I had MSNBC on for a while in the background while I was working yesterday, and they were giving what seemed like an inordinate amount of attention to the trailer, released over the weekend, for Oliver Stone’s W. Most of the talking heads were just mocking the trailer and Stone, but gossip reporter Courtney Hazlett had an interesting observation. Noting that Stone is pushing his crew through a (probably ill-advised) grueling seven month production and post-production schedule, Hazlett predicted that crowds might come out just to see a finished product produced under such duress. With a gleam in her eye, she said, “It could be a hot mess!”
Leaving the wildly off-base assumption that moviegoers actually care about the conditions under which a film is produced aside, it’s interesting to see W’s rush to release as a selling point, especialy since so many bloggers are, in the wake of the trailer release, saying the exact opposite.
My version of The Godfather would open with a voice in the darkness saying, “I don’t believe in America. The American Dream is a once-beguiling fairy tale; show’s over, y’all.” But The Dream is still real to many people, and the violence that powerful private interests have done to it in the last century pains them like a kidney punch.
Gonzo journalism pioneer Hunter S. Thompson was one of the wounded, and so is Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Darkside), the far more straight-laced director of the entertaining documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. They share a proprietary sense of outrage over abuses of power they’ve witnessed in their times. For them, America’s Nixons, Enrons and Bush-Cheneys have desecrated the church, the front lawn. For all their passionate trouble-making, there’s no denying that Gibney and the late Thompson, two white males who came up through America’s hallowed institutions (Thompson through the U.S. Air Force; Gibney through Yale), are insiders.
When I went to interview Gibney about Gonzo, I remembered the film’s procession of leathery right-wingers and elites, former Thompson nemeses, who have warm, friendly things to say about “Dr. Gonzo” now that he’s dead, now that his caricature as a gun-toting drughead has endured beyond his politics. I wondered if, in the end, being inside got the hole dug any better than chucking rocks from outside.
Oh good, fake controversy! Everyone’s pointing to Jeffrey Ressner’s Politico piece on Boogie Man, the Lee Atwater doc screening here at LAFF. “Atwater doc makes conservatives groan,” cries the headline. But, as AJ Schnack points out, those groaning conservatives were actually Ressner’s invited guests, conservative plants who would likely be hostile towards the subject matter regardless of its actual treatment.
On to controversy-baiting classics: “The 7-minute film has a hero called Eveready Harton (sometimes spelled “Hardon”), a fellow with a very large penis who, throughout the course of the film, lets his manhood lead him into contact (mostly sexual) with a naked woman, an unfortunate man, a farmer, a donkey, a cactus and ultimately a cow.” A brief history of dirty animation from Nick Dawson at Film in Focus; behold the adventures of Mr. Harton above.
Finally, WTF? Sequel Controversy: Corey Feldman strenuously attempted to defend the existence of a sequel to The Lost Boyslast night at LAFF, but even the sequel’s director seemed unconvinced: “I still think no matter what, it’s not like Citizen Fucking Lost Boys Kane.” More from Stu at Defamer.
Later today, we’ll be debuting a new column from Lauren Wissot, whose work you might have also read at The House Next Door, and/or The Reeler. Lauren, who will be tackling (no pun intended) sexual themes in indie and classic cinema every Wednesday, will begin with a revisionist take on Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie. We wanted to call her column “Art Films To Jerk Off To,” but in the end that might be too limiting––after all, who’s to say what qualifies as art?
So please join us in welcoming Lauren and Steven. We’re also looking for additional part-time columnists, so if you have a topic or a genre that you’re dying to explore in bloggy form week in and week out, do send Karina an email.
“So I remember we– I had like two or three days or something and I rehearsed and choreographed and dressed my brothers. I choreographed them with the piece and picked the songs, picked the medley. And not only that. You have to work out all the camera angles and, oh, I direct and edit everything I do. Every shot you see, is my shot.” -Michael Jackson, on his preparation for an ’80s Jackson 5 performance. (Ebony Magazine, December, 2007).
Who doesn’t remember the worldwide shock and dismay when Michael Jackson announced his retirement from music in 1990, at the age of 32? But the real shocker was what came next. Mr. Jackson’s stellar career as a film director, now nearly 20 years on, seemed pure folly at the time. What magic could such a musical being possibly work with images? Surely, a performer who spoke so eloquently with his voice and feet would, with a movie camera, be all thumbs…?
