Over at Cinematical Ryan Stewart rounds up some Darren Aronofsky news including word of his new script (Noah's Ark) and a link to the director's MySpace page where he blogs about his fight to release a bonus-packed DVD of The Fountain.

From the blog:

so the dvd came out.
happy that it is in the world.
hope more folks will get to see it.

as many of you can tell it is light on the extras as compared to my previous dvd releases.

everything at the studio was a struggle.
for instance: they didn't want to do a commentary track cause they felt that it wouldn't help sales.
i didn't have it in me to fight anymore.
whatever.

so:
niko, my friend who did the doc on the dvd came up with a novel idea.
we recorded a commentary track ourselves.
we're gonna post it on a site soon, http coming soon.
you can play it and watch the flick and hopefully you'll enjoy it.

It's dispiriting when a director with the stature of Aronofsky can't get his studio to agree to putting some coin into decent DVD extras. As a producer, I've been involved with a number of DVDs where the extras have been added solely at the producer or director's expense. The studios just don't seem to care about spending any extra money on a film that may not have been a big hit when it comes to DVD extras. I'm convinced, though, that DVD buyers look for these extras when they are shopping for a DVD.

Anyway, I do think downloadable commentary tracks that you can play along with the movie (kinda like playing Dark Side of the Moon alongside The Wizard of Oz) are the wave of the future.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/31/2007 06:58:00 PM Comments (2)

In the interview I did with Judd Apatow yesterday we spoke about how he wrote Knocked Up for Seth Rogen, and I know that nobody else was ever considered for the role. All that makes this clip of Apatow "firing" Arrested Development's Michael Cera from the movie even funnier. As Gabe Wardell points out there's more than a hint of David O. Russell to this...



It's of course a clever little stunt to promote Knocked Up, and also Apatow's next movie, Superbad, which Cera stars in. Apatow confided to me yesterday that "the secret we're trying to keep from everyone is that Superbad is even funnier than Knocked Up." While Knocked Up is out tomorrow, Superbad is only released August 17, but you can check out the film's R-rated trailer for a taste of what's to come.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 5/31/2007 02:54:00 PM Comments (0)

Today GreenCine links to a couple of articles discussing Rainer Werner Fassbinder, his legacy, and allegations that the Fassbinder Foundation and its director, Juliane Lorenz, have "systematically erased" (to quote d.p. Michael Ballhaus) important figures like composer Peer Raben and actress (and ex-wife) Ingrid Caven from the Fassbinder history.

The key document is a translation in Sign and Sight of a Die Zeit interview with Caven (pictured here). Caven's attack on Lorenz and the Foundation is what's getting all the press attention, but the interview is also striking for Caven's memories of Fassbinder's sex life, the early days of the New German Cinema, and the political goals contained within the films.

An excerpt:

Die Zeit: In 1981, Fassbinder said that of all the many people who had once lined up "to effect the realisable Utopia" only he, Peer Raben and you remained. What did this Utopia look like?

Caven: It was about fundamental structural changes in feeling and thinking. Even if we didn't manage to pull it off. You know, I still think today that we failed to communicate something vital to the generation that followed us. Back then, in the sixties and seventies, there was a vehement need for all artists to confront the German past and also to intervene in everyday history. This attracted a lot of attention for us personally and for our own needs. And it forced us to confront power relations in love and in life. All this was essential for our survival as artists in post-war German society. At the same time it was always clear that if we wanted to analyse something, perhaps even destroy it, this could not happen at the cost of style. What remains of us is that we were wild and tempestuous and that somehow everything was rock 'n' roll. It was an enormously aggressive force which expressed itself through a style. Style and form – everything rested on this. No style without morals, no morals without style. But this also affects the way you live your life. It soon becomes clear that there's no separation of artistic work and life.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/31/2007 01:03:00 PM Comments (0)

On the occasion of the Walter Reade's 30th anniversary screening of Barry Lyndon (the last show is tonight at 7), Jamie Stuart contributes to The Reeler an interview with Kubrick actor and long-time associate Leon Vitali. Vitali, who most recently produced Todd Fields's Little Children, is in town to intro tonight's screening and he took a few moments to talk to Stuart, who also snapped the pic of the producer shown here.

From the interview:

Reeler: But other filmmakers I think of who have a great degree of control -- modern filmmakers like say the Coen Brothers or somebody like David Fincher -- they very much work from storyboards. They go into shooting their movies knowing exactly what they want, and they do it until they get exactly what they want. With Stanley, however, it seems like it was completely about the process.

Vitali: That's right. He never used storyboards. Never used storyboards. That's a wonderful feeling of freedom you have as an actor, and I've said several times that Stanley was the closest to a theater director that I ever worked with. That was the process you went through. It's just that instead of taking six weeks to rehearse for a play scene by scene by scene, here we were taking hours and sometimes days to rehearse and shoot and rehearse and shoot. And all the time during rehearsals, he insisted: "Do it for real. Do what you think you will do." Because the way he found his first shot, he used to walk around the set with an Arriflex tube and just change lenses, look around, down, up, move away, move around. Once he found his first shot, he knew he could build the scene from that point. But he said: "If you don't do it properly, if you don't do it for real, you could change the way I think about the scene. You could suddenly put a whole new accent on it." You know, it's such a refreshing way for an actor to work. It really is.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/29/2007 03:14:00 PM Comments (1)

So the Palme d'Or went to 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days [pictured above], the account of a woman's efforts to get an abortion in the waning days of Ceacescu, from Romanian Cristian Mungiu. Not a huge surprise, in truth, since the film, screened on the fest's first full day, consistently lead in critics' polls.

A mildly dissenting voice here. The continuing emergence of Romanian cinema is to be applauded, of course. And “4 Months” is a take-no-prisoners gut punch of of neo-realism. The tension is palpable, the temptation to preach resisted, the acting flawless, the heroine positively heroic.

And yet. The film lacks the transcendence of the Dardennes brothers; a great Tolstoyan epiphany – I'm thinking of Resurrection – in which the miscreant performs a back flip of the soul and finds redemption. In “4 Months” no one is held to account; the two women can only suck it up and soldier on. It's claustrophobic, dreary – the farthest thing from entertainment. Who but the most die-hard art house folks will go for this? And then there's that shot of the fetus lying on the floor, gazed upon steadily and long by the camera, inspiring a queasiness that would be fodder, paradoxically, for the right-to-lifers ...

In general, the awards, presented all over the lot, appeared to reflect ample dissent among the jurors. More justified, in my view, was the special prize to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the Festival de Cannes, which went to Gus Van Sant for Paranoid Park. Juror Toni Collette reportedly told the press, “We wanted to give the prize to someone whose film we admired in this particular fest and also [to someone] whose body of work was incredible.” “Paranoid Park” creates an exquisite layering of sound design upon image, while the fractured narrative conveys the disordered thoughts of an adolescent boy in denial about his role in a dreadful accident. True, some accuse Van Sant of retreating into an ever more hermetic preoccupation with lost boys. But “Paranoid” also taps into a nightmarish guilt and paralysis that many can identify with.

It's like having egg on your face – but I missed several of the award-winning films. Oh hell, a body can take in only a fraction of Planet Cannes. Happily, The Edge of Heaven from Fatih Akin (top Berlinale winner for Head On) nabbed the award for best screenplay. Akin's artful script juggles 6 characters, who miss or collide with each other in always surprising ways. Too schematic, too much coincidence, carped some critics. To which I'd reply, the artifice is intentional, as patterned and satisfying as figures in a Tabriz carpet.

Like the Berlinale, Cannes has always looked to politics and the state of the world. The award for “The Edge of Heaven” -- as well as the one for Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis – rightly salutes films that address the escalating tension between Islam and Western cultures. I can well imagine one juror, Nobel novelist Orhan Pamuk, applauding Akin's take on Germans of Turkish origin, ever strung out between their original and adopted lands.

