Links for the Day (August 15th, 2008)

1. "Anti-Populism and Indie Antiquity": Karina Longworth interviews Whit Stillman for Spout. You can watch Stillman's Metropolitan on Hulu.

["In the liner notes to the Criterion edition of writer/director Whit Stillman’s debut film, Metropolitan, cultural critic/historian Luc Sante notes that the picture, “which looked like a perverse bit of daring in 1990, today seems like an artifact from an earlier century.” Sante is likely referring to the debutante culture in which the film is set, but the story of how the movie itself not only found an audience but rose to classic teen movie status among a certain class seems equally antiquated in this age of indie film Chicken Littles. Made for a reported $250,000, starring a full cast of young unknowns, and consisting primarily of one long scene after another of rich kids sitting in a palatial Upper East Side apartment discussing Jane Austen, Charles Fourier, their mostly unfashionable morals and fears of failure, all the while dressed in evening clothes, Metropolitan played in theaters for seven months, eventually grossing $3 million and earning Stilman an Oscar nomination (he lost to the screenwriter of Ghost). But if Metropolitan traveled a commercial road that seems nearly unnavigable today, the film itself has perhaps never been as in tune with popular culture. From Best Week Ever pundits to big-traffic bloggers, it’s become the standard mode of digesting the world around us to stand outside of it, employing caustic, self-deprecating humor as a defensive mechanism. It’s like we’re all Chris Eigeman characters from a Whit Stillman film––except, in some cases, stripped of the anxieties of old-money entitlement. With Metropolitan premiering tonight on Hulu, I chatted with Whit about his films, the state of the indie film industry, his alleged political agenda, the state of the Last Days of Disco DVD, the project he’s getting ready to shoot, and why it’s taken ten years for him to make a fourth film."]

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2. "Capra Corn and Math Porn": The latest installment of "Best Picture from the Outside In" at The Film Experience. Discussed: It Happened One Night & A Beautiful Mind.

["This wasn't an easy week for me. I fall madly in love with Colbert & Gable's sass and fire every time -- I'm eager to throw rice at that wedding. But when it comes to Crowe & Connelly's weepy mannerisms, I just want a quickie divorce. I don't understand the appeal of either half of this romance. Connelly has mostly one note: wet eyed put upon woman and Crowe delivers his worst performance. He's unbearable mannered with an arsenal including so many facial twitches, hand gestures, and vocal tics that I swear I caught whiff of mental retardation Oscar-baiting rather than an honest examinations of social awkwardness or schizophrenia. I wanted to retitle the movie Forrest Gump Goes to Princeton... or maybe I Am Nash --ditch Connelly's sainted wife and bring in Dakota Fanning as an eternally patient daughter. The movie won't change that much."]

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3. Jeremiah Kipp revisits Kiss of the Spider Woman at Slant.

["The continued public fascination with the movie is that it was made during a politically conservative time, and for a movie about a feminine gay man and a socialist who learn to love and respect one another, it seems to have been tailored in such a way that Molina's gayness is like a straight guy's imagination of what a girlish man should be like. William Hurt, as Molina, gives a strange performance, since he is playing Molina as if he were a woman, and it's unlike any gay man or woman or drag queen I've ever seen or known. Molina is more like a benevolent space alien with maternal instincts. As a straight, left-wing journalist, of course I've always identified more with Valentin, and Raul Julia's sensitive, conflicted performance. The very film seems to be coming from Valetin's perspective, and Babenco strikes me as a very heterosexual filmmaker. When Molina tells the stories of his beloved movies, Valentin imagines the woman he loves, and the very climax of the movie involves the revolutionary having dreamlike contact with this beguiling woman of his fantasies—with even Molina acting butch, getting involved in the cause, and considering making a spy-movie phone call to the rebels, as if Babenco were saying, "This is how to be a man!""]

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4. "Potter film release date delayed": I'm sure the fans are stupefied.

["The release date for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been pushed back by eight months, to July 2009. The sixth instalment of the teenage wizard's adventures was supposed to have its Royal premiere on 17 November. Alan Horn, president of studio Warner Bros, said the decision was taken to guarantee the studio a major summer blockbuster in 2009. He also blamed the Hollywood writers' strike, which hit the film industry hard earlier this year. Mr Horn said the strike, which ended in February, had "impacted the readiness of scripts for other films.""]

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5. "Two Georgians Say They Have Bigfoot’s Body": From The New York Times.

["In the hairy and hoax-filled history of Bigfoot, those who believe in the mythical beast have offered up all manner of evidence, from grainy photos to hoarse recordings to tracks of those aforementioned feet. But on Friday at a hotel in Palo Alto, Calif., a pair of Bigfoot hunters say they will present what they contend is the most definitive proof yet of an animal that science says does not exist: DNA evidence and photographs of a dead specimen they say they found in a remote swath of woods in northern Georgia."]

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Quote of the Day: Julius Caesar

"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double- edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and patriotism, will offer up all of their rights to the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Julius Caesar."

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Image of the Day (click to enlarge): A gravesite excavation in the Sahara, new evidence of the desert's green period.



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Clip of the Day: This is what the Bigfoot will do to you...

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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.