Dans Paris
July 20th, 2007
Christophe Honoré’s follow-up to Ma Mere is a loving homage to the French New Wave that stays true to its own emotional core. Heartthrobs Louis Garrell (The Dreamers) and Romain Duris (Moliere, The Beat My Heart Skipped) play brothers who find themselves once again in their father’s small Paris apartment, Jonathan (Garrell) as a student, Paul (Duris) in the throes of depression after his breakup with longtime girlfriend Anna (Joanna Preiss.)
Read the rest of my review on About.com. Dans Paris is scheduled for limited U.S. release on August 8.
Dans Paris. Christophe Honoré, 2006. ****
Instead of the trailer, here’s a scene where heartbroken Paul listens to Kim Wilde:
Cleopatra, Sith, Death Proof
April 10th, 2007
Prompted by the grand finale of Rome, we took another look at Cleopatra, which is one of those movies I can rewatch every few years. Compare-and-contrast is a fun enough game, and Marcy, who was never entirely sure which of the HBO characters were fictional, was entertained by noting differences in motivation and plot. Every frame of Cleopatra must have cost more than an entire episode of Rome, but the storytelling is much more contemporary on HBO. The movie nearly bankrupted Fox because it was designed to trump TV by outspending it. Forty years later, it has been shown up by… a TV show. But the images are still twice as wide, and the characters twice as grand.
Here’s what fascinated me, though: the palatial sets, outlandish backdrops, and outsized drama of Cleopatra resemble another, much more recent epic about larger-than-life figures. Along with forties serials, The Hidden Fortress, Ray Harryhausen and all the other usual suspects, there is no doubt that the Cinemascope epics of the fifties and sixties, and specifically Cleopatra, served as a blueprint for the Star Wars films. Archetypes in ever-morphing hairdos and caped costumes acting out eternal tragedies and reciting awkward, overwritten lines of dialogue — especially Revenge of the Sith, the episode in which the galactic shit hits the fan, is the spiritual and cinematic heir of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s four-and-a-half-hour epic.
Read on for more about Star Wars, Grindhouse, and why Jar-Jar Binks is cooler than Stuntman Mike. Also, lots more screenshots.
Outlandish Republic
February 21st, 2007
As much as I’d like to blame it on the rum, it was a clear, sober morning when I hatched the idea for a Caribbean homage to David Lynch.
What’s it about? A puppy in trouble.
Much thanks to my patient and inventive cast: Kay Aleksić, Stéphan Goldsmith, Roxie, Marcy Dermansky, Karl Supierz, Fedir Nikolayev, and Mike Bastin.
OUTLANDISH REPUBLIC (I insist on the capitalization) was shot on the run in various locations around the Dominican Republic, including Santo Domingo, Santiago, Sosua, and the Hotel Atlantis in Las Terrenas. Beware of the giraffe!
More muckfilms:
- Playa Bonita
- Alternadad
- The Flatbroke Stringband
- Glory Days
- Alien Stingers
- The Diggs Live at Sin-e
- In the Flesh: Marcy Reads from Twins
[tags]muckfilm, dominican republic, david lynch, youtube, dominican republic[/tags]
