who we are
staff picks
More CT Movies & TV
All posts from "September 2009"
« August 2009 | Main | October 2009 »
September 25, 2009Terrible Yellow Eyes!
Website, artists celebrate Sendak and 'Where the Wild Things Are'
Cory Godbey is one of them. A professional animator and illustrator in Greenville, S.C., Godbey launched TerribleYellowEyes.com, what is being called "a curatorial online project and ongoing blog with original works honoring Maurice Sendak."
If you like Sendak's art, you'll love this website, which features work from over 100 artists from around the world. And if you, like me, can't wait for this movie, spending a little time at TerribleYellowEyes will help to tide you over till the wild rumpus starts.
Creation gets an American distributor after all.
Now, the Hollywood Reporter says an American distributor has been found for the film after all -- and it is Newmarket Films, the same distributor that handled Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ nearly six years ago. If anyone in this business would know how to handle a "really hot potato", it would seem to be them.
Newmarket is reportedly thinking of releasing the film in December. (If they really want to stir up some controversy, they could try releasing it Christmas Day.)
Meanwhile, the film opens in its native Britain tomorrow, and in conjunction with that release, the Christian outreach organization Damaris has posted some movie-related resources at their website "to help churches, schools and community groups make the most of this film."
Now He's REALLY Informed!
Marc Whitacre, Matt Damon's character in 'The Informant!', found Jesus in jail
Marc Whitacre, the title character, apparently found Jesus (or the other way around) while doing a prison term for embezzling millions from his former employer.
WORLD magazine has an interview with Whitacre here.
Darwin Film: Not Showing in a Theater Near You?
As Mark indicated last week, things are beginning to heat up around the Darwin biopic, Creation, in which a young Charles Darwin (played by Paul Bettany) struggles between faith and reason, particularly after the loss of a cherished daughter. In his post, Mark discussed Roger Ebert’s reaction to people who walked out of the film, possibly for theological reasons.
What the piece didn’t mention is that Creation may not be seen in a theater near you.
Why? Apparently it can’t get a distributor in America. The reason? According to a newspaper in the U.K., Creation, which opened the recent Toronto Film Festival, is having a hard time finding traction in the United States because it has been deemed too “divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.”
The film’s producers, who say they have lined up distribution in every other country but the United States, are reportedly baffled, citing positive reviews but a hostile religious climate.
While there are Christians who see God’s handiwork in natural selection, the majority of Christians consider the uber-theory of the most controversial scientist of the 20th century as anathema to their faith. So it is little surprise that Creation is getting such a frosty reception.
But should Christians’ reaction to Darwin block the film’s release? What do you think? Do you think Creation (based on the book “Annie’s Box,” by Darwin's great-great-grandson, Randal Keynes) should go unseen in the States, or do you see it as a way to open a dialogue on the creationism vs. evolution debate?
NOTE: Another Darwin biopic, titled Mrs. Darwin, with Joseph Fiennes and Rosamund Pike is also in production.
Ben-Hur's Roots in . . . Indiana??
As the classic film turns 50, writer's home state remembers him
And while one Indianapolis journalist remembers the writer, Indiana native Lew Wallace, in a quiet way, the O2 in London remembers the story in a bit louder fashion with an extravagant stage show that its promoter calls "an opera for God."
Watch the teaser video for the production below, and learn more about it at the official site.
Fallen Angel Finds a Home
Documentary about Larry Norman to hit theaters, festivals in 2010
The company, Abramorama, most recently distributed Anvil: The Story of Anvil, which received high critical marks.
Critical response to Fallen Angel is somewhat lacking, except for a few things that had been written about earlier versions of the film -- which I saw about a year ago. DiSabatino took some of those early criticisms to heart and apparently has done some heavy editing on the film, and says the new version has a much different vibe than the original. (The first version -- available here -- was a choppy and a bit too dark, though there were certainly some dark sides of Norman that had to be explored. DiSabatino says the edited version is lighter, but doesn't gloss over Norman's problems, many of which he brought on himself.)
DiSabatino also reports that "the legal wranglings that went on behind the scene are over and we have prevailed. For those of you that do not know, after the Cinequest festival [where Fallen Angel screened in March] we were threatened with a copyright infringement lawsuit by the Norman family. We responded by petitioning the courts to judge whether we had fairly and legally used the materials in the film. We prevailed in the case and found out that much of what was contested wasn't even owned by those protesting."
CT Movies plans more coverage, including a review, of the film in the months ahead, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, learn more about Fallen Angel at the official site, and watch the trailer here:
Saved! + Helter Skelter + South Park=Leslie
Observations from Day 7 of the Toronto International Film Festival
Or maybe you don't. Nothing in my description yet would indicate that the idea is this is an anti-war film, a coda underscored twice in the film (by comparing former president Richard Nixon unfavorably to Charles Manson) and reiterated by the producer and director introducing the film by invoking the deaths of Canadian citizens in the Iraq war and suggesting the film was a valentine to America because it was about a time when it was okay to express dissent. Ummm....well...okay.
I'm sympathetic to just about every idea in Leslie, My Name is Evil, though I confess I often wanted them to work together better than they did. I like nachos. I like ice cream, I like curry. Just not in the same dish.
It's hard to write succinctly about the film because there are a lot of things to talk about, some formal and some thematic. Like South Park (actually, a bit more like Team America), the film is deliberately transgressive, and so it is rather pointless to talk about whether it crossed some self-defined "line" separating the legitimately satirical from the grossly offensive. For me, I tend to care more about the perceived intention in being transgressive than I do about the exact nature of their envelope pushing. I imagine the scene that would most offend most Christian viewers (who might through some fluke find themselves in the audience unaware of what they are in for) would be a dream sequence in which protagonist Perry fantasizes about recreating a Manson ritual he has heard related in court with his naked, pious fiancee alternately lusted after and stabbed to death. That scene is so over-the-top in its stylization--and it, at least, has an underlying thematic point about repression which one may or may not agree with but can recognize--that I found it more subversive than obscene. Your mileage may vary.
