April 25, 2013

This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated

This documentary details the travails that filmmakers have to go through to get an R rating on their edgy movies. It's not the world's most captivating documentary, but it makes the case that the MPAA is outdated and just all-around awful. The membership of the ratings board is kept secret,  a bizarre injustice that filmmaker Kirby Dick goes about rectifying by hiring a private investigator to track down their identities, which she does with dogged glee. Half of the fun of the movie is seeing the PI follow these hapless raters around, snapping their license plates and going through their garbage.

Most grating is that any kind of below-the-belt frontal nudity is going to get filmmakers an NC-17 rating, which means that it won't be seen in the theaters (except for the occasional art house or film festival). The result is a whitewashed American oeuvre of film work that abounds in shots of topless young women and not much else. I'd much rather see PG and PG-13 movies that are more tightly restricted in terms of language and nudity. It's important to preserve a realm of filmmaking that is innocent and truly child-appropriate. But the PG and PG-13 ratings are the appropriate place for this kind of care and conservatism. The R rating should be the place for freedom and honesty. After all, no parent who is truly concerned about exposing their kids to inappropriate material is going to take their child to an R-rated movie.

Also grating is the mere fact that such a small group of people are allowed to control the ratings system and thus the content of American filmmaking. The raters don't seem particularly sophisticated or fair, defending their choices (when finally confronted) with sentiments like "All I know is that I wouldn't feel comfortable watching that with my daughter." Uff—then don't go to R-rated movies with your daughter. The movie makes the case that the raters are really just shills for the studios, who want to maximize the profitability of films by cutting out any disturbing bits. The raters know what is expected of them and are simply doing their jobs. The solution isn't better raters but a completely different philosophical orientation within the MPAA, which probably isn't happening any time soon.

April 9, 2013

Julie Taymor's Tempest


How pissed am I that mediocre reviews kept me from seeing this movie till now? I'm not saying it's perfect, but the parts that are good are damn, damn good. Unfortunately, critics tend to be much harsher judges of experimental films than conventional ones.

Helen Mirren is so great as Prospera that I now can't imagine the play with a male Prospero. Djimon Hounsou has a monumentally challenging job as the slave Caliban and he tackles it fearlessly. Russell Brand was born to be a Shakespeare fool, and Ben Whishaw brings depth and spookiness to Ariel. Most of all, Julie Taymor creates a uniquely loaded atmosphere to the film. It feels weird and portentous, and if not all the special effects work, most are spectacular.

As Roger used to say, thumbs way, way up.

April 2, 2013

The Boy in the Suitcase

I just finished this new mystery/crime novel, another entry in the growing list of great Scandinavian thrillers. Perhaps a key to their success is that these novels have several nodes of storytelling: a main protagonist, a second protagonist working toward a similar goal but unaware of the first, and a villain (or two) who is working toward the same goal but with a different aim in mind. We get to see the thought processes and psychologies of three or four gripping characters who are slowly converging toward each other.

In The Boy in the Suitcase, we have the mother of a kidnapped child, the woman who has found and is protecting him, the kidnapper who's been cheated of payment, and a fourth character whose relationship to the others is murky.

The book was co-written by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, which makes it the second co-written Scandinavian thriller I've read in the last few months. Seems like a hard thing to do, co-write a novel, but these authors seem to do just fine.