In The Guitar, ex-Mike Figgis muse Saffron Burrows plays a terminally ill, freshly laid-off woman who holes up in a downtown loft near the Hudson and doggedly pursues one last series of good times, as represented by the shiny red guitar which informs the title, and sex with Isaach de Bankole and Paz de la Huerta. Not bad as far as final flings go. After making its debut at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, with stops at Mill Valley and the Hamptons along the way, Amy Redford’s directorial debut opened on Friday in New York. We caught up with the fledgling film director (and Sundance chief’s daughter) to talk about her addiction to Family Guy, what made The Diving Bell and The Butterfly so special and what she’d like to do with Tom Waits.
The 9th Annual Golden Trailer Awards were held in Los Angeles last night with what seems like a thousand winners announced in all sorts of categories representing movie marketing. There were awards for trailers, TV spots and posters divided up by genre (comedy, drama, horror, independent, etc.) and technical achievement (sound editing, motion graphics, etc.). While having too many categories can lead to questions of consistency — how does The Dark Knightbeat out Iron Manfor Best Action trailer but the latter film wins the Summer 2008 Blockbuster award? — it’s interesting to know which film’s ad employs the best music (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and which has the best voice-over (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford).
Regarding Jesse James‘ win, though, I have to wonder how a film’s marketing can be so great if it doesn’t actually bring in an audience. In addition to its trailer being honored, its poster also won in the Best Drama category. Plus (and this is me just being picky), isn’t awarding the trailer’s voice-over a bit unfair considering it just utilizes part of Hugh Ross’ narration from the actual film? To me, this category should probably be honoring those “In a world … ” trailer voice-over guys. Nonetheless, I do love the trailer and the film and so I’ve included it for repeat viewing above.
Of course I understand that the Golden Trailers are more an honoring of craft than of successfulness. Still, if the trailer for In Brugesand the stencil poster for Ramboare the most original works in film marketing in the past year, we need some new designers right away.
Check out the list of winners and nominees after the jump
The winner of our Julian Schnabel Poster Contest is Ed Howard. Ed’s contest entry is posted after the jump; you can also check out his extended thoughts on The Diving Bell and the Butterflyat his blog. Congratulations, Ed––and please contact us with your mailing address at karina AT spout DOT com so we can get the poster out to you.
Here’s your final reminder: if you want a chance to win that limited-edition Diving Bell and the Butterfly one-sheet, designed by Julian Schnabel himself, go here and enter our contest. We’ll accept entries until midnight tonight, and will announce a winner on Friday.
Above: a detail of the special edition Julian Schnabel-designed Diving Bell poster that we’re giving away. The deadline to enter our giveaway was supposed to be earlier this week, but whilst at Sundance we got too busy to promote it. So, we’re extending the deadline to Wednesday, February 6. Full details on how to enter here.
Amelie Gilette at The Onion A.V. Club “always thought that Jamie Foxx’s natural career progression would be Booty Call, Ray, Oscar win, release of the R&B album Unpredictable, release of the R&B album Hot Tub, Academy Award (These Are The Words I’m Sayin’ To You), followed by the launch of Academy Award Winner: The Fragrance (musky ego with notes of ugh).” She was wrong.
“In 1993 Justin Timberlake joined the Mickey Mouse Club. In 1993 I officially joined the Mrs Doubtfire Fan Club. While membership is small, we all still share a love of vaccuming to Aerosmith’s ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady.’” Paul Scheer breaks down what sets him apart from the superstar with whom he shares a birthday.
“It’s all in there,” James Toback tells Michael Musto of his upcoming Mike Tyson documentary. “The ear biting, the rape charge, which was indeed a setup, and the solitary confinement. Mike’s survived, but he’s not sure into what future. He talks about being 40 as if it were 105 because a lot of people around him are drugged out or dead. Where does he go now?”
Cloverfieldhas the honor of being the latest movie that I disliked watching but love thinking, reading, writing and talking about. It’s not so much that it’s the kind of movie that’s better in concept than execution (as I was bored, millions of others were thrilled), but it is the kind of movie that — intentional or not — has much more depth off-screen than on. Originally I was going to devote a whole week to discussing all the different things Cloverfield has been said to be about, but the monster flick has been out for more than a week and its attendance has diminished so much that instead I’ve decided to put all the theories into a single post. I hope it gives you enough to ponder on its own.
Specifically, I present you with different perspectives on what the Cloverfield monster is. Even if the movie isn’t necessarily about the monster, these thoughts on what the monster represents carries over into what the movie is as a whole. First, though, I’d like to relate a story about my experience seeing the film. I saw Cloverfield with an audience that included some of its stars, including T.J. Miller, who plays the obnoxious cameraman character “Hud”. At the end of the movie, he thanked everyone for coming and invited a question from the audience. A number of people shouted, “What is it?” Miller replied, “We have no fucking idea!” What may have seemed like a cop out or even an invitation for viewers to come up with their own answer was in fact one of the many explanations. Find out what I mean after the jump.
The combo of last week’s DGA contract agreement and yesterday’s announcement of the Oscar noms may have set the WGA in a new direction towards ending the writer’s strike. Yesterday afternoon the WGA announced it had withdrawn demands for jurisdiction over reality and animation, which the AMTPT was dead against recognizing. The two sides are reportedly meeting together today.
Even if the strike is not over in a month, let alone today, there will still definitely be an Oscar telecast. It will be heavy on clips honoring the past 80s years of cinema, according to Gil Cates, who compared the strike to the presidential race.
2008 Oscar-nominee Michael Moore is making a stand on the issue of documentary and foreign film exhibition, stating that his new year’s resolution is to sit down with theater owners and urge them to reserve one auditorium per multiplex devoted to specialty films. Hopefully he’ll document it, and one day we can sit in that auditorium and watch the result.
The fate of Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassushas not been officially announced yet, but Variety points out that Heath Ledger’s involvement in the movie was integral to its financing. I doubt the film could easily replace the late actor and go back and reshoot all of his scenes, but I also hope Gilliam isn’t left with another unfinished work (ala The Man Who Killed Don Quixote). Could Gilliam & Co. go the route of The Crow and digitally add Ledger’s face to a double?
Diving Bell and the Butterfly fans, take note: Spout is giving away a limited edition one-sheet poster, designed by Julian Schnabel, with an original poem by the painter/filmmaker imprinted on one side. We’ve pasted a detail of the poster above; you can see a larger view here. It’s a very cool prize, but we only have one to give away, so we want to make sure we give it to the right person.
So here’s what we’re going to do: sometime between now and January 29, tell us in 200-500 words why you love Schnabel and/or Diving Bell, why you deserve to win the poster, and where you’ll put it if we pick you. Post your answer, or a link to your answer on your own blog, in the comments to this post. We will review entries the last week of January and announce a winner on Friday, February 1. Good luck!
The news that Mathieu Amalric, star of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, has been cast as the next Bond villain may not be such a great sign for Bond 22. Nothing against Amalric––in fact, just the opposite: the best actors have a tendency to show up in the worst Bond films. Here’s five bits of evidence to support that thesis; tell us what we’ve missed/why we’re wrong in the comments.
1) Max Von Sydow, Never Say Never Again
A lot of 007 purists barely acknowledge this “unofficial” Bond film, which was made outside the auspices of the Ian Fleming-sanctioned production company behind the rest of the franchise. But we have to include Von Sydow on this list, as the actor, who coincidentally plays the father of Amalric’s character in Diving Bell, was the source of an initial rumor that Almaric would be taking on the role of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played by Sydow himself in Never.
Never came out the same year as Octopussy, but made less money; it’s essentially a rehash of the far-superior Thunderball. Sean Connery came back to play Bond after a 12 year hiatus, whilst Von Sydow takes over the recurring character of Blofeld, head of the villainous SPECTRE, previously played by Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas and others. Wikipedia has a chart comparing the various Blofelds across the seven films in which they appear, which pegs the Pleasance and Savalas incarnations as a clear inspiration for Dr. Evil. Von Sydow’s characterization of Blofeld broke from that mold, and reactions were/are mixed. At Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Leo Goldsmith mocked Von Sydow’s “Dracula accent and silly haircut,” but The Bond Film Informant praises Von Sydow for making Blofeld “cool, calm and bearded.”
So, like father like fictional son? Somehow I can see Amalric rocking the “cool, calm and bearded” thing a little more easily than the “creepily impetuous Siamese cat-careeser” thing, but we shall see.
We didn’t do a New in Theaters last week, and many Thanksgiving releases are expanding this weekend, so this is basically a recap of every film we’ve reviewed that’s been released in the past two weeks.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Paul was “blown away” by Julian Schnabel’s latest at Telluride; at NYFF, Karina called the film “an almost excessively beautiful aestheticization of misery [that's] often a little too good at conveying Baudy’s isolation within his own head.” Check out today’s podcast, which includes an interview with Schnabel from Telluride, and an argument between Karina and Paul.
The Savages: At Telluride, Paul called Tamara Jenkin’s long-awaited feature follow-up to Slums of Beverly Hills “a really rich movie, full of dark humor you have to develop when things aren’t funny.”
Starting Out in the Evening: Karina caught Andrew Wagner’s second feature in Denver and had this to say: “[Evening] unfolds in comfortably-worn indie drama territory: New York academics and struggling artists collide cross generations, their almost complete lack of self-awareness failing to keep them from brutally criticizing and actively manipulating one another…but Lauren Ambrose and Frank Langella make each moment on that path feel startlingly real.”
Protagonist:Guest SpoutBlogger Pamela Cohn on Jessica Yu’s experimental tackling of Euripedes: “Juxtaposing live interviews with four different male characters, and using archival footage of their lives intercut with highly-stylized scenes of puppets reciting Euripides‘ in the original Greek acting out the tragedies being narrated on-screen, Yu orchestrates a provocative and deeply-thoughtful chorus based on the structure of a Greek tragedy…yes, it is quite challenging to watch, but far from boring.”
We interview Julian Schnabel, director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, opening tonight. Karina and I cross wires on its watch worthiness. We also interview Brian Poyser, director of Dear Pillow. It’s a complicated, divisive, raw look at porn leading Kevin and I into some verbal wrastlin’.
Chris Thilk points to a new trailer for Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Chris writes: “I love the music that plays, since it creates a sort of tone-poem feel to the trailer. Unfortunately that will likely be lost in the final film.” Actually, “tone poem” is a pretty dead-on description of large sections of the final film–if anything, this trailer is maybe more straightforward in terms of narrative than the full feature. Check it out above.
For the New York coterie of film critics, bloggers, and anyone else who can make a reasonable case for a press or industry pass, the first day of New York Film Festival press screenings every September is something akin to the first day of school. (That is, for people who really, really liked school.) But it’s also kind of like embarking on a four-week vacation right in the middle of the city. Screenings are held at Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side, a part of town that I personally rarely have occasion to visit, and once you’ve made your way through a maze of construction and up a hidden escalator to the Walter Reed Theater, it’s difficult to hold on to everyday concerns and not get completely wrapped up in the excitement of what is about to unfold.
NYFF press screenings are perhaps most appreciated for their leisurely schedule. Each day starts out with a fair amount of breakfasty schmoozing over the bagels, juice and coffee provided every morning by the press screening sponsor. There are generally just two screenings a day, five days a week, for four weeks. Most screenings are followed by a lengthy press conference; this year, the only American filmmaker whose work is in the fest who is conspicuously absent from the press conference schedule is Gus Van Sant. It’s the rare film festival that’s actually possible to cover in the nooks and crannies of a normal day job––although, having tried that last year, I have to say that I far prefer camping out at Lincoln Center for full days to sneaking in screenings here and there during lulls in the odd work day.
Because I’m still working on some Toronto odds and ends, I was only able put in a half day at yesterday’s NYFF 2007 opener, but I’ll be able to catch the afternoon film, Masayuki Suo’s I Just Didn’t Do It, when it re-screens later in the fest (if you can’t wait, Keith Uhlich has already reviewed it here). In the morning, I did catch Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. More on that after the jump.
Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly won him the Director award at Cannes this year. After seeing it this morning, I can’t argue with the Cannes’ jury. I was simply blown away. How can somebody tell a gripping story of a man who–resulting from a stroke–can only communicate with one eyelid? All I can say is you will simply be amazed.
I interviewed Julian Schnabel and asked why he continues to orbit around intensely creative but “doomed” men (his previous two films are Basquiat and Before Night Falls, biopics about Jean Michel Basquiat and Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas).
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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The winner of our Julian Schnabel Poster Contest is Ed Howard. Ed’s contest entry is posted after the jump; you can also check out his extended thoughts on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly 
