"Shop therapy" is something more Americans than not have become addicted to over the last few decades in particular. They engage in indulgent overspending to make themselves feel better in the face of all sorts of adversities. At the end of the day, they're more in debt and have more crap they don't need. They avoid hard work and skate by on credit. All of these values are spotlit by an upcoming film, but shown through a very troubling lens indeed.
The most galling part of the trailer for Confessions of a Shopaholic is that it says it's ok to act like an idiot about debt and consumerism now more than ever; however, as much as I decry it, I've been as much part of the problem as everyone else.
Tuesday used to be a weekly holiday for me called "DVD Tuesday" when I was in college. I had a gold Discount Card sold by the Lacrosse team that got you 10% off all purchases excluding TVs & computers at Best Buy. That coupled with the standard release week discounting made my bang-for-buck extremely high when it came to loading up on DVDs. This was great for my film education and in the same stroke, horrible for my credit rating. The lousy credit education I got in high school combined with the easy availability of Student Credit Cards and my lack of interest in learning about what I was getting myself into plunged me into debt I'm still getting rid of years later, no longer buffered by cheap student living and financial aid.
Over the last three or four years, I've become a fervent anti-credit activist, with close friends and relatives sometimes yelling at me about how vehemently I pour hate on lending as a concept. Even at this point, people have such a lack of knowledgeability about credit debt, financing, and the US economy that they are dismissing the "cratering" world markets as something that doesn't and won't affect them. If you want a good look at predatory lending and financing practices that doesn't pull any punches, take a look at Maxed Out, a doc I covered from the 2006 South by Southwest Film Festival that Magnolia released on DVD a while back. Rent it via Amazon VOD here, buy the DVD from Amazon here, or Rent/Buy on iTunes.
I've been shaking my head at what Shopaholic represents since I heard it was announced. Especially in this climate, where things are going to get worse before they get better due to the nature of our economy, I am now anticipating the release of Confessions of a Shopaholic for a couple reasons. I wonder if it will open-and-close thanks to a public who doesn't want to be reminded of the reason we've destroyed our economy, or will the B.H. Chihuahua crowd go in droves, still deluded that "Happy days are here again"?
Culture of Demand is a recurring feature of Arthouse Cowboy focusing on the growing on-demand nature of how people think of and consume media from an anthropological perspective. If I miss a "digital" option of how to watch something, please let me know.
Read MoreElectric Shadow
CultureOfDemand: HSM3 versus Broadway
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/122138.html
http://jimhillmedia.com/blogs/jim_hill/archive/2008/09/25/will-senior-year-re-energize-disney-s-high-school-musical-franchise.aspx
Read MoreImportance of Ember
As I wrote a couple weeks ago about the hooks Gil Kenan's City of Ember has to the current state-of-the-game in the US election and the (now global) economic crisis, here are some select graphs that remain prescient:
"This is not an "adult" post-apocalyptic thriller or anything, but it isn't "kiddy" either. This is not a reinvention of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy film, but it is a vitally important cautionary tale for the climate we currently live in, especially in the US.
"Fundamentally, the thematic thrust of the movie involves paying attention when things don't sound or feel right, pulling your head out of the sand, and doing the right thing.
"There was no ever-present danger-danger in the "someone's out to get us", traditional sense, but instead I felt rather claustrophobic, like the city was caving in on the kids (and me by extension) just as the economy and the country seems to be crumbling at the moment. It reminds me of what my dad has told me has happened to Havana over the last five decades, complete with government-assigned professions "for the greater good" of a crumbling society."
I'll add here that I think the trailers are slightly overdoing expectations for the amount of "action-packed thrill-riding" in the movie proper. Kenan has exceptionally translated fast-paced cognitive discovery into physical action, so you should expect this is more of a discovery adventure than a "look out here comes the monster/army, get out the bazooka/power ring" thing.
"Swing-voter parents taking their kids to City of Ember will watch a crumbling civilization as a result of inaction coupled with empty The People Come First promises. They'll see a leader refuse to address how he's going to fix things other than say he's on the job and focused on no one but them all while he's only intent on deflecting concern and covering his own ass."
Post-apocalyptic fairy tale City of Ember starts pulling heads out of the sand today.
Read MoreCultureOfDemand: Che for kids
Re: Jeff's Che post about something Karina Longworth wrote about Che appeal to the 20something generation...
As a member of the Generation of Doom, I'm an anomaly in my unrepentant eagerness to see Che for a couple reasons: I was reared on movies like Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia and not only tolerate but expect 3-hour plus running times and vague moral perspective from great films, and on top of that, my father's direct immersion (I'm gonna withhold using the word 'involvement') in the Cuban revolution of '59 makes me more interested in El Che than the average 25 year-old who thinks they know a lot about movies. When I worked on a campus programming board when I was an undergrad, there was always great resistance to anything that ran over TWO hours, let alone 3. Well, unless there were hobbits in it.
The anecdote that a reader passed along a while back about some idiot in Best Buy not knowing what Citizen Kane was reminded me of these meetings where I would be alone in the room when I brought up Antonioni or Bresson, and any time I would mention Lawrence or Zhivago, one person or another would pipe in with "my dad likes it a lot, but isn't it, like, 60 years old or something?" At a certain point, it was like the High School Student Council was deciding that The Little Mermaid or Hackers made a better "Midnight Movie" than El Topo or Pink Flamingos.
Culture of Demand is a recurring feature of Arthouse Cowboy focusing on the growing on-demand nature of how people think of and consume media from an anthropological perspective. If I miss a "digital" option of how to watch something, please let me know.
Read MoreElection2008: Obama crushes McCain
I wasn't trained in the finest English schools like Andrew Sullivan, but I've won my fair share of parliamentary and Lincoln-Douglas debates. I've "flowed" (ask a debate nerd to explain that one) plenty as well. I'm far from objective, but there is no way you could score last night as a win for McCain or even a "keeping afloat."
The best move Obama made was dropping the "AIG went on a spa trip on taxpayer money" reference early on and letting it stew in viewers' minds the rest of the debate. Here's the invoice.
Even though things got off in the standard Presidential Debate style with candidates sidelining questions in favor of talking points, once they asked about Healthcare, it was over from there. While Barack Obama talked about his mom dying of cancer, McCain reacted as detatched and indifferent as possible, echoing Sarah Palin jumping in all perky yippy-skippy after Joe Biden talked about his dead wife and daughter. It's all grin grin, sneer sneer.
I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go through this a bit more chronologically:
McCain lead off and establish the precedent by breaking the debate rules and ignoring the format and time limitations. Great.
McCain's leadoff statement that it's nice to see Obama "at a Town Hall meeting" calls back to his insistence on weekly Town Hall debates that would have severely cut down Obama's time to go out and campaign and let battleground states actually get to know him.
McCain's bitter tone started here and permeated his answers, talking points, catchphrases, and "jokes" that went over like a fleet of lead balloons.
He then proceeded to drop his big new policy position that makes no practical sense: he wants the US to buy all the bad mortgage debt and refinance all of those subprime loans at the now-depreciated value and at better rates. Not only is that outright socialism if you ask the moderate Republi-Libertarians, but McCain is only using it as a ploy to sucker "those dumb poor people" into voting for him.
