ARAB TIMES, MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2017
NEWS/FEATURES
20
People & Places
Film
Movies that matter
‘The Post’ may start
new wave of films
By Owen Gleiberman
got a shiver of anticipation when I read the anIwould
nouncement on Monday that Steven Spielberg
direct “The Post,” a drama about The Washington Post’s role in exposing the Pentagon Papers, starring Tom Hanks as the fabled Post editor Ben Bradlee
and Meryl Streep as publisher Katharine Graham. Set
in 1971, the movie will center on the paper’s war with
the White House over whether the Post had the right
to publish the top-secret military documents — first
leaked to The New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg
— that charted the escalation and futility of the Vietnam War. I have no idea if Spielberg has been mulling
this movie over for a while (the
rights were bought by producer
Amy Pascal last fall), but everything about the timing suggests that it’s no coincidence
the announcement was made
45 days after the inauguration
of Donald Trump. “The Post”
is clearly a film that Spielberg
wants to make because he sees
it as a parable of today: a highstakes political drama of secrecy, lies, and leaks, and the
Hanks
rights and responsibilities of a
free press. The parallels could hardly by more incendiary.
That’s why it’s a fast-track movie. “The Post” is
scheduled to begin shooting in May and to be released
later on this year, even as Spielberg is in the midst of
post-production on his dystopian climate-change sci-fi
epic, “Ready Player One,” and has had to push back
another project he’s already at work on, “The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara” (starring Oscar Isaac and
Mark Rylance). Spielberg has a pattern of turning into
a master juggler when he takes on a drama of historical
import. He completed “Jurassic Park” the same year
— 1993 — that he shot, edited, and released “Schindler’s List,” and he repeated the pattern, in 2005, with
“The War of the Worlds” and “Munich.” It’s fascinating to think that Spielberg makes his topical-urgency
movies on such a breakneck schedule, because that’s
probably part of what gives them their history-writtenwith-lightning quality.
At the same time, it’s worth noting that it took quite
a while for Spielberg to make “Lincoln,” because he
had trouble lining up the financing for it. That marked
a sad — and, in its way, signature — shift in American cinema: Steven Spielberg wants to direct a movie
about Abraham Lincoln...and no one will back it!
When the film came out, it was, of course, a huge success (domestic gross: $182 million), and it deserved to
be, but you couldn’t help but wonder what was going
on in the minds of the financiers and executives who
would no longer pony up $65 million for a movie like
“Lincoln” but would think nothing of paying twice
that for a blockbuster about a car chase on Mars.
Fireworks from Pyro 2000 Fireworks company of Britain, light up the sky on the fifth weekend of the 8th Philippine International Pyromusical Competition on March
11 by the Manila Bay at the Mall of Asia in suburban Pasay city south of Manila, Philippines. Various fireworks from eight countries as France, Germany, China,
Canada, Britain, Australia and Philippines have been showcasing their skills in pyrotechnics for six consecutive weekends. (AP)
Film
A rowdy heist movie-cum-romance
‘Baby Driver’ a high-speed caper
By Peter Debruge
W
Served
Actually, we know what’s going on in their minds:
They’re reading the marketplace. Which is, on a basic
level, what they’re supposed to be doing. As long as
you regard making movies as nothing more or less than
a business, the decisions that go into them may not always be smart, but they tend to have an iron-clad logic,
and it is this: Week after week, around the world, the
popcorn beast must be served! Movies about subjects
like the Pentagon Papers are now routinely thought of
as “elite” end-of-the-year awards-bait stuff. That’s the
economics of the market as it now exists, and those
economics come from two places at once: from the
bottom up (what the audience wants) and from the top
down (the executives looking to serve that audience).
Unless there’s a change in those priorities, movies will
more or less go on as they are.
