After six days in town, Regal pulled The Beat That My Heart Skipped from Tallahassee's Miracle 5, missing yet another opportunity to build an audience. Putting an arthouse movie in any town for only six days is the best recipe for failure at the box office.
The second (and third, and fourth) week is integral to the life of movies that don't get ads on national cable nets like MTV or especially network play. The death sentence seems to be effectively carried out around the country for anything that isn't a premature performer (first weekend-dependent) to its studio or the chain theatre companies, all two of them.
Home for art movies has moved from the interesting, earthy side of town to the newly-renovated shtetl of DVD-istan. Not only did we get Beat 10 weeks after its first release weekend, but it disappeared before most people who'd care knew it was playing.
The Beat That My Heart Skipped tugs on the fact most men don't want to admit: we are who we are.
No man is the degree of superhero he thinks he is, and we all are disposed toward descending into a world where we find ourselves fully submerged in a murky soup of our own vices. Audiard remakes one of my favorite movies all my pals have never seen, Fingers, with considerable skill and precision.
The protagonist Tom (Romain Duris) shares a relationship with one woman in particular that to me ventures less into the realm of a Type A/B/C/D relationship Character One has with Character Four in Standard Plot #36, but strays from serving the traditional needs of the dramatic plot in the details. This is where Beat's personality really shines through. It isn't the piece that you play, but the style in which you stroke the keys. Everyone has the same notes available to them, but no two people play them the same way.
One look, in particular, I would classify as the "we shouldn't, but for another reason entirely, we really really should," and it forms the basis for the aforementioned relationship. That look that starts as a glance, and is instead held. It crackles with a suddenly thick, full current of crackling heat, and it takes no more than a few simple words to catalyze.
When you give someone that look and you can feel them returning by the way your breathing shifts, there's little to do to prevent the people involved from sooner than later tearing one another's clothes off. Resisting such an urge requires some of the greatest powers of restraint in human history.
In another rare instance, this movie's soundtrack features prominently in its effectiveness in portraying a grimy, never-quite clean atmosphere. Without the signature track by The Kills, as well as the specific classical piano selections, the movie would not be nearly the surgically-precise animal that makes it so good.
Each of these reviews/reactions I post feel more like eulogies than announcements, and it furthers the feeling that I'm writing about movies not in the hope they'll be seen as they ought (in cinemas), but at home on HBO, DVD, or (god forbid) PPV. We've become a three-letter acronym culture.
East Meets West
Eastern imports like Hero, Zhang Ziyi, and Asian movies remakes have been steadily becoming more prevalent than Jackie Chan or his string of movies ever did; however, there are a number of major misses in my mind.
1. Hero taking nearly 2 1/2 years to make it to American shores
The proximity of this movie's and House of Flying Daggers' American release hurt both movies (more House than Hero), making the operatic melodrama and the operatic, melodramatic national epic seem even more similar than they already were. All the swords and Zhang Ziyi in peoples' faces overloaded the American public in the same way they OD'd on Jude Law last year.
2. Zhang Ziyi is being sold as the only Chinese actress the studios are willing to push
Back when Farewell My Concubine was a big push for Foreign Film, Gong Li (arguably one of the hugest of huge marquee names in China) was at the forefront of the ad campaign. Maggie Cheung and Gong Li mean nothing likely because they weren't "the Chinese girl in Rush Hour". Hollywood needs to branch out from the one or two requisite "spanish", "asian", and "british" names they'll put on a poster or feature in a trailer.
3. Remaking Asian movies and missing the boat, so to speak
Shall We Dance epitomized this, I think in the kneejerk casting of Richard Gere, as he has been since Pretty Woman. He's a proven quantity to the women of America that he's a businessman with a heart and cute dimples. If they wanted to properly build an audience, they would have gone against type with a guy who looks the part like John O'Hurley. I remember hearing they were gonna remake it and guessed to a friend they'd use Gere, and a few days later catching an episode of Seinfeld. I remarked to the same friend that were "the guy playing J. Peterman" able to drop the Radio Voice, he'd have the look down for it for sure.
Fast forward to this summer, and O'Hurley has won the hearts and ratings of America's women (and a few of us men) who watched Dancing With the Stars, in which he advanced to the finals over The New Kids on the Block's Joey McIntire, among others. When we were in the vast cinematic and televised summer wasteland, this guy became the clever, determined man we all wanted to see in Richard Gere throughout all of Shall We Dance's runtime.
Late-Breaking News...John O'Hurley is making his Broadway debut this January, taking over the role of Billy Flynn from Huey Lewis in the New York production of Chicago. Who's the bankable name now?
Everyone had seen that Richard Gere story, and I'm sure that's why no one went. Additionally, no one makes movies properly for the over-24 crowd anymore, and this presents yet another stunning example of that fact.
Gems like Zhou Yu's Train and Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall...and Spring are getting acquired, but at once they're being turned away from port in favor of the old product.
When are the businessmen going to learn the lesson taught by Steve Jobs in the last few years?
No one wants last year's iPod, let alone 1989's Pretty Woman Edition iPod, so why the hell do the studios keep ordering the models that don't sell?
Ah yes, now I remember why less and less are going to theatres and more are buying and renting DVDs...Hollywood won't let go of a failing business model.
Fresh Meat Schedule
I'm going with a version of the way Jeff has shifted up his schedule, so you'll see a couple new posts a week, where bits and bobs will be added as they come. Watch for some images to be added later this evening, along with a couple other notes.
Wednesday, I'll be seeing an advance show of Elizabethtown, and I hope the new cut works better than the infamous Toronto Cut. Watch for a fresh column then. I'm slowly working up a piece on book adaptations that I'll be putting in on an off week, so watch for that.