2013-05-23T11:53:13-04:00 John Lopez http://www.news.moviefone.com/author/index.php?author=john-lopez Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for John Lopez Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3188384 2013-04-30T17:45:27-04:00 2013-04-30T17:46:35-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ Sports Illustrated cover story, and one of the most gratifying aspects to Collins' story in my mind is how quickly it is passing into the realm of the mundane. That is not to say it's not important or heartening (it's both). Rather, the quotidian nature of the story signifies that a sea change in social perceptions hasn't just happened--it happened a while ago. Now, a coming-out story that a decade ago might have provoked the same flurry as Magic Johnson's HIV announcement is met with a general attitude of: "about time."

So what does this have to do with the Newport Beach Film Festival? Well, for every Sundance or Cannes Film Festival that gets the lion's share of the coverage while showcasing maybe one ten-thousandth of one percent of the indie films made in a given year--the ones that get the glitz, the glamour, the headlines--there's literally thousands more festivals all across the globe brimming with all those other indie gems. And in many ways, they are a far more accurate barometer of our social norms and perceptions. The Newport Beach Film Festival, for example, held in Orange County's premiere upscale beach community, has all the festival accoutrements of its more famous cousin, Sundance: the fancy sponsorships, the red carpets, and frankly, more comfortable theaters. But perusing its selection of films may well give you a better sense of our times. These movies do not necessarily have the high profile presence of "indie darlings" like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but the filmmakers behind them are just as much (if not more) in the trenches, filming how we live now, and defining our new normal.

Take for example, The Geography Club, which premiered this past Saturday down in Fashion Island. The twin filmmaking Entin brothers, Gary (the one who directs) and Edmund (the one who writes), have adapted Brent Hartinger's teen novel into an oft-told tale of adolescent angst. In short, a group of young misfits form a club so boring that no one will want to join so they can hang out and just be themselves without enduring the Darwinian social struggle that defines pretty much everyone's high school experience. Of course, the hero of the book just happens to be gay. In fact, he just happens to be a gay athlete in love with the gay captain of the football team, who has just about the most accepting parents you've seen in cinema. That's not to downplay the film's conflict--the team captain in particular struggles to reconcile his sexuality with his identity as a "jock." However, as Gary and Edmund pointed out when I talked to them afterwards, a film made about sexual identity in the 90s might have centered more on this athlete struggling to find acceptance in a close-minded community; now, the more dramatic struggle is about him coming to terms with himself. Or as Gary put it, "It's okay if everybody else in your life is accepting of you; but the most important part of acceptance is you accepting yourself."

And again, the most remarkable thing about The Geography Club is how, in many ways, unremarkable it is. Gary and Edmund weren't trying to make a movie that shocked, or enraged, or fired up its audience--just one that entertained. Their role model was less Gus Van Sant's Milk, than John Hughes' The Breakfast Club. In other words, they're trying to help define the new normal, where teenage homosexuality is as everyday as trying to get laid in high school--dramatic, yes, but universal and relatable. "When two boys show up at the prom, it's still a novelty; even when it's applauded, it's separated," Gary told me, before Edmund chimed in: "I think we need to work to a place where one day, two boys can show up to a prom and it's not even thought about twice."

Smartly, the two brothers are tapping into what films and television--mass-minded entertainment--do best: define what we take for granted. For years, political demagogues have railed against film's power to erode our beliefs and ideals (whatever those were); and in truth, they aren't entirely off the mark. Films have that great soft power of slowly but surely dissolving our prejudices and preconceptions, as they acculturate us to the glacial but inevitable changes in how we as a society live our everyday lives. And if you want to watch that happen in real time, you can do nothing better than head down to Newport Beach, or any of the other film festivals, and catch a film just like The Geography Club (it's showing against Wednesday at 5:45) that attempts to show us how we live now. And maybe it'll make you laugh in the process.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2921548 2013-03-21T08:39:44-04:00 2013-05-21T05:12:01-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ Lord of the Rings. To the vast majority of popcorn-munching moviegoers, Viggo might as well be Danish for "Aragorn." His performance as J.R.R. Tolkien's legendary (and legendarily rugged) fantasy king was so iconic, Viggo could easily have carved himself a comfortable throne playing all the mythic monarchs that big-budget franchises rely on. Instead Viggo went on to portray a cigarette-swallowing Russian mobster, a helplessly intellectual Sigmund Freud and, most recently, Argentine twins in his latest film Everybody Has A Plan. In fact, Everybody Has A Plan, (which opens this Friday in New York and L.A.) is the perfect example of what drives Viggo Mortensen. While others salivate over a role in whichever potential tent-pole is good to go, Viggo's taking a chance on a Spanish subtitled film from a first time director he met at a soccer club. (Though obviously, given Lord of the Rings Viggo's not above those mega-blockbusters.) Because to someone like Viggo, starring in Everybody Has a Plan isn't a chance; it's a necessity.

I'm not just blowing smoke: I recently got a chance to work with Viggo on the upcoming thriller The Two Faces of January and saw him in action. So, granted I could be a little biased, but watching him work I began to understand why Viggo would star in a movie like Everybody Has A Plan without a second thought. He's the kind of star directors dream about: professional, playful and eager to make a movie that doesn't wrap itself up in a neat pre-digested bow. Likewise, Ana Piterbarg's Everybody Has A Plan is the kind of enigmatic film that gets under your skin and sucks you into its exotic, alienating world of Argentina's Tigre Delta. In other words; a perfect match. So, I jumped at the chance to catch up with Viggo and talk about betting on an unsolicited script, what he thinks of the new Argentine pope (having grown up in Buenos Aires), and of course, his favorite topic: soccer team San Lorenzo.

I really enjoyed the movie. It had an enigmatic South American literary feel, like a Borges story or a Bolaño novel. What made you want to do this script? I hear it came to you in an odd way.

Well, it was unsolicited. I ran into Ana Piterbarg just by chance [in Argentina.] I was actually at the headquarters of the club that I'm a fan of, San Lorenzo. Anyway, I was down there on a visit, a few years ago. I ran into her at the club. She said I'm a director of TV and shorts and I have a script I want to make a feature from, and I'd love to send it to you. I said okay and gave her my address and didn't think much of it. A few weeks later when I got back, it was waiting for me. Now I didn't think much of it because you know most, if not almost all, unsolicited screenplays are usually not well-written and certainly not very original material. But this one, just a few pages in and I'm intrigued. I'm like, "What's going on here? This is really good dialogue, very well drawn characters and it's really intriguing." The further I got, there more I liked it. It has a different pace, more thoughtful, with a lot of grey areas, which I really like. It's a story that kind breathes and develops slowly and leaves you with a lot to think about at the end. I thought, well, if she's at all a good director, and can get any decent crew and cast together even on a low budget...

...this could be a really special movie?

It more than met my hopes. Everybody's who's seen it has said they were really surprised it was a first time effort because it's very self-assured and well told. I was really happy it turned out as well as it did. And it seems to be getting really great reactions. At the Toronto Film Festival, it was one of the most overwhelming reactions I've had in a screening, and the Q&A was remarkable. Most Q&As, even if they're great movies--certainly at festivals where people have a lot of parties and screenings to go to-- not many people stick around. But at this one almost everyone stayed. And that was the first time a non-Spanish-speaking audience had seen it! So, I'm really happy for Ana. We just showed the movie at the Miami Film Festival and she won best director down there. I hope it gets seen by more than just the usual foreign film fans who go to the art house in New York and LA.

I hope so, too. It's artistic but has genre elements to it: mystery, thriller. Still it doesn't leave you with any simple resolution and really keeps its air of mystery all the way to the end.

I think most people aren't used to that any more in movies. Cronenberg does that, which is why I like working with him. [I like] movies that engage you and provoke thought, movies that ask a lot of questions but don't necessarily answer a lot of questions. Hopefully, they do it in an artful way and that's something to play with and think about.

It's a delicate balancing act. It really is amazing that a first-timer could pull it off.

Exactly. And she was really calm on the set. Kind of like Cronenberg, really. Very calm and with a good sense of humor. Well-prepared. And patient! It took a long time to get this movie made. She showed a lot of promise and I think she's definitely a director to watch.

This character is something of an enigma himself -- it's as if the film wants you to be asking why he does what he does and still not be sure. And to boot you also play his twin. How do you crack that role?

Whether I'm playing twins or not, I always ask myself what's on the page, and what's underneath the words and between the words. I question what happens from the moment the character was born until page one of the script. As I fill in the blanks, by the time I get to shoot, I have a lot of information and a lot to go on. Every story asks for different things, I don't think there is any one way to do it. I don't think there is any such thing as "Method Acting" because method is "what works," you know? And what works for one movie doesn't necessarily work for another. I mean if I'm playing a Russian character, I have to learn a lot: I'm not Russian. I don't speak Russian. On this movie, I speak Spanish and I was raised speaking Spanish in [Argentina], so I did have a leg up and I knew the landscape. But as afar as differentiating between the characters, you know, that takes some work. It was fun, though. I still enjoy it after all these years, like a kid who enjoys something and doesn't question it. But it takes a conscious effort for an adult. Any child, it doesn't matter who they are in the world, doesn't question. They just do it in a pure sense. It's that state, in a more sophisticated way, that I try to arrive at, where I'm just having fun and it's just play. Once I have all the preparation under my belt, then I can have fun and listen to the director and listen to the other actors and really play make believe.

Is there any type of role you're specifically looking to do?

I don't really think in terms of directors or kinds of roles or genres or budget. I'm just looking to do movies like Everybody Has a Plan and The Two Faces of January, types of a characters that I haven't played before and stories that have a chance to be movies I want to see again and again, years from now. That's what I look for: the kind of movies I'd want to see.

Sounds like a good strategy. Okay, finally, just because this movie's set in Argentina, you've lived there and love it, I have to ask: what do you think about the new pope being an Argentine?

