Minggu, 23 Januari 2011

‘Submarine’ – The quirk of ‘Juno,’ the whimsy of Gondry, the light-heartedness of Wes Anderson, the melancholy of ’500 Days of Summer’ [Sundance Review and Video Blog]



Richard Ayoade’s Submarine, which screened recently at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, probably affected me more than any other film I’ve seen so far. Its humorous depiction of a young man struggling to get through his teenage years was so authentic, heartfelt, and moving that it vividly evoked all the trials, tribulations, and thrills of my own younger years in a way I was not prepared for.


Hit the jump for some of my thoughts and for a video blog on the film.

Submarine opens with a voiceover from its protagonist, Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), immersing us into his enclosed little world and keeping us there for the film’s entire runtime. Oliver is eccentric and full of idiosyncrasies, sometimes painfully so. He lives a life filled with elaborate, dream-like fantasies. All of this makes his chances at landing a girlfriend difficult at best. Nonetheless, through a series of unexpected events, classmate Jordana (Yasmine Paige) becomes interested in him and the two share a lovely teen romance. In the meantime, Oliver works desperately to prevent the disintegration of his parents’ (Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor) rocky marriage.


What makes Submarine shine is the committed performance of newcomer Craig Roberts and Ayoade’s willingness to let the story venture into some dark territory. There are developments in Oliver’s life that would overcome even 20 or 30-year-0lds with paralyzing fear. Oliver makes some horrible choices, but it’s a treacherous learning process that we all go through, and the film’s ability to recall it makes Oliver imminently relatable. That Oliver is able to endure this period is a testament to the awesome resilience of children.


Those who know Ayoade from The IT Crowd and The Mighty Boosh won’t be surprised that he’s able to nail the tone of this film and deliver some great laughs. But the fact that Ayoade’s directorial debut is so full of life and so true-to-life promises what I hope will be an amazing career in feature films.


Here is our video review of Submarine, which also features Dustin from Pajiba and Raffi and Dan from The Film Stage, shot in glorious shaky-cam by Jordan of The Film Stage. For an alternate take, be sure to also check out Peter’s review of this film from TIFF.



BEST OF 2010: Aaron's Top 33 Films

Today, Christmas Eve, is the beginning of my 'Jesus year,' appropriately. Though I was forced to stop at a mere 10 favorite films on my 2010 indieWIRE and Village Voice/LA Weekly poll ballots, why not keep going? For each of my birthdays, including this 'un, I present a fuller, more eye-popping list that will hopefully encourage you to seek out something new...



BUT BEFORE THAT: Starting tonight, I encourage all of you still in the NYC area to come out to Brooklyn's reRun Gastropub Theater for a FREE screening series I've programmed called 'PINK XMAS: The Holiday Cheer of Japanese Sexploitation.' Co-presented by GreenCine and PinkEiga, the two-week series (Dec. 24 - Jan. 6) will feature 6 of the wildest, weirdest 'pink films' from Japan, including two from the Academy Award winning director of Departures). I'll be hosting and bartending tonight at the 8pm show, with doors opening at 7pm. For more info, click here.



01-Amer.jpg



02-Another-Year.jpg



03-Black-Swan.jpg



Continued reading BEST OF 2010: Aaron's Top 33 Films...



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(J-Diz on
Dec 25, 2010 7:05 PM)




Hmmm... I know what some of these are. Any chance I can find this list in text form?


(Aaron Hillis on
Dec 25, 2010 9:34 PM)




Unfortunately, no. You'd have to look at the names of the image files themselves. The good news is: if you look hard enough, all the titles ARE there...


(J-Diz on
Dec 25, 2010 10:19 PM)




Sigh. Okayyyy.

Can I ask though, your appreciation of FLOODING WITH LOVE FOR THE KID... how would you describe it? I can't seem to wrap my head around the idea that this film is worthwhile for any other reason than as an artifact of cinema-du-WTF.

Is there anything you got out of this film wasn't purely... WTF-ness?


(Aaron Hillis on
Dec 27, 2010 12:31 PM)




Some of them are more readable now, but I wanted there to be a rewarding challenge to it all: magic eye puzzles, if you will!

As for FLOODING WITH LOVE FOR THE KID, I direct you to my review in Time Out NY back in January right here, especially this line: 'While the premise might seem like a superficial YouTube stunt, the storytelling is crafty, compelling (falling from a cliff while being chased by a helicopter?!?) and heartfelt enough to explode all sense of cheeky irony.' It's an utterly sincere project/performance, and I'm greatly looking forward to his next endeavor, Your Brother. Remember?, which opens at NYC's Public Theater in January. Definitely seek both out.

FILM OF THE WEEK: The Way Back

by Vadim Rizov


The Way Back



When you have—as with The Way Back—an old-fashioned, grueling trek odyssey with plenty of far-off shots of tiny figures crossing a vast landscape, there's a danger in making it sound like an awards-season anachronism for the old folks. Describing the difficulties he had getting financing for his first film in seven years, director Peter Weir sounded surprisingly like a man who feels out of time: 'One [studio exec] said 'We aren't in that kind of business anymore.' I thought what kind of business? Show business?' Truly, Weir has more to offer than mere old-school, impress-through-sheer-scale spectacle. That same sound byte might've been uttered by David Lean at his most peevish; when Lean was interviewed by Gerald Pratley on the CBC in March 1965 (collected in the out-of-print, Andrew Sarris-edited anthology Interviews with Film Directors), he sniped the kitchen-sink realism and other 'obscure' films rising in awards prominence. Doctor Zhivago would be his last great success, and the kind of sweeping epic he'd come to specialize in was on the way out. 'I, personally, often worry about being old-fashioned,' he said. 'But I like a good strong story. I like a beginning, a middle and an end.'

Continued reading FILM OF THE WEEK: The Way Back...



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Has 3D Already Failed? The sequel, part one: RealDlighted



Kristin here–


On August 28, 2009, I posted an entry called “Has 3-D Already Failed?” As I wrote then, my title was deliberately provocative. It depended on which of two yardsticks you measured success by:


1. If you’re Jeffrey Katzenberg and want every theater in the world now showing 35mm films to convert to digital 3-D, then the answer is probably yes. That goal is unlikely to be met within the next few decades, by which time the equipment now being installed will almost certainly have been replaced by something else.


2. It also seems possible that the powers that be will decide that 3-D has reached a saturation point, or nearly so. 3-D films are now a regular but very minority product in Hollywood. They justify their existence by bringing in more at the box-office than do 2-D versions of the same films. Maybe the films that wouldn’t really benefit from 3-D, like Julie & Julia, will continue to be made in 2-D. 3-D is an add-on to a digital projector, so theaters can remove it to show 2-D films. Or a multiplex might reserve two or three of its theaters for 3-D and use the rest for traditional screenings.


If the second, more modest goal is the one many Hollywood studios are aiming at, then no, 3-D hasn’t failed. But as for 3-D being the one technology that will “save” the movies from competition from games, iTunes, and TV, I remain skeptical.


So, nearly 17 months later, where do we stand? There has been a considerable increase in the number of screens with 3D projection systems, from 4,400 in May 2010 to 8,770 in early December. That’s out of roughly 38,000. This growth presumably came in response to the huge success of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. Anne Thompson’s “Year-End Box Office Wrap 2010″ quotes Don Harris, Paramount’s executive vice-president of distribution: “There are more screens, so a theater can now handle anywhere from two to three 3-D films at one time.” By year’s end, there were roughly 13,000 3D-equipped screens outside the North American market. The number of 3D films per year has grown from 2 in 2008 to 11 in 2009 to 22 in 2010 to an announced 30+ for this year.


Thompson also points out two other important strengths of 3D films: they sell a lot of tickets abroad, often earning three times as much as in the North American market, and they have led to theatrical income is “again the leading film revenue stream.” Of course, that’s partly due to the drop in DVD sales.


