Clint Eastwood’s new cranky-old-man epic, Gran Torino, sped past the competition to prove its raw masculine authority at the box office. Over the past twenty years, Eastwood has perfected his own sub-genre: the grizzled old timer who comes back for one last hurrah. This latest iteration adds a surprising dose of compassion.
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Last month, on the opening day of Gran Torino, I went up to Lincoln Center to participate in a roundtable discussion about Clint Eastwood for a Film Comment podcast. Kevin B. Lee, who also participated in the roundtable, has since adapted the conversation into three video essays: one on Changeling (in which I am extremely quiet; I guess I was playing by the “if you have nothing nice to say…” rule); one on Gran Torino, and one (embedded above) on the look of Eastwood’s films, and particularly his use of light. I’m quiet in that last one, too, but in this case it’s because my knowledge of Eastwood’s filmography was brutally overmatched by that of the Film Society’s Evan Davis, Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine, Akiva Gottlieb of The Nation.
I’ve always had major problems with Eastwood’s work, but being part of the conversation made me excited about going back and watching some of his directorial efforts that I hadn’t seen, including The Bridges of Madison Country, which coincidentally ended up showing the weekend after we recorded the podcast on the WE network, where I gave it about four hours of my life, counting the frequent breaks for Rich Bride, Poor Bride promos. It was worth it.
The Wholphin Blog alerts us to the news that Carson Mell will be screening a program of his animated shorts and music videos a week from tomorrow in San Francisco. Mell is producing some of the most cinematic (in terms of narrative scope and point of view) indie animation around right now. His Chonto, a former Wholphin DVD pick, screened at Sundance this year. I saw it when I was on the shorts jury at CineVegas and absolutely loved it, but my fellow jury members had their own favorites and compromise was inevitable. You can watch a trailer for Chonto above. The Chonto issue of Wholphin was also a topic of an episode of FilmCouch.
Responding to your emails on The Dark Knight conversation. Wholphin 6 is here! Our favorite DVD quarterly returns with some amazing short films that have to be seen to be believed. We talk to Wholphin editor Brent Hoff about where it came from.
Bonus: Can you name a post-apocalyptic movie where the human race is condemned to death? We can and do.
The Dark Knight totally changes the landscape of comic book hero movies, a kick-ass action flick with a lot to chew on. Two conversations, the first on how great the movie is, the second–at the end of the show–full of spoilers and plumbing the depths of The Dark Knight’s conclusion. Also, what Karina watches when her cable goes out.
This week we’re taking movies with fans, colleagues, and friends. An e-mail from a listener gets us thinking critically about our love for post-apocalyptic movies, and watching the amazing 1962 French short, La Jetée (pictured above). Kevin talks with David Chen and Devindra Hardawar from /Filmcast about podcasting, Roman Polanski, and really good cartoons. Later we check in with Karina Longworth, where she tells us about overlooked Japanese classic When A Woman Ascends the Stairs and a whimsical WWI quasi-musical, La France.
0:00 - Intro, post-apocalyptic movies, La Jetée
8:00 - /Filmcast’s David Chen and Devindra Hardawar
The death of George Carlin was a big blow to the entertainment world. At the risk of sounding crass during a sensitive time, we dare to ask why? Why is comedy so important? Why do some people seem to construct their very identities around their favorite broad comedies? We think the answer has something to do with the inevitability of growing up, while resisting growing old. Discussed are such life-shaping films as Dumb & Dumber, Grosse Pointe Blank, Caddyshack, The Jerk, Office Space, and many more.
M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening is as bad as we feared (or hoped?). Shyamalan, and the studios who have dared to work with him, would like to paint him as a first-bill auteur, a director of genius and vision who’s name atop the poster puts butts in seats. Alas, things do not looks good for ol’ Manoj. In this episode of FilmCouch we compare The Happening with two classics by directors whose names do sell movies, and who have influenced Shyamalan’s career: Spielberg and Hitchcock. Duel, Spielberg’s first film, is a lost gem, and a must-see for anyone hoping to populate their film with a faceless evil. And of course, we look at Hitchcock’s The Birds, the genesis of the spooky nature-turns-on-man sub-genre.
