Filmenthusiast2000 (14:06:14): I may do a WOTW post yet today.
robbiefreeling8 (14:06:34): i was going to do another...i'm writing something...should i not?
robbiefreeling8 (14:06:38): what was the focus?
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:08:25): The lazy 9/11 refs and other general critical follies.
robbiefreeling8 (14:10:06): i was going to talk about 9/11, but i could say something different i guess
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:10:27): No, please, go ahead now.
Robbiefreeling8 (14:10:51): i'm sure yours would be more interesting...do you not have time?
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:11:05): I just think it's great how dated 90% of the critical notices for this movie will be in, like, a month.
robbiefreeling8 (14:12:59): agreed
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:14:49): Nobody's just talking about it in the historical context of, you know, disaster movies (it is one, and a pretty good one); every critic gets caught up on Spielberg/ Cruise and doesn't get much further than that.
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:17:01): It's funny that everyone wrote about how the Twin Towers faceplant looked like "something from a Hollywood disaster movie," but nobody seems ready to say that, that said, maybe the Hollywood disaster movie is a pretty appropriate medium to approach the idea of catastrophe through.
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:18:00): I guarantee you WOTW is more worthwhile than anything that Art Spiegelman, Jonathan Saffron Foer, and Spike Lee have to say on the subject of 9/11, or catastrophe
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:49:21): Yikes, maybe not that second part; I was just playing provocateur; I'm clearly out of my element.
robbiefreeling8 (14:49:30): Jami Bernard in the NY Daily News wrote this:
robbiefreeling8 (14:49:42): "The realism here borrows from the events of 9/11. These aren't Martians, they're sleeper cells hiding among us, waiting to activate."
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:50:34): The sleeper cells comparison I've already read once today--maybe Edelstein in Slate or Zacharek at Salon...
robbiefreeling8 (14:50:44): so you caught the incredibly short-sighted review by Zacharek in Salon?
robbiefreeling8 (14:52:31): Zacharek: "At one point the camera scans a wall covered with fliers of missing loved ones (presumably humans who have been abducted or just plain disintegrated by the marauding aliens), as direct a reference to post-9/11 New York City as you could make. I can't possibly divine what Spielberg intends by that shot. Are we meant to nod solemnly, jolted by the recognition that this alleged bit of summer fun has a real-life parallel? "
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:54:42): As I've said before, this same image is in R.W. Fassbinder's Marriage of Maria Braun, where we see Hanna Schygulla looking for her husband at a post-WWII Berlin train depot, where many of the survivors are wearing sandwich boards with the names and faces of loved ones on them. Are we to assume, then, that Fassbinder was making reference to 9/11?
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:55:55): It shows a profound myopia on the part of critics, who have to take WOTW as a movie about THEIR catastrophe rather than about, well, catastrophe.
robbiefreeling8 (14:56:48): not to mention that Spielberg's been doing this for the second half of his career consistently
robbiefreeling8 (14:57:10): My hands were grasping and scratching at my pantlegs for almost the film's entire duration
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:57:10): You know very well I don't watch Steven Spielberg movies, Michael.
robbiefreeling8 (14:57:42): but I had the same nausea while watching the Normandy invasion of Saving Private Ryan, the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto in Schindler�s List, and the carnage of the middle passage in Amistad.
Filmenthusiast2000 (14:59:17): The most puzzling aspect of Zacharek's write-up is her reading of the movie as just a good-time smash-up; of course there is this element in any flick that sets up the big model train set and bangs it into oblivion but... I have to say I found the carnage in WOTW genuinely disheartening, disorienting, and decidedly unpleasant.
robbiefreeling8 (14:59:37): Yeah, it wasn't at all a fun film. Spielberg's most terrifying scene is the when mob mentality finally busts through the safe zone of the family minivan, with that incredible shot of one man clawing his way through shredded windshield glass with bloody fingers.
robbiefreeling8 (15:01:02): Yet the audience tried to pretend it was riddled with comic relief...it was odd, like they didn't know how to reconcile the supposedly disreputable genre trappings with the very serious, sober approach he took
Filmenthusiast2000 (15:04:10): I found myself thinking a lot about the original Godzilla movie--it's, for its time, an absolutely state-of-the-art movie created in response to a state-of-the-art tragedy: Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Perhaps in direct proportion to the profile of Mr. Spielberg, a lot of the old post-9/11 touchiness is showing up in reviews...
Filmenthusiast2000 (15:07:37): "the presumption...seems to be that we have, after a four-year rest cure, regained our consumer appetite for destruction" writes Mike Atkinson in the Voice. Rest cure, you say? But the pundit's line that showed up at the end of 2001--that the real-life disaster f-x of 9/11 somehow invalidated the disaster movie--is idiotic when held up to the example of Godzilla or WOTW...
robbiefreeling8 (15:08:28): well, people are really just projecting their anxieties onto the disaster film because it's the easiest way for most people to look for so-called "responses"
robbiefreeling8 (15:08:57): i mean, are we supposed to be lambasting romantic comedies with Drew Barrymore for not existing in a post-9/11 world?
robbiefreeling8 (15:09:46): Woody Allen's been getting hit left and right because he's a New York filmmaker who hasn't "dealt" with the contemporary "reality" of living in post 9/11 New York...as if that's not a subjective concept
Filmenthusiast2000 (15:11:16): I think it's tough for a lot of people to write concisely about the coexistence of gawping and empathy in these big smash-up movies because it's difficult to feel concisely about disaster--there's that element of horror and also that element of oohs-and-aahs that run against one another, and which were present, I think, for a lot of people even ON 9/11.
Filmenthusiast2000 (15:12:48): That was our payback, delivering the goods for everyone who half-wished for a catastrophe at the turn of the millenium--and it was horrible when it actually happened, yeah, but it made for really good TV.
Filmenthusiast2000 (15:13:17): As for Woody Allen not dealing with 9/11, I'd ask you to look a little closer at Anything Else.
robbiefreeling8 (15:14:24): did you see how he was taken to task for his insightful quotes on pagesix?
robbiefreeling8 (15:14:40): "As a filmmaker, I'm not interested in 9/11 - it's too small, history overwhelms it. The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other. Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral - not important. History is the same thing over and over again."
robbiefreeling8 (15:14:55): and then this headline appeared on IMDb:
robbiefreeling8 (15:15:05): "Allen Not Interested in September 11"
robbiefreeling8 (15:15:14): Director Woody Allen has dismissed the September 11th attacks as a negligible historical event not worthy of the silver screen."
robbiefreeling8 (15:15:26): I was like, FUCK!
Filmenthusiast2000 (15:15:43): I'm sorry, I tried to read what he said there, but all I saw was "I hate America"
robbiefreeling8 (15:16:07): don't mess with 9/11....especially if you're a widely hated nebbishy New York intellectual with a penchant for your wife's adopted Asian daughter
robbiefreeling8 (15:16:15): oh, and Jew
robbiefreeling8 (15:18:40): Going back to your Spike Lee bash, when 25th Hour came out I was enthralled...just seeing my New York at that point in 2002 seemed like a revelation. So i understand the impulse. So I continued to look for films that "dealt with 9/11" in a "realistic" and "sober" manner....that's what many are still feeling, so I think all of that is just being heaped upon this sci-fi film.
Filmenthusiast2000 (15:21:57): Well, I think "dealing" with 9/11 effectively involves a little more than taking the bull by the horns--what was that fucking Sigourney Weaver and some firefighters lumpen-hagiography? The Guys? It's so omnipresent, so completely a part of our consciousness now, that you're dealing with it anytime you make a movie, anytime you write... It's just kind of there.
Filmenthusiast2000 (15:22:52): I've gotta plead Claude Chabrol's "little themes" motto on this one.
robbiefreeling8 (15:24:08): but Spike Lee made 25th Hour at a time when it wasn't nearly subconscious...it was very conscious. we were walking around a city still plastered with photographs and memorials...so that film is actually an accurate reflection of where we were. The opening credit sequence, with the Twin Towers light beams, was appropriate in its bombast.
robbiefreeling8 (3:29:37 PM): by the way, me and Tom Cruise are getting some hummus after work today. care to join?
Filmenthusiast2000 (3:31:12 PM): I wish to God that was true.
robbiefreeling8 (3:31:24 PM): i just hope the flavor won't clash with his working-class sensibilities. would he go for babaganush?
Filmenthusiast2000 (3:31:47 PM): Hey, remember the end of WOTW?
robbiefreeling8 (3:32:09 PM): when Morgan Freeman voice-over reoccurs?
Filmenthusiast2000 (3:33:31 PM): Nah, the tearful (spoilers:-)) family reunion
outside the row of posh, fully intact Boston townhouses. Who was it who said of Schindler's List (which I haven't seen): "the holocaust was about six million people who died, Schindler's List was about a few hundred who lived."
robbiefreeling8 (3:33:51 PM): some antisemitic jackass
robbiefreeling8 (3:34:08 PM): gee, isn't it horrible to be reminded of survivors of catastrophe?
robbiefreeling8 (3:34:18 PM): it's easily the worst offense a filmmaker can commit
robbiefreeling8 (3:34:37 PM): i mean, forget Solondz, Korine, et al....this is truly awful
Filmenthusiast2000 (3:35:20 PM): Now Michael, come on. Do you think TC's
ex-wife's family paid off the aliens, like the mayor of Savannah during the Civil War, to leave their block intact?
robbiefreeling8 (3:36:17 PM): undoubtedly...one of many logic gaps in an otherwise "air-tight" script
Filmenthusiast2000 (3:36:44 PM): I expected at least for Cruise to pull a rueful Ethan Edwards in The Searchers number and walk away from his reunited clan... Is that too much to ask.
robbiefreeling8 (3:36:57 PM): that's exactly what I said to Jeff
robbiefreeling8 (3:37:04 PM): the framing was all set up for it
Filmenthusiast2000 (3:37:40 PM): I thought he was all set to rub his elbow and about-face; I almost wonder if it was a deliberate Searchers inversion...
robbiefreeling8 (3:38:03 PM): well, WOTW is better, so...
Filmenthusiast2000 (3:38:39 PM): Yes, I suppose we can agree at least on that. War of the Worlds is much better than The Searchers.
robbiefreeling8 (3:39:05 PM): one of us is joking, and one isn't
Filmenthusiast2000 (3:39:22 PM): one of us is an idiot, and one isn't

In the sprit of FilmEnthusiast's thought-provoking Manderlay/Mandelay post and all this Scientology/Look Who's Talking talk: one of these photos is a Battlefield Earth still of an alien with a giant package, and the other is a still from the film's premiere.

Has anyone written on this gem for RS? Maybe it's too obvious. Next symposium -- "The Cinema of Scientology". I get dibs on 1984's Introduction to Scientology, which apparently includes the following insight from L. Ron Hubbard: "Psychiatry has to do with the insane, and we have nothing to do with the insane whatsoever. The insane -- well, uh, they're insane." Take me, Tom.

Interesting article concerning the connections between scientology, tom cruise, the new "war of the worlds" film, and h.g. wells in the voice. it got me thinking about a less high-profile, but perhaps more insidious, film with l. ron-worshipping stars and possible dianetic messages -- "look who's talking" anyone? my friend mark and i came up with this during one of those late night college shit-shooting sessions: the inimitable john travolta and pre-obese kristi alley (both scientologists) were involved in the groundbreaking project. if you recall (but who could really forget?), the film's opening gives voice to the thoughts of a sperm cell on its journey down the fallopian tube. what's creepy about this is that a tenant of scientology has the mind active even during this stage in human development, when sperm and ovum haven't even merged -- already the bad "engrams" that cause so much trouble for the individual later on in life are being picked up on by an entity conscious in some form. lord knows how many impressionable minds were twisted into accepting the scientologist view of pre-embryonic existence through this supposedly family-friendly comedy.

This shot was taken outside of the brand-new IFC Center in the West Village this past Saturday. IATSE Local 306 (the projectionists union - yes, there is such a thing) is protesting the new theatre's refusal to meet or negotiate with them. Theatre manager John Vanco is on record as saying that "We want this to feel different from going to a movie any place else" and given that most NYC theatres employ union projectionists (all of their main competition does) this is most certainly a step in the right direction. So when you check out Miranda July's Me You and Everyone We Know and the focus is soft, or a reel is projected out of frame, you can thank the undertrained, pimply NYU-undergrad who's most likely flirting with the cute hipster working concessions.

The winners were announced on Sunday night and somehow - surprise, surprise - the only Russian film in competition won the Golden George. This despite a supposedly concerted effort to diversify the pool and attract more international industry interest in the fest. To me, this was very typical of things in Russia right now, where a big show is made of improvement or openness on the surface of things while insularity works behind the scenes so that the status quo - or the desired outcome - prevails. I can't make a good argument against giving the top prize to Dreaming of Space - it's well-made, and sensitive and wise about envy and desire. Of course it's also uncourageous and unwilling to follow through on its own themes (exploration, liberation, curiosity, flight) without finally pinning them all on the grand, nationally empowering, film-killing-obvious moment when the Soviet Union sent a man into space. Yet it was the best film in competition. How? Because most of the competing films were low-grade, cookie-cutter, "for film fest eyes only" fare, and simply lucky to be there (or anywhere). I can't say that this stacked deck was intentional - I have no idea what kind of submissions were received - but I do know that Dreaming of Space was a late addition to the fest, and that its participation was requested by someone of significant power in the Kremlin. Director Alexey Uchitel wouldn't name names, but he seemed happy to hint from how "high" the request came. If you can read Russian, the interview can be found on these pages. Though I'm pretty cynical, I can't imagine a host government of any another major international fest intervening in such a way. Yes, it's also true that 2 out of 6 jurors were Russian, and another 2 hailed from former Soviet territories, but anyone would have considered Dreaming of Space a top contender in this company. Dear Wendy deserved a certain respect, but its flaws are considerable, and the other decent films (The Porcelain Doll, The Outcome, Left Foot Forward On The Beat) are decidedly minor achievements. Ultimately, this was never about film. This was about Russian film. And about Russian film being exemplary of a resurgent Russia. That's what the government's paying for. I'm glad for the investment, because this area of the world certainly merits a major film festival. But I'd be even happier if film wasn't just another sector ripe for intervention on behalf of leaders allergic to fair competition.

Hooray for Hollywood.

Saturday, June 26, 12 noon. Penultimate day of the Moscow International Film Festival, penultimate in-competition press screening, and we've got a first: the lights go up instead of down and "special presentation" music (the theme from The Phantom of the Opera, if you must know) heralds two people to the stage. First to the mike is producer Bonnie Curtis, who wastes all of five words before mentioning that she's an associate of Steven Spielberg. She then mentions that her co-producer on the film we're about to see, Lawrence Bender, is an associate of Quentin Tarantino. She pauses for applause both times. Then she introduces the director, Arie Posin, who makes a show of speaking in Russian and introducing his Russian mother who's sitting over there in the front row - stand up mom - it's her first trip back to the motherland since fleeing back in the sixties. Posin goes back to speaking English so that he can better explain how his first film, The Chumscrubber, explores the true American suburbia, showing, "the world you see and the world underneath." Oil in water promo act exits stage left, the lights finally go down, and so begins the worst film I have ever seen.

Batman? Land of the Dead? March of the Penguins? Definitely some of the Louis Malle retro at Lincoln Center...

Eight days down, two to go. More postings of substance will follow, but right now I'm choosing five hours of sleep over four hours + blogging. Thankfully, the last two late night screenings were well worth the sleep deprivation - Claire Denis's The Intruder and the Dardennes The Child, though why Denis and her film were relegated to an 11pm weeknight screening was a mystery, especially considering her very high profile (locally, of course) presence on the jury. Nevertheless, she anticipated the restlessness by gracefully promising, "if you don't like the film, it's only my fault."

