Who are you, really, in terms of your moviegoing choices? If you're faced with a typical serving of big-studio garbage on one hand and a genuinely cool, riveting/engrossing, trying-to-be-a-little-bit-different indie film on the other, which would you probably go to first? Be honest.

Having been there myself, I know there's always a moment of doubt in mulling this over. You know the indie film is smarter and craftier and probably just plain better (i.e., you're going to feel a lot less sorry about having seen it after you leave the theatre), but deep down you're thinking the big-studio flick is probably going to be more fun to watch in a breezy, dumb-ass, cheap-high sort of way...and you're sorely tempted to see it first, even though you know it's probably crap.

But if you go to McG's CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE (Sony) on the weekend of June 27th instead of what I have to presume (having seen it) will be the much cooler, far superior choice of Danny Boyle's 28 DAYS LATER (Fox Searchlight), you'll be doing your part to make the movie world a lesser, shallower, more McDonaldzy place...and you don't want that on your conscience.

Except matters of conscience and doing the right thing aren't the point either, because the Boyle film isn't some stuffy, pretentiously arty thing -- it's an allegorical horror film, although it's a bit more soulful and certainly better acted than what this term may suggest. You could also tag it as a sci-fi zombie movie in the vein of George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD, although it's not as satirically humorous as that under-appreciated 1978 thriller. (Didn't it recently come out on DVD?)

Call it a smart, imaginative, realistically absorbing thriller -- not terrifying in a buzzy, scream-in-the-dark fashion, but believably chilly and threatening every step of the way.

I promise you'll feel just fine after it's over, just as I can almost guarantee (which is to say, I have a lively imagination) you're going to absolutely, positively hate yourself the next morning if you see CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE instead. My advice? Don't see it at all. Run the other way. Don't even watch it on the plane next Christmas. It doesn't exist. McG was never born.

I paid to see 28 JOURS PLUS TARD last weekend inside a small cinema near Place de Clichy. It opened in Paris two or three weeks ago, I think. It premiered in England last fall and played Sundance last January, and now it's finally hitting the States.

One difference between Boyle's and Romero's zombies is that Boyle's run like hell when they're trying to kill someone -- no shuffling around for these bloody-eyed fiends. And they don't want to eat you -- they're just possessed by a terrible rage and a compulsion to kill.

28 DAYS LATER is about a small group of survivors who haven't been infected with a "rage" virus that has spread throughout England in less than a month's time. (The virus is unwittingly unleashed by a militant animal-rights group trying to free some chimps from a testing center.) Mostly there are dead bodies everywhere, and just about the only live wires are infected victims roaming around looking for the relatively few healthy ones left.

My favorite part is in the opening minutes when the male hero (Cillian Murphy, who has a very small dick, by the way) is seen wandering the totally deserted streets of central London, calling out "hello?" over and over. I was reminded of a similarly haunting scene in ON THE BEACH ('59) when a Navy guy runs around a totally deserted, post-apocalyptic San Diego, as well as that classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode with Earl Holliman called "Where Is Everybody?"

Anyway, after an half-hour or so of absorbing the bleak reality of the London situation, the film's four survivors (Murphy, Naomie Harris, Megan Burns, Brendan Gleeson) decide to try and reach an army base near Manchester that they've heard about on the radio, and which may offer greater shelter and/or security. The touch-and-go journey is one antsy jolt after another, but once they make it to the military compound an interesting moral tangent kicks in.

The military guy running things (Christopher Eccleston) eventually reveals his agenda to Murphy one night: he wants the women (Harris and Burns) for his men, because "women provide a future, and what can men do alone except wait to die?" His attitude is both repellent and, on an end-of-the-world, we-have-to-start-over basis, vaguely understandable. Women with healthy reproductive organs do provide a future, which is why guys are always after them. (Sex is just the icing.)

The curious aspect is that when Murphy learns of Eccleston's plan he freaks and tries to save the women from the soldiers. In so doing he's seemingly being presented as a caring, compassionate sort who's trying to defend the women's dignity as well as prevent their violation (Burns is only a kid -- maybe 14 or thereabouts), and to give them the civilized right to choose their own breeding partners.

Fine...but what's really going on is pure territorial cave-man stuff. In the matter of the fully-grown, very-attractive Harris, Murphy has decided in his head he's already laid claim to her, and so once Eccleston puts his cards on the table it becomes a battle to the death as to who gets breeding rights -- Murphy or those primitive dickwads in fatigues.

The screenplay is by Alex Garland, whose novel of THE BEACH was made by Boyle into that not-terribly-good Leonardo DiCaprio film. (If you've ever seen THE BEACH DVD, there are deleted scenes on it that suggest it could have been somewhat better if they'd been used in the final print.)

28 DAYS LATER doesn't look all that great -- it appears to have been shot on video and then transferred to film -- but the slightly indistinct, washed-out look fits the queasy mood.

It plays like a genre film in some respects, yes, but this is Boyle's most satisfying effort since TRAINSPOTTING, although I should add right away it's not in the same league as that 1996 classic. I say this also not having seen either one of his '01 releases (which were shown side-by-side at the Toronto Film festival that was disrupted by 9.11), STRUMPET and VACUUMING COMPLETELY NUDE IN PARADISE, although neither seemed to generate much excitement.

Boyle's next, the currently shooting MILLIONS, is about a couple of kids who discover some heisted pounds from a bank robbery, but they've only got a week to spend it before England switches over to the euro.

Bill's Bloody Business

Quentin Tarantino has been a borrower of other filmmakers' stuff. He takes, assimilates, and tries to make anew...sometimes conspicuously, at other times less so.

He seems especially fond of Asian filmmakers in this regard. To judge from the acrobatic wire work in one of the more recent trailers for Tarantino's KILL BILL (Miramax, Oct. 10), Quentin seems to have taken inspiration from Ang Lee's CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. And although his ear-slicing scene in RESERVOIR DOGS showed an early interest in deadpan ultra-violence, a recent comment from Lucy Lui about the pronounced violence in KILL BILL suggests that Tarantino may also be paying tribute also to the legendary king of Japanese over-the-top violence, Takashi Miike.

Miike is most famous for ICHI, THE KILLER, which I ran into at the '02 San Francisco Film Festival. No way I'll ever forget that film...I found its excessiveness appalling, but at the same times its mock-ironic attitude totally charming.

This guy is unrestrained in ways I would hope normal people could never imagine. People have allegedly fainted and thrown up over his scenes of violence. He's into major arterial blood-spurts, torture, various forms of mutilation, anal rape, automatic weapon fire, bloody beatings...and believe it or not, in a way that is meant to be sort-of half comic. Or at least not taken straight.

Miike's a kidder, I swear. I realized what his game was in a scene in which a gangland assassin is showing contrition to a mob boss by slicing his tongue off. Just as the tongue is about to be sliced in half (or just after it's been sliced...I forget), the assassin's cell phone rings and he jumps up and answers it...and the audience just howled.

Anyway, EMPIRE ONLINE reports that Liu told journalists in Beijing during a CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE round-table encounter that KILL BILL "is so violent [that] people will leave the movie theatre or get sick in the movie theatre. There's so much violence that it becomes not numbing, but almost comedic. There's a scene where there's so much violence that the color of the film goes into black and white, so that the blood looks like oil. It's cinematic...it's art.

"You can take it to a different level, and show what violence is in such a heightened manner that you don't think of it as violence anymore," Liu continued. "You think of it as a language."

I'm just saying astute critics who haven't seen ICHI, THE KILLER should definitely do so before catching KILL BILL. Other Takashi Miike films are AUDITION, DEAD OR ALIVE, RAINY DOG, THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS. The guy's incredibly prolific, having made over 50 features (according to EMPIRE's tally) in just over a dozen years of directing.

Morning Wake-up

Tuesday, June 10th, sitting at my desk (all times are Los Angeles), cuppa Joe and talking with a friend....

Me (12:03:10 AM): Got some quotes for you from my EMPIRE magazine, "Attack of the Clones" piece...in the new July issue.
Friend (12:03:28 AM): Is it on the web?
Me (12:05:12 AM) : Uhhm, no. I don't know. Maybe. Quote #1: Q: Why is Hollywood forcing more sequels on us this summer than it ever has before? A: "For the same reason a dog licks its balls -- because it can." -- JURASSIC PARK screenwriter David Koepp.
Friend (12:05:20 AM) : Yawn.
Me (12:08:01 AM): How about this one? "Simply put, Hollywood is making sequels because the current group of corporate officers, who are the absolute nadir in the industry's sordid history, have no fucking vision, intelligence or balls" -- a prominent, highly-paid screenwriter/ director.
Friend (12:08:14 AM) : Boring. It's so easy to cast those wide nets.
Me (12:08:31 AM): Another yawn quote, huh? What do you need? For someone to pull out a knife and slit someone's throat?
Friend (12:08:40 AM): Any idiot at Starbucks could have given you that quote. No.... I would like someone to seriously address the question. Glib is for children.
Me (12:12:15 AM): I may be quoted in an L.A. TIMES piece about de-graining the old classics that Bill Desowitz has written....maybe. It's coming out in a couple of weeks.
Friend (12:12:34 AM): I assume he is for de-graining
Me: I don't know what his view is. I say eliminate the grain on DVD's, but keep it for theatrical prints.
Friend (12:13:34 AM): Interesting viewpoint... bizarre.
Me (12:13:51 AM) : The new GIANT on DVD has been de-granularized, I'm told. Robert Harris is no fan, but it sounds good to me.
Friend (12:14:22 AM): Splitting tiny little hairs, really.... no?
Me (12:14:38 AM): Nobody wants theatrical prints to not look the way they did when the films first opened...we all want the best possible recreation of what first-week audiences saw at the Roxy on B'way at 50th. But when it comes to DVD, forget it....get rid of the grain and give us those wonderful visual values .

[dumb stuff, lame stuff...and then...]

Me (12:20:54 AM): I tried to buy Robert Dallek's JFK bio yesterday, "An Unfinished Life," yesterday at W.H. Smith on the rue de Rivoli, but they were sold out...and the other two English bookstores were closed due to some obscure French holiday...
Friend (12:21:04 AM): Strange.
Me (12:22:53 AM): Wine is super-cheap here...3 or 4 Euros per bottle in markets...2 and 3 Euros a glass at some bars...favorite bar is Bar Relais, at the top of one of the hilly streets in Montmartre, a half-block up from my favorite internet cafe...people hang out on the street and talk and drink...nothing like standing there and looking out at the city at 10 pm, while the sun is still out a bit. It just starts to get dusky around 10:15 pm or so.
Friend (12:23:34 AM): Do you find people to talk to?
Me (12:25:01 AM): Every time I go out and do anything I feel I'm getting physically bitten by a timber wolf...the dollar is worth about $1.17 to every Euro, and it doesn't feel good to have to pay heavily for everything. I know about ten people here who know me. Do I strike up conversations with babes at bars? No. My French isn't nearly good enough for that.
Friend (12:26:50 AM): Time will solve that riddle, if you work at it.
Me (12:29:57 AM): And I've been calling this British woman who works for VARIETY here for a little help with publicists and upcoming local screenings (about half of the fifteen publicists I wrote and requested screening invites have gotten back to me...so I have to rewrite or e-mail the 7 or so who haven't) but she's not what you and I might call the menschy type...unless she's vacationing....if I were in her position I wouldn't dream of blowing off a fellow journalist like she is me....I might say fine, get back to me in a day or so because I'm on deadline, but I wouldn't flat-out refuse to return calls. William Burroughs said it once in a speech he gave in NYC that I attended in the early '80s. He said, "Some people are shits."
Friend (12:30:37 AM): Indeed...but there are so many journalists who actually do want to fuck you over. It's an ugly group
Me (12:33:06 AM): I've never rib-shivved a journalist in my life.

[Sound from the heavens outside]

Me (12:34:00 AM): It's thundering now here....I love it when that happens.
Friend (12:34:30 AM): Thunder only happens when it's raining...players only love you when they're playing.
Me (12:35:20 AM): But I hate it when thunder happens in a Steven Spielberg film, because then it's fake and exaggerated and full of bullshit, like 80% of everything he does. People looking up at the sky with awe-struck expressions, the wind blowing their backlit hair, a chorus of angels on the soundtrack....that's the King of Bullshit for you.
Friend (12:35:44 AM): Love that shit.
Me (12:36:02 AM): There's a piece for you....King of Bullshit. I need something to write about today, so....
Friend(12:36:10 AM): There ya go!
Me (12:36:40 AM): Then I can get Marvin Levy angry at me, and also Terry Press and ....well, the more people praying for my death and dismemberment, the better.
Friend (12:37:14 AM): Fab.
Me (12:37:35 AM): That's a slogan. It could run at the top of the column.
Friend (12:38:55 AM): "Death and dismemberment since 1998."
Me (12:39:20 AM): Now it's raining, and my black jeans were hanging on the metal railing to dry, and now they've gotten a little bit wet! And it's all your fault, since you were distracting me.
Friend (12:39:47 AM): I feel so guilty
Me (12:39:54 AM): "Death and dismemberment since 1998" -- naaaah, too extreme. Besides, there's a lot of stuff about movies that I love, so why emphasize the dark side?

Gallo Whine

"In your Vincent Gallo piece last Friday, you reported that Danish Camera d'Or winner Christoffer Boe (RECONSTRUCTION) expressed his solidarity with the BROWN BUNNY creator at the Cannes closing award ceremony by saying, 'Vincent Gallo, please don't give up. You're a one-man army, and we should all fight conventional filmmaking. Keep up the war!'

"This sums up the bankrupt state of the European intellectual community right now. Filmmaking or novel writing or any other form of creative activity is not a 'war' -- no one's fighting. It's a free-for-all in the best possible way. Anyone can do it. And if it's good, enough people will find it.

"That doesn't mean that every time a mediocre talent makes a self-indulgent (if not self-pitying) little 'moi' movie or poem we should all applaud or not say anything unkind. I think we should be stringently unkind about bad art, and especially bad art that is self-promotion in disguise. Sure, Picasso was a self-aggrandiser writ large, but he had a talent that was even bigger.

"Gallo doesn't deserve anything but what he's getting, and I suspect he would be deeply uneasy if he wasn't getting it. If he sucks it in, as you advised him to do, people will ignore him. Anyone who puts their work out there for the world to see -- indeed, tries very hard to make sure the world takes notice, whatever that takes -- does not need or deserve compassionate defense.

"As for conventional filmmaking, I agree with Hemingway's observation that great art will always find a popular audience (and one should not conflate conventional with commercial hogwash like Hollywood sequelitis). 'Unconventional' is often a cover for talentless, meretricious garbage." -- Dave Farrell

Wells to Farrell: Like I said, I haven't seen THE BROWN BUNNY, but I've seen BUFFALO 66, and that above-average film convinced me on the spot that Gallo is far from being a mediocre talent. Did you see it?