One more month and the year is half over! Yikes. I only have six months left to churn out some fantastic life-saving (my life anyway) "best of the decade" book for you to purchase. In case you missed anything, here's the best of May.
The Blockbuster Loop I buried the lead. Everyone thought it was about Christian Bale but what I really wanted to discuss was the loop! May Flowers My favorites were Vertigo and My Fair Lady. Yours? 9 for Nine I should talk about this everyday given your enthusiasm. Juliette Binoche JA thinks she's the "best crier" in cinema. A lively discussion followed. Terminator a retrospective and the debut vodcast.
'Precioussssss' the new movie looks great but I can't stop thinking about the white poodle and the girl in the pit. John Cameron Mitchell on Nicole Kidman "a stradivarius" Signatures: Jamie Lee Curtis Adam chose a truly undervalued actress to celebrate. Cannes Coverage the most we've done. If only I'da been there. Triple Crowner this one was for the awards freaks. Who's next: Jane Fonda, Geoffrey Rush, Marcia Gay Harden, Dianne Wiest or John Lithgow?
In June: MERYL STREEP MONTH Both serious and un postings (thrice ? weekly) about America's most acclaimed actress, her co-stars, her filmography. For those who share Katharine Hepburn's "click, click, click"reservations about Meryl's work, Streepless posting will continue. Topics to include: Sam Rockwell in Moon, Michelle Pfeiffer in Chéri, Sam Mendes' Away We Go, the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Woody Allen's Whatever Works This week: Oscar prediction updates
I didn't live blog the MTV Movie Awards tonight but I tweeted about it -- if you followed along -- whilst bracing myself for the last death rattle of Slumdog Millionaire's trophy gathering prowess. It lost everything to Twilight and that makes total sense since the latter stare-fest was the worst movie in the mix and this ain't about the cinema!
It was the MTV Twilight Awards. They won everything. Here's the New Moon trailer. Lots of screaming on MTV when Taylor Lautner took his shirt off.
It looks like he'll lose more than his shirt. When he transforms into a fearsome WereCGI his clothes explode.
The big takeaway of the night:Brüno wins. Eminem loses.
Sacha Baron Cohen hasn't lost any of his ability to cause a comedy stir and Eminem hasn't gained any sense of humor. Shouldn't rehab give you a humbler handy sense of humor about yourself? I do think it was justly hilarious to see Eminem's gaybaiting come back to (ass)slap him in the face. To be fair though he has cooled the homophobia a bit, unless you consider the 'don't mean to offend' to be sarcastic
He does not mean to lesbian offend But Lindsay, please come back to seeing men Samantha’s a two, you’re practically a ten I know you want me, girl, in fact, I can see a grin ... Sorry Portia, but whats Ellen DeGeneres Have that I don’t, are you telling me tenderness? Well I can be as gentle and as smooth as a gentleman
At least Zachary Quinto and Cameron Diaz thought the Brüno/Eminem bit was funny. Here's a theory about the prank that I suspect is true
Adam of Club Silencio here with another look at my favorite actresses and their distinguishing claims to fame.
I'm probably not Kathy Bates number one fan, but I'd certainly be club treasurer. As much as I love her, I just don't have the follow through to keep her bed-ridden and hobble her legs. Even so Kathy's worth any and all fan-frenzy devotion. Not only does she consistently turn potentially mocking roles into comedy and drama gold, she's a director in her own right and an inspirational cancer survivor. It's not just her characters that are unsinkable, it's Kathy Bates.
Many of Kathy's most mesmerizing turns play on that fact that she's an atypical starlet, and she always seems to revel in that - capturing the misery, humor and strength in unglamorous roles. Her Oscar-winning character Annie Wilkes surely never crossed the paths of Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts, but Kathy takes on this frumpy and fanatical Colorado native as if she'd been listening to Liberace and abducting authors her entire life. Acting shouldn't always pretty, and Kathy manages to make even the most unappealing part a thing of beauty. Few could give an overweight character named Evelyn Couch her due decency, but Kathy never flounders.
Towanda will go on a rampage! I'll slip tiny bombs into Penthouse and Playboys so they explode when you open them. I'll ban all fashion models who weigh under 130 pounds! And I'll give half the military budget to people over 65 and declare wrinkles sexually desirable.
She tackles roles without reservation, without vanity, and that's what really plumbs the depths of her characters.Likewise, real depth exists when you're trying to dump your deadbeat husband's body in a well...
One of Kathy's most stirring and complex portraits comes in Dolores Claiborne, about a woman whose life has been centered on abuse: verbal abuse from her boss, physical abuse from her husband, and emotional bruises that still exist with her distant daughter. The film takes us through the years of Dolores' headstrong life to find the power in a woman painted as victim, bitch and bully. Kathy's own strength is what translates and gives this woman her second chance at redemption.
Here's to Kathy Bates. An atypical starlet as strong, beautiful and bold as ever. Truly unsinkable.
For the finale of May Flowers I thought we should gaze at Alfred Hitchcock's immortal Vertigo(1958). Aside from Vertigo descendants like Robert Altman's Three Women or David Lynch's Mulholland Drive what film is more appropriate for this time of year when we're ruled by twin sign Gemini? Hitchcock films generally deserve complete dissertations but we don't have Scottie Ferguson's (Jimmy Stewart) stamina when it comes to fetishizing doppelgangers. So in the space of this blogpost we merely glance at his introductions to Madeleine/Judy (Kim Novak).
Ferguson has been hired to follow Madeleine and as he first spots her in the deep rose red restaurant, Hitchock slow zooms out from Scottie (far right) at the bar and pans left, following his gaze, into the dining area filled with flowers and well heeled customers and even a painting of a floral arrangement framed by floral arrangements before it finally stops at Madeleine (tiny, far left) in her emerald green dress.
As she leaves the restaurant we get Kim Novak's first bewitching close up, carefully calibrated and emphasized by Hitchcock's editor George Tomasini and cinematographer Robert Burks. Scottie likes what he sees but this is a job.
Some enchanted evening You may see a stranger, you may see a stranger Across a crowded room And somehow you know, You know even then That somewhere you'll see her Again and again.
-"Some Enchanted Evening" from South Pacific which (trivia note!) opened in theaters two months before Vertigo.
Scottie will indeed be seeing Madeleine again and again. His interest is piqued. Hitchcock sees this man's spiral into obsession coming long before he does. When Scottie next follows Madeleine she enters a door in an alley way and he enters, not knowing what he'll find there.
This is psychologically astute visual storytelling. Once he's in pursuit, Scottie is cast into shadow and suddenly it's all color, flowers, woman. This will be happening to Scottie again and again, albeit not in the literal sense. His personality will darken (obsessive bullying voyeur coming right up) and soon his life will be entirely focused on colors (it must be the gray suit!), flowers (his eyes darting from bouquet to bouquet) and this particular woman. All he will be able to see is Madeleine.
Or Judy as the case may be...
Scottie also first "meets" (okay, stalks) Judy, who looks suspiciously like Madeleine, in a setting bursting with colored petals. His eye is drawn there by a familiar bouquet... And then he spots Judy, introduced with a right profile closeup just like Madeleine. Her shot isn't as elegant but she's from Selina, Kansas. What did you expect?
Though she lacks Madeleine's class, she's practically a fraternal twin. Scottie will force the issue until she's identical. Hitchcock, Novak and Stewart aren't afraid to commit to unlikeable characters (pity that neither actor was Oscar-nominated for this, but then Oscar treated this masterpiece quite shabbily, extending only sound and art direction nominations) and the movie is richer and darker for it.
Vertigo makes you dizzy with its duplicate women, tripled bouquets -- oops, I didn't mention the third woman, Carlotta Valdes, and that painting that hypnotizes Madeleine? No?!
We can't venture there, lest we be sucked into the knotty insane spiral of all of these doppelgangers. We don't want to end up like Scottie or Madeleine who'll violently toss her flowers into the river before jumping in herself.
I regret to inform that I had to bow out of StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Smackdown for 1992. I haven't participated in a long time and I had really hoped to. 1992's women offer a wealth of Oscar discussables and tropes: the wisecracking dame, the old biddy, the longsuffering spouse, the maligned winner, the nominee who maybe isn't being thanked for the performance she's nominated for but for her entire year, the Woody Allen player, Oscar's perceived anglophilia versus its perceived nationalism.
My vote would have gone to Judy Davis (Husbands and Wives) and by quite a large margin. To drive the point home further, she is roughly tied with Julianne Moore (Boogie Nights) for my favorite supporting actress performance of the 1990s altogether. Unless you count Michelle's Catwoman (Batman Returns) as supporting... and I'm never sure that you should. If I had a nominating ballot back in the day, these four women would have made it.
Miranda Richardson, The Crying Game (I'm not sure what it is about this performance that I find so spooky but she really puts me on edge. 1992 was such a peak year for Richardson: This film, Damage,Enchanted April, the BAFTA & Globe win, the Oscar nom. When will she get another chance like this? She was even better in Spider (2002) but no plum parts as of late)
Marisa Tomei, My Cousin Vinny [new readers take note: she talked to me about this Oscar win on the first episode of the Film Experience Podcast]
Not sure about the fifth slot. I love Alfre Woodard in Passion Fish but it's kind of a dual lead film, isn't it? Who to put in slot five... Hmmm. Any suggestions?
We're back with round two. This time Katey and I are discussing Pixar's latest Up.
Would love to hear your thoughts on Pixar's latest film and protagonist Carl Fredrickson (we didn't get into this in the video but isn't it strange that Pixar films never have female leads?). I take it many of you already took that balloon ride.
I'm not sure that Georgia O'Keeffe would have loved Sex & The City but I'm pretty sure Sex & The City loves Georgia O'Keeffe. Those lady flowers are everywhere.
While it's true that you can't really make a wedding movie without a floral arrangement, Sex... doesn't just use flowers for the bouquet toss.
Just give me the damn symbolic vaginas -The Bachelor (1999)
Flowers cling to Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw like she's a one woman photosynthesis factory. It'd be a stretch to say that every costume includes them but more often than not costume designer Patricia Field has dipped Carrie in vats of them: green florals (buying an apartment), red (bragging about her boyfriend), purple (single again), huge gigantor white florals just because. She's a photosynthesis factory and a color wheel.
Subtlety has never been Sex and the City's strong suit. The movie is all about the act of handing her ladyparts over to Big permanently, so they must be fully visualized. She even beats Big over the head with them!
Carrie has never been a shrinking violet, she's always an exhibitonist. She parades it around. She turns heads with it on the street. She even writes best selling books about it as you know.
The other women are not without their own floral motifs. Charlotte (Kristin Davis), always the most subdued, doesn't wear a lot of flowers but she's named her daughter "Lily" so she's done her part. Her sexuality was always goal oriented anyway.
The older women get floral representation too, albeit with less saturation. Carrie's envious editor (Candice Bergen) has given up. She's framed hers and hung it in her office.
Samantha (Kim Cattrall), who kept Sex in Sex and the City (the TV show) even when it forgot its libido late in the run, isn't having a lot of sex (in the movie). She wears no florals but in one key sequence she decides that she must have a pricey bit of jewelry at auction.
This flower ring is the essence of me. One of a kind.
It's a symbolic vagina for a symbolic vagina (oh, the folds and layers!). See, her boyfriend Smith Jerrod also wants to purchase the ring and Samantha's entire subplot becomes a tug of war between them. Smith wants her ladyparts for himself. She wants them back.
This leaves two characters and they're both conspicuously lacking in the flower power. 'Saint Louise from St Louis' (Jennifer Hudson) has no vagina. Poor thing. She's only there to help Carrie, so I guess they figure she doesn't need one?
And finally there's Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) who definitely has one but is being punished for pretending she doesn't. Her vagina is furious and only comes out once (barely visible: black on dark brown) to warn Big away from Carrie's vagina.
My vagina's angry. It is. It's pissed off. My vagina's furious and it needs to talk. -The Vagina Monologues
Miranda is all work work work and 'let's get this over with' mood killer. Unless she learns to let Steve in, she'll never be able to wear bright floral prints again!
P.S. We'll find out if Miranda is back in bloom when Sex and the City 2 opens next year on this very weekend. *
In my weekly column over @ Towleroad I've declared next week "Neil Patrick Harris Week"... pass it on! The hilarious Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (pictured left co-starring Nathan Fillion) comes to DVD on Tuesday* and then NPH hosts the TONY Awards on Sunday. He'll basically sing for you all week if you want him, too. The column also features a quick bit on two gay winners from Cannes, Bruce LaBruce's plan to make another explicit zombie picture and more...
*Apparently it was already on DVD but is being rereleased or released in some new way? DVDs schedules are making me crazy, lately. I can't keep track anymore... they're getting as convoluted as theatrical. How many versions and how many release dates can each movie / tv show have? And the press releases don't even mention the other releases. Ayiyiyiyiyi.
off-cinema Getty Drew Barrymore and Emmy Rossum attend the reject Prop 8 rallies. I think this is the most animated I've ever seen Emmy Rossum's face. It can only mean one thing: supporting gay rights makes you a better actress! Gawker Wikipedia cracks down on Team Scientology Pretty on the Outside imagines a Playbill for the new Hugh Jackman / Daniel Craig Broadway outing. World of Wonder and Gawkerfinally other people besides me are beginning to talk some sense about celeb du jour Adam Lambert's dumb coyness. I seriously have been annoyed at the way the gay community has been kissing his ass for months. Just Jared Jude Law hones his Hamlet. Oh, I wish I could see it. And I'm totally sick of Hamlet.
cinema The Rocchi Files Open Letter to Pixar (great stuff) Lou Romano production art development for UP. Just beautiful The Celebrity Truth Steven Spielberg's Tintin movie, with Jamie Bell in the lead is now scheduled for Christmas time 2011. Unfortunately it's a motion capture thing. Hopefully Jamie Bell will look more human than Tom Hanks did in that Polar movie AfterEllen the hottest sporty women in sports movies or some such. Thumbs up on the high rank for "Missy Pantone" in Bring It On. But then I'm always up for Eliza Dushku. i09 Spider-Man 4 to focus more tightly on Peter Parker Cinematical fun piece on horror replacement actors to celebrate Alison Lohman's role in Drag Me To Hell which, as you may know, was originally Ellen Page's.
