In The Company Of Glenn

Speaking of 'Redacted'...

The Venice Film Festival's press screening of Brian DePalma's Iraq-based Redacted—which didn't thrill my colleague Mark Salisbury, as the post directly below attests—isn't even 48 hours old, and the movie is drawing the wrath of pro-war blog personalities who, unlike Mark, haven't laid their eyes on a single frame. Roger L. Simon, the novelist/screenwriter turned blogger and, erm, new media mogul, reflects on DePalma, "someone I used to know," and notes that he "may have resurrected his career" with Redacted. I don't know how Simon defines "resurrected," but I see DePalma's completed four features in the past ten years, whereas Mr. Simon's last screen credit was in 1998. No matter. Simon's just working up to the froth eruption, which spumes thusly:

DePalma, quintessentially a man of my generation, equates Iraq with Vietnam not just because he may think they are the same (ridiculous as that is) but because Vietnam made him the man he is today. In other words, he was able to live a fantastic Hollywood life (even with the normal vicissitudes),including the fancy houses, cars, women, etc., by being a "groovy" man of his generation - militantly opposed to Vietnam War and for all traditional PC things. Why change? Indeed, why not drill down further into the old well when things aren't as they once were. Why think about the specifics of the current situation or about history? They would only disrupt personal progress.

Um, okay. Huh? Is it me, because I just finished rereading Under the Volcano, or is that prose on a bender? (In any case, I won't have what it's having.) Is Simon really saying that one could have made a fortune in '70s Hollywood merely by being anti-Vietnam? Shit, I completely missed out! (I was only a kid then, but still.) I thought that maybe making films that made money might have helped DePalma out a bit. (His first actual hit, Carrie, was released in 1976, by which time one's stance on the Vietnam War was kind of moot.) Also, is there any other filmmaker of DePalma's peers less likely to be referred to as "groovy," not to mention less likely to ever use the word "groovy" himself, as DePalma? And "traditional PC things"? Has Roger never seen Body Double?

Finding wisdom in this incoherent rant is the reliably bad-faith Glenn Reynolds, who is moved to adopt his putatively snide mode while linking to Simon: "How about a movie where Hollywood filmmakers take money from America's enemies to undermine morale? It wouldn't be any more dishonest than Brian DePalma's latest."

You know what's genuinely dishonest, you smirky, supercilious little [impolite potty-mouth word redacted to preserve internet civility]? Talking smack about movies you haven't seen and likely never will see. Redacted may well be tripe, for all I know. But right now, I don't.

Venice Film Festival: 'Redacted'

Mark Salisbury reports:

One of a slew of Iraq/Afghanistan themed movies coming your way soon (Paul Haggis’s In The Valley Of Elah screens here too), Brian De Palma’s Redacted is a film of noble intentions but unsatisfactory execution. It’s also, very much, a Brian De Palma movie, in that it feels like a “movie” (which, in this case, is a problem)—although there are none of the director’s trademark Steadicam shots. Based on factual events, Redacted focuses on a squad of US soldiers charged with guarding a Iraqi checkpoint, two of whom rape and kill a 15-year-old Iraqi girl and then murder her younger sister and elderly grandfather before setting fire to them. Purported to be cut together from a variety of "sources" – the video diary of one Private Angel Salazar; an arty French documentary complete with Tosca on the soundtrack; Iraqi television reports; security camera footage; footage from various websites (including one in which a US soldier is beheaded); various Western news reports – the problem with Redacted is that most of it (the arty French stuff aside) looks fake; even the CCTV shots don’t look like CCTV, and very little of it—apart from the checkpoint sequences and a couple of scenes of grunts talking—feels authentic. The performances, too, with a few exceptions, come across as just that. Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, United 93) and Michael Winterbottom(In This World, Road To Guantanamo) have shown how this stuff should and can be done, making films that blur the lines between documentary and drama to recreate a reality. De Palma has merely restaged one, and none too convincingly.

Venice Film Festival: 'Sleuth'

Mark Salisbury reports:

"They’re a funny lot the Italians,” says Michael Caine’s character in the Sleuth remake, “culture isn’t their thing.” That got a big laugh at yesterday’s press screening I can tell you, but judging by the critical reaction to the movie in this morning’s Italian media they clearly took the comment with a pinch of salt, since they gave the Kenneth Branagh-directed, Harold Pinter-scripted version of Anthony Shaffer’s play, previously filmed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1972, pretty positive notice. Not so Variety, which called it a “bizarrely contorted facsimile”. It’s that, and worse. With Jude Law stepping into Michael Caine’s shoes for the second time, and Caine taking over from Laurence Olivier, Shaffer’s classic two-hander, a verbal war of words and increasingly deadly gamesmanship between best-selling crime author Andrew Wyke (Caine) and his wife’s young lover, Milo Tindle (Law), is sunk by a woefully unconvincing Law performance, terrible (and terribly distracting) production design from Tim Harvey - Caine’s eccentric lair is filled with bizarre, uncomfortable looking modern furnishings, security cameras and hi-tech gadgetry, all seemingly operated by one Apple ishuffle remote control - and Branagh’s failure to make the one location and two men work visually. “I wouldn’t have done a straight remake,” said Caine at the film’s press conference, “this is a completely different take, much more severe.” It’s also almost an hour shorter that the original, which was a relief.

Glenn Kenny adds:
I'm slated to review this when it opens in October, but I will say here that Branagh places Caine and Law in front of so many reflective surfaces that the picture often comes off as Losey's The Servant on steroids. Not a good thing.

Venice Film Festival: 'Far North'

Mark Salisbury (see here) reports:

Asif Kapadia’s debut feature, The Warrior, was a visually stunning, elegantly told tale set against the harsh, brutal desert of India. His third feature, Far North, which screened in Venice in an out-of-competition slot, takes place against another timeless landscape, the Arctic tundra. Here, off the map, lives Saiva (Michelle Yeoh) and her adopted daughter Anja (Michelle Krusiec). Theirs is a cold, lonely, desolate existence, paddling the ice flows, scavenging for food – dog, reindeer, seagull – hiding from man, constantly moving, the sole survivors of an indigenous tribe wiped out in a shocking massacre. Then, one day, a figure appears on the ice sheet, a man, Loki (Sean Bean), and against her better judgment Saiva rescues him, bringing home to their tent where the two women compete for his attentions, with Loki eventually pairing off with Anja. Based on a short story by Sara Maitland that Kubrick was a fan of (he asked Maitland to write AI on the strength of it), Far North has the feeling of a classic folk tale, a strong, simple human story economically told with minimal dialogue and breathtaking cinematography by Kapadia’s usual DP Roman Osin (all blues, greys and whites). The film casts an inexorable spell and is always moving, right up until the shocking and, actually, rather baffling finale. It’s the kind of denouement one can’t talk without spoiling the film but, until then, Kapadia doesn’t put a foot wrong.

Critical Reach of the Week

I can't report whether August and cinematographer Nancy Schreiber attain the supernal visual aesthetics of Red Desert or Marienbad since The Nines was screened for critics in ugly, pixilated [sic] digi-beta video. It matters—or has Hollywood's philosophical decline succumbed to the artistic wasteland of mumblecore?—Armond White, in the 8/29-9/4 New York Press

Leaving aside for the moment questions of whether a decline can succumb, or if digi-beta video is capable of getting drunk...while I wholeheartedly concur with Mr. White that the trend toward smeary video projection at critics' screenings is to be deplored, I believe the practice has more to do with venal tightfistedness than aesthetic depravity. Although it is amusing to picture some Hollywood exec—you know, the one who runs all the New York screenings—chomping on a cigar and saying, "The critics love all that shot-on-video stuff, hell, let's just show everything through that old Runco over at Magno."

Good to know what White thinks of "mumblecore," though. I never would have guessed.

Oh, and incidentally, I saw the same screening of The Nines. Even if they had shown a pristine 35 print on 40-foot-high silver using a brand-new bulb, it wouldn't have looked "supernal" in the least. Red Desert my white Irish ass—The Nines hasn't even got the mise-en-scene of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Letter from Venice, #1: 'Atonement'

I'm not going to this year's Venice Film Festival—I'm a Toronto guy, and only the most peripatetic of critics can do both fests, or rather, parts of both, since they overlap—but my friend Mark Salisbury is, and he's been kind enough to offer some reports from the festival to this blog. Readers of the print version of Premiere will recognize Mark's name, as he was a frequent contributor there; Mark's also the editor of the terrific book Burton on Burton, which came out in a newly revised edition last year. So without further ado, here's Mark:

The Venice International Film Festival has always been, to my mind, the more civilised, more sedate counterpoint to the brash and bawdy “festival du film” that is Cannes. Less frantic and arguably more cultured, La Biennale di Venezia (which also hosts art, architecture and theatre and dance strands) remains an unalloyed joy. The kind of place where filmmakers stroll the Lido virtually unmolested and where the likes of Alfonso Cuaron and Spike Lee happily attend other directors’ screenings without the need of a closed off viewing area.

This year Venice hits 64, and begins tonight with Joe Wright’s Atonement. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from Ian McEwan’s allegedly unfilmable novel, Wright’s follow up to his rather impressive debut, 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, is, for its first half at least, a towering achievement, a compelling, richly detailed, moving examination of morals, lies, and class prejudice, beautifully acted, and strikingly shot by Seamus McGarvey. Set, initially, over a hot summer afternoon and evening in an English country pile in 1935 where 13-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Roman), a wannabe writer with an overly active imagination, catches her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) in flagrante with the housekeeper’s Cambridge-educated son Robbie (James McAvoy). Later, she (wrongly) accuses him of raping her cousin, a childish indiscretion that instigates a chain of events that has life-altering repercussions for all concerned.

Sex in public toilets.

How d'ya like that post hed? I'm really classing up the joint, huh?

The Larry Craig scandal has gotten pretty much the whole blogosphere all het up, and many commenters, regardless of political orientation, seem both confused and aghast at what they've learned, or more precisely, what they don't know, about the etiquette code of cruising for sex in public toilets. To which I can only say, people, you really need to get out more. Ar ar ar.

Such delicate flowers. Most likely they'd faint if you explained to them what a glory hole was. Fortunately, le cinema is capable of educating as well as entertaining, and a viewing of 1981's Taxi zum Klo would certainly learn 'em. This West German film, the title of which translates as "Taxi to the toilet," is remarkably frank in its depiction of its lead character's quests for anonymous sex. The movie set a particular high-water mark at the time of its U.S. release for "shocking" explicitness; a friend who was managing a movie theater at the time drolly told me he wanted to put "Coming for Christmas: 'Taxi zum Klo' " on his marquee. It was also refreshing in that it didn't play its lead character's behavior for pathos—it was a comedy, and it had no scruples about getting off on what many regard as thoroughly squalid. ("It's awful that public bathrooms -- especially in places like airports -- are used for sexual activity. The police have to figure out how to drive this activity elsewhere." Thus, Ann Althouse.) Not that it made a convert out of me or anything.

Anyone who's ever dreamed of updating Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas has taken note of the commonplaces: sex in public toilets is indisputably disgusting, while joining "the mile-high club" is positively chic. Celeb involvement is also a mitigating factor in such matters. I remember reading a profile of Amy Brenneman a few years ago ("Why would I do something like that?", I wonder now) in which she bragged about she and director husband Brad Silberling having sex in the bathroom of some agent's house at a party; the profile writer cited this as indicative of "you-go-girl" feistiness rather than irredeemable vulgarity. I'm sure that whatever agent put two and two together wasn't particularly thrilled in any case.

The locusts do have a king, it turns out.

I've got nothing to say about Mr. Owen Wilson's situation save that I hope he gets well soon. In the meantime, Variety this morning demonstrates just what a warm, caring, compassionate entity Hollywood is with a prominent story headlined "Owen Wilson Projects In Question." The article's lede: "Owen Wilson's emergency hospitalization and recovery are throwing a major monkeywrench into production of two movies and causing marketing headaches for two more."

Ah, headaches and monkeywrenches. Damn these human beings and their failings for fucking up our marketing!

Mind you, I don't condemn Variety or its reporter Tatiana Siegel for this. They're just doing their jobs in a company town. And sometimes it's instructive to get such a vivid reminder of exactly what this business we call show really is.

Lust, incaution

I'd like to say I'm impressed by the way director Ang Lee and his longtime collab James Schamus are taking the NC-17 rating given to their new picture Lust, Caution, but really, I expect no less from these guys. The The Hollywood Reporter's story on the rating non-brouhaha by Gregg Goldstein that's posted at CNN.com (without author attribution) is typically breathless concern-troll twaddle—the rating "creat[es] potential distribution problems"! "it's unclear if the rating will deter Oscar voters"! Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!—leavened with some "ooh! titties and thrusts and bondage" speculation about just what's in those "too hot for censors" sex scenes.

In the midst of all this, Schamus, who aside from being Ang's producer and screenwriter is also the head of the picture's distributor, Focus Features, keeps his head, says they're not going to appeal the rating and have no intention of changing a frame. As I said, this is only what I expect of Schamus and Lee. Throughout their association, regardless of commercial ups and downs (remember that their Ride With The Devil did not even gross one million dollars in its theatrical release), they've stuck to their guns. Even their Hulk, for all the ways it didn't work, was not anybody's idea of a sellout. Goldstein's a former colleague and a good guy, and I understand that showbiz trade reporting requires a certain amount of fizz, but his writeup backfires, and makes Schamus and Lee look like the only adults in a roomful of horny droolers. Which may actually be the case...

Monday Morning Foreign-Region DVD Report: 'Phantom Lady'

The foreign-region shopping cinephile sometimes is obliged to accept redundancy in order to achieve the highest level of fulfillment. For instance, my Criterion Collection double feature disc of The Killers features a superb presentation of Robert Siodmak's 1946 adaptation of Hemingway; I don't need another. So a French DVD box featuring that film doesn't seem like any kind of draw...except that Carlotta's "Coffret Robert Siodmak" also throws in two of the German director's most delirious Hollywood films, both from 1944: the worshipped-by-Jack-Smith Technicolor Maria Montez good-versus-evil twin fantasia Cobra Woman, and the entirely irrational quasi-noir Phantom Lady, starring Ella Raines as a good-girl secretary who becomes an undercover bad girl in order to clear her beloved boss of a murder conviction.

The bad news about the set is that Cobra Woman looks pretty tepid; te print's got noticeable damage and the color's largely faded. This diminishes its lurid appeal quite a bit; one only hopes a restored version will come from Universal's domestic Studio Classics line (hey, they did the lesser Montez Arabian Nights). Phantom Lady is a different, happier story; from the clouds of cigarette smoke contantly rising in front of the shadows of prison bars in the credits sequence on, it's a beautifully dark delight. The greatest thing about this picture, adapted from a novel by "William Irish" (a pen name for Cornell Woolrich) is its completely invented reality which, while certainly informed by German Expressionism, spins off into a realm of horrific hilarity, as in the picture's legendary "jazz drummer" sequence, wherein Raines, dolled up and playing hep-kitten, eggs on hopped-up Elisha Cook Jr. (who has information that could exonerate Raines' boss) to a kind of percussive orgasm.