By Jason Apuzzo. Variety and the few critics allowed to see Kevin Smith’s Red State at Sundance are panning it, with Variety calling it “a dull blade slashing wildly, predictably and ineffectually.”
Also, in a profanity-laced, 20 minute speech after the screening of his film, Smith announced that he would be self-distributing the film himself. According to Hollywood Reporter:
Smith lambasted movie studios for a system he said is unfair and outdated and too focused on advertising. Smith said that he had never intended to get into the business of the movie industry — noting that he’s simply a “fat, masturbating stoner” — but the state of the industry essentially forced his hand.
Translation: the film bombed, and he had no takers.
Deadline Hollywood is also reporting that even if there had been any enthusiasm for distributing his project among the many distributors who brought their teams to the screening, Smith alienated them all by generally acting like a psycho and insulting the distribution business. He also claims that this will be his second-to-last film.
Free Game Pass revoked. Kevin Smith=Game Over.
Also: this is another sign that political cinema is currently dead, having been killed, ironically, by the very people who practice it.
By Jason Apuzzo. Libertas is proud to announce that our own Joe Bendel will be covering the 2011 Sundance Film Festival for us, starting today. We’re very excited to have Joe ‘on the ground’ in Park City providing his insightful and witty analysis, as we are expecting this particular Sundance to be provocative and eventful.
For our new readers, Joe Bendel is easily one of the top independent film writers around, and we’re proud to have him on our team. We also want to thank the folks at Sundance for having Libertas there. Joe’s coverage of the festival will begin later this afternoon.
As a special treat, I also wanted to mention to our readers that one of our Libertas writers has a film in the festival this year.
Composer Steve Greaves, who’s previously written music for my own film Kalifornistan also did the music for Commentary, a film that will be screening at Sundance tomorrow (Saturday) at 1pm in the Presidential Suite of the Waldorf Astoria – so if you happen to be in Park City this weekend, make sure to check Commentary out. I’ve put the trailer for Commentary below, and we want to wish Steve and the entire Commentary team the very best with their film.
And stay tuned to Libertas this weekend and all next week as we take a look at Sundance’s most intriguing films.
By Jason Apuzzo. • The Kennedys miniseries controversy goes on and on, with no end in sight. The Hollywood Reporter recently watched the first hour of the series and – surprise, surprise – found it “brisk, entertaining” and “compelling.” Why anyone would’ve expected less from series producer Joel Surnow (24) is beyond me, but there it is. The series still has no distribution deal, however, although the latest scuttlebutt has The Kennedys potentially landing on DirecTV – which, frankly, would be sad if that winds up being its only distribution venue. Meanwhile, new behind-the-scenes accounts of the controversy are emerging (see The New York Times), with fingers being pointed in many new directions.
Although I probably shouldn’t be surprised by all this, I still am. I’d always thought my colleague Joel had the magic touch, the ability to rise above Hollywood’s ongoing ideological blockade of projects veering even slightly from the Maoist line; alas, not even Joel seems able to pull off such a levitating act at the moment, due to the industry’s apparently fanatical devotion to the Kennedy clan.
And so I’d like to officially welcome Joel to the world of independent filmmaking and distribution – a world he has now joined like the rest of us, albeit unwillingly.
• Speaking of Joel, the big news today is that Kiefer Sutherland told Extra that the 24 movie will be “shooting hopefully by next December or January.” That’s big news, because there had been some concern over the length of time it was taking to complete the script on that one (and it’s apparently still being re-written). So for you 24 fans, Jack Bauer will indeed be back.
• There’s been a lot of casting news for the Clint Eastwood-J. Edgar Hoover pic. It looks like Charlize Theron is out, but Judi Dench, Josh Lucas, Arnie Hammer (late of The Social Network) and some other folks are likely in. ‘Arnie’ is such an old-school name, isn’t it? [CORRECTION: a reader points out that his name is actually ‘Armie,’ which is even more old-school.]
"Red Dawn" cast photo.
• A Red Dawn cast photo has leaked, which you can check out to the right. I want to urge Libertas readers NOT to forward this photo to Hu Jintao, however, because we’re all trying to ‘tone down our rhetoric’ these days. Right?
• Speaking of MGM releases, James Bond 23 finally has a release date – November 9th, 2012 – and Daniel Craig will be returning as Bond, with Sam Mendes directing. Directing a Bond film is no doubt great for Mendes, but is it good for the Bond series? Only time will tell. The current word is that Fox may distribute the film.
• Star Trek‘s Chris Pine talked recently about Moscow, the forthcoming Jack Ryan reboot he’s doing. I like Pine; he seems like a decent, regular guy – and his dad (Robert Pine), incidentally, is a fine character actor. I assume it’s no small challenge for the younger Pine to step into Shatner’s shoes and now Harrison Ford’s, but so far so good.
• It occurs to me that I never posted the Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon trailer. It’s actually quite good, and deserves to be part of a Cold War update. (Aside from the stuff you see in the trailer covering the ’69 moon landing, there’s also apparently a retro-U.S. vs. Russia space race element to the film’s storyline.) Check the trailer out below if you haven’t already – it’s fun.
• Peter Weir’s anti-Soviet epic The Way Back opens today, and you can read the LFM review of it here. Also, the film’s post-theatrical distribution rights just got bought up (a good sign) and both Weir and star Ed Harris have been doing a lot of media lately. (See Weir here, here, here and here and Ed Harris here).
January Jones in "X-Men: First Class."
• The forthcoming X-Men: First Class is set in the swinging, Cold War 60s, and a bunch of new cast photos just got leaked of that film – including of Mad Men‘s January Jones as Emma Frost. Yowza! Ms. Jones has been out doing interviews about her insanely sexed-up costumes for that film (see here and here) … but at least she had costumes in the film, as opposed to Jennifer Lawrence. Ms. Lawrence, formerly of the indie hit Winter’s Bone, recently described to Hollywood Reporter the process of having her nude body painted blue each day by seven female make-up artists, all in preparation for playing Mystique. Welcome to Hollywood, Jennifer! We’re all looking forward to seeing how that worked out. (Memo to James Cameron: have you looked into trademarking blue women?) Also: check out some new First Class interviews here and here.
Russian spy Anna Chapman.
• In other Cold War News & Notes: buzz is building for John Milius’ Homefront video game; new photos are out of Atlas Shrugged; Timur Bekmambetov’s Apollo 18 will now be released on April 22nd; and one of my favorite classic movie sites, Greenbriar Pictures Shows, did this great post recently on John Wayne’s Cold War anti-communist classic, Big Jim McLain (one of the inspirations for Hawaii Five-O, incidentally). The Duke wears some strikingly snazzy suits in that film while he’s fighting the Reds on The Big Island.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … our old friend Anna Chapman is back! Fox News is reporting today that the comely ex-Russian spy has landed a new Russian TV gig for herself, a series in which she unlocks the ‘hidden mysteries of the world’ – such as stigmata, and other bizarre skin phenomena! Maybe The History Channel can slip this show into the slot previously reserved for The Kennedys, as I’m sure Ms. Chapman’s series must certainly meet History’s ‘rigorous’ broadcast standards!
And that’s what’s happening today in The Cold War!
By Jason Apuzzo. Apparently Kevin Smith hasn’t gotten the message about how we’re all supposed to ‘tone down our political rhetoric’ in the wake of the Tucson shooting. Take a deep breath and check out the new teaser trailer for Red State above.
Since Smith is going forward with his forthcoming Red State debut at Sundance, I can only assume he didn’t catch President Obama’s recent speech in Tucson during which the President made the following remarks:
[A]t a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds …
We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.
The Red State trailer wallows in exceptionally ugly, inflammatory and hateful stereotypes at the worst possible moment. I hope Smith understands what he’s unleashing here. The sad thing is that he probably does, and doesn’t care.
[UPDATE: Red State is currently expected to have its distribution rights sold by Sunday night – the evening of its debut – for around $4 million. Meanwhile, Joel Surnow’s The Kennedys currently has no distributor whatsoever.]
