Video of the Day 2: Martin Scorsese’s “Mirror, Mirror”
4/10/2007 5:00:00 PM
An interesting curiosity, "Mirror, Mirror" was Scorsese’s contribution to Steven Spielberg’s TV series, Amazing Stories. The show itself wasn't particularly well conceived, mainly due to scripts that looked like they'd been messed around in development for far too long. (But the direction was often top notch; Joe Dante and Phil Joanou did episodes, too.) The episode Scorsese helmed was a supernatural thriller starring Sam Waterston, and it even had a brief role for an up and coming Tim Robbins. It was written by Joesph Minion, who earlier had written Sorsese’s inventive black comedy, After Hours.
Though given a budget of a $1 million, this would be the first time since Raging Bull that Scorsese didn't collaborate with his now long time editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. Before he helmed Cape Fear, this was the director’s first foray into horror, and allowed him to pay homage to the Hammer horror and Mario Bava movies that he's always raved about.
The above clip is part one. Go to YouTube for parts two and three.
— Faisal Qureshi
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“What Does It Say About an Art Form When Its Preeminent Venue is an Archive?”
4/10/2007 4:00:00 PM
I'm a big fan of experimental and avant-garde film. On the other hand, I live in San Antonio, which is sort of like living in Siberia and being a big fan of coconuts and snorkeling. New York, naturally, is where the action is, but according to Ed Halter in the Village Voice, too much of the action consists of turning around and looking backwards.
In the course of a short piece dealing with a retrospective of the Collective for Living Cinema taking place this month at the Anthology Film Archives and the Orchard Street Gallery, Halter asks some pretty pointed questions about the tendency in experimental film circles to fetishize the distant past at the expense of ignoring what — if anything — is happening now. "The past of experimental cinema may be overtaking the present," he warns, noting that while two major venues for avant-garde film in New York have stopped hosting screenings, while revivals and survey-course festivals sell more and more tickets. Concluding with what can be read as either a promise or a threat, Halter says "with an increasing amount of avant-garde history behind us, the archival urge is only bound to grow."
— Leonard Pierce
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DVD Tuesday: Twin Peaks, Baby Blues, and a Whole Lotta TV
4/10/2007 3:15:00 PM
The DVD set released this Tuesday that film fans have been awaiting the most is no doubt Twin Peaks: The Complete Second Season, Paramount's compilation of the David Lynch-produced show's final 22 episodes. The second season turned out to have less popular appeal and lower ratings, and the network imposed some restrictions on the narrative, the biggest being solve the damn murder. Once Lynch and Mark Frost did that, however, their interest, at least in one interpretation of what happened next, waned, and Lynch took it out on his fans by pressing a bleak ending on the series. This seems likely as far as it goes, but it ignores the fact that most Lynch films end bleakly, regardless — and anyway, he did go on to make the theatrical release prequel.
Seeing Twin Peaks again after all these years, and with several more Lynch films under the belt, brings to the foreground previously unnoticed facets of his work. For one thing, it wasn't Tarantino who introduced the idea of resurrecting old time Hollywood stars for one more career sparking go-around; season two is rife with old timers, from Hank Worden to Michael Parks. Another facet is his knack for great casting (or for hiring great casting directors). The list of dead on, just-the-right-person casting choices in the show is phenomenal, and more pleasing is that Lynch has a real eye for breathtaking babes.
Most important, however, is Lynch's main theme, which appears to unify all of his films, a tale of someone tempted by the dark side. In Season Two, there are two temptees functioning in each other's orbit, first Lara Flynn Boyle's Donna Hayward, and then, to the disappointment of fans, Kyle MacLachlan's Dale Cooper. Hayward is tempted to go down the same dire path that Laura Palmer took. Cooper is possessed by the same malignant force that led to Laura's murder. These trajectories are enhanced by Lynch's strange belief that one's soul can be possessed by another. The legal and moral battles that rage in Twin Peaks are over the possession of others. On the discs, one can revel in more Lynchian philosophy, thanks to the optional episode introductions spoken by the Log Lady, originally recorded for cable broadcasts of the show. The transfers are good, but as per Lynch's preferences, there are no chapter breaks. In addition, there are supplementary video interviews with various directors and DPs, and Lynch's daughter, who explains how she came to write the book version of Laura Palmer's diary.
