george hickenlooper Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Now that most of us acquire our music online these days, radio DJs don't have the same sway as taste-makers that they used to. But in the '70s, the final word in rock music was Rodney Bigenheimer. In George Hickenlooper's 2003 documentary about the infamous DJ and rock music icon, Mayor of Sunset Strip, we are shown Bigenheimer as an awkward and strange little fellow who, in the end, did it all for the music. Now, thanks to the nice folks at SlashControl you can now watch the documentary as one of their collection of (pretty awesome) free movies.

You wouldn't know it to look at him, but Bigenheimer was one of the biggest names in the rock music scene, and was credited with helping to break bands like The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Nirvana, and even Coldplay. Bigenheimer has been relegated to the 'graveyard shift' these days at KROQ, but considering that Hickenlooper was able to get appearances from some of the biggest names in rock (everyone from Mick Jagger to Rob Zombie) you can't deny Bigenheimer still has some clout.

Hickenlooper's film is more than just a walk down music history lane. It also manages to show you someone who truly loves the music, and maybe it's a little sad that it never quite loved him back. But this documentary reminds us that his legend lives on -- you might even remember a certain homage to Bigenheimer in Cameron Crowe's rock n' roll tale, Almost Famous when he works in one of Rodney's famous quotes "It's all happening!", and during the 'Mayor's' reign at KROQ, it really was...

Watch The Mayor of Sunset Strip at SlashControl

My pick of the week is Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. Our own Jeffrey M. Anderson declared: "There's no question that it belongs in the canon of greatest American movies." As he pointed out, though, the film "has perhaps been more written about and appreciated than actually seen." Now we can all see it. The two-disk special edition DVD from New Yorker Video includes an audio commentary by Burnett and Richard Peña, two versions of Burnett's feature film My Brother's Wedding, four shorts (three rediscovered and one new) and cast reunion video.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse , directed by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, stirred up controversy when Hickenlooper said that neither he nor Bahr were consulted on the DVD version of their documentary about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere calls it "one of the best making-of-a-famous-movie docs ever made," but also says that the new DVD from Paramount Home Video "looks like a VHS tape. ... No remastering, tweaking or upgrading ... brilliant!" Sounds like a rental to me. The DVD includes Eleanor Coppola's doc Coda: Thirty Years Later, which will also be screening on cable next month -- see Monika Bartyzel's story for more on that.

Cinematical's James Rocchi saw Gary Hustwit's Helvetica at SXSW and described it as "one of the most intellectually exciting, stimulating, warm-hearted and best-made independent documentaries I've seen in a long time." The DVD includes 95 additional minutes of interviews. Another festival favorite, So Yong Kim's In Between Days (pictured), about a teenage girl dealing with first-time romantic feelings for her "best and only" friend, hits DVD with a stills gallery and a conversation with the director and co-writer/producer Bradley Rust.

In her review Jette Kernion said she was "not a rabid [Werner] Herzog fan, which may actually be the reason why I liked his latest film, Rescue Dawn, as much as I did." The DVD includes commentary by Herzog, deleted scenes, and a "making of" featurette. Luc Besson's Angel-A did not cause much stir when it was released theatrically earlier this year, but I've always been fascinated by the director. The DVD has a "making of" feature.

Viewing George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl a second time on the DVD which will be released Tuesday, my opinion has gone up a few notches. It's not so much because the restored material -- a few snippets -- does a great deal to let the movie breathe. Instead, I found myself reading between the lines of the insightful director's commentary, in which Hickenlooper takes pains to point out to the viewer exactly which parts of the movie were the results of his original cut, and which parts were introduced at the whim of Harvey Weinstein. Invariably, it's the Weinstein-mandated changes that slow the movie down and make it sometimes seem commonplace and uninspired. (Hickenlooper is carefully to say how great the Weinstein-changes were, even as he's dutifully pointing them out.) One big problem is the 'Warhol montage' near the beginning that takes great pains to point out to us that there was a guy named Andy Warhol who was a great pop artist of the late 20th century -- as if anyone in the film's audience wouldn't know that.

Another unwelcome element is the Gia-like 'Edie in a mental hospital' bookends -- a drastic stylistic departure from the fast-paced, Oliver Stone-like cutting rhythm of the rest of the film. A lot of exposition is proffered during these moments, but to what end? Do we really need to know more about Edie's homelife than we've already learned during the A-story? I don't think so. There are a few other Weinstein-elements scattered throughout, and having seen the film twice now, I think we can conclude two things: Hickenlooper is a genuine talent who made a good film under unbearable pressures and he would have made a substantially better one if not for the heavy-handed studio honcho standing on his head. His visual chops are, while a little too close to his admitted mentor, Oliver Stone, still very sharp. He has a masterful knowledge of camera minutia and spends much time during his commentary talking about how he chose certain camera grains and lenses in order to complement the tone of a particular scene.

Fresh from directing Factory Girl, the film about Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick that Ryan Stewart described as "a pair of superficial portraits," George Hickenlooper has found his next gig -- something completely different. He's been tapped to adapt and direct an espionage thriller by Colin MacKinnon called Morning Spy, Evening Spy for Rifkin-Eberts. The film will be next in the series of 9/11 movies. However, this one won't be of the "Yay U.S.!" scope, I presume, but rather something more akin to Juliette Binoche's A Few Days in September. Where that film used monetary rationale to explain the attacks, this one deals with political fumbles.

