Transamerica Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Airlines have traditionally not shown controversial films on flights, making sure to stay far away from anything that might be slightly objectionable. That's why you've never seen a disaster movie (although you've probably seen movies that have been disasters) while jetting across the continent. That may all be changing soon as airlines have decided to show more mainstream fare like Brokeback Mountain and Transamerica in an effort to upgrade in-flight entertainment, and provide more choice, variety, and current releases to passengers.

Airlines edit films for content even more stringently than television networks do, cutting out language, sexuality, and anything that might even suggest that an airplane has a problem. According to the World Airline Entertainment Association, films are edited "because airlines carry young children as well as a diverse population of passengers from diverse cultures, many airlines require movie edits for language, sex, violence and political or religious content. The film distributor generally handles this process."

I remember flying from Los Angeles to Dallas and watching a cut of the Jennifer Lowe Hewitt film Heartbreakers that featured a digital insert over the cleavage of one ghost whispering actress. This reflects an oddly reciprocal effect between films edited for American vs. European airlines; Europe edits out violence, and America edits out sex. Apparently breasts might incense an American passenger to hijack the plane and fly to Club Med, but a bullet-riddled body will lull them into complacency.

I suppose I can understand the need to edit films on flights, because in a way it is forced viewing. You can't exactly get up and leave the theater if something on the screen bothers you. It is also understandable that you wouldn't want to watch anything that features a spectacular plane crash on a flight, for obvious reasons. However, more planes are starting to feature in-flight entertainment that allows each individual passenger to choose what they want to watch. What happens if the person next to you on that JFK-to-SFO flight wants to watch something featuring ultra-violence and you find that objectionable? It's hard to go through a flight with blinders on, but perhaps the next-generation of flight entertainment will feature a digital alternative.

What do you think? Should films be edited for airlines, or should you be able to watch whatever you want?

At a press event for his upcoming TV drama Shark over the weekend, James Woods was asked why he thought so many movie stars were turning up on the small screen. Though we, sadly, don't get invited to press junkets for TV shows, Ray Richmond of The Hollywood Reporter was there and took the time to transcribe Wood's typically intelligent, manic response.

Like Richmond, I adore Woods and his willingness to speak his mind; it's incredibly refreshing to find someone like that in an industry that's so carefully controlled. Though I happen to disagree with his politics, which often drive his opinions, I think he tends to be worth listening to. Basically, Woods is sick of what Hollywood is making right now. But he's not talk about Little Man, and the other things that we all think are crap. Instead, he's annoyed by award-winners like Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica and Capote, which he describes as having "sort of the same tenor and tone." More specifically, Woods believes that there's "not ... as much breadth to the imagination in the movies these days. They are very careful. Movies seem to be scared, whereas television seems to be like a teenager feeling his or her oats ... Television is more sophisticated, more dynamic, more gut-wrenching to me today than the movies." Take that, filmmaking world.

Now, granted, this is a guy busy promoting a TV series (the pilot of which which he calls "The best thing I've read in 10 years, period"), who certainly could be seen as having a very specific reason to talk down film and talk up the quality of television. What do you guys think? Does he have a point, or is he just getting attention for his current gig by talking down Hollywood?

• Bloodrayne - Teutonic terror Uwe Boll directs movies no more than gravity directs objects to Earth. His grasp of pithy things like story and character development is nearly non-existent, and his penchant for adapting video games has earned him a reputation as a sort of idiot savant (only without the savant part), kind of like if the kid on the porch in Deliverance only knew how to play the riff that Vanilla Ice nicked from Queen's "Under Pressure". His latest, a shameless Blade ripoff about a half-human, half-vampire avenger (Kristianna Loken), is miscast, barely written and staged with the skill of a spastic with cataracts. Currently residing on the IMDB's Bottom 100 (at #34), it and Boll's rotting body of work have elevated the oeuvre of Ed Wood, whose non-charting Plan 9 From Outer Space was once considered the worst film ever made, to common hack status. At least the inclusion of the free PC version of the Bloodrayne 2 video game will help soothe buyer remorse.
 

It's cold and rainy here in blustery Seattle, so why not go catch a movie? Here's a roundup of some of the film offerings around the Emerald City:

FREE MOVIES IN SEATTLE! 

Sure, you can listen to your fave radio station to find out about those nifty free preview screenings.  But if you're really a movie buff, you might want to check out Janet's Film Club at Janet Wainwright PR. They'll send you passes to get in free to lots of preview screenings! The only catch? Use 'em or lose 'em.

UW Film Club 

Japenese Film Series - Supermarket Woman (1996, Itami Juzo). Japanese comedy about a woman (Miyamoto Nobuko) hired to remake a small grocery store to compete against a large chain. Thursday, March 9 @ 7:30PM, UW Savery 239

A Moveable Feast  - Check out a rough cut of this film, by a former UW student. And it's free! At the Ethnic Cultural Center, 3940 Brooklyn Ave NE.

