Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky begins as a leisurely yet engaging character study, seemingly unconcerned with a traditional conflict/resolution narrative. Sally Hawkins’ performance as Poppy, a bubbly, sarcastic, and endearing elementary school teacher is a delight to watch. An hour into the film, I pleasantly resigned myself to enjoying it as a disconnected series of episodes. This could have been annoying, if not for the stellar performance by Hawkins. Her comedy and breezy demeanor nearly covers Poppy’s immaturity and apparent fear of commitment, while still giving us a glimpse that something more lurks beneath all the giggles and quips.

The character is so delightful, in fact, it almost comes as a surprise when conflict eventually erupts between her and her driving instructor Scott, played by Eddie Marsan. It’s a marvel that the animosity between these two characters, and the eventual resolution, is so well-rendered, considering how late it appears in the film. This is by no means sloppy filmmaking on the part of Leigh. On the contrary, he has perfected a sort of inverse method of story telling. Whereas normally we are dumped into a narrative-in-progress and bombarded by exposition to let us know who the characters are supposed to be, Leigh takes his time, building his characters first, then letting the drama follow.

When I asked him if the conflict between Poppy and Scott was part of the initial concept of the film, he said, “No…you explore and develop, and out of it comes the drama. It can’t be there at the beginning because you have to have the characters there before you have the drama.”

More from Leigh after the jump.

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Hamlet 2 is one of the funnier films you probably haven’t heard of unless you track the movie sales at Sundance. Earlier this year it almost broke the Little Miss Sunshine record of 10.5 million when it sold for 10 million to Focus Features. The New York Times says “”It made sure to take shots at Christians, gays, Latinos, Jews, the American Civil Liberties Union and Elisabeth Shue, one of its lead actresses.” In fact, the trailer says “And reintroducing Elizabeth Shue as… Elizabeth Shue.”

Since we attended their party last night, and drank copiously from their open bar, which was stocked with drinks like “Holy Water” and “Rock Me Sexy Jesus,” we thought we’d better man up on the tough “sunday morning wakeup and head to the Con through the remaining fog of Saturday night.” They showed us the trailer for the movie, and several clips, which all served to make me wish I’d seen this movie in Park City. The aforementioned drink name serves as one of the key musical numbers, and you’ll end up having “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” stuck in your head.

Director and co-writer Andrew Fleming, and writer Pam Brady joined star Steve Coogan onstage to discuss the film, which is exactly what you’d expect from Brady, who writes and produces South Park. But Fleming has directed films like Dick, Threesome, The Craft, and Nancy Drew, so he’s all over the map. According to Fleming, the original title for the film was “Mr. Holland’s Anus,” but according to Pam Brady, “That title was already being used by a Belgian porn, so there were copyright issues.”

They didn’t really have much time for a Q&A, being slotted for just 30 minutes, right before the Harold & Kumar panel. Someone asked Steve Coogan, “did you watch a lot of Jesus movies?” Steve replied, “Yes, particularly enlightening was Max Von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told,” which might have actually inspired Coogan’s hair in the film. “The hair was very key,” according to Coogan.

Fleming also explained that, yes, they do make a lot of fun of Elisabeth Shue throughout the film, although most of that was her idea. For instance, when Coogan’s theater teacher character brings her to class, no one knows who she is. That was Shue’s idea. I’m actually wondering if that’s based on some of her real-life experiences. Do people still know who Elisabeth Shue is?

They showed several clips from the film, including an extended “sing along” scene of the main dance number, which you can watch in the video above. As they closed things out, Fleming thanked everyone at Comic-Con for coming to the panel, “Jesus is the original superhero, so… yeah!”

Hamlet 2 comes out in limited release on August 22nd, and goes wide on August 29th.

