The Screengrab : my winnipeg

The Best of 2008: Leonard Pierce's Picks for the Best Movies of the Year, Part Two

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:45:00 GMT

5. WALL*E (Andrew Stanton, dir.)

Pixar has been on such a roll of late that if they were a single director, they’d be getting mention in the same breath as the golden age greats. But they’re not; they’re an aggregate of many clever, talented folks who make computer-generated cartoons that are at least partly intended for children. I’m not going to argue that this isn’t sometimes a weakness; in WALL*E, the environmental message only seems fitting and appropriate because I happen to agree with it, and the crypto-Objectivism in The Incredibles only bothered me because I don’t. But regardless of the heavy-handedness of the moral, it can’t be denied that WALL*E is flat out the most wonderful film of the year, hopeful and funny and romantic and bittersweet all at the same time, and wrapped up in a package so beautiful to look at you wonder why anyone ever questions the potential of CGI. And if this astounding motion picture spawned an obnoxious marketing empire, one can only shake one’s head and say “Damn kids don’t know how good they’ve got it.”

4. RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (Jonathan Demme, dir.)

If you ever want to flummox a music critic, ask him to describe one of his favorite new bands without comparing them to another band. Of course, Rachel Getting Married proves that the same can occasionally be said for movie critics: it seems impossible to talk about without referencing something else. It’s got the dysfunctional family dynamics of Il y a Longtemps Que Je T’aime; the comeback-kid story of The Wrestler; the hateful-misanthrope-as-vehicle-for-joyous-redemption jawn of a Wes Anderson film (only better) and the structure and form of the late Robert Altman’s best work (only different). With all of these elements at play, though, it never seems derivative of anything else, only reminiscent in the best possible way. In the end, Rachel Getting Married is its own film, familiar yet new and impressive, and carried along by some of the finest acting of the year, most especially from Anne Hathaway and Bill Irwin.

3. CHE (Steven Soderbergh, dir.)

Steven Soderbergh keeps on making great movies, and never the same one twice. His latest is getting lots of what child care experts call “good attention” and “bad attention”; it’s certain that Soderbergh intended it that way, with its rigid formal structure, back-spasm-inducing length, difficult tonal shifts, and…oh, yeah, it’s a biopic about one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. It’s just as hard to figure out how much of the negative reception is due to political and moral judgment of the revolutionary Che Guevara as it is to figure out how much of the positive reception comes from those who valorize him, but taken purely as a movie, Che is hard to beat: it’s formally daring, adventurously directed, risk-taking, well-made, and held together by a powerful performance that shows its subject neither as a heroic rebel or a vicious murderer, but simply as a man so consumed by his cause that he didn’t know what else to do than keep fighting for it.

2. WENDY AND LUCY (Kelly Reichardt, dir.)

There have been a number of exceptionally well-done documentaries in recent years about ordinary people dangling from the precipice of financial ruin in economically uncertain times, but successful narrative films dealing with the same subject have been few and far between. That’s largely because it’s hard to approach the topic in fiction without becoming didactic, maudlin, or treacly – and those challenges are certainly, and perilously, evident in Kelly Reichardt’s story about a young woman in brutally limited circumstances who loses her beloved dog while pursuing a slender chance at a decent job. But the miraculous thing about Wendy and Lucy is that it toes that line from its first frame to its last without ever tumbling down and making a mess of itself. That’s a testament to the top-notch script, the surprisingly deep direction, and the beautiful performance by lead actress Michelle Williams. No one could ever have predicted that an heir to the Italian neo-realist tradition would emerge in 2008 from America’s Pacific Northwest; that it happened is one of the year’s greatest surprises.

1. SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK (Charlie Kaufman, dir.)

There are so many things that could have gone wrong with Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut. I first heard him talk about his desire to direct way back in 2004, when I interviewed him for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and when Synechdoche, New York was finally announced, I was full of dread. The video stores of America are choked with mediocre-to-bad movies by talented writers who decided what they really wanted to do was direct. I needn’t have worried: Synechdoche, New York is easily my favorite film of the year. Kaufman approached directing with the same meticulous, self-searching approach that he does writing, and the result is nothing short of astounding. The best movies, for me, are the ones that seem to completely rewire my head – that are so profound and well-crafted that they redefine my basic approach to their subject, form or content. Charlie Kaufman accomplishes that his first time out of the gate, and that’s the mark of a major talent.

ALMOST MADE IT: The Strangers, Doubt, Iron Man, The Wrestler, Bigger Stronger Faster*.

DIDN'T SEE THEM: Entre les Murs (The Class), Standard Operating Procedure, Lat den Ratte Komme In (Let the Right One In), Dear Zachary: A Letter To His Son About His Father, Trouble the Water, Full Battle Rattle, Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon).

PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler; Bill Irwin, Rachel Getting Married; Kristin Scott Thomas, Il y a Longtemps Que Je T'aime; Viola Davis, Doubt.

MADE IN 2007, BUT GREAT IN 2008: 4 Luni 3 Saptamani si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days); Paranoid Park; My Winnipeg; Une Vielle Maitress (The Last Mistress); Auf der Anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven); Encounters at the End of the World; Chop Shop.

OVERRATED: Waltz with Bashir; In Bruges; Happy-Go-Lucky; Slumdog Millionaire; Kung Fu Panda.

Click for Part One

Ann Savage, 1921-2008

Phil Nugent — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Ann Savage, nee' Bernice Maxine Lyon and fated to become one of the iconic femme fatales of no-budget noir, died on Christmas Day, at a nursing home, at the age of 87. She was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to an army dad who died before she was five years old and a mother with whom she lit out for Hollywood when Bernice was all of ten. She trained at Max Reinhardt's acting school at a time when it was managed by Bert D'Armand, who she married when she was twenty-one; the marriage--her second--lasted until his death in 1969. (Her earlier marriage, when she was eighteen, last two years and ended in divorce.) She appeared in thirty movies between 1943 and 1953 but failed to make much of a dent in the public's consciousness--but then, as she herself admitted, most of the pictures she was in didn't deserve much of an audience. The big exception is Detour, the 1945 cult classic in which she co-starred with Tom Neal for director Edgar G. Ulmer. Shot in less than a week on a budget of $20,000, it would develop a reputation as one of the most febrile and unforgettable noirss ever to come out of poverty row, and Savage's Vera would take her place in the history of the genre as one of the all-time greatest mistakes ever made by a man on the road, a woman who attaches herself to Neal's doomed antihero like a virus. (It was the fourth and final movie that she made with Neal, who in 1965 would be tried for the murder of his wife and convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He died in 1972.)

In 1986, just about the time that the rediscovery of Detour (thanks to TV broadcasts and home-video releases) was reviving her name, Savage made her first film appearance since 1953, cast somewhat against type as a nun in the steamy romance Fire with Fire starring Virginia Madsen. After that, she resumed her retirement until last year, when Canadian auteur and Detour fan cajoled her into playing the mother of his on-screen alter ego in My Winnipeg. Scarcely recognizable, she gave that movie a full jolt of comic energy, but was subsequently bedrodden after suffering a series of strokes. In 1992, Detour was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress's National Film Registry.

2008 in Review: Paul Clark's Favorite Movie Moments

Paul Clark — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Starting tomorrow, the writers of Screengrab will be unveiling their lists of the top 10 films of 2008. But before that begins, I’d like to post a different sort of list of highlights from the past year. For those of you who’ve only started reading recently, I used to write a bi-weekly column called “The Movie Moment,” in which I’d explore in depth some of my favorite scenes from movies both old and new. This past spring, I had to put the column on indefinite hiatus for various reasons, but I wanted to bring it back for this week only so I could celebrate some of my favorite Movie Moments of 2008. However, I had such a devil of time trying to narrow down my list that I’ve decided to simply list all of the moments that made me laugh out loud, cry like a baby, bite my nails uncontrollably, or which otherwise rocked my world this past year. This list is by no means meant to be taken as comprehensive, but merely were the moments which readily sprang to mind while I was writing the piece. So without further ado, I give you…

2008: The Year in Movie Moments:

(in no particular order)

The little boy’s confession notes- In Bruges

“No-no-no. I kill the bus driver.” - The Dark Knight

The security guard makes his rounds - Man on Wire

Sidney’s musical vows - Rachel Getting Married

The kiss that launched a thousand lens flares - Silent Light (only one of several transcendent moments in the film- the swimming-hole scene or the epic rainstorm might just as easily have qualified)

Mike’s late-night visit (or really, anytime Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” is played) - The Strangers

Peekaboo nudity - The Romance of Astrea and Celadon

Harry unveils the machine - Burn After Reading (honestly, who could possibly enjoy THAT?)

