Sundance Report: D’Angelo Reviews Lots Of Films
1/27/2007 9:12:59 AM
A few other drive-by assessments as we head for the home stretch:
- I don't understand why some people are excited by Teeth, Mitchell Lichtenstein's Troma-style tale of an aggressively virginal young woman (Jess Weixler) with vagina dentata. The film delivers as many bloody penile stumps as anybody could possibly desire, but that's all it delivers—assign the premise to 100 random aspiring filmmakers and 96 of them would turn in a movie exactly like this one, though perhaps with fewer shots of newly dickless males bellowing directly into the lens. AUUUGGGGHHHH! AUUUGGGGHHHH! Zzzzz....
- Even had it stuck assiduously to the facts of the horrific real-life case on which it's based, Tommy O'Haver's An American Crime, starring Catherine Keener and Ellen Page, would have been little more than pointless, retch-inducing wallow in torture porn. What O'Haver does with his film's climax, however—I'll describe it only as a mock-cathartic fake-out—may be the single most repugnant cinematic "ploy" (for lack of a better word) I've ever seen. No amount of good intentions can possibly justify such a vile, sadistic betrayal of the viewer's trust.
- Like most people, I got a little sick of Parker Posey during the mid-'90s, when it seemed like she was in every third indie film on the market. As the lead in Zoe Cassavetes' romcom Broken English, however, she taps into the loneliness and desperation beneath her brittle persona; this is the first time in my memory that she's ever come across as a plausible human being. Too bad she's been paired with Melvil Poupaud, the most narcissistic actor in all of France (which is like being the most opportunistic politician in all of Congress).
- I wound up bailing on Martin Hynes' The Go-Getter, mostly because I was starving and knew I had a tight turnaround between that film and Zoo. But while I was plenty exasperated by his screenplay's concussive wackiness—the plot sees Thumbsucker's Lou Taylor Pucci impulsively steal a car for a road trip and then forge a long-distance phone relationship with the vehicle's weirdly tolerant owner, played by the disembodied voice of Zooey Deschanel—Hynes clearly has serious chops as a director. If he can dial it down a few notches while maintaining The Go-Getter's hazy, lyrical, asymmetrical visual style, he'll have something really special.
- I have now skipped Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, the avant-garde documentary about the titular soccer star, at three different festivals. (Previously, Cannes and Toronto.)
--Mike D’Angelo
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Sundance Report: D’Angelo on Rocket Science
1/26/2007 6:00:00 PM
With the festival gradually winding down, now seems like a good time to belatedly address a handful of films that I just didn't have time to write about during the initial onslaught. Chief among these is Rocket Science, a quirky high-school comedy that borrows a few plot elements from Election and much of its sensibility from Wes Anderson, yet still somehow comes across as fresh and original, if perhaps a bit strained. It helps that writer-director Jeffrey Blitz, best known for the hit documentary Spellbound, sets the film in a distinctive milieu that's largely been ignored or misrepresented in movies: the cutthroat world of policy debate (a.k.a. Oxford debate). This is a world I happen to know exceedingly well, having gotten as far as the California state championship tournament in 1984 and 1985 , and while Blitz uses debate only as a backdrop and a narrative engine, he does make an effort to depict it accurately. In particular, he acknowledges the existence of "spreading," a delivery technique so rapid-fire that most untrained spectators are lucky if they comprehend half of what's being said. (You can see why the movies favor the laid-back, conversational style of presidential debates.)
Rocket Science's awkward protagonist, Hal Hefner (the winning Reece Daniel Thompson), wouldn't seem to be prime debate material, since he's afflicted with the most debilitating stutter since Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda. Nonetheless, he's recruited by debate club star Ginny Ryerson, who claims to see an argumentative fire burning deep within him and is determined to stoke it by any means necessary. A type-A Gorgon in the Tracy Flick mold, Ginny is played by Anna Kendrick, the young actress whose remarkable poise and versatility made her castmates in Todd Graff's Camp look like rank amateurs by comparison; she more than fulfills her promise here, nailing the character's forthright duplicity and verbose, supersonic monologues. Blitz, for his part, continually steers the movie in unexpected directions, which can be both exhilarating and maddening—his determination not to succumb to cliché pays hilarious dividends throughout, but also ultimately makes Rocket Science feel more like a collection of sharp sketches than a bona fide film. And, of course, it goes all sappy at the end. Knock that shit off, comic filmmakers! Leave the life lessons to Lasse Hallström, if you please.
--Mike D'Angelo
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Video of the Day 2: Edward Scissorhands, the Musical
1/26/2007 5:00:00 PM
This will, without a doubt, be one of the strangest musicals ever. Presenting a preview of Matthew Bourne's "dance-play" of Edward Scissorhands.
(Hat tip: Panayides Optical House.)
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Achtung! German Film Honcho Displeased With German Film Critics
1/26/2007 3:15:00 PM
Germany’s filmmakers are launching an attack on Germany’s film critics. Guenter Rohrbach, president of the German film association, wrote an essay in Der Spiegel asking, “Do we even need them, these elite self-promoters who turn pirouettes around our films?…Is the meager praise they occasionally give worth all the suffering they inflict, all the damage they do to us?"
