(Saturday, 24 November, 2001) riday is turning into movie night around here, a time for catching up on the critical screenings missed during the regular week. Thus it was that I found myself at the relatively old, or at least old for a movie theater, Broadway Metroplex Cinemas to see Spy Game. After the usual television commercials for Mountain Dew and other beverages, and before the cheap Regal Cinemas self-promo, there were several trailers for upcoming films. It was a shock to see that Doug Liman's forthcoming The Bourne Identity is not unlike a tricked up version of the mini-series version with Richard Chamberlain. Obviously Liman has enough visual "go" for the material, and he has the tireless Franka Potente to run yet again through the familiar streets, but, more important, it seems now that Liman was always destined to be an action metteur en scene rather than another QT blending hip cultural sensibilities with rock video aesthetics. When I interviewed Liman around the time of Swingers he expressed admiration for Richard Donner as the ultimate source for solutions to all cinematic problems, in the same fashion as, according to DePalma, the generation before that drew upon Hitchcock. The next trailer advertised Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. How appropriate for it to appear before a film by his (estranged?) brother Tony. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the film looks to be, as one of my colleagues has pointed out, Ridley's attempt to elbow his way into the profitable, stylish action genre his brother almost made his own. The film looks more like Sadiator, a bummed out version of his earlier hit but in which the proud warriors are foiled by the indigenous people. Then there was The Royal Tenenbaums. This was the second trailer I've seen for the film, and it was worse than the first. The audience was audibly unmoved. The distributors don't seem to understand this film, to be able to find a way to promote it properly. They are not at all finding the charm and wit evident in the screenplay (but missing in translation to the screen?). It makes me worry for the success of the film, because I want Wes Anderson to keep making movies.
py Game itself proved to be an example of the new "mature" Scott, of Enemy of the State. He still uses visual tricks but there is a newfound moral sophistication, perhaps due to the kinds of screenplays he is now taking on. Redford is excellent as a retiring CIA officer who learns that his estranged protegé (Brad Pitt) is about to be executed in China in the wake of a rogue mission. Redford's last minute manipulation of office politics and protocols, intercut with chronological flashbacks of his relationship with Pitt given while he is grilled by his superiors, is a narrative complexity on the order of a John LeCarré novel. The only off moment is the swirling camera above a German rooftop where Redford has a rendezvous with a disillusioned Pitt after a scrubbed mission; the visuals are in excess of the emotional quality of the scene. In the end, the film is an off-center love story, with Redford's "Company man" character serving to re-unite two people whom he will never see again.
t's curious how Scott's reputation has altered in the year's since QT began to champion him. Top Gun was mocked and reviled by critics such as Hoberman for its disguised homoeroticism and dire signal of the decline of Hollywood moviemaking. Tarantino is very funny in his monologue about the homoerotic subtext of the movie (funnier than he knows he is, actually), even though the speech is apparently appropriated from Roger Avery (like everything else?). Be that as it may, Scott's career trajectory has interesting contrasts with that of Carol Reed. While Reed started high in prestige and popularity, only to descend to the depths of Flap, Scott began as the manufacturer of clean entertainment machines anchored to sexy male stars, only to rise in critical disdain and public uninterest as his films have gotten better.
Loaded magazines
(Thursday, 22 November, 2001) welcome onslaught of recent film magazines hits the mailbox. The new Cine-ACTION arrives and it is packed. It leads off with an article about Memento by Dion Tubrett that makes many valuable points, such as that "the pursuit and murder of John G. becomes part of an elaborate process of repeating his past murder of his wife but reconstructed as the outlet for his rage—unable to be directed at himself": that is, Lenoard Shelby is the true killer of his wife and can't face the guilt. That article is followed by Robin Wood's sensitive and nuanced appreciation of Hou Hsaio-Hsien's most recent film, Flowers of Shanghai. Like many academic magazines, Cine-ACTION is trying to catch up with the DVD revolution, and in an article rather too long for making such an obvious point, we learn that "DVD is offering the melding of entertainment with increased knowledge provisions for a film-viewing generation cine-literate enough to cope with the breaking and reconstructing of film narratives and, increasingly, requiring that filmmakers offer that very opportunity." Where is "deconstruction" now that the viewing technology is finally ready for it? Douglas Keesey's essay on erotic thrillers, the straight-to-video phenomenon, is a noble start in what will be a major work of excavation for someone somewhere, but while making valuable points the writer relies too heavily on high profile thrillers such as Basic Instinct,Bound, and Fatal Attraction. While drawing the links between the erotic thriller and both pornography and horror films, Keesey notes that "horror leaves something crucial out of account: the man's attraction to the fearsome female."
