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Academy Fight Song

Peter Carlson of the WaPo reads every movie magazine, so we don't have to. "[A]fter careful reading and due deliberation, the Academy of Motion Picture Magazines (that's me, folks) has voted its own Academy Awards, which have been counted and tabulated by the former accounting firm of Arthur Andersen."

Best Performance by a Critic Writing About a Dumb Movie in an Intellectual Movie Magazine

And the winner is: Chuck Stephens in Film Comment.

This was a tough one to call. The sentimental vote went to James Niebaur, who pondered the oeuvre of the Three Stooges in Cineaste. But in the end, Stephens seized the award with his over-the-top prose about "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle":

"If Jackass seems the model for the movie's twin impulses toward exxxtreme peril and ultracretin recklessness, then it should be noted that demonlover indulges just as ambitious a panoply of similar enticements regarding narrative meltdown and the post-Surrealist potential of hanging ten over a perpetual channel-surf."

Chuck, baby -- maybe it's time to switch to decaf?

Confidential to Carlson: Nobody digs the Dennis Millerisms anymore, cha-chi. [via Shaken and Stirred]

Elsewhere, Fametracker weighs in with a very special speculative Oscar edition of the Galaxy of Fame:

"Hi, I'm Fog Of War, about Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Thanks for awarding me Best Documentary over the category's favourite, Capturing the Friedmans. It's a tremendous victory for octogenarian arguable mass murderers over arguable child molesters. Cheers!"

Poutine: Quebeçois for "freedom fries"?

RDI (Radio-Canada)
Horaire établi en fonction de l'heure de l'Est.

Jeudi 26 février 2004
20 h 00
Hollywood et le Pentagone - Grands Reportages
Programmation spéciale en vue des Oscars

Hollywood et le Pentagone. Sachant que le public se fait une opinion del'armée à travers le cinéma, le Pentagone et Hollywood entretiennent des relations étroites depuis longtemps. Il existe même toute une administration, le Film Liaison Office, à Washington, qui étudie tous les scénarios de films de guerre américains. On ira même jusqu'à aider le réalisateur en lui prêtant du matériel militaire, des avions de chasse, des navires, etc. Ce document décrypte cette collaboration, encore mal connue du grand public, qui existe entre les militaires et les cinéastes américains.

Serait-ce une « liaison dangereuse » ?

Animation : Pascale Nadeau.
Du lundi au vendredi.
Rediffusion à 1 h.

I don't want to do your dirty work

Why does the cinetrix do this to herself?

Last night I went to an author "event" featuring Peter Biskind. This is the second such film writer non-reading I've been to. Instead of, oh, I don't know, reading a passage from the tome he's shilling and then taking audience questions, the author has an on-stage "conversation" with some sort of interlocutor. Boston Globe film critic Wesley Morris, a tiny man, had the honors last night of chatting with the Garfunkelesque Biskind.

Their conversation went something like this.

Wesley Morris: Harvey's crazy. You say mean things about that bully.
Peter Biskind: blah blah extremely charming, self-deprecating blah blah bully.
Wesley Morris: That Robert Redford sure is passive aggressive.
Peter Biskind: blah blah extremely blah blah next door to Mother Teresa. [laugh line]
Wesley Morris: And he's a micromanager who takes projects away from directors.
Peter Biskind: blah blah extremely blah blah Redford's competing with the people he's supposed to be nurturing.
[A long story about Redford poaching Quiz Show from Steven Soderbergh, followed by a riveting discussion of Sundance: marketplace or festival?]

Ah, fuck it. You know, this is boring even me. So here are two Harvey and Bob Weinstein stories. Such stories are the main reason to read what I've heard is an atrociously copyedited book.

Neither one will come to the phone first. An assistant will say, "Harvey, will you hold for Bob?" and Harvey will hang up. Click. Or "Bob, will you hold for Harvey?" Click.

Harvey tried to kill Biskind's book several times. Biskind confided, "I had to get caller ID. It got so that I would recognize Miramax numbers."

Also, look for Ben Affleck's vicious letter about Biskind [and Biskind's snotty reply] in the next issue of Vanity Fair. Good lapdog, now let Uncle Harvey try and save your moribund career.

Just forget looking for the cinetrix at any more film book "readings." I've had it. I'm sure when I read Down and Dirty Pictures I'll get all the same stories and I won't have to hear Biskind's nasal and nebbishy voice when I do.

Fat boy Roger Ebert also had some choice words about the new book and its author: "Biskind has a way of massaging his stories to suit his agenda." [link via the potvaliant TMFTML]

And after this our exile

Sans Soleil begins two ways: invoking T.S. Eliot's poem "Ash Wednesday"

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place

and with a long piece of black leader, the imageless film that pulls every movie through the projector and into its light.

Watching this movie filled me with aphorisms and allusive images. I scrawled in the darkness, "It was now little girls who made and unmade stars." That night I had vivid dreams that woke me up just as I was cresting an enormous wave and plummeting into its trough. I distinctly recall I was doing it for science.

Poet Susan Howe wrote

Often Sans Soleil seems largely about footage shot somewhere else. This is a film of quotations, outtakes, retakes, tape delays, failed military coups, dead pilots, and ghostly warriors. Everything is acted out on the borderline that divides introjection and incorporation.

I think part of the secret of this film, itself "a list of things that quicken the heart," is that its use of found documentary footage, knit together into narrative by a woman's voice reading letters, makes it feel like part of a longer, ongoing film. One that began when cinema began and that stretches past today into the future.

I can't wait to watch it again.

[See also Stalker, Tarkovsky; Until the End of the World, Wenders]

The cinetrix starring

See it today. Guaranteed, no crucifixions!

Let it bleed

OK, the cinetrix is currently sitting in the e-Chair as she types one-handed. What's that, you ask? A rig at Mass General Hospital's Blood Donor Center that lets you watch a DVD [I'm halfway through Shrek] and surf online while donating platelets. The process [squeamish skip ahead] takes about 100 minutes and involves one honking huge needle in the crook of my left elbow that sucks my blood into a centrifuge. The centrifuge spins out my platelets and some plasma, then the rest of the blood is returned via an equally nasty needle in the vein of my right [typing] arm. Platelets are especially important for immunosuppressed folks [like those on chemo], and they only last for five days once donated. The donor generates replacements in 72 hours.

But until then, it'll be verrrrry easy for me to get wasted this Mardi Gras, cher.

Back to Shrek for me [he was battling the lady dragon], and laissez les bon temps roulez!

13 Ways of Looking...

Films on the reserve shelf for Elvis Mitchell's American Film Criticism class at Harvard this spring.

The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe [Buñuel]
Before the Revolution [Bertolucci]
Breathless [Godard]
Citizen Kane [Welles]
The Conformist [Bertolucci]
Contempt [Godard]
Don't Look Now [Roeg]
Fury [Lang]
Last Year at Marienbad [Resnais]
Los Olvidados [Buñuel]
M [Lang]
Sunset Boulevard [Wilder]
The Third Man [Carol Reed]

I know what you're thinking. Pretty standard stuff. Anyone could be teaching this class. What makes it, you know, Elvis?

The Warriors [Hill]

Can you count, suckas?

The Film Snob's Dictionary Vol. 2

OK, the article about Bonnie Fuller in Vanity Fair has derailed the cinetrix, perhaps permanently, from reading the rest of the hateful Hollywood issue. Fortunately, I looked at this year's edition of the Film Snob's Dictionary [or how to speak fanboy film geek] first. A few of my favorite entries:

Doc Films: The film society at the University of Chicago, founded in 1932 as the Documentary Film Group. Hard-core beyond words and lay comprehension, the society is populated by 19-year-olds who have already seen every film ever made, and boasts its own Dolby Digital-equipped cinema and an impressive roster of alumni that includes Snob-revered critic Dave Kehr.

Meditation on. Stock hack-crit phrase used to bestow an air of erudition and gravitas on both the critic and the film he is reviewing. Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation is an affecting meditation on cultural and temporal dislocation; the Matrix series is the Wachowski brothers' meditation on the intersection of technology and spirituality.