And finally, just for fun... here's a sampling of the variety of things people -- complete strangers , I just did a title search -- are tweeting about Drag Me To Hell.
While some people were enjoying the sunshine last weekend I was holed up with Joe having a True Blood marathon (I'm not much for sunshine). Now, that it's on DVD have you caught up with it yet?
Art of the Title Sequence investigated its NSFW opening titles last year which I still can't get enough of. I couldn't ever fast forward. I love how the credits shove religiosity, carnality and base nature into a crammed pot, boil them down to their base essences (remarkably similar as it turns out!) and mix them into a trashy stew... just like the show. ♫ "I wanna do bad things to you" I'd only seen the first few episodes before and the show never got any less obvious about what some saw as its awkward / obvious political sexual metaphors but as it turns out it didn't need to. Good trash is good trash. Trash that has campy knowing fun with its awkward flailing at message and meaning? I'll take it. The second season starts June 14th.
<--- Robert Pattison on the set of New Moon
The vampire mythology has always readjusted itself to suit current preoccupations and we've definitely moved back into the realm of the romantic vampire. The romantic undead was missing for awhile -- see 2006's vampire blog-a-thon -- but he's returned defanged. The traditional romantic/erotic vampire has been replaced by the romantic/sexless vampire. Twilight bores me stiff, like rigor mortis stiff, but a lot of people of all ages love its weird asexuality... which... though I'm no social theorist, I'm guessing is a natural result of the past decade of purity rings, abstinence fever and attacks against sex-ed. But it's strange (to me at least) that the TeenBeat style sexuality isn't just for tweens and newly hormonal teens anymore.
The recent television upfronts have revealed that we'll be getting more Twilight style PG vampirism with The Vampire Diaries which is also about a beautiful high school girl falling for the mysterious undead classmate who initially resists her. How much do you have to change something to avoid lawsuits?
Not much apparently!
I assume that a lot of this teen vampire craze sprung from the influential and totally brilliant Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy may have also been a high schooler but you know what they say: some people mature faster than others.
Thank god there's True Blood for a randy bloody counterpoint to the wildly popular but anemic teenage vampire craze. For all the dreamy eyed romanticism of the Bill (Stephen Moyer) & Sookie (Anna Paquin) relationship on True Blood, it also feels just as sexually dangerous as it should. I mean loving the undead... that should be a little frightening, not just mushy. That scene late in the first season where Bill emerges from the earth and mounts an initially terrified Sookie? That was dirty... in both senses of the word.
Will True Blood get any cinematic company or will Twilight ripoffs completely take over in the next few years? Surburban Vampire has a huge list of upcoming undead titles and the answer seems to be neither. Most of the new vampire films seem to be horror or action related like...
High Midnight -a period piece and vampire western which the always welcome Thomas Kretschmann (The Pianist, Valkyrie) was initially rumored to be starring in as a vampire hunter.
Daybreakers a scifi horror take which frankly sounds more like a zombie film. Most of the human race has gone bloodsucker. With Willem Dafoe and Ethan Hawke (who look quite clean and fresh for people fighting for their lives in a horror film.)
Last Blood epic war between zombies vs. vampires with the vamps out to protect their food source, humans
... and finally gets Nicole Kidman's hair red again!
JA from MNPP here making a couple of assumptions and false statements for entertaining bullshit's sake: first off, I don't know for sure that Nic's dyed her hair for Rabbit Hole, John Cameron Mitchell's film with her and Aaron Eckhart, but I'm assuming so since that thing's filming these days, ain't it? I'm sure one of you Kidman disciples will fill me in if I'm incorrect, or correct, or falling somewhere in between.
And also, it makes for a punchy headline but JCM's hardly accomplished the impossible - Nic's gone back to red for several of her auteur-pals: Baz got her fire-enginey and Jonathan Glazer got her strawberry.
But it feels like forever and it's always a cause to celebrate - I'm a firm advocate of her embracing her unique gingerness - so I don't feel too bad in mis- or over-stating my case. She looks lovely! .
tuesday thursday top ten: for the listmaker in me and the listlover in you What follows is a reworking of a post originally published in 2007. It's two years later and you know what that means: Pixar has given us two more classics. UP brings their feature film count to ten. You know what Ten means: Top Ten Time!
Pixar by Preference
Cars (John Lasseter, 2006) 117 min. Pixar's only dud. Chief among its problems: the anthropomorphics were forced. Let me get this straight: Cars as bugs on windshields of cars as cars who act like humans and they even sleep in hotels for cars -- What? What? It's not quite Shark Tale in the realm of painful "they're just like us!" pandering but it's not 'good' either. I would give it a second chance except it's also Pixar's longest feature... too long by about 23 minutes. Thankfully, they seem to have reversed their bloated running time trending. It peaked here and began coming back down to 90 minute levels. Best character: n/a Oscar noms: 2 (Original Song and Animated Feature)
Good Movies
09A Bug's Life (Lasseter & Andrew Stanton, 1998) 96 min. Not as memorable as the other films but a solid entertainment. Best character: Heimlich "finally, I'm a beautiful butterfly!" Oscar noms: 1 (Score, Musical or Comedy)
08Finding Nemo (Stanton & Lee Unkrich, 2003) 100 min. Pixar's biggest hit and the appeal is obvious. It's consistently funny and it looks like a million billion bucks. And I'm not just talking about the color palette (fish were such a brilliant subject for an animated film) but the intermittently serene bliss of the uncluttered frame. Animated films tend to overstuff and err on the side of visual and narrative chaos, desperate that the littlest eyes in the audience might wander. Pixar is more confident than that (though I could've done without some of Nemo's lamer gags like "surfer" turtles. 'Whoa') Best character: Dory, possibly the best celebrity voice casting ever for a toon. In non-Pixar efforts the casting is usually only about the marquee value of the name. Pixar almost always does right by casting. It's character first. Ellen DeGeneres's whole comic persona serves the fish and not the other way around. Oscar noms: 4 (Animated Feature*, Score, Sound Editing, Original Screenplay)
Toy Story 2 (Lasseter, Unkrich and Ash Brannon, 1999) 92 min. The last time I made a Pixar list I asked if it was as great as some claim? But unfortunately I didn't seek an answer for myself. I loved its basic story concept but I don't remember it well. Best character: They're mostly holdovers but I do remember that that Barbie sequence was bananas. Oscar Noms: 1 (Score). 1999 was the year that prompted the Academy to create an animated feature category, which became an official category in 2001. The collective critical response to Toy Story 2, The Iron Giant and Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke which were all released stateside in 1999 was basically along the lines of 'these animated movies are as good as any live action movie'. AMPAS decision seemed like a good move at the time, but now the category has become a ghetto preventing films as rich and lauded as WALL•E from landing in the Best Picture category where they belong.
Very Good. Sometimes Great.
06Up(Pete Docter & Bob Peterson) 96 min. This ranking might be too high or too low. But the film is brand spanking new. I'll need time to settle with it... float back down to earth. I always feel high in the sky after a Pixar... even the ones that don't include helium balloons. Our Vodcast Review Best character: Carl Fredricksen. I love how square his face is, how it ages and how expressive it remains throughout the film, despite being as boxed up as his life in his old house. Oscar noms: We'll know in January 2010. I'm going to guess three (Score, Animated and one Sound categories)
Monsters, Inc. (Docter, Unkrich and Lee Silverman, 01) 92 min. One of the most underrated films of 2001, arguably the best cinematic year of the decade. How can this be underrated when it made hundreds of millions and people generally like it, you ask? Because they should love it. It's got all the Pixar strengths in abundance: inventive screenplay, memorable characters, complicated gags, glorious production design. Those people (including Academy voters) who thought Shrek was better? They're monsters! My screams when it lost the Oscar could power Monstropolis for a year. Best character: Boo Oscar noms: (Original Song*, Animated Feature, Score, Sound Editing)
04Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 07) 111 min. Left the movie theater with a huge smile on my face... interrupted only by an occassional shudder from the heebie-jeebies. You know, hundreds of rats... in a kitchen... touching food! Pixar is totally gourmet. You always feel that the films are crafted with great skill and love. They make a mint but it's plain as day that's not their soul purpose. It's not an assembly line. One hopes this anti fast-food approach eventually rubs off on the increasingly soulless direct to DVD Disney. Best character: Gusteau Oscar noms: 5 (Animated Feature*, Score, Sound, Sound Editing, Original Screenplay)
For the All Time Lists
03Toy Story (Lasseter, 95) 81 min. I'm not sure if it's the 99th best film of all time as the AFI claims but I'm glad animation is represented on that list. We were both excited to see it as we were ahead of the populace on the Pixar curve. I don't remember how I obtained it but I had a bootleg VHS tape of all of the Pixar shorts that had been made before they risked going into features. I had already converted my whole family to the cult of Pixar and even considered buying stock in the company went it first went up for sale even though I was a poor college student (Oh, to have done so). As long as I live I will never forget the first time I saw the film. I went with my brother. The moment that lifted it into a complete comedic classic was 'The Claw' My brother and I literally hurt from laughing. That's a good kind of pain. Best character: Buzz Lightyear Oscar noms: 3 (Score, Original Song, Screenplay... and a special Oscar for John Lasseter for making it all happen)
02The Incredibles (Bird, 2004) 115 min. From my top ten of 2004 review: "I saw The Incredibles three times within the month of its opening. And every time something else opened the following month that only looked sort of appealing I thought to myself. "Self, you can always go and see The Incredibles again" ... Gah. Pixar is so awesome. Group hug!
Best character: Elastigirl. She keeps this family together... and not just with those rubbery arms that can literally do so. Oscar noms: 4 (Sound Editing* Animated Feature*, Sound Mixing, Original Screenplay)
01 WALL•E (Stanton, 08) 98 minutes One of the best pictures in recent years from any medium or genre. Since it's still fresh in mind I'm guessing we've discussed it enough for awhile. I was wild for it as you know. See my annual awards for further proof. Best character: Read my ode to EVE here if you missed it. Oscar noms: 6 (Animated Feature*, Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Screenplay)
Next up for Pixar? I hope they don't spoil their status as "most consistent studio on the planet" but they're moving into two pictures a year now, instead of one. When Disney sped up in the mid 90s, things started going downhill.
2010: Toy Story 3 which will be directed by Lee Unkrich, who is finally getting his own movie after co-directing three of their giant hits. 2011:Newt about the last remaining male and female blue footed newts... who hate each other and Pixar's first fairy tale (moving into Disney's realm, eh?) The Bear and the Bow 2012: Brings a weird double feature: the one I'm least excited about, Cars 2, and the one I'm most excited about John Carter of Mars. The latter will be a real departure for the studio, a sci-fi adventure / adaptation that's not specifically aimed at children.UPDATE: Apparently Andrew Stanton is being essentially "loaned out" for this one and it won't be a proper Pixar film after all. Live action. Barsoomia is tracking the project closely.
Pixar shorts top ten, a bonus list. Here's my top ten.
For the Birds (Ralph Eggleston, 2000) 3 min. Oscar winner
One Man Band (Mark Andrews and Andrew Jimenez, 2005) 4 min. Oscar nominee
YourPixar Experience
Which was your first in theaters? Which film has shifted the most in your opinions about it over the years? How would you rate them on a scale of dud to all timers? Or are you, like Armond White, tired of hearing about their awesomeness? If so, how soon do you think a backlash will happen?
Playing against type is an ancient Oscar-winning trick but it only works if you do it really well (or if enough people are hoodwinked into believing you've done it really well). A lot of people, including myself and Academy voters, rethought Sean Penn last fall due to his twinkly and affable work in Milk. The famously sour Penn was suddenly funny, likeable, warm... sweet even.
Sean Penn in 1996. Sweet smiling Sean was always in their somewhere.
In other words, not "Sean Penn".
How on earth will he follow Harvey Milk up?
He himself probably isn't feeling the pressure, "Great Actor" status having been granted long long ago, but I was curious. Would he return to directing, to more typically Penn parts? Turns out the 48 year-old actor is booked until he's 50. At least. He's got five new identities lined up for our cinematic enjoyment over the next two years.
Contemplative Narrating Penn: In Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (previous post) he plays "adult Jack" and since the film is focused on a father (Brad Pitt) and his three boys... I guess that means Sean Penn is playing Brad Pitt's son. Brad really did age in reverse!
Political Penn: In Doug Liman's Bush era dramatization Fair Game he's Joseph Wilson, the administration's nemesis and husband to CIA Agent Valerie Plame, played here by Naomi Watts. It's their third time playing Very Intense Screen Couple (see also: 21 Grams and The Assassination of Richard Nixon).
Tough Penn: I'm not sure who he is playing in Cartel, but it involves guards protecting a lawyer trying a mafia case.
Slapstick Penn: He's "Larry" in the Farrely Brothers The Three Stooges... but you knew that already. Jim Carrey is "Curly" and Benicio Del Toro is "Moe"
Rock Star Penn: I saved the oddest one for last. Odder than The Three Stooges? Maybe not. Okay okay, I saved the furthest away for last. Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian writer/director behind the award winning Il Divo, is prepping a movie called This Must Be the Place. The plot is unusual. A retired rocker (Penn) decides to find his dad's executioner, a former Nazi.
Excited for Penn's upcoming projects? Or are you more excited about the continuing drama of the on again off again on again off again on again off again (I actually think that's the right number of times) Robin Wright Penn divorce? Can those two crazy kids make it work? Or make it work again as the case may be?
You must... you simply must set aside ten minutes today to read this terrific piece at TheNew Yorker on Victor Fleming and 1930s Hollywood. It digs into Fleming's heavily debated contributions to the twin immortals of 1939 (Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz -- he was a replacement director on both) and what it unearths is fascinating, indeed. Frankly my dears, I gave a damn... several damns if you're counting.
<-- Clara Bow on Fleming: "Of all the men I've known, there was a man."