Seattle Jewish Film Festival March 5-19 - This year marks the 11th year of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, and they have a fantastic lineup. This year's fest runs at three venues: Seattle's Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), AMC Pacific Place, and Majestic Bay Theaters in Ballard. The festival really kicks into high gear this week, with an interesting lineup of films:

March 11 - The opening night film is Live and Become, which you can have with dessert at the 7PM showing (for passholders special ticket holders only), or without at 9:50PM. The film, which won the audience award at the 2005 Berlinale, tells the story of a young Ethiopian boy in the 1980s whose mother places him with a group of Ethiopian Jewish refugees to save him from the famine. As he grows from a boy into a man under his assumed identity, the lie under which he has lived begins to take its toll.

Check out the full lineup to see when other films are playing.

 

I like to think that my beautiful city of Seattle is home to so much wonderful film because there are so many brainy, intellectual film geeks here. In reality, it's probably as much because of the rainy weather here as anything else. Sure, we have an abundance of mainstream theaters like every other big city, but we also have lots of film that will feed your soul through the rest of your mundane week. Why settle for what's playing at the multiplex, when you can open the windows of your world through such a wide range of glorious world cinema, right here in your own backyard? We have lots of film here for the cinephile, and my fellow Emerald City residents will be able to come here to find out what's going on in film in Seattle,  every week, from now until the end of time. Well, maybe not until the end of time; life is impermanent. But film? Film is forever.

 

The first time I saw Felicity Huffman wasn't on Sports Night. It was on a short-lived (but fun) CBS show called Raven, about a martial arts expert (Jeffrey Meek) looking for his son in Hawaii with the help of Lee Majors. She was in one of the best episodes, playing a deadly assassin. I don't know, I've always thought she was cute, even back then, in the early 90s.

She tells The Boston Globe that she was told several times in her career, "you're just not pretty enough." But she was happy that they told her that, because they always told her that her looks weren't good enough, but never said that her talent wasn't good enough. And now, with an acclaimed-movie (Transamerica), a hit TV show (Desperate Housewives) and lots of awards and nominations, she's getting the last laugh.

In a choice that proves the Hollywood Foreign Press likes people with issues as much as the Academy does, Felicity Huffman wins for her apparently incredible work as a transsexual in Transamerica. She's wearing an awesome dress, by the way - despite that, however, the crowd is bored. Or at least she thinks it is. Happily, she's ignoring them and just doing her thing. (Aw. Her mom thinks little Felicity is on a TV show called The Women. That's sort of close - I wonder which one of them is Joan Crawford.) She also salutes "the men and women who brave ostracism, alienation, and a life lived on the margins to become who they really are," (Thank you, Tivo.) which strikes me as much classier than Tom Hanks outing a guy to honor him when he won for being marginalized.

At this point, I think organizations giving out movie awards should only release their lists of nominees if Brokeback Mountain and Capote aren't involved - I mean, this is just getting boring. The Screen Actors Guild announced their nominations this morning and, shock of shocks, Brokeback Mountain and Capote are up for best picture (actually, the award is called "best film ensemble," but it's the same thing), and Heath Ledger and Philip Seymour Hoffman are among the best actor nominees.

The also-rans for best picture are Crash (which, lately, has been winning a lot),  Good Night, and Good Luck, and Hustle & Flow. Competing with Ledger and Hoffman for the best actor award are Russell Crowe, Johnny Cash Joaquin Phoenix, and David Strathairn. Even among the other major awards there really aren't any surprises: as you'd expect, for example, Felicity Huffman's performance (in Transamerica) is recognized, as are those of Reese Witherspoon, Don Cheadle, and Jake Gyllenhaal.

The full list is below; the SAG awards will be given out on January 29 and we can all watch them on TV, if only to get the couch broken in for the awards shows that follow.

• IFC is hopping on board with The Weinstein Company to co-distribute Transamerica, the award winning trannie-movie starring Felicity Huffman. Pundits are wondering if this is a sign that the two entities are approaching a larger partnership – it is, after all, their second deal in two months, after they joined to acquire rights on the thriller Unknown.
• With all the Michael Ovitz brouhaha (in which former chairman Michael Eisner was accused of operating in a "Machavellian" fashion) finally dying down, Disney took measures yesterday to ammend its board practices, making it "easier to remove directors and tougher to buy off angry shareholders".
• Our own Ryan Stewart has been awaiting Wes Craven's Red Eye with what could only be called bated breath; he'll no doubt rush to defend it from Robert Koehler, who calls the film "negligible" and predicts that a "nonstop vid landing isn't far off."
• Jonathan Bing echoes Kim Voynar's concern that trailers have become misleadingly clean: "At a time when kids are bombarded on all sides with sex and violence, it's easy to sympathize with parents who'd like the multiplex to remain a safe zone. But one has to wonder whether theaters have gone too far in their efforts not to offend."