I’m so over filmmakers who put or involve themselves in their documentaries. Thanks to Michael Moore, who wasn’t the first to use first-person narrative in non-fiction filmmaking but who was certainly the one who brought it into the spotlight, so many documentarians want to be in their movies, be the subject of their movies or at least narrate their movies in a very personality-injected way. It’s like the whole Woody Allen, casting oneself as the star kind of directing, which influenced so many indie filmmakers, only it’s much worse. This isn’t to say that all documentary must be objective, and I continue to be a huge fan of McElwee and Broomfield (who apparently has changed his style of late) despite the fact that newbies like Jonathan Caouette and Zana Briski have been ruining subjective documentary filmmaking in recent years. Instead it’s to say that one shouldn’t pretend to be making a movie about a cause, when really one is making a movie about oneself, or one’s cause.
Case in point, this trailer for Abby Epstein’s The Business of Being Born, which attempts to make the documentary out to be like a footnote to Moore’s Sicko. It doesn’t really show how the film involves executive producer Ricki Lake on screen, nor does it let us know that Epstein, too, is a character. I’ll admit that I haven’t yet seen The Business of Being Born and so can not comment on just how much footage there is of Lake, who apparently gives birth in the film, or Epstein, who fortuitously became pregnant in the middle of making the film, but any amount is too much, in my opinion. I made exceptions for Don Cheadle, who executive produced Darfur Now, in which he also appears, because the film is partially about how celebrity is unfortunately the best route in which to carry a cause (and a film), but in Lake’s case it merely seems like a case of blatant self-interest. Anyway, the film opens today in New York City. And no, I’m not running out the door to see it, so it may be awhile before I find out if that self-interest works or doesn’t.
The Golden Compass made $26.1 million over the weekend, just over half the $50 million it would have needed to clear in its first three days to justify its $180 million budget. That makes it the fourth consecutive box office disappointment in a row for New Line; it’s also Nicole Kidman’s third flop in the last six months. Meanwhile, teen sex com in indie clothes Juno made $60k a screen on seven screens, for a $531, 399 five day weekend–more than double the per screen average of presumptive Oscar front runner Atonement, which was already doing well with $817,000 on 32 screens.
Strike talks fell apart on Friday night, and they’re not expected to resume any time soon. And, with the AMPTP soon shifting focus to hammer out a deal with the DGA, it “now seems a certainty” that the strike will continue well into next year.
The International Documentary Association namedA Walk to Beautiful as their top film of the year on Friday. Though that film beat Michael Moore’s Sicko for the top prize, the loudest man in documentary film sent his sisters, armed with a manifesto about his mission to outgross Fred Claus, to pick up a Career Achievement Award on his behalf.
…that, and other revelations about what celebrities blog about, courtesy of this feature on Gawker. Surprising: 36% of all celebrity blogging is devoted to “shameless self-promotion”; I would have pegged it at 70 or 80 percent. Not so surprising: statistically, blogging celebrities devote exactly as much virtual ink to “indecipherable rants” as “Republicans.” Nice graph, but I have to say, I’m SHOCKED that the Gawk squad let Jeff Bridges’ use of the word “netiquette” slip by un snarked-upon.
The International Documentary Associaton (IDA) just released a list of their picks for the 25 Best Documentaries Ever, to coincide with the Association’s 25th anniversary. Predictably, the list isn’t very interesting–as is usually the case with these things, it’s very American and very weighed towards recent releases. Box office hits and Oscar winners are well represented; non-white people are represented as subjects, but not so much as makers; there’s one film on this list directed by a woman, and another one about women. Michael Moore, Errol Morris and the Maysles own a full third of the list real estate between them.
Maybe in theory, as Anthony Kaufman scathingly implies, we should have expected better from an international body of filmmakers and champions, but in practice the list falls victim to the familiar muddling of consensus. As I’ve said before, the populist nature of these things always seems to ensure their mediocrity. Grizzly Man was probably the only Herzog film that made it on to multiple ballots, and that’s why–Fata Morgana and Little Dieter fans be damned–it’s the one that makes the list.
Maybe we just need to call for a moratorium on voted lists––”Thou shalt not call on the wisdom of the crowds to numerically rank works of art based on perceptions of their quality!” Or, maybe, we should all just get together at the end of the year and fill out wildly baroque ballots to select The Best and Worst Film Lists Of 2007––after all, why should The Reeler haveall the fun? Or, maybe, we should just accept the fact that lists do more to gratify the list-maker than anything else, and find something slightly liess futile to argue about.