But that’s the reason I got that tingle. Spielberg,
a unique figure in Hollywood, still has the power to
make the films he wants to make, and the fact that he’s
now teaming up with two of Hollywood’s greatest —
and most famously liberal — actors, Tom Hanks and
Meryl Streep, to tell the story of a 46-year-old event
in American political and journalistic history isn’t, in
itself, anything revolutionary. (The Pentagon Papers is
part of the liberal catechism.)
What has changed is the context. A year ago, a
movie like “The Post” — or “Spotlight,” or “Zero
Dark Thirty,” or “Erin Brockovich” — would have
been thought of in that category called “Movies That
Matter.” Which is to say: Movies that the liberal media establishment likes, that take on crucial themes of
truth and corruption, and that have a fairly specific
audience. That’s the way it’s been for ages. My question is: Could that audience, for the first time in a long
while, evolve and expand? Is it possible that we could
return to a period when movies aren’t just slotted into
a category called “Movies That Matter”? That we
could return to an age when they actually do matter?
The legendary Hollywood renaissance of the 1970s
happened because America, at the time, was mired in
social upheaval, in the earthquakes brought about by
the new youth culture and by the corruptions and scandals of Vietnam and Watergate; the desire to see all that
reflected back at us as drama was a timely, organic phenomenon. The defining motion pictures of the age, from
“Midnight Cowboy” to “M*A*S*H” to “The French
Connection” to “Chinatown” to “The Last Detail” to
“All the President’s Men,” weren’t things you went
to see because they were “good for you.” They were
films that made the darkness enthralling, because they
let you go into the darkness and come out the other side.
They were slices of reality that were also extraordinary
pieces of entertainment, and the audience was hungry
for them because there was a sense, all around you, that
the stakes were so high.
Support
That, I think, is what has begun to sink in over the
last 50 days. Here’s something that those who support
Donald Trump and those who despise him can probably agree upon: that we’ve arrived, in America, at a
fork-in-the-road moment, when we’re going to decide
(and by “we,” I mean the people) what kind of a society we really want — a society that helps to take
care of its citizens, or one that lets its citizens fend
for themselves. That, beneath the policy debates, is the
question, and it has never hung in the balance at any
point in the last half century as seismically as it does
now. These issues are weighing on everyone. That’s
why reading the news each day has taken on a different quality than it had before. It feels like the very soul
of America is up for grabs. The last time it probably
felt like this way was in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Here’s a hope that is also a prediction: The more
that people feel how high the stakes are, the more
they’ll want to see those stakes reflected in the movies
they go to. Wishful thinking? (RTRS)
Jon Hamm (left), and director Edgar
Wright arrive at the world premiere of
‘Baby Driver’ at the Paramount Theatre during the South by Southwest
Film Festival on March 11, in Austin,
Texas. (AP)
Gere
Kerouac
Variety
JERUSALEM: Richard Gere has lashed
out at Israel over its settlements in territory
that Palestinians want for a state.
The “Pretty Woman” star came to Jerusalem for the local premiere of a new film
by Israeli writer-director Joseph Cedar in
which he stars.
A story in Sunday’s Haaretz newspaper
quoted the actor as saying “settlements are
such an absurd provocation ... and they are
certainly not part of the program of someone who wants a genuine peace process.”
The international community mostly
views settlements as an obstacle to creating
a Palestinian state alongside Israel in territory it captured in the 1967 war. Israel says
settlements along with other core issues
like security should be resolved in peace
talks. (AP)
❑
❑
❑
LOS ANGELES: Terrence Malick spent
40 days filming his latest drama “Song to
Song” throughout Austin, in his trademark
style, without a completed script. The days
were long -- starting in the morning, with
only a 30-minute break for lunch. The
actors were even shot in the car, moving
from one location to the next, just in case it
turned into something.
