Nonfat, black male in late-30s/ early-40s dresses as fat, old black woman. Stop making this kind of movie, please. Thx.



And no, you're not off the hook, buddy...

As much fun as it to take a cheap shot at Michael Winterbottom here and there, we at Reverse Shot like to believe we’re willing to stow our biases safely away when necessary and offer an olive branch of credit where credit is due. (Though, even if Todd Solondz turned out L’Argent, I’d still call it a piece of shit.) To that end, I’ll offer hearty kudos to MW, the hardest working doofus in show business, for his Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, a surprising, admirably goofy, low-key, lower-case d-econstruction of the literary adaptation that’s more than a little palate cleansing in this fallow season of post-holiday bloat. Personal fetish for movies about moviemaking aside, Tristram Shandy is light, largely lacking in pretension (all the more laudable for its knowing winks and tweaks of the form) and in spite of its many digressions and interludes, seems really intent on pushing something of the spirit of Laurence Sterne’s novel. It may not be 8 ½ or Beware of a Holy Whore (even if the film does bend over backwards to reference both), but beggars can’t be choosers.

Is it annoyingly hyperactive from time to time? Yes, of course—it’s Michael Winterbottom, that comes with the territory. Does perhaps too much rest on one’s appreciation (or lack) of Steve Coogan? For sure: Coogan is, after all, Tristram Shandy, the nominal star, as the narrative and its characters constantly remind us. It’s a flawed, overstuffed, jumpy film that will probably irritate as many as it pleases. But, I relish a little movie like Tristram Shandy, which features characters that are markedly human, full of faults and offhanded warmth, clashing impulses and conflicting burdens, especially as I sit with the first episode of The Apprentice, a “reality show” lacking any semblance of humanity, blaring over my shoulder. Trump & Co. may be “real people” but they might as well be automatons; their utter unmodulated venality is something I’m forced to acknowledge must exist—I’m watching it after all—but call me naïve if I find pleasant recognition in Winterbottom’s worldview even buried under layers of artifice as it is. (Did I actually just say that?) He may openly reference Fassbinder and Bresson, but what’s he’s pulled off here is a truly Rohmer-esque bait-and-switch. (Did I just say that too?) Tristram Shandy’s a movie about making a movie of a book on the surface only and features a payoff of surprising warmth from the man who last left us bluntly juxtaposing frigid sex with frigid scenery.

Perhaps best of all: given that Winterbottom’s about as likely to knock one out of the park as a second rate relief pitcher, I won’t feel the need to see another one of his movies for at least another five years.

And another point goes to Goliath. In case anyone was holding out hope that the art film was alive and kicking, and that the increasing difficulty of getting solid and timely distribution for great international cinema was just a blip on the radar, and that Anthony Kaufman’s recent article in the New York Times was mere movie-geek alarmism, the announcement this week that Wellspring was drying up was just another sock to the sour gut. As most in the know now know, Genius, the parent company of Wellspring’s theatrical distribution, majority owned by Weinstein Company, has cut off all theatrical release in favor of focusing on the DVD market. Ten fine people will lose their jobs, and more importantly, in order to cater to the straight-to-DVD ethos that is allegedly expanding the accessibility of foreign and art cinema, there will be even less chance for many of the world’s masterpieces to see the light of a projector. If this doesn’t seem alarming to everyone—especially for the cinephiles stuck out in the middle of Indiana where the closest movie theater is about 90 minutes up the road—then imagine the announcement being made in the Sixties/Seventies. Imagine being told that Last Year at Marienbad, Zabriskie Point, and Knife in the Water would be skipping the “theatrical leg” of their tour and going straight to late-night TV; imagine, say, Janus Films in the Seventies snatching up The Mother and the Whore, Chloe in the Afternoon, or Walkabout for their “greater good” and throwing them on some Z-channel somewhere. Severely cropping their scope, yet making them widely available for any Netflix subscriber, the reliance on DVD has recently seen the odd occurrence of Alain Resnais’s Not on the Lips, a luxurious big-screen musical treat if you happened to have gone to Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater one night back in 04, becoming a straight-to-video title. Movies are getting harder and harder to see; but now with the rampant rationalization that accessibility will breed art-appreciation 101 in the living room, there seems to be no turning back.

