list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Kabluey on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Kabluey/351649/default.aspx Title: Kabluey
Year: 2008
Director: Scott Prendergast
Plot: A slacker tries to do the right thing for his family with unexpectedly chaotic results in this independent comedy. Salman (Scott Prendergast) is an out-of-work twenty-something who has few skills and fewer prospects. However, things are significantly worse for his older brother -- his National Guard unit has been called back to Iraq, and his wife Leslie (Lisa Kudrow) needs to go back to work in order to support their children. However, Leslie doesn't have anyone to look after her two sons, so when Salman learns of her sad situation, he volunteers to move in and help mind the kids. Salman quickly discovers the boys are nearly psychotic and will stop at nothing to get him out of the house, including putting sharp objects in his breakfast. With the household still short on money, Leslie helps Salman get a job, and soon he's become the corporate mascot for a failing internet company, who pounds the pavement wearing a strange blue costume hoping to drum up interest in renting space in the corporate offices. The first feature film as writer and director for actor Scott Prendergast, Kabluey also stars Christine Taylor, Conchata Ferrell, Terri Garr and Chris Parnell. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 10
Number of Lists: 4
Number of blog posts: 5
Number of discussion threads: 2
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:12:18 GMTKabluey2008Scott PrendergastA slacker tries to do the right thing for his family with unexpectedly chaotic results in this independent comedy. Salman (Scott Prendergast) is an out-of-work twenty-something who has few skills and fewer prospects. However, things are significantly worse for his older brother -- his National Guard unit has been called back to Iraq, and his wife Leslie (<a href="/players/P____39535/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Lisa Kudrow</a>) needs to go back to work in order to support their children. However, Leslie doesn't have anyone to look after her two sons, so when Salman learns of her sad situation, he volunteers to move in and help mind the kids. Salman quickly discovers the boys are nearly psychotic and will stop at nothing to get him out of the house, including putting sharp objects in his breakfast. With the household still short on money, Leslie helps Salman get a job, and soon he's become the corporate mascot for a failing internet company, who pounds the pavement wearing a strange blue costume hoping to drum up interest in renting space in the corporate offices. The first feature film as writer and director for actor Scott Prendergast, Kabluey also stars <a href="/players/P___230124/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Christine Taylor</a>, <a href="/players/P____22767/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Conchata Ferrell</a>, Terri Garr and <a href="/players/P___263419/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Chris Parnell</a>. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide10Taggedy Taggged (6-10)4523http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s351649.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Kabluey/351649/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/wonga/archive/2009/2/2/40140.aspx Post By: wonga
Post To: wonga's filmblog
Post Date: 2/2/2009 10:12:18 AM
Body: favorite 10 movies seen in the theater (2008) Man On Wire In Bruges Kabluey I've Loved You So Long Young@Heart Song Sung Blue Snow Angels Tell No One Behind The Glass (2008)* The Dark Knight *Croatian movie from the Denver Film Festival. original title is "Iza Stakla" and director is Zrinko Ogresta. honorable mention (alphabetical) Burn After Reading Caramel The Damnation Of Faust (Metropolitan Opera broadcast) Happy-Go-Lucky Iron Man The Last Command (1928) Mongol Nick And Nora's Infinite Playlist Son Of Rambow Towelhead
]]>Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:12:18 GMTwongawonga's filmblog2/2/2009 10:12:18 AMfavorite 10 movies seen in the theater (2008) Man On Wire In Bruges Kabluey I've Loved You So Long Young@Heart Song Sung Blue Snow Angels Tell No One Behind The Glass (2008)* The Dark Knight *Croatian movie from the Denver Film Festival. original title is "Iza Stakla" and director is Zrinko Ogresta. honorable mention (alphabetical) Burn After Reading Caramel The Damnation Of Faust (Metropolitan Opera broadcast) Happy-Go-Lucky Iron Man The Last Command (1928) Mongol Nick And Nora's Infinite Playlist Son Of Rambow Towelhead http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2009/1/8/39270.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 1/8/2009 4:01:14 PM
Body: Netflix and Film Independent got a jump on the deluge of independent filmmaking news that will be coming soon via Sundance by announcing a new independent film contest today that will be chaired by Josh Brolin and judged by Brolin, Dan Jinks, Bruce Cohen, and Dustin Lance Black. The Netflix FIND Your Voice Film Competition is meant to foster new indie filmmakers, and it’s not open to anyone who has created and publicly screened a film more than 70 minutes long. The prize package, worth $350,000 consists of a $150,000 cash grant from Netflix, a camera package donated by Panavision, 25,000 feet of Kodak Color Negative Film or 10,000 feet of Kodak Color Intermediate Film, along with prints, dailies, and a digitial intermediate package from Deluxe, and EFILM. It’s an extremely fast-track competition, and entrants only have until February 9th to submit a script, budget, sample work, bio, and synopsis, which give filmmakers one month to get everything together. They’ll only be accepting 2,000 submissions, and those will be whittled down to 10 semi-finalists who will be asked to submit a two to three minute short film, and of those ten films, five will be chosen by the public via the web to move on. From the five finalists, the judging panel will select one winner. The upshot? Even if you’re lucky enough to have a script ready to go, you’re going to have to scramble to put all of this together and meet the February 9th deadline. It’s not for people who have a work in progress, or who need a few months to direct a short film for consideration, but rather for filmmakers who are ready to go tomorrow. Maybe you have a project you’ve been kicking around, but lack the funds to get it into production. This is your shot. While the final product will be available on Netflix both on DVD and via digital streaming, filmmakers will retain all rights to their finished work. Josh Brolin, who was on hand to introduce the project with Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Film Independent’s Dawn Hudson, remarked that working in independent film has changed dramatically over the past decade, because it now “means working with directors like the Coens, Gus Van Sant, Robert Rodriguez, and Oliver Stone. I mean, no studio wanted to touch W., and when it was announced that I was going to be in that and in No Country, people [reacted] like ‘You mean… the guy from The Goonies?’” Thankfully, Brolin realizes that “I guess I’ll always be ‘That guy from The Goonies.’ Martha Plimpton was recently in a production of The Three Sisters, or something really classic like that on stage in New York, and at the end of the performance they come out and get a standing ovation, and everyone is cheering and everything. Then, from the back of the room, someone shouts out GOONIE! So, there you go.” At least he knows where his roots are. Sadly, I didn’t get to ask him about the possibility for a Goonies II. Maybe I should have pitched him my idea. He went on to explain that Robert Rodriguez constantly encouraged him to go out and make his own short film and not focus on how much money he needed to make it, so last year Brolin directed X for $17,000 starring his own daughter, “Because we were able to get her to work cheap.” He pointed out that although reaction to the film was very polarized, “People either thought it was the worst film they’d ever seen, or they thought it was a great directorial debut” it got him even more excited about independent film, and led him to donate his time to this project. Also on hand was writer/director Scott Prendergast of Kabluey fame, who was a protege of the Film Independent program. He wrote and directed Kabluey with a shoestring budget, and was able to get Lisa Kudrow, Teri Garr, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Christine Taylor involved in the project. “Basically, I’m here as proof that the program actually does work.” Kabluey ended up premiering at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival, and Prendergast now has a couple of films lined up to direct. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to matter how good of a film you make unless people see it, which is what this program hopes to achieve through its more than eight million subscribers. “When I was working on No Country, and we were between takes, Joel Coen walks by me and whispers ‘Nobody’s going to see this movie.’ I was like, why would he say that? Luckily, it was able to get some attention, whether peoople liked the ending or not.” Netflix and Film Independent probably hope that the same thing happens with whatever film comes out of this competition. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:01:14 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com1/8/2009 4:01:14 PMNetflix and Film Independent got a jump on the deluge of independent filmmaking news that will be coming soon via Sundance by announcing a new independent film contest today that will be chaired by Josh Brolin and judged by Brolin, Dan Jinks, Bruce Cohen, and Dustin Lance Black. The Netflix FIND Your Voice Film Competition is meant to foster new indie filmmakers, and it’s not open to anyone who has created and publicly screened a film more than 70 minutes long. The prize package, worth $350,000 consists of a $150,000 cash grant from Netflix, a camera package donated by Panavision, 25,000 feet of Kodak Color Negative Film or 10,000 feet of Kodak Color Intermediate Film, along with prints, dailies, and a digitial intermediate package from Deluxe, and EFILM. It’s an extremely fast-track competition, and entrants only have until February 9th to submit a script, budget, sample work, bio, and synopsis, which give filmmakers one month to get everything together. They’ll only be accepting 2,000 submissions, and those will be whittled down to 10 semi-finalists who will be asked to submit a two to three minute short film, and of those ten films, five will be chosen by the public via the web to move on. From the five finalists, the judging panel will select one winner. The upshot? Even if you’re lucky enough to have a script ready to go, you’re going to have to scramble to put all of this together and meet the February 9th deadline. It’s not for people who have a work in progress, or who need a few months to direct a short film for consideration, but rather for filmmakers who are ready to go tomorrow. Maybe you have a project you’ve been kicking around, but lack the funds to get it into production. This is your shot. While the final product will be available on Netflix both on DVD and via digital streaming, filmmakers will retain all rights to their finished work. Josh Brolin, who was on hand to introduce the project with Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Film Independent’s Dawn Hudson, remarked that working in independent film has changed dramatically over the past decade, because it now “means working with directors like the Coens, Gus Van Sant, Robert Rodriguez, and Oliver Stone. I mean, no studio wanted to touch W., and when it was announced that I was going to be in that and in No Country, people [reacted] like ‘You mean… the guy from The Goonies?’” Thankfully, Brolin realizes that “I guess I’ll always be ‘That guy from The Goonies.’ Martha Plimpton was recently in a production of The Three Sisters, or something really classic like that on stage in New York, and at the end of the performance they come out and get a standing ovation, and everyone is cheering and everything. Then, from the back of the room, someone shouts out GOONIE! So, there you go.” At least he knows where his roots are. Sadly, I didn’t get to ask him about the possibility for a Goonies II. Maybe I should have pitched him my idea. He went on to explain that Robert Rodriguez constantly encouraged him to go out and make his own short film and not focus on how much money he needed to make it, so last year Brolin directed X for $17,000 starring his own daughter, “Because we were able to get her to work cheap.” He pointed out that although reaction to the film was very polarized, “People either thought it was the worst film they’d ever seen, or they thought it was a great directorial debut” it got him even more excited about independent film, and led him to donate his time to this project. Also on hand was writer/director Scott Prendergast of Kabluey fame, who was a protege of the Film Independent program. He wrote and directed Kabluey with a shoestring budget, and was able to get Lisa Kudrow, Teri Garr, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Christine Taylor involved in the project. “Basically, I’m here as proof that the program actually does work.” Kabluey ended up premiering at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival, and Prendergast now has a couple of films lined up to direct. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to matter how good of a film you make unless people see it, which is what this program hopes to achieve through its more than eight million subscribers. “When I was working on No Country, and we were between takes, Joel Coen walks by me and whispers ‘Nobody’s going to see this movie.’ I was like, why would he say that? Luckily, it was able to get some attention, whether peoople liked the ending or not.” Netflix and Film Independent probably hope that the same thing happens with whatever film comes out of this competition. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/jimbell/archive/2008/12/11/38223.aspx Post By: JimBell
Post To: JimBell Blog
Post Date: 12/11/2008 12:53:52 AM
Body: Kabluey (2007) will be dismissed as “quirky,” or, more subtly, as a “first film.” So I invite you to perform a thought experiment: Select your favourite director and image he or she made this film. Ready . . .? Probably no other director besides [my fav director] could have so successfully combined comedy, drama, and social commentary. When we first meet 32-year old Salmon (Scott Pendergast), he appears to be someone we can easily pigeon hole as a “slacker” or a “loser.” When he gets a job in a print shop, he is so eager to do a great job that he works all night laminating everything, including everything he shouldn’t. If we are worthy of the subtleties of this film, we note that he was over-motivated and we start asking, What could make an adult male like this? We get a partial answer when he goes to help his sister-in-law with her two hellion boys when her husband’s stay in Iraq is prolonged. He gets a job as a large blue mascot for a dotcom corporation going down the tubes, and he stands by the side of the road handing out pink flyers for cheap office space. The other characters swirling around his humiliation are not just padding, not just there for a giggle, but flesh out what life is like at the lower echelons of corporate America. Screenwriter [ok, insert the name of your favourite screenwriter] is far too sophisticated to show us bosses mistreating underlings. Rather Salmon is not even granted the decency of an interview, and while he is being hired by an angry, chain-smoking woman who is relegated to the basement, she carries on a shouting match with a rival worker. Out on the road, four guys picking up litter come across Kabluey handing out leaflets. Instead of solidarity, they toss a can of Budweiser to him, knowing that in his costume he cannot open and drink the beer, which is what he’d most like to do on a hot summer’s day. Similarly, when we first meet his sister-in-law Leslie (Lisa Kudrow), she appears to be devoted wife and mother having difficulty handling the kids while her husband is in Iraq. But if we are worthy of the subtleties of the film, we realize there is something else going on. For one thing, she makes no serious effort to control the two young hellions. For another, while she has a huge military portrait of her husband front and center, she is having an affair with the slimy boss at work. In the short scene with her and her boss sipping wine and making out in the near-empty corporate headquarters, she glows. We ask, What could make a devoted wife and mother do this? Every time the family eats supper, Iraq is on the screen. Salmon changes, entirely believable, limited, and good for those around him. As he stands roadside for minimum wage and faces the prospect of going home to two boys who have poured Comet cleanser in his mouth and put tacks in his breakfast cereal, a rich neighbour stops and offers Kabluey $100 to show up at her kid’s birthday party. As the kids swarm lovable Kabluey, he spots the two little hellions standing at the gate to the mansion. What does he do? He picks up the boys, one under each arm, and gives them a hug and a playful ride. The boys don’t know it’s him and they love Kabluey. When they accidentally see Salmon getting out of the costume, their attitude does not change in the way you’d expect. That night in bed the boys are whispering and then ask him, “Can you fly?” He says, no, he is simply one of the good guys, there to protect them and their mother. These scenes are the moral fulcrum of the movie. Leslie changes. When Salmon shows her that her lover is seducing yet another secretary, Leslie at first slaps him, but it is a turning point for her. She begins to discipline the boys. She talks to Salmon as if he were a real person, and once she even says thanks to him. At the climax of the movie, warrior-husband-father-brother walks in the front door. Long hug with wife. Salmon urges the wary kids forward—long hug with kids. Will no one notice Salmon sitting in the background? By now you should have realized the quality of this movie and you’ll be thinking all kinds of creative endings. How about this? Salmon disappears and reappears driving down the highway in an old blue Volkswagen Beetle with his suitcase in the back and a slight smile on his face.
