• According to Variety, four new films are competing for the attention of adult moviegoers this weekend, with The Women attracting the +25 ladies and Righteous Kill, Burn After Reading and Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys attracting the men, I guess. The prediction is that Perry’s film will win the box office, because it will attract the black audience while Righteous and Burn are expected to split their (white?) demo. And, well, women don’t actually go to the movies. Right?
• Universal and Focus have made a deal to invest in and co-produce the latest from Oldboy director Chan-wook Park. The new film, a risque vampire pic titled Thirst, is apparently the first Korean production financed and picked up for distribution by a U.S. studio prior to its being completed and released locally.
• In case you want to know more about the Gore Verbinski-Johnny Depp motion capture film, Rango, Variety has a short follow-up, which spotlights the involvement of ILM. Though it doesn’t really add much to the original news, I’m a little more intrigued now about the future of animated features and whether or not mo-cap companies like ILM, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Animal Logic (none of which, it’s noted, develop their own projects) could soon give Pixar and DreamWorks a run for their money.
• Ray Winstone will replace walk-off Robert De Niro in Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness, which will apparently actually be good and so doesn’t fit with De Niro’s career goals of late.

The other night, someone with knowledge of these things approached me at a party and said, “Have you heard that Magnolia’s bought Che? I’ve never heard a more premature rumor in my life.” Any suspicion in my mind that this party chat was mere misdirection has just been proved unfounded with IFC’s announcement that they’ve bought Steven Soderbergh’s epic for U.S. release.

In not specifying that IFC will release the two halves of the film separately, the press release implies that Che’s “two stand-alone parts” will be shown in theaters back-to-back. But this is the only specific language regarding their distribution plan:

Che will be released for one week awards qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles in December. The company will then re-open the film in January through IFC In Theaters, its day-and-date distribution platform which makes independent films available to a national audience in theaters and on-demand, simultaneously. It will also be included in the company’s exclusive video rental deal with Blockbuster Video.

I’ve pasted the full release after the jump. More when we get it.

UPDATE: Anne Thompson clarifies the “one movie, or two?” issue: “IFC will open the full four-hour movie with an intermission for one-week Oscar-qualifying runs in New York and Los Angeles before opening Che Part One (The Argentine) in 15 to 25 key markets in January; Part Two (The Guerilla) will follow the Oscar nominations announcement.”

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The new Claire Denis film is a Claire Denis film, and there are certain givens that this entails: nothing is spelled out, behavior is highlighted over action or incident, and we’re asked to spend a decent chunk of time getting to know the characters and observing their typical behavior before the status quo is changed just slightly and the film’s concerns start to come into focus.

But, rather shockingly, the new Claire Denis film is also a bittersweet family movie, and the work you put into it early on is paid back in surprisingly tender dividends.

For the first time, Denis is working here with a virtually all-black cast, and as my companion at the press screening noted, there’s a bit of irony that this film is making its North American debut alongside Medicine For Melancholy, a film about a tentative connection between two racially self-conscious young black people which was not only inspired by Denis’ Friday Night but concieved as a generational update. Though Denis’ characters don’t discuss race as compulsively as Jenkins’, it’s not a matter off their minds. Josephine (Mati Diop), the daughter of widowed train operator Lionel (Alex Descas), seems to be studying it at university.

Rhums takes place in and around the working-class apartment complex where Lionel and Josephine live in quasi-incestuous bliss, though from the start Denis conveys the sense that this arrangement can’t last for much longer. One neighbor, Gabrielle, clearly has a thing for the father, while another, Noe, cautiously courts the daughter. This is apparently how this ad hoc family has functioned for ages, but the film’s centerpiece scene sets a reconfiguration of this unit into motion. A night out that doesn’t go as planned leaves the foursome stranded in a cafe where they drink, flirt and dance to cheesy 70s soft rock. Rebelling against his perceived responsibilities to Josephine and Gabrielle’s need, Lionel leaves the other three watching as he hits on an attractive waitress, and waiting up at home for him to return from his walk of shame. Lionel’s disappearing act pushes father and daughter to reconcile their closeness and the tragedy responsible for it, leading to a surprisingly touching and uncynically romantic conclusion.

