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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
June 26
Cheri
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Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
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I Hate Valentine's Day
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
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All Good Things
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When in Rome
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August 21
Five Minutes of Heaven
Goose on the Loose!
It Might Get Loud
World's Greatest Dad
August 28
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Tyler Perrys: I Can Do It All Myself
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The Burning Plain
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Brand New Day
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Jennifer's Body
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A Serious Man
Toy Story/Toy Story 2
Friday, March 31, 2006
2 comments
A couple of weeks after
A couple of weeks after I called director-screenwriter John Milius about that issue of seeing parallels between the Wolverines in his classic Red Dawn (1984) and the anti-American resistance in Iraq, he finally called back. I've been speaking to him off and on since the late '80s or early '90s. We danced around the question for a bit, but that's often what talking to Milius is like -- circling, veering in and out. He's one of the greatest guys in the world to talk to about the psychology of war and military history. We eventually sashayed into the subject. "I'm one of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:23 PM on Friday, March 31, 2006
1 comment
I'm reluctant to get into
I'm reluctant to get into this because I know how venting about weight makes me sound, but funny-guy Vince Vaughn looks too bulky in the trailer for The Breakup (Universal, 6.2). I was half focused on the premise, dialogue and jokes, and half trying to ignore a voice that wouldn't stop saying, "Whoa...guy's gotta hit the treadmill." But I lost the battle and the "whoa" voice, in fact, kept getting louder and louder. Forget Vaughn's Swingers physique -- he hasn't had that for ten years. The problem is that he looks heavier in this trailer than he did in The Wedding Crashers,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:17 PM on Friday, March 31, 2006
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Being something of a talent-spotter,
Being something of a talent-spotter, I agree with Anne Thompson's recommendation about Movie Marketing Madness. It's a site about the latest scientific techniques to strengthen soil nutrients in water-depleted areas...a site about the business of selling movies, I mean...and it's pretty damn good. The author is Chris Thilk, a 31 year-old Chicago-based writer and married guy with two kids. (I wrote earlier that Thilk is most likely single and lonely, since happy fulfilled guys don't bang out blogs....not this time! Thilk has also never toiled in any ad agencies.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:39 PM on Friday, March 31, 2006
1 comment
The smartest thing that Business
The smartest thing that Business Week columnist Jon Fine says in his riff about New Line's Snakes on a Plane (8.18) is "I can't wait till this comes out...although on a certain level, I guess it already has." Precisely. Snakes is the internet rumble about it...I've had lots of fun and laughed at a lot of hand-made songs and video spots...and I'm starting to think the hoopla has probably already peaked, in fact. (I told this to a Washington Post staffer who interviewed me for a Snakes piece yesterday morning -- file it quickly!) Richard Williamson at Adfreak has suggested a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:00 PM on Friday, March 31, 2006
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There's a boo-boo in Borys
There's a boo-boo in Borys Kit's Hollywood Reporter story that's partly about Stone Village Prods. having hired Bo Goldman to pen an adaptation of a forthcoming remake of Jules Dassin's Rififi, which will star Al Pacino in the Jean Servais role. The piece names the director of the remake as "Walt" Becker. Referred to in the story as Pacino's collaborator on Sea of Love and City Hall, the guy's actual name is Harold Becker. Walt Becker, an actual guy, directed Van Wilder.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:22 AM on Friday, March 31, 2006
2 comments
"Page Six" says in a
"Page Six" says in a lead item today that "embattled Paramount chief Brad Grey's days seem to be numbered" and that "speculation on a possible replacement for him is running rampant." Okay, maybe...but does anyone really think Viacom president and CEO Tom Freston and the Paramount board are going to jettison Grey because federal prosecutors are rattling their sabers about some wiretapping mucky-muck that went on back in the '90s when Grey was a talent manager, and because reporters are writing stories about this? LA Indie's Ross Johnson believes that upper-level executives relish wrestling matches of this sort, and that the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:50 AM on Friday, March 31, 2006
1 comment
A seasoned talent who has
A seasoned talent who has his alliances and enemies like anyone else in this town, but in my estimation has always had a fairly profound understanding of Hollywood power games, and who now enjoys a certain priveleged insight into upper-stratosphere Hollywood maneuverings...this guy told me something yesterday about Paramount chief Brad Grey's former attorney Bert Fields, who's being pressured these days by federal prosecutors over suspicions that he may have been doing the bidding of Grey (and possibly others) when he allegedly hired indicted investigator Anthony Pellicano to wiretap certain persons in order to provide Grey and other clients with information that could...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:56 AM on Friday, March 31, 2006
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I rather liked Greg McLean's
I rather liked Greg McLean's Wolf Creek upon seeing it at Sundance '05, and I said so right away. Very few in my journo circle agreed, though, and more than a few despised it. Which is why it feels oddly comforting, way after the fact, to read Christopher Kelly, film critic for the Dallas-Ft. Worth Star Telegram, give it a thumbs-up. Mat Zoller Seitz was startled by Kelly's piece, and then challenged him to discuss it online.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:04 AM on Friday, March 31, 2006
Thursday, March 30, 2006
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That guy who's worked with
That guy who's worked with N.Y. Times Manohla Dargis and has more to the point trashed the idea of her being worthy for the Pulitzer Prize in that Women's Wear Daily piece has an enemy in L.A. Daily News critic Glenn Whipp. "Whoever this source is has a serious case of professional jealousy," Whipp wrote this evening. "This person never hears that Dargis is the best critic the Times has? I hear it all the time."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:52 PM on Thursday, March 30, 2006
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I'm watching the PBS DVD
I'm watching the PBS DVD of Ric Burns's two-hour Eugene O'Neill documentary, and it has a clip from a 1960 televised production of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, and suddenly there's a dissolute Robert Redford playing Don Parritt.... 
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:11 PM on Thursday, March 30, 2006
2 comments
"Now that Peter Jackson's King
"Now that Peter Jackson's King Kong has been released as a two-disc DVD, enterprising fans will undoubtedly find a way to upload the 188-minute film and trim it down to a more dynamic running time," writes DVD/Laser Newsletter editor Doug Pratt. Please! If someone does this soon, I will provide a link and do my part to bring viewers to it. Jackson's Kong is the ultimate example of a film that plays pretty well the first viewing (exciting after the 70 minute mark!...that fun dino run!), and gets weaker and weaker the more you think back upon it. Repeat after me --...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:25 PM on Thursday, March 30, 2006
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Film critic Manohla Dargis has
Film critic Manohla Dargis has been been submitted by her N.Y. Times editors as a contender for a Pulitzer Prize, and someone "whos worked with her there" trashes her, saying "by no means do you ever hear that [Dargis] is the best critic [the Times] has...she's known for synopsizing and giving stuff away. You're not supposed to read her if you don't want to know what's going to happen."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:53 PM on Thursday, March 30, 2006
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Universal Pictures has agreed to
Universal Pictures has agreed to hand over 10% of the opening weekend grosses of United 93 (opening 4.28) to the Flight 93 National Memorial. The proposed $30 million memorial will be located in a field near the spot where Flight #93 crashed on 9/11, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. This seems like a good move, right? The Universal donation, I mean.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:06 PM on Thursday, March 30, 2006
2 comments
Rally Round
Rally Round
If a movie is going to try and tell the truth about a real event, I believe it should stick as closely as possible to what is actually known, and if certain things about this event aren't crystal clear then that should be acknowledged and somehow worked into the film.
With this theory in mind, it hit me this morning how United 93 (Universal, 4.28), Paul Greengrass's 9/11 thriller, should best unfold. Since nobody knows what specifically happened during the last few minutes before United #93 slammed into muddy ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the best way is to end it,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:45 PM on Thursday, March 30, 2006
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With Basic Instinct 2 arriving
With Basic Instinct 2 arriving this Friday, here's an amusing piece about unwanted sequels by L.A. Daily News critic Glenn Whipp. One of the the misbegotten is Oliver's Story, a 1978 sequel to Love Story. I remember this film's poster fondly, or rather a dialogue- added variation. I saw it on a New York subway station wall just after the film opened in December '78. The graffiti dialogue made me laugh, and I've told people about it for years and they've laughed, so I'll try it out on the readership. This isn't a family column, but I'm going to use polite...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:22 PM on Thursday, March 30, 2006
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Hollywood Elsewhere's technical ally Jim
Hollywood Elsewhere's technical ally Jim Stanley has constructed a special search engine that's aimed at only the WIRED section. He's eventually going to put up a regular link to this on the main page, but in the meantime here it is.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:52 AM on Thursday, March 30, 2006
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
2 comments
Many people have written in
Many people have written in and asked if I've seen Dylan Avery and Korey Rowe's Loose Change (2nd edition), a documentary that lays out a lot of suspicious maybes, intriguing indications, and clues of different shapes, weights and sizes to support a premise that neocons in the U.S. government orchestrated the 9/11 attacks for their own political benefit. A lot of readers think it's at least a disturbing piece (smart, disciplined, well-ordered), and probably the most famous member of this club is Charlie Sheen. Anyway, I've seen it and thought about it, and I know a lot of bright people...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:08 PM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
1 comment
Oh, and by the way:
Oh, and by the way: the allegedly brash nude footage of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct 2 isn't that brash at all. I guess Columbia had to trim it down to satisfy the MPAA. All I know is that is that your eyes barely have a chance to feast before the editor cuts back to David Morrissey. It's basically blink-and-you'll-miss-it. There's a nice boob shot that lasts maybe four or five seconds, and I don't know what that New York guy was on about when he told "Page Six" that "the only thing worse than the dialogue were Sharon's implants," one of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:26 PM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
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Paul Greengrass's United 93, the
Paul Greengrass's United 93, the 9/11 thriller hitting theatres on 4.28, will open Manhattan's Tribeca Film Festival on 4.25. Tammy Rosen's press release says that people whose family members died on Flight 93 will be there. Also attending will be "other 9/11 groups and family organizations and first responders whose lives were forever altered on that day." (After I read this last sentence to a friend, he asked, "Will they be flying them in on United?") It's obvious why this downtown Manhattan film festival is looking to show United 93, but I sense a vague strategy in the presence of the victims'...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:28 PM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
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David Fincher's Zodiac is absolutely
David Fincher's Zodiac is absolutely going to be called that. Chronicles is just what it was called during casting and shooting, apparently...as a ruse. Movies do this sometimes. Just yesterday a breakdown came out for Transformers under the name Prime Detective.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:21 PM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
1 comment
Columbia had an all-media screening
Columbia had an all-media screening last night of Basic Instinct 2 (Columbia, 3.31) at the new AMC Century City plex. The hope was that it might be Showgirls bad...something deliriously awful...so bad it would make middle-aged men squeal like pigs. Alas, the verdict is that it falls short. At best, it's Catwoman bad, which is what gossip columnist George Christy said to me after the show. But of course, that movie wasn't bad enough either. The New York Post's "Page Six" reports that people laughed at some of the BI2 dialogue at Monday night's premiere screening in Manhattan. Two or...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:57 PM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
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It's not just David Fincher's
It's not just David Fincher's Zodiac (Paramount, 9.22) that's probably going to run about three hours, but also Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Warner Bros., October), which stars Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard and Sam Rockwell. I don't know anything rock-solid, but it seems fair to deduce that the James film will run long because Dominik's script is a whopping 210 pages, whereas James Vanderbilt's Zodiac script runs about 190 pages...do the math. Here, by the way, is a well-written appraisal of a 2004 draft of the James script, posted six...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:02 PM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
1 comment
Here are two edited reactions
Here are two edited reactions to Julia Roberts' stage debut in the very first preview performance of Three Days of Rain in New York on Tuesday night, 3.28: Guy #1 has written that Roberts "appeared nervous in the beginning but hit her stride in the second act. Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper [were] both outstanding. A standing ovation came at the end (of course), but Julia appeared very happy to get this one out of the way. A few lines were flubbed, but the show is in good shape considering it was the first preview." Guy #2 wrote that the show is...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:03 PM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
1 comment
Kim Voynar at Cinematical has
Kim Voynar at Cinematical has spoken to Rebel Without a Cause screenwriter Stewart Stern, and reports that "the screen test Marlon Brando made in 1947" -- which will be included on a new double-disc DVD of A Streetcar Named Desire coming out May 2nd -- "had practically nothing to do with the Rebel Without A Cause we're all familiar with." Stern tells Voynar that "Marlon's 1947 test was not for Rebel Without a Cause as we know it. Dr. Robert Lindner wrote a book of that title in which there were several case histories, written in fictional form, of young offenders...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:57 AM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
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The Guardian's Xan Brooks on
The Guardian's Xan Brooks on how well Marlon Brando might have handled the Jim Stark role in Rebel Without a Cause.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:55 AM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
1 comment
It didn't truly hit me
It didn't truly hit me until yesterday the degree to which public broadcasting TV affiliates (like L.A.'s KCET) are operated like medieval feifdoms, totally local and unto themselves with no regard for providing viewers with shared information about options to re-view or purchase popular shows. I'm saying this as a way of explaining that I was bizarrely misinformed yesterday by both a KCET spokesperson and a WGBH media relations executive named Lucy Sholley when I called about wanting to see a re-broadcast of Ric Burns' Eugene O'Neill, a highly praised two-hour documentary that aired on PBS stations Monday night. Neither the KCET...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:33 AM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
1 comment
That $10 million Randy Quaid
That $10 million Randy Quaid Brokeback Mountain lawsuit filed on Thursday, 3.23 against the makers of this widely honored, very profitable film (i.e., Focus Features, James Schamus, David Linde, Del Mar Productions), now enjoys a certain enhancement by the mere fact that Sharon Waxman has examined its merits in a N.Y. Times story out today (3.29). Boil the snow out of it, and the conclusions are these: (a) Randy Quaid is in no way a whinin', groanin' sourpuss actor but in fact has a bright, buoyant attitude about the lawsuit, as amply indicated by the photo that accompanies Waxman's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:47 AM on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
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If anyone in Manhattan went
If anyone in Manhattan went to the first-night preview of Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain on Tuesday, 3.28 (which is being performed as I write this, the time being 9:04 pm back east) and feels like sharing an opinion about how first-time performer Julia Roberts did in the lead role, please get in touch. Roberts' costars in the Joe Mantello-directed show are Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper. The official opening is 4.19, and the reportedly sold-out show will run at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre for for 12 weeks. This Playbill piece claims "many critics consider [Rain to be]...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:52 PM on Tuesday, March 28, 2006
1 comment
If you weren't watching your
If you weren't watching your local PBS station Monday night (like me) and therefore missed Ric Burns' Eugene O'Neill, a two-hour "American Experience" documentary about this country's greatest playwright, you're out of luck for a while. There are no repeat broadcasts set for the immediate future, although the widely-praised film will probably turn up on DVD sometime in the summer. Not making this show available for subsequent viewings over the next couple of weeks is a ridiculous policy. It underscores the suspicion that PBS is a very old-fashioned organization with separate feifdoms spread across the country, and basically out of touch with...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:50 PM on Tuesday, March 28, 2006
1 comment
Two things about David Fincher's
Two things about David Fincher's Zodiac (Paramount, 9/22) -- one sounding a tad questionable and the other most likely accurate. The film, first things first, is a crime period piece based on the Robert Graysmith "books" about cops and reporters on the trail of the Zodiac killer who plagued the San Francisco area in the '60s and '70s. Except last night a person close to the film told me it's no longer being called Zodiac but Chronicles, allegedly due to some title-rights issue. (The IMDB lists a recent Thinkfilm release with Rory Culkin and Robin Tunney called The Zodiac, but a Paramount...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:23 PM on Tuesday, March 28, 2006
3 comments
Still from 1947 screen test...Read More
Sweet Bird of Youth
Sweet Bird of Youth
It's not so much how the 23 year-old Marlon Brando looked, although this is fascin- ating in itself. It's more the metaphor of a life not yet blemished or sullied...an aura of freshness, vitality, raw presence.
These are stills from a screen test Brando made in 1947 for a planned film of Rebel Without a Cause, in which he would have played the famously troubled teenager Jim Stark, whom James Dean made into a legendary inconographic figure in Nich- olas Ray's 1955 film of the same name.
Still from 1947 screen test...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:12 PM on Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Monday, March 27, 2006
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Stop what you're doing (again)
Stop what you're doing (again) and watch "Wife Force One," an absolutely brilliant short about the jeopardy that the wives of Harrison Ford have been subjected to over the years...and the overal climate of "rage, pure rage" that has permeated his numerous action films.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:47 PM on Monday, March 27, 2006
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The feds looking into the
The feds looking into the past deeds of indicted private investigator Anthony Pellicano "have found no convincing evidence that actor Steven Seagal was involved in depositing a dead fish on a reporter's windshield in June 2002," etc. Great... and nobody cares. This story is mainly about whether or not Paramount chief Brad Grey is going to emerge so compromised by allegations of involvement in illegal wiretapping via his associations with Pellicano by way of attorney Bert Fields that he'll be forced to resign...that's it. With maybe a sideplot" exploring to what extent Tom Cruise may have...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:25 AM on Monday, March 27, 2006
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Director Richard Fleisher left us
Director Richard Fleisher left us a few days ago, and I'm only just paying homage now...sorry. If you're a film buff-type, you might feel like saluting Fleisher for having directing Narrow Margin, the classic 1952 noir-on-a-train with Charles McGraw. But for me, Fleischer's peak was The Vikings -- the 1958 historical action epic that was mostly dominated by producer-star Kirk Douglas, but was (and still is) notable for two dramatic elements that still work today. One is what seems to happen inside the male Viking characters (particularly Douglas and dad Ernest Borgnine) whenever Odin, the Nordic God, is mentioned....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:33 AM on Monday, March 27, 2006
1 comment
"I think there's a big
"I think there's a big difference between James Bond and Jason Bourne. I think James Bond is the secret agent who likes being a secret agent and likes killing people. He's a misogynist, an old-fashioned imperialist, and Jason Bourne is an outsider on the run and he's one of us and he's fighting against them, I think. That's the profound difference, and that's why I like Bourne." -- director Paul Greengrass riffing two weeks ago with Empire magazine online about the The Bourne Ultimatum, which will (naturally) topline Matt Damon, the script having been co-written by Tony Gilroy and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:55 AM on Monday, March 27, 2006
1 comment
The New York Post's "Page
The New York Post's "Page Six" column says "the race is on" to see who'll be the first to make a biopic of LSD guru Timothy Leary -- Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company, which has been half-heartedly stirring this pot for at least a couple of years, or Fountain director Darren Aronofsky , who didn't mention any Leary project to me when we last spoke (at the Golden Globes awards) but whatever. Aronofsky may or may not be in a "race" mode but the DiCaprio team is mostly slumbering, I've been told. Two years on the case and there's not even...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:22 AM on Monday, March 27, 2006
1 comment
Stop what you're doing right
Stop what you're doing right now (seriously) and watch this -- actor Dave Coyne (a.k.a. "DCLugi" of Subatomic Warp), has put together a comic video, called "Early Auditions", about four actors -- Chris Walken, Jack Nicholson, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro -- doing their best to land a part in Snakes on a Plane. [Note: The first link goes to Snakes on a Blog, which had the Coyne video on the top of its page at 7:50 am Monday, but they'll eventually move it down, of course.]
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:38 AM on Monday, March 27, 2006
Sunday, March 26, 2006
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"Be disloyal. It's your duty
"Be disloyal. It's your duty to the human race. The human race needs to survive and it's the loyal man who dies first from anxiety or a bullet or overwork. If you have to earn a living and the price they make you pay is loyalty, be a double agent -- and never let either of the two sides know your real name. The same applies to women and God. They both respect a man they don't own, and they'll go on raising the price they are willing to offer. Didn't Christ say that very thing? Was the prodigal son loyal, or the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:08 PM on Sunday, March 26, 2006
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Kris Tapley informs me that
Kris Tapley informs me that Univeral publicist Jen Chamberlain sent out a press release on 3.7.06 announcing the title change from Flight 93 to United 93. Okay, fine...but I didn't get it, and it was still being called Flight 93 on the IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and JoBlo earlier today, and Variety ran that story on 3.19 in which they called it Flight 93 and that Google search I mentioned shows that several other sites are still in the old mode, so is everyone suffering from ADD or what?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:55 PM on Sunday, March 26, 2006
1 comment
Here's a pretty good (i.e.,
Here's a pretty good (i.e., well-written, moderately diverting ) piece about Friends with Money director Nicole Holofcener by critic Carina Chocano. I've seen the film, which portrays four Westside L.A. women in terms of their jobs, income and relationships with their men (i.e., mostly husbands), and I certainly recognize some of the characters, character traits and situations. Holofcener is a smart writer, an honest artist and a straight dealer...but there are two things in this film that no one, anywhere, is going to buy. One is Jennifer Aniston playing a poor house cleaner who winds up with a slovenly,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:17 PM on Sunday, March 26, 2006
1 comment
"I, too, just came back
"I, too, just came back from seeing Inside Man and while my audience wasn't vocal against the United 93 trailer like they were in Arlington Heights, my companion turned to me when it ended, saying, 'Do you want to see that? I have no desire to see that...eccch!" -- Joseph Jones, Tampa.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:48 PM on Sunday, March 26, 2006
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One of the zombie letters
One of the zombie letters (in response to my observation that there are no Pacific Rim zombies...the phenomenon is strictly East Coast, Caribbean and other Old World areas) came from reader Charlie Hill, who reminded me about that highly regarded Joe Dante/Sam Hamm Showtime film, Homecoming, which aired on the "Masters of Horror" series last 12.2.05. Based on the short story "Death and Suffrage" by Dale Bailey , it runs with the premise of "what if the hundreds of soldiers killed in Iraq were to rise from the dead for the purpose of voting Bush out of office for lying as to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:35 PM on Sunday, March 26, 2006
1 comment
"I live in Arlington Heights,
"I live in Arlington Heights, Illnois -- a fairly affluent, moderately left-leaning suburb -- and the audience I saw Inside Man with on Saturday reacted none too well to the United 93 trailer. When the Brokeback Mountain trailers first started playing there was some discomfort but nothing too reactive. But reaction to United 93's trailer was downright hostile, with a few people actually yelling, 'too soon!' and 'there's no reason to see that' in addition to a lot of perturbed coughing. From listening to people on the way out, there seemed to be a sentiment that this movie is looking to exploit still-fresh...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:17 PM on Sunday, March 26, 2006
1 comment
...Read More
Switcheroo
Switcheroo
Like old habits, movie titles you've gotten used to can die hard. Even relatively recent ones, like Universal's Flight 93, the Paul Greengrass 9/11 thriller that's opening on Friday, 4.28. Or the former Flight 93, I should say. The old-shoe, boilerplate-sounding Flight 93 of yore...a label I was totally down with.
I was so accustomed to the sound of it that when I linked to the trailer three days ago (on 3.24), I didn't even notice that Universal had snuck in like a cat burglar on the Cote d'Azur and changed it to United 93.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:47 PM on Sunday, March 26, 2006
1 comment
Turns out that Snakes on
Turns out that Snakes on a Plane tune I liked so much was sung by Neil Cicierega. He wrote this evening and asked me to link to his www.lemondemon.com site, except it's been shut down due to bandwidth overages. He also passed along "live journal post" whatchamacallit.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:55 AM on Sunday, March 26, 2006
Saturday, March 25, 2006
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A mildly depressing, somewhat alarming
A mildly depressing, somewhat alarming piece by Nerve writer Justin Clark about the growing power of conservative media mogul Philip Anschutz. The conservative-minded owner of Regal Cinemas (as well as the Edwards and United Artists chains) has plans to shape and control the kind of movies you'll be seeing at his theatres in the coming years. Sanitized, family- or Christian-friendly...a segregated aesthetic environment.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:48 PM on Saturday, March 25, 2006
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A "Page Six" item, based
A "Page Six" item, based on the word of private eye Richard Sabatino, says that Nicole Kidman was "well aware" that Tom Cruise "was using a private detective to wiretap her phones during their 2001 divorce" [and that] "Kidman knew that Cruise's private detective, Anthony Pellicano, was a resourceful opponent." The story says that "during her divorce, [Kidman] would talk to friends on the phone and every couple of minutes break into the conversation and say, 'So, Tom, are you listening?' or 'Am I saying what you want me to say, Tom?' She knew he was either tapping her phone or trying...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:25 PM on Saturday, March 25, 2006
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British author and gossip columnist
British author and gossip columnist Toby Young yesterday passed along an insane-sounding rumor about Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter being considered as Paramount honcho Brad Grey's replacement, a story that Young admitted was almost "almost impossible to believe." The noteworthy thing here is Young's declaration that "Grey's position looks increasingly untenable...at this rate, it's not a question of if he goes, but when."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:55 PM on Saturday, March 25, 2006
1 comment
More blood in the water,
More blood in the water, the sharks are circling, and things are looking even more dicey as far as the future of Paramount chief Brad Grey is concerned. The latest bite was contained in yesterday's (3.24) N.Y. Times story linking Grey and indicted investigator and accused wiretapper Anthony Pellicano by David Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner. They reported that "the first direct evidence of eavesdropping" by the indicted investigator "has surfaced in newly filed court documents" that contain "excerpts of what prosecutors have described as Mr. Pellicano's summaries of conversations he intercepted in 2001 between Vincent Zenga...and his lawyer, Gregory...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:36 PM on Saturday, March 25, 2006
1 comment
"There's an aircraft error in
"There's an aircraft error in the Flight 93 trailer. The shot of the jet taking off into the rising sun is not a United Airlines 757 but in fact a British Airways Airbus. There's a good possibility that it is just a stock shot used for the trailer to be eventually be replaced, but..." -- Andy Smith, an airline expert.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:23 PM on Saturday, March 25, 2006
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This is my favorite Snakes
This is my favorite Snakes on a Plane T-shirt so far. And only $14 a pop.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:19 PM on Saturday, March 25, 2006
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Randy Sharp, director of special
Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the Mississippi-based American Family Association, is encouraging "concerned" (i.e., anti-gay) Christians to contact Wal-Mart regarding the 4.4 release of Universal Home Video's Brokeback Mountain DVD. Sharp claims the retailer's plan to distribute the "pro-homosexual film" (according to an AgapePress news story) is evidence that Wal-Mart has strayed from its family-friendly roots. (Excuse me? Wal-Mart is friendly only to the notion of constant commerical expansion and destruction of small-town businesses.) An Advocate story last October reported that Sharp was complaining that American Girl, a manufacturer of dolls and children's books, was promoting lesbianism.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:58 PM on Saturday, March 25, 2006
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Toronto Star critic Geoff Pevere,
Toronto Star critic Geoff Pevere, having described himself as a "nearly extinct stone-age geezer" (funny...he doesn't sound that way in his reviews), laments how common it is to be viciously attacked these days if people don't agree with your film reviews. The internet, says Pevere, is "the ideal technology for venting intellectually unadulterated spleen...with e-mail it has never been easier to fire a vigorously hawked-up spitball and land a direct hit at someone with whom you disagree. Even better, at someone who can't see you and doesn't even need to know your name. (Being mad is never more tempting -- or fun!...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:43 PM on Saturday, March 25, 2006
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The two big success stories
The two big success stories of the weekend are Spike Lee 's Inside Man and Jason Reitman's Thank You for Smoking. Lee's bank-robbery drama was projected to do $25 to $30 million this weekend, and current estimates (based on yesterday's figures) project a $28.6 million tally, having done about $9.5 million on Friday. And Smoking took in $262,000 in 54 theatres yesterday, averaging about $20,000 a print. I'm sorry to report that V for Vendetta is falling...projected to earn about $13.1 or $13.2 million for the weekend, which is a reduction in business of 47% from last weekend. (Word-of-mouth obviously isn't fantastic). The...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:09 PM on Saturday, March 25, 2006
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In his story about the
In his story about the current proliferation of zombies in movies, N.Y. Times writer Warren St. John lists all the recent commercial manifestations required for a story like this to be approved by his Times editor, but he fails to mention one important geographical distinction. Zombie Nation is pretty much anchored in the eastern region of the U.S., the Caribbean islands, New Orleans, and most recently England (i.e., Shaun of the Dead). If anyone has written about, drawn a graphic novel or made any kind of exploitation-horror film about zombie armies in the Pacific Rim territories...Los Angeles, the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:15 AM on Saturday, March 25, 2006
Friday, March 24, 2006
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This is a totally excellent
This is a totally excellent trailer for Paul Greengrass's Flight 93 (Universal, 4.28)...you know, the 9/11 movie about the plane that went down in the Pennsylvania countryside because a few brave passengers stood up and did the hard thing. But what's with the image on the one-sheet [see below]? Flight # 93 was nowhere near Manhattan after the towers got hit, but Universal's ad guys...well, as the saying goes, "Leave it to the ad guys!" They obviously decided the folks wouldn't get it unless the burning towers were front-and-center. Talk about clever, creative, Cleo-Award work. 
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:22 PM on Friday, March 24, 2006
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Randy Quaid acted in Brokeback
Randy Quaid acted in Brokeback Mountain for peanuts, so you can understand why he's pissed that he did that, given that the movie has taken in $160 million worldwide. He's figuring that a portion of the dough ought to be passed around as a retroactive make-up thing. And yet it seems a mite strange that Quaid is suing Focus Features, Del Mar Prods., and Brokeback producers James Schamus and David Linde for $10 million on complaints of "intentional misrepresentation, "negligent misrepresentation" and "recisssion." (The last term apparently refers to someone having "rescinded" or gone back on a deal point.) I don't...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:03 PM on Friday, March 24, 2006
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When he recently interviewed former
When he recently interviewed former pinup queen Bettie Page, whose life during the 1940s and '50s is the focus of Mary Harron's The Notorious Bettie Page (Picturehouse, 4.14), L.A. Times staffer Louis Sahagun wrote that that "her face remains smooth and fresh, and one can still see the face of the young woman in the old. Her eyes, bright blue, still sparkle." That's good to hear because judging by Paige's reported criticism of the film, she's not that hip. After seeing the film at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, Page reportedly complained about the title. "Notorious? That's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:58 PM on Friday, March 24, 2006
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What's the worst DVD commentary
What's the worst DVD commentary track ever recorded? Obviously a subjective call, but Rate That Commentary hands the booby prize to the usually very well-spoken William Friedkin and his commentary on Warner Home Video's The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen, which came out in June 2004. Odd...Friedkin is usually very good on the mike. "A slow and uninformative comentary...one of the worst," "the worst...non-informative and boring...the director is clearly uninspired [and] just describes the events we can see for ourselves. Actually, he also spends a lot of time in silence," and"I don't understand why this is the worst commentary ever! Was...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:38 PM on Friday, March 24, 2006
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The coolest thing about John
The coolest thing about John Anderson and Laura Kim's new how-to-sell-your-independent-movie book, "I Wake Up Screening" (Billboard, 3.30), is, of course, the title...although it sounds more like a description of what it's like to attend Sundance or Cannes or Toronto as a buyer or a journalist than anything else. It's a how-to manual for emerging filmmakers "about how to (and how not to) get their films talked about, written about"...uhhm, the best way to do this is to get people like me to see it early. Anderson and Kim also "explain how to get their films evaluated, how to put together the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:58 AM on Friday, March 24, 2006
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That server shutdown that happened
That server shutdown that happened around 10:30 am and lasted about fifteen minutes was one of those unfortunate incidents. Lunar Pages has offered their apologies, and I, too, am offering mine.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:13 AM on Friday, March 24, 2006
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A little more than three
A little more than three years ago Variety's Michael Fleming reported that former bigtime auteur Lawrence Kasdan (Grand Canyon, The Big Chill, et. al.) was starting work (along with screenwriter Terri Minsky) on a U.S. remake of Sandra Nettlebeck's Mostly Martha for Castle Rock. There was moderate excitement about this since pretty much everyone with any taste was fairly taken with the '01 German-made original. In June 2002, back in my Reel.com period, I ran a rave about Martha, calling it "a culinary Kramer vs. Kramer" about a female Hamburg chef with selfish tendencies (movingly played by Martina Gedeck) having...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:47 AM on Friday, March 24, 2006
Thursday, March 23, 2006
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I mentioned something a while
I mentioned something a while back about David Morrisey, Sharon Stone's costar in Basic Instinct 2 (Columbia, 3.31), not being "her sexual equal...his eyes are too small and his pale freckly face is a bit soft and puffy." One presumes Morrisey was hired for the part because of this...because he would make Stone look good. Can anyone imagine Stone and director Michael Caton-Jones deciding to cast an exceptionally handsome and photogenic younger costar? This movie was Stone's show...she's the one who had to look great, not the guy. 
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:53 PM on Thursday, March 23, 2006
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"As long as the leadership
"As long as the leadership at the other agencies remains static, many Hollywood players are putting their money on Endeavor as the one that could mount a challenge to the CAA monolith. The solution for Endeavor would be to follow the CAA model of focusing on teamwork and efficiency -- and bring in more top agents like ex-CAA agent [Patrick] Whitesell. 'If they pick off a partner or two from the other agencies,' one producer says, 'the balance could shift pretty quickly. Pull over an Ed Limato and shake the power balance. CAA can't handle everybody. One defection, and the ball will start...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:58 PM on Thursday, March 23, 2006
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If you're mainly a WIRED
If you're mainly a WIRED reader (i.e., not into reading the feature stories in this column), I'll reiterate the key point of today's Snakes on a Plane story, which is that New Line Cinema's 8.18 release date -- five months from now -- is a mistake at this stage, given all the excitement being generated right now. No movie company can orchestrate what's happening with Snakes, and it's folly to think that the present energy levels will keep up for another 19 or 20 weeks. If New Line's distribution chief Russell Schwartz is smart, he'll push Snakes into theatres sometime in late May...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:02 PM on Thursday, March 23, 2006
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Snakes! Snakes!
Snakes! Snakes!
You're in your too-small coach seat and speechless, eyes aglare and back arched. Reason? A dangling diamondback rattler (as opposed to a dangling participle), four or five inches in front of your face and hissing like any well-motivated serpent, is about to bite down hard.
This, in a nutshell, is New Line's Snakes on a Plane (8.18). Combined with that hilariously idiotic title, it's also behind a growing camp following and internet groundswell that appears to be turning this low-rent thriller into the first major movie phenomenon of 2006.
I wasn't on the boat at...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:04 PM on Thursday, March 23, 2006
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Holy coyote! Holy fruit salad!...now
Holy coyote! Holy fruit salad!...now the N.Y. Daily News has sided with the N.Y. Times in this completely groundless beep-beep vs. meep-meep debate, which, of course, Hollywood Elsewhere is totally on the audibly-correct side of. I'll say once again to these old-media newspaper editors who keep using "beep beep"... listen to one of the damn Roadrunner cartoons already. I know this will require extra effort...I know it'll take time out of your lunch hour, but just sit down, put on the headphones and actually listen to one of the damn things and ask yourself, "Is the Roadrunner really going 'beep beep'?" If...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:39 AM on Thursday, March 23, 2006
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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Steve Buscemi keeps getting bumped
Steve Buscemi keeps getting bumped off in his movies, and when he directs movies (like the upcoming Lonesome Jim) he always seems to make them about loser gloom-heads...but the thing moviegoers love about Buscemi...his ace-in-the-hole material...is when he plays extra-smart guys saying really sassy lines. Reservoir Dogs' Mr. Pink explaining why he doesn't tip, that psycho killer in Con Air explaining the meaning of irony, his high-IQ mobster Tony Blundetto imploring Tony Soprano, "Put me in, coach!" I once suggested to him during an interview that he make and act in a short film about that bar fight he got into two...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:41 PM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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Basic Instinct 2 (Columbia, 3.31)
Basic Instinct 2 (Columbia, 3.31) "will almost certainly be hailed as unforgettable -- though not, perhaps, for the reasons that Stone and the filmmakers intended. The movie, directed by Michael Caton-Jones, finds Sharon Stone's oversexed ice-queen author, Catherine Tramell, squaring off against a criminal psychologist (British actor David Morrissey) as she goes on trial for the murder of a soccer player. If you expect an erotic thriller, you may be sorely disappointed. But if you expect soft-core camp, you will be rewarded with a showstopper nearly in the league of the weirdly mesmerizing Showgirls. Stone prowls, purrs and struts through every scene, delivering...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:22 PM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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"I've had it with these
"I've had it with these snakes!" -- one of Samuel L. Jackson's money lines in New Line's Snakes on a Plane (8.18). (This is an unfinished trailer -- some of the CG snakes look like something out of a cartoon.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:41 PM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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Will Smith may have another
Will Smith may have another half-decent film opening later this year, and perhaps more: Pursuit of Happyness (Columbia, 12.15), directed by Gabriele Muccino and written by Steve Conrad. It's about a salesmen having a tough time (Smith) as he takes custody of his son (played by Smith's son, Jaden). In any event, Mike Sampson at JoBlo has seen an early cut and reviewed it. An excerpt: "Will this be an Oscar contender or a blockbuster? I'd say Smith has a good chance of being nominated, though nothing else really stuck out to me as being great. A blockbuster? Smith might be able...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:20 PM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven
Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven "Director's Cut" (191 minutes), which I saw and reviewed early last January, is coming out on DVD on 5.23. And Mr. Beaks' Collider site is having a free screening of it 4.4 on Hollywood's Arclight.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:09 PM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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We're all tired of hearing
We're all tired of hearing that Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette (Columbia, 10.13), which will play at the Cannes Film Festival in mid May, is going to be a stylized take on the life of the young Austrian-born woman (Kirsten Dunst) who became the Paris Hilton of her day when she married King Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), and not a "historically accurate" capturing of any kind except for the 18th Century sets, clothes and hairstyles. What's instructive, perhaps, is that before deciding to use Lady Antonia Fraser's biography of the ill-fated empty vessel and party girl --"Marie Antoinette: The Journey," which adopts a view...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:18 PM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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Roadside Attractions will distribute the
Roadside Attractions will distribute the Berlin Film Festival hit The Road to Guantanamo in the U.S. of A. sometime early this summer. Which means, of course, that only people in the big cities will see it in theatres and everyone else will rent the DVD through Netflix. Co-directed by the always-slightly-irritating Michael Winterbottom, it's a docudrama about three British Muslims who were nabbed by U.S. authorities during a visit to Pakistan and were held as suspected terrorists at the U.S. base in Guantanamo for two years because...well, see the film. The victims weren't exactly British gent types (with their Arab-y features and black...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:26 PM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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If Derek Wan's Shadow: Dead
If Derek Wan's Shadow: Dead Riot, a lesbo women-behind-bars zombie flick, is half (or even a third) as entertaining as Nathan Lee's review in the 3.22 New York Times, I'd really like to see it. The opening graph reads, "A cult classic is born in Shadow: Dead Riot, and so is a rampaging corpse baby. Written by Michael Gingold and directed by Derek Wan, this berserk little B-movie is obviously the greatest zombie flick ever set in an experimental women's prison, easily the underground treat of the season, and totally off its rocker." But can the film's distributor, Media Blasters,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:05 PM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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"Because Netflix relies on subscriber
"Because Netflix relies on subscriber ratings and recommendations, and can offer an almost limitless array of product, it creates a level playing field, allowing a tiny indie film to compete with a multiplex monster. It's a great example of what Wired magazine's Chris Anderson calls the Long Tail. Put simply, our culture is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of blockbusters at the head of demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail." (Cool concept, nicely expressed.) "If you go to a movie theater or a Blockbuster, the vast majority of business comes from...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:50 PM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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"It's funny you mentioned The
"It's funny you mentioned The Hospital because I just bought the screenplay off Amazon (as part of "The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky, Vol. II") and am reading it for the first time. (I've never seen the movie but will as soon as I finish.) The impulse came from rewatching the brilliant Network special edition DVD released two or three weeks ago. The speeches were so mesmerizing I just had to see how he wrote them on the page. Chayefsky's writing is definitely 'a little show-offy at times but pleasurable as hell,' but what struck me more was the anarchic wit of his...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:13 AM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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Will Smith as "a charming
Will Smith as "a charming rogue who is blackmailed by the government into doing covert larceny for the good of his country"? God...the old Cary Grant debonair-thief concept again? No offense to the producers (Kevin Misher, John Davis, Joe Singer), but the mentality beneath a project like this is what everyone with a smidgen of taste or a half-functioning brain hates about Hollywood, and is exactly the sort of vehicle that has made Smith into the most vapid African-American superstar around. Smith peaked in '93 when he did Six Degrees of Separation, and with the exception of Enemy of the State...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:33 AM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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I came across these two
I came across these two dialogue files by accident this morning -- two clips from Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital (1971), and it hit me all over again how wonderfully particular and penetrating and needle-sharp these soliloquies are. George C. Scott's confession to a colleague about what a wreck his middle-aged life has become is about as masterful and genuine-sounding as this sort of thing gets, and I love the the cadence he brings to some of the lines. (The almost imperceptible pause he inserts between the words "pushing" and "drugs" is sheer genius.) And the "murder by irony" confession by wacko...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:58 AM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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"Chaiya Chaiya" is a Bollywood
"Chaiya Chaiya" is a Bollywood tune, but I was never entirely clear about what precisely constitutes a Bollywood tune...or a Bollywood film, for that matter. (I know how to define them generally, but not with any particularity.) So a reader named Aamir Hanif laid it all out: "Bollywood refers to all movies that are made in Mumbai, formerly Bombay. Sort of like Hollywood movies." (Okay, I knew that.) "Pakistan, India's neighbor, has the same sort of thing. Its movie capital is a city called Lahore and all Pakistani movies are also called Lollywood movies. The thing with India is that it makes...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:45 AM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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I'd like to ask everyone
I'd like to ask everyone to stop what they're doing and bow their heads in a moment of silence...seriously...for Sidney Lumet's Find Me Guilty, which opened on 3.17 and is already dead. It's one of the best films of 2006 so far, it's Lumet's best since Q & A, and it has what can reasonably be called an embarassment of first-rate performances (by Vin Diesel, Peter Dinklage, Anabella Sciorra, Alex Rocco and Linus Roache, for openers). It cost $13 million to make, took in $608,000 in 439 theatres last weekend, and now has about $667,000 total so far. Forget it, off to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:56 AM on Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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A catchy Indian Bollywood tune
A catchy Indian Bollywood tune called "Chaiya Chaiya" seriously energizes the opening and closing credit sequence of Spike Lee's Inside Man (Universal, 3.24), and is one of the best things about it. The cut was previously used for an allegedly decent Indian 1998 film called Dil Se (i.e., From the Heart.) The composer is a guy named A.R. Rahman, the composer for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams on Broadway (and in London), and currently the composer for the Lord of the Rings musical that's opening (or will soon open) in Toronto.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:22 PM on Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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Here's the voice, mind and
Here's the voice, mind and personality of Gretchen Moll, star of Picturehouse's The Notorious Bettie Page, talking to a round table of journos at today's (Tuesday, 3.21) at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills. Mostly chit-chat, four or five decent questions. (Me? I asked whether she had any contact with the real Bettie.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:08 PM on Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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A portion of the Cannes
A portion of the Cannes 2006 lineup has been reported on, and the only one I'm really hot to see so far is Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's Babel (Paramount, 10.6.06), a three-story interweave in the vein of Amores Perros with a script by that film's author, the great Guillermo Ariagga. Plus a large cast topped by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal. Plus locales in four countries -- Morocco, Tunisia, Mexico and Japan. (A taste: Pitt and Blanchett, a married couple, are in Morocco when she suddenly suffers a terrible accident...forget it, I'm not doing this.) Forget Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:12 PM on Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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"I think you're onto something
"I think you're onto something with this 'beep beep'/'meep meep' thing. I can't imagine any person with functioning ears hearing the Roadunner sound as anything but 'meep meep.' But Warner Bros. seems bizarrely insistent that the actual term is 'beep beep' (for example, see serial number 73689940 in the U.S. trademark database) and Chuck Jones himself used 'beep beep' (with the 'b' clearly pronounced) in interviews. I cannot imagine what sinister purpose they might have had in mind here, but the conspiracy dates back to at least 1952, with the release of the second Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon. The title? Beep...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:57 PM on Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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I've heard some "interesting spin"
I've heard some "interesting spin" from two enthused sources over the last few days about Steven Zallian's All the Kings Men (Columbia, mid-to-late fall). They're saying this period political drama, believe it or not, is going to be the film to beat in the 2006 Oscar race. Based on Robert Penn Warren's novel but for all practical purposes a remake of the Oscar- winning 1949 Robert Rossen film about a ruthless Southern politician modelled on Huey Long, the Mike Medavoy production was yanked from its 12.16.05 release on or about 10.20.05. (Here's the story I wrote when it happened.) Everyone presumed...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:32 PM on Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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Regarding Fathers
Regarding Fathers
There isn't anyone out there who doesn't expect Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks/Paramount) to rank as a probable Best Picture contender later this year, but it won't be screened for another four or five months or so why not chill and write about something else?
Then I figured, "Naaah." I knew I could at least get an idea of how this World War II tone poem will play if I would just focus and sit down and read a March 2005 draft of Paul Haggis's script that's been sitting on my desktop for the last month or two....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:24 PM on Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
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I can't stop laughing at
I can't stop laughing at this. I've read it over and over and it's magnificent....brilliant. The speaker, quoted in USA Today, is Greg Laemmle, president of Laemmle Theaters, a 16 theatre Southern California chain. "The movie business is a little like the drug business. We are the pushers, and our customers are the users. Even if business is good, you have to keep giving people what they want."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:53 PM on Monday, March 20, 2006
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Thanks to MCN's "the Reeler"
Thanks to MCN's "the Reeler" for his unqualified support in the all-important New York Times vs. Hollywood Elsewhere "beep beep" vs. "meep meep" debate, which came to a head in this space on Sunday, 3.19.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:00 PM on Monday, March 20, 2006
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There's a stinky sulfur cloud
There's a stinky sulfur cloud hanging over Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, a Vietnam-Laos escape-from-a-POW camp film set in the mid '60s and costarring Christian Bale, Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies. It's no secret to anyone who's taken the time to read the chat boards attached to Rescue Dawn 's IMDB page that the odor in question has nothing to do with Herzog or the film itself, which no one has seen because it hasn't yet been cut into viewable feature-length form, but from a pair of hotshot L.A. operators -- funny-money financier Elie Samaha and a young wannabe producer named Steve...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:46 PM on Monday, March 20, 2006
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Of the 24 films in
Of the 24 films in this generic N.Y. Daily News spring-preview piece, you can take two to the bank, and they're both from Universal: Spike Lee's Inside Man (opening Friday) and Paul Greengrass's Flight 93 (opening 4.28...only six weeks from now).
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:27 PM on Monday, March 20, 2006
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Time's Tim Padgett has visited
Time's Tim Padgett has visited the Yucatan peninsula set of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (Touchstone, 8.4), and discovered that the movie's message will likely be embraced by the followers of "liberal Hollywood's bible," and that it might play like some kind of wild-ass companion piece to Al Gore's anti-global warming film An Inconvenient Truth, which is opening this spring. "Wacko Mel", as he is generally thought of and/or referred to in liberal circles, has made a violent and very bloody film with human-sacrifice scenes, okay, but it's also a metaphorical warning piece about how the Mayan civilization self-destructed due to ecological abuse...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:55 AM on Monday, March 20, 2006
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Padgett also writes in his
Padgett also writes in his Time magazine Apocalptyo piece that "criticism of Apocalypto is expected from Mexican nationalists ...since it touches on the raw issue of human sacrifice, which scholars don't believe was a prevalent Maya practice until the post-classic period, after A.D. 900, when fiercer influences like the Toltecs and Aztecs arrived. It is in that period, not coincidentally, that Apocalypto is set." Padgett also writes that "if there are complaints about Apocalypto's portrayal of human sacrifice by the Maya, whose mostly impoverished descendants today are a cause celebre for liberals, Gibson says he won't care. 'After what I experienced with...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:55 AM on Monday, March 20, 2006
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A crisp, perceptive take by
A crisp, perceptive take by Newsweek's Andy Dehnart on Tony Soprano's coma dreams and existential wanderings via an alternate identity (i.e., salesman Kevin Finnerty) in episode #2 of The Sopranos. "I'm 46 years old," Soprano/Finnerty says in a hotel bar to some sales execs he's recently met. "Who am I? Where am I going?" To which costar Sheila Kelley, sitting across from him, says, "Join the club."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:52 AM on Monday, March 20, 2006
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Robobos has cut another excellent
Robobos has cut another excellent faux trailer that spins a dark melodrama into a piece of easily digestible pop-fluff, in the vein of that popular Shining trailer from last year. This one takes Dennis Hopper's ferociously insane Frank character from David Lynch's Blue Velvet and turns him into...a wild and crazy guy!
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:46 AM on Monday, March 20, 2006
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A penniless Anthony Pelicano is
A penniless Anthony Pelicano is looking to part ways with his pro bono defense attorney and is planning to make a motion in court today to defend himself, according to L.A. investigative journalist Ross Johnson on his just-launched L.A. Indie website. "Pellicano wants to go quickly to trial and is willing to do it without the help of a federal public defender," sources are telling Johnson. "In this scenario, Pellicano might use the trial as a forum to expose what he feels is the duplicity of the various state and federal prosecutors who've earlier used his testimony at trial and in sworn...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:28 AM on Monday, March 20, 2006
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Spike's Slam-Dunk
Spike's Slam-Dunk
I haven't seen the tracking on Inside Man (Universal, 3.24), but I'll tell you one thing for damn sure. It's going to be the top box-office dog when it opens five days from now. In fact, it's quite obviously...hello?...the most commercial film ever directed by Spike Lee.
It's going to to put arses in seats because it's pretty much devoid of any African- American social concerns. And because it's a deft, smooth and unpretentious big-studio thriller that's always a step or two ahead of the audience (including those who pride themselves on being able to figure out plot twists). And...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:18 AM on Monday, March 20, 2006
1 comment
Spike's Slam-Dunk
Spike's Slam-Dunk
I haven't seen the tracking on Inside Man (Universal, 3.24), but I'll tell you one thing for damn sure. It's going to be the top box-office dog when it opens five days from now. In fact, it's quite obviously...hello?...the most commercial film ever directed by Spike Lee.
It's going to to put arses in seats because it's pretty much devoid of any African- American social concerns. And because it's a deft, smooth and unpretentious big-studio thriller that's always a step or two ahead of the audience (including those who pride themselves on being able to figure out plot twists). And...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:06 AM on Monday, March 20, 2006
Sunday, March 19, 2006
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A Sunday (3.19) profile by
A Sunday (3.19) profile by the San Francisco Chronicle's Vicky Haddock of controversial anti-Iraq War activist Cindy Sheehan (the mother who last year camped out in protest near President Bush's home in Crawford, Texas, following the death of her soldier son Casey in Iraq) mentions that Sheehan had recent plans to "breakfast in Manhattan with actress Susan Sarandon, who is set to portray her in a biopic movie." Haddock doesn't say if it's for cable or theatrical, but the former sounds a bit more likely. If anyone knows anything...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:14 PM on Sunday, March 19, 2006
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Charles Solomon's N.Y. Times piece
Charles Solomon's N.Y. Times piece about how annoyingly verbal animated features have become refers to Chuck Jones' Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons as an example of the non-verbal, all-visuals approach that used to rule in the old says. But hold on...Solomon says the Roadunner cartoons "took place in a silence broken only by music, sound effects and an occasional 'beep-beep.'" Inaccurate, dawg. The Roadrunner sound is an unmistakable meep-meep. Listen to one closely. At no time do you hear the "b" consonant -- it's totally an "m" thing.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:42 AM on Sunday, March 19, 2006
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Hold up on that V
Hold up on that V disappointment stuff. The Warner Bros./ Wachowski Bros. flick had a pretty good Saturday....an encouraging 19% Friday-to-Saturday jump and a $10,028,000 haul. We seem to be looking at a likely weekend tally of $23.9 million, although WB will probably report $25 million (which is what tracking had earlier projected).
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:20 AM on Sunday, March 19, 2006
Saturday, March 18, 2006
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Enemies Watch
Enemies Watch
Last Friday night I read James Vanderbilt's gripping, pared-to-the-bone screenplay of Against All Enemies, an adaptation of former terrorism czar Richard Clarke's bombshell novel about the failures of the Clinton and Bush administrations to stop the terrorist plotters who eventually brought about the 9.11 attacks.
The script, yet another example of a fascinating run of political films being made by mainstream Hollywood these days, is the basis of an upcoming Columbia feature that Crash director Paul Haggis "[hopes] to shoot...this year," according to what he told N.Y. Times reporter Sharon Waxman in a piece that ran last Tuesday.
...Read Moreposted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:26 PM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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Paul Weitz's American Dreamz (Universal,
Paul Weitz's American Dreamz (Universal, 4.14) opened the Bermuda Film Festival last night, and a friend who saw it there tells me it's "D.O.A." The performances in this political satire about an opportune alliance between the White House and a populuar televised game show host are, he claims, "one-note jokes...Dennis Quaid is Dubya, Hugh Grant is Simon Cowell of American Idol and Willem Dafoe appears dressed and head-shaven like Dick Cheney. The pacing is totally off, and most of the jokes lie flat like toss-offs from a bad Saturday Night Live sketch." The costars are Chris Klein, Mandy Moore, Marcia Gay Harden...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:35 PM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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V for Vendetta is a
V for Vendetta is a box-office disappointment. Tracking on the Warner Bros./Wachowski Bros. release showed a projected $25 to $30 million, but Friday's figures are indicating only a $21 million weekend haul, and it could wind up a bit lower. The reviews were mostly positive with some pans from major names mixed in, and the the film's radical-leftist political metaphor probably isn't playing as well in the boonies as it is the cities. Sidney Lumet's Find Me Guilty has badly tanked, apparently destined to bring in less that $500 thousand in 439 theatres. (It did $156,000 on Friday, averaging $1100 a print.) Failure...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:03 PM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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I love how this totally
I love how this totally chickenshit MSNBC account of the Tom Cruise-vs.-South Park censorship story doesn't even mention the title of the satirical episode that Cruise prevented from being re-run last Wednesday night -- "Trapped in the Closet." I'm also enjoying the determination of old-media reporters to overlook the first-anywhere reporting about this episode by journalist Mark Ebner, a longtime Scientology critic who provided research for the controversial Matt Stone and Trey Parker-authored episode and was the first to post the story. (I ran what I believe was the first link to it, at 1:11 am on Thursday). At...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:55 AM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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"Whilst I disagree with the
"Whilst I disagree with the calculated sneers towards V for Vendetta by U.K. critics, the film was a disappointment despite all the ideas bubbling beneath the surface. Visually it never really took off and too many of the supporting characters were one-note stereotypes. Halfway through I couldn't help but wish the Wachowskis had ditched the Moore comic book and filmed the actual story of Guy Fawkes. And by the way: Basic Instinct 2, which previewed in London last week, contains very little that is controversial. It's surprisingly tame in the sex department despite some embarrassing one-liners from Sharon Stone. Maybe they have some...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:20 AM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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I tend to like Hollywood
I tend to like Hollywood righties on a personality/character level, and Ben Stein is basically correct in saying at a right-wing fundraiser last Thursday that Hollywood films would do better in the hinterlands if they weren't so contemptuous towards mainstream American values. "Stop spitting in the face of Americans and maybe we will go to the movies," Stein said. Copy that, but what a lame and simplistic way of looking at things. Los Angeles and New York creatives live in their own spiritual-philosphical realm, of course...an international blue world, really, that encompasses London, Paris, Prague, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, et. al. And...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:58 AM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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Ben Stein also lamented that
Ben Stein also lamented that "not one prayer or moment of silence [was heard during the 3.5 Oscar show] for those who have given their lives" in Iraq. I hate this right-wing rhetorical tactic. Cheer our men and the women in the military who are mainly doing what they can to survive and nothing more (of course), and let them know they have our support (ditto) except that righties always twist this into a vote of support for the general effort in Iraq and the fact that what we're doing over there right now is inspiring revenge-lust among who knows how many...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:37 AM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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I wrote a short riff
I wrote a short riff a while back about the slightly varying lengths reported for Crash, from the N.Y. Times's 107 minutes to Variety's 112 minutes out of Toronto to the 122-minute running time on the DVD jacket. Now comes a note from a Variety guy asserting that the N.Y. Times "has long been notoriously unreliable in this area. I'm attentive to this stuff because we time films very carefully at Variety, never relying upon publicists, studios or film festival catalogues but timing films with stopwatches or ultra-reliable watches. Especially during the Janet Maslin years, the NYT was almost always wrong -- I...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:54 AM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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I saw Jason Reitman's Thank
I saw Jason Reitman's Thank You for Smoking at the Toronto Film Festival, and then again at Sundance '06. And all that time I never wrote anything. This means something, obviously, although I've had fun with it each time. For a movie about lighting up, Smoking is in no way, shape or form a burn. And yet...let me try again. A very smart, fast-on-its-feet satire, Smoking appeals much more to my dry sense of humor than anything Jason's dad, Ivan Reitman (i.e., "the king of tasteless comedy"), has directed or produced. And Aaron Eckhardt's tobacco lobbyist guy is his best role (and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:32 AM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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I would have posted the
I would have posted the usual eight to ten items plus a fresh feature yesterday, but the old periodic burnout syndrome took hold on Thursday and some of Friday. I want to write and post away, but...but...but. I can feel it taking over like a flu (or like that red taffy invader in that Steve McQueen movie, The Blob) and I'm strangely unable to stop the lethargy. And then I wake up the next day and it's gone.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:17 AM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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In speaking with the Guardian's
In speaking with the Guardian's Suzie Mackenzie, Susan Sarandon says that "one of her strengths as an actor...is that she can look at a page of dialogue and tell in a flash if it's authentic or phony." That's fast. Most people who read scripts say they know if one's any good after five or ten pages. I can watch a movie for five minutes -- less, really -- and know if it's on some kind of case and going somewhere, or not. Hell, most of us over the age of 25 or so have a pretty fair idea who and what most...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:28 AM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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It's worth noting that V
It's worth noting that V for Vendetta, a flick I've loved twice (especially in IMAX) and would see a third time in a snap, has been almost universally killed by critics in London, where the film takes place. London Times critic James Christopher said he's "never seen so many respectable, mostly British, actors in such a deranged satire." The Guardian 's Peter Bradshaw called it "V for Valueless gibberish...weird and bizarre and baffling, but in a completely boring way." The Telegraph critic panned it. The Independent's Anthony Quinn says "anyone who bothers to read newspapers will scorn [the film's]...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:07 AM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
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El Cartel's Mikki Flow in Jauretsi Saizarbitoria's East of Havana
Havana Rap
To judge from three recent docs about bullet-dodging rappers living in volatile 'hoods, the most intense and socially relevant rap music these days is coming out of the Caribbean area.
George Gittoe's Rampage makes the case for the rap community in south Miami, Asger Leth's Ghosts of Cite Soleil injects rap into the hell of Haiti's poltical turmoil, and directors Jauretsi Saizarbitoria and Emilia Menocal show what the Cuban rap scene is about in East of Havana.
El Cartel's Mikki Flow in Jauretsi Saizarbitoria's East of Havana
Each film has its own style and aesthetic,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:50 AM on Saturday, March 18, 2006
Friday, March 17, 2006
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A guy was telling me
A guy was telling me he'd just left a project on amicable terms after the usual creative differences, and I contended there's no such thing as an amicable parting over creative matters. All right, it may happen once in a blue moon, but most of the time it's like what director-writer Nicholas Meyer once said about creative differences with a now-deceased producer named Stephen J. Friedman (All of Me, The Big Easy), whom he happened to despise, having once called him "that horrible man." Maybe someone else said it first, but I've remembered Meyer's remark about his clash with Friedman: "I was creative...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:26 PM on Friday, March 17, 2006
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Having stuck my neck out
Having stuck my neck out on Sidney Lumet's Find me Guilty early on, calling it "clearly Lumet's best film since Q & A, and before that Prince of the City," it's nice to be in the supportive company of the L.A. Weekly's Scott Foundas (who called it Lumet's "best picture since the 1970s"), L.A. Citybeat's Andy Klein ("Lumet's best in a decade"), and the N.Y. Times' Stephen Holden ("near the top of his game, this master surveyor of the urban jungle still has the machinery of police work and courtroom ritual down cold").
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:47 PM on Friday, March 17, 2006
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With every word and keystroke
With every word and keystroke today I feel like Gregory Peck climbing up that straight-up cliff face in The Guns of Navarone ...in the dead of night, in the rain, the wind howling. I can't decide whether to play catch-up and write some more stuff, or just hunker down and finish reading Paul Haggis's script of Flags of Our Fathers, which I was going to do a lead piece on today. So I'm doing both and not getting very far with either. If anyone's read the Fathers script and wants to contribute, send me something today or tonight.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:44 PM on Friday, March 17, 2006
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C-drive issues come up every
C-drive issues come up every so often that drive you nuts...like someone or something has poured a bottle of Elmer's Glue into the gut of your computer. Re-start, clean up, defrag, buy a new backup hard drive...it can go on and on.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:04 PM on Friday, March 17, 2006
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If I were running a
If I were running a production company I'd be thinking about ways of bringing in some of that Christian-right moolah like everyone else, but the more I think about Nativity, Catherine Hardwicke's drama about the life of the Virgin Mary with Whale Rider's Keisha Castle-Hughes in the title role, the more problematic it seems. I haven't spoken to anyone and I haven't read Mike Rich's script, but Hardwicke's turf so far has been hardscrabble So-Cal angst and dysfunction (Lords of Dogtown, Thirteen) and suddenly she's off to ancient Judea? I know, I know...Martin Scorsese and his New York urban outlook handled Christ's life...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:48 AM on Friday, March 17, 2006
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"Sex/Nudity: 4 scenes of innuendo,
"Sex/Nudity: 4 scenes of innuendo, 1 scene of a near rape, and 1 scene with nude bodies in a mass grave. Violence: 28 scenes. Profanity: 48 instances, including 12 harsh ones. Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco: 8 scenes of smoking and/or drinking." -- posted at conclusion of Peter Rainer's Christian Science Monitor review of V for Vendetta.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:00 AM on Friday, March 17, 2006
Thursday, March 16, 2006
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"Tuba-sized customers? The Jabba-sizing of
"Tuba-sized customers? The Jabba-sizing of America? Funny, Jeff. I'm one of those people. Not morbidly obese, but a big guy. I've been this size for over ten years. I spend a lot of money going to the movies, and have loved doing so since I was about ten years old. I have never complained of the size of seats, but I have had to squeeze into some seats that seemed especially small. If new seats are being made for those of us who need it, what the fuck difference does it make to you? Do you really think you don't have readers and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:02 PM on Thursday, March 16, 2006
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Brian Cook's Colour Me Kubrick,
Brian Cook's Colour Me Kubrick, a perverse comedy about Alan Conway (John Malkovich), a real-life fraud who successfully passed himself off as the reclusive Stanley Kubrick in various London haunts in the early to mid '90s, is finally showing its face at the Tribeca Film Festival (4.25 thru 5.7). I've been trying to get a look at this film since late '04, at least. I'm under the impression it was filmed sometime in the 21st Century but I can't absolutely confirm this. Cook was Kubrick's first assistant director on The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut, and the pic's screenwriter Anthony Frewin worked...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:37 PM on Thursday, March 16, 2006
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Two-plus weeks after the Oscars,
Two-plus weeks after the Oscars, blogger Chris Molanphy defends the winner for Best Original Song "because friends and acquaintances of mine are still complaining about it." Most of us loved Hustle & Flow from whence 'It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp' came, but there hasn't been a serious morning-after piece about why -- on the merits -- the song deserved to win, so here's one.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:30 PM on Thursday, March 16, 2006
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On top of my riveting
On top of my riveting encounter last Sunday with Asger Leth's Ghosts of Cite Soleil, a doc about a sympathetic Haitian thug who fancies himself as a hip-hopper in the midst of political chaos, there are suddenly two other docs on the radar screen about bottom-rung hip-hoppers struggling in a tough environment. East of Havana, which was produced (i.e., paid for) by Charlize Theron and shown just recently at South by Southwest Film Festival, is a portrait of Cuban rappers that's allegedy pretty damn good. It'll be discussed by HE's SxSW correspondent Moises Chiullan in a column piece running tomorrow. The other...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:00 PM on Thursday, March 16, 2006
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The apparent yanking of Wednesday's
The apparent yanking of Wednesday's re-run of South Park's "Trapped in the Closet" episode (i.e., the one that vivisected Tom Cruise and Scientology as a whole) isn't the first time Viacom and Comedy Central have censored an episode from Matt Stone and Trey Parker's animated show. According to this 12.29.05 Sarah Hall E! News story, Viacom pulled a 12.28 rerun of an episode called "Bloody Mary" that offended the Catholic League. In an email to fans following this occurence, Comedy Central said the episode was not included in the South Park marathon "in deference to the [Xmas] holidays...we have not...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:18 PM on Thursday, March 16, 2006
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MCN columnist Gary Dretzka's report
MCN columnist Gary Dretzka's report about bigger theatre seats and implied American obesity levels doesn't just raise intriguing questions -- it could serve as the starting point for a comedy skit. Dretzka wrote from Showest that "representatives of seat manufacturers confirmed [during the festival] that the width of the average chair has expanded from around 18-20 inches, to 22-24 inches. Since volume is important to exhibitors, it's logical to think that this adjustment was made necessary for reasons other than pampering their customers' rear ends." But how did this obviously major business decision (think of the revenue downscalings due to fewer seats...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:03 AM on Thursday, March 16, 2006
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Paramount Pictures chief Brad Grey
Paramount Pictures chief Brad Grey "has been compromised in the industry's eyes" by last Monday's N.Y. Times story about his past ties to indicted wiretapper Anthony Pellicano, writes "Deadline Hollywood" columnist Nikke Finke in her L.A. Weekly blog, but where's the beef? "Yes, the FBI has interviewed Grey...yes, he's testified before the grand jury investigating Pellicano. But is there or is there not a Pellicano tape [with Grey on it]? Did he or did he not sign something before he could get the Paramount job saying he had no knowledge of Pellicano's wiretapping? The Times story doesn't begin to answer these...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:34 AM on Thursday, March 16, 2006
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"At midnight, I turn into
"At midnight, I turn into a wolf." -- "Lawrence Talbot," played by Lon Chaney, Jr.. "Yeah, you and 20 million other guys." -- "Wilbur Frey," played by Lou Costello. From Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo and John Grant's script of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), which was also about the boys running into Dracula and the Wolf Man.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:17 AM on Thursday, March 16, 2006
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I've made no calls and
I've made no calls and done no digging on this...zip...but "Hollywood Interrupted" investigative reporter Mark Ebner has written on his blog that "sources from inside Paramount and South Park Studios report that parent company Viacom pulled Wednesday night's scheduled repeat of the previously-aired South Park episode called 'Trapped in the Closet'." (The show goes on at 10 pm Pacific, 9 pm Central.) The reason, Ebner reports, is that Tom Cruise, who is mocked pretty heavily in the episode (along with the Church of Scientology), threatened to cancel all publicity for Paramount's Mission Impossible: 3 if Comedy Central aired it. This is apparently...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:11 AM on Thursday, March 16, 2006
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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Benicio del Toro as the
Benicio del Toro as the Wolf Man...down with that. But you know what gets better and better with each viewing, if you take out the final 20 minutes? Mike Nichols' unforced and sophisticated Wolf...what was that, 12 years ago? The more I think about it, the more I think it might be my all-time favorite, simply because it's the most adult. The del Toro pic has 7even's Andrew Kevin Walker writing it. I'm not sure what that means.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:59 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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"If a script isn't new
"If a script isn't new or daring in some way...subject matter, plot turns...if it doesn't push the envelope nobody wants to make it because they're afraid everyone'll be bored because they've seen it before. But once they greenlight an envelope- pusher they always get nervous because they start worrying that Middle American popcorn-munchers won't want to see it." -- Seasoned producer to Hollywood Elsewhere columnist during a cell phone conversation last night (3.14) around 10:10 pm after a screening of Spike Lee's Inside Man (which isn't, by the way, a daring envelope pusher but is satisfyingly nervy and different as far as Manhattan...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:33 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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Okay, so George Clooney didn't
Okay, so George Clooney didn't actually pour himself a cup of coffee, turn on his laptop, sit down and bang out that column he ostensibly wrote for the Huffington Post...which was recently de-posted. Here's Arianna's explanation about how it went down.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:31 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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In this Time Richard Corliss
In this Time Richard Corliss piece about the battle between celluloid and digital photography, director Michael Mann (Collateral, Heat) argues that digital is "capable of a chromatic subtlety that film can't match." Collateral, Mann claims, was "the first photo-real use of digital...[and] in the nightscapes in Collateral, you're seeing buildings a mile away. You're seeing clouds in the sky four or five miles away. On film that would all just be black." Mann used the same digital process to shoot his big-screen version of Miami Vice with Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx. 
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:26 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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MSNBC's Dave White giving props
MSNBC's Dave White giving props to actress Vera Farmiga for "making them all finally pay attention. I had no idea who Farmiga was until [I saw] Down to the Bone where she played a deadpan drug mom, struggling to keep both food on the table and sober, only to lose her job by admitting that her performance at her grocery clerk’Äôs job was enhanced by cocaine. And she's got a clear-eyed resolve that Anthony Minghella and Martin Scorsese both must have noticed because she's about to work with both of them." No biggie, but what White really means is that Farmiga has...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:45 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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An excellent defense of V
An excellent defense of V for Vendtta by David Poland in his Hot Button column. "V for Vendetta is, simply, a wake-up call. The film is not about terrorism, though it is about terror. The film is not about threatening civilians to make a political point in any way. It is about threatening a state that has lost control of itself, absolutely corrupted by absolute control. But for control to be absolute, the people must remain asleep. It is, perhaps, instructive that the extreme right wing -- which I never realized had a representative in Newsweek's Jeff Giles -- feels...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:37 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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A journalist doing a story
A journalist doing a story about the possible fading of IMAX says he's spoken with solid tech-industry sources (Dolby, Tehnicolor, IT Access, In Three, etc.) and they all seem to believe that the rollout of digital and 3-D digital projection in the big theatre chains is imminent. So do I think that this digital rollout will render IMAX obsolete? I replied, "Not to get all primitive on you, but there's something extremely cool and oh-wow about watching a movie on that huge friggin' screen. Digital and 3-D digital in regular theatres sounds fantastic and bring it on, but typical theatre screens are...what?...10 or...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:14 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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Columnist Alan Lopuszynski agrees with
Columnist Alan Lopuszynski agrees with my just-posted WIRED observation about the girl-on-girl subtext in the Wachowski movies, but adds, "No need to stop at Bound and V for Vendetta, really...what about the entire world of The Matrix, in which androgynous freedom fighters strive to awaken from a fantasy world in which everything they know is a lie? Where ruthless, society-controlling agents (hmmm...who are all men) try to force the 'we just want to live our lives the way we want' rebels into 'normal' lives of acceptance? What about the perponderance of fetish gear? I'll tell you, when news Larry's red-pill lifestyle...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:06 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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I'm sorry, but those Michael
I'm sorry, but those Michael Douglas quotes about Brangelina, Renee Zellweger and Julia Roberts in the April issue of GQ are funny. Funny in the sense that Douglas is apparently getting into that Shirley Maclaine mode...i.e., a celebrity who's done it all and is tired of playing the game and has adopted a come-what- may-but-I'm-gonna-say-what-I-think attitude, and if certain people don't like this, too bad. "I don't know about Brad Pitt leaving that beautiful wife to go hold orphans for Angelina [Jolie]...I mean, how long is that going to last?" Douglas said. "[And] don't ask me what happened with Renee Zellweger...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:51 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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Diallo Tyson of Woodbine, Georgia,
Diallo Tyson of Woodbine, Georgia, happened to see John Milius's Red Dawn (1984) the other night, and was struck by the parallels between how the Wolverines (Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Charlie Sheen, et. al.) respond to the Russian/Cuban invaders of the U.S.A., and how those no-good Iraqi resistance guys have been responding to the U.S. invaders since '03. And how both have vague echoes in the Wachowski's V for Vendetta. Red Dawn's Wolverines, says Tyson, are "a band of insurgents determined to fight and get their country back. They steal munitions, blow up envoys, set up ambushes, and other general terrorist...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:04 PM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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Call this invasive prying, but
Call this invasive prying, but all art is personal and if you can't stand the heat don't pick up the paint brush. I'm referring to the obvious echoes of Larry Wachowski's transgender personal life in his and brother Andy's V for Vendetta (Warner Bros., 3.17), as well as Bound, the Wachowski's 1996 crime drama. Both deal with passionate love affairs between women, and given that Larry, who's been a woman for the last two or three years, has been paired with a dominatrix namd Karen Winslow (a.k.a., Ilsa Strix) and...well, it's fairly obvious. And yet there seems to be some kind...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:07 AM on Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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"Spike Lee's Inside Man, a
"Spike Lee's Inside Man, a crime drama, is nothing short of brilliant," critic Emanuel Levy has written. "It's also one of the two or three best films he has made in his 20-year career, along with Do the Right Thing and He Got Game. At once celebrating, deconstructing and surpassing the heist films and police corruption movies of the 1970s, Lee joins forced with producer Brian Grazer to craft a pressure-cooker thriller. After making many social commentary films, such as Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Jungle Fever and The 25th Hour, Lee seems reenergized by the opportunity to helm an interlocking...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:30 PM on Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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Like the N.Y. Times DVD
Like the N.Y. Times DVD guy Dave Kehr, Newsweek's Malcolm Jones is a huge fan of director John Ford, and particularly the Criterion Collection's recently released double-disc DVD of Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). I love his earlier stuff (The Informer , especially, and I still love Drums Along the Mohawk as much as I did when I was 12) and I'll never cool down on The Horse Soldiers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but let's face it -- Ford's Irish Catholic sentimentality seems to get thicker every year. Those films that are heavily covered in the stuff...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:44 PM on Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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Harry Potter and the Goblet
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is supposed to be among the new and slightly delayed crop of HD-DVD titles from Warner Home Video, and I've recently heard a conspiracy theory about the recently-issued regular-format DVD of this title from some staffers at a popular Los Angeles DVD store. The resolution on this DVD isn't especially great...a little soft and unsatisfying, as if the people who mastered it didn't really give it their best shot. (DVD Talk's Holly Ordway has written that it "looks good, but not as good as I expected, given that it's a high-profile release...the main...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:14 AM on Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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The new HD-DVD players are
The new HD-DVD players are purchasable but the first generation of HD-DVDs from Warner Home Video, which were supposed to be out 3.28, are on hold for two or three weeks. Due to some technical bureacratic bug manifestation...what else? (With every new product there are always has cockups and delays...has it ever not been so?) "To be honest, the outlook is tenuous," said WHV division president Ron Sanders. "We're still coming out with an initial slate, but we may be a week or two later...we just don't know." The cheapest Toshiba HD-DVD player so far is the HD-A1, whcih is selling for...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:45 AM on Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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"The Sopranos [has] sustained itself
"The Sopranos [has] sustained itself through sex, violence and some very effective, at times Luis Bunuel-ish black humor," says N.Y. Press and Newark Star-Ledger critic Matt Zoller Seitz on his "A House Next Door" blog. "More a curdled social satire than a straightforward gangster story, it is arguably the most cynical long-running series of all time, a show in which nearly every scene depicts characters being confronted with the choice between selfish expediency and a higher good, and invariably choosing Option A. From Tony and Johnny Sack (Vincent Curatola) to Carmela and the kids to the FBI agents investigating the family and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:03 AM on Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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"I am a liberal. And
"I am a liberal. And I make no apologies for it. Hell, I'm proud of it. Now fire away." So says George Clooney in a Huffington Post piece that went up Monday, 3.13...which reads, of course, like an elaboration of his Oscar night comments after winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Syriana. My favorite passage: "In 2003 a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullshit. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, 'We were misled.'...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:35 AM on Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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All this hot copy generated
All this hot copy generated by Sharon Stone about Basic Instinct 2 (Columbia, 3.31)...daring nude scene this, totally full frontal that, etc. Example: "By the time the film is released, I will be 48 and I wanted to do the nudity in a way that's quite brazen. I wanted [Catherine Trammell] to be very masculine, like a man in a steam room, and I wanted the audience to have a moment where they realize she's naked and then realize she's a fortysomething woman and naked." Whatever...barring a major God miracle, this movie is certain to be a Michael Caton Jones ickfest...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:15 AM on Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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A very astute and satisfying
A very astute and satisfying analysis of last Sunday's Sopranos opener (you know...the big shocker with Tony taking a bullet in the gut) by MSNBC's Andy Denhart.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:04 AM on Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Monday, March 13, 2006
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Another "web rumor" that Variety's
Another "web rumor" that Variety's Nicole LaPorte dismissed or made light of in her 2.5.06 piece ("Showbiz rumors tapped in web: online gossip goes haywire") that condemned the willingness of showbiz websites to run unchecked rumors and thereby creating all kinds of havoc...another one of these merit-less rumors appears to have a little merit after all. That is, if today's L.A. Times story about a possible merger between the ICM and Endeavor talent agencies, written by Claire Hoffman, is to be given any weight. The gist is that Endeavor partner Patrick Whitesell and ICM co-owner Suhail Rizvi -- who've been...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:41 PM on Monday, March 13, 2006
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I'm told that another reason
I'm told that another reason Universal president Ron Meyer is looking to pair his distribution and marketing vp Marc Schmuger with David Linde in the studio chairman (i.e., production chief) job vacated by Stacey Snider is that Schmuger's talent relationships aren't so much under-nourished as strained with certain producers. Particularly with Imagine co-chief Brian Grazer, who "was leaned on by Schmuger to release Cinderella Man last summer rather than last fall, and it didn't work out and the result is that Grazer feels Schmuger basically ruined the reception for his movie, so there's no love there."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:11 AM on Monday, March 13, 2006
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Everyone has now seen the
Everyone has now seen the first episode of the new season of The Sopranos, which means they finally know about the Big Thing that happens at the end. And sure enough, there's a guy who's found a way to be pissed off about that episode #4 sound clip I ran on 3.8.06 because it had James Gandolfini's voice on it. "If I hadn't trusted your fucking asshole self, I would honestly be wondering if Soprano producer David Chase didn't have the balls to kill Tony," writes Josh Massey of Atlanta. "Now there's no mystery between this week and next. So this all...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:45 AM on Monday, March 13, 2006
Sunday, March 12, 2006
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The ten year-old ties between
The ten year-old ties between Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey and indicted wire-tapper and onetime private investigator Anthony Pellicano are a bit clearer and more detailed due to a Page One story in Monday's N.Y. Times, written by David Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner. The story is mainly about past acrimonious relations between (a) Grey, a big-time talent manager before being hired to run Paramount, (b) his former client Garry Shandling (whom Grey managed and also collected a fat fee for producing Shandling's "The Larry Sanders Show") and (c) former actress Linda Doucett, who briefly co-starred on "Sanders," was engaged to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:23 PM on Sunday, March 12, 2006
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Sharon Waxman is reporting in
Sharon Waxman is reporting in the N.Y. Times that Universal president Ron Meyer is about to appoint the studio's distribution and marketing vp Marc Schmuger to fill the departing Stacey Snider's job as president of production...half of it, that is. Schmuger, presumed by Meyer to be not fully up to speed on relationships with the talent community, may wind up sharing the new job, according to speculation, with either Focus Features co-president David Linde or Sci-Fi Channel and USA Network topper Bonnie Hammer. L.A. Times reporters Lorenza Munoz and Claudia Eller are hearing it's basically Schmuger-Linde... forget Hammer. They're also reporting...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:59 PM on Sunday, March 12, 2006
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Hooray for Dave Cullen and
Hooray for Dave Cullen and the Ultimate Brokeback Forum for landing a story in Monday's N.Y. Times about the full-age ad they paid to run in Daily Variety last Friday (3.10) lamenting Brokeback Mountain's having lost the Best Picture Oscar to Crash. The UBF-ers raised more than $24,000 -- the ad cost $15,435. Variety president-publisher Charles C. Koones told Times writer Stuart Elliott that Brokeback "really touched a chord with certain audiences...there are those in Hollywood who feel it was robbed."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:40 PM on Sunday, March 12, 2006
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Time magazine and writer Lev
Time magazine and writer Lev Grossman have stuck it to the Wachowski's V for Vendetta (Warner Bros., 3.17) in their story called "The Madman in the Mask". Grossman begins by asking if it's "possible for a major Hollywood studio to make a $50 million movie in which the hero is a terrorist? A terrorist who appears wearing the dynamite waistcoat of a suicide bomber, and who utters the line -- from beneath a full-face wooden mask that he never takes off -- 'Blowing up a building can change the world'? Starring Natalie Portman, shaved as bald as Demi Moore in G.I....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:51 PM on Sunday, March 12, 2006
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I have a Rob Marshall
I have a Rob Marshall question...well, actually a comment ...that applies to Clint Eastwood's imminent filming of Red Sun, Black Sand, the companion piece to his Iwo Jima drama Flags of Our Fathers. Sun will cover the same conflict but tell the Japanese-soldier side of things with Ken Watanabe playing General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who led the battle against American troops for 40 days, according to Variety. The comment...okay, a jibe...concerns a statement Marshall made after his Memoirs of a Geisha opened late last year, which was that the reason he didn't shoot it in Japanese is that he can't speak the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:16 PM on Sunday, March 12, 2006
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Here's a nice downer-head film
Here's a nice downer-head film to look forward to -- Sandra Bullock starring as the alcoholic, money-wasting, totally self-destructive and overweight Grace Metalious, the author of the best-selling novel "Peyton Place" that became a hit movie and then a TV series. I read that recent Vanity Fair story about Metalious and it would appear, judging by what actually happened to the poor woman, that the theme of the film is going to be that fame kills. In other words, Metalious couldn't handle it. Her marriage didn't last, she blew most of her earnings, she destroyed her reputation as a reliable writer...all of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:45 PM on Sunday, March 12, 2006
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James Scurlock's Maxed Out, an
James Scurlock's Maxed Out, an expose documentary on the American debt industry that showed yeserday at South by Southwest, "anger and saddens and calls to action all at once," says HE columnist Moises Chiullan. "It follows the trail of the debt business through the lives of a broad range of Americans, but the killer testimony comes from Harvard's Dr. Elizabeth Warren when she expounds upon the grave seriousness of new debt legislation and the fact that low income consumers who are almost completely incapable of repaying are precisely the debtors that credit companies want. Warren says she was told by a high-ranking executive...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:11 PM on Sunday, March 12, 2006
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Failure to Launch, a Paramount
Failure to Launch, a Paramount piece-of-shit comedy co-starring a ferocious fanged chipmunk, a vicious mockingbird, a Jaws-like dolphin and one of the most stupendously vapid actors in Hollywood history, took in an astonishing $24.6 million in 3057 theatres...imagine the tens of thousands of folks who paid money to see this only to come out of theatres with faces like "buckets of cold piss" (stealing again from Norman Mailer). Tim Allen's The Shaggy Dog (Buena Vista) grabbed $16 million in 3501 situations...and if I'm close to dying from boredom I might watch it on a plane someday....maybe. The Hills Have Eyes (Fox Searchlight) nabbed...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:22 AM on Sunday, March 12, 2006
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"So Paul Haggis says Will
"So Paul Haggis says Will & Grace signals acceptance of gays by Hollywood, eh? The show has spent nearly a decade with the lead gay male leading a virtually sexless, even kiss-free (until very recently) life with an amazing amount of plot devices utilized to keep him single and chaste, while every other character leads sex- and marriage-filled lives, primarily Grace who's regularly been shown in bed with men, while Jack, the brainless and effeminate (read: non-threatening) supporting character has numerous dates and conquests that are always off-camera. More telling is the NBC promo department's eight-year streak of just releasing cast photos...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:13 AM on Sunday, March 12, 2006
Saturday, March 11, 2006
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The Toronto Star's Martin Knelman
The Toronto Star's Martin Knelman reminds Crash director- writer Paul Haggis that his film has been belittled as a safe, conservative choice for those too timid to endorse Brokeback Mountain. "I have to say I find that view hysterical and absurd," Haggis replies. "I thought Brokeback was a really good movie but, if you decided to vote for it, the best reason would be you thought it was a great movie about two human beings, not because it's a social statement. And if you wanted to see the gay community embraced by Hollywood, well, the fact is that happened a long...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:32 PM on Saturday, March 11, 2006
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"The Washington Post Co. announced
"The Washington Post Co. announced plans [Friday] to eliminate the equivalent of 80 newsroom positions over the next year...newsroom managers told employees the cuts were part of an overall effort to reduce costs...like many newspapers suffering from declining circulation, the Post's revenue has remained flat for several years [and] the number of paid subscribers has declined 4 % a year...the Post is trying to extend its reach by adding features to its website, such as blogs and podcasts [but] "it is obvious that a significant change is taking place in our readership, with a sizable portion of it migrating to the internet,"...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:01 PM on Saturday, March 11, 2006
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Prairie Home Companion's Lindsay Lohan, Meryl Streep, Robert...Read More
The Spirit of Radio
The Spirit of Radio
Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion (Picturehouse, 6.9), based on Garrison Keillor's radio show with a script by Keillor, is a backstage look at the goings-on during the final broadcast of America's most celebrated radio show.
The film played Friday night (3.10) at the kickoff of South by Southwest in Austin, and Moises Chiullan, author of HE's "Arthouse Cowboy" column, was in the audience with his video camera. And he's sent along some thoughts. Which I've refined and reshuffled to some extent.
Prairie Home Companion's Lindsay Lohan, Meryl Streep, Robert...
posted by Moises Chiullan at 7:15 PM on Saturday, March 11, 2006
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Concerning the myriad beefs of
Concerning the myriad beefs of "V for Vendetta" author Alan Moore, fans might find this BBC profile/interview short (about 10 minutes) from the "Culture Show" interesting.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:28 PM on Saturday, March 11, 2006
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Reuters' Alexandria Sage and Bob
Reuters' Alexandria Sage and Bob Tourtellotte wrote yesterday that Amazon.com is close to completing a deal with Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Bros to offer legal downloads of movies and TV shows. I wouldn't watch a downloaded film on a computer with a gun to my head. DVDs and only DVDs (regular, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD) forever.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:18 PM on Saturday, March 11, 2006
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"No Bravery" in Iraq...a sad,
"No Bravery" in Iraq...a sad, moving music video piece sitting on the Huffington Post. Well worth your time.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:16 PM on Saturday, March 11, 2006
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"I think you called it
"I think you called it right on Annie Proulx's reaction to the Oscars in the Guardian. She seems to be coming from a place of deep disillusionment and a belief that the Academy was an actual, honest-to-goodness arts organization...like those that have previously awarded her the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, and the O. Henry Award, and included her in the Best American Short Stories anthology. In the literary world, when there are five finalists for a book award, the judges are likely to actually take the time to read through the books, for the most part, before passing judgment. That some in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:50 AM on Saturday, March 11, 2006
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One of graphic novelist Alan
One of graphic novelist Alan Moore's problems (and there are quite a few of them) is definitely with the Wachowski brothers' V for Vendetta (Warner Bros., 3.17), given his statement that he's "read the screenplay" and "it's rubbish." He also feels, according to Dave Itzkoff's 3.12 profile of Moore in the N.Y. Times, that the American film business "has distorted his writing beyond recognition," which refers not only to Vendetta but his adverse feelings about the way From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen turned out. (Curiously, Itzkoff didn't speak to the producer of these films, comic-book maven Don Murphy, who...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:43 AM on Saturday, March 11, 2006
Friday, March 10, 2006
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Turns out Brokeback Mountain was
Turns out Brokeback Mountain was done in by the likes of Jay Leno, David Letterman, Nathan Lane and the dozens of other jokesters who guffawed at the sad gay cowboys, and also by the failure of the gay comunity for laughing along with them. Or so says Karel, a radio talk-show guy, in this Advocate commentary piece.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:43 PM on Friday, March 10, 2006
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"I think Peter Howell makes
"I think Peter Howell makes a good point about the Academy's fear allowing Crash to sneak away with the Best Picture Oscar. However, I think the most glaring example of the Academy kowtowing to fear would be Citizen Kane losing the 1941 Oscar to How Green Was My Valley. That time was the fear of Randolph Hearst and the national stink his henchman would have made if Kane had won. Also in both examples, the ultimate winner seemed to be a safe wagon on which the Academy members could jump. The winners of '41 and '05 are good quality movies, just not...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:19 PM on Friday, March 10, 2006
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I can relate to Annie
I can relate to Annie Proulx's sour grapes ("Blood on the Red Carpet"), although if I were her I probably wouldn't have confessed to them. In a fair and aesthetically just world Brokeback Mountain, the film based on Proulx's short story of the same name, wouldn't have lost the Best Picture Oscar to Crash...and she knows it as well as anyone, and she's furiously pissed about it. Truly first-rate writers don't tippy-toe around their feelings, no matter how raw and unattractive they might seem to guys like David Poland, who thought at first that Proulx's piece might have been taken from The...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:33 PM on Friday, March 10, 2006
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I have to shut down
I have to shut down for two or three hours, but I'm looking for thoughts and/or arguments about Failure to Launch star Matthew McConaughey. I'm cooking up a piece about the poor guy called "Dead Man Walking." It's my belief that McConaughey is a somewhat historic figure in that he's one of the very few actors who've made it as a pseudo-movie star and yet, contrary to what you might think is a necessary attribute, exude absolutely nothing from within. No river, no spirit...McConaughey is the most empty-souled movie actor I can remember since Don Johnson. But he presents an interesting proposition,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:13 AM on Friday, March 10, 2006
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"Sunday's selection of Crash over
"Sunday's selection of Crash over Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture was the first time in memory that fear seemed to be the guiding impulse for awarding Oscar's top prize," says Toronto Star critic/columnist Peter Howell. "Faced with the choice between a feel-good movie about the evils of racism and a troublesome film that challenged prejudices about homosexual love, Academy voters grabbed their security blankets and starting sucking on their thumbs. They figured they were being progressive, but in fact they shunned anything that smacked of subversion. In an era of cowboy conservatives they wanted real Marlboro men, not sensitive males who collected...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:20 AM on Friday, March 10, 2006
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"I could not promise that
"I could not promise that we would not come back and do a [Sopranos] movie," series creator David Chase has told N.Y. Times writer Bill Carter (which I can't link to because the article is on Times Select). "It may be that in two or three or four years I could be sitting around and get an idea for a really great Sopranos movie. I don't think that will happen. But if one morning somebody woke up and said this would make a really good, concise, contained Sopranos story, I wouldn't rule that out."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:12 AM on Friday, March 10, 2006
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Another example of a Sopranos
Another example of a Sopranos spoiler, this from N.Y. Times critic Allesandra Stanley: "Sadly, this episode marks the beginning of the end. The good news is that it begins with a badda bang." And by the way, why do reviewers keep saying this is the final season? It's fucking not that, okay? As N.Y. Times guy Bill Carter recalls in a Times Select article that I can't link to, to wit: "After several years of speculation, [series creator David] Chase and the executives of HBO came to an agreement that the latest season of 12 episodes, which starts up on March 12, would...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:54 AM on Friday, March 10, 2006
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Woody Allen's Paris-based film, which
Woody Allen's Paris-based film, which lenses there this summer with Wild Bunch footing the bills, was described in Variety's 3.7 story as "an American movie set in Paris" rather than one with largely French characters, or not in the vein of Match Point and Scoop, which were London-based flicks mostly about English natives. It would be nice if Allen's Paris locations turn out to be less generically touristy than the London ones he chose for Match Point, but you know Woody...his pics always use "glamorous" locations enjoyed by mildly hip, not-terribly- adventurous people with money. (So forget Oberkampf.) Woody's next will shoot...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:29 AM on Friday, March 10, 2006
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A sympathetic portrait of Oscar-winning
A sympathetic portrait of Oscar-winning Crash producer Cathy Schulman by Risky Business columnist Anne Thompson. Stand-out graph: "In the film community, while many respect Schulman's taste and acumen as a producer, some question her business judgment when it comes to the men with whom she works. 'Cathy's emotionality makes her a good producer on-set,' says one producer, 'but gets her into trouble in business.'"
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:11 AM on Friday, March 10, 2006
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"Page Six" is claiming that
"Page Six" is claiming that George Clooney was the bad guy smoothie in Teri Hatcher's life a couple of months ago. A non-attributed source has fingered Clooney as a guy described as "a world-class Don Juan" and a "Mystery Man" in Leslie Bennett's just-out Vanity Fair interview piece with Hatcher. This guy, Bennett says, seduced and abandoned Hatcher last January, and made her feel so badly she got in touch with feelings about her uncle having abused her as a young woman, etc. I just bought the issue today, and Bennetts reports that the seducing and abandoning of Hatcher by "Mystery Man"...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:18 AM on Friday, March 10, 2006
Thursday, March 9, 2006
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This site says that pirated
This site says that pirated DVDs of Brokeback Mountain are floating around Turkey, and evidently the title "they've" gone with in Turkish -- Ibne Kovboylar, or something close to that -- translates into English as Faggot Cowboys. An Istanbul site called Radikal has written about this crude title and quotes a reader saying that "this hopeless and disgusting name shows my culture's primal face...it's really bad." I went to three Turkish- English translation sites and tried translating Ibne Kovboylar into English, and three times I got "nothing found." Then I tried translating "faggot cowboy" into Turkish and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:30 PM on Thursday, March 9, 2006
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This is nine days old
This is nine days old and counting, but also a fascinating peek into Ann Coulter's head when it comes to discussing Hollywood films and industry attitudes. And here's Coulter's 3.8 response to the show and who won, etc.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:36 PM on Thursday, March 9, 2006
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The V for Vendetta London
The V for Vendetta London premiere took place last night (Wednesday, 3.8) at the UCI Empire Cinema in Leicester Square, and here's a link to some video coverage.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:11 PM on Thursday, March 9, 2006
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If you live in L.A.
If you live in L.A. and have masochist-adventurist leanings, get over to the American Cinematheque Aero Theatre on Saturday, April 1st, for a 7:30 pm screening of a restored and uncut print of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, which clocks in at faucet-dripping 219 minutes. This version has been on DVD for a long while, but this is one of those appalling creations you have to experience in a theatre on the big screen to fully appreciate. I was there, you see....at the evening press screening of this bloated, turgid western at Manhattan's Cinema 1 theatre nearly 25 years and eight months ago....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:41 PM on Thursday, March 9, 2006
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There's a guy I spoke
There's a guy I spoke to last night who complained that I've spoiled his enjoyment of the first episode of the new Sopranos season by saying something heavy happens in this episode (debuting Sunday, 3.12, on HBO). I provided no details at all...not the slightest dandelion-fuzz of a hint...but for Mr. Bitch-and-Moaner just knowing something or other will happen is a serious problem. Well, he also needs to call Variety's Brian Lowry and let him have it. Lowry's review of the first four episodes, posted late yesterday (Wednesday, 3.8), gives almost nothing away but it does say "there is a genuine surprise...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:01 PM on Thursday, March 9, 2006
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I've asked a lot of
I've asked a lot of well-connected guys if the can help me get a copy of the shooting script of The DaVinci Code, and they all said it's too much of a lockdown thing...can't happen. Does anyone anywhere have a copy? In the meantime, I just received the illustrated version of Dan Brown's best-seller by messenger.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:40 PM on Thursday, March 9, 2006
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"You've probably heard this from
"You've probably heard this from others, but supposedly there just isn't that much extra footage to add back to that director's cut of Crash [due April 4th on DVD]. I was at a screening several months back where Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco spoke for about an hour after it ended. They mentioned the low cost and speed at which they had to shoot it, saying that basically most of what they shot is on the screen and that's that. Who knows how honest they were being with the Creative Screenwriting crowd, but this may be the answer to your question." -- Josh...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:27 PM on Thursday, March 9, 2006
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"Though it needs to be
"Though it needs to be cut drastically, George Gittoes' Rampage is a power-packed documentary with lots of potential," Screen Daily's Peter Brunette wrote out of Berlin on 3.7. "Set mostly in one of the worst black ghettoes in Miami, the film, which was shot over the course of several years by the Australian-based Gittoes, is lively, insightful and even shocking. Festival programmers and buyers of docs for television, who may think there's nothing new to be seen or said about black American ghetto life, should give this film a serious look. Once its two-hour running time is shortened to a punchier...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:22 PM on Thursday, March 9, 2006
592 comments
Haiti, Sex, Death
Haiti, Sex, Death
Before last Sunday night I thought of Haiti as a hopeless Caribbean shithole, one of the worst places to live in the world because the government corruption and the politically-motivated beatings and killings never seem to stop, and because the poverty levels for most of the citizens are beyond belief.
I still see Haiti as an island most foul, but a knockout documentary called Ghosts of Cite Soleil, a kind of Cain-and-Abel story that was filmed just before, during and after the overthrow of Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide in March 2004, has added a new dimension.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:11 PM on Thursday, March 9, 2006
Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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Brokeback Mountain not winning the
Brokeback Mountain not winning the Best Picture Oscar hit the film's director Ang Lee in a soft spot, and it left some kind of bruise. He said in a TV interview that aired yesterday (Wednesday, 3.8) that promoting the film was "an arduous process" and that losing to Crash was a disappointment-and-a-half. "We've won every award since September, but missed out on the last one, the biggest one," Lee said. But feeling disappointed "is human nature. And it wasn't for myself. I led a whole team of people."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:28 PM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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Sales of the old Crash
Sales of the old Crash DVD (i.e., the one that went on sale last September, and not the "special edition" coming out 4.4) soared after the Paul Haggis film won the Best Picture Oscar Sunday night. In one day (aaah but which day?...Monday, 3.6 or Tuesday, 3.7?) Lionsgate sold 17,500 copies.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:15 PM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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Another story about Bob Yari's
Another story about Bob Yari's lawsuit over being denied producer credit on Crash, and I'm not precisely understanding how it moves things along to hear Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, say that Yari has a tempestuous nature and a Producer's Guild attorney say more or less the same thing.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:05 PM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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I've finally heard an explanation
I've finally heard an explanation as to why Mozart and the Whale costars Josh Hartnett and Radha Mitchell didn't show up for the Santa Barbara Film Festival screening a month ago. The no-shows, I've been told, were basically about giving a fuck-you message to Avi Lerner, the film's Israeli producer. The principals are angry because Lerner apparently wasn't happy with a longer and allegedly better cut of Whale and, being the big-cheese producer, had it re-cut it into the shorter version I saw in Santa Barbara. I happened to enjoy and admire what I saw (as did Variety's Todd McCarthy), but the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:02 PM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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I'm told by a trusted
I'm told by a trusted source that Lauren Bacall intended to wear her glasses during her appearance on last Sunday's Oscar show, but at the last minute she didn't (we can assume why) and this is why she had difficulty reading her copy. Sounds odd (Bacall never heard of contacts or laser eye surgery?) but a well-placed guy tells me that's how it went down.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:39 PM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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The website for Robert Towne's
The website for Robert Towne's Ask the Dust (Paramount Classics, 3.10) nicely captures the film's 1930s atmosphere and meditative mood. There's not a great amount of advance heat coming from critics or the distributor, even, about Friday's opening, but it's my idea of a movie of genuine substance. Here are some excerpts from a piece I wrote after seeing it last month in Santa Barbara: "Ask the Dust is about how self-acceptance -- who you really are, where you come from, what you're feeling deep down -- brings clarity and with that the noblest kind of strength, which is the ability...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:29 PM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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The teaser-trailer for Pixar's Cars
The teaser-trailer for Pixar's Cars (Disney, 6.9), the latest, certain-to-be-cool animated feature from John Lasseter (Toy Story 2), will be viewable on the Pixar site sometime tomorrow, apparently. (Looks like it's live now but it isn't, or wasn't when I tried it ten minutes ago.) It's about cars driving themselves around and going through identity crises, etc., but rising to the challenge a big third-act race at the end. (What else, right?) Hotshot race-car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) finds himself in a proverbial meditative dead-end in a desert bumblefuck town called Radiator Springs on his way to the big...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:59 PM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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Sharon Stone has formally confirmed
Sharon Stone has formally confirmed she has a bare-assed scene in Basic Instinct 2. And with that out of the way...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:07 PM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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A few Sopranos cast members
A few Sopranos cast members were asked to spill some plot details about season #6 (which launches on Sunday, 3.12) by a "Page Six" reporter at Tuesday night's MOMA premiere, but of course they wouldn't. Nor will I (although I'm trying to figure out some way to write about the four episodes I've seen), but here's a little tiny taste of some dialogue from episode #4...hilarious. A born- again guy talking to Tony (James Gandolfini) and some friends (among them Michael Imperioli's Chris) about being saved, the legend of Charles Colson, dinosaurs and world history. Beautiful stuff.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:01 PM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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"George Lucas is wrong about
"George Lucas is wrong about the future of cinema," says Matthew Meyeretto, in a reference to this morning's item sourced from Lloyd Grove. "The reason people still go to theaters is because of tent-pole pictures. Films like Crash have achieved a nice niche market but they'll never attract that key market segment of 12-30 year olds that epic tent-poles do. We all know Kong 'disappointed' because it was too long and was too much of pet project for Jackson. If he had trimmed an hour off and made a straight monster flick that put the pedal to the metal within...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:28 AM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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"A check of Brokeback parodies
"A check of Brokeback parodies on Google should convince anyone with half a brain that the American pop culture is intent on passing this passionate, well-meant, and well-made movie like a kidney stone. And how does the American pop culture pass what it cannot stand? Easy. It laughs that shit right out of its system. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, at bottom as conservative as the current U.S. House of Representatives, gave Ang Lee one Oscar (which surprised me), the writing team of McMurtry and Diana Ossana another...and with those bones thrown, felt free to move on. To Crash, of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:12 AM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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"So what happened? Brokeback won
"So what happened? Brokeback won almost all the critics' awards, but the critics are only trying to select the best movie. In Hollywood, the old guard never embraced Brokeback...it never had a chance to win over the 60-year-old straight white men who compose most of the voting. Giving Brokeback an award is not the kind of message Hollywood wants to send to middle America. Hollywood does not heart homosexuals. The only people in the country who really truly seem to believe that Hollywood is pushing a gay agenda message the throats of Americans are the ultra far-right wing...the Michael Medveds, Ann Coulters, and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:02 AM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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Nothing to do with movie
Nothing to do with movie culture whatsoever but a great L.A. hiking-trail website for locals and anyone visiting...excellent. (Yeah, I'm a hiker...but not enough.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:58 AM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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Lauren Bacall, great actress and
Lauren Bacall, great actress and screen legend who unfortunately lost her concentration and stumbled while reading copy on the teleprompter last Sunday night...tough moment for a great lady.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:53 AM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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"The market forces that exist
"The market forces that exist today make it unrealistic to spend $200 million on a movie," George Lucas has told N.Y. Daily News columnist Lloyd Grove. "Those movies can't make their money back anymore. Look at what happened with King Kong. I think it's great that the major Oscar nominations have gone to independent films...small movies. Is that good for the business? No -- it's bad for the business. But moviemaking isn't about business. It's about art! In the future, almost everything that gets shown in theaters will be indie movies. I predict that by 2025 the average movie will cost only...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:42 AM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
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"Sometimes I go about in
"Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind carries me across the sky" -- Ojibwe saying written on a small piece of paper, posted on a tile wall and captured three times by the cameras in episode #4 of the new Sopranos season, debuting 3.12 on HBO.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:38 AM on Wednesday, March 8, 2006
Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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Something very big and very
Something very big and very traumatic happens right off the bat in the first episode of the new Sopranos, which debuts on March 12th. That's all I'll say. Except that having seen the first two episodes so far and feeling like a family member of sorts (as I have for the last five or six years), it makes me feel untethered and out to sea. David Chase is a nervy guy.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:54 PM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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"The DVD edition of Crash
"The DVD edition of Crash that came out last September says right on the back cover: 'running time 122 minutes.' It also gives a date of '2004,' which means it shouldn't have been eligible for the 2005 Oscar, but what do I know? I've seen it in a theatre, but I watched it again last night and it did seem to end earlier than it was supposed to. Confusing, yes. Why anyone would want to see a version three minutes longer...or three minutes shorter, for that matter? Your guess is as good as mine." -- Gordon Eklund, Seattle.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:49 PM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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Variety's Brian Lowry and the
Variety's Brian Lowry and the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt are both calling Failure to Launch (Paramount, 3.10) a non-starter. There's some merit to this opinion, which the vast majority of the reviews appearing this Friday will confirm. Sarah Jessica Parker can shrug it off and move on, but poor Matthew McConaughey...what can he do? No one on this film ever woke up one morning and realized that Failure to Launch is one of the worst titles ever conceived? Astonishing.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:49 PM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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Okay...two more comments about the
Okay...two more comments about the Crash victory. Can't find the link but it appears that the Boston Globe's Wesley Morris wrote that "the memo from Hollywood seems clear enough. Better to reward the movie about people who clean our closets than the one about the men who live in them." And the Washington Post's Tom Shales said last Monday morning that "film buffs and the politically minded...will be arguing this morning about whether the Best Picture Oscar to Crash was really for the film's merit or just a cop-out by the Motion Picture Academy so it wouldn't have to give the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:29 PM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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I've been overhwelmingly told by
I've been overhwelmingly told by so many readers that I'm overheated or flat-out full of shit about my belief that there was a sufficient numbers of Korean War and World War II-generation Academy members flinching at Brokeback Mountain to cause it to lose the Best Picture Oscar. I don't know what to say except that I know I'm right about a certain percentage of these people voting against Ang Lee's film for reasons I've described in previous postings, and/or supporting Crash for the "wrong" reasons. I know it, I know it...but nobody seems to agree (here's Roger Ebert disputing it) so...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:55 PM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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I don't know how long
I don't know how long this Starz bunny parody of Brokekack Mountain has been kicking around, but the words "who cares?" are inadequate to the task of expressing my interest levels. Why am I posting it then? Good question.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:03 PM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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Ron Grover's 3.6 Business Week
Ron Grover's 3.6 Business Week scoop about the recently- cemented deal between the Weinstein Co. and the Sony-based MGM Studios came out yesterday, and the official announcement may be announced at a press conference on Wednesday, 3.8. The MGM-Weinstein Co. deal "will mean a new, high-profile home for Harvey and his brother, Bob, who had a nasty 2005 divorce from Disney, which had bought Miramax in 1993," Grover writes. The pact will also signal legendary studio MGM's return to making and distributing films. "Sources" say Harry Sloan, MGM's new CEO, will proclaim MGM's resurgence as a full-fledged studio at the 3.8 press...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:03 AM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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"My life is about finding
"My life is about finding time to dream. That's why my card is American Express." This speaker is famed director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs), and it's the only line of narration heard in his fascinating, self-directed two-minute American Express ad, which is definitely Night-flavored and Night-creepy, and two or three cuts above the usual-usual. (And I don't care how long it's been viewable...I just saw it now.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:55 AM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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Okay, so the Oscar-viewing TV
Okay, so the Oscar-viewing TV audience was down 8% from last year, but -- but! -- viewership among 18 to 34 year-old males was up 5%, which is probably due to Jon Stewart's popularity with this demo. Nielsen's estimated total count came in at 38.8 million viewers, compared to last year's 42.1 million. And Sunday night;s show was ahead of the 2003 audience of only 33 million. And the 38.8 million figure is larger than the audience for the recent Emmy and Golden Globes shows combined, and was also larger than the Academy Award telecasts in 1986 and 1987. But they should...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:37 AM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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"The key to the success
"The key to the success of Crash," writes James Bates in today's L.A. Times, "was that the film itself -- and the carefully orchestrated promotional campaign undertaken by its distributor, Lionsgate ’Äî appealed to actors, the academy's largest voting bloc. With 22% of the voting members, the acting contingent is nearly three times as big as the next-largest group, producers. It was actors -- specifically, those in Los Angeles -- who were targeted to deliver votes. And judging by the upset, deliver they did. Crash likely...scored points with some actors because it was shot in Los Angeles at a time when runaway...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:49 AM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
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It was linkable yesterday, but
It was linkable yesterday, but David Halbfinger's N.Y. Times piece about Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck's sharply critical doc about former House majority leader and right-wing ideologue Tom DeLay is in today's issue. The Big Buy: How Tom DeLay Stole Congress, which is about the trouble DeLay got into over campaign fund-raising as well as Texas redistricting, has been produced and will be distributed by "liberal provocateur" Robert Greenwald. Staunch leftie orgs like People for the American Way and Democracy for America "are expected to sponsor the film's release," which will start with openings in a few cities before being made widely...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:35 AM on Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Monday, March 6, 2006
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"My friend Jim is more
"My friend Jim is more interested in the Academy than anyone I know who isn't involved in the industry. (He's a chauffeur in Seattle.) By early summer he's already talking up possible nominees. The discussion reaches a fever pitch in November and December when the prestige pictures are rolled out and critics make their 'best of' announcements. He goes to see these films. He talks about them. He actually cares. Not anymore. Crash's win did him in. The Academy, he said afterwards, 'is not a serious body of voters who vote rationally. If they're influenced by a DVD sales pitch, they're not worth...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:52 PM on Monday, March 6, 2006
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Jon Stewart sure as shit
Jon Stewart sure as shit didn't hit it out of the park last night. The general consensus is that his material was a little too dry, and that he was mostly hit-and-missy. Did he do better than Chris Rock? Somewhat, but not that much. A few of his ad-libs were slightly funnier than the prepared material, but they weren't golden either. The filmed bits were the funniest of all. If Oscar show producer Gil Cates was a hipper, nervier guy, he would have followed my suggestion and tried to get Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan to co-host. C'mon...those guys would have killed. And...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:22 PM on Monday, March 6, 2006
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It was Gil Cates' idea
It was Gil Cates' idea to have that soft prompt music play under the Oscar winners' acceptance speeches, right? And what was that film noir reel about? And that pitch about movies being better served in a big theatre on a big screen? And that chit-chat between Leonard Maltin, Joel Siegel and Anne Thompson was smooth and smart but felt overly rehearsed, and this, I gather, was mandated by the Cates team. It was an irksome, not-terribly-enjoyed show, and I think it's pretty clear that the 71 year-old Cates needs to be sacked and somebody younger (somebody in their 50s, maybe?....sopmeone who wasn't...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:08 PM on Monday, March 6, 2006
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"Just in case you hadn't
"Just in case you hadn't heard -- 10 years from now people will say 'Oh right....I forgot that Crash won for Best Picture. That was the 'little' year." -- message from broadcast news guy.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:50 PM on Monday, March 6, 2006
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"Crash was far more representative
"Crash was far more representative of the our industry, of where we work and live," said "player" David Cohen to the New York Times guy David Carr in another what-happened-last-night? story. "Brokeback took on a fairly sacred Hollywood icon, the cowboy, and I don't think the older members of the academy wanted to see the image of the American cowboy diminished."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:29 PM on Monday, March 6, 2006
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Just to reiterate: It's pretty
Just to reiterate: It's pretty clear to me that an undetermined but not-miniscule percentage of Academy voters went for Crash the Tony Curtis way -- because it wasn't Brokeback Mountain, because they flat-out didn't see Brokeback, or just didn't feel good about supporting a film that meesed with the iconic image of macho cowboys. Curtis said he wouldn't see it, an Academy-member uncle of a friend said the same thing, and I've heard or read about this same mindset among older Academy members from others aroudn town. There were many Crash supporters who undboutedly voted for it because they admired it the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:58 PM on Monday, March 6, 2006
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N.Y. Daily News critic Jack
N.Y. Daily News critic Jack Matthews speculating why Crash won and Brokeback didn't. (1) "Enough Academy voters found the gay subject matter of Brokeback Mountain too uncomfortable to sit through, meaning they abandoned their professional responsibility and didn't watch all five nominated films"; (2) Lionsgate "simply bought the grand prize by outspending everyone else in a $4 million campaign that included mailing DVDs to each of the 130,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild" and thus "a combination of everybody seeing Crash and some refusing to watch Brokeback Mountain"; and (3) Crash's subject matter -- racism, fear, and intolerance on the streets of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:47 PM on Monday, March 6, 2006
6 comments
For Shame
Different Enough?
There's a slightly longer "Director's Cut" DVD of Paul Haggis's Oscar-winning Crash hitting stores on April 4th. It's just about three minutes longer than the 112-minute version that played in theatres. Extra dabs, clips and brushstrokes "integrated," as a Lionsgate spokesperson put it this morning.
The two-disc package will have several deleted scenes and the usual featurettes, etc., but it's too bad the slightly altered film on the DVD won't be a little more so. A good 15 or 20 minutes longer, say, or maybe even a Wyatt Earp-sized three-hour cut. All those racist Los Angelenos, all those story...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:21 PM on Monday, March 6, 2006
Sunday, March 5, 2006
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If James Mangold and producer
If James Mangold and producer Stacy Keach had wanted to kill audience interest when they were making Walk the Line, they would have portrayed Cash as intensely religious and full of faith. Because they knew what they were doing, they avoided this. The New York Times ' Robert Levine has found some Christian types who wouldn't have.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:17 PM on Sunday, March 5, 2006
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If my stuff isn't making
If my stuff isn't making it for you, check out the Oscar simulcast commentary from Salon's Camille Paglia and Cintra Wilson, starting at 7:30 Eastern, 4:30 Pacific.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:09 PM on Sunday, March 5, 2006
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"I'm kinda shocked that you're
"I'm kinda shocked that you're drinking the Crash kool aid. Doesn't the film that wins almost all the critics awards, the top Golden Globe prize, all the main Category Guild Awards (except SAG), makes the most money and gets the most nominations...doesn't that film usually win Best Picture? Crash won the SAG cast award but it's an ensemble and ensembles usually win -- Sideways , Gosford Park, Traffic and The Full Monty all won the SAG cast award but they didn't win Best Picture. If they really give the Big Trophy to Crash I think there's going to be a huge backlash against...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:33 AM on Sunday, March 5, 2006
Saturday, March 4, 2006
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Everything is either down or
Everything is either down or mezzo-mezzo at the box-office this weekend. 16 Blocks, the Bruce Willis cop thriller from director Richard Donner, will come in second to Madea's Family Reunion , which is down about 58% and will probably end up with about $12 million on Sunday night. 16 Blocks is being projected to earn just over $11 million for the weekend, and that means Willis isn't bringing them in like he did in the late '80s and early '90s and is basically over the hill. (Sorry, but that's the reality right now.) "He made a string of lousy pictures, and when you...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:01 AM on Saturday, March 4, 2006
22 comments
Santa Monica Vibe
Show of Shows
Please, Oscar God...give us surprises. Any surprises. Anything.
Even if it means Crash winning the Best Picture Oscar, which I'd rather not see happen for a few reasons. At 4:45 pm Joel Siegel, sharing the black mike with his ABC co-commentators Leonard Maltin and Anne Thompson, said this is precisely what might happen.
Ladies, it's okay with me. Crash is a very well crafted, socially resonant film. No, wait...March of the Homophobes!
That was an excellent CG intro with the classic scenes and characters all blended together in that CG sepia-tone dreamscape. Awesome work.
Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, David...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:57 AM on Saturday, March 4, 2006
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"The atomization of the culture
"The atomization of the culture makes it hard to know what people want [from movies], particularly when they belong to a multi-everything society like ours. Still, something will be lost if Hollywood continues to downsize its ambitions and fails to make movies that connect with the mass audience, to make movies that speak to us as a unified whole rather than as a mass of self-interested egos, that give us a sense of collective identity and social cohesion. A nation of iPod-people, each staring at his or her individually downloaded film on the delivery system of his or her choice, seems a poor...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:52 AM on Saturday, March 4, 2006
Friday, March 3, 2006
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Garrett Scott, 38, an Independent
Garrett Scott, 38, an Independent Spirit Awards nominee for Occupation: Dreamland, suffered an accidental death on Thursday night somewhere in Southern California, and what a sad thing this is to pass along. But is there some reason why Indiewire didn't run some kind of account of what happened to the poor guy?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:40 PM on Friday, March 3, 2006
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The Oscar show "is not
The Oscar show "is not the place for any kind of revolutionary act. We don't want to do something that feels cheap, like we totally gave up on doing something that makes us laugh, but if we're doing material that's political in nature, we want to make sure it's filtered through the world of movies, not just political for the sake of being political. We're trying to find that balance. It's all about being able to beat yourself up in a pure way." -- Ben Karlin, Jon Stewart's exec producer and co-writer, talking to Robin Finn.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:32 PM on Friday, March 3, 2006
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L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke
L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke has a new daily blog, and will apparently be tapping out commentary as the Sunday Oscar telecast unfolds. Is there anyone with an Hollywood entertainment column who won't be doing this? Does this mean I have to?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:59 PM on Friday, March 3, 2006
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Thanks very much to the
Thanks very much to the IFP Spirit Awards organizers for giving me a seat at one of the tables with all the hot-shots inside the big white tent tomorrow afternoon. Four or five years ago I was booted into the press tent because of all the corporate contributors buying more and more tables, etc. The show goes on IFC (Independent Film Channel) at 2:00 pm Pacifc (5:00 pm Eastern). A re-broadccast will happen on AMC at 10:00 pm on both coasts.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:29 PM on Friday, March 3, 2006
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Josh Horowitz tosses a few
Josh Horowitz tosses a few questions to Spirit Awards host Sarah Silverman, and she gives him one balls-out response after another.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:24 PM on Friday, March 3, 2006
Thursday, March 2, 2006
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The Walk the Line DVD
The Walk the Line DVD came out two days ago (Tuesday, 2.28) and has sold more than 3 million copies already. I don't have the regional stats but I'll bet that a significant portion of the buys happened in Middle America. If James Mangold's film had been Oscar-nominated for Best Picture (as it damn well should have been), ratings for Sunday's Oscar telecast would probably be higher due to red-state tune-ins.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:19 PM on Thursday, March 2, 2006
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Zack Braff's Garden State was
Zack Braff's Garden State was shot in the winter-spring of '03, went to Sundance in January '04 and then was released by Fox Searchlight later that year. Braff did a Chicken Little voice-over and acted in Scrubs and then in Tony Goldwyn's The Last Kiss (due later this year from Paramount) but helming-wise it's been All Quiet on the Western Front. Now, finally, Braff is about to direct again -- a remake of Susanne Bier's Open Hearts for big Paramount. (Paramount exec Pam Abdy, a Garden State producer, will "shepherd" the untitled pic with Brad Weston.) The infidelity drama will shoot in New...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:11 PM on Thursday, March 2, 2006
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"This is a very odd
"This is a very odd year. The East Coasters love it because it's so arty, and the Left Coasters hate it because it's so arty. Here, it's considered a year for the 'classics' divisions of studios, which exist for prestige, to attract filmmakers, and for the occasional breakthrough hit. On that score, Brokeback Mountain has been the subject of many a wager. As in, 'No way this movie will ever do over $40 million, no matter what.' (It's taken in more than $100 million worldwide.) They're not races at this point so much as duels: the golden girl (Reese) versus the she-man (Felicity),...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:51 AM on Thursday, March 2, 2006
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Astrological Oscar analysis from N.Y.
Astrological Oscar analysis from N.Y. Post's astrology columnist Sally Brompton.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:43 AM on Thursday, March 2, 2006
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N.Y. Daily News guy David
N.Y. Daily News guy David Hinckley has it bad for Keira Knightley. I've been there and I know how it feels.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:40 AM on Thursday, March 2, 2006
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"The scariest days of my
"The scariest days of my life are the days that I'm filming...scary because I'm scared of failure. I'm scared I'm not going to satisfy not just myself, but satisfy my film family, my larger family. I want people to like what I do, and I'm scared that I'm going to fail in doing that. So that's why every morning when I wake up, I'm always bolt upright five minutes before the alarm clock, whether I've had one hour's sleep, two hours, ten hours...I don't get ten hours' sleep, my max is about five...I'm always bolt upright in fear, in fear of failure, in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:27 AM on Thursday, March 2, 2006
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"Anyone who claims to take
"Anyone who claims to take pride in a film not doing as well as its supporters hoped it would is, simply, pathetic," David Poland has written, obviously referring to yesterday's Wired item about my feeling a wee bit proud about helping to stop the Munich Oscar train in some small way. Poland has gone after films and filmmakers and fellow journalists, even, and hurt them to some degree (I still carry the scars), so let's not have any high-minded judgments about pathetic vendettas. I'm much more of an amiable, shoulder-shrugging, comme ci comme ca type of guy than Poland is any day...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:04 AM on Thursday, March 2, 2006
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Heavy boozing, smoking and "a
Heavy boozing, smoking and "a walking time bomb" lifestyle brought down Jack Wild, the "artful dodger" of Sir Carol Reed's Oliver (1968). Wild died of cancer at only 53 years of age.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:19 AM on Thursday, March 2, 2006
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I've read these stories about
I've read these stories about the battling Crash producers three times now -- Sharon Waxman and John Horn's, I mean -- and both are written so impartially that I can't tell what's really going on, but it seems to boil down to this: (a) Bob Yari, the former real-estate mogul who's moneyed his way into the upper ranks of indie film producing over the last two or three years, has sued the Motion Picture Academy and the Producers Guild for denying him producer credit on Crash, (b) Crash wouldn't have been made if Yari hadn't put up a reported $7 million...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:47 AM on Thursday, March 2, 2006
Wednesday, March 1, 2006
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Here's a recording of the
Here's a recording of the chat I had earlier today with Rachel Boynton, director of the just-opened documentary Our Brand of Crisis (Koch Lorber), a fascinating political doc that just opened at Manhattan's Film Forum and will be playing in 15 other U.S. cities within the next five or six weeks. Read Laura Kern's N.Y. Times review for background. I began by asking Boynton whey it took her nearly four years to complete her film, since most of it was shot in late 2002. And she replied....
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:05 PM on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
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Forbes' Leah Hoffmann analyzes Oscar
Forbes' Leah Hoffmann analyzes Oscar winner thank-you speeches. Just think -- this is all going to be over next Tuesday (i.e., after the morning-after reviews and reaction pieces run on Monday).
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:59 PM on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
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"Seriously...fuck you and your plebian
"Seriously...fuck you and your plebian McDonald's taste in cinema." -- reader Bill Weber over my confessing to feeling "a twinge of pride" over being part of the team that helped take down Munich. It's hard to explain, but Munich struck me as a pretty good film with third-act problems, but the more I thought about it the less interesting it became. Then I saw it again last December and it didn't kick back up...it just did the same thing. I may watch it again when it comes out on DVD, but I don't especially want to.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:50 PM on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
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16 Blocks (Warner Bros., 3.3)
16 Blocks (Warner Bros., 3.3) is a predictably gritty urban thriller that doesn't screw up too badly. It's Richard Donner's finest film in a long time, but that's not saying a whole lot considering his direction of Timeline, Lethal Weapon 4, Conspiracy Theory, the piss-dreadful Assassins, the revoltingly glossy Maverick (which an attorney friend of mine called "a 75 million dollar Elvis Presley film"), the over-boiled Lethal Weapon 3, the manipulative Radio Flyer, and so on. Call it Donner's best "street" film since Lethal Weapon, even though 16 Blocks walks and talks like a hack job from start to finish. It uses...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:47 PM on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
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Another good David Carr/"Carpetpagger" rant
Another good David Carr/"Carpetpagger" rant in the N.Y. Times about some especially irksome social ticks and tendencies in the Oscar game. I'll just address the complaint about industry journo-bloggers flogging the "Pet Cause" (David Poland on Munich, Roger Ebert on Crash ). I've jumped into this swimming pool from time to time (my anti-Peter Jackson and Chicago rants), and I see Carr's point that "if you harp relentlessly on an agenda, many people will soon wish that you and your pet cause would go for a long walk." But I'm not at all sorry for pushing The Fog of War two years...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:07 PM on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
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Stop for a sec and
Stop for a sec and click on this Cannes website...it has a really great crickets-and-birds soundtrack and if you throw in the rising sun visual it's kind of perfect. It really and truly captures the way that town feels...at times. I'm feeling jaunty about Cannes because I just scored a good flat share at the right price.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:35 AM on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
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A little over three weeks
A little over three weeks ago, or on February 4th, former N.Y. Times critic Elvis Mitchell returned to National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition Saturday" for the first time since...well, it gets complicated from here on. In February '05 an announcement came down about an acqusitions gig Mitchell had supposedly landed with Columbia Pictures in Manhattan...which he apparently never performed. Maynard Institute columnnist Richard Prince referenced a 2.1.5.05 Daily News story about the Columbia gig, and also a column written last year by the New York Observer's 2.27 piece that Jake Brooks saying that Mitchell had "been assigned the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:44 AM on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
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A very cool Volkswagen ad
A very cool Volkswagen ad starring Peter Stormare, okay, but let's not go overboard. It's about the GTI Mark V, which starts at $21 thousand and change.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:34 AM on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
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Critics have been saying for
Critics have been saying for years that the Oscars have to loosen up and change with the times and not be so stiff and regimented. Well, here's one very cool and classy idea: annnounce a brand-new category called the Masters Oscar, which in effect would be a retroactive Best Picture Oscar. The idea is to give a Masters Oscar each year to some richly deserving film that has steadily gained in reputation in the years and decades since it was first released, but was ignored or under-valued by Academy members at the time. An opportunity to right a past oversight by way of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:40 AM on Wednesday, March 1, 2006