Well, what I'm more interested in is that he's a life-long fan of San Lorenzo, which is the team I've been a fan of since I was a kid. I could care less about the Vatican but if you got to be pope, you might as well be a fan of San Lorenzo. That I think is kind of fun. Also, there's the fact that he seems more personable and down to earth; his character to me seems to be, I don't know, warmer.

Well, having been educated by Jesuits, I'm really intrigued by the fact that he was a Jesuit.

Yeah, he didn't come from bureaucracy, the institutional route. He was a priest for the poor people, typical Jesuit. That's probably why he's more personable and more humble. I mean, you don't get to be pope or president without making some enemies, but I think he's an intriguing person.

Okay, so what's the story on San Lorenzo: what's their vibe? I remember on Two Faces in Istanbul you went to a Besiktas game, they're kind of the blue collar team there, and it was in the Turkish papers the next day that you wore a Besiktas jersey. Are they at all similar?

San Lorenzo's not unlike Besiktas, and that's why I wore their shirt. The fans of Besiktas are singing the whole game no matter what the score is; there's something similar in that sense to a San Lorenzo fan. And it was a team that was founded by a Jesuit priest, Lorenzo Massa. He had a parish in that neighborhood of Buenos Aires, and there were lots of kids who used to play soccer in the street all the time. One day one of the kids was almost run over by a trolley car and the priest said okay, that's enough, come inside. And in the big courtyard of the Church, he said you can play here and he eventually provided them uniforms and everything! So that's how the team was founded and they wanted to call it Lorenzo Massa, and he said, "nah," but you can call it San Lorenzo in honor of the saint. And that was in 1908. Then he went on to travel a lot in the country, and worked with indigenous people and poor people. He was a really unusual man actually. So, Bergoglio, it was natural for him to be a fan. And when he was a kid in the late 40s, they were a fantastic team. In fact the 1946 team were champions and they had a tour when they were on holiday in January, in Portugal and Spain. They were just playing for fun, they were on vacation, and the only team to beat them was Real Madrid 4-2. They beat the Spanish national team twice by several goals, and they beat the Portuguese team by like 11-1 or something.

No way!

Yeah, it was the first team to pass the ball a lot, the way Barcelona does now. Anyway, that's the team that the present pope grew up with. He followed them his whole life and is a card-carrying member. In fact, an interesting thing happened. The day he was elected pope, somebody took the number from his membership and that number won the lottery!

Wow.

Go figure.

Does this mean that San Lorenzo is now officially God's team?

Well... the good thing about it is I don't have to go around explaining to everybody what San Lorenzo is as much in my travels.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2553108 2013-01-25T17:14:14-05:00 2013-03-27T05:12:01-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/
What remains are the film fanatics, scruffy-bearded hipster mountain men determined to see everything -- absolutely everything -- Sundance has to offer. Once they've completed this sacred task, they purify themselves by leaping over bonfires fueled with overstock Blu-rays of Transformers: Dark of the Moon and chanting "Death to Bay!" Then, and only then, are they deemed worthy to attend Sundance's awards ceremony, which festival director John Cooper inaugurates by stripping naked, smearing himself in vegan-friendly stage-blood and slaughtering a 6-foot-tall replica of the Oscar statue made from 100 percent biodegradable soy.

I am not one of those mountain men. In fact, I missed a great deal from even my modest must-see list, which expanded geometrically every time one of my Park City roommates came back from another screening. According to these guys, S-VHS was the best fright-fest in a long time I never had; The East was a remarkably compelling psychodrama even though its plot description felt like a liberal-agit-prop movie-of-the-week commissioned by MSNBC; Metro Manila featured surprisingly touching family drama; Jiseul had beautifully composed black-and-white photography; Escape from Tomorrow was cool; and The Summit was just awesome. I also barely missed crowd-pleaser The Way, Way Back but its $10 million sale to Fox Searchlight means I can catch that one later. I did manage to catch Ain't Them Bodies Saints, but I wasn't as enthralled with its pseudo-Malick vibe as were others so I'd rather use my last few moments of your waning attention span to highlight two films I saw which I hope don't get forgotten: Magic, Magic and Circles.

Magic, Magic was director Sebastian Silva's other film with Michael Cera at Sundance, after opening night's Crystal Fairy. I've loved Silva's work since I saw his wry, touchingly oddball first feature The Maid. I even enjoyed his less-universally-beloved follow-up Old Cats, and I'm pissed at Sundance's bus schedule for making me miss Crystal Fairy. All in all, I think Silva's one of the most entertaining, inventive and brilliant rising directors out there, and Magic, Magic confirms my belief with its Polanski-esque flair for f#*!ing with its audience. One minute you're laughing at the main characters' bizarre (yet human) behavior; the next you become deeply disturbed as you realize its implications. Juno Temple plays a shy, awkward young American girl who's never been out of the country before until she comes to visit her cousin in Chile for a road trip to the southern wilds. She's cooped up in a car with her cousin's callous friends, then left at their mercy in a remote lakeside cabin when her cousin must return to Santiago to take an "exam." There's no love-loss as Temple's needy freak-out behavior gets on everyone's nerves and their impatience only hastens her mental deterioration. (Specific kudos to Michael Cera for channeling his obnoxious side as a foppish ambassador's son whose quasi-sexual harassment of Temple provokes some of the movies' most uncomfortable laughs and most disturbing reversals.) It only gets worse from there. The tension of being thrust into a group of strangers is a universally relatable feeling, of which Silva takes full advantage. However, he also never lets you get too comfortable with any of the characters as what seem like minor complications and molehill concerns blossom into stomach-churning psychological horror. The result is a masterfully orchestrated slow-burn that sneaks up on you, gradually pushing you to the edge of your seat until look down and see a yawning chasm beneath. All in, it's a great little thrill-ride that hopefully will make its way into your Netflix queue, or even better, a real theater!

Finally, my last pleasant surprise from Sundance was Serbian director Srdan Golubovic's Circles. This taut little triptych of moral dramaturgy starts with a tiny but potent act of heroism during the Bosnian war by a Serbian soldier who stands up to his fellow soldiers on behalf of a Muslim cigarette seller in Serb-occupied Bosnia. The action then jumps forward 12 years into more-or-less the modern era to follow the consequences of this one tragic, if noble, event as they ripple across newly independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, and Serbia. Although the plot and back story are intentionally elliptical, you actually understand far more of what's going on than you may realize at first -- the movie has a narrative fragmentation that gives the story a mosaic feel but that's more an aesthetic choice than a vehicle for goosing your audience as in say, Memento. The suspense created matters less than the way the fractured story forces you to think about the film's subjects and its themes as you piece it all together. Each of the three interwoven segments functions as a meditation on what makes those small acts of heroism just so rare and difficult, especially in the middle of general madness and inhuman brutality. Compelling, thought-provoking and challenging: one shirks from using critical clichés, but they fully apply here.
Circles is a movie of moral questions, which forces you to contemplate those questions in a way that so few movies rarely do but great art almost always does.

And that wraps up Sundance 2013 for me. Until next year when the Great Redford bestrides Park City like the golden god he is and lets loose the indie dogs of cinema for 2014!

P.S. And a grateful shout out to the Korean Film Council for throwing one of the funnest Sundance parties with great bulgogi-beef sliders and the once in a lifetime chance to ogle the great Park Chan-wook while eating glass noodles!]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2537788 2013-01-23T21:14:33-05:00 2013-03-25T05:12:01-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ delirium tremens of cinematic fatigue where all the films you've seen -- the good, the bad, the bat s#!t crazy -- start blending into one gigantic bowl of indie chow mein. It doesn't help that all the after-parties and lack of sleep also induce a state of low-grade alcoholic psychosis. (Monday is a particularly bad morning-after, as Hollywood's big three agencies -- CAA, WME and UTA -- threw their bacchanalian orgies Sunday night right across Main St. from one another. They achieved such a state of thermonuclear excess that CAA actually had to issue an apology for the dildo-wielding pole-dancers at its party.) As much as all the free Stella Artois and promotional t-shirts are nice, you start longing for the chance to actually pay for a half-decent meal instead of relying on finger foods for caloric content. However, the upside of all this is that when you do get some sleep, the good films you've seen rise to the surface of your snow-battered consciousness.

The first that leaps to mind is The Spectacular Now, director James Ponsoldt's follow-up to his Sundance hit last year Smashed with a script by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the writing duo behind 500 Days of Summer. Featuring another great, nuanced performance by Shailene Woodley and a break out one by Miles Teller, The Spectacular Now follows a charming, young alcoholic as he navigates the last few days of high school -- and the burgeoning damage his drinking is doing to his future becomes painfully clear. After he's dumped by his dream girlfriend, Teller goes on a bender that winds up with him waking up on Woodley's lawn and beginning a rebound relationship that becomes much more. Clearly inspired by John Hughes and Cameron Crowe, The Spectacular Now delves much deeper into darker territory -- almost as if Ponsoldt, Neustadter and Weber had asked themselves what deep pathos was behind Ferris Bueller's nuclear charisma. As a coming-of-age film, it ups the ante for future coming of age films, daring directors not to tastefully turn the camera away from the more complicated demons teenagers face. Even now, far too comfortably ensconced in my 30s, Spectacular Now resonates -- enough to make me reconsider indulging in the second bottle of free Stella.

Stoker and Before Midnight also managed to thrust up through the alcoholic haze. Oldboy director Chan Wook Park's first English language film, Stoker plays like an update of Shadow of a Doubt on acid. While Park graciously declined the comparisons to Hitchcock after Monday's screening, Stoker makes clear that he understands the universal language of suspense almost as well as the master. Mia Wasikowski stars as a dour, young girl who's idyllic childhood falls apart when her father dies and her uncle (Matthew Goode) comes to stay with her and her mother (Nicole Kidman). You figure out pretty fast from the demonic glint in her uncle's eye that all is far from it seems and there's clearly some messed-up family history that needs to be uncovered. Goode absolutely steals the show and Park proves that he can sustain his signature mood of alienated horror as well in English as Korean.

