July 04, 2009
Happy Fourth of July, all. On this holiday celebrated with
fireworks perhaps it is appropriate to talk about those heroes who put their
lives on the line to prevent things from exploding. Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt
Locker" tells the story of the demolition experts in Iraq whose dangerous duty involves
defusing the lethal improvised explosive devices (IEDs) set by insurgents and
which have been responsible for a frightening death toll, both military and
civilian.
Plus, it's the best film so far this year. But don't let
that dissuade you. True, "Transformers" opened with about $200 million last
weekend and "The Hurt Locker," which was released in only 4 theaters, made
somewhat less (it will be expanding to more screens and cities on July 10,
including Boston).
But it did score about 91 on Metacritic.
Which would you choose? A good question for Bigelow, no doubt, but when I spoke
to her Friday, she seemed to have something else on her mind, as you will see.
PK: How are you today?
KB: Fine. Other than the plane was hit twice in midair by
lightning. Did you ever have that happen?
PK: Not that I've been aware of.
Oh, you would be! It was like a bullwhip snapped the whole plane. Bam! It was
very intense. So I'm very happy to see you.
PK: What an adrenaline rush. That's probably as close as
you'll get to defusing a 155 [an artillery shell used in IEDs].
KB: Let me knock on wood.
PK: The second time was probably already boring.
KB: Just old hat.
PK: After the screening of "The Hurt Locker" another critic
said this makes Michael
Bay look like a wimp.
What is the key to making a powerful action movie?
KB: Emotional investment with the characters. Smart stories.
If you're not emotionally engaged cinematic prowess can't invent what is not
there. And then there are so many other factors so I don't want to be
reductive. Like keeping the audience oriented, making sure the geography is
very clear. Especially in a movie like the hurt locker where the audience's
relation to an improvised explosive device is the key to your understanding of
what a bomb tech does on a daily basis in Baghdad
in 2004. And so I'd say emotional engagement with carefully crafted characters
and a great script.
PK: So, no Autobots.
KB: No tricks. You put the camera low and you dutch the
angle and you hit the side of the magazine when you turn the camera over. But
if the intrinsic investment is not there, you can't invent it out of whole
cloth.
PK: And easy on the rapid fire editing so people can follow
what's going on?
KB: And geography. So people can be oriented geographically.
If you're creating excitement purely from an editorial standpoint it has to be
intrinsic to the story and the subject it doesn't com from form it comes from
content.
PK: Intensity and clarity.
KB: Exactly. And the intensity comes from one hopes anyway
emotional investment in the characters. You are worried for them or you break
down the fourth wall and become them.
PK: Was the point of view camera something you started using
after "Strange Days?"
KB: I did some p.o.v. in "Near Dark" and I think... it's a
really successful tool if the story needs it and demands it. Total immersion
and experiential cinema -- I know I've talked about it in other interviews --
where film and literature, not that literature can't be experiential, it's more
reflective. But film is experiential. It can transport you to the desert basin of Baghdad in 2004 and put you up close and
personal.
PK: Kind of like the SQUIDS in "Strange Days?"
KB: Kind of like that, but it's more literal. In the case of
Hurt Locker it's looking at a day in the life of a bomb tech in Baghdad in 2004 through
the soldier's eyes in a boots on the ground you are there alongside these
individuals who have the most dangerous job in the world. And you're walking
toward what most people in the planet would run from. In the EOD parlance they
call it "the lonely walk." Because you're by yourself.
With the big suit.
KB: Right.
PK: It's kind of like "High Noon."
KB: I know. I saw that when we were shooting it. I kind of
imagined it in the script stage but getting to the location, we were in the
middle east, and the nature of the light, the reflective surfaces of the sand, just
creating this kind of classic palette and then this guy in the suit. The solo
nature of the job.
PK: Is there a little bit of "The Wild Bunch" going on there
too? The slow motion explosion for example.
KB: All of this came from Mark Boal.
PK: He's not here.
KB: No, he had to go to Florida with somebody.
PK: He had a bad feeling about the flight.
KB: He said if anyone is going to deal with lightning, it's
going to be her. Anyway, he was on a journalistic embed in 2004 and spent 10,
12 15 times a day they'd go to these coordinates that the ground troops had
called in because of a suspicious rubble pile or a pair of wires or an empty
garbage bag and.. there not all 155 but their fairly heavy ordinance when they
are detonated or tragically accidentall go off there's something called
overpressure. That's what those shots are meant to indicate. Before the
particulate matter is expended it's the gas that precedes the shrapnel. It
travels at some ungodly speed. And that completely implodes any air pocket in
your body.
PK: Ouch.
KB: That's what he means by, within 25 meters you're in the
kill zone. The point of no return. Nobody can help you. These guys are like
surgeons. Frighteningly intelligent. You have to have scored high on your IQ
tests. You're invited to the EOD. You have phenomenal motor skills and
dexterity. You're able to make decisions under extreme multitude of decisions
under extreme pressure so it really self-selects. It takes a special kind of
person to make that lonely walk.
PK: Are they addicted to adrenaline or a death wish?
KB: It isn't meant to
stand as a generalization and I wouldn't want to think of all of it as a death
wish but I think they are incredibly courageous. If you've read read Chris
Hedges book
"War is Force that Gives us Meaning" he...
PK: Did you read it before or after you decided to make the
movie?
KB: Before. And Mark read it before his embed. James is not
a particular individual, but a kind of composite and fictionalization. I think
between James and Sanborn and Eldredge you get a nice myriad of personalities.
PK: You get a lot of that good angel/ bad angel motif in a
lot of your movies.
KB: That's true. I hadn't thought of that. That's why we
need people like you. People to analyze. Not the gesticulators. Isn't that what
the French critics say about American critics? "You gesticulate We analyze.
PK: We blurb.
KB: Thankfully. So, anyway, Hedges talks about the allure of
war. And mind you, this is an all volunteer military. It's fairly unique to
this conflict. So what Hedges tries to attack is that for some individuals
combat provides an allure and attraction. It can provide that. Whether that
attraction or allure, I don't know, intensifies your survival skills it
certainly with someone like James who has a kind of reckless swagger...
PK: He's intuitive
KB: I think of him as an artist. Every IED , they are all
prototypical. Not one is like another And you have about 45 seconds to...
PK: The red wire or the blue wire...
KB: Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. It would be so
much easier. But to make life or death decisions. If you're on the ground too
long -- first of all you're by yourself. You've got a 200-300 meter
cordoned-off area. The guy in the balcony might be calling in your coordinates
for a sniper or just hanging out his laundry. But you don't want to be exposed
too long. And he's like a surgeon with this ability to analyze this
prototypical wiring or pressure plate or secondary or single or double or
triple initiating device. But if you make a mistake -- it's not the patient who
dies, you die.
PK: As the French critics would say, it's the ultimate
deconstruction paradigm.
KB: Taking deconstruction to atomization. What would Lacan
say about that?
PK: Deconstruct the artifice or it will deconstruct you.
KB: There's your lede.
NEXT: Beyond deconstructionism.
June 26, 2009
Say what you will about the guys running Iran, but they
are indeed media savvy. How do you get thousands of people off the streets and
into the house and put an end to all these pesky demonstrations? Why, you
broadcast the most popular trilogy of all time on the TV. According to this
anonymous posting from someone in Tehran
in "Salon,"
one of the state television stations is offering marathon showings of "The Lord
of the Rings."
But Frodo and company have nothing on Jacko when it comes to
drowning out news or interest in the gruesome onslaught of oppression. And certainly poor Neda, the young
demonstrator who bled to death on YouTube and has become a rallying point for
Iranians disputing the election, has
been completely overshadowed by Michael Jackson's sudden demise. On Google for
the last 24 hours Jackson's
hits outnumber Neda's 47,900,000 to 378,000. The activity almost crashed the
whole damn internet.
And not just the internet has fallen victim
to the Jackson
tsunami. As Jonathan Rosenbaum points out in his blog, Jackson's
demise has pretty much short-circuited history, at least for the time being. Iran
who?
Ever the conspiracy theorists looking to implicate the Great
Satan, some Iranian spokespeople have suggested that the CIA was involved in
bumping off Neda. If I were of a paranoid turn of mind (which I am), I'd have
to ask myself, who would benefit most from bumping off Jackson?
June 26, 2009
Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and now Michael Jackson. In one
week it's like an entire issue of "National Enquirer" has been wiped out.
I was never a big fan of Jackson's
music, but I certainly respected his impact on Pop Culture. How could you not?
Not only are there an overwhelming number of references in the mainstream media, but he makes appearances in
the most obscure independent and foreign movies.
For example, Harmony Korine's "Mister Lonely," which came out
last year and stars Diego Luna as an incompetent Michael Jackson impersonator.
He finds refuge in an isolated community of other bad celebrity impersonators
and, well, it sounds a lot more amusing than it is, though Werner Herzog is
quite entertaining as a deranged priest in a wildly disconnected subplot.
Further afield in Estonia, there is Veiko Õunpuu's "Autumn Ball"
(2007), in which, apropos of nothing, a bellman in a cheap Tallinn hotel breaks
into a nearly silent version of Jackson's "Beat It," and is ignored. This film
is one of the more hilarious black comedies I've seen in recent years and maybe
the 
impetus of Jackson's
death might give it wider distribution, but I doubt it.
And heading to Moravia,
there is Bohdan Sláma's "Wild Bees" (2001), which takes place in a backward village
where one of the benighted characters earns scorn as he tries to perfect his
Moonwalk.
Then there's a Chinese movie in which a character wears a single
glove in homage to the King of Pop, but I can't remember the title.
So, as you can see, Jacko will be missed, but only if you bury
yourself in a bomb shelter for the next week or two and avoid any and all media
contact.
June 23, 2009
The distributors of "The Stoning of Soraya M," according to
the "Hollywood Reporter," face a delicate opportunity as
the release of the film coincides with the ongoing turmoil in Iran over
the disputed election. The film is based on the true story of the 1986 stoning death
of an Iranian
woman accused of adultery by her husband who wanted to get rid of her for a new
wife. "Anyone watching TV can see this is about a certain kind of religious
fascism that was present 20 years ago and is present now," said producer
Stephen McEveety about the film's relevance to today's situation. "If you Google the subject, you'll see stonings going on
today."
Another story you might come up with is that of Neda, the
young woman shot to death by police during demonstrations against Ahmadinejad in Tehran. No
doubt inflammatory images like that have increased the recent interest in
"Soraya," which, according to the IMDB, by over 1,000%. But is it ethical or tasteful
to exploit such a horrific events to promote an entertainment?
Who am I kidding? Shortly after writing the above I got an
e-mail from the film's publicist that
begins: "Why is this film so important and relevant? Let's connect the
dots . . . In March 2009 the Iranian regime condemns and bans our movie
- now the parliament plans to end some punishments."
Well, with that kind of post hoc/ergo propter hoc reasoning,
perhaps we can also attribute the election fraud and the violent crackdown on demonstrators to
"Soraya" also?
Okay, I haven't seen the movie myself. However in Brett Michel's review, which will come out this week, he gives it one star and concludes: "Poorly
written (with his wife Betsy) and directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh, it's as
black-and-white as his scripts for the TV movies 'The Path to 9/11' and 'The Day Reagan Was Shot.'" Based on that I would suspect that the film encourages a kind of demonizing approach to the
situation, with clearcut good guys and bad guys and therefore demanding an immediate unambiguous response. The kind of approach, in other words, that has worked so well for us as foreign policy
in the past and is still being urged by these clowns.
Meanwhile, one film I did see was Majid Majidi's "Song of
the Sparrows," which opened June 5. It depicts Iranians as diverse, complex and
non-stereotypical human beings. It also sheds some light on the conflict
between the traditional, mostly rural culture and the urban more modern
perspective that seems to underlie a lot of the current strife. This film might
enlighten people about what's going on over there. But unlike "Soraya" it won't
be cashing in on the crisis because it was pulled from the theater after a one
week run.
