Not to end the year on a negative note with a worst list, how about something more upbeat and positive? Here’s an alternative Oscar Category the folks at the Academy might consider: The Tim Roth Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Seriously Wounded Role. There are a lot of candidates this year so one criterion I used to limit it to five is to avoid the possibility of spoilers. (Thanks to Brett Michel for pointing out some of the more wounded ones).

 

1. Rudy Youngblood as Jaguar Paw in “Apocalypto.”

2. Daniel Craig as 007 in “Casino Royale.”

3. Brandon Routh in “Superman Returns.”

4. Nicolas Cage in “World Trade Center.”

5. Cate Blanchett in “Babel.”

Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to mention "Babel" again, but this a case of giving credit where credit is due. Same goes for "World Trade Center."

 
Any suggestions on other nominees or other alternative Oscar categories are welcome. Happy New Year to all.

12/29/2006 4:40:12 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

Well, I’m glad that’s almost over. 2006, that is. But as bad as it was nearly everywhere else (a tip of the hat to the Dems for the election), it wasn’t such a bad year in films. I’ve already compiled my ten best list, and to avoid seeming overly rosey-eyed, here’s my choice of the year’s five worst films.

Wait a minute, you say, this can’t be a worst list. Where’s “Lady in the Water”? Truth to the say, I didn’t see it. Nor did I see a lot of the really bad films --  I assigned those to unlucky freelancers. Also, you might note that a lot of these films have been praised by other people, however wrong-headedly. So these aren’t really the worst films of the year, but those that are the worst for filmmaking in general. You might say I don’t include a film on my worst list unless it’s on someone else’s best list.

So here they are, for better or worse, the worst, listed from best to worst: 

5. “Thank You For Smoking.” I thought the art of satire had died with this overrated smirk-fest, but then came “Borat.” The real irony of this smug film is that the director Jason Reitman is not lampooning the powers that be -- the elitist, cynical hypocrites who pimp out evil and pretend to righteousness -- but is praising them.

4.”Confederate States of America.” Ditto above concerning my fears for the future of satire. Plus it’s never remotely funny. Except for maybe this image.

3. “49 Up.”  Have 49 years passed and people not realized that this supposed landmark in documentaries is just a pretentious bit of tawdry reality TV? Every seven years Michael Apted has an opportunity to discover some insights into society, culture and human nature and instead regurgitates the same platitudes and banalities, exploiting the morose delectation of watching other people fuck up and grow decrepit.

2. "World Trade Center." What a shabby exploitation of a tragedy and a pandering to the sleazy people who benefited from it.

1. "Babel." And with that, I promise to say no more about it. Unless provoked.

12/29/2006 12:53:45 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

Ruthless raiders attack a village, killing most of the inhabitants, capturing others as slaves. One man taken prisoner is determined to escape and find and rescue his scattered family. So goes Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto.” Or is it Edward Zwick’s “Blood Diamond?”

Moviegoers knew the difference a couple of weeks ago when both films premiered. “Apocalypto” came in first at the box office with over $14 million. Blood Diamond was a poor fifth, at around eight. That despite (1) Gibson was in disgrace after his anti-semitic meltdown; (2) the film is in Mayan with English subtitles and (3) the biggest star is Rudy Youngblood as Jaguar Paw. “Diamond,” on the other hand, boasts the squeaky clean liberal credentials of Zwick and the star power of Leonardo Di Caprio. What happened?

Maybe it was the politics. Back in September while promoting the movie Gibson let on that the movie, which takes place in the 15th century when the Mayan empire was resorting to human sacrifice to stop its decline, was a metaphor for the war in Iraq. “What’s human sacrifice," he said, "if not sending troops to Iraq for no reason?”

Given the success the Democrats had with this tack in the November elections, it’s probably not surprising that it worked for “Apocalypto.” "Diamond," meanwhile, has as its political message a warning not to buy gems unless they are “conflict free.” That, and an overall negative attitude to frivolous Western consumerism, doesn’t seem to have gone over big this holiday season.

