In 1989, Spike Lee picked up a trashcan and hurled it into the front window of Sal’s Pizzeria, stirring chaos in Bed-Stuy and sending movie audiences into a tizzy about race relations…. Jump ahead 20 years: today’s watercooler cinema holds nary an ounce of subversive content. On the contrary, the most talked-about upscale American films of the year (“Precious,” “Up in the Air”) uphold such conservative myths as the sanctity of family and community.
That’s not to suggest the agit-pop screeds of Michael Moore—yes, he was back this year, too, with “Capitalism: A Love Story,” his biggest box office disappointment since 1997’s “The Big One”—are preferable. But it’s a reminder that the forceful, provocative cinema of Spike Lee, John Sayles, Todd Haynes or Gregg Araki has been replaced by the bourgeois niceties of Jason Reitman and Marc Webb…
Serious African-American cinema scarcely exists. It arrives in fits and sputters, in the occasional legends (Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks), outliers (Charles Burnett, Julie Dash) or mavericks (Spike Lee). But demanding cinema based around the black experience are largely absent from American screens, displaced by gangstas, guns and masquerading comedians in drag or fat suits (Tyler Perry, Eddie Murphy). Can Lee Daniels’ “Precious” change all that?
A couple key quotes:
“‘Precious’ is the sort of black film we’ve gotten used to seeing,” says Barry Jenkins, the San Francisco-based director of “Medicine for Melancholy.” “A gritty story of urban struggle and strife—there’s nothing wrong with that, but why aren’t there other films filling out this portrait of what it’s like to be black in America today? Whatever backlash there is against ‘Precious,’ it’s not about the film itself—it’s about the dearth of films to complement it.”
“We want to see ourselves reflected on the screen in fresh and innovative ways just like our white counterparts,” says “A Good Day to Be Black & Sexy” director Dennis Dortch. “White folks are up to their necks with hip and quirky films validating their existence every year. To believe that a black audience with the same desire does not exist is silly.”
Crusading investigative journalist or paranoid conspiracy theorist? Michael Ruppert, the subject of Chris Smith’s engrossing new documentary “Collapse” (which opens tomorrow) may be a little bit of both, which makes the movie so much more interesting. Environmentalists and sustainability folks will have a lot to talk about after the film, but for me, the most fascinating thing about the film is Ruppert, the character: He’s bubbling over with contradictions: brilliant but maybe a little nuts; and like a big dog with a ferocious bite who just wants to be pet. For the Wall Street Journal Online, I talked to Ruppert about his views on oil and energy, and the man remains utterly steadfast in his convictions. As he says in the film, “I don’t deal in conspiracy theories. I deal in conspiracy fact.” See the film, you be the judge.
“Do you take advantage of the new freedoms?” purrs sexy next-door neighbor Mrs. Samsky in the Coen brothers’ 1967-set “A Serious Man.” The question looms large over a number of this year’s award-season films, many of them set either on the cusp of that moment of revolutionary change in the ‘60s (“An Education,” “A Single Man”), during its heyday (“A Serious Man,” “Nine,” “Pirate Radio”) or as its gleam began to wear off and turn darker (“The Damned United,” “The Lovely Bones”). Read more in this Variety story...
Focus Features exec James Schamus once again proves he may be the most learned man in the film business with this observation:
“I don’t think the American culture has honestly absorbed the potential of what was happening in the 1960s,” he says. “Late capitalism shut it down as a stylistic detour, and there’s very little understanding or acceptance of how deep were the structural changes—everything from male-female relations to gay liberation to what happened last November at the ballot box. These are things we all owe to the ‘60s.” And as this recent cycle of films suggest, adds Schamus, “We’re still working it out.”
The closing of Miramax—because that’s what has effectively happened by shutting its New York office and letting Daniel Battsek go—is appalling, sad, practically devastating from a historical view of American independent cinema, and not entirely surprising. As corporate powers see more profit in the culture of tentpoles, they’ve been fleeing from smaller-budget films across the board. But what about the brand? Speaking from a purely base commercial perspective, Miramax was one of the most recognizable film companies in the land. And if any entity should have been able to survive the current dip—because that’s what it is, a temporary shift, one that all entertainment companies, big and small, will eventually be able to adapt to—Miramax was probably it.
I don’t know much about Disney and the new mucky-muck atop the “Mouse House,” but what I do know is all of this panic surrounding indie cinema appears to be particularly short-sighted. There are still hundreds of Landmarks and similar art-houses across the country and there are still people going to those movies. And remember, they also cross over into the mainstream. Don’t the corporate elite remember little movies like “Twilight,” “Juno,” “Slumdog Millioniare,” “The Blair Witch Project,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Traffic”—movies that never would have been made within the studios and yet far outgrossed most of the crap they put out. I’m not a business analyst, but isn’t a little risk worth taking when the profit margin can be so potentially large? Maybe releasing movies is just too costly nowadays. Maybe audiences don’t want to go to theaters anymore. I don’t know.
But what I do know is that New York has lost a part of its film history. Love the brand or hate it—and I wrote many critical stories about the company over the years when it was run by the Weinsteins—the community has lost one of its giants, and the fall will have repercussions for all of us.
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