The Sundance Lineup: What does it all mean? The Hollywood Reporter’s story grumbles that a high percentage of filmmakers who got the call “seem to come out of nowhere”; you may call it a good day for independent film, but they seem to think it’s a red flag. Meanwhile, at Variety, noted blog skeptic Todd McCarthy doesn’t quote Geoff Gilmore directly on the matter, but says the Sundance director “suspects that the blogging phenomenon that has unleashed a torrent of personal opinion online may, in a way more metaphorical than literal, have influenced the filmmakers.”
Anton Corbijn’s Controlswept the British Independent Film Awards last night, taking five trophies, including Best British Independent Film. Julien Temple’s Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten took the doc prize.
Woody Allen has had a falling out with Mediapro, the Catelan production company that was to shepherd three upcoming Allen films, including the already-shot Vicky Cristina Barcelona. There was a bit of controversy last summer during the filming of Vicky, when it was revealed in the local press that 10% of the movie’s budget had been paid by the city of Barcelona.
A number of films that we’ve covered previously on SpoutBlog are either opening or expanding this weekend:
Across the Universe: Julie Taymor’s Beatles musical has grossed almost $9 million over the last month in limited release, mainly drawing (as I predicted) repeat crowds of young women. The weekend, it expands to just under 1,000 screens. I’m not personally much of a fan, but I figure every generation of teenage stoners-cum-theater brats need a Hair, and I can’t begrudge them that. Read my Toronto coverage here.
Control: I was a big fan of Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis biopic at Toronto. In hindsight, I do wonder if the film will fall flatter for those who don’t go in with an emotional attachment to Joy Division’s music. But it’s still a fascinating character study, and of course, the cinematography is tremendously satisfying. Read my Toronto review here.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age: Destined to become some kind of camp classic, this sequel to 1998’s Elizabeth is artless at concealing its Freudian metaphors in a way that only truly miscalculated films can be. At Toronto, I wrote: “The Golden Age plays out in a very binary, comic-book reminiscent universe, in which Spain isn’t merely a sovereign nation pursing interests in conflict to that of Britain–the country as a whole is a supernatural embodiment of evil…The Queen is able to bounce from emotional devastation to patriotic warmongering with a flick of a switch; for the rest of us, the transition may not be as easy.”
The Darjeeling Limited: Another shot of crack for fans of Wes Anderson’s visual style, but with a stronger emphasis on character than some of his recent outings. If the idea of a film revolving around a set of limited-edition Marc Jacobs luggage sounds really annoying, this may not be the film for you. But watch the short-film prequel, Hotel Chevalier, on iTunes, read my coverage from NYFF, and if your Anderson allergy hasn’t yet flared up, go see the movie.
I’m way too tired (three film festivals in as many weeks will do that to you) and far too far removed from academia to make a coherent argument on this right now, but in trying to make a dent in my backed-up feed reader I came across some fascinating, British Marxist rumination on Joy Division. I think some of this writing might help me reconcile the two portraits of the band/singer Ian Curtis that I saw in Toronto: Grant Gee’s documentary Joy Division (which I have not yet had time to write about) and Anton Corbijn’s nominal Curtis biopic, Control (which I reviewed rather rapturously here).
Of specific concern: Gee’s provocative but not exactly fully realised thesis, that the story of Joy Division is synonymous with the story of the band’s home town of Manchester; and the philosophical concept of hauntology. You can find workable definitions of hauntology here and here, but both skew towards Derrida on one end, and music theory on the other. In relation to these two films, I think it’s more useful to simply think of hauntology as a tool with which to posit Ian Curtis as spectral presence in Control, and Joy Division as the ghost haunting Manchester in Joy Division.
ReelerTV is back with another episode from Toronto. This time around, Stu talks to Anton Corbijn, director of the amazing Control, and Karina offers up her thoughts on the film.Previous installments:
Ian Curtis (Sam Riley) is about 18. He lives with his parents in Macclesfield, England, in a massive suburban housing complex with rounded safety windows that look like 1960s TV screens. He goes to school, but sits through his classes in a near fugue state. One day he brings home a vinyl copy of Aladdin Sane, which he listens to whilst wearing a fur coat over his bare chest, and simultaneously smoking and applying eyeliner. In the middle of this ritual, a friend comes over with a girl. The girl and Ian lock eyes in Ian’s bedroom mirror while she’s making out with his friend. After the girl and the friend leave, Ian sings along with David Bowie and plots stardom, imagining himself the toast of New York’s Warhol-centric counterculture. A star is born … and doomed.
Anton Corbijn’s Control 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. The Joy Division frontman’s talent doesn’t drop out of the sky; it’s something he keeps to himself until, after enough practice in front of the mirror, he’s sure he’s got it right. Likewise, his tragedies are almost entirely of his own doing, born from a borderline pathological desire to seize control of himself and the world around him, and exacerbated by his immature inability to do so. Particularly in the balance it finds between transcendence and dread in suburban family life, Control has a lot more in common with the British realism of the films of Mike Leigh than it does with even the recent wave of rock-star-as-antihero pics like Walk the Line. Corbijn’s actors, particularly Riley, hauntingly recreate the band’s image and sound, but the director is really only concerned with the milestones of the band’s career in so far as they give him an opportunity to talk about Curtis’ personal struggles.
Less than 48 hours after reutrning to New York from Telluride, I’m back at LaGaurdia waiting for a flight to Toronto. A couple of weeks back, I made a list of 15 films that I planned to see during my four days in Canada. I made a bit of a dent in that list last weekend in Telluride, and had to drop a few titles due to the press screening schedule. After the jump, you’ll find my revised list. Assuming my flight is on time, I plan to hit three or four of these today and tonight.
In anticipation of seeing Anton Corbijn’s Control at Toronto next week (FYI, that film took a couple of prizes at the Edinburgh Film Festival this past weekend), I’ve been watching some of Corbijn’s music videos on YouTube and iFilm. In the late 80s/early 90s, Corbijn was to go-to guy for Euro-bands looking for something grainy and either black-and-white or in washed-out color, in which they could sulk bitterly whilst stalking around either city or countryside, surrounded with what looked like low-rent Helmut Newton girls in various 80s costumes, and eventually resolve some of the underlying tension and hostility in some suggestion of light S & M.
Several of ourfavoriteblogs have noted the passing of British music impresario Tony Wilson. Manchester tastemaker Wilson (who was played by Steve Coogan in Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People) founded Factory Records, and is generally considered at least partially responsible for launching the careers of The Fall, OMD and Joy Division (and later New Order).
Wilson is portrayed by Craig Parkinson in Anton Corbijn’s upcoming Joy Division film Control, which will screen at the Toronto Film Festival before opening in the States in October. This gives me the excuse I’ve been waiting for to make the Control trailer our Clip of the Day. It’s embedded above.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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The Sundance Lineup
A number of films that we’ve covered previously on SpoutBlog are either opening or expanding this weekend:
