Category: (random lists)

jane campion on the dearth of women directors

from yahoo

When Jane Campion was honored onstage at the Cannes Film Festival with about 30 other major directors Sunday, she was the lone woman of the bunch. And she’s still not used to how strange that feels.

The New Zealander is the only woman filmmaker to have won Cannes’ top prize, for “The Piano” in 1993. This year, she showed a fantasy short film about a ladybug — a woman dressed up in an insect costume — who gets stomped on in a movie theater. She said it was a metaphor for women in the film world.

“I just think this is the way the world is, that men control the money, and they decide who they’re going to give it to,” Campion said in explaining why so few women get movies made.

it really is quite depressing how few women seem to be able to break the glass ceiling when it comes to directing movies. it would be interesting to know what the percentages of men and women in film production programs are, and how this correlates with what they go on to do. anecdotally, based on informal attention to film credits, it seems as though more women’s names pop up in the technical end of things than did in the past, but the number of directors does not seem to be growing.

however, i am not sure about this bit from comrade campion:
Continue reading jane campion on the dearth of women directors

Old and another small Joy

First, to get it out of the way: many of us will try Deja Vu no matter what any of the rest of us say about the film. And why not? It’s got Denzel Washington, and a gloriously loony plot. Well–glorious for about 20 minutes, and then the film’s a flat bore. Not bad. Worse: boring.

But what I’m here to tell you is about two other films. Continue reading Old and another small Joy

Look Both Ways / Dominion a là Schrader

Look Both Ways is a rather good Australian movie about cancer, loneliness, uncontrollable thoughts, mortality, coping, smoking, children, purpose and family. Maybe it’s about more than that too, but it’s a good start. I’m eager to give the benefit of the doubt to any movie that tries to deal with dying, esp. when it’s both the person dying and the people left behind. I really admired The Barbarian Invasions for that reason. This doesn’t get nearly as deep and full of itself as that one; it just wouldn’t be Australian as if it did.

One characer is diagnosed with testicular cancer straight off, and another imagines scenes of her own demise around every corner. Do they meet and fall in love? Well, yeah. Nothing earth-shattering there, but the characters are believeable and try to do the right things, difficult as that may be. It’s too sappy and there’s a tendency to break into montage with some Damien Rice-esque Australian singer-songwriter strumming a tune far too often. But I give a lot of respect to the writer-director here anyway, Sarah Watt, who is primarily an animator. This is her first live-action film.

Dominion however, hoo boy. Continue reading Look Both Ways / Dominion a là Schrader

Tideland

I’m writing this only because it’s the first film I’ve felt very strongly about in a long time, and because it’s so much better than another much-talked about film to which it can be easily compared.

First off, my love of Terry Gilliam’s films are as deep and abiding as my love of David Lynch’s. Watching their very different, but equally spectacular failures over the past year (Brothers Grimm and Inland Empire) made me sad for many reasons – first that it will decrease their chances to get future films made, and b/c neither works very quickly and they’re not young. It’s just one fewer chance for them to make another truly great film. I have no idea what Lynch will do next. There’s at least little doubt that Laura Dern was great in IE, and it was so purposefully experimental that maybe studios will say it doesn’t count against him. Brothers Grimm on the other hand had 2 A-list stars, and a marketing budget, all of which served to just exponentially build the millions of dollars the film must have lost – and it came right after his failed Depp prodcuction of la Mancha.

So Mr. Gilliam, would you like to re-trench here and just go for an easy Fisher King feel-good re-write? “Fuck You” is his answer. Before I get too deep into Tideland, let me rail against the over-rated, empty Pan’s Labyrinth awhile. Continue reading Tideland

the ground truth and the road to guantanamo

i’ve been trying to write these reviews for days now. these are troubling movies, not only for what they say about the iraq war and the war on terror, but also for the feelings of identification and alienation they evoked in me.

according to the ground truth, the iraq war’s difference from other wars the US fought consists in the fact that a) the psychological conditioning of soldiers to kill people they don’t hate without inhibition has achieved a phenomenal success, b) the enemy is pretty much indistinguishable from the non-inimical civilian, and c) body armor and surgical technologies save many more lives than in past wars but don’t save limbs, faces, and psyches. what you get is a phenomenal, brutal, free-for-all bloodbath and a lot of seriously damaged veterans. none of this is news to any of us, but filmmaker patricia foulkrod gives these known facts the support of some pretty amazing (and shocking) footage, and a remarkable cast of interviewees. Continue reading the ground truth and the road to guantanamo

sherrybaby/maggie gyllenhaal

since people on this blog are clearly bored, here’s a crackling recommendation. in sherrybaby, which is hereby joining my best-of-2006 list with full grades, sherry is an ex-con just out of jail and on her way to the halfway home that is to be her domicile. in the halfway home, she immediately does two things, in the following order: 1) she calls her child, to whom she’s not talked for three years (the child is about four), and 2) she fucks the director. this is pretty much what she does for the rest of the film, too: she attempts to establish a connection with her child, and she has lots of sex. sex seems to be the only way sherry knows of connecting with people and, for a change, these connections are not the abusive, exploitative, violent type films about dysfunctional women tend to portray. the men sherry beds may not all be rescuers, but they are all right. director laurie collyer is hell-bent on not giving us targets for easy judgment. even when sherry gives a matter-of-fact, bored blow-job to an employment counselor who’s understandably reluctant to put her to work in a kindergarten, you don’t hate the guy. he’s got a lousy job, and it’s not like he asked. Continue reading sherrybaby/maggie gyllenhaal

Indie Films, Genre, Structure

How do certain indy films (Little Miss Sunshine, Lost in Translation) achieve Hollywood-style success while others don’t?

I want to return to Little Miss Sunshine, because the film came up in my class today (after class, really). I was speaking with three students who plan to do a group presentation soon. My students are free to come up with their own topics and can structure presentation any way they wish, provided the presentation prompts a class discussion that helps us understand the larger issues of class (this is my American genres class, so the groups should help us advance–in interesting and not-necessarily academic ways–our understanding of genre). The group wants to talk about the indy film as a genre. My first thought was that the indy film is essentially anti-generic. But I didn’t want to dismiss the idea outright (frankly, I don’t know if the indy film can be called a genre or not–it’s an interesting problem), so I asked them to give me some examples.
Continue reading Indie Films, Genre, Structure

Dreamgirls

The most remarkable thing about this film is how old fashioned it is. Bill Condon has managed to “reinvent” the musical by simply ignoring MTV, and for that I guess many a purist are quite satisfied. The camera doesn’t move so much; the editing is not pushed to front and center; performers are allowed to sing and emote in full and medium shots. There is little razzle-dazzle (Krieger and Eyen ain’t no Kander and Ebb, that’s for certain and Bill Condon ain’t no Baz Luhrmann for that matter). Is it entertaining? Sure, in fits and starts. Continue reading Dreamgirls

Children of Men

Films in which the future of the human species is at stake tend to be problematic; the commodification of despair is tricky stuff. Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of P.D. James novel is certainly a very entertaining, emotionally and intellectually powerful film with one of the best endings of the year. And it is beautiful to look at. But that’s kind of ironic, yes? Here the landscape of broken, bombed-out buildings (shot in muted, blue-grey tones) approaches something best described as rubble-chic (the art direction is superb, but one questions if the end of the world should be reminiscent of early mornings at Hogwarts). That’s cinematic dystopia for you. But I’ll not labor the point; Clive Owen looks appropriately grizzled and that will do. Continue reading Children of Men