…that, if it’s domestically released this year, Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” will pop up somewhere in my top 10?
Category: Daily
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5/18 Web Round-up
• “Star Trek” looks to be a hit off-world. [The Carpetbagger]• It looks like Kenneth Branagh and Marvel have found their Thor: Chris Hemsworth from “Star Trek.” [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
• Jeff Sneider takes a long, hard look at the MTV Movie Awards. [Examiner.com]
• Tom O’Neil poses the obvious question: Will “Angels & Demons” bring another Razzie bid for director Ron Howard? [Gold Derby]
• Speaking of which, someone finally calls out the two worst writers in the business as responsible for the clunky film. [Peter Bart]
• Dan Jolin wonders if the latest 3D craze is a bunch of hogwash. [Empire]
• Laughing stock Roger Friedman gets a new gig as “senior correspondent.” [Hollywood Reporter]
“Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” premieres in D.C. [Washington Post]
• On the stamina of fan-movie filmmakers. [The Independent]
• Sad to see a once-great magazine reduced to nothing but constant top 10 lists, but here’s another one: top 10 “safe for work” movie strip scenes. Oy. [Premiere]
• Tom Shone talks to Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, writer/directors of the brilliant “Sugar.” [The Guardian]
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Back in the spotlight
UPDATE: Sorry, my fascination is unending. The Guardian’s Xan Brooks comes out in full support of the film:
I stumble out in a daze, momentarily unsure whether I loved it or loathed it. Abruptly I realise that I love it. Von Trier has slapped Cannes with an astonishing, extraordinary picture – shocking and comical; a funhouse of terrors (of primal nature, of female sexuality) that rattles the bones and fizzes the blood before bowing out with a presumptuous dedication to Andrei Tarkovsky that had sections of the crowd hooting in fury … Pound for pound, (“A Prophet”) is surely the strongest film of the competition so far. Why, then, is it “Antichrist” that keeps me awake last night, whirling like a dervish in the darkness of the room?
EARLIER: Somehow I get the feeling that Lars Von Trier went to bed last night a very satisfied man. After the deafening indifference that greeted “The Boss Of It All” and “Manderlay,” he arrived at Cannes with one objective more crucial than any other: to prove that his work could still inspire feeling and discussion. Point proven.
Whether or not “Antichrist” is as awful as some people seem to think — and indeed, not everyone does think so — is beside the point. For all his genius (and I do think he is one of the most extraordinary filmmakers of his time), Von Trier shamelessly thrives on attention; when his work is ignored, as has been the case these past six years, his own creative mojo appears to flag. Much has been said about how “Antichrist” is the product of a recent bout of severe depression; perhaps his rediscovered capacity for provocation signals a renewed willingness to engage, and a more fruitful creative period to come.
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Hahahahahaha
From this morning’s Telegraph (among other sources):
Jamie Foxx, the African-American actor, singer and comedian, has been named as a potential contender for the role of Frank Sinatra in Martin Scorsese’s biopic of the entertainer.
Foxx, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the 2004 film Ray, reportedly considered to be “perfect” for the role. If he is chosen for the part, it will be one of the most prominent examples of “colour-blind” casting in Hollywood history. Also in the running are George Clooney, Leonardo di Caprio, Harry Connick Jnr and Justin Timberlake.
They forgot to mention Dakota Fanning.
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Ebert on ‘Antichrist’
Curiouser and curiouser. Roger Ebert is clearly still processing Lars Von Trier’s latest crowd-terroriser, but there appears to be respect in his initial assessment:Whether this is a bad, good or great film is entirely beside the point. It is an audacious spit in the eye of society. It says we harbor an undreamed-of capacity for evil. It transforms a psychological treatment into torture undreamed of in the dungeons of history. Torturers might have been capable of such actions, but they would have lacked the imagination. Von Trier is not so much making a film about violence as making a film to inflict violence upon us, perhaps as a salutary experience. It’s been reported that he suffered from depression during and after the film. You can tell. This is the most despairing film I’ve ever have seen.
What can be said is that von Trier, after what many found the agonizing boredom of his previous Cannes films “Dogville” and “Manderlay,” has made a film that is not boring. Unendurable, perhaps, but not boring. For relief I am looking forward to the overnight reviews of those who think they can explain exactly what it means. In this case, perhaps, a film should not mean, but be.
There is no film on the planet that I want to see more, right now, than “Antichrist.”
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American ‘Chéri’ poster
Unlike the appropriately sober (if aesthetically half-assed) UK poster, this U.S. one-sheet for “Chéri” does much the same thing as the trailer in selling the film as an effervescent romantic comedy.