Wellspring, for the most part, has been truly what its title suggests for the past half-decade or so: an oasis in the desert of moribund film distribution, doing its damndest to help the latest Tsai Ming-liang, Bruno Dumont, Godard, Claire Denis, or Techiné to see the inside of one of those antiquated structures called movie houses. “Genius remains committed to the independent film industry and we are moving forward with indie releases. We're just going to handle them in a different manner than we did before,” Genius Products CEO Trevor Drinkwater said in a statement. Honestly, we know that no one cares about “art cinema” unless it reaffirms our own values (Brokeback, Good Night and Good Luck) or treats history with a chuckle and a safe distance (Motorcycle Diaries, Benigni crap), but Jesus, I can’t imagine a world in which Wellspring hadn’t helped bring Russian Ark, Twentynine Palms , Les Destinées, The Brown Bunny, Notre musique, Friday Night, or Kings and Queen to a theater near you. Furthermore, the new move by Genius will be thoroughly eradicating all possibilities of risk, which is exactly what was taken by Wellspring when showing their devotion to Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Crimson Gold, Father and Son, and this year’s underseen masterpiece The Intruder, none of which ever really had a chance to turn a profit, but were so visually entrancing and thematically challenging that they felt like confrontations with the unknown. I cannot imagine ever being moved by the sheer immensity of the imagery in these films from the ratty couch in my apartment. If popped in the DVD machine, could Denis’s The Intruder ever have washed over me with the confounding beauty of a dream? Could Goodbye, Dragon Inn ever have forced me to question my relationship with the moving image had I not been sitting in the theater? Would the single-take spontaneity of Russian Ark have transported me to another time, place, and world, literally, had I been able to readily pause the image?

But I don’t just want to make another glorious paean to the movies; I wish to tribute Wellspring, and all other distribution companies daring enough to take on projects they know will be a tough sell but which deserve not just a fighting chance but to be seen the way they were intended. And seeing as how film criticism focuses primarily on the theatrical, these films will become increasingly hard to promote and drum up interest in from mainstream critical establishment. Though we may have had our slight difference in the past (Palindromes, Tarnation, anyone?) we would like to thank Wellspring for fighting the good fight for so long.

I spent maybe the worst night I’ve ever spent at the movies last night, one of those outings that makes your eyes feel soiled, makes you want to ensconce yourself in ballet and leave this kid’s stuff alone. I like to think getting booted from my first (and likely only, extremely low-level) “industry” job that very same afternoon had nothing to do with my sour mood; I’ve progressed far enough in life and own enough blazers that, whenever the wolves get to the door, I’m confident I’ll find someone to pay me a living wage to nudge a cursor around an Excel spreadsheet. Of course getting shitcanned, even from a job you hate, is never pleasant—I’d liken it to being shot down by a girl you’re not particularly attracted to, but hit on from some sense of bored obligation. Nobody likes to feel unwanted. Anyway, maybe the job did have something to do with the malaise with which I’ve been seeing the Seventh Art lately: as product, as widgets to move from point A to point B, as cultural flotsam.

But I got myself excited at the prospect of spending the better part of two weeks in sweatpants, had dinner with some friends, and was revved-up to catch something in the theater. Date Movie, specifically. This was, with the benefit of hindsight, obviously a bad idea, but I have a more-than-usually high tolerance for piss-poor Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker retreads, if only for the head-buzzed feeling to be gotten from buying a ticket for something unfathomably dumb-looking—I’ve gone places in the Leslie Nielsen filmography most fear to tread. And as no-one in my party could figure out from the ad what Date Movie was specifically trying to spoof, beyond the obvious Napoleon Dynamite reference, we were understandably intrigued.

