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Out in Theaters: FIFTY SHADES OF GREY

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When I’m in the mood to do the pant’s dance, you won’t find me reaching for airport smut the likes of Fifty Shades of Grey. Rather, I prefer my sex with a little, uh, sex. I have been told the crop of humans that find this lewd drivel titillating are mostly repressed housewives and jittery virgins. Even then I find it hard to believe that the virginal palette is whetted by domestic abuse dressed up as BDSM and that housewives crave the kind of punishment on display in Fifty Shades of Grey. I imagine the more apt female fantasy involves turning the table and gaining the whip rather than submitting to an older, powerful, pain-obsessed billionaire. I’m willing to admit that maybe I just don’t get it but I have an inclination that I’m standing on the right side with this one.

Fifty Shades of Grey is fifty shades of shady. It’s porn for people who don’t watch porn – filled with nudity (you even snag a glimpse of shaft-top), playroom tools (Mr. Grey keeps his own personal, in-house red light district stocked to the brim but never gets around to using any of his actual instruments. When he does finally turn to his tool box of BDSM trinkets, he uses an ordinary belt? Really? But you have a wall STOCKED with sick canes?!), and waiting – but the film is improbably light on actual sex. And, more importantly, sex appeal. For a movie that’s two hours of contrived tension and nothing in the way of plot, the payoffs suffer creative erectile dysfunction en masse and fail to tick the arousal dial even slightly clockwise.

It’s no surprise to learn that the concept from Fifty Shades was explicitly born from “Twilight” fan fiction. Doing my best to know as little as possible about these kinds of things, I had no idea this was the case when I turned to my girlfriend during the screening and said, “This is just Twilight without the vampires”. After over two hours of Fifty Shades though, I was begging for Twilight. That should give you a sense of just how putrid a product Sam Taylor-Johnson‘s adaptation of  E.L. James‘ bestselling romance novel truly is. At least Twilight had a story. 

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Starring two nobodies that no-one cares about – Dakota Johnson and Jamie DornanFifty Shades of Grey purports the telling of a peculiar love story but to call what unfolds a story is unfittingly generous. A story involves characters being forced to make choices and subsequently developing because of those choices, their relationships thickening as various circumstances swirl around them, pushing them hither and thither. Fifty Shades revolves around one choice – whether Ana will submit to the dominant Mr. Grey – and only by curtain time has our character made her choice. It’s 125-minutes of will-they-or-won’t-they BDSM-lite cinematic garbage and to spent any more time discussing the “plot” is a waste of resources, yours and mine both.  

Perhaps what is most off-putting about the whole affair is (my admittedly personal) perception that the sexual acts that take place are in no way, shape or form sexy. Their bumping uglies is either as awkward as losing your V-card or as painful to watch as sitting through Blue is the Warmest Color with your parents, and Taylor-Johnson has little to offer in terms of variety to spice things up. Surely she was handed a pile of narrative yuck so it’s hard to put the blame on her for trying to dress that yuck up as pretty as she could. In the midst of the second act, the movie appears as if it might switch gears and turn its engines to full steam ahead but just piddles out shortly thereafter and gets back to the will-they-won’t-they grind.

Not having read the source material, I genuinely wonder if this kind of novella smut could have ever made a good movie. The plain truth of the matter is Fifty Shades of Grey just isn’t a story. There’s no three act structure. There’s hardly characters so much as denuded cardboard cut-outs sticking themselves into each other, brewing with overt undertones of sexual violence.

Damian Grey’s misunderstanding of consensual sexual congress comes cloaked in contracts, a fact that should be an immediate red-flag for any self-respecting female. “Oh, I need to sign my rights away in order to bone you? Sounds legit!” When asked what she gets out of the deal, Grey purrs, “Me”. Fucking spare me.

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When Mr. Grey does let his demons out of the closet and sparks the engines on his lingering dungeon tools, his coital playbook is closer in form to The Rapes of Wrath and Ho-piercer than the soft femininity of Nicholas Spark’s The Throatbook. Even then – in the midst of an aggressive buttocks bludgeoning – I had trouble feeling anything towards the lip-biter on the receiving end because she asked for it AND had a carefully-outlined safe word prepared. If only there had been a safe word to make this movie stop.

Those sexually-repressed tittering housewives looking to get their jollies off in the biggest budget, softest soft-core porno ever, will find their faces fully flushed, hooting and hollering as the hot bodies on screen run their whips across bared flesh and eventually insert themselves in one another. Those who’ve gotten lost in a Borders to find themselves surrounded by self-same covers of disposable romantic novels – those with the bare-chested hunks and the impossibly helpless damsels dangling from them – and have run screaming, those poor few ought prepare for the absolute overdose of senseless smut that is Fifty Shades of Grey.

At the screening I attended, they distributed Fifty Shades fashioned blindfolds before the showing. You wouldn’t be worse off wearing it during the film.

D

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Out in Theaters: KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE

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Absurdist superspy farce that tips its top-hat to the JB’s (James Bond, Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer) while rampantly assaulting its way into the 21st century, Kingsman: The Secret Service is filmic reassurance that ridiculous fun can still be had in the theater. Over the past decade, the spy spoof (Austin Powers, Spies Like Us) has mostly gone the way of the Crocodile Dundee (unless we’re counting the underwhelming, geri-action Red films. Note: we shouldn’t be). Leave it to genre revivalist Matthew Vaughn to inject that tired and trying genus with the same eye-widening, pulse-quickening hit of adrenaline that he’d previously brought to the superhero and crime genre with Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class and Layer Cake. Brimming with tactful homage and just enough youthful zest to make its balls-to-the-walls-ness truly one-of-a-kind, Kingsman is a shining, shimmering, splendid example of why we go to the movies.

In Vaughn’s murderous opus, the titular Kingsmen are a copacetic society of mustache-twirling gentleman/gun-totting acrobats renown for their secrecy, military effectiveness and hand-tailored suits. When world leaders want the job done right, they hire the Kingsman and if everything goes according to plan, you don’t hear peep about their success in the papers. One might assume from the cut of their jib that the Kingsmen are a group of pacifist nancies but Vaughn wastes little time conveying just how deadly his crew of well-dressed gentlemen is.

The stage is set with a fortress under siege, explosions tumbling block letter title cards to Dire Straight’s pounding “Money for Nothing″. Through a window, a masked agent informs an Arab man bolt-strapped to a chair that he will count down from ten and if he doesn’t have the information he needs in that time frame, ten will be the last thing he ever hears. There’s no deliberation, no hesitation, just counting. At five, he caps both the captive’s knees. There’s no breathy drawls, no pregnant pauses. This ain’t that kind of movie, bruv. Harry Hart, code name Galahad, counts down like a metronome.

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Caught unawares, Galahad is too late to stop the prisoner from pulling the pin on a stashed grenade, but finds himself and his fellow Kingsmen saved when a fellow super-agent in training throws himself on the explosive. Seventeen years later, Galahad feels indebted to his savior and, with a recently opened spot on the team, seeks out the promising-but-problematic son of the man who saved his life so many years ago, Gary ‘Eggsy’ Unwin (Taron Egerton). Eggsy is a kind-hearted ruffian, loyal to a fault and entangled with the wrong crew because of his mother’s not-so-cunning choice of gentlemen friends.

What transpires next involves a global climate change world domination plot, X-Men: First Class-style training montages, an ultra-violent blitzkrieg in a church that will assuredly go down as one of the year’s most memorable and visually-arresting sequences, Samuel L. Jackson playing a despotic billionaire with a lisp and a soft stomach for blood using the subterfuge of free data plans to “clean the slate” and loads of not-so-subtle James Bond references. If the above does not at least pique your interest, Kingsman is probably not the film for you.

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The film again pairs Vaughn with the authors of the comic book source material on which Kingsman is based; Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons (Kick-Ass). So again if you weren’t won over by the wacky, violent antics of Kick-Ass, this is likely not going to amuse you. And though shy a Hit-Girl, Kingsman has plenty of fun, memorable characters to play with, most notably Colin Firth as Galahad. Liam Neeson reinvented himself as an action hero in his twilight years so why not the King with the lisp? asks Vaughn. Firth makes the most of his pithy dialogue and provides an adroit aging action hero – a lovingly rendered throwback to the age of the smooth-talking British spy. Engaged in a carousel of gun shots and knifings, Firth shines in the action scenes too, even if it’s a fair gamble to say that most of his stunts are mostly the work of computer animations.

There are a few notable sequences that feature spotty CGI work (Eggsy’s mid-air, knife-tipped shoe stab makes him look like a plastic action figure) but in the center of Kingsman go-for-broke, give-em-all-ya-got approach to breathless bombast, it couldn’t matter less. The eyebrow-raising smarm and au courant irreverence of Vaughn’s rhapsodical vision just make for one hell of a show. Plus, there’s nothing quite like capping off your film with the prospect of slamming the back door of a princess. In the end, isn’t that the point of this whole spy venture anyways?

A-

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Out in Theaters: LEVIATHAN

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Leviathan
is the work of an artist struggling with his heritage. Hailing from Novosibirsk, Russia, Andrey Zvyagintsev paints a Roman tragedy with Biblical implications into the modern seascape of Northern Russia’s Barents Sea and the result is staggering. Interpersonal power struggles and structural corruption pollute the scenery of Zvyagintsev’s vision presenting a modern man’s saga of David and Goliath as a simple mechanic faces down an nefarious but forceful mayor.

Russia’s official selection for the 87th Academy Award for Best Foreign Film (and a strong contender for the win) also took home the prize for Best Screenplay at last year’s Cannes Film Festival in large part due to the many layers of Leviathan’s searing and potent critique. Zvyagintsev’s pages cut deep emotional and intellectual slashes, destined to linger long after the curtains are drawn. Aided by Oleg Negin, Zvyagintsev has written a screenplay that reveals itself a piece at a time, delicately peeling back layers of a narrative onion until we’re at its nasty center and likely as tearful as after dicing an onion.

The plight of Zvyagintsev’s characters – each a flawed shade of simpleton doing their best to get by – give emotional weight to his cold, procedural dealings but it’s what he does with the idea of institutional extortion that really transforms Leviathan into a foreign epic worth remembering. After all, when is red tape an equal villain to a vodka-slugging Mafioso?

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Kolya (Alexeï Serebriakov) leads an earnest life with new wife Lilya (Elena Liadova) and son Roma (Sergueï Pokhodaev) as a part time auto-repair mechanic. Recently under one roof, Roma and Lilya have yet to come to an understanding about their newly forged stepson-stepmom relationship, forcing Koyla into an unwelcome focal point between two occasionally feuding forces. Pressure from corrupt major Vadim Shelevyat (Roman Madianov) only further yaws their domestic equilibrium and an all out land war erupts in the form of paperwork, blackmail and eventual murder.
 
Zvyagintsev’s curt and gloomy voice shines through in every scene, lending a pessimistic but pragmatic air to the overwhelming fogginess of his feature. Hope is a long shot but events never feel forcibly grim. Even when they are, there’s an understanding that Zvyagintsev courts his catastrophe with a fair potion of verisimilitude. No matter how black and bleak his world becomes, he approaches despondency from a position of hard-won credibility; credibility that can only be won first-hand from a lifetime of institutional injustice.

This begs the question: is Zvyagintsev’s film a condemnation of his country? According to his own statements, no. “I am deeply convinced that, whatever society each and every one of us lives in, we will all be faced one day with the following alternative: either live as a slave or live as a free man.” Zvyagintsev continues, “And if we naively think that there must be a kind of state power that can free us from that choice, we are seriously mistaken.” A chilly message blasting like a bullet from an even chillier film, and one seriously worthy of your attention. 

B

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Joe Swanberg, Jake Johnson and Rosemarie DeWitt Talk DIGGING FOR FIRE

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Joe Swanberg‘s got a Joe Swanberg way of making movies. Working with a cast of hot shot, big name, creme da la creme names though means Swanberg being, well, a little less Swanberg-y. Instead of just “going for it” with Digging for Fire, Swanberg penned his most complete script yet. About ten pages worth of it. But such is the Swanberg way. Have I said Swanberg enough yet?

Although we had some minor issues with Digging for Fire at its Sundance premiere, the mumblecore maestro nonetheless managed to sink his independent teeth into some interesting territory with a stunning barrage of talent, including Jake Johnson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Brie Larson, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston, Sam Elliot, Orlando Bloom, Sam Rockwell, Melanie Lynskey, Chris Messina and a glorified cameo from Jenny Slate. Swanberg, Johnson and DeWitt took to the stage to explore the meaning of Digging for Fire and to illuminate the process of Swanberg filmmaking, from making kids cry to spontaneously hanging dong. Read More

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Weekly Review 71: ERASER, ELEPHANT, VELVET, SAMSARA, COHERENCE, JUDGE

Weekly Review

Still recovering from Sundance meant a week spent out of the theater…for the most part. I did attend a screening of Jupiter Ascending (to disappointing result) and decided to skip Spongebob: Sponge Out of Water and Seventh Son because they were Spongebob: Sponge Out of Water and Seventh Son. Instead, I took it upon myself to launch into the work of David Lynch – a far superior choice – as well as dive into a wonderful French film called Girlhood (full review upon release). I also scooped up a few Netflix watches as well as The Judge from Redbox in order to judge the worth of Robert Duvall’s Oscar nomination. So onto Weekly Review.

ERASERHEAD (1977)

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It’s been a lifetime of waiting for Mr. David Lynch and me and with Eraserhead, I’ve finally uncovered the beautiful oddities and off-kilter surrealism of the celebrated auteur. Lynch’s jet-black Eraserhead is as much a character study as it is a cultural study, presenting nightmare-scapes rife with character tics and haunting black-and-white cinematography from Frederick Elmes that take subtle jabs at the heteronormativity of male-female relations. From the get-go, one is set off ease by Lynch’s uneasy depiction of sexuality as a living horror show, incomplete without a xenomorphic fetus spawn straight out of the freak show. Lynch’s unsettling portrait of unwanted fatherhood conjures deeply disquieting emotions – feelings expanded upon by Lynch’s soundtrack and’s unforgettable industrial sound design. But underneath its nasty facade, Eraserhead is also a deeply personal, almost intimate film and struggling with its own nihilistic, fatalist outlook that’s very much questioning its own sanity. Eraserhead is without a doubt a wholly fascinating film. (A)

THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980)

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Lynch’s second film is yet another home run, a step sideways into more straightforward filmmaking but one that doesn’t lose one ounce of the hypnotic and affecting power that Lynch harnessed in his debut. Featuring an absolutely knock-out performance from John Hurt as a deformed “circus freak” welcomed into society by a kindly Victorian surgeon (Anthony Hopkins), The Elephant Man is a powerhouse of a revisionist biopic. Lynch reigns in his surrealistic elements without covering them up entirely, allowing him to present a heartbreaking true story with just enough style and character nuance  to make it an engrossing and artistic experience. Coming to a close, Hurt’s performance and Lynch’s linchpin ending left my tear ducts wavering on the verge of breaking. (A-)

BLUE VELVET (1986)

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Very much a precursor to Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet hones Lynch’s fascination with the underbelly of suburbia and plants it in the midst of a sexually charged, off-the-books teenage investigation. Like the Hardy Boys uncovering a prostitution ring, Blue Velvet makes for some harrowing, surrealistic scene work and showcases a totally bonkers performance from Dennis Hopper as a oxygen-huffing sexual deviant. While Eraserhead and The Elephant Man set Lynch up as filmmaker shaping his iconoclastic image, Blue Velvet solidifies his role as a subversive, sexual, singular director in an arena lacking on all of the above. (B+)

SAMSARA (2011)

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Like Planet Earth without David Attenborough’s sultry British baritone, visual collage/wordless documentary Samsara took director Ron Frickle five years to complete. Crossing into 25 countries to observe patterns of human traffic spliced into views of picturesque world wonders, Samsara is a wholly unique offering not best suited for the impatient or the narrative dependent. As a singular film experience though, it’s a sometimes captivating look at the things we do and the places we live and its hallucinatory, high-speed portrait of Earth’s odd regularities is perfectly suitable for any stoney movie explorer. (B-)

COHERENCE (2013)

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A practically unheard of independent release, Coherence came to my attention per a film critic friend’s top ten list. Already anticipating something special, I found myself truly surprised by how immersive a cinematic experience Coherence is. This is the kind of sci-fi misadventure you watch will the lights pulled low and the doors deadlocked shut. It shakes your perception of reality and the boundaries of possibility, all with the minimal usage of multi-colored glow sticks. The story follows a group of eight friends at a dinner party who experience the effects of a meteor passing close overhead. As they content with the Schrodinger-ian notion that all is not necessarily what it seems, circumstances turn dreadfully eerie, begging questions about identity and continuity that would thoroughly benefit any entry level philosophy student. Compelling and creepy throughout, Coherence is a hidden gem demanding a cult status. (A-)

THE JUDGE (2014)

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A mild venture into dramatic territory for jabbermouth Robert Downey Jr., The Judge fills it quotient for melodrama early on but continues to poureth for that sacred saccharine drama-heavy cup. It’s a definitively average film with solid performances from RDJ and Robert Duvall (though I’m entirely unconvinced the latter’s performance is Oscar nomination worthy) that is set on hamstringing its way to the finish line, often at the expense of its own dramatic success. There are elements to The Judge to make it a worthwhile watch but they’re buried within a jello-mold of quizzical small-town whimsy that gives the whole thing an air of fluffy narrative negligence. It’s two hour and twenty minute run time makes it all the more difficult to endure and reccomend. (C)

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Out in Theaters: JUPITER ASCENDING

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The Wachowskis
have been getting blank checks from Warner Bros since pulling off The Matrix in 1999 and with Jupiter Ascending have likely made their last boundless blockbuster. In 2012, Cloud Atlas turned a budget north of $100 million (though no official budget was ever released) into a pitiable $27 million domestic return, a figure almost as bad as the lowly $43.9 domestic box office cume from a $120 million investment on 2008’s Speed Racer. With their latest, they’re about to pull off their biggest magic trick yet, making a $175 budget disappear into thin air. To say the bloom is off the rose is a lie by degree. This movie’s gonna get crushed.

And rightly so. The Wachowskis have always skated by on their awesome sense of spectacle, often at the expense of a cohesive story, but Jupiter Ascending is not just their latest but their most egregious offender of complete and utter style over substance. In their defense, the style is often blindingly cool, if only for a brief moment. No scene better utilizes their captivating handle on big budget pageantry than a first act escape scene, one that reportedly took upwards of six months to film. The issue remains: why dump so much time and resource into a glorified stunt and so little into plot, character and general story cohesion? The answer is mindbogglingly unaddressed.

With Jupiter, one established Wachowski mainstay remains in their FX-driven manipulation of gravity. Bullet time has been replaced by gravity boots and Keanu Reeves’ wooden acting is subbed in by a frequently shirtless and rarely compelling Channing Tatum. Tatum plays the role of a warrior “splice” – a genetically engineered part-man, part-dog. He once had cyborg-enhanced wings but got them hacked off Maleficent-style when he bit the wrong rear end. Or was it ear end? His is a lackluster bit of back story that’s never explained or accounted for in a movie full of lackluster bits of back story that are never explained or accounted for. But such is Jupiter Ascending.

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Tatum’s effortlessly seductive (or so we’re told) Caine Wise is tasked with retrieving an Earthling woman at the center of a galactic land grab but in a guns-blazin’ fix gets mixed up and ends up with the wrong chick: a Russian toilet-scrubber by the name of January “I Like Dogs” Jones (Mila Kunis). The maid mix-up winds up COMPLETELY forgotten about as it turns out our heroine is actually an heiress of the highest order – the reincarnation of an interplanetary Tzar and somewhat recently deceased head of family to the Abrasax clan. With a hefty sum of a birthright (including, ya know, the Earth), the rest of the Abrasax fam-damily tries to win over the pea-brained January with various schemes and assaults of paperwork. You can almost hear Wachowski’s whine, “Bureaucracy’s a bitch.” After a few queues to get the ol’ inheritance files in order, many things explodes and Tatum’s dog-boy is called to the rescue – like Lassie with a six pack – more times than I’d like to report on.

In a pinch, Kunis’ Jupiter Jones is as compelling a female lead as Denise Richards’ Christmas Jones and just about as believable as Richards’ is as a rocket scientist. She’s a perma-damsel in distress, haplessly entering herself into laughably dumb situations and finding herself subsequently incapable of getting out without being rescued by her half-canine prince. It makes me wonder why the Wachowskis even bothered making a film with a female protagonist when they’re just going to make her so pathetic and pitiable. It’s an asinine step backwards in an industry that demands two forward. The gross lack of chemistry between Kunis and Tatum doesn’t help either, nor do the odd bestiality undertones.

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And just as Channing Tatum is a dog genetically spliced with a human, Jupiter Ascending is The Princess Bride genetically spliced with Star Fox, a bombastic video game of a space-set fairy tale that feels like it needed something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue in order for the studio to marry it to a budget so high. The result is a rip-off by assault; kitchen sink FX hogwash laid upon tired narrative tactics.

What is truly visionary in terms of set production, lavish costumery and creature design results in something totally and tonally defunct in the story department. As Eddie Redmayne greedily dismantles everything great about his work in The Theory of Everything as a necky, whispering, totally bratty villain, the Wachowskis make a mockery of their own legacy as storytellers. Even when they haven’t been firing on all cylinders, the sibling filmmakers have been able to provide dazzling, heady escapism. Jupiter Ascending though just makes you want to escape the theater.

D+

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Sundance Review: RESULTS

Andrew Bujalski earned an earnest little following out of Austin, Texas from his efforts in building up the mumblecore scene but his star has never shined brighter than it did two festival seasons ago with the debut of his offbeat docu-comedy Computer Chess. Expanding on that last project – which used a blend of professionals and non-actors – Bujalski had to contend with being in a whole new league. The majors to his minors, the Globo-Gym to his Average Joes. He admits that the process was very much the same as it’s always been. “I think directing is the same. Whether they’re professionals or non-professionals, everybody has their own insecurities, and their own approach.” The result is Results, an offbeat and messy gym rat comedy that’s still a little pudgy. Read More

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James Strouse, Regina Hall and Jemaine Clement Talk PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

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Every once in a while an independent film comes along and rocks the film world to its core. People, Places, Things is not that film. It is however a richly charming film full of love and life lessons. James Strouse‘s latest was an affable dramedy about the woes and joys of marriage, divorce and parenthood in the chaos of NYC. Our full review beamed over Jemaine Clement finally getting the role he deserved and rightfully pointed out Strouse’s quiet ode to race in relationships. Joinging the rest of the cast, Strouse detailed the process of making the film, where his ideas came from, working out the score with Mark Otson, graphic artistry and using race without “using race.

How did the script change, from when you first came up with the idea, to what we see on the screen?

James Strouse: You know what, there’s a process – I’ve been writing for a while. I wrote this very quickly. I wrote a lot of things that were hinting this way, for a long time, and then I wrote the first draft really quickly, and then I just put it away, and didn’t think about it for a long time. That was really cool, because when I brought it out again, maybe half a year later, I knew exactly what to do – there were some things that immediately seemed wrong, and I changed. It evolved, organically, over time. Putting it away and forgetting about it was really important.

Jemaine, how much did you see of yourself, in that character, and are you still a hiphopopatamus?

Jemaine Clement: It’s hard to balance the emotional part of myself with the hiphopotamus part of myself. The main challenge in filming. I really get it quite down, before a part. Are you satisfied?

Can you talk a little bit about the casting? All of the casting is great, but Jemaine is really a revelation.

JS: I love this thing and it was really just the script. I started thinking about, “Well, if I could get anyone, who would I get?” These people were the first on my list, and basically, they wanted to do it. I basically had a feeling that they would all play off of each other really nicely, and I think they all do. Everyone’s so distinct, and funny, and subtle. The casting, I don’t know if there’s anything more in-depth you’d like to know.

Who did you cast first?

JS: It started with Jermaine.

The dialogue is so well-written for the cast. Did you change a lot of it? Were they improving it, as they discovered their character, or did they just nail their character?

JS: Well, these are all fantastic actors, so they make everything seem natural. Like I said, the people standing here are the people I wanted in. I have so much respect, and enjoy their work. I was confident they were going to be great. I think they were. Very early on, Jermaine very politely asked, “Is it okay to go off-script?” And I said, “Of course.” Everyone went off a little, and we used a lot of it. Everyone sort of respected what each and every scene was about. It wasn’t like we ever had unusable stuff. It was within the characters they were creating. It wasn’t like, “What would be funny to do here?” It was, “What’s the funniest thing I can do, that’s right for the character.” It’s all them, they did it. They made it seem natural.

Can you tell us about the graphic art?

JS: Yes. Colleen Sharpe help me put it together. Greg Williams also did the drawings for Rhode’s character. To be honest, from the start it looked great. He was a student in a screenwriter class of mine. He was working on a script that he wanted to adapt into a graphic novel. I said, “Can I see your drawings? I want to see what you’re thinking for the dialogue.” He showed me the drawing, which were like the drawings in this movie, and I thought, “This is amazing. These drawings are amazing.” I said, “I have this script about graphic novels. If I ever make it, I’d like you to do the drawings.” And he just kind of rolled his eyes. But then it happened! And then Cat’s drawings – Lauren Weinstein, who’s an SBA teacher, she teaches in the comic art department.

Obviously, the music filled out the film really well. Can you talk a little bit about the composer?

JS: Mark Orton and I were doing a roundtable about the relationship between director and composer. Just like all these wonderful actors here, I loved his work. My experience, in the past, with making films, is you put in a lot of temp music, music that you can’t actually use, but it works for now, and then you get really wedded to that music, and then a composer comes in, and tries to approximate that, and does something completely different. What happens with this film is that I put a lot of Mark’s music in the temp score, so I knew how it was going to feel. I love his music! It’s fantastic! He’s scored a lot of lovely films. I think there’s something really about the sensibility that fits this movie. It’s funny, without trying too hard. It has emotion, without pushing it too much. It’s lovely, itself.

I was strangely touched by the depth of character of Kat and Diane. Can you talk about that character evolved over the course of making the movie?

Regina Hall: It was the way that it was written, and it was really nice to get on-set, and have Jim be like, “Okay, you can improvise here, whenever you want.” We got to play, and explore, which was nice. The character came out of that.

Jessica Williams: Same for me. Jim was so great, so great and so talented! I love Kat so much! But I love her so much, so I think going into it, respecting everyone’s artistry, and her artistry, and kind of made the natural connection.

Regina and Jessica you both get to play African-American women who are smart, driven and without attention paid to your race. What was that experience like?

JW: I noticed when I read the script from Jim, it didn’t have race in there. I think he was just casting women. I asked him, “Do you think about race? Do you now?”

JS: I just wanted good actors!

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Leslye Headland, Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie Talk SLEEPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE

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It’s 2015 and there are no less than 20 apps that serve to guide desperate, lonely people towards other desperate, horny people. And yet, solitude and loneliness is an issue people face more and more. The growing divide between sexual satisfaction and emotional closeness is one that interests director Leslye Headland of Bachelorette and now Sleeping With Other People. Joined by Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie, Headland revealed – in riotous fashion – what her creative process looked like (a lot of on-set crying), what it was like working with the actors, knowing where to draw the line and her many, many movie references.

Leslye Headland: I’m sure you guys have been sitting out there since 5 a.m. or something. It’s like a Grateful Dead concert. I think that just dated me. I can hear them say my name, I’m on cloud nine! Look at all these god damn motherfuckers! You perverts, what are you doing here at 5 a.m. in the morning. Holy shit! I’m going to introduce some people who are going to do this Q & A with me. We’re so excited to talk to you about the movie, and answer any questions you might have. We’re just so excited, and so proud of this film.

Q: How much of the acting was improvised, and how much was written?

LH: Do you guys want to talk about that?

Alison Brie: Most of it was written, a large percentage of it was written. The script was so tight, and so amazing, from the get go. But Leslie was so wonderful about letting us loosen it up, and discover little idiosyncrasies between Jake and Laney. Obviously, Jason Mantoukas and Andrea Savage did a fair amount of improv in their scenes; the end credit bit was fully improvised. And this guy comes up with really amazing, funny stuff all the time. It’s really fun, so much of it was scripted, but it’s also fun to see the things that made it in.

Jason Sudeikis: As far as improvisation goes, I think it’s kind of a misnomer, even with us not burning film anymore, it all being digital, which you can delete and re-format and save money on. It’s not just, “Roll the camera, and do something until you find something. Say whatever you want.” Because there’s the danger of inventing some new set that hasn’t happened. I mention, “I work at NASA.” That’s bad improv. Then Jess is like, “Great! Now I’ve got to add a space station to the set!” So a lot of it more comes in terms of fast re-writing, just sort of bantering through the rehearsals, which we did. And I think Leslie, coming from the theater, you don’t have that six weeks before you show it in a preview. And then this, especially in an independent film, we’ve only got five takes, and we’ve got to move the camera. We got to do shit, we’ve got stuff to do. We’ve got a space station to get to! So the idea of it being improvised is a misnomer. You’ve just got to think of the script, and Leslie’s words, and Leslie’s heart and soul, as being a jumping off point, almost like a suggestion in an improv show. You try to improvise within the character, within the tone. It’s all about being inspired by the original voice, and the voice you’re given, as a character, from the writer, and in this case, the director as well, coming through that. It’s less making things up on the fly, it’s more about catching the wave that’s already there.

Q: I don’t think anyone’s going to look at a green tea bottle again. Can you talk a little bit about that choice?

LH: I did let Jason pick the bottle. We brought like three of them, and I was like, “Which one do you want to use?”

JS: I was in the bathroom…

LH: And you bought him dinner?

AB: Glass bottles, dinner, and the best woman blood.

Q: Did everyone know one another, before the film, or was this the first thing that brought you together?

LH: I met Jason about three years ago, right before I started shooting ‘Bachelorette’. He’s heard me tell this story a million times now, I was so… we met up, and I thought it would be sort of like, “Hi…”, “Hello…”; and we sat there for like three hours; it was a long time. I just thought, “This guy is so fucking special. His point of view is so unique.” We just talked about everything, from theater, to film, to our personal lives, it’s like a real artistic connection there. I just thought, “I really want to write this guy something. I really want to write a love story, where he’s the lead. He’s the guy.” Because I think that’s one of the things that’s so hard about making a romantic comedy, right now, are the leads. They’re usually so, they don’t have any problems. It starts out, and the girl’s got everything, except the right penis to stick inside her! And Jason’s just a complicated, awesome person, and so I was inspired by meeting him, and the work he’s done. I’m probably the largest ‘Community’ fan there is, out there. When I met Alison, it was like… I kept it together, for like fifteen minutes at least, I acted cool. Then I was like, “I’ve seen every episode of ‘Community’ at least three times.” I’ll be at home, hanging out, and I’ll be like, “Let me just watch community again. Let’s just do that.” She was someone I always wanted to work with, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know her, socially, and she had read the script, and she was kind enough to come in, and meet me, and it was just love at first sight. And I got to see them read together, as well, which was really exciting, because I think that so much of a romantic comedy is the sound… it’s one of the first genres, where they introduced sound to film. Here you go, 20th century. When I heard them speaking to each other, I was like, “This is the sound of people falling in love with each other.” And I think you guys were talking about nothing. Shooting the shit, and I was like, “We’re going to make some money off of that.” The first time we were rehearsing, and they were rehearsing the drinking scene, and we didn’t have a glass bottle, and Jason was just sort of saying the lines, “glug, glug, glug”, and he started doing it. And I was like, “Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!” My dad’s going to kill me! This has to be in the movie. So many people have to see this. Anyone with retinas is going to see this. Anyway, a long-winded answer, but as you can tell, I’m brimming with love for these guys. This movie’s my heart, and they met me so hard. They didn’t flinch once, man. I came at them, hard, and they came right back at me. I’m so proud of their performances, and of the film itself.

Q: Discuss the challenge of keeping the tone right.

LH: Oh, the tone. That’s one of those ethereal words, isn’t it? Keeping the tone right… I don’t really know how to answer that question, because I feel like it’s something that’s usually very difficult. With this film, even when I watched the assembly – if you don’t know what an assembly is, it’s when you basically see the entire movie cut together. It’s usually about three hours long. And you basically think, “Why did I do this? Why did I decide to become a director? I’m going to fade away into obscurity, and everyone’s going to find out that I’m a hack.” Maybe I should just go kill myself, in a peaceful way. And no one will ever see this. And so, that’s usually the reaction. And I have to say, when I saw the assembly, the tone was really there, already there. It is a little bit magical chemistry, kind of thing that I’m really grateful for. It wasn’t something at the forefront of our minds. We put a lot of work, my department heads did a lot of work. My editor, my production designer, my costume designer, my DP, line producer, Jessica, everybody.

AB: I want to say something about this, because I want to give you more credit! A lot of the material, especially with the Sobvechik/Laney scene, could be very intense! And I think that Leslie was very great about taking the temperature of it, every time we were shooting it, and getting a read on, like, “Okay, we’ve done the REALLY intense version. And now let’s do some where no one’s going to slit their wrists, right away.” And things like that. And I was also going to say, because I think it’s funny, with Adam’s schedule, we had to shoot all the Sobvechik scenes, the first week of production. And it was super weird, because we kept being like, “Are we just making a sexual, psychological thriller? What is this movie? It’s crazy intense!” And then Jason, suddenly, would have a scene, with some casual walking time, and we’d be like, “It’s fun and bubbly! Oh, thank God!”

LH: Poor Jessica would be like, “Holy shit!” I also wanted to add to that, the Adam Brody scene, in which Adam was so incredible in. He did me such a solid, to come in for one day, and do that scene. I just remembered, that day…

AB: I want to immediately piggyback on it, before you even get to say anything about it! Also, what you were saying about it, in terms of, not necessarily improving, but Leslye’s so great with rehearsal, that even without a lot of time, we would get to set, read through the scene, and figure it out. The Adam Brody scene, which I think plays so funny, and he’s so funny in it, but meanwhile, Laney’s going through really deep emotions! And it’s just one of those things, when we first got there, it was like, “Here’s the super serious version. Here’s the more silly version. Where’s the happy medium?” And once it finally clicked, everyone was like, “Ah, it’s clicking.” I think the same way, with the bottle fingering scene, that even going into it, Leslye was like, “All right guys, I hope this doesn’t turn out super creepy.” The more we did it, it ended up being sweet and romantic, I think. It was just great, and educational!

Q: With all of the references you made, you really reveal yourself as a movie nerd.

LH: You mean the movie references? Yes, absolutely! I’m a human. Speaks English. All of the references were very planned. I’m a huge, huge film nerd; really, it’s my first love, it’s my only love. Literally, the first shot is clipped from ‘The Shining’, that’s a shot from ‘The Shining’. When she sees Sobhichev on the bridge, that’s a sequence from ‘Jaws’. Jake’s first line to her, the ginger reference, is from ‘Casablanca’, and is also referenced in ‘When Harry Met Sally’, not to mention all the references to ‘When Harry Met Sally’, including the text montage. It’s almost exactly like the voiceover, when they’re on the phone with each other. It’s how people will spend their whole days interacting with each other, even though they may never see each other. Especially ‘Graduate’ references, from ‘The Graduate’… it’s a great film, I get a little bored after Mrs. Robinson leaves, but she deserves her own movie… Maybe that’s the next one. But yeah, they were all very planned. I think it’s just because I love movies. I think even the last shot, her and Ann… I love movies. I love referencing them, because they are my church, they’re my lover, they’re my friends. In a weird way, when you’re referencing things, you’re just saying thank you for being there, in a weird way. You’re just saying, “Thank you for giving me a chance to do this, and as a result, I’m going to give you a loving butt tap.” ‘The Graduate’ booty touch. Hashtag that, guys. I don’t know how to spell it.

Q: Can you illuminate us on the choreography of the fight scene? How was that all worked out?

JS: It was always… in the script, both Alison’s sex scene, and my sex scene, with Amanda, with the character, and the fight scene, were all conceived in the written way as being done in masters – only one shot, all the information. For the sex scenes, it’s a nice little lithmus test, seeing what kind of gumption the people reading it would have. It was like, “Would you be willing to do this? We’re not going to have you do this.” I asked him if we were really going to show d’s in b’s and penetration, the day before… Not that I’m shy with that kind of stuff. I just made the assumption that we probably would be bucking for an NC-17. But the fight scene maintained that, and it was done with that one tracking shot. I can’t remember how many takes we did; it was really hot that day. We had to do the fight choreography, with great stunt guys, and that was probably a couple of hours, and little bit, piece by piece, learning it. It was kind of like a dance – this, and this, and this, and sort of added things to it. Adam was super into it. He and I had tons of mutual friends, as well; we all kind of met during this movie. Pertaining to the fight scene, it was very intimate. You don’t want to hurt someone, or get a boner, or not get a boner. There’s all this stuff – your right brain’s in a different mode than your left brain. You’ve got to hit your mark, but you can’t hit it too hard. We’re just constantly checking in, right-click, and the foley sound effects help. It really makes it look like I’m hitting him harder. I remember watching, before the sound was done, and I was like, “I look like a first season WWE wrestler.” I didn’t have quite the comfort level, as the rest of it, but I see it here, and it all flows. I was standing outside, and I heard you guys react to it. I heard the music shift. My friend Julian and I were like, “It sounds like a horror movie, all of a sudden!” I didn’t realize that until I was watching it, then you hear the audio, it helps tremendously, to add that visceral nature to the fight. It was just checking in – I think we did three takes of it, only. No cutaways, or anything like that. And that was all written.

Q: With the synergy of the cast, was that something that was difficult to conceive and get together and make it all work?

LH: I would love to speak to the cast, and how that all came together, but I can say that once everyone was together, I really put my entire heart on the line with this film, emotionally. I cried on every take – even funny takes. Coming up to them, and really giving them that energy, “here it is.” Really not speaking a lot, or giving a lot of direction, but just standing and in this case, with Jason and Ali and Eva, especially Adam… Adam Scott… I think I gave Adam one piece of direction, the whole movie. The energy was so reverberating, and really experiencing it, emotionally, telepathically, spiritually, with the actors, as opposed to dictating to them, “Do this thing.” Because I feel like many directors do not do this – I feel like it is my job to make myself emotionally vulnerable for the actors, and to stand there with them, and go, “I know this is hard.” I have lived these moments, not specifically in the movie, but I’ve had heartbreak. I’ve had romantic obsessions. I’ve had rage. And I want to be there with you guys, and I want to feel that with you. Once we’re together, I felt like that was the emotional glue that held us together. I don’t know if you want to talk about the actual physical act of putting everybody together, really brainstorming about who should be in this movie.

