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FESTIVALS – Berlinale 2012 Final Report: The Tantalizing and the Taboo

What does it take to get your film into a world class festival? That's the question asked with gleeful irreverence by "The Woman in the Septic Tank," which screened at the recently concluded 2012 Berlinale, one of the world's foremost festivals. This hilarious satire of international art filmmaking finds two aspiring auteurs sitting in a Manila café, jealously regarding a rival's Facebook photos taken at the Venice film fest. They vow to devise the ultimate movie to win festival audiences and prizes: a single mother of five suffering in the slums is forced to sell her son to a rich pedophile. But like Mel Brooks' "The Producers," the project gets out of hand, and before we know it we're watching a musical version with the pedophile singing "Is this the boy / who'll bring me endless hours of joy?" It's one of many delightful detours taken by these filmmakers seeking the road to art house glory.

Some critics find "Septic Tank's" satire too glib and cynical of the festival scene, but much of what it mocks can be found in another Filipino film that competed for the Berlinale's prestigious Golden Bear. Brilliante Mendoza is one of the standard-bearers of the blistering DIY filmmaking that thrives in the Philippines (and with an ego to match: his website describes him as a "living national treasure.") His success led to a golden ticket in the form of European funding, but his new film "Captive" finds him caught in the crossroads of no-budget trash filmmaking and festival prestige picture, doing service to neither. This hyperactive re-enactment of a 2001 terrorist incident even has Isabelle Huppert along for the ride as a kidnapped missionary, but it feels more like Michael Bay than Michael Haneke. From close-ups of menacing jungle creatures to a real baby being pulled out of a woman during a firefight, no attempt at sensationalism is spared to get a rise out of the audience.

Read the rest of this festival report, including thoughts on the best film at Berlinale 2012, at RogerEbert.com.

Kevin B. Lee is Editor in Chief of Press Play, and contributor to RogerEbert.com and Fandor. Follow him on Twitter.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: RANGO

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Fearless Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is making it her mission to watch every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

The trailer for Rango made the movie look unappealing, and I didn't have high hopes when I threw it in the DVD player. Oops: it's awesome.

Rango himself (voiced by Johnny Depp) is a pet chameleon with writer/director aspirations who finds himself marooned in the Mojave. Thirsty, hot, lectured by other fauna and preyed on by a hawk, Rango gets a ride from a petit-mal-prone lizard named Beans, into a town called Dirt; after a chase/misunderstanding involving vending-machine licorice (…I know!), he's made Dirt's sheriff by the Mayor (Ned Beatty), a turtle who has secret plans to annex all the local natural resources, by whatever means necessary.

In addition to that commentary on the haves and have-nots of the global fresh-water supply, Rango also furnishes a nod to Depp's role as Hunter S. Thompson; a send-up of acting workshops in the opening sequence; several stunning animated chases, beautiful nighttime scenes, and a gift for capturing textures, liquids, and light on glass; and verbal and visual gags for kids of all ages. The bird with the prosthetic limb made of a wiffleball is one of my favorites, as well as the fly backstroking in the cactus juice, but I rewound the cemetery sequence three times just to catch all the headstones. (Sheriffs in Dirt, you see, don't tend to live very long. "Sheriff Jurgen / 'OOPS.'" "Sheriff Tucker / Hold My Beer And Watch This." "Sheriff Amos / Thurs – Sat RIP." And towards the back of the graveyard, one reading, "He's Dead Jim." Love it.)

The voice acting is great across the board — Depp's plaintive "T.O., T.O., just a sec" prior to a duel is a highlight — and the hat-tips to other works cracked me up too. The Greek-chorus mariachi birds reminded me of the orchestra bus in Mel Brooks's High Anxiety, and the soundtrack repeatedly refers to Carter Burwell's yodeling runs on Raising Arizona's.

Characters announce, "We're experiencing a paradigm shift!"; minutes later, hundreds of beetles gather to carry an exhausted Rango, Godspell-style. It's funny and pretty and there's something going on in every frame. The last half hour is perhaps too contemplative and atmospheric, but it's nice to look at and I didn't mind.

I liked A Cat in Paris a lot and I wouldn't mind it winning, but Rango is firing on all six cylinders, and should win Best Animated Feature.

Sarah D. Bunting co-founded Television Without Pity.com, and has written for Seventeen, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and others. She's the chief cook and bottle-washer at TomatoNation.com. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here.

ADWEEK INTERVIEW: New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz takes a tough stand on reality TV shows

Have you been surprised at any of the comments you’ve gotten about what you’ve written so far?
I don’t feel like Indiana Jones in front of the boulder at New York magazine. Everything that happened at [ex-employer] Salon is like what happened on the island of Lost. There were people who would comment on everything. On one level it was terrifying, but it was kind of nice. There were people who cared about every little thing.

You’re not a fan of Jersey Shore. Are you prepared to take heat from its big fan base among the magazine’s readers?
I have very particular tastes when it comes to reality TV. Just because people are stupid enough to be exploited doesn’t mean you should take advantage of them. My idea of a good reality show is like Survivor, where it’s goal-directed and they have to use their minds to solve problems.

You have a soft spot for doomed shows like Pan Am and Community. Do you hope that by writing about them you can save them?
I want people who make these shows to know someone appreciates what they’re doing, even though they’re not quite pulling it off. I’m 43 years old. I want to see things I haven’t seen before. I think Pan Am is trying to be extremely rich and extremely light at the same time. They haven’t quite mastered the art of making a soufflé every week.

You can read the rest of Adweek's interview with Matt Zoller Seitz here.

REDLETTERMEDIA VIDEO: Hey, kids! It’s every face punch in ROADHOUSE

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The comic geniuses over at Redlettermedia have created this forensic catalog of every right cross, chambered strike, backfist, hammerfist, haymaker, shovel hook, uppercut, trachea rip and jab thrown in Patrick Swayze's classic Roadhouse. You have to admire the sheer length of this — 45 seconds of distilled face-punching goodness. I suppose we could call this piece a somewhat circuitious tribute to the late Ben Gazzara — who died this month at the age of 81. His evil turn as Brad Wesley is so gratuitous that it transforms a bad movie into a good-bad movie. Watching him get his ass kicked in this film is simply divine. Thanks, Ben. And thanks to everyone at Redlettermedia for creating and posting it. Check out their site here. If you haven't seen his "Plinkett" reviews, you might want to watch them this evening after work. You don't want to get fired for wasting company time.]

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Supporting Actor

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is watching every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. She has completed the category for Best Supporting Actor and now surveys the competition. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Not much of a race here, I'd say; one guy's had it sewn up for months now. Doesn't mean we can't discuss it, though.

The nominees

Kenneth Branagh (My Week With Marilyn): At first, I didn't really get this nomination, but Branagh is forced to play some on-the-nose and lechy character beats and he does it like a pro. While wearing lipstick. He won't win anyway, so, fine.

Jonah Hill (Moneyball): I still don't get this nomination. Understand: it's perfectly fine. It's a good performance. …And? Again, I like Jonah Hill, but this is not the best anything. Jonah Hill does what he does, the same way he does, and he's taking the spot from someone else. More on that later.

Nick Nolte (Warrior): The only guy who has any shot at taking the statue from Plummer at this point, Nolte gives a nice, steady performance in Warrior, and he has to fight the script to do it in a few spots. That said, I think it might be a hair overrated, but I have no issue with the nom, and wouldn't be mad at a win either.

Christopher Plummer (Beginners): The presumptive heir, and I'm fine with it. I wish it had come in a better story, but the performance did a lot to redeem a movie that was mostly tiresome.

Max von Sydow (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close): Ditto, and the degree of difficulty here is probably higher than Plummer's given the cutesy crap von Sydow has to work with. But that can bring out some highlights sometimes; a few of the looks The Renter gives Oskar have whole novels in them.

Who shouldn't be here: Jonah Hill. Could also live without Branagh.

Who should be here, but isn't: The role maybe isn't big enough, but I think Dench picked up hardware for being onscreen eight minutes or something like that, right? So: John Goodman. He has one scene in The Artist that is gorgeous. I'd like to see him get more credit for playing serious (he had a few scenes with Darlene on Roseanne just nailed "baffled dad of thundercloud adolescent girl").

And where's Kevin Spacey? Part of what drove me so nuts about Margin Call is that, when Spacey was onscreen, I bought it…and then something inconsistent or poorly researched would happen and I'd be disappointed all over again. (Ditto Tucci, just as good in a smaller role.) I think we're finally out of the dark tunnel of "Spacey = Leading Man," and it's nice to see him doing his thing again.

Who should win: You know what, the hell with it: von Sydow. Again, no issue with Plummer, but when I think about it, I'm more impressed with this one.

Who will win: Plummer's BAFTA is the end of that, pretty much. You could bet Nolte if you're feeling frisky.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the Race for Best Actress

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is watching every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. She has completed the category for Best Actress and now surveys the competition. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

The BAFTAs complicated this assessment somewhat, but at least we can predict with a reasonable degree of confidence who isn't going to win. And now, the firm of Streep Davis & Others, LLC…

The nominees

Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs): Well, we know Close has looking apprehensive down pat; it's what she spends the bulk of the movie doing. It's a pity, in a way, because she's obviously close (…sorry) to the material and she spent years and years trying to make the project happen, but she didn't have enough distance on it, I don't think; the film is overworked, and so is this performance.

Viola Davis (The Help): The early leader until Streep snagged the BAFTA, Davis makes the movie around her performance seem better than it is by association — more thoughtful, more credible. She's really good. Could still win if voters decide it's the only one The Help should be getting (and I would agree there).

Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo): I enjoyed her, but I might have enjoyed almost anyone; I'm not sure how much of the performance was the character. Good work; no shot.

Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady): Streep is extremely good, and she's playing some wet toilet paper in that role. Until the BAFTA, I considered the nomination her award, a thanks for yeoman service, but she's probably going to win. Hated the movie, liked the work, fine with me.

Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn): Technically accurate but not terribly interesting portrayal of a figure I already found not terribly interesting.

Who shouldn't be here: I would have preferred to see Williams nominated for Meek's Cutoff instead. It's not surprising that movie threw a shutout nominations-wise, though I loved it, but that would likely have been its shot. Close's character is grating, but the performance itself is fine. I don't really take issue with these.

Who should be here, but isn't: Elizabeth Olsen for Martha Marcy May Marlene, maybe, but I don't feel super-strongly about it.

Who should win: Slight edge to Davis.

Who will win: Slight edge to Streep.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: CHICO AND RITA

I wish I had seen what other reviewers did in Chico & Rita. The word "dazzling" keeps coming up, but I was not dazzled. …Well, not by the film, whose plot is the old "boy meets girl / girl gets in naked catfight with other girl / boy wins girl back / girl leaves for New York / boy gets deported" tale of star-crossed musicians in a bygone era.

The music is amazing, though, and Chico & Rita might have worked better without Chico and Rita, or at least without their overly adagio romantic ups and downs. Something more collagey, vignettes of '40s Cuba and the '50s jazz scene in New York, the various other bits and cross-sections the animation does well — the vintage fonts, and a sequence where Chico follows Rita's bus — that would work better for the true heart of the story, the music and the songs. Instead, it uses a traditional romantic arc it doesn't need, that isn't served very well by the characters as written; Chico is ineffectual, mostly, and the darker currents hinted at in Rita's offscreen existence never get explored, so she comes off as kind of a bitch. (The pair's voice acting, by Eman Xor Oña and Limara Meneses respectively, is fine.)

The soundtrack is great, the sound design is great; the animation is imperfect, but in an improvisational way that works for the subject matter. The love story and its attendant subplots merely pull focus and slow things down.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: W.E.

When a movie bombs, I like to go to Rotten Tomatoes, sort the reviews by "Rotten," and enjoy the show. Flops can bring out the best a critic (or her thesaurus) has to offer, the acidic synonyms and dismissive gut-punches she saves for when a movie is genuinely and thoroughly crap and not just misguided or inconsistent, and I like scorched-earth movie reviews for the wordsmithing — but also because I know that glorious tingle, that "I'm-a stomp this flat and make the deadline with two hours to spare" feeling.

W.E., drowning in the boot of a 13%-Fresh rating at present, isn't as hateful as I'd expected, but I still had fun scrolling down the reviews list, which is kind of like sighting down a line of golf pros at the driving range. "Relentlessly monotonous" — whock! "A pointless and pretentious oddity" — whock! "A sloppy, hubristic affair" — whock! "Vapid," "torpid," "abysmal" — whock whock whock!

The movie is pretty to look at (the nomination is for Costume Design), but it has a Julie and Julia problem. Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), unhappily married and underemployed in the present day, becomes obsessed with what she thinks of as the great love of King Edward and Wallis Simpson, and visits the Sotheby's auction of their effects every day. (She touches every goddamn item for sale, and later their love letters, without archival gloves or reproach from anyone. Just one of many minor errors that added up to a clueless script.) Her husband (Richard Coyle) is a twattily dismissive workaholic who later becomes abusive, and it's one of those straw-man bad film marriages in which you don't understand why these people even know each other. Coyle can't commit to the character — with good reason; the script gives him nothing but retrograde attitudes and Scotch-drinking to work with — while Cornish plays what she's given, a wan simp, rather too well.

The flashbacks work better, with fantastic set design, mouth-watering outfits, and a snappy performance by Andrea Riseborough as Wallis. The sequences in the past aren't good, quite; James D'Arcy as Edward is a bore, and it takes the film too long to get to the abdication. But it's better than the present-day material, in which the love of a blue-collar cutie (Oscar Isaac, very good in Drive and better than W.E. deserves) solves Wally's life.

The script dodges a few key issues (Edward and Wallis's Nazi sympathies are waved off with a too-flip "just rumors, guvnor"-type scene) while lingering over others that don't merit it, like the ludicrous IVF subplot. Other moments land like a sackful of cowbells — Wallis bugging out to the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant," for one. And of course the thoughtful, sweet, poetry-reading, piano-playing security guard has a $2 million loft in Williamsburg.

I sat there checking my watch and longing for other, better versions of W.E. — Guy Pearce playing his King's Speech version of Edward, a documentary about the famous couple, anything but yet another "poignant" close-up of Wally creepily sniffing another woman's table linens.

Madonna really knows how to shoot a $5,000 floor lamp, I'll give her that, but it's too long, it's tone-deaf…I basically paid $13.50 to watch a live-action catalog, and it's not even bad enough to merit an MST3K viewing.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

Not to crap on two Steven Spielberg movies in a row here, because I do enjoy his work sometimes. Alas: enh. The Adventures of Tintin's failure to land with me isn't entirely on the director; the source material seems like something I'd have loved as a child, but isn't something I knew before coming to the film, so I didn't get any reunion-y feelings, and motion capture may appeal to some, but is still creepy to me.

But the pacing probably is Spielberg's responsibility, and the movie plods. Chase scene; interstitial bit with Thomson and Thompson that fails to delight; fight scene; Thomson and Thompson; chase/fight; nonsense with dog; "joke" about Captain Haddock's alcoholism that's awkward instead of funny; lather, rinse, repeat. The 3D does nothing to help the story, which involves a flea-market ship Tintin purchases and a treasure lost at sea and which contains no suspense — we've been told repeatedly from the very beginning of the film that Tintin is a genius investigator (though not shown much evidence of this; he repeats things a lot, and actually seems somewhat slow), and it's clear he'll solve the…or prevail over the…whatever. The score tries to add tension, but John Williams is recycling runs and trills from Indiana Jones and the Imperial March. No idea how that nabs Williams a second nom in the category, but at least it didn't make me yell "shut UP, timpani!" like the other one did.

I've never even read the comics and I have to think they're a better bet than this clatter-fest.

AARON ARADILLAS: 20 years later, a soundtrack that still has JUICE

The first half of the 1990s may be considered by some as being ruled by grunge, but for more enlightened music fans that is simply not the case. Hip-hop and R&B, in particular the New Jack Swing sound of the early ‘90s, has had a profound impact in shaping pop music. Producers like Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and Teddy Riley modernized the rather quaint sound of R&B with funk rhythms, piano, jazz and break beats, while guys like Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest and The Bomb Squad gave hip-hop a fuller sound – a bass-thumping thickness. Rap and R&B, two genres that had been segregated by class prejudice and musical temperament, were now fused together to create an at once looser and tighter sound. Songs like Johnny Kemp’s "Just Got Paid" or Tony! Toni! Tone!’s "If I Had No Loot" or Michael Jackson’s "Remember the Time" or Schoolly D’s "Am I Black Enough For You?" or Naughty By Nature’s "O.P.P." made you feel as if you were inside the song – as if the greatest block party was boiled down to four minutes of grooves, beats and samples.

At the same time, the New Black Wave in American movies was for the first time giving young black filmmakers the opportunity to tell stories of the contemporary black experience. Naturally, the soundtracks to most of these movies contained some of the most cutting-edge tracks around. Unlike the soundtracks to movies like Breakin’ or Krush Groove, which were dominated by the most adventurous rap acts around, the soundtracks to movies like House Party or New Jack City made room for R&B slow jams and new-funk dance tracks. With songs like Bobby Brown’s "We’re Back" from Ghostbusters II or Public Enemy’s anthemic "Fight the Power" from Do the Right Thing giving their respective soundtracks a jolt of energy, it was inevitable that a full-scale new-jack soundtrack would make its mark. 1990’s House Party was a good start, with Kid 'n Play kicking the party up a notch or two. Then, 1991 saw new jack soundtracks start to come into their own. The soundtrack for Mario Van Peebles' New Jack City featured memorable tracks by Ice-T ("New Jack Hustler"), Christopher Williams ("I’m Dreamin’"), Keith Sweat ("(There You Go) Tellin’ Me No Again") and Troop/LeVert’s interpretation of "For the Love of Money." (The soundtrack also featured the ridiculously sexual #1 hit "I Wanna Sex You Up" by Color Me Badd.) The soundtrack to John Singleton’s landmark directorial debut Boyz N the Hood added a West Coast seasoning with songs like Ice Cube’s "How To Survive In South Central" and Compton’s Most Wanted’s "Grownin’ Up in the Hood." Even Stevie Wonder got into the swing of things with his song score to Spike Lee’s interracial love story Jungle Fever. (If you think about it, albums like Stevie Wonder's Innervisions laid the foundation for the new-jack sound.)

Then, in 1992, a movie and soundtrack announced with authority the arrival of street-level hip-hop. Ernest Dickerson’s excitingly directed Juice was an up-to-the-minute morality play about the intoxicating power of guns. Shot on the street corners of Harlem, where the ritual of hanging on the corner with your friends is charged with the possibility of violence, Juice has an electrifying propulsive energy. So does the soundtrack.

Produced by Hank Shocklee of The Bomb Squad (the production crew behind Public Enemy’s collage of sound), the soundtrack highlights everything from hardcore hop-hop to mid-tempo new-jack grooves to playful girl crew anthems.

The opening track, Naughty By Nature’s "Uptown Anthem," is a piano-driven thumper highlighted by Treach’s scat-fast flow. They’re contrasted by Son of Bazerk’s "What Could Be Better Bitch," a hilarious boast about being the best rapper around.

Too $hort’s "So You Want to Be a Gangster" is a spare and stark warning against getting into "the life," while M.C. Pooh’s "Sex, Money & Murder" is a jaunty strut about not giving a fuck. The one weak track on the soundtrack is EPMD’s "It’s Going Down." Its cluttered soundscape obscures some terrific rhymes. Cypress Hill offers something better with "Shoot 'Em Up," a sinister creep of a song with B-Real’s trademark nasal flow. (Not included on the soundtrack, but featured in the movie, is Cypress Hill’s "How I Could Just Kill a Man," a song that is easily the equal of Johnny Cash’s "Folsom Prison Blues.")

On the R&B tip, Teddy Riley & Tammy Lucas’ "Is It Good to You" is an afternoon delight shoulder-shaker. Aaron Hall’s "Don’t Be Afraid" gets you in the right mood, while Rahiem’s "Does Your Man Know About Me" is a creamy background jam about a male lover’s paranoia over getting caught.

But the two most memorable tracks are Eric B & Rakim’s "Juice (Know the Ledge)" and Big Daddy Kane’s "Nuff Respect." Positioned as the theme song for the lead character Q (Omar Epps), a good kid who dreams of being a mixmaster DJ, "Juice" is a stunning New York anthem about hustling as a way of survival. From its tension-filled bass line to Eric B’s perfectly timed scratching to its multiple samples, "Juice" feels like the big-budget sequel to "Paid in Full." Even better, "Nuff Respect" showcases Big Daddy Kane’s breathtaking rapping as he easily keeps up with Shocklee’s and G-Wiz’s thumping production. The soundtrack to Juice is just about the most perfect sampler of early '90s hip-hop. It’s more than a blast from the past. It’s a look into the future.

San Antonio-based film critic Aaron Aradillas is a contributor to The House Next Door, a contributor to Moving Image Source, and the host of “Back at Midnight,” an Internet radio program about film and television.