McCain then segued into talking about how he did the selfless thing, suspended his campaign (though he didn't stop campaigning or interviewing with Katie Couric) and flew to Washington to logjam the bailout plan until it had enough pork in it to satisfy him and his lobbyist campaign minders. Immediately after that, he all but told the first black questioner "not that 'you people' know who Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are." Depending on which station you were watching when McCain later called Obama That One, you may have seen this same guy wince. This isn't the angle I'm talking about, but here's the gaffe heard round the world:
After some good ol' fashioned bickering between the candidates, McCain then refused to prioritize a basic list of how he'd tackle Energy Reform, Healthcare, and Entitlement Programs. In the same breath as saying we'd do them all at once, he played the Reagan card, which he and Sarah Palin love pulling out when they feel overwhelmed. At this point, very early on, he began repeating Reagan, My Friends, Lieberman, Jobs, and My Record with such frequency, anything he did say that was of any substance got muffled. I'm glad I stayed home from my regular Debate Watch Party, because I would've been hammered about fifteen seconds in to this thing.
McCain entirely avoided a real answer to the Healthcare question (Right, Responsibility, or Privelige?) and Barack Obama finally went for the jugular. All McCain could do was keep spinning on and on about a fine he's invented. Everything really went downhill for him from that point. McCain repeatedly refused to acknowledge the topic presented in favor of his talking points that were tangentially related to the question.
I'm not giving Obama a complete pass here, because there were points where he prefaced his answer with a lengthy talking point and that drives me nuts. He did this more than once, and he eventually got back around to either setting the paradigm for the back and forth he had with McCain on the subject or redirecting the topic to what Obama thought was worth talking about. He really hit a groove later in the debate, but at first it came off as aloof, as if saying, "that's an interesting question, I'm going to answer it as if I'd asked it in this way." He's getting better at not coming off as Captain Arrugula, but there are still places where he slips. He turned it around, but I was really worried early on.
The most telling part of the whole night came at the end of the debate. After a clear and relaxed Obama answer to the "zen" question, McCain sounded rattled and jumpy...outright nervous. His strategy of teaching himself to hate his opponent in all his races is evident now more than ever. That sneer on his face is what seals it.
True undecided voters are becoming afraid of what this impulsive, cranky guy is going to do if he wins. He pops in juvenile "oh yeah but did you know?" comebacks and tries to shroud his own dirty politics in his military service and the fact he calls everyone his friend. The deal closer was what happened after Tom Brokaw asked the doddering old man to get the hell out of the way of his teleprompter.
McCain and Cindy Lou Oxycontin shook a couple hands and waved at a couple of the poor people and bolted. They probably couldn't stand to look at or smell them for too long.
Barack and Michelle stuck around for almost an hour. It seemed like as soon as McCain left, someone yelled "we're clear!!!" and everyone pulled out their disposable cameras and started smiling. McCain had earlier shook a Navy vet's hand who now seemed more pleased to meet the actual next President of the United States. There are tons of veterans out there who were watching last night who McCain completely lost, just like this guy.
The subject neither one of them wanted to be completely honest about or touch with a ten foot pole was the set of real facts about the mortgage crisis and the realistic (vague) expectation of "when it'll all be fixed," which this guy does a much better job of explaining than I do. The most prescient point I want to point out here is the erroneous holdover Boomer notion that everyone needs to own a home.
The pressure from parents to hurry up and buy a house or peer pressure of other twentysomething couples who have one is absolutely poisonous for young couples getting started. Unless you're phenomenally well-off, that's the most crippling financial decision you can make depending on your situation. The bar for "you are successful" is set at "get into as much debt as you can lock yourself into." Lock the lending industry's shackles on your wrists and pile on a bunch of debt, everything will be fine.
That's exactly the Reaganesque mindset and policy from 20 years ago that started moving us toward this rapidly worsening recession, specifically with thanks to trickle-down economics. That's the system where as long as we lessen the tax burden on the rich, the American public is to expect it'll all filter down and keep everyone in good shape. De-regulate and those companies can spread the wealth better, just trust them.
It turns out that instead of the spring waterfall it was advertised as, it's turned into a piss storm that's spreading across the globe. McCain can keep name-dropping Reagan all he wants, but it's not going to help when everyone is in the process of seeing how terrible Reagan's economic policy has been over the long term.
Oh, there I go again, playing the Reagan card.
Presidential Debates are equally one part what those of us who obsessively watch all this stuff see in the moment and what gets picked up the next day that Joe SixPack, Esq. took away from it.
What seems to have come through from last night is the following:
1) McCain called the black guy he snickered at all night That One
2) the Bo-ring debate was full of numbers and bo-ring crap
3) John McCain wants to make my shitty mortgage less shitty but not lower my taxes more any than the other guy
4) Barack Obama acts Presidential if that means calm and collected
5) John McCain acts Presidential if that means he carries himself like a cranky uncle who hasn't taken his pills
And now on a lighter note, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver on The Colbert Report last night where he refers to Barack Obama as the Tampa Bay Rays of the 2008 election:
Especially after this debate, alternate contender Paris Hilton has a chance to surge in the polls during "the greatest depression since The Notebook":
Read MoreSee more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die
Let the Right One In not playing Austin???
Thanks to the intrepid Scott Weinberg at Cinematical, here's a list of play dates and cities for Let the Right One In. Notably absent is Austin, Texas. It played here for Fantastic Fest, but how is it completely missing from the first run release schedule? The entire arthouse-going population of Austin didn't see it the three times it screened here last month.
Read MoreCrawford free on Hulu tomorrow
Fire up Hulu tomorrow to watch their first feature film premiere, David Modigliani's Crawford, which I raved about back in March when I saw it at SXSW. I can't find more concrete details than that and the fact the DVD is to be released immediately afterward.
"The beginning of the Bush years in Crawford begins a local economic boom: every storefront on the main street is rented, and the town's former glory many recall comes back. As the years wear on, we approach the point where the country began to implode, and once it does, it's kind of surprising how bad things turn out until you remind yourself that George W. Bush invaded Crawford before Afghanistan or Iraq."
Let the Right One back and forth
Devin at CHUD has recently decried the American remaking of Let the Right One In, and I couldn't agree more. From reporting the director attached as Cloverfield's Matt Reeves to the major objection of the original film's director to the idea of the remake, Devin's been covering this thing better than anyone else, in true CHUD form.
He brings up an important distinction in one article or another about how he doesn't want to see a remake of Nacho Vigalondo's Timecrimes go through but at the least that remake has the original visionary's blessing. I'm very conditional with remakes, but as we all know well, most of them are worthless. Then again, proportionately, the vast majority of movies completed around the world are worthless when you think about it. I believe in remakes like The Beat That My Heart Skipped, culled from James Toback's Fingers. I will defend Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate to the end of my days.
Touching various elements of Let The Right One In ruins the delicate construction of the entire piece.
Title
Change the title to Let Me In (one of the approximated translations of the book's title) or My New Neighbor or The New Girl Next Door or Can I Borrow a Liter of Plasma or any other focus-grouped, marketing agency-reworked version of the title makes no sense. The title as it stands is poetic.
Age
When you augment the age of the leads, the movie becomes one of two things:
1) Twilighterrific
2) a dork meets goth girl stereotyporama where the casting agency posts a notice looking for "Rainn Wilson but 16"
Violence
Did we learn nothing from the tanking of Hostel 2 and other gorefests? Adding gore for effect is something the American public is over, big-time. The fact this movie
Read MoreFantasticFest08 Secret Screening: RocknRolla
People derided Revolver as being one of the worst things they'd ever seen. I never saw it myself. People have been digging at Guy Ritchie about RocknRolla being "a lazy return to his comfort zone", and I want to know what's so wrong about doing what you do well? Hey Michael Jordan, you suck at Baseball, don't come back to Basketball, that'd be the easy choice.
Read MoreElection2008: Stay on Target
As my esteemed and occasionally reviled editor has pointed out, now is not the time to get lazy. I know people here in Texas who are plowing through registering voters all weekend in advance of the cutoff on Monday. Everyone in every other state should be doing every little bit. If early voting has begun for you, encourage your registered friends to get it done. If you haven't gotten involved at the grassroots level, getting your next-door neighbor to register helps more than you may think. It's the only pyramid scheme I'm behind 100%.
I've stolen the current expected electoral map from Electoral Vote explicitly to prod people to not just sit back and see a day dawn with President of the Walking Dead and VP PageantSarah SquareGlasses having won out of your, mine or our complacency. Looking at this map and the current trends, it could be magnificently easy to sit back and forget to vote or register or be active.
If the above map holds, it's thanks to people who've registered not sitting back and assuming Obama-Biden doesn't need your vote. If the above map holds, the Democratic ticket could have the election called for them before results start coming in from the West Coast, taking for granted California is a solid Obama state. By my math, the states pencilled blue from the East Coast through the Central Time Zone at the moment (which include Florida, Ohio, and Virginia) come out to a little over 220 electoral votes, with California's solid 55 a lock putting Obama over 270 handily.
I want that to actually happen. If anything, the chance McCain will go down in a resounding defeat means a lot, like the fact we could see revisions to the Electoral College and FEC that make it easier for people to vote and feel like that vote matters in "the most Democratic country in the world." There are plenty of people in Texas and other "Solid Red" states who choose not to vote because the Electoral Map exists as it does. The Civil War is the ancient past now, and States' Rights are no longer an issue related to which state wins the pissing match and gets a more disproportionate influence on who leads the country.
John McCain is employing the people who W. used to smear him in 2000 and they still can't manage to proof web ads before they run. First the "McCain Wins Debate" banner ad running before the first Presidential Debate happened, and now the towering opinion of famed celebrity Famous Person has called the VP debate for Palin. He's decided to pull out of Michigan to his running mate's chagrin, and if the Obama grassroots ops can keep him on the run in Florida and Ohio, it's over.
Sarah Palin did a catch-up interview with some guy from Fox News where she slipped in the answers to the Couric questions she avoided a few days ago regarding papers she reads and Supreme Court cases. Even the Fox News guy called her on treating it like an open-book test. On top of that, she's about to have the Troopergate thing finally explode in her face when the investigation findings are made public, which she currently has people trying to block as "unconstitutional."
On top of that, the GOP is picking up on the fact that all the poor people out there who vote go colorblind and turn on their "protectors" when things finally crash down all around them.
Where was all of this sense-talking Mainstream Media in 2004?
The above-cited details are grains of sand compared to the precipitous downslide the McCain campaign has begun, but again, don't underestimate him with a month left to go under any circumstances.
To get back to laughs, here's a clip of Brian Williams, former SNL guest host, Daily Show regular and apparent anchor of the NBC Nightly News. It never been a secret to me that Brian is an ardent Democrat, having on a long-ago school trip read his letter to LBJ that's prominently featured here in Austin at his Presidential Library. He articulates "what happened" on Thursday night.
Read More
I've stolen the current expected electoral map from Electoral Vote explicitly to prod people to not just sit back and see a day dawn with President of the Walking Dead and VP PageantSarah SquareGlasses having won out of your, mine or our complacency. Looking at this map and the current trends, it could be magnificently easy to sit back and forget to vote or register or be active.
If the above map holds, it's thanks to people who've registered not sitting back and assuming Obama-Biden doesn't need your vote. If the above map holds, the Democratic ticket could have the election called for them before results start coming in from the West Coast, taking for granted California is a solid Obama state. By my math, the states pencilled blue from the East Coast through the Central Time Zone at the moment (which include Florida, Ohio, and Virginia) come out to a little over 220 electoral votes, with California's solid 55 a lock putting Obama over 270 handily.
I want that to actually happen. If anything, the chance McCain will go down in a resounding defeat means a lot, like the fact we could see revisions to the Electoral College and FEC that make it easier for people to vote and feel like that vote matters in "the most Democratic country in the world." There are plenty of people in Texas and other "Solid Red" states who choose not to vote because the Electoral Map exists as it does. The Civil War is the ancient past now, and States' Rights are no longer an issue related to which state wins the pissing match and gets a more disproportionate influence on who leads the country.
John McCain is employing the people who W. used to smear him in 2000 and they still can't manage to proof web ads before they run. First the "McCain Wins Debate" banner ad running before the first Presidential Debate happened, and now the towering opinion of famed celebrity Famous Person has called the VP debate for Palin. He's decided to pull out of Michigan to his running mate's chagrin, and if the Obama grassroots ops can keep him on the run in Florida and Ohio, it's over.
Sarah Palin did a catch-up interview with some guy from Fox News where she slipped in the answers to the Couric questions she avoided a few days ago regarding papers she reads and Supreme Court cases. Even the Fox News guy called her on treating it like an open-book test. On top of that, she's about to have the Troopergate thing finally explode in her face when the investigation findings are made public, which she currently has people trying to block as "unconstitutional."
On top of that, the GOP is picking up on the fact that all the poor people out there who vote go colorblind and turn on their "protectors" when things finally crash down all around them.
Where was all of this sense-talking Mainstream Media in 2004?
The above-cited details are grains of sand compared to the precipitous downslide the McCain campaign has begun, but again, don't underestimate him with a month left to go under any circumstances.
To get back to laughs, here's a clip of Brian Williams, former SNL guest host, Daily Show regular and apparent anchor of the NBC Nightly News. It never been a secret to me that Brian is an ardent Democrat, having on a long-ago school trip read his letter to LBJ that's prominently featured here in Austin at his Presidential Library. He articulates "what happened" on Thursday night.
FantasticFest08: The Short Films of Nacho Vigalondo
Nacho Vigalondo is a name everyone is going to be much more familiar with very soon. After seeing this year's program of his short film work, I'm even more fascinated by this guy because now I'm along for the ride everyone else got on last year when Timecrimes (limited release Dec. 5th in the US) won everyone over. He was deservingly nominated for an Oscar a few years ago for 7:35 in the Morning, which closed the program.
Una leccion de cine (2005)
A Lesson in Filmmaking
I'm interspersing as many of his shorts as I can find, even if there are no subtitles. Apologies in advance if dates are incorrect.
