[comics] Spiderman Bursts out of the Page — profile of Peter Parker, the Amazing Spiderman … ‘Realising the tremendous value tied up in old Marvel titles should have been easy. But the company managed to botch the job, selling the Spider-Man film rights to three different parties. Even now, argues Win Wiacek, the company is taking little advantage of the Spider-Man film hype to promote its comic books. Selling Spidey figures made in the Far East is more profitable in the short term. For Spider-Man, a successful future is more likely to be scripted in Hollywood than New York.’
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June 6, 2002
[film] That’s Militainment — a look at what Jerry Bruckheimer’s is currently up to… a new “Reality Soap” set in Afghanistan. ‘Interested to see just how highbrow Bruckheimer is prepared to go, I spin him a hypothetical scenario. Ingmar Bergman is on the phone. He’s making a new film about an old woman who suffers a crisis of faith at a remote cottage in Sweden. He wants Jerry to produce it. “I’d have a problem with that,” Bruckheimer admits. What, even if it starred Liv Ullmann?’
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June 3, 2002
[comics] Couple of articles about Comic Movies in the wake of the Spider-Man Film …
Angst in his Pants ‘As Ang Lee begins making his film of The Incredible Hulk, the hero of which is a personification of tormented male hostility, it seems inconceivable that twenty-first-century audiences would ever take to their hearts the kind of hero who soared through the clouds in Superman The Movie (1978). That picture looks now like a snapshot of innocent times every bit as nostalgic and obsolete as the images of gay abandon in the 1980 Village People musical Can’t Stop the Music. A Superman with that side parting, blemish-free morality and crisply chivalrous manner would be laughed off the screen today.’
How Superheroes took over the Cinema … ‘Last September changed the world. Even the escapist world of the comic book. Spider-Man the movie is replete with heartstopping scenes in which the superhero saves New Yorkers tumbling from burning or bombed skyscrapers, attacked by the flying Green Goblin, a one-man technologically enhanced al-Qaida. Haunting my pleasure in Raimi’s screen fantasies is the question: “Where was Spider-Man when New York really needed him? Why didn’t he, or some other superhero, intercept those madmen – or at least rescue their victims?”‘ [thanks Kabir]
[film] Soon to be a major motion picture — The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen … ‘Variety reported on February 20, 2002 that although Sean Connery has not yet signed the deal, he is in final negotiation for the key role of Allan Quatermain. Apparently, the storyline has been altered to include Dorian Gray and Tom Sawyer (the latter to generate more appeal in the American market). The $80 million project is said to begin shooting in the Czech Republic and Morocco in summer 2002.’ [via BenHammersley.com]
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May 27, 2002
[film] Biggie and Tupac — review of Nick Broomfield’s new Documentary … ‘If James Ellroy wrote a novel about gangster rap, it would be a lot like Biggie and Tupac, teeming with chancers and casualties and underpinned by the threat of death. “You knocking like you scared,” chuckles the bodyguard who opens his door to let Broomfield in. And yet his timid knocking pays dividends.’
[film] Dinomania — Review of Jurassic Park from Stephen Jay Gould in 1993 … ‘…the mantle of carnivorous heroism has clearly passed to the much smaller Velociraptor, Henry Fairfield Osborn’s Mongolian jewel. Downsizing and diversity are in; constrained hugeness has become a tragic flaw. Velociraptor is everything that modern corporate life values in a tough competitor—mean, lean, lithe, and intelligent. They hunt in packs, using a fine military technique of feinting by one beast in front, followed by attack from the side by a co-conspirator. In the film’s best moment of wry parody of its own inventions, the wonderfully stereotyped stiff-upper-lip-British-hunter Muldoon gets the center beast in his gun’s sight, only to realize too late that the side-hunting companion is a few inches from his head. He looks at the side beast, says “Clever girl” in a tone of true admiration (all of Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs are engineered to be female in another ultimately failed attempt to control their reproduction), and then gets gobbled to death.’ [via Robot Wisdom]
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[film] The Unlikely Pin-Up of the Cannes Festival — interview with Michael Moore … ‘The film includes sequences in which Moore investigates the civilian Michigan Militia, with which Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh trained, and a bank which offers free guns as an incentive to clients. He also interviews weapons-obsessed teenagers, including one who admits to manufacturing home-made napalm. Rock star Marilyn Manson, widely accused of being an influence on the Colombine killers, makes a lucid and pithy response to the charge. When asked by Moore what he would say to the Columbine Killers, he replies, “I wouldn’t say anything. I’d listen.”‘
[movies] Age Shall Wither Them — the Guardian on the twilight years of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis. ‘…they’re getting on a bit now. Stallone will be 56 this year, Schwarzenegger 55, whilst Willis clocks in at a mere 47. Think of it this way: Stallone has been a superstar since the Ford administration; and Schwarzenegger first started to make his mark in Hollywood in 1968.’
