Jean Luc-Godard may be unique amongst similarly iconic post-War European filmmakers in that it seems like we rarely go six months without one of his lost or little-known works getting revived or rediscovered, but its rare even for him for two such works to re-enter the spotlight in the same week. BAM’s presentation on Monday night of the little-seen One P.M., a film started by and, finally, starring Godard, was not billed as an event meant to capitalize on today’s street release of the little talked-about Une Femme Mariee, but it does inspire one to look for ways to talk about both in the same breath. There is not much overlap here, but at the very least, both films play on Godard’s interest in and persistent exploration of the tension between reality and its creation. Some notes:
1. One P.M.: Actual vs. Synthesized Anarchy
That One P.M puts Jean Luc-Godard on screen as a central focus should maybe not be the revelation that it is; after all, as we’ve discussed before, his best-known work is so deeply reflective of his personal life, and sometimes vice versa, that traditional distinctions between on-screen and off lose much of their ordinary meaning. But DA Pennebaker and Ricky Leacock’s film — began as a Godard-instigated collaboration called One A.M (or One American Movie), taken over and edited by the direct cinema legends when the French filmmaker abandoned the project and renamed it One P.M. (or One Pennebaker Movie, or One Parallel Movie) — presents a different Godard. Glimpsed here, in what amounts to documentary footage, trying to wring a hybrid of truth and fiction out of subjects both unsuspecting (a twenty-something female Wall Street lawyer) and very suspicious (Eldridge Cleaver), Godard embodies a caricature of the European art filmmaker come to America to con us into giving up our truth.
Okay, so I’m as excited as any other blogger commenting on her choices, even if I’m not as surprised by them. Why shouldn’t I be thrilled that someone has the same favorite Godard as myself? And how can I not be glad that someone else loves Stroszek, which is hardly a beloved movie, even for many Herzog fans. I’m not any bit a fan of her top pick, but that’s fine. We’re still plenty compatible…to produce a brand of pornos that parody classic art films.
Check out some other reactions from the blogosphere after the jump:
Set in alternate-universe present day versions of frozen-over Russia and the Manhattan theatrical intelligensia (the latter resembling something Charlie Kaufman might have come up with, minus the self-deprecating suspicion of success that leads him to mock the careerist stars of Needleman in a Haystack), Sophie Barthes‘ very strong first featureCold Souls stars Paul Giamatti as an actor named Paul Giamatti, a movie star struggling to get into the character of Uncle Vanya on the stage. His agent points him to an article in the New Yorker about an extraction and cold storage facility for souls on Roosevelt Island. At the end of his rope, Paul goes through the procedure, but find that soulless, his performance is even worse — imagine Vanya as interpreted by a handsy William Shatner. It’s when Giamatti attempts to get back his original soul (shaped, in one of the film’s best running jokes, like a chick pea) that he discovers that the pristine New York clinic where he had the procedure is a front for a roiling Russian soul black market, and with the help of an attractive female soul mule (Dina Korzun), embarks on a journey to St. Petersberg.
In an interview at the Sundance Film Festival last week, Barthes discussed reading Jung, dreaming about Woody Allen, and why she hopes Putin doesn’t read film blogs.
So why would Paul Giamatti’s soul look like a chickpea?
In a couple of weeks it will have been 25 years since Ridley Scott’s hammer-tastic 1984 commercial introducing the Macintosh was seen during Super Bowl XVIII. Though it wasn’t seen on television again until popular demand brought it back years later, it wasn’t for lack of quality. Ridley Scott was just coming off of Blade Runner, and the spot, which cost over a million dollars to produce, has been named the best television commercial of all time. Not too shabby.
But in a day and age of TiVos and DVRs, are commercials still relevant? In fact, it’s hard to remember more than a handful of commercials that have had the cultural impact of Scott’s 1984.
Ad agencies often turn to big talent to try and draw attention to a commercial, and the pendulum often swings the other way when Hollywood taps a commercial director to direct a feature. That’s what launched the careers of David Fincher, Michael Bay, and many other high-profile filmmakers. While 1984 might be the most famous commercial by a famous director, there have been a slew of others that have been equally as strange, from artists ranging from Spike Jonze to the Coen Brothers. Here’s a look at a some of the better ones, including both Ridley Scott’s 1984 (and it’s updated 2003 version, along with the Hilary Clinton version from last year’s Presidential race).
I have a confession to make: I am really not up to date on the newest latest trends in contemporary porn. When I used to work in a video store, the culture of AVN and Vivid Video was impossible to ignore, but I guess I’ve gone respectable. So when I saw Chris’ post earlier today about the casting of Sasha Grey in Steven Soderbergh’s prostitute dramaThe Girlfriend Experience, I wondered if the part about Grey being a fan of “Godard, Bertolucci and Breillat” was a joke.
But then I discovered Grey’s Wikipedia profile, which offers evidence that the 20 year-old (recently the youngest actress to be named AVN’s Female Performer of the Year)has actually made attempts to position herself as The Porn Star Who Likes Art Films. Some choice excerpts:
Tropic Thunder is taking heavy fire, not for Robert Downey Jr.’s blackface performance, but rather for Ben Stiller’s spoof movie-within-a-movie, Simple Jack. Is this a case of political correctness gone too far? Or does Hollywood have serious flaws in how it portrays people with disabilities? The latter may have been Stiller’s point all along…
Our friend Kevin Kelly shares the tale of his journey to the fabled Skywalker Ranch to see Clone Wars and meet the elusive George Lucas. The film, essentially a two hour trailer for the upcoming animated series, gets into some pretty wonky territory when it asks the question we’ve all wondered: What would Truman Capote be like as a Hutt?
Thanks to Matt Prigge, I’ve spent the past 26 minutes watching Meetin’ WA, a 26-minute film about Woody Allen, shot in New York by Jean-Luc Godard. A good portion of the short is dedicated to a fairly formal, almost junket-style interview, with Godard asking the questions, sometimes with the help of a translator, and mostly concerning Woody’s then-new release, Hannah and Her Sisters. Godard then inserts his typically pointed commentary via almost non-sequitor intertitles and film stills. It was particularly interesting for me to see this so soon after hearing the full story of why Godard didn’t direct Little Murders, the ultimate subversive New York movie, for Eliott Gould. Fifteen years later, he’s revisiting the city and having an interesting but rather bloodless conversation with the man who is, at that point, the preeminent New York auteur, and he seems mostly concerned with Allen’s thoughts on television. A stretch? Yeah, probably.
I’ll have some thoughts on Woody Allen’s recent work, including the about-to-premiere Vicky Cristina Barcelona, tomorrow
Lists of movies within movies are fairly common on the internet, enough that I now realize I need to finally see Bowfinger simply because I’ve counted about a million list makers in love with something titled “Chubby Rain.” And the lists are likely to keep on coming thanks to this week’s hot release, Tropic Thunder, which actually features two movies within (the Vietnam War film “Tropic Thunder” and the festival-winning making-of documentary “Rain of Madness”), as well as the upcoming How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, which has spawned a popular fake movie trailer for an NC-17 film titled “Mother Theresa: The Making of a Saint” (previewed above). Yet until someone makes a Wikipedia page for “List of Fictional Films,” these blogged and forumed lists are necessary to keep us movie fans remembering those non-existent movies we wish existed.
Narrowing down to ten seemed to be difficult — fictional films have been at least nominally been created for tons of films about filmmaking, otherwise reflexive films, sketch comedies, spoofs, etc. — until I realized that a lot of these films within films are appropriately nominal or trailer- or clip-sized gags and would in reality be terrible (imagine actually watching the entirety of“Asses of Fire” from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut). Even “Je Vous Présente Paméla” (”Meet Pamela”) from Day for Night and the sci-fi film being made in 8½would probably be major disappointments in actuality if you expected from them the work of Truffaut and Fellini, respectively.
So, I went mostly with fictional films that would probably be bad, but would at least be amusingly bad — though I purposefully avoided fictional porns, including those from Boogie Nightsand The Big Lebowski, of which there are literally thousands:
Elliot Gould said a few words Friday night before a BAM screening of Little Murders, the 1971 film based on Jules Feiffer’s play, which Gould starred in and produced for first-time feature director Alan Arkin. The event came towards the midpoint of a retrospective at the Brooklyn theater dedicated to Gould’s 70s-era peak, and the actor seemed humbled by the thought of so many snapshots of an era lined up for quick consumption. “It’s my life,” he said wistfully. Then, with a little wave of a hand and a vigorous shake of his head, he corrected himself: “Well, it’s all of our lives, isn’t it?”
Gould noted that he’d “probably never” seen Little Murders “with a real crowd”–when the film was released in the States in February of 1971, Gould was in Sweden shooting The Touch for Ingmar Bergman, and thanks to its disappointing box office, it didn’t have much of a life for a while. Not that Gould took time out at the time to dwell on its failure. After the screening, Gould’s answers to questions from both the audience and moderator Bruce Bennett continually circled around a kind of “fear” the actor experienced at the peak of his career. After a 1970 TIME Magazine story in which he was anointed both “the urban Don Quixote” and “a star for an uptight age”, Gould worked constantly because he was afraid that if he stopped to catch his breath––or picked the wrong project and fell on his face––his allure would cool off and he wouldn’t be able to find a job.
Why has the NY Times published two reviews of Richard Brody’s Jean-Luc Godard bio Everything is Cinema––less than two weeks apart, and two months after the book hit store shelves? Are film critics really so lacking in ways to fill their time that the Times has taken pity and allowed them to just publish whatever, and at their leisure?
I know, I know––too far. I retract. It just seems odd that the paper would give space to two pieces of criticism on the same thing, from two critics whose overall take on the thing seems to be not so far away from a shrug. At least the two reviews seem to enter the text from slightly different angles… …Read more
This week we have two big-time offenders: Mike Myers’ The Love Guru, which has brought concern from Hindus, because the comedy seems to be making fun of the Hindu religion; and Ron Howard’s Angels & Demons, the “sequel” to The Da Vinci Code, adapted from Dan Brown’s bestseller. Earlier this week, the Vatican banned the latter production from all Catholic churches in Rome. The following statement from Father Marco Fibbi, spokesman for the diocese of Rome, was a favorite quote from the story: “Usually we read the script but in this case it wasn’t necessary. Just the name Dan Brown was enough.”
Of course, these days, religious organizations taking offense to a movie seems so commonplace that news like this is hardly even considered bad buzz. Neither The Love Guru nor Angels & Demons will be too aversely affected by the protests or boycotts. Both films will merely be added to the following list of major offenders (in alphabetical order so as not to offend anyone who thinks one is more offensive than another), as almost a genre cataloging than an inventory of condemned.
Brokeback Mountain - Because of its promotion of “the homosexual lifestyle,” many right-wing Christian groups protested Ang Lee’s film. Most famously, it was pulled last-minute from a multiplex owned by Mormon businessman and Utah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller, though his motivation was not necessarily claimed to be religion-based. Despite there being hundreds of gay films throughout the years, because of its popularity, this one was the worst offender. …Read more
Sympathy for the Devil has a bad reputation. Like most of the work produced during Jean-Luc Godard’s so-called “revolution” period in the late-60s and 70s, it rarely screens without a disclaimer advertising its difficulty. The synopsis selling last month’s screening of the film at New York’s Film Forum (as part of a month long tribute to Godard’s work of the 1960s) was just 55 words long, but it managed to contain three red flag inferences of Sympathy’s “difficulty” (italics all mine): the “camera endlessly prowls,” it’s “shot in long, long takes,” it’s “deadening and hypnotic.” A Reverse Shot blog entry led off with the poster quote: “One helluva cocktease.”
One million critics with a common case of blue balls can’t be entirely wrong, but writing off the film formerly known as One Plus One as a novelty from a filmmaker determined to be difficult (not to mention attempting to sell it by scaring the audience away) is a lot easier than actual engagement. Certainly, Sympathy is a provocation––political, formal, pop cultural––before it’s a coherent work of narrative drama; certainly, most of its most memorable moments involve juxtaposition of political critique with infantile sex farce. But the same could be said for the average YouTube video, and the kids seem to be able to eat those up without a warning label. If it comes off as impenetrable, it may just be because no penetration is needed––everything Godard wants to say is laid into the film’s surface. If anything, Sympathy for the Devil is a blatant (and, at times, blatantly transparent) cinematic flail from a filmmaker at a crisis point.
