The Trayvon Martin incident inspired Tyler Perry’s latest blog post , which is like whoa : “As I stepped out of the car another officer pulled up in front of my car. This officer was a black guy. He took one look at me and had that Oh No look on his face. He immediately took both officers to the back of my car and spoke to them in a hushed tone. After that, one of the officers stayed near his car while one came back, very apologetic. I said all of that to say this: do you see how quickly this could have turned for the worse?” Related: Why does Tyler Perry drive himself to the airport? So many questions. [ TylerPerry.com ]
The film : The Broken Tower (2011), available on DVD via Focus World Why it’s an Inessential Essential : Straight out of New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts, actor-turned-aspiring filmmaker James Franco helmed, starred in and adapted The Broken Tower: The Life of Hart Crane, Paul Mariani’s biography of the titular turn-of-the-century poet. Franco’s moving film — his first feature as a director to be commercially released — depicts Crane (played by Franco, of course) as a frustrated artist striving for an avant-garde artistic ideal that he would never fully realize. Crane, an alcoholic bisexual (one of whose conquests is played by Michael Shannon!) committed suicide at the age of 32 before he was able to complete The Bridge, his epic post-modern poem about, well, everything. Franco’s version of Crane identifies his style as a response to T.S. Eliot’s poems. He tells a friend that his poems are similarly reliant on free association, though Crane’s poems are considerably more hopeful than Eliot’s are. While Franco’s public persona suggests that he has become unfocused and uninterested in his own celebrity , The Broken Tower proves that, along with the probably never-to-be-released-on-DVD My Own Private River (a companion film to Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho that Franco and Van Sant exhaustively assembled from unused Idaho footage), Franco has made good use of his time and talent. For example, it’s apparent that Franco heavily researched Crane’s world, though his film exhibits that knowledge in a rather modest way; The Broken Tower ‘s narrative is, after all, mostly composed of dialogue-light long takes where Crane struggles to become inspired while having sex, getting drunk and taking long walks. But the period Crane lived in and the way it directly influenced how he experienced his creative frustrations and ecstasies is also vividly depicted in Franco’s film, too. How the DVD/Blu Makes the Case for the Film : Franco, cinematographer Christina Voros and The Broken Tower producer Vince Jolivette contribute an enlightening audio commentary. Franco’s rambling (though never boring or ignorant) narration takes some getting used to, but his enthusiasm about his subject and research comes through — particularly in conversation with Jolivette about making exterior scenes period-specific or with Voros about shooting in the cathedral at Notre Dame. It’s easy to pigeonhole Franco as a know-nothing art-house movie brat. But if you listen to him talk for a little bit, he does come off as well-read in an impressive and unpretentious way. Other Interesting Trivia : Elsewhere on the commentary, Franco cites Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr as a key influence on The Broken Tower ‘s use of long takes. This is especially striking since Franco also mentioned Tarr as a guiding influence when he recently presented My Own Private River at Lincoln Center’s screening of that film. In River, Franco emulated Tarr’s unique style of anti-kinetic storytelling because he was trying to edit the film as Gus Van Sant — who has also cited Tarr as a source of latter-day inspiration — might have cut it in 2011. But with The Broken Tower, Franco has taken his own footage and shot it with the intention of pacing a completely new film in a style similar to Tarr’s. Franco’s Tarr love proves how badly he wants to be taken seriously. With a little luck, he’ll get the respect he deserves. PREVIOUS INESSENTIAL ESSENTIALS The Last Temptation of Christ The Sitter Citizen Ruth Simon Abrams is a NY-based freelance film critic whose work has been featured in outlets like The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Vulture and Esquire. Additionally, some people like his writing, which he collects at Extended Cut .
Say what you will about James Cameron ’s epic 1997 romance Titanic , but everyone in the universe has seen it, sniffled at it, or at least has had its iconic moments indelibly seared into their brains. (Don’t even get me started on the soul-piercing power of “My Heart Will Go On.”) When it comes to Titanic fandom, 15 years of romantic obsession plus the internet have yielded quite the bounty of fan-made Titanic creations. Naturally, with Titanic 3-D steering towards theaters this week, Movieline searched near, far, and all across YouTube in search of the best of them. Go in search of Titanic fan videos and you’ll find more than your fill of amateur home video reenactments and remixes. Apparently anyone with a camera who’s gone on a cruise in the years since Titanic has done some measure of the “I’m the king of the world!” while running around the lido deck (and who can blame them). But not many folks have turned their Titanic obsessions into cats-singing-Celine Dion videos, tributes in LEGO, or… well, just scroll down to countdown to what’s probably the best (and inevitably creepy) Titanic fan clip of all time. Titanic II : If Jack Had Lived It’s the number one fantasy among Titanic romantics: What if Jack had lived? Why did he have to die, dammit! WHY DID ROSE LET GO?? In this fantasy mash-up of Titanic and 2008’s Revolutionary Road , which reunited Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet onscreen, Jack and Rose walk off the Titanic and go on to become miserable suburban marrieds… if only they could get away to Paris, to Jack’s old stomping grounds, like they’d once dreamed! Further viewing: Titanic vs. Inception , which illustrates the popular idea that Jack Dawson didn’t freeze to death one that one fateful night… but rather woke up on the beach years later in Inception . Dead Cat Orchestra – My Heart Will Go On Celine Dion’s heart-wrenching love ballad… as sung by two mewling dying cats. Also see: Cat-Tanic . That one Hanson music video I vaguely remembered this momentous meeting of Titanic ‘s Gloria Stuart, Hanson, and Weird Al from Hanson’s pop culture crossroads. “I’ll never forget that night… it was right after I got my Hanson tattoo!” Sorry for this one. Lego Titanic 3D trailer spoof There are a lot of terrible Titanic LEGO videos on the internet, kids, but this one keeps it short and sweet.