Anyway. If you care, IDA’s Top 25 is after the jump. …Read more
Less than 48 hours after reutrning to New York from Telluride, I’m back at LaGaurdia waiting for a flight to Toronto. A couple of weeks back, I made a list of 15 films that I planned to see during my four days in Canada. I made a bit of a dent in that list last weekend in Telluride, and had to drop a few titles due to the press screening schedule. After the jump, you’ll find my revised list. Assuming my flight is on time, I plan to hit three or four of these today and tonight.
Posting will be light here this afternoon and tomorrow, as I’ll be en route to the Telluride Film Festival. In keeping with tradition, the official Telluride schedule will be kept under wraps until tonight, but whisperers are already whispering. Click through the jump for notes on what I’ve heard. If you’ve got your own details to pass along, please post them in the comments, or, if you want to protect your identity, send an email to karina AT spout-dot-com and I’ll post it anonymously.
As part of a campaign to promote their film’s upcoming DVD release, the producers of the Michael Moore attack doc Manufacturing Dissent have struck a deal to stream 40 minutes of the movie on AOL’s TrueStories documentary site. According to Variety, AOL’s Stephanie Sharis said they’ll monetize the event “by splicing adds into the video;” they’re hoping to get some free publicity from “plenty of blogs.”
SuperBad held onto the top slot at the box office for the second weekend in a row, making it just the third film this summer to show such staying power. Meanwhile, the Weinstein Company’s losing streak continued with a sixth-place open for The Nanny Diaries.
The New York Film Festival has announced three sidebars: “Views from the Avant-Garde”, an annual program featuring films by Ernie Gehr and Ken Jacobs; “Tropical Analysis: The Films of Joaquim Pedro de Andrade,” through which NYFF will screen 13 films by the Brazilian director; and “Chinese Modern: A Tribute to Cathay Studio,” featuring Hong Kong cinema of the 1950s.
The Pasadena Playhouse will host the world premiere of a stage musical based on Peter Bogdanovich’s 1985 film, Mask. Despite the fact that the score will be written by the songwriting team who brought us “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” it seems unlikely that Cher will reprise her role. The Playhouse will also host the premiere of Orson’s Shadow, a play based on a real-life encounter between Lawrence Olivier and Orson Welles.
Here’s a round-up of a few late-afternoon tidbits from across the film blogosphere:
At Slackerwood, Jette Kernion has a fully-illustrated review of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Simpsons Feast. “The second course soon followed: Blinky (the three-eyed fish) in a sauce made from tomacco (Homer’s magical crop that resulted from planting tomatoes, tobacco, and uranium from the nuclear power plant)…His eyes were made from white asparagus and caviar. He was a very tasty three-eyed fish.”
AJ Schnack takes a look at the year thus far in documentary box office. When you see the year’s Top 20 docs laid out by grosses, the discrepancy between the fiction and nonfiction economic systems really hits home: “Looking at the year to date documentary box office, the elephant in the room (there are so many mixed metaphors in that) continues to be SICKO … no other [documentary] film has crossed $1 million at the box office.”
Like Film Junk, I too got really excited when I heard that a trailer for Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewindhad leaked onto YouTube. And then I tried to watch it.
At Edward Copeland On Film, Odienator remembers The Roach, “one dance that blew me away” upon watching John Waters’ Hairspray for the first time. “I laughed so hard that I choked on my popcorn. If you lived in the neighborhood I grew up in, this was an activity with which you could identify. It was pure John Waters, a mix of absurdity and social commentary. Here was the rich snob girl from Baltimore stomping roaches and shaking her ass while the lyrics commanded her to “squish, squash, kill dat roach!”
Sicko director Michael Moore submitted a question to the CNN/YouTube debate, but it didn’t make the final cut. (Hmmm….wonder why?) After the debates, he posted his question–along with a lengthy explication–at the Huffington Post.
In the last ten years, movie screens have squashed podiums as the place for politicians to build a voter base. Should old entertainment formulas be used in politics? Do these politi-dramas spur us to action or whining? Under discussion:Sicko (2007), The Party’s Over (2000), Network (1976) and the sprawling entity known as Michael Moore.
The Golden Compass made $26.1 million over the weekend, just over half the $50 million it would have needed to clear in its first three days to justify its $180 million budget. That makes it the fourth consecutive box office disappointment in a row for New Line; it’s also Nicole Kidman’s third flop in the last six months. Meanwhile, teen sex com in indie clothes Juno made $60k a screen on seven screens, for a $531, 399 five day weekend–more than double the per screen average of presumptive Oscar front runner Atonement, which was already doing well with $817,000 on 32 screens.
The International Documentary Associaton (IDA) 
As part of a campaign to promote their film’s upcoming DVD release, the producers of the Michael Moore attack doc 
In the last ten years, movie screens have squashed podiums as the place for politicians to build a voter base. Should old entertainment formulas be used in politics? Do these politi-dramas spur us to action or whining? Under discussion: 
