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Taking the children: special cherry Slushie edition

Elvis "was a hero to most" Mitchell is rumored to be out at the Times, but he weighs in on Mean Girls in the Gray Lady's pages today. His ratings advisory is lackluster, but can you blame him?

"Mean Girls" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has a mild and adulterated version of the language, misbehavior and partying generally assigned to teenage comedies.

[Confidential to Dave Kehr. Schadenfreude, even when you know how to spell it, is unbecoming. Also, NASCAR and the NBA are still the only gigs where 3 means number one.]

Mamma mia, here we go again.

There's something terrible about watching a beautiful woman fall apart.  But we can't look away.  It's the essence of cinema. Sometimes the cinetrix suspects that filmmakers could do away with the second part of Godard's maxim about needing only a girl and a gun to make a movie.  A girl about to go off is much scarier than gunplay any day. This week, the cinetrix has seen two blondes lose their respective shit on the silver screen in movies that on the surface couldn't be further apart: Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill Vol. 2.  At their core, though, both films celebrate and valorize a monstrous maternalness in an environment of violence.  [Stick with me, here.] Le Tigre asked "What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" on its eponymous 1999 album: "Misogynist? Genius? Alcoholic?  Messiah?" Until Monday night, I was in no position to answer because somehow I had never gotten around to seeing any of Cassavetes' films.  Sure, I loved hating him as devil-worshipping husband Guy in Rosemary's Baby, but that's where my firsthand knowledge began and ended [sue me].  Now that I've watched A Woman Under the Influence, my answer is "all of the above."  That film reminded me, viscerally, that it's OK to admire performances and directorial skill and still hate hate hate a movie. It may seem like hyperrealism to some, but I found it as calculating and emotionally dishonest as any mainstream tearjerker. At the film's center is Rowland's Mabel Longhetti, a writhing mass of actorly tics that, say, Hoffman circa Rain Man or Pacino in Scent of a Woman would be ashamed of pulling out of the old kit bag.  She's mesmerizing--don't get me wrong--with her elastic features mugging, now a sad clown face, now a parody of earnest attention.  But you get the sense that a less attractive woman wouldn't have been able to slip so far, that beauty is an excuse for and then an indictment of a lot of behaviors for the character and the actress playing her.  But, the film shows us, once it's no longer cute, yes, once it's dangerous, let's clap her in the loony bin and zap her with electricity to blunt those spiky edges!  Then feel remorse when the hollow shell that comes back from the hospital isn't as exciting. Or, you know, you could just kill her outright, which is what all the cool kids try to do to Uma Thurman's Beatrix Kiddo. She, we learn after a mere 247-minute, two-movie valentine to Tarantino's own single momma [one imagines], just wants to be a good mother. All the chop-socky sadism visited upon her is an extended futile attempt to contain her feral maternal drive, to keep the Bride from becoming the Mother.  Really. [So I guess that coma and subsequent mayhem was just a bad bout of post-partum depression?]  There are some nice stylistic nods on the road to the pivotal EPT flashback that explains it all.  Here's one I haven't read about.  The film opens with the same overloud, jagged panting on the soundtrack that you hear at the beginning of Kiss Me Deadly. You know, right before the gorgeous black and white shots of Uma driving a convertible against a rear-projected sky. Of course she's not really in the driver's seat, governed by instinct as she is.  In his Globe review, Ty Burr singled out this line: "You're not a worker bee," Bill reminds the woman who left him to live a boring normal life and whom he tried to murder for it. "You're a renegade killer bee." Whatever. She's a prisoner of the hive mind either way. All the sturm und drang, all the revenge killings and live interments, turn out to be nothing more than pesky obstacles en route to a mother and child reunion of surprising schmaltzyness. Sure, being a feared lady assassin is good and all, but true fulfillment only comes through motherhood. For real?  After all that, Quentin, that's the best you can do? So riddle me this: Does the Pussy Wagon signify a bitch on wheels or is it just another way of saying vagina dentata? Eh. Perhaps all you really need to make a movie is a boy wonder director who fears and admires his powerful leading lady.  UPDATE: Mark T. Conard examines how a real dick turns into a big pussy over the course of Vols. 1 & 2 at Metaphilm [courtesy of the esoteric rabbit].

Teenage Lobotomy

It's turning into a Ramones kind of week for the cinetrix [although which one I haven't yet decided]. Randy Kennedy in today's Times writes about A Hole in One, a movie debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival [ask for Aaron].

This is a film too messy to be pigeonholed. Don't believe me? Well, it stars Meat Loaf. The screenplay's inspiration is the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene Annual Report of 1953. Oh yeah, and it's the first feature film about lobotomies.

[O]ne character is based on a real neurologist, Dr. Walter Freeman, who pioneered outpatient lobotomies in the late 1940's and, before he lost his surgical privileges in the late 60's, drove around the country promoting the operation in a camper van he called the lobotomobile.

[snip]

The movie, which will have its premiere on Sunday at the TriBeCa Film Festival, is a resolutely absurdist critique of 1950's conformism that has few aspirations to appeal to a mainstream audience. The story of a small-town woman (played by Michelle Williams) who wants to have a lobotomy to deal with the emotional pain caused by her murderous gangster boyfriend (Meat Loaf), the movie sometimes feels like a combination of David Lynch, Sam Peckinpah and an old high school hygiene film. Mr. Ledes said he became interested in the subject of lobotomy after he produced a performance-art piece in the early 1990's at the American Fine Arts Gallery in SoHo, based on the records of a World War II veteran who had a psychotic breakdown after the war.

To his credit, Kennedy even squeaks in the old Tom Waits chestnut: "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

The cinetrix cops to being fascinated and would gladly review this flick if someone wanted to send along a screener.... Meanwhile, if anyone catches it at the festival, report back in the comments, s.v.p.

Coming soon to a theater near you. Yes, you.

The Wall Street Journal [paid subscription required] examines the mainstream ambitions of the latest crop of documentaries.

"The Yes Men" is one of a number of documentaries coming soon to U.S. theaters that take on the corporate world with varying degrees of hostility. The others include "Super Size Me," in which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eats a pure McDonald's diet for 30 days to see how it affects his body (badly), and "The Corporation," which accuses capitalists of being mentally ill.

Documentaries with a political message typically are limited to releases in one or two big cities and screenings at a few college campuses. But what sets apart this year's crop of documentaries is their mainstream ambitions.

[snip]

One of the main challenges these distributors face is how to market the films to entertainment-oriented moviegoers who wouldn't traditionally go to see a documentary, without driving away the core audience of film buffs and left-leaning political enthusiasts. The latter group includes early supporters of the films who spread the word about them through festivals and over the Internet.

Ultimately, the marketing campaigns have to reach both audiences, which has these very anti-corporate films relying on traditional corporate strategies, from talk shows to product tie-ins, along with some less-orthodox techniques.

The cinetrix is thrilled to see what Michael Moore hath wrought in the multiplexes, but she reminds everyone that venerable PBS also makes room for documentaries between pledge drives. In fact, the cinetrix is still recovering from watching the powerful film Love & Diane, which was broadcast last Wednesday under the auspices of POV.

Do you know about this film? It follows one family through ten years. Ten years of single parenthood, crack addiction, suicide, group homes, HIV-positive infants, the family court system, therapy, and public assistance. And it is fucking breathtaking. At its heart is the relationship between mother Diane, who battled back from a crack addiction to, miraculously, reassemble her children from the far reaches of the foster care system, and her articulate, truculent, guilt-ridden daughter Love, a mother herself now at 18.

Oh, just see it. If you can. It's available directly from Women Make Movies, or you could urge your local independent video store to purchase it, or start pestering Netflix and GreenCine to add it to their inventories. After you've sniffled through it, let me know what you think.

Next up on POV: Farmingville. [POV even offers to send you an email reminder, so no excuses!]

It's scientific

The cinetrix can't make this stuff up: Hollywood couple Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were the best on-screen lovers, according to a study by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Burton and Taylor were second, which suggests the scientists have a thing for volatility. And the only recent celluloid couple that charted were the leads in the Lethal Weapon franchise. [Ahem]

You can see the rest of the list, and which couples BBC listeners felt the chemists cruelly overlooked, here.

What's it all about? You scream and then you shout.

Oooo! This is good. Lydon wants Timberlake for Rotten role.

John Lydon wants Justin Timberlake to play him in the forthcoming film version of his autobiography. The former Sex Pistol, known as Johnny Rotten in his punk heyday, said Timberlake had agreed to the request provided Lydon stays away from the film set. Lydon's book No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, is being made into a film by Penelope Spheeris, the Wayne's World director.

May the road rise with you.

Cinderella story

All day, the cinetrix has been dragging her heels, knowing that, objectively, a story like Sharon Waxman's about "what do girls want?" from Hollywood "after a string of disappointing results for movies aimed at girls and young women this year" should be right up my street. But it's a rainy Monday and my heart just wasn't in it.

Then I read the real Cinderella story: the ascendancy of poutine pride in Quebec. The charge is being led by none of than Montreal's own Prince Charming de cuisine, Martin Picard, the owner of Au Pied de Cochon, perhaps the 'Fesser's favorite restaurant in the world.

