TheDivingBellAndTheButterfly Tagged Articles at Cinematical

One thing you should know about the Julian Schnabel-directed concert documentary Lou Reed's Berlin is that Lou Reed has personally instructed theaters to play the film at concert-level volume. That means it's really, really loud. When I saw it (at NYC's Film Forum, which is following Reed's command throughout the film's limited engagement), an elder woman walked out. Of course, I can't be sure that it was due to the sound, though the exit was during one of the loudest songs.

The volume may seem excessive and unnecessary to some, but at a time when concert docs are shown in IMAX and/or in 3-D, it really helps a film like Lou Reed's Berlin compete for audiences seeking a filmic experience comparable to the real thing. And leaving the theater with your ears ringing will help you think that you were actually there when Reed performed his 1973 album Berlin live for the first (and second, third and fourth) time in Brooklyn, New York, December 14-17, 2006.

I'm going for a highly praised film this week, rather than the big buzz, but you can check out a couple of other big releases after the jump.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
In 1996, Julian Schnabel directed Basquiat. Led by the charming and unforgettable performance of Jeffrey Wright as the famous artist, the film laid out the art world of 1980s New York City with heart, and it showcased many of today's top names. It was the straightforward film.

Now there's Golden Globe winner Le Scaphandre et le Papillon, a feature that has taken Schnabel out of the straight-forward and into a world of tragedy and eye-opening imagination. It's a move similar to David Lynch taking on The Straight Story, but switched. Instead of strange complexity to charming simplicity, it's the other way around.

Diving Bell is the true story of what happened to Jean-Dominique Bauby, a man who had been the editor-in-chief of French Elle, until a sudden stroke has left him still -- only able to move one eyelid. It's like taking the thought of paralysis and upping it -- no legs, no arms, no lips. But it isn't just a sad story of despair. After being forced to adapt to his condition, he write the memoir that becomes this film, all with the simple, blinking eye.

Hollywood's neverending love affair with itself just keeps on rolling, as now the Producer's Guild of America has announced its list of 2007 film nominees. And the nominees are: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood. Surely the most notable exclusions are Atonement and Sweeney Todd, since both films took Best Picture honors at last night's Golden Globes disaster atrocity ceremony. The PGA does not often sync up with the Academy. Last year, they selected Little Miss Sunshine and the Oscar went (rightly) to The Departed. In 2006, they selected Brokeback Mountain and the Oscar went to Crash. In 2005, they picked The Aviator and the Oscar went to Million Dollar Baby.

No guesses as to which film they'll select this year, but don't count out There Will Be Blood. As a friend of mine recently remarked: "Producers will definitely relate strongly to the story of a relentless misanthrope who sacrifices everything in his quest for money and power." The PGA nominated Bee Movie, Ratatouille, and The Simpsons Movie as nominations for its animation award. Their nominated documentaries are: Body of War, Hear and Now, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, Sicko, and White Night Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The winner of the PGA's Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year award is announced February 2nd, and will not be televised. Still, if the host announces the winner at his or her kitchen table while eating a large bowl of breakfast cereal, it will be a more exciting event than last night's Billy Bush cringe-a-thon. Yikes.

Most people have a favorite place to sit when going to the movies. Some people like the back row; some people like the centermost spot (middle seat, middle row); some people like to sit near the front so that they can stare up at the screen and let the picture fill the limits of their peripheral vision.

I figure that last preference made more sense fifty years ago, when Cinerama and CinemaScope presented vast, expansively shot epics and westerns that were made to surround our senses and engulf our whole eye-span. Nowadays, most movies are too fast-cut and often the camerawork is too shaky to really work for close viewing. Have you ever been forced to sit in the first few rows when a movie is sold out? Wasn't it hard to tell what was going on most of the time?

