Your Unexpected Source for DVD Reviews: American Cinematographer
6/19/2007 4:00:00 PM
You might think reviews in American Cinematographer would be superficial and "corporate." But the online version of the magazine runs DVD reviews of films you wouldn't expect to be heralded by the American Society of Cinematographers. For one thing, few of them are American. The DVD section kicks off with a look at The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, followed by reviews of Amarcord, Michael Haneke's difficult Funny Games, The Conformist and Performance. More predictably, there are also reviews of The Premiere Frank Capra Collection and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, called "one of the most underrated releases of last year."
Curiously, the reviews don't focus solely on the cinematography (though the Pants review does note that "the filmmakers visually convey the characters' friendships with long takes and careful compositions.") The only major feature posted from the print version of the magazine is the reassuringly technical cover story on Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End: "Wolski shot At World's End in Super 35mm with a camera package comprising Panaflex Platinums, a Panavision Lightweight, Arri 435 and 235 cameras, and Primo prime and 11:1 and 4:1 zoom lenses. Lens filtration was limited to NDs and polarizers for exterior work." Good to know. — D. K. Holm
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Sicko Update
6/19/2007 3:00:00 PM
We spend a lot of time crawling through the e-stacks at YouTube to bring you Videos of the Day, upcoming trailers, clips for our weekly Top Tens, and so on. One thing we won’t be bringing you, though, since it’s been unceremoniously yanked from the site, is the entirety of Michael Moore's Sicko. The whole movie, in what’s reported to be high-quality video that could only have been made by an insider, was uploaded to YouTube over the weekend in fourteen-minute chunks, only to be interdicted Monday morning after complaints from the Weinstein Company. The Hollywood Reporter has the whole story, including Moore's denial that he was the source of the leak. — Leonard Pierce
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Viaggio Italiano
6/19/2007 2:00:00 PM
Now in its seventh year, the Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series at Lincoln Center gives viewers a glimpse at a modern Italy, with actors, directors and films rarely seen in American theaters. True to Italy's cinematic tradition, many of this year's films featured dark subject matter, heavy emotion and some of the most beautiful women in the world.
Secret Journey
Roberto Ando's thoughtful, beautiful film freely adapts Josephine Hart's novel Reconstruction, focusing on a long-buried family tragedy (the mother’s murder) and its lingering effects on the children who witnessed the scene. Alessio Boni plays Leo, a psychoanalyst who examines other people's memories while repressing his own. In the Q&A after the film, Boni joked that take after take, his director told him to do less, until he felt he was projecting nothing. But the subtlety in the performances saves Secret Journey from melodrama.
Largely concerned with the dangers of memory, Secret Journey is heavily influenced by the films of Bernardo Bertolucci, particularly Luna. Ando spoke afterwards about his love for the Italian master and Bertolucci’s idea that all memory begins with the primal scene — our parents making love. These themes guide us through Leo’s complex psychology, as he attempts to finally address his past and save any chance he has at a future.
Dark Sea
With its shadowy scenes and muted jazz, Dark Sea recalls '90s noirs like Romeo Is Bleeding. The main character (a compassionate/intuitive detective) is straight out of Michael Mann. Likewise, you can see the fingerprint of David Lynch in the many sexually-charged scenes. Unfortunately, the storyline also runs close to another American film — Basic Instinct.
Here, a young detective must investigate a young woman killed while bound at hands and neck in a sexual game. Journeying into the underworld, he's consumed by perverse desires. But the central crime is solved far too easily, and the abrupt ending is unsatisfying.
Caravaggio
The biopic at its worst. For two-and-a-half hours, Caravaggio forces "magic" into every scene, presumably to suggest the inspiration for the painter's beautiful, iconoclastic work. The sentimental score makes things worse, as do the ridiculous scenes of death and execution that haunt Caravaggio — especially the repeated bang-you-over-the-head symbol of Death on Horseback. In contrast to his restraint in Secret Journey, Alessio Boni overplays the role of Caravaggio, with all the standard histrionics of the tortured genius.
