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Above: Rainn Wilson lets his hair down for The Rocker.

Fans of Rainn Wilson's offbeat, hilarious and strangely endearing performance as Dwight Schrute on NBC's The Office might expect him to transition into film work with straightforward comedy, and The Rocker confirms that suspicion. However, they might not realize the serious professional motives behind his choice. In the movie, directed by Peter Cattaneo (The Full Grown Monty), Wilson plays a grown-up dolt named Fish with a scary fixation on classic rock. Abandoned by the band Vesuvius in his teens -- before they became a commercial phenomenon -- Fish spends the next twenty years working deadbeat jobs and wishing things happened differently. Naturally, he gets a second chance: When the opportunity rolls around to drum for his nephew's high school, Fish goes for it. Ageism and slapstick humor ensue.

While not exactly a classic, The Rocker proves Wilson has the charisma to carry a movie. The script could use some polishing, but Wilson manages to play a completely dysfunctional human being without ever becoming an annoyance. It's a testament to his skill as an actor with calculated timing. The humor emerges from the naturalism of his performances, which make you believe in the outlandish characters he portrays. In a conversation with Cinematical recently, Wilson elaborated on his particular strategies as his career advances, reminisced about his days as a New York theater actor, and shed some light on a few upcoming projects.

Cinematical: You acted in theater for several years before getting any television work. What was the endgame for you during that time?

Rainn Wilson: I went to theater school at the Tisch School of the Arts, and that's a theater training school, so I always thought of myself as a theater actor. I did a ton of plays all over the place, then swiftly realized, "Wait a minute here. If I'm ever really going to make any money or get decent health insurance, or save anything or buy anything, I need to do TV and film." That was a long, hard struggle for me in New York -- to try and get any kind of TV or film auditions. I was here in New York for ten years, and never had an audition for Law and Order, because it's like this club, where you have to be at a certain level even to audition for it.

Cinematical: Once you did get to the point where you were a recognizable television star, what compelled you to start doing film acting?

Rainn Wilson: To me, it's always been about interesting new challenges. I know that sounds like a cliche, but I just love trying to do new things. Recently, I was offered this gig to interview bands backstage for VH1 for this [Rock Honors 2008] concert with The Who. I loved all the bands and I was like, "Sure. Sign me up." I like to have fun that way. As I kept going along, I was getting new and interesting jobs offered to me, and it was enough to keep me going. The jobs kept getting better as I went along. I started doing regional theater, then off-Broadway, then Broadway, guest spots on TV shows, pilots, movie roles. The snowball kept going. It was a long time going, but it just kept moving forward.

Cinematical: So when that happened to you, did you start thinking about what comic traditions you wanted to follow?

Rainn Wilson: It wasn't until many years into it that I thought of myself as a comedian, or even as a comic actor. Even Six Feet Under, though lightly comedic, was kind of serious. It wasn't really until The Office that I got known just for comedy. I did a lot of serious stuff: Long Days Journey Into Night. I played Hamlet. I'm not a sketch comedian, stand-up comic or host. When I was kicking around auditioning for plays, a lot of times I would audition for plays that Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman were auditioning for. I'm a little more of that school of thought. That being said, I've always loved silly comedy. Growing up, I loved the Marx brothers, Jerry Lewis movies, Monty Python, Bob Hope's road movies. Andy Kaufman was my hero when I was twelve or thirteen. Now, I'm getting to do really cool stuff in comedy. It's beyond my wildest dreams.

Cinematical: The Rocker is similar to a lot of recent comedies, including Step Brothers and Knocked Up, in that the main character is this irresponsible man-child who can't seem to grow up. Where does the appeal of that story come from?

Rainn Wilson:
The greatest comedy comes from people with big comedy blind spots. People who have a disconnect from reality and live in denial create the best milieu for comedy. I think people that just don't fit in and can't grow up are funny.

Cinematical: What was it about The Rocker that made you decide to take your first lead role in a feature-length film?

Rainn Wilson: Well, man, if you're offered a lead role in a movie...

Cinematical: But you must have been offered lead roles before.

Rainn Wilson:
Not so much. I guess I turned down other projects that were pretty low in quality. A funny script with an interesting premise and a great character, and they want me to play the lead? I can't turn that down. It's an amazing opportunity. The Office has opened all these doors for me.

Cinematical: You seem very aware of the way people perceive your comic appeal. Have you ever considered playing against it with a dramatic role?

Rainn Wilson:
The next couple of projects that I'm looking at are more in the indie film world, and they're a lot darker and more serious. That being said, they're still essentially comedies. I think it's a mistake for certain one wants to see Robin Williams and Jim Carrey play psycho killers. I think if you can establish yourself as a comedic actor, you can certainly get established as a great actor, but you need to be very careful. When you become a celebrity, I think you have a responsibility to your audience. If I were to do just serious roles right now, I would come off like a self-serious asshole. But I don't want to do creepy Office weirdos my whole life. I want to expand myself. I think Fish [in The Rocker] is very different from Dwight. They're both comic roles, but as characters go, they couldn't be more different. I do want to challenge myself, but I have to do it gradually, and carefully.

Cinematical: That explains the rationale behind your cameo in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and the voice work you did for Monsters vs. Aliens.

Rainn Wilson: Yeah, pretty much. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has received a ridiculous amount of press considering that it was just a one day cameo. Monsters vs. Aliens -- it was just a blast to do that voice. I play an evil alien warlord, so that's pretty fun. Right up my alley.

Cinematical: Plus, people don't have to look at you as a bad guy.

Rainn Wilson: Exactly. It's not a Rainn Wilson thing. It's just a silly voice thing.

Cinematical: You've written a couple projects that are in development now.

Rainn Wilson: There's this one called Bonzai Shadowhands. That's the indie project Jason Reitman and I set up at Fox Searchlight. I've turned in my second draft to Jason, and he's going to take a stab at doing some rewrites on it, so hopefully we can shoot it next summer. It's a very dark comedy about a down-and-out alcoholic ninja living in the San Fernando Valley.

Cinematical: Then there's Renaissance Men, which you also wrote.

Rainn Wilson: I wanted to write a first grade renaissance fair comedy. It's about two unemployed losers who are on the lam from the law at a renaissance fair. I've just always loved renaissance fairs. I played Dungeons and Dragons and went to science fiction conventions. My buddy who I wrote it with [Matt Ross] started acting in Ashland and did sword fighting. We just know that world. It's a hysterical world that people take very, very seriously. Almost everyone has been to some kind of renaissance fair or reenactment, so there's something everyone can identify with there.

Cinematical: The Office has had some really great directors on some episodes, with Harold Ramis, Jason Reitman and Steve Carrell all pitching in. Have you considered directing any yourself?

Rainn Wilson: I've talked to them about doing both [writing and directing]. Maybe at some point I'll undertake that. Right now, I'm really enjoying writing and thinking about movies. The Office is the greatest day job anyone could ask for. Someday, maybe -- I've talked to Greg [Daniels, producer of The Office] about starting off by writing an episode.

Cinematical: Do you get a sense for how much longer the show will last?

Rainn Wilson: Well, we're all under contract for at least two or three more years, so it's going to be around for awhile.

Cinematical: Any plans to get publicly active in the presidential election?

Rainn Wilson:
No. That kind of comedy doesn't really interest me. I think a lot of people are doing it really well. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and The Onion -- I'll leave that to them. I really have no comment on it. I've learned the hard way on that one before.

For more on The Rocker, see Eric D. Snider's review.]]>
<![CDATA[Joel Silver Screens 'RocknRolla' For Competing Studios]]> 1283223 As far as hustling movie producer archetypes go, I tend to prefer Joel Silver over Harvey Weinstein. Sure, Weinstein played a role in some of the great American independent films from the last decade of the twentieth century, but Silver's production credits have more spice to them -- The Matrix, Predator, 48 Hrs. -- hinting at the zany force behind their existence. The movies he has produced don't always please everyone (consider those last two Matrix movies), and sometimes his productions run into unforeseeable setbacks (Joss Whedon's troublesome Wonder Woman script). But now, Silver's trying a radical maneuver that reaffirms his maverick abilities: He's shopping around Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, which tells the story of a drama surrounding a stolen painting and stars Gerard Butler, to other studios despite the plan to release it through Warner Bros. in October.

According to Patrick Goldstein in The Los Angeles Times, Silver said he showed the movie to Lionsgate and Sony Pictures to get some advice on how to market the film. However, when Goldstein asked Warner Bros.' top executive Alan Horn about the situation, Horn called the movie "very English," not "broadly commercial," and said the studio "might not be willing to spend the marketing money he wants us to." So it follows that Silver probably wants to sell the movie to somebody else.

This kind of thing has happened before. Jonathan Levine's teen horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was set for a release through The Weinstein Company, but when it was determined that the distributor might not provide the best home for the film, it went to the more agreeable Senator Films (although Senator has yet to release it). What troubles me is Horn's assertion that RocknRolla is "very English." Yeah ... so? ]]>
<![CDATA[Jim Emerson Smacks Down 'Tropic' Boycotters]]> 1283275 Whether or not you're offended by the use of the word "retard" in Tropic Thunder, it's hard to deny the difference between the intention of the humor and the ire of the groups protesting it. When Ben Stiller's character, Tugg Speedman, learns that he was mistaken in going "full-retard" with his miscalculated awards-bid performance as a mentally challenged man in Simple Jack, you either laugh or you don't, but you definitely get it. Stiller's point is that self-important actors often take crass or poorly formulated roles on the basis of subject matter simply so they can get a chance at the podium. At no point are we forced to laugh at a character meant to be taken as actually retarded; instead, we only get Tugg Speedman's really bad, really offensive interpretation of one.

At his Scanners blog, Jim Emerson gets this point, and smartly rails against complainers like the Special Olympics for making such a big deal out of a scene before even coming to terms with its purpose. He also brings up a brilliant historical parallel: In 1977, Randy Newman's single "Short People" was pulled from the air because it supposedly offended, uh, short people. "If you do satire or parody, you have to expect there will always be fools who will take it literally," writes Emerson. "Those people are called 'literalists.' And there ought to be a law against them." ]]>
<![CDATA[Fan Rant: 'The Deal' is Better Than 'The Queen']]> 1278503

When Stephen Frears' The Queen came out in 2006, all the buzz emphasized Helen Mirren's icy performance as London's reclusive royal highness. The ubiquitous praise lead to her Oscar win, but it overwhelmed recognition of the movie's secret weapon: Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, quietly pressuring his Majesty to face the public in the wake of Princess Diana's untimely demise. There's a reason why Sheen conveyed the nuances of Blair's role in the event, which transpired a mere three months after the Prime Minister rose to power -- he had practice. The Deal, a fantastic made-for-TV movie Frears directed in 2003, tracked Blair's cunning (and morally questionable) instincts in the years leading up to his position at the top of the Labor Party.

Sheen played Blair in The Deal first, and it's both a superior performance and a superior film. Whereas The Queen had a tabloid hook and only tangentially explored the deeper political ramifications of a reclusive national leader, The Deal delves into precisely how Blair managed to emerge at the top of British politics with a series of calculated maneuvers. Political drama at its finest, The Deal hit DVD in the United States last month, where it has been touted as "the prequel to The Queen." That's not quite fair; The Queen is the sequel to The Deal, and the two movies ought to be seen as a single, wholly fascinating package depicting British politics in the 1990s.

Frears showed up at a special screening of The Deal last night in New York City, at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, where he revealed his unkind feelings toward Blair. "He was an unprincipled spiv," Frears said (confusing American members of the audience), and the movie shows it: Blair befriends Gordon Brown (David Morrissey) early in his career, pretending to support Brown's bid for the top spot, then basically pushes him aside with his own ambitions. Frears noted that the high point of Blair's career took place when he managed to elucidate the tragedy of 9/11, something George W. Bush himself couldn't quite accomplish. "He was articulate and could describe people's feelings," Frears said. "On the whole, I prefer the Queen, who's incapable of describing feelings." Despite his prejudice, Frears does a remarkable job depicting Blair's charisma in The Deal, particularly in the way he gets Brown to open up to him, and later uses that to attack his weaknesses.