For instance, I knew that Vivien Leigh didn't like Fleming and was angry that George Cukor who worked with her closely on her performance was fired. But I had no idea how complex and influential Fleming's relationships to Hollywood's top actors (Gable prominent among them) and actresses actually were (nor what an actressexual -- ok womanizer but we're splitting hairs here -- Fleming was. He had affairs with Clara Bow, Norma Shearer, Lupe Velez and Ingrid Bergman among others). This is but one of many quotes worth sharing.
"Despite his later reputation as a ‘man’s director,’ ” Sragow says, “Fleming launched or cannily revamped a host of female stars from the 1920s on.” The hot-wired Bow did her sexiest, best work for him, in “Mantrap” (1926), and he got sensationally funny performances out of Jean Harlow in “Red Dust,” “Bombshell” (1933), and “Reckless” (1935). The sacred male companionships of seventy years ago did not have the effect of downgrading women—anything but. Fleming, along with his friend Hawks, created women onscreen who were resourceful, strong-willed, and sexual—the kind of women they wanted to hang out with, partners and equals who gave as good as they got. For a while, they, too, were an American ideal.
Selznick, Fleming, Leigh & Gable on the contentious Gone With the Wind set
Gone With the Wind gets the most time in the article. It's a great read and now I think I'll have to look into Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master as well since this essay references that work frequently.
Thompson on Hollywood really cohesive Cannes roundup on buzz winners and losers EW funny stretch of a followup to yesterday's Buffy reboot news. What does Whedon think of it? <---Pixar an interview with Tim Hauser on The Art of UP Lazy Eye Theater "don't terminate until you can see the whites of their teeth" My New Plaid Pants a pearl of wisdom from The Others Risky Biz Blog the 2009 Oscar race. It's not off to any kind of real start The Evening Class on Latino images in film and Turner Classic Movies
These three go out to you Californians! Movie|Line on California's Prop 8 Disaster "J.J. Abrams to Revitalize Supreme Court Franchise" ... a stress release laugh Socialite's Life Colin Farrell to be best man at his gay brothers wedding. Awww. No wonder he was so sincere in that A Home at the End of the World movie. The Post Game Show "The Movement to Protect Singing"
It's not a crime to look at Lange. So herewith, Frances Farmer in her prime (surrounded by... hmm, levitating flowers?) and the woman who played her in 1982's Frances, Jessica Lange. There are no flowers in this old photograph of Lange but I think you'll agree that she was in full bloom.
I've never seen any of Frances Farmer's movies (she didn't make many. Any suggestions?) so maybe that was a minor obstacle for me, but I am not a fan of the film. But I do enjoy a good Old Hollywood biopic. It's the one type of biopic that holds immediate appeal for me. So, can we please get some more of them about old Hollywood? Like... a lot more of them. Let's immortalize the immortals.
Didn't you love those lavish scenes in The Aviator when Jude Law was pretending to be Erroll Flynn and Cate Blanchett was pretending to be Katharine Hepburn and neither of them had to break a sweat to drip Old Hollywood charisma? I almost wish Scorsese had let a few other directors onto those sets to film other Old Hollywood biopics simultaneously.
But back to Frances... If the 1982 movie is to be believed Ms. Farmer was a self sabotaging volatile handful. Have you ever stopped to wonder which of today's superstar actresses are actually crazy people under their carefully constructed public personæ? On that note, you know there'll be an Angelina Jolie biopic by 2056!
My vote for a modern actress that deserves a stellar bio is Mia Farrow. My vote for an old Hollywood glamor movie (a la The Aviator) is Jean Harlow or -- I'm too predictable -- Norma Shearer... but especially if Joan Crawford figures prominently in that screenplay.
I promise I'm not going to mock up every potential Green Lantern in shiny emerald spandex but I go weak at the knees for opportunities to photoshop ... and for Green Lantern, too, as you must know. I don't secretly dream of a Hollywood career but if I did, The Green Lantern is at the top of the list of superhero properties I'd want to pitch. That said, I'd rank it up there with Wonder Woman under the heading Will Be Nearly Impossible To Pull Off. Good Luck! so I'm not particularly excited about seeing Hollywood try.
So, this is Shawn Roberts (pictured left) who was all the rumor-rage a couple of weeks ago, round about the same time as the Bradley Cooper rumor that IMDB stamped. But, recent casting of Thor aside, Hollywood almost never goes with relative unknowns for expensive franchises (despite stars being expensive and the properties themselves being the selling point) so I never took the Roberts rumor seriously. I suspect if the movie ever happens, and if it's not Cooper, it'll be a very familiar face bathed in green light.
Anyway -- my god get to the point, man! -- some people are far more skilled with visual trickery than I. If you haven't yet watched this fan-made Green Lantern trailer which is basically a very enthusiastic campaign for the casting of the always charming Nathan Fillion, you should.
Vanity Fair briefly killed my enthusiasm for the "Hollywood project" when they nixed the traditional cover for 2009. But time heals most wounds and I have reanimated the project's corpse. 2004's cover had 13 already peaking actresses on it. How'd they follow it in 2005? With another batch of goddesses, 60% of whom had already graced their "Hollywood" cover. In the case of the C/Kates, it was now thrice. Was Vanity Fair running out of ideas? Given the idiosyncratic pool the covers regularly pulled from you'd think there were only 40 actresses in Hollywood... but then, it's probably all in who you know who represents you when it comes to face time here. It's definitely not only about the fame. Consider this: this cover series lasted from 1995 - 2008 and Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Michelle Williams and Tilda Swinton never appeared on them (just four chronologically appropriate examples off the top of my head).
click to enlarge for maximum beauty
For reasons that only pop culture archives will be able to fully explain to future generations this cover was called "Not So Desperate Housewives". Only two of these actresses were even married at the time (the C/Kates) and only six kids had sprung from their enviable DNA (two kids each for Cate, Kate and Uma).
Uma Thurman, about to turn 35, had appeared on VF's very first Hollywood issue back in1995. Back then she was celebrating her deserved Oscar nom for Pulp Fiction. I like to think that her get up here, white shirt and black pants (the only one of the ladies eschewing a gown), was a nod to "Mia Wallace" in Pulp Fiction. It would make sense. Director Quentin Tarantino had just finished (momentarily) resuscitating her talent and fame with those thrilling Kill Bills and she was about to risk memories of that film with the John Travolta dance number in Be Cool. She had divorced Ethan Hawke in 2004 and the three films coming out (Prime, Be Cool and The Producers) were a nice range of drama, comedy and musical... on paper. Onscreen it didn't work out so well. More flops followed. Uma turns 40 in 2010, and she's undoubtedly looking for that third career wind. Next up: Motherhood, Percy Jackson and Eloise in Paris.
Cate Blanchett had just been won an Oscar (The Aviator) and was about to turn 36. Aside from the Oscar win, 2005 was quiet. Blanchett never stays quiet. The next four years would be jam packed full of Oscar bait and trips down the red carpet culminating in the two biggest non-Hobbity hits of her career (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). No films in 2009 (shocker!) but she'll be back in 2010 as Maid Marian in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood [see previous posts]
Kate Winslet was 29 years old, still Oscar-less and an old pro at the "Hollywood" covers. Uma & Cate are her superiors when it comes to behaving like models in photoshoots (think about it), but she wasn't letting them pull all the focus with her sleek über sexy look here. Her inarguable triumph in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) was about to prove very difficult to follow. Fascinating time capsule note: 2005 is the year wherein she guest starred on "Extras" as a foul mouthed narcissistic "Kate Winslet", bitching about having to do a Holocaust drama to win an Oscar.
Despite that hilariously written and performed prophecy, her next several films didn't truly catch on (The Holiday, Little Children, Romance & Cigarettes, Revolutionary Road and All the Kings Men). The happy ending punchline arrived earlier this year when she won her Oscar for the holocaust drama The Reader. Up next: Nothing. With Oscar in hand, I'm guessing she lays low for the next couple of years. She was never a ubiquitous celebrity to begin with.
Scarlett Johansson was just 20 and already a back to back Hollywood covergirl. She had skyrocketed in 2003 with the global success of Lost in Translation, the critical success of Girl with a Pearl Earring and her high profile relationship with another Young Hollywood star, Josh Hartnett. And though nothing in 2004 had added much to her mystique she had the lead in a would be summer blockbuster for 2005 (The Island, which flopped). No one at the time saw her Woody Allen's muse status coming, but Match Point (their first collaboration) was about to debut at Cannes and become the legendary director's biggest hit in over a decade. Cut to several Scarlett roles and three calendar years later: she's beloved as a celebrity, newlywed and spokesperson but who loves her as an actress, any more? Can she turn that around with her stint as The Black Widow in Iron Man 2 (see previous post)
<-- Rupert Everett, Claire Danes and Billy Crudup at the premiere of Stage Beauty in October 2004
Claire Danes, turning 26 appears to have been slain by ScarJo. And maybe she was. Hollywood only has room for a handful of young superstar blondes in any given time period, you know. Perhaps she's prone as sacrifice for Cate, Kate and Uma none of whom have ceded much space for up and comers, holding onto big fame with that iron grip combo of talent, beauty and the favor of important filmmakers. Or maybe Mary-Louise Parker had snuck in to lay her down? It had only been a year since the gossip machine had ground and spit Claire Danes and Billy Crudup out for splitting with their partners -- in Billy's case, the several months pregnant Parker.
Which is all along way of saying that her cover girl status was slightly puzzling. Despite Danes' absolutely stellar start in television's My So Called Life and a promising initial silver screen transfer (Little Women and Romeo + Juliet), the movie career never really worked out. Her career had slipped in the late 90s and the Aughts brought nothing but a string of well performed but small supporting roles (The Hours, Igby Goes Down) or lead parts that didn't do much for her (Terminator 3, Stage Beauty). This trend continued after this cover, too: The Family Stone, Stardust, Evening and Shopgirl haven't provided breakthroughs. Up next: Temple Grandin in which she plays an autistic scientist. Should she try headlining a TV series again?
Rosario Dawson about to turn 26, had been on the cover before and had just caused a mini-fuss with her scene stealing nudity and feral performance in Alexander (2004). Vanity Fair's cover indicated a good sized year for her and it was: Sin City and Rent "I wanna go ouu--uuuuuttt, tonight" both premiered.
Zhang Ziyi newly 26, had enjoyed a high international profile since her breakthrough in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, five years earlier. The preceding months had been very good to her with three well received successful imports: 2046 (her best performance if you ask me), Hero and House of Flying Daggers. But she was undoubtedly on this cover because everyone in the world seemed to be anxiously awaiting Memoirs of a Geisha, then only a blockbuster book and not yet a disappointing movie. She was making lists like People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful, she was a frequent object of lust in men's magazines. Once the Memoirs craze ended, things went quiet, though one can still spot her on red carpets or in paparazzi shots with venture capitalist boyfriend Vivi Nevo. Is an international comeback going to happen? She's only 30. Next up: Sophie's Revenge and possibly the romantic drama Waiting which would reunite her with her Daggers co-star, Takeshi Kaneshiro, her only co-star to ever challenge her for "prettiest person in this movie" contests.
Kerry Washington, 28, had just appeared in the Oscar nominated biopic Ray and was still dating actor David Moscow (pictured together right, Jan. 2005) Many people, including yours truly, were pulling for major stardom for Kerry. She's still high profile and highly castable (young, beautiful, talented, speaks multiple languages including very handy ones for the cinema: French and Spanish) and yet the cinema can't seem to figure it out. 2005 brought only bit parts in Mr & Mrs. Smith and Fantastic Four. When will Hollywood ever figure out big careers for the top black actresses? It seems hopelessly beyond Tinseltown's capabilities. Things are still about the same for Kerry. She'll give a great performance (The Last King of Scotland, Dead Girl) and it's like it didn't happen at all in the larger scheme of the star hierarchies. It's so frustrating. Will her new projects turn the tide? Next up: A Thousand Words with Eddie Murphy and a possibly plum possibly Oscar-bait supporting role in Mother and Child starring Annette Bening.
Kate Bosworth, 22, was fresh off the underrated romantic comedy Win a Date With Tad Hamilton! and the flop biopic Beyond the Sea starring Kevin Spacey. She was very high profile in the celebrity-watching sector as Orland Bloom's girlfriend and Hollywood seemed to have faith in her. She was soon given the Lois Lane role in Superman Returns (unfortunate casting, that). Her film career has long since been smaller than her celebrity and she hasn't actually been making many movies. Next up: The Warrior's Way.
Sienna Miller, at 23 was, like Kate Bosworth, far more famous than her filmography would imply. She was Jude Law's new fiancé -- they had just made Alfie (Oct 2004, left)-- and he was at the peak of his celebrity. A few months after this Hollywood cover they broke off the engagement and their on and off again relationship has provided tabloid fodder for years now. She followed Alfie by romancing Heath Ledger in Casanova. She's been working a lot ever since (Factory Girl, Stardust, The Edge of Love, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh) but it looks doubtful that her movie career will ever equal her celebrity. Or not. Maybe she's just the right role away from more legitimate stardom? Next up: playing "The Baroness" in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
PLEASE NOTE: If you'd like to read more about any of these stars, click the names in the labels section below.
* median age: 27. Blanchett was the eldest, Scarlett the baby. noticeably absent: Who else was topical 'round mid 2004 to mid 2005? Let's see... Monica Bellucci (international profile raised with The Matrix films and The Passion of the Christ), Jennifer Garner (transferring to movies with 13 Going on 30 and Electra), Eva Mendes (had 4 movies coming out including Hitch), Lindsay Lohan (Mean Girls) and maybe Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) collective Oscar stats before cover: 7 noms / 1 win (all by the front cover girls. Blanchett won for The Aviator) collective Oscar stats after cover: 5 nominations / 1 win (3 for Cate, 2 for Kate) fame levels in 2009, according to famousr, from most to least: Uma Thurman, Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett, Kate Bosworth, Claire Danes, Sienna Miller, Rosario Dawson and Kerry Washington. Not listed in famousr for some bizarre reason:Kate Winslet & Zhang Ziyi. previous episodes:1995 ,1996, 1997,1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003and 2004. *
Self Styled Siren has a fascinating quote from William Wellman on the psychology of actors <--- THR A relaunch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer without the Scoobies, Gellar or Joss Whedon. Ewww. Remember what happened last time they revived Buffy from the dead? She weren't too happy 'bout it, y'all. Learn from past mistakes or be doomed to repeat them. Big Picture on Ulmer Scale of Bankability. Re: Nicole Kidman
Even overseas, people see her choice of roles as very erratic. She'll do a studio film, but followed by several films that don't even register overseas. She's just too unpredictable. A French executive I spoke to said, "I find her fascinating, but she's too quirky." That makes her a very risky bet.
