Category: Shorts

BREAKING: Lionsgate Acquires Uday Hussein Film The Devil’s Double for Distribution

Dominic Cooper and Ludivine Sagnier in "The Devil's Double."

By Jason Apuzzo. Deadline Hollywood reports today that Lionsgate has acquired North American distribution rights to the Sundance hit The Devil’s Double, director Lee Tamahori’s new gangster epic about Uday Hussein and his body double. Libertas’ own Joe Bendel saw The Devil’s Double at Sundance and loved it (see his glowing review).

The film stars Dominic Cooper as Uday, and Ludivine Sangier as his mistress Sarrab. [Side note: expect to see lots of pictures of Ludivine Sangier here at Libertas in days ahead.] For those of you not familiar with the film, here’s the official description:

The year is 1987 and Baghdad is the playground for the rich and infamous- where anything can be bought, for a price. When army lieutenant, Latif Yahia (Dominic Cooper), is summoned from the frontline to Saddam’s palace, he is faced with an impossible request – to be Iraq’s notorious Black Prince Uday Hussein’s ‘fiday ,’ his body double. With his family’s lives as well as his own on the line, his fate is decided. Latif begins his journey as Uday Hussein, a man as widely hated as he is powerful. As he learns to walk, talk and act like Uday, he experiences the extravagance of a world filled with fast cars, endless money, easy women, and deeply depraved violence. Knowing who to trust becomes a matter of life or death, as he battles to escape from his forced existence alongside Sarrab (Ludivine Sangier), Uday’s notorious concubine. In a dynamic and chilling portrayal of Latif Yahia’s autobiographical novel, THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE charts one man’s struggle in a world of bloodlust, power and seduction.

Congratulations to the filmmakers, and we look forward to the film’s release. Here’s an interesting interview below with director Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors, Die Another Day) about the film.

Posted on Feburary 3rd, 2011 at 2:14pm.

Frantisek Vlacil at The Lincoln Center: The White Dove

By Joe Bendel. Like many contemporary Iranian filmmakers, the late great Franstišek Vláčil often focused on ostensibly apolitical subjects, like children and animals. Yet, as a filmmaker in the vanguard of the Czech New Wave, his work was still considered suspect by the Communist power structure. Though his career would be put on hold for six years following the 1968 Soviet invasion, the international acclaim greeting his 1960 feature film debut The White Dove promised great things at the time for the filmmaker, making it the perfect selection to launch Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Fantastic World of Franstišek Vláčil retrospective.

A group of doves is released in Belgium. On a small Baltic island, their handlers eagerly anticipate their return. However, young Susan’s bird has a late start due to a twinge of the wing. While detouring through Prague, the wheelchair-bound Miša’s pellet gun nearly proves fatal. Shamed by Martin, the artist in the next door apartment, he nurses the bird back to health, while Susan faithfully keeps watching the skies.

Franstišek Vláčil.

Dove is a deceptively simple story, involving several themes Vláčil would return to in later films, such as the bond between children and animals. Reportedly reluctant to overwhelm his youthful cast with extensive lines to memorize, Vláčil makes his points visually rather than verbally. Stark but sensitive, nearly every artful black-and-white frame lensed by cinematographer Jan Čuřík is suitable for framing. Indeed, it is an arresting film to behold, effectively contrasting the claustrophobic, urbanized Prague with the idyllic sun and sea of Susan’s Baltic isle. Adding further texture, composer Zdenek Liska’s spritely jazz interludes and more suggestive chamber music nicely underscore and reinforce the power of the film’s speechless moments.

Vláčil elicits some natural yet restrained performances from Karel Smyczek and Katerina Irmanovová, as the dove’s two youthful caretakers. He also captures the artistic impulse better in Dove than nearly any other film, raptly observing as Martin creates a series of works inspired by Miša and the injured dove (which are credited to Czech artists Theodor Pištěk and Jan Kablasa).

At times, Dove seems to suggest deeper allegorical significance, but Vláčil judiciously keeps it all rather obscure—though perhaps not obscure enough, in retrospect. (Whenever you have a cat named Satan hunting a peaceful white dove, it could be rather awkward explaining what each represents to the occupying commissar .)

Many have likened Vláčil’s films to poetry. Indeed, like a good poem (at least by Poe’s standards) Dove is relatively short at seventy-five minutes. Though it memorably evokes a child’s perspective, it is unquestionably high art cinema, better suited to the discerning connoisseur. A major work from a filmmaker under-exposed on the American film scene during his own lifetime, Dove kicked-off the FSLC’s welcome reappraisal of Vláčil’s films yesterday at the Walter Reade Theater.

Posted on February 3rd, 2011 at 12:17pm.

LFM Sundance Review: Being Elmo: a Puppeteer’s Journey

By Joe Bendel. Sesame Street can essentially be divided into two eras: before and after Elmo. Actually, the red Muppet had been around for a while, but had always suffered something of an identity crisis until puppeteer Kevin Clash took him over. Reconceived as the sweetest of sweethearts, Elmo loved everyone and the love came right back at him, as Constance Marks documents in her profile of Clash and his furry alter-ego, Being Elmo: a Puppeteer’s Journey (see clip above), which was one of the hottest tickets at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Kevin Clash & his alter ego, Elmo.

Growing up as a budding puppeteer in his lower middle class Baltimore neighborhood was not always easy for Clash. However, two important people recognized and encouraged his talents: his parents. Thanks to his mother’s cold call, an important figure came to share that faith in Clash—Kermit Love, the guru-designer of Henson’s Muppet studio. With love’s encouragement, Clash would be working professionally on national television soon after graduating from high school. Yet, for years, the timing just did not work out for him to join the Henson Company.

Eventually, the stars aligned. His early days with Henson were pleasant if mostly unremarkable, but an off-hand assignment to figure out something to do with the show’s red-headed stepchild proved to be a turning point. Previously rather monosyllabic and not particularly gracious, Clash’s Elmo was now outgoing, eager to express his affection for the world. Suddenly, Elmo was no longer an obscure supporting Muppet, but the marquee star of Sesame Street.

Journey is part Horatio Alger story, chronicling Clash’s rise to the pinnacle of his profession. Throughout the film, he frequently acknowledges all those who mentored him along the way, including not just Henson and Love, but also his colleagues from the local Baltimore affiliate where he first cut his teeth in children’s programming.

There is also a whole lot of Elmo in Journey as well. Yes, he is the touchy-feeliest of the Muppets, but he is also the most frequently requested by Make-a-Wish kids. Viewers who do not get a little misty-eyed during those scenes need to get their souls tuned-up.

Indeed, Journey is quite an antidote for cynicism. Wisely, Marks takes a conventional approach to her subjects, relying on the charm of Clash and Elmo. Featuring a whole lot of feel-good material – like Clash’s American success story, the strength that comes from family, the value of friendship, and the continuing legacy of Henson’s creative genius – Journey is a crowd-pleaser for audiences of all ages. A hit at Sundance, it should have a long life after the festival, which concludes this Sunday (1/30) in Park City.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Being Elmo won the Special Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary Competition at this year’s Sundance.]

Posted on January 30th, 2011 at 10:52am.

LFM Sundance Review: Another Earth

By Joe Bendel. What if Star Trek got it wrong? Suppose there really is an alternate Earth, but instead of a world full of evil Kirks and Spocks, it is pretty much like our own. It’s hard to say for sure, but this seems to be the case in writer-director-editor-cinematographer Mike Cahill’s Another Earth, a quiet character drama subtly built around a durable sci-fi device that screens during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

The astrophysics are a bit sketchy, but it seems an identical Earth has always existed, hidden from view by our mutual sun. One fateful night, our orbits shifted and Earth 2 suddenly appeared in the sky. It is exactly the sort of phenomenon Rhoda Williams looks forward to studying at MIT. Tragically, however, it is not to be. Craning to get a glimpse of the new Earth, the drunk-driving Williams slams into another car, killing composer John Burroughs’ pregnant wife and their young son. She spends the next four years in a juvenile prison, while he descends into an alcohol-fueled depression.

From "Another Earth."

Though eventually released, Williams remains a captive of her own guilt. She even approaches Burroughs to apologize, but the words will not come. Instead, she pretends to be from a cold-calling maid service. Much to her surprise, Burroughs (unaware of her identity due to their local juvie offender laws) hires Williams for a much needed weekly house cleaning. Slowly, a relationship develops between the two, but their fates still seem to be intertwined with Earth 2.

At this risk of sounding nauseatingly condescending, Another Earth is a film that shows tremendous promise. Cahill’s use of sf elements to tell a fundamentally human story is smart and ambitious. Particularly intriguing is the premise that the moment of awareness led to a break in the two Earths’ synchronization. Like the best of old-fashioned speculative fiction, this opens up the door for redemptive possibilities. However, AE is stylistically over-baked, indulging distractingly odd camera angles and visual tableaux more appropriate to Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy. Oddly though, though, the periodic portentous narration from Dr. Richard Berendzen (director of NASA’s Space Grant Consortium) fits into the flow better than one might expect.

Despite a reasonably large cast, AE is essentially a two-hander, with co-writer-co-producer Brit Marling and William Mapother impressively carrying the load as Williams and Burroughs, respectively. They consistently feel like real people struggling with real pain. While their budding romance is a tough sell given the context, they pull it off quite credibly.

A filmmaker with a background in documentaries, Cahill does a lot right in AE, but also a fair amount wrong. The net effect is a surprisingly memorable film, marking him as a filmmaker worth tracking. A selection that really fits the Sundance mission, AE screens again during the festival today (1/29).

[EDITOR’S NOTE: According to Deadline, the budget of Another Earth was apparently only around $150,000 – and the film was just acquired by Fox Searchlight for around $3 million. Not bad!]

Posted on January 29th, 2011 at 10:13am.

LFM Sundance Review: If a Tree Falls & Eco-Terrorism in America

By Joe Bendel. There is an old saying: “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.” It sure is convenient to quote if you happen to be accused of terrorism. Daniel McGowan certainly falls back on it in If a Tree Falls: a Story of the Earth Liberation Front, Marshall Curry’s public relations salvo on behalf of the convicted eco-terrorist, which screens at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

First radicalized at New York’s Wetlands Preserve, a now defunct music club and clearing house for environmental agitation, by his own admission former Earth Liberation Front cell member McGowan took part in dozens of destructive “actions” targeting lumber companies, forestry research facilities, and the like. However, he claims that a particularly ambitious double operation soured him on the ELF.

McGowan and his co-conspirators believed Superior Lumber was engaging in genetic engineering that violated the tenets of their environmental faith. Actually, they Superior Lumber was not, but the ELF only discovered this fact after burning the company’s offices to the ground. Simultaneously, the arson planned for an agricultural geneticist’s university office burned out of control, taking part of the school’s library with it. Sorry dudes, our bad.

Some of the ELF's handiwork.

If a Tree is really two irreconcilable films grafted together. In the first half, ELF supporters revel in their glory years, unambiguously boasting that they were finally putting palpable fear in the hearts of the world’s polluters and lumber barons. However, once McGowan and his co-defendants were caught, the very same people decried the injustice of applying domestic terrorism laws to the ELF defendants. (For his part, MacGowan has no such scruples throwing around the word himself, proudly sporting a tee-shirt labeling Pres. George W. Bush an “international terrorist.”) Yet, the fear and intimation resulting from their actions were not unexpected by-products, but the conscious and deliberate goals of the ELF operations. To then debate whether McGowan’s actions meet the legal definition of terrorism constitutes mere sophistry.

McGowan and Curry make much of the lack of human casualties directly attributable to ELF actions, but it is hard to think of a lower ethical bar to clear. In a wider sense, though, it is actually not true. Given the businesses damaged and even outright destroyed by McGowan and his fellow eco-terrorists, many innocent people clearly lost their livelihoods. These are working people, whose lives were shattered by McGowan, but Curry steadfastly refuses to delve into such inconvenient details.

To Curry’s credit, he gives the Assistant U.S. Attorney and lead detective who brought down the ELF a fair opportunity to speak for themselves, never casting them as fascist caricatures. However, that is the extent of his fairness doctrine. Aside from those brief segments with law enforcement and the rather unlucky Superior Lumber proprietor, Curry confines his interviews solely to those supportive of the ELF, scrupulously avoiding its critics. He never once challenges McGowan’s radical environmental pronouncements nor does he explore the full repercussions of the ELF’s crimes.

Well beyond one-sided, If a Tree should not be considered a documentary at all, but the work-product of McGowan’s defense team, while the sympathy it elicits for the convicted domestic terrorist is profoundly misplaced. Yes, he destroyed property, but he also intentionally terrorized people and ruined lives. It is highly skippable this morning (1/28) at Sundance.

Posted on January 28th, 2011 at 7:04am.