By Jason Apuzzo. IndieWIRE is reporting today that North American rights to Duane Baughman’s 2010 Sundance documentary Bhutto have been picked up by First Run Features. A November theatrical release is planned for North America, with home video, internet platforms, and television to follow. According to IndieWIRE:
“Bhutto” follows the epic story of Benazir Bhutto, the first woman in history to lead a Muslim nation. She was born into a wealthy family that has become Pakistan’s dominant political dynasty. Often referred to as the “Kennedys of Pakistan,” the Bhuttos share a painful history of triumph and tragedy, played out on an international stage. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, Benazir’s life changed forever when her father, Pakistan’s first democratically elected president, chose Benazir, instead of his eldest son, to carry his political mantle. After her father was overthrown and executed by his handpicked Army Chief, Benazir swore to avenge him and to restore democracy – or die trying.
We’ve embedded the film’s trailer above. We’re pleased to see this film get picked up. Benazir Bhutto was a fascinating and complex woman whose shocking assassination in 2007 ended the hope of many people that the current Pakistani regime could be effectively reformed. Bhutto’s story, and that of her family, is very much the story of modern Pakistan. We will keep an eye on this film, and report down the line on screenings.
I’m not surprised by this, given the audience’s overwhelmingly positive reaction in the screening I attended – but at the same time I’m thrilled to learn that the film won this important award. This will certainly boost the film’s chances for securing a distribution deal here in the U.S.
Best wishes to whole team behind Four Lions, and we’ll keep everyone here at LFM updated on when and where you can see this extraordinary film.
For anybody who read the news two years ago that a nearly complete 16mm negative of METROPOLIS was discovered in Buenos Aires (including 30 minutes of additional footage previously thought lost forever), the anticipation and excitement has been building for when the film would finally be restored and we could all see Fritz Lang’s original cut of his masterpiece for the first time since its Berlin premiere in 1927.
The time has now come. After a premiere in Berlin earlier this year and a North American premiere in Los Angeles this past April, the film is finally being screened in theaters across the U.S. and Canada – all leading up to the DVD release of the Complete METROPOLIS in November 2010.
The tale of METROPOLIS – originally panned by critics and disliked by audiences on its initial release in Germany, and later mutilated by international distributors, who turned the film into a diluted Frankenstein story (a quarter of Lang’s original film was thought lost for decades, one of the ultimate “lost masterpieces” of the silent era) – is a tale well known to classic movie fans and silent cinema enthusiasts. This latest chapter in the film’s life only enhances its mystique and mystery. Almost 40 minutes of this landmark film was lost for nearly a century only to be found hidden away in a Buenos Aires museum in 2008. What was found in Argentina is now the most complete version to date. The print was deemed nearly complete because of the way it matched up to the original Gottfried Huppertz score (the only complete document still in existence from the 1927 premiere). With almost 30 minutes of film time restored, this newest version of METROPOLIS is the closest we might ever come to seeing the film the way Fritz Lang intended.
I was fortunate enough to attend a screening of the Complete METROPOLIS at the Detroit Film Theater earlier this month. It was one of the best movie experiences I’ve had in a long while, thrilling and impressive, making me fall in love with METROPOLIS all over again. Continue reading LFM Review: The Complete Metropolis
By Jason Apuzzo. • Govindini and I were at the LA Film Festival yesterday, where it was a zoo – in large measure because the Twilight world premiere was right across the street. The whole Twilight cast was there along with Stephanie Meyer, Jaden Smith, the NY Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez (in town to get his butt kicked by the Dodgers), Kim Kardashian … and about 20,000 screaming female fans – in what looked like the world’s largest outdoor high school prom. We had a lot of fun, and a good time seemed to be had by all. Meanwhile, the film itself is gearing up for what looks to be a monster opening weekend …
• The Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz pic Knight and Day opened poorly, with the entire industry circling around like there’s blood in the water. Still not sure why Cruise draws such animosity given how much money he’s made for other people. Or is that maybe the reason?
• With sci-fi projects getting hotter and hotter, producer John Davis and Fox have optioned Ray Bradbury’s classic, The Martian Chronicles. By odd coincidence, I just pulled out my autographed copy of Martian Chronicles recently to read. Govindini and I met Ray a few years ago and had a nice chat with him – what an inspiration he remains. Footnote: I recommend the TV adaptation of Martian Chronicles made in the early 80s featuring Rock Hudson. It’s a little longish, but still quite good.
[Editor’s Note: LFM has recently been covering a series of provocative films debuting at The Los Angeles Film Festival.]
By Jason Apuzzo. Chris Morris’ striking new film Four Lions, which showed yesterday at The Los Angeles Film Festival is so wickedly funny, shatters so many taboos, and is so brazen in its satire of Islamic terrorism – and the vacuous political correctness that supports it – that it’s a wonder Morris isn’t in a witness protection program right now. Not that he would need to be protected from jihadis, whom I imagine spend little time watching indie cinema – but from the Western cultural establishment, whose protective covering over the lunacy of Islamic radicalism Morris rips away with comic gusto and flair in this marvelous new film.
Four Lions was a big hit at Sundance earlier this year, and has already done killer business at the indie box office in the UK (it opened the same weekend as Iron Man 2, yet had a better per-screen average), but the film has yet to secure distribution here in the U.S. Seeing the film last night, it’s not hard to understand why. This uproariously funny and sophisticated film, that had the audience in hysterics from the opening scene on, is nonetheless so subversive in its vision of Islamic terrorism – so thoroughly and mercilessly dismissive of any justification for terrorism – that by the end of the film any lingering shred of sympathy that might exist toward the terrorists’ point of view has simply been pulverized. Imagine starting up a heavy-metal band fresh off watching Spinal Tap, or becoming a French police officer after watching Peter Sellars play Inspector Clouseau, and you can imagine the kind of effect Four Lions must have on young Brits thinking of starting up a terror cell.
Total morons.
Four Lions is about a bumbling UK terror cell living in Sheffield. The two key leaders of the cell are Omar (Riz Ahmed) – the only reasonably sane or professional one in the group, around whom most of the film revolves – and Azzam al-Britanni (or ‘Barry’ to his friends, played with Falstaffian flair by Nigel Lindsay), who’s actually just an abrasive, working class white-guy convert to Islam. Nigel Lindsay’s portrayal of Azzam al-Britanni almost steals the show; the combination of belligerence and stupidity he brings to the character is pitch-perfect. Other guys in the terror cell include the sweet but utterly moronic Waj (Kayvan Novak), and Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) – a mumbling doofus who for some reason is convinced he can train crows to be suicide bombers. A fifth member of the group, Hassan (Arsher Ali), is a pretentious wanna-be rapper (his music conducts a ‘jihad of the mind’) who is recruited while Omar and Waj are in Pakistan botching their terrorist training.
The film follows the different members of the group as they struggle to conceal their activities, aided only by blind luck – and a kind of inane cunning – with the film climaxing in the terror cell’s effort to bomb the London Marathon. That last sequence in particular is a tour-de-force of action, comic-timing, suspense … and ultimately, great emotional power. Without giving away the film’s ending, let’s say simply that Four Lions does not exist to pull punches about the full tragedy and inhumanity of terrorism.
Trying to light a bomb.
What struck me the most about this film was the intelligence and sophistication Chris Morris and his actors brought to this material. The trailer for the film (see below) captures the opera buffa aspects of Four Lions – but not necessarily the anarchic, Paddy Chayefskyian verve and insight of the film’s satire. Having made a film on this subject matter myself, I can tell you that Morris has accomplished no small feat in bringing out the sheer lunacy of the terrorist worldview – while keeping the tone light, and respecting the earthy humanity of the characters. The inevitable question that films like Four Lions or The Infidel or Living with the Infidels or Kalifornistan always inspire is: is the film ‘humanizing’ terrorists? And the answer is, of course, yes … which is exactly what real-world terrorists, intoxicated with their self-image as divinely inspired warriors, never want. In the real world terrorists do not consider themselves mere human beings … but jihadis inspired by Allah. This is the pompous bubble that Four Lions exists to pop. And pop it the film does, with the force of an atomic blast.
What has happened to American filmmaking that we let the Brits get to this subject matter first? Watching Four Lions I was reminded of how utterly repressed, how politically correct, how tendentious and boring American filmmaking has become of late. How have we become so morally clouded and unsure of ourselves, so confused by our own basic humanity, that we can’t make clear-eyed films like this anymore? As recently as the 1970s, I think a film like Four Lions would’ve still been possible to make in the United States. For now, however, it apparently takes the Brits to make a film like this – and the only way to see it for the moment here in the U.S. will be through bootlegged copies, digitally smuggled-in via the internet. It’s almost like we’re living in the the old Soviet Union, actually. Congratulations to the LA Film Festival for breaking the blockade. Memo to Fox News, talk radio, the blogosphere and related alternative media: you should get behind this film NOW, and bang every pot and pan you’ve got, so that this film gets proper distribution. Or else this film will basically not be seen here in the U.S. – and that would be a genuine tragedy.
One final note: Govindini and I had a nice chat after the screening with actor Kayvan Novak, who plays the clueless ‘Waj’ in the film. He did a wonderful job in Four Lions – there’s nothing tougher than playing dumb on camera, and doing it in an entertaining and engaging way – and we wish him and this scintillating film the very best.
