Kevin Smith-Approved!
7/18/2007 4:00:00 PM
Gallery 88 in Los Angeles has just opened its Kevin Smith-approved Crazy4Cult show, which includes original works from fifty artists inspired by their favorite cult movies. (A Clockwork Orange, Blue Velvet, The Big Lebowski and movies by Tarantino, John Waters and Silent Bob himself are prominently featured in the advertising.) Check out the exhibit's official poster above (larger version here) and name all the movie references therein to win a free copy. — Phil Nugent
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Torture and Class: Hostel: Part 2 v. Goya's Ghosts
7/18/2007 3:00:00 PM
So Milos Forman gets to hang women upside down and torture them, but Eli Roth can't? Sure, Hostel: Part 2 is now something of a dead issue, since it underperformed at the box office, and has been supplanted by Captivity as the bogey-film that everyone who hasn't seen it has an opinion about. But the trailer for Forman's new film, Goya's Ghosts reveals a scene in which Frank Baker's Monk of the Inquisition tortures Natalie Portman's Inés for a "confession." (When she pleadingly asks, "What do you want me to confess?", any student of film clichés can almost mouth the words before Baker utters them: "The truth.") Apparently it is okay to string up a lass for a round of slow torment and bloodcurdling screams when she's the delectable Natalie rather than the pathetic Heather, and when the torture is encased in the soothing classiness and platitudinous dialogue of a Masterpiece Theater "heritage film." We'll see if self-appointed movie pundits get as up in arms as they did over Hostel: Part 2 and Captivity. — D. K. Holm
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Festival Buzz
7/18/2007 2:00:00 PM
Long about this time of year, hints about the shape of the upcoming New York Film Festival start turning up on the grapevine. The submission deadline was last Friday, so it's time to get down to serious kibbutzing. In the New York Sun, S. James Snyder reports that the opening night selection will be The Darjeeling Limited; the promise of a Wes Anderson-Jason Schwartzman reunion is calculated to inspire circuit overload in those for whom the last eight and a half years have just been an agonizing wait for Rushmore 2. The festival has also inheirited three movies that caused a stir at the Cannes Film Festival: the Coens' No Country for Old Men, which serves as this year's New York centerpiece, Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine. Festival director Richard Pena acknowledges that "It was good news for all of us, I think, that Cannes, the most important festival of them all, had a really strong year." But what sets the New York festival apart from Cannes and so many other annual sprawlers is the selectivity that the NYFF, with its much smaller schedule, demands of its programmers. "What I always admired about our festival and others," says Pena, "is that a small group of people actually selected the films. You could disagree wildly with their choices, but someone did choose it, and it wasn't just hundreds of titles, chosen without any rhyme or reason." — Phil Nugent
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The Little Boy Who Lives Down the Hall: Kim Morgan on Creepy Kids
7/18/2007 1:00:00 PM
Lists! Lists! Oh, lists! Everyone in the blogosphere is into lists! One of the best filmic list-makers is Kim Morgan over at Sunset Gun. The other day she mounted a list of Creepy Children, in anticipation of the latest entry in the genre, Joshua, and came up with some unexpected entries. I'd forgotten the twins in The Shining, and never seen one of Morgan's favorite films, Don't Deliver Us From Evil. Surprisingly, Morgan also includes the much older Sue Ann Stepanek in Pretty Poison. Why? Because, "I will never, ever stop talking about Tuesday Weld. I love her so much, that as I've said numerous times, it almost hurts." Joshua, by the way, is a wildly effective minor horror film. Directed by George Ratliff of Hell House fame, it is subtle yet creepy. Almost everything you need to know is revealed in the in-jokes and looks that pass, in the film's first fifteen minutes, between upscale parents Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga, and from the appreciative understanding of Joshua's uncle, played with quiet brilliance by Dallas Roberts. Yet the ending still comes as a surprise (which I've just ruined by announcing that there is a surprise). In any case, Jacob Kogan as Joshua will be on any further Creepy Kid lists that Kim Morgan ever makes. — D. K. Holm
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Rep Report Addendum: Mods & Rockers Film Festival
7/18/2007 12:00:00 PM
The Eighth Annual Mods & Rockers Film Festival kicks off in Los Angeles on July 13th and runs through August 1. The "festival" actually originated as a promotional event for the first Austin Powers movie, but it's hung in there, and the Los Angeles Times' Steve Hochman thinks that its lineup this year deserves some respect. The screenings this year are packed with obscure '60s pop music documentaries by some important nonfiction filmmakers of the time, including a record by the Maysles brothers of the Beatles' arrival in America and a Led Zeppelin concert movie by the hot cult director Peter Whitehead. (Whitehead's so hot, in fact, that there's a documentary about him that's also included in the festival, In The Beginning Was The Image.) Still, if you really need your fix of nostalgic sixties schlock, there's Otto Preminger's infamous 1968 Skidoo, which features such with-it delights as Jackie Gleason on an acid trip and Carol Channing in a pirate costume. — Phil Nugent
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Morning Deal Report: There Can Be Only One
7/18/2007 11:00:00 AM
 | | Popular Movie Star |
Jared Leto will play the world's last mortal in Reverse Highlander. I mean, in Mr. Nobody, with Sarah Polley. (Doesn't she have something better to do?)
DreamWorks Animation might phone in the movies, but they're paying attention to the business; they just changed the release date of Monsters vs. Aliens two years down the line to avoid conflict with Avatar, James Cameron's first feature in ten years.
John Leguizamo joins Mark Wahlberg in M. Night Shyamalan's next movie.
Noah Baumbach's adapting The Emperor's Children for Ron Howard to direct. This is a step up in brow from Howard's last adaptation. . . at this rate, he'll be tackling Finnegan's Wake by aught-nine.
— Peter Smith
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Half Measures 2007, Part 5
7/18/2007 10:00:00 AM
The top five films of the year to date, as submitted by the ScreenGrab's contributing writers.
Leonard Pierce:
1. Zodiac
Stepping out of his comfort zone for the first time in recent memory, David Fincher, a director most notable for his visual fireworks and Grand Guignol imagery brings to life the story of one of the most notorious serial killers in history — and turns it into a quiet, unassuming and remarkably successful character drama.
2. Brand Upon the Brain!
I had to travel far and wide at some expense to get an advance look at Canadian genius Maddin's latest (and most personal) masterpiece, but it was well worth it. Even seen outside the 'live' performances he concocted in various cities, Brand Upon the Brain! is an absolutely terrific, compelling piece of cinema.
3. Knocked Up
Certainly not the most accomplished film of the year by any reckoning, but damned if it isn't the funniest. With a tremendously appealing cast and a surprising range of emotion (especially given how easy it would have been to turn it into a Farrelly Brothers-style cheap-shot comedy), Knocked Up deserves respect.
4. The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai
It’s probably a mistake to rank this thing (which was originally completed in 2003, but only recently gained a re-edited American release) so highly; after all, it's little more than a brainy, surreal skin flick. But oh, what a brainy, surreal skin flick it is! Explosive, anarchic, derange, incredibly smutty and impossible to describe without seeing it, this is if nothing else the most unique cinematic experience you’ll have all year.
5. Alpha Dog
Nick Cassavetes has yet to prove that he deserves to be talked about in the same breath as his father John. But with Alpha Dog, the story of a low-rent coke dealer in the San Fernando Valley who unexpectedly rockets to the top of the FBI's Most Wanted list, he proves himself adept with the sort of twisted noir his dad flirted with in a number of his films.
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Blanchett as Dylan
7/17/2007 4:00:00 PM
One of this fall's most intriguing movies is Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, which finds the Far From Heaven director tackling one of the key figures of the twentieth century: Bob Dylan. Haynes, to his credit, isn't the type to make a conventional biopic, and his most unorthodox tactic is his use of half-a-dozen actors to play Dylan at various stages of his life. This clip gives us our first look at one of the film's more unlikely Dylans, Cate Blanchett, playing the legend in his young folkie days. All things considered, she looks pretty darn great in the role — the voice is a little off, but she's got his look and mannerisms down cold. At the very least, she should be better than Hayden Christensen in Factory Girl. And dig who's playing Allen Ginsberg! — Paul Clark
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Sex Scares: The Silence Greeting Jim Mitchell's Death
7/17/2007 3:00:00 PM
They always come in threes. First there was minor but beloved Australian horror director and Hitchcock disciple, Richard Franklin, who died at fifty-eight (here's a nice obit). Then there was Charles Lane, the long-lived crabby-appleton character actor (he's the first guy you see in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). But the third victim of the Grim Reaper has received much less publicity: Jim Mitchell, brother of fellow pornographer Artie Mitchell, whom he killed in 1991. In tandem they were the auteurs behind the smut-legitimizing Behind the Green Door, and the thorn in the side of censorious then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein. The cause of Mitchell's death was officially a heart attack, but it's more likely that Jim never recovered from being played by Emilio Estevez in the Showtime TV movie version of the murder case, Rated X. Though his nieces and nephews hate Mitchell, journalist Warren Hinckle still has a soft spot for the manslaughtering smut entrepreneur. In the obit, he remarks, "They were a part of the counterculture. Jimmy was a pioneer, a champion and one of the funniest guys you will meet. He was one of the great guys in the great tradition of tough old San Francisco, maybe the last one of them." — D. K. Holm
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Times Magazine Profiles Milton Katselas
7/17/2007 2:00:00 PM
"A cat that I study says that you are responsible for the condition you are in. Period." The speaker is Milton Katselas, acting teacher to the stars at his school, the Beverly Hills Playhouse; the feline to which he refers is L. Ron Hubbard, the father of Scientology. Profiling Katselas in the New York Times Magazine, Mark Oppenheimer finds him worthy of his reputation as a great acting teacher but is struck by the ways in which his ideas about acting seem to be informed by the church's teachings about how to live a successful life. The general consensus is that Katselas isn't a Dianetics-thumper; Burt Reynolds, a longtime colleague, tells Oppenheimer that he didn't even know the man was a Scientologist "until four days ago," and one fellow Scientologist who's considered an actor in some quarters, Jenna Elfman, apparently cut her ties with the Playhouse because she felt that he was insufficiently devoted to L. Ron. But Katselas credits Hubbard with having turned his life around when he was at a low ebb both personally and professionally. (He had made a name for himself as theater director before turning, less successfully, to directing movies in the 1970s. His 1975 crime melodrama Report to the Commissioner, which features a jaw-dropping turn by the young Michael Moriarty, was described by Pauline Kael as "a must for connossieurs of egregious acting" — not a quote that you want to see hanging on your acting teacher's wall.) It seems that Katselas values the "get high on yourself!" gospel of Scientology but disdains many of the people connected to it. But reading about Katselas, who counsels that "the purpose of the acting art is not to bring about therapy," and thinking about how many actors are Scientologists (and so have embraced the church's animus towards psychiatry), can get you to wondering if L. Ron Hubbard has indirectly been behind the swing away from the Freudian groping that seemed so much a part of American acting as recently as a couple of decades ago. In every day in every day, the differences between Marlon Brando and Tom Cruise just keep piling up. . . — Phil Nugent
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