Spike Jonze previews tantalizing virtual romance with 'Her'

"Why are you so lazy?" Meek's Cutoff director Kelly Reichardt jokingly asked filmmaker Spike Jonze after a dazzling montage of his music-video and feature-film work opened a Q&A session at the

TIFF Bell Lightbox Sunday afternoon at the Toronto Film Festival. Reichardt, who sheepishly confessed to being capable of doing only one thing at a time, was clearly in awe of Jonze's energetic, inventive approach to his craft, which encompasses landmark videos for the likes of Bjork, Beastie Boys and Weezer and such mind-bending movies as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are.

The event was designed to pique interest in Jonze's new film, Her, and the sequences presented by the director more than accomplished that goal. Written by Jonze very much in the mode of his former collaborator Charlie Kaufman, Her is a satire of our increasing disconnectivity with real human interaction thanks to all the modern electronic devices that command our attention. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore, a "creative writer" at a company that composes poignant audio-letters for those too busy or lacking in confidence to pour out their hearts on their own.


When Theodore brings home a new computer with a virtual personal assistant (think Apple's Siri with unlimited terrabytes of personality), he's amazed by how natural, responsive and utterly disarming she is. Voiced by Scarlett Johansson, she calls herself Samantha (after a microsecond scan of a book of names) and is the perfect companion. Soon, she and Theodore are having an affair...of sorts.

As in Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, Jonze takes an outlandish situation and treats it in a wry, low-key manner that gives the surreal a patina of realism; the believable character interactions and the avoidance of rib-poking make the comic conceits more droll. I can't wait to see the finished film when it debuts as the closing-night attraction at the New York Film Festival.

Jonze and Reichardt, who are clearly good friends and mutual admirers, indulged in some good-natured joshing, especially when Jonze praised the "feminine" qualities of his new (male) cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema and Reichardt grilled him on whether that was a compliment or condescension. When an audience member wondered whether Jonze was seeing signs of his influence among newer filmmakers, Reichardt observed, "I think he just called you old."

In all, Jonze came across as humble and the kind of filmmaker who encourages play on his sets. "I work with people I'm close to," he said, "and I like to try out my ideas on my friends." His method on his Beastie Boys videos, for instance, was simply a matter of "cracking ourselves up" and turning those antics into MTV staples. His friend and fellow music-video pioneer Michel Gondry was a big influence; although Gondry was constantly experimenting with visual effects, his videos always had their own unique personality.

Jonze has been in the editing room for 14 months with Her, and the final version is yet to be locked. The editing process is when he "finds" the movie. For him, the message of Her and what it says about man and machine is still being crystallized. "It's about the way we connect, the way we long to connect." And though it's certainly about "how quickly technology has changed our lives," to his mind "it's always been a relationship movie."

'Riddick' poised to overtake box office

Post-Labor Day, kids are returning to school and the deliciousness of popping into an icy, air-conditioned theatre during the summer has dissipated. September is often a dead period at the box office, but this year there appear to be more appealing options than usual, both on the genre end (Insidious: Chapter 2) and movies with a sheen of quality--and maybe even awards seekers (Rush). This weekend, there's just one wide release, Riddick (3,107 theatres).

Given that Riddick is the third film in an action-dominated series by Vin Diesel, who isn't exactly a critical darling, and the previous installment was a box-office flop, it says something that the Tomatometer currently stands at 58%--for a movie like this, it's practically a big thumbs up. Performance-wise, Riddick should benefit from being a fresh offering in a wide-open space. Less competition will also help returning films, which should expect smaller-than-average decreases. In particular, The Butler should hold strong. Pantelion's Spanish-language hit from last week, Instructions Not Included, is doubling the number of locations in release, upping the screen count to 717. The sweet family-centered comedy should do at least as well as last week, when it surprised the industry by debuting to $10.3 million.

With just one wide release, almost two dozen indies crowded into the seemingly vacant release slate. The largest of them is The Ultimate Life (412 theatres), a faith-based movie that could cross $1 million. For those interested in seeing a bit of sinning, there's A Teacher, a nail-biting, performance-focused indie about the illicit relationship between a teacher and her student. Bibliophiles can buy a ticket to Salinger (4 theatres), a documentary about the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye. For wannabe oenophiles curious about the wine market (the surprise is that Chinese have priced everyone out of the best French wine), there's Red Obsession. Or learn about recent activism with 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film. Then there's the frothy (but disappointing,) Populaire, a 50s-set French romantic comedy about a competitive typist. With such a crowded market of indies, it will be interesting to see which ones can turn out theatrical audiences, and which ones will quickly scurry (if they aren't there already) to VOD.

