By Jason Apuzzo. Today we bring some special news to Libertas readers. Kalifornistan, a film starring LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty, and which I wrote and directed, will be opening the Free Thinking Film Festival in Ottawa, Canada this November 12th.
The Free Thinking Film Festival is designed by its founder Fred Litwin to celebrate “limited government, free market economics, and the dignity of the individual.” We’re very honored that Kalifornistan was chosen to open the festival for its Opening Night Gala, an event which will also serve as a fundraiser for the Military Family Resource Centre – which helps military families in Canada. Tickets for this event are available here.
Other films in the festival include: Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Stoning of Soraya M (Closing Night Gala, with Cyrus attending), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn, HBO’s documentary For Neda (which we showed in its entirety here at Libertas) and a multitude of interesting documentaries including: Crossing the Line, Outside the Great Wall, Decryptage, The Cartel, Generation Zero, Do As I Say, Mine Your Own Business and others.
The full festival line-up is available here.
We want to thank Fred Litwin and his team for choosing Kalifornistan to open the festival. We’re very honored to have Kalifornistan in the company of the many exceptional films and filmmakers being gathered together for this exciting event. I’ve put the trailer for Kalifornistan above, and you can visit Kalifornistan’s website here.
I also want to congratulate Fred for putting on this festival to begin with. Freedom of thought within the film world is something that needs to be promoted at every opportunity; it is, indeed, the very basis for our having started The Liberty Film Festival back in 2004 and Libertas back in 2005, and for bringing Libertas back in its current form earlier this year. It isn’t sufficient to simply complain about the state of free speech in the film world; action and activity are required to foster and encourage emerging voices. So we applaud Fred for putting this event on, and encourage everyone to attend. Having done the Liberty Film Festival ourselves, we know how challenging these events can be – and also how necessary they are, given the current state of our film culture.
Here’s a description of Kalifornistan from the Free Thinking Film Festival website:
In the shadowy Port of Los Angeles, an insane terrorist stalks a beautiful dancer … while plotting the nuclear apocalypse he hopes will make him a celebrity. KALIFORNISTAN is a darkly comic satire on terrorism made by Canadian actress and filmmaker Govindini Murty and American filmmaker Jason Apuzzo. KALIFORNISTAN follows the deranged leader of a terror cell called ‘Glorious Jihad of Kalifornistan’ as he plots to destroy Los Angeles with a nuclear bomb – while being distracted by a sultry exotic dancer. KALIFORNISTAN fuses film, video, documentary and surveillance footage into a cutting-edge narrative on the violence, narcissism and delusional fantasies that fuel contemporary Islamic terrorism. KALIFORNISTAN takes viewers on a twisted journey of the post-9/11 world from Gitmo to Iran, from the dark corners of LA harbour into the mind of a terrorist too deranged even for Al Qaeda.
Human Events says of KALIFORNISTAN: “The film clicks as strong, effective satire … Kalifornistan … dares to see the average terrorist for what he truly is — a laughably warped soul with a world view shaped by Islamic radicalism — and too many extremist blogs … and once you meet the terrorist at the heart of the film you’ll wonder why more filmmakers haven’t taken this approach before.” LA’s Daily Breeze says that “Kalifornistan may be the South Bay’s 21st century cinematic equivalent of Gone in 60 Seconds, the 1974 cult classic.” Online journal Rational Review says that KALIFORNISTAN “is beautifully shot” and “it’s Fellini meets Kubrick.”
Govindini Murty of "Kalifornistan."
We had a lot of fun making Kalifornistan. And I’d like to think that Kalifornistan is imbued with the same kind of spirit that we bring here to Libertas every day: a spirit of fun, good humor, edginess, a completely uncompromising look at very controversial subjects … and really sexy women. 
Kalifornistan is basically an art-house/cult film on a subject that most people in Hollywood are too afraid to touch: the sexual fantasies that fuel many young Islamic terrorists. You can check out an extensive interview I did about the film here.
Our ‘Libertas pin-up’ in Kalifornistan is Govindini, of course – although she provides a great deal more than just eye candy in this film … not that that isn’t important, by the way. But I’m also quite proud of her performance in the film – which required her to be believable not only as an exotic dancer, but as someone who can realistically confront a terrorist. [Of course, as anybody who knows Govindini will tell you, it's not hard to imagine her doing that.]
Govindini was also the film’s executive producer, story editor, and was invaluable in the final shaping of the film’s retro-’documentary realist’ style – a style which she and I are both quite passionate about. She was a vital force behind this film, and there’s quite simply no way I could’ve made it without her.
One other note: LFM Contributer Steve Greaves wrote and performed the cool, retro-60s music score in Kalifornistan, which you hear in the trailer above. Steve did a great job on Kalifornistan’s soundtrack, on a very tight deadline, and I’m looking forward to working with him again in the near future.
Even though Kalifornistan was shot on a modest budget, the film has a lot of personality – which, in my opinion, is what an indie film always needs to have. If you haven’t had the chance to see Kalifornistan, we encourage you to pick up a copy here.
Of course, if you think Kalifornistan has a lot of personality, wait till you see the next film we’re doing …
Again, our thanks to Fred Litwin and the Free Thinking Film Festival, and we encourage everyone to get their tickets for this great event today. We expect tickets for this event to go fast. The Free Thinking Film Festival will be taking place at the National Archives – adjacent to Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Canada. Incidentally, Govindini is a proud Ottawa native, and is delighted that free thinking films are coming to the fine citizens of Canada’s capitol.
Posted on September 8th, 2010 at 11:23am.
By Joe Bendel. Gangster and self-styled revolutionary Jacques Mesrine never lacked for nerve, but he might have started to believe his own hype. That never turns out well. At least we have good reason to believe he will not go quietly at the conclusion of Mesrine: Public Enemy #1, the second part of Jean-François Richet’s two-film bio-epic, which opens today in select theaters nationwide.
After his notorious detour through Quebec, Mesrine is back in France, plying his chosen trade. A celebrity criminal who assiduously cultivates the media, his capture becomes the top priority of Police Commissaire Broussard. Actually, catching the flamboyant Mesrine seems relatively easy – keeping him behind bars was the tricky part. When he teams up with François Besse, an unassuming but equally slippery fellow inmate, all bets are off.
Largely eschewing the personal drama of Killer Instinct, Public features two shoot ‘em up escape sequences, a number of mostly disastrous capers, some cold-blooded killing, and the brilliantly edited conclusion. Essentially, Public delivers the pay-off on Instinct’s emotional investment. Yet all the really juicy supporting turns come in the second, action-driven film. As Besse, the perfectly cast Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) is an intense counterpoint to blustery Mesrine. Likewise, Dardenne Brothers regular Olivier Gourmet brings some heft to Broussard, making him a worthy antagonist for Mesrine. Instinct standout Michel Duchaussoy also makes a brief but touching return appearance as the gangster’s meekly loving father.
Of course, it’s problematic using terms like “hero” or even “anti-hero” with regard to the Mesrine films. While most of his outright misogynistic episodes come in the first installment, he is consistently presented as a problematic figure, albeit one not without charm. Arguably, though, it is his effort to preserve his good press that contributes to his undoing. Vanity—it’s a killer.
While Instinct had the occasional slow patch, Enemy speeds along like an escaped fugitive. It is all held together by Vincent Cassel’s dynamic lead performance and the film’s cool, retro-70’s look. Of course, the Mesrine films are best seen as a whole, but of the duology Enemy is definitely the superior film. It opens today in select theaters nationwide.
Posted on September 3rd, 2010 at 10:21am.
By Jason Apuzzo. The ironies on display here are too much. Recently I came across this award-winning Russian film called 9th Company, which is essentially about the late stages of the Russian war in Afghanistan. You can watch the trailer for the film above; the film’s just coming to DVD and Blu-ray right now, although it actually dates from 2005.
The Russian invasion of Afghanistan was a brutal and sadistic affair all the way around. What’s so striking to me, though, is that even the Russians have apparently been able to muster sufficient national pride in the valor of their soldiers to make this relatively large-scale film about their experiences in Afghanistan.
And what do we get here in America from Hollywood about our own Afghan war? The ostensibly ‘just’ war (in contrast to Iraq, so the story goes)? We get nothing.
As I mentioned in my recent post on the new Aussie film Tomorrow When the War Began, the climate here in the United States for freedom-oriented filmmaking is really lousy. Here we have a situation in which the biggest DVD release of a war film set in Afghanistan is being provided to us by the Russians. Perhaps we should import some of their politicians, while we’re at it. I’m no longer sure it would make much difference.
And by the way, you know how I found out about this film? They were advertising on Harry Knowles’ site(!). What a country we’re living in.
Posted on September 2nd, 2010 at 1:38pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. Yesterday, after my post on the new film Tomorrow When the War Began (which appears to be a kind of Australian Red Dawn), a reader named Psudo reminded me that this new film is coming out at roughly the same time as the new videogame Homefront - which is actually written by Red Dawn writer/director John Milius, and is quite obviously inspired by the subject matter of his original film. Check out the two trailers for the game, above and below. My understanding is that Homefront will be coming out in February.
John Milius' forthcoming video game.
Homefront is actually set about 15 years from now. The idea is that North Korea has become a mini-expansionist empire, invigorated by a young new leader, and that this empire grows to consume both South Korea and Japan. Meanwhile, the United States’ economic and military profiles continue to weaken. The North Koreans then launch some kind of advanced electronic pulse weapon that takes out our defense systems. Enter North Korean invaders.
Whether one finds this scenario especially plausible, by the way, isn’t really the issue here. What’s fascinating is how prevalent this type of scenario is becoming in current projects.
We’ve been documenting these invasion scenarios here at Libertas all summer, as regular readers know. These scenarios are truly starting to appear everywhere – most prominently in science fiction films. Suffice to say that Homefront is looking not only a lot like the forthcoming MGM remake of Red Dawn, but also this new Australian film Tomorrow When the War Began, plus the forthcoming web series Red Storm, and about a hundred different sci-fi invasion stories coming down the pike. Plus, this summer we’ve seen the return of films depicting the Cold War Soviet spy threat in Salt and Farewell, and vivid depictions of communist tyranny in indie films like Mao’s Last Dancer, Disco & Atomic War, and The Red Chapel (which deals specifically with North Korea).
How big of a trend is this? It’s a very big one that’s impacting us in many different ways. Two recent films greenlit with $200 million budgets – Universal’s Battleship and the Warner Brothers Battle of Midway – both seem to partake in the trend, for example. [Midway was the World War II battle that permanently scuttled any Japanese hopes of invading America; Battleship is a World War II-style naval battle, set in the future, pitting a combined Earth navy against an invading alien force.]
We’ll keep an eye on all this here at Libertas, to be sure. I personally think these films reflect deep domestic anxieties about the direction the country’s going in … and I don’t think these anxieties are waning. They’re only growing in intensity.
One final word: I spent a pleasant evening several years ago with John Milius; we smoked cigars and talked about the White Rajah of Sarawak … and, ironically, about Mao. I want to wish him the best with this new project.
Posted on September 1st, 2010 at 4:37pm.
By Joe Bendel. It is 117 A.D. and the Roman “conquest” of Britain has been a miserable, blood-soaked experience—for the Romans. Just ask Centurion Quintus Dias, whom we first meet running for his life from a very ticked-off war party of Picts in Neil Marshall’s Centurion, which opened this Friday in select theaters nationwide.
Posted to the most distant Roman outpost, Dias is miserable in Caledonian Britain (what is more or less Scotland today). Things only get worse when his fort is over-run by a Pict surprise attack. The sole survivor, Dias escapes his captors, making his way to what just became the newly Northern-most Roman outpost. Tired of taking a beating to his prestige back in Rome, the local governor commands General Virilus to hunt down the mysterious Pict leader Gorlacon with his vaunted Ninth Legion, to which Dias is now attached.
Virilus is not thrilled with his assignment, but he supposedly has the advantage of the services of Etain, a Pict tracker ostensibly civilized by the governor. Given the way her eyes smolder with hatred, following her into battle is probably a bad idea, but they do it anyway, with predictable results. Now Dias must lead the remnant of the Ninth as they try to rescue their revered General behind enemy lines.
Centurion is a fairly straight-forward historical hack & slash, with maybe a hint of the fantastical. At one point Dias and his men find refuge with Arianne, a woman shunned by the Picts as a purported witch—not that she really is one. She just seems to know a lot about healing herbs. Neil (The Descent) Marshall definitely has a knack for gritty battle scenes, and the clever symmetry of his opening and closing scenes perfectly suits the story of ancient (if misplaced) heroism. Unfortunately, the film lags a bit in-between, with too many scenes of rock-climbing and weary shuffling through the Caledonian forests.
Michael Fassbender is one of the few actors working in film today with potentially movie star-like screen presence. Yet in Centurion, the grizzled badness of Dominic West’s Virilus somewhat outshines him. Still, he has some credible chemistry with Imogen Poots as Arianne the witch. Unfortunately, Ulrich Thomsen is a bland villain as Gorlacon (probably because the film is too conscious of its alleged modern parallels), while as Etain, former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko looks distractingly blue, almost like she walked out of Avatar. Oddly, the Centurion’s Romans are played by Brits, whereas the Britons are mostly played by Scandinavians, Slavs, and even the Belgian Axelle Carolyn.
Centurion’s craftsmanship is definitely above average for action films. Cinematographer Sam McCurdy’s dazzling vistas make the Caledonian mountains look like the Alps. It also boasts one of the cooler opening title sequences of the year. Still, its heavy-handed “occupiers” versus “insurgency” themes often sabotage the film’s momentum. Ultimately, it is an okay summer diversion, but it is effectively limited by its reluctance to definitively pick a side and stick with it.
Posted on August 28th, 2010 at 9:55am.
By Jason Apuzzo. I’m curious as to what people think of this preview (above) for NBC’s forthcoming series, The Event. Here are the main elements I’m getting from this trailer:
• Heroic, charismatic young black President.
• CIA conspiracy involving illegal detainees.
• A secret detention facility in Alaska?
• Some sort of 9/11-type event.
I believe this is what is referred to as ‘on the nose’-style filmmaking. And we apparently now have the Obama Administration’s own version of The West Wing.
Somehow you knew this was coming, didn’t you?
[Special thanks to LFM's Patricia Ducey for tipping me off about this.]
[Special thanks to Hot Air for linking to this post.]
Posted on August 24, 2010 at 2:20pm.
We really enjoyed this little spoof of the Inception trailer, called Inebriation. Give it a look. Kudos to young filmmakers Ben & Andrew Adams for putting this together.
Warning: this spoof gets a little vulgar. Viewer discretion advised.
And if you didn’t get a chance to read it, don’t forget to catch Libertas’ notorious ‘upside down’ review of Inception.
Posted on August 23rd, 2010 at 1:29pm.
From "Mao's Last Dancer."
By Jason Apuzzo. • Mao’s Last Dancer is in the news a lot right now. The LA Times has a piece on the difficulties associated with shooting the film in China, and director Bruce Beresford does a new interview on the film over at IndieWIRE.
