THE GHOST WRITER: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE GHOST WRITER 

(Dir. Roman Polanski, 2010)


It's not easy to bypass the tangle of legal matters surrounding legendary director Roman Polanski and view his work on its own merits, but THE GHOST WRITER is such a fine film that it is possible to do so.



Most of the time. Every now and then I would remind myself that he edited it in confinement, but that only enhanced the tone of pure tension in which the film revels. Ewan McGregor, whose character's name is never revealed - he's only credited as "The Ghost", takes on the job of rewriting the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (a gruff very un-Bondian Pierce Brosnan), reportedly a thinly veiled characterization of Tony Blair.



It's a daunting task as McGregor only has a month to get the lengthy manuscript in shape, Brosnan is being accused of war crimes by his former Foreign Secretary (Robert Pugh), and there's the troubling matter that the former ghost writer was found dead washed up on the beach of Brosnan's lavish oceanfront compound in Massachusetts.



Goaded by his smarmy agent (beautifully played by Jon Bernthal), McGregor flies to that same compound and is greeted by one of Brosnan's handlers (Sex And The City's Kim Catrall) and Brosnan's frazzled wife (Olivia Williams). McGregor attempts to have a sense of humor about the situation, but is a bit unnerved when after drafting a statement for Brosnan to the press is told by a smug Catrall: "That makes you an accomplice." 



After obliviously tipping off an odd man at his hotel's bar of Brosnan's whereabouts, McGregor wakes up to a media circus. Brosnan's conversations with his lawyers (including a demure Timothy Hutton) and handlers about where he should relocate in order to stay out of the hands of the law is undeniably a moment in which Polanski's real life predicament pulsates through the screen.



In a masterfully shot sequence, McGregor drives his deceased predecessor's car following the stored GPS directions and ends up at the house of Tom Wilkinson as a retired Harvard professor with possible CIA connections who denies any connection to Brosnan. McGregor has pictures that suggest otherwise, but Wilkinson insists. 



Wilkinson's edgy presence evokes good memories of MICHAEL CLAYTON - another polished and pleasing thriller in the same class as THE GHOST WRITER. Despite a few scenes that drag slightly, this is a powerful and intensely satisfying film. It's the definition of a slow burner with an ending that is absolutely on fire. I was seriously blown away by the construction and impact of the final shots. 



That Polanski can still make such a vital piece of cinema - one that I believe will stand in his canon comfortably along ROSEMARY'S BABY, CHINATOWN, FRANTIC, and THE PIANIST - at this complicated point in his career is no less than exhilarating. So whether or not you can separate the art from the artist, this is a must see. I



t's a great story; it has great performances (even Jim Belushi as a publishing CEO puts in solid work!), a great gripping score by Alexandre Desplat, and, most importantly great direction. Just shy of a masterpiece, and I know it may be to early to say this, but it's already one of the best films of the year.

More later...

DVD Review: WE LIVE IN PUBLIC

WE LIVE IN PUBLIC (Dir. Ondi Timoner, 2009)






“This is the story of the greatest internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.” So say the opening titles, aptly presented as white on black computer text, of WE LIVE IN PUBLIC, a frenetic and fascinating documentary that's very concerned with how modern media affects all of our lives. 



The so called internet pioneer in the spotlight is Josh Harris, a researcher / developer who thrived in the early days of the World Wide Web, became a dot com multi-millionaire then…well, you know what happened to those guys.





Oh, but there’s so much more to the story than that. Harris wanted to go beyond capitalizing on the daily uses of technology; he wanted to perform experiments on a huge interactive level to prove his theories of how this new exciting technology was going to take us over as a society. 





Not take us over in a TERMINATOR sense, mind you – though I bet Harris wouldn’t completely rule that out.

Director Ondi Timoner (DiG), who narrates in a nice conversational manner, tells us that like many folks in New York of the 90’s: “I had no idea who Josh Harris was, until I happened into one of his legendary parties.” 