Before Midnight, meanwhile, may be one of my favorite films of the festival after Fruitvale. Director Richard Linklater first introduced us to Jesse and Celine, the ultimate fantasy couple for diehard hopeless romantics with 1994's Before Sunrise, then brought them (and us) back together a decade later in Before Sunset. In the previous two, the couple always seemed a tad too good to be true -- we should all be so lucky to meet our true loves backpacking in Europe --but in Before Midnight Linklater takes us to the other side of the fantasy, after happily ever after. As always, the dialogue is sharp and delicious but the underlying drama here gives it all an added kick. Some may dislike that Linklater pops the fantasy bubble, but in my opinion, never have Jesse and Celine felt more real.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2523038 2013-01-21T21:47:47-05:00 2013-03-23T05:12:01-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ press screening. That's when you know you've stumbled upon it -- the Out-of-Nowhere Find. The film at the festival pretty much everyone agrees is worth it. In years past it's been Reservoir Dogs, Clerks, and last year it was Beasts of the Southern Wild.

This year it's Fruitvale. And the question that's really on your mind, presuming you haven't seen it already, I'll just answer straight out. Yes, it's that good. But to leave it at that would be a huge disservice to such a fine film as Fruitvale, an impressive first turn from writer/director Ryan Coogler. Fictionalizing the real-life tragedy of Oscar Grant, whose death on Jan. 1, 2009, provoked riots in Oakland, Coogler takes a neo-neorealist approach in chronicling Oscar's last day on earth, New Year's Eve. But instead of Italian street urchins searching for bicycles, Coogler has cell phone phones filming police brutality. At the core is Michael B. Jordan's artfully subtle yet emotionally vibrant portrayal of Oscar. Jordan's no neophyte -- the depth of his skill is no surprise to The Wire fanatics who remember his scene-stealing in the first season as Wallace, the very embodiment of an urban youth who loses his childhood to drug-dealing. So, it's great to see Jordan maturing impressively into the vast frame of his full potential. In Fruitvale his performance is so smooth, it's water: invisible yet essential, clear and vital. And he's given all the support he needs with the equally gifted Melonie Diaz and Octavia Spencer.

There's not much in the way of plot twists to outline -- as there shouldn't be. You start off knowing the most dramatic turn, previewed with blocky, digitally obscure cell phone footage at the beginning. But that's not the point. It's the last day of 2008 and Oscar's a 22-year-old father, worrying as any 22-year-old father would about how to pay the rent while toeing the line and atoning for the myriad of familiar fuck-ups that have led him to this point. Basically, it's the well-worn story of an urban youth's struggle that we may think we've moved past in post-Obama America. Of course we haven't, and it's the specificity of Coogler's vision, and the authenticity of the film's execution that demonstrates why. There's drugs, prison, paychecks; but also, family, hope, and an irrepressibly good-natured spirit that can turn a crowded BART train into an impromptu dance floor with only an iPod and a flask. This scene, which you'll recognize when you see it, is case in point. That same one-line description could apply to a million soulless Super Bowl beer commercials. In Coogler's hands you not only believe it, you may be tempted to try it sometime yourself. That's the testament to the film's achievement and skill.

Granted, sometimes there's a collective high from cinema sniffing known as the Festival effect -- and now that Harvey Weinstein has acquired the film many more will likely have the chance to judge for themselves outside the euphoria-inducing clarity of this mountain air. But I have a feeling in a few months, I'll stand by my implicit (and now explicit) reference to The Bicycle Thief. I don't want to build expectations too high, and you always feel bad making a fragile first film stand toe-to-toe with a titan of cinema -- it's too easy to draw unflattering comparisons that press down with the hefty weight, physical and metaphorical, of a million monographs. But once, a long time ago, it was just a film that achieved the sadly-too-rare feat of showing you a world you take for granted with fresh eyes. Regardless of whether it's social commentary, or dramatic finery, a feel-good film, or a feel-bad film, it made you feel -- feel enough to pause a beat as you leave the theater, blink at the painfully bright afternoon sun and take a second look at the reality all around you, whatever it may be. In that sense, Fruitvale is very much like The Bicycle Thief.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2517466 2013-01-21T10:38:49-05:00 2013-03-23T05:12:01-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/
But at the heart of it all: movies, some of which I actually managed to see. Right off the plane, I rushed to Touchy Feely, Sundance darling Lynne Shelton's follow up to Your Sister's Sister, which stirred buzz at 2012's festival. Unfortunately, those high expectations may be dashed by the film's super subdued energy. It's a movie about small crises, and stilted emotions. Rosemarie DeWitt plays a masseuse who suddenly develops a fear of skin, which is pretty much just a displaced reaction to her boyfriend (Scoot McNairy) asking her to move in. Meanwhile, her anal-retentive dentist brother (Josh Pais) has his failing practice revived when he develops the mysterious ability to heal temporomandibular joint disorder -- a plot twist which necessitated Wikipedia surfing on my part. Also, Ellen Page is there as DeWitt's sister, mostly to give that wounded puppy look more recognizably employed in the service of Diablo Cody's witticisms or Christopher Nolan's mind-blowing. First, the good: Josh Pais's brother is the surprise of the movie. He's the kind of wet-blanket character so often used as a throwaway joke in most mainstream movies. Here, Shelton pushes us past his bland, timid personality; and Pais' performance engaged me so much that by the end I wanted his story to continue. DeWitt's lead character, while ostensibly "the fun one," actually lost my interest. The problem may be that her life seems well-balanced, so her crisis felt more like a mole-hill than a mountain. She isn't the same knotty mass of neuroses, hesitation and vulnerability as her brother, and thus less engaging. That said, the film has moments of insight, humor and engagement. And the after party thrown by Chase Sapphire was fun, too, if only because I saw Josh Radnor and Michael Cera looking lost while searching for lamb chops.

Jerusha Hess' Austenland proved to be less-satisfying spiritually, though I admit I laughed here and there, which did more to raise my heart rate than Touchy Feely. I am so obviously not the target audience for this, Hess' marriage to Napoleon Dynamite's father notwithstanding. Basically, Keri Russell plays a girl, all too recognizable to male English majors everywhere, so obsessed with Jane Austen that she blows her savings on a trip to a deranged theme-park/country manor where you act out a Jane Austen romance. But wait, will real romance result from this overt and obvious charade! Gee, I wonder. I was willing to give the conceit a chance -- it seemed like the premise could produce disarming yet literate humor. Instead it's just silly and a little sloppy: basically Legally Blonde with accents. Which is not to say it couldn't be wildly commercially successful, and I admit I laughed here and there. Then I cried imagining this in musical form.

But my find of the day was Il Futuro by rising Chilean director Alicia Scherson. She adapted the film from Roberto Bolaño's novel Una Novelita Lumpen, imperfectly translated as a A Little Novel About the Proletarian Dispossessed. Chilean starlet Manuela Martelli plays Bianca, a recently orphaned 19-year-old who must take charge of her younger brother after they lose their parents in a car crash. However, her brother, yearning for a physique his lithe frame will never achieve, drops out of school and brings back two muscle-bound buddies who take up residence in their apartment. Indifferent and lazy thugs that they are, they convince Bianca to sleep with a blind ex-Mr. Universe who lives in a nearby mansion, brought to life with marmoric grandeur by Rutger Hauer. Disclaimer: this is an art film, the kind where the nudity must be wedded to estrangement, elliptical dialogue and smoking. But I enjoyed it immensely. Bolaño, since having The Savage Detectives and 2666 posthumously translated into English, has become the icon of choice for the intellectual set -- the jaded Latin American poet-philosopher lost in the new Europe. He's the kind of writer who talks about life in terms of metaphysics and post-capitalist discontent. That's not to denigrate him -- his novels are intoxicating capsules of pure mood, and his genius is to dance around the least nameable feelings of existence with complex, startlingly concrete and hypnotic metaphors. Suffice to say, I doubted such a feeling could be translated cinematically but Scherson has captured Bolaño's spirit. She's well supported in this coup by Martelli's cool, effortless sensuality, and especially by Hauer. The movie really takes off when he comes on screen, emerging from the shadowed corners of his neo-classical mansion, a blind chunk of corroded-marble-made-flesh. Clad in only a silk robe, Hauer looks like something Michelangelo might carve after taking a graduate course in post-structuralism. Now, this might scare some viewers off: but I promise, he talks almost solely about his career as a muscleman and star of Italian Hercules films. But as he waxes postcoitally philosophic about life and what remains in old age, his dialogue is also entirely poetic. The movie is pure mood and Hauer is pure presence. The perfect film to watch as you light a cigarette, pour a tall glass of garnacha and watch the sun set over the imminent ruins of Western Civilization.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2506722 2013-01-18T17:11:50-05:00 2013-03-20T05:12:01-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/
Sure, Sundance can be frustrating. The selections can feel like they hew closely to a homogenous quality best described in English, tautologically, as "Sundance-y." And the entourages make it seem like a nuclear glitter bomb has been dropped. But there is something infectious about the madness -- this year, literally, as the Hollywood Reporter points out. (Take note starlets: see if your guerilla director's still trembling indoors before air-kissing him.) In all seriousness, the fun of Sundance is finding the gems, the insightful needles among the indie haystacks. So, I'm packing Purell and heading for the heart of darkness in hopes I find something other than Redford athwart an army of half-shaven savages armed with DSLRs and vimeo links.

Slight skepticism aside, I've found at least one small gem so far, and I haven't even landed: Narco Cultura, Shaul Schwarz's fascinating and outright balls-y chronicle of glorified drug-lord culture. The film is split equally between an L.A.-based composer of the popular narcocorridos, which lionize the misdeeds of cartel operatives, and the police investigators on the ground amid the tsunami of violence that engulfed Ciudad Juarez when Chapo Guzman's Sinoloa cartel took on the local Juarez cartel. How Schwarz got the access he did is almost as intriguing as the question as how he had the balls to use it. Suffice to say, this is the ugliest side of the drug war captured with a camera that doesn't flinch, even if you the viewer need to. Frankly, Schwarz might deserve a thumbs up just for coming back alive.

But the real stars are the police investigators, whose resigned dedication to jobs they know are equally futile and dangerous provide a poignant snap-shot of Mexico's violence battered psychology. Little moments, like cops waiting fearfully at a stoplight for an unmarked SUV to pass them, or identifying pistol calibers from the sounds of gunfire in the distance, make this section shine -- and make the drug war emotionally palpable in a way that even laundry-list images of mutilated bodies can't. (There are plenty of those, too.) The section with the Los Angeles narcocorrido singer also captures a compelling authenticity. The singer is candid about his dreams, aspirations, and lack of "real knowledge" of that from which he draws his inspiration. His dangerous search for the real thing takes the documentary into stomach-sinking territory, though I was left curious to dig even deeper into his life. There's probably another documentary there, and of course, you can't fault Schwarz for juxtaposing it with the compelling material he gleaned from his police ride-alongs. The truth is there's too much material and too few filmmakers with the brazen disregard for personal safety to really dive into it.

Sundance's Spotlight selection also offers a guaranteed respite of solid-filmmaking. These selections don't have the same anticipation-factor that the Premieres or In-Competition entries boast, but if you haven't spent the year on the world-festival circuit, you can often catch up on gems you'll have missed. This year, two such gems are Pablo Lorrain's No and Dror Moreh's The Gatekeepers: both are Oscar nominees (Best Foreign Film in No's case and Best Documentary in The Gatekeepers') and both will be released by Sony Pictures Classics soon enough. No caps Lorrain's trilogy about the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet with a surprisingly upbeat story about the power of vapid advertising to effect needed political change. Gael Garcia Bernal stars as an 80s-era Don Draper (en español!) who playfully uses his powers of manipulation to trick people into empowering themselves politically. Hopefully, the delight of the conceit is self-evident from that synopsis; equally delightful is Bernal's expressive puppy-dog eyes as he operates a microwave for the first time. Lorrain's artful use of low-def video to capture the feel of the era succeeds, and even though Amour is a near lock for the Best Foreign Film Oscar this year, No is a worthy contender, not to be missed.

Just as edifying, though far more sobering, is Dror Moreh's powerful documentary The Gatekeepers. If you think Kathryn Bigelow had insider access for Zero Dark Thirty, Moreh's film redefines the phrase. In a documentary coup, Moreh wrangled six heads of Israel's Shin Bet, the secret service charged with overseeing its war on terror. Even more impressive, the agency heads are engaging storytellers who eschew the usual politically sanitized pablum with their relatively forthcoming accounts of the major incidents in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including Yitzhak Rabin's tragic assassination. Universally and eloquently, these former hardliners stress pragmatism over ideology and the failure of force to achieve ultimate peace. It's far too complex to get into at the end of a blog post, but the movie is wholly compelling, fascinating, and yes, at times, depressing. But hey, sometimes you need the downers, even if Sundance's influx of comedy this year tries to change that stereotype of the festival. But really, at its best, Sundance can provide a moment where some of the hype and glitz rubs off on noble projects which, as Moreh told me about his film, aim to "put a mirror in front of [society] -- so it can never be able to run away with excuses -- to put those six people who fought and dedicated their lives to the security of Israel and have those six people speak the way they speak and say what they say. It has to count for something. If it doesn't, then don't say we didn't say that before."]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2449557 2013-01-10T15:02:57-05:00 2013-03-12T05:12:02-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ link here!) are announced, I feel like a low-level Al-Qaeda flunkee staring down Jessica Chastain in a no-nonsense pantsuit: beaten, cowed, humiliated, willing to trade my ideals, beliefs and loyal brothers for just a whiff of fresh figs. But THIS YEAR I've been out of the U.S., and more importantly, reliable Wi-fi, for almost all of the Pre-Season Death slog! So with this, my first Oscar post in over a year, I feel like a newborn infant fluttering his eyes in blinkered confusion as he beholds light for the first time.

It feels good. Frankly, I'm going to advocate that Oscar bloggers, much like starting pitchers, should be on rotation with mandatory rest years in-between. But before I start my online petition, I figured I'd muse on today's Oscar nominations from my completely uninformed, haven't-even-been-in-the-country privileged point of view.

Two words: Lincoln. LINCOLN!

The headline of today's nominations is that Steven Spielberg's refreshingly anti-epic biopic Lincoln, surprising few I'm sure, took the day with 12 nominations, nailing down pretty much everything in the Oscar roster (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Cinemato-editing-mixology) -- that is, except Best Actress and the kitchen sink. Now pardon me if I take an immodest moment and pull a Nikki Finke: TOLD YOU!* That's right, over two years ago I called this sucker for Vanity Fair. Don't believe me? Here's the link!

If you found that off-putting, sorry. Just know that I'm now passing from hubristic braggadocio to sincere regret that I didn't lay some money on this sucker when I had the chance. Anyway, the point is this pretty much obviates me having to have a rational discussion about the Oscars with anyone -- bloggers, publicists, obnoxious guy at work who thinks he knows everything -- from now until Sunday February 24th when hopefully I'll be too soused on cheap champagne to have a coherent conversation at all. What do I mean? Observe this theoretical conversation:

Oscar Blogger Who Takes This Seriously: So, I think Silver Linings Playbook has a real dark horse shot at beating Linclon for Best Picture. It scored noms in all the major acting --

Me: LINCOLN!

Blogger: You're probably right. What do you think of the Best Director snubs?

Me: LINCOLN!

Blogger: All right... well, Daniel Day-Lewis seems like a Best Actor favorite. But do you think Tommy Lee Jones can--

Me: LINCOLN, LINCOLN!

Blogger: Ok. I assume you think Supporting Actress will go to--

Me: LINCOLN FIELD!

Blogger: Right. You could have just said Sally Field. Anyway, Lincoln isn't even nominated in the Best Actress category, so--

Me: QUVENZHANE LINCOLN!

Blogger: Wait, are you saying Quvenzhané Wallis, the adorably precocious 9-year-old wunderkind from Beasts of the Southern Wild will beat Jessica Chastain or--

Me: LINCOLN LINCOLN LINCOLN.

Blogger. I see. You're just saying Lincoln nonsensically to prove a hyperbolic point. If I were to ask who you think the favorite for Best Foreign Film is, you'd say --

Me: Amour. That film is amazing.

You get the point. Lesson is: don't try to have a coherent conversation with me about the Oscars. I very well may hand-write Lincoln on all the fields in my Oscar party ballot and see how many people I beat. No one ever guesses best short doc, anyway. The only thing intelligent I have to say is that if everyone's so shocked about those Best Director snubs --Tarantino, Bigelow and Ben Affleck, all of whom more than deserved a nomination... Well, let me put it this way: how can you switch up the voting system from good ol' paper and pencil to ONLINE VOTING on the geriatric Academy in one fell swoop and not expect Benny Hill-style madness to ensue? Some of these guys are still bitching about the advent of talkies! Let's all admit something right now: half of the votes probably came from grandchildren of Academy Members who were asked to set up the online voting profile cause Gramps fell asleep watching his screener of The Master and the extended deadline was minutes away...

Just for kicks though, I'm really sad Zero Dark Thirty didn't get Kathryn Bigelow a second best director nomination. Sure, we can laud ourselves that a woman winning best director means we've come a long way, but I'd argue women still aren't adequately represented on the other side of the camera until it's so quotidian that the barely-there Academy just nominates one out of habit. Dear Kathryn, when you make your next just-kind-of-ok film and the Academy nominates you anyway, that is progress. (I'm also bummed Zero Dark didn't get nominated for Sound Mixing. Mixing you say!? Yes, mixing. Ray Beckett is a genius and deserves a second Oscar. Ask anyone who's worked with him.) Also, Zero Dark Thirty is just by far and away the best and most important movie of the year, Senate-probes-be-damned! We should be falling all over ourselves that Hollywood is putting such a thoughtful, challenging, disturbing, perfectly executed film (and exciting!) into wide release this weekend. I mean, Lincoln's great, but Steven, come on, you know you should have ended it after that shot of Lincoln walking down the hall! That was perfect! Honestly, only you have the creative sway to make a movie with Lincoln that ends before he gets assassinated. Sigh.

Anyway, the point being: Lincoln. And Amour. Intelligent, insightful analysis to follow. Maybe. First I need to see Life of Pi.

*purposefully misspelled -- rather, properly spelled -- to avoid a lawsuit.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1626062 2012-06-26T13:55:42-04:00 2012-08-26T05:12:05-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ It's a Disaster, as well as Dr. Tobias Funke on Arrested Development. As I mentioned previously, It's a Disaster takes a shoe-strong, funny and surprisingly realistic approach to answering the question of what would happen should terrorists strike during brunch. L.A. residents know what it's like to live with a disaster hanging over their head, so I quizzed Cross on the film, his experience with the disaster trio of the Northridge Quake, 9/11 and the New York Black Out, as well as his list of absolute essentials for true disaster preparedness (hint: it involves the dairy aisle at Ralph's.)

First, I'm thrilled to talk because my favorite sketch of all time is your Mr. Show sketch, "Pre-Taped Call-in Show." Without flattering you too much, it's meta genius.

Hah, yeah, it's pretty meta.

It's like the M.C. Escher of comedy sketches.

Nice, I haven't heard it referred to that way, but yeah, it's like an onion of comedy -- not The Onion the newspaper, I mean like an actual onion.

Exactly, you peel away the layers and just get more and more frayed nerves and pathos. In a way, it's like It's a Disaster, now that I think about it.

Yeah, I thought the script was super sharp and funny in an honest way. It's not like sitcom jokes where somebody would never say that thing cause it's just a writer's clever joke. The comedy [in It's a Disaster] really felt honest. All the characters are real and grounded, even though they're all wildly different and represent different types of personalities.

For such a high-concept disaster film, it felt surprisingly (and hilariously) realistic.

Well, one of the genius things about the script, and it came out of practicality because it was such a low-budget film, was you couldn't show what was happening. I mean, it's not aliens blowing up the planet or anything, but because of the nature of what's happening, these people have to seal themselves inside this house. The characters themselves act silly, stupid, with misplaced priorities, but they really represent so much of American culture as well, the kind of self-involved narcissism that each character has in their own subtle way.

There seem to be a lot of these disaster/end of the world films lately. Why do you think that is? Is there a cultural link, something in the Zeitgeist or what?

I don't think there's a link in the culture, but I think things are particularly unpleasant for a lot of people, not just in America, but all over the world. Unless you live in Scandinavia where people are quite happy. But they're godless socialists, so what do they know?

Hah, right.

Certainly, our culture is somewhat pathetic. What we consider talent and art that has value in this country is for the most part garbage, as well as what gets rewarded and who gets rewarded -- but I don't think it has any correlation to the state of disaster movies. [In It's a Disaster] some unknown, unseen terrorists set off some dirty bombs. So, it's certainly relatable in that we're all subconsciously, waiting, "When is that gonna happen?" That'll probably happen in a couple of years, right? A suitcase bomb in Philadelphia, that's what, 2014 you think?

It's kind of like living in L.A. waiting for a you-know-what. Were you here for that?

Sure, I was here for the Northridge quake and I was in New York for 9/11. So, I've had that first hand, "Oh shit, now what do we do." A lot of it is about the first 48 hours where there's so much confusion. People understandably don't trust their news sources or their politicians, but in those situations, you really have no choice. You have to suspend that and go, "What's happening, what do I do? Giuliani says what now? Get my water, okay I'll get my water." I mean, it was like that two years later when we had the big blackout in New York. Of course the first thing was, "It's Muslims!" But it's really about what you do in the face of that confusion. You're immediately and shockingly close to a child who needs nurturing and their hand held to know where do I go.

It's revealing, too. When the power goes out and you think everything's going to hell in a hand-basket, you definitely learn things about yourself.

Oh yeah, I learned a lot about myself, especially after the Northridge earthquake. I was very surprised to learn that the first place I'd loot was Ralphs. Prior to the earthquake, the first thing I would loot would have been this men's clothing store on Hollywood Blvd. There's a couple of suits there I wouldn't necessarily pay for, but if they were free, I'd take them. So, I would've thought that'd be the first place I'd loot: you know alligator shoes and shark skin suits. But I was shocked to find myself at the dairy aisle in Ralphs.

When push comes to shove, you'd rather have moose-tracks ice cream, huh?

Yeah, I got Kerrygold butter, the fancy butter, and I got a bunch of aerosol whip cream, for obvious reasons. I wouldn't have said that before the earthquake, but now I know.

On the bright side, community comes out in a disaster. Like in L.A., you discover you actually have neighbors.

Yeah, that was one of, if not the greatest thing I experienced after 9/11 and the blackout. And New York has this in spades -- I would say L.A. doesn't really have this even with a disaster -- but [in the black out] everybody was helping each other, nobody was selling batteries for $20 a pop. I can't speak for all New York but I can talk about the East Village and Lower East Side. It was a very optimistic, heart-warming thing to experience.

So, the Lower East Side is the place to be?

For sure. The building I was in was 12 stories and there were a lot of elderly people and people were going door to door immediately, making sure everyone was okay. It didn't take them hours to go, "Oh shit, there's people up there." It was really the first half hour.

What about free love communes? I feel like, in a disaster, people are suddenly much more open to orgies and such.

Not that I was invited to. It might've been happening but I don't think they sent out Evites. The electricity was off anyway.

So, what's next?

I'm starting to get back into stand-up more, and I should have enough material soon. I've got a book I'm working on with Bob Odenkirk, which is a collection of our movie scripts that never got made. At some point, a movie will be coming out I did with Daniel Radcliffe where he plays Allen Ginsburg and I play his father, and I'm getting married in the fall.

Congrats! Okay, I have to ask, any Arrested Development tid-bits to share?

Nope. I mean, there's nothing to say, there's no script, there's no deal. There's nothing that's going on.

All right. Again, I love that sketch: I think it should be shot out into space on Voyager 3 or whatever so when aliens come across the remains of our race, 5,000 years from now, they'll know what humor is.

Well, I don't know if I'd go that far, but let's get NASA on it.
*]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1625305 2012-06-26T13:02:57-04:00 2012-08-26T05:12:05-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/
Not surprisingly, Sundance favorite hippie love-child Beasts of the Southern Wild took the audience award for best narrative feature. Its lead's magical realist child-like eyes and those mytho-poetic fireworks are clearly ready to charm audiences across the country with faints whiffs of Oscar hanging in the summer air.

Film Independent also handed out the best narrative award to Pocas Pascoal's All Is Well and Best Documentary to Everardo Gonzalez's Drought, while the best performance award went to the cast of Joshua Sanchez's Four. (The rest of the winners are here.) Of course, I somehow managed to miss most all of the winners -- damn you, open bar -- though I caught Four.

Anchored by the tremendous presence of Wendell Pierce, the he-muse of David Simon in The Wire and Treme, it follows the separate sexual confusion/collisions of a father and daughter over the fourth of July. In true indie spirit, Four focuses less on plot than character dynamics and again, assuming it was shot on a Canon 5D or 7D which it looks to be, shows how such DSLR's have become the essential sketch pencil for cinematic artists these days -- with some gifted actors, night lighting and shallow depth of field, young directors can draw out some compelling observations with an intimacy that film proper, i.e. that weird strip of stuff you're not supposed to load in the light -- requires a whole apparatus of technicians and crew to duplicate. Just you wait one of these days, the next Godard, probably already born brooding and smoking somewhere in Silverlake, will take these possibilities to the next level.

Of course, one of the species of film that often falls through the cracks, even at festivals, is the short documentary category. Frankly, in our ADD-age, I'm surprised short docs haven't had their moment of vogue yet; they're often a perfect appetizer for the bored brain. Given our propensity to click on links of puppies playing scrabble, why isn't there a YouTube channel dedicated to mini-docs for the afternoon office break at work? Shorting of founding a start-up, I'll ameliorate that travesty by a) listing LA Film Fest's winner in that category right now -- Josh Gibson's Southern flora lyric Kudzu Vine -- and b) I'll sing the praises of a short I have seen (Sorry, Kudzu Vine but you got that prize you sound like you'll be good). Nadav Kurtz's Paraiso won best short doc at Tribeca and the Seattle International Film Festival and hopefully will find its way into a theater or your laptop somehow, someway.

It's a beautiful little gem about the immigrant window washers of Chicago -- Mexican immigrants who daily strap themselves to the tops of the Windy City's most totemic skyscrapers and dangle precariously over the edge, all so you can look out your corner office with just a little less grime obscuring that Masters-of-the-Universe view. Delightful, probing, insightful, and most importantly, ennobling its subjects without the least trace of condescension, Kurtz takes you on a 10 minute ride to the top of the world with men who face death on a daily basis just to feed their families-- and then joke about catching people having sex in their offices. It's enough to make John Steinbeck cry.

Equally delightful and touching is Jake Schreier's Robot and Frank, essentially a robot, buddy, heist comedy with Frank Langella, words I never thought I'd string together in one sentence. It's been on the tips of industry cognoscenti tongues since Sundance and finally, I got to understand why. Frank Langella plays a retired cat burglar in near-future upstate New York whose son gets tired of enduring his dad's cantankerous fits and fading memory, and so he buys him a medical robot companion to monitor his health and keep him active. Looking like a cross between Nintendo's R.O.B. and a Mac Performa 6115 on human growth hormone, Robot's constant medical attention and low sodium meals infuriate Frank. That is, until he realizes his transistor-based buddy has no concept of the law and thus makes for the perfect companion to a geriatric cat burglar itching to pull one last job -- and get revenge on the 21st century pampered Brooklyn hipsters co-opting his mountain retreat with their retro-chic vibe.

Of course, Frank ends up with an all-too-human attachment to his new appliance, whose emptiness reflects hard truths that Frank has been unable to face up to. Now, there's a great deal to admire about the film -- Schreier's thoughtful brush strokes of near-future prognostication, like battered Priuses and translucent iPhone X's, as well as its touching, grounded script that finds a good balance between sentiment and schmaltz. (And Schreier displays a commercial sensibility and human heart with his high-concept that studios used to seek out before falling back on sarcastic comic book re-boots and... what else do they do now?) But it's Frank Langella, truly one of our greatest living actors, who steals the show.

Not only does he knock this out of the park without batting an eyelid, his ability to project human empathy animates Robot as well as the best crew of Pixar pixel-monkeys can with all their textured-code; the mechanoid's blank visage becomes a mirror that amplifies Langella's gruff, poignant humanity. It's an astounding feat of acting, and if Robot and Frank gets any traction this year, perhaps Langella will at least be rewarded with that Oscar he's so dearly overdue for.

I also caught Todd Berger's It's a Disaster -- a sarcastic and surprisingly realistic look at what would happen if the world happened to go to pieces over a strained Sunday brunch. It takes its cues from what I'd call the "throw-the-kitchen-sink" school of comedy, another prime example of taking a high-concept premise that a studio would add CGI-aliens and a Hans Zimmer score to, and transplanting it to the living room.

America Ferrera, Rachel Boston, Erinn Hayes, and Julia Stiles play the womenfolk, and David Cross, Kevin Brennan, Blaise Miller and Jeff Grace the men in a creative imagining of the only way a noxious couples brunches could get any worse -- (hint, terrorist attack.) To me, it was surprisingly realistic for all the quips and hysterics, and more than anything highlights the quivering jelly of fear, neuroses, and confusion vacuum-packed inside the dutifully repressed packaging of civilization that's just waiting for a power outage and loss-of-Internet to emerge.

It made me wonder, in a world where we've become accustomed to constant connection, what would happen if that connection was suddenly now cut off. I propose after 24 hours of no Internet, a brutal Mad-Max world would emerge where we check each other's status updates with a two-by-four full of nails after being forced out of our digital cocoons into dealing with other human beings. For more on the the unique dynamics of disasters, check out my conversation with the brilliant David Cross to come shortly.

So on that glib, glum note, I must bid adieu to the Los Angeles Film Festival, pre-order my Dark Knight Rises tickets and brace myself for a summer of exploding film, if not exploding minds.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1607060 2012-06-19T12:07:31-04:00 2012-08-19T05:12:08-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ blog post for Vanity Fair about the DSLR revolution -- basically, the fact that everywhere you look in L.A. these days you see scruffy-bearded, pork-pie hat hipsters running and gunning Godard-style with a boom mic, a Canon 5D and a monopod. I'm sure I'm not the only one drastically fatigued by the same old studio-offerings, 3D-shotgun blasted into theaters to shock and awe us into paying $25 for a ticket -- (remember when different multiplexes had different movies, rather than the same five movies playing everywhere? I do, barely.)

There's just a massive creative-fatigue-miasma hanging over the film business these days, a sense the establishment has sucked all the air out of the business (as well as the financing) and your options are limited to one mega-hit like The Avengers and 100 bits of re-hashed trashed that even the most generous of audiences are tired of. Everyone would rather talk Mad Men or Game of Thrones than what film they caught over the weekend, simply because there are so few films worth talking about. I wonder if this was what Hollywood was like when the old studio system, rotten to the core was ready to crumble a la Mrs. Haveshim's wedding cake -- we're just waiting for someone to tip it over, and give us an Arab Spring for indie filmmakers.

Anyway, I thought, if anyone's going to topple the Jenga tower of stale cinema, and breath new life into the corporately moribund Agency-Studio-Financing Industrial Complex like Peter Biskind's rebels on the back lot did in the '70s, it might be the DSLR-revolutionaries. Of course even as I wrote, the revolution was well underway, and the LA Film Festival's competition category has incidentally proven a good excuse to check up on the state of the revolution.

Now large budget productions are already using DSLR's to shoot -- famously the subway scenes in Black Swan and some House episodes when last I checked aeons ago -- but those are somewhat traditional modes of shooting, with crews and lights and all the massive apparatus that accompanies such undertakings. What's interesting about the LAFF selections are how they use the DSLR's small size and relatively innocuous look to open up creative possibilities.

Take Alex Karpovsky's Red Flag for example. You may know Karpovsky as a regular on Girls and Lena Dunham's peripatetic houseguest in Tiny Furniture, but he's also an indie auteur in his own right. While showcasing his film Woodpecker on the Southern Festival circuit, he brought along his DP/editor with a Canon and some radio-mics and stole footage from motels, parades and auditoriums all around the south.

As he mentioned at the Q&A after his film's premiere this weekend, Southern gentility allowed him to steal some impressive shots without the headaches and nightmares of permitting. More to the point, it allowed him to capture a vivid immediacy with his actors and script -- or rather scriptment, that quasi-script-treatment hybrid used for everything from Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes to Paranormal Activity. In this case, Karlovsky uses his DSLR to capture tiny moments and build a wry portrait of a confused character who seems kinda-sort-but-hopefully-not-too-much like Karlovsky himself.

Obviously, there's a mumble-corp feel to it -- if only cause Karlovsky couldn't use lights -- but it seems more slightly attuned to the harmonics of performance and story, which can only be a good thing. Certainly, the family feel of the film elevates it beyond the shoelace cinematography, which also elevated their Karaoke RV after party courtesy of RVIP in the parking lot from L.A. Live. There was plenty of Tecate and Commodores songs to be had by all. If nothing else, DSLR-revolutionaries know how to have a good time.

The family element plays a huge part of Pincus as well, director David Fenster's follow-up to his well-regarded Trona. Again, the small size of the camera allows Fenster to situate lead actor David Nordstrom as a stand-in for himself, and cast his own father in a film that charts a son taking care of a father struggling with Parkinson's. The intimacy and family-aesthetic make you feel like you're watching home-movies -- albeit particularly poignant ones -- yet you're clearly being guided along a subtle narrative.

Pincus takes over his father's contracting business, while caring for his father and their eccentric German employee Dietmar, and attempting to carve out a life for himself. Again, it's modest, tiny but authentic -- telling the kinds of stories millions of Americans are living out daily in the post-house-crash doldrums of our present economy (the stories, incidentally, studios wouldn't know how to process, even if they did touch them with 10-foot poles).

Of course, the most radical experiment with family, compact cameras and film festivals might be director Cory McAbee's film Crazy and Thief, his attempt to capture an honest portrait of those earliest, hazy days of childhood that you quickly forget but remain as primordial memories animating your soul. Casting his own daughter 7-year-old Willa McAbee and 2-year-old son John, Cory essentially follows them around Brooklyn and New York at their eye-level, getting down low and re-introducing us to the world of wonder that exists when almost everyone is taller than you. He stays tight on his children with macroscopic persistence, and that perspective alone is almost as transformative as a full lighting, grip and sound package. Fortunately, McAbee knows to keep it brief but this simple cinematic experiment has something that studios and marketing departments will spend hundred of millions trying to manufacture and still miss entirely: a sense of wonder.

Of course, the craft of filmmaking still has a magic of its own when done right and perhaps my favorite film at LAFF so far was Paperman the short that preceded Crazy and Thief. First time director John Kahrs merged computer 3D with hand-drawn black-and-white animation to tell a simple but beautiful story of a young office drone who has a fortuitous encounter with a beautiful young woman on his morning commute to work. If the two looked surprisingly like Disney characters that's because Kahrs, and the film are a product of Disney Animation (with the guiding hand of John Lasseter back there somewhere) and the short will run in front of Wreck-It Ralph later this summer.

It's simple, beautiful, elegant and magical, a throwback and a painful reminder of the days when studios used to be magic factories, instead of just factories. But the fact that super-corporate, John Carter-bombing Disney can still produce work like this, albeit on the smallest of scales, gives me hope that even in the most corporate of crevices lie cinematic revolutionaries ready to blow the whole thing apart from the inside.

If Alan Horn wants to make his mark on that studio, he'd be wise to take a sweep around the animation floor and look for the next-big-thing right under his own nose. After all, that's where John Lasseter was hiding.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1601253 2012-06-15T17:22:05-04:00 2012-08-15T05:12:05-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ To Rome With Love. The maestro himself was in attendance downtown, a rare treat for our vast freeway-girded metropolis whose contribution to world culture Allen so famously limited to traffic rules in Annie Hall. (Then again, if the great one drove more, maybe he could appreciate just how soulfully wonderful it is to turn right on a red light.) Perhaps this brief jaunt will fill Allen with an appreciation for how the City of Angels has grown since he last languished out here in his youth, though I doubt an evening at L.A. Live would turn his head. Sadly, I think Allen's more likely to rhapsodize Ljublana's alt rock scene before he sends L.A. any filmic-love letter -- or even a flirtatious YouTube-text. So, for all those cineastes desperate to see how Woody's nihilist humor meshes with Mediterranean climes, To Rome With Love may be as good as it gets.

Your first instinct, especially after the film's now-expected tourist photo-montage of the Eternal City, might be to compare it to Midnight in Paris. It is, after all, Woody's greatest commercial success and a worthy addition to his canon, with Owen Wilson's beaujolais-soaked bonhomie gently modulating Allen's tannic cynicism to give a full-bodied, well-themed glass of intelligent, escapist fare. (Sorry, I'm drinking as I write this.) However, To Rome With Love is an entirely different creature all together: a farcical, free-spirited omnibus in the tradition of De Sica's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and Boccaccio's Decameron. And as such, it comes served as a round of absurdest antipasti that don't so much intertwine as break each other up in a jazzy, free form movie appetizer.

A pretty young American (Alison Pill) comes to Rome and immediately falls for the prototypical well-dressed Italian stud, prompting a sudden engagement that drags her failed avant garde opera impresario father (Allen himself) and mother (Judy Davis) kvetching and moaning to meet the in-laws. Yet, lo and behold, neurotic Daddy discovers that his daughter's new undertake father-in-law has a magical voice -- one he can only access within the safe confines of his shower. Still, Allen's not about to let this small technicality impinge on his hopes for a career revival. Across the Tiber, in trendy Trastavere, an aged, successful architect (Alec Baldwin) reminisces about his youth in Rome and meets a young admirer, Jesse Eisenberg, who's also a budding architect and a sort of twitchy proto-Frank Gehry. Eisenberg invites the rakish Baldwin back to his place to meet his girlfriend, Greta Gerwig, just as her loose-canon best friend, a floundering actress (Ellen Page) with a penchant for needy seduction, comes to crash with them. Baldwin then acts as a knowing Greek Chorus to star-crossed lovers as the inevitable -- and mutually delusional -- triangle begins to coalesce with Page and Eisenberg name-dropping great poets and cooking, very, very poorly.

However, this time Allen doesn't content himself with Americans at play abroad. He also includes two Roman vignettes: one of a young, idealistic couple from the country (Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi) who arrive in Rome to start new lives as part of the Roman upper class. However, fate (or more accurately Woody Allen's typewriter) separates them and tests their doe-eyed love: for him, that test takes the form of a busty Penelope Cruz as a prostitute sent to the wrong room; for her, fate incarnates as her favorite movie star (Antonio Albanese), who she meets while he's filming, then quickly finds herself accepting a less-than-innocent invitation to lunch. Lastly, and most ingeniously, Allen follows the fate of an average middle class man played by the aging, yet still comically elastic Robert Benigni, who wakes up to find himself famous for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Every aspect of his daily life is dissected, digested and regurgitated on TV and in the papers, against his initially vehement protestations. Of course, while he bemoans his random loss of privacy, he also finds himself enjoying the endless premiere invites and having Italy's leading ladies throw themselves shamelessly at him.

It's par for the course to give Allen wide latitude in your expectations. He's certainly earned it. Catching the latest Woody Allen film is like opening a party favor bag: you're as likely to get a bonafide masterly success as a light confection for loyal fans, a noble failure with redeeming qualities, or a "What the hell was that?" disappointment. And frankly, after nailing an ace with Midnight in Paris, you're almost holding your breath lest he hit the ball boy with his next serve. It's just bound to happen, statistically. So, as To Rome With Love struggled to get going, I was actively lowering my expectations, if not to The Curse of The Jade Scorpion or Anything Else levels, maybe to A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy or You Will Meet A Tall, Dark Handsome Stranger territory. Basically, I thought "Woody must have wanted to get a crack at those new Italian filming tax incentives before the euro crashed." However, once certain vignettes started showing some momentum, I found myself going along for the ride; the best part of an omnibus film is you don't have to damn the whole enterprise with faint praise if parts of it don't work as well as others. Considering Alec Baldwin's reliable comic genius on 30 Rock, his relegation to background commentary narrating the Eisenberg-Page-Gerwig affair felt like a lost opportunity -- as was Page's perplexing turn as the kind of messed up girl whose confusion is as frustrating as it is titillating. It felt like Gerwig's lazy-eyed hipster sensuality would've been the better fit, and as I watched Jesse try to swap Greta for Ellen, I found myself re-imagining the piece with Woody swapping Page for Gerwig. Nonetheless, the wisdom of Woody's wry observations rang through and eventually hit my funny bone. The mirroring Roman story of the other fractured couple, Alessandro Tiberi and Alessandra Mastronardi, also felt a little like pasta served al dente -- an acquired taste for undercooking. But who can complain about getting to watch Penelope Cruz traipse around in a hot-red mini half the time; and Mastronardi's part of the story finished with a nice comic flourish.

Unexpectedly, the more bizarre vignettes tickled me the most. The showering opera singer section also started slow, then built to a glass-shattering finish when the obligatory relationship humor of "meeting the folks" took a sharp left into the rich Italian tradition of farce. I know I'm battling disbelief from those who found Life Is Beautiful's heart-warming take on the holocaust nauseatingly sweet, but Roberto Benigni steals the show. Really, there's nothing much to his story -- it's satirical commentary more than anything else. Then again, Begnini works best with the bare outlines of a plot in films like Johnny Stecchino and The Monster that allow him to distort his pliable innocence into overwhelmed masks of comic confusion. You can feel Allen's distaste for the existential absurdity of fame rooting the satire, but Begnini brings a clownish humanity to a section that's more idea than story. The alchemy of Allen and Begnini produces a puff-pastry of Pirandello-esque dimensions that makes it far more enjoyable and amusing than you might expect. Allen's writing is transfigured by Begnini's gestures and reactions, a buffoonery that belies the Italian's delicate mastery of comedic ballet. You can write this stuff, but it takes someone like Begnini to pull it off. After all, as I'm sure Charlie Chaplin would agree: clowning is serious business. Overall, To Rome With Love might not be an elegant grand masterpiece fit for a night at the opera, but it is an amusing bit of commedia dell'arte, a reliably fun street show you can stop to watch on your walk home while you digest your dinner.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1593855 2012-06-13T17:21:25-04:00 2012-08-13T05:12:05-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ Mad Men and Game of Thrones over, interesting entertainment options are about as rare as Don Draper at an AA meeting. You can only re-watch The Avengers and Prometheus so many times until The Dark Knight Rises, and after the American Cinematheque's Fassbinder retrospective is over, your indie-cred tooth may still be yearning for some intellectual sugar. Fortunately, the Los Angeles Film Festival kicks off this week downtown with an eclectic slate of alternative stimulation. In fact, LAFF may be the perfect casual way to inaugurate lazy summer -- start off surveying the downtown skyline with a cocktail at Perch and then amble over to L.A. Live when you're sufficiently soused to appreciate Woody Allen's Boccaccio-esque vignettes of wry nihilism in To Rome With Love, which opens the festival tomorrow.

Run by Film Independent, the LAFF has a more chill, familial air than Sundance -- and unlike Sundance, you can usually get tickets. In fact, LAFF is a great place to check out those noteworthy Sundance titles that have trickled down from Robert Redford's Mt. Olympus, if you didn't make it to Park City for the first go (or made it but missed'em thanks to Park City's faith-in-God-testing shuttle system). This year, the big post-Sundance catch is Beasts of the Southern Wild, which arrives after winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and playing in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. If you haven't seen its firework-filled, Malik-miming feel-good trailer showcasing the world's most adorable orphan careening around a post-flood city (read: New Orleans) the word is that Beasts is so magically real, you'll need to read three Edith Wharton novels just to recover your sense of cynicism. Other Sundance second-chances include The Queen of Versailles, a housing-bust-era documentary that made waves in Park City for its tale of lives lost in the real estate bubble; Celeste and Jesse Forever with the incomparably lovely Rashida Jones; and Robot and Frank, an off-beat buddy comedy with Frank Langella and, well, a robot. After twice being thwarted by Sundance's shuttle system, I'm most excited to see Robot and Frank, because it apparently boasts the most powerfully sarcastic relationship between a man and his appliance since Steve Jobs gave us Siri.

Of course, LAFF is its own festival with its own selections and everything! And since it lacks the surfeit of hype and glamour that can overwhelm the filmmaking in Park City, downtown L.A. may, ironically, be a more likely place to have the kind of casual encounter with personal filmmaking that's at the core of the festival experience. For example, although I have yet to see David Fenster's Trona, apparently he is the keeper of the Wim Wenders/Jim Jarmusch flame. So, I'm putting his follow-up feature Pincus on my LAFF playlist besides Dead Man's Burden and Crazy and Thief (the latter, an LAFF friend assures me, rivals Beasts for its nostalgia-inducing lost and wondrous child POV). On the lower-fi segment of the spectrum, you often also have the most heart, and Breakfast With Curtis, turns out to be one of those surprises. Honestly, nothing can make my eyes glaze over faster than the words, "meandering, plot-less, coming-of-age story." However, if you give yourself a beat to adjust to its DIY aesthetic, Curtis and its cast of backyard hippie burn-outs redeem that cliché with a mellowed-out, jazzy free-form riff of eccentricity that is the perfect thing to stumble on after a handful of brunch-time Bloody Marys when you're in need of a cool place to wait out the mid-day heat. Documentary-wise, LAFF also has some interesting gems: The Iran Job follows an almost-made-it basketball player who picks up a contract to play in Iran's Super League. The film satisfied both my inner geopolitics geek with its inside look at Iran in the lead-up to the Green Revolution, as well scratched my Hoop Dreams itch with its inspiring sports story. Also of note and worth checking out, according to friends, is the rockumentary A Band Called Death, which follows punk band Death (if you're in need of a Sid-and-Nancy fix); as well as, Vampira and Me, about the local late-night horror host legend who inspired Elvira and plenty of lonely-midnight nerd fantasies.

You might have a hard time scoring a ticket to the gala Seeking a Friend For the End of The World, or the closer Magic Mike now that Channing Tatum has proven his comedy chops in the funniest movie of the year so far, 21 Jump Street, but those are getting their wide-release soon enough, and LAFF has plenty of other events: after parties, panels, discussions, Q&As and yes, free screenings. Now free outdoor screenings usually fall on the category of solar panels and sock-drawer organizing: great idea, but who's going to take the time? However, between the Academy's new open air screening venue, and the Hollywood Forever movie schedule, outdoor movies are having a heyday in L.A.; to boot, the plaza at 7th and Figueroa is screening gratis two films that I would gladly pay (and have paid) to see on the big screen again: E.T. and The Wrath of Khan. Michael Fassbender notwithstanding, Prometheus kind of fizzled when it came to "screams in space that no one can hear" -- but there is one scream in space that I love hearing every time, and that's William Shatner's gloriously hamfisted crie-de-coeur: Khaaaannnn! Chase that with a shot of tequila and Ricardo Montalban quoting Moby Dick and I'm all set cinematically for the next 10 days.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1522867 2012-05-17T09:24:17-04:00 2012-07-17T05:12:20-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ Moonrise Kingdom reviews. Yes, Cannes is the unapologetic cine-snob's heaven: and 2012's line-up could fill a solid year of art house cocktail banter. Let the plebeians titter over that teaser at the end of The Avengers -- we have cinema to discuss! (Then again, since The Artist conquered the Oscars, pundits wonder which Cannes confection might splash over from the private penthouse jacuzzi into the Olympic-sized swimming pool of the masses. Is this the year tween girls go gaga over Ken Loach? Eh, probably not). Needless to say, Cannes' megaton line-up has arched the eyebrow of even the most indifferent cineastes this year; so join me as I peruse the list of films I really hope Harvey Weinstein brings back to America, and imagine the thrill of paying twenty Euros for a glass of table wine. In return, I shall share my weekend strategies for recreating all the magically elitist indifference of Cannes right here in homey L.A.

First off there is Wes Anderson's latest entry into his canon of postcard precious cinema: Moonrise Kingdom. It's no surprise to see Wes open Cannes at last; Anderson's films have always been lacquered with a European sheen tailor-made for those weaned on the Criterion collection. According to the reviews pouring in, this summer camp Romeo and Juliet story will renew the faith of all who adore his meticulous dollhouse mise-en-scene and its powers of youthful-wonder-rekindling. (You know, when maps were paper talismans of adventure and not an app that drains your iPhone's battery prematurely). It probably doesn't hurt that he's surrounded his young lovers with an all-purpose Swiss army knife of a supporting cast: intense Ed Norton, sangfroid-filled Bill Murray, arthouse bread-and-butter Tilda Swinton, and Bruce Willis, if you can even conceive it, as a milquetoast. The chance to see a John McClane dead-pan delivering Anderson lines alone is enough to set my heart aflutter.

However, that's just the start of the anticipatory heart murmurs. For all those entranced by (i.e. didn't fall asleep during) Andrew Dominik's megaton-arthouse western The Assassination of Jesse James, the rumors are the Australian auteur's Killing Them Softly (also starring Brad Pitt) is just as lush a cinematographic poem. It's a re-adaptation of George Higgin's famous Boston crime-novel The Friends Of Eddie Coyle (previously adapted into a Robert Mitchum cult-classic), and considering how Dominik transformed outlaw grit into a lyric elegy before, I wouldn't be surprised if Cannes' cantankerous crowd swoons over his contemporary take on American gangsters. I smell Palmes-winning possibilities -- though blogger love for Dominik's countryman John Hillcoat makes me curious about Lawless as well. Adapted from crime history hit The Wettest County in the World, it's another foreigner's examination of the American crime scene, i.e. Depression-era backwoods bootlegging. Hillcoat's proved his own cinematic chops with the visual style of The Proposition and he might wow the French if Shia La Beouf can prove to cinesnobs he's more than just that fast-talking, slightly annoying kid from the Transformers commercials. I mean, movies. Robert Pattinson's in the same boat, but guided by the fairly good hands, with David Cronenberg's adaptation of Don Delillo's intellectual screed (novel) Cosmopolis. The trailer combined the soft-core titillation of Red Shoe Diaries with the neon-lighting of a Tron cut scene, which could mean Cronenberg's backsliding to his more lurid ways after the comparative tameness of A Dangerous Method. Lastly, finishing off Cannes' Americana-fetish is a film that's gestated so long, it was born with an AARP card: Walter Salles' adaptation of On the Road, Jack Kerouac's generation-defining novel. Rumors have been that it's a little bit of a shaggy-dog-story of a movie, but if that's your complaint, I advise you to re-read On the Road. Honestly, fishing a coherent film out of Kerouac's river-of-consciousness that could live up to the book's iconic status would be a miracle. Frankly, Salles deserves a medal just for getting this one over the finish line.

Of course, to demonstrate your truly rarified taste, one should drop more than just the familiar American names when you talk Cannes. Abbas Kiarostami, godfather of Iranian cinema, is back with Tokyo-set Like Someone In Love. Considering how well Kiarostami's observant eye and intellectual playfulness transplanted themselves to European soil in Certified Copy, I'm more than excited the possibility of him channeling the spirit of Ozu or Imamura. Of course, he'd be following in the cultural transplantation footsteps of Alain Resnais (man behind the New Wave masterpiece that's still stuck in my Netflix queue Hiroshima Mon Amour), who at a spry 89, also has a film in the festival: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. In fact, octogenarians are having a banner year in the South of France: the austere Austrian Michael Haneke has also directed French eighty-something legend Jean-Louis Trintignant in Amour, about a couple in their 80s whose "love is tested." Since this is the director who delights in torturing his audience (see Funny Games), "tested" might be a dangerous understatement. On the up-and-coming side of the spectrum there's Matteo Garrone, who made a splash with his Neapolitan crime epic Gomorrah is back with Reality--on an equally horrifying topic, reality television. And of course, Cristian Mungiu, who won the Palmes for his excruciating abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is back with Beyond the Hills. However, the Euro-fare I'm most excited for is Rust and Bone by Jacques Audiard. Take one part brilliant director of A Prophet and The Beat That My Heart Skipped, fold in luminous beauty Marion Cotillard and garnish liberally with Killer Whale and you have possibly the perfect cine-souffle.

Anyway, all this longing can be tiring, and reading reviews from across the Atlantic doesn't exactly sate the appetite. However, for those of us without immediate yacht access, it is possible to play Cannes: The Home Game, at least in the greater LA area. For the truly dedicated, Sunday night you can line up along Wilshire Blvd. for standby-tickets to LACMA's special screening of Moonrise Kingdom -- I recommend cocktails at the Stark Bar first, and if you squeeze your eyes hard enough, the tar pits might come to resemble the Mediterranean. Or you could check out the Bresson retrospective at the Aero in Santa Monica all this weekend and try to replicate the crowded, elbow-room only bars at the Carlton or the Majestic by squeezing into Father's office for a burger and a beaujolais. However, for those who want a more tangible (and attainable) whiff of the Cannes glamour, check out Polisse, which opens this Friday, winner of last year's Special Jury prize. French actress-turned-director Maiwenn takes a docu-drama approach in following the lives of several cops in Paris' child protection unit, demonstrating how the pressures of protecting the wee-ones from pedophiles can wreak havoc on one's personal life. The acting's impressive and the cop patois feels so authentically French, you can practically taste the ennui. Just don't expect Maiwenn to pull any punches when it comes to the sex-crimes, silly prudish American. Art isn't there to make you feel good; it's there for you to argue endlessly about over a half-stale glass of wine and a smoldering ash tray.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1300541 2012-02-24T19:19:54-05:00 2012-04-25T05:12:01-04:00

John Lopez http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lopez/ The Artist shockingly poised to sweep the Oscars thanks to Harvey Weinstein's dark arts, good luck finding a decent bottle of champagne. There haven't been this many spontaneous exclamations of jubilation in French heard around Los Angeles since D-Day.

I for one will be riding with the Gallic tide when I phone in my picks to the bookie. Like pretty much every other Oscar "expert" out there -- i.e. I argue with friends over whiskey about who deserved best picture more, Sunset Blvd. or All About Eve (exciting, I know!) -- I fully expect The Artist to take Best Picture, Best Director and Best Editing. (Best Cinematography will go to Emanuel Lubezki for figuring out how to light Creation in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, working title: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Everything But We're Too Existentially Overwhelmed to Ask). Hazanavicius certainly deserves the Directing and Editing awards for a film whose excellence was almost fully predicated on the precision and perfection of its execution. The magic of the The Artist is how it manages to capture the marvelous lost beauty of silent films in a modern package that contemporary audiences can embrace. And Jean Dujardin, he of the ridiculously strong jaw (I bet his chin alone can bench 250), stands a chance of claiming best actor. Though, here, I think is where the surprises will lie. George Clooney could well take it -- but I'd actually put my moneyball on Brad Pitt: the Greek God of Hollywood is way overdue and his performance as Billy Beane is remarkable, even to the Academy's not-quite-in-touch electorate. The only thing you can fault him for is making it look too effortless. Also, the battle of the octogenarians in the Supporting Actor category could offer some surprises if Max Von Sydow can top Christopher Plummer. I say let them wrestle for it -- it'll be an instant Oscar moment worthy of the late, great Jack Palance, and Billy Crystal will score a joke or two off that. Otherwise, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer have Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress all but locked up. Any of the other non-black-and-white Oscar contenders should be happy with the "consolation categories." (Sorry, Best Make-Up!). For those of you out there with an obsessive compulsive addiction to know the thoughts of every Oscar blogger on the internet, my picks are at the bottom.

But let's be honest, for every nominee who bursts into tears onstage, offstage there's four more gritting their teeth into fine enamel-dust and repeating "It's an honor just to be nominated" while hatching plots to leak sex tapes of the winner to TMZ. Or if you want to elevate sour grapes to a science, you can keep in mind that for all the glamour and grief, the schadenfreude and self-celebration, the Oscars aren't exactly the best indicator of what stands the test of time. Maybe it's a function of the fact that, as the L.A. Times so devilishly pointed out this week, the Academy is so ridiculously old, white and male, it makes the cast of Downton Abbey look like the extras pool for Roots. Sure, everyone whines about the Oscars' irrelevance, but I have neat little rule-of-thumb test to make it painfully clear -- and help soothe the battered psyches of those who don't win Sunday night. Which of these paired films would you put higher on your Netflix queue -- and which of them won Best Picture that year? Take a spin, consult a film nerd and I bet you will need a bare minimum of Googling to answer the second part of that question.

Grand Illusion or You Can't Take It With You
Citizen Kane or How Green Was My Valley
The Magnificent Ambersons or Mrs. Miniver
Double Indemnity or Going My Way
It's A Wonderful Life or The Best Years of Our Lives
High Noon or The Greatest Show On Earth
The Ten Commandments, Giant or Around the World in 80 Days
The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde or In the Heat of the Night
MASH or Patton
Apocalypse Now or Kramer vs. Kramer
Raging Bull or Ordinary People
E.T.,Tootsie or Gandhi
Goodfellas or Dances With Wolves
The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction or Forrest Gump
Fargo, Jerry Maguire or The English Patient
Saving Private Ryan or Shakespeare in Love
The Lord of the Rings or A Beautiful Mind
Brokeback Mountain or Crash
There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men

**For the record, considering the sad state of cinema that was 2011, I predict The Artist will be eminently Netflix-able for years to come. Of course, we'll find out--one day.

And my Oscar Picks are:
Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing: The Artist
Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, The Tree of Life
Best Actor: Brad Pitt, Moneyball
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, The Beginners
Best Actress: Viola Davis, The Help
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help
Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, The Descendents
Best Documentary: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Best Foreign Film: A Separation
Best Animated Film: Rango
Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Music, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing: Hugo
Best Make-Up: The Iron Lady
Best Song: "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets
Best Visual Effects: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Best Short Doc: The Tsunami and The Cherry Blossom
Best Animated Short: La Luna
Best Live-Action Short: The Shore -- aw, heck let's be crazy and say the one about the guy with the Tuba: Tuba Atlantic.]]>