Madame Gaudens’ confession - A Girl Cut in Two

Incident at the race track - My Winnipeg

Most hilarious random line of the year: “When it comes to women, you’re Michael Jordan. I’m… Bill Laimbeer.” - Baghead

The new army suits up for battle - Role Models

Alex takes a shower - Paranoid Park

Brandi forgets her cell phone - Stuck

Black Kold Medina puts on a show - Trouble the Water

Runaway penguin - Encounters at the End of the World

Jung-rae Kim diagrams his neuroses - Woman on the Beach

Alex’s sex surprise, both inevitable and strangely erotic - XXY

The director’s big exit - Tropic Thunder

Most unlikely tearjerking moment of the year: Fred Knittle sings “Fix You”, Young@Heart

Three-way fist fight: Seth Rogen vs. James Franco vs. Danny McBride - Pineapple Express

The Richard McGuire segment - Fear(s) of the Dark

Ninjas! - In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (yes, really)

And finally, my five favorite openings and finales of the year:

Perfect openings: “Put on Your Sunday Clothes”, WALL*E; Sunrise, Silent Light; The piano, The Silence Before Bach; The Jean-Claude Van Damme Stunt Spectacular, JCVD; The Legend of Po, Kung Fu Panda

Great final scenes (no spoilers): Synecdoche, New York, The Duchess of Langeais, Shine a Light, The Visitor, Burn After Reading

I would invite all of you to share some of your favorites in the comments section. After all, I’m surely missing at least a couple of really good ones.

Roger Ebert Supersizes Top 10 of 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Is 2008 ending early? I didn’t get the memo, but I do know that Roger Ebert traditionally waits until after Christmas to unveil his top ten list because I’m always up at the Von Doviak ancestral manse in Maine when it appears online. This year, however, Ebert has jumped out early – and not only that, he’s doubled the content. “In these hard times, you deserve two ‘best films’ lists for the price of one,” Ebert writes. “It is therefore with joy that I list the 20 best films of 2008, in alphabetical order. I am violating the age-old custom that film critics announce the year's 10 best films, but after years of such lists, I've had it. A best films list should be a celebration of wonderful films, not a chopping process.”

You’ve gotta admire his enthusiasm after so many years in the game, especially if, like me, you have about three movies on your list and are scrambling to catch up with any possible contenders you may have missed. In fact, since Ebert presents an entirely separate list of documentaries, as well as a “special jury prize,” he actually has 26 movies on his list. Since he declines to rank them, I can’t tell you which is his favorite, but the most surprising selection has to be The Fall. “Tarsem's film is a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free fall from reality into uncharted realms.” I didn’t catch this one myself, but our own Phil Nugent dissents.

That special jury prize went to My Winnipeg. “Guy Maddin's latest dispatch from inside his imagination is a "history" of his home town, which becomes a mixture of the very slightly plausible, the convincing but unlikely, the fantastical, the fevered, the absurd, the preposterous, and the nostalgic. Oddly enough, when it's over, you have a deeper and, in a crazy way, more "real" portrait of Winnipeg than a conventional doc might have provided--and certainly a far more entertaining one.” Among the documentaries singles out for praise is Encounters at the End of the World, which director Werner Herzog dedicated to Ebert. Logrolling in our time!

Here’s the full list.

Related:
Roger Ebert Gives Himself Thumbs Down
Classless Man in Voiceless Brawl

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: June 7-13, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Guest editing this week’s Highlight Reel will be noted physicist Dr. Bruce Banner. Dr. Banner, if you could just…Dr. Banner? Is there something wrong? You look a little angry, and…what’s happening to your pants? Dr. Ban –

HULK BLOG!!!!

Hulk has new movie for puny humans to see! Also see Hulk’s old movie! It a little artsy-fartsy for Hulk, but Hulk appreciates innovative editing scheme!

Hulk think Zooey Deschanel very pretty and sings like bird!

Hulk not opposed to Liv Tyler making out with Kate Hudson!

Hulk remember stupid Jaws 2 movie and stupid Battlefield Earth movie, but Hulk not see Summer Catch with ten foot pole!

Hulk like Top 10 Empowered Girls more than Top 9 Disempowered Girls – they snap like twigs in Hulk’s embrace!

Although a big Guy Maddin fan, Hulk admits to not yet seeing My Winnipeg!

Hulk think Sam Hamm Watchmen script reductive and trite!

Hulk stomp Terence Stamp!

Hulk take Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood by necks and crash heads together like cymbals!

Hulk miss last Friday the 13th movie because puny Banner want to see revival of The Robe instead!