Interesting. David Poland, who is not crazy about Iron Man (”I just wanted a character who actually dealt with the obvious demons that he overcomes… and not just another really, really cool suit of CG armor”) posits that the fact that other critics are crazy about the film (it’s currently at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes) might be a sign that it’s not going to connect with audiences:
This appears to be the Pass movie of the early summer for critics. Is it because of Downey or the middle-aged hero or talk about a huge opening or the use of the Middle East and the half-ass political arguments of the film that play out hypocritically but pay active lip service to liberals… I don’t know.
All I do know is that when film critics are the ones identifying with your superhero, you may be being successful with the wrong demo for mega-bucks… which is all the film producers wanted in the first place.
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.
From the department of Bloggy Frenzies We Missed While We Were Out: The Playlist has an excellent post on the music used within Ben Stein’s aforementioned intelligent design propaganda film, Expelled. It all started on Monday, when James Boyce posted a story on the Huffington Post titled, “Yoko Ono Sells Out John Lennon To Creationist Manufactroversy.” We assume that’s a contraction of “manufactured controversy”, even though as far as I’m aware, the film’s opponents have done a better job of promotingExpelled via fuss than the filmmakers themselves. Ack! Maybe i09 is right––maybe Expelled is actually a reverse-psychology conspiracy designed to bring down the intelligent design movement. Or maybe not.
Charlton Heston’s passing reminded me of one of my all-time favorite Youtube videos, the above Ten Things I Hate About Commandments. Considering that the original star of Ten Things I Hate About You, Heath Ledger, also passed this year, it’s a bit like watching old SNL skits with Chris Farley, Phil Hartman, or John Belushi, funny, but also quite sad.
Ronald Bergan has a nice piece on the Guardian Unlimited Film Blog exploring the idea of boycotting Heston’s films due to his affiliation with the NRA and his other staunch right-wing beliefs. While Bergan doesn’t exactly encourage a boycott, his point that actor’s political lives color our perception of their work is spot on.
I for one think that boycotting Heston or Jane Fonda or anyone else for their political views is silly. For one thing, the work that any artist makes is automatically open for interpretation. Even propaganda can be misread. And if the fickle nature of the viewer weren’t enough, we now have mash-ups on Youtube like the one above, where one of Hollywood’s most serious leading men is transformed into a pitch-perfect comedian. The political views of celebrities are what we make them, literally.
Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden, follows a similar gimmick to his first film, Super Size Me: take a controversial topic, put yourself at risk exploring that topic, and make it funny. While not a perfect film, it does work on many levels, especially in humanizing average citizens of the Muslim countries Sprulock explores. The film also turns Mortal Combat style video game fight sequences into biting political satire. Read a full review of the film here.
Either the URL is broken or the post has been removed, but according to my Google Reader, the horror site Bloody-Disgusting did a post this morning titled “Barack Obama Loses Our Vote, Insults Horror Genre,” in response to some comments the presidential candidate made at Thursday night’s Democratic Debate. Here’s the text of the post, from the RSS feed:
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) said Thursday that he is concerned about TV content and that he believes as president, it would appropriate to “work with the industry” to address issues of sex and violence, including the marketing of violent films in TV shows, but he believes parental control, not government control, is the best response, reports Broadcasting Cable. Obama literally “calls out” our genre and indicates it’s a problem.
I actually took notes on that part of the debate, in the hopes that there would be a discrepancy between Clinton’s answer and Obama’s that might reveal something about which candidate is more beholden to Hollywood donors. Unfortunately, Hillary wasn’t given a chance to answer the questions. Reviewing my rough transcription of Obama’s comments today, what’s amazing is how it transitions from typical, weaselly politician non-response––which seems uncharacteristic for Obama––into a minor strike against the Hollywood publicity machine. But of course, he’s not actually pledging to do anything, and any horror fan who takes this as the sole evidence that Obama doesn’t deserve their vote probably shouldn’t be voting in the first place.
My rough transcription of the debate quote follows after the jump.
I’ve been keeping a vague log of Chris Matthews’ tendency to wedge non-sequitor movie references/analogies into his ostensibly hardcore-wonky political chat shows for awhile. Hands down the worse that I’ve seen: on the night of the Iowa caucus, Matthews tried to diagnose Mike Huckabee’s popularity thusly: “He appeals to a lot of people in the middle of the country, mostly because of I Heart Huckabees.” Really, Chris? Really?