Yet for some the bloom seems to be off the rose. Low-budget exploitation films in 3D, films shot in 2D and converted for 3D release, filmgoer impatience with ticket surcharges and clunky glasses, and a general decline in the novelty value of 3D have all combined to leave its future still in doubt.


Before going more deeply into those problems, though, let’s look at the box-office successes, or apparent successes, of 3D films in 2010.


3D props up the box office


This week’s print version of The Hollywood Reporter heralds 2010 as “The year that was saved by 3D.” (For subscribers, the article is online, though it lacks the charts.) As Pamela McClintock, author of this excellent article, points out, “Of the top 20 films at the domestic box office, 11 were 3D titles (out of a total of 22 major 3D releases). Why the fat grosses? On average, a 3D title can expect to make 30 percent more because of the 30 percent upcharge for a 3D ticket.” (The accompanying chart, below, covers only the top 11 titles.)



(I will step in here and point out something that never seems to get mentioned in coverage of 3D, which is that part of that fee goes to pay for the glasses.)


Moreover, overseas markets, which have been making up an increasing portion of most big films’ worldwide grosses, are adding 3D screens like crazy. “The U.K., China, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, China and Russia in particular have seen a surge in digital-theater installations.” Given that the U.S. is still making more 3D films than most of these countries, Hollywood is getting a generous slice of that box-office income. Some films thought to be disappointments in the States did well worldwide, such as Clash of the Titans, with $493.2 million, and The Last Airbender, with $318.9 million.


Of course, there have been underperformers: Cats and Dogs: the Revenge of Kitty Galore, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and Gulliver’s Travels, most notably. McClintock points out, “It’s almost certain that Deathly Hallows would have jumped the $1 billion mark worldwide had it been released in 3D, but Warners didn’t want to tarnish the franchise.” As it is, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 has grossed $937,257,461 worldwide and is still in distribution.


Another thing that McClintock points out that most commentators ignore is that making a film in 3D adds to its budget, on average about $20 million for a two-hour feature. The alternative practice of shooting a film in 2D and then converting it to 3D is common. That costs about $100,000 or more a minute, or about $12 million for a two-hour film. (James Cameron, who ought to know, says a quality job would be $15 million or more.) For a movie that grosses in the hundreds of millions, that’s pretty small, but it’s not insignificant for a more modest film.


Let’s think about that for a moment. Jeffrey Katzenberg and James Cameron may still expect that all films will someday be made in 3D. But, to take one example I’ve seen people use in recent months, do we really think The Kids Are All Right would be enhanced by 3D? Even if some people do, the film cost only around $4 million to make and grossed a little under $30 million worldwide. Would $20 million spent on 3D cause it to gross over $50 million to make up the difference?*


Or does it?


Despite the fact that 3D brought in higher grosses for the more successful films in that format last year, some experts are pointing to a decline in revenues over the year. In July of last year, Daniel Frankel published a widely cited chart called “The Rise & Fall of 3D” on The Wrap showing that since the release of Avatar the previous December, the proportion of the opening weekend box-office for major films coming from 3D screenings had declined:



Then in August Slate posted a more detailed study by Daniel Engber bluntly entitled “Is 3-D Dead in the Water?” Engber took issue with Frankel’s chart saying that it did not reflect problems with a shortage of 3D screens available during the release of these films. But Engber didn’t disagree that 3D’s share of a film’s income has been falling. Quite the contrary, he thought it the decline was even greater. Taking a different approach that basically compares per-screen averages for 3D and 2D screening of the same film, he came up with a new chart:


The chart below—created with enormous help from Slate designer Holly Allen—shows the ratio of 3-D revenue to 2-D revenue, on a per-screen basis, for almost every major three-dimensional release going back to the beginning of the current revival.



Here’s the simplest way to interpret this graph: 3-D has been getting less and less profitable, relative to 2-D, over the past five years. It’s an ominous, downward trend that started long before Avatar and Alice in Wonderland and continued after. (The red dotted line represents a break-even point, where screenings in 3-D and 2-D theaters make exactly the same amount of money.)


(I can’t go into the details here, but Engber presents additional charts and information; it’s a must-read for anyone interested in 3D, pro or con.)


Last year the big complaint from Katzenberg and other 3D purveyors was that there weren’t enough theaters to screen all the films that were coming out in that format. Katzenberg is still not satisfied with the rate at which theaters are converting screens to 3D, but maybe exhibitors have realized that there is not as much future in it as they had been led to believe. Given that most multiplexes have two, three, or even four screens capable of showing 3D films, the rate of conversion is likely to slow, if it hasn’t already.


Toy Story 3‘s release seems to have marked the point where some industry analysts began to notice the downward trend in 3D revenues in comparison to 2D. Its opening offers an insight into whether the drop is real or just an apparent effect of too many 3D films vying for too few screens, as is so often claimed. Media financial analyst Richard Greenfield pointed out that the film’s percentage of revenue from 3D screens was 1% less than with Shrek Forever After (released May 21). Toy Story 3 had made 60% of its opening weekend box office on 3D screens, while Shrek Forever After (released May 21) had made 61% and Alice in Wonderland (March 5) had made 70%.


1% may not sound like a lot, but Toy Story 3 was released on the largest number of 3D screens of any film to that date. In that case, it could not be claimed that the drop resulted from too many 3D films jostling for screens. On the contrary, one would expect a rise.


Not only that, but Engber points out that the 2D versions of Toy Story 3 actually outperformed the 3D ones:


Then we come to the weekend of June 18, 2010, when Toy Story 3 opened in more than 4,000 theaters around the country. It was a huge weekend for the Pixar film—one of the biggest of all time, in fact, with more than $110 million in total revenue, and $66 million from 3-D. Yet a close look at the numbers shows something else: On average, Toy Story 3 pulled in $27,000 for every theater showing the movie in 3-D, and $28,000 for every one that showed it flat. In other words, the net effect of showing Woody, Buzz, and friends in full stereo depth was negative 5 percent. The format was losing money.


One could posit, of course, that the 2D screenings simply benefited from the overflow from sold-out 3D screenings. People who wanted to see the film in 3D had to settle. But that still doesn’t explain the drop in comparison to earlier films given the fact that Toy Story 3 opened on the largest number of 3D screens. At least two tickets to the film in 2D were sold to people who had the option of going to a 3D screening: David and me.


Engber goes on to consider some explanations for the decline, some of the same basic ones I’ll discuss here. He concludes that the situation is dire for 3D: “For mainstream movies that can be viewed in either format, the added benefit of screening in three dimensions is trending toward zero.”


Is 3D TV competing with theatrical or hurting it?


There seems to be an assumption that pop culture is headed toward a time when new media in general are delivered in 3D. The assumption is that 3D television will help boost sales of movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Maybe, but the sales of 3D TVs have been reported as lower than expected. According to a revealing article in Variety, Samsung projected that it would sell 3 million units in 2010 and sold less than 2 million: “According to several electronics makers, the biz will be concerned if the negativity continues six months from now.” Screen Digest’s year-end summary of 3D TV’s prospects (“After one year of 3D in the home,” December 2010 issue) points out that not only do 3D sets cost half again as much as 2D ones, but they are also mostly 44” or over, larger than most people can afford even in 2D sets.


That’s not the only cost holding back sales of sets. According to Variety: “The main reasons for holding out have been the pricey pairs of active-shutter glasses (sold for around $150 or more) that can be cumbersome to wear, easy to break and require batteries that run out. At the same time, there hasn’t been much 3D content to watch on the new sets.”


Sets with these active-shutter glasses come with one pair included. The things are bulky and require batteries. New 3D TV models are in the pipeline, some that work with lighter polarized glasses costing more like $20, with four pairs included. As Bob Mayson president of consumer electronics for RealD (a major 3D theatrical supplier) told Variety, “You won’t have a Super Bowl party with active eyewear. With passive eyewear [i.e, those polarized glasses] you can buy a bag of glasses from Costco and be in business.”


Maybe guys who sit around drinking beer and watching the Super Bowl will get used to seeing each other wearing plastic glasses. Still, I have long been of the opinion that until 3D technology reaches a point where the glasses are unnecessary, the format can’t be universally viable. Toshiba and Sony have prototypes of such sets at technology fairs, but they reportedly won’t reach consumers for three to five years. I’m curious to know what the 3D effect will look like if you’re not sitting at exactly the right spot in front of the screen. From what I’ve read, you have to be positioned not only in front but also close. An excellent article in Wired summing up the obstacles to watching 3D on TV says the depth effect is limited to about four feet. In fact, there already are monitors for 3D without glasses (mainly available in Japan); they’re used mainly to display ads in stores. But in October Toshiba showed off two models intended for the home (left). The monitors are 12″ and 20″ and the optimum viewing distance is 90 cm for the larger monitor; that’s about three feet. They can project 3D to nine points in the room, but it sounds downright impossible for that many people to perch at precise points, all about a yard from the screen. Bigger versions will no doubt follow.


More content is coming for 3D TV, but again according to Variety, many content-providers are


focused on high-profile fare like sports and concerts, because as long as 3D TV requires glasses, it will only be used for event programming, not casual viewing. It may be tough to broadcast the Super Bowl in full 3D, outside of relying on a conversion, however, given that too many seats in the stadium would have to be removed for the 3D cameras. Networks could use robotic and remote-controlled 3D cameras but those are still too new of technologies to rely on yet.


Screen Digest ‘s year-end summary of 3D TV focuses on other obstacles, primarily the lack of content:


As recently as early September 2010 two thirds of the 21 3D BD [Blu-ray Disc] titles confirmed for US release in 2010 were tired to exclusive bundling deals with 3D hardware, leaving only seven available for purchase in store. By November, the total 3D BD slate had increased to 37 titles, 25 of which had been confirmed for retail sale by the year end. Furthermore, many of the biggest titles (including Avatar, the Shrek franchise, Monsters v Aliens, Ice Age 3) were still tied into exclusive bundles. By comparison, at the end of Blu-ray’s first year of availability (2006) 135 titles had been released on the format in the U.S.


I’m sure the brand partnerships between the TV makers and the studios have saved a lot in advertising, but it’s hard to imagine investing in a new technology when every time you want a popular film title, you have to buy a TV set to go with it. No doubt the availability of films to buy will increase, but the introductory approach seems a strange way to go about fostering interest in 3D movies on TV.


The Screen Digest article makes another interesting point. Initially, “3D in the home was conceived first and foremost as an attempt to mirror the revenues proven in the cinema—a 20 per cent premium over 2D features.” But much 3D TV content is also surprisingly like 2D TV content: “Ten percent of the cinema features have been dance or music, with a further four per cent including live sports and opera. This suggests an appetite for content that has traditionally been better suited to live television transmission than physical or cinematic tradition.” That further suggests that in the long run, people may be keener on 3D TV than on theatrical films in 3D—just the opposite of the studios’ hopes as they went in for 3D.


Beyond film and TV content, there is also the likelihood that 3D video-game playing through the large monitor will take up some of the time spent in front of the appliance. There’s also the fact that streaming or downloading 3D films requires far more bandwidth than 2D movies, though methods of compression are being developed.


The Screen Digest author predicts that by the end of 2014, 25% of American homes will have 3D TV. The question remains: What will people be watching?


Next week: Part two: RealDsgusted



*No doubt some cost-cutting is possible. Still, Tsui Hark’s Flying Swords of Dragon Inn (announced for a 2011 release), shot with the relatively inexpensive Red 3D digital camera, is budgeted at approximately $35 million. The difference between that and his usual cost per film could easily include $15-20 million for 3D. See Filmsmash for information and numerous photos derived from Chinese sites; the latter include images of the camera and of shooting in front of a green screen.


By Sam Spratt at Gizmodo

BEST OF 2010: Cinema Jukebox Edition

by Vadim Rizov

Inception and Shutter Island... DISQUALIFIED!



One of the incidental pleasures of watching even a mediocre movie is experiencing the way a specific song is used. As long as they're not the bland sonic equivalent to wallpaper for montages (e.g. the breathy singer-songwriter blandness of Morning Glory, or any peppy pop-punk shopping sequence), most movies make a token stab at rewiring the associations of a given song. Here are 10 of my favorite examples from the past year, with any film-length scoring (like Shutter Island's primer on 20th-century chromatic classical music, or the ever-popular BRAAAAAAAHM of Inception) disqualified:

Continued reading BEST OF 2010: Cinema Jukebox Edition...



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(Seankgallagher on
Jan 4, 2011 6:49 PM)




Forgot about the use of 'Fly Me to the Moon' in DOGTOOTH. That was indeed a disturbing scene.

Another great use of music in a movie last year was SOMEWHERE using Gwen Stefani's 'Cool' during the scene where Elle Fanning is practicing her ice skating, and Stephen Dorff goes from indifference to really appreciating her for maybe the first time. Also unusual in that they let the song play out for the entire time.

PODCAST: Stellan Skarsgard


A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN star Stellan Skarsgard



Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård's international resume speaks volumes about his versatility—from cinephile faves like Breaking the Waves and Insomnia to glossier American fare like Good Will Hunting and Mamma Mia!. (Ronin might fall in both camps.) His latest film, a bleakly funny comedy entitled A Somewhat Gentle Man, opens in New York on January 14:



Ulrik (Skarsgard) is a somewhat gentle man, as far as gangsters go. Reluctantly back on the streets following a stint in prison, Ulrik's boss greets him with open arms and a plan to settle an old score. With a demented sense of professional pride, Ulrik's boss sets in motion a plan to right the wrong done to his star employee. The problem is Ulrik would rather go about his own business, however mundane, than get involved with his ragtag colleagues again. This dark feel good comedy delivers laughs and gasps in equal measure.




In late December, Skarsgård phoned me from Sweden to briefly chat about his third collaboration with director Hans Petter Moland (after Zero Kelvin and Aberdeen), David Fincher's upcoming remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, cooking for his own family, and atheism.



To listen to the podcast, click here. (10:56)



Podcast Music

INTRO: Python Lee Jackson: 'In a Broken Dream'

OUTRO: Julie Walters & Stellan Skarsgård: "Take a Chance on Me (from Mamma Mia!)'



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Porn Stars' Oscar Picks

by Steve Dollar


Porn Stars' Oscar Picks


They call Southern California's adult film industry 'the other Hollywood.' And much as their mainstream counterparts, porn stars, too, gather during awards season to hand out trophies to their best and brightest. Although you'll likely never see Meryl Streep nominated for best performance in a double penetration scene.


As the XXX elite gathered in Las Vegas for tonight's AVN Awards ceremony—the Porno Oscars, if you will—I chatted with a few notable talents to get their favorite contenders in that 'other' race.


[WARNING: Far safer for work and more thoughtful than you'd expect.]

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The Boy Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

by Vadim Rizov
Â


THE GREEN HORNET director Michel Gondry, with Seth Rogen


The Green Hornet was supposed to be Michel Gondry's directorial feature debut in 1997, starring Greg Kinnear as Marvel's comic-book hero. As it was, it took 2001's Human Nature for Gondry to break into cinema, and Kato's first fight in the 2011 model is a retread of Gondry's video for The Chemical Brothers' 'Let Forever Be.' It's a nifty bit of trivia or validation that the project ended up with the same filmmaker 14 years later, but the project resulted from multiple corporate disputes, with reshoots and a shoddy 3D conversion to boot. The Green Hornet proves to be the sloppiest, most inept action franchise-launcher helmed by a frail visionary weirdo since Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. At least on that production, Jack Nicholson ran interference for Burton, sparing him from the worst of Warner Bros.' meddling. This is a film made by a director who is not allowed to be himself.
Â

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(Dean on
Jan 14, 2011 2:36 PM)




If Green Hornet is as STOOOOOOOPID as it looks it will be the flop of the year, I thought it was bad enough when I heard that Seth (i can't act ) Rogen was picked for the part. Then it was down hill from there.
I can honestly say that I won't even buy the DVD let alone go to the theater.

Podcast: Paul Giamatti


BARNEY'S VERSION star Paul Giamatti


For an actor who has been praised for playing a sad-sack wine snob (Sideways), a socially backward everyman (American Splendor), an irascible leader (HBO's John Adams), even a gloomy actor named 'Paul Giamatti' (Cold Souls), Paul Giamatti would still have a diverse oeuvre if you only counted his onscreen cranks. Perhaps the most complicated of the bunch would be Giamatti's role in the new film Barney's Version, for which he has been nominated for a Golden Globe:



Based on Mordecai Richler's award winning novel—his last and, arguably, best—BARNEY'S VERSION is the warm, wise and witty story of the politically incorrect life of Barney Panofsky (Giamatti), who meets the love of his life at his wedding—and she is not the bride. A candid confessional, told from Barney's point of view, the film spans three decades and two continents, taking us through the different acts of his unusual history.



His first wife, Clara (Rachelle Lefevre), is a flame-haired, flagrantly unfaithful free sprit with whom Barney briefly lives la vie de Boheme in Rome. The Second Mrs. P. (Minnie Driver) is a wealthy Jewish Princess who shops and talks incessantly, barely noticing that Barney is not listening. It is at their lavish wedding that Barney meets and starts pursuing Miriam (Rosamund Pike), his third wife, the mother of his two children and true love.


With his father Izzy (Dustin Hoffman) as his sidekick, Barney takes us through the many highs, and a few too many lows, of his long and colorful life. Not only does Barney turn out to be a true romantic, he is also capable of all kinds of sneaky acts of gallantry, generosity, and goodness when we–and he– least expect it. His is a gloriously full life, played out on a grand scale. And, at its center stands an unlikely hero—the unforgettable Barney Panofsky.




Sitting down together at the Crosby Street Hotel in NYC, Giamatti and I extolled the hidden virtues of the quick-tempered Barney, then discussed the actor's desire for vice, naked existential fear, what attracts him to playing curmudgeonly souls, and whether Lady in the Water was misunderstood.



To listen to the podcast, click here. (13:58)

[WARNING: One minor plot point spoiled herein.]



Podcast Music

INTRO: Heyoka: 'Big Bud Barney'

OUTRO: Barney from The Simpsons: 'A Boozehound Named Barney'



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FILM OF THE WEEK: Lemmy

by Steve Dollar


Lemmy



What a piece of work is Lemmy. Keith Richards gets all the credit for being the rugged Jack Sparrow of rock'n'roll, but he's not the only pirate sailing under a black flag. And he doesn't even play for a band with an umlaut in its name.



LemmyAnd you might argue that Ian Fraser Kilmister, born on the first Christmas Eve after the end of World War II, makes a far sturdier badass icon. Better known as Lemmy to the gazillion fans of Motörhead, the bruisingly influential English metal band of which he is the only abiding member, the author of such live-fast-die-ugly anthems as 'Eat the Rich,' 'Killed by Death' and the immortal 'Ace of Spades,' seems as indestructible as the Terminator. To paraphrase one of his enthusiastically besotted fans, interviewed outside a concert in the documentary Lemmy: 49% Motherfucker, 51% Son of a Bitch: 'If they ever drop a nuclear bomb on this world, the only thing left behind will be Lemmy and cockroaches.'

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CONTEST: Lebanon DVD Giveaway


Lebanon


Lebanon DVD
'Not just the year's most impressive first feature, but also the strongest new movie of any kind I've seen in 2010,' praised The Village Voice's J. Hoberman about Samuel Maoz's Lebanon, available today on home video. On behalf of GreenCine and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, you may enter to win the DVD of what Salon's Andrew O'Hehir called 'A terrifying, absorbing 93 minutes spent in hell.' More on the film:



In 1982, during the First Lebanon War, a tank manned by a novice crew of Israeli soldiers are led into a town previously bombed by the air force. Young men who have never fought before are now placed inside of a killing machine and thrown into a situation that quickly spins out of control, testing the mental toughness of the men inside of a confined space, with only the lens of a periscopic gun sight to see the madness outside. In LEBANON, writer-director Samuel Maoz has created a compelling, visceral drama in the tradition of DAS BOOT. Based on his personal experiences in the Israeli army, the film is as much a personal work of filmmaking as a triumph of powerful storytelling.




To enter, email contest@greencine.com and include your name, email address, mailing address, and, if you're a GreenCine member, your username in the email, and 'Lebanon' in the subject header. Entries without all this information will not be considered. (You will not be added to a mailing list!). One winner will be selected at random from all valid entries. You must be a US resident to enter. The deadline to enter is January 24. Winner will be notified by e-mail and announced in future editions of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter.


See the Lebanon trailer below:







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Hollywood's Tourists

by Vadim Rizov

Florian Hennel von Donnersmarck (with tiny Johnny D.)


One of winter's great flops—The Tourist, in which Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie failed to, in Variety trade-speak, attract domestic auds (yet grossing twice as much overseas, validating the continual attractiveness of household names and glossy production values in foreign markets)—has prompted inquiring minds to wonder why a film concocted from such promising elements fell apart. The answer, according to one source among a post-mortem smattering of anonymous voices close to production, laid much of the blame at the feet of director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. He wanted a style piece, the stars didn't want to be stylish (Depp insisted on an elaborately ugly goatee, to the alarm of all involved) and the production went downhill from there.



Von Donnersmarck had come to Hollywood with big ambitions: his 2006 Best Foreign Film winner The Lives of Others was exactly the kind of historically weighty but easy-to-watch film Academy members love. If his attempt to go Hollywood failed, perhaps it's because he aimed too high, with an outsized budget and a story anchored by people and plot rather than a concept that sells itself. Over the last decade, many foreign directors have quite deliberately emigrated for American studio budgets and never gone back, but they keep their ambitions modest and pragmatic. At home, aping Hollywood on a small budget is a dream. In California, you can do it without the struggle.

Continued reading Hollywood's Tourists...



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(J.M. on
Jan 20, 2011 8:09 AM)




Another example of wonderful foreign directors who magically lose their...well, magic when working in the USA: John Woo.


(Jen on
Jan 20, 2011 10:59 AM)




Is this writer out of touch? The Tourist's worldwide gross is already $186M . . . and counting. Yes, despite the bashing of the so-called critics. This weekend it is predicted to reach $200M! 'Nuff said. Don't want to waste any more time with a stup1d writer.

SUNDANCE '11 PODCAST: Michael Tully


Michael-Tully-Septien-podcast.jpg


Since I consider actor, director and respected film blogger Michael Tully both a colleague and friend, I've chosen not to write a proper review of his third feature, Septien. Set in the dreamy Tennessee boonies, Tully's darkly eccentric (and if you can forgive the bias, quite remarkable) familial fable makes its world premiere simultaneously at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and nationwide on VOD via Sundance Selects (January 23):



Michael Tully's SEPTIEN follows Cornelius Rawlings, who returns to his family's farm eighteen years after disappearing without a trace. While his parents are long deceased, Cornelius's brothers continue to live in isolation on this forgotten piece of land. Ezra is a freak for two things: cleanliness and Jesus. Amos is a self-taught artist who fetishizes sports and Satan. Although back home, Cornelius is still distant. In between challenging strangers to one-on-one games, he huffs and drinks the days away. The family's high-school sports demons show up one day in the guise of a plumber and a pretty girl. Only a mysterious drifter can redeem their souls on 4th and goal. Triple-threat actor/writer/director Tully creates a backwoods world that's only a few trees away from our own, complete with characters on the edge of sanity that we can actually relate to. A hero tale gone wrong, SEPTIEN is funny when it's inappropriate to laugh, and realistic when it should be psychotic.




