By Jason Apuzzo. With the protests currently taking place in Iran, we wanted to alert Libertas readers to a short film called Interrupted Lives: Portraits of Student Repression in Iran (see the trailer above). Interrupted Lives is a 20 minute documentary that deals with the repression of free-thinking students by the Iranian government, and specifically examines documented human rights cases of student imprisonment, torture or execution since the 1979 revolution.
The film is available to be seen in full here. Interrupted Lives will be traveling to major university campuses this Spring – including Harvard, Berkeley, and Oxford. We wish the filmmakers the very best in this important effort.
By Jason Apuzzo. Special thanks to reader Vince for alerting me to the fact that Peter Weir’s The Way Back, an epic saga starring Ed Harris and Colin Farrell about a breakout from one of Stalin’s gulags, will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 22nd. You can pre-order the film below through the LFM store.
We greatly admired The Way Back here at Libertas (see our review here), along with the courage it took to make it, and are glad to see the film making the transition to DVD/Blu-ray so quickly. It’s often frustrating for us to recommend indie films of this kind here on this site, and then have to wait 6 months from their appearance in a film festival or in limited theatrical release for people to be able to see them. Bravo to the team behind The Way Back for making it available so swiftly. This, one hopes, is the way of the future for indie releasing.
By Jason Apuzzo. • Photos leaked this week of Leonardo DiCaprio playing Hoover (see here and here). In all the chatter I’m seeing about this film, I still haven’t heard a peep about how this film intends to depict Hoover’s confrontation with actual – i.e., non-imaginary – Soviet infiltration of the American government from the 1930s-1950s. This is an enormous issue that has rarely been covered adequately in film, beyond the usual treatment as being a phenomenon of ‘paranoia.’ I’m hoping that Clint breaks from that clichéd and misleading template – although, for a multitude of reasons, I’m doubting he will.
You know who would’ve made a great film out of this subject matter? Kazan. (I’m actually reading his autobiography right now.) There are no Kazans today, however, because they’ve been weeded out of the system by the same people so enamored with Eastwood right now.
• Die Hard 5 suddenly has a director, and the latest rumors on that film involve Bruce Willis/John McClane fighting a relative of his old nemesis, German ‘Red Army Faction’-style terrorist Hans Gruber, wonderfully played by Alan Rickman in the original film. (Jeremy Irons played a relative of Rickman’s in Die Hard 3; I actually thought Irons was even better than Rickman.) What do people still think of this franchise? Personally, I’m long past caring about Willis or what he does; I didn’t even bother to watch Die Hard 4 – a film which, I might add, dropped its American title of Live Free or Die Hard in certain foreign territories in order not to ‘offend’ certain sensibilities. Opinions on the film and on Willis are welcome.
• Sony will apparently be releasing James Bond 23. Also: no word yet on whether or how this may also affect MGM’s Red Dawn.
• According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Russians are building a huge new studio complex, ‘Lenfilm XXI,’ which apparently could become Europe’s largest film studio. Question: isn’t it ironic that the Russians are actually building studios, while we’re shipping our film production overseas?
• The big news this week was the release of the new X-Men: First Class trailer, in which the young X-Men and X-Babes appear to play a role in … resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I’m rolling with it. Check out the trailer above, and see how the Cold War continues to be fought and re-fought on our screens these days. (Also: Bryan Singer talks about the new film here.) By the way, where are all the juicy production stills we’re expecting of January Jones and Jennifer Lawrence? (January Jones talks more about her sexed-up costumes here.) The latest production photo they released was of the back of Magneto’s head. Weird marketing, guys.
• Speaking of publicity stills, the first such still of Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher has just been released. I’m not sure what the point of that was – to prove that Streep can transform herself? I think we all know that by now. The photo doesn’t make me feel any better about the ugly rumors over this film being a hit job – or about the Thatcher family’s ardent opposition to the film. Here’s what Streep herself is saying about playing the role:
“The prospect of exploring the swathe cut through history by this remarkable woman is a daunting and exciting challenge. I am trying to approach the role with as much zeal, fervour and attention to detail as the real Lady Thatcher possesses—I can only hope my stamina will begin to approach her own!”
Sounds wonderful. Why am I not believing a word of it?
• The Atlas Shrugged trailer arrived this week, and to some extent it raised more questions than it answered. Certainly the main question it raised was: who is John Galt? OK, bad joke, I haven’t my coffee yet. But seriously, reader Vince noticed that Dagny Taggart is driving a Toyota in the trailer – quite the irony given Toyota’s recent acquittal in court over their supposedly bad brakes. My question is: wouldn’t Dagny be driving something like a Jaguar? Or a Mercedes? She strikes me as being an expensive kind of gal.
