The Night Watch

Here is the Russian sci-fi thriller based on the book of the same name, and this years entry into the Foreign Film Oscar nomination race. It is usually cause for worry when a film begins with multiple prologues and this film has two of them. The first begins with a mythic battle between good and evil armies in the centre of a narrow bridge that immediately conjures up comparisons to the big army shots in Lord of the Rings. The second is thousands of years later when a schlub of a man goes to a fortune teller and finds out that his wife will leave him for another man because she is pregnant by her. The very helpful fortune teller offers to kill the fetus in the mother for an extra fee and one other condition...that the man will take responsibility for his actions in the afterlife. Weirdness ensues as we get a peek behind the supernatural curtain. Flash forward 12 years and the story of Mages, Vampires and Shapeshifters in some major Russian Urban centre battling it out before a prophecy is fulfilled. It's somewhere between Underworld (crap that that film was...) and The Highlander (a genre classic) but with a lot more gore than either.
Add this to the release of France's Immortel, China's Zu Warriors and you are beginning to get the sense that the rest of the world wants to make big explosive genre pics like Hollywood has been turning out since Star Wars. I don't know if this is a good thing, but Nightwatch has such a twisted and organic sensibility. It is squishy, bloody and twisted like a good Cronenberg film, but without the subtext.
This is pretty straight-up plot driven story telling, and it occupies with its visual candy, for its 2 hour run time. Then you find out that there is a cliff-hanger ending and two more chapters to come (again, comparisons to Lord of the Rings). Would I recommend this movie? Well it's too obtuse and exposition free for any non-genre fans to make any sense of. I'm still undecided on whether or not this is a good thing. Let's just say you are just thrown into the mix thinking: "I would probably have understood this better if I had read the book."

Famous Mirandas

How to tie this into films so I can brag on my blog?
Here are some famous Mirandas:

Miranda Richardson - From Black Adder to Spider to Chicken Run


Miranda Otto - From The Thin Red Line to Lord of the Rings


And introducing our second child (and first daughter):


Miranda Asenath Halfyard.

That is her when she is 45 minutes old. What a cutie!

KBT re-Presents: Van Helsing

A successful showing of Infernal Affairs last Tuesday marks the return of KBT!

In an attempt to mock my KBT Screenings of arty or foreign films, my wife has taken over the cinema to show Van Helsing. She knows how much I despise Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns). She also knows way more people will probably turn out for this than the movie I was going to screen, Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music In the World. C'est la vie.

Want some halloween cheese? Please show up at 8:20pm on Tuesday for a pre-screening drink and some pumpkin pie and Van Helsing.

For those who missed the deluge of marketing and product tie-ins in May: Van Helsing is sort of a League of Extraordinary Monsters (Well, the ones that are owned in Universal Studio's copyright portfolio). They are taken on by Bram Stoker's distinguished Doctor of pathology, Van Helsing, in a deluge of CGI and themepark violence. LJ saw it in the theatres and loved it, and takes a certain delight in inflicting a third (!) Stephen Sommers film on me.

OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

Outfoxed is more like a TV documentary than a feature, but it is a lot of fun, in an apocalyptic sort of way. It is a scathing look at the world of Cable News and the bias that goes along with it. In particular, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News is deconstructed into the partisan Republican voice-box that it is.
Now many of you would say: "Duh...they don't need a documentary to tell me that!" But, as there are a lot of people out there (or so i'm told) that just believe the news they see and think no further on it. This documentary tries show how not reporting certain stories and blowing non-stories to lead-in items (i.e. manufacturing the lead story rather than reporting it) are just plain common practice for Fox. (Again, "Duh!").
The fun part is to watch this documentary use many of the same tactics to bring Fox and it's celebrity-level newscasters, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly down a few pegs. This is well deserved, but it hurts the credibility of the doc when it becomes an issue of the 'Pot calling the Kettle Black'.
In light of the recent spat with Jon Stewart on CNNs Crossfire, are we on the verge of actually examining the level that the News Media has sunk down to in the 21st Century? "I'm mad as hell..." indeed.