Actually, the scene I had the most trouble with was the recreation of the actual murder. The victim, who was, you know, an actual historical person who really did suffer and really did die, is rendered faceless and identity-less, wrapped in an American flag so that the stabbing can have a more political than personal signification. A few years ago, I stumbled across a book that contained actual archival photographs of Jack the Ripper's crime scenes and of the autopsies of his victims. Since then, I've had a real hard time with the commercialization of true crime. Even when works of art don't glorify or romanticize the killers (and this one doesn't--Leslie and Manson both are cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs) there still seems to me to be something about them that is exploitative in their co-opting of the suffering of others.
Which is a shame, maybe, because the film actually hits its mark as often as it misses. A scene in which the trial judge and district attorney discuss what euphemisms for copulation are acceptable for being said in court smartly underscores the seeming absurdity of straining at gnats while drowning in a sea of camels. There is a brief abortion back story that manages to be, somehow, both subversively pro-life and bitterly accusatory towards those who speak in terms of values but act in terms of self-interest (real or imagined). God's answer to prayer and Perry's obedience to (some of) the light that he has is one of those conclusions that can be read equally plausibly as sincere and mocking, thus encouraging viewers to think about why the implications are troublesome rather than simply being offended.
Early this week, the guy introducing Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime said, "If the film disturbs you, [the director] is doing his job." I'm not sure everyone will buy into the notion that this can be the primary purpose of film: I know I don't buy that it is the only purpose. Leslie is a bit more cartoonish than, say, Welcome to the Dollhouse or Happiness, more prone to present its characters as absurd rather than petty, but I could totally picture director Reginald Harkema's film playing as a double bill with Solondz's and not suffering by the comparison.
Coming Soon: Festival wrap up and best bets.
Guest blogger Kenneth R. Morefield, an English prof at Campbell University, is writing about the Toronto International Film Festival for CT Movies.
World Films and the Buzz About Town
Observations from Day 6 of the Toronto International Film Festival
The day began, however, with Alain Renais's Les Herbes folles (Wild Grass).
There is a communal aspect to film going that is present in the culture at large and highly concentrated around major festivals. People talk about films and the way they shape our lives in a way I seldom hear them talk about books anymore. For good or for ill, films matter to people, and as a result the relationship between cinephiles and an auteur is often something quite different from that of their relationship to authors, actors, and other celebrities.
Two years ago, the eighty-seven year old Eric Rohmer sent what could well be his final film to the festival (Romance of Astree and Celadon) and the fact that the much beloved director could not himself make the trip to present the film in no way diminished the joy of his fans at having another film. Life gets mighty precious, Bonnie Raitt sings, when there is less of it to waste.
Alain Resnais is eighty-seven this year, and Les Herbes folles could well be his last film. That he was not able to be in the Scotiabank theater to present the film did little to diminish my pleasure in having two more hours in the dark with an international treasure of whom we are not yet ready (are we ever?) to let go.
When wiser, more knowledgeable men than I write histories, I would venture to guess that Resnais will be remembered more for Night and Fog, Hiroshima mon Amour, or Last Year at Marienbad. Film, though, like the music in a Nick Hornby novel, is autobiographical. The experience of it is so intimately connected to space and time that it is held in our hearts and our memories as much as on the tape or the disc.
I was once fortunate enough to hear Johnny Cash live in concert. He was not at the peak of his artistic powers, but I treasure to this day having not having to regret never having done it. When Nick Reynolds passed away a few years ago, my sorrow was allayed with the fondness of the memories surrounding having finally seen the Kingston Trio perform. I'm not sure what I would give for the opportunity to hear Leonard Cohen in person before I can only applaud after his shadow. More than I could reasonably afford, probably.
Les Herbes folles was not, for me, a particularly great film. I found the tone to be whimsical in that cloying Alexaner Payne/Wes Anderson/Paul Thomas Anderson too-cool-for-school manner that generally grates on me. I found the two principal characters to be tedious and totally unsympathetic. I thought it labored in places, and I was restless throughout.
I cherished every second of it.
FESTIVAL BUZZ
There are approximately 250 features and another 60 shorts playing at this year's festival. I am seeing twenty. Here's what I'm hearing about what I'm not seeing:
--Oddly enough, I didn't program any documentaries this year. They are usually some of my favorites. My friend Russel Lucas has convinced me I want to see Google Baby, a provocative documentary about the outsourcing and commercialization of fertility. The always dependable Darren Hughes spoke up for Colony, an exploration into the mysterious and alarming loss of the world's bee population. Given that The Band That Wouldn't Die was presented by Barry Levinson and produced by ESPN, I have no doubt it should be airing soon enough on your television screens. Focusing on the departure of the Colts from Baltimore, the descriptions I've been given by those who saw it make it sound as much about how society has changed and what holds communities together as it is about sports.
--Most everything gets good word of mouth the first week because there is an element of self-selection involved. That said, I haven't heard anyone in line talking about Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire who wasn't gushing. (The majority of those I've overheard have been middle-aged, white women. I would not be surprised if the film ends up having more crossover appeal than I was expecting.)
--Screening are always more packed on the weekend, understandably. As of this morning, Capitalism: A Love Story was one of the few early Tuesday screenings that was "Rush Only" (i.e. sold out).
--I've heard from two people who tried and failed to make it all the way through Enter the Void. That's as anecdotal as evidence comes, but there it is.
--Carlos Saura's I Don Giovanni is the film I've heard the most people say they tried to get into and couldn't. Given that the non-gala presentation on Monday was at the cavernous Ryerson theater, I found that telling.
