Julien Temple Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Hmm, I don't remember any of this week's noteworthy indie DVD releases playing at theaters in my area, so why don't we catch up together and decide what to rent? Listed (roughly) in order of critical favor:

Chop Shop (pictured). Second feature by Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart) is a coming of age story set in a New York junkyard. Cinematical review (entirely positive): Kim Voynar. DVD features: audio commentary with director and actors, rehearsal footage, and trailer.

The Tracey Fragments. Ellen Page stars in Bruce McDonald's harrowing drama. Cinematical reviews (both positive): Erik Davis; James Rocchi. DVD features: behind the scenes footage and interviews with McDonald and Page, entries from the "Tracey: Re-fragmented" contest, a selection of images by photographer Matt Sullivan, and trailer.

Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. Julien Temple's doc on the influential Clash musician. Cinematical reviews (both frustrated): Kevin Kelly; Jeffrey M. Anderson. DVD features: audio commentary with Temple, 100 minutes of additional interview footage, and trailer.

American Zombie. Grace Lee's horror comedy depicts the ordinary, day to day challenges of life as one of the undead. Cinematical review (disappointed): Jette Kernion. DVD features: audio commentaries, behind the scenes footage, deleted scenes, and trailers.

Sleepwalking. Family drama about a young girl dealing with life after her mother abandons her; with Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb, Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, and Dennis Hopper. Cinematical reviews (both negative): James Rocchi; Jeffrey M. Anderson. DVD features: "making of," and trailer.

I can't help but think that the huge audiences that flocked to American Gangster this weekend cut into the box office for indie films. it's a big-budget, star-driven, "based on real life" vehicle that has nothing to do with the Iraq War or other Serious Issues, yet it's an adult drama that screams quality. While there were no big break-out numbers posted, though, two docs performed quite respectably, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News.

Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten averaged $9,450 on two screens in New York for distributor IFC Films. Our own Jeffrey M. Anderson found the doc to be a frustrating experience, chiefly because director Julien Temple "has never figured out how to move past a short attention span. He's constantly worried that we'll lose interest, even in a story as ferocious and passionate as Joe Strummer's." Other reviews were more positive. The film is also available as part of the IFC InTheaters video on demand service nationwide.

Darfur Now "spotlights six individuals," according to Cinematical's Christopher Campbell, "some of whose stories directly inter-weave, who are affected by the tragedy in Darfur and have been successful at making a difference." The film itself did not generate much enthusiasm among critics, but no doubt its subject matter helped the doc to earn $7,800 at three screens in New York and Los Angeles for distrib Warner Independent.

Sidney Lumet's widely-praised Before the Devil Knows You're Dead expanded into 35 theaters and had the highest per-screen average ($9,830) among limited engagements for distributor ThinkFilm, according to Mr. Klady.

It's difficult to underestimate the significance of The Clash in rock 'n' roll. They belong on any serious list of the top five rock 'n' roll performers of all time, and their 1979 masterpiece London Calling belongs on any list of the top five albums. But beyond that, do we know who they were? Julien Temple's new documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten attempts to answer that question, although if you want to know more about Mick Jones, Topper Headon or Paul Simonon, it'll have to wait for another movie. This is Strummer's world, and we all just wish we were living in it. The movie begins, like any biography, with Strummer's parents. His father was a diplomat that moved from country to country; Strummer was born in Turkey as John Graham Mellor, and later insisted on being called "Woody" before adopting his legendary moniker.

The singer, songwriter and guitarist attended art school, lived as a squatter in an abandoned London flat and busked on the street before forming his first band, a rockabilly unit. But when he saw the Sex Pistols play, he decided to move in a different direction. The Clash was born, and with it a series of extraordinary shows and five great albums. But only the movie's first hour is dedicated to the Clash. As Strummer intones on the soundtrack, they made every conceivable mistake: success went to their heads, too many drugs, etc. They even made up a few new ones. The band grew successful, they began squabbling and they lost their direction. Temple includes a terrific sequence in which he intercuts two performances of "White Riot," one from a small club in 1977 and one from a giant stadium in 1983, brilliantly illustrating how big they grew and how far they fell.

