Aug. 14, 2002 - 2:33 am
it was rather random. i was watching one of my movies last week and saw a trailer beforehand for this film. i remembered it from a few years ago and thought it might be good. plus it's got the amazing Claire Forlani in it (who is not in enough good films). how could i turn it down? the movie is directed by the famous artist Julian Shnabel. has anyone seen The Million Dollar Hotel (2000)? if you have, you'll get the significance of that name.
it's a biographical film about the short life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a young black American painter who made it big with his New York "gutter" art in the 1980s. he also had a way with women, a tinge of insanity, and a huge drug problem of which he died in 1988. his rise to the top and the times he had with his bigger artist friends such as Andy Warhol are shown throughout the film.
ok, i just have to say that everyone in this film is famous. except you probably haven't seen the lead actor, Jeffrey Wright, anywhere else. David Bowie, Dennis Hopper, Michael Wincott (damn he's good), Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Courtney Love, Parker Posey, Benicio Del Toro. hell, even "the electrician" is played by Willem Dafoe. the best performances come from Benicio Del Toro as Benny, Basquiat's drug addict buddy, David Bowie as Andy Warhol, and Michael Wincott as Rene Ricard, one of his reps.
yeah, so this movie has a lot of really awesome people in it. but it's still not that great. it seems really unfocused to me. Schnabel tried to add in all these artistic elements to an otherwise linear film. like you'll have 20 minutes of straight classical Hollywood cinema, then you get some little cutscene of Basquiat looking up at the sky seeing a surfer surfing in the clouds. there are other films that do things like this, but they do it well. this film doesn't.
also, there's way too much emphasis on the terrible soundtrack of this film. the one useful song that i heard was at the final credits. the amazing "Hallelujah" by John Cale. i'm sure you'll remember the song because it was also used in Shrek (2001). but remember, it was used here first.
this is so weird. i paused this film halfway through to watch the Gwyneth Paltrow interview on Conan. so that was pretty cool and they talked about Possession (2002). they also talked a little about how she's playing yet another British character in this film. but she is totally not British. i've never really been bothered by that. i actually like that aspect of her for some reason. that we want to believe that she's British. so just a second ago i'm thinking about Claire Forlani and i wonder if she's in any upcoming films, etc. then i remember hearing her do one of those "R" carries that i talk about that Brits and Australians do. ok. that requires a bit of explanation. it's like you're going to say the phrase: "My sister is a great person." now if you're British you say "my sista" in normal conversation. but when you put another word after that word that starts with a vowel (like "is"), then you have to put an "R" in there. she did the "R" thing to a normal American phrase. i don't remember exactly what the phrase was, but it was like "He was playing the tuba and I really enjoyed it." so she said "He was playing the tubar and I really enjoyed it." that's noticeable only to obsessive people like me i'd imagine. so yeah, i was looking at her upcoming films on the IMDb here a minute ago and I realized, oh yeah, that's because she actually IS from England. Middlesex, England to be precise. what is wrong with this world when Claire Forlani is pretending to always be American (so much so that I often forget that she actually is British), and Gwyneth Paltrow is always pretending to be British? ok, that's my rant.