on AMC.
7/8 am: The Day The Earth Stood Still on AMC.
9/10 am: The Day After on SCIFI.
3/4 pm: 3 Godfathers on TCM.
4:30/5:30 pm: The Pianist on IFC.
5/6 pm: The Shop Around The Corner on TCM.
2/3 am: The Shop Around The Corner on TCM.

Wednesday, December 24:

Christmas Eve brings more despair! I recommend that you choose wisely and then go volunteer in a soup kitchen. Nobody Knows is a 2004 Japanese film based on a true story about children who were horribly neglected by an unfit mother and then abandoned to survive on their wits alone. Guaranteed to make the hardest heart break down and openly weep. Brother's Keeper is the uplifting documentary about a rural community that rallies around a near-feral farming family when one brother is accused of murdering another. The Delicate Art of the Rifle is a microbudget indie about a sniper on a college campus. Death and the Maiden is Roman Polanski's film (of the Ariel Dorfman play) in which a woman (Sigourney Weaver, who has never been better) is convinced that the man who gave her husband a ride home was the man who tortured and raped her while she was a prisoner of the previous brutal regime. It is stunningly good and sadly underappreciated. Finally, Bad Santa is the salve for all that ails us.

6/7 am: Nobody Knows on IFC.
8:30/9:30 am: Brother’s Keeper on IFC.
10:30/11:30 am: The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC.
12:05/1:05 pm: Nobody Knows on IFC.
2:45/3:45 pm: Brother’s Keeper on IFC.
4:35/5:35 pm: The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC.
6:15/7:15 pm: Death and the Maiden on IFC.
10/11 pm: Bad Santa on Comedy Central.

Thursday, December 25:

Tidings of comfort and joy for all: TCM has a film fest of Bogie's most iconic movies on Christmas Day. That'll deck your halls with boughs of something. Note that it runs all night.

7/8 am: 3 Godfathers on TCM.
2/3 pm: Bad Santa on Comedy Central.
7/8 pm: Casablanca on TCM.
9/10 pm: The Big Sleep on TCM.
11 pm/12 am: The Maltese Falcon on TCM.
1/2 am: The African Queen on TCM.
3/4 am: High Sierra on TCM.

Friday, December 26:

Back to our regularly scheduled holiday sadness! George Washington is a must-see film about youths who can't see a future for themselves in their quiet North Carolina town. Elephant is about youths whose future is brutally taken away for reasons unknown. And The Honeymoon Killers is about hideous sociopaths who love each other and brutalize the world. Happy fucking Boxing Day!

9/10 am: George Washington on IFC.
10:35/11:35 am: Elephant on IFC.
2:05/3:05 pm: George Washington on IFC.
3:35/4:35 pm: Elephant on IFC.
5/6 pm: The Honeymoon Killers on IFC.
3:35/4:35 am The Honeymoon Killers on IFC.
5:25/6:25 am: George Washington on IFC.

Saturday, December 27:

Saturday is about Japan. First up is The Greatest Story Ever Told, aka The Seven Samurai. I believe I recently wrote here that The Wild Bunch was the best film ever. That's only half-true, because The Seven Samurai is its equal. Damn, this movie is good. Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon isn't even close to the same league, but it's pretty great on its own. Finally, Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle is not the best Miyazaki movie, but it's wonderful and highly, highly recommended.

7/8 am: The Seven Samurai on IFC.
10:30/11:30 am: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on IFC.
2:30/3:30 pm: Howl’s Moving Castle on IFC.
4:30/5:30 pm: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on IFC.

Sunday, December 28:

Wait, Sunday is about Japan. Rashomon, another film by Akira Kurosawa, is iconic and a must-see for fans of cinema, although it isn't quite as great as his best movies. The Bad Sleep Well is Kurosawa's corporate office take on Hamlet. Of his three Shakespeare adaptations (the other two are Throne of Blood/MacBeth and Ran/King Lear), it is the least, but it's full of his distinct sensibilities and very enjoyable. Finally, Malick's The Thin Red Line is half-war movie and half-nature documentary and all about the human soul. Overnight, there's Tati's utterly delightful Mr. Hulot's Holiday, which is full of wit and pratfalls.

7/8 am: Rashomon on IFC.
8:30/9:30 am: The Bad Sleep Well on IFC.
8/9 pm: The Thin Red Line on IFC.
2/3 am: Mr. Hulot’s Holiday on TCM.
2:30/3:30 am: The Thin Red Line on IFC

Monday, December 29:

Dreary Monday! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a film based on a play that delights in its own postmodernity. If you watched The Bad Sleep Well, definitely follow it up with this. And then put off whatever it is that you're supposed to be doing. Kiss of Death is one of the great film noirs. The Sweet Hereafter, Atom Egoyan's film based on Russell Banks's devastating novel, will ruin you in a good way. And The Player is Robert Altman's great tribute/kiss-off to Hollywood.

