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For the Love of Movies at Telluride

Now it can be told. A work-in-progress screening of Gerald Peary and Amy Geller's film criticism doc, For the Love of Movies, unspools in the Rockies this afternoon--2 p.m. mountain time--at the Telluride Film Festival.

For the first time ever, a documentary celebrates film critics. It dramatizes how, for a hundred years (1907-2007), practically the history of American movies, they have championed this medium they so unabashedly love. In surveying the voices and faces and personalities behind the bylines, we recognize the immense value of critics as advocates for films of artistic integrity, and original vision, and social relevance. They are a too-rare oppositional force to the conglomerate power of advertisers, who push audiences to escapist mass entertainment. And where independent and foreign films are concerned, critics are, perhaps, even more important, their reviews essential to bringing an audience to these films.

They're still looking for completion funds, so consider making a donation, won't you?

Ring ring ring ha ha hey

For years the cinetrix has averred that she wanted nothing more than the Vertigo theme as her ringtone. So soothingly circular. But a strong case could also be made for Nino Roti's jaunty rumba for La Saraghina.

What would you pick?

Sidebar

A little background: The cinetrix has somehow managed to get on any number of publicists' e-mail lists over the years. They taunt her with invites to press screenings in distant cities and send out nary a screener. Clearly, I am going about this all wrong.

That said, I thought I'd mention the Angelika's new blog, announced in an e-mail sent only yesterday in the hopes I might do just that, because I think they're missing out on a real opportunity by not turning their recurring "Who's @ the Angelika" feature--a man-on-the-street-style Q&A with various random patrons--into a shaky, handheld video feature smacking of Greengrass. Imagine! Blog readers far away can vicariously experience what it's like to be in the theater when the subway goes by and gets things rattling. They could call it Subway Series.

Yeah, I'm full of good ideas this morning.

Doldrums

You know it's going to be a good morning when an ancient artifact is slipped over the transom as you sleep. Case in point, this short film [somehow calling it a video seems crass] by two of my favorite Hermenauts: Boston Phoenix film critics A.S. Hamrah and Chris Fujiwara. [My other favorite Hermenaut, Josh Glenn, may be found here.]

Back soon.

When I was Bourne for the seventh time

As the closing credits began to scroll up the screen, the cinetrix quickly scrambled to her feet. There was not a moment to lose. Striding briskly up the aisle, she surveyed the slow-moving crowd as she elbowed her way to the exit.

Entering the lobby choked with moviegoers, her pace quickened. A split-second's hesitation could be fatal. Reaching the stairs to the second floor, she took them two at a time, turned the corner at the top, and made for a door. Would she be too late?

The din of the crowd grew distant as the bathroom door closed behind her. Success! There was no line, but plenty of full-bladdered female patrons were closing in behind her. Suckers. She smiled at the growing line of women as she left minutes later and made her way back to the lobby below.

It was still clotted with people, so the cinetrix suggested to the 'Fesser and Aaaaron that they use the door beyond concessions dimly promising "Exit." Together they spilled out into the humid August night behind the theater. Surrounded by fire escapes and construction detritus, they gingerly picked their way toward paved-over Palmer Street, glancing at the glass walkway connecting the third floors of the Coop buildings above them, checking the alley door behind Aveda, monitoring the hungry hopeful diners outside the Border Cafe on the corner of Church Street. No one had noticed or followed them. Moments later, they merged with the crowds of pedestrians milling around Harvard Square.

Annnnnd scene!

You'll forgive the potboiler prose, I hope, but since the cinetrix saw The Bourne Ultimatum on opening night she's become convinced that the sinister genius of the Damon/Greengrass flicks is not the action--which is awesome, yes--but the way in which they transform the quotidian aspects of our lives into something filled with threat and foreboding. Commuting becomes much more exciting if you imagine the train station is crawling with assassins. Reading is fundamental: When you're battling a bad guy even a book can be a weapon. And of course that innocuous-looking building in midtown is actually spook central. The suits filtering in and out couldn't possibly be as generic as they seem.

A similar well-founded suspicion of the ordinary propels Hot Fuzz, which the cinetrix and her pal Peter caught up with on the day of its DVD release. In his way, super detective Nicolas Angel is as scary capable as Jason Bourne, which is why his higher-ups [Steve Coogan! Bill Nighy!] decide to bump him down to charming backwater Sandford--he's making them look bad.

Once in the Agatha Christie-quaint village, Angel is paired with bumbling Danny Butterman, who takes as gospel truth just the sort of Point Break bombast that Angel and Bourne rebuke. What Angel and Bourne know, and Danny comes to appreciate over time, is that when the shit goes down--and with a cutesy burg like Sandford it's only a matter of time--balletic bricolage beats the bad guys' oversized armory every time.