lso arriving is Film Comment, with The Royal Tenenbaums on the cover and a not particularly helpful interview with Wes Anderson inside, along with the inevitable hosannas to Pauline Kael (and this from a magazine that was always more Sarrisian). Also on hand is an "appreciation" of The Royal Tenenbaums by Kent Jones, whose excited yet mercurial prose epitomizes all that was wrong with the old Richard T. Jamison days, now carried over to the new regime, mixing hysteria with a lack of clarity. As mentioned before in this space, Film Comment is attempting to compete with the newsier Sight and Sound but doesn't have the resources or the brain power, and surely it doesn't help make the magazine appealing when it pulls New York Times Book Review style plugs for books by unacknowledged Film Comment contributors (such as the rave for contributor Jimmy McDonough's book on Andy Milligan) or cheap shots at letter writers when a magazine always holds the best cards in such disputes (vide Kent Jones versus letter writer Jennifer Harrell). And appearance-wise, you can never tell when an one article ends and another begins, thanks to the new graphic design and the near-invisible headlines. On the other hand, Paul Arthur's review of In the Bedroom made me very much more want to see this film by actor turned director Todd Field (who once took my photograph). Curiously, the couple who own the house in which Field's film was shot wandered onto the set of Film at Eleven last Sunday (they also have a house in Portland, Oregon).
eanwhile, the Cinefantastique empire continues to deteriorate. The style of the magazine has subtly changed since the suicide of founder and editor Frederick Clarke. The old Cinefantastique, and I mean decades ago, was notable for its in-depth coverage of science fiction and horror movies both "vintage" and recent, for the ghastly paintings it put on its covers, and for its scoops. The magazine was not afraid to tell the reader inside dope on Star Wars sequels and other films in the works. These days the magazine spends much too much time on promotional articles on films such as Jeepers Creepers without helping the reader to discriminate the good from the bad among all the horror films coming out. The current issue has huge coverage of Ghost of Mars, as if the movie were of the importance of Halloween. The magazine presents its coverage with the quasi-literate sub-head, "The maverick director makes his latest movie, and doesn't spare CFQ his opinion of our work," as if in the past the magazine had been a hard-hitting critic of Carpenter. In fact, Cinefantastique used to offer actual opinions, and also in its way formed a precedent for Aint it Cool News with its aggressive pursuit of scoops, but now it is little more than an adjunct to the promotional arm of the studios, just like Vanity Fair. Its sister publication, Femme Fatales is even worse, offering promotional articles seemingly written by the actresses they are about. The current issue is dedicated to Asian actresses, and as in the past, the magazine makes no attempt at thoroughness: there are no detailed filmographies or critical assessments. Under the stewardship of Celeste Casey Clarke and editor Lisa Coduto, the magazine currently offers bigger pictures but less eroticism, leaving that to the boys over at cheaper magazines, such as Draculina.
Where in the world is Mo Henry?
(Wednesday, 21 November, 2001) s Mo Henry the negative cutter on every movie ever made? I seem to have been reading his or her name for years. That's because I actually read the credits. I want to enjoy the full movie experience; I want to hear the rest of the music or all the songs; I want to see who did what; and I want to "decompress" from the movie experience. Often I am the last person in the theater. So Mo Henry and I have a brief moment together as her or his name inevitably appears on the screen. Who is Mo Henry? Why has s/he never been interviewed? Or has s/he? And just what does a "negative cutter" do? Apparently it doesn't take very long because Mo Henry seems to cut the negatives of about a film a week. According to the IMDB, Mo Henry is associated with 121 films since 1993, with 10 so far in 2001 alone. I am not the only one curious about Mo Henry. Others are intrigued. Leave it to the WWW, but there is actually a Mo Henry fan club, where you can learn a modicum of information on Mo Henry. And it turns out that s/he is a she.
