Indieville
August 2009 - Posts
Summer 2009: but what does it *mean*?
Mon, Aug 31 2009 11:31 PM
Clearly someone at Variety was crunching numbers every Sunday night and waiting for the moment they could announce that this was the highest-grossing summer EVER; late Monday afternoon, with all the box office estimates confirmed, it was time to drop the good news. Yes, this summer set records all over. $4.17 billion grossed over last summer's $4.16 billion, with Labor Day weekend still to come! The highest-grossing summer romantic comedy ever ("The Proposal," with $160.2 million)! And many other memories to take home with us over the cold, frigid months until next summer's warm, lovely explosions. Has anyone bothered to crunch these numbers for inflation to see if they hold up -- or, for that matter, ticket sales? If this weekend indeed adds at least $100 mil to the summer's cume, would that really take us up three percent over the halcyon days of 2007? Have ticket sales risen, or...
The fine art of YouTube curation and hypemanship.
Mon, Aug 31 2009 1:48 PM
Killian Fox's Observer article about the current state of up-and-coming UK filmmakers is called "Digital: a short cut to the cinema," which makes it sound like a decade-old article just now predicting the rise of digital movies, but don't be fooled. It's a bleak little piece in which Fox profiles four up-and-coming British filmmakers working against the tide of limited opportunities and financing, with the most optimism coming from Film London director Adrian Wootten, who says, "Instead of it being a threatening time, I think this can be a very exciting time for a young British film-maker." Though Wootten's words ominously sound like being laid off and sent to a career counselor who tells you how lucky you are to have this chance to turn your life around, there have been bright spots emerging from the rubble. I was particularly struck by Zam Salim, who learned how "to make less...
"Chloe" and Canadians
Mon, Aug 31 2009 6:00 AM
The Toronto International Film Festival starts next Thursday! September 10! Who's excited? Well, you should be: even if you (like me) can't attend, Toronto unveils much of what devoted filmgoers can look forward to over the next half-year or so. I'll be keeping an eye on the festival's high-profile premieres (and perhaps even more so the low-profile ones, where surprising gems can emerge with little notice). But now it's Monday morning and the salivatory pre-coverage is already flowing, so let's start with the best film piece I read this weekend, Katrina Onstad's profile in The New York Times on the upcoming Atom Egoyan movie Chloe. There's a lot to like about this piece -- Onstad deftly balances where the film fits in Egoyan's body of work, speculation on how it'll turn out, and its now-eternal place in morbid trivia as the film Liam Neeson was working on when wife Natasha...
"Black Devil Doll." There are no words.
Sun, Aug 30 2009 7:10 AM
Making intentionally shoddy attempted cult movies tends to be a waste of time -- usually all they turn out to be good for are high-concept trailers that give you all the fun without any of the dead time. Remember "Grindhouse" and the trailer for "Machete" and it was snicker-worthy when the voice-over said "They just fucked with the wrong Mexican"? And then Robert Rodriguez had to go kill the joke by deciding to turn it into a feature that would add nothing to the trailer? Yeah. Below is the trailer for "Black Devil Doll," a blaxploitation Chucky movie designed to offend everyone. And maybe "offend" should be in quote marks, because when you show up for something that advertises itself as gleefully pissing all over everyone's sensibilities, it's not really that different from, say, Don Rickles. I have no clue how good the movie itself -- which has been a...
"Halloween II" is, theoretically, awesome.
Fri, Aug 28 2009 11:40 AM
I love Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects." I think it's one of the 30 best movies of the decade. But, according to my critic peers, that can't possibly be the case, because we're all horrific snobs -- or so the studios think. Dan Kois at New York is done with what he calls "the Summer of Film-Critic Irrelevance." Since neither of today's two major genre releases, "The Final Destination" or "Halloween II," is getting screened for critics -- despite the fact that critics might actually like them -- he's more worked up about this than you might expect. Back in the day, B-movies wormed their way into importance, turning noir from pulp entertainment into an essential part of film-student study. Every generation of critics fights over what should become part of the canon (check out this discussion at Dave Kehr's website). Every time it seems the essential viewing curriculum is...
"Mystery Team" takes on the case of the indie comedy.
Thu, Aug 27 2009 11:15 AM
The case of the indie comedy has been a tough one to crack. Films like "The Foot Fist Way" and "Wet Hot American Summer" struggled in theaters, only to go on to success on DVD and permanent rotation on cable. That's why the "Mystery Team" is coming to the rescue. Tonight, the Derrick Comedy troupe will premiere their Sundance fave about a trio of "Encyclopedia Brown"-esque kiddie crimesolvers forced to grow up fast when faced with a murder investigation, but it won't be in front of the usual crowds in New York and L.A. Instead, Derrick members Dan Eckman, DC Pierson, Dominic Dierkes, Donald Glover and Meggie McFadden will be traveling to Austin, TX to kick off a full-fledged theatrical run at the Alamo Ritz. In the weeks that follow, "Mystery Team" will begin theatrical runs in Athens, GA (9/4), Gainesville and Tallahassee, FL (9/11), Ames and Iowa City, IA...
"Transformers 2" M&Ms will corrupt your children.
Thu, Aug 27 2009 9:45 AM
Long ago, when the ratings system was new, its standards wouldn't necessarily make a whole lot of sense to today's zealous parents. In 1968, "Planet of The Apes," was a G movie, and in 1976 "The Bad News Bears" was PG -- alleged family fare with enough beer consumption and racial tension to make Paul Haggis blush. Over the years, parents got pickier; mild profanity got elided from the "G," and the gap between "PG" and "R" got too broad. After "Gremlins" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" came out in 1984, scaring the holy crap out of kids and angering their folks, "PG-13" came along. And then parents never complained about ratings ever again, because they finally had enough information to make good judgments about what was appropriate for their children. Nah, just kidding. Maybe it's a cliché to say that today's parents are overly over-protective, but...
What people know when they say they know movies.
Wed, Aug 26 2009 5:30 PM
Our friends at Time Out New York have whipped up a neat little alt-canon of 25 films most people wouldn't think of as essential to cinematic knowledge in the way of "Citizen Kane" or "Battleship Potemkin" but which, according to them, should be. Now, I applaud the TONY crew for digging deep into their personal loves and not pandering one bit: on their list, relatively well-known fare like "Barry Lyndon" rubs shoulders with rarities like Mikio Naruse's 1964 "Yearning." But mostly the alt-canon got me thinking about how dreary the idea of "canon" can be as a selection of the Movies That Changed Cinema Forever. When I was a freshman at NYU's film school, I took the mandatory "Language of Film" class, which is supposed to teach you how to watch and analyze films; in practice, it's more a crash course in film history tailored to the taste of whomever...
Where are all the big stars? Documentaries.
Wed, Aug 26 2009 3:10 PM
Last week, there was plenty of attention given to the fall of the Hollywood star system, but there is one realm of filmmaking that seems to be unquestionably benefiting from marquee attractions -- documentaries. While others ponder the value of Julia Roberts and Russell Crowe in this day and age, the doc world is gearing up for a fall loaded with stars... from other fields. It's a trend that actually started earlier this year with the release of "Valentino: The Last Emperor," the Matt Tyrnauer doc about the Italian fashion designer that's been going strong theatrically since March, even though the film has now hit DVD. This week, another fashion icon makes her screen debut -- not counting "The Devil Wears Prada" -- as you might've picked up from her appearance on David Letterman Monday night: Getting Anna Wintour to take off her signature sunglasses might be considered an achievement...
Battling Hollywood temptation in radio musical form.
Wed, Aug 26 2009 1:20 PM
Sparks -- brothers Ron and Russell Mael -- is a cult band who haven't stopped being odd for nearly 40 years now. Depending on who you believe, Queen stole their hysterical falsetto in the '70s. After making 1974's "Kimono My House" (one of Kurt Cobain's favorite albums) they got bored of glam and became minor disco stars, hooking up with Giorgio Moroder to put out "No 1 Song In Heaven." With their sarcastic lyrics, high-pitched vocals and (of late) minimalistic song structures, the brothers keep on annoying 95% of the people who hear them and tickling the other 5%. Obviously, I'm in the latter camp. Now Sparks has pulled off their weirdest project yet: an hour-long musical about Ingmar Bergman. "The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman" -- done for Swedish National Radio -- is made up of 24 songs following an extremely weird plot that has Bergman going into a multiplex...
"Up In The Air" could be this decade's "Fight Club."
Wed, Aug 26 2009 10:10 AM
Stills from "Up in the Air," the new film from Jason "Juno" Reitman, have been gathered over at the Playlist, and while I'm not usually into the tea-leaf reading that occurs when an anticipated upcoming movie releases things like this, I'll take any excuse to write about an adaptation I've been anticipating for almost a decade -- one whose meaning has almost completely shifted. Walter Kirn's novel "Up in the Air" dropped in the summer of 2001, a more innocent age, to high sales and acclaim. It follows Ryan Bingham, "career transition counselor" (he fires people) and air-travel veteran, who waxes poetic about every aspect of his nomadic existence, the overwhelming sameness of hotel rooms, the miles and the artificial normality of travel. Kirn's great zeitgeist contribution was the term "AirWorld," denoting the sheer interchangeability of layouts no matter where you are in the airport system (a term promptly jacked...
David Duchovny would like to be your Warren Beatty.
Tue, Aug 25 2009 3:50 PM
Every summer since "Star Wars," pundits have complained about The Death of Adult Film. Sunday, it was the Washington Post's Ann Hornaday's turn to speculate on why "movies for grown-ups are in the cross-hairs," or, in her formulation: "Hello, 'Paul Blart.' Sayonara, 'Frost/Nixon.'" Oh, c'mon. The article's assumption is that anything that isn't explicitly blockbuster schlock or a kiddy flick qualifies as "adult." That means that Liam Neeson's kick-some-terrorist-ass fantasia "Taken" is "adult"; "Angels & Demons" is "adult" because it involves the Vatican. Being "adult" doesn't equal the confronting of unpleasant truths about how people interact, subtlety in characterization or delays in instant gratification; it's just another marketing problem for anything that isn't Sundance quirk (Hornaday calls "(500) Days Of Summer" a "poverty-row striver") or CGI bombast. Same as it ever was. I'm more bemused by David Duchovny's take on the issue. In a Random Roles interview with the AV...
Where the classic films roam.
Tue, Aug 25 2009 2:20 PM
Repertory cinema, the charmingly arcane practice of people gathering in a movie theater to watch a 35mm print of an older movie, seems, like so many things, to be on its way out, eradicated by DVD. The most recent sign is the upcoming closure of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's rep film program, a decision decried by many, include, most eloquently, K.A. Westphal, who notes that the $100,000 the program has reportedly been losing the museum each year is still "less than two-tenths of one percent of the Museum's $74 million annual operating budget." He also takes on the "Why can't you just get it on DVD and shut up?" problem -- but he's assuming DVD will be there to pick up the slack. Unless it isn't. Two weeks ago, Maclean's issued a gloomy prognostication about the future of classic films on DVD: there isn't one. "Older movies...
"Inglourious Basterds" promotes English language domination.
Tue, Aug 25 2009 9:20 AM
Over the weekend, "Inglourious Basterds" went from a film with a mixed Cannes reputation as Tarantino's least-productively talky to being a box office conqueror. If critics are still split, the general public seems surprisingly united in loving it. As Sharon Waxman reports, the Weinsteins marketed a kick-ass action movie, and somehow, remarkably, didn't alienate theatergoers who actually got two-and-a-half hours of subtitled conversations. CinemaScore (which polls crowds on their way out) puts the film at an unexpected A-. Typically, audiences who show up for one thing and get another are annoyed (the explanation given for "Funny People"'s failure). The most interesting fallout from "Inglourious Basterds"' success was noted in Ben Fritz's analysis in the LA Times. Writing of the film's triumph abroad, Fritz reports that in Germany, no less than 28 theaters showed the original (that is, un-dubbed) version of the film -- four times more than usual for an...
Whit Stillman heads back to the dance.
Tue, Aug 25 2009 6:15 AM
Whit Stillman will never again have to answer that nagging question -- when will "The Last Days of Disco" finally be rereleased on DVD? Criterion, who did a splendid job with "Metropolitan" in 2006, released their edition of "Disco" today, with the full bells-and-whistles treatment. There's also a screening at Lincoln Center in New York on August 27th, complete with a dance party, and a subsequent screening at the Jacob Burns Film Center on September 1st, both with the filmmaker in attendance. Stillman confessed that he never actually got a copy of the long-out-of-print first disc, having seen it only once at a friend's house. For this new release, he's penned lengthy captions to accompany the stills gallery, dug deep into Warner Brothers' archives for deleted scenes and recorded an audio commentary with stars Chloë Sevigny and Chris Eigeman. (Not surprisingly, there's now talk of a Criterion edition of "Barcelona,"...
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