Of course, Frears isn't the only reason The Deal works so well. Like The Queen, the movie's screenplay was written by Peter Morgan, whose deft skill at recreating secretive conversations behind the closed door of governmental powers rivals that of Aaron Sorkin. Fortunately, Morgan has plans to make a third movie about Blair, this one detailing his professional relationships with presidents Bill Clinton and Bush. Cue the 9/11 speech, and put Frears back in the director's chair.]]>
<![CDATA[Vulture Declares August a Cursed Movie Month]]> 1272116 Beginning with the summer of Surf Ninjas and concluding with last year's Underdog, Vulture has compiled a list arguing that August movies generally blow. Sifting through the titles from the past fifteen years, it's hard to ignore their point. If Bushwhacked, Spawn and The Thirteenth Warrior don't convince you, how about Hollow Man? The Adventures of Pluto Nash? Anacondas?

August usually means a lot to America. It's big for vacationers. The sun comes out and everyone gets one last hurrah before the summer recedes for the year. So why would studios dump their worst movies at this time? Maybe it's just a coincidence, but either way, it's hard to say whether or not this August will break the trend. Swing Vote seems to confirm Vulture's dire prediction, but Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder will surely find some appreciative audiences. And we all know The Dark Knight will continue to make bank. However, before you start thinking that a turnaround is on the way, consider the third Mummy movie -- and, once again, Vulture might have something here: Variety has called it "cheeseball stuff." Could that be the codeword for "typical August movie"? It would seem so. ]]>
<![CDATA[Pack Ratner Heads to Paramount]]> 1272049 Love him or hate him, you've got to hand it to Brett Ratner for keeping his career in motion. Variety brings word that the hustling filmmaker plans to take his Rat Entertainment company from New Line, where it first settled in 1996, to a first-look deal with Paramount Pictures. Ratner says the departure of New Line execs Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne in February convinced him it was time to move on. At Paramount, Ratner will probably get bigger budgets and executives more receptive to his blockbuster-ready concepts. Stating the obvious, Ratner told Variety he "will not be pitching art films. I want to make major tentpole movies." You don't say?

Unless you're Scott Foundas, you probably balk at the idea of more Ratner movies populating the mainstream film scene, but the guy does fit the proper archetype of the classic Hollywood powerhouse. A modern day Sammy Glick, he knows how to make movies that bring out the audiences, whether or not they're any good. But maybe that determination means that, one day, Ratner will make a lot of great movies. His planned Hugh Hefner biopic sounds promising -- or at least, appropriate.

Still, that's a little ways off. Encouraged by his experience with X-Men: The Last Stand, Ratner decided he wanted to work on a new superhero franchise, so he's adapting Valiant Comics' Harbinger. Also in his queue: Beverly Hills Cop 4, The Incredible Shrinking Man and The Boys From Brazil. Do these projects get anyone excited? Anyone at all? ]]>
<![CDATA[Discuss: Do Real Media Celebrities Make Sense in Fiction?]]> 1270956 The basic scenario behind Swing Vote makes for an easy pitch: An average American (Kevin Costner) winds up in the position of casting the deciding vote in a presidential election. Both candidates (played by Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper) fly into town and try to woo him. It's a simple premise clearly aimed at exploring the various quirks of the political process. However, although it is quite a fantastical situation, the filmmakers have put quite an effort into incorporating at least one element from the real world: News anchors. Countless movies have asked Jay Leno and his fellow late night brethren to make cameos on TV joking about this or that bit of plot to add a sense of realism, but Swing Vote brings a slightly different set of rules to the table: The presidential candidates are clearly fictional (and Grammer, the Republican candidate, doesn't have many Bush-like qualities), while the news anchors, for the most part, play themselves. If you ask me, something doesn't quite add up here.

Chris Matthews blares into the camera about the ramifications of the election snafu. Tucker Carlson follows suit. Larry King delivers his trademark monotone. And Arianna Huffington gets a full-blown monologue. How is it that all these people can play themselves in a world with a completely different president, one virtually devoid (as far as we can tell) of modern talking points like the Iraq War and the beleaguered economy? It's almost as if they've been imported from another dimension.

Then again, there's a logic behind writing these familiar faces into the screenplay -- it mirrors the way human interest stories are broken down by larger institutional forces. The public rarely wants to decide for itself, choosing instead to leave the decision-making process to the people it recognizes on the tube. However, the gimmick will sort of break the fourth wall and provide a reminder that Swing Vote is just a movie, rather not a thoughtfully accurate reflection of the world we live in. How do you feel about the presence of authentic news people in a scripted film?]]>
<![CDATA[R-Rated Comedies Fare Poorly at the Box Office]]> 1270826

According to a report conducted by Nielsen PreView published today in The Hollywood Reporter, R-rated comedies don't do so hot at the box office. The timing of these findings seems odd, considering that Step Brothers made a solid $30 million last weekend, while analysts are predicting that another summer comedy slapped with the restricted label, Tropic Thunder, will collect at least that much. Right in the middle of those two releases comes Pineapple Express, which, like Step Brothers and Tropic Thunder, has a built-in core audience interested in raunchy masculine humor. The findings of this report suggest that larger audiences don't want to attend R-rated movies, but it's sort of a pointless observation because R-rated comedies are only made for people who want to see them. Everyone else can check out You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

Of course, there is the occasional R-rated comedy with cross-over appeal, such as Knocked Up, but studios are probably hesitant to make many of those when a safely PG-13 Juno will suffice. Anyway, it's usually not difficult for Hollywood movies to trim a few vulgarities or the fleeting shot of exposed skin in order to knock down the rating a notch and maximize turnout. Horror films are a different story: They usually make bank with the R-rating intact.

Speaking to the 18 and over audience here: Do ratings play any role in the movies you choose to see? ]]>
<![CDATA[Fan Rant: Critics of 'The Dark Knight' Are Allowed to Hate]]> 1264796 Look, I thought The Dark Knight had a lot of strong selling points: Combine a deft pace with thoughtful characterizations and a whopping IMAX design that turns the entire experience into a plot-driven theme park ride, and you've got one hefty dose of Batman adrenaline.

Still, comparisons to The Godfather Part II notwithstanding, The Dark Knight isn't foolproof -- in fact, no single movie in history is foolproof. The subjective experience of movie watching ensures that nothing can be universally liked by everyone, and rules of civility insist that humanity respect that truism. It's acceptable to feel passionately about a great work of art, and defend that perspective with rigorous argumentation, but much of the outrage over the minority perspective that The Dark Knight isn't any good has made such practical thinking impossible.

Deemed the first critic to pan the movie, New York's David Edelstein went out of his way to list the allegations against him sent along by various Batman fans. The House Next Door editor Keith Uhlich, meanwhile, fielded over a hundred rants in the comments section following his astute critique of director Christopher Nolan's questionable portrayals of violence. What's particularly shocking about this frightful deluge of negative responses is that many of these people began posting their disapproval before they even saw the movie.

As House Next Door Founder Matt Zoller Seitz points out, a lot of people lashed out after David Fear's Time Out New York review ran last Tuesday, before the film opened. "That's scary," writes Matt. "Is there a collective yearning for a masterpiece out there? Is it a Heath Ledger RIP thing? Or is it groupthink, aided by Warner Bros. hype -- a hive mind phenomenon in which ecstatic love for the film has been unconsciously agreed-upon in advance as the only acceptable response to this film, which in turn means that anyone who dares deviate, and ask for something not necessarily better, but different, is an enemy of the people who must be crushed?"

Whatever the cause, it's shameful. The entire critical practice is founded on the freedom of expression, not to mention the unlimited prospects of open minded discourse. That doesn't mean you shouldn't speak out if you disagree with someone -- but use some tact, people. Consider the fascinating, deeply contemplative response to Uhlich's review recently posted at Only the Cinema. Let it serve as an example, lest the Orwellian groupthink detected by Seitz winds up dominating the marketplace.

<![CDATA[U.K. Regrets Anti-Environment Doc]]> 1264213 It's one thing to disagree with somebody. It's another to censor them. That's the central problem with the United Kingdom's decision to condemn The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary by Martin Durkin arguing exactly what its title implies.

A response to the global warming awareness popularized by An Inconvenient Truth, Durkin's film was considered disingenuous from the perspective of British broadcast regulator Ofek, which ruled that Channel 4 violated the country's boundaries of impartiality when it broadcast the movie last year. Apparently, Durkin manipulated his subjects in order make them verify his questionable stance that global warming was a conspiracy.

Now, I find it hard to buy into any movie that puts its ugly one-sided argument right in the title, but there's something to be said for freedom of speech in this case. What's the U.K. doing with these nonsensical impartiality laws? Since when do documentaries have to remain objective and avoid agendas? Even your average PBS program takes a side. The ruling suggests a totalitarian mindset where art is subjected to a group think mentality, and that's scary. What if The Dark Knight were banned for condoning torture? Maybe that's an extreme comparison, so try this one: What does Ofcom think about Michael Moore?

<![CDATA[Did Joss Whedon Steal 'Dr. Horrible' from Dr. Steel?]]> 1263885

Whenever a good idea comes along, it doesn't take much time for people to claim they thought it up first. That seems to be the case with Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog, the Joss Whedon-created miniseries that streamed online last weekend and is now available on iTunes. Spout reports that legions of commenters calling themselves the Army of Toy Soldiers have been pummeling the site with complaints that Dr. Horrible is a direct rip-off of Dr. Steel, an online show that's several years the senior of Whedon's program. Wired spoke to Dr. Horrible co-writer Mauria Tancharoen, who said they've never heard of Dr. Steel, but don't mind that it exists. The Toy Soldiers, however, appear to be gearing up for a confrontation, possibly one that will go down this week at Comic Con.

Whatever. Dr. Steel offers plenty of entertainment value in its own right, and it does feature a maniacal supervillain with a catchy singing voice (see above). But it also contains more razzle-dazzle weirdness than plot, and Dr. Horrible is pretty much a straightforward narrative. One Toy Soldier member has argued that if they don't speak out, their silence will imply that Dr. Steel stole its concept from Dr. Horrible. That logic holds up -- but either way, we're dealing with two very separate programs here. If anything, the immediate exposure of Dr. Horrible can only help Dr. Steel gain more attention. Once noticed, people should be able to tell the difference. ]]>
<![CDATA[Paul Thomas Anderson Directs Play With 'SNL' Members]]> 1262717 First, he gets a mainstream comic actor to act in a contemplative art house narrative with Punch-Drunk Love. Now, he's putting two of them on a stage. According to cigarettes and red vines, Paul Thomas Anderson has written and directed a play in Los Angeles with Saturday Night Live stars Maya Rudolph (Anderson's partner) and Fred Armisen. It premieres at the Largo on August 5, but specific details about plot remain unrevealed. Still, the prospects of seeing Anderson's eerily detached style in a live performance are intriguing, to say the least. As Slashfilm points out, the production has a few logical attachments to the filmmaker's past: Anderson directed a short film for SNL back in 2000, and Rudolph starred in Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion, which Anderson may or may not have ghost-directed in parts.

Now that Anderson has proven he can craft epic period pieces of the raunchy (Boogie Nights) and morose (There Will Be Blood) kind, he's reached a point where audiences will basically allow him to take them wherever he wants to go. The dynamics of the stage, however, differ greatly from those of the cinema. Since the name and subject matter are a mystery, there's a lot left to the imagination. Will Anderson allow Rudolph and Armisen to unleash their comic potential? Or is that a milkshake I hear brewing? ]]>
<![CDATA[Review: 'Take']]> 1260750

Death is the ultimate dramatic device, but great art doesn't emerge from strong devices alone. In Take, the directorial debut of Charles Oliver, the impact of a single, startling tragic death immediately conveys the sense of watching a gravely serious movie, which is definitely the case. However, having immediately provided a tone, Oliver fails to follow up with a story powerful enough to justify it. That's not to say that the experience Ana (Minnie Driver) goes through after her son dies in a freak accident before the start of the film isn't relentlessly bleak, but there's hardly anything distinctive about the circumstances to make viewers care any more than they would if they were glancing at it in the morning headlines.

