December 19, 2005

Shorts, 12/19.

The New World Filmbrain: "[W]hat is most surprising about Terrence Malick's latest film (his fourth in thirty-two years), is that though it depicts one of the most lethal cases of culture clash, it is ultimately more a tragic love story steeped in the consequences of misunderstanding than it is an indictment of the crimes of our forefathers.... The New World is the true masterpiece this holiday season."

Talking to Stephanie Bunbury of the Age, Tilda Swinton has elicited frosty responses from Jason Morehead and Jeffrey Overstreet. Related: Laura Miller's longish profile of Philip Pullman in the New Yorker is titled "Far From Narnia."

For the Los Angeles Times, Richard Schickel reviews Matthew Modine's Full Metal Jacket Diary, Taschen's The Stanley Kubrick Archives and Rainer Crone's Stanley Kubrick Drama & Shadows: Photographs 1945-1950 and comes away with this observation, among others:

The essence of film directing is to make the performers appear utterly naturalistic, uncalculating. One way of doing that is to print the first or second take before actors have settled into their roles. The other way is to get them so befuddled and exhausted that thought and artifice are drained from them, and they're freely, but persuasively, doing anything that might end the agony.

In the latest installment of the paper's series on Scientology, Claire Hoffman and Kim Christensen examine the organization's courting of Tom Cruise.

Raging Bull Danish filmmaker Per Fly raves about Scorsese's Raging Bull and Sheila Johnston listens: "I love that practical, colourful way of dealing with guilt. You confess, do a penance and get absolution... When you look at Ingmar Bergman's films, the guilt in them is much more melancholy and depressive." Also in the Telegraph, Julian Fellowes's week-long diary.

Dan Williams reports for Reuters that Steven Spielberg has hired Eyal Arad, "who helped mastermind the recent Israeli withdrawal from Gaza" and "one of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's top strategists," to market Munich in Israel.

Munich "might be the year's most levelheaded (if not necessarily the most dramatically sturdy) cinematic dissertation on our ongoing war on terror," writes Nick Schager. Also in Slant: Joe McGovern on Caché, Ed Gonzalez on The Intruder and Schager on Fun with Dick and Jane.

2929 Entertainment "I've seen more movement in the last three months than the previous five years." That's Todd Wagner, co-owner, with Mark Cuban, of 2929 Entertainment, nailing it. Again, 2005 will be remembered as the year that alternative means of distribution alongside (rather than instead of) theaters started to become a concrete rather than abstract inevitability. Laura M Holson checks up on a few ventures.

As for 2929's specific "rationale," though, Randall Stross remains skeptical, to put it mildly. To him, it "seems dangerously ungrounded in reality." Commentary: Chuck Tryon. Related: At indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman: "Over the past several months, Picturehouse, The Weinstein Company, and 2929 Entertainment have all made headlines, pronouncements, and even released a few pictures. But in 2006, their true colors - along with their business models, taste and acumen - will be revealed, for better or for worse."

Back in the New York Times:

  • David Carr: "Much was made of how silly it was for Apple to believe people would watch television on a 2.5-inch screen. But consumers have downloaded three million video programs from iTunes since the new video iPod became available in October. What gives?" Related: Matt Clayfield: "New media isn't about narrative integration, but about narrative disintegration and a return to novelty and attraction." Another discovery from our recent past from Nick Rombes: "A version of iPod in 1976? Not exactly, but the basic idea is there." And Scott Kirsner in the Boston Globe: "The iPod's strength, so far, is how easy it is to load it with video downloaded from the iTunes Music Store; as usual, Apple has made simplicity paramount." Exactly. It's not about the viewing experience. It's about accessibility and portability.

  • Tom Zeller looks back briefly at a rotten moment in the early days of DreamWorks when a piece in the Spectator "suggested, among other things, that Jews had created an 'invidious and protective culture' in Hollywood that excluded non-Jews."

