Cinemascope

Ah, I see the guys at The Onioin are finding subtle ways to endorse “Waltz With Bashir” for Oscar. So this week, Israel is Featured Country of the Week in The Onion’s online version of the Our Dumb World Atlas. Featuring such lively insights as the one below (which is oh-so-true):

I’ve been reading the on-line coverage by Anne Thompson ever since she launched her “Risky Business” blog at “The Hollywood Reporter”. When “THR” started having financial difficulties I thought it was a brilliant move by “Variety” to snatch Ms. Thompson away from the competition. Now it’s “Variety”’s turn to crumble financially and as a result comes the news that Anne Thompson has lost her job there. This seems to me as not only a silly move on “Variety”’s side, but also as an ungrateful one. Ms. Thompson’s “Thompson on Hollywood” blog and her weekly column were a breath of an independent thinking mind, dedicated to the artistic process, in a publication that too often tries to appease the corporate bosses.

Her blog, Thompson writes, will continue in some form or another. And I say: Anne, this may be the best thing that has happened to you. An independent blog - free from “Variety” or “The Hollywood Reporter” - is the best solution. Creatively, certainly, but I believe that also financially.

Thompson was always ahead of the curve. She admired Bollywood movies long before anyone in Hollywood knew how to spell “Slumdog”. She were chummy with Israeli producers and filmmakers long before anyone knew what “Waltz With Bashir” was. And as for this blog, stationed half a world away from Hollywood, Thompson was always very kind and supportive of “Cinemascope” and I heard great things about her from mutual acquaintances such as Ram Bergman and Ari Folman.

So while being fired is a bummer, I believe that as an independent blogger Anne Thompson could very well beat “Variety” at its own game: certainly with scoops. But also in online traffic. I see great things ahed. Best of luck, Anne. And thanks for your continuous support.

Over on my Hebrew blog I asked four of the leading Israeli directors of 2008 to tell me what’s next for them in 2009. One of the was Ari Folman, whose “Waltz With Bashir” won Best Picture by The National Society of Film Critics and is the favorite to win the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film tonight. Folman has previously disclosed his intention on diving back into animation and named the adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1971 novel The Futurological Congress as his next project. But now he reveals more on how that project will look:

Folman writes, exclusively for “Cinemascope”: “As a Science Fiction nut I knew, even as a kid, that Stanislaw Lem is the greatest. The Futurological Congress was always a novel I wanted to make into a movie but never knew how. Now that I was sucked into the world of animation I feel the time is right”.

Lem’s novel, as condensed by Wikipedia, begins when the hero, Ijon Tichy attends a Futurological Congress when “a riot breaks out and the hero, Ijon Tichy, is hit by various psychoactive drugs, which are being used as weapons by both the government and rebels. Ijon and a few others escape to the safety of a sewer beneath the Hilton where the congress was being held, and in the sewer he goes through a series of hallucinations and false awakenings which cause him to be confused about whether or not what’s happening around him is real. Finally, he believes that he falls asleep and wakes up 150 years later. The main part of the book follows Ijon’s adventures in the future world — a world where everyone takes hallucinogenic drugs, and hallucinations have replaced reality.”

So how will that translate into film? Folman elaborates:
“We’ll take elements from ‘Bashir’, mainly in how the story is structured, but instead of traveling backwards with the characters, this time we will travel forward, jumping into the future. The present will be shot in live-action, the future will be animated. The main character will be played by AN ACTRESS PLAYING HERSELF. The film is a coproduction between Israel, Poland and France. England may join in as well. The animation will be done by the studio we set up for ‘Bashir’, with Yoni Goodman as the director of animation, David Polonsky as the art-director and Yael Nachlieli as producer. The team will start works soon, and the preliminary development will start in March”.

In tonight’s Golden Globe Folman in nominated for “Waltz With Bashir”, but HBO’s “In Treatment” is based on a Israeli show that was co-scripted by him. In addition, this week back home sees the premiere of the third season of “Affair of the Week”, an Israeli TV drama series that Folman is its head writer. And “Bashir”’s Israeli DVD launch as well.

Even if Philippe Claudel’s “I’ve Loved You For So Long” steals the Golden Globe from Folman, “Bashir” is currently - as I see it - the front runner to win the Foreign Language Oscar, thus becoming the first Israeli movie to win an Academy Award. “Bashir” will be the second Israeli film in a row to be nominated for an Oscar after a 24 year dry spell. Interestingly, both last year’s “Beaufort” and this year’s “Bashir” deal with the trauma of the first Lebanon war. A trauma made relevant with the current fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas in Gaza, a conflict that if not resolved soon could be the basis of “Waltz With Bashir 2″ in 20 years.

Sorry for being so late. I had a tremendous amount of catching up to do.

For over a month this site was deserted as my other blog - the one in Hebrew - was bought up by Israel’s largest Telecom provider and integrated into their Hulu-like content site. I’m now a paid blogger. And for the last month I’ve been working out the kinks from the move so I was distracted away from this site. Apologies. I hope to now return to regular blogging on both blogs, in hopes that a major sponsor would ultimately snap up this blog as well.

Here, finally, are my top films for 2008:

1. Synecdoche, New York (Directed by Charlie Kaufman)
2. Wall-E (Andrew Stanton)
3. The Dark Knight (Chris Nolan)
4. Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman)
5. Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
-. Silent Light (Carlos Reygedas)
-. The Fall (Tarsem Singh)
6. Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green)
7. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
8. Burn After Reading (The Coen Brothers)
-. In Bruges (Martin Mcdonagh)
9. Hunger (Steve McQueen)
-. Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris)
10. The last 80 minutes of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher)

Worthy runner-ups: Rachel Getting Married, You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, Drillbit Taylor, Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo Bay, Let The Right One In, Wendy and Lucy, The Changeling, Nim’s Island, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Tropic Thunder, Iron Man, Be Kind Rewind, The Edge of Heaven, Man on Wire.

Overrated (or: Sorry, but I didn’t get what all the fuss was about): The Class, Gomorrah, Doubt.

Nice flicks, nothing more: Revolutionary Road, Frost/Nixon, Gran Torino, The Visitor, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire.

The film I hated the most this year: Happy-Go-Lucky.

Frankly, 2008 was a so-so year - definitely after the cinematic powerhouse that was 2007. But still, I’ve seen some great movies this year, alternating radically from the high-brow to the popular cineplex hits. Indeed, some so-called art-house movies that are supposed to be independent in form and content were mediocre and rehashed “artsy” cliches, while some studio movies, aimed at the common denominator, had true independent vision. And BALLS. “Wall-E” and “The Dark Knight” HAD BALLS! That’s so rare to see. And I’m happy it paid off.
And now would anyone care to explain to me what many of critic colleagues found so appealing in “Happy-Go-Lucky”, a movie I found so annoying that I’m shocked to see it getting so much love.

Number 1: “Synecdoche, New York”. Without a doubt, the most brilliant and bizarre film I’ve seen this year. A movie about reflections and doubles, where every character has a stand-in, and every word means more then one thing (stool, pipes, etc.), to the constant bewilderment of everyone. A movie about the constant need of someone whispering directions and translations in our ear. And a movie that begins with Philip Seymour Hoffman saying casually, while reading the paper: “Harold Pinter died. Oh no… he won the Nobel Prize”. And by year’s end, Harold Pinter had indeed died.

I have two animation movies on my list:
Number 2: “Wall-E”: I thought Brad Bird was the only genius employed at Pixar, and I thought that “Ratatouille” was as best as they could make them over there. Add to that the fact that I didn’t care much for “Finding Nemo” and imagine my shock with seeing “Wall-E”, an almost abstract film that manages to evoke both emotions and brains.
Number 4: And on the opposite end of the spectrum, my home-grown laureate in “Waltz With Bashir”, made with 1.5 Million US$ (about 1 percent of “Wall-E”’s budget), and displaying the same amount of surrealism and irreverence towards the war-film genre as a latter day “Apocalypse Now”. Sadly, Ari Folman’s musings on his own memories from the 1982 war in Lebanon are now echoed in a new state of warfare being waged between Israel and the Hamas in Gaza, as if trying to make us remember that war movies, no matter how after-the-fact they come, are almost always relevant.

Number 3: “The Dark Knight”. Brilliant entertainment.

Three films are tied for Number 5: all three are poetic cinematic pieces that are all but extinct from the world, preferring pure aesthetics over narrative and a clear storyline. To me, this is cinema at its best: evoking philosophies without giving in to elaborate dramatics.

Number 6: The brilliant and hilarious “Pineapple Express”. Seth Rogen is turning out to be a screenwriter to be reckoned with: after the brilliant “Superbad” he struck it twice in 2008 with “Pineapple Express” and the funny “Drillbit Taylor”. “Pineapple” had David Gordon Green’s loose direction that made it into something of a free-form romp on the early Eighties macho buddy shoot-em-ups directed by Michael Mann or William Friedkin.

Number 7: If Gus Van Sant should win an Oscar for “Milk” I’d be the happiest, not that I care for that movie all that much, but because I think Van Sant has proven to be proficient in both the abstract realm and the mainstream. “Paranoid Park”, his true masterpiece this year, joins the brilliant trilogy of “Last Days”, “Elephant” and “Gerry” proving that Van Sant is an American working in the European idiom, and doing it brilliantly. “Milk” is an OK docu-drama, not unlike “Frost/Nixon”. If this is what he needs to do to win acclaim in order to make more “Paranoid Park”s I’m fine with it.

Number 8: I think it was great of the Coen Brothers to follow up “No Country For Old Men” with this ditzy slapstick romp, about America’s intelligence - or lack thereof. “Burn After Reading” was one in a string of 2008 movies that centered on the USA and the stupidity in it, and turned it into a satire to profile the last days of the Bush presidency: the underrated “Step Brothers” and “Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo Bay” and the brilliant “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” are also to be seen as political comedies that tip their toes in the murky waters of the zeitgeist.
Tied for Number 8 is “In Bruge”, a film very much indebted to the style and prose of the Coen Brothers, down to the employment of regular Coen collaborator, composer Carter Burwell.

Number 9: Two films that looked behind the bars of political prisons, but employing a conceptual artist’s point-of-view. Steve McQueen has his Irish inmates turn into de-facto artists, turning their cell walls into works of art (decorated in feces) and themselves stars of a radical body-art performance piece. “Hunger”, alongside “Silent Light”, had the most dumbfounding single-take shot seen this year.
In “Standard Operating Procedure” Errol Morris flips the table: he turns the Abu-Ghraib soldiers/guards into unwitting artists, curating a macabre art-show of sorts from the snapshots they have taken while humiliating inmates. “Standard Operating Procedure” had a point similar to “Waltz With Bashir” in which both films dealt with what one does in service to his country and what he later blocks out from his memory, until it resurfaces as fragments of tormented art.

Number 10: For the first half of “Benjamin Button” I thought the film was visually impressive but ultimately it was Fincher stepping into Tim Burton territory - no strings were pulled in my heart. But then came the second half, after Benjamin’s father reveals his identity and Benjamin and Daisy have a girl, and this movie moved the hell out of me. Fincher is one of my favorite directors, but never has he reduced me to tears. He has now succeeded.

Best Daisy of the year: Clint Eastwood’s dog in “Gran Torino”, beating out Cate Blanchet’s namesake character in “Benjamin Button”.