• All Hollywood tentpole pics now being written by Travis Beacham. He just wrecked Clash of the Titans; new assignments include Pacific Rim, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Black Hole and a secret J.J. Abrams project. This guy may cause more damage than Madoff.
• New complaints over ‘busty’ new Barbie dolls. Heidi Montag sues Barbie for copyright infringement. No word on whether busty Barbie is competing for the Megan Fox role in Transformers.
• AND IN MORE SERIOUS NEWS … TV star Gary Coleman has died, at age 42. He really sparkled on “Diff’rent Strokes” back in the day, and he’ll be missed.
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …
[Editor’s Note: Memorial Day is Monday, May 31st, but we’re posting this week’s Classic Movie Obsession now because Turner Classic Movies will be airing Howard Hawks’ Sergeant York on Friday, May 28th at 2:30pm Pacific Time/5:30pm Eastern Time.]
By Jennifer Baldwin. Director Howard Hawks is a favorite among film critics and students of auteur theory. His fans include critics Robin Wood and Andrew Sarris, the Cahiers du Cinema crowd, and even Quentin Tarantino. I’m a big fan too.
Much has been written and said about Hawks, about his great films, about how he could work in every genre. But there’s one major Hawks film that doesn’t get much ink spilled over it; it’s the one major Hawks film that always seems to get ignored by the film critics and fans.
That film is SERGEANT YORK. Why are critics and Hawks experts so reluctant to discuss this classic biographical film about one of America’s greatest war heroes? It’s a movie anchored by the performance of a major movie star in Gary Cooper. It’s a rousing war movie. It includes many of the classic Hawksian themes. It’s beautifully shot. So what’s the deal, critics? Why no love for YORK when you’ve got plenty of words to write about HATARI!?
Two words: God. Country.
Critics avoid YORK like the plague because the film has been slapped with that wartime “propaganda” label and that’s all it needs to be effectively silenced as a work of art and an important film in the Hawks oeuvre.
Not that I’ve taken a poll or anything, but life experience tells me that most critics are left-of-center politically and that for them the subjects of Christianity and patriotism are sticky issues. A film that’s unabashedly pro-Christianity and pro-American patriotism doesn’t appeal to the majority of Hawks’ critical champions. We all tend to write about the movies that excite us and for most critics, a movie that wears its Christian patriotic heart on its sleeve is not something that appeals.
Which is a shame, because as a Hawks fan myself and a huge fan of SERGEANT YORK, I find there’s not enough written about the film. Seeing as it’s Memorial Day weekend and SERGEANT YORK is playing on TCM on Friday, May 28 at 2:30 PM PT/5:30 PM EST, I figured I’d give YORK its fair shake and make it my Classic Cinema Obsession of the Week. Continue reading Classic Movie Obsession (Memorial Day Edition): Howard Hawks’ Sergeant York
By Jason Apuzzo. • Sex and the City 2 continues to draw fire for its supposedly non-p.c. depiction of Middle Eastern society. Women don’t seem to mind, with film off to roaring start at box office. The cast is also out defending the movie. Pic has incidentally been banned in Abu Dhabi, where some of the film is set (although shot in Morocco). Brassy American cougars new weapon in war on terror.
• The Wrap talks about Hollywood’s all-white WASP summer. Nice that this issue is finally being noticed – but will anyone’s head roll as a result? Hollywood suddenly providing affirmative action for white people. Prince of Persia played by white guy with Swedish name.
• AND … in an extraordinary new development, Heidi Montag – unfazed by the apparent casting of Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington – has begun publicly lobbying Michael Bay to replace Megan Fox in Transformers 3! In an effort to display her bona fides for the role, so to speak, Ms. Montag has posted a video at You Tube in which she displays her prowess shooting a handgun at a firing range. [Footnote: how great must Bay’s job be? This stuff never happens to Ang Lee.] Ms. Montag is not likely to get the role, although she would’ve been perfect for Andy Sidaris’ films. WE WILL CONTINUE TO WATCH THIS STORY CLOSELY …
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
[UPDATE: Govindini’s seen Sex and the City 2, and will be reviewing it shortly – with details of the controversy.]
Thematics of emptiness: on the set of "The International."
By David Ross. I believe that we are witnessing Europe in its death convulsion. I have in mind Europe’s economic situation, which is worse than ours insofar as there’s no pro-growth, free-market, small-government solution waiting in the wings – but even more I have in mind its spiritual situation. Vastly admiring Children of Men (one of the most moving books I’ve ever read), I’ve been reading some of P.D. James’ mystery fiction. She brilliantly evokes the symptoms of spiritual decay: empty churches, childless couples, bureaucracies people dislike but nonetheless accept as faits accomplis, monuments and traditions that lurk as depressing wraiths of former glory. While living in the UK from 1996 to 2000, I remember picking up on this funereal aura and finding it very unfamiliar and unaccountable. Americans are simply not used to thinking of themselves as occupying the dying embers of history.
