Friday, 31 March 2017
Did You See This?
Jean-Pierre Léaud takes the spotlight this week in a career-spanning retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. To mark the occasion, Film Comment has republished Olivier Assayas’s 1996 tribute to the French film icon, whom he . . .
Katherine Heigl vs Rosario Dawson in New Trailer for 'Unforgettable'
"She's messing with me." Ugh. Another trailer for this movie. Warner Bros has released a second trailer for the romantic thriller titled Unforgettable, about a vengeful woman who sets out to make life hell for her ex-husband's new wife. The man-in-the-middle is played by Geoff Stults, and the two women are played by Katherine Heigl with some impressive blonde hair, and Rosario Dawson. The film is also a reunion for Heigl and director Denise Di Novi, as they previously collaborated on Life as We Know It. The cast includes young actress Isabella Rice, Simon Kassianides, Whitney Cummings, Robert Wisdom and Cheryl Ladd. This is an ironic title, because this movie seems instantly forgettable, and I'm certain it's going to be sitting in the Bargain Bin in a few months. This looks terrible, even with these two women leading the cast.
Here's the second trailer (+ new poster) for Denise Di Novi's Unforgettable, direct from YouTube:
Heigl stars as Tessa Connover, who is barely coping with the end of her marriage when her ex-husband, David (Stults), becomes happily engaged to Julia Banks (Dawson)—not only bringing Julia into the home they once shared but also into the life of their daughter, Lilly (Isabella Rice). Trying to settle into her new role as a wife and a stepmother, Julia believes she has finally met the man of her dreams, the man who can help her put her own troubled past behind her. But Tessa's jealousy soon takes a pathological turn until she will stop at nothing to turn Julia's dream into her ultimate nightmare. Unforgettable is directed by veteran producer Denise Di Novi, making her directorial debut. The script is by David Leslie Johnson and Christina Hodson. WB releases Unforgettable in theaters starting on April 21st this spring. Anyone?
Official Trailer for Thriller 'Grey Lady' Starring Eric Dane & Natalie Zea
"It all ends here! No more lies!" Beacon Pictures and Broadvision Entertainment have released an official trailer for an indie thriller titled Grey Lady, from director/actor John Shea. The movie stars Eric Dane (seen in Marley & Me, Valentine's Day, "Grey's Anatomy", "The Last Ship") as a Boston police officer who goes to Nantucket to investigate the murder of his partner, but discovers more than he bargained for. The cast includes Natalie Zea as a woman he befriends who helps him around the town, plus Amy Madigan, Adrian Lester, Carolyn Stotesbery, Chris Meyer, and Rebecca Gayheart; as well as director John Shea in a small role. This looks pretty much straight-to-TV quality, but it is surprisingly going to theaters.
Here's the official US trailer (+ poster) for John Shea's Grey Lady, direct from YouTube:
When Boston homicide detective James Doyle's partner is killed in an ambush, their dying words provide him with a clue that sends him to remote Nantucket Island. There in the grey off-season his hunt for the killer leads him to the heart of island where not even he can hide from the truth. Grey Lady is directed by American actor-turned-filmmaker John Shea, who has directed only one other film previously from 1998 titled Southie. The screenplay is also written by John Shea; from a story written by John Shea and Armyan Bernstein. Beacon & Broadvision will release Grey Lady in select theaters starting April 28th this spring.
Watch: Meet a Cute Cardboard Monster in 'Frolic & Mae' Short Film
Meet Frolic. Yet another one-of-a-kind short film to feature and it's worth your time to watch. Frolic & Mae is the latest short from director Danny Madden, founder of the filmmaking collective Ornana. You may recognize his name as he made the fantastic hand-drawn short Confusion Through Sand previously. Frolic & Mae is a much more ambitious short, inspired by films like Gremlins and Lilo & Stitch, about a young girl who decides to create a cardboard monster in opposition to her cousin's friends only wanting to play with their phones. It gets lose, and turns out to be more than she can handle. Although this just premiered at the Atlanta Film Festival, they couldn't wait to release it online for everyone to watch - here it is. Catch it below.
Thanks to ScreenAnarchy for the tip on this. Description from Vimeo: "Mae turns some cardboard into a little monster — Frolic — and Frolic turns everything into mayhem. Mae is outcast at her cousin’s birthday party. She reacts by creating Frolic, who ends up being far too much for her to handle. So she has to reel him in and together they get a foothold in the battle against boringness." Frolic & Mae is directed by filmmaker Danny Madden. It was produced and created by Madden's filmmaking collective Ornana, based out of Los Angeles, CA. This was originally funded on Kickstarter, along with extra funding from Screencraft and Bondit. See a behind-the-scenes video here. To watch more shorts, click here. So what did you think of this?