]]>Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:53:52 GMTJimBellJimBell Blog12/11/2008 12:53:52 AMKabluey (2007) will be dismissed as &ldquo;quirky,&rdquo; or, more subtly, as a &ldquo;first film.&rdquo; So I invite you to perform a thought experiment: Select your favourite director and image he or she made this film. Ready . . .? Probably no other director besides [my fav director] could have so successfully combined comedy, drama, and social commentary. When we first meet 32-year old Salmon (Scott Pendergast), he appears to be someone we can easily pigeon hole as a &ldquo;slacker&rdquo; or a &ldquo;loser.&rdquo; When he gets a job in a print shop, he is so eager to do a great job that he works all night laminating everything, including everything he shouldn&rsquo;t. If we are worthy of the subtleties of this film, we note that he was over-motivated and we start asking, What could make an adult male like this? We get a partial answer when he goes to help his sister-in-law with her two hellion boys when her husband&rsquo;s stay in Iraq is prolonged. He gets a job as a large blue mascot for a dotcom corporation going down the tubes, and he stands by the side of the road handing out pink flyers for cheap office space. The other characters swirling around his humiliation are not just padding, not just there for a giggle, but flesh out what life is like at the lower echelons of corporate America. Screenwriter [ok, insert the name of your favourite screenwriter] is far too sophisticated to show us bosses mistreating underlings. Rather Salmon is not even granted the decency of an interview, and while he is being hired by an angry, chain-smoking woman who is relegated to the basement, she carries on a shouting match with a rival worker. Out on the road, four guys picking up litter come across Kabluey handing out leaflets. Instead of solidarity, they toss a can of Budweiser to him, knowing that in his costume he cannot open and drink the beer, which is what he&rsquo;d most like to do on a hot summer&rsquo;s day. Similarly, when we first meet his sister-in-law Leslie (Lisa Kudrow), she appears to be devoted wife and mother having difficulty handling the kids while her husband is in Iraq. But if we are worthy of the subtleties of the film, we realize there is something else going on. For one thing, she makes no serious effort to control the two young hellions. For another, while she has a huge military portrait of her husband front and center, she is having an affair with the slimy boss at work. In the short scene with her and her boss sipping wine and making out in the near-empty corporate headquarters, she glows. We ask, What could make a devoted wife and mother do this? Every time the family eats supper, Iraq is on the screen. Salmon changes, entirely believable, limited, and good for those around him. As he stands roadside for minimum wage and faces the prospect of going home to two boys who have poured Comet cleanser in his mouth and put tacks in his breakfast cereal, a rich neighbour stops and offers Kabluey $100 to show up at her kid&rsquo;s birthday party. As the kids swarm lovable Kabluey, he spots the two little hellions standing at the gate to the mansion. What does he do? He picks up the boys, one under each arm, and gives them a hug and a playful ride. The boys don&rsquo;t know it&rsquo;s him and they love Kabluey. When they accidentally see Salmon getting out of the costume, their attitude does not change in the way you&rsquo;d expect. That night in bed the boys are whispering and then ask him, &ldquo;Can you fly?&rdquo; He says, no, he is simply one of the good guys, there to protect them and their mother. These scenes are the moral fulcrum of the movie. Leslie changes. When Salmon shows her that her lover is seducing yet another secretary, Leslie at first slaps him, but it is a turning point for her. She begins to discipline the boys. She talks to Salmon as if he were a real person, and once she even says thanks to him. At the climax of the movie, warrior-husband-father-brother walks in the front door. Long hug with wife. Salmon urges the wary kids forward&mdash;long hug with kids. Will no one notice Salmon sitting in the background? By now you should have realized the quality of this movie and you&rsquo;ll be thinking all kinds of creative endings. How about this? Salmon disappears and reappears driving down the highway in an old blue Volkswagen Beetle with his suitcase in the back and a slight smile on his face. http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/9/28/35654.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 9/28/2008 1:47:56 AM
Body: Watching Kabluey the other night, I was delighted to see that Lisa Kudrow is letting the camera record her age (45), at least in this movie. Her part required her to look haggard and beaten down, but not necessarily mid-forties; in this business, it takes some guts to show your age, especially if you're female. Helen Hunt, born the same year, looks 45 in Then She Found Me, which is good, except that as the director, she cast herself as a 39-year-old trying to conceive. Does this mean that she thinks that she still looks 39 onscreen? I like Helen Hunt, so I hope that she isn't deluding herself. A while back I found I Could Never Be Your Woman unwatchable because Michelle Pfeiffer has had so much work done that I feel creepy looking at her. See, everybody should be in charge of their own body and if someone wants to get a little plastic surgery done, fine. Their perogative. But as a movie-goer, it's my perogative to choose not to go to films that creep me out. Sorry, Michelle. In the movie she's the October in a May/October relationship, which is good, but that face. Whew.And as soon as I say that, here comes Aging Gracefully with Michelle Pfeiffer.The common trope on women is: "Except for occasional supporting roles as mothers (who are never germane to the plot), Hollywood actresses disappear from the screen at about age 35 or certainly by 40. After of few years of exile, they turn up as has-been semi-celebrities on reality shows then disappear again until they age into grande dames like Helen Mirren, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith." (Ronni Bennett) Somehow I've been thinking that there are more women of middle age in the movies now than there used to be. True or false? Women who never stoped working, like Geneviève Bujold and Charlotte Rampling. Hmm. In their forties or older: Nicole Kidman, Lucy Liu, Laura Linney, Demi Moore, Julia Roberts, Holly Hunter, Meg Ryan, Mary-Louise Parker, Elizabeth Perkins, Mary McConnell, Felicity Huffman, Teri Hatcher, Alfre Woodward, Geena Davis, Stockard Channing, Frances Conroy, Glenn Close, Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Goldie Hawn. I keep thinking of more. Angelica Houston. Lily Tomlin. Sarah Palin. Debra Winger. Catherine Deneuve. Got to stop. Signorney Weaver, Isabella Rossallini, Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Adjani, Lili Taylor, Jane Curtain. Got... to... let... it... go. Janeane Garofalo. Julie Delpy. Sharon Stone. And by the way, Helen Mirren was never out of work, nor was Maggie Smith, nor was Dame Dench.I remember how pleased I was when Pacino let his age show, in movies like... hmm... when did he start looking ravaged? Heat? Scent of a Woman?. Not like Cary Grant in North By Northwest or Gable in Teacher's Pet - geezers romancing younger women. I like Grant and Gable but having them nuzzling young dishes in their late 50s... Ugh. To me, Gable and Doris Day in a clinch has not aged well. Meanwhile, my hat is off to Clint Eastwood for making Laura Linney his daughter instead of his squeeze in Absolute Power. He was pushing it with Streep in Madison County (she's 19 years younger than he is). And Redford and Deniro just throw their aging mugs up there onscreen without feathers. So too Woody Allen, but thank God he's finally stopping pairing himself with young women.Btw, Paul Newman. RIP. There was a guy who looked great all the way through.Burt Reynolds, once, just once, take off the rug. In Leatherheads, Renee Zellweger, 39, claims to be 29; does she mean it or was that just a character lying about her age? Stallone, ok, he's had so much work done that he's entered the realm of the weird but for some reason that doesn't bother me at all. There he is in the latest Rambo, totally unwrinkled and supposedly a guy living as a snake-catcher out in the bushes and that totally works for me. On the other hand, what is it with Mathew Broderick? I kept staring at him in Then She Found Me, trying to figure out what's strange about his face. He looks like a recovered burn victim. I googled his name along with "work done" and all I got were hits about his wife's plastic surgery (Sarah Jessica Parker's, that is).Bottom line: skip the lift. P.S.: Parker Posey, Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, Mary Kay Place, Dianne Weist.
