Category: movies

Not to get all Kottke about it, but I really like the NY Times’ infographic data visualization tool thing [is that an inexpert enough description for you?] that plots out the inflation-adjusted weekly domestic box office numbers of movies from 1986-a couple of weeks ago.
It’s fun to play with and interesting to watch in the same way the highly addictive Baby Name Wizard’s NameVoyager interface is.
Still, I think Ebb & Flow’s got some near misses in terms of usefulness. The tool’s big takeaways–that studios are relying more and more on blockbusters, that there are more films released, for much shorter runs–are best seen over the years, so a zoomout would’ve been nice. Also, a zoom in, since so many recent films are reduced to single, stubby lines.
And while I’m sure it was a decision based on the underlying value of the box office data–as provided by NYTimes Company subsidiary StudioSystems and Box Office Mojo–the details I want to click for are not a synopsis and a link to the Times’ review; it’s the box office numbers and the duration of the theatrical run for that particular film.
Also, Idiocracy isn’t in there. I wonder why, since despite Fox’s best efforts, the movie was technically released last year. [Note to self: next time I see Mike Judge, give him $20 for downloading the movie in a way that provided absolutely no financial benefit to the studio who killed it.]
The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 – 2007 [nyt]

Whoa, so it turns out that Sony’s new Bravia ad full of city-hopping bunnies [top] is a ripoff of the LA-based design team kozyndan.
According to Core77, Sony’s commercial production company Passion Pictures had invited kozyndan to present their portfolio which, in addition to the bunnyscape panorama USA-chan [detail above], also included Uprisings, their Hokusai-inspired wave of bunnies. After receiving the materials, the agency never called the designers back.
[Dumb-ass smart-alecks like 95% of the commenters on Gizmodo take note: there is a substantive economic and ethical difference between kozyndan openly referencing a centuries-old, famous work of art by a long-dead artist and an ad agency taking tens of millions of dollars from a client for creative concepts and work it solicited privately from independent artists, and then used without either credit or compensation.]
This also seems like a good time to point out that Sony’s agencies appear to have a problem with this. The idea of the first big Bravia ad, the one with 250,000 bouncy balls let loose on the street, was originally exhibited in Canada and the UK by the Canadian artist Lucy Pullen .
[Not that Sony’s alone in this ripoffery. Apple was in touch with artist Christian Marclay to use his 1995 piece, Telephones, for the first iPhone commercial that ran during the Academy Awards. Marclay finally refused, but Apple went ahead anyway.]
Will the Real Bunnies Please Stand Up? [core77]

Yeah, so how about that Blade Runner: The Final Cut article in the Arts & Leisure section??
A Cult Classic Restored, Again [nyt]

From the NYT review of Bratz: The Movie:

With their tender hearts and lip-gloss dreams, these teenage princesses are direct descendants of Alicia Silverstone’s Cher in “Clueless,” although Sean McNamara’s TV-ready framing and coarse direction lack Amy Heckerling’s snap and style.

As if. Clueless was like the greatest Jane Austen adaptation Hollywood’s ever done. Bratz are a line of skank dolls for whorish toddlers with–oh. Clueless parents.

A short film Noah Baumbach made in 2000, Conrad And Butler Take A Vacation, was included on the Criterion edition of Kicking and Screaming. Variety was not pleased with this story of two buddies, one damaged from his divorce, getting annoyed and drunk on some sofas: “with grade-Z production values, this esome lark serves only one purpose: It proves just how far Baumbach has come.”
I don’t think it’s that bad, though, kind of carefully written, in fact. The short’s on YouTube, broken up into three 10-minute parts. At the moment, Part 1 has about 700 views. Part 2: 300, and Part 3: 250.

This vote-with-your-eyes data feels like a more useful assessment than Variety’s snark, especially if everyone who started watching was looking for Baumbach or Wes Anderson in the first place. [via coudal]

Jason caught a Guardian article saying that the Weinsteins are going to split Grindhouse in two: “There have been reports that many film-goers have been confused by the movie’s structure – mistakenly assuming that there was only one film on offer and leaving the cinema en-masse after the Rodriguez section.”
Having seen Grindhouse on opening night, I can only suggest the obvious: maybe people are leaving early because Rodriguez’s film sucks and blows simultaneously, and they’re trying to cut their losses?
Tarantino’s film is infinitely better, even in the trashfilm terms the two movies purportedly want to be judged on. I wish I’d gone to the previous showing of Deathproof, hung out in the lobby, then sneaked back into catch Planet Terror. Which I’d have then left early. Oy.

