Mick Innes as ‘John’ in ‘The Insatiable Moon’, Ponsonby, New Zealand, December 2009

*For the next couple of weeks I’m in New Zealand and will be blogging about the production of ‘The Insatiable Moon’, a movie based on Mike Riddell’s novel.

I’m in Ponsonby’s red light district – the portable gazebos we’re using for shade and comfortable eating are the colour of healthy scarlet; appropriate enough, given that today we turn to one of the most troubling scenes in the movie – a scene in which the hidden shame felt by a character leads to disaster. Everyone’s focused on the task in hand: to portray an awful event as truthfully as possible, without exploiting the audience’s emotions, nor denying the fact that human sorrow is real, and touches to us all. If we’re lucky, we might have an Arthur in our lives, someone who sees through the superficial mores of our culture, resists its car rally speed, and offers a human connection in the midst of the awful things that come to us, hopefully only a few times in a full life.

Mick Innes was our featured actor this morning, and it can’t be easy to do what the script requires of him – I don’t want to give too much away, but for instance, he had to be very cold and hold his breath for a long time today. I met Mick last week at his home, an amazing little place furnished with items reclaimed from the street and elsewhere – it’s one of the most character-filled abodes I’ve ever been; and Mick one of the warmest human beings. You know when people talk about someone having a twinkle in their eye? Mick’s one of them – his face may be lined from what I presume include the vagaries of being an actor; but his smile is overwhelming; his coffee welcoming, and despite his passion for sustainable home improvement, there’s nothing recycled about his performance. Trust me. You have not seen the character he plays – called John in the movie – on screen before. He will make you angry and cry at the same time. His character stands for all the people marginalized by their mistakes, and dehumanized by their community; and as a consequence not allowed to live. Mick plays him beautifully; and seeing him do it is a privilege for me as a writer used to only brining a critical eye to bear on a film once it’s made.

This has been the most illuminating aspect of being in the environs of ‘The Insatiable Moon’ – on the one hand it’s an obvious thing to say that critics and film-makers are two sides of a coin; we need each other, but we’re not always very good at communicating with each other. The reasons are fairly simple – each of us may be considered to have a vested interest in outdoing the other, but usually this either produces unhealthy cynicism rather than the kind of creative competition that we’re all supposed to believe is the nexus at which great art emerges; or, more likely, we just don’t talk to each other at all. Warren Beatty asked Pauline Kael for notes while he was making ‘Reds’ – a magnificent film that seems to get better with age – but she went back to New York soon enough; even a great director and the then most respected critic in the English language couldn’t find a way to make it work. So I’m reticent about overstating just what a film critic is doing on a film set (and while our director knows what she’s doing, I can face the reality that I am not Pauline Kael)…

Maybe it can suffice to say that I’m more convinced than ever that film-makers and film critics are, when we’re at our best, on the same side. We both want cinematic art to tell the truth; we want to share stories to the world (or whoever will watch) that reveal something that no one else has seen before in the way that we see it; we want the curtain to rise at whatever megaplex, art house or out house we’re in, and for something of surpassing quality to appear in front of our eyes. That’s not too much to ask, is it? In that light, I’d love to hear from you, the Insatiable Moon blog reader about your own thoughts of just what this surpassing quality in movies is – what are the transcendent moments of cinema for you? And what performances have granted you access to a world of compassion that made you want to change your life?

Ill add a few more cents-worth with a brief evocation via the following stills:

UPDATE: Our Ben Foster Podcast Interview on ‘The Messenger’ is Now Online – Click Here to Listen or Click Here to Subscribe for Free to the Podcast and have the interview downloaded automatically.

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In February I asked the question of that character actor you may have seen in a comic western, or a sci-fi flick, or a vampire movie, or a vampire western, or a comic book blockbuster or some combination of all of those:

Is Ben Foster the Best Actor in American Film Today?

It’s October now and Foster’s still on my mind .  Just look at him in the trailer for the new Iraq War fallout movie ‘The Messenger’:

Messenger Trailer (Quicktime on Apple trailer site)

He may look like Owen Wilson genetically splurshed with Edward Norton – but by God he knows how to perform in front of a camera.  His energy seems internal – it leaks out of the edges of the frame, like there’s some sort of strange melancholic miasma seeping out of the screen.

He’s the reason I’m seeing ‘Pandorum’ tomorrow – a film that I’d normally avoid as it doesn’t seem to be enough – meaning that right now I’m either into seeing films that are masterpieces, (those that transcend their genre to become lasting works of art), or pics that are absolute trash.  ‘Pandorum’ looks like neither.

As for ‘The Messenger’ – who knows?*

The mere fact that it seems to be a film about adults in real-world situations rather than the usual Ben Foster gig of ‘genre cheese’ bodes well.

I hope it challenges him as an actor – people have a far more critical eye regarding the things they know, (getting drunk, friendships on the road, being attracted to someone), whereas nobody knows what the hell a vampire-cowboy-astronaut sprinting away from some sort of weightless space monster looks like.  Well, at least not yet.

‘The Messenger’ opens October 30th in the U.S.

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*Only caveat: ‘The Messenger’ seems to be suffering from the blue/teal attack we’re currently going through at the pictures (scroll to end of post).  Sigh.

Film Making is a collaborative art.

Want proof?  Check out this description of this ‘Bound for Glory’ panel gone awry, (link courtesy of Higgins who made my day with this link), featuring the late David Carradine and revered cinematographer Haskell Wexler:

Bound for Hell, Or Glory? David Carradine and the Feistiest Film Panel Ever

In case you wonder how fraught the evening actually was in the text linked to above here’s a sample MP3 from the event:

“Hal, just take a minute and stop sniffing that stuff up your nose”

It’s tough to make a film – and not everybody is going it get along.  The author of the piece at top seems surprised that David and Haskell hug at the end – but that’s what you’ve got to do – you’ve got to get along if you want to keep going on.  And make more movies.

There’s a fellow on Myspace who lists his favourite films as ‘Champion’, ‘Paths of Glory’, ‘Spartacus’ and ‘Lonely are the Brave’. These are all pretty strong movies, let’s face it.  It’s clearly a fellow who likes Kirk Douglas.  Turns out that it is Kirk Douglas.

Kirk Douglas is one of those guys who exudes the combination of gravitas and at least imagined integrity that signals ‘Old Hollywood liberal’. I like him; always have – from first seeing him as a cowboy fighting Arnold Schwarzennegger in ‘Cactus Jack’ as the B-film with ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ in 1981 in a musty English cinema, to discovering him with James Mason in ’20 000 Leagues Under the Sea’ on Saturday afternoon TV, to finally getting around to seeing ‘Spartacus’ when I was a late teenager trying to educate myself about film history.

Of course, ‘Paths of Glory’ might be the best film he was ever in, and has his best performance, tortured, vulnerable, simmering as the French army commander whose superiors kill three of his men to teach the others a lesson.

Throw in ‘The List of Adrian Messenger’, ‘Seven Days in May’, ‘The Vikings’, ‘Lust for Life’, and a handful of others and you’ve got the image of mainstream cinema heroism.  If his Myspace page is anything to go by, he thinks the same.  Kirk Douglas.  A Chin for All Seasons.

In This Episode: Walton Goggins / That Evening Sun /  Nashville Film Festival

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Through the magic of Netflix Watch Instantly – which seems to be delivering much better quality image than it used to – tonight I saw one of the films I had been eager to catch last year but missed due to unhelpful film distribution patterns/other commitments/laziness.  ‘Elegy’, a film based on a Philip Roth story, with Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz as lovers, Dennis Hopper as Kingsley’s best friend, Deborah Harry as Hopper’s wife, Patricia Clarkson as Kingsley’s long term girlfriend, and Peter Sarsgaard as Kingsley’s son proclaims itself a desirable prospect from its casting alone.  Its director, Isabel Coixet, made two of the best interior dramas of the past few years in ‘The Secret Life of Words’ and ‘My Life Without Me’.

It’s a gorgeous film, thoughtful and ruminative about life and love, ageing and death; a film in which the New York of Woody Allen’s serious side is a character (even though the movie was shot mostly in Vancouver).  It’s about what happens when a person prefers their career over being with other people; when one allows even a little celebrity to take over the priorities of human relationships; when a person believes their own propaganda.

It’s also about cities and how they can affect people – in this movie they look at each other through windows, across courtyards, in nightclubs and taxis, and they’re scared to say what they think or even to really know what they want.  But maybe not always.

Of course, Philip Roth is known for being a serious man – too serious, according to his ex-wife Claire Bloom’s extremely sad memoir – and this is a film based on a novel called ‘The Dying Animal’, so don’t expect an adrenaline-fuelled thrill ride.   Actually, maybe that’s not a bad description, for ‘Elegy’ is an exhilirating piece of work, utterly gripping, full of life despite, being its emotional context, which is in the shade, to say the least.  And, to explain the title of this post, all the performances are excellent – these people feel real.  Penelope Cruz in particular re-asserts the vulnerability she showed in ‘Abre los Ojos’ and its remake ‘Vanilla Sky’.  My genial co-host and I were mightily disappointed by ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’, for which Cruz won an Oscar.  Not that I begrudge people winning prizes, but she stole that one from herself.

UPDATE: Our Ben Foster Podcast Interview on ‘The Messenger’ is Now Online – Click Here to Listen or Click Here to Subscribe for Free to the Podcast and have the interview downloaded automatically.

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He just may be.

Watching 3:10 to Yuma I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  I kept thinking ‘who is this guy’ during the film.  It takes something real special to burn up the screen when you’re surrounded by Christian Bale, (link NSFW), and Russell Crowe.

Was reminded of Minority Report, when ‘new to the big screen’ Colin Farrell blew Tom Cruise away with his intensity – of course it helped that the character he was playing was ambitious, a threat and possible replacement of Cruise.  Unfortunately for some, Farrell’s career as a leading man hasn’t panned out, but here’s hoping he segues gracefully into a sturdy, yet interesting character actor.

Ben Foster is something else though.  Look at the shot above.  Brilliant torment, he could be playing Van Gogh.  Unfortunately he’s stuck in the aggressively bad vampire flick 30 Days of Night.

30 Days is one of those films with ‘CSI Syndrome’ – you know the type, where people have jobs like ‘Fire Marshal’ and yet are absurdly, impossibly beautiful.  So much so that you can’t concentrate on the film because you’re thinking – if they’re so good looking wouldn’t they have left their small Alaskan town and got a job in modeling?

Anyhew, this terrible film is graced with the presence of Foster who, using the latest CGI technology, has obviously been digitally inserted from a different, much better film.

I don’t know why he’s in 30 Days, unless a) he lost a bet, or b) he belongs to some super-secret league of character actors who’ve made a pact to only appear in bad pictures.  I’m hoping it’s ‘b’, cause that be cool.  They wouldn’t even have to make a pact – it would just be nifty if character actors had a secret society – do you think they would excommunicate Richard Jenkins cause he carried a picture?

Regardless of the reason why he’s there, Foster is the best thing in the movie.  As in 3:10 there’s a sense of history, of torments unknown, of character forged from terrible hardship, of an abandoned child desperately trying to piece together an identity from the scraps he’s been left from some unnameable terror.

I can’t wait to see his next movie.  I’m hoping it’s a serious drama that will really challenge him and give the cinema something new.  Let me just look it up on IMDB.

Oh.

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(Re: losing a bet and having to appear in a movie; the leader of the vampires in 30 days?  Danny Huston.  What?)