In Contention

Tag: Demetri Martin

  • ‘Taking Woodstock’ fizzles at Cannes

    Demetri Martin in Taking WoodstockAng 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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  • Ang Lee takes Woodstock

    Here’s what I love about Ang Lee: there is simply no way of anticipating what his next project is going to be. So far, the decade has seen him bounce from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” to “Hulk” to “Brokeback Mountain” to “Lust, Caution” – a group arguably linked by thematic concerns of outsider identity, but with precious little in common besides. If there’s a more adventurous filmmaker at work these days, I don’t know his name.

    Now Variety confirms that his next project sees him revisiting Nixon-era America, the period having served him well in “Brokeback” (part of it, at least) and what I believe to be his finest work, “The Ice Storm.” Not that “Taking Woodstock” – Lee’s third film in a row for Focus Features – sounds like anything he’s done before either.

    The project, which enters production this month, has been adapted by James Schamus, Lee’s regular cohort, from the memoir of Elliot Tiber, a Greenwich Village interior designer who wound up in the creation of the biggest rock concert of all time when he lent his family’s motel to the event organisers.

    In an inspired piece of casting, Tiber will be played by “The Daily Show”‘s Demetri Martin, while other members of an interesting, and evidently complex, ensemble include Imelda Staunton as Tiber’s mother, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Tiber’s closeted lover, Emile Hirsch as a Vietnam vet, Paul Dano as a hippie concertgoer, Liev Schreiber as a transvestite, and Eugene Levy as Max Yasgur, the owner of the farm where it all took place.

    Sounds like a suitably broad canvas for Lee to paint on – this should afford him plenty of room for a typically nuanced investigation of class, sexuality and popular culture, while offering him another completely new story world to explore. I can’t wait.