Slipstream (Anthony Hopkins, 2007)
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flyonthewall2983
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flyonthewall2983
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domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
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colinr0380
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Sight and Sound made a brief mention of the film in a Locarno festival report from Geoff Andrews (October 07, Page 11):
Anthony Hopkins wrote, directed, acted in and composed music for Slipstream, a partly satirical story about a screenwriter brought on to a desert set to save a movie from meltdown - except that 'story' is perhaps too strong a word for a fractured, hallucinatory narrative in which we, like the protagonist befuddled and fearful of losing his life, can seldom tell what's real, dreamed, imagined or being acted out in the film-within-a-film. It's far too easy to dismiss Hopkins' unfashionably ambitious movie as a mess, but think Ruiz, or the Roeg of The Man Who Fell To Earth or even Altman's 3 Women, and Hopkins' witty, richly allusive achievement starts to make sense.
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s.j. bagley
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Magic Hate Ball
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marty
Strand Releasing are only doing theatrical as Sony Pictures Entertainment will be handling the DVD release. I saw this film in Cannes and it's quite an intriguing film. Very much experimental arthouse in the David Lynch/Gus Van Sant way than any commercial film that Hopkins has starred in the past. The film is beautifully shot in 2.35 by Dante Spinotti and is very challenging for modern cinema audiences but I expect it to have some cult following on DVD. As the film is very much a mystery until the end, many viewers may feel exasperated by the film's constant ambiguity and lack of clarity. I found it fascinating. Many have compared the film to Fellini's 8 1/2 as both films deal with the final stages of a film director's life.domino harvey wrote:Well since Strand's releasing it, I guess I'll just wait for the interlaced non-anamorphic DVD. I thought they only put out lgbt movies, or is that not the case any more?
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Antoine Doinel
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....and Inland Empire (which I was disappointed by). The Quicktime trailer is here and the film looks utterly fascinating. It's heartening to see someone like Anthony Hopkins spearheading a project like this.flyonthewall2983 wrote:It looks like the kind of movie Southland Tales wants to be.
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John Cope
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As someone who loved both INLAND EMPIRE and Southland Tales (and Domino for that matter) one would assume I would be the perfect audience for this spastic riff on every conceivable stylish mind fuck imaginable. Sorry to say, I was not. In fact, I take very real umbrage to the whole thing.
And it was not always so. I was pretty enthralled by the first twenty minutes and more than sufficiently intrigued as to where Hopkins would go with all this. Well, it's no spoiler (and is perhaps indeed even an act of salvation) to reveal that it goes absolutely nowhere, except in endless rotation self-referential circles. Yes, it's all very "innovative" and those first twenty minutes or so are truly captivating but it's ultimately depressing to see so much effort and energy expended on nothing. Now obviously many can and do level that criticism against the likes of the above mentioned three films and it's quite possible that this film can be read and was intended as a cynical rebuke to the popularity of supposedly incomprehensible anti-narratives. I'm not sure if that would make Slipstream more or less detestable.
Hopkins apparently has said that he "did it as a little joke"; it would have been nice to know that going in. It is for sure a critical mash up of Lynch, Potter, Fellini, even Hollywood era Mike Figgis and the collected work of Damon Packard. Any or all of that stuff is more worth while than this. As I said I was enthralled for awhile because the anything goes approach promised much but as it plays out (particularly around the time of the truly insufferable Christian Slater/Jeffrey Tambor in the diner sequence) it all begins to simply irritate as it becomes obvious that it was never meant to amount to much. Stunt performances such as Turturro as a writer hating producer (get it?--someone thought you wouldn't, there's even a Michael Lerner cameo) are one note and not funny to start and just get increasingly more grating as they go on. As a side note, if somebody wants to see a genuinely funny, less suffocating depiction of the whole colorful Hollywood power player archetype, please see Peter Weller in Bernard Rose's great ivansxtc or Harvey Fierstein in David Marconi's underrated The Harvest.
Anyway, Hopkins' supreme indulgence here in assuming that his tricked up presentation and lame insider gags were sufficient to captivate and satisfy is the height of unjustified self-regard. Coppola's Youth Without Youth was slammed for being too self-indulgent as well but I can't imagine it being as willfully insulting as this. What is most obnoxious is the way reviews such as this one seem all too content to give it a pass in order to demonstrate some kind of assumed sophistication of perception. The idea here is that anyone who expects all the random, disparate elements to add up or configure in any way is just a stooge unwilling or unable to accept what is being offered on its own merits, for its own sake. This presumption simply accepts that the approach taken here is worthy of our time and consideration. I don't agree.
Hopkins includes a ton of stock footage, much of it documenting wartime horrors or political rallys. He also names his character Bonhoeffer (the name of a Protestant minister incarcerated by the Nazis). This gives the appearance of weight or substance to many of the endless digressions which are not, I guess, digressions at all as there is nothing to digress from. Actors double and triple up on characters and identities and one cannot help but have the impulsive instinct to make connections or see patterns even when explicitly none were intended. Is this Hopkins' point? That this is what we do? Well, no kidding. It's also easy, glib metaphysical absolutism to suggest that what we do is simply and inherently pointless. Lynch and company (and even experimental filmmakers like Nina Menkes) do not share this attitude. Connections and associations are able to be formed in many ways and the insight gained is not deemed to be insufficient or frivolous, though it is always only partial and provisional. Insight does not have to be dependent on one method of engagement, but to dismiss the whole enterprise of engaement as a wan joke is self-defeating to say the least.
And it was not always so. I was pretty enthralled by the first twenty minutes and more than sufficiently intrigued as to where Hopkins would go with all this. Well, it's no spoiler (and is perhaps indeed even an act of salvation) to reveal that it goes absolutely nowhere, except in endless rotation self-referential circles. Yes, it's all very "innovative" and those first twenty minutes or so are truly captivating but it's ultimately depressing to see so much effort and energy expended on nothing. Now obviously many can and do level that criticism against the likes of the above mentioned three films and it's quite possible that this film can be read and was intended as a cynical rebuke to the popularity of supposedly incomprehensible anti-narratives. I'm not sure if that would make Slipstream more or less detestable.
Hopkins apparently has said that he "did it as a little joke"; it would have been nice to know that going in. It is for sure a critical mash up of Lynch, Potter, Fellini, even Hollywood era Mike Figgis and the collected work of Damon Packard. Any or all of that stuff is more worth while than this. As I said I was enthralled for awhile because the anything goes approach promised much but as it plays out (particularly around the time of the truly insufferable Christian Slater/Jeffrey Tambor in the diner sequence) it all begins to simply irritate as it becomes obvious that it was never meant to amount to much. Stunt performances such as Turturro as a writer hating producer (get it?--someone thought you wouldn't, there's even a Michael Lerner cameo) are one note and not funny to start and just get increasingly more grating as they go on. As a side note, if somebody wants to see a genuinely funny, less suffocating depiction of the whole colorful Hollywood power player archetype, please see Peter Weller in Bernard Rose's great ivansxtc or Harvey Fierstein in David Marconi's underrated The Harvest.
Anyway, Hopkins' supreme indulgence here in assuming that his tricked up presentation and lame insider gags were sufficient to captivate and satisfy is the height of unjustified self-regard. Coppola's Youth Without Youth was slammed for being too self-indulgent as well but I can't imagine it being as willfully insulting as this. What is most obnoxious is the way reviews such as this one seem all too content to give it a pass in order to demonstrate some kind of assumed sophistication of perception. The idea here is that anyone who expects all the random, disparate elements to add up or configure in any way is just a stooge unwilling or unable to accept what is being offered on its own merits, for its own sake. This presumption simply accepts that the approach taken here is worthy of our time and consideration. I don't agree.
Hopkins includes a ton of stock footage, much of it documenting wartime horrors or political rallys. He also names his character Bonhoeffer (the name of a Protestant minister incarcerated by the Nazis). This gives the appearance of weight or substance to many of the endless digressions which are not, I guess, digressions at all as there is nothing to digress from. Actors double and triple up on characters and identities and one cannot help but have the impulsive instinct to make connections or see patterns even when explicitly none were intended. Is this Hopkins' point? That this is what we do? Well, no kidding. It's also easy, glib metaphysical absolutism to suggest that what we do is simply and inherently pointless. Lynch and company (and even experimental filmmakers like Nina Menkes) do not share this attitude. Connections and associations are able to be formed in many ways and the insight gained is not deemed to be insufficient or frivolous, though it is always only partial and provisional. Insight does not have to be dependent on one method of engagement, but to dismiss the whole enterprise of engaement as a wan joke is self-defeating to say the least.