October 25, 2008

Shorts, 10/25.

Your Candidate John Patterson comes close to making the argument I've been haranguing friends with for months now: Since the Iowa caucuses at the very latest, this marathon presidential campaign has been, hands down, the movie of the year: "[T]he campaign is so filled with U-turns, red herrings, cliffhangers and serial climaxes that one barely needs go near the multiplex for white-knuckle entertainment. Just keeping up with Palin's alter egos - the French populist Pierre Poujade and Australia's Pauline Hanson in politics; Tracy Flick, Marge Gunderson, Peggy Hill (and Tina Fey's spoof) in fiction - is enough to set your mind reeling. And movie references are ever near at hand."

Also in the Guardian, Jon Savage:

By the late 70s, deepening recession and spiralling unemployment had pitched Britain into uncharted waters. There was the threat of fascism, the rise of the new right, a pervasive mood of decay and riot. Youth bore the brunt of these conditions: the first to be sacked, the last to find jobs, exploited and/or victimised by adults and government. Music and pop culture was one of their only sources of hope and inspiration, and it was pursued with a fanatic determination. So within a three-year period, [[films such as Franco Rosso's Babylon, Jubilee, The Music Machine, Quadrophenia, Rude Boy, The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle, Breaking Glass and Take It or Leave It] were able to explore punk, disco, the mod revival, reggae and dub, synth pop, and 2 Tone. At the same time, they were mostly shot on location, mapping a capital city of dark corners, queasy neons and blasted bombsites.

And:

  • "One minute [Steven Soderbergh] is planning a low-budget experimental erotic drama with a porn star in the lead, the next it's a biopic of flamboyant pianist Liberace, with Michael Douglas," notes Ben Child. "For his next trick, the Traffic filmmaker wants Catherine Zeta-Jones to play Cleopatra opposite Hugh Jackman's Mark Antony, in what is described as a '3-D live-action rock'n'roll musical.'"

  • "I do not know that I have ever seen a film as powerful, beautiful, haunting and individual as Hunger, Steve McQueen's movie about the dirty protest and the hunger strike," writes Ronan Bennett. "Obviously, having been in Long Kesh, some of the movie's impact on me is particular, though I was never in the H-blocks (I was released, suddenly, before the blanket protest began). But as a writer I was, frankly, awed by McQueen's art and vision, by writer Enda Walsh's superb and unusual framing of the story, by Tom McCullagh's stunning production design, and by the authenticity and breathtaking dedication that actor Michael Fassbender brought to the role of Bobby Sands, the leader of the hunger strike and the first to die, on May 5 1981, by which time, as well as being a convicted IRA prisoner, he was also MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone."

  • "Bollywood and Hollywood, which have long peddled shared visions of chaste romance and unlikely friendships, today finally ties the knot with Disney's first Indian-made animated feature film in Hindi: Roadside Romeo." Randeep Ramesh reports, while, in the New York Times, Rachel Saltz reviews this otherwise "conventional Hindi movie with a small-guys-versus-gangsters plot, song-and-dance sequences and film references galore."

Young Mr Lincoln

Call + Response "Call + Response gives us a whirlwind tour of abhorrent practices that many of us would rather ignore," writes Jeffrey Overstreet. "Sex slavery is thriving around the world, even in the US, and the average age of the victim is getting younger. In their eagerness to buy sex slaves that are disease-free, customers are buying younger and younger slaves... children right on to to seven, five, even three years old. Last year, slave traders made more money than all of the profits of Google, Nike and Starbucks put together. It's not just sex slavery... it's also about the exploitation of children in military endeavors, as young boys are trained to use AK-47s in African civil wars."

"We've been getting more than a few interesting responses to the notion that Ben Stiller could direct The Trial of the Chicago 7, the DreamWorks passion project that's had big names like Spielberg and Greengrass associated with it over the past six months," notes the Hollywood Reporter's Steven Zeitchik.

Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay has been listening to Max Richter's 24 Postcards in Full Colour and it's inspired thoughts on "the issue of movie form and content in the internet age."

"Film Threat," a poem by Richard Deming in the Nation.

Catherine Grant points to more "excellent online resources."

Kristin Thompson elaborates on the differentiation between perceptual and mental subjectivity made in the third chapter of Film Art: An Introduction.

Home Cineuropa's new "Film Focus": Ursula Meier's Home, starring Isabelle Huppert and Olivier Gourmet.

