October 2008
The week on IFC.com: Makeup artistry, child vampires and black eyes.
Friday, October 31, 2008 | 5:40 PM
What's been happening on the rest of IFC.com:
+ Video: How to Give Yourself a Black Eye - For Halloween, or just to scare your parents -- makeup artist Rachel Pagani demonstrates how to make your own shiner,
+ Feature: Puddy In Their Hands - The Experts Speak - Stephen Saito gathers opinions from the pros on their favorite creature and makeup effects work from the history of horror flicks.
+ Interview: Tomas Alfredson on "Let the Right One In" - Aaron Hillis talks to the director about his vampire/coming-of-age movie, working with child actors and how technology has crushed the Swedish film industry.
+ Feature: Puddy In Their Hands - Ten Old Movie Makeup Jobs That Hold Up, Part I - Matt Singer gets into the Halloween spirit by looking back at famous movie makeup jobs that are at least 25 years old that have kept their power to scare the bejeezus out of viewers.
+ Feature: Puddy In Their Hands - Ten Old Movie Makeup Jobs That Hold Up, Part II - Continued from part one.
+ On DVD: "Flight of the Red Balloon," "Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition" - Michael Atkinson on Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien trip to France to take on Albert Lamorisse's beloved 1956 short "The Red Balloon"; plus, plumbing the depths of the MST3K gang's sophomoric, avant-garde repurposing of forgotten films.
+ Podcast: The "Killer _____" Movie - Movie murdering isn't going to pay the bills. We look at the day jobs or convenient professions held by various slasher psychos.
+ Opening This Week: Brit horror, high school horror and Kevin Smith - Neil Pedley rounds up what's new in theaters.
Want these updates to be sent to you each week? Email us and we'll add you to our list.
[Photo: "The Exorcist," Warner Bros. Pictures, 1973]
Critic wrangle: "Zack and Miri Make a Porno."
Friday, October 31, 2008 | 5:23 PM
I liked Kevin Smith's rom-com just fine when I caught it at Fantastic Fest last month, though I'm getting pretty tired of the Smith/Apatow tendency to obscure sappiness with poop jokes. Own it or get over it, boys. The critics are all over the place with "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," which is either heartfelt, tiresome or both.
On the pro side: Roger Ebert, who compares Smith, favorable, to a line cook, and Robert Wilonsky at the Village Voice, who shrugs that "nothing about Zack and Miri feels terribly fresh, much less transgressive," but adds that "there is something decidedly novel (nay, revolutionary!) about this particular Kevin Smith film: It looks professionally made, which counts for something." Noel Murray at the Onion AV Club puts it this way: "It's nice to be able to break from the ritual of Smith-bashing for a change and say that his latest movie, Zack And Miri Make A Porno, is honestly enjoyable."
Not so nominally impressed: Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly sighs that Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks' porno scene is "the one naked moment of emotion (and yes, eroticism) in this otherwise coarse movie's whole tired, simulated premise." Stephanie Zacharek at Salon agrees that "everything else around that moment is more workmanlike -- in that freewheeling, rather messy Kevin Smith way -- than it is funny." "Zack and Miri keeps throwing away the opportunity to be more than a string of undifferentiated puerile gags," writes Dana Stevens at Slate, while Armond White at the New York Press observes "While Zack and Miri obviously parallels Smith's own piddling career endeavors, it also exposes his filmmaking inadequacies." And I'll give the last word to A.O. Scott at the New York Times, who complains that "thrown away an imaginative premise to get down to predictable, mechanical business. It's as if Mr. Smith were a plumber who knocked at your door and then, against all reasonable expectations, insisted on fixing the sink."
"Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father."
Friday, October 31, 2008 | 1:19 PM
The common refrain when describing Kurt Kuenne's documentary "Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father" is that you shouldn't -- that the shocking events that occur over the course of the film should blindside audiences as much as they blindside the filmmaker and his subjects. But you wouldn't be watching "Dear Zachary" if it were merely the film Kuenne first set out to make: a celluloid memorial to his childhood friend Andrew Bagby, a cheery 28-year-old with a touch of the hobbit to him, an Eagle Scout, an eager on-camera participant in all of Kuenne's teenage attempts at moviemaking, and a doctor who was finishing up his family practice internship when he was murdered in 2001, almost certainly by his ex-girlfriend.
