Long Live The Old Flesh: A Dangerous Method

Michael Fassbender feeling shame--an all too common issue this year.

The exact point when “body horror” became one of the defining critical tropes around David Cronenberg’s work is hard to place. Ok, it isn’t (Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Shivers etc) but it’s a welcome shift in A Dangerous Method that the horror is kept in a subdued tone compared to, say, if Carl Jung’s dreams were brought to life on screen.

Ok, maybe it isn’t that subdued. Paralleled by carriage rides, Method opens on a hysteric Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) being signed into  Burghölzli hospital where she picques the interest of Dr. Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) into trying out the fabled “talking cure” of Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Jung struggles between his dislike of the military (“I just look at cocks all day!”) to analyzing his dreams as he takes Sabina under his wing as an assistant while coaxing out the nature of her “humiliation.”

In The Age of Spiritual Meme-chines: Shut Up! Little Man

The Internet is serious business, or at least that’s how the online adage for folks lurking around the chans and message boards go. Fun with audio and video alike is the content beast that churns out BuzzFeed‘s feeds and gave us mash-ups, crossovers and fan art to go along with an ever-evolving creative culture based on what’s already there.

Shut Up! Little Man is one of the found (audio) footage holy grails since it goes all the way back to the days when recording via  a make-shift boom and tape deck were the best two punk roommates on the Haight in San Francisco could accomplish. Those two idiot savants, Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitchel D., happened to strike gold thanks to their sociopathic alcoholic neighbors (Peter J. Haskett and Raymond Huffman) who couldn’t go a night without drunkenly attacking each other either verbally or physically.

Crafty is King

There’s a clear zen when it comes to manning the craft services table on film and TV shoots. The table itself is often metaphorical, instead being a bar, a series of shelves or–ok, maybe it is just a 72″ folding table set up against the far side of the wall. It’s informal name is simply “crafty” and it is the lifeblood for any production that needs to chug along for the requisite 12 hours before everyone can go home, sleep for half that time and be back on set for an eight a.m. call time.

So, what’s crafty made up from?

Lacking Culture, Italian Style

Because art films are foreign and Italians are stupid heads!

No really, as David Ehrlich/Criterion Corner points out in the above ad that wound up causing Martin Scorsese to engage in one of the first pro-”cultural vegetable” statements via a letter to the editor at the New York Times (reprinted and found here).

Note the Blockbuster cameo and how “foreign” cinema isn’t nearly as awesome as explosions when drinking beer. Or, as Scorsese wrote, “it seems the commercial equates “negative” associations between women and foreign films: weakness, complexity, tedium. I like action-adventure films too. I also like movies that tell a story, but is the American way the only way of telling stories?”

Well, duh. The song says so.

An Ode To A Grecian Speed Ramp: Immortals

When your film requires an opening quote about truly being immortal before launching into the type of audio assault not seeneardInception, it brings to question just how much is your mortality worth? Not in the “Will I die a legend and thus live forever” way, but more a “my ears can’t take much more of this, when do we get to the pretty people in gold clothing smashing shit up like the trailer promised us” way.

That’s kind of forgivable for Immortals, the third feature from director Tarsem–now with an added middle and surname in his credit–who previously overstuffed our eyes with The Cell and The Fall. Electing out from referring to this as a potential noun phrase trilogy, Immortals is a mash-up hybrid of the tales of Thesus and Hyperion into a dimly saturated (if you’re going 3D, which you shouldn’t due to this being post-conversion) series of deserts and kind of stunning set pieces including a shining watering hole surrounded by white sands to a really dark subterranean cave “that’s like a maze” where he battles a “minotaur.”

Great Moments in Zombie Hunting

The Walking Dead took in seven million eyes when it premiered on Sunday (“shattering records” according to Deadline, which also regularly uses the phrase “Toldja!” and “I’m going to sue you”) isn’t that big of a surprise when factoring in key points that:

• It’s October.
• People love zombies and zombie killing.
• Norman Reedus.

Cry, Cry, Cry My Darling

"Hey kid, it's me. Broadway's Frank Langella. Just here. In a car. Doing some things. Wanna party?"

New York’s October films have been kind of in a rut this year. Granted, Lincoln Center’s about to unleash a week long span NY premiering The Innkeepers and Kill List next week along with some classical throwback like The House of Usher and creepy mod-horror Eye of the Cat.

The unknown champ, however, has been the folks programming over at Spectacle Theater for their Spectober selection. A healthy mix of all shlock mixed with shock (Catman ) and tonight’s “secret screening” of the once-televised-and-never-again Cry Baby Lane.

Great, Ali G’s Ghost: Attack The Block

dir. Joe Cornish Theatrical It is a superlative to say Attack The Block is the best film of the year–if not the Summer; but that’s coming from quite a few people. I mean, a lot of people. Attack the Block is probably one of the year’s most positively seen genre odes that opened last March at SXSW on massive buzz and then even people afraid of the “Scott Pilgrim Effect” (e.g. too many free fan/critic screenings would deter from the film’s box office). It opened last weekend against fellow sci-fi flick Cowboys & Aliens on 8 screens to a low six-figure. It is, for all intensive purposes, the underdog of the summer that folks are clinging with to prove word-of-mouth and grassroots campaigns can work this time for Edgar Wright and company in the ashes of Pilgrim. Except that it really doesn’t.

X-Men First Class

dir. Matthew Vaughn

Theatrical

Jet-setting mutants and alterna-Cold War history sound like the perfect combination, doesn’t it? And yet Matthew Vaughn’s take on the X-Men franchise, produced by Bryan Singer, is a combination of great concepts mixed with the boredom of rebooting a franchise that is now popular. The logistics of which can be summed up by this New York article: Kinberg’s X-Men: First Class is a more tangible case of casting downward while maintaining a healthy brand. It centers around the familiar characters of Magneto and Professor Xavier, which justifies its marketing under the X-Men brand, but it’s a prequel, which means it stars all new actors, mostly up-and-coming. They won’t strain the budget, let alone take a piece of the gross.

Which is an unfortunate thing to consider when Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon and James McAvoy–even if he does constantly remind one of a British Zach Braff–are welcome additions to a tonally different franchise. Here it’s more like “Fun With History” than a straight adaptation of the actual “X-Men: First Class” series.

…that’s it.

Lazy Announcement: The 2011 New York Asian Film Festival Line-Up

NYAFF 2011 schedule is out.