The original film of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three was quite representative of New York City in the mid-1970s. Tony Scott’s remake, which opens this weekend, doesn’t have that same sense of space, but even worse than its lack of local relevance is its out-of-date plot, which has John Travolta causing panic on Wall Street in order to make hundreds of millions in a stock scheme. Never mind that the economy is currently in such a state that the terrorist’s plan may be fruitless. Even before the recession this should have seemed antiquated. As David Edelstein writes in New York magazine, “Why would he need to do something so…so…1974 as hijacking a subway train to do what a lot of hedge-fund managers do before breakfast?”
The plot is also tremendously unoriginal, enough to assume Travolta’s character is a huge James Bond fan. But someone familiar with 007 villains, or any other would-be economic terrorists, would have to realize his own scheme would fail. To illustrate why it’s useless to attempt this kind of thing, we present you with ten classic films involving stock market scams, most of which are unsuccessful. …Read more
Probably in part thanks to the Tribeca Film Festival’s new pre-fest review embargo, it’s been extremely difficult thus far to get a sense of which of the festivals many, many titles are actually worth seeking out and seeing. I’m sure the embargo has a purpose, but the fact remains that we’re now five days away from opening night, and we’re starring down a festival devoid of buzz. As someone trying to figure out how to cover the thing, I’m in the odd position of reevaluating givens: I don’t know what to do with the rest of the lineup, but I know Tom Hall’s last blog post makes me think Speed Racer looks fucking awesome.
So spelunking the catalog, all I really have to go on is keywords. And, my my, what keywords do we have for the Encounters selection, The Objective: A horror film. Set in Afghanistan, beginning three days after 9/11. About a Special Ops mission in search of an Al Qaeda nukes stash, gone horribly wrong. Directed by Daniel Myrick, best known as the co-director of The Blair Witch Project. Are our jaws dropping in unison?
It’s the kind of film everyone would be talking about, if only Tribeca would let us review it before it premieres. But, they didn’t put an embargo on reviewing the trailer…
Oooh, this is exciting. One of my favorite films from Sundance 2007, Lynn Hershman-Leeson’s Strange Culturehas booked a two-week engagement at the Cinema Village here in New York.
Strange Culture is an experimental documentary about Steve Kurtz, an artist with the renowned Critical Art Ensemble who was arrested on fraud charges after the FBI searched his home found biological testing materials from an art installation, which they misconstrued as weapons of mass destruction. Because Kurtz is barred from speaking on camera about the details of his case, the director hired actors, including Tilda Swinton and Thomas Dean Ryan, to star in dramatizations, which are woven with testimony from Kurtz’ friends and colleagues. It’s a fairly academic approach, but the finished film is persuasive, and as a document of what happens to art in a post-terrorism climate of paranoia, it’s surprisingly moving. Check out the trailer above, and for more info on when and where Strange Culture might be playing near you, check out the film’s website.
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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