]]>Sun, 28 Sep 2008 05:47:56 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog9/28/2008 1:47:56 AMWatching Kabluey the other night, I was delighted to see that Lisa Kudrow is letting the camera record her age (45), at least in this movie. Her part required her to look haggard and beaten down, but not necessarily mid-forties; in this business, it takes some guts to show your age, especially if you're female. Helen Hunt, born the same year, looks 45 in Then She Found Me, which is good, except that as the director, she cast herself as a 39-year-old trying to conceive. Does this mean that she thinks that she still looks 39 onscreen? I like Helen Hunt, so I hope that she isn't deluding herself. A while back I found I Could Never Be Your Woman unwatchable because Michelle Pfeiffer has had so much work done that I feel creepy looking at her. See, everybody should be in charge of their own body and if someone wants to get a little plastic surgery done, fine. Their perogative. But as a movie-goer, it's my perogative to choose not to go to films that creep me out. Sorry, Michelle. In the movie she's the October in a May/October relationship, which is good, but that face. Whew.And as soon as I say that, here comes Aging Gracefully with Michelle Pfeiffer.The common trope on women is: "Except for occasional supporting roles as mothers (who are never germane to the plot), Hollywood actresses disappear from the screen at about age 35 or certainly by 40. After of few years of exile, they turn up as has-been semi-celebrities on reality shows then disappear again until they age into grande dames like Helen Mirren, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith." (Ronni Bennett) Somehow I've been thinking that there are more women of middle age in the movies now than there used to be. True or false? Women who never stoped working, like Genevi&egrave;ve Bujold and Charlotte Rampling. Hmm. In their forties or older: Nicole Kidman, Lucy Liu, Laura Linney, Demi Moore, Julia Roberts, Holly Hunter, Meg Ryan, Mary-Louise Parker, Elizabeth Perkins, Mary McConnell, Felicity Huffman, Teri Hatcher, Alfre Woodward, Geena Davis, Stockard Channing, Frances Conroy, Glenn Close, Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Goldie Hawn. I keep thinking of more. Angelica Houston. Lily Tomlin. Sarah Palin. Debra Winger. Catherine Deneuve. Got to stop. Signorney Weaver, Isabella Rossallini, Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Adjani, Lili Taylor, Jane Curtain. Got... to... let... it... go. Janeane Garofalo. Julie Delpy. Sharon Stone. And by the way, Helen Mirren was never out of work, nor was Maggie Smith, nor was Dame Dench.I remember how pleased I was when Pacino let his age show, in movies like... hmm... when did he start looking ravaged? Heat? Scent of a Woman?. Not like Cary Grant in North By Northwest or Gable in Teacher's Pet - geezers romancing younger women. I like Grant and Gable but having them nuzzling young dishes in their late 50s... Ugh. To me, Gable and Doris Day in a clinch has not aged well. Meanwhile, my hat is off to Clint Eastwood for making Laura Linney his daughter instead of his squeeze in Absolute Power. He was pushing it with Streep in Madison County (she's 19 years younger than he is). And Redford and Deniro just throw their aging mugs up there onscreen without feathers. So too Woody Allen, but thank God he's finally stopping pairing himself with young women.Btw, Paul Newman. RIP. There was a guy who looked great all the way through.Burt Reynolds, once, just once, take off the rug. In Leatherheads, Renee Zellweger, 39, claims to be 29; does she mean it or was that just a character lying about her age? Stallone, ok, he's had so much work done that he's entered the realm of the weird but for some reason that doesn't bother me at all. There he is in the latest Rambo, totally unwrinkled and supposedly a guy living as a snake-catcher out in the bushes and that totally works for me. On the other hand, what is it with Mathew Broderick? I kept staring at him in Then She Found Me, trying to figure out what's strange about his face. He looks like a recovered burn victim. I googled his name along with "work done" and all I got were hits about his wife's plastic surgery (Sarah Jessica Parker's, that is).Bottom line: skip the lift. P.S.: Parker Posey, Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, Mary Kay Place, Dianne Weist. http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/9/25/35552.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 9/25/2008 7:04:22 PM
Body: O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias (2006)***** SPOILERS *****The Year My Parents Went On Vaction tells the story of a pre-teen boy in São Paulo, Brazil, separated from his parents during a military coup in 1970. As the army takes over, the country is distracted in part by Brazil's successes in the World Cup of that year (sort of like following the pennant race or NFL football in the U.S. as the country's financial system implodes). The movie is pleasant, never dull, well shot, with a delicate score that adds to the feelings of sadness and loss inherent in the plot (the director threw out the first score written for the movie; Beto Villares then did it over and got it right).TYMPWOV begins with a mother and father taking their son to grandfather's house in São Paulo. The three are riding in a VW bug, '65 or earlier. A Brazilian friend suggests that for verisimilitude, they should have been in a Renault or Citroen, because the bug was the inexpensive car of youth and the lower middle-class; her family always drove French cars. Be that as it may, the movie's streets are rife with vintage bugs and VW buses, though I did spot a Renault or two. I mention this because the first car that I bought and paid for with my own money was a new '67 bug from Belmont Motors in Massachusetts, powder blue. It has been sitting since 1981 or so in a succession of company parking lots, progressively degenerating until, paint gone, wheels seized, flowering weeds growing from dirt caught in the chassis crevicles, it looks so bad that I was ordered to have it towed off the property because it had become an eyesore, at least to one sorehead in the company who remained anonymous - the bug's engine refusing to start, a hole in the floor threatening to release the battery under the back seat like a bomb dropped from its bay at the first speed bump, the windows opaque as my glasses in the Turkish bath down the street. Fortunately, my son stepped up and volunteered to restore the car as a hobby. He abstracted it on a flatbed towtruck via Raul's Towing Service to his driveway, where it sat, partially disassembled, for a week or two before the city, at the behest of neighbors or a cruising patrol car, ordered him to remove it. He rolled the poor thing into his garage, wheels now at least freed, out of sight behind closed doors, and since then he has ordered replacement parts from an unending list. He tells me that there are two sources from which to obtain these parts: (a) a quality manufacturer somewhere or other, or (b)Brazil. You want quality, you go to the quality manufacturer; you want cheap, you go to Brazil. I don't know if that's true or not but when I replaced a bumper a long time ago, it had a "Made in Brazil" sticker on the inside surface. One tap by another vehicle and the bumper folded up like an origami noodle. Also, curiously, '67 door handles are unavailable. But the point is, if you're a bug lover you might want to give TYMPWOV a little love for that reason if for no other.Director/writer Cao Hamburger and his co-writer, Claudio Galperin, were both born in São Paulo in 1962 and were eight years old when General Emilio Medici engineered his coup. Hamburger's parents "went on vacation" at that time, but only for a few weeks. In this movie, Hamburger and Galperin share some of their childhood experiences growing up in the cultural melting-pot of São Paulo. Hamburger's father came from a German/Jewish family that emigrated to Brazil before World War II. His mother was of Italian/Catholic stock, though both parents were non-religious scientists as he grew up. He says that he began thinking about São Paulo's mix of cultures and his roots while living and feeling like an outsider in London, another city where races and nationalities mingle. According to Hamburger (and my Brazilian friends), Brazil is deeply divided over socio-economic class issues (the rich, a small middle-class, and the poor) but is accepting of emigrants; he refers to Brazilian culture as Samba culture - "Samba" here meaning, roughly, "let's all dance together." In fact, Hamburger started out with all sorts of ideas for the movie, but while making it settled on the idea of enjoying the brief periods of sunshine in life on a cloudy day. The movie was made on a medium budget by Brazilian standards. Since the success of films like Central Station and City of God, Hamburger says, funding opportunities for cinema have gotten a lot better. He used professionals as well as non-actors from the community, which in the film is a conservative Jewish neighborhood. Today, Hamburger says, this neighborhood is Korean, but since he is exploring his own roots, for the purposes of the film it remains Jewish. Hamburger spent four months finding an empty apartment building to use for the shoot; the movie was filmed completely on location.So often in making a movie, the director starts out with an idea and massages it until a theme for the film is produced. This process can extend over years with input from editors, writers, friends, family, and assorted other sources while the director