The short program actually began with a trio of Spaghetti Western shorts made by filmmaker friends/associates/pals of Nacho's, which were entertaining enough, but things really began with this short, which could replace most undergraduate film programs in the United States. Nacho introduced it, as he did all subsequent shorts. Subtlety is one of the most important tenets of filmmaking, and Nacho gets it just right.
Domingo (2005)
Sunday
A couple is watching a UFO that's just sitting there, doing nothing. They fight and something amazing happens. Nacho prefaced this movie as "Cloverfield with no budget" and he mentioned at one point during the Q&A at the end that he's working out what he considers "the closest to a 'drama' that I would make" involving a man building a ramp to drive up and land on top of a UFO. Someone please give him the money to make that.
Codigo 7 (2002)
Code 7
Nacho's Phillip K. Dick-inspired, ultra-resourceful sci-fi trilogy magnum opus was one of his earliest short films. In advance of this epic of short proportions, he railed against Lord of the Rings, the Star Wars prequels, and trilogies as a concept. The first three seconds of this short film are more entertaining than any of the American-produced "spoof movies" that have been made of late. In all honesty, I have little to no tolerance for people who can't comprehend the sheer brilliance of the satire underneath the surface this piece or appreciate how it reveals Nacho to be more resourceful than most of Hollywood with no tools other than a camera.
Nacho as an Actor
Las adventuras galacticas de Jaime de Funes y Arancha (2003)
The Galactic Adventures of Jaime de Funes and Arancha
Nacho didn't direct this, but instead played the lead in it alongside Alejandro Tejeria, star of Codigo 7. In addition to this short, we got to see extended behind-the-scenes footage of them trying to get Nacho to vomit. He referred to his ability in this realm in this way: "Meryl Streep can cry, I can vomit."
Ecological Shorts
Nacho prefaced these as "work [he] did for the money." He's very ecologically-minded in his personal life, but in his filmmaking life he's more likely to be ecologically destructive. In the first short shown he points to the rationale behind low-rent production values in science fiction:
Ciencia ficcion barata (2007)
Cheap Science Fiction
In the second, his protagonist finds himself communicating across parallel universes with alternate versions of himself. A great example of sharp, quick cuts effectively used.
Cambiando el mundo (2007)
Changing the World
Directed for TV
Nacho directed the below-embedded sketches for La Hora Chananate, a sketch comedy show in Spain that he referred to as their contemporary version of Monty Python. The one I couldn't find was a really enjoyable Back to the Future 4 sketch that ends in a musical number.
La Hora Chananate: 24
La Hora Chananate: Gremlins 3
I like that we got a look at european TV sketch comedy and that the tack taken in all of them is rife with social commentary. My wife said the Back to the Future one was depressing, but I thought it was completely valid that someone is asking "where are the fucking flying cars?"
Glorious 35mm
Next were his two shorts shot on 35, both of which were great for different reasons. These two shorts were what we built to over the hour and a half, and the journey was very fulfilling for me. I overheard Nacho mention to someone after everything was all over that he didn't know what made him so nervous. I imagine it must have felt like a concert pianist having people watch tape of his first lesson through his opening at Carnegie Hall. The journey showed us all the real depth of Nacho's seeming effortless intuitive prowess, so the only reason for the nerves must have been an extension of his attention to precision.
Choque (2005)
Crash
I swear on my love of the cinema that this short film, titled "Crash" in english, is much better than the American feature of the same name. The American Crash takes itself so terribly seriously and lathers on the melodrama thicker than the most popular telenovelas, and Nacho takes the theme of juvenile conflict from the childish perspective and get the point across without belaboring it. I like other Paul Haggis work, but I really absolutely couldn't roll with the lesser, Best Picture-winning movie called Crash made in 2005. I would much rather hang with Crash in VigalondoVision for the ten minutes Nacho takes to craft his tale of irrational, hormonally-driven hatred and conflict.
7:35 de la manana (2003)
7:35 in the Morning
Please watch this short before reading my commentary.
This is the 2005 Oscar-nominated short that he is best known for, and he joked that after The Dark Knight, it can be seen as something of an origin story for a supervillain. 7:35 makes me wonder why no one has opened a checkbook and told Nacho to do whatever he wants. An entry on his blog reveals that in particular, he really does have the right temperament and sense of humor to take a valiant stab in the heart of what has become its own standalone genre along old standbys like Romantic Comedy and Dry English Period Drama.
American filmmakers have seemingly wholesale gone to the extreme of "let me just break through so I can sell out on being artistic and unique," following the Lucas model. Nacho is constantly itching to create something new and as much as he enjoys festivals like Fantastic Fest, he wrestles with the fact that going to them breaks up his capability for filmmaking. His hunger for filmmaking hasn't remotely died down, but has instead grown exponentially, which is all the better for all of us.
Nacho is a filmmaker who attends festivals his work is featured in and watches other people's films. Those of you who have been to festivals know how rare that is for someone who's sold a film in the US.
Fantastic Fest's summary clips from the screening I went to:
This post has helped me realize more than ever how crippling it is to not have accented spanish characters available for use in Movable Type. Solving that problem on the backend may take up my entire afternoon today, so RocknRolla and other stuff will pop up tomorrow or late tonight.
Read MoreFantasticFest: Nacho Vigalondo and other crammed reviews
I'm earnestly doing my best to finish transcribing an interview I did with Nacho last week in addition to writing up the program of his short films that they programmed this year. I've gotta button up FF2008 today and tomorrow so I can get back to business as usual. There are a couple movies I'm trying to track down screeners for that'll get written up when I've got discs in hand. The Short Films of Nacho Vigalondo, RocknRolla, Gachi Boy, and maybe a couple others, time (and waking hours)-permitting are on their way. Stay tuned.
Read MoreRegion 0: The IT Crowd
An article I read in the New York Dying Media Times angered me so much I'm firing off a post to defend one of my favorite TV shows from the UK.
I love America. I love mom, Apple Pie, and freedom. I love the freedom of the press we have in this country. I hate the fact that some of the people writing for our oldest, most-respected outlet that reports "all the news thats fit to print" can be unrepentantly lazy idiots.
If I could Find+Replace the New York Times' recent review of The IT Crowd with what I'm about to write below, I would. NYT's Ginia Bellafante not only wrote a hastily-compiled "review" of the show in advance of its premiere on IFC, there's little evidence she did more than watch a promo trailer before baselessly calling it a rip-off of The Office. Judging from her other recent writing, she's a fan of bland Bravo network design competition shows and emo-soaked primetime drama. I'm probably making baseless assumptions myself, but that's only in the tradition of her infuriatingly childish IT Crowd review.
The show concerns the basement-bound denizens of a corporate IT department and is indeed a workplace sitcom, but it is not remotely comparable in form to the single-camera, docu-com that The Office is and always will be. The show follows Jen (Katherine Parkinson), an upward corporate climber who makes the mistake (she finds) to list "computer experience" on her CV, getting her sent to manage the IT department, which is staffed by wisecrack-slinging slacker Roy (Chris O'Dowd) and his socially-awkward compatriot Moss (Richard Ayoade). All three and their supporting castmates are fantastic and pop up occasionally in things Americans see now and then or after they get imported by HBO. This weekend, you can see both O'Dowd and Parkinson in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People with Simon Pegg.
