Indieopolis: Reports from the Front Part 39
by Lola Bianca

Beyond Babe. U.S. rights to anime master Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film have been Spirited Away by Disney. The Mouse House is apparently betting that this touching story of a human child searching for her parents (who have been turned into pigs!) will be just the ticket to take Japanese anime from cult status to boffo B.O. in this country. Meanwhile, “Mini-Mouseketeer” Harvey Weinstein, still searching (read “flailing about desperately”) for some way to spirit Miramax back to the glory days of old, has added kidpix to its slate. So now it’s “Mini” going one-on-one with Mickey in the family department!

Broken ‘Promises? Two Palestinian girls and two Israeli boys from the Oscar-nominated doc Promises were flown to L.A. for the awards. One of the girls was visibly upset when Murder on a Sunday Morning won instead. The girl, who it turns out is a Titanic fan, was consoled by Kate Winslet later that evening. (Cultural imperialism rules!)

After the ceremony, to add injury to disappointment, the Palestinians were unable to return home to the Dheishe refugee camp in Bethlehem as scheduled – this due to the latest round of Middle Eastern violence. Instead, they stayed with friends of filmmakers Justine Shapiro, Carlos Bolado and B.Z. Goldberg in San Francisco, paying a visit to the nation’s capital for a screening and Q & A. www.promisesproject.org.

Shock Value. Y Tu Mama Tambien scored a cool $3 mill in less than a month and promises to shatter B.O. records for Spanish-language films in the U.S. set last year by Amores Perros ($5 mill). That’s good news for fledgling distributor IFC Films and its parent company Cablevision. Y Tu Mama…has already earned almost as much as IFC’s first 10 releases put together. Lola saw the film opening weekend at the Laemmle’s 7 in Pasadena, with a full and culturally diverse house testifying to the success of IFC’s crossover marketing campaign. Audience members squirmed and groaned when the unrated movie went “all the way,” but nobody walked out. They were caught by then in helmer Alfonso Cuaron’s highly entertaining web. And that, readers, is the subversive power of art!

Meanwhile, ContentFilm, the even more fledgling Ed Pressman/John Schmidt outfit, already has $15 mill in equity investments and 5 green lights: 1) a black comedy starring Alec Baldwin and William H. Macy (The Cooler); 2) a “blaxploitation parody” starring Adam Goldberg and Mario Van Peebles (The Hebrew Hammer); 3) Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia in a 9-11 drama (The Guys); 4) Desmond Harrington in a psychological horror flick (Love Object); and 5) Party Monster, a bio of NY scenester Michael Alig starring Macaulay Culkin, Seth Green, and Marilyn Manson, to be directed by The Eyes of Tammy Faye team of Bailey and Barbato (based on the evocatively titled book Disco Blood Bath!). That’s a strong start on Content’s assembly line goal of 12-15 digital films a year at $2 mill each, with 6 weeks prep, 3 weeks lensing. (Guess they plan to give InDigEnt a run for their business model!) According to Pressman, the company has no distribution in place and, rather than relying too much on the fest circuit, will look to “defined demographics” and direct-to-video and foreign/tv sales. And if the biz – even the indie biz – is all about relationships, these guys have them. Pressman, by the way, produced the seminal low-budgeter Badlands.

The Museum of Modern Art has honored David O. Russell (Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings) with its 1st annual “A Work in Progess” tribute. John Leguizamo, Mary Tyler Moore, Wes Anderson, Patricia Arquette, Spike Jonze, Mark Wahlberg, Carla Gallo and Alberta Watson were among the guests at the event, which included a Q & A with Lily Tomlin. The award presumably honors “young directors,” but Russell thanked MoMA for honoring a young director who’s “a little older!” (MoMA, of course, has been been big into film ever since Luis Bunuel was a curator there in the ’40s.)
- Lola at indieopolis@hotmail.com.

