Remembering the year 2001

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH
Written and Directed by John Cameron Mitchell


I can still remember how I felt after seeing HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH for the first time. It was raining but the only reason I noticed that was because I was wet when I got home. I didn’t feel a thing while I walked outside; I was far too stunned. What had I just seen? I certainly couldn’t say that I had ever seen a rock opera about a transsexual singer/songwriter from East Berlin who had a botched sex change operation and who had immigrated to America only to have all of her music ripped off by a pretty little white boy. The only reassuring thing about this state was that I was fairly certain no one else could say they had seen that before either.


Well, plenty of people had seen the Off-Broadway hit but that is still a pretty paltry faction of people. Yes, HEDWIG got its humble beginnings in New York City. It was written by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask and the title character was performed by Mitchell himself. After the show concluded its run, Mitchell had bigger plans and bigger wigs in mind for both Hedwig and himself. He had never directed a film before but must have felt comfortable enough with this material to take that risk. The risk most certainly paid off and to watch Hedwig, you would never know he had never directed before. Mitchell took a play that was grand in scope but limited in size and eradicated any notion that it had to be contained on a stage. His direction of Hedwig goes from town to town following the former lover who stole all his songs while simultaneously moving back and forth between time and space to tell Hedwig’s incredible story. His performance of Hedwig earned him a Golden Globe nomination and to watch it, you cannot imagine anyone else filling those gigantic platforms.


Sure, it’s all a little jarring at first but then at ten minutes in, a song starts. An animation takes over the screen and tells the story of how love began. The song is called, “The Origin of Love” and the drawings are nothing more than stick figures shaking almost elegantly on parchment but it doesn’t matter. They capture exactly what the complex song is saying so simply. The song details how all of us were once connected with another. There were boys attached to other boys, girls with girls and even girls attached to other boys, if you can believe that. Until one day, the gods decided that too much fun was being had and split all of these perfect unions into halves that would then have to scour the world to find their counterparts. Before this moment, there was no need for love, to search for it, to crave it because it simply didn’t exist. Hedwig is not a man or a woman and certainly not whole. Her search is bold, empowered and unfailing … and will likely never be over.


I think its fair to say that there are still too few people who have seen anything like HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH and I think its fair to say, too few people ever will. Thanks to John Cameron Mitchell though, a select group of fortunate people can now fell a little more open minded and hopefully a little more whole.



Black Sheep's 2001 Top 10
(in alphabetical order)

DONNIE DARKO, directed by Richard Kelly
LE FABULEUX DESTIN D’AMELIE POULIN (Amelie), Jean-Pierre Jeunet
GOSFORD PARK, Robert Altman
HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, John Cameron Mitchell
IN THE BEDROOM, Todd Fields
L.I.E., Michael Cuesta
MEMENTO, Christopher Nolan
MOULIN ROUGE!, Baz Luhrmann
MULHOLLAND DRIVE, David Lynch
PRESQUE RIEN (Come Undone), Sebastien Lifshitz

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: STAR TREK Lives Long and Prospers

They’ve been taunting us for months now and while that sometimes comes across as obnoxious or pompous but in the case of the STAR TREK reboot, it seems that it was just pride all along.


There was no certainty that relaunching a decades old franchise and aiming it at a generation that really had nothing to do with it past having to sit through organized marathons with their potentially costumed fathers. Yet here we are, $72 million later, and there is no question that the decision to come back was a good one. The film is being heralded highly by both critics and audiences alike, which means that STAR TREK may not disappear so quickly into the overcrowded summer night. Outside of North America, STAR TREK performed solidly, pulling in an additional $35 million. Playing on over 5,000 screens, many expected a bigger figure.


STAR TREK may not have launched as monumentally as last weekend’s WOLVERINE but something tells me STAR TREK will be able to parlay its excellent word of mouth into a much thinner decline than the 68% WOLVERINE plummeted this week. WOLVERINE does not have the benefit of being loved by many if any, had to deal with the inevitable fanboy drop-off and went head to head with another highly anticipated feature that was essentially attacking the same demographic. WOLVERINE almost held its international box office crown though, pulling in just under $30 million outside of North America.


