Production still from Michael Tully’s “Septien”

Recap of Day 4 at SXSW 2011.

• JOHN’S GONE
• SCENES FROM THE SUBURBS
• SEPTIEN
• THE OTHER F WORD

Production still from “Fightville”

Recap of Day 5 and wrap-up of SXSW 2011.

• FIGHTVILLE
• HOW TO DIE IN OREGON
• HESHER

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Recap of Day 3 at SXSW 2011.

• WEEKEND
• CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP
• THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD
• 13 ASSASSINS
• PAUL
• THE FUTURE

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by contributing writer Howard Anderton

Dune.

Man, Dune.

That movie sucks.

David Lynch.

Man, David Lynch…

Unquestionably, he’s one of the most gifted filmmakers who ever lived: David Lynch, a bona fide weirdo, and the grand transgressor of American cinema. His best scenes live on in your mind just like those dreams you’ll never forget: the nightmarish arrival of Robert Blake in Lost Highway, the circus-freak march of The Elephant Man, Dennis Hopper’s oxygen mask in Blue Velvet.

Some of Lynch’s work I embrace and love: The Straight Story is amazing. But most of his work I either don’t touch with a ten foot pole or don’t have the stomach to finish. Admittedly, the only films in the first paragraph I didn’t shut off were The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet. I loved The Elephant Man. I wish I could unsee Blue Velvet.

As alienating as his films are to me, he is a erudite man and a gifted communicator.

The man knows film, and he knows how to communicate his love for film. Heck, even our tastes are similar—he loves Hitchcock even more than I do. I have an intense amount of respect and admiration for Lynch, and for his command of the medium.

And then we have Dune. I was six years old when I first saw this film, and it stuck in my head: The bad guys’ six-inch-long eyebrows… The super-evolved, space-folding psychic monster men… knife-fights with bizarre yellow energy shields… Sting… Even as a kid, I wanted to like the film—giant worms and spaceships, come on!—but it didn’t make a lick of sense.

Thank God for Netflix streaming. In a moment of idle curiosity, I found Dune again. I’ve been on a pre-90s sci-fi kick lately (old school Doctor Who! Yes!!), so I clicked on it…

…and oh my goodness, I feel like throwing up.

The film opens with a shot of Virginia Madsen staring at the screen, fading in and out, setting up the world of Dune for us by talking directly to the camera. It is the year 10,000-something. Something about “the spice must flow.” A bunch of weird names like Atrides and Arrakis. I’m sort of captivated—kudos to Madsen and Lynch for creating a dreamlike erotic atmosphere… but I can’t understand a word she’s saying. Is that English?

Check the opening out. I can’t embed it from youtube, but you can watch it here.

Fade down Virginia Madsen. Fade up opening credits.

And then comes one bizarre, incredibly over-plotted, incomprehensibly weird scene after another.

The casting’s insane: Kyle Maclachlan, Patrick Stewart, Linda Hunt, Francesca Annis, Dean Stockwell, Sting, Jurgen Pronchow, Brad Dourif, Max von Snydow, Richard Jordan, Fernando Rey, Sean Young. All somehow leave a distinct impression on the viewer, delivering full-bodied characterizations in the midst of a very messy film.

The villains of Dune are classic David Lynch. Brad Dourif, whose ridiculous pyscho-religious dialogue and bizarre gestures and body language set the viewer on edge. Kenneth McMillan as a flying, psychopathic fat man. A bunch of attendants with their eyes and ears sewn shut. A psychotic doctor who whispers sweet nothings into Kenneth McMillan’s ears while sucking puss out of his face. A bald witch lady. Michael Bolton.* Sting.

About halfway through the movie—long after I gave up trying to make sense of it–Kyle Maclachlan and his mother get stranded in the desert. They’re taken in by some sort of native terrorist tribe run by Everett McGill, who has the coolest voice this side of James Earl Jones. From this point on, the movie threatens us with comprehensibility… there’s a neat sequence where Maclachlan uses some sort of psychic shouting thing to blow up rocks. The giant worms show up. The editing becomes smooth (it’s a complete hack job up until this point), and the film’s atmosphere becomes stronger. In another sequence, Kyle Maclachlan drinks a potion and goes on an acid trip. When he wakes up, the giant worms are sitting at his feet like puppy dogs, and he’s become, apparently, some sort of Future Space Jesus Christ.

At this point, I have the impression that Lynch may have had a good film here somewhere during the editing process.

I also have a headache. I pop a Tylenol and continue.

Finally, there’s a climactic battle in which the heroes attack a future space dessert city while riding giant worms. It should be noted that the special effects here aren’t the greatest, and the battle looks like… well, it’s a bunch of penis-shaped worm puppets attacking a miniature city.

The good guys win. Virginia Madsen shows up for the first time since the opening, speaking one line (why was she in this movie again)? Kyle Maclachlan fights Sting and stabs him to death. Then Kyle Maclachlan, summoning his Future Space Jesus Christ powers, makes it rain. Cue closing credits.

All in all… what the heck just happened?

That said, I think there was a good film in there. It should have been an hour longer, allowing Lynch to flesh out the story and give us something more comprehensible. The novel Dune is based on is thick—like 544 pages. It is regarded as the Lord of the Rings of science fiction—i.e. it is a unique, intricate, and complete world, filled with maps and glossaries and mishmash. Imagine if the first Lord of the Rings film had been cut down to two hours. We all would’ve hated it.

According to my research,** Lynch turned in a four hour cut, and it was chopped down by the producers for release—Lynch was contractually obliged to turn in a two hour film. An obvious mistake on the producers’ part.

Ridley Scott was developing Dune to direct before Lynch, and had suggested splitting the first book’s story into two films. This was probably the wisest choice. The Sci-fi Channel’s miniseries adaptation of the novel spanned six hours, and apparently made a lot more sense. There’s just too much information in the novel to adapt into a sensical two hour film.

Lynch’s film has its good points, buried in an obsence mess of uniformly awful editing. The score by Toto is sublime. The cinematography by Freddie Francis is atmospheric and heady. The performances, as I noted earlier, are full-bodied, weird, and attention-grabbing. And it has the touch of an auteur, which can make a terrible film like Dune more entertaining to me than vacuous fluff like Night at The Museum.

That said, it still made me wanna throw up. Netflix it at your own risk.

· Bolton can be spotted in a single shot at the end of the film. He plays a drummer during a climactic knife fight between Sting and Kyle Maclachlan.

** By research, of course, I mean Wikipedia.

Robert Duvall turns 80 today.

Hiyao Miyazaki turns 70.

The blogosphere’s heaping an incredible, much-deserved amount of attention on the great Robert Duvall, and there’s no way I could show my appreciation better than they do.

But I’m not reading a lot about Mr. Miyazaki, who along with John Lassiter remains the most important filmmaker in the world.

Here’s a smattering of trailers for his masterful animated children’s films:

Two years ago, I stood less than six feet from both Mr. Lassiter and Mr. Miyazaki in the press pit at San Diego Comic-Con.  I swear I got misty-eyed when Miyazaki, humble and soft-spoken, emerged onto the stage to promote his latest, the ecstatic fantasy-comedy Ponyo (which you should watch right now on Netflix streaming).  As I saw clips from Ponyo, I witnessed an animator who had completely reinvented his style, abandoning computer-aided drawing for a hand-drawn technique that at times looks almost fingerpainted.

He is one of the few filmmakers that is so gifted at invoking sense that you can almost smell the film.  But his images, often hallucinagenic in their beauty, are built around carefully constructed, specific stories.

His masterpieces–My Neighbor Totoro, The Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Castle in The Sky–burst with candy-colored detail.  The gentle, character-based beauty of My Neighbor Totoro somehow uses animated fantasy to invoke the works of Ozu.  The Princess Monoke is an uncharacteristically dark, rich action film.  Spirited Away is Alice in Wonderland for this generation: a bold fantasy that works as both family entertainment and acidic satire.  Castle in The Sky stands as a masterpiece of action filmmaking and environmental dogmatism.

Take some time today to investigate the immense, captivating worlds created by Hiyao Miyazaki.  Happy birthday, Sensei.

To lie or not to lie, that is the question. Not posed by William Shakespeare of course but rather by the growing interest of “documentary” films today. I recently screened two widely discussed films, “Catfish” and “Exit Through the Gift Shop”. But rather than simply review them, I’ve decided to take a different approach.

What these two films have in common and why I’ve chosen an alternate path to writing this article, is because both films have been questioned of their legitimacy. What’s odd, is that these aren’t the first documentaries to be asked of this however it seems to be a growing trend. Though with all of this controversy surrounding these films, you have to wonder if that was the producer’s plan all along.

Let’s begin first by analyzing each film separately and then from there decide which film in fact holds merit, and which film simply is holding your cash. The first film is “Catfish”, one that I had high expectations for and one that I also enjoyed. Although it should be pointed out that going into this film without knowing it, I believed it to be a work of fiction. The film revolves around the relationship between the center piece of the documentary (also the filmmaker’s brother) and a girl he meets online. I can’t say much more than that although, in the digital age we live in today the film is very interesting. Later, when curious of the film’s reception, I researched it and discovered that the film was actually listed as a documentary. Upon realizing this I also found that many, like myself, questioned the very same thing. What is used as proof of the film’s fraud is that there are scenes that are too convenient to the “arc of a story” and to the “composition of a film”. Furthermore, at the Sundance Film Festival and when asked about the film’s legitimacy, the director’s of the film shut down the Q & A panel, which didn’t help. Regardless of the films authenticity, I still enjoyed it but also can understand why a simple concept and modest budget would attract producers.

What’s truly astounding about this argument in general is while seeing the second documentary, “Exit Through the Gift Shop”, I believed the film to be real. Although once again, once finished with the film I learned that others like me had also wondered of this film’s “true meaning”. The difference in contrast is far more apparent than with “Catfish”. This reason being that the film centers around a street artist known as “Banksy” who is infamously known for his elaborate pranks and also serves as the film’s director. When figuring this out and looking back at the film, of course I became more curious. My final bit of curiosity relied on whether or not the film itself was just another media stunt or if it was making an extremely ironic point about media stunts in general. Though real or not, like “Catfish”, this film is one that is highly entertaining and shouldn’t be missed.

So, two documentaries, real or fake, have been released and it raises the idea of whether or not it matters. In comparison, the recent film “I’m Still Here” about actor Joaquin Phoenix’s recent “retirement from acting” anchored completely on the idea of whether or not the film’s plot was real. When discovered that [SPOILER ALERT] it was in fact a fake, many wrote the film off in its entirety. While somewhat harsh, it’s easy to understand since the film had no real story other than the audience wondering if the film was based on truth. Once again a problem many of Hollywood films are faced with today, you have to base a film around a story not a concept.

While the subject of fake documentaries may be shocking to some, in filmmaking it’s nothing new. The difference being that in most “fake documentaries” or “mockumentaries” as they are often called, the lie is more forthwith. Whether it’s in film with a movie like “Best in Show” or in Television with examples like “The Office” and “Modern Family”, the concept has been seen before. What’s important to realize in all of this is that just like any human being it is what’s inside that counts, and if the film, like a person, has no heart then it’s not worth the effort.