Sundance Report: D'Angelo Reviews Son of Rambow
1/24/2007 5:00:00 PM
Imagine Lukas Haas' character from Witness abruptly transformed into Jason Schwartzman's character from Rushmore, and then further imagine that oddball juxtaposition as rendered with a distinctly British sensibility, and then add a dollop of '80s nostalgia, and you'll have a pretty good sense of the goofy fun to be had watching Son of Rambow, which may well become a minor hit -- it's already been scooped up by Paramount Vantage -- provided that audiences aren't put off by a title that seems to demand an explanatory "[sic]." Written and directed by Garth Jennings (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), the film pivots upon the unlikely friendship that develops between two 11-year-old boys -- one of them (Will Poulter) an incorrigible ruffian, the other (Bill Milner) a member of the Plymouth Brethren, which seems to be a rough U.K. equivalent of the Amish. Since the Brethren frown upon any exposure to pop culture, young Will can't believe his eyes when his new buddy Carter shows him a bootleg VHS copy of First Blood -- the first movie he's ever seen in his life. Before long, spurred by a television contest for young filmmakers, Will and Carter have begun creating their own remake/homage to Stallone's one-man forest assault, wielding a massive '80s-era video camera with all the naive confidence and ludicrous ambition of the Max Fischer Players.
Son of Rambow lacks the melancholy undercurrent that made Wes Anderson's film something truly special, but it definitely brings the funny. The premise itself is pure gold, and Jennings demonstrates exquisite comic timing in one absurd vignette after another -- some of the best bits come from a tangential subplot involving a French foreign-exchange student whose streaked hair and leather pants leave the Brits awestruck. ("Bonjour...L'Angleterre," he solemnly intones into a microphone upon arrival, as if he'd just kicked off the first leg of his world tour.) Like too many contemporary comedies, Rambow gets bogged down a bit with sentiment in its third act, as Jennings provides a helpful lesson about the True Meaning of Friendship. But it helps when the gooey homilies are addressed to a little kid who's both dressed up and addressed as Colonel Trautman.
--Mike D'Angelo
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Video of the Day: No Time For Nuts
1/24/2007 4:00:00 PM
Nominated for Best Animated Short. One of the few Oscar nominees you can legally see online. It’s good, too.
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Sundance Report: An Interview with Manda Bala Director Jason Kohn
1/24/2007 3:00:00 PM
Bryan Whitefield sits down with the director of one of this year's most acclaimed Sundance documentaries.
 | | Manda Bala director Jason Kohn |
Manda Bala is a beautifully constructed film that tells the story of Sao Paolo, Brazil through first hand interviews and footage that moves from frog farms to political corruption, grisly kidnapping stories to reconstructive surgery footage. The film, which cannot be shown in Brazil because it is considered too dangerous, moves at a rapid fire pace, contrasting the warm sunshine of Brazil and Brazilian music with talk of severe violence and circumstances, including several intense, look-away scenes. The five-year process the film endured shines through in the masterful management of the material, and in the way its visual and conceptual metaphors build to a grand crescendo. I recently got a chance to sit down with Jason Kohn, the very modest director of Manda Bala.
Can you talk about where the idea for this film came from?
Jason Kohn: Well, I was doing a lot of research when I was working for Errol [Morris] because I wanted to make a film. And the whole thing started basically when I left Errol’s office, sold my car, sold my saxophone, as nerdy as that is, and went down to Brazil to try and make this film. My mom is actually Brazilian and my dad is Argentinean. But my Argentinean dad has lived in Brazil since 1991, so I had been there a few times. And because you get more bang for your buck in Brazil than you do in the States and also because of the production value I wanted to achieve I thought it would be better to make a movie in Brazil.
A lot of it doesn’t look like a typical documentary.
