Gary Dretzka
Noah Forrest
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Douglas Pratt
Ray Pride

February 28, 2002

What’s art worth in the real world? Yes, a question about The Pianist. Of the five films nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, which will be the classics, and which will be the Dr. Doolittles thirty years from now? Chicago is the triumph of MTV’s ADD esthetic, where relentless cutting supplants consistent planning. Gangs of New York is an overblown, minor work from a director burdened with the hardship of being labeled “America’s greatest living director,” traversing his own Via Doloroso from Mulberry Street to the Kodak Theatre in search of a piece of gold. The Hours is a much-misunderstood and maligned skein of metaphors about depression and individuality; to some, like screenwriter David Hare, it’s a film about the American taboo of a woman having the right to determine her own fate, family be damned; I think it’s a terrific portrait of how depression has no logic and no remorse. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers? A middle child whose youngest sibling will get praise for its prodigies the end of this year. (I haven’t seen either of Peter Jackson‘s films; I’m waiting to see all three back-to-back when they’re finally finished.)

Which brings us to The Pianist. Neil Gabler, frequent contributor of thumb-suckers to the New York Times and Mr. Ready-with-a-Bromide on controversial topics for journos high and low, reduces the fate of Polanski’s daunting, haunting masterpiece about isolation, despair and survival, to this note in Thursday’s New York Post (which identifies the wearisome quotemonger as a “show business historian”): "What we may be dealing with is: Can the Holocaust trump child molestation?" Can pundits beat time? Nah. We all get old, we’ll all die. Maybe we’ll be remembered beyond our families. Type, type, eh, Mr. Kerouac?

Steadi as you go

Higher ticket prices notwithstanding, Russian Ark, which should hit a million dollar gross this weekend, continues to set new house records, such as at Landmark’s Opera Plaza in San Francisco, the American Film Institute’s Kennedy Center Theater was a record-setting $21,685, the highest grossing film ever at the venue. In Chicago, Alexander Sokurov’s ninety-minute, single-take stunt, released by Wellspring pictures, opened exclusively at Chicago’s Music Box Theater and made $48,416, a new house record for highest-grossing foreign-language film. Similarly, its one week run at Landmark's Nuart Theatre in L.A. set a new house record as the highest grossing foreign language film ever for that site. Taking in $53,967 from January 3-9, Russian Ark, is now also the fifth highest -grossing film ever in the Nuart's history. Here’s how I know how many people are seeing it: Russian Ark has prompted more angry email, despite my shrug of a review, about anything I’ve written about since trashing the re-edition of the first three Star Wars movies.

Slap Judgment

Plus a couple of commentators on my review of All the Real Girls at indieWIRE. A reader named T. R. Black wrote almost a thousand words to offer up Donnie Darko and Tully as superior works, and I had to reply, they’re both more-than-worthy movies. “The Dukes of Hazard (sic) go Indie!” was his headline, and he comes out slugging. An earlier note from another reader: “Frankly, I was astonished that a movie like this would actually be made with so many good scripts lying around.” I always hope that talent finds a way to show itself, even if it’s a talent to get your work made. Where are those good scripts? Dammit, show yourself!

War mongered

Sundance Channel has the television premiere of Eugene Jarecki’s The Trials of Henry Kissinger this week as part of an increasing focus on documentary filmmaking. Based on Christopher Hitchens’ assaultive broadside on the life of the veteran diplomat and self-promoter, it’s relentless, making the case that Kissinger ought to be tried as a war criminal. The displays of self-deception and arrogance remind me of my favorite quote I’ve heard attributed to him about power. “If I bore people at parties now, they think it’s their fault.” Jarecki’s film is more compelling than Hitchens’ book and its assertion that moral responsibility and legal culpability, accompanies the exercise of power in the name of a nation couldn’t be timelier.

Remote Possibilities

Flipping through a stack of DVDs this week, I was more annoyed than edified. On the Criterion edition of The Royal Tenenbaums, alongside a few pallid outtakes, there’s a half-hour piece about Wes Anderson and the making of the movie by doc great Albert Maysles, who quietly, efficiently demolishes the thirtysomething director’s preciousness, capturing him self-consciously unselfconsciously prating on about wallpaper and carpeting colors.

Watching Razor & Tie’s release of Biggie and Tupac, it holds up as Nick Broomfield’s best movie yet, where his on-camera persona, often cheaply insolent in the past, finds Broomfield in real physical danger as he tries to uncover the causes of both the popularity and the possible conspiracies, high and low, behind the murders of L.A. rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur. Could it be the best murder investigation on film since The Thin Blue Line? Broomfield includes outtakes that aren’t strictly instructive, but at the very least intriguing, including scenes that misfired for various reasons. He’s also good in an on-camera interview, painstakingly describing his approach on this particular project. Hooray for maturity. Oh-oh. Suge Knight got released from prison on Thursday...

Email Ray Pride