Movieness. Stock hack-crit term used, like a more fun version of postmodern, to denote a director's or viewer's hyperawareness of filmic conventions and techniques. Watching Kill Bill's gory, kinetic fight scenes, you can sense Tarantino exulting in the sheer movieness of moviemaking.

Murch, Walter. Exacting, innovative sound designer who was cultivated by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas early in their careers; for Snobs, the genius of film sound. An eccentric, intelligent polymath, Murch dabbles in the other aspects of filmmaking--he co-wrote the screenplay to Lucas's THX-1138 and edited The English Patient and Cold Mountain--as well as beekeeping. I'm not easily impressed, but Murch's work on the opening sequence of Apocalypse Now was next-level shit.

Fun fact to know and shout: Aggro right-wing screenwriter-director John Milius was the inspiration for John Goodman's Nam-obsessed character in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski.

Say it with me, people: Wolverines!

You've been served

Acclaimed local restaurant Upstairs on the Square in Cambridge is hosting its first Academy Awards party this Sunday in its Monday Club room. The menu is too good not to share.

Lord of the Onion Rings $6
Mystic River Pizza $12
Chicken and Sea Biscuits $19
Lamb In Translation $26
Monster Rib-Eye Steak with Roasted Fingerling Potatoes and Fried Herbs $26
Sean Penn Perdu - Monte Christo Sandwich with Country Ham & Gruyere $9
21 Grams of Caviar with Blinis and Crème Fraiche and Red Onion $22
Pirates of the Caribbean Jerk Chicken $21
Cold Mountain of House-Made Sorbets $7

Also, the duck foie gras two ways on the regular menu is absolutely filthy.

Desperately Seeking Sofia

Don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again.--Michael Corleone

Good news for those trying to puzzle out the secrets of Oscar-nominated naif Sofia Coppola in the run-up to this year's Academy Awards. The cinetrix is happy to report that the DVD for Sofia's debut feature, 1999's The Virgin Suicides, includes a behind-the-scenes featurette that firmly situates Ms. Coppola in the bosom of her family. In addition to proud producing papa Francis--in a series of florid flowered shirts--and documentarian mother Eleanor, who shot the footage used for the making-of, we meet brother Roman [second-unit director], cousin Chris Neil [acting coach], and Auntie Talia's boy [and Jason's brother] Robert Schwartzman, who plays neighborhood smoothie Paul Baldino.

It's tough to take Sofia seriously as a director when you hear her mom talking about how tired she looked during the shoot. Which is too bad because The Virgin Suicides stands on its own virtues. My second viewing of it last night produced just the same high, mesmeric feeling it did when I saw it a few years ago. Recreating the hazy and claustrophobic atmosphere that so strongly suffused Eugenides' book is no mean feat for a director at any point in his or her career.

Coppola understands the truth in a pop song, and she harnesses this power deftly. The Air soundtrack has been recognized, and rightly so, as one of the strengths of the film. [A bizarre video for "Playground Love" on the DVD features, I kid you not, animated wads of chewed bubblegum singing the song.]

But I was blindsided by the sequence in which the neighborhood boys reach out to the cooped-up Lisbon sisters by calling their house and playing Todd Rungren's "Hello It's Me" over the phone. The musical conversation that follows is conducted solely via such familiar 70s staples as Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again, Naturally" and Carole King's "So Far Away." It is excitingly illicit and thrilling from the boys' perspective. Like Paul Baldino, who can get into any house in the neighborhood through the sewer pipes, they have figured out a way to breach the Lisbon fortress. Or so they think. But like any game of telephone, the message is garbled and misunderstood.

Coppola uses these banal AM emotions to underscore how ultimately unknowable the Lisbon sisters' desperation is. She shows, not tells, and you never get the sense that she includes Styx or Heart songs as mere aural set dressing. The girls' opacity is the cinematic equivalent of the sob caught in the throat quality of every cheesy and derided note Karen Carpenter ever sang. Even "Jambalaya." It was there all along; we just didn't hear it until it was too late. Now it's the only thing we can hear, and we don't know how we missed it. And it haunts us.