A deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, and escaping the roles we are forced to playby the author of the infinitely inventive How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.
Willis Wu doesnt perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: Hes merely Generic Asian man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but he is always relegated to a prop. Yet every day he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. Hes a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guythe most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. At least thats what he has been told, time and time again. Except by one person, his mother. Who says to him: Be more.
Playful but heartfelt, a send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes, Interior Chinatown is Charles Yus most moving, daring, and masterly novel yet.
from the director of Fantastic Four and that teenage superhero movie whatever it was called. he's also the writer and, oh, editor. costarring Kyle MacLachlan. Lynch's dp (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005687/). Music by El-P
Was originally intended to be theatrically released but due to the COVID-19 pandemic these plans were dropped in favor of a direct-to-digital release. May 12, 2020
This is a go-for-broke movie on every level, from Tom Hardy's ferocious lead performance to Trank's aggressively non-conventional script to the grisly tableaux Trank gleefully parades Capone through as he tries to get inside this dying, increasingly-insane gangster's mind. The discourse surrounding this film has already become a reductive echo chamber of "lol Tom Hardy poops his pants" observations, which is pretty stunning when you consider how much more there is to chew on here. I'm honestly not sure what would motivate anyone to make this particular movie, but the fact that Josh Trank's the one behind it makes the whole thing even chewier. Given that, it's the sort of film you might feel compelled to decode, but I suspect that would ultimately prove to be a dead end. Capone can't trust his mind any more than we can trust the film itself (both are unreliable narrators of the highest order), and what clues we think we've found would likely turn out to be red herrings.
You see? Fascinating.
There's very little narrative to CAPONE: it's 1946, and Alphonse ("Fonzo" to virtually everyone in the film) Capone has been sent home early from prison thanks to his deteriorating mental condition. He, his family (including his supernaturally patient wife, played by a stellar Linda Cardellini), and a small army of gardeners, servants and handymen fill out a massive estate in Palm Island, Florida, where everyone does their best to navigate Fonzo's outbursts and occasional cruelty. He might sit for hours in a chair, chewing a cigar and looking out across the lake behind his house (Is someone watching him from the other side? Are those...binoculars?), only to suddenly explode in a fit of mush-mouthed obscenities. What caused the outburst? Who knows? Whatever's going on inside Capone's mind as he rides out this final year is not pretty, and it's everyone else's job to stay out of his way ... and, when necessary, to clean up after him.
There are dangling plot threads. $10M which Capone may or may not have hidden somewhere on the property, and the various hangers-on and government stooges who seek to get their hands on it. An illegitimate son who appears to be in cahoots with some of those stooges. A doctor (Kyle MacLachlan) who's trying to avoid prison time. These threads exist but they're never fully explored or resolved; the vast majority of the film takes place within Capone's sizzling, collapsing brain, and what we find there is a swirling miasma of disconnected memories, simmering fears and rage. As crazy as this sounds, the film I kept thinking of while watching CAPONE was Pablo Larran's JACKIE, another film which was more concerned with impressing a feeling and tone upon its audience than a traditional narrative (that CAPONE's score, gorgeously rendered by Run The Jewels' El-P, also sounds a little like Mica Levi's JACKIE score only serves to make the comparison feel less crazy).
The first thing I wanted to ask you is how did you get involved with the film?
Heres the deal. Im not involved with the film. I didnt make this. I just know Nick was in CoatWolf [Productions]; Evan has a movie coming out called Canary. Its gonna pretty much destroy everybody all day for years. Its one of the most amazing things Ive ever seen and hes still not done with it. So its still getting better. In the meantime, Nick did a lot of work, a lot of 2D, CG editing. Making it. Perfecting it.
And after that, he knew that he was his own Alpha Wolf and he needed to make his own thing. And so they separated. I loved it. Because I get to be friends with both of them. And so Nick, hes been building this world. If I talk to him to call him, then well talk about The Wanting Mare, about Whithren. Well talk about cities. And after a while you have a map in your head and youre like, Oh God. This guys only telling you a fraction of the story of how this works. But I can pull out shit right now about whats coming next. And it blows my mind, the ideas that he has. But you know, its not time for that. Still, the guy made a world, and now he is taking a moment. Its so good.
I found myself gravitating toward the mythos thats been created around this world of horses and different continents. Theres that first aerial shot thats a map. Immediately I was thinking, Whats that dot? That dot?
Totally. Totally. And thats what I mean. And of course, I mean thats not real. Thats just him being awesome with Blender. Hes amazing. And heres the thing: the guys going to get promoted like a CG 2D artist, like a Neill Blomkamp kind of guy. Oh, okay. Thats a skill. I get it. Cool.
Thats not the case with this guy, dude. Like yes, that stuff. But he did it out of necessity. It doesnt mean that the literature is less. The literature is real. In the trailer it says, If youre not going to get me across, then youll just have to forget me. Ill forget you. You forget me. That is not somebody whos obsessed [solely] with using CG-like rendering, right? This is literature. Its just in this day and age, some of us have to come up with clever ways to get it across.
Something that really interested me was the ecological theme in the film. Theres a scene where someone turns into dust and is consumed by a horse, which on its face feels fantastical, but is actually grounded in realism. As you know, we ultimately return to the ground and become the mulch for the grass the horses graze on. Theres a Whitman transcendentalist quality to it, which reminds me of Upstream Color. Could you speak on the return to nature theme thats prevalent in The Wanting Mare.
Im thinking. Alright, well Im stuck. Im in a dichotomy right now. Cause what you said could be true. It could be. I cant fight it, but Im not here to say that at all. I dont say that theres similarities.
I mean, you know my deal with Upstream, right? I didnt know that I was stealing from Walden. I dont think I was stealing from Walden. I really dont. But I do see it. I see the similarities. I see what I got from it; what I stoleMaybe thats the wrong word. So Im not going to do that with Nick, but um
I wouldnt call it theft. Just a theme that feels recurrent, like with anything that ends up feeling somewhat universal.
I could try to do it. I could make a connection, but Id be lying. Im still watching his film. I watch it once in a while. I watched the trailer. Its one of these things. Its like you leave the theater, you know, after Phantom Thread or whatever you saw and youre like, Okay, well I dont know if I saw a whole movie there, but I just want to talk about it.
Whats that Tarantino movie that Tony Scott directed starring Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette?
True Romance
There we go. True Romance. Okay. Its like that. There we go. Great. Because in True Romance, after they see the movie, Patricia Arquette, says she wants to go have a piece of pie and talk about it. Thats literally the only reason I even brought it up was to recall that scene.
I think one of the values you get from making something thats a little bit obtuse, a little bit insular, a little bit inside itself is that you allow the audience to walk away and have something to talk about. And I dont mean it as a trick. I dont mean you should make movies obtuse just to make people have a reason to go get gelato afterward. I just mean that there is such a thing in film that is just like the greatest book you ever read, and you cant wait to tell your wife about it. And have her read it; and you can talk about it in depth.
What have you taken away from The Wanting Mare? How has it connected with you?
Its the women, generation after generation, that have the same dream. They have the same longing. They know theres something they should probably do, they think, but they dont know what it is. So they live in this place, but only once in a while can you actually ever leave. And so eventually the third one decides she has to go. Shes gotta get out of this. Its Thunder Road. We gotta get out of place. Weve got to go to a city. Pack up. You want to get in the car with me? That kind of stuff.
In the meantime, you have a lot of men running around with guns that are worried about tickets and horses. Thats the bit about money. Thats the bit about dollars. Thats a bit about coercion. Moving and pressing, and you mix them both up. Then you have something like a spirit thats got to get out of that fucking town.
You Should Have Left (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8201852/) is an adaptation of a Daniel Kehlmann novel, written and directed by David Koepp (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1547234/). it's listed as Completed
The fact that Shane Carruth has self-mythologized his difficult career in the industry as just being like “the visionary creator Hollywood can’t handle” is especially gross and manipulative given the context. I’ll shut up, but goddamn.
— machine gun handsome_pal (@handsome_pal) July 26, 2020
Update, 12 p.m. Tuesday: The hearing on the restraining order was held via telephone on Tuesday morning. Carruth dialed in and interrupted the judge at least a dozen times, even after being repeatedly admonished to be quiet. Unable to mute his line, the judge continued the hearing to Aug. 21 so that it could be held either in person or via video.
Joshua Rosenberg, Seimetzs attorney, informed the judge that Carruth had violated the order to have no contact with Seimetz 20 times since the last hearing on July 6. The judge, Commissioner Laura Cohen, advised that she could take any alleged violations to the police. The temporary restraining order remains in place until the next hearing.
I wonder if he has lots of restraining orders, so he just like.. loses track, leaves ‘em lying around and shit. “Oh shoot I was looking for that one !”
— SorryBoutFacts (@ZingularDay) July 26, 2020
Yes, I do. Turns out if you get a paycheck you can hire a clown show of racketeers to fleece you into oblivion and send lots and lots of paper to the wrong address so it blows all over the block and the other person gets to collect this and pay 94 dollars to be on a court call. pic.twitter.com/le2d7gYMXI
— Upstream Color (@UpstreamColor) July 28, 2020
As a parent of young children and a nationalist who worries about America’s low fertility I can say with confidence that daylight savings time reduces fertility by at least 10 percent.
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) November 2, 2020