Someone sent me this blog post from the web site “The Playlist,” and I find all the conjecture and excitement infectious, so I’m going to share:

7/01/2009

More Fall Film Festival Speculation/Predix: Venice, Telluride & NYFF

Alright, we already made our 2009 Toronto International Film Festival predix and then people asked, what about “The Informant,” what about “The Road” or “Where The Wild Things Are“? The truth of the matter is TIFF is such a beast it essentially has first dibs on anything it wants. So if ‘Wild Things,’ for example, is going to be part of the fall film festival circuit — and we’re not convinced it will, to be honest —TIFF has first dibs on it. However, there are three other major film festivals in the fall and some of these pictures (that could easily land at TIFF too) could land there first, and or afterwards. The smaller festivals will want to key in on specific films so here’s our predix for each one (with some preamble…)

Making your splash debut at a film festival can be a risky proposition. If you score the sought after accolades it’s gravy for your buzz train. But if you hit the snags of lukewarm reviews you’re either in trouble, need major adjustments and/or are simply dead in the water (see the mildly troubled “Inglourious Basterds,” probably fucked “Taking Woodstock” and Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,“ which didn’t receive quite the enthusiastic Cannes reception of his last picture, “Volver“). After being scrutinized over Quentin Tarantino’s bloated war epic, will the financially strapped Weinstien company take that risk again with John Hillcoat’s “The Road“?

Perhaps the remaining big, highly anticipated films from 2009 will throw caution to the wind and try their hand in the fall festival circuit anyway, in pursuit of some buzz. But will Warners unveil something like ‘Wild Things‘ early? Again, will Weinstein unveil “Nine” months in advance and will Peter Jackson show “The Lovely Bones” that far ahead? Here’s our guess: unlikely. Like Fincher’s ‘Benjamin Button‘ (albeit a film allegedly not ready for the fall film fest slate last year), the major heavyweights will most likely wait for their December time slots, especially now since there’s 10 Best Picture slots to choose from. There’s less of a rush. Oscars may matter less these days, but they still mean something, and studio’s have it in their head (and they may be right) that late year releases have the upper hand in the race — plus, it’s tradition, at least as of the last few years. Similarly, The Weinstein Company can’t afford another bomb, or even really middling reception for one of its films, so they’re particularly likely to sit on their films for as long as they can.

So what will we see at this year’s other fall film fests, Telluride, Venice, and New York?

Well, we can only guess, but we have some educated predictions (as well as some that could be filed as “wishful thinking”). We hope to see things like Werner Herzog’s bizarre-looking “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” (which has no distributor yet), and this seems as good a time as any for Herzog to try and sell the damn thing, Nic Cage lunacy and all.

Venice International Film Festival (nobody calls this VIFF, sorry. If you do you will be shot on sight)
Runs: September 2nd to 12th 2009.
Venice goes for artier, more auteur-driven fare and generally doesn’t include Cannes repeats since the south of France isn’t that far off from Venice geographically. Also, Venice generally doesn’t includes a ton of American films in their line-up.

“The Road” – Possibly? Like we said, it seems unlikely that the Weinsteins will show “The Road” anywhere, considering their financial woes and all manner of other crap — but, if they were going to show it early, the receptive European audience at Venice would be a good one, no? If the film’s a hit, there — and with its artier leanings it very well could be — it might be able to sneak into TIFF’s line-up at the last minute as well, as was the case with “The Wrestler” last year. (And look how well that that move paid off.) And, if it’s a bomb, at least being a bomb at Venice is not as bad as being a bomb within the U.S. for U.S. critics.

“The Informant” – This one seems almost a lock for something, as Soderbergh isn’t festival shy or scared off by early reactions (he’s off onto the next six pictures while you’re dissecting the current one). Easily could hit here first and then would likely hit TIFF afterwards, but we have a hunch Venice might be an early launching pad.

