The National Post has a nice highlights reel, with reports from the field (and locker rooms, apparently) at the Toronto Film Festival. Some of it’s like listening to cricket scores on the BBC, though; you can recognize the language as English, but you can’t understand WTF it means.
One thing I do understand, though is the mention of met-on-the-set couple, Christina Ricci and Adam Goldberg, who are premiering their film I Love Your Work, which was co-produced by Josh & Co at Cyan Pictures. Josh and ILYW are getting some good buzz and press; and they’re posting festival updates on their production company weblog, cyanpictures.com.
Also, from BoingBoing, comes a Festival groupblog from the FilmNerds. Public screenings (and an enthusiastic, thoughtful audience base) are one of Toronto’s greatest strengths, and these four guys apparently have over six years of festival experience…between them. Hmm. If you’re looking for reviews with a sweeping historical context, I suggest not running those numbers. These are fresh, unjaded–and Canadian–perspectives. You’ve been warned.
Author: greg
Ozu in New York
I know Venice is barely over and Toronto’s just getting started, but I’m already getting pumped for the New York Film Festival in October. Is “pumped” the right reaction for an Ozu centennial retrospective? All 36 films by the greatest Japanese filmmaker ever will screen at Lincoln Center.
Also on the schedule: A 2-day symposium on Ozu’s work and influence (Oct. 11 and 12) and, batting cleanup, Wim Wenders’ 1985 Tokyo Picture, his filmed diary exploring Ozu’s world.
On the Directors of HBO Series
I should have mentioned it earlier–maybe when I asked for DVD rental suggestions–but HBO’s Band of Brothers is one of the best series I can think of. (Except that I can also think of Kieslowski’s Decalogue and Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, which are probably the #1 and #2 greatest “mini-series” of all time; that’s not the category we’re dealing with here. Decalogue has been re-released on DVD, by the way. Run, don’t walk.)
Last week, I watched Part 5, the one installment I missed on TV. It was pretty remarkable, easily bearing the strongest directorial stamp. “Crossroads” was what it sounds like, a transitional story, notable for lacking (until the end) any of the “gotta take that ridge” straightforwardness typical of a war film. Instead, the story focused on the challenges Winters faced off the front; incoming mortars replaced by barrages of mundane paperwork and meetings. Even so, a complex mix of recollections and revealing subplots were woven together in a fairly complex structure. It could have been confusing, but it wasn’t.
From the opening scene, the director let you know something was different. The handheld camerawork was unexpected, with an intensity that clearly referenced the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan. And in a later battle scene, the handheld camera follows a soldier on a dead run (no pun) across a battlefield. The SPR allusion was no coincidence. Of course, Steven Spielberg was an executive producer of BoB, but Part 5 was the only episode directed by the other exec producer–and veteran of the D-Day scene–Tom Hanks.
The giddy pablum on HBO’s site, actors gushing about how great it was that Tom Hanks was directing them is exactly what “Crossroads” overcomes. Maybe it’s too directed, too edited to blend in with the more conventionally directed installments, but it feels like Hanks had something to prove, and for the most part, he did.
Movie Passions Betrayed
[via GreenCine] Wim Wenders’ official 4h45m version of Until the End of the World will be released on DVD next spring. David’s excellent, slightly ecstatic discussion of the release annoucement betrays a diehard fan’s passion about this almost-mythical cut of the film. (For the rest of the world: Wenders’ epic-to-be was subjected to drastic and problematic guts/cuts that rendered it a disappointing and confusing, both in terms of story and box office. Wenders and his editor spent a year of their own time, after the film was released, “finishing” his version, which has been seen only rarely. Until next spring, anyway.)
[via my site logs] Greg.org’s first TypePad referrer links come from Persistence of Vision, a smart new weblog about independent film, evidently created by a fellow New Yorker who doesn’t explain much about him/herself onsite, but betrays an obvious passion and familiarity with the film world. Welcome (and thanks for the link).
Lost in Transition
[via Travelers Diagram] At the Guardian, Jonathan Jones stages a virtual exhibition (we used to call them “articles”) of great lost, stolen, or missing art. Included in the list: the Gardner Museum’s Vermeer, the recently stolen Scottish Leonardo, and Ryoei Saito’s van Gogh Portrait of Dr. Gachet. The latter is probably lost like the Ark of The Covenant is lost: it’s in some crate in some bankrupt Japanese company’s warehouse somewhere.
But Jones ends, inexplicably, with Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty: “Since its construction it has vanished underwater as the level of the lake has risen. Films have been made, stories told about attempts to rediscover it (the British artist Tacita Dean is one of those who have gone looking). Recently, it is fabled, the spiral has started to resurface.”
A FABLE?? Don’t get me started, Jonathan. I don’t know why, but September is the month for Spiral Jetty deniers. Last year, I took Artforum‘s Nico Israel to task for pretending the Jetty was unfindable, even though we’d just visited it.
