NYFF: "Tahrir" You Are There

Michael C reporting from the New York Film Festival. 

In years to come there will no doubt be countless documentaries made attempting to make sense of the world changing events in the Middle East in the first half of 2011. Yet for all the context and analysis they bring to bear on the complexities of the Arab Spring I doubt any will have the immediacy of Stefano Savona’s Tahrir.

When the people of Egypy took to the streets, filling Tahrir Square, Savona grabbed his camera and marched out with them. When assembling his film he afforded himself no additional perspective. No talking heads. No title cards. No voiceover narration. If the protesters don’t have the information neither does the audience.

Without those crutches to lean on Savona goes in the opposite direction, building a picture of those days through collage - the musical repetition of chanting, the urgent, unsure spread of information, the confrontations with government enforcers. One such battle devolves horrifyingly into endless hours of rock throwing as protesters fashion makeshift helmets out of cardboard, scarves or whatever they can tie to their heads. The Egyptians we meet are a great antidote to the mainstream media’s usual representation of a sea of indistinguishable screaming foreigners. They debate the next course of action, speculate about events outside their control, and worry if it will all be worth it if in the end one tyrant is traded for another. 

Those unfamiliar with the events in Egypt last February will be more than a bit lost, even a news junkie like myself longed for a little added perspective, but with Tahrir that is beside the point. When historians set about to reconstruct what it was like to be in that square at that time, Savona's film will be essential viewing. 

✩

Previously... A Dangerous Method, The Loneliest Planet, Melancholia

Linknesses

Just Jared The Rum Diary gets a Johnny Depp-centric poster, opens in October... "absolutely nothing in moderation" tagline. What'cha think?
IndieWire Millenium buys Rampart and aims for an Oscar push for Woody Harrelson this year. My my my Best Actor is getting crowded, right?
Fandor's blog Keyframe just hosted a Guy Maddin blog-a-thon. Check it out.
Movie|Line talks to Sigourney Weaver about supporting Taylor Lautner through the action genre minefields with Abduction. (What a world, right?)
Wow Report Mia Farrow makes a LOL. Best tweet ever?

Cinema Blend Katey interviews Andrew Haigh the writer/director of Weekend. I really enjoyed talking to him too (my interview if you haven't seen it) but I love the bit about his dialogue writing that she gets him to discuss 9/10 minutes in. Very interesting process he has! I should've asked him about that. The bane of interviews is always thinking of things later that you really wish you'd asked.
MNPP James Dean's brotherly love screentest for East of Eden. 
Ultra Culture makes a funny with the Meryl Streep poster for The Iron Lady 

OffCinema
Sociological Images Elizabeth Warren is my new hero. Finally, a Democrat who can convey message in a clear, confident, convincing way.
Drawn If you're an artist reading, this lengthy video on celebrity caricature is super interesting in terms of technique and how to capture likenesses that are always so manipulated. This bit on Conan O'Brien's hair is choice.

I will draw his hair how we expect it to look, as if it had its own anatomical structure."
-John Kascht 

75th Anniversary! 
Have you played with this current Google Doodle honoring Jim Henson's birthday yesterday? (Shame I forgot about this one for blog purposes. Grrrr).

It's fun to play with though it's a bit difficult to replicate the two best surprises. 

Get Link Soon

Being sick would be awesome if one didn't feel like crap whilst staying in bed all day watching movies,  reading blogs, playing iPhone games, and snuggling with the cat. 

IndieWire has an interesting chart of which Toronto People's Choice Winners scored big at the box office after the fest. Adjusted for inflation American Beauty (1999) is still the champ. Or Slumdog Millionaire (2008) without any fancy maths. But those People's Choice winners sure do have a good track record at winning Oscar attention.
Parade has an interview excerpts piece up about Brad Pitt. I don't want to get too sentimental about it but I consider it a huge blessing when very famous and very rich celebrities actually reveals themselves to be good souls, too. The things he has to say about religion and federal government and affordable housing and adoption and all of these things... they are so spot on. I really don't get the bad rap that charitable celebrities often get -- is it just self-loathing turned outward when people realize they wouldn't be even a tenth as altruistic if they were wealthy? Is it jealousy of good fortune? I don't know. But my point is Brad & Angie: love 'em. 
Just Jared Bizarre contest alert. Seems you can enter/audition to be a voice in the animated musical Dorothy of Oz starring Lea Michele (first photos of characters are also present). The closer all these Oz movies get to theaters (I keep losing track of how many there are), the more naive the producers of the celluloid transfer of Broadway's Wicked look. How on earth do you sit on that golden goose property (which has already outgrossed most of the biggest blockbuster films ever) long enough to let an animated film --they take forever!-- beat you to theaters and live off, profit from and burn out the renewed Wizard of Oz fever that you yourselves stoked? Sometimes the Hare and not the Tortoise wins.

Speaking of Brad Pitt, somewhere in this past week I missed the Oscar Fever rise of his candidacy for Moneyball. It would be so weird if the Best Actor race was all hunky across the board: DiCaprio, Gosling, Fassbender, Pitt, DuJardin, and Clooney? 

Awards Daily snapped photos of Julianne Moore and Ed Harris in a Game Change preview. Disturbing it was (I saw the same one) with Julianne being so spitting image of that one celebritician
Ultra Culture opens the PR package for The Change-Up. Big LOLS ensue.
Nicks Flick Picks starts his beloved "Fifties" column, i.e. best of the year thus far. As always his choices and writeups make you rethink the work... which is what great critics do.
Empire Colin Firth, whose career is still giant-sized post A Single King Man's Speech, will next star in The Railway Man, a POW drama. That is after Tinker Tailor. 
Towleroad my latest movie column in which I order people around. Go see Drive.
Stale Popcorn remembers the character actress Frances Bay (RIP) from The Golden Girls to Twin Peaks

October News and Request For Reader Input
When I was reading this article on Everything I Know...  in which Mr. Caggiano who teaches courses in musical theater history and the neuropsychology of music (?!?) asks his incoming students to name the best musical of all time, I remembered that next month marks the 50th anniversary of my personal favorite (WEST SIDE STORY). The film version of West Side Story, which first hit the big screen on October 18th, 1961 went on to become a huge hit and one of the biggest Oscar champs of all time (11 noms, 10 wins losing only its screenplay nomination as musicals tend to.). On the classic movies note, I wondered, for younger readers especially (and please do speak up if you have feelings about this), if I use too much of a shotgun approach when discussing old movies here? I sometimes suspect you have too many titles flying at you all the time to really decide what to get familiar with (like in those huge "all time" lists). So perhaps we should focus more going forward? Maybe we should try Classic of the Month style loose themes? It would be boring to talk about the same movie -- any movie -- for an entire month but perhaps a loose theme could include all sorts of detours that tie in but aren't too much of the same thing (Oscar competitions, influences, actor careers.

Sound off in the comments... I guess I'm interested to know if you liked the previous theme weeks like Aliens or the films of Tennessee Williams or Moulin Rouge! this summer or if you had to already know and love the movies to enjoy those?

Bachmann-Eyezed

I know I've already plugged the maximum lolz tumblr "Bachmann-Eyezed" which only uses "100% real Michele Bachmann eyes" to change up famous people and uh things. But because I check it daily for updates and the joke will undoubtedly be shortlived,  I thought I'd share my six favorite movie centric editions.

Not to be confused with John Wayne Gacy, y'see.

three more eyed photos and a bit of political commentary (you have been warned) after the jump...

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Melissa Harris-Perry and "The Help"

I fear that I may have to retitle the blog "The Help Experience" but that's okay. This kind of happens when Oscar contenders show up and get everyone talking. Soon there will be more of them and The Help won't hog so much attention.

If you haven't yet read my review, do that please (they don't write themselves!) but today I wanted to discuss Melissa Harris-Perry's righteous fury at the movie (There is a lot of this going around which Sasha Stone discussed recently though Perry was never mentioned).

For those of you who don't Perry she's a professor of political science at Tulane University, her new book "Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes and Black Women in America" just came out, and she's regularly on political programs as a talking head.  She's also one of the smartest people alive. Every time she's on television I swoon. When her segments are over I often feel as if the fog has cleared from the subject under scrutiny, her commentary is so perceptive and accessible. Gender, race and politics of the South are kind of her thing so, naturally, she HATED The Help. But she was amusing about it so I thought I'd share her disgruntled tweets.

They're not as incisive and genius as her political commentary but 140 characters, y'know. Read on!

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