Indieville
October 2009 - Posts
Five obnoxious Troy Duffy quotes.
Fri, Oct 30 2009 12:40 PM
This week saw the, er, proud return of Troy Duffy, writer/director of 1999's Boston-set cult favorite "The Boondock Saints," about the stylish side of vigilante violence, and its new sequel "Boondock Saints II," which arrives in theaters today. Duffy's also the resentful subject of 2003's "Overnight," a fascinating 2003 documentary-as-showbiz-cautionary-tale that showcases how he's not one of those people to whom modesty and introspection come naturally. In the process of making "Boondock," Duffy managed to alienate a lot of people by being boorish, self-aggrandizing and effectively worshiping at the altar of his own ego. "Overnight" was beyond biased in depicting these things, but co-directors Tony Montana and Brian Mark Smith show you exactly why they went that route: they have Duffy on camera swearing he's not going to pay them what he originally promised. Ten years later, Duffy's out on the press circuit, and the one message coming through loud...
"Metropolis," as it was meant to be seen! (For real, this time.)
Fri, Oct 30 2009 6:42 AM
Few movies are as incomplete yet overwhelmingly influential as Fritz Lang's 1927 "Metropolis." Any movie you've seen with enormous, gigantic architecture set in an ominous future or a mythical past -- "Brazil," "The Hudsucker Proxy," "The Fifth Element," even this year's "The International" -- stole some of its moves from Lang's skyscrapers and underground dens. Brutally cut upon release and restored and re-released an impossible amount of times since, "Metropolis" is finally whole again. A complete 16mm copy was discovered at Argentina's Museo del Cine last year, and the complete restoration will premiere February 10 at next year's Berlin International Film Festival. There's a condensed version of how the print was found here, though a better rendition, from September 2008's Sight & Sound, is sadly not online. Basically, it'd been sitting, forgotten, in the archives until museum director Paula Félix-Didier's ex-husband remembered hearing about how a horribly degraded, two-hour plus...
Are you ready for 20,000 spoonfuls of terror?
Thu, Oct 29 2009 12:49 PM
In the pre-YouTube era, it was generally assumed that a short film was a director's calling card, a stepping stone to prove that talent and resourcefulness lay within and that great things could be obtained with a real budget. These days more people seem to be interested in watching YouTube videos than committing to a feature anyway -- hence the success of Richard Gale's "The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon." The weapon is a spoon, and the short's a fake trailer that promises a nine-hour spectacle of one tormented soul being repeatedly rapped all over his body with it. Gale, a veteran of LA's cable TV scene, previously directed a few straight-to-video thrillers. But now, according to Twitch's Todd Brown,, Gale's been omnipresent at various genre, shorts and standard festivals worldwide, "screening this film to packed houses and -- more often than not -- collecting a nice...
Desplechin vs. Anderson: "Fantastic" family men.
Wed, Oct 28 2009 3:36 PM
Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (which is, yes, fantastic) begins its platform release domestically two Fridays from now, but it's already out in the UK -- complete with a "Fantastic Mr. Fox Happy Meal" -- and the publicity mill is already grinding. One of the cooler interviews Anderson's done is with French director Arnaud Desplechin (recently ordained the future of cinema by Alain Resnais at a New York Film Festival press conference) -- though, per Interview magazine's usual form, it's more of a curious dialogue between equals than a straight-up interview. They talk about Proust, argue about which directors influence them and scratch each other's backs a little. Desplechin tells a really morbid Hitchcock anecdote. What no one mentions the entire time is the thematic overlap Anderson and Desplechin share, the entire reason someone might've sicced them on each other in the first place. The tagline of "The Royal Tenenbaums"...
The academics are running the asylum.
Wed, Oct 28 2009 11:12 AM
On her way out at Spout, Karina Longworth noted a few days ago that the film blogosphere can feel like "hundreds of traffic-chasers, who are essentially blaring the same thing, at the same time, all day long." She doesn't like it one bit. And such was the attitude Focus Features CEO/Ang Lee's screenwriter James Schamus brought to his keynote speech at the London Film Festival. Noting he preferred to skip the usual topics of "the challenges of our digital future, new distribution models, the threat of piracy, etc. etc.," Schamus proceeded to deliver a solid hour of political deconstructionist theory about his wife, steeped in Derrida, entitled "My Wife is a Terrorist: Lessons in Storytelling from the Department of Homeland Security." This is a pretty outré thing to do at a film festival, where hushed vagaries on cross-platforming and (yes!) Our Digital Future are the order of the day. It's...