• A word of note: Mao’s Last Dancer will be arriving on DVD/Blu-ray on March 29th (we loved the film, see our review here), and Farewell – a great Cold War thriller, featuring Fred Ward as Ronald Reagan (see our review here) – will be arriving on DVD/Blu-ray April 12th.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT COLD WAR NEWS … Russian former Bond babe Olga Kurylenko’s The Assassin Next Door hits DVD this week, and her new film There Will Dragons just got picked up for distribution for Samuel Goldwyn Films. Olga’s proving that old homespun adage about what Russian immigrants should do to make it in America: play Bond girls and assassins.
And that’s what’s happening today in The Cold War!
By Jason Apuzzo. Here it is above, folks, so take a look. The film hits theaters on April 15th. Atlas Shrugged Part I covers the first third of the novel (Part I: “Non-Contradiction”) up through the “Wyatt’s Torch” chapter.
As regular Libertas readers know, LFM was invited on-set and did the very first interview with director Paul Johansson about the film (see here and here). Audiences will now soon get to render their own verdict.
By Jason Apuzzo. I wanted people to be aware that Chris Morris’ brilliant satire on Islamic terrorism, Four Lions, is coming to Blu-ray and DVD on March 8th. We loved the film here at Libertas (see the LFM review here).
I’ve embedded a clip of one of my favorite scenes from Four Lions above. (Note: the language gets a little rough.) You can pre-order the film now below in the LFM Store.
By Jason Apuzzo. The great Tura Satana passed away this past Friday. Our condolences to her family, many friends and fans. She will be greatly missed. (Read the NY Times obit here, and classic film blogger Kimberly Lindbergs’ fine 2007 piece “Tura Satana: An American Icon”).
Govindini and I met Tura about two years ago at an event. I’m a great fan of Russ Meyer’s films, and of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! in particular, so I approached Tura to express my enthusiasm for her work. What I expected to be a brief exchange turned into an hour-long conversation, and I soon found myself snapping pictures of Tura with Govindini (they got on like a house on fire) and with the other Pussycat girls Haji and Lori Williams, and having a fantastic time. I talked with Tura about her incredible life – her hard upbringing, her Japanese family’s stint in the Manzanar internment camp, her romance with Elvis. In particular I remember her telling me how some of Elvis’ signature dance moves were actually lifted from her burlesque act.
She also talked a lot about her love of America, and the opportunities it had given her. Tura was intensely patriotic, and was not shy about expressing it. It was amazing to see that coming from someone who’d had such a difficult upbringing – a young life filled with violence, betrayal and a lot of pain. (More horror stories, more abuse and hard luck than I care to recount here.) Nonetheless, the impression I had of Tura that day was of a survivor with a very tough exterior – who had nonetheless preserved a tender heart, and a robust love of life.
For those of you who may not be familiar with her, Tura delivered what is in my opinion – and in the opinion of many others – the iconic performance of cult cinema, playing Varla in Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. And for some bizarre reason, it’s the only really large role that Tura was ever given. This is a bit like not wanting the young Wilt Chamberlain on your basketball team. I’ve heard many explanations for her disappearance from the film scene after Faster, Pussycat – but none of them has ever made any sense to me. She seems so impossible to ignore.
Images of Tura Satana from "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"
The biggest tragedy of Tura’s career, one which Russ Meyer himself acknowledged, was that he and Tura didn’t continue to make films together. The mind reels to think of what those two could have accomplished, had they kept that partnership going.
In the very least, however, we have Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.
And on that subject, 1965’s Faster, Pussycat is easily the greatest cult film ever made – and the competition is not even close. Certainly one of the major reasons for the film’s success is Tura’s performance as Varla – and how does one describe her in that film? She’s like a force of nature – a category 5 hurricane – something primal, unstoppable, a torrent of violence, lust, desire, and mocking humor rolled into one. Imagine a Japanese Venus of Willendorf with bangs, dressed like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, puffing on a cheroot, bellowing quips into the desert air that seem like something out of a long-forgotten Bogart film. And then come the karate chops, the kicks and knives! Not exactly Bruce Lee stuff, but deadly nonetheless.
Publicity still for "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"
The image of Tura Satana (has there ever been a name like that?) – dressed in black, leaning against her car in the high Mojave desert – has become one of those iconic images that end up on the dorm room walls of young guys in college … and increasingly young girls, as well. It’s a great American image, one of cool independence, not unlike the image that Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood projected during that same period. It’s an image of what we all want to be, or should want to be – tough, self-reliant, skeptical, at home in the wild.
We don’t do ‘cool’ here in America very well, any more. I’m told by experts that we have a President who’s ‘cool,’ for example, but I don’t quite believe it. Cool people don’t get everything in life handed to them, and nobody handed anything to Tura Satana – except maybe Russ Meyer, who gave her that one role of a lifetime.
Since we still have that film, Tura will still be with us, reminding us of how cool all of us can be.
Somewhere in the afterlife, God and the Devil are probably fighting over credit for creating Tura Satana. God will win that one.
Footnote: Tura was a fan of Libertas Contributor Steve Greaves‘ music. Plus: I’ve embedded below the first 6 minutes of Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! There’s never been anything quite like it.
