Father Geek Here once again, thought I'd post this before taking off to help entertain all the out-of-state guests arriving for our weekend BUTT-NUMB-A-THON film fest last night and today... Robert Bernocchi, our Rome editor, has put together a nice little report for you this week... Sooooooooo check it all out below...

Hi people.

Next week Gangs of New York will be released in the States. It’s a movie I have a very particular relationship with. No, I’m not looking forward to GONY as much as I’m waiting for TTT, or Adaptation, for example. But GONY has something to do with my personal life.

In fact, I started working in this medium for my Italian site Caltanet more or less when Scorsese and his crew started creating the sets at Cinecittà (which is, by the way, only five minutes from my work). My first report for Aint-it-Cool-News contained, in fact, the first pics from the huge sets of GONY (in the summer 2000, my god, it seems yesterday).

Then, my colleagues Francesco Alò and Giovanni Colucci were able and lucky enough to see various scenes from the movie (You can read their reports, if you didn’t before, by clicking here: To Read The First, or here: To Find The Second and then here: Just Click For The Final One)

Then, I was lucky enough this summer to visit personally the sets in Cinecittà and I was shocked by the great achievement that Scorsese and his team achieved. I also get a lot of pictures from there, but unfortunately we were forced to remove them (We’ll be able to present them when the movie will be released). So, after almost three years, GONY is coming out in theaters, eventually. Even if I’m not too optimistic in his chances to be a great movie and to collect a lot of money since I started reading the first reviews, I hope it won’t be the new Heaven’s Gate (which is, in my humble opinion, a masterwork, but also the perfect example of how not producing a movie and the reason the director’s age of the 70’ finished so abruptly), as many critics predicted. We’ll see…

For today, also considering the special reports about TTT you have seen these last few days in the AICN pages, we have not too much stuff. Anyway, there are a few interesting rumours about Troy and X-Men 2 and a bunch of cool reviews (Rules of Attraction, Die Another Day, Pumpkin and Lantana). Enjoy…

Irving wrote me with a tidbit about an actor probably involved in the upcoming epic Troy…

Hi,

I've never emailed you before, but I have just been watching a programme on the B.B.C. and there was an actor on it. He was telling a story about going for an audition to play Agamemnon's seer. He didn't say the title of the film. But he was told by the casting people that RUFUS SEWELL was playing Agamemnon.

I could be jumping the gun, but is this Troy? The I.M.D.B. says that Ciaran Hinds is playing Agamemnon, but there are plenty of other characters he could be?

So, will Rufus Sewell be facing off with Bradley and Eric?

Call me Irving.

Chris has seen a Uk program which hosted Brian Cox and the actor talked about a particular scene in X-Men 2 (beware, spoilers below…)

Hi Rob

Brian Cox (X-men2, Manhunter, Ring etc) appeared on Jonathan Ross' Film 2002 today in the UK. He talked about the forcoming X2 which he said wrapped last week in Canada. He talked about his role as Stryker and about being chained to the wall of a dam. He then apologised as he'd given away a major plot point. That's about it. Hope it's of some use to you.

Ethan is back and passed me his (as usual) sharp point of view about three movies you probably already know (and so, there are a few spoilers)…

RULES OF ATTRACTION vs DIE ANOTHER DAY vs PUMPKIN

Hey there, this is a call from flu infested Serbia. Now, these reviews won-t give you any new info, it`ll give you just a wee bit of fresh insight in some of he latest releases.

First of all, there`s this mostly unseen "art house" flick RULES OF ATTRACTION. It`s just that all of a sudden, Van Der Beek ceased being a dumb-ass star in a dumb-ass mass market TV show and became a deep, quirky character actor. It is just too ugly to forgive him his many TV sins, because, him entering the indie movie bandwagon is the most hypocritic shit I`ve had to smell in years. It's like he moved from the sure-shot Bread & Butter arena of teen rom-coms into the safe, do no wrong arena of indie filmmaking. It`s like his unrelenting pursuit of immortality has taken a turn. He decided, I better start spoofing before I become spoofed.

This is why I LIKE Freddie Prinze. He sticks to "shitty" films like there`s no tomorrow. Yeah, his movies are way too bad but he is at least proud of it, wearing them boldly on his sleeve. On the other hand you have Van Der Beek who whored-out for years and then ended up trying to become Everybody`s All Indie. Even though he was Everybody`s All-American Boy Next Door just a couple of months ago.

Nevermind, Van Der Beek. Let`s focus on the film. It feels like a Placebo record. Not just any record. Like a particular Placebo record `Black market Music`. I don`t know if you`re familiar with that record. Anyway, it`s just that it could have been a great record if Placebo had stuck to their guns and sang more a bout love in the world of sin. On that record, you have great tunes and then out of a sudden somene starts rapping. Well, this is the kind of movie where someone started doing some different, out-of-spirit shit. It`s like we`re in for an all-round "nichilsitci" show and then suddenly we get to know that these people (especially Sen Bateman have feelings). After looking at this bunch of freaks, they come to us for forgiveness. And I guess, I`m the kinda guy who ain`t buying that.

Like Placebo, both Ellis and Avary seem from their films know a lot about sin and not too much about real love. And they can`t control themselves. Especially Avary. See, Avary turned the prose into a satiric Great Grand Guignol, a frig'n freak show which isn`t able to address any of the real issues. It happens to strenghten up the hypocritic world since, all of these people have feelings and too many drugs, and sex, and drunken parents keep them distracted. It`s like that everything would be fine if people quit doing drugs, getting easily laid and if their parents were kinder. It`s like a picture made by a man frustrated by Disneyland who actually dreams of Disneyland. It`s like the guy who has nothing aganst Mickey Mouse. He is just disgusted by the fact that the Mickey Mouse he met was some poor fella dressed like Mick, but not Real McCoy.

And Avary pulls every trick in the book. Sadly, his film isn`t as exciting as it should be since all of this stuff was done in FIGHT CLUB and before that in Scorsese flicks. So all Avary`s wonderfully stylish moves can`t distract a viewer with developed habit of really watching a film. Nevertheless, this formal concern isn`t the biggest flaw in this one. The biggest flaw is the number of freaks in this one. It`s like common people don`t exist in this film, Avary's world. You are being dragged into a disgusting dreamworld that contains no faith in the good. Which is fine. But Roger if you have no faith in health and Goodness and purity then go all the way. Otherwise, you have RULES OF ATTRACTION which comes off like a half-cocked attempt at too many things.

When Lee Tamahori moved to States, after his ONCE WERE WARRIORS, I expected that he`ll be completely into stuff like RULES OF ATTRACTION. Instead he made a suave yet pointless noir rehash MULHOLLAND FALLS, one of the nastiest $70 million films ever, called THE EDGE, and ALONG CAME A SPIDER a shamelessly shitty sequel to a crap original. What fascinated me was Tamahori`s unique ability to feast upon the most formulaic projects when Hollywood discarded him after two brilliant misses. There`s this feeling of honesty about him repaying the debt. Now, DIE ANOTHER DAY was Tamaohori`s ticket to infinite whoredom but instead he delivered with a vengeance. It`s just that studio gave him 100 million and he said `Look at how should a hundred million dolar Bond look like`. It`s a mighty fine film across the board and if it weren`t for the invisible car, I would declare it The Best Possible Bond Film under these circumstances.

PUMPKIN is a sick, little movie. It`s a bit overlong and gets draggy here and there. But I strongly suggest you see it.

God bless, Ethan

Last but not least, our most prolific critic James Bartlett share his thoughts about the great australian movie Lantana (Spoilers)…

Lantana

d. Ray Lawrence Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Barbara Hershey, Vince Colosimo, Rachael Blake

Lantana is based around a small number of people whose lives unknowingly affect each other through love, lust, jealously and death. Leon (Anthony LaPaglia) is an angry, rough-edged cop; not only that, he's been shagging around with Jane (Rachael Blake) and doesn't realise that his wife Sonja (Kerry Armstrong) is beginning to suspect him - a fact that she confides to her psychiatrist Valerie (Barbara Hershey).

Valerie has her own problems though; she too is beginning to suspect that her husband John (Geoffrey Rush) is having an affair with one of her other clients - a man. Valerie and John's marriage has been on the rocks since their daughter was murdered a few years ago - is it now beyond repair?

When Jane sees her next-door neighbour Nick (Vince Colosimo) throwing a woman's shoe into lantana-filled shrub land, she begins to suspect that he is covering a murder: Valerie has been missing since she crashed her car on a country road a few nights back.

Leon is in charge of the case and brings Nick in for questioning, though he suspects that John is the culprit, especially when he works out Valerie's suspicions of his affair. It is of course when he is going through her notes that he sees Sonja's name.

Lantana works like Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" or PT Anderson's "Magnolia", yet it has more integrity and pure drama than those films.

It also eschews any gimmicks or big laughs and instead focuses on the characters themselves and none of them, not even the supporting cast, feel shallow, cardboard or under-developed - you care about all of them and understand all their points of view.

That's a tough thing to pull off and writer Andrew Bovell does it well. Lantana is adapted from Bovell's own play and is a mature and clever drama that aims high - it vows not to cop out - and actually hits the target.

It's efficiently directed too and gives us great performances from all the cast, especially Rush, Hershey and LaPaglia.

God alone knows what a Hollywood studio would have done with it, but thankfully Lantana made it to Oz and ended up a quality piece of work.

James Bartlett

That's all for today See you next week

Robert Bernocchi

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