Still, Olilver has made a quietly observant work solely driven by the specific needs of two downtrodden protagonists with completely believable motives. In flashback, we learn that Ana struggled with her son's elementary school, which wants to put him in a special needs program. Meanwhile, she has a hard time communicating with her husband and finding decent work to get by. Elsewhere, reckless gambling addict Saul (Jeremy Renner) destroys his life in a whirlwind of debt. His misfortune, as it's shown in early scenes at a prison where Saul awaits execution, will lead him to accidentally murder Ana's innocent child, Jesse (Bobby Coleman).

The cinematography by Tyler Measom generates an impressive landscape of despair filled with empty desert scenery and the pallid interiors of death row. However, by revealing Jesse's fate in the first few minutes, Oliver eliminates the possibility of a dramatic climax when we learn the details explaining precisely how Ana (with her son in tow) and Saul happened to cross paths. It's actually cathartic when the fatal event finally transpires -- finally, the morose atmosphere makes sense. But it doesn't make sense that half the movie leaves you in the dark about it without keeping the general outcome a secret.

Like Paul Haggis' Crash, Oliver deals with the intersection of catastrophe and happenstance, although Take is a better movie for containing real characters worth caring about. It's his troublesome structure, and inability to inject some occasional liveliness into the script, that makes this focused drama tough to recommend. The characters are so insulated that their motives are tough to discern, which establishes the real finale of the movie -- a shocker for reasons unrelated to the plot. The details might give too much away, but it's worth noting that the last few scenes of the movie basically function as an advertisement for restorative justice, the idea that a victim should play a role in the punishment for a crime. In this case, it involves Ana getting to confront Saul about what he's done. That might supply the best scene of the movie, but it's followed by an end note filled with statistics and pointers for people interested in learning more. So if death is truly the ultimate dramatic device, then its role Take is essentially propagandistic.

Should a law class watch Taken and brings a few lessons out of Ana's experience? Sure, more power to it. And yet it's tough to consider Taken as a positive creative work, however, when the didactic angle is so clear-cut. Instead, Saul's remorse for what he's done feels like it's lifted straight out of the Goofus and Gallant playbook. "I pray to god she hates me," he says, but that's just a set up for the punchline when, naturally, she doesn't.]]>
<![CDATA[Cinematical Seven: A 'Dark Knight' Companion]]> 1259422

There are many ways to anticipate The Dark Knight. You can assemble a fake plot out of the numerous clips circulating the web, you can stitch together adorable bat-toys, or just rewatch Christopher Nolan's first entry in the Batman franchise. However, there's a lot more to this sprawling, nearly three hour rush of furious confrontations and haunting corruption. The greatest Batman stories emphasize the character's shadowy nature, and Nolan pulls from many of them to create the intensely moody aura of the latest film. You don't need to know anything about the character to enjoy the movie, but it certainly expands the experience to do some research -- and allows for a greater appreciation of the filmmaker's efforts to honor the nature of the character.

Here's a look at some antecedents to the current interpretation from the last two decades.

1. The Killing Joke (1988)

Legendary comic book scribe Alan Moore penned this one-shot, a brief, conventional story of Batman facing down the Joker that nonetheless remains memorable for its fantastic interpretation of the Joker and his relationship to Batman. Two scenes stand out: A numbingly violet late night visit by the Joker to Batman buddy Jim Gordon's home, when the Joker harms a member of the police commissioners family, and an eerie epilogue following the climax during which the Joker explains his senseless corruption with oddly compelling timing. The Joker is certainly a psychopath, but he's still a funny guy.

2. Batman: The Long Halloween (1997)

Writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale made this unforgettable story of Gotham City getting plagued by a mysterious killer named Holiday with the stuff of nightmares. Just like The Dark Knight, there's more being explored here than simply Batman and his personal woes: Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face, the Joker terrorizes a family on Christmas Day, and Gotham's preeminent crime family, the Falcones, struggle to sustain their power when faced down by an evil so strange and outlandish they don't understand its potential. And so they lose.

3. The Dark Knight Returns (1986)

In Frank Miller's near-future classic, Bruce Wayne has grown old and weary of his Batman antics and needs a new strategy. Gradually rising to help a city that won't get fixed with ordinary police work, Wayne breaks all the rules and invents some new ones to restore a new order to the town -- Batman's. In doing so, he faces off with Superman, creating one of the finest battles in comic book history.

4. Batman: The Animated Series (1992 - 1995)

Quite possibly the strongest interpretation of Batman in moving image format, this marvelously grown-up series owes much to co-creator Bruce Timm's love for art deco, which he infused in the visual design of the show. However, it's the writing that really shines in nearly every episode, as all the great Batman stories receive their quintessential treatments. Even Robin haters would like his bleak origin tale, and the (appropriately) two-part Two-Face story combines elements of classic horror films and Greek tragedy without getting too heavy-handed. Unfortunately, the network clamped down on the series during its later incarnation and forced it to become less violent (and hence less exciting), so you're better off with the earlier seasons.

5. Batman: Year One (1987)

Miller's version of the Batman origin story gets it better than most by ramping up the depravity of Gotham City's criminal problem and emphasizing the hero's early relationship with do-gooder Jim Gordon, whose infant Batman manages to save in a frightening climax that provides, in a slightly different format, the finale of The Dark Knight.

6. Batman Returns (1992)

Not everyone loves Tim Burton's take on the character (the biggest complaint seems to revolve around the slim storylines), but I've always been captivated by this sequel's hyperstylized interpretation of Batman's world, where the entire universe seems predicated on gothic traditions. It's also got a monstrously spot-on performance by Danny DeVito as the Penguin, a conniving freak straight out of a Todd Browning movie -- or, for that matter, The Dark Knight. Jack Nicholson's Joker looks downright goofy compared to Ledger's mannered antagonist, but nobody out there could possibly outdo DeVito's kooky felon.

7. Batman: Ego (2000)

Comics writer Darwin Cooke started out as a storyboard artist for Batman: The Animated Series, and you can see it in this harrowing Joker tale (a one-sheet available in the collection of the same same). Akin to The Killing Joke, the revelation about the Joker in Batman: Ego is that you can't defeat him simply by putting the guy behind bars. As long as his anarchistic needs are satisfied, he wins. And that makes him virtually unbeatable.]]>
<![CDATA[Seth McFarlane Plans Another 'Family Guy' Movie. Seriously?]]> 1258423 Those manatees really know how to keep themselves busy. In one of the more irreverent news items of the day, Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane -- whose voice work is currently on display in Hellboy II: The Golden Army -- has told TV Week that he hopes to get a Family Guy movie off the ground in a year or so. The announcement was first picked up by Ain't It Cool News, where most commenters seem fairly lukewarm about the idea. Honestly, it's hard not to agree with them. Family Guy already has two feature length titles out on DVD, and neither one really raised the bar for the show or even played better than a decent episode.

At least The Simpsons movie had a plot that made sense for ninety minutes. Family Guy, with its incessant randomness, generally works as a series of distractions. In other words, not the sort of thing that really needs to get expanded beyond the half hour structure. Then again, the show has its devout base, which eagerly anticipates each sloppily constructed gag like clockwork, so maybe the new film project is good business sense. Either way, the South Park two-parter that took Family Guy to task remains far more entertaining (and insightful) than Family Guy's entire six-season run. ]]>
<![CDATA[New JibJab Video Debuts Online!]]> 1258383

And you thought Wall-E was political. JibJib, the interactive e-card site founded by brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis, have returned to the scene that originally brought them fame. The duo first received national notice during the 2004 presidential campaign, when their riotous spoof This Land presented the two candidates (and a variety of secondary players) as rotund heads on animated bodies spouting rhetoric in rhythmic harmony. Since then, the JibJab site has placed more focus on the e-card business, but now it's back to the good old days with Time for Some Campaignin', a jolly tune to set the stage for the Obama/McCain face-off in the weeks to come.

The new video is similar to This Land in that it opts not to spoof either candidate more than the other, instead focusing on the larger campaigning process. It's hard not to laugh at the goofy visuals and smartly composed lyrics (especially those involving the Clintons), but it seems to me that the Spiridellis' work will never attain the degree of insight offered by the satire on The Daily Show (or The New Yorker, for that matter) because of this resolutely non-partisan approach. What do you think? ]]>
<![CDATA[Discuss: Should 'Hellboy II' Serve as Del Toro's Audition Tape?]]> 1257044 "While waiting in line for the screening of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, I overhead someone say that Guillermo del Toro's latest is being seen as his audition tape for The Hobbit," observed Jonathan Pacheco in his review for The House Next Door. Of course, Del Toro already had the directing gigs for the two Hobbit films before Hellboy II hit theaters, but that won't stop audiences from evaluating the current parade of fairies, demons and evil elves with Del Toro's Middle-Earth-to-be in mind.
Needless to say, it's a narrow perspective.

It would make more sense to expect that these upcoming features will negotiate between the gothic horror of Pan's Labryinth and the blockbuster approach of Hellboy II. In the latter work, it's clear that Del Toro has more interest in placing these loony supernatural beings in relatively conventional action sequences, allowing the specificity of the characters to create a sense of ingenuity. Pan's Labryinth, on the other hand, offers a single package of storytelling: The art direction, special effects and even the violence directly relate to the drama. The best case scenario for the Hobbit films would be a happy medium: Glorious visuals that reflect Tolkien's deeply involving mythology.

Peter Jackson's trilogy succeeded by gradually drawing viewers into the world with small details, rather than trying to dazzle them with an endless barrage of lavish spectacles. Hellboy II does seem to adopt this approach, as it starts with an animated flashback, followed by scenes of the villain in his shadowy lair. Several plot twists unfold before Hellboy even shows up (as an adult, anyway), and a few more go by before he actually starts fighting people. However, a more significant part of the movie that should clue viewers into Del Toro's vision of The Hobbit arrives with the troll market, a strangely hilarious landscape of fantasy creatures straight out of Jim Henson's workshop. This alone should quiet those who have claimed the director doesn't like "heroic fantasy."

What's your take? Does Hellboy II serve as a good measuring stick for the upcoming Hobbit films?]]>
<![CDATA[Discuss: Heath Ledger and James Dean]]> 1255587 In the last twenty-four hours alone, countless news articles have compared the late Heath Ledger to James Dean. Of course it helps that the two actors -- whose careers lie fifty years apart -- bear physical resemblances to each other. The real reason for the frequency of the comparison, however, revolves around the possibility that Ledger, like Dean, might end up with a posthumous Oscar nomination.

Other than Dean, whose death in a 1955 car accident was preceded by two nominations back-to-back, six actors have landed the distinction -- but only one, Peter Finch, actually won (for Network in 1976). However, Ledger is now perceived an actor who possessed a potential he never quite realized, while Dean was already an icon by the time of his death (and he still didn't win the prize). If Ledger gets nominated for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight, the award will also acknowledge the great career that never was. Dean surely would have followed Giant with other wonderful performances, but his brief filmography also allowed the actor to reach a level of prestige that Ledger would have needed a few more movies to attain. So does this comparison really hold up?

The media certainly seems to think so. "Like Dean, he could endure as a mythic figure of talent silenced before his time," writes the AP. "People are aflutter over seeing the final performance of a new James Dean," reports The Huffington Post. " One quality that Ledger and Dean did share is rapid growth," notes the Baltimore Sun.
These are all provocative ways of examining America's longstanding relationship with celebrity lives (and deaths), but that doesn't mean Ledger's own posthumous myth benefits from being stuffed into Dean's established legend. If Ledger does get nominated -- and if he wins -- it should happen because the performance stands on its own terms.

What do you think? Does the Dean comparison help or harm Ledger's Oscar chances?

Top: A painting of Heath Ledger and James Dean by Tom Bierdz.]]>
<![CDATA[What's the Deal With: French Thrillers in 2008]]> 1254883

Maybe you've seen them, maybe you haven't, but French thrillers are making a comeback in North America. That's good news for people uninterested in art houses solely for the sake of watching foreign films: You don't have to be a Francophile to appreciate smart, meticulously generated suspense, and that's exactly the appeal of several French movies hitting American theaters this year. A steady mixture of warm reviews and positive word-of-mouth appears to have helped Guillame Canet's breathlessly entertaining drama Tell No One land an impressive $240,858 at 18 locations. Earlier this year, veteran auteur Claude Lelouch, long known for his cinematic explorations of eroticism and lawbreaking, remained thematically consistent with a delightfully complex story of double-crossing novelists and dysfunctional families called Roman de Gare. The movie made over $25,000 on two New York screens when it opened in late April, and eventually pulled in more than $1.5 million after expanding to theaters around the country. It's not hard to argue that Tell No One and Roman de Gare put most recent American thrillers to shame. North America, once the haven of film noir, appears to be outsourcing.

