Cinematical

When I was in middle school in the early 90s, I remember longing to see a movie that accurately mirrored the strange fix I suddenly found myself in, as a sexually-aware but nowhere near sexually-active pre-teen. It seemed like there was no cultural bridge between something like Home Alone (in which the protagonist was plucky, but pre-sexual), and something like Dazed and Confused, where, with the exception of the character played by actual-teenager Wiley Wiggins, the high-schoolers on screen seemed to handle their sexuality with a kind of confidence that would be foreign to most adults. I remember being thirteen years-old, having the body of a child and Mae West's libido, and having no idea how to reconcile the two. I dreamed that someday, someone would make a film that answered my cry for help.

With Wild Tigers I Have Known, 25-year-old director Cam Archer has answered that cry for help -- if not for me, then at least, for some suburban male pre-teen grappling with his new-found homosexual tendencies. The film appeared at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival but has been re-cut (by some reports drastically) in the past year. I didn't see the Wild Tigers in its festival incarnation, but it appears that while narrative structure was never at the top of Archer's 'to do' list, the cut that IFC is releasing today as part of its First Take initiative seems to be somewhat tighter than the version previously reviewed by critics. It's still a puzzle, but Archer and cinematographer Aaron Platt's undeniable feel for stunning imagery helps to smooth some of the more jagged edges.

Whereas the November murder of actress/director Adrienne Shelly left much of the indie film community in shock, it left the producers of Law and Order with a perfect ripped-from-the-headlines storyline for February sweeps. An episode based on the incident premieres tonight on NBC, and from the looks of things, it bears quite a bit more than a passing resemblance to the actual tale. In it, detectives Green and Cassady (played by Jesse L. Martin and Milena Govich) investigate what appears to be the suicide of an actress/director; after finding a mysterious footprint near the body, they follow the trail of an undocumented construction worker who was seen arguing with the actress days before her death.

In a long story that appeared in last Sunday's New York Times describing the birth of the episode, L&O producer Dick Wolf explained that he and his producers were looking for a way to work off of Shelly's death as soon as they heard the news. At that point, the case was front-page fodder for New York City's tabloids; the New York Post, in particular, couldn't pass up the chance to exploit the illegal immigration angle provided by the fact that Shelly's apparent killer was an undocumented worker. Though the NYT story is careful not to parcel out any spoilers, it hints that the episode will examine the paranoia surrounding the immigration debate by setting two illegal alien suspects against "the 22-year-old ne'er-do-well American-born son of their employer."

One person unlikely to watch tonight's episode is Adrienne Shelly's widower, Andrew Ostrow, who refused to comment for the NYT story. Wolf and his colleagues insist they're not out to exploit Shelly, but it's hard to see this as the most noble of undertakings. What about you -- does this strike you as 'appointment' television?

It's been exactly one week since the not-so-shocking death of Anna Nicole Smith, and as the perspective baby-daddies fight to lay claim on a fortune that may never materialize, various media outlets are competing to tag the final footnote on a film career that never really happened. Jim Keough is one of several movie pundits to scoff at the media's insistence on setting Smith's story against that of her stated icon, Marilyn Monroe. "The comparison is unfair to Monroe," Keough writes. "Anna Nicole Smith will be remembered for her outsized proportions, her tabloid-friendly personal life and her erratic behavior, which included dozens of slurry interviews, but unlike Marilyn, she's light years from being iconic." It would seem that the bulk of Hollywood agrees; the L.A. Times reports that Smith's final film, a schlocky-sounding sci-fi flick called Illegal Aliens, co-financed by the wannabe-actress herself and co-written by Smith's late son Daniel, has been unable to find a theatrical distributor and will go straight-to-DVD this spring.

That's a far cry from the fate of Monroe's final film. Though Marilyn was fired from George Cukor's remake of My Favorite Wife, after her death 38 minutes of footage from that aborted project were cobbled together for inclusion in countless tributes and documentaries. The clip reel itself, completely divorced from Cukor's original intentions, was eventually released on DVD as part of a Marilyn Monroe box set. Cultural critic Camille Paglia agrees that the comparison to Monroe is off the mark, but insists that Smith had what it takes to become a genuine movie star -- if only Hollywood had let her. Comparing the late Trimspa spokeswoman to Jayne Mansfield, Margaux Hemingway and Anita Ekberg, Paglia laments the loss of a studio system that would have made room for Smith's "sexual charisma and comedic charm." "The real problem was that the broad, Technicolor comedic films in which Smith might have thrived are no longer made -- except in Bollywood," Paglia writes in a long column at Salon. "Smith had genuine talent but no place to put it."

Last we heard from Dakota Fanning, she was playing an Elvis-impersonating rape victim in the Sundance debacle Hounddog. That performance managed to simultaneously warm the hearts of festival goers, while rendering anti-kiddie porn crusaders appalled, and leaving most critics simply bored. Now, apparently having had a taste of life as a hot topic on MSNBC, Dakota wants more. She's signed on to star alongside little sister Elle Fanning in Hurricane Mary, which, according to Variety, "tells the true story of an Irish-American mother, played by Patricia Clarkson, who fought a long battle for the rights of her handicapped yet gifted daughters to have a public school education."

