It’s probably largely to do with the inherent sense of understanding, but there’s also something universal about it, about the tragically imperfect’s search for perfection. In any case, I find this to be one of the best, if simplest, slices of genius on the page in our time. Anyway, as you were. I’m just bored here.
Tag: Charlie Kaufman
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5/20 Web Round-up
• Peter Sciretta asks for your most hated uses of CGI in movie history. [/Film]• Charlie Kaufman talks “Synecdoche, New York,” his “mutant horro film,” across the pond. [Daily Telegraph]
• IMAX plans to cozy up next to James Cameron’s “Avatar” for an extended run. [The Carpetbagger]
• Donna Freydkin chats up “Terminator Salvation” star Christian Bale. [USA Today]
• Matt Bradshaw remembers the movie summer of 1980. [Cinematical]
• Christopher Campbell puts together a casting call for Steven Spielberg’s recently announce Martin Luther King biopic. [Spout Blog]
• Richard Corliss picks the top 10 Cannes films ever. [Time]
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Charlie Kaufman on Charlie Kaufman
Flipping through Empire Online’s typically entertaining list of features recently, I stumbled across this portrait of filmmaker Charlie Kaufman (whose brilliant “Synecdoche, New York” opened in the UK this weekend) giving one-offs on the six features sprung from his twisted mind to date.There’s talk of his working relationship with director Michel Gondry on their first effort, “Human Nature” (which I still haven’t seen), the agony of adapting Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief” into 2002’s “Adaptation” and meeting Harvey Keitel and Pierce Brosnan at the Oscars in 2004 (when Kaufman one the original screenplay award for his masterpiece, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”). My favorite is this aside about “Being John Malkovich”:
“There’s something about John Malkovich that’s odd and unknowable. There’s a look in his eye that makes me imagine there’s someone else looking out from inside his head. His name is funny, you know – when people say ‘Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich’, it’s funnier than any other name I’ve tried. And I’ve tried other names, because we didn’t know if we can get him. We also thought of Christopher Walken, we thought about Willem Defoe. I don’t know what that group is exactly, but they’re serious actors, they’re good actors, but they’re slightly odd. So it’s funny, but it’s not a joke in the way it would be if it were, say, Jerry Lewis.”
Kaufman also calls “Synecdoche” a “horror film,” which I’d be willing to go along with. I’d be willing to go along with just about anything he has to say on that film, to be honest. It’s the most bizarrely brilliant film that I can’t qualify to come across my path in a long, long time. And suddenly I want to see it again.
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The Brits get it
Of course, the film is very old news to all of you Stateside, but allow me a moment to say how proud I am that my fellow Englishmen — well, the critics among them, at least — have embraced Charlie Kaufman’s stunning “Synecdoche, New York” with open arms.The film opens today in the UK to a raft of rave reviews from the local broadsheets, including rare five-star notices from the Guardian and the Telegraph. Here’s a sample of Peter Bradshaw’s awestruck review:
The film is either a masterpiece or a massively dysfunctional act of self-indulgence and self-laceration. It has brilliance, either way: surreal, utterly distinctive, witty, gloomy in the manner that his fans will recognise and adore, but with a new epic confidence, absorbing the influences of Fellini and Lynch … At the end of it all, you will feel as if you have lived through some crazy tragedy, swum a chlorinated Hellespont of tears. It is not for everyone, but is utterly extraordinary in its way. If Charlie Kaufman never does anything again, this will stand as his cracked monument.
I always suspected that the film would probably play better across the pond than in the States — though to be fair, it’s not as if the film doesn’t have it share of American devotees. But I’m so pleased to see a clearer consensus emerging on the film this time around — perhaps if there had been similar unanimity of praise on its U.S. release, the film wouldn’t have got quite so buried in awards season. (I’m not deluding myself into thinking the film could have been a major player, but the fact that there was nothing for, say, Samantha Morton all season still really smarts.)
Anyway, the rehabilitation begins here. Hurrah.
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A pleasure deferred
As I walked past my local cinema (that would be my beloved Dalston Rio, if there are any other fans out there) en route to the supermarket this morning, I was rather struck by this new poster for Charlie Kaufman’s masterpiece “Synecdoche, New York.”
After spending a moment admiring the one-sheet and wondering why I had never seen it before, it only then occurred to me that the film has yet to be released in the UK. Yes, you Yanks read that right: the film only hits Limey screens in a fortnight’s time. (Of course, to make up for it, we get a lot of European titles ahead of the States — with the curious exception of “Let the Right One In,” which only bowed last month.)