Fabulon has some clips from a Bette Davis sitcom The Decorator Risky Biz on marketing Palme D'Or winner The White Ribbon
---> Elizabeth Banks has fun posts up with personal pics and views from Cannes.
...I just got back from the Festival de Cannes. It was pretty good...
We saw UPin 3-D (adorable) and Precious (the opposite of adorable, but great). So I guess it was better than good.
Hell on Frisco Bay sees a documentary about the Sherman Brothers (Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). I want to see this toot sweet. DListed Cher & Christina Aguilera as co-stars? I Need My Fix Heather Graham has some words for the producer of her latest
Corbis has a fun brief article by Fran Lebowitz on this ancient Warhol portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I link to this because the grim box office of Terminator Salvation (less than T3 many years of ticket price inflation later) suggests that without Ahnuld, there is no interest in Terminators. CGI Ahnuld need not apply. If your personal lack of interest involves the lack of a James Cameron behind the wheel, you can click over to Market Saw to whet your appetite for Avatar. The shot they have is supposedly of body armor worn by humans attacking an alien village. It's reminiscent of Ripley in her exoskeleton in Aliens, don'cha think?
Enjoy your day off. We'll be back early tomorrow to kick off one last week of May featuring: updated Oscar predictions, daily May Flowers posts, Cannes fallout, and more.
Adam of Club Silencio here with another look at my favorite actresses and their distinguishing claims to fame.
Who can blame Catherine O'Hara for leaving Macaulay Culkin home alone... twice... on Christmas... in major metropolitan cities. Artists have other priorities. And as an artist who's consistently playing other artists, Catherine O' Hara certainly knows the bittersweet sides to success. It's all for her art.
From SCTV to her ensemble comedies with Christopher Guest, Catherine O'Hara's donned many different and hilarious characteristic quirks. For me the most beloved is watching her catch the creative bug. Regional theatre, folk music, film production and sculpture - all the more opportunities for Catherine to find her greatest inspiration and internal expression. Somehow, amidst all the neurotic pursuit of fame and and shallow self-service that comes with being an artist, Catherine's always understood that less is more.
"Less is More" Method Acting:
When you're talking to someone you close your eyes - and then you look at them when you're not talking to the person. I mean you open your eyes when you're looking away, but then when you talk to the person you go like that - and you open your eyes - and then you look back at the person, but you never open your eyes when you're talking to them.
Perhaps "less is more" can also be applied to the way that Catherine provides even her most hysterical and horrifying characters with the subtlest shades of heart and humanity. It's a shame that we've only heard the "for your consideration" buzz and never the award win she wholly deserves. But then Catherine's not the type do just anything to win an Oscar, even if her characters are.
I do have trouble doing jobs that I don't really believe in. After Home Alone, another actor might have jumped on that and said, 'I am the reason this is such a big movie.' But I guess I've always been only half-ambitious -- kind of resentfully, after-the-fact ambitious. I'll see something and say, 'How did she get that? I could have done better.' Maybe it's an Irish thing... to hold back from putting yourself on the line and then say, 'That should have been me.'
At this point she's a comedy veteran with the refreshing ability to laugh at the business and take pot-shots at her botoxed peers. Her humor is a craft in itself. Catherine O'Hara is the rare and glimmering artist who's always avoided becoming trapped in her art... Almost always.
This is my art, and it is dangerous! Do you think I want to die like this?!
OFFICIAL COMPETITION Jury president was French actress, deity, provocateur Isabelle Huppert Palme D'or:The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke. Cannes loves him long time. And so does Isabelle Huppert, his La Pianiste leading lady. Sony Pictures Classics has US distribution rights to this black and white costume drama about German village and school prior to World War I. It sounds like something of a departure for Haneke since his films are usually contemporary and often tightly focused on small casts. The extensive German voiceover will be rerecorded in English for that release.
Michael Haneke nabs the top prize
Grand Prix:Un Prophèteby Jacques Audiard. Sony Pictures Classics also has this one -- winner and runner up prepping for release? Not bad, SPC, not bad. Jury Prize: It was a tie between the family drama Fish Tank by Andrea Arnold and vampire drama Thirst from Oldboy director Park Chan-Wook Special Jury Prize:Director Alain Resnais won this special prize for Wild Grass. He's 86 and he's still making movies. His most famous film is probably Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) but, rather incredibly, he's never had a film nominated for Oscar's foreign language race and he's only had won prize winner at Cannes, Mon Oncle d'Amérique (1980) Best Director: Brillante Mendoza competed last year with Serbis and for this prolific Pinoy director, the second time is the charm. He won the prize for his violent drama Kinatay. This award will cause a ruckus. Many people detested the film, including Roger Ebert who declared it the worst in Cannes history.
Best ActressCharlotte Gainsbourgh for Lars Von Trier's Antichrist. This film just keeps adding fuel to its media fire. Well done Lars and your latest actress victim. You continue a grand tradition. Best ActorChristoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (see previous post for Rosengje's very similar enthusiasm) Best ScreenplayFeng Mei won for writing Lou Ye's explicit gay romantic drama Spring Fever Palme D'Or (Short Film):Arena by Joao Salaviza CAMERA D'OR This award goes to the best first film. Warwick Thornton's buzzy Australian feature Samson and Delilah (pictured right) took the prize. He's previously made three short films. Special Mention went to Ajami by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani
FIPRESCI Competition:The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke Un Certain Regard:Police, Adjective by Corneliu Porumboiu Directors Fortnight:Amreeka by Cherien Dabis
UN CERTAIN REGARD Jury president was Italian writer/director Paolo Sorrentino Prize:Dogtooth by Yorgos Lanthimos. The synopsis sounds vaguely Virgin Suicides-ish, three teens are cut off from the outside world by their parents. Jury Prize:Police, Adjective Two Special Prizes:Father of My Children by Mia Hansen-Love and No One Knows About the Persian Cats by Bahman Ghobadi
CRITICS WEEK Grand Prix:Goodbye Gary by Nassim Amaouche SACD Prize:Lost Persons Area by Caroline Strubbe Cash Prize, Young Critic Award and Regards Jeunes Prize:Whisper in the Wind by Shahram Alidi Canal Plus Grand Prix (Short Film):Seeds of the Fall by Patrick Eklund Kodak Discovery (Short Film):Logorama by Francois Alaux, Herve de Crecy and Ludovic Houplain
DIRECTORS FORTNIGHT Art Cinema, 7e Prix Regars Jeunes and the SACD Prize: Twenty year-old (!) actor Xavier Dolan-Tadros ' (pictured right) won an incredible three prizes for his directorial debut, a coming out mother-son drama called I Killed My Mother (J'ai Tue Ma Mere) Special Mention: La Merditude des Choses by Felix van Groeningen Europa Cinemas Label:La Pivellina by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel French short film:Montparnasse THE SNUBBED Whether you're in the main competition or outside of it in the sidebars, when reaction is very positive the snubs have to sting. The following films won coveted buzz but no hardware: Lee Daniel's Oscar hopeful Precious, Marco Bellochio's Vincere andJane Campion's Bright Star.
FURTHER READING Indie Wire live blogged the event. Time Warner Cable of New York wanted me to pay $9.95 per month for the French language station so sadly I couldn't gaze at Huppert and her fire-starter jury myself.
Pass the cigars. I've had a lovechild ... a baby Vodcast with Cinema Blend's Katey Rich. You've heard her on the TFE podcast and now you can see her. She's more practical than I and talked me off of the ledge of my extravagantly ambitious ideas. Basically I always try to do acrobatics before learning to crawl. For the first vodcast I was thinking ornate costumes, visual effects, multiple camera angles, original score. She suggested a more dogme 95 approach -- less frills, more talking at the camera --smart girl.
The topic: Terminator Salvation and the franchise. Four movies, three spoilers, two opinions and one ass shot (Michael Biehn's, 1984).
This will function as Part 3 of my Terminator Special. I'm worn out and I don't wanna watch Rise of the Machines again. I don't wanna so I don't gotta. In cased you missed it: Part 1 (Tech Noir, The Terminator) Part 2 (Model Citizen, Judgment Day)
Our correspondent Rosengje caught 22 films during her Cannes trip. Before Isabelle Huppert's jury bestows the coveted Palme D'Or, I thought we'd let Rosengje offer up her own jury-of-one highlights. She had to miss Precious, Broken Embraces and Un Prophète due to time constraints.
Her five favorite films were...
Marco Bellochio's Vincere. More on this further down.
Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank. This family drama was a major hit with the critics and could be up for prizes today. If Andrea Arnold sounds familiar just think Wasp, Oscar's 2004 short film winner about an irresponsible mother (Natalie Press) and her brood of babies. That was a stunning 26 minutes of film so I'm eager to see this one.
She also wanted to name '10 things that stuck with me most' with honorable mentions going out to Up's use of 3D (see post), Vincere's unapologetically dramatic score, David Lynch’s interview footage in Great Directors (see post), and the beauty of Alden Ehrenreich in Francis Ford Coppola’s misfire Tetro (see post). Now, on to her personal 'top ten'...
10Eric Cantona in Looking for Eric Soccer great Cantona’s presence in Ken Loach’s ebullient film avoids camp, instead elevating the fulfilling film into a strangely compelling absurdist realm. His scenes reliably brought the audience to applause, and one involving dancing had the entire Lumiere in hysterics.
09Sound Effects in Thirst As anyone familiar with Park Chan-Wook’s previous Grand Prix winner Oldboy can attest to, much of the director’s haunting power is drawn from what is not seen. The implication of horrifying action is nonetheless impossible to escape, primarily because of the explosive sound. This funny, gory Korean vampire flick ultimately delves into camp in its last third, but the grotesque noises accompanying scenes ranging from lovemaking to vampire creating made it a memorable film experience.
08 Brad Pitt’s accent in Inglourious Basterds This had me concerned in the trailer, but Pitt’s Tennessee hick persona is crucial to the success of Tarantino’s latest. In the initial introduction to the Basterds, the portrayal seems over the top and cloying in its attempt to generate laughs. All is forgiven, however, later in the film. Adopting a phony Italian accent, Pitt’s Aldo Raine is introduced to Christoph Waltz’s Hans Landa, and delivers an impeccable line reading that still has me giggling days later. Perfection.
07Michael Fassbender Pictured right with director Andrea Arnold ---> Yummy. I could not sit through the entirety of Hunger, which I found immensely disturbing, but Fassbender capitalizes on his breakthrough status in two Cannes films. He excels in Tarantino’s Basterds and in Fish Tank he is the perfect blend of charm and sleaze. He leaves the audience and characters confused about the character’s intentions until the very end. It's a credit to his screen charisma that I desperately wanted to believe in his sincerity until the last possible second.
06 Abby Cornish & Paul Schneider in Bright Star 05 Rachel Weisz in Agora 04Liev Schreiber in Taking Woodstock Discussed in earlier posts.
03 Giovanna Mezzogiorno in Vincere Rounding out the impressive list of female accomplishments is Giovanna Mezzogiorno’s performance in Marco Bellochio’s operatic Vincere. She left me cold in last year’s Palermo Shooting but sheshines as Ida Dalser, Il Duce’s lover during his rise to power in fascist Italy. When she is carelessly tossed aside by the ambitious politician, Dalser is at first isolated and then imprisoned in an insane asylum. Taking the abuse suffered by Angelina Jolie in Changelingto the next level, Mezzogiorno never loses the audience’s sympathy, even as she plunges further into despair. Many of Dalser’s statements against Mussolini remain in question, so the actress must constantly balance the character’s clear logic with the murkiness of her claims. If the film receives a considerable stateside release, I would not be surprised to see Mezzogiorno embraced by critics. The performance is more accessible than Marion Cotillard’s work in La Vie en Rose and the lack of public familiarity with Dalser decreases the burden of representation.
02 Technical accomplishments of Bright Star Costumes, art direction, cinematography...
01Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds Without the success of his multi-lingual, comically terrifying performance the film would have failed. Oozing the debonair sophistication most would want to deny the vicious Nazi figure, Waltz makes an indelible impression in the film’s very first sequence that lingers throughout the film’s lengthy running time. He's completely deserving of a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
So much to consider. Rosengje's write up has me wondering if Mezzogiorno will one day expand her global fame (she's a regular nominee at the Italian Oscars) -- especially if Vincere tours. I expect Oscar buzz for Bright Star to follow the Cannes hoopla rather closely. I'm much much less bullish on Basterds. Rosengje obviously enjoyed the star turns a great deal but Oscar voters have long since cooled on Tarantino's style and, more strangely, seem to have turned a blind eye on his inarguable talent for tapping into the unique strengths of nearly every actor he works for.
The great thing about personal movie loves and communal movie discussion is that one man's treasure is another's... so I thought I'd include additional perspective. These four critics in particular were fun to follow during Cannes: Mike D'Angelo, Eugene Hernandez, James Rocchi and Karina Longworth. If you couldn't get enough Cannes coverage, click to embiggen for a few sample tweets on Basterds, The White Ribbon, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Face and sidebar films like Dogtooth.
Which Cannes film are you most longing to see at this point? *
Before the Palme D'Or is handed out, I've got two last bits from our buddy in Cannes but first (sigh) a big old frowny face in regards to the following nugget.