JK: I wanted to use the language of narrative movies -- that’s from Errol, Errol invented that. He was the guy that basically said documentary isn’t a separate form of storytelling; it’s a genre within cinema and all of the language of storytelling is visual. A lot of documentaries have this conceit of content over style, but cinema -- the tradition of it, anyway -- is a balance. The bottom line is that movies are the things I love the most, and so it seems like if you’re going to make a movie then make a fucking movie regardless if it’s fiction or non-fiction. Truthfully, I wanted it to look like a science fiction movie.
Really?
JK: Yeah. I mean to me a lot of Sao Paolo looks really futuristic and dystopian. Instead of flying cars you have helicopters, doctors taking parts of your body and moving them to another, so I was really thinking of this as a non-fiction Robocop. It’s about a very violent, broken society and it had to look like that and feel like that, not just have somebody tell you that’s what it’s like. I mean crime is crime but to make it effective, to get some emotion, you have to make an effort to create that mood.
You’re showing a world with a very accelerated evolutionary process. To see this guy sitting there smiling because he knows he’s struck on a new industry with inserting microchip tracking devices into people’s skin… And then the plastic surgeon who developed a process for reconstructing ears that have been chopped off…
JK: Well, he actually invented that process to deal with congenital ear deformities, people who are born without ears. But what happened was that once the kidnappings became more and more prevalent in Sao Paolo he became famous for reconstructing the ears of kidnap victims…
And in the process his life became more dangerous because he was treating these people.
JK: Yeah, I mean as his profile rose it did become a lot more scary, I’m sure.
Within that you have these somewhat humorous interviews and the on-going contrast with this very warm Brazilian music. I thought it served to help keep things a little lighter within all this heavy information you’re giving.
JK: I never wanted anyone to think that the goal of this movie was to talk bad about Brazil. Because the thing about Brazil is that it’s a huge country, has huge problems but it’s extremely beautiful and there are amazing things about it. Plastic surgeons are some of the best in the world, the music is some of the best in the world, the frog farmer, whatever his misdeeds, did something really innovative and interesting and some of that is supposed to provide some balance and add to the objectivity of the movie.
The earliest idea for the film was to show the poor steal from the rich and the rich steal from the poor. From the beginning I didn’t want to focus on poverty, because I think it’s condescending, so the challenge was how to represent poverty without being so explicit. It’s very easy to go to a Third World country with First World eyes and instantly feel sympathy for the people in these places. That wasn’t the point of the movie. Then after three or four and a half years working on it I realized I needed a character to tell the story of poverty, and that ended up being the kidnapper. [The kidnapper interviewed in the film reveals, among several heartless and grisly admissions, that he has 10 kids of his own and used the money he made from kidnappings to pave the streets and create a sewage system in his favela.]
That really makes the movie.
JK: That was the last thing I did. I had a version of the movie that just didn’t have an ending. People gave up on this movie many, many times in the past five years. Cut me off… This was one of those really long, struggle, horrible story kind of movies. And it came out as good as I could have made it. I’m happy now, I wasn’t always.
Are you feeling some reward this week with people’s response to the movie?
I don’t know. It’s very, very stressful. We’re trying to sell the movie. I’ve never really dealt with press before, and when I started this I thought we’d be lucky to get into the North Dakota Inter-Collegiate Film Festival. This whole thing was inspired by Errol Morris and Fred Wiseman and Paul Verhoeven, so this wasn’t something that I could have anticipated, having to enter this world where people actually give a shit about what I say, or get paid to pretend they do. So I’m still getting used to it… But this is the switch from amateur to professional -- the difference between paying to work, which is what I felt like most of the time making this movie, and getting paid to work. I look forward to getting paid to work.
-- Bryan Whitefield
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“I’m Afraid I Punched Him. Very Hard": O'Toole, the Glory Days
1/24/2007 2:15:00 PM
”Michael Caine was O'Toole's understudy in The Long and the Short and the Tall; considering he never went on stage, Caine later said, it was incredible he was so exhausted at the end of the run, but waiting anxiously in the wings every night as O'Toole swung in at the very last minute was enough to give any man a coronary. Once, the pair went out drinking and woke up in a strange flat. 'What time is it?' Caine asked. 'Never mind what time it is,' said O'Toole, 'What fucking day is it?' And sure enough, it was two days later, three hours before curtain up.”