When you consider that my minor obsession with this has required me to become a faithful viewer of Matthews’ god-awful, cheap McLaughlin Group-knockoff Sunday morning chat show, I probably deserve a medal. But give me the silver, because whoever put together the montage on last night’s Daily Show––proving that Matthews is not the only guilty party, but certainly the undisputed champion of the “This event is EXACTLY LIKE that one movie…” genre of political analysis––deserves the gold. Skip to about 4:25 on the above clip to go straight to the good stuff.
Here are some quick reviews of two SDFF films that I watched via screeners before touching down in Denver, and the one film I managed to see in town before succumbing to jet lag/altitude exhaustion. Oddly and entirely accidentally, all three films have something to do with aging males and their identity crises.
A self-mocking psuedo-documentary from the mind of Dan Butler (a journeyman supporting actor best known for a recurring role on Frasier), Karl Rove, I Love You has far less to do with the titualar “ultimate supporting actor” than with the personal fallout of engagement in our super-polarized political culture. What begins as a documentary on Butler as the archetypical “invisible” character actor (he’s consistently compared to Philip Seymour Hoffman, only “less famous”) morphs into a document of Butler’s mid-life crisis passion project, a one man show designed to expose the world to the “Real” Karl Rove. Butler begins the project wanting to hit the Bush administration where it hurts, but slowly comes to empathise with Rove, turns his show into a mildly-satiric love-letter, and alienates his single-minded friends and collaborators in the process.
Not always laugh-out loud funny, but well-paced and consistently engaging, Karl Rove, I Love You uses the natural conflict between (pervasively and unquestioningly liberal, and largely openly gay) Hollywood and (socially conservative but morally ambiguous) Red State actors to explore how angry obsession can offer the same kind of madness, identity salvation and pure pleasure as romantic passion. But more interestingly, it’s also about breaking down a black-and-white cipher and finding a whole person. It always feels more like a sitcom than a credible documentary (and the last twenty minutes really push the limits of disbelief), but it’s just creepy enough to work.
“I’ve been thinking about Medium Cool a lot lately,” writes Chuck Tryon at Newcritics. “In part because I’m teaching it, but also because the film’s treatment of history and documentary would seem to inform the debates about Brian DePalma’s Redacted and the decision to remove some documentary photographs from the film’s final montage.” Chuck hasn’t seen Redacted yet, but he makes some interesting connections in the full post, which you can read here. I havent’ seen Medium Cool since my first year of college (that’s about nine years, if you’re counting), and Chuck’s post inspired me to try to dig up some clips online. All I could find was the trailer above.
The thing that struck me when watching the trailer is that it looks very “real.” Obviously, I’m too young to have seen Medium Cool at the time of its release, so I don’t know if this is really a legitimate response–I don’t really know what “real” looked like in 1969. But even if it’s just a so-so approximation of 1969 reality, Medium Cool would seem to have something over Redacted, which wants to be a dispatch straight from contemporary popular media but, with its school play version of combat and video blogs kabuki, fails miserably.
Check out the Medium Cool trailer above, and the Redacted trailer below the jump. The almost image-free Redacted trailer is the ultimate teaser, a physical illustration of Brian DePalma’s insistence that the whole movie is comprised of material that an unnamed someone doesn’t want you to see. As Chuck notes, Medium Cool was, literally a movie that was considered too controversial and ground-breaking for release. In contrast, its trailer plays as a perfectly preserved slice of zeitgeist.
At Steady Diet of Film, Erin has a great post about two not-so-great film recommendations that came her way via form emails from John Kerry and the ACLU. Particularly alarming (to me, anyway) is Kerry’s endorsement of Paul Haggis’ In The Valley of Elah. In the portion of the email that Erin excerpts, Kerry essentially uses rhetoric to fight rhetoric. Elah is not “an ‘anti-war’ film,” he says (his fear quotes, BTW), because that term is too “too cheap and easy and clichéd.” “No,” says Kerry. Elah “is a film about soldiers and families.” Nothing easy or clichéd about that!
Just a brief note to introduce you to a couple of new SpoutBlog contributors. You may have already noticed that 
Interesting. 
