Another Saturday, another Cinejabber – your space to kick around whatever film-related thoughts you fancy, while we seek life beyond the movie theater.
Or, you know, not. My weekend is shaping up to be very cinema-bound indeed, with a rather schizophrenic to-do (or to-see) list combining art and trash, recalling nothing so much as the critical adage of playing both brows against the middle. It begins on a noble note: I”ll be wallowing this afternoon in all 190 minutes of the digitally restored Marcel Carné opus “Les Enfants du Paradis” at London”s invaluable BFI Southbank.
From there on, my plans get slightly less respectable, as I”m hoping to catch two new releases whose press screenings I napped on. One of them I feel little need to apologize for: Tarsem had me at hello with his wildly underappreciated (and frankly just wild) fantasy thriller “The Cell,” which you may or may not remember was robbed of every design award going in 2000, so there”s no way I”m not seeing him indulge his mask fixation to the nth degree and the third dimension in “Immortals.”
Throw all the bad reviews at me you want: at least two critics I love are down with it (one quite viscerally so), so the loyalties involved are manifold. In fact, I”m rather happy to see this one with a willing audience rather than in an airless screening room full of grousing journos.
I feel slightly less principled, however, about the prospect of rocking up at my local multiplex and requesting a ticket to Joel Schumacher”s “Trespass,” which snuck onto a handful of London screens yesterday with its tail already between its legs, and which even the “Immortals” champions are steering me away from. But Kidmasochism is a powerful force, as is the morbid curiosity to decode what possibly led one of my favorite contemporary actors, one film away from “Rabbit Hole” to star in something resembling a project Sharon Stone might have been too busy for in 1994. Wish me luck.
I”ll probably need a shot of high culture, not to mention a stiff drink, after that, so it”s handy that I”ll get both at tomorrow”s AMPAS tribute evening to Vanessa Redgrave in Soho, where Meryl Streep will be among those leading the cheers. “Looking forward” is an understatement.
But enough about my weekend plans. What”s on your mind? Have at it in the comments.