By Jason Apuzzo. Libertas is proud to announce that our own Joe Bendel will be covering the 2011 Sundance Film Festival for us, starting today. We’re very excited to have Joe ‘on the ground’ in Park City providing his insightful and witty analysis, as we are expecting this particular Sundance to be provocative and eventful.
For our new readers, Joe Bendel is easily one of the top independent film writers around, and we’re proud to have him on our team. We also want to thank the folks at Sundance for having Libertas there. Joe’s coverage of the festival will begin later this afternoon.
As a special treat, I also wanted to mention to our readers that one of our Libertas writers has a film in the festival this year.
Composer Steve Greaves, who’s previously written music for my own film Kalifornistan also did the music for Commentary, a film that will be screening at Sundance tomorrow (Saturday) at 1pm in the Presidential Suite of the Waldorf Astoria – so if you happen to be in Park City this weekend, make sure to check Commentary out. I’ve put the trailer for Commentary below, and we want to wish Steve and the entire Commentary team the very best with their film.
And stay tuned to Libertas this weekend and all next week as we take a look at Sundance’s most intriguing films.
By Jason Apuzzo. • The Kennedys miniseries controversy goes on and on, with no end in sight. The Hollywood Reporter recently watched the first hour of the series and – surprise, surprise – found it “brisk, entertaining” and “compelling.” Why anyone would’ve expected less from series producer Joel Surnow (24) is beyond me, but there it is. The series still has no distribution deal, however, although the latest scuttlebutt has The Kennedys potentially landing on DirecTV – which, frankly, would be sad if that winds up being its only distribution venue. Meanwhile, new behind-the-scenes accounts of the controversy are emerging (see The New York Times), with fingers being pointed in many new directions.
Although I probably shouldn’t be surprised by all this, I still am. I’d always thought my colleague Joel had the magic touch, the ability to rise above Hollywood’s ongoing ideological blockade of projects veering even slightly from the Maoist line; alas, not even Joel seems able to pull off such a levitating act at the moment, due to the industry’s apparently fanatical devotion to the Kennedy clan.
And so I’d like to officially welcome Joel to the world of independent filmmaking and distribution – a world he has now joined like the rest of us, albeit unwillingly.
• Speaking of Joel, the big news today is that Kiefer Sutherland told Extra that the 24 movie will be “shooting hopefully by next December or January.” That’s big news, because there had been some concern over the length of time it was taking to complete the script on that one (and it’s apparently still being re-written). So for you 24 fans, Jack Bauer will indeed be back.
• There’s been a lot of casting news for the Clint Eastwood-J. Edgar Hoover pic. It looks like Charlize Theron is out, but Judi Dench, Josh Lucas, Arnie Hammer (late of The Social Network) and some other folks are likely in. ‘Arnie’ is such an old-school name, isn’t it? [CORRECTION: a reader points out that his name is actually ‘Armie,’ which is even more old-school.]
"Red Dawn" cast photo.
• A Red Dawn cast photo has leaked, which you can check out to the right. I want to urge Libertas readers NOT to forward this photo to Hu Jintao, however, because we’re all trying to ‘tone down our rhetoric’ these days. Right?
• Speaking of MGM releases, James Bond 23 finally has a release date – November 9th, 2012 – and Daniel Craig will be returning as Bond, with Sam Mendes directing. Directing a Bond film is no doubt great for Mendes, but is it good for the Bond series? Only time will tell. The current word is that Fox may distribute the film.
• Star Trek‘s Chris Pine talked recently about Moscow, the forthcoming Jack Ryan reboot he’s doing. I like Pine; he seems like a decent, regular guy – and his dad (Robert Pine), incidentally, is a fine character actor. I assume it’s no small challenge for the younger Pine to step into Shatner’s shoes and now Harrison Ford’s, but so far so good.
• It occurs to me that I never posted the Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon trailer. It’s actually quite good, and deserves to be part of a Cold War update. (Aside from the stuff you see in the trailer covering the ’69 moon landing, there’s also apparently a retro-U.S. vs. Russia space race element to the film’s storyline.) Check the trailer out below if you haven’t already – it’s fun.