Reason number #379 to kick myself for not seeingSpeed Racer in a theater: Daniel Kasman’s latest entry at The Auteurs. It begins like this: “Upon return from Cannes, I saw two movies in rapid succession. The films probably should not be combined into any sort of synthetic criticism, but it is too tempting to at least collide their names in the same piece: Jean-Luc Godard’s 1968 film with the Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil (1968), and Andy and Larry Wachowski’s Speed Racer (2008) adaptation. The arena we are dealing with is dimensionality.”
“The Happening is not just bad. It is more than awful.” At Hammer to Nail, Michael Tully finds the dark side of Avante Retarde. “The painful truth is that I had a blast while watching the film–again, not in the intended manner–but when it ended, and especially when I woke up the next morning, my delight at the preposterousness of it all was gone and all that remained was frustration and anger.”
Blatant self-promotion: Your Blogger and Glenn Kenny joined the House Next Door boys for an epic, booze-soaked podcast. This is just the first part; stay tuned for parts two and three, where I accidentally slap my wife while she’s winning an Oscar and then walk into the sea in order to allow her career to continue its ascent without the anchor of my humiliations.
An enjoyable trip to the cinema to see Kung Fu Panda leads to some unexpected ponderings. If kung fu is the epitome of lifelong self-discipline, what does it mean when Jack Black’s fuzzy panda learns the ancient art overnight? In our epic quest to define the true spirit of kung fu, we look at a few new documentaries: Resolved, a fascinating account of competitive high school debate, and Bomb It, which tracks the evolving art of graffiti around the globe.
Interview with Chris Bell who made Bigger, Stronger, Faster–opening tonight. A doc going way beyond body building into the essence of an unspoken American pastime: Cheating. Karina reports back on Cannes and everything the media missed that it shouldn’t have: Tyson,Frontier of Dawn and Everything is Fine.
FilmCouch #72 - Karina on Cannes, Kevin on steroids [31:03m]: Play Now | Download
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be huge regardless of what any critic says about it, and for good reason. It’s freaking Indiana Jones! Why is Indy so compelling? And why have attempts to repeat him (Romancing the Stone?) failed every time?
And a movie we think everyone should be compelled to see. We interview one of the greatest documentary filmmakers alive, Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Stevie), and Reverend Carrol Pickett, a prison chaplain and activist who presided over 95 death row executions in Texas. Their documentary, At the Death House Door, sets a new gold standard in “issue” docs. (At the Death House Doorairs on IFC Thursday night at 9:00.)
New developments in the case of an artist arrested for bioterrorism (from the doc Strange Culture), lead us into a web of noir (Murder, My Sweet) and an unexpected look at No Country for Old Men. All of which reveal the sinister culture of PARANOIA!
Paul interviews Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, opening tonight), which inadvertently pushes Paul & Kevin on to a road trip–metaphoricaly speaking–from a Whites Only saloon in the old west to the ghettos of Canada where a mathematician is changing the world and a legendary filmmaker brings them to enlightenment.
When a laugh is more powerful than a tear. The Care Bears Big Wish Movie, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? and, possibly, Iron Man share a common theme. A quiet–almost subliminal appeal–to an audience seeking a straight shot of entertainment asking them to drop apathy and get involved in a troubled world. A new subversive cinema (that I wrote about earlier this week), which isn’t a filmmaker sneaking a message past Hollywood executives, but past a message-weary audience.
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.
filmcouch-114
Last month, on the opening day of Gran Torino, I went up to Lincoln Center to participate in a roundtable discussion about Clint Eastwood for a Film Comment podcast. Kevin B. Lee, who also participated in the roundtable, has since adapted the conversation into three video essays: one on Changeling (in which I am extremely quiet; I guess I was playing by the “if you have nothing nice to say…” rule); one on Gran Torino, and one (embedded above) on the look of Eastwood’s films, and particularly his use of light. I’m quiet in that last one, too, but in this case it’s because my knowledge of Eastwood’s filmography was brutally overmatched by that of the Film Society’s Evan Davis, Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine, Akiva Gottlieb of The Nation. 
Responding to your emails on 
Reason number #379 to kick myself for not seeing 