Like his famously enigmatic landscapes, the performances that anchor Michelangelo Antonioni’s films are integral to his vision of existentialist ennui. Among the most iconic is David Hemmings’s turn in the Italian master’s first . . .
Official US Trailer for Indie Drama 'Paris Can Wait' Starring Diane Lane
"Let's pretend we don't know where we are going, or even who we are." Sony Pictures Classics is releasing this indie drama in theaters this May, so we're featuring the trailer before the summer movie season kicks off. Paris Can Wait is the feature directorial debut of Eleanor Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola's wife, now making her debut at the age of 81. Diane Lane stars as a woman married to a Hollywood producer who, after a visit to Cannes, takes a long road trip through France with one of her husband's business partners. Alec Baldwin stars as her producer husband, and Arnaud Viard plays the man she goes on the road trip with. Along the way, she finds happiness and a love for life again in everything from the food to the sights and the conversations. This looks like a light, charming film to remind you how great it is to see the world.
Here's the official US trailer (+ poster) for Eleanor Coppola's Paris Can Wait, direct from YouTube:
Eleanor Coppola's feature film directorial and screenwriting debut at the age of 81 stars Academy Award nominee Diane Lane as a Hollywood producer's wife who unexpectedly takes a trip through France, which reawakens her sense of self and her joie de vivre. Anne (Lane) is at a crossroads in her life. Long married to a successfully driven but inattentive movie producer (Baldwin), she finds herself taking a car trip from Cannes to Paris with a business associate of her husband (Viard). What should be a seven-hour drive turns into a journey of discovery involving fine food and wine, humor, wisdom, and picturesque sights. Paris Can Wait is written and directed by Eleanor Coppola, who's also Francis Ford Coppola's wife, making her feature directorial debut. This first premiered at the Toronto and Mill Valley Film Festivals last fall. It also played at this year's SXSW. Sony Classics will open Paris Can Wait in select theaters starting on May 12th.
Film History Royalty: Jean-Pierre Léaud as Louis XIV
The 400 Blows. Courtesy of Shutterstock
For many directors, casting decisions are a crucial part of the writing process. They set the parameters in which the character can develop itself. Fundamentally, a good casting decision can make a character transcend its own scripted ambitions into wonderful, unexpected territories. But bad casting, as we know, can cripple not just a character’s potential but the entire film. It’s hard to talk about casting choices as creative decisions since they are so ingrained within certain creative impulses—the decision of choosing a particular actor over another can be based on mere gut feeling, a hunch, or an intellectual response. But of course, it can also depend (as it often does in large budget films) on an actor’s status, reputation or his or her monetary value. As we get to know actors, we see them typecast or cast against type but sometimes casting decisions go a bit further. It seems like some decisions, whether they are made by producers, investors, or the directors themselves, can work beyond the normal variables and inadvertently become self-aware decisions. In other words, the casting decision references itself and thus becomes self-conscious and even symbolic.
When we talk about French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud, we often touch on the impression that we’ve seen his life play onscreen. This is specifically unique for Léaud, as critic J. Hoberman points out in a recent New York Times piece: “Something more than an actor or even a movie star, Jean-Pierre Léaud is a man who has lived his life on film.” We experienced Léaud’s life starting with his childhood in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, his rebellious adolescence in Jean-Luc Godard’s La chinoise, the troubled post-May ’68 hangover in The Mother and The Whore, the French film establishment in Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep, an aging actor in Tsai Ming Lang’s film-within-a-film Face and more recently, on the king’s deathbed in Albert Serra’s masterful The Death of Louis XIV. His filmography tells us a story of film history. It’s hard to detach Léaud from this phenomenon, particularly because so many directors have cast him in a role that alludes to or directly references film history. For instance, it is almost impossible to separate Léaud from the looming shadow of his character as the Truffaut alter ego, Antoine Doinel, and so it feels like his subsequent roles are some sort of version of Doinel. Later in his career, Léaud played a director in films like Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Assayas’ Irma Vep and Bertrand Bonello’s The Pornographer. Even though these are, in their own right, very distinct films and the characters are all used differently, in each instance Bertolucci, Assayas and Bonello also employ Léaud as a reference.
