Kubrick-a-brac

From the Stanley Kubrick project at the Deutsches Filmmuseum, image:stanleykubrick.de From the painstakingly organized files of Mr Stanley E. Kubrick:
Stanley Kubrick filled his St Albans estate with over 400 fileboxes (specially manufactured to his own design) of notes, photographs, correspondence, drafts, props, and much, much more. The first authorized exhibition drawn from the estate opens today at the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt. In fact, Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan are speaking in the cafe at 2030h, less than 5 hrs from now.
[Seeing as how you missed that, though, you can pre-order the exhibition catalog in English from the museum. It’s a more in-depth collection of essays by filmmakers and historians, different from The Stanley Kubrick Archives due any day now from Taschen.]
Journalist Jon Ronson writes in the Guardian about what he found in his repeated vists to the archive, including an exhaustive day-by-day timeline of the goings-on in Napoleon’s court; Kubrick’s favorite font; a sniper’s severed head, and a reference to “A Bill Murray Line!” [Also, a link to Kubrick’s script for Napoleon, deemed authentic by Ronson.]
From a 1975 telex correspondence with a Warner Bros. publicity man re Barry Lyndon:

[Publicity man:] “Received additional material. Is there any material with humour or zaniness that you could send?”
Kubrick replies, clearly through gritted teeth: “The style of the picture is reflected by the stills you have already received. The film is based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel which, though it has irony and wit, could not be well described as zany.”

[via TMN. And my post title came from a 1977 French animated short I found on IMDb.]

A 4 week-old baby reviews the Whitney Biennial

She slept through the almost the whole thing*. Until we walked into the Cecily Brown gallery, when she started screaming at the top of her lungs. On this advice, we cut our visit short, leaving via the elevator so as not to disrupt the Julianne Swartz sound installation in the stairway.)
* Truthfully, she also shattered the misty calm of the Gran Canaria forest in Craigie Horsfeld’s video room with a post-bottle burp worthy of a trucker.

Souvenir Series, Sofia, and me

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve decided to shoot a fourth short film, which may be part of the Souvenir Series, or may not. We’ll see. It was not in the original outline of the series, and it’s out of the order I’d planned to shoot them, but the opportunity and idea presented themselves so clearly, I’ve decided to at least get it shot, then see where to take it.
Long story short, it’s a reconceiving of the baptism/massacre sequence from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. The scene is a classic, not only of storytelling and dramatic contrast, but of editing as well.
While it has the immediate feel of intercutting–jumping back and forth between simultaneous events–as this Yale film analysis site where you can watch (most of) the sequence points out, it’s unlikely that all the other mafia dons in NYC were actually assassinated at the same instant. They call it montage.
Frankly, I always thought they were concurrent events. The baptism scene provides a sense of linear time that is utterly absent from, say, Jennifer Beals’ rehearsal/welding scenes in Flashdance. (Gimme a break, she was on The Daily Show last night.)
Anyway, Seeing as how the baby in that scene was a weeks-old Sofia Coppola, and seeing as how I have a weeks-old baby myself now, and seeing as how I’m gonna be hanging out with the Coppolas tonight at a MoMA Film Department benefit, I thought I’d better start shooting.

ND/NF: Captive by Gaston Biraben

Gaston Biraben's Captive, image: filmlinc.comI saw Captive, the debut feature from Gaston Biraben, at New Directors/New Films last night; it’s a subtly powerful movie that gripped the sellout audience at MoMA Gramercy.
Captive is a fictionalized telling of real events, a surreal, politically charged story of, “You’re adopted…And then some.” A 15-year old Buenos Aires girl’s life is turned upsidedown when she learns her real parents were among The Disappeared, the tens of thousands of Argentines kidnapped, tortured and killed by the country’s military dictatorship in the 70’s. On top of dealing with a new family of strangers, the girl has to confront the chilling circumstances of her birth and her adoptive parents’ possible complicity in the systematic crimes of the junta.
By keeping a restrained, naturalistic focus on a the experience of one girl, the film tackles the third rail of the Argentine psyche–accountability for The Disappeared–with tremendous skill, and without devolving into political agitprop. Biraben coaxed a highly effective, intuitive performance from his star, Barbara Lombardo, which holds the film together.
Almost the entire audience stayed for the Q&A. Sensing, perhaps, Captive‘s potential for making great political waves, many questions were about where the film has shown and what was the reaction. It turns out ND/NF is one of the first screenings for Captive, so the impact is still to come. [The film was also at Palm Springs and San Sebastian, where it won the Horizontes award for Latin American films.]
This all serves as setup for the improbably story of Biraben’s getting the film made in the first place, and how he scored a cameo that elicited surprised howls of recognition from the New York audience. I spoke with Gaston and his co-producer/editor Tammis Chandler after the Q&A.

Continue reading “ND/NF: Captive by Gaston Biraben”

Colder Mountain

still from Lars von Trier's Dogville, image:dogville.co.uk

Actually, I was going to title this post “Nicole Kidman: Dogville’s bitch,” but that’s not how I was brought up. Besides, it sounded unnecessarily cruel. [Not in comparison to the movie itself, however, or to some of its reviews. David Edelstein’s Slate piece is bitterly well-done; he can make people who liked the movie hate it.]
Lars von Trier’s been called anti-American, which I don’t buy. [Come on, he stuck a “von” in his name; what’s more American than that?] When Grace (Kidman’s character) begs them for sanctuary, the Dogville-age people show her mercy and take her in. In no time, though, they turn on her, brutalizing her mercilessly, flagellate her and jeer after her as they nail her hands to a cross–ahem. Sorry, wrong grace/justice/sadism/mob violence movie. Actually, they town-rape her and chain her neck to a wagon wheel. At least von Trier didn’t make it a Jewish town.
What evil lurks in the hearts of (American) men (and women), von Trier asks. How could they turn so suddenly and heap black-hearted violence on this beautiful, selfless creature who appeared in their midst? Maybe they’d just seen Cold Mountain.

Continue reading “Colder Mountain”

Close Enough, or Introducing greg.org v1.6

Horseshoes and hand grenades? Feh. These days, some people think close counts in WMD’s and the war on terror. Alls I know is, after a week of editing in 15-minute stints (interspersed with crying and diaperchanging and bottlefeeding), close counts on stylesheets, too.
Beyond the cleaner integration of long-form Features and filmmaker interviews, MT brings addition of categories, which will make recurring themes and topics a little easier to follow.
Chief among these: production diaries, development notes, and news for each film project
Whether it pays for yachts for my coke-head grandchildren, gets my ass sued by Conde Nast, or prompts simple UI improvements on the magazine’s website, one feature I’m interested in watching is This Week in The Magazine, aka New Yorker Magazine Database. If you’ve ever wanted to write for the NYMDb, your chance is coming soon.
Anyway, let me know what’s wrong, what’s missing, etc. And if you have particular expertise with 1) archive pagination and 2) category-specific template tweaking, don’t be shy. I’ll be here.

Joywar, What is it good for?

“>Riot, by Joy Garnett, image: firstpulseprojects.com

The artist Joy Garnett just had a show called “Riot” at Debs & Co, lushly painted figures in caught in moments of distress or violence. Then she got threatened with a lawsuit by a Magnum photographer for referencing a 1978 image of a guy throwing a Molotov cocktail. Of course, the irony [?] is that, as Garnett says, “my work is ABOUT the fact that images are uncontrollable entities.
It’s about what happens when you remove context and framing devices.” Which means, of course, it’s about getting sued.
Congratulations, Joy. I hope you get sued again real soon.
Related: The Bomb Project, an archive of “nuclear-related links organized for artists.”

Four New Yorker Writers Online

In addition to Susan Orlean (whose website includes a weblog by Jason Kottke for the film Adaptation) Rebecca Mead, Malcolm Gladwell, and Michael Specter all provide archives of their writing for the New Yorker on their personal websites:
Rebecca Mead breaks out articles, Talk of the Town pieces, and reviews into three pages.
Malcolm Gladwell lists his articles and Talk of the Town pieces on one giant archive page.
Michael Specter does the same thing: one long archive page.
The nearly identical approach to alt tags, the ubiquity of PDF links, and the very similar feel of these three sites, I’d bet they share a single designer. [Or maybe it’s just some Adobe GoLive site wizard. Not my department.]

Kevin Smith and Lars Von Trier, or greg.org reads the papers for you

Both in today’s NY Times:

  • Slate’s Bryan Curtis interviews Kevin Smith in advance of the Jersey Girls release. Jersey Girls makes Kevin Smith sound like the perfect spokesmodel for daddytypes.com, but Smith’s best comments are about Mel Gibson, “fellow Catholic.” [Damn, that’s one big tent.]
  • Tony Scott’s got a very astute read/review of Dogville, Lars “Von” Trier’s new movie. Scott makes some keen references to both Mayberry and South Park, while skewering the reactionary anti-anti-Americanism of reviews like Variety‘s.
  • Jessica Winter interviews LVT’s cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, in the Voice. [Stay tuned for my own Dogville post later this week.]

    • 2004-03-29, This Week in The New Yorker

    In the magazine header, image: newyorker.com
    Issue of 2004-03-29
    Posted 2004-03-22
    THE TALK OF THE TOWN
    COMMENT/ AFTER MADRID/ David Remnick on what the train bombings in Spain and the election that followed mean for the world.
    ON THE CLOCK/ JAM OFF/ Nick Paumgarten on the backstage scene at the jam-band awards.
    POSTCARD FROM BAGHDAD/ STREET CRIME/ Jon Lee Anderson on how the city is now a much more dangerous place.
    THE WIRED WORLD/ THE REAL ORKUT/ Jesse Lichtenstein on the eponymous member of a new networking Web site.
    ON THE ROOF/ PEPSI GENERATION/ Blake Eskin on making art out of an East River soda sign.
    SHOUTS & MURMURS/ Bruce McCall/ Liberal Radio Network Employment Application
    LIFE & LETTERS/ David Remnick/ Reporting It All/ A hundred years of A. J. Liebling.
    A LETTER FROM SOUTH TEXAS/ Katherine Boo/ The Churn/ When the jobs go abroad, what happens to the people who are left behind?
    FICTION/ Jim Harrison/ “Father Daughter”
    THE CRITICS
    BOOKS/ Folk Hero/ David Hajdu/ A new biography of Woody Guthrie.
    POP MUSIC/ Slow Burn/ Sasha Frere-Jones/ Norah Jones’s eternal afternoon.
    THE THEATRE/ Stuck/ Hilton Als/ “Frozen” and “Embedded.”
    THE CURRENT CINEMA/ The Quick and the Dead/ David Denby/ “Bon Voyage” and “Dogville.”
    FROM THE ARCHIVE
    A REPORTER AT LARGE/ Ahab and Nemesis/A. J. Liebling/ A classic Liebling boxing piece, Issue of 1951-10-08