Cinematical

As part of our ever-expanding quest to bring you the most movie news most often, and with the highest possible ratio of slant to fact that we can manage, allow me to introduce our new video podcast. The idea is that it's an easy way to catch up on the previous day's movie news that you can download and watch every morning, either when you get to work or on your iPod during the commute. We're going to try to post one of these every morning, five days a week, through the end of the Tribeca Film Festival, at which point we'll evaluate the relationship between labor and demand and go from there. There's only one problem: we don't have a name. And that's where you come in: offer up your best title in the comments, and the best name we get by Friday will go on the podcast intro for good. The author of said name will also receive a credit on each podcast post, as well as a Cinematical t-shirt.

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Hosts
Karina Longworth

Editor
Randall Bennett

Music
Love as Laughter - I'm a bee

Format
6:12, 50.4 MB, MPEG4 (iPod / PSP compatible)

Program
00:00 - Steven Spielberg says he's creating a reality show
01:30 - Crash coming to the small screen
02:22 - Prison worker disciplined after showing 'Brokeback' to Inmates
03:08 - 'Ice Age Two" Frozen atop the box office
04:25 - Writers Guild releases 100 best Screenplays
05:14 - Star Wars Kid settles lawsuit out of court

 

Note: Portions of the review appeared on Cinematical during the Sundance Film Festival, as part of this article.

Friends with Money stars Jennifer Aniston as an unhappy, 30-something, pot smoking maid who can't stop stalking her married ex. Like writer/director Nicole Holofcener's previous films, Walking and Talking and Lovely and Amazing, Friends with Money is an astutely observed relationship dramedy, painfully funny even as it burns. As Holofcener's unhappily unmarried heroine, Olivia, Aniston – a one-note actress, but virtuoso-good at that note – acquits herself more than admirably,  considering the film began shooting the day after news of her seperation from Brad Pitt leaked to the press, The timing could maybe not have been more cruely ironic: the role requires Aniston to convince us that she's a loser. Watch for a key moment, about three quarters in, where a romantic rival tells Olivia to "go get [her] own husband." It's not hard to imagine the real-life motivations Aniston used to fuel Olivia's profanity-laden response.

 

 

Last column (and, uh, yeah -- it's been a while), I teased you with the promise of a column about V for Vendetta, the opening weekend sucess of which seemed unlikely for a host of reasons. The film, after all, has faced a host of obstacles on its 20 year journey from B & W British comic strip to Warner Brothers' most prominent Spring widget: the Wachowski-brother-speared adaptation was abandoned by comic co-creator Alan Moore (who, to be fair, has a general policy of distancing himself from filmatizations of his work); after the London bombings last summer, WB was forced to abandon both its original release date (November 5, the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawlkes' aborted bombing of the British Houses of Parliament) and its original marketing campaign ("Remember, remember, the 5th of November..."). But most interesting of all was the outsized fervor the film instigated, months and months before its release, amongst conservative film critics.

Add it all up, and and Vendetta's $26 million opening seemed sufficient for study. But two things happened the following week: 1) I finally got around to seeing the film, and 2) Vendetta's numbers dropped a precipitous 52% in its second weekend, with the holdover title easily falling victim to Inside Man's $30 million opening onslaught despite an advantage of 500 screens. The weekend-to-weekend drop isn't exactly a mark of failure -- at virtually exactly this time last year, another comic adaptation, Sin City, opened just under $30 million, dropped 50% a week for about six weeks, and was eventualy considered one of the year's biggest hits -- unless we're playing this as a zero-sum game, On those terms, V for Vendetta could safely be considered a massive failure: the most pretensiously political film to come from a studio in some time, it's managed to fail to either rally the Left or vidicate the Right. On the ideological spectrum, there's no winner here -- which means everybody loses. But just the very fact of Vendetta's failure to inspire much more than a shrug from most parties points to the possibility that the culture wars might be far less potent than certain pundits – not to mention publicists – would have you believe.

Literally tens of New Yorkers walk and drive past a certain non-descript, concrete-and-glass building on Canal Street every day, with absolutely no knowlege that Oscilloscope Labs, the world headquarters of the Beastie Boys, is housed inside. Indeed, when I made my way up the elevator last week to sit in on a roundtable with the Boys, who have been promoting their fan-shot concert film/love letter Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That in full force the past few weeks, my only clue that I was entering the domain of superstars came from an overheard lunch order made by a personal assistant: "We're going to need to make sure that the risotto can be made with vegetable stock, and no cheese. It needs to contain absolutely no animal products of any kind." High-maintenance veganism aside, it's refreshing that the Beasties have managed to made it through two decades in the public eye – and have continued to evolve creatively – without lapsing into typical celebrity self-seriousness. And Awesome is as strong a testament to their staying power as we'll ever see – living proof that, as the elder statesmen of white rap keep getting older, their fans stay the same age.

The Boys have a reputation for swerving around interview questions (Exhibit A: this WIRED interview, in which Ad Rock warns George Foreman to watch his back), so I went into the roundtable determined to meet them off-topic. So that's me you'll hear, asking Mike D about his acting debut; later, when they launch into the debate over the proper way to hold a barbeque contest, I'm pretty sure it's also my fault. You can listen to the entire roundtable here; or, subscribe to our entire podcast feed, via iTunes or RSS.

Due to technical problems on our end, we're just getting around to posting the last round of video interviews from this year's Sundance Film Festival (you can check out the backlogue here), and this is one I've been looking forward to for a while. Goran Dukic's Wristcutters: A Love Story was, to my mind, one of the few real gems to come out of this year's Sundance. Which makes C.K. Sample's interview, with Dukic and the film's co-star, Shannyn Sossamon all the more ... uh ... interesting. I'm not sure if Dukic and Sossamon didn't realize they were on camera, or if they were just wiped out from the Sundance grind, but by the time Sossamon started rifling through her bag for lipgloss, a publicist definitely should have stepped in and wisked the talent away. Lucky for you, they didn't.

You can watch this video here, or, if you love us enough (and why wouldn't you?), subscribe to our podcast feed, either through iTunes or RSS.

So, I'm going to Cannes. I've never been before. As much as I'd like to spend the next seven weeks picking out the perfect pair of open-toed sandals for my first stroll down La Croisette, I'm afraid that if I don't find lodging soon, I will be covering the Festival from a cardboard box, and cute footwear will be the least of my worries. So: got any hotel recommendations? Or, better yet, do you or anyone you know have, or have info about, a housing share? I'm looking for space for myself, and the illustrious James Rocchi. If you have any tips, please send them directly to me at karina AT cinematical DOT com.

No rock band has ever consistantly exceeded expectations quite like Pixies. Formed by four dirt-poor Bostonians in 1986, the band released four albums, an extended EP and a handful of singles on 4AD (an English art rock label largely kept afloat by the inexplicable staying power of The Cocteau Twins), barely blipped the domestic charts whilst enjoying massive sucess overseas, headlined the Reading Festival in 1991, opened for U2 on the Zooropa tour in 1993, and disbanded later that year after lead Pixie Black Francis announced their breakup to the world on a radio interview, and then to his three bandmates via fax.

Though seemingly destined to drift off into obscurity, the band's long, slow comeback started almost immediately, as Kurt Cobain started telling anyone who would listen that Nirvana's breakout single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", was his blatant attempt to rip off a Pixies song. That simple endorsement had a lot of power; a quote on the band's record company website credits Cobain's admission with singlehandedly bringing about "the beginning of the end of counterculture." Hyperbolic, sure, but not necessarily inaccurate: by the end of the decade, when their early single "Where is My Mind" was becoming forever linked to the apparently archtypical modern male's emasculation-via-consumerism through its use in David Fincher's Fight Club, the quartet had easily become the biggest dead band of the 90s. I can personally attest to the fact that Pixies fanatacism was only stoked by the band's limited output – with only five records, there's nothing to do but listen to them all. A lot. In 1994, I played my cassette of Surfer Rosa until it wore out. Twice.

But then, because irony is a virus that we cannot escape, and can only hope to contain, in the Spring of 2004 Pixies came back, for an almost-two-year, sold-out tour called – wait for it – Pixies Sell Out. loudQUIETloud, a film by Steven Cantor and Matthew Galkin which had its world premiere last week at SXSW, is about what happened next, and as concert films go, it's fairly phenomenal. Galkin and Cantor paint Pixies' tale as an epic romance that was doomed from the start; when the lovers reunite (for a host of reasons, but not one of them love), the end result is, much like the film itself, both spectacular and sad.

Well, darlings, tomorrow marks the one month anniversary of this column, and to celebrate the occasion, I've put together a bit of a grab bag for you. Because there's nothing I find more celebratory than a good argument, this first milestone seemed like as good a time as any to go through my hate mails and answer trackbacks and post a few thoughts and responses. If you're dying for new(er) content, come back next week, when I'll have some thoughts on how the success of V for Vendetta breaks every rule in modern Hollywood.

On to the brawls...

Andre Soares was kind enough to link to my last column, in which I connected a few tidbits from SXSW to the ever-evolving relationship between consumers and critics, over at the Alternative Film Guide. But, taking exceptions with a few points, he went on to file what looks a lot like a counter-argument. The thing is, I think Soares and I actually agree on most every aspect of the issue. Soares starts off by pointing out that Hollywood makes the lion's share of its profits off of a consumer roughly 30 years younger than the average critic: "film critics can't be expected to represent the tastes of a film audience composed mostly of teenagers and very young adults -- unless, of course, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Nation were to hire fourteen-year-olds to write film reviews." That's a valid point, but it's also just a little fatalistic -- he's essentially saying that any hope for a connection between the people who write about movies and the people who pay to see them is doomed.

Joe Swanberg burst onto the scene at SXSW 2005 with his debut feature, Kissing on the Mouth, a low-budget, lo-fi venture made up of equal parts verite drama, relationship comedy, and graphic sex. I enjoyed it the first time around; I loved it the second time around, when I picked up on all the jokes. One year later, Swanberg is back at SXSW with LOL, a slightly higher-fi relationship dramedy, with gadget fetishism (and gadgetry designed to facilitate fetishism) in place of actual sex. In fact,  LOL is maybe most remarkable for the way it  shackles the sex drives of its protagonists to their digital toys. If Kissing wanted to remind us that sex is something that happens in the real world, LOL wants to show us how and why it doesn't.

The director stars again, this time as Tim, a smirking young man with a beautiful brunette girlfriend and a seriously problematic attachment to his equally attractive Powerbook. The action takes place over a few days of a Chicago summer, and expands to include the misadventures of Tim's two friends, Alex (Kevin Bewersdorff) and Chris (C. Mason Wells). Alex, a video artist and electronic musician, is obsessed with Tessa (Kissing's ingenue, Kate Winterich), an online pinup with whom he's been exchanging emails; his plot to bring their online "relationship" into some kind of real space causes him to ignore the very real affections of a very cute girl (played by the exquisitely green Tipper Newton). Chris, home from college for the summer, is trying to continue his relationship with girlfriend Greta (Greta Gerwig) from 1000 miles away – despite his frustrations over her resistance to the ideas of sending him dirty phone-cam snaps or initiating phone sex.

As with Kissing, LOL is a true mixed-media collaboration. Bewersdorff created conceptual drawings for the promotion of the film (this is my favorite) and composed LOL's score (in one of the film's best scenes, he self-mockingly performs a recital for a crowd of four). Taking the concept even further, Wells and Gerwig are an actual couple, and their actual voicemails and phone-cam shots have made it into the film. This necessarily gives the two actors an edge when it comes to realism, but the other players (all without experience outside of Swanberg's films) are more than up to meeting the challenge. As noted, Newton is particularly good as the young Walter – watching her heart drain of hope is excruciating – and Bewersdorff is also excellent as the oblivious jerk who causes the disappointment. When it comes to this quest for realism, I've read reviews of Swanberg's work that try to peg him as Andrew Bujalski-lite, which is somewhat unfair. Though both young filmmakers are in some ways using naturalism to investigate modern (mis)communication, Swanberg's characters actively fuck with one another in ways that Bujalski's do not .(The Funny Ha Ha director actually has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it role in LOL, as do Arin Crumley and Susan Buice, the hearts and minds behind Four Eyed Monsters.) You may find yourself in recognition when faced with either director's work, but Swanberg installs an unavoidable culpability in that recognition. You're much more likely to leave LOL with a guilty cringe on your face.

If Swanberg has an Achilles heel, it's that his formal experimentation (or, really, deviation) is easily taken for gimmickry. It was easy to latch on to the sex in Kissing on the Mouth, and ignore that film's deft balance of quiet humor and devastation; it might be even easier for some to roll their eyes at LOL's structuring sequences (which combine footage shot by friends and strangers, solicited by Swanberg over the web) and dismiss the filmmaker for allowing his content to be dictated by technical possibilities. The criticism wouldn't be completely inappropriate here, but it would be better leveled at the latest works of Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez; There's nothing here as distracting from the story as the latter's love of shitty 3-D – when Swanberg shows you what he can do with technology, he's essentially strengthening his narrative, by way of replicating it.

LOL, in Narrative Competition at SXSW, sadly walked away without an award, but word on the street is that a deal of some sort is in the works. You can catch it one more time, if you're still in Austin – its last screening is tonight at 9:45 at the Austin Convention Center.

I've sat on this review for an awfully long time. Don't let anyone tell you that procrastination never pays off.

I saw The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things a year ago, at the 2005 SXSW Film Festival; by that point, it had already been on the festival circuit for almost a year. It was picked up by Palm Pictures for North American distribution at Cannes in 2005, exactly one year after its world premiere. At some point, it was possibly worth asking why writer/director/shameless showboat Asia Argento had so much trouble getting her splashily filmed, star-studded translation of name-brand memoirist J.T. Leroy's short stories into theaters. At this point, now that Leroy has been unmasked as the brainchild of three middle-aged wannabes, it's easy to close the case with a two-part answer: 1) the film is terrible, and 2) it is, in fact, so bad, that without a New York Times-endorsed scandal for Palm to latch its marketing campaign on to, its release would be damn near impossible. Oddly, now that it's able to hide behind the mask of Leroy's unmasking, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things gets to wear a certain kind of cachet; a literary scandal has a funny way of making what's actually been burned onto the celluloid seem a little less unconscionable.

So let's talk about that scandal. It's much more interesting than anything in Argento's film.