| FILM RAP... Alan Ball (TOWELHEAD) |
Invest just a little time and effort and you can come up with far better reasons to dislike people other than the color of their skin, their country of origin. Hate others for the content of their character.
Maybe this isn’t what Martin Luther King had in mind, but Alan Ball may still agree, though his spin would be far less curmudgeonly. The Emmy®-winning creator of Six Feet Under and Oscar®-winning screenwriter of AMERICAN BEAUTY, is a compassionate progressive, acutely capable of parsing the differences between individuals and then poetically adept at celebrating those distinctions on screen, recognizing every one’s capacity for blending black and white; yet still realizing them in glorious Technicolor, not a murky grey.
TOWELHEAD, based on the novel by Alicia Erian, proves Mr. Ball’s greatest challenge. The movie is told, primarily, from the point of view of Jasira, a thirteen-year-old girl who is shuttled from her indifferent American mother to live with her intolerant Lebanese father in Houston. Once ensconced in this religiously air-conditioned, precariously-integrated cul-de-sac community, Jasira is subjected to her father’s double-standards regarding assimilation, her neighbor’s indelicate prejudices and inappropriate sexual proclivities and one schoolmate’s own natural, if premature, romantic desires.
TOWELHEAD is dramatically diverse, universally moving. Mr. Ball expertly guides his superb cast — Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello and Toni Colette along with rising stars Summer Bishil and Peter Macdissi — through his enthralling and emotionally-draining feature directorial debut. TOWELHEAD may be a derisive epithet for some, but for Mr. Ball it is the name of an instant film classic.
WARREN: You’ve created your own stories for so long, what was it that made you passionate enough to adapt and direct TOWELHEAD ?
ALAN: You know when I read it. I actually had another screenplay that I was ready to go out with — a screwball comedy set in the 30’s — and my agent called, said he just got a manuscript and thought I should take a look. And when I read it, I just got so pulled into the viewpoint of Jasira and what she was going through. The book had a tone that I responded to… it was harrowing, sweet and there was a lot of humor. Obviously there are themes in there that I’ve explored before, that obviously I respond to, but also I loved the whole casual, multi-culturalism of it. I loved the fact that the book didn’t judge its characters. The book refused to judge them, it refused to cast Jasira as a victim, it refused to punish or condemn her for being sexually curious and allowed her to keep that curiosity after everything she’d gone through. A lot of people are uncomfortable with female sexuality, and there is a little bit of a fetishization of victimhood in pop culture. We like our women to be victims. So I loved the fact that here is this young girl that just out of the sheer strength of her own character transcends this pretty horrific event and not only does it not ruin her, but it enables her to extricate herself from another abusive situation and to really take control over her own life and her own destiny and her own body for the first time in ways that she wouldn’t have been able to.
WARREN: Is it your life experience that allows you to have that compassion for all the characters in your stories?
ALAN: I’m just not interested in stories that judge their characters very harshly, and even in real life I feel like as a society we tend to really want just to seal everything into this viewpoint, all or nothing, good or evil. And life is much more complicated and much, much richer than that. Things are not simple, no matter how much we want them to be. And you can look at that as a blessing as well as looking at it as a curse.
WARREN: But some things people do can actually be wrong, no?
ALAN: Of course, absolutely. And you know, if I were the father of a 13-year-old girl and, and some guy molested her I would want to kill him, but… as a writer, as a storyteller, what is interesting to me is why does he do this, how does this happen. I don’t think the movie in any way lets him off the hook for what he did. He certainly is punished for it. And you know what? He should, but that doesn’t mean that he is not a human being, that he doesn’t have his own reasons for what having done what he did. It doesn’t excuse him, doesn’t let him off the hook, but I’m interested in how this happened, as opposed to just condemning him.
WARREN: So is it safe to say that for any character there are explanations for behavior but not necessarily excuses?