Tully invited me to his Brooklyn apartment on the night before he left for Sundance to discuss Septien's 'little pot of gumbo' tone, the delicate concerns of being both a critic and a filmmaker, and whether an unearthed camcorder and the casting of Harmony Korine's wife Rachel were a combined onscreen ode to Trash Humpers.



To listen to the podcast, click here. (20:25)




Podcast Music

INTRO: Michael Montes: 'Septien Opening Titles'

OUTRO: HAM1: 'It's Only a Dream Unto Itself'



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Neds – review


Eight years ago in The Magdalene Sisters, his second movie as writer-director, Peter Mullan took up the cudgels against the repressive cruelty of a Catholic institution for girls in the Ireland of the 1960s.

He has now turned to, and on, a similar subject on the other side of the Irish Sea, the insensitive brutality of a Catholic boys' school in Glasgow and the conditions that lead to the near-destruction of an intelligent, lively, working-class lad.

What with the idle, negligent teachers, a brutal, alcoholic father (Peter Mullan), a cowed mother and a violent, antisocial brother, it's not entirely surprising that John McGill (Conor McCarron) throws in his lot with local gangs for reasons of personal survival and self-respect, and ends up among the eponymous acronymous Neds (ie non-educated delinquents).

This angry film is a forceful slice of life, clearly indebted to the realism of Ken Loach, in whose My Name Is Joe Mullan starred, and to whose Kes it nods. One also detects something of Terence Davies's films about growing up in working-class, Catholic Liverpool. Mullan's performance recalls the drunken domestic tyrant played by Pete Postlethwaite in Distant Voices, Still Lives.

The realism is disrupted by the occasional touch of surrealism, most especially a sequence in which a statue of Christ comes to life for the hallucinating hero, a recurrent trope of Catholic movies.


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Get Low – review

Get Low – review: "

Set in rural Tennessee in the 1930s and inspired by a local legend, this curious comedy-drama stars Robert Duvall as Felix Bush, a twinkle-eyed old curmudgeon out of Faulkner. After living as a recluse since the 1890s, he decides to invite suspicious neighbours to attend his 'living funeral', where they'll have the chance to win his 300 acres of land in a raffle. Bill Murray gives a superb performance as the undertaker, an opportunistic but essentially decent man, who organises the event when the pastor turns it down. And an intriguing air of mystery is built up around the revelations Felix plans to make on this bizarre occasion.

But though handsomely shot and designed, this ponderous film is a disappointment. Winston Churchill famously described Russia as 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. Get Low proves to be a platitude wrapped in a banality inside a mystery.


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Simpan sebagai Konsep

Gobo. Digital Glossary – review


ICA, London

Akhe Engineering Theatre defies categorisation. Presented under the banner of the 2011 London International Mime festival, its latest piece, Gobo. Digital Glossary, offers an exploration of humanity's powerlessness in the face of the chaos of existence. At the centre of the performance is the elusive notion of Gobo, a concept definable only by its absence. Ironic references to heroism and the hero suggest that Gobo might be some kind of ordering principle, perhaps based on antique notions of virtue. A self-deluding dream that a Beckett character might cling to.

Or not, because this event resists all efforts at interpretation. The hour-long performance is almost entirely mute, except for the occasional brusque Russian imprecation, but there are cryptic references to 'Judith from Catford' and 'Susan from West Ham'. Lasers zip across a stage littered with detritus, reflecting off spoons and illuminating a fish tank in which a Big Ears puppet is ritually drowned. A man in a chair raises his leg by means of chains and pulleys and briefly sets himself on fire. Another, with rubber bands wrapped tightly around his face, is pummelled by a plastic boxing kangaroo. A book is laid on a bed of nails, flogged with a scourge and dismembered with a saw.

Maxim Isaev and Pavel Semchenko, the piece's authors and performers, enjoy a certain notoriety in their native St Petersburg as the orchestrators of absurdist "happenings" staged in public spaces and apartment stairwells. That their work leaves spectators flummoxed is part of the point, as is its physical integrity. "If the fire is burning, then it's hot and painful," Semchenko told one interviewer. "We don't want to rely on tricks."

This was a week in which ballet invaded the cinema. On Wednesday the Royal Ballet's production of Giselle, with Marianela Nuñez in the title role and Rupert Pennefather as Albrecht, was relayed live to cinemas all over the world. Entering into the spirit of the event, audiences tweeted each other effusively. 'Lovely first act from my tiny cinema in France. Really like the production, apart from the pas de six,' wrote the online critic Bella Figura. 'Love, love Marianela,' agreed Ashley Bouder, principal dancer with New York City Ballet.

On Friday it was the turn of Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky's gothic psycho-flick in which Natalie Portman plays a ballerina in meltdown. That the film retreads every negative ballet cliche has troubled some dance fans, as has the fact that Portman, with her wonky port de bras and soft, citizen's legs, clearly can't dance to save her life. 'It makes what we do look so naff and laughable,' Royal Ballet star Edward Watson told the Guardian.

It does, but perhaps only to the trained eye. Michael Powell's 1948 film The Red Shoes, which culminates with the star dancer's suicide, sent an entire generation ballet-mad, and while Moira Shearer is beautiful throughout, the supposed ballerina played by Ludmilla Tchérina is laugh-out-loud ludicrous and Robert Helpmann quite startlingly camp. So dance insiders should take the long view, ignore the stereotypes and count the column inches. Is it just a coincidence that the Royal Ballet's new season of Swan Lake opened at Covent Garden yesterday? Well, yes, it probably is. But the fact that it's running alongside Black Swan can only be good news for the box office. And if there's less lurid self-harm and girl-on-girl action in the Royal's version, you do get to see Sarah Lamb's port de bras.


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It's too simplistic to blame mothers for anorexia | Barbara Ellen


The suicide of Marie Caro raises troubling questions about this killer

How terrible that Marie Caro has committed suicide out of 'guilt'. She was the mother of Isabelle Caro, the French anorexic model, who posed naked, bones jutting, skin stretched, eyes sunken pools of horror, for the 2007 'No Anorexia' campaign. At her worst, Isabelle weighed 3st 13lbs and ate two squares of chocolate and four or five cornflakes a day. She died last November, aged 28, after being admitted to a French hospital suffering from dehydration.

Marie is said to have taken her own life, consumed with guilt. Isabelle's stepfather says this was because it was his wife who insisted that her daughter go into the hospital. (In a case still pending, the Caro family believes the hospital failed Isabelle.) Aside from this, you wonder if, for Marie, guilt had become a way of life, the default guilt that's the lot of almost every mother, capped by the guilt of Isabelle's illness and death.

In her book, The Little Girl Who Didn't Want to Get Fat, Isabelle said her mother didn't want her to grow up. 'I wanted to have the body of a child for ever, to make my mother happy.' This belief is seemingly contradicted by her mother's subsequent battles with her over food, but who are we to know?

What we do know is that other mothers of anorexics have come forward to talk of their own crippling 'guilt'. This seems odd when anorexia has long been classified as a disease. If a mother would not blame herself for her child's cancer, then why would she take the blame for her anorexia? Because society dictates that she should?

If so, what rot. Anorexia is a disease, an issue of mental health, with myriad and complex triggers which, in a long list, can include family dysfunction. What it is not is: 'Something Mummy does to you!' Despite this, there often seems this undercurrent in cases of food disorders in girls. If we are not blaming magazines and skinny models, it's Mum's diets, body consciousness, vanity, their selfish, screwed-up example. Too much bad influence, too little vigilance – for the mother of an anorexic, there is always a way to blame herself.

One presumes a lot of this information about mothers was gleaned from medical interviews with sufferers, the majority of whom are young girls. The problem is that young girls are likely to plant the blame on their mums, not just about anorexia, but about anything. There's a possibility that you could ask some girls about global warming or Iraq and they would find a way to pin it on their mothers. They're not being horrible, they're not even being anorexic, they're just being young girls. It doesn't make what they say true, but it does make for an impossible burden of guilt for mothers of anorexia sufferers everywhere.

In truth, blaming mothers, even partly, doesn't make sense. If anorexia is a disease, then would a different mum, a non-dieting, non-oppressive mum, have made much difference? Moreover, if maternal influence were really this powerful, then why do these girls not get better when mums, along with the rest of the family, do their best to get them to eat?

Indeed, the real amount of influence these mothers have over the onset of this condition seems all too evident in how pitifully little they have over its cure. It seems to me that where the dark dance of anorexia is concerned, the sufferer pirouettes alone, a twisted, broken ballerina. Meanwhile, the mother stands aside, forced to play wallflower, with the rest of the world.

Was this Marie Caro's story – crushing guilt, accepted and absorbed, but for no real reason? It seems that it's high time we took the maternal guilt out of anorexia in order to see it more clearly. If we accept that anorexia is a killer, what we have here looks like a double homicide.

Politicians dyeing? It's a grey area

What's with all the 'hair McCarthyism' towards male leaders at the moment? David Cameron and Barack Obama have both been 'outed' and denounced for dyeing their hair. Shots of them greying have been gleefully juxtaposed against more recent ones of them, looking furtive, with 'darker hair'. When they say 'darker', they mean 'trying to look younger'. Did you get that?

Personally, I prefer both men with the more 'pebble-dashed' look, or, should I say, distinguished. When 'darker', Cameron, in particular, takes on a ghoulish 'Westminster meets Twilight' air. All of a sudden I can imagine him sporting a black net kerchief at a 1980s goth disco, and dancing to Soft Cell nonchalantly. Not a great look for a prime minister.

As for Obama – things being the way they are, it makes a lot more sense for him to be ageing in front of our eyes. After all, the same thing happened to Tony Blair, whose boyish looks disappeared in office, to be replaced by someone so raddled he looked as if three ghosts were visiting him in the night. Every night.

Ed Miliband has yet to acquire the hot politico look of 'prematurely greying desperation', but give him time. One thing is for sure, there must be a more edifying way forward than the thought of Obama and Cameron sitting in hair salons, towels around necks, having Vaseline dabbed around their ears to avoid 'staining', reading old copies of Take a Break.

With this in mind, tipping a bottle of Nice'n'Easy 'natural medium brown' on to politicians' heads to make them look younger, fresher, more electable, could be viewed as counterproductive. If grey hair is the price of leadership then the dignified thing is not to fight it.

For a silent birth, we're hearing an awful lot about it

John Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, is said to have undergone 'silent birth', in keeping with her religion, Scientology. Personally, the idea of 'silent birth' seems creepy, woman-hating, and just plain wrong.

Whether intentional or not, it's as if Scientology itself is intoning: 'You are a woman. Only you are biologically equipped to give birth, I suppose we are going to put up with that. Just so long as you don't make too much of a fuss. While you are passing this new human being through your birth canal, we don't want to hear a peep out of you, for um, spiritual reasons – is that clear?'

Why is Preston buying into this tragic quasi-macho rot? Why is Travolta, for that matter?

Moreover, Scientology, like many other religions, has its sanctimonious, pompous and freaky sides – but if these rituals are really so sacred and divine, then why do they feel such an urgent need to broadcast every detail?

Do they get the Scientology equivalent of Blue Peter badges for this kind of thing? It seems a bit ironic that the only thing 'non silent' about Ms Preston's birth was all the bragging she's done since.


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The Portuguese Nun – review


Even by arthouse standards, the French director Eugène Green's minimal, formalistic films are an acquired taste, and his latest work, which centres on a beautiful French actress in Lisbon to shoot a film version of the 18th-century novel about the affair between a nun and a French naval officer, is fairly characteristic. There are only two outright jokes, one being Green himself as the film's director, Denis Verde (ho! ho!), the other a hotel desk clerk mocking pretentious French films.

Otherwise, it's a solemn, portentous affair, dramatically, verbally and visually, where everyone talks in an uninflected manner. This does have its payoff in an oddly moving, all-night encounter in a chapel between the actress playing a nun and an authentic Portuguese religieuse, in which they discuss the nature of secular and spiritual love.

Watching the movie two days after the death of Peter Yates, the versatile British director best known for Bullitt, Breaking Away and The Dresser, I was reminded of one of his most enterprising works, the 1964 screen version of NF Simpson's absurdist play One Way Pendulum. In his only big-screen role, Jonathan Miller played a young man who (for reasons too complicated to go into here) is obsessed with teaching a group of speak-your-weight machines to sing the 'Hallelujah Chorus' from Handel's Messiah. Had he persisted a little longer, his choir might have auditioned successfully to play the lead roles in The Portuguese Nun.


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Morning Glory – review


This deeply dislikable comedy of embarrassment, which uses rock music like narrative Polyfilla, stars Rachel McAdams as Becky, an unintentionally unprincipled, motor-mouthed TV producer. An acerbic New York TV executive at the fictitious IBS network (Jeff Goldblum, the film's one major asset) gives her a job on a failing breakfast show and she takes it further downmarket with the speed and determination of a Stuka dive-bombing a column of refugees.

We are expected to stand up and cheer as she does so. We are also invited to admire a self-satisfied, over-the-hill celebrity anchorman and prize-winning journalist (Harrison Ford), first for standing up for traditional journalistic standards and then for becoming a good sport and joining Becky's bid to keep the show on the air by doing a weekly cookery spot. The film's British director and his American screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna, don't quite understand what Preston Sturges was getting at in Sullivan's Travels.


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Twelfth Night; Tiger Country; The Painter – review


Cottesloe; Hampstead; Arcola, all London

To celebrate his 80th birthday, Peter Hall has returned to the building he once ran and directed a sweetly autumnal Twelfth Night. His breeches-and-farthingale production, set under a canopy flecked with russet-coloured leaves, doesn't break much new ground – there's hardly a moment when it shows you something you'd never suspected was there – but, at its best, it does better than that: it seems completely natural.

Take Simon Paisley Day's icily exact Malvolio, who walks as if he were skating, and whose head lies so still on his ruff that it could be a severed bonce on a platter. Or his polar opposite, Simon Callow's Toby Belch: pink-faced, wobbly cheeks, a belting old fruit. He is every flabby inch the ramshackle roisterer, who announces the keynote of his unbuttoned, spilling-over performance in his spluttering rejection of the notion that he 'confine' himself. Yet just as that looks too easy, he finds another register.

Usually it's the wistful absurdity of Andrew Aguecheek's 'I was adored once' that brings a plaintive note into the clash of tankards. Here, though, it is Callow's crumpling face, as he declares that Maria adores him, that ushers in a sudden change of temperature.

There are some duff stretches. The yellow stockings sequence is neither funny nor disturbing. David Ryall's Feste is not so much melancholy as down-in-the-dumps: he wanders on like Mole after a bad day's spring cleaning in The Wind in the Willows. And as Orsino, Marton Csokas is preposterous: a wrist-bending, knee-pleating, over-expostulating, neck-bridling gazer into the middle distance, he seems to be taking off a Victorian pantomime villain.

Still, the centre of the play is gracefully delivered by the daughter of the director, Rebecca Hall. Her velvet-voiced androgyny supplies its tender heart. Lightly soulful as she trembles between tearfulness and merriment, she looks, in knickerbockers and buckled shoes, like an older version of the boy in When Did You Last See Your Father? A question to which she could provide the right answer.

As could her brother, Edward, the newish artistic director of Hampstead. It's taken Hall the Younger a little time to show the fighting form needed to put his beleaguered theatre on the new-writing map. Still, with Nina Raine's medical play, directed by the dramatist, he has something that can be judged by the high standards set by the Royal Court. On press night people were swearing they could smell disinfectant wafting from the stage.

Tiger Country was actually started before Tribes, which remains Raine's best work so far. It has the metro wit and banter of her first play, Rabbit, but a bigger canvas and more elaborate movement. Set in a big London hospital, it closely observes diagnostic skill, failed attempts at resuscitation, a bungled operation, great gentleness in dealing with a dying patient, and an impatience with the idea that 'caring' means a caressing manner. This is not an obviously political play. It is not about NHS cuts, though it does have things to say about shortage of time and staff, and about constant fatigue: 'I'm losing patience with the patients.''

Alongside zeal and high spirits, it shows bullying, frustration and prejudice among the clinical staff: an Indian doctor, fresh from sneering at a West Indian nurse, complains that she has spent her career trying to sound hyper-British and to behave as if she were a man. It also drops little nuggets of information. A young doctor hoards swabs to take off her makeup; a surgeon explains that the same neurones in our brains are activated by eating sugary things and by settling a score: 'In other words, revenge is sweet.'

You are in tiger country in an operating theatre when you take a knife close to an artery. Raine's achievement is to stage a world governed by the laws of that country. Everyone rushes; everyone is on the edge. Huge images of a pumping heart swim around the walls of the stage as if in an underwater landscape; characters in sea-green gowns weave frantically around each other. And when they take off their gowns (and settle down to watch Doctors on the telly), their love affairs are arrhythmic, as if they too are moving to a hospital beat.

Follow the director and impresario Mehmet Ergen and you're likely to end up in the theatrical thick of things. In 1993 he helped to found Southwark Playhouse, on a South Bank that was innocent of edgy theatre; he slept in the building. Nowadays you can't move there for dramatic life. Eleven years ago he snatched an old textile factory in Dalston, east London, from the hands of developers who wanted to turn it into a snooker hall and founded the Arcola, to the dismay of some critics who considered the area alarming.

That building is now being turned into deluxe flats, Dalston has become a transport hub, and Ergen has taken his vision – which includes programmes for schools, and plays designed to encourage co-operation between local Turkish and Kurdish residents – into a beautiful industrial mansion: an 1868 factory built by Reeves, the paint manufacturers, a vaulting space with exposed brick (and currently rather over-exposed lavs), iron pillars, a smell of sawdust and possibility.

Here he has directed Rebecca Lenkiewicz's play about JMW Turner, who used the cakes of paint made by the firm. As a series of historical vignettes, The Painter is a fine thing. Rumpled, furrowed Toby Jones works at his golden sunsets and swirling storms in a studio meticulously but not too doggedly reconstructed in Ben Stones's design with bottle-green stove, clutter of paints and chamber-pot-concealing screen; the brickwork and rough floorboards of the new Arcola wire the 19th century into the 21st.

Alongside the artist, though never quite impinging on him, are his mother, who goes mad and is taken to Bedlam; Sarah Danby, by whom he had two children, who cleaves to him; an ex-prostitute (impressive Denise Gough) who befriends him; and his father, who cooks for him. Turner talks of the sublime; others talk of the pleasures of wig-making, the fascination of snake-swallowers ('you just pinch their tail and they'll hop in there') and the ploy of putting leeches inside young prostitutes to make clients think they are having a virgin.

Adrienne Quartly's soundscape sends husky notes from a bass clarinet curling between episodes; superb lighting by Emma Chapman makes each scene a small adventure in illumination and obscurity. What's odd is that the different light of Turner's own paintings doesn't infiltrate the play. The gap between domestic life and activity on the canvas is hinted at but not explored. The play drifts. Not so much The Fighting Temeraire as a trim little dinghy.


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Orson Welles's unseen masterpiece set for release


The Other Side of the Wind, shot in 1972, could now see the light of day

An unfinished 'masterpiece' filmed by Orson Welles nearly four decades ago is finally to reach the screen.

The Other Side of the Wind portrays the last hours of an ageing film director. Welles is said to have told John Huston, who plays the lead role: 'It's about a bastard director… full of himself, who catches people and creates and destroys them. It's about us, John.'

The unedited film has been hidden away in a vault until now amid doubts that it could ever be shown.

Rumours of its release have surfaced repeatedly since it was shot in 1972, but an ownership dispute has always scuppered any plans. However, a Los Angeles lawyer told the Observer last week that the film will finally be seen.

Kenneth Sidle, a lawyer involved in the dispute over rights to the film, said: 'We are in negotiations for the picture, which would lead to the finishing and public exhibition. Hopefully within the next few weeks we will know.'

Sidle, of law firm Gipson Hoffman & Pancione, represents Jacqueline Boushehri, widow of a relative of the Shah of Iran and one of the film's producers.

Also embroiled in the negotiations is Welles's lover, Oja Kodar, a Croatian who starred in and co-wrote the film. Sidle confirmed that both are selling their interests in the film.

He added that would-be buyers have checked that he can complete the film: 'They wouldn't be putting up money if they weren't confident.'

Huston's actor son, Danny, describes the footage as 'absolutely fascinating'. In 2005 he recalled that Welles had given extensive 'editing notes' on the film to actor and director Peter Bogdanovich, who also appeared in the film.

Bogdanovich is understood to be involved in efforts finally to bring The Other Side of The Wind to the screen.

Françoise Widhoff, a producer who collaborated with Welles on his F for Fake, spent a month on set of the unedited film, which she described as a masterpiece – 'the way it's shot, the way it's acted. It's very modern and free.'

However, Widhoff has reservations about anyone editing the film; she says the raw footage should be seen.

Andrés Vicente Gómez, a Spanish film-maker who worked with Welles on various productions, including the unedited film, agreed that its completion would be an 'act of betrayal'.

Describing it as Welles's 'testament', he said: 'The main character is a mix of [Ernest] Hemingway, Huston and himself… It was a film very close to him. But his physical condition was delicate. He didn't have the energy to cut it.'


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Mark Kermode's DVD round-up


The Town; Devil; The Other Guys; Mary and Max; Jackboots on Whitehall

This year opened on a sad note indeed with the death of Pete Postlethwaite, star of The Usual Suspects, The Lost World and the underrated 90s British gem Brassed Off, whom Spielberg once called "the best actor in the world". A stalwart and often admirably brusque presence, Postlethwaite always brought something special to the screen, even when the films in which he appeared (such generic remakes as Dark Water, The Omen and Clash of the Titans) were unremarkable.

In the Boston-set thriller The Town (2010, Warner, 15), Postlethwaite plays a comparatively small role as sinister florist-cum-crime boss Fergie, whose malign influence seeps through the crime-breeding neighbourhood of Charlestown. Director Ben Affleck, who proved his mettle behind the camera with Gone Baby Gone, stars as disenchanted bank robber Doug MacRay, whose attempts to discover how much a witness (Rebecca Hall) knows about his gang's identity blossoms into intimacy with predictably allegiance-testing results.

It's increasingly overcooked stuff, with a screenplay (adapted from Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves) that tips too far into melodramatic contrivance, and boasting a couple of grand scale shootouts that aim for (but fail to hit) the high target of Michael Mann's Heat. Yet despite these flaws there's an earnest grittiness to the proceedings, boosted by some believably macho male-bonding between Affleck and a convincingly unbalanced Jeremy Renner, whose trigger-happy Jem provides the real dark heart of the piece.

As for Postlethwaite, he has rarely been more quietly unnerving than in the few scenes in which he appears, and during which the film's threat level moves from amber to red. A posthumous best supporting actor Bafta nomination last Tuesday may well provide The Town (which has already received a couple of prestigious ensemble cast awards) with another significant victory next month, a fitting tribute to Postlethwaite's powerful legacy.

Considering the horrifying dramatic potential of confinement within enclosed spaces (witness the claustrophobic audience anxieties provoked by both Buried and 127 Hours in the past few months), it's amazing just how tension-free Devil (2010, Universal, 15) manages to be. Written by the talented Brian Nelson (who penned the leg-crossingly taut Hard Candy), from a story dredged 'from the mind of M Night Shyamalan', this sub-Twilight Zone hokum traps a disparate group of people in a lift and then proceeds to kill them off one by one during curiously orchestrated blackouts. You'd have to be trying pretty hard not to guess the inevitable 'twist' regarding the killer's identity, but there's still plenty of potential for camp creepiness which Quarantine director John Erick Dowdle signally fails to exploit. As for Shyamalan (whose possessive the Night Chronicles credit suggests that this is but the first in a series of such minor diversions), surely after this and The Last Airbender things can only get better?

Speaking candidly about his leading role in Shyamalan's woebegotten 'nature in revolt' clunker The Happening, Mark Wahlberg was recently quoted as telling a press conference that 'it was a bad movie... fuckin' trees, man!' Clearly, Wahlberg has no such regrets about the altogether less ambitious odd couple comedy The Other Guys (2010, Sony, 12), in which he co-stars with Will Ferrell as a hapless New York cop attempting to escape the desk to which he has been shackled in punishment for a past mistake and finally achieve heroic status.

Despite the familiarly goofy set-up, this is an uneven and rather peculiar movie that swings between enjoyable slapstick comedy with strangely sustained running jokes (gormless Ferrell's ability to attract beautiful women) and oddly ill-fitting socioeconomic seriousness (the credits sequence looks like something Michael Moore would have left on the drawing board). Like Shyamalan, Anchorman director Adam McKay doesn't seem to have quite decided exactly what movie he's making, but at least this time the laughs are intentional. Plentiful extras include featurettes, extended gags, a music video for 'Pimps Don't Cry' and a 'first-ever mom-mentary' track in which the proud parents of Ferrell and McKay applaud their sprogs' work.

Finally, two very different puppet shows. Mary and Max (2009, Soda, 12) is a bizarrely engaging antipodean stop-motion tale of long-distance friendship between a lonely Australian girl and an obsessive-compulsive New Yorker given to anxiety attacks whom Mary contacts through the random use of the Manhattan phone book. Described with its usual deadpan accuracy by the BBFC as 'comedic, sometimes warm and ultimately uplifting [but] also dark in places', Adam Elliot's award-winning feature reminds us just how expressive claymation techniques can be in a world in which 3-D digimation increasingly rules the roost. A well-chosen voice cast featuring Toni Collette, Barry Humphries and Philip Seymour Hoffman perfectly completes the bittersweet off-kilter picture.

No such plaudits, sadly, for Jackboots on Whitehall (2010, Soda, 15), a sub-Team America-style 'marionation' satire set in an alternative history in which Nazis occupy London during the second world war and the resistance is forced to fight back from the other side of Hadrian's Wall. Despite a veritable who's who of homegrown A-listers, including Ewan McGregor, Rosamund Pike, Tim Spall, Stephen Merchant, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Tom Wilkinson and Richard Griffiths, this rarely manages to raise a laugh. It's a shame I didn't enjoy it more, particularly considering the effort that has clearly gone into conjuring this unruly visual canvas, and the love brought to the project by creators Edward and Rory McHenry.


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Black Swan – review


Darren Aronofsky's New York ballet psychodrama is a watchable if rather pretentious study of artistic obsession

Darren Aronofsky made a strong impression in 1998 with Pi, his low-budget debut as writer-director, in which a number theorist descends into insanity as he searches for a mathematical solution to the secret of the universe. He followed this up with Requiem for a Dream, about four people in a rundown corner of New York whose dreams are destroyed by their addiction to drugs. His third film, the confused fantasy The Fountain, dealt with a 16th-century conquistador, a present-day American scientist and an astronaut in the 26th century searching for eternal life. This was followed by The Wrestler, a somewhat earthier study of an ageing practitioner of a despised, lowlife profession, much given to self-mutilation and prepared to risk his life in order to make the comeback that will restore some self‑respect.

His latest film, the glossy, hard-surfaced Black Swan, which he co-scripted with Mark Heyman, co-producer of The Wrestler, takes Aronofsky into the upper reaches of New York's social and artistic world but pursues themes and obsessions that inform his previous work. The central character is Nina Sayers (the beautifully glacial Natalie Portman), a young dancer who lives, eats and sleeps ballet. She starts the film having dreamt of appearing in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. She spends her days rehearsing with a corps de ballet at the Lincoln Centre. Shortly thereafter she's presented with a grand cake by her mother to celebrate having been tapped by Thomas (Vincent Cassel), the Svengali-like head of the company, to play Odette/Odile in his new Swan Lake, but, in a neurotic gesture, she only eats a small creamy piece of it from her mother's finger.

The film has certain superficial resemblances to Herbert Ross's ballet movie, The Turning Point, in that the heroine's mother (Barbara Hershey) is an ex-dancer who gave up a career to raise a daughter in whom all her hopes are invested. But this aspect is dealt with only superficially. In some ways it is closer in tone to that peak of all dance films, Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes, in embracing the romantic notion of ballet as a demanding, all-consuming vocation that can lead to destruction and death. But Aronofsky seems little interested in either the internal dynamics of a dance company or in the creation of a specific work for the stage. We are told that this production of Swan Lake is a bid to restore the fortunes of a failing company, but we do not discover, and can only vaguely infer, what Thomas's particular innovations are beyond some sort of psychological realism. Because Natalie Portman is not a professional dancer she cannot be exposed to the lengthy scrutiny that Moira Shearer and company are in The Red Shoes or Leslie Browne and the electrifying Mikhail Baryshnikov in The Turning Point, so we only get brief segments of the ballet. We have to accept Nina's excellence or otherwise when Thomas comments on it sarcastically in rehearsal and when the audience gives her standing ovations during the crisis-driven premiere performance.

What we have in Black Swan is a psychodrama of a rather obvious kind, and an equally traditional theatrical tale in which the off-stage life of an artist mirrors the on-stage performance until the point is reached where the two merge. From the start Nina is a troubled person, given to seeing her doppelganger during her journeys to and from work. When she is told to get in touch with her dark side so she can convince as Odile, the evil black swan, as well as Odette, the good white one, this dual identity becomes an obsession. In a rather overly neat way, which is directly identified in the film's final credits, everyone around Nina assumes, in her fraught mind, a role in Swan Lake, her mother becoming the Queen, choreographer Thomas the Gentleman, and Lily (Mila Kunis), the rival dancer for her role, the Black Swan. Just as the roles become confused, so Nina herself moves towards what resembles a clinical breakdown in which she can't distinguish fantasy from reality. For a moment at least, the audience shares her confusion. As her paranoia develops, the film enters familiar horror movie territory.

Like the fighter played by Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, Nina turns to self-mutilation, as if it were not enough that her toes should bleed. In her quest for some form of absolute perfection of the sort the mathematician in Aronofsky's Pi seeks, her body becomes a treacherous enemy to be combated. Natalie Portman gives a performance of painful intensity that conveys not just someone in the pursuit of artistic excellence but a person driven over the edge, with the audience invited to accompany her on the journey. But there is a dangerous fallacy here, and it is embodied in the character of Thomas. He is the agent by which her delicate balance is disturbed through his insistence that she must discover her dark side by some form of physical and spiritual abandonment. By implication the solution resides in polymorphous perverse sex. This is playing with the idea that you must go mad to play Lear or commit murder to convince as Othello or Macbeth.

Black Swan holds the attention in a manipulative manner, but one can see in it the possibility of a better, more satisfying film with the same setting and the same dramatis personae. This would, for instance, have freed Winona Ryder from a melodramatic contrivance which is thrust upon her and allowed her to give a truly serious performance as a forty-something prima ballerina on the point of forced retirement. Instead, what Aronofsky has ended up with is an exercise in the higher kitsch, a slick, pretentious film in which the polished surface is a distorting mirror.


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