This year, the lake level is so low, I was told (and I saw the pictures, JJ), you’re able to walk the entire length of the Jetty. WMD’s are a fable, Jonathan. Spiral Jetty is real.
IndieWIRE, who loves ya, baby
[via GreenCine] IndieWIRE surveys 20 acquisition executives from indie and mini-major studios to see what gets them out of bed in the morning (and to see what gets you into bed with them). Great stuff.
OY! Recommend me some movies! [update: the Mob has spoken]
My DVD rental queue is down to dangerously low levels. GreenCine, by the way, not the big red DVD subscription service Gawker sold it’s soul to (I’m sure they used the money to buy an expanding T-Rex sponge. Chum…p).
Most recently in the machine:
- Punch-Drunk Love (Ouch. I had to stop, finally. Maybe my stereo settings were wrong, but it was so assaultive… the Bonus Disc is on the way, though.)
- Soderbergh’s Solaris (underappreciated. re James Cameron’s commentary:he’s deeply, annoyingly, and predictably shallow. ).
- Ghost World (Didn’t need to watch it since I didn’t end up interviewing Scarlett Johannson),
- Virgin Suicides (Did need to watch it, because I did end up… wait, I’m getting ahead of my self. But I will say, it’s a little weird to have your mom shoot your Making Of video.)
- Funeral, Juzo Itami’s dark comedy. (About as subtle as Japanese overacting gets, but the camerawork is bizarrely tight, and the DVD transfer absolutely sucks.)
- Thirteen Conversations about Something or Other (If you’re gonna make a feature that interweaves several independent episodes together, you probably should watch one, right?)
Update: Yow, thanks. I should be asking for stuff more often. The results–minus the ones that aren’t available on DVD–like Hearts of Darkness (also shot by Sofia Coppola’s mom) and Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho–ones that weren’t available on DVD–like GVS’s first feature, Mala Noche–and a couple of obviously dumb ideas–Everyone’s seen Pearl Harbor, duh–are below.
Also, I put them all in an Amazon List, “movies greg.org readers told me to watch #1,” if you feel like watching along. Thanks again, and keep’em coming. - Before Night Falls
- Dog Day Afternoon
- Dogtown & Z Boys (Avary‘s working on the feature remake with David Fincher)
- Double Indemnity (a staple)
- e-dreams (ahh, Kozmo.com)
- Office Space (always good)
- Kundun (already on the list, actually)
- Last Temptation of Christ (how timely)
- Goncharov (1973) (Scorsese’s complicated but most under-appreciated work)
- Lumiere
- One-Hour Photo (someone watched the the VMA, or the Johnny Cash video)
- Raging Bull (ok, enough with the Scorsese)
- Secretary
- The Wind Will Carry Us (actually, the rec. was Abbas Kiarostami, so I picked this one about extremely rural Iran, which led me to…)
- Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, a remarkable-sounding 1924 silent film about shepherds in rural Iran, which led me to…
- The Saltmen of Tibet, and all on my own, I had the idea of rewatching Errol Morris’ Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
Things I want to write about, given world enough (or time)
LOL. Burningman Bingo
On BoingBoing (Never let it be said I don’t link to Xeni’s posts), BurningMan Bingo, which apparently relates to Hipster Bingo, something I’ve never clicked on.
This quote, however, is unignorable fun:
“Numerous BoingBoing readers have e-mailed to ask why John Perry Barlow’s head was selected to represent ‘A Bad Trip’ (shown at left) That is not John Perry Barlow‘s head. That is Chuck Norris‘ head.”
John Ashcroft Repudiates Ten Commandments
Attorney General John Ashcroft rose nice and early yesterday [Sunday] morning to check out the Home Depot on Rhode Island Avenue NE in Brentwood a little before 9 a.m. An unnamed federal employee spotted him and his swarm of Secret Service agents as they pulled into the parking lot in a huge SUV. Clad in a dress shirt sans tie, Ashcroft was perusing the patio furniture in the garden area.
This bit of sabbath-breaking is:
a) an unexpected repudiation by the ostensibly hyper-religious Ashcroft of efforts by Christian activists in Alabama to worship a graven image of the Ten Commandments.
b) Ashcroft placing himself above not only man’s law, but above God’s law, too. [Cue Alec Baldwin in Malice: “You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.”]
c) what those Bible verses about “judge not lest ye be judged” and “first cast the beam out of thine own eye” are talking about, Greg, you hypocrite [Of course, I’m only occasionally leaking my religious views on my weblog, not replacing the Constitution with them]
d) comforting, when you realize that deep down, John Ashcroft probably hates his sinnin’ self for skipping church (on the Lord’s day!) to buy patio furniture.
e) all of the above.
Related:
The Ten Commandments (including the 4th, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”)
Pharisees and Saducees, the ostensibly hyper-religious bad guys of the New Testament.