Screengrab Review: My Winnipeg

Peter Smith — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:30:00 GMT

By Mike D'Angelo

"I must leave," Guy Maddin intones solemnly at the outset of his hilariously sardonic-affectionate tribute to Manitoba's capital, where he's lived and worked his entire life. "I must leave here now." But while it's Maddin's voice we hear on the soundtrack, the anxious-looking "Guy Maddin" we see booking it out of town on a locomotive in this early sequence is actor Darcy Fehr, in a puckish mix of invention and autobiography that characterizes the movie as a whole. Yes, Winnipeg did experience a turbulent strike in 1919 that was directly inspired by the Bolshevik revolution. No, Winnipeg in all likelihood not does have ten times the sleepwalking rate of any other city in the world. Merrily juxtaposing history and myth, Maddin/"Maddin" decides to "film [his] way out of here," shepherding his surviving family into the apartment-cum-salon where he grew up and re-enacting episodes from his childhood. According to the narration, his tyrannical mother plays herself; those who stick around for the credits will discover that the role is in fact played by Ann Savage, the long-ago star of Detour.

Shot in Maddin's now-standard faux-silent style, complete with apparent celluloid damage and breathless intertitles, My Winnipeg itself amounts to a neverending series of detours. Truth is, the titular subject is entirely ostensible, which is both the film's charm and its greatest limitation.

Unlike Maddin's last feature, the overly plotty Brand Upon the Brain!, this one never wears out its welcome, but neither does it ever achieve the galvanizing force of Maddin's best work, simply because we're forever off to the next random goofy vignette. (Cowards Bend the Knee, which worked similar quasi-autobiographical terrain, derived much of its lunatic power from Maddin's expert use of silent horror tropes.) In other words, the movie is kind of a doodle — and yet, it's a magnificent doodle, with parts so individually flavorful that you don't so much care about pulling out your calculator and working out their sum. Any film deranged enough to include a a fictional '60s TV show called "Ledge Man," which found the hero threatening to leap to his death from a tall building every single week, really must be seen.

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "My Winnipeg"

Phil Nugent — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

My Winnipeg, the latest from Canadian filmmaker and friend of the Screengrab Guy Maddin, was commissioned by the Documentary Channel, but as noted here recently, it's hardly the straight history-travelogue that the title might suggest. It's an impressionistic, semi-satitic tribute to the hometown of his fantasy life that Maddin's feelings about the city as a taking-off point, the way his recent "autobiographical" films Cowards Bend the Knee and Brand Upon the Brain! take off from his feelings about his memories from his early life. Those feelings, as they come through here, might best be described as affectionate but haunted. In Maddin's telling, the entire city is a folksy snowscape where people might yearn to get away but aren't awake enough to formulate an escape plan. "Guy", our hero and narrator (played by Darcy Fehr) recalls that for a hundred years, there was a yearly, day-long, city-wide treasure hunt, and the prize was a train ticket out of town, but nobody ever used their winnings because, after spending a day exploring the city, no winner could bear to leave. At the same time, Guy says, Winnipeg has ten times the number of sleepwalkers of any other city; at night, the sidewalks are clogged with folks who've gone to bed only to stagger outside and wander zombie-like through the cutting winds. It's as if their subconscious minds where sending their bodies a message that their brains don't want to hear. Guy, who himself would dearly love to leave but can't, murmurs to himself, "Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake!"

Naturally, Maddin's feelings about the place he grew up in are tangled up with his feelings about his family, his mother in particular. (She's played here by the 1940's starlet Ann Savage, best remembered as the female lead in Egdar G. Ulmer's febrile noir Detour, in her first film role in more than twenty years.) Eager to get at the roots of his unresolved childhood issues, Maddin decides to move back in with Mom and use some of the film budget to hire actors and a dog to "play" his siblings and his "long, long, long-dead chihuahua", Toby. ("Because Mom doesn't want Dad left out, "we pretend to have had him exhumed and reburied in the living room.") This idea, which is partially borrowed from Albert Brooks's Mother, generates some laughs but not a lot of mileage. (It didn't generate much mileage in Mother either, where it proved good for fewer laughs.) In general, My Winnipeg feels as if it were made to order; it lacks the fever-dream obsessiveness of Maddin's best work. But it's very funny and consistently entertaining. It turns out that Mom stars in the only dramatic TV series ever made in Winnipeg, Ledge Man, in which she plays the mother of "an overly sensitive man" who each week has to be coaxed back inside after climbing out onto the ledge over some perceived slight. (It's been running for fifty years and Mom hasn't missed an episode.) And the stream-of-consciousness narration suggests a previously unsuspected influence on Maddin's work: Ken "Word Jazz" Nordine. It's nice that cable TV is doing its part to keep Maddin working, but My Winnipeg gave me a feeling that he really ought to have his own late-night radio show.

Winnipeg is the New Cleveland: Guy Maddin's Hometown

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:30:00 GMT

As Tribeca kicks into high gear, New York filmgoers brace themselves for a spate of the strange and unsual, and they don't get much stranger than the fact that Guy Maddin, Canada's master of the bizarre, has apparently made a documentary.

Well, maybe that's going a bit too far -- in this brief interview with the Village Voice's Aaron Hillis, Maddin makes it clear that his new film debuting at the festival, My Winnipeg, isn't exactly a documentary so much as it is a "docu-fantasia", and that the idea of a documentary as little more than straight-up representation of the sort he says could easily be made with a security camera doesn't really appeal to him that much.

But Maddin (who here, as elsewhere, is a mighty fun interview) says that he jumped at the chance to immortalize his hometown on screen: "Canadians, especially Winnipeggers, are lousy self-mythologizers—pathologically so. I think it's because we're sitting next to a country that's so great at it," he says. "I decided, while I'm living here, I should try my best to bring Winnipeg at least up to speed with Cleveland on this sort of thing. "

The Rep Report (23--May 1)

Phil Nugent — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: One of the strangest and most intriguing new filmmaking talents to emerge in recent years, the Korean writer-director Kim Ki-Duk gets his first complete U.S. retrosepctive, courtesy of the Museum of Modern art, running from April 23 to May 8. Originally typed as a bit of a sickie on the basis of his 2000 film The Isle, with its isolated, watery setting, creepy eroticized atmosphere, and creative use of fishhooks, Kim has continued to turn out deluxe midnight-movie fare (such as Samaritan Girl) while also revealing a more restrained, meditative side in such films as Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring and the weird, mute romance 3-Iron. The MOMA show will be of special interest to old fans eager to get a look at some of his movies that haven't gotten much play here before, including his 1996 debut picture Crocodile.

"Creatively Speaking" (April 25-27) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is a series, curated by Michelle Materre and co-curated and produced by Neyda Martinez, that seeks to showcase "realistic, universal portrayals of people of color." It includes documentaries about the culture and political activism of South Africa, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a concert honoring what would have been Bob Marley's sixtieth birthday, the African-American activist Robert F. Williams, and the roots and spread of hip hop culture, along with a number of dramatic short films. Each screening will be accompanied by a Q & A session afterwards.

FESTIVAL NEWS: In spring, the film geek's heart turns to thoughts of film festivals, where the hardcore faithful can seal themselves up in dark screening rooms to take refuge from all that sunshine and pollen. The Independent Film Festival of Boston, which was founded in 2003 and is already well-established as perhaps the city's premier yearly film event, kicks off on Wednesday, April 23, and runs through the 29th. This year's week-long bash includes new features from Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg, Harmony Korine (Mister Lonely), Werner Herzog (Encounters at the End of the World), and the Hoop Dreams, Steve James and Peter Gilbert (At the Death House Door), as well as documentaries on Joy Division, Harlan Ellison (Dreams with Sharp Teeth), and George W. Bush's home away from home, Crawford, Texas. From April 25 through May 8, Pacific Film Archive will be running standout attractions from the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival, including Ermanno Olmi's One Hundred Nails, Bela Tarr's The Man from London, Claude Chabrol's Girl Cut in Two, Roy Andersson's You, the Living, and Mock Up on Mu, the latest "pulp serial-cum-political tract" from Bay Area filmmaker and "culture jammer" Craig Baldwin. Across the border, Toronto's fifteenth annual Hot Docs Candaian International Documentary Film Festival begins on Thursday and spends eleven days showcasing the best in nonfiction filmmaking, including more than a hundred new pictures and retrospectives devoted to the work of Richard Leacock and Canada's own Jennifer Baichwal. And New York's youthful-and-still-growing counterweight to the city's fall festival, the Tribeca Film Festival, begins Wednesday and continues through May 4, with a handsome spread of independent and international films sandwiched in between the premieres of Baby Mama and Speed Racer. We'll have more to come on Tribeca as soon as it lands.