<--- Maggie Cheung and her boyfriend Ole Scheeren in 2008
Maggie Cheung's scene in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds was cut before the Cannes opening and will not be restored even though Tarantino is returning to the editing room. Presumably he's tinkering for maximum audience playability. The cutting room floor is a regular habitat for actors with small roles but this time it really hurts: Maggie still works the red carpet, but never the silver screen. She retired from movies afterClean and 2046 five long years ago. Basterds was going to provide us with a rare chance to see one of the most bewitching living actresses on the big screen again. Damn! * On to cheerier topics.
The generous take on Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock appears to be that it's a "minor" effort. Rosengje found it charming and especially enjoyed the first "fun and frothy" hour, but understands why people aren't taken with it
...the movie loses a lot of momentum toward the conclusion, with the actual music festival not quite coming together in a cohesive manner. Ang Lee makes the puzzling decision to not include any concert footage. The managed chaos that defines Taking Woodstock's first hour feels like it has been building toward something that viewers are ultimately denied access to.
Liev Schreiber is the movie's real standout as a transvestite security guard -- the audience interrupted his first scene with boisterous applause. The actor has limited screen time, making probably around four substantial appearances. Demetri Martin was extremely enjoyable, giving a nuanced performance that belies his limited screen experience. He has great comic timing and definitely suggested the character's muted sexuality (he's closeted) effectively. The supporting cast is generally impeccable, with Emile Hirsch and Paul Dano making the biggest impressions in small roles.
Rosengje also notes that she thinks age will play a heavy factor in reaction to the movie. She admits that some of the details and mythos escaped her (she's in her 20s) but thought the movie was a pleasant diversion, nonetheless.
She also told me about a documentary I hadn't yet heard of from Angela Ismailos called Great Directors.
One of the treats of Cannes is the ability to see sprawling epics alongside small, intimate pieces. The endearing and informative Great Directors falls into the latter category. Pic focuses on nine directors that have influenced Angela's life: Bernardo Bertloucci, Agnes Varda, Stephen Frears, Todd Haynes, David Lynch, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater, Ken Loach and John Sayles. A mixture of new interviews, archival footage, and well chosen film clips craft winning portraits of each of the auteurs. David Lynch proves most memorable, putting forth a charmingly gregarious personality that bizarrely contradicts his films. Trying to reconcile clips of Eraserhead and Inland Empire with the man telling anecdotes about Mel Brooks is one of the film's chief pleasures.
The mix of genders, ages, and nationalities of the directors ensures that the topics discussed do not become repetitive, but are constantly revisited in fresh and innovative ways. Despite the unique elements and perspectives, common threads do emerge. Hearing Sayles discuss working on Hollywood scripts to finance his own efforts evokes and contradicts Frears’ and Loach’s development through the BBC. Though the documentary is interview heavy, Ismailos varies her visuals to correspond to the character of her subjects: Bertolucci is shot primarily in formal interviews, while Linklater and Haynes are shown in a variety of interactive locales (i.e. driving, perusing books).
I wish the film shed more light on the Angela herself, who remains an enigmatic presence throughout “Directors,” occasionally revealing her presence during interviews or walking through shots on perilously high heels. She grants the directors a platform for expressing their own inspiration and intentions, but never really delves into the specifics of her own. With such unusual and impeccable taste in auteurs, I constantly wanted to know more about her own pursuits.
Indie Wire has more on the screening and the yacht party that I also sent Rosengje too.
The film sounds intriguing and it certainly prompts a completely necessary! commenting exercize. If I were making a documentary about nine living auteurs that influenced my life (not necessarily my favorites) I might have to go with: Tarantino, Haynes, John Hughes, Mike Nichols, Tim Burton, Paul Thomas Anderson, Woody Allen, James Cameron and Pedro Almodovar... but it's tough to say.
What about you?Which nine men or women would you choose if you were making a personal documentary about auteurs that shaped you? *
"Lady Dior" that is. Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard is starring in a new online serial for her La Vie En Rose director Olivier Dahan.
You can see the first arch chapter here... "The Lady Noire Affair". Dahan still doesn't seem even remotely interested in (capable of?) coherency but that shouldn't surprise. I didn't love this blend of glamor, mystery and possibly shady ladies but it's short so I'll give the second chapter a whirl when it premieres.
Running serials as a cinematic medium are totally underutilized. I hope the web brings them back in vogue. More specifically, I wish they'd throw Clive Owen back behind the wheel for more adventures as The Driver, don't you? God, those were fantastic shorts.
I'm so far behind on the Cannes coverage! The festival wraps on Sunday. So, without further ado some red carpet beauties and some links to get you caught up if you haven't been online much or were trusting me to bring you the best bits ...so sorry to have kept you waiting.
First up is Imelda Staunton at the photocall for Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock. There was some very very early Oscar buzz for Imelda for her comic portrayal of Dimitri Martin's mom. Rosengje wasn't sold, writing...
I think people are going to be very divided about Imelda Staunton. It was a technically perfect performance and likely imitated the real life counterpart, but the character is written as too much of a caricature. Excluding one great scene involving some.. special brownies she is excessively shrill.
Saïd Taghmaoui, all in white, attended the Vengeance premiere. I feel like I haven't seen him in a movie in forever but I like him. Next up for Saïd is G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra. Kristin Scott Thomas remains a classy red carpet must have. Michelle Yeoh and Kerry Washington, two undervalued actresses that we've always loved here at the Experience, have both been valiantly working the charity circuit at Cannes.
Kerry's getting muscled out of this picture by Brad Pitt& Angelina Jolie, mega-stars (heyyyy, just like she was in Mr. & Mrs. Smith. You're entirely forgiven if you didn't realize Kerry was in that movie. She barely is). Brad was in Cannes for Inglourious Basterds which seems to have a left a lot of people underwhelmed.
All Cannes! All the Time! Go Fug Yourself salutes Penélope's game face after her food poisoning this week. Eating the Sun Lots of Philippines upset abotu Roger Ebert's 'worst film ever' comments about Brillant Mendoza's Kinatay IndieWire on why Cannes still matters Living in Cinema is jazzed for the new Tsai Ming-Liang film Face. The early stills and the trailer do look like pure eye candy. NY PostDid you know that Antichrist's end credits cite a "misogyny consultant" Ha! Lars Von Trier continually delights me... and I don't even need to see his movies (not that I don't -- love them, too) for this delight to take place. But then, I've always had a thing for artists who loved to push buttons just to be pushing them and/or to mock themselves or have fun with perceptions of their persona. Madonna used to be in this camp, too. Twitch rumor has it: Universal is going to ask Tarantino to trim Inglourious Basterds down after the mixed reaction at Cannes. Hey, a little trim probably wouldn't hurt most QT movies. Getty points to the trend for the red carpet at Cannes and elsewhere: nude (coloring that is) Obsessed With Film enthusiastically offers 5 reasons to see Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell IndieWire Director's Fortnight winners... a big night for the Quebecois film I Killed My Mother My New Plaid Pants is waiting impatiently for each new bit on Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon Risky Business thinks that Haneke's film is going to win the Palme D'Or.
Will these two films be the big winners?
As to who might win... Haneke seems like a good bet but it's not the only film that's been wowing them. Others are saying Jacques Audiard's Un Prophete could take it. (If you don't recognize the name just think of the lively, tense French hits The Beat That My Heart Skipped and Read My Lips... both of which did well in their US runs). But remember Cannes watchers... no one knows anything. The winners are never exactly predictable. This ain't the Oscars. It's a juried competition where they're encouraged to spread the wealth. No one knows who might win what... except maybe Isabelle Huppert. *
But never fear. A healthy dose of Julie Anne Smith face time coming our way in 2009 and 2010 (provided that the distribution gods are kind). Up first: a supporting role in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Then? Release dates are hiding but she's the lead in a horror thriller Shelter (uh oh. Julie + genre = trouble) and working the drama (ahhh, much better) with Colin Firth in A Single Man. Rather intriguingly (plot & auteurial wise) she's offering up Amanda Seyfried to her husband Liam Neeson in Atom Egoyan's Chloe. The teaser poster tag line makes it sound like "cheesy misogynistic thriller"... like Obsessed or something, but it's Atom Egoyan so it's safer to place your bets on "good psychologically compelling movie".
No obvious Oscar bait on the way except for the lead role of a frontier mother, Mary Margaret, who takes her kids on a treacherous journey from Missouri to Wyoming in Boone's Lick. It's from director Barry Levinson's and novelist/screenwriter Larry McMurtry (Brokeback Mountain). Entertainment Weekly calls the McMurtry book a "gory farce". Hmmm. Actresses don't often win Oscars for westerns but it's fun to imagine that she'll finally get hers as a sort of belated 50th birthday present in 2011. Still, with no other cast announced yet, who knows what will become of this project. Levinson has had two Best Picture shortlisters in his directorial career (Bugsy and Rain Man) but his last picture to cause any sort of fuss was Wag the Dog way back in 1997. So cross your fingers that they actually start filming this fall, as once planned... with or without the "rumored" Tom Hanks as co-star. *
My latest column at Towleroad is up. I continue to geek out over Sam Worthington (I promise to stop shortly) and there's also bits on Make Me a Supermodel, Liz Taylor's home viewing (the earth is doomed) and more.
In other news... screened Pixar's UP tonight. One of cinema's all time hottest streaks continues. It's beautiful, moving, funny and thematically sound. But perhaps the best praise one can give it is that it's a totally worthy follow up to WALL•E.
Sorry, I've been absent today. Katey and I were experimenting with a vodcast (This just in: It's posted). It's really just us testing the camera and ourselves and talkin' bout killer robots.
Did you see Terminator 4 this weekend or are you going the DVD route?
JA from MNPP here. There is a scene in Summer Hours - a wonderful film, by the way - that exists only to play off of my above-stated theory. The film literally stops in its tracks, zooms in on her face and stares at her for what must have been at the very least a full minute and watches as she fights off tears, and it's perhaps the most hypnotic thing I've seen on a screen all year.
Obviously director Oliver Assayas knew what he was gonna get when he pointed his camera there, and Juli delivered, as she always does.
I dare anyone to name a better crier than her. Double dog dare ya! .
I got nothing this afternoon. So, whilst I nibble on doggy chow and hitchhike my way to a press screening, please enjoy this ancient Showgirls illustration brushed by yours truly in college. Should I put it on a t-shirt?
California Nerve charts the sexiness of the entire Terminator franchise <---Posterwire if you're in Southern California you'll want to check out this exhibit. Bob Peak's movie posters are a-ma-zing. The one to your left is for The Year of Living Dangerously (1983) Gallery of the Absurd totally awesome "14" has a gallery show in June. Go! Her celebrity illustrations are so... gah Guardian Charlie Kauffman considering a TV series. Is this a good idea? /Film the voice of Mickey Mouse passes away. RIP
Seattle Towleroad Seattle International Film Festival gets the premiere of Johnny Weir documentary Pop Star on Ice
NYC Michael Musto and TransGriot salute Octavia St. Laurent from Paris is Burning. She passed away a few days ago. RIP Octavia. Boy did the Oscar documentary committee screw up in 1991 when they ignored both Paris is Burning and Madonna's Truth or Dare, two of the best docs of the entire decade. If you've never seen Paris... put it on your queues immediately. Everything I Know...Phantom of the Opera sequel still going forward. NYC & London simultaneously next year (god help us all)
Outer Space i09 offers 9 important lessons on how to turn robots evil
Asia StarEast is Faye Wong planning a comeback? She hasn't made a film since Wong Kar Wai's 2046, five long years ago.
South of France In regards to Cannes... I am not good with time zone issues. Every time I hear a story from Cannes I feel as if I've been sucked into a calendrical black hole in which no days of the month or time zones exist. Even clocks and hours have been eradicated. Everything is happening all at once and not at all since it's far far away. I totally don't know what day it is anymore and I'm not even there. I can't imagine how crazy it is in the heart of it. This is a long way of saying I'll address the film festival again tomorrow. Today has been... weird. *
I threw down a little Trek post just for Eric Bana but it was so annoying -- instant load audio is the devil -- that I had to throw it off the mainpage. But if you're curious you can click over.
Did you watch the pilot of the new show choir comedyGlee last night? Unfortunately, there's no rush. In an odd carrot-dangling exercize from FOX, you can watch it all summer long on their website. You just can't see anything new. Not that Glee is "new" per se. We've seen high school shows with well meaning adorable teachers and can-do dorky kids before. We've seen musically self aware comedies (Ally McBeal / Pushing Daisies). It's not "new" but it is very very welcome. It's another blessed flag planted down in the pop culture sand, with the inscription "the musicals are back."
I swear to god if I read one more opinion piece / review of anything musical that feels the need to use the disclaimer...
I'm not really a musicals guy/girl...
I'm going to... Well, I'm going to ... bite my pillow!
How about we drop this foolish bias and twittering nervousness about anything show-tuney or theatrical. Let's just admit that it was out of fashion for about twenty years -- roughly the years in between the genre's final 70s classic All That Jazz (1979) and its masterful rebirth Dancer in the Dark (2000) / Moulin Rouge! (2001) -- and two decades is a lot of time to train people to believe that a particular genre is "uncool" or "gay" or "only meant to be in animated movies" and that they're not supposed to like it.
Stop being sheep opinion-makers! Why the disclaimers? It's like many bloggers, talking heads and critics are worried about being seen as uncool. And that's so, well, high school. Stop worrying about what's cool and enjoy anything that's passionately created, well executed and joyfully performed. Enjoy anything that is glad to be what it is. There are so many joyless money-making exercizes out there. [*cough* Wolverine... seriously? I think everyone involved needed major injections of anti-depressants]
Glee is certainly glad to be what it is. The first episode is funny, mostly well cast (yay Jane Lynch. Never can get enough Jane Lynch), moving and bursting with promise. It was also just casually adorable. That light touch was particularly surprising given that musicals are more prone to tilt towards the charm offensive. Not that there's anything wrong with that: if you've got it, flaunt it and whatnot. Glee doesn't whip out its razzle dazzle into the rousing "Don't Stop Believing" finale, but by then you're already a believer. B+/A-
Matthew atop a pickup for a solo in the short-lived 10 Million Miles.