Predictably, the NY Times has attacked the film as “brainless,” but the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern had this to say about the film:
The movie’s strengths are considerable. The first section summons up a tormented period of Chinese history when art was bent to the breaking point in the service of a ruthless state … The film celebrates artistic freedom without preaching a sermon, and often flies when Mr. Chi is on screen. When he is on stage, spinning and leaping to the strains of magnificent music, the film soars.
I’ve put another clip of this extraordinary new film below. Make sure to see it this week. You can read the LFM review of it here.
• While on the subject of China, possibly the only film that America and China should be able to cooperate on, without Chinese censors getting involved in the mix, is a movie about Army Air Corp Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault and his Flying Tigers, who protected China from Imperial Japanese invaders during World War II. And that’s exactly what director John Woo is apparently trying to do, as he attempts to put together a U.S.-China co-production for a huge film version of the Flying Tigers’ story, that would end up in the IMAX format and possibly starring Liam Neeson in the title role. This sounds intriguing, and we’ll hope for the best on that.
The girls of "Piranha 3D," at the LA premiere.
• Everybody’s talking about Piranha 3D right now! Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of this film’s debut is that – as of the writing of this post – the film is receiving an 80 rating among critics over at Rotten Tomatoes. The film had a splashy (so to speak) debut in LA the other night at the Chinese theater, featuring some of the jaw-dropping (as it were) ladies from that film – and there are some new interviews out with director Alex Aja (see here and here), and with newly minted star/Playboy covergirl Kelly Brook (who’s also adorning the cover of Love Magazine this month). Ms. Brook, by the way, is dueling it out with her ex-boyfriend – the Expendables’ Jason Statham – at the box office this weekend.
As regular Libertas readers know, we expressed our enthusiasm for Piranha 3D early on – eagerly devouring each marketing ploy for this exceedingly cheeky and sexy little thriller. It’s for this reason, sensing the possibility that this film might be a cult classic, that we dispatched noted film critic and theoretician Prof. Jacques de Molay to review Piranha 3D for Libertas. He delivered a decidedly impassioned and idiosyncratic review.
I just got off the phone with Jacques, and frankly he’s still raving about the film. I could barely hear him, because he’s currently kayaking down the Amazon river, but some of the phrases I made out were: “Cult masterpiece … easily the best film of the year, possibly of any year … ecstatic pleasure … dream-like … watching hyper-real, 30-foot high females floating underwater in free space in 3D … like something out of a Botticelli painting … or Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage … why couldn’t James Cameron think of this?!” At a certain point I had to cut Jacques’ call off, frankly, because he was just going on too much. I suppose I’ll have to see the film now.
Underwater sirens: Riley Steele, Kelly Brook.
In related Piranha news, Lake Havasu is apparently worried that Piranha 3D is going to take a bite out of tourism due to unfounded fears of piranhas. (It’s the exact opposite; hordes of teenage guys are likely to now descend on the place looking for Riley Steele … probably quite willing to risk their lives in the process.) “Girls Gone Wild” mogul Joe Francis has also fired off an unintentionally funny legal letter to the producers of Piranha 3D over concerns regarding ‘defamation’ (the film’s primary villain is obviously based on him). I suppose it is a bit humiliating to watch one’s member getting chewed by piranhas on a 30 ft. screen in 3D, but maybe he should’ve thought about this sort of thing years ago when he started exploiting teenage girls.
Finally, Alex Aja has announced his next project … which will be a big-budget adaptation of the French space-pirate comic book series, Cobra. That looks absolutely fantastic, and we wish him the best with that.
• The trailer for the new Valerie Plame movie Fair Game is out, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, and apparently Richard Armitage – the man who leaked Plame’s identity to Robert Novak – isn’t even mentioned in the film (or at least, no character by that name is listed in the credits). This is kind of like making All the President’s Men and not mentioning Deep Throat.
Jolie in Berlin.
• From real-life spies to fictional ones, Angelina Jolie premiered Salt in Berlin this week. This worldwide tour of hers is really colorful, and I enjoy covering it … but I’m wondering if one visit to, say, Greta van Susteren’s show might actually do more good for this film’s box office right now. Has Salt really been promoted as aggressively here in the States as it should be?
• The first review of David Fincher’s new Facebook movie The Social Network is out, and it sounds like a whopper. The Facebook camp isn’t happy about the film, not surprisingly. And now Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page may get the biopic treatment. [Why do I think Steve Jobs is next? He's the biggest character of them all.] Memo to the Silicon Valley crowd: you’d better start financing your own movies, if you want to start writing your own history … because otherwise, Hollywood will write your histories for you. Hollywood has a financial interest in keeping Silicon Valley egos in check, because the Valley is constantly threatening to take Hollywood over. Expect this inter-California rivalry to get a lot hotter.
• In sci-fi news, an interesting casting notice has leaked for the forthcoming J.J. Abrams’/Steven Spielberg Super 8. I’m very much looking forward to that film – actually much more so than any of the forthcoming sci-fi projects on the books that we’ve been covering here, simply because I have greater confidence in the filmmakers involved. We’re also learning that X-Men: First Class will apparently be taking place in the 1960s. According to Aint It Cool News:
[T]he film takes place in the 1960’s. John F Kennedy is the President of the United States. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X are on TV doing marches. There is a spirit of a hopeful future that was prevalent in that time.
Now receiving transmissions.
Interesting. In other sci-fi news, the new poster for Skyline is out, and Shia LaBeouf is apparently very excited about the storyline that’s been revealed to him for Indy 5.
Word on the street is that Indy 5 will be headed to the Bermuda Triangle, potentially with a final stop in Atlantis. Indy 4, along with the suprise-hit Cloverfield, kicked off the most recent wave of alien invasion projects … and I expect Indy 5 to add a new dimension to this whole craze before it’s all over, due to Lucas and Spielberg’s deep immersion in sci-fi lore …
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … would you buy iPod accessories designed by Brit celebrity Katie Price? [They adorn her headgear to the right.] These things look like they’re designed to receive transmissions from outer space – of which she may already be receiving her fair share. She may be trying to snag a role in Area 51, although Battleship or Piranha would probably be more appropriate given that she already comes equipped with artificial flotation devices.
And that’s what’s happening this weekend in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on August 22nd, 2010 at 9:06am.
[Editor's Note: LFM Editor Jason Apuzzo has the day off. In his place he's invited an old friend, Professor Jacques de Molay, to review Piranha 3D. As long-time Libertas readers may recall, Jacques is a Professor of Cinema & Neurosemiotics at the University of Northern California, and is a widely recognized Marxist intellectual.]
By Jacques de Molay. Bon jour, Libertas readers. Due to LFM Editor Jason Apuzzo’s vacation, and the fact that Piranha 3D is directed by the subversive French auteur Alexandre Aja, I have been asked to review this striking new film for the bourgeois film forum Libertas.
It could be said that the subject of Piranha 3D is ‘consumerism,’ albeit consumerism that is contextualised into a dialectic that incorporates within it both “T” and “A.” Except that in the case of Aja’s provocative, neo-deconstructionist exercise, female “T & A” in Piranha 3D is itself the object of consumption - as well as being approximately 10 meters high, unclothed and in three dimensions.
A parable of 'consumer' culture?
Aja understands that in America’s capitalistic society, the chief object of consumer desire and fetishizing is female flesh, itself. By thereby ‘incorporating’ into his film such pre-commodified females as Kelly Brooke (ooh-la-la!), Riley Steele, Ashlynn Brooke, et al as objects of ‘consumer’ desire in his film, Aja boldly poses the question: who are the ‘real’ consumers depicted in Piranha 3D? Are ‘we’ ourselves the piranhas here? And if so, what does this say about the state of deconstructive, post-capitalist feminism (i.e., whose ‘asses’ are being hung out to dry here?)