Politics aside, though, I think the biggest difference in the two movies is in graphic, gory violence. Despite it’s title, “Blood” just doesn’t deliver. A few battle scenes, a couple of lopped-off hands -- small potatoes, as A.S. Hamrah points out in his LA Times op-ed “We Love to Torture,” in today’s movie market. “Apocalypto,” on the other hand, is like “Saw III” with great scenery.

Come to think of it, it might well have been the pain, not the piety, that made Gibson’s last film “The Passion of the Christ” such a blockbuster. Or maybe it’s pain plus piety, because you can’t beat the combination of indulging in one’s perverse pleasures for righteous reasons. Maybe that’s what  this year’s “The Nativity Story” was lacking  -- it took in only $7.8 million it’s opening weekend as opposed to “Passion”’s $81 million. Maybe if it focused more, say, on the Slaughter of the Innocents, it too could have been a big hit.

12/21/2006 5:31:13 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

The world, at least my irrelevant fragment of it, can be divided into two groups: those who think "Babel" is a brilliant depiction of the wondrous and ironic synchronicity of all human experience and irrefutable proof that all misfortune is the fault of stupid Americans. And then those who think it’s a pretentious, manipulative crock of shit. It is, in short, the "Crash" of 2006.

Me, I'm of the crock persuasion, but I recognize that a lot of people feel differently and so for me one of the biggest mysteries about the recent critics organizations awards has been: where’s "Babel?" (just one award so far, for Best Supporting Actress, from the San Francisco).The other mystery, mentioned before, is where did all this support for "United 93" come from? (It just  got two more Best Picture Awards, from the Dallas/Fort Worth and Phoenix critics).

Oh, and then there are the Golden Globes. Seven nominations from the The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which can be regarded as the journalistic equivalent of a pretentious, manipulative crock of shit.

Why the discrepancy? I think both films are in part about a similar subject, Western terror at the emerging threat of the Third World, but taken from different viewpoints. In "Babel," spoiled American tourists in a bus in Morocco get popped by a sniper; in "United 93," average folks respond to horrible circumstances. In "Babel," the victims are beautiful movie stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett; in "United 93," the victims are people like you and me. In "Babel," the culprits are fate and dumb American bureaucracy and policy; in "United 93," the culprit is a deadly enemy and dumb American bureaucracy and policy. In "Babel," it’s all a misunderstanding. In "United 93," it will probably never be completely understood. "Babel "is phoney, made-up hoo-haw; "United 93" is as close to the real thing as commercial cinema gets.

Who do you think will win out come Oscar time?

12/19/2006 12:44:44 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

Remember “United 93?” Not the flight whose passengers and crew heroically thwarted the 9/11 terrorists who wanted to fly it into the Capitol or the White House, but the Paul Greengrass movie that wrenchingly recreated it? When it came out last April to the refrains of “too soon!” it got good reviews (three and a half stars from me) and a respectable opening weekend box office (around $11 million) but made no real impression. In the theaters for ten weeks, it would ultimately gross around $35 million and be eclipsed by Oliver Stone’s smarmier and more media-savvy “World Trade Center."

And that was that. Until, that is, when at the Boston Film Critics Society awards meeting last Sunday it barely lost to the local favorite “The Departed” (the same number of points but not enough ballots in a voting system that after about fifteen years I still can’t explain properly).

A fluke? Perhaps. But then the next day both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Washington D.C. Critics group gave their Best Picture nod to “United 93” And today I find out that the San Francisco Film Critics gave their Best Director prize to Paul Greengrass.

So, who cares? They’re just pointy-headed critics, after all, aren’t they? In fact, though, as "Time" film critic Richard Corliss points out in his story “Do Movie Critics Matter?” (and thanks to fellow BSFC member Dan Kimmel for the tip on this) these groups do have a pretty good track record of predicting, if not actually influencing, the Oscars. At any rate, we critics really only have this narrow window of time at the end of the year to enjoy our illusion of relevance, so give us a break.

12/13/2006 10:34:53 AM by Peter | Comments [1] |  

Could it be the lingering threat of Whitey Bulger and the South Boston mob? Whatever the reason, “The Departed” took the top honors at this year’s Boston Society of Film Critics awards. Here are the results:

 

Best Cinematography: Guillermo Navarro, "Pan's Labyrinth."