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1/19 Oscarweb Round-up
(It’s kind of hard to find anything with meat on its bones amid all the boring, derivative Sundance coverage.)• David Poland spends 30 minutes with genius Charlie Kaufman. [The Hot Blog]
• Patrick Goldstein comes to Edward Zwick’s defence over a wrong-headed, borderline moronic assessment of his recent film “Defiance.” [The Big Picture]
• Nathaniel Rogers takes his final Oscar stabs. [The Film Experience]
• Tom O’Neil catches up with “Reader” makeup head Ivana Primorac. [Gold Derby]
• Speaking of which, in case you missed it over the weekend, Gerard Kennedy talked to Primorac and the rest of the film’s below-the-line crew in this week’s edition of “Tech Support.” [In Contention]
• Dave Karger wonders if Meryl Streep’s precursor consistency will nab her a third Oscar. If pressed to answer today, my money would be on her, too. [Entertainment Weekly]
• Your chance to be interviewed about “The Dark Knight” and Oscar and a poll asking whether you’d be more inclined to watch the Oscars if the film is nominated for Best Picture. [USA Today]
• Christopher Campbell takes a look at a Sundance story of yore: “Little Miss Sunshine.” [Spout Blog]
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INTERVIEW: Michelle Williams
Fate can have a bittersweet sense of timing, and Michelle Williams understands this better than most. A 2008 that started bleakly with the passing of Heath Ledger, her former partner and the father of her daughter, has ended as a professional banner year for the 28 year-old actress.A triptych of startling performances in a disparate array of projects — Sharon Maguire’s “Incendiary,” Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” and, most prominently, Kelly Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy” — have made this the year Williams consolidated the Oscar-nominated promise she demonstrated as a member of strong indie ensembles in the likes of “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Station Agent,” and emerged as a great, free-standing actor in her own right.
Further accolades have rolled in, with her tricky, film-carrying performance in “Wendy and Lucy” earning her an Independent Spirit nod and a Best Actress award from the Toronto critics, while in the background, her late ex remains the year’s most talked-about thespian. When she sighs wistfully over the phone from New York and says that it’s been “a weird year,” that barely seems to cover it.
It’s another curious reversal that the film largely responsible for making this such a big year for Williams truthfully couldn’t be any smaller. “Wendy and Lucy” is a brilliant, elegiac piece of Americana that easily ranks among the year’s finest films. The story of a young, broke drifter, Wendy, whose already fragile existence collapses when she is separated from her best friend Lucy, a yellow-gold mongrel, it inauspiciously came her way as a short story (“Train Choir,” by co-scripter Jon Raymond) with a brief note attached — the lean script still uncompleted.
“Todd Haynes recommended it to me,” she says, referring to the iconoclastic auteur who directed her in last year’s “I’m Not There.” “He’s a mutual friend of mine and Kelly’s, and he thought we’d be a good fit. So I read it — I mean, I’d be stupid not to trust the judgment of someone like Todd.”
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“Agonized and beautiful”
At the risk of sounding stoned on hope, I offer the following heresy: The movies are fine. Sometimes they’re great; occasionally they’re magnificent.
The twelfth-graph opener in Manohla Dargis’s recent year-end wrap-up. The sentiment would be a nice reference to Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” which Dargis calls “a grievously underloved film about life and death and every agonized and beautiful thing in between.” Curiously, she’s the only critic in the New York Times triumverate who found a place for the film on her list.
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Best in show: the year in superlatives
The year is slowly coming to a close, and after this week’s year-in-review pieces, I’m happy to see so much healthy and spirited discussion on my humble picks for the year’s best films. Today I’m wrapping all of that up with a list of superlatives, some of them in your usual categories, the staples, some of them in a couple of, oh, let’s call it “fun” arenas that I like to mix in year in and year out.I should note, however, that Nathaniel Rogers at The Film Experience is the king at this stuff. His annual “Film Bitch Awards” are a must-read. Here’s last year’s set.