June 22, 2009
What with the crashing economy, the North Koreans having a nutty and Iran
melting down - to name just a few of the crises spinning at the moment - the
status of the death penalty would seem to be near the bottom of President
Obama's list of priorities. Nonetheless, he'll have no choice but to take a
stand on the issue pretty soon, since the cases of six federal death row
inmates will probably see their stays of executions expire in the next few months.
Then Obama, who has the authority to pardon them or not, will have to
decide whether they live or die.
"The death penalty in the abstract is one thing," says Dianne
Rust-Tierney of the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty to "Politico."
"The reality of the death penalty and all of its nasty details is a very
different thing."
Perhaps the president might want to prep himself for this
decision by watching Steve James and Peter Gilbert's ("Hoop Dreams") wrenching,
sublimely restrained and expertly crafted documentary, "At the Death House
Door," which
will be released by Facets Video tomorrow. It concerns, in part, the strange
career of Rev. Carroll Pickett, who served as the Death Row chaplain at the Huntsville, Texas prison, ushering condemned
prisoners through the last 12 hours of their lives.
Pickett's first experience at the prison traumatized him. In
1974, inmates took several civilian workers hostage. Among them were two of his
parishioners.
He watched them get gunned down in a bloody shootout.
In 1982, six years after the Supreme Court had reinstated
the death penalty, Huntsville
Prison was in the business of executing people. Pickett, then the prison
chaplain and a compelling force for good who had already changed the lives of
many prisoners through his ministry and his choir, was enlisted into the "Lethal
Injection Team" as the person who would accompany the condemned through his (or
her; one victim was a woman) last day, offering them comfort and consolation
and, as the warden put it, "seduce" their emotions so they wouldn't "fight"
when they had to walk that last 8 feet to be strapped to a gurney and put to
death.
Given the murders of his parishioners in 1974, Pickett
initially, if abstractly - had no problem with the death penalty. His leather-tough
Texas
dad used to say "hang them fast and hang them high." But he discovered, as
Rust-Tierney noted above, that the reality is different. He was so shaken by
the experience that he made a tape recording of his feelings and impressions
after each execution. Thirteen years and 95 executions later, including that of
one man, Carlos DeLuna, whom he was certain was innocent, Pickett was no longer
in favor of capital punishment. Anyone who watches this film will be hard-pressed
to support it, either.
Be assured that the film is no screed, but a subtle and
complex interweaving of themes and narratives - including the investigative crusade
of two "Chicago Tribune" reporters seeking to
posthumously establish DeLuna's
innocence ("that's what newspapers are for," says one, reminding us what the
big deal about print journalism was all about). At the heart of the film is the
unforgettable, calmly tragic and utterly compassionate Pickett and his
briefcase full of shattering recorded memories.
June 17, 2009
What with the increasingly tense protests against the
disputed election of Mahmoud Ahmedenijad, not to mention the ongoing threat of their nuclear program, the state of filmmaking is not the first thing people think
about when the subject of Iran is raised. Nonetheless, I think it's germane,
and so does Vadim Rizov at GreenCine.com, who describes how the leading Iranian auteurs such as
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi and Panahi have been stifled
or sent into artistic exile by the current regime, which in the meantime has
turned the film industry into a dumbed down spewer of reactionary palaver, a
regime which, he writes, is " one of the most ridiculously efficient propaganda
machines on the planet, one that's shattered a vibrant film culture in under
ten years."
That may well be the case, but I found the selections in the annual "Boston Festival Of Films From Iran" showing at the Museum of Fine Arts last November pretty
provocative. They seemed forthright on such issues as feminism, tolerance and
individual freedom -- especially when compared to such Hollywood box office offerings
as "The Hangover" and "Land of the Lost." Whether these films got much exposure
in Iran
I don't know (though it seems at least one, Dariush Mehrjui's "Santoori: The
Music Man," was banned) and most of the high profile directors were not represented. An
exception being Majidi with his "Song of the Sparrows,"
which has since been released here commercially and, though a little on the sentimental
side, is certainly more insightful into human relations and the iniquities of
society than, say "Away We Go."
And what of those other major directors Rizov mentioned? Well Kiarostami, whom Rizov said was "off doing art
installation-type dares to the audience," was interviewed recently by the
Guardian. Asked
whether he planned to vote in the (then) upcoming Iranian election he said, "I won't
vote for a republic again. But if any candidate declared himself as a
responsible power for life, I might well vote for them - I'd even go barefoot
to vote. I can't vote for someone who, once they're elected, spends two years
reinforcing his position, and the next two years preparing for the next vote. More
than the Islamic republic, I want to question the republic itself. Nowadays you
can win a four-year mandate with the promise of a kilo of oranges. People have
to be educated to be politically mature and independent." No big booster of
democracy he, nor did he sound particularly worried about his own circumstances
whatever the outcome of the election.
Makhmalbaf, on
the other hand, who as a zealous youth was arrested resisting the Shah back in 70s,
is a little more of an activist. He is a supporter of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the
opposition candidate who claims to have defeated Mahmoud Ahmedenijad, and together with Paris-based Iranian
filmmaker Marjane Satrapi
("Persepolis "), has gone
public to denounce Ahmedinijad. "What happened is not an electoral fraud, but a coup d'etat," he
said. Apparently he and Satrapi believe
that there comes a time when making history is more important than making
movies.
June 15, 2009
The deserved success of "Up"
and other Pixar CGI epics unfortunately overshadows the visual glories of
animated films made the old fashioned way, laboriously by hand. Films like
"Pinocchio," "Dumbo," "Snow White." And
"Aladdin?" Well maybe not so much "Aladdin," if only
because it was in part responsible for deep sixing one of the most ambitious
and dazzling feats of animation ever attempted, Richard Williams's "The Thief
and the Cobbler."
In 1989 Warners gave a green light to Williams, who has won
three Osars including one for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (1988)
to finish the picture, which he had already been working on mostly at his own
expense for decades. But in 1991 Disney decided to make "Aladdin," which drew on much of the same
story "Thief." So Warners pulled the plug on the project. They passed the 90%
of it that had been finished to another director who eviscerated and dumbed it
down and then they sold it to Disney's Miramax division who redubbed it into a
farcical parody.
