Movies
Indieopolis: Reports from the Front Part 34
by Lola Bianca
Sign of the Times. Inside sources report that Cameron Diaz, a fine actress who has proven herself equally at home in mainstream blockbusters (Something About Mary, Charlie’s Angels) and interesting indies (Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, Being John Malkovich) alike, has gone from driving high end black luxury toys (Porsche and Mercedes) to a mod-est, white Toyota Prius hybrid! Perhaps this sign of self-imposed austerity and social consciousness bodes well for the screen goddess doing more indie work in the near future? Or not.
Docs Are Hot. After last month’s big docupalooza love-fest at Park City (announcements of the creation of a new Sundance documentary channel and of a Sundance documentary fund), the AFI has announced the creation of its new Doc Film Fest, in collaboration with Discovery Communications (as in Discovery Channel). The event, dubbed “The Silver,” promises to court active participation by networks, distributors and cultural institutions worldwide. With its sterling inaugural skedded for June 2003, Wendy Braitman has been tapped as helmer, and she’s got the right stuff for the job. (Braitman founded the Int’l Film Financing Conference, aka IFFCON, one of the most successful independent film financing confabs in North America.) Interestingly, the Sundance Int’l Doc Fund helmer is also a woman – Diane Weyermann. When Weyermann, a former director of the Open Society Institute of New York, came to Sundance last year, the institute’s $4.5 million Soros Documentary Fund tagged along. All of which is good news for all you filmmakers out there who have been patiently doing the verite thing with little or no money for all these years. Get ready, your time is coming!
Meanwhile, Code Red (the Cowboy Pictures-Antidote Films partnership) has acquired worldwide rights to Chris American Movie Smith's latest doc-ode to homegrown eccentricity, Home Movie. For its April release, the film will be packaged with Jeff Krulik and John Heyn's Heavy Metal Parking Lot, a doc cult classic featuring Judas Priest fans who were interviewed, as the title suggests, in the parking lot of a Mary-land concert stadium in 1985. Parking lot sequels include Neil Diam-ond Parking Lot and Harry Potter Parking Lot. Where will Krulik park his camera next?
And in the Howard Hughes dueling biopix department (next best thing to a doc, right?), the Leo DiCaprio version is now set to be helmed by Martin Scorsese. Hmm, Soderbergh/
Scorsese. Carrey/Di-Caprio. Forget about it! (Lola’s favorite Hughes movie is still Jonathan Demme’s Melvin and Howard, starring Jason Robards as HH.)
Sundance may be over, but the deals aren’t. MTV Films has acquired rights to Justin Lin’s controversial teen movie Better Luck Tomorrow for a reported near seven figures. Meanwhile, those who didn’t make it to Park City will have a chance to see 26 of the yet-to-be-sold films from this year's fest at the upcoming 2002 American Film Market (AFM) in Santa Monica, Feb 20-27. Those to screen include special jury award winner Secretary, Bloody Sunday (winner of the World Cinema Audience Award), The Laramie Project, Crush, The Dancer Upstairs, Gerry, The Jimmy Show, Sex and Lucia, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, and World Traveler. www.americanfilmmarket.com
The Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival (brainchild of Hypnotic, Universal Pix, and Chrysler) offers emerging film-makers the chance to compete for a $1,000,000 feature production deal. Check it out at www.chrysler.com/in
side/news/index.html
La-la-la-la-Lola indieopolis@hotmail.com.
SUN SPOTS
Better Luck Tomorrow Sundance Premiere, ’02
Better Luck Tomorrow looks beyond the stereotype of the high-achieving Asian-American teenager to discover the darkness beneath. This is the story of four bright, seemingly successful Southern California kids in search of their own identities and sense of place in the world – kids whose underlying alienation, frustration, and penchant for risk-taking (petty theft, drugs, etc.) lead them down an increasingly dangerous road. It is not a new story, but it is a story that has not been told about this particular group before – a distinction for which the film is garnering much attention, some favorable, some not. And it is told with a fresh and stylish feel that is also garnering attention. It is young, hip, shockingly “honest,” and has just been bought by MTV Films for a reported “near seven figure” deal.
