J.D. Salinger: a Gift of Words and Silences (Los Angeles Times)

In his greatest works, a clash between self-expression and self-effacement.
By David Ulin

January 29, 2010

"Don't ever tell anybody anything," J.D. Salinger wrote in the closing lines of "The Catcher in the Rye." "If you do, you start missing everybody." For more than two decades now, I've thought about that ending as a piece of code. Not that Salinger, who died Wednesday at age 91 in Cornish, N.H., was an oracle, despite what his most dedicated followers -- those who hung around his driveway, hoping for a glimpse of the reclusive author, or parsed his sentences on a million websites -- might believe.

But Salinger was a writer who refracted his perspective into language, producing work that was personal and profound. Between 1951 and 1965, he produced four uncommonly sensitive books of fiction -- "Catcher," "Nine Stories," "Franny and Zooey" and "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" -- before retreating to his home in Cornish and refusing to publish any more. As he once wrote to biographer Ian Hamilton (in the course of suing Hamilton for quoting from his unpublished letters), "I think I've borne all the exploitation and loss of privacy I can possibly bear in a single lifetime."

For the last 45 years, this was the encoded story, Salinger's self-imposed silence, as readers debated whether he was still writing or off in some twilit oblivion of his own. For his part, Salinger's interactions with the public were infrequent and largely litigious. As recently as July, he won an injunction preventing the release of an unauthorized sequel to "The Catcher in the Rye." And yet, our collective fascination with his life rather than his writing suggests another bit of code, or at least a set of clues. Wasn't this, after all, what Salinger was rejecting, a culture of celebrity in which the most important thing was appearance and no one cared about the level of the soul? "I just quit, that's all," Franny Glass tells her boyfriend early in "Franny and Zooey," explaining why she gave up acting. " . . . I don't know. It seemed like such poor taste, sort of, to want to act in the first place. I mean all the ego. And I used to hate myself so, when I was in a play, to be backstage after the play was over. All those egos running around feeling terribly charitable and warm."

For all that "The Catcher in the Rye" made him famous, "Franny and Zooey" is Salinger's masterpiece, an evocation of loss and longing within the bonds of family. Composed of two novellas, it introduces the youngest members of the Glass family, about whom Salinger would devote more than half of his published work. The Glasses are a New York creation, theatrical but also intellectual, middle class but bohemian at the same time. They talk and fight like immigrants, but they pursue esoteric pursuits, most notably Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, like members of the leisured elite.

In a sense, this was reflective of Salinger's experience; growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the son of a Scotch-Irish mother and a wealthy Jewish father, he had a foot in several worlds. Yet more to the point, the Glasses offered Salinger a wide lens through which to look at the intersection of mystical and secular culture, at the satisfactions of the spirit and of the flesh. In "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters," he describes a night on which Franny, then an infant, is moved into the room shared by her brothers Buddy and Seymour, to avoid "a siege of mumps." As the baby fusses, Seymour reads to her; the story he chooses is a Taoist tale. "To this day," Salinger writes, "Franny swears that she remembers Seymour reading it to her" -- an echo that reverberates throughout his work. Seymour, after all, is the sainted genius of the Glass family, the oldest brother whose suicide Salinger recounts with just the right touch of understatement in his short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish."

And "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" is an account of Seymour's wedding, an account that, because we know about his death from the outset, comes encoded with its own end. That, of course, is true of everything, of all human endeavor, which is an expression of futility in the face of the void. Salinger understood this, maybe because of a nervous breakdown he is said to have experienced during World War II, maybe because of his embrace of Buddhism.

Either way, the Glass stories are all about renunciation -- as is "The Catcher in the Rye," in its way. This is why generations of adolescents have responded to "Catcher's" 16-year-old hero, Holden Caulfield, for his ability to see through the machinations of the adult world. "Hey, Sally," he says to a girl he's taken on a date. " . . . Did you ever get fed up? I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something? I mean do you like school, and all that stuff? . . . Well, I hate it. Boy, do I hate it. . . . But it isn't just that. It's everything.

"What Salinger is evoking here is the contradiction of his own heart: the need to express himself, even though he knows that it won't get him anywhere. Ultimately, perhaps, this may be why he took his leave from the world nearly half a century before he actually left it, why he stopped publishing. It makes for a complicated legacy, since how are we to know what to think of him, when so much remains beyond our reach? And yet, it doesn't matter, not really, for in his books, we find the essence of a fully articulated worldview, in which silence and expression go hand in hand.

Ulin is book editor of The Times.
david.ulin@latimes.com

Slow Criticism (De Filmkrant)

Una nueva edición de Slow Criticism, el especial que la revista holandesa Filmkrant hace para el Festival de Rotterdam. Aquí abajo está el texto introductorio de la editora, Dana Linssen, y por aquí se puede acceder a los textos que hicimos, entre otros, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Adrian Martin, Gabe Klinger, Christoph Huber, Neil Young y quien esto escribe...

Speedy poison

In this bilingual issue of de Filmkrant we present the second edition of our Slow Criticism Project, a counterbalance to the commodification of film journalism. Filmkrant editor in chief Dana Linssen introduces living in the slow lane.

Just before this issue of de Filmkrant went to press, we received a press release from the International Film Festival Rotterdam with the headline: 'Film makers visit IFFR 2010'. I dare say! But what's the news? Need the Dutch audience be reminded that the IFFR is, first and foremost, a film festival? And that films still are, funnily enough, made by film makers?
What's next? 'IFFR attended by film critics'? Another rediscovered endangered species? That day seems not too far away, since several weeks ago the IFFR already announced their side program: 'Big Talks' with film directors, moderated by such eminent film critics as Bas Heijne or Sjarel Ex and introductions to films by the famous film scholars Ruud Lubbers and Awraham Soetendorp.

Well, skip the film part. By inviting these opinion makers, museum directors, ex-politicians and rabbis respectively to the festival, to shine their light on cinema, by surrendering to this form of eventisation, the IFFR is treading in the footsteps of the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam. Some years ago IDFA announced publicly (by word of director Ally Derks) that they considered it more important to have their program discussed on the editorial pages of the newspapers, than reviewed by film critics.

So now the IFFR has followed up upon that model. They would rather have former Middle East correspondent Joris Luyendijk interviewing Samuel Maoz on his film lebanon or women's activist Kathalijne Buitenweg talking to Musola Cathrine Kaseketi on her first feature suwi, reducing their work to single issue-films. And you know what is the irony of it all? No one in the audience will have a clue that besides creating political controversy, Maoz does so by exploring some daring aesthetic strategies, let alone that they will remember Zambian Kaseketi's name afterwards, but they will certainly know star-journalist Luyendijk and best-dressed EU-politician Buitenweg.

Sometimes it's hard to figure out the times we're living in. Are they the analogous times of hand written letters and mail coaches and ink-smudged fingers? Or the digital ones of the instantaneous here and now? And what does it mean when the entire spacetime continuum is compressed into that one ecstatic momentum presenting itself as an everlasting present? Is it nirvana or stasis?
And how do we measure the weight of words or the velocity of thoughts? Do they occupy space while travelling?

Last year de Filmkrant launched the Slow Criticism Project with a collection of essays and texts that looked beyond the latest craze. It was a way to encourage film critics to reclaim the field of reflection and ambiguity.

Over the year the Slow Criticism Project has become a counterbalance to the commodification of film journalism, and antidote to the haste and the hype, a speedy poison for a panicked recycle industry in which most media recycle each others opinions, announcing yet another record breaking box office wonder.

Slow Criticism, for us, is a refuge for rebellious and imaginative thinking, which is too often considered to be too personal, philosophical, poetic or simply not appropriate for day-to-day journalism. Slow Criticism is not born out of dissatisfaction, but out of love, for cinema, for words & visuals, for looking & listening, for the way thoughts move.

And sometimes simply for the unseen made seen, the unspoken and the unspeakable. That sign of recognition between the eye and the image.

We present this second edition as a gift to our loyal readers in the Netherlands and the audience and international guests of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, but also for the online community, being one of the reasons to publish the articles in English. English-English, Euro-English, the sophisticated lingua franca of Cine-English.

And together they also form a sort of accidental manifesto, nailed on the doors of de Doelen and the astonishing Pathé spaceship that turns into an artfilm fusebox from January 27 to February 7, and the IFFR headquarters, for 'Rotterdam, we sure do have a problem'. In the words of John Cassavetes: "If you don't put your innermost thoughts on the screen then you are looking down not only on your audience, but the people you work with. That's what makes so many people [in Hollywood] unhappy. They say: 'Well I'll make a lot of money and then I'll come back and do this later on', and the truth of the matter is, of course, they never do. These innermost thoughts become less and less a part of you and once you lose them you don't have anything else."

Slow criticism is the safe haven for that kind of authenticity.

Dana Linssen

Dana Linssen is the editor-in-chief of de Filmkrant.

Producer Veronica Cura boards comedy Living And Leaving LA (Screendaily)

Veronica Cura will produce Marcelo Mitnik’s Living And Leaving L.A, a bilingual comedy set in Los Angeles and Buenos Aires.

