Film serials go back to the earliest days of cinema—think “Perils of Pauline” cliffhangers or the exploits of French criminal mastermind “Fantômas,” unspooling in theaters in weekly installments. More recently, a new kind of serial cinema has emerged. Less reminiscent of those silent movies or the Hollywood franchises of Harry Potter or James Bond—themselves a kind of large-scale, ever-expanding serial—these news works are film compilations more akin to the networked complexity of the best of contemporary episodic television. It’s no surprise then that the latest example of the form, the British import “Red Riding Trilogy,” was originally made for UK broadcast. (The film series will appear this week in U.S. theaters, but fittingly, on VOD, as well.)
While the article only focuses on “Red Riding,” with passing references to the “Pusher” films and Kieslowski’s work, I realize now there are a couple of recent omissions: I probably should have name-checked Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” two-parter and Zentropa’s character-driven The Advance Party project, which I’ve written about previously. While Andrea Arnold’s “Red Road” is the only film to have been released as part of the Advance Party, the second film in the series, Morag McKinnon’s “Rounding Up Donkeys,” has been completed, and a host of new Advance Party films has been greenlit under the moniker Advance Party II, with a new set of rules set to be given out at next week’s Berlin Film Festival. According to reports, participating filmmakers include Paul Wright, Adrian McDowell, Esther May Campbell, Daniel Mulloy, Enda Hughes, Rory Bresnihan, Ciaran Foy and Steph Green. This is no passing fad.
Today, I plunked down $3.99 to watch Linas Philips’s “Bass Ackwards,” premiering in Sundance’s NEXT section, on YouTube. This is the first time I’ve ever paid money to watch something online—notwithstanding my Netflix subscription—so I’d say this is a major coup for the publicity and filmmaking team behind the movie. “Bass Ackwards” producer Thomas Woodrow is a persuasive sort, and when he vigorously argued to me that they would treat “Sundance itself as the theatrical campaign” and make the movie simultaneously available on all platforms, I bought the pitch, literally. (Since I talked to Woodrow and wrote about the film for Filmmaker Magazine (When Does Plan B Become Plan A? Few Sundance Filmmakers Brave Alternative Distribution Paths), I was probably more invested than your average movie-consumer, but so be it. Last I checked, the movie had 63 views after being available for about three-quarters of a day.
I have little doubt that this approach is the best commercially for the film—the decidedly lo-fi, offbeat, rambling road-trip story of a slacker looking for direction in his life would not fare well in theaters.
But I still have my doubts about the cinema experience of watching a movie streaming on my computer. There’s too many potential distractions and I had a number of brief streaming pauses—visual hiccups (what’s the 21st century terminology for this?). Also, comedy doesn’t translate as well at home verses a theater with a bunch of people. There’s an early sequence that shows the protagonist working briefly at an Alpaca farm—for my money, one of the movie’s best scenes. And while I snickered out loud during a moment where the character asks for love from a hungry alpaca, I suspect this bit gets big laughs in a theater—which would have been far more satisfying, not just for the audience, but the filmmakers, as well.
For the second year in a row, I won’t be going to the Sundance Film Fest (for many of the same reasons I listed in this most popular blog post, 5 Reasons I’m Not Going to Sundance). But I will try to be their in spirit, and true to the age of blogger journalism, write about things second-hand. For instance, you might not even know I wasn’t in Park City if I hadn’t admitted it: You can read my interview with Philip Seymour Hoffman on the eve of his Sundance directorial debut “Jack Goes Boating” or short conversations with other high-profile Sundance directors Mark Ruffalo (“Sympathy for Delicious”) and John Wells (“The Company Men”).
In the coming days, I also plan to check out a handful of the simultaneous Sundance VOD/online premieres, including “The Shock Doctrine,” “Daddy Longlegs” and “Bass Ackwards” (the subject of my latest Filmmaker article, When Does Plan B Become Plan A?). And given the line-up, the reliability of the auteur theory and the proclivities of taste, I can pretty much list my favorite films of Sundance 2010 without even having seeing them: Eric Mendelsohn’s “3 Backyards,” Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s “Restrepo,” Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “Howl,” Debra Granik’s “Winter Bone,” Jay Duplass’ “Cyrus,” and “Jack Goes Boating.”
That headline is a joke, of course. While I’m sure the film industries of Bulgaria and Kazakhstan are celebrating their inclusion in this year’s shortlist for the Foreign Language Oscar (respectively, with “The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner” and “Kelin”), the chances of either being picked for the top five are probably next to nil. The fact that I have no idea what these films are suggests to me not only that I must be out of the loop somewhat, but how strange these films must appear to Oscar voters.
But with the Academy, there’s really no telling what will happen: I wouldn’t be surprised if “The White Ribbon” would be seen as too arty or enigmatic, which leaves the field pretty much wide open, except for the French shoo-in, Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet.” Israel’s “Ajami and Argentina’s “El Secreto de Sus Ojos” also probably have pretty good shots. And while I can’t judge the Dutch entry, “Winter in Wartime,” because I haven’t seen it, the synopsis suggests prize foreign Oscar bait—“a WWII coming-of-age story portrays a 14-year-old Dutch lad’s brutal loss of innocence when circumstances force him to become a one-man Resistance movement.”
But then again, who knows?
Here’s the full shortlist below:
* Argentina, “El Secreto de Sus Ojos,” Juan Jose Campanella, director;
* Australia, “Samson & Delilah,” Warwick Thornton, director;
* Bulgaria, “The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks around the Corner,” Stephan Komandarev, director;
* France, “Un Prophète,” Jacques Audiard, director;
* Germany, “The White Ribbon,” Michael Haneke, director;
* Israel, “Ajami,” Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani, directors;
* Kazakhstan, “Kelin,” Ermek Tursunov, director;
* The Netherlands, “Winter in Wartime,” Martin Koolhoven, director;
* Peru, “The Milk of Sorrow,” Claudia Llosa, director.
According to Danish news reports this morning, veteran Danish filmmaker Jorgen Leth (“The Five Obstructions”) was in Haiti at the time of the devastating earthquakes. Leth, who has lived in Haiti part-time for many years, was asleep in his house when the ground began to shake, according to one news report that I translated with the help of Google. “I was convinced I would die,” he told an outlet called Expressen. “I felt sick and wanted to vomit. Then the house began to sway and the house collapsed on us. Now I understand the word disaster.”
Leth was also with another Danish producer, Marianne Christensen. The Danes told the paper that they cried during the beginning of the earthquake and did not sleep the first two nights. “We’re living on water and biscuits,” said Leth. “But we are so grateful to be alive.”
Leth has chronicled the plight of Haitians in a number of projects, as in his 1996 film “Haiti: Untitled.” Leth’s son Asger Leth co-directed the 2006 documentary “Ghosts of Cite Soleil.”
In 2004, I had the pleasure of speaking with Leth pere about the making of “The Five Obstructions,” which a handful of critics included among their top ten films of the decade. In that interview, “Breaking Von Trier: Jorgen Leth Survives The Five Obstructions”—the choice of title appears fitting today—the Danish maverick told me, “I’m accustomed to miserable places, it’s true. And I could have shot this scene [of the most miserable place on earth] in Haiti, but I thought that would have been a smaller challenge. So that’s why I chose India. But really, when I think about it after, Haiti would have been more miserable in certain areas. But by living in Haiti, I’m learning a lot about life.”
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