WimWenders Tagged Articles at Cinematical

All hail the now-defunct Dallas institute of weird and wooly media, Forbidden Books and Video. It was in a scuzzy neighborhood down by the fair grounds, which was perfect for a place where bored high school kids could rent Romper Stomper, Nekromantik, El Topo, or similarly mind-warping movies. They sold obscure CDs from England, serial killers T-shirts, and really effed-up books back before Hot Topic or Amazon or any of those joints.

In college, a friend introduced me to Nick Cave, specifically The Birthday Party but also his Bad Seeds stuff. I didn't get it. It was over my head. First he's screaming, now he's moaning, now he's releasing bats. What the hell? I wanted to get it, but I just didn't... yet.

And then one summer when I was back home, I hit up Forbidden Video and came home with Wings of Desire. It was hard to stick with the German poetry and the thoughts of strangers in the library and the street, but soon it all clicked. Oh, Columbo and his cup of coffee and cigarettes. Bruno Ganz as the angel Damiel watching his object of desire Marion swing on her trapeze, alone in her trailer. And the very best parts, my favorite parts, when the solemn black and white film flashes to color -- when Damiel sees what it would be like, or could be like, to be human. Two of these scenes are when he follows Marion to a club where Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are playing. She thinks she's alone in the crowd, but she's not. (An interesting sidenote -- fellow Aussies and Bad Seed compatriots Crime and the City Solution also played in the movie. Mick Harvey and Rowland S. Howard were in both bands.)

After 10 days of being pushed, prodded and poked by the world's hordes of paparazzi at the Cannes Film Festival in their spittle-flecked enthusiasm to get a picture of Angelina or Brad or Benicio, the essential plot of Wim Wenders's Palermo Shooting, with a famous photographer on the run for his life and re-assessing his career in Palermo, Italy, sounded like what could be the feel-good film of the festival. I hate paparazzi with a passion; they hog all the power outlets in the Cannes press room, they shove and shout and scream at people in order to get them to look at them so they might thereby increase the saleability of their shot, and, most damningly here at Cannes, they're both annoyingly innumerable and wildly irrelevant. (I know I'm biased, but I see it this way: I can read two reviews of the same film and learn something different from each, get a entirely separate set of insights from each writer, learn any number of things and have any number of ideas raised. I can look at 800 different photographers' snapshots of Gwyneth Paltrow on the red carpet and they all say the same thing: Dahr, she purdy.)

What kind of horror movie can you get from the uninitiated? We're about to find out.

The Hollywood Reporter posted an interview with Wim Wenders yesterday, which discusses his current Cannes film, Palermo Shooting. However, in this whirlygig of conversational fun, the director also talks his next film.

"But my next film will be a genre movie. Full on. It will be a horror film." But wait, he goes on to say: "Horror is one genre that is used much less than others to transport other things. Lots of people have used great thrillers to transport political messages but the horror film is rarely used to transport anything but fear." Wenders has made a bunch of great films and has a good deal of talent, so I'm going to assume that he just hasn't seen very many scary movies, and has based his opinion on minimal fact.

Heck, I'm picky with my horror movies, and I've seen a good deal of political and social commentary in a number of them. Anyhow, it gets more interesting. It's called Miso Soup, and will be based on "the famous Japanese novel." I assume that means that it's In the Miso Soup, about a Japanese tour guide who is leading around a disturbing American client who might be a murderer, and has superhuman strength and metallic skin (vampire perhaps?).

What really makes this intriguing, regardless of Wenders' lacking horror knowledge -- Willem Dafoe is attached to star. Production will begin in Tokyo next spring.

Every once in a while, a follow-up news piece pops up that makes me wonder where I've been. In case you missed it as well -- there's a new anthology hitting screens this year called 8, and it's got a bunch of interesting directors attached. There are the likes of Jane Campion, Gael Garcia Bernal, Mira Nair, Gus Van Sant, and Wim Wenders, plus Gaspar Noe, Abderrahmane Sissako, and Jan Kounen.

