The International Documentary Association threw a party for and tribute to the filmmakers nominated for Oscars for short and feature length non-fiction films last night, and most of the best jokes of the night had to do with Man on Wire’s star wirewalker Philippe Petit. Sort of. In introducing a clip from the film, host Lily Tomlin asked, “What does it take to be arrested for the crime of the century? Apparently more than a meltdown on the set of I Heart Huckabees.” Cue insidery guffaws.
Earlier in the evening, IDA’s Eddie Schmidt tossed off a Petit joke that was less funny ha-ha than funny remarkable as an answer to a thrown gauntlet. Without naming names, Schmidt responded to Alexandra Pelosi’s claim to the New York Times that “it’s like a dirty little secret” that documentaries “are boring.” In the same story, Pelosi also proudly declared that she won’t make films longer than standard broadcast length, and refuses to submit them to film festivals — thus marking her supposed populism in firm opposition to the entire cinematic ethos that IDA was celebrating. Schmidt offered a rousing rebuttal: “The only person who is allowed to say that anything is boring is Philippe Petit, because he has walked on a tightrope between two buildings.”
Since nominee Werner Herzog was absent, Petit (seen above, apparently praying for a miniature version of the man behind him) was the most charismatic character in the room, and even after a year on the festival circuit, he and director James Marsh inspired a standing ovation. But it was a clip from Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World — the scene where the demented penguin goes his own way towards certain death — that got the biggest laugh of the night. Herzog’s schtick may sometimes seem to be bordering on self-parody these days, but the material it produces doesn’t get old.
Meanwhile, chatter over wine and tomato soup before the tribute program kept circling back to the recent sudden changes at Sundance. More than one person I talked express some degree of bemusement over a non-sourced, sort-of charticle on The Wrap, pegging Sundance programmers John Cooper and Trevor Groth, former AFI programmer Shaz Bennett (whose name The Wrap misspelled) and sometime Sundance programmer and current Without a Box guy Christian Gaines as the top contenders for Geoff Gilmore’s abandoned post. Cooper and Groth were at the event last night, but if either knew the what the future holds for their festival, they weren’t saying. When the topic came up, Groth simply smiled and said, “We live in exciting times.”
“It often seems that when there isn’t an obvious, populist pick in the Academy’s documentary feature category (such as Bowling for Columbine, March of the Penguins or An Inconvenient Truth), the field is rife for an upset,” points out Kris Tapley. This may, he suggests, be evidence enough that James Marsh’s Man on Wire, the presumed frontrunner in the Oscar Best Documentary category, is vulnerable to an upset. That makes sense. Slightly more aggravating: the substance behind Tapley’s suggestion that Wire doesn’t deserve to win.
We’re less than two weeks away from receiving this year’s Oscar nominations, and though none of the major categories are completely predictable just yet, each has at least three or four certain favorites. Meanwhile, the final slots for Best Picture, Best Director and the acting and screenwriting categories may be simply a random grab from small handfuls of rotating contenders. As of now, it doesn’t appear we’ll be seeing any huge surprises come the morning of January 22nd, when the Academy announces the nominees. The Dark Knight is sure to become the first comic book film up for Best Picture, and it won’t even be a shocker if animated feature Wall-E is listed alongside it in the same category.
But the ballots don’t need to be mailed out until Monday, so I’m taking one last chance to reach out to the procrastinators within the Academy membership. If you still don’t know who and what to write in, and you’re unwilling to go the safe route and nominate the expected bunch of films and talent, then consider some of these underdogs, under-appreciated and pretty much unlikely possibilities: …Read more
Great caper movies, of which James Marsh’s Man on Wire is one, are ultimately movies about stolen moments of ecstasy, in which the stars temporarily align to make the impossible possible, all the while rendering pedestrian notions of property and moral judgments about crime inapplicable. The best of them work not just because they so deftly calibrate tension across a meticulous breakdown of the process behind the crime, but because they make us feel like being privy to that process is equivalent to being let in on a life-changing secret. We’re made to understand that whatever felonies are committed (and whether or not the perpetrators are forced to face the consequences) are besides the point. The point is the relationship between the perpetrators, forged over long nights huddled over scale models and blue prints, tested over the plan’s execution in the face of unexpected hurdles, and confirmed in a giddy moment of “we really pulled it off” glory, a transcendent high which, we’re made to understand, is the only real reason for living. It’s an intimate cycle — flirtation, consummation, afterglow — and as such, its as romantic as a Hollywood romance, and offers the same kind of vicarious pleasure. Stolen kisses or stolen cash, it’s pop about secular salvation.
Catherine Hardwicke hit one out of the park for female directors this past weekend, but she had a lot of help. Not only was she working with a pre-sold property, she also had a very manageable budget of $37 million. Quite different from the $2 million she had to work with on Thirteen a few years back. Of course, she had similar budgets on Lords of Dogtown ($25 million) and The Nativity Story ($35 million), and both were box office disappointments. Still, she’s going to keep on being trusted with more money — if Summit is smart they’ll keep her on for at least the first Twilight sequel, which will surely come with a higher price tag — and as long as she continues with genre films, she’s sure to remain a profitable director.
Not every talented filmmaker does well with more money. Danny Boyle, for instance, typically bombs with bigger budgets. And a lot of foreign auteurs strike out when handed costly studio-produced genre or franchise pics (Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection is a favorite example). But there’s the occasional filmmaker who, like Steven Soderbergh or Christopher Nolan, can make something worthwhile out of any budget they’re allotted. And then there are the many indie filmmakers who quickly find themselves at home with modestly priced broad comedies, such as the case with Seth Gordon easily transitioning from the Slamdance doc The King of Kong to the star-studded Hollywood holiday pic Four Christmases, out this week.
Who will be the next small-scale filmmaker to successfully rise up and prove him or herself worthy of bigger budgets? SpoutBlog has selected five directors we’d like to see given an economic boost, each because he or she would likely deliver something more interesting and popular than the usual Hollywood product.
One of the most talked about films having its New York premiere this week at Tribeca is James Marsh’s Man on Wire. Notable blurbs include this one from Steve Erickson (via The House Next Door), who calls it “the most purely entertaining film I’ve ever seen at Tribeca” and predicts that the “caper film and inspirational sports tale rolled into one” will soon be fodder for a Hollywood remake. But there’s actually another James Marsh film screening in New York this week: The Burger and the King, a 1996 BBC documentary on Elvis Presley’s history as an eater, will play Stranger Than Fiction tomorrow night followed by a Q&A with Marsh. For a preview, you can check out the first nine minutes of the film above. You can buy tickets for the event via the IFC Center’s website.
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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“It often seems that when there isn’t an obvious, populist pick in the Academy’s documentary feature category (such as Bowling for Columbine, March of the Penguins or An Inconvenient Truth), the field is rife for an upset,” points out Kris Tapley. This may, he suggests, be evidence enough that James Marsh’s Man on Wire, the presumed frontrunner in the Oscar Best Documentary category, is vulnerable to an upset. That makes sense. Slightly more aggravating: the substance behind Tapley’s suggestion that Wire doesn’t deserve to win.
