New in Theaters: ‘I’m So Excited!’

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Nothing passes the time on a long flight like a Pointer Sisters routine.
Nothing passes the time on a long flight like a Pointer Sisters routine.

Im-So-Excited-movie-posterNews of a new Almodovar film is always welcome, particularly something like I’m So Excited!, which finds him back in full comic form. It’s a dizzy piece of candy-colored nonsense set on a plane where the attendants have drugged all the passengers in coach to keep them from complaining. Meanwhile, in first class, things get more interesting.

I’m So Excited! opened in limited release on Friday and will be expanding around the country soon. My full review is at Film Journal International; here’s part:

The Spanish title for Pedro Almodóvar’s newest film, The Amorous Passengers, is more to the point than its English title, I’m So Excited!, even if it doesn’t leave as much to the imagination. That’s alright, though, as the film itself doesn’t have much truck with leaving anything unsaid. It’s a fashion-magazine potboiler, gossipy and brash, whose attention keeps wandering south of the waistline…

You can watch the trailer here:

The Art of Drinking and Writing: Amis / Hitchens Edition

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

everydaydrinking1A couple items of note from Christopher Buckley’s essay on “Booze as Muse” … and other temptations and illusions of the lit’ry kind, in which he quotes from his departed friend Christopher Buckley’s introduction to Kingsley Amis’s deathless book, Everyday Drinking:

…the “Muse of Booze,” as Christopher Hitchens calls Mr. Amis … gives us recipes for Paul Fussell’s Milk Punch (“to be drunk immediately on rising, in lieu of eating breakfast”) and Evelyn Waugh’s Noonday Reviver (“1 hefty shot gin, 1 bottle Guinness, ginger beer … I should think two doses is the limit”).

Also:

[Hitchens] and I once had a weekday lunch that began at 1 p.m. and ended at 11:30 p.m. I spent the next three weeks begging to be euthanized; he went home and wrote a dissertation on Orwell. Christopher himself was a muse of booze, though dipsography and fancy cocktails were not his thing. Christopher was a straightforward whiskey and martini man…

“Alcohol makes other people less tedious,” he writes, “and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing.”

 

Quote of the Day: Richard Matheson

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IAmLegend25028Prolific fantasy/horror/science fiction author Richard Matheson passed away last week at the age of 87. He was one of those foundational genre authors who came of professional age during the great age of the pulps and learned to write across a great slew of styles. Matheson made his bones with frequently filmed and ripped-off 1950s novels like The Shrinking Man and I Am Legend that reimagined suburban life as a place of potential horror; adaptations of his work over the years ranged from Twilight Zone to Stephen Spielberg’s debut film, Duel.

Here’s Matheson on how he came up with the idea for I Am Legend while watching the 1931 film of Dracula:

My mind drifted off, and I thought, ‘If one vampire is scary, what if the whole world is full of vampires?

Not bad as premises go. What’s more incredible is the book itself.

New in Books: ‘The Way of the Knife’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WorldLeave a comment
Predator drone operators at Balad Air Force Base in Iraq, 2007
Predator drone operators at Balad Air Force Base in Iraq, 2007

Suddenly, about midway through the twelfth year of the post-9/11 conflicts, America decided to have a conversation about drones and the forever war. Books and op-eds were written, opinions voiced. Then all that was forgotten.

book-wayofknife-mazzetti-cvr-200In April, though, Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Mazzetti delivered The Way of the Knife, a precise little guidebook to all the secretive ways that America has been waging war without borders or oversight just about anywhere in the world we darn well please.

My full review is at PopMatters; here’s part:

When people of the future look back on America’s first wars of the 21st century, they will study the flash-bang invasions and slow-death occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq in the decade-and-a-half following 9/11. Lessons to be learned are many and complex, though occasionally quite simple. Don’t invade countries without an exit strategy, for example. Avoid using vengeful locals or untrained and unsupervised National Guardsmen to run prisons; that would be another. Train at least a few guys to speak something besides English—preferably the langue of the country they’re occupying.

It’s less clear what lessons will be gleaned from America’s third undeclared and so-far nameless war; since we’re still right in the middle of it…

You can buy The Way of the Knife anywhere. Here’s an excerpt.

New in Theaters: ‘Byzantium’

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Saorise Ronan deals with bloody eternity in 'Byzantium'
Saorise Ronan deals with bloody eternity in ‘Byzantium’

BYZANTIUM-PosterIt’s been a while since Neil Jordan tried his hand at the vampire game. With his newest, Byzantium, he is working on a smaller and more intimate scale than in Interview with the Vampire (Saorise Ronan and Gemma Arterton inside of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise). It’s gloomy and capital “R” Romantic; Keats, not Meyer), which could explain the limited distribution.

