Michelle & Tim's 20th Anniversary Reunion

Michelle Pfeiffer and Tim Burton reunited on the set of Dark Shadows... nice visual. It only took two decades!  For reasons we've never understood since we don't hear that she's particular "difficult" or anything, Pfeiffer rarely works with directors twice. She barely even repeats co-stars (apart from, famously, Pacino & Nicholson). It's a strange thing about her career when you hold it up against other stars of her stature.

In fact, before this film with Tim Burton which opens 20 years after Batman Returns, the number of directors she's had a second round with number just two. And that number was only one up until the film before her 1000th hiatus (yeah, I'm bitter).

• Michael Hoffman (One Fine Day and Midsummer Night's Dream)
• Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons and Chéri)

Weird, right? 

I REALLY must stop posting photos about Dark Shadows (I'm sure there will be many more temptations) or I won't be able to mock other movie blogs anymore for their anti-movie / pro-marketing approach (i.e. 200,000 articles about New Movie before it arrives, 1 when it does and then it magically transforms to Old Movie And We Don't Talk About Those! But it was either Dark Shadows anticipation or New Year's Eve (groan) so, you know... what could I do? Dark Twisted Pfeiffer is way more exciting than Mall Mom Pfeiffer. (I don't know any pfans who prefers Mall Mom Pfeiffer.)

There's another photo from Dark Shadows featuring Johnny Depp doing a Nosferatu-style air grab if you must over at Empire who reported from the set. 

Q&A: Young Directors, Male Actresses, Awesome Marisa

My apologies straightaway that this week's Q & A is so late. A particularly nasty bout of insomnia derailed me for over a day. I was without rail. Back on track now and the time has come to answer your questions, 10 of them at any rate.

BBats: What young director (3 or less films) are you most excited about seeing over the next decade?
Nathaniel: This is a great question but difficult because then you have to really stop and think about who made which pictures when and you have to set aside people you've been rooting for forever that will seemingly be 70 before they birth a third feature (I'm talking to you Jonathan Glazer and Kimberly Peirce). It'd be weird to say John Cameron Mitchell since he's been making great movies for a decade now but in fact he's only made three. Still it's hard to argue with that diverse, unique and cathartically vivid trio: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Shortbus (2006), and Rabbit Hole (2010). I would follow him anywhere though I might be shoving him from behind while doing so because he's too freaking slow. 

My list would have to include 34 year-old Cary Fukunaga who has made two features but already has a great sense of the camera's place in storytelling as well as a place's place in storytelling (Sin Nombre) if you get me. On top of that he's got a steady hand with strong actors (Jane Eyre). 

Cary Fukanaga, Xavier Dolan, and Steve McQueen

I'd also go with 22 year-old Xavier Dolan who sure can make pretty pictures (I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats) and can also act inside of them. His influences are super apparent but he's very young and it should be thrilling to watch that already glorious image-making while on the soundtrack a filmmaking voice find itself. I'm very curious as to how Andrea Arnold's career will develop. She already has an Oscar from that gritty compelling short film Wasp (2003) and Fish Tank was so special. Finally, there are two filmmakers who are about to unveil their sophomore feature after a startling debut: 37 year old Joachim Trier (will Oslo August 31st equal Reprise or prove too similar?) and 42 year-old Steve McQueen (will Shame top Hunger... but then how could it?) which means that my list is already up to five and your question was singular so I'll stop there. But the three names in bold are the ones I can't stop thinking about this year.

Roark: What's your favorite movie in your least favorite genre?
Nathaniel:  I'm not crazy about westerns but I love Howard Hawks's Red River (1948). I was going to say "horror" but then when I stop to recall how many I do love (Psycho, Carrie, Rosemary's Baby being the holy trinity) it becomes clear that I far prefer horror to westerns. 

Luke and Adrian: Best Post Oscar move for Natalie Portman?
Nathaniel: Laying low now that she's had her money-guzzling year. Wait it out until something challenging but different than Black Swan comes around. I'm guessing it would be a lot easier for her to find her next Closer than her next Black Swan so if I were her management team I'd be looking for a high profile prestige ensemble drama... or even a highly stylized but lighter something... She was terrific in Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier and the short treated her like a star. Directors who know how to frame her spectacular face and amp up her sexuality in deeper than surface ways tend to get the best rewards; too many Your Highnesses and Friends With Benefits and that Oscar win won't age well.

Evan: What three movies are you most looking forward to from the remainder of 2011?
Nathaniel: Shame for the McQueen/Fassbender reunion, The Skin I Live In for the Almodóvar/Banderas reunion, and I Don't Know How She Doe.... KIDDING! and  A Dangerous Method for the Cronenberg/Mortensen reunion. Look at me all Director/ACTOR things instead of actresses. Where am I? WHO AM I?

Mr W: And are you going to revive you reader spotlights any time soon?
Nathaniel: Yes. The new fall season of The Film Experience kicks off on September 13th and we'll also go back to honoring you... the collective you, I mean. Not that Mr. W isn't worth honoring :) 

Tom M: Which Male Actors (past and/or present) come closest to having careers/images/appeals like the actresses you love? (Not necessarily asking about your favorite actors but if there are any actors that trip your actressexual wire...if that makes any sense.)

my answer, plus Woody Allen and an ode to Marisa Tomei if you click-to-continue

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One Take Wonders

Though I don't recall when it began -- maybe with Rope as just discussed? --  I've been obsessed with one-take scenes for what seems like forever. You know the kind. It's that thrilling moment when the editor seems to go out for a smoke break and the director allows the film and/or performances to fully breathe. That free breathing is probably an illusion since the scenes must be rigidly corseted by the technical and performative choreography required to get it all without "coverage".

When you see a great one take scene or film, even if that "one" take is partly a matter of film trickery (examples: Atonement, Children of Men basically the entirety of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and Aleksandr Sukorov's Russian Ark and a scene we just discussed from 25 years ago in Peggy Sue Got Married) it can be hard to return to the world of "regular" filmmaking with its generic one and a ½ second cuts composed of plentiful coverage. Over the shoulder. Close up. Over the shoulder. Repeat for billions of converszzzzzzzzzz  

I'm sorry I fell asleep.

So why do so few film directors trust in the highwire potency of long or single takes? Are they too difficult to pull off? Are film actors that unable to sustain themselves throughout emotional hairpin turns the way stage actors can 8 shows a week for hours at a time? Do people think the audience will get bored (a falsity since these scenes are usually THE talking points of their movies)?

If they're so hard to pull off why do music videos with significantly lower budgets than movies keep selling them so well?

The latest one I saw was the low budget but high entertainment "Party Girl" by XELLE 

Absolutely hot. Think of the rehearsal time required just to time things like that glitter blow? But it works, don't you think?

And I've already expressed my love for both Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend" - just her dancing in a gym but with all the lighting tricks it's just totally a great watch --  and Cosmo's Jarvis "Gay Pirate" which is both sing-a-long fun and actually moving.

Although it's NOT a one take video, this REM "üBerlin" video starring rising actor Aaron Johnson (directed by his partner Sam Taylor-Wood) breathes enough to suggest that it wanted to be one and would have been a classic video instead of just a frisky uninhibited one, if it were. 

So I ask in full sincerity...

  Why are today's directors so afraid of letting a moment play out without zillions of edits? If music videos -- which were once blamed for shortening the average shot length in movies -- can ironically use them so often now, why can't today's full length pictures? 

Top Ten Triple: Time Tables 'Tween Movies

Generally speaking a human infant can be produced in nine months. Baby elephants take two years. But when it comes to directors birthing their next celluloid or digitial babies, the time tables from conception to birth remain a calendrical mystery. Outside of Woody Allen, who brings an infant film into the world each and every year and Clint Eastwood, who often has twins, there's just no telling!