There are some problems with season two, however. One, Lynch's odd, gross humor seems to clash with the lush soap opera stories and music. And by this time, perplexity became and end in itself, such as the little kid, made up to look like Lynch, who performs disappearing acts with corn. But the larger problem with the second season, which had many more hours to fill than the first season did, is that most of the numerous new subplots were not directly tied to Laura Palmer's murder. It's interesting to imagine where Lynch and Frost would have gone in a third or fourth season, especially if the network hadn't made the pair resolve the pending murder case.
In other art film DVD news, there is Baby Blues, a 1999 French film from Koch featuring Audrey Tautou in a quirky drama about a detective investigating cases in an odd and secretive village. Another curiosity is Acorn's Investigator a 1997 TV drama about a British soldier who finds that the task given her, to isolate lesbians in the military, runs counter to her own "awakening sexuality." It's directed by Christopher Oxley, who mostly does documentaries.
Another crime film is Xavier Beauvois's policier Le Petit Lieutenant, with Nathalie Baye, who appears not to have aged since Day for Night, as the tough cop burdened with the task of breaking in a rookie. Something of a French version of Prime Suspect, its day to day observations of life in the end succeeds better than the resolution to the crime itself. The film comes from Koch both on its own and as a double bill disc with Eric Rohmer’s Triple Agent.
Two off-beat British crime TV shows are also out today, Murder in Suburbia - Series 2 from Acorn, and the second season of the odd, pessimistic Irish series Proof, from Koch. Finbar Lynch's troubled journalist Terry Corcoran makes for an uneasy, almost unpleasant central character — but as with all TV shows, if you watch the whole thing, everyone grows on you.
For the PBS crowd, there is Koch's edition of Sons and Lovers, made for TV in 2003, with Sarah Lancashire and Rupert Evans, as well as Koch's The Thomas Mann Collection, a big seven disc set of three adaptations of Mann novels made for German TV.
Tuesday also brings yet another big batch of horror films, including a new film by indefatigable Brian Yuzna, Beneath Still Waters, which includes the in-joke of naming the film's central town Marienbad. Image offers Blood Flood, with three films, including Boris Karloff in House of Evil. Tartan has Korean director Man-dae Bong's exercise in plastic surgery horror, Cinderella , and Anchor Bay has Dean Cain in the Italian influenced military zombie film Dead and Deader , and the latest DVD iteration of Phantasm. Both discs come loaded with supplements, as does Lions Gate's Gamebox 1.0. Tartan also has the Dutch horror film Slaughter Night, and Koch has Philippe Grandrieux's French serial killer film, Sombre, with Elina Lowensohn, which also comes as a solo film or as a double feature. Even Universal has gotten into the act this week, with Succubus: Hell-Bent, from director Kim Bass and starring Kelly Hu, Gary Busey, David Keith, and Lorenzo Lamas
Other genre offerings include Koch's Roy Rogers: The King Of The Cowboys - The Ultimate Collection, with no less than 25 films featuring the singing cowboy. Unfortunately, the box doesn't include The Golden Stallion, the oddly structured western that so intrigued Tarantino.
There are two box sets today, the Doris Day Collection Vol. 2, from Warner with a list of lesser, more romantic films by the chanteuse: By the Light of the Silvery Moon , I'll See You in my Dreams , Lucky Me, My Dream is Yours , On Moonlight Bay , and Romance on the High Seas. Warner is also releasing a big box of films featuring Mexican swooner and crooner Pedro Infante, who made over 50 films and recorded almost 400 songs before his career was truncated by a tragic plane crash in 1957. Among the titles in the Coleccion Pedro Infante include Angelitos Negros, Cuando IIoran los Valientes and numerous others.
Documentaries released today include Danielson: A Family Movie, from Image, the lengthy film about the outsider band of Christian rockers, who use odd, homemade stage props, and a family of a different kind in Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple, from Paramount, a chilling if ultimately superficial film.
Several TV shows released on DVD include Scrubs Season 5, the witty single camera "dramedy" from Buena Vista, The Streets of San Francisco: The Complete First Season, the straightforward policier with Michael Douglas and Karl Malden, and the bombastic cops and gangsters show The Untouchables: Season One: Volume One, from Paramount.
Romantic comedies are the theme of the day however, from the indie feature Flannel Pajamas (Hart Sharp Video), starring Julianne Nicholson, and featuring an audio commentary by the film's director, ex-producer Jeff Lipsky, to Hy Averback's limp Cybill Shepherd vehicle, the TV movie A Guide for the Married Woman, from 1978 (Fox). The success of Ellen Pompeo on Grey's Anatomy has led to the resurrection of Life of the Party (ThinkFilm), but there seems no hook for Knuckle Sandwich (Westlake Entertainment Group), Ryan Miningham's film starring Brooke Burke and Morgan Fairchild. Readers familiar with Garden State and the forthcoming In the Land of Women will find the narrative familiar. Important to Altman fans is the release of his A Perfect Couple from 1979 (Fox), in which odd opposites attract. Madonna buffs, on the other hand, have Shanghai Surprise, her only on screen pairing with then husband Sean Penn. The disc from Lions Gate, surprisingly, comes packed with extras. First Look publishes Bobcat Goldthwait's Sleeping Dogs Lie, the comedian's first big screen effort as a director' since Shakes the Clown, back in 1992.
Finally, the "major" DVD releases this week include a special edition of Major League (1989) from Paramount, Emelio Estevez's well-meaning Bobby, from the Weinstein Company/Genius, and a director's cut version of Payback (1999), another adaptation of the Richard Stark novel that inspired Point Blank, starring Mel Gibson.
— DK Holm
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Big Trouble in Little New York
4/10/2007 2:30:00 PM
It's pretty common knowledge that Toronto is Hollywood's preferred stand-in for New York; and, with the average cost to film in the Canadian metropolis running more than a quarter-million dollars less than its American equivalent, it's no surprise that plenty of filmmakers choose the T.O. over the Apple. But all's not well north of the border: a recent strike by ACTRA (the Alliance of Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, the Canadian film workers' union) sent Ontario and other provinces scrambling to make up for lost business, and now, word comes from Playback magazine that circumstances surrounding the shooting of The Incredible Hulk (the sequel to Ang Lee's 2003 film) are highlighting the city's woeful lack of adequate soundstages. A mega-studio known as Filmport is already under construction, but isn't expected to be ready until 2008, by which time a great deal of business may already have been lost.
Curiously, according to Playback, the last time this became a major issue for Toronto was in 2000, when the city hosted the filming of the first X-Men movie. Maybe it's just American superhero pictures that are the problem; has anyone pitched an Alpha Flight movie to these people?
— Leonard Pierce
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An Interview with Peter Miller, Director of Sacco and Vanzetti
4/10/2007 1:50:00 PM
Peter Miller’s intriguing new documentary, Sacco and Vanzetti is the latest exploration of a trial that, for much of the 20th century, symbolized miscarriage of justice in America. (Read Nerve’s review here, and read last week’s interview with historian Howard Zinn about the case here.) Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants arrested for a payroll robbery and murder in South Braintree, Massachusets. They were sentenced to death more for their anarchist views, and their foreign birth, than for the paltry evidence against them. The documentary examines the easy corruption of justice by an establishment whose views are openly targeted by the defendants.
Miller’s interviews with historians, artists and those living who were closest to the actual crime combine to create a documentary that reminds us that the onus is on the system to provide a fair trial. Powerful commentaries from a wide range of sources are interspersed with readings of the condemned men’s own letters, allowing Miller to flesh out a moment in American legal history that should not be forgotten. The parallels drawn with today’s terrorist threat, however, raise more questions than it answers. What should the state do with members of groups that advocate violence? What should the state do when such groups then carry out violence? And if an anarchist group wages war (complete with bomb-making instructions) on the State, how is the State to deal with the double duty of showing restraint while protecting its citizens from harm? ScreenGrab spoke to Miller about his film and the provocative political questions it raises.
 | | Peter Miller |
When you started on this film, what were people's reactions? Did people generally know about the case?
When I've mentioned what I'm doing, people often look a little puzzled. Few remember who Sacco and Vanzetti were, and some ask if they were ball players or have vague memories from high school history. Clearly this is a story with a huge amount to tell us in the present - about justice, immigrants, politics, and human resilience.