Most of you won't recognize the name Ray Posel, so I've excerpted heavily from a great piece that ran in today's Philadelphia Inquirer (its well worth reading in its entirety - I would link to it, but you need a login). I only know him only through a handful of phone conversations, legend, and his terrific theatres (to which this Southern Jersey shore lad would trek to regularly come summertime), so I leave things to someone who knew Ray well.

Woody Allen has a pretty interesting, fairly troubling, and memorably insightful rebuke to all those who criticize his films for seemingly existing in a so-called post 9/11 New York City. In an interview with Der Spiegel , Woody says:

"As a filmmaker, I'm not interested in 9/11. Because, if you look at the big picture, the long view of things, it's too small, history overwhelms it. The history of the world is like: he kills me, I kill him. Only with different cosmetics and different castings: so in 2001 some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other. Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again."

Hit it.

1. Unclear on American Campus: What the Foreign Teacher Said
2. Trying to Update the 60's, Just a Twitch at a Time
3. Under a Bridge, and on Top of the World
4. Adulterous Romance in a Fractious World
5. New EBay Service Aims to Stem Merchant Exodus
6. At Your Request, a Bespoke Adventure
7. Lord Love a VW Bug That Knows Its Mind
8. An Affair of Their Art
9. The Lives and Loves (Perhaps) of Emperor Penguins
10. U.S. and Europe Differ on Testing Athletes for Rare Heart Ailment

Though there may be no finer or nobler pastime than reviewing those films that may or may not exist, or those better left unseen, I'd like to draw your attention to some boring shit: theater consolidation.

After Regal gobbled up UA, Edwards, and the remnants of Hoyts a few years ago, I suppose this latest was only a matter of time. Though "analysts" referenced in the article describe this as "as a show of faith in moviegoing," it's certainly not a show of faith in moviegoers as this merger will most likely result in more theatre closures and a more centralized control over programming. That AMC is, in general, much less friendly circuit-wide to "specialized" films is cause for serious concern, though it remains to be seen how much of Loews' film buying staff will make the transition to this new behemoth.

We all have our little despised truisms; for my part, I've always found a huge fallacy in that familiar chide "You can't judge a book by its cover." This just isn't, in my experience, always the case, for better or for worse. Truth is, you can often garner a pretty good idea of someone's personality from their tee-shirt, get a pretty accurate idea of a movie from its trailer and, yes, get the gist of a book from what's on the jacket.

Which brings me to my latest innovation, a revolution in film criticism that is sure to shake that esteemed literary tradition to its very foundations: reviews of movies I haven't seen! Think of the time we poor scribes of the screen will save by not thanklessly ruining our eyes absorbing Hollywood waste product! Why, given the phoned-in" no, fuck it, telegrammed-in nature of most contemporary criticism, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this technique is already widely practiced!

"Listen to me, mister. You're my knight in shining armor... Don't you forget it.  You're going to get back on that horse, and I'm going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we're gonna go, go, go!" - Katharine Hepburn as Ethel Thayer in On Golden Pond (1981).

Yes, folks, it's that time of the summer again, when AFI trots out another not-just-pointless-but-actively-stupid list populated by the same 33 titles of American movies in rotation. Didn't get enough of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? in 1998 when you rented it to satisfy an unnatural urge brought on by the AFI claiming it as one of the 100 best movies ever made in this country? Well, then odds are you'll get to see it again some time, when AFI releases its list of 100 Best Reaction Shots, 100 Best Closeted Gay Movie Stars, or my favorite, 100 Best PG-Rated Films with Pedophilic Undertones.

Nah, that's okay, Reverse Shot isn't going to step up to that bad Scientologist juju... Shit is freaky.

We're behind you 101% Tom! :)

SCHMATTY'S MILLIONS "Monsieur, surely I can't be blamed if this safe opens ITSELF!?"

Why this little delight is so wildly overlooked is one the great mysteries of this rabid cinephile's quarter-century. Existing somewhere in that nebulous zone between post-Stolen Kisses French New Wave doldrums and the emergence of the Hollywood Brats, Remy Mastodon's neat little crime caper undoubtedly managed to pull off a stunt all its own. Anthony Lane, in one of the first reviews he ever wrote--first scribbled onto the back of a pearly white dinner napkin--for his hometown paper, the Delouth Crimson, called Mastodon's film: "A charmer; not only does it make you thrilled to be in a darkened room all by yourself with nothing but the images on the screen wafting off like the vapors of a stringent bloody mary but it also makes you realize that film as an art form shouldn't really be taken that seriously in any context." Touchez, monsieur! When I first stumbled upon Schmatty's Millions, I have to admit what caught my eye was the presence of a not-as-pretty but not-quite-ravaged Alain Delon of 1971 pitted against that most bovine-featured of odd British-Hollywood crossover stars, Glenda Jackson. Fresh off her Oscar win for Women in Love, Jackson certainly brings some of her D.H. Lawrence-inspired randy insouciance to her role as Bethany, a safe-cracker who's as stone-hearted as she is savvy. Quickly falling under the spell of wayward police officer Thierry McFarland (Delon, sexier than mid-period Paul Newman but slightly more of a real-life prick) after she is caught with her pants down (literally) in a scenario too wonderfully hazardous to explain, Bethany slowly in turn seduces Thierry to the dark side. With a muddied, downtrodden L.A. landscape reminiscent of Demy's Model Shop and a jazzed-out, intentionally nauseating score (much of it lifted from The Pawnbroker), Schmatty's Millions really keeps you on your toes, every twist is like a sharp left-hook jab. The scene in which Delon trains Jackson how to use a shotgun while she masturbates furiously is as shocking now as it was then. The stellar supporting cast includes a crestfallen Anna Karina as the titular Schmatty, a proletariat socialite (imagine the contradictions!) whose fortune seems to be up for grabs, and Sal Mineo as Crip, Thierry's eternally pissed off brother--though Mineo's attempt at a French accent leaves a lot to be desired, his propensity to disrobe and show off his Who Killed Teddy Bear-honed physique more than makes up for his dramatic limitations. I heard through the grapevine that a DVD release is scheduled for some time in 2007.|Hopefully it will be soon, or it will fast become more sought-after than The Leopard and The Conformist put together.

