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QUIET CITY Director Aaron Katz: The Media Diet

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Aaron Katz is the director of Dance Party USA and Quiet City, both of which are screening as part of The New Talkies festival at the IFC Center. The former plays Tuesday and Wednesday; Quiet City opens on Wednesday for a week-long run. Both films will be released by Benten Films as a two-disc DVD set in January 2008. I love the intersection of high and low in this interview: Aaron talks about Antonioni in the same breath as Can’t Hardly Wait, and puts Ornette Colman on the same list as Mario Kart. He also discusses the pros and cons of the Mumblecore label, and offers up some intriguing details about his next project. All that, and much more, is waiting for you on the other side of the jump.

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Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 11:05 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments

No Country For Old Men Trailer — Clip of the Day

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Under discussion:

Blood Simple (1984)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Anne Thompson points to the red-banded trailer for the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men. In order to watch it, you have to prove that you’re over 17 by entering your birthday and zip code, as it corresponds to your government-issued ID. Leaving aside the fact that it’s totally creepy that movie studios now have access to some massive DMV database (that’s gotta be where they’re getting this info from, since the site wouldn’t accept the zip code on my passport), if you prefer Blood Simple to The Big Lebowski, then this trailer will likely be right up your alley. Warning: it’s, um, kind of violent. I counted at least 6 corpses, plus 2 implied human deaths, plus one definitely dead dog.

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Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 9:03 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments

Kamp Katrina in NYC, And Soon In A Theater Near You

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Under discussion:

Low and Behold (2006)

Kamp Katrina (2007)

Kamp Katrina (which opened a series of nationwide screenings last night at MoMA and continues a week-long New York stint at the Pioneer Theater starting tonight) joins Low and Behold in the budding genre of micro-dramas dedicated to dismantling the clusterfuck that is post-Katrina New Orleans one personal story at a time. Whereas Low and Behold is a character drama that draws strength from documentary elements, Kamp Katrina is a documentary with an uncommon feel for character and an incredible narrative focus. Both stand in contrast to something self-consciously “definitive” like Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, which despite its undeniable significance as a historical document, can’t possibly rival micro-budgeted projects like Low and Behold and Kamp Katrina in terms of microscopic attention to detail.

Kamp focuses on Ms. Pearl, a casually charitable resident of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward who opens a tent city in her backyard to house displaced residents while they “get back on their feet.” Her companion David has a start-up construction business, through which he employs some of Kamp Katrina’s residents by day. By night, the four or five couples sleeping in the backyard cook communally and share pre-and-post Katrina horror stories.

It becomes clear very early on that, before the storm, the residents of Kamp Katrina were likely not really on their feet to begin with: for every one Kamper that lost a decent home and a good job in the storm, three or four were barely scraping by on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. Each of the women in the Kamp seems to have been the victim of some kind of domestic abuse; two such incidences are captured on camera, while another is memorialized in a camper’s glass eye. One of the men at Kamp Katrina, Charles, believes he’s in a relationship with Joan of Arc, who is the patron saint of Orleans. Charles acknowledges that even he can’t see his girlfriend, but maintains that the relationship is nothing less than real. “I can’t wait to see her in the flesh!” Charles announces to the camera. “All I have to do is be tortured to death first.”

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Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 8:04 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments

Toronto Film Festival: My Hit List

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Under discussion:

Elizabeth (1998)

Across the Universe (2007)

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Cassandra's Dream (2007)

Control (2007)

The Toronto International Film Festival begins on September 6, and is currently scheduled to showcase 349 films through September 15. I’m only going to be in town for four days, so I’ve combed the schedule and picked out 15 films that I’m going to make an attempt to see during that time. I’ve purposely left films that are going to be at the New York Film Festival off this list; hopefully, I’ll be able to scratch off one or two at Telluride as well. If there’s anything I’ve glaringly missed, let me know in the comments. In alphabetical order:

Across the Universe (dir. Julie Taymor, starring Evan Rachel Wood)
Which version of Taymor’s long-troubled psychedelic musical romance based on the songs of The Beatles will Toronto audiences see? There’s still no running time listed on the film’s IMDb profile, which could mean that Sony hasn’t figured that out yet.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik, starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck)
Okay, marketers, I give: I’ve been seduced by the gorgeousness of the latest trailer.

Battle for Haditha (dir. Nick Broomfield, starring Elliot Ruiz, Andrew McLaren)
Broomfield is best known for his tabloidy first-person docs; I missed his most recent drama, Ghosts, when it debuted at Sundance, and it seems to have vanished since. Judging by the comments on IMDB about Haditha (which is a drama based on the actual incident in Iraq), the British director is heading into a realm of controversy that’s going to make his persecution at the hands of Courtney Love look like picnic.

Cassandra’s Dream (dir. Woody Allen, starring Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor)
Control (dir. Anton Corbijn, starring Samantha Morton and Sam Riley)
See my previous commentary here and here

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (dir. Shekhar Kapur, starring Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen)
My sometime celebrity boyfriend Owen co-stars as Sir Walter Raleigh in this sequel to the Oscar-nommed Elizabeth. Blanchett reprises her role as the no-longer-so-virginal queen.

See my next nine picks after the jump.

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Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 6:03 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments

FilmCouch #34

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Under discussion:

High School Record (2005)

Superbad (2007)

Going beneath the surface of Superbad (Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen). Questioning the “substance” of R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet. Also, the high school comedy that should have made it, Karina investigates whatever happened to High School Record.

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Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 4:03 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments

Welcome to Award Season: Trade Roughage 08/24/07

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Under discussion:

Lust, Caution (2007)

Focus Features has accepted an NC-17 rating for Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, despite the fact that it will seriously hamper the film’s chances of reaching the audience it needs to gain critical mass come Oscar time. According to The Hollywood Reporter, although the film contains no full-frontal male nudity, “male-on-female oral sex, non-S&M restraints and several nontraditional sexual positions are depicted, conveying the aggression and emotional conflict between the main characters.”
Unfortunately, it looks like DGA members won’t be able to enjoy any of that in the comfort of their own homes. First the Directors Guild of America said studios could send their members award season screeners; then they said they couldn’t; then they said they were planning to say they could, but now they’ve said that they can’t.
With male and female audiences divided over the equally drecky-looking Scarlett Johansson vehicle The Nanny Diaries, and the Jet Li/Jason Statham fight pic War, Variety says SuperBad has a chance at pulling off another weekend at the top of the box office. In related news, Knocked Up is a huge hit in Australia and Russia.
Anger Me, a documentary in which former child star/experimental filmmaker/Hollywood Babylon muckraker Kenneth Anger tells stories about his own life for two hours, earns the ultimate backhanded compliment from Variety: “Tech credits are adequate.”