May 2010 Archives

I'm taking an actual vacation (from the computer) -- back in action Wednesday, June 2. Hope you have a meaningful (and, yes, enjoyable) Memorial Day Weekend. I will.

He's still in the bloody dictatorship of Iran, he still faces charges of conspiring to make an anti-regime film... but, for now, he is home with his family.

They completely lost me with the time travel stuff, which became so arbitrary I just stopped caring. But the series finale did make me weep a few times (especially when Vincent showed up at the very end). Glad that it all concluded with the image it needed to end with (an eye closing, not opening -- "Avatar" stole the latter for its ending). None of the Island Mythology made any sense to me (what's with the big stone cork stopper at the bottom of the glowing cave waterfall -- surely the Cheesiest TV Special Effect Since The Original Star Trek?). It seems to me that LOST went "sideways" long ago, with that wasted half-season that took place in the old zoo on the Other Island (references to which were significantly downplayed in the finale). Everything after that had little or nothing to do with the concerns of the first few seasons -- The Others, the Dharma Initiative, etc. The Jacob/Brother With No Name thing was lame beyond lame. But, still, the finale kind of redeemed a lot of the interminable padding of the last several years -- mainly by ignoring them and by re-framing The Island as a peak experience that bonded a group of people, even if the Thing Itself had no intrinsic meaning. You know, like being together in the army, or a college dorm, or a TV series for a few years... Still, some people have a few questions...

Oh, and in case you forgot: It was Nikki and Paulo's story all along.

I do not know what Jean-Luc Godard's "Film Socialisme" does because I haven't had the opportunity to see it. But the initial reviews from Cannes are, incredibly, the same ones he's been getting his entire career -- based in part on assumptions that Godard means to communicate something but is either too damned perverse or inept to do so. Instead, the guy keeps making making these crazy, confounded, chopped-up, mixed-up, indecipherable movies! Possibly just to torture us. Many approach the films themselves as though they are puzzles designed to frustrate (and to eventually be "solved"), then they blame Godard for not doing a better job of solving them himself because they're too hard. Herewith, a sampling of New York Times reviews over the years. Just about any of them could be about any of Godard's movies -- and, positive or negative, some are noticeably more perceptive than others. A key with the "answers" (who wrote what about which film) is at the bottom.

1. Mr. Godard sometimes makes his storytelling more difficult than it needs to be.

2. And neither can Mr. Godard make us understand why the wife in his drama suddenly tells him she has contempt for him and decides to leave. Has she lost faith in him? Is she bored? Or is she just fed up with watching him wear his hat all the time?

Evidently, Mr. Godard has attempted to make this film communicate a sense of the alienation of individuals in this complex modern world. And he has clearly directed to get a tempo that suggests irritation and ennui.

A Jean-Luc Godard movie is required to bewilder, astonish, bore and infuriate its film festival audience -- especially the critical contingent. That's why it's there. JLG's "Film Socialisme," which may or may not be his last directorial effort, premiered at Cannes to a cacophony of criticism, rapturous and contemptuous. Some of it has also been exceptionally entertaining -- almost as much fun to read as the reviews for "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" last summer. In the case of Godard, however, the critical debates take on a nearly religious dimension as believers and debunkers argue over whether there's meaning to be found in the sacred text or whether it's all just an inconsequential, obfuscatory fraud.

From an interview with JLG at Cinemasparagus, regarding the director's preferred distribution and exhibition method for his latest (and allegedly last) feature, "Film socialisme," which premiered a few days ago at Cannes and which can be seen in its entirety, backwards and compressed into 67 seconds, above:

I really would have liked to have a boy and a girl be involved, a couple who had the urge to show things, who were kind of involved with the cinema, the sort of young people you might meet at small festivals. They'd be given a copy of the film on DVD, then be asked to train as skydivers. After that, places would be randomly chosen on a map of France, and they'd parachute down into those locations. They'd have to show the film wherever they landed. In a café, at a hotel... they'd manage. People would pay 3 or 4 euros to get in -- no more than that. They might film this adventure, and sell it later on. Thanks to them, you get a sense of what it means to distribute a film. Afterwards, only you can make the decision, to find out whether or not it's able to be projected in regular theaters. But not before having investigated everything for a year or two. Because beforehand, you're just like me: you don't know what the film is, you don't know what might be interesting about it. You've gone a little outside the whole media space.

