What’s on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann
There’s a lot of fluff at the Tropic right now, which is to be expected for the summer season. Whether it’s the ghosts of Ernest Hemingway, Salvatore Dali and Pablo Picasso holding court in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS; the female versions of the Hangover guys engaging in shenanigans in BRIDESMAIDS; Morgan Spurlock jerking the chains of corporate America in THE GREATEST MOVIE EVERY SOLD; or J.J. Abrams channeling Steven Spielberg in SUPER 8; you know you can just kick back and enjoy the show.
But for the thinking filmgoer, INCENDIES is the movie to see. This noir thriller/anti-war movie was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar this year, and by the judgment of many should have won. It starts out in Montreal (the home of director Denis Villeneuve), where twin 20-year-old brother and sister Simon and Jeanne Marwan are given sealed letters from their just-deceased mother, with instructions to deliver them to their father and brother. Since the twins had no idea that the father was still alive, or that they had a brother, the plot quickly thickens.
Both of the addressees are living in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, which is easily identified as Lebanon. As they travel there to carry out their mother’s wishes, Simon and Jeanne are thrust into the middle of a religious/ethic civil war that is wracking the country, and the movie pulls no punches showing the horrors of the war. We discover through flashbacks that the mother fled the country because of these tensions. But why did she want to thrust her children back into such turmoil? Didn’t I say it was a mystery?
“Tells a story-masterfully-of courage, cruelty, family mysteries and a chain of anger that can only be broken by love.” (Wall St. Journal) “Painful, searing and something close to brilliant.” (Arizona Republic) You’ll want to discuss it over a glass of wine in the lobby rather than just amble out of the theater.
The Ballet in Cinema Series also brings a note of seriousness on Saturday, with a presentation of CHILDREN OF PARADISE danced by the Paris Opera Ballet and shown live at 1:30pm EDT (7:30 in Paris), with an encore evening performance at 7:00pm EDT. It’s appropriate that this new ballet come to the Tropic because it’s based on the classic 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis, rated by Gallic critics as the greatest French film ever.
Two special events round out the week.
On Monday, the Summer of Fun Classics Series features the PEEWEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985). This was director Tim Burton’s first hit, preceding Beetlejuice, Batman and Edward Scissorhands, and of course it’s Peewee Herman’s greatest achievement. Recapture your childhood this Monday, and every Monday in July with a classic kids’ film.
For a special treat on Thursday, local cinephile and director Mike Marrero has collected a group of short films from local Key West filmmakers, including Chris Shultz, David Sloan, Mark Pierson, Chad Newman, and Mike himself. These guys are doing great things in the local cinema community. Support them and enjoy yourself.
Comments, please, to pmann99@gmail.com
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Incendies (Rhoades)
“Incendies” Heats Up Screen
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Think of it as the difference between 2D and 3D, the addition of a whole new dimension. That’s the way I view it when a stage play is adapted into a movie.
No longer are you restricted by the confines of the theater’s proscenium arch. You can move from close-ups to panoramic vistas. You can use authentic backdrops, or present the story with ultra reality.
When director Denis Villeneuve decided to base a film on Wajdi Mouawad’s play, “Scorched,” he was able to supplement the gripping dialogue and startling plot with authentic Middle Eastern locales that add a verisimilitude only cinematography can supply.
This is not to denigrate the excitement of a live performance or the immediacy of theater. It’s merely to recognize that a film is something different. So Villeneuve changed the title to “Incendies” (French for “Scorched”) to distinguish between his film and Mouawad’s play.
“Incendies” recounts the search by a brother and sister for their heritage. When their mother dies, she leaves two envelopes for her twin children to deliver to a previously unknown father and a surprise brother. Her odd will specifies that she be buried without a coffin, naked, and facing downward, with no headstone, until Simon (Maxim Gaudette) and Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) accomplish their mission.
So the siblings travel to the Middle East, visiting their mother’s village, orphanages, and prisons, in search of this phantom father and brother.
The film unfolds as two parallel stories, the twin’s search and the mother’s ordeal.
The flashbacks reveal that Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) disgraced her Lebanese family when she became pregnant out of wedlock. Even though she gave up the baby to a midwife, she vowed to one day find him again. And amid the war-torn country, she doggedly looks for him. Her political viewpoint shifts when she witnesses the brutality of the Christian right – a harrowing experience as passengers are murdered on a burning bus – and she commits an act that lands her in prison. There she is known as the Woman Who Sings, refusing to be broken by her merciless jailors.
At the same time we follow Jeanne as she retraces her mother’s steps in search of her father’s identity. Brother Simon and the notary who employed Newal in America (Rémy Girard) join her as they close in on the identity of this long-lost brother (Abdelghafour Elaaziz).
Past and present collide as the shocking truth is uncovered.
“Incendies” is currently heating up the screen at the Tropic Cinema.