Personally, I like watching movies close up, when it's appropriate. Unfortunately, it rarely is. But movie theaters can't just start removing those front rows because they aren't good for the moviegoer's eyes. No, that would mean a lot fewer tickets sold, a lot fewer popcorns sold, and a lot less money going to both the theater owners and the movie distributors. So, moviemakers should go back to making movies that are more accommodating to the theatrical audience, right? Yeah, that's not going to happen.

Rejoice Midwesterners: Marcus Theatres is finally showing Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street! Last month, I wrote in my column on the story of Marcus' inability to reach an agreement with Paramount on the split of the movie's box office, and the cinema chain's subsequent decision to not show the film. For many people in Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, North Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota, that meant not being able to see the musical unless they drove hundreds of miles out of their way to an area with a non-Marcus-owned movie theater. I'm sure some huge Johnny Depp fans and Burton loyalists made the trek, thinking they'd otherwise have to wait for the DVD to come out. But Marcus and Paramount have now worked out a deal, likely because the movie has been out long enough for Paramount to be satisfied with the box office share it squeezed out of the country's other theater owners. Or maybe the studio realized that with a gross of only $40 million in three weeks, the movie wasn't as in demand as it had thought. Starting today (Jan. 11), 15 of Marcus' 49 locations will be showing the dark Sondheim adaptation.

I haven't yet seen Sweeney Todd. I wish I could say that I've been boycotting the film in support of Marcus Theatres, but in all honesty I've simply been choosing other better-looking movies to see (including The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and There Will Be Blood). Coincidentally (or not, maybe the company is doing it to spite the studios), Marcus has also decided to highlight these better-looking movies, which all qualify as "art films". The chain is calling this new programming of foreign and independent films "Critic's Choice"; the purpose is to call to attention "acclaimed and smaller films that are in limited release or might otherwise go unnoticed." Titles include Diving Bell, Juno and No Country for Old Men. Between those films and Sweeney Todd, Marcus patrons should now be fully prepared when they sit down to watch the Golden Globes press conference this weekend.

Best Screenplay

Nominees:

Diablo Cody -- Juno

Joel & Ethan Coen -- No Country for Old Men

Christopher Hampton -- Atonement

Ronald Harwood -- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Aaron Sorkin -- Charlie Wilson's War

Predicted Winner: Diablo Cody -- Juno

Often, it's not the finest writing that wins the screenplay award, it's the flashiest. Cinematical doesn't think Globe voters will be able to pass up Diablo Cody's hyper-verbose, show-offy script, chock full of memorable one-liners and quotable dialogue. Plus, Hollywood just can't get enough of her stripper-turned-screenwriter tale. Juno what I'm saying?

Now it's your turn to vote ...

Best Director

Nominees:

Tim Burton -- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Ethan and Joel Coen -- No Country for Old Men

Julian Schnabel -- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Ridley Scott -- American Gangster

Joe Wright -- Atonement

Predicted Winner: Ethan and Joel Coen

No Country for Old Men could go on to win Best Director at the Oscars, but unlike the Academy, the Hollywood Foreign Press will actually recognize both of the Coen Brothers. Everyone knows that Ethan and Joel co-direct their films, but due to Director's Guild and Academy rules, only Joel is allowed credit for them. Therefore their win of the Golden Globe for Best Director will be the better honor. And boy do they deserve it! With No Country, they've delivered a stunning film that exemplifies the two major dimensions of the craft: visual storytelling and management of the acting performances.

Now it's your turn to vote ...

The Director's Guild has announced their five nominees for best director of 2007, and they are: Ethan and Joel Coen for No Country for Old Men; Tony Gilroy for Michael Clayton; Paul Thomas Anderson for There Will Be Blood; Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; and Sean Penn for Into the Wild. For those of you paying attention to the major kudos, that's two different directors than the Hollywood Foreign Press nominated for the Golden Globes. Rather than recognizing Atonement director Joe Wright or American Gangster director Ridley Scott, the Guild has gone with Anderson and Penn.

So, which grouping will be closest to the Oscars? Who cares? I hate that with every announcement about non-Academy-related awards we get a statement like "since ____, only _____ winners have failed to claim the Oscar ... " Well, the fact that there is some divergence means there is no predicting who will get the Oscar nominations, let along the award. So, let's just appreciate the Director's Guild Awards for what they are. That said, I haven't seen all the films (I'm actually about to head out the door to finally catch There Will Be Blood), so I can't fairly pick my favorite. In fact, two of the nominated films that I have seen are so different in style that it's quite difficult for me to decide which I think is more deserving of this honor. Ultimately, despite the fact that I greatly admired Schabel's ability to make a first-person POV-shot engaging throughout the majority of his film, I'd have to go with the Coen Brothers. Except for that one controversial shot, I think they gave us the best visual storytelling of the year and I also think that they managed to get some of the most amazing performances of the year from their actors. However, my mind could easily change in about an hour when I sit down in front of the work of Paul Thomas Anderson. The winner will be announced on January 26.

If I had to think of one moment that summed 2007 up for me as a critic and moviegoer, then that moment came before an early-morning press screening at Cannes. Two film writers were speaking about a film from the day before -- excited, animated, engaged. One of them said "Le Scaphandre et le Papillion?" She then made a hand gesture worth a thousand words, and then exclaimed "Cinema!" And I felt the same way about The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as she did -- that it was a work of pure cinema, using every possible element of film to make a powerful piece of art, one that was engaged with the real world we live in while also existing as a strong, expressive creative work in and of itself. That's worth looking for, at the movies -- and, this year, it was easier than you might think to find it. These, then, are the films that made me exclaim 'Cinema!" in 2007, in no particular order after #1.

1. No Country for Old Men

The best film of the year -- wildly engaging, supremely confident, completely thrilling. Lesser filmmakers would have turned Cormac McCarthy's book into a tedious shoot-'em-up; thanks to Joel and Ethan Coen, we get a pulse-pounding, thought-provoking existential action flick -- a Greek tragedy with shotguns, a story of the American West whose true themes and concerns are eternal. I've seen No Country for Old Men five times now, and I get something new out of it every time -- it's a rich and dense work that also has sugar-rush surface-level pleasures. With three of the best male performances of the year (Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem) and a tone that somehow both fulfills and thwarts what we expect from the movies, No Country for Old Men may be the Coen's masterpiece.

(With the Diving Bell and the Butterly opening in America this weekend, we're re-running James's review of the film from the Cannes Film Festival in May of this year.)

After seeing Julian Schnabel's Cannes competition entry Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), I staggered into the light awestruck, a little moved, my heart and mind both racing with the excitement and power of the film I'd just seen. I ran into a fellow film critic, who wanted a fast take on the third film from painter-turned-director Schnabel, his follow-up to Basquiat and Before Night Falls. "Imagine a Spike Jonze-Charlie Kauffman-Michel Gondry-style film," I said, "but with a warm, beating heart instead of cool, detached hipster irony. ..." Based on the true story of Jean-Dominic Beauby, the editor-in-chief of the French edition of Elle, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly begins in blinding, blurry light; there's been an accident, and Jean-Do (as his friends call him, here played by Mathieu Amalric) has just woken from a coma. We're seeing the world through his eyes, and things don't look good.

Jean-Do's had a massive cerebro-vascular accident, as his doctors tell him in hushed tones; all Jean-Do can move is his left eyelid. "It won't comfort you to know," one notes, "that your condition is extremely rare." Soon, therapists are suggesting to Jean-Do that he can communicate by blinking; one for 'yes,' two for 'no' with longer ideas expressed by someone reading a list of the letters of the alphabet, starting with the most frequently used and moving down the line, waiting for Jean-Do to blink and indicate which letter he wants. A letter becomes a word become a sentence, blink by blink -- but is this really a way for Jean-Do to communicate with the world?