The Top 10 saw only one other debut, NEXT DAY AIR, which fizzled out in sixth place. Meanwhile, three intriguing indies performed reasonably well in limited release further down the chart. The highest charting title is also the title with the lowest average between the three. Reuniting Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna from Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, RUDO Y CURSI, debuted on 70 screens but only managed an average of $3K. Meanwhile, debuting on just 12 screens, LITTLE ASHES, in which TWILIGHT hunk, Robert Pattinson plays gay, brought in the highest average of any limited release, $6.4K. And falling somewhere in between the two, Atom Egoyan’s latest, ADORATION, brought in an average of $4.3K on just 10 screens.

NEXT WEEK: Tom Hanks tries to take down Starfleet and the Roman Catholic church in ANGELS AND DEMONS. And on the indie front, the Jennifer Aniston/Steve Zahn comedy, MANAGEMENT will start small and the oft-delayed THE BROTHERS BLOOM will finally see the light of day.

STAR TREK

Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
Directed by J.J. Abrams
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg and Leonard Nimoy


James T. Kirk: Who was that pointy-eared bastard?

How long has it been now? It seems like the last star date was light years ago, that a franchise that had been a cultural mainstay for decades had finally drifted into its final frontier. As the leagues of Trekkies grew older, it seemed that the obsession and admiration for Gene Roddenberry’s benchmark science fiction work would soon die out but one Trekkie would not hear of it. J.J. Abrams, the man responsible for creating a new faction of avid followers with his twisted series, “Lost”, stepped up to bring STAR TREK to this generation. The trick then became how to sell these classic characters to an audience that may widely know them solely as punch lines or wax statues while not shunning those who watched religiously and have had to wait seven years for a new installment. Abrams must be a master trickster then because his reboot feels alive and energized from start to finish. While making a movie to appease particular crowds, both new and old, Abrams has instead made a STAR TREK film everyone can get into.


I never cared much for the original “Star Trek” series and I was only a casual viewer of “The Next Generation”. I have nothing against Trekkies but I most certainly am not one. And I also admit that the thing I was most curious about this film was how Abrams could make STAR TREK relevant again. He did it by owning it. From the very beginning, STAR TREK dives into intense drama. A Starfleet ship is under attack by a rogue Romulan ship that appears out of nowhere and looks like a tentacled mechanical monster. People are dying all around and the situation is grim but the result is instant immersement in an alternate reality that is unfathomable and yet entirely convincing. We proceed to bounce back and forth between Iowa and the planet, Vulcan, as if they were mere minutes apart. Beings, both human and alien, exist in both plains seamlessly and it suddenly isn’t so difficult to relate. Even Michael Giacchino’s score is triumphantly, boldly proclaiming a resounding pride for the project as a whole. STAR TREK makes no apologies for what it is and no concessions to be here now.


Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s screenplay is surprisingly concise given their studio background. They were faced with the challenge of reintroducing characters that are cultural icons without desecrating their origins. The truth is that bringing the whole cast of characters from the original Enterprise as is could never work today. They are simply too dated to keep up with today’s pace. And while their new incarnations are much more limber, they also have their original values (and a few hilarious catchphrases) in tact. And Abrams did a fine job weaving the old and new into his fresh cast. Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) is a cocky self-assured womanizer but Pine plays him with a well-hidden insecurity in the back of his head as to what he truly can accomplish. Ohura (Zoe Saldana) is a beautiful and fiercely intelligent woman on a mission to succeed. And Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto), the child of a Vulcan father and a human mother, is the most fascinating of them all. Quinto strikes the perfect balance of internal turmoil between honouring his Vulcan roots and indulging his human emotions. Perhaps most important though, the cast just seems to be enjoying every second of their time on deck.


Maybe I should just have a little more faith in reappropriating the past. This is the age of the geek after all so it shouldn’t be so surprising to see this resurgence now. I haven’t discussed the plot because it simply isn’t necessary. Suffice it to say, it is intricate and tight and a lot more fun not to know where anything is going at any point in time. It is such a smooth ride that you can just sit back and enjoy the comfortable warp cruising speed. I didn’t think he could do it but J.J. Abrams has boldly brought STAR TREK where no STAR TREK film has ever gone before … past the niche and to the masses.



(ps. is it wrong to think mr. spock is hot?)

ADORATION: An interview with writer/director, Atom Egoyan

“I remember thinking this was the simplest film I had ever made, that it was so straight forward.” Even Atom Egoyan, one of Canada’s most internationally recognized and celebrated filmmakers, can admit that his films are not always that simple to follow. “Now that there has been some distance though, I can see that it is challenging; it asks the viewer to trust what I’m doing.” Having debuted at last year’s Cannes film festival, audiences are finally about to get the opportunity to judge ADORATION for themselves..


As we have come to expect from Egoyan, ADORATION is a multi-layered piece of filmmaking. Adolescent Simon (Devon Bostick) cannot come to terms with the death of his parents in a car crash that took place when he was a child. He decides to rewrite their history as part of an oral presentation for his French class, in an effort to regain control over his own lack of understanding. He chooses to tell his classmates that his mother and father had been involved in a foiled attempt to blow up an airplane en route to Iran. Passing the story off as truth sparks a fiery debate on the internet that spirals out of control and Simon soon discovers that his lies cannot reconcile the truths of his past.


The truth is a central theme in ADORATION. This is especially intriguing given that the terrorist back-story Simon appropriates as his own actually took place in 1986 in London. Then you throw in the world wide web of potential deceit the internet allows for and you are left with an excuse for those who hear it to add their own layers to this already falsified truth. “You can start any journey on the internet and be pointed in a specific direction,” Egoyan says of the opportunities modern technology affords. “At one point, you will have to leave it though and chart a physical relationship with what it is you’re searching for.”


Egoyan’s works cannot be watched complacently. One must engage with the film, and subsequently the filmmaker himself. For Egoyan, this process begins as early as the writing process, when even he needs different coloured index cards to keep up. “It’s all very carefully planned but you cannot absorb everything that’s happening as it’s happening.” In our current film culture, where the viewer is often led from beginning to end by the hand, a film like ADORATION forces us to see that we mustn’t just follow what Simon says in order to find the truth.

Black Sheep @ HOTDOCS: ANTOINE

Written and Directed by Laura Bari


With a knowing wink, a small, blind child opens the blinds and lets light into the room. It takes about five seconds to fall in love with this precocious six-year-old, Antoine Houang, in Montreal-based director, Laura Bari’s first film, ANTOINE. Subsequently, it takes just as little time to fall in love with the film itself – a documentary that infuses narrative ideas to create an indefinable hybrid and moving experience.


Antoine, who is of Vietnamese descent, was born 100 days prematurely. He lives in Montreal with his parents and is fully integrated into the progressive school system. He has a number of friends; he has dreams of working in radio; and he can recount his first memories, those of his retinas detaching while he was still in his mother’s womb. Rather than simply structure a film around his daily challenges and speak with the people who surround him, Bari took a decidedly more playful approach. In Bari’s world, Antoine is on a mission. He is a private detective and he must find the missing “Madame Rouski”, a mystery that Bari herself concocted to give Antoine’s imagination the game it was ready to play. Antoine dives right into the case and we gladly follow.


The height of ANTOINE’s irony is that this film about blindness is visually stunning. Bari, who is Argentina-born and whose day job is as a schoolteacher, shot the film herself and fed off the imagination of her young subject to push her own creative style. It serves as a welcome reminder for all who see it that we too have imaginations that we may have turned our own blind eyes to over time. To this extent, this one little boy is an inspiration. He may not be able to see but he sees so much more than most and forces us to open our eyes.

GRADE: A-

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: The Box Office Cries Wolf

You can withdraw the claws, Hugh Jackman; X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE has done what it was supposed to do despite its widely publicized leak online that has been reportedly downloaded over a million times since last month. You’ll be able to don those muttonchops for years to come.


The first X-Man prequel carved out $87 million. It may not have made IRON MAN numbers ($98 million opening weekend) but it certainly did better than Fox thought it would ($70 million). Of course, Fox was downplaying the numbers so as not to come in below expectations (as if $70 million is some sort of paltry number). They knew the success of WOLVERINE was pivotal. Each previous X-movie had bested the one before and launching into an origins series ensured possibilities for years to come. Not to mention, WOLVERINE is the official launch to the 2009 summer season. No one wants to muck that up. And with the STAR TREK reboot coming next weekend, Fox had to get in big now because there is no room to go any further.


Working the talk show circuit hard this weekend didn’t pay off for Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner. (I swear I saw Garner on Regis & Kelly twice!) The ridiculous romantic comedy treatment of the classic Dickens tale, GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST tried for the same counter-programming angle MADE OF HONOR went with last year with similar results. An average of under $5K per screen and a ravishing by the critics pretty much ensures a disappearance as quick as a ghost in the night next weekend.


