Archive for June, 2011
Retrospecting Jeff Bridges And Cutter’s Way At The BFI
Thursday, June 30th, 2011The Big Gamble Of Larry Crowne: 1990s Stars In Warm Milk
Thursday, June 30th, 2011Stuart Staples On Tindersticks’ Music For Claire Denis’ Films
Thursday, June 30th, 2011SOCIAL NETWORK BIG WINNER AT 12TH ANNUAL GOLDEN TRAILER AWARDS
Thursday, June 30th, 2011GTA12 Jury Friends “The Social Network” With Three Wins AND “Best in Show”
June 30, 2011 (Los Angeles, CA)—Last night,“The Social Network” came away from the 12th Annual Golden Trailer Awards with three wins in major categories and the coveted top honor, Best in Show. It is the first time a trailer has accomplished this feat since “The Matrix” in 1999, the year the awards show debuted. After carrying away the trophies for Best Drama, Best Music (which gauges the creative use of music in a promo reel) and Most Original—Sony Pictures’ “The Social Network” trailer nabbed the top honor, Best in Show.
Notes Golden Trailer Awards Executive Director, Evelyn Brady-Watters,“The trailer for ‘The Social Network’ lures you into the drama of the movie without any of the usual selling points in a trailer — its famous writer, or even the name of its famous subject—but you come away knowing exactly why you want to buy a ticket. We congratulate Sony Pictures and trailer house Mark Woollen and Associates.”
The Awards listed below were presented at the Music Box Theatre in Los Angeles, in a ceremony marked by outrageous comedy. The night was hosted by comedian Natasha Leggero, with presenters including Upright Citizen’s Brigade’s Jon Daly (also head-writer), comedian Darren Carter (“Chelsea Lately”), voice-over actor Jim Cummings (named a “Disney Legend” in 2010), actors Clancy Brown (“Highlander”) and Patrick Fabian (“Big Love”) and teen heartthrob Dylan Minette (2010 nominee for Young Artist Award for “Let Me In”). Renowned comedians Brian Huskey, Joe Wengart, Neil Campbell and Duncan Trussell also performed. The complete list of awards in 62 categories is available on http://www.goldentrailer.com
JetBlue, Porsche and Variety top the list of this year’s sponsors, with additional support from Steiner Studios, National CineMedia, The Darling Agency, Rok!t, PRG, Position Music, Firstcom, and Dailytrailer.com.
ABOUT THE GOLDEN TRAILER AWARDS
Now in its twelfth year, the Golden Trailer Awards show celebrates the art and fun of movie promotion. Golden Trailer Awards are recognized internationally as the top honors in the field, and are followed both by industry professionals and by movie-trailer lovers across the globe. The Golden Trailer Awards organization was founded in 1999 by Executive Director Evelyn Brady-Watters and Executive Producer Monica Brady. This coming December, The Golden Trailer Awards will hold their first international ceremony in Mumbai, India.
THE TWELFTH ANNUAL GOLDEN TRAILER AWARDS
Presented at the Music Box Theatre, Los Angeles, June 29th 2011
Hosted by Natasha Leggero
Show Categories:
Best Action
Inception “Control”, Warner Bros., BLT:AV
Best Animation/Family
Rango “Teaser”, Paramount Pictures, The Ant Farm
Best Comedy
The Other Guys “Return to Glory”, Columbia, Seismic Productions
Best Documentary
The Tillman Story “Trailer 1”, The Weinstein Company/ A&E Indie Films, Zealot Productions Inc.