• Peter Weir’s anti-Soviet epic The Way Back opens today, and you can read the LFM review of it here. Also, the film’s post-theatrical distribution rights just got bought up (a good sign) and both Weir and star Ed Harris have been doing a lot of media lately. (See Weir here, here, here and here and Ed Harris here).
January Jones in "X-Men: First Class."
• The forthcoming X-Men: First Class is set in the swinging, Cold War 60s, and a bunch of new cast photos just got leaked of that film – including of Mad Men‘s January Jones as Emma Frost. Yowza! Ms. Jones has been out doing interviews about her insanely sexed-up costumes for that film (see here and here) … but at least she had costumes in the film, as opposed to Jennifer Lawrence. Ms. Lawrence, formerly of the indie hit Winter’s Bone, recently described to Hollywood Reporter the process of having her nude body painted blue each day by seven female make-up artists, all in preparation for playing Mystique. Welcome to Hollywood, Jennifer! We’re all looking forward to seeing how that worked out. (Memo to James Cameron: have you looked into trademarking blue women?) Also: check out some new First Class interviews here and here.
Russian spy Anna Chapman.
• In other Cold War News & Notes: buzz is building for John Milius’ Homefront video game; new photos are out of Atlas Shrugged; Timur Bekmambetov’s Apollo 18 will now be released on April 22nd; and one of my favorite classic movie sites, Greenbriar Pictures Shows, did this great post recently on John Wayne’s Cold War anti-communist classic, Big Jim McLain (one of the inspirations for Hawaii Five-O, incidentally). The Duke wears some strikingly snazzy suits in that film while he’s fighting the Reds on The Big Island.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … our old friend Anna Chapman is back! Fox News is reporting today that the comely ex-Russian spy has landed a new Russian TV gig for herself, a series in which she unlocks the ‘hidden mysteries of the world’ – such as stigmata, and other bizarre skin phenomena! Maybe The History Channel can slip this show into the slot previously reserved for The Kennedys, as I’m sure Ms. Chapman’s series must certainly meet History’s ‘rigorous’ broadcast standards!
And that’s what’s happening today in The Cold War!
By Jason Apuzzo. Apparently Kevin Smith hasn’t gotten the message about how we’re all supposed to ‘tone down our political rhetoric’ in the wake of the Tucson shooting. Take a deep breath and check out the new teaser trailer for Red State above.
Since Smith is going forward with his forthcoming Red State debut at Sundance, I can only assume he didn’t catch President Obama’s recent speech in Tucson during which the President made the following remarks:
[A]t a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds …
We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.
The Red State trailer wallows in exceptionally ugly, inflammatory and hateful stereotypes at the worst possible moment. I hope Smith understands what he’s unleashing here. The sad thing is that he probably does, and doesn’t care.
[UPDATE: Red State is currently expected to have its distribution rights sold by Sunday night – the evening of its debut – for around $4 million. Meanwhile, Joel Surnow’s The Kennedys currently has no distributor whatsoever.]
By Joe Bendel. In the future, child labor laws will be loosened in Japan. It will be for a good cause though: the salvation of humanity. Only pre-teens can fit into the cockpit of the Evangelions, the huge cyborg-like fighting machines created to protect the earth from the otherworldly peril it faces. It is a grueling task that extracts a costly toll from the young pilots in Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance, the second film in screenwriter and “chief director” Hideaki Anno’s big-screen “rebuild” of the popular Japanese anime, which opens this Friday in New York and San Francisco.
As 2.0 opens, the Earth is once again under attack by “Angels,” hulking robotic extraterrestrial beings apparently impervious to all conventional weaponry. Shinji Ikari still flies his Eva unit in hopes of winning the approval of his severe father, who oversees NERV’s Evangelion program. His feelings for Rei, the emotionally fragile lead Eva pilot, continue to percolate. Into their midst comes a new pilot, Asuka, a Euro hotshot who arrives on the scene like Maverick at the Miramar TOPGUN school. Unfortunately, none of them expect the radical transformations in store for the Evas, nor the resulting implications for their own humanity.
Also crediting co-directors Masayuki and Kazuya Tsurumaki, 2.0 shrewdly incorporates proven elements from popular film and television, like the shadowy cabals of The X-Files and armored behemoths pounding each other silly, a la The Transformers. However, Anno’s anime utilizes strangely inverted Christian imagery, like the killer “Angels” that often explode into crosses when they are destroyed and “Lilith,” the life-giving angel, preserved beneath NERV central command disturbingly crucified on her cross. In fact, the original anime was somewhat notorious for its dense mythology, which has reportedly been streamlined for the rebuild. While its symbolism has the potential to become deeply troubling in future installments, for now it earns the first two Evangelions credit for ambition and novelty.
Frankly, elements of the meta-conspiracy revealed in 2.0 might even confuse those who saw 1.0, but most viewers going in cold will pick up enough to appreciate the rock-em-sock-em action sequences. Anime fanboys though might be disappointed by the lack of “fan service” aside from an AustinPowers shot of Asuka. Yet as animation, Evangelion represents the high-end of anime, featuring some rather striking imagery.
For those who sparingly partake of anime, the Evangelion series is one to check out. Smarter and more neurotic than the industry standard, it is an oddly compelling excursion into apocalyptic science fiction. Many theaters, including the Manhattan Big Cinemas (1/20) and the Viz Theater at New People (1/20) are screening 1.0 prior to 2.0’s opening (on the 21st both in New York and in San Francisco).
By Jason Apuzzo. New clips went online recently over at Collider of Peter Weir’s forthcoming film, The Way Back. Currently in Oscar contention, The Way Back stars Colin Farrell and Ed Harris and tells the story of an escape of a small group of prisoners from a Soviet-Siberian gulag in 1940, and of their epic journey over thousands of miles to freedom.
The film starts its limited release on January 21st, and you can read Joe Bendel’s LFM review of it here. Peter Weir has also done recent interviews on the film here and here.
By Joe Bendel. 1968 was truly a year of infamy. Perhaps most notorious was the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia crushing the brief “Prague Spring” interlude of openness, but that awful year also witnessed the Polish Communists orchestrating an anti-Semitic purge, as a part of a virulent propaganda campaign against Zionism. Essentially it completed the country’s complete disillusionment with its Communist government, leaving a lingering sense of shame and loss that is expressed in unconventional but eloquent terms in Nir David Zats and Zuzanna Solakiewicz’s Cabaret Polska, which has its American premiere tomorrow during the 2011 New York Jewish Film Festival.
Ryszard Wojcik is not Jewish, but the purge cost him many close friends, including Stach and Joasia Gomulka. Hounded into immigrating, the Gomulkas were forced to abandon nearly all their worldly possessions, including a book Wojcik still prizes as a memento of their interrupted friendship. Yet as Joasia Gomulka ironically remembers, many of those persecuting her family were also jealous of them, because at least they were allowed to leave (and the sooner, the better).
Poland, 1968.
Cabaret is not merely an oral history-style documentary. As the title indicates, there are several slightly surreal musical interludes, as well as a highly stylized animated sequence incorporating surviving photos of the Gomulkas circa 1968. While it all might sound out of place, those familiar with the absurdist theatrical productions of Grotowski and the dissident Theater of the Eighth Day will recognize and understand Cabaret’s influences. Indeed, it is a fittingly absurd way to address Communism and its institutionalized anti-Semitism.
As one probably gathers, Cabaret veers far and wide, yet it never loses sight of the big picture, delivering a number of heavy moments. At just under an hour’s running time, it is also a manageable excursion into experimental documentary filmmaking. Given the Polish experience in WWII, the 1968 anti-Semitic purges were particularly appalling. Fortunately, Cabaret is part of an organized effort to prevent that difficult episode of Polish history from slipping into the memory hole. Highly recommended to modestly adventurous viewers, Polska screens Wednesday (1/19) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of a double bill of long short-form documentaries during this year’s NYJFF.
