Thighs Wide Shut

Something In The Air
(Après mai)
It’s No Carlos
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
Unrated | 122 min

It’s the late 60s/early 70s, in France, and students everywhere are pissed about stuff, and they want to do something about it.  News to me, since I’m an American, and we didn’t cover late 60s/early 70s French student unrest in any of our history classes, and I took a lot of history classes cause I was a History minor in college (which got me nowhere… but here?).  So these French students did anything in their power to make their voices be heard – they like firebombed buildings and things, they wrote pamphlets and manifestos on hot topics and stuff, and they did drugs and each other.  Sounds juss like lates 60s/early 70s America, but in France!!!!!!!!!

The GREAT director Olivier Assayas (Carlos, Carlos, Carlos) came of age during that turbulent time, and he autobiographically channels his experiences into his atmospheric Something In The Air.  Newcomer (with a Strokes hairdo) Clément Métayer plays Olivier by way of the character Gilles – the son of a TV writer/director (just like Assayas and his pops is was), who has nothing better to do than fight the power with pal Felix Armand (also with a Strokes hairdo), and get into the pants of Carole Combes & Lola Créton.  But maybe there’s more to life than juss being a shaggy-haired revolutionary shagging chicks????  Gilles is an artist first, and a radical second, but the movie starts with the order reversed.  Not much actually transpires over the film’s two hours, but stuff is happening all around, but that’s not really our concern.  Our concern is for Gilles, but there’s nothing really to ever be concerned about, cause he will shed his anger and become an artist!  Oh, there’s something in the air indeedy-do, and yes, it’s worth inhaling, even if it’s not exactly clear what that something is!

Verdictgo: low-end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Air is Something in limited release today, and on-demand May 9th

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Carlos
Highjackal!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Simple rule of thumb for exceedingly crazy-arsed long movies: a movie can be as long as it needs to be, just so long as anything over the perfect runtime of 90 minutes is absolutely necessary.  Most movies could use a good trim (the 3rd LOTR flick) and some could stand to be expanded (Zodiac, duh!), and some shouldn’t have been made longer than 5 minutes (Nerderberg’s insufferable Che).  Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos, a sprawling and masterful 3-part French TV mini-series epic, turned into one gigantic film for other countries, clocks in at a WHOPPING 330 minutes (5 1/2 hours), and we can honestly say that not a single moment was wasted, even if one’s eyes will fall out of their sockets after sitting thru it.  (there will also be a 165 ‘theatrical cut’ being shown in theaters, which we have yet to see and are THIGHLY curious to check out what got cut in half!!!)

What’s moist hammazin about Assayas’ mammoth undertaking is not how he pulled it off (but seriously, HOW DID HE?! 2 decades of story, shot over 7 months, in 7 different countries, in countless languages, all looking MIGHTY 70s/80s GORGEOUS!!), but how dang fast it all flys by!!!  ZIP ZIP ZOOOOEY!!!  Luckily he took his pacing cues from Fincher’s Zodiac!  Even if the film went unmade, the work and research that Assayas and co-writer Dan Franck put into a 300 page screenplay is worthy of applause all on its own!!!!  And guess what, so little is actually known about Venezuelan global terrorist Carlos the Jackal (Édgar Ramírez, who deserves a ton of accolades, and more accent marks in his name) that they had to make up a bunch of stuff!!!  And who cares, hispecially if it’s so dang captivating (even if it’s hard to maintain fluid and tense drama for that long of a period)!  It’s like what Finchy and Sorkin pulled with The Social Network, but Carlos deals with stuff that’s actually important, like hurting people, and not juss their feelings!

OK, there’s some known stuff about the Jackal, like killing some cops, taking some hostages here and there, flying planes to shady countries, drinking tons of whiskey, smoking tons of fags, banging some slutty revolutionary chicks, plotting, plotting some more, plotting some more after some more, until he eventually became a bloated nonentity and a relic dinosaur of terrorism’s past, before eventually being captured!!!  In a shellnut, that’s the entire story

Carlos is the flipside of Spielbergo’s Munich, AKA the best movie of 2005!!  While we’re not likely to put Carlos at the very very top of our list at the end of 2010, in time, that may turn out to be a decision we regret.  What to do, what to do????  Dunno, but you should give up 330 minutes of your life to see this, which you’ll gladly never get back!!!

Time Out of Mind:  so what is the longest movie ever?   Guinness sez The Cure For Insomnia. sounds more like the cause of insomnia!!  here are two lists of the longest films evers!!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Carlos will be released as follows:

TV – broadcast premiere on the Sundance Channel from Rocktober 11 thru 13 (sorry about the late notice!)

THEATRICAL – opens in NY on Friday.  330 minute Special Roadshow Edition at IFC Center – Roct 15 to Nov 2 ONLY.  The 165 minute ‘theatrical cut’ will be shown at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.  Both the extended version and the shorter cut will roll out theatrically elsewhere elsewhen

VOD – the 165 minute cut will also be shown on video on demand beginning Rocktober 20

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…