Video of the Day 2: Silent Light
5/29/2007 5:00:00 PM
As anyone who read D’Angelo’s Cannes blog knows, his favorite film at this year’s festival was Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light, which won a Jury Prize, and also won major accolades from the likes of Manohla Dargis, A.O. Scott and J. Hoberman. Here’s the trailer for the film.
— Bilge Ebiri
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“The Great American Epic of Our Time”: Jonathan Demme’s Heroes of New Orleans
5/29/2007 4:15:00 PM
The last year or so has seen a number of worthwhile films released about the man-made disaster in New Orleans and the government's response, or lack thereof, to the near destruction of a major American city. While conservatives decry the lack of flag-waving, gung-ho movies about 9/11 — a disaster from which New York was thankfully able to make a near-complete recovery — they have little or nothing to say about the stagnation and shameful inaction that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Spike Lee's remarkable When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Justin Pearce's surprising Katrina Diary, and the little-seen but powerful short After Katrina: Rebuilding St. Bernard Parish are all well worth seeing, but the most powerful documentary about post-Katrina New Orleans may prove to come from the cameras of Jonathan Demme.
As reported in the New York Times, Demme's upcoming film, Right to Return: New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward will preview in small excerpts on PBS' The Tavis Smiley Show (Demme worked closely with journalist/activist Smiley in making the film) before making its full-length debut at Silverdocs (the AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival) in June. Some excerpts from Right to Return are already up at Smiley's website, and while there is still a great sense of loss in these clips, in keeping with Demme's belief that he is telling a story of hope and triumph, they maintain a surprising degree of optimism and a sense that the battle being fought is worth winning. "The culture was not obliterated," says Demme of the world in which his 9th Ward subjects (captured, true to the title, in a scriptless home-movie fashion) live. "These are not tragic figures. These are the American heroes."
— Leonard Pierce
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Hey Kids, If Fred Flintstone can Do It…
5/29/2007 3:30:00 PM
As everyone knows by now, earlier this month the MPAA finally had a hissyfit over smoking in films, even going so far as to note that smoking by lead characters can now affect a movie's rating. Of course, smoking in the movies has often been cited as a major factor in teenagers taking up the filthy habit. But if you think smoking advertisements are bad now, check out this one for Winston Cigarettes from the fifties. I mean, Jeezus, what customer was Winston trying to reach with this little sponsorship tie-in?
— Faisal Qureshi
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Cannes Roundup: The D’Angelo Index
5/29/2007 2:45:00 PM
It occurs to me that it makes sense to put up a handy index to Mike D’Angelo’s recent Cannes reports for Screengrab, since it can be a bit hard to track down his individual posts. If I may be so immodest, Mike’s reviews constituted the best writing from Cannes I saw this year (at least in the English language). His reviews have always been sharp, but his notorious Wack Experiment (see the first post if you don’t know what I’m talking about) added a dimension to his Cannes experience. Frankly, I’m jealous — not because he got to go to Cannes, but because he got to experience so many of these films perfectly tabula rasa, which, let’s face it, is how most movies should be seen. Anyway, here are his posts:
- May 15, 2007: An Introduction to the Wack Experiment
- May 16, 2007: A review of Wong kar-wai’s My Blueberry Nights
- May 17, 2007: A review of Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
- May 18, 2007: A review of Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and Johnnie To’s Triangle
- May 18, 2007: A review of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s The Banishment
- May 18, 2007: A review of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon
- May 18, 2007: A review of Cristophe Honore’s Love Songs
- May 19, 2007: A review of Olivier Assayas’s Boarding Gate
- May 19, 2007: A review of the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men
- May 20, 2007: A review of Michael Moore’s Sicko
- May 20, 2007: A review of Kim ki-duk’s Breath
- May 21, 2007: A review of Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light
- May 21, 2007: A review of Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park
- May 22, 2007: A review of Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
- May 23, 2007: A review of Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven
- May 23, 2007: A review of Bela Tarr’s The Man from London
- May 24, 2007: A review of Roy Andersson’s You the Living
- May 25, 2007: A review of Catherine Breillat’s Une vieille maitresse
- May 25, 2007: A review of James Gray’s We Own the Night
- May 27, 2007: Drive-By Short Reviews
- May 27, 2007: Awards Predictions
At this point, I also have to give a shout-out to the awesome and ever-so-organized Green Cine Daily, which has been posting links to a wide range of reviews (including Mike’s) throughout the festival, and has now organized it all into their very own Handy Index.
— Bilge Ebiri
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Tintin-tabulation: Anthony Lane on Hergé in the New Yorker
5/29/2007 2:00:00 PM
It turns out that I have something in common with Hugh Grant. No, it's not our looks (Grant is rubbish, obviously). And it's not having fucked Liz Hurley (though she is on my short list). No, according to Anthony Lane in the New Yorker, we both love King Ottokar's Sceptre.
In case you don't recognize that title, it is arguably the best of all the Tintin books. In a celebration of the Hergé comic book hero, perhaps inspired by the announcement that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are teaming up to do three screen adaptations of the comics, Lane mentions in passing that Grant's "desert island" book is King Ottokar's Sceptre.
Well, King Ottokar's Sceptre is my favorite comic book story, too. I recall the first time I saw it, in San Francisco in 1962. A relative's kids had the four volumes that Golden Books had published in America in hard covers. I instantly fell in love with Tintin if for no other reason that it was the first time I had seen a comic published as a full-blown book. In fact, part of the attraction was that it was both novel-like, across some 62 action-filled, gripping yet also wordy pages, and movie-like at the same time. Dipping into it, I soon fell in love with Hergé's hyper clean style &$151; no one draws a birch tree like Hergé. Moreover, I think that his exploration of Balkan politics and intrigue has stuck with me as the way to do noir. Lane also quotes Timothy Garton Ash as saying that the book is a surprisingly accurate satire on Balkan politics. Finally, Hergé's story structure is perfect. It should be studied in screenwriting classes.
I still believe that the Golden Book versions are better than the Methuen and other versions, often issued in flimsy paperback. For one thing, the typeface in the word balloons is much more readable, as the panel comparisons here reveal. Secondly, the paper is thicker and serves Hergé's impeccable color schemes better. Lane also praises Hergé's efforts to get things right: the design of an airplane, the dimensions of a Tibetan chorten. Like Lane, I prefer the Tintin stories that have "their feet on the ground," and as a kid grew impatient when he went into outer space.
Lane's essay in the New Yorker's May 28 issue celebrating Tintin is not online, but is a rather thorough survey of the man, the character, and the art (the only thing he doesn't mention is Louis Malle's allusion to Tintin in his film Milou in May, Milou being the French name of Snowy, Tintin's terrier; nor does he mention that trend in some gay circles to mimic Tintin's short blonde hair and little tuft of a forelock, while thinking they are mimicking Pee-Wee Herman). In the piece, he both biographizes Hergé, whom he compares to Simenon (and also touches on the stain of Hergé's wartime collaboration), and analyzes the appeal of Tintin himself, whom he characterizes as a fellow with a "lightly borne air of moral purpose."
Analyzing the first page of The Black Island, Lane notes that "things fall over themselves to happen to Tintin, who is what all boys both love and dread becoming: a magnet for trouble." Lane also notes that "there are no genitalia in Hergé's work because there is no sex. Tintin passes increasing portions of his life with an unmarried seaman, yet it seldom occurs to us to question their rapport. Tintin never has a girlfriend, nor does he express the need for one, and that absence is part of his greater mystery. He has no parents or siblings. He has no children, of course, and we are unsure whether he counts as a child himself; like Peter Pan, the boy reporter never ages, being a person both of his time and buoyantly apart from it." Tintin, Lane concludes, is a Clark Kent "without the phone booth."
— D. K. Holm
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Video of the Day 1: The Cannes Awards Ceremony
5/29/2007 1:00:00 PM
We’ve got something like 8,000 channels, but for some reason no American TV, cable, or satellite outlet could find it in their hearts to broadcast the Cannes awards ceremony. (Maybe because they don’t have any tacky Celine Dion musical numbers. But let’s not give anybody ideas.) Luckily, the ceremony is available online, although you’ll have to know French to make it through the whole thing. The best moment is about halfway through when the uber-hot Michelle Yeoh gives the uber-smug Julian Schnabel his Best Director award. Schnabel does the classy thing and shakes the hand of every single member of the jury, but you can tell he really wanted that Palme.
— Bilge Ebiri
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Dispirited Over The Spirit
5/29/2007 12:15:00 PM
There aren't many comic-book heroes who are as gosh-darned wholesome as the Spirit. Created in 1940 by legendary writer and artist Will Eisner, The Spirit was detective Denny Colt, who, after being seemingly killed by one Dr. Cobra, comes back as a masked vigilante, complete with secret underground lair and the blessing of Police Commissioner Dolan. (Similarities to Batman are probably not coincidental; Eisner was friends with Bob Kane.) Yet, while Batman was clearly a bit nutty, even back then,, The Spirit, with his sensible blue business suit and fedora, always radiated generosity. Sure, the plots were noir-inspired, and sure, he had enemies like sexpot murderess P'Gell, and sure, he wasn't afraid to whup some ass when the time was right, even if it meant dirtying that nice suit of his. But for Eisner (who died in 2005), these pulp conventions were never the be-all end-all; rather, they were the means for him to explore, almost novelistically, the people who lived in the shadow of the big city: the tenement dwellers, the men at the end of their rope, the dreamers. Although he wasn't a super-hero, the overall sense was that, like his creator, The Spirit had a superhuman sense of decency.