Now my life is based around surrounding myself, inasmuch as I can, with things that I love or at least am pleasantly frustrated by; I limit my TV to professional sports and an occasional "Gilmore Girls," prune my CD rack regularly, and try to keep my movie-watching, outside of a sense of semi-professional obligation, honed toward my own conception of truth, grace, beauty, etc. So getting a full blast of what really constitutes contemporary American popular culture in the face can be a stunner—I often lose sight of the vast seas of shit that my little dinghy of individual obsessions is adrift in, and when it crashes through my porthole, as last night, it’s pretty debilitating. By the time I staggered onto the sidewalk I was prime recruitment fodder for Al Qaeda, a sworn enemy of the Western world that fostered such sickness.

I learned about the following exciting entertainment products upon plunking into my $10.75 seat: some show (or movie, I really couldn’t tell) where two tanned-orange teenaged girls (one with the stage name “Jojo”) become friends with a mermaid named Aquamarine; some thing on NBC called “Conviction,” about young, sexually-active New York City District Attorneys, which was mashed-up with a music video by a piano-fondling twat with a trollish forehead named Gabe Dixon whose ditty featured the most insipidly “uplifting” chorus I’ve heard in recent memory (“All will be well/ You can ask me how but only time will tell”); a new loaf pinched by ever-herpetic unfunnyman Robin Williams called RV; some rancid mumbo-jumbo romcom featuring Lindsey Lohan Inc., Just My Luck; and another factory-line chunk of charmless CGI where Hollywood power player-voiced animals make badly-dated movie references “for the adults.” Do they really need to keep naming these things? Just give them serial numbers.

On to the show! Starlet Alyson Hannigan dons a fat suit, and references are made to some recent-ish pop culture phenomena, including My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Hitch, “MTV’s Pimp My Ride,” Bridget Jones’ Diary, Star Wars, and very possibly some other goodies that slipped by me. I say references, not parodies; the general consensus between the writers seemed to be that achieving brand recognition from the audience was a joke in and of itself. We filed out of the theatre around the time that Hannigan shouted “Bumfight!” and started to wallop a trenchcoat-wearing hobo—the homage, if you missed it, is to a briskly-selling DVD series for which a few camcorder-packing San Diego-based jerkoffs packaged footage of homeless dudes taking twenty-dollar bills to whale on each other. The idea that this little internet phenom has made a cultural blip sufficient that it can be counted on to get a Pavlovian in-the-know titter from a teenaged crowd is depressing in-and-of itself, but the “minds” behind Date Movie don’t stop there. What should score this outburst of violence but—oh, the ironic counterpoint—The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe in Magic”!

Now, I really, really like this song. I liked it in In America, one of the most tender, human movies of recent years, where it was the unabashedly exuberant soundtrack of a first-glimpsed midtown Manhattan and the spree of potential it represented. I liked it when I watched my cousin Mai-Liis cross the floor at the dance party after her Bat Mitzvah, and it played. “Do you believe in magic/ In a young girl’s heart?” Man, do I love it—I can’t think of anything that better represents how intoxicatingly good and sweet-natured and glowing pop can be than this radio stand-by. And I can’t think of anything that better represents the sickest and saddest and most soul-shriveled uses mass media can be put to than “Bumfights” and the hiccup of notoriety it’s received. And that you, Date Movie auteurs Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, would see fit to juxtapose the two, thereby forever fusing them in my memory... Well. If I ever, by whatever strange turn of events, should be in the same room as either one of you, I will kick your teeth down your throat.

My theater-mates and I shared a curiosity about The Matador, so we headed upstairs to catch the 10:00 after we ducked out of Date Movie—if stills are to be believed, we missed a LOLocaust send-up of Say Anything. More new trailers, these intended for a more sophisticated demographic: V for Vendetta set in a dystopian (yawn) future and based on a graphic novel widely regarded by a bunch of dudes with stunted inner lives. Some British-accented gunk for those who need a patina of respectability on their twaddle (including a movie about a dude swimming the English Channel—“The story of one man who taught an entire nation to dream for the magical stars”-type of shit). Michael Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland, be-suited and wagging pistols around in the behind-the-scenes for a movie I’ll never, ever watch.

And guess what? The Matador’s a piece of shit too, with a self-pitying, critic-friendly “deconstructive” performance by actor/producer Pierce “Take me Seriously” Brosnan sporting a “Magnum P.I.” ‘stache, and Greg Kinnear delivering his “Kinnear Special” schtick at indie cut rates. Brosnan, by the way, is a hitman, probably the most over-represented occupation on celluloid in the last two decades outside of serial killing; there are several garish “Mod” theatrical gels so you know you’re in the hands of a real movie-mad artist, and I’m sure something quirky happens somewhere along the line—my friend leaned over, said “There’s no way I’m going to enjoy this,” and nailed our collective feeling, so we split.

And here’s the kicker: when I was waiting for the train, I realized I’d left a book in theater. Some days, I tell ‘ya.

Okay, okay, so the Crash bashing is getting a little tired? I still can't help taking a way-too-easy swipe at Roger Ebert for the worst attempt at a logical argument this side of a Pulitzer Prize: "Dickensian narratives are contrived and caricature-laden; Crash is contrived and caricature-laden; ergo, Crash is Dickensian!" (Note to Roger Ebert: Just because Gangs of New York was overlong and narratively incoherent, no one went around calling it Proustian). Still, most distressing about Crash winning Oscars isn't its general badness (hello Ron Howard!) so much as the persistent bias Hollywood has for honoring lousy "race" films made by and for white people (we've moved from "Miss Daisy! I'm tryin' to drive you to the store!" to "We just ran over a Chinaman") while truly great films like Charles Burnett's To Sleep with Anger pass to obscurity.

But much as there is to bitch about, I'm happy to report that Sanaa Hamri's Something New has quietly dropped into theaters and given us a real alternative to Haggis-fever: Hamri's subtle melodrama casually reinvents the All that Heaven Allows/Far from Heaven formula to offer a fresh, sophisticated take on race and racism -- as they're lived and as they're felt -- in contemporary L.A. Kenya (Sanaa Lathan) is a beautiful, hard-working, privileged, and successful black woman who finds herself a little lovelorn, so concerned with finding her romantic ideal that she can't deal with romantic reality. When she slowly falls for her sexy white gardener -- fine, "landscape architect" -- Brian (Simon Baker), she finds herself torn between her feelings and the social pressure she receives from all directions. If we know where this is going -- and let's face it, we probably do -- it's still a pretty nice ride: beautifully acted, intelligently shot, and well put together.

Most remarkable of all, though, is the film's insistence on not simplifying the complexities of interracial romance, as it asks both lovers to make some hard realizations: Kenya must learn that social approval can never take the place of emotional fulfillment, and Brian must shake his naive assumption that race somehow doesn't matter and accept the fact that being with Kenya demands dealing with race and racism as facts of social experience. Using the most conventional of genres, Something New offers more insight, minute to minute, than all of Crash and Monster's Ball combined. Dickensian it isn't, but I'm betting Douglas Sirk would be impressed.

"The reason we believe we have a great chance of actually winning the best picture Oscar is because people are passionate about the movie," said Tom Ortenberg, president of Lions Gate Films, which released Crash. "With all due respect to the other best-picture nominees, all of which are terrific and of great merit, there's a sense that people admire and respect the other nominees, but they are passionate about Crash."

As I can best remember them, here are quotes from the possible Best Picture–winning Crash, which could end up giving American Beauty a run for its money for most quotably awful Oscar winner of the past decade.

“It’s a good cloak, daddy.” (Angelic little HISPANIC girl, after jumping in front of her father to shield him with her invisible cloak from the bullet of the PERSIAN shopkeeper who came to kill him because he didn’t fix his door well enough)

“Mom, I can't talk right now, I'm having sex with a white woman!” (Don Cheadle, a BLACK, who is screwing Jennifer Esposito, who in the film is actually a LATINA, from Puerto Rico, when interrupted by a phone call from his, presumably BLACK, mother)

“You're the best friend I've got!” (Miss Daisy, old JEW broad to her NEGRO cab driver, Hoak…er, uh WHITE rich bitch Sandra Bullock to her GUATEMALAN (?) housemaid)

“Shaniqua. Big fucking surprise that is!” (WHITE CRACKER cop Matt Dillon to Loretta Devine’s BLACK social worker Shaniqua, upon finding out that her name is Shaniqua, which is usually of a name used by those who are darker)

“I am angry all the time... and I don't know why!” (WHITE rich bitch Bullock coming clean about her soul-crushing unhappiness)

“I can’t believe I just pulled you from a burning car wreck the day after I illegally put my hand on your stank cooch. Isn’t it ironic?” (CRACKER cop to reassuringly hot BLACK woman)

I let the words speak for themselves.

(Instead of giving Crash any more face time, I've included a pic from some upcoming teen movie about a mermaid. Sweet.)

In typical fashion, White skewers von Trier's latest (which I haven't seen yet) culminating in this lance straight to the heart:

"Malick’s distorted American history also contrasts Terrence Malick’s beneficent The New World, perverting Malick’s artsiness and grace."

You may think there's a typo in there, but keep reading until it makes sense.

UPDATE: We Are Back

Hello loyal readers. As some of you may have noticed our main site is currently taking a bit of a break. We're working on this with all the necessary technicians and hope to have things resolved shortly. Our apologies.

And for those slavering for our 2005 year in review, you won't have much longer to wait. We promise.

Annapolis (PG-13, 108 min.) 11:15am |4:55pm |10:30pm
Big Momma's House 2 (PG-13, 99 min.) 11:10am |1:40pm |4:35pm |7:10pm |10:05pm |12:30am
Brokeback Mountain (R, 134 min.) 10:50am |1:50pm |4:50pm |7:50pm |10:50pm
Capote (R, 109 min.) 11:40am |2:20pm |5:00pm |7:40pm |10:30pm
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (PG, 125 min.) 1:50pm |7:25pm
Curious George (G, 82 min.) 11:30am |2:00pm |4:30pm |7:00pm |9:30pm |11:45pm
Final Destination 3 (R, 115 min.) 10:45am |1:00pm |3:15pm |5:30pm |8:00pm |10:20pm |12:30am
Firewall (PG-13, 100 min.) 11:45am |2:15pm |4:45pm |7:30pm |10:10pm |12:30am
Good Night, and Good Luck (PG, 100 min.) 12:00pm |2:20pm |5:05pm |7:25pm |10:00pm |12:20am
The Matador(2005) (R, 96 min.) 12:40pm |3:10pm |5:35pm |8:05pm |10:45pm
Match Point(R, 124 min.) 11:20am |2:30pm |5:20pm |8:20pm |11:20pm
Memoirs of a Geisha (PG-13, 144 min.) 12:20pm |3:30pm
Mrs. Henderson Presents(R, 103 min.) 11:15am |2:05pm |5:10pm |7:45pm |10:40pm
Munich (R, 164 min.) 6:40pm |10:15pm
Nanny McPhee (PG, 98 min.) 11:30am |2:00pm |4:35pm |7:05pm |9:40pm
The New World (PG-13, 150 min.) 3:40pm |9:45pm
The Pink Panther (2006) (PG, 92 min.) 12:15pm |2:45pm |5:00pm |7:15pm |10:00pm |12:20am
Something New (PG-13, 100 min.) 12:30pm |3:00pm |5:50pm |8:30pm |11:00pm
Syriana (R, 126 min.) 12:35pm |6:45pm
Underworld: Evolution (R, 106 min.) 11:05am |1:35pm |4:30pm |7:20pm |9:50pm |12:20am
Walk the Line (PG-13, 136 min.) 12:10pm |3:50pm |6:50pm |10:35pm
When a Stranger Calls (PG-13, 100 min.) 11:00am |1:10pm |3:30pm |5:40pm |8:10pm |10:25pm

Wow, aside from '05 Academy holdovers it is a real shitfest out there. The studios couldn't even muster up a half-dead romantic comedy for the weekend before Valentine's Day. Sheesh. If I do venture out, it'll be to see The New World again.

Oh, and a special "Fuck You" to Harrison Ford and all the assholes behind Firewall for ruining a perfectly good evening of televegetation with incessant commercials that invariably raised my blood pressure and caused much yelling at the screen. Guys, you can slap all the quotes from Moron Smith CBS Networks on the ads you like - but this thing is D.O.A.

Who's excited for Eight Below?

From the director of Splash, Backdraft, and The Bad Version of the Grinch, and the writer of A Beautiful Mind and Batman and Robin (“You’re not putting me in da coolah!”), comes a film that will make you question everything you ever thought you knew about Christianity.

Seriously, look at these assholes.

Great news for anyone who likes the medium of film and happens to live in New York: Victor Erice’s spellbinding, endlessly inventive, and seriously disquieting Spirit of the Beehive has been held over at downtown Manhattan’s Film Forum until February 16. Thanks to a lovely new Janus Films rerelease print, I was able to fully experience the enveloping tones of Erice’s seminal 1970s European art film, and even more extraordinarily, without knowing much of anything about it besides its recurring placement on classic Spanish cinema essays and best-of lists. Erice sets his camera on the parched landscape of a small Castillian village in 1940, directly following the Spanish Civil War, specifically on two small girls, Isabel and Ana in the days (weeks?) following their viewing of James Whale’s Frankenstein, brought to their town’s small movie house. Via daily minutiae and fragmented images, we slowly realize that the girls’ home is a fractured one, the distance between their father and mother (rarely seen in the same shot) exacerbated by the desolation of their location and postwar environs.

But Erice goes further, digging into more than mere dysfunction, getting at some sort of ineffable otherness permeating the daily rituals of the two small girls, who seem literally haunted by monsters, both literal (Frankenstein himself makes an eerie lakeside appearance) and not so literal (Isabel’s penchant for frightening the younger Ana begins to seem truly disturbed, sending chills not just through the little girl but this viewer; what has possessed these children?). Nearly every shot is stunning yet never so aestheticized that it moves away from the grain and grit of the family’s earthbound plain; it’s a baffling, irreducibly odd experience that somehow by its abrupt ending reaches an inexplicably emotional clarity. Erice, who has only made one feature per decade since the 70s and only three altogether, is something like Spain’s answer to Malick (both Beehive and Badlands premiered in 1973): unbowdlerized artistic statements made somewhere outside of the confines of monetary expectation, invested at looking at the world around us in alarmingly new ways, and existing within historical context yet defying simple readings at every turn.

We can’t stop writing (and reading) about The New World: today’s required article is Reverse Shot’s own staff writer extraordinaire Nick Pinkerton’s awesome new piece on Malick’s masterpiece in the new issue of Stop Smiling, which both rightfully ascends the film to a heavenly plane and drags its short-sighted critics down to the sweaty bog of idiocy from whence they came. Watch out Zacharek, Hoberman, and Stephen (lol) Hunter: prepare to be dropkicked.

After 10 days' worth of blogs, dispatches and emails home to friends and loved ones, I'm prettyfed up with finding clever ways to explain that I'm in Holland. So, simply: I'm working at the International Film Festival Rotterdam as a "Trainee" —that is, a working critic under 30 years of age who needs deep-pocketed Europeans to pay his way abroad.

My main responsibility has been advising the FIPRESCI jury in selecting the winner of the International Critics' Prize. I can't discuss the as-of-right-now embargoed results. But I can write about the films I've seen here, the best of which, surely, is American director Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy.

I have not read the novel, by John Raymond, upon which the film is based, nor have I seen Reichardt's first feature, River of Grass. And yet after watching this film, I have a strong sense of both as artists. Raymond's story is about two men, Mark (Daniel London), and Kurt (Will Oldham) who embark on a weekend hiking trip in Oregon's Cascade mountains. Mark is a father-to-be who looks vaguely uncomfortable in his skin and blasts Air America on his car radio; Kurt, who looks several years older, has a wildman beard and appears to be unemployed. They might be stock figures (the sell-out and the wizened hippie); they're not.

Another critic has already written that he fears discussing Old Joy for fear of overwhelming through his expressions of admiration. He's right. It is a whisper of a film, suggestive without being declarative. There is definitely something here about the back-to-the-wall anxieties circulating amongst American liberals, and some savvy film editor may commission a piece comparing and contrasting it with Brokeback mountain. There's something to both of these readings (I've tried each of them out myself) but Old Joy, whatever its deeper implications, works first and foremost as a film about our slippery grasp of love. Reichardt's carefully, beautifully modulated direction demands adjectives that will be boring for you to read — "subtle," "patient," and "meditative," all apply here — but as with the film's themes, any analysis of its aesthetic feels a bit like a bludgeon. I can only sum up my initial feelings by quoting one line of the screenplay: at one point during their weekend together, Mark and Kurt have a discussion about the latter's night-school foray into the world of theoretical physics.

Kurt, who talks a lot more than Mark does, says that he rejected the ideas he was being taught — that he had his own theory, of a "tear-shaped universe." Old Joy is a film which describes exactly this realm. It's one of the most startling and genuinely poetic American films in recent memory.

Brattle Film Foundation Signs Extension On Current Lease At The Brattle Theatre;
Preserve The Brattle Legacy Campaign Extended Through 2006

It was announced this week that the Brattle Film Foundation (BFF) has signed a one-year extension on their current lease with landlord Brattle Square Associates. The major benefit to this event is that the vital Preserve The Brattle Legacy Campaign will be extended through the end of the current year. This will give the foundation the time needed to complete the two-year Preserve The Brattle Legacy fundraising campaign.

When the campaign was originally announced in October of 2005, the urgency of the undertaking was compounded by the fact that the BFF’s lease on the Brattle Theatre space was initially due to be re-upped in February of 2006. The Foundation and the landlord felt that in order to renew the lease of the theatre, significant community support for repertory film programming at the Brattle needed to be clearly demonstrated. Both parties now believe that a solid base exists for a sustainable and stable film program at the Brattle Theatre thanks in large part to the significant response to the beginning of the Preserve The Brattle Legacy campaign.

In addition to an extended lease term, Brattle Square Associates has temporarily lowered the monthly rent on the Brattle Theatre space, has agreed to put aside the debt that the foundation has accrued with them until the beginning of 2007, and has agreed to work with the foundation in exploring ways in which the property taxes (a major expense) can be reduced. With this, Brattle Square Associates have reiterated their commitment to preserving the Brattle Theatre as a cultural space and the Brattle Film Foundation is looking forward to cooperating on making sure that creative repertory film programming remains a vital part of Cambridge’s cultural make-up.

Of course, despite this major development, the war is not yet won. The Preserve The Brattle Legacy campaign has raised over $250,000 in just under four months – a major accomplishment, but only bringing the foundation halfway to its goal of raising $500,000 by the end of the campaign. A portion of the funds raised so far will be put directly into increasing both the Brattle Film Foundation’s marketing budget and its development staff. “We feel certain that through expanding our fundraising and marketing capacity we will be able to further stabilize the Brattle’s budget,” says the foundation’s executive director, Ivy Moylan, “It is imperative that the foundation move away from a reliance on ticket sales and towards a balance between earned income and continued community support. That is the true key to sustainability.”

“While the prospect of extending our fundraising deadline is very exciting and the most recent developments both in fundrasing and with our landlord are thrilling, we can’t afford to stop,” says Brattle Film Foundation creative director, Ned Hinkle, “We hope to impress upon our supporters and those who have not yet contributed that, while we have many successes under our belt, there is still a long way to go. We do need to raise a significant amount of money over the next 12 months and we will continue to struggle for attention in an arts scene that is quite crowded.”

The BFF is committed to carefully curated programming, driven by presenting films based on quality, diversity and cultural value not by garnering high-ticket sales. Viewing film is a community as well as personal experience and films should be seen as they were meant to be seen – in an auditorium, on a large screen, with an audience of strangers, surrounded by the sounds and feel of a traditional movie theatre. It is exactly this type of movie-going experience that the Foundation is working to retain.

“We are committed to keeping our programming quality high and our accessibility broad so that we can continue to stay true to the goals established by the Brattle Theatre's founders,” says Hinkle, “We have been fortunate to raise enough money in 2005 so that we won’t have to compromise our programming goals and so that we can increase our staffing capacity and marketing budget. Hopefully you will be seeing a renewed presence for the Brattle around Boston and across the country for the rest of 2006 and into the future.”

###

Upon seeing a television spot for this gem the other night, Mrs. Clarence Carter turned to me and said:

"Don't they make this movie every year?"

No, not you fuckface.

It took me a good few episodes of The Gilmore Girls to actually "get it." The first few times I was annoyed--"Why are they talking so fast?" I wondered. The next few deepened my interest, but I still vacillated--"Isn't this all a little too cute?" It wasn't long before I was eagerly awaiting each new episode. Lorelei and Rory had won, button-cute whipsmart banter and all. I owe this turnaround partially to my Gilmore Girls enabler, filmenthusiast, who helped me realize that all the traits that first grated were nothing more than a modern take on the screwball, and placed within a specific lineage, the whole enterprise made a great deal more sense. I can’t believe it took me so long to figure it out.

But, last night…nothing I’ve seen on the show thus far could have prepared me for the concluding scenes of last night’s episode, truly one of the more radical formal interventions I’ve seen on television. In a season which has felt (at times) like one long tease, to find something as satisfyingly conclusive for the narrative presented like a lost sequence from Alain Resnais’s Muriel (not kidding) was sweet stuff indeed. The mayhem begins as the four Gilmores, Lorelei (Lauren Graham), Rory (Alexis Bledel), Emily (Kelly Bishop) and Richard (Edward Herrmann) assemble at the family mansion to fight out conflicts that have simmered underneath the surface all season.

Over dinner, a jerky handheld camera swishes tennis-style back and forth between the combatants: Rory-Emily-Rory-Richard-Emily-Richard-Lorelei. Finally, a cut, and all is oddly calm at the table with everyone seemingly fascinated by dishes of melon sorbet. What the fuck happened? Another cut, the fight is back on. Cut again to the four, artfully posed, laughing and swilling cognac. And so on—each jump in time offering a new tableau and completely different mood than the last setup. Jarring yet totally accessible, the only thing I can imagine Resnais doing differently might be an abrupt shift from night to day, or color to B&W. By the time Lorelei and Rory stumble from the house, hair mussed and exhausted, the editing has fully suggested the length and breadth of the hours-long fight and pushed the audience through similar highs and lows only in a more television-digestible seven minutes. For whoever dreamt the construction of this brilliance up, it may have been nothing less than a cute idea, but somehow I doubt that creators whose entire project seems to be filtering an acute eye on “now” through a sensibility borrowed from another time wouldn’t know their precedents. Kudos!