The film, which Mitnik will direct from his original screenplay, will follow the travails of a young Argentinian actor who, after being cast in an international film that is cancelled, decides to go to LA to hunt down the film’s director in a bid to salvage his big break.

Cura, a leading Argentinian producer, said Marcelo’s script had “great humour and depth of emotion”. She added: “I think this movie has the breakout commercial prospects in both the English and Spanish-speaking markets, and I’m delighted to come on board to produce.”

Her credits include Sundance 2005 special jury prize winnerLive-In Maid (pictured), 2006 Palme d’Or nominee The Headless Women and The Other, which won the Silver Bear in 2007.

Alex Zito, Cura’s partner at Utopica, is also producing.

Corrección mía: "La mujer sin cabeza" estuvo en Cannes en 2008...

Algunas consideraciones sobre el Top 20 del cine argentino de la década, según Fipresci

Antes de hacer unas consideraciones sobre el tema, aquí está la lista de las 20 películas argentinas de la década (2000-2009), las más votadas por los miembros de FIPRESCI Argentina, asociación que incluye los críticos de los diarios y revistas más importantes del país (además de dos directores del BAFICI y la mayoría de sus programadores). Las primeras diez --cuyos puestos se definirán en una votación que se hará y se dará a conocer más adelante-- están en orden alfabético. Las restantes, en el que quedaron votadas.

El aura, de Fabián Bielinsky (The Aura) 2005

El bonaerense, de Pablo Trapero (El bonaerense) 2002
La Ciénaga, de Lucrecia Martel (La Ciénaga) 2001
Los guantes mágicos, de Martín Rejtman (The Magic Gloves) 2004
Historias extraordinarias, de Mariano Llinás (Extraordinary Stories) 2008
La libertad, de Lisandro Alonso (La libertad) 2001
Los muertos, de Lisandro Alonso (Los muertos) 2004
La mujer sin cabeza, de Lucrecia Martel (The Headless Woman) 2008

Nueve reinas, de Fabián Bielinsky (Nine Queens) 2000
Los rubios, de Albertina Carri (The Blonds) 2003

11. - "Bolivia", de Adrián Caetano
12.- "Un oso rojo", de Adrián Caetano
13.- "Ana y los otros", de Celina Murga
14.- "Leonera", de Pablo Trapero
15.- "La niña santa", de Lucrecia Martel
16.- "La antena", de Esteban Sapir
17.- "Yo no sé qué me han hecho sus ojos", de Sergio Wolf y Lorena Muñoz
18.- "Nadar solo", de Ezequiel Acuña
19.- "Aniceto", de Leonardo Favio
20.- "Como pasan las horas", de Inés de Oliveira Cézar

Habiendo sido responsable de compilar la lista, noté algunas cosas que me sorprendieron y me interesaría saber la opinión de los lectores, en algunos o en todos los puntos. A saber:

1.-La caída en cuanto a "peso" y "presencia" de Damian Szifron, cuyas películas fueron muy celebradas y premiadas en su momento. Ahora, "El fondo del mar" tuvo un sólo voto y ninguno "Tiempo de valientes". Paralelamente, otro cineasta que coqueteaba entre el cine de autor y el comercial como Fabián Bielinsky tuvo sus dos películas entre las diez primeras. ¿A qué se deberá?

2.-"Nacido y críado" y "Familia rodante", de Pablo Trapero, fueron completamente olvidadas. Me sorprendió que "Leonera" no estuviera más alto. De hecho, en el 2008 se quedó con la Mención Especial arriba de "La mujer sin cabeza". Hoy, las cosas cambiaron. ¿Alguna idea?

3.-Películas que no tuvieron prácticamente votos pese a ser de las más premiadas del cine argentino (al menos en Berlin): "El abrazo partido", de Daniel Burman; "El custodio", de Rodrigo Moreno; "El otro", de Ariel Rotter. Apenas Burman tuvo algunos votos repartidos entre sus películas... ¿Perdieron vigencia?

4.-"Liverpool" y "Fantasma", de Lisandro Alonso, fueron dejadas de lado y los fans del realizador pusieron todas sus fichas en sus primeras dos películas. Deja pensar que la evolución del cineasta no fue del todo apreciada por la crítica. ¿O no? Algo similar sucede con Albertina Carri. Nadie recordó sus otras películas ("La rabia", "Géminis") y muchos apoyaron a "Los rubios".

5.- El problema de las películas pequeñas. Muchos filmes recibían varios votos pero siempre en la parte baja del Top Ten, lo cual no lo permitían sumar demasiados puntos. Eso hizo que películas de Celina Murga, Santiago Loza, Gustavo Fontán, Ana Katz, Ezequiel Acuña, Luis Ortega o el mismo Adolfo Aristarain no sumaran muchos votos. Lo mismo que muchos documentales ("Pulqui", "Trelew", "Los próximos pasados", "M", "La quimera de los héroes", "Bonanza", etc), que apenas consiguieron una que otra mencion. Mejor le fue a "76/89/03", que arañó el Top 20.

6.- Martel, Bielinsky y Alonso parecen formar una trilogía que abarca las distintas facetas del cine argentino de esta década, con dos películas cada uno en el Top Ten. El cine de autor con cierto alcance comercial, otro aún más comercial y el tercero, para poco público.

7.- Una gran sorpresa para mi fue la buena ubicación de "La antena", de Esteban Sapir, una película que parecía haber quedado medio olvidada.

8.- No hubo casi votos para Juan José Campanella (uno para "El secreto de sus ojos") ni Marcelo Piñeyro. Enrique Piñeyro apenas cosechó un apoyo por su "Whisky Romeo Zulú". Otras películas con votos sueltos fueron "Historias mínimas", "Felicidades", "XXY", "Una novia errante", "Balnearios" o "La sangre brota".

9.- Nada hubo para las películas de Sandra Gugliotta, Juan Villegas, Paula Hernández, Verónica Chen, Ana Poliak, Raúl Perrone, Gustavo Postiglione, Alejandro Agresti, Pablo Reyero, Pino Solanas, Alejandro Chomski, Anahí Berneri, Gabriel Medina, Néstor Frenkel, Santiago Palavecino, Jorge Gaggero, ni para muchas que figuran en el Top 5 de este año, entre otros. ¿Ninguna de sus películas merecían algún reconocimiento? ¿Fueron quedando relegadas por el peso de los "grandes nombres"?

10.- El tema Caetano: sus dos películas más votadas orillaron el Top Ten ("Bolivia" quedó undécima por una mínima diferencia), pero no alcanzaron a cobrar la fuerza de las de los otros cineastas que sí lograron meter dos filmes en el Top Ten. ¿Habrá caído su cine en la consideración crítica o fue simplemente una división de votos? Por lo pronto, "Crónica de una fuga" tuvo una sola mención.

Toda lista, se sabe, es arbitraria, y en otroscines.com leía que a Fernando Martín Peña le molestaba que hagamos un "canon" con un cine tan variado como el de esta generación. Puede haber algo de cierto en esa crítica, ya que estas listas terminan por ensalzar a cinco o seis cineastas dejando de lado a un grupo muy variado y heterogéneo. Pero también nos pareció util intentar establecer un parámetro acerca de las películas más valoradas de la década por los críticos. Parámetro que será, seguramente, acompañado y justificado por textos y alguna publicación que explique esas elecciones.

Postdata: de las diez películas del Top Ten hay una clara diferencia de votos entre las cinco primeras y las que se ubicarían del 6 al 10. ¿Alguien se anima a apostar cuáles son las cinco más votadas? Cuando salga el Top Ten definitivo, le entregaremos un premio a designar...

"Alicia en el país de las maravillas", de Tim Burton (Strange World)

Sundance: "The Runaways", de Flora Sigismondi (críticas)

Screendaily

Dir/scr. Floria Sigismondi, USA, 2009, 102 minutes.

In The Runaways, music video director Floria Sigismondi’s debut feature, the early days of Joan Jett’s rock career are revisited without any cloying nostalgia. Sigismondi has made a rousing portrait of the eponymous 1970’s teenage band and taken a hard look at life on the road at a time when most girls with bands were groupies.

With two major young stars in the cast, The Runaways should connect with the young female audience internationally, perhaps leading to a revival in sales for the band’s three albums, all released pre-1977. Jett’s original fans could also be piqued by good reviews when the film opens domestically on March 19 through Apparition. Needless to say, Kristen Stewart’s glow from Twilight will help globally.

Basing her script on the memoir Neon Angel: the Cherie Currie Story by the band’s singer Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), Sigismondi brings us back to the days when aspiring rock girls were Bowie fans (with obligatory Bowie hair) and punk was an as-yet unformed barrage of angry testosterone.

The story builds around Jett (who executive produces) and Currie, with Jett as the serious girl who always knew she wanted to play music, and Currie as the 15-year-old blonde recruited in a bar for her looks and later taught how to sing.

Both actresses sing themselves and perform more than competently. Stewart, who conveys Jett’s no-nonsense determination, lacks the singer’s guttural raspiness, but her voice and attitude do the job. Fanning as Cherie, meanwhile, starts out as a shy girl who gets by on her looks. In an audition scene in the filthy abandoned trailer where the group rehearsed in 1975, she is depicted stumbling clumsily through what would become the incendiary tune, Cherry Bomb, moments after manager Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) and Jett write the song on the spot.

Fanning’s performance of the same song during scenes showing the group’s 1977 tour of Japan reveals the singer that Currie had become, and reminds us why the song terrified the parents of teenage girls.

Sigismondi uses performance scenes sparingly but effectively, balancing the romance of the road with a backstage reality check. Conflicts would eventually lead to Currie’s departure from the band in 1977.

Crucial to The Runaway’s sprint to stardom was manager/svengali Fowley, a profane rogue without a conscience who gave the girls their first break.

As Fowley, Shannon relishes in the gonzo rock entrepreneur role, erupting with zinger lines that any comedian would envy. Music “is not about women’s lib,” he lectures Cherie, “it’s about women’s libido.” Despite his agenda of greed and lust, which Shannon plays to the hilt, the eager girls signed with Fowley nonetheless.

Cinematographer Benoit Debie and production designer Eugenio Caballero capture the disco kitsch of those early days (alongside the blandness of the suburban “valley” that the girls fled), and chart the visual evolution toward hardened punk.

Stewart and Fanning give us the musical and sexual cockiness of teenage ambition, along with its constant vulnerabilities. Yet performances are not overplayed in an effort to make The Runaways another Sid and Nancy. The same deft modulation sustains scenes of Cherie’s volatile family life, in which Riley Keough (Elvis Presley’s granddaughter) plays her twin sister Marie, who stays home reluctantly to care for their drunken father. Tatum O’Neal is blithely vain as the girls’ inattentive mother.

A vivid period piece, The Runaways is anything but an extended music video. It is an auspicious turn for Sigismondi.

Production companies

River Road Entertainment

Linson Entertainment

US distribution

Apparition

International sales

Summit Entertainment

+1 310-309-8400

Producers

John Linson

Art Linson

Bill Pohlad

Cinematography

Benoit Debie

Production design

Eugenio Caballero

Editor

Richard Chew

Main cast

Kristen Stewart

Dakota Fanning

Michael Shannon

Stella Maeve

Scout Taylor-Compton

Alia Shawkat

Riley Keough

Johnny Lewis

-------------------------------------------------------------

The Hollywood Reporter

PARK CITY -- "The Runaways" bursts with energy, youth, excess, female empowerment, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. It's an instant hit worldwide with its cast of young stars, but is it any good? Surprisingly, yes. It just must be met on its own terms.

Although neither a biopic nor a concert film about the famous/infamous 1970s all-female band the Runaways, the film does prefer music and bad behavior to insight, character or substance. First-time director Floria Sigismondi, whose background is in photography and video, surfs along the surface of the '70s rock scene in Los Angeles and, weirdly, Tokyo, to scoop up photo ops, sound bites and glimpses of a hardcore lifestyle. The vigor and pace is electric, and the movie features three showy performances by Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning and Michael Shannon.

Maybe the film falls into the category of Guilty Pleasures. The dark ugliness on display -- the amazing drug abuse and pre-AIDS hedonism -- looks probably too exciting. While the film makes it clear its personalities suffered tremendously for their addictions, it all looks so glam.

The Runaways had their run from 1975-79. The movie so collapses this half-decade run of rock stardom and self-destruction that it feels like the rise and fall of the Runaways happened over a long holiday weekend.

The focus is on three dynamic personalities: wild child Cherie Currie (Fanning), the lead singer; androgynous ringleader Joan Jett on electric guitar; and the band's Svengali, Kim Fowley (Shannon), a record impresario whose attire reads neither male nor female.

This focus makes sense creatively but also legally as the producers never secured life story rights for other band members. The film is loosely based on Currie's 1989 memoir, "Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story." That book, however, delves more into Currie's drug addiction, one-film movie career and downward spiral than it does the Runaways. Jett, by the way, is the film's executive producer.

As the movie tells it, the Runaways are an accidental band. Joan approaches Kim outside a rock club one night and mentions her idea of forming an all-girl band. A light bulb goes off in his ever-scheming head, so he introduces her to drummer Sandy West (Stelle Maeve). Trolling another bar later, looking for a lead singer, he spots the underage Cherie and is immediately taken with her post-Marilyn Monroe/Brigitte Bardot look.

After few weeks of rehearsal in a San Fernando Valley trailer -- Kim has to write the group's first single "Cherry Bomb" on the spot for Cherie's audition -- the group, already snorting and drinking all sorts of intoxicants, hits the road. Somewhere around Cleveland, a record deal is signed. The Runaways are a hit and, next thing you know, are getting high on sake and coke in Tokyo.

Only Cherie gets her San Fernando Valley background sketched in, though sketched is the word, with Dad a drunk, Mom (former child actress herself Tatum O'Neal) remarried and living in Indonesia and a loving though iffy relationship with a sister (Riley Keough). Mostly, the film plays out a battle of wills between Joan and Kim to control the band and especially its loose cannon, Cherie.

For she is the key, because Cherie is the angel-from-hell face of the band. Kim exploits her and her teen sexuality to the fullest, even setting up a lurid photo shoot of her for a Japanese magazine without telling the other band members.

Stewart in short-cropped dark hair and dark clothes is the movie's driving force as Joan Jett. The movie never appreciates Jett's musical passion and savvy, but it does capture her burning ambition.

Fanning gets to play the film's most flamboyant character with her fishnet stockings and skin-tight corsets, but the trap here is that, for all its truth, it's repetitive and cliched. Still, the young actress makes you feel the confusions beneath an overconfident facade.

Shannon seals the character-actor stardom he launched with his Oscar-nominated performance in "Revolutionary Road" as the flamboyant music promoter/producer/manager who challenges the girls to discover their "balls." There is never a quiet moment in a life focused on supplying immediate gratification to audiences -- and to himself.

The film steers pretty clear of the more salacious side to the Runaways' reality. It doesn't linger long on the two teens' sexuality, expressed with both sexes and with each other. Instead, Sigismondi rushes back onstage for another performance or plays Runaways music over the film's many montages.

The actor-musicians play and sing reasonably well, or at least fake it reasonably well. Sigismondi's collaborators, especially designer Eugenio Caballero and cinematographer Benoit Debie, make the film's many environments reflect the colors and excesses of the '70s.

In the end, "Runaways" celebrates their music more than anything, even as it tries to give an impression of lives forever on the road where no one -- other than Kim, who refuses to travel -- has a home. The film is not memorable in the sense one recalls it afterward only in flashes and impressions. No scene particularly stands out. And the performances hit emotional and physical highs very early and then stay there.

This might be smart. Probably no one would sit still for a deep-dish biopic about any of the band members. Their product, as Kim sagely puts it, isn't music but sex. So the movie, like the band, is selling flash and glitz and a story about how a group of girls stormed the boys club of rock a little more than a decade after the Beatles.

Sundance/Berlin: "Please Give", de Nicole Holofcener (críticas)

Screendaily

Dir: Nicole Holofcener. US. 2009. 91 mins.

The difficulty of finding lasting happiness informs every frame of writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s comedy-drama Please Give. As she did previously with Lovely And Amazing and Friends With Money, Holofcener reveals a deft understanding of female relationships, and with the help of a very strong cast, she presents a series of complex characters that are among her very best.

A recognised filmmaker with a solid if modest commercial track record, Holofcener should expect her usual audience of sophisticated, female-driven crowds when Sony Pictures Classics releases Please Give on April 23. Aided by strong reviews, Please Give could be a sizeable hit in the indie realm.

Married New York couple Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) own a successful business which resells antique furniture belonging to the recently deceased. Death is on their minds at home as well as they secretly wait for their 90-year-old next-door-neighbour (Ann Morgan Guilbert) to die so they can purchase her apartment and add it to their own.

But their lives become more complicated when they befriend the neighbour’s two very different granddaughters: conceited and gorgeous Mary (Amanda Peet) and sweet and withdrawn Rebecca (Rebecca Hall).

As she demonstrated in her previous films, Holofcener is less concerned with plotting than she is in investigating the behaviour of her characters. This approach – coupled with her uncomplicated, dialogue-heavy mise-en-scene – can lead to charges that her films are slight or inconsequential. But when she assembles as many relatable and interesting personalities as she does in Please Give, it feels churlish to complain about her perceived shortcomings as a filmmaker.

Beyond Holofcener’s gift for naturalistic, funny dialogue, she is also able to both satirise and empathise with the failings of her characters, and in Please Give she’s particularly good at commenting on the nagging unhappiness of Kate and Alex. Interestingly, the spouses never fully articulate the discontent they feel about their marriage, but their quiet desperation crops up in other ways: through Kate’s frantic need to help the less-fortunate, and Alex’s flirtations with Mary. To her credit, Holofcener never explains their actions, instead letting the audience extrapolate from the behaviour presented.

All her characters are satisfyingly complex and even Mary, Please Give’s most insensitive soul, has moments of real tenderness. Without resorting to quirkiness, Holofcener’s characters manage the nifty trick of being both thoroughly original and immediately recognisable.

Working with three generations of actresses, Holofcener gets across-the-board great performances. As Abby, Kate and Alex’s angst-filled daughter, Sarah Steele plays a believable teenager who’s filled with uncertainty and petulance. Guilbert cuts through the typical grumpy-old-lady clichés to make the 90-year-old neighbour exasperating but also very funny. And Keener, Peet and Hall all shine as women plagued with self-doubt who respond to those insecurities in strikingly different ways.

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Production company

A Likely Story

Domestic distribution

Sony Pictures Classics

International Sales

Sony Pictures

+ 1 212 833 8833

Producer

Anthony Bregman

Screenplay

Nicole Holofcener

Cinematography

Yaron Orbach

Production designer

Mark White

Editor

Robert Frazen

Music

Marcelo Zarvos

Main cast:

Catherine Keener

Amanda Peet

Oliver Platt

Rebecca Hall

Sarah Steele

Ann Morgan Guilbert

Thomas Ian Nicholas

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By Kirk Honeycutt/The Hollywood Reporter

PARK CITY -- In "Please Give," Sundance regular Nicole Holofcener has made perhaps the ultimate New York movie. It makes perfect sense to New Yorkers -- if a completely unscientific canvassing of attendees at the Sundance Film Festival means anything -- but is a little puzzling for non-Manhattanites. The movie certainly deals in universal situations - conflicts in values, a marital betrayal, teenage uncertainty and the guilt of the privileged class. Yet the film centers on a completely New York phenomenon regarding real estate in crowded Manhattan.

A well-to-do family purchases an adjoining apartment from an elderly woman with the proviso she can live out her life in the apartment, which they will only enlarge and remodel when she passes. It's rather ghoulish yet common for New Yorkers. From this situation, Holofcener extracts all sorts of moral tales and wry commentary on middle-class sensibilities.

How the rest of America reacts to this intriguing but dramatically muted story is hard to tell. Art houses may welcome this Sony Pictures Classics release, going out April 23.
The title itself is curiously void of meaning. The end credit crawl perhaps reveals an original title, "Feelin' Guilty," which makes more sense. It is Catherine Keener's character that mostly carries this banner as she seemingly feels guilt for every dollar the family makes - and they make a lot.

She and her husband, Oliver Platt, run an upscale vintage furniture/home accessories store. They mostly acquire their merchandise from estates, which is to say the children of dead people, but this is now causing considerable angst to Keener. She compensates by handing money to every homeless person she passes on the street and would love to volunteer to do good deeds only she can't handle the reality of the disabled or elderly.
The rest of the family is not so obsessed, Well, they have their obsessions, just different ones: her daughter (Sarah Steele) battles with acne while her husband has entered a kind of middle-age malaise.

Meanwhile, the two granddaughters of the elderly woman (Ann Marie Guilbert) over whom the family is conducting a polite death-watch hold ambivalent feelings about the family next door. The nice one (Rebecca Hall) visits her grandmother daily and is pleasant to the couple while the bitchy one (Amanda Peet) is, well, bitchy - to them and even more to her grandmother.

Everyone here is stressed about something but none of their travails seems terribly significant or revelatory about the human condition. Peet and Steele take physical appearances much too seriously. Peet, a spa worker specializing in facials, is a devotee of the tanning salon while Steele obsesses over every zit.

Peet is still reeling from her last romantic disaster, to the point of all but stalking the girlfriend of her ex, while Steele won't be satisfied unless her parents buy her a pair of $200-plus jeans.

Then the father and husband out of nowhere launches an affair with the spa bitch. Say what? This has got to be one of the least convincing adulteries in movie history. There's little in it for either party.

Think of "Please Give" as a finely tuned short story with every glance and gesture full of suggestive meaning. Drama is not high on the agenda here. There is a bit of comedy and, briefly, sexual mischief even though it doesn't look like much fun.

Keener, who frequently stars in Holofcener's film, is clearly writer-director's alter ego, so despite the multi-character format the focus tends to fall on her. But one wishes Holofcener had invested more in the other characters and their stories. They are a bit sketchy, seen more in how they relate to and play off of the Keener character than having a full life of their own.

The self-enclosed world of these New Yorkers is very well observed as designer Mark White has made the apartments, streets and businesses all seem to belong to the same small village.

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Sony Pictures Classics)
Production companies: A Likely Story production
Cast: Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Sarah Steele, Ann Marie Guilbert, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Lois Smith
Director/screenwriter: Nicole Holofcener
Producer: Anthony Bregman
Executive producers: Caroline Jaczko
Director of photography: Yaron Orbach
Production designer: Mark White
Music: Marcelo Zarvos
Costume designer: Ane Crabtree
Editor: Robert Frazen
Rated R, 90 minutes

Sundance/Berlín: "HOWL", de Rob Epstein y Jeffrey Friedman (críticas)

By Todd McCarthy/Variety

A Werc Werk Works production in association with Telling Pictures and Rabbit Bandini Prods. (International sales: The Match Factory, Cologne, Germany.) Produced by Elizabeth Redleaf, Christine Kunewa Walker, Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman. Executive producers, Gus Van Sant, Jawal Nga. Co-producers, Brian Benson, Andrew Peterson, Mark Steele. Directed, written by Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman.

Allen Ginsberg - James Franco
Ralph McIntosh - David Strathairn
Jake Ehrlich - Jon Hamm
Judge Clayton Horn - Bob Balaban
Professor David Kirk - Jeff Daniels
Gail Potter - Mary-Louise Parker
Mark Schorer - Treat Williams
Luther Nichols - Alessandro Nivola
Jack Kerouac - Todd Rotondi
Neal Cassady - Jon Prescott
Peter Orlovsky - Aaron Tveit

Intelligent and highly respectful of its central character and his titular landmark poem, "HOWL" is an admirable if fundamentally academic exploration of the origins, impact, meaning and legacy of Allen Ginsberg's signal work. It is also an intriguing hybrid of documentary, narrative and animated filmmaking, one that needed to burst through the constraints of its conceptual origins as a docu to express everything on its mind. Adventurous but tidily formalized picture will attract a certain following among intellectual and gay audiences, but by nature it's a rarefied project for a relatively narrow target audience.

That said, how many remotely commercial films have ever had the nerve to build themselves around core sequences consisting of long swaths of poetry being read to eager listeners, whose rapturous reactions are recorded in enthusiastic detail? So it is here, as vet documakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman anchor this searching work with the 29-year-old Ginsberg (James Franco) getting up in front of a beatnik crowd at San Francisco's Six Gallery in 1955 to read "HOWL" for the first time. Even if the shock that Ginsberg's bluntly sexual and provocative words carried then can't possibly be felt the same way 55 years later, anyone who revels in the pure pleasure of the spoken word will receive rare gratification here.

To examine the impulses that caused the words to be written, the filmmakers expand their work fourfold: first, with excerpts from a far-ranging verite-style "interview" with Ginsberg (with text drawn from assorted actual interviews the writer gave over the years); second, with elaborate animated sequences by former Ginsberg illustrator Eric Drooker that attempt, with varying success, to translate words into moving pictures; third, with a dramatic re-creation of the 1957 trial in which the prosecution attempted to outlaw the book by having it adjudged obscene and without redeeming artistic merit; and fourth, with renditions of key moments from the youthful Ginsberg's life, notably his interactions, carnal and otherwise, with such Beat Generation superstars as Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Ginsberg's longtime mate, Peter Orlovsky.

In the interview, Ginsberg admits, among many other things, to his fear of his teacher-poet father's reaction to his work; his mother's madness; his sexual infatuations; his psychiatry-inspired breakthrough to live a fully honest, unconstrained life; and his view that "HOWL" was not, as some perceived, a promotion of the merits of homosexuality but at its heart an argument for "frankness about any subject." It's in these thoughtful, off-the-cuff interludes that Franco can come closest to fully inhabiting Ginsberg, which he does with great credibility; despite doubts going in about how plausible the handsome actor would be as the poet much more familiar from his later life as looking plump, balding and unkempt, it's a good fit in the end, physically and vocally.

The trial, cleanly and brightly rendered, is played without histrionics and with particular attention to how uncomfortable and clueless the prosecutor (David Strathairn) is with the substance of the text he's sometimes forced to recite in court. A parade of name thesps (Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker, Treat Williams, Alessandro Nivola) comes on to portray expert witnesses, while Jon Hamm, without having to much change his period look from "Mad Men," plays the defense attorney who ably steers the case being heard by a conservative, fair-minded judge (Bob Balaban).

Snippets from Ginsberg's intimate moments with his literary cohorts, as well as from his attempt to live a "straight" life, are little more than that, silent and fleeting black-and-white memories of loves yearned for, lusts consummated or not and acceptance found. There was certainly much more in Ginsberg's past that informed "HOWL" but is not shown here, particularly the more sordid aspects; this honorific treatment stands as the diametric opposite of the sensationalistic sort of biopic Ken Russell would have made had he been drawn to the subject.

But therein lies the rub. Russell's films, good and bad, had blood coursing through their veins, whereas this one, while clearly motivated to celebrate the life force embodied by Ginsberg and his work, is itself wood-dry. It's a paradox born of the film's fundamentally informational and historical perspective, one viewers will just have to live with.

Resourcefully made on a modest budget, the picture boasts top craft contributions from lenser Edward Lachman, production designer Therese DePrez and composer Carter Burwell, whose melodic, jazzy backgrounding mixes well with a number of period tunes.