• The Tribeca Film Festival continues its mission to wow us with quantity over discovery by booking a full sidebar of festival leftovers like Savage Grace (which will have been on the festival circuit for about 50 weeks by the time it hits lower Manhattan courtesy of Robert DeNiro and American Express) and The Wackness (which will make its multiplex debut via Sony Classics a month or two after its Tribeca screening). But, as always, the festival’s Restored and Rediscovered program offers hope, including screenings of new prints of Fellini’s Toby Dammit, and Curtis Harrington’s Cat People–inspired, young-Dennis Hopper-starring Night Tide.
• While we’re on the topic of festival exports: Nanette Burstein’s American Teen will open the 2008 edition of Sundance at BAM on May 29.
• Would it even be news that a new Patrick Swayze movie is having its world premiere in Austria, if Swayze’s battle with cancer wasn’t currently grade-A tabloid grist, and if his health didn’t preclude his attendance? Yes––but only because Uwe Boll is distributing the movie.

• Is it too “gory,” or did the filmmakers want too much money? This Variety story offers both as potential reasons for why the Amy Adams/Emily Blunt Sundance comedy Sunshine Cleaning, which was pegged before and during the festival as an almost sure-thing candidate for a sale, is only now closing a distribution deal with Overture Films.
• In other sales news, Film Movement has picked up Argentinean teen hermaphrodite drama XXY. It won two awards at Cannes last year, and it’ll screen next month at New Directors/New Films here in New York.
• No Country For Old Men will “almost double” its screen count this weekend, in order to best take advantage of the profile boost offered by its multiple Oscar wins. It’s probably also smart counter-programming against Semi-Pro, which will be the only film to open this weekend on over 2,000 screens.
• Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company is looking to cash in on a potential SAG strike by offering policies to film productions scheduled to coincide with the union’s summer contract negotiation deadline.

I should say first that I am about to wholeheartedly support the world viewing Be Kind Rewind in the face of what I believe will be a lot of poopooing over this movie (it’s currently “rotten” over at Rotten Tomatoes). I will also say I am not a Michel Gondry fanboy or, even, somebody who could pass for a hipster (that segment of the population making Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Puma economically viable). I saw Be Kind Rewind at Sundance 2008 thinking it would be a pallet cleanser from long nights of editing interviews and watching the really challenging stuff. But Be Kind Rewind was the most subversive movie at Sundance this year. So much so, I question the programmers even knew it.

The premise is straight from a sub-genre of comedy that has brought us such classics as Ski Patrol and One Crazy Summer (a perfect ball of ice cream for Gondry to hide his medicine in). Two slackers who while away their days in a hole-in-the-wall hangout–owned by a kindly old proprietor–have to raise more cash than they’ve ever seen or the hangout gets the wrecking ball. Antics ensue. The antics are brought to us by Jerry (Jack Black) and Mike (Mos Def) as they remake a library of hit Hollywood movies with a VHS camcorder when Jack Black inadvertently erases all the tapes at their neighborhood video shop (the hangout). The montages of their backyard productions are the stuff people will go to see this movie in droves for, and they are fall-down funny. However, these montages end partway through the story to make room for the proverbial “plot.”

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I was one of the many who enjoyed Morgan Spurlock’s debut feature documentary, Super Size Me, but mostly only because it came at the tail end of an anti-fast-food kick for me that began with Eric Schlosser’s 2001 book Fast Food Nation. By the time Spurlock showed up on the big screen with his silly McDonalds-only diet/experiment, I had already given up fast food two years prior, had lost 65 lbs. over the course of a summer (only partially as a result of not eating fast food, of course) and wasn’t exactly in need of convincing. But I was in the mood for some comedy, and Spurlock entertained as needed. Did he deserve the Oscar nomination? Not at all.

This time around he’s even less of a pioneer. In fact, I think the Where is Osama Bin Laden? jokes were already dated when Super Size Me hit theaters. This isn’t to say that I think the search for the terrorist should be over, nor that I think we should shrug off the topic of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda just because it’s been more than 6 years since 9/11. I just don’t see how a feature-length documentary, which from watching the trailer appears to consist of nothing more than Spurlock annoying people with his query, can keep the issue funny enough throughout its whole running time. Actually, thanks to the trailer I now have doubts that Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? is even funny for a minute of the film’s length. Of course, it received mixed reactions from Sundance last month, where Karina Kevin reviewed it somewhat favorably, so perhaps my doubts aren’t completely justifiable. Maybe this is just a failed trailer. Or maybe, judging by the little (also dated) joke on The Da Vinci Code (or is it on National Treasure?), this trailer is simply aimed at a broader audience with a broader (and simpler) sense of humor.

As of yet, The Weinstein Co. has not set a U.S. release date for the film.

Shopping With Filmmakers: The Zellner Bros.

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In another installment of his series of Sundance interviews, Joe Swanberg goes shopping for, um, “fine art” with David and Nathan Zellner, stars and co-directors of Goliath. The Zellners talk about working together as brothers, navigating the insanity of Sundance, and why they qualify as “total sluts.”

Shopping With Filmmakers: Margaret Brown

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In this video, shot at the Sundance Film Festival, Joe Swanberg goes shopping for Western wear with Margaret Brown, who talks about her excellent documentary, The Order of Myths. Brown talks about sleep deprivation, how filmmaker Michelange Quay provoked an “emotional” Myths Q & A, and why, “like it or not,” Sundance is a valuable launching pad for independent film.

An unforeseen hangover from the Sundance Film Festival, like the freezing and thawing of the earth, slowly drags up thoughts and pondering on the state of movies in America. The conclusion looks much like the political landscape: Two parties, sharply divided, moving further apart. Talking to Baghead director, Jay Duplass, and Zeroville author, Steve Erickson.

 

 FilmCouch 55 [29:45m]: Play Now | Download

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FilmCouch 55
Baghead

Here’s a catalog of the coverage we produced during the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. We’ll add any future posts that deal with the festival in the coming days to this list.

REVIEWS

Baghead

Stranded

Momma’s Man

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?

Roman Polanski: Wanted & Desired

Made in America

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures

Ballast

Bigger, Stronger, Faster

Timecrimes

Eat, For This Is My Body

Trouble the Water

INTERVIEWS

Azazel Jacobs (Momma’s Man)

Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes)

Greta Gerwig (Baghead)

Jay Duplass (Baghead)

The Zellner Brothers (Goliath)

Tia Lessin (Trouble the Water)

Chris Bell (Bigger, Stronger, Faster)

Mylika Davis and Jerome Anthony Hawkins (A Good Day to be Black and Sexy)

The Linguists

Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze)

Ballast

Diary of the Dead

FilmCouch from Sundance

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Captain Abu Raed, the first film to come out of Jordan in over 50 years, tells the story of an airport janitor who befriends children by telling them he’s an airline pilot. In this interview writer/director Amin Matalqa and stars Nadim Sawalha and Rana Sultan talk about the range of styles that influenced the film and the serendipitous events that led to the casting of the two lead roles.

Captain Abu Raed Interview

Also on SpoutBlog:

Chris offers his thoughts on the Captain Abu Raed trailer.

Kim Roberts happened to buy a $20 video camera just days before Hurricane Katrina hit her home city of New Orleans. The day before the storm hit, explaining why she was using the camera to record everything in sight, Kim was already talking apocalypse: “I’m showing the world that we still had a world, before the storm come,” she said, from behind the lens. “It’s like the Lord is upset, angry with New Orleans. And I don’t blame him.”

Roberts’ amateur video footage of her neighborhood shot before, during and after the storm is sprinkled throughout Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s documentary Trouble the Water, which just won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The footage itself has been billed as “harrowing,” but in practice most of it is too muddy and unfocused (literally on both counts) to make much of an impact. That said, the professionally shot material, of Roberts and her husband’s struggle to rebuild their lives after the storm, tells as powerful a story about the New Orleans diaspora as I’ve seen on film, from an angle unfamiliar. It plays out like a love story, with the Roberts’ turning their backs on their city in times of crisis, only to realize that their hearts are there after all.

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The festival is over, but we’ve still got a back-log of content to deliver. In this installment, I talk to Nathan and David Zellner. At last year’s festival their short about the mysteries of circumcision, Aftermath on Meadowlark Lane, got a lot of people talking. This year they return with Goliath, a feature about divorce, demotion, and a missing cat. For my money it has the best trailer of any film in the festival, check it out along with Chris’ thoughts here.

Zellner Brothers Interview

This morning, I called in to CNET’s new podcast, The 404, to talk about Sundance hits (Baghead, Timecrimes) and misses (The Wackness, Downloading Nancy), why the SAG Awards can’t replace The Oscars, and why Alec Baldwin’s looks have declined as his career has resurged (hint: age is only half of it). You can listen here.