"FTP"O'd

Since our FTP server is down I haven't been able to update the index; and because I know everybody's been looking forward to it, here's a direct link to Walter's review of Eastern Promises.

And here's a direct link to a thought-provoking rumination by the great Bryant Frazer on the half-life of Miramax's fraudulent marketing tactics circa the mid-1990s. It made me remember a drunken conversation I once had with Atom Egoyan (I was drunk, he was patient) that marked the first--though certainly not the last--time I heard "Faust" and "Weinstein" mentioned in the same sentence.

Why I'm Not Formally Reviewing 'Control'

Control is an authentic-feeling biopic about the late Ian Curtis, the epileptic front man for Joy Division who committed suicide--though a revisionist theory absurdly contends that he "accidentally" hung himself from the clothesline in his Manchester flat--in 1979 at the age of 23. Spoiler. Directed by music-video auteur Anton Corbijn and objectively lensed in black-and-white and 'scope by Martin Ruhe, the film overcomes the central miscasting of Samantha Morton as Ian's wife Deborah (though she would've nailed this role in her Morvern Callar days, she's far too long in the tooth for it now) with the near-perfect casting of Sam Riley as Curtis, Craig Parkinson as Tony Wilson, and Alexandra Maria Lara as Annik Honoré, a.k.a. The Other Woman. (Morton's incongruous star-power is easily explained by the basis for Control's screenplay: Deborah Curtis' own memoir Touching from a Distance.) The film is admirably not a hagiography while engendering empathy for a gifted asshole more successfully than, say, Man on the Moon, and the song recreations are surprisingly persuasive, although I was a bit disappointed with how literalmindedly the music is applied at times.

Anyway, I liked it and thought it mostly deserving of its Cannes honours, but towards the end of the film, I found myself growing increasingly restless: instead of dreading Ian's fate, I became impatient with any scene I knew wouldn't end with the money shot. Rather than give the Brothers Weinstein ammunition to butcher another film, though, I'm more apt to blame the anti-piracy measures that have been put into effect for this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Throughout the film, some skinny, anime-looking dork attired in a security uniform that was sliding off his shoulders paced the aisle next to me, stopping occasionally to put a pair of infrared specs to his eyes and pivot his head back and forth, Terminator-style. Call me a prima donna, but when a movie is quiet and intense, as Control most certainly is, there's just something distracting about a guy incessantly goose-stepping in your periphery. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was when he leaned against the screen, spilling some of the projected image onto his smug expression. I kept hoping someone with a little influence would speak up (Dave Poland was seated in my vicinity) until finally I tried staring down the twerp myself. Alas, he wielded those night-vision goggles like a talisman, using them to shield himself from direct eye contact. Eventually I hotfooted it to the other side of the theatre--the Nazi stationed there was much less obtrusive, seemingly conscientious of Control's fragile tone.

Now, I'm not gonna get all self-righteous about being monitored during these press & industry screenings, even though I think they're very obviously going after the wrong people. Everybody knows that the Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka's factory comes with some caveats. But at least properly train this Gestapo to blend into the furniture and conceal their contempt for the whole charade, because it's the films--not the spectators--that ultimately pay the price.

My TIFF So Far:
Just Buried *1/2
Angel **
Emotional Arithmetic **
King of the Hill ***1/2
Love Songs *
A Promise to the Dead **1/2
Amal **1/2
Lust, Caution ***
Control ***
Mother of Tears: The Third Mother ***1/2

The Trench

Somebody talk to me about Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in socio-political context because I think I just saw its millennial doppelganger in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Fresh from a nice chat about Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return at Beaver Creek’s beautiful Vilar Center, I’m dying to see his new one, Banishment, based on a writing by William Saroyan and premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The trailer looks like more of the same which is, of course, not a bad thing at all. Heard today, too, that Burn After Reading, the new Coen Bros. spy flick starring Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, and Malkovich has started production.

Owen Wilson tries to kill himself? That’s some bad juju there. Now Steve Coogan and Courtney Love are in the fray – the latter accusing the former of getting Wilson into some heavy shit. Whatever happened, it reminded me a lot of The Royal Tenenbaums and, from there, The Darjeeling Express - when brother Luke’s character shaves his hair and opens his wrists to the tune of the late Elliot Smith’s “Needle in the Hay”. The singer, incidentally, dead by auto-inflicted steak knife to the chest.

(Another odd non-synchronicity, some guy working at the University of Colorado’s student center slit a student’s throat out of nowhere and then started stabbing himself in his chest until police tasered him. It’s the goddamnest thing.)

Saw Rob Zombie’s Halloween tonight. Um. . . it’s more interesting in the context of an emerging auteur’s work? Let’s go with that.

Got a last second gig to host a screening of The Third Man on Saturday, projected from a 16mm source, at Denver’s Starz Filmcenter as part of their “Tattered Cover Film Series”. Admission is free, but it’s always a sellout so get there early if you’re coming. That afternoon, at 1:00pm, screening Bonnie & Clyde as part of Gilpin County’s “American New Wave” series. Admission? Also free.

Finished the first seasons of “Rome” and “Dexter” and the last season of “Deadwood” – two are great, one sucks. Here’s a hint: Showtime series are uniformly awful. Imagine if “Dexter” had been written by David Milch instead.

In other news, Elias Merhige has a new film out. A short film that you can watch for free here:

http://www.dinofcelestialbirds.com/. Just found out that his Begotten is out of print. Shame, that.

Some links

In lieu of a Friday update at the mothersite...

• A super-sized update at FFC contributor Alex Jackson's homebase, including the site's first guest reviews.
• The trailer for Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind, a movie I can't believe actually exists.
• A guy who is restoring Star Wars on his home computer.

Discuss if you're so inclined.

P.S.: They're splitting Grindhouse into two movies for DVD. Bummer, huh?

The Trench

I dunno. Ebb and flows.

Busy time coming up. A new film series starting in the Vail Valley: one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Most of the notoriety comes from the ski resort, but the last three years or so a fledgling film festival has started up on its slopes that’s actually fairly impressive. Celebs like resorts – festivals like money – movie people like monied people: it all works out. The series is four films: Chungking Express, The Return, 3-Iron, and Pan’s Labyrinth. New American New Wave series starting up as well: five Saturdays. We’ll be doing Bonnie & Clyde, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Conversation, The Last Detail and The Stunt Man – as well as a cinematography series that will include pics like Hud and Days of Being Wild. It’s good because I like the work – and good, too, because I need the money.

Working on a couple of big projects – a few interesting assignments, a few that are just frustrating as fuck – and looking around at a few of my friends and peers who are going back to school, going out for drinks, going off on a lark. Checking that watch and wondering if it’s too soon for a mid-life crisis. How old was I ever going to get, anyway?

Amid a few screening duties (including Walter Hill’s still-delightful The Warriors – anyone here for an all-out revival of Hill’s works? Post-Sunshine, I was really hankering for a director’s cut of his Supernova) got a chance to watch Jack Hill’s Spider Baby, released in that annus mirabilis, 1968. Things really fucking flew apart that year in the United States, you know, bad enough that Richard stinking Nixon actually quoted Yeats in one of his speeches. He was talking about hippies, I think (most probably Abbie Hoffman in particular), but it’s gotta’ be bad for Mr. Bad Faith to assume the role as the proverbial falconer. 1968 in the movies has generational horror flicks like Rosemary’s Baby and Night of the Living Dead – and the ultimate freak-out in 2001: A Space Odyssey – too many to mention, really. The Wild Bunch is in there, right? Bonnie & Clyde and Easy Rider. . . and Altamont and Bobby Kennedy and My Lai and The Family. In a lot of ways, America is still suffering the hangover of that year. 1968.

But, oh yeah, Spider Baby is hilarious. An opening murder-by-shears is appropriately nauseating (though not overly gory by any stretch) and Lon Chaney’s sad performance as a caretaker of a family of inbred misfits recalls of all things, certain feelings elicited by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Inspired? Not quite. But definitely worth a look.

Saw The Invasion tonight and it’s just fucking bloody awful. Dumb as dirt and proselytizing, too – with every line of dialogue written by Kang and Kodos.

Saw Superbad last week and it’s not bad – mostly because I like Michael Cera.

Anyone here bite the pride bullet and go to Stardust?
Anyone here read the pieces on Antonioni and Bergman by Scorsese and Allen?

“John from Cincinnati” just got the hook – though what I’m really interested in is Alan Ball’s new Vampire series. I have hope, but frankly after “Six Feet Under”, the premise feels a little redundant. I have faith that he’ll surprise me. It’s good to have faith in something.

Here’s my lunchtime poll: best pod movie?

The Trench

I finished up an interesting Shakespeare on Film series with the Douglas County Library System – ending with Michael Almereyda’s just fantastic Hamlet (it’s fucking amazing - re-orders the universe in a way), and Orson Welles’ savage MacBeth - and am looking forward to talking Pan’s Labyrinth and, among others, Birth and Days of Being Wild for a couple of new series at the end of this month. Gilpin County has been good enough to green light an “American New Wave” series for me in September – I’m hoping to program The Conversation, Bonnie & Clyde, The Parallax View, The Last Detail, and so on. Good times. Mostly I remember the paranoia. It occurs to me that a whole, interesting series could be built around just versions of “MacBeth”: from Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood all the way through to the Polanski and Welles versions and then that funny one with James Le Gros, Christopher Walken, and Maura Tierney. After the upcoming The Invasion, you could do one with versions of the pod story as well. Truly a tale for all times.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be doing Philip Noyce’s The Quiet American – the film that I’m starting to think is better than Noyce’s other film from that year, Rabbit-Proof Fence. At the time of the latter’s release, I remember calling it “critic-proof fence” to the consternation of the picture’s publicist. What a jackass I am.

A couple of Bergman events planned for the mothersite – and a eulogy proper planned for airing in this blog, penned by one of our fine writers – but for now, RIP, by the way. I’ve mentioned it before around here but we got the name of our daughter from his The Seventh Seal: thus are we bound to art. I’m reminded, too, of a great Coleridge quote:

And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversly fram'd,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all ?

I never thought Bergman necessarily deserved any of his reputations: great artiste; insufferable bore; airless intellectual – but there are certainly a handful of films of his that I think about not infrequently. I consider it to be a great honor to have spoken about Persona a few months ago. I’m looking forward to writing it up in the near future.

Just finished a particularly long project that’s taken a lot out of me but, simultaneously, given me a tremendous amount of insight into an American icon I had heretofore taken for granted – and am engaged in another mega-project that I hope will segue into a few personal projects. A couple of interviews simmering: too soon to talk lest we jinx them – I’m feeling a new energy around these parts and hope that it doesn’t flag before a few more tent-posts are planted into the ground.

Saw a giant standee for the new Robert Zemeckis Beowulf that made me fairly hard, I have to admit. Especially its script by Neil Gaiman. . . okay, especially the Frazetta-like profile of Angelina Jolie. I guess there’s a new teaser for The Dark Knight floating around and am happy to report that a second viewing of Harry Potter 5 is as good as the first. I suspect the same won’t be true of any subsequent screenings of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine.

Currently reading J. Hoberman’s exceptional The Dream Life. Currently listening to Gram Rabbit’s “Music to Start a Cult To”. Francis Coppola admits that he wanted to do Godfather IV with an ailing Mario Puzo in the same week that I discovered that the new director’s cut of The Outsiders is possibly his last true masterpiece – and weep at the revelation that Ray Harryhausen has praised colorization using the “we wanted to shoot it in color in the first place”. Fuck all over that. Have given up on “John from Cincinnati” apparently just at the moment that it started to get good – thank goodness for On Demand – and is it just me or has “Big Love” turned “Carnivale”?

Weird few weeks, guys – seismic upheavals on the personal front though nothing fatal, I think – but it’s all left me feeling exhausted, a little delirious in that head rush when drinking sort of way, and present in a way that I haven’t been in months. Let’s hope it lasts.

Groovin' on a Thursday Afternoon

A few things:

• R.I.P. Edward Yang.
• Did anyone catch one of TCM's multiple screenings of Richard Schickel's "Spielberg on Spielberg" this week? Perhaps predictably, it's spectacularly evasive, skipping over Temple of Doom, Last Crusade, Always, Hook, The Lost World, and Catch Me If You Can (the latter two hardly more embarrassing than, say, Amistad) while breezing through Spielberg's filmography in a mostly chronological fashion. Any self-flagellation is limited to the topic of 1941--the irony there being that it's not exactly eating humble pie to recount the time you exploited the power bestowed on you by a string of successes...then luckily happened to be ensconced in Tunisia shooting the redemptive Raiders of the Lost Ark when the shit hit the fan. It was inevitable that either Schickel or Laurent Bouzereau--the two biggest sycophants in the cottage industry of supplemental documentaries--would direct this thing, since Spielberg is not one to sanction scrutiny of his methodology. (Accountability so scares him that he wields the existence of Stanley Kubrick's fabled treatment for A.I. like a talisman here to ward off blame for the perceived failure of the eventual film, particularly its final act.) What surprised me most about the piece is that, unlike TCM's similarly clips-laden hagiographies for John Ford and Marlon Brando, it left me with little urge to revisit the Spielberg canon; it's not even good auteur porn.
• Edward Yang? Still dead.
• Do yourself a favour and pick up the latest issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG. It's a real return to form for the magazine, which had been noticeably sidetracked in recent months while editor Tim Lucas put the finishing touches on his mammoth tome "Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark".
• Anyway, consider this an open forum. I presume you'll want to discuss Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Walter's attendant review, but anything from the recent death of director Richard Franklin (whose Psycho II is drastically underestimated) to that stupid J.J. Abrams trailer is of course fair game. We know better than to violate the Prime Directive.