Gus Van Sant’s best-known films (which are not the same as his best films) have historically involved a certain grappling with What Hollywood Does. Hollywood saves a poor-but-smart kid from his environment (and himself) with the help of a bearded, platitude-spouting Robin Williams. Hollywood saves a poor-but-smart kid from his environment (and himself) with the help of a bearded, laughable slang-spoutingSean Connery. Hollywood flatters its flavors of the month by shoe-horning them into paint-by-numbers remakes of aged cinematic game changers. Etc. Anyone cognizant of Van Sant’s turn-of-the-century Hollywood period shouldn’t be surprised by his willing ability to play it straight.
To say that Van Sant continues to “play it straight” with Milk isn’t meant as a pun regarding sexuality, exactly, but said pun wouldn’t be entirely off the mark. If his Hollywood trilogy was what Van Sant needed to get from his early meditations on the emotional lives of low-lifes to his much-vaunted Death Trilogy, then that most recent career phase may be what Van Sant needed to work through in order to merge the first two modes of his career. Milk takes the defining moments of a subculture once perceived by the mainstream as deviant, and runs it through the mill of What Hollywood Does, thereby sanitizing its hero for mainstream martyrhood. Van Sant’s laundering of an outsider hero through the very inside mechanism of the Hollywood biopic has been variously described as heroic and distasteful. As of press time, I think it’s somewhere in between.
In yet another sign that the digital revolution will be good for smut and violence, the largest theater chain in the States, Regal Entertainment Group, has announced that they’ll allow “red band” trailers, featuring uncensored glimpses of R-rated films, to screen in front of films already designated for adult audiences. Regal’s senior VP of marketing says digital projection will allow the chain to exercise greater control in tailoring pre-show content to specific films, thus reducing the risk that a trailer meant for Hostel 7 will play in front of Horton Hears a Who.
Speaking of: the Jim Carrey-voiced Horton made $45 million at the box office this weekend, while both Snow Angels and Paranoid Park continued to do well in limited release.
Scott Rudin and Miramax have acquired the rights to Richard Price’s recently released, heavily-buzzed novel Lush Life, a noir set in the new-money Lower East Side. Price, a writer for The Wire, will write the adaptation himself; he previously scripted Rudin’s remake of Shaft.
Married Life, Paranoid Park, and Snow Angels: three independently produced American films, all being released this weekend by indie arms of major corporations, and three films that, according to Anthony Kaufman, are surprisingly serious about the “notion that we must come to terms with our complicity in other people’s pain, as well as our own.”
In this piece at Filmcatcher, Kaufman wonders what prompted filmmakers Ira Sachs, Gus Van Sant and David Gordon Green to tackle similar themes in very different ways. “Could it be some long-gestating post-9/11 reflection, or a reaction to the Iraq war and its horrendous collateral damages, from Abu Ghraib and Haditha? Or is it a newfound understanding of globalization, that we are all interconnected and responsible for each other?”
I haven’t seen Snow Angels. I saw Married Life months ago, but I really didn’t care for it and don’t think I could consider it seriously. But Paranoid Park is a really interesting film, one I wish I had time to write more about, but unfortunately haven’t been able to really cover in the madness of True/False and SXSW. It’s definitely a film about the psychology of Getting Away With It, and I can see how it would be tempting to graft political parallels on to that, in that it essentially mines horror from a criminal’s self-interested refusal to take personal responsibility. Still, even if the filmmakers were somehow taping into a zeitgeist, these films are all festival holdovers from 2007, and I’m not sure their simultaneous says anything other than that they’re neither likely Oscar contenders nor summer blockbusters. I’m personally skeptical that three corporate entities would suddenly come to a “newfound understanding” of their complicity in globalization and try to ameliorate their guilt by releasing three adult dramas on the same day.
Speaking of Snow Angels, indieWIRE is sponsoring an Apple Store event tonight in New York, with Angels director Green and co-star Olivia Thirlby (yes, the girl who said “honest to blog” in Juno). More info here.
What if this movie were not directed by acclaimed filmmaker Gus Van Sant? What if it had not been honored with a special prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival? What if it had not been an official selection of the Toronto and New York Film Festivals? What if it wasn’t nominated for three (Independent) Spirit Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Producer? What if Manohla Dargis didn’t consider it, “one of the most moving and delicately felt films of Gus Van Sant’s career”? Would Paranoid Parkstill seem that appealing?
Not to me, but then I’ve seen enough films involving teens covering up an intentional or accidental murder. And that’s despite having enjoyed most of them, including Mean Creek, Bully, George Washington and even (though much, much less so) I Know What You Did Last Summer. Honestly, if this new domestic trailer for Paranoid Park didn’t mention all its prestigious claims, I probably wouldn’t be that compelled to see it. In fact, even if it simply mentioned that it was directed by Van Sant and featured one or more positive review blurbs, that wouldn’t be enough to sell me. Van Sant did direct such lame films as Finding Forresterand Even the Cowgirls Get the Blues, so he’s not a name that is completely synonymous with greatness. And this specific film has received enough negative reviews that critical acclaim is also not constant enough to attract my attention.
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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In yet another sign that the digital revolution will be good for smut and violence, the largest theater chain in the States, Regal Entertainment Group, has announced that they’ll allow “red band” trailers, featuring uncensored glimpses of R-rated films, to screen in front of films already designated for adult audiences. Regal’s senior VP of marketing says digital projection will allow the chain to exercise greater control in tailoring pre-show content to specific films, thus reducing the risk that a trailer meant for Hostel 7 will play in front of Horton Hears a Who.
Married Life
