Although it's half a documentary and half a reenacted drama, VOID is not one of those dryly intelligent, thoughtful films that are "good" for you. It's a bracing, realistic, highly emotional thing about getting through a high-altitude, death-defying ordeal against all odds. It's been beautifully shot and edited, with three utterly convincing performances by actors who speak only two or three words (if that), and is basically a flat-out, white-knuckle thriller all the way through.

It says something for the extraordinary quality of this thing that although you know from the start that the two main characters will survive their ordeal (since they appear in the film as talking-head narrators, telling the story as it moves along), I was churning with apprehension all through it.

The story happened 18 and 1/2 years ago on the slopes of Siula Grande, a 21,000 foot high mountain in the Peruvian Andes. Simpson -- 21 at the time -- and climbing buddy Simon Yates (four years older) made their way to the peak with a brave, Alpine-style climb.

It was on their descent when fate came a callin'. Simpson's fall from a short distance caused his right leg to snap into three pieces. This, Simpson now recalls, pretty much amounted to a death sentence in both their minds. Yates tried lowering Simpson down the steep face of the wind-swept mountain by a long section of rope for a while, but then Simpson went over a cliff and was left hanging in the air, unable to pull himself up.

Unable to move either or do anything except hold Simpson's weight at his end of the rope, and yet not knowing what had happened, Yates was forced to make an agonizing decision, which was to cut Simpson's line. It was that or they'd both die. Simpson fell 80 feet into a deep, spooky crevasse -- a tomb of inky blackness and blue ice.

The miraculous thing was that he didn't die from the fall, and that he somehow made it out of the crevasse and down the mountain on his own steam. That's all I'm going to say about it, except that if there's ever been a film that has drilled home the lesson that life is tenuous and we're only here for the moment so embrace the shit out of it while you can, it's this one.

The guys who play Simpson and Yates (Nicholas Aaron, Brendan Mackey) are mainly action figures -- you just see them climbing, holding on to ropes, falling, crawling, etc., and their faces are obscured most of the time by goggles and whatnot. They're integral to the piece, all right, but McDonald and his cinematographers, Mike Eley and Keith Partridge, are the spellbinders. Justine Wright's editing is also superb.

The wind-blown, high-mountain footage was shot in the Alps, and the base-camp footage was shot in Peru, where the saga actually began and ended.

The most fascinating by far are the real Simpson and Yates as they tell their story. You can see how the ordeal still tears at them. Simpson said from the get-go that that Yates did the only thing he could have done and still live, and that he himself would have cut the rope if their positions had been reversed. (He mainly wrote "Touching the Void" as a way of defending his friend.) Yates was viciously condemned by the mountain-climbing community after their story became known, and it's obvious from watching him in the film he'll never really be at ease about it. You can see anxiety in his eyes, his gestures...in every flicker of emotion crossing his face.

See this movie, see this movie, see this movie. And if anyone doesn't have the same or similar reactions to mine, or at least some kind of "good God!" reaction, please write in and tell me what you did feel.

I have this not-fully-formed idea that TOUCHING THE VOID might be a date flick. It makes you feel so good you're alive and warm and safe in a movie theatre, that it might inspire women to want to have sex as a way of celebrating this. I'm not entirely sure about this theory, but maybe. Thoughts? Has anyone who's seen it with a date (it opened last weekend in New York) gotten lucky? Is thinking about escaping death an aphrodisiac of any kind?

This may be related on some level to the so-called "terror fucking" that was going on in Manhattan in the immediate wake of 9.11. I've been told a few times that it's bad form to bring this up, but this was at least one aspect of that ghastly New York nightmare that acted as a slight counterbalance to the anguish that a lot of firemen were going through.

Discovery

I went to exactly one really good film at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, which is still going on right now, and which I'll be re-visiting Thursday through Sunday. That's not to say there aren't several worthy films showing there. It's because the panel discussions and the various parties were so cool. I mean, you couldn't attend just one.

The exceptional film was Gabriele Salvatores' I'M NOT SCARED, which I'd been ducking for several months for some reason. It played at Cannes last May, and I didn't go. Ditto the Czech Republic's Karlovy Vary Film Festival, and then at last September's Toronto Film Festival.

Now that I've finally seen it I feel like a schmuck. This is a precisely composed, very special, first-rate children's film that doesn't walk or talk like a children's film at all.

It's a thriller with a striking visual scheme (acres and acres of rolling, treeless, golden hills in Southern Italy, sporadically contrasted with the dankness of an underground cave) and a seriously spooky vibe, which is created through repeated use of children's POV shots of adults up to no good.

Miramax is releasing this little gem on April 9th. Mark that down somewhere. It's worth catching.

The story is set in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy, and focuses on a certain dirt-poor family, and more particularly on a certain 10 year-old boy.

The boy's name is Michele (Guiseppe Cristiano), and the story's about his accidentally discovering a young boy his age named Filippo (Mattia di Pierro) chained inside a large cave-like hole. It turns out that Fillippo is a wealthy child who's been kidnapped and held for ransom. A friendship develops between the two boys, but things turn creepy when Michele discovers that his parents and other adults of the village are behind it.

Salvatores (MEDITERRANEO) clearly knows how to build tension in quiet, atypical fashion. I'M NOT SCARED is visually arresting every step of the way (the photography is by Italo Petriccione), and the children's performances hit exactly the right notes in their ability to seem both mature and childlike in equal measure.

If you want to get a feel for this thing, visit the film's Italian-produced website (www. iononhopaura.net).

Santa Barbara Intrigues

For me, the social summit of the Santa Barbara Film Festival came last Saturday evening, when I got to chat with the co-screenwriters of the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens. Seriously, these ladies are quite cool. The same night I got within six or seven feet of Peter Jackson, and snapped his picture three or four times.

Jackson, who's fairly young-looking up close, showed up at Santa Barbara's 150 year- old Lorber theatre around 10:30 pm, which was a half-hour late due to getting caught up with fans at a special Jackson tribute at the Arlington theatre a bit earlier. He was at the Lorber to introduce a showing of DEAD ALIVE (a.k.a., BRAINDEAD), his 1992 monkey-virus zombie film.

Chit-chat, yaddah-yaddah, warm applause. Then it was off to a party being thrown by the S.B. festival in Jackson's honor at a big-ass mansion in nearby Montecito.

A certain party who helped arrange for Jackson to attend the festival wasn't sure about what I might say to him or his collaborators, given my dislike of this and that aspect of the RINGS films, and because of this she didn't want me to attend the party. But the festival's gracious and warm-hearted director, Roger Durling, assured her I'd be cool ...and I was, of course.

Durling drove me to the Montecito party in his SUV. I figured we'd be escorted right in, his being a big festival honcho and all, but the valet guy standing at the gate told us we'd have to park a mile up the road near a fire station and wait for a shuttle bus. "This is the respect I get," Durling muttered as we pulled away.

We found the fire station, parked, and started waiting for the shuttle with some others for 10 or 12 minutes, but when the guy driving the shuttle bus finally arrived he didn't see us and drove right by. "The hell with this," said Durling, and so the two of us just walked back to the mansion -- the road visible only by the faint glow of the moon, the occasional car whizzing by at high speeds --and then up the long, tree-lined driveway to the residence and the whoop-dee-do.

I was told that the home used to belong to Diandra Douglas, the former wife of Michael Douglas. It felt more like a hotel lodge than a place where someone might actually live. The place was packed. Jackson, Walsh and Boyens were huddled in a small VIP room, chatting with a few others (me among them). And there was a huge Hawaiian ape in a dark suit standing at the door, keeping out the crashers.

I spoke to Boyens a bit about the script she's been working on for Jackson's next film, KING KONG, which will begin shooting in August. I said I'd love to see it shot in black-and-white. Failing that, I said I hoped their film will make Skull island look as spooky as it did in the 1933 original, with a lot of fog and hanging vines and whatnot. She totally agreed about the fog thing, which suggests, I suppose, that Jackson does too.

I caught a ride back to town with a couple of PMK/HBH publicists around 1 am. Durling stayed until 3 am to make sure the house was neat and tidy after the guests left. He found a drunk sleeping it off in one of the closets. When Durling was finally ready to leave he discovered that the shuttle drivers had all gone home, so he had to walk all the way back to his car at the fire station.

Durling's a very cool hombre and he's doing a great job with this festival (or so everyone tells him when he strolls around town), but next year he should budget for a special car and a driver to take him around from event to event.

Talk Soup

I attended three cool panel discussions at the Santa Barbara Film Festival last weekend -- two on Saturday, one on Sunday. One for screenwriters, one for directors, and a third for producers. I could listen to these things all day. Talk, quips, opinion, anecdotes...my kind of popcorn.

I made a point of asking one provocative question to each panel, but no one got into the spirit of what I was trying to discover and no provocative answers came back.

The screenwriter panel, called "It Starts With the Script," featured writers Patty Jenkins (MONSTER), John August (BIG FISH), Jim Sheridan (IN AMERICA), Tom McCarthy THE STATION AGENT), Denys Arcand (THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS), Anthony Minghella (COLD MOUNTAIN) and Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh (the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy).

Screenwriter-director Frank Pierson moderated, so to speak. He pretty much killed off the first half of the discussion by asking duh-level, dead-head questions. The energy just kept sinking lower and lower on the meter. I thought Pierson kinda blew it by ignoring the recently-announced Oscar nominations, which was clearly a big topic on everyone's mind.

Minghella got a big laugh when he mentioned he'd spoken to his father on the day the nominations were announced, which included the news that COLD MOUNTAIN had been denied a Best Picture nomination and Minghella one for Best Director. His father's comment, he said, was "I think you should think about doing something else."

I asked Walsh and Boyens about whether they were bothered by the big-gate problem in KING KONG, which I wrote about a few months ago. Why would the villagers of Skull Island, obviously looking to keep Kong and the island's dinosaurs from invading their village by building a massive wall between the village area and the jungle, also build a huge gate in the center of the wall that's big enough for Kong or a Brontosaurus to walk through?

Walsh and Boyens grinned and nodded sympathetically, but it was clear from their hesitant answers that they hadn't really thought this one through, or perhaps hadn't bothered to, given Jackson's likely intention to ignore the problem altogether. I would ignore it myself if I were directing the new KING KONG. That scene in which Kong pushes his way through the gate is just too good.

The "Directors on Directing" panel was moderated by "Down and Dirty Pictures" author Peter Biskind, and included Anthony Minghella, Patty Jenkins, Tom McCarthy, Vadim Perlman (HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG), Ed Zwick (THE LAST SAMURAI), Peter Weber (THE GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING), and Gary Ross (SEABISCUIT).

Biskind asked better questions than Pierson, but he still wasn't snappy or catty enough. Audiences at these things want the feeling they're sitting in on some private get-together, not a presentation meant for general consumption. They want dish, bluntness, smart-ass commentary...stuff they can repeat to friends at parties.

I tried to ask everyone if they thought the film industry was becoming less or more tolerant or supportive of super-impassioned visionary types who tend to say "my way or the highway" alot....the latter-day Orson Welles, Nicolas Ray and Eric von Stroheim types.

I said I think the industry is obliged to make room for creative nutter types the way the mafia is obliged to tolerate and support murderers and sociopaths within its ranks, as a price of doing business. But I started with an analogy from Biskind's book that says if Hollywood is like the mafia, the indie side Hollywood is like the Russian mafia, and for some reason this seemed to freak one of the directors out. (I told him after the panel I wouldn't make a big thing out of it in the column, so I'm not.)

The Sunday producers panel, which was sponsored by Daily VARIETY and was called "Movers and Shakers,:" was moderated by VARIETY editor Peter Bart. The producer panelists included Bob Salerno (21 GRAMS), Clark Peterson (MONSTER), Barrie Osborne (LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING), Mike Kaplan (I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD), Mary Jane Skalski (THE STATION AGENT), Lauren Moews (CABIN FEVER), Albert Berger (COLD MOUNTAIN) and Marshall Herskovitz (THE LAST SAMURAI).

Bart knows just how to moderate these things. He jumps right in and sasses everything up and sort-of goads the panelists into talking straight and spilling the beans, mainly by setting an example.

When Berger referred to Paramount's distribution of ELECTION, which Berger and six others produced (or exec produced), Bart said ELECTION was one of the worst marketed films ever. "But Paramount did produce it," Berger said, to which Bart replied, "Accidents happen."

Peterson half-scored when he said "if you want to get into the movie business but you don't have any special talent or ability, become a producer."

Berger got a laugh when someone asked him about COLD MOUNTAIN missing out on Best Picture and Best Director nominations, and he said, "I've been thinking about that a lot lately."

I asked the panel, and Herskovitz in particular, if lead actors are more or less willing to die these days in the movies. There's a big-name actor who dies in a new film that was shown at Sundance, I said, but Tom Cruise's character not dying in THE LAST SAMURAI was a definite curiosity, given the several machine guns that were firing right at his chest during the final battle scene.

Herskovitz said "the idea was always for Tom to live in the end, even though he had sought death so many times in this film." He said they had failed to include footage that would have explained why Cruise's character survives, or would somehow have made his survival more acceptable, but admitted that what I'd mentioned has been "the single biggest criticism of this film."

Moews, whose CABIN FEVER was a blood-spattered spoof, said that she "like[s] to kill everyone off...stars, supporting players...everyone dies in my films."

Bulls

I don't know if this had something to do with the rowdiness of crowds over Super Bowl weekend, but the cops in Santa Barbara last weekend were busting people left and right. Every time I turned around some cop car's lights were flashing and someone was getting pulled over, or some downmarket-looking dude was being asked for identification.

It didn't feel good. Santa Barbara used to be a hip town with a mellow vibe -- now it feels like downtown Compton. The last time I'd observed this level of confrontation between authorities and people on the street was in the early scenes in Roman Polanski's THE PIANIST. Cops are supposed to keep order and all that, but nobody likes it when they do their job too visibly.

Son of Re-Animator

This column has lately been accused of sounding too political, which is essentially a right -wing rant that my views are too liberal. To demonstrate my impartiality (or at least my willingness to pretend that I can bend over the other way), here's something that only guys like Rush Limbaugh and Dennis Miller would get a kick out of.

I'm not the first one to say it, but it's been pointed out that Massachucetts U.S. Senator John Kerry bears a fairly close resemblance to the late actor David Gale, particularly as he appeared as "Dr. Carl Hill" in Stuart Gordon's cult horror comedy RE-ANIMATOR (1985). Here are some comparison photos -- you decide. I think the resemblance is in fact pretty close between the two jawlines.

Kerry has also been compared to Ted Cassidy's "Lurch" in the TV series version of THE ADDAMS FAMILY. This I find blatantly unfair. Everyone agreed four years ago that the biggest "Lurch" look-alike around was Angelina Jolie's brother James, or "Jamie."

What's This?

To promote the upcoming EUROTRIP (opening 2.20), an Ivan Reitman-produced variation on ROAD TRIP, DreamWorks has sent journalists a totally fake-looking bottle of "Absinthe," which you can only buy in...well, I know you can buy it in Prague, because that's where I purchased a bottle of the stuff myself about 22 months ago.

Absinthe is green and a bit liqueur-y looking, and always comes in odd-shaped bottles that never look like they contain wine. The DreamWorks hand-out looks like a bottle of white wine, except it's filled with water. No imagination...boring! Dare anyone suggest a connection between this and what's to come in the film?

My understanding of the law is that Absinthe is illegal to sell in this country, but not give away. If DreamWorks had any fire in their belly, they would have sent out bottles of the real thing, or, failing that, bottles of something that at least looks like Absinthe.

Bounce Off

"I have to suspect the problem with THE BIG BOUNCE didn't start in the editing room-- it started when someone tried to make this particular book into a comedy.

What everyone seemed to miss is that this is one of Elmore Leonard's best serious books. I'm not one of those people who thinks everything he writes is gold, but this one justifies his often inflated rep -- a terrific character study about a young man torn between two possible role models, a sociopathic girl who's into nihilistic crime, and an exquisitely responsible motel owner trying to teach him the value of work and being a grownup.

"Considering when it was written, circa 1969, it's one of the great defenses of the square life against hippie-era attitudes, but it's not meant to be funny. From the sound of this adaptation, I can imagine the same Warners execs overseeing HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG and wanting a wacky scene where Jennifer Connelly is trying to pretend it's still her house to somebody and racing from room to room one step ahead of Ben Kingsley and family. " -- Mike Gebert.

"My wife and I were two of the six people in the entire country who saw THE BIG BOUNCE last weekend, and I gotta say I enjoyed it immensely. It had the feel of some stoner comedy from the early '70s, and all it needed was Cheech and Chong to make it a trip down memory lane. Good-looking people hangin' out in Hawaii, obviously having a good time. Plot elements basically irrelevant. Lots of riffing on nothing in particular.

"And that scene with Harry Dean and Willie? Director George Armitage obviously gave them a bottle of Wild Turkey, then turned the camera on and filmed them hanging out and getting drunk.

"Armitage is a master at this shaggy dog stuff. I have always liked MIAMI BLUES and GROSSE POINT BLANK, and I think THE BIG BOUNCE will have a nice afterlife on home video. Got poi?" -- Lewis Beale

Wells to Beale: Yeah, I like that stuff too, but if you ask me it wasn't Armitage-y enough. The studio recut it on him, methinks. It didn't flow with any kind of harmonious drift. Something was very clearly wrong in the way it was cut together. That bedroom farce thing (horny Sheen downstairs, horny Wilson upstairs) really didn't work.

Return to Ringu

"You've been dead on regarding the complete commercialization, and overall ruining of the LORD OF THE RINGS movies. The general population was so enamored with the books that people seem to simply willing themselves into thinking the films are great. I loved the books, too, but I can't suspend disbelief that far!

"The films are akin to watching a high school play with Ian McKellen in it, finished over with ridiculously overlathered CGI. Any movie that isn't character-driven is doomed to be a commercial. Peter Jackson should have known better, and pocketed some of his massive budget and shot something more from the heart.

"Telling people that a new car has faults, after saving up and visualizing said vehicle for years, causes heartbreak. I get the same reaction when I refuse to sit through another four-plus hours of a LOTR chapter on DVD. Stand firm, Mr. Wells, and remain receptive and gracious to your slings and arrows. The fans of the trilogy are probably hurting inside too." -- Adam Davis

Stefani vs. Harlow

"The overwhelming majority of people who will see Gwen Stefani in THE AVIATOR have never seen or heard Jean Harlow except, perhaps in old, half-remembered black- and-white movies. In fact, if you showed them a photo array consisting of Harlow and several other platinum blonde actresses of the era, I doubt a significant percentage of them would pick her out.

"I don't know how good an actress Gwen Stefani is, but the key to my enjoyment of her performance will be how good a job she does of portraying the character of Jean Harlow as written in the film, just as the key to my enjoyment of Leonardo DiCaprio's performance will be how good a job he does of portraying Howard Hughes, a man to whom he bears about as much physical resemblance as Stefani does to Harlow.

"I liked your comments in your latest column where you defended yourself against a logical fallacy (slippery slope) brought against you by a reader in regards to the Stefani casting decision. Might there be more important factors than her obvious dissimilar appearance. Casting agents in this case are simply doing what they have been doing to the black community for some time now -- casting celebrities rather than actors. Stefani is a powerful pop figure who propelled a competent but lackluster band to the heights of success based on pure charisma and a distinct voice.

"The bottom line she is a pre-packaged commodity with a built-in audience. Her involvement will add valuable pounds to the overall amount of press this movie will receive. In fact your discussion of her casting, in what is probably a role a mannequin could play, has justified to decision made by the casting director. " -- Thomas Haight

Van Helsing, Catwoman

"This latest Stephen Sommers film will be a huge yuck. The trailer is ridiculous. More super kung-foo wire crap with stupid weapons. Those Victorians sure know how to build far out stuff! Not even Hugh Jackman can save this obvious piece of tripe.

"As for CATWOMAN, Halle Berry is beautiful and a damn good actress, but that costume is absurd. No self-respecting super-heroine would be caught dead in something like this...and heels? No way she'll outrun any bad guys or girls. I have no clue about the quality of the film. Halle is beautiful, though." -- Edward Klein, Salem, Oregon.

Keep It Up!

"As an arch-conservative, right-wing, Bush supporting, (insert epithet here) blah, blah, blah...it gives me great pleasure to read your injection of politics into a film analysis/ entertainment column. As recent experience clearly shows, Americans love nothing better than having people in the entertainment industry condescend to them with their inane political views and mock and ridicule that which is close to their hearts. That always translates into big numbers at election time!

"So keep up with the sarcastic quips on Mel Gibson while noting nothing of the factual inaccuracies of propaganda pieces like MONSTER or ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE. And remember you can never start tub-thumping for the new Michael Moore film too early, so an ode to...er...sorry...unbiased piece on this should come down the 'ole poop shoot soon.

"You may think I'm joking but I'm not. Nothing will turn people conservative more in November than the continual litany of screeds from the increasingly elitist, bigoted, hypocritical, censorious left. Still don't believe me? Guess why so many university students are now calling themselves conservative? It worked on a former lib like me. " -- Nicole DuMoulin.

F***ing Righties!

"The thing with Martin Hart telling you to take him off the mailing list got me a little angry, and it also got me thinking. I have this friend going back some twenty-four years. Now, this is significant for two reasons. One, we're both only 34. And two, he's a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and I'm not. Now, we don't talk politics anymore. Why? What happened?

"The mood of the country...hell, the way the country just feels changed over the last three years, and not for the better. Now, some of it is not Bush's fault. But I happen to believe a lot of it is. Some might think differently, and that's supposed to be okay.

"But not anymore...

"This president was supposed to be a uniter and not a divider, yet how come the way I think and feel politically is not only to be disagreed with, but demonized? The right has put my political ideas under constant assault for just about the last 8 to 10 years (or however long Fox News has been around). The attacks border on McCarthy-esque, and guess what? The left ain't taking it anymore!

The right can't stand anything or anyone who dares mess with their STEPFORD WIVES view of how things really are in the country for a lot of people. Dare to dissent, and it's shut up, quiet down, and you hate America.

"You know why me and my friend don't talk politics anymore? It's because as good a friend as he is...as tight as we are...if we talk politics, I will have to hit him with both rhetorical barrels. I don't have the time, nor do I have the patience to pussyfoot around anymore. Right now, as tight as we are, we are political enemies. That's it. That's how bad it's gotten.

"He's still my friend. We get together. We talk about football. We talk a lot about the movies. We talk about his new kid. We just don't talk politics. That's the price we have to pay. So be it. He'll still be the best man at my wedding, and the eulogist at my funeral (or I his).

"Am I asking you to stop talking politics in your column? Hell no.

"Between you and me, I don't think a movie column (however well written) is going to sway too many votes one way or the other. But you have a passion and you have a voice, so go wherever the mood takes you. please keep doing what you're doing. Keep saying what you feel. And hell, if Martin Hart (or anyone else on the right side of the aisle) doesn't want to hear it, fine. The hell with 'em!

"Before the Clinton impeachment fraud...before the 2000 election...before Iraq...I would have said that politics has no place in a movie column. Frankly, it still probably doesn't. But the more I hear right-wingers and Bush supporters whine, bitch and moan about what you're doing, the more I start to believe it does after all.

"Proud to have been born blue, still livin' blue, and I'm gonna die blue, too." -- Malcolm Johnson, Glendale, CA.