Debuting with a per screen average nearly matching that of WOLVERINE, the latest Jim Jarmusch film, THE LIMITS OF CONTROL brought in an average of over $18K on just three screens. Michael Keaton’s cinematic return, THE MERRY GENTLEMAN was not so fortunate. On 24 screens, the film brought in just over $3K per screen for a grand total of $54K. Still, that is nothing compared to the 12th place finish of the two year old North American release of BATTLE FOR TERRA. Having premiered at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Lionsgate released the eco-friendly film on over 1000 screens and pulled less than $1000 on average.

NEXT WEEK: As previously mentioned, WOLVERINE takes on Captain Kirk et al in STAR TREK (3,500 screens). NEXT DAY AIR, a movie about a package being wrongly delivered comes out on the wrong weekend (1,000 screens). TWILIGHT vampire hottie, Robert Pattinson gives us LITTLE ASHES - a little gay indie he made when he thought his career was going nowhere (which explains the mustache). And Atom Egoyan releases his Cannes 2008 darling, ADORATION … be sure to look for the Black Sheep interview with Egoyan coming next weekend.

Source: Box Office Mojo

ABC: BREATHLESS

BREATHLESS
(A BOUT DE SOUFFLE)
Written and Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Story by Francois Truffaut
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg


In 1960, the film world was taken by surprise and swept off its feet and away to Paris in Jean-Luc Godard’s BREATHLESS. I was not alive in 1960 so I would not have been a part of this particular film world. No, Godard’s feature film debut came into my film world some time during my time at film school. And I also wouldn’t say that it swept off my feet so much as it kicked me in the shins and tripped me onto my ass. In my limited film experience at the time, I had never seen anything like this film. I most certainly had never heard of the period known as the “nouvelle vague”, and neither had the film world of 1960, as BREATHLESS was one of the pioneers in that movement. Based on a treatment written by the official father of the nouvelle vague period, Francois Truffaut, BREATHLESS admires American cinema and iconography while it simultaneously makes every effort to break down its conventions and leaves its audience exactly as the title suggests it should.


Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is one of the greatest enigmas I have ever encountered in film history. He is deeply fascinating while remaining essentially vacant. He kills a police officer in one of the film’s first scenes while en route to Paris. Once he has arrived, he needs to get some money that is owed to him from an acquaintance and he wants to bed the beautiful, American journalist, Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg). Aside from these two items of business, as they are both treated that way, he has little interest in anything else. He doesn’t talk much except to get what he wants. He has no issue with using violence when he must. In actuality, he is self-obsessed and finitely focused in a film that is just as obsessed with him but alternately frames him in scattered jump cuts and long takes. In fact, Michel is only distracted from his goals by the one thing that Godard is most passionate about – the movies.


One could argue that it is almost certainly useless to attempt attaching meaning to BREATHLESS but one could also argue that is just as ridiculous not to try. Regardless, any meaning the film does have to offer outside of its distinct film language comes from one of Godard’s favorite and most famous devices, the long conversation. Godard revels in spending time with his characters, as though he, and subsequently we, were right there with them just simply hanging out. At one point, we find ourself in Patricia’s bedroom in the middle of the day, where Michel has already let himself in. The two talk about whether it is better to be in grief or to have nothing at all, where she should hang her Renoir print, the possibility that she might be carrying his baby and, at one point even, Michel just wants to know about her toes. No part of the conversation is taken any more seriously than any other and though it isn’t going anywhere specific, the two actors are so beautiful to look at and so we admire right along with Godard. In this regard, the meaning can be found in the beauty and the act of spending time with another human being.


BREATHLESS stands out as a nouvelle vague classic because of its contradictions and how it both honours the craft and art of filmmaking while it laughs in the face of the suspension of disbelief. At no point in time does Godard allow you to sink into complacency when watching this film. He is constantly at play with the viewer by jarring our expectations. One moment, he is sending up a very clichéd idea of a cops and robbers caper and the next he is allowing scenes to prattle on long after any furthering of the story has taken place. Godard is fascinated with the texture of his imagery and just as bent on slicing it up into jump cuts that are sometimes functional and at other times, completely frivolous. While it may seem as though Godard is often thumbing his Scandinavian nose at the naturally excessive American approach to filmmaking, he is actually calling our attention to the artistry behind it and reminding the viewer that a good time can be had whether you call it art or a movie. The best part about BREATHLESS and Godard’s self-described anarchist filmmaking style is that nearly 50 years later, the film is just as challenging, if not more so, and, for me, still takes my breath away.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

Written by David Benioff and Skip Woods
Directed by Gavin Hood
Starring Hugh Jackman, Live Schreiber, Ryan Reynolds, Lynn Collins and Danny Huston


Kayla Silverfox: You’re not an animal, Logan. What you have is a gift?
Logan/Wolverine: A gift? You can return a gift.

I guess I got caught up in wanting it all to get started. I was treated to an unseasonal bout of good weather after a particularly tepid spring at the movies and I wanted to watch things get blown up already. I can’t come up with any other reason why I would have been suddenly excited to see X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, the summer’s first major event picture. Well, I’m sure staring at Hugh Jackman’s arms had something to do with it too but I’m not usually that easily coaxed by rugged beauty into seeing potential schlock. Yet, there I was, popcorn in hand, for a big, bad popcorn movie. Pitched as a prequel to the X-Men films, director Gavin Hood, was set to show us how a little boy born in the North West Territories in 1845 turned out to be the Wolverine, arguably Marvel Comic’s most popular X-Man. Instead, what he did was put together a giant showcase for Jackman’s brawn and little else.


I’ve never quite understood why Wolverine is as loved as he is by so many men out there. Is it because he is rugged and brooding? Because he keeps to himself and doesn’t exhbit any emotions no matter what the situation is? Or is it because he is genetically designed to beat the crap out of people? Unfortunately, the story of his origins did little to make it all any clearer to me. If anything, I would think that this film would actually take away from some of the mystery behind the man-beast. To clarify, what the concept of the X-Men Origin series is designed to do is to show who these icons were before they joined the X-Men, not to show how they became to be mutants to begin with. Before he became Wolverine, James Logan was a lumberjack up in the Canadian Rockies. He set himself up there for a peaceful existence after spending decades of his life (he doesn’t age all that fast) fighting other people’s battles in war after war. Aside from chopping down trees and enjoying the scenery half naked in the morning, he also falls in love there, with a beautiful woman by the name of Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). I may be wrong here but why would a man who is revered for living by his animal instincts need to be shown searching for inner peace and sharing his heart with someone?


Of course, the honeymoon doesn’t last and Wolverine must take on an army man named, Stryker (Danny Huston), who is kidnapping mutants so that he can harness their power to make one great super mutant that will then, in turn, be able to kill all of the world’s actual mutants, while engaging in a long time death match with his brother, Victor (Liev Schreiber). Screenwriters, David Benioff and Skip Woods, must be confusing me with someone who gives a shit. No, I’m not being flippant; I am merely quoting some of the banalities they pass off as intense dialogue throughout the film. WOLVERINE’s weakest element is certainly its screenplay. Taking on Hood (TSOTSI, RENDITION) as director, was supposed to bring a darker tone to the film, which would have been brilliantly appropriate considering the inherently dark nature of the character. Unfortunately, the script Hood had to work with never allowed for an exploration of the scary corners of Wolverine’s mind; it was always torn between potentially going there and making certain the tone stays summertime light.


Jackman has a lot at stake with X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. Not only is he the face of the film but he is also a producer on the project. Success here, which is essentially inevitable no matter what is said about it, will determine just how many more films in the origin series get made. More importantly, Jackman needs to demonstrate that he can carry a major action film all by himself. Fortunately for him, he has no problems doing that whatsoever. Unfortunately for the film though, focusing on Jackman alone left very little else of note to cut through to the surface.



(ps. I would have graded slightly lower but any film that allows Jackman to run around naked for ten minutes has to get bonus points.)

Black Sheep @ TRIBECA

My time at the Tribeca Film Festival is coming to an end now. For the most part, it was an incredible experience. It was light on sleep but it was certainly plentiful when it came to seeing films. All the volunteers were extremely helpful, especially the crew at the Direct TV Tribeca press center. If it weren't for these people at this great space, I would not have had the chance to meet as many filmmakers as I did. There was one day where I didn't know how I was going to make it actually. I caught the latest from XXY director, Lucia Puenza, entitled THE FISH CHILD, first thing in the morning before scurrying over to the aforementioned press center for an interview with Puenza (who is breathtaking, I must say). From there, I hopped in a cab to go uptown to the Regency Hotel on Park and 61st for an interview with one of my favorite directors, Steven Soderbergh and the star of his latest film, THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, adult film star, Sasha Gray. They were running late so I got to relax for a bit and enjoy the catered set up before doing the interview and rushing down to another interview in an alternate universe - a quaint midtown apartment that had no air conditioning, let alone snacks. After that, I hopped on the subway and ventured back to my friend's apartment, where I have been staying. I took a well deserved nap but that ended up being my downfall. I woke up later to realize that I had completely missed my scheduled time on the red carpet with Eric Bana for his directorial debut, LOVE THE BEAST. Right, I am awesome.