The Americans were a dominant presence in this year's Competition, yet the Cohen brothers, James Gray, Quentin Tarantino, and David Fincher got passed over by the jury. Still, in a realm beyond critical laurels, Yank star power created its own glitzy firmament. Hollywood novas Angelina/Brad, and Leonardo (of A Mighty Heart and The 11^th Hour, respectively) racked up points for their commitment to serious issues. Vive l'engagement. And though Michael Moore's Sicko was out of competition, it generated sufficient publicity to make it a de facto winner. Also a winner of sorts – in the category of Media Attention -- was Harvey Weinstein, who reportedly threatened, from his balcony over the Croisette, to sue the U.S. government for trying to impound “Sicko.”

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/28/2007 09:25:00 PM Comments (1)

Director Chris Munch (The Hours and Times) sent the below comment in regarding Ted Hope's post, below, on start-up online film distributor Jaman. While applauding the company's goals and its economical price points, Munch wonders whether all the enthusiasm for digital film distribution means that we are being conditioned to accept lower image quality when it comes to viewing our favorite movies.

Will the price ever rocket, though? Will producers and filmmakers benefit if it does? Jaman seems like a good idea at a good price point. I'm astonished how "content delivery trend predictors" have been proven wrong time and again: while the public embraces and gobbles up low-fi, low-rez stuff online (even theatrically!), what I and others have been waiting for -- HD DVD rollout -- founders, and the quality of cable HD delivery only seems to worsen. Is this attributable to too much greed on the part of cable and satellite operators, trying to squeeze too much programming through their bandwidth? In any case, most of the audience doesn't seem to care or they would demand something better. They don't seem to care that what comes through their 50 inch plasma screens is of poorer quality than the analog cable broadcasts of 20 years ago. This country really fucked up broadcast HD in a big way, just like it fucked up by allowing its 70mm infrastructure in theatres to languish in disuse. But, alas, the days in which the latter can be lamented are numbered as affordable 4K capture via Red has become a reality, and the rollout of DCI continues to widen. Bottom line is we now live with the best and the worst of D-cinema and E-cinema and everything in between. And the best is truly something to reckon with.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/28/2007 11:29:00 AM Comments (0)

Ted Hope sent the following thoughts on Jaman's current trial offering of free online art-film rentals. Check out Hope's comments and then, if you are so inclined, click over to Jaman to download the player and watch a movie.

The absolute hostility, at best, neglect, generally speaking, that the American Film Industry displays towards adventuresome work, and particularly such work done in a non-english language, has some nice byproducts.

When no market exists, salesman often resort to the time tested techniques of the drug pushers. Want to sample the product? Find nirvana for free? Here you go friend, feast away, for once there is a market, you'll be hooked and the price will rocket. But for now, for you friend, special deal: free.

Takeshi Kitano (several), Maroboshi (the first film by Afterlife's Koreada), Jia Zhang-ke's first film Pickpocket, two by Tsai Ming-liang (including his first, Rebels of A Neon God). Not to mention the Dardenne brothers, Jacques Rivette, and Walter Salles.

All from the pleasure of your own home. Okay, it SUCKS that you are not going to see these projected, but that is but a dream world, and in reality it's wonderful we have an opportunity to see these.

I believe fully, as the guys at Netflix have said to me that their business has proven, that the longer people have access to quality work at a reasonable price point, their appettite for the work of real auteurs increases, AND the more they are exposed to the good taste of others, the same phenomenon occurs.

So alert all you know and love to this great work and this fabulous opportunity to see it for free. I have no idea how long it will last, but thank you Dreammachine (which controls the rights to these films), thank you Jaman (the online site that offers these films at top internet quality), and thank you Anthony Kaufman (who tipped me via his blog to this great opportunity).

The only thing I can say negative though is what is with Jaman that they don't list the director's name in the description?

Here's the link.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/25/2007 03:43:00 PM Comments (1)

Writer-director Shonali Bose’s latest feature Amu begins its U.S. theatrical run today in New York City, with LA following in early June.

The tale of a young Indian-American woman’s search for the truth about her past, the film has already proven highly controversial in India, where it suffered several cuts and received the dreaded "A" rating, equivalent to an "R" here. This decision insured that a younger film-going audience would not see the film.

The film itself is a bold, honest story, told without a trace of heavy sentimentality or preachiness. Check it out and see what's lacking in so many empty US productions.

# posted by André Salas @ 5/25/2007 12:10:00 PM Comments (0)

I don’t particularly care much for anime save a handful such as Hayo Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii, directors that really push the limits of how compelling animation can be. Satoshi Kon’s films fall into this category. In his movies you won’t find aliens invading high school locker rooms or gender ambiguous demi-gods trying to take over the universe 10,000 years in the future. Even though Kon’s latest film, Paprika, takes place predominantly in dreams, it’s still a world that’s intensely familiar. Kon debuted with the much acclaimed Perfect Blue back in 1997. The film had a major impact on directors including Darren Arronofsky who bought the remake rights so he could steal shots for Requiem for a Dream. His follow-ups Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers broadened Kon’s animation style which grew to incorporate a mix of hand drawn, computer generated, 2D and 3D animation. Paprika is Kon’s dream fugue, full of hallucinatory imagery and scintillating dreamscapes.

The protagonist, Dr. Atsuko Chiba, is a no-nonsense neuroscientist by day and a spunky, perky dream hunter by night. While diving into a detective’s dream to help him solve a murder case, the prototype device that allows her to enter people’s dreams is stolen. Lots of grand, beautiful chaos ensues as the lines between dreams and reality become broken to the point of catastrophe. The actualities of the plot, as is the case with most anime, becomes lost in a visual symphony of dream parades, giant dolls, talking frogs, demonic circuses all more colorful then anything Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz dreamed up. Tack on an incredible post-modern, synth soundtrack and the film begins to feel like ninety-minute amusement-park ride. I saw this with a friend who has an intense disdain for all forms of animation, but I could see as the film progressed he was captivated. When we left the screening room he said to me “Wow that just made me really happy.” Give it a shot, I think it’ll make you really happy too. Paprika opens this Friday.

# posted by Benjamin Crossley-Marra @ 5/24/2007 02:36:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at his CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner receives an email from Dovetail CEO Jason Holloway about the current debate over just how content creators should be compensated for the online viewing of their work. Holloway discusses the pros and cons of the paid subscription model, the pay-per-download model, and the ad-supported model, and provides an opinion as to which types of content are most appropriate for each model.

I'm with Kirsner in believing that there is considerable untapped promise in the pay-per-download model (essentially, this is the model of the iTunes Store), but Holloway makes some points about the value of brand recognition that independent filmmakers should consider.

An excerpt:

Here’s the way I see it. For simplicity there are two segments: high end (stuff that people readily recognize on its own merit) and the rest. For the rest, my theory applies. People won’t pay to experiment, so you have to have ads or subscription (once the platform ITSELF is a brand worth recognizing, people will pay for the platform, even if they won’t pay for each piece of content). People wanting content free or [as] part of a subscription would apply to the high end stuff too, except that the high end stuff (“Darn, I missed Entourage last night”) commands more value and people aren’t experimenting with buying it, so consumers are willing to pay for it.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/23/2007 02:20:00 PM Comments (0)

I spoke to Lars von Trier this morning about his new film The Boss of It All, which opens today through IFC First Take. The interview was fascinating and very revealing, and can be read here.