Best Drama
The Social Network “Trailer #2”, Sony Pictures, Mark Woollen & Associates
Best Horror
The Last Exorcism, Lionsgate, Mojo
Best Independent
Tree of Life, Fox Searchlight, Mark Woollen & Associates
Best Music
The Social Network “Trailer 2”, Sony Pictures, Mark Woollen & Associates
Best Romance
Blue Valentine “Trailer 1”, The Weinstein Company, Zealot Productions Inc
Best Thriller
Black Swan, Fox Searchlight, Mark Woollen & Associates
Best Video Game Trailer
Starcraft II “Prepare”, Blizzard Entertainment, Mojo
The Don LaFontaine Award for Best Voice Over
Born To Be Wild “Evolution”, Warner Bros. Pictures, Mob Scene Creative + Productions
Golden Fleece
Burlesque “Make A Star”, Screen Gems, Seismic Productions
Most Original Trailer
The Social Network “Trailer #2”, Sony Pictures, Mark Woollen & Associates
Summer 2011 Blockbuster Trailer
Transformers: Dark of the Moon “Alien Secret”, Paramount Pictures, Wild Card
Trashiest Trailer
Hobo With A Shotgun “Red Band”, Magnet, AV Squad
Best In Show
The Social Network “Trailer #2”, Sony Pictures, Mark Woollen & Associate
# # #
Coppola Twixting ComicCon
Thursday, June 30th, 2011The Little Things
Thursday, June 30th, 2011The folks at the Apple Store have been pleasant and helpful and generous about my loosely held rage about the 9 day, 6-roundtrip repair of my 27″ desktop that started with a simple broken DVD drive. I thank them and I am ready to have my computer back, thanks.
No one is dead or even ill. I have not been unable to communicate on the blog, though admittedly, every part of it is harder (except the license to write less that I have afforded myself in light of the hardship.).
But man… after the first couple of novel days trying to create systems to push content in the site using just the iPhone and iPad, it’s been really hard. It’s like having a nagging cold or a broken toe. You just want to be at zero so you can start fighting the normal hassles more comfortably.
Somehow, at least in the moment, a severed limb seems less of an obstacle than a loose end that has no knot in sight.
It’s an odd element of human nature. Or at least mine.
A character on Treme was quoted as having said, “I’m too blessed to be stressed.” He was quoted at his memorial after having been shot in the head in a random act of violence.
Still, he was right. Wasn’t he?
Cinemascope Roundtables Tree Of Life With Peranson, Franey, Charity, Sicinski, Koehler, Möller And More
Thursday, June 30th, 2011SUNDANCE INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES DOCUMENTARY FILMS TO RECEIVE $575,000 IN GRANTS
Thursday, June 30th, 2011For Immediate Release
June 30, 2011
Grants will Support 29 Documentary Projects, Filmmakers in 9 Countries
Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute today announced the 29 feature-length documentary films selected to receive a total of $575,000 in Documentary Film Program (DFP) grants for the Spring 2011 round. The DFP received applications for grants from 650 filmmakers in 80 countries, and submissions were judged on their approach to storytelling, artistic treatment and innovation, subject relevance and potential for social engagement.
Filmmakers selected are working in 9 countries and represent a broad range of experience, including Academy Award-winning documentarians Roger Ross Williams and Frieda Lee Mock as well as first-time feature documentary filmmakers. Documentary subjects include the first Islam-inspired superheroes, a matchmaker for HIV-positive couples in India, the journey of a school bus from America to Guatemala, a courageous human rights lawyer fighting for justice in her native Democratic Republic of Congo, an exploration of Wonder Woman and the evolution of heroic women in popular culture, and Parisian street artist JR, who believes the streets are “the largest art gallery in the world.”
In addition to receiving financial support, these filmmakers are eligible for year-round creative support from Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, including Creative Labs, Work-in-Progress screenings, and documentary activity at the Sundance Creative Producing Summit and Sundance Film Festival.
“Sundance Institute realizes that independent filmmakers often need a combination of financial resources and artistic support to bring their projects to completion,” said Keri Putnam, executive director of Sundance Institute. “Our commitment to documentary films and filmmakers has been a central component of our Mission since our founding, and these grants will further support the field.”
“The power of documentary storytelling continues to advance across the globe, and the DFP is working with artists year-round,” said Cara Mertes, director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program. “Artists and audiences increasingly understand the connective power of exemplary storytelling that expresses contemporary reality in creative and compelling ways.”
The Sundance Institute Documentary Fund is a core activity of Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program, which provides year-round creative support to nonfiction filmmakers globally. Proposals are accepted twice a year. Sundance Institute considers projects in the Development, Production/Post-Production and Audience Engagement phases. The film selection is juried by creative film professionals and human rights experts. The online application and postmark deadline for the 2011 fall round is July 7, 2011. Please visit www.sundance.org/documentary for more information.
DEVELOPMENT
Documentary projects in the development stage that will receive grants are:
Anita – Speaking Truth to Power
Freida Lee Mock (U.S.)
An African-American woman, Anita Hill, charges Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas with sexual harassment in explosive Senate hearings – bringing sexual politics into the national consciousness and fueling 20 years of international debate on the issues.
Border Town (working title)
Bill Ross and Turner Ross (U.S.)
Border Town (working title) will be a cinematic exploration of the realities of the modern frontier. Filmed in and around the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas, it is a document of the iconic Rio Grande region and the daily struggles of its people.
How to Survive a Plague
David France (U.S.)
The surprising and unknown story of an improbable group of mostly HIV-positive men and women who changed HIV from being thought of as a death sentence, and made medical and historic breakthroughs in the process. A story about AIDS survival, not death.
Inside Out
Alastair Siddons (France/U.K.)
French artist JR wins the TED Prize 2011. He gives his prize (a wish) and his art back to the people, creating a global participatory art project inviting people to stand up for what they care about through the power of their own image. From Tunisia to the Bronx, Lisbon to Iran, the film follows individuals and communities pasting their portraits in the streets. Now they don’t just see art, they make it.
The List
Kirsten Kelly and Anne de Mare (U.S.)
No one expects the homecoming queen to be homeless, but at a local high school on Chicago’s west side, she is. And none of her classmates know it. How do you survive as a teenager with no home and no adult support? A group of surprising homeless youth struggle to build a future in the city they call home.
The Message
Avi Lewis (U.S./Canada)
In her new book, Naomi Klein reveals that climate change is more than an issue: it’s a message, one that is telling us that many of our most cherished ideas about our place in the world – the quest for endless economic growth, the assumption of western supremacy, and the human dominance of nature – are no longer viable.
One Bullet (working title)
Carol Dysinger (U.S.)
As part two of Carol Dysinger’s Nation Building trilogy, One Bullet concerns the rule of law.
Who is Dayani Cristal?
Marc Silver (U.K./Mexico)
In a fusion of drama and documentary, made in collaboration with actor Gael García Bernal, this hybrid film follows one man’s journey from his home in Honduras to the border between Mexico and the United States, where he meets his death while attempting to cross into the U.S. An investigation uncovers a tale of family and faith, discovered by tracing his body’s only identifying feature; a tattoo reading ‘Dayani Cristal.’
PRODUCTION / POST-PRODUCTION
Projects in production or post-production that will receive grants are:
Betting the Farm
Cecily Pingree and Jason Mann (U.S.)
In a desperate attempt to save their farms, a group of Maine farmers launch a new, organic milk company. Will their gamble rescue them – and with them an entire way of life – or will it leave them worse off than when they started?
La Camioneta
Mark Kendall (U.S.)
In this lyrical film, an out-of-service American school bus travels 3,000 miles with its new owner to Guatemala, where it is repaired, renamed, re-equipped and reborn.
Democrats
Camilla Nielsson (Denmark)
Democrats is a film about the creation of a new constitution in Zimbabwe. The film follows two top politicians, who have been appointed to lead the country through the reform process. The two men are political opponents, but united in the ambition to make history by giving the nation a new founding document, that can give birth to the future Zimbabwe.
Free Angela
Shola Lynch (U.S.)
The film explores the story of Angela Davis and the high stakes crime, political movement, and trial in the seventies that catapulted the striking 26-year-old UCLA philosophy professor into a lasting international political icon.
God Loves Uganda
Roger Ross Williams (U.S.)
In a journey that spans two continents, director Roger Ross Williams, inspired by his own roots in the African American Baptist church, explores the nature of belief – in America, where congregants search for spiritual meaning, and in Uganda, where American missionaries and Ugandan evangelicals struggle for the hearts and souls of a people facing dire poverty and tumultuous social change.
The History of the Universe as Told by Wonder Woman
Kristy Guevara-Flanagan (U.S.)
This film tracks the evolution of heroic women in pop culture from the comic book superheroines of the 1940s, to TV action chicks of the 60s and 70s and big screen blockbusters of today. Wonder Woman’s unique story provides telling examples in this tale of gender and power.
Herman’s House
Angad Bhalla (Canada/U.S.)
Herman’s House captures the remarkable creative journey and friendship of Herman Wallace, who was imprisoned in a 6-by-9-foot cell for over 30 years, and artist Jackie Sumell while examining the injustice of prolonged solitary confinement.
I Dream the Always
Kirsten Johnson (U.S.)
The all-seeing eye of a U.S. military surveillance blimp floats over Kabul, looking down at a one-eyed boy haunted by his loss and a clear-eyed girl staking out her future.
Justice for Sale (working title)
Ilse van Velzen and Femke van Velzen (The Netherlands)
A young, courageous Congolese human rights lawyer refuses to accept that justice is indeed “For Sale” in her country. She fights to end impunity in the Democratic Republic of Congo at great personal risk and against all odds.
Magic Words
Mercedes Moncada Rodriguez (Nicaragua)
Mercedes Moncada returns to her native land to explore memory and identity in a poetic documentary feature.
Match + : Love in the Time of HIV
Ann S. Kim and Priya Giri Desai (U.S.)
In India – where marriage is a must, but AIDS is an unspeakable disease – can you find love and companionship if you’re HIV positive?
Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People
Thomas Allen Harris (U.S.)
This film explores the role of photography, since its rudimentary beginnings in the 1840s, in shaping the identity, aspirations, and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present.
Town of Runners
Jerry Rothwell (U.K.)
Four young Ethiopians try to emulate their local athletic heroes, as they move from school track to national competition and from childhood to adulthood.
Wham! Bam! Islam!
Isaac Solotaroff (U.S.)
Naif Al-Mutawa is on a mission to create THE 99 – the first Islam-inspired superheroes with their own comic books, theme parks and animation series. Conceived with the intention of countering political and religious extremism, THE 99 now find themselves at the center of a debate over shifting definitions of the sacred and the secular that calls THE 99′s future into question.
When I Walk
Jason DaSilva (U.S.)
When I Walk is a poignant meditation about a talented filmmaker’s journey after being diagnosed with a degenerative nerve disease (multiple sclerosis) at 25 years old.
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
A grant to further engage audiences will be awarded to:
Camp Victory: Afghanistan
Carol Dysinger (U.S.)
How do National Guard soldiers turn illiterate Afghans into an army? U.S. policy becomes a tangled, trying, alternately funny and tragic reality in this riveting documentary about an unlikely friendship. The Audience Engagement grant award will support significant outreach to stakeholders in both the U.S. and Afghanistan.
Last Train Home
Lixin Fan (China)
Every spring, China’s cities are in chaos as 130 million migrant workers form the world’s largest human migration. As they journey to their home villages, they reveal a country caught between its rural past and industrial future. Last Train Home will be the first independent feature documentary to be government approved as a theatrical release throughout China. This grant will support that release.
We Still Live Here — Âs Nutayuneân
Anne Makepeace (U.S.)
Spurred on by their indomitable linguist Jessie Little Doe Baird, the Wampanoag Indians of Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard are reviving their long-dead language, marking the first time a language has been revived in a Native American community that had no speakers for many generations. The We Still Live Here Engagement Campaign partners with Cultural Survival and Native American language programs working to create fluent speakers.
DOCUMENTARY FILM INITIATIVE IN CHINA
A Clear Sky
Harhuu (Linping, Hu) (China)
Xilin Gol grassland in Inner-Mongolia is one of few natural grasslands with high-quality pasture in China. When a rich coalfield is discovered under the ground of this beautifully natural scene, the nomadic herdsmen reluctantly migrate into the cities and wave farewell to their grassland. The water levels lower, plants die, and only sandstorms remain on the prairie.
Patriotism, 90
Du Hai-Bin (China)
Patriotism, 90 looks at the recent wave of patriotism among Chinese teenagers. The film raises questions about what nation and patriotism mean to young Chinese citizens.
Weaving
Wang Yang (China)
In Xi’an, China, a weaving factory built in 1953 is soon to be demolished by the local authority. In search of forgotten family memories during the Cultural Revolution, a historian returns to his childhood factory hometown. Digging deeper into this locations past, he finds his own family secrets begin to unravel.
The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program is made possible by generous support from the Cinereach Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Charles Engelhard Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney Foundation, the Skoll Foundation, the Woodruff Charitable Memorial Trust, and the Wallace Global Fund.
Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program
The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program provides year-round support to nonfiction filmmakers worldwide. The program advances innovative nonfiction storytelling about a broad range of contemporary social issues, and promotes the exhibition of documentary films to audiences. Through the Sundance Documentary Fund, the Documentary Edit and Story Laboratory, Composers + Documentary Laboratory, Creative Producing Lab, as well as the Sundance Film Festival, the Sundance Creative Producing Summit and a variety of partnerships and international initiatives, the program provides a unique, global resource for contemporary independent documentary film. www.sundance.org/documentary
Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute is a global nonprofit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981. Through its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, composers and playwrights, the Institute seeks to discover and support independent film and theatre artists from the United States and around the world, and to introduce audiences to their new work. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to inform, inspire, and unite diverse populations around the globe. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Son of Babylon, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, I Am My Own Wife, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America. www.sundance.org
# # #
Rudin Shifts Shingle To Sony
Thursday, June 30th, 2011Review: Terri
Thursday, June 30th, 2011Note: This review ran earlier this year during Sundance. I’m re-running it today because Terri opens in limited release. Go see it. It’s great.
Terri, the latest effort by Azazel Jacobs (Momma’s Man) is everything a coming-of-age story should be: it’s honest, it’s real, it’s completely unpretentious, and it utterly lacks any whiff of the preciousness that so often permeates indie films that feel as if they were made with the specific goal of getting into Sundance.
(more…)
A Sad Telling Of Life Of Edith Fellows, 88, “Wholesomely Disagreeable Sprite” As Child Actress, Loner As 4’10″ Oldster, “Teethed On Phoneys, Don’t Miss ‘Em”
Thursday, June 30th, 2011Director Of Sarah Palin Doc Sez He’s Going To Add “All Sorts Of Violence” To His Film, Including “Facebook And Twitter” “Crucifixions, Lynching And Suicides”
Thursday, June 30th, 2011Transformers Sock Box Opening Day Record: $37.3 Million Including Midnight Shows
Thursday, June 30th, 2011“On the small screen, promoting Larry Crowne, Hanks is relaxed, worldly, sophisticated and charming. But in the film itself, he is strained, unconvincing, infantile and silly.”
Thursday, June 30th, 2011Magyar Filmunió, Agency Promoting Hungarian Cinema Abroad, Suspended
Thursday, June 30th, 2011Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic. Kiss Me Deadly
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
“Kiss Me Deadly” (Four Stars)
U.S.: Robert Aldrich, 1955 (Criterion Collection)
Something went dark and sour and more than a little crazy in American culture in the post-World War 2 era. And more than a little of it comes bubbling up like hell-froth in Robert Aldrich‘s and A. I. Bezzerides’ hard-boiled, high-style masterpiece Kiss Me Deadly.
One of the great film noirs of the 50s, this gut-grabbing, hellbent movie — almost as visually baroque as an Orson Welles thriller and mean as a pair of brass knuckles cracking a jaw — takes Mickey Spillane’s ferocious detective thriller and twists it inside out. Aldrich’s show, in an amazing piece of narrative subversion, turns Spillane’s ultra-tough but justice-minded private eye, Mike Hammer into a brutal, greedy gun-toting lecher with the morals of a pimp and the ethics of a swindler, while transforming Spillane’s hard-edged, dirty-minded, right-wing mystery novel into a stylish, taut, left-wing investigation of some of the sleazier sides of American pop culture and the underworld.
Kiss Me Deadly is about urban America at its seediest and most dangerous. It’s about the atomic age, and corruption, and misogyny, and boxing, and crummy divorce work, and phony psychiatrists, and gangsters and gunsels, and murderers who seem to get away with it. It’s about prowling around L. A. in the kind of wheels Randy Newman was born to ride. (Los Angeles from Bunker Hill to Hollywood to Santa Monica).
And it’s just about as cinematically inventive and inky-noir as a 1955 Eisenhower era movie thriller can get. Watch it and you’re descending into a Great American Nighmare — beginning with that first breathless night-on-the-highway view of a blonde beautiful mental institution escapee (Cloris Leachman as Christina) racing down the road, breathing hard, nude under a raincoat, flagging down Hammer’s sports car by standing right in its path. (In the book, Spillane goes farther: according to Hammer, Christina opens up her coat and “uses her whole body” to thumb the ride.)
SPOILER ALERT
The jittery, screw-loose feel of that wild opener continues through the movie‘s bizarre backward rolling credits, unscrolling like Star Wars‘ opening crawl, but with all the words and names dropping down from the top in reverse order, while Christina cries and Nat King Cole purrs the Frank DeVol ballad “Rather Have the Blues.” 106 breathless minutes later, “Deadly, Kiss Me” ends with another woman opening up a Pandora‘s box in a beach house, and hell finally catching up with the movie‘s unsavory crew.
END OF SPOILER
There are several constants through all this: sex and death and money and classic black-and-white photography. Both these women (one good, one evil) want Hammer — though Christina subjects him to a scathing personal critique in the car. Upshot: He’s good at sex, bad at love, just like ‘50s America. Hammer has also been stripped of his good-vigilante rationale in this film. But he’s still the same brutal guy who, at the end of Spillane‘s first novel I, the Jury, blasted a femme fatale with his smoking rod, and when his dying victim asked him why, answered “It was easy.”
All the women seem to want Hammer, especially his faithful Girl Friday and sometime divorce case bed-bait Velda, played by Maxine Cooper. And all the bad men want him shit-beaten-out-of or dead, including Albert Dekker as the suave villain Dr. G. E. Soberin, Paul Stewart as the smooth gangster Carl Evello, and those two memorably ratlike torpedoes Sugar Smallhouse and Charlie Max (played with maximum evil by Jack Lambert and Jack Elam).
Did I mention there were tough cops? Not genial Ward Bond-tough or sullen Barton MacLane-tough, like the coppers in Huston and Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, but a lean and fashionable-tough fuzz: Hammer’s dour antagonist Lt. Pat Murphy, played by Wesley Addy, without a qualm. Thre are also some pals and bystanders: Nick Dennis‘s Nick, an explosive auto mechanic who should never trust a jack (or a Jack), Fortunio Bonanova (the opera coach of Citizen Kane) as an opera buff whose classical 78s were made to be broken (or hammered), Juano Hernandez (who was also the great old man who wanted to talk in The Pawnbroker) as Eddie Yeager, a vulnerable fight manager, and Percy Helton as Doc Kennedy, a sleazy little police mortician who peddles corpse access.