“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” – Build the buzz, build the buzz. At this point it seems that ‘Parnassus’ will wait for fall festival accolades — because maybe it will manage one — before it sells to a U.S. distributor.

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” – Herzog’s latest was in our TIFF picks, but it’s just too off-the-charts bad for them, perhaps he’ll try for Venice and hope they’ve taken advanced irony courses and not flunked out.

“13” – Gela Babluani’s remake of his own film starring Mickey Rourke (TIFF also seems likely).
Telluride Film Festival
Runs: September 4-7,
If you have the dollars in this economy to go to Telluride in Colorado — a wacky, hippie-like film festival that does not reveal its line-up until the day it begins — consider yourself lucky. We’re always curious to see how many regular film writers can afford to show up to a festival this blind. While the idea is super cool, that kind of risk is generally not in our purview.

Telluride seems to have a good relationship with Fox Searchlight and gave “Juno” and “Slumdog Millionaire” their World Debuts, so possibly Jason Reitman’s “Up In The Air” could land there. As per usual in the fall schedule, many films that premiered at Cannes make their North American debuts around this time, but generally Telluride grabs the more off-the-beaten path pictures, conceding to — like many festivals — the premiere power and clout of Toronto.

“Where The Wild Things Are” – Does Warner Bros. really want to show this off early? Most years we would say absolutely, but given its ballooned budget, the economy and how much they’ll want this film to be a success, we think showing 20 minutes of footage like they did with ‘Benjamin Button‘ to get critics foaming at the mouth might be a better route to test the waters. Then again, they are showing footage at ComicCon 2009, which maybe means they are more receptive to trying their hand at the Autumn festivals.

“Men Who Stare At Goats“ — Telluride will need some big name premieres. This one doesn’t hit until December which is generally far to late for most festival consideration, but films like ‘Goats’ need some early press buzz to help them out and Telluride seems like a good place for it. TIFF might want it too because of George Clooney and Ewan McGregor.

“Looking For Eric” – Telluride grabs a few Cannes film each year and this small little celebratory and feel good film by Ken Loach could be a perfect little fit.

“Vincere” – Marco Bellocchio’s pre-WWII era’d film about the the abandoned son of Mussolini feels like it could fit in well here.

“Michael Moore Untitled Doc” – There’s a small chance Moore could take his economy doc here, but not a chance in hell if it means TIFF won’t. But he surely wants American audiences to see it, so he’ll probably flog this all over.
NYFF- The New York Film Festival
Runs: September 25 – October 11, 2009
The New York Film Festival is excellent, but generally skews artier — lots of Cannes pictures — and has the semi-unfortunate position of being the last major fest of the fall season so TIFF often beats them to bigger names, but they do curate an amazing best-of-the-best from many prior fests. Last year the only major debut was the Eastwood film “Changeling,” but they did have “The Wrestler” and “Che” and always choose meticulously. Less prestigious, as the more enviable TIFF steals its premieres, NYFF still has probably the most carefully curated line-up of all the festivals. While interested in stars for marquee value, they know they’re dwarfed by TIFF.
Note: this festival only takes on an average of around 28 films.

“Forgiveness” – If it’s ready, Todd Solondz‘s seems right for this art-leaning, sympathetic festival.

“Tree of Life“ – If Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” is indeed hitting in 2009 like the reports say, it will have to hit the fall film festival circuit somewhere, no? But is this ambitious film, that nobody seems to know much about (other than that “life and family” jargon we’ve all been fed a zillion times), starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, actually going to be ready any time soon? That seems to be between Malick and his maker.

“Broken Embraces” – It’s possible that Almodovar’s latest, which has already been slapped with hit or miss reviews, could land at TIFF, but if it skips that festival for whatever reason, it feels like a NYFF film. Likely will land in New York regardless.

“Antichrist” – The organizers always cherry pick the best from Cannes and they love auteurs, which means it find a home here as well, which seems to fit with its new October-scheduled release date which will star in limited NY/L.A. release.

