“You know neither of us are really very creative people, Joe. I mean, I have filmmaker friends who walk around generating plot ideas all the time, but shit, when I walk down the street, all I do is brood about my friends and my loved ones and really zero in on all the attending barbs and snags and accrued resentments that seem to get in the way of closeness.” Ronnie Bronstein pulls back the curtain on himself and Joe Swanberg in the latest installment of our Butterknife interviews. See also: Butterknife stills.
On this week’s podcast: An argument about No Country For Old Men, a love letter to Billy the Kid.
This is Michel Gondry’s video for Bjork’s Declare Independence. It’s okay. It kinda has the feel of a musical number from Dancer in the Dark, except shot with a more expensive camera, and instead of Catherine Deneuve dressed like a factory worker, there are soldiers bopping around on strings. I actually kind of prefer the clip I found on YouTube, embedded above, which uses stock war footage and clips from Spike Jonze’s video for It’s Oh So Quiet to create a screed against “the Bush monarchy.” At the very least, it’s got a crackpot energy to it that Bjork used to be so good at, but hasn’t been able to pull off in awhile. I don’t think Michel Gondry directed that one, though.Gondry video via Fimoculous.
Let there be a Juno backlash, and let it begin with Modern Fabulosity. And let it continue with Craig Kennedy: “Some folks are even looking at this as being an Oscar contender. I don’t think it is, but when I’m ultimately proven wrong I’ll be the first to admit it. Of course, if I’m right I’ll be shouting it from the rooftops.” Finally, at Reverse Shot, Elbert Ventura concedes that Fox Searchlight has found “this year’s Little Miss Sunshine“–which should not, under any circumstances, be considered a compliment.
The Reeler talks to Jennifer Venditti about Billy the Kid and, most interestingly, the subject’s complicity in its construction: “He met Heather, and after that he would come up to me on the way home and say, ‘I think tomorrow we should do a scene where we’re holding hands walking down the street.’ Of course we didn’t do those things, but he was going with it in his head and getting into it.”
Both Alan at Burbanked and Chris at Movie Marketing Madness have complaints about the new one sheet for Be Kind Rewind. I hate to say it, but their fears were confirmed by a friend of SpoutBlog, who called with a four word review on his way out of a Rewind press screening this afternoon: “It sucked my ass.”
Part Two of the Sundance 2008 slate just arrived. As with yesterday’s announcement, I’ve pasted the meat of the press release after the jump; first, here’s what I percieve as highlights right off the bat:
Be Kind Rewind: I kind of expected Michel Gondry’s latest to show up here, just because January 25 would have been a *really* weird release date otherwise. Plus, Gondry’s The Science of Sleep was one of the fest’s big sales in 2006, although it’s actual US release didn’t get as much attention as I would have liked to have seen.
Baghead: Jay and Mark Duplass’ long-awaited follow-up to The Puffy Chair, co-starring Hannah Takes the Stairs‘ Greta Gerwig.
Goliath: Is the David Zellner who wrote and directed this the same David Zellner who makes short films with his brother, including the much-beloved Aftermath at Meadowlark Lane, which played before Low and Behold at Sundance last year? IMDb offers no help, so shout if you know the answer. UPDATE: Yup, same Zellners. Thanks, Matt!
Momma’s Man: Directed by Ken Jacob’s son Azazel, starring his dad as (wait for it) “Dad.”
Funny Games: Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his own 1997 film. It’s a Midnight selection, which could be good or bad.
Blind Date: The second of three planned films based on the work of slain Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (the first was Steve Buscemi’s Interview). Stanley Tucci directs himself and Patricia Clarkson.
Towelhead: This was called Nothing is Private when it premiered at Toronto to hugely divisive reviews. Directed and written by Alan Ball, it became known colloquially as The One Where Aaron Eckhart Has Sex With the 13-Year-Old Arab Girl. It has the questionable honor of uniting Roger Friedman and The Reeler in mutual hate.
August: A period piece about the end of the first dot-com boom (!), featuring a cameo from my former boss as himself.
The Black List: A documentary about Black America, written by and starring sometime film critic Elvis Mitchell.
Made in America: A “first-person look at the notorious Crips and Bloods,” via Dogtown and Z Boys‘ Stacy Peralta.
The Merry Gentleman: Michael Keaton (yes, the “I’m Batman” Michael Keaton) directs himself and Kelly McDonald in this drama about a woman who “stumbles into a curious relationship with a depressed hitman.”
Savage Grace: Tom Kalin’s telling of the Barbara Daly Baekeland murder case, starring Julianne Moore. A Cannes 2007 leftover.
Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?: I missed this one on first-skim. It’s Morgan Spurlock’s long-awaited sophomore effort. IMDb still ha it listed as Untitled Hunt For Osama Documentary; this new title seems to be pretty self-explanatory.