Much of the film plays like a mystery, as we slowly piece together the roots of each relationship and figure out along with the characters where they’re going and what kind of change they’ll have to endure to get there. Cinematographer and frequent Denis collaborator Agnes Godard paints urban Northern France in muted colors, a maze of highways and train tracks weaving around towering apartment buildings. These cool, geometric fling cabinets for wage workers are, for Noe and Lionel, imprisoning, but for Josephine and Gabrielle, the walls store memories and promise that can’t be easily discarded. This locus of loneliness and longing is also their only outlet for love.

A hit at the most recent Rotterdam Film Festival, Paul Krik’s feature debut Able Danger is a Flatbush, Brooklyn set post 9/11 conspiracy tale that hinges its low budget thrills directly to a studied pastiche of classic film noir and a healthy cynicism of our government’s possible role in the events of 9/11 and the subsequent dive into a state of perpetual middle eastern war in the name of defending freedom. Krik, who occasionally goes by the name Dave Herman, has the hip threads and thousand yard stare that are par for the course for Brooklyn conspiracy theorists, but he also has sure handed feel for cinema. With deftness he milks paranoia out of his crisp, hi-def B&W images and creates an altogether plausible conspiracy that barely name checks the controlled demolition theory, but nonetheless synthesizes large quantities of suspicious information from that sunny tuesday morning seven years ago. On the eve of his film’s NYC release at the Pioneer later this week, we caught up with Paul to talk about––what else?–– Entourage, Atlas Shrugged, the desire to work with Cate Blanchett and Greek versus German philosophy.

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Are we entering the era of the apolitical Iraq film? I won’t see Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker until later in the week, but the accounts I’ve heard suggest that it’s an action film that happens to be set in Baghdad, with tunnel-vision on the technical aspects of warfare and an almost complete disregard for the politics of the war being fought there. Similarly, Matthew Newton’s drama Three Blind Mice is a film about Australian marines en route to Iraq, but the war these boys are heading into could be anywhere and backed by any kind of ideology, so timeless are the film’s ideas about camaraderie and duty. It’s essentially a modern redo of On the Town, with ample fist fights in place of fancy footwork, a much more cynical attitude towards the notion of patriotism, and a completely credible sense of verisimilitude. In fact, the writing and performances create such a life-like mise en scene that when movie-like violence happens, it’s as shocking as it would be in real life.

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• I’m skeptical about James Franco portraying Allen Ginsberg in the courtroom-set biopic Howl (can anyone but David Cross be cast after I’m Not There?), but now that Paul Rudd, Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker, Alan Alda and David Straithairn are also aboard, it could at least be a decent ensemble piece.
• Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, U2 and now … Blue Man Group? The painted trio is the latest group to be given a 3-D concert film. I wonder if David Cross just blue himself in the hopes of getting a part in it.
• New Line has acquired an upcoming novel from Richard Doetsch about a man accused of killing his wife and his trip back in time — in one-hour increments — to save her. Titled The Thirteenth Hour, Variety says it’s being described as The Bourne Identity meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, but obviously it’s more like The Fugitive meets Memento (meets — hopefully — David Cross).
• New Line is also making a romantic comedy that’s an obvious cross between Slap Shot and The Devil Wears Prada. And, not obviously, it’s based on a true story.

With the first weekend of the 2008 Toronto International Fim Festival now in the dustbin of history, here are a few notes from the ground:

• Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler premiered here last night, fresh off its Golden Bear win in Venice, and nary a negative word has so far been heard. In the interest of time management, I’m going to wait until NYFF to catch it, but a reliable source told me after the screening that the film “is fucking awesome.” Apparently Fox Searchlight agrees––this morning they locked a deal to domestically distribute the film and finance a major Oscar push for star Mickey Rourke.
• A film at the polar opposite end of the buzz spectrum is Spike Lee’s The Miracle at St. Anna, which even admirers of Spike’s provacations are calling a waste of time. Our own Kevin Kelly was at the film’s junket, which he says devolved into “The Elect Barack Obama Show” when neither journalists nor the filmmaker could keep the conversation focused on the movie. Kevin will have a report from the junket coming soon.
• Somewhere in between in terms of audience reaction: Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. It’s my favorite film in Toronto this far, and a small contingent of journalists are also all about it. Still, some are (bafflingly, to my mind) pejoratively comparing it to Margot at the Wedding (the titles share a word, so apparently such comparisons are fair game), and rumor has it that the NYFF selection comittee unanimously rejected it for inclusion.
• Magnolia hasn’t officially announced it yet, but everyone is saying that they’ve settled on a deal to distribute Che. The NY Post says Mark Cuban’s distribution arm is “already booking theaters.”

In a director’s statement circulated by her film’s publicist, writer/director So Yong Kim says Treeless Mountain, which is “inspired by events from my early childhood in Pusan, Korea,” doubles as “a letter to my mother.” This makes the film even more of a heartbreaker––if that’s even a possibility. An autobiographical feature about two tiny girls sent to live with distant relatives by their caring but insolvent mother, Treeless Mountain is a sparse but incredibly moving film about love turning to longing turning to resentment, and if I as a total outsider could barely hold back tears whilst watching it, I can only imagine the strength required to pull such a story from one’s own life and throw it up on a screen.

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This is the year that print film criticism went on life support, online film critics drafted sober eulogies and the rest of the world yawned distractedly while poised over the plug. Into the ill-attended open grave my colleague Lauren Wissot just tossed a meditation on film culture titled, “The Movie-Going Public.”

I dig it because it dares to take filmgoers as seriously as it does cinema itself. Further, it manages, mostly by way of example, to pee all over the very notion of a professional film critic. I use don’t use the term “pee” lightly but with great care, thinking of readers like Anonymous, who responded to Lauren’s post with, “You’re not an elitist. But you are crass, vulgar and unprofessional… Manny Farber is rolling in his grave.” I want Anonymous, if he or she is reading this, to imagine Mr. Farber howling in pain from the beyond at my using such a crude bathroom word as “pee” in reference to the profession he devoted his life to. But another dead 20th Century critic is probably grinning in his grave. James Agee: “I suspect I am, far more than not, in your own situation: deeply interested in moving pictures, considerably experienced from childhood on in watching them and thinking and talking about them, and totally, or almost totally without experience or even much second-hand knowledge of how they are made. It is my business to conduct one end of a conversation, as an amateur critic among amateur critics. And I will be of use and of interest only in so far as my amateur judgment is sound, stimulating,
or illuminating.” (Props to Ryland Walker Knight.)
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The Telluride Film Festival is what Sundance would be if it took place in heaven. Every year the tiny mountain hamlet hosts four days of hassle-free cinema paradise. There were grumblings about the lack of American films, but we still found plenty to love. Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake) came with his delightful new movie, Happy-Go-Lucky. He sat down for a disgruntled yet insightful interview. Paul Schrader (Affliction, Hardcore) seemed as blow away as we were by his latest film, Adam Resurrected, starring Jeff Goldblum.

 

 FilmCouch 86 [33:52m]: Play Now | Download

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro, Telluride faves: Waltz with Bashir, Revanche, The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, Tulpan, The Rest is Silence.

7:04 - Happy-Go-Lucky, with Mike Leigh interview.

19:52 - Adam Resurrected, with Paul Schrader interview.

filmcouch-86

• Prodigal Sons review
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button preview (and backlash)
• Waltz with Bashir review
• Jeff Goldblum, Media Diet interview
• Helen review
• Tulpan review
• O’Horten review
• Learning Gravity review
• Ken Burns, Media Diet interview
• You Must Remember This: The Warner Brothers Story and tribute to Richard Schickel
• ‘Movies Are Over.’ Directors, Distribs & Journos Debate Future of Film & Criticism
• Hunger, Steve McQueen interview
• Slavoj Zizek and Nazi melodrama
• Telluride 2008 photos
• Slumdog Millionaire review
• Adam Resurrected, Paul Schrader interview
• Firaaq review
• The Rest is Silence review
• I’ve Loved You So Long review
• The Good, The Bad and the Weird interview with Kim Ji-Woon
• Revanche review

Revanche had its North American premiere here at Telluride 2008 and was far and away one of the most exciting new films playing. It’s a revenge thriller with cinema purist sensibilities from acclaimed Austrian director, Götz Spielmann. Keeping its German title, Revanche, the word carries two meanings: Revenge, but also a kind of second chance.

In the Austrian countryside, Robert and Susanne (Andreas Lust and Ursula Strauss) have built a cozy house and are trying to start a family. He’s as a rural cop, she works at the local grocery and on Sundays she takes her elderly, widowed neighbor to church. In the red light district of Vienna, Alex (Johannes Krisch) is the errand boy for a pimp and has started an amorous–and very secret–relationship with one of his prostitutes, Tamara (Irina Potapenko). When the desperation of escaping Vienna kicks in for Alex and Tamara, it looks as if Revanche is heading into familiar genre territory: Alex plans a bank job out in the country (”What can go wrong?”), it goes wrong and Tamara is killed in the getaway by a cop, Robert. But it’s when Alex goes to hide out on his grandfather’s farm and realizes the cop who killed his girlfriend lives next door, the movie screeches like a getaway car into unexpected territory. …Read more

I’ve Loved You So Long came into Telluride with a lot of buzz about this being Kristen Scott Thomas‘ soon-to-be Oscar winning performance. Like Forrest Whittaker in The Last King of Scotland two years ago, it was the performance not to miss. So, I didn’t. And if Kristen Scott Thomas wins an Oscar it’s because there are very few actresses who can hold an audience for two hours alternating between chain smoking with a million-mile-stare and delivering long, expository monologues about her backstory. I mean that as a compliment to Ms. Thomas and a criticism to director, Philippe Claudel.

Juliette (Kristen Scott Thomas) sits in an airport in France smoking. Her face is a map of heartache. In fact, it looks more dead than alive, which is probably the most impressive moment of the movie. (Why do directors insist that great actors talk so much?) Her sister, Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) arrives late. The ride to her sister’s country home is icy. They haven’t seen each other in a long time and they want to discuss anything but why. That’s how I’ve Loved You So Long begins. …Read more

Paris Hilton and her team have successfully pressured the Toronto International Film Festival into canceling all but one screening of Adria Petty’s Paris, Not France, a documentary about the celebrity heiress which “attempts to explore the Paris phenomenon and how it defines this moment in culture” and is also “modeled after the 1960s “it”-girl film Darling.” Though the film’s TIFF info page still lists three public screenings, TIFF documentary programmer Thom Powers confirmed to me that Paris will screen only once at the festival. “From my standpoint, of course, I wish we could do additional screenings,” Powers told me in an email. “But this is certainly a better option than not showing the film at all.”

Of course, the big question is why, and that’s something that no one seems willing to give up an answer for. As I’ve noted before, if it turns out that Hilton’s own life resembles the narrative of Darling, that might qualify as embarassing to a different kind of starlet (Orgies! Abortion! Glorified prostitution! Ennui!), but not Paris. As Steven Zeitchik joked when he first blogged about this, “the mind dances at what kind of footage can be seen so newly shameful to Paris Hilton, the enfant teribles whose entire reputation is based on shamelesness.” Zeitchik didn’t name his own sources, who apparently didn’t offer details as to what, exactly, rubbed the celebutante the wrong way. Publicist Mark Pogachefsky’s statement on behalf of the filmmakers is extremely vague: “For a variety of reasons - which we are unable to discuss - the film will only be screened once.  We are optimistic that the film will ultimately be released commercially, but we are not able to comment further.”

But I’ve got to wonder if there’s more to this than meets the eye. …Read more