On Monday, we'll see if Riddick indeed tops the box office, and where the rest of the field ends up.

Pre-Toronto, hype builds for 'Gravity' and James Cameron gives his endorsement

For those that have been following the Venice and Telluride film festivals, there's one movie that keeps being talked about: Gravity. Our contributor Tomris Laffly named it in her festival top two. Now, leading up to its next appearance at the Toronto Film Festival, the buzz is approaching an onslaught. Variety just released an article going into deep detail about how writer/director Alfonso
Cuaron conquered the incredible technical challenges of making the film---so much so, the movie took 4 1/2 years to make, in part because of the technology needed to film realistic, weightless scenes in space, and needed to do so using his trademark long takes. I try not to get too excited about films that get this much early hype, but in this case, it's hard not to get worked up for this feature. Nearly everything Variety says sounds like Gravity is chock-full of Oscar nominations.

On Sandra Bullock, who already looks like a Best Actress contender:

"Because it was laborious to get in and out of her rig, Bullock chose to
stay inside the light box alone for nine or 10 hours at a time,
communicating only through a headset. Though she calls those hours
isolating and silent, she adds, 'It also gave me the opportunity to dig
as deeply as I needed to for whatever was required, in privacy. … To me
it felt as though there was nothing but the thoughts in my head to give
me company.'"

On just one of the lighting challenges faced by Cuaron's cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, a five-time Oscar nominee--I'm pretty sure that alone makes him a shoo-on for the statuette:

"Lubezki suggested folding an LED screen into a box, putting the actor
inside, and using the light from the screen to light the actor. That
way, instead of moving either Bullock or Clooney in the middle of static
lights, the projected image could move while they stayed still and
safe."

And there's the endorsement of the film (and by extension, writer/director Cuaron) by one of the most technically precise filmmakers out there, James Cameron:

“'What is interesting is the human dimension,' Cameron says. 'Alfonso and Sandra working together to create an absolutely seamless portrayal of a woman fighting for her life in zero gravity.'"

For those eager to get past the September slump and catch some Oscar-worthy films, they're in luck: Gravity will be one of the first awards frontrunners to release, coming out on October 4.

Telluride on Labor Day: Salinger, and playing catch-up with TBAs

The town of Telluride
empties considerably on Labor Day Monday, even though the screenings continue,
and the festival’s final event –The Labor Day Picnic- takes place then. Many
film industry people (and to my surprise, many regular festival goers) take off
and head back to the real world outside of this surreal-looking mountain town.
But Monday is actually a perfect day to play catch-up with some of the films
you have heard people talk about throughout the festival, but not had a chance
to fit in your schedule until then. 

Navigating the Telluride program is incredibly tricky. As you get closer to the end point, the number of TBAs noted in the festival booklet grows, and Monday ends up being a day that is entirely made up of TBAs. That said, you can’t plan in advance and determine what you’re seeing each day and trust that you’ll have checked off all your priorities from your list of must-sees when the festival comes to a close. The festival announces all the TBAs the night before. Therefore, you pretty much have to wait until the last minute on any given day to decide on an optimal screening schedule for the next day. Complaining about how many of your “must-sees” are clashing or omitted (e.g., if I had only known they were/weren’t going to screen such and such) is a big part of the fun, as I quickly discovered. And I chipped in with my fair share of complaining.

As soon as Monday’s TBAs were announced late Sunday night, I knew what my schedule was going to be. The 9am sneak screening of Shane Salerno’s Salinger, despite the fact that it’s hitting theatres in just a few days on September 6 via Weinstein Co distribution, was a must-see in its first-ever public screening. John Curran’s Tracks, which screened in Venice and Telluride earlier in the week and got acquired by The Weinstein Co, was also going to be a priority. And the final film was going to be J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost, simply because that was the only film (among the ones I hadn’t yet seen) that logically fit my schedule. It’s worth mentioning here that some exceptions aside, I consciously tried to distance myself from many Cannes-hailers that are headed to the 51st New York Film Festival, thinking, if one traveled all that distance, one should try to make a schedule unique to Telluride as much as possible. That said, I purposefully skipped the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska and Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is The Warmest Color (which won the Palme D’or) and saved them for New York.

