With the arrival of this new R-rated promo-clip montage, it becomes obvious that Warner Independent is still trying to figure out what the fuck to do with Michael Haneke’s sure-to-be-unpleasant Funny Games remake.
And there’s a new, funny, red-band trailer for Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (I guess I missed the title change). I’m not sold on the George W. Bush impersonator but everything else about this looks wicked, dude.
Delirious director Tom DiCillo tells Roger Ebert, “I’m kind of struggling on my own to make sense of how a film I put my soul into, that Buscemi put his soul into, a film that generated such strong, positive reviews, had no life in the market.” And Ebert looks for the answers. What on earth is to become of the indie-film scene? Is HDNET a vision of the future?
I don’t know what Ridley Scott means when he says a (presumably archive-quality) “digital version” of Blade Runner “was fading,” but Tatiana Siegel has a story in Variety about the state of film preservation at the major studios. Turns out digital archives are not yet the answer, some bad decisions made during the 1970s are threatening the longevity of some films, and some studios are better than others when it comes to taking care of their fragile assets. Money quote? “One Paramount veteran compared the studio’s vault to a teenager’s chaotic bedroom. In fact, a visitor accidentally stepped on the negative of Rosemary’s Baby, which was unspooled on the floor.” Yow.
Frederick Wiseman’s famous documentaries, including the once-suppressed Titicut Follies, are now available for purchase by individuals on DVD. I saw State Legislature earlier this year, and the man still has the touch — at close to four hours, the film is inarguably tedious — banal, even — yet somehow compelling.
An entry in a Slate series on unenforced U.S. laws deals with pornography, and offers some insight into how Americans consume sex-related material, and why federal prosecutors, even under the Bush administration, aren’t pushing obscenity convictions on the Web and elsewhere. “Americans love zoning—compartmentalizing behavior to designated times or places. It’s how a diverse nation manages to live together. And so our obscenity system—much of which takes the legal form of an outright ban—is often in practice being used to move erotic content away from public places.”
It’s entirely possible that everyone who wants to see this has seen it already, but here’s Arcade Fire performing “Keep the Car Running” on stage with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in Canada. The best part may be the guy screaming in your ear, delirious with joy.
In a Similar Vein (related by tags)
Re: the Wiseman DVDs, I noticed the Zipporah Films site politely suggests that folks interested in renting them might want to pester Netflix about adding them to their library. I just did so myself. Not sure how much Netflix-hate there is around here, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to mention it.