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Will Smith Sings The Songs. SpoutBlog Week in Review

SpoutBlog — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:01:22 GMT

Gonzo director Alex Gibney talks about what makes him feel like Gandalf, and the search for the American Dream.
Gerard Depardieu goes to the dungeon.
Dragging the Hitchcock out of Mad Men.
LAFF: Heaven Wants Out, Trinidad and Thing With No Name
Metropolis edges towards a landmark restoration.
Plot songs: classic style, Will Smith style.
Who needs critics when we’ve got the producer of 88 Minutes?
John Waters has a new “anarchist” muse.
Videos: Quantum of Solace trailer, Hellboy goes Inside the Actors Studio; New Miyazaki, Muppets love America, too.
Lists: 10 Best Superheroes Created For The Screen
I always feel like, YouTube is watching me!
IsThe Wackness Juno for boys? Or is it just a mirror of the ultra-boyish segment of the movie blogosphere?
Related: 10 movies that definee New York in the 90s.
On FilmCouch: Inside the YouTube screening room, and Wall-E.
There are an awful lot of unauthorized ways to produce a Harvey Weinstein expose, apparently.
War, Inc isn’t coming to DVD … yet.
Peter Greenaway brings laser light show aesthetics to The Last Supper.
Girls and boys can’t share Hollywood porn.
Anti-strike activism from Temp X.
Finally, a special July 4th treat: Nick Dawson points us to the website for Proud American, a film described thusly by its official synopsis, “While showing the nation’s spectacular landmarks and engineering marvels, historical sites and natural wonders, Proud American is really about the American people.” And it’s “presented by” Coca-Cola, MasterCard and Wal-Mart, so you know it has to be good!

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

FilmCouch #77 - WALL-E the Snake, YouTube gets sophisticated

SpoutBlog — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:00:50 GMT

WALL-E may look like the bastard child of E.T. and a backhoe, but inside he’s all Snake Pliskin from Escape from New York (1981). YouTube’s Sara Pollack on the most exciting thing to happen to short films since… well, maybe ever.

3:11 Sarah Pollack from YouTube

14:33 Wall-E vs. Escape From New York

18:23 Movies to watch

filmcouch-77

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

15 Will Smith Plot Songs

SpoutBlog — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:00:33 GMT

In response to Karina’s post from yesterday about plot songs, I feel it is necessary and timely to pay tribute today to the best plot song writer since Huey Lewis: Will Smith. From the ’80s on, Smith has provided the world with songs serving as storytelling supplements to his TV show, his movies and even other people’s movies. At times he has even prematurely released songs that could later be applied to movies for which he failed to attach an official plot song. Uh huh.

To get us started, here’s one for Hancock. It’s a song released three years ago, but it’s much more relevant now:

“Here He Comes” for Hancock

The above video is the closest thing I can find to a video for the song, which applies to Smith’s latest movie in three ways. (1) The title is close to the former title of the movie, “Tonight He Comes.” (2) It samples the theme to the Spider-Man TV series, fitting it in with the superhero plot. (3) It works as a big defense against all of the naysayers thinking he’s finally struck out with Hancock.

“If U Can’t Dance (Slide)” for Hitch

Because the video featuring “Here He Comes” that I embedded already included this track, I’m moving on to it next. According to Wikipedia, the song features a dialogue sample from the hit movie, but I don’t hear it. Still, it does relate to the movie, because of this scene.

“Wild Wild West” from Wild Wild West

The movie may have been complete crap, but the theme song — and its video — is worth its being made. How this didn’t inspire new hip hop fashion trends is beyond me.

“Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (Theme Song)” from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Every sitcom should have an opening theme song that lays out a prologue for the series. Especially one as easily remembered as this. If you don’t know the lyrics, you’re definably unAmerican. I think McCarthy said that.

