In more Toronto lineup news, indieWIRE has posted TIFF documentary programmer Thom Powers’ selections for this year’s festival. Highlights:
Emmett Malloy’s The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights will mark Jack White’s return to the festival as the star of a nonfiction film, after last year’s It Might Get Loud.
In Collapse, American Movie director Chris Smith follows “radical thinker Michael Ruppert” and “explores his apocalyptic vision of the future.”
Bassidji tracks director Mehran Tamadon’s three-year immersion “into the very heart of the most extremist supporters of the Islamic republic of Iran (the Bassidjis) to understand their ideas.”
In Videocracy, Erik Gandini examines the business and political interests of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlosconi, to show “how his reality TV shows full of bikini-clad women enriched his friends and beguiled a nation.”
Straight from Cannes, L’Enfer de Henri-Georges Clouzot follows archivist Serge Bromberg’s discovery of an unfinished film by the director of Wages of Fear.
How to Fold a Flag, from Gunnar Palace directors Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, tracks “U.S. soldiers as they create new lives post-Iraq—from a Congressional candidate in Buffalo to a cage fighter in Louisiana—set against the backdrop of the 2008 election.”
This piece was originally published in March during the AFI Dallas Film Festival. The Hurt Locker opens in select theaters today.
When I was finishing my BFA in the Film Department at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early 00s, Kathryn Bigelow was the school’s most famous filmmaker alum, despite the fact that she matriculated at SFAI as a painter (she studied filmmaking as a graduate student at Columbia after a stint in the Independent Study program at the Whitney Museum). The work of the woman who made Point Break and Strange Days wasn’t exactly part of the curriculum of the then fine art-focused (sometimes to a fault) Film program at SFAI, where Hollywood film was rarely considered worthy of scrutiny; those who did readily embrace her success as part of the school’s pedigree often named glass ceiling smashing as Bigelow’s greatest achievement — as if to say, “Yes, she makes mainly action and genre blockbusters with big name stars, but she’s a woman, so that makes her subversive.” The argument that Bigelow’s work is somehow subversive just because she has a vagina is not only ludicrous, but unnecessary, being that her films are actually subversive. Marked by moral ambiguity, insistently complicating easy distinctions between good and evil, using Bigelow’s patented point-of-view camera to implicate the viewer in the dark worlds and questionable choices of her subjects, her films literally subvert the viewer’s expectations dictated by genre.
When I was finishing my BFA in the Film Department at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early 00s, Kathryn Bigelow was the school’s most famous filmmaker alum, despite the fact that she matriculated at SFAI as a painter (she studied filmmaking as a graduate student at Columbia after a stint in the Independent Study program at the Whitney Museum). The work of the woman who made Point Break and Strange Days wasn’t exactly part of the curriculum of the then fine art-focused (sometimes to a fault) Film program at SFAI, where Hollywood film was rarely considered worthy of scrutiny; those who did readily embrace her success as part of the school’s pedigree often named glass ceiling smashing as Bigelow’s greatest achievement — as if to say, “Yes, she makes mainly action and genre blockbusters with big name stars, but she’s a woman, so that makes her subversive.” The argument that Bigelow’s work is somehow subversive just because she has a vagina is not only ludicrous, but unnecessary, being that her films are actually subversive. Marked by moral ambiguity, insistently complicating easy distinctions between good and evil, using Bigelow’s patented point-of-view camera to implicate the viewer in the dark worlds and questionable choices of her subjects, her films literally subvert the viewer’s expectations dictated by genre.
And yet the “good for a girl” backhanded praise continues to dog her. At the Q & A after the screening of The Hurt Locker at AFI Dallas on Saturday night, moderator Gary Cogill commented that his favorite book about the Iraq war was written by a woman (The Long Road Home by Martha Raddatz) and then asked Bigelow a question that essentially amounted to, “Isn’t weird that The Hurt Locker is so good, since you’re a girl and all?” Bigelow deflected the question, but the issue came up again when an audience member who introduced herself as a member of Women in Film gushed that it’s “almost miraculous” that Bigelow has “embedded” herself in the making of “big boys movies.” This is when I decided it was time to leave; as i made my way out, I heard Bigelow respond that he choice of material is chiefly “instinctual” and not motivated by a desire to step where she supposedly doesn’t belong by virtue of chromosomal difference.
That the conversation surrounding Bigelow’s work seems to consistently get stuck in the mud of gender politics is all the more tragic in the case of The Hurt Locker, a film of such complex construction and complicated values that it should be able to sustain much deeper inquiry than what it feels like for a girl. If anything, it’s a film that bears the mark of a painter, full of deceptively beautiful imagery masking multiple layers of meaning.