It's the "Greed"
of
animation. And like the people who restored that lacerated masterpiece,
29-year-old starving animator Garrett Gilchrist
painstakingly retrieved all the surviving footage of "Thief" and put together a
remarkable (though unofficial) fan restoration.
Former "Phoenix" contributor Steven
Drachman was kind enough to arrange to get me a screener, and I was impressed
to put it mildly. Even on the small screen the eclectic, protean, inexhaustibly
inventive imagery dazzles. The story, which is set in a Persian-like fairytale
land and is about a cute young Cobbler named Tack who catches the eye of both
an evil Vizier named ZigZag (voiced by Vincent Price) and the lethargic King's
beautiful daughter Yum-Yum and must help save the Kingdom from an evil warlord
named One Eye, calls to mind not just "Aladdin" but also elements of "Lord of
the Rings." The visuals, however, tap into the history of art and media for the
past thousand or so years, a kaleidoscope that ranges from Indian
miniature paintings to Looneytunes, with forays into MC Escher, Op Art, Van
Gogh, Arabic geometric design, German
Expressionism, Symbolist painting, Rube Goldberg, "Yellow Submarine" and many
more than I can identify. All combining into an integral, original vision that
is not only gorgeous but also laugh-out-loud hilarious. The concluding
confrontation between the good, the bad and the ugly makes Peter Jackson's
Tolkeinesque showdowns look like Wrestlemania.
It seems to me that Warners and Disney missed out on a good
thing. You don't have to. The restored version
(not the crappy Disney hatchet job) is available on YouTube
and is downloadable and pops up occasionally at film festivals. Also, Williams
himself is alive and kicking; maybe he could someday finish his own version,
that is, if Disney deigns to relinquish the rights and open the vault. We can
dream, can't we?
There is a web campaign to make this dream come true, and
for further information about the film, its availability, and the campaign for
an official restoration can be obtained from Gilchrist himself
at Gilchristgarrett at gmail.com
June 10, 2009
Are there no undivorced dads in the movies any more? And do
they all end up going to some imaginary realm to find with their inner child
and so be able to reconnect with their children? My theory: these movies are
written, produced and directed by divorced Hollywood dads who are overworked
and are trying to find with their inner child if not to reconnect with their
inner child than at least to dredge up some material the kids in the audience
(or their parents might) like and thus earn enough to make child support
payments.
What brought this to mind was a screening of "Imagine That"
in which Eddie Murphy plays a Wall
Street whiz who's losing his edge until he notices
that his daughter (the adorable newcomer Yara Shahidi) has
imaginary playmates who have inside information on hot investment commodities.
My first response was, have we come this? Kids' imaginations taken over by
stock futures? At any rate, this skill interests Murphy in his child's inner
world (he had been a workaholic coldly ignoring her up to then) and the
resulting scenes of them bonding are some of the best work Murphy
has done in years. Funny! Heartwarming! And an insight into why Wall Street recently
took such a disastrous turn.
Another film following this pattern is "Night at the Museum:
The Battle of the Smithsonian," which
I didn't see. But I did see the original and from what I heard this is much the
same, but worse. In the first one, once again a divorced dad with work
problems, a museum security guard played by Ben Stiller, bonds with his estranged son when an invisible, magical world springs to
life (I guess in the sequel they pretty much dump the kid and it's the
imaginary world itself that Stiller's character is neglecting) which father and
son can both share. Hey, it's easier
just playing video games. But inevitably dad's work and family problems are
both solved, and Stiller's reputation takes another hit.
That's two movies on this theme, and as we all know it takes
at least three examples to make for a trend. So how about "Up"? Wait,
you say, Carl, the hero of "Up," is not a divorced single dad, he's a childless
widower. True, I reply, but his sidekick Russell is the son of a divorced dad.
Russell consequently has father issues and begrudgingly Carl takes on the role
of surrogate pop and when the pair sail to Paradise Falls
(a play on words, perhaps? Paradise falling?
Like in the Bible, sort of?) they bond and Russell finds a new dad and Carl
finds his inner child. (And note "The Wizard of Oz" resemblance, with a flying
house, no less).
All of this cogitating is giving me a headache, which
reminds me of "The Hangover." True,
there is no divorced dad in this raunchy comedy about a quartet of knuckleheads
who head to Vegas for a bachelor party. The only dad is the finagling Phil, and
his wife and kids barely make a cameo. The other guys aren't even married, yet.
But let's stretch the paradigm a bit. Though there are no children to speak of (some show up in the middle of the film armed with taser guns in a scene I'm still
scratching my head over), but there sure are some childish adults. There's Doug,
the meek chump for whom the party is taking place, who disappears for most of
the movie. There's Stu, who's treated like a child by his emasculating,
basilisk of a fiancée. And there's the loose cannon Alan who, it is suggested,
might be a child molester. At any rate, they all journey to the imaginary,
magical Paradise of Las Vegas where they avoid arrest, raise hell, lose their
memories, and get in touch with their inner, if depraved child, preparing them
presumably for a future of being respectable, conforming, breeding adults.
So let's move on from the Land of the Losers to "The Land of
the Lost." Here a
team of lunkheads (one a woman for the purposes of crude sexual humor) led by Will Farrell (Can you think of a film in which he's
played a father? I can't either) who have regressed far beyond childishness to
infantilism travel to another dimension, a desert studded with the detritus of
pop culture. It's inhabited by dinosaurs, giant bugs, big piles of poop and
intoxicating sugary drinks. In short, a kids' paradise as dreamed up by Hollywood marketing people
and the countless toy, sweets, video game
and crapola manufacturers that also prey on children. And there they act
like idiots in a Neverland
of inanity forever.
It's the Peter Pan myth as opposed to "The Wizard of Oz." In
the latter the protagonist (an adolescent girl, significantly) journeys to a
magical realm and learns there's no place like home. In short, she learns adult
responsibility while retaining some of childhood's innocence and imagination. But "The Land of the
Lost" offers neither maturity nor innocence, but rather the kind of stunted
growth and benighted intelligence that makes for the ideal consumer.