(translation: Craig Keller; tip: girish)

Dave Thomas and Catherine O'Hara do Steve and Eydie on the SCTV Solid Gold Telethon in 1978.

Jafar Panahi, the Iranian director of "The White Balloon" and "Offside," was supposed to have been on this year's Cannes Film Festival jury, but he was arrested by Iranian authorities in March. His countryman Abbas Kiarostami devoted much of his Cannes press conference to raising worldwide awareness of Pahani's plight. Pahani released a message Tuesday, published online at La Règle du Jeu, declaring that he and fellow political prisoners at Evin prison have begun a hunger strike:

I hereby declare that I have been subject to ill treatment in Evin prison.

On Saturday May 15, 2010, prison guards suddenly entered our cell, n° 56. They took us away, my cell mates and I, made us strip and kept us in the cold for an hour and a half.

UPDATE (05/25/2010): via Salon.com: "Iranian director finds freedom and moral victory." Of course, he's still in Iran...

UPDATE (05/21/2010): via New York Times: "Detained Iranian Director Granted Hearing"

Some people are proposing a boycott of Newsweek because of a silly article that criticizes gay actors -- specifically on TV's "Glee" and in the Broadway revival of the Bacharach-David Musical "Promises, Promises" -- for acting too gay in straight roles. This strikes me as fundamentally hilarious for several reasons, the most obvious of which are:

1) I didn't know anyone needed additional incentive to not read Newsweek, since circulation figures indicate that lots and lots of people have been not reading it without making any concerted effort not to do so.

2) "Glee" and "Promises, Promises" are both Musicals, for god's sake. Where would the Musical be without the participation of gay actors? The movie version of "Paint Your Wagon" -- that's where. You Musical fans want to spend the rest of your lives watching and listening to Clint Eastwood singing "I Talk to the Trees"? Then go ahead and complain that gay performers are too gay to star in Musicals.

John T. Chance is an enforcer of justice. He doesn't wear a cape or a mask; he wears a badge and a hat -- the latter a well-worn specimen just like the one Duke Wayne himself wore in John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy. But just because he's a towering figure and a natural-born leader, the kind of authoritative moral icon ordinary mortals look to -- and look up to -- doesn't mean he's invulnerable. Even the greatest of heroes age, and Chance has to face the limitations of flesh and blood while still keeping the good citizens of the town, those he has sworn to protect and defend, safe from the greedy and less scrupulous elements who would put themselves above the law.

In the summer of 1981, Robert Redford gathered novice and veteran filmmakers together for the first of what has become known as the Sundance Institute's Directors and Screenwriters Labs. Eleven projects were chosen for the workshop (there are 13 for the 2010 program) -- which, over the last 29 years, has included such films as Paul Thomas Anderson's "Hard Eight," Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs," Tamra Jenkins' "Slums of Beverly Hills," Darren Aranofsky's "Requiem for a Dream," Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now," John Cameron Mitchell's "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and Kimberly Pierce's "Boys Don't Cry."

That's the old news.

Short answer: Sure, but has it hasn't happened yet?

Matt Zoller Seitz says he's a fan of superhero movies -- but that doesn't mean he thinks they've been particularly good. In a piece at Film Salon called "Superheroes suck!" (just to get fans' attention), published to coincide with this weekend's opening of "Iron Man 2," Matt argues that comic-book movies are "Hollywood's most bankrupt genre." Even the now-ubiquitous zombie movies have produced a notable list of films he considers "more engrossing, uncompromising and consistently imaginative -- and more likely to reward repeat viewings -- than pretty much any superhero film made since 1978." (That would be a reference to "Superman: The Movie," which I still consider to be the most entertaining and resonant of comic-book movies.)

No offense none taken per se.