Glee did manage to sneak in one beefcake shot of Morrison in bed but no singing to stamp it with an exclamation point. For a while Broadway and Off Broadway were combining his hunk quotient with the killer voice to great effect: shirtless for the romantic highlight in TheLight in the Piazza (the unbelievably gorgeous "Say it Somehow" --god, that show was so fab), Broadway Bares 18, extra pumped-up and wife beater clad for most of 10 Million Miles (the show wasn't so hot but the music was super. You really can't go wrong with Patty Griffin, now, can you?),
When Glee returns there will supposedly be guest appearances from other glittery musical theater types like Kristin Chenoweth, Cheyenne Jackson, Victor Garber and John Lloyd Young. But given the show's concepts (which seems to only allow for the high schoolers to be singing ... how are they going to give all these giant voices their own musical numbers?). Either way, this show will be a much better rent-paying option for Broadway stars than Law & Order (their previous cash cow) sine though none of them ever got anywhere close to a musical number on that procedural. They usually just got a paycheck for delivering some exposition as victims, criminals or witnesses. Snooze.
Two videos: Matthew Morrison and Zooey Deschanel in Once Upon a Mattress and "Don't Stop Believing" from Glee (though I'd advise watching the whole show first. It's more moving that way)
In conclusion: September/October can't come soon enough. Summer is my least favorite season, anyway. Let's skip ahead to fall. That way we get the new TV shows, falling leaves, Oscar buzz and prestige movie season.
I'm totally into time travel this month, huh? 1984, Fall 2009, Terminators 91. How to stay in the present tense? WhereWhen am I? *
Part 2 of 3 Terminator Franchise Retrospective. (Part 1 / Part 3) Personal Canon #81 (see full index) Spoilers abound but you've had 18 years to see the movie...
Once the big profits for the small budgeted The Terminator began rolling in in October of '84, James Cameron became a hot commodity. He wasted no time on the follow up. Twenty-one months later the release of the much larger sci-fi spectacle Aliens catapulted him from "filmmaker to watch" to the real deal. His current long absence from the multiplex -- Avatar's December bow will end a 12 year drought -- makes this easy to forget but it's true: the director once moved swiftly through the stages of filmmaking if never quite as rapidly as his movies moved through their action.After Aliens, he left outer space for the deep seas with The Abyss (another hit) and having proved himself thrice over, returned to the killer robots that made his name. "Model Citizen" The Terminator cost 6 million to make, Terminator 2: Judgment Day would cost 100 million plus. The budget wasn't the only thing exploding: salaries, visual effects, setpieces, ambition, and public reaction were all supersized. Yet for all of this exponential external growth, Cameron smartly kept his focus tight and intimate.
Two early shots. That's your color scheme (fiery reds and steel blues) and the first John Connor (Michael Edwards) pre-Christian Bale
Sarah Connor's opening narration and the imagery of post-apocalyptic LA it plays over, both review the first movie and download Cameron's game plan for the sequel.
The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human resistance, John Connor my son. The first terminator was programmed to strike at me in the year 1984 before John was born. It failed. The second was set to strike at John himself when he was still a child. As before the resistance was able to send a lone warrior, a protector for John. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first.
In other words, it's more of the same... only bigger (we notice immediately by way of shinier effects and massive fireball explosions). This repeat template is familiar but it won't be comfortable. We're also going deeper. The story structure is varied only enough to reflect the passage of time. But what has that passage of time wrought?
Upgrade U: The original T-800 returns (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and the leaner meaner T-1000 (Robert Patrick) is introduced
As before... two naked men arriving from the future are introduced first. Once clothes are violently procured, their target is immediately identified by text (a phone book in the first film, a police car monitor in the second). Cut to target: John Connor (Edward Furlong). He's even introduced with a shot of a motorbike just like his mother was in 1984. So far so remarkably similar. This makes the slight tweaks stand out all the more. First, the film is more self consciously "funny" (the "Born to Be Bad" accompaniment to the T-800's intro). Second, both visitors from the future are instantly portrayed as formidable threats rather than as a David and Goliath mismatch. Third... where the hell is Sarah Connor?
Ah, there she is! She's locked up in a mental hospitalcuz she crazy... she batshit crazy.
...the usual indicators: depression, anxiety, violent acting out, delusions of persecution. The delusional architecture is fairly unique.
See, Sarah can't shut up about everyone dying and the killer robots. No one, not even her son John, shipped off to foster care, believes her.
Sarah Connor Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Meet her leaner meaner reincarnation, the T-91 (Linda Hamilton)
If The Terminator (1984) were a debut album, it'd be beloved by rock purists and critics for its raw recorded-in-a-garage honesty. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) is, then, its polished recorded-in-a-studio follow up.With its new moralizing and corny humor it might have been come across as something of a sellout were it not for the astonishing transformation of Linda Hamilton. Whatever savagery the franchise lost with the addition of a snarky pre-adolescent and new sense of humor was regained in Sarah's evolution. Few performers in cinema history have had an opportunity like this. Or, rather, few performers have made this much of their second stab at a character. She's unrecognizable and not just from the new musculature. Her endoskeleton, if you will, has morphed in the years inbetween the movies. Hamilton seems to have devoured every relentless droning beat from the first film and metastasized it for the new Sarah. Her awful knowledge of impending doom and long years of isolation have eaten her alive from the inside.
In one of the movie's earliest and most fascinating sequences, she tries to fool her psychiatrist into believing she's had a sudden change of heart. It's a simple enough scene on the page but onscreen it multiplies in complexity. The cameras varying points of view end up reflecting both Sarah's changes and the franchise's preoccupation with time travel. We're essentially watching a calm present tense Sarah watch past tense Sarah frothing at the mouth about doomsday while wordlessly strategizing a future escape. Simultaneously her smarmy psychiatrist is watching these competing versions of Sarah and correctly seeing them as the same: calm or wild, past or present she's only ever mentally locked up in the future.
If that weren't heady enough, our view then widens tilting slightly to the left and then pans and slowly zooms out to the right (I've smooshed it all together for you above). It does all of this very calmly until what we're looking at is a whole roomful of people watching present Sarah watching past Sarah whilst being recorded (another past to study in another future!). This is the best part... to complete its quest to take everything in, the camera slowly zooms back in on yet another monitor of present tense Sarah (located to the far right). We're now a few layers removed from the physical Sarah. The Sarah we once knew is an abstraction. New Sarah is a shell who happens to be playing a shell game.
When she realizes she's lost the game, her calm facade shatters and she attacks the psychiatrist. The camera, formerly serene observant, crashes back in on the action again. The guards have pinned Sarah down. The rescued psychiatrist turns to the camera within the camera to deliver the completely unfunny punchline.
"Model citizen"
He may be an asshole but, you know, he's right about Sarah. Her present and past have merged again. Note how snarling Past Sarah presides over thrashing Present Sarah. Past or present, this woman is only ever a ball of fury hurtling towards a future oblivion that she alone is privy to. The one thing she is no longer is the waitress we once knew. It's a bold but authentic feeling reinvention of the character and the movie sells it for all it's worth.
Now that the unfamiliar new Sarah has the audience on edge, it's time for the film's first real action sequence. In keeping with the sequel's more mainstream tone, the collision of the two future warriors with their unsuspecting target (one aiming to kill, the other to protect) happens in a brightly lit mall rather than a dark night club. Cameron's skills with action have only grown from 1984 to 1991. Some action movies grind to a halt for their setpieces in the way that weaker musicals sometimes trip up on that "we're going to start singing now" pause. Cameron's action is always organic. He builds tension and dread from each scene until the setpieces burst out of the narrative like some H.R. Giger alien exploding from its human host.
Another remarkable thing about Cameron's gift for action direction is how much he's able to cram into the showstoppers without weighing them down or causing visual clutter. There's wordless exposition like the slow reveal of the T-1000's powers (a little bit more each battle... even the malfunctions in the last battle are shown rather than told), funny asides like the T-1000's wary glance at a doppelganger mannequin and even fun subliminal set design -- I've never noticed this before but the video game signs framing John Connor when his friend warns him about "the cop" (i.e. the T-1000) looking for him read "RESCUE" and "CAUTION". Most importantly, the action scenes display major invention during their requisite stunts, thrills and scares. Much of this emanates from the absolutely genius villain that Cameron has concocted in the T-1000. Even the way the actor Robert Patrick rounds corners or adjusts his walking or running speed is both freakishly menacing and wildly entertaining.
To continue the musical simile, let's just say that the action scenes have so many flourishes and movements that they're just like orchestral pieces or maybe pop songs. Consider the mall sequence: It has an opening verse (interior foot chase), repeated chorus (T-800 vs. T-1000's short bouts of gun play) a catchy bridge (the parking lot chase) and a second verse (exterior vehicular chase).
Mall surveillance photos supercharge Sarah's escape plans. If her psychiatrist doesn't cooperate he's getting a liquid rooter injection
No sooner does that "pop song" end than we launch into a veritable symphony at Pescadero. This entire sequence, from Sarah's brutal hostage-taking through the T-1000's ultra alarming shape shifting (that floor move -- sick!) to the final escape is genius. The transcendent peak comes with the oddly horrifying reunion between the T-800 and his former target (We know that the T-800 is now a good guy but she doesn't. And Hamilton has sucked us into Sarah's hair wire personality so vividly, we're both scared of her, for her and with her throughout) and then the collision of all four principles. All three heroes are finally stopped in their tracks, face to face with the T-1000 who walks liquidly through the bars separating them, only to be stopped momentarily by his non-liquid gun which has audibly caught on the bars. It's a wonderfully dischordant idiosyncratic note and we've reached lift off. Terminator 2 rockets from great action movie to great cinema, period. Right there.
Does the movie ever come back down again? Not really.
There are two breaks in action: First, a trip into the desert for healing and weapon acquisition and the second, a talky planning and exposition scene. In these two sequences we ponder the film's famous message "no fate but what we make" and its moralizing philosophy (the human race is self destructive). Neither of these "breaks" derail the movie's exquisite sense of danger. Sarah Connor carries it with her. In her sad, furious and failed assassination attempt on Miles Dyson (Joe Morton) -- she knows his future scientific breakthroughs will lead to doomsday -- the film reveals its master stroke: T2 has not two terminators but three. Sarah has gone from hunted to hunter. The film even borrows and perverts 1984's sickening moment when Sarah Connor had a red target light on her forehead. This time she's the one training the deadly red dot on an innocent man, execution style.
Mother superior (Hamilton) and the Father who didn't know best (Morton)
Cameron is savvy enough in his direction to let his heroine battering ram her way into unlikability and there's a pitch perfect moment of overkill with Sarah as moralizing hypocrite. She really can't help herself, she's so tightly wound.
Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you... all you know how to create is death and destruction. You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something, to create a life... to feel it growing inside you.
She knows from death and destruction herself and she's hardly been a model of matronly warmth even if she did give birth to our future savior. The punchline of the scene, John Connor shouting "MOooom!!!" in embarrassment and 'let's get back on track' pleading is perfectly timed. It cuts the tension just enough to allow the movie to pull back from its philosophies and ideas and put on its final battle gear.
One last reminder that we've got three terminators. The T-1000 morphs into Sarah Connor. He doesn't seem any less scary that way. It's not visual effects trickery. It's Linda Hamilton's twin sister.
The rest is an attack on the Cyberdyne corporation (which is holding the chips... literally) and a molten lava finish in a steel mill. It's all adrenaline, blood, explosions and deeply satisfying arias of action.
Though T2 frequently references its predecessor it never rests on its laurels. It's a hard working piece of cinema. Respect came far more easily than it had to the original. It proved an immediate success with critics, audiences and even Oscar. The Academy usually has to warm up to genre fare and seven years of growing respect for the original killer robot sleeper did the trick. The sequel won four Oscars and even two additional tech nominations (cinematography and editing) that are often reserved for Best Picture players. Sadly, no prestigious honors happened for Linda Hamilton. It's a shame. Despite the revolution in visual effects swirling all around her, Sarah Connor's transformation gave T2's its enduring muscle and heart. Liquid metal was new and eye-popping in 1991 but nothing ever beats the timeless spectacle of flesh and blood.A
Your thoughts and personal experiences with T2 are welcome in the comments.
PART ONE: Tech•Noir (The Terminator) PART THREE: Terminator Salvation Chat *
...would you journey back in time, naked, to save?
Even if they didn't eventually save the world like Sarah or John Connor. And why? It can be any character from any movie. Just save them in the comments from whatever threat they might be facing. (Yes, The Terminator franchise is still on me brain. Here are my write ups of the 1984 original and the 1991 sequel)
Our reader / contributor in Cannes hasn't had much time for post-screening e-mails but she is quite fond of Agora, from director Alejandro Amenábar (The Others, The Sea Inside). That's rather a surprise since a lot of reports we've been reading have been decidedly less enthusiastic. But you know cinema: it divides whether or not it conquers.
Here she is...
Agora is unapologetically provocative. The Vatican has been wasting its time worrying about Angels and Demons with Amenábar's epic about the religious strife that destroyed Alexandria waiting in the wings. Rachel Weisz, reminding us that her Oscar win was no fluke, is dynamic as Hypatia, the philosopher and astronomer known for her outspoken questioning of God. She has a high-minded nature and has sworn off men and worldly pursuits completely. The first half of the movie follows the expulsion of the pagans from Alexandria and the Christian led destruction of the city's famed library. Many Alexandrians convert to Christianity in the wake of the seige, including Hypatia's former slave Davus (Max Minghella) and confidante Orestes (Oscar Isaac). Hypatia nonetheless remains steadfast in her beliefs, devoting her time to pursuing possible explanations for the heliocentric model. The movie focuses on the growing power of the Christians, as they turn their sights on the Jews and eventually the city's entire political organization. Agora outright accuses the film's Christian leaders of flagrantly manipulating the biblical text and indulging in the worst types of persecution (are there good types?). This is the most forthright challenge to the religion that I have personally seen committed to film.