Director Justin Lin has an MFA from the UCLA School of Film and TV. He is the producer, editor, DP, and director of many award-winning shorts, docs, and digital movies and co-director of Shopping for Fangs (’97), a feature which showed at the Toronto Int’l Film Festival. – LB
Sister Helen
Sundance Doc Directing Award, ’02
Move over, Sister Wendy! There’s a new nun on the block. Sister Helen offers viewers a sour and savory slice of life in the South Bronx. The subject herself is extraordinary: a former alcoholic who entered the Benedictine order late in life (after the death of a husband and 2 sons) and started a home for recovering substance abusers. Sister H. lives in the home alongside the 21 male residents. And she makes the rules, and they follow them – or else! In this documentary we get to know an entire community of lost souls, but most of all we get to know the woman they have come to rely on when the rest of society lets them down, Sister Helen herself, an unforgettable character. If she didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent this tough-talking dame with the heart of gold!
Rob Fruchtman and Rebecca Cammisa won the ’02 Documentary Directing Award for this work. Cammisa turned filmmaker just 4 years ago, after 13 years as an award-winning documentary photographer. This is her first feature. Fruchtman is an Emmy-winning veteran producer and director of TV documentaries. – LB
Rollerball
by Sean Chavel
Rollerball is one long smorgasbord of smash-ups, crashes and body blows. The guilty party for this disaster is director John McTiernan, who previously has been reliable with such strong and intelligent action-adventure movies like Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October and The Thomas Crown Affair. What was he thinking?
For those unfamiliar with the 1975 version of Rollerball with James Caan, this film will be especially difficult to follow. Watching the original film before seeing this remake is essential because the old version plays like Cliff Notes in order to follow the action. The original movie wasn’ t a great film but at least it established interesting ideas about corporation rule in a futuristic society which operated in totalitarian rule under CEO’s. This film attempts to satirize the extent producers will go for television ratings. In the original film, the game of rollerball was a fusion of hockey, football and motocross with gladiator brutality. This time the game is interrupted by constant cutting with complete absence of clarity and the arena is so small that it’s claustrophobic.
What’s worse is that the casting is all wrong. Chris Klein is too baby-faced and non-threatening to play Jonathan Cross, the athlete that becomes a hero for the masses while challenging the integrity of the game. LL Cool J is his teammate Marcus Ridley that wants to help Cross get out of the game once it starts getting deadly in the arena. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos plays the love interest to Jonathan and scarred teammate in this unisex sport. Jean Reno plays the evil executive owner of this dangerous sport league, doing little but snicker from his owner’ s box seat or shouting incomprehensibly at his lackeys.
There is constant noise on the soundtrack, the pacing is as reckless and frenetic as a bad video game and with constant attention to overlong action scenes, this lends to little character development. The game itself is so burdened by the suffocated design of the arena, so incoherent and undefined in athletic contest that it would more logically crumble faster than the XFL. This movie is the first disaster of 2002. *
Birthday Girl
by Gil Benzeevi
John Buckingham (Ben Chaplin) is a lonely bank clerk in a small town in England leading a boring uncomplicated life who decides to order a Russian mail order bride in the dark comedy in Birthday Girl.
After picking up his Russian bride Nadia (Nicole Kidman), he quickly realizes the meaning of misleading advertising claims. Nadia is supposed to speak English but as he tries to talk to her she acts as if she doesn't understand a word he is saying. He calls to complain to the mail order service he used and can't get anybody on the line.
The one good surprise he finds out about Nadia is that she is not only beautiful but she is also willing and able to satisfy his weird sexual desires. How does Nadia figure out how to satisfy John in the bedroom? By snooping around his house and finding certain magazines and video tapes. It's amazing what educational materials one can find around the house.
Even though John's love life has improved exponentially, the good times are about to take a sharp retreat. The cause of a lot of pain and suffering comes in the form of an unexpected visit to John's home of Alexei (Vincent Cassel) and Yuri (Mathieu Kassovitz), supposed cousins of Nadia - a bunch of crooks who turn John's boring routine life upside-down and inside-out in a matter of days after their arrival, and Nadia is not an innocent party to this mess, either.
Alexei and Yuri get John to rob the bank he works for by pretending they will kill Nadia if he doesn't. From there on everybody is on the run. The ultimate question in this film is will love find a way to put John and Nadia back together again?
If you are thinking this is a quirky amusing film full of odd characters and interesting situations then you have got it only half right and that's being nice. Birthday Girl is a half baked attempt at putting bizarre characters together to try and spark some fun but director Jez Butterworth mostly misfires badly.
Birthday Girl has got a bunch of uninteresting characters with possibilities that never materialize into an enjoyable experience. There is really nothing new in this film that ignites you to pay attention although there are a few moments that might cause you to smirk.
Storytelling
by David Rolfe
Films by writer/director Todd Solondz are not for everyone. They are comedic, but the humor is so very dry and dark that we are left with a feeling that the (surprisingly abundant) laughter is being wrenched from our throats. This sensation does not sit well with people who are happy enough, thank you, and have no great desire to wallow in the angst of middle-class existence. So if your disposition is on the sunny side and you consider introspection a waste of time, if you’ve found your path and are comfortable on it, then consider yourself warned away, and no hard feelings. Solondz will be best grasped by those who struggle with inner demons. You are the ones to whom the tales will ring true and the manic laughter will bring some degree of catharsis.
Storytelling is composed of two distinct stories, "Fiction" and "Non-Fiction," each of which involves a central theme of a creator's attempt to bring a story to fruition. In "Fiction," a brilliant, bitter professor of creative writing (very powerfully played by Robert Wisdom)interacts trenchantly with his naïve and not particularly talented students, with particular focus on a hopeful girl named Vi (Selma Blair). "Non-Fiction" tells of an unknown documentary film maker who tries to build his reputation by capturing the lost soul of the American teenager, represented by an amiable high school slacker named Scooby Livingston (Mark Webber) and his painfully desolate family. Each story carries its characters towards an important and not very pleasant set of truths. The juxtaposition of comedy with pain is sharp indeed.
There is a sense that the stories do not quite come together as well as they should. I particularly appreciated "Fiction," al-though there was a sense that something was missing. I struggled more with "Non-Fiction" because I found the characters less compelling (but this may be a subjective judgment). (I have read rumors that the film was severely cut and compromised in order to achieve an "R" rating, and that would explain some of my reaction.) Nevertheless, Todd Solondz is unique, and if you are at all intrigued by the foregoing comments and you think something as dark and strange as the vision I describe may speak to you, please consider attending.
Todd Solondz's previous films are Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, and the same general comments and recommendations apply to them. Storytelling is rated R for some very strong adult situations. I would be tempted to say it is unsuitable for anyone under 18, but it's possible that mature teens might understand that they can learn something from these cautionary tales without having to go through similar experiences firsthand.
Collateral Damage
by Sean Chavel
Collateral Damage is such a hot topic – losing family members as a result of terrorist bombing – that it is disappointing it turned out to be nothing more than a routine action picture. The movie should be stirring and furiously provoking, but all attempts at meaningful significance are quickly abandoned in favor of one-dimensional action mayhem.This project was filmed before September 11, but it could have gone through a little bit more of some thought provoking fine-tuning in post-production.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is surprisingly good in some of the dramatic scenes as firefighter Gordy Brewer. It’s too bad that he also feels he has to please his old-school action fans, and the ending grows more and more preposterous with explosions and breakneck fistfights. Somebody should have told him to leave Commando and Predator behind and stick with the consistency of the story. Bottom line: Schwarzenegger doesn’t trust himself to do anything new with his action icon.
