Wenn Sie "deutschen cinema," das erste Ding denken, das zu Gemüt kommt, ist romanisch und Komödie, Recht?

Drei Sterne aka Mostly Martha is a smart, adult-minded romantic comedy that continues the recent run of quality titles such as Italian for Beginners, Mifune, Late Marriage and others.  The story will sound familiar – An uptight professional woman is forced to embrace the love of her niece, which opens her up to a possible romance with a man who lives at a temperature 10 degrees higher than her at all times.

But Sandra Nettelbeck, who makes her American debut with this film, finds more than the easy or the obvious for her central character.  Mostly Martha runs purely on emotion, centered around three characters, each of whom wears his or her heart on, under or in another room than their sleeve. 

Martina Gedeck is quite good as Martha, letting her emotions swing as wildly as they might in real life, but never losing the thread of the character and the audience with it.   This is a woman who is beautiful but plain… sexy and still built like a real woman.  She seems to be on edge, waiting for the worst in every frame, yet underneath her apron she always seems to be wearing clothing that accentuates her bosom and clings to her backside, not as a flower looking to be pollinated, but as a woman who loves to feel, to taste and to please others, all the while unwilling to open up until the right moment. 

As the 8-year-old niece who is stuck with her unbalanced aunt while she also mourns the loss of her mother, Maxime Foerste is excellent.  She is, to me, more beautiful than Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby and infinitely more wise.  I caught Kubrick’s Lolita the other night on TCM and while Sue Lyon was twice Ms. Foerste’s age, there was a similar sense of knowingness and willfulness that matched. (Note: Don’t misunderstand.  There is nothing sexual about the 8-year-old’s story in this film.)

The one performance that I suspect will lead to a career in Hollywood is Sergio Castellitto’s.  He is the Italian “fifth wheel,” who takes up a spot in Martha’s kitchen.  (An unintended euphemism.)   Castellitto is a better looking answer to Jean Reno and he’s five years younger.  Also, Mostly Martha is his third foray into American distribution this year, with The Last Kiss and Va Savoir also out there.  He will be “discovered.”  One can easily imagine Mr. Castellitto handling the action roles that have made Reno famous, but Castellitto has a more gentle handle on comedy than his French predecessor.  (Reno starred in one of France’s biggest comedy hits ever, The Visitors.  His recreation of the role in English marks the lowest point in his American career and remains one of the biggest English-language money losers ever.)

It’s hard to imagine any audience not enjoying Mostly Martha.  To try to answer why anyone would dislike this film, I went to Rotten Tomatoes and found one of the few negative reviews, from The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt.  He wrote, “The main problem here is that Martha is a real head-scratcher.”  And there it is.  If you want answers… if you want Big Night… if you want to the film to be French… you might actually be disappointed.  But if you want a romantic comedy that reflects the romantic comedy of real life, you are going to enjoy Mostly Martha. 

“MANCHESTER, ENGLAND, ENGLAND”:  Before the events of 24 Hour Party People, Manchester was best known in America for that lyric from the show, Hair.   Things change.

I am a fan of the music that came out of Manchester in the late 70s and early 80s.  But not a rabid fan.  The most fun I ever had with that era was in Julian Temple’s brilliant Sex Pistols doc, The Filth & The Fury.  For me, 24 Hour Party People adds to the joy… adds, but doesn’t top.  And somehow, I feel like it should have been a topper.  That’s why I haven’t been anxious to review the film.  People really dig it.  And there really isn’t anything about this movie that I dislike.  But I just couldn’t fall in love.

The story follows a period in the life of Tony Wilson, played by Steve Coogan, the star of a show about a fictional character named Alan Partridge that American critics may have made the most heavily praised work ever never to have been seen in this country.  If you think that sentence construction is challenging, you are getting an idea of how I feel about the movie.

Director Michael Winterbottom, writer Frank Boyle, Coogan and their many really-lived-it collaborators have made a film whose form and function mesh in a fascinating way.  Coogan’s Tony Wilson breaks the fourth wall in character, out of character and next to his character.  In the opening sequence, Wilson is doing a TV remote that is going wrong and talks to his TV audience.  But soon, Coogan, who runs into the real Tony Wilson in the course of the film, is talking about the film being made about the man who is making TV films.  And so on and so on and so on….

I wish I had more to say about 24 Hour Party People.  But it felt like something hammocked between being a fascinating exercise from the Digital Land of Figgis and a really good movie.  If you love music and are interested in the music business, you’ll probably like this film.  To use a dating euphemism, for me, 24 Hour Party People had a great personality.

And if anyone has tapes of Alan Partridge, please let me know where I can get a copy.

BRUTAL:  Some movies bring out the knives and some bring out the hatchets.  Ray Pride took at look at Goldmember and dusted off the bazooka.  Take a look.

GOOD FOR THEM:  Just the other day, someone asked me about The Golden Globes and I complained about the shocking wealth of the organization.  And today, they announced that they were giving away $500,000 to good causes.  Great!   I salute the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for their good deeds!   The story is here.

AIN’T IT DIFFERENT?:  I spent a day or two thinking about the Ain’t It Cool co-sponsored preview screening of The Ring.  The upshot of the screening was that DreamWorks got pretty much what they wanted, which was a reasonably supportive platform for a new movie.

But it wasn’t the same as two years ago, when the studio gave the boys a very early screening of Gladiator at San Francisco’s Metreon.  That one really pissed me off, particularly because the studio had given something to AICN that they had not and would not give any other outlet.  The goal, successfully achieved, was to get an overwhelmingly positive response to the film on Ain’t It Cool and with the media who flocked to the site back then, searching for the latest industry inside info. 

Just two years later, no one really much cares about this screening.  That is to say, no one who isn’t part of the Ain’t It Cool community, which has become quite well defined by the studios.  In fact, the entire internet universe has been reassessed by the studios.  Just two years ago, new positions in publicity were being created to take advantage of – and to defend against – the web.  Honestly, after the just six months in which I was in Miami, I returned to a whole new ballgame in town.

The most savvy studio web players, have maintained relationships with their priority outlets and dumped as many as have gone away care of bankruptcy proceedings.  Others seem to have put the web just below small-market radio stations on the priority scale. 

I guess the upshot is that the medium is now being treated like most other media… there are a lot of outlets and a few players who matter… mattering always being about perception more than any factual data.  

I have already heard some backlash from traditional media reporters who take the screening as a sign that DreamWorks is writing off The Ring as a “geek flick.”  I consider that unfair to the film.  As always, it is the movie first and the movie last.  But things sure have changed…

ADD MORIARTY:  The bigger Ain’t It Cool story this week is Drew McWeeney doing a deal to write a film, with his partner, for Revolution Studios.  Congratulations, Drew.  Sincerely.  I wish you well as a screenwriter and who knows, someday, maybe a director.  I have always said that you were a smart guy and I have no doubt that you will find your way.

Of course, it’s time to take down that Auto Focus review and to promise not to write about any Sony films again anytime soon.  Not even Punch Drunk Love… a movie produced by the people who just hired you.  You do recognize conflict of interest, no? 

You know, I consider Time Magazine to be wrong for allowing studios to use pull quotes from Jess Cagle features, as though he was a critic.  But Jess doesn’t pretend to be a critic.  I blame his employer and I blame the studios for quote abuse.  But with you, Drew, there is no one to blame but you.  You can point out some negativity about The Ring, but when you write that its release date is “a great day for film fans” after the studio gave you this event, you are crossing a line.  It doesn’t mean that you don’t sincerely love the film.  But the man who sleeps with his secretary may also love his wife.

If Roger Ebert picked films for his Overlooked Film Festival before he saw or reviewed the films, we would have to wonder whether a review coming from the event was tainted… even though we all know Roger is above such things.  And please note, Roger and Roeper work for Buena Vista TV… they do not answer directly to movie executives.  The man you work for at Revolution is the man who greenlights all their movies. 

I know that you feel that you are above such petty judgments.  But there isn’t a quote whore in the business that doesn’t swear that they are being perfectly honest when they love this weeks’ Mission to Mars or Scooby Doo.   I don’t think you are a whore, Drew.  I just think that if you are as honest as you have always claimed and as smart as I know you are, you will show some restraint and some professional honor in your future endeavors.  There is a price to pay for those relationships that we choose. 

READER OF THE DAY:  THE SICKSTER writes:  “Popeye?  Popeye?!

Oh, ye, gods, David,  " Popeye " was an awful, awful, awful picture.  And the biggest problem with it was that so much of it was -right- that where it goes bad makes it even more frustrating.

Feiffer's script and the casting were perfect, but Altman's half-assed direction and insistence on filming in Malta doomed it from the word "go."  By building his little village, Altman blew the budget and we lost forever what could have been one of the great finales ever (including Popeye and Bluto swinging telephone poles at each other like baseball bats) and were stuck with that horrible octopus finale that was taped onto the end with Scotch tape and spit.

Of course, by that time, the battle was lost anyway, due at least in part to that hideous musical score.  Even Disney admitted how bad it was by cutting it out of the European release and marketing it as a straight action picture, but by then it was too late.  If ever a musical called for a traditional score, it was this one, but Nillson's wimpy music and terrible lyrics doomed it.

I'll cop to not liking any of Altman's pictures ("The Player" and "Gosford Park" come close, but are both fatally flawed), but for me, this one was strictly in the "if only" file.

 This summer's pictures?  Well, Hollywood has succeeded in driving me away from theatres.   I even have a free pass to Landmark, and have used it a total of twice.  I used to attend dozens of movies a month, but the theatre-going experience has become so annoying that I've given up.  Not that the quality of what's out there is worth going to.  I'm reminded of Horace's quote:  "The mountain labors, and brings forth . . . a mouse!"

"Superman and Batman?"  Just another illustration of how Warners has no idea of what their properties are worth.  To greenlight "The Wonder Twins" and sit on potential goldmine franchises as Superman and Batman is the height of short-sightedness.”

THE LIQUOR WEB writes: “No contest for me - GREAT summer. To my mind at least, big-budget Hollywood has finally woken up. Spidey, Clones, Perdition, Insomnia, Bourne, Sum, Minority, About A Boy, Signs. Maybe you liked all of those flicks, maybe some, maybe even none. The point is this - the vast majority of moviegoers (and, egads, even CRITICS) DID. Should you need further proof, just look at those movies that DIDN'T hit the mark for many. The tired MIB2 and Goldmember, the truly abject Scooby flick. Notice that those three flicks feel like leftovers from LAST summer, belonging in amongst Pearl Harbor, Tomb Raider, Apes, JP3, Mummy Returns etc. That was last year's blockbuster crop. Anyone take that over this year's batch? No hands raised. As for the best blockbuster season ever, i still say 1989 is the one to beat. Batman (still the best superhero flick ever), Last Crusade (best Indiana movie), Lethal Weapon 2 (the best of that franchise), Abyss (by far the best three-hour waterbound epic love story directed by James Cameron).” 

And THE BIG AL EXPERIENCE closes with:  “Come on, Dave, you KNOW this has been a bad summer.  I compare it to the Internet bubble.  All these studios making $100 million, $200 million+, some even fudging their box office numbers, but as you've so wisely have been pointing out, at the end of the day the budgets and marketing expenditures are killing any chance of profit.  I can't wait for the inevitable, competing $100-million budgeted Enron/Global Crossing/Adelphia biopics by Michael Mann or Oliver Stone that go on to make $30 million.  Truly ironic.

Sony can rah-rah all they want, but I hated "Spider-Man," "Men in Black II," and am not even interested in "Mr. Deeds," "Stuart Little 2," or "XXX."  Not much to be happy about there. (And who the fuck do they think wants to see "Seabiscuit???").  When the final numbers are tallied, I wouldn't be surprised if Sony, like Vivendi with their $12 BILLION DOLLAR LOSS, end up saying they aren't doing well financially, regardless of the hits.  Your story on "Charlie's Angels 2" and its budget and back-end deals basically summed it up.  For the $120 million that movie will cost, doesn't it seem smarter to make 20 movies in a "Memento" price range, with talented writers and directors, and hope that just a few of them take off?  There's more profit there, in addition to more relationships they can garner.  But as we all know, most studio executives are lawyers, movie idiots, who care more about bragging rights over having the next Vin Diesel movie or the first in this latest batch of Roman emperor/gladiator films to go into production (what's up with that? - it's duelling asteroid/ebola virus films all over again).

I just wish the studios would focus more on the quality of the movie rather than just pandering to what they think the lucrative 12-16 year old male teen market wants to see.  Somehow, when I was a teen, I never got the feeling that "Animal House," "The Blues Brothers," "Caddyshack," "Meatballs" or "Stripes" were made exclusively for teen boys.  They just seemed like good, rebellious, "organic" films.  The only films like those lately have been "There's Something About Mary," "Rushmore" and "American Pie," which were good films that didn't rely on flavor-of-the-month casting.  Last year had the decent "Legally Blonde," but this year -- zippo.  One disappointment after another.  The "stocks" are tanking.

I've liked four movies this year: "About a Boy," "The Bourne Identity," "The Kid Stays in the Picture," "Minority Report," and only somewhat "Insomnia" and "Road to Perdition." ("The Mothman Prophecies" is my one guilty pleasure -- oh, okay, and "Xxxxxxx Xxxx" [but don't tell anyone]).  (DAVID NOTE: Edited… so no one knows.)

E ME:  WOW!!!!  I need a cigarette after that rant!!!

Tomorrow is Sumner Wrap-Up Day and Thursday… it’s my fifth anniversary.  I hope I don’t forget or I won’t get any from myself for a week! 

Has your perception of the web changed?  Have you changed the way you use it… your expectations of it…. your faith in it?