Byzantium opened in limited release Friday. My full review is at Film Racket; here’s part:

Just when werewolf armies, zombie hordes, and Stephenie Meyer’s affectless prose seemed to have done in the poor old vampire film, along comes this gloomy, glossy little oddity about the deathless from Neil Jordan. Like in his elegant take on Interview with the Vampire, Jordan’s vampires are a study in dichotomy; either happy to bury themselves in the bloody necessities of their survival or morally indecisive. In the meantime, they have eternity to deal with, and not a whole lot of money or options for living it…

You can watch the trailer here:

New in Theaters: ‘How to Make Money Selling Drugs’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Festivals, Film - New1 Comment

howtomakemoney1

A few times every year, journalists, artists, and filmmakers try to make the case to end America’s war on drugs. Expensive, ineffectual, corrupting … the list of reasons is legion. Yet nothing ever quite seems to change.

The latest salvo in this effort in Matthew Clarke’s compelling if overly jokey documentary, How to Make Money Selling Drugs, which is playing now in limited release after a number of successful festival screenings. Filled with interviews with dealers themselves (from “Freeway” Rick Ross to 50 Cent), as well as DEA agents, narcotics officers, and the random user (Eminem) and commentator (The Wire‘s David Simon), it’s got something for just about everyone.

My full review is at Film Journal International; here’s part of it:

… Cooke means the title to be taken quite seriously…sort of. Setting itself up as a kind of instructional video for would-be drug dealers, the film is structured as a step-by-step “training guide” to making it to the top of a viciously competitive but highly lucrative (albeit illegal) industry. Cooke advances his film level by level through the various layers of criminal enterprise (“Level One: Getting Started” to the top level: Cartels), examining all the operational hazards and institutional hypocrisies encountered along the way…

You can watch the trailer here:

On Writing: Scare Yourself

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When zombies attack.
When zombies attack.

Hard as it might be for viewers of the new World War Z to believe, the book that it was based on was neither meant to be tongue-in-cheek or horror. Its author, Max Brooks (the very lucky son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft), intended for the book to examine some extremely real concerns about pandemics and modern society, just as its predecessor The Zombie Survival Guide was inspired by the world’s long inattention to the AIDS plague.

worldwarz-bookcoverIn this profile for the New York Times magazine, Brooks lays out a few things that he believes differentiates himself from your run of the mill zombie writer. For one, his zombies are slow (not like in the very loosely adapted Brad Pitt film): “Brooks is an ardent believer in slow zombies. He doesn’t even want to try to comprehend how we’d deal with fast ones.” Also, he’s just normally a very scared person:

What he can’t understand is the horror fans.

“I’m not a horror fan,” he said. “I’m an anti-horror fan. I think horror fans feel deep down in the pit of their souls, they feel safe, and therefore bored. And therefore they want to be scared. I already have a baseline level of just anxiety about the world I live in,” he continued, metaphorically pushing the horror genre away from him on the table. “I don’t need to go seeking it out.”

No, his books aren’t horror, and he’s relieved that his books aren’t in the horror section. But he’s miffed that they’re in the humor section. “I would have put it in self-help. Or how-to.” He shakes his head. “I can’t think of anything less funny than dying in a zombie attack.”

The lesson here for aspiring writers of horror, zombie or otherwise, could be this: Try to terrify yourself first with what already scares you about everyday life. Don’t go looking for something absurd and unbelievable. Then worry about scaring your audience.

Trailer Park: ‘Salinger’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - UpcomingLeave a comment

SALINGER_FINALThe theories that have swirled around the reclusive J.D. Salinger over the decades since his disappearance are many and mostly ridiculous (a personal favorite being that he actually still walks among us … writing as Thomas Pynchon). It’s what happens when you write a defining novel like The Catcher in the Rye and then just drop off the face of the earth.

It will be interesting to see what Shane Salerno’s award-potential documentary Salinger is going to be able to come up with when it opens this fall. What pops up in the trailer looks to be a mix of biography, adulation from various literary types and actors, and wildly imaginative speculation—the most enticing of which being: Is there a new book in the offing?

You can check out the trailer here:

Writers’ Corner: The Grammar Cops

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sherman-alexieOne of America’s more multitalented fictionalists (is that a word? Why not?), Sherman Alexie, contributed mightily to the sanity of many struggling writers the other day when he delivered the following tweet:

Grammar cops are rarely good writers. Imagination always disobeys.

You could argue that this attitude is just plain laziness, a disinclination on the part of frazzled scriveners already overburdened with dicta from various seminars (“Show, don’t tell,” and so on) who don’t want to be bothered with yet more rules impeding their creative flow. Clearly, there are many writers who scrupulously follow their Strunk & White and turn out some damn good books.

When it comes to writing, particularly fiction, rules are there for a reason: to guide to less-talented (or just less successful) of us through the mires of our own procrastination and indecision. But when you’re good enough, it all goes out the window. In other words, if you are going to disobey, disobey well.

GalleyCat has some of the better responses to Alexie here.

Now Playing: ‘Something in the Air’

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Lola Creton and Clément Métayer look for meaningful revolt in 'Something in the Air'
Lola Creton and Clément Métayer look for meaningful revolt in ‘Something in the Air’

somethingintheair-posterIn Olivier Assayas’ newest film, French teenagers dive headlong into the ferment of political and cultural revolt, circa 1971. Something in the Air doesn’t have the adrenaline rush of Assayas’ crime epic Carlos but it shares that film’s interest in what makes idealists tick.

Something in the Air is still playing in limited release around the country. Try and catch it on the big screen if possible. My review is at PopMatters; here’s part:

Quiet and mop-haired Gilles  spends half of his time churning out paintings and sketches and the other half selling underground magazines and trying to help the broad-based struggle. Like any teenager, he’s brimming over with romance and can’t decide what to do with it all. He has one girlfriend, the enigmatic Laure, who gives him thoughtful critiques of his work and also her own poetry chapbooks. After she heads off to London with her family, he is drawn toward the more serious-minded Christine, who takes a different view of the arts, that they should exist to further the revolution. All else is just bourgeois nonsense…

You can watch the trailer here:

 

New on DVD: ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’

On By chrisbarsantiIn DVD - FilmLeave a comment
oz-1
James Franco (the one in the hat) in ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’

oz-dvd1L. Frank Baum’s fantastical Oz series gets turned into another CGI spectacle with Sam Raimi’s pretty but pretty unremarkable Oz the Great and Powerful, which hit shelves today on DVD and Blu-ray.

My review is over at Film Racket; here’s part of it:

Sam Raimi’s big and splashy but tin-eared prequel Oz the Great and Powerful turns the spirit of the 1937 The Wizard of Oz inside out. Oz is no longer the place where misguided Earth youths like Dorothy can discover how special home really is. This time, Oz — with its expensively imagined rainbow- and candy-colored vistas of cold, computer-generated wonderment — is all things to its titular human interloper. For Oz the man, he would never think to say there’s no place like home, since dreary old black-and-white Kansas offers no home for him. They never appreciated his act back there anyway. The land of Oz, on the other hand, provides the greatest audience he’s ever seen…

You can watch the trailer here:

On Cinema: ‘Frances Ha’ in IMAX!

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THRILL to Greta Gerwig's dancing in 'Frances Ha' in IMAX!
THRILL to Greta Gerwig’s dancing in ‘Frances Ha’ in IMAX!

It’s been nice to see The Onion spicing up their pages with the addition of some bold-faced names lately. Check out, for example, Joyce Carol Oates’ recent advice to aspiring young writers trying to get published (“A good writer should always be curious, constantly looking around for new and more powerful people to sleep with”).

Almost better, though is this satirical piece from director Noah Baumbach (or an Onion staffer doing a nice impersonation of his dry style that’s been used for a few “Shouts & Murmurs” essays in the New Yorker) about his new talky black-and-white micro-budget comedy, Frances Ha; now helpfully providing summer counter-programming for all those who don’t feel like seeing anything with The Rock in it. In short, Baumbach says, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen this sucker in 3D:

I just went all out when I was writing it, tailoring every character and scene for maximum impact on a six-story IMAX screen in a 601-person amphitheater…. And the effect, to be honest, is simply stunning. Through the magic of IMAX, every social faux pas, every quiet epiphany, every dinner party, and every awkward conversational exchange practically jumps off the screen. You feel as though you can almost reach out and touch the glass of white wine that a character is drinking. Simply put, no celluloid version of Frances Ha could provide the same visceral impact as witnessing a 30-foot-tall Greta Gerwig towering above the audience as she negotiates her relationship with her best friend or tries to find an apartment, all displayed in vivid black-and-white.

Now, if only it were true; the possibilities are nearly endless.

New in Theaters: ‘Violet and Daisy’

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Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan get all giggly before their next hit in 'Violet and Daisey'
Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan get all giggly before their next hit in ‘Violet and Daisey’

VIOLETDAISY_FINAL_POSTER1A few years back, Geoffrey Fletcher wrote the screenplay for Lee Daniels’ scorching tale of family dysfunction Precious. Now Fletcher is directing his own script for another wildly over-the-top story, only this time it’s supposed to be an archly ironic assassin comedy.

Violet and Daisy is playing now in very very limited release. My review ran at Film Journal International; here’s part:

Fletcher starts off strong, with a pair of teenage-looking girls staring despondently at a poster announcing the cancellation of a concert by their hero, Barbie Sunday. Violet (Alexis Bledel) and Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) go to work anyway. We next see them walking down the street carrying pizza boxes and dressed up as nuns. Chattering brightly, they knock on an apartment door. Once it’s opened, the two start blazing away with semi-automatic pistols. Several dead guys later, the two are revealed to be hit-girls-for-hire working for some never-seen crime boss who apparently needs people rubbed out just about every other day…

You can watch the trailer here: