In the current issue of The Believer, dude extraordinaire Chuck Klosterman essayifies on that tried and true genre, the road movie. Recently, we'd decided our previous opinion of Klosterman's writing (mostly self-important, not a lot of there there) was misguided* but with this article, Cinecultist has gone back to sort of hating him.
As usual, Klosterman seems to have missed the forest for the trees, deftly writing around the main issue in a wholly unsatisfying and overtly-intellectualized way. He argues that road movies always lead the characters back to the beginning, are about reinvention, or discovering geography. Sometimes they have no structure, sometimes they have a strict three act structure. Maybe the point is nothing happens, maybe the point is something big happens. Klosterman throws all of these ideas out there for contemplation, and doesn't really pass final judgment on any of them.
But road movies, to our mind, aren't ever solely about asphalt or cars or nature versus society. They're about the externalization of that internal quest to know ourselves. Here's where we go a little Joseph Campbell: As the hero travels, exiting his home base/comfort zone, encountering archetypes and solving minor roadblocks, he comes to learn who he is. He may be traveling down the road in a car, but he's really trekking into his psyche. That's why 2001 is an interesting inclusion into the road movie genre—the road into space is a metaphor for Dave's real journey into that 18th century white alien room, ie. his mind.
Another annoyance from this essay is that Klosterman cites a lot of great examples of road movies like Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise, Old Joy and Two-Lane Blacktop (Most. Boring. Movie. Ever.) but neglects Cinecultist's fav, and the subject of a high school English AP paper we wrote about road stories in literature: The Muppet Movie. Kermit, a banjo, and a bunch of fuzzy buddies in a Studebaker going to Hollywood? How could Chuck have missed that one? Perhaps just like Fozzie, Klosterman learned to drive by correspondence school.
*CC recently donated to This American Life for the CD Kings of Nonfiction, a dialog between host Ira Glass and writers Susan Orlean, Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Klosterman at Town Hall. In this context, Chuck's writing or if you prefer, riffing about KISS for 600 words, seemed to have purpose. Obviously, we were wrong.
• Shooting Down Pictures hates on San Francisco Chronicle critic Mick LaSalle for boldly admitting he hasn't seen some canonical cinema classics and then tossing off cursory reviews of them. Cinecultist used to read LaSalle religiously when we lived in the Bay Area too, and he even emailed to wish CC a happy 22nd birthday following a column in our college newspaper. But dude, LaSalle, you hadn't seen 2001 or Blade Runner? Jeez.
• Amy Monaghan on Radar lists some of the most misogynistic movies of the '00s. We say "right on, sister!" for calling out Superbad and My Super Ex-Girlfriend. These are not pro-lady movies.
• In our Movie Binge review of Garfield 2: A Tail of Two Kitties, Cinecultist contemplated the oddity of Garfield's premise, ie. that Jon Arbuckle is basically talking to himself when he chats with his fat tabby cat. In this inspired tumblr blog, the author has literally erased that lasagna eating cat and produced a hilarious, yet almost unsettling nihilistic strip. Is it wrong to laugh at a character who seems so close to the edge of sanity?
Amy Ryan, flanked by John Ashton and Ed Harris, as Helene in Gone Baby Gone.
On Friday night the New York Times magazine hosted a conversation between editor Lynn Hirschberg and two of their featured subjects (and Oscar nominees) in this week's story on Breaking Through actresses Ellen Page and Amy Ryan, as well as Juno director Jason Reitman. After the fascinating hour and a half conversation, which featured discussions of their work in Juno and Gone Baby Gone as well as a cameo from portfolio photographer Ryan McGinley, Cinecultist had the opportunity to speak one on one with Amy in the green room. The critically lauded (she was nominated for two Tonys and now the best supporting Oscar nod) down-to-earth stage and screen actor couldn't have been nicer—she even complimented CC on our favorite earrings.
It’s so great to meet you because I’ve been talking about your performance ever since I saw it.
Oh, gosh. Thank you.
Something I thought that was interesting that you brought up in the talk tonight was that in your theater career, and then again in your movie career, you’ve had these breakthroughs and I wondered if there was anything that you thought was similar about these two moments?
It is similar to what Ellen was saying about when you read a script and it’s somewhat inexplicable, but your body is just propelling you forward [to do the project]. I think the common thread is that when I first read Uncle Vanya and actually Streetcar, these two plays, I thought 'I have to play these parts.' And when I read Capote, I knew this was a role I had to play, Marie Dewey. I just had to. It was the complexity of her being star struck in tandem with her neighbors just being murdered. What does that feel like, to be this person? I wanted to figure that out. And then with Helene [in Gone Baby Gone], how do you play a drug addict who is considering the fame and also wondering if her daughter is alive or dead, just trying to survive?
So it’s more about the chance to play a certain role rather than, 'Now the world will know me and I’ll have a chance to be famous?'
No, never had that. I remember when I was a kid seeing a play with a famous actress in it and I remember saying to my mom, ‘I hope I’m good before I’m famous.’ Because when you’re famous people will tell you you’re good.
I’m glad this has happened later in my life because I know I’m good at some things, but there’s going to be a lot of things that I know I’m shitty at. At least I know what I know now. Because I wasn’t as smart as Ellen, I keep having to remind myself of her age! She’s a phenomenal, grounded, intelligent person. Man, this girl is impressive. [Ed note. Up close Ellen Page is also very, very tiny. So much sardonic for such a little package.]
I know!
Because I didn’t have that, so I’m glad that it happened later in life.
And do you think being a New York actress, and being based here, is about that too?
For me it is. First of all there’s nothing like coming back home to New York where any other block you walk down, someone’s story is bigger than your own. You’re not the star. You’re not the center of attention. Everyone has a drama on each new block. Also after drama school I didn’t go back into training, I just started training by watching behavior in the streets and the subways. In that sense I need New York, I need that. I think it’s the balance of life.
Do you have a favorite place to watch movies in New York?
I watch movies on my wall now in my house, because I have a projector. But to go to the movies, nothing beats the Zeigfeld. You feel like you’ve stepped back in time. You feel like you have to get dressed up to go to the movies there. I also really appreciate—even though I do think the screens are too small—but I love a rainy day with no plans and you walk by the Angelika. They always have something interesting and worth seeing. I do wish their screens were a little bigger but that’s New York real estate.
If you're looking to break into the film criticism racket, the second annual Moving Image Institute in Film Criticism and Feature Writing is now calling for entries to their five day program in April. "With sessions at the Museum and at production facilities and offices in Manhattan, members of the Institute will learn about the art and business of film from leading directors, editors, composers, screenwriters, publicists, and executives. Fellows will also have the opportunity to attend a weekly meeting between editors and writers of The New York Times." Sounds like geeky good fun, right? Cinecultist knows someone who attended last year and gave the program high marks.
They're looking for budding Pauline Kael's who've had at least one year of profession journalism experience. Send your home address and email; your employer’s name, address, and email; 350 words describing your experience as it relates to film criticism and/or arts writing; 350 words describing a likely/hoped for outcome of your participation in this institute; two published writing samples (These pieces need not be about film) and two professional references (including name, title, address, email, and telephone) to Film Institute, Museum of the Moving Image, 35 Avenue at 36 Street, Astoria, NY 11106. Email to: institute@movingimage.us. They'll pick 12 participants, so good luck!
In other professional development/mentoring news, Cinecultist volunteered to be a part of the "take a student to lunch" program at our alma mater, UC Davis. Two eager young Aggies should be contacting CC in the next few weeks for a chat, which should be interesting. (Though we'll be surprised if we can do the actual "lunch" part since the students will be living in California and we're in New York, but that didn't seem to stop UCD from putting our name in the pool.) We felt utterly clueless and lost when we graduated from college, so Cinecultist will be happy to pass along any words of encouragement and advice from the past 9 years that we can.
What movies are appropriate for children? is the subject of A.O. Scott's well-written essay in today's New York Times. This very topic has been on the Cinecultist brain lately too, between hanging out with our 11-year-old brother and 14-year-old sister over the holidays and writing reviews for Kaboose.com, a parenting website. "If it's PG-13, should we write a review about it?" is often a discussion between CC and our editor.
When Cinecultist thinks back to the movies we loved as a child, a huge chunk of them were not children's movies per se. As Scott writes, it's great for kids to feel challenged by their entertainment. Why does everything have to be so sanitized and stripped of all points controversial? Surely there are bloody, disturbing movies like No Country For Old Men out in theaters now that should be avoided with a kid in tow, but something like Persopolis would be perfect for my politics-minded little sister.