Von Trier also gave Filmmaker an exclusive picture showing his response to overhyped reports in the media that depression has all but ended his film career.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 5/23/2007 09:42:00 AM Comments (0)

Things are really gearing up here on the Croisette. Say hello to Pleasure Factory [pictured above] from Ekachai Uekrongtham, which just screened in the Un Certain Regard section. A Thai film from Singapore, in Mandarin with English subtitles, its language, to judge by the promo, is universal. The packaging -- winner of the packaging prize from Screen International -- features a pink box containing photos of Singapore's pleasure givers from the Red Light district, and includes a pink-wrapped condom. The pamphlet offers another condom, this one armed for action, under the Fortissimo Films logo. “Here, I'm too old for this,” says a colleague, handing off the pink box. “Anyway, the condom's too small for me.” There follows some ribaldry on the stallion's dimensions in animal-lover doc, Zoo. Uh, yeah, guess the pressure is starting to tell ...

In other exciting news, Edge of Heaven from Fatih Akin (Berlinale winner Gegen die Wand)
racked up healthy applause at the 8:30 A.M. Press screening. Wonderful title, part Rilke, part Douglas Sirk. Set in Hamburg, Bremen, and Istanbul, the film is a swallowed-its-tail affair that opens and closes with the same scene, a circular, and peculiarly satisfying device. Always engrossing,“Heaven” follows the interwebbed lives of 6 German and Turkish-German characters, who eventually find bittersweet versions -- more bitter than sweet -- of their heart's desire. The theme of fathers/sons and mothers/daughters is inflected with issues of cultural identity, to make a package both emotionally resonant and topical. It's tipped to join the race for the Palme (and will it help or hurt that Turkish writer and Nobelist Orhan Pamuk is on the jury?)

Unfortunately I missed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly from Julian Schnabel, also collecting much praise (“This year's Barbarian Invasions”). I missed “Diving” because I had to wash my hair. I know this admission will seriously undermine my credibility as a critic, but the hair was about to leave for a screening without me.

Meanwhile, Cannes is bracing for tomorrow's Oceans 13. Which puts me in mind of Robert Altman's immortal words when last on the Croisette: “Who do I have to f—k to get out of here?”

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/23/2007 09:33:00 AM Comments (9)

For those of you who, like me, didn't make it to Cannes this year to see Harmony Korine's new feature Mister Lonely, here's a teaser: a couple of clips have popped up online on a site entitled Fest 21 and are embedded below:

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/22/2007 07:10:00 PM Comments (2)

So how, past midpoint is the race for the Palme shaping up? According to the dailies, the Coen brothers crime thriller, No Country for Old Men, leads the pack, while 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, the miserabilist abortion drama from Romanian Cristian Mungiu, follows close behind.

Frankly, I'm hoping a beaut from the coming lineup will edge them both out. My own informal survey, conducted at the various A-list events clamoring for my presence, revealed no critical consensus. Some critics find the competish films weak overall; others consider them the most exciting in years; while a third group prefers what's out of competition, such as Michael Moore's Sicko and Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart.

Paranoid Park [pictured above] from Gus Van Sant may not be Palme d'Or material – too particular, too hermetic – but it's damn brilliant anyway. Though the critics turned out in droves – with the overflow corralled into a newly erected theater -- many feared a snore-mongering reprise of Elephant, and a camera fixated on boys-from-behind, loping down highschool halls. Well, there's a bit of boys in halls in “Paranoid,” as a kind of Van Sant signature. But unlike “Elephant” and Last Days, this film packs an emotional wallop, generating sympathy for its adolescent Alex, a skateboarder who has inadvertently caused a horrendous death.

In Van Sant-land, 16-year-old boys don't do much communicating, least of all with divorcing parents and girlfriends, so this kid is bottled up within himself, an accidental felon, unable to deal. The fractured narrative takes the form of a “letter” Alex is writing to sort out what happened, and the disordered sequence mirrors his internal disarray.

As in the past, Van Sant has shot the film in the so-called Academy ratio of l:33, an almost square frame, tighter than what we're accustomed to, but one that enhances close-ups. As Alex, Gabe Nevins (plucked from MySpace and beautiful as a Renaissance prince), wears a blank mask of teen befuddlement that reminded me of No theater. Some critics faulted the character's lack of affect. But Van Sant has long moved away from naturalism. More than anything, it's Leslie Shatz's sound design, a thing of genius, that conveys Gabe's turmoil. By layering snippets of music over murmuring voices, the whirring of bobbins -- and occasionally bird calls -- Shatz captures the equivalent of mental “noise,” the sound of consciousness, our waking dreams and nightmares. Sometimes, to keep us off balance, he plays against expectations, layering some jaunty Nino Rota over a scene where Alex blows off his girlfriend. If anyone merits a prize so far in this fest, it's Leslie Shatz.

Yesterday, managed to shoehorn a a small, exclusive press conference by Michael Moore -- in the American Pavillion – into my crammed schedule. Wearing his usual red baseball cap, shorts and black tee shirt, America's favorite gadfly looked like he could use a stay at Canyon Ranch. I say this only because thinner, you live longer, and I want him to make many more films.

Moore is not only sharp as a tack – he really engages with and respects journalists. What he does as a filmmaker, after all, is a form of investigative journalism. Moore said he doesn't need Cannes to launch a film – “Michael Eisner launched Fahrenheit 9/11 by refusing to distribute it. I come here for the sun.” The accuracy of the facts in his films is impeccable, he claims, and he rarely gets sued. (Except when the U.S. Government is on his case for going to Cuba?) What about his next film? “I said 3 years ago in Cannes that I was doing the health care system, and the pharmaceutical companies went on red alert. They actually trained employees to get me off the subject by asking me about sports and complimenting me on my weight loss.” So this time round, Moore will stay mum about his next project.

Angie and Brad on the telly again. What must all that adulation do to a person? I mean, Brad must look down at himself in the morning and say, wow.

Despite the near-chaos that is Cannes there remain pockets of charm. Like the "coaches" in the Wifi room, ever ready to assist the visiting technophobe; and the "hostesses" (Sorbonne students, according to my interviews) poured into their white toreador pants like Manolete. And the Frenchmen jogging along the Croisette, only to head for a Tabac for a pack of Marlboros. And the guys outside the Chas Addams Arms at 7 A.M., who apparently stay up all night, because they're hitting the caffeine still in evening clothes. And those trucks with power hoses that scrub the streets ... And the niceness without exception of cops, guards, all the French personnel working this event ... Hell, I might even miss the place.

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/22/2007 05:19:00 AM Comments (0)

Why go to the movies when you can read the newspaper? NY Times reporter David M. Halbfinger's recent piece "In Court Files, Hollywood's Mr. Fix-It at Work" includes snippets from the court case against detective-to-the-stars Anthony Pellicano. Halbfinger, along with co-reporter Allison Hope Weiner, has been shadowing the celebrity gumshoe for years. In this article, Halbfinger includes conversations that could be in any movie. Here's an exchange between Courtney Love and and Pellicano.

“Listen, Courtney, if you come to me, that’s the end of that,” Mr. Pellicano said. “My clients are my family, and that’s it.”

Ms. Love indicated her approval.

“There is no other way around it,” he said. “I’m very heavy-handed, honey.”

“I need heavy-handed, baby,” Ms. Love said. “I like talking to an Italian.”

“Sicilian, honey,” he corrected.

“Well, that’s even better.”

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 5/21/2007 09:05:00 AM Comments (1)

Celebrity sighting! Following the screening of A Mighty Heart by Michael Winterbottom, Angelina Jolie is about to enter the Palais for the press conference. I don't actually see Ms. Jolie, but I do see the the braying pack on hand for the photo call, as well as flashbulbs popping from the terrace out the window. Well, it's a demi-sighting. And from here in the Orange (i.e. France Telecom) Wifi room, I see Brad Pitt on the telly, suited up, but resembling the hustler from Thelma and Louise. Wait a mo: according to my fave supermarket literature, didn't the Brangelinas split? Come to think of it, I'd rather gawk at Dan Futterman of the sexy eyes, who plays Danny Pearl.

Today is Day 6 of the festival. That's the thing about Cannes – Day 6 is the only day that exists, as if God were recreating the universe. Haven't cracked a Times since Kennedy. It's as absorbing here as downhill skiing. And almost as dicey -- in fact, the swollen pack of journos, cinephiles and Sylvia Miles lookalikes trying to pour through narrow checkpoints is getting friggin' dangerous. The local papers reported a “scrimmage” in the Palais at a screening of a film later judged mediocre.

So, it's entirely fitting that Philip Zombardo has arrived on the Croisette. Zimbardo's the researcher who set up the famous prison guard experiment to demonstrate that, given the circumstances, we all have the potential to deteriorate into sadistic louts.

INTERRUPTION FOR CELEBRITY ALERT. Marianne Pearl is at the Mighty Heart press conference. Angelina: “I was very nervous about getting it right.” Pearl: “I'm not going to describe my private emotions.” Brad: “the project was very important to us.” Ange: “it came from a very organic place, as most films do.”

Restylane alert: Angelina's lips look ready to take over her entire face.

Back to Philip Zimbardo. As with the prison guards, Day 6 has brought a Cannes tipping point. People with normally pleasant manners, including myself, are turning loutish. Lined up in the cattle pens for No Country for Old Men from the Brothers Coen, I found myself harboring unworthy thoughts. Like “that one has a fat ass,” as a sea of pink badges mounted the Potemkin-like stairs of the Debussy.

Finally, they green-light the blues. Caught in the stampede to secure a seat, I'm shouldered aside by a Slovenian footballer. I point out to him that he's bigger and possibly fitter than me, despite my years of Pilates, and moreover some of the old-fashioned niceties might be in order, but I get no response (and sprint past him on the stairs).

Happily, some uphold the niceties. Like the Brit who said, So you wait an hour, and don't get in. Hell, I can always see it in a theater. I've brought a good book, the weather's great, etc.

As for the small matter of the film, No Country is an adaptation by Joel and Ethan Coen of the novel by Cormac McCarthy. It tracks the cyclone of mayhem unleashed in a Texan outpost when a drug deal goes wrong. Was the film worth the aggravation of the wait? Yes and no. The Texan-inflected dialogue is darkly funny. And Josh Brolin nails a Western everyman who makes off with a stash in order to please his wife, but is no match for the principle of evil embodied in Javier Bardem, who kills based on a coin toss. But at heart this is a gussied-up chase film that fails to access the novel's larger meanings. And it's always risky to adapt a great stylist, such as McCarthy, because the style is the whole point.

Okay, you really want to know what's going on with the Brangelinas. First, an insight on Brad Pitt that I should have saved for Parade. He's actually rather blushing and shy in his responses, and almost defers to A., as if she's the brains of the family. A's view on journalism: “when the paparazzi descended on Marianne, I could identify with her pain." Winterbottom: “I was not trying to preach a particular message – I was trying to show a situation.” Brad, getting in the groove: “to create a dialogue, you have to have an unbiased perception of a situation to move forward ... As a global community we seem to be failing ... We need to hear the other side, instead of jumping to demonization ... I found the strength of Marianne through this situation an epiphany [uh oh, Strunk and White alert!]

Finally: last night I saw The Orphanage, a Spanish film so deliciously scary, the audience screamed out loud at the terrifying moments. And this being Cannes, they also applauded the terrifying moments. There's even a character who looks like Tony Perkins's stuffed mom, only this one's alive. Set in a spooky manor on a desolate coast, the film dispenses with special effects and infuses the horror genre with compelling characters, plausible motives, and themes that transcend the usual hants and creaking doors.

Stay tuned: Gus Van Sant's latest is a winner.

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/21/2007 09:04:00 AM Comments (0)

Over at Bright Lights After Dark, the Weekend Moviegoer (aka Alan Vanneman) gives a rundown on the current releases. His assessment of Shrek the Third? "I think I got all the jokes the first time."

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 5/20/2007 02:34:00 PM Comments (1)

Here's U2 performing live on the red carpet of the Palais at Cannes to launch their new U23D concert film directed by Mark Pellington and Catherine Owens.

(Hat tip to Variety's Dana Harris and GreenCine, which has more links.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/20/2007 01:35:00 PM Comments (3)

Producer Ted Hope sent in the below rumination on indie film and rock music for the blog. It was presumably prompted by two projects. Hope produced Hal Hartley's latest, Fay Grim, which opened this weekend. As Hope notes, Hartley has made a "true rock gesture" in all of his films; he's a director who seems to follow current music, incorporate it into his films, and, through his forays into music video, actively approach it on its own terms.. Also, this week Hope announced The Passenger an Iggy Pop bio-pic set to be directed by Nick Gomez and star Elijah Wood as the Stooges-era Pop.

Here's Hope:

Most directors I know are music nuts. Many even play instruments. They all seem to make mix tapes. Or rather mix CDs. At least in between jobs. They pride themselves to some degree on their music taste and knowledge. But can anyone ever make a great film about music. Should anyone even try?

Music docs are another beast altogether. A performer, a performance, their music, even their process can be captured on film. Don't Look Back and even Eat The Document give a glimpse, behind the curtain, at an artist beyond what I had imagined them as before. Cocksucker Blues may be the greatest rock and roll movie ever made, but not because of anyone's performance but for the world, not of The Rolling Stones but of their hanger ons, that it exposes. And The Devil and Daniel Johnson, which I had the pleasure of aiding, reveals bits and pieces of an incredibly complex man who makes deceivingly simple seeming music and all which somehow elevates us and makes it seem more worth living (and isn't that what the dream of all art is, to some degree).

But what of narratives? of fictions? Of recent times, Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People comes the closest to being a perfect rock film in that its failures feel like perfect rock moves. I probably have the most affection for Sid and Nancy by Alex Cox as I had the glorious pleasure of being a PA on that (calling my first "roll" and "cut" as Gary Oldman pops up at the bottom of the stairs after a stuntman's tumble). The film was made with what always has felt to me as pure rock attitude, as Alex Cox seemed to improvise many of the greatest moments, deliberating creating chaos all around him but finding the calm center that S&N could escape into. I am thinking about Rock Films as I would like to make a whole bunch of them, but financiers tell me that no one wants to see them. That may be true, but we all know the reason no one goes is because everyone out there knows most rock films really truly suck. You know that they are fakers, wannabes, not even approaching a put on. It's all performance of performance.

Music videos have always held more promise for me than they have ever delivered. They never feel like they are about the music. At best they are about the filmmaking. The Director Series that Palm put out a few years back were great films and infinitely watchable, but like all videos they are not about music. Great ideas with great visuals and great backing tracks but do they put the music forward. Could they, if they had more than the length of a song to play with? I would be curious to see a collection of music videos made by filmmakers who don't consistently make music videos and aren't really trying to deliver the product just to sell the disc. I know that all the indie filmmakers have made a spot or two or three along the way;
you'd think the indie cinema gods could wield strong swords against the capitalist hordes; keep art for arts sake and not sell out. But I have yet to find the collection of the collected music videos of Jarmusch, The Coens, Harmony Korine, and Wong Kar Wai. I have a few links here and there but where's the master list? When's Palm or anyone going to put out the Indie Director Series?

Hal Hartley, who has had many a true rock gesture in all of his films, has made a handful of videos, two of which I have had the pleasure of working. The good folks at Matador Records recently posted Hal's Yo La Tengo video on their blog and it's worth checking out. Fay Grim opened on Friday. Please check it out.

If you're interested in Hartley's own music, you can download it from eMusic here.

And Hartley's video for Beth Orton's "Stolen Car" can be watched here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/20/2007 10:49:00 AM Comments (8)

Sometimes the best here are the films without buzz. Yesterday afternoon, during a lull in the ongoing hysteria that is Cannes, I wandered into something called Bikur Hatizmoret (translated as The Band's Visit), a first feature from Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin [pictured above].

