I found a Paris Review article about Centralia, that little town in Pennsylvania that is now burning underground for more than fifty years. And I wanted to write about it a couple days ago. Why would I want to do that? Because the movie version of Silent Hill used Centralia as its model for the town and shifted the whole background story of the videogame on this town of burning coal-mines and disrupted streets. And I liked that The Paris Review would do an article about it. But then I forgot or didn't have the time or just didn't bother too much.
But just about a couple minutes ago I received news (that are already four days old) that are intricately linked with the Centralia thing that I now have to talk about it. Well, Roger Avary, probably best known for co-writing the script for Pulp Fiction with Tarantino, also wrote the script for the first Silent Hill movie. And he also wrote the screenplay for Bret Easton Ellis's Rules of Attraction as well as directed the flick, which is the one really really good film adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel that exists, and BEE loves Avary for that (as well as I do; well, on a whole different level, maybe). Just watch this little piece that introduces Victor Ward/Johnson into The Rules Of Attraction. Victor became later the protagonist of Ellis's masterpiece, Glamorama. Or this one, THE most amazing suicide scene ever.
Well, a lot of talk has been around if Avary would ever be able to raise the money for finally filming Glamorama, and it never looked very promising, because of 9/11 and are the Americans really ready for a movie like this and isn't it kind of too late now, anyway? But consider this tweet from Ellis, dated 10/13/11:
Just finished reading Roger Avary's adaptation of "Glamorama" which he will direct next year. Hilarious, horrific, sad. He's a mad genius.
So, this now makes top of my most eagerly awaited films list. In the meantime: Watch/Rewatch The Rules of Attraction. Avary really did the best job of his career with this one and if he had a hand in the casting as well, everything Bret tweeted is true: Hilarious, horrific, sad. He's a mad genius.
All right. I just watched, for the first time, Tarantino's Grindhouse edition of Death Proof. I have to specify: As you should know, Tarantino and Rodriguez did a double feature called Grindhouse, in about 2007, consisting of two feature films, Rodriguez's Planet Terror and Tarantino's Death Proof. Both of which are excellent movies. Death Proof is maybe Tarantino's best film yet, although Inglourious Basterds is close on second. Or first, maybe, I can't say for sure. And Planet Terror is a really good zombie flick that keeps very true to Romero in its political and sociological implications. I bought the Grindhouse BluRay because I never saw the double feature, including fake trailers, of which Machete eventually, you know, of course you know, blabla. Mentioning the fake trailers. I love Udo Kier, he is the German Christopher Walken, but on a much much higher level.
Well, I digress. What I wanted to talk about: There was no Grindhouse double feature in Germany, or the whole world other than the U.S., for what I know. Planet Terror and Death Proof were released in Germany six months apart as two 120 minute, stand alone feature films by two different directors. Even the marketing machinery made no connections between these two flicks. There were no fake trailers for Germany and no theater did a double feature without the trailers. But: the U.S. Grindhouse double feature is like exactly 3 hours long. That means that the U.S. version was about 23 minutes shorter per film than the German/European one (plus about 10/14 minutes that the fake trailers made up for). So tonight I, for the first time, watched the shorter, U.S., version of Death Proof.
And there is a whole lot to be missed! It is pretty easy to cut about 20 minutes from a film like this because it's whole aesthetics deal with missing and worn down film reels. But I don't understand the choices made (either way, if other scenes were cut, I would miss them, too, because there is nothing in this movie that deserves cutting). The two scenes that I missed most: 1) Vanessa Ferlito's lap dance for Kurt Russell. I knew that it wasn't in the U.S. version beforehand, and 2) The first meeting of Stuntman Mike with the second set of girls at a gas station. There are more beautiful close-upped feet in this one and a real good joke about female addiction to fashion magazines, with black and white scenes and everything.
I don't like to say this, but you American guys have been tricked. Somehow. And I think of something like the U.S. version of the first Silent Hill game had little ready-to-slay-children-monsters in it and for a German release they had to be replaced with little ready-to-slay-monster-creatures-that-don't-resemble-human-children-so-much because German censors don't appreciate violence towards children. But on the other hand, because Konami felt sorry for their European customers, we Europeans got a really nice making-of-and-international-trailers-DVD for and with Silent Hill 2, which the U.S. release didn't have. So, really. What I want to say. If you only know the U.S. Grindhouse double feature, try to get your hands on the European releases of Planet Terror and Death Proof as well. It is really worth the ride.
And the other thing is: Werner Herzog toured Germany last week because of the German theatrical release of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which I am looking forward to so very much. And he was on Harald Schmidt and I had to realize, although I once idealized Schmidt as THE most intellectual German voice just a few years ago, that Werner Herzog is moving in another realm entirely. There is just no man, no father figure, of deeper knowlegde and wisdom around. Not even Ted Danson in Bored To Death. There is so much calm in everything Herzog says because he just emanates pure ethereal wisdom. And it doesn't seem to me to be a pure coincidence that Ted Danson mentions Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog a couple of times in Bored To Death.
I have to admit that I never saw any of Herzog's movies. I stumbled upon his documentaries a couple years ago and they are just so good and heartbreaking, and wise, and terrifying, and melancholic, and, foremost, true. You just cannot see Grizzly Man and be the same person anymore. Or Encounters at the End of The World. That penguin, running about 80 miles away from his peers, just running and runnning, alone, into the distance, straight into his certain, lonely death, still haunts me. This part of the nature of being is so utterly, heartbreakingly sad and I fear it being at the central nature of all being. Just as Herzog considers brutality and cruelty at the very heart of nature. Watching Herzog always raises so much questions. I'm so looking forward to Cave of Forgotten Dreams. And also to finally watching some of the Herzog/Kinski films. And to connect the first topic of the post with the second, just watch this clip (that you pretty certainly already know; when I wanted to write about Herzog and Kinski a few nights ago, but didn't, I wanted to name the post I Shot Werner Herzog, but this now seems to be a much better title; to watch the full interview, click here):
IMDB is a great source of joy. Especially if you stumble upon something that interests you in such a way that minutes, hours, whole lifetimes seem to have passed in a couple of seconds. Actually it's just your attention span on digital speed leaving you with bloodshot eyes and a feeling of loss and wasted time that makes you want to kill yourself. But sometimes psychological backlash is not so severe and kills less of your brain-cells than you think (but still more than you wish for).
In this case of utterly useless information-spreading I want to direct your attention unto some upcoming films that might interest you. One of them is HANNA. I've seen it in a Sneak Preview two weeks ago. Scheduled for May 26 in Germany this is one of the weirdest films I've ever seen. It surprised me a lot. If you get the chance to see it OV, do it. Because Eric Bana has the most perfect German accent and a lot of the other actors have really bad ones, including the psychotic Reeperbahn-club owner slash assassin, which makes him an even more psychotic person. He whistles his own tune, too. I'm pretty sure this movie won't do well with Box Office #s but will gain some scholarly attention. Really worth watching, trust me.
The other big news is that Silent Hill: Revelation 3D started filming a couple weeks ago. I got tricked by a really good looking fan-trailer that is right here:
The 2nd movie-adaptation of the Silent Hill video game series seems to deal primarily with Heather and the storyline of Silent Hill 3. Just let's hope that director Michael J. Bassett does this one as well as Christophe Gans did with the previous adaptation, still one of the best videogame adaptations out there. And it makes so much sense to shoot it in 3D, too, with all the oblique camera angles and shifting of worlds/consciousness. I'm really looking forward to that one, scheduled somewhen in 2012 and having Malcolm McDowell (Clockwork Orange) on board.
Also with Malcolm McDowell on board is Amy Heckerling's Vamps, which marks her second collaboration with Alicia Silverstone as female lead, after 1995s Clueless. Richard Lewis and Sigourney Weaver also join this Vampire RomCom. Not much more information about this one, though.