Camera (Technicolor/B&W), Edward Lachman; editor, Jake Pushinsky; music, Carter Burwell; music supervisor, Hal Willner; production designer, Therese DePrez; art director, Russell Barnes; set decorator, Robert Covelman; costume designers, Kurt and Bart; sound (Dolby Digital), Jan McLaughlin; supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer, Lora Hirschberg; sound designer, Tom Myers; animation designer, Eric Drooker; animation producer, John Hays; visual effects, Mark Christiansen; line producer, Lynn Appelle; associate producers, Peter Hale, Bob Rosenthal, Ken Bailey, James Q. Chan, Kelly Gilpatrick; assistant director, Tom Fatone; casting, Benie Telsey. Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (competing, opener), Jan. 21, 2010. Running time: 84 MIN.

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By Kirk Honeycutt/The Hollywood Reporter

PARK CITY -- You don't turn a poem into a movie and certainly not such a revolutionary, in-your-face, youthful and passionate work as Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." But then again, maybe you can, just not in the manner that longtime documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman presumed. In fact, they finally, in desperation, turned to the narrative format as they could find no other way to penetrate the 1956 literary work.

The movie mounts a four-pronged attack: animation, a simulated interview with Ginsberg (played imaginatively by James Franco), brief dramatizations of Ginsberg's life and a landmark obscenity trial that surrounds the birth of his game-changing poem all come together to capture how "Howl" landed in the middle of the Eisenhower era like a literary H-bomb.

"Howl" proved the perfect film to kick off Sundance 2010, a festival that means to rededicate itself to "cinematic rebellion" and indie experimentation. "Howl" fairly howls its proud defiance of commercial filmmaking norms. It's a heady flight into not just a particular poem but into the act of creativity itself, into how an artist breaks down barriers between himself and his art.

This exhilaration one feels watching this absorbing genre-bender doesn't mean the whole thing hangs together. It doesn't. The fragmented approach means some pieces don't fit, and you find yourself wishing for more of this and less of that.

Franco's Ginsberg is seen, in black and white, reading his poem in a Beat Generation coffee house to a young crowd growing more enthusiastic with each foray into homoerotic love, artistic hedonism and nihilistic drug-taking. A year or two later, the now established poet gives an interview -- this, like the rest of the film, is in color -- in which he explains his methods and reveals himself to be a disciplined, savvy artist fully aware of his craft.

Another section focuses on an obscenity trial over "Howl" in San Francisco, where the defendant is not Ginsberg but rather the poem's equally famous publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Andrew Rogers). Here David Straithairn as a morally indignant prosecutor duels with Jon Hamm's defense attorney before an often-puzzled trial judge played by Bob Balaban.

Finally, there's the poem itself, imagined as you listen to its pulsating, on-rushing rhythms in surreal animation that feels like a contradiction -- a captivating nightmare with dark images that nevertheless appeal and attract.

Every piece of film involving Franco is terrific, but the problem is that there isn't nearly enough. The film barely sketches its hero and his emotional life. Some of this is even rendered in documentary-like revelations, about his mother and about his obsession with such Beat characters as Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, rather than in fully scripted scenes.

The film never takes the leap into treating Ginsberg as a flesh-and-blood character but rather shoves him up on a stage or in front of a tape recorder as a cultural icon. Franco certainly delivers the performance, but the filmmakers haven't given it shape.

The animation, done in Thailand, is outstanding. If anything, you'd like to rerun just those sections, as "Howl" rages on the soundtrack, over and over again. They have a hallucinogenic feel that fits the poem like a glove.

The obscenity trial, frankly, could get lifted out, and the film would only improve. The courtroom footage is stiff and unconvincing. You get little sense of any of the personalities involved or what's at stake for them. Here especially the filmmakers' limited experience in feature filmmaking shows.

But what's cinematic experimentation without a few failures in the lab? Maybe that's why "Howl" is so appealing: The filmmakers don't get everything right but their passion for Ginsberg's genius and their excitement over trying to deconstruction a literary master work is contagious. A more perfect film might have been just a teensy-weensy dull.

Venue: Sundance Film Festival
Production companies: A Werc Werk Works production in association with Telling Pictures and Rabbit Bandini Prods.
Sales: Cinetic Media, the Match Factory
No rating, 80 minutes

Sundance/Berlin: "The Kids Are All Right", de Lisa Cholodenko (críticas)

By ROB NELSON/Variety

A Gilbert Films presentation of an Antidote Films, Plum Pictures production. Produced by Gary Gilbert, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Celine Rattray, Jordan Horowitz, Daniela Taplin Lundberg. Executive producers, Steven Saxton, Ron Stein, Christy Cashman, Anne O'Shea, Riva Marker, Andrew Sawyer, Neil Katz, J. Todd Harris. Co-producers, Charles E. Bush, Jr., Joel Newton, Todd Labarowski. Directed by Lisa Cholodenko. Screenplay, Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg.

Jules - Julianne Moore
Nic - Annette Bening
Paul - Mark Ruffalo
Joni - Mia Wasikowska
Laser - Josh Hutcherson
Jai - Kunal Sharma
Clay - Eddie Hassell
Sasha - Zosia Mamet
Tanya - Yaya Dacosta
Luis - Joaquin Garrido

Sparked by wonderfully lived-in performances from Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo, "The Kids Are All Right" is alright, if not up to the level of writer-director Lisa Cholodenko's earlier pair of new bohemian dramas, "High Art" and "Laurel Canyon." Once again, the focus is on the neuroses of well-off hipsters living alternatively in conservative times, as a Los Angeles lesbian couple (Moore and Annette Bening) are rattled by the unexpected introduction of their hippie sperm donor (Ruffalo) to their teenage kids. Commercial prospects look solid for an ingratiating, sitcom-style entertainment whose genuinely stirring moments come rather late in the game.

Cholodenko's uncharacteristic degree of comedy (in combination with her unusually high budget) can be understood and to a fair extent applauded as a principled bid to sell alt-family values to the mainstream. The kids of a married lesbian couple are alright, indeed, even or especially if that couple is wacky in familiar ways. Alas, this is the sort of movie in which illicit lovers agree that they'll never, ever hook up again, followed by a shot of them lounging post-coitus in bed. Cholodenko's previous work has been about how it's complicated to keep relationships from turning messy; this film simply has too much of "It's Complicated."

What the director's formulaic third feature does retain in full is her palpable and infectious love for characters and actors alike. By far the least likable of the bunch, uptight doctor Nic (Bening) nevertheless appears engagingly severe from the point when she learns that 18-year-old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and 15-year-old Laser (Josh Hutcherson) -- yes, Laser -- have secretly sought out and met their biological father, Paul (Ruffalo). Moore's well-sketched Jules is at once whip-smart and loopy, an underachiever whose landscaping biz remains stuck in low gear until Paul, an organic crop farmer and restaurateur who starts coming to family dinners, offers her work on his scruffy backyard.

This development naturally abrades the wine-guzzling Nic, as college dropout Paul, acting warm and sounding seductive via Ruffalo's lilting purr, appeals irresistibly to the kids in paternal terms, and to Jules in sneakily sexual ones. Nic's eventual realization that Jules and Paul have been tending more than his bushes is indelibly captured in a moment whose slo-mo closeup on scowling Nic, pumped up with sludgy background noise, makes it play like a fight scene in "Raging Bull."

It's more or less at this point that the movie, like the characters, begins to drop its glib defenses and score on an emotional level. The alternately comfy and edgy rapport between Moore and Bening hits peak levels in a scene where the two begin to pull apart. By far, the screenplay by Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg is most incisive in the film's final reels, as the effects of a culture clash waged on multiple fronts -- male and female, gay and straight, educated and experienced -- literally come home to roost.

As before, Cholodenko generously shares her keen ear for pop, the soundtrack ranging from classic rock to Wendy & Lisa, along with a too-cute scene wherein Nic and Paul, in a rare moment of bonding, warble their way through a rendition of Joni Mitchell's "All I Want." Working with stellar production designer Julie Berghoff, the director also displays a vividly geographic feel for L.A.'s funkier, leftist enclaves. All across the frame, tech credits for this upscale indie production are of studio-film sheen.

Camera (Technicolor), Igor Jadue-Lillo; editor, Jeffrey M. Werner; music, Craig Wedren, Nathan Larson; production designer, Julie Berghoff; art director, James Pearse Connelly; set decorator, David Cook; costume designer, Mary Claire Hannan; sound (Dolby Digital), Jose Antonio Garcia; supervising sound editor, Joe Lemola; re-recording mixers, Elmo Weber, Frank Gaeta, Patrick Giuraudi; visual effects, Scale; stunt coordinator, Mark Norby; assistant director, Jesse Nye; casting, Laura Rosenthal, Liz Dean. Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (Premieres), Jan. 25, 2010. Running time: 104 MIN.

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By Justin Lowe/The Hollywood Reporter

PARK CITY -- As Lisa Cholodenko's latest Southern California-set feature plays out, the title may seem particularly apt. An otherwise conventional romantic comedy centering on the mid-life parenting issues of a long-time lesbian couple, this love letter to gay-marriage supporters is respectably entertaining filmmaking, it's just not exceptional.

The cultural zeitgeist is just right for "Kids" to receive a warm reception from art house crowds and with a top-notch cast and Cholodenko's solid reputation, reasonable returns should be expected.

Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) have been together nearly 20 years and have two kids by artificial insemination. Laser (Josh Hutcherson) is a typical teenager, focused on sports and girls, although more experienced with the former. Sensitive, thoughtful Joni (Mia Wasikowska) has just turned 18 during her last summer home before heading off to university. Shortly after his sister's birthday, Laser asks Joni to follow up on a previous plan to make contact with their biological father.

Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the anonymous donor, is a laid-back entrepreneur and organic gardening enthusiast with a locavore restaurant but few other commitments in his life who is totally cool with meeting his offspring after a call from the sperm bank. Their first encounter, kept secret from the "moms," is understandably awkward, but soon the kids are regularly hanging out with Paul, until Laser inadvertently reveals their subterfuge to his parents.

Jules takes the news fairly well, but ever-uptight Nic reacts unfavorably, worried about Paul's potential influence on her kids. An informal introductory lunch ends with Paul inviting Jules, who is launching a fledgling landscape design business, to remodel his overgrown back yard.

Rather improbably, an attraction develops between Jules and Paul, and before long they are copulating like newlyweds, despite their shared guilt. Meanwhile, Paul has bonded remarkably well with Laser and Joni, offering them some respite from their moms' smothering parenting. Nic's chance discovery that her spouse is cheating with their sperm donor sends the family into a tailspin, with Paul left to wonder just where he fits in.

While snappy, realistic dialogue is one of the strengths of Cholodenko and co-writer Stuart Blumberg's nonchalantly breezy script, the writers often strive a bit too obviously for perceived authenticity (the phrase "I'm just sayin'" seems to be repeated with the frequency of an advertising disclaimer). Despite some key character-motivation omissions, Moore, Bening and Ruffalo all deliver endearingly quirky comic performances, with Wasikowska also particularly effective as the confused and resentful Joni.

Cholodenko's polished directing and Igor Jadue-Lillo's cinematography burnish the boho LA settings with an almost tactile sheen, while production design by Julie Berghoff ornaments key scenes with revealing details.

"The Kids Are All Right" ultimately requires that audiences sympathize with the already familiar foibles of well-off, white Socal residents whose problems might seem fairly mundane to others struggling with crime, poverty and illiteracy. But whatever works -- "I'm just sayin"....

Venue: Sundance Film Festival
Production: Gilbert Films, Plum Pictures, Antidote Films
Cast: Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson
Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Screenwriters: Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg
Producers: Gary Gilbert, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Celine Rattray, Jordan Horowitz, Daniela Taplin Lundberg
Executive Producers: Steven Saxton, Ron Stein, Christy Cashman, Anne O'Shea, Riva Marker, Andrew Sawyer, Neil Katz, J. Todd Harris
Director of photography: Igor Jadue-Lillo
Production designer: Julie Berghoff
Music: Craig Wedren, Nathan Larson
Costumes: Mary Claire Hannan
Editor: Jeffrey M. Werner
Sales: Cinetic Media
No Rating, 104 minutes

"The Paranoids": The Surprisingly Watchable Adventures of an Oversensitive Twentysomething

By Simon Abrams/L Magazine

As tedious as it normally is to watch overprivileged twentysomethings stuck in a creative rut find their way out by finding romance (on film, that is; in real life, voyeurism totally rules), there's somehow always room for one more film to defy that tried-and-true expectation. The Paranoids, co-writer/director Gabriel Medina's portrait of a wiry, mullet-sporting angry young Argentinean with an autistic artistic temperament, is both lively and brooding, alternating between taking its protagonist's all-too-relatable perfectionist, antisocial tendencies deathly seriously, and taking the piss out of them (as in a dream sequence that liberally paraphrases Taoist philosophy, and one of the most dramatic video game boxing matches on film). Medina is sincere about recreating his protagonist's worldview, but he also has the proper distance to recognize that it's the stuff of bittersweet comedy.

It should come as no surprise that The Paranoids is in part based on Medina's own youth. Luciano Gauna (an excellent Daniel Hendler), a budding screenwriter unable to finish a script he's been working on for years, is a control freak. It's how he struggles to cope with knowing that his best friend Manuel (Walter Jakob) has already made a big splash with his own TV show-cum-overnight franchise while he's stuck dressing up as a big purple monster suit for children's parties (Barney he ain't). And he has a thing for Manuel's girlfriend Sofia (Jazmin Stuart). And he can't dance (he's got this windmill thing going with his right arm but it could be he's just used too much Tiger Balm).

Thankfully, The Paranoids, a film about a character constantly striving to maintain emotional equilibrium in his mopey little life, is so good at walking its protagonist's volatile tight rope. Hendler has a hungry look in his eyes that sustains many of his character's repressed, passive-aggressive confrontations, which always boil down to a stare and a pout anyway. Medina knows just how hard it is for Luciano to experience life outside of his terms and perfectly mimics that impulse in his meticulous pacing and camera blocking. The aforementioned video game battle is one of the funniest contemporary expressions of the phallocentric contest that is the love triangle, the romantic comedy's standby representation of sexual tension. It's surprisingly tense, more than a little silly, and filmed with a Fincheresque OCD precision—everything a comedy about a twenty-something's bruised ego should have in a nutshell.

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Otras críticas:

by Scott Tobias / AVClub

• B- av club rating

• Director: Gabriel Medina
• Cast: Daniel Hendler, Jazmín Stuart, Walter Jakob (In Spanish w/ subtitles)
• Rated: Not Rated
• Running time: 98 minutes

Though there are some differences in tone—and a refreshing lack of impromptu convenience-store dance numbers set to “My Sharona”—the Argentinean romantic triangle The Paranoids has the same basic dynamic as Reality Bites, and the same message about young adults holding onto their scruffy integrity. Daniel Hendler plays the Ethan Hawke character, a soulful, unkempt apartment-dweller whose screenwriting aspirations are thwarted by equal parts crippling fear and general unwillingness to engage with the outside world. Walter Jakob plays the Ben Stiller slickster, a superficially charming cad whose runaway success as a TV producer in Spain includes selling out Hendler. That leaves Jazmín Stuart in the Winona Ryder role, dissatisfied with being Jakob’s arm candy and drawn to the somewhat elusive charms of a slacker who can barely peel himself off the couch.

With his feature debut, writer-director Gabriel Medina stops blessedly short of making a big generational statement, but The Paranoids does a fine job of evoking youth culture and attitudes in Buenos Aires, which here doesn’t seem that different from the scene in Park Slope or Los Feliz. Medina has more trouble revealing anything surprising about the three lead characters, who don’t evolve much from their initial impression. Hendler is given the most to do as the chief paranoiac of the title, but Medina substitutes an assemblage of odd quirks—irrational fears of STDs and his doorman, a job as the world’s glummest children’s entertainer—for a clearly defined hero. Still, The Paranoids summons a scuzzy, winning nocturnal ambience, particularly when Hendler breaks out of his funk, hits the dance floor, and does his best impression of Michael Stipe in the “Losing My Religion” video. For a few brief moments, he and the movie transcend their four-walled ennui.

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By STEPHEN HOLDEN/The New York Times

Published: January 22, 2010

Pity poor Luciano, the sad-sack aspiring screenwriter played with twitchy, wild-eyed charm by Daniel Hendler in “The Paranoids,” a deadpan slacker comedy from Argentina. A children’s entertainer who dresses up in a furry purple suit to play a comic-book character at parties, Luciano is such a sloppy entertainer that he falls asleep on the job.

Although an extreme hypochondriac, he smokes and drinks to excess. During a bout of vomiting after an all-night binge he pleads for an ambulance. He obsesses that a casual fling with a woman may have left him disease ridden, although he has no symptoms of sexually transmitted diseases.

So nervous that he can fly off the handle at a moment’s notice, Luciano sends his business partner, Sherman (Martin Feldman), to the hospital after accidentally slamming a door on his neck; he throws a tantrum in a grocery store when the owner refuses to exchange some bad wine he returns. Yet for all his infuriatingly neurotic self-sabotage, Mr. Hendler makes Luciano such a lovable loser that you root for him to get over himself.

“The Paranoids,” directed by Gabriel Medina from a screenplay by Mr. Medina and Nicolas Gueilburt, plays like a dawdling sitcom that strings together small incidents into not very much. At its most cohesive it examines a potentially toxic friendship between Luciano and his childhood buddy Manuel (Walter Jakob) who returns to Buenos Aires from Madrid, where he has created a hit television series, “The Paranoids.”

Manuel subtly lords his success over Luciano, who has been working forever on a still-unfinished screenplay. Manuel drags along a beautiful, glum girlfriend, Sofia (Jazmin Stuart), who remains in Buenos Aires while Manuel goes to Chile on a business trip.

While his friend is away, Luciano discovers that the series’s main character, a laughingstock, is based on him. Upon returning, Manuel loftily offers Luciano a lucrative job adapting “The Paranoids” into an Argentine movie. Luciano demurs. The ugly undercurrents of their friendship come to the fore when they compete in a boxing video game.

“The Paranoids” is so well-acted and has such a keen eye for detail (the Ramones poster in Luciano’s apartment certifies his flailing negativity) that you expect its pieces to jell into something larger. But just like its main character, this smart, slyly witty movie with few laughs undersells itself.

THE PARANOIDS

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Directed by Gabriel Medina; written by Mr. Medina and Nicolas Gueilburt; director of photography, Lucio Bonelli; edited by Nicolas Goldbart; music by Guillermo Guareschi; art director, Sebastian Roses; produced by Sebastian Aloi; released by Oscilloscope Laboratories. In Spanish, with English subtitles. At Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Daniel Hendler (Luciano Gauna), Jazmin Stuart (Sofia), Walter Jakob (Manuel Sinovieck), Martin Feldman (Sherman) and Miguel Dedovich (Dodi).

Sundance/Berlín: "The Killer Inside Me", de Michael Winterbottom (Screendaily review)

Dir. Michael Winterbottom, USA, 2009, 110 min.

Michael Winterbottom’s staggeringly violent adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel The Killer Inside Me reaches a new extreme in the cinematic depiction of a psychopathic murderer. It is hard to watch – and for some will be impossible - regardless of any psychological logic behind its many killings.

Distributors everywhere will be shy of this film, despite Winterbottom’s established reputation. Anyone releasing it will be dogged by its violence, especially towards women. Theatrical response should be similar to Antichrist, another film whose violence is at the extreme of what is watchable.

The killer is (and is in) Sheriff’s Deputy Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), the son of respectable parents in Central City, Texas. Ford is imperturbable, except for when provoked, as we see in an encounter with a local prostitute, Joyce (Jessica Alba), who gets a beating after she strikes him, and then becomes Ford’s lover. He eventually kills her and the local mayor’s spoiled son, which he blames on Joyce.

Affleck plays Lou Ford as a boy scout who graduated to the police force with an eerily high voice and a rigidity that seems inscrutable. His motivation in killing seeps through over the course of the film, but far more time is devoted to the murders of two women than there is to why Ford kills them.

More violent than Chigurh, the killer in No Country for Old Men, Ford is also far more cerebral than American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman. In his ability to talk about almost anything, he is reminiscent of real killers like the well-groomed Ted Bundy.

Thompson’s novel is mostly dialogue and interior monologue, so an adaptation has flexibility in its depiction of Ford’s town. Production design by Rob Simons and Mark Tildesley recreates a sedate western city meticulously, down the details of Ford’s clothing, about which the killer is fastidious. Cinematography by Marcel Zyskind takes us back to the 1950’s with the precision that Ford applies to his own life.

Ford’s exterior, as played with serene control by Affleck, is a defence and an offence. It hides the horrific drives inside him, which the film never probes satisfactorily, and it challenges anyone to penetrate through the mask of decorum. Winterbottom seems to be assuming that, as a work of fiction, The Killer Inside Me plays by its own rules, and that a character’s actions are better witnessed than explained.

Just as troubling are Joyce and Ford’s girlfriend, Amy (Kate Hudson), who remain drawn to him despite beatings and signs of depravity. Ford’s acceptance by these women could be why audiences will attack the film on grounds of misogyny. Winterbottom seems to suggest that their willingness to endure violence, like Ford’s aggression, are things that can happen to people.

The Killer Inside Me is well within American film noir territory, in that it identifies the criminal without understanding the crime.

Secondary roles are solid, with Ned Beatty as the town’s corrupt mayor whom Ford blackmails, and Bill Pullman as the wildly inane lawyer who escorts Ford out of an insane asylum, enabling him to kill one last time. Simon Baker plays the district attorney who sees through Ford’s defenses and hates what he sees.

Audiences up to their ears in cinematic serial killers may enter this film, thinking blithely that they already know them all. Like it or not, Winterbottom will prove them wrong.

Production companies

Stone Canyon

Muse

Revolution

Wild Bunch

Curiously Bright Entertainment

Indion Entertainment Group

International Sales

Wild Bunch

+ 33 6 20 36 77 72

Producers

Chris Hanley

Bradford L. Schlei

Andrew Eaton

Screenplay

John Curran, based on the novel by Jim Thompson

Cinematography

Marcel Zyskind

Editor

Mags Arnold

Production design

Rob Simons

Mark Tildesley

Main Cast

Casey Affleck

Jessica Alba

Kate Hudson

Ned Beatty

Elias Koteas

Tom Bower

Simon Baker

Bill Pullman

Brent Briscoe

Matthew Maher

"Crossing Chris: Some Markerian Affinities", by Adrian Martin

Link

Concurso del Bicentenario de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires

Clickear sobre la imagen para poder leer los detalles.

Mexico City Fest canceled (Variety)

Triste crónica de un final anunciado...

MEXICO CITY -- The seventh edition of the popular Mexico City Contemporary Film Festival, dubbed Ficco, has been canceled only weeks before it was set to open.

With the capital plastered in posters promoting the event, rumors began to fly mid-to-late last week that the fest, due to run Feb. 24-March 7, was in hot water; staffers were quietly told they were going to be out of a job.

Last Friday, the fest contacted its PR firm, Burson-Marsteller Mexico, to say it was over and to expect an official announcement -- which came on Tuesday.

Heavy on international pics that have no local distrib, the fest pleased crowds but was light on industry impact -- ultimately unable to attract many buyers or foster major deals despite efforts to build it up as a major venue for new indie Mexican cinema.

Ficco faced a number of challenges in recent years, most notably the departure of much of its original executive and programming staff in September 2008, following the lead of then-director Paula Astorga.

At that time, Astorga cited creative differences with chief sponsor Cinemex, a Mexican exhibition chain.

Ficco's new director, Raquel Cajiga, managed to pull off the sixth edition last year, but with a marked decline from the fest's 2008 peak of 263 films to 180 last year.

In November, Cajiga held a press conference to unveil events for the 2010 fest.

She had lined up 150 features; a retrospective of indie Mexican filmmaking from the 1960s and 1970s; workshops run by the Mexican Film Institute, Imcine; plus plans to take the films on the road to 10 states in Mexico -- much like the road show that thesps Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal have put on with their doc fest, Ambulante, which runs next month.

While the list for features and documentaries in competition were not released, the fest received entries from July to October and listed prizes available in a number of categories, consisting largely of film transfer, editing equipment and gear rental -- a step down from the larger cash prizes seen in past editions.

With the demise of Ficco, Mexico City's 20 million or so residents are left without a large, competitive film fest to call their own, with the exception of Ambulante.

This makes the Guadalajara Film Festival and, to a lesser degree, the Morelia Film Festival the nation's only real hunting grounds for fresh local talent in fiction filmmaking.

Cine Club Núcleo inicia su 57° temporada

EN EL ESPACIO INCAA KM. 0 - CINE GAUMONT.

Abierta la inscripción.

Comenzamos con “Los hombres que no amaban a las mujeres – Millennium 1” dirigida por Niels Arden Oplev y protagonizada por Michael Nyqvist, película que fue vista en Europa por más de 6.000.000 de espectadores.

El martes 2 de febrero a las 18.15 y 20.45 hs. en el Espacio Incaa. Km. 0 - Cine Gaumont el Cine Club Núcleo iniciará su temporada ininterrumpida número 56, fundado por Salvador Sammaritano en el año 1952, ya ha realizado más de 7200 funciones a lo largo de su historia.

Las actividades serán todos los martes a las 18.15 y 20.30 hs. con los pre-estrenos más esperados en el Espacio Incaa Km. 0 - Cine Gaumont (Av. Rivadavia 1635); los lunes a las 19.00 hs. "Ciclo de Revisión" en el Complejo Tita Merello rescatamos las joyas del cine de todos los tiempos; y el segundo y cuarto domingo de cada mes a las 11.00 hs (de la mañana) en el Espacio Incaa Km. 0 - Cine Gaumont se exhibirán pre-estrenos o films de reciente estreno comercial con mucha calidad ya retirados de cartelera y como última posibilidad de verlos en pantalla grande.

Para informes, inscripciones de nuevos socios y renovaciones anticipadas se estará atendiendo los días viernes 29 y sábado 30 de enero de 18.30 a 20.30 hs. en el Espacio Incaa Km. 0 - Cine Gaumont (Av. Rivadavia 1635 – Congreso).

La primera función será el pre-estreno de “Los hombres que no amaban a las mujeres – Millennium 1” (“Män som hatar kvinnor” / Suecia 2009), la primera película de la saga Millennium, escrita por Stieg Larsson, la novela negra más vendida de la década. Dirigida por Niels Arden Oplev y protagonizada por Michael Nyqvist, la trama nos cuenta que hace 40 años, Harriet Vanger desapareció de una reunión familiar en la isla que pertenece y es habitada por el poderoso clan Vanger. Su cuerpo nunca se encontró, sin embargo su tío está convencido de que fue asesinada y de que el asesino es un miembro de su propia familia, una familia unida y a la vez disfuncional. Contrata entonces a un periodista caído en desgracia, Mikael Blomkvist, y a la hacker informática Lisbeth Salander para investigar el caso.

"Megalopolis", de Francis Ford Coppola (el guión original)

Link

Un interesante sitio, con muchos otros guiones también...
Los dibujos del storyboard son también originales de Coppola.

