Bullied

Alpha Dog - dir. Nick Cassavetes - USA - 2007

The career of late cinema pioneer John Cassavetes has proved to have little to no effect on the directing career of his son Nick. His first two features, Unhook the Stars and She’s So Lovely, may have suggested otherwise, but, c’mon, The Notebook? I know Ryan Gosling is in it, and I’m convinced he’s the finest young actor working today, but I can’t stomach sitting through that. So if The Notebook was a bit too pussy for you, here’s Alpha Dog, a testosterone-infused real-life crime drama about the kidnapping and murder of a fifteen-year-old boy (Anton Yelchin). But is this really an improvement on the ham- and cheese-stuffed Notebook? I’m going for no.

It’s a real feat to make Larry Clark look like a visionary, but Cassavetes appears to have done so. Alpha Dog, rather awkwardly, intertwines interviews with those involved in the crime (most notable Sharon Stone wearing a frightening fat-suit) with the depictions of the crime, conducted by a young drug dealer (Emile Hirsch) with a vendetta against a speed-head (Ben Foster), who owes him a large chunk of money. If Clark’s Bully was true crime in the falsely-plastered southern Florida, Alpha Dog is the My Super Sweet 16 version. It’s nearly as sleazy, but in more of a Paris Hilton sort of way than an Aileen Wuronos one. Each of the kids live with their equally morally-reputable parental units (including Bruce Willis and Alex Kingston) in Beverly Hills mansions, all equipped with large swimming pools to inspire the most flesh possible. That the final murder scene is rather hard to watch doesn’t make Alpha Dog any more sophisticated, as the real superiority in this scene is the surprising dramatic abilities of Yelchin and, yes, Justin Timberlake.

Though the trial of the Hirsch character has yet to be finalized, Alpha Dog jumps into its final credits just as you might expect, with text letting the audience know of the severity of the kids involved’s sentence. It’s these moments that Clark actually succeeds in Bully, adding a chilly realism and gravity to the crimes of a bunch of fucked-up, bored teenagers. It’s hard to imagine that, within a film like Alpha Dog, that any of the characters had time to concoct a murder between binge-drinking, pot-smoking, fucking, and partying (all while still keeping their perfectly-toned bodies in check). The true sadness of Bully is that murder was simply a way to cure the sad teenagers’ boredom. In Alpha Dog, murder comes from power and manipulation (though, like Bully, there‘s still some sort of homosexual undertones in the relationship between Hirsch and Shawn Hatosy, who actually commits the crime), something strikingly less interesting. Either way, Alpha Dog only ends up being curiously viewable if you want to see what dogshit the loins of John Cassavetes has produced or seeing Sharon Stone, who might have delivered the best performance of her career if not for being one of the annoying talking heads, in a ridiculous fat-suit.

Zombie Jack Valenti

The passing of MPAA ratings chief Jack Valenti has been the first death since I've written this blog that has pleased me to no end. Good riddance, Jack, and good riddance to your silly MPAA rating system, douche. To celebrate his death, go out and rent This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Adios, fucker.

Summer Blues

Here's a list of DVDs coming out this summer. The list was a bit more concise, but I apparently haven't learned my lesson after this being the third fucking time my computer froze in the middle of one of these DVD updates.

14 August: You'll have to wait until then to see if David Lynch is really going to produce a commentary for his latest, Inland Empire.

On 31 July: David Fincher's critically-acclaimed, but unsuccessful Zodiac.

Miramax will be releasing the French science-fiction animation film, Renaissance, on 24 July. Also out that day will be Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood, from Criterion. First Look will have the long-delayed Nicotina, with Diego Luna, on the shelves as well; they will also be releasing a 20-film set, entitled Grindhouse Experience, though I have no word on what titles it will include. Finally, the monster-movie/comedy The Host, from Magnolia, will be out this day.

On 17 July, Criterion will release Billy Wilder's film noir Ace in the Hole. ThinkFilm will be releasing the French romantic comedy Avenue Montaigne (Fauteuils d'orchestre) with Cécile de France. Koch Lorber will repackage three of their Emmanuelle Béart DVDs (Un coeur en hiver, Nathalie..., and L'histoire de Marie and Julien) in a three-disc box-set (I don't care for any of the three films, myself). Lionsgate, with their new stateside acquisition of Studio Canal titles, will have Volker Schlöndorff's The Orge, with John Malkovich, and Jérôme Boivin's Baxter, a strange French film about a dog that thinks, on your shelves. The Weinstein Company will release a definitive edition of John Woo's Hard Boiled, which is said to be superior to the long out-of-print Criterion disc. MGM will have a "Fully Exposed" edition of Paul Verhoeven's unsung masterpiece, Showgirls, out as well, which will likely just be the same disc as the VIP Edition, without the pasties and shot glasses. And finally, IFC Films will unload Jean-Claude Brisseau's follow-up to his controversial Secret Things, The Exterminating Angels (Les anges exterminateurs).

Criterion will be putting out three films by director Hiroshi Teshigahara (The Face of Another, Pitfall, and his most famous film, Woman in the Dunes) in a box-set on 10 July. IFC Films will be releasing Cam Archer's Wild Tigers I Have Known, with Fairuza Balk as the mother of a thirteen-year-old boy coming to grips with his homosexuality, and Susanne Bier's Oscar-nominated After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet), with Mads Mikkelson about a bunch of family secrets. Tartan Video will release the French thriller, The Page Turner (La tourneuse de pages), with Catherine Frot and Déborah François of L'Enfant. Orson Welles' adaptation of The Stranger, starring Edward G. Robinson, will be out from MGM. Home Vision will be releasing Shunji Iwai's Hana & Alice, about two Japanese BFFs in love with the same boy. And, don't forget to preorder 20th Century Fox's Joan Collins collection, which includes the films Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, Rally 'round the Flag, Sea Wife, Seven Thieves, and Stopover Tokyo!

3 July: absolutely nothing so far, so play catch up.

26 June: Craig Brewer's lackluster Black Snake Moan; Kim Ki-duk's The Bow; Nuri Bilge Ceylan's follow-up to Distant, Climates; Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Oscar-winning The Lives of Others; a nunsploitation flick, Nuns of Saint Archangel; Puccini for Beginners, a romantic comedy with Gretchen Mol and Justin Kirk; two films by Chris Marker, La jetée and Sans soleil, from Criterion; and three box-sets from Warner of Cult Camp Classics, including Attack of the 50ft Woman, Trog, Sergio Leone's Colossus of Rhodes, and Howard Hawks' Land of the Pharoahs.

19 June: The dud biopic of Edie Sedgwick, Factory Girl; a crime drama, Ginostra, with Harvey Keitel, Asia Argento, and Andie Macdowell; Harrison's Flowers, with Adrien Brody, Elias Koteas, and also with Macdowell; the Charles Bronson/Alain Delon crime flick, Honor Among Thieves; Criterion's release of Lindsay Anderson's If... with Malcolm McDowell; Lucille Balle in the much-hated Mame; Marlon Brando in the horror film The Nightcomers; the long-delayed Panic in Needle Park, which won a Best Actress prize at Cannes for Kitty Winn; Reno 911!: Miami in an unrated cut; and two Dusan Makavejev Criterion discs, Sweet Movie and WR: Mysteries of the Organism, the latter in a two-disc special edition.

12 June: Eric Steel's documentary about suicides off the Golden Gate Bridge, entitled The Bridge; Fina Torres' Celestial Clockwork (Mécaniques célestes); Rachid Bouchareb's Oscar-nominated Days of Glory (Indigènes) from Algeria; an Eclipse boxset of early Ozu; Julien Temple's concert film Glastonbury, with Radiohead, Coldplay, Bowie, and a bunch of others; a rerelease of Ken Loach's comedy Raining Stones; Claude Berri's The Two of Us (Le vieil homme et l'enfant) from Criterion; and Abderrahmane Sissako's Waiting for Happiness.

5 June: The cult classic The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert in an "Extra Frills" Edition; a sure-to-be-awful sound remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; a "Best Of" for Chappelle's Show, in a final attempt for Comedy Central to milk its popularity to the fullest extent; Stephen Frears' made-for-TV Cold War drama, Fail Safe, with George Clooney; the first season of Fame (no thank you); Joe Angio's doc about Melvin Van Peebles with the best title of the year, How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It); Maxed Out, about credit card debt in America; the documentary The Prisoner, or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair; and a Sergio Leone Anthology from MGM.

29 May: something being dubbed "Citizen Kane for a new millennium" from producer Steven Soderbergh, called Able Edwards; a stupid gay sequel, Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds; a "guilty pleasure" from TLA, called Flirting with Anthony; Amos Gitai's Free Zone, with Natalie Portman; the unnecessary Hannibal Rising in an unrated version; rereleases of Fernando Arrabal's I Will Walk like a Crazy Horse and Viva la muerte; a blood bag collector's disc of Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer; a film once titled Forever Emmanuelle, and retitled Laure, from Severin; Nigel Finch's The Lost Language of Cranes; a splatter-punk wetdream called Meatball Machine from Japan; and an adaptation of Quentin Crisp's The Naked Civil Servant starring John Hurt.

21 May: A 2-disc of The 40-Year-Old Virgin; a thriller with Colin Hanks called Alone with Her; Mel Gibson's (boo) Apocalypto; a no-thank-you rerelease of Renny Harlin's disaster Cutthroat Island; Hal Hartley's (boo again) sequel to Henry Fool, Fay Grim with Parker Posey as the title character; Steven Soderbergh's The Good German with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett; Andrei Kravchuk's The Italian; an Argentinian film called Jews in Space (wonderful title); a big ol' boring box-set including Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, and a documentary; another unnecessary rerelease from Lionsgate, this time Polanski's The Ninth Gate; Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City with Treat Williams; Philippe Garrel's Regular Lovers (Les amants réguliers) with his son Louis; a two- and three- special editions of Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo; Kenji Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff from Criterion; a two-discer of The Third Man from Criterion; and Roger Michell's Venus with Peter O'Toole.

15 May: Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows (L'armée des ombres) from Criterion; a special edition of Becket with Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, and John Gielgud; Daniel Burman's Family Law (Derecho de familia) with Daniel Hendler; Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz; a pre-New Queer Cinema flick entitled Fun Down There; Pan's Labyrinth in single-disc and two-disc special edition; and Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine from Criterion.

8 May: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's controversial Blissfully Yours, banned in its homeland of Thailand; Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering with Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, and Vera Farmiga; two Claude Chabrol/Isabelle Huppert flicks, nearly twenty-five years apart, Comedy of Power and Violette, the latter of which gave Huppert her first Cannes best actress win; a rerelease from Home Vision of Frank Perry's David and Lisa; Karen Moncrieff's The Dead Girl with Toni Collette and Brittany Murphy; the Oscar-nominated doc Deliver Us from Evil; Steven Shainberg's critically-panned Diane Arbus biopic Fur; The Painted Veil with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton; Isabel Coixet's follow-up to her sublime My Life Without Me, The Secret Life of Words, also with Sarah Polley; Roberto Benigni's disastrous take on the war in Iraq, The Tiger and the Snow; and Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief in a special edition.

1 May: A limited-edition of 28 Days Later... just in time for the sequel; Nick Cassavetes' Alpha Dog, with Sharon Stone and Justin Timberlake; a collection of a number of Academy Award nominated shorts; Dreamgirls (snore); the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky: El topo, The Holy Mountain, and Fando and Lis; Todd Field's Little Children; the long-delayed Mahogany with Diana Ross; and Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy with Will Oldham.

I hope you're now up-to-date.

To Cannes, we go!

Cannes has reached year 60, and their official line-up was announced yesterday with exciting results -- easily one of the more exciting line-ups in years. The opening film will be Wong Kar-wai's latest, his first English-language film, entitled My Blueberry Nights, starring singer Norah Jones, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, Ed Harris, Tim Roth, and David Strathairn. The rest of the films in competition are listed below:

Fatih (Head-On) Akin's Auf der Anderen Seite
Catherine (Fat Girl, Anatomy of Hell) Breillat's Une vieille maîtresse, starring Asia Argento, Anne Parillaud, Amira Casar, Lio, Roxane Mesquida, and Sarah Pratt (not with either Jeanne Moreau or Louis Garrel, as it was originally rumored)
The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, with Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, James Brolin, and Kelly Macdonald
David Fincher's Zodiac
James (The Yards, Little Odessa) Gray's We Own the Night, with Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Robert Duvall, and Eva Mendes
Christophe (Ma mère) Honoré's Les chansons d'amour, with Ludivine Sagnier and Louis Garrel
Naomi (Shara) Kawase's The Mourning Forest
Kim (The Isle, Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall... and Spring, 3-Iron) Ki-duk's Breath
Emir (Underground, When Father Was Away on Business) Kusturica's Promise Me This
Lee (Oasis) Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine
Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Raphaël Nadjari's Tehilim
Carlos (Battle in Heaven, Japón) Reygadas' Silent Light
Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Persepolis, in their first film
Julian (Basquiat, Before Night Falls) Schnabel's Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), with Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, and Marie-Josée Croze
Ulrich (Dog Days) Seidl's Import/Export, with Susanne Lothar (Funny Games)
Alexander (Russian Ark) Sokourov's Alexandra
Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, without Rodriguez's Planet Terror in an extended hour-and-fifty-six minute version
Béla (Werckmeister Harmonies) Tarr's The Man from London, with Tilda Swinton (!!)
Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, with a bunch of non-actors
Andrey (The Return) Zvyagintsev's The Banishment (Izgnanie)

Of course, two of the films have already hit the U.S. theatres (Zodiac and Death Proof, though I'm pretty sure the version they will show at Cannes will restore the "missing reel" of that pig-nosed girl from Shadowboxer doing a lap-dance for Kurt Russell), but I have to say I'm most excited about The Banishment and Une vieille maîtresse. Zvyagintsev's The Return was easily one of the finest film debuts this decade (alongside David Gordon Green's George Washington), and the fact that the premise of his film has been kept under wraps makes me even more excited. Asia Argento, in an interview, stated that one shouldn't expect the usual graphic nature of Breillat's early works with her new film, which is a period piece, apparently not written by Breillat. Regardless, the line-up looks phenomenal, and even though I know nothing about Tarr's latest, here's my fingers crossed for a Best Actress win for Tilda Swinton!

The jury will be headed by Stephen Frears (The Queen), and will include Toni Collette, former Best Actress winner Maggie Cheung, Maria de Medeiros (Henry & June, Pulp Fiction), Sarah Polley, Marco Bellocchio (Fists in the Pocket, Devil in the Flesh), author Orhan Pamuk, Michel Piccoli (Belle de jour, Phantom of Liberty), and Abderrahmane Sissako (Waiting for Happiness).

The closing film will be Denys Arcand's L'âge des ténèbres, starring Diane Kruger, Emma de Caunes, and Rufus Wainwright. Arcand has previously won a screenwriting award for The Barbarian Invasions (Les invasions barbares) and a jury prize for Jésus de Montréal.

Three promising filmmakers, among twelve others, will be presenting their works-in-progress: Bertrand (Tiresia) Bonello's De la guerre, João Pedro (O Fantasma, Two Drifters) Rodrigues' To Die Like a Man, and Tsai (Vive l'amour, What Time Is It There?) Ming-liang's Salome -- I would urge you to check out these directors' other films.

Playing in the Un Certain Regard competition will be a bunch of first-time filmmakers from all over the world, in addition to new films from Valeria (It's Easier for a Camel) Bruni-Tedeschi's La rêve de la nuit d'avant, Harmony (Gummo) Korine's Mister Lonely, starring Diego Luna as Michael Jackson, Samantha Morton as Marilyn Monroe, Anita Pallenberg as The Queen of England, Denis Lavant as Charlie Chaplin, as well as starring Werner Herzog and magician David Blaine, and Barbet (Barfly, Maîtresse) Schroeder's L'avocat de la terreur.

And, finally, Michael Moore's Sicko, a documentary about health insurance in the United States, Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Thirteen, and Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart, with Angelina Jolie, will be screened out of competition. Olivier (demonlover, Irma Vep) Assayas' first English-language film Boarding Gate, with Asia Argento and Michael Madsen, Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales, with Willem Dafoe, Bob Hoskins, Matthew Modine, Sylvia Miles, Pras, and the two It-Girls of this year's Cannes Anita Pallenberg and Asia Argento, and Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington's U2 3D will be playing at midnight screenings.

Whew, I hope you're now informed... and you can, of course, expect updates when the festival goes underway on the 16th of May.

Dark?

Was Notes on a Scandal really nominated for Oscars? Best Actress, Supporting Actress, and Adapted Screenplay? It's destined to become some sort of camp classic, as both revered actresses Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett ham it up throughout most of the film. I really think someone should make a YouTube montage of the best overracting scenes in the film, sort of like someone did with Neil LaBute's abhorrent (or hilarious?) The Wicker Man. I hope when Notes on a Scandal drops from video store new releases that it lands in the horror section, as it's pretty much a slasher film with a crusty ol' dyke terrorizing a pretty young woman. If you don't chuckle at the final scene of the film, I'm not sure what's wrong with you.

On an unrelated note, I must highly recommend (and at the same time, not recommend) Phillippe Grandrieux's Sombre, which was just released on DVD by Koch Lorber. It's almost as if the film was made just for my perverse French film obsession, a longing, frustrating, claustrophobic, meandering, exquisite, painful, heartbreaking, gorgeous motion picture, and I know for certain that most people will loathe the very core of Grandrieux's vision. So, if you lay around your house waiting for the next installment of French extremist cinema, give Sombre a gander.

The Horror: Extended Edition

Grindhouse - dir. Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth - 2007 - USA

Grindhouse, despite many reservations I may have had, provided what most exploitations only hinted toward: the meat. I’m sure plenty of critics have used the term “full-throttle” to describe one or both of the features within Grindhouse (as “full-throttle” is just as commonly thrown around in film “criticism” as “tour de force”), and for lack of any word to better convey the intensity of the films, I’ll reluctantly agree with said critics. Sure, there were plenty of sleaze fests from back in the day, but as I’ve stated in numerous other reviews, exploitation films, as quoted by a TLAVideo reviewer on the film Let Me Die a Woman, always seemed to provide the “sizzle” without the “meat.” And thankfully, two filmmakers, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, have blessed us with both in their ode to the grindhouse films of decades past.

The idea of separating the two from one another (in order to recuperate money that wasn’t received on its opening weekend) is a shame. Both Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Tarantino’s Death Proof beautifully play off one another, despite being completely different films. Planet Terror is utter mayhem from the go-go dancing credit sequence to its absurd, utopian ending. Death Proof, however, takes its time, alienating certain viewers with its incessant long-take dialogue and Tarantino pop culture references. Yet, however you feel about the rest of the film, Death Proof provides the most exhilarating finale for not just the film, but the double-feature itself. The positioning of the films is almost as important as the films themselves, not to mention that both sort of play off one another. In Planet Terror, we hear a radio dedication to one of the characters in Death Proof, not to mention that Rose McGowan appears in both films as drastically different characters and Marley Shelton as the same one.

Among the few people who actually saw the film, I’m sure there’s a debate going around as to which is the superior of the two, and it’s all a matter of taste, really. It goes a bit deeper than whether you’re a zombie-freak or a fast-car aficionado. A preference is probably devised as to which method the directors take you would align yourself with. Planet Terror is about as faithful as you can get to a nuclear apocalypse film where zombies are taking over the world. The screenplay, by Rodriguez, would have probably been ranked as one of the more efficient and skilled (in a screenwriter sense) of the time, had it came out during said period. Everything obnoxiously and hilariously comes back in the end, from corny life lessons to disputes among characters, here involving a barbeque recipe. The script is so artless that it reaches a level of tongue-in-cheek beauty.

Death Proof, however, functions drastically differently. My friend Eric commented, “Tarantino’s dialogue is becoming worse and worse as his films continue, or I’m becoming less and less tolerant of it.” I think both responses are correct. I, personally, haven’t felt like Quentin Tarantino has ever really followed up Pulp Fiction; the tepid Jackie Brown and overrated Kill Bill series don’t so much feel like films in a respected filmography as just time-wasters, even though time wasting is what Tarantino does best in Death Proof. In hindsight, one realizes that Death Proof only exists for its final fifteen-minutes, an invigorating car chase sequence like no other. While some might complain that the rest of the film is nearly unnecessary, I’d have to disagree with caution. The talkiness isn’t merely a Tarantino motif, as it us intentionally unintentional suspense. There’s an overcast of fear and terror that runs throughout Death Proof and heightens with every silly talk-fest that is seemingly just taking us to the film’s stunning climax. When the film reaches its second act, there’s a real uneasiness about what is about to transpire. The excessive build-up to the game that stuntwoman Zoë Bell and Tracie Thoms want to play (“ship’s mast,” I think is what it was called) is both irritating and alarming. Their talking, which just fills the time to the game itself, makes for brilliant danger, almost as much as seeing the scene itself. I appreciate the long stretches of dialogue that seem to be about nothing, because it feels like an authentic exploitation film that wrote some semblance of a screenplay around a jolting car chase sequence. However, Tarantino tried his hardest not to make so much an exploitation film as a “Tarantino does exploitation” film. There are herds of annoying pop culture references, from Lindsay Lohan to an appreciation for the film Vanishing Point, that could have only come from Tarantino’s mouth. Sure, I snickered a little when Rosario Dawson tells her friends that her director boyfriend banged Daryl Hannah’s stand-in, but that doesn’t make up for Tarantino’s sheer lack of modesty.

Either way, Grindhouse stands alongside a few other films in recent memory as being exhaustingly entertaining, in ways movies so seldom are these days.

NOTE: Tarantino has admitted that Rose McGowan is his favorite actress (Brian De Palma concurs), and I can’t help but notice the odes to her other performances in both Planet Terror and Death Proof. In Planet Terror, Freddy Rodriguez comments that he loves the way Cherry (McGowan) says the word “fuck,” which (perhaps just for me) recalls some of her finer moments in Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation, in which she barely utters a sentence without that word. My friend Dan suggested that her hideous blonde wig in Death Proof was also an homage to her role in Scream, where she, rather famously, gets her head smashed in a garage door because of the interference of her large chest.

NOTE 2: Though I loved both films, the finest moment of Grindhouse is easily (and I can’t think of many who will disagree) Eli Roth’s fake trailer for Thanksgiving. Makes you a little more excited about Hostel 2, doesn’t it?

The Horror

I really don't know how I feel about living in a country where the most exhilarating sleaze and the most exciting three hours one could spend in the theatre is considered a bomb, while a generic comedy about a bunch of fat old men riding motorcycles is a box office smash. The world is scarier than I thought.

slow like honey

Some things you might expect once I get out of my writing rut:

-A critical examination of Alain Resnais' sublime Muriel, ou Le temps d'un retour.
-Some thoughts on Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse (you know I was going to see it when the poster of Rose McGowan with a machine-gun leg was revealed)
-A better review of Children of Men

Any other suggestions, send them my way. Sorry for the lack of updates.