Here are the winners of the 2008 Spirit Awards. A complete list of the nominees, as well as interviews with nominees, can be viewed here.

Best Feature: Juno, Lianne Halfon, John Malkovich, Mason Novick, Russell Smith (producers)

Best First Feature: The Lookout, Scott Frank (director); Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber, Laurence Mark, Walter F. Parkes (producers)

Best Director: Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

John Cassavetes Award: August Evening, Chris Eska (writer/director); Connie Hill (I) (producer); Jason Wehling (producer)

Continue reading "2008 Independent Spirit Awards Winners" »

Of all the 20-something-year-old actors to emerge in the last ten years, none seemed to have come out of nowhere as assuredly as Heath Ledger. In 1999, he was Julia Stiles romantic foil in 10 Things I Hate About You. In 2001, he was that cute blonde thing in the inexplicable blockbuster A Knight's Tale. No one ever questioned this man's ability to charm. Nevertheless in 2005, his Oscar-nominated turn in Ang Lee's tragic romance Brokeback Mountain made America sit up and take notice (and not just because he was kissing Jake Gyllenhaal on the lips). Ledger's portrayal of the closeted cowboy, at odds with himself as much as he is with society, revealed emotional depths that previous roles in Monster's Ball and Ned Kelly had only hinted at.

Continue reading "In Memory of Heath Ledger" »

"Good books make bad movies," said director Otto Preminger so he spent his entire career proving the opposite by adapting mediocre material into intelligent, controversial fare.  Unfortunately his reputation as a bully earned him few friends in Hollywood, and overshadowed his rep as a trailblazer.  In New York City, the repertory theater Film Forum is out to right that wrong with a retrospective of his work—23 films spanning four decades—from now until Thursday, January 17.

After proving himself a man worth watching in the 1940s with noir classics like Laura and Fallen Angel, Preminger rocked the boat in the 1950s with two huge musicals with all-black casts: Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess. His disregard for the status quo led him to introduce coarse language in his indie flick The Moon is Blue, tackle drug abuse in 1955's The Man With the Golden Arm, and depict a gay bar in Advise and Consent in 1962.

Continue reading "Otto Preminger: The Groundbreakers Gets a Retrospective" »

I hear that some viewers who have seen I’m Not There are put off by the use of six different actors to play Bob Dylan, often with no attempt to look anything like Dylan. (The one who comes closest, amusingly, is actress Cate Blanchett.) I guess those people were expecting a standard biopic instead of the more intellectual examination of identity the movie presents. (Remember that it’s directed by Todd Haynes, who first made a name for himself telling the story of Karen Carpenter with Barbie dolls in his 1987 short Superstar.)

One of the reasons I think I’m Not There works so well is that the multiple-actor strategy avoids the common problem with biographies of contemporary subjects: the discomfort we feel watching an impersonation of someone who is already famous to us. Jamie Foxx did an astonishing job of capturing Ray Charles in Ray, but it was hard to shake the awareness that what you were watching was an imitation, no matter how well done. To play the young Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, Joaquin Phoenix opted to do an interpretation of the character rather than mimicking the person, and he gave an interesting performance. But in the end he faced the same problem: we’re so familiar with Johnny Cash that it makes it hard to lose ourselves in the story to watch someone else play him.

Continue reading "Famous Actors Playing Famous Musicians" »

Tamara Jenkins, the writer and director of the just-released film The Savages, was interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air this week. As in her 1998 film Slums of Beverly Hills, Jenkins is concerned with the forces – both beneficial and detrimental – that bind families together. It's a worthy topic at this time of year, as we hurtle from Thanksgiving toward the December holidays. 

Jenkins based the narratives of both films on incidents from her own life, altering events to suit the story. She said, "I've been differentiating from (The Savages) being strictly autobiographical vs. it being really personal, 'cause if I said it was autobiographical I'd end up like that guy James Frey (author of "A Million Little Pieces").

Slums of Beverly Hills is the story of a teenage girl whose father moves her and her two brothers around the wealthy zip code, always one step ahead of eviction, so the kids can attend good public schools. They are an unusual bunch, and Jenkins takes care to preserve their quirks without resorting to revelations of "hearts of gold" or other mainstream clichés. 

Continue reading "Tamara Jenkins: Comedy and Tragedy Co-Exist Comfortably" »

In the November issue of The Atlantic, literary editor Benjamin Schwarz reviews three Hollywood history tomes, himself writing incisive prose about a time in which the Hollywood studio system was king. In doing so, he finds that the studio system produced its greatest pictures during that era -- just as it filled its stars and writers with great sadness and grief amid the momentary elation that comes with accumulating fame and money.

In a brilliant paragraph, Schwarz sums up what it was like to toil in Tinseltown when the studio system ruled the roost: "(N)o one was more unhappy than four-times married, two-times Oscar-winning Bette Davis, an actress whose high-strung, spiky screen persona famously matched her personality. The unusually intelligent Davis suffered all the indignities and frustrations the star machine could dole out. Put through some two dozen movies in her first four years in Hollywood, she was done up as a platinum-blonde flirt and a vamp. Even after she won acclaim, her studio, Warner’s, seemed perversely unwilling to give her consistently good roles. She refused a part assigned her, flamboyantly went on suspension, and was forced to return. Warner’s then bought Jezebel (seen here with Henry Fonda on YouTube) for her, the movie that made her a star and gave her her first serious—and strict—direction (by William Wyler). But for every great part she was assigned (dying finely in Dark Victory, loving the man she killed in The Letter, nobly self-sacrificing in Now, Voyager), she’d get a rotten one. Her salary grew enormously and she was given more vacation time, but Warner’s never granted her total control over her roles (her greatest turn, in All About Eve in 1950, was as a freelance at the end of the studio era)."

I have to wonder how people survived within these choking confines. Yes, the money, and at the end, long vacations from the system helped Davis endure. And yes, at the beginning, she yearned for stardom. But, for a long while, the system trapped her. It's a tribute to her humanity and her ability to survive and evolve that she lived proudly through all the strain. Today, we see her great movies as memorable and historic. But it's important to realize what one must give up to become a legend.

In what perhaps can best be described as Too-Much-Information, Jean-Luc Godard today staggered New Wave film fans around the world when he confessed to stealing money to make his films. In an interview with Die Zeit weekly, the legendary French New Wave director chatted for a feature in anticipation of being given a lifetime achievement award on Saturday in Berlin by the European Film Academy.

The much-lauded and revered director of the landmark Breathless told the high brow Die Zeit (The Time), "I had no choice. Or at least it seemed that way to me. I even stole money from my family to give to (fellow French director Jacques) Rivette for his first film. I pinched money to be able to see films and to make films."

While the comment is candid, it's shouldn't be too surprising to those who've read a fair amount about the director. In Colin McCabe's 2004 tome, Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70 , McCabe talks early on about how Godard and his family often spoke with a "soft voice veined with a biting sarcasm." His comment proves that, even at the ripe old age of 74, Godard can still provoke thought, discussion, and yes, controversy.

During a recent New York press conference for his brilliant new Bob Dylan exploration I'm Not There, writer-director Todd Haynes talked about some of the classic films and filmmakers he drew on to recreate the different eras of which Dylan was such an important part.

After revealing that parts of the film were inspired by Fellini and Godard, he spoke about the closing section starring Richard Gere (pictured) as Billy, a western hermit who may be Billy the Kid trying to live a quiet life after faking his death:

“The Billy story was inspired by the hippie westerns that came out in the late 60s. Prior to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid westerns were these big overdone studio productions made on soundstages. But the genre was reinvented by the counterculture, and the actors with stringy long hair were often scored by the artists of popular music scene, from Burt Bacharach, Leonard Cohen, and of course Dylan.“

Continue reading "Bob Dylan and the "Hippie Western"" »

Alexander Godunov, who would have turned 58 today, was a stunningly-acrobatic Russian ballet dancer who caused an international uproar when he defected from the Soviet Union in 1979, one that pitted President Jimmy Carter against Soviet  Premier Leonid Brezhnev. While Godunov got to stay in the U.S. and dance with the American Ballet Theater, his wife returned to the U.S.S.R. The two eventually divorced.

In Hollywood, Godunov helped to pave the way for other ballet dancers dabbling in acting. Godunov, who became involved in a relationship with the beautiful Jacqueline Bisset, starred in nine movies, everything from the well-reviewed Witness with Harrison Ford, Die Hard with Bruce Willis, The Money Pit with Tom Hanks to the much lesser Waxwork II. 

Continue reading "Remembering Alexander Godunov" »

It's Christmastime, and that means it's Bing Crosby season.

A while ago in a small nook at a Broadway Theater, I picked up a first edition of Bing Crosby's 1953 autobiography, Call Me Lucky (Simon and Schuster). The book is full of old movie anecdotes and shoots that were slapdash, but full of a DIY attitude that made these pioneers of cinema stand out. Crosby's first role in film was singing as part of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, but he soon graduated to starring roles.

Crosby's slapstick shorts were 20 minute films that were conceived on the fly with Mack Sennett, the slapstick comedy producer and director. Says Crosby, "The way we made those Sennett shorts reads like a quaint piece of Americana. For two days, we'd have a story conference. I was in on it. In fact, everybody was in on it -- actors, cameramen, gag men and Sennett. We sat upstairs in Sennett's office, a large room equipped with plenty of cuspidors because Sennett was a muncher of the weed.

Continue reading "Slapdash Slapstick: Bing Crosby's First Films" »