When CC, our 27-year-old sister and her boyfriend wanted to take our little brother to the movies over the vacation, we all went to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets. It seemed safe for him and entertaining enough for us. During a few of the more suspenseful moments, CC turned to look at Mark and noticed he had pulled his feet up onto his seat and had his fingers in his ears. Smart strategy: he didn't want to hear the explosion that was about to happen but he wanted to know the outcome. Despite a few of those anxious moments, Mark totally dug the movie and all the way home was asking us if he could become a treasure hunter. When we all encouraged him to let his imagination fly, he seemed a little skeptical but still excited about learning more about his own ancestors just like Nic Cage's character does. Movies do have the power to thrill and inspire, especially for children. They don't always have to fluffy and G rated.
And speaking of CC's Kaboose reviews, you can read our opinions of Water Horse: Legend of the Deep and The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie on their site. Regarding the Veggies, it was perhaps one of the more boring flicks we've reviewed but at least the angry Cheetos were cute.
Last week in his email column, New York Times technology writer David Pogue sounded off against the misleading nature of some movie trailers, particularly National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Basically, Pogue was miffed that scenes so prominently featured in the teaser were no where to be found in the final $11.75 product and thought it amounted to false advertising.
This week he published some of the responses that email column got, including an interesting one from National Treasure's director Jon Turteltaub. Cinecultist enjoyed his trenchant response so much that we thought we'd quote it (especially because the column isn't up on the NYT site yet). We like mental image of Turteltaub watching a trailer for a movie he made and panicking that maybe he'd cut out the best parts. Poor directors, yet another thing to obsess over when trying to control your film.
“Yeah... the trailer issue is a weird one. At some point, we all wonder if there’s something misleading in the advertising if the scenes shown aren’t in the movie... but apparently, the studios and all their lawyers feel it’s not a legal problem.“Basically, what happens is that as we film a movie, the ‘dailies’ are sent to the marketing department. They cut together the trailers LONG before we have had time to cut the movie together. The first trailer for Book of Secrets was finished when we were only halfway through the filming!
“Then, as we cut the movie, they get revised scenes and try their best to use what we give them, but often, the ship has sailed. They’ve finished a fun, great trailer without knowing whether the scenes will end up in the movie. Plus, scenes can get cut out at the last minute for all sorts of reasons... running time, they test badly, or they just don’t fit.
“What’s funny is that the filmmakers do exactly what you do. I was watching the final trailer for my movie, saying what you said: ‘Ummm....that’s not in the movie, that’s not in the movie, THAT’S not in the movie.’ But then I respond by saying, ‘Uh oh, did we cut out all the best parts???’
“The fact is, what works in a trailer isn’t necessarily what works in the full feature. Dialogue that is really blatantly clear and ‘explainy’ is GREAT in a trailer. Profound statements like ‘Let’s find that treasure!’ work in a 30-second commercial, but come out pretty lame in a real dialogue scene.
“For me, the biggest problem that comes up is when the trailers and TV spots don’t reflect the essence of the movie they are selling. You see that a LOT. The studio often feels that the movie they made isn’t a movie they can sell... so they sell it as a different movie. That can help fill seats on opening weekend, but it usually backfires. Personally, I think that’s what happened to Sweeney Todd. Perhaps they didn’t want anyone to know it was bloody, gory and a musical. So they hid that. What happens is that the wrong audience sees the movie on opening weekend, and the word of mouth is all wrong. Great movies can get lost because of this.”
The ever-enjoyable and thought-provoking Dana Stevens at Slate has called the annual Movie Club to order. First topic of convo: David Fincher's Zodiac and fellow debaters Nathan Lee, Wesley Morris and Scott Foundas's obvious Fincher love. Funny, Cinecultist and our fellow Fincher admirer Ilana were just discussing our love for Zodiac last night over beers at The Smith.
Stevens writes that "David Fincher has always seemed like a niche director to me, an expert spelunker into remote corners of the male psyche who never brings back quite enough from his travels to justify the descent," (ha) but CC disagrees. Or rather, the thing we found most intriguing (and ultimately resonant) about Zodiac is the way Fincher seems to be interrogating the very project of investigation and the thriller genre. By refusing to make one character the ultimate mystery solver and by scattering the movie's action across decades, he seems to be laughing in the face of our ability to catch evil-doers. Law and Order's Jack McCoy may be able to get the killer to confess in 50-odd minutes, but in Fincher's world, it's not so easy. And this from a director who was made famous by his tidy crime solving movie Se7en. Now he wants to spend 2 and a half hours exploring a story without a tidy conclusion, and that seems worthy of admiration and predictions of cinema history placement in our book.
Please keep clicking through at the above link for the other critics' responses, they're all quite well written. (BTW, Morris agrees with CC's opinion on Zodiac but we heartily disagree with his worship of Southland Tales. That Kelly mess put CC to sleep, literally.)
This week the Cinecultist weighed in on Alvin and the Chipmunks over at Kaboose.com. The filmmakers are pretty much pandering to the lowest common denominator when it comes children's entertainment, but we still think the fat, sentimental chipmunk Theodore is awfully cute.
Focus Films has launched a new website with tons of original content called FilminFocus. Check it out, there's lots to enjoy from features on Focus films like Atonement, a look back at film history from that corresponding week and interviews with smart movie bloggers like our friend Andrew Grant.
Have you gotten a $1 promotional movie ticket from Fandango yet? It's a sweet deal, you just send a text on Wednesdays and they text you a code. Could be good for some cheap seats during the holiday vacation.
Run, Judd, Run.*
*This video is why Judd Apatow is sorta an evil genius. It's like he anticipated CC's bitchy/bored response to his saturation of the comedy landscape and cutesy viral marketing overload, then mocked it. Plus, the Paul Rudd eye candy combined with some self-deprecating Jewish jokes will always win Cinecultist over.
How about you, do you think you will ever get sick of Judd Apatow and his gang?
The Cinecultist has been slightly under the weather lately, so while trying to take it easy this weekend we constructed our top 10 list for 2007. Now granted, CC still have two weeks worth of screenings we could (and probably will) try to cram in, so bear that in mind when you analyze our choices. Looking back it's been a strong year for drama, full of dysfunctional families, cultural malaise and senseless violence at the movies. But, CC still managed to toss a musical comedy, a Western and a summer action blockbuster on the pile. Because basically that's how we roll, viewing taste-wise.
After the jump, we also listed the rest of the movies we saw this year divided into the categories stuff we liked, stuff that we are now indifferent to and stuff that is just painful to recall. When you watch this many movies in a year (nearly two a week, on average! and that's not counting dvds or repertory), sometimes you have to sit through utter garbage. But if Cinecultist didn't suffer a little, we know we'd never discover the hidden gems, those little features that make this delightful obsession all worth while.
1. No Country for Old Men
2. There Will Be Blood
3. The Savages $ @
4. Michael Clayton @
5. The Bourne Ultimatum @
6. The Wind that Shakes the Barley
7. Enchanted $ @
8. I’m Not There
9. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford $
10. Zodiac $
(special award) 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (saw this year, but comes out in January and it’s amazing.) @
$ = paid money to see
@ = didn’t watch alone
Saw and Enjoyed
Catch and Release. Jennifer Garner at a grieving granola chick in the Pacific Northwest kind of hit a cord for us.
The Lives of Others. East Berlin was not a happy place but this is a great movie.
The Namesake. Kal Penn rewards us for our long term support of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. $ @
Blades of Glory. Funnier than you’d expect a one-note comedy about ice skating should be.
Black Book. Only Paul Verhoeven would dare make Nazis sexy.
The TV Set. If you’re lovin’ Juno, give Reitman’s other fellow second generation director Jake Kasdan's feature from this year a go.
Year of the Dog. How much do you love Peter Sarsgaard’s asexual vegetarian dog rescuer?
Hot Fuzz. Simon Pegg makes darn funny movies.
Waitress. $ The affection for Kerry Russell is not unfounded.
Fay Grim. Hal Hartley still makes movies that make us think.
Once. Bringing back the musical, one busking Irishman at a time.
Knocked Up. CC laughed until it hurt during our screening but we got tired of the over-enthusiasm and subsequent backlash against this movie.
La Vie en Rose. Marion Cottilard is a revelation in this one.
A Mighty Heart. @ Just pretend this isn’t an Angelina Jolie movie.
Broken English. This is how neurotic real New York single women are.
Ratatouille. $ Paris, this is my town baby.
Rescue Dawn. Christian Bale, you are the man. Steve Zahn isn’t too shabby either.
Sunshine. Like Solaris and 2001 but with Michelle Yeoh in it.
Exiled. Bad ass Asian gangsters but with a Western twist.
3:10 to Yuma. @ Better than we expected for a nouveau Western with Russell Crowe.
Into the Wild. Sean Penn brings out lots of great quiet performances and some gorgeous scenery.
