Beauty vs Beast: Take My Spouse, Please

Jason from MNPP here with this week's edition of Beauty vs Beast, pitting cinema's good guys and bad guys against each other in a polling orgasm of gorgeous vicious oneupmanship! And you'll forgive me for getting a wee bit over-passioned there with my adjectives since this week I'm surrounding us with two of the most gorgeous creatures to ever grace the big screen, much less the marital bed -- this Friday the cinematic supernovas Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt are reuniting on-screen in Jolie's most recent directorial effort, the swooning-in-sunglasses drama By the Sea. (You can read what Nathaniel had to say about the film here.) It's been ten full years since the last time the stars combined their movie star wattage onto one fortunate screen, and that's where we look for this week's contest...

PREVIOUSLY Last week we bonded with James & Co. (bonded, get it, ha ha, sigh) in honor of the latest 007 flick (Did you see it this weekend? Thoughts?) -- looking back at Skyfall it was Daniel Craig himself who left us shaken and stirred over Bardem's baddie, taking about 63% of your vote. Said tom:

"In this case, I vote for Bond. the first half of the movie was just building up the character of Silva and when we finally meet him, disappointment. That isn't completely Bardem's fault, but no vote from me."

AFI Fest: James White

Kieran, here reporting from AFI Fest in Hollywood.

James White (played by Christopher Abbott) is a 21-year-old whose life is in a kind of disarray that's sometimes indistinguishable, at least from the outset, from typical millenial aimlessness. He spends his evenings binge drinking, getting high and instigating bar fights all while harboring vague notions of becoming a writer. His estranged father has recently passed away and he sleeps on the sofa of his ailing mother, insisting that he's only there to take care of her. There's a lot in that plot description to suggest something trite and indie-by-numbers. My own antennae were up for yet another indie about a disaffected, yet ambiguously wealthy young white man. Thankfully, writer-director Josh Mond's directorial debut (he was previously a producer on Martha Marcy May Marlene whose director, Sean Durkin is a producer here) opts for something more specific and lived-in here.

The film's saving grace, at least on the script level, is that it manages to be kind to its lead character without co-signing his worldview or behavior. Yes, James is "a mess" as a family friend played by Ron Livingston tells him during a job interview that's going terribly in every possible way. [More...]

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Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" - Still angry, still timely

TFE is celebrating the three Honorary Oscar winners this week. Here's Lynn Lee on one of Spike Lee's most controversial joints...

Is Spike Lee an Angry Black Man?  Reductive as the label is, it’s hard not to associate with an artist as reliably outspoken as he is accomplished—if only because so much of his best work is fueled by genuine anger at the condition of African Americans and the state of American race relations generally.  The irony of having achieved major critical and commercial success by channeling those frustrations surely hasn’t been lost on him, even if it’s done nothing to diminish them.

Bamboozled (2000), an incendiary, balls-to-the-wall satire about a disaffected black man who creates a pop culture monster, shows Lee at his angriest and most conflicted.  The film takes its cue from Malcolm X’s famous wakeup call:

You’ve been hoodwinked.  You’ve been had…You’ve been bamboozled”

It tells the tale of a Harvard-educated black TV writer (Damon Wayans, sporting a deliberately outlandish pseudo-French African accent) who pitches a hideously racist modern-day minstrel show as a fuck-you response to his white boss’s demand for “blacker” material—only to have the show become a megahit despite, or rather because of, the controversy it causes.  [More...]

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AFI Fest: Hitchcock/Truffaut

Hitchcock/Truffaut has a kind of sacred place among film books. Though it's rarely assigned in class, since its original 1966 publication the collected interviews between Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut have unofficially defined auteurism, the role of the director in Western film, and - most obviously - public opinion about Hitchcock. The immediate result of the publication was to turn public opinion about the Master of Suspense from lowbrow entertainer to underappreciated artist, and to further solidify Francois Truffaut's image as critic-cum-creator, a critical distinction upon which the members of the French New Wave thrived. With a book this prominent in film history, a movie about the book is a lofty goal to say the least. Historian and director Kent Jones uses his movie as an unfocused if zealous love letter to Hitchcock, that ultimately falls short of its goals.

The movie Hitchcock/Truffaut attempts to be many things. On the one hand, it is a historical documentary which explains who Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut were and why their legendary interviews exhaustively analyzing every single one of Hitch's films was so important to film history. In this endeavor, Jones is primarily aided by the original recordings of the interviews. Unedited and untranslated Hitchcock is even more blunt and humorous than the published book let on. He gives a rather graphic explanation of the famous green-lit scene in Vertigo before suddenly cutting the interview short with a clipped "Off the record!" Jones includes the scenes that Hitchcock and Truffaut discuss, which allows the audience to observe critically with the directors' eyes and compare what Hitchcock says he's doing to the end result. It's a testament to Hitchcock's notorious control that there's little difference between what he describes and what appears onscreen.

This leads to Kent Jones's second goal in Hitchcock/Truffaut: a formal analysis of Alfred Hitchcock. As this was the primary motivation of the original book as well, parts of this can feel redundant. Jones brings in various directors to explain what they love in Hitchcock's films - Richard Linklater talks about time, Wes Anderson talks about precision, David Fincher talks about suspense, Scorsese talks about everything. The more directors Jones brings into the conversation, the more wide-reaching he reveals Hitchcock's influence to be. Directors who at first glance have little stylistically in common react with the same joy to discuss their favorite parts of Hitchcock's films. However, this formal analysis begins to drag, as very little new is discussed beyond what Hitch himself states.

That is the greatest flaw with Kent Jones's film: he doesn't add more to the conversation. Hitchcock/Truffaut was published nearly 50 years ago, but the movie doesn't have anything new to say about either the book or its subject. In trying to be too many things - a history, an analysis, a tribute - Jones's movie wanders aimlessly. 80 minutes spent with Hitchcock is never time wasted, but ultimately I wonder: why make this movie?

Grade: B

Oscar Chances: Low, though the Academy does like insider baseball.

Star Wars: The Marketing Strikes Back

Manuel here. I have been trying to steer clear of the Star Wars hype machine. I’m an avid fan as you all know so I don’t need to obsess over every extra footage trying to glean what this latest installment will be about. Alas, while catching James Bond: The Winter Soldier ahem, I mean Spectre, I caught that latest trailer after all. And while a trailer, as we all know, is by no means indicative of quality, I have to say I am very much eager to revisit this galaxy far far away. 

Abrams did a great job jump starting Star Trek and while Lucas's characters and stories are quite literally of a different world, the emphasis on practical effects and simple color palette suggest there's a chance this could be something special. And thank god we'll be spared any Jar Jar nonsense (though I will say, this wacko theory about that loathed character is funny, if all too ridiculous).

And so, I had to share these character posters that are making the rounds. I know everyone is already making a lot of the fact that Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker continues to be conspicuously (and intentionally, I’m sure) absent from the marketing of the film, but I have to admit that I wanted an Oscar Isaac character poster. If only to see his luscious cartoon pilot locks (what is it with hair and me lately?). And don’t get me started on Lupita; is her character going to be cameo-sized? I'm happy she's getting strong reviews Off-Broadway (enough for her play Eclipsed to already have booked a Broadway run next year) but for all the press she got when she was signed on for the franchise, I'd have expected her to be more prominently featured. [Update: No sooner had I published this that I saw the latest TV ad features her voice!] If she will be unrecognizable under CGI, I hope she gets to play more of a wily Bobba Fett than a tangentially villainous Jabba the Hutt.

And speaking of Jabba, did you hear that all “Slave Leia” merchandise is being pulled from stores? We know Carrie Fisher is not a fan (she reportedly told fellow co-star Daisy Ridley,“You should fight for your outfit. Don’t be a slave like I was.”). It’s a savvy and progressive move on Disney’s part though one which necessarily neglects both what Leia stands for and how the outfit in itself plays out in the film (I mean, she uses her chains to kill her kidnapper!). Yes, the outfit has since been co-opted and exploited, but does that really merit a wilful banishment from our pop culture lexicon?