Cue crazy raw video footage of naked and semi-naked 24 hour party people illuminated by flashing strobe lights while rave music pounds.




Although Harris, dubbed “the Warhol of Web TV” by New York Magazine spent a good chunk of the 90’s advancing webcasting with a company he founded, Pseudo.com, his heart was more into the art of it all.



After leaving Pseudo in late 1999 with his share of the stock, those legendary parties morphed into a large video project called “Quiet: We Live In Public” in which he built a sizable bunker including a Japanese-style capsule hotel under New York City and invited 100 partying artists to live there. Web cams were installed in every room so that every action and utterance could be followed by anybody who had online access. "Everything's free except your image. That we own." Harris proudly declares in the only line that is repeated in the documentary. As you might imagine, this bizarre experiment got way out of hands.



People brought in guns, there was a lot of physical conflict, and the police thought it was a “doom cult” (it wasn’t long after the Heaven’s Gate tragedy) so Mayor Guliani finally shuts the whole thing down. So Harris moves on to his next project. He outfits a New York apartment with webcams in every room and, with his new girlfriend Tanya Corrin, lived there for 6 months.



People online could watch them eat (there was a camera in the fridge) have sex, go to the bathroom (yep, a cam in the toilet), bathe, and towards the end – violently argue with tons of people in chat rooms commenting on every detail. Later, after the experiment and their relationship was long over, Harris says that Corrin was a “fake girlfriend...I knew it was going to end in public.” Her disbelieving response to that is a cutting moment. 



The dot com bust of 2000 writes the next chapter of Harris’s story. He literally buys the farm – an apple farm in upstate New York and he turns his back on a world where the internet is going to explode exactly in all the ways he predicted. When he tries to get back into that world he finds he isn’t the famous pioneer he thought he was. No matter – he lives in Ethiopia now and says he is plotting his next big art project. 



Of all the sharp interview clips throughout, some of the best remarks come from Jason Calacanis - an internet mogul/blogger (and sometime actor) who definitely deserves to get his own career sweeping bio-doc some day. 



What’s best about this never tedious half bio-doc/half cultural phenomenon exploration is that Timoner creates a structured and thoughtful piece of art out of the fractured remains of the pile of projects, theories, conceptual conceits of a messy yet stunningly prophetic life. 



Harris was definitely ahead of his time, but we’ve caught up with him with every “look at me” tweet, profile tweak, and especially every blog posting (wink!), so now that we’re here – what next? This film won’t, and can’t, answer that, but its insightful intricacies of how we got here, and how we may be in danger of getting lost in cyberspace from one click too many, are among the most deeply penetrating of any social concern documentary out there. 



Extra Features: The bonus stuff is fairly typical, but there's worthwhile separate commentaries by Timoner and Harris. Both are worthwhile, but if you're going to listen to just one of them - go with Harris's. He's watching the film for the first time ("I haven't even seen the trailer") so he says some pretty funny things: "I'm between fortunes", "they say a lot of things about me but no one's ever accused me of throwing a bad party", and, my personal favorite: "Andy Warhol - I'm his wet dream." 



More later...

The Wrong Alice Indeed

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (Dir. Tim Burton, 2010)





I had forgotten that in my review of SWEENEY TODD (January 13th, 2008) I had joked that I was only going to see Burton/Depp productions at Movies At Timberlyne in Chapel Hill. Since I now live in Raleigh, I'm so glad that wasn't a strict vow because this really wouldn't have been worth the 40 minute drive. 




This is exactly what I thought it was going to be - another CGI fueled fantasy fest with Depp dancing around like a maniac as dark yet ostensibly beautiful imagery bombards the viewer.




We all know the basic story here so I'll try and keep it brief. A 19 year old Alice (Mia Wasikowska) in Victorian times escapes from her oppressive family and the unwanted marriage proposal from a chinless Bourgeois doofus of a suiter (Leo Bill) into a magical land. She encounters, you know, a White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen), a Blue Caterpillar (voiced by Alan Rickman), a Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry), and twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both voiced by Matt Lucas). 



