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That a bunch of slovenly, misshapen movies (not necessarily a pejorative) has come to be so closely grouped together, so quickly and forcefully, speaks to the intense need of the current independent film community to feel part of and champion something in the American independent landscape. With filmmaker support groups dying out and increasingly scarce funding rubbing up against the exploding availability of high quality, reasonably priced video cameras and projection systems, and calcified distribution channels giving way to newer models, it’s an exciting, and uncertain, time to be making or releasing films—and writing about them. The young critics, young distributors, and young filmmakers of America haven’t had their moment yet, that instance where they stood up and reclaimed the notion of “independent” from a half-decade gone wrong and the general sense in the—to be honest—limited sphere protecting and fostering these movies seems to be simple: This might be it. A utopian instant of passion, artmaking, cheap beer, and a little bit of commerce overlapping; read the faces in the circa 1980s Telluride Film Film Festival softball team photo wedged in Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes and you’ll find a similar story. Are these folks our new Spike Lees, Jim Jarmuschs, or Hal Hartleys? Or are we all just getting carried away?
Loudmouthed John Cassavetes booster Ray Carney has been an early champion of this stuff, claiming a similar artistic lineage between one of America’s greatest filmmakers and a bunch of youthful overachievers (at 26 years of age, Swanberg has already completed three films, shot another and put out a twelve-episode web series; Katz, also 26, is halfway to lapping his visual inspiration’s four-film oeuvre). Here’s a clear instance in which the excitement over a bunch of filmmakers working together and producing work (and lots of it) that vibrates off of similar themes has won out over reason and historical context. No mumblecore movie that I’ve seen yet has truly reached out for anything beyond arm’s length, aside perhaps LOL and Funny Ha Ha which come within striking distance of the cascading meanings that we expect of great cinema. (Quiet City’s lovely meditations on the cityscape nudge it in this direction; The Puffy Chair feels bigger, but in a more traditional recent Amerindie manner) Cassavetes decimated the industry model he’d worked within for over a decade with his very first film, and continually collapsed categories over the course of his small body of work. Mumblecore may be reading his blueprint, but that same humming energy is missing. My greatest fear for all of these filmmakers is that they’ll never reach similarly—for genre, for period setting, for a tripod—thus limiting the possibilities of their art. There’s a nagging sense with many of these films that in their creators’ rush to produce feature-length works, and thus ensure the possibility of nationwide visibility, a disservice has been done to the material. (Would Quiet City have been even stronger at 45 minutes?) By gambling that exercises that might be stunningly ambitious in the context of a senior film seminar will float in the theatrical marketplace, this group’s won fairly big so far, but their future is far from clear.
Of late, there's been a lot of ink spilled over that new group of filmmakers currently being honored at New York's IFC Center as "Generation DIY" (and inadvertently forever dubbed "mumblecore," in an interview in indieWIRE), so it might now be somewhat pressing to put aside questions of collectivity and look at the films themselves and see how they stand on their own. Being released directly after a week-long run of Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs, Aaron Katz's second feature (after last year's Dance Party USA) Quiet City evokes a memorable aesthetic to surround its minor-key maybe-romance, focusing almost as much attention on lovely, video-sculpted natural formations and cityscapes as its two main characters.
No arbitrary stylistic decision, these punctuating shots of evidently dislocated scenery provide necessary respite from Quiet City's central couple: the reserved if discombobulated Jamie (Erin Fisher) and the unsurprisingly disheveled Charlie (Cris Lankenau), who meet by chance one late night in a subway station (the 7th Avenue stop in Brooklyn's Park Slope, whose endless tunnel walkways have never seemed more elegantly composed). Click here to read the rest of Michael Koresky's review of Aaron Katz's Quiet City.
From today's story announcing that Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is getting slapped with the "dreaded" NC-17:
"Sources who have seen the film said it contains at least three scenes -- one a long montage -- featuring multiple acts of aggressive sexual activity in different positions. There's no full-frontal male nudity (the source of some NC-17 rulings when shown in sex scenes), but male-on-female oral sex, non-S&M restraints and several nontraditional sexual positions are depicted, conveying the aggression and emotional conflict between the main characters."
Whew. Sounds more like Mr. Skin than Wolf Blitzer. Though this kind of story reeks of a certain familiarity, the bigger question now becomes: where do we turn for news if CNN is no longer safe for work?
..."Of course, it's largely up to the actors to make this sort of pared-down pas de deux work. Playing an obvious variation on a younger, more enthusiastic Ethan Hawke, Mark Webber, who's never been this verbal or alert onscreen (in other films he's been often dour, eyes downcast), has also never seemed more right for a role--he's surprisingly likable both as a blurting, confident courter and as a heartsick empty shell. Meanwhile, Catalina Sandino Moreno again enchants, juggling playful shyness, burgeoning sexuality, and finally, baffling betrayal. Hawke encourages the actress's rare, glowing timidity, which is truly uncommon to film. Though Sara is meant to be something of an abstraction (the film is, of course, from William's point of view), the actress shows enough warmth and quiet inner conflict to make us understand his love for her as well as her inexplicable need to move on. Most importantly, Hawke never demonizes Sara, who in other films could be seen as villainously indifferent, according her a respectful distance. In one especially nice wintry moment outside her mother's house, Sara rebuffs William's sexual advances when he doesn't have a condom. "You wanna get me pregnant?" she asks directly. When he responds affirmatively from off-screen, she delivers the line, with no actorly grandstanding "Don't say that." And Hawke leaves his camera trained on her reaction."
"In his book on the Apollo 11 moon landing, Of a Fire on the Moon, Norman Mailer wondered whether, in addition to providing wish fulfillment, dreams might act as psychic simulation chambers 'where the possible malfunctions of life tomorrow and life next year could be tested, where the alternate plans could be tried.' If movies can be said to resemble dreams of the collective unconscious, an idea suggested since the birth of the medium, then what are we to make of the current crop of films reimagining horrific terrorist attacks, panicked citizens, and draconian federal responses, films like War of the Worlds, Children of Men, and now Right At Your Door? Do they simply express our shared post-9/11 fear? Or are they preparing us for the worst, keeping us on our toes for another catastrophe, as if to say 'Don't get too comfortable, the potential for more 9/11s lives very much with us?'"
"Whenever you're dealing with the plot keywords 'fathers and sons' and 'sports,' the potential for emotional molestation is daunting, and Resurrecting the Champ doesn't defy any expectations on that count. Whatever finesse and restraint there is to Rod Lurie's direction is hobbled by Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett's screenplay, a bowdlerization of J.R. Moehringer's 1997 article for the Los Angeles Times Magazine—the script fails to attribute a quote it uses from famed journalist A.J. Liebling, shows not a jot of Moehringer's feel for the sport, and distills the complexities of its source into rote observations on redemption, dadhood, and integrity."
Just caught the trailer for Todd Haynes's I'm Not There over at the Enzian Theatre blog. Can't say I'm all that knowledgeable on the Dylan front, but I can say I’m a huge Todd Haynes fan (RS #1 had some nicethings to say about Far From Heaven all those years ago), and this trailer has my interest stoked for the announced NYFF screenings. Looks very, very strange—did I see a giraffe in there? An homage to 8 ½? The oddness might do a little bit to explain that “No, really, I’m in it for the art” story on its distributor, Harvey Weinstein, in the NY Times today. Even so, I gotta give the gang some credit--this is a nice take, and might help get the film out to a wider audience.
"The script comes from Seth Rogen, who appears in the film as Officer Michaels and previously played the lead in Knocked Up, and his childhood friend Evan Goldberg. They claim that they sketched out the script at age 13, and juvenile abandon permeates throughout. But there’s a mature subtlety and depth of insight that’s notable particularly when considered next to films like the aforementioned Talladega Nights or the two entries from Apatow. Where those films embody convention even as they purport to shatter stereotypes, Superbad exhibits a surprisingly nuanced sensibility. Myriad so-called irreverent comedies, even when they’re funny, languish in exploitation, misogyny, and pat conventionality. But Superbad eschews these hallmarks, instead joyously emphasizing male friendship, respect for women, and open dialogue between opposing demographics. Even the more peripheral characters defy expectation—the female characters, for example, avoid the genre’s typical bimbo vs. high maintenance harpy dialectic, and just when the dim-witted officers seem beyond hope, they prove their decency, if not their competence."
"It's like a musical couch," one character comments, shifting positions on a sofa with two others, nicely summing up the narrative thrust of the wispy but radiant Hannah Takes the Stairs. The line also unwittingly references the cinematic cross-pollination taking place amongst the real-life troupe of assorted filmmakers and artists featured in Hannah (though Joe Swanberg directs, eight names share the byline). Programmed as part of a two-week festival entitled "The New Talkies: Generation DIY" at downtown Manhattan's IFC Center--seemingly in direct response to an article published in Filmmaker magazine's spring issue exploring the freshly dubbed "mumblecore" movement--"Hannah" epitomizes this indie strain with its naked sincerity, neophyte/nonprofessional actors, near-plotless trajectory borne of improvisation, and nondescript visual style that clears the way for an emphasis on the miniscule moments that constitute coming-of-age in the lives of privileged (no one seems to work much, or need to) post-collegiate twentysomethings.
Efficient, pared-down run-and-hide horror, Ils (Them) arrives today in New York. Its pleasures are limited in scope, but many in numbers. With its basic, nearly can’t-fail premise (young man and woman are terrorized in their home very late at night by unseen intruders), terrifyingly narrow focus (we aren’t privileged to see anything the characters don’t), and sweetly brief running time (77 minutes), Them excels as a neat little experiment in pressure-cooker filmmaking—though outsized plaudits and praise won’t do any favors to such a modest, if well-crafted, work.
The debut film of David Moreau and Xavier Palud, Them is exactly the sort of moviemaking 101 obstacle course directors should hurl themselves through. This is a calling-card feature, and it’s textbook (in a good way): around 4 in the morning, an attractive, appealing young couple (Olivia Bonamy and Michael Cohen) hear noises downstairs in their country home conveniently tucked away in the dark woods. Upon investigation, they are forced into a terrifying game of hide-and-seek with the unknown, not-too-friendly intruders, barricading themselves in bedrooms, bathrooms, and attics. This is of course, just the set-up, and as for the rest, the less said the better. It’s par for the course at this point to say that when “all is revealed” it’s more than a bit disappointing; while the film never resorts to final-act Scooby-Doo mask-pulling, it does ultimately dissolve its own tension by granting closure on the story, an especially defeating, strange tactic for a film that is so much more about texture and atmosphere than narrative. And if it is “based on a true story,” as it claims, in some very Texas Chainsaw-ish opening text, the film would be even cheaper than it seems—a gear-grinding fright machine cum social problem picture?
Portentous title cards and twist endings aside, Them is less about who is out there or even what is happening to the characters than what is happening to the audience. Much of Them consists of screw-tightening of a high order: cuts are jarring but never spatially displacing or showy (the old looking-through-the-key-hole moment is used to great, rapid effect), and Moreau and Palud are adept at placing figures in the frame at oblique angles so that they’re nearly subliminal in their threatening poses. Part of the film’s success is undoubtedly that it doesn’t overstay its welcome (even ten more minutes would have been a problem, as the grip of high tension cannot be sustained for long without your mind wandering), but that shouldn’t be a criticism of the directors, who have designed the film as the merciless little nugget that it is. While it has none of the allegorical or emotional heft of the similarly stripped Blair Witch Project (and certainly none of the lasting impact of that film’s unforgettable final image), Them is equally adept at heightening the viewers’ sense amidst sounds of crackling branches and images of barely illuminated shapes. In a summer of garbage like Hostel Part Two and Joshua, Them isn’t a revelation for horror, but it’s a welcome return to form.
"Full disclosure: like many who hobby as a film critic, I have aspirations toward film production, and I’ve written more than my fair share of half-assed comedic screenplays. About five years ago I cranked out a response of sorts to the death of my grandmother, a darkly comic network-narrative farce about a dysfunctional family coming together to bicker at a funeral. One major plotline revolves around one of the attendees having accidentally ingested copious amounts of drugs prior to arriving, which by some embarrassing coincidence of parallel thought is also a major narrative strand in Frank Oz’s similarly conceived new film Death at a Funeral.
With that said, I would be mortified to discover that someone had ripped me off and made this film out of it. An ill-timed fart of alleged comedy featuring a cast of recognizable British and American character actors, Death is a haphazard marriage of old-fashioned farce and early-21st-century levels of cynical post-humor, with mannered performances and precisely choreographed comic beats."
"Paired with another scruffy American in Paris, Julie Delpy actively engages viewer recollections of Before Sunset in her DIY feature-length directorial debut. Playing like a rough-around-the edges reinterpretation of Richard Linklater's transcendent Before Sunrise sequel, 2 Days in Paris echoes Sunset in so many ways it's nearly impossible to meet on its own terms (at least for one as admittedly infatuated with its predecessor as I am). Much of the film's meaning seems generated by comparisons. His name this time is Jack (Adam Goldberg) rather than Jesse but, as Marion quibbles with her beau along the Seine--full of resting riverboats--we can't help but think back to Celine and Jesse's tremulous ride. Delpy's character in 2 Days also distractingly resembles the other in intellectual curiosity, strident political concerns, and unabashed love for her cat (named Jean-Luc, though we still remember Che). Is she intentionally playing off these resonances, and to what effect?"
"The unanimous acclaim for Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset, certainly high on the list of this decade’s small handful of American masterpieces, will engender a fair amount of good will towards Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris. And not merely by association with that fine earlier film—Delpy was that film’s anchor, and so naturally and effortlessly did her indelible character Cèline’s world views, philosophies, agonies, contradictions, and neuroses float off the screen that it left little doubt that we were watching an approximation of the actress herself. The fact that she cowrote the screenplay with Linklater and leading man Ethan Hawke only compounds the nagging verisimilitude of the character—as does Before Sunset’s real-time shooting style, which heightens the film’s near documentary feel....2 Days in Paris goes a long way toward exposing the challenge of trying to separate Delpy from Cèline as a fruitless one.
Okay, I get it. Straight guys are repulsed and fascinated by anal sex. They find anal sex inherently funny. Putting things up your butt makes big laffs. In fact, it might come in third in a national guy-poll of "what makes a funny?"—right behind farts and poking fun at Chinese people. Given that youth-stunted frat dudes have been the ones pulling the strings behind mainstream comedy for a very... verrrrry ... verrrrrrrry long time, I can't say it comes as any surprise when comedies aim below the belt, specifically for rear-entry laughs. What simpler way to reassert laugh-protected homophobia? (If you question it, you're a finger-wagging homo, amiright? Yah, dude, now lemme give ya a noogie and pretend I accept your differences and we can all go home happy, cool?)
What does bug me to no end, though, is when these INCREDIBLY TIRED jokes come from supposedly enlightened contemporary corners of comedy. Obviously, as evidenced by the lazy "film"making, writing, and acting on display in the sub-Amazon Women on the Moon anthology comedy The Ten, a doofy Decalogue of sorts from the bros who brought you (the much funnier) Wet Hot American Summer, coherence isn't the goal. But how about originality? Can't these guys funnel their oogie feelings towards butt-sex into something other than an incredibly repetitive sketch about two blandly smug white guys (Ken Marino and Rob Corddry, from The Daily Show, natch) commencing an improbably direct prison-rape relationship behind bars? Haven't we seen this a million times before, from My Cousin Vinny to Weekend Update monologues from Norm MacDonald? Whatever good will viewers have towards the film based on scattered laughs and happy Wet Hot memories are flushed down the hole here.
2- The witless animation
In one segment, a horribly animated rhino wanders around doing drugs, fucking, and shitting out brown mounds with daisies poking out of them. It looks cheap. Unimaginative. See, that's the joke. Cheap, bad animation is inherently funny. Family Guy. Spongebob. South Park. Forget cleverness. All you need for big laffs is zero scale, flat backgrounds, and barely emotive character drawings.
3- The closing cast sing-along
What's more prevalent and tiresome than anal rape jokes? How about the filmmakers' desperate final plea for audiences to go out tapping their toes with a cast singalong?! That's riii-iight—when in doubt, have all the people you just forgot you watched slog their way through an incoherent bunch of half-hearted jokes return for a summarizing send-off of the bad movie you just watched by singing into the camera with ingratiating smiles. (See also: There's Something About Mary, The 40 Year Old Virgin, probably some Freddie Prinze Jr. movies, and a bunch of other crap I know I saw but blocked out). Minus points for incorporating into the song more anal-rape jokes.
4- The lack of any remotely daring anti-established religion or anti-establishment-of-any-kind jokes
I know, I know: like Kieslowski's distant cousin Decalogue, this is meant to have only a ribbing, tangential relationship to the Ten Commandments. This is not meant to be a serious social satire. Even still, the best "cheekily subversive" jokes they can come up with are: Jesus Christ as a South American ladies' man and a bunch of disgruntled husbands skipping church to frolic nude together? How...cutting? And speaking of that last segment....
5- The lack of a penis
Again, we're in the territory of the hilarity and revulsion inherent in male genitalia. Desperate househusbands stay home Sunday morning while their wives and children go to worship God, and slowly but surely start a clandestine club that involves them freeing their bodies and romping around without any clothes while listening to Roberta Flack music. The entire sketch is concerned with penises. Men stripping and literally "hanging out" together. Do we ever see a penis? Even a money shot of a penis? No, they're all predictably, stylishly concealed throughout. Aside from the obvious chicken-shittiness of the actors and "film"makers here (I guess when you hire established actors such as Bobby Cannavale, you can't ask him to drop trow while slumming it in a stupid sketch), the lack of the film's central visual gag completely ruins the joke. Even the suspiciously de-politicized Simpsons Movie managed to sneak in Bart's curious little wiener. Center frame.
6- The squandering of Paul Rudd
Rudd's unpredictable career maneuvers over the past decade have seen him move from stage crossover to "next leading man" to smaller character roles and then to his current incarnation as comedy troupe vagabond. He's a reliable party trickster; he beckons you with his improbable handsomeness and then knocks you for a loop with his flair for convincing self-deprecation. So likable is he that he would seem a natural for Master of Ceremonies duty, as he’s relegated to here. And while it's pleasant and reassuring to have Rudd return in between each segment, flanked by two huge, insistently fakey stone Commandment tablets, director David Wain seems so confident in his abilities for breezy charm that he forgets to write any good material for him. So he riffs. And it's not all completely unfunny, but Rudd seems unmoored and a bit lost. Not a nice way to treat your MVP.
7- The squandering of Winona Ryder
Ryder's been due for a comeback, A Scanner Darkly notwithstanding. And...this is it? Fucking a wooden ventriloquist's dummy, while moaning and orgasming? By my quarter-full theater's count, not one laugh or gasp occurred during this thoroughly bizarre display of juvenilia. The sadder part is the zeal with which Ryder throws herself into this sketch (the "Thou Shalt Not Steal" one… get it? Get it?!!). If given good comic material, Ryder can shine (Beetlejuice, Heathers), but this feels like they're just throwing this fallen star a (very dry) bone. Minus points: this segment really has so little to do with stealing (except that she does in fact abscond with the ventriloquist's dummy in order to...have sex with it) that it smacks of being shoehorned into the film's precarious thematic gimmickry. Double minus points if this is true because this is a skit that should have stayed at the bottom of the night-table drawer, where it must have sat since the writers were in high school.
8- Wet Hot American Summer feels tainted.
Perhaps it's because it allowed its fine ensemble to fully embody its hilariously stock cast of characters, but WHAS was a late-summer 2001 treat that rightfully earned its cult stripes (I sat in a relatively empty theater upon its first release, only to return a mere two years later to a packed midnight screening, complete with audience members dressed in full summer-camp couture in tribute). While both films certainly come from the same brand of humor, which simultaneously extols and subverts clichés, only the former, which sustains an entire narrative, consistently grapples with its own form and being. The intentionally loose Ten Commandments framework of this broken-down contraption doesn't provide the same understanding of comical context. Like Paul Rudd wandering around that oddly blue-screened black void that provides the film’s wraparound, it's hopelessly unfettered, unsure of what it's supposed to be satirizing. Therefore, there are sure to be less laughs of recognition than quizzically furrowed brows. Even as sketch comedy, the film has less connective tissue than your average episode of Mad TV, for which writer-director Wain occasionally wrote. Every single segment, and that includes the two passably funny ones, feels like a nearly rejected idea from the last half-hour of an off-week of Saturday Night Live.
9- It made me laugh out loud a few times.
I hate that I have to admit that, since the genuine laughs were so few and far between, and because the near-guffaws are all predicated on pretty stale routines: white woman birthing black twins and not knowing who the father is; Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonators; women being slapped. Surely, none of this seems funny in retrospect, but the general genial nature of the thing sometimes works its powers—and then you feel like shit after for laughing.
10- I just wasted way too much time writing about a film that no one will see anyway.
"Can a director be too independent for independent film? In an arena increasingly seen as an annex of the major studios and where one of Hollywood’s contributions has been the acceptance of compromise, the career of the writer and director Tom DiCillo would suggest it’s true."
"Delirious represents a return from direct-to-DVD purgatory for Tom DiCillo, still probably best remembered--when he is--for his calling card 1995 film, Living in Oblivion, a self-reflexive look behind-the-scenes of an independent film shoot that piggybacked on the mid-'90s vogue for all things "indie" into a modest critical success. More than once since I've seen him referred to as a cult filmmaker, though I don't claim to know where this cult congregates, or why, exactly."
I’m well aware of Reverse Shot’s reputation for what is often wrongly labeled as contrarianism, and so I know it may seem to stretch credulity to insist that, despite the outlandish praise that’s been heaped upon Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Ultimatum, I went into it with an open mind. Though I missed Doug Liman’s first installment in the trilogy, I genuinely liked Greengrass’s Supremacy, and whatever reservations I had about his United 93 had more to do with the ethics of representation, given the 9/11 subject matter, than the craft of the picture itself (at least, at the time).
“This is, simply put, some of the most accomplished filmmaking being done anywhere for any purpose,” gushes Nathan Lee in an intelligent and thoughtful piece on Bourne Ultimatum at the Village Voice, and in his praise, he’s not alone. But where some see a technically dazzling piece of action filmmaking, I must confess I simply see a mess. As the film’s advocates would have it, Greengrass has broken visual convention and effectively thrust the spectator into a thrill ride that seamlessly melds handheld, verité-style camerawork with the sensibility of a techno-thriller. The film is all about knowledge and surveillance: who sees whom, where, and when. But it doesn’t follow that we should have to work so hard to figure out what the hell’s going on—why, as spectators, do we need to strain to piece together the fundamentals of the visual storytelling (Who are we looking at? Where are these people—in relation to one another and in the context of their environment? What is the chronological relationship between this image and the previous image and the next image? Etc.)?
The shaking, haphazardly zooming camera prevents us from following movement or comprehending space, while also making continuity editing nearly impossible. Time and again, Greengrass gives us a single establishing shot and a subtitle with a vague geographic location (“Madrid, Spain”) and then plops us in the middle of a cinematic nowheresville. The resulting confusion this creates for the spectator may well stimulate a certain kind of nervous thrill, but I’ll take well-crafted conventional visual storytelling any day: where Bourne’s chase scene through the streets and apartments of Madrid is jarring and disorienting, it achieves none of the visceral energy that a comparable chase in Casino Royale did last year. By the end of Bourne Ultimatum, I honestly felt like Greengrass should be locked in a room and forced to watch D.W. Griffith films for a week.
This isn’t just an issue of aesthetics; it’s an issue of a rigorously thought-through aesthetic. The New York Times’s Manohla Dargis — as smart a critic as they come — raves that Greengrass “shatters movie space like glass,” but to what end? Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, the best English-language film I’ve seen in a year-and-a-half, was also basically an action picture with an audaciously unconventional visual approach, but in Cuarón’s film, technical virtuosity served an overarching artistic commitment to a certain approach to subjectivity, point-of-view, and cinematic space. Why the disorienting storytelling technique in Bourne? Some clichéd flashbacks notwithstanding, it can’t have anything to do with aligning our point-of-view with that of Matt Damon’s amnesiac protagonist — after all, Bourne has a better knowledge and command of space, action, and time than anyone else within the narrative (he’s not disoriented, we are).
When Spielberg first brought verité camerawork into mainstream action filmmaking with Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, it was, like Cuarón’s visual innovations, in service of an artistic vision — a certain approach to cinematic space and spectatorial point-of-view — but in the ten years since then, the dizzying handhelds and zooms have become their own kind of visual convention. Greengrass certainly has technical skill, but I’m not convinced that he’s anything more than an opportunist, honing and refining a visual style not to make a point but simply because it’s in vogue. Stephanie Zacharek in Salon claims the Bourne film is “the kind of picture that will still look good 20 or 30 years from now.” Really? I can’t help feeling the exact opposite. This is a movie that’s all about fashion. It’s very now. But it’s not very interesting. Two or three decades from now, this is exactly the sort of picture that’s going to feel very dated — and we’ll look back on it and wonder, “Why, exactly, did people make movies that looked like this?”
Bonus points if anyone can tell what the whole “ultimatum” thing is all about.
A friend recently tried to dissuade me from overestimating the recent cottage industry of quirky, offbeat films focused on the maladjusted and weird. But it’s films like Rocket Science—not nearly as atrocious as Eagle vs. Shark but in a way more frustrating—that keep convincing me this is a not insignificant trend. Are filmmakers now so insecure about the meaningfulness of their films that they must consistently undermine any truthful melancholy about high school life with evasive adorability and easy irony?
Anthology's currently playing host to a retrospective feting the enigmatic works of Portugal’s other famous—and famously difficult—filmmaker, Pedro Costa. I caught his latest Colossal Youtha few months back and I’m planning a return to trip to see if the film’s many teasing strands coalesce more fully with a bit of foreknowledge, or if the film remains stubbornly (albeit pleasurably) diffuse.
Also showing are his earlier features O Sangue, Casa de lava, Ossos, and No Quarto de Vanda, a documentary he made about Straub-Huillet and a few of his shorts. I caught the first two features on Friday, and while both are wildly flawed ventures, it's fascinating to watch the assured filmmaker behind Colossal Youth pushing the boundaries of narrative which he’d bust apart a few features later.
Crystal blue waters on which sailboats glide; cooling, hushed evenings for night drives; creaking floorboards of vacation retreats: Summer '04 uses familiar elements from seasonal coming-of-age and romance films and twists them to sinister, damaging effect. Director Stefan Krohmer and screenwriter Daniel Nocke, both veterans of German TV and collaborators on Krohmer's 2003 debut, They've Got Knut, set out on a seemingly standard course when adolescent Nils (Lucas Kotaranin) takes along younger girlfriend Livia (Svea Lohde) on a trip with his parents, Andre (Peter Davor) and Mirjam (Martina Gedeck), to the Baltic coast, where the family owns a summer house.
Andre and Mirjam possess a liberal attitude when it comes to their son's burgeoning sexuality and practically encourage his summer love, but tension arrives in the form of Bill (Robert Seeliger), the kind of rugged, laconic mid-thirties man for whom twelve-year-old girls develop immediate crushes. Nils doesn't mind Bill's intrusion, but as Livia starts spending more time with him Mirjam feels the need to voice concern. Mirjam—vivacious, voluptuous, and probably a step faster than her kind but bland husband, for whom she still has a fresh attraction—also immediately takes to Bill. Click here to read the rest of Michael Joshua Rowin's review of Summer '04.
To: Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting
Cc: City Council Committee on Culture, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations
We, the undersigned, believe that the new rules currently under consideration for Film Permits (Chapter 9, Title 43 of the City Rules of New York) will have an irrevocable impact on independent filmmakers and photographers and their ability to engage in creative work in New York.
The proposed regulations would not only jeopardize the activities of artists, but of hobbyists and tourists, as well as commercial practitioners. Furthermore, we believe these new restrictions will have far reaching impact on the tourism industry and cultural economy of New York. With limitations placed on the kind of work that can be made, the commercial galleries, museums, and theaters that present the work, as well the film processing labs and rental companies that service the production of such work would lose considerable business.
The right to photograph in public space is established by the First Amendment, which states that, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble." These rights are not the City's possession to take away, or to restrict to the point where such free expression is rendered impossible. The impact on public space of the types of activities you propose to regulate are so minimal that requiring permits is an undue burden towards exercising First Amendment rights. Furthermore, one cannot regulate an art form or activity by negating its very premise. The proposed rules, in refusing to recognize the spontaneity that is at the core of street-based filmmaking and photography, are untenable for that reason alone.
Because there was virtually no public notice about the proposals, many advocacy groups, photographers, and filmmakers did not know about the rules or the opportunity to file objections. We therefore call upon the city to dismiss these regulations altogether, and hold a new public hearing so that the communities that will be most impacted have an opportunitiy to meaningfully input into the shaping of new and constructive policies.
Towards the end of Becoming Jane,a new — and generally lousy — dramatization of the early life of novelist Jane Austen, a would-be suitor to the inimitable Ms. Austen utters the phrase, "It is a truth universally acknowledged...," and the great opening line to Pride and Prejudice is born. It's no small concern that screenwriters Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams imagine their protagonist snatched one of her most famous lines from the lips of a man; indeed, Becoming Jane would have us believe that Austen, played here by the perennially boring Anne Hathaway, was nothing less, or more, than a watered-down variation on one of her own heroines, a woman who owed her inspiration as an artist to her doomed love affair with an Irish barrister (a suitably charismatic James McAvoy). This Shakespeare in Love style premise is tired enough on its own without the dubious implication of the romantic fantasies in which it trades. It's all right there in that execrable title: she was always a writer, but she needed to know the love of a man in order to...become Jane.