As expected, the 9am screening of Salinger was packed with a curious crowd. I joined the priority patron line in order to guarantee my seat, and spotted Indiewire’s Eric Kohn, Thompson on Hollywood’s Anne Thompson, The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg, my friend, Awards Daily’s Sasha Stone (whom I caught most of the sneaks with) and Michael Moore. A side note here: Members of the attending press are given four patron tickets each to be used at any screening of their choice. We were all promised a “reveal” at the end of Salinger (which took Twitter by a snark storm just a few weeks ago), and in Telluride, it is important to be one of the first few to discover a secret. Hence, that was going to be a patron ticket, well spent. 

Post-Screening Q&A, moderated by Ken Burns

Salinger did not disappoint as a documentary. Based on the titular book by Shane Salerno and David Shields, which is derived from nearly 200 interviews (and being cross-promoted alongside the film), Salinger meticulously chronicles the life of this legendary, mysterious, larger-than-life and personally unlikeable writer. Witnessing his struggles as a writer who constantly got rejected by The New Yorker in his early career, his relationships with very young and bright women, and his eventual choice to isolate himself from the public, I couldn’t help but think of Howard Hughes (who is also mentioned as a frame of reference in the film), but mostly, Citizen Kane’s unlikeable but ultimately vulnerable Charles Foster Kane. By the end of it, I thought –just for a hot second- that I had just been handed out a piece of the Rosebud sled that ought to have been burnt, and that only I knew about it. In reality, however (and trust me, this is not a spoiler – the news is all over the Internet), the reveal ended up being an announcement of Salinger’s completed but unpublished works, slated to be published between 2015-2020. Some appear very striking. Many will be looking forward to owning all of them. It is useful to put the reveals aside for a second, and think about Salinger purely from a filmmaking standpoint. A perfect blend of archival footage and landmark interviews, Salinger has a convincing and immersive structure that makes you believe in and respect the amount of labor put into the project. It is largely engaging and entertaining. The only hiccup (and a big reason why I can’t give full points to it) is the musical bombast in the end that is completely overbearing and unnecessary (think of the music in Christopher Nolan movies –like Inception and The Dark Knight Rises, and imagine how self-important that would come across in a documentary.) Once the film ended, Sasha and I exchanged thoughts while also tweeting about the film and taking notes during the post-screening Q&A (moderated by Ken Burns). Then she pointed out a woman in the second row who looked like the writer Joyce Maynard (whose relationship with Salinger is one of the long subjects of the film). I briefly thought to myself how ironic it was that Maynard somehow bookended this year’s festival: Reitman’s Labor Day (which I saw on the first day of the festival) is adapted from her book of the same title, and there we were, on Labor Day, discussing a story which she was a big part of. Sasha was quick to notice that Maynard (who saw the film for the first time that day) left the theatre in tears before the Q&A even ended. When we stepped outside, we spotted Anne Thompson –being the great journalist she is- doing an impromptu interview with Maynard, who is apparently “angry that the film does not come down hard enough on Salinger as a serial predator of young girls.” I strongly urge you to read Anne Thompson’s piece here.

Following Salinger, I decided to head to my condo to catch up on some writing, and consequently, I skipped the Labor Day Picnic. Then I caught John Curran’s Tracks as I planned, with Curran and the star Mia Wasikowska in attendance. Adapted from the true story of Robyn Davidson's 1977 journey through the Australian desert towards the Indian Ocean, the existentialist Tracks failed to impress by not reaching its full emotional potential. It’s slow-moving, somewhat cold, and makes you wish it somehow realized the true power of the real story it is adapted from. Made watchable mostly by Mia Wasikowska’s elegant performance, Tracks deserves some attention by being a rare film about an empowered and independent female character who is not defined by her romantic attachments, yet it unfortunately doesn’t go much further than that.

After finally seeing J.C. Chandor’s brilliant All Is Lost (one of the exceptions I made to my Cannes-hailer-headed-to-NY rule) in which Robert Redford tries to survive in the harshest, most unforgiving of conditions and delivers an incredibly nuanced performance (the Oscar buzz you’ve been hearing is much deserved), I called it a festival and headed back to my condo, with a strange sadness that immediately washed over me. Telluride was officially over, and realized I was already looking forward to its next edition.

Thankfully, there were still some friends in town to help ease my gloomy mood. On my final night at the Rockies, I met with my friends Kris Tapley (of HitFix/In Contention) and his lovely wife April. We grabbed drinks, discussed our favorites/disappointments of the festival, and then decided to take the gondola to the top of the mountain one final time in order to do some stargazing. And what a great idea that was.
Too bad the festival directors are adamant about going back to their usual four days in 2014. As a first-timer, it’s impossible for me to imagine this festival a day shorter. With many experiences I couldn’t have fit in even with the extra day (such as the filmmaker tributes and free screenings in the park), what would I subtract? I guess I will find out what one less day means next year. Until then, “To Hell You Ride."

'Butler' returns to win in mixed bag Labor Day weekend

During a quiet Labor Day weekend, The Butler made a splash, becoming the first 2013 release to stay at the top spot for three weekends in a row. The Civil Rights-movement drama starring Forest Whitaker and, of course, Oprah, earned $14.8 million from Friday to Sunday and $20 million

over the four-day period. Its Monday total was enough to push it ahead of One Direction: This Is Us, which earned $15 million over the normal weekend period, and $18 million through Monday. Concert movies have been popular ever since tween singer Miley Cyrus (you know, the star that performed at the VMAs last weekend) took the sleepy Super Bowl weekend by storm and opened Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour to $31 million. Since then, concert movies have been a bit hit-or-miss, with the Jonas Brothers completely bombing their debut, and Katy Perry not doing much better last year. But Sony was quick to point out that the One Direction movie cost just $10 million, making it an inexpensive win for the studio.

A Spanish-language underdog of a movie, Instructions Not Included, made it to fifth place over the long weekend with a total haul of $10 million. It marks the biggest hit yet for Pantelion Films,
the Lionsgate arm devoted to distributing films targeted at Hispanic audiences. The family-focused narrative, a mixture of comedy and heart, wowed audiences, who gave the movie an "A+" in exit polls. Popular Mexican comedian Eugenio Derbez plays a man who takes in his daughter after her birth mother abandons her, then fights to keep her when the mother shows up after they've formed a close bond. In release in just over 300 theatres, it had the best location average of the week, $28,000 per screen.

The car-set thriller Getaway lived up to its 2% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a four-day total of $5.5 million. Still, that was better than the thriller Closed Circuit, which earned $2.5 million over the weekend. Focus Features has used this time slot before for adult thrillers like The American and The Debt, but this opening was markedly worse than those two releases, coming in with just a fraction of the take of those movies' opening weekends.

While the long weekend was poor for new releases, other returning releases posted lower-than-average drops. Blue Jasmine, in its second weekend on over 1,000 screens, had a four-day total of $5.3 million, matching last week's performance day for day. The Grandmaster, which expanded onto over 700 screens, earned $3.1 million, an excellent showing for the martial arts feature.

This Friday will be a light in major releases, with only Riddick opening in over 2,000 theatres.

 

James Franco creates a stir at Venice Film Festival

FJI critic Jon Frosch continues his coverage of the Venice Film Festival, this time reporting on a Judi Dench tearjerker, James Franco-mania, a new-generation Coppola, and a drama about the JFK assassination.  Read his report for France 24 here.

 

40th Telluride Film Festival Weekend Recap: Gravity, Prisoners and other Sneaks...

The weekend in the Rockies was marked by an interesting
trend that has emerged in this year’s festival. If you are the kind of person
who keeps an eye on Twitter for film-related news and musings every now and
then, you would have noticed a number of folks already talking about All Is Lost (lost in sea) and Gravity (lost in space) in some kind of
a thematic togetherness. But the weekend over here has confirmed that this
thematic trend would continue to be the talk of this year’s cinematic stories
under the umbrella of “survival”. Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Eugene
Hernandez posted a very insightful piece about Telluride being marked by extreme
stories of survival, including not only Gravity
and All Is Lost under this theme, but
also (very rightfully so) 12 Years A
Slave (which I talked about in my previous Telluride dispatch). Over at The
New York Times, A. O. Scott similarly hinted towards the same trend (by calling All Is Lost "another movie about the fight for survival in a hostile environment.") So here
we are, slowly heading into the madness of the awards season, with survival in
mind. Seems ironically fitting.