Is this it? This is (not) it!
Wed, Oct 28 2009 10:00 AM
You know, I really wanted to ignore all the Michael Jackson-related hoopla today, but fat chance. The title "This Is It" is distracting for a concert movie built out of Michael Jackson's rehearsal footage; mostly it just makes me think of The Strokes, but that's my problem. It is, nonetheless, a grim way to commemorate Jackson's legacy; depending on how you feel, one final film could be a promise not to exploit his legacy Tupac-style. Or maybe you believe the exploitation happened long before Jackson died and it's your moral duty to lead the investigative charge, in which case I have a Web site for you. The folks at This Is Not It aren't exactly promoting a boycott of the concert film, but something more muddled: "we can inform people and help them see the movie with different eyes." Specifically, with "eyes" that recognize Dr. Conrad Murray -- Jackson's physician...
Risky business.
Wed, Oct 28 2009 6:00 AM
Since "Paranormal Activity" stomped all over "Saw VI" at the box office this weekend, it was only a matter of time before someone wrote about how creativity and risk-taking are rewarding, shaking up Hollywood and reminding executives not to write off the audience. So thank you, Patrick Goldstein, for making my job easier. "It's yet another reminder for cynical studio execs that audiences are not simply sequel zombies, only willing to patronize the latest installment of a familiar, easily accessible franchise," Goldstein exults. "Moviegoers still crave fresh, new, exciting ideas, even if they come in a primitive, low-budget package." Also, it's "a risk that has paid off. Big time." Big whoop. Making a lo-fi horror movie is hardly a "fresh, new" idea; the fact that Goldstein mentions "Paranormal Activity"'s "visceral, 'Blair Witch'-style appeal" in the same post should be proof enough of that. The perceived "risk" is in the heads...
India, coming to a theater near you.
Tue, Oct 27 2009 5:01 PM
India's Reliance Entertainment doesn't just own a chunk of DreamWorks, they're also now the 25th-largest movie theater operator in the U.S. Welcome to the globalized future! In the last 18 months, Reliance has snapped up 18 cinemas across the country; they control 181 screens. Not all of the theaters are devoted to Bollywood movies; some mix them in with Hollywood product, others have none at all. But the goal is a chain of Indian-oriented cinemas. The Indian American community numbers more than 2.5 million, and members have proven to be happy to pay $12 for a ticket and -- more enticingly -- entry to theaters that serve as social meeting-places, with cafes serving mango juice and wishing their customers a happy Diwali. It's the social factor Reliance is banking on: there's actually a surprising number of major theater chains already showing Bollywood films (barely advertising, with in-the-know viewers bringing themselves),...
Ghosts of Christmas movie "traditions."
Tue, Oct 27 2009 2:58 PM
"A Christmas Carol" arrives next Friday, and I'm actually a little excited, being a fan of the perversity of "Beowulf," Robert Zemeckis' last motion-capture experiment. But by now we're as overstocked on cinematic Scrooges as we are on Jane Eyre adaptations. No matter, Disney's betting $175 million on the film itself, and lord knows how much on the marketing. The Dickens classic has been made into movies so many times that the adaptations have their own Wikipedia entry. Notable Scrooges include Bill Murray, Scrooge McDuck, Michael Caine, Barbie, Fred on an episode of "Sanford & Son," Henry Winkler and, of course, Fred Flintstone. Earlier this very year, Matthew McConaughey was visited by "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" (which really suggests how much people fear and loathe Valentine's Day). So yes, there are more than enough Scrooges for everyone. But, and here's where Disney is crazy like an animated fox, none of...
Sufjan Stevens takes "The BQE."
Tue, Oct 27 2009 11:20 AM
Sufjan Stevens has become something of the elusive yeti of indie rock, popping up from time to time to turn in a Christmas album, lurking in the audience at unexpected shows, booking himself on an impossible tour of instantly sold-out small venues. So it was nice to see him, genial and in the flesh, at 92Y Tribeca on Saturday for the premiere screening of the DVD for "The BQE," his film and "cinematic suite inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Hula-Hoop." Commissioned by BAM, "The BQE" first screened for three nights in November 2007, with 36 performers providing a live soundtrack. It's since grown into a multi-media project. The only live music on Saturday came before the film, from singer-songwriter DM Stith and string quartet Osso, who performed arrangements of songs from Stevens' electronica album "Enjoy Your Rabbit." Which, the guy sitting next to me, who'd also been at...