So with that, let’s get into the awards. I used to call these the “In Contention Awards,” but I don’t think that’s fair anymore now that we have a slew of contributors. So I’ll let them speak to their favorites at their leisure. These reflect my views of the season and mine only. You know the Best Picture champ, of course, but beyond that, I hope you enjoy the rundown. Just keep the (inevitable) disagreement friendly:
Best Picture
“Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures)Best Director
Danny Boyle, “Slumdog Millionaire”Best Actor
Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler”Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”Best Supporting Actor
Heath Ledger, “The Dark Knight”Best Supporting Actress
Samantha Morton, “Synecdoche, New York” -
10/26 Oscarweb Round-up
• Tom O’Neil ponders Angelina Jolie’s Oscar hopes yet again… [Gold Derby]• …and rather pointlessly takes a shot at Sean Penn. [Gold Derby]
• Peter Bart is charmed by Clint Eastwood’s development through the years. [Peter Bart]
• Eastwood, meanwhile, offers up 12 key influences on his life in movies. [Entertaiment Weekly]
• Peter Sciretta takes a look back at Paul Thomas Anderson’s short film “The Legend of Dirk Diggler.” [/Film]
• Condon and Mark tap Roger Goodman to helm the 81st annual Oscar telecast. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Gaynor Flynn spends some time with Debra Winger, assumed by some to be a shoo-in nominee for the worst five minutes of “Rachel Getting Married.” [The Independent]
• Howard Feinstein talks “Synecdoche, New York” with the haunted and brilliant Charlie Kaufman. [indieWIRE]
• Ditto Rachel Abramowitz. [Los Angeles Times]
• Harrison Ford is crowned best movie President for his performance in “Air Force One.” [Reuters]
• Mark Blankenship digs into the differences between “Billy Elliot” on stage and screen. [New York Times]
• Karina Longworth has some nice remarks about our old friend Chad Hartigan and his feature debut “Luke and Brie are on a First Date,” currently playing the Hamptons Film Festival. [Spout Blog]
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On ‘Synecdoche’
I’ve been pretty silent about my feelings on Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” ever since I first saw the film a month ago. I haven’t been coy, I just haven’t known how to qualify a film like this in a review format, and while I respect those whose job it is to convey such sentiments week in and week out, I think it’s a foolish exercise in this instance.
Predictably, the film is splitting the critical masses as hordes of viewers wrestle with the idiosyncracies of Kaufman’s narrative. I won’t comment on the brilliance of Manhola Dargis’s lede or the stupidity of Rex Reed’s assessment, but I will say this: count me in the “one of the year’s best” field.
More in the year’s Top 10 column in December, no doubt.
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10/21 Oscarweb Round-up
• Jeffrey Wells passes along further second-hand indication that “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is the one to beat this year. [Hollywood Elsewhere]• Steven Zeitchick responds to the suddenly wide open acting races. [Risky Biz Blog]
• Some folks think Robert Downey Jr. can’t score a Best Supporting Actor nomination…emphatically. I beg to differ, but that race is weird at the moment. [Vulture]
• Tom O’Neil wonders how what happened to the AMPAS hopes of “W.” But I’m not so sure it was ever a “hot Oscar player.” [Gold Derby]
• John Anderson profiles Milos Forman, set to be feted by the DGA. [Variety]
• The Carpetbagger, David Carr, goes inside the mind of Charlie Kaufman. [New York Times]
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Best Original Screenplay: beyond the obvious
Everyone has a favourite Oscar category, and Best Original Screenplay is mine. It’s partly because I’m a screenwriter myself, so I feel a little more invested in the outcome. My evaluation of the category often comes down to the question: “Which screenplay do I most wish I’d written first?”More importantly, however, it’s the category where the Academy takes its greatest artistic risks. With the Best Picture category generally weighted towards adaptations, they often use Best Original Screenplay as a way to acknowledge the edgier, more adventurous work that voters can see the greatness of, but don’t yet have the guts to honour with their biggest prize. Hell, once in a blue moon they even give it to (gasp) a foreign-language film.
It’s this convenient ghettoising mentality that ensures the likes of “Citizen Kane,” “The Red Balloon,” “Chinatown,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Talk to Her” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” don’t go empty-handed. Sure, it sucks that they couldn’t win more. And, being the Academy, they make more than their share of screw-ups. (Let’s try and forget that, in 1960, “Pillow Talk” beat — wait for it — “Wild Strawberries,” “North by Northwest” and “The 400 Blows,” shall we?) But they occasionally hit on an otherwise-snubbed masterpiece, and for that we should be grateful.
This year’s Best Picture slate appears to be heavy on prestige adaptations, allowing for a more idiosyncratic ragbag of contenders on the Original Screenplay front, mixing familiar Academy-anointed favourites with some exciting new voices.
There is, of course, a chance this could be a year when the paths of the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay races converge, principally in the shape of “Milk” scribe Dustin Lance Black. Already high hopes for “Milk” were amplified by an excellent trailer, and a number of Oscar clairvoyants are labelling it the front-runner in the top race. If this turns out to be the case, Black will likely benefit.
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9/8 Oscarweb Round-up
• Jen Yamato wonders what the hell happened to Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding Jr. [Rotten Tomatoes]• Jeffrey Wells puts up a positive review of Kevin Smith’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” philosophizes on the photographical approach to actually shooting a porno. [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Logan Hill profiles “The Brothers Bloom” star Rachel Weisz back East. [New York Magazine]
• Scott Macaulay goes party-hopping in Toronto. [Filmmaker Magazine]
• Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz put together a video mid-term report for Toronto. [Entertainment Weekly]
• Focus Features honcho James Schamus is honored with the Trailblazer Award at the Woodstock Film Festival. WELL deserved. [MovieMaker Magazine]
• Lou Lumenick considers Dakota Fanning a “formidable actress” in “The Secret Life of Bees,” but doesn’t see Oscar on the horizon. [Lumenick on Film]
• A preview of Clint Mansell’s “Wrestler” score pops up online…I’m loving it. [MySpace]
• Tommy Lee Jones sues Paramount over “No Country for Old Men” profits. Show me the money. [Associated Press]
• Anne Thompson’s heart goes out to Charlie Kaufman. [Thompson on Hollywood]
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Which film will take the Palme d’Or?
Wells is already speculating and Foote is ready to move on, but let’s think it out here. In a festival that has been a bit underwhelming to most, both artistically for the critics and fiscally for the buyers, someone’s still gotta win best in show.Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorra” and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” might be the safe guesses, as both were quite well-received. But the Palme has made a habit of being elusive to the films one would expect to claim it.
Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” enjoyed a pleasant love-fest for a time, before the director was roughed up by a colleague and then hit a wall of sorts with The New York Times.
Then there are the fringe possibilities of Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” — mixed on receipt, but that hasn’t stopped efforts in the past — and “Synecdoche, New York” from Charlie Kaufman, which has the benefit of being the last film out of the gate.
What’s it going to be?
If I had to bet, I’d say “Three Monkeys.” If I ventured a guess in the midst of rampant unpredictability (which is Cannes in a nutshell), I’d say “Synecdoche, New York.”
We’ll see how it pans out over the weekend.
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A.O. Scott on ‘Che’ and ‘Synecdoche’
Thankfully SOMEONE took some time to properly respond to Steven Soderbergh’s one-two punch of “The Argentine” and “Guerrilla” — “Che,” for the Cannes world premiere. I respect as much as anyone the need to get the reaction out there fast, but more than a few critics were a bit hasty in rounding up extended thoughts hours after the 6:30 screening Wednesday night.After all, the film’s first reaction came from Jeffrey Wells, who has paced himself yet and refrained from offering a full-blown review until the dust has at least settled somewhat.
A.O. Scott’s piece in The New York Times is part-review, part-Cannes immersion study, and he ties his thoughts to a partial reaction to Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York.” He doesn’t venture solid opinions on either effort, though he does note that the filmmakers have perhaps raised the bar too high with their previous work to judge these films as anything other than a little disappointing.
It is regardless an intriguing think piece presenting his American perspective on the global cinema 7-11 that is Cannes:
This is one of the frustrations of Cannes, for American critics at least. We see lots of fascinating movies — not all good, but very few completely worthless — and then wonder if we, or our readers, will ever see them again. I’m not in the movie business (a mutually beneficial arrangement, believe me), and not inclined to speculate with someone else’s money. I do hope, however, that sometime in the near future I can take part in the long and contentious conversation that “Che” deserves, and also see how my own initial ambivalence about the film resolves itself.
(Pull-quotes on “Che” and “Synecdoche, New York” after the jump.)
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Festival-goers file out of ‘Synecdoche’
UPDATE (5:38 a.m.): Allan Hunter of Screen International has written the first full review out of the fest I’ve come across. He raves the effort as follows:Synecdoche is about one man’s lifelong struggle to understand the meaning of his existence. Unadventurous audiences may feel the film is a two hour struggle to understand the meaning of its intentions but as the story appears to move in ever decreasing circles, it remains incredibly engaging and ultimately very moving. Hoffman gives a bravura performance that provides the film with all the focus it requires, capturing everything about Caden that makes him immensely sympathetic and instantly recognizable as a symbol of everyone on planet earth who is…struggling with the challenges of being human.
EARLIER: We should be hearing word in the next few hours on Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, “Synecdoche, New York,” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Samantha Morton — and one my most anticipated flicks of the Cannes fest this year.
Here is Jeff Wells’ one-off, on his way to the post-screening goings-on:
I’ve just emerged from the semi-nourishing, semi-tortured Fellini-esque Chinese box mindfuck-dreamscape that is Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York…and the press conference is just starting. [Ten minutes later] Kaufman has just explained the title’s pronunciation: Syn-ECK-duh-kee. At least that’s settled.
Mike Jones at Variety, meanwhile, had some fun yesterday with Croisette-goers about said pronunciation.
More to come, I’m sure.
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‘Synecdoche, New York’ — another makeup contender?
Rope of Silicon recently posted a series of stills from upcoming releases, including Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” films and Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness.” But this image from Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” has me wondering if we don’t have another major contender for Best Makeup, a category shaping up to be more competitive than in years past.
Here’s the pic:
In addition to this new hopeful, I’d say there are solid bets to be placed on “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” and “Tropic Thunder.” Not a shabby start.