Unlike the "I Love You" odes to famous cities, the film will tackle 8 themes and 8 films from famous directors that focus on the progress, set-backs, and challenges that face our planet. It's not just an environmental picture, but rather, it focuses on themes of poverty/hunger (Sissako's Tiya's Dream), education (Garcia Bernal's The Letter), gender equality (Nair's How Can It Be), child mortality (Van Sant's Mansion on the Hill), maternal health (Kounen's The Story of Panshin Beka), HIV/AIDS and other diseases (Noe's SIDA), environmental sustainability (Campion's The Water Diary) and development (Wenders' Person to Person).

It's sort of like Invisibles, which Kim reviewed from SIFF last year, and which also had a short from Wim Wenders. Now Variety reports that Marta McGonagle (iCarly) has signed on for a role in his segment -- although there is no word on what his segment, titled Person to Person, will be specifically about. For now, you can get a bunch of information from the film's website.

The latest Wim Wenders (produced) film, The Open Road, was sounding pretty decent back in February, when Jeff Bridges, Justin Timberlake, and Mary Steenburgen signed on. Now it's gotten even better -- The Hollywood Reporter has posted that both Lyle Lovett and Harry Dean Stanton have joined the cast. I just wish that Wim was heading this feature, since the last time that both Stanton and Wenders were on the same project, it was in the great film Paris, Texas back in 1984. This time around, writer/director Michael Meredith gets the honor (he did write Wenders' Land of Plenty, so this isn't out of left field).

The film is a reconciliation tale that focuses on a man (Timberlake) who is trying to reconcile with his former sports pro father (Bridges) as they head to his ailing mother's bedside. As Christopher Campbell noted back in April of 2007, there's also a girlfriend in the road trip mix. THR says that Kate Mara is the other player in this film, so I imagine she's Justin's love interest. As for Lyle and Harry -- the former plays a Memphis bartender who "lends a helpful ear" to Timberlake's character, while the latter will play his grandfather.

After his creepy stint as Roman Grant in Big Love, it will be nice to see him as a grandfather who isn't some gangster-like Mormon. Then again, maybe he is, but that'd be a totally different sort of story. Production is currently underway in Louisiana.

When 'N Sync was prancing around the stage in the late '90s, did anyone imagine that one of the dudes would become a pretty successful actor in less than 10 years? I mean, I'm sure Jeff Bridges didn't see Justin Timberlake on the boob tube and say: Gee, that kid should play my son in something! It's as weird as watching Ronnie Regan in his movies and imagining that he'd become President. NOTE: I am, in no way, suggesting Justin will turn to politics -- I'm just noting surprising career moves.

Anyway, Variety reports that Timberlake is about to head on The Open Road with Bridges, the comedy drama that Christopher Campbell first blogged about almost a year ago. Under filmmaker Wim Wenders' watchful eye, writer Michael Meredith will direct his own script. This was going to be a reunion for the Land of Plenty crew, but unfortunately, it seems that cinematographer Franz Lustig has been replaced by Yaron Orbach.

Road is a reconciliation tale about a young man who reconnects with his dad, "a legendary athlete, as he struggles to get him home to his ailing mother's bedside." While the parts aren't specifically laid out, I imagine Bridges is the dad, Timberlake the son, and Mary Steenburgen is the mom. Initial reports also described a girlfriend on the trip, but there is no word about that role in this latest bit of news. This could be at least partly autobiographical, as Meredith's dad is ex Cowboys QB Don Meredith, but for this film, the sports figure is a baseball legend. Personally, I'm interested in seeing how Meredith handles the comedic aspects since Land of Plenty was all sorts of somber -- good, but somber. The film is scheduled to slip into production in Louisiana later this month.

It has been a couple years since Wim Wenders' last feature film (Don't Come Knocking), as the director has been busy working on shorts for three different compilations (including the Cannes showcase, To Each His Cinema). And now it appears that instead of immediately heading back to a full-length of his own, he will be very closely producing Michael Meredith's second feature, Open Road. Meredith wrote Wenders' Land of Plenty and previously directed the little-seen 3 Days of Rain, an interlocking of six Chekov adaptations, which starred his father, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith, and Peter Falk, who also starred in Wenders' best film, Wings of Desire.

