Interview By Hannah Eaves

After finding success in the UK by documenting the lives and work of eccentric artists like Gilbert & George and currency vandal J.S.G. Boggs, director Philip Haas jumped the narrative fence with an adaptation of Paul Auster's Music of Chance, the first in what would become a long line of literary adaptations for the screen. With his next film, Angels and Insects, Haas broke through the arthouse market and received Cannes and Academy Award nominations. His latest film, The Situation, starring Connie Nielsen (Gladiator) as an American journalist caught in a Graham Greene-like situation, takes place in Iraq and marks his first collaboration with noted journalist Wendell Stevenson.

Hannah Eaves talks with Haas about working with artists vs. actors, directing scenes in Arabic and about how journalists and soldiers have reacted to The Situation - which is now out on DVD.

Continue Reading Philip Haas: Understanding the Situation

"Ever fired your gun in the air and yelled, 'Aaaaaaah?'"

Director Edgar Wright and actor-writer Simon Pegg's follow-up to Shaun of the Dead was yet another affectionate genre homage/comedy that was merely "The best, surely the smartest, English-language movie of the year to date," according to Time's Richard Corliss. Adds the LA Times' Kevin Crust: "Wright and Pegg are storytellers who weave their naughty bits into genuine characters and a plot. It's a ridiculous plot, but one that's absolutely in the spirit of the films they're satirizing." Now, after you check out our video Q&A with Pegg, Wright and co-star Nick Frost, why not give our brand new contest a whirl? The little hand says it's time to rock and roll! Bring the noise! Two lucky blokes (or lasses) will win a copy of the brand new DVD, out today, plus secret Hot Fuzz memorabilia!

To be eligible for the prizes, send an email with the correct answer to contest@greencine.com, including your name, email address and, if you're a GreenCine member, your username in the email, and "Hot Fuzz" in the subject header. Winners will be selected at random from all correct entries. The deadline is Monday, August 6, at 12PM PST. Winners will be notified by e-mail and announced in future editions of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter.

The Question: Which two action movies does Danny (Frost) make Nicholas Angel (Pegg) watch to get up to speed?

Continue Reading Hot Fuzz: Trivia Contest!

Writers and Poets on Film

By Simon Augustine

Could writers working prior to the 20th century have imagined their creations and characters being expressed in films, with all the dramatic innovations that moving pictures afford? With the advent of film, the literary arts, ancient by comparison, were instantaneously afforded a new interpretative dimension, as occurs when any new art form appears and is able to comment and expand upon another. In this process, the old art form and the new one are changed forever. Placed alongside the fresh aesthetic abilities of cinema, the frame of the written page acquires an adjunct frame, that of the screen, and a conversation ensues between the two frames that provides a new conceptual space, not to mention limitless new fodder for critical thought.

As the events in the pages of a novel or poem become translated into a new medium, the "language" of cinema opens up new frontiers for the tradition of written language: the film allows us to see the book in new ways, and vice-versa. In effect, just as when we read a book and form a picture of the narrative in our "mind's eye," the filmmaker makes a permanent document of his or her own version of that narrative on celluloid. The substance of the mind's eye becomes a public performance, and thus a fixed commentary on all the versions of the book each individual has formed for themselves in their own minds. In this way, the film refers back to and interacts with the original written work, and exciting things begin to happen in terms of widening interpretive horizons.

The permanent document on celluloid as it is formed from literary sources can take several forms. The most obvious and numerous is a straightforward interpretation of the written story - that is, books "made into" movies. But there are other, less frequent, examples in which the literary/cinematic loop is given an additional twist and becomes more complex: those in which a real-life author, and/or characters based on or extrapolated from his or her text, appears as the central figure. Here we are given not merely an example of the visual realization of the written word but also insight into the writing process itself; we are presented with portrayals and imaginings of the dramas surrounding literary invention.

The journey from book to film is reversed and turned in upon itself: we witness not the translation of the mind's eye of the writer into a visual, fixed medium; instead, the fixed visuals of film are used to dramatize the writer in the act of using their mind's eye. In these films, viewers are hopefully exposed to new inroads toward understanding the traditional literary experience and its modes of creation. For instance, the vehicle of cinema might provide a meditation upon the author's intentions and state of mind while creating a work - i.e., the biographical film, such as Sylvia (2003), about Sylvia Plath, or Pandaemonium (2000), about Coleridge and Wordsworth; or it might be an account of fictional events inspired by an author's life or literary work, such as Dead Poets Society (1989); or a postmodern type of story, woven from the relationship between an author's life and the "life" of his or her work, such as the recent mind-bender Adaptation (2002).

Portraying the writing process in the movies with excitement and insight is difficult to pull off, given that writing is such an interior, personal process, mostly done in isolation. (And the operations of the mind's eye can be so hard to capture in a medium that simply presents rather than comments; just think about all the things books convey that get lost in movies - observational details, aspects of characters, philosophizing, etc.) At their best, films about writers and poets manage to shed fresh light on aspects of an author's personal struggle to get words on the page and to handle the world outside the page while still maintaining a writing career.

Or they present the actual literary work itself in a fresh light. At their worst, they descend into a contented form of melodrama or a superficial, convenient representation of an author. But usually they center on the personality of the writer, since this is the most easily dramatized component in the mix.

Outsize and Tragic Personalities

Some personalities have an irresistible quality that engages them in an ongoing love affair with the public imagination. They may not be the most deserving literary heavyweight, or even a particularly pleasant or moral person, but something they have given to readers draws filmmakers to them, sometimes more than once. Perhaps it has to do with the way specific writers give some part of themselves entirely to the page and to life: in unmistakable and excruciating ways, stripping away the barriers of pretension, these artists manage to communicate an undiluted element of themselves, and in the process of taking this risk, often sacrifice their well-being and even their lives.

Writers, and in particular poets, are famous for this variety of self-destruction - Hemingway shooting himself; Dylan Thomas drinking himself into oblivion while simultaneously torturing everyone close to him; Hart Crane throwing himself off a ship; Sylvia Plath putting her head in the oven; and confessional poet Anne Sexton subjecting herself to carbon monoxide poisoning in her garage, among many others. In the brave act of self-revelation, the self does not always survive the show; yet a self-destructive artist makes for a particularly good film subject, not only because of the excess of personality involved, but because of film's fascination with violence, even if it is the interior violence of a persona in turmoil.

By Sean Axmaker

"You look at filth and it's beautiful because, in a strange way, it is beautiful."

It's a cornucopia of new releases today - well, relatively, for summer, anyway - with titles from all over the world, two classics from Criterion, and some indies, anime, and more. Read Craig Phillips' review of the indie caper comedy Live Free or Die on Guru and his thoughts on The Host, too.

Read on for this week's new releases and those coming soon, too!

Continue Reading New on DVD: July 24, 2007

Interview By John Esther

"Eschewing the reactionary tropes of the supernatural or working class threats to the paranoid ruling classes vis-àis mutant horror in most American movies, Bong Joon-ho's The Host (Gue-Mool) brings a social conscious to a story of a world run amok. The film commences with chemicals being dumped into a drain leading to the Han River..." John Esther spoke with director Bong Joon-ho about his newest feature The Host. An impressive buzz has built up around the film, including coverage in ArtForum.

The Host is now available on DVD.

Continue Reading Bong Joon-ho: Horror on the River Han

"Not for nothing did this movie open the International Critics' Week (and win its grand prize) last year at Cannes," wrote J Hoberman in The Village Voice of this biting, (very) French drama set at a university. "Poison Friends may be all talk, but it's cut like an action flick."

Adds the LA Times: "Steeped in shrewdness about the often contradictory workings of human nature, gratifying in the best tradition of French cinema."

Continue Reading Poison Friends: Cannes winner

Billy Wilder's most famous box office flop, the searing 1951 satire Ace in the Hole (once retitled The Big Carnival in a lame attempt to save it) has long been a cult item and now that Criterion's revived it on disc, clearly much more than that, too. "It's dark, funny, ferocious, and vintage Wilder all the way," wrote the Christian Science Monitor's David Sterritt.

"An acquired taste," adds The New York Times' A.O. Scott, "and an unforgettable one."

Also see: An interesting essay on the film by Richard Armstrong in Senses of Cinema. 

Continue Reading Ace in the Hole: Wild Wilder

Something old, something new, something uh, French, something... blue? Well, sort of blue, although the "unrated" edition of Factory Girl, while sexy, isn't all that ribald. We'll have a review of that one up soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the diverse batch of titles out this week.

Continue Reading New on DVD: July 17, 2007

These are the most often turned, or rented, discs in GreenCine's 5 year history. You probably won't be surprised by all of these, but perhaps a few...

1. City of God
2. Battle Royale (Special Edition)
3. American Splendor
4. Dead Man
5. Lost in Translation
6. Dark Days
7. Eraserhead
8. Spirited Away
9. Kill Bill vol.1
10. Bottle Rocket

Continue Reading GreenCine's All-Time Best-Renting (Top Turning) DVDs!