Crowdsourcing "Star Wars."
Tue, Oct 27 2009 10:07 AM
Truffaut used to say that a movie should have four ideas a minute. Well, François, say hello to "Star Wars: Uncut", a full-length user-generated remake of "A New Hope" chopped up into 15-second segments -- four per minute. The result is a staggering 2,161 separate amateur directors overall, a major sugar-buzz of crowdsourcing, "Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation" turned viral and opened to the online masses. It's not done yet, but the trailer's below. If nothing else, it's an inadvertent summary of every internet YouTube/meme trend of 2009: amateur CGI, hand-drawn comic-strip animation, strange-looking people in weird masks, IM conversations and the inevitable "Big Lebowski" homage. It's all waaaaaay too much for me, but I'm sure a lot of people out there will love this: intentional camp seems to have become the ultimate form of reverence. Now let's just see how long it'll take for the LucasFilm lawyers...
Boston, home of the new American noir.
Mon, Oct 26 2009 2:30 PM
Ben Affleck's directorial debut "Gone Baby Gone" is one of the best American movies of the decade, though somehow most people never found out (it stalled at $20 million domestically). Its greatest achievement is its sense of place -- shooting in Boston, Affleck spent a lot of time highlighting the terrifying alcoholic faces of the city's poorer residents. "By rule you have to use a certain number of SAG people," he explained. "But SAG extras have a certain look -- they're put together. So I said: 'O.K., we'll use the SAG actors. I just don't want to see them." What he got was some of the scariest verisimilitude this side of "The Wire." Boston's become the setting of choice for utterly unromanticized noir. At the Boston Phoenix, Peter Keogh considers the resurgence of filmmaking in the city. For years, it was too dangerous to shoot in: teamsters would extort the...
Welcome to Hugowood, where revolution rules.
Mon, Oct 26 2009 9:54 AM
Hugo Chávez is having a movie moment. The Venezuela president is the subject of a fawning Oliver Stone documentary. He's had visits from Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Kevin Spacey. (And, of course, Tim Robbins, if it even needs to be said.) And, as I pointed out last month, his anti-golf politics have a lot in common with Alex Cox's "Repo Man" sequel -- trendy! And now, Chávez has got his own film studio -- La Villa del Cine -- and they're intent on pumping out movies that get behind his agenda. The official slogan: "Lights, camera, revolution!" Mac Margolis' Newsweek profile of the studio is pretty harsh. I'm not necessarily Chávez's biggest fan, but Hitler/Mussolini comparisons seem, at the very least, premature. That said, it's no surprise that Chávez is going as dictatorial over the Venezuelan film industry as he has been in every other aspect of the country's...
Where in hell could horror film be headed?
Mon, Oct 26 2009 9:23 AM
Horror is in a strange place right now. In a genre currently steeped in remakes, "Paranormal Activity" has become the first original nail-biter to break through to the masses since "Saw," whose sixth installment showed its (and torture porn in general's) age by coming in second to "Activity" (in its third week) at the box office this weekend. Likewise, the film "Activity" has been most compared to, "The Blair Witch Project," recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, reminding everyone what a rare phenomenon it is to get spooked in a new way. These were the things I was thinking about when I sat down to watch Ti West's "Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever" at Los Angeles' Screamfest over the weekend, coincidentally the genre festival that premiered "Activity" in 2007. A sequel to the 2003 splatter flick that launched Eli Roth's career, "Cabin Fever 2" was supposed to do the same for...
Rewriting the heartland: "Fargo Rock City."
Fri, Oct 23 2009 1:30 PM
Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City" might be my favorite book about music, because it does the one thing great music writing should do: it sucks you in even if you don't care about the actual tunes at hand. In my case, I could care less about the collected musical legacies of Tesla and Cinderella, but Klosterman's book presents his beloved '80s hair metal through irresistible compact sketches of his rural North Dakotan upbringing. "Fargo Rock City" seems unfilmable: it's all Klosterman explaining what the music meant to him, without stand-alone anecdotes. But that isn't going to stop "Letterman" writer Tom Ruprecht and The Hold Steady's frontman Craig Finn, who've purchased the rights to the book and are adapting it into a coming-of-age comedy. Apparently the pair are going to just mine the book for atmosphere and details rather than 15 debates about whether or not metal is sexist. The fact...
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