Filmed in Canada (Quebec) and Jordan (a stand-in for Lebanon), this French-language film was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film. Roger Ebert predicted it would win, but it lost out to “In a Better World.” Having seen them both, I agreed with Ebert. Rotten Tomatoes gives it 94% positive reviews.
Denis Villeneuves’s fourth feature, “Incendies” is considered a shocker – not for blood and
gore, but for the horrors that war and culture can exert on a family.
Not to take anything away from Lebanese writer Wajdi Mouawad’s fine play, but the film delivers a you-are-there sensibility that makes it all the more poignant. Mouawad’s production of a trilogy of Greek plays by Sophocles – “Electra,” “Antigone,” and “The Women of Trachis” – received great acclaim in Canada. No surprise that he’d tackle “Oedipus” too.
srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Think of it as the difference between 2D and 3D, the addition of a whole new dimension. That’s the way I view it when a stage play is adapted into a movie.
No longer are you restricted by the confines of the theater’s proscenium arch. You can move from close-ups to panoramic vistas. You can use authentic backdrops, or present the story with ultra reality.
When director Denis Villeneuve decided to base a film on Wajdi Mouawad’s play, “Scorched,” he was able to supplement the gripping dialogue and startling plot with authentic Middle Eastern locales that add a verisimilitude only cinematography can supply.
This is not to denigrate the excitement of a live performance or the immediacy of theater. It’s merely to recognize that a film is something different. So Villeneuve changed the title to “Incendies” (French for “Scorched”) to distinguish between his film and Mouawad’s play.
“Incendies” recounts the search by a brother and sister for their heritage. When their mother dies, she leaves two envelopes for her twin children to deliver to a previously unknown father and a surprise brother. Her odd will specifies that she be buried without a coffin, naked, and facing downward, with no headstone, until Simon (Maxim Gaudette) and Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) accomplish their mission.
So the siblings travel to the Middle East, visiting their mother’s village, orphanages, and prisons, in search of this phantom father and brother.
The film unfolds as two parallel stories, the twin’s search and the mother’s ordeal.
The flashbacks reveal that Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) disgraced her Lebanese family when she became pregnant out of wedlock. Even though she gave up the baby to a midwife, she vowed to one day find him again. And amid the war-torn country, she doggedly looks for him. Her political viewpoint shifts when she witnesses the brutality of the Christian right – a harrowing experience as passengers are murdered on a burning bus – and she commits an act that lands her in prison. There she is known as the Woman Who Sings, refusing to be broken by her merciless jailors.
At the same time we follow Jeanne as she retraces her mother’s steps in search of her father’s identity. Brother Simon and the notary who employed Newal in America (Rémy Girard) join her as they close in on the identity of this long-lost brother (Abdelghafour Elaaziz).
Past and present collide as the shocking truth is uncovered.
“Incendies” is currently heating up the screen at the Tropic Cinema.
Filmed in Canada (Quebec) and Jordan (a stand-in for Lebanon), this French-language film was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film. Roger Ebert predicted it would win, but it lost out to “In a Better World.” Having seen them both, I agreed with Ebert. Rotten Tomatoes gives it 94% positive reviews.
Denis Villeneuves’s fourth feature, “Incendies” is considered a shocker – not for blood and
gore, but for the horrors that war and culture can exert on a family.
Not to take anything away from Lebanese writer Wajdi Mouawad’s fine play, but the film delivers a you-are-there sensibility that makes it all the more poignant. Mouawad’s production of a trilogy of Greek plays by Sophocles – “Electra,” “Antigone,” and “The Women of Trachis” – received great acclaim in Canada. No surprise that he’d tackle “Oedipus” too.
srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]
Incendies (Brockway)
Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
Incendies
"Incendies", a film by Denis Villeneuve based on the play Scorched, by Wajdi Mouawad, gives Alajandro Inaritu (Babel) a run for his money and has the kind of existentialist spirit that you find in the fiction of Paul Bowles. The film creates a bitter landscape and doesn't mix any sugary events with its shrubs.
All to the good.
"Incendies" lost out to "In a Better World" at the Academy Awards but that doesn't make it any less of a film. It is by turns wistful, punchy and unapologetic.
The film concerns Canadian twins, Jeanne (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) as they try to find answers to their wild mother's past during the reading of her last will. The mother, Nawal, (Lubna Azabal) has died of a stroke during a swim. She wants to be "buried naked, with no headstone face down away from the sun" She informs them that they have an unknown father and brother.
So begins this hard-bitten jigsaw of a tale that might make Thomas Hardy wish he had traded his fictional Wessex for the director's fictional town of Daresh, somewhere near Lebanon.
In a series of flashbacks which are as intricately woven as Muslim prayer rugs, although the bold style of the titles owe much to the films of Michael Haneke and Richet (Mesrine), we take in little parcels of the story, tasting each bit like spoonful of apprehensive hummus. We are nomadic travelers watching Narwal's young life as she falls in love with a scorned refugee and has a pregnancy deemed an abomination by Narwal's family. Almost immediately, as in Hardy's Tess, she is judged an outcast with no where to turn. As Narwal struggles on in her quest to find her lost son who is peppered with a tattoo on his heel--- three dots that resemble ellipses in an interrupted story--- her daughter struggles on also to find her mother thirty five years later. Mother and Daughter as a kind of Hitchcockian "Vertigo", share two halves of the same face. They exist both together and alone, as two pairs of knitted brows and doubled crosses that hope to receive answers through time but only get anxious echoes in return and more dusty trails to wander upon.
Both Narwal and Jeanne are obsessive doubles, both engaging in a kind of mental noir that we see on film. And we as all- seeing scarabs are not spared or blindfolded from what occurs.
In the its last half, "Incendies" becomes Hitchcockian with its deep closeups of skirts and stockings and the razor sharp edge of a bob-haired mother with murder on her mind.
Narwal has all the power of a character in "Salt" without the pulp comic acrobatics. Her vignettes are jarring and unsettling without comic relief. The sometimes bloody events are juxtaposed by the silent beauty of an ochre field in Jordan and the winding turn of an infinite sand-road.
"Incendies" doesn't have any single point of view, a cross is seen in the same light as a crescent and star. Narwal and Jeanne carry on in their own Gothic lives: the turn of a foot equals the muzzle of a gun, shot either in religious hostility or a mother's revenge.
Only nature---the hard baked earth--- carries on without Judgment.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Incendies
"Incendies", a film by Denis Villeneuve based on the play Scorched, by Wajdi Mouawad, gives Alajandro Inaritu (Babel) a run for his money and has the kind of existentialist spirit that you find in the fiction of Paul Bowles. The film creates a bitter landscape and doesn't mix any sugary events with its shrubs.
All to the good.
"Incendies" lost out to "In a Better World" at the Academy Awards but that doesn't make it any less of a film. It is by turns wistful, punchy and unapologetic.
The film concerns Canadian twins, Jeanne (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) as they try to find answers to their wild mother's past during the reading of her last will. The mother, Nawal, (Lubna Azabal) has died of a stroke during a swim. She wants to be "buried naked, with no headstone face down away from the sun" She informs them that they have an unknown father and brother.
So begins this hard-bitten jigsaw of a tale that might make Thomas Hardy wish he had traded his fictional Wessex for the director's fictional town of Daresh, somewhere near Lebanon.
In a series of flashbacks which are as intricately woven as Muslim prayer rugs, although the bold style of the titles owe much to the films of Michael Haneke and Richet (Mesrine), we take in little parcels of the story, tasting each bit like spoonful of apprehensive hummus. We are nomadic travelers watching Narwal's young life as she falls in love with a scorned refugee and has a pregnancy deemed an abomination by Narwal's family. Almost immediately, as in Hardy's Tess, she is judged an outcast with no where to turn. As Narwal struggles on in her quest to find her lost son who is peppered with a tattoo on his heel--- three dots that resemble ellipses in an interrupted story--- her daughter struggles on also to find her mother thirty five years later. Mother and Daughter as a kind of Hitchcockian "Vertigo", share two halves of the same face. They exist both together and alone, as two pairs of knitted brows and doubled crosses that hope to receive answers through time but only get anxious echoes in return and more dusty trails to wander upon.
Both Narwal and Jeanne are obsessive doubles, both engaging in a kind of mental noir that we see on film. And we as all- seeing scarabs are not spared or blindfolded from what occurs.
In the its last half, "Incendies" becomes Hitchcockian with its deep closeups of skirts and stockings and the razor sharp edge of a bob-haired mother with murder on her mind.
Narwal has all the power of a character in "Salt" without the pulp comic acrobatics. Her vignettes are jarring and unsettling without comic relief. The sometimes bloody events are juxtaposed by the silent beauty of an ochre field in Jordan and the winding turn of an infinite sand-road.
"Incendies" doesn't have any single point of view, a cross is seen in the same light as a crescent and star. Narwal and Jeanne carry on in their own Gothic lives: the turn of a foot equals the muzzle of a gun, shot either in religious hostility or a mother's revenge.
Only nature---the hard baked earth--- carries on without Judgment.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Monday, July 4, 2011
Week of July 1 to July 7 (Mann)
What’s on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann
Did you see Super Size Me, the documentary about the guy who ate only at McDonald’s for a month and wound up a fat slob? The writer-director-subject Morgan Spurlock has a penchant for tweaking the system. He also produced What Would Jesus Buy?, a satirical examination of the commercialization of Christmas. And now he’s back as a writer-director-subject with POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS: THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD, the ultimate product-placement film. If you believe Spurlock – and why not, since transparency is his mantra for this movie – the pomegranate drink Pom Wonderful paid him a cool million bucks for its “above the title” ad placement. Unlike ordinary movies, where people do such things as drive Mini Coopers to secretly promote the minis (The Italian Job), everything here is a promotion, and the movie is about how Spurlock got advertisers to pay his costs by giving them screen time. You won’t believe what people will do for a plug. It “makes you laugh until it hurts.” (Rolling Stone)
Not that every movie is so crass. Watching SUPER 8, set in 1979, you’ll look in vain for any product, except maybe Kodak Super 8mm movie film, which I hardly think the company is paying to promote now. Like Steven Spielberg’s classic E.T. this is an alien movie – from other planets, that is, not other countries – with a heart. Written and directed by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek-2009, Mission Impossible III) and produced by Spielberg, it has the same kid’s eye viewpoint as E.T.
Abrams has acknowledged his debt to Spielberg with a letter to theater operators:
“As many of you are aware, the film is set in the 1970s and is an homage to the early works of my good friend, Steven Spielberg. Naturally, the theatrical experience should be as attentive to period detail as the film itself. To that end, all stadium seating should be removed and replaced with cracked and ripped vinyl benches. If you are unable to affix chewing-gum to the bottom of each handrest, know that you will be greatly disappointing Steven Spielberg, my creative partner and mentor.“
However, since Hollywood’s CGI (computer-generated imagery) has ramped up over the past thirty years, the alien in Super 8 is much bigger than in E.T., and his destructive capabilities are vastly enhanced. So come for the kid-hearted charm, and stay for the explosions. And see if the Tropic has accommodated Abrams’ requests.
Those are the two new films. Held over by popular demand – meaning people are still buying tickets like mad – are Woody Allen’s MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, BRIDESMAIDS, and WINTER IN WARTIME.
The Monday Night Summer of Fun Classics starts a new theme for July: Second Childhood, with WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. Not the recent movie based on the Roald Dahl story, but the original from 1971 that Roger Ebert called “probably the best film of its sort since The Wizard of Oz. It is everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren't: Delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination.” School’s out. Bring the kids on Monday night for a delightful end to the long weekend.
Comments, please, to pmann99@gmail.com
by Phil Mann
Did you see Super Size Me, the documentary about the guy who ate only at McDonald’s for a month and wound up a fat slob? The writer-director-subject Morgan Spurlock has a penchant for tweaking the system. He also produced What Would Jesus Buy?, a satirical examination of the commercialization of Christmas. And now he’s back as a writer-director-subject with POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS: THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD, the ultimate product-placement film. If you believe Spurlock – and why not, since transparency is his mantra for this movie – the pomegranate drink Pom Wonderful paid him a cool million bucks for its “above the title” ad placement. Unlike ordinary movies, where people do such things as drive Mini Coopers to secretly promote the minis (The Italian Job), everything here is a promotion, and the movie is about how Spurlock got advertisers to pay his costs by giving them screen time. You won’t believe what people will do for a plug. It “makes you laugh until it hurts.” (Rolling Stone)
Not that every movie is so crass. Watching SUPER 8, set in 1979, you’ll look in vain for any product, except maybe Kodak Super 8mm movie film, which I hardly think the company is paying to promote now. Like Steven Spielberg’s classic E.T. this is an alien movie – from other planets, that is, not other countries – with a heart. Written and directed by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek-2009, Mission Impossible III) and produced by Spielberg, it has the same kid’s eye viewpoint as E.T.
Abrams has acknowledged his debt to Spielberg with a letter to theater operators:
“As many of you are aware, the film is set in the 1970s and is an homage to the early works of my good friend, Steven Spielberg. Naturally, the theatrical experience should be as attentive to period detail as the film itself. To that end, all stadium seating should be removed and replaced with cracked and ripped vinyl benches. If you are unable to affix chewing-gum to the bottom of each handrest, know that you will be greatly disappointing Steven Spielberg, my creative partner and mentor.“
However, since Hollywood’s CGI (computer-generated imagery) has ramped up over the past thirty years, the alien in Super 8 is much bigger than in E.T., and his destructive capabilities are vastly enhanced. So come for the kid-hearted charm, and stay for the explosions. And see if the Tropic has accommodated Abrams’ requests.
Those are the two new films. Held over by popular demand – meaning people are still buying tickets like mad – are Woody Allen’s MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, BRIDESMAIDS, and WINTER IN WARTIME.
The Monday Night Summer of Fun Classics starts a new theme for July: Second Childhood, with WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. Not the recent movie based on the Roald Dahl story, but the original from 1971 that Roger Ebert called “probably the best film of its sort since The Wizard of Oz. It is everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren't: Delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination.” School’s out. Bring the kids on Monday night for a delightful end to the long weekend.
Comments, please, to pmann99@gmail.com
Super 8 (Rhoades)
“Super 8” Captures Alien Dreams on Film
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Not to take anything away from director J. J. Abrams (he gave us the “Star Trek” reboot, TV’s “Alias” and “Lost”), but producer Steven Spielberg’s name easily overshadows when it comes to the new sci-fi thriller “Super 8.”
Thanks to such classics as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” it’s hard not to think of Spielberg without thinking of aliens (and great white sharks and holocaust victims). He’s a producer-director who leaves his imprint.
I can’t say I’ve met Steven Spielberg, but I did exchange waves with him once. My friends and I were staying at Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee’s rambling old house in East Hampton, right across from Spielberg’s place. From the second-story window you could look right into Spielberg’s fenced-in compound. One day the director pulled into his driveway as I was staring out the window. He looked up and saw me, hesitated, and then waved.
No neon-lit spaceships hovered over his house that night. No cute little extraterrestrials knocked on my door asking to use the phone. No train wrecks outside of town released any dangerous aliens.
But in Spielberg’s head – and later on movie screens – all that happens.
“I dream for a living,” he once said.
As I said, “Super 8” – the new sci-fi thriller currently playing at Regal Cinema 6 – is directed by J. J. Abrams, but produced by Spielberg. Quite a teaming.
Unlike those atom-bomb-fear-driven sci-fi movies of the ’50s, Spielberg doesn’t usually show us the dark side of invaders from outer space. The aliens in “Close Encounters” were friendly, even musical. And the visitor in “E.T.” was cuddly enough to spawn toy lines. But “Super 8” is different, more a monster movie than not.
A train wreck outside of a small Ohio town releases a government-captured alien. And suddenly the town’s dogs go missing. Then citizens disappear one by one.
Who’s to save us? Well, the town’s brave lawman (think: “Jaws”). And a kid who accidentally films the train crash on his super 8 camera (kind of a “Blow Up” moment).
Instead of the late Roy Schieder we have Kyle Chandler as the cop. And instead of Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore, we have Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning as leaders of those six cute kids who investigate these strange goings-on.
Spielberg himself doesn’t see this film as a departure. “I’ve had darkness in all the films,” he insists. “There are moments in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ that are brutally dark. I just don’t think people have stopped to study. They assume that I suddenly developed a dark side because of ‘Schindler’s List.’ When critics carp about my dark side, I always wonder, ‘Well, did they really look in the shadows?’”
He once said of his film “Poltergeist” (directed by Tobe Hooper), “It’s the darker side of my nature, it’s me when I was scaring my younger sisters half to death. In ‘Poltergeist,’ I wanted to terrify and I also wanted to amuse – I tried to mix the laughs and screams together.”
With “Super 8,” it’s not so much the mixture of chills and laughter that audiences will find significant. It’s this darker view of extraterrestrial life.
“Whenever I try to tell a risky story, whether it’s about sharks or dinosaurs, or about aliens or about history, I’ll always be thinking, ‘Am I going to get away with this?’” says Spielberg.
“When I don’t have that worry, I won’t make that movie.”
J.J. Abrams, who has already directed a monster-on-the-loose film called ‘Cloverfield,’ has this to add: “All people need to know is that it’s an adventure about a small town and it’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s scary and there’s a mystery: What is this thing that has escaped? What are the ramifications of its presence? And what is the effect on people?”
“Super 8” is the amalgam of two film pitches that Abrams made to Spielberg. The first, a coming-of-age film about small-town kids in the ’70s. The second, a film about the government moving alien monsters out of Area 51 on midnight trains – “one of which never reaches its final destination.”
Why go see it? As Spielberg explains: “After a scary movie about the world almost ending, we can walk into the sunlight and say, ‘Wow, everything’s still here. I’m okay!’ We like to tease ourselves. Human beings have a need to get close to the edge and, when filmmakers or writers can take them to the edge, it feels like a dream where you’re falling, but you wake up just before you hit the ground.”
Or before ravenous aliens come to earth.
srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Not to take anything away from director J. J. Abrams (he gave us the “Star Trek” reboot, TV’s “Alias” and “Lost”), but producer Steven Spielberg’s name easily overshadows when it comes to the new sci-fi thriller “Super 8.”
Thanks to such classics as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” it’s hard not to think of Spielberg without thinking of aliens (and great white sharks and holocaust victims). He’s a producer-director who leaves his imprint.
I can’t say I’ve met Steven Spielberg, but I did exchange waves with him once. My friends and I were staying at Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee’s rambling old house in East Hampton, right across from Spielberg’s place. From the second-story window you could look right into Spielberg’s fenced-in compound. One day the director pulled into his driveway as I was staring out the window. He looked up and saw me, hesitated, and then waved.
No neon-lit spaceships hovered over his house that night. No cute little extraterrestrials knocked on my door asking to use the phone. No train wrecks outside of town released any dangerous aliens.
But in Spielberg’s head – and later on movie screens – all that happens.
“I dream for a living,” he once said.
As I said, “Super 8” – the new sci-fi thriller currently playing at Regal Cinema 6 – is directed by J. J. Abrams, but produced by Spielberg. Quite a teaming.
Unlike those atom-bomb-fear-driven sci-fi movies of the ’50s, Spielberg doesn’t usually show us the dark side of invaders from outer space. The aliens in “Close Encounters” were friendly, even musical. And the visitor in “E.T.” was cuddly enough to spawn toy lines. But “Super 8” is different, more a monster movie than not.
A train wreck outside of a small Ohio town releases a government-captured alien. And suddenly the town’s dogs go missing. Then citizens disappear one by one.
Who’s to save us? Well, the town’s brave lawman (think: “Jaws”). And a kid who accidentally films the train crash on his super 8 camera (kind of a “Blow Up” moment).
Instead of the late Roy Schieder we have Kyle Chandler as the cop. And instead of Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore, we have Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning as leaders of those six cute kids who investigate these strange goings-on.
Spielberg himself doesn’t see this film as a departure. “I’ve had darkness in all the films,” he insists. “There are moments in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ that are brutally dark. I just don’t think people have stopped to study. They assume that I suddenly developed a dark side because of ‘Schindler’s List.’ When critics carp about my dark side, I always wonder, ‘Well, did they really look in the shadows?’”
He once said of his film “Poltergeist” (directed by Tobe Hooper), “It’s the darker side of my nature, it’s me when I was scaring my younger sisters half to death. In ‘Poltergeist,’ I wanted to terrify and I also wanted to amuse – I tried to mix the laughs and screams together.”
With “Super 8,” it’s not so much the mixture of chills and laughter that audiences will find significant. It’s this darker view of extraterrestrial life.
“Whenever I try to tell a risky story, whether it’s about sharks or dinosaurs, or about aliens or about history, I’ll always be thinking, ‘Am I going to get away with this?’” says Spielberg.
“When I don’t have that worry, I won’t make that movie.”
J.J. Abrams, who has already directed a monster-on-the-loose film called ‘Cloverfield,’ has this to add: “All people need to know is that it’s an adventure about a small town and it’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s scary and there’s a mystery: What is this thing that has escaped? What are the ramifications of its presence? And what is the effect on people?”
“Super 8” is the amalgam of two film pitches that Abrams made to Spielberg. The first, a coming-of-age film about small-town kids in the ’70s. The second, a film about the government moving alien monsters out of Area 51 on midnight trains – “one of which never reaches its final destination.”
Why go see it? As Spielberg explains: “After a scary movie about the world almost ending, we can walk into the sunlight and say, ‘Wow, everything’s still here. I’m okay!’ We like to tease ourselves. Human beings have a need to get close to the edge and, when filmmakers or writers can take them to the edge, it feels like a dream where you’re falling, but you wake up just before you hit the ground.”
Or before ravenous aliens come to earth.
srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (Brockway)
Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
The friendly documentarian Morgan Spurlock returns with "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold". This film is considerably lighter than the highly-saturated "Super-Size Me", where Spurlock took on on the fast food kingpin McDonald's and did an adequate job of convincing us that a steady diet of a Big Mac and an order of fries was slowly putting us in lethal jeopardy and that Happy Meals target children for obesity. This film is kinder but less impassioned. Now Spurlock has his camera-eye trained on product placement in movies and advertising.
His concept is to have a film where he shamelessly seeks out advertisers and tie-ins for his documentary on advertising itself and simply show what happens. The film holds its own. Spurlock is easy to watch. He is a gentle Everyman from West Virginia. Unlike his contemporary, the heavy -coated Michael Moore, Spurlock doesn't badger. When Moore trudges in confrontation, Spurlock casually walks in a board room with a self deprecating smile. No bullhorn here. He is quick to shake hands.
We get a good taste of corporate behavior here, but as Morgan isn't really attacking anyone the smiles are congenial and not forced. The highlight of the all the interviews are the offices of POM Wonderful, a juice company that seems just a smidgen saintly and self conscious. CEO Lynda Resnick is a bit catty underneath her politeness. She is a reverse-image of Cruella de Vil killing Spurlock with kindness. Her fingernails are painted a deep red, perfectly matching the super-juice that she is mistress of. I would hate to be on her bad side. Imagine being juice-boarded by POM Wonderful.
The irrepressible Ralph Nader makes an appearance too, with what may be the best exchange in the film when Spurlock asks him if there is anyplace to go without ads. Nader replies, "to sleep."
Linguist Noam Chomsky is questioned and gives Spurlock options, either to "put his toe in the water" or to swim in a sea of advertising and drown.
This is all well and good. But when Spurlock interviews Donald Trump, the film drifts a bit into camp, especially in light of current events. Trump is as arrogant as ever, lamenting certain musicians for not taking corporate cash.
There is good fun here though, mostly in the earnest good guy nature of the director himself as he gleefully accepts sponsor after sponsor with an unbridled joy. Or when he just shrugs and laughs at the ocean of corporate zombiefication, ready to wash over his efforts .
There is a very funny sequence of Spurlock mimicking a Justin Timberlake video and shots of
Spurlock's son role-playing in corporate videos and these moments are insightful. It just seems as if the director is having too much fun going with the flow.
But maybe that is the point.
I prefer the old Spurlock, the one who unnerved the Mcdonald's corporation with stubborn charm. And who went for multiple Big Macs like a kid on a mission. Like new Coke, Spurlock's tone just seems a bit altered, a bit too jokey and sweet.
It is still Spurlock and it pleases, but I miss the old attack. The flavor suited him.
I'm not sure about the new POM suit.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
The friendly documentarian Morgan Spurlock returns with "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold". This film is considerably lighter than the highly-saturated "Super-Size Me", where Spurlock took on on the fast food kingpin McDonald's and did an adequate job of convincing us that a steady diet of a Big Mac and an order of fries was slowly putting us in lethal jeopardy and that Happy Meals target children for obesity. This film is kinder but less impassioned. Now Spurlock has his camera-eye trained on product placement in movies and advertising.
His concept is to have a film where he shamelessly seeks out advertisers and tie-ins for his documentary on advertising itself and simply show what happens. The film holds its own. Spurlock is easy to watch. He is a gentle Everyman from West Virginia. Unlike his contemporary, the heavy -coated Michael Moore, Spurlock doesn't badger. When Moore trudges in confrontation, Spurlock casually walks in a board room with a self deprecating smile. No bullhorn here. He is quick to shake hands.
We get a good taste of corporate behavior here, but as Morgan isn't really attacking anyone the smiles are congenial and not forced. The highlight of the all the interviews are the offices of POM Wonderful, a juice company that seems just a smidgen saintly and self conscious. CEO Lynda Resnick is a bit catty underneath her politeness. She is a reverse-image of Cruella de Vil killing Spurlock with kindness. Her fingernails are painted a deep red, perfectly matching the super-juice that she is mistress of. I would hate to be on her bad side. Imagine being juice-boarded by POM Wonderful.
The irrepressible Ralph Nader makes an appearance too, with what may be the best exchange in the film when Spurlock asks him if there is anyplace to go without ads. Nader replies, "to sleep."
Linguist Noam Chomsky is questioned and gives Spurlock options, either to "put his toe in the water" or to swim in a sea of advertising and drown.
This is all well and good. But when Spurlock interviews Donald Trump, the film drifts a bit into camp, especially in light of current events. Trump is as arrogant as ever, lamenting certain musicians for not taking corporate cash.
There is good fun here though, mostly in the earnest good guy nature of the director himself as he gleefully accepts sponsor after sponsor with an unbridled joy. Or when he just shrugs and laughs at the ocean of corporate zombiefication, ready to wash over his efforts .
There is a very funny sequence of Spurlock mimicking a Justin Timberlake video and shots of
Spurlock's son role-playing in corporate videos and these moments are insightful. It just seems as if the director is having too much fun going with the flow.
But maybe that is the point.
I prefer the old Spurlock, the one who unnerved the Mcdonald's corporation with stubborn charm. And who went for multiple Big Macs like a kid on a mission. Like new Coke, Spurlock's tone just seems a bit altered, a bit too jokey and sweet.
It is still Spurlock and it pleases, but I miss the old attack. The flavor suited him.
I'm not sure about the new POM suit.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Super 8 (Brockway)
Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
Super 8
The movie "E.T". came out when I was sixteen. It wasn't just seeing the movie itself, but the act of physically going to see the movie. I was spending the summer in Cape May. And the next morning I was scheduled to go to a physical therapy clinic in Atlantic City. They were going to try to straighten my body. I was dreading it.
Like Elliott in "E.T". I was surrounded by identical houses in the suburban area of Cape May under a midnight sky. As my own physique was not the norm, I too, felt Outside--a star-flung traveler. After all, my feet seldom touched the ground. My Grandfather was adamant. "Ian shouldn't go to the movie. He has a doctor's appointment!" But my Dad let me go.
In watching " Super 8", I couldn't help having these recalls of memory. Here are six kids from a suburban neighborhood who want to make a monster movie. One of the kids, Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) bears a startling resemblance to Henry Thomas. There is also a glib chubby kid Charles (Riley Griffiths) who looks a little like the smart aleck character, Chunk in "The Goonies" (1985). This is no accident, since "Super 8" is produced by Spielberg, who knows how to treat children as people in much the same way Hal Roach did in the 1930s, by portraying their quirks without condescension.
And in "Super 8" the kids are the best aspect of the film. They are glue that holds it all together. They want to make a zombie movie with a super 8 camera. It is the late 70s and each one of them is in charming cahoots against the adults, who are too wrapped up in problems to really know what their children are doing. Like in any Speilberg movie, the parents are out of touch or eerie, wearing big key chains or overlarge shoes that go thump. You can't help feeling for the boys who resort to the movies to escape parental dysfunction.
Young Charles is about to make a breakthrough. He wants to film a crucial scene by the railroad tracks. There is the cue of wind and a blue beam of light. Where had I seen that before... Of course---"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977). These references are quite intentional, for in "Super 8", J.J. Abrams and Spielberg are telling of their own childhood aspirations and (re-hashing?) legacies.
The kids watch a horrible train-wreck and their dropped camera holds a secret. They must never tell their parents what lies behind the lens.
The film's strength is in its characters and in the vivid recreation of the 1970s as a period. Here is awful decor in all its orange and brown glory and here are the mature parents looking as naugahyde and drab as you might expect. The film doesn't pull punches. The grown ups are foul and coarse, but nobody is all good or all bad. The one odd note in the film that seems off key is that the kids scream and holler holy Hell whenever they see something horrible. (Eek!) At such times it seems more like a roller coaster ride than a meaty film. If we are really scared as children, aren't we usually scared speechless? I can get into the Earth vs. monsters idea that the film presents in the style of 1950s movie camp. But I have to say that after a while, this becomes a bit boring and contrived. So modeled it is after films like "War of the Worlds" (1953) and other George Pal classics.
"Super 8" starts out as a heartfelt autobiography detailing the genesis of a Spielbergan imagination with humor and gusto, but soon becomes two films in one. It does too much. Had the film stayed on the trajectory of young childhood, it would have been as deft as E.T's finger, perhaps becoming science fiction's answer to "Au revoir, les enfants". Yet with all the explosions and military charges and BoomBoomBoom! I feel I stayed a bit too long in Elliott's bedroom.
But perhaps it is enough to see this and not worry remembering my former self, as a young boy bundled in my chrome chair with my index finger extended, in one hope, to somehow touch the flickering screen.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Super 8
The movie "E.T". came out when I was sixteen. It wasn't just seeing the movie itself, but the act of physically going to see the movie. I was spending the summer in Cape May. And the next morning I was scheduled to go to a physical therapy clinic in Atlantic City. They were going to try to straighten my body. I was dreading it.
Like Elliott in "E.T". I was surrounded by identical houses in the suburban area of Cape May under a midnight sky. As my own physique was not the norm, I too, felt Outside--a star-flung traveler. After all, my feet seldom touched the ground. My Grandfather was adamant. "Ian shouldn't go to the movie. He has a doctor's appointment!" But my Dad let me go.
In watching " Super 8", I couldn't help having these recalls of memory. Here are six kids from a suburban neighborhood who want to make a monster movie. One of the kids, Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) bears a startling resemblance to Henry Thomas. There is also a glib chubby kid Charles (Riley Griffiths) who looks a little like the smart aleck character, Chunk in "The Goonies" (1985). This is no accident, since "Super 8" is produced by Spielberg, who knows how to treat children as people in much the same way Hal Roach did in the 1930s, by portraying their quirks without condescension.
And in "Super 8" the kids are the best aspect of the film. They are glue that holds it all together. They want to make a zombie movie with a super 8 camera. It is the late 70s and each one of them is in charming cahoots against the adults, who are too wrapped up in problems to really know what their children are doing. Like in any Speilberg movie, the parents are out of touch or eerie, wearing big key chains or overlarge shoes that go thump. You can't help feeling for the boys who resort to the movies to escape parental dysfunction.
Young Charles is about to make a breakthrough. He wants to film a crucial scene by the railroad tracks. There is the cue of wind and a blue beam of light. Where had I seen that before... Of course---"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977). These references are quite intentional, for in "Super 8", J.J. Abrams and Spielberg are telling of their own childhood aspirations and (re-hashing?) legacies.
The kids watch a horrible train-wreck and their dropped camera holds a secret. They must never tell their parents what lies behind the lens.
The film's strength is in its characters and in the vivid recreation of the 1970s as a period. Here is awful decor in all its orange and brown glory and here are the mature parents looking as naugahyde and drab as you might expect. The film doesn't pull punches. The grown ups are foul and coarse, but nobody is all good or all bad. The one odd note in the film that seems off key is that the kids scream and holler holy Hell whenever they see something horrible. (Eek!) At such times it seems more like a roller coaster ride than a meaty film. If we are really scared as children, aren't we usually scared speechless? I can get into the Earth vs. monsters idea that the film presents in the style of 1950s movie camp. But I have to say that after a while, this becomes a bit boring and contrived. So modeled it is after films like "War of the Worlds" (1953) and other George Pal classics.
"Super 8" starts out as a heartfelt autobiography detailing the genesis of a Spielbergan imagination with humor and gusto, but soon becomes two films in one. It does too much. Had the film stayed on the trajectory of young childhood, it would have been as deft as E.T's finger, perhaps becoming science fiction's answer to "Au revoir, les enfants". Yet with all the explosions and military charges and BoomBoomBoom! I feel I stayed a bit too long in Elliott's bedroom.
But perhaps it is enough to see this and not worry remembering my former self, as a young boy bundled in my chrome chair with my index finger extended, in one hope, to somehow touch the flickering screen.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
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