Day: October 4, 2010

The Social Network: How Hollywood Doesn’t Understand Innovation + The New Thing & Hollywood Round-up, 10/4

From "The Thing" (2011).

By Jason Apuzzo. The Social Network took top honors at the box office over the weekend. I saw the film on Friday, and although I found it interesting the film was also curiously unmoving and somewhat clinical. Essentially it felt like a gossipy Vanity Fair article rather than a movie. Silicon Valley is apparently reacting to the film badly, believing that Hollywood doesn’t really understand them at all. They’re right. Basically, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher don’t really know what to do with Mark Zuckerberg in this film other than to slap the usual geeky-Jewish-nerd template over him, and assume that his prime motivations for creating Facebook were: girls and money.

A motivation they seem completely incapable of understanding is: innovation.

And this, ultimately, is why the movie fails as a depiction of Silicon Valley culture. In an industry based on sequels, remakes and franchise properties, I’m sure it must be difficult for Hollywood people to grasp what makes the Silicon Valley guys and girls tick: a desire to innovate, to create technologies no one has ever dreamed-of before, to push the boundaries of science and industry. This is not what Hollywood has any interest in any more, to say the least. But a spirit of innovation is what makes people like Steve Jobs tick. Or filmmakers like George Lucas, or the Pixar guys, or Francis Coppola – all of whom decamped for the Bay Area decades ago, for reasons few people in Hollywood (whether liberal or conservative) seem capable of understanding.

January Jones plays Emma Frost in "X-Men: First Class."

Oh and incidentally, as of this month Steve Jobs’ Apple may currently be replacing Exxon as the most valuable company in the world, in terms of market capitalization. That’s another development the Hollywood guys probably don’t understand at all.

A fun little footnote here. Some years back when I was a graduate student at Stanford (I was studying lit), I had a buddy in the computer science department there. We would occasionally hang out at the computer lab late at night and shoot the breeze. Often there would also be these two other guys there, huddled off in a corner working on something. They always seemed busy, and intense – my buddy and I always wondered what they were working on.

I never gave those guys much thought until years later when I saw their pictures, and realized that those two dudes in the lab were … Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

And what warm, wonderful guys they were! 😉

• First it was MGM bankruptcy, then losing Guillermo del Toro, then labor troubles, and now a fire has burned down a crucial workshop in New Zealand that was to be used for production on Peter Jackson’s already-troubled Hobbit adaptation. Plus: word is now leaking that the 2 Hobbit films may be shot in 3D, at a cost potentially as high as $500 million. Is there really that much juice in this series? I sure hope so, for Jackson’s sake (and MGM’s).

• I was very sorry to read that one of my favorite directors, John McTiernan (Predator, Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard: With a Vengeance), just got sentenced to one year in prison for his role in the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping scandal. It could’ve been worse, though: he could’ve been forced to direct a Green Hornet sequel.

Tanit Phoenix.

• Hugh Hefner’s life may be getting a BBC miniseries treatment, and Brett Ratner may be reviving the Beverly Hills Cop franchise, sans Eddie Murphy. Why do those two stories seem related? It must have something to do with bringing things back from near-death.

• Mary Jane is apparently going to be played by Emma Stone in the Spider-Man reboot. No surprises there. And you’ve probably already heard by now that Wonder Woman will be coming back to television, in a new series to be written and produced by David E. Kelley. Few details are available about what’s planned for this reboot, so we’ll be keeping an eye out …

• On the Sci-Fi/Alien Invasion front, Olivia Wilde of Tron and Cowboys and Aliens (and ACLU ads) has now been cast in (the project formerly known as)I.m. mortal. Plus, check out this interesting set visit to the forthcoming The Thing prequel/remake/reboot (see the picture above); Matt Reeves talks about Super 8 and also the potential of a Cloverfield 2; and Mad Men’s January Jones may be doing a lingerie scene for X-Men: First Class, so that’s a plus.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … did you know that somebody did a prequel to Death Race, called Death Race 2: The Beginning … with Danny Trejo and Sean Bean? Neither did I, but apparently it’s going straight to DVD – and it also stars South African model Tanit Phoenix, who as a brunette might be a great candidate to play the new Wonder Woman on TV. Judge for yourself …

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

Posted on October 4th, 2010 at 1:08pm.

LFM Review: The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu

By Joe Bendel. There was a time when Nicolae Ceaușescu got all the Iron Curtain’s favorable press. Many in the foreign policy establishment considered him reasonable, even reform-minded based on some shrewd public relations moves, like his measured criticism of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. However, the 1989 Revolution ripped down the façade, revealing to the world the monster that had long oppressed Romania. Of course, every dictator sees himself as an enlightened Caesar – and has the state-produced propaganda to prove it.  Culling 180 minutes from over 1,000 hours of archival footage, Romanian director Andrei Ujică assembled a video-collage of Ceaușescu’s life as it was perceived by the dictator and recorded by his state cameras in The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu (trailer above), which screens this Saturday during the 2010 New York Film Festival.

Defiant to the end, Nicolae Ceaușescu refuses to cooperate in the hastily assembled trial following the Revolution (he would say coup) that removed him from office. Indeed, his has been a life of destiny as we watch his storied career in flashbacks, courtesy of the state propaganda ministry.

From his meteoric rise following the death of his Stalinist mentor Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceaușescu might have displayed a bit of independence in foreign policy – but aside from his support for Prague Spring, this usually manifested itself in uncharacteristically warm relations with the Warsaw Pact’s Eastern rivals, the Chinese and Vietnamese (here was a man who could appreciate a personality cult). Still, he certainly seemed to enjoy entertaining western heads of state, including President Nixon (who also appears to relish his photo ops with one of the few world leaders he physically towered over). We watch as Ceaușescu celebrates birthdays, receives dignitaries, and opens party conferences. He briefly condemns a spot of hooliganism in Timişoara and then suddenly he is facing an ad-hoc inquest. Of course, the real story is much more dramatic and far bloodier.

More or less billed as an object lesson in film as a propaganda tool, Ujică did not set out to create a revisionist history or to humanize the permanently deposed dictator. However, the film might have that unintended effect on audiences not privy to Ujică’s underlying concept or his past work documenting the 1989 uprising in Videograms of a Revolution. This is a particular risk here in New York, where art-house patrons consider themselves politically sophisticated but are easily manipulated by propagandistic images exactly like those in Autobiography.

Running a full three hours, Autobiography is a hugely ambitious work, but frankly it is a grueling viewing experience. One scene of Ceaușescu fondling the bread of a well-stocked Potemkin market during a photo op makes the point. The second constitutes overkill. In fact, there is constant and deliberate repetition throughout Ujică’s film, as each Party conference and state visit blends into the next. Perhaps this is a deliberate strategy to convey the rigidly homogenous nature of Ceaușescu’s artificially constructed reality, but it is wearying for viewers looking for a lifeline to grasp unto.

As the highly problematic Autobiography currently stands, there is no footage that even mildly criticizes Ceaușescu’s twenty-five year misrule. How could there be? Any employees of the propaganda ministry not properly lionizing their master would have faced severe (probably fatal) reprisals. As a result, the entire film is much like Kim Il-sung’s massive welcoming ceremony, a hyper-real but static spectacle, ironic in its conspicuous lack of irony. Ujică proves himself a daring filmmaker, but to what end? Autobiography is ultimately a film for those who have an affinity the vintage aesthetics of the Soviet era, regardless of the messy history involved, essentially unreconstructed leftists and ironic hipsters. Not recommended, it nonetheless screens this Saturday (10/9) at the Walter Reade Theater as a special presentation of the 48th NYFF.

Posted on October 4th, 2010 at 9:13am.