Indieopolis:
Reports from the Front Part40
by Lola Bianca
Cannes Opener! The Grande Dame of Film Festivals gets underway May 15th with an out-of-competish screening of Woody Allen’s latest neurotic fantasy, Hollywood Ending, starring Himself and Tea Leoni. Although Manhattan, Purple Rose…, and Hannah and Her Sisters each had their day in the Med sun, this marks the first in-flesh appearance for Allen.

Meanwhile, David Mulholland Drive Lynch will preside over a jury that includes thespettes Christine Hakim, Sharon Stone, and Michelle Yeoh and filmmakers Bille August, Raoul Ruiz, and Walter Salles. Director-producer Barbet Schroeder has been named official “godfather” to the fest’s oldest sidebar, the Int’l Critics Week (the fest itself is in its 55th year; the Critics Week in its 41st). He is only the 3rd filmmaker to receive this honor, after Bernardo Bertolucci and Ken Loach. And cinephile Marty Scorsese will head the 2002 shorts jury (an interesting assignment for a man whose latest film, the $97 million dollar Gangs of New York, clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes, with Harvey Weinstein vehemently denying that there was ever any serious conflict between them!). Jurors for this year’s prestigious Camera d'Or award for best 1st film include Geraldine Chaplin, Marthe Keller, and Bahman Drunken Horses Ghobadi, all drawn from the pool of former jury presidents and award winners.

What’s Up, Docs? From Park City to the Croisette, docs are hot. Michael Roger and Me Moore’s Bowling for Columbine takes on gun violence in America, the NRA, and the main competition at Cannes; while D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ Only the Strong Survive, a look at the survivors of the Motown scene, is among the feature selections for the Director’s Fortnight: There will be special screenings of 2 other US docs: Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein’s The Kid Stays in the Picture (about Robert Evans) and Rosanna Arquette’s Searching for Debra Winger.

Fest promises to be lively offscreen as well as on, with emotions running high in the wake of April’s firing of Canal Plus president Pierre Lescure.. David Lynch, not surprisingly, has weighed in on the side of Gallic indie spirit – Canal Plus – against the US corporate mentality of Jean-Marie Messier and Vivendi Universal.

On the Home Front: former Prez Bill Clinton was in attendance at the Sundance Institute’s big 20th anniversary bash in NYC. Meanwhile, the IFP (Independent Film Project) is reorganizing to better serve its 9,000 filmmaker-members nationwide. Chapters are being renamed: IFP/New York, IFP/Los Angeles, IFP/Minneapolis/St. Paul, IFP/Chicago, IFP/Miami, and a new one – IFP/Seattle. Each will remain an independent non-profit org governed by its own board, while working together to develop new national programs.

Overnight Success! 28 year old Venezuelan-born Eduardo Rodriguez scored a 3-pic deal after Miramax co-chair Bob Weinstein saw his 15-minute $18,000 horror movie at a DGA screening last month. The film (Daughter) was a thesis project for the Florida State U grad student. First on Rodriguez’s slate for Dimension (Miramax’s new genre division) will be Symbiosis, a thriller which he co-wrote. (A 10 min, 16mm version already exists.) Before coming to the US, Rodriguez was a writer for Venezuelan TV. To view a trailer for Daughter, check out www/fsu.edu/~film/
fsufilms/current/daughter.

Not-So-Overnight Success… If you’re on the Slamdance mailing list, you already know that Co-Founder-at-Large Dan Mirvish has a new short film, “Open House,” from which he and his writing partner plan to make a feature-length musical this summer. If this weren’t excitement enough, Mirvish’s debut feature Omaha (the Movie) is getting a 350,000 unit DVD release, with a disc stuffed inside every Pioneer DVD player sold in North America over the coming months! Lola’s Law: You never know where you’ll find distribution! Mirvish’s Moral: “It can take 8 years, but eventually people may see your film.” www.slamdance.com/mirvish.
Congrats, Dan! - indieopolis@hotmail.com.

MovieReviews
Spiderman
by Lynn Barker
After months of speculation among Spidey fans, some of whom complained that the Green Goblin’s costume was different or that Peter Parker’s spider was genetically, not atomically altered, the web is finally spun. Despite years of legal battles, creative differences, and costumes stolen from the studio, we finally get a superhero for the nerd in all of us!
Teen orphan Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) lives in Queens, New York with his aunt May (Rosemary Harris) and uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson). He’s nerdy, brilliant and gets his kicks shooting pictures for the school paper especially of hot red-head Mary Jane Watson, his crush since he was six. Peter shares his lovelorn angst with best buddy Harry Osborn (James Franco).

When Peter is bitten by a genetically-altered spider, he takes on qualities like agility, strength, a buffed up bod and keen ESP-like senses. At first he’s a total klutz but soon masters his powers and uses them, in the beginning, to make money for that teen Holy Grail: a new car. When he becomes instrumental in a crime and tragedy hits home, Peter vows to be a crime fighter.

When an experiment goes awry, Harry’s dad Norman Osborn also develops super powers but, as the violent, aggressive Green Goblin, he’s a split personality that Peter must conquer despite personal connections. Mary Jane starts dating Harry, which further complicates Peter’s personal life. When the Green Goblin hurts those Peter loves, he must make some life-altering decisions.

If you can’t identify with Peter Parker then you’ve never had a nerdish, underdog day in your life. He gets incredible superpowers and first uses them in a comic attempt to win money to buy a car to impress a girl. This is one superhero film that takes time to reveal what makes the characters tick and I, for one appreciate that. There are still plenty of kick-butt stunts and fights to please the ardent action and comic book fans. Director Sam Raimi accomplished the same combo in Darkman and was the best choice to helm this film.

Tobey Maguire, despite the complaints, is a terrific Spiderman. It is Parker’s character that matters and Maguire plays his emotional challenges with soulful confusion.Willem Dafoe is a fun Osborn but scenes in which he talks to his alter-ego in a mirror or chats with his Goblin mask are a little too bizarre. Kirsten Dunst is great in the Mary Jane role with just the right mix of bad girl attitude and heart-of-gold concern. Emoting through eyeless, mouthless masks has got to be difficult for actors but Dafoe and Maguire do their best to translate with body language. Effects combining life action and CGI work fine. The armored Goblin costume has gotten complaints but did you really want to see a bad guy who looks like an overgrown elf?

At the core of the story is a soap opera romance that just seems to get started when it is quashed. In that, the film is unsatisfying but could it end any other way and be true to superhero creed? If you are the type of filmgoer who has to see fists and bodies flying every few seconds, and to heck with character development, this isn’t your film. If you like to see what makes someone tick before he goes into battle, then get caught in Spidey’s web. Overall, you won’t be sorry.


Life or
Something Like it
by Fred C. Godlash
Not a bad movie. One of the hardest things when reviewing a film is not to prejudge before entering the theater. The plot: if you had one week to live, how would you change your life? Seattle reporter, Lanie Kerrigan (Angelina Jolie) thinks she has gained ultimate success. She has a high- profile job, a professional baseball player boyfriend, and even the perfect body. Lanie’s world falls apart when a homeless prophet predicts many things that will come true, including her death. Lanie finds solicitude with cameraman Pete (Edward Burns), who falls in love with this woman in transition.

This movie has a clichéd theme, but here is what surprised me. Angelina Jolie’s character Lanie Kerrigan is very likable and very much in tune with the common Los Angeles resident. She is running through life without finding her true self, blinded by ambition, and searching for some kind of fame or recognition to validate herself. How many transplants have moved to Hollywood for whatever similar motivation?

The Edward Burns character is very grounded and does not need to conform to any standard to be himself.

Another interesting thing about this film is that it asks the question, can women play in a man’s world? It is not a news flash that the further up the corporate ladder you climb, the more you must sacrifice. Men instinctually become slaves to their job, but at what price? The Edward Burns character does not hold work above his life. Can this be a role reversal?

Bottom line is that this movie has some laughs and is a barometer of the times.

Goofy to the X
by Witney Seibold
The last film in the undying Friday the 13th franchise was called Jason Goes to Hell. I have seen it. Jason did indeed go to Hell. So, then, how can he be around to wreak terror in the most recent sequel, Jason X? Well, applying logic to a horror sequel, especially the tenth in a series, can cause dire confusion and, in some cases, serious injury.

