Rock musicals about rock stars are almost as tiring as independent films about independent filmmakers. They’re too self-involved and too self-satisfying, and they typically have nothing for an objective viewer to grab hold of. But at least with rock musicals, if the audience can dig the music, they can maybe dig the movie, too. This has been the case, for me at least, with such films as Velvet Goldmine and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, neither of which I would have been so into were it not for their excellent glam rock soundtracks. And now the same goes for Rainbow Around the Sun, a neat little low-budget musical fantasy, which interestingly enough also has a touch of glam in its songs, about a very cliché band leader and his very cliché drinking problem and his very cliché story of heartbreak.

Here, more than the songs, though, it’s the musical numbers, many of which work on their own as great music videos, that really kept me interested. That tired tale of the troubled, tortured artist/poet/rock star is merely a thin thread for Rainbow Around the Sun, which was adapted from an autobiographical album of the same name by Matthew Alvin Brown, who also stars in the film as singer-guitarist-drunk Zachary Blasto. The plot is like an afterthought, concocted only to connect the album tracks and their “videos”, and though the songs seem like they’re supposed to comment on the story, it’s really apparent that it came about the other way around, that the story is in fact meant only to put the songs into a context. I’d probably have enjoyed it as much, if not more, though, without the loose narrative and its underdeveloped scenes. The film could still have been what it actually is anyway: a cinematic concept album.

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Call me crazy (again), but I really like Tarsem’s debut feature, The Cell. If I had any complaints, though, it would be that there wasn’t enough visual stimuli. I’m sure others would have preferred a better story instead, but I have a greater appreciation for those films that are primarily meant to be looked at, and not as much followed. Favorites include Terry Giliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Julie Taymor’s Titus and Zhang Yimou’s Hero, though I could probably go on and on. It’s an interesting affection coming from me, a guy occasionally inclined to criticize Hollywood’s spectacle-over-substance model of blockbustering. But I can’t help falling for a combination of beautiful cinematography and art direction. I shouldn’t, but I’ll even admit to enjoying What Dreams May Come – with my eyes wide open and my ears plugged shut, of course.

The problem, though, with filmmakers like Tarsem and the rest is that eventually their painterly visions may dry up or become repetitive or obvious, or they’ll simply fail to reach enough of an audience that they cease to acquire enough funding to adequately present their style believably. I’ve already grown bored with Taymor and Zhang (Gilliam hopefully still has some surprises), and I’m thinking it won’t take long for me to tire of Tarsem, too. As gorgeous as his sophomore effort, The Fall, looks, it also seems a bit cheap, as if it had only the budget of one of his music videos (he directed R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” and Deep Forest’s “Lullaby”). Yet perhaps it only feels like that to me now because I’m viewing the film as a short montage of shots. I’m willing to give any of these visionary filmmakers a chance until they disappoint me enough that I scream (figuratively, through criticism, that is — see any of my mentions of Taymor’s Across the Universe around the web).

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Here is my follow-up to last month’s question of what mainstream movie will feature on the most top ten movie lists. And the winner is … Ratatouille. Oh wait, didn’t I disqualify that one for being too obvious? No? Well, I should have. Yes, according to Movie City News’ Big Ass Chart (aka Scorecard) of critics’ top tens, the Pixar movie made it on to 51 best-of lists, making it the best-grossing best movie of the year. But maybe it wasn’t the most mainstream, if you define mainstream as studio-produced fare. Under that qualification Zodiac was the best mainstream movie of 2007, having been made jointly by Warner Bros. and Paramount and showing up on 70 best-of lists. Other Warner successes include Michael Clayton, which featured on 54 lists, Sweeney Todd, which received 44 mentions, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which showed up on one list, and Letters From Iwo Jima, which showed up a little late on one list.

As far as those mainstream movies I predicted would feature heavily, Knocked Up (34 lists) ended up defeating Superbad (25 lists) — meanwhile, the third Judd Apatow movie of the year, Walk Hard, managed to get on one critic’s list — though both were actually behind The Bourne Ultimatum (28 lists), when it came to “average vote” (average numerical placement on the list). If we’re going by mainstream appeal (and if Karina is correct in her view of the film), then Juno was the best mainstream comedy of the year with 63 lists. Hairspray (13 lists) beat out its crappy musical siblings Across the Universe (7 lists) and Enchanted (8 lists). In addition to showing up on Richard Corliss’ list, Beowulf managed 3 other mentions. And Transformers not only showed up on a top ten list, it featured on 3! Of course, it’s more surprising that Spider-Man 3 made it on 4 lists. The greatest thing to happen, of course, was Manohla Dargis listing The Kingdom as one of her favorites. Joining her is Don Payne. If I had made a top ten list (instead of this thing), the film could very well have beaten Transformers. Oh well, at least nobody put the shocking blockbuster Alvin and the Chipmunks on their list … yet.

Good thing Veruca Salt (the girl, not the band) doesn’t have a movie up for Best Picture this year. She’d probably shout at her daddy, “Hey, Denzel’s got two! I want another one!” And hopefully Grandpa Joe (Here that would be Joe Wright, whose Atonement received seven nominations) would turn around and mumble that she needs a good kick in the pants.

But really, looking at the Golden Globe nominees this morning, I’m wondering why the Hollywood Foreign Press Association couldn’t just pick one of Denzel Washington’s films, so that one category wouldn’t make the rest of the list seem so lopsided. Surely there were two more comedy/musical contenders that could have been added on, too. Heck, let’s just nominate everybody and call it a year, shall we?

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• Advancing the dangerous notion that an Oscar is the first step to the Nobel Prize, Variety asks An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim and producer Laurie David to confirm that “the film played a part” in Al Gore’s Nobel lauding. Meanwhile, the Guardian reveals that the film’s recent battle for educational clearance in Britain was engineered by “a Scottish quarrying magnate who established a controversial lobbying group to attack environmentalists’ claims about global warming.”
• According to Pamela McClintock, Across the Universe has managed “by the far the best showing among specialty releases so far this fall” by drawing repeat visits from teenage girls. Meanwhile, the under-marketed expansion of The Assassination of Jesse James was, as could only be expected, a failure, grossing less than $400,000 on 163 screens.
• Taylor Hackford will direct his wife, Helen Mirren, in Love Ranch, about “a couple who opened the first legal brothel in Nevada and the violence that resulted when their relationship was tested by infidelity.”

You can expect one more Toronto-related segment on next week’s FilmCouch, but until then, our coverage of the 2007 Toronto Film Festival is complete. Here’s a round-up of our reviews; all were contributed by Karina, except where otherwise noted.

Across the Universe: “The tween and teen girls fueling the success of High School Musical and Hairspray, who willingly ingest those god-awful Ford music videos on American Idol without understanding the relationship between content and commerce–they’re not going to care that Universe is “too literal”, and they’re definitely not going to shun it for being pretentious.”
Atonement:  “There are no direct parallels to contemporary conflicts in Atonement, only the very general nod to the ways in which large-scale wars fundamentally alter lives…by making a sweeping, war-torn love story that refuses to directly comment on contemporary events, in a roundabout way Joe Wright draws attention to the impossibility of wringing romantic propaganda out of Iraq.”

Operation Filmmaker: “Whether her subject is serious about the movie business or not, Davenport gives Muthana’s plight extra resonance by cross-cutting between footage of real, blood violence in Iraq, and scenes of Muthana on the fake blood-soaked set of Doom. Can you blame the guy for pulling out all the stops to stay in the realm where the piles of corpses are only make-believe?”

Nightwatching: “I absolutely loved the first 15 minutes of the film, in which Greenaway introduces us to Rembrandt, his somewhat fantastic home life, and his unconventional but deeply touching bond with his wife Saskia”

Control: “Anton Corbijn’s film smashes the music biopic mold by portraying the star at its center not as a mythological creature, but as a real-life, fucked-up kid in over his head.”

Heavy Metal in Baghdad: “It’s a film in which the people that we went over there ostensibly to liberate show and tell details that demonstrate the complete lack of freedom of a life lived “in between the terrorists and the troops.” It’s not just that the members of Acrassicauda have suffered a severe quality-of-life downgrade; it’s that their lives have become so brutal that they’ve resigned themselves to not caring whether or not they live or die.”