Grindhouse to be sawn in two? [guardian via kottke]

‘What is amazing is the idea of this generation
being responsible for creating a cultural icon—
like that we get to do that!’

—Elizabeth Berkley speaking, presumably, about Nomi at a fund-raiser for the New Globe Theater [in last week’s NYO]

The Dutch Sunbather On Google Earth, a Powers of Ten-like zoom-in video. Here’s the spot on GoogleMaps, if anyone cares to find out who it is.

A week after finally seeing it, I’m having a hard time starting to write about Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s wonderfully crafted, intelligent, slice-of-basehead-life feature, Half Nelson. One thing’s for sure, though: I won’t be able to sustain the same insouciant, faux-decadent abandon in my dance floor renditions of “White Lines” anymore.
In fact, the movie’s warping my whole funk karaoke world. After the groggy, solitary silence of the opening scene, where he finds himself right where he blacked out– on the floor of his dingy living room, in front of his glasstop coffee table—Dan Dunne’s first words are Pointer Sisters lyrics.
Not coincidentally, they’re probably everyone Child of Television’s first Pointer Sisters lyrics, too: “Onetwothree four. five. sixseveneight nine. ten. eleven. twelve.” In an incisive, throwaway performance sung into the rearview mirror, these vintage Sesame Street lyrics, which have also been remixed into a minor underground techno hit, ground the main character, date the filmmakers, and implicate a large segment of the audience in equal parts.
But despite the presence of an over-educated White Man in The Ghetto, Half Nelson is no more a glib Williamsburg hipster parable than it is a treacly Stand And Deliver homily. Ryan Gosling’s performance is as nuanced and assured as Fleck’s direction and his and Boden’s screenplay. And the whole film feels as real and raw as a documentary, but with a narrative that unfolds–Boden is credited with editing–with offhand meticulousness
Andrij Parekh keeps his jittery handheld camera close, impossibly intrusive for a verite doc, but intrusively perfect for a verite doc style, and the actors’ gestures, expressions, and reactions almost always deliver. [Or just as likely, Boden finds the exact instinctive or unconscious elements of their performances to fit together.] Shareeka Epps has been scoring a lot of great reviews for her performance as Drey, the thoughtful, conflicted student torn between her two surrogate father figures, but the more I think back, the more impressed I am with Anthony Mackie’s Frank, who has more emotional and intellectual complexity than any movie drug dealer I can think of.
As I watched Dunne’s entirely plausible addiction unspool, I began to warily question if I should care. Is he an unredeemable loser? Should I go ahead and invest my sympathy, only to be duped, manipulated or let down later? Was I going to be confronted with some formulaic rationalization for his addiction, one that’s not afforded the black characters whose susceptibility to the lure of drugs–poverty, no opportunity, no education, The Man, etc.–are so thoroughly played out in movies and TV?
It was an oblique-then-devastating trip, but Fleck and Boden anticipated and delivered on this backstory, too, and in a way that telescopes Half Nelson into a non-didactic, intergenerational historical/political critique. But it works, because the filmmakers never lose touch with their film’s emotional core, which is Dunne’s development.
This is such a well-realized film, I’m tempted to say it’s hard to believe it’s a first film. But then, I can’t really imagine this thoroughly conceived-yet-modest film coming from anyone BUT a young filmmaker. If it’s like anyone at all, it’s a more restrained Cassavetes. And Boden and Fleck’s multiple, shared credits seem to belie a Cassavetian work method.
There’s a great making of story to be told, though; this small, micro-budget film has twelve producers [including a friend, Hunter Gray]. It seems like just yesterday when I wrote about and spoke with the two Ryans about Gowanus, Brooklyn, their Sundance-winning short film version of Dunne’s story, and the script was apparently workshopped at Sundance’s summer Lab before that. If it weren’t such a rare success, I’d say Half Nelson was a throwback/textbook example of indie film production. Whatever it is, though, it’s definitely worth a trip to the theater.
Half Nelson opened in wider release this past weekend [halfnelsonthefilm.com]