The film opens with superficial exposition where we see Gordy in action as a heroic fireman. We meet his family, then are promptly led to their inevitable bombing by Colombian terrorist radicals. Their target: CIA headquarters - as a reprimand to remove government operatives from intervening with their drug trafficking operations. Schwarzenegger has a few quiet moments where he grieves over his wife and daughter, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and before long is assembling plans to infiltrate Colombia by way of Panama in order to track down the terrorists responsible for the merciless bombing.
Once the movie goes to South America, it fizzles. It goes through the motions predictably, as if the screenwriters were coming up with easy sell-outs for conflict A, then B, and so on. The obstacles against Schwarzenegger as the family man with a vengeance pile up so recklessly that you realize that if the movie was realistic, this character would pack up his bags and go home and realize retribution against his wife and daughter’s killers is impossible and futile. That would be a real movie.
Andrew Davis, the director of both the smashing blockbuster The Fugitive and the incredulous and inane Chain Reaction, hardly touches this indeterminate Schwarzenegger vehicle with any style, and it sorely lacks any of the smooth visual stokes seen in some of his earlier work. This is a case of a competent exercise in moviemaking without attempt to make anything fresh or resonant. **
Kung Fool
by Witney Seibod
Think back to the time when you were in college. Imagine that student you knew who made obtuse "in" jokes with his friends, and had a laugh that could wake a sleeping musk ox. Now imagine that same guy with entire film studio and special effects company at his beck and call. Such is the case with comedian Steve Oedekerk and his new film Kung Pow: Enter the Fist.
Kung Pow is actually the 1976 Hong Kong actioner Tiger and Crane Fists which, thanks to Forrest Gump style computer effects and creative redubbing, now stars Steve Oedekerk, a few of his friends, and a kung-fu fighting cow. The concept of mocking bad kung-fu films in this manner is not new. Woody Allen did it decades ago with What's Up, Tiger Lily, and the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 honed their wit to diamond points on films such as Tiger and Crane Fists. Never before, however, has this jejune practice been elevated to such a level. Its a film that raises talking-during-the-movie to Wagnerian proportions.
Steve Oedekerk is a funny man. In 1991, he wrote and starred in the one-man film High Strung which elated the art of complaining to the supernatural. He’s also the one responsible for the television spoof Thumb Wars which featured our hero's phalanges with animated faces. He has a strange, simple, and off-kilter sense of humor, which is funnier if you know him and have been following him for a while. Luckily, thanks to nights of postponing study, and bravado in my video selection, I have been.
So when I sat to see Kung Pow, part of me felt like I was in on his jokes, like I was part of this little planet occupied by Steve and his friends messing around and having a good time. The rest of me, however, could not believe what it was seeing. It was an amateur, television-level film by one man, fooling around in the college library basement, making a film that is most funny to one man: himself.
If you know him, this film will be great. If you don't, prepare for quite an odd ride!
History Makers by Dr. Jim
Speaking of African-American history, haven’t you noticed that we’re currently living through what has to be one of the most talented generations of stars who ever donned masks & cothurni?
Look at heavy hitter Halle Berry, currently ripping hearts out all across the land in Monster’s Ball. Ms. Berry first lightly tripped into fantastic view about a decade ago in a series of great supporting roles, including Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever. For a while her photogeneiety relegated her to dazzling beauties, but then Warren Beatty (who suffered similarly in his early career) cast her indelibly as the hit girl with a brain and a conscience in Bullworth (1998). Taking another page from Mr. B., she went on to self-produce herself in the award-winning biopic, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), and she proved once and for all that she’s quite capable of carrying the heavy loads and the award statues, thank you.
Or glance briefly at the career of Angela Bassett, who did notable journeyman work for John Sayles in 1991’s City of Hope and 1992’s Passion Fish before coming into very sharp focus as the minister’s devoted, principled wife in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992). From there she earned an Oscar nom in 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do with It?, creating a Tina Turner that almost had you disappointed when the real Queen of Rock showed up to close the film with some concert footage. ("Aw," you felt, "that’s not the real Tina.") And if you haven’t seen Ms. Bassett’s work opposite Danny Glover in the classic Athol Fugard play, Boesman & Lena (2000), an apartheid-era South African riff on Waiting for Godot, then get out there and dig for it—it’s worth it.
Alfre Woodard is so well established by now that hardly a year goes by without her name showing up in several of the acting award nomination columns. She was unforgettable as the recovering actress’s nurse in Sayles’ Passion Fish, in which her own pain reverberated throughout the southern small town milieu, giving body and soul to this American version of the Bergman classic, Persona. Not surprisingly, the performance put Ms. Woodard into the Fabled Five, come Oscar season that year.
Ms W garnered acclaim a few years later on stage and the small screen playing the hard-nosed single mother in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson (1994 ), locked in familial conflict with her soulful brother (Charles S. Dutton). More recently, Woodard shone in Maya Angelou’s deeply moving Down in the Delta (1998). In this one, Woodard leads us the harrowing road of a recovering addict, searching for redemption from the streets of Chicago to her forgotten deep south roots, accompanied by her tuff-loving mother and son. If you know another actress who’s got this kind of claim on her generation’s hopes and dreams, let me know, ’cause I don’t.
The by-now mythic story of underage Laurence ("Larry") Fishburne (was he 14 years old?) getting himself signed on for that fatal tour of duty up the river of no return in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979, or Redux 2001!) should have been some kind of warning that a similarly generational talent was growing up in front of our eyes. The payoff started coming in the nineties, with turns like the park-dwelling slam-chess master in 1993’s Searching for Bobby Fisher. That same year he found himself on the Oscar Roster for his unflinching recreation of the disturbing Ike Turner. In 1995 he gave the world its best filmed Othello in a wonderfully nuanced performance and the next year he put his own mark on the classic American gangster movie, playing Bumpy Johnson in Bill Duke’s Hoodlum.
Along the way, he’s found time for a series of cable features, some self-produced, all worth looking at, including The Tuskegee Airmen (1995), Miss Evers’ Boys (1997), and a moving adaptation of Walter Mosley’s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1998).
Still sizzling the screen (look for another trunkful of awards for Training Day), Denzel Washington shows no sign of easing up in his search for challenging roles. Whether shining as South African martyr Steven Biko (Cry Freedom—1987), smoldering as the Civil Warrior (Glory—1989) or articulating the mind and passion of Malcolm X , Mr. Washington always brings substance to his roles. In the late nineties, he seemed to be exploring the relation of sports and race, with films like Remember the Titans (football, 2000), The Hurricane (boxing, 1999) and He Got Game (basketball, 1998), but he’s also found time to put out a string of consistently engrossing thrillers, including The Bone Collector (1999, opposite Angelina Jolie), The Siege (1998, opposite Annette Bening), and Fallen (1997, one of the chilliest chillers of the decade),
Danny Glover brought his strength and depth to a role that seemed to have been written for him in 1998’s Beloved, the shattering story of the real cost of slavery, in the most intimate detail anyone’s yet had the courage to imagine. If you thought Roots was enough to make up for the shameful humiliation of Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind, think again. The star has always balanced commercial hits (Lethal Weapon, 1, 2, 3, ad infinitum) with more thoughtful material. The Saint of Fort Washington (1993) saw him teaming with Matt Dillon in one of the best filmed excursions into the brutal world of the homeless. Mr. Glover’s currently on view in a totally unpredictable performance in The Royal Tenenbaums, as a mild-mannered rival to Gene Hackman for Anjelica Huston’s affection.
So, reparations for the fact that a hefty chunk of the nation’s wealth was created by unpaid African-American slaves? No question—those of us born with the privileges attendant upon skin color in this society need to do it for the sake of our souls. And then we gotta start thinking about how to pay back the current generation of stars for the priceless gifts they keep giving us today.
- Dr. James C. Lundstom is Dean of Academics at Columbia College Hollywood.
