Dear Zachary - Leading Contender for Best Doc of the Year?

This column formerly known as RFP’s 30 Most Anticipated Fall Films has now been renamed Getting Buzzed: RFP’s Seasonal Buzz Aggregator. Each Friday, I’ll be writing a varying-sized piece on the weekly buzz for that season’s films. Seasons will be broken up into Fall, Winter/Spring, and Summer. I won’t be going on about upcoming summer movies in the dead of winter or films far in the future. The purpose is to drum up interest in buzzed about work that’s coming out soon, and get movie fans talking.
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The theme is fear. Drawn in black and white. Animated in the style of graphic novels. This is what you get when you enter FEAR[S] OF THE DARK. Ten of the hottest graphic artists from around the world have come together to lend their artwork and stories to this French animated production. Rabid dogs on the hunt. Body possessing insects. Esoteric dread. Rage filled nightmares. Beasts from the clouds. And the things that go bump in the night.

The artists assembled for this experiment include Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou & Romain Slocombe, Richard McGuire & Michel Pirus, Lorenzo Mattotti & Jerry Kramsky and Pierre di Sciullo, along with artistic director Etienne Robial. Three of the six tales play out straight, while the other crisscross throughout the film. In the first, by Blutch, a thin-jawed man, dressed in stockings and a three-point hat, haunts the countryside with his rabid dogs in tow. The sketch-style drawings highlight the savagery of the murderous beasts. Di Sciullo’s experimental segments present shifting shapes and imagery to fearful ponderings about life. In a faux-naïve style, Marie Caillou and Romain Slocombe’s sequence has a devilish doctor forcing a young girl named Sumako to relive her nightmarish dreams, filled with headless samurai, bullies, dragons, spiders and blood.

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With THE INCREDIBLE HULK recently arriving on DVD, This Weekend’s Film Festival is taking a look at misunderstood monsters for Halloween. We’ll look at the giant ape to end all giant apes. The flat-headed monster and his bride. Plus a ponderous green guy and his new angrier image. Let the smashing begin.

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After making a name for himself in music videos, Tarsem made the jump to feature films in 2000 with the visually innovative serial killer thriller THE CELL. Sadly disregarded as just a “Jennifer Lopez” movie (equally sadly Lopez is always at her best in films no one remembers: see ANGEL EYES), THE CELL had to settle for cult status after its initial release. It took four years to produce and eight years to finally release this follow-up project. Again, he crafts a visually innovative film that mixes reality with fantasy, in a tale that reminded me tonally and thematically of Guillermo del Toro’s PAN’S LABYRINTH… only brighter.

Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) is the child of Romanian migrant workers. She has broken her arm and is staying in the hospital to heal. Using the hospital as her playground, she stumbles into the suicide ward where she meets depressed stunt man Roy Walker (Lee Pace, TV’s PUSHING DAISIES). In an effort to use Alexandria as a way to obtain a lethal dose of morphine, Roy tells Alexandria a wild tale of the Black Bandit whom is determined to kill Governor Odious after the fiend killed his brother. In her mind Alexandria casts people from her life as the characters in the story, including the kind Nurse Evelyn (Justine Waddell, MANSFIELD PARK) as the woman who has come between the Black Bandit and his archenemy.

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With the ilk that is passed off as horror nowadays being a horror fan must also make you masochist. Then a special film comes along and gives you faith in the genre again. THE ORPHANAGE is the best horror film since 2002’s FRAILTY. Gore is absent, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t horrifying sights to be seen. The red stuff is replaced by suspense. This ghost story will have you gripping the closest thing that doesn’t scream. But this isn’t a screamer; director Juan Antonio Bayona is much more of a sadist then simply thrust boo moments at you. And you’ll love him for it.

Laura (Belen Rueda, THE SEA INSIDE) was an orphan. Now she is grown and has moved back to the orphanage she once lived in, planning to reopen it with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo). The couple has a young son named Simon (Roger Princep). He came to the orphanage with two imaginary friends and now has more… and his new friends like to play disturbing games. During a party to celebrate the orphanage’s opening, Simon disappears. Has his new friends kidnapped him? Distraught, Laura calls on paranormal investigator Aurora (Geraldine Chaplin, HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS), who encourages her to continue to believe in the supernatural despite the fears of Carlos, whom believes she might be losing her mind.

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Going into this film, I was not a fan of the TV show. In about the third season, I rented the first disc of the first season and got through about three episodes before I gave up on it. I found it shallow as it bowed down to crass consumerism. But due to the cultural phenomenon that surrounded the film, I was curious as a student of pop culture. So going in, I expected the worst and hoped for the best. So what a wonderful surprise when I enjoyed it much more than expected.

For those not familiar with the show, the feature takes a few moments to fill us newbies in on the key players in the opening credits. Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker, L.A. STORY), the famous culture and relationship writer, is firmly in love with her longtime, off-and-on-again boyfriend John James “Mr. Big” Preston (Chris Noth, TV’s LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT). Now after 10 years, Mr. Big proposes. Carrie’s friends Charlotte (Kristin Davis, TV’s MELROSE PLACE) and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon, IGBY GOES DOWN) are ecstatic. Her other friend Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall, MANNEQUIN) is not so enthused, thinking they would be the “unmarried” ones together forever. But as most romantic comedies go weddings don’t always go as planned.

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In 1931, Universal Studios introduced to the world what would become the two most iconic movie monsters in history. James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN was produced following the success of Tod Browning’s DRACULA, released earlier in the year. While Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster originated in novels, the actual screenplays were based on popular stage adaptations of the books. They retained some of the elements of the original texts, but many new elements were added, such as Frankenstein’s hunchback assistant and the mistaken use of the abnormal brain, which have now become firm parts of the Frankenstein mythos. But the singularly most defining element of the film is the look of the monster. People around the world, who have never seen the film, know who he is.

Boris Karloff became a star because of his performance as the groaning creature. In the opening credits of the film, the monster is created as ?. The film begins with Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive, 1934’s JANE EYRE) and his assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye, THE MALTESE FALCON) lurking at the cemetery waiting to dig up a fresh corpse. He is so obsessed with his experiments to create life that his fiancée Elizabeth (Mae Clarke, PUBLIC ENEMY) and his friend Victor Moritz (John Boles, STELLA DALLAS) have begun to worry. They call on Henry’s old teacher Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan, DRACULA) to help them confront Henry. They arrive at his gothic castle-like lab on the very night he brings his horrid creation to life. We cannot forget when the monster’s hand first moves and Henry screams, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”

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Swedish horror has the buzz.

Movie buzz for the past few weeks has been only at a simmer. The saddest news is that THE ROAD, the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s darkly moving novel, is moving to 2009. It was set to come out Nov. 14th. It was my pick as the most anticipated film of the fall. I won’t go all Harry Potter-fan on the Weinstein Co., but it’s disappointing.

Clint Eastwood’s GRAN TORINO has a release date and Rod Lurie’s NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH are now firmly in the season, getting limited runs on Dec. 17th and 19th, respectively.

This week I have a list of five art house releases that have piqued my interest. Tell me what you think.
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Clint Eastwood is a busy man. In 2006, he made the companion films FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, now he’s back this year with two new films, CHANGELING and later this year’s GRAN TORINO. He also making the best films of his career, and that’s in front and behind the camera. Now he has made a stirring drama about a missing child and the corrupt police department that was more interested in improving their tarnished image than in justice.

Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie, GIRL, INTERRUPTED) is a loving single mother, working hard as a supervisor at the telephone company. Her son Walter (Gattlin Griffith) gets in a fight at school when a kid says bad things about his mom in regards to why his father left them. She explains that his dad couldn’t handle the responsibility. One day, Christine has to work late and when she gets home, Walter is missing. The police won’t investigate until after 24 hours have past. Nearly a month after the boy went missing, Capt. J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan, TV’s BURN NOTICE) declares the LAPD has found the boy. At a big train station reunion event with the Chief (Colm Feore, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE) proudly talking up the press, Jones presents the wrong boy to Christine. When she begs to differ, Jones accuses her of shirking her responsibilities and has her institutionalized.

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SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is like stumbling into an id-fueled nightmare of the melded brains of Woody Allen and Franz Kafka. If you can understand and appreciate that description than you might like this film. If you don’t then you might be hopelessly lost. This isn’t Cinema 101 stuff, it’s 400-level material. The film references WAITING FOR GODARD, DEATH OF A SALESMAN and countless philosophical ideas about life, death and existence. But what else should one expect from the directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman, the writer of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.

Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman, CAPOTE) is a neurotic theater director. Every over-the-top anxiety one could fear comes true in his life. Even when he receives a MacArthur grant to stage his epic play, where he will rebuild New York City in a warehouse, he isn’t overjoyed, but petrified with what to do. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener, 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN) doesn’t seem interested in him, because she’s more consumed with her own career as a painter. His young daughter Olive (Sadie Goldstein, LITTLE CHILDREN) is more neurotic than he is. How could simply describing what a plumber does lead to a little girl screaming that she doesn’t want blood in her body? The box office clerk Hazel (Samantha Morton, MINORITY REPORT) and Caden’s lead actress Claire (Michelle Williams, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN) seem sweet on him, but always crying before or during sex doesn’t make for good love affairs. Caden endlessly works on his play trying to find truth until his life and his work are interchangeable. Caden is furious when one of his actors wonders when they will bring in an audience.

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