As journalist Erica Abeel recently observed in an interview with Canet, "French filmmakers are currently making the best old-style Hollywood thrillers." It's not the first time for a country that has a long history of borrowing from American cinema, and often improving on it. At the beginning of the French New Wave in the early 1960s, former Cahiers du Cinema critics like Jean Luc-Godard discovered Hollywood genre films and decided to make their own loopy versions. The results were often strangely philosophical and experiment works, ranging from Godard's Breathless to François Truffaut's ambitious Shoot the Piano Player.
Other members of the movement, particularly Claude Chabrol, took more direct approaches to the genre. Chabrol's Les Bonnes Femmes (released the same year as the other two aforementioned titles) pits inner city women against urban sexual predators in an adult situation few other movies explored at the time (Alfred Hitchock's Psycho was another). Thanks to a happy accident of timing, the octogenarian Chabrol contributes to this year's resurgence of French thrillers with his deliriously twisted love triangle narrative A Girl Cut in Two, which comes out in North America next month.

To a certain extent, the current popularity of French thrillers in the United States has more to do with Hollywood's decidedly greater interest in blockbuster action films (even the thriller components of Eagle Eye appear to be upstaged by large scale explosions). It's also a trend that owes a bit of its existence to coincidence, since Tell No One opened in France way back in 2006. However, the country's big hits in the United States last year were all period dramas of various types: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, La Vie en Rose and Persepolis. Now it seems that the country is filling a void for audiences interested in thoughtful entertainment with less emphasis on gunplay than calculated excitement. Hopefully, this can lead to a circular arrangement: Just as the French New Wave took cues from Hollywood, perhaps Hollywood can learn a thing or two from the French.

Top: François Cluzet takes flight in 'Tell No One.']]>
<![CDATA[Interview: 'August' Director Austin Chick]]> 1251697

The world changed on September 11, but Austin Chick's second film, August, focuses on the moments right beforehand. Starring Josh Hartnett as a young start-up entrepreneur deluded by power trips, the movie moves along with a subtle pace, letting the natural drama emerge from a situation about to veer out of the control with the crash of the stock market. Chick's first feature, XX/XY, explored a three-way relationship; August, which opens in New York on Friday, explores the relationship between money and power during a key time in American history. Supporting performances from Rip Torn and David Bowie elevate the movie, while Howard A. Rodman's script keeps its conceits in check. Chick spoke with Cinematical about envisioning August's themes and working with his talented cast.

Cinematical: The film uses a very specific setting -- August 2001 -- immediately before 9/11. What interested you about that time?

Austin Chick: It captures a moment on the eve of change. If Howard (Rodman) and I were to move it to any other time, we would probably move it further back. The market really started crashing about eighteen months prior to when the movie is set. But I feel like there was still a certain amount of momentum in New York up until 9/11, this sense that things were going to turn around. The market had completely crashed, but there was still this crazy sense of decadence. All that really changed with 9/11.

Cinematical: Did you have any personal relationship to entrepreneurs like Josh Hartnett's character?

AC: Not personally. I had money in the market that I lost, and I had a lot of friends in those businesses. I definitely felt close to it, but I never worked for a dot com. There are aspects of those characters that I drew from people I know, but not having written the script, I don't know who Howard had in mind. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't lift any of it from his life. He wasn't in New York during 9/11.

Cinematical: A key point in the movie arrives when Tom's father, played by Rip Torn, talks about visiting his son's business and observing that people just stood around eating Oreos all day. What fascinates you about that moment?

AC: Obviously, there's the clash between two generations, but the thing that interested me most about that scene was that so much of Tom's psyche is visible. You can see the groundwork, ideologically, for who Tom once was. He tells his father, "You just don't understand. You thought you could change the world. What have you settled for? Tenure. Well, we're changing the world." On a certain level, Tom knows what he's saying is bullshit, but it's a rhetoric he once believed.

Cinematical: Did you give Torn much direction for the monologue?

AC: Rip's an interesting actor. He's obviously been around for a long time. We played that scene a number of different ways. From one scene to the next, we came up with very different things. It's part of what's interesting about working with somebody like that. When we got to the editing room, there were a lot of choices.

Cinematical: Torn famously got into a brawl with Norman Mailer on the set for Maidstone. Did you have better luck working with him?

AC: [laughs] He keeps you on your toes. The very first time I met Rip, I had a meeting with him at French Roast on Eleventh Street and Sixth Avenue. Rip ordered escargot and lemonade, and the first story he told me was that one, and he showed me the little piece of his ear that got bit off in that fight.

Cinematical: Ha! "Keep your distance, kid."

AC: Yeah, basically.

Cinematical: What do you think attracted Josh to his role? This is not a likable character.

AC: It's so different from stuff he's done in the past. He tends to get cast as these kind of passive, boyish characters, and Tom is a much more active character. He's also a much more verbal character. There's probably more dialogue here than Josh Hartnett has spoken in his entire career put together. It was a big challenge for him. His boyish charm goes a long way towards making Tom a little bit more palatable.

Cinematical: David Bowie shows up at the end of the movie in a rather frightening role. How did that come about?

AC: We got a call from Bowie's agent, asking if we'd be interested in considering him. He read the script and liked it. We were warned that he doesn't tend to commit to things quickly, so we had to wait. Then I got this call, saying that he watched my first movie, XX/XY and it wasn't his cup of tea. My response was that it was fucking cool that David Bowie watched my movie. A couple of days later, I got a call saying that he'd only watched the first fifteen minutes of XX/XY. Somebody encouraged him to watch the whole thing, and he did. He loved it and wanted to do the movie. It took awhile. The first time I actually met him was when he showed up on set. Obviously, he's an amazing, iconic figure and I think he's a fantastic actor.

Cinematical: Despite the presence of Bowie, Hartnett and Torn, this is still very much an independent film, and you're very much an independent filmmaker. Do you prefer this route, or would you like to work up to the studio level?

AC: The size of the project doesn't really concern me that much. Different budgets make sense at different levels. I don't think I ever made a choice that I was only going to make independent films. I've been involved on the writing level in a number of films that were supposed to be studio films. August is really a character study, and it's not a big action movie. It makes a lot of sense with the budget we made it with.

Cinematical: Are you happy with the release it's getting?

AC: It remains to be seen what kind of release it's going to get. Hopefully, it'll do well in New York and go on to play all over the place.

Cinematical: You premiered the movie at Sundance. Do you think the festival circuit works for movies like August?

AC: Things have changed pretty rapidly in the time I've been involved in them. There are fewer people seeing the smaller films and there are a lot fewer avenues for theatrical distribution. I really think certain types of stories make sense at certain budget levels. I'm definitely not determined to stay in the independent film world, but it's not like I'm trying to leave it. I have a couple different projects that range from a million dollars to upward of fifteen or twenty. Who knows which one will come together first? I've written a couple of scripts, and there's also a project I've been developing for awhile that I'd like to direct. The movie that looks like it's closest is a character-driven thriller about two friends who went to a house in the Hamptons for the summer and found a bunch of money. They think they can keep it without anybody knowing about it. Of course, they're wrong. Bad shit happens.

Top: Josh Hartnett in 'August.'

For more on August, see our review of the film.
<![CDATA[Review: August]]> 1251983
Few leading male actors have followed the roundabout career trajectory of Josh Hartnett. Though indisputably tall, dark and handsome, Hartnett still manages to avoid the pratfalls of typecasting by landing roles in strange projects with questionable appeal. While this choice comes at the expense of a quality resume, his performances can lend barely competent films at least one redeeming ingredient: I could give or take Wicker Park, Resurrecting the Champ, and even the good intentions of The Black Dahlia, but each benefits from Hartnett's expressive glare, furrowed brow and whispered delivery. He's an instant generator of gravitas.

Although August, director Austin Chick's second feature after the relationship drama XX/XY, doesn't qualify as Hartnett's best movie, it's certainly one of his meatiest roles - right up there with his work in the unfairly maligned Lucky Number Slevin. As the crudely pompous CEO of the mysterious start-up company Landshark in New York City during the summer before 9/11, Hartnett offers a maddened, garrulous anti-hero replete with dark humor and sustained by a surge of baseless confidence. The movie follows the audacious entrepreneur, Tom, as his fifteen minutes begin to run out - and it concludes with him facing off against a freakishly powerful David Bowie as the icy corporate foil. Despite the age gap, both men exude an eerie amount of restraint - which is not the case for the film. August adds up to less than it aspires to be, but it's populated with enough curiosities to keep you watching.
Hartnett spends almost every scene of the movie dominating the room. As Tom rules with an iron fist over his devout staff, terrifies potential clients and enjoys his exuberant nightlife, he hurls phrases in high-minded, utterly vapid biz-speak, moving far too fast for anyone to keep pace. ("Landshark is not a vehicle," he says. "Landshark is the road itself." Um, okay. "That's so third quarter '99!" he spouts. Meaning?) At one point, he tells a possible business partner that what they want, as moneymakers in the internet era, has less to do with the specifics of e-commerce than with "pure 'E.'" It doesn't take long to see past Tom's assertiveness and figure out he's packing pure BS.

Before long, somebody calls him on it: His father. Stealing the show, Rip Torn shows up in a few disparate family scenes to challenge his son's seemingly invulnerable ego. "What do you actually do?" Torn asks with his trademark gruffness. He speaks for audience members who might be inclined to shout as much at the screen. Tom claims he's leading a global village revolution first dreamed up by academics like his cantankerous pop, but he doesn't really have a clear answer to the question.

The irony of Tom's luxurious lifestyle, which indicates the benefits of an undefined accomplishment, is juxtaposed against the admirable intent of his brother Joshua (Adam Scott), who lives a practical existence with his wife and newborn child. Josh is clearly the brains behind whatever the hell Landshark does, but he cowers behind the unrelenting brawn of his sibling. When Tom tells him to stop apologizing all the time, Josh meekly replies, "I'm so sorry."

From Napster genius Shawn Fanning to Mark Zuckerberg, the YouTube guys and beyond, America's digital revolution has played host to a number of hotshot businessmen barely out of their teens getting rich on web-based schemes. Tom represents their darker side, and that's what makes August a fairly intriguing study of twenty-first century moneymaking. But the wink-nudge effect of the particular setting, with an impotent Wall Street right around the corner, never really comes into play.

That's because the script, by Howard A. Rodman (Savage Grace), feels overloaded with smart conversations, and too involved with the process of creating an 'inside baseball' logic for the start-up realm. I disagree with the degree of harshness in this recent comment left at Defamer, but it's still a fair summation of the viewing experience: "After the first conference scene, you know the entire movie is garbage. Landshark! What does it do? I'm so worth your money! Heavy data! Secure data! Wireless resources! Get me a latte! David Bowie!" Yep, and roll credits. The movie itself, however, grows critical of its own impenetrable density. "Just because I'm smart doesn't mean I'm stupid," Joshua rants to Tom. Impatient viewers might share his pain.]]>
<![CDATA[Michelle Williams Supposedly Plans Heath Ledger Film]]> 1250442 Citing an unnamed source -- you know, one of those reliable anonymous types -- Showbiz Spy is reporting that Michelle Williams plans to make a movie about her late ex, Heath Ledger, in order to provide a record of him for the former couple's toddler, Matilda. No details have been released yet, which leaves a lot of questions up in the air. Is it going to be a straightforward documentary? A biopic? Some mixture of both? If this source is to be trusted, it seems unlikely that Williams simply wants to assemble family footage to screen privately for her daughter when she gets older. A Ledger film made for general audiences would probably reveal his unrealized career intentions and help solidify his posthumous James Dean-like reputation, but it's hard to say what approach Williams would want to take, since we don't even know what role she'll have in the production (producer? director? consultant?).

Based on the skimpy information provided by Showbiz Spy, Williams' idea sounds somewhat similar to a recent documentary project that's been riding the festival to great acclaim in recent months: Kurt Kuenne's devastating Dear Zachary: A Letter to his Son About His Father, which begins with the documentarian planning to collect the memories of his murdered friend for the departed man's young child (the story takes a shocking turn after the first hour or so). Whatever the final product, surely Williams wants to avoid letting E! True Hollywood Story have the final say on Ledger's myth. Who can blame her? ]]>
<![CDATA[Discuss: Do Sacha Baron Cohen's Antics Bother You?]]> 1249375 Call it performance art, savage prank behavior or audacious social satire. Call it whatever you want, but there's no question Sacha Baron Cohen is at it again. As Erik reported back in March, the Borat star began surfacing as his Bruno alter-ego in a variety of absurd situations likely intended for the movie starring the effeminate European character. Wearing chains at a Kansas church? Check. Weirding out Ben Affleck? Check. Airport dancing? Yep. Now, bizarre reports of a cage match in Arkansas, where attendees paid for admission expecting to watch a fight and instead witnessed two men get naked and lock lips, suggests Cohen is still at it, more than three months down the line. Not only that, but he appears to have pulled the stunt twice: First on June 5 at the Four States Fair Grounds in Texarkana, then again at Fort Smith's convention center, where a character named "Straight Dave" apparently selected a planted audience member to challenge him.

Whether or not you agree with Cohen's brash style -- he claims to take inspiration from Michael Moore's stunts --
the actor definitely constructs his gags with very specific ideas in mind. Borat took a stab at American stereotypes of foreign cultures, but Bruno looks like it's geared more towards attacking homophobia -- specifically as it manifests in middle America. However, it's hard to say whether or not such excessive spectacles will manage to correct misinformed perspectives or reinforce them.
The latter possibility means that Cohen is a dangerous talent, but that doesn't mean he lacks the conviction that he's cooking up something insightful. In a Rolling Stone interview, he expressed surprise that audiences would have a problem with his fake Kazakhstani journalist, claiming that "the mere purpose of it was to allow people to bring out their own prejudices." Sure, he can bring them out, but does he have the power to make them go away?

Your thoughts? Does Bruno serve the right purpose or should Cohen call it quits?]]>
<![CDATA[Cinematical Visits MOMA's "Dali: Painting and Film" Exhibit]]> 1244178

Even the weirder artists of the twentieth century have been attracted to the allure of Hollywood filmmaking, and Salvador Dali was no exception. In the fall of 1941, the surrealist painter hosted a masquerade party at Pebble Beach during one of his regular visits to the town. Called "Surrealism Night in An Enchanted Forest," the fundraising event, intended to assist European refugee artists, brought out a number of stars, including Bob Hope and Ginger Rogers. It was here, the story goes, that Dali became attached to a major studio production called Moontide. The great German emigre Fritz Lang was hired to direct the movie, and asked Dali to create a three-minute nightmare sequence for the film. Unfortunately, after the incident at Pearl Harbor later that year, Twentieth Century Fox deemed the project too bleak. Lang was replaced, and Dali's nightmare sequence went with him.

Although inspired by the movies, Dali didn't always have the easiest time making them. He would get another chance to inject his hallucinatory vision into American cinema with the hypnosis scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, but it's his unrealized projects that truly indicate the scope of the painter's ambition. So many ideas, such little time. Dali: Painting and Film, a breathtakingly unique exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, surveys Dali's completed cinematic works in addition to tidbits from the ones that never came to fruition. Marvelously structured to show how his paintings were intentionally cinematic, the exhibit contains all the obvious highlights from Dali's movie career alongside lesser-known productions. The importance in film history of his collaborations with Luis Bunuel remain uncontested; two large screens in separate rooms showing Un Chien Andalou (where the opening eye splicing retains its original gross-out impact) and L'Age D'Or attest to that. Fewer visitors, however, might know about Dali's collaboration with the Marx Brothers on a deliriously strange movie that sounded too good to be true.

It was: Alternately titled Giraffes on Horseback Salad and The Surrealist Woman, the concept came about after Dali publicly expressed his love for the Marx's Animal Crackers ("the summit of the evolution of comic cinema," he wrote). Dali befriended Harpo in 1936 and wanted to cast him in the lead role as Jimmy, a Spanish aristocrat living in America, where he pursues a mysterious female character. The exhibit contains Dali's English language script and his preliminary drawings, which include the ubiquitous flaming giraffes one can find lingering throughout numerous Dali landscapes.

Those paintings, by the way, make up a great deal of the exhibit as well. It's impossible to tire of unequivocal masterpieces like The Persistence of Memory (the melting clocks look rather small up close), but most of Dali's works clearly demonstrate his fascination with the moving image. The shadow of an unseen figure appearing on a tarp, for example, implies the theatrical experience. Of course, you can only go so far rationalizing a Dali painting before surrendering to the overwhelming absurdity of it. His greatest paintings present unspeakably strange visions and yet generate an odd sense of familiarity, which explains his cross-over appeal. He could have unleashed something spectacular with his screenplay Babaouo (published in 1932 and also included in the exhibit) if it ever became a movie. The plot has a randomness to it, even though the offbeat adventures of a man trying to find his troubled lover seem, at first, pretty straightforward. Along the way, he has a series of Kafkaesque encounters akin to those in Martin Scorsese's After Hours (but Dali's script is wackier; in one scene, the protagonist's taxi driver randomly climbs a tree and puts on an Indian headdress).

Destino inspires similar curiosity. Dali began working on the animated project while under contract for Walt Disney Pictures for eight months in 1946, but only managed to complete fifteen seconds before heading off to place his focus elsewhere. Disney released a completed version of Destino in 2003 (which screens at MOMA in a room with original Dali sketches). The newer film integrates computer animation, suggesting Dali might have enjoyed the prospects of twenty-first century technology. The guy truly aged with the times: His experimental film Chaos and Creation documents his 1963 appearance at the Convention on Video Communications in New York, and the 1977 documentary Impressions From Upper Mongolia uses photorealistic techniques to examine microscopic reality.

Dali kept up with American counterculture (the exhibit has a screen test he did for Andy Warhol) but never became a beatnik or a hippie (in fact, he sympathized with fascism). The artist existed in his own world and stayed in it until his death in 1989. Part of the appeal offered by his work comes from the effort involved in trying to understand him without going mad in the process. It makes you wonder how much crazier the world would have been if all his film projects were finished. While you're wondering, MOMA's got the fragments.

'Dali: Painting and Film' runs at the Museum of Modern Art June 29-September 15. View the online exhibition here.
<![CDATA[Fan Rant: Superhero Satires Get No Respect]]> 1242688

Although Will Smith plays an emotionally fragile superhero in Hancock, as a movie star he's practically invincible. By industry standards, the last genuine Smith dud was The Legend of Bagger Vance, but the actor's standing among many audiences has remained decidedly rocky. As a result, he occupies a unique corner of the Hollywood marketplace where quality and taste don't necessarily match up. Unlike, say, The Dark Knight, not many people eagerly await the latest Smith offering -- which currently has a 32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes -- but they'll see it anyway. Hancock is tracking well, thanks to a poster exclusively dominated by Smith's unshaven mug, and that pretty much seals its potent box office fate. Just as Smith's slapdash onscreen persona is bullet-proof, Smith himself is steadfastly critic-proof.

Which places movie in an interesting quagmire: After pulling in waves of cash, it will probably get relegated to the void of forgettable Smith fare, where spectacles offer passing amusement before scampering off forever. Hancock, however, deserves better than a fleeting moment in the limelight and a crash landing in the bargain bin. It's part of a genre that speaks directly to the modern state of blockbuster cinema: The superhero satire.

Considering the way superhero movies have continually made bank at the multiplexes over the last several years, superhero satires essentially serve to spoof the zeitgeist. Hancock ridicules the bloated fantasies of its action-packed referents by taking cues from The Incredibles handbook, bringing questions of practicality into a realm that usually ignores them. Just as those characters avoided the hazards of outfits with capes, Hancock gives us a drunken hero incapable of flying around without destroying the cityscape. When we first meet the guy, he's cold-hearted, lonely and relentlessly vulgar -- the Bad Santa of supermen. Frequently raunchy while maintaining the cheerful simplicity of a kids' movie, Hancock switches gears time and again, but it glides along on a confusion of moods.

There's no doubting the absurdity of the situation -- a street bum with powers sloppily saving the day -- and it gets even kookier when Jason Bateman shows up as a well-meaning PR man to help smooth out Hancock's public image. But Bateman's wife, played by Charlize Theron, retains a credible ferocity when enunciating her own feelings about Hancock's role in society. She delivers a poignant monologue near the end of the movie that recalls the emotional tenor of director Peter Berg's less outlandish effort, Friday Night Lights.

Because it seems like she's acting in a far more grounded film, The New Yorker critic David Denby (an outspoken Hancock champion) compares her scenes with Smith to "a Cassavettes psychodrama" before concluding that the whole thing makes for "the most enjoyable big movie of the summer." Honestly, it's not quite consistent enough to justify that hyperbole, but it's still one of the weirdest studio movies in some time, and not one without precedent. Superhero satires tend to get regarded as passable comedies, but they're often loaded with pertinent social commentary. Blankman and Meteor Man deal with inner city race problems. The Incredibles observes unrest in the nuclear family. All the way back in the 1960s, William Klein's Mr. Freedom (which Criterion recently put out in a great DVD box set) mocked super-patriotism. As long as America continues to obsess over good guys in funny costumes, there's a benefit to satirizing them: It helps us understand the mania. Then again, that doesn't mean Superhero Movie! gets a free pass.]]>
<![CDATA['Hancock' Gets an Experimental Release]]> 1241221

It seems fairly certain that Hancock will do decent business when it hits theaters this week, if only because Will Smith rarely stars in a dud these days -- especially when it's his face selling the movie before all else. Whether or not the film has staying power after opening weekend, however, remains to be seen, but Sony Pictures clearly has a lot of faith in its potential: Last week, the studio revealed its intentions of releasing the film online sometime after its theatrical run and before its DVD release, but only to users with Sony Bravia TV sets. It's a bold maneuver, one that assumes its core base of consumers actually have an interest in Hancock -- but the movie will make a profit either way, so it's a reasonable choice for this intriguing experiment.

Left in the dust by Apple's iPod, Sony continues to struggle in its search for a piece of the digital revolution. Company head Howard Stringer recently told the New York Times that the strategy for releasing Hancock "vanishes the memory of the failures of the Sony Walkman." Well, maybe. While on-demand technology has changed the way audiences consume their media, they don't like paying more money than necessary. Asking your audiences to buy a special device in order to access what, at this point, amounts to one movie -- well, that's asking a lot. But it's still a step in the right direction.

What do you think? ]]>
<![CDATA[Discuss: Do Politics Belong in Kids Movies?]]> 1236897

A couple of people have been griping about Wall-E director Andrew Stanton's refusal to admit that his cute little movie about a robot in love actually contains some pretty upfront green politics, but there's a far more polarizing reference in the film than its harmless pro-environment agenda. It's no major plot spoiler to reveal that, about an hour or so into the story, Fred Willard appears in a recorded message as the mysterious president of Earth's corporate government and orders the ship's captain (Jeff Garlin) to "stay the course." Wait, we've heard this one before: It was the go-to statement used by the Bush administration for about three years or so when describing its modus operandi in Iraq (the term was abandoned when staying the course started to sound like a bad idea). In Wall-E, the context is quite different -- it's an order to not do something, rather than take action -- but hard to ignore nonetheless.

Certain critics with (surprise!) conservative slants have taken issue with this. At Dirty Harry's Place, John Nolte expresses his disappointment in the first paragraph of his review: "Have we lost the wonderful studio who brought us The Incredibles and Ratatouille to Bush Derangement Syndrome?" he asks. New York Post critic Kyle Smith picked up the rant and decided to write his own, even though he hadn't seen the film yet: "This kind of crack, lame as it is, also breaks the spell of the movie by hurling you out of the theater and back into reality."

