1930's-1950's The Moon's Our Home (Seiter, 1936) Sh! The Octopus (McGann, 1937) The Mating Season (Leisen, 1951) Bad for Each Other (Rapper, 1953) The Phenix City Story (Karlson, 1955) Run of the Arrow (Fuller, 1956) House of Secrets (Green, 1956) Saint Joan (Preminger, 1957) Macabre (Castle, 1958) The Fiend Who Walked the West (G. Douglas, 1958 Five Gates to Hell (Clavell, 1959) 1960's Key Witness (Karlson, 1960) Summer and Smoke (Glenville, 1961) The Chapman Report (Cukor,1962) Bachelor Flat (Tashlin, 1962) [on Hulu] The L Shaped Room (Forbes, 1963) The Chalk Garden (Neame, 1964) A Thousand Clowns (Coe, 1965) You're a Big Boy Now (Coppola, 1966) The Whisperers (Forbes, 1967) Dark of the Sun (Cardiff, 1968) Skidoo (Preminger, 1968) Last Summer (Perry, 1969) The Comic (C. Reiner, 1969) 1970-1974 The Revolutionary (Williams, 1970) The Landlord (Ashby, 1970) Diary of a Mad Housewife (Perry, 1970) Tropic of Cancer (Strick, 1970) I Never Sang for My Father (Cates, 1970) Sometimes a Great Notion (Newman, 1971) Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (Turman, 1971) 'Doc' (Perry, 1971) The Music Lovers (Russell, 1971) Drive, He Said (Nicholson, 1971) The Steagle (Sylbert, 1971) The Last Movie (Hopper, 1971) Made For Each Other (Bean, 1971) The Day the Clown Cried (Lewis, 1972) Hickey & Boggs (Culp, 1972) The Carey Treatment (Edwards, 1972) Pete 'n' Tillie (Ritt, 1972) Slither (Zieff, 1973) Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (Pakula, 1973) Man on a Swing (Perry, 1974) Open Season (Collinson, 1974) The Tamarind Seed (Edwards, 1974) Law and Disorder (Passer, 1974) Homebodies (Yust, 1974) Stardust (Apted, 1974) Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette, 1974) 1975-1979 Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (Richards, 1975 At Long Last Love (Bogdanovich, 1975) Hearts of the West (Zieff, 1975) Welcome to L.A. (Rudolph, 1976) W.C. Fields and Me (Hiller, 1976) Citizens Band (Demme, 1977) Twilight's Last Gleaming (Aldrich, 1977) Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Brooks, 1977) Girlfriends (Weill, 1978) Movie Movie (Donen, 1978) The Medusa Touch (Gold, 1978) American Hot Wax (Mutrux, 1978) Hot Stuff (DeLuise, 1979) Scavenger Hunt (Schultz , 1979) Players (Harvey, 1979) Rich Kids (Young, 1979) Nightwing (Hiller, 1979) Screams of a Winter's Night (Wilson, 1979 When You Comin' Back Red Ryder? (Katselas, 1979 1980's Resurrection (Petrie, 1980) The Awakening (Newell, 1980) Simon (Brickman, 1980) God's Angry Man (Herzog, 1980) Fast-Walking (Harris, 1982) Twice Upon a Time (Korty & Swenson, 1983) Trouble in Mind (Rudolph, 1985) When the Wind Blows (Murikami, 1986) Housekeeping (Forsyth, 1987) The Glass Menagerie (Newman, 1987) Patty Hearst (Schrader, 1988) Running on Empty (Lumet, 1988) Drowning by Numbers (Greenaway, 1988) Haunted Summer (Passer, 1988) The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (Spheeris, 1988) 1990's Men Don't Leave (Brickman, 1990) Old Times (Curtis, 1991) Prospero's Books (Greenaway, 1991) City of Hope (Sayles, 1991) The Baby of Macon (Greenaway, 1993) King of the Hill (Soderbergh, 1993) Dadetown (Hexter, 1995) SubUrbia (Linklater, 1997)
New Line Cinema's decision to move the release date of Tony Scott's Domino from 11.23 back to mid-August (which is when the film was originally scheduled to open for several months) may look like an exploitation of a tragedy to some...but apparently it's not.
I was shocked to learn Tuesday that 35 year-old Domino Harvey, the former model-turned-bounty hunter portrayed by Keira Knightley in Scott's action thriller, was found dead in a bathtub in her West Hollywood home on Monday night.
Edgar Ramirez, Mickey Rourke, Kera Knightley in Tony Scott's Domino.
It turns out the Russell Crowe phone-throwing episode was captured on tape. It's also being reported that Crowe didn't just throw a phone at Mercer Hotel concierge Nestor "Josh" Estrada, but also a vase. It's also been written in this "Page Six" piece that what got Crowe so enraged was Estrada saying "whatever" after Crowe repeatedly complained that he couldn't get an international phone connection. Now I know who the real bad guy is. I've dealt with guys like Estrada all my life and their "whatever" attitudes about life's challenges, and they really don't belong in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:35 PM on Tuesday, June 28, 2005
I would love to jump into War of the Worlds (having seen it last night) but along with everyone else Paramount publicity insisted on a written pledge that I not review this Steven Spielberg film until Wednesday morning. I think it's fair, however, to pass along one bit of reportage. The widely-buzzed-about disappointment with the finale, which I passed along in this space two or three days ago, is not about Spielberg's decision to go with the the original H.G. Wells ending. It is not -- not -- about earthly bacteria in the alien's bloodstream. As fantastic and genuinely scary as most of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:18 AM on Tuesday, June 28, 2005
The dozens of oddball revisions and reshufflings aside (which are fine -- Peter Jackson isn't doing a Gus Van Sant-folllowing Psycho remake), the new King Kongtrailer is actually fairly (emphasis on the "f" word) cool. It's just that his criteria seems to have been "how can I do this my way, so it doesn't look like I'm copying?" instead of "how can I take what's already been done very well and make it better, deeper, spookier...more haunting?" But I love the seeming fact that Jackson has Kong doing his Manhattan rampage in the winter, with snow on the streets...brilliant.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:57 AM on Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Six or seven bent-over guys wearing ape-pelts around their shoulders and chests are circling a young woman sitting in their center and chanting the chant that goes "Kong!...konnalong- konnalong-konnalong-konnalongalong Kong Kong!!" and beating their chests with each repetition of those last two syllables. They do this two or three times and then suddenly one of them stops circling and stands up and looks at the others and says, "Wait a minute... something feels wrong...it's not the same." And the other ape-pretenders wave their ape arms and tell him to shut up, and then they tell him, "It is what it is, bubba....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:32 PM on Monday, June 27, 2005
From Roger Friedman's column a couple of days ago: "Meantime, I've got a solid new figure for the budget on War of the Worlds. Are you ready? Not counting promotion: $182 million. With promotion, think more like $230 million."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:26 AM on Saturday, June 25, 2005
Sometime within the next week or two, Paul Haggis's Crash is going to pass the $50 million mark in theatrical revenue. That's an extraordinary haul for a film that's not exactly a downer but is about as divorced from the conventional definition of a feel-good audience hit as you can imagine.
It's a socially observant thing that ends with a hopeful or balanced view of who and what we are in terms of racial attitudes. It also says that widespread racism has made us all fairly miserable inside the prison of our own skins. And yet people are going for...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:33 AM on Friday, June 24, 2005
For the last two or three days there's been a ripple effect coming off that press-junket screening of War of the Worlds (Paramount, 6.29),and specifically one cutting remark in particular about the conclusion being underwhelming or otherwise not cutting it because it doesn't deliver a big crescendo-ish blowout but ends rather quietly and internally...in a bacterial realm. I won't be seeing the film until Monday night but this is the ending that H.G. Wells used in his original novel and more or less the same one used in the 1953 George Pal movie with Gene Barry. Wells intended WOTW was a metaphor...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:31 AM on Friday, June 24, 2005
I was blown away by Fernando Meirelles' The Constant Gardener (Focus Features, 8.26) this evening. I don't know how popular it will be (it may be a little too complex and sophisticated for the schmucks) but it's very high-quality merchandise with a decent shot at year-end awards and Oscar noms. I expected it would be at least pretty good, considering how extraordinary Meirelles' City of God was, but I didn't expect it to be this smart and impassioned and as strongly political. This is easily the best adaptation of a John le Carre novel since The Spy Who Came In From The Cold...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:20 PM on Thursday, June 23, 2005
For years, Anita Busch was like Old Faithful. Every time I saw her at a screening or a party, she always gave me a vaguely dirty look. Every...damn...time. Which is one reason why I enjoyed...no, not enjoyed...why I didn't especially grieve over Nikki Finke's respectful vivisection and entombment of the former entertainment journalist in this just-postedL.A. Weekly column. The subhead reads, "Pellicano charges are vindication for the former Hollywood reporter, but we've already buried her."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:59 PM on Wednesday, June 22, 2005
What...are you kidding? This is fantastic. You can tell right away that Elizabethtown has a nicely seasoned mood, a tone that's not quite this, that or the other thing but is definitely alive and absorbing and trying to dig down. You can feel the whimsy, humor, gravitas, regrets. Kirsten Dunst seems...I don't know...hotter and more emotionally come-hither than in anything she's acted in before, and something tells me this will be Orlando Bloom's home run. (Or something approaching this...a triple?) This easily overrides the effect of those moderately dull school yearbook cast photos that appeared on the Elizabethtown site a week...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:01 PM on Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Could everyone I've been speaking to about doing a new column (and you know who you are) please re-contact me so we can finalize everything and get this stuff rolling? Thanks.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:13 PM on Wednesday, June 22, 2005
My hopes were up during the first three or four minutes of Bewitched because it starts out like Bell, Book and Candle, the 1958 film with James Stewart and Kim Novak.
Nicole Kidman, playing a cheerfully perky witch named Isabel Bigelow, says at the beginning that all she wants is to be loved in a normal everyday way by a regular "helpless" boyfriend who needs her. Not to be repetitive, but at this point I leaned over to Bill McCuddy, the Fox News anchor guy who was watching it with me last week, and I said, "This is Bell, Book...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:37 AM on Wednesday, June 22, 2005
When Cinderella Man opens theatrically in England and Europe in early September, will local distribs be using a different title? I ask because a lot of people stateside felt that the vaguely pansy-ish Cinderella Man title may have been one of the reasons the '30s boxing saga didn't perform up to expectations, and because the title being used in Germany (where the Ron Howard film is opening September 8) is Das Comeback. It's routine for films to be retitled for European audiences in the local vernacular, of course. Finding Neverland was retitled for Germany as Wenn Traume fliegen lernen (i.e., When Dreams Learn...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:49 AM on Wednesday, June 22, 2005
The new trailer for Fernando Meirellles' The Constant Gardener (Focus Features, 8.26) is up and rolling. Download it and make of it what you will, but also consider the view of a reader who recently saw the entire film: "Gardener is a tad more conventional and mainstream than Meirelles' City of God, which I was a huge fan of, but it combines thriller elements, a love story and searing reportage of everyday catastrophes besetting Africa...it's by far the strongest Le Carre adaptation in feature form ever. There are just so many good things about it that it's hard to know where to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:30 PM on Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Those attending the War of the Worlds all-media showing this Monday (6.27) will be obliged to miss the televised debut of the two -and-a-half-minute trailer for Peter Jackson's King Kong. But there's an alternate option: an announcement on the official King Kongsite says that "Volkswagen, the exclusive automotive promotional partner of King Kong, has been granted the exclusive online debut window for the teaser trailer. Beginning at 8:44 PM ET (15 minutes prior to the NBC Universal primetime roadblock), the teaser trailer may be viewed exclusively on the Volkswagen website (www.volkswagen.com). This Volkswagen online exclusive will continue for 48 hours."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:21 AM on Tuesday, June 21, 2005
"You gotta find a good woman. Not too smart, not too dumb. Not too old, not too young. One that can cook and clean." -- Saddam Hussein's advice to an unmarried 20-something American guard in Baghdad, according to a news report.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:34 AM on Tuesday, June 21, 2005
It won't be enough for that new David Spade Comedy Central satire show ("The Showbiz Show") to goof on moronic Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight-style coverage of Hollywood and celebrity news. These shows parody themselves. Spade is going to have to really get down and be mean...if you catch my drift. If the show were on right now, for instance, he would have to really talk about what's going on with everyone talking about but not really talking about the Tom Cruise meltdown. If Spade just does his usual "nyah-nyah..I'm a funny smart-ass" thing without taking it to the next level, the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:07 AM on Tuesday, June 21, 2005
I've thought and thought about it over the last 24 hours, and I still don't get Sharon Waxman's Tom Laughlin-wanting-to-do-a-Billy Jack remake story. It seemed to mainly be about Waxman (or maybe Times editors Michael Ceipley or Jodi Kantor) being a fan, etc. I couldn't figure any other reason why it ran. Does Laughlin seriously expect people to relate to a 73 year-old barefoot Billy Jack setting things straight about...what?..the religous right, nuclear power, the Iraqi War and the proposing of a third-party candidate? Tom Laughlin and Billy Jack nostalgia are waaaay past the identification or recollection abilities of the general ticket-buying...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:52 AM on Tuesday, June 21, 2005
My people-rebelling-against-flaunted-celebrity-behavior theory (by way of Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust) seems to be gaining validity. The London Independent's Andre Gumbel has, in a just-posted article, half-rationalized and come close to applauding last weekend's squirt-gun attack (click on video here) upon Tom Cruise by a guy from a Channel Four news team. "Though [Cruise] kept his cool, the stunt will have been heartily applauded by those who are beginning to tire of Cruise's endless self-promotion," Gumbel wrote. "The production of Tom Cruise: The Movie is in full swing and the response, at least so far, appears to be a resounding...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:53 AM on Tuesday, June 21, 2005
A sincerely rendered approval-slash-redemption piece appeared in last Sunday's New York Times, with Charles Isherwood lauding the talents of Elizabeth Berkley and her work in Scott Elliott's revival of David Rabe's Hurlyburly. "I hereby spread the word that [Berkley] is pretty darn good," he wrote. "You may have already heard that virtually everyone is terrific in this much-acclaimed production. That Ms. Berkley holds her own among this skilled company of scene- stealers (i.e., Ethan Hawke, Josh Hamilton, Wallace Shawn) is a testament to how much her talent has grown since her appearance in [a certain] monumentally bad movie. As Bobbie, a 'balloon...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:14 AM on Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The hostility levels are rising between celebs and photographers and the public. It may be coincidence, but I'm picking up vibes from that mob riot scene at the end of Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust. First, the confrontation levels between celebs and crazily aggressive paparazzi started to lunge way out of control, prompting Us editor Janice Min to pledge that the magazine wouldn't run photos captured via ruthless methods. At the Bewitched premiere last week Nicole Kidman went up to a New York photographer and called him "very rude" after he booed her. Then Leonardo DiCaprio got cut with a broken...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:53 AM on Monday, June 20, 2005
The aliens are looking to slaughter everyone in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds (Paramount, 6.29) and, of course, the film doesn't bother to explain their motive. In a current Newsweekpiece, Spielberg says "having no idea why they're killing hundreds of thousands of people is scarier than having them arrive, make an announcement and then go to work." At least screenwriter David Koepp makes a stab at an explanation. "I think the whole war is about water," he says. "I figure their planet ran out. Wars tend to be fought over very elemental things: water, land, oil."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:25 AM on Monday, June 20, 2005
Right off the top and sight unseen, I'm intrigued by David Koepp's decision to write Tom Cruise's War of the Worlds character as "kind of a jerk." Ray Ferrier is described in the Newsweekarticle as "a divorced, blue-collar guy more interested in fast cars than in his young daughter (Dakota Fanning) and teenage son (Justin Chatwin). But then huge alien tripods begin destroying everything in their path, and Ray finds himself on the run with his kids." Cruise, says Koepp, has "played so many characters that are capable and cocky, and I thought it would be fun to write against that...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:24 AM on Monday, June 20, 2005
This Friday's opening of George Romero's Land of the Dead (Universal, 6.24) has stirred an observation about pedestrians in the touristy areas of Manhattan. This is nothing new, but out-of-towners always seem to walk the streets without the slightest hint of spunk or urgency in their step, like they're making their way from the bedroom to the refrigerator at 2 ayem in their pajamas and nightgowns. And they're always wearing those dead-to-the-world expressions. (Writer Fran Leibowitz has described the shuffling gait of tourists as the "mall meander.") Every day I'm walking along at my usual spirited pace and these Jabbas and sea lions...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:57 AM on Monday, June 20, 2005
Just so it's understood: the zombies in George Romero's Day of the Dead still slowly shuffle around. They do not do the zombie sprint (i.e., running toward their victims like Olympic athletes) as witnessed in 28 Days Later and the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead. Romero's zombies are still taking their time because, according to Romero (or rather a Universal publicist who says Romero has said this), zombies are "more spooky" when they're lumbering rather than running.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:47 AM on Monday, June 20, 2005
Read David Poland's "Hot Blog" comments about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes...just read 'em...very blunt, very hard-nosed, very this-is-what-it-is...a tiny bit wimpy at the very end when he gets "moral" and says no more TomKat reporting, but don't mind that. The only thing I choked on was his description of how publicist Cindy Guagenti's handling of the Pitt-Jolie entanglement as "just good, solid publicity management." Is that what they call lying through your teeth these days?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:35 PM on Sunday, June 19, 2005
A very smart and thorough take by the Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson about the over-35 adult audience, and how they still show up for solid adult-angled movies when the calibrations are right (like they were with Lion's Gate's Crash). The piece also observes how the mainstream studios have failed to nurture this audience and in fact have done what they can to systematically alienate them. Good work, guys!
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:42 AM on Sunday, June 19, 2005
I love it that Lion's Gate's Crash, that piercing L.A. drama about racism and criss-crossing fates from director Paul Haggis, has hung in there ($44 million since it opened 5.6 on 1,500 screens) and keeps on chugging. I realize the same thing might not happen with Palm Pictures' Cronicas (opening 7.8) and also that Sony Classics' The Beautiful Country (also 7.8) is also facing an uphill ordeal, but I'd sure like to see them both do better than expected.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:40 AM on Sunday, June 19, 2005
Besides being a wonderfully inventive remake of James Toback's Fingers, meaning that it fully honors the Toback while creating its own French-ified fissures and peculiarities, Jacques Audiard's The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Wellspring) has a track that plays over the closing credits that I can't get out of my head. It's by The Kills and is called "Monkey 23" and is off their Keep on Your Mean Side album. It's purchasable for 10 cents at www.allofmp3.com, or you can click on this Randall Pullen link and download it.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:04 AM on Saturday, June 18, 2005
Well, at least there's one thing that works in Bewitched (Columbia, 6.24), and that's Steve Carrell's third-act cameo as Paul Lynde's "Uncle Arthur." If only director-cowriter Nora Ephron had decided to weave Carrell into the film as a major character, things might have turned out differently. Lynde played the Uncle Arthur character (as a bitterly witty gay warlock, natch) on the original Bewitched series off and on from '65 through '71, and Carrell does Lynde quite well. Known mainly as an off-and-on Daily Show correspondent as well as one of Will Ferrell's better friends (he previously costarred with Ferrell in Anchorman and Melinda...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:20 AM on Saturday, June 18, 2005
Two Tom Cruise items have just broken that are going to enrage certain parties. Radar Online is reporting that Cruise made repeated calls and made certain overtures to Scarlett Johansson "weeks" before he began his relationship with Katie Holmes. (Johansson was reported by Upcoming Movies as being firm to costar with Cruise in Mission: Impossible 3 in July '04.) The item, which quotes Johansson directly and says her publicist didn't respond to calls or e-mails seeking confirmation, claims Johansson not only declined Cruise's offer of a Scientology-fortified relationship, but that Cruise then made similar relationship pitches to Kate Bosworth (22) and Lindsay...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:50 AM on Saturday, June 18, 2005
It's possible that Martin Scorsese's The Departed won't work, but it appears as if all the elements for a genuine Scorsese comeback are in place. An urban crime movie (Marty's home turf), a terrific cast (Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga) and a really fine script.
This is probably Scorsese's last chance to raise himself back up to the level of Goodfellas or better. If he screws this up he should just throw in the towel.
Slapdash pseudo poster art for The Departed that I would normally be too...
I'm a little slow at times and maybe that's why I'm not quite loving this first-anywhere gallery of Elizabethtown cast photos that just appeared on the film's official site. If Cameron Crowe's film is anything like the script (which I've read), Elizabethtown (Paramount, 10.14) will be a well-honed, colorfully layered story of romantic restoration on top of a quietly penetrating family ensemble piece. The idea behind these photos -- a series of portraits of the principal actors in character (Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Bruce McGill, Alec Baldwin, et. al.) -- is to say, "Hi, guys...we've got a really nice...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:02 AM on Thursday, June 16, 2005
That allegedly first-hand description in the Star of Angelina Jolie sounding like a "wounded animal, like someone being killed" during a gymnastic whatever during their stay at the Alfajari Villas beach resort in Kenya...man, I love that, and I don't care if I read it first on Defamer. Item says the security guys became concerned, "grabbed their weapons," rushed to Pitt and Jolie's suite and "hammered furiously on the door with their clubs." The screams suddenly stopped and a guy's voice said, "Everything is cool guys. You can leave -- we're okay."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:53 AM on Thursday, June 16, 2005
On Friday, May 27, Tom Cruise took Katie Holmes to a town called Canadian, Oklahoma, partly to acquaint his newly beloved to a phase in her indoctrination into the Church of Scientology.
The Hollywood couple were in this remote corner of America's heartland to visit a Scientology-backed drug rehabilitation center called Narconon Arrowhead, located about an hour from Tulsa on the shores of Lake Eufaula. And Tom basically took Katie through the whole this-is-Scientology, start-the-education-process thing.
Smiles and giddiness: Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes.
Cruise's sister and press rep LeeAnne DeVette called from...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:57 PM on Wednesday, June 15, 2005
James Cameron has been futzing around with this and that project and not really doing anything feature-wise for so long (what's it been, seven and a half years since Titanic came out?) that you really can't pay attention to stories about his latest movie-to-be...I mean, this stuff is just in one ear & out the other. Hollywood Reporter columnist Anne Thompson and reporter Sheigh Crabtree have written that Cameron's next film will not be Battle Angel, a pic based on Yukito Kishiro's Japanese graphic novels about a "nymphette" who morphs into an action heroine, but another film called Project 880....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:11 AM on Tuesday, June 14, 2005
N.Y. Daily News columnist George Rush ran a lead item today about the Russell Crowe/Cinderella Man meltdown in today's "Daily Dish" column...fine. (Especially since he quoted yours truly.) But in looking at how off-screen movie star shenanigans may be affecting box-office performance, Caryn James has summed up the whole celebrity-feedbag phenomenon rather nicely in today's New York Times. She's saying movies are no longer about the purity of the moviegoing experience -- the tabloid-gossip crap is feeding into the watching of movies and vice versa. "For the average viewer in this celebrity-crazed culture, the hype and buzz are simply...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:52 AM on Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Great news! After weeks and weeks of waiting and loads of political horseshit, it's finally being announced that Clive Owen is committed to playing the lead role in Michael Davis's Shoot 'Em Up, a very hip-funny absurdist urban actioner fron New Line that will start shooting in January '06. This is an excellent move on Owen's part, and a major score for Davis. Anyone who doesn't remember the 3.2.05 piece I wrote about Davis and Shoot "Em up, here it is.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:02 PM on Monday, June 13, 2005
The white-faced freak has walked...hooray for the white-faced freak. Celebrity wins! Paving the way for more friendships with boys, more "hand-holding," more Jesus juice, etc.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:21 PM on Monday, June 13, 2005
Wanna know why Mr.and Mrs. Smith did as well as it did last weekend? Read this story by Maureen Story in today's New York Times ("Forget About Milk and Bread. Give Me Gossip!") I will say no more. Just read it. Remember how everyone was saying after 9/11 that the country and the culture will never be quite so frivolous again as it was before that tragedy?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:21 PM on Monday, June 13, 2005
Don't you just love the American public? More specifically, the moviegoers (let's just say it -- those really deep women out there who read the tabs and are total fools for the Brangelina mythology) who just had to see the thoroughly rancid Mr. and Mrs. Smith to the tune of $51.1 million last weekend, and thereby rewarded director Doug Liman and stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie for making the biggest piece of shit of their careers?? (Variety said that "boosting Smith were older femme adults, who don't usually turn out for actioners but do read the celeb weeklies and watch tabloid TV...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:59 AM on Monday, June 13, 2005
Russell Crowe's career as an A-list star -- i.e., a guy who gets the $15 million-or-higher fees and a first-look at the best scripts -- is on the ropes. Despite his latest film Cinderella Man having gotten a 99% favorable CinemaScore grade last weekend, which means it has fantastic word-of-mouth behind it, Crowe's recent telephone-throwing incident has so turned people off, it appears, that they're pulling away from the 1930s boxing flick. How else to explain the fact that last night's Cinderella Man earnings (for Friday, 6.10) of $2,848,000 were down over 50% from last Friday (6.3), when the Ron Howard film...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:10 AM on Saturday, June 11, 2005
Yesterday's tracking figures on War of the Worlds (Paramount, 6.29) are through the roof -- awareness is over 90% and definite interest is over 50%. For a movie that's two and a half weeks from opening, this indicates something really big about to happen. This is almost Star Wars-level. Who knows? The Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise collaboration could do $90 to $100 million in five days time.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:15 PM on Friday, June 10, 2005
Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (Warner Bros., 6.15) is the smartest and most adult-minded superhero film Hollywood has ever made.
For the first time ever, a major studio has made a comic-book movie that plays it fairly straight and grown up without letting the usual downmarket distractions run the show.
Batman Begins is somewhere between exceptionally good and awesome during the first hour or so, which is what sold me and put me in a relatively placated and open-to-whatever place for the film's slightly more conventional remainder, which -- don't get me wrong --...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:34 PM on Friday, June 10, 2005
Thanks to the good, gracious and supportive readers who've tossed me some loose change over the past three or four days, in response to my request for help (see upper left ad box) in getting through a proverbial bad patch. For those of you who can't pitch in, don't sweat it...your steady readership is what really counts. For those thinking of doing so ...well, whenever and whatever. But thanks again to everyone.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:05 AM on Thursday, June 9, 2005
The fanboy community freaked last week when 20th Century Fox announced their decision to hire Breet Ratner to direct X-Men 3. Ratner will of course degrade the franchise. Not in any thuddingly obvious way but in a hundred little ways. One of these is his decision to add more laughs. "Not jokes for the sake of jokes," Ratner said in a recent interview, but "jokes that come from character humor, that come from characters and that come from the situations." This sounds to me like a guy saying he doesn't entirely get (much less get off on) the X-Men mythology or metaphor, and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:53 AM on Thursday, June 9, 2005
Did I miss the news about Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Esrada finding a U.S. distributor, or are Jones and his producer Michael Fitzgerald still hunting around for the right match? The latter, apparently...but shouldn't this obviously worthy drama (several reviewers in Cannes called it a great Sam Peckinpah film) have found a distributor by now? It's a fairly safe bet it'll be an award nominee (Jones took the Best Actor prize in Cannes, on top of Guillermo Arriaga winning for Best Screenplay) if it comes out in October or November. It's probably the usual-usual (producers asking for more money...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:53 AM on Thursday, June 9, 2005
There are two things that scare me just a little bit about the upcoming movie version of Rent (Columbia, 11.11), the phenomenal mid '90s Broadway musical that was based on Puccini's "La Boheme." The first is that Joe Roth's Revolution Pictures produced. Roth has shown such lousy instincts and has built such a terrible track record that the word "Revolution" is, in a Hollywoood context, pretty much synonymous with stinker. The second concern is that Rent was directed by Chris Columbus, a nice-enough guy who likes to sentimentalize and sugar-coat everything he shoots. If there's a way to overly-sanitize and prettify and otherwise...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:59 AM on Thursday, June 9, 2005
I've dipped into this twice now, but that item I ran last Thursday (6.2) about Paramount's not wanting to green-light Mission: Impossible 3 unless Tom Cruise agreed to scale back his 30% gross revenue deal has been verified by a report in today's (6.8) Los Angeles Times saying that the film is now set to go and what put it back on track was Cruise's willingness to take "a major pay cut, giving up what could amount to tens of millions of dollars." Cruise agreed to take 22.5% of the gross instead...big concession! Reports have said that Paramount chief Brad...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:06 AM on Wednesday, June 8, 2005
Werner Herzog, perhaps the greatest poet-documentarian of our time and certainly one of the world's most go-for-broke filmmakers, is seeping into my inner places left and right.
I saw his latest documentary, the touching and very beautiful The White Diamond, which Herzog is self-distributing, at Manhattan's Film Forum last Saturday.
The great Werner Herzog, now 63, and the teardop-shaped helium-filled flying contraption that is the ostensible focus of The White Diamond.
Press screenings of Herzog's Grizzly Man, which I saw 90% of at Sundance last January, are happening in New York in support of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:28 AM on Wednesday, June 8, 2005
When I wrote about Russell Crowe's phone-throwing altercation a couple of days ago I suggested that the hotel employee who got hit by the phone might have been giving Mr. Fistbiscuit an attitude of some kind. I was being sincere, and I read a statement from Crowe's rep that the hotel guy was being a bit of a dick. Then I said that "the hotel employee obviously didn't understand the golden rule when dealing with celebrities, which is 'don't fuck with the Gods!' I say get those hotel employee wankers...get 'em!" Some people wrote in and said, "Are you siding with Crowe on...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:48 AM on Wednesday, June 8, 2005
I ask again -- if there are any committed people out there who genuinely love and care about movies and can actually put words and sentences together so it all fits together in a smooth and compelling fashion...who actually care enough about writing to scrupulously edit themselves so their work can stand up alongside the work of serious pros....if there is anyone out there, man or woman, young or old, who wants to pen a Hollywood Elsewhere column and not quit or take some other gig after three or four weeks, unlike certain parties I could mention...if there's anyone who really wants to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:33 AM on Wednesday, June 8, 2005
I'm truly surprised there are some critics out there trashing or pooh-poohing Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (Warner Bros., 6.15), by far the smartest, best constructed, most adult-minded Batman film ever. And I'm genuinely stunned by Richard Schickel's suggestion in his Timereview that while Nolan's effort "is not dishonorable...what it needs, and doesn't have, is a Joker in the deck -- some antic human antimatter to give it the giddy lift of perversity that a bunch of impersonal explosions, no matter how well managed, can't supply." The lack of a colorfully over-the-top villain is, for me, precisely one of the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:48 AM on Wednesday, June 8, 2005
I've always been fascinated by the fact that Anne Bancroft, who died Monday at age 73, was only 35 when she played the part of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate when it was being made in early '67. Only six years older than costar Dustin Hoffman, who was playing a kid of about 20 or 21, and barely embarked upon adulthood by today's standards, and yet Bancroft was very convincingly playing a World War II generation woman of 45 or so. That sexy-husky voice of hers and those streaks of gray helped, along with the cultivated airs and way of speaking that any...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:54 AM on Wednesday, June 8, 2005
Nice little acknowledgement of my recent WIRED item about Tom Cruise vs. Paramount Pictures (i.e., the discomfort studio topper Brad Grey and his executive homies are feeling over Cruise's "massive and unreasonable" 30% back-end on the upcoming Mission: Impossible 3) in Rush and Molloy's "Daily Dish" column today.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:12 AM on Monday, June 6, 2005
This is astonishing...a very bright critic has fallen for Mr. and Mrs. Smith and is bringing up that ludicrous The War of the Roses analogy in the bargain. Newsweek's David Ansen is declaring that "Doug Liman's heavily armed comedy.... [is] a high-wire act, pitched above a gaping chasm of implausibility, and the remarkable thing is how well Liman and his red-hot stars sustain the joke." Trust me, there is no joke to get...the utter flatness and lack of recognizable humor in this film is stupefying and incontestable. Ansen acknowledges that the film is "preposterous, but Liman gives it such a seductive, playfully...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:05 AM on Monday, June 6, 2005
A news report says that five and a half hours ago, at 4:20 am Monday morning, Russell Crowe was arrested at Manhattan's Mercer Hotel for allegedly throwing a telephone at a hotel employee. "He was upset because he couldn't get a call out to Australia," said Sgt. Michael Wysokowski. "He threw a phone at the employee hitting him in the face and causing a minor laceration." What I want to know is, what did this asshole -- the hotel employee, I mean -- do to provoke Crowe? Seriously...Crowe is too intelligent an actor and too large-of-spirit-and-imagination to throw phones at people just...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:39 AM on Monday, June 6, 2005
There's a very good piece by David Fellerath at Slate.com that portrays former heavyweight champion Max Baer in much more sympathetic and thorough terms than Ron Howard's portrayal of Baer in Cinderella Man. Fellrath points out that Baer was a proud Jew who wore a prominent six-pointed star on his trunks. There's also a star on the trunks worn by Craig Bierko, the charismatic actor who plays Baer, but it's "significantly less prominent than the one that the real Baer wore in the 1935 fight," writes Fellerath. "It's no surprise that Howard would obscure this detail, as it would complicate his film's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:58 PM on Friday, June 3, 2005
Romances between immensely attractive, super-successful movie stars don't last for all kinds of reasons. I won't go into all the usual factors but one thing that really throws a monkeywrench into these relationships is when their children -- i.e., the movies they make together -- turn out badly.
The Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie alliance is toast. I don't actually know if they're "with" each other and it's none of my damn business anyway, but they're in Mr. and Mrs. Smith together and if my observation has any validity they're doomed as a couple because their child is a rank embarrassment...a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:58 PM on Friday, June 3, 2005
Okay, forget that whole Sharon Waxman-suggested scenario about Paramount chairman Brad Grey hesitating about bankrolling Mission Impossible 3 because of...well, Waxman vaguely implies this is due to concerns or at least questions about Tom Cruise's recent oddball behavior. A seriously informed source says the reason why an un-named Viacom executive told Waxman that "no definitive decision has been made" about M:I3 is because of...ready to be surprised?...Cruise's deal. Specifically, his "massive and unreasonable" back-end deal, which is around 30% of the first dollar. (He doesn't take upfront cash.) With the budget of M:I3 pushing toward $180 million (yup, that's what I'm hearing)...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:20 PM on Thursday, June 2, 2005
What I'm not quite understanding from the various has-Tom-Cruise-gone-crazy? pieces, and particularly from Sharon Waxman's report in today's (6.2) New York Times, is why, exactly, Paramount Pictures is apparently re-thinking its support of Cruise's Mission Impossible 3. As Waxman points out, many millions have already been spent on the action thriller, the total estimated M:I3 budget is around $150 million, and the projected start date is July 18. And yet Paramount chairman Brad Grey is seemingly reluctant to give a final green-light. This conclusion hinges on a quote from an executive with Viacom, Paramount's parent company, telling Waxman that "no definitive decision...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:39 AM on Thursday, June 2, 2005
Cinderella Man isn't quite stupendous, but it's honest and earnest and has dignity and heart, and if you don't respond to it on some deep-down human level there's probably something you should have inside that's not there.
And it's an actual movie, which definitely qualifies it as an oddity in the current summer season. So count on this one plus Hustle & Flow, Mad Hot Ballroom, Cronicas and Hans Petter Moland's The Beautiful Country to do the job between now and Labor Day, at the very least.
When Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn dropped by my UCLA Sneak Preview class in early April, I asked if he could confirm that he'll be directing X-Men 3. Vaughan said he'd just come from a meeting an hour or two earlier at 20th Century Fox to discuss just this, and said he didn't want to do the X-Men sequel if he couldn't give it a particular flavor and inner life of his own. (The Hollywood Reporter quoted him as saying he wanted to bring "more heart" to the next episode.) Clearly, Vaughan had doubts about Fox's willingness to let this happen to his...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:09 AM on Wednesday, June 1, 2005