One is a product that has the same effect as vigorous masturbation, the other... (insert joke here)

As promised, an update:

Lars (Von Trier) talks often of the size of Afro-American genitals.

-Thomas Vinterberg at the press conference following today's Dear Wendy screening, in response to questions about the film's use of a young black male to represent shoot-first aggression, or as he put it, "men of action". He surmised that Von Trier, the screenwriter, chose a black character in order to be politically incorrect, and also because of envy, saying:

Being a small white animal from a small country in the north, we're envious of beautiful African men. It's in our nature.

Look what nineteenth century thinking the MIFF dragged in.

Manderlay screens tomorrow. Whoo boy.

I kept the otherwise superfluous "27th Annual" in the title to evoke visions of the great 1979 inaugural fest, likely blessed by a doddering Brezhnev and teeming with Estonian, Chinese, and Cuban films (comrades in two hemispheres!). Things have obviously changed, but with sidebar presentations commemorating the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War and the East German director Konrad Wolf, not to mention the packs of military officers that inspect press passes at the gape of every room, there's also some continuity. Of the 17 films in the main competition, 5 have been screened, I've seen 4 (I missed the Chilean entry because it lacked English subtitles - unannounced, of course, before I miraculously arrived in time for the 9:30 am screening), and they've all been well-polished, lifeless turds. Thankfully there are many many other films being screened in the supporting programs, the best being a "Russian Alternative" at the vanguard Cine-Fantom club near Gorky Park. On Saturday night they showed 4, a festival hit at Rotterdam that has no planned release date for Russia, ostensibly due to its needling of the ruling administration and its harsh, stomach-churning vision of contemporary Russia. The film, directed by Ilya Khrzhanovsky and penned by enfant terrible Vladimir Sorokin, is unlike anything else I've ever seen: savage and human, blunt and considered, elaborate and spare, there's no way to summarize or do it justice here. It's the most profane, and possibly the best Russian film I've seen since Alexsei German's Khrustalyov, My Car! Thanks to curator Andrey Plakhov, who also screened Russia's first identifiably gay film, You I Love, on Sunday night, local cinephiles can finally see it for themselves, albeit for one night only.

Screening tomorrow is Thomas Vinterberg's Von Trier-scripted Dear Wendy, in competition, and thus an early front-runner. Assuming the militsia let me in, and the promised English subtitles actually appear, I'll have more to tell in the coming days.

Even in the world of hopeless, puerile nostalgia for all things '80s (in which I'm about to take part), nowhere is this piece of crudely-drawn Hanna Barbera magic ever mentioned. I remember my dad grudgingly taking me to see it when I was about five or six at the now-hollowed-out Route 3 cinemas in Chelmsford, MA. From the size of the audience and the look of distress on my dad's face, I had assumed at the time that it wasn't the most regaled of the bumper crop of animated (hand-drawn, so antiquated!) films of the era. I remember the Jule Styne score (its songs sounded like warmed-over HELLO DOLLY rejects), the truly bizarre Night on Bald Mountain-inspired nightmare sequence (which to this day I wouldn't believe actually happened if not for the Chernobog-esque mountain man at the top of this dazzling poster), the adorable non-talking goat sidekick. and of course, the evil, slimy Sammy Davis Jr. voiced rat (get it?) Heidi encounters when locked in the grubby basement of her wicked aunt's mansion. Regardless of the shitty reviews it received, Heidi's Song was a nearly seminal film for me for some reasons: it was one of the few non-Disney animated films I was taken to (along with TRANSFORMERS THE MOVIE some years later, whose Orson Welles voice-over work even outdid Lorne Greene's stellar effort here), and because it was a film that only my father accompanied me to, my mom probably too busy with grocery shopping or a League of Women Voters meeting. Never have I met anyone else who has seen it andnever have I seen a video copy of this, nor a DVD version, so the film simply exists in vague outline in my memory, almost as if it never quite happened at all. In this sense, the film does indeed stand alone.

Believe it or not, tomorrow morning at 10:30AM I will be settling down for this. Poor trailer or no, I'm still pretty excited. We need to do more coverage of IMAX stuff.

After that, a double feature of My Summer of Love and 5x2. Maybe Batman later.

I had a good time with the new format used in last week's edition, so I think I'll stick with it for a while. It occurred to me that it might also make sense to post the answers at some point, so I'll try to do this on Monday from now on.

