Filed under: Features
Peter Bart recently posted an entry on his blog about “The Joaquin Phoenix Mythology”, relating a story about Mr. Phoenix’s appearance on Bart’s show Shootout several years ago. Bard describes his experience interviewing Mr. Phoenix as lucid, except for one specific moment of panic:
Clean-shaven and calm, Joaquin struck me as an OK guy until we sat down in front of the camera. Suddenly he froze. “Where’s my script?” he said. “What am I supposed to say?”It seemed almost like a seizure. He walked off the stage and stood outside for a few moments before I joined him. “You OK?” I asked. He took a deep breath, lit a cigarette and seemed to gather himself.“Want to try again?” I asked. “We can talk for a while and if it turns out to be shit, let’s just toss it.” “OK,” he said. We returned and had a thoughtful, lucid conversation. After twenty-five minutes I cut it off and thanked him. “This was cool,” he told me.
Joaquin Phoenix’s now-infamous interview on the increasingly stale and irrelevant Late Show with David Letterman featured the Gladiator actor fully bearded and in a mental state of Hunter S. Thompson-caliber “gonzo”. As far removed from the flashiness of the Land of Ryan Seacrest, Mr. Phoenix looked decidedly hilarious. His interview on Letterman was one in a string of strange public appearances in the last few months; Peter Bart, David Letterman, and even Ben Stiller have all poked fun at him, with a degree of actual bitterness. Stiller impersonated him, replete with mangy beard and sunglasses, at the Oscars- Natalie Portman, who dated Devendra Banhart at one point, told Stiller/Phoenix that he looked like a “Hasidic Meth dealer”. Perhaps they are aware, perhaps not, that ultimately the joke may be on them; Mr. Phoenix and Casey Affleck have been filming a documentary on the “true story” of Mr. Phoenix’s rise in the world of hip-hop.
Stiller jumped on a fellow humorist rather hastily. What was amusing about his impersonation was the unmistakable, genuine confusion and fear that lingered behind the joke- Ben Stiller is annoyed and perplexed as to why Joaquin Phoenix is toying with his own public image, and getting Stiller involved.
I’m rooting for Mr. Phoenix. His appearance on Letterman marked a break in the eerily tame and banal conversations that usually take up the duration of the show. Most Hollywood actors and actresses file in and out, but Phoenix confounded audiences by appearing confounded himself, subverting expectation and routine. It’s difficult to imagine that he is truly losing his mind, but if that’s the case, hopefully he can navigate his way out of the maze. We shouldn’t glare at Phoenix’s antics- it’s all for the sake of show business.
Filed under: Reviews
Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are two men sent to Bruges against their will, forced to see the staggeringly boring historic sights and stay in their hotel room. Bruges is in Belgium, and Ray and Ken are two assassins. Unfortunately for Ray, his last job resulted in the death of a young child, and so his future is debatable- Harry Waters (a reptile-like Ralph Fiennes) may or may not be putting a hit on him. Meanwhile, the two friends enjoy themselves as much as possible while in Bruges.
Written and directed by Martin McDonagh, whose short film t “Six Shooter” earned him an Academy Award in 2006. With In Bruges, he shows an affinity for exotic locales and guns. Colin Farrell plays a manic young hitman named Ray who absolutely and vehemently despises Bruges- “If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn’t, so it doesn’t.” His partner is an older, more experienced hitman, Ken, played by Brendan Gleeson. He is excellent as a tired hit man with an unusual empathy for Ray, who’s conscience is reeling after his accidental homicide of a young boy.
Ray refuses to stay cooped up in the hotel or see “boring” European architecture so he ventures off, noticing that a film is being shot in the streets of Bruges, complete with a midget named Jimmy (Jordan Prentice, whom a quick search on IMDB reveals played the “Giant Bag of Weed” from Harold & Kumar). On the set he also meets a beautiful woman named Chloë (Clémence Poésy), who as it turns out is actually a drug dealer, and strikes up a tentative relationship with her. He also gets into a fight with Chloë’s boyfriend Eirik, whom he ends up shooting in the eye with a blank.
The film is hilarious- an excellent balance of Guy Ritchie-paced dialogue, Belgian architecture and atmosphere, and cleverness. Ralph Fiennes plays a reptile-like Harry Waters, both Ray and Ken’s employer, and is nearly unrecognizable with a shaved head- he hearkens back to Voldemort more than anything else. Interestingly enough, that also reminds me- Brendan Gleeson, Clémence Poésy, and Ralph Fiennes all have roles in the Harry Potter films. Odd coincidence, or grand conspiracy? Probably just useless info.
Anyway, the film is surprisingly touching, and the pressure falls less on Colin Farrell’s shoulders as one might assume. Far from the leading days of junk like SWAT and Miami Vice, his character has a difficult moral dilemma with no good end in sight. Ken willing to help Ray despite his better judgment. The script is enormously clever, approaching the “shooter” genre with refreshing subtlety and humor- when a weapons dealer namd Yuri offers Harry Waters an Uzi, he replies, “An Uzi? I’m not from South Central Los Angeles. I didn’t come here to shoot twenty black ten year olds in a drive-by. I want a normal gun for a normal person.” The quickness and cultural awareness is well-timed. Part Bourne Identity, part Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Martin McDonagh’s film delivers in the most surprising of ways.
Filed under: Reviews
Lionsgate releases a slew of mid-level horror films throughout a given year. In 2006, they developed Hard Candy, a conceptual scenario involving pedophilia and punishment, a real winning combination. It is an intentionally ambiguous and difficult film, made more complex by its desire to also be viscerally entertaining and commercially appealing. The result is typical Lionsgate fare: a low-budget, fascinating work that, while not having significant lasting power, is stylish and exciting for its duration.
Hayley Stark (Ellen Page, pre-Juno) is a fourteen-year old girl with short black hair who chats online with older men. She decides to meet a guy from the Internet at a cafe- who turns out to be a good-looking thirty year old man named Jeff (Patrick Wilson) a photographer. Their relationship is openly flirtatious upon introduction, and soon, Hayley offers that they go back to Jeff’s ultra-cool modern home so she can listen to a “Goldfrapp MP3″ that Jeff has told her about. Jeff is a hyper-hip dude, and initially seems genuine and trustworthy, and so the two drive to his home.
Upon arrival, Hayley tells Jeff that she never drinks anything mixed by someone else, and so she offers to make screwdrivers herself, as she marvels at the provocative (yet tasteful) pictures of young girls he has hung up around his house. She hands him a drink. He accepts. He feels drowsy. He passes out and wakes up, tied to an office chair, staring at Hayley. She reveals that she is going to castrate him for being an obvious pedophile. “You used the same phrases about Goldfrapp that they do on Amazon.com!” she says, threatens to end his reproductive life. As he squirms, it becomes evident that both people are insane in the big empty house. The film was shot over only eighteen days and certainly feels like it; the only real props are the characters themselves, a pack of ice, a noose, photographs, and the house. It’s an existential battle of a young intelligent girl and a shady, ambiguous older man. There is no good or bad in the scenario, however dualistic it appears; Hayley is in deep, as Jeff continuously reminds her: ” You’ll remember this moment any time your with a man,” he pleads, furthering the ugly psychological battle between these two.
While ultimately a fairly fruitless odyssey, Hard Candy is a fine example of a small budget ($950,000) going to the right things: the film’s composition, shot through a customized filter fixed onto the camera and edited in post-production, adds a look and feel to the film that characterizes the whole endeavour. It’s a modern look at technology and perversion, the kind you hear about in the news. Hayley is a girl conditioned to distrust those around her, and as a result, she trusts no one, and in fact ends up mentally dysfunctional, a freakish outcome of a society bred with suspicion.
Filed under: Reviews
David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia takes place in the sun-drenched Saharan desert during World War I, a place filled mostly with camels and turbans, during a time during which Western civilization supposed that foreign meant savage. Stationed at a camp in Cairo, Egypt, a soldier named T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), a dreamer and thinker, is sent by a chief member of the Arab Bureau to convince Prince Feisal (a nearly unrecognizable Alec Guiness) to resist against the Turks. At over three and a half hours, Lawrence of Arabia is an unprecedented epic, a sand-swept historical spectacle detailing English-Arab relations and the profound cultural gaps Lawrence conquers for the sake of genuine selfless diplomacy.
They simply don’t make them like they used to; Lawrence of Arabia is as much influenced by the medium of film as it is by theater and realism. A true costume drama, the film is a symphony, concurrent elements melding into cinematic achievement. The sweeping shots, courtesy of cinematographer Freddie Young, as well as the regal, bombastic score of Maurice Jarre, are remnants of a Hollywood of old– that dedication to enthusiastic celebration and surprisingly to mankind. Compared to the “spectacles” of today- superhero films, mostly- Lawrence of Arabia is utterly brilliant, even as it is twice as long as most feature-length films.
Peter O’Toole’s delicate interpretation of the real-life character T.E. Lawrence is a subtle and galvanizing performance, a harkening back to the melodrama of early 20th century film. As he travels across the Arabian desert, he witnesses the brutal murder of his Bedouin guide by Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), a punishment for drinking from Sherif’s well. The haughty Brit learns of the harshness of Middle Eastern life, a people he believes to be savage and primitive but begins to understand are in fact principled, albeit differently than within the universities of the Western world. The gaps of culture are as relevant today as they were even during the first World War, however out of style pith helmets and bush jackets have become. Set design and even makeup are remarkable, noticeably grandiose.
T.E. Lawrence is caught amidst bureacratic politics and old-school colonialism- a resounding story of superiority and manipulation on a grand scale. In a familiar turn as well, liberated Arabs lack the organization and experience to form a cohesive nation, necessitating British and French intervention.
Nearly 50 years after it’s initial release, Lawrence of Arabia has maintained much of its beauty and obvious brilliance, however overlong it may be. In fact, the film manages to feel significantly shorter than it’s actual length, and yet I cannot help feeling as though the age of the cinematic epic such as this has died out with the advent of lasers and Star Wars, regardless of whether George Lucas name-drops David Lean or even Lawrence of Arabia specifically. The film did win seven Academy Awards, among which were small, such as “Art Direction”, “Original Score”, “Film Editing”, “Sound”, “Best Director”, and, oh yes, “Best Picture”. Brilliantly shot, exuberantly scored, and featuring an intermission, David Lean’s Middle Eastern epic is no small undertaking. While dated, it also remains a shining example of well-researched and meticulously executed Hollywood spectacle, appearing both artistically and technically superior to almost any movie ever made.
