Gallo, Ozon, Reichardt, Schnabel, Hellman, Kechiche, Coppola, etc, Screening at Venice

The complete line-up of the 67th Venice Film Festival was announced yesterday, with twenty-two films competing for the the Golden Lion, the festival's highest honor which was awarded to Samuel Maoz's Lebanon last year. Not paying attention to films in production has its benefits; quite a few of the filmmakers presenting their works this year came as a pleasant surprise. Among those surprises: Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff which re-teams the director with her Wendy & Lucy star Michelle Williams; a brand new film written, directed, starring, composed and edited (naturally) by Vincent Gallo called Promises Written in Water; Pablo Larraín's follow-up to Tony Manero, Post mortem; Abdellatif Kechiche's Vénus noire [Black Venus], his first film since La graine et le mulet [The Secret of the Grain] which won a Special Jury Prize at the 2007 fest; Tran Anh Hung's adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood; and Road to Nowhere, the first feature-length film from Monte Hellman in twenty-one years (following, uh, Silent Night, Deadly Night 3) which stars two former "It" girls Shannyn Sossamon and Dominique Swain. Gallo will also be presenting a short entitled The Agent as part of the Horizons sidebar, which–like Promises–stars Sylvester Stallone's son Sage. Other high profile filmmakers in competition: Sofia Coppola with Somewhere; Julian Schnabel with Miral; François Ozon with Potiche; Tom Tykwer with Drei [Three]; Tsui Hark with Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame; Takashi Miike with 13 Assassins; Darren Aronofsky with Black Swan; and Álex de la Iglesia with Balada triste de trompeta [A Sad Trumpet Ballad]. Four Italian films will be screening in competition, and unfortunately the national titles have proven to be the weakest entries in recent history. The sore thumb of the lot appears to be Barney's Version, whose fine cast feels overshadowed by the fact that the last film outing from the director, Richard J. Lewis, was a direct-to-video sequel to the buddy-cop-and-dog classic K-9 (starring, uh, Jim Belushi). Tran Anh Hung and Darren Aronofsky are the only past Golden Lion winners in competition, for Cyclo in 1995 and The Wrestler in 2008 respectively. The competition line-up can be found below. The festival runs from 1-11 September.

- 13 Assassins, d. Takashi Miike, Japan
- Attenberg, d. Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece, w. Yorgos Lanthimos
- Balada triste de trompeta [A Sad Trumpet Ballad], d. Álex de la Iglesia (Dance with the Devil), Spain/France, w. Carmen Maura, Fernando Guillén Cuervo, Antonio de la Torre
- Barney's Version, d. Richard J. Lewis, Canada/Italy, w. Dustin Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver
- Black Swan, d. Darren Aronofsky, USA, w. Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Bruce Greenwood, Scott Speedman
- Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame, d. Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in China), China/Hong Kong, w. Andy Lau, Carina Lau, Li Bingbing, Tony Leung Ka-Fai
- Drei [Three], d. Tom Tykwer, Germany, w. Devid Striesow
- Happy Few, d. Antony Cordier (Douches froides), France, w. Marina Foïs, Élodie Bouchez, Roschdy Zem, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Jean-François Stévenin
- Meek's Cutoff, d. Kelly Reichardt, USA, w. Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson
- Miral, d. Julian Schnabel, France/Israel/UK/Italy/USA, w. Hiam Abbass, Freida Pinto, Willem Dafoe, Vanessa Redgrave, Alexander Siddig, Stella Schnabel
- Noi credevamo, d. Mario Martone (L'odore del sengue), Italy/France, w. Luigi Lo Cascio, Toni Servillo
- Norwegian Wood, d. Tran Anh Hung, Japan, w. Rinko Kikuchi
- La passione, d. Carlo Mazzacurati (La lingua del santo), Italy, w. Stefania Sandrelli
- La pecora nera, d. Ascanio Celestini, Italy, w. Maya Sansa
- Post mortem, d. Pablo Larraín, Chile/Mexico/Germany
- Potiche, d. François Ozon, France/Belgium, w. Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini, Karin Viard, Judith Godrèche, Jérémie Renier
- Promises Written in Water, d. Vincent Gallo, USA, w. Gallo
- Road to Nowhere, d. Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop), USA, w. Shannyn Sossamon, Dominique Swain, John Diehl, Fabio Testi
- Silent Souls, d. Aleksei Fedorchenko (First on the Moon), Russia
- La solitudine dei numeri primi [The Solitude of Prime Numbers], d. Saverio Costanzo (In Memory of Me), Italy/France/Germany, w. Filippo Timi, Isabella Rossellini
- Somewhere, d. Sofia Coppola, USA, w. Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Benicio del Toro, Michelle Monaghan, Benicio Del Toro
- Vénus noire [Black Venus], d. Abdellatif Kechiche, France/Italy/Belgium, w. Olivier Gourmet

