…The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus would be as popular as Avatar.
Jett Loe Harvests the Webinets So You Don’t Have To – Tuesday Edition
Posted By: Jett Loe
Posted January 12th, 2010 · Comments
Ok – I still don’t have a name for my weekly film-related harvesting of the Webinets – I’ll come up with some sort of snappy, happy-happy catchphrase at some point. Anyhew, I won’t let the lack of a branded identity for this post stop the magic – here’s a wrap-up of some film related stories from the past week – enjoy.
- Noted director of motion pictures, Eric Rohmer, passed away. To quote Jarrod Whaley, “Let’s mourn the passing of Eric Rohmer by sitting in a room, talking endlessly. I jest. One of my favorite filmmakers. Goodbye.”
- The Avatar screenplay has been discovered online – you can download the PDF here. I looked over it to find the bits of dialogue that I thought were actually added some character to the flick, (“Do you think I felt like a shave-tail louie?, etc.), only to find they are not there. Perhaps added by the actors while filming?, (notice how the “what are you smoking?” line reads in the script versus Ribisi’s interpretation in the flick).
- More Avatar stuff : I Don’t See You - Steven Santos over at The Fine Cut eviscerates everybody’s favorite blockbuster Avatar. His secret is to treat Avatar as a motion picture – I think he has a point – the film stinks, if you view it as a motion picture. Another way of looking at Avatar is as pure spectacle – the film it most reminds me of is not a film at all but the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Pure massive spectacle – you know how they said at the time that “only China” could put on that kind of show? Same thing with Avatar – “only Cameron” could make that pic.
- Continuing with the Avatar theme, (let’s ride that Cameron horse as much as possible folks), Noah Harlan at the 401st Blow notices that Jake Sully’s ‘rallying the troops speech’ not only can’t hold a candle to Henry V – it can’t even go toe to toe with Braveheart. Yikes.
- Roger Ebert continues his vast volume of blogging with ‘Nil by Mouth’ – thoughts on having to say goodbye to eating and drinking.
- Nashville’s very own Jason Shawan interviews ‘My Son My Son What Have Ye Done’ protagonist Michael Shannon – excerpt: “Ostriches are just heathens. They’re really rotten; I didn’t want to interact with them at all. The flamingos, well, they would peck at me sometimes, but it didn’t really hurt. I liked the flamingos.”
- The most important US film of the 80’s, They Live, gets the ‘re-cut trailer’ treatment – and becomes a touching a love story, (but really, wasn’t it always?)
- The always necessary Indie Wire is hiring – they need a Media/Traffic Coordinator.
- Apparently Sam Mendes is in talks to direct the next James Bond picture. Make of this what you will Dear Reader.
- And finally Nic Cage as Everyone rectifies that hole in our heart we always knew was there.
TFT 106 – SHERLOCK HOLMES / BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL – NEW ORLEANS
Posted By: Jett Loe
Posted January 9th, 2010 · Comments
TFT 106 / 16 mb MP3 / 32 minutes /
DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
SHERLOCK HOLMES / BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL – NEW ORLEANS / SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION / BEARD / NASHVILLE SCENE / PUTNEY SWOPE / ROBERT POWELL / WERNER HERZOG EATS HIS SHOE
‘My Son My Son What Have Ye Done’ – Starting Tomorrow at The Belcourt
Posted By: Jett Loe
Posted January 7th, 2010 · Comments
It’s a story of crime inspired by a real crime story. A young man does something terrible one morning in suburbia – in the hostage situation that follows, the police and the young man’s friends struggle to understand his actions.
That could be the plot of some witheringly tired corporate product – yet look at the cast of My Son My Son What Have Ye Done:
Wilem Dafoe as Detective Hank Havenhurst. Chloë Sevigny as Ingrid. Udo Kier as Lee Meyers. Verne Troyer as ‘midget’. Brad Dourif as Uncle Ted. Grace Zabriskie as Mrs. McCullum and Michael Shannon as her son Brad.
Yes that’s right, it’s a Werner Herzog film produced by David Lynch. Thank god – just when I was losing my faith in cinema yet again after screening yet again another corporate offering.
My Son takes place in a world parallel to ours – a world where there is no mental illness – or more accurately, where mental illness has yet to be discovered; mental illness and possibly psychology itself.
If this was a film striving for surface realism instead of the inner dark heart of things it would be clear right from the start that the young man, Michael Shannon’s Brad McCullum, is mentally ill – but in this world, (of magic? where nature is still untamed? where magic and nature are inseparable), the police, Brad’s girlfriend and his associates struggle to understand the nature of nature’s malfunction.
It’s extraordinary in this way – and it makes sense that Werner Herzog runs a film school – what a wonderful exercise – to alter just one element of our world, (in this case the aforementioned non-discovery of psychology), to create a new filmic reality. One can imagine more films along these lines – with plots that take place in a world where where there never was a Magna Carta, or to go more deeply as in My Son, a reality where there is only one sex, or the ‘denial of death’ was not a wellspring for creativity, etc.
In this ‘alter-reality’ way My Son is a parallel world flick, (what would happen if Hitler had never been born, etc.), and therefore is the finest science fiction film I’ve seen in years. And not just history of the world is different in My Son – with all due respect to James Cameron’s extraordinary work on Avatar, nothing on Pandora is as mesmerizing, strange or otherworldly as Mrs. McCullum’s front lawn as seen in this pic.
Now if the above doesn’t appeal to you I’d suggest it’s worth watching just for what I’ll call the ‘Willem Dafoe Coffee Conversation’; I won’t say more – that would just spoil it. Dafoe is wonderful in the scene and in the film – as is Michael Shannon, Grace Zabriskie, Brad Dourif and the great Irma P. Hall, (are her actions morally correct in Bad Lieutenant? You decide).
My Son My Son What Have Ye Done is a superb film – and due to it I’ve once again fallen in love with the movies after having to suffer this over the weekend. Thank you Werner and thank you to everyone involved. Onward cinema, onward!
My Son starts tomorrow at the always necessary Belcourt Theatre here in Music City – if you can’t see it here screen it anyway you can.
Cinema Splits In Two: the Real vs. the Unreal
Posted By: Jett Loe
Posted January 5th, 2010 · Comments
(Ugly Betty - they're not really on the streets of New York)
Yeah we all know about computer assisted imagery – it’s everywhere in moving pictures – heck, some folks even go to the movies just for the effects alone.
But I don’t know if peoples out there really know how much the new technology has invaded the cinema system – and this invasion I would argue doesn’t just make it easier to transport the viewer to other worlds, or save a production cash money on a location shoot – it’s actually a retreat from the great advances of cinema in the 70’s.
Let me explain – first of all take a look at this ‘Virtual Backlot’ reel from effects house Stargate Studios, (via Metafilter):
Pretty amazing huh? And how great for the folks working on a show = ya don’t have to go outside, freeze your ass, suffer bad food, etc. So what’s the problem?
Well, think about US films from the 70’s for a moment. If you watch a lot of films from the period one thing becomes very clear. Even mediocre films from that decade are more interesting than the corporate product being pumped out today. Why? Because in many of the films the production actually went somewhere. You get a sense of real-life in these pics – even the crappy ones – you see streets, airports, people, dirt – ’cause on location something can happen. The camera can get bumped, an avenue won’t be cordoned off like it’s supposed to, the light’s bad – whatever. You’re forced to improvise and one result of this is that the film can feel alive – there’s a heartbeat present that’s just not in mainstream film today.
This ‘real life in film’ revolution all started of course with the availability of light-weight cameras and faster film stocks. Heck, in the late-60’s George Lucas was even gonna go shoot Apocalypse Now in 16mm with small cameras in person on location in Vietnam, (the irony here is just too much to contemplate – the would-be acrobat turned mortician).
(1973’s The Last Detail – Try to watch this scene without feeling the cold and the feeble warmth of the cooking franks)
And it’s not just the films of the 70’s – this sense of the real makes even average pics of the 80’s far more invigorating. Starman for example – not the best John Carpenter movie by a long shot – yet watch it today and it’s shocking simply because it’s clear that the actors are actually in a real car traveling across the US – and not just sitting in front of a large green sheet.
Now sure movies back in the ‘golden age’ of US cinema were all shot in a studio – but I sense that returning to that world of Hollywood fantasy, (dictated by technology – you don’t make realistic pictures if you’re hidebound in a studio back-lot – you make Meet Me in St. Louis), is not what we need right now.
‘Hollywood’ is retreating from the advances brought about by the lightweight cameras and in tandem by the desire to depict and explore real life. Shooting in front a green screen reminds me of folks so terrified by the ideas of terrorism, of crime, of other peoples, of the whole damn world, that they don’t go anywhere – not even to the movies themselves – they just stay at home in front of the screen. It’s as if, confronted as we are with glowing global problems like climate change, massive wealth inequality and permawar, cinema is retreating to the purest fantasy.
The result is that filmmaking is being split into two camps – the high budget broad spectacular, (think Avatar), and the small picture shot outside of the studio and made for a $1.95. And while it’s fantastic that we can all make movies now on a Motorola Clutch the fact is these small films, (with some exceptions – see: Paranormal Activity), are not a dominant part of our culture – the Transfomers pics are – and that’s the problem – mass culture, (what’s left of it), is degrading into an anti-culture of the stupid, the scared and the just plain ignorant.
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Whew. Rant over. I feel better now. How are you doing today?