Severe Clear is the Iraq documentary I’ve been awaiting conscientiously if not eagerly. There certainly hasn’t been a shortage of retrospective examinations from a position of authority - e.g. the macrocosmic No End In Sight and the microfocused Standard Operating Procedure - or, in lesser quantities, on-the-ground reportage. The best-known of those is probably 2004’s Gunner Palace, which could be politely described - in internet slang - as Epic Fail. Well-intentioned though they were in spending time with soldiers both at rest and patrolling, Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein screwed up by including little you couldn’t have seen on the news - gore and atrocities discreetly off-screen - and also in basic competence, like providing audible sound.
Working from the footage of Marine Mike Scotti, Kristian Fraga does much better. An Afghanistan vet who voluntarily re-enrolled and went over to Iraq in 2003, Scotti took along a camera for documentation and kept a journal with the ultimate purpose of writing a book; the movie’s accordingly divided into titled chapters. Rarely on-camera, Scotti’s personal arc and perspective on the war is kind of beyond the point. There’s no revelations here; from the opening blast of Marine excitement to Scotti’s closing sense that something’s gone wrong, there’s no surprises. What there is is an utter lack of reserve, a jolting immediacy that could’ve come from Walter Hill, but one that never telescopes the war into its own bloodless movie.
Two movies, both adapted from novels, open in theaters tonight. One is a children’s fantasy, the other is a political thriller. One poses intriguing questions about the nature of authority and value of disobedience, the other is a tangled collection of tired clichés.
City of Ember tells the story of two children becoming heroes thanks to their suspicion and rebellion. While it may seem strange to make a children’s movie that encourages young people to defy authority, there are psychological tests that suggest it may be a really good idea. The Human Behavior Experiments, a little known documentary by Oscar winner Alex Gibney, provides interesting insights.
Body of Lies, the latest from director Ridley Scott, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe as dueling CIA agents. Does the film have what it takes to overcome the deadly Iraq-fatigue that has destroyed so many of its comrades at the box office? Or is it another example of Ridley Scott taking super-charged material and delivering a super-flat film?
Kathryn Bigelow hasn’t made a feature film since 2002’s Harrison Ford starrer K19: The Widowmaker, unless you count the “blink and you’ll miss it” Mission Zero with Uma Thurman. The Hurt Locker returns her to real roots as a character-driven action director, and she gets some terrific performances out of relative unknowns Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie in this film about the war in Iraq.
In our interview, she discusses fictionalizing real war stories, what The Hurt Locker does that other Iraq films haven’t, and the everlasting legacy of Point Break.
Are we entering the era of the apolitical Iraq film? I won’t see Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker until later in the week, but the accounts I’ve heard suggest that it’s an action film that happens to be set in Baghdad, with tunnel-vision on the technical aspects of warfare and an almost complete disregard for the politics of the war being fought there. Similarly, Matthew Newton’s drama Three Blind Miceis a film about Australian marines en route to Iraq, but the war these boys are heading into could be anywhere and backed by any kind of ideology, so timeless are the film’s ideas about camaraderie and duty. It’s essentially a modern redo of On the Town, with ample fist fights in place of fancy footwork, a much more cynical attitude towards the notion of patriotism, and a completely credible sense of verisimilitude. In fact, the writing and performances create such a life-like mise en scene that when movie-like violence happens, it’s as shocking as it would be in real life.
That Troma propaganda/war satire clip that Lloyd Kaufman showed at Comic-Con? It’s on YouTube, natch––and it’s apparently super old. Oh well––new to us! It’s embedded above.
The Troma panel at Comic-Con gets smaller every year, but the sense that you’re at a really fucked up family reunion never dissipates. “What I find is amazing about Lloyd, is that everybody is connected to him in some fashion,” said panelist Steven Paul at yesterday’s session. He gestured at the room––the smallest I entered all weekend. “I bet everyone here has acted in a Lloyd Kaufman film.”
Not quite, but part of the reason to show up to this thing every year is to see which disparate characters Lloyd will rope into making an appearance. This year, there wasn’t a guest more unexpected than Paul, a producer on Ghost Rider, the visual effects producer on Karate Dog (!!!), and the man responsible for a number of upcoming “is that really necessary?” video game adaptations, including Castlevania and Tekken. What, exactly, was this guy doing on what Kaufman himself billed as “a panel of independent thinkers?” “I at one time was Steven’s teacher,” Kaufman boasted. “So there’s a little bit of Troma in the mainstream world!”
Maybe more than a little bit. Seated on the far end of the table was Mark Neveldine, co-writer/director of the budding Jason Statham franchise, Crank. “You’ll have to excuse me, because this is the first panel I’ve been sober for,” Neveldine cracked with pitch perfect post-frat bravado––now that nerds are inheriting the earth, an awful lot of them look and sound suspiciously like recurring characters on Entourage. What’s this guy’s connection to Kaufman? He’s apparently Troma’s most dedicated plagiarist.
I have no idea what to do with Josh Fox’s Memorial Day, a sporadically engaging––but far too simple-minded to be as troubling as it wants to be––hypothetical slice-of-life which exists to explain away Abu Ghraib via spring break. It seems to be consensus that this is, at the very least, the ballsiest film at this festival, although it certainly has fewer defenders than detractors. I found it to be alternately mesmerizing, infuriating, boring and eye-rollingly facile. I think it fails as a narrative film, even as it occasionally stuns as a work of pure cinema. And yet, I don’t think it’s dismissable outright.
Executive produced by Michael Stipe, Memorial is the brainchild of a New York theater rabblerouser named Josh Fox, and is loosely based on his “traveling, site-specific theatre event” Death of Nations 1: The Comfort and Safety Of Your Own Home. Dressed in all in black with standard-issue hipster-lectual glasses, Fox rocked a frustrating evasiveness at the Q & A following the film’s CineVegas premiere; when asked to unpack his intentions, Fox responded, “I don’t really do that.” He did admit to being a tourist to the world his film depicts. “I’m from New York,” the first-time filmmaker said more than once, ultimately invoking an old Spaulding Gray line about living “off the coast of America.”
I’ve always been conflicted by my hatred for war and my love for war films. But I can’t help being excited by cinematic combat. As Miguel Ferrer says in Hot Shots! Part Deux, “War … it’s fantastic!” Certainly his character is referring to the real-life action, but in a reflexive way he’s talking about war on film (he does break the diegetic space when he utters the statement, after all). And I have to say, in that context, no war film in recent years has been as fantastic as Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha, which opened in New York yesterday.
The difficult thing about war films is that, despite often being exciting action movies, they’re about real, tragic situations, even if they’re fictional stories set in an actual war (the opening of Saving Private Ryanis of course the epitome of war films’ ability to be at the same time both affecting and awesome). Broomfield’s film has the additional difficulty of being about a real battle from a war that is still going on. And of course there’s that whole problem of Iraq War films being box office poison lately. But if the viewer is able to forget all that stuff, there’s a chance he or she will find Battle for Haditha totally exhilarating.
The night before Sony Pictures Classics planned to open Errol Morris’ Abu Ghraib docStandard Operating Procedurein two theaters the Tribeca Film Festival hosted a screening of the film, followed by a conversation between Morris and Jarhead author Anthony Swofford.
Beat to the festival circuit by over a year by Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib(which debuted at Sundance 2007 and later screened on HBO), Morris’ two-hour dissection of the Iraqi prison schedule retreads a fair bit of ground that will be familiar to anyone who has followed the scandal closely and/or seen the previous film. But where Kennedy was primarily concerned with depicting the psychological climate that led to the abuses (of both detainees and power) and their photographic documentation, Morris is more concerned with revealing the discrepancy between what those iconic photographs seem to be documenting, and what the testimony of the indicted soldiers suggests is closer to the truth. “We looked at the photographs and thought we knew everything about Abu Ghraib,” Morris said after the screening. “We knew nothing.” …Read more
Ain’t It Cool has pictures from the Morocco set of The Green Zone, a Paul Greengrass film about the war in Iraq starring Matt Damon. AICN’s tipster says the U.S. military has refused to provide props for the film because of the script’s critical stance towards the war. I don’t know that it’s exactly standard practice for the military to lend equipment to Hollywood productions anyway, but LIBERTAS says this is just one more sign that filmmakers who question the war are “enablers of evil willing to squander tens-of-millions in the hope of watching untold numbers of abandoned Iraqis fed into the meat grinder of death squads and terrorists.”
Eugene at indieWIRE notices the similarities between the new poster for Baghead, and the poster for 60s sex farce Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (starring young Elliott Gould….drool). I think the Baghead poster is kind of awesome––I love it that it downplays the totally (and I’m sure somewhat intentionally) unconvincing horror aspect of the film.
Vulture counts down budding filmmaker Madonna’s five worst in front of the camera contributions to the music video canon. The big loser is the partially-animated “Dear Jessie”, which is truly awful, but also enough of an oddity that it’s a shame it’s already been removed from YouTube.
To close the day on the most prurient note possible: the tabloids say Lindsay Lohan’s drinking again, but Radar says she’s just an avid Facebook updater who takes both her sobriety and alleged lesbian lover Samantha Ronson very seriously.
The Tribeca Film Festival opens tomorrow (with Baby Mama, a film I haven’t seen but am rooting for via sheer love for Miss Liz Lemon), and there are a number of films on the schedule that we’ve covered at other festivals and can reccommend, including Baghead, Bigger, Stronger, Faster* and especially Mister Lonely. After the jump, you’ll find a look at some of the films and events that I’m looking forward to covering over the next couple of weeks. The festival concludes on May 4.
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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