MovieReviews

Teaching a Lesson
by Witney Seibold

Michael Haneke’s film The Piano Teacher is a dark and beautiful portrait of envy, pain, female sexuality, and lack of attachment. Its stark emotional juxtapositions of classical music and sexual torture paint a vivid insight of the human mind, how it works and why some people do what they do.

The film follows professor of classical music Erika Kohut (played harshly and brilliantly by Isabelle Huppert). She lives with her mother (Annie Girardot), a petty and unrelenting woman who controls her daughter with guilt. They even sleep in the same bedroom. Erika scolds her piano students for not putting enough passion into their work, when she herself cannot feel. As she escapes from her misery, she hides in x-rated film booths, spies on necking couples and sexually mutilates herself with a razor. A student, the young Walter (Benoît Magimel) believes her cold exterior is hiding warmth. He knows exactly what he wants, but is challenged and changed by Erika’s stiff-arming and subversive proclivities. Erika and Walter then half-intentionally sweep themselves downward in a spiral of confusion, sex and mounting pain.

While the film spends most of its time on the relationship between Erika and Walter, the film’s central relationship is between Erika and her mother, who almost unconsciously, browbeats and chastises her daughter into a kind of emotional slavery. All Erika can do to escape is torture and belittle herself and others. Walter, used to a more usual structure in his relationships, is actually transformed by Erika’s confusion as to what she wants, and thus begins to plummet himself.

There is a conversation in the film about Schumann knowing that he was going mad. This is the center of the film: Knowing when you’re circling the drain.

The Piano Teacher has an extraordinary insight into the human mind. We see not only the result of the characters’ sicknesses, but the source. It bravely and unflinchingly tackles delicate subjects like sexuality, subtle mental illness and human attachment (or lack thereof). The bleakness, honesty, and pain evoke the finer works of Ingmar Bergman. It is a truly great film that exploits every facet of the art and reveals real truths. It is beautiful.

Power and Grace at Pendleton
by Fred C. Johnson

With Green Dragon, Tim and Tony Bui prove that their first film, Three Seasons, was anything but first-timer’s luck. The Vietnamese-American brothers won a number of awards for their 1999 film, a moving, funny and visually sumptuous am-algam of stories set in contemporary Vietnam, produced by Tim and directed by Tony. This time they’ve reversed positions, with Tony producing and Tim directing.

The setting of their new film is more personal and the narrative more centrally focused. Set in Camp Pendleton in the mid-1970s, Green Dragon chronicles the fortunes of a handful of the thousands of Vietnamese refugees “processed” through the camp, recalling the experiences of the brothers themselves.

Bui narratives have a classical formality which is rigorous and satisfying. The action of the film is entirely limited to the camp, starting with the entrances of some of the key characters and proceeding through their final departures.

The formality also extends to the variety of characters whose fates we follow. As in Three Seasons, we meet children and parents, lovers and warriors, winners and losers, the living and the dying. We meet those who help their fellows and those who exploit each other, those who crush and those who are crushed.

Green Dragon features the presence of two American stars: Forest Whitaker plays an artist working in the kitchens who befriends a Vietnamese boy and Patrick Swayze, as the American marine in charge of the camp, models the way our lives were enriched by these newest Americans. But the film properly belongs to the Vietnamese actors and actresses. Headed by the great Don Duong, from Three Seasons, and Hiep Thi Le, from Heaven and Earth, the entire cast forms an ensemble of exceptional power and resourceful grace.

This is the best film of the year, so far, and one of the best of the decade. Don’t miss it.

Family Planning
by Witney Seibold

In most families, when the two youngsters decide to argue, you will commonly hear things like “How come Billy gets to go out and I don’t?” In the Meiks family from Bill Paxton’s new film Frailty, the main household argument between brothers Fenton (Matthew O’Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter) is “How come Fenton gets to see God, and I only get to see demons?” Ah, those precocious little scamps.

The film begins when the adult Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey) wanders into the FBI one night to reveal the truth about The God’s Hand killer, a serial killer at large in Texas. The killer is his brother. How does he know? Listen to this: Flashback, 1979. Fenton, 10, and Adam, 8, live alone with Dad (Paxton). Their life is a simple one, Dad can support everyone just fine, and brothers only ever argue about which film to see on Friday. The peace is upset, though, when Dad gets a vision from God. There are demons on Earth, and it is now the Meiks family’s responsibility to destroy them. The problem with this, Fenton observes, is that the demons are really just people. What follows is a series of kidnappings and murders, which feel like typical family outings where one son just doesn’t wanna. The film progresses in the flashback and the present until we learn a series of unpleasant truths and the true disturbing power of family.

This film is unexpectedly well put together. Instead of a pat horror film, we get a taut drama of real family conflict. Bill Paxton did not play the part of Dad as a bloodthirsty villain, but rather an upright Texan dad who wants the best for his sons and for the world. He doesn’t revel in the killing, but feels that he is doing God’s work. Paxton, and writer Brent Hanley, both from Texas, have really nailed down the hominess of Texan life and the instinctively moral people of the place.

Thrillers often define themselves with twist endings. This film does not use its ending to toy with us, but its overwhelming tone. We feel unsettlingly at home.

Power Players
by Dr. Jim

True revolutions—transfers of power—don’t happen very often, even in art; even in arts as sketchily defined as film acting. When they do, attention should be paid.

Film acting underwent such a revolution in the middle of the last century. The revolution was centered around the work of a handful of key actors, most of whom studied at the Actors’ Studio, where they worked on something called (loosely) “The Method.” If you missed the recent Method Fest Independent Film Festival, dedicated to “breakout acting performances” (in the method tradition), or just want to brush up on the classics that continue to inspire new generations of actors, there’s method aplenty to be found on video or dvd.

The first and greatest practitioner of the method was Marlon Brando. Brando’s impact on film acting can be measured by comparing Elia Kazan’s 1951 film of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire with Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 film The Godfather. In the 1951 film Brando noticeably stands out against a sea of solid stage performances from great actors like Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden. In the second film, he swims in a sea of extraordinary film performances, from folks like Robert Duvall, Al Pacino and Diane Keaton.

Two of my favorite Brando performances demonstrate both the flexibility and the durability of The Method. I love Brando’s saucy stealing of Olivier’s Shakespeare laurels playing Marc Antony in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1953 film of Julius Caesar. Remember, while you’re watching it, the intensity of the scorn Brando endured over his “mumbling;” and don’t forget to enjoy the performances by quality Shakespeareans like John Gielgud, James Mason and Charles Laughton.
The other Brando performance I like to plug is from Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1970 Burn!, in which Brando plays a 19th-century British agent provocateur who foments a Caribbean slave revolt only to justify its brutal suppression. In this case, Brando’s improvising against non-English-speaking and non-professional actors, and his generosity, his intuition and his sensitivity with them virtually hold the entire film together.

I always thought Coppola pulled off a casting stroke of genius when he got Lee Strasberg to play Hyman Roth, the Meyer Lansky stand-in of 1974’s The Godfather II. If you can’t get Marlon, I reasoned, who better than his teacher? Strasberg, of course, was the pedagogical power at the Actors’ Studio for many decades. He topped off his career with several unforgettable performances. Check out Martin Brest’s Going in Style (1979), in which Strasberg joins Art Carney and George Burns to pull off a bank heist and go out in style.

Strasberg’s most famous student, however, will always be Marilyn Monroe. Monroe, like Brando the victim of vicious attacks on her talent, began studying with Strasberg in the mid-’50s, to try to raise her rep. The first product of her studies was Josh Logan’s film of William Inge’s Bus Stop (1956), considered by many to be her best performance. Look at her great rendition of “That Old Black Magic,” or note the emotional depth in her final scene, while admiring the fine work of supporting pros like Arthur O’Connell and the magnificent Eileen Heckart.

Marilyn’s other piece of indisputably great acting is in The Misfits (1961), John Huston’s film of the script her then husband, Arthur Miller, wrote for her. Watching her work, transcending the misogynist limits of the role to make full contact, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, with her character’s world, is still an inspiring way to spend a few of the hours left to you.

Montgomery Clift’s work, also iconic of The Method, was never better than in 1961, when he shone as the sympathetic horse wrangler with Marilyn in The Misfits, and devastated everyone as one of the forgotten victims of the Holocaust in Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg. Clift plays an emotionally unstable survivor who was sterilized by the Nazis. When Maximilian Schell, as the defense attorney, proves that sterilization was common practice in the U.S. for families judged to be mentally deficient, with Clift on the stand, the actor’s reaction is almost too painful to bear.

Geraldine Page played a leading role in the continuing practice of The Method in the years following the death of Lee Strasberg. Her work as an actress, though intermittent on the screen, has been sought out and valued by connoisseurs of great acting for the last half century. Her work in Richard Brooks’ film of Tennessee Williams’ play Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) opposite the young Paul Newman and her life partner, the great Rip Torn, was a compendium of Method techniques and standards.

Page won her Oscar for Peter Masterson’s film of Horton Foote’s play A Trip to Bountiful in 1985. Page’s performance as the aging mother desperate for one last visit to her childhood home is—to quote the title of another Foote masterpiece—one of the screen’s tender mercies, a magical gift that we, in our youth-obsessed, profit-driven, hard-nosed world don’t deserve. Geraldine Page is a wonder, and, frankly, there’s only a few of those left in this world and most of them are fat and growing old.

Ellen Burstyn, who taught recently at the Actors’ Studio in its current incarnation with the New School as the backdrop for the Bravo channel interview series, started life as a chorine. Fortunately for all, she found her way onto the dramatic boards, and the rest has been history. Ms. Burstyn took her Oscar for her work in 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Martin Scorsese’s feminist road movie, which sports sharp work by the likes of Harvey Keitel and a scratchy-voiced pre-teen Jodie Foster.

Burstyn put in powerhouse Method work in How To Make an American Quilt (1995) directed by Jocelyn Morehouse, in which she played Winona Ryder’s patient, good-hearted, deep-souled grandmother. However, her amazing work as Sara, the harried, pill-addicted mother of junky Jared Leto, in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000) earned her respectful attention from her peers again, resulting in another slew of awards and award noms for her, for power play acting, for The Method.
–Dr. James C. Lundstrom is Dean of Academics at Columbia College Hollywood.

Zingers!


40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS
“It’s stupid but it’s funny, and that’s all those movies are supposed to be.”
–Jordan in Brooklyn
A BEAUTIFUL MIND
“I felt cheated because he didn’t give you any kind of a road map to understand whether you were in it [the schizophrenia] or not at any particular time. I suppose that was the point…” –Phil Bergdorf

“It made up for Russell Crowe’s performance in Gladiator. This is the one he should’ve gotten an Oscar for. Or The Insider.”
–Jordan in Brooklyn

BIG TROUBLE
“So cute. so funny. Go on out and have a good time. EVERYBODY’s in it.” –Miss P

BLACK HAWK DOWN
“It was so real and so disturbing, I just had to turn it off. It was excellent.” –Phil Bergdorf

BLADE II
“Blood and gore, yes. But a whole lot more.”
–Miss P

CHANGING LANES
“This one is about anger, and the joke is it will make you angry you went at all.”
–Miss P

DEATH TO SMOOCHY
“It was absurd. Williams is just demented
in it.” –Marlan Pillay

“Actually, pretty bad, but bizarrely amusing at the same time.” –Lime

E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
“A classic celebration of love and faith.”
–Yolanda

“What Steven knows how to do is pluck the strings, and people fall for it every time.”
–R.D. Floyd

GOSFORD PARK
“A nice little upper class twit whodunit. A word of advice: when you go see it take a Brit with you to translate. Sometimes it's like a completely foreign language!”
–Michael Bonham

“Julian Fellowes has written a simply astounding screenplay.” –Don Grigware

HIGH CRIMES
“It doesn't get much better than Ashley Judd.” –Miss P
KISSING JESSICA STEIN
“At first I thought it was going to be very shallow, but then it developed what you might call ‘diurnal depth.’ Most of our life isn’t about big melodramatic moments but the day-to-day, and they captured that.”
–Joanna Thompson

LORD OF THE RINGS
“They tried to pack too much in, and there just wasn’t enough character development. I’d have taken some of the battle scenes out and done more on the relationships.”
–Stacy Thompson

MONSOON WEDDING
“Love conquers all, even in an arranged marriage. Delightful.” –Petra Smith

“I just loved the dancing!” –Dora Mancini

PANIC ROOM
“The best film I've seen in a long time. Fully engages the audience.” –Miss P

“Slow and predictable and not particularly scary.” –Charlotte Morgan

THE PIANO TEACHER
“An abortive S&M relationship becomes a metaphor for the impossibility of human connection. For such hot material, it’s very, very cool.” –Lola Bianca

RETURN TO NEVER LAND
“A very entertaining movie. For fans of the original, this is not quite as good but a decent sequel. The 20 or so kids I was with loved it.”
–Jada Crimson

THE ROOKIE
“Good wholesome story. Should be popular among young, baseball-playing boys.”
–Miss P

SHOWTIME
“Cops and robbers fare, some laughs from Eddie Murphy, pretty formulaic storyline.”
–Marion Siwek

TIME OUT
“Like the morbid fascination of a train wreck, you can't take your eyes off this movie, a suspense thriller about a guy who is out of work but is unable to admit it to his family and friends. Reminds me of movies like A Simple Plan and Fargo, where the more someone tries to extricate themselves from a bad situation, the more events begin to spiral from bad to worse to even worse.” –Phil Bergdorf

TRAINING DAY
“Wow! What a movie! Denzel Washington is so charismatic, it makes you want to be a corrupt cop!” –Phil Bergdorf

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN
“Talk about racy – don't miss this one.”
–Charlotte Morgan

Changing Lanes
by Gil Benzeevi

In Changing Lanes, high powered attorney Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck) and temperamental insurance salesman Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson) try to destroy each other’s lives. They were complete strangers before a minor traffic accident during rush hour sets them on a collision course that very quickly spirals out of control.

Both are rushing to court for different reasons before colliding by chance into each other. Gavin was on his way to file some very important documents that mean millions of dollars of future income to his bosses, and Doyle was on his way to a custody hearing regarding his two sons.

Gavin is in such a hurry when the accident occurs that he offers Doyle a blank check to fix his car. Doyle refuses cause he is a stickler for procedure, which results in Gavin illegally and quickly departing the scene before they can exchange insurance information.

Inadvertently, Gavin leaves behind the folder containing the very important papers he needs to bring to court and they end up in Doyle‘s possession. The Judge tells Gavin he has til the end of the day to file the documents with the court or he will not only be in trouble with his law firm but might also face jail time. Meanwhile, Doyle also arrived in court late and, as a result, loses in the custody hearing what he most wanted: to have regular contact with his kids.

Each uses underhanded tactics to try to get his way with the other. Gavin utilizes such deceitful methods as hiring someone to destroy Doyle’s credit by falsifying data via computer, which results in Doyle losing a house loan. Doyle applies less complicated techniques, such as taking the screws out of Gavin’s car front tire which causes Gavin to almost die on the road. At the same time, Gavin is trying to come to terms with working for a big dishonest law firm that uses both devious legal and illegal means to make money.

The whole film is built around their battle and the resulting consequences Doyle and Gaven endure by making wrong choices. Changing Lanes delivers like an average formulaic movie with sparingly stimulating moments that build up to an anti-climatic ending. If you’re looking for a shallow story with one-dimensional characters that is mildly entertaining, Changing Lanes has your name on it.