Best Newcomer: Ryan Fleck, "Half Nelson"

Best Screenplay: William Monahan, Alan Mak, Felix Chong, "The Departed"

Best Supporting Actress: Shareeka Epps, "Half Nelson"

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Wahlberg, "The Departed"

Best Actress: Helen Mirren, "The Queen"

Best Actor: Forest Whitaker, "Last King of Scotland"

Best Ensemble Cast: "United 93"

Best Director: Martin Scorsese, "The Departed"

Best Documentary: "Deliver Us From Evil" and "Shut Up & Sing" (tie)

Best Foreign Language Film: "Pan's Labyrinth"

Best Picture: "The Departed"

12/10/2006 4:27:01 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

Sorry for the delay.

When last we checked in on this conversation David Lynch was talking about the cow he was using to promote Laura Dern’s Best Actress Oscar campaign. That naturally led to a discussion of pets, and ultimately a discussion  of the meaning his last three films and of the meaning of life  in general. Let’s listen in…

 

Q: Do you have any pets of your own? Because you always seem to have a nice animal in your films.

DL: I used to have a dog named Sparky. A Jack Russell Terrier.

Q: He passed away?

DL: He was in “Blue Velvet.”

Q: That was the dog…

DL: …biting the water.

Q: He was a trouper.

DL: Take one.

Q: Just one take?

DL: Yeah.

Q: One-take Sparky. But you haven’t had any animals to replace him.

DL: You know, everybody’s different. But I …don’t really like animals in the house. And then you kind of fall in love with animals and you sort of design your life around that animal. And I worry about the animals. And I don’t want to worry about an animal. I want to worry about getting something done.

Q: So this wasn’t your own cow.

DL: No, it’s not my own cow.

Q: You got it from a farm or something?

DL: Yeah.

Q: Do you think Laura has a shot?

DL: Yeah. I was at a place where doing interviews and the people were asking me questions who had seen the films for this year and two of them said definitely Laura gave the best performance. So, you know, it doesn’t mean she’s even going to get a nomination. But in a perfect world she certainly should get that. It’s not a big studio picture.

Q: It’s got a budget under $100 million.

DL: Just under.

Q: The film is a challenge for viewers. What sorts of responses have you been getting?

DL: WAY better than I EVER hoped for. I think, and it’s younger, younger people. They don’t have a problem with abstractions so much. And they just, and it’s not just younger people. There are lots of people who like a dream in a film or like taking off and enjoy being lost. Lost in some ways but always feeling, you know, follow their intuition, and they don’t have a problem. And there’s other people, young or old or middle age, whatever, they just do not like that. It’s what makes the world go round. But I’ve been pretty amazed, it’s a three hour picture that’s hard to understand, and it’s doing much better than I ever hoped.

Q: You’ve said the ideal audience you’re trying to appeal to is 14-year-old girls.

DL: Fourteen-year-old girls in the midwest that like to walk down tree-lined streets. If I…I um.. often wonder if some kind of wind swept across the country, if they’d just catch it and have to see INLAND EMPIRE and take their boyfriends and then it would just go up in the years from there. If 14-year-old girls in the midwest would embrace it, it’s so beautiful.

Q: It seems like since you’ve had so much experience working on your website and on the internet you drawn on that sort of consciousness -- multinarrative, free association -- for the movie.

DL: Random access thinking, or some kind of abstract thinking. Maybe so. They’re hip to that way. For sure. It doesn’t bother them.

Q: Even though some say the internet leads to short attention spans and makes them less literate…

DL: They might becoming less literate in the old way but their minds are super fast in another way. There’s this thing about wanting to go into a world and get lost that’s pretty beautiful. That’s what I like to do.

Q: The worlds you get lost in can be nightmarish.

DL: They say that art reflects the world we live in. There’s some truth to that. Ideas are kind of born out of the way the times are. I know they are; you see the way that all art has changed, painting has changed, film has changed, so there’s something about that. The world we live in -- though not for all people but all people hear about it -- heavy, heavy, heavy duty suffering, Things that you just can’t believe are happening. I think it fuels a lot of things. Ideas come somehow from that.

Q: I was at a screening of “Mulholland Drive” a week after 9/11 that was followed bya discussion. It seemed people took comfort by finding refuge from the general nightmare by trying to figure out yours.

DL: It’s not all dreadful.

Q: It seems that in this movie as well as in “Mulholland Drive” and “Lost Highway” they all end in a continuous loop that's a circular hell, and for some forgotten transgression…

DL: Uh-huh. Good. Good.

Q: …they undergo a repetitious cycle of punishment…

DL: Beautiful. Beautiful.

Q: She seems to get out of it in this one.

DL: That’s real good [he shakes my hand]

Q: Oh, thanks. Do you agree?

DL: I’m not going to agree. I said…

Publicist: You’ve got five minutes.

Q: Five minutes. Oh well. Let’s talk about Transcendental Meditation. It seems like the unconscious that your films draw on isfrightening but the unconscious you tap into with TM is blissful. Are they two different unconsciousnesses?

DL: But it’s not unconscious or you wouldn’t know it. It’s subconscious. There’s the surface, just like the ocean. The surface is where we are. We see surfaces, we’re on the surfaces, just like they’re solid matter. Human’ beings are bodies and we see the surfaces. But deeper and deeper and deeper there are these huge realms that parallel the huge realms inside matter that scientists have found in molecules and atoms, finer and finer particles and forces. At the base of that, at the base of matter is the Unified Field. At the base of mind and intellect is a unified field. One field gives birth to everything that is a thing. Vedic science has always said that and now modern science is confirming that. There’s an unmanifest field of oneness at the basis of everything. And everything that is a thing is born out of that. Created by that. It’s not like out of it it’s still in it. Like it manifests itself in its creation. Universes. It’s a thing that on this level always was, is and always will be. It’s eternal. Unbounded. Any human being can learn to dive within and experience that deepest level. Powerful, unbounded consciousnmess. Bliss consciousness. Powerful. all the power that runs the whole show is there. It’s beautiful to experience it. What it does for your work is that negative things start going away. Things that constrict creativity. The flow of ideas. Those things start livening up. Amazingly true. So you work with so much more freedom, so much more happiness. So much more energy. When you get up in the morning, it’s not like literally bounding out of bed, but it’s like you’re raring to go and you catch these ideas and life becomes really good.

Little kids can meditate. They say stress is hitting the little kids at an earlier and earlier age. Just pinched, the school is like a nightmare, it’s no fun to go to school. You let them experience the Self at the deepest level. It’s the Self of us. Their grades go up. They start getting more inner happiness, inner power. Intelligence rises. IQ rises. They’ve done so many studies. They start getting along with the other students. It eases up all the negative, what I call the rubber clown suit of negativity starts dissolving and they start to enjoy life. And they start improving in all aspects of life just by enlivening that deepest level. So, whatever they want to do they’re going to have a lot more chance to do it. more self-assurance. More power. And they become more themselves but still appreciate all these differences. No problem! We’re a world family. We really can get along; just enliven that unity. In the midst of diversity. And a beautiful thing happens. Who knows what we’ll get into? In terms of creativity. It’s a storehouse, a treasury, of all possibilities there. And this is happening. More schools are interested because they’ve tried these other things. More people are listening and hearing it and they’re saying, wait a minute: this is us. This is where we came from. This is what we’re made of. Consciousnes, consciousness, consciousness! Beautiful! Unfold it! Watch things get better.

Publicist: [indecipherable]

DL: Give him a few more minutes. I’m on a roll.

Q: Have you raised any of that  $7 billion that you had set for your goal last year to promote this program?

DL: Some of it. It’s a big number. But they talk about in Iraq I don’t know how many billions they spend a week, one and a half billion a week? I don’t know. It’s a small amount to repair so much damage. The thing about this field of unity is that it’s good for all things. It improves all avenues. Enliven it. Enliven it.

Q: The Maharishi -- he’s pushing 90 isn’t he?

DL: I don’t know how old he is. It doesn’t matter. He’s working 24/7 to makes things better and he’s been working for 50 years.