That loss spurred Kuenne to begin creating an obituary for Andrew, a collage of home movies and interviews with friends and family that would represent "everything there is to know" about the man. "Dear Zachary" succeeds at many things, most of all at being an almost unwatchably raw representation of grief, but its original goal turns out to be insurmountable. It becomes clear that you simply can't create a fair portrait of someone near to you who died, unfairly and untimely. The more Kuenne digs, talks to people, roadtrips across the country and flies to England to meet cousins, the more remote Andrew, who was blessedly normal, becomes. Everyone is too close to express more than mourning.
Rudy Ray Moore, 1927-2008.
Monday, October 20, 2008 | 3:22 PM
The man was Dolemite, not to mention otherwise funny like burning. From Mike White:
Moore passed away at age 81 on Sunday October 19, 2008. Via rhymed couplets, free form verse, and dirty versions of the alphabet, Moore entertained audiences for decades. His best-remembered routine, "The Signifying Monkey," continues to echo through the world of popular culture. Without two turn tables, and only a mic, Moore rocked the world as Dolemite.
[Photo: "Dolemite," Dimension Pictures, 1975]
+ Dolemite to Kick God's Ass (Impossible Funky)
Trailering: Heartbreaking memorials, Irish dramas, more superheroes.
Monday, October 20, 2008 | 3:00 PM
Here's a trailer for "Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father," Kurt Kuenne's documentary that begins as a memorial to his murdered best friend and goes to even more distressing places from there. The film, which has had a very successful festival fun since its premiere at Slamdance, opens in New York on Halloween and L.A. the week after.
Here's a trailer for "Eden," "from the producers of 'Once'," or maybe just its executive producer, according to IMDb. An adaptation of Eugene O'Brien's play about a suburban Irish couple facing marital problems on their tenth anniversary, the film received decent reviews when it played at Tribeca, and nabbed an acting prize for lead Eileen Walsh. It's getting a November 7th release from Liberation Entertainment, who are surely hoping it'll seem "Once"-like enough to pull in some of that title's audience.
Here's the trailer for "Push" -- more superheroes, more, more! Psychic assassins in Hong Kong for no particular reason! Dakota Fanning can see the future and Chris Evans has TK in the new film from director Paul McGuigan, otherwise known for the overly stylish indies "Gangster No. 1" and "Lucky Number Slevin." "Push" is due out February 6th.
And here's a red-band trailer for Tomas Alfredson's excellent vampire/adolescent angstfest "Let The Right One In" (here's my review from Tribeca), which opens this week.
[Photo: "Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father," Oscilloscope Pictures, 2008]
+ Trailer: "Push" (Apple)
+ "Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father" (ComingSoon.net)
+ Eden Trailers & Video Clips (Yahoo)
+ Let the Right One In Trailer - Exclusive Red Band Trailer (Rotten Tomatoes)
The Gothams big heart "Ballast."
Monday, October 20, 2008 | 10:35 AM
Lance Hammer's self-distributed Sundance hit "Ballast" is the favorite amongst the Gotham Awards nominees, with the film's four nominations including Best Feature, Best Ensemble Performance, Best Breakthrough Director and Best Breakthrough Actor.
The Gothams are now officially called the "Gotham Independent Film Awards," and while their criteria for which films can be nominated are not as stringent as those of the Spirit Awards, which give a budget cap, this year's awards have been limited to films that have received a "theatrical release through a specialty division of a studio, an independent distributor or via self-distribution" -- no more "The Departed."
The full list of nominees can be found at indieWIRE; here are the nominees for Best Feature:
Best Feature
Ballast Lance Hammer, director; Lance Hammer, Nina Parikh, producers (Alluvial Film Company)Frozen River
Courtney Hunt, director; Heather Rae, Chip Hourihan, producers (Sony Pictures Classics)Synecdoche, New York
Charlie Kaufman, director; Anthony Bregman, Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jonze, Sidney Kimmel, producers (Sony Pictures Classics)The Visitor
Tom McCarthy, director; Mary Jane Skalski, Michael London, producers (Overture Films)The Wrestler
Darren Aronofsky, director; Scott Franklin, Darren Aronofsky, producers (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
[Photo: "Ballast," Alluvial Film Company, 2008]
+ "Ballast" Leads Gotham Awards With Four Nominations (indieWIRE)
The week on IFC.com: Catherine Deneuve, comebacks and Ukrainian mustaches.