2010. Crystal Lake (Jason’s ol’ slashin’ grounds) has been transformed into a research facility complete with cryogenics lab. In a fit of violence, Jason (Kane Hodder), and the busty ingénue Rowan (Lexa Doig), become frozen. They are thawed in 2455 aboard a spaceship of grad students. In the future, androids walk among us. People have abandoned a dead Earth, and now live among the stars. And, as luck would have it, the teenagers are still massively horny, and still possess epic stupidity.

They’re the same teenagers that the “post-Halloween” generation has seen slashed to ribbons countless times. Things go along predictably violently for our future crew (body count: 19. I counted).

And just when Kay-Em 14 the android (Lisa Ryder), shoots Jason into tiny bits, he is (of course) reconstructed by medical nanites, and tromps into the film’s finale as (ahem) “Über-Jason.”

Is this a good film? Certainly not. This is a slasher film, which uses its future setting merely as a slight twist to the usual immortal-killer-stalks-horny-teenagers bit. The entire slasher genre, however, has been retread so many times that unoriginality has become part of its charm. So I hold no grudge against this film’s banality. Indeed I celebrate it. The violence is no longer scary, or even suspenseful. It has become wonderfully goofy. Example: When Über-Jason encounters two topless teenagers smoking marijuana in sleeping bags, there is a marvelous shot of him beating one of them to death… with the other one.

Did I enjoy Jason X? Yes I did. I recognize that it is quite low on the ladder of cinematic quality, both in concept and in the shoddy execution. But it is certainly one of the better bad films I have seen.


No Place Like Where You Can't Go Back
by Dr. Jim
Rummaging through my internal mnemonic data base (aka memory-bearing brain cells) a few weeks back for the LA Noir issue, I stumbled across the counter-intuitive notion common to a subset of films that LA can sometimes be other-than-noir; that in fact it can occasionally be a downright delightful jungle in which to build one's treehouse.

And okay, "delightful" isn't the precise adjective to apply to Nicholas Ray's teen-angst-’n-tragedy, Rebel without a Cause (1955). Nevertheless, there's a youthful energy that fairly scintillates the celluloid, watching talents like James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Dennis Hopper and Corey Allen, the original OGs, slash and burn their way through the Hollywood Hills from the Griffith Planetarium to the Pacific Palisades and back, in an era when phrases like "JD," "chicken" and "I've got the bullets!" explained it all and the world was very, very white.

The juvenilia on display in Rebel permanently grounded the widespread belief that the cult/ure of the US, of California in particular and of Hollywood especially, was that of perpetual youth, energy and a Huck-Finnish/Don-Key-Ho-Tay-esque odyssey in search of innocence, lost, found, tainted, tarnished and otherwise.

Note how white the celluloid cosmos continued through 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Amy Heckerling's bounce into Hi-jinx School in the Cameron Crowe-penned version of The Great Comedy of the Struggle for Teen Sex (aka "coming-of-age-teen-flix," a genre of inexplicable box office appeal in the paleoreagan era). And glory here in the arrival of another generation of Talented Young Stars-To-Be, with folks like Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates and (watch fast) Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards and Nic Cage battling through the swimming pools and shopping malls of the West Side, like so many spermatozoon in search of the perfect ovum.

What a difference a day makes – or, in PRT (Pacific Reel Time), a year. 1983 was the year of Alex Cox's explosive debut into the Gallery of Immortal Images with Repo Man, a post-modern thriller/sci-fi/coming-of-age/road trip/buddy movie so scathing it justifies everything else Emilio Estevez (its star) ever did to us. Romp along "doing crimes" with the kids through the bleak mid-county world of generic consumables (cans labeled "Food" and "Beer"), televangelistically tranced-out parents, an indelible Harry Dean Stanton performance, radioactive alien life forms in the trunk and vans full of feds imitating the Keystone Kops (years before x-files or men in black), all of which reel-ly does add up, because, as the man says, “the life of a repo man’s intense.”

