Scenes: I Stood Where Carey Mulligan Sang

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending a private party for Fox Searchlight's Shame after its New York Film Festival premiere held at the Top of the Standard. That's the bar atop the glassy luxury hotel that hovers in the sky over the immensely popular High Line (an elevated walkway over the meatpacking district). You read that the Top of the Standard (also known as the Boom Boom Room) is impossible to get into if you're not among the über famous or wealthy. I just walked up and said "Michael Fassbender's Party" and the doors parted. Amazing what a name can do.

Not mine, his! Don't misunderstand. I always feel as if there's been some mistake when I enter these moneyed settings as I'm just a poor boy from Detroit who loves the movies too much. Not that I don't welcome such beautiful mistakes. I know virtually no one so am happy to run into a friend from Movie|Line while I'm there and we catch up a bit.

Mostly I'm there to soak up the buzzy atmosphere since the film, despite the very typical backlash which followed the early Venice "Masterpiece!" shouting, has been well received. That's particularly true of Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan's performances, which snap electrically back and forth between frighteningly numb fleshiness and raw exposed nerves. I spot Fassy almost immediately several people away talking to executive types. He's all slim and handsome in a gray (?) suit but he looks substantially more human in person, almost civilian like, were it not for that sleek beanpole refinement. Another partygoer echoes my thoughts "Before you got here he was just standing outside smoking... like he was anybody else!"  

At one point John Cameron Mitchell is standing right behind me and though he's surrounded by friends and I have no idea what they're talking about I immediately presume (by which I mean pretend) that they're all discussing Shortbus (2006) since it's the last sexually explicit serious-minded English language movie I can think of before Shame. Elsewhere I see faces I can't quite place though I recognize them (character actors? industry players?) and one that I do, Brady Corbet. He's had such a steady career playing suspicious, damaged or dangerous types for everyone from von Trier to Araki through Michael Haneke and now Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene -reviewed) that at first I am wary of his total friendliness. Nevertheless I have to take advantage and we chat for awhile. How soon did he know Martha would be special? He indicates immediately but when pressed for something more definitive about life on a film set -- how soon do you get a sense for what the finished film will be? -- he hesitates before settling on "two weeks." 

Nicole Beharie, on the other hand, who plays Fassy's would be girlfriend (and co-worker) in Shame didn't know what to expect at all. She had just seen her film for the first time that night. Turns out that she and Fassbender improvised a lot and since all three of her major scenes are actually single continuous shots (yay!), she had no idea which takes were chosen. I make a mental note to thank Steve McQueen for this as it is such an strangely rare treat to be able to watch two fine actors acting together rather than in their own disjointed closeups.

Carey Mulligan is absent.  "She's in Australia filming Gatsby" I'm told by the vivacious publicist who makes my night when she points out that we are mere feet away from the spot where Carey Mulligan sang in the movie. 

If u can make it there, u'll make it anywhere. come on come thru New York, New York ♫ 

If you haven't been following reviews, there's a key scene early in the movie where the Oscar-buzzing actress, playing Sissy the cabaret singer, does a rendition of "New York New York" that is both hauntingly real (her voice isn't perfect but emotive) and vaguely unreal (it's in the molasses phrasing and intense close-ups that aren't preferenced elsewhere in the film). The whole sequence might justifiably be read as a dream sequence, a psychic conversation, between sister Sissy and brother Brandon. The sequence has only two edits and thus three acts if you will, as it stares at Sissy then Brandon then Sissy again for wrap up.

Looking around I realize that The Standard is practically Shame Central... (though it'd surely be odd to advertise as such!) Two of its sex scenes were also quite obviously filmed there. It's the glass windows and the wrap around view that are dead giveaways.

Before leaving I chat briefly with Steve McQueen and narrowly resist the urge to bow down after years of worshipping his debut film Hunger though I can't help but praise him for his resistance to the boring unimaginative camera work that plagues even "master" directors when two characters converse. Rather than gushing any further, I thank him for not taking a million years off between film #1 and film #2 (a typically unfortunate habit of newbie directors). He's already working on film #3 he tells me called Twelve Years a Slave starring Chiwetel Ejiofor -- though what little he says about it he asks me not to print. Shame (no pun intended). His current pace is troubling him, he adds, because he also has his art career and his wife and kids who need more of his time.

I suppose we can allow him a break after film number three. As long as he keeps working...

NYFF: "Hugo" A Work in Progress

The surprise screening of The New York Film Festival tonight was Martin Scorsese's Hugo, a 3D adaptation of the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret (a much better title for about a hundred reasons) which is about an orphan boy who inadvertently uncovers rich cinematic history while trying to repair a broken automatron that is his only cherished reminder of his father. Martin Scorsese introduced the film himself and seemed a bit embarrassed by the standing ovation before the screening. Perhaps he was thinking Calm down. What if you don't like it?!? 

Father and Son and Automatron in "Hugo"

Though you'll undoubtedly see several full reviews online tonight, we were given a finger wagging public reminder pre-screening that we weren't to do so. Scorsese warned us that the color correction was not finished, the score was a temporary rendition of the completed score which Howard Shore is currently recording, and some of the effects and the 3D still needed touching up. This was especially true of the opening pre-title segment which had a lot of computer graphics in lieu of actual people and objects. So absent an actual review, let it suffice to say that I was too caught up in it to take ANY notes (the only thing written on my pad is "still needs color cor..." yep, that's it!) and was very pleasantly surprised.  

Ben Kingsley as the mysterious Papa GeorgeI had found the trailer so manic and gimmicky that I assumed the film would be a noisy disaster but the completed -- excuse me, nearly completed -- movie is actually fairly gentle and lovely despite flirting with manic slapstick on a few occassions. Production designer and certain Oscar nominee (again) Dante Ferretti's clock motif on steroids should read garish since Hugo lives inside a train station which seems to house ten thousand of them, all of which he hand winds daily. Instead the sets feel like intricate beauties with tiny hand-crafted parts. The film is still settling in my mind and I heard everything from raves to loud but minor quibbling while briefly chatting with other moviegoers outside. But if you've ever loved France, Books, Fiddling With How Gadgets Work, or The History of Cinema, it's a love letter you'll most definitely want to read when it opens next month.

NYFF: "My Week With Marilyn"

Poor Marilyn. The press hounded her. Fans would tear off pieces of her soul if they could. Co-stars and directors dissed her. Men wouldn't leave her alone (not that she wanted them to). And now Simon Curtis is holding yet another Monroe seance -- her soul will never rest in peace -- with his feature film debut My Week With Marilyn (2011),  a "true" story about the making of The Prince and the Showgirl (1957).

True must come with quotes. The film is based on the memoirs of Colin Clark, the third assistant director on the "lightest of comedies" directed by and starring Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams). Can we trust the awestruck account of a young movie dreamer's version of his friendship and quasi-romance with the world's most famous actress? My Week With Marilyn emphatically does despite the amusingly placcid (if repetitive) moonyness with which the talented Eddie Redmayne portrays him, as if he's just as doped up as Marilyn, but much smarter about his cocktails of choice.

"Surprise!" Marilyn escapes with Colin Clark, lowly third assistant directorClark was 23 going on 24 when he met the immortal bombshell while hustling into the movies, landing his first job on a set through the help of his father's connections, despite the fact that the father did not approve of him 'running off to the circus'. The details of Clark's adventure in the movies are both acted out and explained to us in voiceover in the film's inelegant screenplay, which prefers for the characters to state the obvious or speak their psychologies aloud. Sometimes they even speak Marilyn's aloud; in the great transitive powers of true celebrity, everyone on earth is her psycho-therapist. Sometimes this obviousness of speech has comic payoffs (the film works best as a comedic clash between proper British theatrical training and idiot-savant American stardom) and once it even pays off both dramatically and comedically in a sadly funny scene where Colin Clark tells it like it is, succinctly, to Marilyn. He understands Marilyn and Olivier's mirrored goals and prophesies the failure of the movie.

Thought Balloons as dialogue and Michelle's performance after the jump...

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NYFF: "Shame"

Michael C. from Serious Film here with fresh dispatches from the New York Film Festival.

For all there is to chew over in director Steve McQueen's Shame, follow up to Hunger his stunning feature debut, my thoughts keep returning to Carey Mulligan's potent supporting work as Fassbender's irresponsible sister. She plays a drifter/lounge singer who disrupts his physically and emotionally empty life when she shows up to crash on his couch for an open-ended visit. For a film about walling yourself off from life until you're numb, Mulligan is at the opposite pole, a person so open to everything that she can't help leaving an emotional mess in her wake. It's a performance that is so unlike anything we've seen from her before it is hard not to get excited anticipating the long career of performances she has yet to give.

As for the film itself, even if I can't join in the chorus shouting "Masterpiece!", there is still much to recommend here. Mulligan plays Sissy, sibling to Michael Fassbender's Brandon, a slick New York City lady killer to the world and a joyless, self-abusing sex addict in private. We follow Brandon as his life begins to slip from its holding pattern and begin a rapid descent towards rock bottom. His work computer is hauled away teeming with viruses. He almost sabotages his chances at a healthy relationship with a beautiful coworker before it begins, and his sister's presence is a constant reminder of things he'd rather not think about. 

After giving a similarly glacial performance in A Dangerous Method Fassbender is much more effective this time out, successfully suggesting the vast oceans of conflict churning beneath the placid surface. The performers are so electric, in fact, you could be forgiven for not noticing they are never much developed beyond being players in the familiar tale of addiction's downward spiral. 

Yet even if Shame isn't saying much about addiction that Billy Wilder didn't say sixty-five years ago in The Lost Weekend, it is worth riding that night train to Hell again just to experience it through McQueen's lens. The director once again shows a rare skill for pacing and composition. The film lingers over moments with far more patience and attention than most filmmakers are capable of. As a result, McQueen and company transform what could have been an attempt to liven up tired subject matter with lurid material into something vital and alive.

10 Word Reviews: The Ides of Miss Pina Bala's March of Shame

I think you'll agree that we've had our best festival coverage ever with our NYFF write-ups (thanks to Kurt & Michael for their continued input) but even with the speedy pace of full reviews that we've been hitting, it's all too easy to fall behind. So here are super short notes on films seen recently during the festival and outside of it since we can't get to full reviews yet (or ever probably in some cases). After the ten word reviews I'm adding Oscar Thoughts since all four of these films have golden dreams.

Shame (Steve McQueen)
Fucked up siblings Michael Fassbender & Carey Mulligan self-destruct in New York through sex & despair.
10 WR: Brilliant sense of ghostly city, personal demons. But too obvious. B+ (B?)
Oscar?: Frighteningly committed acting but will voters see it? It'll surely be NC-17

Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo)
A beauty pageant contestant falls prey to drug cartel in escalating war.
10 WR: Easy indulgent nihilism elevated by smart construction and thematic visualizations. B-
Oscar?: The things it does very well are easy to see/love (or overpraise depending on how you see it). Will almost certainly make the pre-nomination finals in Best Foreign Language Film.
P.S. Michael reviewed this one and liked it much more than I did it. 

Pina (Wim Wenders)
A performed documentary on Pina Bausch, the late legendary German choreographer.
10 WR: 3D amplifies choreography's spatial genius. Bit noncommittal: Performance? Doc? Decide! B
Oscar?: Unless you count Waltz With Bashir, Oscar's foreign committee has never nominated a documentary. But this one is very very easy to enjoy (the dancing is like heaven) and could be a novelty exception to "rule". 

Ides of March (George Clooney)
Clooney adapts the stage play about dirty politics and betrayals of spirit, body, and ideals
10 WR: Involving and handsome but few great scenes. Weird "scene-change" pacing. B
Oscar?: Seems very likely on several fronts but particularly Supporting Actor (Clooney, Giamatti or Hoffman, though?) and score (Desplat's work gets a lot of "air time" if you will.) Though Evan Rachel Wood (major role) and Marisa Tomei (minor role) are both marvelous, Supporting Actress seems less likely for a wide variety of reasons.

Quick takes. Finis! In short it's been a good run of super enjoyable or at least interesting movies lately. Other than that Abduction fluke. Your turn in the comments.