This is what I tweeted last week on my WeekofWonders twitter account:
Romantic in the classical sense, BRIGHT STAR is a perfect film. Perfect. Film.
Did I hear Tony Scott on “At the Movies,” say that “Bright Star is porno for English majors”?
OK. He’s got my number.
Some smart person at distributor Apparition or publicist Donna Daniels picked the charming, historic Tilden Mansion as the setting for television and other interviews with director Jane Campion, producer Jan Chapman, and actors Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, and Paul Schneider. Built in the 1840s, the Victorian mansion now houses the National Arts Club.
Inside the Tilden Mansion on Gramercy Park
There, lovely, gestural Abbie Cornish, who plays Fannie Brawne, said that this poem is one of her favorites:
Ode To A Nightingale
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,—-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
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09-21-09: Jude Law in Rage via iPhone held by writer/director Sally Potter
“I can’t think of a worse way to watch a movie than on a cell phone,” commented a reader on a “Thompson on Hollywood” blog post announcing Rage.
But here’s the thing—this film was made to be watched on a phone. Maybe it should have been called a series of webisodes. Of course, that might have scared people from buying the DVD. If you watch the DVD, as I did, you will see that its natural home is the hand-held device, seen in daily sections over the course of a week, as the story progresses during Fashion Week. Internet viewing is another option.
Potter wrote the dramatic thriller as a conventional script ten years ago, and only after having her own blog and website did she “unlock the form for the film,” using close-ups exclusively because, she told me, “the close-up is the language of MySpace and Facebook.”
“This isn’t about shoving a movie into a cell phone,” she said. “Everything in this film could have been made by a child with a cell phone in their bedroom.”
“I needed to make it very graphic, very pure, very simple…with no cutaways, no locations, no sets, and a green screen. The dynamic had to be in the performances,” she said. She cast Jude Law, Judi Dench, Steve Buscemi, John Leguizamo, Lily Cole and others to play recurring characters in brief shots, reminiscent of screen tests.
The eye-popping background colors were copied digitally from somewhere on the actor’s face, body, or clothing.
Filmmakers and adventurous audiences should see this beautifully crafted and acted humorous film, as it presents a new direction for entertainment.
The documentaries that really work for me are those that transcend their topic, ones in which the directors follow their muse, and “allow” the story to come, often in cinéma vérité.
Films such as Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost 1 and 2, Metallica, and some of the Sundance channel episodes of Iconoclasts, directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, fit into this category. They are not what they appear to be on the surface. Aspects of human nature are revealed through divining, not hunting down a story. There are themes and moments in this body of work that I consider life changing.
Earlier this month, at the Radical Media production company, it didn’t surprise me when Joe Berlinger said he had originally resisted the invitation to film the story for Crude, a legal battle against Chevron related to oil drilling in the Ecuadorian Amazon that resulted in environmental and human rights violations. It wasn’t exactly a muse-following project. “I thought it was more like a ‘60 Minutes’ piece,” he said, “The films I’m known for are ambiguous human portraits.”
He finally agreed to the request, offered by the American legal advisor for the Ecuadorians, on the condition that the film take a neutral position on the lawsuit, which had been going on for sixteen years, with no end in sight.
The film is in theaters now and there is still no end in sight. Crude is not a feel good movie. We don’t get to see justice served as we have come to expect in a David and Goliath set up like this—indigenous people versus a multinational corporation.
Chevron may not even be guilty in the strictest sense of the law, but one can’t help but feel some culpability lurking in the shadows of those corporate corridors. Berlinger said he was openly surveilled there, with a Chevron camera crew standing behind him, documenting his filming.
So instead of the story of little guys versus big guys, Berlinger allowed another theme to take its place, an inquiry into “the moral responsibility of handling human rights catastrophes” as well as “the inadequacy of solving these issues through lawsuits.”
And there’s more to the story when you read between the lines of the film. “It’s a comment on the nature of celebrities and political activism,” he said. Trudie Styler and Sting participate with support and fundraising through their Rainforest Foundation, but their privileged lives are a stark contrast to the native people of the rainforest that their organization nobly aids.
“Will there be a sequel?” I asked Berlinger. “We’ve been following the case for Paradise Lost, and we’re working on number 3 now, but no, this film took too great a toll on me emotionally and physically,” he said.
Coco Before Chanel is a film that gets progressively better, as it tells the story of the love life and career of the budding designer, and culminates in a spectacular scene of models wearing real Chanel fashion from the archives.
09-15-09: Alessandro Nivola is hot hot hot as “Boy” Capel, the love of Coco Chanel’s life
Expert storyteller Nivola grew a thick moustache for his character and recounted how he was approached during the Paris shoot by guys who thought he resembled Freddie Mercury. He learned how to play polo for the role. His grandfather was the Sardinian sculptor, Constantino Nivola, and his wife, actress Emily Mortimer called his cell phone during our group interview.
09-15-09: Director Anne Fontaine is a most elegant and well-spoken director
By her carriage, it’s no surprise that Fontaine was a model and dancer. She was not upset to learn that Nivola had lied to her about knowing French in their initial conversation, something he confessed to us earlier. Her reaction was that “it takes energy to not be in reality, a good quality for an actor.”
Tautou didn’t want her photo taken, but she was very petite and was looking strikingly like the fashion designer. Her eyes were almost black and she was generous with facial expressions. She attributed her earthy quality to being from the country, the provinces of France. Concurrently, she is the “face” of Chanel No. 5 ads, an interesting combination of art and business.
In the first half of the year, I saw more great films than I could fit on a Top Ten, but for the sake of discipline, here’s my list, culled from New York theatrical releases from January thru June:
Cherry Blossoms by Doris Dörrie
24 City by Zhang Ke Jia
Adoration by Atom Egoyan
Coraline by Henry Selick
Sleep Dealer by Alex Rivera
12 by Nikita Mikhalkov
Donkey Punch by Oliver Blackburn
Goodbye Solo by Ramin Bahrani
Lemon Tree by Eran Riklis
Hunger by Steve McQueen
The tendency is to forget the first half of the year when we’re making our Top Tens in December!!!
What do you think is the best film so far this year?
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