--If you are constitutionally able to handle a film about a sex doll that comes to life, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll has some moments of breathtaking (pun intended) beauty. (Okay, I did in fact see that one, so it's not just a rumor. The sexual content is more graphic and crude than I suppose most Christians will care for, bit it's an achingly tender film for all that.)
Guest blogger Kenneth R. Morefield, an English prof at Campbell University, is writing about the Toronto International Film Festival for CT Movies.
Ends of the World (as We Know It)
Observations from Day 5 of the Toronto International Film Festival
A lot of people, and I'm not entirely sure.
Partial disclosure: I'm one of the six people in America who did not love the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, so my concerns are not about failures in adaptation. Changes from the novel are minimal and somewhat understandable. As an adaptation, the film reminded me of the Harry Potter films or The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is successful in repainting the surfaces of the plot, but somehow loses something of the poetry, mystery, and majesty of the source material. But I recognize that I'm in the minority in my assessment of those other two franchises, and I suspect I will be here as well.
Viggo Mortensen said in introducing the film that it was not a "heartbreaking story" but a "heart opening story." Kodi Smit-McPhee said the story was not about the end of the world but about the relationship between the father and son. Readers are free to wonder if my not having a son is part of what makes it difficult for me to connect to the story; I've wondered myself.
Ultimately, I found the film, like the book, to be too much setting and not enough purpose. The lyricism of McCarthy's prose carries us past that fact in the novel. He writes so poetically and movingly that it is easy enough to get transfixed in the beauty of his words and spend little time contemplating what the words signify or whether or not it is beautiful too. As with No Country for Old Men, some of the prose is imported into the film with voice-over (though, oddly, not the final passage, which is strange given that it provides the closest thing to a coda the novel has).
Also, the novel begins en medias res, and part of its spell is the way it reveals its horrors gradually. The film elucidates most of them in the prelude, so many are reduced to the level of dangers to be avoided on an obstacle course rather than revelations. That this point is thematically important and not superficial is, I think, underscored by how often in the text the boy says, "I don't know." and the man replies, "Yes, you do." Rhetorically, this repetition reinforces the way revelation is structured in the film. It's a story about being confronted with what you already know but don't want to admit.
The thing is, though, much like the works of Melville or Faulkner, McCarthy's stories unfold in the descriptions of the action, not the action itself. Film being such a visual medium, what we end up with is a picaresque obstacle course of fires, falling trees, cannibals, and cold.
But there, I've done it; I couldn't help myself. I ended up talking about what I didn't like instead of what I think others will. Who do I expect will appreciate the film? Parents who love their children. People for whom carrying the fire and being one of the good guys is important. Most everyone who is not a cynical misanthrope or small minded film critic.
He did say he thought the film was "anti-fundamentalist," which I think was (and is) an unfortunate word choice, but which I'm pretty sure based on the context of his remarks he meant to use as a descriptor for someone who imposes his or her beliefs on another by means of force. As a descriptor of the film's point-of-view, with this assessment, I would also agree.
Amenábar also said he was an optimist by nature, and this I have a hard time seeing in the film. The film's twice repeated thesis--when two things are equal to a third, they are each equal to the other--in conjunction with the moral failings of Christian, pagan, scientist, and Jew alike make it hard for me to see the film as a plea for tolerance so much as a lament for the costs (personal and corporate) of intolerance.
That the film is designed to invite parallels between fourth century Egypt and the contemporary world is clear enough (and this intention was also freely admitted in the Q&A). It's pretty impossible to contemplate the Christians throwing a man into the fire without thinking about how many of them would be later burned at the stake. It's pretty hard seeing the Pagans assault Christians for defiling their symbols and then retreating behind the protection of the law without thinking about those who would insist that Christians are the only ones who don't deserve equal protection under the law. It is hard to see those who pride themselves for being learned and enlightened men of science and reason whip their slaves for the wrongs of others and not think about how often science and technology has been the tool of the oppressor and religion the solace to the oppressed. It is hard to see the Jews of the film, forced to systematically live in a society where they have no rights, finally pick up stones and throw them back and not think of another intifada centuries later.
There will be many viewers, I suspect, who will feel the group with which they identify is singled out and represented the most unfairly. I'm not one of them. There were people who were hypocrites, cruel, and destructive in the film. Some of them were Christian and others were not. There were people who recognized their mistakes and owned them and people who refused to do so. Some of each were Christians, and some were not.
In terms of historical accuracy, the director claimed he tried to stay as true to to the sources as possible, but he admitted making changes for narrative purposes. (Examples include the means of death for one character and the changing of locations for some events because of budget constraints.) When pressed by one audience member why he chose to focus more on Hypatia than one of the Jews or Christians (a premise that I'm not sure the film supports), Amenábar said simply that he was amazed no one had made a film about Hypatia yet and wanted to do so before anyone else got the idea. What was clear to me from these comments, is that while Amenábar had political and cultural points to make, he wanted to make them in the context of a good story.
And make no mistake, Agora is a smashingly good story. I love the fact that Amenábar said he tried to limit the use of CGI in the film, instead building sets. There is a beauty and truth to the human face that no amount of spectacle can replace. There is a moment during the ransacking of the library of Alexandria when Amenábar very simply and slowly turns the camera, and it results in fifteen seconds of the most hauntingly beautiful and heartbreakingly painful images I have seen in a major narrative film in years. So, too, a shot of a character looking through a circular hole in a roof that, from the angle she is viewing it, is seen as an oval. Where that shot comes and why it is so ripe with meaning, it would be criminal for me to give away.
Still, I know there will be some who will be hung up on the historical accuracies (or inaccuracies) of the film and/or the biases (real or perceived) of the filmmaker. To them I will say that the Battle of Agincourt probably had more to do with the English longbow than King Henry V's "band of brother" speech, that William Wallace may not have yelled "freedom" as he was being disemboweled, and that just because Aslan was not a real lion doesn't mean he's not a Real Lion.
