jürgen fauth’s muckworld

The first two acts of this W. Somerset Maugham adaptation are fantastic: Naomi Watts plays a woman who marries stodgy bacteriologist Ed Norton out of desperation and cheats on him with Liev Schreiber as soon as they arrive at his home in Shanghai. To punish her and himself, Norton takes her into the interior, to a village ravaged by cholera. The way the two steer their wrecked relationship through the lush landscape stalked by death is terrific–it’s sort of a grown-up version of Battle Royale, in which the stakes of love are ratcheted up to 11: if you leave me, you’ll die a grisly death. Toby Jones (Truman in Infamous) provides the cynical but helpful foreigner, and there are nuns.

I was less fond of the third act, in which Chekhov’s Law is adhered to much too slavishly: if there’s cholera around, somebody’s gonna get it! Still, The Painted Veil is big classic Hollywood cinema, splendidly engaging, marvelously acted and shot, sumptuous and emotional. The real mystery is why this film, far better than The Departed and most of the other nominees, didn’t get any kind of attention at Oscar time. In decades past, this would have been exactly the kind of thing the Academy would’ve gone gaga over. As a sign of how much times as changed, the The Painted Veil wasn’t even technically released by a major studio but by their “indie” distributor Warner Independent. It was drowned out in December’s mad movie rush, and now the official site is hocking the DVD as “just in time for mother’s day!”

The Painted Veil. John Curran, 2006. ***

• Rotten Tomatoes: 75%

I wish I’d seen this sooner because it’s old news now: Infernal Affairs is much better than Marty’s Oscar-winning remake, The Departed. There are about 49 reasons why this is so, but here are just two: it’s only half as long, and the Hong Kong waterfront is twice as dramatic as Boston’s.

Mou gaan dou. Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak, 2002. ***

• Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

The trailer:

The sidebar is home to an automated list of items I highlight in my feed reader (which, in turn, is also available as a feed) — but some of them deserve their own post. Here’s a roundup of the more interesting bits I found around the web lately:

• Watch all of Todd Haynes’ outlawed Barbie doll spectacular Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story on Google Video. Bonus: Lukas Moodysson’s latest. [via Ray Pride]
• The Friday Mix Tape: when he’s not scienceing Mouth of the Beast recordings or haunting the Knitting Factory after midnight, my friend Dan Alford is blogging groovy compilations at Hidden Track. Get his mix of Herbie Hancock covers here.
• Terrence McKenna’s Ex-Library: in what sounds like a tragic Name of the Rose tie-in, Quizno’s lays waste to the treasure trove that was the late psychedelic visionary’s library. [via Gpod]
• Long Island Nazis on Metafilter
• On her blog, Nina Hagen supports Britney.
• RSS Geekout: for those of us who use news readers to digest the interwebs, there is now Yahoo! Pipes and xFruits for remixing RSS feeds. For example, you can now read muckworld on your cell phone.[via Lifehacker]
• Cahiers du Cinema is now available online, in English. Very handsome and full of David Lynch. [via David Hudson]
• Marcy’s vomit comes in third at the Debutante Ball’s favorite line contest.
• If you’re still reading and looking for something else to click, go vote on our Oscar poll.

Fish in a barrel. Christopher Guest and gang turn their talents to Hollywood and the Oscar race, but come up with a less satisfying film than usual. Everybody in the industry gets lampooned, from directors, writers, actors to PR folks, and assorted hangers-on, including literally drooling movie critics (”I’ve seen a lot of movies, and I’ve loved them all!”) and some guy posting on the Internet. (Apparently Guest also keeps a special circle of hell warm for Charlie Rose.)  I particluarly liked Eugene Levy as worthless agent, Fred Willard as entertainment TV host, and Jennifer Coolidge as diaper heiress/producer. Parker Posey, Bob Balaban, and Harry Shearer are all reliably amusing. Catherine O’Hara, as a pathetically desperate aging actress, is at the center of the film, but seeing her ambitions frustrated isn’t half as much as fun as you’d think.

Dog shows, the folk music scene, and amateur theater were probably better fits for Guest’s improv comedy–the movie industry has been satirized and abused so much before, For Your Consideration seems a little tame and scattershot by comparison. There’s none of the bite of The Player, nor any of the ridicule disguised as love letter to the movies that makes Day for Night such a pleasure. Some good one liners, but you’ve probably seen the best ones already in the trailer. Opens on Friday.

For Your Consideration. Christopher Guest, 2006. **

[tags]christopher guest, film, 2 stars, hollywood, parker posey, eugene levy, bob balaban, harry shearer, fred willard, jennifer coolidge, catherine o’hara, comedy, oscars[/tags]