In his post on the Berlin Film Festiva’s jury prizes, the bulk of which were handed out on Saturday night, David Hudson predicted that some of the selections “will not sit well with many of the people I spoke with or the critics I read throughout the festival,” and man, was he right. The Golden Bear went to The Elite Squad (or Tropa de Elite), Brazilian filmmaker Jose Padilha’s action drama about drugs and military police in mid-90s Rio, and to say that this film was not a critical favorite would be an understatement.
Noting that the “overwhelming ugliness of [The Elite Squad] has stayed with me,” Shane Danielson at indieWIRE was one of many to cite the film’s “genuinely fascist sensibility…Since when did Mike Huckabee start scripting action-thrillers?” And that was published before the award was announced––Jurgen Fauth’s post on the matter seems to sum up the thoughts of many in the wake of the announcement: “From where I’m sitting over a Hefeweizen, the Berlinale’s top award couldn’t have gone to a worse film.”
So why, and how, did it happen? Filmbrain is calling conspiracy:
At the IFC Blog, Alison Willmore unpacks the wildly divisive buzz surrounding Filth and Wisdom. “On one side is the urge to wield the long knife one’s probably been sharpening since the film’s presence at the festival was announced, and on the other is, perhaps, that wild contrarian compulsion to hold up the sure-to-be-maligned film as a misunderstood masterpiece.” Meanwhile, Jurgen Fauth defends his positive exit Twitter.
Mike Jones has the winners of the Teddys, Berlinale’s juried queer film prizes. Matt Dentler got the news via a call from winner Olaf de Fleur, whose The Amazing Truth about Queen Raquela will be making its US premiere at SXSW next month. See a “making of” short above.
At Salon, Stephanie Zacharek is less than impressed with Shine a Light and Standard Operating Procedure, but she found God in Fernando Eimbcke’s Lake Tahoe.
Jurgen Fauth has nothing but praise for Heavy Metal in Baghdad (we felt pretty much the same when we saw it in Toronto), the screening of which, Jurgen says, “was so oversold that I ended up in the front row, effectively watching a distorted fun house mirror version of Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti’s documentary.”
“Most of the European critics came down pretty hard on Petri Kotwica’s Black Ice, a film in competition from Finland,” notes Filmbrain, “But I found this deliciously dark drama about dangerous deceptions to be a good bit of trashy fun.” Mr. Grant is far less enthusiastic about In Love We Trust and Just Anybody.
Daniel Kasman is not entirely sold on Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, but he concedes “Maddin’s humor comes through perhaps stronger in this film than any other (he narrates himself, with dialog by regular collaborator George Toles), pushing an obsessive, if not repetitive, theme of the life of a city and the life of a boy being an inescapable series of traumatic, almost unreal conflicts and co-minglings of unreturnable pasts and their dream-like traces in the present.” Also at The Auteurs Notebook: an extremely memorable one-liner from Klaus Kinski’s “notorious one man show,” Jesus Christ Saviour.
A giddy-seeming Madonna leaked details of her future filmmaking plans, in an interview with indieWIRE posted yesterday:
“I have other ideas swirling in my head,” Madonna said coyly when asked what else is on tap. For now she also has a new doc, “I Am Because We Are,” that will make its way around the festival circuit this Spring (apparently with stops in Tribeca and Cannes). She is also prepping another feature that she hopes to direct. It will “take place in New York, London and Paris,” she said of the new project, before quickly turning to her publicist, and smiling, “Oops, I don’t know if I should have said that.”
See also: the Spiegel interview above, in which Madonna comes precariously close to making a “Like a Virgin” reference when assessing the rush of bringing her directorial debut to market. If I was Madonna, I’d unleash direct “Like a Virgin” references in interviews all the time––not only would it be good for back-catalogue sales, but I think I’d feel the need to remind everyone that my whole career, the whole reinvention gambit, is all about being “touched [as if] for the very first time.”
I don’t actually sit around and think about what I would do if I were Madonna. Really. I swear.
They’re calling it an exclusive, which we’re sure won’t be accurate for long, but for the time being the Times Online has the first full review of Madonna’s directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom. Again, this seems like a case of a filmmaker winning by vaulting over an extremely low-set bar, but as far as three-star reviews go, this one’s damn near hyperbolic. Unless we’re just talking about everyone in the same sentence as Robert Altman these days? Here’s the nut graph:
Yet despite its many shortcomings and an ending so mushy and neat it would embarrass Richard Curtis, Madonna has done herself proud. Her film has an artistic ambition that has simply bypassed her husband, the film director Guy Ritchie. She captures that wonderfully accidental nature of luck when people’s lives intersect for a whole swathe of unlikely but cherishable reasons. Altmanesque would be stretching the compliment too far, but Filth and Wisdom shows Madonna has real potential as a film director.