It's so hard to please movie buffs

We're thinking about this because Darren Aronofsky is lining up his post Black Swan project and Serious Film was just rejoicing over the news that P.T. Anderson is back to work. His thinly veiled Scientology film, formerly titled "The Master" has a June start date. Michael is like Goldilocks on the topic of time between pictures and we are too -- it's hard to satisfy us! -- but the Robert Altman / Martin Scorsese time table, a film every two or so years, is deemed "just right".

Michael writes:

Sure that makes them more vulnerable to the occasional dud, but it also opens them up to all the interesting follies and surprise discoveries that wind up being as treasured as their major masterpieces. Marty would never had produced anything as odd and discomfiting as King of Comedy if he has been moving at the glacial pace of a Terrence Malick, and the cinematic landscape would have been poorer for it.'

Can he get an amen?

We're limiting the following lists to living filmmakers / post-studio time frame because everyone was more regular when films ruled the world (prior to tv) and were assembled with greater efficiency. So for today's lists, let's look at the slowpokes, inbetweeners and quickies. These are not exact lists -- imagine trying to research every director in the world and we've also extracted shorts, tv films and documentaries -- but lists of commonly discussed feature filmmakers and a few of our favorites thrown in for good measure. 

DISCLAIMER: We're fully aware that financial backing is a factor in speed but have to ignore it for the purposes of this article. Also, we're aware that release dates don't always reflect timetables but you try looking up start of filming dates versus release date disparity on thousands of movies.

also: eating, sleeping, thinking, applying sunscreen.

SLOWPOKES
Listed from the very slowest to quickest among the slow. One is forced to imagine that the following filmmakers actually hibernate inbetween films. Only intense hunger pains ever reawaken them. This list is dedicated to Spike Jonze (who has only made 3 features since he started movies and they're all brilliant. But three is no kind of legacy: Commit!) and to Jonathan Glazer who we can only assume is having problems with financing. He's only made 2 films, both of them wonderful, in the past 10 years. His next feature is supposedly Under the Skin (2014) which would arrive a full decade after Birth, one of the most brilliant films of the Aughts.

1. Terrence Malick
   Quickest: 5 years between Badlands and Days of Heaven.
   Slowest: 20 years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line.
   Rough Breakdown: One film every seven and ½ years (5 films thus far)
2. Baz Luhrmann
   Quickest: 4 years between Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet
   Slowest: 7 years between Moulin Rouge and Australia
   Rough Breakdown: One film every four years and 9 months (4 films thus far)
3. David Lynch
   
   Bob, Dale Cooper and Lynch in the prolific Twin Peaks years.Quickest: He's managed one year gaps on occasion
   Slowest:

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What's Your "Type"? (Of Director)

Making the Movies has a good piece up called "The Four Types of Filmmaker". On first impression it feels spot on, apart from some arguable placements once they get around to naming names. They divvy filmmakers up into four groups: The Meticulous Master (obsessive, detailed... sometimes they take forever), The Prolific Pro (wide range of quality but constantly filming), The Irrepressible Entertainer (uneven but always serving the audience first), and the Reverent Referentialist (mashing up recycling and reconfiguring all their favorite movies and movie tropes). I'm simplifying -- it's worth reading for fuller explanations.

Masters, Pros, Entertainers, Referentialists

You could and I think should argue for a Fifth Type, "The Hired Hand", the men and women who work but aren't regularly labelled as "auteurs". This type only wows when the project feels just right for them in a way, or when the project itself has so much else going for it. But they can "wow" nonetheless. The thing that I found most surprising about the four categories once I stopped to look at the people falling under each umbrella -- and there are a few who seem like they could flip categories with ease -- is how much there is to love in each group. Maybe I don't have a type. Maybe that means I'm a big whore for the movies?

Do you have a type?