I went because I could. The science of survival here is to go where the crowds are not.. And I was hoping to catch some z's and sit near the aisle for a quick departure.

As it turned out, I finally found a film at the 60th to love. Please, members of the jury, you MUST give the prize for best actress to Ronit Elkabetz. The audience went for her and Band, too, to judge by the applause and shouting that wouldn't let the visibly moved filmmakers and cast leave the theater.

Band is a small movie – but in the way Chekhov is small. It's about an Egyptian Police band that arrives in Israel to play at an initiation ceremony for an Arab cultural center – but through a series of mishaps, the men end up stranded in a desolate, almost forgotten Israeli town, somewhere in the heart of the desert. “Not many people remember this,” says the narrator at the outset. “It wasn't that important.” It wasn't that important. Oh my God, pure Chekhov!

To the band's rescue comes Dina (Elkabetz), the tough, gorgeous, husky-voiced owner of a restaurant (that seems devoid of customers), who sees that the men are fed and lodged for the night till the morning bus. The stranded band's arrival becomes a catalyst compelling interaction between the musicians and their Israeli hosts. Their interwoven dialogues open up whole lives, past, present, future.

Especially moving are scenes in which the forthcoming Dina reveals a past of messy divorces; draws out super-reserved band leader Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai), who's haunted by a tragic past; and wordlessly flirts with Simon, the band's hot-to-trot pretty boy, who ends up in her bed. In an earlier very funny sequence, Simon teaches a naive Israeli boy how to hit on a girl. And in one of the best moments I've seen in any movie, the guy describes in a rhapsodic, untranslated Arabic, what it's like to make love to a woman.

This exquisite film is unafraid of simplicity and silence – the better to let resonate the fascination for these Egyptians of Dina's bounteous sensuality, and the growing rapprochement between Arab and Israeli. A poignant Chekhovian figure, the beautiful Dina is stuck in a life without great prospects, but remains, as in Uncle Vanya, determined to endure.

As I write, I can see aging bad boy Roman Polanski, silvering at the temples, holding forth on the telly. He's in Cannes, along with 32 other directors, as part of Chacun son Cinema, an omnibus film of 3 minute shorts, created for the 60^th anniversary. And there's Walter Salles, looking totally adorable ...

Celebrity Alert! Yesterday I was loitering in the empty Palais, when Leonardo di Caprio went speeding past. He was all suited up and flanked in military formation by what I suppose was an entourage. Really, it was like something from an air show. Leonardo's here with his film The 11^th Hour, a documentary continuing Al Gore's efforts to save the planet and us from ourselves. I followed Leonardo and entourage for a while, but the inevitable guard barred my way. So as part of my interview series, Notes From Under the Red Carpet, I asked the guard about his work. “I've been coming for twelve friggin' years” he told me, “but enough is enough. I'm tired of being on my feet all day.”

Where was I? Oh, with the fest now in Day Five, the buzzed-about films are terrific too. Like Michael Moore's Sicko, which was everything one hoped. It's a biting, poignant, often funny indictment of an American health care system dominated by insurance companies, which is quietly hastening the deaths of everyone but the rich. One guy interviewed by Moore lost two fingers in an accident, and was forced by Big Insurance to choose between replacing one for 12 grand and the other for 60. He went with the 12.

Moore's rage is palpable and rousing. You'll laugh and cheer when you see his boatloads of sick Americans, streaking toward Cuba in search of medical care. Yeah, some French and Canadians here faulted him for idealizing their health systems, which are plenty flawed. I'm sure they have a point. But the over-simplification is good, part of a package designed to reach Americans not in the choir, folks so dumbed down by anti-”big government” pieties, they can't identify their oppressors. Moore's larger message: make America a world of we, not me.

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/20/2007 06:34:00 AM Comments (1)

Thursday on the Croisette was D-day. D for decadence. Bright and early at 8:30 A.M. we got a menage a trois. 11 A.M. brought a heavy dose of Asia Argento and S & M. 2 P.M.-- happily I'd been fortified by lunch – served up mother/son incest plus matricide.

The menage a trois in question occurs early on in Competition entry Chansons d'Amour by Christophe Honore [pictured above], a pleasant, at times poignant operetta about young people in Paris enjoying, losing, and rediscovering love. Yes, I said operetta: when overcome by emotion, the characters burst into song. It's the only way they can express themselves, says Honore in the press notes. Trouble is the music barely rises above French-style Musak, with banal lyrics to match. In a nice touch, the boy-girl-girl trio romping through Paris pays homage to such New Wave classics as Jules and Jim. And Louis Garrel, of the great hair and demonic eyes, is always fascinating to watch. But he needs a director to dial down his narcissism.

Inspired by a news brief about a French financier murdered during an S & M session, Boarding Gate from Olivier Assayas elaborates the sordid portrait of global financiers explored to ill effect in his 2002 Demon Lover. The plot of Boarding beggars description. Essentially we watch Asia Argento, slut assoluta (that's a compliment) play S & M games with wide-body financier Michael Madsen, kill him, then escape to Hong Kong with the help of another lover, who may have set her up.

In the press notes Assayas claims that due to budget constraints, he shot the film on the cheap, adopting an appropriate B-movie esthetic. Guess he achieved his goal. Assayas is fascinated, rightly, by the skanky underbelly of the global economy. But his lurid, even romanticized image of kinky financiers seems to reflect more private obsession than reality. Most financiers I know get off on 80% return on investment or winning at doubles, not playing “snuff” and getting garotted by their own belt, while Asia Argento ... oh, never mind.

Topping off D-day was Tom Kalin's Savage Grace, a selection of the Director's Fortnight sidebar. It's based on the true story of Barbara Baekeland, who married up into the Bakelite plastics fortune. Husband Brooks seems to despise his gorgeous wife for being “low class” (Julianne Moore, in a wardrobe keyed to her coloring); and his son for being gay. Brooks runs off with son's theoretical g.f., leaving Moore and son in their own hothouse. Then Moore's “walker” b.f. seduces the son, and all three end up, giggling, in the same bed. It gets worse. You have to wonder what we're supposed to take away from a sicko psychodrama that's well acted (Moore gives it her best shot), but offers zero insight into what made these folks derail. Maybe the problem is that they never held an honest job.

Over a diet coke in the American Pavilion (I'm not a member and had to sneak in), I got to thinking. Friday's 3 D-movies share an intangible flaw: somewhere between intention and execution, the film loses credibility, even turns ridiculous (in fact, when Moore's character, after seducing her son, tells him, “You're the best,” the audience laughed). It's hard to poinpoint where it happens, but the falseness is fatal. Rather than engaging the viewer, the film virtually fades from the screen as you watch, becoming a phantom of the filmmaker's imagination.

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/19/2007 07:48:00 AM Comments (0)

A few days ago, in amongst the glut of pre-Cannes stories, one stood out. Written by the Associated Press on May 14, and syndicated to countless outlets worldwide, an article called 'Film purported to show actual deaths blocked by Cannes' read as follows:

French Customs officials have quarantined a 35mm print of the controversial film "Last Looks," which was on its way to a world premiere showing out of competition at the current Cannes Film Market.

The director of the film, Nick Brown, said the seizure was "a disguised act of censorship" and that the film deserved a public screening before condemnation.

A source close to the production described the film as showing the actual deaths of actors and behind-the-camera crew members during production of a low-budget American indie horror film called "The Evil Eye" that was filmed in the summer of 2006 among the Turkish and Greek Islands in the Mediterranean Sea.

"The Evil Eye" deaths were first reported in the Rhodes daily newspapers Dimokratiki. According to Dimokratiki, the largely American crew was using a 33-meter long Turkish ship as a set as well as for living quarters. But when that ship docked on July 3, 2006 in the port of Faliraki it was in order to seek medical help for a young actress, Malaysian born Ying-Yu Tan, who later died of unnamed injuries.

Reportedly, she wasn't the only victim. A crew member told the paper that the filming of "The Evil Eye" was aborted when the director Zack Freedman, the cinematographer Scott Maher and soundman Ryan Denmark (all three U.S. citizens) were killed when the small boat they were shooting from blew up during a staged explosion at sea.

Earlier, the French actress Verane Pick was also killed during the filming of a stunt scene involving a prop knife that tragically turned out to be a real weapon.

Greek authorities continue to investigate and were quoted as saying that it was impossible to say how many people had been killed or were missing because it appeared that some of the dead might have been buried at sea. The surviving production team refused to cooperate with authorities and fled the country.

Law enforcement officials briefly held a "person of interest" in connection with several of the deaths — the then 19-year-old videographer Nick Brown who is said to have captured the grisly events on his own camera. Brown, a citizen of Great Britain, was never charged with any crimes and was released. According to people involved in the production, after his release Brown returned to his home in New York City and edited the material into a feature-length motion picture that he titled "Last Looks."

Nick Brown is the son of famed British-born film editor Barry Alexander Brown, known for his Oscar-nominated work with Spike Lee ("Malcolm X," "Inside Man"), Mira Nair ("Monsoon Wedding") and Madonna ("Truth or Dare").

According to Nick Brown, he will fly to France in an attempt to resolve differences with French authorities, who were apparently tipped off by relatives of the deceased that he planned to screen his film out of competition at Cannes. Said Brown, "One way or another this film will be shown at Cannes, and I predict that people will find, in spite of all the rumors swirling around, that it is a very entertaining movie."

On the web site http://www.horror-no.com, a group calling itself Citizens Against Real Horror has lambasted Brown for his "callous use" of "The Evil Eye" tragedy to make a commercial motion picture. They have called for a boycott of the film at the Cannes Film Market.

Anyone one who has read this will agree that it's a very newsworthy story and extremely revealing about the lengths to which filmmakers are willing to go in order to become successful.

If you go to the Citizens Against Real Horror website, you can find the Dimokratiki article on the tragic deaths of the cast and crew, a video of a brother of the victims talking about his grief, and a radio interview with Last Looks' director Nick Brown from last month. All of them reveal Brown to be callous and calculating. The site calls Last Looks "the worst, most crass example of commercial EXPLOITATION one can imagine!", and begs people to "show your support and boycott this film. Boycott the screenings and pass the word to unsuspecting buyers."

It's all pretty compelling stuff - except that it's a fake. Far from being cinema verite, Last Looks is a hoaxumentary (arguably mockumentary's poorer cousin...) directed by Barry Alexander Brown, aka Spike Lee's editor and the director of four low-budget, low-profile films.

Twitch and LAist cottoned on to the fact that the whole Evil Eye story is a concoction and the Citizens Against Real Horror website a sham, but everyone else - including the usually reliable Associated Press - bought it hook line and sinker. (Or should that be Look line and sinker...?)

Personally, I think what Brown has done is inspired. There's no tragedy and no one's feelings have been hurt, but Brown has tapped into the perverse tendencies of the modern cinemagoer, and (he hopes) the opportunistic film buyer. Think back a few years to Blair Witch Project, the most famous of the fake snuff movies, and the amazing impact it had because people believed it was real. Clearly Brown hopes to emulate what Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez did.

On the basis of the trailer, I don't think Last Looks has the potential to be a second Blair Witch, but it's hugely impressive that with a tiny amount of effort, plus a lot of savvy, Brown has turned his little film into an international news story. It raises the bar in terms of what can be achieved with viral marketing; whether Last Looks can emerge from Cannes with a distribution deal is another question.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 5/18/2007 04:07:00 PM Comments (2)

Today Anthony Kaufman revives memories of Cannes past with the below clip of Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky being presented with prizes by Orson Welles:



... which gives me an excuse to post an amazing Tarkovsky shot from The Mirror.



And then this brilliant sequence from Bresson's Pickpocket.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/18/2007 10:43:00 AM Comments (0)

If you're used to checking out this blog and not the main page, surf over there for Nick Dawson's interview with Hal Hartley, whose Fay Grim opens today.

An excerpt:

I'm one of those people who doesn't think the world has changed any at all since 9/11. It just seemed to be almost inevitable, something like that. That's one of the reasons why the backstory of Fay Grim goes all the way back into the '80s. I was trying to sketch out the continuity of all this hanky-panky between the security agencies of the world. I think you're right in another sense, I was writing this as the invasion of Afghanistan was going on at the time. I simply tried to focus on making Fay a representative American, in the sense that she's a type that a lot of us might associate with: she's not terribly educated, but she's not stupid; she's got a big heart, but she's uninformed; she doesn't know how tough she can be.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/18/2007 09:27:00 AM Comments (0)

As guitar player for the band Interpol, Carlos D must be prepping for the release of their third album, Our Love to Admire, in July. But, as Pitchfork reports, he is also seriously and quite publicly pursuing a career as a film composer. He's got a separate site to promote his scoring skills where you can hear what he would have done had he scored The Devil Wears Prada and Ice Age 2.

From the bio on the site:

Carlos is an aspiring film and tv composer in addition to playing bass and keyboards in Interpol. His understanding of harmonic principles and an ear for colorful orchestration have contributed notably to the Interpol sound and are integral to his work as a composer. Although working in a different musical environment, Carlos utilizes the same skills in scoring as he does in Interpol.

Carlos' influences include film composers Angelo Badalamenti, James Newton Howard, Alexander Desplat, and classical composers Henryk Gorecki, Arvo Pärt, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Carlos resides in New York City with his Italian Greyhound, Gaius. He works from his home studio on Logic Pro 7 and uses the Vienna Symphonic Library and MOTU Symphonic Instrument to simulate the sound of the symphony orchestra; one day he hopes to work with the real thing. He has scored one short film (The National Anthem) and is currently working on a Randall Poster/Search Party project for HBO to be announced late spring."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/18/2007 09:12:00 AM Comments (0)

Yes, I'd shamelessly slipped behind in my Asian horror (or A-horror, as web geeks and fan-boys refer to the genre), when the good folks over at Tartan put me up to speed with some of their latest releases. Stand outs: the sophisticated, lushly photographed The Red Shoes, and ghost/cop thriller Arang. I know, I know... the female ghost with matted, long dark hair covering the face has pretty much been done to death (pun intended) but I'll be damned if the Koreans aren't still managing to get a little extra milage out of this tired horror trend. Not sure how far this can go on, but I'll take it over watered-down, tepid American remakes any day. If there's any justice in the world, we'll soon be encountering a rash of Asian giant monster movies, courtesy of The Host's huge success.

I'm going to take this opportunity to recommend some more obscure titles that may have slipped under your radar, at the same time shamelessly plugging online retailer YesAsia. I also suggest hitting your local Chinatown to find the official Hong Kong DVD releases, often in all-region editions.

Futago - hands down my favorite Asian thriller at the moment, this nasty little psychological thriller is a Chinese ghost story with a decidedly Japanese twist; slow, brooding and visually stunning. Mio (Hisako Shirata) arrives in Hong Kong from Tokyo, looking for her missing twin sister, only to find the residents at the boarding house to be secretive, frightened and unwelcoming. Then the rash of sudden deaths begins. Futago really succeeds in setting up a convincing atmosphere of dread and hopelessness, with a pay-off worthy of Lynch's Mulholland Drive. How this missed a US theatrical or DVD release is beyond me. Maybe the Japanese spirit killing off a bunch of Chinese had something to do with it; I thought it gave the film a deliciously twisted subtext. Tartan, this one's got your name written all over it.


Colour Blossoms - I encountered this at the Berlinale in 2005, and was sure it'd end up on our shores at some point. Oh well, our loss. This sexy art-house film attempts to mix genres as far-flung as the Chinese ghost story with heavy-handed Wong Kar-Wai posturing and a shade Red Shoe Diaries-type erotica thrown in for good measure. The result? An existential erotic ghost story that veers dangerously close to camp... but never stops entertaining. The plot involves Meili (Teresa Chiang), a gorgeous female real estate agent who finds life a lot more interesting after renting a house to the vampy Madam Umeki (Matsuzaka Keiko) and meeting male model Kim (played by male model Sho); soon she is practicing heavy S&M with both. We meet many more beauties, male and female, and Colour Blossoms becomes a mediation on desire and excess. Or something like that.

Visible Secret - Not quite as Pan-Asian, respected Hong Kong director Ann Hui takes on a ghost story of her own, involving a disenfranchised straight hairdresser whose new girlfriend has the unfortunate ability to see dead people. With the just the right touch of humour and romance to balance out scares, this ends up being rather sincere and poignant. Another beauty to look at (who's financing these things anyway?), this one's a keeper. I kept thinking Chungking Express meets The Grudge.

So yeah, ghosts ghosts ghosts. Vengeful, remorseful, horny. One for every taste. So keep em coming, I'll never stop watching.

# posted by André Salas @ 5/17/2007 04:27:00 PM Comments (1)

Cannes at 60 is young at 7 A.M.: hosed-down, fresh, free of hollering paparazzi and rampant attitude. Her age shows a little in the venerable hotel Majestic-Barriere, a dowager kitted out with ceiling-to-floor sphinxes in the bar, and, in the dining room, wine velvet upholstered chairs, threadbare around the edges. I've become a habituee of this genteel oasis; with the breakfast tab at 35 euros, I order a la carte.

The 60th anniversary will be celebrated with an omnibus film created by what Festival chief Thierry Fremaux calls “this era's most prestigious 35 directors. It's going to be the best red-carpet event!”

I shudder to think how said event will be greeted by the get-a-lifers -- ie. the folks who erect extraordinary rigs built of stepladders, stools, umbrellas, positioned for an aerial view of red carpet arrivals. They're looking for Brad Pitt, not directors. The get-a-lifers do little to ease the bottlenecks along the Croisette created by 30,000 industry professionals plus tourists. (Correction for yesterday's blog: according to charming press boss Gerald Duchaussoy, last year 4,000 journos attended; this year 4,200).

Another feature of this 60^th edition: 6 out of the 22 In Competition films are American, and the Yanks figure heavily in other sections as well. This is nice for the Americans; perhaps it's less healthy, it's been intimated, for world cinema. One headline in the dailies read “Feels Like Euro Trashed.” No Brit films in the Competish; none from Spain and Italy. The one German title, Fatih Akin's “The Edge of Heaven,” is a co-production with Turkey, with 60% of the film's language Turkish. Nothing sinister here, say fest officials. The lineup reflects which worthy films were finished by the submission deadline

Cannes, it's been remarked, has a thing for Asian cinema; as usual, it's heavily represented in the official selection. And this year Eastern Europe weighs in with films from Serbia (“Promise Me This”), Hnngary (Bela Tarr's “The Man from London”) and Roumania (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.”) This last is a slice of unalloyed grimness about a young woman seeking an abortion in 80's Roumania, which includes lingering shots of things you'd rather not see. It won't play the multiplex any time soon, but “4 Months” was more warmly received at the press screening than “My Blueberry Nights.” In a vivid contrast, the “4 Months” was preceded by live coverage of celebs ascending the red carpet. Gee, they're fun to watch – prettier and flatter of stomach than you or me, idealized forms of humanity. Maybe the get-a-lifers have a point ...

The high point of the day – and only point, so far -- was an exclusive private viewing of clips from Dreamworks' “Bee Movie,” with Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jerry Seinfeld, and Chris Rock presiding. To judge by the spread laid out at the Carlton Beach -- tables heaped with crustaceans, pastries, bee cookies and chocolate lollipops; even a bee ice scupture – Dreamworks has high hope for this one. The journos chow down with a vengeance since we literally never know when we'll next eat.

Katzenberg first introduced the film, “A Short History of Bugs in Movies.” Next came clips from “Bee Movie,” touted as “the next incarnation of Jerry's comedic journey.” Then Jerry worked the room to much laughter, praising bee societies (“they have it worked out; bees don't have crime, drugs ... “); recounting how Spielberg signed on during dinner in what I'm guessing was East Hampton, where the two are neighbors.

“Bee Movie”'s clever wise-ass tone reflects the wise-ass tone of kids you hear on the bus today (I mean, I dunno, mine used to read Greek myths and Tintin, a more innocent age, I guess). Urban Jewish humor abounds – the bee hero's parents want him to marry a Bee-ish girl – and there are amusing shots of bees flying over the Great Lawn in Central Park. Adults will enjoy the references to Hon-ron, a honey mega-corporation, and Rock's ad libs about girl mosquitoes that “trade up to a moth or dragon fly.” Dreamworks plans translations – Katzenberg prefers the word “adaptations” -- in 28 languages. Cannes was chosen as the ideal spot to launch a product aimed at the world market. It's billiant marketing, a way of intellectually colonizing the world. Who needs an army or navy if they've got “Bee Movie?” Oh, and pre-lunch, Jerry Seinfeld dressed in a bee suit went flying from a wire strung from the roof of the Carlton to the beach. Scorsese did it last year for “The Departed,” he quipped, though it looked for a moment as though he might throw up.

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/17/2007 09:11:00 AM Comments (0)

The Cannes film festival officially kicked off this morning -- for the press, that is -- with Wong Kar Wai's “My Blueberry Nights,” toplined by Norah Jones and Jude Law. Winner of the Cannes best director award in 1997 for “Happy Together, and president of the Competition jury in 2006, Wong is godlike along the Croisette. So it seems almost sacreligious to report that “Blueberry,” the Hong Kong auteur's first English-language production, and his first film set and shot in the U.S., is gorgeous to look at, but not a helluva lot more. In fact, the screening in the packed Salle Debussy was greeted with only a smattering of anemic applause.

Singer-pianist Norah Jones makes her bigscreen debut as a young woman traveling cross country in the wake of a romantic breakup. Looking way too dishy for the job, Jude Law plays a hash-house owner who bonds and falls in love with Jones over his blueberry pie, then tries to track her down during her waitressing gigs. Co-scripted by Wong with crime writer Lawrence Block, “Blueberry” is essentially a road movie, and therein lies the problem. The hard-bitten babes (Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman) Jones encounters are cliche'd creatures from a novelist's overheated imagination, who do nothing to advance the central story, except promote the heroine's, ugh, “growth.” It couldn't, in its way, be more Hollywood. And seasoned actors, such as David Straitharn, point up the girlie vapidity of Jones's non-acting.

That said, "Blueberry" is, predictably, of a visual mastery and beauty that provokes gasps. The film works best as video-art of the highest order; I wanted to freeze frames, and can't wait to see it again. A recurring lush image from the Wong dreamscape: Jones, smoky-eyed, before a lime-rimmed clock and a yellow medallion. And all those shots through windows slashed with signage in primary colors ... Also, in a strange but intriguing dissonance, the nocturnal glow and sensuality locate this film anywhere but in the United States.

As for the 60^th edition here, it's rumored that more than 1,000 journos have been added to the usual 3,000. This does little for quality of life issues. The line for “Blueberry,” screened at 10 A.M., already stretched forever at 9. I whiled away the time discussing “Sarko” with French journos, and contemplating the fashion statement I wish to make on tomorrow's queue.

Given the mob, those of us with the humble blue badge can probably expect limited access to such hot movies as the Coen brothers “No Country for Old Men.” (According to the badge system, a holdover from the Ancien Regime, Pink and White get into screenings before Blue; wearers of the lowly Yellow are forced to line up in the face of ongoing traffic, and thus cause no problem.)