My Kid Could Paint That. Quite well edited, and we’re not just saying that because we’re friends with the editor.
Lars and the Real Girl. $ @ Ryan Gosling does it again.
Gone Baby Gone. @ Amy Ryan is our favorite new discovery of the year.
Persopolis. A good, woman-centric story about life in a part of the world we want to know more about.
Juno. $ Ellen Page is great though the script has some overly cutesy moments to it.
Sat Through
The Water Horse
The Kite Runner
Alvin and the Chipmunks
The Golden Compass
Southland Tales $ @
Margot at the Wedding @
Redacted
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
Lions for Lambs
Bee Movie
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
The Darjeeling Limited
Nanking
Transformers (saw on an airplane, okay?)
Sydney White
The Jane Austen Book Club $
The Brave One
December Boys
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
The Nanny Diaries
Mr. Bean’s Holiday
Super Bad @
The Invasion
The Last Legion $
Becoming Jane
El Cantante $
No Reservations
Goya’s Ghosts $ @
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix $ @
Joshua
License to Wed
Sicko
Vitus
You Kill Me
Ocean’s Thirteen $ @
Mr. Brooks @
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End $
The Wendell Baker Story
Home of the Brave
The Ex
Paris, je t’aime
Private Fears in Public Places
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters
Grindhouse
The Host
300 @
Avenue Montaigne
Music and Lyrics
Blood and Chocolate @
God Grew Tired of Us
Delirious
Run, Fat Boy, Run (comes out next year)
The 11th Hour
Hannah Takes the Stairs
Great World of Sound $ @
Dans Paris
Day Night Day Night @
Election
East of Havana
The Wayward Cloud @
Tears of the Black Tiger
Want/Need to See Before the Oscars
Sweeney Todd
Charlie Wilson’s War
Atonement
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Eastern Promises
Away From Her
Painful. Utterly Painful. That’s 2 Hours of Our Life We’ll Never Get Back
Because I Said So. Worst Mandy Moore movie ever. And that’s saying something. $ @
Exterminating Angels. This was an art house French film that was actually porn, but not in a good way.
Evening. Dear god, the cheesy flash back-induced pain. It still hurts.
Over on Kaboose.com, Cinecultist has been weighing in on the new releases for the youngsters. We gave Enchanted 3 1/2 stars, and The Golden Compass 3 stars (out of five), 3 stars for Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium because we have a soft spot for living toys and Jason Bateman, and a less-than-buzz-worthy review for Bee Movie. Har dee har har.
All of this kid flick viewing has reminded CC that we've got a sentimental interior, masked by our high heel-wearing, Eee Vee-dwelling cynical exterior.
Some Cinecultist thoughts on...
* Margot at the Wedding (published on Metromix)
* I'm Not There (published on Metromix)
* Our halfway mark recap on Gothamist
Cinecultist has been writing up a storm lately, just not on this blog. Please click through to check out our hard work. We're quite pleased with all of these endeavors.
We interviewed cartoonist and great storyteller Adrian Tomine for Gothamist today. CC really enjoyed his new book Shortcomings, though Tomine's depiction of relationships can be pretty bleak. We were happy to learn that Tomine just got married, so all of that cynical energy isn't debilitating. (We also revealed in our interview that we have the New Yorker cover at right up in our apartment and have already gotten a bunch of response that other folks do too! So there are still some hopeless romantic saps in this town.)
Over on the parenting website Kaboose, Cinecultist recommended taking the kids to see December Boys and Sydney White. Getting paid to think and write about our love for The Bynes? It's a good world, people.
Also, CC is trying to work in as many New York Film Festival screenings as we can. We wrote a feature about the opening night film The Darjeeling Limited for Metromix last week. It was a movie CC had been hedging out bets on, assuming it was going to be as bad or worse than Life Aquatic but we actually found it to be quite charming. So our love for adorable Wes Anderson, his khaki suits and his reluctant quirk continues. This afternoon we're seeing Todd Haynes' Dylan movie I'm Not There and expect to be totally blown away. We also are looking forward to Persepolis which is the closing night film and is showing to press next week. Marjane Satrapi is another one of our favorite authors/illustrators and we're psyched to see her speak at the press conference. Oh and if your were curious, this year our press pass has CC's picture on it not some random other critic. Hooray.
Cinecultist has a new reviewing outlet with the parenting website Kaboose.com. With two much younger siblings and an inherently light-hearted view on movies, we thought we'd be well suited to watch some kid-centric movies and tell their parents if they should shell out the admission price. Although we will say taking detailed notes on how many times there's nudity or swearing in a movie is an odd, slightly prurient sensation.
Our first feature for Kaboose was the Rowan Atkinson slapstick comedy sequel Mr. Bean's Holiday. While this kind of simplistic comedy isn't really CC's cup of tea, we couldn't help but be struck by how much the kids in the audience really seemed to enjoy the movie, so we gave it a surprisingly favorable review. As we know from experience, if you take a kid to the movies and he's laughing so hard he can barely stay in his seat, you're lack of amusement pales in comparison to his good time.
Cinecultist is not sure when a review of a movie a week or two before its release became such a big "get" but apparently in the rarefied world inhabited by arts editors of New York tabloids it is.
Via the New York Times (with a distinct tone of *snicker* in their reportage):
"The two New York tabloids and their movie critics...have been duking it out all summer to be first to publish their reviews of major Hollywood releases. Both reviewed Sicko, Michael Moore’s documentary, exactly 10 days before its scheduled release. (The Post panned it; The News raved.) Both reviewed Live Free or Die Hard the Sunday before its official opening on June 27.
The Post even flew its critic Lou Lumenick to London to attend the British premiere of Spider-Man 3 so that he could publish his review on April 24 — a week and a half before it opened in Manhattan.
A touch ridiculous, right?
Cinecultist had heard from our friends over at Film Forum that Into Great Silence, the three hour nearly silent documentary about Carthusian monks, has been a huge hit for them but this week's Talk of the Town confirmed it. “We had to turn away a hundred people,” an employee told the New Yorker reporter. “It’s ridiculously popular.”
An even better bit in this piece than the always happy news of sell-out shows at FF was the detail that New York's only Carthusian monk Father Michael Holleran loves Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. When commenting on the noisiness of the city and the quest for spiritual enlightenment in our modern age, Father Holleran totally geeked out thusly: “The battle, like fighting the Balrog in the dwarf caves, is defeating the noise inside you,” he said.
Spiritual dude, that Balrog was totally awesome. I feel you, man. BTW, CC still has in the freezer our novelty sample of Chartreuse*, the emerald green liquor made by the Carthusian monks and named after their home region in France, which we received as a publicity tie-in at the press screening of Into Great Silence. Maybe we should bust it out next time Frodo et al is on TBS, just to give Father Holleran the shout out.
*Fun fact: Quentin Tarantino also like Chartreuse. He name checked it in his section of Grindhouse, as the drink o' choice for his bartender character in Death Proof.
A day for sad news and happy news amongst movie periodical fans like the Cinecultist. Hachette Filipacchi Media is shuttering the print version of Premiere magazine after their upcoming April issue. They will be continuing to run things on the web though, according to the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile on the other side of the pond, the legendary French film periodical Cahiers du Cinema is launching an English translated monthly e-version for those of us who like French opinions but can't read actual French. You can "flip" through an English version of part of the magazine now and the rest of the newest publication will be online as of March 9. [Flip version via GreenCine Daily.]
By the way, it's kind of a fun day for the Cinecultist when Reuters references André Bazin, but maybe that's just the cinema studies geek in us rearing its snarky head.
Question for the comments: Is the film criticism from Premiere still relevant (or was it ever)? Does the thought of a more accessible Cahiers sound exciting for the history buff only?
Over on Gothamist today, Cinecultist finally got around to posting our top 10 for 2006. Honestly, we've been thinking about this list for weeks but the more movies we see in a year, the harder is seems to get to make our definitive picks.
1. The Queen
2. Letters From Iwo Jima
3. Half Nelson
4. Old Joy
5. Volver
6. Shortbus
7. A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints
8. Last King of Scotland
9. Woman on the Beach
10. Iraq in Fragments
Worth An Honorable Mention (in no particular order):
Children of Men, 13 Tzameti, The Puffy Chair, Man Push Cart, Miss Potter, Perfume, Notes on A Scandal, The Pursuit of Happyness, The Holiday, Casino Royale, Babel, Marie Antoinette, The Science of Sleep, Sherrybaby, Talladega Nights, Brothers of the Head, The Devil Wears Prada, The Road to Guantanamo, Lady Vengeance, United 93, Brick, Inside Man, 16 Blocks, Dave Chappelles Block Party, Tristram Shandy, Tristan & Isolde, Gabrielle, No Restraint
After the jump is the full list of all of the new releases we saw in the last 12 months. CC clocked in at over 100 this year, and remember that doesn't include repertory movies or DVDs. So for all of those critics who've put Army of Shadows at the top of their lists, Cinecultist says to them "Cop out dudes!" American audiences may have not ever seen this Jean-Pierre Melville movie but it was made in 1969 and thus doesn't count.