Thanks to the wonders of region-free DVD players and shows hitting DVD in the UK well in advance of them premiering on US channels, I've seen all of The IT Crowd as it's aired thus far. In fact, thanks to that same technology, I'd previously seen creator Graham Linehan's other work, best known among it Father Ted (a mother-fucking classic...note the use of a hyphen) and Black Books. Linehan's work excels in sarcasm, silliness, and absurdity (and that's a sincere compliment int he form of a list). These are the same qualities that make The IT Crowd wonderful. It balances sometimes surreal silliness and geek reference jokes with sharply-written situational comedy and doesn't smash you over the head with any of them. It's quite a perfect stew.
The IT Crowd is more enjoyable than all of the new shows that US networks put on the air this fall...combined. It is more precisely scripted and expertly performed than the vast majority of the abortions they've paraded on the air in recent memory either. Perhaps that is why NBC (or whoever) failed miserably doing a pilot for a US version of the show. I've not been able to track down a copy of that pilot that was panned by a number of people in early 2007, but I'm sure it was as badly-done as McG's "reimagining" of Spaced would've been had it not been killed before production.
Do not brush aside The IT Crowd because someone with a predisposition against situation comedy who writes for the New York Times only felt like spending 5 minutes pretending to review it. The DVDs exist, and there's no reason (especially in New Yawk) that one couldn't do the "watch more than one episode" degree of research on a highly-acclaimed British show that's about to start its third season (series) on the air.
Wait a minute...she mentions something from an episode later in the first season, so it appears she did watch more than a clip. Maybe she's just launching a takedown campaign on anything remotely concerned with nerds, geeks, and the socially allergic. Maybe she copy/pasted the wrong review template into Word. Maybe she was too busy livejournaling about feelings and didn't feel like the oppressive act of laughter and the tyrannous nature of having fun.
My wife, who is decidedly not geeky and watches the Style network's How Do I Look? and Clean House considers The IT Crowd one of her favorite sitcoms. She also likes Bravo's Top Design, and I'll repeat: she loves her some IT Crowd. The only logical conclusion my horribly under-developed American brain can suss out of all this data is that Ginia Bellafante is a blockhead of epic proportions.
I have now added Black Books as well as the long-neglected Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and Man to Man With Dean Learner DVDs to my already overrun queue of Region0 projects. I think I'm less angry about this whole sordid ordeal now, so I should write a sincere apology letter due to the embarrassment I've caused here. Please see it below if you read (or Google Translate) English and reside in Europe. Americans, please carry on being irrationally afraid of having a black President.
Dear Enlightened Europe,
My dear friend, I regret to write you once again in this fashion. It pains me that the vast majority of our correspondence is limited to these sad apologies.
Please assume my entire country is peppered with uncultured, lazy bastards like an American steak is peppered with...pepper. I will endeavour (that is how you prefer it to be spelled, yes?) to correct these egregious errors of "critical" judgment as soon as I notice them, but lordy lord...there are so many idiots here, and only so many hours in the day.
Despondently,
M. W. Chiullan
American Yahoo Cowboy
Texas, US of A
Read More
If I could Find+Replace the New York Times' recent review of The IT Crowd with what I'm about to write below, I would. NYT's Ginia Bellafante not only wrote a hastily-compiled "review" of the show in advance of its premiere on IFC, there's little evidence she did more than watch a promo trailer before baselessly calling it a rip-off of The Office. Judging from her other recent writing, she's a fan of bland Bravo network design competition shows and emo-soaked primetime drama. I'm probably making baseless assumptions myself, but that's only in the tradition of her infuriatingly childish IT Crowd review.
The show concerns the basement-bound denizens of a corporate IT department and is indeed a workplace sitcom, but it is not remotely comparable in form to the single-camera, docu-com that The Office is and always will be. The show follows Jen (Katherine Parkinson), an upward corporate climber who makes the mistake (she finds) to list "computer experience" on her CV, getting her sent to manage the IT department, which is staffed by wisecrack-slinging slacker Roy (Chris O'Dowd) and his socially-awkward compatriot Moss (Richard Ayoade). All three and their supporting castmates are fantastic and pop up occasionally in things Americans see now and then or after they get imported by HBO. This weekend, you can see both O'Dowd and Parkinson in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People with Simon Pegg.
Thanks to the wonders of region-free DVD players and shows hitting DVD in the UK well in advance of them premiering on US channels, I've seen all of The IT Crowd as it's aired thus far. In fact, thanks to that same technology, I'd previously seen creator Graham Linehan's other work, best known among it Father Ted (a mother-fucking classic...note the use of a hyphen) and Black Books. Linehan's work excels in sarcasm, silliness, and absurdity (and that's a sincere compliment int he form of a list). These are the same qualities that make The IT Crowd wonderful. It balances sometimes surreal silliness and geek reference jokes with sharply-written situational comedy and doesn't smash you over the head with any of them. It's quite a perfect stew.
The IT Crowd is more enjoyable than all of the new shows that US networks put on the air this fall...combined. It is more precisely scripted and expertly performed than the vast majority of the abortions they've paraded on the air in recent memory either. Perhaps that is why NBC (or whoever) failed miserably doing a pilot for a US version of the show. I've not been able to track down a copy of that pilot that was panned by a number of people in early 2007, but I'm sure it was as badly-done as McG's "reimagining" of Spaced would've been had it not been killed before production.
Do not brush aside The IT Crowd because someone with a predisposition against situation comedy who writes for the New York Times only felt like spending 5 minutes pretending to review it. The DVDs exist, and there's no reason (especially in New Yawk) that one couldn't do the "watch more than one episode" degree of research on a highly-acclaimed British show that's about to start its third season (series) on the air.
Wait a minute...she mentions something from an episode later in the first season, so it appears she did watch more than a clip. Maybe she's just launching a takedown campaign on anything remotely concerned with nerds, geeks, and the socially allergic. Maybe she copy/pasted the wrong review template into Word. Maybe she was too busy livejournaling about feelings and didn't feel like the oppressive act of laughter and the tyrannous nature of having fun.
My wife, who is decidedly not geeky and watches the Style network's How Do I Look? and Clean House considers The IT Crowd one of her favorite sitcoms. She also likes Bravo's Top Design, and I'll repeat: she loves her some IT Crowd. The only logical conclusion my horribly under-developed American brain can suss out of all this data is that Ginia Bellafante is a blockhead of epic proportions.
I have now added Black Books as well as the long-neglected Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and Man to Man With Dean Learner DVDs to my already overrun queue of Region0 projects. I think I'm less angry about this whole sordid ordeal now, so I should write a sincere apology letter due to the embarrassment I've caused here. Please see it below if you read (or Google Translate) English and reside in Europe. Americans, please carry on being irrationally afraid of having a black President.
Dear Enlightened Europe,
My dear friend, I regret to write you once again in this fashion. It pains me that the vast majority of our correspondence is limited to these sad apologies.
Please assume my entire country is peppered with uncultured, lazy bastards like an American steak is peppered with...pepper. I will endeavour (that is how you prefer it to be spelled, yes?) to correct these egregious errors of "critical" judgment as soon as I notice them, but lordy lord...there are so many idiots here, and only so many hours in the day.
Despondently,
M. W. Chiullan
American Yahoo Cowboy
Texas, US of AHamlet to direct Thor?
I'll be honest: I'm a comic book fan, but I was puzzled as to how they'd adapt Thor and it not fail miserably in execution and box office returns, but with Kenneth Branagh directing, this could be a completely different thing.
Either we'll see ol' Sir Ken go the route of directing a DeMille Superhero movie, since the screenwriter has described it as a Norse/Biblical Epic wherein a God awakens...or we'll see his followup to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I didn't hate as much as others did, but I can't say I found it memorable.
Up until this point I haven't been able to see this thing working without someone like originally-attached helmer Matthew Vaughn, but this may be an excellent fit. Maybe we could then look forward to Branagh playing Jarvis in the Avengers flick. Karl Urban for the med student-turned Thunder God?
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Either we'll see ol' Sir Ken go the route of directing a DeMille Superhero movie, since the screenwriter has described it as a Norse/Biblical Epic wherein a God awakens...or we'll see his followup to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I didn't hate as much as others did, but I can't say I found it memorable.
Up until this point I haven't been able to see this thing working without someone like originally-attached helmer Matthew Vaughn, but this may be an excellent fit. Maybe we could then look forward to Branagh playing Jarvis in the Avengers flick. Karl Urban for the med student-turned Thunder God?FantasticFest08: Donkey Punch
I hated, hated, hated, hated all the people in this movie. The movie itself I can't say I enjoyed, but instead appreciated exclusively from an anthropological perspective. If I think of the boat full of morons in the movie as under-developed primates, it's easier to not feel like I wasted a little over an hour and a half watching this early one afternoon at Fantastic Fest with my friend Peter Martin from Cinematical/Twitchfilm.
There's no really...classy way to talk about these people, so pardon the terminology I use. While on "holiday" in Mallorca, Spain, two unrepentantly loose British chicks and their much more cautious friend get duped into hanging out with four penis-for-brains yacht sailors. One drug leads to another and people start fucking. One of the dickbrains decides he's going to Donkey Punch the girl he's plowing, and everything goes downhill.
Death, murder, and madness on the high seas ensues. It's the hipster, empty-headed boat version of a survival horror video game without the zombies or vampires. One of the characters is dispatched in particularly...explosive fashion, and at that point I immediately hoped they would all off each other and I'd be done with them and the movie quickly.
I really couldn't get invested in any of these morons. As survival horror movies go, it's not bad, and even hilarious thanks to the utterly idiotic seven lead characters' thought processes and gut reactions to quite literally every single thing that happens. It's one of the few instances of movies where I couldn't give a shit about anyone in the movie living or dying, but found myself interested in their terribly under-developed sense of survival. I hope this movie was conceived as an intentional outright joke, and the sigh of the surviving individual(s) (don't wanna spoil anything!!!) at the end almost said, "thank god all that mindless crap is over."
Donkey Punch hits the US in the back of the neck in January.
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There's no really...classy way to talk about these people, so pardon the terminology I use. While on "holiday" in Mallorca, Spain, two unrepentantly loose British chicks and their much more cautious friend get duped into hanging out with four penis-for-brains yacht sailors. One drug leads to another and people start fucking. One of the dickbrains decides he's going to Donkey Punch the girl he's plowing, and everything goes downhill.
Death, murder, and madness on the high seas ensues. It's the hipster, empty-headed boat version of a survival horror video game without the zombies or vampires. One of the characters is dispatched in particularly...explosive fashion, and at that point I immediately hoped they would all off each other and I'd be done with them and the movie quickly.
I really couldn't get invested in any of these morons. As survival horror movies go, it's not bad, and even hilarious thanks to the utterly idiotic seven lead characters' thought processes and gut reactions to quite literally every single thing that happens. It's one of the few instances of movies where I couldn't give a shit about anyone in the movie living or dying, but found myself interested in their terribly under-developed sense of survival. I hope this movie was conceived as an intentional outright joke, and the sigh of the surviving individual(s) (don't wanna spoil anything!!!) at the end almost said, "thank god all that mindless crap is over."
Donkey Punch hits the US in the back of the neck in January.Evangelicals, Kirk Cameron, and Fireproof
Nikki Finke puts it best as to the wherefores and hows of the evangelical-produced, directed, and scripted Fireproof coming out of nowhere doing big business on less than a thousand screens.
Why can't other interest groups can't band together and make a film explode like this? They're not nearly as organized or fanatical. As much as evangelical Christians want to call out atheists, deists, and agnostics as being organized armies of the devil, they are not as regimented as the Soldiers of Christ-types are. I bet Religulous won't do as well as this one proportional to per-screen average for that reason.
Read MoreFantasticFest08: Muay Thai Chaiya
Since Ong Bak, I've gotten more into Thai martial arts movies than I ever was before. This year's festival spoiled me with two excellent Thai fighter flicks. If there is an absolute dream-team double feature I'd say comes to mind from this year's Fantastic Fest, it'd be back-to-back viewing Chocolate with Muay Thai Chaiya.
Muay Thai Chaiya follows three guys who meet in a thai boxing camp one summer and become inseparable friends. One of them is the son of a legendary former fighter whose brother gets a shot at the big time in Bangkok. We follow the three boys to adulthood in what honestly becomes something of a Thai boxing Goodfellas.
The fighting is clean, traditional Muay Thai stuff, less sensational than in Chocolate, more gritty and realistic. The story takes these guys from best of young intentions to their adult lives, replete with ridiculously violent encounters inside and outside various fighting rings. As you progress in the movie, they get further away from traditional Muay Thai, with bits of official sanctioned fights thrown in.
My mind draws a blank thinking of a similar movie's story to compare Muay Thai Chaiya to, but it's a "coming of age buddy fighter drama" in the diaspora of fighting movies. It does this against the backdrop of the disco era, which they nail to a T (as I assume, having not been alive or in Thailand in the 70's).
Even though I mention Goodfellas, don't expect this to be some crime epic. There is some descent into the underworld of Bangkok, but I'm more generally referring to this being a loss of innocence movie with a brotherhood theme and lots of polyester. I'm definitely recommending this one to all of my friends who dig fighting movies, but it may not be the best one for them to watch with their wives or significant others who can't handle graphic gun/blade/spear violence.
Aside from some sentimental bits with sad-eyed, longing calls of someone's name ("Piaaaaak" "Sripraaaiiiiii" "Samorrrrrr" "Paaaoooooooo" they cry) melodramatically sitting you back from the edge of your seat, the action, intensity and momentum of the movie keep you engaged throughout. It was nominated for the Thai equivalent of Best Picture, Actor, Director, Cinematographer, and a few others, and won Actor, Supporting, Art Direction, and Editing. It definitely deserved accolades for Editing and particularly Art Design, though I hesitate to jump in on foreign language (that I don't speak) acting.