"Germany Year Zero: The Humanity of the Defeated", by Jonathan Rosenbaum (Criterion Collection Notes on Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy)

Unlike the more aesthetically and intellectually conceived French New Wave, Italian neorealism was above all an ethical initiative—a way of saying that people were important, occasioned by a war that made many of them voiceless, faceless, and nameless victims. But this was, of course, a conviction that carried plenty of aesthetic and intellectual, as well as spiritual, consequences, including some that we’re still mulling over today.

Deliberately or not, Germany Year Zero concludes Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy by posing a kind of philosophical conundrum, a fact already signaled by its title, which he borrowed, with permission, from a book by French sociologist Edgar Morin. It was a title that stumped even Joseph Burstyn and Arthur Mayer, the American producers of Rome Open City and Paisan, and the fact that Rossellini, characteristically trusting his instincts, refused to say what he meant by it eventually encouraged them to back out of the project, which was largely financed by the French government. But even when Rossellini later tried to formulate what drove him to make the film—in its dedication to the memory of his son Romano (who died in 1946, at the age of nine, after emergency surgery for an inflamed appendix), or in a statement prefacing its international versions—he tended to contradict himself.

“This movie, filmed in Berlin in the summer of 1947,” he declared in that statement, is “an objective and faithful portrait,” not “an accusation or even a defense of the German people.” Yet objectivity was clearly (and thankfully) the last thing Rossellini had in mind. Even the doom-ridden modernist score by his brother Renzo participates in the sense of unfolding disbelief and horror by suggesting some of the mood of science fiction. And the directive later in the preface to care about these Germans rather than call for any further retribution is actually more consistent with Rossellini’s aims than any “objective assessment” could be. This was a brave and principled stance for him to take at the time, and it still places Germany Year Zero well in advance of most films about war made even today.

The film stars Edmund Meschke, an eleven-year-old acrobat from a circus family, whom many have said Rossellini cast largely because of his close resemblance to Romano. Playing a motherless boy named Edmund Koehler, who struggles to help support his desperate family (including an ailing father and older sister and brother), Meschke is the film’s affective center and focus, clearly making it the most personal film in Rossellini’s War Trilogy. It’s a story concluding both horribly and logically with Edmund’s suicide after he fatally poisons his father—an act that proceeds no less logically from statements by both his former teacher (espousing the survival of the fittest) and his father himself (about wishing he were dead).

Significantly, Edmund’s family is split between his anti-Nazi father and his pro-Nazi older brother—perhaps no less significantly (and machocentrically), his sister’s politics are simply ignored—but one never feels that Rossellini is limiting his sympathy to ideological allies. At worst, he may overload the motivations for Edmund to poison his father and the melodramatic villainy of two predatory pederasts, but these might ultimately be considered more flaws in his dramaturgy than humanistic failures. They count for little alongside the film’s more acute and far more numerous everyday observations about postwar Berlin.

How we interpret this tragedy is a direct consequence of how we watch it, and how we watch it depends largely on how much we regard it as the personal expression of a particular auteur—and how much, neorealistically, as a reflection of the time and place where much of it was shot: Berlin, August and September 1947. The fact that a portion of Germany Year Zero was shot in Rome between November 1947 and January 1948—even though the story throughout has the same postwar Berlin setting—may complicate our grasp of what neorealism consisted of, but this is only part of the conundrum. The very title of the film offers not so much a documentary fact as a subjective reading of a documentary fact: not just a city and a population reduced to chaos but a terrain leveled spiritually and morally (which implies a place to build, but not necessarily or specifically what is to be built there).

It’s easy to see how a leveling title that references a leveled country would form a major template for Jean-Luc Godard—cropping up most clearly in his hour-long 1991 film commemorating the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, but already fully evident in his earlier, Maoist-inspired notion, expressed most famously in La Chinoise (1967), to rebuild society “from zero” (that is to say, from the ground up). This has as much to do with a subjective reading relevant to auteurism as it does with any documentary fact traceable to neorealism. And arguably, the same ambiguous mixture can be intuited in François Truffaut’s 1963 statement that “aside from Vigo, Rossellini is the only filmmaker who has filmed adolescence without sentimentality, and The 400 Blows owes a great deal to his Germany Year Zero.” Moreover, this is the first Rossellini film that Truffaut ever saw, turning him immediately into a convert.

But paradoxically, Rossellini himself was not much of an auteurist. He said that he made the film for its final stretch: “Everything that goes before held no interest for me.” The whole film “was conceived specifically for the scene with the child wandering on his own through the ruins . . . I only [felt] sure of myself at this decisive moment.” (All of these quotes come from Tag Gallagher’s essential biography, The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini.) It is especially in this closing section—anticipating Robert Bresson’s Mouchette (1967) in its depiction of a child oscillating between the contradictory reflexes and demands of childhood and adulthood, where suicide itself becomes the culmination of a child’s game—that Rossellini’s film achieves its devastating lucidity, and one is hardly surprised to learn from Gallagher that some of Rossellini’s specific memories of Romano (such as his playing with a piece of rubble as if it were a gun) are integrated into Edmund’s behavior, which also includes some desultory stabs at hopscotch and similar kinds of play.

Yet it’s worth adding that even some portions of this climactic sequence—such as Edmund passing the fountain and church and playing with his feet—were shot in Rossellini’s absence, by Carlo Lizzani, his (credited) assistant director and (uncredited) cowriter, while Rossellini was back in Rome coping with various marital complications brought about by his adulter­ous relationship with Anna Magnani. According to Lizzani, Rossellini “was of the opinion that the framing could be done this way or that, but if one shot enough and if the idea was clear, the material would be good in any case.” And according to a recent conversation with film scholar Adriano Aprà, who interviewed Lizzani on the subject, an enormous amount of material was in fact shot while Rossellini was away—enough to allow him plenty of choices in the editing after he returned. But selection clearly plays as important a role in defining an auteur as any sort of pure “creation,” especially when some form of documentary truth is what’s ultimately at stake. A gesture of despair that emotionally fuses personal grief with an intense empathy for the dispossessed, Germany Year Zero is finally something closer to a cry of pain than a carefully worked-out and conceptualized statement, and this is what grants it a lasting authenticity.

Jonathan Rosenbaum was a film critic at the Chicago Reader from 1987 through 2007 and now has a website at jonathanrosenbaum.com. His most recent books include Dead Man, Movie Wars, Abbas Kiarostami (with Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa), Movie Mutations (coedited with Adrian Martin), Essential Cinema, and Discovering Orson Welles.

Synopsis

Roberto Rossellini is one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. And it was with his trilogy of films made during and after World War II—Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero—that he left his first transformative mark on cinema. With their stripped-down aesthetic, largely nonprofessional casts, and unorthodox approaches to storytelling, these intensely emotional works were international sensations and came to define the neorealist movement. Shot in battle-ravaged Italy and Germany, these three films are some of our most lasting, humane documents of devastated postwar Europe, containing universal images of both tragedy and hope.

Collector's set includes

Rome Open City

Roberto Rossellini, 1945

This was Roberto Rossellini’s revelation, a harrowing drama about the Nazi occupation of Rome and the brave few who struggled against it. Rome Open City is a shockingly authentic experience, conceived and directed amid the ruin of World War II.

Paisan

Roberto Rossellini, 1946

Roberto Rossellini’s follow-up to his breakout Rome Open City was the ambitious, enormously moving Paisan, which consists of six episodes set during the liberation of Italy at the end of World War II, taking place across the country, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley.

Germany Year Zero

Roberto Rossellini, 1948

The concluding chapter of Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy is the most devastating, a portrait of an obliterated Berlin shown through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy.

Disc Features

SPECIAL EDITION THREE-DISC SET:

• New, restored high-definition digital transfers
• Video introductions by Roberto Rossellini to all three films, from 1963
• New video interviews with Rossellini scholar Adriano Aprà, film critic and Rossellini friend Father Virgilio Fantuzzi, and filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
• Audio commentary on Rome Open City by film scholar Peter Bondanella
• Once Upon a Time . . . “Rome Open City,” a 2006 documentary on the making of this historic film, featuring rare archival material and footage of Anna Magnani, Federico Fellini, Ingrid Bergman, and many others
• Rossellini and the City, a new visual essay by film scholar Mark Shiel on Rossellini’s use of the urban landscape in the War Trilogy
• Excerpts from rarely seen videotaped discussions Rossellini had in 1970 with faculty and students at Rice University about his craft
• Into the Future, a new visual essay about the War Trilogy by film scholar Tag Gallagher
• Roberto Rossellini, a 2001 documentary by Carlo Lizzani, assistant director on Germany Year Zero, tracing Rossellini’s career through archival footage and interviews with family members and collaborators, with tributes by filmmakers François Truffaut and Martin Scorsese
• Letters from the Front: Carlo Lizzani on “Germany Year Zero,” a podium discussion with Lizzani from the 1987 Tutto Rossellini conference
• Italian credits and prologue for Germany Year Zero
• Roberto and Roswitha, a new illustrated essay by film scholar Thomas Meder on Rossellini’s relationship with his mistress Roswitha Schmidt
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by James Quandt, Irene Bignardi, Colin MacCabe, and Jonathan Rosenbaum

More info