The Saddest Music in the World

Guy Maddin is as much of an film archeologist as he is a director. Digging up and reconstructing film styles which have been dead for 80 years is his forte. The Saddest Music in the World is an ode to a bygone era of melodrama, scored very oddly with 5.1 channel sound.
The story is of the tragedy of Lady Port-Huntly, a rich baroness who runs the beer industry in the Canadian Prairies during the Great Depression while prohibition is in full effect in the United States. As a promotional tool, she decides to run a contest to find out which country has the saddest music in the world. This brings a cocky American huckster and his girlfriend, as well as a Serbian recluse who is recovering from the loss of his child as well as his wife leaving him. The local Canadian entry, the man who is responsible for the loss of Lady Port-Huntly's Legs and who has constructed for her new legs made entirely of glass (which of course, are full of Port-Huntly Brew).
To add to the crazed hilarity of the proceedings, the music contests are like a battle of the bands with the musicians literally trying to overwhelm their opponents with their tones. The songs go back and forth as indicated by a hockey buzzer. The lady gives a thumbs up or thumbs down, Roman-Coliseum style as two inane commentators broadcast it live over the radio.
Surprise connections are revealed (and believe me that everyone is closer related than the Star Wars characters) between contestants and it sets up an Eisenstein level montage climax that is antiquated and brilliant simultaneously.
Somehow during all the craziness of the whole affair and the grimy black and white (for some scenes prehistoric colour techniques are used) stylings, there is a sense that Maddin does in fact love these characters. It gives the movie an odd type of beating heart with the occasional piece of glass stuck in it.
Highly recommended for when you are in the mood for something truly different

KBT Presents: Infernal Affairs (take two!)

OK, we are going to try this again, with a brand new engine driving the theatre:
They just don't make very many good Cop Thrillers in Hollywood anymore. The last memorable one was Insomnia and even it was inferior to the Original European Version. Fortunately, they can still turn out good ones in Hong Kong. Infernal Affairs has the brooding feel of a John Woo style Bullet Ballet, the stylistic excess of Tony Scott and the macho profesionalism of Michael Mann.It stars two of the biggest names in HK Cinema, Andy Lau (House of Flying Daggers) and Tony Leung (Hero). It is a complex game of cat and mouse where the both men think they are the cat. Leung is a undercover policeman who has a position high up in the mob. Lau is an undercover mobster high up in Internal Affairs. Each is informed enough to know that there is a mole in their midst. Who will figure out whom first? Check out Rotten Tomatoes for the 96% (at the moment) rating on this film. It has already turned out 2 (supposedly inferior, I haven't seen them) sequels in China. There is an American Remake (to be directed by Martin Scorcese!?!!??!) already underway. See the original first. The screening will be started at approximately 8:30pm Tuesday Night.

Best of the Year So Far...

Just in time before the fall oscar-grab season hits, this is my quickie Top 10* of 2004** (The links go to my TIFF blog entries). Only 4 american films, and one of those directed by a Brit, are on the list so far. That may change by the end of December.

1. Vital
2. 3-Iron
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
4. House of Flying Daggers
5. The Saddest Music In the World
6. Kill Bill Vol.2
7. Shaun of the Dead
8. Good-bye Lenin!
9. Primer
10. Collateral

*Special mention to:
The Triplets of Belleville
Moolaadé

**Items on the list that have been on my previous year lists but were theatrically released this year in Canada:
Hero
Jeux D'Enfants

Team America

Which ever way you lean politically, your views are poked at in Team America. Whether it's the gung-ho team members who sally forth with their theme music: "America, Fuck Yeah!" or the pouty left-wingers including Hollywoods politically outspoken actors and rabble-rouser/documentarian Michael Moore. But that is only a small part of the films raison d’être. Where Team America really shines is in its deconstruction (for comic effect only!) of the Golan Globus and Jerry Bruckhemier action pictures of the 80s and 90s. For those us raised on these reluctant vigilante pictures (from First Blood to Above the Law to Lethal Weapon to Gone in 60 Seconds), the jokes strike home.
What I was particulary impressed with in this picture is how it never runs out of steam for its 90 minute run-time. The puppet concept does not get old, the satire stays sharp (if lowbrow and crude) through-out and the surprises (or should I say non-surprises, as it follows the reluctant vigilante structure religiously ) keep coming. Even the puppet sex is comically stimulating and as gratuitous as the equivalent scenes of the action genre. One of the best jokes is how wooden the acting and dialogue is, but how it is only a hair off the actual action films. In fact, many of the best jokes are not the quick pay-offs, they are the chuckle-to-yourself kind (the same type that occupy Christopher Guest films) where you see the conventions of the genre (the melodrama of the heros as they blow stuff up takes precedence to the collateral damage, the use of montage shortcuts to pump the adrenaline before the final showdown, the tragic past incident which the characters have to work past before they can come together, etc) on display for comedy not adrenaline purposes.
There are a couple of musical numbers injected into the proceedings which hit good comic notes. The most effective being the theme song, the lease effective was the Pearl Harbour number which is funny, but not as funny as it should have been.
Everyone I was with during the Friday night showing (which was pretty empty considering it was opening night) left smiling and mentioning their favorite parts of the film: A sign that the movie was successful with our crowd. I mention this because the four of them have quite different tastes in films. Not bad for a cursing, vulgar puppet show!

Shanghai Triad

Zhang Yimou, more than any other director working today, makes sumptuous feasts for the eyes. Shanghai Triad is set in the 1930s, in the Shanghai mafia circles. A rural boy is picked up by is uncle to begin his training as a servent to gangsters, thus beginning a week of bloody loss of innocence. That is one arc. The other is the exploration of the Triad Bosses wife, a haughty singer who has great influence on those around her only due to her link to the boss. At first she is presented as a shallow bitch, but as the film goes by, you see a wealth of complexity in her character who acts impulsively and willfully, but not without a conscience.
There are only really three locations in the film, the bosses club where the costumes are bold (and curiously western). The bosses home where many of the gangsters and their servents live, and the final chapter on a small rural island where everything comes into focus. Each location is like a chapter in a classic three act structure: The introduction (night club), the complications (Bosses masion), the climax (secluded island).
Gong Li, who had worked on several films with Yimou in the past including Raise the Red Lantern, To Live, and Red Sourgum, proves she can easily play the Diva as well as the rural peasant. She is the film. Menacing and diaboloical however is her husband, played by the talented Baotian Li (no relation to Gong). He is a small shaved headed man, with tiny German-looking sunglasses on always, even at night. It makes me wonder if the Wachowski Brothers borrowed this look for Morpheus in The Matrix which came out four years after this film. Either way, he is effective.
On the whole, the film has an underlying theme on the suffrage of the peasant class, a common one with Zhang. While this film is not as politically angry as his previous work, it is a master filmmaker working at the top of his game. In fact, this film may mark the point where Yimou decided to become less the art-filmmaker, and more into the mainstream as his works have been decidely less angry since Shanghai Triad. Follow the progression through The Road Home, Happy Times, Hero and the his latest film, an which is almost entirely surface, House of Flying Daggers (even without depth or resonance, Yimou still makes compulsively watchable movies).

Interesting Cinemas...

This weekend, we went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow at the Highlands Cinema in rural Kinmount Ontario. The motto of the theatre is "You remember not only the movie, but the theatre." And it is true. Easily the best place that I've seen a movie. The owner Keith Strata turned his house into a movie theatre, then started adding screens and memorabelia until he had a mounted a 5 screen multiplex in a town of 300 people (Trivia: Most theatre screens per capita in North America, he could pack the entire town several times over into his place). He has hundreds (yes hundreds of 8, 16 and 35mm projectors as well as countless movie posters, lobby cards, images of famous cinemas, props, even shipping cases for the film reels (one that stands out has the 2001: A Space Odyssey emblazoned on the side). All of the screens are decorated differently, with one with classic posters one art deco, one looks like a typical multiplex auditorium. The seats are all top quality seats taken from prestige movie houses that have been tragically demolished. The museum stuff which lines all the corridores between the screens is the central attraction for me, becuase it has to be one of the largest private collections in the world (I'm not exaggerating, seriously!), but for anyone looking for a film going experience like that of a bygone age (classic candy: liquorish whips!) with no Toyota advertisements, previews or Reward Club promos, the feature just starts when the lights go down, this is the place.

At the risk of sounding like a bad travel guide, this post is a (very) small spotlight on some of the more interesting places to see a movie away from the big chains (Cineplex, Famous Players, AMC, Alliance Cinemas) in the city:

Reg Hartt presents: (aka Cineforum)
There is nothing like an extreme liberal rant prior to sitting down to watching classic and/or banned Cartoons and animated shorts. Reg delivers whatever is on his mind from childhood experiences (and it ain't PG-13) to film history, he keeps talking even to the point of stopping his 16mm projector in the middle of some of these showings to make a comment or two. You are watching whatever he shows (or he may decide at the last minute he isn't showing) in his library/livingroom of his townhouse at Bloor and Bathurst St. in Toronto. He likes to screen old stuff, from D.W. Griffith's silent cinema to Triumph of the Will, the Leni Reifenstahl propaganda piece from the 1930s. But he is famous for his banned cartoon festivals. Just don't talk back to the man in the middle of his rants, he is libel to boot you out of his place for breaking his train of thought. On the plus side, he encourages you to go across the road to the liquor store and grab a bottle of wine, "pretend you're at a theatre in Europe".

The Princess Cinema:
There is a special place in my heart for the Princess Theatre in Waterloo from my University days. I lived right next the place for a couple years and spent many, many evenings there. The special stale paper/urine smell of the place combined with its mix of locals, film junkies and homosexuals i recall vividly. They had this print of Baraka which they screened there so many times, that it was not uncommon for it to break in the middle of a showing and have to be spliced on the fly. During the years between 1993 and 1998 when I lived in Waterloo, they used to screen 50% new art/indie films and 50% cult/classic/special interest films which was a nice blend and always provided wall paper for my room courtesy of their monthly film schedule-calander.

The 5 Drive-in:

This place is fills up fast in the summer, as they are a drive-in 3-plex in Oakville. We've never made it into a show, so I cannot speak for the experience directly. However, I drive down 9th line a lot at night in the summer on my way home and always catch a few seconds of whatever feature faces the roadway. Damn if that isn't a sharp picture for a drive-in screen. Plus, with the dwindling number of drive-ins left in Ontario (what are there, like 10 left in the provice, if that...), go now before they are all gone.

RIP: Christopher Reeve

News here.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, for me, amouts to a feat of interesting art direction and images which fuel the imagination while simultaneously touching all of those Amazing Stories key moments: The lost island populated by dinosaurs, the glistening space ship blasting off, spotlights searching an art-deco New York skyline and tentacled giant robots destroying everything in sight. The movie leaps to life off the pages of a 1940s comic book through the lense of expressionistic noir lighting. It also is devoid of anything much beyond one long action sequence which starts 3 minutes in and finishes 30 seconds before the end credits.
There is not much more to say. I liked the movie while it was playing, and many memorable images are still imprinted on my brain. But there is not much here in terms of characters (read: emotion) or story beyond plot. This is not a major fault of the movie, I do honestly believe that it accomplished everything the creators set out to do, and big human drama was not a priority.
I hope more people step up and create films which have such a strongly focused vision. But one of these retro-futuristic popcorn munching movies is probably enough for now.

Manhunter

Michael Mann. From Miami Vice to Collateral, he has always had a spotty resume for my tastes. I Loved Collateral. I thought Ali was bunk. I loved The Insider. Last of the Mohicans was pompous and portentous. Heat worked for the most part and was a solid film. (As rote Deniro performances go, I prefer Ronin however).
Now you know where I stand with Mann's CV, let me tell you my feelings on the Hannibal Lecter franchise. Silence of the Lambs is possibly the most overrated film in the last 25 years. I do not say this lightly. Let me ask anyone to take the overratedness challenge: "What do you remember from the film apart from the few short scenes of hammy Anthony Hopkins creeping out a dull and lifeless Jody Foster?" It was indeed a slow year for film in 1991 which allowed this mediocre, often unintentionally funny film to sweep the 4 big Oscars. Ridley Scott's completely unnecessary sequel was crap from moment one. I'm still embarassed for Julianne Moore, who may have set the downward spiral (in my opinion) post-millenial career with this choice of taking over the Clarice role and praise Jody Foster for her decision not to do the sequel (for whatever her reasons were). For cash-grab reasons only were the prequel/remake Red Dragon and follow on Lecter Variations made, and despite good actors in both (and all of the film in the franchise for that matter), I will not be seeing them.
Both of these elements bring us to Manhunter. A film made right in the middle of Michael Mann's Miami Vice era which is based on the first Thomas Harris novel about Hannibal Lecter (the novel was titled Red Dragon). It is the only film where Hannibal is not played by Anthony Hopkins. Instead he is portrayed by Brian Cox. Much like SotL, he is not the centre of the story, but rather a creepy advisor who edges his way into the hero's (another FBI agent) psyche. FBI agent Wil Graham is tracking down a killer who kills by the phase of the moon and inflicts bite marks on many of his victims, earning the name "The Toothfairy". He goes as much by trying to get into the killers head as he does the evidence. When Wil caught Lector, he had to decompress in a mental ward for a couple years, the experience was so intense. Now he seeks Lectors advice and that adds further conflict to an investigation which is already hampered by the ticking clock until the next full moon and anticipated murder.
I would call Manhunter probably the best of the Lecter films, with Brian Cox easily giving a performance (with extremely limited screen time) that surpasses Hopkins scenery chewing. He is menacing, indirect, predatory and confident even when completely captured. This is early in Cox's acting career and an indication of all the great character roles which he has been doing for the past 10 years. That aside, the film just is not that good. It certainly has much of the look of a Miami Vice episode (albeit with an increased budget). And William Peterson, playing Wil Graham, is just wooden and unconvincing. This is Steven Segal type acting and it undermines most of the good points of the movie. (Notice that I still think it is the best of the series..this doesn't say much for my opinion of these films). I know that Manhunter has a minor cult following. This may be due to it pulling no punches in the sick serial killer department (and Tom Noonan's Tooth Fairy has a couple of effective scenes terrorizing a young Joan Allen) but it just brought out too many elemnents of 1980s crime drama that I wanted to just go away (like too many episodes of Knight Rider and Hunter TV shows). Overall a disappointment, but I'll cut Mann some slack because this was his first big movie.

Aside: It is sad that this was pointlessly remade by Brett "Rush Hour" Rattner for purely monetary reasons. Cheifly for the capital crime of keeping Edward Norton, Emily Watson, Harvey Keitel and Philip Seymour Hoffman from working on better films.

The Good: Cox, Twisted Serial Killer, Slow-burn understated pace
The Bad: Don Johnson beard on Paterson coupled with his Van Damme acting chops, Eighties Fashion, Flaming Wheelchair scene just stooopid!

KBT: Van Helsing --CANCELLED

DUE TO MASSIVE COMPUTER FAILURE (the engine that drives the theatre)...SCREENINGS WILL BE POSTPONED

In an attempt to mock my KBT Screenings of arty or foreign films, my wife has taken over the cinema to show Van Helsing. She knows how much I despise Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns). She also knows way more people will probably turn out for this than the movie I was going to screen, Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music In the World. C'est la vie. For those interested, please show up at 8:20pm for a pre-screening drink and pumpkin pie. This may be the first Halloween themed movie this month, but it probably will not be the last before Oct. 31st.
For those who missed the deluge of marketing and product tie-ins in May, Van Helsing is sort of a League of Extraordinary Monsters (Well, the ones that are owned in Universal Studio's copyright portfolio). They are taken on by Bram Stoker's distinguished Doctor of pathology, Van Helsing, in a deluge of CGI and themepark violence.

Heaven's Gate

Most people who love the movies know the story of Heaven's Gate. Here it is again in a nutshell. After winning three Oscars for The Deer Hunter (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor), director Michael Cimino went on to write and direct a western epic about the Johnson County Wars. Due to massive cost over runs and film delays (some say mainly due to Cimino's perfectionism: Case in point, after 5 days shooting they were apparently 4 days behind schedule.) the film ended up being 44 million dollars (don't laugh, that was an unheard of amount of money to spend on a film in 1980) and 5 1/2 hours long. This was eventually pared down to 3 hours 40 minutes. After the Deer Hunter, critics were expecting the second coming of christ (which wouldn't happen until Mel Gibson, 2004) and lambasted the film so bad that the studio waited on the film for another 8 months, and chopped it down by an hour. Nobody went to see the film when it was released, and United Artists, the studio, went backrupt and was bought at fire-sale prices to MGM.
So how is the film? Well, I liked it. A lot. The class struggles in the film between the rich corporation (i.e. state-sanctioned rape of the working class) and the poor immigrant farmers is as relevent today as it was in the 1890s. I loved the contrast between the Harvard graduation celebrations and the frontier life celebrations. The frivilous game of defending bouquets of flowers with concentric rings of faculty holding hands while the students try to grab the flowers for honour is nicely revisited as a bloody game of survival as the residents of Johnson County defend their escaping families and attack the 50 odd armed bounty hunters. The love triangle of Kris Kristofferson's rich man behaving like a poor man, and Christopher Walken's poor man behaving like a rich man with Isabelle Hupert's confident middle class prostitue is as interesting for it's relationship dynamics (she charges Walken's character for sex so as to no be 'cheating' on Kristofferson's) as for it's symmetry.
I loved the dusty, gritty look of the old west which had it's islands of civility in a harsh wilderness (expressed explicitly with the repeated 'wallpaper' on a tar shack home of Walken's character). Because the epic film is on the rise again and now the cast of thousands are created digitally, as well as much of the sets, to see this film which does actually employ a cast of thousands, real steam trains, fully constructed towns, etc. makes it stand out as all the more well realized. The film, with the help of and admittedly long run-time has a submersive effect into the evirnment I've not had since Das Boot. For that I give it whole credit. It forgives the underdeveloped characters such as John Hurt's broken Harvard valedictorian who cannot resolve his moral failures other than with a smart mouth and too much drink, or Jeff Bridges' tavern owner who is supportive of Kristofferson's defence of the town, but never feels like much beyond that. It seems that Cimino enlarged Bridges role due to his excellent performance...Huh? (And believe me, I'm a huge Jeff Bridges fan, here he is just, well, there...)
The last 10 minutes ran a bit too vindictive and hard to swallow, and tragedy for the sake of following the Shakespeare mold of 'nobody gets away alive'. But overall, why this film was bashed into oblivion is beyond me. It stands up there with many of the 1970s gritty epics (I would watch Heaven's Gate over Godfather Part II any day of the week) and was way ahead of it's time as an Anti-western. Much of the same aesthetics and messages are revisited in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven and Kevin Costner's Open Range, both of which came out more than 11 and 23 years (respectively) after Heaven's Gate.
A couple more notes of trivia on Heaven's Gate:
1. The actual story that the film was based on, the government stepped in after the first couple murders, rather than here where the goverment is behind the 125 man death list from start to finish.
2. The film features a lot of brutality to animals. There is a stunning Cock fight at one point in the saloon which is most definitely not staged. So many horses were hurt or killed in the big battle sequence in the film that animal groups stepped in and from that point on, there had to be a Humane Society observer on films to prevent such abuse (you know that clip at the bottom of the credits: 'No animals were harmed in the making of this film').

Mirrormask

What could certainly end up as this years What Dreams May Come or The Cell, but with Neil Gaimen writing the story, I'm hoping for so much more. Check out the fantastic trailer (It's in Windows stream media for now, lets hope quicktime is not too far away).

Unconventional Movie Reviews

Here is a strange tidbit picked up from the New York Times (free reg. required). Chemical and Engineering News, the publication of the American Chemical Society is now running movie reviews which spend as much time or more reviewing the science in the movie rather than the drama, narrative, acting etc. They give a thumbs up to The Day After Tomorrow because 'Rather than disliking the movie because much of it is physically and thermodynamically impossible—even under the most extreme of plausible climate scenarios—I found myself intrigued, recalling what has happened recently and imagining what could happen in the future.'
Scary Stuff Kids. Even the reviewer here admits to banal dialogue and unconvincing human characters.
There is also a review of Gattaca. It gets well-deserved praise, but not much comment on the science.
It is always interesting to see what perspective people come at the subject of reviewing movies. Even if the coverage here is a little slight. But even the fact that they have a few column inches in CEN is startling. Hey and if you look closely at the picture above, you will see the caption on computational computing is actually the post colon (:) tagline of Terminator 3. Perhaps there is more movie stuff in the magazine that expected!

I ♥ Huckabees

I passed on this film at the TIFF because I knew it was coming out soon. I'm looking forward to it in the same way I did for Waking Life, Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I just love the mix of philosophy-speak, out-there-pseudo-comedy and unconventional narrative! Could there be a new genre forming? I understand that I ♥ Huckabees is more of a satire of the 'genre' than an honest-to-goodness execution. I understand that many people who have seen it (mainly critics) are baffled and distanced by it's apparent pretensiousness. This doesn't bug me one bit, in fact it makes me want to see it more. And the cast is, well, to die for. Here's hoping that Schwartzman can deliver on the promise of Rushmore. I'm prepared to be entertained.
It's going to be a good fall. This new film from David O. Russel, followed shortly by a new Alexander Payne film (Sideways) and a new Wes Anderson film (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). I guess the only person who is really upset about this is Rex Reed who seems to be outraged by quirk. His Loss. Our Gain.