Take “Kick-Ass,” a film about an ordinary delusional guy who creates a costume, dons a mask and calls himself a “superhero” — albeit one without any “super” powers. Strip it of most of its wit and charm, amp up the violence, the sadism. Make it more crude and coarse and gory.
And what you’re left with is “Super,” a vehicle that reunites Rainn Wilson with “Juno” herself, Ellen Page.
So one isn’t considered a promising enough prospect to warrant a preview screening.
And the other could do for zombies what “Twilight” did for blood-suckers — make’em young and romantic.
High hopes for one, guarded fears for the other.
If ever a filmmaker had permission to let acclaim go to his head, it’s Benh Zeitlin, the 29 year old writer-director of “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a no-budget neo-realist fantasy that has taken awards at Sundance and Cannes, and earned rapturous reviews, major awards from critics groups and now Oscar nominations for best script, picture, director and actress.
The film, set in a mythical community of Louisiana down-and-outs, is “a love letter to the people of the Bayou State, who have persevered in the face of apocalyptic tragedy,” raved The Atlantic.
The film’s blend of grim poverty, unflinchingly observed, and magical realism make is “so completely unique that it’s hard to imagine how it was even made,” marveled The Guardian newspaper.
But Zeitlin sees this attention not as a chance to sell out to Hollywood. “I hope these awards and the distribution can be a source of leverage for us to maintain our methods, our way of making movies,” he says. “It’s a film born from hardship, but it’s the way we want to make films. The brush that we use to paint is so specific that I don’t want to change that.”
“Beasts” is about a little girl who lives a hardscabble existence with her father, neighbors and teacher in The Bathtub, an off-the-grid community on one of the disappearing islands of south Louisiana. It sprang from Zeitlin’s short film, “Glory at Sea,” and from the native New Yorker’s experience of post-Katrina Louisiana.
“I wasn’t planning on moving to New Orleans, but by the end of that short film, I was drawn to their stories — why people stay. What is the magnetism of the place? I started driving to these towns at the very end of the road, at the bottom of the marsh. I wanted to make a film about the end of the road, about hold outs standing by their homes, no matter how modest, no matter what. The Bathtub to me is not a place for the down and out. It’s a place for the defiantly independent, off-the-grid, truly living free. Money, as a concept, doesn’t really exist there. The people in this world we made have ingenuity and not money. You don’t have a job to live in the bathtub.”
Zeitlin, the son of New York folklorists, brought an outsider’s eye to the region, and found the resilience of the locals inspiring — “They get knocked down, they pick themselves back up. Even in the darkest moments, there’s a celebratory culture to the place. It’s like a jazz funeral. Somebody dies, it starts with a dirge and turns into a party. That refusal to have your spirit broken is the greatest inspiration about being there.”
He’d sit on the docks, typing out a script, and a fisherman would say, “Computer man, turn that thing off. Let’s go fishin.'” Zeitlin would learn how to catch catfish with his bare hands and other bayou survival skills.
“Beasts” is built around a tiny, scruffy but plucky child, Hushpuppy, her rough, no-nonsense daddy, and the “apocalypse descending on them,” as Zeitlin puts it. Thanks to climate change, the island is washing away, outside of the levee system that is speeding up the process. Leaving that island will mean people who have lived off the grid would suddenly be “in the system,” subject to the rules, laws and meddling of the state. Zeitlin wanted to focus on what they would lose in the process — their independence, their DIY survival skills.
“Our crew really absorbed that make-do ingenuity. The boat the Hushpuppy and her dad fish from used to be my old Chevy pickup truck. One day, it exploded on the set, and thinking like the characters, we wondered “What would he do if his truck blew up? He’d turn the bed of the truck into a boat.’ Which we did.”
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” (review here) has unprofessional actors, children (Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis), animals and water — three of the most unpredictable elements to build into any film shoot. Zeitlan & Co. soldiered through that. “We didn’t take a whole lot of advice. We tried to set up those challenges — working with kids, working with animals, working in water — as the texture of the movie. We wanted it to feel chaotic and out of control. We weren’t out to craft this perfect thing. We wanted to create chaos and sort of chase it as a film crew. The chaos takes on a life of its own.”
And that’s what he hopes to cling to in future productions, that freedom and disordered chaos.
“It’s great to get all this attention for this film, but we’re hoping to use that as a way to continue doing things the way we’re doing them.”
There usually aren’t any laughs when Oscar nominations are announced.
That’s why Seth MacFarlane’s planned and joked-up sharing of the announcements (with Emma Stone) this AM was so refreshing.
Jokes about nominated actresses not needing “to pretend to like Harvey Weinstein” any more, now that they’ve made it.
Jokes about the “last collaboration between Austria and Germany” re: best picture/best director nominee “Amour,” that caused a groan, and a “Oh no he DIDN’T.”
Seth’s own dopey nomination for best original song, writing the lyrics to “Ted.”
Seth ripping Emma on comparisons to Meryl Streep.
“Who says that?” “Lotsa people.”
He was on task and on form, and while the material was no better than your average Billy Crystal at the Oscars night, he’s fresher, younger, hipper (to some). Less familiar.
This is going to work, though whether he’ll draw an audience remains to be seen. One thing I wouldn’t be surprised to see — a female co-host added to the proceedings. Emma held her own, both off the cuff and with the help of the gag writers. Is she busy Oscar night?
Writer-producer Luc Besson gives us a parody of his earliest hits “La Femme Nikita” and “The Professional” with “Colombiana,” a lady assassin star vehicle for “Avatar’s” blue angel, Zoe Saldana.
See Zoe kill. See Zoe strip. Many times. See Zoe shower — a PG-13 shower. See Zoe dance seductively all by herself. See Zoe slip into a cat suit to carry out a hit from inside a jailhouse. See Zoe go for a swim. With sharks. In a sexy swimsuit.
Before he won his Oscar, before he starting studying infamous murder cases, before taking on Robert McNamara and the whole justification for the Vietnam War, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris was known for finding America’s most colorful eccentrics and putting their eccentricity on film.
“Our Idiot Brother” has a menage a trois, nudity, pot use and profanity. But the unfailing sweetness of Paul Rudd’s lead performance makes what could have been another raunchy and rude R-rated farce a bracing change of pace in a summer of aggressive comedies about aggressive people, from “Bad Teachers” to “Horrible Bosses.”
Since childhood, Corinne has been searching for something. She might have found it in a book, if the local librarian hadn’t yanked “Lord of the Flies” out of her hands. She might have found it in music, if mom (Broadway great Donna Murphy) hadn’t dismissed her interest in learning it.
And she might have found answers in vacation Bible school.
“She got saved today,” pushy Pastor Bud (Bill Irwin) tells mom.
“Saved from what?”
Religion eventually becomes Corinne’s permanent quest in “Higher Ground,” Vera Farmiga’s challenging film based on Carolyn Briggs memoir.
Let us go amongst the Sports Crazed for a few minutes of convincing them to get up off the sofa and head to the movies this weekend.
Chatting with Mike “Bulldog” Bianchi and Brian “Fritzie” Fritz about the new releases — “Zero Dark Thirty” goes wide today. “Gangster Squad” brings a little Old West/New West gunplay our way.
And we’ll talk about horror and the ongoing fascinating with pictures like “Texas Chainsaw 3D.”
That’s at 745 AM on 740 AM/The Game.
The Old West died hard in the City of Angels. And in the years after World War II, battle-hardened veterans came home to a town “under enemy occupation,” when the only way to fight off The Mob was with a sixgun, your two fists and the right hat.
“Gangster Squad” is a gang war drama built on Western conventions, a rootin’ tootin’, Camel-smokin’, whiskey swillin’ shoot’em up about a lawless period in L.A.’s history when a small cadre of cops, working outside the law, took on mob boss Mickey Cohen in a fight for “the soul of Los Angeles.”
