Cinematical

 Just in case you haven't gotten your quota of movie-related bizarre today, here's one that's sure to satisfy. The BBC was videotaping an interview with Wener Herzog about 2005 movie Grizzly Man, a documentary about how young environmentalists Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard were killed by bears while attempting to live among them in Alaska. (The movie was reviewed this past August by our own Ryan Stewart.) Cue the bizarre: while filming an outside scene, some miscreant shot at Herzog with an air rifle, apparently hitting him in the abdomen. Herzog insisted he wasn't hurt, and said he didn't want the BBC to try and chase down the offender.

The bizarro scene is even more amazing considering the interview that follows. At the interview's 4:00 minute mark, we see Herzog sitting with Treadwell's ex-girlfriend, listening to the tape that Treadwell made during the attack; the lens cap was on Treadwell's video camera, so only the sound was captured. Herzog whispers to the woman: "Julie, you must never listen to this."  "I know, Werner," she replies tearfully, "I'm never going to." (Herzog chose not to include the audio in his film.) In another clip, Herzog describes Treadwell's irrational fearlessness of nature, and his belief that the natural world was in "balance and harmony". "I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony," intones Herzog, "but chaos, hostility, and murder."

Maybe the shooter was just trying to drive the point home.

I loved this article's description of this year's entries at the Berlin Film Festival as having no consistent theme except "a prevailing mood of harsh reality". Apparently, this year's lineup at the Fest is marked by " brutal murder, drug addiction, political corruption, exorcism and rape". In other words, it's a lot like the news - except that it stars Alan Rickman and Heath Ledger. Movies set to screen at Berlin include Candy, starring Ledger as a heroin addict; Snow Cake, starring Alan "Yes, My Voice is Delicious and No, I Won't Be Wearing a Freaking Cape in This One" Rickman, alongside co-star Sigourney Weaver; A Prairie Home Companion (which, unless I missed something, sports neither rape nor exorcism); and new flicks from Terence Malick and Roberto Benigni.

But, of course, audiences are flocking to the festival mostly for their dose of brutal murder. Sorry, Roberto. Perhaps if the concentration camp in Life is Beautiful hadn't looked so damn clean, you'd be allowed to hang out with the cool kids.

Now that the whole "I hate you, you hate me" venom has been cleared up between Disney and Pixar - with the former slurping up the latter for a pretty penny - it seems that the newly-crafted Frankenstein of animation is coming out with fresh news for fans every week. Today brings word that Disney has announced that Ratatouille, a planned Pixar flick about a rat who lives in a French restaurant, will release in Summer 2007, which will have it premiering a couple months after the late-spring release of Spider-Man 3.  Everybody Loves Raymond's Brad Garrett will voice the chef who runs the restaurant.

The real question, of course, is when we're going to see a sequel to The Incredibles. No, you can't improve upon a classic.  But I sure wouldn't mind seeing Brad Bird and team crank out another compelling tale of the Parr family. This would be a welcome follow-up announcement to the news that Toy Story 3 was unceremoniously dropped from Disney's production schedule. (Can't you just picture John Lasseter begging Jobs to sell the company to the House of Mouse for no other reason than to cancel that film?)

Mon Dieu! It appears that the French are losing their taste for homegrown films - just as demand for them outside of the country is growing. According to the AFP, France rode the international success of films such as March of the Penguins to the tune of $453M this year, representing a 50 percent increase in foreign audience appreciation. At the same time, domestic consumption of French flicks dropped over 14 percent. Penguins itself accounts for over $70M in box office sales internationally, with over 16 million people having seen the story about Emperor penguins doing it all for the nookie. In France, however, the penguins only tempted 1.2 million people to waddle their butts into theater seats.

So, what have YOU done for French cinema lately? What's the last French flick you watched? I went through a phase several years back where I attempted to bone up on some classics of French cinema, getting addicted to Truffault along the way. But I have to admit I've been a Parisian slacker as of late. And "slacker" is generous: the last French flick I can remember watching is Amelie. Before that, it was Romance, which probably deserves an award for being the world's most depressing porn flick. (Um, not that I have tons of expertise in that area...)

So...what did you do this weekend? If you lived in Seattle, you likely spent it at a friend's house or in a local bar, filling your Sunday evening with many tears and much gnashing of teeth. (Of course, if you're the kind of geek who reads Cinematical daily, you likely spent your Sunday evening finding those people and reveling in schadenfreude. I'm just saying.) If you were George Clooney, however, you spent the weekend in Santa Barbara, California, where you picked up an award recognizing you as a Modern Master of film. Clooney is no stranger to the Santa Barbara Film Fest, having premiered his directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, at the festival. Clooney, looking all de-Syriana-ed (yes, that is a word) was his usual charming and self-deprecating self in his appearance, claiming that he didn't think he was "brave" for making films like Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck. The film polyglot is quoted as saying, "I'm terrified of not making films like these, and that's the truth. I'm afraid of waking up at 70 years old and saying, 'I'm Batman again'."

Funny, George, but we have the exact same nightma - er, dream. Here's to more directorial and acting success for Clooney...so long as he leaves the tights to Christian Bale.

Are you fed up with the glorification of murderers in the movies? No? Well, to each his own. In Australia, some folks are downright livid about a new film, Suburban Mayhem, inspired by a 2000 gay-hate crime of a local mayor. In response, the Crime Victims Support Association in Victoria is demanding Australia pass a law that bans the making of movies based on real murders for a 20-year period after the crime. It's a noble idea in some respect, but silly in others. If this logic were transplanted to America, Monster couldn't have been made when it was. And would this law apply to meta-stories? Would Capote have been banned based on this law,  even though it's only about the writing of In Cold Blood? As offensive as these movies may be to the victims of the families, when done well, they can offer dramatic insights into the minds of the perpetrators.

Even more to the point, however, the international nature of filmmaking renders such a law preposterous. If a filmmaker is truly intent on making a movie based on an Australian crime, all they need to do is move the production overseas. Australians interested in watching the film could then order DVDs off of the Internet.

And then, you know, there's that whole sticky "freedom of speech" thing...

With the passing of Paul Clinton from his mortal coil, it's time to remember CNN's other film critic. "Wait," you may ask, "CNN has another film critic?" Yes indeedy - at least up until 2003, that is. Whereas Paul Clinton's editor claimed he constantly had to slice the world "perfect" out of Clinton's reviews, I can only imagine how many synonyms for the word "suck" the editor had to remove from the reviews of Paul Tatara. Tatara practically served as Clinton's id at CNN for several years; the two of them even posted dueling best/worst lists at year's end. While Clinton was known for being diplomatic in the face of schlock, Tatara was unsparing in his distaste for most of what Hollywood had to offer.

Here's an interesting series of questions and answers from the BBC, which asked film industry personalities how movies will be different in the digital age. The field of questions ranges from "Will fans choose how they want to watch films?" to "Did the VCR hurt the film industry?" What's most interesting about these answers is that most of them aren't really answers. Dan Glickman, who heads the MPAA, gives the most non-ny of the non-answers, saying the decision to release films digitially is a "company by company" choice. Wow, thanks for the wisdom there, Dan. Naturally, the theaters owners have their own strong opinions on the subject, while the head of the British Video Assocation and Curt Mavis of CinemaNow are the only ones who speaks the truth: simultaneous release on a wide scale will happen once digital technology becomes more pervasive.

Beyond the issue of whether theaters are doomed, the BBC also gets some good dish on why DVDs are region encoded - the bane of every hardcore anime fan in the United States - and why more films don't receive simultaneous global release. Check it out.