“With new cameras, you can quickly
accumulate a lot of footage,” Malick said at
a rare public Q&A at SXSW on a rainy Saturday morning. “We had an eight-hour first
cut. We thought, ‘Is this a mini-series?’ It
really could have been. It took a long time to
cut it down to a manageable length.” (RTRS)
❑
❑
❑
ith “Baby Driver,” Edgar Wright
believes he has made a movie
about music, about the way that some
people absolutely, positively require
music in their lives. But “Baby Driver”
is actually a movie about obsession —
a rowdy heist movie-cum-romance, to
be precise — about a guy named Baby
who has different iPods depending on
his mood, who hardly ever takes his
earbuds out, whose favorite singer was
his mother (now deceased), and who
falls in love with a diner waitress who
reminds him of dear old mom.
Like all Edgar Wright movies,
“Baby Driver” is a blast, featuring
wall-to-wall music and a surfeit of inspired ideas. But it’s also something
of a mess, blaring pop tunes of every
sort as it lurches between rip-roaring
car chases, colorful pre-caper banter,
and a twee young-love subplot — to
the extent that the movie will resonate
most with audiences that skew young,
hip, and, like its helmer and its hero
(the latter played by baby-faced “The
Fault in Our Stars” star Ansel Elgort),
more than a little obsessive.
In real life, obsession can be an unflattering trait. On movie characters,
however, it’s golden, resulting in singleminded protagonists who are crystal
clear about what they want, leaving little
room for conflict or contradiction to distract from their goals. Baby’s a lot like
rabid B-movie connoisseur Clarence
Worley in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted “True Romance,” or fellow Elvis
devotee Sailor Ripley in David Lynch’s
“Wild at Heart”: Such obsessive characters prove intensely passionate, slightly
crazy, and as committed to their women
as they are to the quirks that preoccupy
them the rest of the time.
For Baby, that would be music and
cars — though it’s anyone’s guess how
he came to be such an expert on either.
Wright introduces Baby behind the
wheel of a souped-up red Subaru. In a
likely nod to Robert Altman’s “Thieves
Like Us,” during the first bank hit,
Wright remains parked outside with the
kid, listening to the Jon Spencer Blues
Explosion’s “Bellbottoms” while the
Kerouac’s more obscure works.
The festivities conclude at 7:30 pm
with a “Happy Birthday Jack!” concert at
Zorba’s Music Hall featuring the Neverly
rest of the team (Jon Hamm, Jon Bernthal, and Eiza Gonzalez) rob the joint.
When the gang come running back to
the car, Baby cranks up the volume and
peels off for one of the most satisfying
chase sequences in recent memory.
Like a slightly mellower version of
Ryan Gosling’s stoic “Drive” driver,
Elgort proves adorably awkward around
women, especially Lily Collins’ character, Debora (ladies just love a damagedgoods guy like Baby, with his childhood
trauma, mommy issues, and bad-boy
streak). Prone to singing Carla Thomas’
“B-A-B-Y” while she works, Debora
complains that there are no good ballads
written for girls with her name, and he
introduces her to an exception by T. Rex.
Still, “you have us all beat,” she tells
Baby. “Every song is about you.”
That may be true, but because Baby
is now thoroughly, obsessively in love,
every song may as well be about her
in his mind. Though he can’t hear,
the deaf old black man who serves
as Baby’s foster dad (played by CJ
Jones) instantly picks up on the shift
in Baby’s playlist. And yet, on account
of some longstanding debt to a smartalecky criminal named Doc (Kevin
Spacey), Baby isn’t free to drive off
into the sunset with Debora — “to
head west ... in a car I can’t afford with
a plan I don’t have” — at least, not yet.
Handle
Baby still has one last heist to handle
for Doc, and this gig is complicated by a
loose cannon who calls himself “Bats”
(Jamie Foxx). Technically, all of Doc’s
foot soldiers are in some way unhinged,
and Wright exploits their unpredictability to suggest that even a small snafu on
one of Baby’s runs could end badly for
any and everyone involved. And so the
heist half of “Baby Driver” plays like
one of those wildly eccentric ‘90s-era
crime movies, a la Doug Liman’s “Go”
or pretty much anything from Tarantino
at that time.
