In Contention

Tag: Fahrenheit 9/11

  • 2/8 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: HFPA counter-sues, Moore wants more ‘9/11’ money, how Harvey got his groove back

    • David Poland talks “In a Better World” with the film’s director, Susanne Bier. [The Hot Blog]

    • The HFPA counter-sues it’s former publicist. [The Wrap]

    • Michael Moore is suing Harvey Weinstein for “Fahrenheit 9/11” profits. [TMZ]

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  • The Telegraph picks the decade’s Top 100

    Fahrenheit 9/11I’ve lately been immersed in a marathon of DVD viewing and re-viewings, catching up on films that slipped through the cracks and reassessing former favorites — all in preparation for my own year-end “Best of the 2000s” list.

    It’s a process that has resulted in some unexpected fringe challengers (“Longing,” an underexposed work of New German Cinema, won’t leave me alone), as well as some shifted perspectives (Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Distant,” which I adored on first viewing six years ago, burned a little less brightly second time around). Nat Rogers is currently doing similar homework at the Film Experience, on a year-by-year basis.

    At this stage, I have only a faint idea of what my list will eventually look like, but I’m already fairly sure that it will have little in common with the Top 100 of the decade that has just been unveiled at The Telegraph. Compiled by the British paper’s three critics, including IC friend Tim Robey, it’s an interesting and occasionally perplexing list.

    They state upfront that their aim is to represent the decade’s “pick ‘n mix” culture, though the headline promises the decade’s “Top 100 movie masterpieces.” “Mamma Mia!” and “Saw,” both in the top 20, may fit the former description, but “masterpieces” they ain’t. Then again, popularity or influence aren’t the principal criteria either, as the list includes such obscurities as “Los Angeles Plays Itself.”

    Whatever the system of selection, the result, you may or may not be thrilled to hear, is that Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” is the film of the 2000s.

    (More, including the Telegraph’s Top 20 films, after the cut.)

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  • Just the one, then?

    Quentin TarantinoYou may or may not have caught this piece on Quentin Tarantino in Sunday’s New York Times magazine. Overall, it’s a fairly flimsy Cannes-oriented interview that serves mainly as an accompaniment to some pretty pictures (very pretty, in the case of the Diane Kruger shots), but two of QT’s statements jumped out at me.

    In the first, he (fairly, I think) defends his decision to hand “Fahrenheit 9/11” the Palme d’Or in 2004 as a reward for being “a movie of the moment” — but when the conversation turns to “Inglourious Basterds,” he offers up this line:

    NYT: On this movie, you worked very quickly. Was that partially to have the film ready in time for Cannes?

    QT: Yes. I wanted to have a masterpiece before the decade’s out.

    I’ll let slide the overweening pride of Tarantino’s statement for a moment — partly because, as many misgivings as I personally have about the new film, it’s that brash confidence that also gave birth to a genuine masterpiece like “Pulp Fiction.” Largely, however, it’s because I detect a note of cryptic self-deprecation there.

    Perhaps I’m reading too much into his wording. But the use of the indefinite article “a” rather than, say, “another,” intrigues me. Is he admitting that, “Basterds” aside, he hasn’t made a masterpiece this decade? If so, on behalf of “Kill Bill: Vol. 1” — and only that, I hasten to add — I’d like to disagree.