Saw the all-media screening of Chicago tonight, with one of the most enthusiastic crowds I can remember. Lots of theater people in attendance — wild cheering after each of the musical numbers, loud applause for key cast and crew members during the end credits — at the Loews Astor Plaza, which is itself a cavernous movie theater built below Times Square, just off Broadway. Never thought I'd see a movie where a good portion of the crowd sat through the entire closing credit scroll, only to start whooping and hollering their appreciation again as the last bit of film left the projector.

Anyway. Though I was kind of rooting for it, the movie itself left me wholly unmoved. The director, Rob Marshall, is a choreographer whose credits include choreography and co-direction of the Broadway production of Cabaret (which I adored), and I think that may be part of the problem — his narrative strategy for the film is conceptually intriguing but, in execution, kind of clumsy. I’m thinking C+, but a full review will be forthcoming.

I haven’t seen Soderbergh’s version of Solaris yet, but check out those Cinemascores. Is this the first time a movie has gotten Fs across all the demos those people survey? In other Tarkovsky-influences-the-new-generation news, check out this videogame inspired in part by Stalker.

Scott Tobias has conducted a fascinating interview with scuzz auteur Abel Ferrara for The Onion AV Club. Highly recommended. (R'Xmas is on my DVD to-view shelf, how about yours?)

So is this how this weblog thing is supposed to work? Hope I can come up with something to write tomorrow, too.

Comments

Liked the review of Bowling For Columbine. I too was embarrassed at the on-camera, self-conscious demonstrations of compassion. He held that shot with his arm around the schoolteacher's shoulder for so long I had no choice but to distrust him.

Nevertheless, I think the interview with Heston is one of the most spectacular debunkings of a public figure I think I've ever seen, right up there with "At long last senator, have you no shame?" As an interviewer, Moore dropped the ball somewhat, but the showman in him must have been doing cartwheels when Heston got up and walked out.

And once again, when Moore left the little girl's picture on Heston's doorstep and walked away with camera tracking, I got the distinct impression that he was judging exactly where to walk in order to keep both himself and the girl's picture in the frame. Yuck.

Still, this is the first of his films that made me realize he's not just a savvy political commentator with an ace camera crew - he's a damn filmmaker.

It's interesting that in each of the Moore films I've seen, the climax is provided by an extended encounter with a powerful white male: Heston here, Nike's Phil Knight in The Big One, and Roger and Me, in which the attempt to interview Roger Smith is the subject of the entire film. What does that say?

Posted by: Andy at December 4, 2023 10:54 PM

A Michael Moore moment that made a big impression on me as a relative youngster was the sequence in Roger & Me where he used "Wouldn't It Be Nice" as ironic counterpoint to drive-by footage of an utterly devastated residential neighborhood in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. It was riotously funny and unspeakably tragic all at the same time -- the university crowd I saw it with started raising the freaking roof with screaming laughter and applause at that moment -- and taught me things I hadn't known before about filmmaking ... and about the Beach Boys.

Posted by: Bryant at December 4, 2023 11:32 PM

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