“An Education” – TIFF seems to not like to sully itself with films that have already premiered at Sundance earlier in the year. NYFF doesn’t seem to have those issues.

“Biutiful” – We have yet to hear a word about Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new drama starring Javier Bardem and it’s July. We’ll shove it here, ’cause why the hell not? Plus we hope New Yorkers get to see it first.

“Enter The Void“ – Is Gaspar Noe’s heady, surrealist drama too heady for TIFF? Here’s a good alternative for it.

“Dogtooth” – Won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, which means it’ll probably be at TIFF first, but could easily hit NYFF after.

“A Thorn In The Heart” – Maybe if TIFF passes they’ll take the low-key Michel Gondry documentary about his aunt?

“Visage” – Probably too avant-garde for TIFF, and thus a very strong NYFF candidate.

“Kinatay“- NYFF seems to love Brillante Mendoza. They had “Serbis” at the festival last year.

Some Odd Balls:
“Hadewijch“ - Bruno Dumont’s latest. Many speculated it would be at Cannes, it wasn’t, so it should show up somewhere.
“Mammoth“ – We don’t really know what happened to Lukas Moodyson’s new movie other than receiving middling reviews at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. Perhaps it went the way of the dodo, and the steam powered train.

Thanks Glenn!

What better time to see the Seattle theatrical premiere of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 Made in USA than over July 4 weekend?

Here’s what the critics are saying:

“The Wire: Jean-Luc Godard’s Made in U.S.A. is not the celluloid holy grail, but it’s close enough…Made in U.S.A. is anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist, decrying miniskirts and rock ‘n’ roll as mind control, but it’s also more devoted to the vulgar modernism of mid-20th-century pop culture than any movie Godard made before or would make after.” -J. Hoberman (via the Seattle Weekly)

“In terms of Godard’s body of work, the 1966 film is as challenging as it is important.” -LA Times

And here’s A.O. Scott’s entire NY Times piece, because it’s provides some excellent context:

The mid-1960s were Jean-Luc Godard’s heroic period, the time when the vector of his talent seemed almost uncannily aligned with the direction of history. Between 1964 and 1967 Mr. Godard directed a mind-boggling nine feature films, completing one every few months in a frenzy of productivity that blurred the line between prolific and compulsive.

That a handful of these films have become touchstones — classics even — is one of the jokes that history likes to play now and then as it transforms bloody-minded aesthetic radicals into canonical figures. In an essay from 1968 that managed to be both gushing and analytically acute, Susan Sontag identified Mr. Godard as “a deliberate ‘destroyer’ of cinema,” yet somewhat paradoxically, his wanton, wily and thorough deconstructions of cinematic technique have become objects of preservation and examples for the future.

But he was also, from the beginning, a conservator of film history and a fetishist of cinematic form and genre. “Made in U.S.A.,” a 1966 quasi policier starting a two-week run at Film Forum on Friday, is dedicated to “Nick and Sam,” as in Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller, Hollywood mavericks who were objects of filial awe and Oedipal aggression for Mr. Godard.

As its title suggests, “Made in U.S.A.” pays ambivalent, tongue-in-cheek tribute to American movies. Shot in obviously French locations, it pretends to take place in Atlantic City and features characters whose names are a salad of American political and pop cultural references, like Robert McNamara and Paul Widmark.

One of Mr. Godard’s frequently cited sayings is the claim that all he needed to make a movie was a girl and a gun. There are quite a few guns in “Made in U.S.A.,” but the axiom only really applied when the girl in question was Anna Karina, Mr. Godard’s mid-’60s muse, who had recently become his ex-wife when this movie was made.

Looking a bit weary (perhaps from the strain of having appeared in so many Godard films in such a short time), Ms. Karina plays Paula, a fetchingly dressed young woman desultorily investigating the disappearance of her boyfriend Richard, whose last name is drowned out by sound effects every time it is uttered.

