THIS IS NOT AN ENDORSEMENT

Simon Beaufoy, the British producer who wrote "The Full Monty," is bringing out his new movie "This Is Not a Love Song." The big deal about that is, it will be "the world's first Internet premiere," as the U.K. Film Council terms it. The flick, written by Beaufoy and directed by Bille Eltringham, is being screened today -- at 1 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. in London --  on the film's Web site, thisisnotalovesong.com.  

Trouble is, the site says unless you're in the United Kingdom you won't be allowed to see it. (Give it a try anyway. You never know.) If nothing else, you can see the trailer. I just did. It's very well produced, though not much help in sorting out the story. All I could tell is that it had the tempo at times of a chase flick and the look of a horror flick.

The site has a detailed plot summary, but the Reuters synopsis does just fine: "'This Is Not a Love Song' tells the tale of two bad boys on the run from vigilante farmers and has been favorably compared with hit thrillers 'Blair Witch Project' and 'Deliverance.'" It does give reason for pause, though. What couldn't be favorably compared with "Blair Witch"?

September 5, 2003 11:13 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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