Agora is the post-9/11 film that I've been waiting for without knowing it--the one that appears to say, finally, we are defined by what we do more than what is done to us, that our greatness lies less in how much we know than in how mightily we strive to live by it.
And with that, I also agree.
Guest blogger Kenneth R. Morefield, an English prof at Campbell University, is writing about the Toronto International Film Festival for CT Movies.
Brilliant Star; Drab Gray
Observations from Day 4 of the Toronto International Film Festival
Campion also mentioned that she was not a fan of poetry before she read the biography of Keats that prompted the film. Yet this, too, surprisingly works to the film's advantage. Brawne is presented as one who only gradually comes to understand and appreciate the poetry, and this allows her to serve as a surrogate for the audience. Not that the film is stingy with Keats's words--it isn't. But the work is always subordinated to the soul that produced it. In this, the film is like an anti-Shakespeare in Love, where it is clear that the woman loves the poetry first and the man only for producing it.
As a scholar of literature who has always found the Romantic poets to be more narcissistic and self-indulgent than deep, more about sensation than truth and beauty, I was deeply appreciative of the film's ability to make me understand the greatness of Keats's and Brawne's spirits and not merely their accomplishments.
Jesus said, "When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven." I've never really understood that verse before, and the film doesn't mention it explicitly (nor honestly, any conventional religious ideas for that that matter), but I feel as though I might have caught a glimpse of the truth at the heart of that verse in a poetic sort of way.
From a moral standpoint, one problem with the work might be that one always feels that Wilde is a bit more on the side of the tempter than the resister. Most of Colin Firth's lines got big laughs, but by the time Gray (Ben Barnes) complains that he has only followed Wotton's advice the audience is far enough removed from the instruction in debauchery to feel complicit for encouraging it.
The real problem is a structural one, though. Once the moral slide begins, there is a dreary monotony to each regression. A seduction. A suspicion. A murder. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Even the portrait is a bit of a MacGuffin; it is actually shown very little and used less as a poetic symbol (like the scarlet letter) and more as a geographical focal point to allow long, ominous tracking shots to closed doors.
The one place, oddly enough, where the film perks up is when Gray visits a confessional. When he insists that most of us could not stand a glimpse of our own souls, we understand that the painting is a symbol of the human condition and not just a supernatural talisman for one man. Ultimately, though, this scene also fizzles, one more example of a church unable to offer any substantive help or answers to those who see the world as it really is.
The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890, but the film is decidedly twentieth century in the way it channels the source material's cynicism to the point of appearing almost nihilistic. "You possess the only two things worth having," Wotton tells Dorian, "youth and beauty."
I wonder if John Keats and Fannie Brawne would agree?
Tomorrow's Screenings: A Solitary Man, The Road, Agora, Life During Wartime.
Guest blogger Kenneth R. Morefield, an English prof at Campbell University, is writing about the Toronto International Film Festival for CT Movies.
Places--and Horrors--in the Heart
Observations from Day 3 of the Toronto International Film Festival
My Tehran for Sale is listed as an Australian/Iranian picture, since director Granaz Moussavi moved to Australia with her family in the late 1990s. Its focus on the youth culture in urban areas reminded me of Persepolis, as did its attempts to portray the internal strife when love of one's culture and country comes into conflict with those who would proscribe how such emotions must be expressed in order to be legitimate.
I think My Tehran for Sale would make an excellent companion film with Nahid Persson's The Queen and I in that Persson's film comes from a generation that participated in the Iranian revolution and must grapple with how and why that participation led to ends so very different from what they imagined. By contrast, in My Tehran for Sale we are beginning to hear voices from Iran of those who inherited the revolution, who were born into a society shaped by fundamentalism. If Persson's film is the better of the two (and I think it is) that may be because there is a deeper level of self reflection in it. I think Moussavi's generation is in that place where it must first document its grievances. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but it does tend to result in films that are a bit one-note. (And I confess the repeated assertions at the festival of Moussavi being the first to break some of this ground struck me as a bit self-aggrandizing given the richness of Iranian literature, memoir, and film in recent years.)
I was among the skeptical when it was announced that Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon took the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Cynics whispered that the upset pick had as much to do with the jury being led by Haneke's friend and sometime collaborator Isabelle Huppert as it did with the film's preeminence.
The White Ribbon is also a film about place. Set in a small German village just prior to the outbreak of World War I, its narrative winds through the village entwining several families, all with secrets. Expanding the breadth of his narrative turns out to be a good thing for Haneke, as it allows the audience's uneasiness to build gradually throughout the film and find its culmination not so much in a single, climactic act of violence as in a final awareness of just how deeply entrenched is the malignancy of the human heart that leads to it.
Shot in luminous black and white and utilizing a brilliant ensemble cast, The White Ribbon struck me as less of a horror film and more of a literate, thoughtful, and serious examination of horrific ideas. (It reminded me in many ways of the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who shares with Haneke a concern for the way in which intolerant and absolutist societies can warp the human heart.) Some will no doubt find the ending a bit abrupt, especially if they are used to Hollywood movies delivering tidy thesis statements in the form of climactic, rhetorical speeches. I thought the point was clear enough.
Perhaps it isn't fair to call movies like Syriana or Rendition horror films, but in their willingness to be explicit about the details of torture, they often play on the surface as horror films, at times being more disturbing for their proximity to real life than the increasingly cartoonish gorefests with roman numerals in the titles that seem to get released every other week and disappear just as quickly.
The Disappearance of Alice Creed has all the ingredients of a horror-porn exploitation film, but its genius lies in withholding enough information from us that while we think we know what we are watching, we aren't entirely sure.