The detective story trappings are vestiges of the movie’s supposed literary source, a pseudonymous novel by the American mystery writer Donald Westlake, whose death a little more than a week ago gives the film’s current release a poignant timeliness.

“Made in U.S.A,” in any case, has rarely been seen in the U.S.A. since its appearance at the 1967 New York Film Festival. And while this film is far from a lost masterpiece, it is nonetheless a bright and jagged piece of the jigsaw puzzle of Mr. Godard’s career.

Sontag noted that “one of the most modern aspects of Godard’s artistry is that each of his films derives its final value from its place in a larger enterprise, a life work.” Anyone curious about the shape and status of that work will want to seek out “Made in U.S.A,” but there are also reasons for non-Godardians to make the pilgrimage.

There is, for one thing, a pouting and lovely Marianne Faithfull singing an a capella version of “As Tears Go By.” There are skinny young men smoking and arguing. There are the bright Pop colors of modernity juxtaposed with the weathered, handsome ordinariness of Old France, all of it beautifully photographed by Raoul Coutard. There are political speeches delivered via squawk box.

And of course there is a maddening, liberating indifference to conventions of narrative coherence, psychological verisimilitude or emotional accessibility.

As assaultive as “Made in U.S.A” can be, it also seems to have been made in a spirit of insouciance, improvisation and fun. If it doesn’t merit a place, with “Weekend” and “Band of Outsiders,” on the Godard’s Greatest Hits compilation — a perverse idea, I know, but an appropriate one for just that reason — it is still a great lost B side, a time capsule whose half-strength doses of Godardian self-contradiction, self-consciousness and provocation remain surprisingly fresh.

And finally, I offer this menagerie of various poster artwork the film has inspired over the years:

On Friday July 3 we’ll be hosting a screening and discussion of the movie “Police Beat.”

At this screening of Police Beat, the film’s screenwriter, Charles Mudede, will speak with urban theorist Thomas Sieverts, author of Zwischenstadt, and writer Matthew Stadler about the new shapes of cities and the ways that film can make them legible.

The discussion is part of a great series of events going on in the city called “Suddenly.”

Seattle has been called a “picaresque city” because its geography is so episodic, an archipelago of hills divided by water and dominated by scenic vistas that stun us into forgetting. Z the peripatetic bike-cop hero of Police Beat is content to drift across this fragmented sequence of views, witnessing the petty humiliations and violent assaults that trigger 911 calls to the police. He is polite, but always looking outward, his mind on the mountains, somewhere west or east of here, and his absent girlfriend, gone camping with another man. 

 


What kind of city is this? It cannot be mapped, so it must be filmed. In Police Beat, Seattle’s fractured landscapes are remixed and made sensible by Z’s path through them.

To watch the film and join the discussion, be at the Film Forum on Friday at 1pm. Tickets are just $7 and available at the door.

The time is now! Renew or become a member by June 30 (tomorrow!) and get all these special benefits:

• Join or renew your membership before June 30, 2009 and receive an admit-two pass (value $18 and good through December, 2009).
• Join or renew your membership before June 30, 2009 and we will extend your membership by two extra months – your membership won’t expire until September 30, 2010!
• Join or renew your membership before June 30, 2009 and be entered to win a year-long admit-two pass to all Film Forum films.

Members receive our calendar in the mail, discounts on tickets, and depending on the level of your membership, free popcorn, family discounts, invitations to press screenings, and other fabulous benefits. Everything you give above $50 is tax deductible.

Support what you love about Seattle! NWFF screens over 250 independently made and classic films annually, offers a year-round schedule of filmmaking classes for all ages, and supporting filmmakers at all stages of their careers with affordable equipment rentals and grant programs.

Join or renew your membership right now!

Filmmakers, don’t forget that this week is the final week to submit your films to our 12th Annual Local Sightings Film Festival. The submission form is available to download at localsightings.org. What’s to lose, cash prizes are at stake and there’s no entry fee.