The Master and the Margarita

"[W]hat do you think documentaries are supposed to achieve, fundamentally?" asks Nick Davis at Cinemarati.

Logan Hill in New York on Woody Allen and London: "One film could have been a fling. Two, an affair. But three? This is getting serious. How can Woody leave us? Oh, yeah, we dumped him first." Related: André Soares: "If Alfred Hitchcock were to direct a screenplay co-written by Nietzsche and Dostoevsky based on Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, the result would be something like Woody Allen's latest opus, Match Point." And Tim R's own private Woody retro.

Still going Kongkers:

Rolling Stone: Kong

  • Gavin Edwards interviews Peter Jackson for Rolling Stone.

  • Ed Champion: "The filmmaker who once dared to instill subtext and nuance into disrespectful genres, has been replaced by an overgrown adolescent who has run amuck, a fortysomething toddler whose storytelling abilities have been occluded by a need to fling random computer-generated bodies around and spend countless dollars on special effects."

  • Nigel Andrews, writing in the Financial Times, would disagree: "Three hours of stupendous cinematic self-assurance, fantasy-adventure images to die for, by and with and a script and characters so much cleverer than Christmas entertainment should be that Jackson risks being clapped in chains and exhibited at the next World Fair." Via Ray Pride at Movie City Indie.

  • Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Press: "This Kong is an epic mixed bag, at best one-third to one-half a good movie."

  • Mark Kermode in the Observer: The "claim that British performer Andy Serkis's sterling work bringing the CGI star of King Kong to life is something less than 'acting', and more akin to mere technological monkeying around" is "foolish."

  • "low iq canadian" at Cinemarati: "[L]et's give credit where credit's due: Kong #2 contributed to the widely-hailed 2005 remake in significant and largely unacknowledged ways."

  • At Video WatchBlog, has Tim Lucas found the lost sequel?

  • Sharon Waxman cautiously notes in the NYT that Kong "could be on track to be the blockbuster hit that Universal badly needs it to be. But it appears likely that achieving that will take more time than usual."

Also in the NYP, Armond White on The Family Stone as a socio-political barometer far more complex that it might seem at first glance; and Jennifer Merin interviews Ang Lee.

In a light-hearted piece for the Observer, Adam Mars-Jones measures Brokeback Mountain against past landmark films with gay themes. Related: Charles Karel Bouley II in the Advocate: "[T]he media has all but compared [Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal] to war heroes for their portrayal of two closeted cowboys in a story of unrequited love and personal deception. Say it with me: poppycock." Via lylee at Cinemarati.

Also in the Observer, Rachel Cooke lunches with Mel Brooks, whose "approach to dining is as wilfully anarchic as his humor." Nonetheless, it has, of course, been a very hard year. Related: Nathan Lane tells the Independent's David Usborne how grateful he is to Brooks.

The Reeler leaves indieWIRE for Movie City News.

Punishment Park Steven Boone: "Punishment Park is a full-on convulsion of rage and paranoia from a year that saw massive anitwar protests in San Francisco and DC, the US-backed invasion of Laos, a Harris poll that put opposition to the Vietnam war at 60% and the publication of the Pentagon Papers. This movie wants blood."

Speaking of blood. Sean Axmaker's latest "Digital Delirium" column for Static Multimedia rounds up gore on DVD that "would make even the Grinch a little squeamish."

Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay surveys the twelve projects selected for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, 2006.

At Movie Poop Shoot, DK Holm comments on Mike Russell's "Screening Rats": "I can only echo Marlowe in Conrad's Heart of Darkness: 'The horror. The horror. Exterminate the brutes!'"

Armin Müller Stahl turned 75 over the weekend. Deutsche Welle tips its hat in English.

Online fiddling around tips. Xeni Jardin collects a bunch at Boing Boing.

Online viewing tip. "Lazy Sunday," SNL's ode to Narnia. Via Waxy.org: Links.



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Posted by dwhudson at December 19, 2005 7:14 AM