James, however, is detached from this dynamic: she observes it without embodying it and understands it only in terms of its external manifestations. She is like H.G. Wells’ Victorian time traveler, puzzled and appalled but in no position to philosophize the finer points of the situation she encounters. In his unnerving novel Elementary Particles (titled Atomised in the UK), Michel Houellebecq provides a full theory. In his historical scheme, the rational impulse arose as a kind of mutation in the cultural DNA of the West; rationalism promulgated scientific materialism; scientific materialism dismantled the structure of religious faith and negated all systems of meaning that transcend the self; the spiritual vacuum was filled by – could only have been filled by – an ultimately unsatisfactory and self-destructive hedonism and social atomism. If this scheme is familiar to the point of being trite, Houellebecq has a subtle feel for the texture of this reality (its brittle intellectualism, its flatness of affect) and a rigorous, dark instinct for the equivalency of all actions once they have been drained of anything except physical meaning. He is also particularly good at demonstrating how his philosophical premises play out in the individual case.
Juliette Binoche in "Cache."
Fancying itself on the cutting edge, film has institutionalized the post-modern manner, but its dabbling in glass and chrome set design, in the spectra of blue-grey, in fractured narrative, is usually nothing more than window dressing. Tom Tykwer’s The International (2009) is typical: a bland thriller involving the usual corporate conspiracy dressed up as post-modern statement. Far more to the point is Michael Haneke’s Caché (English title Hidden, 2005), in which a French literary pundit (on television, of course) suddenly begins to receive cryptically threatening letters and surveillance video of his own house. The film is an intricate cultural puzzle, but its most basic comprehension is that the post-modern bourgeoisie is resourceless to defend or even justify its existence – and that history, far from having ended, increasingly threatens the equilibrium of Europe’s culture of weakness and indulgence.
[Editor’s note: the trailer above contains strong language and scenes of battlefield violence. Viewer discretion advised.]
By Jason Apuzzo. The trailer above is for a forthcoming on-line documentary series by independent filmmaker Danfung Dennis called Battle for Hearts and Minds. On July 2nd, 2009, four thousand US Marines of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade launched a major helicopter assault into a Taliban stronghold in the Helmand River Valley in southern Afghanistan in order to break a military stalemate reached with the Taliban. Dennis was embedded with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Company, as they were dropped 18 km behind enemy lines.
The series focuses on the sometimes contradictory roles played by the Marines as both warriors and statesmen in their effort to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the Afghan people.
Based on the trailer, the series looks like it will be intense and compelling – and we look forward to its debut. You can read an interview with Dennis about his experiences with Echo Company here. In the interview Dennis goes to great lengths to describe how the Marines do everything possible to distinguish between friend and foe in Afghanistan in order to avoid civilian casualties – often a very difficult task when the enemy hides among civilians.
We are, as most people are aware, sorely lacking in good war reporting these days – i.e., reporting that lacks a political agenda, but also that captures the complexity of the situation we’re facing. I’m hoping this series gets some attention. From a photographic standpoint the series certainly looks extraordinary. Dennis shot the footage with a custom built rig using a Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70 f/2.8 L lens, Sennheiser ME-66 and G2 wireless system, Singh-Ray variable ND filter, and Beachtek 2XAs mounted on a Glidecam 2000 HD with custom made aluminum ‘wings.’
You can find out more information about the series here. Feel free to also follow Danfung Dennis on Twitter, or visit the Facebook page for The Battle for Hearts and Minds.
• Six new superhero flicks to come out over summers 2011-2012: Captain America, Green Lantern, Thor, Spider-Man reboot, Batman 3, The Avengers … have we had enough of this stuff yet? Instead of a ‘superhero,’ how about just one (1) movie about an average soldier fighting terrorists in Afghanistan. Just one.
• AND IN MORE SERIOUS NEWS … The SilverDocs fest announced its lineup today. Among the most interesting entries is the documentary Beyond This Place (see the trailer), which – picking up on the theme mentioned below in Govindini’s piece on Happiness Runs – is another film that takes a harsh look at the legacy of the 60’s-hippie culture.
• More details coming out now in The New York Times about Jafar Panahi’s release. His bail was apparently (the equivalent of) $200,000.
By Jason Apuzzo. • Big box-office bow for Sex and the City 2. Female fans ignore griping from film’s p.c. critics. A heartening development. Check out Govindini’s review of the film below.
