By Jason Apuzzo. MTV News is showing a clip today (see above) from The Taqwacores, a film which opens this Friday in New York – and travels to art house theaters nationwide in subsequent weeks. The movie – which was a hit at Sundance – deals with the new Muslim punk scene here in the U.S.
Indiewire is actually showing a much more interesting clip from the film here, although the clip can’t be embedded. Take a look …
Posted on October 20th, 2010 at 2:47pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. • Red finished only second at the box office this past weekend, and I would be more pleased about that if it weren’t for the fact that Jackass 3D finished at #1, taking in some $50 million. I can’t even begin to describe how depressing that is. Silver lining: at least we won’t have to hear more bloviating about how Willis and Stallone have ‘revived the action genre.’
• Easily the juiciest rumor out of Hollywood late last week was the potential pairing of Angelina Jolie and James Cameron on a huge, 3D Cleopatra biopic epic – with the project to be based on Stacy Schiff’s book, Cleopatra: A Life. There are about a thousand different things I could say on this subject, but here’s what holds me back: the fact that James Cameron (or one of his many doubles) is currently attached to about a 1000 different projects right now, so who knows whether this particular one will ever happen? I’ve otherwise embedded a video above of Stacy Schiff describing her biography of Cleopatra. There are several concerns I have about her approach – perhaps you can guess them? – but there’s not much more to say, really, until this proposed Jolie-Cameron pairing becomes an actual, going concern. [Jolie, incidentally, just got her film permit back to shoot her indie film drama in Bosnia.] Also: I can only imagine how impatient Fox’s executives must be right now regarding their Avatar sequels …
• Brigitte Bardot is back in the news. Bardot is thinking of running for President of France, because Nicholas Sarkozy apparently hasn’t kept his promise to crack down on the ritual Islamic practice of slaughtering animals for halal meat (!). She also thinks Carla Bruni is “as beautiful as she is badly brought up,” and that Sarah Palin is “disconcertingly stupid.” Ouch. I’ve always been a big fan of BB – what male isn’t? – but there’s such a thing as retiring gracefully, and BB perhaps should think about more elegantly easing her way off the stage …
In the spirit of 3D film projects centered around glamorous women, however, I’ve put up a 3D picture of France’s great blonde for our readers’ general delectation. You’ll need your red/blue anaglyphic 3D glasses to enjoy this picture properly.
• In other news on the Political front, Oliver Stone does another interview about Wall Street 2; Shia LaBeouf is apparently interested in playing Lee Atwater in College Republicans; Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s The Accordian just opened the Abu Dhabi Film Festival; and McG apparently wants to do a movie about Christopher Columbus. McG?! This improbable project would apparently be done “300-style” and would be funded by Virgin’s Richard Branson, who must a lot of money to burn. [Sigh.]
• It now seems that the Christian audience did not go out in droves to see Disney’s Secretariat. This doesn’t surprise me, because there’s actually very little Christian content in the film. As I’ve said before, Disney really should’ve marketed this film more to women.
• Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films have finally been greenlit, and there are already casting rumors floating around. You know what I’m even more interested in seeing, though? A little Norwegian indie flick called The Troll Hunter that just got picked up for distribution by Magnolia and is getting all sorts of buzz. I’ve embedded the trailer below – it’s looks cheeky, provocative and thrilling.
We’ve been covering these little indie sci-fi bootstrap projects for months here at Libertas – whether it’s Monsters or Skyline or Iron Sky or The Mercury Men or The Third Letter or Pioneer One. This is clearly the new wave, the next mode in which indie filmmakers are breaking through to the mainstream, and sometimes dealing with controversial subjects. Check out the trailer below – it’s a hoot.
• On the Superhero front, the new Christopher Nolan/Zack Snyder Superman will apparently be an ‘origins’ story (yawn), and there’s no confirmation that General Zod will appear at all. Snyder is also talking about some of the boffo action sequences planned for his latest project with Frank Miller, Xerxes, which is the 300 ‘prequel.’ Also: The Lizard will apparently be the new villain for Spider-Man, and there are some new stills out for the forthcoming Conan movie that’s currently being retro-fitted into 3D.
• I’m very excited about Apocalypse Now coming to Blu-ray. Check out this LA Times article for some of the interesting new elements included in the set.
• As usual there’s a lot of news on the Sci-Fi/Alien Invasion front. We may have a Cowboys & Aliens trailer by Christmas; Luc Besson says his massive new sci-fi project will be like The Fifth Element “to the power of ten”; Sigourney Weaver may be back for Avatar 2; there’s another new behind-the-scenes look at Skyline; someone’s now going to be doing what’s described as an ‘Area 51 comedy’; there are interesting rumors circulating about Guillermo del Toro’s potential involvement in a huge, creature-invasion project (a lá Monsters) called Pacific Rim, which may or may not morph into the Godzilla reboot; a new poster for the Disney/Robert Zemeckis Mars Needs Moms is out; some great pictures from the new The Making of the Empire Strikes Back book are now online; and, unfortunately, Alec Baldwin has just been cast in Men in Black 3D – making it even less likely that I’ll be seeing that film. [When will people in Hollywood understand how roundly despised he is?]
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … there were some big developments on Mad Men this past weekend – which we won’t spoil now, but will deal with later on in the week here at Libertas – but for now we wanted to take a look at actress Jessica Paré, who apparently will be a very busy woman on the show next season …
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on October 18th, 2010 at 8:09pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. Am I the only one who finds this a bit odd? The White House recently released this video (see above) of the President meeting with the Waiting for Superman kids (see LFM’s review of the film, by Patricia Ducey), and most of the video simply consists of the kids watching Obama leave.
This seems like an odd way for the White House to reassure us Obama is on the ball, and that the problems associated with our miserable education system are being fixed. I was waiting for something more – some sort of indication from the President that he is aware of the crisis that the film is depicting, and that he’s going to move mountains to fix it. Instead, we merely get to see Obama deliver a few stiff blandishments to the kids and parents (I think I see Davis Guggenheim in there, as well) and then wave good-bye as he heads toward his helicopter.
Was anything else said? Because the rest of us would like to hear it. As p.r. from an already-embattled White House, this is a bit weird.
Posted on October 18th, 2010 at 2:20pm.
By Joe Bendel. Forces from the Mainland have their eyes on Formosa territory. It is a familiar story, but in this case it is the Chinese syndicate looking to dislodge the traditional Taiwanese neighborhood triads in Doze Niu’s Monga, which opens the San Francisco Film Society’s Taiwan Film Days this Friday at the Viz Theater.
In the 1980’s, nearly every densely packed block of Taipei’s Monga neighborhood has its own triad, like the Temple Front Gang. It is here that the fatherless Chou Yi-Mong finds a sense of belonging. Recruited after standing up to a pack of bullying classmates, Chou (a.k.a. Mosquito) makes fast friends with Boss Geta’s son Dragon Lee and his three running mates. The fab five fight like unit, though they know the rules of the streets dictate they might eventually find themselves rivals. Frankly, Mosquito often does not understand why they are brawling, but the friendship is real. It is even realer than real for Monk, who is devoted to Dragon in quite a suggestive way.
Of course, the nature of their camaraderie is such that betrayal is inevitable, especially with the Mainlanders looking to move in. Indeed, the young gang princes find themselves caught up in a power struggle between those who want to maintain local control of organized crime, like Boss Geta, and those who want to cut a deal with the Northern triads, most notably including Grey Wolf, mysterious old flame of Mosquito’s mother.
Though Monga was selected by Taiwan as its official foreign language Oscar candidate, it is a highly commercial film (in a good way). Energetically mixing teenaged coming of age angst with gritty street level gangster power games, it pretty much has all the elements. There is even young love, street smart as it may be, when Mosquito falls for Ning, a beautiful young prostitute often demeaned for her nearly invisible birthmark.
Monga features a number of young Taiwanese television and pop-stars who likely brought a built-in fan base to the film in the ROC. However, they are well suited to their roles, particularly Ethan Ruan as the intense Monk. Mark Chao also seems to appropriately grow into the role of Mosquito, while the haunting Chia-yen Ko projects a fragile vulnerability as Ning. Yet, the silver coiffed Niu might even upstage his young cast, appearing as the intriguing Grey Wolf.
With generous helpings of Big Brawl style street fighting and unapologetically tear-jerking romance, Monga has something for a wide array of Asian cinema devotees. Thoroughly entertaining, it deserves a productive life on the festival circuit and even a shot at specialty distribution. It should be a crowd pleasing opener for SFFS’s Taiwan Film Days when it screens at the Viz Cinema next Friday (10/22).
Posted on October 18th, 2010 at 10:55am.
By David Ross. Defenders of Roman Polanski say in effect, “Great artists give the world so much that they deserve the right to engage in a bit of pedophilic sodomy.” The Ghost Writer (2010) should discomfit this chorus. You can argue that great artists should stand above the law, but you can’t argue that Polanski is anything like a great artist these days. With The Ghost Writer, the elderly roué sinks into the second childhood of incompetent left-wing conspiracy mongering and leaves you wondering whether you’ve overestimated him all along. How bad is The Ghost Writer? I remember once wandering into my dad’s kitchen and taking a big swig of milk from the carton and my mouth filling with rancid cottage cheese. The Ghost Writer is the filmic equivalent.
The plot – something like the Manchurian Candidate in reverse – is a snitty little exercise in historical distortion (I won’t bother with the usual spoiler warning because there’s nothing to spoil). Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter hired to help a recently retired British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan) write his memoirs. While investigating the mysterious demise of his predecessor, McGregor discovers that the prime minister’s wife is – what else – a CIA mole. This explains the brainless and biddable prime minister’s otherwise incomprehensible support for America’s War on Terror. In the end, the prime minister is assassinated by the forgivably deranged father of a British soldier killed in Iraq, and McGregor is murdered by the CIA before he can breathe a word of his secret (I hadn’t noticed that the CIA was this competent – well done, men, keep up the good work). So we now have a Tony Blair assassination fantasy to complement Hollywood’s bevy of Bush assassination fantasies (see here). Just in case we somehow miss the analogy to the Bush-Blair axis of evil, Polanski throws in a Condi-esque secretary of state, a Cheney-esque vice president, and a confused sub-conspiracy that links the CIA to a Halliburton-like defense contractor (it’s called Heatherton or something).
Polanski’s demonization of the the CIA is leaden and mechanical and ultimately unwatchable; the entire film has the air of the liar sullenly brazening out his lie. Give guys like Michael Moore and Markos Moulitsas some credit – they at least bring a zany bounce to their programmatic misunderstanding of the world. Polanski does not even bother to make his film superficially credible. Why does his retired PM live in a concrete bunker on a remote island off the coast of what – Maine? I hadn’t noticed that the graying lions of European politics make a beeline for Yankee fishing villages, nor have I noticed much Brutalist domestic architecture round Bar Harbor way. I suppose Polanski filmed these scenes in Sweden or Norway, having no clue and not caring what New England actually looks like. And, of course, it takes McGregor only twenty-four hours to unravel a CIA conspiracy at the heart of the Atlantic alliance that the anti-American world media has somehow missed over the previous twenty-five years. How does he do it? Google! By gum, that’s clever. Why didn’t someone else think of that?
There is a weird autobiographical subtext to the movie, by the way. The Blairish PM can’t return to Europe because he’s been indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. Polanski, of course, can’t return to America, having helped himself to a drugged thirteen year old. The Ghost Writer is Polanski’s fantasy of a world in which celebrity pedophiles can cross borders and neocons – the real bad guys – can’t. In my own opinion, the International Criminal Court should bring charges against directors who invent listless alternate realities vaguely meant to confuse and propagandize. For punishment, they might be set down in the desert with only their broken moral compasses to guide them back to civilization.
For more CIA derangement syndrome see here.
Posted on October 17th, 2010 at 10:06am.
“If you don’t like what they’re saying about you, change the conversation.”
By Jennifer Baldwin. When you’re blowing smoke, you’re lying, B.S.-ing, kissing ass. We blow smoke all the time – at work, in our relationships, in our families. In advertising, you’ve got to blow smoke in people’s eyes in order to get them to buy the product. In the business world, when it comes to your clients, you almost have to blow a little smoke to keep everybody happy. Blowing smoke implies a certain kind of magic, like a magician’s trick, where everyone knows they’re being lied to, but they let it go because they’re enjoying the spell. The problem is, you can’t blow too much smoke, or everybody wises up and the spell is broken.
You have to blow a little smoke when you’re a kid too. In this episode, Sally’s blowing smoke, both at her mother and at her psychiatrist, Dr. Edna. She’s found a way to get them off her back, to make them think she’s a good little girl again. I’m still not sure if Sally is sincere with Dr. Edna, or if she’s just learned how to play the game, but she’s definitely trying to put smoke in her mother’s eyes.
Midge, our favorite beatnik chick, has returned – and she’s blowing smoke as well. Midge just “happens” to run into Don at his office building and invites him over to her place to meet her husband and “maybe” buy a painting. Her story works for a little while; she gets Don to her apartment. But after her heroin-addicted husband spills the beans, Don realizes he’s been had. Midge and her husband are just a couple of junkies who need money to get high. He helps Midge out, but not after realizing he’s got smoke in his eyes.
Of course, Don’s trying to blow some smoke too. With SCDP falling down around him, he’s got to schmooze and placate and woo any client he can in order to keep his agency afloat. But Don’s no account man; he’s creative. He doesn’t understand the “business man” approach to things, the financial side that guys like Lane have hardwired into their bespeckled DNA. He goes after Heinz Beans, Vinegars, and Sauces way too hard; he’s got the whiff of desperation about him. His kind of magic doesn’t work in a restaurant business meeting. He’s creative, he doesn’t know how to handle accounts. Don’s blowing too much smoke at potential clients and where there’s smoke, so the client thinks, there’s fire.
Dr. Atherton’s meeting with Phillip Morris might seem like the solution, until, once again, Don realizes (much like in the situation with Midge) he’s been snookered. The Phillip Morris people were just blowing smoke, just using SCDP as a way to get a better deal with another agency.
Atherton says that SCDP — and Don specifically — are best at working with a cigarette company. “You’re a certain kind of girl and tobacco is your ideal boyfriend.” This is what people have been saying about Don and his agency. SCDP has been all about “blowing smoke” – blowing smoke at the public for years to get them to buy Lucky Strike cigarettes. Sterling, Cooper, and the rest of them have been “addicted” to the smoke of cigarette money for too long.
But Don’s sick of desperately kissing ass with potential clients like the guy from Heinz; he’s sick of letting other companies like Phillip Morris B.S. him. He’s sick of being that “certain kind of girl” who’s made for tobacco. He’s done with smoke. His new strategy is to be the agency that sees clearly, that shoots straight, that “stands for something.” It’s a way of “changing the conversation,” as Peggy suggests. He’s rebranding the agency. His New York Times full-page ad is a gamble, a creative risk. It’s that perfect kind of advertising B.S. that doesn’t feel like B.S. because it has the whiff — not of desperation — but of confession, of truth.
Not that Don’s suddenly turned crusader against the health ills of cigarette smoking. But he has turned against the “addiction” of being hitched to a tobacco company. It’s no coincidence that he meditates on Midge’s “Number Four” painting before penning his open letter to the public. Midge can’t stop using heroin as Don suggests; it’s got too strong a hold. Don realizes that fear has got too strong a hold on his company – fear that they’re a cigarette agency that might not land another cigarette account.
But as Don realizes, they’re afraid because they’re addicted to the security and the money that a cigarette company can bring. The honesty behind the ad, the thing that makes it so powerful and so dangerous, is that it’s Don’s confession that he’s not going to play scared anymore.
Of course, it’s a stunt, as Peggy slyly, jokingly points out. But it has the potential to work because it’s too reckless and fearless to feel like a “stunt.” It’s too foolhardy to seem like a trick or a lie. It’s just another ad, but instead of blowing smoke in people’s eyes, it’s blowing the smoke away. Don is the master of reinvention. SCDP doesn’t have to change their name or start over. They just have to change the conversation.
Some other quick thoughts:
• Betty needs so much help! Poor woman. She has major trust issues (who can blame her?) and it’s in an episode like this, even as she’s being a witch to Sally, that I feel sympathy for her. I hope Dr. Edna can help her. I actually think Betty could be a pretty cool chick and a good mom if she could just work through all her myriad of issues.
• Don showed quite the charitable heart this episode, what with giving Midge all the money in his wallet and paying Pete’s share of the money to keep the company afloat.
• Bert Cooper’s departure cracked me up: “Get my shoes!” Then, shoes in hand, he bids farewell to the baffled underlings.
• Jared Harris’s delivery of that line about making sure fired employees don’t steal any staplers or tape dispensers – “They do disappear” – was perfect. I love his performance on this show.
• Also, in Lane Pryce news, apparently a swift whack of Father’s cane works wonders for reuniting a man with his wife and son. Farewell to the Playboy Bunny, it seems.
• And finally, Mad Men continues its streak of showing hippies and counter-culturals in a bad light. First season, it was Midge’s pretentious beatnik loser friends getting put in their place by Don. Last season, it was the hitchhiking draft dodger who clunked Don over the head and robbed him. This season, it’s Midge and her playwright hubby as con artist junkies who guilt Don into giving them money. Maybe that’s why Joyce and Abe and the rest of Peggy’s BoHo friends feel so false as characters – they’re not con artists or drugged-out junkie losers!
This week’s Closing Credits Song: “Trust in Me” by the divine Etta James
Only one more episode left, and of course, the Mad Men promos manage to reveal nothing whatsoever!
Posted on October 15th, 2010 at 9:16pm.