Casanova
Last Holiday (on the plane)
Tristan and Isolde*
Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story*
16 Blocks*
Dave Chappelles Block Party*
Failure to Launch
Inside Man*
Brick*
Friends With Money
Hard Candy
American Dreamz
United 93*
Lady Vengeance (NYFF)*
Mission Impossible III (on a plane)
Art School Confidential
Down in the Valley
Just My Luck
The Da Vinci Code
X-Men 3
The Break Up
Cars
Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties
The Lake House
Wordplay
The Road to Guantanamo *
Superman Returns
The Devil Wears Prada*
The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest
A Scanner Darkly
Minis First Time
The Oh in Ohio
My Super Ex Girlfriend
Shadowboxer
Little Miss Sunshine
Miami Vice
Brothers of the Head*
The Night Listener
Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby*
Step Up
the Aura
Half Nelson*
Material Girls
Factotum
Invincible
The Wicker Man
This Film Is Not Yet Rated
Riding Along for Thousands of Miles
The Covenant
Sherrybaby*
Hollywoodland
The Last Kiss
Al Franken: God Spoke
The Ground Truth
Flyboys
The Science of Sleep*
The Last King of Scotland*
School for Scoundrels
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints*
The Queen*
Employee of the Month
Shortbus*
Infamous
Marie Antoinette*
Babel*
Volver*
A Good Year
Harsh Times
Fuck
Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
Casino Royale*
For Your Consideration
Candy
The Fountain
The History Boys
The Architect
10 Items or Less
The Holiday*
Off the Black
The Pursuit of Happyness*
Dreamgirls
Home of the Brave
Letters from Iwo Jima*
The Painted Veil
Curse of the Golden Flower
Notes on a Scandal*
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer*
Miss Potter*
The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
This Filthy World
Flannel Pajamas
Backstage
What Is It?
Old Joy*
Man Push Cart*
Wrestling With Angels
My Father is 100 Years Old
Bergmans Island
Mutual Appreciation
Le Petit Lieutenant
The Puffy Chair*
Calvaire
13 Tzameti*
Lunacy
The Good Shepherd
Triad Election
The Host
Woman on the Beach*
Gridiron Gang
Fratricide
Iraq in Fragments*
The Photographer, His Wife and Her Lover
Gabrielle*
Over the weekend Cinecultist did that rare thing in our obsessive movie-going lifestyle, we actually bought a ticket to see a film in the theaters. We'd missed the preview screenings of The History Boys and thought it might be worth a watch. If you ever go to the movies here in New York, or really any major American city these days, you know trying to get into a flick over the weekend can be tough sometimes, so CC bought ahead on Fandango.
Like a lot of online businesses these days, Fandango keeps track of all of your vital info, from your purchasing frequency to your favorite spending locations. In our account you can see all the movies CC's bought online over the last few years which is sort of a fun exercise in personal anthropology. Then today we got an email from those info trackers at Fandango asking CC to log on and rate The History Boys for a potential gift of up to $100. Our interest piqued, we clicked through the email to a log in page. Fandango wanted to know about our social habits and viewing preferences besides movies, to place in a public profile. We filed a bit of the most innocuous details about ourself and then proceeded to The History Boys page. We were asked to rate the movie on a scale of 1 to 5 (from Oh No! to Must Go!) and then fill in a review.
This kind of thing always tickles the Cinecultist and makes us rub our hands in evil glee because when companies or publicists at advance movie screenings ask for our opinion, they really don't know what they're getting themselves into. For god's sake, CC has an advance degree in being an obnoxious movie goer! We've been trained in this field but some of its leaders.
Afterwards we tried to click back to see our review online, but it doesn't seem to be up quite yet. Maybe they have to approve the reviews first, make sure no one uses some crazy obscenities or gives a rave review of Deck the Halls. Anyhow, here was our opinion, just in case Fandango tries to censor our lukewarm response to the flick.
I'd read a certain amount about the award-winning play but hadn't seen it, so thought a film with the original cast would be the next best thing. However, I didn't think the reported energy and intensity from the stage production translated into a visual or gripping movie. While the acting was good, particularly Samuel Barnett, and the soundtrack of '80s hits were fun, the various monologues about learning, history and thinking for yourself didn't really come across as strongly as I would've expected. Only later when I was describing the film to friends, in particular the issues of homosexuality and relationship between teachers and students, did it come across as a more interesting film than while I was watching it. That very intangible quality of a movie to move from scene to scene with force is tough to quantify, and while I thought the History Boys was a good movie, it didn't have that "something" that could've made it great. Too bad.
After all of that work, of course it turned out that the $100 was towards discounted magazine subscriptions. Yick. If there's one thing CC doesn't need in our life is even more magazines filling up our tiny apartment. Advice to Fandango, use this user talk-back feature to award your clients with discounted concessions or a punch card towards free movies. That would be a good incentive. Also, CC sort of likes that idea that a community could grow on these movie ticket websites and movie lovers could dialogue or interface with each other on line. Any way for film fans to connect and argue seems like a good idea to Cinecultist.
Happily indieWire has recently expanded their criticism coverage to include more frequent solo reviews from their Reverse Shot contributors. However, it seems that the open comments structure of the site can lead to some cranky talk back from the review's subjects.
In this week's review from the always astute Kristi Mitsuda, she takes issue with Thom Fitzgerald's 3 Needles, an AIDs drama with a very strong cast which Mitsuda argues has suspect politics towards women and a dogmatic tone. She writes, "No one could argue against greater collective action to end the proliferation of this deadly disease, but Fitzgerald's film bespeaks a dodgy humanitarianism which demands scrutiny." In a very lengthy comment below, Fitzgerald himself tells Mitsuda essentially, Ohh no you di-n't. Going for the cowardly "well, uh, you movie critics are even more lame than filmmakers" is never pretty. He comments, "My humanitarianism is dodgy indeed. I make movies for a living, and that's about as shallow a career as one could choose (except, maybe, writing about movies?).... If Montreal is too exotic a locale for her to relate to, then really only by making yet another film about AIDS in downtown New York City would be close enough to home. The extremely narrow limitation of her point of view also demands scrutiny."
Petulant directors -- yet another reason why being a critic is fun work and why CC doesn't allow comments on our site.
Just a brief note that you can now read the Cinecultist's review stylings over on The Village Voice, a rag we suppose we could call our hometown newspaper despite their current upheaval. This week we wrote about The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, a beautiful movie by the Quay Brothers that we didn't understand, and This Filthy World, a concert film of sorts with John Waters tell stories about his movies and jokes that are in very poor taste.
Yes, it's true -- our net of critical influence gets wider and wider. We'll ensnare the whole known universe very soon.
Our friend Matty pointed us to this article from last weekend's New York Times magazine where 22 various funny performers and artists listed their 5 desert island comedy DVDs. As Matty noted, these kinds of lists are fun for comparing the listers with the items (is David Cross being hipster ironic when he calls the musical Rent a comedy?), and for adding to your Netflix queue.
For our Jane blog post today, CC came up with what would be the Cinecultist's Five. They include:
* Annie Hall -- This Woody Allen classic about mismatched love won the Oscar for best picture the year CC was born, but that's not the only reason it's on the list. From the lobsters behind the fridge to the subtitled first flirtatious conversations, Allen and Diane Keaton capture so memorably and hilariously the way couples fall for each other. It's a movie that every time we see it we see something new, a definite prerequisite for any Desert Island-worthy movie.
* All of Me -- It's tough to go wrong with early Steve Martin comedies, but this one from '84 which co-stars Lily Tomlin always leave us in stitches. Martin's prowess with physical comedy shines as he plays a lawyer possessed by a selfish, millionairess. Plus, the tender ending makes us a little teary too.
* A New Leaf -- (pictured above) Our Dad first introduced us to this Walter Matthau and Elaine May movie from 1971, and it never gets old. Matthau plays an aging playboy who's spent all his money so he needs to marry rich. He picks a doddering botanist (May, who also wrote and directed the film) with a penchant for sparkling sweet wine, then plots to kill her. As J. Hoberman points out in this Village Voice essay, May is one of the real comedic greats and worth exploring if you're unfamiliar with her work.