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‘Have you ever had a single moment’s thought about my responsibilities? Have you ever thought for a single solitary moment about my responsibilities to my employers? Has it ever occurred to you that I have agreed to look after the Overlook Hotel until May the first? Does it matter to you at all that the owners have placed their complete confidence and trust in me, and that I have signed a letter of agreement, a contract, in which I have accepted that responsibility? Do you have the slightest idea what a moral and ethical principle is, do you? Has it ever occurred to you what would happen to my future if I were to fail to live up to my responsibilities? Has it ever occurred to you? Has it?!’
[wtf?] ‘X-Files’ star takes ‘Confidential’ Role — David Duchovny as James Ellroy? … ‘Ellroy, a burly, eccentric man was 46 at the time he began investigating his mother’s murder, and on the surface, Duchovny makes for an odd match. “It’s odd to see someone who doesn’t resemble me physically in the least playing me,” Ellroy acknowledged to Variety.’ [Related: Brief extract from My Dark Places, Buy My Dark Places at Amazon, link via WEF]
[film] Great review of the 20th Anniversary edition of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial … ‘Watching it again is like getting a masterclass in American popular culture. Without ET there would be no Toy Stories, yet the Toy Stories with their hi-tech sheen can’t match the easy swing of Spielberg’s live-action storytelling. Without ET there would be no X Files, but Spielberg’s passionate idealism and faith in the power of love make the cramped, paranoid X Files look ridiculous. Without ET there would be no Harry Potter, but ET doesn’t have Harry’s glow of self-congratulation. In the strange and beautiful love story of ET lies the genesis of Douglas Coupland’s vision of Generation X: people in the west growing up in a secular, affectless society, yearning to feel rapture, and looking for love in the ruins of faith.’
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March 23, 2002
[film] Harry Knowles reviews Blade 2 … ‘I believe Guillermo Del Toro eats pussy better than any man alive. Watch his ‘HOUSE OF PAIN’ sequence in BLADE 2. BLADE 2 is the tongue, mouth, fingers and lips of a lover. The Audience is the clit. Watch your audience. This is where Guillermo Del Toro goes down on the audience. It starts with long licks with a nose bump on the joy button slowly. He smiles as he does this?’ [via Do You Feel Loved]
[quote] ‘In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone? …the Great Depression, passed the… Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered? …raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? The Laffer Curve. Anyone know what this says? It says that at this point on the revenue curve, you will get exactly the same amount of revenue as at this point. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-d-o-o economics. “Voodoo” economics.’ [Thanks Meg, Scally]
[film] The trouble with Harry — brief update on Harry Knowles… the “ultimate movie geek”. ‘…I don’t believe that their [Movie fan websites] opinions affect or alter the tastes of the moviegoing public. Far from it; most web geeks are so leadenly conservative that their opinions actually reflect and reinforce the lamest conventional tastes. “Fan”, after all, derives from “fanatic”, and fanaticism is rarely progressive, original or mould-breaking.’
[film] Salon looks at Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey … ‘…we see Bowman, now an old man, living out his old age like a zoo attraction in a feigned Louis XVI-style bedroom, assumedly created for him by the aliens. And then suddenly the creation theme continues as a giant fetus inexplicably rises over Earth. Although birthdays have noticeably been happening in the background all along (Poole, Floyd’s daughter), all bets are off as to the movie’s ultimate statement. At the film’s Hollywood premier in 1968, Rock Hudson walked out saying, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?”‘
[books] Excellent oldish interview with James Ellroy from 1995 … Ellroy on Oliver Stone’s JFK: ‘I was just enthralled for an hour and twenty minutes. Bravuro moviemaking, wonderfully layered and dense and jazzy, and then Donald Sutherland arrives to posit this preposterous theory, and it goes downhill from there. I think organized crime, exile factions, and renegade CIA killed Jack the Haircut. I think your most objective researchers do as well. When Oliver Stone diverged from that to take in the rest of the world (Lyndon Johnson, the Joint Chiefs of Staff), I lost interest. I went out and bought a copy of the video and I watch it right up until Donald Sutherland appears, then I turn it off.’ [via Book Notes]
[film] Oh, I can’t bear it. I really can’t bear it — Nicole Kidman talks about her fascination with The Shining … ‘In The Shining, Kubrick made these ostentatiously smooth camera movements – relatively new to audiences – into a motif for the film. The steadiness of the camera movements mixed with the grisly subject matter into a mood of unease, especially when juxtaposed with the odd, often emotionless speech. “Stanley would tell us he was not interested in naturalness,” Kidman recalls. “He was not interested in a sort of documentary style performance. He liked it to be slightly odd, slightly off.”‘
[film] The Conversation … ‘Harry is a surveillance genius for whom other people’s privacy is an obstacle to be overcome using equipment he builds himself. He is also a man suffering intensely from guilt: one of his previous assignments resulted in the death of an entire family. This revelation, as well as the film’s depiction of Harry’s Catholicism (we see him at confession, an analogue of the secular eavesdropping Harry practices), complicates his detachment from others by introducing the one element that functions as the “bug” Harry can neither disable nor escape: his own conscience.’ [Related: Conversation at IMDB]
[film] Look, Dad, Top of the World — William Leith interviews Kevin Spacey … ‘I can’t help looking closely at Spacey’s eyes, and his mouth, and his hands, just as I have not failed to notice the camp touches he often gives his characters – the fluttering eyelashes, the snootily tilted head, the catty remarks delivered out of the side of the mouth. Spacey’s characters, mostly highly intelligent weirdos and losers, all come from left field, and he renders these people, these creeps and oddities, with more sensitivity and feeling than any actor I can think of. Could anybody else raise a glimmer of sympathy after cutting off Gwyneth Paltrow’s head and putting it in a box?’
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[film] 100 Years, 100 Stinkers — the worst films of the last century … ‘There ought to be a law with mandatory prison time for any studio executive who ponders doing an eighth “Police Academy” film. The basic story of misfits who enroll in a big city police academy and make the force was beat beyond recognition through six numbing sequels. Steve Guttenberg had the good sense to jump ship after #4. Most audience members bailed out with him.’ [via plasticbag.org]
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January 29, 2002
[people] A couple of interesting articles from The Independent:
Don’t mess with the man in the leather skirt — profile of Russell Crowe … ‘I’d move to Los Angeles if Australia and New Zealand were swallowed up in a huge tidal wave. If there were a bubonic plague in England, and if the continent of Africa disappeared from some Martian attack. In Australia, they treat you like a piece of furniture. Your mates are your mates and the folks who hate your dark and bloody guts, they don’t change their minds. That’s why I love it, I suppose.”‘
Interview with Tony Benn … ‘Today, he is wearing House of Commons braces and an old shirt with little burn holes in it. “I burn holes in all my shirts and cardigans all the time. This is the trouble with being a pipe-smoker.” Overall, he has the look of a homely, crumpled, go-ahead vicar. I ask him if the Labour Party ever tried to tart him up, encouraged him to seek advice from a Colour Me Beautiful consultant. “No. And I think that they wouldn’t have succeeded. I’ve still got the coat I was given when I was demobilised in 1946.”‘
[film] Jack the Rip-Off — Iain Sinclair looks at the From Hell movie … ‘What Moore proposes, and what the film necessarily refutes, is the belief that the past is unknowable. ‘In all our efforts to describe the past, to list the simple facts of history,’ he wrote in his introduction to the From Hell scripts, ‘we are involved in fiction.’ There can be no anachronisms when time is a plural concept. Nobody knows, or will ever know, or should know, who Jack the Ripper was. Jack is. Sustained and incubated by tour guides, crocodiles of sombre or giggling pilgrims processing around the locations where the bodies were found, the Ripper lives on. An invisible earner. A waxwork vampire.’
[film] The Greatest Movie Stanley Kubrick Never Made — Salon on Kubrick’s unmade Napoleon biopic … ‘In the midst of preparing his adaptation of Stephen King’s novel “The Shining,” and noting the success of the large-scale miniseries “Roots,” Kubrick began investigating the possibility of turning his Napoleon project into a 20-hour television production, with Al Pacino in the lead role. He revealed his plans in an interview with French writer Michel Ciment. But Kubrick’s friend Senior believes the suggestion was probably nothing more than a joke. “My God,” Senior exclaimed in a recent interview, “can you imagine Stanley Kubrick actually doing a miniseries?”‘ [via Bitstream]
[movies] Are you having a good war, Ewen? … profile of Ewen Bremner. ‘In moments of panic, of which Black Hawk Down has plenty, Ewen Bremner’s brow folds into a deep and spectacular crease, which raises his eyebrows into his hairline, lifts his chin into his mouth, and seems to hollow out his already emaciated face. No, since you asked, he doesn’t look like a movie star. He is the first to admit it. Of his role in Pearl Harbor, in which he played a goofball with a speech impediment, he has remarked: “I’m just making Ben Affleck look good.”‘
You have a genius intellect and an awesome sense of humor. You can sarcastically put someone in their place without batting an eye. Your only problems seem to be that you have trouble acknowledging your true feelings and you may use your humor as a defense to hide what you are really feeling. But, your godliness overpowers any insignificant flaws you may have. Even if you tend to pass gas during very inconvenient moments.
“What kind of man are you anyways? I’m talking comics and you bring up chicks and romance.” — Brodie
[reviews] There were a few interesting articles in today’s Guardian…
You can’t diddle with the truth — another interview with Ridley Scott on his film Black Hawk Down. ‘The teams on the ground get lost under fire in Mogadishu’s narrow streets, as directions are relayed to them by the helicopters. “The Black Hawks are orbiting in a pattern, clockwise or anti-clockwise, and they can’t diverge from this or they will fly into each other.” This, in his view, “was the real juice of the film”, the place where plot enacted theme – theme being the complexities of intervention in a country like Somalia. “It was like a three-layer chess game.”‘
So lonely I could cry — Cameron Crowe writes about his film Vanilla Sky … ‘Within weeks of finishing this screenplay, there we were on Times Square, an early Sunday morning in November. Tom Cruise as David Aames was racing through the most famous geography on the globe. Utterly alone. Watching the shot as it happened on a video monitor, the whole world of Vanilla Sky was still ahead of us. Lonely. Scary. Promising. Inevitable.’
Interview with Adam Ant — ‘Anyone over 30 belongs to me. Bisexual, male, female, gay, whatever.’
Ageless, peerless, Douglas — update on Kirk Douglas … ‘I see Kirk Douglas still isn’t dead. Remarkably, he’s preparing his next movie, Smack in the Puss, a family affair starring his son Michael, with whom his relationship has always been fiercely competitive, and the next sprig on the dynastic tree, grandson Cameron. The man will never stop, it seems. These days, at 86, bowed and speech-impaired by strokes, and having collapsed again recently on the golf course, he still radiates that fanatical, spartacist determination to live life right into the last ditch, or at least the last water hazard.’
[thanks to whoever left their entire copy of the Guardian on the tube for me today]
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January 6, 2002
[film] Scott’s Corner — interview / profile of director Ridley Scott … ‘His mother died at the beginning of this year, aged 96, just before he started filming Black Hawk Down. He says, of course, it affected him, but not like his brother’s death, ‘Because – at 96 – you get into the preparation for the inevitability of the event – even though I was convinced she was going to last till she was 105, actually – she was really tough. I can’t even remember the last time she had a cold. And it was a very simple minor operation – and the operation was successful, but her heart gave up.’ There is just the slightest catch in his voice when he says this, which I imagine is the closest he ever comes to showing emotion. He once said, ‘As an Englishman, I’m aghast at emotional intensity’, and, despite all his years in California, he still hasn’t learnt the first elements of letting it all hang out.’ [Related:Black Hawk Down Trailer]
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December 20, 2001
[movies] A couple of distracting film trailers —
Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter [Low Bandwith | High Bandwidth] ‘The second coming is upon us, and Jesus has returned to earth. But before he can get down to the serious business of judging the living and the dead, he has to contend with an army of vampires that can walk in the daylight.’ [via I Love Everything via Kookymojo]
[comics] Moore and Hayter Talk About Watchmen — brief mention of discussion regarding a proposed Watchmen Film … Moore: ‘Watchmen was designed as a showcase of things that comics are capable of but aren’t so easy to achieve in any other medium. […] With a comic, you can take as much time as you want in absorbing that background detail, noticing little things that we might have planted there.You can also flip back a few pages relatively easily to see where a certain image connects with a line of dialogue from a few pages ago. But in a film, by the nature of the medium, you’re being dragged through it at 24 frames per second.’
[celebs] Cruise speaks out on Cruz — Tom Cruise on Penelope Cruz and Scientology… ‘The actor vigorously defended his religion, Scientology, which he said had kept him on the straight and narrow since he was 24 years old. “I started reading books on it and I thought “God, this makes sense’,” he said.’
Who is Xenu? …described as the core belief of Scientology by Operation Clambake. ‘Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.’
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December 3, 2001
[watching] True Romance … ‘Wanna see what Spiderman number one looks like?’
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November 26, 2001
[film] The Cold Shoulder — great interview with Thora Birch. ‘I fit in one more question before she signals it is time for me to go. I ask if movie acting feeds her soul. Somewhat chillingly, she answers, “They feed off each other.” I never get to meet her dad (‘He’s too busy’), nor do I get to use her lavatory (‘No, um. . . No. . . Our plumbing isn’t. . . it’s not good’). The urgency with which she wants me to go actually frightens me a little.’
[film] Great review of Apocalypse Now Redux… ‘What passion this film has – what mad daring, what ambition. And what have we got now? CGI. Apocalypse Now is supposed to be a film you grow out of. I can only say it’s time to grow back into it again.’
‘Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin’ all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin’ program.’
[reaction] Oliver Stone’s Chaos Theory — Stone discusses 911 and a film on terrorism…. ‘You show the Arab side and the American side in a chase film with a ‘French Connection’ urgency, where you track people by satellite, like in ‘Enemy of the State.’ My movie would have the C.I.A. guys and the F.B.I. guys, but they blow it. They’re a bunch of drunks from World War II who haven’t recovered from the disasters of the sixties?the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam. My movie would show the new heroes of security, the people who really get the job done, who know where the secrets are.” And who would that be? His eyes roamed, searching and sad. “I don’t know yet.”‘
[film] Hollywood’s hottest fifty-something — an interview with Terry Zwigoff … ‘This woman called me last week from New York. She said, “We’re doing an ad for Gap, and we want you to be in it.” I said, “To be in it? What do you mean? You want me to direct?” “No, we want you to be on the billboard, wearing Gap clothes. We’re doing this series of hip young film-makers.” I’m thinking, are they trying to make fun of me? Do they know what I look like? So I said, “I’m not young, I’m 53! I don’t wear a backwards baseball cap, I’ve got white hair on my arms! I’m about as unhip as they come!”‘
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November 12, 2001
[film] Shallow Hal — Salon previews the next Farrelly Brothers film … ‘Hal (Jack Black) is a pudgy, not overly good-looking guy who, after taking the advice of his dying dad, nevertheless thinks he’s entitled to the most gorgeous babes. He and his pal Mauricio (Jason Alexander) spend most of their time comparing notes on which women are most perfectly suited to enter their dazzling orbit. They succeed with virtually none of them, of course, and can’t accept what they have on the rare occasions when they do. (Mauricio rejects his knockout of a girlfriend because her second toe is longer than her big one — this from a man who tries to disguise his baldness with what looks like a yarmulke of iron shavings.)’
[comics] Jack The Ripper: From Hell … a Master Mason comments on From Hell — the film and comic. ‘As unlikely as it may seem, From Hell is not simply a product of Hollywood greed or opportunism. It is based on a remarkable “graphic novel,” of the same name, by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell. Graphic novels, a fairly new phenomenon, are pricey novel-length comics, most often published in quality paperback format and usually aimed at a teen or adult audience. From Hell, an engrossing retelling of the Jack the Ripper chronology, is possibly the most prominent graphic novel yet published. It weighs in at over 500 pages of a detailed story, with an additional 42 pages of notes and annotations, where Moore explains some of the more obscure details of Ripper history and gives reasons for choosing among the dozens of competing theories of who did what when. This is important to note because, despite the reputation of comic books for shallow plots and characters, From Hell, the graphic novel, is a multi-layered story that is more akin to the complex novels of Thomas Pynchon than to the simple comics of Walt Disney.’ [via I Love Everything]
[film] Go Ahead, Pinko Liberals, Make My Day … Guardian interview with John Milius. ‘The second world war has replaced the western as a morality play, as a venue where these things exist. The western is no longer the western; we’ve changed our attitude towards the Indians, the frontier, the open spaces. So the second world war is a much better place to say, “Here’s what you should measure up to be.” It’s no longer Shane. It’s Sergeant Rock.’
[comics] Girls’ World — excellent interview with Dan Clowes about Ghost World … ‘”I once had this idea to do a comic where a mother tattoos a message on her baby’s head so that years later, when he’s losing his hair, he finally sees it. It would say something like, ‘I never loved you’.” Clowes lets out a bright, engaging laugh, so contagious it’s hard not to laugh along with him, until you realise exactly what it is he’s just said.’ [via Kooky Mojo]
[paul is dead] The Fool on the Hill … Did Paul McCartney expose himself on the Magical Mystery Tour film? ‘The zoom view clearly shows the left coat tail billowing up. There does seem to be a fairly clear image of his penis extending out from under it and pointing to his right at a slightly upward angle. The coloring really adds to the impression: the shaft is darker toned than the head which would be consistent with the coloring of the shaft and head (glans) of a penis. (Yes, unlike most British men, Paul is circumsized.)’ [Related:Paul is Dead, link via Robot Wisdom]
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[film] Typhoons, binges… then a heart attack — interview with Martin Sheen about Apocalypse Now … ‘The shoot is, of course, a cinematic legend. It was regarded as such a year before the movie was even released. Typhoons destroyed several huge sets. Sheen had a heart attack, aged only 36. Brando – obese, overpaid – was rumoured in the press to have been difficult and self- indulgent, though no one on set thought so.”Marlon wasn’t difficult at all,” Sheen says. “Never. The only problem we had was the image, his presence, but he’d just dismiss it. He treated everyone the same – Francis, me, the guys on the crew. Also, out of all of us, I think he’d spent the most time in the third world. So he was more aware of the fact that the world’s not made up of first-class service and over-privileged people. I was in awe, because for my generation of actors there were only two guys, Marlon and [James] Dean. And for Dean there was only one – Marlon.”‘
[film] O Brothers, Thou Art Cinematic Gold Dust — Sunday Times profile of Joel and Ethan Cohen … ‘Pranksterism has always been a feature of Coen productions. In the days of Blood Simple they invented a crusty old English film editor called Roderick Jaynes, who blasted the production before dropping out of sight. The awful Jaynes cropped up again for Barton Fink and Fargo, lambasting the “inept” scripts and “silliness” of the camera work before vanishing again. His name, nevertheless, appeared prominently on the credits, and for Fargo he was nominated for an Oscar. The Coens persuaded Albert Finney to dress up and attend the awards ceremony in disguise, but his cover was blown by the trade paper Variety and the academy huffily withdrew its nomination.’
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October 22, 2001
[movies] Return of the Legend — brief interview with Nick Broomfield about the documentary he is currently working on… ‘Broomfield is an undisputed success at marketing his own image, even down to starring in self-parodic adverts for cars. And he’s loaded: an English country pile; a place in Santa Monica. What’s interesting is how he divides opinion. Depending on who you talk to among those who really know him – producers, co-producers, commissioning editors, journalists, film-makers and friends – he’s an innovator, a shark, a genius, a fraud, a legend or a has-been; people love him or hate him. The work is brilliant or boring, revealing or repetitious, always fresh or endlessly formulaic. They all have to agree, however, that a Nick Broomfield film is hard to ignore.’
[film] Terry Zwigoff: ‘Every guy wants a teenage girlfriend’ — facinating interview with the director of Ghost World. ‘…Ghost World’s Seymour has a horrid mom. What’s Zwigoff’s like? Until now, Zwigoff’s sails have been full of wind. Now they collapse. Mrs Zwigoff, it turns out, was “very critical, very negative, everything I was wildly passionate about she had no interest in whatsoever”. She didn’t get to see Ghost World (“she died, luckily”). She did, however, get to see Crumb, at its world premiere at the New York Film Festival. When the lights came up, she turned to Zwigoff’s cousin, Sherwin, and said, “So, are you still awake?” I tell him she sounds hilarious. He shakes his head morosely. “She was a very depressed person.”‘
[film] Interesting review of From Hell from the New York Press:‘…despite its surface slickness and baldfaced artistic pretensions, this is an angry, empathetic movie. It’s genuinely interested in the lives of the poor, and righteously angry at the rich ruling class that has used the poor as servants, whores, entertainers and guard dogs since civilization began. The second half spirals into a bizarre conspiracy that turns history into a slanderous comic book, then delivers an intelligent, downbeat, provocative ending that’s sure to alienate most viewers, and finishes up by reminding us that nothing we just saw can be taken at face value because it’s all the memory of an absinthe-pickled opium addict.’
[movies] The first trailer for Ocean’s Eleven is up … ‘Dapper Danny Ocean (GEORGE CLOONEY) is a man of action. Less than 24 hours into his parole from a New Jersey penitentiary, the wry, charismatic thief is already rolling out his next plan. Following three rules — don’t hurt anybody, don’t steal from anyone who doesn’t deserve it, and play the game like you’ve got nothing to lose — Danny orchestrates the most sophisticated, elaborate casino heist in history.’ [via Ghost in the Machine]