One Out of Two
One Out of Two is about the threat of disease suddenly putting life in perspective. It's a familiar story, so the film succeeds or fails on the strength of the acting, and Ninetto Davoli succeeds. You see each of the turns coming, and the conclusions are simple, but does it ever hurt to be reminded that life is beautiful? That said, the cynic in me feels thankful that Roberto Benigni wasn't a part of this year’s series. . . — Bryan Whitefield
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Cable Liberation: Joe Dante, Master of Horror
6/19/2007 1:00:00 PM
Not many people would consider relegation to late-night Showtime a career high point, but Joe Dante — the sporadic, underrated director responsible for ambitious failures like The 'Burbs and unexpected gems like Gremlins — does just that. He's taken the freedom of cable development and made two pieces of stunning social commentary disguised as genre horror: the anti-war polemic Homecoming, and The Screwfly Solution, a meditation on sexual violence. The Onion AV Club interviews him on these and other projects, and records his engaging description of signature Joe Dante style: "A movie that looks like it was made by a guy who read too many copies of Mad magazine." — Leonard Pierce
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Out Patient: Sicko on Bittorrent
6/19/2007 12:00:00 PM
Slashdot links to a news story at ZeroPaid.com which reveals that Michael Moore's new film on American health insurance, Sicko, is already downloadable via Bittorrent. Moore is apparently sanguine about peer-to-peer digital trading, but Lionsgate, which is opening the film on June 29, may be less so. The P2P version of the film at least alleviates some of Moore's fears, as reported in the story, that the U.S. government might seize the film because of a trip to Cuba that Moore made in the course of the film. It's been illegal for Americans to go to Cuba since 1962. But even if the Feds do seize all the prints, the digital version is already out there. — D. K. Holm
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Morning Deal Report: High Concepts
6/19/2007 11:00:00 AM
The guy who made Old School is making a movie called Man-Witch with Jack Black. Jack Black is Midas to me, though in this movie Jables gets "taken in by a coven." Yuh-huh.
Speaking of high-concept comedy, New Line bought a movie called The $40,000 Man, about "a legendary astronaut and true American hero who finds himself horribly injured in a car accident and rebuilt by the government to be a bionic man, on a budget of $40,000." JB? Is that you?
Every single marquee name in Mexican film will collaborate on Rudo y Cursi. It's produced by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro, it's directed by Cuaron's brother Carlos and it stars Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna. Let's see, where're all our Mexican film jokes from last year? Six amigos? Something or other?
Film studio buys fantasy children's series (The Sisters Grimm — never heard of it). God kills a kitten every time this happens. — Peter Smith
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When Good Directors Go Bad: Art School Confidential (2006)
6/19/2007 10:00:00 AM
The setup:
Coming off cult favorite Ghost World and sleeper hit Bad Santa, Terry Zwigoff reunites with Ghost World writer Daniel Clowes for a satire of collegiate art programs.
What went wrong?:
Zwigoff and Clowes clearly had an axe to grind against art schools. A visiting graduate tells the students, "The only way to be a great artist is to be a great artist, and the rest of you are just wasting your time." This is practially the only point the movie has to make, and it surrounds its artist-hero with a collection of wannabes, hangers-on, and posers — with special disdain for the professors, like the John Malkovich character who only paints triangles.
The only "successful" artist we meet during the film is a drunken loser, advising the hero that fellatio is the secret to success, and spending his days holed up in his apartment masturbating and watching The Facts of Life. Ghost World tempered its misanthropy through the character of Seymour, and Bad Santa got away with its bleak worldview by being really goddamn funny. Art School Confidential is all misanthropy, all the time.
In addition, the film’s hero, Jerome, is a tangle of contradictions (he fancies himself a true artist but his primary motivator is getting laid), but star Max Minghella isn’t nearly actor enough to pull it off. His one expression is "mopey," and his droning voice doesn’t help matters either.
Either as a sop to the audience or to satisfy his own impulses, Zwigoff and Clowes occasionally try to shoehorn in some scenes of wacky campus comedy, like when Jerome’s classmate ticks off all of the art-school archetypes represented in the class. Unfortunately, the film never really explores these archetypes, preferring to present them in snide vignettes or zany montages, including characters like a guy who photographs his own balls.
And the less said about the campus-murders storyline, the better.
The fallout:
Zwigoff and Clowes haven’t made another film since Art School Confidential, so it’s impossible to say what effect it’s had on their careers. But my enthusiasm for their subsequent films will certainly be more guarded than it was before this was released. — Paul Clark
Previous When Good Directors Go Bad columns:
The Serpent's Egg (Ingmar Bergman, 1977)
1941 (Steven Spielberg, 1979)
Exorcist II: The Heretic (John Boorman, 1977)
Ready to Wear (Robert Altman, 1994)
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Creative Screenwriting: Summer Blockbusters
6/18/2007 5:00:00 PM
Do screenwriting magazines really want to help their readers break into the movie biz? Competition is already tough, and most screenwriting mags are themselves staffed with wannabes, but perhaps part of their evil plot is to give the public bad advice! Be that as it may, Creative Screenwriting's Summer Blockbuster issue provides some useful material. None of the content is online, but readers who subscribe to the email newsletter receive free excerpts. Films covered with screenwriter interviews include Pirates 3, Harry Potter 5, Disney's Ratatouille and Knocked Up. Shorter script analyses include Mr. Brooks, Ocean’s 13, Eli Roth on Hostel: Part II, Paris, Je T'Aime, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard and Shrek the Third. One of the more interesting pieces is Hal Hartley's essay on why he writes: "I know that if a Hal Hartley film did the same kind of business as Kill Bill, we would be living in a very different world." — D. K. Holm
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Movies We Missed: Code 46 (2004)
6/18/2007 4:00:00 PM
Michael Winterbottom's docu-drama A Mighty Heart comes out this Friday. Starring Angelina Jolie, it's an adaptation of the memoir by the wife of murdered reporter Daniel Pearl. We could have easily chosen Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People or even last year’s Tristram Shandy for this Movies We Missed entry, but Code 46 may be the inventive director's most overlooked and quite possibly best work.
Why we missed it:
A strange combination of genres (science fiction mixed with romantic drama) that didn’t feature enough spaceships and creatures for the sci-fi geeks or enough critical buzz for the indie geeks.
After flops like The Claim and strange experiments like 9 Songs it’s hard to know what to expect from the risk-taking Winterbottom.
Why we should have known:
After so many engaging Samantha Morton performances, making bad movies worth watching (In America, Enduring Love) and good movies great (Morvern Callar, Jesus’ Son), any movie starring Morton should be upgraded to "consider" status.
The trailer proves that at the very least this movie looks cool. . .
Why we ended up kicking ourselves:
The beautiful photography, shot mostly on location in Shanghai, uses that city’s exoticism (at least to Western eyes) as a way to project the near future with very few sets. The film also features an excellent atmospheric soundtrack by David Holmes and The Free Association.
Morton is a joy to watch especially when she’s rolling off clever lines like, "Everybody’s children are so special. It makes you wonder where all the ordinary adults came from."
The film is really about the power of attraction and its ability to push us temporarily outside the realm of logic. The two lead actors have a strange chemistry.
Sometimes in his docu-dramas Winterbottom hammers you with his pet causes — overreaching government, hard-line law, encroachment on personal freedoms. Here he takes a subtler approach.
Why we may have been justified to begin with:
Had to be a better casting choice than Tim Robbins out there. It’s hard to take him seriously when he delivers every line with a half-smirk.
In an attempt at futurism, Winterbottom breaks up the dialogue with Spanish inserts that are more annoying than effective.
— Bryan Whitefield
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Special Bonus Trailer: There Will Be Blood
6/18/2007 3:00:00 PM
This has been linked to virtually everywhere by now, but in case you haven’t seen it yet, P.T. Anderson’s new film, There Will Be Blood, has a teaser. While the overall visual style of this is quintessential PTA, many of the shots are darker than we’re used to seeing from him, which could be interesting. Overall, this is pretty clearly meant to be an online-only job, considering that it doesn’t even attempt to sum up the plot or even to announce the star or director’s name. Still, for anyone who has been eagerly awaiting more from Anderson, this is manna from heaven. Here’s hoping the film turns out to be more Days of Heaven and less Heaven’s Gate. — Paul Clark
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