Here goes. Pick the real four:

1. Many Still Seek One Final Say on Ending Life
2. What Price Authenticity?
3. An Artistic Eye Wide Open, Observing Odd, Lost Souls
4. When Blurry Lines Divide Fact, Fiction and Family
5. When Astronauts Brief Congress, a Little Levity Goes a Long Way
6. New Jersey Won't Make Deadline to Transfer Mentally Ill Youths
7. Dark Was the Young Knight Battling His Inner Demons
8. Giants Still Healing From Last Year
9. A Corporate Moral Slide on a Wartime Oil Slick
10. Not Ready for Their Close-Up

"Garden State" pointed the way, and Hollywood has heeded the call of Zach Braff--there's a new inobtrusive, innocuous brand of "furniture music" (to borrow a phrase from Antonioni) to lubricate the scene changes and introspective montages of the Dream Factory's latest steaming loafs. Indie rock on, bros!

From rollingstone.com

"A new song by the Flaming Lips, 'Mr. Ambulance Driver,' will be featured on the soundtrack to the upcoming summer comedy, Wedding Crashers, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Packed with indie rock -- including tunes from Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, Bloc Party and Spoon, and a rare early track by Jimmy Eat World -- the CD is due three days before the movie's July 15th release."

Can he be stopped?

"If I had never seen a film by D.W. Griffith, Antonioni, Ozu, John Ford, Vincente Minnelli or Prince, I might have been impressed by performance artist Miranda July's Cannes award-winning directorial debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know." - Armond White

Where are the ladies, Armond? Or is this list of great directors intended to sit cozily alongside your definitive survey of the eight or nine great female performances given to date that you cobbled together while attacking Charlize Theron in Monster.

LOS ANGELES, June 14 - An urgent meeting got under way in Universal City on Tuesday, as the executives who made the star-crossed film Cinderella Man mulled the miserable question of the day: What went wrong?

So begins this unintentionally revealing article from the NY Times. I haven't seen this Manbiscuit wannabe yet, but I find this line of reasoning from an exec at Universal to be particularly troubling:

Mr. Shmuger noted somewhat bitterly that he repeatedly heard the complaint from cinephiles that there are no serious, adult dramas on studio schedules. Now that there was one, he said, moviegoers did not go.

...So, in celebration of the release of that new, dreary Batman brood-fest, here's a still from some weird Turkish Spiderman movie where Spidey is like, a cat burglar baddie or something. Hopefully this will kick start some dialogue.

I'm in Seattle currently for the film festival, but the pickings seem surprisingly slim for a fest that shows hundreds of films over the course of three weeks. Granted, trekking between the many venues (this a longtime stronghold of Landmark Theatres which has eight houses here ranging from the gargantuan aquamarine movie-palace The Neptune to the Quad-sized screens of its tenplex Metro) without access to a car may be playing a large role in my desire to stay outside and stroll around the downtown area of a gorgeous city I've never been to before. As a whole, the festival has a good selection, and seems extremely well-run, but I may just be here on an off couple of days for films. Still, I'm hoping to catch Police Beat tomorrow which I've heard good things about, and Gus Van Sant's latest Tarr cherrypick Last Days is the closing night film, so I'm shooting for that as well.

Also, Revenge of the Sith is playing commercially at the immense Cineramadome, so if I'm gonna take the plunge, this might be the place for it.

A little late this week, but I thought it'd be nice to switch things up for our seventh installment. Instead of matching titles to movies, below is a list drawn from the entirety of today's NY Times and your challenge is pick the real movie review titles. Good luck.

1. Action Hero Travels Light and Often Takes the Bus
2. The Appetites Are Nearing the Gate
3. Citigroup to Pay $2 Billion in Enron Lawsuit
4. For Better or Worse, Even on a Battlefield
5. A Sliver of Prairie Still Untamed
6. A Church Where Birth Runs Out of Control
7. A Cursed Teenager Turns 90. Let the Adventures Begin.
8. Portraits of Life and Fantasy That Embody the Artists
9. Fungus Fatal to Mosquito May Aid Global War on Malaria
10. Like Trains, Crossing but Never Touching

This last Wednesday, June 9th, I went by Kim's Video on St. Mark's Place after work, as I usually do, to return a rental (in this case the execrable 1977 Evel Knieval hagiography Viva Knieval!--look for the review in an upcoming Reverse Shot) and to pick through CDs. There was a makeshift paper sign on the door, 'Closed- Come Back Later,' which I didn't think much of; I figured that a disgruntled ex-employee had hacked the computer again, went on my way, and that was that.

Well, this morning I discovered that it had been no garden variety closing. It was a police raid; the store was in trouble for selling bootlegs, and employees had been scooted off to jail in the fracas. I stopped in later and learned from a friend on the inside that the complaining party was none other than Columbia Records, incensed by some illegal CD-Rs or another, which had prompted the legal action. The result? Three clerks and two managers arrested, and Kim's extensive stock of illicit, pirated treasures pulled from the shelf, at least for the time being.

I was a little surprised by my reaction to this news. Full disclosure: I'm one of those disgruntled ex-employees, having served a full year as assistant manager at the now-deceased Ave. A Kim's. In my tenure I had a firsthand seat to experience the complete corruption of Kim's upper management, who bear comparison only to certain Soviet Bloc dictatorships for sheer ineptitude and venality. I'd received the ludicrously scanty under-the-table pay envelopes, helped to circulate the urban legends about the dapper, imperious Mr. Kim's alleged ties to the Korean mob, and I'd spat "good riddance" when Ave. A closed its doors for the last time. Sure, I still made the rounds to Kim's, but only as a necessary evil.

