Archive for October, 2004
Friday, October 29th, 2004
According to JT Leroy, Asia Argento’s film adaptation of his book The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things now has its own Web site.
“Imagine Oliver Twist re-made as a horror pic and you’ll come close to its essence,” wrote one reviewer about the film.
The Heart is Deceitful had its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May, then went on to Toronto in September. Directed by and starring Asia Argento, the cast also includes Winona Ryder, Peter Fonda, Mike Pitt, Jeremy Renner, Kip Pardue, Matt Schulze, Dylan and Cole Sprouse and Jimmy Bennett. The film screens November 8 at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles.
A slide show of Lydia Lunch’s still photos from the film can be found on her Web site.
Leroy’s latest book, Harold’s End (Last Gasp), an illustrated novella with watercolors by Cherry Hood, is due out in December, and Leroy’s band Thistle LLC, celebrates the release of its debut EP, November 13.
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Friday, October 29th, 2004
Although at first glance it might be mistaken for an action-adventure film in the vein of The Crow, Sting: Moment of Truth is actually a straight-forward docudrama based on the life of the pro wrestler known as Sting (a.k.a. Steve Borden). Focusing on his rise to success, eventual spiral into drug use, and redemption via religion, Sting promises lots of ringside action and personal drama. If you like your wrestling with a decidedly Christian bent — and who doesn’t? — this could be one for you.
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Friday, October 29th, 2004
Nerve.com’s Politics Issue, online through Nov. 2, features an article by Lynn Harris on Mommar Qaddafi’s sexy female bodyguards, which is also the subject of Rania Ajami’s documentary Qaddafi’s Female Bodyguards: Shadows of a Leader
“Everywhere [Qaddafi] goes he’s surrounded by a badass bunch of Lara Croft clones,” write Harris, “usually in matching colored camouflage (of dubious use in the desert). They’ve been described as ‘wearing their Kalashnikovs like Gucci fashion accessories.’ (Yes, news articles always describe [what] they’re wearing. Not like you ever hear the AP mention the ‘navy wool, three-button, notched-lapel suits’ of the Secret Service.) On a good day, the bodyguards make Qaddafi look like Hef. On a bad day, a Bond villain. On every day, a crackpot.”
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Thursday, October 28th, 2004
“Want to see your name on a film screen at one of the most important cultural institutions in the world?” The Film Society of Lincoln Center and HBO Films are sponsoring a student competition to create a 45-second-long trailer for the 2005 New York Film Festival. Details can be found here. Deadline: December 31, 2004.
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Wednesday, October 27th, 2004
Lars von Trier, currently editing Manderlay at Zentropa studio’s editing facility Klippegangen says it will be years before the third film in his USA trilogy hits screens. “It will be several years before we shoot the final part of the trilogy [begun with Dogville], ” said von Trier, “because in the meantime I need to earn some money.”
He is currently “preparing a new [English-language] film for a wider audience, a horror film… in the style of The Kingdom,” explains executive producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen referring to von Trier’s brilliant 1994 miniseries, later adapted by Stephen King for ABC as the tepidly received Kingdom Hospital. “It is kind of an Antichrist [movie] based on the theory that it was not God but Satan who created the world.”… Read the rest
Tuesday, October 26th, 2004
The folks at Greg.org got suspicious first, and their fears proved correct. Nick Nolte’s online diary, linked to below, is revealed by its creators to be a parody. Or, alternately, a work of fiction. Or a satire containing photographs protected by Section 107 of the United States Copyright Law. Whatever. For the few seconds it takes to scan a home page and link to it here, we were fooled.… Read the rest
Tuesday, October 26th, 2004
“And it seems to me to be almost the perfect life, really. I mean, I would like to be taller and have more hair [laughs] and things, but apart from those physical things I can’t really imagine how my life could be improved. I hope that doesn’t sound smug, but it is a pretty good life.”
That’s British d.j. John Peel, the legendary musical tastemaker who championed and established bands like Joy Division and the Sex Pistols, as quoted in an interview on the B92 website as linked to by the ever essential Greencine Daily. Peel, 65, died yesterday, and, like us, our friends at Greencine saw fit to acknowledge on their film site the immense contribution Peel has made to our modern culture.
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Tuesday, October 26th, 2004
Did you know that John Sayles, before he became a filmmaker, was a National Book Award-nominated novelist and short-story writer? Mediabistro.com’s David S. Hirschman talks with Sayles about filmmaking, his latest collection of short stories, Dillinger in Hollywood, and the current climate in the news media.
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Monday, October 25th, 2004
Last night I caught up with “The Downtown Plays”, a production of Drama Dept. and Pace University as part of the Tribeca Theater Festival.
Featuring a terrific ensemble cast of 10 actors in nine short plays directed by John Rando (“Urinetown”), “Downtown Plays” is an exhilarating two hours of theater that runs the gamut from poignant drama (Frank Pugliese’s “Late Night, Early Morning” and Jon Robin Baitz’s “My Beautiful Goddamn City”) to dark comedy (Kenneth Lonergan’s True to You” and Neil LaButes’s “Union Square”) to social satire (Douglas Carter Beane’s “He Meaning Him” and David Henry Hwang’s “Trying to Find Union Square”) to outright hysteria (Paul Rudnick’s “Pride and Joy,” featuring Jackie Hoffman, pictured above). Even the clunkers in the program (Warren Leight’s relatively dull “Happy for You” and Wendy Wassertein’s madcap “Psyche in Love”) were still well worth the price of admission.
Each evening “The Downtown Plays,” which runs through October 31, is introduced by a different celebrity. (I’m tempted to return Tuesday night when Christopher Walken handles the intro and Molly Shannon joins the cast for the remainder of the engagement!)
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Monday, October 25th, 2004
Writing for Ain’t It Cool News, someone named Pappy relayed the following interesting tidbit: According to producer Richard Gladstein the release of Finding Neverland, initially completed in 2003, “was delayed because of the release of [P.J. Hogan's] Peter Pan. …Since that film had the rights to the play, the reenactments of the theater scenes in Finding Neverland had to get Sony’s permission to be admitted into the film. In short, Sony gave [the producers] permission if they would release the film after Peter Pan,” hence Miramax’s forthcoming release of Neverland almost a year later, on November 12, 2004.
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