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Breathe easy

The Oscars are over and the cinetrix is spent.  She may take to her bed.

But lucky New Yorkers seeking a palliative for last night's glitz and glamor should head to MoMA for the latest installation of Great Collaborations, featuring two folks who deserved a lot more Oscar love than they got.

A Conversation with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke              

Texas natives Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke have collaborated on five films. While a deep friendship was launched when Linklater directed Hawke in Before Sunrise (1995), they independently pursued directing and screenwriting projects before reconnecting on films like The Newton Boys (1998). With their latest production, Before Sunset (2004), which was shot in fifteen days, they have also become screenwriting partners.

             

Monday, February 28, 8:00.

The cinetrix had the pleasure of attending a Hamlet Q&A with director Michael Almeyreda and Ethan Hawke ages ago. Hawke was smart and earnest, and, if not always articulate, not slick, either.  Plus, he cleans up nice when he wants to.

Acceptance speech

Ohmigosh, this is so unexpected! Wait, let me fish out a little something I prepared. You know, just in case.

The cinetrix would like to thank all of the nice people who've visited my vacation home over at Bravotv.com during the past few days. The Awardsmania winds down on Monday, so do check back a few more times between now and then.

Thanks, too, to my fellow bloggers for showing this little endeavor love and links. (When I get a moment, I'll be checking the DSM to see whether maniacal awards show watching is a sickness. I have my suspicions.) Shoutouts to Lindsay and to Aaron Out of Focus, who has posted his own, much more informed ISA picks (he's actually a voting member, you see); to David for the GreenCine mention and to OGIC for the About Last Night love and to Chuck; to Gwenda, to Ed, and to George, who claims a question I asked inspired a whole post on documentaries you should all rush over to read right now. I'm sure I'm forgeting people....

Many others--among them, Grambo, Cee Rock, the Corsair, Maccers, CAAF, Filmbrain, Liz Penn, Sac--sent along lovely notes that I kept open for inspiration while I was up against deadline. (And let's be honest: I've been up against deadline the whole time).

Britopia, fancy TiVo-haver, provided invaluable local technical support. Sean, Michael, and Peter made the magic happen on the West Coast. Jason made the call.

Alex helped me procrastinate brainstorm any number of ultimately rejected possible blog names.

The 'Fesser kept me fed and danced with me to "What's Yr Take on Cassavettes?"

Most of all, thanks to LZ, who called my bluff, much to my delight.

[cue orchestra. cut to commercial.]

Short, but sweet?

Two of the Oscar nominees for Best Short, one animated, one live action, are available online.

The cinetrix suggests that you start by watching Ryan, an homage to a fellow Canadian animator, who was himself nominated for an Oscar in 1969 and is now an alcoholic, bilingual panhandler on the streets of Montreal [in the shadow of Schwartz's, no less]. It's grim, fantastic, and beautiful.

After that, you'll need a palate cleanser, which is where Nacho Vigolondo's distinctly odd live short, 7:35 de la mañana comes in.  Imagine a twisted, 8-minute musical, complete with bricolage, choreography, you name it.

Here's a brief description from Vigolondo's blog [which is worth checking out if your Spanish isn't rusty]:

Una mañana, una mujer percibe algo extraño en el bar donde desayuna todos los días: todos los demás clientes y camareros están en silencio.
               
Todos miran al suelo. Nadie toca su desayuno.
De repente, se oye una canción.

And what a canción it is. Not only will you never look at the regulars at your local coffee house in quite the same way after seeing this short, you'll find yourself singing snatches of the title song all day.

Does Valenti have to be dead to spin in his grave?

Amazing! The MPAA decides that moviegoers old enough to enlist can handle profanity on screen.

At this point, the cinetrix would like to yield the floor to Variety, which breaks the good news for Gunner Palace  in its inimitable style.

F-BOMBS CATCH A BREAK
MPAA lets 'Palace' push profanity limits
While the decency wars continue to rage in Washington, the MPAA has okayed the most profane PG-13 pic ever. Palm Pictures won its appeal Thursday of the original R rating given to Iraq war docu "Gunner Palace."

And that post title ain't rhetorical, people. Your best guesses in the comments, s.v.p.

Limited engagement

Beginning Thursday [yes, today] and running until Monday, the cinetrix will be doing double duty in the cinematic section of the blogosphere. Come on over and help me moonlight at Bravo as I cover the final, breathless runup to the Independent Spirit Awards and then the Oscars.

Also, help me think up drinking games!

Rogues' gallery

The out-and-about OGIC forwards this account of the New York screening of Inside Deep Throat, which took place earlier this month.

This time, the hapless lot of directing a post-screening panel fell to Elvis Mitchell, former movie critic at the NY Times. The panel was made up of HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan, journalist Peter Boyer, criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz (who defended Harry Reems in the famous obscenity trial), and feminist professor Catherine McKinnon.

Mitchell looked on helplessly as McKinnon did her thing, claiming that the film we had just watched was promoting the acceptance of rape.  At one point, however, her righteous zeal became unhinged when she claimed that it was not possible to do deep throat safely, that it was a dangerous act  that could only be done under hypnosis. "What's so funny?" she snapped as the audience rippled with mirth. Todd Graff's hand shot up - "I can do it," he said, and the room echoed with a chorus of gay men going "me too!"  (Gigi Grazer - wife of Brian - later told Graff to stop bragging and that she could do it better than him and had the rocks on her fingers to prove it. Touché).  But La McKinnon was not to be discouraged; she claimed that emergency rooms were filled with women victims of throat rape, not to mention the ones who hadnt even made it that far and had died in the act.

Judith Regan chimed in preposterously, maintaining that her Jenna Jameson autobiography, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, really was "a cautionary tale" rather than just an afterthought of a subtitle.  She argued that all sex workers are victims of sexual abuse.  Frontliner Peter Boyer went on on about rape porn and tried to raise a quorum on fisting.

Which left the task of defending Deep Throat and the porn world by extension to Alan Dershowitz, who pointed out that to say porn promoted rape was akin to saying that rap promoted. . .   But then Elvis Mitchell leapt to his feet, as if about to throw a Springer-like punch, and put us all out of our misery by ending the panel abruptly. [emphases added]

Poor Elvis. He's so courageous. I guess some things can be too hard to swallow, even for former NYT critics.

Works on the principle of the cantilevered bridge

Over on the nerd list-serv the cinetrix subscribes to, there's been a small hubbub about a sequence in Kinsey that quotes a certain Hitchcock flick. Now, as the cinetrix has yet to see Kinsey, she's hoping that maybe you nice people could weigh in. Here goes.

Just saw Kinsey, a [let's say] peculiar movie, and not only because it deals with a peculiar man. . .. One of the most peculiar things in it is a bizarre homage [if that's the right word] to Vertigo, inserted more or less arbitrarily and with no motivation or function that i could imagine.

As a reminder: Shortly before the film's ending, Kinsey and his wife, on a trip to the airport, stop briefly in the woods to relax and director condon films the sequence in a way that virtually replicates the sequoia forest scene in Vertigo--everything from the framing of the shots to some of the behavior of the characters to [most amazingly] the dialogue itself, comes right out of the Hitchcock film

What the hell is going on here?

What, indeed? Anyone else catch this cinematic wink, much less read into it? Please elucidate!

Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere.

REVEALED: Would you believe that Moviefone, of all sources, comes through with the skinny on Kinsey, straight from director Bill Condon himself?

There's also a scene at the end that we think we shot at the same spot where Hitchcock shot the sequoia scene in 'Vertigo.' It's one of the reasons that Laura appears from behind a tree wearing a light-colored coat and kerchief. There's just something so mysterious and mesmerizing about that scene that when I read that Kinsey had taken a trip to the Muir Woods towards the end of his life, I immediately connected it to 'Vertigo.'

How late it was, how late

Entertainment Weekly tells us where the bodies--in this case, shelved Miramax acquisitions--are buried: Starz! Well, at least one. That'd be Christina Ricci's own Girl, Interrupted, the now four-year-old film version of Prozac Nation.

That's right. Next month lucky Starz! subscribers can enjoy the self-involved histrionics of La Wurtzel in the comfort of their own homes. According to Miramax, it's "a great way for a larger audience to see the film."  Riiiiiight.

A word of advice? If you do watch, self-medicate first. Lizzie would want it that way.

In the dark

Oy. The cinetrix is a busy little cineaste today. But do not despair! She's going to send you globetrotting in her absence. Why, you won't even miss her.

• George at A Girl and a Gun has been on a tear, reporting from the front lines of the Film Comment Presents series.
• Filmbrain and David Hudson from GreenCine Daily met at the Berlinale and saw a lot of films. A lot. [Where's my lousy tee shirt, guys?]
• Aaron at Out of Focus spends the week leading up to Oscar at Gothamist interviewing New York's Finest: repertory programmers. Check back daily.
• Film Flâneur sounds the "he wuz robbed" alarm for Sideways--for supporting actor Thomas Haden Church! Really.
• Liz Penn asks the tough questions. To wit: Why was The Aviator made, other than to earn Martin Scorsese a foot-high, eight-and-a-half-pound chunk of gold-plated britannium alloy?
• And Matthew goes in circles around Seven Samurai at Esoteric Rabbit.

Speaking of rabbit, the cinetrix is planning on pulling a little something out of her hat later this week. Watch this space.

RIP x 3

Man, talk about a quick death comes in threes cycle.

Sandra Dee
John Raitt
Hunter S. Thompson

Here's the cinetrix's prediction: An autopsy will reveal that Hunter was terminal with something. Naturally, he said it best:

There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.