"Wild Thing" Spike Jonze has his new project...
According to Variety, Spike Jonze is the man that Warner Brothers is depending on to take us...
Let's see... with Curious George also on the way, what other beloved children's books are waiting for their champion?Read more
Hostel takeover: "Horror pornography" tops the box office, defeats Aslan
(Thanks to Peter T. Chattaway for noting this so quickly.)
A movie that gives audiences the opportunity to watch human beings tortured, decapitated, having their throats cut, their heads smashed in, parts of their body chopped up and thrown in a furnace, shot point blank, their eyes dangling from their sockets and eventually cut (to relieve the pain), poked full of holes with a drill, having digits snipped off, throwing themselves in front of trains, having their chest cavities opened for more torture....
.... is #1 at the box office this weekend, according to early numbers.
In fact, Eli Roth's hyperviolent Hostel looks like it not just defeat, but overwhelm both Aslan and King Kong at the Box Office.
Brokeback Mountain is getting all kinds of flack from conservatives beyond the boundaries of Christian movie reviews. But it's nowhere near #1. It'll be interesting to see how many "culture-watchers" sound an alarm over America's embrace of a movie that even mainstream critics are calling "horror porn."
I don't want to just write something off because it's violent. I've defended a lot of violent films as worthwhile and redeeming, from Saving Private Ryan to A History of Violence. But in those cases, the violence has served a meaningful purpose, and I've provided plenty of cautions about the content, qualifying that only discerning and conscientious adult viewers should proceed.
And in a sense, the description above bears some similarity to Dante's L'Inferno. But L'Inferno is a dead-serious work of art about the nature of hell and the wages of sin. Is Hostel serious about anything?
Still... what's being advertised? Human suffering, as entertainment. And lately, it seems there's a contest on to see who can serve up the most taxing and extreme display of grotesquerie and bloodshed.
I invite anyone who sees Hostel to post a comment and defend the film here, if they've seen it. Since I haven't seen it, all I can do is pass along what I'm hearing. (Please don't misunderstand this as an exhortation to go see it for yourself, though. I suspect the nay-sayers are right about this one.)
Tom Shales on "The Book of Daniel"
Loved this quote:
Tom Shales, The Washington Post, regarding the new television show The Book of Daniel:
"I cannot recall a series in which a greater number of characters seemed so desperately detestable -- a series with a larger population of loathsome dolts. There ought to be a worse punishment than cancellation for a show that tries this hard to be offensive and, even at that crass task, manages to fail."
"Prince Caspian" greenlit...
...according to NarniaWeb, anyway.
Looks like Prince Caspian got the big phone call today, and rumor has it that you could hear cheers all over Narnia.Read more
Homosexual Heath Ledger Character: Bad. Heterosexually Promiscuous Ledger Character: Not So bad?
I've had some interesting chats with the film writers and the editor of Christianity Today Movies in the wake of the publication of Lisa Cockrel's Brokeback Mountain review.
Mark Moring, the CT Movies editor, says he's received over 250 e-mails about the Brokeback Mountain review. Many of them have expressed hatred toward homosexuals. And some of them have expressed hatred towards Christiainity Today for even reviewing the movie.
(Some of them are posted here and more here.)
But here's something interesting...
While many of those Christians responding felt that it was immoral for Christianity Today to say anything positive, or to say anything at all, about a movie in which Heath Ledger plays a homosexual...
... there has not been one single letter raising any protest to the fact that Christianity Today Movies also reviewed Heath Ledger's other movie currently in theaters... Casanova... in which he plays a character who happily hops into bed with one woman after another.
While Casanova does end with a nod toward the rewards of fidelity, we're never made to consider the immorality of his promiscuity. Furthermore, who's the villain in the film? The guy who works for the church.
So, if CT reviews a movie in Ledger gets frisky and sleeps with a bunch of WOMEN ... nobody bothers to protest.
But make his indiscretions homosexual instead of heterosexual, and suddenly, it's not just automatically a "wicked" and "abhorrent" movie, but even those Christians who write about the film thoughtfully are labeled as sinners and even "sodomites"!
It boggles the mind.
[revised question] Why are so many Christians ready to send off angry letters the moment something offends them? And why do so many respond so viciously toward their brothers and sisters in Christ who are trying to engage the culture in a thoughtful, rather than condemning and judgmental, way?
This question comes back to me constantly. For my decade of publishing film reviews, I've received mountains of spiteful and condemning letters from Christians telling my that I'm not saved, that God will judge me, etc. ... all because of my attention to various films. My attempts to engage those writers in conversations have usually been useless--they have no interest in discussing anything, they just want to deliver judgment. Movieguide's Ted Baehr even announced to the public on live radio that, because I liked a certain film, I have clearly not read my Bible. (An interesting statement, considering what the Bible says about people who claim to be clairvoyant.) But in all of those years, I've only received a couple of angry notes from unbelievers... and those notes led to interesting conversations.
Anyway, in case you missed it, here's my review of Brokeback Mountain. A few folks have asked why I prefaced the review with such a heavy clarification. But if you could see my email box, and the responses coming in to CT, you'd understand.
Steven Greydanus on "Match Point"
For what it's worth, while I'd probably rate the film as a C because it is very well crafted, I agree with Steven's observations about the film. Match Point is a work of wicked, twisted genius, one that comes to dangerous and frightening conclusions about reality and morality. This is a great review.
The first shot in Woody Allen’s Match Point is meant to serve as a metaphorical master-image for the film as a whole: a freeze-frame shot of a tennis ball suspended in space over the net after striking it, poised between falling on one side of the net or the other. It's an image of blind chance: Which side the ball lands on has nothing to do with which player is more skilled, let alone more deserving. The universe is indifferent to the outcome and its consequences.
Match Point has been hailed as a return to form for Allen, in particular harkening to the director’s landmark 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors, which treats similar themes of infidelity, murder and ultimate meaning.
In fact, Match Point can be read as a kind of loose remake of Crimes and Misdemeanors, or rather a distillation of its dark moral drama, purged of the earlier film’s comedic plot threads involving Alan Alda’s and Allen’s characters. In the past Allen has expressed his dissatisfaction with the comedic portions of Crimes and Misdemeanors, feeling that these detract from the film’s more serious heart. Match Point is perhaps meant to be Crimes and Misdemeanors as it should have been.
Except it isn’t. In fact, Match Point lacks precisely what is, at least arguably, the most haunting element in the earlier film: its sense of genuinely conflicted existential drama.
Crimes and Misdemeanors is an obsessive meditation on the razor’s edge between guilt and unbelief, a film torn between radically different existential alternatives. Like the tennis ball in the opening shot of Match Point, the moral drama in Crimes and Misdemeanors is suspended between two outcomes, and absolutely everything hangs in the balance.
He's just getting started...
Great Films, True Stories: The 2006 Image Film Festival
This year's Image Film Festival promises to be a challenging, exciting series of events. It's entitled “Telling the Truth: The Art of Documentary Films,” featuring five documentary films that satisfy our desire for revelation, entertainment, emotional connection, and above all, truth.
Join us for the kick-off event, Friday, January 20, 2006, from 7:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
Five films will be screened over the course of the weekend--Hoop Dreams, Born Into Brothels, Murderball, Supersize Me, and Buena Vista Social Club--followed by discussions led by panels of faculty and students.
Free popcorn and other goodies will be served.
Sponsored by Image journal and the SPU Office of Student Life. Contact Julie Mullins, jmullins@imagejournal.org, x2988.
Specials: Wong at Cannes. Vote against Pedro. Chattaway's Top 10. "New World" cut. "Pan's Labyrinth." "Horror porn." "Scanner Darkly." "Fateless."
Wednesday's specals:
President of this year's Cannes Film Festival jury... Wong Kar-wai!
Fantastic. This should make for some very interesting choices. Can't wait to see who else is on the jury. (Thanks, Opus, for the link.)
No more Pedro the Lion. Please welcome... David Bazan!
It was bound to happen. Bazan's dropped the band name, officially declared himself a solo artist.
Peter Chattaway and Roy Anker post contrary top ten lists at Books and Culture
I like titles on both lists. I especially appreciate Chattaway's insistence on personal favorites (Dear Frankie at #1! Wow!) rather than merely rearranging the ten titles popping up on almost every other critical list. Anker's list is good too, although it looks you'll impress him if your movie is a) political and b) left-leaning. And I think he's being far too kind to Chronicles of Narnia.
Which cut of Malick's The New World do you want to see?
It hasn't opened wide, and it sounds like Americans won't get to see Malick's original cut until it reaches DVD. This has me considering whether or not I should consider The New World to be a 2006 release. (And, frankly, I may have to reconsider Kingdom of Heaven's director's cut as a 2006 film, since it's supposedly so drastically different than the theatrical film.)
The trailer for Guillermo Del Toro's new film:
Pan's Labyrinth.
David Poland on "Horror Porn"
Hostel is apparently too hostile.
"The Dude" reviews A Scanner Darkly
This movie tops my list of films I can't wait to see in 2006.
Village Voice praises Fateless
Let's face it. There will never be an end to good movies about the Holocaust. And perhaps this is a good thing. While those evils can never be undone, many of the stories set in that context will continue to reveal the effects and the origins of such evil, and hopefully instill in more and more audiences around the world the reason why ideologies as dangerous as Hitler's must be resisted.
Looking Closer is Back in The Seattle Times!
Somehow, I missed Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times, and didn't find out until today that the Pacific Northwest Magazine again ran an update on my doings at Looking Closer...
Thanks to Richard Seven for doing the follow-up story!
(If you missed the original cover story, check it out here.)