Synecdoche, NY has just opened in England, and Laura Barton stopped by Charlie Kaufman's hotel room to help him measure himself for a coffin. "Does he read the reviews? 'Uh. I've stopped,' he says, not remotely convincingly, and immediately contradicts himself: 'I tend to not only read reviews, but also every little stupid thing online. It's a very bad idea, and there's a lot of angry people in the world. And it's weird to absorb all that weirdness.' He speaks like a hen pecking the dust. 'Were you at the screening [in London] last night?' He directs the question to the carpet. 'I was, like, what in the world would motivate someone to shout, "Rubbish"? I speculated it might be the same guy who asked later on, "I've noticed that your movies don't have any structure, and I'm wondering if you are comfortable with your movies not having any structure, or whether you'd rather they had structure..." He said "structure" three times.'"

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Yesterday we looked at five documentaries I deemed “must-sees” based on their descriptions in the Sundance guide, their trailers (if available) and my own whims and biases. As I mentioned, I will not actually be attending the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, but why should that minor detail prevent me from having an opinion? With any luck I’ll get to see these movies sooner or later anyway, either at other festivals, in regular theatrical release or on DVD. With that in mind, let’s move on to the narrative features:

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Wait a sec... I thought John Malkovich was supposed to be a puppeteer, not a magician. What gives?

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The Muscles From Brussels returns... and people actually care. Awesome.

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With his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York due next month, the notoriously press shy Charlie Kaufman has reluctantly decided that a little publicity is in order, especially given the movie’s pre-release rep as, shall we say, an esoteric experience. Kaufman agreed to sit down with a writer from geek culture magazine Wired for a profile in an upcoming issue. Ah, but what form should this profile take? It can’t be just a run-of-the-mill celebrity puff piece, because this is the guy behind such mind-twisters as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It has to be meta in some way. And so a blog was born.

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It seemed like a match made in heaven. The classic Maurice Sendak children’s book Where the Wild Things Are and the one-time video wunderkind who brought a sure-handed touch to offbeat Charlie Kaufman material in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Throw in a screenplay by lit-hipster Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and what could go wrong? But Spike Jonze’s $80 million adaptation of Wild Things appears to have gone off the rails.

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As the Cannes Film Festival enters its final days before the announcement of awards on Sunday, here’s one final roundup of reviews. We begin with Charlie Kaufman’s highly-anticipated (by me, anyway) directorial debut Synecdoche, New York. Would Kaufman’s inexperience behind the camera cause him to become timid and soften his edge? If reviews are any indication, don’t bet on it.

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