By Jason Apuzzo. We’ve gotten out of the habit here at Libertas of showing you short films, and I wanted to get back to that when we have the opportunity.
This new short film above from a group of Indian animation students has won a variety of awards, and was just uploaded to Vimeo about two weeks ago. Its subject matter is terrorism, and fears associated with the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. The film is interesting, and unpredictable. Make sure to watch it all the way to the end.
The premise of the film is simple and powerful, as with any good short film. A guy is traveling home on a late night Mumbai train. The passenger car is empty, except for one sleepy passenger. Suddenly, a man who matches a description of a terrorist – carrying a briefcase – boards the train and decides to sit directly in front of our protagonist. Suspense ensues …
The interesting question the short seems to raise is: whose expectations are being played upon here – the passenger’s, or the audience’s? Another way of putting it is: is the title intended ironically, or not?
For more information on the film, visit its Facebook page.
By Jason Apuzzo. • Tron is approaching, a wave that’s looking smaller as it approaches shore. The film is tracking poorly; it’s also getting mixed reviews thus far (see here and here) … oh, and the total cost of the film, with marketing? Apparently around $320 million. Plus, people are starting to scratch their heads about the fact that this is the debut feature for the film’s director, Joseph Kosinski (see interviews with him here and here), whose background is in architecture and design rather than in drama or literature – you know, those old-fashioned disciplines that involve human beings.
Boomer New Age morality tale?
So, what are we about to get here with Tron? I’m guessing something stylish and dull – with a dash of retro-liberalism (of the anti-corporate variety) to keep the Boomers happy. (Incidentally, there’s some speculation that this new film may already be subtly setting up the corporate villain for the sequel … )
In the meantime, Olivia Wilde continues to flaunt herself (see here), and otherwise make herself out to be the face of the production. As annoying as she is, that’s probably a good idea given how flat Garrett Hedlund seems, and how spaced-out Jeff Bridges seems in his interviews about the film (see here). Somewhat more fun are the Daft Punk guys, whose “Derezzed” video just hit.
More sinister, however, are inferences from several people (see here and here) that Disney is psuedo-suppressing access to the charming, old version of Tron while the new film gets its marketing binge. That’s certainly an ironic development for a movie that’s supposedly a sub rosa critique of ‘fascism’ and enforced sameness. (In fairness, the old film just got remastered and will be getting a Blu-ray release in 2011.)
Incidentally, whatever happened to that Path to 9/11 DVD, Disney?
Beau Garrett in "Tron: Legacy." Maybe she knows where Disney's "Path to 9/11" DVD went.
I’m not sure how much juice the Transformers series still has, really, but we’ll probably learn something from that trailer. Footnote: Megan Fox is really seeming out-of-sight/out-of-mind right now.
Also, Nikki Finke noticed today that the one-sheet for Dreamworks’ Cowboys & Aliens looks a lot like the one-sheet Dreamworks’ other alien invasion thriller, I Am Number 4. Oops.
They’ve since put out a new poster, although it still has the same feel.
I’m getting bad vibes about this project. Cowboys right now is looking like one of those All Star teams in basketball or baseball that looks great on paper but doesn’t play well. We’ll see.
• Ridley’s Scott’s Alien prequels have been pushed back to 2013 and 2014. What’s more annoying, however, is that Olivia Wilde is suddenly in the mix to play the lead. PLEASE STOP CASTING THIS PERSON. She’s already in Tron, Cowboys & Aliens and the Logan’s Run knockoff Now (which also just halted production) … and now Alien? Look, I haven’t seen Tron yet but I’ve seen enough of House to know that she’s not that good, besides which she’s almost as abrasive as Natalie Portman.
The new poster for "Apollo 18."
• I Am Bored by I Am Number 4, but it’s marketing binge has begun. This alien invader thriller – also from Michael Bay – has a new poster, the film will apparently be converted to IMAX (why?), and there are new interviews out with the director (here) and babes Teresa Palmer (here) and Dianna Agron (here). Basically this looks like another movie about a WASP teenage guy with Special Powers. Never seen that before.
• On the Creature Invasion Front: Troll Hunter will be having its world premiere at Sundance; besides having one of the greatest titles in the history of the cinema, Piranha 3DD now also has a release date (September 16th); and David Ellis’ untitled 3D shark thriller recently got picked up for distribution. So there you go: sharks, piranhas and trolls.
• In the time since our last Invasion Alert!we’ve lost the great Leslie Nielsen from Forbidden Planet. Our condolences to his family; he certainly will be missed.
• On the Home Video Front, some classics from Roger Corman are finally coming to DVD: Not of this Earth, War of the Satellites and Attack of the Crab Monsters (not as bad as it sounds). Also: have I told you people that I caved and bought the whole first season of the new V? I’m definitely enjoying it thus far (here, by the way, is a review of the Complete Season 1 on DVD).
• It was both funny and sad to read about the Skyline guys’ surprised reaction to the torrent of abuse that film received on-line. Apparently they couldn’t understand all the trash-talking because, as they put it, “Brett Ratner liked it!”
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … I finally got around to watching the sci-fi music video “The Ghost Inside” that Christina Hendricks did this summer (see below). It’s a little odd, and slow … but it’s got Christina Hendricks in it as a robot with detachable parts, so how bad could it be – right?
And that’s what’s happening today on the Alien Invasion Front!
Actress Mona Zaki in "Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story."
By Joe Bendel. Hebba Younis wants to be Chris Wallace. Her husband wants her to be Oprah Winfrey. However, when at his behest she temporarily forgoes her hard-hitting newsmaker interviews in favor of women’s interest features, it winds up antagonizing the Egyptian government even more in Yousry Nasrallah’s Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story (trailer below), a recent selection of the Venice Film Festival which has its New York premiere during this year’s African Diaspora International Film Festival.
They should be Cairo’s most fearsome media couple. Younis is the formidable host of a morning talk show. Karim Hassan is an up-and-coming journalist in line to become editor-in-chief of one of Egypt’s state-owned newspapers. Unlike Younis though, Hassan never met a government official he wouldn’t suck up to. Reluctantly, she agrees to lay low during the upcoming editor selection process. Yet, as she invites average Egyptian women on her show to tell their stories, a portrait of a corrupt and misogynist Islamic society emerges that hardly thrills Hassan. When cabinet ministers start to be implicated in her guests’ stories of victimization, we know there will be trouble.
Hebba Younis with her husband, played by Hassan El Raddad.
Essentially, Scheherazade is four films in one, telling three discrete story arcs in flashbacks within the framework of Younis’ show. As the least controversial (and therefore least memorable), her first interview with a late middle-aged volunteer social worker gives Hassan reason for hope. While it runs a bit long, the second woman’s story is a much different matter. Convicted of murdering the man who was playing her and her two spinster sisters, it raises hot button questions about women’s legal rights in Egypt specifically and under Islamic law in general—not exactly territory Hassan and his political masters are eager to explore. When Younis’ third guest Nahed, a dentist from a prominent family, accuses a sitting minister of sexually and financial preying on mature unmarried women, all bets are off.
While cinematographer Samir Bahsan gives Scheherazade a lush, sophisticated look, it is a surprisingly tough film. Though Hassan might appear to be a modern dope-smoking yuppie, it becomes clear he would prefer his wife veiled and cloistered rather than more famous than him. Evidently, Mona Zaki has been the target of some heated disparagement from Egypt’s medieval quarters for her portrayal of the relatively liberated and assertive Younis. While she is a smart and attractive lead, Sanaa Akroud really steals the picture as Nahed, an older but still striking and all too vulnerable woman. Akroud brings out her intelligence and resoluteness, making her not-so uncommon circumstances a particularly effective indictment of Islamist Egypt.
Scheherazade would be bold for any Islamic country and is especially so in an Egypt where most media is wholly owned by the Soviet-sounding State Information Service. A feminist film in the best sense of the term, Scheherazade is a surprisingly forthright look at the status of Egyptian women today. Timely and recommended, it screens as part of the 2010 ADIFF at the Anthology Film Archives on Sunday (12/12) and next Tuesday (12/14, the concluding night of the festival) at Symphony Space’s Thalia Theater.
By Joe Bendel. Nothing brings back the terrible memories of 9/11 like the sight of home-made missing person posters. Evidently they were a common sight in London as well during the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings of 2005. One desperate mother hopes against hope that they will help her find her missing daughter in Rachid Bouchareb’s London River, which screens currently as part of the 2010 African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.
Elisabeth Sommers lives a quiet life tending her farm on the island of Guernsey. Estranged from his family in Africa, Monsieur Ousmane works as a forester in France. She is a Protestant, while he is a Muslim, but they soon discover they are linked by the 7/7 bombing. Neither her daughter Jamie nor his son Ali has been heard from since that tragic day. Much to their surprise, it turns out their missing adult children were involved in a serious relationship. They were even learning Arabic together—a revelation Sommers has difficulty processing.
Eventually, the nervous Sommers and the stoic Ousmane form an uneasy truce that slowly evolves into something like friendship. Yet the nagging uncertainty of their children’s fate looms over their time spent together.
River is a quiet film about every mother and father’s greatest nightmare. Bouchareb largely eschews the political in favor of the starkly intimate. Still, some realities are impossible to avoid. Does it give pause to any of River’s many Muslim characters that their co-religionists just murdered 52 innocent people? Perhaps the ever taciturn Ousmane hints at such misgivings when he confides in Sommers his own failings as a father. It is hardly a transcendent epiphany, but it is an honest, sensitively turned scene.
While River boasts a large cast, it is essentially a two-hander for two vastly different parents. The Oscar-worthy Brenda Blethyn is agonizingly convincing as the distraught Sommers, perfectly counterbalanced by the deliberate Sotigui Kouyaté as Ousmane. Chronically ill during the shoot, Kouyaté passed away earlier this year, but his Silver Bear at the 2009 for River was well-deserved. Though quiet and reserved, he brings Ousmane to life – not merely as a stereotypical symbol of non-western wisdom. Instead, he is a flawed individual, whose character arc is just as heavy as that of Sommers.
Though often a political filmmaker, the French-Algerian Bouchareb’s greater loyalties clearly lie with his story and characters. That is why his most recent film, Outside the Law, is such an interesting take on the Algerian independence movement, in which it is devilishly difficult to differentiate the rebels from the gangsters. With River, he focuses like a laser on the pain and fear of his primary leads. Bouchareb also gets a nice assist from composer Armand Amar, whose jazz-inflected score adds a wistful air to proceedings. A simple, moving film that deftly sidesteps polemics, River is a good way to start the 2010 ADIFF. It screens this Sunday (12/5) at Symphony Space’s Thalia Theater.
By Joe Bendel. Everybody despises collaborators and informers, but what of the secret policemen who press them into betrayal? That is just one of the difficult questions raised by Petr Jarchovsky’s Kawasaki’s Rose, the Czech Republic’s official submission for best foreign language Oscar consideration, which opened Friday in New York at Film Forum.
Pavel Josek was a signatory to Charter 77. A critic of the Communist government’s perversion of psychiatric medicine (his chosen profession), Josek’s dissident credentials are unimpeachable. As a result, he is seen as a logical choice to receive the annual “Memory of the Nation” award for demonstrating moral integrity during the oppressive Communist regime. However, while working on a television documentary on Josek, his estranged son-in-law Ludek (a child of Communist apparachiks) starts to unearth troubling questions about the great man’s early years.
Josek’s wife Jana had once been the lover of Borek, an artist too idiosyncratic and honest to prosper under the Communist system. It begins to look like Josek might have played a small part in the campaign against the sculptor that culminated in his banishment to Sweden.
Whatever Josek did, it was relatively limited and his motives were complicated. He was not, for example, the state security officer stubbing out cigarettes on Borek’s hand. This fellow, known as “Kafka,” apparently pays no price for his crimes, as he smugly dissembles for Radka, Ludek’s television reporter lover. Conversely, Josek starts to slowly twist in the wind.
Martin Huba perfectly captures Josek’s complexity and contradictions in one of the year’s best screen performances. He has scenes discussing the perils of guilt with his mildly delinquent granddaughter that would be fraught with peril for lesser actors. Yet Huba sells them perfectly with his understated world-weariness.
The past haunting the present in "Kawasaki's Rose."
The weak link of the film is unquestionably the marital strife engulfing Ludek and Josek’s daughter, Lucie. Frankly, the confrontation between husband, wife, and mistress makes no sense whatsoever, merely distracting from the more significant drama at hand. Indeed, there is a measure of closure to be found in Rose when the audience finally meets Borek. Spiritually reborn during his time in Sweden, he has befriended Mr. Kawasaki, a Japanese artist who chose a life of self-imposed exile after his entire family was murdered during the 1995 sarin gas terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway.
Though long out of power, the Communist regime continues to cause suffering throughout Rose. Rose is a deeply humane film, but not a completely forgiving one, as evidenced by the bitter irony of its coda. Thoughtful and challenging, Rose is most likely a long shot for Oscar recognition, but it is one of the better films of this award season, well worth seeing at New York’s Film Forum.
By Joe Bendel. In the late 1960’s United Kingdom, trade unions dominated industrial policy, but did chauvinism trump class warfare? 187 women find out when their strike brings the mighty Ford plant to a standstill in Nigel Cole’s Made in Dagenham, which opened Friday in select theaters nationwide.
In one of the all time penny-wise-pound-foolish decisions, Ford reclassified the seamstresses working at their plant in the London suburb of Dagenham as “unskilled” rather than “semi-skilled” workers. This naturally resulted in a corresponding pay cut for the women. Encouraged by Albert, the factory’s union rep, they vote to authorize a work stoppage if their semi-skilled status is not reinstated. Though not previously active in the union or politics of any sort, Rita O’Grady is selected to attend the negotiations between Ford and their union. She is supposed to sit quietly in the corner, but when Monty Taylor, the feather-bedding head of their Local tries to sell out the Dagenham women, O’Grady gives them a case of what’s what.
Jaime Winstone disrobes for social justice.
Suddenly, the strike is on. However, the parameters have widened. With the encouragement of Albert, a former military officer raised by his single working mother, the Dagenham women are insisting equal pay for equal work. With 55,000 men now out of work, the union leadership is decidedly unenthusiastic. Ford is not too thrilled either. However, Barbara Castle, Harold Wilson’s minister for labor relations is quite impressed by the Dagenham women, while her boss is rather befuddled by it all.
Dagenham is a mostly harmless, Swinging Sixties Norma Rae, yet it veers awfully close to the patronizing attitudes it takes pains to skewer. We are clearly meant to cheer when O’Grady asserts herself with the sexist old boys around the negotiating table, but why shouldn’t she? William Ivory’s screenplay never actually uses the term “plucky gals,” but one can feel it floating in the air.
While Dagenham frames the issues surrounding the strike in simplistic terms, at least it earns credit for its pointed portrayal of the union leadership – a venal, Marx-quoting lot of chauvinist pigs. Of course, the overall membership is the salt of the earth, who eventually rally to the Dagenham women’s cause. Yet wisely, the film resists the dour naturalism of most union movies. Instead, it gives us Jaime Winstone in a mini-skirt.
Do not get the wrong impression though, Winstone (daughter of Ray) is mere window dressing. Dagenham is clearly intended as a star turn for Sally Hawkins – and certainly she is ‘likable’ enough. Everyone in the film is likable, unless they are management, in which case they are despicable. However, Hawkins’ soft-spoken, twitchy performance makes it hard to understand how she becomes such as a galvanizing force.
Granted Bob Hoskins’ big speech is ridiculously manipulative, but he still sells it, supplying the film’s most heartfelt moments. Though Wilson incisively contrasted himself with his Conservative opponent’s aristocratic background during the 1964 campaign, John Sessions plays him like an upper-class twit, emasculated by a look from Miranda Richardson as Castle – but at least they also supply some dramatic flair.
It might be faint praise, but Dagenham could have been far worse. When in doubt, Cole clearly opted to keep the tone light, which makes the film watchable – even if it is predictable and stilted. It opened Friday in New York, Los Angeles and in select theaters elsewhere.
