By Jason Apuzzo. I wanted Libertas readers to have a chance today to see an extraordinary short film by Iranian filmmaker Farbod “Fred” Khoshtinat called, ATTN: Mr. Democrat. The ‘Mr. Democrat’ of the title is an ironic reference to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who actually claims to preside over a democratic republic in Iran.
Fred Khoshtinat with Hillary Clinton.
Khoshtinat is a multi-talented filmmaker who edited the music video sequences in a poignant movie I really admired this past summer called No One Knows About Persian Cats (see my review of that here).
Dissident filmmakers like Khoshtinat will always have a ‘virtual home’ here at Libertas. We wish him the best in his future endeavors, and hope the success of his film opens up another tiny crack in the Iranian regime.
PLEASE NOTE: Living with the Infidels Episode 5, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” features adult language and situations. If that might offend you, please don’t watch the webisode. Otherwise, enjoy.
By Jason Apuzzo. Here is Episode 5, the final installment of Living with the Infidels. We hope you’ve enjoyed the series. This episode may be the best. It is genuinely hilarious – in large measure because it’s dominated by the terror cell’s raging narcissist, Psycho Ali, who delivers the funniest riff on a terror video I’ve ever seen – Four Lions included. Watch him as he struggles to find his ‘actor’s moment.’ Enjoy!
By Jason Apuzzo. • I recently saw the trailer for the new Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck/Angelina Jolie/Johnny Depp thriller-romance The Tourist, which also features Timothy Dalton and Paul Bettany – and I thought it looked great. Frankly, I didn’t think anybody out there made movies like this any longer (i.e., charming, Hitchcockian espionage capers with a light touch), and I’m very much looking forward to seeing it. I’m a bit concerned that the trailer gives away too much … but nonetheless I’m excited by what I see. The film looks to be what the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz Knight and Day was supposed to be but wasn’t. Jolie is obviously on a roll these days, making up for months of tabloid magazine gossip with some very solid projects. As for Depp, he still apparently feels the need to hide himself behind a bizarre exterior in order to convey whatever idiosyncratic humor he’s trying to put across. Still, I can’t fault his performances even if he’s never been my cup of tea. This looks like a film to rescue an otherwise dull fall.
• There’s a lot happening, as usual, on the sci-fi front. First let’s begin with James Cameron, who is apparently producing a new TV-series adaptation of his film True Lies. This was reported recently with great fanfare, but I’m allowed to be a little skeptical here because there are about 2,000 other Cameron-related projects that have been announced lately … so who knows? Since the original film was about fighting terrorists, I’m wondering how the storyline will be changed to fit Cameron’s new passion for indigenous resistance fighters. Anyway, Cameron has also apparently commissioned some new deep-sea explorations to the bottom of the seven-mile deep Challenger Deep (part of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific), from which he will shoot 3D footage that may be incorporated into Avatar’s sequel. [Or at least, that’s his excuse – probably so he can charge the expedition to Fox.] Cameron’s career is becoming increasingly intriguing, as he veers between Michael Moore and Jacques Cousteau. The question is: when he’s 20,000 fathoms down, will he find any beasts down there? [Inside joke.]
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … we thought we’d take a look at Amber Heard (above), who stars in John Carpenter’s new film, The Ward, which just debuted in Toronto. The Ward is set in the 1960s, and deals with a group of five comely young women in a mental institution who attempt to outlast a lecherous ghoul who haunts the hallways. It sounds a bit like working for Letterman. Anyway, I hope she makes it!
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
PLEASE NOTE: Living with the Infidels Episode 4, “The Box,” features strong sexual innuendo. If that might offend you, please don’t watch the webisode. Otherwise, enjoy.
Here is Episode 4 of Living with the Infidels. We hope you enjoy the series. You might say that the series is moving toward its climax.
By Joe Bendel. Prepare to be shocked: not only is there considerable drug use in the modeling business, some unscrupulous photographers sexually take advantage of the girls — and yes, in many cases they really are girls. Such are some of the revelations in super-ish model Sara Ziff’s video diary that she and her filmmaker boyfriend Ole Schell cut and shaped into the feature length documentary Picture Me, which opens in New York and Los Angeles this Friday immediately following the conclusion of the 2010 NY Fashion Week.
Though Ziff first started modeling at age fourteen, she really began pursuing it in earnest after graduating from high school – relatively late by modeling standards. Certainly beautiful, she seems quite successful, judging by the five and six figure checks she shows the camera. The close proximity of her supportive family is also an advantage, keeping her more or less grounded. Still, as we watch her over the course of a chaotic season, the exploitative nature of the business (even at Ziff’s rarified level) takes a toll on her.
Model, filmmaker Sara Ziff.
Ziff is probably rather bright and down-to-earth by industry standards, but that does not make her a fascinating personality on the big screen. She is, after all, a young woman in her early twenties with only a high school education. (To her credit, she does enroll in college late in the film.) Frankly, her much less successful former roommate is a far more compelling figure. She can definitely tell a bad gig story, disturbing as it might be.
The real question is just what her freeloading b.f. did to earn his co-director, co-editor, and d.p. credits. In addition to being the subject, Ziff clearly shot much of the footage of her friends and fellow models herself. Hopefully Schell was very active in the editing bay. He certainly was not picking up any checks. In fact, some of the scenes he did indeed shoot feel almost as intrusive as the creepy lechers backstage snapping photos of the models as they change (a practice designers and agencies inexplicably tolerate, though it must violate American labor laws).
There are probably better modeling exposés available, but Picture should be sufficient to make parents think twice about allowing their daughters to pursue such a career. Even though one might expect it to have a glitzy E! sheen, Picture is a fairly dark and dingy looking affair, shot in backstage dressing rooms and crash pads on handheld consumers video cameras. Hardly glamorizing the model’s lifestyle, it shows the behind-the-scenes reality, zits and all.
It is hard to make a truly boring movie about beautiful women who are often skimpily clad. However, aside from a few insightful interviews with Ziff’s less successful colleagues, Picture is largely dependent on the sex appeal of its participants to hold audience interest. As a result, it is unlikely to make much of a lasting impression with viewers, unless they are fascinated by the modeling world to an unhealthy degree or have been stalking Ziff. The film opens in New York and Los Angeles this Friday (9/17).
Dreamworks "Megamind" poster to the left, Olivia Wilde ACLU ad to the right.
By Jason Apuzzo. Obama adulation in Hollywood has apparently not yet waned completely. Some are still apparently holding out hope … trying to resuscitate the dream, as its embers fade in the cold wind of Obama’s own narcissism. Note above-left the new Dreamworks Shepard Fairey-inspired poster for Megamind, with the villain depicted as an opponent of Obama-style hopefulness.
Perhaps more depressingly, since such partisan nonsense is to be expected from Dreamworks, is Tron’s Olivia Wilde (above-right) in a new Shepard Fairey-inspired ad for the ACLU. Is this the kind of activism we can expect from Ms. Wilde when Tron debuts in December, with what may be some subtle political messaging already embedded in that film?
I think it’s the smugness of these posters that bothers me most, their basic triteness, beside the fact that they feel like they’re about two years behind the times. Who is actually persuaded by this nonsense anymore – other than the young, poorly educated and easily impressionable … oh, right, that’s quite a lot of people these days. [Sigh.]