* When Brendan Met Trudy -- Cinecultist has forced whole audiences of people to sit through this Irish comedy from 2000, and we've never heard one complaint. Written by renowned author Roddy Doyle, it tells the love story of a nebbish school teacher who's obsessed with the movies and the irreverent, blonde thief he falls for. This movie can be tough to find but it is available on DVD, maybe request it from your local store that has a good selection of foreign films.
* Coming To America -- A big factor in our decision making process for this list was how many times CC could sit through any given movie, and this one starring Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, we've probably seen about 30 times. The plot is a little silly (an African prince wants to marry for love and travels to Queens, NY to find his bride), but all of Murphy's ability with characters and crazy makeup jobs are in tip top shape. Also, the scene where Murphy sings drunkenly on the streets of Queens after a great night with his lady love (and the New Yorkers subsequent responses) is just delightful.
Just between Cinecultist, you and the internet, we kinda love Amber Tamblyn. Sure, she was a child soap star, and she writes super earnest poetry, but she's a lovely young actress. Even before she took the reporter at Nylon magazine to a magicians' clubhouse in LA for their cover story interview, we suspected she was actually kinda cool. After all she's a self-professed feminist, when most women in Hollywood just want to be ingnues and her new movie Stephanie Daley, about a teenager who leaves her newborn to die, sounds seriously intense.
You can read the entire November issue of Nylon in a downloadable pdf format, flipping through the pages and zooming into the images fancy pants style. CC still loves the feeling of a hefty, glossy magazine in our hands, but the more content archived and easy to access on the internet the better. We hope more and more publications adopt this technology, it's pretty versatile and potentially exciting. Imagine the possibilities for dynamic links.
In other magazine news: We'd also like to thank our editor Julie at Janemag.com for inviting us to Sarah's birthday party last night. CC is very happy to be even a small part of a women's magazine that throws parties with free drinks, pizza AND cupcakes for their guests. Sweet!
Cinecultist just finished watching today's episode of Gilmore Girls, and we have to comment that it's almost as though the writers got an advance copy of Virginia Heffernan's smack-down in the Times today. The banter was definitely back up a notch from previous episodes this season. As a major fan of this show since the first season, we can understand Heffernan's almost slavish devotion to Amy Sherman-Palladino's role as creator. We too have been second guessing the current producers and writers decisions at ever turn so far this season. 'Is that really what Lorelai would say? Would she really reference that particular, quite mainstream, film?' (See Lauren Graham's recent rant against Snakes on a Plane. A S-P's Lorelai probably would've dug Samuel L. Jackson and his motherfucking snakes.)
But all over-analysis aside, we do agree with Heffernan's thesis that Lauren Graham is a brilliant, brilliant performer who is underutilized in Hollywood. Good news on that horizon though: She costars with the ever side-splitting Steve Carell in Evan Almighty, the sequel of sorts to Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty. It doesn't come out until this coming June, so for now CC will continue to weigh each new GG episode carefully, keep watching old eps in syndication, and begin a quiet but insistent grassroots campaign for Lauren Graham's big Hollywood recognition. That girl deserves a break, she works her cute butt off.
Semi-related: CC really enjoyed this interview by Terry Gross with Sherman-Palladino on Fresh Air last year.
[Pictured: Graham (at left) with GG co-star Alexis Bledel.]
In the New York Times today, writer John Leland reports on the new Ridley Scott movie American Gangster starring Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington.
Unlike when say Coppola or Scorsese sat down to make a gangster movie, the genre now has a whole host of meanings and connotations for an American audience. For Scott and producer Brian Grazer, the analysis of gangsters as a type and a trope are a big part of making this movie, according to the piece. Though unfortunately this deep thinking can lead to cloudy statements difficult to parse by journalists. Evidence (complete with snarky embedded response):
"I like to think in terms of a grand generic notion of an American gangster, as opposed to the American gangster, [Scott] said. Because there are too many famous and infamous American gangsters over the last century. The notion of American Gangster is almost like a new evolution of the adjustment of change. Change in this instance cost the Mafia the main precedence at the time, because they were having to buy the idea of progress in the idea of a black businessman.' (Somehow, when he talked to actors and his four camera teams, they seemed to follow him without decryption devices.)"
Oh, snap.
You don't hate it, but you don't love itthus is the difficult life of the film critic. Recently, Cinecultist wrote about The Science of Sleep and Flyboys for Radar and the Movie Binge, respectively. We couldn't rave about either one, though they both had elements that were of interest and were entertaining, in their own way.
This has been one of our big dilemmas lately, if you can even call our movie going problems such a hyperbolic term. When you see as many movies as the Cinecultist been watching in a given week, it takes a lot for any one flick to rise above the rabble. We're not complaining about having to sit through most of them, because mostly we love just sitting in a darkened theater, but should we really recommend this "just okay" movie to a person who doesn't want to see every single film that comes through town? Also, what to do about a movie like The Science of Sleep that is of note because it was made by Michel Gondry, and compelling to CC within a director's oeuvre, but a movie that's kind of odd just judged on its own? Some people will want to see it despite our misgivings, but we have to be guarded in our recommendation. After all, if you go nutso for every single movie that comes out, how will anyone know what your taste really is?
Gawker likes to rib the New York Times' food critic Frank Bruni about the often baroque metaphors peppering his reviews, but Cinecultist reads his column and blog faithfully each week. Like the best examples of criticism, Bruni in his food writing knows how to both turn a witty phrase and illuminate his experience sitting in a particular restaurant on a particular night.
That's why Cinecultist was intrigued to see Bruni reporting this weekend on John Cameron Mitchell's new movie, the already infamous art house porn, Shortbus. This seems to be a subject that's off Bruni's usual beat.
Yet the piece still contains typical examples of Bruni's literary-meets-cabaret-rim-shot humor. "Mr. Mitchell said sex was a way to look at characters longings 'Theyre trying desperately to connect,' he explained, making the inspiration for Shortbus sound like E. M. Forster by way of Marilyn Chambers. Perhaps he should have titled it 'A Passage to Orgasm.'" Wocka, wocka. Not surprisingly, the article makes the production of the film sound almost more interesting than the finished product. Hopefully, JCM will think about including a making of documentary or other supporting material on the DVD.
Related: Our friends over at Hamburger Today also interviewed him recently for their "Grilled" feature.
Yesterday, Sharon Waxman contemplated in the New York Times about whether Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat movie is subtle anti-anti-Semetic commentary or something else less political. It's playing at Toronto, btw and CC can hardly wait for it to open here.
There's going to be an interview with Laura Albert, aka professional liar and creative force behind the literary persona J.T. Leroy, in the up coming Paris Review according to the New York Post today. As we've mentioned before elsewhere, CC conversed with "Leroy" over the phone for various La Day Jobs so we've super curious to read what crazy town has to say as herself in print.
Cinecultist interviewed director Ramin Bahrani whose film, Man Push Cart, comes out today for Gothamist. Please don't miss this movie, it'll be playing at the Angelika and for the graceful New York photography alone is worth a viewing.
Periodically, films will not be available for review before their release and Neil Labute's new movie starring Nicholas Cage, The Wicker Man was one of them. This became a bit of a thorn in the Cinecultist side over the last few weeks because we had an assignment to review it. So, with pride (and a notebook) in hand, CC reluctantly shelled out $11 of our hard earned dollars for the first screening on Friday. We won't lie to you and tell you it was a happy experience, mostly Wicker was like the furniture material boring, lack luster and in a few moment, completely laughable.
From the first moments of this movie, Labute plays it completely by the book. First up, rote psychological causality. Cage's character Edward is a hardworking, good guy cop in California. However, when he pulls over a young Mom and her daughter to return the little blonde girl's dolly, his do gooder-ness is thwarted as the car is slammed by a semi before it bursts into flames. Edward is understandably rattled by this emasculating experience, so when a pleading letter from his former fiancee arrives asking for help finding her missing blonde daughter, Edward leaps to the rescue. From this point on, we're subjected to one tiny blonde in danger fantasy from Edward after another. Every time there's a lull in the action, a blondie pops up and then is mowed down but an imaginary semi. It's distracting to say the least.
Meanwhile, Edward arrives on the mysterious island of Summersisle and doesn't get a warm welcome. In fact, no one likes interlopers from the mainland here and even the ex is being oddly stand-offish. If you've seen the original 1973 Wicker Man, you'd expect this to be the point where the movie launches into one odd encounter after another with the islanders intimating their aberrant sexual and religious practices. But here, Labute's film becomes surprisingly timid and instead veers into all of this nature girl, Queen Bee in her hive imagery. Ellen Burstyn plays the Queen Bee, aka Sister Summersisle, who runs the whole compound but she comes across as more benevolent than creepy. Molly Parker, as a school teacher, is a little menacing in the way she stares down Edward after he bursts into her classroom, but a few mean looks hardly adds up to a serious horror movie.