Max Minghella starts out somewhat weak but grows increasingly impressive as he develops from a slave in love with Hypatia to a religious follower trying to mute his own unease with the tactics being used around him. I was most invested in the relationship between Orestes and Hypatia, and the former's clear respect and admiration for the latter. Watching Orestes negotiate the turning of public opinion against Hypatia gives the movie its most challenging emotional edge. Agora has some trouble connecting the drama of the personal stories with its larger tale of a pivotal moment in civilization, but its audacity, technical clarity, and relatability ultimately make it worthy of the effort.
I know several readers are hoping that we see Rachel Weisz on Oscar's red carpet again. The lack of consensus enthusiasm at Cannes doesn't always mean something in the larger marketplace (and thus the Oscars) but it can. Rosengje thinks that if it surmounts the obvious obstacle -- will anyone see it? will critics care to convince them to? -- it would find Oscar favor.
<-- Abbie Cornish and Jane Campion at the Bright Star premiere
I also had to ask her opinion on Jane Campion's Bright Star which is about the short passionate romance between the poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. It's my most eagerly awaited picture from the festival on account of my deep love for Campion's The Piano (1993).
Rosengje is less enthusiastic then the consensus thus far.
I enjoyed and admired Jane Campion' competition entry Bright Star but could not fight the feeling that the movie frequently functions as a standard period romance. Abbie Cornish's direct manner and eventual tenderness toward her beloved are captivating. It is a testament to her performance that the poignancy of the relationship is actually more potent in Keats' absence. I felt the leads were lacking in chemistry, but the depth of Fanny's feeling as the film progresses is palpable and carries the film's last act as Keats journeys to Italy to treat his tuberculosis.
Ben Whishaw and Paul Schneider in Bright Star
I found Ben Whishaw to be Bright Star's biggest weakness. The actor effectively portrays the man's sensitivity and his poetic nature, but overall he seems too weak to warrant the affection of the headstrong Fanny. Paul Schneider, in the supporting role of Mr. Brown, gives the movie's most energetic and vital performance amidst the romantic and intellectual angst. He constantly challenges Fanny's motives while demonstrating a true devotion to Keats.
As expected, the technical credits are perfection, with costumes and cinematography standing out. Fanny starts Bright Star obsessed with design, and her frilled and pleated ensembles reveal more about her personality in the opening scenes than her initial interactions with Keats. Campion particularly captures the beauty of the couple's surroundings in a way that is more effective than the resulting poetry. One sequence involving butterflies left me breathless.
This is the same sequence that Roger Ebert referred to in his recent Cannes article, so I'm guessing it's a true standout and one that they'll eventually plaster on beautiful Oscar FYC ads... not that that is all that important at the moment. The real importance is that Jane Campion has finally made another picture. Rosengje wanted Campion's comeback movie to be a bit more "narratively audacious" but thinks it could be an arthouse hit.
Bob Berney, formerly of Picturehouse, has made a career of successfully drawing audiences to arthouse fare, and the young leads and romance should be accessible and enjoyable to a fairly broad audience.
Agora is currently expected on American screens on December 18th. Bright Star arrives on September 18th.
I'm perplexed that millions of people thought Angels & Demonsmight be worth seeing. I distinctly remember that people -- and quite a lot of them at that -- thought that The DaVinci Code* was, to put it nicely, "not good". Why is it that huge hordes of people can often be lured into sequels to movies they didn't love with much greater ease than they can be lured into acclaimed movies that they might actually love with a passion should they ever give them a chance? See also: The Blockbuster Loop.
*Full confession: I never saw the movie as I remain agnostic on Tom Hanks after all these years and am unfond of Howard's "serious" movies. But I did try to watch it at home a year ago, only to be completely horrified at how unwatchable it was. As in: much worse than I had originally suspected it to be. I think I lasted 30 minutes.
This post has been updated. Please choose 3 answers from the poll
Meryl Streep Month begins in 14 days. For the six or seven Streep-phobic readers among you I promise to keep it fun and cinematically broad (co-stars, directors, tangents, oscar discussions). Regular posting will continue betwixt the Mary Louise Gummer business.
Your enthusiasm + my stamina will = how far we journey into the Streep Territories. For now, offer up suggestions in the comments and take this poll. I've left out the obvious must (Sophie's Choice) and things that are unavailable (Joe Tynan), that I have no desire to revisit (Manchurian, etc...) or that I've already discussed (the quite recent stuff).
As you read this Katey and I will almost be finished with our critics screening of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smitsonian. Or as I like to call it Night at the Museum 2: Now With More Amelia Earhart. This is not to discount the efforts of Owen Wilson ( ♥ ) and Hank Azaria ( ♥ )but... Amy Adams !
If one museum exhibit could come alive for you, which would you have it be? Discuss in the comments. *
Glenn pointed me to this cake with the following inscription "you like movies as inspiration for food, so here you go" Why yes... why yes, I do, Glenn. (Chase the "yummy" label below this post for further proof). If you love all things Wild, I suggest further eating reading at We Love You So, a blog devoted to Spike Jonze's upcoming adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are.
For what it's worth, theWild Things cake was made by Coco Cake Cupcakes in Vancouver. If Glenn truly loved me he would have sent the cake itself rather than a boring link! I guess I'll have to fly to Canada to sample it. If the cake should be unavailable upon my arrival I will gladly nibble on My Neighbor Totoro cupcakes while I wait for them to bake another. *
My brain and heart are 3,990 miles away. If you have several minutes to spare you might want to check out this video of the Cannes ceremony. If you speak French you'll have more fun but even if you don't the montage of films showing at Cannes (14 - 22 minute mark) is still intriguing.You can see brief cuts from Bright Star, Emmanuelle Devos in L'Origine (Je l'adore), Broken Embraces, Spring Fever and many more including a bit from Heath Ledger in the The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus "Do you dream? Or should I say 'Can you put a price on your dreams?' "
A little kid in a Michael Haneke movie?!? Poor kid. What horrific, psychologically distorting fate awates him?
Cannes over the weekend... for those of you who've been offline Roger Ebert "fings ain't wot they used t'be" - lovely piece Bright Star scrapbook. Jane Campion has such an eye IFC Daily Strong response to Mother, from The Host director Bong Joon-ho
LA Times Doctor Parnassus still waiting for buyer. The last film of Heath Ledger and a f***ing Terry Gilliam movie with major stars and they don't want it? I will always love the cinema as an artform but as a business it sometimes seems like a malevolent soul crushing destroyer In Contention joins the chorus singing that Cannes competition lineups need to be riskier than just 'insert 20 famous auteurs' Getty Tilda Swinton & Agnès Varda of the avant-garde IndieWire Lars Von Trier does it again with Antichrist. Boos and applause at the premiere Spoutblog Lars Von Trier does it again for Antichrist. Quotable egomania
I am the best filmmaker in the world
I know it's too much to ask that all directors be as brilliant as Lars Von Trier. But why can't they all be this entertaining?
Cheeky Dafoe, 'the best filmmaker in the world' (?) and sweet Charlotte Gainsbourg
too much Cannes? These posts have never been to France. PopWrap Shia Labeouf overshares with Playboy Topless RobotStar Trek = Star Wars. It's Benji Button = Gump all over again Lazy Eye Theater Remembering Royal Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums BoingBoing Twitter graph -- how topics get played out. hee *
Adam of Club Silencio here with another look at my favorite actresses and their distinguishing claims to fame.
Jamie Lee Curtis leads a multitude of magnificent lives. Hollywood Royalty holder, children's author, wife to Christopher Guest, AARPcovergirl and staunch advocate for Activia yogurt. But then that's what she's shown to be so splendid at throughout her revealing and revitalizing career: balancing these many separate lives. It's enough to make anyone scream, but then Jamie Lee Curtis is also the queen of that.
The virginal high school babysitter with the homicidal, immortal brother; the hitchhiker with a past who's sure to put out. Jamie Lee Curtis is like an onion. As she progressed through the 80's we saw her shed layers... and eventually her layers.
A street-tough cop and undercover thief are both hard earned women's roles that transcend just just being topless. It's all about range, and Jamie's sensual and oft-victimized self takes some harder-edged turns. Not only is she playing the independent brains behind the operations, Jamie Lee proves she's a horror heroine, comedian and an action star! Maybe someone will have the sick humor to pair her with Arnold Schwarzenegger...
But first come see the softer of side of Jamie Lee... Although it's easy to understand this little girl's suspicions. There's definitely some backstory there - especially obvious when Jamie Lee shows up at a funeral home in her camper trailer asking for a cosmetology job. Is she telling the truth? Lies?
You don't marry Arnold Schwarzenegger in a movie and think all you're getting is a joint checking account. The jig is up: hubby's a secret agent and that mousy wife of his (Jamie Lee wears glasses!) has been sleeping with her own 007 on the side. But then we can understand why, given Jamie Lee's past. For one thing this new guy also lives in a trailer. Just peeling back the layers with Jamie Lee...
And I bet Jamie Lee Curtis's body is looking pretty good to Lindsay Lohan right about now... (Take that as you will.) Even if she needs to swap bodies with her daughter to gain perspective, Jamie Lee's found perfect balance when it comes to her body of work. She's managed to stay fearless and funny, taut and terrified. Her sparse appearances always remind me of why I loved her in the first place.
Few have managed to hold a horror film AND the sheer terror of the Disney summer movie. As organically as her career has unfolded, she's somehow kept that Hollywood legacy fresh. Either she's constantly swapping bodies with teenage girls or that Activia yogurt really does work wonders.
Today, rather than blogging, I think I'll hang by the pool with Natalie Wood ...and poodle (not "Precious", this poodle has an easier life). Adam will be back with a new "Signatures" this evening. Stay tuned.
Thanks to Rosengje for sharing her notes from Cannes. Here she is on Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro.
Tetro is, for lack of more eloquent phrasing, just not a very good movie. It follows Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich in his feature debut) as he attempts to reconcile with his brother Angelo (Vincent Gallo). After a stint in an asylum, Angelo has disowned his family and now resides in Argentina under the name "Tetro" with his almost-wife Miranda (Maribel Verdú).
The two brothers both suffer from the pressure of their genius composer father's expectations and betrayals. While the Oedipal issues at play throughout Tetro are intermittently appealing, the film suffers from Coppola's need to excessively explain the motives and psychology. Each revelation is played for maximum dramatic effect. Not only are we treated to various characters discussing each tidbit of information, but there are also accompanying film clips and ballet sequences as reminders. The modest, sincere appeal of the story of loosely connected family members trying to navigate evolving relationships is lost in the director's weighty treatment of the material.
The majority of Tetro is beautifully photographed though there's an over-reliance on visual motifs such as reflections in mirrored surface and the flashing of lights. The decision to shoot predominantly in black and white is mostly successful, but I was drawn out of the world during the garish color sequences and bothered by the insertion of modern devices as counterpoints. This fairly standard family tale is not necessarily tied to a specific time period, so the occasional presence of MacBooks seemed unnecessarily jarring.
And here we get to the element that's winning everyone over even if they're cold on the film, a new star in Aldon Ehrenreich.
Tetro's most appealing quality is its star. Ehrenreich resembles a divine hybrid of Leonardo DiCaprio, Emile Hirsch, and Matt Damon.
Every member of my demographically varied group was swooning over him (as do many of the women in the film). If the story of his discovery by Steven Spielberg in a bat-mitzvah video is true, he just becomes even more appealing. The role of Bennie doesn't require excessive emoting until a dramatic twist toward the end, but Ehrenreich maintains a casually charming screen presence. He keeps the camera's attention even when the story doesn't.
Leo, Emile and Matt conjoined, huh? How can all that starry goodness fit into one man? But more importantly, when will Francis Ford Coppola get his auteurial mojo back? Both Tetro and his previous picture, Youth Without Youth have disappointed the hopeful.
Hedwig himself is making another movie. John Cameron Mitchell's cinematic take on stage hit Rabbit Hole begins filming on June 1st in New York. Here, via Screen Daily, he's talking about why he's directing someone else's material for the first time and the humor that attracted him to this very sad story about a mother (Nicole Kidman) who has lost her young child.
He's really forthcoming about the different approaches required to work with untrained actors (Shortbus) versus stars (Rabbit Hole). He had never worked with stars before and I love this bit on Nicole Kidman and his cast...
There's a different kind of pleasure with working with virtuosic actors --working with the Stradivarius... There's a thrill with working with a beautiful, resonant instrument that can respond to gentle guidance.
And there's nothing Hollywood about this experience which has been fantastic... I'm surprised at how smoothly it's going. This is very pure. We're not getting interference from people who don't have good taste.
Hee. You mean to say that interfering suits don't always have good taste? I'm shocked. Shocked I say.
I've never heard my Kidman referred to as a Stradivarius before but I love the comparison. In part because it makes me think of classical music which immediately causes a reverential hypnotic blissful state as I remember Kidman's opera house close up in Birth. sigh
I also found it intriguing that he feels such a connection to the teenage character in the film who draws comic books.
The art in this is going to be important in the way that Hedwig and Shortbus used animation and art -- in a subtler way, we'll be using that.
I can't wait to see this movie but since they're still only in pre-production, I will have to. *
I'm not an aficionado of hair, but his looks great.
I don't believe the pre comma denial, and I don't share the post comma sentiment.
No Sacred Cows a fine interview with Charlie Kaufman on Synecdoche New York. I'm warming to the notion of giving it a second chance. But currently I think it's a purposefully off-putting one note masturbation session. We'll see. Heroine Content has a pointed review of Star Trek and its use of gender and race. StarPulse on the season finale of Grey's Anatomy. I'm so thrilled that Katharine Heigl is finally free of that particular ball and chain.
Finally, 3 videos of note
An oddly compelling, funny juxtaposition of Bambi imagery with Sir Ian McKellen discussing acting ???? For real (thx, Jeff)
HBO's preview for Hung, starring Thomas Jane. Doesn't HBO need a new zeitgeist hit in a big way?
First trailer for The Road (it's not a "thriller" per se and Charlize is barely in it, despite the marketing) but the imagery look better than when I saw the movie. I guess finishing the color corrections really makes a movie pop.