Friday, October 17, 2008 | 4:12 PM
What's been happening on the rest of IFC.com:
+ Video: Lars Ulrich Loves Indie Film - The Metallica drummer on how '07 was a great year for independent film, his friendship with Thomas Vinterberg and why there's still hope for low-budget cinema.
+ Feature: Four Actor-Director Duos Who Are Joined at the Hip - Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott aren't the only actor/director pair attempting to be the John Wayne/John Ford of our time.
+ Interview: Eugene Hütz on "Filth and Wisdom" - Wrangling with the Gogol Bordello frontman over perversity, mustaches and his role in Madonna's directorial debut.
Critic wrangle: "What Just Happened?"
Friday, October 17, 2008 | 3:37 PM
"And Bruce Willis as himself" -- Barry Levinson's industry satire "What Just Happened?" wasn't the buzzy Sundance hit those who made it clearly had expected, despite a bright and shiny cast of biggish names like Robert De Niro, Robin Wright Penn, John Turturro, Stanley Tucci. Catherine Keener and the aforementioned Willis. In theaters today, it's generated mixed reviews -- I'd count myself amongst the many that seem impatient with continued tales of high-larious Hollywood woe.
"What Just Happened? is a doodle, but its aura of dread seems earned," writes David Edelstein at New York, saluting De Niro's "killer timing" and the fact that "Barry Levinson directs snappily." Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly agrees that the film "rambles a bit, but it has dryly obscene, laugh-out-loud lines, and its portrait of Hollywood as a giant anxiety attack is fused by De Niro, who musters a desperate, nagging warmth beneath his grumbly facade." Nathan Rabin at the Onion AV Club lauds the way the film "retains its [source novel's] sustained melancholy mood of low-key existential dread and dyspeptic wit."
Critic wrangle: "Filth and Wisdom."
Friday, October 17, 2008 | 11:32 AM
Ah, it's been a while, By the way, did you hear Madonna made a movie?
"Filth and Wisdom" came out of its premiere at Berlin this year with some of the expected scorching reviews and a few others that noted, with a shrug, that the movie wasn't actually so bad, which about reflects the reviews not that it's reached theaters. And why not? As Manohla Dargis notes at the New York Times, the film "is a ridiculously easy target, but it also creaks and strains with more ambition than most mainstream throwaways that just recycle the usual guns and poses," like, perhaps, the recent entry from Madonna's soon-to-be ex. "[I]t does keep you interested from scene to scene, which is a more generous compliment than it might seem." "Considering that everything she does is subject to tabloid scrutiny, I can't help but respect the courage it took for Madonna to make, and then show to the public, a film as honest, unpolished, and staggeringly naive as 'Filth and Wisdom,'" adds Eric Hynes at indieWIRE, who sums up Madge's filmmaking as "by turns exciting, tedious, disarming, and god-awful."
"W."
Friday, October 17, 2008 | 10:21 AM
When the "South Park" boys looked at George W. Bush not long after he'd been sworn in in 2001, they saw in the malapropism-prone Texan we'd sort of elected the perfect sitcom character, a genial doofus whose hijinks could always be resolved in the space of half an hour, even though those problems hung on the unresolvable ones over which our country regularly tears itself apart. And with all that's happened in the intervening years, with "W." we find that when Oliver Stone looks at our current president, he apparently also sees...a genial doofus. "W." isn't a vitriolic indictment of G.W., or, despite the goofy soundtrack choices ("Yellow Rose of Texas," more than once), so much a satire -- it's a "Nixon"-esque timeline-leaping biopic that, like many films in the genre, attempts to solve its subject as if he were a math problem. The answer here is: daddy issues.