One sign of the weakness of the first Bush shogunate era – an omen of the waning of nostalgia for the homogenous hallmark world of pre-Vietnam US entertainment – were the flailing attempts Hollywood made to discover or remember LA's true identity as the multi-cultural capital of the third world. In rapid succession African-Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, even (gasp!) women, suddenly found themselves (however briefly) transformed from threatening outsiders to the sympathy-worthy hearts of the US experience, as played out against the shimmering LA skyline.

Check out Set It Off, a 1996 crime caper, written by Kate Lanier and Takashi Bufford, and directed by F. Gary Gray. Watch South Central home-grlz Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A. Fox, and (in a star-making turn) her majesty Queen Latifah, good and tired of getting choked and smoked by the male establishment, setting their sights on, and (more or less) carrying off a down-town, prime-time, zillion dollar bank heist.

Stand and Deliver (1988), written and directed by Ramon Menendez, catapulted Edward James Olmos into a well-earned Oscar nom and equally well-earned star status. Playing real-life hi-priced engineer turned lo-priced math teacher Jaime Escalante, Olmos expanded his waistline, curved his shoulders and receded his hairline to guide a troupe of hard-core, gang-banging homies from The Barrio (an ancient pueblo in the heart of Nuevo El Lay where English never did supplant the native tongue) to prize-winning scores on their math SATs. Rosana De Soto suffers nobly as La Otra Significante and Lou Diamond Phillips tears new turf as the most macho student since Vic Morrow (JJ Leigh's dad, remember?) in Blackboard Jungle.

Pre-WWII Little Tokyo was lovingly re-created for Come See the Paradise, Alan Parker's soapy 1990 saga about the injustices wreaked on California’s Japanese American community in the 1940s. Dennis Quaid struck the right poses as a union-organizing lefty, winning the heart of home-born Tamlyn Tomita and then promptly getting infernoed in the Ninth-Circle-cum-USA, just about the same time Tomita-san and her entire extended family get manzanared off to the local concentration camps. Just, one assumes, to remind us that white boys get mistreated too, when their political sympathies don't line up with accepted political correctness. Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, back on the post-modern front (and I did promise I'd get to that “delightful” stuff, didn't I?), has LA ever had a brighter, more insightful promo-boy than Steve Martin? 1991’s LA Story, which Mr. Martin both wrote and starred in, takes us on a romantic romp through museums and cemeteries, through freeways, alleys and valleys, from the source of the Santa Anas to the beachfront motor inns of Santa Barbara. As tv weatherguy Harris K. Telemacher, Martin crosses paths with his ex (Marilu Henner), his intended (Victoria Tennant) and Sarah Jessica Parker. Oh yeah, and finds the true meaning of the Freeway Warning Signs along the way.

Martin's back in LA in Bowfinger (1999), again writing and starring, under the direction of erstwhile muppeteer Frank Oz. From one of the seediest suburban home-offices, some of the hottest locales (and on one of the busiest freeways in the history of cinema), Martin shows how movies really get made. Watch for top-notch support from a double-cast Eddie Murphy, playing a paranoid action star and his goofy look-alike. Oh, and talk about LA secrets – if you watch closely, this one will reveal the exact stop where that bus lets off all those wannabe young stars pouring in from the rest of the mundane world.
I love LA.
–Dr. James C. Lundstrom is Dean of Academics at Columbia College Hollywood.


Zingers!
A BEAUTIFUL MIND
“Ron Howard’s really good at entertaining people.” –Marlan Pillay
“A movie you discuss for hours afterwards...” –Eileen Ogle
“I felt manipulated.” –Coco Vaughn

BLADE II
“A must-see. Kudos to Wesley Snipes.”
–Miss P

CHANGING LANES
“If you get in that line, Change Lines.”
–Miss P

CLOCKSTOPPERS
“My boys, Josh [8] and Jesse [9], loved it. They said it was really cute.” –Jake
“Great family entertainment!”
–Barbara (Jake’s wife)

DEATH TO SMOOCHY
“It’s really not a good movie, but it’s so demented, you have to laugh at it.”
–Marlan Pillay

E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
“Take every kid you know who has not seen it. Truly delightful and inspiring. Go Spielberg!” –Miss P

GOSFORD PARK
“Everything about this film is memorable [and] stylish.” –Don Grigware

GREEN DRAGON
“Offers a fascinating glimpse into an aspect of the Vietnam War experience that many of us weren’t even aware of – the lives of Vietnamese refugees held at Camp Pendleton while waiting for their papers to come through.” –Nola Parker

HIGH CRIMES
“Judd is a phenomenal actress. Too bad Jim Cavesiel's a dud. He just doesn't sell you on anything. Morgan Freeman is missed on screen when he's gone. Good movie.” –Miss P

KISSING JESSICA STEIN
“There were some funny lines, but basically it reminded me of Chasing Amy – another straight man’s fantasy about lesbianism!” –Stacy M.

LORD OF THE RINGS
“Visually stimulating, a true spectacle.”
–Jake
“It’s a war movie. That’s what I wasn’t prepared for.” –EmJay
MONSOON WEDDING
“The audience applauded. It’s that kind of movie.” –Lola Bianca

“I loved how all the relationships were resolved and how the wedding preparations were juxtaposed with inner city scenes in New Delhi. You really feel like you’re there.” –Petra Smith

PANIC ROOM
“Jodie Foster is awesome and Forest Whitaker keeps you watching” –Miss P
“Pretty good, especially considering it’s all just set in one location. There are a few cheesy lines, but…” –Jordan in Brooklyn

THE PIANO TEACHER
“Great performances, intriguing premise, extremely intellectual at core. Hard to tell if it’s meant to be taken as very dry comedy or completely seriously.” –Lola Bianca

RETURN TO NEVERLAND
“Typical Disney. England is at war and the children are about to be sent off to the country until it is safe to return. The night before, Jane, Wendy's daughter, is swept away by Captain Hook to Neverland. Unlike her mother, Jane is a nonbeliever in all that is Peter Pan. The main plot revolves around how she comes to believe in Neverland.” –Jada Crimson

SCORPION KING
“It’s better than The Mummy Returns!”
–Hannah Bering

TIME OUT
“Don’t forget to take your Prozac before you go…” –EmJay

TRIUMPH OF LOVE
“An amusing masquerade with some great comic turns - human weakness exploited to marvellous absurd effect. A whole lotta fun, but it ain’t Shakespeare.” –Lola Bianca

WORLD TRAVELER
“Billy Crudup is one of the great actors of his generation.” –Lola Bianca

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN
“A remarkable achievement.”
–Dave Eisenstark
“I thought it was rather raw but truly worth the ride.” –Charlotte Morgan


Thrill Killing by Witney Seibold
Murder by Numbers, the recent crime thriller from director Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune, Our Lady of the Assassins) is a rather pedestrian, yet oddly satisfying film. We get the usual police investigation, complete with an angry police chief shouting “You’re off the case!” to the heroine, but the film’s center lies with the two young killers and their rather close relationship.

Justin (Michael Pitt) is a nihilistic smarter-than-he-is-wise wallflower. Richard (Ryan Gosling) is the popular boy who coasts through high school solely on charm. It is a mystery how they became friends, but we sense that it may be more than a little bit sexual. They are both bored with what the adult world has to offer so, much like Phillip and Brandon from Hitchcock’s Rope, decide to commit a murder for an intellectual thrill. Richard plans it all perfectly, and there’s no way they can be caught. Well, until the clever yet wounded Cassie (Sandra Bullock), and her green partner Sam (Ben Chaplin) take on the case. She immediately sees logical flaws to the way the murder was committed, and begins to not only suspect, but obsess over the two boys. Cassie, you see, once survived being dumped in a ditch very much like the boys’ victim. The film then unfolds as Cassie’s investigations lead her to the unraveling of the two boys’ plans.

While Murder by Numbers is ostensibly about Cassie and her personal conflicts, its spirit comes from the relationship between Richard and Justin. Cassie’s story is only marginally interesting, and Sandra Bullock, while a talented actress, didn’t seem able to dig out the suffering to give Cassie any necessary pathos. The truly interesting story is the one that follows the planning, the thinking, and ultimately the caring that these two boys have. We see them as both bored teens, and as people who are actually capable of doing what they did.

The actual police investigation feels like a pat episode of CSI, and there’s a little too much focus on Cassie’s unconvincing suffering. But as a modern take on Leopold and Loeb, this film is quite effective.