No, that's not what Mariah Carey wore to the red carpet. That's her travel outfit on her flight over to attend the very successful Precious screening. This might be the first time I've ever understood one of Mariah's fashion choices. Comfort first when you're high in the sky... even if you're a diva. I included her in this red carpet lineup merely to get my bearings that somehow -- due to Precious-- I'll have to start talking about her now. There are so many singers I'd rather talk about if they'd only make movies (Gwen Stefani, Annie Lennox, Sufjan Stevens, P¡nk, Rufus Wainwright) or learn to act (Madonna).
Remember Bae Doona (waving to the camera) from that Korean monster movie The Host? -- or as the IMDB likes to call her Du-na Bae. Asian names are so confusing on that site -- she's now starring in Hirokazu Koreeda's latest called Air Doll, which is about a blow up doll who develops a soul. Great concept. How many hours until we hear about some American studio snatching up remake rights?
Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish got dolled up for the star-studded premiere of Jane Campion's Bright Star which seems to be divisive already. More on that when you scroll down. And finally American funny lady Elizabeth Banks & internationally renowned beauty Aishwarya Rai were photographed together at the Up premiere in different gowns a couple days ago. I guess they're not about to put the brakes on their red carpet chumminess. Here they in different gowns... and this event wasn't long after the other. Imagine how much luggage you'd have to bring to Cannes if you were a celebrity. Three outfits for each day... minimum.
More Cannes chatter Manohla Dargis @ NY Times on the previously glutted art house market. Is there a silver indie lining in the economic downturn? IFC DailyBright Star reactions at Cannes. Is Jane Campion (The Piano) finally making a real comeback? The movie is now scheduled to open stateside on September 18th. Mike D'Angelo lots of tweeting from Cannes. Hates everything. Or merely tolerates. Only a 50/100 for Jane Campion's Bright Star? Boo. Or "assumed 'Boo' " rather since I haven't seen it. Still, the tweet is funny.
I do support such legislation. Or, rather, a 5 year ban. Needless to say, this ban would not go into affect until after Jane Campion is done returning to us. The cinema needs her. *
S'appelle Rosengje. She's a regular commenter and sometime contributor -- she covered ShoWest for us -- and she's in the South of France for Cannes and has graciously agreed to share her thoughts.
She relays quickly that Cannes is overwhelming and crazy (so we have absorbed though we have never been....sniffle) but here are her notes from the premiere. More to follow
I had the pleasure of seeing the Cannes opening ceremony and the premiere of Up in the Grand Theatre Lumiere. After watching Tilda Swinton dominate the red carpet and Isabelle Huppert give a delightful introduction (in French!) as jury president, the film started. I had previously seen, and loved, the first 47 minutes at ShoWest. The rest of the film did not disappoint.
The highlight of Up remains the poignant, largely silent, opening montage that chronicles main character Carl Fredrickson's life with his wife Ellie. Carl and Ellie dreamed of being explorers and filling books with their adventures, but the daily struggles of life inevitably got in the way.
After her death, Carl becomes determined to fulfill his promise to Ellie and embarks on an unlikely adventure with a young boy named Russell. Despite offering a poignant, whimsical film experience, Up ultimately does not measure up to the lofty standards set by WALL•E.
That was always going to be a tough act to follow, yes. Will Rosengje's opinion be the consensus? If so, that's a very similar reaction to the last Pixar picture ('the first 40 minutes are the best!'). Some minor spoilers in this next bit so skip ahead if you don't want to know anything.
This can be attributed to the film's determination to combine elements of both art-house fare and mainstream family-friendly releases. This decision makes the film accessible and immediately funny, but provokes some awkward juxtapositions. Carl and Russell are supported by a large animal crew that eventually includes a large bird and a pack of dogs outfitted with collars that allow them to speak. Toward the film's conclusion, director Pete Docter movingly reprises the opening snapshot motif. The result led to quite a few audience members having to lift their nifty 3D glasses to wipe away tears. Unfortunately, the scene is quickly followed by a prolonged action sequence that while visually stunning relies on several animal cliches. The dogs are frequently distracted by squirrels and treats in a manner that is sweetly amusing but tonally contradicts the preceding emotional material.
end spoilers
I loved the movie and am confident it will be a huge success at home and abroad. I do believe, however, that the disparity between Pixar's visual sophistication and the expectations of family films will prove increasingly problematic in understanding and assessing their releases.
Up also represents the first film that has truly impressed me with the use of 3D. Docter deployed 3D to strategically create connections with the material rather than to create mere shock value. The images will alternately flatten and expand to heighten emotional tension. The film demonstrates that the technology need not be a gimmick when used effectively, a trend James Cameron will hopefully confirm later this year with Avatar.
Readers, how anxious are you to take that balloon ride with Carl Fredrickson and do you even care if Up falls just short of WALL•E -- maybe you considered that a ridiculously high altitude to worry about. Are you still waiting to be impressed by 3D or are you already there? *
Today's Must Read: Joe Reid spits out a brilliant piece on the simple-minded Channing Tatum vehicle Fighting over at Low Resolution. His thesis:
Fighting is a movie about hardcore gay sex. With mentally retarded people.
Heh. So wrong and true. I started using this trailer screencap to your top left as my desktop background (I switch it up bi-weekly) primarily because I enjoy the, um, ideas that come up when I look at it. Shut up! I can't help myself when it comes to the Tatum. I seriously can't.
Speaking of Tatum. Next up is a small bit in Public Enemies and after that, in his third of three '09 films, comes the role of "Duke" in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. The G.I. Joe trailer is stoopid with bad CGI but normally I'd have to see it anyway on account of my helplessness in the face of the face of...
But, lo, a silver lining. Since everyone in G.I. Joe seems mummified by their costuming to the point of unrecognizable, and even the marketing suggests we shouldn't care who is inside each costume*, maybe this is my way out? Surely if I can't tell that it's The Tatum inside the rubber costumes (what are those costumes made out of anyway?), I can purge my self-destructive desire to see every frame of him his movies.
Anyway, read Joe's post. In fact, read it over and over again until 105 minutes have passed. I guarantee you'll have more fun than you will at the movie itself. The only enjoyable actualmoviething you'll miss out on is Altagracia Guzman's bossy Latino grandma act but you can see her do that with greater detail, comedy and pathos in Raising Victor Vargas which is 2,069 times better than Fighting anyway.
Altagracia Guzman gives Tatum her best right hook at the premiere of Fighting
I've been urging people to see Raising Victor Vargas for years now. People still give me blank looks when I mention it. Will no one listen? Rent it.
*Question: Why hire name actors who are expensive when you're just going to bury them in CGI, body suits, and masks? *
Part 1 of 3 Terminator Franchise Special. Spoilers abound but you've had 25 years to see this picture...
"Tech Noir" In March of 1984 when The Terminator began filming, the director James Cameron and the producer Gale Ann Hurd were no Hollywood heavyweights. Cameron was no one's idea of a visionary (except for perhaps his own) and had only one feature under his belt, Piranha 2: The Spawning --auspicious beginnings! Hurd had learned the production ropes on B movies for Roger Corman. Cameron and Hurd intended for the dark, fast andcheaply made robot movie to be their calling card. Seven months later in October the movie premiered with only its deceptively simple premise (killer machine hunts woman) and Conan the Barbarian (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to sell it. The Terminator was an immediate hit, though not quite a blockbuster. It earned a Conan-like $38 million gross in its initial run (which I believe is something roughly in the ballpark of $90 million in 2009 ticket sales).
As a franchise it was a slow starter but as a stand alone movie The Terminator was anything but.
The movie begins with a bone crushing (literally) view of "The Year of Darkness", in which massive machines hunt humans in desolate post-apocalyptic ruins. Very quickly we're thrown back to present day Los Angeles ...present day in in the 80s at least.
The T-800 meets Cameron regular Bill Paxton (blue haired punk). Check out the lengthy tongue accompanied stare his friend (genre movie regular Brian Thompson) directs at the T-800's realistic looking man parts. Ha!
An electric storm begins and a naked crouching man rises from the clearing smoke. He proceeds to walk emotionless through LA and slaughters some punks for clothes. A second electrical storm follows dropping another naked man into downtown LA. The twin sequences are mostly wordless but already Cameron's story instincts are shining: The first man (we don't technically know he's a machine) is already embedded in the audiences mind as an cool collected deadly force to be reckoned with, the second Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is, in contrast, a scurrying, less capable and frankly desperate looking man.
Kyle Reese's famously cold and harsh entrance. His arrival isn't pain-free and before he even has his bearings "What Year!?!" he's being hunted.
In short, he's mortal. We don't know why he's there but his world is already merciless with him (damn that pavement smacks him hard). Soon both men are armed and searching for the same woman "Sarah Connor". A smartly recurring shot has all three lead players scanning the phone book for the name, followed the first time by an expository cut to the Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) we're looking for.
The large stone faced man quickly dispenses with the first two unlucky Sarah Connors. We learn that dogs don't like Terminators. We learn that the Terminator can mimic voices. The police realize someone is scrolling down the list and even Sarah Connor herself, the Sarah Connor, hears about the first murder. As she gets ready for a night out, we realize she's next... and that her roommate is probably done for, too, even if the remain ignorant to the bad omen the first murder portends.
Check out the 80s fashions! Sarah's a simple waitress, not a fashionista. Earlier in the film she wears a Jetsons t-shirt. Is it a fun nod to the sci-fi genre?
All of this happens very swiftly, sometimes with almost inhuman proficiency (thank the sharp editing by Mark Goldblatt) like the brutal unfeeling demise of the first Sarah. In its early sequences, The Terminator has the timber of a slasher movie. It's over in a flash. Cameron wastes no time in his calling card film. Would that more action filmmakers would have learned from his economy. He doesn't stop to explain. He just shows with clarity and moves on. His films are so precise that sometimes I think he's a Terminator himself, a T-Auteur2000.
Next comes the pivotal plot braiding sequence as all three lead characters are finally threaded together at the brilliantly named dance club Tech-Noir. This leads to possibly the most brilliant shot in the movie as the T-800 stands firing his heavy artillery in front of the blinking sign. Tech-Noir, indeed: He's a futuristic machine and this movie is pitch black with menace.
The night club sequence ups the ante considerably. We're finally shown, without a shadow of a doubt, that Schwarzenegger's character is, in fact, a machine. He rises from what should be death and we get our first shot from inside his head as he targets the fleeing Sarah and Reese. We're nearly 40 minutes into the movie before Cameron finally stops and lets us breathe a little, letting the exposition in. Reese tells Sarah what the T-800 is, putting the sci-fi threat in all too human terms
It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity. Or remorse. Or fear. And it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead
Reese and Sarah are caught by the police after a high speed chase with the T-800 and in the police station the psychiatrist also gets to restate the franchise plot and laugh at the absurdity of it all.
This computer thinks it can win by killing him before he's even conceived. A sort of retroactive abortion?
Apparently, in the 80s you could say the word "abortion" onscreen. How far we've regressed.
'Come with me if you want to live have sex.' Kyle's aim is true.
Nine months later Sarah will give birth to new savior of the human race.
Speaking of regression... in the 80s action/horror hybrids were rated R (It's called The Terminator. It needs to be violent and scary) and women were usually naked when they had sex instead of leaving their bras on or rolling around in strangely adhesive sheets. It's true. I'm not trying to be a horndog by why shouldn't Sarah Connor be naked? We're visualizing the conception of our savior J.C. (John Connor) and that's important. If The Terminator were made today they would cut out the goriest bits and make Sarah wear a bra during her world-saving orgasm.
But I digress... in the last half of the film we basically morph from a sci-fi horror film to a chase picture, as Sarah and Reese run from the increasingly robotic looking killing machine and fight him when they have to. Unless there was a heroic woman in Piranha 2 (I haven't seen it) this 1984 classic also gives us our first ultra satisfying taste of James Cameron's respect for powerful women. When Reese is finally put down by the big bad machine, there's no prince to rescue Sarah Connor and she takes matters into her own hands.
You can see her pooling her strength to help Reese and then herself in the last intense fights in the movie. The damsel in distress within her has to die. She's her own savior. And she's the killer now.
You're terminated, fucker
The Terminator gets uncomfortably close to Sarah Connor's sweating face. I like to think that David Fincher stole this shot in homage for that famous Alien³ moment when the alien breathes on a terrified Ripley
Sarah Connor crushes this machine but the story isn't over. Storm clouds gather in the sky as she drives away to Mexico and the credits roll. A
The first poster for this 80s classic referred to the original T-800 as "something unstoppable." It was a rare case of marketing as prophecy. The Terminator wasn't a critical sensation and received no Oscar nominations (not even for that brilliantly metallic and frightening theme by Brad Friedel, something like the The Jaws of sci-fi). It started life as a mid-sized hit but snowballed into a massive one on home video in the following years, eventually becoming a billion dollar avalanche of a franchise.
What a calling card The Terminator turned out to be.
PART TWO: "Model Citizen" Terminator 2 PART THREE: Terminator Salvation Discussion * *
Lipsynching is hard enough to do well and that's before adding several pounds of distraction atop your noggin. Ouch.
What happened to Hugo Weaving anyway? Is he hiding in Australia?
For a good long while between the sober elven council he kept and his multiplying Matrix villainry his face was hard to avoid at the franchise-happy multiplex. Now, Hollywood lets him talk (V in V For Vendetta, Megatron in Transformers) but his face is suddenly off limits.
I know movie stars get paid more money for short contract work than most of us can ever earn in our lifetime but sometimes I think they deserve it. Imagine having to shout such utter nonsense while leaping around in front of blank green screens for days on end. Imagine doing that and delivering it with any degree of disbelief suspended authenticity? It might be a fun job but I'm guessing it's not easy. *
In my latest column @ Towleroad I'm covering gay interest films at Cannes including Lou Ye's (Summer Palace) new provocation Spring Fever which IndieWire is likening to a Chinese Shortbus for its explicit apparently unsimulated gay sex. There's also a bit on the ongoing interweguments about how much "bromance" we'll actually witness in the new Sherlock Holmes. Jude Law does like to play with his sexuality onscreen. He's such an actress in that way.
In June: MERYL STREEP MONTH