- Read this. It’s the Guardian’s profile/interview of Peter O’Toole, and it is unbelievably awesome.
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See This Movie: Shockproof
1/24/2007 1:40:00 PM
Douglas Sirk’s 1949 noir Shockproof, which was featured on ScreenGrab as a Forgotten Film a few weeks ago, starts its weeklong run at New York’s Pioneer Theater today. Go here to learn more, or buy tickets.
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Sundance Report: D’Angelo Hounds Hounddog
1/24/2007 12:30:00 PM
Pity the poor fellow -- I'm sure there must be one -- who spent upwards of 90 minutes waiting in line for yesterday's press screening of Deborah Kampmeier's Hounddog, courageously endured another hour of overheated Southern Gothic nonsense, and then sneezed at the crucial moment and completely missed the infamous Dakota Fanning rape scene, which was the only reason he was there in the first place.
Actually, I'm exaggerating for effect -- most of the serious idiocy occurs post-violation, though David Morse getting blown off his tractor by a bolt of lightning is good for an early belly laugh. So long as Hounddog sticks close to Fanning's wide-eyed, King-obsessed Lolita, it has a certain blowsy charm, coming across something like a gene splice of Baby Doll and To Kill a Mockingbird. If nothing else, the film will lay to rest any doubts about whether Fanning is genuinely gifted or merely precocious -- her character as written may be little more than a fanciful construct, but she tackles each suspect emotion with unshakable conviction. Alas, she's trapped in a movie that seems unaware that wise Negro stablehands and drooling Faulknerian man-children have gone out of style for a very good reason.
As for the controversial taking of Dakota, I can only grieve anew at our society's sorry squeamishness about children and sexuality. Early word that the scene in question is tastefully suggestive rather than explicit turns out to be an understatement -- it's so brief and murky that Kampmeier might as well have resorted to an intertitle that reads YOU CAN PROBABLY IMAGINE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. Fanning isn't even shown naked, though there's no evidence that Brooke Shields was unduly traumatized by having revealed her incipient girl parts in Louis Malle's Pretty Baby three decades ago. (I assume a shot-by-shot American remake of that film today would result in criminal prosecution.) Any 12-year-old girl not raised among the Amish knows of the existence of sex and rape; asking a pre-teen actor to simulate terror in a sexual context is no more abusive than asking her to scream at the pretend sight of Martians dry-roasting her entire neighborhood.
Speaking of the Amish -- or at least the U.K. equivalent -- Son of Rambow, about a little kid whose first and much-belated taste of pop culture turns out to be Sylvester Stallone in First Blood, has turned into the sleeper of this year's festival. More about that one a bit later today. Right now I have to go watch a dude do a horse. Where are the protests about that?
-- Mike D’Angelo
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Sundance Update: Buying Spree Continues Unabated, EW Blows Its Cred, Zoo Writer Speaks
1/24/2007 11:45:00 AM
- Despite some pundits’ premature suggestions that this was an off year for the festival (actually some called it “the worst Sundance ever”), the buying free-for-all has been positively surreal the last few days, with tons of pictures getting sold for pretty decent prices, including Son of Rambow ($7 million), How She Move ($3 million), Dedication ($4 million), La Misma Luna ($5-6 million), Weapons (a little more than $1 million), In the Shadow of the Moon (more than $2.5 million) and The Signal (slightly less than $2 million). For a full roundup of the sales, go here.
- Years from now, when we look back on when Entertainment Weekly jumped the shark, the time when they hired Tara Reid, Billy Baldwin, and Rainn Wilson to blog the Sundance Film Festival will be a prime contender.
- Should have linked to this earlier, but Andy Spletzer did a pretty fascinating interview for Green Cine Daily, pre-Sundance, with the writer of the poetic bestiality documentary Zoo
- New York Magazine reports on the sad premiere of the late Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress.