Were Sacco and Vanzetti citizens at the time of their arrest?
Sacco and Vanzetti weren't citizens — they had each emigrated from Italy in 1908, and were arrested in 1920. Both had become part of American life, but had not become citizens
Did Italian-American citizens get better treatment than those who had not yet become citizens?
America is a land of immigrants, but we should remember that many immigrant groups were treated very badly when the arrived in this country. Italians in particular were treated with great hostility and suspicion in the early years of the 20th Century. Sacco and Vanzetti were also radicals and opponents of World War I, at a time when dissent of all kinds was barely tolerated. They were tried by a jury that was entirely male, Anglo Saxon, and hostile to Italians and radicals. The jury foreman famously said, when told that Sacco and Vanzetti might be innocent, "they should hang them anyway." One commentator in the film says that an Italian accused of murder in Massachusetts stands about as much of a chance of getting justice as a black man accused of rape in the South.
In light of those conditions, do you get the sense that Sacco and Vanzetti fell in with the Galleanistis for lack of a more peaceful Italian group, or do you think they sought and found the group most in line with their feelings?
Sacco and Vanzetti are always associated with one another but were not that close. Both became involved in the anarchist group surrounding Luigi Galleani, and they seem to have arrived in that group for similar reasons. They were horrified by the poverty and exploitation they saw in America at the time. Why they chose anarchism, and not another kind of left ideology, probably had to do with the fact that there were anarchists in their community who were doing important work responding to labor issues in their communities. They were both peaceful men, but joined a faction that advocated revolutionary violence. The times were very hard, the forces they were up against were very difficult, and the idea of revolution was probably quite appealing.
It is interesting to me that Vanzetti had suffered a poor work environment as a baker's apprentice in Italy, but only radicalized in the US.
Neither Sacco nor Vanzetti came to America as a radical. Vanzetti was escaping a difficult situation at home — his mother's death, a difficult apprenticeship at a bakery. Sacco came looking for adventure and fortune. But both were appalled by the mistreatment of workers that they witnessed here. Sacco had it relatively easier — he found a job doing skilled work in a shoe factory. But Vanzetti had a series of very difficult jobs — from washing dishes to building a breakwater. He saw the awful way in which immigrants and workers were mistreated here. This was a time when something like 35,000 people a year were killed or maimed in industrial accidents. Change wasn't just a good idea — it was necessary. And these two compassionate men wanted to help bring it about.
Nunzio Pernicone, a historian featured in the film, notes that the case "lays bare myths about what America is and what it is supposed to be". To what extent do these myths persist?
There is a persistent myth that this is a land in which immigrants can come and succeed. And to an extent that is true. But we often are deeply hostile to new immigrant groups, and newcomers are often scapegoated and treated with brutality and bigotry. In the wake of 9/11, our country tolerated mass arrests and deportations of Muslims. Now we're putting up a fence between our country and Mexico. Perhaps we could learn a lesson about how we should think of immigrants in the present by looking at the mistakes we made in the past.
The daughter of one of the murdered men (Parmentier) says in the film, that if Sacco and Vanzetti did not commit the crime of which they were accused, "somebody did". This seems to echo the initial public sentiment of the time re: the Red Scare. There would have been pressure on the justice system (police, courts, and politicians) to put someone away for the crime. It feels like Sacco and Vanzetti became symbols for the establishment as much as they became symbols for the left.
That's a very good point. The film shows the massive outpouring of support for Sacco and Vanzetti as the case went on. But I suspect that the majority of the public were decidedly unsympathetic to the defendants. They were Italians, radicals and opponents of the war. Most people probably assumed that they were guilty, and even if they weren't guilty, that they should be punished anyway. This was the beginning of the tabloid newspaper era, and the press was very sensational — and often quite hostile — in describing Sacco and Vanzetti.
How did the trial affect political organization?
When the two men were arrested, they had the support of a small band of anarchist colleagues. But as the trial proceeded, the case began to take on greater meaning, and the movement to support them grew. By 1927, when the executions were imminent, Sacco and Vanzetti's supporters included not just anarchists, but civil libertarians, liberal members of the Boston elite, the labor movement, communists, artists, authors, Italian Americans, and many others. Millions of people marched in support of the men, not just in the U.S., but around the world. I'm not sure there has ever been a legal case that attracted such widespread interest for such a long time. Clearly people were moved both the humanity of Sacco and Vanzetti, and by the broader meaning they saw in the case.