The book is a mix of fact and fiction, detailing a CIA agent named Paul Patterson. While investigating the murder of a CIA operative who had been hunting Bin Laden pre-11, he uncovers a bunch of troublesome events that Publishers Weekly describes as "porous U.S. immigration policies, White House indifference, CIA bungling -- that in hindsight provides the perfect set of circumstances for 9/11." This is compounded on Patterson's personal problems -- he's dealing with a divorce that came from the accidental death of his son. Now, Variety's description of the book leaves out the bungling, and talks about the guy coming only meters away from Bin Laden and Mohammad Atta, so I wonder if this will be adapted into a straight spy thriller without the political undertones? Time will tell. Meanwhile, an absolutely terrific film that Hickenlooper executive produced, Ghosts of Cité Soliel, comes out this week, so you should go check it out.

I can't believe I'm about to link you to this NY Daily News story, which is breathlessly reporting the 'scoop' that Sienna Miller's sex scenes in Factory Girl were - wait for it, not acting. The story, which would not pass the laugh test for even the most D-list movie website that just started last week, cites an "insider" who claims that the sex between Miller and co-star Hayden Christensen in the film was actual intercourse. "It's not simulated," the 'insider' source says. "They're really doing it." Director George Hickenlooper, who cracked jokes and showed himself to be a generally jovial sort during this week's press conference for the film, apparently gave them the excuse they needed when someone from the NYDN asked him at the premiere if the sex was real and he said "I can't comment. You'll have to ask Sienna."

The publicist, of course, denied everything. I'm surprised she returned the phone call. Anyone who knows anything about, or has even heard of film, knows that nothing approaching real sex would ever be allowed on a modern-day set, with all the publicists and crewmen and lawyers standing three feet away from the actors at all times. To suggest otherwise is lunatic.

After two years and a shoot that was a challenge, by all accounts, Factory Girl is finally making its way to a theater near you (or me, at least.) The film is a biopic of Andy Warhol hanger-on Edie Sedgwick, who breezed into the artist's life, hung around his circle for a short time while living on the dime of her rich family, and was then spit out the other side of the 'factory' with a drug habit and psychological problems that would leave her dead at 28. The film's notoriety has been two-fold: it's something of a public coming-out for star Sienna Miller, who has felled forests with all the tabloid fodder she's generated with her personal life, but drawn little attention for her acting work until now. The film was also threatened with crippling litigation from Bob Dylan, who felt that a harmonica-chewing, folk-singing hipster-icon character played by Hayden Christensen was an unflattering, biographical portrait of him.

Christensen is in Tokyo, doing location shooting for the upcoming science-fiction film, Jumper, and could not attend this week's junket for Factory Girl. Those on hand included director George Hickenlooper, Sienna Miller, and Guy Pearce, who embodies the iconic Warhol, right down to his blotchy, pock-marked skin and ethereal accent. Here's a sampling of what went on:

Sienna Miller

Cinematical: Talk about the climactic scene, where your character confronts Andy Warhol in the restaurant. How did you prepare for such an emotional scene, and how did the director guide you through it? "That was a really intimidating scene, because it was actually our second day of shooting on the movie. It just so happens that schedules sometimes work out like that, and I was obviously very nervous. I didn't know anyone, but in a way that helped with the feeling of vulnerability, and George.....what George has an amazing ability to do for me is to create an environment that's very safe and very trusting, so that you feel you have the ability to go as far as you want to go, and it's never too far. He's very embracing of an actor's journey. He just sort of made me feel protected and reassured and comforted and encouraged, constantly. And it really helped, to be supported like that, because you feel like you want to do well for that person."

Over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells (and, it must be said, at least one other critic, whom he quotes) is finding himself very impressed by George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl, the Edie Sedgwick biopic that may or may not be coming out at the end of the year. More specifically, Wells is blown away by the performance of Sienna Miller in the lead role and, assuming the Weinsteins get it on some screens in time to qualify, he's expecting her to get an Oscar nod, alongside such grand dames as Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada) and Helen Mirren (The Queen). According to Wells' post, Miller "gets [Sedwick's] fluttery debutante laugh, that mixture of Warholian cool and little-girl terror, the giddy euphoria, the cracked voice. It's more than convincing -- it's a kind of rebirthing."

Um, wow. And hooray! I know essentially nothing about Sedgwick, but I've adored Miller since she lit up the small screen in the under-seen (and under-rated) Keen Eddie, and would love to see her get some credibility -- particularly given the fact that she been turned into something of a joke by the tabloids (as well as evil bloggers like ourselves).

Lou Reed knew Edie Sedgwick. Edie Sedgwick was a friend of his. And you, Sienna Miller, are no Edie Sedgwick. That, if you can believe it, is the nice version of Reed's reaction to Factory Girl, the upcoming Sedgwick biopic. According to Reed, the screenplay is, well, a bit weak. "It's one of the most disgusting, foul things I've seen - by any illiterate retard - in a long time." Well. Not surprisingly, director George Hickenlooper disagrees. In his book, said work is nothing less than a "complex story about a wonderful young woman." (No response yet from the illiterate retard himself, Captain Mauzner. Yes, his name is Captain.)

By speaking out against Factory Girl, Reed is adding his voice to a growing tide of protest against the film among those who knew and loved Sedgwick (her family is particularly peeved). Man, this movie better be good - if it's terrible, even all this press isn't going to help. Plus, it's not as if Miller and co-star Hayden Christensen are exactly sure bets to turn in compelling performances. So yeah, it's probably a safe bet that the suits behind this one are a liiiiitle nervous by now.