Smith, of course, didn't have the frame of reference to know what he's talking about. (Welcome to the world of extreme miscalculations in the blogosphere.) Nolte, on the other hand, rightly deems the first act of the movie "magical" and complains that the Bush reference sullied his love for Pixar. "Other than the dark chuckles from the liberal critics around me, what's to gain?" he asks. "Why go there?" To which I would respond: "Why not?" It seems like the kind of order Willard's character would give, it reflects the circumstances, and places an otherwise far-fetched narrative in the context of modern times. Wall-E is an innately political film for viewers old enough to recognize it as such; what's the harm of one more bullet point from the headlines? Before you complain that "Stay the course" now belongs to yesterday's headlines, it's important to realize that Wall-E takes place eight hundred centuries from now, so maybe the line implies that rhetoric is cyclical.

Then again, perhaps my own political proclivities have misled me. What do you think? Do politics belong in family films? Does the inclusion of the "Stay the course" line have topical implications regardless of the context? Well, Willard thinks so.]]>
<![CDATA[Clooney's SAG Strategy]]> 1238941 His last movie didn't do so hot, but George Clooney's still making headlines. This time, he has spoken out about the recent split between the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. According to Variety, Clooney has decided to stay neutral where many prominent actors have taken sides, and he's urging others to take the same route. If Hollywood actors go on strike, it'll probably be SAG's fault, considering the eagerness of AFTRA to negotiate a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. AFTRA's biggest defender is Tom Hanks, while Jack Nicholson is heading up the other side. "Stories about Jack Nicholson vs. Tom Hanks only strengthen the negotiating power of the AMPTP," Clooney said in a statement.

Like many actors, Clooney wants to take any measures he can to prevent a strike. As a member of SAG, the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America, he wears many hats. "I'm hoping that there might be a way out of this," he said. "To be sure, I'm not the brightest bulb out there. So maybe someone has a lot better idea." Then he got personal: "I just happen to believe so strongly in both unions... my father, my mother, aunt, uncle, even cousins were all members." Nobody's doubting his allegiance, but after souring his relationship with the WGA after Leatherheads came out, it's hard to say how the other unions will regard him in the coming months. ]]>
<![CDATA[Obama Endorses Jeff Bridges for President]]> 1238943 When it comes to sifting through all actors responsible for portraying the most powerful man on the planet, there's no shortage of options. John Travolta did a great Bill Clinton impersonation in Primary Colors and Timothy Bottoms delivered a near-perfect imitation of George W. Bush in both D.C. 9/11: Time of Crisis and That's My Bush! Neither one comes across as particularly flattering, so presidential nominee Barack Obama has chosen a safer bet: At a recent party in Los Angeles, Obama revealed that he prefers Jeff Bridges' conflicted commander-in-chief in The Contender. Granted, he may have said this simply to keep his audience happy -- in this case, Contender director Rod Lurie, one of the attendees who was willing to plop down $28,000 for the event. "'I just plugged your movie," Obama told Lurie, according to a report the director sent to Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells.

Still, when you're under the kind of intense scrutiny that Obama currently endures, Bridges actually seems like a pretty safe choice. Choose Anthony Hopkins in Nixon and it sounds like you're endorsing the bad guy. Choose Kevin Kline in Dave and you come across as disingenuous. Choose Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove and somebody will call you incompetent. Bridges, on the other hand, plays a fierce leader bound to his moral convictions. Of course, Obama also expressed sympathy over Lurie's short-lived television show Commander-in-Chief, which featured Geena Davis as the first woman president. Perhaps it's no coincidence that he and Hillary have publicly made amends. ]]>
<![CDATA[Tony Danza Wants to Play Nixon Aide]]> 1237830 Yesterday's New York Post contained a gossip item in Page Six taken from the book party for James Rosen's The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate in New York, where attendee Tony Danza expressed an interest in playing Richard Nixon aide H.R. Halderman -- maybe in a movie version of Rosen's book. Halderman, who died in 1993, worked for Nixon as White House Chief of Staff until the Watergate scandal landed him eighteen months in prison in 1973. His story, partially recounted in The Strong Man, involved a longstanding relationship with Nixon going back to the 1950s and the tense moments immediately before and after the president's resignation. In between, he was involved in a botched attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro and other tumultuous events dutifully recorded in Halderman's diary, which became available to the public years later.

Many political scandals often revolve around a single corrupt individual, but it's the right hand man whose story can be most revealing. (Roy Cohen's personal drama has way more twists than that of Joseph McCarthy, for example.) There's little doubt that Halderman's experiences would work well on the big screen, but this wouldn't be the first time: IMDb lists no less than five actors who have portrayed Halderman, including James Downing in The Pentagon Papers, as recently as 2003. Would Danza make sense in this role? And will any film have a chance at getting people interested in this story after Frost/Nixon nabs the spotlight later this year? ]]>
<![CDATA[Fan Rant: Charlie Chaplin's Talkies Deserve More Respect]]> 1228281

As a fresh 35mm print of Charlie Chaplin's quintessential 1947 thriller Monsieur Verdoux begins circulating through revival houses around the country, it seems like a good time to remind people that while the late actor is mainly known as a star of the silent screen, he definitely didn't die with it. Although the greatest slapstick artist of all time initially rejected the development of sound film, mocking it with hilariously exaggerated voices in City Lights, he eventually adopted it after realizing that resistance was futile. However, he refused to simply throw in a few lines of dialogue to accompany his beloved tramp shtick, choosing instead to take his career in a fresh direction. While Chaplin made many sound films over the course of several decades, only two of them really qualify as classic talkies (except for Limelight, which deserves a category of its own). Late flops like A King of New York don't really hold together, but Chaplin's initial forays into the world of sound film display his talent as a composer of distinctive prose.

His first work of this era, The Great Dictator, remains a masterpiece that broadened the potential of his tramp character with a modified Prince and the Pauper tale applied to World War II, and Chaplin doing double duty playing both a Jewish barber and an exaggerated Adolf Hitler (or "Hinkel," rather). Monsieur Verdoux, in which he plays a frustrated man whose losses during the Great Depression lead to a twisted scheme where he marries, murders and robs rich women, represented something else altogether: Chaplin's only brooding melodrama, the occasional laughs are almost incidental.

The movie didn't get much acclaim when it first came out (quite the opposite, actually), and built up a cult following over the years, but it has yet to be appreciated by the masses as an essential part of Chaplin's career. Film critic Pauline Kael complained that, once Chaplin started talking, he "became a deeply unfunny man; if he had found the street language to match his lowlife, tramp movements, he might have been something like Richard Pryor."

She makes a wise observation, but Chaplin had little interest in translating the Tramp into a chatterbox. Verdoux shows how Chaplin utilized dialogue in subtler ways. When we first hear the character talking about "liquidating members of the opposite sex as a strictly business enterprise," he delivers the line with such relish that it rightly gives you the chills. Later, Verdoux explains why he refuses to feel sorry for himself. "Despair is a narcotic," he says. "It lulls the mind into indifference." The statement has beautifully haunting repercussions. Eventually, Verdoux allows himself to get caught, and remains collected throughout the climactic trial. Like The Great Dictactor, the movie ends with Chaplin delivering a harsh declaration of principles.

After thanking the prosecutor for admitting Verdoux has brains, the killer launches into a justification of his actions. "As for being a mass killer, does not the world encourage it?" he asks. "Is not building weapons of destruction done for the sole purpose of mass killing? Has it not blown unsuspecting women and children to pieces -- and done it very scientifically?" He pauses for an eerie laugh. "As a mass killer," he adds, "I'm an amateur by comparison." In final analysis, then, Verdoux isn't satire; it's a summary of apocalyptic dread.

Watching the film now, one can only imagine how he might have expanded on this bleak sentiment in the unfilmed project about the Tramp surviving a nuclear holocaust, an idea he had developed with film critic James Agee (a major outspoken advocate of Verdoux). We can see here that Chaplin's interests went deeper -- and darker -- than slapstick humor could take him. "I am at peace with god," Verdoux says when a priest tries to bless him before he's executed. "My conflict is with man." And those of us appreciative of the insight put forth in Verdoux, which remains potent to this day, feel his pain.]]>
<![CDATA[Discuss: Dwayne Johnson, Philanthropist]]> 1228180

There's no way around it: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson owes at least some of his fame to the way his dominating figure fits the blockbuster action stereotype with near-mechanical sleekness. However, he also offers an alternative to that reductive perspective. Looking sharp in a business suit and speaking with the relaxed professional discipline of a CEO, Johnson showed up at a screening of Get Smart on Sunday at the CineVegas Film Festival displaying sheer confidence. The screening took place at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, where Johnson had recently acted in Race to Witch Mountain ("We just added to the chaos," he said), but on this visit, Johnson got a chance to remind people that he's not just a one-note performer, but someone who plays an active role in the international film community (not to mention the health community, since The Rock Foundation pushes obesity prevention).

Outside of his supremely meta performance in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, Johnson has made his interests in adventurous cinema increasingly clear, and boldly champions independent artists. You can get a small glimpse of this aspect of his personality in Operation Filmmaker, documentarian Nina Davenport's account of an Iraqi filmmaker named Muthana Mohmed whose aspirations tragically fall short of the expectations surrounding him. Landing the opportunity to work for Liev Schreiber on the set of Everything is Illuminated, the 25-year-old Mohmed grows increasingly frustrated with the boring tasks given to him, and continually blows opportunities as a result of his unbalanced work ethic.

Nevertheless, high caliber members of the industry keep giving him more chances to follow his dream -- and while the results form a real downer of a film that ultimately pushes the Iraq war metaphor to its breaking point, Johnson's appearance provides one of the few bright spots. After Mohmed bonds with the actor on the set of Doom, Johnson offers to pay for his film school tuition in London. It's the sort of staggering altruism that celebrities often do in the name of good publicity, but Operation Filmmaker captures a gentle side of Johnson in private conversation with Mohmed that suggests the sincerity of his actions. Too bad they didn't amount to much, especially since Davenport and Mohmed had a falling out during his film school days, causing the story to get cut frustratingly short. Johnson can't help fill in that blank. "I don't really know what happened with Muthana," he said when I asked him about it on his way into the Planet Hollywood theater. "But I really enjoyed the documentary."

Of course, it's interesting to hear a star of Johnson's caliber discuss something like Operation Filmmaker, a small project that rode the festival circuit before coming out in very limited release a few weeks ago. "I thought the movie was provocative," Johnson said. "Nina did a great job directing it. They have a really interesting relationship. I don't know what it has progressed -- or digressed -- to." Either way, he seemed content with his own decision. "What compelled me to help Moktada was that I though he was genuine," he said. "At the end of the day, when we got to our set for Doom, he was an incredibly hard worker."

What do you think? Do the Rock's actions in Operation Filmmaker seem like a legitimate way to help a struggling immigrant, or do they come across as shameless self-promotion?

Top: Dwayne Johnson, the actor, contemplates 'Operation Filmmaker.' Meanwhile, Dwayne Johnson, the hardened spy in 'Get Smart,' peers over his shoulder.]]>
<![CDATA[Werner Herzog and Jonathan Demme Talk About Life, Cinema]]> 1222953

It's hard to say which event in midtown Manhattan on Thursday night was cooler: New German Cinema legend Werner Herzog in conversation with director Jonathan Demme at the Times Center, or the two crazed climbers who attempted to scale the New York Times building right next door just a few hours earlier. In some ways, the two occurrences worked together: It was later announced that one of the climbers did it in order to raise awareness about global warming, a relevant issue for anyone interested in Herzog's latest film, the remarkable Antarctica odyssey Encounters at the End of the World. Like most of Herzog's documentary work, it's a brilliant amalgam of gorgeous imagery and Herzog's personal philosophies. Not a scientist himself, he spends time in their company down south, seeking to understand their behavior ("Is this a big moment?" he asks when they nonchalantly announce the discovery of a new bacterium).

Demme, admitting that he and Herzog had just met earlier in the evening, opened the conversation by reading an effusive letter to Herzog written by Roger Ebert after the critic discovered that the director dedicated Encounters to him. Herzog seemed displeased that Ebert printed the letter ("Those things should stay between two men") but had only praise for his friend. "I salute him, a good soldier of cinema," he said. "We have very few left."