Which is not to say that either film is immune to the sort of bad bon mots upon which David Caruso rebuilt his career. I'll leave you with two:

Noah Vosen: [in car, on cell phone] Perhaps we can arrange a meet.
Jason Bourne: Where are you now?
Noah Vosen: I'm sitting in my office.
Jason Bourne: I doubt that.
Noah Vosen: Why would you doubt that?
Jason Bourne: If you were in your office right now we'd be having this conversation face-to-face.
[Bourne hangs up]

Danny Butterman: Where's the trolley-boy?
Nicholas Angel: In the freezer.
Danny Butterman: Did you say "cool off?"
Nicholas Angel: No, I didn't say anything...
Danny Butterman: Shame.
Nicholas Angel: Well, there was the part that you missed where I distracted him with the cuddle monkey, then I said "Playtime's over," and I hit him in the head with the peace lily.
Danny Butterman: You're off the fuckin' chain!

Indeed.

Working class heroes

Earlier this month the cinetrix treated herself to a Cantabridgian double bill: Once at the Harvard Square followed by the doc Punk's Not Dead at the Brattle.

Part of the fun of finally catching up with an NPR pet like Once toward the end of the summer is the array of trailers attached to it. Hollywood is gearing up for fall seriousness, and they know you, indie watcher, are ready to go there with them.

The first three flicks I'd categorize as "Apocalypse Pretty Soon": the "Oh, shit! They poisoned LA!" paranoid stylings of Right at Your Door; Leo Di Caprio softening the blow of the scary enviro shit in The Eleventh Hour; and the more homespun trials and tribulations of The Real Dirt on Farmer John.

Then Julie Taymor tries to tell you "All You Need Is Love," but watching the one recognizable face in the Across the Universe trailer--Evan Rachel Wood's--makes me think of her "fucking" Marilyn Manson in that video while it rains blood and, well, it's back to "We're all gonna die!"

The best reaction to Goya's Ghosts is to avert one's eyes. So.

At last we arrive on the back of a train speeding through the Indian countryside. Thank God. Wes Anderson's not likely to tell us we're all gonna die. Life is a series of tableaux vivant set against wonderfully color-coordinated mise-en-scenes. Oh, yeah, and guys shaving. What's up with that? Anderson himself doesn't seem like he could grow a beard on a bet. Grad students: Get out there and write up something clever about shaving, castration anxiety, and arrested masculinity in the Anderson oeuvre, won't you?

But I meant to talk about Once. With its shaky, handheld camerawork; earnest, unfamiliar cast; and drifting, occasionally solipsistic storyline, Once resembles an Emerald Isle entry in the latest, well-documented stateside DIY movement. Call it O'Mumblecore. So much to answer for. But it's not. Not really.

For one thing, the lead characters, cutely called Guy and Girl, are not slacking post-collegians. Not only can they carry a tune, Guy works at his dad's shop and immigrant Girl picks up odd jobs to pay for the apartment she shares with her--gasp--mother and--double gasp--young child. All Hannah has to do is take the stairs. Guy and Girl live in C. Day-Lewis territory.

The Girl meets the Guy on the street while he's busking. She asks him to play his own stuff. He refuses--until they slip into a music shop where the proprietor lets her play the pianos. They make music together. He fixes her Hoover. She writes some lyrics to music he's written, gliding down streets wearing headphones and singing--like a refugee not from the Czech Republic but from the films of Jacques Demy.

Throughout Once, the crowded conditions in each of their flats keep driving the Girl and Guy outside, through the tourists in Temple Bar to the shops and quays and quieter neighborhood streets and finally into the studio, backed by some other street musicians. They make beautiful music together. They gambol on the shore. There's a misunderstanding. A bit of resignation. And the film ends--just stops--shrouded in ambiguity. Like a mumblecore flick, sure, but these two get a fookin' lot more done in a day. It's lovely.

Punk's Not Dead, the doc's title promises. But already, the apostrophe should have put you on notice that this film's version of history may be tidier than the movement it attempts to chronicle. And it does look good: there are "Never Mind the Bollocks"-style intertitles underscored with the scratchy sound of a needle reaching the end of a 45. Some amateur performance footage so raw you can feel the salt in the sweat sting your eyes. But the bulk of the archival still photos shown are familiar enough the cinetrix could have assembled them from Google given an afternoon.

The music selection is impeccable; the talking heads not so much. Often a track is playing--say the Rezillos "In a Rut"--but you get no actual Rezillos. Which is not to say all the hoary old punks are disappointing. Far from it. The cinetrix is ready to follow smirking bon mot machine Captain Sensible straight into another movie, one more worthy of pronouncements like "They're all as sober as bloody judges, and that's the tragedy." "Punks were hippies with teeth." Even "Punk should be appalling. Disgraceful."

Which probably rules out it being sponsored by Target, as the Warped Tour now is. Or sold in Hot Topic. The filmmakers have the good sense to exclude mall "punk "Avril Lavigne, but they devote plenty of time to her husband, Sum 41's Deryck Whibley. DIY platitudes coming from a guy who covered his tats in Hugo Boss to marry a pop princess? How fucking punk rock.

Which brings me back to those intertitles. Each one is garnished with a well-chosen lyric from a punk classic. But, ultimately, all they do is indicate the filmmakers' excellent taste in music. There's absolutely no connective tissue between title and text. Yeah, there are some great interviews with a bunch of old guys who are still out there doing it, and a bunch of young guys doing something like it but on a much more lucrative scale, and too much fuckin' Rollins, but there's no argument. In a documentary on punk, that's a pretty appalling oversight. One never gets any true sense of structure or a stand being taken. Is the Warped Tour cool, or is it just biting punk's style? What about the U.K. Subs? And were there really only four female punks--and Kelly Osborne--willing to be interviewed? Not a single fuckin' Go-Go even?

Are the kids alright? Got me, and the documentary never says, but you can buy a tee shirt saying Punk's Not Dead on the flick's Web site.

Rat in me kitchen

Not even a minute into Ratatouille the other night, the cinetrix was staring at the screen in gobsmacked disbelief and pawing through her bag for a notebook and a pen. Still stunned, she scribbled one word in the darkness: Goodfellas.

It may seem like a stretch to liken Pixar's culinary rodent to anything in Scorsese's flick, but stay with me here. The shot that got me was a freeze frame of Remy the rat sailing through a shattering glass window clutching a copy of his hero Auguste Gusteau's Anyone Can Cook. Then his voiceover kicks in. No, he doesn't announce, "My whole life I wanted to be a gangster." Remy wants to be a chef. However, the Pixar kids do deftly lift the mob flick's flashback framing device, voiceovers, and occasional freeze frames to tell Remy's scrabbling story of leaving his provincial colony and rising to the heights of Parisian haute cuisine.

Even given such savory bona fides, it took the cinetrix a while to shake the skeeved feeling of watching the adventures of--you know--a rat, no matter how plucky and personable. But once he's hidden, tucked under the hapless Linguini's towering toque, Remy gets cooking, turning around the failing fortunes of Gusteau's once-famed restaurant on the strength of a savory soup.

I could sense the 'Fesser grinning giddily in the dark next to me as the camera moved lovingly past the saucier's station, hovered over various mise-en-place, and lingered to admire the knife work of the lone female chef, Colette, who arrives at work each day with her case tucked smartly under her arm. [The cinetrix admits to being a little in love with Colette, mostly because she wears clogs. But I digress....] No longer can we scoff at the animators' cushy-sounding apprenticeship alongside Thomas Keller and research trips to Taillevent. This is some of the most convincing cooking ever seen on screen.

The same attention to detail also extends into the dining room, which makes the cinetrix suspect that there's the makings of quite a parlor game if you can recognize the animated patrons. And, of course, the copper pots gleam and the water glistens and you can almost smell the tarragon and taste the chardonnay--yay, algorithims!

But, days later, I'd say Ratatouille's most astonishing achievement is twofold. First, the film cleverly animates the Proustian experience of biting into a lovingly prepared dish. It tastes overwhelmingly of home and childhood and individual flavors swirl on screen like escapees from Ken Nordine's color wheel.

Second, and perhaps more impressive, Ratatouille turns the rogues' gallery of felons and malcontents behind the Michelin stars--whom Tony Bourdain celebrated in all their hard-R splendor in Kitchen Confidential--into a genial G-rated gang. OK, they stopped short of creating action figures for Horst et al., which is a pity. One can, however, pick up a plush Anton Ego doll. Imagine the thrill of tucking your child in at night clutching a critic!

Incidentally, that's all the cinetrix has to say about Ego: She'd would like to think she's smart enough not to trip a baited trap.

Hello, my life, I said

Yeah, yeah. I'm back. Sit tight while I slip into something more presentable, won't you?

Split screen

Can you say "T-M-I?" Camille Paglia overshares in Salon:

When I saw Bergman's "Persona" at its first release in New York in 1967, I felt that it was the electrifying summation of everything I had ever pondered about Western gender and identity. The title of my doctoral dissertation and first book, "Sexual Personae," was an explicit homage to Bergman. On a British lecture tour for the National Film Theatre in 1999, I asked to sleep with "Persona" -- whose five reels, like holy icons, rested in two silver cans next to my bed.

Should I even ask what your sleepover cinema candidate might be? Or do I risk not respecting you in the morning?

Coming attractions

The cinetrix has seen many many movies over the past two weeks. The trick has been finding the time to sit my ass down and figure out what to say. I'm working on it.

In the meantime, have you been listening to Slate's Spoiler Specials? Dana Stevens drops the f-bomb while discussing Sunshine. Good stuff.