Q: Is it serendipitous that we are talking at the Om Restaurant?

DL: Yeah. It’s beautiful. And I was saying to somebody earlier that the Buddha was one of the Vedic masters and the Vedas are the law of nature and Vedic science is the science of this unified field. How unmanifest becomes manifest. So the unmanifest of all manifestation, that’s the science of totality. Modern science is getting so heavy into this with quantum physics and cosmology and all the branches have discovered this in their own way and it may be a good time in the world things will start happen. The sun comes up and without trying the darkness goes. That’s negativity: the darkness. Close your eyes, start your mantra, transcend. Unique, powerful, sublime. And things start getting better.

Q: Someone walking out of darkness is a common motif in your films.

DL: There’s something about that. Yeah.

Q: You once described the ending of “Blue Velvet” as bittersweet. Have you changed your mind about that?

DL: No; that’s pretty good.

12/8/2006 10:48:32 AM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

David Lynch was in Harvard Square, Cambridge last Sunday, introducing a screening of his new film “INLAND EMPIRE” at the Brattle Theater ( one of only four screens across the country on which it makes its premiere). Earlier he was gladhanding and doing promotional interviews (he’s more or less distributing the film himself) at the aptly-named -- given his enthusiasm for Transcendental Meditation -- Om Restaurant (though the no-smoking ban was a bummer for Lynch, who spent much of the time on the sidewalk puffing American Spirit cigarettes). I was one of the fortunate journalists allowed to interview him.

Some observations:

1. at times he sounds like Rain Man.

2. at times I sound like Rain Man

3. perhaps because of #1 and #2, the transcript sometimes sounds like dialogue from a Lynch film. Maybe “Dune.”

4. Don’t ask questions about what things mean in his films.

5. Don’t ask questions about digital video technology or Transcendental Meditation unless you want to spend a lot of time talking about these subjects.

6. There really is a coherent meaning to his films. Maybe many.

As for a coherent meaning to this interview, I have my doubts. I’m dividing it into two parts out of laziness.

 

Q: With all that coffee, how do you sleep?

David Lynch: I sleep great. How do you sleep?

Q: Okay

Q: Are they rabbits or donkeys?

DL: Rabbits.

Q: I guess donkeys would be too political.

DL: They’re rabbits.

Q: Are they from the website series “Rabbits?”

DL: Yeah.

Q: Is a lot of the material from the website? I don’t subscribe because I’m too poor.

DL: (laughs) I’m going to be poor too. That’s okay. I started shooting digital because of the website. So the website I saw as the home for short experiments and with the idea that something could catch and continue. Because wevery little fragment can draw other things. In doing short things a lot of times it triggers more and I was shooting these short things on my Sony PD 150. And I started falling in love with this camera.

Q: That’s not a real fancy camera, is it?

DL: No, it’s um, it’s um a hair above a consumer… I’m not sure where it lands. It’s pretty low res. But when you put that through a machine called the Alchemist it upraises it in the most beautiful way. And when it’s upraised you have so much control in the telecine bay or in what they call this D.I. room but that cost a lot money to go in there but the telecine was plenty good enough. You’re going to end up in the telecine bay anyway if you shoot film when you go to DVD. So if you get your film transferred to digital going to the telecine bay, retime the entire thing after you’ve timed it for film, you can grow old fast. Now you’re in the telecine bay even though you’ve shot on film. Now I’m in the telecine bay first stop, having control of blacks, midrange, whites, all the color, all kinds of things you can do you couldn’t do with film and you get it just the way you want it there and it’s almost a one-to-one over to film, based on our experiments. It’s very, very beautiful.

Q: It allows you to write the screenplay on the day you were shooting?

DL: No, not on the day. Sometimes close to the day of shooting. Once or twice. Mostly it’s done… it’s a long story. I always process it exactly the same except normally all the catching of ideas and seeing if this relates to this or this relates to that happens in the script form. So you do all this work and then you finally have a script. I did the work piece by piece. Write it and then I would shoot it. That was the difference. Bit by bit. Bit by bit shooting instead of bit by bit forming a script.

Q: So you had the freedom to spontaneously come up with ideas as you were shooting.