So, what did I see over the weekend? My Saturday was marked by ‘dizzying tension’, as well as survival. Early Saturday morning (8:30
am, to be specific), I started my day with a sneak peek of Prisoners directed by Denis Villeneuve (Incendies), which was a competent if not slightly overwrought
procedural/thriller. While capably maintaining tension throughout, Villeneuve’s
film lost some blood due to a few issues in its script (written by Aaron
Guzikowski), reminding us that it is never good news when characters take
unconvincing steps and make senseless decisions as a convenient means of
furthering the plot. Still, there is a lot to like here. Tension, for one.
Melissa Leo, for two. And most importantly, Roger Deakins’ gorgeous photography
that makes the experience worthwhile. Prisoners
will hit the theaters in just a couple of weeks under a Warner Bros
distribution. You may choose to check it out, or perhaps re-watch a masterpiece
called Zodiac instead that an
ultimately Fincher-esque Prisoners
will inevitably make you think of.

After a brief stopover at the Elks Park to hear a free panel
moderated by Annette Insdorf (Moving Pictures: How is narrative shaped by
evolving visual strategies? What makes a story cinematic?), with the attendance
of Jason Reitman, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Asghar Farhadi; I continued
my Saturday with David Mackenzie’s excellent Starred Up, starring a jaw-dropping Jack O’Connell (whom you might
remember from This Is England and Harry Brown.) Depicting the corruption
within the British prison system through the story of a teenage criminal,
Mackenzie’s accomplishment lies in his unbending honesty and naturalism in
telling the story of another survival struggle. Starred Up is drawing a lot of comparisons to Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, and there is currently some
distribution buzz around it.

In the evening came this year’s hottest ticket, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity in 3D (and along with Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave, my favorite of this year’s festival). A dizzying, nauseating and heart-stopping space
adventure, Gravity is very much a tightly choreographed piece of
cinematic dazzle, completely free of excessive flashiness and overwrought
dialogues. For reasons you will understand as soon as you see it, many talk
about Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as a point of reference to this movie. But in
all honesty, it made me think of Ridley Scott’s Alien a lot more –
it was almost impossible to not recall Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney
Weaver) while watching Dr. Ryan Stone (played by a marvelous Sandra Bullock)
embracing all her intuitive instincts in order to survive in this masterpiece
that celebrates the classic adventure genre by slightly turning it over its
head. During the post-screening Q&A in front of an overexcited audience in
the Werner Herzog Theatre, writer/director Alfonso Cuarón (joined by his
co-writer and son Jonás Cuarón) said, “This film was a big act of
miscalculation. That's why it took four-and-a-half years to make.”, jokingly
addressing the challenges of pulling off an overambitious project such as this
one that deceptively looked easier to tackle at first.

Saturday was concluded with a laid-back (and surprisingly
under-attended) Fox Searchlight party over at the New Sheridan Bar. In addition
to prominent journalists and bloggers, the entire 12 Years A Slave team were in attendance (all but Brad Pitt). It
was the right way to end an epic day marked by Gravity; catching up with
friends over a few drinks, and watching the contenders Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong'o dance the night away.

The following day, I was able to fit in Ritesh Batra’s
heart-warming and old-fashioned love story/drama The Lunchbox, which is slated for distribution by Sony Classics. Charged
by humanistic performances by Irrfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur, this little film has
become a darling in the streets of Telluride, producing much enthusiastic word
of mouth. I continued my day with Yuval Adler’s Bethlehem – a powerful drama that navigates the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict through a Palestinian teenager’s troubling life. Following Bethlehem, I had an incredible 30-minute chat with The Past director Asghar Farhadi on his
latest movie and his cinema collectively. I can hardly wait to transcribe our conversation in which he offered generous insights about his narrative choices and cinematic aspirations.

Catching up with Twitter later on alerted
me about the three pieces of news that broke a little earlier that day. First
was The Weinstein Co acquisition of Tracks. The second was Hayao Miyazaki’s
retirement decision (which convinced me to catch his somber and beautiful The Wind Rises at Chuck Jones later that
night.) And the third was, the Weinstein Co Team bringing the Salinger documentary to Telluride
crash-landing in Telluride’s frightening regional airport. Thankfully, no
injuries were reported. Talk about a weekend being marked by stories of
survival...