chases funding, as I describe in my review of Manda Bala. Hamburger's initial inspiration was to examine the mixture of cultures in Brazil, and from that grew the idea of examining a year in the life of a boy growing up in the same time and place that Hamburger and Galperin did. During the making of the movie, the military coup and contemperaneous world-cup excitement in the film emerged, according to the director, as metaphors for life. It seems to me that some of these metaphors crop up post-production but perhaps I'm just metaphor-blind or metaphor-averse. Does a movie metaphor count if it's discovered after the movie is finished? Does it count if a reviewer invokes it, rather than the director? I do like the way that Claudia Llosa, for example, disavows metaphors in her Maven-reviewed Madeinusa, a movie which could easily be weighed down with them. I'm guessing that Hamburger's military coup and World Cup would remain in the movie whether Hamburger deemed them metaphors or not. As it is, he has one more thing to talk about during interviews. Anyway, the coup represents a dark day and the World-Cup victory represents a shaft of sunlight breaking through the gloom of that day. The dark day is life under the military regime and the sunlight represents those moments in life that you must embrace in order to get through the bad patches - did I just nest a metaphor within a metaphor there? The life of goalies in general is also a metaphor in the movie, but if the victory is a bright shaft of sunlight, what is the goalie? A meteorite the size of Oshgosh? Who knows? The gray day/sunlight metaphor, applied to my own personal life, would be like at my work, where my boss would be dictator General Emilio Medici, and out of the grinding gray of morning I would emerge at lunchtime to sit down across from Izzy Vulvano and beat his pants off playing Magic and using my special red and black deck. Also the movie is about dealing with our loneliness and our connections to others, how we make them and break them and move on. Is the movie itself a metaphor for that, or just a movie about that? Also, the director does not agree that soccer is the opiate of the masses, exploited by the junta in this case to maintain calm. Hamburger is going for gray day/sunshine here, not gray day/opium. And having mentioned Manda Bala above, note that this whole movie unfurled without a kidnapping or fried frog in sight, but only because the whole country is under siege from an autocratic military dictatorship rather than a scourge of corrupt politicians and kidnapping-for-profit criminal thugs.Strangely, Hamburger's soccer metaphor gets turned on its head at the end of the movie. Irony? Another layer? Or just part of the movie that doesn't conform to a simple, stumbled-upon talking point? I thought about calling Hamburger and asking him, but nobody likes a wiseass.When the metaphorical army arrives in Michel's neighborhood and starts dragging young men out of their union offices in São Paulo, clubbing them and hurling them into vans while the boy's parents are in hiding, it occurred to me to wonder whether such scenes are automatically more powerful when filmed in the country where they are supposed to have happened, in the language in which they happened, by victims or the relatives of victims of the evils portrayed. Or, for a subtitle-hating country like America, could such a scene be made more visceral and moving if shot in Hollywood for U.S. consumption? For example, would Der Untergang or The Lives of Others have retained their energy or even gained some, if they had been made, shot for shot, in the U.S. with U.S. actors instead of Germans? Ennio De Concini tried it with xxAlec Guiness playing Hitler but I think we can agree that that didn't work as well as Bruno Ganz doing it. Being a cinema snob, I would say without cavil that it is intuitively obvious that the Brazilian version of the coup or the German version of Hitler's last days cannot fail to have an innate power, if well enough done, that a U.S. version could never match. But hold on. Summer Palace provides a dramatic take on Tiananmen Square and the events there in 1989, yet I've heard plenty of squawking (from round eyes) about its failure to do justice to that historic conflict. Would a movie about Tiananmen, made along the lines of The Last Emperor, fare better in the U.S? Could Gettysburg withstand a transfer to Japan; if Kurosawa made it, might it even improve in the eyes of the Japanese? Or in the eyes of American viewers as well? How to assign metrics to questions like these? It's easy to just say that the better the filmmaker, the better the film, for all informed viewers of taste. Do the French still love Jerry Lewis? Are Hollywood blockbusters still the biggest grossers all around the world? And children in movies - does the fact that the child is native to a country foreign to the viewer and speaks a foreign language have any effect one way or the other on that viewer? Rather than approaching these questions from first principles, maybe the thing to do is to evaluate a hundred movies or so, make a call on each, and examine the results for trends.And speaking of children, how do they learn to act so well? Or isn't learning involved? Teens act in high-school drama classes and plays - they're learning something there, I guess. They act in community theater, especially in locations where drama in the schools is being cut. Adults go to drama school, but often act badly in films anyway. And yet I see movie after movie in which children act just fine (Mother of Mine, Wondrous Oblivion, Birth, Kabluey (where the kids are caricatures, but good caricatures.) On the other hand, that kid in The Dick Van Dyke Show... ouch.). Is aging an antidote to natural inborn talent? As we grow up, do we lose our ability to act? Or are these children, who seem to be acting so well, actually not doing much at all? In TYMPWOV, is the boy mostly just running around, looking upset, and playing with his tabletop soccer set, or is he interacting with others and... well, acting. I called the Stella Adler School in Manhattan to ask these questions, but the woman I spoke to told me that the youngest students they enroll are 14-year-olds (eight Saturday classes from 10 to 6, $800. No waiting list.) I asked the woman if the under-14s I see in the movies have been trained, or if whatever they show is just natural ability. She could only surmise. I asked if the Stella Adler Saturday classes have produced some success stories; she said yes, but didn't name anybody I've heard of. She didn't have much else to say about younger children and their appearances in movies, so I called a school out in the Valley (Sherman Oaks) which takes kids as young as 8. Sherman Oaks is up the 405 from Santa Monica, just over the hills from Hollywood. The fellow I spoke to told me flatly that every young person onscreen today has taken classes. He listed graduates from his school now appearing in Desperate Housewives, Everyone Hates Chris, etc., etc. (Classes from 10 to noon on Saturdays.) Agents and casting directors visit frequently, nominally as "class assistants," but actually trolling for talent; or maybe just trying to make a living. For example:****For Young actors:Howard MeltzerHannah Montana Casting DirectorTV Intensive - Saturday, October 4thIn each class session, the children work on a scene. In addition, there is instruction in preparation, auditioning, so forth. Camps and career-placement services are available. I asked the fellow whether children start out with talent and then lose it, or whether talent is distributed among children in the same proportion as among adults, and if so, what the classes might add to that. According to him, we're all natural-born actors. As children, we play-act all the time, but as we age, we forget how much fun that acting can be. Acting classes, like organized sports, are just a modern way of letting children continue to have fun. And just as you won't be playing in the NFL or NBA unless you associate yourself with an organized program, just so you won't break into Hollywood without connections. Plus, I'm now getting casting calls for some reason.Hamburger claims to have auditioned more than a thousand children looking for his stars in TYMPWOV. When he found the boy and girl that he wanted for the leads, Michel Joelsas and Daniela Piepszyk, he changed the script to fit them. Joelsas had never acted in a movie before (like Magaly Solier in Madeinusa, who had never even been in a movie theater when Claudia Llosa made her the lead in her movie). Hamburger says that Joelsas had talent and other characteristics of his personality that helped him to compose the character, such as "his shyness, his introspection, his curiosity about life, and his strength." And his "intelligence and a sense of observation. And he had strong charisma. He's also got a certain shyness and an inner strength." Hamburger introduced all the children in his movie slowly to the characters that they were to play, perhaps Mike Leigh-like. There was improvisation. None of the kids saw a script during the shooting of the movie. So no acting class there, unless you count Hamburger's direction; TYMPWOV argues for inborn talent, but only in one in a thousand or so. “The way I work with them is the most important element. I treat them as intelligent people. They are not children. They are spiritual, intelligent human beings. What I look for in casting children is charisma and talent, but, more than that, I want smart people. There is a very natural sense - especially the kids with their reactions...We worked a lot to have this very natural feel, but there is a lot of work behind it.” So roll the film of Michel's audition. What the heck did this kid have to do when he came through the door, number 1013, with Hamburger languishing there in his director's chair, in order to get picked boss boy? Bark like a dog? I coulda been a contender? Put on blackface, fall to his knees, and sing Mammy? We'll never know. Now my niece - those auditions are brutal. She crawls on her belly like a reptile. They badger her about her tattoos. Surely there were tattoos in Shakespeare's time, weren't there, even if they weren't coupling ferrets over You Suck! in red and green on her shoulder blades?When I say that the kids were fine in the movie, I just mean that I watched the movie and never found myself thinking, "This kid is acting." What they were actually doing onscreen, I wasn't exactly paying attention to. Sometimes in a movie I do think about what the child is up to: when Cameron Bright gets into the bath with a naked Nicole Kidman in Birth, I found myself speculating about how that was accomplished without breaking any laws. When Dylan Baker has a talk with his son in Happiness, about Baker's pedophilia and his abuse of the boy's sleepover friend the night before, I knew in advance that Baker was actually talking to the air and his son's reaction shots were filmed later. But in general, I don't sit watching for signs that actors are acting, child or otherwise. Mary Badham and Phillip Alford in To Kill a Mockingbird? How much were they given to do? Can't remember. Scout narrates the movie, but as an adult. Are kids mostly asked to just look worried, or angry, or confused? How often does a kid have to laugh in a movie? What's the story on kid monologs? 726,000 Google hits for "kid monologs," including the following from Henry V:BOY: As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to all three; but all three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks word and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds, for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or handkerchers; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another's pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them and seek some better service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.Wow. Maybe Michel laid that one on Hamburger.When I think of "bad acting," am I just reacting to bad line readings? In Son of Rambow, the boys have a lot to say and every once in a while I'd raise an eyebrow. In TYMPWOV, Joelsas and Peipszyk and the other kids are required to show their chops as follows:First twenty-five minutes: Michel (Joelsas) is the only child in the first quarter of the movie, except for a brief interaction with Hanna (Piepszyk). He plays by himself, asks his parents questions, looks out the car window at the big city and, by the way, narrates the film creditably. Sustains hugs from his parents. (As a child, I was hugged by a woman in a play once and I had to stand there and take it with a smile.) This is a good-looking young man. The camera loves him. So he walks, runs, waits, frowns at strange food, pisses in a flowerpot. It all looks real to me. I guess that's acting.Second twenty-five minutes: Michel gets slapped, runs away, cooks in the kitchen, kills time around the house. Now some face time with Hanna - mild dialog - but since I don't speak Portuguese, how can I evaluate their line readings? Rats. (And by the way, watching the movie, I mostly couldn't distinguish Portuguese from Yiddish; be nice if the subtitles would indicate which was being spoken - and ditto for Swedish and Finnish in Mother of Mine). At 39 minutes (out of 100), Michel meets Hanna's friends, three boys. They refer to Michel as the goy. Ten minutes of ensemble child acting; all five seem a little stiff, but they're just meeting each other for the first time, so maybe in real life they would be stiff. Will the stiffness persist? Now Michel settles in with his neighbor, the elderly Shlomo next door, and makes friends throughout the neighborhood. He's not asked to say much by Hamburger, but he does a lot of worrying about his parents, running around the neighborhood, so on. At the halfway point in the film, the World Cup begins. Third twenty-five minutes: First World-Cup match with everyone watching; Michel spending time alone again in the apartment; then with a whole crowd of kids - minimal dialog; back home at the one-hour mark. Second match. Polish Jew, Italian Jew, Greek, African, German Jew, Hamburger really pushing the melting-pot theme. Local soccer game. Narration by boy. He wants to be a goalie. Another World-Cup match (sees first with Shlomo, second at the union, third with the old women. Local kids game with Michel as goalie. Piepszyk gives him a gift in a one-on-one scene with dialog. Michel goes to synagogue.Final twenty-five minutes: The kids do an excellent acting job at a bar mitzvah celebration. And then some acting by Joelsas, as he helps a young union member hide from the army and secret police. Emoting, face to face with an adult! Some intense moments. Then more alone time for the boy, now coping with his worries in a more mature way than at the beginning. And the final soccer match, and more perfect-pitch behavior from Joelsas. And drama to wrap up. The boy has charisma, for sure. I believed him, from start to finish, and the other kids too.And lest I forget, every time a goal was scored, everybody whooped and waved their arms in the air and I wondered if all the women in Brazil were shaving under their arms in 1970. According to a Brazilian I asked, the answer is yes. Looks come first in Brazil, she told me, and that includes proper underarm maintenance.
]]>Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:04:22 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog9/25/2008 7:04:22 PMO Ano em Que Meus Pais Sa&iacute;ram de F&eacute;rias (2006)***** SPOILERS *****The Year My Parents Went On Vaction tells the story of a pre-teen boy in S&atilde;o Paulo, Brazil, separated from his parents during a military coup in 1970. As the army takes over, the country is distracted in part by Brazil's successes in the World Cup of that year (sort of like following the pennant race or NFL football in the U.S. as the country's financial system implodes). The movie is pleasant, never dull, well shot, with a delicate score that adds to the feelings of sadness and loss inherent in the plot (the director threw out the first score written for the movie; Beto Villares then did it over and got it right).TYMPWOV begins with a mother and father taking their son to grandfather's house in S&atilde;o Paulo. The three are riding in a VW bug, '65 or earlier. A Brazilian friend suggests that for verisimilitude, they should have been in a Renault or Citroen, because the bug was the inexpensive car of youth and the lower middle-class; her family always drove French cars. Be that as it may, the movie's streets are rife with vintage bugs and VW buses, though I did spot a Renault or two. I mention this because the first car that I bought and paid for with my own money was a new '67 bug from Belmont Motors in Massachusetts, powder blue. It has been sitting since 1981 or so in a succession of company parking lots, progressively degenerating until, paint gone, wheels seized, flowering weeds growing from dirt caught in the chassis crevicles, it looks so bad that I was ordered to have it towed off the property because it had become an eyesore, at least to one sorehead in the company who remained anonymous - the bug's engine refusing to start, a hole in the floor threatening to release the battery under the back seat like a bomb dropped from its bay at the first speed bump, the windows opaque as my glasses in the Turkish bath down the street. Fortunately, my son stepped up and volunteered to restore the car as a hobby. He abstracted it on a flatbed towtruck via Raul's Towing Service to his driveway, where it sat, partially disassembled, for a week or two before the city, at the behest of neighbors or a cruising patrol car, ordered him to remove it. He rolled the poor thing into his garage, wheels now at least freed, out of sight behind closed doors, and since then he has ordered replacement parts from an unending list. He tells me that there are two sources from which to obtain these parts: (a) a quality manufacturer somewhere or other, or (b)Brazil. You want quality, you go to the quality manufacturer; you want cheap, you go to Brazil. I don't know if that's true or not but when I replaced a bumper a long time ago, it had a "Made in Brazil" sticker on the inside surface. One tap by another vehicle and the bumper folded up like an origami noodle. Also, curiously, '67 door handles are unavailable. But the point is, if you're a bug lover you might want to give TYMPWOV a little love for that reason if for no other.Director/writer Cao Hamburger and his co-writer, Claudio Galperin, were both born in S&atilde;o Paulo in 1962 and were eight years old when General Emilio Medici engineered his coup. Hamburger's parents "went on vacation" at that time, but only for a few weeks. In this movie, Hamburger and Galperin share some of their childhood experiences growing up in the cultural melting-pot of S&atilde;o Paulo. Hamburger's father came from a German/Jewish family that emigrated to Brazil before World War II. His mother was of Italian/Catholic stock, though both parents were non-religious scientists as he grew up. He says that he began thinking about S&atilde;o Paulo's mix of cultures and his roots while living and feeling like an outsider in London, another city where races and nationalities mingle. According to Hamburger (and my Brazilian friends), Brazil is deeply divided over socio-economic class issues (the rich, a small middle-class, and the poor) but is accepting of emigrants; he refers to Brazilian culture as Samba culture - "Samba" here meaning, roughly, "let's all dance together." In fact, Hamburger started out with all sorts of ideas for the movie, but while making it settled on the idea of enjoying the brief periods of sunshine in life on a cloudy day. The movie was made on a medium budget by Brazilian standards. Since the success of films like Central Station and City of God, Hamburger says, funding opportunities for cinema have gotten a lot better. He used professionals as well as non-actors from the community, which in the film is a conservative Jewish neighborhood. Today, Hamburger says, this neighborhood is Korean, but since he is exploring his own roots, for the purposes of the film it remains Jewish. Hamburger spent four months finding an empty apartment building to use for the shoot; the movie was filmed completely on location.So often in making a movie, the director starts out with an idea and massages it until a theme for the film is produced. This process can extend over years with input from editors, writers, friends, family, and assorted other sources while the director chases funding, as I describe in my review of Manda Bala. Hamburger's initial inspiration was to examine the mixture of cultures in Brazil, and from that grew the idea of examining a year in the life of a boy growing up in the same time and place that Hamburger and Galperin did. During the making of the movie, the military coup and contemperaneous world-cup excitement in the film emerged, according to the director, as metaphors for life. It seems to me that some of these metaphors crop up post-production but perhaps I'm just metaphor-blind or metaphor-averse. Does a movie metaphor count if it's discovered after the movie is finished? Does it count if a reviewer invokes it, rather than the director? I do like the way that Claudia Llosa, for example, disavows metaphors in her Maven-reviewed Madeinusa, a movie which could easily be weighed down with them. I'm guessing that Hamburger's military coup and World Cup would remain in the movie whether Hamburger deemed them metaphors or not. As it is, he has one more thing to talk about during interviews. Anyway, the coup represents a dark day and the World-Cup victory represents a shaft of sunlight breaking through the gloom of that day. The dark day is life under the military regime and the sunlight represents those moments in life that you must embrace in order to get through the bad patches - did I just nest a metaphor within a metaphor there? The life of goalies in general is also a metaphor in the movie, but if the victory is a bright shaft of sunlight, what is the goalie? A meteorite the size of Oshgosh? Who knows? The gray day/sunlight metaphor, applied to my own personal life, would be like at my work, where my boss would be dictator General Emilio Medici, and out of the grinding gray of morning I would emerge at lunchtime to sit down across from Izzy Vulvano and beat his pants off playing Magic and using my special red and black deck. Also the movie is about dealing with our loneliness and our connections to others, how we make them and break them and move on. Is the movie itself a metaphor for that, or just a movie about that? Also, the director does not agree that soccer is the opiate of the masses, exploited by the junta in this case to maintain calm. Hamburger is going for gray day/sunshine here, not gray day/opium. And having mentioned Manda Bala above, note that this whole movie unfurled without a kidnapping or fried frog in sight, but only because the whole country is under siege from an autocratic military dictatorship rather than a scourge of corrupt politicians and kidnapping-for-profit criminal thugs.Strangely, Hamburger's soccer metaphor gets turned on its head at the end of the movie. Irony? Another layer? Or just part of the movie that doesn't conform to a simple, stumbled-upon talking point? I thought about calling Hamburger and asking him, but nobody likes a wiseass.When the metaphorical army arrives in Michel's neighborhood and starts dragging young men out of their union offices in S&atilde;o Paulo, clubbing them and hurling them into vans while the boy's parents are in hiding, it occurred to me to wonder whether such scenes are automatically more powerful when filmed in the country where they are supposed to have happened, in the language in which they happened, by victims or the relatives of victims of the evils portrayed. Or, for a subtitle-hating country like America, could such a scene be made more visceral and moving if shot in Hollywood for U.S. consumption? For example, would Der Untergang or The Lives of Others have retained their energy or even gained some, if they had been made, shot for shot, in the U.S. with U.S. actors instead of Germans? Ennio De Concini tried it with xxAlec Guiness playing Hitler but I think we can agree that that didn't work as well as Bruno Ganz doing it. Being a cinema snob, I would say without cavil that it is intuitively obvious that the Brazilian version of the coup or the German version of Hitler's last days cannot fail to have an innate power, if well enough done, that a U.S. version could never match. But hold on. Summer Palace provides a dramatic take on Tiananmen Square and the events there in 1989, yet I've heard plenty of squawking (from round eyes) about its failure to do justice to that historic conflict. Would a movie about Tiananmen, made along the lines of The Last Emperor, fare better in the U.S? Could Gettysburg withstand a transfer to Japan; if Kurosawa made it, might it even improve in the eyes of the Japanese? Or in the eyes of American viewers as well? How to assign metrics to questions like these? It's easy to just say that the better the filmmaker, the better the film, for all informed viewers of taste. Do the French still love Jerry Lewis? Are Hollywood blockbusters still the biggest grossers all around the world? And children in movies - does the fact that the child is native to a country foreign to the viewer and speaks a foreign language have any effect one way or the other on that viewer? Rather than approaching these questions from first principles, maybe the thing to do is to evaluate a hundred movies or so, make a call on each, and examine the results for trends.And speaking of children, how do they learn to act so well? Or isn't learning involved? Teens act in high-school drama classes and plays - they're learning something there, I guess. They act in community theater, especially in locations where drama in the schools is being cut. Adults go to drama school, but often act badly in films anyway. And yet I see movie after movie in which children act just fine (Mother of Mine, Wondrous Oblivion, Birth, Kabluey (where the kids are caricatures, but good caricatures.) On the other hand, that kid in The Dick Van Dyke Show... ouch.). Is aging an antidote to natural inborn talent? As we grow up, do we lose our ability to act? Or are these children, who seem to be acting so well, actually not doing much at all? In TYMPWOV, is the boy mostly just running around, looking upset, and playing with his tabletop soccer set, or is he interacting with others and... well, acting. I called the Stella Adler School in Manhattan to ask these questions, but the woman I spoke to told me that the youngest students they enroll are 14-year-olds (eight Saturday classes from 10 to 6, $800. No waiting list.) I asked the woman if the under-14s I see in the movies have been trained, or if whatever they show is just natural ability. She could only surmise. I asked if the Stella Adler Saturday classes have produced some success stories; she said yes, but didn't name anybody I've heard of. She didn't have much else to say about younger children and their appearances in movies, so I called a school out in the Valley (Sherman Oaks) which takes kids as young as 8. Sherman Oaks is up the 405 from Santa Monica, just over the hills from Hollywood. The fellow I spoke to told me flatly that every young person onscreen today has taken classes. He listed graduates from his school now appearing in Desperate Housewives, Everyone Hates Chris, etc., etc. (Classes from 10 to noon on Saturdays.) Agents and casting directors visit frequently, nominally as "class assistants," but actually trolling for talent; or maybe just trying to make a living. For example:****For Young actors:Howard MeltzerHannah Montana Casting DirectorTV Intensive - Saturday, October 4thIn each class session, the children work on a scene. In addition, there is instruction in preparation, auditioning, so forth. Camps and career-placement services are available. I asked the fellow whether children start out with talent and then lose it, or whether talent is distributed among children in the same proportion as among adults, and if so, what the classes might add to that. According to him, we're all natural-born actors. As children, we play-act all the time, but as we age, we forget how much fun that acting can be. Acting classes, like organized sports, are just a modern way of letting children continue to have fun. And just as you won't be playing in the NFL or NBA unless you associate yourself with an organized program, just so you won't break into Hollywood without connections. Plus, I'm now getting casting calls for some reason.Hamburger claims to have auditioned more than a thousand children looking for his stars in TYMPWOV. When he found the boy and girl that he wanted for the leads, Michel Joelsas and Daniela Piepszyk, he changed the script to fit them. Joelsas had never acted in a movie before (like Magaly Solier in Madeinusa, who had never even been in a movie theater when Claudia Llosa made her the lead in her movie). Hamburger says that Joelsas had talent and other characteristics of his personality that helped him to compose the character, such as "his shyness, his introspection, his curiosity about life, and his strength." And his "intelligence and a sense of observation. And he had strong charisma. He's also got a certain shyness and an inner strength." Hamburger introduced all the children in his movie slowly to the characters that they were to play, perhaps Mike Leigh-like. There was improvisation. None of the kids saw a script during the shooting of the movie. So no acting class there, unless you count Hamburger's direction; TYMPWOV argues for inborn talent, but only in one in a thousand or so. &ldquo;The way I work with them is the most important element. I treat them as intelligent people. They are not children. They are spiritual, intelligent human beings. What I look for in casting children is charisma and talent, but, more than that, I want smart people. There is a very natural sense - especially the kids with their reactions...We worked a lot to have this very natural feel, but there is a lot of work behind it.&rdquo; So roll the film of Michel's audition. What the heck did this kid have to do when he came through the door, number 1013, with Hamburger languishing there in his director's chair, in order to get picked boss boy? Bark like a dog? I coulda been a contender? Put on blackface, fall to his knees, and sing Mammy? We'll never know. Now my niece - those auditions are brutal. She crawls on her belly like a reptile. They badger her about her tattoos. Surely there were tattoos in Shakespeare's time, weren't there, even if they weren't coupling ferrets over You Suck! in red and green on her shoulder blades?When I say that the kids were fine in the movie, I just mean that I watched the movie and never found myself thinking, "This kid is acting." What they were actually doing onscreen, I wasn't exactly paying attention to. Sometimes in a movie I do think about what the child is up to: when Cameron Bright gets into the bath with a naked Nicole Kidman in Birth, I found myself speculating about how that was accomplished without breaking any laws. When Dylan Baker has a talk with his son in Happiness, about Baker's pedophilia and his abuse of the boy's sleepover friend the night before, I knew in advance that Baker was actually talking to the air and his son's reaction shots were filmed later. But in general, I don't sit watching for signs that actors are acting, child or otherwise. Mary Badham and Phillip Alford in To Kill a Mockingbird? How much were they given to do? Can't remember. Scout narrates the movie, but as an adult. Are kids mostly asked to just look worried, or angry, or confused? How often does a kid have to laugh in a movie? What's the story on kid monologs? 726,000 Google hits for "kid monologs," including the following from Henry V:BOY: As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to all three; but all three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks word and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds, for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or handkerchers; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another's pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them and seek some better service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.Wow. Maybe Michel laid that one on Hamburger.When I think of "bad acting," am I just reacting to bad line readings? In Son of Rambow, the boys have a lot to say and every once in a while I'd raise an eyebrow. In TYMPWOV, Joelsas and Peipszyk and the other kids are required to show their chops as follows:First twenty-five minutes: Michel (Joelsas) is the only child in the first quarter of the movie, except for a brief interaction with Hanna (Piepszyk). He plays by himself, asks his parents questions, looks out the car window at the big city and, by the way, narrates the film creditably. Sustains hugs from his parents. (As a child, I was hugged by a woman in a play once and I had to stand there and take it with a smile.) This is a good-looking young man. The camera loves him. So he walks, runs, waits, frowns at strange food, pisses in a flowerpot. It all looks real to me. I guess that's acting.Second twenty-five minutes: Michel gets slapped, runs away, cooks in the kitchen, kills time around the house. Now some face time with Hanna - mild dialog - but since I don't speak Portuguese, how can I evaluate their line readings? Rats. (And by the way, watching the movie, I mostly couldn't distinguish Portuguese from Yiddish; be nice if the subtitles would indicate which was being spoken - and ditto for Swedish and Finnish in Mother of Mine). At 39 minutes (out of 100), Michel meets Hanna's friends, three boys. They refer to Michel as the goy. Ten minutes of ensemble child acting; all five seem a little stiff, but they're just meeting each other for the first time, so maybe in real life they would be stiff. Will the stiffness persist? Now Michel settles in with his neighbor, the elderly Shlomo next door, and makes friends throughout the neighborhood. He's not asked to say much by Hamburger, but he does a lot of worrying about his parents, running around the neighborhood, so on. At the halfway point in the film, the World Cup begins. Third twenty-five minutes: First World-Cup match with everyone watching; Michel spending time alone again in the apartment; then with a whole crowd of kids - minimal dialog; back home at the one-hour mark. Second match. Polish Jew, Italian Jew, Greek, African, German Jew, Hamburger really pushing the melting-pot theme. Local soccer game. Narration by boy. He wants to be a goalie. Another World-Cup match (sees first with Shlomo, second at the union, third with the old women. Local kids game with Michel as goalie. Piepszyk gives him a gift in a one-on-one scene with dialog. Michel goes to synagogue.Final twenty-five minutes: The kids do an excellent acting job at a bar mitzvah celebration. And then some acting by Joelsas, as he helps a young union member hide from the army and secret police. Emoting, face to face with an adult! Some intense moments. Then more alone time for the boy, now coping with his worries in a more mature way than at the beginning. And the final soccer match, and more perfect-pitch behavior from Joelsas. And drama to wrap up. The boy has charisma, for sure. I believed him, from start to finish, and the other kids too.And lest I forget, every time a goal was scored, everybody whooped and waved their arms in the air and I wondered if all the women in Brazil were shaving under their arms in 1970. According to a Brazilian I asked, the answer is yes. Looks come first in Brazil, she told me, and that includes proper underarm maintenance. http://www.spout.com/groups/Michigan/Waterfront_2008_Follow_Up/609/31399/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: lopezdash
Post To: Michigan
Post Date: 6/19/2008 12:18:14 AM
Body: Just found out that ticket sales at last weekend's Waterfront Film Festival topped 2007 numbers, with more than 14,000 admissions sold. The Saturday night screening of "Bart Got a Room" was the best-attended show, selling out the Saugatuck Yacht Services building with 699 seats filled. Other big sellers were "Kabluey," "The Flyboys," "Yonkers Joe," "Dakota Skye," "Man on Wire" and "Bonneville." Next year's festival will take place June 11-14. Source: MLive.com
]]>Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:18:14 GMTlopezdashMichigan6/19/2008 12:18:14 AMJust found out that ticket sales at last weekend's Waterfront Film Festival topped 2007 numbers, with more than 14,000 admissions sold. The Saturday night screening of "Bart Got a Room" was the best-attended show, selling out the Saugatuck Yacht Services building with 699 seats filled. Other big sellers were "Kabluey," "The Flyboys," "Yonkers Joe," "Dakota Skye," "Man on Wire" and "Bonneville." Next year's festival will take place June 11-14. Source: MLive.com http://www.spout.com/groups/Waterfront_Film_Festival/Quick_Waterfront_2008_Wrap_Up/298/31398/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: lopezdash
Post To: Waterfront Film Festival
Post Date: 6/19/2008 12:18:09 AM
Body: Just found out that ticket sales at last weekend's Waterfront Film Festival topped 2007 numbers, with more than 14,000 admissions sold. The Saturday night screening of "Bart Got a Room" was the best-attended show, selling out the Saugatuck Yacht Services building with 699 seats filled. Other big sellers were "Kabluey," "The Flyboys," "Yonkers Joe," "Dakota Skye," "Man on Wire" and "Bonneville." Next year's festival will take place June 11-14. Source: MLive.com
]]>Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:18:09 GMTlopezdashWaterfront Film Festival6/19/2008 12:18:09 AMJust found out that ticket sales at last weekend's Waterfront Film Festival topped 2007 numbers, with more than 14,000 admissions sold. The Saturday night screening of "Bart Got a Room" was the best-attended show, selling out the Saugatuck Yacht Services building with 699 seats filled. Other big sellers were "Kabluey," "The Flyboys," "Yonkers Joe," "Dakota Skye," "Man on Wire" and "Bonneville." Next year's festival will take place June 11-14. Source: MLive.com http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/war/MemberTagFilms.aspxwar
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