6:50/7:50 am: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on IFC.
9/10 am: Kiss of Death on FMC.
1:30/2:30 pm: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on IFC.
9/10 pm: The Sweet Hereafter on IFC.
11 pm/12 am: The Player on IFC.

Roman Polanski: Wanted in Los Angeles, Desired in Turin

Phil Nugent — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

For almost a year now, Marina Zenovich's documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which deals with the Los Angeles criminal case that turned the director of Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby into a fugitive from American justice, has been kicking up dust in both film and legal circles. In 1977, Polanski was arrested on six felony counts arising from charges that he had drugged and raped a thirteen-year-old girl at a private photo shoot he had arranged at his friend Jack Nicholson's house. In a plea bargain, Polanski, who had been staring down a possible life sentence if convicted on all counts, pled guilty to a single count of "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor", and expected to receive probation, a sentence that would have been in keeping with recommendations made by psychiatrists advising the court. In the end, Polanski fled the country, though only after spending 42 days locked up in a maximum-security prison where he was to receive a "psychological evaluation." What the documentary, which draws on interviews with both defense and prosecution attorneys involved in the case, makes clear is that Polanski skipped out only after deciding that he couldn't trust the judge, Lawrence J. Rittenband, a starstruck jackass whose delight at being at the center of a high-profile case had turned to distress over the bad publicity he was getting from Hollywood reporters chastising him for going easy on a rich pervert filmmaker with a "Children of the night!" foreign accent. (The subtitle of Zenovich's film is a sly reference to the different ways that Polanski was regarded in America and in Europe.) On two occasions, Rittenband demanded that the lawyers play-act scenes with him for the benefit of the reporters, and reneged on deals he'd made when he didn't like his press clippings. (Rittenband has since died, but in the movie, retired Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson, who speaks about Polanski as if he were something he'd found sticking to his shoe, recalls warning Polanski's lawyer about Rittenband and says that if he'd found himself at the legal mercy of a freak like Rittenband, he probably would have been on the next plane himself.) Now lawyers for Polanski have filed a request the dismiss the outstanding warrant against him, citing the evidence of "a pattern of misconduct and improper communications" revealed in the film. If the charges are dropped--a move that Polanski's alleged victim calls for in the film--the 75-year-old winner of the 2002 Academy Award for Best Director (for The Pianist) will finally be able to visit the U.S. for the first time in thirty years. A spokeswoman for the District Attorney's office told reporters that she couldn't comment on the new developments because the D.A. was s till waiting to be served with the motion. She knew all about it, though. Saw it on the TV news.

While he waits for the results of the Los Angeles Superior Court hearing scheduled in January, Polanksi is maintaining his regular schedule of getting his feet kissed in Europe. He recently showed up at the Turin Film Festival, site of an enormous career retrospective thrown in his honor. Neil Harris reports that "At the nearby Museo Nazionale del Cinema, the gantry that snakes around its spectacular five-storey exhibition hall is decorated with blown-up photographs from the director's own collection. Viewed together, they offer fascinating insights into the making of such iconic masterworks as Repulsion, Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby. A snap from the latter's set sees its star Mia Farrow visibly delighted by a chart breaking down her performance into separate components. Polanski, whose directing style has not always inspired descriptions of his actors as being "visibly delighted", rolled into town to co-star in a Q & A session with director Nanni Moretti (The Son's Room), the festival's artistic director. Describing the challenges he's placed in front of himself on some projects, Polanski said that "Telling stories is not enough. I need something more difficult to achieve." He also admitted to the odd failure or two. The most spectacular of these on his resume is Pirates, the $40 million bellyflop that Polanski had actually been working on before his arrest and that was finally released in 1986, only to serve as a reminder to the world that if you're working on an expensive project that you've conceived for Jack Nicholson to star in and find yourself making it with Walter Matthau in the lead, something has gone terribly wrong. "It was a nightmare from beginning to end. Every day something new would go wrong," Polanski recalled of the shoot, adding, "I should have got a special award just for finishing it." Or maybe, as Chico Marx might put it, he should have been offered a really special award in exchange for agreeing not to finish it.