The film plays along for its first half, though as I said in my review, the chick-lit crowd may find themselves surprised by the melancholy turn the proceedings take. Still, whatever means necessary, and all that. Meanwhile, you’d never guess that Rupert Friend plays the title character. (Thanks to commenter Red Wine for the tip.)
[Source: IMP Awards]
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‘Antichrist’ causes outrage on the Croisette
Oh dear — this is turning out to be a pretty rough weekend at Cannes. We’re still awaiting the first official reviews of Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist,” which just screened this evening, but it seems to have attracted the full ire of the notoriously excitable Cannes crowd. Boos, gasps and laughter reportedly greeted the screening on the gory, sexually explicit film, which apparently throws everything from talking animals to genital mutilation into the pot.
Jeff Wells pulls no punches in his assassination of the film:
Easily one of the biggest debacles in Cannes Film Festival history and the complete meltdown of a major film artist in a way that invites comparison to the sinking of the Titanic … It’s an out-and-out disaster — one of the most absurdly on-the-nose, heavy-handed and unintentionally comedic calamities I’ve ever seen in my life. On top of which it’s dedicated to the late Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, whose rotted and decomposed body is now quite possibly clawing its way out of the grave to stalk the earth, find an axe and slay Von Trier in his bed.
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Keep hidden
In trying to disentangle the order of Martin Scorsese’s upcoming projects (in the wake of this week’s news that the master is taking on Sinatra), AwardsDaily’s Ryan Adams takes a peek at the range of titles that IMDB Pro lists on the director’s slate.
I am mistrustful of IMDB’s information at the best of times, particularly with a director like Scorsese who seems to nurture multiple projects indefinitely. (For how many years has “Silence” been in the conversation, after all?) But I was intrigued and a little puzzled to see an optioned property titled “Cache” at the head of the list, with a projected date of 2011.
Is this the long-mooted American remake Michael Haneke’s 2005 masterpiece, or is it unrelated? (There’s no accent aigu on the title, after all.) Can anyone enlighten me? I remember recoiling in horror when Ron Howard was mentioned in connection with the project a few years ago. Scorsese is obviously a step up, but a remake — by anyone — of Haneke’s very idiosyncratic film still strikes me as a dicey prospect, given how rooted it is in a very specific historical and political context.
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Neeson, Connelly headline Dustin Lance Black’s directing debut
The Liam Neeson career revival continues apace. Variety reports that the 56 year-old thesp will star opposite Jennifer Connelly in “What’s Wrong With Virginia,” the first directorial effort from “Milk” scribe Dustin Lance Black. The film, which has Gus Van Sant involved as an executive producer, which begins shooting this summer. The pitch goes as follows:Connelly will play the charming but psychologically disturbed mother of a 16-year-old son. Her 20-year clandestine love with a sheriff (Neeson), who is running for the state senate, is tested when her son begins a relationship with his daughter.
Sounds to me like a return for Black to the quirky domestic territory of “Big Love.” Is this a comedy of sorts? Certain details (that title, for starters) imply that to me, though it isn’t made clear in the report. Either way, Neeson and Connelly aren’t exactly the first pairing I’d think of for an onscreen romance — so, well, interesting.
We’re also reminded that Black and Van Sant are collaborating once more on an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” which is an ambitious undertaking to say the least. You may remember that I wasn’t exactly sold on Black’s Oscar-winning efforts on “Milk,” but good on him for using his post-win momentum to get as many irons in the fire as possible.
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Mixed early word for ‘Agora’
I’ve had slight misgivings about Alejandro Amenabar’s much-awaited historical epic “Agora” for a while, and I’m not really sure why. It’s certainly nothing to do with Amenabar’s own track record. For me, “The Others” stands as one of cinema’s great ghost stories, and while “The Sea Inside,” for which he won an Oscar four years ago, wasn’t quite up to his previous film’s immaculate standards, it was a rousing, intermittently stunning effort.Perhaps it’s because, even in his most conceptually elaborate work like “Open Your Eyes,” his work has such an intimate scale that the prospect of him taking on a massive sword-and-sandal endeavor like “Agora” doesn’t quite gel. Perhaps it’s because star Rachel Weisz has shown such wildly inconsistent taste in her selections of late. I have no idea, but I’m not particularly comforted after reading the rather mixed slate of reviews that followed the film’s unveiling at Cannes this morning.
The Hollywood Reporter dithers over the film, declaring it a bit of a slog, but one that repays the effort, with “an unfaltering performance” from Weisz:
Amenabar gets most of the epic staples out of the way relatively early: flatly acted scenes of textbook exposition, overly earnest extras, main characters who wander unscathed through hordes of butchery and, of course, frequently swelling music. The story then becomes a timely parable on religious intolerance, inexorable fundamentalist violence and the powerlessness of reason and personal freedom in the face of both.
It is a pleasure to see Weisz’s scenes of scientific inquiry, which capture the passion of research and discovery without artifice or pretension. That the scientist is a woman makes it all the more engaging.
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John Cameron Mitchell on ‘Rabbit Hole’
Thanks to Nathaniel Rogers for pointing out a Screen Daily video interview (embedded below the cut) in which John Cameron Mitchell talks in some depth about his next film, “Rabbit Hole,” which goes into production next month.We mentioned the project last month, when Aaron Eckhart was cast opposite Nicole Kidman in the screen adaptation of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about bereaved parents. The cast has grown since then, with Dianne Wiest, Sandra Oh and Giancarlo Esposito all also on board now.
The setup in the video is slightly odd — Mitchell seems to have been held at gunpoint against a wall and forced to give a monologue — but the director has a number of interesting things to say, particularly on the contrast between working with stars like Kidman and the less seasoned players of his last film, “Shortbus.”
He also talks up Lindsay-Abaire’s screen adaptation in a big way, describing it as one of the best screenplays he has ever read, and “head and shoulders” ahead of the original play. Unlike the cut-and-paste script jobs of recent Broadway-to-screen transfers like, say, “Doubt” or “Frost/Nixon,” Mitchell promises a complete cinematic reimagining of the material, citing the way his previous films incorporated animation and art into their film language as a point of reference.
As I said before, he’s a bold choice of director, and it’s clear he’s deeply invested in the material. It’s not often one gets such detailed insight into a director’s plan for a project before shooting begins — here’s hoping he pulls it off. Check out the video below the cut.
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Cracks show in Cannes lineup
After surveying the reviews of Johnnie To’s “Vengeance” and Brillante Mendoza’s “Kinatay,” it seems safe to assume that neither film is a contender for the Palme d’Or — in the latter, we may even have our first real critical punchbag of the Competition.ScreenDaily dismisses “Vengeance,” an action effort teaming Hong Kong genre lord To with iconic French actor/singer Johnny Hallyday, as a “revenge shoot-em-up which fires mostly blanks,” citing a “contrived plot,” “wooden English dialogue” and a “stilted” lead performance as the key problems. Variety is more charitable, calling it “smoothly executed” but ultimately “more of the stylish same” from the director.
Less predictable, and a lot more contentious, appears to be “Kinatay,” a grim, ultra-violent (the title translates as “slaughter”) tale of an ordinary man drawn into a crime syndicate — though apparently a lot weirder than that generic premise indicates. Variety slates the film, labelling it both “unpleasant” and “banal,” and predicting a general critical drubbing.
Roger Ebert confirms that prognosis, with a vicious takedown in which he claims the film surpasses Vincent Gallo’s infamous “The Brown Bunny” as the worst in the festival’s history:
There will be critics who fancy themselves theoreticians, who will defend this unbearable experience, and lecture those plebians like me who missed the whole Idea. I will remain serene while my ignorance is excoriated. I am a human being with relatively reasonable tastes. And in that role, not in the role of film critic, I declare that there may not be ten people in the world who will buy a ticket to this movie and feel the money was well spent.
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Jane Campion’s ‘Bright Star’ scrapbook
Those of you impatient to lay eyes on Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” following yesterday’s very positive Cannes reception might want to check out this online “production scrapbook” that has been assembled for the film.
A loosely compiled collection of notes, photos, sketches, storyboard and props from Campion and her collaborators, it’s an elegant indulgence that gives some indication of the painterly visual textures we can expect from the film. Greig Fraser, a young DP working on his first major feature here, is already being talked up as a contender for cinematography honors, and in addition to the stills we’ve already soon, some of the location pics here show why. Take a look here.
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‘Basterds’ online
Blame the lack of U.S. star power on the Croisette this year if you like (the NYT’s Brooks Barnes claims there’s an abnormal amount of empty hotel rooms around), but it sounds like a particularly quiet day at Cannes — and elsewhere.
If you want to make it a lot noisier, check out the relatively new official “Inglourious Basterds” site here. Grinding guitars, gunfire every time you click a tab … it’s every bit as subtle as you’d expect and want from the film, even if it doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know, or thought you knew.
The ample quoting of dialogue throughout, however, reminds me just how many misgivings I had about that script. Perhaps the clunkiness needs a visual context. I’m genuinely curious to see how this goes down — the film makes its Cannes debut on Wednesday.
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‘A Prophet’ impresses at Cannes
Ang Lee may have struck out, but happily, another of my favorite auteurs in the Cannes lineup has had better luck today. I mentioned earlier this week that Jacques Audiard’s prison drama “A Prophet” was one of the Competition titles I was most personally interested in, and the reviews from today’s press screening justify my faith.Like Audiard’s superb “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” the film appears to be another genre-infused exercise, though with a broader, grittier touch than that delicate character study — and Screen Daily’s Jonathan Romney thinks that shift could pay strong commercial dividends:
(Audiard’s) violent, gripping prison drama A Prophet shows him extending his range with unimpeachable command. The story of a gauche young inmate who rises through the criminal ranks to become a formidable player, A Prophet works both as hard-edged, painstaking detailed social realism and as a compelling genre entertainment.
The film should have the same international appeal as last year’s Cannes crime hit Gomorrah. Its unapologetically testosterone-laden tenor will give the film a resonance way beyond the international art-house constituency that embraced Audiard’s last film, The Beat That My Heart Skipped.
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‘Precious’ a hit at Cannes
Since it was announced that it would be playing the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes, I’ve been interested to see how Lee Daniels’ “Precious” would play on this side of the Atlantic.Though the film was an all-round sensation at Sundance back in January, I wasn’t sure if it would receive the same level of adulation here, where there traditionally isn’t much of an audience for U.S. urban-based stories.
Moreover, the film’s biggest talking-point at Sundance — Mo’Nique’s surprise-attack performance — risked being diluted in Europe, where I suspect few people know who the comedienne is. (It’s telling that the Cannes media has focused far more on Mariah Carey’s de-glamming.)
All of which hasn’t appeared to matter one jot, as the film screened last night to a rapturous standing ovation, making it one of the heavy favorites for the Un Certain Regard award, which has boosted such arthouse fare as “The Band’s Visit” and “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” in recent years.
That “Precious” has been so warmly embraced in a critical environment not particularly predisposed towards such a film speaks volumes. Could its awards prospects go beyond that increasingly likely-looking Best Supporting Actress bid for Mo’Nique? A Best Adapted Screenplay nod, or Best Actress for Gabourey Sidibe, are certainly in the realm of possibility. A Best Picture bid seems to me a bit too great a leap for the Academy at this stage, but as long as the film keeps slaying audiences like this, who knows?
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‘Taking Woodstock’ fizzles at Cannes
Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock” appears to have provided Cannes with its first high-profile disappointment. While it doesn’t appear to be a disaster by any means, the general consensus appears to be that it doesn’t meet the very high standard Lee set for himself with his last two features.Allan Hunter at Screen Daily finds much to like in the film, calling it a “sweet, meandearing tribute” to the eponymous festival, he ultimately declares it inconsequential:
Taking Woodstock is accessible but very lightweight and should enjoy moderate commercial success as a specialised domestic release. The very American, softly sentimental nature of the film will make it a harder sell internationally … While the wider themes are persuasive enough its the smaller human stories that are disappointingly banal as Woodstock becomes a form of therapy for Elliot and his parents. Enjoyable in places and merely humdrum in others, Taking Woodstock ultimately feels like a minor Ang Lee digression in between more memorable works.
Hunter finds the film’s ensemble an equally mixed bag:
(Demetri Martin’s) gentle, guileless manner makes him perfect casting for Elliot without settling the matter of whether he is charismatic enough to have a sustained cinema career. Liev Schreiber brings dashes of sass and style to cross-dressing Vilma but Imelda Staunton’s dowdy, embittered Sonia is overcooked and all too reminiscent of Shelley Winters in full flow.
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WEEKLY WRAP: Cannes unspooled, ‘The Road’ unveiled
• Kicking off a Cannes-loaded week, we offered a two-part profile of this year’s contenders for the Palme d’Or.• Meanwhile, this week’s Top Ten list reflected on the greatest runners-up in the festival’s history.
• As “Up” opened the festival, Pixar maintained its recent critical streak.
• Within the competition, however, it’s two films from female auteurs — “Bright Star” and “Fish Tank” — that have critics buzzing.
• Away from the Croisette, there was lots of talk about “The Road” this week, with a new trailer and early review.
• In a neat coincidence, “The Road” was also the subject of this week’s Page to Screen column.
• In a major week for debuting trailers, we also got a look at two very different hot properties: “Nine” and “Precious.”
• Ahead of its June U.S. release, we reviewed Michelle Pfeiffer’s comeback vehicle “Chéri’.”
• We looked into the box office success of “Star Trek.”
• We revisited some buried treasures from the 1980s.
• And finally: is the theatrical experience overrated? Have your say here.