NYFF 2008: The rest.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008 | 3:55 PM
"I'm Gonna Explode"
An unhappy girl and a troubled boy meet in detention in their high school in a suburb of Mexico City, and before you can shout "Holy Nouvelle Vague, Batman!" they're running away on a dreamy days-long adventure together, having found their perfect co-conspirator. Their parents don't take this well, but their on-the-lam offspring haven't actually gone further than the roof of the boy's house, where they sunbathe with the radio on, divest themselves of their virginity, curl up to movies in a tent, and sneak food and booze from downstairs when everyone's out. The lad's father is a former activist turned right-wing politician, but the film's rebellion is more of the usual teenage variety, a swooningly enjoyable series of episodes set to a languid soundtrack of Bright Eyes and Zoot Woman that convey a thorough sense of all-consuming and self-centered pubescent angst. It's a shame that it has to end, and in fact it seems to reach half a dozen conclusions before its final, unsatisfying one.
Starting up "The Stagg Party."
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 | 11:25 AM
Episodes one and two of the new web series from mumblecore's own Joe Swanberg are now up on the main site of IFC.com: "The Stagg Party" is a documentary series about Ellen Stagg, a Brooklyn-based photographer whose commercial career is sometimes at odds with her passion for shooting high-end erotica. (Stagg also has a small role in Swanberg's "Nights and Weekends," which opened on Friday.) Needless to say, this one is NSFW.
Stagg on the series, from The Huffington Post: "The only problem that reared its head when I was shooting is that sometimes Joe would be in my shot and so I would move and this in turn would ruin his. It was funny having two artists, who are always so in control of their own work, learning to work together and trying to find the right fit."
+ The Stagg Party (IFC)
+ The Stagg Party on IFC.com (Huffington Post)
NYFF 2008: "Happy-Go-Lucky."
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 | 11:10 AM
You're not supposed to take to Poppy right off the bat. She rides through London in her wildly colored outfit over the opening credits grinning so cheerily that at any moment a chorus of animated forest creatures threatens to leap out and provide backup as she burst into song. She pops into a bookstore and tries to chat up the utterly resistant cashier as she browses. She is, to put it lightly, irritating as all hell. When she rounds the corner to leave, her bike is gone, and she just sighs "We didn't even get a chance to say goodbye," a response which seems to come from a mindset far beyond that of zen happiness, one that might be considered insanity.
NYFF 2008: "Ashes of Time Redux."
Thursday, October 9, 2008 | 11:05 AM
When Wong Kar-wai's lone attempt at a martial arts film, "Ashes of Time," first came out in 1994, it was considered by most to be awfully pretty and mystifyingly elliptical. "Redux" finds it restored, re-edited, seven minutes shorter, with feverishly heightened colors and dramatic new music from Yo-Yo Ma. Having never seen the original version, I can't speak to whether it's also been clarified, but here's what I got:
The Blind Swordsman (who's more in the process of losing his vision) loves his wife Peach Blossom, but left her because she has a thing for Huang Yaoshi, a warrior who's a bit of a wandering playboy, having also stolen the heart of, and then jilted, Murong Yin, who's nutty and has developed a separate personality in which she cross-dresses and claims to be her brother, Murong Yang. They all, along with Hong Qi, a rural would-be assassin, his wife, and a destitute peasant girl seeking revenge, drift in and then out of the life of Ouyang Feng, who was once a great swordsman himself, but who now lives alone in the desert acting as an agent for other fighters and dreaming of his own great love, who abandoned him to marry his brother. Each eventually dies or goes off to become a figure of legend.
NYFF 2008: "The Wrestler."
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 | 4:23 PM
Mickey Rourke is one magnificent wreck. "The Wrestler" holds off from giving you the full-frontal of his face for a while, as if he were the monster in a low-budget horror flick. When it does finally creep around, you see misplaced tautness, semi-mobile features, starlet lips, an overall impression of carved putty. One of the film's visual jokes is that Rourke's character, faded pro wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson, is a shambling but still formidable hunk of meat, but he's aging in the style of a South Beach matron. It's not just the too often overhauled mug -- we follow as he gets the roots of his long, brittle hair (which he often keeps in a bun) bleached to cover the grey, as he bronzes himself against the colorless New Jersey winter in a tanning bed, as he puts on a pair of prim wire-frame glasses in order to read. Then he buys several hundred bucks worth of steroids and growth hormones from an amiable locker room dealer who he tells, with a wrenching capacity for denial, about his plans to "get big and strong." Randy has only a rocky downhill slope ahead of him, but no one would ever tell him that -- the guy's got nothing but his past, a few lingering die-hard fans, and a friendship with a similarly past-her-prime stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), the only one to whom he can tell his only half-believed tales about how he'll clamber back to the big leagues.