This a great cinematic pairing to Chocolate, like I said. It'd be even better to throw some Pad Thai in for a mid-movie meal. I smell a great programming tie-in for Tim and the Drafthouse this coming January when Chocolate hits limited US release.
I don't know if there are Region 1 plans for this movie theatrically or on DVD, but it came out in Thailand last year, so I'll do some research and post an update in my new recurring feature, "Region0" later this week.
Read More
My mind draws a blank thinking of a similar movie's story to compare Muay Thai Chaiya to, but it's a "coming of age buddy fighter drama" in the diaspora of fighting movies. It does this against the backdrop of the disco era, which they nail to a T (as I assume, having not been alive or in Thailand in the 70's).
Even though I mention Goodfellas, don't expect this to be some crime epic. There is some descent into the underworld of Bangkok, but I'm more generally referring to this being a loss of innocence movie with a brotherhood theme and lots of polyester. I'm definitely recommending this one to all of my friends who dig fighting movies, but it may not be the best one for them to watch with their wives or significant others who can't handle graphic gun/blade/spear violence.
Aside from some sentimental bits with sad-eyed, longing calls of someone's name ("Piaaaaak" "Sripraaaiiiiii" "Samorrrrrr" "Paaaoooooooo" they cry) melodramatically sitting you back from the edge of your seat, the action, intensity and momentum of the movie keep you engaged throughout. It was nominated for the Thai equivalent of Best Picture, Actor, Director, Cinematographer, and a few others, and won Actor, Supporting, Art Direction, and Editing. It definitely deserved accolades for Editing and particularly Art Design, though I hesitate to jump in on foreign language (that I don't speak) acting.
This a great cinematic pairing to Chocolate, like I said. It'd be even better to throw some Pad Thai in for a mid-movie meal. I smell a great programming tie-in for Tim and the Drafthouse this coming January when Chocolate hits limited US release.
I don't know if there are Region 1 plans for this movie theatrically or on DVD, but it came out in Thailand last year, so I'll do some research and post an update in my new recurring feature, "Region0" later this week.FantasticFest08: Zombie Girl: THE MOVIE
I only moved to Austin a little over a year ago, and find myself learning more about the film culture here day by day. A few years back, Austinite Emily Hagins directed her own feature-length zombie movie here that touched most points of the local filmmaking and filmgoing spectrum. She posted a casting notice on a board that read: "12-15 year olds needed for feature-length zombie movie". Once Justin Johnson, Erik Mauck, and Aaron Marshall found out the director of said independent feature was a 12 year old girl, Zombie Girl: THE MOVIE was born.
Zombie Girl is a doc about her emergence as a filmmaker and the rise of "kid filmmakers" as a subset of the thousands of independent filmmakers out there in this era of YouTube.
Emily and her ever-supportive mom are the focus of the piece, littered with Austin film mainstays like Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League, Ain't It Cool News Headgeek Harry Knowles & one of his subordinate writers Christopher Cargill (Massawyrm). A couple of film festival pals I've made over the years showed up to my surprise as well, including Tony Vespe, the younger brother of AICN's Quint. Tony turns out to be one of the most entertaining parts of the movie, dropping in with hilarious one-liners from time to time.
Emily became a regular at the dearly departed Alamo Drafthouse Downtown off of Colorado Street, her mom always (according to Tim) at her side for all kinds of horror films. As weird or gruesome as the film may be, mom was happy to be there with her so she could see what she's most passionate about.
No less than Fantastic Fest fixture Nacho Vigalondo (director of the upcoming Timecrimes) mentioned during the post-show Q&A how many filmmakers (himself included) would have killed for a supportive parent doing everything they could to make their kid's "weird hobby" come to life. Megan (Emily's mom) does everything from help bankroll the whole thing to be a true production management swiss army knife.
Their relationship is understandably strained in places as the well-known strains of independent production weigh on them both, and contrary to how it seems Megan felt she came off in the film, her intentions are always to help Emily achieve her dreams.
As I understand there are no clear distribution plans at the moment for Zombie Girl, but wherever it goes, it'd be great to see it pop up on TV a couple years from now as Emily will certainly have a few more films under her belt by then. She wrapped her second feature (The Retelling) with a much larger crew this past summer, a ghost story set in a small town in Texas.
Emily's first feature, Pathogen, is available from her website for a solid $8.
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Zombie Girl is a doc about her emergence as a filmmaker and the rise of "kid filmmakers" as a subset of the thousands of independent filmmakers out there in this era of YouTube.
Emily and her ever-supportive mom are the focus of the piece, littered with Austin film mainstays like Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League, Ain't It Cool News Headgeek Harry Knowles & one of his subordinate writers Christopher Cargill (Massawyrm). A couple of film festival pals I've made over the years showed up to my surprise as well, including Tony Vespe, the younger brother of AICN's Quint. Tony turns out to be one of the most entertaining parts of the movie, dropping in with hilarious one-liners from time to time.
Emily became a regular at the dearly departed Alamo Drafthouse Downtown off of Colorado Street, her mom always (according to Tim) at her side for all kinds of horror films. As weird or gruesome as the film may be, mom was happy to be there with her so she could see what she's most passionate about.
No less than Fantastic Fest fixture Nacho Vigalondo (director of the upcoming Timecrimes) mentioned during the post-show Q&A how many filmmakers (himself included) would have killed for a supportive parent doing everything they could to make their kid's "weird hobby" come to life. Megan (Emily's mom) does everything from help bankroll the whole thing to be a true production management swiss army knife.
Their relationship is understandably strained in places as the well-known strains of independent production weigh on them both, and contrary to how it seems Megan felt she came off in the film, her intentions are always to help Emily achieve her dreams.
As I understand there are no clear distribution plans at the moment for Zombie Girl, but wherever it goes, it'd be great to see it pop up on TV a couple years from now as Emily will certainly have a few more films under her belt by then. She wrapped her second feature (The Retelling) with a much larger crew this past summer, a ghost story set in a small town in Texas.
Emily's first feature, Pathogen, is available from her website for a solid $8.The Best of Fantastic Fest 2008 so far
I'm re-posting and amending this rundown of what I've covered so far. I'll be completing my coverage of Fantastic Fest 2008 into next week due to the sheer volume of stuff I saw, interspersing that coverage with the first non-festival week of my full-fledged return to writing for Hollywood Elsewhere covering the "middle coast" that is Austin.
Zack & Miri was a lot of fun. If you like Kevin Smith's previous work, odds are you'll love it. Justin Long on his own was more worth the price of an admission to me than most of the major releases that have come out this year. The rest of the movie plays really sympathetically to the circumstances working people find themselves in these days. I think it's gonna play like gangbusters (or gangbangers) at the end of October.
Fanboys' shortcomings I forgave, but many outside real Star Wars geeks woudn't, but I still have a lot of respect for the fact it finally at long last got finished.
Jean-Claude Van Damme literally gives the performance of his life in JCVD. It's a lot better than you may think from reading a synopsis.
Terra is far and away better than all of the generic "insert cute animal here" family-friendly CGI movies released these days. An inspired, independently-produced CGI feature that does Star Wars better than Lucasfilm seems to of late. I'll go a bit more detailed on it when it approaches general release, hopefully in the currently-planned 3D iteration.