In the Voice:

  • Chuck Wilson: "[W]hat propels Saving Marriage is footage of the campaign to replace an old-school state representative with a 25-year-old gay health-care worker - a political novice whose attempt to change the system from within makes one think that there's hope yet for this democracy thing." More from Jeannette Catsoulis (New York Times) and Bill Weber (Slant). Related: Aaron Hillis in the LA Weekly on Gods and Gays: Bridging the Gap. Related online viewing: Ellen DeGeneres responds to Sarah Palin.

    Ernest Hardy: "Like the cinematic version of its maternal root, the Noah's Arc film, Jumping the Broom, centers on the bumpy road to marriage - an especially timely subject to which the film brings heavy-handed polemics, teary bust-ups and reconciliations, and lots of slapstick comedy, but no real insight or depth." More from Andy Webster (NYT) and Armond White (New York Press).

  • Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun "is little more than a good performance of dated material," finds Vadim Rizov. Adds Bill Weber at Slant: "Adapted from the award-winning 1939 pacifist novel and a one-character play first mounted off-Broadway in 1982, this incarnation of Johnny Got His Gun is a mismatch of medium, text and talent." More from Laura Kern (NYT) and James Yu (L Magazine).

    Ella Taylor on The Soviet Story: "This pungently anti-communist documentary from the wonderfully named Latvian historian and filmmaker Edvins Snore is much more than a catalog of Stalin's Terror.... Drafting little-seen footage of Soviet mass killings that closely resemble oft-seen footage from Nazi concentration camps, Snore, along with prominent historians from Russia and Western Europe, argues that Nazism and Stalinism were equivalent forms of fascism." More from Neil Genzlinger (NYT) and Lauren Wissot (Slant).

Black Lizard "Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku made two of my favorite films of 1968," writes Kimberly Lindbergs. "Blackmail is My Life (aka Kyokatsu koso Waga Jinsei) and Black Lizard (aka Kurotokage)." As for the latter, "I thought it was time to finally share some of my thoughts about this fascinating and extremely entertaining movie that always manages to find its way onto any list of 'Favorite Films' that I compile."

Max Färberböck's A Woman in Berlin, starring Nina Hoss, "is likely to shock the nation, stir resentment against the Russians and provoke a debate about morality in war," predicts Roger Boyes in the London Times.

Gina Lollobrigida "has reached the stage of lifetime achievement awards: the National Italian American Foundation honored her in Washington this month, and the Rome International Film Festival is expected to fete her on Wednesday." Rachel Donadio meets her: "With a full-figured beauty that communicated innocence and experience, La Lollo was the incarnation of an Italy that leapt after the Second World War from dire poverty to the glamour of the Dolce Vita years. 'La Lollo was a personality that outshone her work in the cinema; she was simply one of the most beautiful women in the world,' said Peter Bondanella, the author of Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. She represents 'something iconic, more important than the actual talent she often displayed in her work as an actress.'"

Also in the New York Times:

Spellbound by Beauty

Harold Clurman and Clifford Odets, "old colleagues from the Group Theatre, were reunited in 1946 (at least professionally - they were good friends in real life) to do the film Deadline at Dawn," notes Sheila O'Malley, who reviews the film at Noir of the Week: Parts 1 and 2.

Sean Nelson talks with Mike Leigh about Happy-Go-Lucky and writes, "Poppy's positivity might seem a naive approach to life in a world as blighted as this one. But having seen her in action, you can be forgiven for thinking that a person who chooses to enjoy her life, caring deeply about others, investing her considerable energy in being a loving teacher and a loyal friend, and adding color to a dying world, might understand something the miserable, angry rest of us don't." Scott Tobias talks with Leigh, too, for the AV Club.

Also in the Stranger, Charles Mudede: "Instead of something new, progressive, and innovative, what we see in both the original and the [Ashes of Time Redux] is something that's primordial - a film that has its place in the mental-land before time, in mental-time before self-consciousness, in consciousness (or sense certainty) before it's ordered by the forces of narration and human sensibility."

Anvil! Gaynor Flynn talks with Debra Winger for the Independent, where Rob Sharp tells the story behind Anvil! The Story of Anvil.

Dennis Lim talks with Madonna about Filth and Wisdom for the Los Angeles Times.

The Guardian has Mark Ravenhill introduce a YouTube competition: "I've written a piece called 'Old School People.' Your task, if you choose to accept it, is to respond to it in a five-minute film. The winner's prize is a once in a lifetime chance to work for a major broadcaster with Channel 4 executive Stuart Cosgrove as your mentor."

Online listening tip. "Not Quite Hollywood is a new documentary exploring the world of Australian exploitation cinema that began in the early 1970s." Ambrose Heron talks with director Mark Hartley.

Online viewing tips. Ray Pride's director pix and Wassup! 2008.



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Posted by dwhudson at October 25, 2008 12:24 PM