Q: Please tell us a little more about your creative process, Leslye.

LH: That’s a great question but really difficult to answer. It’s incredibly ethereal; it’s weird. I had an ex that called it “montage-ing”; I’ll just go out and walk around. I’ll listen to music, or see a lot of films. I’m inspired, definitely, by things that happen in real life. I think if you’re an aspiring writer, give yourself that time to just stew in it. A lot of the ideas that this movie came from, are nothing like this movie, if that makes sense. Even the first idea I had for this movie, the very first inkling, was to tell ‘Fatal Attraction’ from Glenn Close’s point of view. And that’s where I came up with the character of Laney. I was like, “What if we just told it really sympathetically?” This poor chick is REALLY obsessed with this guy, and he’s being a dick! And definitely Jake’s pattern, the way that he spoke – I don’t if I ever told you this – not really by Jason, who I really wanted to work with, but I remember seeing Jen going… and watching Christoph Waltz just talk people into everything. I was like, “What if there was a dude who could just talk his way into everything!” His motive, instead of revenge, was just pussy. There’s this weird little balls that go on. For me, the creative process is just noticing which ones fall by the wayside, as you continue to gestate the idea, and you start doing drafts, and re-writes, and then starting to collaborate with the actors and getting their input, The wheat gets separated from the chaff, and you start to really see what the movie’s going to be, and what the story’s going to be. As far as comedy goes, which is really what your original question was, I had no idea that I was a funny writer. When I first did this, when I first started producing my plays, in black box theaters and basements and stuff. I was just mortified, when people started laughing at it. I thought I had written ‘Glengary Glenn Ross’, and I was like, “Here you are. The female voice of a generation.” And people were just like, laughing, they were dying, and I was just like, “God damn it!” No one is ever going to take me seriously. I think the key to comedy is, don’t write jokes, write people. I put that in a piece I wrote, about last night, this kind of heart thing that I wrote. I really don’t come from a place of jokes. I’ve gotten better at writing them, I think, but I really want to start with the characters. People are very funny, and pain is very funny. You can just trust that, if you’re working on something, that’s coming from your heart. If you want it to be funny, don’t worry too much about… but maybe you’ll disagree, though, with, like, SNL, and Joe Friday, and things like that. I just come from a place of “Are these people speaking truthfully?”

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Sundance Review: PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

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Having retired from his role as the Hiphopopotamus, Jemaine Clement frequents our living rooms and theaters all too infrequently. His 2014 cameo in Muppets Most Wanted didn’t nearly suffice to fill our favorite Kiwi quotient and we’ve yet to take in his lauded vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows (though we eagerly anticipated its eventual stateside arrival.) Nor can we really kid ourselves into believing that Clement’s existence beyond Flight of the Concords has been far-reaching – though his role as Boris the Animal was an easy highlight of Men in Black 3 and tapped into his unrealized Hollywood potential. So it’s with a heaving sigh of relief that we can announce that Clement has finally been given a role worthy of his gawky stature in the delightful, funny and tender People, Places, Things.

Going for the heart and the belly laugh with each delicately placed jab, Jim Strouse tells a humbling NYC dramedy that would feel at home amongst HBO’s heady comedic lineup. People, Places, Things opens with a man and his wife unhappily in marriage, publicly wrenched apart by a birthday party affair (all the more embarrassingly at the hands of the not-so-sexy Michael Chernus) and later forced to reconcile for the sake of their twin daughters.

Clement plays Will, a graphic novel artist and a teacher at the School of Visual Arts (where Strouse himself works and teaches) going through the motions of adulthood. His long-standing indifference with the world is reflected by a series of simplistic but affecting black-and-white illustrations in a yet-unfinished comic book autobiography. Will’s coy about the autobiographical nature of this illustrated tell-all but his book’s character is a spitting image down to the scruffy-headed mop of the toothy New Zealander. Gentle heartbreak sets in as Strouse flips through frame after frame of the book’s protagonist/Will-stand-in looking lost and alone with a speech bubble persistently asking for “more space.” His parents, his friends, his wife, all have left him craving breathing room and now that he has it, the reality of solicitude slaps him heartily with the question of “Well what now?”

If there’s one (or two) things that Will does not want space from, it’s his daughters and as the narrative turns towards Will taking on increasing responsibility for his children and accruing more time with their fast-aging antics, we get a sense of his potential as a father. Along the way, Will is propositioned by student Kat (Jessica Williams) and get’s his panties all in a bunch about this or that being inappropriate. “Gross,” Kat mutters and fills him in on the fact that she’s in fact (unsuccesfully) trying to hook him up with her more age-appropriate but totally-bangin’-for-her-age mother, Diane (Regina Hall.)

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Strouse’s saga of arrested maturation and the awkward footing towards becoming a reputable parental figure is presented with a soft earnest but is special for another prominent reason. Notably forward-looking in his depiction of race, Strouse skirts calling attention to the bi-racial relationship that develops by focusing on the inner-workings rather than the outer makeup of his characters. And for good reason. Hall and Clement make a great match, her sage advice clashes ever so gently against his accidental aloofness and their chemistry sparkles.

If there’s anything holding People, Places, Things back it’s how slight it all feels – another solid entry into the increasingly salient category of elevated rom-com. But we must credit Strouse some major points for the manor in which he moves the dial forward with a gently nonchalant but entirely progressive depiction of romantic race relations. To destigmatize is a powerful thing, especially when you don’t even realize it’s happening.  

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