The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford: “It’s likely the most “difficult” film produced with Hollywood money and starring an A-list star since Eyes Wide Shut. It demands repeat viewings, and as such, it’ll either be a massive commercial failure, or it’ll touch off a new wave of American cinephilia.”

Elizabeth: The Golden Age: “The film hits its absolute peak of absurdist pleasure with Elizabeth on that horse, and the rest plays out like the last 20 minutes of a Busby Berkeley film: with narrative and emotional stakes obliterated, we’re treated to a meaningless parade of CGI explosions and really, really cool headdresses.”

Juno: “Juno’s one truly revelatory element stems from screenwriter Diablo Cody’s apparent intention to have her title character serve, at least in part, as a device through which to examine the sexual desires of teenage girls.” [reviewed at Telluride]

I’m Not There: “I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for concept films (Memento: OMG, it’s backwards!), but this went way beyond that. Every scene is a delicious layer cake of cultural references and multiple meanings.” [reviewed by Kevin at Telluride]

The Savages: “It was a good decision on Jenkins’ part to not spend any time in flashbacks or expository dialogue about back story. She stays in the present and let’s the past way on Linney and Hoffman’s faces as they try to reconcile their guilt over caring for a father they’d rather just be dead.” [reviewed by Paul at Telluride]

Encounters at the End of the World: “He’s a funny narrator, not nearly so severe as in Grizzly Man. But it is Werner Herzog. So, although he’s funny, he’s constantly reminding us we’re all doomed.” [reviewed by Paul at Telluride]

It’s the final installment of Reeler TV from Toronto, and I’m terribly jealous that Stu got to interview Peter Bogdanovich. But, I got over my grudge just in time to talk about some of the final films that I caught at the festival, including Across the Universe.

Previous episodes:

Episode 1: Neil Jordan & Terrance Howard on The Brave One; Juno

Episode 2: Scott Hicks; Love Songs; Heavy Metal in Baghdad

Episode 3: Anton Corbijn/Control 

Episode 4: Phil Donahue/Body of War; Operation Filmmaker

Julie Taymor’s long-awaited Beatles-fueled musical seems to have split critics neatly into two camps. There are people like Aaron Dobbs and Anne Thompson, who give Taymor’s spin art 60s pastiche an A for effort, but ultimately concede that the film could, at the very least, stand to have some rainbow-hued fat cut. Then there are the full-on haters, like the journalist I spoke to immediately after yesterday’s press screening, who used the phrase “literally retarded,” and Glenn Kenny, who compares the “mortifyingly soft-headed” experience to “watching Sesame Street.”

They’re all right, and they’re all wrong. The first hour of Across the Universe was nowhere near as bad as I feared it would be; the remaining hour+ was worse. It’s not an experience I would recommend for any obsessive Beatles fan (you’d never be able to stand the fast-food commercial instrumentation), and Taymor’s refusal to deal with the dissolution of the counterculture will infuriate hippie cynics.

But I’m absolutely positive that a shorter cut, stripped of some of the forced multiculturalism and contemporary political references, would play like gangbusters in middle schools.

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MTV’s Movie Blog is trumpeting two exclusive new trailers for Across the Universe, Julie Taymor’s big budget period musical starring a pre-Marilyn Manson Evan Rachel Wood and set to the songs of The Beatles. These trailers are super different from the film’s international trailer, which Sony implanted on YouTube a few weeks ago. Where as the international spot seemed to play up the film’s non-musical elements (epic scope, romantic and political subplots, Taymor’s patented baroque psychedellia), these new trailers seem squarely aimed at the High School Musical crowd.

It’s probably a smart move for Sony to hedge their bets like this: the new, music-video-on-crack trailers have a shot at reaching the kids who are currently pushing Hairspray to $100 million, while the international trailer might lure their Boomer parents. But the both sets of trailers would seem to give credence to an idea disseminated by the hatchet job Nikki Finke wrote on Taymor back in March: it now seems probable that the movie Sony is unveling at Toronto next month is very different from the movie they hired Taymor to make.

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