SFIFF53: ROGER EBERT TRIBUTE

Roger Ebert was the distinguished recipient of the Mel Novikoff Award at this year's edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF53). The presiding theme that ran throughout the celebratory evening held at San Francisco's historic Castro Theatre was that—at a time when (as Jason Sanders states it in his tribute essay) "the future of film criticism remains a real question"—Ebert has proven by example that film criticism's role in championing the work of new filmmakers has kickstarted many a career and encouraged others to hone their craft. To prove that point, the San Francisco Film Society invited four guests whose directorial careers have been personally encouraged by Ebert to share their thoughts: Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff, Henry & June), Errol Morris (The Fog of War, The Thin Blue Line), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno) and Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World, Crumb).

Letter From Tilda Swinton

One guest who had been invited but was unable to attend due to a conflict in her filming schedule was festival favorite Tilda Swinton, whose brave performance in Erick Zonca's Julia was singled out by Ebert for reconsideration. In lieu of attendance, Swinton forwarded a letter to Ebert, which Program Director Rachel Rosen read to the audience:

"Dear Roger: I cannot tell you how sad I am to miss out on our San Francisco moment. I am—as my daughter would describe her dog when it pines—'pretty low to the ground' about the whole thing. Were it not that I'm in Connecticut shooting what I sincerely hope is a great film with Lynne Ramsay, and were there flights that existed that could get me there and back between the end of a Friday night shoot and an early call on Monday without our company suffering one collective heart attack, you know I would be there.

"You do me and Julia such great honor. Such a beloved film for me and all those who made it. Your support has kept us warm over the past months. The witness you provide for this kind of work is incalculably valuable to all filmmakers working outside the frame of studio movie's muscle and your inexhaustible passion as a film fan means everything. Tilda."

Terry Zwigoff

Introducing Terry Zwigoff as a "director who makes a specialty of literate antisocial oddballs", Rachel Rosen qualified: "that he does it with comedy takes more guts than doing it in tragedy."

"I make films about 'antisocial oddballs'?" Zwigoff countered behind the podium. "I guess that's fair. You write about what you know. I'm actually so antisocial myself these days I find it very difficult to watch a film in a theater among other people. I'm not saying that to be self-serving; it's just the truth. I feel very uncomfortable and I prefer, these days, to watch films at home, especially comedies. I know Roger prefers that communal audience experience—he's a much more well-adjusted, sane person—but, I really can't stand it when I go to a film and the audience starts laughing at something I don't find funny and when they don't laugh at something I do find funny. It's a very alienating experience for me and I'm alienated enough, so.... But whenever I watch a film at home, I got into this habit of wanting to talk or think about it with somebody and, of course, the guy I always choose to think about is Mr. Ebert. I can go to the computer and hope that he has written a review of what I've just watched. Why do I do this? I'm not even sure to tell you the truth because I don't fully agree with him; but, why I do it is because he's a great writer.

"I brought something to read and I hope he doesn't mind but it's part of a review that he wrote for one of my favorite films, which is Army of Shadows: 'Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows is about members of the French Resistance who persist in the face of despair. Rarely has a film shown so truly that place in the heart where hope lives with fatalism. It is not a film about daring raids and exploding trains, but about cold, hungry, desperate men and women who move invisibly through the Nazi occupation of France. Their army is indeed made of shadows: They use false names, they have no addresses, they can be betrayed in an instant by a traitor or an accident. They know they will probably die. This is not a war film. It is about a state of mind. ...[A]bout the war within the minds of Resistance members, who must live with constant fear, persist in the face of futility, accept the deaths of their comrades and expect no reward, except the knowledge that they are doing the right thing. ...Their immediate commander is Philippe Gerbier, played by Lino Ventura with a hawk nose and physical bulk, introspection and implacable determination. To overact for Ventura would be an embarrassment.' That's like the greatest line I've ever heard: 'To overact for Ventura would be an embarrassment.' People forget that Roger is a very funny writer as well as a smart one. I know that's known without my reading that.

"I often times read things he's written and take on a new appreciation for something I've seen, and watch it again, and learn something. Anyway, I'm so socially retarded that I don't think I've ever become friends with Roger in the traditional sense. I don't know him very well personally so I don't have very many anecdotes to share. I had dinner with Roger and Chaz once, but Malkovich's whole crazy family was there.... He's interviewed me a couple of times. He's had me at Ebertfest. I don't know, part of it's—I guess—that you have to keep a little bit of a professional distance if a guy's reviewing your films as well.

"I first met him at the Telluride Film Festival in 1984 where I had my first film Louie Bluie and I had only been accepted in one other film festival before that; it was down at Filmex, which is now called the L.A. Film Festival. I think 12 people showed up to see the film down there. So I didn't expect much when I went to Telluride; but, one of the people in line to see the film was Roger Ebert, which was a big deal to me. I remember I was in the lobby selling LPs—that sort of dates the whole thing; but, at least they weren't 78s—and they were soundtracks to the film Louie Bluie. Roger wanted to buy a few. He came up and I said, 'Just take a few, man, take some.' He seemed rather put off and rather irritated by that because maybe he thought I was trying to bribe him or something.

"I guess the biggest criticism I have of Roger is that his reviews are often too easy on films, except for my films of course—he could never be too easy on them—but, the guy loves films so much that it's almost contagious. He's open, he's smart, he's thoughtful, he's always very clear, and he's got a really good heart and—like I said—he's really funny, which is hard to do as a writer. He manages to make you think critically without making it seem like homework. God knows the world needs more people thinking critically these days about a lot of things.

"Finally, I'm going to tell a short story for Roger's benefit that he's never heard and that probably most of you have never heard. I don't tell many people this; but, I get a kick out of it so what the hell? When I made my film Crumb years ago, my executive producer Lynn O'Donnell suggested that we have a few informal test screenings before we locked picture. She wanted some feedback from an audience and so she got about 200 people to come and she handed the audience survey cards. They would ask you things like: What do you like most about the film? Do you like this? Is it too long? Too short? That sort of thing. After the screening was over, I realized it hadn't gone very well and so I went up to Lynn and I said, 'You know what? Let me take those cards home with me and read them over tonight and I'll give them back to you tomorrow morning.' She said, 'Okay.' So I took them home.

"I was mortified reading the cards because they were unanimously down on the film. The consensus was that I should take Robert Crumb's brothers out of the film, which to me was the whole point of the film. But everyone wanted to go in a more cheery, upbeat direction, and spend most of the time on underground comic books or something, which I had no interest in. So I thought, 'Well, I better take a few of these cards and fill in my own comments to balance this out.' I knew I wasn't going to be able to find any blank cards so I took some Wite-Out and I whited out their comments, then I went down to Kinkos and I Xeroxed about a hundred of these things. I came home and got a bunch of different pens and tried to disguise my handwriting on these cards and wrote, 'Oh, the brothers were great! More of them!'

"Eventually, we had one more screening and I couldn't do that again and, luckily, at that test screening this guy Walter Murch came and everybody felt the same way except him; but, he had enough clout as an Oscar®-winning editor to just say, 'Y'know, the film is great. Just leave it alone.' He went on beyond that to do a free sound mix for me, because we had no money.

"So we locked picture and started submitting it to film festivals and everyone turned us down. Eventually, somehow, the New York Film Festival let us in and it did well there. Roger and his ol' pal Gene Siskel saw it and they started championing the film on their show. They got it on there three or four times. The first time they did an early review to encourage theaters to actually book the film. Then after that they did it again when it came out to review it. And after that to remind people to go see the film. Eventually, by then all the other critics had gone along and come out for it. Ultimately Roger argued for it at Oscar® time and eventually it made its way onto Roger's list of great films, which was probably a greater thrill for me than winning the Oscar® itself.

"A few years ago Roger did a commentary for the film. The truth of the matter is that Sony Pictures had done a poor transfer the first time they did it and I had been on their case to correct it. Ever since then they sort of made it clear that—if they were going to do that—they wanted me to do a commentary and that's how I could pay them back for all the expense. But I just wasn't comfortable doing a commentary for a film. I think it takes the mystery and the magic out of it and it diminishes the film sometimes if you're not careful. So I was a little reluctant to do it, but I said, 'Y'know, why can't Roger Ebert do it? He could talk about this film. He knows it pretty well.' They said, 'Okay. That's a great suggestion.' So they called Roger and Roger agreed to do it and I said, 'Great! I'm off the hook.' And they said, 'No. You have to do it as a conversation with Roger.' So Roger came and we did this commentary and I tried to sit there the whole time and not say anything. I let him talk. I later found out they had used a lot of his voice from that DVD commentary to help restore his computer voice, which was great.

"Anyway, it's been my greatest hope and fondest joy to talk about Mr. Ebert here. Again, I'm glad he's been given this award. He truly deserves it."

Errol Morris

"It's an honor for me to be here tonight. Roger Ebert has given out so many awards to so many filmmakers, it's nice to be part of giving him an award this time around. Anybody who's done this long enough knows that there are two, three, four people who have made an extraordinary difference in their careers for many many many reasons. For me, Roger is most certainly one of those people. He champions unlikely films. His own film festival is the perfect example of this. It's my perfect trophy, by the way, the thumbs up. ...It's something I'm very very proud of, although I was disappointed to find out it was not Roger's thumb.

"I had made my first film Gates of Heaven. I think this is true many many films later, you don't really know if they're good or bad. You really depend on someone to tell you that they're not as bad as you might think and, in fact, they might be good! For me, very early in my career Roger Ebert—because my film went to the New York Film Festival; I was really lucky to be accepted—but, there was a newspaper strike that year in New York so no one read about the film. And then out of seemingly nowhere these reviews appeared on television and in the newspaper from Roger and Gene Siskel, almost as if he would not give up. In fact, he hasn't given up—I think it's now something like 30 years—his obsession with this film and other films I've made. I owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.

"What do you hope for when you make a film? That someone out there will appreciate it, perhaps see it in a kindly light, or maybe see things in it that you saw in it, or maybe even see things in it that you never even noticed. It's truly a blessing and Roger has certainly played that role in my life over the years. For that alone—aside from all the great writing and the great criticism—I am grateful.

"It also occurred to me—I will be brief—that there's something very odd about this man. He's not really just a film critic. He's also an icon, quite clearly. I remember when I first met him—I believe I first met him at the Cannes Film Festival years and years ago—I was told, 'Y'know, Roger always writes about his experiences at Cannes' and I read the one from that year. I remember saying to my wife at the time, 'This guy writes really really well.' And it's absolutely true. He's an extraordinary writer. If I call him 'kind', it seems like it's the wrong way to put it; but, he's an enthusiast and a person who is very much a person of conviction....

"So it's an enormous privilege for me to be here. He means—and continues to be—a lot to me. He's mastered every form of this sort of thing: as a writer, as a newspaper man, as a television personality, now as a blogger, and I'm sure that—if in the future there is a new kind of media that is developed—he will master that as well."

Jason Reitman

"Terry, I have one word of advice for when you're in a movie theater and they are laughing at the thing that's not funny. It's something I do when my wife drags me to a horrible romantic comedy. You just have to laugh three times as loud and talk about what's happening on the screen: 'Oh my God! She doesn't know that he's already in the bathroom!' And just get bigger and bigger and bigger. You can own that film.

"It's hard to give context for the life of Roger Ebert when it is he who has given us all context. He is America's critic. He's one of the few people who comprises our cinematic voice of record. He is ... 'The Thumb.' It's almost hard to come up with what we're supposed to say. Roger's name alone stands for his great writing, his criticism, all his contributions that have lived so far beyond them. One would think one could say, 'Now the Mel Novikoff Award goes to Roger Ebert' and that would be it.

"A few times a year Roger will choose a film, sometimes a studio release, but more often a film on the fringe, something small that was made for all the right reasons; something that moves him, and he will blow wind into the tiny sails of this film and give it a life that otherwise would be unimaginable. I'm not the first person to talk about this. I realize everybody's actually talking about this. I have personally experienced it. I remember arriving at the Toronto Film Festival with this tiny movie about teenage pregnancy starring an unknown Canadian actress named Ellen Page that I really thought, 'This will be a festival movie and it will not be seen otherwise.' I remember when the movie ended and people began to clap, I saw Roger—he was actually seated a few seats away from me—and he nodded to me. It was an extraordinary thing! The next morning he had already started talking about the film. He shone a spotlight on it. He gave people a reason to pay attention to it and by the end of the week I got a call saying that Roger would actually like to sit down and talk to me about the film. I was terrified but knew it was going to be a thing I was going to cherish for the rest of my life, and it was. I have no doubt that Roger is one of the very few reasons why people know the name Juno.

"There is a joy for Roger even when he doesn't like a film. I'm sorry in advance for this but here is a quote from [a review of] a movie that will go nameless: 'I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it.'—Errol, you're right, he's a great writer!—'Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.' Here's the thing: even in this review, I know how much Roger loves movies. I know how much he thinks of them, how much he wants from them, what he expects from them, because these are the same things that I look to movies for. I can't quite put a finger on it but there's something about many film critics and the way they write that makes me think they actually hate movies.

"There's an enthusiasm in Roger's writing that can't be mistaken for anything else but joy. He's passionate and cannot be silenced. He's America's best friend who won't stop nagging you until you've seen this new film. Nowhere is this more evident than on Twitter. I know teenage girls that tweet less than Roger Ebert. You could put Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears, and the entire staff of Ain't It Cool News and /Film together and not tweet as much as Roger Ebert. He tweets about movies. He tweets about politics. He tweets jokes. Yesterday he retweeted the following Twitter user named Superstanos who wrote: 'I just spent 20 minutes writing WU TANG into a lab table. This is why I go to school y'all.' The Roger Ebert Twitter feed is one of the best publications we have running. I don't mean this sarcastically. It's awesome. It's political. It's daring. It's funny. It's self-effacing. It's everything that I love about his writing. It rails against Sarah Palin. It's even about the artfulness of video games.

"He has somehow found yet another medium and a way to share what he thinks is special. This is the passion I associate with this great man who I was introduced to watching At the Movies and who I was fortunate enough to meet when I was a 20-year-old short film maker at the Toronto Festival. I introduced myself. I had no idea that as a writer he would change my life. His instinct to write and share is one thing, but then he wants you to experience what he has experienced, to feel what he has felt. It's an instinct to give and he gives so much. And so there's really only one thing left to say: thank you. Roger, thank you for everything you have done for my career. And thank you for everything you have done for cinema. I cannot imagine a more deserved honor."

Philip Kaufman

"Rose and I left Chicago during the great blizzard of '66 with our little son Peter. We'd done a couple of low budget independent films in Chicago but the films gave no return to the investors, money dried up, and Rose said it was time to head back to San Francisco: always our city of succor. We'd become best friends with Nelson Algren and he came to the airport to see us off. He started to tell us it would be lonely in Chicago without us. Nelson, as you know, wrote The Man With the Golden Arm. At that very time, maybe at that same moment that we were hugging Algren on our way out of Chicago, a bright, tough young kid was just making his way into Chicago. I like to think he took our place. He became a friend of Algren's. And Studs Terkel. And the great Mike Royko. In time he would come to be known as the Kid With the Golden Thumb. Everything you've read by this kid Ebert over all these years should be taken in the context of his being in the tradition of these Chicago guys: tough, give 'em hell, not compromising, no bullshit, tell it like it is, compassionate writers. Like them, Ebert spoke from his heart, spoke against the big boys, championed the little man against small-minded bullies. He told us the truth according to Ebert and—like Mike Royko—he could say with all humility: 'I may be wrong ... but I doubt it.'

"Once, Roger called and woke me up at about six in the morning. Rose and I had made Henry & June and by now Peter was our producer. The Ratings Board had dropped the dreaded 'X' on the film, which meant essentially that it couldn't be distributed. They demanded that I make some cuts. 'Why should I?' I said, 'You guys don't give an "X" rating when a breast is mutilated or blown away; you only give one when a naked breast is caressed. Besides, I applied the same standards I did in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and you gave that an "R" rating.' They said, 'We should have given that film an "X" too.' At which point I might have used the word fuck. They told me I could not use 'the F word' with them and that cemented the 'X' rating.

"I was going to fly to Washington that very day with a big-time lawyer to take on the system and that's the morning Roger called me and woke me up. Roger had been fighting the same fight with the rating system for years and he called us to tell us that the Ratings Board had backed down and that—because we had challenged them and Roger had led the forces of change—they were finally coming up with a new rating: NC17. This was the first I had heard of it. Roger had the news before anyone else. Good news. We felt great at the time. We thought everything had changed. Now, in America we could see films that were—as Rose used to say—'not for children of all ages.' But pretty quickly the powers-that-be found a way to make the NC-17 become the new 'X' and today studios will no longer make or distribute a NC-17 film; but, that's another story. The point of this story is that no one has fought harder or longer or with more enthusiasm than Roger Ebert for justice and fairness and good movies. He's fought for intelligence in movies and, at the same time, he's fought for fun, for sex, beauty, humanity and did I mention sex? In San Francisco, Roger Ebert's our kind of guy.

"Roger and I have both been lucky to find great loves in our lives who stood by us through thick and thin, who had our backs, at the same time led us, who were our partners. I wouldn't be here today if not for Rose and Roger wouldn't be here if not for Chaz. Chaz and Roger, I wanted to tell you a little story about Rose. I was in graduate school at the University of Chicago. Rose and I went to see a film at the Hyde Park Theatre. One of us liked the film and the other one didn't. I've forgotten who felt what. I've even forgotten the name of the film. But I do remember that—in the heat of our passionate disagreement—Rose hauled off and punched me in the face. ...A couple of hours later after thinking things over in some of the local bars, I decided, 'Who needs this shit?' I staggered back to our one and a half room basement apartment on Blackstone ready to end our relationship. Rose had bolted the damn door. I was locked out on a cold, windy Chicago night. I walked around to the alley and found a window that was slightly open. This was the window to the tiny bedroom. As I crawled through the window onto the bed, Rose grabbed me and wrapped herself around me. Tears were all over her face. She whispered, 'Enough of this crap. Let's make our own films. Let's make our own films.'

"We stayed in that bed for days and talked through those days and every night that followed about everything; a lot about films. Our conversation went on for the next 50 years. We never stopped talking. [At this moment grief overwhelmed Kaufman and he found it difficult to speak. Ebert reached out his hand to him.] It's tough being here because Rose and I saw hundreds of movies in this theater. We saw many with Mel. We loved this theater. I thought I could get through this more easily; but, anyway, Rose—as anyone who knew her can attest—never stopped telling me or anyone exactly what she thought. She was fearless and brave as hell, like Roger. As I said, I wouldn't have the honor of being up here on stage with Roger and Chaz if not for Rose.

"I just wanted to say, Roger: thanks for always keeping the bedroom window slightly open. Thanks for encouraging me and these wonderful directors up here and thousands of aspiring filmmakers all over the world to make our own films. Now, as one Chicagoan who has found his home here in San Francisco to another Chicagoan who will always have a second home here, I'd like to present you with a couple of things."

At this juncture Kaufman read aloud Mayor Gavin Newsom's proclamation of May 1, 2010 as Roger Ebert Day in San Francisco and handed Ebert the Mel Novikoff Award.

Cross-published on Twitch. Introductory photograph of Ebert and friends in front of the Castro Theatre marquee courtesy of Pamela Gentile and the San Francisco Film Society.

SFIFF53 2010: Michael Hawley Wraps Up the Special Events

The 53rd edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) came to a close on May 6, having sold out 92 screenings during its successful 15-day run. While I'm still mulling over the three dozen films I saw during those two weeks—all of which I hope to write about—here's a look back at five of this year's special events.

I've been coming to the SFIFF for a few decades now, and 2010 was only the second time I've attended the opening night festivities. Someday I might grow to feel blasé about the event, but for now I still get caught up in the glamour of it all. My suit came out of the closet for the first time since last year's opening night, and despite a major MUNI snafu I was second in line and able to secure myself a choice, unreserved aisle seat in the Castro Theater. After perusing the contents of my goodie bag—which I placed under my seat and regrettably forgot at evening's end—I spent 90 minutes chatting with friends who were equally amped up for two weeks of movies, movies, movies.

The program started 20 minutes late, presumably to accommodate late arrivals from the aforementioned MUNI delay. Late that afternoon, a man either jumped or fell onto the Castro St. Station subway tracks and was killed, effectively terminating all train service until mid-evening. Finally at 7:20PM, SF Film Society Executive Director Graham Leggat took the stage and welcomed everyone, reminding us that this was his fifth year at the festival's helm—"the best five years of my life." The resounding applause and cheers hopefully told Leggat that the feeling is mutual.

This year's opening night film was Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs, which the director assured us had nothing to do with Big Macs, and everything to do with his new favorite English word, shenanigans. I've enjoyed all of Jeunet's films, except the one everybody adores (yes, Amelie, I'm talking about you). Reviews for Micmacs have been mixed, but it turned out to be a perfect opening night film—inventive, fast-paced, comical, crowd pleasing. I couldn't remember much about it the next day, but I did recall how much fun I had while watching it. After the screening, the festival's new Director of Programming Rachel Rosen interviewed Jeunet and conducted an audience Q&A. We learned that the director "wanted to put everything I love in this film," which ranged from animator Tex Avery to Mission Impossible, and that he's "not interested in realism." When asked if he might ever work again with Marc Caro (co-director of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children), Jeunet diplomatically replied, "it's so good to work alone." With the final question, Jeunet got off the best line of the evening in regards to Micmacs poor reception on his home front: "In France they love to hate what they loved before." With that, the ebullient crowd adjourned to the Regency Center for a swinging after-party. The nibbly things I sampled there were delicious, and I washed them down with the beer everyone who frequents Landmark Theaters loves to hate.

I hadn't attended the festival's Founder's Directing Award program since it was given to Arturo Ripstein in 1999 (when it was still known as the Akira Kurosawa Award). In the interim years I've skipped honorees both deserving (Coppola, Leigh, Lee, Herzog, Forman, Altman, Kiarostami) and, imho, questionable (Eastwood, Beatty, Hackford). When I unexpectedly found myself with a free night on April 28, I high-tailed it over to the Sundance Kabuki Cinema for this year's tribute to Brazilian director Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries).

Firstly, I wish someone had clued me in on how handsome this guy is so I could have ogled him from the front row. But from my seat in the Kabuki's large House One it was easy to perceive the man's warmth and self-effacing intelligence. The evening began with introductory remarks by Leggat, followed by a clips reel of career highlights. Then came the on-stage conversation with Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who started things off by saying, "Let's put the guns down before we start, and talk about the sex life of Mr. Walter Salles." Hear, hear! I loved hearing about Salles' early life as a diplomat's son living atop a Parisian arthouse theater. Twelve-year-old Walter frequented that cinema so often, the ticket seller began letting him in for free. But he longed for Brazil: "I hated the drizzle, the cold, the croissants." During the talk it was also revealed that Salles spent a full year casting the boy in Central Station, that Latin Americans do not make good genre films (i.e., his own remake of Hideo Nakata's Dark Water), and that Argentina currently has the strongest cinema in Latin America (little to argue about there). He also acknowledged that "Antonioni is the director who brought me to cinema," specifically 1975's The Passenger.

Before getting to the evening's main event, Salles shared a short film that had been screened only once before—for the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival. In it, he addresses his six-month-old son, saying, "If I could choose just one film for you to see before any other, it would be this one." Then we saw an infant entranced by Chaplin dancing with the globe balloon in The Great Dictator. Salles remarked that they screened a DVD projection for the first take, and his son just wasn't interested. For the second take they projected it in 35mm and this time he became fully engaged by Chaplin's antics. What a smart, discerning kid!

As a special treat made exclusively for the SFIFF, Salles next showed us a one-hour work-in-progress documentary about his efforts to film Jack Kerouac's On the Road. It was edited in just one week from 100 hours of mini-DV and super-8 interview and location footage. Salles, who first read the book as a 15-year-old, feared that showing an incomplete film about The Beats in San Francisco might be a "suicidal act," but the festival audience ate it up. In its current state, the film gives an impressionistic overview of Kerouac's work and the times from which it sprang. An off-camera Matt Dillon intermittently reads passages from the book, and contemporary figures ranging from Laurie Anderson to Johnny Depp to David Byrne reflect on its influence. There are terrific interviews with key players who are still with us (Michael McClure, Carolyn Cassady), as well as vintage screen tests by Brendan Fraser, Ashley Judd, Mathew McConaughey and others made for a previous attempt at filming the book. Directors as diverse as D.A. Pennebaker and Jean-Luc Godard have been interested in the project, but based on the evidence presented that night, Salles is clearly the man for the job. Indeed just one week after this event, it was announced that shooting for Salles' On the Road (the narrative feature) will begin in August. The next day at the festival, Salles would conduct a master class, as well as introduce a screening of his 2008 film, Linha de Passe.

On Saturday, May 1st, I must have changed my mind a dozen times. Should I spend the early evening at the Kabuki watching a French orangutan documentary (Nenette) and a Brazilian movie (The Famous and the Dead) before heading over to the Castro for the late-night world premiere of All About Evil? Or should I catch Roger Ebert receiving this year's Mel Novikoff Award at the Castro? I chose the latter and it turned out to be a smart move. The combination of Roger Ebert and Peaches Christ made for one of the most fabulous evenings I've experienced in 35 years of attending this festival.

Ebert and his wife Chaz were brought onstage and seated while four directors delivered heartfelt and hilarious tributes to the man they call "The Thumb." Terry Zwigoff recalled Ebert being the first person in line for a 1985 Telluride screening of Louis Bluie, and later sold him a soundtrack LP in the theater lobby. He also told a great story about a Crumb test screening. The audience survey cards were overwhelming negative—they thought the storyline about brother Charles should be dropped—so Zwigoff "fixed" the cards with the help of Wite-Out and a late-night trip to Kinko's. Ebert would become a steadfast champion of the film, going so far as to record a commentary track for the DVD release (much of which would be used for the text-to-speech software that allows the now "speechless" Ebert to speak through a computer). Next, documentarian Errol Morris called Ebert, "not just a film critic, but a cultural icon." He was followed by Jason Reitman who, commenting upon Ebert's social networking prowess, declared "I know teenage girls who tweet less than Robert Ebert." Reitman would also add that, "It's hard to put Roger Ebert's work into context when it's him who puts us into context."

Last up was Philip Kaufman, who took a seat next to Ebert and Chaz and read a mayoral proclamation declaring May 1, 2010 "Roger Ebert Day" in San Francisco. Then the man himself fired up his laptop and brought the house down with his first sentence, "My little man is standing on his chair and applauding." The rest of Ebert's speech railed against Hollywood's current output of sequels and so-called blockbusters ("The studios are running like lemmings to 3-D") while films like Erick Zonka's Julia, featuring a tour de force performance by Tilda Swinton, gross a measly $65,000 in U.S. release. (Locally, the film ran for one week last summer on the SF Film Society's Kabuki Screen before moving over to the Roxie). The tribute audience then got to see and judge Julia for itself, having been specifically chosen by Ebert to accompany his appearance at the festival. A letter of regret from Swinton was read to the crowd—she had hoped to attend the screening but was stuck filming on the East coast. I was thrilled to watch it a second time, especially on the Castro's big screen. It's a tough little film and there were a few walkouts, but the applause at the end was booming.

I darted out of the Castro and was greeted by the sight of blood-splattered klieg lights clawing the night sky. Then I noticed a dead body flopped across the base of the lights and a ticketholders line already around the block a full two hours before showtime. This could only mean one thing—the world premiere of Peaches Christ's All About Evil! From my vantage point in the press line, I was able to watch the red carpet parade of outlandish costumes and mile-high hairdos, praying that none of those 'dos ended up sitting in front of me. (This was a movie theater, after all, and not a planetarium.) As Peaches would remark at some point in the evening ("Peaches" being the beloved late-night movie hostess alter-ego of one Joshua Grannell), a movie only gets one world premiere. And boy did he/she pull out the stops to ensure All About Evil's would be momentous.

The All About Evil preshow consisted of no less than four musical production numbers, the first one featuring Peaches and a dozen pom-pom shaking monstrosities performing, "I'm a Gore-Gore Girl." Afterwards, she threatened the audience with a three-hour preshow in which she would single-handedly act out the entire movie onstage. Next she brought out All About Evil cast member Mink Stole and the duo croaked out the theme song from John Water's film, Female Trouble. Peaches and Mink go way back, the latter having been the first "celebrity" to appear at Peaches' Midnight Mass film series at San Francisco's Bridge Theater. Waters was also in the house that night and stood for a round of applause. Teen heartthrob and All About Evil co-star Thomas Dekker was next on board, performing the movie's rocking theme song, "Welcome to the Horror Show." Then Natasha Lyonne, who stars as mousy theater-owner turned murderous film director Deborah Tennis (pronounced De-BOR-ah Ten-NIS) wrapped things up with a final number.

After all that hullabaloo, one almost expected the film itself to be anti-climactic. But no, All About Evil delivered the sicko thrills and chills. Two scenes in particular had all 1400 audience members screaming their collective heads off in disbelief, and neither was the film-within-the-film, A Tale of Two Severed Titties. By the time the Q&A wrapped up—with Peaches now out of drag and onstage as plain old Joshua Grannell—it was two in the morning. Everyone was handed a commemorative All About Evil world premiere poster upon exiting the theater, which I'll surely treasure for the rest of my days. It was Saturday night and the Castro Street bars were emptying out—a phenomenon I hadn't witnessed in many years. I was satisfied and spent and had no hope of making it to the next morning's surprise SF Film Society members screening.

If you weren't there that night, here's good news. Come October, Peaches will be presenting the film, complete with a preshow, at San Francisco's Victoria Theater (where All About Evil was actually filmed). She promises a full-on William Castle-like experience—I think her exact words were "we're gonna stab you and chainsaw you." Meanwhile, check out Dennis Harvey's recollection of the evening at SF360, and don't miss The Evening Class' Michael Guillén and his interviews with Grannell, special effects artist Aurora Bergere and five cast members. Now for a special treat, the evening's complete opening number.



I spent the next few days singing, "I'm a gore, I'm a whore, I'm a gore-gore girl" and desperately needed a new earworm. One came in the form of the rousing and repetitive chorus that greeted each new chapter of Stuart Paton's 1916 silent screen adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This May 4 Castro Theater screening was also the world premiere of a new score composed and performed by The Magnetic Fields' frontman Stephin Merritt, with help from Daniel Handler on accordion, David Hegarty on the Castro's Mighty Wurlitzer and a gentleman playing tuba and trumpet.

Merritt was clearly having a goof with it, blending his customary old-timey vibe with injections of electronic bleeping and screechy freakouts. Speaking and singing through megaphones, Handler gave voice to the female roles in an abrasive Olive Oyl-y falsetto while Merritt handled the male parts in a low register that was mostly inaudible. The film itself is kind of unremarkable—a flatly directed mash-up of Verne's 20,000 Leagues and The Mysterious Island, with underwater photography that was stunning for its time but is now merely quaint. Merritt exploited the film's campier aspects, such as a sarong-clad "child of nature" who sings a ditty about not wanting to wear pants and who turns out to be Captain Nemo's long lost daughter. I thought it was all good-natured fun and Merritt's legion of fans seemed satisfied, but I know some likened the performance to a bad episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I was glad I went, but it paled compared to last year when Dengue Fever blew the dome off the Castro with their score for the stop-motion dinosaur epic, The Lost World.

Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch. Photos by Pamela Gentile and Pat Mazzera courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society and SF360.

SFIFF53 2010—Michael Hawley Previews the Press Announcements

In a matter of days, the full line-up for the 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival (April 22 to May 8) will be revealed. If you're a San Francisco Film Society member, look for an e-mail this Friday with instructions for downloading a PDF of the fest’s mini-guide (and all tickets go on sale to members that same day). Non-members will be kept in the dark until after the official press conference next Tuesday, and can start buying tickets April 1. In the meantime, plenty of good stuff has already been announced. Here's a recap, followed by my personal 20-film wish list for the fest's 2010 edition.

For devotees of Midnight Mass hostess Peaches Christ (aka Joshua Grannell), the World Premiere of her/his feature directorial debut, All About Evil, will be the must-see event of this year's festival. Peaches seizes control of the Castro Theater on Saturday, May 1 at 10:45PM "with a fully realized stage-show spooktacular hosted by Peaches Christ, starring members of the cast including Mink Stole, Thomas Dekker, Martiny and more."

The SFIFF event I anticipate most each year is programmer Sean Uyehara's pairing of a silent film with a new live score written and performed by a contemporary music artist. You'd think last year's The Lost World/Dengue Fever combo would be an impossible act to follow, but I think Sean's done it again. On Tuesday, May 4, songwriter Stephin Merritt of the group The Magnetic Fields will premiere a new score to Stuart Paton's 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Joining Merritt will be Castro Theater organist David Hegarty, author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) on accordion and others TBA.

Brazilian director Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries) will be the recipient of 2010's Founder’s Directing Award. His tribute takes place on Wednesday, April 28 and will feature a clip-reel of career highlights, an on-stage interview and "a special screening of In Search of On the Road (a Work in Progress), an hour-long edit prepared specifically for the Festival of a documentary about Salles's effort to make a documentary about Jack Kerouac." The following day Salles will offer a Master Class, plus attend a screening of his 2008 Cannes Competition film, Linha de Passe, which won a prize for its lead actress Sandra Corveloni. Hopefully, someone will ask the director why it has taken two years for this film to reach us (I believe this screening might even be the U.S. premiere?) Linha de Passe shows again at the Pacific Film Archive on Friday, April 30.

Receiving this year's Peter J. Owens Award for acting will be none other than legendary screen vet Robert Duvall. At the Friday, April 30 tribute, he'll be feted with a career clip reel, on-stage interview and a screening of his latest film Get Low, co-starring Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek.

Each year the festival gives its Mel Novikoff to "an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public's knowledge and appreciation of world cinema." Could anyone be more deserving of such an award than Roger Ebert? On Saturday, May 1, Ebert will appear on-stage in conversation (employing his extraordinary, new computerized text-to-speech speaking voice) with directors Terry Zwigoff, Jason Reitman and others TBA. Following the tribute, the festival will screen one of Ebert's favorite films of 2009, Erick Zonca's Julia, featuring a balls-to-the-wall performance by Tilda Swinton. If you missed this film when it screened at the SF Film Society's Kabuki Screen (R.I.P.?) last summer, or its subsequent run at the Roxie, you're lucky to have this additional opportunity.

The SFIFF's 2010 Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting will be given to writer/producer/Focus Features CEO James Shamus on Saturday, May 1. Shamus is best known for the films he's written and produced for Ang Lee, including Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm and Lust, Caution. Following an on-stage interview with critic B. Ruby Rich, the festival will host the West Coast premiere of a new director's cut of Ang Lee's underappreciated 1999 Civil War film, Ride With the Devil.

Every year the festival screens newly restored prints of some select cinema classics. For SFIFF53 we'll get to take another look at Satyajit Ray's 1958 The Music Room at the Castro on Saturday, May 1, as well as Luchino Visconti's 1954 film Senso (date TBA).

This year's State of Cinema Address will be delivered on Sunday, April 25 by film editor/sound designer extraordinaire Walter Murch (The Conversation, Apocalypse Now). Titled "Three Fathers of Cinema: Beethoven, Flaubert, Edison," the address will "contemplate what would have happened if motion pictures had been invented in 1789. He will present various theories on the evolution of filmmaking, investigating the cultural origins of cinema in the 19th century and the implications for the future of cinema in the 21st century."

The festival has also announced the 11 films that will be competing for Golden Gate Awards Documentary Competition. There are three I'm especially looking forward to. Lixin Fan's Last Train Home won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary (World Cinema), and looks at the phenomenon of China's annual New Year's mass migration. Winning the documentary Jury Prize just last week at SXSW is Jeff Malmberg's Merwencol, in which a brain-damaged survivor of a bar attack copes by setting up a complete WWII-era town in his backyard. In Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's Sundance Grand Jury Prize Documentary winner Restrepo, we follow a group of soldiers fighting the Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan. The other eight titles are Colony, The Invention of Dr. Nakamats, Mugabe and the White African, The Peddler, PianoMania, Presumed Guilty, Russian Lessons and Simonal: No One Knows How Tough It Was.

Twelve filmmakers will compete for this year's New Directors Prize. I saw Ounie Lecomte's South Korean adoption drama A Brand New Life at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and would definitely recommend it. I've also heard very good things about Pedro González-Rubio's Alamar, which won a coveted Tiger Award at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival. The remaining 10 titles are Animal Heart, The Day God Walked Away, The Famous and the Dead, Night Catches Us, Northless, La Pivellina, Shirley Adams, Susa, Tehroun and—I've gotta see this one for the title alone—You Think You're the Prettiest, but You Are the Sluttiest.

This year's Persistence of Vision Award will go to Fremont-born, Oscar-nominated short-film animator Don Hertzfeldt on Friday, April 23 in a program titled "Life, Death and Very Large Utensils."

Finally, SFIFF53 will close on May 6 with a screening of Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg's documentary Joan Rivers—A Piece of Work. It is anticipated that Rivers will attend the screening, along with director Stern. At the closing night party at 1015 Folsom, "partygoers will celebrate the culmination of SFIFF53 with festive drinks, hors d'oeuvres and music inspired by the legendary comedian Joan Rivers."

Every year I draw up a list of the 20 films I most hope to find in the SFIFF line-up. They're culled from a longer wish list of approximately 100 films, spanning from 2009's Berlin Film Festival up to the present. A few have received mixed-to awful-reviews, but they're from directors who interest me nonetheless. Last year I only got seven of my 20 films, but eventually caught up with all but three. We'll soon know how SFIFF53 shakes out.

Altiplano (Belgium dir. Peter Brosens, Jessica Hope Woodworth)
The Army of Crime (France dir. Robert Guédiguian)
Enter the Void (France, dir. Gaspar Noé)
Everyone Else (Germany, dir. Maren Ade)
Face (France/Taiwan dir. Tsai Ming-liang)
Gainsbourg (vie héroïque) (France dir. Joann Sfar)
Hadewijch (France dir. Bruno Dumont)
Hiroshima (Uruguay dir. Pablo Stoll)
I Am Love (Italy dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Korkoro (France dir. Tony Gatlif)
Life During Wartime (USA dir. Todd Solondz)
Lola (Philippines dir. Brilliante Mendoza)
Lourdes (France dir. Jessica Hausner)
Min Ye (Mali dir. Souleymane Cissé)
Rapt (France/Belgium dir. Lucas Belvaux)
Revolución (Mexico dir. Mariana Chenillo, Fernando Eimbcke, Amat Escalante, Gael Garcia Bernal, Rodrigo Garcia, Diego Luna, Gerardo Naranjo, Rodrigo Plá, Carlos Reygadas, Patricia Riggen)
Scheherazade Tell Me a Story (Egypt dir. Yousry Nasrallah)
Skirt Day (France dir. Jean-Paul Lilienfeld)
The Time That Remains (Palestine dir. Elia Suleiman)
White Material (France, dir. Claire Denis)

And here are four terrific films I saw at January's Palm Springs International Film Festival—films I'd love for my Bay Area friends to see, too.

Dogtooth (Greece dir. Giorgos Lanthimos)
I Killed My Mother (Canada dir. Xavier Dolan)
The Milk of Sorrow (Peru dir. Claudia Lhosa)
To Die Like a Man (Portugal dir. João Pedro Rodrigues)

Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.

TIM BURTON'S ALICE IN WONDERLAND

"Art isn't easy / every minor detail is a major decision / have to keep things in scale / have to hold to your vision."—Stephen Sondheim

"Vision" is one of those double-edged properties—much like a looking glass—that, at first, promises pleasure for reflecting back something new to the spectator, but which—as is often the case in our fickle and vain consumerist society—eventually offers reflections all too familiar and, thus, undesirable and (dare I say?) unattractive. It's way too easy to demand that Vincent Van Gogh paint us another "Starry Night" rather than face the reflection of our unbridled consumerist desire. In other words, it's far too easy to blame an artist for our dissatisfied appetites. And when it comes to cogent criticism, the effort required to distinguish one from the other is a plummet down the rabbit hole indeed.

Ironically enough, criticism based on consumerist dissatisfaction is just this side of criticism based on a nostalgic adherence to source materials—in this case Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass—and one might even consider these two poles of criticism to bear the polarized countenance of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. So far, what I'm hearing in response to Tim Burton's inflection of the Alice story is the sibling tussle between those two perspectives; elbows to the ribs and all. Perhaps much of this tussle could have been avoided had Burton elected to entitle his project Alice in Underland?—which, as far as I'm concerned, would have worked much better, been more exact, and dissolved many an expectation, evening the playing field.

While Twitch teammate Jim Tudor acknowledges that Tim Burton is "one of the pre-eminent visual stylists in the world of filmmaking", he's quick to side with commercial interests to complain that Burton "has generally had nothing new to say since his earliest, most triumphant works" and that Burton's Alice is a "shockingly conventional tale—a Campbellian hero's journey." As a student of Joseph Campbell's who has watched his influence ebb and flow over the decades, it no longer surprises me when the monomyth is reduced to the "conventional" instead of being recognized appropriately as the source font of cultural inflection for millennia. Such unbridled ennui suffered by so many young critics—wanting something perpetually new from our beleaguered visionaries—seems to forget what Alice learned in Wonderland: "The hurrier I go, the behinder I get." That's a sage warning. In the race for new style, new product, new vision, do we forget to encourage the few visionaries we have? Mileage varies, of course, even when moving way too fast. And hip dismissal such as College Humor's caricature of "Tim Burton's Secret Formula" (via our friends at /Film)—undeniably truthful as far as the truth of caricature warrants and eliciting the expected guffaw—does little in my estimation other than to momentarily supplant genuine vision with kneejerk insight. Granted, kneejerk insight satisfies low attention spans than—here's the word again—deep reflection requires.

As a good friend once told me, "The silent mirror forfeits" and, therefore, in any narrative involving a looking glass, one hopes that the mirror will speak back and that self-reflection will engage how one imagines their identity and how they keep that imagined identity in scale. For me this has long been the presiding lesson of the Lewis Carroll stories: imagination and scale. And—contrary to all the complaints that Burton has drifted too far from the original material—I find he has in fact reinvigorated Carroll's most salient themes, especially through his visual design.

Keeping an imagined identity in scale is the selfsame challenge that presents itself when such beloved literary works as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are adapted—i.e., imagined—for the big screen. It is, afterall, a difficult transition from a little book to a big screen. Industrial compromise requires nibbling first on this and sipping next on that to even make it through the door. In my humble opinion, Tim Burton has imagined a wondrous world playful with scale and expressed it in such a way that it applies to the awkward process by which a young person discovers a confidence that fits (give and take some shrinkage) for them. His Alice in Wonderland is as much a "just-so" story as it is one about "muchness." For those who criticize that he has lost his touch, for crying out loud, go find another visionary and enjoy them for one or two films before your critical ennui sets in and—while you're at it—why not question why your ennui keeps rearing its weary head? For all his obvious failings of repetition (one could also see them as creative reiterations), Burton's works of art remain some of my most anticipated, and the Hollywood landscape would be rendered far more anemic should he be discouraged from expressing his vision because fans want him to make another Nightmare Before Christmas.

Since the silent 1903 filmic adaptation of Alice in Wonderland—currently available for viewing courtesy of BFI—adherence to John Tenniel's illustrations has been a near given and the rule by which adaptations have been evaluated. The popular imaginary has a dear affection for these visualizations, which—again—concern scale, not the least being physical growth. Should Alice be a little blonde-haired girl in a blue dress or can she be—as Burton sees her—a young woman in a blue dress? Reams have been written—and it is widely well-known—that Alice Liddell, Carroll's inspiration, actually had dark hair and a short fringe so from the get-go there has been a wrestling within the popular imaginary of not only how this girl should look like but who she really is. That, after all, is the informing question posed by our hookah-smoking caterpillar. And in Burton's version, the Dormouse's doubt darkens Alice's presence in Underland.

So setting aside all we want from Tim Burton, I'd like to take a look at what he's given us. Tim Burton's achievement in his vision of Alice in Wonderland is to situate self-inquiry against social expectation. His is one of those important tales that warn against the false marriage and that promise a young woman that she can become herself all on her own and without the hindrance of the male. Jim Tudor is quick to reduce this to "a typically anachronistic female movie heroine", which begs a gendered argument against all those typically anachronistic male movie heroes that fanboys never seem to question. I concur more with guest Twitch contributor Mike Sizemore's quite fair observation: "It's also refreshing to see a female lead have so much fun in an adventure while reminding Alice's target audience that doing six impossible things before breakfast is something to be held onto no matter how old you are."

More pertinently, I would argue that like most fairy tales, the Carroll books are not really children's literature and have always been darkly psychological books intended for adults and—as psychology is, in my estimation, organic and evolutionary, anchored in the body—it only stands to follow that the psychological strength of a story will adapt to the zeitgeist of the time. Now some people don't like this. They prefer that a story stay anchored in a certain time and will, let's say, complain that Burton has sexualized a children's story—and that's all very fine and good for unapologetic nostalgists—but, it doesn't strike me that this is what Burton wanted when he re-imagined the story of Alice and—true to his own vision—he has retold the story for our time, for better or worse (and, in this case, admittedly both). The fact that there is an ongoing adjustment throughout the film—a constant struggle to find the right size—speaks I think to the indeterminacy and insecurity of any given time, especially our own.

There are dangers of conflation in the script; but, these dangers have been around since the story first began to be imagined. Some of those conflations have inspired irritation for generations—most notably, the conflation of the Queen of Hearts with the Red Queen—but, such conflations become scriptural strategies that deal not only with the compression of narrative time but narrative image. Conflation and compression, incidentally, are merely different ways of being different sizes. If there is any conflation I object to in Burton's reconfiguration of the Alice tale, it's the worrisome blend of Alice with an armored Joan of Arc. I somewhat understand why Burton stretched this battle for independence towards an image of chivalric militancy against a dragon, even as I concur with Roger Ebert that audiences today require filmmakers to end otherwise involving narratives with "routine and boring action." Ebert asks: "Why does Alice in Wonderland have to end with an action sequence? Characters not rich enough? Story run out? Little minds, jazzed by sugar from the candy counter, might get too worked up without it? Or is it that executives, not trusting their artists and timid in the face of real stories, demand an action climax as insurance? Insurance of what? That the story will have a beginning and a middle but nothing so tedious as an ending?" In my estimation, that's cogent criticism. Fanboys, question your appetite for action and how it hinders vision.

For all these grumpy critics who don't like what Tim Burton has imagined with this story, perhaps they need to nibble on—or sip from—something that will shrink their large heads to a proper scale of imagination? Failures of imagination have more to do with being unable or unwilling to suspend disbelief: the most time-honored of spectatorial requirements. Merely buying a ticket doesn't do it. It isn't that a director is responsible for making a spectator suspend disbelief; that has to be allowed from the spectator himself. And if you're going to be hugging a book too hard or holding on to a desired visualization too intensely, you might not see the mordant and hallucinatory wonder laid out before you, which deserves due respect.

Finally, in terms of characterizations, Mia Wasikowska bears the pale countenance of a young girl turning into a young woman, perhaps forced to by the social demands being placed on her. Her paleness becomes a visual accent to the disturbed colors of Underland. Along with his concern that Alice desperately needs a Wonderland nap, Jim Tudor writes intriguingly about his concern that such pallor merely guises Burton's penchant for cinematic alter-egos. However, truth is, this is a visual element present since Tenniel's illustrations, which even Ebert admits were alarming. "Why," he wondered as a young boy, "did Alice have such deep, dark eye sockets?" Shall we levy a complaint against Lewis Carrol for writing such obvious pallid alter-egos as well? Or is it time to wonder what Alice's exhausted countenance suggests?

Johnny Depp—with customary flair—has become the Mad Hatter and invested a tone of self-doubt that complicates his portrayal with the anguish of someone who is aware of—but has no control over—encroaching madness. Once again I concur with Mike Sizemore: "Traumatized and suffering from split personalities, it's a nice touch that in his few coherent moments he seems aware that he's gone insane allowing Depp to briefly add a little humanity to the character." Contrary to Twitch teammate James Marsh's harsh assessment, this is the first time I've ever felt anything for the character of the Mad Hatter other than bemusement and that's totally due to Depp's pitch-perfect performance. Further, I like that Depp is not immediately recognizable under his costuming and makeup effects. He looks more like Elijah Wood than himself. I will concede, however, that the dance is silly and distracting, but then so is our zeitgeist.

Helena Bonham Carter's grotesque Red Queen hazards a one-note performance; but, then, this suits the character's megalomania. I didn't expect much range from such a petty tyrant. As Knave, Crispin Glover comes across cruel and irreal. The weakest performance, by far—and here I wholeheartedly disagree with James Marsh—was Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. Glenda, she ain't, though she flits around like she's supposed to be. Wrong story, Anne! The other actors, who are primarily voice actors—Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall and Christopher Lee—all do admirable jobs disguising their British celebrities in enlivened portrayals.

I do hold valid Jim Tudor's complaint regarding the eleventh hour shift to 3D; but, again, see this as a consequence of consumer appetites. Studios are struggling to keep moviegoers coming to the theaters and 3D remains an effective lure. I actually intend—in sheer deference to Kurt Halfyard—to watch Alice in Wonderland again, in 2D, more because I find that 3D glasses mute color and I want to see Burton's palette in full array.

In conclusion, I would say, "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!" In other words, beware critics, and see the film for yourself. It may not be your cup of tea, but at least you can say a chair was found for you at the tea party.

Cross-published on Twitch.