Twitch links to this animated Beringer ad directed by Oliver Gondry, as evidence that the recently announced animated collaboration between Michel Gondry and his son is not “purely a case of nepotism and fatherly favor.” But I’m pretty sure Oliver Gondry is not Michel Gondry’s son, but his brother. My previous research suggested that the son working on the film is 16 year-old Paul Gondry; meanwhile, a search for “Oliver Gondry” turns up several references to the above time-lapse music video, which would seem to have some vague stylistic similarity to the Beringer ad, and which is alternately credited to “Oliver Gondry” and “The Gondry Brothers.” Am I wrong? If you’ve got any airtight info on the Gondry family tree, do pass it along.
There’s some cool new promo stuff up online for Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. The film is about two video clerks who accidentally demagnetize every VHS tape in their store while their boss is on vacation, and then proceed to produced no-budget camcorder “remakes” of the most rented titles. The studio is–smartly, I think–exploiting the DIY theme of the story in order to sell it to kids who live online as a user-participatory event.
First, go to the official website. Wade your way through the animation about the internet being erased, and tell it that you want to rebuld the internet. Eventually, you’ll get to a place where you can insert an image of yourself into a VHS box of a “classic” film, such as, um, Drop Dead Fred. I went with My Own Private Idaho, because I thought it would be funny. See above.
Then, there’s the obligatory “viral” video component. So far, there are three trailers on YouTube, representing three of the films remade within Be Kind Rewind. I’ve pasted my favorite, for Ghostbusters, after the jump; you’ll find the Robocop trailer here and the Rush Hour 2 trailer here. I know the guru of faux-viral movie marketing said that clips this this should be under 30 seconds, but honestly, I could have gone for a longer Ghostbusters trailer, if only to hear Jack Black and Mos Def argue over who’s going to be the Key Master and who’s going to be the Gate Keeper.
Did YouTube “borrow” branding from a successful internet film festival?
Nikki Finke claimed Warner Brothers had instituted a corporate policy against casting women, then baited Gloria Allred into threatening a WB boycott. WB was like, “No you didn’t,” and then Nikki was like, “Yes, in fact, I did.”
In more devastating Warner Brothers news, the studio continues to show a lack of support for Jesse James by making it nearly impossible for non-coastal critics to see it.
Juno is not a remake of another film about a pregnant teen with ‘Juno’ in the title.
The Austin Film Festival memorializesMoonlighting.
“Any network that can be used to share cat pictures can be used to bring down a government.” This and other pearls of wisdom from from academic/blogger Henry Jenkins.
On FilmCouch, Paul and Kevin talk to Rob Parrish, the mastermind of Next to Heaven, a web series carved out of the public domain. Watch the most recent episode of Next to Heavenhere.
New York Film Festival:
Mark Cuban confirmed to us that he would not release Brian DePalma’s director’s cut of Redacted. DePalma took the case to the DGA, who ruled that Magnolia could release the “redacted” version. DePalma eventually gives up.
It’s probably not a great sign that the release of Michel Gondry’s upcoming Be Kind Rewind, starring Jack Black and Mos Def, has been pushed back to the icy winter wasteland of late January. With major critics too busy in the proceeding weeks to see much beyond Oscar hopefuls before heading off to Sundance, it’s traditionally the portion of calendar where movies destined to draw bad reviews go to hide. But even if that one’s a wash, Gondry’s next project sounds really, really cool. He tells MTV News:
I am working on an animated film with my son…We’re translating our relationship into a futuristic story with a dictator and a rebel. He’s the dictator in the story [and] it will be based on [his] art.
The MTV story doesn’t specify which son Gondry’s talking about–he has two–but according to Director’s File, it’s Paul Gondry, who is 16. He recently made an animated music video for The Willowz. You can watch that here; I’ve pasted a still of it above.
For a slice of the father-son relationship ostensibly inspiring this new project, check out this interview Paul conducted with his dad for INTERVIEW Magazine last year, around the time Michel’s The Science of Sleep was released in the U.S. In the interview, Gondry said he cast Gael Garcia Bernal in that film’s lead role because “he looks like [Paul] a little bit.” Paul said, “It’s hard for me to watch your movies sometimes because they’re always based on everything you went through and I was there with you in a way.” Michel responded, “Same for me.”
Last week it was Wes Anderson; this week, hipster auteur Michel Gondry cashes in with the above advert for Motorola Razr phones. The spot adopts the basic visual themes (and, by the looks of it, some of the sets and special effects) of Gondry’s 2006 feature The Science of Sleep. The pesky product doesn’t make an appearance until the final ten seconds. [Via Laughing Squid]
Remember that terrible camcorder leak of the Be Kind Rewindtrailer? It apparently prompted New Line to push an official version of the trailer on to the web. Check it out via YouTube above, and let us know what you think. I’m seeing a little too much Jack Black-doing-Jack Black for my tastes, but come on — it’s a movie about two guys who try to pull off a ten cent remake of Ghostbusters. How could I not fall in love? The studio has apparently pushed the opening up from early 2008 to late 2007 (ie: Oscar-bait season), so they’re probably assuming they’ve got something difficult to resist.
Also, if you haven’t yet, you should check out Michel Gondry’s channel on YouTube. The “Will it Deblend” clip is a thinly veiled advertisement for the Science of Sleep DVD, but it’s the most charming thinly-veiled advertisement I’ve ever seen.
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!”
Let there be a 
