The Screengrab : jane campion

Cannes Roundup: Day Two

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Francis Coppola takes another shot at a comeback with Tetro, but the response at Cannes was mixed at best. “The debut of a new Coppola stirred hope and foreboding; and both were warranted,” writes Richard Corliss in Time. “The great news is that this unquestioned giant of American cinema, who sired the Godfather films, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now in the '70s, is still making independent-minded movies three decades later. The bad news is that he made this one.” Eric Kohn of Indiewire chimes in: “Neither complete misfire nor triumphant return to form, Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro works as a competent family drama right up until the messy final act.”

Jane Campion finds a champion for her comeback effort Bright Star in Allan Hunter at Screen Daily: “Bright Star deftly avoids the stilted, starchy quality often found in lesser period dramas. Characters appear comfortable in their clothes and settings, the dialogue flows easily from their lips and there is a quiet, everyday intimacy to the way events unfold.” The Telegraph is high on Fish Tank. “Shot with a terrific eye for pointillist detail and panorama, Arnold opens up the council estates of Essex, revealing the myriad ways in which they cramp but never entirely extinguish the spirit and imaginations of the people who live there.”

If your tastes run toward Korean vampire movies…well, the word is not so good on Park Chan-wook’s Thirst. “New settings and characters are introduced so willy-nilly, and consecutive scenes have so little formal or tonal consistency, that you’re generally floundering even as you’re gasping,” writes Mike D’Angelo in the AV Club. Variety calls it “an overlong stygian comedy that badly needs a transfusion of genuine inspiration.”

Basterds in the Imaginarium: Cannes Lineup Unveiled

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Quentin Tarantino, Ang Lee, Terry Gilliam, Pedro Almodovar, Lars von Trier and Jane Campion are among the big-name directors with films set to screen at the 2009 Festival de Cannes. Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds will have its premiere at the festival, where it will compete with von Trier’s Antichrist, Lee’s Taking Woodstock, Almodovar’s Broken Embraces and Campion’s Bright Star. Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus will screen out of competition.

“More recent Palme d’Or recipient Ken Loach will appear once again in Cannes with Looking for Eric, about a troubled young soccer fan and Gallic soccer sensation Eric Cantona. The film will vie for the Palme d’Or against Johnny To’s French-made Vengeance starring pop sensation Johnny Hallyday as a hitman out to avenge his daughter’s death,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Other notable films screening in competition include Les herbes folles, directed by Alain Resnais, The White Ribbon, directed by Michael Haneke, and Enter the Void, directed by Gaspar Noe. The opening night film will be Pixar’s Up and the closer will be Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinski. The festival kicks off on May 13.

Related:
Tarantino's Ingluourious Basterds Unleashed
Terry Gilliam Bites Back

Take Five: Gotta Get A Guru

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:55:00 GMT

Mike Myers' not-so-glorious return to the big screen, The Love Guru -- also known as Austin Powers IV and Verne Troyer's Pleading E-Mails Finally Pay Off -- opens everywhere today, and critics couldn't be more disappointed. Not only is it reported to be low on laughs, it's also being criticized as being high on stereotypes; despite his alleged friend and idol Deepak Chopra coming to his aid, Myers has been attacked for his stereotyping of Asian Indians and his portrayal of a cartoonish, caricatured guru. But let's face it: Hollywood has always loved its gurus, spiritual masters, and wise old mystics from the subcontinent. Hardly had the Beatles falled under the influence of the Maharishi than Hollywood followed suit; here's a look at some of the more memorable wise men of the East that the movie business has given us.

THE LOVED ONE (1965)

One of the few countercultural satires from the 1960s to hold up in the modern era, Tony Richardson's The Loved One holds up for two reasons: first, it was based on an Evelyn Waugh novel from nearly two decades prior and isn't quite as tarred, as a result, by the hippie-dippie vibe of its time; and second, it's got an impeccable crew behind the camera, from Richardson to cinematographer Haskell Wexler to skilled, hip screenwriters Christopher Isherwood and Terry Southern. This satire of capitalism run amok in the funereal industry crams so many jokes into its two-hour running time that it's almost impossible to keep up with them all, but make sure you don't miss gravel-throated character actor Lionel Stander as the Guru Brahmin, one of the first-ever big-screen gurus -- and one of the first to be portrayed as a bumbling fraud.

CANDY (1968)

This big-screen adaptation of the Mason Hoffenberg novel (actually the infamous Terry Southern writing under a pseudonym) is generally regarded as a major failure. It's not that there weren't talented people involved -- besides Southern himself, and his co-writer Buck Henry, the cast is crammed with fine actors -- but the entire film seems to go off the rails from the very start. That doesn't mean, though, that there aren't plenty of bizarre treats for those with the energy to sit through it. This updating of Voltaire's Candide is purely Southern in the sense that authority figures are always portrayed as phony, venal, and couching some grotesque habits or appetites. In this instance, we're treated to the the sight of the monstrour Grindl -- a sex-crazed Hindu guru played by an overheated Marlon Brando -- putting the poor, put-upon Candy in yet another compromising position.

THE PARTY (1968)

All right, so technically, Peter Sellers' Hrundi V. Bakshi ("That is what my name is called") in the Blake Edwards farce The Party isn't a guru. (That title more rightly belongs to Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Sellers in 1979's Being There.) But he is Indian, sort of, and he does speak in Hindi platitudes that those around him mistake for pearls of inscrutable eastern wisdom. For example, when asked who he thinks he is, he responds, "In India, we do not think who we are. We know who we are." Whoa, heavy. The rest of the movie is pretty much straight-up Blake Edwards comic fare, and it falls flat on the stereotypes at times, but a few scenes are still paralytically funny forty years later, especially when a stoned Bakshi comes across a parakeet cage and solemnly intones the name of the birdseed: "Birdy Num Num."

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973)

In this stunning, surreal, and nearly incomprehensible masterpiece by ultimate provocatuer Alejandro Jodorowsky, the guru is Horacio Salinas, a Christlike thief who is half savior and half mountebank. Under the tutelage of the Alchemist, a mysterious figure played by Jodorowsky himself, he and his gang of mystical banditos -- each named for a different celestial body -- plan nothing less than an assault on Heaven, where they will depose the reigning gods and take their places. Visually, this is exactly the sort of film people talk about when they talk about crazy European art films: it's bewildering, deliberately offensive, totally impenetrable, and weird for the sake of being weird. It's also absolutely brilliant, and Jodorowsky -- who's the real guru here -- shows us what it might be like inside the mind of the truly enlightened -- and it alternately makes us gasp at its beauty and scares the hell out of us.

HOLY SMOKE (1999)

Jane Campion's weirdest movie -- which, if you think about it, is really saying something -- features the always-engaging Kate Winslet in the role of a young woman who decides to embark on a quest for spiritual self-discovery in the Indian subcontinent. Along the way, she encounters the guru Chiddaatman Baba (played by Dhritiman Chatterjee) and falls under his sway -- and that's just where the movie begins. From there, she is confronted by Harvey Keitel as a deprogrammer -- sorry, "cult exiter" -- hired by her family to get her back, and discovers that he's not without his own guru-like tendencies. A battle of wills, intellects and bodies ensue over the terrain of feminism, spirituality and sexuality, and the movie degenerates into a bit of a chaotic mess, but it's at least a glorious mess with two terrific actors like Keitel and Winslet at the fore.