For villainy's sake there is the Red Queen - Helena Bonhma Carter (you knew she'd have to be here somewhere) with a disturbingly huge head, who has stolen the reign of the land from her sister, the blindingly White Queen (Anne Hathaway) - who strangely has little presence. 



Also there's Crispin Glover, who doesn't look like he likes working in ginormous budget world, plays Stayne Knave of Hearts, the ominous head of the Red Queen's army.

But of course most folks won't care about any of that stuff - they care about Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter.




For some reason his make-up with his green eyes and fiery orange hair made him look like Madonna at times. His patently wacky performance will surely please hardcore Depp fans, but his take on the character, much like his turns in previous Burton work as Willy Wonka and Sweeney Todd, has that not so fresh feeling.



I personally feel that Depp and Burton should be separated for a decade. If they want to come back in ten years and make another Disney re-imagining of something that's been done to death in the past, so be it. But give us, or at least me, a break for a bit!



The film builds to a big battle climax which too greatly resembles the terrain and aesthetics of the STAR WARS prequels. The humorless execution and the distinct lack of charm made the third act particularly hard going.



Still, I can't completely slag it off. On the whole it's a well made and reasonably entertaining movie that I think a lot of people will enjoy. There are inspired flights of animated fancy and some close to great Gilliam-esque visual splendor. 



I just felt overall that as played by Wasikowska, Alice was too much of a blank slate, Depp was too weird, Glover not weird enough, Bonham Carter not as amusing as she's supposed to be, and the whole remake enterprise ambiance was a bit off.



All through the first half of the film, seemingly every character says that Alice is the "wrong Alice." I'm not going to spoil why it is they say that, but of the dozens of adaptations out there in which to experience Lewis Carroll's immortal story, it's an apt statement because this sure isn't the right one.

More later...

GREEN ZONE: The Film Babble Blog Review

GREEN ZONE (Dir. Paul Greengrass, 2010)








Going in to this movie I knew precious little about it. I hadn't seen a trailer or even given the movie poster more than a passing glance. I only knew it was a Matt Damon/Paul Greengrass/war movie. 

But in the first five minutes I knew exactly where it was going to go. In those five minutes, Damon, as a US Chief Warrant Officer in 2003 war torn Iraq, pulls up with his crew to a location that Intel tells them houses Weapons of Mass Destruction. They find the rotting remains of a toilet factory instead. 

Damon goes back to his superiors and tells them that the WMDs weren't there (or any of the other locations they've been to) and the Intel is bad. They sternly tell him to stand down. From that description, do you see where this is going? 

Do you see shoot-outs, shady informers, sleazy politicians, and compromised journalists? 

Do you see a climax involving Damon, aggressively and a tad bit violently, confronting the sleazy politician (played by Greg Kinnear) over the government conspiracy spreading lies in a public place/photo op? 

That's what I call that "THE FUGITIVE ending" and it, like everything else in this less than thrilling thriller, you've seen before.

Many many times before. This is a standard issue liberal-minded political action drama that made me wish Damon and Greengrass had just made another BOURNE movie. In last year's THE INFORMANT! (one of last year's best films and a role he should've been nominated for IMHO) Damon really pulled off something different; a fully realized character that was almost unrecognizable.

In this and play it safe parts like INVICTUS, he's just plain old Matt Damon going through the motions. We never get any sense of who the character Damon is beyond his military conviction. There is no phone call from back home or any line that tells us who he is outside of this plot. 

The lack of such insights makes one really appreciate the newly Oscar Best Picture approved THE HURT LOCKER so much more. The compelling drive of that vital Iraq war film really reduces such a lackluster work as GREEN ZONE to the soulless shaky cam rubble it is. 

I could be wrong but I swear Matt Damon did not smile once in the entirity of that movie. That might sound like a minor quibble but when he flashes that sharp glaring grin it can be quite stinging. Since I didn't smile once either I can't really blame him. 