You can check out some of Madonna’s, um, potential, in the clip above. I have no idea what the announcer is saying (and yet us know if you do), but you can make out a bit of Filth and Wisdom behind it. Meanwhile, if you were Guy Ritchie––and had run your once-promising (I mean, some of you like Snatch, right?) career into the ground by first remaking a socialist/misogynist classic with your pop star wife in the lead, then by allowing said pop star wife to infuse your next generic gangster picture with Kabbalah bullshit––how many reviews like this would you stick around for?
UPDATE: You can watch a more complete, foreign voice-over-free clip at indieWIRE. And this one has strippers! Also, I added a question mark to the headline of this post, because after watching the new clip, I think Filth and Wisdom’s Altman cred is truly up for debate.
The biggest news of the day thus far coming out of the Berlin Film Festival? Madonna’s directorial debut screened…and it wasn’t that bad. Let’s go to the Twitters:
IDrinkYourMilkshake.com mastermind Jurgen Fauth manages to squeeze a headline and a rating into 140 characters: “Berlinale Shocker: Madonna’s Filth and Wisdom not awful at all! ***” And Andrew Grant of Benten Films/Filmbrain fame more or less concurs. “Madonna’s directorial debut Filth and Wisdom could use more of both, but surprisingly it aint half bad!”
Of course, there could be some crazy festival alchemy in the works here––as we know, the critical crowds have been somewhat underwhelmed by the competition offerings thus far, and it would be hard to imagine a film for which expectations could have been any lower. But still, it’s rather heartening to hear that an aging, walking punchline of a pop star can still swoop in to an international film festival and steal attention away from an apparentlymediocre issue film directed by a name-brand, Oscar winning filmmaker. Hooray for meritocracy!
Above: a sample of Madonna’s recent musical output. I saw the title and really hoped it was a cover of the Van Halen song, but alas…
Juno is honored as a work of “Cinema For Peace” on the same night a Czech party runs out of beer. Mike Jones enumerates those, and other signs of the apocalypse.
Brit Withey isn’t feeling the doomsday vibe––he’s just bored. “So, halfway into the festival and so far, at least the competition screenings have been met with a general ho-hum-ness.”
Unfortunately, it looks like Brit is not alone. With half the competition slate already screened, There Will Be Blood is apparently the clear front-runner for the Golden Bear, but no one wants to give an award that’s supposed to be about discovery to an Oscar-nominated Hollywood film.
Variety offers a pre-screening feature on Errol Morris’ Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure. Says Michael Barker of the film’s distributor, Sony Classics: “One of the things that I love about the film is that you watch it and you are in the shoes of the common soldier who committed all these acts, and you tell yourself, ‘That could be me.’” We doubt such testimony will win over skeptics, but early word from the choir (ie: my super-liberal Facebook friend) is positive.
The Circuit has pictures from The Weinstein Company’s party, which was held in “a strange concrete bunker” outfitted with a bumper car dance floor. Also, Patti Smith is apparently going around telling people she is “beyond gender,” which cleverly preempts any joke we could have made.
Also at Mike Jones’ festival blog, a diary entry from Vicci Ho, member of the Berlinale Teddy jury. Apparently, assigned seats don’t mean much at this festival.
Shane Meadows is showing a new feature in Berlin, featuring his This is England star Thomas Turgoose. Variety explains why you haven’t heard about it.
“Not a gore fest by any means - it would likely get a PG-13 rating in the US - the film is a tightly plotted, exceptionally well shot thrill ride that sets the rules of its world very early on, lets the audience know what to expect and then executes flawlessly.” Todd Brown reviews Dark Floors, “the Finnish horror film conceived and created as a starring vehicle for Finnish metal act Lordi,” at Twitch.
The FILMMAKER Blog points to the launch of The Auteurs, a new site that will offer full-length classic and art house features for download. The site will also have an editorial and social networking component. I’ve requested a beta invite, and I’ll post more on the site once I’ve had a chance to explore.
Surfer Girl devotes twoposts to the meme that there may be an “interactive There Will Be Blood milkshake drinking” game in the works. I think the Juno game meme was the final straw––I think I have finally, fully slipped into a state in which the ironic walls have closed in so tight that I can no longer even tell when I’m being fucked with. Via Scanners.
Maybe I’m Not There would have worked better if more of Todd Haynes’ collaborators actually cared about Bob Dylan. Says Stephen Malkmus, who recorded several Dylan songs that appear in the movie, “I was more into Creedence Clearwater Revival…Dylan was a punk-rock guy and his records are undeniably genius. But you don’t know what’s going to speak to you, and his music didn’t for me.”
Chris Thilk approves of the poster for Fool’s Gold. I think. “[T]his poster is good at selling the movie based on the personalities (and breasts) of the two actors involved. Get them smiling at each other, turn them a shade of yellow that’s only slightly removed from the residents of Springfield, hint at a tropical location by putting water in the background and you’re finished.”
Brit Withey of Denver Film Festival fame has surprising news from the Berlinale: “…you can no longer smoke anywhere. I’m fine with this in the United States and I knew it was coming in France…but Berlin? Christ…”
Juno is honored as a work of “Cinema For Peace” on the same night a Czech party runs out of beer. 
