Only a couple more to go (until we get to the unframed ones later in the year)...
This poster sits in what will become my son’s room. I can’t in good conscience leave it there, for fear that it might somehow be misinterpreted by a visiting guest; this docile-seeming image is more menacing than any I own.
François Ozon’s See The Sea was a revelation to me and made me an instant fan of the director. I have followed him ever since. I am dying to see his new film Ricky, which seems to once again marry the subconscious anxiety of parenting with Ozon’s unique brand of dread. What I also love about this poster is that it stands as a reminder that first impressions do not a career make; All of the Chabrol and Hitchcock, Polanski and Rohmer references have come to seem as restraints on a diverse career. Ozon is a unique filmmaker who reinvents himself with every film (compare Swimming Pool or Under The Sand with, say Water Drops On Burning Rocks, 8 Women or Angel or any of those with, say 5x2 or Time To Leave) yet retains a unique visual and tonal consistency that is purely his own. Unfortunately, the photo is crappy. C’est la vie. The original U.S. poster from Zeitgeist, on the other hand, is great. As is the film. But for my son’s room? As bad as a poster of The Son’s Room! It’ll have to move.
Another in a series of poster posts. One day the blog will return to a post-poster posting state, but for now…
I try hard to not slip too much personal info from the present tense into my postings here, primarily because I tend to link movies with my past, as part of a continuum of ideas and experiences that shape my life. This poster poses a problem in that regard; This 1996 French original poster for Arnaud Desplechin’s Comment je me suis disputé... (ma vie sexuelle) was a present from my wife and it holds a place of honor on the wall of my home office. It’s a movie that really shaped me, and I have written about it ad nauseum, so I’ll shut up about it, only to say that this is one of two posters for this film I own (you’ll see the other one soon enough). I love this film, love this poster and love my wife. Three for three.
Locking the program… Sarasota news soon. The poster posts have being getting some nice feedback, so they continue on (despite the aforementioned bad pictures)...
Today’s poster for Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep is one of my favorites, not just because of the image, which is beautiful, but also because of the film, which remains one of the best movies ever made about the business of filmmaking. Often, movies about movies tend to be one-note comedies about the farcical nature of the shoot, but Assayas transcends the form here by merging comedy with a truly imaginative rendering of the social construction of the movie set. This poster, from the original 1997 U.S. theatrical release from Zeitgeist, sits next to my Beau Travail poster, above my desk, providing cinematic inspiration. I have the new Zeitgeist DVD re-release of the film queued up to buy (probably this summer) and can’t wait to watch it again… But that’ll have to wait. The festival work beckons…
Post-Oscar (I didn’t watch… too much work) poster posting…
In honor of all of the films that should have won Academy Awards but were leveled by the Slumdog juggernaut, I present to you a poster of one of the greatest movies ever made, a film that was itself levelled by another zeitgeist-dominating film, 1974’s The Godfather Part II, which won six Oscars including Picture, Director, Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction and Original Score. Left behind with only one statuette (a richly-deserved Best Original Screenplay for Robert Towne)? Only Chinatown, which is, as far as I am concered, one of the best movies ever made. It has been said before, but wow, the 1970’s were an insane decade for movies…just look at the Best Director nominees for this year…
John Cassavetes for A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
Francis Ford Coppola for THE GODFATHER, PART II
Bob Fosse for LENNY
Roman Polanski for CHINATOWN
François Truffaut for LA NUIT AMÉRICAINE (DAY FOR NIGHT)
I mean, come on. If I had a ballot that year, I would have only been able to vote “yes”.
This poster, a small French original from 1974, was a gift from my mom, who had it framed for me and gave it to me for the holidays years ago. I am not sure what it means when your father gives you a poster for a film about divorce and your mother a poster for a noir about incest, but I think that just means they love me and understand my taste in movies (then again, what would Lacan say!??!)...
Anyway, cold comfort on the morning after the Oscars, but remember, make a great movie and the trophies are irrelevant. Time will be the judge of greatness.
Off for a weekend of family and work work work. In the meantime…
This poster posting is a shout out to John Vanco, the man who runs the terrific IFC Center in Manhattan, and also the man who, has the head of Cowboy Pictures here in the US, was responsible for some of the best film distribution work in the late 1990’s/ early 2000’s. Shall we run the list? Fat Girl by Catherne Breillat, George Washington by David Gordon Green, La Cienaga by Lucrecia Martel, Benjamin Smoke by Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen, Devils On The Doorstep by Wen Jiang, Warm Water Under A Red Bridge by Shohei Imamura; along with Wellspring, Lot 47, Strand, Zeitgiest and the others, Cowboy was a part of a definitive group of passionate, small distributors who filled New York’s cinema screens with amazing films. Their hard work represents my introduction into the world of New York cinephilia, of film programming and festivals, and a landscape (literally) where you could walk between Houston and 14th street, dashing from film to film, theater to theater, to find amazing treasures. I miss those times.
One of my favorite of the Cowboy bunch is Movern Callar by Lynne Ramsay, which I saw while working at The Hamptons International Film Festival back in 2002. Samantha Morton came to the festival just to do one Q&A for this film, and she skipped into the theater only to find an emotionally drained audience. “Hey guys,” she said, “I came all the way out here to talk to you, so fire away…”
relative silence.
A single hand is raised.
Moderator: “Yes, sir?”
Man: “Have you been in any other movies before?”
I nearly shit myself.
Samantha: “I was just in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report... did any one see that?”
Sighs of pleasant surprise at the recognition of Steven Speilberg’s name. A smattering of applause.
Samantha: “Yes, I was Agatha, the Precog, but you might not recognize me in this hat, because I had a bald head in the movie… I was also in Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown and have done loads of other things…”
Another smattering of applause at the recognition of the name Woody Allen.
I have to hand it to Ms. Morton, she was a game and generous professional that night, but oy, the things that come out of film festival audience Q&A’s… I have presided over my own slew of disasters, including a lengthy lecture by one audience member demanding over and over that the attending director dub his film because no one wants to read his movie, but this one is up there in my memory… I’m just thankful I wasn’t moderating!
Anyway, I think that Morvern Callar is a truly beautiful film and at the time it heralded amazing things from Lynne Ramsay who, as I remember it, came off of numerous festival awards for Morvern and was signed on to direct the screen adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. I have no idea why Ms. Ramsay has not made another feature since then; I know she has a script in development and I also know she was on the Sundance Jury in 2007, but it’s sad to thik that a filmmaker this gifted would be silent for seven years. In that time, Samantha Morton has become one of the most interesting actors (her turn in Oren Moverman’s The Messenger is terrific), Peter Jackson is prepapring The Lovely Bones for a December 2009 release, and Cowboy Pictures in the USA is no more.
That said, despite the way in which the world changes, this beautiful Movern Callar poster sits defiantly on the wall in my living room, a reminder of happy times. Yes, things carry on and change is the only contsant, but sometimes, I’m sentimental, too.
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