Word on the towers
(Tuesday, 20 November, 2001) ord has it that Columbia is already re-shooting, or is about to re-shoot, quite a bit of Spiderman, already the most anticipated movie of this coming spring next to the new Star Wars, in order to eliminate vestiges of the fated Twin Towers. The real story is somewhat different. The grapevine has it that there is a dispute between director Sam Raimi and the studio. Raimi, a true comic book fan, believes that the film has a great story, and that the psychological stress on the Peter Parker character is interesting in a story driven film, as in the original comic. Columbia, however, wants an action film, and the re-shoots are designed not to erase traces of the WTC, of which there apparently weren't all that many to begin with, but to expand the "talky" character scenes to appropriately action-filled blockbuster length.
Cinemonkey in the DVDJ
(Monday, 19 November, 2001) ere's what the Cinemonkey team has to say about some recent DVD releases: this week it's Damon Houx's perceptive account of Planet of the Apes, and Matrix Revisited; and Kim Morgan on America's Sweethearts.
(Tuesday, 13 November, 2001) 'm a little worried about The Royal Tenenbaums. It's among the top four or five movies I've been looking forward to this year, and I've even read the screenplay. But now I'm beginning to fear that the movie might represent some kind of softening of Wes Anderson's vision. These fears started with the publication of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, a big sprawling novel about the woes of a modern American family. Visitors to MobyLives.com are also thoroughly aware of the controversy that has dogged the author recently. I haven't read the book, but because the novel has some broad similarities to Anderson's movie, including a shattered family with three adult children, one of whom is a financial whiz, I feared that the book would steal away the media attention the movie (might) deserve or exhaust the public's patience for a similar tale.
My fears were exacerbated this week by the new issue of Time, thanks to a story by James Poniewozik, on the New Home Culture. The thing that Time does best these days, besides running huge advertising supplements, is cultural theme coverage. The magazine seems to have given up on everything else and become an adjunct to its sister publication, Entertainment Weekly. Poniewozik draws parallels among numerous home spun movies, books, and television show, that indicate a renewed reaching out to family for reconciliation, but refuting the idea that they are a reaction to 9/11. Society is ready to drop the old cynicism for the New Family Values, but pop culture just happened to get there before The People were ready to really admit it.
Poniewozik made explicit links between Anderson's movie and Franzen's novel, but though Poniewozik links The Royal Tenenbaums to his cultural shift, I have to suspect, or at least hope, that Anderson and co-screenwriter Wilson's satiric vision is going to over-ride any facile linkages to Thanksgiving Culture. But we will find out in December when the film finally opens.
(Sunday, 11 November, 2001) ne always feels so optimistic at the start of a season. Right now, in Portland, Oregon, we are enjoying crisp, clear, clean, and dry Fall days with temperatures dropping but not irritating so yet. Simultaneously, the magazines are issuing their holiday movie previews. Entertainment Weekly's is effective, but the magazine's list of movies is not duplicated on the web site, or at least I couldn't find it. My favorite movie preview list is found in the Los Angeles Times, which is as thorough as you could want. In fact, the paper's annual January movie Sneaks feature in the Sunday calendar section is so popular that the editors have taken to running versions of it four or five more times a year.
The news is welcome to me, however. I never feel happier than when anticipating movies. It's actually watching them that is the problem. All too often expectation leads to grave, culture-doubting disappointment, as 2000 proved, and as this last summer of 2001 also showed.
So as I was flipping through the December Premiere magazine's preview I stumbled upon yet another obit for Pauline Kael. Like EW,Premiere is a hotbed of Kaelites, and sure enough one Hal Hinson, who knew Kael (of course; they all do), wrote a fawning if brief memoir of the woman. However, the obit's attendant mini-memoirs, a suite of one and two sentence reflections from the likes of Barbra Streisand and Warren Beatty, were helpful because they provided a guide to what is so exasperating about Kaelolotry. It's the inherent inconsistency of Kael's "aesthetic," such as it was. One contributor, Jonathan Demme of all people, writes that he was privileged to spend some time with Kael during a promotional event: "When I was a reporter for Film Daily, I was invited up to Connecticut for a press conference for a film that was being prepared by Otto Preminger (that he never made [his bio of Moshe Dayan?]). I got to ride in a car with Pauline and Andrew Sarris. As we were standing around, Andy started going off to Preminger about his vision, and I remember Pauline saying, 'Oh, Andy, cut the crap. You know that Hurry Sundown is a piece of shit. Even Otto will tell you that.'"
I find this anecdote exasperating. I gather from it that we are not to take filmmakers seriously. That the whole industrial-promotional apparatus of movie making and writing about movies is a game riddled with mutual contempt and no joy in movies for themselves. Also, that it is a given that directors even of the stature of Preminger are not to be taken seriously as artists. To me, the anecdote raises the question, What did Kael actually like about movies?, and I am shocked that the story should be told by Demme with such sympathy for a director-hating writer such as Kael and disdain for a director-supporting one such as Sarris.
Kael was clearly an anti-intellectual when it came to cinema, which suggests that she spent her entire career slumming. On the one hand, she posed as a scoffer of intellectual pretensions; on the other, she reveled in the worst crap. To her, movies were escape, fun, they were "kicky," and best when the movies were about handsome and beautiful socialites with witty tongues who lived between 1934 and 1939. Kaelites really don't like movies, either. They just like to write about them. They are not guided by a firm ideology or theory, like Sarris. They make it up as they go along. Instead, post-Kael acolytes just want to please "mom," that ethereal Kael now floating in the sky smiling benignly on all the hundreds of her children continuing to ruin film writing in this country. I think that the great tragedy of Kael's life is that she wanted to write, in her view, seriously, but could only write well about movies; she wanted to be Susan Sontag, but could only be Judith Crist. Her vile views are the product of this anger and self-hate. One wishes that she had at least been witty. "Plays-with-Cameras," indeed.
As I write these words, the rain starts.
Down on Amélie
(Saturday, 10 November, 2001) fter a difficult day of work, I drag myself to the Fox Tower in Portland to see Heist before collapsing back in bed with on-going flu-like symptoms. Unfortunately, the only seats left for Heist were in the front row. I failed to remember that the front rows at the Fox are not as terrible as at other theaters, so instead I urged that we see the film that is called Amélie in the United States. It proved to be one of the best animated movies of the season, though posing as a live action tale of a French girl who learns to do anonymous good. This cartoon movie is like the opening sequence of Magnolia writ large, an act of sentimentality tricked up with a catalog of mostly enjoyable camera angles. Coincidentally, earlier in the day I had been re-watching the opening portions of Magnificent Obsession, curious to see how Sirk handled the incredible coincidences of that plot. By further coincidence, Amélie, too, is about a person doing good secretly, though for secular reasons. My viewing companion, on the other hand, thought the film was a rejoinder to Kieslowski.
Should I mention the reaction of the crowd? They loved it, and laughed all the way through. They laughed at things that I wondered how they found funny. But then, I think that people laugh at movies for the same reason that members of Parliament grumble "Hear, Hear!" It's an affirmation of understanding and solidarity (there is also laughter as I-get-the-joke-and-you-don't, most often heard at Shakespeare's unspeakably unfunny comedies). But then, I am the sort of person who narrows eyes with hate when one of Bill Maher's insipid rock star guests evokes cheers and applause from the audience for speaking incoherent platitudes. At least the audience at Amélie was not too annoying. Recently, at a screening of The Man Who Wasn't There, one of current cinema's most quiet movies, I had to suffer through people riffling though their popcorn bins, whispering, talking out loud, and worst of all, a screening rat sitting across from me who was suffering from nasal and throat distress. He coughed, spat, and snorted literally every three seconds, occasionally saying "Fuck" at something, either his decaying body or at the movie he couldn't understand. I was going to go out to the lobby and complain about him but couldn't figure out how to frame the complaint. Are people in control of their bodies at all anymore in this post-911 world? Recently I sat next to a man who was a nose whistler. As he breathed, his nose emitted rhythmic nasal whistles of a maddening regularity. I had to stick my finger in my ear and eventually lean forward to find concentration for the movie. But in this case I felt sorry for the man, who goes through life unaware of how much he drives others crazy.
Just like a movie
(Tuesday, 6 November, 2001) t's just like a movie," they say, when sometime traumatic and unbelievable. People on the streets of Manhattan on 9/11 said they felt they were in a Bruce Willis movie. Having just experienced a car accident, I can say that "movie" is not quite the word. Stop motion animation is more like it.
Here's the situation. We had just shot the two latest episodes of Film at Eleven. We were driving north on a fairly busy main thoroughfare (called 39th Avenue). The sky was dark; the fall leaves from the parallel Laurelhurst Park were in the street, it was raining. There was a street signal. When it turned green, we advanced, up a small bluff, and then descending. And then at 39th and Pine, a car going south decided to turn left onto Pine, without signaling. When that car's driver noticed that we were coming, he or she stopped. Avoiding the car was impossible. The front end of our car was completely smashed in, yet amazingly, it could still be driven the relatively short distance home.
My reaction when we had crossed that threshold that separated "driving" from "we are definitely going to hit that car" was to close my eyes and hope my head did not hit the windshield. I didn't, thanks to a seat belt, but we weren't going that fast to begin with. Nevertheless, our orange Volvo suffered a smashed front end, and both of us suffered some neck pain. I bashed my knees against the dash board.
I've been in maybe six accidents overall, never as a driver, but this was the scariest. Nor, contraCrash, was it at all faintly erotic. Instead it was terrifying after the fact, when you thought of implications, possibilities, and so on. Nor did the event seem like a movie, whatever that means. Instead there was a sickening feeling of inevitability, a freeze framing in the mind, and a terrible thunk in the body as the Volvo hit the other car broadside. Suffice it to say that the exigencies of life compelled me to enter a car again the next day, indeed that same night, and I have no lingering wariness of being in cars. But if nothing else, the experience pointed up the inaccuracy of one of our most common metaphors.
(Saturday, 3 November, 2001) aving "flu-like symptoms" is nothing compared to the situation facing Iranian filmmaker Tahmineh Milani, who faces execution if convicted in a forthcoming trial for "supporting factions waging war against God, and misusing the arts in support of counterrevolutionary and armed opposition groups." This Soviet-style law makes art and commentary impossible of course. Execution seems a barbaric and extreme consequence. Milani is out on bail, but her situation is dire. The film that Iran's Revolutionary Council opposes is called The Hidden Half, and is vaguely described as concerning internal struggles within Iran soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. According to a press release I received from the Nettime news group, "The Revolutionary Council has previously ordered the arrest of journalists and other cultural figures, but this is the first time it has taken direct action against a filmmaker." It's a precedent that must not be allowed to take shape, regardless of the quality or content of Milani's film. According to the release, Milani "is well-known for taking strong feminist positions in both films and public appearances," adding that "Mohammad Khatami, the President of Iran, personally supported Ms. Milani's release on bail." Apparently, The Hidden Half went through the usual vetting for content by the Ministry of Culture, a no doubt Orwellian title for what is really a censorship board, and the film was approved for release. In response, Facets Multimedia of Chicago released a "declaration of solidarity" that has so far been signed by dozens of filmmakers, including John Boorman, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Hanif Kureishi, Ang Lee, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, Oliver Stone, Peter Bogdanovich, Catherine Breillat, Charles Burnett, Guillermo del Toro, Jonathan Demme, Faye Dunaway, William Friedkin, Lawrence Kasdan, Dusan Makavejev, Chris Marker, Sean Penn, Ken Russell, Paul Schrader, Barbet Schroeder. Facets has sent the declaration to Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran; Mohammad Khatami, the President of Iran; Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, the Head of the Judiciary; Masjed Jamee, the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance; and others. Those wishing to support Milani can fax His Excellency Mr. Mohammad Khatami, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, at 98 21 649 5886; His Excellency Mr. Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, Minister of Justice, at 98 21 646 5242; His Excellency Mr. Masjed Jamee, Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, at 98 21 391 3535; Mr. Mohebbi, President of the Farabi Cinema Foundation, at 98 21 670 8155. Supporters can also sign the petition online at the Facets website, or write Ray Privett at .
More adventures
(Friday, 2 November, 2001) rankly, I have always found William Goldman's screenplays superficial in the most Hollywoody, ersatz "tradition of quality" style, but I don't want to read them or re-see the movies to figure out precisely why—I would rather read screenplays that really work for me (those by Wilder; Sweet Smell of Success, scores of others both unread and reread).
Even worse, I have always rejected his earlier Screen Trade book in advance, without reading most of it, because I know that he disdains the auteur theory, which I happen to follow—though not to the absurd lengths that the parodists of the theory such as Goldman maintain that such critics go. The theory merely states that a movie is almost always most interesting when there is a single-minded and sole creative consciousness behind it. Casablancas happen, and they are great, but Citizen Kanes are, in the end, what really interest me, because they unfold out magically rather than lay self-contained, and represent the vision of one person.
Well, while in my flu-like-symptoms-bed, I finally read a William Goldman book, the latest, called Which Lie Did I Tell? More Adventures in the Screen Trade (Pantheon, 486 pages, $26.95, ISBN 0.375.40349.3). There are some insightful remarks in it, but thanks to this book I am finally able to pinpoint my objections to Goldman.
n the Hollywood quality-of-life level he can be an amusing raconteur. He has some funny anecdotes about his obsession with actorial height (he even follows Sylvester Stallone into a pool to figure out how tall he really is sans shoes). But all too often he tells tales out of school that really aren't all that revealing or "naughty" (the title comes from such an anecdote in which he is in the presence of an unnamed producer). He also prints a complete and unproduced "spec" screenplay called "The Big A," and then submits it to a cluster of fellow screenwriters, and receives some useful responses. One of the respondees, screenwriter Tony Gilroy (Dolores Claiborne) really vocalizes what I have always inarticulately found "wrong" or unappealing about Goldman's screenplays. Gilroy notes that when Goldman's tone is off, it is really off. He acknowledges justly that Goldman re-thought the western with Butch Cassidy (though I happen to find that movie superficial on most all other levels). But too many of Goldman's films are humdrum, unenergized enterprises such as The Year of the Comet, films in which the tone is conventional, in which there is no re-thinking of a genre or original scenes or plots. And Goldman has never seemed to aspire to directorhood, as have other screenwriters such as Fuller or Schrader, preferring the dubious prestige of writing guru. By the way, Gilroy's delightful style strikes me as something I have read before, perhaps on Ain't It Cool News.
Anyway, Goldman, as a screenwriter, is, like all writers, a whiner and grievance collector, and is put out that the directors get all the attention. I agree that directorial credit hogging is unfair. But he could take action instead of whine; he could do something about it, as the Screenwriters Guild has, asking for proprietary credits on films, much to the objection of the Directors Guild. For better or worse, sometime is is "A William Goldman Film."
But it's the book's prose style that really signaled to me the core of my objections. It is an amalgam of that insubstantial writing that you find in magazines such as Writers Digest, a blend of creative writing class lessons and motivational speaking, padded with lots and lots of filler, in a chatty and to me jangly prose. Goldman is not without insight, and offers up startling ideas on occasion (he says that actors prefer to be in interesting movies, not big commercial hits. It is agents who want them in hits, and if left on their own, they would always take the quirky small movies), but this entire book could have been an article, not the huge longwinded tome it became. His big insight from before this book, the phrase "Nobody knows anything," has some merit to it, though it needs to be annotated and modified, and he does so in this book, but the idea in the main is well known in organizational behavior theory, which points out the obvious fact that CEOs take credit for ideas that work and pass the blame for ones that don't, and that this is a human characteristic but one with disastrous consequences for multimillion dollar businesses. Everything wrong with the movie business comes down to the fact that half its population is in it for art and the other half is in it for money, and each one thinks the other is talking about something else. But that is a whole other story. No, the big question is, Why are Goldman's scripts popular in Hollywood in the first place? And I'm afraid the answer to that says a lot about the true level of intelligence and talent in show business.
Favorite days and movies
(Thursday, 1 November, 2001) allowe'en is my favorite day of the year but this time I spent it in bed with "flu like symptoms." At least this unprofitable reclining allowed me to catch up with some reading, some baseball games (the first I have seen all year), and some reflection of the movie year thus far. By all accounts this is one of the worst years in recent memory. A short list of the best movies of 2001 so far (that I have seen) would include only Memento, Sexy Beast, Ghost World, Apocalypse Now Redux, Mulholland Drive, The Man Who Wasn't There, and Va Savoir. What I saw of Vertical Light of the Sun I liked, but I'll need to see the rest of it. What's interesting about this makeshift list is that mostly independent directors, by definition if nothing else, are present, and that none of the movies are major studio releases. But then, this has probably been the case since the '80s. There was a time when we looked forward to Hollywood movies, if they were directed by Friedkin, Coppola, Spielberg, Ashby, and others. Today, the catalog of Hollywood directors is mostly a list of personality-free names you can't remember. The last movie movie I can remember looking forward to and also finding satisfying is L. A. Confidential. And that film didn't really do that well. The public prefers the pabulum that Hollywood is happy to supply. The fragmentary list above reflects movies that the mainstream audience in the midwest, the south, in Nebraska and Kansas, will never see, have never even heard of. Now we are in that part of the year in which the industry gears up to issue its Oscar contenders, and presumably "adults" are permitted to return to the theater. Amazingly, one remains optimistic regardless of past disappointments, perhaps the quickest refutation of Skinner and his pellet seeking mice. [Click here for last month's diary, or visit the Nocturnal Admissions page.]
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ere's what the Cinemonkey team has to say about some recent DVD releases: this week it's Damon Houx on 
riday is turning into movie night around here, a time for catching up on the critical screenings missed during the regular week. Thus it was that I found myself at the relatively old, or at least old for a movie theater, Broadway Metroplex Cinemas to see Spy Game. After the usual television commercials for Mountain Dew and other beverages, and before the cheap Regal Cinemas self-promo, there were several trailers for upcoming films. It was a shock to see that Doug Liman's forthcoming The Bourne Identity is not unlike a tricked up version of the mini-series version with Richard Chamberlain. Obviously Liman has enough visual "go" for the material, and he has the tireless Franka Potente to run yet again through the familiar streets, but, more important, it seems now that Liman was always destined to be an action metteur en scene rather than another QT blending hip cultural sensibilities with rock video aesthetics. When I interviewed Liman around the time of Swingers he expressed admiration for Richard Donner as the ultimate source for solutions to all cinematic problems, in the same fashion as, according to DePalma, the generation before that drew upon Hitchcock. The next trailer advertised Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. How appropriate for it to appear before a film by his (estranged?) brother Tony. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the film looks to be, as one of my colleagues has pointed out, Ridley's attempt to elbow his way into the profitable, stylish action genre his brother almost made his own. The film looks more like Sadiator, a bummed out version of his earlier hit but in which the proud warriors are foiled by the indigenous people. Then there was The Royal Tenenbaums. This was the second trailer I've seen for the film, and it was worse than the first. The audience was audibly unmoved. The distributors don't seem to understand this film, to be able to find a way to promote it properly. They are not at all finding the charm and wit evident in the screenplay (but missing in translation to the screen?). It makes me worry for the success of the film, because I want Wes Anderson to keep making movies.
py Game itself proved to be an example of the new "mature" Scott, of Enemy of the State. He still uses visual tricks but there is a newfound moral sophistication, perhaps due to the kinds of screenplays he is now taking on. Redford is excellent as a retiring CIA officer who learns that his estranged protegé (Brad Pitt) is about to be executed in China in the wake of a rogue mission. Redford's last minute manipulation of office politics and protocols, intercut with chronological flashbacks of his relationship with Pitt given while he is grilled by his superiors, is a narrative complexity on the order of a John LeCarré novel. The only off moment is the swirling camera above a German rooftop where Redford has a rendezvous with a disillusioned Pitt after a scrubbed mission; the visuals are in excess of the emotional quality of the scene. In the end, the film is an off-center love story, with Redford's "Company man" character serving to re-unite two people whom he will never see again.
t's curious how Scott's reputation has altered in the year's since QT began to champion him. Top Gun was mocked and reviled by critics such as Hoberman for its disguised homoeroticism and dire signal of the decline of Hollywood moviemaking. Tarantino is very funny in his monologue about the homoerotic subtext of the movie (funnier than he knows he is, actually), even though the speech is apparently appropriated from Roger Avery (like everything else?). Be that as it may, Scott's career trajectory has interesting contrasts with that of Carol Reed. While Reed started high in prestige and popularity, only to descend to the depths of Flap, Scott began as the manufacturer of clean entertainment machines anchored to sexy male stars, only to rise in critical disdain and public uninterest as his films have gotten better.
welcome onslaught of recent film magazines hits the mailbox. The new Cine-ACTION arrives and it is packed. It leads off with an article about Memento by Dion Tubrett that makes many valuable points, such as that "the pursuit and murder of John G. becomes part of an elaborate process of repeating his past murder of his wife but reconstructed as the outlet for his rage—unable to be directed at himself": that is, Lenoard Shelby is the true killer of his wife and can't face the guilt. That article is followed by Robin Wood's sensitive and nuanced appreciation of Hou Hsaio-Hsien's most recent film, Flowers of Shanghai. Like many academic magazines, Cine-ACTION is trying to catch up with the DVD revolution, and in an article rather too long for making such an obvious point, we learn that "DVD is offering the melding of entertainment with increased knowledge provisions for a film-viewing generation cine-literate enough to cope with the breaking and reconstructing of film narratives and, increasingly, requiring that filmmakers offer that very opportunity." Where is "deconstruction" now that the viewing technology is finally ready for it? Douglas Keesey's essay on erotic thrillers, the straight-to-video phenomenon, is a noble start in what will be a major work of excavation for someone somewhere, but while making valuable points the writer relies too heavily on high profile thrillers such as Basic Instinct, Bound, and Fatal Attraction. While drawing the links between the erotic thriller and both pornography and horror films, Keesey notes that "horror leaves something crucial out of account: the man's attraction to the fearsome female."
eanwhile, the Cinefantastique empire continues to deteriorate. The style of the magazine has subtly changed since the suicide of founder and editor Frederick Clarke. The old Cinefantastique, and I mean decades ago, was notable for its in-depth coverage of science fiction and horror movies both "vintage" and recent, for the ghastly paintings it put on its covers, and for its scoops. The magazine was not afraid to tell the reader inside dope on Star Wars sequels and other films in the works. These days the magazine spends much too much time on promotional articles on films such as Jeepers Creepers without helping the reader to discriminate the good from the bad among all the horror films coming out. The current issue has huge coverage of Ghost of Mars, as if the movie were of the importance of Halloween. The magazine presents its coverage with the quasi-literate sub-head, "The maverick director makes his latest movie, and doesn't spare CFQ his opinion of our work," as if in the past the magazine had been a hard-hitting critic of Carpenter. In fact, Cinefantastique used to offer actual opinions, and also in its way formed a precedent for Aint it Cool News with its aggressive pursuit of scoops, but now it is little more than an adjunct to the promotional arm of the studios, just like Vanity Fair. Its sister publication, Femme Fatales is even worse, offering promotional articles seemingly written by the actresses they are about. The current issue is dedicated to Asian actresses, and as in the past, the magazine makes no attempt at thoroughness: there are no detailed filmographies or critical assessments. Under the stewardship of Celeste Casey Clarke and editor Lisa Coduto, the magazine currently offers bigger pictures but less eroticism, leaving that to the boys over at cheaper magazines, such as Draculina.
ord has it that Columbia is already re-shooting, or is about to re-shoot, quite a bit of Spiderman, already the most anticipated movie of this coming spring next to the new Star Wars, in order to eliminate vestiges of the fated Twin Towers. The real story is somewhat different. The grapevine has it that there is a dispute between director Sam Raimi and the studio. Raimi, a true comic book fan, believes that the film has a great story, and that the psychological stress on the Peter Parker character is interesting in a story driven film, as in the original comic. Columbia, however, wants an action film, and the re-shoots are designed not to erase traces of the WTC, of which there apparently weren't all that many to begin with, but to expand the "talky" character scenes to appropriately action-filled blockbuster length.
e sure to read our Scrooge-like review of 
ne always feels so optimistic at the start of a season. Right now, in Portland, Oregon, we are enjoying crisp, clear, clean, and dry Fall days with temperatures dropping but not irritating so yet. Simultaneously, the magazines are issuing their holiday movie previews. Entertainment Weekly's is effective, but the magazine's list of movies is not duplicated on the web site, or at least I couldn't find it. My favorite movie preview list is found in the Los Angeles Times, which is as thorough as you could want. In fact, the paper's annual January movie Sneaks feature in the Sunday calendar section is so popular that the editors have taken to running versions of it four or five more times a year.