Out of competition, you'll find directorial efforts from both the Affleck brothers. The elder will follow his well-received (but, still, not that good) Gone Baby Gone with The Town, a crime thriller about a Boston-area gang of thieves. Casey's directorial debut is I'm Still Here, a documentary that received a lot of press last year which follows Joaquin Phoenix's retirement from acting to pursue a career as a rapper. In addition to 13 Assassins, Takashi Miike's Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City will premiere, likely as part of the festival's midnight screenings, which will open with Robert Rodriguez's star-and-"star"-studded Machete. Julie Taymor's return to Shakespeare, The Tempest, will close this portion. Below you'll find a selection of the films playing out of competition.

- 1960, d. Gabriele Salvatores (I'm Not Scared), Italy
- The Child's Eye 3D, d. Oxide Pang, Danny Pang, Hong Kong/China
- I'm Still Here, d. Casey Affleck, USA, w. Joaquin Phoenix
- The Last Movie, d. Dennis Hopper, USA, w. Hopper, Tomas Milian, Samuel Fuller, Sylvia Miles, Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Henry Jaglom, John Phillip Law, Michelle Phillips, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Toni Basil
- Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, d. Andrew Lau, Hong Kong/China, w. Donnie Yen, Shu Qi
- A Letter to Elia, d. Martin Scorsese, Kent Jones, USA
- Lope, d. Andrucha Waddington (House of Sand), Spain/Brazil, w. Leonor Watling, Pilar López de Ayala, Sonia Braga, Luis Tosar
- Machete, d. Robert Rodriguez, USA, w. Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, Jeff Fahey, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, Rose McGowan, Tom Savini
- Passione, d. John Turturro, Italy
- Přežít svůj život [Surviving Life], d. Jan Švankmajer, Czech Republic/Slovakia
- Raavanan, d. Mani Ratnam, India, w. Aishwarya Rai
- Reign of Assassins, d. John Woo, Su Chao-Bin, China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, w. Michelle Yeoh, Kelly Lin
- Shock Labyrinth 3D, d. Takashi Shimizu (Ju-on), Japan
- Showtime, d. Stanley Kwan (Lan yu), China, w. Carina Lau, Tony Leung Ka-Fai
- Sorelle mai, d. Marco Bellocchio, Italy
- The Tempest, d. Julie Taymor, USA, w. Helen Mirren, Russell Brand, Alfred Molina, Djimon Hounsou, David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, Alfred Molina, Alan Cumming, Ben Whishaw
- That Girl in Yellow Boots, d. Anurag Kashyap (Dev.D), India
- The Town, d. Ben Affleck, USA, w. Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively
- Vallanzasca - Gli angeli del male, d. Michele Placido (Romanzo criminale), Italy/France, w. Kim Rossi Stuart, Filippo Timi, Moritz Bleibtreu, Paz Vega
- Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City, d. Takashi Miike, Japan

The Horizons portion of this year's selection will open with La belle endormie [Sleeping Beauty], another fairy tale adaptation from Catherine Breillat following last year's Barbe Bleue; like its predecessor, La belle endormie was produced by Arte Télévision and employs a cast of unknowns. Hong Sang-soo's Oki's Movie will close the section; Oki's Movie is Hong Sang-soo's second film to premiere in 2010 following Ha Ha Ha, which was awarded the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes in May. Not a whole lot of information was available about the rest of the films (some of them shorts), but I listed below the films from directors I knew. And following that is a selection of the films screening as part of the Venice Days, one of the festival's autonomous sidebars.

Horizons

- The Agent, d. Vincent Gallo, USA, w. Sage Stallone, Gallo
- La belle endormie [Sleeping Beauty], d. Catherine Breillat, France
- Better Life, d. Isaac Julien, UK/China, w. Maggie Cheung
- Cold Fish, d. Sion Sono, Japan
- Guest, d. José Luis Guerin, Spain
- The Leopard, d. Isaac Julien, UK/Italy
- A Loft, d. Ken Jacobs, USA
- News from Nowhere, d. Paul Morrissey, USA
- Oki's Movie, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea
- Painéis de São Vicente de Fora, Visão Poética, d. Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal, w. Ricardo Trêpa
- Red Earth, d. Clara Law, Hong Kong/China

Venice Days

- L'amour buio, d. Antonio Capuano (Luna rossa), Italy, w. Valeria Golino
- Le bruit des glaçons [The Clink of Ice], d. Bertrand Blier (Beau-père), France, w. Jean Duhardin, Albert Dupontel
- Cirkus Columbia, d. Danis Tanović (No Man's Land), Bosnia & Herzegovina/France/UK/Slovenia/Germany/Belgium/Serbia, w. Miki Manojlović, Mira Furlan
- Hitler à Hollywood [Hitler in Hollywood], d. Frédéric Sojcher, w. Maria de Medeiros, Micheline Presle
- Incendies, d. Denis Villeneuve (Polytechnique), Canada/France, w. Lubna Azabal
- Noir océan, d. Marion Hänsel (The Quarry), w. Adrien Joliver
- La vida de los peces, d. Matías Bize (En la cama), Chile, w. Santiago Cabrera, Blanca Lewin

The Decade List: Grindhouse (2007)

Grindhouse – dir. Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth

Probably the most rousingly effective ode to bad taste that graced the cinemas over the past ten years, Grindhouse provided its audience what so few of the exploitation films it honors only hinted toward: the meat (and outside of Antichrist, my Decade List entries have been a little too “respectable” lately). With both the meat and the sizzle on the plate, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino (as well as Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright and Eli Roth who directed shorts that accompanied the double-feature) recreated the spirit of the films they both love so much with their back-to-back sleaze fests, Planet Terror and Death Proof, both of which just so happen to be two of the best films either director has ever made. The former is the best thing Rodriguez has ever done; with Tarantino, it’s not as certain.

As its intended theatrical double-feature, both Planet Terror and Death Proof hilariously play off one another, despite aligning with different subsets of exploitation films. Planet Terror is blissful mayhem from the Rose McGowan go-go dancing credit sequence to its absurd (in the good way), utopian ending. Death Proof, however, takes its time, alienating certain viewers with its incessant long-take dialogue and Tarantino pop culture references. Yet, however you feel about the rest of the film, Death Proof offers the most exhilarating finale for not just the Tarantino entry, but Grindhouse itself. The positioning of the films is almost as crucial as the films themselves, not to mention that both sort of play off one another. In Planet Terror, we hear a radio dedication to one of the characters in Death Proof, not to mention that McGowan appears in both films as drastically different characters and Marley Shelton as the same one. And in a way, Grindhouse is just as much an ode to the specific charms of Rose McGowan as it is grindhouse films of the past.

While I generally lean toward Death Proof as the superior of the two, I suppose it really boils down to a matter of (dis)taste. Planet Terror is about as faithful as you can get to a zombie-infused nuclear apocalypse film. The script, by Rodriguez, would have probably been ranked as one of the more efficient and skilled (in a screenwriting sense) of the time, had it came out during said period. Everything obnoxiously and hilariously comes back in the end, from corny life lessons to disputes among characters, one in particular involving a barbeque recipe. The screenplay is so artless that it reaches a level of tongue-in-cheek beauty.

Death Proof, however, functions drastically differently. I, personally, haven’t felt like Quentin Tarantino has ever really followed up Pulp Fiction; the tepid Jackie Brown and overrated Kill Bill series don’t feel like films as much as they do time-wasters, even though time wasting is what Tarantino does best in Death Proof. In hindsight, one realizes that Death Proof only exists for its final fifteen-minutes, its utterly invigorating car chase. Once again, I’d like to quote my friend Tom, who hilariously described James Gray’s We Own the Night as “a car chase in search of a movie;” that particular statement would perfectly describe Death Proof, only in this case its not a criticism. While some might disagree with it not being a criticism, the chattiness in Death Proof isn’t merely a Tarantino motif as it is intentionally unintentional suspense. There’s an overcast of fear and terror that runs throughout the film which heightens with every silly talk-fest that is seemingly just leading up to the film’s stunning climax. When the film reaches its second act (Death Proof itself is something a double bill), there’s a real uneasiness about what is about to transpire. The excessive build-up to the game of ship’s mast that stuntwoman Zoë Bell and Tracie Thoms want to play is both irritating and alarming. Their chatter, which just fills screen time to the act itself, makes for brilliant danger, which Tarantino will execute like, really, no other in the scene that follows. I appreciate the long stretches of dialogue that seem to be about nothing, because it feels like an authentic exploitation film that wrote some semblance of a screenplay around a single jolting car chase sequence. Pop culture references from Lindsay Lohan to Vanishing Point (and the best of the lot, when Rosario Dawson tells her girlfriends that her director boyfriend fucked Daryl Hannah’s stand-in) become permissible not because Death Proof is so good but because modesty doesn’t really have any place here.

I mentioned in the piece on Children of Men that I pity those who missed it in the theatre, as the home theatre experience could never fully recreate the cinema experience, and this statement applies just as much to Grindhouse (and it would even if The Weinstein Company had released Grindhouse officially on DVD instead as two separate films). I don’t mean to suggest that the best cinematic experiences come in the form of bold “action flicks;” I still regret that I had to see the majestic Flight of the Red Balloon on television and not in the theatre (and I also defended the theatre-going experience with Mulholland Drive as well). But anyway, I can’t really think of another theatrical experience I had in the past 10 years that was more entertaining to the point of beatific exhaustion than Grindhouse.

With: Rose McGowan, Kurt Russell, Marley Shelton, Zoë Bell, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Sydney Tamiia Portier, Vanessa Ferlito, Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Jordan Ladd, Naveen Andrews, Bruce Willis, Quentin Tarantino, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Eli Roth, Rebel Rodriguez, Tom Savini, Omar Doom, Michael Parks, Electra Avellán, Elise Avellán, Stacy Ferguson, Marcy Harriell, James Parks, Jay Hernandez, Udo Kier, Sheri Moon Zombie, Nicolas Cage, Sybil Danning, Tom Towles, Bill Moseley, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Katie Melua, Matthew Macfadyen, Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin, Will Arnett
Screenplay: Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, Jeff Rendell, Eli Roth
Cinematography: Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Phil Parmet, Milan Chadima
Music: Graeme Revell, Robert Rodriguez, Carl Thiel, Tyler Bates, David Arnold, Nathan Barr
Country of Origin: USA
US Distributor: Dimension/The Weinstein Company

Premiere: 6 April 2007

Grindhouse? Maybe?

A couple of people have suggested to me that the theatrical version of Grindhouse, with all the trailers, is coming to DVD and Blu-ray on 11 August. No official announcement has been made, so I don't know the specifics of the release. I'm pretty skeptical about any of the upcoming Weinstein Company's releases anyway.