The Pornographer
This particular use of an actor is a way in which the actor’s role is conditioned or rather tied to the actor’s reputation or previous work. Although not uncommon, it can occasionally work in a deeply compelling way. Naturally, silly meta moments like Julia Roberts playing a character impersonating Julia Roberts in Ocean’s 12 are simpleminded and dull, although more serious versions can often have the same obnoxious effect as a sort of an inside joke. A recent example that comes to mind and is in no way off-putting is the two young anarchist characters from Jim Jarmusch’s heartwarming Paterson. In a particular scene, Jarmusch reuses the same actors who were the leads in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, paying a sweet tribute to Anderson in a film that already includes many other lovely little homages.
In Serra’s The Death of Louis XIV, Jean-Pierre Léaud renders a rigorous and exhaustive performance as France’s longest ruling monarch. Leaud and Serra construct a meticulously intimate look at death, filled with close-ups and profile shots while at the same time the film grows outwards, building on theatrics and iconography that border on satire. Gorgeously framed, the film’s nucleus is Leaud himself, who despite not being in history books (yet) still belongs to a certain category among French historical figures. Thus his presence on screen inevitably works as a double entendre: Leaud is playing the king of France, embodying an important epoch in French political history, while simultaneously embodying a certain period in cinema’s history. It is an eerie sight, leading one to wonder whether or not French cinema is dying with him.
The Death of Louis XIV
It is worth noting, however, that Serra has denied any sort of symbolic intention—or so he claims, as Serra is also somewhat of a provocateur and this naïveté could well be calculated. But in his past work, Serra has avoided scripts and has often used non-actors in his films. In this case, Serra not only uses a professional actor but a legendary one at that. Yet Serra’s alleged lack of allegorical forethought could very well be viable, since the film's concept was first birthed as a commission by the Centre Georges Pompidou where the initial idea was that Léaud would play Louis XIV on his deathbed as a live performance. And in many ways, the film feels exactly like that, both intimate and public. Still, despite creative intent, the effect of having Léaud play this character, in addition to leading an enthralling performance, is undeniably symbolic.
In The Death of Louis XIV, we are essentially watching the king die slowly at the hands of the utter ignorance of the Court's doctors. But Film Comment editor Nicolas Rapold described it better during an overview discussion about Cannes last year (where Louis XIV played at a special screening) in which he recalled the experience as "watching Jean Pierre Léaud slowly die in front of you at the hands of Albert Serra.”
Yet Serra is not the only director to employ an actor in this way. Three well-known examples of this can be found in Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy, Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters and Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire. Although each of these directors employ an actor in very different ways and with different agendas, they are all trying to make some sort of connection with cinema. In King of Comedy, Scorsese casts Jerry Lewis against type forcing Lewis to work through his character as the straight man, a role in which audiences had never seen him before. Yet the effect is similar to that of Léaud: Lewis is perceived as Jerry Lewis, not as his character Jerry Langford.
More commonly done, however, is the use of an actor as a tribute, like Allen’s use of renowned Swedish actor, Max von Sydow. Von Sydow plays a depressed intellectual painter who holds on to traditions ingrained in his old age in Hannah and Her Sisters. His young girlfriend (played by Barbara Hershey) and he have a typical Woody Allen teacher-pupil relationship, but since Allen is an avowed Ingmar Bergman fan his desire to cast von Sydow corresponds with his desire to use Bergman’s cinematic tools. Unlike Scorsese, Allen is not making the casting choice a central factor, he is merely reusing some Bergman elements and trying to make them work as his own. And in contrast to these two examples, there’s Peter Falk in Wender’s Wings of Desire. In that film, Falk’s demeanor is not reworked at all; he plays a version of himself as a former angel who roams the streets of ‘80s West Berlin. What’s interesting here is that Falk performs the same character we are used to getting from him but within Wenders’ particular perspective. Taking Falk out of context and dropping him into a world in which we’ve never seen him contrasts the familiar rugged masculinity of Falk with the more delicate poetry of Wenders.
Naturally, not all these examples are motivated by the same creative desires but they all work in similar ways. Casting decisions like these are not just a way in which filmmakers can acknowledge other films, they can also speak to the nature of films as records of history. To witness someone age on screen through the course of his or her career is remarkable for it can remind us of our own mortality. But to see an actor on screen who has not only aged but cinema has aged with him or her is truly something extraordinary. Films have the unique ability to make such connections with each other; they are not just works of art but pieces of the medium’s own, larger historical fabric. This is evident to a young director like Albert Serra, who is solidifying his status as an international auteur. Louis XIV is a captivating and layered look on history and death and for a veteran like Léaud, whose past work was spent playing a boyish hopeless romantic, this performance is a haunting pièce de résistance.
Movie Poster of the Week: Jean-Pierre Léaud in Posters
Starting this week, the Film Society of Lincoln Center hosts a retrospective of the 57-year career of one of the most iconic figures of modern cinema: Jean-Pierre Léaud. The child who grew up and grew old before our eyes, Léaud will forever be associated with one film above all, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, made when he was only 14, and its character, Antoine Doinel, who he, in many ways, created. In a letter to his friend Helen Scott in 1962 Truffaut wrote, “I would prefer a film to change its meaning along the way rather than have an actor ill at ease. Jean-Pierre wasn’t the character I had intended for The 400 Blows.”
When the Film Society first fêted Léaud, in 1994, in the series “Growing Up with Jean-Pierre Léaud: Nouvelle Vague’s Wild Child” (programmed by my future wife no less), the actor had only just turned 50. Léaud is now 72 years old and playing a dying monarch in his latest film, The Death of Louis XIV.
But to go back to the beginning, Léaud was, in 1959, literally the poster boy for the French New Wave. There are a number of wonderful photographs of him posing with his own printed image in Cannes of that year. A few years ago I wrote about the international posters for The 400 Blows, the sheer variety of which is a testament to that film’s reach and lasting appeal, although only a handful of them captured what was most remarkable about the film—Léaud himself. I know nothing about the film he made next, Boulevard, for old guard director Julien Duvivier (it’s not in the series), but its poster, above, captures Léaud’s rapscallion charm.
Over the next half century Léaud worked for all the great renegades of French Cinema: Truffaut, repeatedly, Godard, often, Rivette, Eustache, Garrel, Assayas, Bonello, as well as the occasional international star auteur like Pasolini, Skolimowksi or Kaurismaki. I’ve collected the best—and most Léaud-centric—posters I could find for these films. Making his debut at the tail end of the golden age of French poster illustration—he was painted by the great Boris Grinsson for 400 Blows—Léaud more often appeared photographed than illustrated in his posters, though there are a few notable exceptions here. What these posters capture above all, what makes them all so different from the poster for Boulevard, is Léaud’s marvelous deadpan: a dispassionate, occasionally puzzled, stone face that would erupt into a manic grin or a voluble tirade on screen. After the last Doinel film in 1979, Léaud was less frequently the star of his films or his posters, often reduced to cameo roles—in which he was wonderful—that played on his iconic presence. Which makes his starring role in The Death of Louis XIV, and in its magnificent poster, all the more satisfying.
Above: French grande for The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, France, 1959.) Art by Boris Grinsson.
Above: Argentinean poster for Masculin Féminin (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1966).
Above: French grande for Masculin Féminin (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1966). Designed by Georges Kerfyser.
Above: Italian poster for Le depart (Jerzy Skolimowski, Belgium, 1967).
Above: French grande for Stolen Kisses (François Truffaut, France, 1968). Design by Ferracci.
Above: Belgian poster for Stolen Kisses (François Truffaut, France, 1968).
Above: British quad for Stolen Kisses (François Truffaut, France, 1968). Design by Peter Strausfeld.
Above: U.S. poster for Le gai savoir (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1969).
Above: U.S. one sheet for Bed and Board (François Truffaut, France, 1970).
Above: 2015 U.S. re-release poster for Out 1 (Jacques Rivette, France, 1971).
Above: French grande for Two English Girls (François Truffaut, France, 1971). Design by Michel Landi.
Above: 1983 re-release French grande for Two English Girls (François Truffaut, France, 1971).
Above: Japanese poster for Day For Night (François Truffaut, France, 1973).
Above: Czech poster for Day For Night (François Truffaut, France, 1973). Design by Stanislav Duda.
Above: French poster for The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, France, 1973).
Above: French poster for Love on the Run (François Truffaut, France, 1979).
Above: French poster for I Hired a Contract Killer (Aki Kaurismaki, Finland, 1990).
Above: French poster for The Birth of Love (Philippe Garrel, France, 1993).
Above: French poster for Just for Laughs! (Lucas Belvaux, France, 1996).
Above: French poster for The Pornographer (Bertrand Bonello, France, 2001).
Above: French poster for The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra, France/Spain, 2016).
See Jean-Pierre Léaud: from Antoine Doinel to Louis XIV at the Film Society of Lincoln Center through April 6. Posters courtesy of Heritage Auctions and Posteritati.
Chadwick Boseman in First Trailer for Thriller 'Message from the King'
"He's in town. We have no idea what he's capable of…" The Jokers from France have released the first trailer for the action thriller Message from the King, starring American actor Chadwick Boseman as a mysterious badass who comes to Los Angeles to find his sister. We already have another John Wick-inspired movie coming up this year, but this seems like yet another John Wick-esque feature. "His pursuit of revenge will lay bare a network of depravity that stretches from the dive-bars of the gang heartlands to the glitz of the Hills." Sounds like fun. The entire cast includes Teresa Palmer, Luke Evans, Alfred Molina, Tom Felton, and Sibongile Mlambo. This looks like it might be entertaining, at least to see Boseman kick ass.
Here's the international trailer (+ poster) for Fabrice Du Welz's Message from the King, on YouTube:
After suddenly losing all contact with his younger sister, Jacob King arrives in Los Angeles determined to track her down. Trying to piece together her last known movements, King finds unsettling evidence of a life gone off the rails - drugs, sex and secrets in the sleazy underbelly of the City of Angels. Undeterred by warnings to go home, King proves to more than a match for the violence he is confronted with as he relentlessly pursues the truth about what happened to his sister. Message from the King is directed by Belgian filmmaker Fabrice Du Welz, of the films Calvaire, Vinyan, Alléluia, and Colt 45 previously. The screenplay is by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell. This premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year. Message from the King opens in theaters in France in May this year, but still has no US release date set yet.
Thursday, 30 March 2017
Watch: Stirring Animated Short Film 'Alike' About Nurturing Creativity
Another one-of-a-kind animated short film to watch. Alike is an animated short film from Spain directed by Daniel MartÃnez Lara & Rafa Cano Méndez. The short is about a father trying to teach his son how to live a unique life, only to realize how much society drains our creativity and originality. This reminds me a bit of Disney's short film Inner Workings, which played before Moana last year. What I love about this short film is the simplicity of it - there's no dialogue, it's all about these two characters, but it has so much to say, and it's easy to pick up on all of that. Most importantly, this reminds us that we should listen to our hearts.
Thanks to Vice's Creators for the tip on this short. Original description from Vimeo: "In a busy life, Copi is a father who tries to teach the right way to his son, Paste. But… what is the correct path?" Alike is an animated short film made in Spain directed by Daniel MartÃnez Lara & Rafa Cano Méndez. Featuring music by Oscar Araujo, and sound by Aleix Vila. The film originally debuted at Mundos Digitales in 2015, and has since picked up 69 awards at festivals all over the world. For more info, visit the film's official website. You can learn more about the making of Alike here. To see more shorts, click here. What did you think of this?
Must Watch: Second Trailer for Reeves' 'War for the Planet of the Apes'
"Apes. Together. Strong." 20th Century Fox has launched the second official trailer for the new War for the Planet of the Apes movie, directed again by Matt Reeves, continuing (and perhaps ending) the new trilogy of Apes movies. After the tensions kept building in the first two movies, this time it's an all out war between humans and apes. Andy Serkis returns to play Caesar, and the cast includes Woody Harrelson as his adversary, the Colonel. Also starring Judy Greer as Cornelia, Max Lloyd-Jones as Blue Eyes, plus Steve Zahn, Chad Rook, Ty Olsson, Aleks Paunovic and Sara Canning. The first trailer for this was amazing, one of my favorite trailers from last year, but this one is even better, and I am pretty much losing my mind with excitement over this. The footage looks awesome - all the action, and Caesar seriously pissed.
Here's the second official trailer for Matt Reeves' War for the Planet of the Apes, from Fox's YouTube:
You can still watch the first trailer for War for the Planet of the Apes here, to see more footage from this.
In the third chapter of the critically acclaimed blockbuster franchise, Caesar and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless Colonel. After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the Colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species and the future of the planet. War for the Planet of the Apes is again directed by Matt Reeves, of the previous Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, as well as Let Me In and Cloverfield. The script is written by Mark Bomback and Matt Reeves; based on Pierre Boulle's novel. Fox will begin the War for the Planet of the Apes starting on July 14th this summer. Who's excited?
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