If horror is about giving expression to our deepest cultural fears (Frankenstein of science run amok, Dracula of xenophobic fears of miscegenation), The Disappearance of Alice Creed simultaneously brings to light and exploits our moral uncertainties about entertainment (is any message worth subjecting ourselves to some of the images we do?) and, especially, torture. Because the first response to squeamishness about torture is to demonize the object of torture, the film effectively forestalls that first move by not allowing us to know for certain who Alice is or what is motivating the men who kidnap her.
That is not to say the film is morally ambiguous. Rather than forcing us to eschew moral judgment in a wishy-washy postmodern way, it forces us first to contemplate the thing itself, absent context. Rather than taking someone who we know has done "x" and asking the question, "Does "x" deserve this?" the film shows what is done and forces us to ask, "Does anyone deserve this?" (Okay, really, "Is anything worth this?")
If the film had actually gone all the way and really explored the implications of its premise, I would have been a lot more forgiving of its gratuitous excesses. Alas, it ultimately became more of a psychological thriller than a horror film, and as such invites the audience to enjoy too much the twists and turns to be taken seriously on any level other than exploitainment. Director J. Blakeson specifically mentioned admiring the Coen brothers for their ability to integrate dark humor into their films, but in spirit and flesh, Alice Creed reminded me much more of a Tarantino film than a Coen film.
Eddie Marsan will be familiar to some viewers coming off a star-making turn in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, and Gemma Arterton somehow, miraculously manages to convey enough genuine terror to make you believe you are a watching a real person and not an actress who has read the last page of the script and knows she will be okay in the end.
There were some concerns raised in the Q&A about scenes played for laughs which I can't really repeat without giving some major spoilers but which I was glad were raised by younger viewers tired of certain stereotypes. Want to know what I found most horrific and uncomfortable in the film? The number of times the words "I love you" were said and meant and the implications that has for what a society producing that film understands love to be.
OTHER RANDOM FESTIVAL NOTES:
--If Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It, is not a hit, it won't be for lack of trying. If it's not the most heavily publicized film in Toronto at the moment, I don't know what is. One can hardly pass a lamp post or wall space without seeing Ellen Page in roller derby gear staring back at one, and Barrymore was in the studio by the Scotiabank today working the publicity machine.
--Other publicity stunts included a downtown zombie walk featuring scores of young adults made up like zombies. I assumed this was in honor of George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead, but I was late for a screening, so I didn't ask. There was also a storefront full of snow to promote the new Kate Beckinsale film, Whiteout, which isn't even playing at the festival (and shouldn't be confused with Snowblind, which is...).
--I don't know if it is because more directors are doing Q&As or because more films were scheduled, but late starts have been particularly bad this year.
--It is customary for the films to be introduced by a member of the festival staff who will name and thank the sponsors. I'm all for that; one has to pay the bills. I'm a bit puzzled by the increasing need of programmers to explain why they booked the film and to summarize the plot for the audience about to see it. For what it's worth, the greatness of the film is usually in exact disproportion to the amount of time the programmer spends telling you how great it is.
--Cell phone usage has reached a tipping point, critical mass, or whatever catch phrase you want to use. Seriously, it used to be one might see one backlight from a texter the whole festival, now one sees two or three a screening. I would not be at all surprised to read about a fight breaking out at a theater eventually. Given the amount of money some people pay to attend such screenings and the degree of shamelessness the cell phone users have, it seems only a matter of time.
Guest blogger Kenneth R. Morefield, an English prof at Campbell University, is writing about the Toronto International Film Festival for CT Movies.
Ebert Reviews Christianity
Critic won't review film, but critiques "fundamentalist minority of American Christians"
Invoking journalistic ethics by saying he "adamantly" won't review Creation till it releases to theaters, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert then went on to "review" Christians in a recent blog post from the Toronto International Film Festival.
Ebert had been to a screening of Creation, the ironically titled film about Charles Darwin, opening in the UK this month and in the U.S. sometime next year. Adhering to an unwritten critics' code to not review a film till it releases, Ebert goes on to voice a few observations about Christians, Darwin and more.
He noted that one member of the audience walked out shortly after a scene in the film in which Darwin walks out of a church during a sermon on Genesis 1 -- the creation story. Ebert wonders: "Was he offended by the film? There's no way to say. There were an unusually large number of walk-outs, but who knows if they were leaving for theological reasons, or to get in line for the screenings of [other TIFF films], or because of boredom?"
Just wondering: If several had walked out of any other film, would it even have crossed Ebert's mind that they might be leaving because of "theological reasons"?
I usually try not to read too much between the lines of what people write, but it's hard not to do that when Ebert goes on to write: "Did it occur to Darwin . . . that nothing in his ideas precluded the existence of God? Today, no major religion finds conflict between God and the theory of evolution. The majority of Christians can live with both ideas; religious opposition to Darwin is limited primarily to a fundamentalist minority of American Christians."
It's fascinating that Ebert uses no adjective to describe Christians who find no conflict between God and evolution. But for those Christians who do find conflict, they are "fundamentalist," a "minority," and "American."
Pretty hard not to read between the lines there. What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
Finally, I'm not sure what Ebert was trying to communicate by including these two images with his blog post, in this sequence:
The Invention of Lying, take two.
As Mark noted in his newsletter last week, my earlier post was flooded with comments after Ricky Gervais, the star and co-writer-director of that film, linked to it from his own blog with the simple comment: "And so it starts..."
The "it" in question was, presumably, the "big controversy" that fellow co-writer-director Matthew Robinson hinted the film would cause in an interview with the MTV Movies Blog. My post was an attempt to track the clues, contained in interviews and official publicity materials, as to what that "big controversy" might be -- and rather than spell everything out, I presented the clues and hoped the reader would be intrigued enough to put the pieces together for themselves.
And that was it. I didn't make any comment on the film itself, let alone pass any judgment on it, for the obvious reason that I have not seen it yet. But many people saw the word "Christianity" at the top of this blog, and the word "blasphemy" in the headline to that post -- co-star Jennifer Garner's word, not mine -- and so they leapt to the conclusion that I was somehow protesting the film. Far from it. In fact, I included a YouTube clip of Gervais discussing his atheism at the end of the post (a clip that I discovered while perusing his blog, as it happens) precisely because it wasn't all that negative, and it gave me hope that a constructive conversation around these issues might be possible.
I still have that hope, but in the meantime, it seems I need to spell out more clearly what my earlier post was getting at. So here goes:
1. Punctuation is important. I never said the film was "blasphemy". Rather, in sussing out what the "big controversy" might be, I came across an interview with Garner in which she said she initially hesitated to be part of this movie because her parents might "think it was blasphemy". This seemed like an obvious clue as to the nature of the "big controversy", so I put it in the headline -- but in quotes, and with a question mark.
2. Robinson says the "big controversy" will revolve around the Gervais character "inventing something that in a world without lying wouldn't exist". Garner says God doesn't "exist" in the world depicted in this film. And yet, based on the prominence of church-related imagery in the subliminal rapid-fire montage that appears in the middle of the trailer, it would seem that religion does come to exist in this world after all. Is this what the Gervais character invents? Based on the triptych that appears in the shot below, which depicts the Gervais character holding a couple of tablets Ten Commandments-style, it would seem the answer is yes:
3. Many people, including myself, have been eagerly looking forward to this film because we enjoy Gervais's comedy, and also partly because it looked like this film could be a moral fable similar to, say, Liar Liar (which, incidentally, was directed by a Christian, Tom Shadyac). To the extent that the film might be a bit more complicated than that, or to the extent that the filmmakers may be hinting at "big controversies" in anticipation of the film's release, I think it's only fair to give interested viewers a heads-up. But as always, the viewers would need to see the film for themselves before they could form any educated opinions about it.
4. As far as I know, no one involved at CT Movies has seen the film yet -- but I have heard from one person who claims to have read the screenplay, and, after describing some of the plot points, that person said the script comes across like a "thinly veiled atheist screed" that owes a lot to the Richard Dawkins brand of atheism. And for what it's worth, the person in question is a self-professed "huge fan of The Office" who found the screenplay "very disappointing". Now, if I had read the script myself, I might have a very different take on it than this person did. And of course, screenplays go through rewrites all the time, and directors have different ways of interpreting those screenplays; just the other day, Hitfix posted an on-set interview with Gervais in which they discussed how Rob Lowe had an "ad-lib about Hell" that Gervais decided not to use. So the finished film could be very different from the script that this person read. But it's something to keep in mind.
5. In a more recent blog post (sorry, there don't seem to be any permalinks), Gervais says, "By suggesting there is no God you are not singling out Christianity." That's certainly true as far as it goes. And certainly, any religion invented by Gervais's character in this film would not be identical to any religion in the real world. That being said, fictitious religions do borrow many of their bits and pieces from real-world religions, and nearly every identifiable bit of religious iconography glimpsed in this film so far seems to borrow from the Christian tradition. Not as extensively as, say, The Golden Compass, perhaps, but still.
6. In that same post, Gervais also says, "Not believing in God cannot be blasphemous. Blasphemy is acknowledging a God to insult or offend etc." For what it's worth, I sort of agree. As G.K. Chesterton once put it, "Blasphemy itself could not survive religion, if anyone doubts that let him try to blaspheme Odin." And as Terry Jones notes in the commentary for Monty Python's Life of Brian -- one of my favorite films of all time, by the way -- there is a difference between "blasphemy", which is the mockery of a god, and "heresy", which is the subverting of a traditional belief about that god. That being said, even if one does not acknowledge the existence of any given god, I think one can still acknowledge another person's belief in that god and insult or offend that belief, knowing that it will come across as blasphemy to the person who holds that belief. But of course, we won't know whether or not this film does that until we have had a chance to see it for ourselves.
7. Finally, I fully support Gervais's right to believe what he wants and make whatever film he wants; in fact, one of my atheist friends and I sometimes grumble about how Hollywood is too wussy to make films that clearly embrace either of our viewpoints, and when I first gathered what The Invention of Lying might be all about, a part of me wondered if -- and even hoped that -- my friend might like it. (You don't have to agree with someone's beliefs in order to empathize with their desire to feel "represented" onscreen.) What's more, we're all about encouraging dialogue here at CT Movies, and in the past we have interviewed such atheists as Philip Pullman (author of The Golden Compass) and Brian Flemming (director of The God Who Wasn't There). If an opportunity to speak with Gervais or one of his fellow filmmakers came along, we'd be game, for sure.
A Puzzling 'Face' and a Non-Story Nun Story
Observations from Day 2 of the Toronto International Film Festival
If I say then that I was completely and utterly lost while watching Face, I mean that as an indictment of my own capacity to deal with non-narrative film and not of the film itself.
The program's summary makes the film out to be a little like a French-Asian Synecdoche, New York and I couldn't help thinking a little of Fellini's 8 1/2, but if you want plot summary with your subject matter description, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place.
Then again, if you are the sort of review reader who wants plot summary, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the film probably isn't for you. I'm the first to admit that I tend to gravitate towards more narrative film, but I do like to broaden my horizons now and then. Some of the screen shots are dazzling in their beauty, while others are disorienting in that surrealistic way that special effects can't quite mimic. There is a fair amount of nudity and sexual content, so be advised that while the film doesn't have an MPAA rating at the moment, I'm quite certain it would be an "R" rated film were it to get U.S. distribution.
So I really wanted to love this film, and it probably took me the full ninety minutes and well into the post-film Q&A to decide that I didn't. Actress Barbara Sukowa mentioned that she had some trepidation playing the part when she first read the script because "nothing much seemed to happen," at least in the beginning of the film. While she framed those remarks within a context of finally understanding that von Trotta was trying to make a film "more like a Gregorian chant than a Beethoven symphony," her initial concerns struck a chord with my own uncertainties about the film.
Von Trotta herself responded to a question by assuring the audience that she had researched the subject matter thoroughly, going so far as to say she left out one incident about von Bingen's life because she was reasonably sure it was apocryphal. That sort of commitment to fidelity is laudable, but it unfortunately tends to lead to a final script that is more choppy than episodic and a character who is more iconic than fully realized.
By way of example, von Trotta mentioned a thread late in the film where the protagonist suffers the loss of an important relationship. The director spoke movingly of how the accumulation of loss led to an "explosion" of emotion that, for her, humanized the character. The scenes she mentioned, though, would have been easier to read as a deeper revelation were a fuller sense of the character already established.
On a more positive note, the integration of von Bingen's own music into the film was a treat. One of my pet peeves is films that tell us someone is a genius at something--writing, music, art, science--but force us to take the film's word for it. When the nuns perform a musical opera of von Bingen's own composition, there is a soaring harmony of spirit and drama that left me wanting to experience more of von Bingen's art itself rather than art about von Bingen.
For those in the same boat, I asked my colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Rambo (a specialist in medieval studies) for a few recommendations. She mentioned Sabina Flanagan's biography Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life (Routledge, 1989) as a good starting point. She also mentioned that the ensemble group Sequentia has recorded performances of von Bingen's music. The film definitely left me wanting to hear more on that front.
Scheduled for tomorrow: My Tehran for Sale, All Fall Down, The White Ribbon, The Disappearance of Alice Creed.
Guest blogger Kenneth R. Morefield, an English prof at Campbell University, is writing about the Toronto International Film Festival for CT Movies.
Things That Caught My Eye This Week
What do John Wayne, aliens, hobbits and Japanese anime have in common? They all caught my eye this week...
The Dude as The Duke
Sounds like True Grit is going to be remade. By the Coen Brothers. Staring Jeff "The Dude" Bridges. Need I say more!?
George Clooney Has a Great Fall
No, not that kind of fall. Clooney has two films coming out soon, Up in the Air and The Men Who Stare at Goats. The first, from Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking and Juno) is a story about a man who resists real human connection, and the second is a decidedly quirky look at the world of a psychic military regiment during the Iraq War. Up in the Air is getting such great buzz that it has been pushed up to a November release. Check out those trailers.
District 9’s Sharlto Copley May Have Been Offered A Role in the A-Team
I bring this up only to shake my head in amazement at how daydreams really can come true. Did you know who Copley was before District 9? Of course you didn't. He was a non-actor and friend of the director who insisted Copley was right for the part. And now, suddenly, he is a star on the rise. It can't be called a big break when you haven't even been trying! Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you...
The Long Road for The Road
First the mixed reviews began pouring out of the festivals about this highly anticipated film, and now it appears Dimension Films will be pushing back the release date of The Road...again...to November 25th 2009, already one of the most crowded weekends on the fall calendar. Uh oh.
Lord of the Rings Lawsuit Settled
Not that it comes as a surprise, but the final hurdle has fallen away and The Hobbit is set to surge into production.
Getting Stoned
The New York Times had an interesting interview with Oliver Stone about his upcoming sequel to his wildly popular and prescient Wall Street. But can Stone capture lighting in a bottle twice? Many are saying Michael Moore's new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, is already behind the economic times, so what will we make of another look at the financial sector which has figured so heavily into the economic news of the past year?
Akira to Become a Live-Action Movie
I just got back from Japan and had a conversation in which the idea of turning this very anime classic into a live-action film was discussed. It'll never happen, was the consensus. Don't tell that to the screenwriters behind Children of Men!
Rambo...Again
I don't know what's worse: that they are making another Rambo or that it's going to be sci-fi (warning: bad language at this link) ...
Toronto International Film Festival: Day 1
The first day of the Toronto International Film Festival is usually very lightly programmed, presumably so that other films are neither competing with nor overshadowed by the opening night gala. The prestigious first Thursday slot at the Roy Thompson Hall was given to the Charles Darwin biopic, Creation, starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. If you're anxious enough to get to Toronto on the first day but not quite ready to spring for tickets to walk the red carpet, your best bet is usually the Ryerson theater which will generally have a premiere of an anticipated, studio-backed film--something capable of selling out one of the larger venues without overshadowing a marquee event. (If the adrenaline has really got you going, the first midnight madness show is usually a film with a tad more name recognition. This year, Karyn Kusama's Jennifer's Body got the nod.)
Lone Scherfig's An Education is just the sort of film that makes for a great first evening screening. A British university comedy and bildungsroman, it can be marketed with several familiar faces: Alfred Molina, Peter Sarsgaard, and (in a small role) Emma Thompson.
The name on the credits that is drawing everyone's attention, however, is the screenwriter's. As someone who counts High Fidelity among his ten favorite films of all time--and who has read enough of Nick Hornby's novels to know that the best parts of that film are lifted nearly verbatim from the pages of its source material--I approached An Education with the quiet confidence that, even though I had never seen one of Scherfig's previous films, I was in good hands.
An Education is more than just a great script, though. Alternately foot-stompingly funny, desperately painful, and achingly tender, it is a reminder after scores of sitcom love triangles of just how deeply affecting a love story can be. It is also a coming of age story about a young woman longing every bit as deeply for a sense of purpose to her life as she is for a romantic love affair. Just as High Fidelity showed how music can be used as a kind of drug to assuage a deep melancholy over doubts about life's purpose and meaning, so too does An Eduction contrast the allure of surface pleasures (some of them intellectual and aesthetic as well as sensual) against the seeming emptiness of a responsible life that the postmodern world can no longer convince itself is a means to an end any different from what the hedonists will suffer (and that after having a lot more fun).
One thing that makes a Hornby story so distinctive is that he doesn't stack the deck--for either the conventional mainstream wisdom or the unconventional upstart. When the conflict doesn't have an obvious right choice--or even when it does but we can see both positives and negatives resulting from it--we can empathize more deeply with the protagonist than we can with most romantic protagonists who are simply obtusely blind to what is apparent to the audience much earlier.
Olivia Williams, Peter Sarsgaard, and Carey Mulligan all give note perfect performances. (The latter mentioned in the Q&A that she will be in the forthcoming adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.)
Some conservative viewers will likely be put off by the film's unwillingness to be reflexively critical of the sexual relationship between the two principals--she is sixteen when they meet, and there is plenty of smoking and drinking. So the content and several of the situations are "R" rated by nature, even if the presentation of them is more PG-13.
Guest blogger Kenneth R. Morefield, an English prof at Campbell University, is writing about the Toronto International Film Festival for CT Movies.
'Bella' Actor in New Role . . . for 20 Minutes
Eduardo Verastegui in short film about hope as part of Doorpost Film Fest
Verastegui plays a ringmaster in The Butterfly Circus, one of ten finalists in The Doorpost Film Project, an annual competition of short films whose purpose is "to encourage truth-seeking visionaries by honoring their creativity as filmmakers, serving them in the context of building community and sharing their discoveries with the world so that others may have hope."
Also starring in the film are Doug Jones, who has played fantastical characters in Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and will also be playing a yet unannounced role in the upcoming Hobbit movies. And making his film debut is Nick Vujicic, a real-life evangelist who has no arms or legs.
I'm not serving as an official judge this time around, but I am "judging" the films as a viewer -- and so can you. All you have to do is log in to the site, watch all 10 films, and you too can play a role in deciding which film will win the $100,000 grand prize. But hurry -- online viewing and voting ends on Sept. 16, and the awards banquet will be held Sept. 19 in Nashville.
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2009 Preview
The week before the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival is one of the longest of the year for the North American cinephile. Imagine getting an e-mail nine days before Christmas with a list of all the gifts you got--but not being able to open any of them yet. Add to the mix a trickle of early reviews for many of these films now playing at festivals in Venice and Telluride--The Road appears to be getting hammered, Life During Wartime is getting a lot of advance praise--and you can turn normally taciturn, middle-aged adults into giddy school boys marking days off their calendars.
Beginning this Thursday, I will be posting dispatches from North America's largest and most prestigious film festival. A strong festival showing can make or break an independent film--Bella rode the coattails of the People's Choice Award to a wider distribution than it might otherwise have received--or position a studio film as an Oscar favorite. (Last year's People's Choice Award winner was a little film called Slumdog Millionaire).
Here are the three films I'm most looking forward to seeing at this year's festival:
Vision--Margarethe von Trotta
Air Doll--Hirokazu Kore-eda
The description makes this sound like a Japanese remake of Lars and the Real Girl, and the subject matter may well put off more conservative viewers. Kore-eda has earned the benefit of the doubt from me, however. His Still Walking was one of the gems of last year's festival, and Maborosi is an an emotionally rich story of grief and loss. Not familiar with Kore-eda's work? Try Nobody Knows. This 2005 gem is about four children left to fend for themselves in a Tokyo apartment. It is one of the most accessible of Kore-eda's films.
Of course, the joy of a festival this size is that there is almost always a surprise--the film you weren't planning on seeing but caught at the last moment based on buzz you heard in a line or at a restaurant. Last year, for me, that film was Martin Provost's art biopic Seraphine. The year before, strong word of mouth from a first day screening convinced me to do a ticket exchange to see Vincent Paronnaud's animated rendition of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and it is now one of my favorite films. The year before that, Amir Bar-Lev's incredible documentary My Kid Could Paint That seemed to come out of nowhere to captivate me.
What will this year's joyous discovery be? Check back here beginning September 10th for daily reports. You'll know as soon as I do.
Guest blogger Kenneth R. Morefield, an English prof at Campbell University, is writing about the Toronto International Film Festival for CT Movies.
MPAA Change a Concern to Parents
My colleague and dear friend Nell Minow of Beliefnet.com, wrote a story in today’s Chicago SunTimes about a policy change at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) that many parents will want to be aware of, all the more so because that change has gone unannounced and unrecognized…until now.
As it turns out, movie previews are no longer approved for all audiences. The change, instituted by the MPAA’s Classification and Ratings Board, went into effect this April, but was not announced to the public.
It used to be that trailers led by a green screen were safe for general audiences (regardless of the rating of the film being advertised), but those trailers led by a red screen contained restricted content and were allowed to be shown only before R-rated films. (The so-called red-band trailers have risen sharply in popularity, especially online, where children can easily get around the age verification firewalls.)
While the green-band trailers used to be “approved for all audiences,” the new designation is a far more vague “approved for appropriate audiences” though there is no indication o f who that audience may be.
Before the switch, a green-band trailer could not include anything inappropriate for general (rated G) audiences and could only imply though not show examples of violence, profanity, sex or nudity, and drug use.
The new change is already apparent. For example, the trailer for Extract, a film which comes out today, was given green-band approval but contains references to male genitalia, sexual frustration and candid drug use.
Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and a watchdog for inappropriate Hollywood marketing to children is quoted in the article as saying, "This is more evidence that the MPAA is not interested in the welfare of children or helping parents make better decisions about content." Linn feels that the MPAA ran afoul of parents when it made this change without their input, and is concerned that many parents will be "falsely reassured" when the word "appropriate" appears on the familiar green background.
While the MPAA has promised to make an effort to ensure that the content in a trailer matches that of the film it precedes, that does not guarantee that the audience being reached is the appropriate one, and parents will need to be extra vigilant to ensure that their children are not being exposed to content they deem inappropriate.
To read Nell’s article, click here.
recent posts
Archives
November 2009October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 |