The week on IFC.com: Mickey Rourke, soundtracks and post-Iraq road movies.
Friday, October 3, 2008 | 6:18 PM
This blog should be back to its regular self next week or so. In the meantime, a round-up of what's been happening on the rest of IFC.com:
+ Review: "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" - Matt Singer wonder why, for a movie that supposedly revolves around music, no one in this teen rom-com seems to like it all that much.
+ Video: "The Wrestler" at the New York Film Festival - Mickey Rourke, Darren Aronofsky and Marisa Tomei face the press to share stories about the making of this tale of a faded pro wrestler.
+ Video: "Che" at the New York Film Festival - At his press conference, Steven Soderbergh talks about his motivations in making a four-hour bio-epic about Che Guevara.
+ Video: "Happy-Go-Lucky" at the New York Film Festival - Director Mike Leigh and star Sally Hawkins at the press conference, discussing why to simply write off the main character as cheery is to misunderstand her.
+ Video: "Hunger" at the New York Film Festival - Director Steve McQueen at the press conference for his film about the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
+ Interview: Neil Burger on "The Lucky Ones" - The director of last year's surprise hit "The Illusionist" on stepping up to the present day and the Iraq War with his new road trip drama.
+ On DVD: "Jellyfish," "Snow Angels" - Michael Atkinson on Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen's everyone's-connected social-weave film, like "Crash" by way of Wong Kar-Wai, but in Israel, and David Gordon Green's own take on the same microgenre.
+ IFC News Podcast #96: Soundtracks That Overshadow Their Movies - Matt Singer and I talk about movies we think are more memorable for their song selection.
+ Opening This Week: Comedy in the Muslim world, infinite playlists and Jonathan Demme - Neil Pedley rounds up what's new in theaters.
Want these updates to be sent to you each week? Email us and we'll add you to our list.
[Photo: Mickey Rourke at the 2008 New York Film Festival press conference for "The Wrestler"]
NYFF 2008: "The Class."
Thursday, October 2, 2008 | 4:44 PM
"The Class," Laurent Cantet's very fine film about an academic year in a life of a teacher and his students at an inner city Parisian middle school, gets its structure and its strength from limitations. The camera doesn't wander outside of the walls of the school; it seldom leaves the classroom, the only meaningful place of intersection between the worlds of François Marin, imperfect instructor, and his boisterously mixed bag of multicultural pupils. When a student departs for the day, or summer, or forever, he or she might as well be oceans away, news of homelife trickling back in through schoolmates or other teachers or, just as obtusely, from the parents in their rare pilgrimages to the building for state-of-things meetings. Marin isn't going to make house calls or bail kids out of jail in the middle of the night or wrest crack pipes from their blackened fingers on street corners and haul them off for a stint of DIY rehab in his guest room. Teaching is his calling, but it's also his job, and, like anyone else, he gets frustrated, tired, has off days and needs to sneak a secret cigarette in the emptied cafeteria.
NYFF 2008: "Bullet in the Head."
Wednesday, October 1, 2008 | 3:05 PM
I hope someone out there is proclaiming Jaime Rosales' "Bullet in the Head" a masterpiece of experimental filmmaking that forces you to reconsider narrative's place and importance in film and such and such. There is something likable about its daring, and it's exactly the kind of film that needs a vocal contrarian champion to stubbornly insist it's the best thing ever. But that person is not me. "Bullet in the Head" is an 85-minute film shot in stalker-cam via long range lens. There's no audible dialogue save a moment when the characters yell loud enough to reach even the theoretical onlooker with whom we share a POV: "Fucking cops!" -- which is also when the film delivers on the violence promised in its title. Before that point, for a crawling almost-hour, we watch from afar as our main man (played by Ion Arretxe, the production designer on Rosales' last feature, "Solitary Fragments") chats in cafes, samples music in a store, buys a paper, goes to a party, picks up a woman with whom he spends the night, and goes on a drive to France with some friends.
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