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If you admire genius

Like the cinetrix, Ed Koch has been making time for the movies* over the holidays. First up, Hizzoner adds a Morrow-stizz "You Are There" gloss to Mike Nichol's latest.

Charlie Wilson's War
This terrific movie about Charlie Wilson, a Democratic Congressman from Texas with whom I served in Congress, is authentic in tone, wit and wisdom. Tom Hanks, who portrays Wilson, truly captures his persona and physical mannerisms. The film doesn't mention it, but Charlie had a very painful back condition which caused him to move as if walking on eggs. Hanks got it just right.

The story focuses on the effort to drive the Soviet Army out of Afghanistan. The moving force in Charlie's social life in the 1980s was a Houston socialite, Joanna Herring (Julia Roberts), who focused his attention on Afghanistan. I left Congress in 1977 when I was elected mayor and didn't know that Charlie was responsible for getting the U.S. to provide funds to the Afghan mujahedeen who were using weapons supplied by the U.S. and available as far back as World War I. The script states that Charlie, who increased the U.S. support of the mujahedeen from five million to one billion, effectively won the war that drove the USSR out of Afghanistan. I have no doubt that he was capable of doing it. The new weapons supplied and purchased by U.S. dollars authorized by Congress at the request of Charlie Wilson on the Foreign Operations Committee made it possible for the mujahedeen with the U.S. Stinger to shoot down dozens of Soviet helicopters and fixed wing planes, and other updated weaponry destroyed the Soviet tanks.

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the C.I.A. operative, Gust Avrakotos. I don't know the operative, so I can't pass judgment on how accurately he is portrayed, but the character presented is an interesting one and the acting is excellent.

Two incidents that I recall involving Charlie Wilson when he and I served in the Congress together:

We were on a junket in Israel where he was inspecting the Israeli Navy. He became involved with a female Israeli Naval officer assigned to our party. The Israeli Navy did not approve and reassigned her. Charlie was beside himself with anger. I went to a government official and said, "You are dealing with Israel's most important non-Jewish friend in the Congress. If you make him angry, that could change. I urge you to return that naval officer to our party." And they did.

Many Senators and Congress members run to the chamber at the last minute to vote on an issue. If they haven't served on the committee sponsoring the bill or listened to the debates on the issue, they often look to another member who is on the floor of the chambers whose judgment they trust on how to vote. On one occasion when I arrived at the last moment, I looked to Charlie, who gave me the thumbs up indicating that I should vote "yes," which I did. Fortunately, other friends of mine noticed my vote on the board and said to me, "Wrong vote. Change it." I learned that I had voted to give billions of dollars in subsidies to oil companies. I quickly changed my vote to "no," and said to Charlie, "How could you do this to me?" He laughed and said, "Ed, you can trust me on anything but oil."

Everyone loved Charlie, warts and all. He invited me to speak at a fundraiser for him in Texas, which I was happy to do. At his request, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who rarely traveled to do speaking gigs, spoke at a dinner in my honor in Manhattan.

This movie will make you feel good. Go see it.

Next up, Koch comes late to the Burton oeuvre, invokes Brecht, and reveals a weakness for Depp and Spall.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
A masterpiece by Tim Burton. I never saw any of his previous films, because I always imagined them to be cartoons in one form or another which I would not enjoy watching. How foolish and gauche of me. Burton is an extraordinary artist and director, and this film is terrific. Equally superb is the performance of Johnny Depp, whose films I never miss.** I don't like his politics, but I sure do admire his talents as an actor. His costar is Helena Bonham Carter as the meat pie maker, Mrs. Lovett, a role made famous by Angela Lansbury on Broadway in 1979.

For those not familiar with the story, Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp) is a London barber. He is married to Lucy (Laura Michelle Kelly), and they have a daughter, Johanna (Jayne Wisener). Todd is wrongfully accused of a crime and banished to Australia by Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who is attracted to Todd's wife Lucy. Todd, who escapes from prison and returns to London 15 years later with a sailor, Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower), searches for his wife and child. He seeks revenge by slashing the throats of customers and waits for Judge Turpin to come in for a shave. Hope, in love with Johanna, later finds her in an insane asylum, having been placed there by the judge. Enough said.

I saw "Sweeney Todd" on Broadway in 1979 starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury in the role of Mrs. Lovett, and it was breathtaking. She made the story her story. The music and lyrics are by Stephen Sondheim. It was a glorious folk opera comparable to the "Beggar’s Opera" by Bertolt Brecht which I had seen starring Lotte Lenya when it opened on Christopher Street in the Village. I saw another production of the "Beggar's Opera" a few years later and walked out because the voices, so important in a musical and an opera, were terrible. In the film "Sweeney Todd," all of the actors, including Depp, who is not known for his singing voice and has never sung in a movie as far as I know, perform their numbers superbly and their acting is excellent, especially Depp's whose facial movements conveying emotions are brilliant.

Do be warned. This is a gory movie and not for the fainthearted. But if you admire genius, hurry to the theater to see this picture.

Oh, I just remembered. The role of Judge Turpin's assistant, Beadle Bamford, is played by Timothy Spall. It is a cameo role that nearly steals the movie. Spall plays it as though he were doing a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in acting style. It alone is worth the price of admission.

*Reviews of which TK as soon as my travel itinerary allows.

**So which is it, Ed? Either you never miss a Depp film or you've never seen a Burton flick, but you can't claim both.

Red ryder

Perhaps one of these years the cinetrix will live-blog the A Christmas Story marathon [take that, Groundhog Day!], but not this time.

Happy holidays to all of you mysterious folks out there who persist in coming back here time and again. May your days be merry and bright.

Pregnant pause

The cinetrix would like to point out that in this year of cinematic unplanned pregnancies carried to term, there was at least one abortion. She refers to the "movie" Shoot 'em Up, which she and the 'Fesser took in at the two-buck theater solely so we could gaze upon Clive Owen on a screen bigger than that of our television.

What a misogynistic, cynical exercise--a terrible mutant creature composed of adolescent male fantasies of power and the last forty minutes of Hard Boiled [which my world cinema students had warned me about] with a little bit of the baby-snatching plot from Heroic Trio thrown in. It's such a mess that it seems only fitting not to recap it but to share my impressions in an equally haphazard fashion.

• Is this what happened when Clive Owen lost out the Bond role to Daniel Craig? [The end credits rip off the Bond aesthetic more cravenly than Stephen Chow ever did.]
• Wow, somebody must have some naaaaasty photos of Paul Giamatti. This is his Boat Trip. "Fuck me, sideways" indeed.
• OK, the gun battle between parachutists is pretty cool.
• Monica Belluci plays a lactating hooker. Please don't make me say that again. Ever.

And that's more than enough energy expended on that.

The cinetrix blames Cate Blanchett for our movie mistep. See, at the same second-run-ish house the week before we'd seen Elizabeth: The Golden Age, an eye-candy confection featuring Owen as the roguish cherry on top. Mostly a series of overhead shots of swirly gowns in acid colors that probably had Sofia Coppola writhing in jealousy, Elizabeth is, as advertised, primarily a wonderful platform for Blanchett's acting chops.

But the plot concerns itself not just with the Spanish Armada and the tactical advantages of her royal highness's official virginity, but also with Elizabeth's behind-the-scenes sexual jealousy. She can't have the dashing Sir Walter Raleigh [Owen in a turn that rivals young Sean Connery for twinkling sex-on-a-stick allure] herself, so she sends her favorite lady-in-waiting, Bess, after him, then gets into a snit when the girl gets knocked up. Blanchett's pouting rivals that of her half-sister, Mary, Queen of Scots [the always creepy Samantha Morton], whenever she thinks of her bastard, Protestant sister sitting on what should be her throne.

So much to do about parturition. Which reminds me: In between our theatre jaunts we finally watched Knocked Up. Yeah, it's better than Superbad, but it's also much meaner than The 40-Year-Old Virgin. And of course it's misogynistic--it was made by men in Hollywood.

But a classic? I'd argue that Knocked Up is best understood as the back story explaining how all those unpleasant, bickering hot wife-schlub husband sitcom couples got together in the first place. And that's why Judd Apatow is being hailed as a genius. He takes television-grade actors and launches them as successful movie stars by giving them a plot and dialogue that hangs together for at least 90 minutes, which is something Lorne Michaels hasn't managed in decades. Think about it: Will Farrell, Steve Carrell, Michael Cera... Christ, Katherine Heigl's mom is played by Joanna Kerns.

I rest my case.

School of fish

The final installment in Pullquote's week-long look at David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish:

Bob's Big Boy

I used to go to Bob's Big Boy restaurant just about every day from the mid-seventies until the early eighties. I'd have a milk shake and sit and think.

There's a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milk shake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner.

Go fish

Here's another fish tale from David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish:

Sound

Sometimes you hear a piece of music, and it marries to a scene in the script. When I'm shooting, I will often play that piece of music in the headphones while listening to the dialogue. Hearing the music is just a verification that things are going the right way--for instance, the right pace or lighting. It's just another tool to ensure that you're following that original idea and being true to it. So it's a good thing if you've got some music up front to play to see if the scene works.

Sound is so important to the feel of a film. To get the right presence for a room, the right feel from the outside, or the right-sounding dialogue is like playing a musical instrument. You have to do a lot of experimenting to get that just right. It usually happens after the film is cut. But I'm always trying to gather what I call "fire wood." So I have piles of things I can go to and see if they'll work. You just have to pop one sound in, and you realize right away, Oh, that is not working

MPAA Censors Taxi to the Dark Side

The hypocrites at MPAA are at it again, this time saying that the one-sheet for Alex Gibney's documentary Taxi to the Dark Side [click the title to read my May 07 review] is unacceptable because it depicts torture. Um, folks? What's unacceptable is torture itself and suppressing documentation of it.

Here's a big excerpt from the story in Variety:

The MPAA has rejected the one-sheet for Alex Gibney's documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side," which traces the pattern of torture practice from Afghanistan's Bagram prison to Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay.

ThinkFilm opens the pic, which is on the Oscar shortlist of 15 docs, on Jan. 11.

The image in question is a news photo of two U.S. soldiers walking away from the camera with a hooded detainee between them.

An MPAA spokesman said: "We treat all films the same. Ads will be seen by all audiences, including children. If the advertising is not suitable for all audiences it will not be approved by the advertising administration."

According to ThinkFilm distribution prexy Mark Urman, the reason given by the Motion Picture Assn. of America for rejecting the poster is the image of the hood, which the MPAA deemed unacceptable in the context of such horror films as "Saw" and "Hostel." "To think that this is not apples and oranges is outrageous," he said. "The change renders the art illogical, without any power or meaning."

The MPAA also rejected the one-sheet for Roadside Attractions' 2006 film "The Road to Guantanamo," which featured a hooded prisoner hanging from his handcuffed wrists. At the time, according to Howard Cohen, co-president of Roadside Attractions, the reason given was that the burlap bag over the prisoner's head depicted torture, which was not appropriate for children to see.

"Not permitting us to use an image of a hooded man that comes from a documentary photograph is censorship, pure and simple," said producer, writer and director Gibney. "Intentional or not, the MPAA's disapproval of the poster is a political act, undermining legitimate criticism of the Bush administration. I agree that the image is offensive; it's also real."

<snip>

The "Taxi" ad art is actually an amalgam of two pictures. The first, taken by Corbis photographer Shaun Schwarz, features the hooded prisoner and one soldier. Another military figure was added on the left. Ironically, the original Schwarz photo was censored by the military, which erased his camera's memory. The photographer eventually retrieved the image from his hard drive.

This movie needs to be seen. These images need to be seen. Fuck, I'm willing to run the one-sheet image every day here until the decision is reversed.

Shooting fish

From Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch:

Generalizations

It's dangerous, I think, to say that a woman in a film represents all women, or a man in a film represents all men. Some critics love generalizations. But it's that particular character or this particular story going down that particular road. Those specific things make their own world. And sometimes it's a world that we'd like to go into and experience.

Canon fodder

The cinetrix just finished teaching a world cinema survey class in which she used only Criterion-issued titles [and attempted to interrogate the implicit imprimatur that release on the imprint seems to connote], so she found this sentence in Dave Kehr's weekly DVD roundup both puzzling and vindicating:

This month it was released on DVD by the Criterion Collection, which puts it as close as any movie can come to joining the official canon.

Ah, the official canon!* Is this it, then? Even this bit? Fascinating. Thank God we've gotten that cleared up. As you were.

I kid, but I do think this canon business [and who decides] is important to consider. To that end, my final exam asked students to select and argue on behalf of a film, on Criterion or not, that they felt should be added to the syllabus. Their answers suggested that there's still some play in this notion of the official canon, I'm happy to report.

*

At last it can be told

The cinetrix supposes that if there's an item about it in Variety this morning, she can finally direct your attention to Random House, Faber & Faber, and Focus Features' new joint venture, FilmInFocus, "a destination point and a haven for film lovers around the world."

I've been surreptitiously monitoring the site in beta via its RSS feed for a couple of weeks now. There's some interesting content up there, but I'm not entirely certain how I feel about these strange bedfellows and their fearful synergy. Yes, I realize that Atonement must be publicized via as many platforms as possible. And Schamus is not a bad sort. But Faber & Faber has long held a special place in my black heart--they not only employed T.S. Eliot for most of his adult life, they also published the Projections series and Hal Hartley's early screenplays, pivotal texts in the cinetrix's film geek development. When I was a wee young thing I wanted to work for them. [Hell, still do.]

Caveats dispensed with, I can at last point you to my favorite FilmInFocus feature: Behind the Blog. The first two subjects couldn't be finer [even if I wasn't biased]: David Hudson of GreenCine Daily and Andrew Grant of Like Anna Karina's Sweater. Now you can peer behind the cyber curtain and learn what their blog days are really like. Truly, it's good reading [and I would say so even if Filmbrain didn't namecheck me].

More fish

Here's today's excerpt from David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish:

Cinema

Cinema is a language. It can say things--big, abstract things. And I love that about it.

I'm not always good with words. Some people are poets and have a beautiful way of saying things with words. But cinema is its own language. And with it you can say so many things, because you've got time and sequences. You've got dialogue. You've got music. You've got sound effects. You have so many tools. And so you can express a feeling and a thought that can't be conveyed any other way. It's a magical medium.

For me, it's so beautiful to think about these pictures and sounds flowing together in time and in sequence, making something that can be done only through cinema. It's not just words or music--it's a whole range of elements coming together and making something that didn't exist before. It's telling stories. It's devising a world, an experience, that people cannot have unless they see that film.

When I catch an idea for a film, I fall in love with the way cinema can express it. I like a story that holds abstractions, and that's what cinema can do.