Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood's Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists and Dreamers - An excursion into the American New Wave
Asking the Wrong Questions (Free subscription) | yesterday
There's a scene that comes about halfway into Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and very early in the romance between its main characters, Joel and Clementine. After a less than ideal first meeting, Joel visits Clementine at her workplace in search of a second chance, and though she's willing, she also matter-of-factly lays down the ground rules of their fledgling
Film Experience Blog (Free subscription) | yesterday
I love slow movies. Really slow. For the longest time I thought everyone else considered that word to signify the worst in movies. Slow meant bad enough to put you to sleep. I love movies that put me to sleep. I’ve a whole collection of movies that I can pop in the DVD player whenever I can’t sleep and they’ll do the trick. If we can agree that music peaceful enough to put you to...
The One-Line Review (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
USA Feature Film Writer/Director: Charlie Kaufman Cinematographer: Fred Elmes Composer: Jon Brion Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Tom Noonan, Dianne Wiest, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robin Weigert Brilliant screenwriter Kaufman’s hugely ambitious (perhaps overly ambitious) directorial debut - an enigmatic, nightmare-like...
Wakkablog (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
I've scraped my previous idea of writing purely about a few post-modern novels and instead am considering writing about Metafiction in both film and literature. Of the seemingly infinite aspects of post-modernism, Metafiction to me is particularly interesting in that it toys with both fiction and reality, twisting them together, breaking them apart, using one to form the other and so on. I'm still...
Film Experience Blog (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
Cinematic birthdays for Nov. 19th , this time with lighter loafers. 1889 Clifton Webb , reportedly as out as an actor could be back in the day but Oscar never gave him their top prize. They never give out actors the statue. Sad, but true. Classic films include Oscar favorites like Laura and Three Coins in the Fountain ( review ) but he's most famous for playing Mr. Belvedere, the uptight gentlemen...
Contactmusic Ltd (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
Like a collision of Charlie Kaufman and Woody Allen, this dark comedy is a surreal gem, astutely examining the issue of
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
Ripping off someone else's act in such obsessive detail that it counts as a mixture of creative larceny and stalking, says Peter Bradshaw There is hommage . And there is ripping off someone else's act in such obsessive detail that it counts as a mixture of creative larceny and stalking. Writer-director Sophie Barthes has created a moderately funny film everywhere described as "Kaufmanesque"....
Movie Talk (Free subscription) | 12/11/2009
A surreal storyline: check. A famous actor playing himself: check. Playful existential comedy Cold Souls certainly ticks some of the same boxes as Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich, yet first-time writer-director Sophie Barthes’s assured feature film debut has a deadpan wit and gentle pathos all [...]
The Screenwriters League (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
The period between 1990 and 1999 was great for movies. Pulp Fiction , Shawshank , Hoop Dreams – that's 1994 alone. There are times when I think the quality of films (especially domestic films) has degenerated as I’ve grown more familiar with writing and filmmaking. But then I thought about it, and, man, some really great movies came out this decade. So here are #'s 10 - 6... (#'s 5 - 1...
ArtsJournal (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
"The image - which looked like a strange mix of African art and Keith Haring - was a page from Carl Jung's long-discussed but only recently published Red Book, a richly illustrated diary that captured Jung's 'confrontation with the unconscious'." Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman looks at the picture and free-associates....
CinemaSpy (Free subscription) | 09/11/2009
Recently, Sam Mendes ( The Road to Perdition, Away We Go ) said the script for Preacher — an adaptation of the DC/Vertigo comic book series — is about halfway finished. Now it appears that John Cusack, who’s starring in the upcoming 2012 , may want in on it. In an interview with io9 , Cusack described a comic book movie circulating around Hollywood that he’s trying to get himself...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 07/11/2009
The Guidelines: Random notes from pop culture Sophie Barthes's engaging new comedy Cold Souls is the latest of a new breed of films that can be called "Kaufmanesque", with deference to the screenplays of Charlie Kaufman. In Kaufman's work, reality falls prey to meta-textual and metaphysical influences, usually with bittersweet, hilarious results. His shadow falls on Barthes's film, in which...
Japan Times (Free subscription) | 05/11/2009
Sreenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who spun American cinema on its head with striking scripts for "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," goes for fiendishly obsessional, intellectual acrobatics in his directorial debut. "Synecdoche, New York" is monumentally ambitious — so crammed with literary innuendo and references galore the distributors...
Professor VJ (Free subscription) | 05/11/2009
Now that the comprehensive exhibition in Athens is well underway, it's time for some serious name-dropping in another direction: What do John Ashberry, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, William Burroughs, Truman Capote, Robert Creeley. my old undergrad teacher Harry Crews, Louise Erdich, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Ted Mooney, my old undergrad teacher Alain Robbe-Grillet, Salman Rushdie,...
jacquie shambles (Free subscription) | 05/11/2009
I must be having a sap-attack, because I've been watching the big pay-off sad scenes of some of my fave movies. Ghostworld, par example, the whole waiting for the bus I mean Godot thing and the fact that much of my high school experience can be summed up in this movie is just all too cathartic. booo hoo. so good. then theres this one. best break up film ever. oh, charlie kaufman you make me feel not...
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