Official Assemblies of God doctrine on keeping the Sabbath day holy.
Patio Furniture from Home Depot, to ease you along your way. To hell.
WTC Memorial Space to Hold Unidentified Remains
Not new information, just more of it. From the NYTimes, the unidentified remains of those killed at the World Trade Center will be preserved in the hope that future technology will make identification possible. The remains will be interred at the memorial:
“Right now I can look up at the sky and talk to him, but I can’t go anywhere and reflect on his life,’ said Lorie Van Auken, 48, whose husband, Kenneth, was on the 105th floor of the north tower on Sept. 11. His birthday is in a few days, and she said she yearns to have a place to visit on that day. “I go outside and I don’t know where to look for him. You feel lost. This would give me somewhere to go.”
On Writing A Screenplay About A Writer
In the Guardian, British docu maker John Brownlow tells about the tricky business of writing a screenplay about Sylvia Plath, one of the most fought-over writers of the modern era. With duelling critics, conflicting biographies, testy literary estates controlling the rights to Plath’s and Ted Hughes’ poetry, and an ending even Hollywood can’t spin, it sounds like an impossible task. Oh, and “there had to be humor.” Humor and a head in the oven.
Brownlow ended up completely re-researching Plath’s and Hughes’ stories to find a bearable story, and, after realizing the couple didn’t “speak in verse” with each other, he says, “[I] cut dialogue and if I couldn’t cut it I made it as banal as I could, while ensuring the situations were dramatic.”
His writing war story is long, maybe not really of general interest, but if you write, you won’t want to miss it. Two good lessons: 1) Brownlow is a huge fan of treatments and outlines and the discipline they impose on the writer’s story, and 2) he wants to direct.
Interestingly, I just rewatched Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris on DVD, and in his commentary (with the deeply shallow James Cameron), he talks about cutting and cutting dialogue, too, in order to reveal the characters’ emotional subtexts. From what he says, I think he greatly improved the movie (which I liked better the second time, btw). Soderbergh tells people if they don’t like the pacing of the first ten minutes, they should leave, “because it’s not getting any better.”
WTC Station’s Master in Slate
BCE Galleria/Heritage Square, Toronto
1992, Santiago Calatrava, image: Galinsky.com
On Slate, Christopher Hawthorne writes about Santiago Calatrava, architect of the transportation hub, um, slated for the WTC site. Hawthorne’s got good architectural sensibility, but I think he’s wrong to worry about Calatrava ignoring the context of his projects. True, many of Calatrava’s flashiest designs look like they’re sitting on a giant dining table, like an overwrought centerpiece, but that’s what he’s been asked to do.
While I haven’t been to the Milwaukee Museum, Calatrava’s pavilion may signal a Bilbaoist nadir; pictures of it make it look both pointless and useless, like the pyramid without the Louvre. But Toronto’s Heritage Square is one of the best public spaces in town. Calatrava carved it out/knitted it together from the interstitial spaces of various downtown buildings, and it’s beautiful. Even if it doesn’t blend in, his Zurich station, too, inhabits its site well.
Beyond Bruce Schneier’s Beyond Fear
On BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow calls Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World “one of the most important texts of the decade.” I’m pretty sure he means the decade starting in 2000, (or, say, September 11, 2001), not the last ten years.
Schneier‘s a/the security expert, and Beyond Fear, Cory says, “utterly demystifies security” for a non-technical audience. My bet is, it guts every Ashcroftian rights-and-power grab in the name of security like a trout on a church griddle. [I know, Ashcroft is so not Catholic, so the fish thing’s not applicable. Work with me here, people.]
I’m using Schneier’s landmark text, Applied Cryptography, as a reference for my animated musical script, of all things. After all, the video store’s bargain bins are overflowing with tapes of animated musicals that included crypto but couldn’t bother to get it right. Aren’t they?
WTC Memorial Competition Update
Newsday reports the WTC Memorial jury will select up to eight finalists, who will receive over $100,000 each to refine their designs more fully (“to develop models and three-dimensional computerized designs”). A winner (from among the finalists) will be announced in October or November.
Jurors apparently walk around placing dots on the designs they like. Designs without dots are then pulled from subsequent rounds. [No mention of how many dots a juror gets, or if later rounds require multiple dots. If not, a juror may be able to repeatedly dot a favorite design into the final rounds.]
Via Hugh and Ellyn, who submitted a design from Kansas. At first I was surprised, now I’m really pleased, but I’ve now heard from a couple dozen fellow entrants, most of whom contacted me through the site. The competition’s gag rule has thrown approximately 5,199 of 5,200 people into a weird, cagey limbo; we really want to talk about our entries, but don’t want to get disqualified. Maybe we should form Entrants Anonymous. [“My name’s John, and I designed a spire.” “Hi, John.”]