The other star of the show was the Museum of the Moving Image, which hosted the conversation to celebrate the launch of their nifty new outlet, Moving Image Source, which contains essays and research guides for cinephiles everywhere. MOMI curator David Schwartz introduced Herzog and Demme by noting that both directors make provocative nonfiction and fiction films; appropriately enough, you could definitely sense a kinship between them. Herzog admitted that he was a fan of Demme's The Silence of the Lambs. "I've never been so scared so deeply," Herzog said, "and I don't scare easy." That got a laugh. "I can't respond to that," Demme said, collecting himself.

In turn, Demme told Herzog that a single sustained shot of the water near the end of his eerie jungle romp Aguirre: Wrath of God left a distinct impression on the younger filmmaker. "This moment of cinema moved me so much," Demme said. "I loved that it kept going even though I couldn't exactly explain why that was. Eventually, I moved from that to holding shots more and more in my own work." Considering the inspiration he takes from Herzog's films, Demme must have taken the other director's next statement as a high compliment. "We are just professional men who know to handle cinema," Herzog said. "That's what makes us what we are."

Demme did slip up once, however, when raising the topic of Herzog's isolated childhood high in the mountains and far away from the movies, which he didn't encounter until late in his teenage years. Demme identified Herzog as a German, and Herzog corrected him. He was raised in Bavaria. "I'd like to make that distinction," Herzog said. "A Scotsman wouldn't agree that he's British. I don't like the Germans."

Encounters at the End of the World opens today in limited release.

Top: Jonathan Demme and Werner Herzog in conversation at the Times Center on Thursday night.]]>
<![CDATA[Interview: M. Night Shyamalan]]> 1221179

He goes by "Night," but it's hard to dispute his sunny disposition. Just a few minutes into a conversation with M. Night Shyamalan in a New York City hotel room yesterday, it was obvious to me that the director has managed to occupy such a unique niche in the Hollywood landscape because he's immediately likable. Of course, a little movie released in 1999 called The Sixth Sense didn't hurt, either.

After landing two Oscar nominations and international acclaim for his masterful ghost story, Shyamalan continued to market himself as a brand. Since then, the results have been mixed. Signs was an indisputable hit. Unbreakable has its supporters. Lady in the Water? Not so much. But that failure hasn't prevented the filmmaker from dealing with audacious material: His latest movie, The Happening, finds a married couple (Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel) thrust into a world where people inexplicably become suicidal after getting struck by an ominous, unseen toxin. Forces of evil usually remain unseen in Shyamalan's films, and The Happening is no exception to that rule. I spoke to the 37-year-old Philadelphia resident about the personal philosophies guiding his career choices, the polarized reactions to his work, and what the future will bring.

Cinematical: Every time one of your movies comes out, we hear about your uncompromising vision. You refuse to leave Philadelphia for Hollywood, and you've never worked as a director-for-hire. Why even bother with the studio system?

M. Night: I think it's more media hype thing than anything else. I've never had an issue with studios. I believe in them as true creative partners in the process. You have to find the ones that match each of your movies. You have to say, "Hey, I'm making a paranoid environmental thriller. Where would be the best home for that?" You need to match it, because you don't want to have a fight. If you're making a romantic movie, maybe Warner Bros. isn't the right home for it. Maybe Sony is the right place for it. If you're making a sci-fi movie, maybe Fox is the right home. When you walk through that, make sure you have the right partner. But once you've chosen your partner, I genuinely believe in honoring them in every way. They're my asset. I have the rights, creatively, but I have never used them. I've never said no to something the studio said. We talk through it, and work through it. A lot of times, they believe what I'm saying. That's my job: To show you my point of view. I've had the least acrimonious relationship with studios. I would almost say it's the entire reverse -- 180 degrees from the way it's been portrayed.

Cinematical: Regardless of the way it's been portrayed, don't you think it would be easier for you to go the independent route? At this point in your career, you could still get name actors, and even finance something out of your own pocket.

M. Night: Oh, so you're saying, "Why?" I guess it's because I like [the studios'] point of view for the right movies. There are some really smart filmmakers in the studios, and a lot of times, I don't deal with any of the bureaucracy. That's probably the best thing -- that there's no bureaucracy in it, in the sense of eight people trying to show you that they're worthy of their jobs. I never get that. It's usually just me, and one other person, or maybe two people. We just sit down and we talk about the movie. It's been a good relationship. Also, my instincts are partly mainstream. I'm not entirely Darren Aronofsky -- who I love. I have a side of that, and I've always had a foot in both worlds. Independent filmmakers are my heroes, and I look to them for integrity and the bar.

Cinematical: In 2002, Newsweek ran a cover story declaring you the next Steven Spielberg. That was a big boost to your popularity. Now, there are so many voices out there, mainly in the blogosphere, trying to define your work. Some people hate it and others love it. How do you sift through all that?

M. Night: I have found that if I stay really true to myself -- in terms of the stuff that's cheesy, the stuff that's flawed -- the more it's me, the better it's going to be in the long run for my career. I don't want to pretend I'm any cooler or smarter than I am. I have a naive outlook on life. That's who I am. If you met me when I was in high school, you'd see that I was the exact same kid. Everyone has that feeling where they wish a girl was this or that. If she was truly happy with who she is, she would be attractive to all of us. That's something we should be taught as kids: To be okay with ourselves.

Cinematical: Do you read the blogs?

M. Night: Not really. I don't have a need for that. Since, even in my short career, I've been able to look back and go, "What I felt about Unbreakable was correct." On the day, it was not received that way. "What I felt about Signs is correct to me." I had a certain good or bad feeling about these movies and what they represent to me. The Village, and Lady -- all that stuff. The only things that have ever hurt my movies is their expectations. There's nothing I can do about that. I'll say to somebody, "Hitchcock's films had twists, right?" They'll say, "Yeah." I only did one twist, but it's difficult to say Rebecca was my favorite movie of his. That's just eerie, well-done filmmaking.

Cinematical: To take a recent example of what people expect from your work, did you see the South Park episode (The Imaginationland Trilogy) that contained a caricature of you?

M. Night: [laughs] I heard about it. I heard it was hilarious.

Cinematical: The government hires you as a consultant and you keep talking about twists. It's interesting, because you really don't have that many twists in your films. There aren't any twists in The Happening. This all came out of The Sixth Sense.

M. Night: This is my hope: That there will be enough movies that you will have to evaluate each movie individually. One day, the commonality will be, "I just like his point of view." He doesn't mean anything specific beyond storytelling. That's the goal. It takes awhile to pound away at that. No matter what, when you hear U2, you think Joshua Tree. There's no way around it. The hope is that you do varied stuff, but a consistency of stuff. My next movie is The Last Airbender [adapted from the animated series], which is so different from anything I've done. You just have to let go from the outset. I think it's really become more about the subtleties are really hard to grasp. Let's just pick two movies -- say, Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Okay, he always makes twist movies, but some of them are scary and some are not. Already, that's too hard to define. Then you add Signs, which doesn't have a twist, but it's scary. Now, you're totally fucked. It's just too complex. I just don't want it to be defined. It should be defined only by the accent, and it'll take time to do that.

Cinematical: Avatar: The Last Airbender is going to be three films.

M. Night: Yeah, it's a long form story.

Cinematical: And you want to direct all of them?

M. Night: Hopefully.

Cinematical: It's really geared toward kids, right?

M. Night: Yeah, it's a PG thing, but you know, Star Wars was PG. It was intended for a younger audience, and yet it affected all of us. I was a kid at the time, so it was a big slam dunk for me.

Cinematical: So you're hoping this will change the way people see your work.

M. Night: I know that the only way to solve this is with time. It's the only asset. Just like Unbreakable has found its glory over time. It takes time for all the movies to be seen individually. I just gotta keep my head down and make movies.

Cinematical: The Spielberg comparison is an interesting one. When he made Schindler's List, it was spoken about as though it signaled his "growing up" phase.

M. Night: It's tricky. The difference is that I write [the movies]. I'm more like an independent filmmaker, probably closer to Woody Allen than a mainstream filmmaker, in terms of being able to watch a theme or person and where they are.

Cinematical: Would you ever direct somebody else's screenplay?

M. Night: I might. I've almost done it a couple of times. Usually, they don't offer them to me. I would love to. I've written the first [Last Airbender] already.

Cinematical: Are you worried about the James Cameron film that also has Avatar for a title?

M. Night: Well, we're going to call our movie The Last Airbender. It's Avatar: The Last Airbender, but really, the plot's in that part of the movie: The Last Airbender. In some parts of the world, it's not even called Avatar, because the name is so loaded, religiously.

Cinematical: Can you share some details about the plot?

M. Night: Oh my god, that's a long conversation. It's a big mythology. It was definitely inspired by fantasy movies. It's a world where there are four groups of people. Four cultures. Each one of the cultures can master a certain element. One can master water, one can master air, one can master earth and one can master fire. They have people in their cultures that can manipulate those elements. There's one person born every generation with the ability to manipulate all four elements. They're the one who keeps the nation in balance. The new Avatar disappears and goes out of whack. The movie starts while this world is completely out of whack. The people who can manipulate fire have begun to overrun the other people. They've actually committed genocide to some extent. The little boy who was the next Avatar ran away. He had been frozen in ice. When he comes out of it, he realizes the world has been screwed up. He never wanted this responsibility, but the world is telling him, "You need to take this responsibility or we're all screwed." The movie's about this boy trying to learn the elements and bring balance back to the world.

The Happening arrives in theaters on Friday, June 13.]]>
<![CDATA[Herzog Responds to 'Bad Lieutenant' Backlash]]> 1215861 Things weren't so peaceful in the movie buff land when word got out a few weeks ago that Werner Herzog plans to remake Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage in the lead role. Even noted trash auteur Abel Ferrara publicly complained about having his work redone. Bad Lieutenant isn't anybody's idea of a good time: Harvey Keitel puts on a freakishly raunchy performance. Still, it definitely sounds like Herzog's pumped about the gig. Defamer cornered the director in New York today for a few questions about the project, and the responses are kind of amazing. Herzog tends to do a great job of explaining himself, no matter what crazy scheme he has cooked up, but the best part of this interview arrives when the guy claims utter cluelessness about Ferrara's work. Way to stick it to the source material.

To hear Herzog tell it, his version of Bad Lieutenant isn't a remake, although he wouldn't know, since it sounds like hasn't actually seen the original. However, he says that Cage's character's name and the plot are entirely new. Herzog apparently liked the "very, very dark story," written by William M. Finkelstein, and he can't wait to work with Cage (given Herzog's notorious appreciation of Anna Nicole Smith, this last bit actually makes sense). Hearing about Ferrara's discontent, Herzog just eggs him on: "Let him fight the windmills, like Don Quixote." It's a feud made in heaven, almost too good to be true. You might just call it ecstatic truth.

Top: Early poster art for the new 'Bad Lieutenant,' snapped at the Cannes Film Festival last month. ]]>
<![CDATA[Fan Rant: Adam Sandler, Republican Actor]]> 1214355 Adam Sandler's movies haver never represented the apex of cultural awareness, but they do tend to grapple, if somewhat brashly, with the finer points of human relations. In his latest raunchfest, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, the insolent comic creates "his stupidest character ever" (as an audience member muttered five minutes into last night's New York preview screening), but it's also his most symbolic one: Sporting a hyperbolic flair for disco music and using hummus as toothpaste, hardened Israeli soldier Zohan is a bloated creature of Semitic extremes.

Overall, however, the movie uses metaphors more than stereotypes. When Zohan and a furious Palestinian terrorist (John Turturro) use paddles to bat a live grenade back and forth, the result is a lowbrow editorial cartoon.

Taking this topicality into account, a recent story in The New York Times dealt with the difficulties of marketing a mainstream comedy with such polarizing issues at its core. But the story ignored a relevant topic that permeates Sandler's career: His decisively conservative outlook. It's no major secret that the actor belongs to a marginalized group of Republicans in a sea of Hollywood liberals -- just take a look at his generous donation to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign last year -- and it's not that tough to find a current of conservatism in Sandler's films, even going back to his early days.

I'm not one to discount certain indisputably funny ingredients of Sandler's shtick, but the underlying philosophies behind his movies don't always go down with ease. I love Billy Madison -- challenge me on this if you must, but I'm convinced it's one of the great surrealist comedies of the 1990's, right up there with Naked Lunch -- which endorses a one-sided concept of social indoctrination in addition to corporate longevity. Billy isn't considered a proper adult until he decides to go to college, and the grandiose hotel chain started by his father winds up in somebody else's hands. Rather than responsibly putting his money towards a noble cause, Billy hands it off to a friend better equipped to navigate the commercial world.

Sandler's movies often embrace idealized notions of blue collar lifestyles. In Little Nicky, which Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman found "gross, but awash in family values," the devil's son is expected to replace his father, akin to the dilemma facing Billy Madison. The simplified correlation between family and work, a dated model of Norman Rockwell proportions, comes up in the blossoming fatherhood plot of Big Daddy and the stress of a demanding job in Click. The dynamic gets even more complicated with I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, a movie about two straight guys disgusted by homosexuality. You could say the film eventually approves of gay marriage, but it does so with notable reluctance.

Many of the middle American heroes in Sandler's films build their successes out of nothing as if they existed in the imaginary realm of a corrupt politician's stump speech. President Bush once spoke of the all-American narrative as a "story in which evil is real, but courage and decency triumph," and if you squint a little, that pretty much sums up Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy and Spanglish at once. Then there's Mr. Deeds, a remake of the 1936 screwball comedy Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which was directed by Frank Capra, Hollywood's quintessential chronicler of patriotic standards. In Reign Over Me, meanwhile, Sandler plays Charlie Fineman, an affluent New Yorker learning to overcome his 9/11 losses, recalling the bittersweet illusion of a happy ending that helped the Republican party in November 2004.

Terrorism forms the central concern in Zohan: Sandler's militant cartoon character doesn't like the Palestinians, but he expresses a desire to escape all the squabbling. "They've been fighting 2,000 years," his mother sighs. "It can't be much longer."

Nevertheless, Zohan throws in the towel, heads to New York incognito and pursues his dream of becoming a hairdresser (which prompts his Israeli brethren to label him a faygele, the derogatory Yiddish word used to describe homosexuals).

Working at a barbershop run by an alluring Lebanese woman (Emmanuelle Chriqui), he gradually assimilates himself into a world free of national boundaries. (He also concludes most sessions with -- nasty spoiler alert -- sexual favors in the back room, quickly making him the most popular barber in town among the little old lady contingent.)

Gliding along on stupid-humor autopilot, the movie operates under the guise of a balanced perspective. Zohan convinces the Israeli electronics vendors across the street to make nice with their Palestinian neighbors, and we even hear them discuss a little political common ground: It was the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in 1995, they all agree, that really busted things up for both sides. Then, they bond through mutual appreciation for the sex appeal of Laura Bush.

The ability of these two opposing crowds to pull together would qualify as fantasy if we were supposed to view them as authentic Middle Easterners. Instead, they combine into a surprisingly potent symbol of communal tranquility. "Here," concludes one character, "we're all the same." That clinches it: Zohan isn't pro-Israel or pro-Palestine; it's pro-America.

There's nothing corrupt about Sandler promoting ethnic tolerance, even in a crass vehicle like this. At the same time, the zeal of its conclusion reads like the reductive "fair and balanced" mentality of a Fox newscast -- it's a blind stab at pragmatism that doesn't exist. It's practically an afterthought when somebody shows up in the end to explain the ease with which everybody can just kiss and make up. That's my own qualm with the consistently subdued politics recurring throughout this talented performer's uneven oeuvre: The ideas flow together with a steady stream of cheap quips and the occasional comic gem, but Sandler hardly possesses the astuteness of a satirist. Helplessly mugging for the camera until a good joke comes along, his political depth is just another punchline.

<![CDATA[Sundance @ BAM: Short Film Mayhem]]> 1213130

For an emerging filmmaker, the Sundance Film Festival provides a starting point for the life span of a feature-length work. There's a far greater sense of immediacy, however, for the filmmakers involved in the shorts program, where a wide variety of material tends to begin circulating the festival world before fading into complete obscurity. That's why the short films that screened yesterday as part of the third annual Sundance Institute at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) signified the most important aspect of the two-week event: With few exceptions, the films on display received the kind of exposure that helped validate this frequently neglected format. While some of the titles are available on iTunes, many that were shown to a packed house finally got the long-delayed reception they deserved.

Animated efforts almost always offer the best ingredients in any shorts program, since it's here that you'll find a combination of inspired side projects from gainfully employed studio animators and the works of struggling independent artists. The latest program couldn't beat the sheer brilliance of cult animator Don Hertzfeldt's short Everything Will Be Ok in last year's showcase, but two particularly memorable films left distinct impressions this time around.

Madame Tutli-Putli, a mesmerizing, wordless story about one woman's encounter with creepy misogynists and late night robbers on a nightmarish train ride through gothic landscapes, unfolds with remarkably accomplished stop-motion effects. The movie, justly nominated for an Academy Award earlier this year (when it unjustly lost to Peter and the Wolf), would be a marvel to behold even without the gripping plot; with it, Montreal-based filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski have crafted a seventeen-minute masterpiece that bridges the gap between the styles of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton by combining a creepy aura with narrative fluidity. On the other side of the spectrum, New York-based animator Signe Baumane's Teat Beat of Sex humorously chronicles her diverse sexual escapades, many of which culminated in embarrassing circumstances. Part of a multi-chapter saga Bauman plans to keep developing, Teat Beat lost its chance for mass exposure when it was unfairly omitted from iTunes' collection of Sundance shorts on the basis of its subject matter. That's unfortunate, because Bauman works on such a small scale that she deserves all the attention she can get. Her explicit slapstick style combines the raunchiness of 1960s Zap! comics with the autobiographical tone of a stand-up routine.

Live action shorts generally serve one of two possible purposes: They're either calling cards for features or singular demonstrations of filmmakers looking to prove their skills. The most impressive accomplishments stuff original concepts into the short format without coming across as needlessly truncated. I was especially impressed by W, from German filmmaking team The Vikings, which won an Honorable Mention at the festival in January. A delightful two minute metaphor for humanity's relationship to its ever-present environment, W. might suck if it ran any longer. As it stands, however, it remains a witty portrait of a certain natural resource I dare not reveal (because that would ruin the punchline). You can watch the whole thing here.

The unofficial award for the cutest short of the bunch (which isn't to say there was much competition) goes to Force 1TD, Randy Tallman's sweet portrait of three urban teenagers on a mission to find sneakers for a guide horse, the lovably petite equine servant who helps the blind member of the trio find his way. Combining deadpan comedy with the original angle that an ever-present guide horse allows, Force 1TD functions as a nifty snapshot of an unlikely partnership.

Another teen-centered entry in the program only felt funny on the surface: The shopping spree documentary kids + money, photographer Lauren Greenfield's detailed portrait of Los Angeles youth discussing the way finances influence their lifestyles. Poorer high schoolers highlight the pressures they encounter when wandering the hallways surrounded by rich kids, whose spoiled views about the importance of wearing pricey clothes provide a stunning contrast. Greenfield strikes a jovial tone in her depiction of the shallow qualities of style-obsessed teens, but the laughter she stirs up has a nervous backdrop. HBO Films has purchased kids + money, but it screams for a feature-length treatment.

Other promising short films in the program had the opposite impact: They resemble long form cinema, but wouldn't necessarily work as full-blown features. Australian director Spencer Susser's zombie drama I Love Sarah Jane, for example, spends fourteen genre-soaked minutes with an all-child cast in a world overrun by the undead, and delivers a bittersweet coming-of-age snippet that you won't find in the entire George A. Romero canon (not even in Diary of the Dead). The dopey comedy FCU: Fact Checkers Unit, meanwhile, carries its one-joke premise as far as it'll go before arriving at an amazing finish: Two devout magazine fact checkers invade Bill Murray's home to confirm a detail about his private life, and the man himself shows up, one-upping his brief role in Coffee and Cigarettes with a few blank stares. In a short film, genius resides in fleeting moments.

For more, check out Erik's report from the opening night American Teen premiere.

For tickets and more information on this year's Sundance Institute at BAM, check out their official website.

Top: Sundance short 'I Love You Sarah Jane.' Middle: Oscar-nominated Canadian film 'Madame Tutli-Putli.' Bottom: Bill Murray and friends in 'FCU: Fact Checkers Unit.' Photos courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival.]]>
<![CDATA['An Inconvenient Truth' Gets the Operatic Treatment]]> 1210829 Just when it seemed like Al Gore couldn't reassert his international stature any further comes word that An Inconvenient Truth is getting turned into an opera. Seriously. Currently in planning stages for the 2011 season at Italy's Milan opera house, the new work will undoubtedly carry the same tone of global peril that the erstwhile vice president enforces in the film, although one imagines they'll probably do away with some of the dry Power Point material. It's not the most practical choice for an adaptation, that's for sure: The way it's assembled in the film, Gore's lecture manages to engage a diverse audience, while the guy comes off as assertive and witty, which makes you wonder what sort of president he would have made -- but that singular charm doesn't necessarily translate into the sort of theatrics demanded by a massive stage spectacle.

It's too early to get any sense for the final product, but for now, the conceit sounds like ridiculous fodder for a Saturday Night Live sketch, and it's hard to envision anything but a parody of the source (consider the infamous case of Jerry Springer: The Opera). Personally, I can see the revamped An Inconvenient Truth taking a cue from Wagner's Ring Cycle and setting the stage ablaze around the main character in a horrific look-what-might-happen finale as a team of green-friendly celebrities chant "Give us Gore" from stage left, their pathetic words drowned out by a deafening orchestral surge ... but maybe that's pushing it. ]]>
<![CDATA[THINKfilm Sued by Allied Advertising]]> 1209765 It's been clear for several weeks now that the independent distribution company THINKfilm has been suffering from some money troubles. Around the time the Cannes Film Festival kicked off this month, blogger AJ Schnack assembled reports from various sources that the company owed a lot of money to many different places. Now, Nikkie Finke reports that Allied Advertising Ltd. filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court today against THINKfilm owner David Bergstein, claiming that THINKfilm failed to pay for Allied's advertising services in a timely manner, while the distributor pretended that wasn't the case. A serious problem indeed.

It's a little unfair, however, for Allied to complain about THINKfilm's decision to continue doing what they do best -- buying films. The lawsuit says that the company embarked on a "lavish film licensing buying spree at various film festivals around the world," rather than exclusively focusing on paying off debt. It's worth noting that THINKfilm remained fairly withdrawn at Cannes this year, and while they did pick up theatrical rights for Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired at Sundance, the film already had a television deal in place with HBO. Meanwhile, the company has dropped Battle in Seattle, which it originally purchased at the Toronto Film Festival. The "buying spree" sounds like needless exaggeration on Allied's part. Whatever the case, given THINKfilm's track record (they did guide Ryan Gosling to his Half Nelson Oscar nod), one hopes they'll survive this nasty legal snafu. ]]>
<![CDATA[Borrowed 'Sex' Scenes]]> 1209825 Since Sex and the City has screened around the world and critics have weighed in, it's time for a little nitpicking -- and nobody seems more up to the task than that unflagging beacon of urban gossip, Page Six. Today, the New York Post column reports that New Line Cinema and Radio City Music Hall are facing off in a blame-fest following the mistake that lead to 1,000 ticket holders getting turned away at the New York City premiere. At the close of the piece, however, the article gets into some of the details of the plot: "Those who've seen Sex and the City are buzzing that its story owes much to widely reported episodes involving Jonathan Tisch and Ellen Barkin," it reads, and that's just one of the alleged rip-offs. There's also a supposed reference to Tisch's canceled engagement to Jill Swid, and a "scene where Carrie freaks out about having a 347 area code seems just like one in an old Seinfeld episode."

Not having seen the movie, I can only judge from afar, but this sounds like two very separate complaints. That Sex and the City would use real life incidents to inspire its metropolitan plot shouldn't bother anyone (except the real life inspirations, of course). But borrowing from Seinfeld? Now that's a low blow.