What a rotten world. What a rotten city. What a mostly rotten, but strangely familiar crew. In the books, Hammer‘s sadism and cruelty are justified because he’s dealing with scum: killers, dealers, tramps and Commies, people who (in Hammer‘s world view) deserve what he gives them. (“It was easy.”) But, if Spillane hated the movie, scriptwriter Bezzerides hated the book, and he deliberately threw most of it away.
It’s an archetypal story anyway, with all those icy private eye thriller routines Spillane was lifting (and coarsening) from Hammett and Chandler, with the setting switched in the film from Spillane’s trashy New York City to Aldrich’s (and Chandler’s) slick, bright L. A., and with the movie’s maguffin altered from dope to dangerous atomic stuff. Aldrich shot it all in something of the style of those revolutionary 1941 film classics, Kane and The Maltese Falcon, while also giving it the bright, hard mean look of a ‘50s Phil Karlson or a Don Siegel — with stark views of 1955 L. A., in the areas where the people from Sunset Blvd. don’t go, down the mean streets Philip Marlowe prowled in a slightly earlier time.
That’s one reason intense movie buffs love Kiss Me Deadly — because it’s both familiar (comfortingly so, even though we’re in a city of psychopaths) and startling (those angles, that modern art, that answer-phone, that classical music, that stalker with the knife, that boxful of hellfire). Aldrich was a left-winger — he’d been assistant director for a first-class progressive Hollywood directorial gallery that included Chaplin, Milestone, Max Ophuls, Robert Rossen and Abe Polonsky — but he was also from a very rich, very well-connected family: the “Nelson Aldrich” side of Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (who was Bob’s first cousin).
Aldrich, or “Le Gros Bob” as his French admirers called him, never lost his politics. But in a way, he never lost his privileged roots either — which is why he understands Hammer’s money-grubbing mercenary heart, and probably why he gives this divorce detective such a spiffy apartment. (Catch Philip Marlowe in digs like that!) It‘s good that Aldrich had the immigrant Greek leftie Bezzerides for a scriptwriter, and also good that they were adapting a book that, however conservative its politics, was what proletarians everywhere were reading. (It was 1955, and in that year’s Oscar-winning Best Picture Marty, Ernest Borgnine’s more literary pal keeps insisting “That Mickey Spillane: He sure can write!”)
It’s easy to see why the American mass audience — and Spillane himself — didn’t like Deadly Kiss Me. They didn’t like Aldrich‘s Mike Hammer. They didn’t like the story, told upside down. It took the French to see the whole picture.
And though Kiss Me Deadly may not have played well in Des Moines or Houston or Tallahassee — in Paris, the movie caught on like a Hitchocko-Hawksian wildfire. Future New Wave filmmaker Claude Chabrol gave it a rave, and the rest of the Cahiers du Cinema “Holy Family” (Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Rivette), and fellow French buffs as well, canonized Aldrich. His other 1954-1956 movies, the pre-Leone Westerns Apache and Vera Cruz, the scalding Clifford Odets Hollywood expose The Big Knife, the blistering war movie Attack! and the Joan Crawford soap-opera-noir Autumn Leaves, all helped his case too: smart, stylish, subversive, visually socko genre pieces with lots of spin on the ball.
But Kiss Me Deadly is the show that still seems Aldrich’s chef d’oeuvre, and one of the great ‘50s American movies. The cinematography (Ernest Laszlo) breathes noir. Aldrich‘s great editor Michael Luciano cuts it like a dream. DeVol’s music jazzes it up. The mood and the angles keep reminding you of Welles and Huston, but Aldrich is less a romantic than Welles, more of a cynic about life and politics and movies than Huston. He was also working with Bezzerides, a great noir screen writer (On Dangerous Ground). If Aldrich never made a better film noir, except maybe Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, he’d already swept the table with Kiss Me Deadly.
A word about Ralph Meeker, who’s far from meek: the Mike Hammer of your worst nightmare. Every good actor has at least one good run, and for Meeker, it was the early ’50s. He took over (successfully) from Brando as Stanley Kowalski in the original Broadway “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He starred in William Inge’s “Picnic” (in William Holden‘s movie role, in a stage cast that included Janice Rule, Kim Stanley, Paul Newman, understudy Joanne Woodward, Eileen Heckart and Arthur O’Connell). He made an Anthony Mann-Jimmy Stewart Western (the best one, The Naked Spur). And he played Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly, and played him with only one ounce of sentimentality, when Mike learns of Nick‘s death.
It’s an oddly selfless performance. Meeker, who later specialized in character heavies, is playing a babe magnet, a bully and an egomaniac, not to mention one of the most then-famous fictional characters on the planet, and he does nothing, nothing, to make us like Hammer — except maybe to rescue Velda and to look numbed and sorry when Nick is killed. Yet the character makes complete sense, especially since Aldrich and Bezzerides slot him as a fancy-dressing divorce detective rather than a Marlowe-type private eye.
Meeker’s Hammer is not unredeemed. He does save Velda, and he would have saved Nick if he could have — and he’s probably even sorry he broke that 78 of Trivago’s. (“Beautiful record” he says as he leaves.) But we can tell within minutes of Christina getting in Hammer’s car, that Alrdrich and Bezzerides don‘t like him. And neither do we, if we have an ounce of sentiment.
Why did the French love Aldrich? (It was a mystery to Spillane.) Aldrich is a great filmmaker partly because he has lots of guts and he has this absolutely compelling story-telling ability, and he gets among the punchiest visuals of any director. When he made Kiss Me Deadly, he was a young man on a hot streak: 1954’s Apache and Vera Cruz had been big hits. (Check out Vera Cruz, just out on MGM Blu-ray; it still plays strong.) Aldrich’s other 1955 film, The Big Knife, would win the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
In Kiss Me Deadly, the 36-year-old Aldrich, sensing his new power (and force) seems to be giving the movie everything he’s got: daring it all, and maybe counting on Spillane’s and Hammer’s popularity to pull him through any rough spots. They didn’t at first. But like all directors who make a classic movie that isn’t initially appreciated or understood, Aldrich won in the long haul.
Hard-boiled. High style. That’s noir. And Kiss Me Deadly is quintessential noir — though “quintessential“ is a word Spillane probably would have hated, just as he disliked the punctuation the “Kiss Me” publisher gave his title. The Mick wanted his book to be called “Kiss Me, Deadly” (you can catch the subtler inflection), but the publisher messed it up. The book has been corrected, apparently, but the movie will probably be Kiss Me Deadly forever. And it will forever be what Spillane also didn’t want, a left wing art film, admired all over the world by the kind of people who love movies and disliked his books.
What a world! One pictures Spillane looking at Aldrich and Bezzerides in the hell or heaven (or the Bunker Hill) where they all now reside, and saying, angrily:“ How could you do this to me? How could you guys screw up my book and pull a switcheroo like that?” And one can imagine Aldrich — or Bezzerides — looking right back at him and answering: “It was easy.”
Extras: Commentary by film noir experts Alain Silver and James Ursini; Video tribute by Alex Cox; Excerpts from 2005 documentary The Long haul of A. I. Bezzerides, with Bezzerides interviews; New version of Max Allan Collins’ 1998 documentary Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, with lengthy Spillane interview; Video pieces on Bunker Hill and other locations; Original theatrical ending (the Criterion print has the restored original ending, as intended by Aldrich); trailer: booklet with essays by Aldrich and j. hoberman.
Review: Green
Thursday, June 30th, 2011Every now and again, a film or filmmaker pops onto my radar because a publicist drops me a line and says “Hey, would you check this out? I think you might like it.” Such was the case with Sophia Takal’s Green, which I likely already would have seen if I’d gone to SXSW, where it premiered; since I didn’t make it down to Austin this year, though, I missed catching Green until now. And if you’ve missed it too, you’ll want to check it out if it comes your way, because while it has its flaws, Green is a surprisingly good feature debut from this young director.
(more…)