- Oh, and if you’re wondering what people thought of the Dakota Fanning Rape Project...the reviews are, so far, pretty brutal.
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Oscar-baition: WB Kudos, An Open Best Picture Race, And A Sweet Sweet Pundit Meltdown
1/24/2007 11:00:00 AM
- The Hollywood Reporter pats Warner Bros. on the back for their successful Oscar campaigns.
- The Best Picture race is wide open this year, they’re saying. And this year, for once, they really mean it.
- Quick, before it gets taken down, read Tom O’Neil’s complete fucking meltdown on the big Dreamgirls Best Picture snub. He thinks it’s a race thing – despite the fact that this year’s nominees are the most diverse bunch in history.
- The film festival submission engine Withoutabox.com had a banner year with Oscar nods, with 13 nominations total going to filmmakers who used the online service.
- Awww. Here’s a sweet story about how the directors of Jesus Camp found out about their Best Doc Oscar nomination: From the pilot of their airplane.
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Morning Deal Report: Clive Owen Wants Marlowe, Obama Wants Gore, Nobody Wants M. Night
1/24/2007 10:00:00 AM
- Universal Pictures wants Clive Owen to play Philip Marlowe in a series of Raymond Chandler adaptations.
- Barack Obama puts his support behind Al Gore for the Oscars. (Hat tip: Movie City News.)
- M. Night Shyamalan is apparently having some difficulty getting his next script bought. (Although you might want to take this particular story with a grain of salt, since the reporter seems to despise the dude.
- David Lynch has teamed up with, um, Donovan to help promote transcendental meditation. Why are we not surprised by this at all?
- Among the films martial arts star Donnie Yen (Iron Monkey, Hero) is considering doing next: A Bruce Lee biopic and a Genghis Khan epic.
- Ang Lee and his younger brother Lee Kang are launching an effort to “provide financial support to projects pushed by young Taiwanese directors” and plan to help produce ten films in the next three years.
- Thirteen director Catherine Hardwicke will direct an adaptation of Edward Abbey’s 1975 anti-establishment novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which “gave rise to a new generation of environmentalists who practiced ‘monkey-wrenching’ — sabotage for the sake of saving the Earth.” The script is credited to William Goldman and Christian Forte.
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Sundance Report: D’Angelo Ruins the Opening of Weapons For You
1/23/2007 6:00:00 PM
I don’t have a whole lot to say about Adam Bhala Lough’s competition entry Weapons, in large part because I walked out after 40 minutes, bored with its macho cretins and its fashionable game of chronological hopscotch. But I do want to quickly note my revulsion for its celebrated opening shot, which even people who dislike the film overall seem to find impressive.
(Stop reading now if you want to be shocked when you see the movie, which was just picked by Sony Classics.)
Technically, the shot is definitely a stunner, especially given the film’s low budget. It begins on a close-up of a burger, pans up to watch a young black man (Nick Cannon) devour it in slow motion for a minute or two (this is the opening credits sequence), catches sight of a blurry figure entering the restaurant behind him, and then watches, silently, without a cut, as the blur cocks a shotgun and proceeds to literally blow half of the burger-eating dude’s head off, showering the camera lens with blood and viscera.
Judging from overheard conversations, people seem to find this gruesome salvo incredibly cool. And that’s precisely my objection: It seems expressly designed to elicit chortles of approval from the AICN crowd. As someone who considers Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible a near-masterpiece, I have no knee-jerk issue with depictions of extreme violence – that film opens with a bludgeoning-by-fire-extinguisher that’s easily ten times more hideous than what Bhala Lough does in Weapons. But it’s also hideously realistic – you watch it unfold in horror and disbelief, each blow more painful than the last. What happens to Nick Cannon’s head, by contrast, is an over-the-top special effect that in no way resembles what such a gunshot wound would actually look like – if memory serves, the expression on the half of his face that remains intact doesn’t change one iota. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a George Romero zombie flick, and in the context of a movie that wants to say something cogent about urban violence, it’s unconscionable.
--Mike D’Angelo
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