Piranha 3D takes place in the fictional bourgeois community of ‘Lake Victoria’ (substituting for Lake Havasu), a repressive middle class haven of Bush’s America – note the proliferation of police, armed with tasers (“Don’t taze me, bro!”) – that swells from a population of 5,000 to approximately 50,000 each year for the annual teen rite of ‘Spring Break.’ This annual bacchanal – which both legitimizes sexual profligacy, yet contains it within the strict confines of the corporate calendar – provides the ultimate ‘feeding frenzy’ for the film’s ‘consumer class,’ the piranhas. For the piranhas, the teens of Lake Victoria are truly ‘pieces’ of ass.
Early in the film we are introduced to our ‘hero,’ a classic WASP teen of the American middle classes named ‘Jake,’ played by Steven R. McQueen – who is the grandson of the famous actor Steve McQueen. And thus immediately one is reminded of the elder McQueen and his appearance in 1958’s The Blob, another film which thematized the devouring of teenage flesh by an insatiable ‘consumer’ beast. [Set to the music of Burt Bacharach.]
We are also introduced to another ‘hero,’ Jake’s mother, a female sheriff played with gruff brio by Elisabeth Shue. Shue’s sheriff is a classic figure of Bush’s America, drilling martial ‘responsibility’ into her son and prudishly shielding him from on-line porn. We practically expect ‘Jake’ to enroll in Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University by the time the film concludes.
'Spectacular' bodies: the temptations of American consumerism.
In a scene evocative of 1957’s The Monster That Challenged the World (another film subtly promoting America’s military-police state), an earthquake at Lake Victoria collapses the ocean floor (the Wall Street collapse?) and opens an underwater chasm, unleashing an enormous swarm of ancient piranhas (releasing unholy forces from the capitalist id?). These savage aquatic creatures, possessed of unexpected shrewdness and cheeky charisma, have ostensibly lain dormant as eggs for millions of years – much like the flash-frozen, fried fish meals so popular in Western capitalist economies.
Soon enough, however, the ‘consumed’ will themselves become the consumers.
After the earthquake, these ‘unleashed consumers’ immediately surface … and confront actor Richard Dreyfuss, reprising his role as ‘Matt Hooper’ from Jaws. And thus the first character killed in this fable of Bush’s America is, predictably: the liberal Jewish intellectual.
In short order, however, we learn that the true villain of Piranha 3D is not so much the prehistoric fish … so much as it is a character named Derrick Jones (Jerry O’Connell), based ostensibly on “Girls Gone Wild” mogul Joe Francis. This character – who attempts to lure young Jake into his world of commodified females, alcohol and drug use – takes Jake, his benign romantic interest ‘Kelly’ (Jessica Szohr), and models ‘Danni’ and ‘Crystal’ (the astonishing Kelly Brooke and Riley Steele, respectively) into the isolated, outer reaches of the lake.
It is here – in this bucolic setting – that the signature sequence of Piranha 3D takes place, the sequence which will be talked about for years to come among film critics, academic semioticians, and older men wearing raincoats: a campy, underwater ballet between Ms. Brooke and Ms. Steele, performed to the strains of Léo Delibes’ “Flower Duet,” conducted fully naked and in 3D. Surely this will be remembered as Aja’s ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence in years to come, his defining moment as a visionary. I am not aware of anything resembling this sequence in the history of the cinema, at least in terms of the fetishizing of female flesh within the strictures of normative capitalist discourse – not to mention within the classical music canon.
It is here especially that Mr. Aja’s meaning becomes only too plain: we ourselves are the ‘piranhas,’ ogling after this commodified flesh. Here one begins to appreciate the sophistication of Mr. Aja’s vision, in comparison to the similarly 3D-mad James Cameron. Aja dispenses with Cameron’s tame, prudish alien titillation – and gives us the ‘real’ thing, in vivid three dimensions, as only a French director could.
Eager capitalist, reviewing his 'product.'
Soon enough the piranha ‘consumers’ begin wreaking their havoc. I have been informed by Editor Apuzzo that one of the conventions of bourgeois film criticism is not to ‘give away’ the ending, so we will limit our remarks to revealing that the Derrick Jones/Joe Francis character – clearly Piranha’s scapegoat in terms of channeling the audience’s anxiety over the exploitation of female flesh – comes to a uniquely spectacular end (aided here by 3D technology) … in which his male member is chewed off with gusto by the piranhas … who subsequently spit the member out, apparently as disgusted by Mr. Jones’/Francis’ exploitation of female labor as is the audience. [The piranhas' refusal to 'devour' the male member also confirms suspicions that the fish are, in effect, masculine and heterosexual in sensibility. Are they fanboys, perhaps?]
Mr. Aja’s critique is thereby made plain: after the Wall Street collapse, commerce in today’s capitalist society can only end in bloody apocalypse – a farrago of bikini tops, chewed limbs … and shattered ideals.
On the acting front, special kudos should be given to Ving Rhames – the sturdy character actor who valiantly combats the marauding fish, at one point with an outboard motor – and to Christopher Lloyd of Taxi and Back to the Future fame, playing the stock ‘mad scientist’ character. His presence in American mainstream cinema has been missed.
A vision of the predatory American 'consumer'?
Given the repressive nature of American society in the long aftermath of the Bush years, Piranha 3D should likely have been rated NC-17, if not an outright X. In my less restrictive homeland of France, where we are better prepared to appreciate such material, I assume there will be a ‘French’ cut of the film - perhaps featuring an extended version of the breathtaking ballet sequence … and perhaps replacing the Delibes with Bizet.
[Editor's Note: here at Libertas we are committed to providing a platform for freedom of speech, and a diversity of ideas - including those of today's progressive left. We'd like to thank Prof. de Molay for his unique contributions to our understanding of the new film Piranha 3D.]
Posted on August 20th, 2010 at 7:10pm.
By Joe Bendel. Forget the Syfy (Sci-Fi) Channel’s Earthsea miniseries. Ursula K. Le Guin, the author of the Earthsea novels and stories, would certainly prefer you did. Her reaction to Gorō Miyazaki’s anime adaptation of her fantasy world has also been decidedly mixed, but arguably not as vehement. In fact, Miyazaki’s film is not without merit, especially for those not intimately grounded in the Earthsea mythology. Three years after its Japanese premiere, Miyazaki’s Tales from Earthsea, finally has its American theatrical release, now screening in select theaters courtesy of Walt Disney.
While the legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki long sought to adapt Le Guin’s Earthsea stories, it was his son Gorō, a relative new comer to animated filmmaking, who was assigned the project by Studio Ghibli, the anime house co-founded by Miyazaki the elder. The result is a visually striking, if thematically familiar, fantasy.
Like the epics of Tolkien and Robert Jordan, Tales follows a young protagonist of destiny, Arren, a confused prince who has apparently just murdered his father, the king. Fleeing in shame, he encounters the wizard Sparrowhawk on the road. Like his late father, Sparrowhawk is concerned about the chaos sweeping over Earthsea. The weather is unseasonable, crops are failing, livestock are dying, and two dragons were recently spotted off the coast fighting to the death – an unprecedented event in the Earthsea fantasy world.
From Miyazaki's "Tales from Earthsea."
Naturally, there is a Sauron-like evil overlord to contend with. In this case, it is the androgynous sorcerer Cob, whose slave-trading minions are out to get Arren. Indeed, Tales follows the standard epic fantasy template, but does so reasonably well. There is also a pseudo-environmental motif of a world out of balance that should have appealed to Le Guin, but it is subtler and more nuanced than most “green” movie messages.
Miyazaki the younger is most successful creating an epic look in the film, employing watercolor backgrounds and hand-drawn animation for dramatic effect. Indeed, his fantasy landscapes and cityscapes have an exotic beauty that elevates Tales well above standard issue anime.
Redubbed for an American audience (not an uncommon practice with anime distribution), the English language cast mostly ranges from adequate to fairly good. Timothy Dalton (the under-appreciated James Bond) is the class of the field, lending his commanding voice to Sparrowhawk. In contrast, Willem Dafoe’s work as Cob often sounds campy, in the wrong way.
The first Disney animated release to carry a PG-13 rating, Tales is similar in intensity (and subject matter) to Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated Lord of the Rings. Richly crafted but predictable (as is the case with most contemporary fantasy fiction), Tales is better than genre diehards might have heard at their conventions. It is currently screening in New York at the Angelika Film Center, and in Los Angeles at The Landmark.
Posted on August 20th, 2010 at 8:11am.
By Jason Apuzzo. We want to keep people pumped here at Libertas about seeing Bruce Beresford’s extraordinary and courageous new film, Mao’s Last Dancer. We’ll be showing you a variety of clips from the film, including this excerpt above for today. It features the lovely Joan Chen as dancer Li’s mother. This clip really gives you a sense of what you’re in for with this film, in terms of how bold it is. [Make sure to read Joe Bendel's LFM Review of Mao's Last Dancer.]
Mao’s Last Dancer opens this Friday (8/20) in select theaters nationwide. Predictably, the film has already been banned in China due to its highly unflattering look at the Mao years.
Word also comes today that Rex Reed, one of our favorite critics here at Libertas, has written a rave review of Dancer, calling it a “masterpiece.” I’ve excerpted at length from Reed’s review below:
“As I depart for my annual August vacation, I leave you with a highly recommended magical experience you must not miss. A giant hit at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival, Mao’s Last Dancer, by the great Australian director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy), is a feel-good film bursting with courage, energy and overwhelming inspiration … In the cherished tradition of heartbreaking movies about personal triumph against impossible odds, it is a combination of Billy Elliot and Rocky …
“At 19, granted unheard-of permission from Mao’s regime as one of the first exchange students to travel abroad, on a three-month student visa, in 1980, Li [the dancer and protagonist of the film] faces new hurdles. His parents expect him to bring honor to their humble station, his country expects him to represent China like a good, loyal and cynical comrade, drawing attention to Communism while trusting no one. Terrified and confused, he is the first boy from his province to travel to Beijing, much less the world beyond. Landing in the U.S. in a stiff, outdated, Chinese government-issued suit, he is like Dorothy arriving in Oz. Housed and guided by the kind but flamboyant Stevenson (wonderfully acted by the charismatic Bruce Greenwood), he takes little time overcoming culture shock, adjusting to alien Chinese restaurants and realizing that the Communist propaganda drummed into his head about America as a place of deprivation and darkness is a lot of hokum. The more he experiences of Texas cooking, kung fu movies, miraculous kitchen appliances, American hospitality and tennis shoes, the more distanced he grows from the ideals of Communism and the rigid dogma of Chairman Mao. (Against the rules of the Cultural Revolution, he also discovers the thrill of admiring political defectors like Nureyev and Baryshnikov without fear of arrest while watching forbidden tapes.) Capitalism, he confesses, is groovy …
“Distilling so much drama and turmoil into two hours is not easy, but by the time the film completes Li’s long and arduous journey, in 1986, when his parents are finally allowed to fly to the U.S. to see him dance for the first time, you will marvel at how much is accomplished. I predict the highly charged emotional finale will leave you cheering … Mao’s Last Dancer is a masterpiece.”
Click here for the entirety of Reed’s review.
Posted on August 19th, 2010 at 12:32pm.
Too racy?
By Jason Apuzzo. We reported recently here at Libertas about how the CW’s reboot of the Nikita franchise will be making the CIA the villains of the piece. So far as we’re aware, we’re the only site currently making a fuss over this.
Variety (registration required) is now reporting today that the show is currently turning heads for a different reason – namely, the raciness of it’s advertising.
At Libertas, of course, we dive right in to such controversies.
As I mentioned in my earlier post about this show, what alerted me to this show to begin with was a gigantic, eye-popping billboard of star Maggie Q slapped up against a building here in LA. The poster was the already quite racy one of her in a red dress (see here). Now, apparently, the people at CW are trying to get huge billboards of Maggie Q in leather and tattoos (see left) into major markets like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles – and even here in LA not everybody’s going along with it.
Let me begin by stating the obvious: it would be spectacularly hypocritical of me to complain about the sexiness of this show’s advertising, given our regular featuring of pin-ups here at Libertas. On the contrary: we love this sort of thing, as it speaks to the sort of freedoms we enjoy here in the West that are routinely frowned upon in totalitarian societies (both of the Islamo-fascist and communist variety) elsewhere in the world.
Plus, the girls look cute – which should be reason enough.
Cheerleaders.
With that said, even I think that putting up 50ft. billboards of Ms. Q in leather and tattoos in public places like malls, where families and children may gather, is probably a bit much. And for safety reasons, I don’t think it’s too good of an idea to put these billboards near freeways. The one of her in the red dress (see here) is more than enough to get the point across.
What bothers me more is that this new show apparently goes The Full Stallone in taking a nasty swipe at the CIA. Why aren’t people more bothered by this? Let me put it this way: why are we so prudish about the sex component to this series, yet so completely untroubled by what the show is depicting in terms of our own government?
Attacking our intelligence services is such a terrible idea at this point in time, as those services struggle under the combined weight of low morale, rampant anti-Americanism overseas and budget cutbacks. And here’s another problem: shows like this do, eventually, get syndicated in foreign markets … and what kind of effect do you think they have, particularly among those already inclined toward hating America? [Foreign distribution rights to Nikita have already been sold to the UK and Australia.]
Much as with The Expendables, I really wanted to like this show. It had the potential of being a kind of sexed-up version of 24 – or a weekly Salt, if you will – and in fact that’s what the show should have been. Instead, they had to make America’s intelligence services into the enemy, into ruthless murderers bent on assassination. What a shame.
The only silver lining here, I suppose, is that the CW is giving us a better-looking show this fall called Hellcats. The show is apparently based on the book, Cheer: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders. I’ve put the trailer for the show below. This cheeky comedy-drama’s premise is described this way:
Hellcats revolves around Marti, a pre-law college student from the wrong side of the tracks. When budget cutbacks and her mother’s constant carelessness cause her to lose her scholarship, she joins the Hellcats, the college’s competitive cheerleading team.
Perfect! A series about a young gal forced into a life of cheerleading due to tragic circumstances. [Is Roger Corman running this network?] Between the new terrorist-fighting Hawaii Five-O and this, I think we’re set now.
Posted on August 19th, 2010 at 11:33am.
By Joe Bendel. For fifty-plus years, Mainland China’s Communist government has experienced bitter factional rivalries and instituted enormously destructive campaigns for ideological purity. While the pendulum has swung back and forth from relative stability to institutionalized insanity, it has remained an authoritarian state where artistic freedom is simply impossible. That is why twenty year-old ballet dancer Li Cunxin defected to America in the early 1980’s. It was a bold decision that would define Li’s bestselling memoir and Oscar-nominated director Bruce Beresford’s subsequent big-screen adaptation, Mao’s Last Dancer, which opens this Friday (8/20) in select theaters nationwide.
As a young boy, Li was slight but flexible as enough to be accepted at Madame Mao’s ballet academy. Diligently training to build his strength, his natural talent blossomed -even in the didactic productions foisted on the academy by their ideologue patron.
Eventually Li was entrusted to study with the Houston Ballet as part of a cultural exchange program. Primed to expect unspeakable misery, Li slowly discovers America is not as he was led to believe. Acclimating to the new environment, he actually finds he dances better in the land of class enemies because he “feels freer.” He also falls in love with Elizabeth Mackey, an aspiring dancer. Then his life really starts to change.
Li indeed decides to defect, news the Chinese government does not happily receive when he ill-advisedly delivers it in-person. In fact, they forcibly detain him in the Consulate, with the intention of whisking him out of the country against his will. However, Li’s friends refuse to leave quietly (fortunately Texans can be an unruly lot), precipitating an international incident.
Dancer is a truly inspiring crowd-pleaser of a film, but it is not an overly-sanitized or conveniently simplistic reduction of a complex, real life story. In fact, the guilt-wracked Li, fearing dreadful repercussions for his family, frequently quarrels with Mackey, eventually even divorcing her. Yet, as a result, Li emerges as a flesh-and-blood human being. We can also forgive the film for indulging in its manipulative coda, having more or less earned its triumphant freeze frame.
As wildly improbable as it might sound, much of Dancer was shot on-location in China. Reportedly, once shooting was underway, the authorities began demanding changes to the script, but to his credit, Beresford rebuffed them. As a result, there are indeed scenes of Madame Mao (who remains an official non-person in China), played by a truly eerie dead-ringer for the Gang of Four leader. We also watch as Li’s mentor at the academy is purged for perceived ideological offenses, such as teaching the techniques of counter-revolutionary defectors like Nureyev and Baryshnikov. (Granted, the film also seems to imply contemporary China may be loosening up, at least to an extent.)
Amanda Schull & Chi Cao.
Perhaps Dancer’s greatest challenge was casting credible dancers for its key leads roles. Again, fortune smiled with the discovery of the considerable acting chops of Chi Cao (currently Principal Dancer with the Birmingham Royal Ballet) and Chengwu Guo (a member of the Australian Ballet) as the adult and teen-aged Li, respectively. Both prove to be charismatic performers, with Chengwu making a surprisingly strong impression, even with his limited screen time. (Hopefully, they will both be allowed to return home, despite their participation in the film.)
Dancer also boasts two Twin Peaks alumns – including Kyle MacLachlan, making the most of a small supporting role as crafty immigration attorney Charles Foster. It is Joan Chen who really delivers the film’s emotional punch though, as Li’s spirited mother Niang. Even thoroughly glammed down for the role, she still remains a radiant beauty.
Dancer is a well-rounded, fully satisfying bio-picture. The product of Australian filmmakers, it refreshingly refrains from kneejerk political cheap shots, even implying then Vice President Bush played an important role securing Li’s freedom. It also vividly captures Li’s passion for dance, which is the fundamental cause of nearly every event that unfolds in the film. Emotionally engaging and politically astute, Dancer opens this Friday (8/20) in select theaters nationwide.
Posted on August 18th, 2010 at 11:58am.
By Patricia Ducey. Time in Cairo is slow. Very slow. Glances are exchanged. Background concertos are heard. Sparks, however, are not ignited, ever, between Juliette (Patricia Clarkson), an American magazine editor and Tareq (Alexander Siddig of Syriana), her supposed Romeo in Cairo Time.
This is not Shakespeare, or even English Patient (a great weepy if ever there was one). This is one nuanced love affair.
Juliette and Tareq represent archetypes of the East and West, yet they are actually more alike than different: both inhabit internationalist circles – Tareq just recently retired from the U.N., where he came to know Juliet’s husband (a UN operative in Gaza), and Juliet herself a feminist women’s magazine editor. Not much of a culture clash here. At a few points in the film Tareq lightly (and rightly) scolds Juliet for her easy outrage over a few social problems in Egypt. This hints at further story is to come, perhaps a real discussion of custom and culture, but nothing develops. (The Last King of Scotland, by contrast, brilliantly portrayed the deadly consequences of feckless liberalism in its main character.)
Juliette arrives in Cairo to await her husband’s arrival from Gaza so they can enjoy a long dreamed of vacation together. He is delayed, though, by trouble in the refugee camp he manages – so he asks his old friend Tareq to see after his wife until he can join her. Juliette seems anxious, tentative and tongue-tied from the start – odd behavior for a successful magazine editor. We wonder why – middle age crisis, bad marriage, illness? – but we never find out. She loves her husband, children, and her job. Tareq tries to draw her out but she rebuffs him. Later, though, she mystifyingly shows up at his men-only coffeehouse to visit him – not once but twice.
This fog of ambiguity never clears, and slows the movie down to a crawl. Juliette wanders the streets alone, inexplicably tossing aside her husband’s warnings about women traveling alone. Naïve, self-destructive? One can only ponder. This behavior does reveal the only people who seem to know who they are, sadly: the bands of leering men on the Cairo streets who consider her, a Western woman alone on the street, as something south of “available.”
Juliette finally takes action after her husband is delayed again and again. She hops a bus to the border and to Gaza to find him, but the Egyptian police stop the bus and send her back to the hotel; they realize the situation in Gaza is dangerous. As Juliette follows the police, her seatmate – a young Egyptian woman – stuffs an envelope into Juliette’s hands and implores her to deliver it to her lover back in Cairo. Again, hints at a story: tension, mixed up in politics, danger – but this too goes nowhere. She gives the letter to the young woman’s lover.
Non-doomed lovers.
The narrative of any melodrama demands some rupture of the moral code. English Patient’s doomed love story was played out on the canvas of a World War, when the old world order was collapsing in England and the Middle East. The lovers in English Patient violated every norm of class, race, gender and sexual orientation and died in agony for their transgressions. Patricia Clarkson’s protagonist, on the other hand, is a modern Western woman and thus is left with no moral code to rupture whatsoever. What will she lose if she betrays her husband, what would happen if she did betray him with Tareq? Not much. Tareq is an Egyptian Muslim who is kind of secular, kind of not. We are not quite sure what his moral code is either, or if he has one. Perhaps this is why the greatest doomed love stories take place at least pre-1950.
Canadian writer/director Ruba Nadda has underwritten both the characters and the story. The characters’ physicality – walking, talking, eye gazing, walking, talking – as well as their sparse dialogue reveal little. Clarkson and Siddig do their best but have little to work with.
My inner writer asks, what do these characters want? Apparently not each other. Or at least not very much. Perhaps Juliette will remain faithful to her husband, perhaps not, but it is of no real import to a woman in the grips of such anomie. Tareq was content pre-Juliette and is content post-Juliette. I am not asking for these characters to outrun a fireball or gun down CIA assassins – I just want to know why their lives and loves matter.
Posted on August 10th, 2010 at 9:36am.
By Joe Bendel. “Banned in Pakistan” sounds like a heck of recommendation for a film. Yet, in the case of Abhishek Sharma’s Tere Bin Laden (a bit of wordplay roughly translating to “Without Bin Laden”) it is hard to understand why they bothered. A mildly amusing satire, Tere tweaks the American response to the September 11th terrorist attacks far more than its Al-Qaeda mastermind, but evidently the Pakistani authorities feared any comedic representation of Bin Laden would be provocative. American audiences can judge for themselves today as Tere opens at select theaters nationwide (see listings here).
In a bit of a departure for Bollywood, Tere is set in Pakistan and stars the Pakistani popstar Ali Zafar as Ali Hassan, an aspiring journalist who dreams of making it big in America. Unfortunately, his departure is delayed by the 9-11 terrorist attack. When his flight finally leaves, his odd behavior (possible only in a slapstick comedy, given the obviously tense circumstances) is misinterpreted as a hijacking attempt. As a result, Hassan is barred from America for life.
Our young protagonist perseveres though, toiling away at a low rent news station, trying to raise cash for a new set of identity papers. Covering a rooster-crowing contest, Hassan spies a poultry breeder named Noora who is the spitting image of Bin Laden — okay, maybe that is a bit daring on the filmmaker’s part.
Peddling a fake bin Laden interview.
However, when the reporter bamboozles the eccentric Noora into making a counterfeit Bin Laden video, made up like his notorious double, the jokes really are not directed at Bin Laden, but primarily at his target -Hassan’s promised land of America. When the bogus tape hits the airwaves shortly thereafter, the American military naturally starts carpet-bombing Afghanistan out of sheer panic. Frankly, this is the sort of satire you can find in any number of American films. Of course, the Bollywood musical numbers are a different story, the best being Zafar’s mellow groover, “Bus Ek Soch.”
Ironically, the most endearing character of Tere is the likably goofy faux Bin Laden, played by Pradhuman Singh, who shows a flare for physical comedy and chicken wrangling. Zafar, who reportedly was once held for ransom by self-described Bin Laden supporters, is also reasonably engaging as Hassan. One can also understand why he might be gun-shy with satirical material that cuts too close to the bone.
The outrageous positions Bin Laden’s double finds himself in (chasing chickens with a grenade super-glued to his hand, for instance) may well help bring the mass murderer’s public image down to earth. If so, Tere could be a force for good. Still the Kumbaya ending, suggesting everyone can come together and work things out if America only reaches out to her enemies, is hardly an accurate reflection of the world as it is.
Ultimately, Tere plays it safe in choosing its targets. That it still found itself deemed “anti-Islam and anti-Pakistan,” with many censors apparently unable to distinguish between Bin Laden and a character clearly impersonating him within the context of the film, is probably more telling than anything in the film itself. For those intrigued by its backstory, Tere opens today (8/6) at the Big Manhattan (formerly ImaginAsian) Cinema for a one week run, with the possibility of extending, and in other theaters nationwide.
Posted on August 6th, 2010 at 3:09pm.
Are you a Chronicles of Narnia fan? If so, here is a new trailer that just appeared on-line for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which arrives in theaters in December.
Posted on August 6th, 2010 at 10:54am.
By Jason Apuzzo. • In the buildup to The Expendables, new clips of the film are being released (see above), and Sly Stallone is talking a little bit more freely about the political situation in Hollywood. Here’s what he says today, in an interview conducting with Aint It Cool News readers:
[I]t’s a minor miracle the last RAMBO would even be released, but I took a gamble there … [for people who] desire to see an action film unfold that wreaks of pride and manly individualism that has unfortunately fallen out of vogue. I believe that everything is a cycle. And once again America will have its cinematic heroes reflect the incredible honor it is to be defending the most extraordinary country the planet has ever known. Just give it time, everything is a cycle.
I sincerely hope he’s right – that these things proceed in cycles. Suffice it to say that if he’s right about this, then we’re long overdue for a correction toward more pro-American, pro-freedom material. We’ll see. Most of the action on the pro-freedom front seems to be coming from independent filmmakers, not from within the Hollywood system.
"Transformers 3"s Rosie Huntington-Whiteley .
• The debate rages on over the merits of 3D cinema. Today J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon are more or less weighing in against 3D. What’s interesting here is that nobody was having this debate right after Avatar. It’s the recent run of crappy 3D conversions that have been causing doubts. I continue to say: filmmakers should shoot natively in 3D, or not use the technology at all.
• Communist China is apparently eager to have Inception playing in its theaters. It’s no wonder; the film’s basic subject matter is brainwashing! It doesn’t surprise me in the least that they would be enthusiastically courting this film, and otherwise banning Salt. In related news, the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein notes the age-difference in critics who love/hate Inception – with older ones hating it. I guess I’m breaking the mold here, because I’m under 40 and I hated it, too!
• The Jack Ryan reboot Moscow may have a director: Lost’s Jack Bender. In related Cold War movie news, you may not have known that until his recent meltdown Mel Gibson and Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black were apparently collaborating on a picture called Cold Warrior, which would have featured Gibson as ”an ex-Cold War spy who comes out of retirement and teams up with a younger agent to stop a Russian terrorism threat.” There’s also news today that Joel Silver may be trying to lure Gibson back to revive the Lethal Weapon franchise. I can’t begin to describe what a bad idea that would be.
• Transformers 3’s Rosie Huntington-Whiteley appears on the cover of LOVE Magazine today. Yowza. Where does Michael Bay find these actresses? Oh, right – from the pages of Victoria’s Secret catalogues.
"Mad Men"'s curvy Christina Hendricks in GQ.
• Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells asks a fascinating question today: “[W]hat about the next generation of Hollywood Republicans? Are there any industry righties from among [the] under-35 set? A movement without young blood is no movement at all.” How true! Boy would I love to answer this question in detail for Mr. Wells, whom I suspect would be fascinated by the answer. Let’s just say that it’s to the benefit of certain people’s media careers that you never hear about the younger crowd – or about anyone currently involved in actual filmmaking, for that matter. You’ll always here about them here at Libertas, though, because that’s our entire mission: to promote and support pro-freedom filmmaking. Plus we have great pin-ups.
• And speaking of which, Tron’s Olivia Wilde, who is quickly establishing herself as a go-to sci fi babe, apparently just shot a nude scene for Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens in which she stands “naked in front of a bonfire in front of 500 Apache warriors.” Hey, this sounds like my kind of film! Maybe Favreau read this.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks does an interview and photoshoot for this month’s UK GQ. We’re big fans of Mad Men here at LFM (see here), and are pleased to see this retro-curvy bombshell is popping up (and out) everywhere these days …
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on August 3rd, 2010 at 1:42pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. As regular LFM readers know, we loved Chris Morris’ striking new comedy about Islamic terrorism, Four Lions (see our glowing Libertas review from when the film unspooled at The LA Film Festival).
Four Lions is currently playing at the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), and a reviewer for Aint It Cool News had this high praise for it:
The day ended with one of my most highly-anticipated films of MIFF, Chris Morris’s FOUR LIONS. There are so many comedians who operate under the assumption that they are “edgy” because they make lots of forced references to things they think are taboo. Chris Morris is one of the few who actually is, shining a sharp, satirical spotlight on our own hypocrisies.
FOUR LIONS, his first film as director and co-writer, is possibly the bravest skewering of cultural mores since LIFE OF BRIAN. When comedy shows or films proudly proclaim they have no political correctness, it usually means they like making fun of a politician’s obesity. FOUR LIONS genuinely discards political correctness, but in an exceptionally smart way, not allowing a single likable character, refusing to present anyone who (a) plays into our own comfortable stereotyped beliefs, or (b) allaying any white or middle-class guilt by having a “Good Muslim” or a “White Politician Who Actually Does Get It”. There are no safe havens in this film, and this — the story of four suicide bombers trying to attack a London target — is all the better for it. I probably missed about 50% of the jokes because I was laughing at the other ones, which is simply an excuse to see it again.
I don’t mind calling it early: FOUR LIONS is the comedy of the year.
We heartily agree. Do whatever you can to see this film. Unfortunately one of the things you won’t be able to do is see it in an American theater, because no company has picked it up for distribution here – even though it was a box office hit in the UK, won the audience award at the LA Film Festival, and was even a hit at Sundance. And this is shameful, because this is an extraordinary film that people should be given the chance to see.
We will continue to bang the drum for this film here at LFM until it gets its American release.
Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 12:46pm.
Kelly O'Neill & Shane Curry from "Kisses."
By Patricia Ducey. Kisses, a 2008 Irish film and favorite at many important festivals, is now in wider release throughout the US this summer. [See the trailer below.] Writer/director Lance Daly spins a tale of two abused Irish kids from the unfashionable outskirts of Dublin who run away from home to find freedom from family strife. No leprechauns or legends in this Ireland – the film takes place in a modern, industrialized Ireland, chockablock with rusting warehouses, traffic jams, and pop culture references. Daly, after a few preview screenings in the US, has wisely provided subtitles to aid the American ear in decoding the Irish patois. [I implore other filmmakers whose films are not in spoken American English to do the same. I’m talking to you, Sarah Gavron.]
The Irish Film Board, Bord Scannán na hÉireann, which has been financing and promoting the national cinema of Ireland since the 1990s, helped finance Kisses. What is the “national” cinema of Ireland, though, in actuality? Films written or produced by Irish persons, or films about Ireland? Or some permutation of both? Irish filmmakers have borrowed from early American films, like the docudrama Man of Aran or the romanticized The Quiet Man, and vice versa. I spent some time in Ireland in the ’90s, when the Board first starting supporting these films – I was researching my thesis on this subject – and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a purely national cinema. But times were good in Ireland then, and the Board plowed ahead. Irish moviegoers, though, voted with their feet and many of these board-supported films ended up, oddly, being shown in art houses in Ireland – while the likes of Mrs. Doubtfire drew the crowds near Grafton Street. Whether it is smart for any government to support the arts is debatable – just look at the bidding war over tax incentives for movie production here in the US – but such a debate has begun in Ireland due to the now faltering Irish economy.
Young Shane Curry in "Kisses."
The truth is that film and narrative have always been ‘globalized’ and Kisses is no exception. The two runaways, Kylie and Dylan, live in a neighborhood Antoine Doinel would feel at home in. The runaways cadge a ride down the canal ala Huck Finn, courtesy of a Russian émigré boatman who introduces the kids to Dylan’s namesake – Jewish/Christian American folk rocker Bob Dylan – with his impromptu rendition of “Shelter From the Storm.” And later Dylan learns a lesson about the give and take of love from a Jamaican prostitute eking out a living in Dublin.
Dylan and Kylie’s world, though, is a drab working class Ireland. The two families live in comfortable enough homes, but Dylan’s father, a handsome guy, drinks and bullies, while Kylie’s uncle fools everyone in the family except her – she knows from bitter experience what he really is. Both Dylan and Kylie reach the end of their respective ropes on Christmas Day; one battle royale, one unwanted advance too many, and they are off, with Kylie egging Dylan on to make a run for it. They hop a river barge to the city, and the adventure begins – for good and ill.
The cinematography is lovely. Daly shoots the opening scenes of the housing development in bleak black and white, and lets the color slowly seep into the frame as the kids and the boatman get farther and farther away from home (a nod to The Wizard of Oz? Again, the cross-pollination of film). The two child stars, real Dublin kids Kelly O’Neill as Kylie (a Drew Barrymore look-alike) and Shane Curry as Dylan, shine as newcomers. Daly draws joyous and heartbreaking performances from both of them, without the wise-assery or precociousness we see in so many preteen stories. I wished that perhaps Kylie was a little less heroic a heroine, but that’s a minor quibble.
If you liked a recent Irish film Once, you will like Kisses. Kisses is the anti-Inception. It is small and slight but you won’t forget it – just like your first kiss.
Posted on July 26th, 2010 at 12:45pm.
David Soul (left) with Fred Ward as Ronald Reagan in "Farewell."
By Joe Bendel. Instead of the man who knew too much, he was the spy who knew everything. Codenamed “Farewell” by the French, Colonel Vladimir Vetrov was charged with reviewing the intelligence the KGB gathered on the free world—every speck of it, including the extent to which each western intelligence agency had been compromised. He also knew the Soviet government had failed to live up to its promises. President Ronald Reagan called the resulting L’Affaire Farewell: “one of the most important espionage cases of the 20th century.” It also inspired Christian Carion’s espionage drama Farewell (trailer below), which opens in Los Angeles and New York this Friday night.
Like the real-life Vetrov on whom he is based, Colonel Grigoriev was once stationed in Paris, where he rebuffed the advances of the French and American intelligence services. However, by 1981, the Colonel had come to the conclusion the Soviet Union needed drastic reform – so he approached the DST, the French equivalent of the FBI (the only western intelligence agency the KGB had not bothered to infiltrate) through Pierre, a French businessman with no formal involvement in the world of espionage.
Out of his element, Pierre wants to extricate himself from the affair as soon as possible, but Grigoriev insists on dealing only with him, considering the professionals untrustworthy. Partly in recognition of the value of Grigoriev’s intel and partly out of a sense of budding friendship, Pierre becomes the Colonel’s amateur handler, passing a wealth of information on to the DST.
While Pierre and Grigoriev meet in parks and train stations, another alliance in being forged between President Reagan and Mitterrand, France’s newly elected socialist prime minister. The President is less than thrilled at the prospect of Communist ministers in the new French cabinet, but Mitterrand has an olive branch to offer: “Farewell.”
Farewell’s portrayal of these influential world leaders is quite fascinating and surprisingly even-handed. Philippe Magnan’s Mitterrand is intelligent but aloof, coming across like more than a bit of a cold fish. Refreshingly, Pres. Reagan is not depicted as a doddering bumbler, but as an engaged and commanding leader. Yes, there are scenes of Reagan using classic film as a metaphor with his National Security Advisor (played by an almost unrecognizable David Soul), but never in way that calls his judgment into question.
Yet, there is something about Reagan’s distinct mannerisms that are hard to emulate without lapsing into caricature. American actor Fred Ward takes a good shot, but he still sounds more like a Saturday Night Live impersonation than a real flesh and blood individual. Frankly, Ronald Reagan remains such a commanding presence in the national consciousness it makes any dramatic representation problematic.
Not too friendly: Vselovod Shilovsky as Gorbachev in "Farewell."
Fortunately, Farewell’s primary leads are uniformly excellent. Though he looks appropriately rumpled, Emir Kusturica plays Grigoriev sharp as a tack, keenly aware of his own personal contradictions. As Pierre, Guillaume Canet’s performance is also smart and understated, avoiding the headshaking “what-did-I-get-myself-into” histrionics. As a result, viewers believe the unqualified trust Grigoriev places in him.
Technically well produced, cinematographer Walther Vanden Ende and designer Jean-Michel Simonet effectively capture the oppressive drabness of the Brezhnev era. Yet ideologically, Farewell resists easy classification. While it certainly conveys the repressive and corrupt nature of Soviet Communism, the film sometimes suggests a John Le Carre-like equivalency, at least between the rival spy masters. However, the shrewd conclusion again challenges the audience’s conceptions of faith and loyalty, within the context of the preceding “L’Affaire Farewell.”
Considering how long it has been since a brainy spy film sneaked into theaters, Farewell is quite welcome indeed. Featuring two compelling lead performances and a meaty story that intrigues on several levels, it is an engrossing film. It also might be the fairest shake Pres. Reagan has gotten on screen since his inauguration in 1981, ironically coming by way of France. Definitely recommended, Farewell opens Friday (7/23) in both Los Angeles and New York, expanding to other cities the following week.
Posted on July 20th, 2010 at 9:13am.
