By Jason Apuzzo. I am going to keep hounding Libertas’ readers until you go see Four Lions! (See my recent review of the film here.) Aint It Cool News’ Harry Knowles even raved about the film over the weekend. Here are the money quotes from his review:
I’m not real sure what I thought I was seeing with FOUR LIONS. I think in some ways I was expecting something more cartoonish, perhaps even bloody. What I wasn’t expecting was the most biting satire that I’ve seen since DR STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB …
I seriously have no idea why this film didn’t get picked up domestically before Tim League of the ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE had to create a distribution company just to distribute it, but man. Here in Austin, they’re gonna make some serious money with this thing.
The audience was laughing throughout and enjoyed the hell of it. It is incredibly smartly written.
Four Lions opened in select theaters nationwide on Friday. Check here to check when the film will be coming to your area.
***SPOILER ALERT***
The scene above is the one in which Omar and Waj, trying to destroy an American drone, accidentally blow up Osama bin Laden’s tent.
By Jason Apuzzo. Watch this deleted scene from Four Lions above – it’s a hoot. As regular Libertas readers know, Four Lions is a blistering satire about Islamic terrorism from the UK’s Chris Morris. The film opens here in America on November 5th, and is sure to spark a lot of debate. We loved it here at Libertas; you can read my review of it here.
By Jason Apuzzo. MTV News is showing a clip today (see above) from The Taqwacores, a film which opens this Friday in New York – and travels to art house theaters nationwide in subsequent weeks. The movie – which was a hit at Sundance – deals with the new Muslim punk scene here in the U.S.
Indiewire is actually showing a much more interesting clip from the film here, although the clip can’t be embedded. Take a look …
By Jason Apuzzo. Am I the only one who finds this a bit odd? The White House recently released this video (see above) of the President meeting with the Waiting for Superman kids (see LFM’s review of the film, by Patricia Ducey), and most of the video simply consists of the kids watching Obama leave.
This seems like an odd way for the White House to reassure us Obama is on the ball, and that the problems associated with our miserable education system are being fixed. I was waiting for something more – some sort of indication from the President that he is aware of the crisis that the film is depicting, and that he’s going to move mountains to fix it. Instead, we merely get to see Obama deliver a few stiff blandishments to the kids and parents (I think I see Davis Guggenheim in there, as well) and then wave good-bye as he heads toward his helicopter.
Was anything else said? Because the rest of us would like to hear it. As p.r. from an already-embattled White House, this is a bit weird.
We are all now able to share these performances live across the world. At 1 p.m. the curtain rises in New York; at 10 a.m. in California we sip our coffees and wait for the theater to darken; in Switzerland they dress in formals and make an evening of it. Now in its fifth season, “The Met: Live” is the perfect marriage of myth, movie artistry and music – and it’s also affordable at roughly $22 per ticket. Last season’s Tosca and Turandot, thoroughly grounded in the familiar narrative territory of romantic literature and soaring arias, won me over – and so I ventured out recently to what I hoped would not be a morning misspent with Herr Wagner …
Deborah Voigt as Brunnhilde.
To be honest, in 21st century America our sensibilities have been trained to respond to the conventions of moviemaking – i.e., camera angles, close-ups, etc. – so as a neophyte opera fan, I find these ‘movie’ productions almost better than some of the live productions I’ve seen. “Not if you had good seats!” my opera loving friend counters, but how many of us can afford that $200-plus ‘good’ ticket? In the Met: Live productions, the production team expertly uses the camera to enhance the storytelling so that we’re not, for instance, continuously scanning a huge faraway stage for the action. So for anyone who did not grow up with this art form as part of their national culture, the familiar conventions of filmmaking prove an invaluable aid here. In addition, the Live broadcasts open with a backstage tour, led (on this occasion) by Deborah Voigt, and include interviews with the cast (with shoutouts to their countrymen) and wardrobe/production staff, along with a “making of the Ring” mini-doc – all of which makes the opera very accessible.
The Met: Live opened October 9 th with Das Rheingold (“The Rhine Gold”), the 2.5-hour prelude to Richard Wagner’s massive-in-scope “Ring-cycle.” The entire cycle runs approximately 15 hours and is meant to be seen in four sittings. In this epic undertaking, Wagner creates an entire mythical world, borrowed from Norse and medieval German sagas, with gods and creatures engulfed in struggles for power and greed and love, all culminating in the four-hour Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods).
Rhine maidens.
The opera opens with three entrancing Rhine maidens who guard the store of magical gold under the Rhine – and the evil Alberich, the dwarf who unsuccessfully woos the beauties. Angered by their rejection, he renounces love and steals their gold and forges it into a ring that the mermaid-like creatures have promised will allow any who possess it to rule the earth. We then meet the gods Wotan, his wife Fricka, and their progeny. Wotan would like to rule the earth as well, and outsmarts Alberich to steal the ring. Plot complications ensue, and the ring eventually ends up in other hands – Wotan trades away the ring for a safe home for his fellow gods. At the conclusion of DasRheingold, his reunited family ascends into beautiful Valhalla, safe at last. Yet, as we hear the strains of familiar chords, we know that the peace of Valhalla is but a chimera; something is coming – something larger than life, something wonderful.
Terrence Malick, incidentally, who is a student of German philosophy, used the image of the water nymphs in the opening scenes of New World – mirroring the opening of Das Rheingold. I can only wonder if this was intentional. Another mythmaker, J. R.R. Tolkein, long-ago acknowledged his borrowing of the all-powerful gold ring for his own ‘Rings-cycle’ – as well as his indebtedness to Wagner’s vision.
Given the sterility and vapidity of our modern day myths (currently, Avatar), exploring opera, theater, short films or foreign films as we do at LFM can only enrich our understanding of filmmaking culture, infusing it with the chords and themes that have resonated in humanity through the ages; indeed, this may be the only way that new film practices will emerge, once the tiresome contemporary genres of the anti-hero, of puerile sexuality, or of nihilism have run their course.
