So, this week almost had an ABAB pattern as far as Bloggery topics go. Two posts devoted to Brunoand now two devoted to Wolverine. If only we had six of these a week I could make it all paired up with an additional Bloggery post focused on how Regal cinemas allegedly won’t show Ice Age 3in 3D if Fox indeed pushes the entire cost of 3D glasses onto theatre owners. I guess it’s not that big a deal to film bloggers, though, anyway. They’re much too excited about the non-trade-confirmed casting news of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddie Krueger for the Nightmare on Elm Streetreboot (all I can think of is Freddie cutting off penises — even his own — with his glove). As one of the few horror franchises I liked growing up, Elm Street is too sacred for me, as is Robert Englund as Krueger, to bother skimming the posts celebrating the remake, and Haley in it. So, instead, I’m going back to the other clawed character making headlines this week, because the X-Men Origins: Wolverine piracy story is just too big* to have been covered in one post:
It finally happened: my obsession with MSNBC has dovetailed with legitimate movie news! Sort of!
Tonight the New York Times broke the news that over a year ago, Dan Mirvish (filmmaker and co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival) and Eitan Gorlin (whose directorial debut, The Holy Land, won the Grand Jury Prize at that festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award) made up a fake adviser to John McCain named Martin Eisenstadt. On Monday, MSNBC’s David Schuster reported on air that Martin Eisenstadt had taken credit for the “Palin thinks Africa is a country” leak. Eisenstadt had indeed published a post on his blog (tagline: “Because freedom isn’t free”) claiming to be the leaker, which no one at MSNBC bothered to look into deeply before Schuster’s report, otherwise they might have discovered that Eisenstadt a) is a made up person, and b) didn’t actually talk to Carl Cameron, the Fox news reporter who broke the “anonymous sources say Palin doesn’t know Africa is a continent” story.
Forty years after the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, protesters are looking to repeat history in Denver this week. In fact there’s even a group calling itself “Recreate ‘68″, and if you’re a true internerd, you’ve already seen the popular YouTube clip of the crowd chanting “Fuck Fox News” at a Fox News correspondent (check out the other side here).
After so many attempts at making parallels between ‘68 and ‘08, I’m a little bored of the nostalgia, and I think the retro attitude is past the point of showing its ineffectiveness. Earlier this year, I groaned at the use of a modern (though really, mostly decade-old) soundtrack in the ‘68 DNC-set animated documentary Chicago 10. Yet two years prior to that film’s 2007 premiere at Sundance, I had already seen a failed attempt to callback ‘68 with the Medium Coolhomage This Revolution, the trailer for which is today’s clip of the day.
My version of The Godfather would open with a voice in the darkness saying, “I don’t believe in America. The American Dream is a once-beguiling fairy tale; show’s over, y’all.” But The Dream is still real to many people, and the violence that powerful private interests have done to it in the last century pains them like a kidney punch.
Gonzo journalism pioneer Hunter S. Thompson was one of the wounded, and so is Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Darkside), the far more straight-laced director of the entertaining documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. They share a proprietary sense of outrage over abuses of power they’ve witnessed in their times. For them, America’s Nixons, Enrons and Bush-Cheneys have desecrated the church, the front lawn. For all their passionate trouble-making, there’s no denying that Gibney and the late Thompson, two white males who came up through America’s hallowed institutions (Thompson through the U.S. Air Force; Gibney through Yale), are insiders.
When I went to interview Gibney about Gonzo, I remembered the film’s procession of leathery right-wingers and elites, former Thompson nemeses, who have warm, friendly things to say about “Dr. Gonzo” now that he’s dead, now that his caricature as a gun-toting drughead has endured beyond his politics. I wondered if, in the end, being inside got the hole dug any better than chucking rocks from outside.
Harry Knowles has seenCloverfield, and he’s not only declared it a safe target for the sploogery of his army of fanboys––he’s got a surprisingly evocative take on how the much-hyped hybrid of Godzilla and Blair Witch breaks the monster movie mold:
The movie is fucking brilliant. It’s what we were told it was going to be. An intimate perspective on an impossibly grand scale human disaster beyond most human levels of comprehension…
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
Robert Greenwald, director of Iraq For Sale, Outfoxed and Xanadu, has launched a new campaign against FoxNews called Fox Attacks. A video associated with the campaign, available on its website and embedded via YouTube above, seeks to demonstrate that every single Fox News program is guilty of “pushing smut out on the airwaves.” Among other things, the video accuses Fox of adding “inappropriate sexual images to serious news stories,” exemplified by a clip of a story in which the hunt for a serial killer in Daytona Beach is illustrated with footage of a bikini contest, complete with numerous cleavage close-ups. Greenwald and friends want to inspire viewers to request “a la carte” cable packages excluding the network.
There’s a quote from Gloria Steinem on the Fox Attacks page, slamming the network for showing “more sexualized violence and humiliation than probably any other network — all in the name of condemning it.” I’m no Fox News fan, but obviously, Greenwald’s clip does the exact same thing. Their highlight reel of half-naked atrocities plays, in the context of YouTube, as straight-up softcore.
I don’t know if it helps his argument or hurts it, but Greenwald certainly knows a thing or two about gratuitous sexuality on TV; he got his start in the 70s directing made-for-TV exploitation flicks like Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold, which marked the leading lady debut of a young Kim Basinger. If you come across any clips of that on the web, do pass them along.
Robert Greenwald, who has made a living making unabashedly partisan documentaries about Wal-Mart and Iraq since scratching Xanadu off his resume, has teamed with Senator Bernie Sanders to launch a viral video campaign against Fox News. The first video, which you can see at FoxAttacks.com, calls for viewers to put pressure on the mainstream media to put pressure on the Bush administration. My favorite line from the Hollywood Reporter story: “One media observer said the video lacked balance and journalistic credibility.”
IFC has picked up three films expected to screen at the Toronto Film Festival, including Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely. In keeping with their previously announced plan to focus their attention on the First Take initiative, IFC will release all of these new acquisitions simultaneously in theaters and on VOD.
“Jeff Goldblum and his hometown of Pittsburgh, whether it likes it or not, have combined to create a surprising summer delight,” effuses an un-bylined AP story floating over at The Hollywood Reporter. That’s an, uh, interesting way to introduce the pay-cable debut of a film that made its festival debut 15 months ago and hasn’t been heard from since.
For the second week in a row, it’s looking like Michael Moore is on track to be the most written-about filmmaker in America. Here’s a brief sampling of the portly provocateur’s latest tour through mass culture:
***Moore is not quoted in but still seems to haunt a lengthy FORTUNE piece on the troubles of Sicko producer Harvey Weinstein. “If [Moore's] film is wildly successful, it could mark a turning point for the Weinstein Co., so Harvey can be forgiven for playing the controversy-equals-marketing strategy he mastered at Miramax,” writes Tim Arango.
***Arango, who pegs Sicko’s budget at $9 million, says the doc has to gross $20 million domestically to hit expectations. According to Variety, it’s well on its way to satisfactory: the flick made $70,000 on one screen this weekend, via three days worth of sold out shows.
***At least two of those sold-out shows were attended by Moore himself. According to the New York Observer, Moore introed the 11pm show by reminding the audience, “We live in dark times…A little laughter sometimes helps.
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.
filmcouch-114
So, this week almost had an ABAB pattern as far as Bloggery topics go. Two posts devoted to 
Harry Knowles has seen
Robert Greenwald, who has made a living making unabashedly partisan documentaries about Wal-Mart and Iraq since scratching 