It could have been a blessing in disguise. Perhaps I would have been so blinded by Bana's beauty that I would have just stood there, stupefied when it came my turn to speak. Who knows really? What I do know is that I certainly enjoyed his film more than I had anticipated. The beast referred to in the title, LOVE THE BEAST, is Bana's race car, a Falcon Coop he has had since he was 15 years old and the film is a documentary about how holding on to that car and fixing it up with his longtime buddies has kept him real through all his years and time in Hollywood. To hear the synopsis, one might think that the concept inherently takes away from its intention. How can one create a film that centers around yourself when the point is to demonstrate how your ego has remained in check despite your celebrity? And in actuality, LOVE THE BEAST does come off at first as a big budgeted equivalent of a home made movie posted on YouTube, just another film put out to the world that begs to question as to wether the subject matter is relevant to anyone other than those involved in making it. But something sneaks up on you while watching Bana and friends partake in a five day race in Australia; you suddenly begin to care about this car and the connection it has with its owner and those who have worked on it all these years. Apparently, what people who aren't car people, of which I can be counted among, don't get, is that cars, for people who are car people, can become living entities, that you can develop a relationship with. This is exactly what Bana achieves somewhere among the racing laps and then he successfully drives the appreciation across the finish line.


Now, ordinarily I would not review a film I walked out of but this one is way too good to pass up. After a morning interview, I rushed to catch DON MCKAY, starring Thomas Haden Church and Elizabeth Shue, only to end up walking out twenty minutes or so after it started. When I tell people this, they look at me and ask how I could do that. And so I tell it to them just like this ... Church plays the title character, a high school janitor that has worked at his job for over 20 unhappy years. He gets a letter at the school, reads it, and then stares off into space. He packs a bag and goes back home to some small town I can't recall, the same unaffected, almost dead look still plastered on his face. A peculiar taxi driver drops him off at a home, where he is greeted by an even more peculiar woman. He is shown up to a room and this is where he finds Sonny (Shue). She is sprawled out on her bed in a satin nightgown, her hair perfectly placed on her pillows and her body positioned as though she were waiting for hours for her lover to come through that door. Sonny looks incredible but she is actually dying and wants Don to spend his time with her before she goes. The two were high school sweethearts and apparently never got over each other. It is all painfully awkward and even more so when her doctor arrives the next morning. He startles Don, who has just been stung by a bee. For no reason whatsoever, the two begin to struggle and the doctor attempts to kill Don while he is in the midst of having an allergic reaction to the bee sting. Sonny and her nurse are out but Don manages to save himself despite slipping into anaphylactic shock. When he wakes up, it is like nothing has happened. When he and Sonny find themselves on the floor appreciating the view from there, I walked out. Most people I tell this premise to stop me long before that point.


One of the films I was most looking forward to seeing at the festival was SERIOUS MOONLIGHT. This film has a very special back story as it was written by Adrienne Shelley, the writer/director of the surprisingly scrumptious film, WAITRESS. The film won great praise but Shelley sadly did not live to see this, as she was murdered before the film was released. Before she died (obviously), she wrote the script for SERIOUS MOONLIGHT, a story about a husband (Timothy Hutton) who is leaving his longtime wife (Meg Ryan) and how she subsequently holds him hostage in their country home to force him to see that he is making a giant mistake. The film was directed by WAITRESS co-star and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star, Cheryl Hines. While the premise might seem contrived, it is exactly the kind of thin line between the implausible and the unexpectedly relatable that Shelley towed so delicately in WAITRESS and Hines does a beautiful job honouring Shelley's last words. In addition to this success, the film also boasts the first time Meg Ryan has shined in years. She gets to play on all her strengths, from her frantic neurosis to quick wit and adorable charm. The only question that looms over the film and threatens to unravel it at any time is why anyone would fight so hard for someone who doesn't want to be there. Luckily, Shelley exceeds at understanding love in trying times and exposing it for all its flaws in order to see its might, right there shining down in the moonlight - which is exactly where Hines allows Shelley to look down in approval throughout the film.

The remainder of my Tribeca coverage will follow when the films find their theatrical releases. As for now, I will proceed to nap again. That said, I was sure to check my schedule first and it is all clear. Thank you New York and thank you Tribeca for a great stay.

Black Sheep @ TRIBECA: GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH

Written and Directed by Damien Chazelle
Starring Jason Palmer, Desiree Garcia and Sandra Khin

I am reminded of a lyric of a song, “What ever happened to modern jazz?” after watching first time filmmaker, Damien Chazelle’s GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH. The answer is certainly not that simple but there are a number of possible theories to be found in the textured grain of this experimental musical that has captured the hearts of the Tribeca Film Festival patrons. Now, there is no need to be frightened of the word, “experimental” – or “jazz” for that matter – in this case, as some tend to run when they hear these words. In fact, the reason the film has been so well received is because it captures the beauty of these sometimes intimidating concepts so naturally that you wonder why you were ever hesitant to begin with.


What began as an undergraduate thesis at Harvard, GUY AND MADELINE (as it is affectionately shortened to for convenience purposes), grew into what Chazelle describes as his personal take on the musicals of the 1930’s and 40’s, which he had been obsessing over at the time. Citing specific influences like THE BAND WAGON and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, Chazelle pitched his thesis as a real life musical; people would still break out into song and dance but it would be grounded in a context that could be universally understood. The classic Hollywood musical is not the only genre being played up here though; Chazelle was also fascinated with the French new wave cinema of the 1960’s and 70’s, from Jean-Luc Godard to Jean Eustace. The combination of the two drastically different approaches is what makes GUY AND MADELINE so distinctly unique and according to Chazelle, balancing between the two was certainly tricky.

“The new wave films don’t really follow strict plots and find themselves as they go along and I tried to find a way to reconcile that with the very strict code of these old musicals that I loved. They have very familiar plots and archetypal characters and follow a strict pacing of musical numbers. It was important to me to not cop out from making a musical, to make an actual musical but in my own way.”


Guy and Madeline (fresh faces, Jason Palmer and Desiree Garcia) have it rough from the start. Heralding from Boston, these two lovers of both music and each other are introduced to the viewer as happy and then torn apart before we can even get a chance to be happy for them. Still, as they both proceed to stumble around somewhat aimlessly in the wake of their brief but affecting time together, your heart goes out to them and you can’t help but wonder what went wrong. And what better way to explore the complicated nature of emotional turmoil than through song? Without a Hollywood sized budget, the musical numbers in GUY AND MADELINE have to rely on plain old fashioned talent, which, after scouring Boston’s music scene, Chazelle found in Palmer in Garcia. Garcia was pursuing her PhD on musicals at the time and was already entrenched in the tap dance scene so she was a natural fit but Palmer doesn’t actually sing. His musical contribution is a beautiful and delicate trumpet.

“I have to admit that wasn’t the original conception. It was originally going to be a singing and dancing male. The movie just changed when I saw Jason play. He just hit us out of nowhere as I went to this club to see someone else play really. It wasn’t the film that I envisioned in my head but it was immediately the film that I wanted to make.”


The musical is inherently out of step with reality but yet it continues to be made and it continues to honour the same values it did when it was originally conceived. Back in the day, when a character needed to deal with a love that is lost, they would saunter through a park and lament to the moon; when that love is reaffirmed, the whole cast breaks out into dance. In GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH, the aesthetic is decidedly different but the sentiment is the same. This is perhaps why the musical has survived all this time despite its detractors; perhaps beneath all of our meandering cynicism, we are all still romantics at heart.

“I believe the musical is so well suited to expressing romance because songs begin and end and are completely separate from the larger movie world. It is this kind of momentary perfection of existence that the characters are able to reach but they always know that it is inherently an illusion. So for me, there is something very beautiful but yet very sad about the great musicals but that’s part of the point.”

Damian Chazelle is already at work on his next screenplay and GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH has two remaining screenings at the Tribeca Film Festival …

Wednesday, April 29 @ 9:45 PM
and Sunday May 3 @ 10:30 AM

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Unreasonable Obsession

OK, I get it. You like Beyonce. Her songs are catchy; her body is rockin’. She is an all around tour de force. But really, does she really need to be a bankable movie star too? I don’t begrudge her every possible success but couldn’t you throw you support behind her for something a little less ridiculous than OBSESSED?


Even though it was panned by critics universally, or perhaps in spite of that, OBSESSED pulled in over $28 million to become April’s biggest opening for a thriller, beating out DISTURBIA, which pulled in over $22 million back in its day. This will mean many more film offers for Beyonce, who clearly has a strong following that are willing to cross over from downloading her music to dropping their money to gaze upon her on the big screen. As a result, another pretty face, Zac Efron, in 17 AGAIN, was forced down to second place with a 50% drop.



Many another film made its debut this week in the Top 10 but none did so very strongly. The most successful of the bunch was the fight movie, appropriately titled, FIGHTING. The film brought in the second highest average in the Top 10 but was originally expected to fight it out with OBSESSED for the top spot. Its third place finish is respectable but a disappointment. Coming in right behind in fourth was the delayed, THE SOLOIST. Joe Wright (ATONEMENT) directed this pedigree project, which stars Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. Good word of mouth could save it but adult fare is not faring too well these days (just ask STATE OF PLAY). And after its solid Earth Day debut, Disney’s EARTH came in fifth place for the weekend. Given that this is a repurposed documentary that many have already seen in its other incarnation, the BBC series, “Planet Earth”, I’d say its $14 million five-day take is definitely the strongest showing of these selections.


Below the Top 10, the much buzzed about documentary about boxer, Mike Tyson, again appropriately titled, TYSON, debuted on 11 screens to the tune of an average just under $8K. The film is being well received by critics and could play better to wider audiences in the weeks to come given the popularity of the subject. Meanwhile, the ensemble piece, THE INFORMERS, starring Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, Billy Bob Thornton and Winona Ryder (now, there are a bunch of misfits!) bombed its opening, pulling in a pathetic average of just $622 on nearly 500 screens. And the week’s best per screen average went to the documentary, NURSERY UNIVERSITY. The doc, which depicts the competitive world of nursery school admissions, opened on just one screen in all of North America and pulled in an average of $13K. I guess it was easier for parents interested in the topic to find a baby sitter for the night than a good school.

NEXT WEEK: Let the unofficial launch of summer officially begin with the release of X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. Opening of over 4000 screens, it will be very interesting to see if that feature length leak from a month ago really has an effect or not on the theatrical gross. And if bladed mutants are not your thing, perhaps laughable romantic comedies starring Matthew McConaughey are. GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST, co-starring Jennifer Garner, opens on 3000+ screens.

Source: Box Office Mojo

Black Sheep @ TRIBECA

I am a gay man. For over a dozen years now, I have lived my life outside of the closet very proudly. And yet, when I sit to write for Black Sheep, I choose my words carefully. Well, I always choose my words carefully; I am a writer and that is the job after all. What I mean in this context is that I will often pause before making any overt statements that undeniably confirm my sexuality. It has always been my concern that if I were to come right out and state in my reviews that I'm gay, that it will somehow taint the way the reader interprets my work and my opinions. Oh, that explains why he loves BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN so much. Or, of course he named MILK as Best Picture of the year. He has to; he's gay. Not that one couldn't easily figure it out if they were to read between the lines, and not that I mind one bit if they do, but there is a significant difference between being coy and being direct.


Saturday morning, I caught the press screening of a new documentary from Kirby Dick, the man behind the wonderful film, THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED. His new documentary is called OUTRAGE and by the time I had finished watching it, I was in tears. Granted, yes, I was also quite tired but I'm sure I would have been crying regardless. Even as I made my way over to the Direct TV Tribeca press center for an interview with Dick, I could not stop the tears from welling up in my eyes on the streets of New York City. OUTRAGE is a direct effort to actually out prominent closeted men in American government. The approach has come under much criticism as outing is often considered sensationalistic and a private matter. That said, the men that are targeted in OUTRAGE use their powerful positions to pass legislature that denies many basic human rights to gay men and women but then proceed to live that very same lifestyle behind closed doors. I assure you, the arguments for are well supported and OUTRAGE is a fine piece of investigative journalism with its integrity well intact. As Dick later said in our interview, and I am paraphrasing because the interview itself is to be published at a later date, OUTRAGE is not about outing one's sexuality but rather their hypocrisy.


OUTRAGE obviously filled me with a great deal of rage in addition to my sadness and my pride. It also helped me see that my approach to writing for this site was in direct conflict with my basic approach to film criticism. It is my belief that film criticism is inherently subjective. Everything in my life lends to my interpretation and appreciation of the film. How then can I honour that philosophy without being completely honest about who I am? So, without supposing that you didn't already know, I will say once again that I am gay. And now that that's done, I can get back to the movies.