June 09, 2009
Well, I guess that clinches it: film criticism, at least in print journalism, is dead.
So
say no less than the head marketers of MGM/UA and Universal studios, as quoted
in a recent New York Times article (by way of Jeffrey Wells's "Hollywood
Elsewhere" website). And, as we all know, the purpose of film criticism is to
sell the product of major studios.
According to the "Times," Mike Vollman, president of marketing for MGM and United
Artists, "said that he will probably rely more on quotes from blogs than from ‘Time' magazine and ‘The Los Angeles Times'
when he promotes ‘Fame,' a remake of the 1980 musical, and a comedy called ‘Hot
Tub Time Machine.' ‘The reality, and I'm sorry to tell you this, is that
younger moviegoers are more likely to be influenced by a blog than by a
newspaper critic,' he said."
Well Mike, if you have trouble getting a good quote from the
bloggers for "Hot Tub Time Machine," you might give David Manning
a call.
Adds Michael Moses, executive vice president of national
publicity for Universal, "some of the best film writing and most
substantive reviews are found online. Those sources are as legitimate as any
other."
The last I looked, by the way, Universal's "Land of the Lost" didn't
have any blurbs at all (I was disappointed I
didn't see "A pot of ersatz dinosaur
piss!" -- Peter Keough, "The Boston Phoenix," on any of the ads), either from
print sources or bloggers. It apparently didn't do so great, barely eking out
$19 million at the box office.
One reason? According to "The Hollywood
Reporter:" "It likely was hoping for a certain review-reading constituency... a
28% Rotten Tomatoes score... [doesn't] really do it."
Regardless, a lot of people went to see it.The bottom line
for marketing people like Moses and Vollman is that if they pump in $50 million or so
in ads and promos and other propaganda it will steamroll noncomprehending dupes
into theaters to watch crap. So it doesn't really matter what anyone else says,
regardless of the medium. Maybe after they waste their $10 to be subjected to
such punishment as "Land of the Lost," some of these dupes might think twice about
ignoring the advice offered by professional movie critics.
June 08, 2009
Truth, they say, is the first casualty in war. Sometimes it's also the last.
Some seventy years after the Soviets and the Nazis signed a
treaty agreeing to invade Poland
and split the country between them, Colonel Sergei Kovalyov, a Russian
historian, recently published an article which appeared on the official website
for the Russian Ministry of Defense entitled "Fictions and Falsifications
in Evaluating the USSR's
Role On the Eve of World War II" in which he explains how the war as all
Poland's fault.
Good point. No doubt the the estimated 20,000 Polish army
officers captured by the Soviets during the war and subsequently massacred
have only themselves to blame. After all, they stuck their necks in front of
their killers' guns, didn't they?
Well, you can believe that or you can believe Andrzej Wajda, whose
shattering film "Katyn"
(that's the name of the forest
where thousands of the slaughtered were found in a mass grave), tells a
different story. But then again, Wajda is hardly an objective source, since his
father was among those slain.
Wajda also happens to be one of the world's greatest living
directors. The films he's made include "Kanal"
(1957), "Ashes and Diamonds" (1958) and "Man
of Iron" (1981), which are not only great movies but are also courageous
historical documents.
If you missed "Katyn" during its run last week at the
Brattle Theatre, you'll get another chance. They'll be screening it again this
summer so keep an eye on their schedule.
It's also available on
DVD.
June 06, 2009
Not to beat the issue to death, but
the credit cookie mentioned below reminded me of a posting I did three years
ago, which seems to have vanished into electronic oblivion. So I'll resurrect
it here. It was about [SPOILER!] "Best/Worst Blow-Jobs in a Non-Pornographic
Film," an award I thought at the time I might bestow on Carlos Reygadas's "
Battle
in Heaven,"
which was on my top ten list in 2005 and not just because it opened with a five minute scene of
the sad sack protagonist looking perfectly miserable as he's serviced by some
babe. I knew the film would never get an Oscar, so I pitched this as a possible
award category. As you will see if you happen to catch "The Hangover,"
that film could be in the running too. But
it would face stiff competition from the following:
1) The dialectical oralism of Marco Bellocchio's "Devil in
the Flesh," (1986) in which Maruschka Detmers services Federico
Pitzalis while telling him the story of how Lenin snuck into St. Petersburg to
start the Russian Revolution.
2) Michael Winterbottom's "Nine Songs"
(2005) I can't remember the specifics, but they do everything else in the film,
so I'm sure it happened and wasn't very good.
3) Hal Ashby's "Shampoo" (1975) ,
in which Warren Beatty gets a wash and rinse under a table.
4) George Roy Hill's "The World According to Garp" (1982), in which oral sex in a moving vehicle
proves hard to swallow.
5) Any film by Catherine Breillat.
6) Vincent Gallo demonstrating that he's a head case with the help of Chloe Sevigny in "The Brown
Bunny"
(2004).
7) The biting irony of the original "The Last House on the
Left"(1975).
I'm sure there are more. If so, keep them coming.
June 03, 2009
NOW I remember what I wanted to ask Ed Helms about "The Hangover" when the
two-minute warning from the publicist put me in panic mode. True, he said that
all the "deleted" photosof the boy's lost night in Vegas - shown in a montage
over the credits in the end - were posed. But were they simulated? In
particular one involving Zach Galifianakis
and a woman old enough to be his mother. I did a double take when I saw it, not
sure if I could believe my eyes, as did the Culture Vulture on
the "New York"
magazine website.
These shock images might be just one more in the ongoing trend (at least since "Ferris
Bueller's Day Off" in 1986) of "post-credit cookies" (though this is during not post) of studio
movies that withhold a final payoff shot or scene until the very end of the
credits (a recent example: "X-men Origins: Wolverine"). How else get people to hang
around when the credit sequence can be almost as long as the
movie itself? True, there are diehard cinephiles who stick it out, perhaps to
show their respect, like fans at a baseball game listening to the national
anthem (and I wonder how many of them would remain standing if the anthem was
played at the end of the game?).
At any rate, as the Vulture also pointed out, it suggests that the bean-counting censors at the MPAA don't watch movies through to
the last frame before slapping a rating on it ("The Hangover" got an "R").Unless they are shown a version without the credits.
June 02, 2009
A lot can happen in two minutes. Especially if you talk
really fast. Plenty of time to slip in a gratuitous question about misogyny.
PK: Alright. So you went back in forth actually from "The
Office" to...
EH: Yeah. Five days a week in Vegas and two days a week in
"The Office." I worked like 45 days in a row.
PK: Since we only have two minutes, I'll give you three
topics, Mike Tyson; tiger; and getting tasered in the nuts.
EH: I didn't get tasered in the nuts.
PK: I know, but the Bradley Cooper character did. By a school
girl. Tasered in the nuts by a school girl. I mean, that seems wrong.
EH: OK. Well, so, Mike Tyson was amazing because no one
quite knew what to expect, and then he showed up and he was like the funniest
guy in the movie.
PK: Did you see "Black and White," the
one he did with Downey?
EH: Uh, no.
PK: The Toback movie.
EH: I remember hearing about that, that he actually punched Downey in that. Have not
seen that, but he was pretty amazing. A lot of times when non-actors show up on
a movie set they're really self-conscious and they hold back, but as you can
see in that Phil Collins moment he just dove in and sold it 100 percent. It
turns out he was a huge fan of "Old School."
So as soon as he said that, it was clear he trusted Todd Phillips, and he, you
know, I think he liked Zach, Bradley and I, because we're pretty easy-going
guys, so. It was just a fun, crazy couple of days with him.
PK: Did he show you some punches?
EH: What's that?
PK: Did he show you some punches?
EH: No, but the best part is when he's doing the punch on
Zach, Todd kept coming in and being like, "he needs to be more like this. Your
fist needs to be up" or whatever, and Mike was just like, "You teachin' me how
to box?" It was pretty good.
PK: But then he had some good directing tips I imagine,
Tyson.
EH: Yeah, yeah, of course. He stepped in and gave Todd a lot
of advice.
PK: Any tips on dealing with a tiger?
EH: Yeah: don't do it. Avoid it. Avoid tigers. Yeah, we
spent way too much time with that tiger. The whole time in the back of your
head is this little voice being like, "Get out! Leave! There's a tiger here!
This is stupid! This is like profoundly stupid what you're doing right now."
PK: Nobody was hurt though.
EH: Thank god nobody was hurt, but, I mean, one look at that
tiger and...
PK: It's a real tiger.
EH: It's a real tiger, we're really close, and for hours
we're shooting with this thing. And I still feel like we sort of got away with
something.
PK: They're very quick too, aren't they? The tigers.
EH: Oh yeah, yeah.
PK: And just, in terms of, I mean, did you have a big litter
box for it?
EH: I never saw that tiger take a shit, so I don't know.
That'd be pretty funny, though.
PK: There's a lot of like, really cruel, sadistic moments in
this film that people laugh at. Do you think sadism is an essential part of
comedy?
EH: Yeah, if it's not physical sadism it's mental or
emotional. I think that people in some sort of pain is oftentimes the core of a
comedic moment, whether it's big or small. I mean some of the greatest
slapstick is just the most violent stuff you've ever seen. Even if you go back
to Looney Tunes, like Wile.E Coyote and The Road Runner? That stuff is so
insanely violent. But it's hysterical.
PK: "Three Stooges."
EH: "Three Stooges," of course. It's just abuse. And if you
contextualize it properly it's hysterical.
PK: There's also the element of masochism in your character,
especially when he puts up with Melissa. What's the story there? Did you make
up a back story of how he got into her clutches?
EH: No, you know I didn't think about it too hard. I think
Stu is a bit of an archetype in that respect, just a henpecked husband, and
Rachel Harris portrayed the girlfriend so amazingly, as just this evil, power
hungry, awful girlfriend. So it just made her a fun dynamic, because Stu is in
total denial that anything's wrong.
PK: Do you think that the character, Melissa, as the most evil
character in the movie, underscores a sort of misogynistic streak in the movie?
EH: Um, I don't know. I think it's not hard to find a lot of
reason to be offended by this movie, and hopefully just all of it together, you
can sort of see it in a silly context. But I guess you kind of have to hit some
raw spots to go for some chuckles. I don't think that was anyone's intention,
to create any kind of tone in that respect, but hopefully it...I don't know.
PK: You haven't seen a completed cut of it, or you've seen
various cuts?
EH: I have, I mean, I know I've seen the last one. I just
get it confused with earlier ones.
PK: Have you seen it with audiences?
EH: I've only seen the last few minutes with an actual
audience.
PK: And do you think it appeals both to men and women or is
it really kind of a guys' film?
EH: I'm getting like incredible feedback from both genders,
and I hope it appeals to everyone. I think there's some moments in this movie
where I think any responsible mom would check out -- for example when we leave
the baby in the car -- but again, it's just one of those things. It's one thing
in a long list of very stupid decisions by our main characters, and hopefully
in the overall context it's something that we can laugh at. But yeah these are
very stupid characters who make stupid decisions and pay a price for it.
PK: But they live to tell about it.
EH: But they live to tell about it, and I think that they
learn some lessons in the process too.
PK: And they delete the pictures. "Hangover 2:" Is that
going to be the back story? I read that that's almost in the works now.
EH: Yeah, I think that's being talked about, but it just
depends on how this movie does, obviously. But, is there a story, is that what
you're asking?
PK: Yeah.
EH: I have no idea. I don't know what we...I mean, I think
we'd have to take it to outer space to heighten what we did.
PK: I thought there was a little, with the Heather Graham
character, there was like a little, you were going to go back to have lunch
with her or something.
EH: Yeah, but that's honestly...
PK: It's too mild.
EH: That's so boring, I mean that's sort of a nice, pleasant
thing. That's like the romantic comedy spin-off. I think if it's going to
follow in sort of the same tone as "Hangover" it has to just blow it out and get even more insane somehow.
PK: She is a prostitute, mind you.
EH: That's true, but she's ...quite a heart of gold, so.
PK: Re-enactors, Civil War re-enactors. You're working on
that movie?
EH: Yeah, very excited, it's a big back-to-the-future
comedy.
PK: And you're writing it.
EH: Yep, writing it this summer. Steve Carell's company is
producing it.
PK: Looks like fun. Are you Confederate or Union?
EH: Uh, well, both... you know what, we'll let that story
tell itself when it comes out.
PK: Have you done research?
EH: Yeah, I've been to a few reenactments, and it's such a
fun culture, It's such a fun hobby. I grew up in the south so I have an
affinity for Civil War nostalgia, so.
PK: Yeah, a lot of battle fields down there.
EH: A lot of battle fields down there.
PK: Well, I'm going to be dragged away from here if I don't
stop, so I really appreciate your time.
June 01, 2009
VIDEO: Peter Keough interviews Ed Helms
If some prognosticators are right (or if you want to believe
the people at Warner Bros.),
the sneak, sleeper hit of the summer will be Todd Phillip's
("Old School") "The Hangover," a crude, lewd, vomit-spewed comedy about four
guys who go to Vegas for a bachelor party and wake up not remembering a damn
thing.
Yes, we've all been
through this, waking up with a missing tooth next to a smoldering armchair in a
trashed hotel room with a chicken, a baby and a tiger in the bathroom. Best to
pretend it never happened, except the groom is missing, and the three remaining
half-drunken, hungover louts have to figure what happened the night before from the tragic evidence that remains. It's
kind of like, "Dude, Where's the Groom?"
Playing one of the four debauchees is Ed Helms, whom fans of "The
Office" will recognize as the insufferable but oddly appealing Andy. Here he
plays Stu, who is less insufferable than Andy but still appealing, as well as uptight,
nerdy and gap-toothed -- none of which things he is in real life. [See the interview here in the video version.]
PK: So you're tired of people asking you about the tooth, I
imagine, right?
EH: I'm sick and tired of talking about the goddamn tooth.
But, no, I'm happy to fill you in. It's pretty simple.
PK: I saw Letterman last night.
EH: Oh you did? So you know. [He lost the tooth as a
teenager and had it replaced by an implant which they removed for the movie]. That's
all true.
PK: I kind of pieced together the entire weekend, or night,
except for the chicken.
EH: Wait, have you, you saw the movie?
PK: I did, yeah.
EH. The chicken is the Great McGuffin of "The Hangover."
It's never explained. But, you know the only reason it's there is because...I
mean there is no rational explanation for it. Although Todd will tell you, Todd
Phillips the director, when I called him on the chicken I was like, "What's the
deal with the chicken?" He says that we stole the chicken to feed the tiger.
PK: That's what I thought.
EH: But I don't know where we got the chicken.
PK: It's either that or the baby. To feed the tiger, I mean.
EH: Right, right. But I just think that chickens are kind of
this symbol of chaos. You know what I mean? Like, it seems like whenever you're
in like, a South American market place, or like a crazy bus ride somewhere,
there's a chicken. And it just sort of represents chaos. So, in that hotel room
the next morning, you know, it's all about chaos, so I think you just have to
throw in a chicken.
PK: Well it's sort of Buñuel-esque, right?
EH: Buñuel? Oh, wow.
PK: They have a sheep coming in and there's no explanation,
at the end of "The Exterminating Angel."
It's kind of like that.
EH: Yeah, that's a great, there ya go. I'm on board with
that.
PK: You've probably been asked, also, if you've ever had a
similar experience? But then you wouldn't remember, I guess.
EH: "Chinatown."
Sorry, I'm just thinking of sheep. Sheep, in relation to the water hearing,
where he herded all the sheep in, in protest...yeah that was more premeditated.
PK: No that's good, good association.
EH: I'm sorry...
PK: Yes, have you ever had an experience that you remember,
obviously, similar to what's going on?
EH: In the movie?
PK: Yeah.
EH: No, not even close.
PK: Not even close?
EH: I never...I mean, I went to college and I've definitely
had too much to drink on a few occasions. But I mean, the craziest thing I've
ever done is like, streaking in college or something, which is pretty mundane.
PK: That raises an interesting point. Do you think that
every comedy from now on that we're going to see is going to have a shot of a
naked man for comic effect?
EH: I sure hope so. I think it's damn funny. Although did
you see "Observe and Report"?
PK: I did, yes.
EH: Oh my God...
PK: That's a little too much, I think.
EH: Yeah but that was sort of the, the elegance of it, I
thought. It was just like -- the slow motion -- just here it is. I don't know,
that made me laugh really hard, but you know like anything it's just a sort of
trend where we are right now, and I'm sure it'll...
PK: But they said that about vomiting too, that a couple of
times there would be vomit takes and then it would go away. But you have like
four in this movie alone.
EH: Do I vomit?
PK: You do.
EH: I can't remember if the final cut has me...I mean there's
obviously the picture at the end of me vomiting as part of the montage at the
end, but I don't know...
PK: You haven't seen the finished cut?
EH: Well I keep seeing different cuts. Is the one -- I
vomited at the breakfast table?
PK: Yes.
EH: Yeah, yeah. Come on, how are you going to sell "Hangover"
without vomit?
PK: That's true.
EH: You gotta throw a vomit in there.
PK: Or at least the dry heaves, right?
EH: Right. I think there's a, if I'm not mistaken, there's a
dry heave and then a vomit.
PK: Yea, it's a build up...a slow build-up type thing.
EH: Right. John Krasinski and I on "The Office" said, "fake dry heave all day long." Cuz to me that is
the funniest physical comedy that has ever existed.
PK: The fake dry heave.
EH: Is dry heaving. It makes me laugh so hard, and Krasinski
is amazing at it. Um, actually Carell and Colbert have this really old bid on
"The Dana Carvey Show" where they were
writers together called "The Waiters..." it's something like "The Waiters Who
Were Nauseated By Food." So the whole bit is Carrell telling the dinner specials to customers, but
he's starting to dry heave while he's describing it, and Carell is behind him
just with a towel or whatever, and Carell starts like dry heaving behind him.
