Movie Review: ‘Moonrise Kingdom’
Moonrise, Moonset: a Wes Anderson fantasy (photo by Focus Features)
I try to love Wes Anderson. Really. I do. Give me “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” any day, or “Rushmore;” even “The Royal Tenenbaums.” But his latest twee tableau shortchanges story and character development (oy vey – is the point arrested development again?). The retro comedy waves a banner of cleverness, where insight would be more welcome. The whole enterprise reminds me of the shrewd little rodent boxes made by Steve Carell’s character in “Dinner for Schmucks.” Admittedly, the story is slight: twelve-year-old outcasts Sam and Suzy run away from home and camp, respectively, on one of those adventures straight out of the children’s novels Suzy pointedly schleps along. Their disappearance has a Rube Goldberg effect, as the eccentric inhabitants of their small New England island freak out searching for the adolescents in what promises to be “Lord of the Flies” fashion, and becomes an episode of vintage tween Nick. The whole enterprise is elevated by the playful production design and art direction, although it very much reminded me of the Shine Gallery at LA’s Farmers Market. That’s the memorabilia store that has all those artifacts from my childhood when the market was rundown and there was no Starbucks or Pinkberry. “Moonrise Kingdom” suffers from suffocating nostalgia for a time of innocence that never was, bolstered by an array of A-list stars like Bruce Willis, Edward Norton and the ever compelling, typically underused Frances McDormand. Bill Murray, who not-so-bravely bares his bear-belly, plays Suzy’s father, and has become tedious playing characters weighed down by their own self-indulgent, world-weary angst. Is this sad-sack suicidal father of the runaway an example of the conformist authority figures that the pint-sized lovers Suzy and Sam are escaping – or what they’re unwittingly running toward as they pair off so early in their young lives?
Celebrity, Criticism, Movies, Oscar Race
Adams on Reel Women: The Cannes Sex Scandal
Cannes Sex Scandal (by Danny Martindale)’
(note: I have migrated my column from AMC Filmcritic.com to Yahoo! Movies where I’m Contributing Editor)
Fact: Men directed all 22 films in competition for the Palme d’Or at the 65th Cannes International Film Festival. Fact: The only woman to win that coveted prize was Jane Campion for “The Piano” in 1993 — and that was a joint victory. Cannes, we’ve got a problem — and when I say “we,” I mean women and men who love film.
Four weeks ago, I first raised this controversy in my column “Thelma Adams on Reel Women” at AMC Filmcritic.com, a site that has since folded. At that time, I wrote, “I love David Cronenberg, whose ‘Cosmopolis’ has been welcomed into the competition and who headed the Cannes jury in 1999. I was a champion of his cerebral period drama ‘A Dangerous Method,’ which had a terrific star turn by Keira Knightley. But, really, not a single film by a woman? I’m just gobsmacked.”
Now that I’ve migrated my column to Yahoo! Movies, the world’s most viewed movie site, I want to expand the debate for our larger audience. In Cannes, where the festival opened last Thursday and will run through Sunday, the quotes on the gender controversy have been surprisingly subdued from the country that decapitated Marie Antoinette as part of its revolution.
[Related: Wes Anderson's 'Moonlight Kingdom' earns raves at Cannes]
The head of the boys’ club: The Boys Are All Right
Festival Artistic Director Thierry Fremaux explained: “I don’t select films because the film is directed by a man, a woman, white, black, young, an old man. … It wouldn’t be very nice to select a film because the film is not good but it is directed by a woman.” Fremaux lacks the self-awareness that his lock-hold on selecting the films may impact which movies get rewarded and which get tossed back. In every society, the gatekeepers determine the definition of quality.
The female director on the jury: Could it be Stockholm syndrome?
As the sole female director on the nine-person competition jury, British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (“Fish Tank”) got to field the “woman question.” While she decried the “pity” of gender inequality, she told a Cannes press conference, “I would absolutely hate it if my film got selected because I was a woman. I would only want my film to be selected for the right reasons and not out of charity because I’m female.” What she was doing, having achieved her spot in the inner circle (congrats!), was echoing Fremaux’s sentiment about the evils of “positive discrimination.”
The academic apologist: The glass is half-full
Columbia University professor and Cannes fixture Annette Insdorf took a wait-and-see approach: “For me, the question is less ‘How many women filmmakers are selected?’ than ‘Do the films illuminate female experience?’” After mentioning such Cannes projects as Marion Cotillard (“Rust and Bone”), Kristen Stewart (“On the Road”), and Jessica Chastain (“Lawless”), Insdorf continued: “It may turn out that the ‘female auteur’ presence in Cannes this year is the prolific international actress.” Having already seen Chastain in “Lawless,” a strong, well-made testosterone-driven film that showcases Tom Hardy and Shia LaBeouf, I can say that Chastain plays a runaway dancehall girl with a heart of gold. She’s great, but really, Annette, I’m not pinning any hopes on this role as a gender game changer.
[Related: Cannes' buzziest movies]
Meanwhile, there has been an outcry from the French feminist group La Barbe (translation: The Beard), which published a satirical letter in the French newspaper Le Monde. The letter and attached petition accused the festival of sexism while joking, “Is it not enough for them [women] to aspire to be mistress of ceremonies someday during the festival’s opening night?” Clearly not, as La Barbe members in bright beards continue to protest on the Cannes red carpet.
Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood took a more straightforward approach in the e-petition she drafted (and which I signed). In part, it stated: “We call for Cannes, and other film festivals worldwide to commit to transparency and equality in the selection process of these films. We judge films as human beings, shaped by our own perspectives and experiences. It is vital, therefore, that there be equality and diversity at the point of selection.” In pushing for transparency in the decision-making process, Silverstein’s petition strikes at the heart of the issue: the gatekeepers.
The point is not to assign quotas for women in film — to present films by women because they are by women. The underlying problem is: Why are women so drastically underrepresented among filmmakers, jurors, and entrants? Why do women with a record of success as filmmakers find it so hard to get projects produced, while men, even after significant failures, can still get the green light for their next projects? If there is nothing “special” about women filmmakers and writers, then there should be nothing “special” about either their presence OR their absence.
Unfortunately, it’s their absence that is special.
Again, the answer is not quotas for women. It avoids addressing the real problem. The answer is that, given the absence of any normal distribution in their selection process, the programmers, the selection committees, the gatekeepers are biased, not for quality or talent — since we all agree there’s a pretty good chance that that’s not gender-specific — but on gender.
If we all agree that quality and talent are not gender-specific, and the results of the gatekeepers’ selections is so gender-specific, then it must be the gatekeepers themselves who are at fault. They can’t see past the sex. Lacking any therapeutic insight into their problem, they should be removed and replaced by those who can, in fact, make judgments on talent and quality — and leave gender issues to those situations when gender selection matters. Like “birthin’ babies,” or finding a date.
Yahoo! Exclusive: ‘The Dictator’ director Larry Charles discusses the comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen, Larry David, and, yes, Bob Dylan
Rebbe Charles (by Paramount Pictures)
Charles chatted with Yahoo! Movies about going to the darker side of comedy with Cohen, humor as an ethnic survival tool and the Jewish comic holy trinity: Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks.
Thelma Adams: You’ve always wanted to go to the more absurd side of comedy. With “Seinfeld,” you wrote some of the darkest material like the second season show “The Bet,” where Elaine gets a handgun, which was never filmed. Now, working with Cohen, are you satisfying your darker side?
Larry Charles: I’ve only gotten to the shady side. I haven’t gotten to the dark side yet.
TA: What is the farthest you’ve pushed the envelope?
[Related: Sacha Baron Cohen: Five things you didn't know]
LC: There were scenes that I feel pushed things the furthest in “Borat” that the audience didn’t feel that way about. Then, in the naked fight in “Borat,” we knew that was funny, but I remember sitting in the back row of the theater with Sacha at the first screening and when that scene came on people reacted like they were watching a horror movie, hitting each other and screaming — and laughing. That scene defines a lot of what I’ve done.
TA: What’s your partnership with Cohen? What does he bring, and what do you bring?
LC: First of all, there’s a brain trust, besides Sacha and me. There were writers collaborating before I came along, and I’m lucky enough to be part of that. They’re like Talmudic scholars. Sacha is a brilliant, fiery, incendiary mind, an intense intellect. He has a savant comedy quality that is singular and unique that puts him in the pantheon of great comic geniuses. Those things are very inspiring and I gravitate to the kind of projects and people that inspire me.
TA: “Borat” had the boldest anti-Semitic jokes outside of Iran — the running of the Jews; Borat believing the cockroaches were spying Jews — where do those ideas come from? And do we have to footnote that you and Cohen (and Seinfeld and David and Dylan) are Jewish?
LC: When we’re dealing with anti-Semitism, and we’re playing with satire, it has to be directed very sharply and precisely because the target is our perception of things, rather than the reality of things. For example, the way we imagine the running of the Jews, imagine in that country that has a history of anti-Semitism some crazy ritual like the running of the Jews, or some crazy ideas about life and magic and gypsies and curses and the idea that Jews could turn themselves into an insect. There’s an honesty that really connected and resonated with people.
TA: Why is Jewish humor so abundant?
LC: I think humor has been used by all oppressed minority groups as one of the tools of survival and Jews have developed a sharp sense of humor. African Americans and the Irish have used similar dark senses of humor as survival tools.
TA: You worked with Arsenio Hall on his show before you went to “Seinfeld.” It seems like “The Dictator” recalls Hall’s African-prince-in-America comedy with Eddie Murphy, “Coming to America.”
LC: I think we would be remiss as comedic historians if we weren’t conscious of the long lineage of stories about doubles, foreign leaders coming to the U.S. These are plot lines that date back long before movies and TV. We were aware of that, and hoped that we could take the next logical step and reinvent it. We tried, like Mark Twain, to reflect this world we live in right now.
TA: I hadn’t realized that you directed “Masked and Anonymous” with Bob Dylan. That movie has a great soundtrack, and is total lunacy. What was it like working with Dylan — was he funny?
LC: He’s so funny but he has the driest sense of humor. It’s very different from Seinfeld or Larry David. When you go back to Bob’s lyrics, you notice all the play on words, the playful mind. But it takes a while before you get one of his jokes. Even in this movie, I said, ‘Bob, people are going to misunderstand.’ And he said, ‘what’s so wrong about being misunderstood?’ He’s a true experimenter in that respect, a true innovator. I bring that point of view to everything I do, work and life itself, like Larry David, like Sacha, a unique perspective, sometimes purposely, sometimes inadvertently, but I’m listening very carefully.
TA: When you go old school humor, are you a Marx Brothers fan, or The Three Stooges?
LC: I love The Three Stooges, Abbot and Costello, and the Marx Brothers. My Jewish trinity is Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. They had the biggest impact on me as I was growing up.
TA: What’s your favorite Allen movie?
LC: The movie that had the most seminal influence the early funny one was “Bananas.” I was just the right age to have my mind blown by that movie. There was something so anarchic, original and fresh. I was exhilarated by it. I saw it ten times. There was a point in my life that I could perform the entire movie.
TA: And what was your favorite Brooks?
LC: Brooks was somebody that I had heard before I knew him with “The 2000-Year-Old Man” and I remember thinking how funny it was. My Mel Brooks moment was “Blazing Saddles.” It broke all the rules, was truly subversive, impolite, politically incorrect. There was something extremely cathartic about seeing all those movies.
TA: Growing up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, who was the funniest person in your family?
LC: My father had been a comedian before I was born. He had used the G.I. Bill to go to dramatic school. He was of the Buddy Hackett, Don Rickles era. He was very fast, funny, did great impressions and was on all the time. I was a good audience and I still am. I might enjoy these things more than any one. I love watching Sacha or Larry David do their thing. Lightening is striking. You can feel it on a cellular level.
TA: Did your father have a stage career? What did he do for a living?
LC: He recently retired at the age of 84. He drifted to many things, but he never found anything as satisfying as being on stage.
TA: He must be proud of your show business success.
LC: I think he’s had almost unspeakable pride. It’s so beyond what my parents imagined. They’re old school Brooklyn Jews. It makes them burst with pride, and it frightens them, they can’t admit how incredibly happy they are. They’re afraid they’ll jinx it.
TA: In Yiddish, there’s even a word for that superstitious feeling — kenahorah. They don’t want to curse their good fortune by mentioning their happiness aloud.
LC: I always remind them that it’s temporary anyway — so you can’t jinx it.
This interview first appeared on Yahoo! Movies
Dark Shadows in Bright Suburbs: Why I Grew up Watching ‘Dark Shadows’
Barnabus Collins: He bites; he scores (Everett Collection)
[Related: Original 'Dark Shadows' TV actress remembers past lives]
I had been too young in 1966 to watch from the beginning, so cracking the giant casket of DVD’s of the complete original series that ran from 1966 to 1971 had the feeling of opening an old yearbook, or a photograph album. Just the spooky theme music and the image of the dark waves crashing on the Maine coast, inspired memories of math homework and flat-out fright. When the front door of Collinwood opened, it was a happy homecoming to that formal black-and-white foyer that was straight out of a Hammer horror set.
From the first episode, with the foreboding voiceover spoken by the orphan Victoria, I slipped into the warm bath of the past: the glacial pace of a soap opera that stretched daily from Monday through Friday, parsing out some thrills, letting slip a cookie fortune’s worth of new information, building to that end-of-week revelation that would leave the viewer breathless for Monday. At the end of each episode, there’s often a tease for “The Dating Game,” or that ‘new’ show “The Newlywed Game.”
But, more than nostalgia, the show holds up. It has its surprises — a scene at the local pub bursts into wild sixties frug dancing that could come out of a beach party movie. The characters drink and spew familial bile that goes back decades, if not centuries. A woman cries in the night, inconsolable. Portraits stare down from the formal drawing room walls with bad intent. It’s completely addicting. And I haven’t even gotten to my favorite part yet — the portals in the house between the past and present that allowed the actors to play the dual roles so beloved by more mainstream soaps.
I loved the series when I was young because it showed a world where the ocean wasn’t the surfer paradise of the Pacific, but the brooding, relentless, frigid Atlantic. That unforgiving waves crashing on a rocky coast were where you’d land if you jumped off the cliff. And characters were always standing on that precipice, contemplating bleakness, or discussing in urgent whispers how they want to get out of Collinwood and contemplate jumping themselves. Why had all those governesses leapt from that spot to their doom in the past?
The irony was that, as an oddball teen who shunned the sun, I had those same feelings of foreboding, and the desire to escape a suffocating home, without the external justification. Nothing could have been less scary than those repetitive sunny seventy degree days, my ranch house with the basketball hoop hammered over the garage, the breakfast nook where we ate our meals regularly at 5:30 p.m. while the Vietnam War appeared in nightly installments on the evening news.
[Related: Johnny Depp reveals why Tonto puts a bird on it]
I think that was part of the reason that for me, and possibly for director Tim Burton who lived two hours north in land-locked Burbank, the show had such a tremendous appeal and resonance. Wholesome suburbia struck me as so much scarier, and the gloomy, death-obsessed supernatural soap, “Dark Shadows,” provided release.
This essay original appeared on Yahoo! Movies
Stranger Danger: ‘Hick’ Villain Dave Vescio’s True-Crime Backstory
Stranger Than Truth (Phase 4 Films)
Vescio, an army brat whose longest stint in one place has been this past six years in Hollywood, spent two-and-a-half years in Leavenworth Federal Prison for drug trafficking from 1993—95. After jail, the army vet and former CBS journalist turned his life around, studying acting with David Mamet at New York’s Atlantic Theater Company. Since then, Vescio (“Gemini Rising,” “Virus X”) has turned a liability into an asset, drawing on his experience behind bars to play villains on screen.
[Slideshow: Bad boys, bad boys: ex-con actor Dave Vescio's favorite villains]
Thelma Adams: You’ve said prison was the best thing for your acting career: Why?
Dave Vescio: Because I lived with the worst of the worst criminals on the planet for two and a half years
TA: And this was no Club Fed — it was the maximum security prison at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. Rough, huh?
DV: They start you in the hole, and you have to work your way out. Continue Reading
- Movie Review: ‘Moonrise Kingdom’
- Adams on Reel Women: The Cannes Sex Scandal
- Yahoo! Exclusive: ‘The Dictator’ director Larry Charles discusses the comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen, Larry David, and, yes, Bob Dylan
- Dark Shadows in Bright Suburbs: Why I Grew up Watching ‘Dark Shadows’
- Stranger Danger: ‘Hick’ Villain Dave Vescio’s True-Crime Backstory
- Julie Delpy spends ’2 Days in New York’…
- Thelma Adams on Reel Women: What Does Cannes Have Against Women?
- “Bernie” scores at the box office: the Yahoo! interview with Jack Black and Richard Linklater
- Marvel Comics Maven Stan Lee chats with Yahoo! Movies
- “The Wire”: We don’t need no educashun
© 2012 Thelma Adams: Outspoken Critic, Passionate Advocate, Playdate Author, Oscarologist. Powered by Wordpress.
Chatter