ALAN: Yeah, I believe there are explanations… I think we are all capable of doing great things and we are all capable of doing monstrous things and that’s part of what our life is about, learning to make those choices… I do believe that we grew up with a mythology that taught us the right choices get rewarded and the wrong choices get punished and I think that’s a lie. I think a lot of people are making really evil choices and getting away with it. So in reality, if you make the right choice it’s probably going to make things harder for you, but it’s still important to do that.
WARREN: But is everyone redeemable?
ALAN: I can’t answer that. I don’t know, you’re talking about millions of people.
WARREN: I think of you as a God amongst writers.
ALAN: Well that’s a misconception that maybe you shouldn’t be operating under. I don’t know. I like to think that everyone is redeemable, but I can’t possibly say that with utter conviction that’s the case. Maybe there are some people who are irredeemable. Dick Cheney jumps to mind.
WARREN: If Rodney King were to ask you “Can’t we all just get along?,” would you’d say ‘nope?’
ALAN: You know actually I wouldn’t. I would say “yes we can” but we have to realize that we are not separate from each other, and that we aren’t separate entities, that that’s all an illusion. That it’s easy to hate each other. It’s also incredibly un-evolved. So yes we can, but we don’t seem to want to.
TOWELHEAD opens in Seattle on September 12th, 2008.
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Posted on September 03, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) |
| Everyone's a winner... BANGKOK DANGEROUS |
Thou shalt not kill.
I don't know. Seems a little dogmatic to me. Mightn't there be the occasional exception to the rule?
Apparently, Nicolas Cage thinks so. In BANGKOK DANGEROUS (aka TITLE LUDICROUS), Hollywood's rug-lovingest actor since Burt Reynolds plays an assassin... with a heart of gold? Who knows? Could be.
But the question is: could you ever take another's life? Would you pull the trigger to save a stranger?
The five blood-thirstiest members of The Warren Report who provide the most compelling reason/s for their new identities as hitmen (or hitwomen!), will receive an exclusive BANGKOK DANGEROUS prize package including an official t-shirt AND two tickets to see the thriller after its theatrical debut on September 5th, 2008. All you need to do to qualify is post your response (under 500 words, please, Rushdie) on The Warren Report blog before September 3rd, 2008. Winners will be determined by the intelligence and humor or the submission, then skewed by my own whim. All 5 winners will receive their packages in the mail, so please, be nice to your neighborhood postal employee. (Especially as mailmen are far more likely to go off on a shooting binge than you are.)
And now, a little more about BANGKOK DANGEROUS, to jump start your killer instincts...
Directed by The Pang Brothers. Starring Nicolas Cage. Rated R.
http://www.bangkokdangerousmovie.net/
An adrenaline-charged action thriller, Lionsgate's BANKGOK DANGEROUS stars Nicolas Cage (LEAVING LAS VEGAS, NATIONAL TREASURE) as "Joe," an anonymous assassin who takes an unexpected turn when he travels to Thailand to complete a series of contract killings. Joe (Nicolas Cage), a remorseless hitman, is in Bangkok to execute four enemies of a ruthless crime boss named Surat. He hires Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm), a street punk and pickpocket, to run errands for him with the intention of covering his tracks by killing him at the end of the assignment. Strangely, Joe, the ultimate lone wolf, finds himself mentoring the young man instead whilst simultaneously being drawn into a tentative romance with a local shop girl. As he falls further under the sway of Bangkok’s intoxicating beauty, Joe begins to question his isolated existence and let down his guard… just as Surat decides it’s time to clean house.
Directors The Pang Brothers (GIN GWAI aka THE EYE) paint an explosive picture of the Bangkok underworld, illuminated with neon and saturated in violence. From a screenplay by Jason Richman, BANGKOK DANGEROUS is based on the Pang Brothers’ wildly popular Hong Kong action film of the same name. Starring alongside Cage are Charlie Young (SEVEN SWORDS), Shahkrit Yamnarm (BELLY OF THE BEAST), Panward Hemmanee and Dom Hetrakul (SNIPER 3).
Ready. Aim. Write! |
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Posted on August 27, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (8) |
| Everyone's a winner... DISASTER MOVIE |
I felt the earth move under my feet… and I wasn’t listening to Carole King. I was watching EARTHQUAKE… in New York… in Sensurround®! (And even though news reports suggested parts of the Murray Hill Theater’s ceiling had cracked and fallen on unsuspecting patrons, I went to the movie unafraid, a giddy smile serving as my plaster-protecting umbrella.)
Back in the 1970s, the studios attempted to become kings of the (William) Castle approach to marketing movies, trumping the late filmmaker’s Percepto and Emergo “technologies” with their own rock ‘em, sock ‘em device that shook seats while you focused on Richard Roundtree’s lame daredevil act or Marjoe Gortner’s inglorious rape scene. The movie was stiffer than Charlton Heston’s jaw, but that didn’t stop me from delighting in the disastrous story-telling. Truth be told, I have always enjoyed epic stud-starred silliness in the rich vein of Irwin Allen’s apocalyptic oeuvre.
Surely, I am not alone. Post a note on this blog entry about your favorite disaster film of all time and you’ll receive a pair of tickets to attend a special sneak preview of DISASTER MOVIE this Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at the Pacific Place Cinemas. (The first 35 entrants will receive passes. Include the names of those who will attend.)
PLEASE NOTE: If your comments have been approved and now appear on this blog entry, you have WON tickets to see DISASTER MOVIE!
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Posted on August 26, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (25) |
| For smarter audiences... FROZEN RIVER |
Poverty perverts the American Dream. Recession has rocked the Rockwellian reverie to the point now that many just long for food and shelter. The amazing Melissa Leo suffers as Ray Eddy, a minimum-wage mom, desperate to provide these basic tenets for her kids after her gambling-addicted husband has, literally, bet the house — the double-wide, that is. In order to salvage the down payment and save Christmas, she teams with a half-blind, hair-raising Mohawk, Lila, (Misty Upham) who smuggles immigrants cross the US-Canadian border to support her own estranged offspring. The women collaborate out of necessity, not kinship — Ray’s “whiteness” serving as camouflage (reverse racial-profiling?) for their illegal operation. Gradually, the relationship between Ray and Lila thaws as does the titular FROZEN RIVER, offering cause for small hope and great concern, respectively. Will sacrifice overcome centuries of self-interest? Will trust trump prejudice? Will the ice hold?
FROZEN RIVER won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It is obvious why. Writer-director Courtney Hunt’s feature debut is strong, earnest and unadorned, much like Ms. Leo’s award-worthy star turn. FROZEN RIVER plays like a Barbara Ehrenreich fever dream, a fictional reminder that Americans are being nickel-and-dimed to death even in pursuit of the most meager happiness.
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Posted on August 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) |
| For smarter audiences... QUANTUM HOOPS: The Caltech Basketball Story |
“Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser… Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.”
General George S. Patton — by way of George C. Scott and screenwriter Francis F. Coppola — may very well have been right. And, not much has changed since World War II. As a nation, we idolize our victors and taunt the defeated. Thus, whenever there is reason to acknowledge the less successful, we ought embrace the opportunity. QUANTUM HOOPS offers just such a respite. This rock-solid documentary reveals the true story of the Caltech Beavers, the collegiate basketball team with the longest losing streak ever, having been dunked 245 consecutives times — a string of shame that outshines Lyndon LaRouche’s perpetual presidential failings. Academically, Caltech is one of the world’s premier institutions; athletically, it’s more akin to Kotter’s Sweathog class. Stocked with brains, the basketball team boasts more valedictorians than players with high-school hoop dreams. Yet despite their inexperience, the Beavers learn how to be competitive and teeter on the brink of a streak-snapping victory during the 2006 season, after having suffered 60+ point defeats for many years. Whether or not they do succeed is less important than the hope the team’s quest inspires on campus and amongst the storied, gloried graduates interviewed throughout. Filmmaker Rick Greenwald tracks the history of the Beavers, almost scientifically, and in the process, educates us life-long C-students, quite entertainingly, as to why we ought give a damn.
QUANTUM HOOPS is now available on dvd |
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Posted on August 06, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) |
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