Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths opens at the IFC Center in New York on Friday. This review is adapted from our coverage of the film at the SXSW Film Festival, where we also interviewed the director. Above: Brown shops and talks at Sundance.
Margaret Brown’s The Order of Myths offers an immersion into the archaic miasma that is Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama. It’s the world’s oldest celebration of its kind, and tradition mandates that the two weeks worth of parties and parades are mostly racially segregated. Using Mardi Gras season as a microcosm for a portrait of contemporary race relations in the city, Brown gets a filmmaker’s dream gift in the black and white Mardi Gras associations’ selection of their queens.
Queen Stephanie, a black schoolteacher, is a descendant of a group of slaves who were transported on the Clothilde, the last slave ship to enter the US. When the Clothilde came ashore, there was a fire and the passengers escaped into the woods, ultimately settling in an area that came to be known as Africatown. Queen Helen Meaher, whose family now owns most of the land in Africatown, is a descendant of the company that brought the Clothilde over. “My people was on her people’s ship,” Stephanie says, with a slow, matter-of-fact nod. That nod confirms the film’s thesis: racism isn’t an outrage or even a spoken issue Mobile––it’s casual, habitual, and historically excused.
The only possible advantage a small-ish movie like Transsiberian has when opening on the same weekend as the biggest box office draw in recent memory, is that in cities where Transsiberian is being shown, The Dark Knight’s screenings have been sold out for weeks. So, if you’ve been left out in the cold by Batman, go see Transsiberian. Or better yet, see them both.
Transibberian is the most enjoyable film I saw at Sundance this last January. As far as best film, I’d say it’s tied with the steroids doc Bigger, Stronger, Faster. Transsiberian is directed by Brad Anderson. (Also known for The Machinist, which is maybe where Christopher Nolan found his next Batman? Discuss). It follows the story of an American couple, Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) as they travel the transsiberian railway from China to Europe after a mission trip. Tensions in their marriage are clear, Roy is a squeaky-clean do-gooder, tapping into a delightful naiveté we haven’t seen since Cheers. Jessie, on the other hand, is a reformed bad-girl. Mortimer makes her apprehension about having settled with Roy readily apparent without overdoing it. …Read more
If you listen to this week’s episode of FilmCouch, you’ll hear me tell a sad story about why I no longer have my most beloved cable channels like Turner Classic Movies and IFC, and what happens to a girl when she’s hungover from her birthday party and is forced to lie on the couch all day without her premium channels (hint: it involves both Michael Ian Black and Kathy Bates. Be afraid.) But thankfully, I *do* still have the ability to pay Time Warner extra money for movies, so the next time I’m curled up in a fetal position on a Saturday afternoon, I’ll be able to watch David Zellner’s Goliath, which just debuted on IFC’s VOD-only Festival Direct service. Back at Sundance, Kevin Buist interviewed David and brother Nathan, and Joe Swanberg went shopping with them.
At Portfolio, Fred Schruers profiles Austin Chick’s dot com crash period piece August, which the filmmaker and his stars will cheekily promote by ringing the bell at the NY Stock Exchange on Friday. “The film will need all the promotion it can get. In this summer of tent-pole behemoths…even an art-house film that won plaudits at the Sundance Film Festival faces a challenge.” Yup. So imagine how hard it’s going to be for virtually plaudit-less August!
Focus Features sent Variety a ComicCon Survival Kit, complete with a copy of Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics. Mike Jones recommends leaving it at home. “If the geeks see you reading this there, you’ll get the worst eye-roll ever. Their equivalent of a beat-down.”
There’s a New York in the Movies blogathon happening at 12 Grand in Checking (blog named after a throwaway line on 30 Rock? Very good sign.) and a Self Involvement Blogathon at Culture Snob. I’m going to try to work up something tonight that fits both.
In the meantime, watch a video that has no application to either: above, The Mind of Danny Tanner, a wrangling of sound and image from Full House into the poetic style of Bergman and the soundtrack of Donnie Darko. Via Mark Lisanti.
I saw The Wackness last spring at a special screening held for the critics participating in the Moving Image Institute last week. Afterwards, Sony Classics president Michael Barker was asked about critical response to the film thus far. Barker disclaimed that “most major critics” hadn’t yet reviewed the film, but then said something surprisingly candid about the makeup of the film’s detractors. “What’s the demographic of the critics who don’t like it?” he began, starting a statement with a question in expert post-Robert Evans mogul style. “Female. Single. Mothers with teenage kids––they don’t like the movie.”
Who ever is doing research over at Sony deserves a raise. I fit just two of those descriptors, and I don’t like it, either.
Maybe it’s true that even professional critics struggle to get beyond their own natural demographic biases. A certain (very young, very male) segment of the film blogosphere lashed out at Sony for buying The Wackness towards the close of Sundance––not because they didn’t like the film, but because they loved the film so much that they were moved to protect it from what they saw as the risk of a mis-managed mainstream release. I thought this campaign was absolutely inane at the time—in the virtually non-existent narrative buying climate of Sundance 2008, the boys should have been happy that their pet project was picked up at all––but having finally seen the thing, I’m at no loss to explain why those writers have embraced this film. With its full-on, fully uncritical glorification of adolescent male self-indulgence and permanent immaturity, The Wackness is a kind of cinematic embodiment of certain tendencies that make the sub-AICN movie web go round.
I haven’t watched The Simpsons regularly in years, but I got a couple of text messages alerting me that last night’s episode, which follows Lisa (whose talent President Skinner assesses equates to “as if Ingmar Bergman and Penny Marshall had a baby), as she makes a documentary called Capturing the Simpsons, and then takes the film to Sundance.
Matt Dentler points out that the entire episode is already up on my beloved Hulu, via which it’s now embedded above. It’s full of some pretty great festival-centric jokes. My favorite: Lisa’s film is chosen during a scene in which a character who looks a little something like Geoff Gilmore throws a can of film into what looks suspiciously like the fireplace in the lobby at The Yarrow, AKA Sundance press and industry homebase. Also good: Marge walks into a theater playing a film called Candyland under the assumption that “a great family game is now a great family movie”, only to find junkies on screen getting ready to shoot up. “Oh, I get it,” Marge says. “Every title means the opposite of what it means!”
I saw The Wackness (which has its New York premiere tomorrow at the Tribeca Film Festival) at a special screening held for the critics participating in the Moving Image Institute last week. Afterwards, Sony Classics president Michael Barker was asked about critical response to the film thus far. Barker disclaimed that “most major critics” hadn’t yet reviewed the film, but then said something surprisingly candid about the makeup of the film’s detractors. “What’s the demographic of the critics who don’t like it?” he began, starting a statement with a question in expert post-Robert Evans mogul style. “Female. Single. Mothers with teenage kids––they don’t like the movie.”
Who ever’s doing research over at Sony deserves a raise. I fit just two of those descriptors, and I don’t like it, either.
Maybe it’s true that even professional critics struggle to get beyond their own natural demographic biases. A certain (very young, very male) segment of the film blogosphere lashed out at Sony for buying The Wackness towards the close of Sundance––not because they didn’t like the film, but because they loved the film so much that they were moved to protect it from what they saw as the risk of a mis-managed mainstream release. I thought this campaign was absolutely inane at the time—in the virtually non-existent narrative buying climate of Sundance 2008, the boys should have been happy that their pet project was picked up at all––but having finally seen the thing, I’m at no loss to explain why those writers have embraced this film. With its full-on, fully uncritical glorification of adolescent male self-indulgence and permanent immaturity, The Wackness is a kind of cinematic embodiment of certain tendencies that make the sub-AICN movie web go round.
SAG has announced nine interim deals with indie production outfit The Film Department, in an effort to put pressure on the major studios to settle on a new contract in advance of a threatened strike. Variety says the studios are “unlikely” to be scared enough by the prospect of Catherine Zeta-Jones going back to work without them to be moved into immediate action.
Women in Film, “a non-profit organization dedicated to helping women within the entertainment, communication and media industries,”will honor Salma Hayek, Diane English, Ginnifer Goodwin and Sherry Lansing at their 35th annual awards ceremony in June.
The title for the long-awaited (apparently; if you’re acquainted with an awaiter, let us know) X-Files movie sequel has finally been released. The X-Files: I Want to Believe opens on July 25.
August, Austin Chick’s summer 2001 tech bust period piece and one of the easiest objects of derision at the most recent Sundance film festival, has become the latest B-list actor-fueled title to land distribution long after the emptying of Park City. Co-producer and star Josh Hartnett––who says “fucking” in the trailer, so you know he’s working hard––plays the cocky douchbag behind a dot com startup called LandShark, with an inflated public value but no discernible product to peddle. He gets to spout of a lot of awesomely empty futurism, like “LandShark is not a vehicle––LandShark is the road itself!” and “What the net is supposed to do … is increase freedom!” It takes place in New York in August 2001 and the tagline, at least at the point when this trailer and this poster were put together, is “August. Comes before the fall.” Get it? September 11 and the crumbling of nerd babylon: two tragedies we must never forget.
Anyway. First Look bought it. The Hollywood Reporter says they’re going to release in July, but First Look hasn’t been the most reliable distributor of late, so Web 1.0 nostalgists may have to wait. In the meantime, check out the ridiculous Sundance Channel segment about the film above. My favorite part is when Chick comments that he and his actors are dressed casually for their premiere. Industry veteran Hartnett responds, “It’s Sundance, you can get away with it here.” Co-star Adam Scott agrees: “That’s the way it is at the ‘dance.”
Karina will be AWOL for most of Wednesday and at least part of Thursday. While I’m gone, you need to go to Hollywood Elsewhere, because Jeff Wells has obtained the script for the movie adaptation of Peter Biskind’s 90s indie film expose, Down and Dirty Pictures. I mean, I think he has––technically, he posted scans of pages on April 1, but he groveled for a copy of the script several days before, so it’s likely legit. Anyway––the pages he’s scanned are…something to behold. They appear to be the first four pages of the screenplay, and they set the film up as a decony film-within-a-film, wherein Bingham Ray and Jeff Lipsky argue over the portrayal of their own foibles. Read, and talk amongst yourselves. Wells says they’re hiring “name actors” for a Toronto shoot beginning in the fall. Um…casting ideas, anyone?
Barry Levinson’s meta Hollywood comedy 