But now, as the boom has suddenly, inevitably lowered on Mr. Kim's law-flaunting empire, I'm not so sure. I find myself thinking back to when I first visited New York City five years previous, coming from Southwestern Ohio, a barren wasteland of Blockbusters and Hollywoods, and to when I first walked through the doors on St. Marks to find odd, obscure titles--for so long only figments of my imagination--suddenly very palpable, rentable realities. It's easy to take the place for granted now, but at that one moment, Kim's was a paradise fulfilled.

And, though I know the circumstances are entirely different, I find myself thinking about being a teenager in Cincinnati, Ohio circa 1994, and hearing about the Pink Pyramid gay bookstore downtown being charged with pandering obscenity by Hamilton County's crusading anti-porn Sheriff Simon Leis--for selling copies of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo or 120 Days of Sodom! And I think about the mom-and-pop video stores back home, the ones with racks of weird, moldy horror flicks, that only managed to keep pace with the relentless Blockbuster/ Hollywood oligarchy by maintaining well-stocked "Adult" sections. I think to the ailing repertory houses in Washington D.C. that switched their fare to hardcore during the day so that they could play A Matter of Life and Death at night (to quote Eminem [which I probably shouldn't do]: "Will Smith don't gotta curse to sell records but I do/ so fuck him and fuck you too"). And I think, finally, to the stories about Mr. Kim, possible mobster and definite asshole, who once rented copies of WR: Mysteries of the Organism out of cardboard boxes in his laundromat in the late 80's. And I can't find any kind of triumphant comeuppance in this whole mess anymore.

Bootlegging and artist's rights are thorny issues, and I don't pretend to have the brains or the facts to deal with either of them just now. What I do know, and what concerns me, is that you'll never once hear a goddamn thing about the police raiding Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. With good reason, yes; both franchises tow the line very nicely, trimming their 'NC-17' titles to a perfectly palatable 'R,' paying a respectable minimum wage, and never, gracious me, never! sullying their shelves with a release that's anything less than 100% studio-approved legit. And from sea to shining sea their clerks will--without any of the storied Kim's surliness--offer up the same flavorless selection of New Releases, a few stolid, dependable Classics, and, should you be in a metropolitan area of 100,000 or more, a whole shelf worth of Foreign.

Short of a renewal of trustbusting, these chains will never get in trouble for one very good reason: they don't give a shit what's on their shelves and they've got gobs of money to back up their indifference. Kim's Video, regardless of its failings, does care. And slavedriving sunuvabitch though Mr. Kim may be, let's not lose sight of the fact that he's gone to all ends of the earth to offer the best possible selection to his clientele, legality be damned. There's something in this which demands, if not our love, than at least our respect; to be a proper friend to the movies in this day and age requires a healthy distaste for the law. So! I say, without hesitation, long live the disrepute of the cinema! Viva Mr. Kim! And, finally, to paraphrase the title of an album by the UK hardcore punk band Conflict: "Only stupid bastards support Columbia"

Whenever I hear of the death of an actor I had admired greatly, I'm always stunned by the fact that I knew little to nothing of their sickness. Of course, it makes sense that this sort of information wouldn't be at our fingertips in the press. But when I found out last night during a casual dinner on the couch at a friend's house that Anne Bancroft had died, I sucked in my breath with an alarmed gasp. We'll undoubtedly be inundated with "Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson" headlines and "Miracle Worker" clips for the next couple of weeks. And her grander, cornier, more emote-heavy later roles (Agnes of God, The Turning Point) have gotten a few shout-outs already.

But the casual Bancroft fan shouldn't forget that this tough old bird, great New York stage actress and B-movie staple of the 50s, has been elevating movies in the smallest of parts, with the slightest of nuances, for years and years since. Her smokey old card-sharp in the weirdo Harold Becker serial-killer/medical malpractice thing Malice; that lovely-grotesque Miss Havisham in the Hawke-Paltrow Great Expectations. Most distressing of all is not that we won't be treated to The Graduate: 40 Years Later anytime soon, but that now my dream of a sequel to Jodie Foster's 1995 masterwork Home for the Holidays is now as good as gone. Like Before Sunset, it would have to take place over the course of one day, as its predecessor, and exist not for financial reasons but because the Larson Family deserves at least another 2 hours of screen time. Bancroft's bewigged Mrs. Larson was so lived-in, so awash with anxieties, neuroses, and her signature performative grandiosity, that it's a character I wished one day to return to, to see where life had brought her. An annual watch at my household, Home for the Holidays never ceases to amaze in its grasping of American family mundanities and hypocrisies; in its own microcosmic way, it could be one of the great politicial films of the Clinton era, a rebuttal to conservative "famly values" punditry.

And Bancroft herself brought more compassion and contradiction to her role than could have been on the page. Rent the film, now or at Thanksgiving, and savor each crease of doubt on her forehead, each glimmer of inner warmth as it spreads across her face even while trying to maintain matriarchal fussbudgetry, each overly scripted malapropism expressed with unembarrassing dedication. This year's viewing of Home for the Holidays will have even more of a tinge of melancholy and bittersweetness than usual: what always seemed like a film gorgeously without closure will now be something more conclusive. I will finally have to say goodbye.

bam's current "village voice best of 2004" series serves a valuable purpose in that it allows me to catch up on films that i refused to pay ten dollars to see last year. so i saw the manchurian candidate last night. i didn't read too many reviews of the film when it was first released, so i don't know if anybody pointed out the most glaring error of this missed opportunity of a movie (especially in regard to what it could have pointed out about the current political landscape): in the original manchurian shaw is the programmed assassin who is forced to kill the presidential candidate so that his mother's second husband -- a milquetoast mccarthy-esque senator under her thumb as a communist-controlled puppet -- can ascend the throne as vice-presidential candidate. but in the remake shaw is both a programmed assassin and the senator/vice-presidential candidate. this makes no sense because as a vp candidate shaw would be under surveillance twenty-four hours a day by the scoop-obsessed press and an adoring public (there might also be his own handlers, pr people, bodyguards, etc., but i'll put that aside for now, assuming along the lines of the film's own logic that they're all in on the conspiracy). the remake tries to get around this problem by making [SPOILER WARNING -- i learned my lesson after my high tension review goof] marco the patsy, but the scene in which shaw kills senator jordan and jocelyne is rendered completely ridiculous because of this plot tweak. not only that, but because the script never establishes a relationship between the two, shaw's killing of jocelyne is hardly as poignant as the original, when shaw and her are about to ride off into the sunset before mommy sends him off to perform his evil deed. who can forget the shot in the original when shaw, after killing jocelyn, walks away from the murders still brainwashed but unknowingly crying thick tears of pain? the only thing i liked about the new manchurian was streep's performance which, while over the top, was perfectly creepy during the near-incest scene.

btw, i'll be getting around to that baillie/marker comparison soon, i'm sure yr all trembling in anticipation...

Is here. Maybe for the special edition DVD of Closer someone will digitally remove Natalie Portman's entire performance.

You've shown all of us how to dream again, to be children again; from film lovers everywhere, "May the force be with you!" And let me congratulate you for having so craftily concealed your hefty waddle (is that a goiter, George?) behind that rakish salt-and-pepper beard. Here's to another six episodes!
Or might I suggest that you have another much-beloved fantasy franchise that's been let to lay fallow for far too long?

'Fess up - who's going to see Cinderella Man?

This week is the juciest we've had in ages:

1. Mean Girls (Some Are Even Fascists)
2. Struggling With Nature and One Another
3. Often Serious, Often Not, Teaching Rock His Way
4. When California Started Sliding on Little Wheels
5. Roll the Fairy Tale, Fade to the Fists
6. Try to Help a Stranger and This Is His Thanks
7. Friends 4ever No Matter Who Wears the Pants
8. Struggles of a Working Mom and Her Daughter in Tel Aviv

1. Or
2. Caterina in the Big City
3. Apres Vous
4. The White Diamond
5. Rock School
6. Lords of Dogtown
7. Cinderella Man
8. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants

A particularly unsettling lobby card from Robert Downey, Sr.'s 'Up the Academy' (formerly 'Mad Magazine's Up the Academy')

A lot of people (or at least the half-dozen who give a shit) might think we Reverse Shotters a relentlessly negative bunch, the way we heap abuse on the autopilot prose of so many of our critical contemporaries. But we by no means take delight in playing killjoy, which is why it is with utmost pleasure that we draw our reader's attention to the emergence of a powerful new critical voice. "nswfzf," writing on 'Super Mario Bros." in that most egalitarian of forums, the imdb.com user comments, displays a robust, idiosyncratic prose that seems to have sprung from nowhere, fully-formed, like some Olympian. If there is a greater joy than watching the fluid maneuvers of nswfzf's spry mind, I don't know what it might be--to watch his words whoop and wheel across the screen is nothing short of a revelation:

Greatest Movie Since Ever., 24 September 2004

Author: nswfzf

When did we learn to be so critical to movies, and stop having fun with them? Movies like this, Mortal Kombat, Independence Day, etc are my examples of the greatest movies. These movies set out to be totally entertaining from the get go, and succeed. Sure it doesn't take much work, but who cares? Why waste time worrying about plot flaws? Aren't movies generally released for our entertainment?

I got an idea, I'll goto the movies and enjoy the entertainment, and you sit at home with an 8 page essay written by a famous lawyer and analyze it. We should both be happy then.

To the point of entertainment, this movie is the greatest. I do not exaggerate when I say I've seen the movies over fifty times. Still rolling with laughter at Luigi's use of the term 'buiscet-head', to counter 'over-weening rogue'.

Of course, we must differentiate between movies and film. Film is serious Cinema, a true art. Some movies breach the difference between the two categories (Training Day), but this one certainly does not at all. If there was a line with 'movie' on one end and 'film' on the other, this would be all the way on the movie end. So while I would say this is the greatest movie, its the worst film. The greatest film is Paris, Texas.

I would like to address consistency issues, mainly dealing with the impossiblity of de-evolution and little things like lizards having hair, or a shard of a meteorite merging dimensions. This is clearly a FANTASY world, and anything can be changed in such a world, why try to apply real standards and knowledge to it? For example, people were complaining Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, that Mat Cauthon (One of the three main characters) learns to juggle 6 balls at once way too fast, that mastering such a feat takes 20 years in real life or something like that. But its a FANTASY world, RJ can dictate any set of deft learning he likes. People who consider themselves intelligent have a bad habit of hunting for flaws in everything, but why? Is that proof of civility?

I wont bore you further, this is a good movie though, I recommend it to anyone who likes to have fun.

There you have it, folks. "Paris, Texas." Thank you, and God bless.