Their humanity is quite evident in the film through the vocalization of their letters.
I became interested in this story because it was a famous injustice and an important story in American history. But I realized that this would be a powerful subject when I read the astonishing letters the men wrote from prison. Here were two men who spoke very little English, but their letters to supporters, friends, and family members are some of the most powerful writings I've ever read in the English language. I was fortunate to have the participation of Tony Shalhoub and John Turturro — two extraordinary actors — to breathe life into the words of Sacco and Vanzetti.
The documentary also deals with the out-pouring of art that came out of the case. Has there been such a phenomenon since?
There was an astonishing outpouring of art about the case. Ben Shahn painted dozens of paintings, Woody Guthrie wrote songs, authors including John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, and Upton Sinclair wrote books.
Though Judge Thayer reveals his anti-anarchist bias in his quotes, Fred Moore’s reputation as a defender of radicals preceded him. It’s hard to know who was reacting to whom.
Fred Moore, the defense lawyer, realized that is was necessary to politicize the case. He chose to put capitalism and its courts on trial, and because of this strategy millions of people ended up hearing about and caring about the case. But this approach was something of a double-edged sword. When the case became politicized, the will of the courts and the Massachusetts establishment grew that much stronger — they dug in their heels and did everything they could to make sure that these men would die in the electric chair. The paradox of the case is that by raising public awareness of the injustice, the possibility of the defendants receiving justice became even more slim.
— Pazit Cahlon
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Video of the Day 1: How We Edit at the BBC
4/10/2007 1:15:00 PM
This brief clip is from Charlie Brooker's excellent TV show Screenwipe, where he goes through a brief history of editing for British Television before going on to a great and humorous look at how you can manipulate footage to make it tell any story you want for reality television. In case you still needed to be reminded not to trust everything you see.
— Faisal Qureshi
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What They Left Out of Apocalypse Now
4/10/2007 12:40:00 PM
I have to admit not liking the DVDs of Apocalypse Now. I didn't think much of the love scene in Redux, I didn't think the additional music helped it (in fact it killed the film) but what I really hated was the transfer of the film to DVD. A film that I had previously seen as a 2.35:1 copy was suddenly transferred as 2:1 to fit in with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s one man mission to make the world accept his 3 perf Univisium format. I think the format is actually a good idea, but why transfer a film shot 2:35:1 as 2:1? 70mm Showprints be dammed!
Anyway, I have a copy of the legendary 5 hour work print, and it’s an interesting film from an editing point of view, albeit completely unwatchable if you expect a finished product. It’s rather like reading the first draft of a great novel. A lot of stuff from this work print never made it to the DVD specials (the best one was finding out what actually happened to Dennis Hopper's character).
What did make it to the first DVD release were the original end credits, where the temple is blown up. All shot in infrared film stock and completely psychedelic, this must have been astounding to watch on the big screen. I suppose all this material and more will be included on the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD re-release of the film to try and persuade you to spend your hard-earned money on another transfer of the film. In the meantime, enjoy this:
— Faisal Qureshi
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Oh, TV, Why Do You Mock Us So?
4/10/2007 12:05:00 PM
The new movie The TV Set is about the making of a TV pilot, and it was made by people who know whereof they speak; director-writer Jake Kasdan and executive producer Judd Apatow worked together on Freaks and Geeks, and the cast includes David Duchovny, Justine Bateman, Arrested Development's Judy Greer and Lucy Davis, of the original English version of The Office. Smart and sharp-tongued, it's the anti-Entourage, depicting show business as a means by which intelligent, talented people accept money from powerful stupid people in exchange for letting them screw up their ideas. Just so you don't get the idea that the truth is anything like that, there's this report from the frontlines of pilot season. Currently in development: a revival of The Bionic Woman ("as a coming of age story"), a show about a vampire private detective, and Reaper, which is about "a drama about a 21-year-old slacker who becomes the devil's bounty hunter", which I take no pride in recognizing as a youth-sweetened version of the premise of a '90s flop series starring Peter Horton.
Also pencilled in for a slot on this fall's televisual feast is the long-awaited The Sarah Connor Chronicles starring 300's barbarian queen Lena Headey as the character played in the Terminator movies by Linda Hamilton. Any participation in the series by anyone who worked on the movies is conspicuously nonexistent at the time of this writing. (At least T3 still had
Ahnuld loitering around the set.)
— Phil Nugent
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Controversy of the Week: Uwe Boll’s 9/11 Comedy
4/10/2007 11:30:00 AM
It’s a few days old, but whatever. Uwe Boll’s latest, Postal, is “essentially a really bad taste comedy essentially attacking American culture as it is right now — with one aspect being Islamic terrorism.”
Here’s a shot from the opening of the film:
And here’s a clip.
“Nuff said.
— Bilge Ebiri
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Dueling Dimwits: Taking Sides Over Grindhouse
4/10/2007 10:45:00 AM
Grindhouse has inspired a lot of respectable people to say a lot of respectable things, and a lot of silly people to say a lot of silly things. In fact, given that the movie itself is a mixture of respectable and silly, it's no surprise that it's brought out those qualities in almost everyone who's written about it. But a battle of witlessness between Cinematical and Libertas is my favorite manifestation so far.
Ryan Stewart over at Cinematical got things started, claiming that Grindhouse's dismal opening weekend box office proved that "it's official: America only wants crap at the movies". Apparently no one hipped Ryan to the fact that sophisticated, intelligent fare (if that's what you consider Grindhouse, a super bonus irony in itself) has been tanking in theatres in favor of lowest-common-denominator stuff since, oh, the invention of the medium. Not to be outdone, though, "Dirty Harry" at the conservative film blog Libertas starts out sensibly arguing that it accomplishes nothing to attack audiences for their tastes, but then veers off into the cuckoo right-wing territory the site is known for by blaming the movie's failure on audiences who are weary of "nihilism, the anti-hero, moral relativism, and political correctness". This may be the first time anyone has ever accused a Quentin Tarantino project of being politically correct, and it's definitely the first time anyone has associated a movie where a woman uses a grenade launcher attached to her leg to kill zombies with moral relativism, but I guess if all you have is a hammer, you look for nails in the strangest places.
— Leonard Pierce
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Morning Deal Report: Harvey Goes to Plan B, Ghost Rider Culprits Sued
4/10/2007 10:00:00 AM
- Grindhouse’s box office numbers were so bad that not even bossman Harvey Weinstein himself is bothering to whitewash them. In fact, he’s decided he’s going to re-release the films separately in a couple of weeks.
- Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich is suing Marvel Enterprises, Sony Pictures, Hasbro, and all sorts of other people over “an unauthorized ‘joint venture and conspiracy to exploit, profit from and utilize’ his copyrights to the comic book character,” which apparently reverted back to him in 2001.
- Jackie Chan wants to find China’s Next Top Martial Arts Star, and has started a TV show contest for specifically that purpose.
- Reign Over Me auteur Mike Binder will write an adaptation of Kate Jacobs' novel The Friday Night Knitting Club for producer-star Julia Roberts, who will play “a single mom who juggles the demands of running a knitting store with raising her teen daughter…When a tragedy occurs, the customers are forced to realize they've created more than just a knitting club.”
- Blade writer David Goyer is planning a new project titled Super Max, about the Green Arrow getting “tossed into a maximum security prison for super-villains when he is wrongly convicted of a crime…Within 10 minutes of entering the prison, the Green Arrow will be stripped of his identity…’They shave his goatee and they take his costume and send him to prison for life, and he has to escape…[H]e has to team up with, in some cases, some of the very same villains he is responsible for incarcerating in order to get out and clear his name. ‘“
- Time Out London features a very reflective Terence Davies (The Long Day Closes, House of Mirth), who bemoans the fact that he hasn’t made a film in years, and informs us he’s keeping “a death list.” (Hat tip: Movie City News.)
- Salma Hayek is partnering with MGM to form a production company called Ventanazul, which will “promote films with Latino themes and talent to a mass audience. “
- Dude, can Tobey Maguire just please make up his fucking mind?
— Bilge Ebiri
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