In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • ‘District 9’ to Six

    As “District 9” remains the number-one topic of conversation among American moviegoers, not least for its invocation of the apartheid era, I’m surprised to see a number of prominent critics have either missed or ignored the most obvious of its symbolic historical references: the tragedy of District Six.

    A vibrant, multi-racial residential pocket of Cape Town that was declared “whites-only” in 1966, prompting the forced removal of over 60,000 people and the eventual demolition of the entire area, it stands as one of the key symbols of South Africa’s darkest days — and is plainly the primary touchstone for Neill Blomkamp’s allegory.

    Some have discussed the connection, of course — starting with that title, it’s hardly subtle — but if you weren’t aware, and were grabbed by the film, you might like to do some further research.

    district-6.1

  • Five new docs added to Toronto slate

    The Little MermaidindieWIRE’s Peter Knegt reports on a few new developments on the documentary side of things at the upcoming Toronto fest, chief of which is the addition of a further five titles to the feature doc lineup.

    Three of the five will be having their world premiere at Toronto, including Bob Richman’s “Ahead of Time,” a study of the life of venerable Brooklyn-born intellectural Ruth Gruber, and Icelandic production “The Sunshine Boy,” which details a mother’s coming to terms with her son’s autism.

    The film, however, that I suspect most eyes will be on is “Waking Sleeping Beauty,” the directorial debut from esteemed, Oscar-nominated Disney producer Don Hahn (“The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast”), which covers a section of recent cinematic history held dear by many:

    This isn’t a fairy tale, but rather the true story of how the Disney animation team went from stagnation in the mid-1980s to a startling rebirth with a staggering output of hits – Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King and more – over a ten year period. Director Don Hahn, who was a key contributor on many of these works, brings an insider’s perspective to the film.

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  • The same, but different

    Friend and reader Nick just pointed me to this international one-sheet for Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island,” which apparently hit the web last week, though I must not have noticed.

    Hardly a drastic departure from the domestic poster we saw last month — and while I like the clearer photo-collage motif here, I think the American design has the upper hand in typography, and a more arresting expression from DiCaprio. So after an international team trounced the U.S. designers in last week’s “An Education” one-sheet showdown, the scores are now level. Riveting stuff. What do you think?

    Shutter Island international poster

  • Spelling it out

    The Time Traveler's WifeAt a dinner this weekend, two female friends of mine were contemplating whether or not to see “The Time Traveler’s Wife” in the face of largely withering reviews. They eventually decided in the negative, one of them sagely (if irrationally) concluding: “If they can’t even spell the title, what are the odds of them getting anything else right?”

    The issue cropped up again this morning, as a bus emblazoned with the film’s poster hovered a few yard away from my living-room window. My dad, visiting for the week, looked up and pointed out the supposed spelling “error” with resigned irritation. Then, while browsing through The Guardian site this afternoon, what complaint should I happen upon but this:

    First they knock our NHS, then they mess with our film posters; truly, there are days when it’s hard not to believe that America hasn’t launched a stealth war against us … The latest attack involves the promotional campaign for The Time Traveler’s Wife, the big-screen adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s novel of the same name. Your eyes do not deceive you: they have indeed spelled it Traveler, as opposed to Traveller.

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  • Seeking refuge in festival season

    The Golden Lion at the Venice Film FestivalThere’s been much prophesying of doom among film journalists lately, with everyone from Roger Ebert to Jeff Wells harping on about an imminent cinematic dark age, brought on by mainstream audiences who prefer “G.I. Joe” to “The Hurt Locker.”

    If I don’t quite share their alarm, it’s because it’s a cry that is repeated at least every other year, as we near the end of another summer stuffed with celluloid shit — that this year’s better blockbusters didn’t quite catch on to the degree of a “Dark Knight,” or (in pop-culture impact, at least) a “WALL-E,” to me suggests a return to the status quo rather than a significant dip.

    Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE shares in the general dissatisfaction with this summer’s crop — bemoaning in particular the dearth of originally-scripted hits — but hits a more upbeat note than his colleagues by painting the upcoming fall festival season as a kind of beacon of hope for serious film lovers.

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  • Streep sells

    Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia!I may have said a while back that Meryl Streep is the most bankable actress in the business at the moment (despite her lowly ranking on the Forbes 100), but I didn’t quite mean it in this way.

    “Julie & Julia” may not be performing at quite the same level as “Mamma Mia!” or “The Devil Wears Prada,” but it still marks the third time in four years that Streep has successfully spearheaded a healthy piece of mainstream counter-programming amid the testosterone-fueled dross of summer.

    With Nancy Meyers’s “It’s Complicated” looking to apply that same populist Midas touch to the Christmas season, that’s a pretty remarkable track record for any woman in the business, much less one in her sixties.

    But this article by Jonathan Romney in today’s Independent takes Streep’s commercial viability even further, and outside the movie theater, by pointing out the peripheral economic effects of her recent hits, in departments ranging from the music industry to the leisure sector.

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  • Still crazy after all these years

    In the course of my daily rummaging, I happened upon this beautiful French one-sheet (pictured left) for Alain Resnais’s “Wild Grass”  that instantly takes the lead in my personal “poster of the year” race. (The film, as we recently mentioned, has the honor of opening the New York Film Festival.)

    Wild GrassLast Year at Marienbad

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  • Second life

    Seth Rogen in Funny PeopleOn Friday, John Foote raised the question of which recent films look likely to endure through the coming decades, despite, in many cases, having under-performed on initial release. You responded in your droves.

    Interestingly enough, Joe Queenan recently addressed a similar issue in a very good essay for The Guardian, contemplating the odd phenomena that lead certain films to largely escape the notice of critics and audiences in theaters, but then go on to gain cult status on DVD (or, back in the day, home video).

    Films he cites as key examples include “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “The Big Lebowski” (which many seem to have forgotten was dismissed by many as a misfire following the crossover success of “Fargo”) and “Office Space” (which barely made it to theaters at all), as well as far older titles that slow-burned their way to classic status, such as “The Wizard of Oz” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

    When it comes to predicting a similar path for current films, he dismisses naming broadly acclaimed specialty titles with moderate box-office (“The Wrestler,” “The Hurt Locker”) as too easy, too prestigious.

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  • International ‘White Ribbon’ trailer

    Okay, so your appreciation of this trailer for Michael Haneke’s lavishly acclaimed Palme d’Or winner will obviously be enhanced if you have at least a working knowledge of German. (No subtitles here.)

    But since it’s the first substantial glimpse most of us have had of what is clearly a major work, I thought it worth posting. The imagery and atmospherics on display here speak for themselves, anyway. Hat tip to Jeff Wells for digging it up. (Trailer plays after the cut.)

    The White Ribbon

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  • Ebert stands up for Armond White … then sits down again

    Armond WhiteI’m sure Armond White couldn’t be more thrilled with the amount of chatter about him this week, and all spurred by one solitary review to boot. It rather puts the lie to the perception that nobody cares about what critics have to say these days.

    Now Roger Ebert, generally appointed by America as class captain of the critical artform, has decided to weigh in on the matter, and has come out in defence of White — only to rather confusingly revoke his support overnight.

    Ebert backs up White’s take on “District 9,” agreeing with him that the film ends in “apocalyptic silliness” (Ebert’s own review heavily criticizes the third act) and praising him for both his political reading of the material and his off-the-beaten-track film references.

    Finally, he stands up for White’s supposedly contrarian leanings, and in doing so, points out the stupidity of using Rotten Tomatoes as a barometer of critical worth:

    More to the point is White’s reputation as a critic who “doesn’t like anything.” This is not true. It would be more accurate to say he dislikes a great many films approved of by fanboys. The last Tomatoes lynch mob raised against him was for his dislike of “Star Trek.” Man, did they hate him for that! You may be surprised to learn that White agrees (or, for that matter, disagrees) with the TomatoMeter exactly 50% of the time.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Festivals beckon, ‘District 9’ opens

    Sharlto Copley in District 9• The New York Film Festival unveiled a decidedly foreign lineup, with Alain Resnais and Pedro Almodovar at either end.

    • Speaking of festivals, the long-awaited “The Road” was among the titles added to the Toronto slate this week.

    • With everyone excited about “District 9” this week, we took time to chat to the film’s breakout star Sharlto Copley.

    • Best Film Editing was the subject of this week’s installment of Tech Support.

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  • One-eyed jacks

    Raoul Walsh“A film must always be finished, even if it is in the dark.”

    This line may come froma brand new film, Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” but it’s an apt pointer to a vintage film retrospective in New York that surely forms the oddest news item of the day. In “Broken Embraces,” the line is spoken by a blind film director determine to salvage the work of his once-sighted career; in this retrospective, directors with half that disability are being duly celebrated.

    The New York Post reports that the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village is screening a series of classics from five Hollywood masters, all of whom share the unusual fate of having gone blind in one eye: John Ford, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang, Raoul Walsh and  Andre de Toth.

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  • Salvaging ‘The Burning Plain’ across the pond

    Charlize Theron in The Burning PlainA couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the tortuous release schedule that Guillermo Arriaga’s directorial debut “The Burning Plain” has endured since making a respectable bow at Venice almost a year ago. The film’s buzz has fluctuated wildly over the months, but it was never softer than in March, when it opened in the UK to an alarmingly weak response.

    The hard numbers make for shocking reading: opening on a meager six screens, the film earned a humiliating $10, 626 in two weeks, before disappearing altogether. (For the sake of comparison, another humble Arriaga-penned effort, “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,” grossed over 11 times that amount.)

    As one of the few people who contributed to that gross, I may have had some reservations about the film — but there’s no question it deserved much better. Perhaps spring wasn’t the right season for a small prestige item like this.

    More than that, I suspect a film as intrinsically American as this one needed to arrive in the UK with some Stateside critical momentum behind it to prod the local press into giving it more coverage. Wrong time, wrong place.

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  • Is it May-December again?

    As usual with Woody Allen’s projects, we have little idea what the film he’s currently shooting in London — with Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin and Freida Pinto, among others — is actually about, but this snap from the set, of Anthony Hopkins and 31 year-old British comedienne Lucy Punch (who stepped in when Nicole Kidman bailed), gives us at least one clue.

    Allen’s preoccupation with generational disparity in relationships has surfaced in many of his films over the years — from “Manhattan” to “Hannah and Her Sisters” to “Husbands and Wives” to, most recently, “Whatever Works” — and it looks like it will again here.

    Anthony Hopkins and Lucy Punch on the set of Woody Allen's latest

  • Nathaniel Rogers boards the Mulligan express

    Carey Mulligan“An Education” and its breakout star Carey Mulligan continue to slay bloggers wherever they go. Chief cheerleader Jeff Wells hasn’t stopped talking about the film since its Sundance bow in January, and you’ll remember that Kris joined the fan club (with added props for Alfred Molina) in June.

    Sasha Stone was sufficiently dazzled by Mulligan’s work to place her at the top of a list of today’s finest young actresses. Now The Film Experience’s Nathaniel Rogers, the guy for whom Best Actress is the most holy of all award categories, has seen the film, and is rendered virtually speechless by Mulligan’s performance:

    just… WOW

    We’re still five plus months away from nominations but, for the moment, it looks like a Carey vs. Meryl showdown on March 7th, 2010.

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  • IFC to bring ‘Fish Tank’ to U.S. screens

    Katie Jarvis in Fish TankI mentioned last week how much Andrea Arnold’s Cannes-garlanded Brit beauty “Fish Tank” has grown in my esteem over the weeks — I’m really starting to think the 3½ stars I gave it in my review was too cautious.

    I wrote then that the film was still awaiting a Stateside distributor, and while I suspected its American premiere in Toronto would remedy that, it turns we didn’t even have to wait that long. ScreenDaily reports that, unsurprisingly, it is once more IFC who have come to the rescue:

    IFC Films has acquired US rights to Andrea Arnold’s second feature Fish Tank following its world premiere in Cannes where it shared the special jury prize.

    IFC’s vice-president of acquisitions Arianna Bocco brokered the deal with UTA and Jamie Carmichael of ContentFilm International. Arnold is represented by Matthew Bates at Sayle Screen Ltd in the UK and Gersh in the US. IFC Films will release through its IFC In Theaters theatrical and VOD day-and-date platform.

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  • In praise of the studio suits

    Kevin Spacey in Swimming With SharksIt’s a few days old, but I only just got to this excellent Guardian piece in which Danny Leigh wonders whether Hollywood studio executives are done a disservice by the widespread perception of them as ruthless corporate shills with little sense of artistic responsibility. (An image best typified in semi-fictional form, of course, by Kevin Spacey’s Scott Rudin-inspired honcho in “Swimming With Sharks.”)

    Arguing that the media is complicit in the dominance of auteur theory, by championing only the directors of critical hits while vilifying the backers of cynical commercial drek in the “Transformers” vein, Leigh fears that a number of dedicated studio heads — several of whom put a lot of time and resources into nurturing new, offbeat filmmaking talent — are getting the short end of the stick.

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  • The ‘real’ Ferris Bueller mourns John Hughes

    Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller's Day OffIf anything good can be said to have from such a sad event, the premature passing of John Hughes has at least inspired an unusually high standard of obituary-writing. The personal connection still felt by an entire generation with his films has manifested itself in a number of heartfelt, idiosyncratic tributes from a wide range of voices.

    As someone too young to have experienced the Hughes teen phenomenon first-hand — I was in diapers when he made his directing debut with “Sixteen Candles” — I’ve gained a lot of understanding this week as to why his work means so much to so many, and why that makes him an important filmmaker. While I’ve enjoyed several of his films, I’m looking forward to revisiting them from this perspective.

    Meanwhile, the most interesting tribute I’ve read yet comes from an unlikely source: Washington lawyer Edward McNally, who grew up and attended high school with Hughes, and is rumored to be the inspiration for Hughes most beloved creation, Ferris Bueller.

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