A documentary on John Graham Mellor, more widely known as Joe Strummer -- lead singer of The Clash, has been creating buzz for a while. Way back in January of 2006, Cinematical brought word that director Julaien Temple would be putting together a doc about his long-time friend -- a complete labor of love as Temple was getting the full support of Strummer's family and former bandmates, which meant tons of archival material and interviews. Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten is now complete, and has been taking the festival circuit by storm. In January of this year, our Kevin Kelly reviewed it at Sundance and called it "a more than adequate" film that filled "in the gaps about Joe Strummer," although it left off a lot of his pre-Strummer, Mellor days.

The documentary is now headed for a November 2 limited release, and the website has a bunch of information about the feature, including a trailer, which you can see in everything from 56k to HD. Unsurprisingly, coming from a pro of music videos, the film and trailer are looking pretty slick. It does a good job of showing enough to amp you up without revealing much more than a ton of images and short tidbits. However, while it is completely suitable within the realm of the film, you should be prepared for some loud bursts of song intermingled between softer voice-overs and interviews -- not exactly office material unless you work in a Clash-friendly environment.

[via The Documentary Blog]

I'm not exactly sure what I want in a documentary about a rock festival, but I'm sure that it's not in Glastonbury. The film covers the 40-odd year history of the British Woodstock and bleeds the comparison so dry that there hardly seems to be any new ground worth covering. Before I even sat down to watch the film, it occurred to me that director Julien Temple might try for mileage by wedging in some references to druids or other ancient stone-worshippers that populated the Glastonbury landscape eons ago. Turns out Temple was way ahead of me -- Glastonbury begins with a re-enactment-history-lesson that has everything but Simon Schama to narrate it. Moving forward a few thousand years, we get a predictably odd parade of oddballs arriving from all corners -- seemingly on foot -- to rock out and dip into some easy-breezy spiritualism at the festival location -- Worthy Farm in South West England. We see nude moped riders, a dude playing guitar upside down in a harness, people with Braveheart-faces, a gorilla carrying a man in a cage, and knights in chainmail.

Much of the film is organized around the point of view of Michael Eavis, a farmer who owns the festival site and has hosted it since 1970. His love-hate relationship with all attendees who show up every year is interesting to explore, to a point, but it eventually give the film a tinge of officialdom; for every stellar captured performance by Radiohead or Nick Cave, there's a scene delving into whether or not Eavis has overcharged some itinerant worker for labor, and so forth. When Temple isn't focusing on Eavis, he's leap-frogging back and forth between footage from different eras with no concern for centering the audience in a time and place even for the duration of a scene. For example, a shot tightly focused on Cold Play's lead singer during a performance might be paired with what seems like a reaction shot of someone from 1971 -- there's a bizarre compulsion at work here to 'Oliver Stone' the film up with a complicated, busy visual pallette. Also, the older the footage is, the more it has the feel of impersonal stock footage.

If you can imagine what it would be like to try to document the life of one of your closest friends after their death, and to assemble everything into feature film length, you can probably see how difficult the process might be. This is what director Julien Temple had to do while he directed Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, about the lead singer for one of the world's best known bands, The Clash. Temple's documentary utilizes an enormous amount of archival footage, personal interviews, news interviews, vintage photos, audio recordings and footage that he himself had been filming since 1976. Temple also had access to Strummer's personal notebooks, writings and recordings, so they feature heavily in the doc. He uses Strummer's doodles and writings in animations that serve as transitions between scenes, or to underscore different pieces of the film. Of course, the main element that keeps everything sticking together is Joe Strummer and his music.

Director Julien Temple has been around the music business forever, directing videos for such wildly diverse artist as Dexy's Midnight Runners, David Bowie, Blur, and Van Halen (The man directed Jump! For that act alone he should be lauded for the rest of his life.). In addition, he's made a pile of music features, including the very odd Bowie flick Absolute Beginners, and Sex Pistols documentaries The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and The Filth and the Fury.

Temple's next project, however, will be a more personal one: he's started work on a documentary about his longtime friend, Joe Strummer of the Clash, who died in 2002. Since the film is being made with the full support of Strummer's family and former bandmates, Temple finds himself in the possession of a massive amount of archival material, as well as copious new interviews. The film is in the very early stages of production, with Temple busy sorting through the material he has, as well as searching for additional audio and video of Strummer from music journalists on this side of the Atlantic. Because of the amount of material involved, it's hard to say when Temple will finish his film, but the obvious care and passion he's bringing to the project make it one that is sure to thrill Strummer fans.