We're loathe to give away the ending but if you've seen the original, the remake ends in pretty much the same fashion, only with a Black Widow coda tacked on at the end. Is that supposed to be Labute's big wet willy goose, that sometimes women are sexual aggressors? Fatal Attraction had the same thesis almost 20 years ago, but at least that had some fear of feminism traction at the time. Here, it makes for about as flaccid a summer horror flick as you can get. If only Labute had acknowledged some of The Wicker Man's camp possibilities and encouraged Cage to do more of a La Depp self-parody performance. Then we might have had at least a fun movie, instead of this dour, boring clap trap.
Cinecultist's friend and fellow Movie Binger, Josh Horowitz will be interviewing Labute in a few weeks at the Astor Place Barnes & Noble, so maybe Labute will address some of these Wicker questions at that point. (Friday, Sept. 22 @ 7 p.m. -- mark your calendars!)
Apparently, this is the story this slow summerfilm criticism is dead. According to the Los Angeles Times today, the death knell has sounded and the internet is the one pulling on the cord. Of course, it's important in a ground-breaking article like this to reference longingly Big Mama PK:
What we're seeing is not so much the death of criticism as the death of the culture of criticism, the culture in which a critic such as Pauline Kael despite writing for a small circulation magazine like the New Yorker could have a huge trickledown influence, not just with the chattering class, but with filmmakers and executives who hung on her every word, either in agony or ecstasy, depending on the verdict.
Then, the director juxtaposition in this next graf made CC a little ill:
But today we're in an era in which shared enthusiasm matters more than analysis, stylistic cool trumps emotional substance. The world has changed. The vanguard filmmakers of the '60s the era that spawned our last great generation of critics were Godard, Kubrick and Antonioni, filmmakers under the spell of the intellectual fervor sparked by existentialism and Marxism. The filmmakers with a youth-culture following today, be it Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson, are largely ideology free, masters of detachment and stylistic homage. Like their audience, they prefer irony to Big Ideas.
Maybe the real problem is that the mainstream critics have been in their cushy places for ages. They don't have the incentive to be inventive. In Cinecultist's mind, there's still important work to be done by criticism on the web or in print, it really makes little difference. The skill of any critic lies in identifying how cinema continues to represent our shared experience and what that means about our culture right now. This article goes on to say that places like the LA Times should be championing their critics and bringing them into the 21st century with up to the minute responses on the pop culture bombardment. But real commentary seems to need time to percolate. It may be at it's best when it's slow moving, but Cinecultist refuses to believe that the film critic is kaput.
Linkage today regarding the new frontiers of criticism:
At the Wikipedia conference this weekend, the site said going forward it's going to be about quality not quantity, from the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit according to site founder Jimmy Wales. Also, irony abounds among the Wikifolks:
At times the conference itself seemed to be dealing with the same issues. One member of the foundations board, Florence Nibart-Devouard, stormed out of a news conference because she had not been told about the announcement being made. And on Thursday afternoon, signs concerning registration had the opening time crossed out, replaced by the word later.[via NYT]
Its a funny thing, Mr. Wales said. I had no idea that anyone was putting up signs. Someone somewhere said there should be signs, and someone did it. Its effective.
But, he added, its chaotic.
Jeff Jarvis writes in the Guardian today about the impact of web criticism on the full time gigs of culture critics. Apparently, we're nipping at the heels of the establishment. To make up for this key change, critics should modify their purpose.
Would I have critics? Yes, but their roles would change. They still should give their views and set art in context. But rather than issuing pronouncements and bon mots, unchallenged, from the screening room, I'd want them to spark the discussion about entertainment: find the good voices, pinpoint the arguments, even referee debates among artists and critics. A great critic should be a magnet for fascinating discussion.
Cinecultist is decidedly outside of Nora Ephron's targeted demographic for her essays, but we love her anyhow. Her new collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck and other thoughts on being a woman details in the title essay her anxieties about pushing past 60 and other selections in the volume discuss parenting, her Upper West Side apartment and interning in JFK's White House press office. This is not the usual domain of the late '20s, Eee Vee-dwelling, singleton Cinecultist but Ephron knows how to make her maddeningly specific experience seem universal.
Just to make sure we are on the same page as to why CC would even be interested in this writing, Ephron is the main mama of the romantic comedy. When Harry Met Sally... is the Ur text of the '90s rom com, in our humble opinion. We initially got into Ephron's writing though through her novel Heartburn, a very thinly veiled autobiographical story about Ephron's second marriage. It features some hilarious New York neurotic girl plot points punctuated by recipes, including a peach pie which bakes up really well. The movie version stars Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson and while it's not as good as the book, it's worth a rental.
Reading that book was a very special experience for CC, not unlike the feeling Ephron describes in the essay "On Rapture," which is in her new collection. "I've just surfaced from spending several days in a state of rapturewith a book. I loved this book. I loved every second of it. I was transported into its world. I was reminded of all sorts of things in my own life. i was in anguish over the fate of its characters. I felt alive, and engaged, and positively brilliant, bursting with ideas, brimming with memories of other books I've loved."
There really is something to this idea that good writing (or good movies) can make you feel creatively alive and engaged. They make you want to sit down with pen and paper and scrawl out all of your deepest thoughts. A writer like Ephron (or Dorothy Parker or Jane Austen or Edith Wharton), makes writing seem like a natural extension of thought. The words on the page seem like the dialogue running through her brain and in the best moments their to-the-pointness is electrifying. This is a style that CC strives for and thus a new opportunity to read her efforts, even if they are outside of our own immediate experiences, is a treat.
For more thoughts of Ephron's new book, read Janet Maslin's review in the New York Times last weekend.
Some articles that have been rattling around in the Cinecultist's noggin lately.
J. Hoberman's review of the new Andy Warhol Screen Tests book in the London Review of Books. J. Ho says, "Given the quality of the writing, the beauty of the reproductions, andcruciallythe difficulty of putting Warhol's enterprise between pages, Andy Warhol's Screen Tests is not simply a catalogue raisonn, it's a work of art."
Tom Hanks, a Hollywood A-Lister for more than just his ability to play the mentally incompetent on screen, according to this article in the New York Times yesterday about his production company, Playtone. Reporter Lorne Manly writes, "Over the last several years they have gotten a great deal done, quietly turning Playtone into one of Hollywoods most prolific filmmaking entities. Mr. Hanks is characteristically self-deprecating about its growth. It just happens. Its not like I sat down and had a meeting on the Death Star with my crack advisers, he said with a laugh, then lowered his voice into movie-villain mode: Now, we make our move.'"
Motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane, Jeff Jensen in Entertainment Weekly this week reports on the full scoop, blogger influence and all. Jensen writes, ""[Director David] Ellis takes creative responsibility for these additions...but [producer Craig] Berenson credits the changes to the lobbying of an active, vocal fan base. And [screenwriter John] Heffernan goes so far as to call the fans "co-creators" of the film."
In this week's New York magazine, Logan Hill profiles the hilarious Steve Carell and his much deserved popular sucess. Apparently though, they're still letting people into movie Q&As who are both well-meaning and too stupid to live.
"During a talk-back [at Sundance], one woman said she was so moved that she wished she could just give him a big hug. So Carell opened his arms, and she ran into them. Another, a therapist, said she'd worked with suicidal patients and had never seen such a true-to-life performance. Had he, by any chance, spent some time in a mental ward? 'No, I didn't,' he said. 'I guess it's just...that I am an extraordinary actor.'"
Carell's movie, Little Miss Sunshine with Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin opens this Wednesday.
In this month's Film Comment, the cover story interview with director Richard Linklater continues into an online part 2. Sweet. Cinecultist really applauds this growing trend by entertainment publications to make more content available on the web and it does seems fitting with Linklater's DIY roots. Blogging, free online articles, filming someone carrying around a vial with Madonna's pap smear in itit all goes hand in hand, right?
Here's just one choice bit from Linklater's conversation with Gavin Smith:
"When I did Waking Life, I was like, Yeah, this is the same guy who did Slacker. Its the way my brain works, I guess. This is how I feel about the world. Im looking for a new way to tell a story, Im looking for a way to cram in a bunch of ideas that dont necessarily fit into a moviewithout even being that conscious of it back then. The more movies you make, the less pressure there is on any one film. The trouble when you only have a few films is those films define you completely....So for me its about just carving off little pieces of myself here and there."[via GreenCine Daily]
Just two things we thought you'd like to know:
- We interviewed two filmmakers last week, Nicholas Jarecki and James Toback. Toback made such movies as Two Girls and a Guy and Black and White and Jarecki made a documentary about Toback called The Outsider which is playing at Cinema Village right now. You can read the full interview on Gothamist. And for the record, CC thinks it would be a very bad idea if film critics were expected to offer a money back guarantee on their recommendations.
- Cinecultist enjoyed this article by Ginia Bellafante in yesterday's NY Times about The Devil Wears Prada's supposedly accurate depiction of the fashion journalism world. As a writer who sort of has a toe in this body of water, we're even more curious to see/judge the film now after reading this commentary. In fact, we're sorta thinking about having a whole DWP night where CC and the girl friends drink strong, bright pink drinks and wear high heels before attending a late night screening. Maybe there will be tiaras involved too, because really nothing says party like a bunch of drunk girls wandering around downtown New York in tiaras.
Learn more than you ever wanted to know about the Tokyo International Anime Fair from this article today in the New York Times. However, we were sad to read that cosplay, aka dressing up as characters in order to get off, wasn't allowed. No adult Sailor Moons wandering around, lookin' for luv? How boring.
This wonderful article from Caryn James in the New York Times movies section today explores all of the ways sexuality, particularly homosexuality, are in this year's Oscar-ish films. Gotta love the cinema studies in mainstream newspapers -- or at least the Cinecultist does.
Cinecultist didn't realize New York Times film critic, A.O. Scott was a hip hop fan. Having seen the mild mannered yet polarizing writer around at screenings, we'd never have guessed he could weigh in on say, the stylings of 50 Cent versus Kanye West, as he does in his review of Get Rich or Die Tryin':
As a rapper, 50 Cent has been an overachiever, selling boatloads of records in spite of his pedestrian skills. Lacking the verbal wit of a Jay-Z, the storytelling ability of a Biggie Smalls or the engaging personality of a Kanye West, he has gotten over through doggedness and a certain truculent charisma.
Should we start calling Tony 60 Cent for his use of such a great 10 cent word like "truculent" when describing Fitty?
* By the way, from Merriam Webster. truculent. Etymology: Latin truculentus, from truc-, trux savage; perhaps akin to Middle Irish tr doomed person 1 : feeling or displaying ferocity : CRUEL, SAVAGE 2 : DEADLY, DESTRUCTIVE 3 : scathingly harsh : VITRIOLIC 4 : aggressively self-assertive : BELLIGERENT - truculently adverb
Today the New York Times $25 and Under column visits the new-ish restaurant next to the IFC's movie theater, the Waverly at IFC Center. Mostly writer Peter Meehan make the food sound good, a little eclectic but solid despite an apparent over-emphasis on prep with a pannini press (hehe, the Times can be so persnickety).
When CC went to see Me and You and Everyone We Know, we read the menu and peered in the place though we weren't tempted to stop for a bite. Frankly though, $15 is sort of a lot for us when it comes to a sandwich, especially when we could just go down the block and around the corner to Grey Dog for one of the best grilled cheeses ever with French fries and their awesome coffee (mmm, that sounds good right now). However, if a certain foodie friend and reader of this space who lives in the nabe suggests a nosh there one of these days, we won't say no. There's lots of good stuff playing at the Waverly coming up (despite their still sucky attitude toward the projectionist's union) and the combo of food with a movie is one intrinsic to the Cinecultist way.
Cinecultist wants to apologize in advance if we seem a bit distracted this upcoming week. We're in the midst of closing our October issue at the day job but more importantly, CC's declared this officially Oggle Hipster Boys Week. Within the span of a few days, we'll be basking in the glow of quite the indie rock triumvirate -- Sufjan Stevens, Colin Meloy and our beloved Ben Gibbard. Le sigh. It's enough to leave a downtown girl seriously absentminded.
Remember that scene in Portrait of a Lady where Nicole Kidman can't decide on which of her three suitors she likes best? And then Jane Campion throws in that anachronistic scene not in the original Henry James where Nic starts a four-way Victorian make-out session with all of them, rather than choose? Um, yeah. That scenario hasn't been skipping through out mind with indie rock boys replacing them. Nope.
By the way, Jen talked with Colin for Gothamist (why? because she has all the stupid luck). Thursday and Saturday can not get here fast enough.
Great cinema catchphrase in the making: New Dude Cinema from today's Believe the Hype feature on the Wedding Crashers by Tim Grierson. A sampling:
The New Dude company of actors, dubbed the "frat pack," includes Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and the stars of Wedding Crashers. Unlike the dude comedies of a generation ago, these new films' heroes aren't fighting the system -- they're fighting maturity. You see this phenomenon everywhere. Whether it's Esquire or Adult Swim or Xbox, the modern man is battling to stay in a perpetual adolescence where you never have to grow up, but you get to have tons of cool gadgets and expensive material possessions anyway. Remember how you always told yourself that those fraternity blockheads would be in big trouble once they entered the real world? Well, guess what happened? There's a whole industry devoted to them now.
This is not the Cinecultist. It is David Edelstein, film reviewer for Slate. Read the whole scoop in Aaron Aradillas' interview on RockCritics.com. [via GreenCine Daily]
Two of the more choice sentences from the review of Dukes of Hazzard by Variety's chief tv critic Brian Lowry [subscription required] :
Urban box office appears unpredictable, but hicks don't figure to nix this sticks pic.
In that respect, credit Dukes of Hazzard with managing to make a juvenile romp with free-spirited rednecks go down as smoothly as a slug o' moonshine on a hot August night.
Can you believe people get paid to write this way?
Essential reading -- Ken Tucker on Tom Cruise in this week's New York magazine:
How edifying to see a superstar saying things the way he wants to say them, unmediated. Even if some of those things are offensive, or dogmatic, or just plain incomprehensible. Why would he say them if they werent what he actually felt? Hes not winning anyone over with his charm offensive, and that fact only makes his words seem more, not less, candid.
Sometimes Matthew Baldwin at Defective Yeti seems to like making all other writers about movies just look bad. Here he did it again, with a simple Darth Vader song. Sigh. Damn him, it's too brilliant.
Should Cinecultist be concerned that we've seen almost all the films mentioned in Stephen Holden's Critic's Notebook article in the New York Times about hardcore simulated sex in films? This includes Lukas Moodysson's A Hole In My Heart which CC caught a few weeks ago at the Film Society with The Man, LM in attendance. With his witty "well, what do you think the movie means?" retorts, Cinecultist was won over for life but we'd like to warn any potential viewers to steel themselves for the extreme labial surgery and de Sadean feeding scenes. They're not for the squemish. And yet, their unflinching quality makes for a kind of cathertic cinema experience. That's the odd thing about film which pushes boundaries, we almost feel like better people for having gone to those far reaches with the filmmaker.
Artist and film critic M.E. Russell displays some movie etiquette with his characters Mr. Do and Mr. Don't in honor of the Portland International Film Festival starting this weekend. Click over to his blog CulturePulp, to read the entire series of strips then hang around to read his previous movie reviews published in the Oregonian and on DVD Journal.
His finely wrought characterization and gentle ribbing on our geeky subculture makes Cinecultist nostalgic for our days spent waiting in line in the alley alongside the Egyptian theater before Seattle International Film Festival screenings. Ahh, Northwest hipsters, how we miss you! You smell so much more working class than our trust fund-ish fellow residents of the Eee Vee.
[Thanks Michael for the link and the reprint permission. Just because one can control-click-save doesn't mean one should.]
With the bright yellow box exclaiming "25 Movies To See Before Oscar Night" on the cover of Entertainment Weekly this week, Cinecultist anxiously flipped through the magazine in search of this list. Not that we really expected to be surprised by anything they could've come up with but maybe there was a glaring omission in our screening schedule? No, no we've been good. Deep breaths, CC. We've read the reviews, looked at the glossy spreads in magazines, scanned the critic circle's awards lists and we feel confident we will see the award winners before March.
Our two major misses: #8 Ray and #9 Vera Drake. We don't know what happened there. Cinecultist usually will sit through the bio-pic without too much fuss and we lurve Mike Leigh after studying his films, particularly Naked, while abroad in England during college. With this kind of buzz for Jamie Foxx and Imelda Staunton's performances, respectively, we really got to get on ball with those two. But do we really have to watch #17 The Door In The Floor? We appreciated LA Confidential and you have to love The Dude, but there's something creepy about Kim Basinger and Jeff Bridges with their yuppie marriage dissolving out at the Hamptons that we didn't think we'd want to see. Same goes for The Woodsman. Love Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon but we wary about a pedophilia movie. That's not totally weird, is it? Can we get some kind of waver for the excessive creep factor when it over takes award-buzzed movies?
After the jump is the full list, re-typed by your Cinecultist because not everyone has access to EW's subscription only website. Then, please let us know in the comments if you think we have to see any of the pictures in Bold. Are there also flicks being lauded by critics that you know you should see, but can't bring yourself to attend?