James Cameron is the sort of director who can make a movie just to prove a point.And he’s going to do so by making a straight drama that will be shot and exhibited in 3D — or as he calls it, in stereo (short for stereoscopic) — just to let the industry know that 3D is not only for special effects and animated pictures. He discusses the project in an interview with Variety:
I plan to shoot a small dramatic film in 3-D, just to prove this point, after “Avatar.” In “Avatar,” there are a number of scenes that are straight dramatic scenes, no action, no effects. They play very well, and in fact seem to be enhanced by the stereo viewing experience. So I think this can work for the full length of a dramatic feature. However, filmmakers and studios will have to weigh the added cost of shooting in 3-D against the increased marketing value for that type of film.
The gorgeous Criterion version of Jean Luc-Godard’s Pierrot le Fou hits stores today. Because I’m date dyslexic, I accidentally posted my review of the film and the set a week early, but you can read it here. To get in the mood, watch the film’s original trailer above.
I watched the new Criterion edition of Pierrot le Fou, a film I’ve seen many times but not once in at least five years, with Glenn Kenny and Nathan Rabin’s wildly divergent reads swirling in my head. I am not in a place in my life where I’m particularly open to romance as either a nostalgic concept or present-day reality, but this recent viewing of a film that I loved long ago left me wondering how it could be received with anything but a swoon. Pierrot le Fou can be distant and opaque, for sure, but necessarily so––it’s about a couple’s inability to overcome the opaque distance that lies between them. More than that, its blend of cinematic Cubism and stylized hyper-realism is deeply evocative of a love that’s literally out to sea. There’s no question that it works as a romance about the death of a romance. In fact, what may be up for debate, is whether it works as anything else at all.
I was nudged down this path of questioning by two elements of Criterion’s special edition package, both of which illuminate Pierrot’s relevance as an extremely thinly-veiled autobiographical portrait of the disintegration of Jean-Luc Godard’s marriage to Anna Karina. The first is Richard Brody’s liner notes essay, “Self-Portrait in a Shattered Lens,” which meticulously breaks down how a film ostensibly based on an American crime novel called Obsession, infused with two Balzac works which Godard conflated into one, became, through a necessity of casting, an accident of timing and a desperate need for catharsis, “an angry accusation against Anna Karina, and a self-pitying keen at how she destroyed him and his work.”
Godard, l’amour, la poesie, a documentary on the package’s second disc, doesn’t fully explicate that”destruction”, but it does offer some clues as to the mindset that transposed it into film. Filmmaker Luc Lagier introduces Anna Karina as “a woman to be filmed and loved,” which is our first indication that said accusations towards Karina’s almost mystical-sounding ability to drive Godard to ruin with her love will be taken at face value.
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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Porn stars can be smart; some are even PhDs. So it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that adult film actress Sasha Grey, who currently stars (non-pornographically) in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, likes great films. In fact, Karina wrote about Grey’s cineaste tastes more than six months ago. But the movie geeks are nontheless excited this week over Grey’s recent appearance on The Rotten Tomatoes Show, where she counted down her top favorite films. They are, in downward order, Stroszek, Fat Girl, Pierrot le fou, A Woman Under the Influence and Escape from New York.
I have a confession to make: I am really not up to date on the newest latest trends in contemporary porn. When I used to work in a video store, the culture of AVN and Vivid Video was impossible to ignore, but I guess I’ve gone respectable. So when I saw Chris’ post earlier today about the casting of Sasha Grey in 
Why has the NY Times published two reviews of Richard Brody’s Jean-Luc Godard bio Everything is Cinema––less than two weeks apart, and two months after the book hit store shelves? Are film critics really so lacking in ways to fill their time that the Times has taken pity and allowed them to just publish whatever, and at their leisure?
This week we have two big-time offenders: Mike Myers’ 