And so on "The Daily Show" I use to beg Colbert to do that for me because it
just made me laugh so hard. Then I got to work on "The Office," and Krasinski
was like, "You gotta see Carell. He does the funniest bit." And I was like,
"I've seen that!" And it is. I don't know why, it just makes me laugh.
PK: Do you miss working on "The Daily Show" and Colbert's
show?
EH: You know, I miss all the people there, and I miss the
kind of culture of that show, because it really is a special place, and like
full of incredibly smart and fun people. But I don't miss the work, because
that job was so hard and so demanding, mostly because of the travel. Like, I
was on the road doing those field pieces...
PK: You were in Boston
a lot.
EH: I was right here...I must've been in Boston five or six
times, I mean, yeah, I did well over 100 of those things, and I came to Boston a bunch of times. We actually
camped out here for the convention in '04. We had the whole show moved up here.
We did a week of shows out of BU.
PK: So you're familiar with the town?
EH: Yep, my sister lives here in Brookline. I love Boston. I grew up in the south, but I still
have a lot of affection for this town.
PK: The thing
about "The Daily Show," and it still is like, probably the most reliable news
source in America
right now...But I'm wondering, do you think that Obama is going to kill all
political comedy? Because you look at "Saturday Night Live," and, well, are we
gonna have eight years of Joe Biden jokes?
EH: No, I don't, and I'll tell you why. Because I don't
think "The Daily Show" was ever about a political position. It's about rooting
out hypocrisy, which, you know, no political party has a monopoly on hypocrisy.
It seems to be a prevalence across the board. You don't have to dig very deep
to find inconsistencies in any politician's positions, so I feel like that was
always the fun and the sort of core of the satire. It's not party specific,
so...I've seen some awesome "Daily Show" episodes since Obama took office, and I'm
really excited. I remember in '04, when Bush won again and people were like,
"You must be really excited that Bush won again, because he gives you so much
material." And, first of all, I was like, "so wait, you think that my desire to
create comedy trumps my desire for our nation to be run well?" So, it was
ridiculous for that reason. But also, like, it gets old, you know? I think we
all really wanted and relished the challenge of kind of making fun of some
liberal perspectives as well, and that's finally here.
PK: So does Fox News, right?
EH: Well Fox News is conservative though.
PK: I know, but they make fun of liberal positions. Even
when they're not funny.
EH: I don't know that they make fun of it. They just, yeah.
They did have that little comedy news show. They had to rip off of "The Daily
Show" for a little while, which was absolutely preposterous.
PK: Well this film you could say really doesn't have much of a
political subtext.
EH: This movie?
PK: Yeah.
EH: No, God no, thank god. [laughter] Yeah, I mean if it
does I have no idea what it is.
PK: You have to dig deep.
EH: Yeah, you have to peel back some layers. If it does it's
operating at a level that I haven't even caught onto yet.
PK: Did you do research into all the great bachelor party movies
going back to "Bachelor Party" with Tom
Hanks in, it was like, '78?
EH: Nah, it wasn't that old. "Bachelor Party?" It was 80s.
PK: 80s? [It was 1984]
EH: Pretty sure it's 80s, because it was on HBO when I was a
kid. And I loved that movie. But here's the thing, like, those movies...that's
like the perfect movie to bring up, because that movie is called "Bachelor
Party" and it's about a Bachelor Party. And it all takes place over the course
of the night of the bachelor party. This movie is called "The Hangover," and it's
all about The Hangover. So it's the next day. You don't even see any of the
bachelor party. So in that respect, no amount of bachelor party research is
really relevant to this movie, because this is just all about the insane fall-out
from a night that nobody remembers and the audience didn't even see, so.
PK: It's kind of like Phillip K. Dick did a bachelor party
movie.
EH: Yes. Well Todd Phillips used to call this sort of the "Memento" comedy, but it's obviously not quite that
complicated. But, yeah, it's got a really fun narrative trick in it, which is
that the audience along with the main characters are trying to figure out what
happened.
PK: You do have the pictures at the end, the photos. Am I
giving away something by mentioning that there's a...
EH: Unless you say what's in those pictures, I think you're
fine, just because those pictures are so insane.
PK: You guys must've had fun in Vegas judging from a lot of
those pictures. [Some of which were cut out.]
EH: You know, I hate to disappoint, but every one of those
pictures was posed, you know.
PK: Really?
EH: Every one of them, yeah. Even the stuff that looks like
crazy party stuff, it was like the end of a long shoot day and we're all just
sort of like, "ok, look crazy. look like you're having fun!" And we're like,
"Ok here we go." Eh. That was it.
PK: So you spent six weeks I guess making this movie in
Vegas and you never really...you never went to the casinos or you never had any
wild debauchery.
EH: We definitely went to the casinos and I think I lost
more money than I care to admit, but we were shooting fourteen hours a day. You
can't party, I mean you can't go out at night. The craziest stuff we did in
Vegas is the stuff that we set up to shoot in this movie.
[Publicist enters room; holds up two fingers]
PK: Two minutes? Really? Wow, I was just starting to get
warmed up to the meaty questions.
EH: It's time to dig deep. Let's get hard core.
Next: We dig deep. We get hard core.
May 29, 2009
Many years ago, let's say 30 or so, I was a regular reader of "The Boston Phoenix" in part because of the writing of Clif Garboden: it was eloquent, witty, informed, impassioned and ferocious in its commitment and ideals. And, more often than not, it was also very funny (his "Hot Dots" column, a preview of the week's TV programming, was a comic mini-masterpiece). So I thought to myself, "The Phoenix" was a cool place to be and maybe one day if I got good enough I, too, could work there.
And so it came to pass, and for many years Clif has been my colleague here and in many ways, visible and invisible, has made sure that "The Phoenix" was a cool place to be and a bastion of journalistic excellence and integrity.
Today, however, is his last day. After four decades as writer, editor and benevolent, protective spirit, he'll say goodbye this evening at An Tua Nua, a casualty of the economic turmoil that is today's journalism. I'm not alone in thinking that with him goes an element of cool that will be hard to replace.