Elle and Dakota will play "handicapped yet gifted" under the director of Arvin Brown, a television director who has directed just one feature film, a 1980 horror flick called Diary of the Dead. I'm sure Dakota's parents and handlers have a master plan, and I'm absolutely positive they need no advice from internet movie critics when it comes to the handling of the preteen phenom's career. However, I do think now is the time to recall the sad story of Macaulay Culkin. If you remember, the Uncle Buck star was just about Dakota's age when he stuck his own little toe into dangerous waters, first as sidekick to a window-smashing, crotch-grabbing Michael Jackson in the "Black or White" video, and then as the villain in the 1993 thriller bomb, The Good Son.

Like Hurricane Mary, The Good Son was a family affair, co-starring Culkin siblings Quinn and Rory. Within a year after The Good Son's release, little Macaulay all but suffered a nervous breakdown and basically disappeared for almost a decade, only to resurface briefly to play a drug-addicted murderer and get engaged to a cast member from That 70s Show. This could very well all fit into the Fanning' family's plan: maybe the goal is to screw everything up now, wait until 2017, and then get Dakota cast in a remake of Monster and married off to Wilmer Valderrama. If so, well done, Mr. and Mrs. Fanning! Let all your haters stand corrected when this delicious plan comes to fruition.

It happens every year: films go to Sundance, play to packed crowds, win Jury prizes and/or score big deals ... and then essentially disappear. It happened in 2005, when Ira Sachs' Forty Shades of Blue took home the Dramatic Grand Jury prize, only to open nine months later on just three screens and eventually gross barely $75,000 in its 84 day release. It happened again last year, when The Darwin Awards and Right at Your Door landed multi-million dollar deals with major distributors, only to be shelved indefinitely. I guess if you're an acquisitions exec, it's easy to get carried away up there on the mountain, but sometimes the same picture that thrilled a packed crowd at the Racquet Club looks downright unmarketable back at the office in L.A. So, with the caveat that I have neither a crystal ball nor any sort of reliable inside information, here are my picks for five Sundance '07 films that will actually see a meaningful release sometime before Sundance '08.


1) The Ten (Cinematical review)


Stu Van Airsdale thinks Manohla Dargis was talking about this film in the NY Times, when she described a distributor who sat through a "bad comedy that features a clutch of low-level film and television actors" whilst fantasizing about "all those recognizable [actor] names once they are printed on a DVD box." I'm actually convinced Ms. Dargis was referencing Gregg Araki's Smiley Face, a stoner comedy starring Anna Faris and half the cast of That 70's Show, which was apparently so awful that even die-hard Araki fans couldn't sit through it. I think if Dargis had attended a public screening of The Ten -- or if she had even caught a glimpse of the hundreds of high school and college kids lining up for the wait list as long as eight hours in advance of the picture's second-to-last show -- she would have a hard time condemning a distributor for trying to cash in on it.

The movie, which was written and directed by David Wain of Wet Hot American Summer fame, consists of ten short segments, one representing each of the ten commandments, strung together by some filler involving Paul Rudd not being able to decide if he'd rather screw Jessica Alba, Famke Janssen or (this is not a typo) Dianne Wiest. It may be less engaging than a 90-minute stint watching old clips of The State on YouTube, but it's got huge college-campus potential, where boys and girls have been known to consume comedy without bothering to consult the second film critic for the New York Times to see if she approves. With savvy marketing, and maybe a few structural tweaks, this could be the sleeper comedy hit of the summer.

If you've turned on the television at all this week, you're probably aware that there's a film at Sundance called Hounddog, in which there's a rape scene featuring 12-year-old Dakota Fanning. There's been a lot of talk about the rape scene in theory, but most of it has come from people who haven't, and may never, see the film. After being shut out of the film's sole Sundance press screening, I swung by a public screening of the film, to find out what ticket buyers had to say after seeing it for themselves.

Remember when I said I was swearing off Main Street? That vow has been broken already. Saturday night, I headed down to the Delta/WireImage Lounge (no, I wasn't making that up in yesterday's post -- it actually exists) for FILMMAKER Magazine's 15th Anniversary bash. 15 minutes after the party's official start time, the slow-moving line to get in was already trailing some ways down the block. Inside, revellers (including various members of the Four Eyed Monsters camp, filmmaker Caveh Zahedi, and SXSW Film's Matt Dentler and Jarod Neece) enjoyed free Absolut and Stella Artois (served up by bartenders dressed as porntastic stewardesses), as they attempted to chat over the blare of Coldplay and The Shins. Here are some of the hot topics of conversation:

A.J. Schnack, director of They Might Be Giants doc Gigantic and About a Son, the forthcoming doc about Kurt Cobain, discussed the difference between opening a film at Toronto (as About a Son did), and opening at Sundance. "At Toronto," Shnack says, "It's like everyone is there to find out, 'Are these Oscar buzz films good enough?' I mean, we got enough press, but Toronto is a festival where it's still possible to play under the radar. Unlike Sundance, where everyone's like, 'What's the great discovery? Where's the new talent?'"

You haven't *really* experienced Sundance until you've trudged through eight blocks of human gridlock on Main Street, stuck behind three heavily Ugg-ed out 19-year-old girls intent on topping one another with tales of encounters with actors 4-6 times their age. (Examples: "I can't BELIEVE I saw Anthony Hopkins!"; "Remember that time I took a picture with Colin Firth? Ohmigodialmostdied!!!") Wait, scratch that: you haven't *really* experienced Sundance until you're distracted from all of the above by the sight of a respectable journalist exiting the Lean Pockets Hospitality Lodge* weighed down with three or four canvas bags full of swag. This is what Main Street is all about, and I'm pretty sure its why Robert Redford and Geoff Gilmore need to remind us to "Focus on Film" at the biggest film festival in the States. I've never been to Park City during the off-season, but it seems a lot like any other slightly-sleepy resort town, where mom-and-pop pizza shops share blocks with ridiculous tchochke emporiums. But the during second two weeks of January, nearly every other storefront is commandeered by a corporation.

ESPN takes over a sports bar; T-Mobile and MySpace team up to conquer an Asian-Fusion restaurant; Delta clears out a local pub and pays for WireImage to use it as a portrait studio. Some companies make their omnipresence felt via random advertising slogans, plastered on buildings but pointing to no visible product (see above). The Festival itself arranges for their official sponsors to take turns taking over the same Main Street club, where mobs line up to collect swag from Motorola, Turning Leaf and Krups. Some brands put up a discrete sign in a second-story window and hire a goon to keep the rabble out; this afternoon, I was denied access to both the PREMIERE Magazine Lounge, and the Luxury Lounge Hosted by PEOPLE. Meanwhile, the folks at the New York Lounge (hosted by the Bloomberg-established agency to lure film and TV productions to the state) welcomed me with open arms, offering me bagels with apple butter and tons of tax incentive literature.

Karina Longworth, the Editor Emeritus of Cinematical, is taking advantage of her mostly-meaningless title to post a diary of her experiences at Sundance. Your new editor wants her to do this every day, but in case she, uh, doesn't, it's because her real job got in the way.

Reading Eugene Hernandez' blog whilst waiting the for the cab to arrive to take me to La Gaurdia this morning, I learned that David Poland and Jeffrey Wells have declared that Sundance 2007, which officially begins tonight, is, in fact, already over. You see, they arrived in Park City a good 48 hours ahead of me, took turns inserting their thermometers in the rectum of the festival, and rushed to their computers to report the reading: cold. In fact, according to Wells, EVERYONE is saying that this year's line-up looks "flat, so-so, nothing to write home about material...a couple of almost-but-not-quite- as-good-as-Half Nelson flicks, and apparently nothing even close to a Little Miss Sunshine-type breakout waiting to happen."

Though tempted to reach for my phone to cancel the car -- a Sundance without a Sunshine is no Sundance for me! -- my more rational self prevailed. Instead, actually invigorated by the prospect of attending a film festival in which an over-hyped (and over-priced) Vacation retread steals headlines (and potential aquisition dollars) from ten or twelve films more deserving of market share, I zipped up my laptop and went downstairs. I went to the airport, got on the plane, and landed a little while ago. I even had my first Chik-fil-a in the Cincinatti airport during my layover. It was good. I ate too many waffle fries, though.

Whereas most major movies these days rely on carefully calibrated publicity campaigns to build and sustain Oscar buzz, the press has spontaneously touted Dreamgirls as an Oscar "lock" since before casting was complete. But 13 months later, most major critics have seen the film, and their returned verdicts are decidedly mixed. Whilst the musical certainly has its fans (such as our own James Rocchi), critics from major publications such as The New York Times, Premiere, Salon and New York Magazine have dared to come out against the film.

Lest you think I'm exaggerating by using the word "dared," take a look at the disclaimers some of the guys and gals have tacked before their reviews. "I know I'm going to bring down the room by saying I think it's just okay," writes David Edelstein at NY Mag. "Well, Jennifer Hudson is more than okay..." Aaron Hillis, a Premiere writer moonlighting at The Reeler, also anticipates that reviewing the film negatively will somehow brand him as an outcast: "I'm bound to take some abuse for being a real holiday Scrooge [by] saying I don't think Dreamgirls is particularly good." I find these reviews fascinating, not because they're negative, but because they contain such a palpable sense of anxiety on the part of the critic. Dreamgirls seemed like such a prohibitive frontrunner at the time it was screened for the press that anyone who didn't like it must have wondered if they were missing something. It certainly seemed unlikely that The New York Times' A.O. Scott, who is not generally known for staking out unpopular opinions, would dismiss Bill Condon's musical as "disappointing."