'Céline and Julie Go Boating' - Going Down The Rabbit Hole With Rivette's 1974 Surrealist Classic

You ever go see a movie that's challenging, hard to get through, but ultimately incredibly rewarding and you're damn glad you sat through the entire thing?

As many, many have noted before us, Jacques Rivette's magically fanciful and wantonly elliptical 3 1/2 hour 1974 classic, "Céline And Julie Go Boating" is many different things to many different people and often all at once.

Part Alice In Wonderland like fantasy, part absurdist comedy, part feminist manifesto and part post-psychedelic escapade, 'Boating' is bizarre, sometimes tedious, nonsensical and masterfully oblique; a hypnotically surreal experience to be sure.

It's the type of expressive film that leaves critics writing breathless, and impassioned panegyrics (like the one above) trying to describe the film's circular oddness and lasting impression and with good reason. Yet it's not for the faint of heart and only for the almost grovelling patient cinephile. It is rather fucking long and slow-moving in moments, but we caught the film at BAM's Directors' Fortnight at 40 series in Brooklyn, and while the film was lop-sided, it was never impenetrable and certainly resonates long after its gone.

What is the film actually about? Good question. Subtitled, "Phantom Ladies Over Paris," the film is a long-winding and circuitous loop (or "story"); one half about accidental friendship and intertwined identity and a second section that somehow evolves into a madcap murder mystery via psychedelic candy. Two female friends, a librarian (Dominique Labourier), and a cabaret magician (Juliet Berto), who become fast friends, begin to overlap in personality and begin to share everything, including a collective imagination that eventually becomes driven by the use of these seemingly psychedelic bonbons that induce visions of another world that may or may not be a realm of ghosts. In this otherworldly haunted house, a evil family controls a sweet and naive little girl. She is apparently murdered and the crystal ball-like hallucinations via the magic candies soon give the duo the ability to break through to this dimension and its past, solve the mystery of how she dies and saves the girl. That's not necessarily doing it all justice, but it'll have to do. PS If it sounds like allusions to LSD experimentation, Rivette has denied this was the case, it's definitely much more Alice In Wonderland anyhow.

This temporal fantasia also becomes meta-textual and self-referential, with the heroines commenting on their adventure, addressing the audience, and revealing how lost they are in one another's stories even as they shape the narrative. Equal parts enigmatic and playful, the film is replete with hidden references, clues, and other puzzle pieces that might help solve the film or might just confound all the more (Céline says, "Every time I see a fish, I feel amnesia," at one point. It's a throw away line, but later on their house has a pet fish and they bother suffer from amnesia).

At its worst the film can be slow-building and it could be perceived as pretentious, but it's too fun and lighthearted to be accused of true contemptible chin-stroking jackassery. The film concludes where it began and ends with a cat staring at the audience which could be Jacques Rivette's mischievous Cheshire cat-like way of slyly saying, "Can you believe I made you sit through that nonsense?"

"Popping a hard candy into your mouth may never be the same again!" —Time Out London wrote, alluding to the film's psychedelic drug-like candy.

"Rivette’s masterpiece, possibly the most fun you’ll ever have at the cinema, [is] scary, evocative, exhilarating, and essential,” they wrote.

Time Out New York says, "It's the Ulysses of moving pictures: You can feel Rivette exploring the art form’s modes of expression and then erasing their borders, one by one."

The New York Times writes, "For a movie so dense with literary and cinematic allusions and perceptual puzzles, Jacques Rivette's 1974 ''Céline and Julie Go Boating'' remains improbably lighthearted."

The film just finished its run in New York/Brookyn and is not available on DVD in North America. If it comes to your down, bring some redbull and power through until the end. You'll be glad you made it through the experience. In researching the backstory of the film, we were sad to hear that the lithsome brunette, Juliet Berto, died of cancer at 43. The Voice says of the the vivacious heroine. "She is youth, 24 frames per second; it seems outrageous that cancer could even contemplate, much less befall, such a vibrant creature."

Scene: Celine & Julie Go Boating (for the jackass that didn't want me to blather on).

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Crispin Glover Has A 'Making My Lunch!'-Like Meltdown

Looks like Crispin Glover has had another freakout, albiet a slightly milder one it seems.

Glover was in Phoenix promoting his "deeply weird art film "What Is It?," which features actors afflicted with Down syndrome, naked chicks, swastikas, and a butt-load of dead snails." [full disclosure, we sadly have not seen this yet, but were dying to do so when it first came out in 2005).

Glover's eccentric behavior and odd demands for being paid in cash at the end of the evening for every appearance started to grate on the mom n' pop indie art house that was putting on his film.

"He wanted it in all the nice, new bills because he takes his money to the Czech Republic, where he has land or a castle or something," Beesley-Brown the owner of the local Chandler Cinemas said. "Apparently, he has to take all the nice bills over there because the Czechs won't take ripped bills."

At one point he apparently freaked out and went apeshit on a young projectionist for what he believed was a fuck-up on her part.

"He built himself up into this very stressed state of mind, pacing and gradually raising his voice, not really letting anyone have a word in edgewise. He made it clear that he felt we had damaged his film and wasn't going to be satisfied until we agreed that we were going to pay for the replacement." The story goes back and forth and back and forth and, zzzzz.....

Hey, this scene with Crispin Glover from "Wild At Heart" is one of the greatest random and very brief flashbacks in the history of cinema! It is a constant source of amusement (wish we could find the whole thing, but it's not that much longer). Crispin Glover's notorious appearance on David Letterman is always a riot too [watch it here].
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Can They Kick It? Oh Hell Yes They Can: The RZA & Hans Zimmer To Bro Down Musically

How fresh is this? Wu-Tang Clan magnateThe RZA and celebrated Academy Award-winning composer Hans Zimmer ("The Lion King," "Gladiator," "The Thin Red Line") have teamed-up to do the score to the upcoming film, "Babylon A.D." starring Vin Diesel. "The RZA’s team and Hans Zimmer’s team have combined to create a hybrid kind of score for this movie that’s based in the future. So I think it’s going to be a good vibe for the audience out there, and it’s a good movie anyway – a very thought-provoking movie," the Wu-Tang Abbot said.

The RZA also confirms that yes, Quentin Tarantino actually has been hard at work on something [evidently "Inglorious Bastards"] cause he's been squirreled away to write. Maybe Cannes 2009 isn't that far off. [ed. jk, he'll never make it] "I don’t know [what about more 'Kill Bill']. I know Tarantino has been writing for the last three months. You only get to see him one time a month (laughs). He’s in the chambers and I don’t know what he’s going to come out with. I don’t know what he’s bringing out. We’ll see. He’s been talking about 'Kill Bill,' but I’ll leave that in his world." [BackBeat]
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Shane West Will Probably Not Cut His Chest Open When Singing For The Reunited Germs (We Hope)

Shane West the actor that plays Darby Crash in the upcoming Germs biopic, "What We Do Is Secret," has performed the part of the deceased L.A. punk icon so convincingly, that the surviving members of the Germs - including ex-Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear - have decided to go on tour with the kid for their upcoming reunion tour.

That's kind of really nuts, but it kind of makes sense given how insanely dedicated West was to playing Crash and how far he went to be authentic, including undergoing several dental operations to unfix his teeth so they'd be as fucked up and gnarly as Crash's were. The tour starts on August 8, the same day the movie opens up in limited release, what coincidence! [NY Observer via The Daily Swarm]

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Is The MPAA Giving The Special Olympics Of Film Directors A Problem?

Kevin Smith - perhaps the most painfully overrated director in the history of indie geek cinema - is apparently gleefully battling over the MPAA over a potential NC-17 rating for his upcoming guffaw-fest "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" starring Seth Rogen And Elizabeth Banks (clearly aping Apatow obvs).

"They are really fucking around with us. Those dicks! A guy fucking a donkey, they ain't got no problem with. But a man and a woman having sex they seem to have real issues with, for some weird reason. It's insane. It's completely insane," Seth Rogen told MTV.
We hate to throw old co-pals under the bus, but this graph from a separate MTV article about Smith makes our skin crawl.

"Kevin Smith is the David Mamet of comedy. Both are modern-day wordsmiths who compose poetic language that elevates the voice of the common man, spoken in a stylized manner that demands devotion, balancing every philosophical comment with an F-bomb for good measure."

Yikes, we couldn't disagree more. Back to 'Porno.' Whatever, guys, that teaser trailer sucked. Concentrate on your jokes and get back to us later. [MTV]

One of our most eagerly anticipated films from Sundance 2008, "Ballast" - a film we unfortunately missed at the recent Sundance @ BAM Brooklyn screenings - has backed out of its deal with IFC Films and instead made a deal with Strand and Required Viewing. Both parties called the parting amicable. The indie drama set in the Mississippi delta, about a suicide that affects multiple people's lives won at ton of acclaim (plus a directing award for filmmaker Lance Hammer) at Sundance '08 in Utah and just sounds kind of great. [Variety]

"Sir Ben is a gentleman first and foremost. He definitely deserves that title, Sir. He's just a humble, professional individual. I don't remember having to break the ice, that's how comfortable I was around him. Sometimes when you do scenes with people, after the director calls cut, nobody really says nothing — that uncomfortable silence. But in between our cuts, everybody was just talking, you know? Kicking it." - Method Man says working with Sir Ben Kingsley on the set of "The Wackness," was chill, just like hanging out with other Wu bangers. [Entertainment Weekly]

Is 'Spider-Man 4' coming in May of 2011? And maybe with the principal actors and directors if the script is good? [L.A. Times]

Extended Play has two great stories on the music of The Jonas Brothers' upcoming film and the "Scott Pilgrim" film starring Michael Cera. We reserve the right to write a full-blown piece on the later when we finally get some sleep. We wanted to give EP some shine though [Extended Play]

Will Christian Bale play alongside Russell Crowe and Sienna Miller in Ridley Scott's new romantic, love-triangle twist on the Robin Hood story (as the good-natured thieving archer)? Seems like the director is keen on casting him if he can. Crowe plays the Sheriff of Nottingham and Miller will portray Maid Marion. [/Film]

"I'm a teleporter. ... I'm here, I'm there, I'm everywhere. Boom, boom, boom! My character's a black Texan. He's not a cowboy, but his gear suggests that he is. He's just a badass who'll whoop your ass." - Black Eyed Pea Will.I.Am. reveals the thrilling details about his role in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." [MTV]
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'Freaks & Geeks' Pimp Edition Coming Out October 28

How rad is this? Not familiar with the origins of the Judd Apatow family players, heart and balls style comedy and the humble begins of actors Jason Segel, Seth Rogen and James Franco on the short-lived, but beloved TV show, "Freaks & Geeks?" Run don't walk, srsly.

According to an Amazon pre-order listing, the very-pimp 8 disc "Freaks And Geeks Yearbook Edition" DVD will be available October 28th via Shout!. It's a little pricey ($118.99), but gonna be well worth it, trust us.

No details yet, but presumably it has all the 2004, 6-disc version had and more. [TVShowsonDVD]

The show had a great soundtrack that featured a score by then a relatively-unknown musician Michael Andrews, who has since gone on to score "Walk Hard," and Miranda July's "Me And You And Everyone We Know," and become a pretty in-demand L.A. producer/multi-instrumentalist in the vein of Jon Brion that's constantly working with excellent L.A. singer Inara George both on her solo work and the her new group The Bird & The Bee (who were featured in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall").

Jason Segel's dorky but endlessly endearing, Rush-loving drummer character on the show sang a bunch of songs on the show including "Lady L" (written and sung by the Segel) and the Doobie Brothers' "Jesus Is Just Alright With Me" (the show also included tons of great mullet-rock cuts by Van Halen, Cheap Trick, April Wine, Deep Purple, Styx, Santana and more; it was set in 1981 after all). We've been sitting on songs from the soundtrack for some time now, so here they are. Now if we could only find the inside-CD art that features shots of a very young Franco and Segel rocking out cause they are priceless. See you at Bestbuy or some similar type place on October 28. If you buy up my copy I will cockpunch you.


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Lucky Bastards Giulia y los Tellarini Get Their Track Featured In Woody Allen's 'Barcelona' By Pure Fluke

Spanish band Giulia y los Tellarini are some lucky bastards.

The girlfriend of one of the band members left the group's CD at the director's Barcelona hotel, the fashionable Hotel D'Arts. Somehow the music fell into Woody Allen's hands as he was in the city shooting "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," his upcoming love-triangle story and first feature film set in Spain.

Pretty soon the band's MySpace page was getting messages from someone claiming to be from Allen's camp that wanted to get in touch with the band. "I didn't even know about it. I thought it was a joke. I didn't think that something like this could happen," singer Giulia Tellarini told Billboard.

And now the group - who's music mixes traditional Spanish music with French chanson, as well as tango, jazz and Latin boleros - are the featured track in the trailer to Allen's 'Cristina' and its a song ("Barcelona") that's becoming a pretty sought after one (we even tried to figure it out who it was until some blog farted and our ADD attention took off elsewhere).

"I equate Barcelona with love," Tellaraini said, which is perfect considering all the three-ways, lesbian trysts, make-out sessions and attempts at love and sex there are in the film.

The soundtrack to the film also includes Giulia y Los Tellarinis' song "La Ley del Retiro," but they hope people stick around for longer than just the film's box-office lifespan. "We hope that people will appreciate the music -- not just the buzz it's getting because it's part of the film." Allen calls the track "perfect."

The group's first album Eusebio was released in May and is available on ITunes now.
Trailer: "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Watch: Giulia y los Tellarini - "Barcelona"

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The Five Worst Twist Endings In Cinema History

Everyone loves a twist in their movies (really?), but all to often the attempts fall flat as a decent movie goes sour with cheesy turns that leave you angry and feeling that two hours of your life have just been flushed down the shitter. Here at The Playlist we thought it was about time to look back on those films that in their attempt to be clever and shocking fell flat on their over budgeted faces.

The Village: M. Night Shyamalamading dong's epic tale of a group of hippie professors from the university of Pennsylvania who buck society and decide to move to the woods was D.O.A. Marketed as a horror film, audiences were understandable disappointed when they went to see a monster movie without a monster and a contriving plot built soley to reach the shocking twist ending. The setting of the movie was not actually a remote village in 1897 as we were led to believe (as well as the majority of the characters in the movie) but really a commune deep in the forest in the present day! [ed. OMG] The monsters that were threatening the villagers the entire time were actually fabrications made up by the town elders to keep the offspring from wandering off. The real horror here for audiences was realizing that they had just paid to see this shit excuse for a movie.

Unbreakable: In this follow-up to the successful "Sixth Sense", Shyamalan fooled us again into buying tickets for this monstrosity, by casting Bruce Willis as the sole survivor of a horrific plane crash and Samuel L. Jackson as the avid comic book nerd who insists that Willis must have latent super powers. As the film progresses, Jackson helps Willis develop his powers only to reveal at the end: Ta daa! Jackson is a super villain who was trying to find his purpose in life - an arch enemy! James Lipton-like in its breathless ridiculousness.

Lady in the Water: A writer who hopes to change the world with his words (played by Shyamalan himself just in case you couldn't get the message) must sacrifice himself and an asshole movie critic who has his doubts about the young man's genius then gets killed (subtle). Cleveland Heep (played by Paul Giamatti), is a super attendant in an apartment complex that is forced to find the chosen people who live in his building that posses the power to save the water nymph that is inhabiting their swimming pool from a mysterious predator (jigga what?). The Chubby Checker-like twist: we learn that the characters originally thought as the chosen ones are all wrong, and the true ones were under our nose the whole time (and that tricky M. Night was dropping hints the whole time!). Magical.

Signs: In this Shyamalan flick an unstoppable force of Aliens attack the earth, but wait, we find out in the end the Aliens were allergic to water the whole time. Why did these creatures invade a planet thats surface is 70% water, and attacking humans whose bodies are saturated with the stuff? Apparently these aliens were mentally retarded extra-terrestrials.

The Sixth Sense: The plot follows a child psychologist who helps heal an funny looking, emotionally damaged kid who "sees dead people," only to discover at the end that he's a ghost who was dead the whole time. An interesting device to use a protagonist that is clueless, stupid and in complete utter denial - kind of like an existentialist Casper the friendly dumbass. While less insipid then Shyamalan's later work, it still has major holes. Who would send their kid to a dead psychologist, and come on, at some point one would realize that NOBODY FUCKING TALKS TO THEM (expect the kid that sees dead people).

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London Scaffolders Try And Tell Us Something About Will Smith's New Movie

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Laboriously Long WWII Quentin Tarantino Epic 'Inglorious Bastards' Now Slightly Less Excessive; Cannes 2009? Still Fat Chance

Quentin Tarantino writes in longhand when writing screenplays and when he does so he pauses every few minutes to smile in satisfaction to himself and think, "Man, this is genius!" And when he gets an idea, he writes them all down. And he never. ever.ever.edits himself. This can be evidenced by almost all his films past "Pulp Fiction" and certainly the Kill Bill films that were both unnecessarily bloated, overlong pictures for absolutely no reason other than the director clearly having fallen in love with his own words and having the final cut to keep them there.

So it's no real surprise that Tarantino's much-discussed, long-delayed WWII epic, "Inglorious Bastards," is now apparently going to be two separate films according to an interview with Ain't It Cool News (ain't it!). Well, hello, the film was originally envisioned as three films. Now we'll be just slightly less jet lagged when we wake up and these two epics are over.

The interview also confirms that the script is essentially pretty much one big rip-off of "The Dirty Dozen."

AICN, who are supposed to be masters of this domain (bad ass cool cinema, yeah!) appear to think the non-casting news is new - that QT only bandied about names like Stallone and Schwarzenneger, he actually hadn't talked to anyone or cast anyone - but like we said last time, this is something he mentioned in 2005.

Quentin said the film would (ideally) be ready for Cannes 2009 at Cannes this year in May. With two films in production and casting and... Oh, whatever...
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New 'Burn After Reading' Trailer Says Cut The Shit, Let's Do This

The Coen brothers are quirky n' stuff, right? Lots of dialogue, zany characters, mad cap stories, etc, etc., yeah? Fuck that. The new trailer for "Burn After Reading," is completely different in tone than the first one and seems to say, "Alright, cut the bullshit, faggots. Let's put some asses in theaters seats."

Was it cut by someone other than the Coen brothers, possibly in a suit, resembling Harvey Weinstein if some such figure existed over at Focus Features? Was it approved by test audiences outside their demographic? Let's just say yes.

The song that soundtrack this cut-to-the-chase, no-nonsense trailer (which barely features any dialogue and instead quick cuts of action, car crashes and kicks to the groin - essentially anyhow) is Elbow's "Grounds For Divorce," and it perfectly suggests that cut the cutesy crap vibe they're going for here (or a higher up at Focus Features is going for anyhow).

The small synopsis is: a disk containing the memoirs of a cast out CIA agent (John Malkovich) ends up in the hands of two unscrupulous gym employees who attempt to sell it (Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand) and exploit it for its potential worth (George Clooney stars too). Will it be more 'Lebowski' than "Intolerable Cruelty"? It definitely resembled the bumbling mood of their scewball-leaning later work (things like "The Ladykillers") in trailer #1, but this version suggest something darker (though $100 this is false advertising and the film is way more goofy and slapstick). Either way, the film is set to hit theaters on September 12, 2008. Read more...

Trevor Rabin Talks 'Get Smart,' Hogging BMI Awards, The Serendipity of Steven Segal, & Eating Maggots With Yes

Trevor Rabin is a noted film composer, a South African, a maggot eater (sort of), a former member of progressive rock band Yes (yes!) and an all around good guy.

His kinetic scores ("Bad Boys II," "Enemy of The State," "Con-Air") have been heralded for ushering in a percussive-heavy era in action flicks and been aped by the 'Bourne' films and pretty much every
action/adventure flick in the book. He's won a shit ton of BMI film score awards (9 of them) and he may not have won an Oscar yet, but who cares: he wrote Yes' synth classic - "Owner of A Only Heart." In your face Academy. Rabin also scored "Get Smart." Oh yeah, Steven Segal of all people got him into the movie biz.

The Playlist: Trevor Rabin, heralded film composer, go! Were you a fan of the original series? Did you have any nostalgia for it? Do you own a shoe phone?
TR: Because I grew up in South Africa, I had heard of it but I never saw it. But when I was going to be interviewed for the project by (director Peter Segal), I really immersed myself in the whole thing, I watched a lot of it on YouTube and then went and got the entire series and watched that a couple of times. I got to know it pretty well and found it to be hilarious.

How important was it to reflect the music of the original TV series?
TR: I thought very important but I also thought it was important to find a contemporary way of doing it without losing the essence of the original theme. And also I thought it made the movie funnier by playing most of it straight and only occasionally playing the comedy comidically, musically speaking.

Awesome. Did you get to meet Anne Hathaway? Is she bland?
TR: I met Steve Carell who was very gracious and very kind about the score and thanked me for doing my job that helped in his view.

Congratulations. Your first major score was in 1997, how did you break into scoring movies?
TR: I had been on the road with Yes and made a number of albums. When we were playing our last show in Hiroshima, I decided – "I think I’m gonna do something else." [ed. heavy!]

I had studied orchestration and I technically knew enough to get into it, and I just decided “I think I’m gonna be a film composer.” My naivety led me to a very virtuous fate which was Steven Segal, he had asked a mutual friend if I could give him some guitar lessons. He was very thankful and he asked “Is there anything I can do for you?” So I just casually said, "Well it would be great if he had any names of agents and stuff because I’m thinking of scoring films." He casually said, "I’ve just done a film for Warner Bros. ["The Glimmer Man"] if you want to do it." And that was it I did that then Jerry Bruckheimer’s people saw the movie and liked the music and my second film was "Con Air," my fourth film was "Armageddon," and it pretty much has been like that ever since.

Best. story. ever. So, you’re noted for your percussive scores and yet you’re a guitar player – how does that work?
TR: I think movies, particularly action movies, lend themselves to being percussive and driving and as far as the guitar goes, percussion is one of the more complimentary devices for playing guitar on top. I think that’s just a natural kind of progression.

For the percussive scores, you’re expecting residuals from the Bourne films or is action film street credibility good enough?
TR: No… and I’ll leave it at that.

Oooh, sly. Are you going to continue to win all the BMI Awards? Gustavo Santaolalla's gonna get jealous, dude.
TR: Well my piano is getting pretty heavy because that’s where I leave them, there’s now I think ten of them there…

You wrote "Owner of a Lonely Heart" – can you jump on buildings and turn into an animal too?
TR: No, but I can eat maggots.

On the real?
TR: There’s a part in the video where the guy washes his face with maggots.

Ouch.
TR: Exactly.

"Get Smart" comes out today, Friday (June 19). The CD soundtrack disc is in stores now.
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A.O. Scott Rips Mike Myers A New Asshole, Calls 'The Love Guru' The New Standard For Unfunny

Damn, New York Times Critis A.O. Scott either woke up on the wrong side of the bed or "The Love Guru," is indeed the worst film of the year (and possibly all time). Scathing reviews are suggesting the latter as most critics would apparently rather live in a 24-hour M. Night Shyamalan world than endure the excruciating pain that is sitting through Mike Myers' seemingly uber-insipid comedy again.

To be fair, Scott seems like he genuinely disliked the film and has no axe to grind. You can practically feel him cringe through the review as he has to open that part of his memory he had hoped to forget. The Times movie scribe makes a case for the word "antifunny," and suggests Myers' cloying snickering may never allow you to properly laugh again. It's a relentless critical beatdown if we've ever seen one.

"Which might sum up “The Love Guru” in its entirety but only at the risk of grievously understating the movie’s awfulness. A whole new vocabulary seems to be required. To say that the movie is not funny is merely to affirm the obvious. The word “unfunny” surely applies to Mr. Myers’' obnoxious attempts to find mirth in physical and cultural differences but does not quite capture the strenuous unpleasantness of his performance. No, “The Love Guru” is downright antifunny, an experience that makes you wonder if you will ever laugh again."

Scott, having already handed Myers his ass within the first three graphs of the piece, continues to eviscerate the comedian, his movie and goes on at length to define the comics "antifunny" approach.

"And this is, come to think of it, something of an achievement. What is the opposite of a belly laugh? An interesting question, in a way, and to hear lines like “I think I just made a happy wee-wee” or “I’m making diarrhea noises in my cup” or to watch apprentice gurus attack one another with urine-soaked mops is to grasp the answer. Please don’t misunderstand: I’m not opposed to infantile, regressive, scatological humor. Indeed, I consider myself something of a connoisseur. Or maybe a glutton. So it’s not that I object to the idea of, say, witnessing elephants copulate on the ice in the middle of a Stanley Cup hockey match, or seeing a dwarf sent flying over the same ice by the shock of defibrillator paddles. But it will never be enough simply to do such things. They must be done well."

"The Love Guru" sits at a currently abysmal 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes as we speak. If America decides to still attend this film in droves this weekend, we wouldn't be surprised at all. But just remember even Harry Knowles hated it and that guy will pretty much endorse any piece of shit with anything resembling a beginning, middle, end and credits. Read more...

Grant Gee's Vibrant 'Joy Division' Documentary Makes 'Control' Look Like A Gray And Dreary Manchester Day

To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world--and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.

--Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts Into Air (the opening quote of the film)

Given the chance to gain intimate access to members of New Order and charming, garrulous raconteurs like Tony Wilson, most filmmakers would be hard pressed to not give in to the temptation to simply just present talking heads.

Surely the average Sundance documentary would do as much, so this makes us appreciate director Grant Gee's inspired, insightful, and vibrant take on the well-documented unlikely rise and fall of seminal Manchester post-punk depressives Joy Division all the more.

The man behind Radiohead's "Meeting People Is Easy" and videos for Tom Waits, Blur, Sparklhorse and Thom Yorke's pals (to name just a few), from minute one, Gee announces himself as a filmmaker with an incredibly strong command of a striking cinematic language.

Obviously the chronicle within the titular "Joy Division" of doomed singer Ian Curtis' eventual suicide is well-told, but the Gee's energy and imaginative storytelling makes the documentary endlessly viewable despite being told in a seemingly obvious chronological order.
Impressionistic, inventive and artful, "Joy Division" is held up by tons of key interviews (Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morrison, Factory Records impresario Wilson, celebrated British rock journalist Paul Morley, Factory Records sleeve designer Peter Saville, members of the Buzzcocks, director Anton Corbijn, Psychic TV's Genesis P-Orridge and more), but the manner in which their recollections are conveyed is continually resourceful and engaging (the way audio clips are displayed as sound waves reminiscent of Unknown Pleasures' artwork is rather inspired).

There tons of archival photos, and footage that reminds you of the electrical magnetism of Joy Division - a fierce live band even evocative of the volume and grandeur of My Bloody Valentine in moments (for those that became familiar with the groups the other way around).

One also can't discuss Joy Division without articulating the post-industrial nightmare that was their experience growing up in Manchester - a city inexorably tied to the band in both literal and figurative manners that are both physically and cerebrally explored and represented in the doc.

DVD Extras include the entire performance of "Transmission" on Tony Wilson's seminal "So It Goes" program plus some 70 minutes worth of extra interviews. This is about as much of a "review" we can muster today, but suffice to say "Joy Division" is a fantastic treat and puts the rather dull feature-length narrative, "Control," to shame. [A]

We have two exclusive clips from the film and by exclusive, we mean two clips we uploaded to YouTube ourselves (actually, our little bro did, thanks Holmes) for everyone to pinch too (we're egalitarian, what can we say?)

Scene: Peter Saville notes the Closer cover wasn't exactly apropos after Curtis' death.

Scene: Peter Hook reminds us all how much of a clueless yob he is. New Order seemed clueless about Curtis' state of mind near the end (it's almost criminal).

Watch: "Joy Division" trailer

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Yet Another 'Where The Wild Things Are' Actor Knows Jack Shit About The Film's Current Status

Yet another actor from Spike Jonze's "Where The Wild Things Are," adaptation has no clue about the status of the film, but claims she also had a blast making the movie. "I've been having screaming matches with [co-star] James Gandolfini. It's part of the gig … I play one of the monsters. And we throw Nerf footballs at each other. You know, they're wild so they're throwing stuff, and we're throwing foam to get into the physicality of what the character is doing," said red-haired Lauren Ambrose (of "Six Feet Under"; given the fact that she replaced our Brooklyn crush Michelle Williams on this film, she better be fucking good).

Wait, "I've been having"? Does this mean she's been part of the recently reported reshoots or is she talking about the principal cast photography that was shot years ago? Nobody answers our questions ever.

Ambrose said she voices an "eight-foot-tall Neanderthal" that looks just like her. "It's uncanny." We're pretty sure she means the character Tzippy.

About all the alleged problems on the production, including rewrites, reshoots and specious claims about replacing directors and whatnot? "I don't know anything about that. It's going to be super rad," she twirled. Gee, thanks for the update. Previously, 'Wild Things' voice actors Catherine O'Hara, Forrest Whitaker and Tom Noonan also knew jackshit about the film's reported problems, but echoed the sentiment of having a gay old time. [Vulture] Read more...

Spike Lee Might Not Be Done With Katrina Quite Yet; Spills The Beans On David Simon's New Film?

Spike Lee, the director of the incisive documentary, "When the Levees Broke," says he's considering revisiting the subject of Hurricanes Katrina and its disaster effect on New Orleans.

"I'm going to go back, not just to New Orleans but to other areas affected, because it's not over," he said. What the press is not really talking about is the mental state -- suicide, self-medication. It's horrible." Lee also said that "The Wire," creator David Simon might be making a feature-length film on the same subject. Lee hopes his recently announced Michael Jordan documentary will debut at Cannes next year. Much to our beef-loving chagrin, Clint Eastwood's name doesn't come up once in the interview. [Hollywood Reporter]

Knocking rotund loser movie "critic" Harry Knowles is like fishing with dynamite, but this trenchant little diss from Vulture about the Ain't It Cool headmaster's contempt for "The Love Guru," is so damn hilarious we wished we had thought of it first. The New York magazine blog notes that quality-control Knowles has previously embraced, "Semi-Pro," "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas," "Rambo V," "Beerfest" and "Speed Racer" which he called "the single greatest trip since the final sequence in Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." Amazing. [Vulture]

Judd Apatow recently accepted a Hollywood Reporter award for something or other. The video is surprisingly not that funny. [HRblog]

The Weinstein Co. will put on a stage version of Pink Floyd's The Wall in 2010. [Variety]
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Motley Crue Want MTV Films Out Of The Picture On Long-Developing 'Dirt' Biopic

After years of script re-writes and stalled pre-production Motley Crue's self-developed biopic of their deliciously scandalous 2001 bio, "The Dirt," (written by sarger Neil Strauss) has still not reached the big-screen and the members of the aging rockers - particularly unofficial mouthpiece, bassist Nikki Sixx - are pissed.

In 2006, the Crue and MTV Films announced a deal to develop the project, but it looks like the "Smoking In the Boys Room" rockers want out.

The film was originally to be developed and directed by "Borat," director Larry Charles, but Sixx and co. want to deep-six the deal if they can. "We're trying to get them [MTV] out of the way to make this movie that should have been made a long time ago," he said frustrated.

"MTV has become bogged down in its own way. We signed with them because we believed they were right, but they haven't come to the table," he said. "We need to find the right partner. They are not the right partner."

Paramount/MTV Films declined to comment for the Reuters story. Last year Sixx alluded to his frustrations saying the film was in a "holding pattern," and said they were having director and script rewrite issues. "It's a pain in the ass," he said.

Various actors have been rumored to play members of the Crue and their friends over the years including Ashton Kutcher (as drummer Tommy Lee) and two seemingly amazing and ridiculous choices for satellite metal community pals: Christopher Walken as Ozzy Osbourne and Val Kilmer as David Lee Roth. God, We would pay shit tons of money to see that just based on those two choices alone. Read more...