Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Festival season... holy cow... here's Ravkill with some reviews of what he saw in Telluride. NO MAN'S LAND seems to be making quite a splash wherever it plays. Surprised we haven't heard more yet about this new AMADEUS cut that premiered. Oh, well... at least Rav got a peek at it.
Hey Harry and gang,
heres the second part of my Telluride coverage, I've got two more telluride parts to crank out before I'm finished with that and seperate reviews of Hearts in Atlantis and Hardball to come.
Rav
Telluride Day 2 (Saturday) Wrap
I got up quickly at Nine A.M. from the 3 alarm clocks all set strategically around the room, I was so not going to miss Mulholland Drive at noon across the street.
Now, I am no extreme David Lynch fan but I am really fucking jazzed to see this film after that 5 minute promo clip on the site a few months ago and well I also had this odd nightmare in which I got to the film perfectly on time but then to my dismay seven hundred gold patrons showed up at the last minute just to torture me.
Alas, I was off on my mulholland quest, armed with a chocolate muffin/20 oz. Dr. pepper breakfast in hand. I was ready for the line waiting!
As I arrived walking up the driveway towards the empty first bench, a figure began to come into view behind me, SHIT you better run or you might be second in line and if there were 699 patrons, your afternoon would be completely wasted as well as your missing the cat's meow Q&A up at the Chuck Jones. Panic aside, I had a kindred spirit occupying the #2 spot in line, she was a die-hard lynch fan who also happened to be a staff member at the festival. So now as I waited I got to listen to Faye Dunaway water stealing gossip.
Eventually the line got bigger and bigger, #3 and #4 wound up being like San Diego (or francisco I can't remember) Landmark theatre managers, who were really dissappointed Waking Life was not this TBA. Suddenly, I looked back into the line and I saw a guy sitting their cuddling his bag just slightly revealing a concealed camcorder, so if there is already a internet bootleg I would not be so surprised. After a bit more inane conversation and the arrival of around 100 patrons (or so it seemed) we were finally let into the gymnasium...ermm i mean screening room. Then more waiting occured and finally people took center stage! Sadly, they were a few staffers to inform us David would not be attending the screening, but a surly producer would be and he came up to introduce it for us and do his best David Lynch "Howdy Everybody" impersonation that he could possibly drum out. Then, finally, the film began to unspool!
Mulholland Drive Review Starts here, minor/major spoilers
By now just about everyone on this site knows the story about how this film came to be a film. It was originally a pilot for an ABC series that Lynch wanted to do, except ABC did not pick it up and Canal bought the footage and gave David ten days of reshoots to turn it into a theatrical feature, this is the product. Now I am no real David Lynch fanatic, I loved Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart but I actually never got around to watching Lost Highway, boy do I wish I had now. Lost Highway was the one film that everyone at Telluride seemed to compare Mulholland with continously. Apparently it was due to the midway twist that hits you dead on out of no where.
Okay let's talk a little bit about the plot, Mulholland Drive follows the lives of several people in LA (I am guessing all the characters in here would have been the main characters of the TV show). One being a filmmaker with some odd casting problems, another being a woman who has amnesia and has just crawled away from a car accident, another woman who has just got off the plane to LA, and then there are a few half characters like a guy having nightmares and a guy that steals a phone-book. Mulholland Drive seems like it would have made a pretty good television series, but as a film it suffers many problems.
Mulholland Drive mainly follows the two female characters that actually seem to be the least interesting characters in the entire film, it makes you wonder why Lynch did not think to explore the director or the thug or the "cafe guy" or maybe even the weird monster thing. Then we have the wonderful twist which can be interpreted as many different things, and it was by many of the festival audience members. I think of it as sleeping into an alternate reality halfway, but that still leaves plot holes. The end of this film will keep geeks debating about it for quite some time, more so than that POTA ending earlier this summer.
What made me wonder the most after viewing the film was those ten days of reshoots, after counting the amount of hardcore lesbian sex scenes throughout the film it leads you to wonder were 5 of those ten days all sex? Wow I wonder how much they got paid to come back for the reshoots. Then there is Dan Hedaya and Robert Forster, who both receive top billing, but only appear for one scene a piece. Both of their characters dont really do much to further the plot either. I don't know, but I will be taking another gander at Mulholland Drive upon release as their are still so many questions left unanswered in my head.
Oh yeah and one more surprising thing about the print of Mulholland that they screened, It had a normal Universal Studios logo and not a Universal Focus logo....Are they taking it wide?
Well after recovering from the nose bleed David Lynch hit me with, I went outside and got back in line for "Amadeus 2001" or also known as "Amadeus: The Director's Cut". I was kind of surprised when I saw the line outside, this is supposed to be the world premiere for this cut and it looks like there is only fifty people in line. I mean for fucks sake Milos Forman and Tom Hulce are presenting this print and this theatre is only going to be 1/10'th full, this would not have been this way if it was in Texas. Apparently there is not that much interest here in a director's cut of Amadeus.
Well Milos, Saul Zaentz, and Tom Hulce (DAMN has that guy changed) eventually took center stage and announced that it was even their first time to see this print, as they had seen the cut together in a screening room earlier this year but the sound had not been finished yet. Then Tom came up and corrected what he had said saying that he had still not seen this cut. Then Milos came up and gave a quick funny introduction, "In 1984 this film had a running time of two and a half hours and all three of us had a combined weight of 600 pounds, now the film is three hours long and we have a combined weight of ermmm I'd rather not say."
Amadeus Director's Cut review starts now
Now I have not seen the original Amadeus for quite some time, so I will not be spending this review giving a complete run-down of what's new and what's not. The new cut features completley re-mastered picture and sound, which I believe is enough to warrant a re-release. It seemed like most of the additions had to do with extended performances. This is a fantastic film, that is even more fantastic in this new cut and print. Sadly, this re-release is by Warner Bros. the same wonderful studio that shafted the superman new cut and print earlier this year, after the screening turnout at Telluride it makes you wonder if this new print will ever see the light of day, if they test it like they did superman people need to turnout and support this re-release! You guys know the film is fantastic, you really don't need another review telling ya.
Well three hours later I emerged from the theatre, ready for another film experience "Lantana", which the only thing I really knew about the film going into it was that it was some Austrailian thriller starring Geoffrey Rush. Surprisingly the film was packed with people, despite band of brothers playing theatrically in town. Anthony LaPaglia and Director Ray Lawrence did their introduction thing, the director called it a look at a middle aged man that feels he is slowly fading invisible to everyone around him that he cares about.
Lantana Review starts now
Ray Lawrence directed Bliss in 1986, this is his first feature since, although he has been a very active commercial director since 1975 having been responsible for recent M.C.I. ad campaigns. Well Lantana is about three Austrailian couples that are all related together by the dissappearence of Geoffrey Rush's wife a therapist played by Barbara Hershey, the cop assigned to look for her is a troubled husband played by Anthony Lapaglia. The film is half mystery/half middle-aged person character analysis, the two don't exactly mix well.
The Murder/dissappearence Mystery is about the least interesting mystery plot captured on film in years, come on raise your hands if any of you actually cared if her husband murdered her or not, or if someone else killed her, or if he ran into someone who would later kill her, in the end the audience really could care less about the murder since it was just a plot tool for the character study. Now I would not have been mad about this, if it had not been for me being told it was a thriller going into it.
In the end Anthony LaPaglia's character comes out the most interesting, his family problems and the characters he encounters make this film what it is. Geoffrey Rush's character is fun to watch if only for wondering if he is having a homosexual affair. LaPaglia does a fantastic acting job as does Geoffrey Rush who gives another great performance although his character has much less character than previous films like Shine and Quills. Out of it all Lantana is a good drama, but not great.
After Lantana I ran outside into line for the Cat's Meow, one of the films in the fest that I was looking forward to very much. As I was talking to the various people in line it seemed like the entire "Cat's Meow" posse walked right by us which included, Peter Bogdonavich (the gang leader), Edward Hermann, The Writer (whom I can't remember his name right now), a young guy, and Kirsten Dunst was attatched to the back of that young guy. Well, later I found out that the young guy was indeed Spiderman himself, Tobey Maguire. Eventually we were let into the theatre and everyone was ready for The Cat's Meow. Peter introduced everyone and told a few boring stories about the movie.
Review of The Cat's Meow Starts very soon!
The Cat's Meow is based on the infamous murder aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht in November of 1924. The murder was covered up and has been a infamous hollywood legend ever since. Of course you know all of this by the beginning of the movie, or perhaps you know more as this "Hollywood Legend" was not exactly as secret as the director would want it to be. See if you are either a Citizen Kane fan, someone interested in Hearst, or just one of the millions of people that watched RKO 281, then you already know the entire story and murder victim in The Cat's Meow. This story was originally going to be a small sequence in Citizen Kane, but Orson Welles removed it from the script as he did not feel that Kane was a murderer.
For those that do not know already I'll set the story for ya. In November of 1924, to celebrate the birthday of movie mogul Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes) William Randolph Hearst (Edward Herrmann) put on a cruise to San Francisco on his yacht, some of the attendees were Hearst's girlfriend Marion Davies (Kirsten Dunst), Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard), novelist Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley), and Hearst gossip columnist Louella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly). During the cruise Charlie Chaplin begins to leave hints of a romantic fling with Marion Davies, this begins to infuriate Hearst. Then you have Ince, who seems to be there just see if he can get Hearst to get into some business dealings with him and Louella who is on the trip to ask him for a transfer to Hollywood.
Overall the film just did not seem to work for me, having known the entire story going into it. The casting choices seemed a bit off for just about every character in the film. The only two actors that actually seemed to get off on a high-note were Cary Elwes and Eddie Izzard, Cary having delivered a up-to-par performance and Izzard continues to streach his talents more so than his work on Shadow of the Vampire. I really think the main problem for the film is that there really is not enough to this story to make a "good" film out of, perhaps as a sequence in citizen kane it would have been perfect, but as a 112 minute feature it just does not seem to work.
Cat's Meow came out being the one MAJOR dissappointment at Telluride, it seemed like nobody afterwards said anything about it above "mediocre". This is one film that might have benifited by NOT being played in a film festival.
Well I'm off for now, I should have wrap up number three tomorrow of Sunday with Mystic Masseur (new Merchant/Ivory film), Lovely and Amazing, Nine Queens (Nueva Reinas), The Devil's Backbone, and 35mm The Devils.
Ravkill@msn.com
