Summer 2007 Trailer Program

Come take a peek at this summer’s upcoming movies by enjoying a twice annual program from the Washington, D.C. Film Society--“COMING ATTRACTIONS Trailer Night, Summer 2007.” The program will take place on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 from 7:00-9:00 p.m. at Landmark’s E Street Cinema, 555 11th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.

It’s that time of the year when Hollywood trots out its latest, and perhaps, biggest, movie blockbusters. This year the magic comes in threes … and twos …and even a four. “Sequel” is the word for the season but there is more. Join long-time favorite co-hosts and local film critics Joe Barber and Bill Henry as they wow you with the latest Hollywood news and buzz about what's in store, what’s hot and what’s not. Think you already know what sets you on fire? Think you’re ready to make your top ten movie list? Think again. Attendees get to play amateur critic and be a part of a live-wire, no-holds-barred, opinion-fest as they preview the most anticipated summer releases.

You might see trailers for the highly anticipated sequel triple play of Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Pirates 3 - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. But wait, Matt Damon is back in Bourne 3 or The Bourne Ultimatum, Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker return in Rush Hour 3 and Clooney, Pitt and company return for Ocean’s Thirteen. Bruce Willis outdoes most with his fourth installment in the Die Hard series Live Free or Die Hard, British zombies return in 28 Weeks Later…, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer reunites the Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans and Ioan Gruffudd, plus, there’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Evan Almighty with Steve Carell. Other non-sequel trailer fare may include the cartoons The Simpsons Movie and Ratatouille, plus, Hairspray featuring John Travolta as a woman, the Shia LeBeouf triple play of Disturbia, Surf’s Up (another penguin cartoon), and Transformers, Kevin Costner shows his bad side in Mr. Brooks, and Harry Connick Jr. gets creepy with Ashley Judd in Bug. Comedy fans can look for Balls of Fury with Christopher Walken and Dan Fogler, Knocked Up with Katherine Heigl, Wedding Daze with Jason Biggs and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry starring Adam Sandler and Kevin James.

As always, there’ll be lots of FREE film giveaways and movie posters PLUS chances for raffle prizes: movie and theatre tickets, and DVDs. Also, look for $5 pop and popcorn combos. This one-of-a-kind, semi-annual event is only $5.00 for members of the D.C. Film Society, FREE to Gold Members, and $8.00 to non-members. Tickets will be available one hour prior at 6:00 p.m.

The Cinema Lounge

It's Up, Up and 'Away' for Sarah Polley

By Ronn Levine, DC Film Society Member

Maybe it’s the Canadian upbringing or the mostly indie resume, but actress Sarah Polley seems nice. When the moderator at a recent Freer Gallery of Art premiere of Away From Her—the new movie she wrote and directed about a couple dealing with Alzheimer’s Disease—lost the last page of her bio and had to pause, Polley smiled and said, "Don’t worry. My last few years are blank anyway."

Hardly. In the last three years, Polley, 28, has appeared in Dawn of the Dead, Don’t Come Knocking, The Secret Life of Words (an intense performance with Tim Robbins) and the highly praised but little-seen Canadian TV show, Slings and Arrows—the latter with her father, Michael Polley. (He’s the one leaning on the piano in the opening.) Go back a few more years and you can see her in Guinevere, My Life Without You and The Sweet Hereafter.

Seated on the modestly sized Freer stage, in a modestly short brown dress, she comes off, well, modest. When someone in the audience apologized for a question before asking it, Polley sheepishly asked, “Are you Canadian?” In fact, she came off so down-to-earth that a woman leaving the auditorium said to a woman friend, "She even has nice legs; I can definitely see your girl crush."

Polley ventured to Washington as a first-time director—"[turns out that] I’m a total control freak; it was clear to everyone else just not to me," she said—along with a co-star of the movie, the highly regarded Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent. (Academy-award winner Julie Christie also stars.) At the Freer, they basked in a warm audience glow, took questions and penned autographs. Asked when the movie opens, Polley kept a straight face and said, "May 4, same day as Spiderman. We’re going to mop the floor with that movie." And then she smiled.

The next day, seated with Pinsent in a suite at the Grand Hyatt, Polley proves equally disarming, laughing at the resemblance of a reporter to a fellow actor on Slings and Arrows. But when talk turns to Away From Her, she becomes serious and quickly shows why someone so young could write a film about older people, a rest home and a 40-plus year marriage.

"What was really interesting for me was that here was a portrait of a marriage, and when I first wrote the script I was at the beginning of a marriage," Polley says. "So I could look forward and wonder what a marriage looks like when that much life was piled on top of it, and life kind of had its way with you."

Polley adapted the film from an Alice Munro short story titled, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” that she read in The New Yorker on an airplane six years ago. In it, Pinsent and Christie show us a marriage full of love that should be in its best moments—except it’s clear to both that the initial stages of Alzheimer’s have settled upon her. Both Polley and Pinsent say that they can relate a bit to Alzheimer’s and the rest home that Christie’s character enters.

"I have a brother whose wife is in the second stages of Alzheimer’s," the eloquent, 70-something Pinsent says. "The thing that struck me and applied to my characterization [in the film] was the one to do with denial—on the patient’s part, whereby you couldn’t really address it with her. [My brother] could not. The pain that he went through, not being able to do anything except deny it himself."

Polley’s grandmother spent the last three years in a retirement home, so "it was an environment incredibly interesting to me and something [society] doesn’t talk about enough,” she says. “So many of us are dealing with loved ones going into these institutions and feeling conflicted about it. It was important for me to portray that environment."

Away From Her appears to get the rest home right—from the spirited card games to the sterile atmosphere—and even adds a few fun touches. Sitting in the TV room, a resident faithfully "announces" the televised hockey games for whoever cares to listen. Polley’s late uncle was Ted Darling, a Hall of Fame announcer for the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League.

Polley uses a characteristic of Alzheimer’s—short-term memory disappearing while long-term memory coming to the fore—to show that the marriage hasn’t always been perfect. Pinsent says this is accurate. "This happens frequently with these patients. They quickly go to a sharper memory of the past—whether they use it in a vicious, despotic way or whether it’s all they had. But it was there. My brother’s wife had an acerbic sense of wit; the wit is gone now, and all that’s left is the anger."

Polley says she was fortunate to be able to cast all four leads that she had in mind upon first reading the story. (Michael Murphy and Olympia Dukakis play a second couple; he spends time in the home and is cared for by Christie.) Like many cinephiles—though mostly older ones—Polley is enamored with Christie, who she met while doing the Hal Hartley monster fable No Such Thing, and then acted with again in The Secret Life of Words.

“As you get older and acquire more life experiences, you get better, especially women,” Polley says. “You see them at their best. Julie and Olympia had a great relationship.”

Pinsent praises Polley for taking on something others might think was beyond her years. “How can someone so young take on such weighty material? Well, she’s weighty enough,” he says. “She never stopped learning [on the set]. She’s strong, straightforward and honest; I never would have touched it if I thought she wasn’t in control. It was a wonderful experience.”

Polley says she enjoyed adapting Munro’s story, despite the author’s lofty reputation. “I did have [scary] thoughts at first—adapting an icon for my first feature. But the process was joyful. I’ve written original scripts and that’s torturous. Self-loathing didn’t creep in on this occasion. On first read it was a remarkably easy story—very nuanced and cinematic.”

As for the eternal question of acting vs. directing, Polley says she would like to “do both equally. You do pick up [the craft] by osmosis”—Polley has acted for an all-star team of directors: Hartley, Doug Liman, Michael Winterbottom, Wim Wenders, David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan—“but oddly enough I was actually kind of shocked when I first went to make my own short at film school about how little I knew about the process, how little I absorbed. It was very upsetting, very shocking.

“I kind of took really small steps. Did five short films and learned the process from square one. What you find out very quickly is that 90 percent of your job is to protect the actors from all pertinent information.” Polley laughs. “So what kind of happens until you direct your own is how little you know, unless you’ve made a conscious effort to learn.”

Pinsent says that Polley’s acting experience gave her a good feel with the actors. “Sarah kindly added a rehearsal period at the beginning, so by the time we had to begin filming, we were set to go. As an actor, it’s important to know that the director has complete faith in you.”

Polley says that there is one line in the movie that she would take back—about “garbage films” that play in the U.S.—that may have gotten the biggest laugh at the screening. “It’s not an issue of American films vs. Canadian films; [it’s more] the blockbuster Hollywood films as opposed to getting to see the independent films. That includes independent American films. A lot of great American films are being made. I just don’t think there are a lot of great films being made in the mainstream.

“In Canada it becomes a cultural issue and a bit of a national issue because that means we can’t see our own films. In fact it has more to do with commerce than anything else.”

Away From Her has received positive reviews and great audience reaction on the festival circuit, surprising Polley. “I don’t know why I thought there would be different reactions in different cultures, but it seems that everywhere we’ve screened the film, it’s been pretty similar. So I guess the film is more universal than we thought.” Modest once again.

Year of the Dog: An Interview with Mike White

By Lee Lederer, DC Film Society Member

In a New York Times review of Year of the Dog, Manohla Dargis comments that "the wily and resourceful young screenwriter Mike White writes movies that seem as if they were cooked up by the skinny, self-consciously awkward guy who always ends up alone in a corner at the office holiday party. As it happens, Mr. White, who sometimes acts in the films he and others write, is a skinny, seemingly self-aware guy, though given his resume--Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl, School of Rock and Nacho Libre--it's a safe bet he doesn't often play the wallflower, at least in Hollywood."

On the late afternoon of Thursday, April 12, just prior to the screening of his directorial debut film Year of the Dog and his Q&A for the Film Society at the Landmark Bethesda, Mike Smith talked at the Park Hyatt Washington about his new film and his career.

As to why he had decided to direct for the first time, White said that Year of the Dog was the sixth film he had written, not counting Dead Man on Campus which was a rewrite of a pre-existing project. "I felt it was time to get out of the back seat and behind the wheel," he explained. He said he had great relations with directors he had worked with in the past, and enjoyed that collaboration, but he welcomed the chance to develop his own directorial personal aesthetic. The "small scale" of the film, he noted, made it manageable for him.

In all of White's films, there is usually one central character and some of the supporting players who are outsiders, rather odd or offbeat personalities--Jack Black in Nacho Libre and Orange County, Black and Joan Cusack in School of Rock, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tim Blake Nelson in The Good Girl, and most notably Buck, played by Smith himself, in Chuck and Buck. And now Molly Shannon and Peter Sarsgaard in Year of the Dog.

Asked what draws him to these outsiders, White replied that "idiosyncratic characters are frankly more fun and I relate to them." White argued that such characters are not really that different from anyone else. "People's personal representations of themselves are not always who they really are," he said, "They're more eccentric than other people think they are."

Relating this to the Molly Shannon character in Year of the Dog, Smith said we all know people in our offices and in our lives who have certain obsessions. Smith argues that we all have our own versions of such obsessional thinking, of getting locked in on something, and that's part of what makes us tick.

Questioned as to why he chose animal rights as a theme for the film, Smith said he wanted to make a film about a woman who was obsessed with her dog, and it was a logical extension for her to become involved in animal rights. He said his personal feelings toward the character and the story are sympathetic, but he realizes not everybody will share that view.

Smith wrote the film with Molly Shannon, of "Saturday Night Live" fame, in mind for the role. "Molly is so funny", he said, and he liked the idea of devising a script which toned her down in the beginning and then, as the film develops and she unravels, allow that dial to go for her from one to ten.

Year of the Dog was written for Shannon and School of Rock for Jack Black. Asked whether The Good Girl was written with Jennifer Aniston in mind, Smith said she was one of the actresses he envisaged for the role and said it is always more interesting when you select someone from the acting ranks who is not one of the usual suspects. He said Aniston has good comic skills and timing, and that the audience relates to her. This allows her to do "mischievous, transgressive things and it's good to have someone like that to take the audience through" the film.

All of Smith's films have comedic aspects but some have a very melancholy aspect as well--such as Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl, and now Year of the Dog. Asked if he was consciously aware of these two aspects--the comic and the melancholy--when writing the scripts, Smith said he does not set out to write melancholy and eccentric characters, but recognizes the "bittersweet" aspects and "melancholy hues" in his films. He said he does not make a sharp distinction between comedy and serious drama and tends to see absurdity wherever he looks and that is reflected in his scripts. He also, he said, wants his films to be "substantive."

As to whether he makes the films he wants or the films the money people want, Smith said that Year of the Dog is now the fifth film he has made for Paramount. They all did well enough financially that the company was willing to let him make this film because of its relatively small budget and his track record. He said he has learned how to cut through the red tape in the film world and knows how the system works. "The money from Chuck and Buck, he said, "wouldn't pay the bills for a very long time." So he acknowledges the practical financial aspects of filmmaking, but nevertheless has managed to "make films meaningful to me".

As to whether he would want to direct again, Smith said he would, but on a scale which is his. He said he does not have the urge to "parlay success into a tentpole summer comedy", which he would find creatively inhibiting. "There won't be a "School of Rock II," he joked.

As for acting, he does that "more like a lark, to get out of my own head."

When asked if people "get" his work, Smith said that some of the reviews he reads are very perceptive and reveal and illuminate aspects of the movie to him even though he is the author. He also has read reviews which he thinks misunderstand his films or that indicate his film was the wrong movie for that particular audience.

Apart from entertaining his audience with Year of the Dog was there anything else he wanted to impart. "Honestly, no", Smith said, "The film has to speak for itself. People will have their own interpretation of the movie." He did say the spirit of the movie is about planting our flag in what makes us happy, and people's obsessions are the other side of that coin.

Mike Smith's films: Dead Man on Campus (1998); Chuck and Buck (2000); Orange County (2002); The Good Girl (2002); The School of Rock (2003); Nacho Libre (2006); Year of the Dog (2007).

Year of the Dog opened on April 20th.

Jindabyne: A Talk with Actor Gabriel Byrne

By James McCaskill, DC Film Society Member

The following is taken from Gabriel Byrne's press conference for his film, Jindabyne (Ray Lawrence, Australia, 2006) at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The EIFF catalogue describes Jindabyne as "moody, mysterious and magnificent: a new drama from the director of Lantana." The film is based on a Raymond Carver short story, "So Much Water, So Close to Home." Jindabyne has been called a "meditation of the Australian landscape and the all-too-human drama it frames." A group of friends, away for a long awaited fishing weekend and led by 'piss-weak' Irish expatriate Stewart (Gabriel Byrne), come upon a drowned Aboriginal woman. In not going back and telling authorities the group makes the first of several bad decisions. They choose to continue their fishing expedition and this decision affects all their lives. Lawrence makes the most of Snowy Mountains, New South Wales' magnificent vista in this story of the uneasy relationship between the white settlers and the Aboriginals. Jindabyne stars Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney; the screenplay is by Ray Lawrence and Beatrix Christian.

Q: What attracted you to this film?
A: My agent saw the script and saw the deceptive nature of the film. It may seem to be very simple on the surface but it is dark and deep underneath. When I met with Lawrence he appeared to very obtrusive but maintains tight control. He is 59 and has only made three films (Jindabyne, Lantana and Bliss) because he maintains control of the final cuts. He allows the actors to work, he is almost invisible on the set. Lawrence once said, "I don't want to be caught directing."

Q: What do you mean when you say he allows the actors to work?
A: Most of the scenes in the film were shot in one take. Some actors only get going after 5 or 10 takes. The lack of lighting and make up adds something special. It is dogme without the dogma. He was making this type of film years ago, like Ken Loach.

Q: Are you comfortable with that style of directing?
A: His films are like a play. He is a mighty giant. There are long scenes between leads. A great many films are cut today to maintain the attention of the audience, that gives the film a different vocabulary. I took my daughter to see Moulin Rouge. She was five and I tried to explain editing to her. When the film started I heard her counting, 1, 2, 5, 4, 5 ... I asked her what she was doing. 'Counting the editing.' I showed Dog Day Afternoon to my son and he was bored in minutes because of the long shots. Today complexities are removed from film due to the market. They want familiar plots. The New York Times had an article on the death of cinema. No one knows where films are going. In the future five minute films can be downloaded in the back of a taxi. They know what the box office will be when the film is released. Hollywood has always been about the money not the art. Sergei Eisenstein"s Potemkin opened in the U.S. the same year that Robin Hood was released and Robin Hood took in far more money. I do believe that we are in a time of change. I don't agree with the article on the death of cinema. We will have different ways of telling a story. There is a rise in home entertainment. Cinema has become more of a club. You rarely have people lining up around the block. There is a period of change in politics and economics. Working on Leningrad (Aleksandr Buravsky, Russia/UK/2006) was more like an old time Russian film. It is the Russians telling their story when millions died in World War II. When you look at movies that came out in France, Germany, and the U.K. on WWII, you get a different story from the American ones. The American market is a juggernaut. Everyone is obsessed with how it will play in America. A lot of people in American believe that Braveheart is the story of Scotland, a film riddled with errors. We in Ireland have never had the chance to tell our story.

Q: Why another film on Carver's writings?
A: Raymond Carver (1936-1988) was a powerful writer. Robert Altman's Short Cuts was based on Carver's short stories. Altman chopped up the stories to make the film. Carver's work is so delicate that changing one sentence can change the story. Our writer, Beatrix Christian, was really careful to remain true to Carver. All the levels are there in this film.

Q: It was a good movie but too Australian.
A: I would disagree. It is like saying that an author is too American. Or Joyce is too Irish.

Q: How would you describe Jindabyne?
A: What seems to the three men to be a good response to a problem becomes a moral problem. The audience is with the men at the river so they have a different sense of what happens. The picture of the dead girl may be a problem in Australia. John Howard (Australia's Prime Minister) has refused to apologize for the acts of white people to the indigenous people. The day after Tony Blair's election he sent a letter to be read at a concert I was doing. It was an apology for England's acts to Irish farmers. Films like Jindabyne must have a universal appeal or they do not work.

Q: With so many exceptional Irish actors why has there never been an Irish film of Ireland's history?
A: Outsiders come in to tell the story. Ken Loch's The Wind that Shakes the Barley tells one story. John Ford is responsible for the mythology of Ireland, an immigrant's view of Ireland that never existed. History has become what Hollywood says it is. How much do we know of each other that is certain? There is a huge wealth of talent in Ireland in young actors. When I went to Hollywood they did not know where I was from: Scotland or Ireland. Today actors immediately go to Hollywood to become famous.

We may be making a film soon that is based on a classic Irish book, At Swim Two Birds. All the great Irish actors want to work in this film.

Jindabyne opens in May.

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