Baby comes across borderline autistic is most social situations, but put
him behind the wheel of a car, and he’s
a nimble, fast-acting pilot, steering his
manual-transmission getaway vehicle
Brothers band. (AP)
❑
❑
❑
LOS ANGELES: Kino Lorber has ac-
LOWELL, Mass: Fans of Jack Kerouac
are celebrating what would have been the
Beat Generation writer’s 95th birthday in
his hometown.
The “On the Road” author was born in
Lowell, Massachusetts, on March 12, 1922.
The city is throwing him a party Saturday,
the day before his actual birthday.
Things kick off at noon with a public
tour of Pollard Library, which is said to
have played a pivotal role in shaping the
young Kerouac’s literary consciousness
and ambitions.
That will be followed at 1 pm with a
presentation and discussion of some of
(From left), actors Arjun Kapoor, Ileana D’Cruz, Athiya Shetty and Anil Kapoor
pose for photographers during a photocall to promote the film ‘Mubarakan’ in
London on March 11. (AP)
out of nearly any bind. Once the backbone of any decent drive-in experience,
car chases have all but disappeared
from action movies these days, leaving
a wide-open niche for “Baby Driver”
to fill — and fill it Wright does, to the
brink of bursting and then some, with a
mostly clever collection of jokes, sudden narrative U-turns, and aptly picked
songs (including the Simon and Garfunkel track that gives the film its name).
But is that enough? As in Wright’s
adaptation of the video-game-themed
graphic novel “Scott Pilgrim vs. the
World,” this explosively entertaining lark occasionally feels like someone smoking in a fireworks factory,
where all that potential could go horribly awry as Wright gets carried away
with his own ingenuity. By the time
the film’s final heist rolls around, both
Baby and the audience are ready to
move on, rooting more for his romance
with Debora than whatever happens
with Doc’s latest scheme, this one to
relieve the Post Office of a few million
dollars in money-order slips.
For this unexpectedly dangerous
job, Doc pairs Baby with Hamm and
Foxx’s characters, obliging them to
buy fresh weapons from a shady gun
runner played by pint-sized songwriter
Paul Williams — and before you know
it, the entire job is off on the wrong
foot, and accelerating fast in a potentially disastrous direction. Previously,
there had never really been stakes to
any of Baby’s outings, but now that
Debora has entered the picture, Wright
has given us something to root for.
Now, instead of simply being a weird
kid with a savant-like sense for music,
he’s a modern-day Romeo, a watereddown version of the one Leonardo
DiCaprio played two decades back.
And much as Baz Luhrmann did in
that contemporary retelling, by setting
this wacky genre-straddling exercise to
music — songs that either accentuate
or ironically subvert the expected tone
of any given scene — Wright manages
to stitch together wildly inventive, yet
otherwise incongruous scenes that
wouldn’t otherwise have any business
appearing in the same movie. (RTRS)
quired all North American rights to Gabe
Klinger’s romance drama “Porto,” starring
the late Anton Yelchin and Lucie Lucas.
“Porto,” written by Klinger and Larry
Gross, will hold its North American premiere on Sunday at the South by Southwest
Film Festival. The film, shot on Super
8mm, 16mm and 35mm in the Portuguese
city, had its world premiere last fall in
the New Directors competition at the San
Sebastian Film Festival.
Kino Lorber is planning a fall theatrical release, with a commitment to screen
the film both on 35mm and DCP, before a
VOD release during the winter. (RTRS)
❑
❑
❑
LOS ANGELES: Two-time Oscar-winning
“La La Land” composer Justin Hurwitz
and the cast of “American …” are among
those stopping by at the Lionsgate Lounge
this weekend in Austin, Texas.
The lounge features a series of events,
including fireside chats, musical interludes,
and VR demos from March 11 to March 13.
On Sunday evening, attendees can join
Hurwitz for “An Evening of ‘La La Land’
Music,” during which he will sit pianoside to discuss one of the most acclaimed
movies of the year. Scott Mantz of Access
Hollywood will moderate the chat before
the event turns into a cocktail reception
with “La La Land”-inspired music. (RTRS)