Thoughts and shorts.

Sideways is so far turning out to be the film of the year as far as critics are concerned. The New York Film Critics Circle is the latest of these organizations to tap it; for more, see the full list, awards scoreboard and "Awards Watch" at Movie City News and Eugene Hernandez's piece at indieWIRE, plus their "Awards Watch." And we'll soon see how far all the critical endorsements carry it into the awards season that culminates with the Oscars on February 29.

But Sideways may not turn out to be the story of the year, and you know, in the long run, even the Passion vs Fahrenheit slug-out might not be, either. No one can predict these things with total confidence, but, as many have pointed out, we may end up looking back at Tarnation as just as much a landmark event as, say, Easy Rider, Stranger Than Paradise or The Blair Witch Project. In the past, I've thought the next bump in the road would arise from the distribution end of things, and that may well yet happen as well. But Tarnation is most remarkable for its production. It's not so much the money; once the $7000 legend was established, pulling off a feature for even just a couple of hundred is, yes, still quite a feat, but the biggest barriers had already been broken.

Instead, Jonathan Caouette will most likely earn his bookmark in history for the manner in which he pieced his film together. Peter Greenaway has been arguing long and loud for the liberation of film from literary conventions. Why can't he show potential investors a painting, he asks, rather than a sheaf of pages? Well, for that matter, why not a film? Considering that, once those low, low budgets were recorded for posterity and the PR departments, both Robert Rodriguez and Caouette were given more money to spend on post-production, that is, essentially what they've done. Caouette has moved things along (or at least along one tangent) by, for one thing, moving them to the living room Mac, and for another, building a cohesive, feature-length film out of what was, more or less, "found" material, but also material he'd shot himself, even if he was unaware at the time of what would eventually become of that footage.

Again, he certainly wasn't the first; many a film has been created (Bruce Conner) or entirely reimagined (Annie Hall) in the editing room, but look at the phrases Caouette has critics coining: "iMovie Nation" (Susan Gerhard), "the age of iMovie" (Jeff Economy), "iCinema" (Stuart Klawans). Ultimately, this tangent into the future may indeed be only one of a few or more, but it's hard to imagine that, as the means of production become handier, we won't be seeing more filmmakers outlining with cameras rather than First Draft. (As a word guy, I should add that I have mixed feelings about this, but find it exciting nonetheless.)

"The best compliment I can give Tarnation is to say that it's the first film I've seen in weeks that compelled me to write." That said, Darren Hughes respectfully argues that "the film's formal problems - its haphazard construction, conflicted voice, and questionable re presentations of life - become too great to sustain the weight of Caouette's noble ambitions."

"Examining the elegiac works of Arthur Penn, Oliver Stone, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Robert Altman, author Robert Kolker's A Cinema of Loneliness is a towering work of critical analysis and a testament to the importance of cinema." For Kamera, Deryck Swan reviews the third edition: "Rather than simply tacking on revisions Kolker has produced a new book, a new outlook, and a new opinion."

Eartha Melzer reports on "A Dubious Doc" for In These Times: "A call to Magnolia Pictures in New York was answered by a man who, lowering his voice when asked about Voices of Iraq, whispered, 'Nobody here wanted to release this and we didn’t do any of the promotion on it. [Mark] Cuban steamrolled us on this.' ... Nobody involved with the film is willing to say who initially put up the money for the film or how they ended up represented by the Army's PR firm." Via Movie City Indie.

Like the editors at Salon, when Army Spc. Thomas Wilson asked Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait why US troops aren't as well-equipped and they could and should be, I thought of Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace. Now, Salon is offering a relevant clip from the film. Also: Allen Barra argues that James Joyce's "The Dead" is the "greatest of all Christmas stories" and that John Huston's is a worthy adaptation; now if it were only available on DVD.

Slate's got clips, too. June Thomas introduces and annotates a series taken from Pedro Almodóvar's films:

Again and again, his films depict the rituals associated with putting on the costumes that confer authority: priests donning robes for mass; nuns adjusting their habits; matadors putting on the suit of lights; and, most commonly, actors and actresses making up and dressing - or undressing - themselves for a performance.

Given this obsession with exaggerated versions of womanhood and the rituals of dressing, as well as his roots in the underground and gay culture, it shouldn't be surprising that Almodóvar has used drag queens, transvestites, and transsexuals to explore questions of authenticity, ambition, and romanticism.

Via MCN: Roger Ebert lunches with Martin Scorsese:

He's talking out loud about ideas for his next movie. He'll make a Boston police picture, starring DiCaprio for the third time in a row. Then maybe he'll adapt Endo's The Silence, about a Jesuit missionary in Japan in the 16th century. Or maybe Boswell's London Journal - he loves that book, about a young man from Scotland, on the make in the big city: "I love it when he gets the clap from that actress and after he's treated, he goes around and presents her with the doctor's bill."

Nick Pinkerton leads the Reverse Shot team's trio of takes on The Aviator by asserting that it is "nothing less than (need I say it?) [Scorsese's] Citizen Kane, with all the faux newsreel, authorial self-portraiture, dime-store Freudianism, and yes, greatness, that the comparison implies."

Alessandra Stanley: "Scorsese on Scorsese is not just a plug for the director's latest movie, The Aviator. This documentary on TCM tonight is mostly a comfortable chat - plus film clips - with one of the world's most engaging conversationalists."

Also in the New York Times:

• Sharon Waxman: "Christmas - according to Hollywood - has become something to endure rather than celebrate, and that sentiment is breeding a whole new genre of anti-holiday holiday movies." Two accompanying pieces: Christian Moerk points out how Revolution Studios, and its partner, Sony, have learned from The Passion of the Christ to use "Christian- and family-oriented media" to turn "potential loser" Christmas With the Kranks into a "modest hit"; and Lizette Alvarez on the UK's "Santa slump."

• Hassan M Fattah reports on last week's glittering Dubai International Film Festival, which was mostly a success, but: "About the only unhappy people were Arab filmmakers, who fancied themselves as the stars of the program."

• Dave Kehr picks the highlights from this week's round of new DVD releases.

Matt Zoller Seitz finds Alexander "a richer work" than The Aviator ("The film's suggestion that Alexander's conquests presaged 20 centuries of ego-driven imperialism is as politically resonant as anything in Godard's Notre Musique, and subtler, too"), and in fact, keeps the comparison running pretty much all the way through his review of the latter, ultimately concluding, "for all its skill, you're aware you're watching a Scorsese movie for people who don't like Scorsese movies." Seitz has another pair for you, too: Beyond the Sea ("a disaster") and The Sea Inside ("orks so well that I wished it were more adventurous").

Also in the New York Press:

• Armond White also doubles up, but only once: Million Dollar Baby ("Eastwood depicts working-class life with a rich man's whimsy") and Spanglish ("comes very close to being a masterpiece").

• Saul Austerlitz goes ahead and opts for "the 'M' word," as White calls it, when it comes to Michael Apted's Up Series: "[M]asterpieces by any yardstick." Also: Secret Things, "Jean-Claude Brisseau's workplace-erotic fantasy-revenge film."

• Jim Knipfel watches Evilspeak, "an unusually - even delightfully - cruel and gruesome film," and The Loveless: "Even the commentary admits it's a big leather boy movie."

• Evidently enraptured, Alan Lockwood talks you through Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue.

Ed Park's the only Village Voice writer to pair up two film and bounce them off each other this week. In short: He prefers The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie to The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.

Also in this issue:

• Michael Atkinson. Very busy. Million Dollar Baby: "[S]aying it's an old man's movie is a serious compliment." The Aviator: "[C]ould've been a Raging Bull brother film, given that masterpiece's crystalline purity of purpose and humiliated courage. But it brakes far short." Plus Swoon, A Tale of Two Sisters, Animal Love and Dreyer's Michael.

• Dennis Lim on Spanglish, "a clueless liberal's easy fantasy," and Beyond the Sea, which "may be the worst biopic of the season."

• Laura Sinagra on The Sea Inside: "[Javier] Bardem won the best-actor award in Venice. But one wonders what further richness fellow Venice winner Mike Leigh (Best Picture for Vera Drake) might have culled from this multi-layered domestic conundrum."

• "Tracking Shots": Leslie Camhi on Whore, Edward Crouse on Santa Smokes and Melissa Anderson on Open My Heart.

"How often in the history of literature has a writer come up with a new subject?" asks Nicola Shulman in the Times Literary Supplement: "Barrie did, and in the many thousands of words written about Peter Pan, too few of them credit him for it."

The Guardian's Michael Billington reviews the Warehouse Theatre's production of Phil Willmott's Femme Fatale, "two hours of knowing, jovial, rib-nudging pastiche."

Noir enthusiast Aaron Dobbs is still relishing the "Essential Noir" series at Film Forum, spelling out all the good reasons you - even if you're nowhere near NYC - really do need to see The Big Sleep, Murder, My Sweet, The Woman in the Window and The Big Heat.

Online download, print out and put to good use tip. DrapIndustries Design Co's SHHH, the Society for HandHeld Hushing. Via the SF IndieBlog.

And an online viewing tip. The trailer for Nobody Knows, via Todd at Twitch, who adds, quite rightly, "They're making it look surprisingly chipper for a film about four young abandoned children and Mr Movie Voice must die, but it does look like fairly compelling stuff..."

Posted by dwhudson at December 14, 2004 4:32 PM