You know that festival organizers are on the ball when they send each filmmaker an individual email with a link to where to buy tickets for their film’s screening. Thanks, Boston!
Click here to buy tickets for “Julie, Julie” at the Independent Film Festival, Boston.
Warning: spoilers after the jump.
It feels as if Samuel L. Jackson has spent the last few years sliding into self-parody in formulaic big-budget films, so I was keen to see him exercise his craft in Lakeview Terrace, an exploitative little thriller set in the LA suburbs. Likewise with its director, Neil LaBute, who caused a stir fifteen years ago with misanthropic indie movies like In the Company of Men, but whose last credit before this was a nasty-looking remake of The Wicker Man, which I refused to see on principle. The idea of both men reminding us why they’re worth watching by getting back to basics is very appealing.
Lakeview Terrace pushes on the pressure points of race relations. Young bi-racial, college educated, hybrid-driving couple Lisa and Chris Mattson (Kerry Washington and Patrick Wilson) have just moved from Oakland to the LA suburbs and are celebrating their freedom from the supportive but smothering influence of parents. Abel Turner (Samuel Jackson) is their cop neighbour, a friendly and authoritative lawman who works a tough beat in the inner-city and spends his off-duty time policing their suburban neighbourhood for fun. But of course, in films like this suburbia is never what it seems on the surface. The threat to normality is present from the very beginning, as Lisa and Chris check the reports on the summer wildfires to be sure that their new home is safe.
I’ve spent this week up to my armpits in jpegs, pngs, html, css, mp4s and H.264, and this is the result. Please, friends, take a look and send me screenshots and news of how the site works for you. I’m especially keen to find out how it works on Windows computers running Internet Explorer, because as a Mac user, I am sheltered from the vagaries of Microsoft’s browser. For all I know it might display in cyrillic on Windows.
Notice how the “Screenings” page of the website lists two festivals! Hopefully the first two of many.
The Film Council’s new service, Find Any Film looks like it could turn into something rather good. At the moment it can tell you the nearest cinema that’s showing a film of your choice. This has been a feature of www.imdb.com in America for years now, but is apparently a first for the UK. It can also tell you if the film you’re looking for is due on TV, or is available on disc or for download.
More features are due to be added, which is necessary if it is to become more than just a good looking UK-specific imdb clone in order to succeed.
It would be great if they could sign a deal with the BFI to carry reviews and/or synopses from Sight & Sound, but I’m not sure how they could do so without killing Sight and Sound’s circulation. Anyhow, I’m looking forward to using it properly when I return to the UK in June. Let’s hope it helps small exhibitors attract larger audiences and promotes small, interesting and British films.
A seventies filmic retelling of Candide by director Lindsay Anderson, writer David Sherwin and star Malcolm McDowell, O Lucky Man! is a rare example of the picaresque in cinema. Starting as a coffee salesman, McDowell’s Mick Travis (the same name, but perhaps not quite the same character as he played in If….) journeys through Britain’s regions, classes and professions veering from cynical capitalist to idealistic altruist. Finally he learns that the best one can hope for is to not die like a dog, and that even if our best shot at understanding the variety and confusion of the world is through the imprecision and contariness of art, at least we can turn our attempts into entertainment.
McDowell is ever-present as a boyish, charming everyman, his strange open face and piercing blue eyes the perfect vehicle for a character who can pass through corruption, torture and victimisation and still emerge fresh and apparently innocent on the other side. Around him an ensemble cast, including Arthur Lowe, Ralph Richardson, Mona Washburn and Helen Mirren, recur in multiple roles, bringing the film’s artificiality to the fore.
This is a low-key romantic drama starring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow, with a couple of good supporting turns from Isabella Rossellini and Elias Koteas. I expected a solid piece of drama, and that is what we saw. Joaquin Phoenix plays Leonard Kraditor, a late twenty-something living in Brighton Beach, a far flung New York neighbourhood. Suffering from bi-polar disorder and low self belief after his planned marriage is scuppered by his future in-laws, he has returned to living with his parents and working in the family business as he tries to put his life back together. His father, Reuben, owns a launderette which he plans to merge with one owned by Mr. Cohen, another Jewish businessman. The two families meet for dinner at the Kraditor’s place, and it becomes somewhat clumsily obvious that the two fathers are planning to cement the business merger with marriage. Sandra Cohen, played by Vinessa Shaw, appears to be a pleasant and unremarkable woman, and as much out of a sense of obligation as anything else, Leonard plays along with the game set up for him by his parents until he a chance meeting with a beautiful and engaging neighbour, Michelle, played by Gwyneth Paltrow.
Two Lovers is a well-made movie, and plots its course from one event to another in a steady fashion, but at no point does it do anything exciting or inventive. It’s set in a humdrum part of New York, and the filmmakers evoke that mundanity precisely. Much of the movie consists of close and medium shots, the interiors of apartments and launderettes, and little attempt is made to find beauty in these spaces. It seems that Leonard harbours some ambitions in the direction of photography, which would perhaps offer him some escape from his feelings of entrapment, but the only photos of his we see are head-on shots of local businesses. At no point do either the viewer or Leonard have any respite from the everyday, and the everyday is presented as being dreary. The tone of the film is inflected by Leonard’s subjectivity, but only the sad part. It seems the filmmakers missed a trick by not investigating the possibility of seeing the world through Leonard’s eyes when he’s “up.”
Or, in the original Swedish, Låt den rätte komma in is the sweet and troubling coming-of-age story of Oskar, a young boy who finds the confidence to fight bullies and assert his place in the world when he falls in love with the girl next door. However, as he gets closer to Eli he realises there might be something sinister about her. Of course there is: she’s a vampire.
Last month I caught up with Twilight, the yardstick by which teenage vampire movies are currently measured. The American vampire movie had plenty of thrills and spills, but it rarely strayed from the established good-girl-meets-dangerous-guy formula – a bit like Dirty Dancing with lots of white goth makeup and little emotional honesty. Let the Right One In is quite different. The tone is measured and, while it’s not as intentionally halting or sparse as Roy Andersson’s Songs from the Second Floor or Aki Kaurismäki’s The Man Without a Past, there’s a similar buttoned-down nihilism underpinning proceedings.
A fascinating documentary about the trial of superstar film director Roman Polanski on a variety of charges of sexual misconduct with a thirteen-year-old girl. It’s very sympathetic to Polanski, but it should be noted that the director/producer is a woman, and doesn’t ignore the suffering of the victim. The worst aspect of the entire case was the conduct of the judge, Laurence J. Rittenband, who courted the press throughout and changed the sentence several times in order to appear to be hard enough in front of the press. He was so bad that even the lawyer in charge of the prosecution thinks Polanski was hard done by.
Daniel Auteuil and Gerard Depardieu pay the bills in this stylish French police suspense movie. Their collective star power almost diverts from the fact that they’ve both eaten too much foie gras to play active, hard-edged policemen. There’s plenty of double-dealing and blurred moral boundaries, but the script sets up the dead bodies a little too obviously. Will there ever be a cop movie in which the officer who’s on the verge of retirement actually lives into his dotage? Or one in which the pretty wife of the hero doesn’t have a torrid time?
Even though this is pretty standard fare for these two stars, it’s still tighter and more dramatically interesting than similar Hollywood genre flicks. And given that 36 Quai des Orfèvres is the French equivalent of Scotland Yard, the filmmakers suggest that corruption and shady dealings are endemic even in the upper echelons of French law enforcement. It’s a smart movie, and delivers exactly the kind of thrills you expect. The pairing of Auteuil and Depardieu is clearly a French attempt to emulate the De Niro & Pacino pairing of Heat or Righteous Kill, and although I understand exactly why they cast it that way I think the movie would have been dramatically stronger with a pair of leaner, hungrier actors.
If you live in a world in which you have a choice between this and, say, Righteous Kill, go for the French movie, you won’t regret it.
Was I half-asleep or was it never adequately explained why “There can only be one?”
Highlander was a complete pile of nonsense, with a barely anglophone Belgian, Christopher Lambert, playing a Scotsman and Sean Connery playing a Spanish-Egyptian swordfighting dandy. Lots of latent sadomasochistic homosexuality and some utterly unreal lighting, including gutter-level strobe lights.
It was showing on ITV, so there were frequent advert breaks, but oddly there were no real adverts, just solicitations to watch other programmes on ITV. Has the credit crunch killed TV advertising?
Today there is a tram and bus strike which means I can’t get to French class and C has a “Get out of Jail Free” card as regards work. I’m not sure why the drivers are striking and I’m hoping the local TV station will cover the strike. Apparently much of the time interviewed picketers don’t know why they’re on strike, other than because they want to “Travailler moins, gagner plus” (work less, earn more).
To me it looks like driving a tram would be quite a pleasant, brainless job. You get to sit in a modern spacious cabin with lots of driver aids and a nice thick glass door between you and the passengers. I suspect in this case that the drivers are misusing their right to withold labour.
Seeing as I have an unexpected day off, I think I’ll bike over to the boulangerie and pick up some tasty pastries for elevenses.
If all else fails, I’m sure I can get a job riding one of these. In France, the job security of a motocrotte rider must rival that of the undertaker. It is an ordinary motorcycle or motorscooter, with an oversized vacuum cleaner mounted on the pillion. The rider sweeps through the streets of the city, and when he sees a crotte s/he sucks it up the pipes. But what is a crotte, you ask? A crotte is a form of shoe decoration left on the street by inconsiderate dog owners.
Now I’m back in Europe, I’m reminded that American political life looks even weirder at a distance than it does close up. I’m inspired by the gall of the Republican party almost daily, but today has been most impressive.
1) Republicans veto a bill that is an attempt to start cleaning up the mess their economic policies have made.
2) Having scuppered the bill, they then try to lay the blame for the bill’s failure at the feet of a woman who voted for it, claiming that the speech Nancy Pelosi made introducing it turned off certain members of the Republican party.
If the Republicans thought it was important that the bill passed, surely they’d have voted for it en masse? If they didn’t want the bill to pass, and that’s what it looks like from the voting record, then why are they now claiming to be upset that it didn’t? Obviously, it’s because they want to make it look as if the Democrats are at fault for the crisis. But, for Republicans, there is no crisis, because they don’t believe in regulation. But then again, there is a crisis, and they want to make sure someone else gets the blame.
On top of this, a John Boehner, the Republican leader of the House said:
“I do believe we could have got there today, had it not been for this partisan speech that the Speaker gave on the floor of the House,”
What are the partisan pieces of the speech?
…when was the last time someone asked you for $700bn?
It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies: policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.
Over the past several days, we have worked with our Republican colleagues to fashion an alternative to the original plan of the Bush administration.
Oh, how upsetting, Pelosi spoke the truth about George Bush, and the Republicans are unhappy. They seem to be conveniently forgetting that George Bush was one of the supporters of the bail-out package. They’ll claim to support him when Pelosi says something harsh about him, but they won’t support him with votes for a bill he supports? Wow, that’s some meaningful support. Oh, the doublethink!
On reflection, it’s no wonder that a group of such conflicted and volatile people should take exception at what, to me, looks like a balanced and well-worded speech.
Transcript of Nancy Pelosi’s speech.
Source: The Guardian.
I really hope the Republicans are humbled at the ballot box in November. The Americans I know and love deserve better.
The other night C and I made a thorough investigation of one of Bordeaux’s cultural gems. Cinéma Utopia in the Saint Pierre district, at the heart of the historic centre ville is a five screen arthouse cinema housed in a converted church. The screen we sat in was small but adequate and the area around and underneath the screen was painted to resemble an altar with candles to each side. This irreverence is played out elsewhere in the building too. Some of the original stained glass windows have been modified to include the Utopia’s logo.
For a dedicated cinephile, the Utopia is aptly named. The films are not preceded by commercials or trailers. You sit and wait, the lights go out, people fall silent and the movie starts, just like that. It’s refreshingly pure to experience cinema treated with the same respect as theatre. During the movie everyone stays totally silent. There is no popcorn munching, (you can’t buy popcorn at the Utopia) nobody answers their phone and nobody issues whispered pleas for explication to their friends. The film we saw was Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict, from 1982, an original print in fine shape. There was a little dirt around the beginning and end of each reel and a significant amount on the tail of the film, which is to be expected. The colours had faded a little, but Paul Newman’s eyes were still startlingly blue. At the end of the film the house lights stayed down until the very end of the credits so you either watch until the very end or bumble about like an idiot in the pitch black.
The Utopia has a café and it’s the real French deal. Like I wrote earlier, there is no popcorn. There is no candy, either. There is an abundance of coffee, and a decent selection of beer, wine and pastries. Some wholesome and tasty meals come out of the kitchen. There is free wi-fi, but the place isn’t crammed with people bathing in the blue light of their laptop screens. The café has a couple of terraces of tables on the square outside, and I think it must bring in more money than the cinema itself. A full-price ticket for the Utopia is €6, and an abonnement (subscription) of 10 admissions costs €45. The multiplexes in town charge around €7,50. In the month of September they showed 36 different films, from a wide selection of countries and from different eras. Right now you can see the prizewinners from Cannes alongside retrospectives of great movies from the archives. In the coming month the selection of classic Hollywood movies includes Siodmak’s The Killers, Kazan’s East of Eden and Hawks’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. There is even philosophical and political graffiti in the toilets. The Utopia really lives up to its name.
It was spookily coincidental that the film we watched that night was The Verdict, in which a lawyer, whose idealism and naivety have cost him a comfortable job and his self-respect, takes a medical malpractice case to court, though it would be easier to settle, in order to do the right thing. It’s a classic tale of the little guy versus the big man, and yet Paul Newman in the title role and the direction of Sidney Lumet are create an emotional gravity that is modest, thoughtful and compelling in a manner seldom seen on screen in recent years. I hate to come across all curmudgeonly and say “They don’t make them like that any more,” but they really don’t.
On the way back from the cinema C and I were admiring Paul Newman as both a great performer, a genuinely good and philanthropic guy, and a good example of an American liberal. There are more films playing at the Utopia that benefited from Newman’s involvement, including one that he directed. I’m planning to make the most of the opportunity to see them. Having seen some of his best work the night before made the announcement of his death a little sadder for us. Damn, he was good.
For the first time in what feels like months – and probably is – I rode my bike five miles to work and five miles back. I’d been starting to feel like a lardy, cranky bastard, but working up a sweat on the bike (mostly on the way back home) makes me think I’m back on the right track.
Other news: I’m currently reading a book that’s a collection of pages in a box. You assemble them in whatever order you want, except for the very first and the very last. It feels like inhabiting a very disorderly memory, which is likely the point. It’s called The Unfortunates and it was written by B. S. Johnson, no relation to London’s current head buffoon mayor.
In A. S. Byatt’s Little Black Book of Stories there is one about a woman who turns into an beautiful and bewildering assembly of stones. Naturally she ends up in Iceland, where the stones are still very much alive. Talking to her Icelandic sculptor friend shortly before her final transformation, he tells her the story of a man who abandons his friends to live wild amongst the rocks. Each year for three years they visit him to see if he’s willing to return to them, and each time they ask what he believes in. The final time he responds, laughing “Trunt, trunt, og tröllin à fjöllunum,”
“‘Trunt, trunt’ is just nonsense, it means rubbish and junk and aha and hubble bubble, that sort of thing, I don’t know an English expression that will do as a translation. Trunt trunt, and the trolls in the fells.”
Ever since I finished the story, trunt has been rolling around inside my head. I love the idea of a word that is so chock-full of nothing.
This weekend has been my first time off from jobs and movie stuff for about two, maybe three months. After ignoring most of the Superbowl, I took Courtney to see There Will Be Blood. Within the first minute she whispered in my ear “I really notice cinematography now.” At that moment I think my heart skipped a beat.
This weekend Courtney and I launched the Shooting Bulletins blog. It’s where we’re keeping a record of our progress as we attempt to make a short movie that will prove my worthiness to be admitted to film school. Check it out if you’d like to see how we’re doing and to find out how you can help us do what we need to do!
We’ll be putting the third bulletin up some time today.
This weekend Courtney and I launched the Shooting Bulletins blog. It’s where we’re keeping a record of our progress as we attempt to make a short movie that will prove my worthiness to be admitted to film school. Check it out if you’d like to see how we’re doing and to find out how you can help us do what we need to do!
We’ll be putting the third bulletin up some time today.
This is funny, sad, touching, hopeful and true. It’s about the village of Botton in Yorkshire. I’ve only got so far as the two blokes in the print shop, who have a Goon Show-esque repartee, and if it weren’t time for bed I’d watch it all the way through.
Update: I finished watching. It was mostly quite decent, but the lack of any serious analysis of exactly how the Botton model helps its patients lead meaningful lives in spite of the difficulties they face was troubling. It felt as if the makers of the programme either intended to present a freakshow and make it acceptable by making some nod towards serious analysis, or they wanted to make something serious but lacked the budget to get interviews with experts, or that the programme makers were fairly young and failed to recognise they needed more serious analysis to add weight to the project. I suspect it was a combination of the latter two.
Wow, for about half an hour I thought I’d totally destroyed my blog. I just upgraded to a new version of WordPress, and it wasn’t the easiest transition.
This week it’s starting to get serious. I’ve received some useful feedback on my script, I’ve cast an actor, and Courtney’s realising the scale of the project we’re about to embark on. My short movie with the working title “Julie, Julie” is officially in pre-production. In the next week or so I’ll be starting a new website with a “donate” button so people can help fund the project, should they so desire.
Thanks to my script readers: your feedback has been very useful.
This weekend was another orgy of video shooting. First off, most of Friday was spent preparing to shoot, and then shooting a Critical Mass of zombies and pirates. More will become apparent when it’s edited.
Saturday and Sunday were spent on a levee in Sacramento shooting a barbaric pinata massacre for my friend Stephanie. I’m quite pleased with how the footage looked when we played it back in the evenings. There was a distinct Tarantino-esque cruelty to a couple of shots.
Palmer asked me if I could help him with a documentary project he’s working on, so this Sunday we went to Sacramento to interview locally-based outsider musician Lenny G. Blat. Something about him reminds me of the Legendary Stardust Cowboy.
Palmer’s started editing already, and a couple of clips are up on YouTube.
When the camera’s off Lenny is surprisingly warm, and unpredictable. He sings almost constantly, as if he has a musical variant of tourette’s syndrome.