In addition to the Michael Jackson Tribute, we’ve also added a special late-night program:

Family: A Webisodic Program

Terisa Greenan, Seattle actress and filmmaker, has created Family, a comic web series on the topic of polyamory. Family is an episodic tale of alternative love. Set in Seattle, the show follows the lives of Gemma, Ben & Stuart, 30-somethings living together in a polyamorous triad. The series is presented in 5-7 minute episodes viewed exclusively at online video portal sites like YouTube. The episodic story is loosely based on Greenan’s own poly life with her two male partners. Greenan has posted fifteen episodes online since November 2008, and this 100-minute feature is a compilation of those episodes, edited to fit our time slot.

Terisa Greenan and Family the web series have been profiled by The Seattle Times, KOMO 4 news, and Newsweek magazine. Family the web series has also been included in the Kisney Institute’s library, for its groundbreaking treatment of polyamory in entertainment media.

Tickets and more info here: http://www.nwfilmforum.org/live/page/calendar/997

(By the way, thanks to my Brown Paper Tickets weekly email of new events, I also learned of a screening of Calamari Union at the Georgetown Ballroom. This is all I know. But if you missed the movie at our special sold-out work-in-progress screening, I highly recommend it.)

In 1983, outside of the Los Angeles location shooting of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video, interviewers asked many among the throngs of young fans who’d shown up why they liked Michael Jackson so much. For the most part, the girls thought he was dreamy and the guys though he was super cool. Of course all of them praised his dancing. But I think one young boy said it best, and simplest: “I like the way he pops.” The kid was referring to the sharp and energetic movements in his dancing, and using a term from the break dancing craze that was just starting catch fire around the country. But I think his simple statement is so right on a larger level. In terms of both his singing and his dancing over four decades, what set Michael Jackson apart from the rest is his “popping”- from his screeches and moans to his kicks and glides. Like his childhood idol James Brown, Jackson’s whole body- his whole being- WAS the music. Besides the Godfather of Soul, one would be hard pressed to name another entertainer who committed half as much of himself to every performance and presentation. And it showed- it popped. That’s why the Jackson 5, fronted by a 11-year old Michael, was a phenomenon right out of the gate in the late 60s (their first four singles on Motown were all smash hits). And it’s why his solo career, a decade later when he was a young adult, changed popular music forever (1979’s ‘Off The Wall’ generated more top 10 hits than any other album before it, and you know 1982’s ‘Thriller’ topped that record by a mile.) Its why, when he busted out the moonwalk during a live TV performance of ‘Billie Jean’ in 1983, the whole world went completely silent for a moment before letting out a scream. (After seeing that TV special, Fred Astaire called him personally to praise his dancing.) And its why the world has memorized every move in his classic videos and still no one can pull them off like Michael. The guy just completely embodied his music, or vice versa. It was the magic of his delivery that moved us. When they call him the “King of Pop,” it doesn’t mean popular music so much to me as it signifies just how electrically charged Michael was when he was doing his thing, how much he popped out from the mundane, and how powerfully his music popped us all out of our lives and onto the dancefloor.

We at the Film Forum love Michael’s music, and have always lived by the credo “Don’t stop ‘til you get enough.” That’s why we’re presenting a special Michael Jackson Tribute on Tuesday July 7 (8pm, doors at 7:30) to celebrate the great entertainer. We’ll show his classic music videos from the late-1970s and 80s on the big screen (and cranked up loud), as well as other stuff (including a 1968 performance of the Jackson 5, an excerpt of Michael in the 1978 musical ‘The Wiz,’ and the 1983 TV performance that introduced the “moonwalk.”) Of course we’ll have refreshments in the cinema, and all ages are welcome. Please join us in raising a glass to the one and only King of Pop and seeing his legacy of fantastic music videos on the big screen.

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