Indieville

Pennan vs. Forks, towns made touristy by movies.

2009-11-20T19:55:00Z

Today, innumerable thousands of shrieking tweens (and older counterparts who really should know better) will descend on the nation's multiplexes, baying for "New Moon" blood. The phenomenon isn't limited to theaters: Forks, Washington -- where Stephanie Meyer set her novel without ever visiting -- has seen tourism jump way up, from 18,000 visitors in 2008 to more than 64,000 this year alone. Twihards come in hoards, over 100 a day, desperate for a scrap of town memorabilia, stealing...(read more)

Fellini: The Ride.

2009-11-20T11:00:04Z

Here in America, we have solid theme park rides based on movies that, for the most part, make sense, like Universal Studios' "E.T. Adventure," or the "Wayne's World" roller coaster "Hurler" (since sold and de-"Wayne"'d by Paramount, but still). But in Rome, they're building a ride based on the Fellini film "City of Women." Yes, in an effort to shore up tourism in the city, Cinecittà Studios is going to give us Cinecittà World -- 400...(read more)

Jeanne-Claude, 1935-2009.

2009-11-20T00:00:00Z

Jeanne-Claude -- Christo's collaborator and partner -- died today in Manhattan at the age of 74. It was fitting, in a way, not only because the artist pair have been residents of the city since 1964, but because their last big completed project was "The Gates," which turned Central Park's walkways into a series of orange vinyl doorways and drapes, portways of color livening up an especially dreary winter. Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been shorthanded as the people who "wrap"...(read more)

Oscars Doc shortlist: same as it ever was.

2009-11-19T14:35:00Z

Bemoaning the failures of the Oscars in the Best Documentary department has become an annual ritual, like spazzing about filing your income taxes or dusting off stale jokes about March Madness obsessions. So the news that this year's doc shortlist of 15 potential nominees is full of omissions and small obscurities is not a surprise. Many folks would've liked to have seen "Anvil! The Story Of Anvil," "Collapse," "Crude," "Tyson," "We Live In Public...(read more)

The Werner Herzog, Jr. awards.

2009-11-19T11:00:00Z

"The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" open Friday, Werner Herzog's supposed latest exercise in unhinged lunacy. But as a colleague observed after a screening, "If you didn't know going in Herzog had made it, would you be able to tell?" I'd say probably not: there's none of his trademark stunning footage that was clearly dangerous to get. It's understandable that at 67, Herzog hasn't really endangered himself of late. But who are the filmmakers...(read more)

Roadtrip/no roadtrip.

2009-11-18T19:50:00Z

Nothing says 1969 like "Easy Rider," the bad-trip Altamont to the ebullient celebration of the next year's "Woodstock." While the hippies were partying down, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson were discovering there was no place for them in America, either old or new. On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, Keith Phipps retraced the road trip taken by the gang. The week-long series is halfway done on Slate, and it's a good read, tracing what's the same...(read more)

Italian cinema on American shores.

2009-11-18T19:41:00Z

There's never been a better time to indulge in a little Italian cinema, at least if you live on the coasts. For New Yorkers, that's meant classics from the likes of Visconti, Rossellini and Pietro Germi at the Italian Neo-Realism series at the Lincoln Center, and a new 35mm print of Vittorio De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief" at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. If you live on the west coast, mid-November means Cinema Italian Style in Los Angeles and New Italian Cinema in San Francisco...(read more)

In defense of John Woo's American period.

2009-11-18T15:00:00Z

Friday sees the release of an abridged version of John Woo's new film, "Red Cliff," a two-part, five-hour epic condensed for American audiences into what's still an admittedly pretty entertaining regular-length feature. As Glenn Kenny notes at The Auteurs while comparing the two versions, what's gone is a lot of character detail and poetic flourishes. What's left is one ridiculously over-the-top battle scene after another, which is definitely fun if you want to see, say...(read more)

Chris Columbus, protector of children.

2009-11-17T20:25:38Z

Some directors are automatic punchlines, their names synonyms for lousy. There's Adam Sandler cohort Steve Brill ("Without A Paddle," "Drillbit Taylor"), Eddie Murphy's favorite Brian Robbins ("Norbit," "Meet Dave") and of course Shawn Levy ("A Night At The Museum," "The Pink Panther," "Cheaper By The Dozen"), who pays the bills as perfunctorily as possible. The godfather of them all may well be Chris Columbus, a man so...(read more)

Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" sequel bites the dust.

2009-11-17T16:00:00Z

"Dazed and Confused" is effectively beloved by everyone who's seen it -- including me -- so I got uber-excited about the prospect of Richard Linklater making a "spiritual sequel." And now it's dead on the ground. It was apparently called "That's What I'm Talking About," in honor -- we presume -- of the kind of stoned logic of the original, where that phrase was the highest form of praise you could offer. But Linklater couldn't raise the $14 million...(read more)

The Catholic horror genre.

2009-11-16T23:09:00Z

Being unreasonably easy to scare, I'm a soft touch when it comes to horror movies and basically refuse to have anything to do with them at this point, but "The Exorcist" is one movie that's never bugged me. But it has scared the hell (heh) out of every Catholic I know; it's the rare horror movie (theoretically) deriving its scares from the potential of blasphemy instead of either creepy atmosphere or sudden jolts. So it's bemusing that William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin...(read more)

Five reasons "Pirate Radio" flopped.

2009-11-16T13:54:00Z

As you're doubtless aware, the weekend saw "Precious" making $6.1 million from a measly 174 screens, doing well on its probable journey towards Best Picture; "Fantastic Mr. Fox" did well too, pulling roughly the same per-theater average as "The Darjeeling Limited" in its first weekend, which means Wes Anderson may or may not still be too cool for the mainstream. Less remarked upon was the crash-and-burn failure of "Pirate Radio," Richard Curtis' tepidly...(read more)

If you Tweeted #indiefilmcliche, #killurself.

2009-11-13T20:27:20Z

I work at home, so I love Twitter: it's a great way to break up the monotony of one room, one laptop and eight hours. If you're a user, you know that on the right-hand side of the page there's a list of "Trending Topics" -- frequently used phrases, frequently marked with a hash-tag -- that changes depending on how often they're used. Last night, #indiefilmcliche reared its ugly little head, with lots of comments about whiny youth, quirky families and vintage clothing. Twitter...(read more)

Brother vs. brother: Zucker fight.

2009-11-13T17:24:08Z

Greenpeace is a good organization that's kind of itchily annoying, the same way a college activist getting you to sign a worthy petition is -- a point driven home quite literally when Bruce Willis was whacking activists with golf balls from his oil rig in "Armageddon." That image might be a good one to keep in mind when reading the news that arch-hack Jon Turteltaub ("National Treasure," "Phenomenon," "Cool Runnings," "3 Ninjas" -- a résumé to...(read more)

The brothers who brought you "Bad Lieutenant."

2009-11-13T12:00:00Z

Alan Polsky wanted to tell me a story about how Werner Herzog held a gun to his head and shattered his brother Gabe's eye socket with the butt of the pistol in the middle of shooting "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," but that was just wishful thinking. "We wanted things to go crazy so that we could tell great on-set stories like [the ones] in Herzog's history," Alan said. "But unfortunately, we don't have any ones like that." If true, the actual...(read more)