Team Experience: "Maleficent" and More

I'm always curious about your film experiences out there in the dark. That curiousity extends to the contributors here at TFE, not all of whom I know in real life given that they're spread across the globe. You know them, virtually speaking. Hopefully you love them. But I thought we'd ask them a couple of questions each week. Feel free to answer yourself in the comments and join the conversation.

WHAT'S THE BEST THING YOU SAW THIS WEEK?

JA: A tie between every single second of Emmanuel Lubeszki's photography for The Tree of Life (it's a gorgeous film that left me cold), and that probably photoshopped image of Jake Gyllenhaal doing the Grace Jones pose in his underpants. I see beautiful things!

Andreas: John Carpenter's The Thing -- after several viewings, it retains all of its original power.

Robert: Ramin Bahrani's short film Plastic Bag. I stumbled upon it while attempting to keep my Herzog high going after being enthralled by Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Bahrani's film follows and anthropomorphized plastic bag (shades of American Beauty are minimal) and finds itself spiraling into themes of life, death, and meaning and best of all, it's narrated by Werner Herzog himself... as the plastic bag of course!

Michael (Unsung Heroes). The best thing I saw this week was, without question, the montage of drunk cast members from the latest episode of Parks and Recreation. I want an episode length edit of all the improv that went into that scene.

Jose: Since theaters here are only playing four movies (Rio, Fast and Furious 5, Thor and Priest) I re-watched Gone With the Wind in HD. Mind blowing!  Sure gives any new movie a run for its money. It also felt much shorter than Thor.

WHAT'S THE WORST?

Michael : the worst thing I saw, or rather didn't see, was screen time for Rene Russo in Thor. It's been forever since Russo had a high-profile gig and she gets 30 measly seconds of screen time? You can't tease me like that Thor.

Andreas: The first 10 minutes of I Know Who Killed Me. (Nonetheless, I may revisit it later; I'm a glutton for punishment.)

JA: The worst thing I saw was the original ending to Alexander Payne's Election. Truly, stupefyingly awful.

TIM BURTON HAS OFFICIALLY LEFT DISNEY'S "MALEFICENT".

Robert: The marriage between Tim Burton and Disney makes me so sad. They're like two people who were really sexy back in high school, still trying to fit into their cheerleading and football uniforms, telling each other how great they still look, and wondering how that dorky kid Quentin got so popular (this metaphor has gotten away from me). But I still want to like them very much. So I guess what I'm saying is I wish they'd split and find new partners who could convince them to hit the gym... cinematically speaking.

JA: Never much loved Sleeping Beauty as a kid - I was all up in Alice in Wonderland and Fantasia - so I was never attached, beyond really liking the way the word "Maleficent" rolls off the tongue. Maaaalefahcint! I don't understand why people didn't take it up as a name for their children. Little Maleficent would rule pre-school with an iron fist.

Jose:  Maleficent would serve itself better from a director with an eye for actual Gothic, I say call Jane Campion or Catherine Breillat!

YOUR TURN...

• Who do you think should direct MALEFICENT with Burton gone? 
• What's the best & worst anything you saw this week? I've been enjoying True Blood and Ishtar (more on the later in a bit.)

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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Curio: Saint Werner

Alexa here.  I heard someone say once that Werner Herzog is as close as the cinema gets to a saint, and I agree. Of course there are the films (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, oy, the magic!), but there's also the exuberant man himself; he feels like a beacon in the middle of a wasteland sometimes.  Nathaniel's perfect festival wardrobe choice of a Herzog tee reminded me of this Herzog wearable I want for my birthday:

I imagine people would assume I'm wearing my grandfather or something, and I'd love to see the different reactions I'd get when I tell them it's an image of Herzog.  (I spied it Seacave's etsy shop; unfortunately he doesn't have any for sale right now, but he does have a sweet Bonnie and Clyde pendant necklace for the lawless out there.)

Recently I spotted this portrait embroidery of Werner, and knowing me, if I had $185 to burn I just might buy it.  You can find him at this etsy shop, along with Peter Sellers and Jean-Luc Godard.