More later...

Oscars 2010 Recap

In the happiest moment of the evening, the Dude finally abided.

Well, my biggest prediction this year was that I was going to get more wrong than the last few years and I was right about that. I got 13 of 24 which is pretty poor although I did get all the major categories correct (BEST PICTURE, BEST DIRECTOR, BEST ACTOR, BEST ACTRESS, and both of the SUPPORTING ones).



I was way off in all the tech awards but hey it was fun throwing those darts just the same. 



The ones I got wrong:



ART DIRECTION: AVATAR. What I predicted: SHERLOCK HOLMES. I really thought they'd throw HOLMES a bone. Just one.

COSTUME DESIGN:THE YOUNG VICTORIA. I said COCO BEFORE CHANEL because it seemed like the most costumey. I haven't seen either movie actually.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: THE HURT LOCKER

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: PRECIOUS. I said UP IN THE AIR. Seems like a no brainer now.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: MUSIC BY PRUDENCE. I had picked CHINA'S UNNATURAL DISASTER: THE TEARS OF SICHUAN PROVINCE. This resulted in one of the only surprising moments on the entire telecast: Elinor Burkett pulled what many are calling a "Kanye" Oscar moment mash-up.

MAKEUP: STAR TREK. I thought STAR TREK was going to win one of the 4 awards it was nominated for just not this one. Still it seems deserved.

SOUND MIXING and SOUND EDITING: THE HURT LOCKER won both of these which I really didn't expect. Last year I also chose wrong but made the statement that I should've have known not to vote for the same movie in both sound editing and mixing. Since that's what happened here I guess I really learned nothing.

ANIMATED SHORT: LOGORAMA. I liked LOGORAMA but really thought WALLACE AND GROMIT IN ‘A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH’ had the edge. Sigh.

BEST FOREIGN FILM: THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES (Argentina) Another I haven't seen. I'm brobably going to see THE WHITE RIBBON, which I wrongly predicted, this week since it just came to my area.

As for the show itself, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin had their moments. I agree with Jon Stewart that Martin had the best line of the evening:

"Anyone who has ever worked with Meryl Streep always ends up saying the exact same thing: 'Can that woman act? And, 'What's up with all the Hitler memorabilia?"


Some other highlights included a tribute to John Hughes by way of a snazzy montage and a bevy of the actors who came of age in his films: Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Macaulay Culkin, Anthony Michael Hall, Jon Cryer, Ally Sheedy, and Matthew Broderick.



Shouldn't she be wearing pink?

Ben Stiller had a great deadpan presenter bit - he was made up like one of the Na'vis from AVATAR. Pretty funny stuff.



"This seemed like a better idea in rehearsal."

Okay so I'm pretty Oscar-ed out. Stay tuned for more new movie reviews - a slew of DVD reviews and some major new releases (HOT TUB TIME MACHINE!) that are coming your way.

More later...

Hey Kids - Funtime Oscar Picks 2010!

This is an incredibly obvious statement, but when it comes to Oscar predictions there are 2 paths to take – what one thinks will win and what one wants to win. Sometimes a gut feeling is difficult to differentiate from a personal preference so on a few I’ve decided to denote the ones I’m the most up in the air about (no BEST PICTURE pun there – really).

1. BEST PICTURE: THE HURT LOCKER




My gut has been sayng, no, shouting AVATAR, but I just have to go with my personal preference. 



Many critics have been saying that it's a coin toss between the 2, while others say that the vote will be split and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS will pull a SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and shock everybody with its dark horse win. Despite recent controversy, I intensely hope the modestly budgeted, little seen THE HURT LOCKER gets the gold Sunday night.



Of those 2 front contenders that is - my favorite film of the year - A SERIOUS MAN - was nominated, but in this particular race it's by far a long shot. 



2. BEST DIRECTOR: Kathryn Bigelow - Roger Ebert said of Bigelow on Oprah Tuesday: "If you vote against her , you'll be going against years of precedent that say the winner of the Director's Guild Award will win the Oscar." So there's that, but since even her ex-husband James Cameron thinks she should win she really is a shoo-in. 




3. BEST ACTOR: Jeff Bridges





Everybody I see online seem to be calling it for Bridges - consider me among them. It would be so nice for the 5 time nominee to abide this time. 



4. BEST ACTRESS: Sandra Bullock - THE BLIND SIDE was the only one of the 10 BEST PICTURE nominees that I didn't see so I admit I'm jumping on the bandwagon here of all the folks who say its Bullock's year. It does really feel like she's got the momentum and support so like Bridges it'll really be surprising if she doesn't get it. 



5. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz

A personal preference AND a gut feeling. Although he had relatively little screen time, Waltz's cold blooded yet sophisticated Nazi was as cutting and memorable as a supporting part can possibly be.

6. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Mo’Nique - Walking out of PRECIOUS last year, my first thought was that Mo’Nique was definitely going to get an Oscar. That thought has never waivered.

And the rest:

7. ART DIRECTION: SHERLOCK HOLMES 

8. CINEMATOGRAPHY: AVATAR 

9. COSTUME DESIGN: COCO BEFORE CHANEL

10. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: THE COVE

11. DOCUMENTARY SHORT: CHINA'S UNNATURAL DISASTER: THE TEARS OF SICHUAN PROVINCE

12. FILM EDITING: THE HURT LOCKER 

13. MAKEUP: THE YOUNG VICTORIA 

14. VISUAL EFFECTS: AVATAR

15. ORIGINAL SCORE: UP

16. ORIGINAL SONG: “The Weary Kind” from CRAZY HEART

17. ANIMATED SHORT: WALLACE AND GROMIT IN ‘A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH’

It would be easy to just go with Wallace and Gromit sight unseen, but after viewing all the animated shorts last night at the Carolina Theater in Durham it's impossible to deny that it's infinitely the most superior offering. LOGORAMA is kinda cool too though.

18. LIVE ACTION SHORT: THE NEW TENANTS - My gut feeling is the Cheronobyl tragedy THE DOOR, but I'm pulling for the dark comic THE NEW TENANTS. 

It has a great absurd edge to it and great turns by its spare cast including David Rakoff, Jamie Harrold, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Kevin Corrigan.

19. SOUND EDITING: STAR TREK

20. SOUND MIXING: AVATAR

21. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS by Quentin Tarantino

22. ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: UP IN THE AIR by Jason Reitman

23. ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: UP

24. BEST FOREIGN FILM: THE WHITE RIBBON

By the way, I don't consider myself any kind of expert - I'm just a guy who loves movies and loves to write about them. My biggest prediction this year is that I'm going to get more wrong than usual. Tune in Monday to find out how many. 

More later...

Ongoing Adventures In Altman Appraisal

Seeing all of the films that iconic director Robert Altman made in his half century career can be quite a task these days.

Several titles have never been released on DVD (including BREWSTER McCLOUD, HealH, and COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN) and one of his first features, COUNTDOWN, is only available as part of Warner Archives Collection’s “Burn On Demand” series so you can’t get it from Netflix.

Recently, inspired by reading the excellent “Robert Altman: The Oral Biography” by Mitchell Zuckoff, I’ve been catching up with the handful of movies of Altman’s movies that I haven’t yet seen. These 3 films are easily available but still fairly obscure - here are my thoughts:

THE JAMES DEAN STORY (1957)

The opening titles of this - one of the very first bio-docs ever - declare that this is “a different kind of motion picture.” They go on to explain: “The presence of the leading character in this film has been made possible by the use of existing motion picture material, tape recordings of his voice, and by means of a new technique – dynamic exploration of the still photograph.”

If that sounds pretentious well you haven't heard anything yet. Orson Welles-ish sounding narrator Martin Gabel reads from a script over the hundreds of photos and footage such overwrought lines as:

“He looked at the ocean, and was envious of its power.”

“He kept a revolver - which made him feel safe... but they found it and took it away.” (No more explanation is given to this)

“He tried to believe it when they said they liked him.”

“Success was nothing more than the concealing leaf which covered the tree of his loneliness, and after every job the tree was bare.”

If you can get past such irritating pretension, and the fact that this was an exploitation film rushed into production after Dean's tragic death, there is much here to enjoy. Such a wealth of black and white photographs, whether they are dynamically explored or not, is displayed - many of which I'd not seen before. I'm sure there is most likely some coffee table book out there that contains them, but this is a well edited collage worth seeking out.

Perhaps one should just turn the sound down and put on some music while watching.

Another notable aspect is that Altman re-created Dean's fatal car accident for the documentary. Producer George W. George described the incident in Zuckoff's book as "pure Bob." He elaborates: "Well, son of a bitch, he goes and figures it out by lashing a camera onto the end of a long piece of wood and putting it on the bumper of his car. And driving down the road that Jimmy Dean had taken that day! It looked like Bob was going to have a crash, but son of a bitch; he missed crashing by about two feet. He was driving the car!"

By no means an essential piece of Altman's canon, THE JAMES DEAN STORY is still an interesting curio.

QUINTET (1979) I purchased this film as part of an odd Altman boxset - the other films were M*A*S*H, A WEDDING, and A PERFECT COUPLE which I had all seen before. QUINTET is a real oddity in his filmography: a sci fi tale set in a future ice age. Paul Newman, in his second starring role for Altman (the first was BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS) plays a stoic seal hunter named Essex who finds himself in the middle of the deadly game of the title.

The movie drags quite a bit with sequences that just sit there. If tightened up considerably it could make for a gripping short film, but you really have to be an Altman fanboy to get through it as it is. I had the close captioning on when I watched it and was amused at how many times the word "groans" was used in the descriptions of sound effects i.e. "the water groans", "the ice groans", "the wind groans", etc. At one point I joked: "the audience groans."

O.C. AND STIGGS (1985) Although this is considered Altman's "least successful film" I was looking forward to watching it mainly because of Nathan Rabin's "My Year Of Flops Case File #54" entry at the A.V. Club in which he concluded that it was a "secret success". That's much more favorable a response than what I experienced. The premise of a 80's teen comedy with a "slobs versus the snobs" scenario isn't a good match for Altman even if he claims it was supposed to be a satire of the genre.

Very little satire is actually present in this tale of 2 hipsters (Daniel Jenkins and Neill Barry) who come off as a poor man's pair of Ferris Buellers. They torment a insurance mogul (Altman regular Paul Dooley) who lives in a garish house with destructive shenanigans, none of which is even remotely amusing. Altman's patented style can still be identified - overlapping dialogue and slow panning long shots - but no unity to this material can be sensed.

It's also sad to see cheap shots such as riffs on "The Pink Panther Theme" and the Doors "The End" intro when Dennis Hopper, who appears in his APOCALYPSE NOW get up, enters a scene. Of the supporting cast which includes Jane Curtin, Jon Cryer, Cynthia Nixon, and Ray Walston, only Martin Mull appears to be having a good time, but, even then, he looks like he's just bidding time until the wrap party after shooting is finished.

The only bonus feature on the DVD is an 8 minute interview entitled "Altman On O.C. And Stiggs" that should've been called "Altman Defends O.C. And Stiggs". Altman: "There was a time when these teenage films were kind of in mode. And I hated them...I just hated them. And I thought here's a chance to do satire on something I feel strongly about." The problem is that his strong hatred of the genre shows in every frame of this film more than any notion of satire. Still, as much as I disliked it, it's not my least favorite Altman film - that would be DR. T AND THE WOMEN (2000).

Okay! That's enough Altman for now. Just a few more titles to go to finish his canon - and then there's his television work (episodes of Combat!, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bonanza, and many others) to consider so look forward to more adventures in Altman appraisal somewhere down the line.

More later...