The latest
Lewbowski Fest happened in NYC about ten days ago, on 10.20 and 10.21, and it just hit me: why was there no documentary about this home-grown phenomenon on the just-out
The Big Lebowski Universal Home Video DVD (released 10.18)? They issued two different special editions (a regular-regular and an "achiever's" edition, which cost $34 and change) and obviously spent a good amount of coin promoting them, but they couldn't cut together a short piece about the Lebowski fans? Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt have been putting on Lebowskifests since '02, and they're obviously genuine and repeating. Fox Home Video's
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:31 AM on Monday, October 31, 2005
I do believe in ghosts....I do believe in ghosts...I do, I do, I do, I do...I
do believe in ghosts and
always have, I swear. And be sure to click on the spooky audio slide show that accompanies this very ghostly story...sitting right there on the left margin.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:04 PM on Sunday, October 30, 2005
Bob Berney's Picturehouse Films has shelled out $3.75 million to be the distributor of Robert Altman's
A Prairie Home Companion, a feature based on Garrison Keillor's radio show. Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Tommy Lee Jones, Virginia Madsen, Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly costar. Berney caught the film at a distributor screening in Manhattan last Thursday. (Another screening happened Friday in L.A.)
Variety's
Ian Mohr reports there was a bidding war, hence the nearly four million dollar fee. An impression was passed along by a couple of set-visit articles that Paul Thomas Anderson informally co-directed
Prairie Home CompanionRead More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:56 PM on Sunday, October 30, 2005
Here's that
snarky 50 Cent toon off Zipperfish...finally found the link. Very funny stuff. I'll leave it to 50 Cent fans to determine how accurate and/or well researched.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:49 PM on Sunday, October 30, 2005
Wow, did you read that undeniably dispiriting
excerpt from Maureen Dowd's forthcoming book in Sunday's
New York Times...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:43 PM on Saturday, October 29, 2005
Spiritual Sell
Gotta love that Bob Berney marketing audacity. Lay it on the line, sell the movie you have and damn the torpedoes.
I'm referring to Berney's decision to call a certain heart-warming, Israeli-produced film, which his company, Picturehouse Films, picked up for U.S. distribution a few months ago...a movie that, let's be honest, very few people other than Orthodox Jews in New York and Florida will want to see no matter what it's called...a movie that Berney, in his admirably mule-stubborn way, has decided to sell with its orig- inal title, which is...ready?...Ushpizin.
Shuli Rand, star and screenwriter of
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:55 PM on Saturday, October 29, 2005
Look at the photo of the bearded, bug-eyed guy wearing a flannel shirt on this
Yahoo news site page, and answer the following question
honestly. We all need to try and look within, to always try to empathize with what the other guy is going through, etc., but that aside and solely on a visual first-impression basis, does the look in this guy's eyes freak you out? Just a tiny bit? Does he seem in any way, shape or form like the same guy who stuck a gun in his mouth in that phony mobile beach home in
Lethal Weapon...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:52 PM on Saturday, October 29, 2005
Jim Choma's Florida-based
Zipperfish site doesn't have an onsite search engine, but a week or so ago there was an inspired animated riff about 50 Cent and
Get Rich or Die Tryin'...and now I can't find it and link to it. Very sharp stuff. Tell you what...watch
this thing...a Zipperfish video clip of a newswoman having a Freudian slip moment. Choma (a.k.a. "Walrus") has a Friday night live-radio talk show on his site, which inspired me to get in touch. Choma then turned me on to
Jeff Beard...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:40 PM on Saturday, October 29, 2005
Many thanks to the
Toronto Star's esteemed movie critic and essayist Peter Howell for giving my upcoming internet radio show, "Elsewhere Live,"
a mention in yesterday's (Friday, 10.28) column. That said, I have no choice but to post a slight correction. "Elsewhere Live" -- an easily thing to listen to as long as you have Winamp and follow the instructions -- will begin on this site on Sunday, 11.20, and
not...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:02 PM on Saturday, October 29, 2005
The trailer for Ben Younger's
Prime (Universal, opening today) told you the film would be sitcommy and Nora Ephronish. And the trailer guys lied. (Big surprise!) They sold the set-up -- Jewish middle-aged Manhattan therapist (Meryl Streep) realizes that the much younger man that her 37 year-old patient (Uma Thurman) is having an affair with is her 23 year-old son (Bryan Greenberg) -- and, of course, ignored what the film is.
Prime...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:12 AM on Friday, October 28, 2005
Nothing There
If I wanted to just blurt it out and cut to the chase, I could say that Jarhead (Univ- ersal, 11.4) is nothing. But it's not entirely nothing -- it's the fall's first major what- the-hell-were-they-thinking? movie, and that ain't hay. Trust me, it's going to send tens of thousands of viewers out of theatres and into the street next weekend (it's tracking...it'll open) asking themselves this very question.
Oo-rahh...
Based on Anthony Swofford's first-person account of his experience as a Marine during the 1991 Gulf War, Jarhead...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:59 PM on Thursday, October 27, 2005
Mondo Kongo
Anyone who's seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy (or, more to the point, has sat through the extended versions on DVD) knows Peter Jackson has never been into brevity. He couldn't operate farther from a less-is-more aesthetic if he tried.
Eye-filling visuals, teary emotionalism, portentousness, sets and costumes that are just so, probing closeups, dialogue scenes that go on longer and are more exacting than necessary...Jackson loves to heap on the syrup.
It should therefore come as no surprise that King Kong...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:24 AM on Thursday, October 27, 2005
Get ready for "Elsewhere Live," a twice-weekly live-internet-radio talk show with telephone call-ins and all kinds of blah-dee-blah from yours truly. It'll start on Sunday, 11.20, and run also on Thursday evening (let's say at 10 pm EST, 7 pm Pacific). We're not talking about some Podcast bullshit (although the radio broadcasts will be archived and downloadable). We're talking about something new here...real throbbing internet radio that you can listen to "live" and call in to, just like any regular-ass radio talk show. And I won't have screeners!
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:02 PM on Wednesday, October 26, 2005
My God, this is it...it's
here...Albert Brooks'
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim Word, which will hit theatres in January...oh my God, I can't stand it...all that lovely brown skin, all those thick accents, those awful Ali Baba shoes, that lovely Iranian/Pakistani/what- ever olive-skinned woman whom Brooks hires, etc.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:55 PM on Wednesday, October 26, 2005
I know you're not supposed to ask this and I'm sorry for
the sudden loss of producer and Blake Edwards colleague Tony Adams, whom I interviewed in '81 or thereabouts about one of the Edwards' films...
10 or
S.O.B., I forget which...but who dies of a stroke at 52? What happened to the poor guy? How come obits never fill in the blanks?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:26 AM on Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Speaking of the recently and sadly deceased, filmmaker Jacob Rosenberg has forwarded a
link to a short film he made called
Bleach that co-starred Charles Rocket, who killed himself in Connecticut earlier this month. A very good guy who ran into a bad patch.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:12 AM on Wednesday, October 26, 2005
In the mid '50s, before CinemaScope lenses were perfected, everything and everyone looked horizontally distorted. The joke was that actors had the "CinemaScope mumps." But on widescreen TVs today -- in bars, people's living rooms, electronic media showrooms -- the distortion is easily double what the CinemaScope mumps syndrome delivered, and nobody blinks an eye. Across- the-board high-def widescreen TV is being promised by Direct TV and Comcast, etc., but the vast majority of broadcast images are still standard-sized (aspect ratio of 4 x 3, meant to fit your mom and pop's TV)...
and yet!...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:40 AM on Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Claire Simpson's editing of
The Constant Gardener is a kind of rhapsodic visual dance, and obviously fully deserving of an Oscar nom. It's hard to define the difference between oppressively heebie-jeebie, ants-in-your-pants film editing..the kind that makes you grit your teeth and makes you feel like you're swatting invisible flies (like the cutting of the action sequences in Paul Greengraass's
The Bourne Supremacy), and what Simpson and director Fernando Meirelles achieve in
Gardener. But one sings and the other doesn't, and, according to this
piece by the
Hollywood Reporter...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:35 AM on Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Responses to The Producers (Universal, 12.15) from a couple of readers who've gotten in touch have been underwhelming, but reaction among regular folks at research screenings, I'm told, has been fairly ecstatic. The guys who didn't like it told me the same thing...people were clapping at the end of each song and having a blast. It's okay to have a good time with broad, brassy obvious entertainments. I guess the only ones who are likely to have problems with this film are...let's fill in the blank later.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:51 PM on Tuesday, October 25, 2005
The IFP is getting an early start on things by announcing its
nominations for the 15th Annual Gotham Awards, which will be handed out on 11.30 in New York City. It's a nice inclusionary gesture to nominate Lodge Kerrigan's
Keane and Miranda July's
You and Me and Everyone We Know as competitors with
Brokeback Mountain,
Capote and
A History of Violence for Best Feature. Ditto Michael Almereyda's
William Eggleston in the Real World against
Ballet Russes,
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Werner Herzog's
Grizzly Man...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:23 AM on Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Snob Aesthetics
My favorite flip-through book last summer was David Kamp and Steven Daly's "The Rock Snob's Dictionary" (Broadway Books), an incisive and tidy sum-up guide about the who, what and wherefores of elitist rock-music savoring.
And now I'm into "The Film Snob's Dictionary," which I scored an advance copy of last week. It's less of an education than "Rock Snobs" -- I'm obviously much more familiar with the turf -- but I'm having just as good a time with the knowingness and wit and concise prose style.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:37 AM on Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Just to be clear, I don't hate March of the Penguins. It's a fairly soulful and well-made film. What I don't like...what I couldn't stand as I saw the French-language version..was the tediousness of all that trekking across the frozen wastelands, and all the sitting around. If I were a penguin I would end it all. I would jump into the water in hopes of being eaten by a killer whale. George Clooney knows what I'm talking about.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:32 AM on Monday, October 24, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:02 AM on Monday, October 24, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:49 AM on Monday, October 24, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:31 AM on Monday, October 24, 2005
Performances that stay with you. Cinematography (by Roger Deakins) to die for. Waiting for Godot in the sand. All geared up and cranked up and no one to shoot. The hip journos -- the ones I've spoken to who are sharp and fair-minded enough to get the unique character of it, not to mention the sublime quality of presentation -- are liking and admiring Sam Mendes' Jarhead (Universal, 11.4).
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:59 AM on Monday, October 24, 2005
I've somehow missed what Jack Malvern of the London
Times Online is
reporting in advance of the London Film Festival debut of
March of the Penguins, which is that U.S. conservative commentators have embraced the Warner Independent release as a monogamy and right-to-life metaphor. Rightie film critic Michael Medved says it ’Äúmost passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing." Uhm, okay. Sacrifice and child-rearing, fine...but forget monogamy.
Penguins...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:07 AM on Monday, October 24, 2005
The most exciting (charming, pleasing, smile-inducing) thing I saw all weekend was recorded on a webcam in China last July. I'm serious. For all I know I'm the last guy in the States to see this, but this is
the best non-pro music video I've seen in ages. These guys are geniuses.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:50 AM on Monday, October 24, 2005
Apologies for ducking out of sight since late Friday. I don't believe in days off. Mentally, that is. But some inexorable force demanded a two-and-a-half-day shutdown & that was that.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:29 AM on Monday, October 24, 2005
Willie's Out
You can bid a sad Oscar farewell to Sean Penn, Willie Stark, Patty Clarkson, Mike Medavoy and director-writer Steven Zallian...at least as far as the '05 race is concerned.
All The King's Men, a southern political melodrama about the corruption of a home-grown politician in the mode of Louisiana Senator Huey P. Long, has been pulled from its 12.16 release date, which has been scheduled for several months now.
Sean Penn in Steven Zallian's
All The King's Men ATKM will probably open in late '06, according to Medavoy, the film's producer and head of the Sony-based Pheonix Pictures.Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:39 PM on Thursday, October 20, 2005
Willie's Out
You can bid a sad Oscar farewell to Sean Penn, Willie Stark, Patty Clarkson, Mike Medavoy and director-writer Steven Zallian...at least as far as the '05 race is concerned.
All The King's Men, a southern political melodrama about a the corruption of a home-grown politician in the mode of Louisiana Senator Huey P. Long, has been pulled from its 12.16 release date, which has been scheduled for several months now.
Sean Penn in Steven Zallian's
All The King's Men ATKM...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:37 PM on Thursday, October 20, 2005
Brief Encounter
Quality over quantity...right? Longer usually ain't better and less is usually more. Except when it comes to performances.
The only exception I can think of was Beatrice Straight taking a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for a single deeply-felt scene in Sidney Lumet's Network. But if Straight had given that killer performance in an anthology film, she'd have been passed over.
Jason Isaacs, Robin Wright Penn in Rodrigo Garcia's
Nine Lives The rule seems to be that a performance isn't award-worthy unless it takes the viewer on at least a 70 or 80-minute journey.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:06 PM on Wednesday, October 19, 2005
It takes about a half-hour to accept Steve Martin as the idiotic Inspector Clouseau in Shawn Levy's (
hah!...Shawn Levy with a possessive credit!)
The Pink Panther (Columbia, 2.10.06). But after you're past this it's pretty funny. Sony/Columbia won't sell it right (what do they care?...it's an MGM/UA leftover) and it probably won't make any decent coin in the States, etc. (Europe, maybe.) But how come the IMDB doesn't list Clive Owen's cameo walk-on? He plays agent 006...half-goof, half-real...a kind of half-smoke signal sent to the Bond movie producers back when
Panther...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:42 PM on Tuesday, October 18, 2005
It's official: the Hollywood Film Festival has labelled itself as the shallowest and whoriest film festival on the face of the planet. The festival's "Board of Advisors" managed this in one fell swoop by announcing that George Lucas's
Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:51 PM on Tuesday, October 18, 2005
I think it's vaguely whorish that Ridley Scott wants to direct an "Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective" movie. Scott and Howard Deutsch, who owns the rights to the series of novels written by Donald J. Sobol (despite Sobol's claim in
Sharon Waxman's N.Y. Times piece...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:11 AM on Tuesday, October 18, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:35 PM on Monday, October 17, 2005
The only film opening this Friday (10.21) that's tracking to any degree is Andrzej Bartkowiak's Doom (Universal)...which the elitists have almost no interest in seeing. The only 10.28 openers with decent numbers are Saw 2 and The Legend of Zorro. The likable and smoothly made Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (10/21) snuck last weekend and isn't tracking...yet. Shopgirl and Stay, both out 10.21, aren't tracking either. And there's not much interest in Gore Verbinski's Weather Man with Nic Cage, Paradise Now or The Dying Gaul, which all open on 10.28.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:46 AM on Monday, October 17, 2005
It's tough out there but Jesus God, the poor guy...
Charles Rocket, the former SNL star, killed himself in Connecticut a little more a week ago. I knew him and worked with him a little bit in '87 when I wrote the press notes for a truly crappy Cannon film he starred in with Carrie Lowell called
Down Twisted. The last film he made came out two years ago...RKO Pictures'
Shade with Sylvester Stallone, Melanie Griffith and Gabriel Byrne. In 2000 he costarred in the TV series
Normal, Ohio...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:07 AM on Monday, October 17, 2005
I read the Amazon.com info about Matthew Modine's 'Full Metal Jacket Diary" too quickly last weekend. It only cost $20 bucks or a bit more, not $63.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:04 AM on Monday, October 17, 2005
Explaining to
Time's
Richard Schickel that sometimes "you have to trust your gut" and go with "a premonition that you can get something decent out of it," Clint Eastwood is doing something fairly startling. Come February he'll begin shooting
Lamps Before the Wind, a kind of cultural reverse-angle, Japanese-soldier companion piece to his World War II war battle-of-Iwo-Jima drama
Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks, due in Nov./Dec. '06) that focuses on the Marines who raised the U.S. flag on top of Mt. Surabachi. Schickel's
excellent piece ("Clint's Double Take") reports that
Flags...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:59 AM on Monday, October 17, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:47 AM on Monday, October 17, 2005
Director Peter Jackson has, in a very friendly, brother-to- brother way, whacked composer Howard Shore over creative differences on the
King Kong score and brought in James Newton Howard as a replacement. Last-minute score replacements are usually a sign of trouble (it happened on
Gangs of New York...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:39 PM on Sunday, October 16, 2005
I haven't confirmed this directly with Warner Bros., but a fairly well-planted exhibitor source
tells me the running time of
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner Bros., 11.18) has been "confirmed" at 157 minutes.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:04 PM on Sunday, October 16, 2005
I've said it before: the snaggle tooth that Peter Jackson has given his big ape is, I suspect, a blade of grass that hints at what may be going on in the emotional universe of
King Kong (Universal, 12.14). The snaggle-tooth is a way of Charlie Chaplin-izing Mr. Kong...of making him seem vulnerable and endearing. (But that's Jackson...an incorrigible emotional underliner.) Harry Knowles
agrees -- he says "the wonky tooth [is] a bit lame" and gives Kong "a goofy look." I'm just saying that the
comparison shots...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:06 PM on Sunday, October 16, 2005
The shooting of Michael Mann's
Miami Vice (Universal, 7.28.06), which stars Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, is generating talk among guys in the production-chat circuit. Before I pass this along, understand that similar yarns were spun during production of Mann's
Collateral (i.e., shooting and shooting with no end, unhappy crew, budget overruns, etc.) and look how that one turned out...brilliant. Remember also what Uma Thurman said in
Pulp Fiction about guys gossiping with each other, and that the stuff I'm getting now is second-hand. That said, the
Vice...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:10 PM on Sunday, October 16, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:17 PM on Sunday, October 16, 2005
DVD distributors re-issue classic titles so often, each time claiming that the film has been beautifully remastered and made to look much better than before...that after a while the pitches don't register. The marketing of Warner Home Video's brand-new
The Wizard of Oz DVD packages (both a two-disc and three-disc set, out 10.25) on the
WHV website promises the same-old "dazzlingly restored picture"...but this time (and I can feel the skepticism before even saying this) it really
is...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:09 PM on Sunday, October 16, 2005
For all my tussles with David Poland, attention and respect should be paid for his having
declared on 5.27.04 that Rachel McAdams "may be the next huge female movie star"...just after he saw
The Notebook. I was bored by
The Notebook and didn't care for
Mean Girls, so I didn't get on the McAdams bandwagon until
Wedding Crashers and then
Red Eye last summer. (And she's excellent again in
The Family Stone.) We have to give the devil his due (and that's not an inference, just an expression)....Poland called it way before me, before anyone.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:04 PM on Saturday, October 15, 2005
It sure is
exciting news that NBC/Universal might want to buy DreamWorks after all, and if they don't maybe Paramount will.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:01 PM on Saturday, October 15, 2005
If I was 17 and into seeing a movie with my girlfriend and didn't care about anything except cheap thrills and maybe getting some action? I'd take her to
The Fog, the weekend's #1 film with a projected $13 or $14 million haul.
In Her Shoes is #4 and on track to make $6 million-plus, amounting to a 40% drop from last weekend. I spoke last night to a married movie buff in his 50s who'd just seen
The Fog and thought it was shit. I asked if he'd seen
In Her Shoes...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:42 PM on Saturday, October 15, 2005
Check out this
30 year-old trailer for Michelangelo Antonioni's
The Passenger, which Sony Pictures Classics is re-releasing on 10.28. The stuffed-shirt narration sounds so stuffy and forced it's almost funny.
The Passenger is an intriguing, sometimes fascinating film but honestly...? It's never been in my Antonioni pantheon.
L'eclisse,
L'aventura,
Blow-up and
Il Grido are much better films. It's a notch or two ahead of
Zabriskie Point and
Red Desert...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:14 PM on Saturday, October 15, 2005
Columbia's Amy Pascal's claim in
Sharon Waxman's N.Y. Times piece (10.15) that Daniel Craig, the new 007, "is the same size as Sean Connery" is hooey. I'm not calling Craig a shrimp, but he's a good two inches shorter than me. I'm 6 foot 1/2 inch, and I'd say he's about 5 foot ten and a half inches, give or take...maybe 5' 11". (I stood next to him after we did a
Layer Cake interview in Park City last Janaury during the Sundance Film Festival.) And I've stood next to Connery, and he's at least 6'1" or 6'2". The website
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:54 PM on Saturday, October 15, 2005
20th Century Fox is pushing back the release date of The Family Stone from early November to December 16th. It'll probably be explained that the home-for-the-holidays mood makes it a perfect Xmas release. But of course, Fox has known it's a Christmassy movie for many months. This is probably about wanting more time to sell it properly and get the definite-interest and first-choice numbers up.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:43 AM on Friday, October 14, 2005
It's official:
Daniel Craig is the new James Bond. The first blonde 007, and...the shortest. Sorry but I had to throw that in. I've stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Connery, Moore, Brosnan and Craig and I know whereof I speak. But this is easily maskable on-screen. Craig told journos at this morning's London press conference that the
Casino Royale...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:11 AM on Friday, October 14, 2005
Mountain High
Eight or nine movies with gay-themes and prominent gay characters will be playing between now and early December. But only three have serious weight, and only one is unequivocally front-and-center about two guys in love with each other -- Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features, 12.9).
The other two -- Bennett Miller's Capote and Craig Lucas's The Dying Gaul (Strand, 11.4) -- are really about work and politics. Capote is about a man who's completely consumed by the writing of a book, and Gaul...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:14 AM on Friday, October 14, 2005
Another diss for 20th Century Fox's marketing team: Ridley Scott has criticized them for selling last May's
Kingdom Of Heaven as a romantic actioner instead of a religious and political piece, which he argued for but didn't get. Fox marketers were seemingly afraid of playing up the Islamic-vs.-Christian conflict element in the film's advertising because this would reflect on the U.S. presence in Iraq and other political issues of the day. Okay, but the running-time issue is a bit more interesting. I read two or three posts last spring claiming that Scott's three-hour
Kingdom...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:06 PM on Thursday, October 13, 2005
Sony Pictures Entertainment and Eon Productions will officially announce that Dan...sorry, will announce the name of whomever's been chosen to play James Bond in Martin Campbell's
Casino Royale at a London press conference tomorrow (Friday, 10.14). If only Wilson and Broccoli had gone with Quentin Tarantino's idea for
Casino Royale..."let me do it my way, I won't screw up your franchise," etc...but they're going with Campbell and
Crash...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:09 PM on Thursday, October 13, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:03 PM on Thursday, October 13, 2005
The first press screenings of Sam Mendes'
Jarhead that I've heard about will begin late next week. The sound of those slowed-down synthesized helicopter blades on the website is an obvious salute to
Apocalypse Now, but the script suggests it'll be something more
Full Metal Jacket-ish than
Platoon-like.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:18 PM on Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Director Tony Scott (
Domino) on his forthcoming remake of Walter Hill's
The Warriors ('79), which will start shooting sometime in '06: "I see it as
Kingdom Of Heaven meets
The Warriors...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:07 PM on Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Leonardo DiCaprio obviously has this liking for dark heavyweight melodramas (The Blood Diamond, The Departed, The Chancellor Manuscripts, Gangs of New York) or biopics about famous ballsy guys (The Aviator, Catch Me If You Can and a film in development about Timothy Leary). Is anyone else thinking he needs to make something light...a clever comedy, maybe a mushy romance of some kind?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:48 PM on Wednesday, October 12, 2005
There's an "airline geek" named Andy Smith who points out that (a) there's a dusky twilight shot of the mythical 747 that Orlando Bloom's character takes from Portland to Louisville in the
trailer for Elizabethtown, and says (b) that this aircraft "is none other than Columbia Airlines flight 409 (obviously not a real airline) from the movie
Airport '75...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:24 PM on Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Stoned
The Family Stone (20th Century Fox, 11.4) looks like a hit because it has some- thing for lightweight Sex and the City fans (you know...the ones who say they've enjoyed this or that film because it's "fun") as well as those looking for a quality deal with a little heart and gravitas.
I've mentioned that hit HBO series because Sarah Jessica Parker is the nominal star of The Family Stone, although it's primarily an ensemble dramedy with great performances all around, plus top-grade writing and directing from the unknown but obviously talented Thomas Bezucha.
The
Family Stone...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:22 PM on Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Two changes with 20th Century Fox's
The Family Stone. One, they've decided to do a platform-release on 11.4 (i.e., the original opening date) in 800-plus theatres, and then go wide on 11.11. (The theatre tallies were wrong before...sorry.) Two, they're cooking up a new one-sheet that will presumably try to sell what it actually is (a sharply-written family comedy with heart) as opposed to whatever that
upraised wedding finger one-sheet...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:50 PM on Tuesday, October 11, 2005
I said before going to the Toronto Film Festival than I hoped Niki Caro's
North Country (Warner Bros., 10.14) wouldn't just be another dramatization of a sexual-harassment issue, which seemed old-hat to me. And I'm afraid
N.Y. Times writer Caryn James is also on the money when she
says the following: "While it seems to be a film with a cause, [
North Country...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:21 PM on Tuesday, October 11, 2005
It occured to me last weekend in the course of the Family Stone junket in Pasadena that right now, a healthy portion of the publicity team at 20th Century Fox is (a) female, (b) married and (c) with child and on the verge of going on maternity leave, or with recently arrrived kids at home. When Fox marketing exec Jeff Godsick was told a couple of weeks of still another impending birth and a request for maternity leave, he allegedly replied, "Hmmm...maybe I'm pregnant?"
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:08 AM on Tuesday, October 11, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:14 AM on Tuesday, October 11, 2005
"I've always viewed life as material for a movie,"
The Squid and the Whale director Noah Baumbach says to
N.Y. Times profiler Deborah Solomon, and thereby flashing his hard-core obsessive filmmaker credentials. "I am sure there will be a backlash against
The Squid and the Whale...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:53 PM on Sunday, October 9, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:31 PM on Sunday, October 9, 2005
Doctor: [Your wife is] not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from her rest.
Husband: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased? Pluck from the memory of a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain and, with some sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:10 PM on Sunday, October 9, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:25 AM on Sunday, October 9, 2005
There's no rejoicing in Mudville over the weekend's box-office tallies, and particularly
Wallace & Gromit's $4.2 million on Friday, which indicates a $13 or $14 million weekend...along those lines. Industry spitballers looked at the tracking and figured it would do a lot better...in the vicinity of at least $20 million, if not higher. And something is certainly wrong with the world when
Flightplan, a movie that loses its grip in the final act and is now in its third week (having opened 9.23), nudges out
In Her Shoes, $3.1 million to $3 million per Friday's reported estimates. It looks like
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:00 AM on Sunday, October 9, 2005
I've been holding off saying anything about Thursday's firing of Par Classics co-prezzies Ruth Vitale and David Dinerstein by Paramount Pictures chief Brad Grey, and here it is Saturday and I still can't think of anything very penetrating...sorry. And I
am...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:13 PM on Saturday, October 8, 2005
Go the
Capote site and click through to the review section (which has a blurb from yours truly), and while you're doing that listen to the excerpts from the score by
Mychael Danna, brother of Jeff Danna, who also composes for films. The last score by Mycahel that I really liked was for
Shattered Glass, but the one for
Capote is even better. Listen to it for five minutes or so and it starts sinking in deep. Now I want to buy the CD.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:40 PM on Friday, October 7, 2005
Sometimes people have trouble with simple declarative sentences and laying things bare. If I'd done some calling around on this thing, I would have uncovered the thing of it. In the meantime, we have
Rush and Molloy reporting this morning that Warner Independent is dumping Paul Dinello and Stephen Colbert's
Strangers with Candy...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:55 PM on Friday, October 7, 2005
Wes Anderson has been living in Paris for the past several months, "just off the Champs Elysee" and somewhere in the vicinity of Roman Polanki's place on Avenue Montaigne, according to
Squid and the Whale director-writer Noah Baumbach. Baumbach visited Anderson there last winter-spring to work on their script for Anderson's next film,
The Fantastic Mr. Fox, an animated film based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name. (Pissed-off farmers wage war upon a sly fox and his family because he's been eating their chickens.) Henry Selick, The guy who did the animated fish in
The Life Aquatic...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:29 PM on Friday, October 7, 2005
"The joy of this unassuming, generous film is that it never sells out its characters' desires or ours,"
N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dragis
says of
In Her Shoes...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:13 PM on Friday, October 7, 2005
The baby that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are said to be expecting (according to a
10.5 piece in
People magazine) is "fake...a Miracle Baby," according to the suspicions of
Defamer's
Mark Lisanti. Mine too (kinda), but how do you fake a baby? The rumble is that Cruise isn't the dad, etc., but if someone knows or has heard something factual (as opposed to the usual blather), please share.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:43 AM on Thursday, October 6, 2005
This is a banner fall-winter season for Fox...In Her Shoes, The Family Stone, Walk the Line...three bulls-eyes. Well crafted, commercial, award-calibre, critic-friendly. Something tells me The Family Stone might be the big breadwinner, but who knows? And to a publicist I spoke to yesterday...no, I don't care if other critics aren't as supportive of In Her Shoes as I've been. In my heart I know I'm right. A friend who saw it at last Saturday's sneak in Manhattan Beach says the audience clapped at the end, so...okay?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:00 AM on Thursday, October 6, 2005
Who the hell is
Thomas Bezucha? Until this evening I didn't have a clue, but he's the former fashion executive (ten years as creative services vp for Polo/Ralph Lauren) who's come out of dead friggin' nowhere to write and direct one of the best-written, most emotionally on-target and true-to-life family Christmas movies (okay, with a tidy commercial attitude...fine) ever made. It's called
The Family Stone...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:59 PM on Wednesday, October 5, 2005
I have to side with David Poland's
"stop, George, stop" plea about George Clooney's plans to remake Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky's
Network for television. It was a cutting and wonderfully nervy film in '76 because it was forecasting trends -- reality TV, infotainment, cult-of-the-personality news anchors -- that were starting to take shape but hadn't quite happened. And of course, the fact that
Network turned out to be prophetic has added to its reputation. But Clooney himself nailed the problem of a remake when he
told the Associated Press...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:45 PM on Wednesday, October 5, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:32 PM on Wednesday, October 5, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:37 AM on Wednesday, October 5, 2005
Terrorball
There's an atmospheric gloominess in Joseph Castelo's just-opened The War Within (Magnolia/HD Net). Almost all the scenes are darkly lit, and the lead character of Hassan (Ayad Akhtar), a Pakistani student who comes to New York to carry out a terrorist bombing, wears a glum, vaguely irritated, don't-be-trivial-with me expression the whole time.
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:52 PM on Tuesday, October 4, 2005
The decision by Nicolas Cage and wife Alice Kim Cage to name their just-born son Kal-el is...how can I best put this?...deranged. Can you imagine growing up knowing you've been named after Superman (i.e., his Kryptonian name)? This ranks with Frank Zappa naming his daughter Moon Unit and that dirty mangy dog in the Johnny Cash song naming his son "Sue."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:44 PM on Monday, October 3, 2005
I've seen a demo of Sony's Blu-ray high-definition DVD process, and I've asked two or three people about the differences between it and Toshiba's HD-DVD system, and it comes down to this -- Blu-ray is a more expensive process but it's more high-end...more digitally
au courant and forward-looking...and HD-DVD, which I haven't seen, is more of a backward-designed system but it's cheaper to work with. There are one or two other twists and wrinkles, but that's what it basically comes down to, trust me. And you won't find any trade reports anywhere that just
say that.
The latest development...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:31 PM on Sunday, October 2, 2005
There's a DVD series called "Sundance Festival Favorites," and the distributor is the curiously-named Genius Products, Inc. Curious because one of the titles, which is due for release on 10.25, is
Jill Spreicher's Clockwatchers('98), a comedy about office angst and girl empowerment that costarred Toni Collette, Parker Posey and Lisa Kudrow. Curious because
Clockwatchers wasn't even a slight favorite at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival...it
died there. The word was so negative that it took another year and a half for the film to find its way into theatres. It opened on 5.15.98.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:33 PM on Sunday, October 2, 2005
A lot of journos (including
columnist Emanuel Levy) have written pieces about the just-passed 50th anniversary of James Dean's death, which happened around sundown on 9.30.55. But how many have driven up to the actual collision spot in Cholame, California, and...you know, gotten out of the car and stood there and closed their eyes and smelled the air and let the lingering vibe of that tragedy (and believe me, you can still feel it) sink in? I'm just asking.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:10 PM on Sunday, October 2, 2005
I slipped into a 9:45 pm showing of Capote Saturday night (10.1) at the Arclight and there were only two or three unoccupied seats. Bennett Miller's film averaged a bit more than $25,000 per screen with a haul of $303,000 in just twelve situations. A good start, but a film like this needs to pace itself. Then again, how can any semi-intelligent movie fan go through the next four or five months without seeing Phillip Seymour Hoffman's knock-down Oscar-calibre lead performance? There's no ducking it.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:29 PM on Sunday, October 2, 2005
Here's a nicely written
Roman Polanski interview piece by the
Guardian's Sue Summers. I'm now into catching
Oliver Twist, which I didn't feel like making an effort to see during the Toronto Film Festival. Polanski doesn't like to sit down with journalists. I tried to speak with him in Paris in '02 when the Oscar chances of
The Pianist...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:02 PM on Sunday, October 2, 2005
Nobody at Warner Bros. told me about any screenings of Carroll Ballard's Duma, which has been called an excellent & moving kids-and-nature movie by Scott Foundas and Roger Ebert, and it's now hitting me I have to pay to see it at a theatre this weekend ....great. If I don't go it'll probably be yanked and then I'll have to wait four months for the DVD.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:52 PM on Saturday, October 1, 2005
Reactions to Susan Stroman's
The Producers appear to be sharply divided at the very least, and that's not just another way of saying the reactions are "mixed." The movie has a lot of fans. A guy who attended last Thursday's research screening wrote that "even though my entire group (myself plus three friends, all of whom see a fair number of flicks) despised
The Producers...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:42 AM on Saturday, October 1, 2005
It's not lead actress Zhang Ziyi but supporting actress Gong Li who's the sensation in Memoirs of a Geisha, or so I've been told...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:42 AM on Saturday, October 1, 2005
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:16 AM on Saturday, October 1, 2005
The
L.A. Times' Claudia Eller and John Horn are now
saying that studio execs are admitting that last summer's slump was mostly about cruddy movies, and probably wasn't a harbinger of a permanent downturn in theatrical revenues. The reason for this sudden candor is that Hollywood has just experienced four punchy weeks at the box-office (grosses 17% higher than what they were last year from Labor Day to last weekend) due to the popularity of
The Exorcism of Emily Rose,
Transporter 2,
Flightplan and
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:53 AM on Saturday, October 1, 2005
