NYFF: "The Skin I Live In" It's Alive!

Michael C. (Serious Film) here with one of my most anticipated titles of 2011.

Dr. Banderas and his monster?

Dammit, Pedro. I just can't stay mad at you.

Even as he never reaches the emotional impact you expect from an Almodóvar production - as is the case with The Skin I Live In - his filmmaking is so alive in every moment one can't help forgiving him his flaws. Is this a top tier work from the man who made All About My Mother? No. Was I still glued to the screen in every moment as I am with few films? Hell, yes.

To call The Skin I Live In "Almodovar does Frankenstein" is both an accurate description and wildly reductive. Accurate in that, yes, Antonio Banderes plays a mad surgeon with a creation of his own held captive in his mansion. It is reductive because Pedro is not about to be satisfied simply delivering his take on lightning bolts and things jumping at you out of the darkness. The horror in Skin is of a far more unsettling variety involving attacks not just on one's safety but on one's sanity. It touches on Almodovar's familiar themes of sexuality, identity, and stopping everything dead so we can watch a beautiful woman sing a beautiful song.

more sans spoilers after the jump.

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Oscar Submissions: Japan, Sweden and Germany's "Pina"

Three more films have been announced for this year's foreign film Oscar competition, and all are from countries with a fairly large degrees of success with Academy's foreign nominating committee. Though the Academy always has a veritably orgy of films to choose from (usually sixty-plus) for its five-wide profile boosting arguably hit-making honors, they do tend to prefer European pictures. They also tend to prefer Japanese films to other countries when it comes to Asian cinema. Will they choose any of these three pictures?

JAPAN (12 noms, 1 win, and 3 honorary awards before the foreign category existed)
Postcard, an anti-war film about a soldier (Etsushi Toyokawa) returning home from World War II to see his family devastated, comes from the 98 year old director Kaneto Shindo. He has already stated that this will be his last film. 

SWEDEN (14 noms, 3 wins)
Beyond is the directorial debut of the actress Pernilla August (More and more actresses are making the leap: see also Vera Farmiga and we're loving it. Why shouldn't they?) The actor-centric heavy drama stars Noomi Rapace as the adult survivor of alcoholic parents in the 1970s. Noomi's real life husband Ola Rapace co-stars. Beyond opened at last year's Venice Film Festival but didn't premiere in Sweden until December 2010, placing it safely within the eligibilty period for this year's submission.

Wim Wender working on his documentary homage "Pina"

GERMANY (18 nominations, 3 wins)
Pina is a high profile 3D documentary on the work of the influential German dance artist Pina Bausch who died two years ago -- it was not intended, originally, to be a posthumous film. Dancers convinced the acclaimed filmmaker Wim Wenders to continue with the project which is now an homage to Bausch featuring several of her most acclaimed pieces performed by dancers onstage and outdoors.

Honestly dance is a great use of 3D if you must use 3D at all. Unfortunately the dance movies that have used it previously have rarely understood that to get 3D to work its spatial relations magic and what that means to choreography (a lot), you need to actually not cut every second to a different camera angle so that the eyes can observe the physicality, distance, and depth. I haven't yet seen Pina (very soon I hope) but I'm assuming Wim Wenders understands this in a way, say, the makers of Glee the 3D Concert Movie would not. Just a hunch.

This is not the first time a filmmaker has been inspired by Pina or used that inspiration to really heartbreaking affect. Remember the way Pedro Almodóvar used Pina to set the stage for the ineffable emotional pull of Talk To Her?

My guess right now is that the documentary Pina may have enough acclaim and novelty interest to make the finals (at least). But documentaries have a tough road for Oscar acclaim in any category other than Documentary. To my knowledge no documentary -- and at least one is submitted each year in this category -- has ever been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. (Unless you count Waltz With Bashir which you could; it strikes me more as an uncategorizable hybrid film.)

Foreign Film Oscar Chart -NEW & SPARKLY!
Foreign Film Articles 

Throw Some Rice, Share Some Link

Before we begin today's news roundup, we must throw some rice. From The Godfather we know that the Coppola's can throw a hell of a wedding. Wish the newlyweds well: Mrs and Mrs Sofia Coppola / Thomas Mars.

The Film Doctor on Luc Besson's Colombiana
The Wrap Pedro Almodóvar will guest direct the AFI Fest and present a 25th anniversary screening of Law of Desire (which is only Nathaniel's favorite Almodóvar, don'cha know) 
IndieWire 10 things that festival season will tell us 'bout the awards race 
Twitch Film has the trailer to the new Hrithik Roshan epic: color, musical numbers, tons of violence. Bollywood always goes all out. 

And no, I'm not sharing The Hunger Games teaser which you can see on roughly 93% of all blogs on the internet today. Someone's gotta take a stand for their .0000000000001% of the film blogging world! Basically Jennifer Lawrence runs through a forest while we learn in narration that she's good at hunting. Then she fires an arrow at the logo. That's it. Search for it yourself if you're a slave to movie marketing. Seriously, that movie: Calm down! I've never felt this exhausted by a movie trying to become an event before. It will probably work which is why movies spend so much on P&A but wouldn't it be cool if audiences got to decide which films were events AFTER SEEING THEM. 

just for fun
The New Yorker "I'm Sorry" by Paul Rudnick
Michael Musto on the VMA Tribute to Britney Spears 
YouTube Hurricane Irene brings back streaking. nsfw
Playbill OMG Carol Channing is releasing a new album at 90 years young this winter. Go see Carol Channing: Larger than Life, a new documentary, if you get a chance. It's fun. 

Q&A: Hitting the Wall, Moving to France, Dreaming of Sofia

You asked so I'm answering. Not all the weekly questions of course. If I did that I'd be typing for a whole week with only your questions to guide me. I've selected a dozen questions to answer and here they are. 

Tyler: Do you think Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet give good performances in Titanic?
Nathaniel: Hmmm. Define "good". I didn't expect this question to give me pause but it did. I'll try to keep this short. I adore Titanic (1997) and not ironically. I have a certain level of teary devotion to instantly iconic performances like those, to movie-movie performances that maybe aren't nuanced or perfect but serve their movie in a seismic way. I think of Leo's floppy bangs or Kate's fiery curled tresses and I go all mushy inside and have a sudden desire to draw hearts all over notebook folders with a ball point pen. *Ahem*. So, I love Leo & Kate in Titanic, especially as a unit, but I think they both have kind of rough moments in it. (Seriously. That was the best take?). Still, if I'm on the ship and in charge of divvying up the lifeboats, Leo & Kate get one first. Women and children can fend for themselves. " Ladies Movie stars first!"

Kin: Pick a country to live in besides America, but base your reasons only on movies.
Nathaniel: France, bien sûr. Do I even need to explain? It's the birthplace of cinema and the auteur theory, the Eiffel Tower is key to a million famous movie scenes, the French New Wave still fascinates, and the list goes on. Also they have Deneuve so this win be landslide.

Matthew: How do you feel about acclaimed actresses who seemingly play themselves or variations of the same character in every film? I'm thinking of, in particular, Mary-Louise Parker and Zooey Deschanel, among other actresses whose overall versatility leaves something to be desired. Do you think they are deserving of accolades for their overall body of works when compared to say an actress like Kate Winslet or Julianne Moore.
Nathaniel: Many of the most beloved actors of all time did just this, particularly before The Method took over. Cary Grant is genius but always Cary Grant. Mae West wouldn't be Mae West if she wasn't Mae West. And so on. So as long as we like that core person they're playing and they're versatile enough to spin it or smear it or mess with it in small ways a little from role to role, we're good. That said, Mary Louise Parker needs to get the hell off of Weeds.  WHAT IS SHE STILL DOING THAT SHOW FOR? She's calcifying. That is way too long to play the same character when said character is already so close to who you've always played. 

SoSueMe: Which actors have hit a wall creatively and have pretty much shown us all that they can do?
Nathaniel: Ding. Ding. Ding. Other than Mary Louise Parker. I am pretty sure that Johnny Depp has misplaced his entire once-prodigious well of creativity and is on perma-auto-pilot for the past six years.

I worry a little bit about Leonardo DiCaprio, too. I'm willing to be proven wrong in J. Edgar but I absolutely don't believe that directors challenge or control him enough. He's so talented but I think his career has been too easy for him. If you never have to struggle -- and his struggling ended abruptly when he was only 23 --  don't you lose the hunger that leads people to ravenously attack their role as if this is the one, the best chance to prove their gift? His performances feel too samey and not just because of the furrowed brow and The Dead Wives Club. But when he's "on" he's really something (see The Departed, key passages in The Aviator and ⅔ of his pre Titanic output.)

Manuel: IF Winona Ryder was not burned out at the time and did The Godfather III, do you think the movie would have been better with her?

my answers and the Question(s) of the week after the jump

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Julianne is Dope. Also: Links

The Far From Heaven team cleaning up at the Indie Spirits in 2003IndieWire so it looks like it's really happening *sniffle* Julianne Moore is moving to television. After that Sarah Palin telefilm turn she's doing a pilot for an HBO series called Dope.

But it's not all bad news: Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon are involved so it's essentially the great Far From Heaven team. Cross your fingers that it's worthy of their collective gifts! It'll have to be really really special to be that. 

The series would be set in the 1950s and is based on this novel. Publishers Weekly describes Moore's character like so.

Josephine "Joe" Flannigan, is a former heroin addict and hooker who has recast herself as a petty thief and con. Working her home turf, New York City's Hell's Kitchen, she is taken up by a mysterious well-to-do couple to find their addict daughter, expelled from Barnard and lost to the streets. 

So there's room for great acting. We shall see.

The Linkies
The Wrap Patti Smith is working on a biopic of sorts -- it's based on her memoirs of her early years with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the late 60s/early 70s -- with screenwriter John Logan. Who on earth could play Patti Smith? She's kinda strange looking and Hollywood only hires beauties. Here's what they looked like when the movie would take place.

ArtsBeat David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method will get a gala screening at the NYFF.
Latina Antonio Banderas on his long artistic separation from Pedro Almodóvar 'tween Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and The Skin I Live In (coming soon... and also getting a gala NYFF screening).

And speaking of Almodóvar, how amazing is this Rossy de Palma wall art by Adrian Valencia? I went to his site via a series of Lady Gaga drawings that are just stellar. 

© Adrian Valencia, 2011

 The Funnies
Ultra Culture "Cowboys and Aliens Fact Sheet"
My New Plaid Pants Quote of the Day from Jean Claude Van Damme [nsfw] 
The Hairpin an amusing review of Rise of the Planet of the Apes with drawings 
I09 "ten vestigial traits you didn't know you had". Robert Gonzalez, who wrote this, is funny. 
Bachmanneyezed a new tumblr