So the choice of Frank Miller to direct the big-screen version of The Spirit is puzzling. I'm not a big Frank Miller fan. I'll admit his talent is prodigious — he can splash a page like nobody, and his style has evolved over the years into rendering humans with a kind of tactile chunkiness that's appealing. But his ability to spin a yarn, once it was freed from the monthly grind of serial storytelling, has atrophied, as evinced by the critical reception to his return to Batman. The Sin City books deal with material similar to Eisner's: vigilantes, crime-ridden urban landscapes, femme fatales, losers looking for that one big score. But that's where the similarity ends. The Sin City stories are horribly paced, full of terrible prose and piss-poor characterization. All the heroes are gutter knights-errant, all the women hookers with hearts of gold. (I'm probably the only person who enjoyed the hyper-accurate Sin City movie as camp — like Sam Fuller doing Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.) It's totally appropriate that the one character who demonstrates something resembling humanity — Alexis Bledel's Becky — is killed off because of her concern for her sickly mother. There is no room for empathy in a world where self-consciously-mythical archetypes shoot automatic weapons at each other in slo-mo. The distance between Sin City and the fascistic 300 can be measured in microns.
But even that, really, is secondary. Why would anybody think that Miller can direct a feature film? Yes, yes, he's credited as co-director on Sin City. But other than saying, "Yep, that looks like my comic", how much input did he have in the actual directing? Did he fight with the producers over the budget? Did he mediate any actorly disputes? Did he give Clive Owen notes? Let's give Miller the benefit of the doubt and assume that he learned everything he needed to know on the set — is the fact that he's learned filmmaking from Robert Rodriguez anything to laud? (The man's a terrific editor, and his action scenes have pep, but that's about it.)
The crazy thing is, history is full of examples of Hollywood throwing money at directors with no previous experience. Sometimes it's because they've made a name for themselves in another art form (Julian Schnabel, Michael Crichton), sometimes because they've been shepherding the project for years (Courtney Solomon), and sometimes it's just dumb fucking luck (Pete Jones). And maybe Miller will turn out to be more Schnabel then Solomon. Or maybe he'll be the next Crichton, content to make one Westworld and taper off with a career of respectable-if-unremarkable Comas. Nonetheless, this pairing of material and artist has me worried. Something has to give, and somehow, I doubt it'll be the one who writes lovingly of baby-killing Spartans.
I'm sure Miller would reply, "Are you retarded? I write the goddamn Batman".
— Kent M. Beeson
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Brit-Crit Roundup
5/29/2007 11:30:00 AM
It's all Cannes all the time in the big British papers, and their reactions are mostly well-covered elsewhere, though, Coen Brothers fanboy that I am, I'd want to call special attention to Guardian film blogger Peter Bradshaw's opinion that, as good as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was, the Coens' No Country for Old Men is one of their best ever and suffered at the Romanian drama's expense. Bradshaw also predicts great things for director Anton Corbijn, whose Ian Curtis biopic Control was also highly praised by the Times' arts editor Richard Brooks. In the Independent, Arifa Akbar and Rob Sharp take a look at the curious journey of Julian Schnabel from oft-reviled New York artist to celebrated filmmaker (his The Diving Bell and the Butterfly took the Director's Prize at Cannes).
In non-Cannes news, the Observer takes a look at Black Gold, the controversial documentary on the coffee industry, and said industry's aggressive reaction to the film, which looks at the dark side of a business second only to oil production in sheer dollar numbers. Over at the Telegraph, the paper explores the increasingly profitable relationship between England and the Indian film industry, as this week, for the first time, the IIFA awards (International Indian Film Association, colloquially known as the Bollywood Oscars) take place in Sheffield.
— Leonard Pierce
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The Big Geek Out: A Star Wars Blogathon
5/29/2007 10:45:00 AM
This past week marked the thirtieth anniversary of the release of George Lucas's Star Wars. Maybe you've heard. The entertainment industry has already gone into overdrive, churning out books and TV specials to commemorate the event. But it's worth remembering that once upon a time, in a cultural universe long, long ago, the movie was a real home-grown event made of enthusiastic word of mouth. One way to recapture that old magic is to check out the action at Edward Copeland on Film's wide-ranging blogathon, where geeks of all stripes are gathering to express their enthusiasms, raise grounds for debate, and generally make the bar scene in the first movie look like Sunday brunch at Mike and Carol Brady's. Ewoks are defended; Yoda is interviewed; and Copeland himself bares all with his soul-searching confession, "Maybe '[Return of the] Jedi' Wasn't As Great As I Thought."
— Phil Nugent
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Morning Deal Report: Mann to Man Depp in Russian Spy Flick, Dame Helen Goes to Gaza
5/29/2007 10:00:00 AM
- We had already heard that Johnny Depp was interested in playing poisoned Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, but now it’s being said Michael Mann might be his director.
- Helen Mirren is considering starring in a film set in the Gaza Strip, about a Jewish woman whose daughter falls in love with a Palestinian and then is killed.
- Is Woody Allen’s latest film Cassandra’s Dream having a hard time trying to find buyers?
- The Weinstein Company has bought the distribution rights to the Cannes-approved, much-acclaimed Joy Division biopic Control.
- Christopher Nolan will be shooting his new Batman movie partially in Imax, a first for a mainstream feature.
- Bill Paxton wants to make a JFK assassination movie.
- So what do you think, guys? Was it the girrrls who prevented the Coen Brothers from winning anything this year at Cannes?
— Bilge Ebiri
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