Fear(s) of the Dark and Jennifer Lynch's Surveillance didn't thrill me overall, but parts of Fear(s) are excellent depending on your taste, and Surveillance could do with some trimming of the out-of-left-field cop dialogue. It's otherwise a pretty good serial killer flick with some people chewing up dialogue and parts they don't routinely get.
Let The Right One In is as good as everyone says it is, but just trust all the positive reviews we all know are out there and avoid getting anything spoiled for you by not reading too much about the film in advance. This movie, Chocolate, and La Creme are my three favorite non-special screenings I saw all week. I'll settle on a final Best of the Fest list early this week. Trying to decide if a couple movies kept me as engaged long-term as they did the day I saw them, which takes some time for reflection. Horror/genre films are easy to jump into loving, only to find you've mostly forgotten them shortly afterward. I'll invent some awards or distinctions to give all the best stuff once all's written and posted.
The Closing Night Film, City of Ember, is no mere "kid movie" especially thanks to when it's being released (about a week after Sarah Palin gets trounced by Joe Biden in the VP debate). No sooner did I joke about them probably not pitching the marketing toward the empty spin coming out of certain candidates' mouths, but they air a "campaign" ad for the movie following the McCain-Obama debate last night, which I juxtaposed with some real-life meaningless buzzwording by Governor Snowmoose Squareglasses.
Completely missed:
Seventh Moon
Deadgirl
Eagle Eye
The Brothers Bloom
Appaloosa
Role Models
Write-ups forthcoming:
RockNRolla
The Short Films of Nacho Vigalondo
Zombie Girl: THE MOVIE
Muay Thai Chaiya
Donkey Punch
Santos
I Think We're Alone Now
footage from Disney's Bolt
more movies, don't have the list handy at the moment
an interview with Nacho Vigalondo
some extra stuff I'm working on lining up to cap off Fantastic Fest 2008
It looks like a lot, but it'll all be posted and finished by mid-week. Of course that means give me until the end of this week, just to be safe. It's good to be back.
Read MoreFantasticFest08: La Creme
Fantastic Fest 2008 was overwhelmingly a series of wonderful surprises for me, and La Creme is great addition to the list of the Best of Fantastic Fest. What they do with a very spare budget and a predominantly non-actor filled cast is remarkable. These Europeans have the chops...you just don't find as many Americans trying this hard anymore.
Francois Mangin (Laurent Legeay), an out-of-work salesman, wakes up Christmas morning and finds he has been gifted a jar of face cream. When he puts "la creme" on his face, whoever looks at his face thinks he's the most famous man in France. In some cases they project the qualities of the most famous person they hold in esteem on him, in others they think he is Gerard Depardieu. At face value, it may sound like an episode of The Twilight Zone translated into French, but as a movie, it holds up for me as one of the most engaging movies about fame itself that I've seen in a long while, maybe ever.
Opportunity knocks in the form of a job interview for Francois, but it turns out he's up against another guy for the job. They both need the work, and are set against each other to vie for the job.
There's no pretense as you see in the American system of stocking the movie with stars for effect or to push box office receipts. I have a soft spot for movie with few professional actors primarily because they just do the work, without the distant look of "which assistant am I going to fire today?" gleaming in their eye. The director, Reynald Bertrand, cast his cousin in the lead and if I didn't know better, I'd think he was probably a well-respected French character actor.
Bertrand is one of the best film editors working in France, and he cuts himself a lean, precise directorial debut here that's equally poignant and hilarious about the cult of celebrity. According to a post-show Q&A he was equally inspired by people randomly mistaking his father (a retired teacher) for some famous person as well as his his day job editing the French equivalents of empty-headed, lowest common denominator comedies we see in the US. In addition to the "paying the bills" flicks he's cut, Bertrand edited the lauded OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies.
The grand, sad irony of the film is that it hasn't been picked up in France expressly because there are no stars in it. Take a look at the film's official website and spread the word if you saw it at FF or elsewhere. If you're attending one of its upcoming festival appearances, make sure to see it.
I suppose the US question of what to do with it involves how to market a French film with no stars to an American audience that isn't always receptive to French films normally. If anything, these wonderful digital distribution options that exist now through collaborations of companies like Hulu and Cinetic Rights Management make some sort of a post-festival circuit future for a movie like this plausible even if no one picks it up to go out to a limited run before hitting DVD. That is not to say I don't think this movie could make it theatrically.
Of all the films that played Fantastic Fest that currently have no distributor, this one deserves to be seen the most. Get the right distributor and get the right press in front of it, and this movie will do you a decent return for what it'll cost to pick up. I know plenty of Francophiles who care less about stars in French imports than they do about the movie being good and not just serving as a French-language version of an American film they avoid purposefully. This is a director with vision and talent, and his first film deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible.
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Francois Mangin (Laurent Legeay), an out-of-work salesman, wakes up Christmas morning and finds he has been gifted a jar of face cream. When he puts "la creme" on his face, whoever looks at his face thinks he's the most famous man in France. In some cases they project the qualities of the most famous person they hold in esteem on him, in others they think he is Gerard Depardieu. At face value, it may sound like an episode of The Twilight Zone translated into French, but as a movie, it holds up for me as one of the most engaging movies about fame itself that I've seen in a long while, maybe ever.
Opportunity knocks in the form of a job interview for Francois, but it turns out he's up against another guy for the job. They both need the work, and are set against each other to vie for the job.
There's no pretense as you see in the American system of stocking the movie with stars for effect or to push box office receipts. I have a soft spot for movie with few professional actors primarily because they just do the work, without the distant look of "which assistant am I going to fire today?" gleaming in their eye. The director, Reynald Bertrand, cast his cousin in the lead and if I didn't know better, I'd think he was probably a well-respected French character actor.
Bertrand is one of the best film editors working in France, and he cuts himself a lean, precise directorial debut here that's equally poignant and hilarious about the cult of celebrity. According to a post-show Q&A he was equally inspired by people randomly mistaking his father (a retired teacher) for some famous person as well as his his day job editing the French equivalents of empty-headed, lowest common denominator comedies we see in the US. In addition to the "paying the bills" flicks he's cut, Bertrand edited the lauded OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies.
The grand, sad irony of the film is that it hasn't been picked up in France expressly because there are no stars in it. Take a look at the film's official website and spread the word if you saw it at FF or elsewhere. If you're attending one of its upcoming festival appearances, make sure to see it.
I suppose the US question of what to do with it involves how to market a French film with no stars to an American audience that isn't always receptive to French films normally. If anything, these wonderful digital distribution options that exist now through collaborations of companies like Hulu and Cinetic Rights Management make some sort of a post-festival circuit future for a movie like this plausible even if no one picks it up to go out to a limited run before hitting DVD. That is not to say I don't think this movie could make it theatrically.
Of all the films that played Fantastic Fest that currently have no distributor, this one deserves to be seen the most. Get the right distributor and get the right press in front of it, and this movie will do you a decent return for what it'll cost to pick up. I know plenty of Francophiles who care less about stars in French imports than they do about the movie being good and not just serving as a French-language version of an American film they avoid purposefully. This is a director with vision and talent, and his first film deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible.