Salon.com > Jason Bailey

Defending Judd Apatow’s midlife crisis

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 16:05:00 +0000

In the first week of its release on Dec. 21, "This Is 40” has been met with poor box-office sales and middling reviews, with many critics branding Judd Apatow's latest as sloppy, overlong, self-indulgent claptrap. Both receptions are a shame, since "40” marks not only a continuation of the filmmaker’s creative evolution but also a culmination of what has been most compelling in comedy over the past couple of years. With its unflinching honesty, ruthless candor, and fascination with uneasy truth over pat payoffs, Apatow’s latest feels less like his previous work and more like a 132-minute episode of "Louie." Sure, the aesthetic is markedly different — "This Is 40” has the gloss of slick studio product — but the spirit and sensibility are the same: It's a stark autobiography and uncomfortable confession, where laughter is the casual byproduct of situation and personality (rather than the other way around) and dramatic beats ring painfully true.

“Silent House”: One movie, one shot

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:30:00 +0000

For the moviegoer who finds the rushed tempo, blunt force, spatial disorientation and general Michael Bay-ishness of movie editing these days depressing, it’s worth remembering that, in the beginning, the movies didn’t even have edits — they came to an end after the train had entered the station or the men had finished dancing or (more importantly) the film had run out. It wasn’t until filmmakers like Edwin S. Porter started making longer films with actual stories to tell that the idea of cutting from one action or shot to the next, changing points of view or scenes or locations, became part of the filmmaking vernacular. This was the custom for decades, but periodically, directors would decide to flex their cinematic muscles by removing from their toolbox the filmmakers’ single greatest source of audience control — the cut — and seeing how long they could make a scene go without one (while still maintaining action, movement and fluidity). Over time, long takes became an unspoken competition, each director’s long, unbroken tracking shot a little longer and a little more complicated than the last, each filmmaker proudly and breathlessly pushing further into the editless abyss.

“Reality” conquers the movies

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:25:00 +0000

Almost 13 years ago, attendees of the Sundance Film Festival left the midnight screening of a low-budget horror film called "The Blair Witch Project" and gulped in the cold Utah air, shaken and invigorated. “The lucky ones who saw it at Sundance,” Michael Atkinson wrote a decade later, “not knowing a thing about it, at the legendary late-night showing and then (emerging) into the mountain nighttime, could make millions bottling that experience.”

The big studios certainly figured that out. This weekend, the faux documentary "Devil Inside" confounded expectations by grossing $34 million in its first three days -- topping the box-office charts despite being trashed by critics (7 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (a CinemaScore rating of F). It's the third-best January opening ever -- and the film only cost Paramount $1 million to make.