“Men in Black” from Men in Black

I know that reworking the chorus from “Forget Me Nots” has relevance to the memory-erasing devices in the movie, but the song’s concentration on the Men in Black not letting us remember always made me think about the memorability of the movie itself. The song later became more significant for me when I completely forgot the entirety of Men in Black II a few days after seeing it.

“Black Suits Comin’ (Nod Ya Head)” from Men in Black II

Huh. What do you know? I completely forgot this plot song existed, too.

“Nightmare on My Street” for A Nightmare on Elm Street
Smith never appeared in any of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but that didn’t stop him from recording this single, which coincided with the release of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. According to Wikipedia, there allegedly was a video made for the song, but due to New Line’s unhappiness with the track, it was never unveiled to the public. So, hopefully this fan-made video, which apes the Fresh Prince video style perfectly, will do.

“Parents Just Don’t Understand” for Made in America

I couldn’t leave out this classic Fresh Prince track, because it tells such a great story, so I’m forcefully relating it to an early Smith movie that has to do with parents. It was either that or consider it a plot song for the double-Lohan version of The Parent Trap, in which it appears. Isn’t it about time, though, that this video be adapted into a feature-length film?

“Just the Two of Us” for The Pursuit of Happyness

The song is apparently in actuality a plot song for a children’s book of the same name that Smith wrote. But since I’ve never seen said book, I’m linking it to his movie about a father and son struggling to get by (they can make it if they try). The video features a different son than the movie, but in fairness to the kids, we can ignore that lack of consistency.

“Ring My Bell” for I Am Legend

Smith should have updated this old Fresh Prince single and applied it to his previous sci-fi blockbuster. Throughout the movie, he broadcasts what’s basically an invitation for survivors to ring his bell. He’d need to throw in an extra verse about how he doesn’t want the undead creatures to call him up, but that wouldn’t have been too difficult.

“I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson” for Ali

This single off the DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince album “In This Corner…” predated Smith’s portrayal of boxer Muhammad Ali by 11 years. And its lyrics don’t exactly apply to the biopic (the closest line to an Ali reference is “I’m rough like a freight train, smooth like ice”). Had Smith waited a decade, though, he could have easily altered the song to fit his Oscar-nominated role. Maybe it would have been titled “I Think I Can Beat George Foreman” or something (Ali would have never said “I think I can”). And maybe it would have gotten Smith a second Academy Award nomination for Ali — for Best Original Song.

“Tell Me Why” for World Trade Center

Too bad Smith wasn’t cast in Oliver Stone’s 9/11 movie, because this would have worked as its plot song. I guess that would have made the movie a little too silly, though. Maybe it will be on the soundtrack for the inevitable Michael Bay 9/11 blockbuster.

“Miami” for Bad Boys and Bad Boys II

Three years late or five years early, this should have been the theme song to the Bad Boys movies. Yes, only because the franchise is set in Miami.

“Will 2K” for I, Robot

“Will 2K” makes me think of Y2K, which makes me think of computers malfunctioning, which makes me think of robots taking over. Say what now?

“Summertime” for Independence Day

There’s nothing in the song about aliens, destroyed landmarks or even Randy Quaid. But there’s no denying that it goes with the movie, because there are only two things every American must do on the 4th of July: watch a Will Smith movie (preferably ID4) and listen to “Summertime” while sitting back and unwinding.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Muppet Patriotism. Clip of the Day

SpoutBlog — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:01:06 GMT

I would love to continue from yesterday’s clip of the day, and spotlight more of those clever Hellboy II: The Golden Army promos (here’s another one with Lipton; and another one; here’s one with “Wolf” from American Gladiators; here’s one with Zachary Levi of TV’s Chuck; and another one; here’s one with TV’s Ghost Hunters).

BUT tomorrow is Independence Day, aka the 4th of July, and that means it’s time for MUPPETS. Specifically the most patriotic Muppet of all: Sam the Eagle, who presents us with a rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever” performed by Beaker, Animal, the Swedish Chef, Bobo the Bear, a penguin and some chickens. Sam also recites part of the Declaration of Independence, Crazy Harry provides the fireworks and Statler and Waldorf show up for some criticism. Forget the hot dogs and the red, white and blue boxer shorts; this is all you need to make your holiday complete.

The employment of all the Muppets with poor communication skills reminded me of those other holiday greetings from Saturday Night Live. Phil Hartman is “Frankenstein”, Jon Lovitz is Tonto and Kevin Nealon is Tarzan, and the trio does their best, with their respective speech impairments, to sing Christmas songs. There was also another one with Chris Farley as himself subbing for Tonto.

Anyway, if you’re looking for more Muppets stuff to enjoy on your three-day weekend, check out the list of 10 Muppet origins on the mental_floss Blog, and also be sure to pay proper respects to two important Kermits who left us recently: Kermit Scott, a childhood friend of Jim Henson’s who may be the famous frog’s namesake and Kermit Love, who was co-designed Big Bird and other characters for Henson.

Have a happy bork bork, meep meep!

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Review: The Wackness

SpoutBlog — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:01:18 GMT

Note: This review appeared in slightly different form during the Tribeca Film Festival.

I saw The Wackness last spring at a special screening held for the critics participating in the Moving Image Institute last week. Afterwards, Sony Classics president Michael Barker was asked about critical response to the film thus far. Barker disclaimed that “most major critics” hadn’t yet reviewed the film, but then said something surprisingly candid about the makeup of the film’s detractors. “What’s the demographic of the critics who don’t like it?” he began, starting a statement with a question in expert post-Robert Evans mogul style. “Female. Single. Mothers with teenage kids––they don’t like the movie.”

Who ever is doing research over at Sony deserves a raise. I fit just two of those descriptors, and I don’t like it, either.

Maybe it’s true that even professional critics struggle to get beyond their own natural demographic biases. A certain (very young, very male) segment of the film blogosphere lashed out at Sony for buying The Wackness towards the close of Sundance––not because they didn’t like the film, but because they loved the film so much that they were moved to protect it from what they saw as the risk of a mis-managed mainstream release. I thought this campaign was absolutely inane at the time—in the virtually non-existent narrative buying climate of Sundance 2008, the boys should have been happy that their pet project was picked up at all––but having finally seen the thing, I’m at no loss to explain why those writers have embraced this film. With its full-on, fully uncritical glorification of adolescent male self-indulgence and permanent immaturity, The Wackness is a kind of cinematic embodiment of certain tendencies that make the sub-AICN movie web go round.

Jonathan Levine’s second feature (his first as both writer and director), The Wackness is a semi-autobiographical period piece set in the summer of 1994. Luke Shapiro––a white, middle-class, graduating high school loner turned self-styled weed vendor with slang, costume and taste in mix tapes loosely adapted from the machine-gun toting black guys who supply him with product––serves smoke to the shrink stepdad of his long-time crush (played by Juno sidekick Olivia Thirlby, here slinging a different brand of hyper-silly slang) in exchange for psychiatric sessions. Though Luke longs for the easy out of psychotropic drugs (his plea: “Nah! I’m mad depressed, yo!”), Dr. Squires (a turned-up-to-11 Ben Kingsley; every note of this performance is a “**** it!” shrug-off of the restraints of taste) refuses to prescribe them. Instead, the good doctor insists that what both patient and doctor really need is to get laid.

So begins a friendship oblivious to the 40-something year age difference between the two voting-age boys, but nonetheless susceptible to all of the textbook Unlikely Friendship cliches in the Indiewood universe. But if Levine shows little insight in his sketch of the way these boys play together, at least he show some inspired (if improbably reductive) paranoia in drawing the landscape on which they play. New York circa 1994 is depicted as a fading Babylon, each resident squirming in the summer heat and struggling to break free from the recently-installed Mayor Giuliani’s apparently omnipotent social control. America’s Mayor, though never seen, is referenced as a scourge more than once by nearly everyone encountered on Luke’s travails. When Luke and Squires’ big boys night out in search of ass ends in a jail cell, the message is hammered home: Giuliani’s mad emasculating, yo!

Though there’s something to be said for “ejaculation=social defiance” as a driving metaphor, The Wackness soon mellows into a story of first love, and it loses all credibility in the process. It’s never clear why we’re supposed to take Luke seriously as a protagonist or sympathize with his plight (which amounts to losing his virginity for realsies, and, far less convincingly, to saving his family home by upping his pot proceeds), but as long as the option is open to laugh at him, The Wackness has a certain goofy charm. But Levine asks us to make a whiplash-inducing transition to emotional investment in the film’s final 45 minutes, and the film suffers for this dive for depth. Boys just want to have fun? Sure, fine, whatever––there are worse ways for the kids to spend their summer afternoons than on a Giuliani-mocking stoner comedy set to De La Soul and early Biggie. But to ask us to take the cartoon character at the center of this farce as a legitimate tragic hero is to insult the audience. Or maybe I just couldn’t roll with it because I’m a girl, yo.

Will kids go see it? MOnths ago, I assumed it was a sure thing, but maybe all those blog boys were right to worry. I haven’t seen the kind of blanket advertising that might be necessary to convince the kids that The Wackness is Juno for boys, both an education in recent popular culture history and a handbook to timeless touchstones of adolescence (ie: speaking in racially slippery slang and trying to get girls drunk enough that they’re willing to **** you in public). But there’s still a chance the film will be well served by the community of (young, male) web critics cheering it on. And can you really begrudge their enthusiasm? The Wackness is an un-critical celebration of out-of-control adolescent male id, of being a walking hard-on who is never wrong. Just like their websites.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Weinstein Expose Based on 9/11 Victim’s Records?

SpoutBlog — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:00:39 GMT

So Page Six has published an email from a character identified only as “The Final Nail,” claiming that a Weinstein-era Miramax tell-all book is in the works, based on records and audio recordings kept by Stuart Meltzer, an assistant to Bob Weinstein who died in the World Trade Center on September 11. Mr. Nail says his book “will detail the day-to-day . . . manipulation of the Disney company by the Weinstein Bros.”

Maybe last week, this would have seemed like a big deal. But just a couple of days ago, the Village Voice published a long story by editor-in-chief Tony Ortega, based on his “accidental” scavenging of Weinstein’s trash. Page Six couldn’t get a comment from a Weinstein on their anonymously sourced story, but Ortega was able to put together a decent profile of the current state of TWC, and even got Harvey on the record to joke about it: “You want more of my garbage? How about a couple of shirts out of my laundry?”

There’s obviously something tacky about this masked writer peddling a book based on the archives of a 9/11 victim, as if Meltzer was martyred to ensure that the truth of Miramax would someday be known. Why all the secrecy, when it’s apparently copacetic journalism to call Harvey up and tell him you’re going to publish memos that you found in his trash?

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Alex Gibney on Gandalf, Obama and the Death of the American Dream

SpoutBlog — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:00:39 GMT

My version of The Godfather would open with a voice in the darkness saying, “I don’t believe in America. The American Dream is a once-beguiling fairy tale; show’s over, y’all.” But The Dream is still real to many people, and the violence that powerful private interests have done to it in the last century pains them like a kidney punch.

Gonzo journalism pioneer Hunter S. Thompson was one of the wounded, and so is Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Darkside), the far more straight-laced director of the entertaining documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. They share a proprietary sense of outrage over abuses of power they’ve witnessed in their times. For them, America’s Nixons, Enrons and Bush-Cheneys have desecrated the church, the front lawn. For all their passionate trouble-making, there’s no denying that Gibney and the late Thompson, two white males who came up through America’s hallowed institutions (Thompson through the U.S. Air Force; Gibney through Yale), are insiders.

When I went to interview Gibney about Gonzo, I remembered the film’s procession of leathery right-wingers and elites, former Thompson nemeses, who have warm, friendly things to say about “Dr. Gonzo” now that he’s dead, now that his caricature as a gun-toting drughead has endured beyond his politics. I wondered if, in the end, being inside got the hole dug any better than chucking rocks from outside.

STEVEN BOONE: On the way over here I was reading the introduction to John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, and the person mentioned that, with the publishing of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck had his greatest fame, his greatest success. With that, you’d think he would have found some comfort, but he was actually a bit in despair that he was being embraced by the very elite forces he was critiquing. Of course, you have Hunter Thompson with his downward spiral… For you, with this recent run of success, is there any kind of…

ALEX GIBNEY: Despair? (laughs)

SB: (laughs) Well, regret…? Second thoughts? “Where do I go from here?”

AG: I have to be honest with you. I haven’t experienced that. I haven’t reached that kind of– I mean, first of all, okay, I won the Oscar. I feel great, believe me. Walking around with that statue, you feel like Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. But I feel like there’s so many other interesting things to do. One of the salvations is to keep having a next project to do and you focus on that, even as you’re looking back. So you don’t spend all day looking your name up on Google.

SB: Well, I do, but–

AG: (laughs) But not all day, maybe 12 or 13 hours.

SB: (laughs) Right. But I look at your body of work and I see a certain political conviction behind it.

AG: Right.

SB: It’s critical, but it is from the perspective of an insider, sort of like your colleague Charles Ferguson with No End in Sight. You came up through Yale, you came up through UCLA, you have your Oscars and your Emmys. You have your… sanction from certain institutions. Does it complicate matters for you going forward?

AG: I understand what you’re getting at and I think it does, to some extent. The danger part always comes with celebrity, you know? You end up going out on the circuit, to some extent and then you get comfortable hanging around with other celebrities and then suddenly– it’s like being an insider journalist in Washington. Hunter talked about that in the campaign trail book [Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72]. He said, “I’m just gonna blow in here and blow out. I don’t have to worry about being here four, five, six years from now, trying to play a game, make sure that this person’s comfortable, that person’s comfortable.” It’s a little bit easier when you go in and out.

But I do think, you know, I’ve had great opportunities. I’ve had a private school education, I went to a good university, I went to a good film school and I know a lot of powerful people. It turns out that that is a good advantage for me because I tend to do films about the perps rather than the victims. When you try to get inside and see what’s going on with the people who are committing these grand crimes, it helps to have access to those connections, sometimes because otherwise you don’t get in the door. But the question is, at some point, do you become one of those people? (laughs)

SB: That’s the question.

AG: That’s the question. Well, you’ll see. You’ll be my judge, and you’ll let me know. (laughs)

SB: But do you ever feel that inner conflict, with maybe posing a certain question or, I don’t know, just bringing a bad vibe into the room…? Have you ever felt yourself back away because, “Hey, this is a nice guy, a decent person.” Sort of like when Hunter Thompson was in the car with Nixon, said he was a pleasant guy to talk football with.

AG: Right. Well, you you always have to kind of separate. One of the big things I’ve learned is… My sister in law once said it: “Everybody’s nice.” And you sit with people in a room and sometimes they’re total assholes and you say, “Well, **** them,” right? But sometimes they’re very nice and solicitous and charming and it is true: When you get close, your tendency is not to–almost kind of a Stockholm Syndrome takes over. But you realize that there are a lot of nice people out there who do horrible things.

SB: How do you contrast yourself with other filmmakers at your level of success dealing with similar subjects– let’s say Michael Moore or Nick–

AG: Everybody’s got their own style. Everybody always asks me about Michael. I always say that Michael does his own thing. There’s no illusion when you go see a Michael Moore film. You know it’s a Michael Moore film and you’re getting what you get. The only people that piss me off are the one that try to hide stuff, pretend to be doing one thing and doing something else.

SB: Like who?

AG: Well, um… Trying to think now… There was, a number of years ago, somebody doing a film about the civil rights movement and they actually faked some archival footage of the movement. They did a re-creation but they intercut it freely with actual footage from the events.

SB: Whaa? Fox News?

AG: No, no. It was on HBO. And there was a big hue and cry over it because it wasn’t like a re-creation where you know the filmmakers shot this with actors. That I have a real problem with.

SB: Well, I was a little uncertain at some points in Gonzo. Actually, I’m pretty sure that when we were listening to audio tape of Thompson and his attorney on the road to Vegas that what I was seeing was a re-enactment.

AG: Right.

SB: But it was pretty slick.

AB: It was. Two things I’ll say about that. First of all, we’re trying to do some fun stuff like Hunter did, like claiming Muskey’s high on this drug called Ebogaine. This kind of tall tale telling. But at the beginning of the film, you see this photograph of Hunter with a gun pointed at a typewriter. Zoom into his hand, where it hard-cuts to a real hand firing the gun. I think its a clue to the audience, you know, “Buyer beware, there’s gonna be some wild stuff.” We’re going to be playing around. Even with that [road trip] sequence, which I love… We shot it with actors who look a lot like Hunter and Oscar. We had the audio tape and we’d go out and shoot Super 8, kind of a home movie. But the deeper into that home movie you get, suddenly you start to see the action from three or four different angles, and you gota be thinking, “This is not a home movie.”

SB: Sort of mirroring Hunter’s techniques, sliding in and out of reality.

AG: That’s right.

SB: Drawing out the people who are really reading closely.

AG: Right. There’s a moment where it’s ambiguous. That’s okay, as long as you resolve that moment at the end.

SB: It kind of reminds me of a documentary I saw a few years back, How to Draw a Bunny, about the artist Ray Johnson.

AG: Oh, I heard about that one. Was that a good film?

SB: It’s a good film, and in style it’s playful and kind of a series of stunts in the way that Johnson’s work was.

[A moment of giddy Netflix chitchat ensues, and then:]

SB: What would Hunter Thompson have to say about these times we’re living in now, or can you speak for him?

AG: I don’t know if I can, but he got very depressed when Bush won in ‘04 and not long after that he committed suicide. I think it’s too much to say that that’s what drove him to suicide. There are lots of other factors that are not so pretty. But I think he would say that we’re seeing the triumph of fear and loathing over that other part of the American character, this sense of idealism. Bush represented to him that aspect of the United States that goes back to its inception. At the same time, he was a big Bobby Kennedy fan and big McGovern fan. I think he’d be an Obama guy now. He would say, “Here’s somebody who understands the need for a prime actor in the theater of American politics. A “together Hunter”–as his wife says– not the drug-addled drunk. The other Hunter would have something to say about it.

SB: Would you be with him on that Obama support?

AG: I am. I like Obama and I think he does speak to a better possibility. My only concern is, will he end up being… Will he make too many compromises once he’s in power? But you know he’s been through the rough and tumble of Illinois politics, so I’m sure he knows better than I how to navigate that stuff. He stirs peple’s idealism in a way that few people have done in the last 30 years.

SB: That’s what ties you to Hunter in my eyes. I view it with a little bit of awe, this kind of idealism underneath it all. Far from cynicism, it’s an idealism that’s been abused– a real sense of connection to America as a concept, American values.

AG: At least that possibility. Not always the reality, but at least the dream. He was always obsessed with the American Dream. I share with Hunter the love of that novel The Great Gatsby. The green light at the end of the dock. It’s destructive because there’s the illusion of mobility and possibility that can be very damaging. That’s why [Thompson] set the death of the American Dream in a casino, where it seems like you can roll the dice and win the big one and then you’re the rich man who gets the penthouse, when in fact you’re always playing against the house and the house always wins. At the same time, that green light at the end of the dock is also a sense of real possibility. There are moments when America makes good on that myth. You can get angry when people abuse that myth and only pretend that it’s so, but you can also celebrate that, from time to time, it’s for real.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

“‘Cock” Cash: Trade Roughage 07/03/08

SpoutBlog — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:00:55 GMT

Hancock made a bunch of money on Tuesday. Yay, Will Smith IS America!
All together now, in our best Werner Herzog voice: “Don’t call it a reeeemaaaaake!” But whatever it is, Val Kilmer and Xzibit have joined the cast of Bad Lieutenant.
Timothy M. Gray’s midyear assessment of the Oscar race finds a lot of ways to say “no one knows anything.” The uncertainty is causing such a frenzy that we’re apparently considering handing out Oscars to Hamlet 2 and (maybe even worse) The Visitor. Please, Toronto, deliver us from this crisis!
Speaking of: Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna and the Michael Cera/Kat Dennings romantic dramedy Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist have been added to the TIFF lineup.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Metropolis Missing Footage Found

SpoutBlog — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:01:45 GMT

Long-missing footage from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis has, apparently, been found. Berlin-based David Hudson at GreenCine breathlessly passes along the online preview to a story that will run in Germany’s ZEITmagazin tomorrow. Hudson’s English-language parsing of the preview is a must-read, but the short version is that a copy of “the long version” of the film––which may or may not be Lang’s original cut, but which seems almost certainly close to it––has been discovered at Buenos Aires’ Museo Del Cine.

David says he’ll have more details after buying the magazine tomorrow; in the meantime, there’s a gallery of stills from the new/old footage. I’ve screencapped two of the eight images; the more vivid one is up top, and a scratchy and almost spectral-looking still is below the jump.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Peter Greenaway: ‘Dazzling’ Educator or Art Wanker?

SpoutBlog — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:01:25 GMT

My favorite part of this NY Times story about filmmaker Peter Greenaway’s “dazzling confection” Leonardo’s Last Supper––wherin he “enhanced” the original painting for one night only by introducing sweeping lights, “rhythmic” music, and the generally ill-advised planetarium aesthetics––is the explanation of why the event almost didn’t happen:

A vigorous debate erupted earlier this year after some art historians recommended that Mr. Greenaway be denied access to “The Last Supper.” They feared for the well-being of the painting, which began to deteriorate only 20 years after its completion in 1498.

Cultural officials also objected to what they saw as the improper use of a monument with an intrinsic universal value…“I don’t know why we would allow anyone to run the risk of possibly damaging a work of art in which the Italian state has invested a huge number of resources in the last 20 years,” said Marisa Dalai Emiliani, one expert who opposed the project.

While champions insisted that the project would lend new meaning to Leonardo’s painting, she said, “ ‘The Last Supper’ doesn’t need any added value.”

I’m no expert, but from the writeups of the event and the above, frustratingly unprofessional video document, it sounds like the worst fears of Emiliani and friends were justified.

“We’re out to educate you as entertainingly as possible,” Greenaway reportedly said after his 20-minute laser light show, which seems to nail down the problem: is there anything more insulting to a grown-up than smug edutainment?

Supper is the second in a series of projects Greenaway is trying to mount, which he characterizes as “dialogues” with nine paintings, each with “a Cecil B. DeMille cinematic scope.” The first of these projects was Nightwatching––which, you’ll remember, I actually liked at Toronto, although it admittedly put me to sleep. But Nightwatching seemed to be an actual character study, of both a painting and its painter, and not an entirely reductive one at that. So much of Greenaway’s work seems to be based on simple equations: a spewing of Greenaway’s knowledge about art, intermingled with dick/****/poop jokes, inevitably rendered in a posh accent so as to, ostensibly, merge low brow with high. And it’s all didactic as hell. Get it? The entire history of art is mitigated through the artist’s bodily functions and attempts to get laid! Get it? God is in the trance music!!!

Disclaimer: I’m cranky about Greenaway today because I had to watch his The Draughtsman’s Contract for one of Kevin Lee’s video essays. There are Greenaway films that I don’t find entirely abhorrent, but this one…oh, I’ll save it for the tape…

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog