I had another super-fabulous movie weekend, making it to Film Forum on Friday for the magnificent-and-you-really-shouldn’t-miss-it The Leopard. Later that evening, I sat through Collateral, a movie about which I have a lot to say and am really conflicted. On Saturday I avoided the bulk of the thunderstorm (after receiving a brief drenching while getting in and out of the cab which took my friends and I about 4 blocks) by watching the powerful Maria Full of Grace. And on Sunday, I started by revisiting Before Sunrise and then after enjoying a bit of one of the nicest, most mild August days in New York I can remember, my gf and I went to Chelsea to catch Before Sunset, in my opinion, one of the absolute best movies of the year. I’ll discuss Before Sunset in more detail in another post, but if people want to praise an innovative, fresh and original voice in cinema doing things that nobody else is doing, stay away from the egomaniacal hack Vincent Gallo — who really doesn’t do anything fresh and innovative – get more intimately familiar with Richard Linklater and his resume. He’s the real deal, constantly pushing his own boundaries, whether it’s with mainstream fare like The School of Rock or trippy experimental non-narrative work like Waking Life. He deserves our praise far more than the boring mess that Gallo gives us.
Meanwhile, as usual Monday’s not treating me so hot, so here are a few quick bits to tide you over until I can force my brain to spew out something interesting:
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From the “completely unnecessary” files: Ellen DeGeneres plans to star in a remake of Oh, God! Now, I’m actually all for the idea of remaking bad movies rather than good ones – you know, give them a chance to be better – but some stories really don’t even merit that treatment, and does anyone really have any interest in seeing DeGeneres try to fill the shoes of George Burns? This whole project comes from the mind of producer Jerry Weintraub who never met a film he wouldn’t like to remake or sequelize (it’s a word if I say it is), especially if the original was one of his own. He’s already planning to subject us to a new Police Academy movie (<a href="I seizured about that already – second item). But seriously, as those who possess far more eloquence than I would say, DeGeneres as God? Durst! No buzz!
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Only slightly less unnecessary is word that the Tony Scott-led remake of The Warriors is moving forward. Terrence Winter has been hired to write the script. He’s apparently the third person (sort of – the first was a writing team) to give it a crack. Is that a good choice? Who knows? Scott isn’t as good a director as his brother, and the quality of his films tend to be no better or worse than the quality of their scripts. He’s been Emmy nominated four times for his work on The Sopranos, but one always has to wonder how much the staff writers really do with uber-writer/producer David Chase overseeing every little element of the show. Winter’s other credits are pretty unimpressive: the terrible Eddie Murphy animated series The PJs, and the syndicated series Xena: Warrior Princess, not to mention the truly terrible syndicated modern incarnation of Flipper. But even giving him the benefit of the doubt – every TV writer has to start somewhere – why does anyone have to remake Walter Hill’s great film which is such a magnificent product of its time. The Variety story describes the update as “having a heightened reality compare d to the original,” while sharing the same basic plot. What the fuck does that mean? As Gothamist rightly notes, “Can you really remake that film for contemporary audiences used to clean subways or safer Coney Island?” But more importantly, why would you want to. If you’ve never seen The Warriors, go netflix it. You’ll see how it influenced Martin Scorsese’s conceptualization for Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video as well as an interesting comparison between the New Yorks of then and now.
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Taking a brief second to look at the world of Broadway theater, it seems that Brooke Shields will be taking over the lead role in Wonderful Town from Donna Murphy. Now, to be perfectly fair, I haven’t seen Wonderful Town, but considering that most reviews and everybody I’ve spoken to who has seen it says that Murphy’s fantastic performance is the only reason to see it, and when you throw in the fact that it’s not even a big box office draw, why would the backers even keep the thing running? And with Shields in the lead? It just all seems a bit pointless.
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The New York Film Festival has announced it’s full lineup, and all I have to say is, “Film Society: Where the hell is my members priority order form.” Holy shit. Is there anything I don’t want to see? (IndieWIRE has the full story.) They had previously announced the Cannes screenplay award winning Comme une image a/k/a Look at Me as the opener as well as Alexander Payne’s eagerly anticipated Sideways as the closing night film. Plus the latest from the brilliant Pedro Almodóvar, Bad Education, as the centerpiece screening. Now it turns out they’re also showing Saraband, what should be the final film from 85-year-old master Ingmar Bergman, who according to Variety’s story has “officially announced his retirement.” Another cinema icon, Jean-Luc Godard, will be sending his latest film, Notre Musique, and if any of you are curious about the identity of Filmbrain, I’d bet major money you’ll be able to find him there. But wait, there’s more! Another French New Wave vet, Eric Rohmer, will screen his new film Triple Agent as well. But for some reason, you’re not into foreign cinema from a bunch of senior citizens? Whatever. That’s stupid, but you’re not being left out. There’s the always fascinating Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake and Chinese genius Zhang Yimou’s second straight martial arts epic and follow-up to Hero (which finally opens here this Friday), House of Flying Daggers. And don’t worry, there are new American films too such as Todd Solondz’s Palindromes and David Gordon Green’s Undertow, both of which are absolute can’t-wait/must-sees for me. And those are just the big name highlights! There are also special Directors discussions, apparently including one with Almodóvar, and special screening series, one being the entire original Infernal Affairs trilogy (another place where you’ll probably find Filmbrain skulking around). Damn you Film Society. I don’t have enough money for all of this!
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And finally (OK, so this wasn’t so brief), I happened across a site today called The World Star Gazette calls itself an online newspaper that treats blog entries as news stories.” Nothing weird or wrong with that. On their Arts & Entertainment page, in the left-hand column about 5 items down, they’ve chosen one of my posts as one of their stories (although for some reason their blurb links to my blog but not that story’s permalink). It was one of my posts about Network from a few weeks back when I was encouraging people to catch it on . My post revolved around the fact that Network, in my opinion one of the best movies of all time, was one of a few films that lost that year’s Best Picture Oscar to Rocky, which, regardless of the latter film’s merits, was somewhat absurd. From what I can tell, the editors of this online newspaper place all their creative energy into producing supposedly interesting, snarky headlines. The one for my “news story”: “Sore Loser Still Mad as Hell About 1978 Oscar Ceremonies.” Get it? “Mad as Hell”? Cause, you know, Peter Finch has that famous line, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” And I guess I’m the “sore loser.” Although I have no problems with the 1978 Oscar ceremony. Network lost in the 1977 Oscar ceremony. 1978’s ceremony (for the 1977 movie year) was won by Annie Hall, a very deserving movie, especially up against the competition. I mean, aside from Star Wars, I certainly wouldn’t have given it to any of the other three films, even though they were each very good. And I don’t know that I’m really a “Sore Loser” considering the fact that I, personally, never lost anything and have no relationship to Network, other than the simple fact that I can recognize a truly great and important movie for the ages over a very good, uplifting, inspirational, but certainly not revolutionary film that was at best a big-time crowd pleaser. I really like Rocky, and in many ways it is a great movie, but it definitely doesn’t stand up, especially in retrospect, but I’d have to think even in 1976/77, to the utter brilliance that was and is Network.
Out of Focus 