Leave it to the late-night hosts to get down to the truth. If you were living under a digital rock last week, the Internet was ablaze with a conspiracy theory that Melania Trump was replaced with a body double. The wild claim was sparked after President Donald Trump spoke to press by the White House lawn while Melania stood beside him, clad in a trench coat and sunglasses. Some like Andrea Wagner Barton watched the speech and took to social media to point out some oddities. "Will the real Melania please stand up? Is it me or during his speech today a decoy 'stood in' for Melania??" she wrote on Facebook. "And....Why would the moron say 'my wife, Melania, who happens to...
- 10/24/2017
- E! Online
Melania Trump has found herself in the center of one wild conspiracy theory. Recently, the First Lady appeared on the White House lawn alongside President Donald Trump. As her husband spoke to reporters, Melania stood to the side nodding her head while wearing sunglasses and a trench coat. Andrea Wagner Barton watched the speech and thought something was a little off. What came next was a conspiracy theory that has caught the attention of social media and the Internet as a whole. "Will the real Melania please stand up?" the comedian asked her Facebook followers. "Is it me or during his speech today a decoy 'stood in' for Melania??" ...
- 10/19/2017
- E! Online
Is there anything in moviedom more consistently frustrating than the "arthouse thriller"?
I'm not talking about films created as commercial thrillers and subsequently embraced by cineastes. I'm referring to dramas, and sometimes romances, that are so "nuanced" that they risk putting audiences to sleep, and so cover for themselves by including watered-down tropes from more populist, engaging fare. A repentant serial killer retires to an Alpine village to collect pension checks and butterflies. A kidnapper adopts a puppy and we're meant to contrast his loving treatment of it with his callous disregard for young human beings. You know the type of bastardized genre I'm referring to--the promise of full-on action or suspense is always lurking there as a kind of tease, but the movie gets away with never fully delivering the goods because its high-minded goals are thought to elevate it beyond that obligation.
Well, I'm happy to report to you that The Robber,...
I'm not talking about films created as commercial thrillers and subsequently embraced by cineastes. I'm referring to dramas, and sometimes romances, that are so "nuanced" that they risk putting audiences to sleep, and so cover for themselves by including watered-down tropes from more populist, engaging fare. A repentant serial killer retires to an Alpine village to collect pension checks and butterflies. A kidnapper adopts a puppy and we're meant to contrast his loving treatment of it with his callous disregard for young human beings. You know the type of bastardized genre I'm referring to--the promise of full-on action or suspense is always lurking there as a kind of tease, but the movie gets away with never fully delivering the goods because its high-minded goals are thought to elevate it beyond that obligation.
Well, I'm happy to report to you that The Robber,...
- 9/26/2010
- Screen Anarchy
The picture that rocked Venice, winning the festival's Grand Jury Prize, Ulrich Seidl's nasty little satire probing the seamy underbelly of suburbia makes "American Beauty" look like "Father Knows Best".
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The picture that rocked Venice, winning the festival's Grand Jury Prize, Ulrich Seidl's nasty little satire probing the seamy underbelly of suburbia makes "American Beauty" look like "Father Knows Best".
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/17/2001
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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