Apparently, this missive was inspired by the negative critical response to two recent, high-profile releases: Tom Tykwer's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and Dani Levy's comedy Mein Fuehrer: The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler, both of which have done well at the box office.
This is fairly typical wounded-ego stuff. Filmmakers are totally dependent on critics when they make small movies that need exposure, but then turn around and gripe about how critics aren’t necessary once they graduate to making big pictures with multi-million dollar marketing campaigns.
I wonder what Rohrbach thinks of the lead actor of Mein Fuehrer, who himself has been very critical of the film? More significantly, if these films are doing so well at the box office, then clearly the critics aren’t having a negative effect on audiences. So really, the only reason to complain about the critics is because it’s hurting these filmmakers’ fragile egos. Just come out and say it: You can’t take criticism.
This nonsense gets tossed around quite a bit, but seriously, can you imagine people in the book world arguing that they don’t need literary critics? (Ignore for a moment the fact that if lit criticism vanished many, many novelists themselves would lose like half their income.)
And I say this as someone who put Tykwer’s Perfume on my Top Ten list for 2006…
--Bilge Ebiri
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Quote of the Day: Sarah Silverman Craps, Dreams
1/26/2007 2:30:00 PM
”I think I'm the crapper and the dreamer. It kills me that I fart and shit in an episode. I love aggressively stupid humor, but it was so embarrassing. The truth is, I do wish all the nations were part of one world and our religion was love. But I'm also the retard. To quote you.”
- Sarah Silverman talks to the Village Voice’s Michael Musto about her new show, as well as her…um, inverted vagina.
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Griping About Thieving Janitor Movies…
1/26/2007 1:45:00 PM
Y’know, the custodial profession deserves our respect. They clean up our shit (literally), scrub the floors of our nasty-ass schools and office buildings, and then pretend that half the incriminating junk they find during the regular performance of their duties never existed. That last bit, of course, suggests that Hollywood in particular should have some respect for the janitors of the world, given the amount of blow, fake accounting ledgers, and dead extras these poor blue collar schlubs have to dispose of on a daily basis.
So why oh why are we now getting two films going into production about janitors stealing? News comes in today that Queen Latifah is negotiating to join the cast of Mad Money opposite Diane Keaton. The film, a remake of the British heist comedy Hot Money, “follows well-off housewife Bridget (Keaton) forced back into a job as one of the night janitors at the Federal Reserve bank when her husband gets fired. Stuck with a mortgage and debt, she figures out a creative way to get money and lots of it with the help of other people in the crew. Latifah will play one of them.”
That, of course, comes on the heels of news that Brett Ratner will be directing a film starring Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock about janitors in a Trump building planning to rob the Donald silly. I suppose getting big movie stars to play janitors is somewhat flattering, but does this mean that these underpaid workers will now also have to endure half-playful, half-tense, “Now, you’re not gonna rob me, are you?” jibes from their richer-than-god employers?
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Sundance Report: Whitefield Goes On The Road With Judas
1/26/2007 1:00:00 PM
The press release for On The Road With Judas reads:
”On The Road With Judas is a film based on a novel, written by a writer, played by actors, about the real characters and the actors playing those characters in this story. It is also about crime, love and David Lee Roth.”
That’s about as a clear a picture as I can paint in terms of what this film is about. It’s actually a lot simpler and less confusing when you’re sitting in the theater enjoying what is easily one of the most original and interesting movies I’ve seen in some time. J.J. Lask has taken his straightforward novel and split it in half, giving each main character in the book an alter-ego, including himself as the author J.J. Lask (played by Kevin Corrigan) and his soundtrack, which is full of covers of easily recognizable songs from the 80s and 90s. J.J. appears in the film himself, but only as a talk-show host who interviews both sides of the character coin.
New Yorkers will recognize several locations as well as familiar faces like Leo Fitzpatrick, Bobbito Garcia, and the late Harold Hunter, but for the most part Judas is filled out with names you don’t know and few faces you will recognize. That is no accident. In today’s Q&A Lask addressed this directly, saying, “Frankly, I’m a little sick of independent films with stars in them. Those don’t feel like independent movies to me, they feel like studio side projects. Everything we did with this project, from casting, to set design, to the poster, was meant to be a film, to be cinema.” If that reads pretentious, don’t worry. This movie stands up to that claim in every sense.
 | | Director JJ Lask |
This movie reminded me a lot of Michel Gondry’s Science of Sleep, which I saw here last year in the same theater, with its absurdity and the similar sense of suspended reality. What I really like about both those films is that no matter how far off the map you go, it always points back to reality and real emotions. Is that something that was important to maintain?
J.J. Lask: I think you always have to get back to reality somehow.
I liked the comment you made at the Q&A where you said the film is basically about one moment in a relationship, and that everything else echoes out from that.
JJL: Exactly. It’s always the non-moments in life that you remember the most. When you didn’t call that girl or you met a girl at the party but then you never saw her again… And it’s those little moments in life that to me are the most important and the most fun to explore. Not graduating college… those are supposed to be the big moments but when you look back they’re really not.
Can you talk a little about the story of the film? It started as a novel…
JJL: Yeah, I wrote the book. It took five years to write partly because I work. I go to work every day to edit commercials. And with that kind of job you don’t get a lot of time to write. I always wanted to make movies so after the book came out I was trying to adapt it into a film and that’s when this idea came about.
To basically just skew it and split it…
JJL: Yeah, in an effort to do something really original and different.
So you assembled a cast and some money and started making the movie, and from what I heard you worked mostly without a script?
JJL: Yeah. The actors read the book, then we did rehearsals where I would ask them questions and they would answer the questions based on the book. We rehearsed about five times with every actor, and then we put the actors together or separately in the different interview settings. We did that for about seven days. Then we took six months and edited all that together.
So you shot everything flat and then went back and chopped it up. That makes sense, because I was wondering how you could possibly keep that story line organized in your head.
JJL: Yeah, no way. We chopped it all up and then started scripting scenes based on the book and the interviews as well as new scenes based purely on the interviews that have nothing to do with what’s in the book.
How did you cast this movie?
JJL: Well, Kevin Corrigan [Lask’s alter-ego in the film] was never cast. He’s been a friend for a long time, and he was always going to be involved with the project. So having him on board lent some legitimacy and helped us get other people involved. But when you’re depending on seven lead actors, because it is an ensemble piece, even though Aaron Ruell [a barely recognizable Kip from Napoleon Dynamite] is the main character, all of those actors and characters are important.
You also shot a lot on real locations. Is that more of a challenge?
JJL: Ben Strikeman [the director of photography] and I spent a lot of time looking for locations that would work. Then Jennifer Dagen, our set designer, did a phenomenal job creating Serra’s apartment. We watched a lot of Woody Allen films, to try and emulate some of the authenticity that he gets creating people’s apartments. We didn’t want a set. The only set we built was the talk-show set.
And where did you get some of these props that we see throughout the movie? [The film is full of recently outdated items like disk drive Macs, answering machines, beepers, etc.] On eBay?
JJL: Yeah, we scoured eBay and TekServe in New York City. eBay makes filmmaking easier.
This is your first film and your first film festival – what has your experience with Sundance been so far?
JJL: First of all, it’s an honor to be here. People are now saying, “J.J. Lask, filmmaker, blah, blah, blah.” Well that’s a pretty big title. I have an enormous respect for film as an art form and I don’t really consider myself a “filmmaker” yet, because I think that’s a title you have to earn. I just made one small movie. I’ve seen a lot of great movies where that person’s second movie is crap and that filmmaker title gets snatched back from them very fast. So I’m not going to call myself a filmmaker just yet. If I can get two or three or even four that people like then I’ll start to think of myself as a filmmaker but for right now I still consider myself a little, lowly writer.
Well, I have bad news for you, you’re not making it any easier on yourself when you make something this fresh and this personal and this original. Then you have to start all over from scratch?
JJL: I know. And then when you add Whoopi Goldberg and Danny DeVito into the next one…
You’re just going to go ahead and put that out there right now?
JJL: Yeah, I’m looking to make a Danny DeVito vehicle. Maybe something with Bernie Mac…
But is it nice, after all that work, to bring the film here and get a good reception? Because you got a very warm reception today.
JJL: It’s humbling. I was very nervous, but it makes you want to work harder. I’ve worked really hard. Basically every weekend for the last 12 years, trying to learn editing and the language of film, on top of being a writer. And I think if you want to avoid your second film being crap, then you have to be prepared to work really hard, and I’m going to do that.
-- Bryan Whitefield
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Video of the Day 1: Trailer for Them
1/26/2007 12:15:00 PM
"French" and "horror" aren't usually two concepts that go well together, but thanks to this (terrifying) trailer for the Gallic horror flick Them, we are seriously keeping an open mind.
(Hat tip: The Nashville Scene.)
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If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again: This Week in Hollywood Jesus
1/26/2007 11:30:00 AM
More Jesus flicks are on the way – well, sort of. MGM has bought distribution rights to Passion of the Christ writer Benedict Fitzgerald’s Myriam, Mother of the Christ, “a dramatic rendering of the key events in Mary's life leading up to the birth of Jesus and the holy family's journey from Egypt to Nazareth following the death of King Herod. The story is told from Mary's point of view as she gradually understands the unfolding of God's plan and responds to her calling. No director or cast is attached.”
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Sundance Update: Swag, the Good Kind, More Salezzzzzz....
1/26/2007 11:00:00 AM
- (Pictured) Ray Pride is suitably impressed with the swag for Black Snake Moan.
- Blah blah blah lots of movies getting bought blah blah blah.
- Justin Theroux wears a necklace made of human teeth his dentist gave him. Who knew?
- Gwyneth Paltrow almost cried at the screening of her brother’s debut feature, The Good Night.
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