Polanski Sexual Assault Victim Gives Thumb's Up to "Polanski: The Movie"

Phil Nugent — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:30:00 GMT

When Roman Polanski won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Pianist, he became the first filmmaker to win that Oscar while a fugitive from U. S. justice. In 1977, Polanski was arrested and charged with rape and drugging a minor after Samantha Geimer (or Samantha Gailey, as she was then known), a thirteen-year-old girl who he wanted to photograph for French Vogue, claimed that he had plied her with champagne and quaaludes and then assaulted her at the private shoot he had arranged at Jack Nicholson's house. Polanksi, who has always maintained that he was set up as part of a scheme by the girl's mother to blackmail him, arranged a deal to plea to a lesser charge, only to flee the country after being advised that the judge intended to set aside the plea bargain and throw the book at him. (He faced a possible prison term of fifty-years.) He hasn't been back to the States since, though Samantha Geimer, interviewed in the wake of The Pianist's release, said that as far as she was concerned, "Straight up, what he did to me was wrong. But I wish he would return to America so the whole ordeal can be put to rest for both of us."

All this and more is covered in the eagerly awaited HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which had its premiere showing in New York this week. Jada Yuan of New York magazine's "Vulture" blog reports that one party of three that showed up for the event were: Samantha Geimer, accompanied by her mother and husband. Geimer, who lives in Hawaii, has three kids and works for a real estate developer, agreed to let the filmmakers interview about what happened thirty years ago because, ""Generally for me, it's just easier that if people want to talk to me, I talk to them. That way they don't sit out in front of my house and wait for me." Still, you might think that she wouldn't have been up to flying in from the big island to see it all gone over again onscreen. On the contrary, "We thought this would be really fun. We don't get many chances to come to New York, so I was really happy to come and see the city and do all this fabulous stuff. Got to be back to work on Friday or the boss will fire me." As for the movie, she endorses it heartily, and maybe, a bit, to her surprise: "I didn't think somebody could make it that interesting."

Trailer Review: Defiance

Paul Clark — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Oh baby, that Ed Zwick reeeeeeeeeeally wants an Oscar, doesn't he? Haven't failed to bring home the gold despite taking on the Civil War, Gulf War I, terrorism, the samurai lifestyle, and African conflict diamonds, now he's taking the tried-and-true route: a WW2 epic. More to the point, a drama about three brothers protecting a community of Jews from the Nazis. But Zwick being Zwick, there's much more action here than in such films as The Pianist and Schindler's List, with the brothers hiding their Jewish charges in the forest and arming them to fight back. When star Daniel Craig says, "we may be hunted like animals, but we will not become animals," it's hard not to be reminded of his character in Munich, who bluntly declared, "don't fuck with the Jews." After Blood Diamond and The Last Samurai, Zwick's got a lot of explaining to do, and unless I hear that he's somehow turned over a new leaf, I think I'll pass on this one.

DVD Digest for January 8, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:00:00 GMT

In our ongoing efforts to give our readers what they want, this week we're premiering a weekly column called DVD Digest, a roundup of the week's notable Region 1 DVD releases that will run every Tuesday morning. DVD Digest is not meant to be a comprehensive list of new offerings on DVD, but should work as a convenient rundown for anyone going DVD shopping.

DVD of the Week: The big news this week on the DVD front is the Paramount Home Video's release of Zodiac: 2-Disc Director's Cut, which finally does justice to one of 2007's most acclaimed films. The DVD contains a number of added and extended scenes- including a scene that was the source for the early promotional image seen at right. There are also a host of special features including: a commentary with David Fincher; another featuring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., producer Brad Fischer, screenwriter James Vanderbilt, and novelist James Ellroy; featurettes on the special effects; sequence breakdowns; and documentaries about the case and the film's prime suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen. My only complaint is why Paramount made us wait for this edition, considering they released a bare-bones edition last summer.

Other Recent Releases Coming to DVD:
3:10 to Yuma (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray)
Death Sentence (Fox)
Dragon Wars (Sony, also Blu-Ray)
Eagle vs. Shark (Buena Vista)
Golden Door (Buena Vista)
The Invasion (Warner, also HD and Blu-Ray)
Sunshine (Fox, also Blu-Ray)

TV Shows Coming to DVD:
The Best of the Johnny Cash Show (Sony)
The Riches: Season 1 (Fox)
Two and a Half Men: The Complete Second Season (Warner)

Of course, there are also some older films receiving new DVD editions this week, most notably Warner's Directors' Showcase Take 3 box set. The most notable title in the set is Daryl Duke's Payday, a half-forgotten 1974 classic starring Rip Torn as a down'n'out country singer on the road. Other titles in the set are Personal Best, Tell Me a Riddle, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and The Ritz.

Finally, I'd like to at least mention a highly, well, eclectic selection of Universal Titles that are premiering on HD this week: Roman Polanski's Palme d'Or- and Oscar-winning The Pianist; the 1991 Christian Slater vehicle Mobsters (aka Young Tommy Guns); and the Michael Keaton-starring j-horror wannabe White Noise, which is getting an HD release in conjunction with the Keaton-less direct-to-DVD sequel. Just in case you were wondering...