Nor can the Blues count on admission to press conferences. So I've decided to interview some of the lower-profile members of the festival. Like the obliging guard presiding over the Palais main stairs. Question: where do all the workers go after the festival? Well, many, like him, are retired folk from the area, he tells me; others are employees of France Telecom, who come to the Cote d'Azur for a work/holiday combo. So never say the French are lazy. Tomorrow expect an interview with the attendant of my favorite ladies room.

As for the housing situation in this tiny town, it's gotten even sketchier than in previous years. I'm installed at The Chas Addams Arms in an attic space improvised under the eaves – call it a virtual room. The hall toilette, angled and low-ceilinged, must be approached crab-wise in a crouch. So, provided I can crank myself vertical, more tomorrow.

# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/16/2007 08:17:00 AM Comments (0)

Over at the main page check out Howard Feinstein's just-posted interview with Wong Kar-wai about his My Blueberry Nights, the opening night film at Cannes.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/16/2007 02:16:00 AM Comments (0)

Via Movie City News comes this fascinating story from BBC news:

An Austrian filmmaker has come up with a novel way of avoiding the costs of creating a movie - by making her film entirely from images of real life captured by CCTV cameras.

Called Faceless, the film is the project of London-based Manu Luksch, who is both the star and director and describes it as a "science fiction fairy tale".

By taking CCTV of herself and blocking out the faces of anyone else captured on it, she created a story set in the future, in the "faceless world" - with herself as the only woman with a face.

"We're being filmed all the time, in all sorts of situations, by CCTV cameras," Ms Luksch told BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme.

"As a filmmaker, I was really questioning myself - where I should bring in my own camera.

"I found out that under the Data Protection Act (DPA), one has the right to retrieve data which is held upon oneself. This does not only apply to medical and financial data, but also to CCTV images."

Click on the link above to read the whole article.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/15/2007 05:01:00 PM Comments (0)

The long-running French film journal Cahiers du Cinema recently launched an online English-language edition. In the current issue there's a provocative article by the editors entitled "12 Objectives for Cinema in France" that I've been meaning to comment on. Written before Sarkozy's victory -- a prospect Cahiers clearly considered when drafting the article -- the piece is interesting for what it says to some of us American fans of French cinema as well as for its implications on our own American indie film.

(For more on the possible repercussions of Sarko's win and what his promised "break with the past" means, check out Doug Ireland's blog posting on the subject.)

But first, a quick primer on French films and their funding.

Young American indie directors often look at the films they see coming out of France -- which, if they're seen in the U.S., are usually "auteur" films by veteran directors -- and imagine that the country is populated by a hearty band of cineastes who actually prefer such defiantly non-Hollywood cinema. But in France, the truth is more complicated. A film by a celebrated French director featured here in the pages of Film Comment or Filmmaker may in fact attract more viewers in its three week run at the Quad than in what is many times a one-week run in the city of Paris. And, in fact, if these same young U.S. directors were French, rather than blessing the system that allows them to make the personal films they want to make, they'd be complaining about how this so-called "French system" -- the latticework of bureaucratic granting organizations and funding mechanisms -- repeatedly finances the old guard and is resistant to the promotion of new voices and new forms of filmmaking.

Cahiers -- a publication certainly not antagonistic to the old guard -- explains further:

No, everything [in the French film industry] is not very well. As the surveys in Cahiers point out month after month, the problems lie predominantly with aberrations in the support measures that make up our rightly famous “French film system” -- aberrations that have ended up reversing the effects they originally intended.

These measures were supposed to help originate singular projects, to favor a variety of unique artistic initiatives, and supply them with the necessary means of production. What they actually breed is the serialized production of pre-formatted films -- including under the devalued moniker “cinéma d’auteur” -- and fatter paychecks for professionals that have stopped taking risks, artistically and financially.

Of course, when considering how to improve the artistic health of its film industry, France has a lot to work with. A percentage of box-office receipts and, now, internet revenues go back to a fund supporting new cinema; films in the French language are eligible for production support; and European productions are privileged by TV buyers. It's not like the U.S. where the vagaries of private investment and the logic of the marketplace are the sole determining factors of what gets made. Still, some of Cahiers's comments are worth thinking about. They're clearly impractical in the U.S.... but what if they weren't?

For example, the second recommendation: "Resisting the formatting of film projects by support procedures":

The decisions for selective support, like financing by television networks, are made by commissions whose choices are increasingly based on a set of predetermined rules to which projects have to adhere. The ideology of the “well-balanced script” has been an alarming factor in this uniformization, including of supposedly “auteur” projects, in the name of a “professionalism” that goes against the unforeseen, against the adventurous creativity that is the very reason for the existence of selective support in the first place.

And here's number ten: "Respecting the activities of amateurs and enthusiasts":

Thanks to digital technology, everyone now has access to the tools of cinema. The vast majority of these users neither are nor ever will be filmmakers, just as owning a pen does not automatically make someone a writer. However, the use of these tools, whether for amateur, professional, or recreational purposes, and whether for personal use or aimed at small groups, creates a personal bond with cinema as a means of expression. This intimate bond is an important breeding ground for more discerning viewers with a closer affinity with cinema.

Here's one ("Providing encouragement for all auxiliary forms of cinema") that I, the editor of a magazine, like:

In addition to theaters, conservation, education, and amateur activities, it is essential to support other initiatives that form, enrich, and deepen the bond between films and their audiences.... DVD is another very important means of support, on the condition that releases are put together with a certain degree of ambition. Book publishing and the activities of film critics both in magazines and other media (Internet included) are indispensable in providing a multitude of viewpoints, expanding the ways in which we view films, and the ways in which they view us. Festivals, obviously and wholeheartedly, but also associations like cine-clubs in their many shapes and forms, should be considered, including on the level of funding, as contributing to sustaining cinema as an art form.

And then there's this one, "Limiting the number of prints per film," clearly unimplementable in the U.S. and also, most likely, France. But what if it could be?

The fact that some films are released with 600, 800 or even 1000 prints makes a mockery of any attempt at an effective cultural policy. It saturates theaters and monopolizes the attention of the mass media, thereby denying access to other films and forcing them into token releases. This in turn creates a rapid turnover for those films that do not have the means to attract widespread attention and which therefore need time to find their audiences. It will be very difficult to fight this overexposure and this will require a lot of effort from politicians and lawmakers. But it is imperative and should be a priority in any film policy.

In the end, though, what grabbed me about this article was not any of the specific recommendations but simply the intent implicit in the piece's title: "12 Objectives for Cinema in France." (Italics added.) There's a lot of talk in the American indie scene about problems of production and distribution, about the tyranny of the blockbuster over the small personal story... but if we as American independents could play the role of culture czars for a moment, what we would do?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 5/15/2007 12:05:00 AM Comments (2)

Today I was talking to my friend Hannah McGill, creative director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, about what she was looking forward to seeing at Cannes Film Festival, which starts on Wednesday. One of the films she mentioned was Catherine Breillat's Une Vieille Maitresse (which roughly translates as An Old Mistress). I had registered the fact that Breillat had a new movie at the festival, but not that it was a lavish period costume drama. And when I saw that Twitch had put up a link to the film's trailer, I became even more intrigued.

The plot of Une Vieille Maitresse centers on a handsome young aristocrat Ryno De Marigny (Fu'ad Ait Aattou) who shuns his longtime lover, courtesan Vellini (Asia Argento), when he gets engaged to Hermangarde (Breillat's current muse, Roxanne Mesquida), a marquis' daughter.

It's virgin territory for Breillat, who has never before made a historical film and for the most part has stuck to the intense, overtly sexual explorations of her own very modern feminist ideas. It will interesting to see how Cannes audiences respond to Breillat's unique interpretation of costume drama, par