By Jason Apuzzo. New clips went online recently over at Collider of Peter Weir’s forthcoming film, The Way Back. Currently in Oscar contention, The Way Back stars Colin Farrell and Ed Harris and tells the story of an escape of a small group of prisoners from a Soviet-Siberian gulag in 1940, and of their epic journey over thousands of miles to freedom.
The film starts its limited release on January 21st, and you can read Joe Bendel’s LFM review of it here. Peter Weir has also done recent interviews on the film here and here.
By Jason Apuzzo. “Well, the time has come to ask, is ‘dehumanization’ such a bad thing? Because good or bad, that’s what’s so. The whole world is becoming humanoid, creatures that look human but aren’t. The whole world, not just us. We’re just the most advanced country, so we’re getting there first. The whole world’s people are becoming mass-produced, programmed, numbered, insensate things useful only to produce and consume other mass-produced things, all of them unnecessary and useless as we are …”– Howard Beale, from Paddy Chayefsky’s Network (1976).
“What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life.” – Michel Foucault.
I thought I would take a little time out today from the usual run of events here at Libertas to review a favorite film of mine that for various reasons I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: George Lucas’ THX: 1138 from 1971. There is an excellent, new Blu-ray edition of the film available out there for you collectors right now, and I recommend it highly.
Future shock: from George Lucas' "THX: 1138."
THX: 1138 is probably best known as the film that started – and almost ended – George Lucas’ directing career. The film was based on a student short Lucas did at the USC Cinema School called “Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138:4EB” (the “EB” standing for “Earth Born”; THX-1138 was actually Lucas’ phone number at the time). That student short, incidentally, happens to be included in the Blu-ray edition, and is definitely worth watching. Around USC Cinema circles the short is something of a legend – in large part because it does everything a short is supposed to do: tell a powerful story quickly, visually, by ‘cutting to the chase’ as fast as possible. In fact, the original “Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138:4EB” is nothing but a chase, involving a lone future-worker’s escape from a totalitarian society.
The story of how “Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138:4EB” got translated into a feature is a long and complex one; suffice it to say the crucial players were Francis Coppola and his newly formed American Zoetrope Studios, plus the cabal of USC Cinema friends Lucas dragged up to the Bay Area with him (most notably Walter Murch), plus a few key executives at Warner Brothers like John Calley – who would later stab Lucas and Coppola in the back once the film was completed. And actually the fascinating, behind-the-scenes story of THX: 1138‘s creation is essentially the story of American Zoetrope itself – the fledgling dream of Francis Coppola to found a Bay Area filmmaking colony of independent artists, set up in opposition to the factory-mentality of Hollywood. Appropriately, the Blu-ray features a great documentary on the founding of American Zoetrope, and the role THX: 1138 played in that company’s rise and fall … and rise again.
Bad day at the office: Robert Duvall in "THX: 1138."
So what, then, is THX: 1138 about? The film focuses on a worker in a futuristic, dystopian, police-state underworld who begins to have a crisis of conscience about his meaningless life and the oppressive, stultifying world he lives in. He rebels – awkwardly at first (he stops taking his tranquilizers, makes illicit love to his roommate, etc.) – and then finally decides to escape.
And that’s really it – the entire film in a nutshell.
What makes THX: 1138 worthwhile and interesting as a film is the striking world Lucas creates out of what was a very modest budget at the time – exactly $777,777, to be precise (executive producer Coppola was superstitious about numbers). The key to the film’s arresting, futuristic ‘look’ – a look that now seems prescient – is what might be described as a Japanese minimalism, combined with a similarly Japanese emphasis on bold, static compositions and a simple color palette.
Lucas initially wanted to film THX: 1138 in Japan, for two reasons. First, Japan seemed at the time to be the most futuristic of countries with respect to its integration of technology into the normal flow of living. (It still seems to be that today.) Secondly, Lucas and Walter Murch (who edited and co-wrote the film) were into Japanese movies at the time – particularly those of Kurosawa and Ozu. They were fascinated by the ‘alien,’ non-Western quality of Japanese rituals – and the degree to which Japanese filmmakers made no effort to explain these rituals for non-Japanese audiences. This ‘alien’ quality was exactly what Lucas and Murch were looking for in order to depict a futuristic society in which individual identity was put in jeopardy.
One is tempted to think here of Marshall McLuhan, who around the time of THX was proposing that the whole world was becoming “orientalized,” and that in the future none of us would be able to retain his or her cultural identity – “not even the Orientals.”
Static compositions, featuring static people.
We begin the film with THX (played with subdued intensity by Robert Duvall) at work on an assembly line, helping to put together what basically look like droids. He’s having a tough time of it, though, not able to maintain his concentration or focus. Is he having psychological problems? We don’t yet know. In THX’s world, all emotions are suppressed through the compulsory use of drugs – drugs that resemble “soma” from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
An early crisis comes in the film when THX’s female roommate ‘LUH 3417’ (Maggie McOmie) stops taking her drugs, and secretly substitutes a placebo for THX’s normal tranquilizer. As THX’s sedative wears off, he finds himself experiencing emotions, doubts, even sexual desire. Chief among these emotions is anxiety, and his work at this point definitely begins to be affected.
Nothing he tries helps. THX goes home, for example, to watch TV – actually holograms. TV in the future, however, has basically been reduced to three different sorts of programming: 1) mindless, sadistic violence; 2) porn; 3) glib, meaningless ‘talk shows.’ Sound familiar?
Everything in THX’s world, incidentally, is impersonal and automated. For example, looking for solace, poor THX visits a kind of high-tech confessional booth which features a generic religious icon (known as “Ohm”) who mutters impersonal, pre-recorded platitudes. “My time is your time … blessings of the State, blessings of the Masses … work hard, and be happy.” THX vomits in one of the confessionals, so disgusted is he by what he hears. He goes home to masturbate (off-screen) – although he’s only able to do so with help of an automated machine. In Lucas’ future, all forms of private experience have been automated, regulated, rendered ‘technological.’
THX is eventually incarcerated for his ‘bad behavior,’ and dragged off to a white limbo prison – where he encounters a group of maladjusted freaks similar to the crowd Jack Nicholson encounters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. My favorite in this group is Donald Pleasence playing ‘SEN 5241’ – a cliché-spouting, bureaucratic functionary. Pleasence’s dialogue in this portion of the film is really delicious, filled with ridiculous platitudes and non-sequiturs. It’s actually some of the funniest stuff Lucas has ever written.
The ‘prison’ in this portion of the film has a Waiting for Godot/existentialist quality to it, in so far as there are no walls of any kind. In fact, THX’s big decision to ‘escape’ the prison consists merely in Duvall’s deciding to walk away into the unseen distance. That’s it. Lucas’ point here could not be clearer: most of the walls we experience in life are illusory, and self-created. Sometimes all we need do is walk away from what’s holding us back.
And, interestingly, most of the prisoners in THX’s white limbo prison are afraid to escape – even though nothing is physically holding them back. Eventually THX and SEN make their way out into limbo on their own, where they encounter ‘SRT’ (Don Pedro Colley), who is actually a hologram who’s managed to escape the underground world’s computer network. SRT reminds one here of the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz, or of C-3PO from Lucas’ later Star Wars. Even robots apparently need a little freedom, too.
A future in which love is forbidden.
THX eventually discovers LUH’s tragic fate, which has a little bit of a ‘Lot’s wife’ feel to it, and then an extended escape sequence begins through the city’s vast underground road network. THX is chased here by android police on motorcycles, and to this day I’ve never understood how Lucas got guys to drive that fast on motorcycles with faceplates on. Weird.
The robot police pursue THX up toward the surface, but – and this is one of the film’s more arch, ironic touches – the budget expenditure allotted to capture THX becomes too great, so the computers tell the robot cops to stand down! Beautiful. Those future dystopias are always running out of money, aren’t they?
We finish the film with an incredible shot that is best appreciated on Blu-ray. After spending the entire film underground, in artificial lighting, THX emerges onto the surface of the Earth in front of an enormous, orange, blazing sun – photographed with what must have been a 1000mm lens. It’s a striking scene that is repeated in 1977’s Star Wars, when Luke Skywalker gazes out on the twin setting suns of Tatooine, contemplating a future of adventure and freedom he doesn’t believe he’ll ever have. In THX’s case, he certainly does achieve his freedom – although the exact nature of that freedom, and of his future, remains unclear.
Thus ends THX: 1138. And now comes the $64 million question: on the whole, is the world of THX relevant to the world of today?
I think the answer must be: yes.
Are we currently living in a world in which the government is intruding into too many aspects of our daily lives – and using advanced technologies to pry into our privacy … even beneath our clothing? Of course we are. And why do we allow this? Because we’ve been brainwashed into believing that it’s necessary, and that a benevolent state apparatus has our best interests in mind.
I’m reminded here, among so many other things, of what is currently going on at our nation’s airports. All of us are now being scanned, X-rayed and disrobed at our airports if we commit the crime of wanting to fly. Book a flight to New York, for example, and you’re likely to find yourself stripped in public – or having your naked form recorded onto a government hard drive. (“Don’t worry – we’ll make sure it gets erased!”) And so a commercial flight can now turn into an exercise in exhibitionism, an opportunity to get scoped-out and humiliated by a government official – all for the crime of traveling.
But that’s not all. New devices are now being marketed that conduct psychometric exams of airline passengers, who are required to answer a battery of questions (to a computer) to determine whether they fit a pre-defined psychological ‘profile’ of someone wanting to blow-up an airplane. Our own Homeland Defense officials are apparently very interested in this technology. And why wouldn’t they be? (After all, perhaps they could even determine if someone might attend a Tea Party rally.)
As citizens and as customers, why do we put up with this? We do so because we’ve been brainwashed, made docile (and literally, in many cases, sedated with drugs), and ultimately because we want to put up with it. Because we’ve been sold the politically correct bill-of-goods that all ‘humanoids’ – whether they be Gramma Betsy from Kenosha, or 18-year old Ahmed from Lahore – are just as likely to blow up a plane as anyone else. Why? Because bureaucratically we’re all the same – just numbers in a system. And if you happen stand up and protest this madness, if you complain about ‘the system’ and its obvious inadequacies and dangers – you can expect to be accused of being a bad person. You’re not with the program! You’re ‘off your meds,’ ‘hateful,’ ‘paranoid’ and a danger to public safety.
This is the world we live in, and this is the world of THX. Indeed it’s altogether amazing – and unnerving – how almost everything about Lucas’ film seems appropriate today.
The experience of freedom.
A few final words about the Blu-ray itself: the image on this film is fantastic; also, Walter Murch did some of the most striking sound design work of his career on this film, and there are superb documentaries (”Master Sessions”) on the Blu-ray that cover that subject for the cinephiles out there.
One quibble I have with the film is its portrayal of sex in the future: namely, there is none. Lucas decided to go the Orwell/1984 route and predict a ’sexless’ future in which children are created primarily in test tubes. Needless to say, I don’t think a sexless future is on our horizon – at least here in the West. Sex is omnipresent and omnipotent today, so Lucas probably would’ve been shrewder to go with Aldous Huxley and Brave New World, or with Yevgeny Zamyatin and We, and predict an orgiastic/promiscuous future in which monogamy is forbidden and children are collectively raised ‘by a village.’ (Lucas otherwise seems to have borrowed the shaved heads and number-names from Zamyatin, or perhaps from Ayn Rand’s Anthem?) This orgiastic/group-sex/collective consciousness future seems much closer to where we’re headed, and the subject of sexual relations is the only area where THX: 1138 seems off-kilter.
THX: 1138 is a great experimental film, however, with a lively and sardonic sense of humor about our world. Underneath that humor, of course, is an authentic social critique of our society – as we march happily toward a future of conformism, sedation, docility and political correctness.