Quebec's signature dish, made of fried potatoes covered with melted cheddar cheese curds and gravy, is slowly spreading beyond Canada and winning fans as far away as New York City and Florida. But the really big culinary news is that poutine is becoming haute cuisine.

[snip]

"People were ashamed to say, 'I want to go to a restaurant to eat poutine,' " said Mr. Picard recently in an interview at his restaurant. "You'd eat it at 3 in the morning when you are drunk or after a party. I didn't like the hypocrisy."

[snip]

As for Mr. Picard, he has bigger thoughts about poutine than its calorie count.

"When you go to a restaurant for a salad, you have a problem," he said with a stern look. "I just love foie gras. I think I was born with a foie gras in place of a liver. And when you eat poutine, it makes you happy."

Vraiment.

Chiens et chats living together

French film critics and the Cannes Film Festival organizers can agree on one thing, Variety reports: Henry Langlois, the founder of the revered Cinematheque.

The Cannes Film Festival and Critics Week sidebar are putting aside their traditional rivalry to jointly present a film, Jacques Richard's docu "Henry Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque."

The three-and-a-half-hour pic, about the life and times of the legendary creator of France's film archive and museum, will be screened out of competition on the morning of May 21.

[snip]

The story of Langlois and his struggles with the French state, which were a prelude to the mass protests that spilled over and paralyzed the Cannes Film Festival in 1968, are a central part of French film lore. Some 65 talking heads appear in the docu, ranging from Jean-Luc Godard to Jack Valenti, who presented Langlois with an Oscar in 1974 for his work preserving films.

The cinetrix would argue that the 1968 protest sequences in Bertolucci's The Dreamers are by far the best thing about that film. Still, it's a toss-up: sit through the beginning of Bertolucci's self-indulgent celebration of juvenile solipsism or sign up for 210 minutes of talking heads. I mean, La Maman et la Putaine is that long, but in Eustache's film at least people are constantly naked and/or smoking.

Gabba Gabba Hey?

The story behind the story of End of the Century, the unreleased Ramones documentary, is a real heartbreaker.

[W]hile the Ramones presented a united front on their album covers — black leather jackets, canvas Converse sneakers and bowl haircuts — the band was fraught with tension and jealousy among its members. Johnny Ramone, the guitarist, ran the band like a dictator. Dee Dee Ramone, the bassist, was a heroin addict (he died of an overdose in 2002). A cast of drummers came and went because they were either too drunk, too opposed to constant touring or too upset over not getting a larger share of the money from T-shirt sales. And Joey Ramone, the singer, was dumped by his fiancée, Linda, for Johnny in the early 80's. Joey and Johnny did not talk to each other during the 15 more years the Ramones toured until they retired in 1996. Joey and Johnny, in fact, never reconciled before Joey died of lymphatic cancer in April 2001.

"Part of what made the Ramones great was this negative energy they had that really worked for them," said Mr. Gramaglia. "It hasn't always worked so well for us."

[snip]

Even when the movie was shown at Slamdance, the filmmakers had not obtained permission to use archival concert footage and music from the Ramones and other bands. They had also never gotten the Ramones to sign releases for their interviews, which took more than three years to conduct.

[snip]

Among its highlights are the last known interview with Joe Strummer, the Clash frontman, before he died of a heart attack in December 2002; early performance footage of the Ramones at the famous Manhattan club CBGB's, in which they fight with each other onstage over which song to play; and several hilarious observations from the spacey (but incisive) Dee Dee.

You can read the rest of the sad tale here. The filmmakers are hoping for a summer release.

Is your muffin buttered?

These kids today, with their made-up slang that the MPAA won't allow in a PG-13 movie. The Sunday Times interviews Tina Fey about her upcoming film, Mean Girls, which Fey adapted from Rosalind Wiseman's pop-ethnography Queen Bees and Wannabes. The first draft of the movie was a lot more raw, Fey reveals.

FEY The things they made us take out of the movie are definitely said on TV.

SENIOR Like what?

FEY The one that was the most benign — and that I was the most surprised about — was: Cady's a new student, and a boy comes up to her and says: "We're taking a lunchtime survey. Is your cherry popped?" Which is already a euphemism. And the rule we go by in TV is if a little kid wouldn't understand it, it's probably O.K. But they said "absolutely not."

SENIOR So "Is your muffin buttered" became the more acceptable substitution?

FEY Because it's totally made-up. But it's evocative in a dirtier way.

Yes, because we all know that in Hollywood today there's nothing dirtier than invoking carbohydrates. And can I just say: a lunchtime survey and not a lunchtime poll? Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw.