Three Notes On Two "Django" Photos

As you may have heard-seen, two official images from Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained have hit the net. Let's discuss both.

We'll start with Leonardo DiCaprio as the villain Calvin Candie

• Between this and the Great Gatsby, Leo may well just accidentally stretch himself this year leaving the Dead Wives Club (Rev Rd, Shutter Island, Inception) behind. Although in the case of his evil slave owner, perhaps there will be still be ghosts of women whose deaths he is responsible for. I'm speaking metaphorically so if you've read the screenplay don't be all "there are no ghosts in this movie I've read the screenplay!" reaction. Please and thx.
• Calvin Candie. What a character name, huh?
• Why is he holding a hammer: Amateur carpentry? I expect its for sadistic reasons because when it comes to hammers and the movies they're never used for good. I think the last time I saw a benevolent hammer in a movie was Witness (1985)... anyone remember that awesome church/barn building scene? When I think of hammers in movies I invariably think of Annie Wilkes Oscar-Winning Hobbling Instructions (1990) or that sick sick sick and infamous sequence in Oldboy (2003)

And here are Christoph Waltz and Jamie Foxx as Dr King Schultz and the titular Django

• No offense to Mr. Foxx but I still wish it'd been Will Smith because I always like to see what Tarantino can pull from certain actors. You know the kind. We think we've already seen too much to be surprised only to be very surprised. With Tarantino I like to see what he gets from megastars or from people who've never got the challenging role they deserve and Jamie Foxx is in neither camp of actor.
• I hope this movie is as crammed withmemorable characters as Tarantino's others so you can end up loving the movie without necessarily having any of the three leads as your favorite performance. Cups overflowing is how we like it.
• Despite the instantly recognizable stylings of Reservoir Dogs, the instantly iconic riffs and theatrical splendors of Kill Bill, and the impeccable glorious  Inglourious fashions, no Tarantino movie has ever been nominated for Best Costume Design. Ain't that a bitch? (Sharen Davis, who costumed The Help and Dreamgirls, does the honors this time in her first collaboration with QT)

Add your own notes. What 3 things do these first 2 photos say to you?

NYFF: "Carnage"

Though critics screenings have been well under way for some time, tonight is the official opening night of the New York Film Festival. The kick off film is Roman Polanski's Carnage, about which we should undoubtedly say a few words. And then scream them, as we lose our composure.

Moviegoers who have seen Yasmina Reza's hit play "God of Carnage" in any of its many stage productions, had just cause to fear a film version; it's very much a work of the stage. What if they cast the two young boys whose stick-wielding playground tussle prompts all the (psychological) carnage between their parents, who meet to discuss the fight? What if the movie leaves the apartment where the entire play takes place? What if the actors can't handle the tricky satirical tone that has to be rooted in internal drama but stylized enough to extract external laughs?

The first two fears involve the dread "open it up" problem that hover like dark storm clouds over so many stage-to-screen adaptations. If you don't "open it up" you run the risk of your movie feeling weirdly hemmed in and even cheap. If you do "open it up" you run the risk of arbitrary and awkward resizing that feels more like nervous approval-seeking then an attempt to serve the material. With Roman Polanski, an expert at claustrophic storytelling, guiding the tight-quarters squabbling perhaps we shouldn't have worried.

The trouble-making sons of Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster and John C Reilly) and Nancy and Allen Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) do appear in the film but in a wonderfully smart and ambiguously played framing device. This change from the play stays magically true to the spirit of the source material but is also entirely new and right for the change in medium (which is EXACTLY what adaptations should strive for). So the first thing Roman Polanski does right is that even though we do technically leave the confines of a realistically sized New York apartment (i.e. small) both visually and physically (the apartment building's hallway), we never once feel as though we've escaped the crowded private hell of two married couples. For a smartly succinct 80 minutes (it happens in real time) you are trapped with the parental quartet and their justifiable concern: what to do about a violent encounter between their children. The comedy and drama of the play-turned-movie are the ways in which said real and justifiable but basic-sized problem morphs, twists, pivots, wiggles, shrinks and expands -- it just can't hold its shape -- until it's a series of problems both microcosmically petty (home cooking, name calling, cel phones) and gargantuan unsolvable (Genocide! Corporate Greed! Marriage!).   

For the most part the actors all do solid work. Christoph Waltz, in the film's best and most nimble performance, ably suggests that Alan is a bit of a sadist and the only one who is actually enjoying all the squabbling and suffering (until he isn't). John C Reilly has the biggest about face, appearing to be the most accomodating character (and the dullest actor) until alcohol and aggravating phone calls from his mother loosen him up. Kate Winslet and Jodie Foster, two of the screen's most formidable actresses are both good. Kate is best with Nancy's comedic outbursts  (her weak stomach and quick inebriation, just as in the play, provides some of the most memorable moments) but one wishes for more character detail in the inbetween when she isn't the focus of the scene. Foster has the most difficult role. Penelope is an extremely uptight and self-righteous Africa-obsessed mother and she's the one character that's simultaneously the worst at keeping it together and the one most concerned with keeping it together. Though Foster has fine moments her comedy is the wobbliest; one ends up pitying Penelope more than laughing with or at her which is a strange place to end up inside of a viciously dark comedy. Still, there's a certain go-for-broke original bravura in Foster's vein-popping despair (hers is the performance least like the original play's), that one has to admire it even while one mentally recasts. 

As Carnage winds down... Stop. Winds down? Yes, though Polanski often comes up with clever angles by which to watch the four characters interact, the film does run into some trouble with momentum which the play didn't have. The hallway scenes offer new and funny ways of thinking about the fact that the couples can't seem to end their evening even while their hatred for each other grows, but they strain credulity as well. If you're that close to leaving... There are strange lulls just as things are reaching fever pitch, and the ending itself is one of those and weirdly sedate.

Despite Polanski's very smart and controlled approach to the material, one almost wishes he'd taken a page from Jodie's book and just gone jugular. He employs so many different techniques to keep you visually stimulated: depth of focus, variety of shot lengths, staging, camera stability (things get a bit shakier in time with the copious alcohol) that one almost wants to scream at him to commit to one of them, embrace it feverishly and "DO IT UP REAL BIG LIKE!!!" Take your cues from Winslet's ugly vomiting, Foster's whiny-screaming or Christoph Waltz's man-pouting and let your hair down a little. Lose your composure. Risk bloodying yourself up but good.

Carnage (2011) is maybe the best film version one could hope for given the absolute stageyness of the source material but it's good enough that it leaves you wanting one that you didn't dare hope for. B/B-*

Previously on NYFF
Miss Bala wins the "must-see crown" from judge Michael.
Tahrir drops Michael right down in the titular Square.
A Dangerous Method excites Kurt... not in that way, perv!
The Loneliest Planet brushes against Nathaniel's skin.
Melancholia shows Michael the end of von Trier's world. 

* Carnage is unique enough that the grade probably doesn't suggest how "see worthy!" it actually is. It's also the kind of property one might conceivably feel differently about on a second pass. For those of you wondering Carnage's best bet Oscar-wise is an Adapted Screenplay nomination. Since no consensus seems to have formed about "best in show" acting traction will be hard to come by for a shared movie.

Venice: A Second Take on "Carnage"

[Editor's Note: Ferdi, pictured left, is one of our two correspondents in Venice this year. Which affords us the rare pleasure of reading two pieces on the same movie back to back. I hope you're feeling appropriately spoiled since we're getting original photography and everything! Here's another opinion on Carnage. -Nathaniel R.]

Carnage (2011)

80 acid minutes of poison, screams, metaphorical scratches, literal vomits and memorable laughs. God, this movie rocks. Maybe it’s the original stage material which is so funny, clever and so well translated to the screen. Maybe it’s the eye of European mega-auteur Roman Polanski, who has rarely taken a misstep in his career. Maybe it’s just me: I love movies where all the focus is on the actors branch. The fact is I can’t stop thinking of Carnage since this early morning press screening.

What else can I say? You have to sit and watch and have fun. You're taken by the tension of the story without even taking a breath from start to finish. It’s a pitch-perfect arthouse movie, a little, subversive masterpiece about verbal violence and adult hypocrisies; a complex, powerful, crazy kammerspiel that begins, as many of you already know, as a polished comedy of manners and ends as a cruel psychological massacre. 

Christoph and Kate are "best in show" says Ferdi

The pleasure of seeing these incredible actors going so over the top has no price. John C Reilly is surprisingly right for the part, hilarious and totally convincing. Christoph Waltz is once again genius and effortless as in Inglorious Basterds. Maybe the weak link is Jodie Foster who has some great moments that prove she can be very funny but she is too tight and anxious from the very beginning. (She is a great straight-forward physical actress but the part required something more subtle.) In fact, Foster doesn’t really seem to catch the satirical tone of the pochade; she goes more and more hysterical from one scene to the next instead of being multi-dimensional. This is were Kate Winslet excels. She’s the real standout, absolutely exhilarating without even doing too much.

All that said, I don’t see any Oscar play for anyone (Winslet aside, maybe, as supporting actress, but it would be a category fraud, because they all are leads), neither for the movie, which is possible too cynical, dark, weird and beautiful by Academy standards.

Kate Winslet in Venice © Fabrizio Spinetta

Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Venice © Fabrizio Spinetta

Review: Water For Elephants

He almost can't believe she's real. The young veterinarian Jacob (Robert Pattinson) confesses this to the audience in voiceover, as we stare through his eyes at Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) reclining across her ailing horse. (He's talking about Marlena but that horse is a vision, too.) Marlena's equine slumber is the strangely serene finale to what is otherwise a typically busy circus act. In Jacob's defense, she is quite a vision; Reese's hair is nearly Harlow blonde, her innate starpower reflects as much light as her shimmery costume, and the horse ain't bad either. Marlena is almost musical, really, riding into the tent on the ripple of black and white stallions. It almost makes you wish that Water For Elephants were a musical. It thrives on these heightened moments, the ones that feel half imagined rather than remembered, and both musicals and epic period romances, a related endangered species, need these to induce the swooning.

Water for Elephants is adapted from the bestseller of the same name which introduces us to a nursing home escapee Jacob who tells a stranger in the circus business his life story. He ran away to the circus when tragedy struck and signed on as their vet, quickly proving indispensable. Naturally the young ivy league dropout falls for the star performer (Marlena) who is stuck in an abusive relationship with her older ringmaster husband. A new addition to the circus, an elephant named Rosie, strains their already tense triangular working relationship.

The unmistakable mistake within the the adaptation by Richard Lagravenese is its timidity. It's almost as if the screenwriter and possibly the director were afraid of breaking the spell that the #1 bestseller had on its audience. It's frustrating really that they were so shy. "Water For Elephants" in literary form, wasn't anything like a masterpiece to coax gingerly with reverence toward the screen. What it had going for it was the incredible images it conjured up; as books go it was practically already a movie. It needed a team that would corral it from big top to big screen with a merciless showman's precision, tossing its less wieldly bits off the train at the first opportunity. It needed to be an August rather than a Jacob. Take the framing device, for instance. It's awkward but enough in the book but justifies its presence somewhat with a good deal of meatiness. Truncated to screen form it's virtually character-free, the definition of inelegant structure. Why not toss it out altogether? (Sorry Hal Holbrook and Paul Schneider but you didn't have characters to play anyway!). Young Jacob's opening act tragedy is also entirely mangled by truncation. Few things are less interesting than waiting for a movie to get where you know it's going and few things are more exciting than entering a movie mid scene and running to catch up. Better to have kicked off with a despondent young man hopping aboard a moving train. Who is he? Why is someone this well educated and richly dressed acting like a hobo? Let key dialogue moments but mostly the skill of the actors (you hired pricey ones) suggest the back story. With best sellers the audience will fill in more than you should ever tell.

Still, the movie version has a few moments just as magical as Marlena's horse act most of them springing from the colorful alien milieu. The 1930 traveling circus is very well executed by the A list production team including production designer Jack Fisk (There Will Be Blood), costume designer Jacqueline West (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain). On occasion the performances get to be the show, courtesy mostly of Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds). His blazingly confident command of the camera is impossible to miss as are his efforts to elevate the archetypal Svengali character, by leaning hard into August's vulnerable moments, the aftermath of his rage or control. A fine pachyderm actor by the name of Tai is also wonderful as "Rosie".

Water For Elephants is smart enough to understand that it's closer to a romantic quadrangle (3/4ths human, 1/4th other) than a typical romantic epic. It wouldn't work without the aggressive push of August or the mysterious pull of Rosie but the young lovers are still crucial. In some ways Pattinson, a far more limited actor than Witherspoon, is better at the romantic grand gesture of this particular vehicle because he's not at all strong with specificity. (Though to be fair the book had this problem too, Jacob refusing to prove as dimensional as the supporting players.) Perhaps it's the cost of being the storyteller? Witherspoon acquits herself well, reminding us why she's a star, but her relationship with Waltz is so ably defined by both actors and involves more tenderness than you might expect from a movie portrayal of an abusive marriage so her turn towards her young savior feels slightly unfocused; It's arguably a sketch where bold romantic strokes might have helped. But in both the circus and at the movies, eye candy is the star attraction. Jacob and Marlena look great together in their romantic clinches, all sharp angled faces struggling to make room for soft feeling.

B-