The film is a father-son reconciliation tale (after The Thing About My Folks, also starring Falk, I could do without another) about a man who heads out on a road trip with his girlfriend and his estranged father, a former sports pro. Although this sounds like it could be autobiographical, the father in the film will be a baseball legend, not a football legend. Still, even if the elder Meredith is not cast in the role, it will be easy to make the assumption. As an added attraction for sports fans, there is a chance that real baseball legends, such as Yogi Berra and Johnny Bench, will have cameos. Wenders is apparently holding Michael Meredith's hand on the film, serving as a visual consultant and seemingly a liason to German cinematographer Franz Lustig, who shot Land of Plenty and Don't Come Knocking. The collaboration should begin shooting this summer in Louisiana.

Nibbles for you:

• In January, Erik reported that Obi Wan's brown cloak from the Star Wars movies was going on the auction block. While bidding didn't explode past the approximately $100,000 starting price, it did make its mark, selling for $104,000 to an anonymous telephone bidder. Did Mr. Lucas slide his own bet in, using the Dark Side to keep others from bidding the price up? Good lord, you could buy an island for that! Personally, I would've grabbed Terry Jones' metal helmet from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That went for what seems like a paltry $19,300 in comparison.
• Sicily has a new funding program for films, budgeted at $9.2 million, that is going to help two premiere foreign filmmakers, and Oscar nominees, make their next features. Michelangelo Antonioni will use his funding to make Aquiloni sull'Etna, translated as North Winds on Mt. Etna, while Wim Wenders will use his share to make Palermo Story. First, props to Antonioni for making a feature at 95, and second, I hope this Wenders film doesn't get swallowed for years like Land of Plenty did.
• When you can't find adaptation inspiration in literature or television, where do you turn? Well, Lionsgate and the Firm think you turn to art. Thomas Kinkade's painting, The Christmas Cottage, will be the source for the feature, and the aim is to release it as Santa rolls around next Winter. The movie, which was written by Prairie Home Companion collaborator Ken LaZebnick, will use the painting to discuss the artists life -- he began painting when his mother was about to lose the family home. I can't blame the studios for wanting a piece of this -- Kinkade's company claims they sold $1.7 billion of his artwork at retail, and $2.4 billion in licensed products. I guess he's not starving.

Earlier this month, I posted about a secret film debuting at the Cannes Film Festival. All that was known at the time was that it would be a compilation of 30 shorts, each about three minutes long and directed by an internationally respected filmmaker, and that it wouldn't be shown to the public. Now, thanks to an official press release, we learn that there are in fact 33 shorts from 35 filmmakers (including two pairs of brothers) and that the film, titled To Each his Own Cinema, will air on French television on May 20 following its premiere at the festival. So now I don't have to wish I could attend Cannes; I have to wish I got Canal +.

Also revealed are the names of the 35 participants, all of whom were supposed to be kept secret until the film's unveiling, and a few details about the project. Each director was assigned the task of filming, "their current state of mind as inspired by the motion-picture theater." The only individual specifics mentioned in the press release, which was written by festival head Giles Jacob, are that Wim Wenders shot in the Congo, Tsai Ming Liang shot in Kuala Lumpur and David Cronenberg shot "in the ... toilet!" (probably meaning the bathroom, not the bowl). But anyone familiar with the directors involved can imagine the kind of diversity that will be seen in the film.

See the names of the 35 collaborators after the jump.

For its 60th year anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival will premiere new films from many past winners of the Palme d'Or. It isn't known how many of these winners will have new material this year, but apparently festival president Gilles Jacob and artistic director Thierry Frémaux tried to get many of the living "Golden Palm" vets -- winners and nominees, both -- to contribute to a special project.

Each participating filmmaker has directed a short film of 2-3 minutes in length that will be shown together as a feature-length film at a gala event on May 20. Variety reports that those known to be included are Ken Loach ('06: The Wind That Shakes the Barley), Gus Van Sant ('03: Elephant), Lars von Trier ('00: Dancer in the Dark), Theodoros Angelopoulos ('98: Eternity and a Day), Abbas Kiarostami ('97: Taste of Cherry), Chen Kaige ('93: Farewell My Concubine), Wim Wenders ('84: Paris, Texas) and non-winners (though often-nominated) Wong Kar-Wai, Michael Cimino, Amos Gitai, Manoel de Oliveira, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang. There are 30 shorts in all, so obviously a lot of other contributors are as yet unknown. Only Pedro Almodóvar (also a non-winner, and never a nominee) is known to have declined the offer.