1 Sideways
2 The Aviator
3 Finding Neverland
4 Million Dollar Baby
5 Closer
6 Kinsey
7 Eternal Sunshine
8 Ray
9 Vera Drake
10 Hotel Rwanda
11 Maria Full of Grace
12 Before Sunset
13 Being Julia
14 Collateral
15 The Incredibles
16 The Motorcycle Diaries
17 The Door in the Floor
18 Kill Bill Vol. 2
19 Imaginary Heroes
20 House of Flying Daggers
21 Bad Education
22 A Very Long Engagement
23 The Sea Inside
24 The Woodsman
25 Phantom of the Opera
A few ideas from the Cinecultist, so as to not let the winter mix* invade your soul the way it's invading your socks from through your shoes.
1) Read the New Yorker's brief ode to Susan Sontag, who recently left us, written by Joan Acocella. Remember, Cinecultist was a big fan of the Craig Seligman Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me book, so if you haven't read this yet, think about picking it up. Or better yet, some of Sontag's originals like Against Interpretation which contains the brilliant essays on camp and photography. "To her, reading and experience were not just mental events; she received them as flaming darts. Without her, New York City seems a colder place."
2) Buy the Believer issue for December/January 2005 devoted to the visual. It contains a free DVD with short films by a number of artists, including Guy Maddin, a Cinecultist fave. The issue includes a hand written fax to the New York Times from David Hockney regarding the use of early cameras in painting, an essay on the film critic Manny Farber's paintings**, a visual representation fo the Genealogy of the Supermarket and other sundry wonderful weirdness.
3) Read the new Reverse Shot online devoted to the Taiwanese auteur, Tsai Ming-liang. Rent a few of his films, if you feel so inspired. CC loves The Hole (We're not trying to be dirty, that's the name of one of his films! It's great! Leave us alone!) They also covered the NYFF AND a bunch of new releases. Try not to be depressed by how many films there are out there, and how little you've gotten around to seeing. That bums us out too.
Our buddy Kristi Mitsuda contributed a review of the Machinist to this issue and she also has a new weekly review blog up, Artflickchick, so be sure to add that to your bookmark list too. She has her Top 10 up there now, and like CC she loved Before Sunrise.
4) Go see In Good Company (out in one theater in New York on the Upper West now, open wider on January 14) and buy the soundtrack (on January 11), because it rocks. We came home and bought 4 tracks from iTunes that are in the film, and in particular have been enjoying the Iron & Wine song, "Naked As We Came." CC posted on Gothamist today regarding the film, it's worth a watch, especially if you were a fan of About A Boy as it's also from Chris and Paul Weitz. Topher Grace and Denis Quaid are both top notch in it, and neither are hard to look at, so that's an added bonus.
* This is what New York weather guys call the unpleasant combo of rain and wet snow. This is not sleet, which is freezing snow. No, this is extra damp coldness. Winter mix, thy name is the bain of our existence.** The exhibition devoted to Farber's visual work at P.S. 1 will be up until January 10, so you may want to head out to Queens to catch that before it closes.
Don't let the winter mix keep you down. Viva la cinecultists!
Cinecultist <3 director Wes Anderson, and everyone who knows us suggested we try to refrain from completely drooling all over him when we interviewed him for Gothamist a few weeks ago. We tried. Honest.
Read the fruits of our brief telephone convo over at Gothamist today.
Also, we wrote a short review of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou as a part of Reverse Shot's weekly contributions to indieWire. Thoughts from Michael Koresky, Michael Joshua Rowin and CC, with many of the same points from each but with wildly different interpretations of how good those elements were.
And, if you're not one of the lucky winners of the Gothamist free passes to the movie tonight (don't worry, there were 1,475 odd click throughs who didn't get one. Crazy amount, no?), it's playing on Wednesday at 8 and 8:30 pm at the MoMA as a part of their Premieres series before it opens this weekend.
PS. If you're going to the movie, and or, you won one of the red Team Zissou ski caps and matching Speedos, please send us your comments or better yet, a picture. We'd love to hear from you.
Ugh. This much linked to and seriously cringe inducing article is why the Cinecultist tries to keep the writing limited to our movie-going life. Rather than dwell on what was a shocking train-wreck of Too Much Information in the Fashion & Style section of last weekend's New York Times, we turn instead to Manohla Dargis's essay in the magazine on The 21st-Century Cinephile. As our friend Matty who directed us to the article pointed out, that's us! The Cinecultist is so the 21st Century Cinephile. It could be our subheading description for this blog, if we weren't already enamored with the tag-line, "Crazy For Movies."
We couldn't put it better, as Dargis codifies what she sees as the current cinephilia:
Today, movie love means buying DVD's online, joining virtual communities on the Web and filling seats at regional film festivals. At once global and local, the new cinephilia simultaneously embraces old and new, avant-garde and mainstream, live action and animation, drama and documentary, celluloid and video. It supports modernist snobberies and promotes postmodern egalitarianism, worships dead masters alongside the living and takes film's aspirations to art as a matter of course. Its adherents use the Internet to track down cult directors and post reviews of films famous and obscure. For these new movie lovers, old divides like trash versus art, Hollywood versus the world have given way to an expansive inclusion of cinemas from around the globe.
The only place where our opinion on modern movie love diverges from Dargis's is with her emphasis on cinephilia as movie collecting. Later in the essay, she describes walking out of a theater and buying a difficult to find Japanese movie on Region 3 DVD to play on her hacked region-less DVD player. (Quite easy to do via Kim's Video, by the by.) To love movies now, according to Dargis, is to want to possess them, perhaps in little plastic packages on your shelves or in neatly catalogued review entries on your website. While CC sees that hoarding tendency in some of our friend's movie libraries, it's not our essential drive. Rather the "expansiveness" of our interests we think, has to do with cultivating taste, a more Sontag-ian model actually. How can a person say they love movies, if they don't take in and can weigh in on all the myriad possibilities of current cinema? If you can't find a bit of value somewhere in all of it, then how can you hold any of it close to your heart?
This is our roundabout way of saying in the coming months, CC will be thinking more on films and blogs in preparation for a discussion with the Reel Roundtable group during their season this winter on "Popular Culture and Film." Organizations such as Women Make Movies, Atom films and bloggers like Greg Allen of greg.org will be talking every Monday night about the convergence of music, the internet, anime and blogging with film. Plus, yours truly will be talking about film blogs on January 17. Mark your calendars now, but more details as we get closer to the date.
New Jersey's Star Ledger has caught on to the blog/film fanatics connection in today's paper. We always thought there were cinecultists on the other side of the tunnel.
Personal gratification time from the above article -- CC gets top billing over Harry Knowles and Ain't It Cool News. And our work here is done.
Cinecultist is quite excited, as we bought a $19 ticket to see filmmaker/model/provocateur Vincent Gallo on Wednesday night Aug. 25 at Rothko. Apparently, in addition to purchasing billboards over Sunset Boulevard showing himself getting a blowjob, he also is a musician. No kidding. He's put out two records. According to the nice salesperson at Etherea on Ave A, they're "folk-y rock" and that Gallo sings "like Chet Baker," according to our other friend who has seen him perform.
To further peak our interest, the Sunday Times ran this piece about Gallo's tour across America with the film, and they even obliquely referenced our dear Uncle Grambo! NYT unnamed quotation in graf nine buzz, so much hottness.
We promise a full report after Wednesday not that the web isn't littered with Gallo detritus already, but CC imagines we'll be unable to prevent ourselves from some sort of tirade and a weigh-in on the controversy. For now enjoy the following Vincent Gallo Quote For The Day:
"If you go to see The Brown Bunny without hating me or resenting me as a filmmaker then there's a beautiful film there," he said. "But if you can't get past your feelings about me, then you can't see that. Long after I'm dead which is any day now this film will still exist," he added. "I feel much better now that I've placed this piece of work in the world."
Thanks to Jen for the link to VG's eponomous website.
Like the whole infamous Roger Ebert versus Vincent Gallo smackdown regarding Gallo's movie Brown Bunny at last year's Toronto Film Festival, a critical "disagreement" is shaping up on the Interweb that Cinecultist is following with interest. We thought we had our opinion on Brown Bunny all sewn up after Aaron Out of Focus's as always, exhaustive posting after seeing the film a few weeks ago. But now, Uncle Grambo's has weighed in via whatevs.org after a screening in Detroit.
Who will emerge victorious from this (up until now decorous) exchange of ideas? While Mark is taller and uses more slang (CC literally just figured out what bovs on the tees means), Aaron wields the power of DiVo and is a Nor Cal Member of the Tribe (represent!). It's a tough call. May be a photo finish. Drat! Now we may actually have to see this thing after reading such intriguing but differing opinions on Gallo's narcissism and the merits of his most recent proj