Both The Dark Knightand Man on Wirewere phenomenally successful at the box office this past weekend. The former, a huge Hollywood blockbuster based on a comic book, broke the record for greatest second weekend ever and the record for quickest movie to break the $300 million mark. The latter, an award-winning documentary about a man who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers, had the best non-IMAX per-screen average and the best opening for a documentary so far this year.
But the two films have more in common than their box office achievements, and I detail ten similarities between them below. My reason for the comparisons––some of which are, I admit, a bit of a stretch––is not just for the amusement of highlighting parallels between a blockbuster and a documentary. Rather, I hope that this list will encourage the millions of people who saw The Dark Knight to also seek out and watch Man on Wire, which is by far my favorite film of the year, so far, and is quite possibly the best doc I’ve seen in years.
Man on Wire certainly features everything that’s entertaining about The Dark Knight — save for a posthumous performance from Heath Ledger — though it does have a terrific posthumous performance by the World Trade Center. And it also appeals to moviegoers who aren’t into comic book movies (even those as non-comic-book-movie-like as TDK), too.
Criminal Clowns - Man on Wire’s Philippe Petit and The Dark Knight’s Joker (Heath Ledger) are each a form of jester jailed for unlawful acts. Petit doesn’t kill anyone, of course, and The Joker exhibits no ability to juggle, perform magic tricks or ride on a unicycle. Yet the two clowns share a common bond: neither can really answer the question of why they do what they do. Sure, their respective motives may be labeled — Petit acts out of pure passion; The Joker is an agent for chaos — but not in any way that satisfies the police or media. Man on Wire’s inclusion of a hilarious press conference held by the NYPD wins points over The Dark Knight’s cliché use of anger-filled interrogation scene. …Read more
So Page Six has published an email from a character identified only as “The Final Nail,” claiming that a Weinstein-era Miramax tell-all book is in the works, based on records and audio recordings kept by Stuart Meltzer, an assistant to Bob Weinstein who died in the World Trade Center on September 11. Mr. Nail says his book “will detail the day-to-day . . . manipulation of the Disney company by the Weinstein Bros.”
Maybe last week, this would have seemed like a big deal. But just a couple of days ago, the Village Voice published a long story by editor-in-chief Tony Ortega, based on his “accidental” scavenging of Weinstein’s trash. Page Six couldn’t get a comment from a Weinstein on their anonymously sourced story, but Ortega was able to put together a decent profile of the current state of TWC, and even got Harvey on the record to joke about it: “You want more of my garbage? How about a couple of shirts out of my laundry?”
There’s obviously something tacky about this masked writer peddling a book based on the archives of a 9/11 victim, as if Meltzer was martyred to ensure that the truth of Miramax would someday be known. Why all the secrecy, when it’s apparently copacetic journalism to call Harvey up and tell him you’re going to publish memos that you found in his trash?
At this point in the festival, it’s hard for me to make room in my schedule for films screening purely in the market when there’s competition stuff to see at the same time (although I did see Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours today, and that was totally worth it––more later). And so on Thursday morning, I’ll be watching Philippe Garrel’s Frontier of Dawn during the sole screening of Able Danger, a neo-noir “spoof” of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. We turn, once again, to the official Marche du Film guide for a synopsis:
Probably in part thanks to the Tribeca Film Festival’s new pre-fest review embargo, it’s been extremely difficult thus far to get a sense of which of the festivals many, many titles are actually worth seeking out and seeing. I’m sure the embargo has a purpose, but the fact remains that we’re now five days away from opening night, and we’re starring down a festival devoid of buzz. As someone trying to figure out how to cover the thing, I’m in the odd position of reevaluating givens: I don’t know what to do with the rest of the lineup, but I know Tom Hall’s last blog post makes me think Speed Racer looks fucking awesome.
So spelunking the catalog, all I really have to go on is keywords. And, my my, what keywords do we have for the Encounters selection, The Objective: A horror film. Set in Afghanistan, beginning three days after 9/11. About a Special Ops mission in search of an Al Qaeda nukes stash, gone horribly wrong. Directed by Daniel Myrick, best known as the co-director of The Blair Witch Project. Are our jaws dropping in unison?
It’s the kind of film everyone would be talking about, if only Tribeca would let us review it before it premieres. But, they didn’t put an embargo on reviewing the trailer…
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 KarinaKevin 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.
Maybe I read too much Curbed, but it seems we’ve been having a lot of construction accidents in New York City lately (actually, the Daily News has also taken notice). So, while watching the new teaser trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, I couldn’t help but think about last Wednesday’s tragedy in Brooklyn involving a man falling 13 stories to his death. The trailer, which features construction workers throwing themselves off a site due to some strange “happening” that causes people to suddenly commit suicide, may hit too close to home for other people, too. A few blogs and forums have noted the similarity to the images of airborne jumpers/fallers from the World Trade Center on 9/11 (this wouldn’t be the first time Shyamalan made a 9/11 metaphor).
Now, I’m not the kind of guy to normally get sensitive about trailers unintentionally evoking tragedy (I thought it was unnecessary for trailers for The Coreto be pulled following the Columbia disaster, but I guess I’m heartless). But this one hit me differently. Maybe it’s because these accidents are more of an ongoing/continuing problem, and certainly I’m also letting my bias against most NYC real estate developers get me heated up. However, I don’t think the trailer should be pulled — no, I’d rather it be seen by enough locals who might also relate the imagery to the tragedies.
With almost three months to go before opening night, the Tribeca Film Festival launched a publicity blitz this morning designed to rehab the festival’s troubled image. Before a press release hyping lowered ticket prices and a concentration of venues landed in my inbox around 9:30 AM, I had already read two interviews with the festival’s co-executive director Nancy Schafer, in the New York Post and the New York Sun. Why this much media, and why now? Who knows. But as Schafer acknowledges in the Post story that her festival has to compete with SXSW for post-Sundance premieres, it might be reasonable to assume they wanted to make a little bit of noise the day before South By releases their full lineup and proceeds to commandeer the attention of a certain sector of the blogosphere for a month and a half. They may not have the films, but they sure do have the publicists!
Someone appears to be exploiting 9/11–but is it the marketers of Cloverfield, or Fox News? For Chris Thilk, the key takeaway from this video is that “Fox News is a half-rate news organization that’s willing to reference 9/11 at the drop of the hat, even if it’s for a story about why Taco Bell should never run another ad because someone bought a taco on that day.”
The Consumerist describes the ad-supported PDF model that Kevin Kelly is using to release his new book, True Films 3.0: 200 Documentaries You Must See Before You Die
So Page Six has published an email from a character identified only as “The Final Nail,” claiming that a Weinstein-era Miramax tell-all book is in the works, based on records and audio recordings kept by Stuart Meltzer, an assistant to Bob Weinstein who died in the World Trade Center on September 11. Mr. Nail says his book “will detail the day-to-day . . . manipulation of the Disney company by the Weinstein Bros.”