DL: That’s what you want. To catch ideas. I  didn’t know where these ideas would lead. I was just getting them, writing them, shooting them. And then after a while bigger things started emerging out of that. It’s part of the process.

Q: An exploration.

DL: All of it is. All the things you write are -- they’re not an exploration of your own subconscious. It’s an exploration. It’s based on the ideas you fall in love with.

Q: You shot a lot in in Lodz, Poland?

Q: It’s pronounced Lodz. It looks like Lodz, but it’s pronounced Lodz.

Q: What’s your background there?

DL: I was invited to the Camera Image Film Festival which takes place there. And I started making friends with the guys who run the festival. They were able to get these huge derelict factories open for me to photograph and they’d get me nude women at night to photograph.

Q: Good deal.

DL: Yeah. It was a beautiful thing. And I started to fall in love with this town. It’s very, very beautiful -- to me -- especially in the winter. It’s a grey, dark place but it has a mood I love.

Q: Very baroque.

DL: In the 1800s a lot was built.

Q: You know Kieslowski. He was a student and shot some of his early films there.

DL: He taught there. At the school there.

Q: I’m a big fan of Kieslowski and of yourself and I was wondering if there might have been an influence in this film. Shades of “The Double Life of Veronique.”

DL: Uh-uh. Whenever you have two women or two different things they say “Persona” or different things, you know. I’m not a film buff and I’d say film’s can inspire us but to take somebody else’s work…I mean it would have to be something…you know.. that’s why I think ideas are the thing. They come to you and they’re not from some other thing. They’re fresh. And it’s just…uh…I just hope they keep flowing.

Q: So it wasn’t just one big idea that set this up.

DL: It never happens for me that way. That would be beautiful.

Q: I understand that in “Mulholland Drive”you got this sudden inspiration as to how to put together the beginning, middle and end…

DL: Well, that was made for a pilot. So it didn’t ever have an ending. Then they didn’t like it, ABC, so I got the chance to make it into a feature but I had no ideas how to do that. And then I got the ideas. So, that was a blessing.

Q: In “Mulholland Drive” and in this film the protagonist is an actress, a woman. In your previous films the protagonists had been men. Any reason for this change?

DL: I can’t explain it. (chuckles). The ideas. You know, there it was. I guess, I don’t know. It’s not like I ever wanted to set out  and say I want to do a film about an actress. Somewhere I had this idea, I mean thousands of girls like they say come to Hollywood with a dreram. So it’s not like it’s that big an idea. but when you get an idea sort of from out somewhere else and it hits you and you fall in love with it but then you just go. And that’s what started it. A girl comes to Hollywood.

Q: Laura Dern is outstanding in this film. I understand you are promoting her for a Best Actress Oscar with a cow.

DL: I was. I am. You know in Hollywood in the very beginning days the actors, directors and film community got together and they had a big dinner and they celebrated each other. And it was, I picture it as a really beautiful thing. And they would recognize each other’s talent’s and they would give awards to each other. In recognition of somebody’s really good work. Now it’s turned into what it is. I think to my mind far far away from what it started out to be. So I can’t afford to do all the things, the traditional things, to help Laura get an award. But I got this idea to go out and help her with this cow. And signs.

Q: Are people getting the connection?

DL: Yeah. I was going to be there the first day three and a half hours or so and about an hour and fifteen minutes in channel four and channel five TV showed up. Word goes very fast these days. How it happens I don’t know. People would come up and I got to meet all these really great people. They loved the cow. People love cows. Love them. I didn’t know how much they love a cow.

Q: They’re very sweet animals.

DL: Yeah! They’re so calm and sweet. They’re so sweet. You’re right. They give milk. And from that milk, we make cheese. And I love cheese. And I love milk.

Q: What’s your favorite cheese?

DL: Well, uh, parmesan cheese, I think. But I like a lot of different kind of cheese. But I like goat cheese, too.

Q: A goat probably wouldn’t be sending the right kind of message.

DL: No, but goats are okay.

Q: You had a project called “Dream of the Bovine.” Did this have any connection with that?

DL: No.

12/5/2006 1:03:17 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |