Karina on SpoutBlog

Under discussion:

Rambo III  (1988)

Today in various bits of internet ephemera that sort of sound like Onion headlines:

• Rick Rey, producer of the popular vlog EPIC-FU, is going to watch Rambo 3 and live-Twitter the experience. “This is a landmark Twitter experiment and I may lose many followers - a risk I’m willing to take,” he bravely notes at the Facebook page for the “event,” which goes down on Tuesday night. You can follow the action here, or play along aIong at home! “If following the action isn’t enough, you can simultaneously Twitter your own Rambo 3 experience at exactly 9:00PM PST. I’m pretty sure it’s in stock at every Blockbuster worldwide.”
• Nikki Finke takes a look at “how the pushback of Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince to 2009 has had such a profound effect on this coming holiday’s North American release schedule.” Conclusion? “When moviegoers think Christmas, they think Nazis…”
• Related (we think): Vulture’s extremely scientific research proves that 2008’s fall movie season is marginally more likelt to induce clinical depression than 2007’s.

My enthusiasm for Trouble the Water (trailer above) seems to wane in direct proportion to the critic adoration it attracts. As I noted in my Sundance review, I’m underwhelmed by the candid, in-the-shit footage shot by the film’s subject, aspiring rapper Kim Roberts, which has been the focus of many glowing reviews. The fact that the footage exists is a fascinating detail to Roberts’ character, and the film is strongest when directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin point to Roberts’ fierce drive (you could even call it an obsession) to turn her life into a narrative, and to transmit that narrative through popular art.

My frustration over Water stems less from the film itself, and more from the general media’s seeming consensus decision to declare it the Indie Katrina Film of Record (as opposed to Spike Lee’s When the Levee Breaks–the big-budget Hollywood version of the story). As Dennis Lim notes, “There is by now a rich, although unheralded subgenre of independent films — shorts and features, ranging from avant-garde tone poem to vérité docudrama — dealing with Katrina and its aftermath.” The sheer number of films on this subject––I’ve heard more than one person joke that in late September 2005, there were more independent filmmakers in New Orleans than residents left in their homes––is so overwhelming that it makes sense that one would need the backing of HBO or the credibility of a Sundance Grand Jury Prize to breakthrough.

Maybe I’m just annoyed because, within that subgenre, the films that I find the most creatively and emotionally satisfying––the Kamp Katrinas, the Low and Beholds––either have yet to be distributed, or have failed to make Water’s national splash. But I worry that Water’s critical success (whether or not it makes any noise commercially) is simultaneously an activist’s victory (anything that gets Katrina back in the news is some kind of victory) and potential roadblock for the existing and future films to come out of the crisis. If Trouble the Water does become the first theatrical katrina film to breakthrough, I hope it’s not the only one.

Under discussion:

Slumdog Millionaire  (2008)

• Ben Affleck will probably star in Mike Judge’s Idiocracy follow-up, Extract. The film “centers on a flower extract factory owner (Jason Bateman) who’s dealing with workplace problems and a streak of bad luck, including his wife’s affair with a gigolo.” Affleck play not the gigolo, but “an ambulance chasing lawyer.”
• Orphaned by the demise of Warner Independent, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire will now be distributed jointly by Warner Brothers and Fox Searchlight.
• Screenvision, a company previously noted for screening baseball games and opera performances in movie theaters, is bringing a BBC adaptation of the classic girls novel Ballet Shoes (one of my favorites at age 7) to US multiplexes. The film stars three veterans of the Harry Potter franchise: Emma Watson, Gemma Jones and Richard Griffith.
• Heaven’s Gate superfans, take note: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is going to help MGM preserve the MGM/United Artists archive.