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Under discussion:

Lawrence of Arabia  (1962)

Guerrilla  (2008)

The Argentine  (2008)

It may seem a bit early to write 1700+ words on the greatness of Steven Soderbergh’s two-part Che Guevara epic, especially without having actually seen the films (titled The Argentine and Guerrilla), but that couldn’t stop Jeff Wells from contributing such a piece to The Huffington Post yesterday. At least the guy has read the screenplays, both penned by Peter Buchman, but otherwise it’s all a lot of confident speculation and hopeful anticipation, particularly for Benicio Del Toro’s performance, which Wells is sure will be garner Oscar talk (didn’t the casting alone garner such talk two years back?):

With Benicio del Toro, the moody and mesmerizing Marlon Brando-ish actor whose work keeps getting deeper and more fascinating, all but certain to stir Oscar talk for his performance as Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the legendary Argentine/Cuban firebrand. Even if the Che movies turn out to be problematic, Del Toro can’t not whip ass. He’s too strange, too gifted. Guevara is too perfect a role for him. All the stars and planets are aligned.

Wells may actually be more excited about these films than anyone has ever been excited about one film (let alone two) and he goes so far as to compare the two films to Lawrence of Arabia. Basically he just likens the Che character arc to that of T.E. Lawrence and so calls the films “Lawrence of Latin America”, though it’s pretty evident that Wells is really thinking Soderbergh’s epic will be as great as David Lean’s. He even suggests that whichever distributor ends up releasing the film do so as “a single, gargantuan Lawrence of Arabia-styled deal with an intermission, running between four or four and a half hours? Initially shown on a reserved-seat basis with a Maurice Jarre-type score with an overture, entre’acte and exit music? You know…for old times’ sake?”

Unfortunately for Wells, the films will likely be given separate releases. Although, from the way Wells makes it sound, the films could barely even be picked up for any kind of release, as the distributors aren’t nearly as excited as he is:

No U.S. distributor has signed on, in part over concerns about the Spanish-language dialogue (American audiences are notoriously “rural” in their attitudes about subtitles), and in part because it’s been determined by Soderbergh that the films have to be seen as a two-part whole with their release to occur within weeks or possibly days of each other. Given the indisputable fact that we are living in the most dumbed-down era of American moviegoing (certainly in terms of the mass audience) since the invention of the movie camera, how many popcorn-munchers are going to be willing, much less eager, to go four hours plus with Che Guevara? Especially given their reluctance to support even Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodrigeuz’s Grindhouse, a two-part, three-hour popcorn movie about hot women, zombies and car chases?

Certainly he’s exaggerating the lack of appeal for these films, just as he’s overreacting in his extreme excitement for them sight unseen. I believe they will be great, and I believe that they’ll be successful, but let’s let the pair of epics premiere at Cannes before we go overboard, shall we? Alright, well, I guess considering yesterday the internet was already all abuzz about Soderbergh’s post-Che project that Wells can be forgiven for jumping the gun.

Under discussion:

Gigi  (1958)

The Lady Vanishes  (1938)

The Last Metro  (1980)

Raiders of the Lost Ark  (1981)

The 39 Steps  (1935)

My Foolish Heart  (1949)

Alright, it’s not actually a film review, but in a letter of correspondence from 1981, to lover Janet Eagleson, the Catcher in the Rye author does pan the original Indiana Jones film. However, it’s difficult to say the man doesn’t have good taste in movies. In the same handwritten note, he also mention that he enjoyed Truffaut’s The Last Metro. Behold the great American novelist’s actual words:

…Have seen no good movies, except The Last Metro…I got hooked into seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark, which might be excused for its unwitty, unfunny awful socko-ness if it had been put together by Harvard Lampoon seniors…

I guess it’s not all that amazing, but I find Salinger’s comments interesting because I’d always figured he was a curmudgeonly hater of films. Part of my misconception is due to Holden Caulfield’s attitude toward cinema in Catcher, and part is due to Salinger’s refusal to permit a movie adaptation of Catcher or any other works post-My Foolish Heart (an adaptation of Salinger’s story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” that apparently resulted in the author’s subsequent refusals).

Yet according to Salinger’s daughter Margaret (via Wikipedia), who wrote the memoir Dream Catcher, the author was in fact a film buff. She even listed his favorite films as Gigi, Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps, and the comedies of the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy. However, according to Joyce Maynard (also via Wikipedia), an ex-lover who also wrote a memoir, Salinger “loves movies, not films.” Of course, that would mean that he should have loved Raiders and disliked Truffaut, right?

Anyway, you can bid on the letter with the Last Metro and Raiders comments in an Ebay Live Auction tomorrow evening, or if you’re short the few thousand bucks, you can just look at the photo of it on the auction’s listing.

[via Empire]

Under discussion:

Iron Man  (2008)

Interesting. David Poland, who is not crazy about Iron Man (”I just wanted a character who actually dealt with the obvious demons that he overcomes… and not just another really, really cool suit of CG armor”) posits that the fact that other critics are crazy about the film (it’s currently at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes) might be a sign that it’s not going to connect with audiences:

This appears to be the Pass movie of the early summer for critics. Is it because of Downey or the middle-aged hero or talk about a huge opening or the use of the Middle East and the half-ass political arguments of the film that play out hypocritically but pay active lip service to liberals… I don’t know.

All I do know is that when film critics are the ones identifying with your superhero, you may be being successful with the wrong demo for mega-bucks… which is all the film producers wanted in the first place.

Those “half-ass political arguments” feature prominently in each of the film’s serious reviews, both negative and positive. Todd McCarthy cheerfully commended director Jon Favreau in his rave for having “found a sure-fire way to make money with a modern Middle East war movie: Just send a Marvel superhero into the fray to kick some insurgent butt.” But for David Denby, Iron Man’s Trojan Horse smuggling of the ideas and iconography of the current war is the film’s biggest sin:

…the freelance fanatics, or whatever they are, waterboard Tony Stark, which, considering what some American interrogators and their surrogates have done to suspects recently, is enraging to watch. Such are the ways of pop: we cast our sins onto others. The complaint sounds a little wan, but it’s worth noting that, possibly, more Americans will see this dunderheaded fantasia on its opening weekend than have seen all the features and documentaries that have labored to show what’s happening in Iraq and on the home front.

David Edelstein, who “loved it,” makes an interesting point about a certain action blockbuster tradition, wherein mass market entertainments “pick up on bad vibes in the air and transform them into something that lets us sleep better at night.” If amelioration of collective guilt is truly what Iron Man is up to, then Poland may have a point. If there’s anything certain about our pop cultural moment, it’s that the masses don’t want “bad vibes” to be “transformed”––that would require having to acknowledge that the “vibes” ever existed.