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Cheri
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
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Five Minutes of Heaven
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World's Greatest Dad
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The Burning Plain
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Brand New Day
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A Serious Man
Toy Story/Toy Story 2
Sunday, April 30, 2006
2 comments
From This End...
From This End...
It's Sunday evening (4.30) and Worldfest-Houston 2006 has come to a close. Earnest apologies for not providing more reports about the films I saw here and the filmmakers I conversed with over the last two days, but something got into me on Saturday -- either the same lazy virus that attacks me at odd intervals like the flu, or some hair-brained whimsy or delusion about having some kind of weekend downtime for a change.
Worldfest had its big awards ceremony Saturday night at the Renaissance hotel, which I half-wanted to go to but decided to blow off at...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:19 PM on Sunday, April 30, 2006
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In Richard Donner's The Omen (1976), a 59 year-old Gregory Peck played Robert Thorn, the U.S. ambassador to England, and Lee Remick, who was 40 or 41 when the film was shot, played his wife Katherine. Remick may have seemed a bit too old to be getting pregnant and raising a young son, but her age wasn't a stopper. Peck certainly seemed too old to be embarking upon fatherhood for the first time, but this was balanced by the fact that he was completely believable as a high-level diplomat at the summit of his career . In John Moore's Omen remake (20th Century...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:31 AM on Sunday, April 30, 2006
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This is a video clip shot during the shooting of Mission: Impossible III that shows Tom Cruise lying prone on a street and waiting for a big truck to start hitting the brakes and then jacknife and then roll right over him...and then it actually happens and it's quite cool. Damn thrilling, in fact. In fact, it's more exciting than when the sequence happens in the film. The difference is that I totally believe the video -- it's obviously "real world" and un-tricked -- and I don't really believe anything I see in a super-expensive action film of this sort. I don't...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:29 AM on Sunday, April 30, 2006
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I first saw this teaser for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford on Friday night at the AMC Dunvale 30 in Houston. It was at this precise moment that a less-than- profound Casey Affleck thought came to mind. Here he goes again, I muttered, playing another creep -- the doleful deadhead Robert Ford, infamous for putting a cowardly bullet into the back of Jesse James (Brad Pitt). On top of his last creepy-head -- that glum-ass, do-nothing piece of wood in Steve Buscemi's Lonesome Jim, and what was perhaps his seminal blank-stare creep role in Gus...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:02 AM on Sunday, April 30, 2006
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This The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford site appears to be dead, but these song lyrics have a certain poignancy: "Robert Ford, a gunman / Did exchange for his parole / Took the life of James the outlaw / Which he snuck up on and stole / No one knows just where they came to be misunder- stood / But the poor Missouri farmers knew / Frank and Jesse do the best they could."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:00 AM on Sunday, April 30, 2006
Friday, April 28, 2006
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United 93 is "the feel-bad
United 93 is "the feel-bad American movie of the year"? Catchy pull-quote from N.Y. Times Manohla Dargis, the only problem being that it's a highly debatable claim. I know what Manohla means, but this is simplistic emotional coding . My idea of a serious feel-bad movie in Barry Sonnenfeld's RV. (I would imagine it's Manohla's also.) For the life of me I can't get my head around the idea of a movie as assured and expert and heavily throttled as United 93 making anyone feel "bad."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:34 AM on Friday, April 28, 2006
1 comment
Brian Burrough and John Connolly's
Brian Burrough and John Connolly's Vanity Fair piece about the Anthony Pellicano wiretap magilla is being called inaccurate by Paramount chairman Brad Grey plus reps for Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler and the late Chris Farley, who were all named in the piece as having engaged Pellicano's services. Gabriel Snyder's Variety piece says that "Pitt, Sandler and the Farley rep deny ever hiring the P.I. In addition, HBO has denied that Grey once pushed a TV show based on Pellicano as a replacement for The Sopranos, as the mag also reported." This story must have been fact-checked over and over to the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:05 AM on Friday, April 28, 2006
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Truly, this Jamie Stuart riff
Truly, this Jamie Stuart riff on the American Express "my life, my card" ads is fucking-ass brilliant . Give this guy a Wes Anderson or M. Night Shyamalan life...enough mad money to patronize cool restaurants, big-loft-size digs in Philly or Paris, $15 million to make his next film, a Mensa-class blonde girlfriend, etc. The delay in the beginning with nothing happening, and then that slamming-into-the-brick-wall image approaches the realm of near-genius. Seriously.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:40 AM on Friday, April 28, 2006
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A smart, hilarious, comprehensive piece
A smart, hilarious, comprehensive piece about Hollywood quote whores by e-Film Critic's Eric Childress. One word for this obviously well-researched article -- "unmissable!" (That's a reference joke...read the piece and you'll see what I mean.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:23 AM on Friday, April 28, 2006
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Holy shit...this is awful, tragic
Holy shit...this is awful, tragic news. Jennifer Dawson, the 35 year-old wife of New York Press critic Matt Zoller Seitz (and mother of their two kids), died suddenly late yesterday afternoon. Alan Sepinwall has delivered the news in a "House Next Door" posting that went up today. Jennifer was in good health, didn't drink, smoke or take drugs, "so there will be a medical examin- ation to find out what happened," Sepinwall writes. If anyone wants to send cards, the address is 343 State Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. Matt's also on e-mail a lot, either his work address (mseitz@starledger.com) or his...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:59 AM on Friday, April 28, 2006
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The two most passionate, best-written
The two most passionate, best-written reviews of United 93 I've read this morning -- one extremely postive, one more of a mixed response -- are by the L.A. Weekly's Scott Foundas and N.Y. Press critic Matt Zoller Seitz. Foundas calls United 93 "nothing short of a direct refutation of all the conventional Hollywood wisdom concerning how such a movie should be made...it is the highest compliment I can pay Greengrass to say that he is a master of the mundane, the routine and the everyday...when he makes a movie about a historical event, he spends as much time showing...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:20 AM on Friday, April 28, 2006
Thursday, April 27, 2006
8 comments
Texas Time
Texas Time
I'm staying in a soul-less, corporate-style hotel in Houston between now and Mon- day morning in order to dive into Worldfest, which I've never been to before. I was invited to visit a few weeks ago by its founder, Hunter Todd, and it seemed like an agreeable idea, and it felt even better as I flew the hell out of Los Angeles Wednes- day morning.
Worldfest is a friendly, funky-ass film festival that's mainly about smallish, hand- crafted (as opposed to machine- or committee-crafted) indie films -- some of them made by or starring Texans, and others from here and there.
...Read Moreposted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:54 PM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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George Clooney tried to do
George Clooney tried to do the right thing today with a somber gray suit and a press conference in Washington, D.C. about the ongoing genocide in Darfur, or how responsible people need to try and do something to stop the slaughter. Darfur? Where's that? Hey, should we go out tonight or...?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:55 PM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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I didn't know that Bryan
I didn't know that Bryan Burrough and John Connolly's piece about the adventures of indicted wiretapper Anthony Pellicano in the forthcoming June issue of Vanity Fair was available online, but it is -- on the mag's website. It's 10,615 words long. The intro reads, "It looks as if the wiretapping investigation consuming L.A. may bring down some of the town's top names. From the details of Anthony Pellicano's electronic 'War Room' to the P.I.' most damaging cases, to the impact of his divorce and his delusions of Godfather grandeur, the authors have a road map to the biggest scandal in Hollywood...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:28 PM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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It's interesting that the N.Y.
It's interesting that the N.Y. Times has ran a story about Alec Baldwin's backstage temper problems. I'm not saying that Baldwin appears to have issues along these lines and I certaily don't wish to minimize the difficulty of working with anyone who punches walls, but the upshot is that actress Jan Maxwell so didn't want to be around Baldwin that she resigned from a Roundabout theatre production of "Entertaining Mr. Sloane", in which she and Baldwin have been costarring. I wonder how many producers of stage plays or films or TV movies made a mental note after reading this story, to wit:...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:19 PM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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Leonardo DaVinci has an IMDB
Leonardo DaVinci has an IMDB credit ("painter -- Mona Lisa") for The DaVinci Code.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:10 PM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
1 comment
Tom Hanks has written a
Tom Hanks has written a tribute to his longtime makeup guy, Dan Striepeke in the New York Times. Dan did Hanks' makeup on The DaVinci Code, but I'm not quite sure why this piece ran when you get right down to it. Striepeke sounds like a gifted, amiable, very hard-working guy but so was my father in his prime and so are a lot of other people out there right now. (Not a huge deal, but Striepeke isn't listed on the IMDB credits for the film.) Of course, it isn't Hanks' makeup in the forthcoming Ron Howard thriller that has gotten...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:48 AM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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Mission: Impossible III is not
Mission: Impossible III is not a snoozer. It may not be an ideal repeat-viewing thing (I probably shouldn't have seen it twice in one day), but it's faster-paced and easier to follow than the DePalma opener and more engrossing than the Woo.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:31 AM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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This is fascinating: Time magazine
This is fascinating: Time magazine has discovered and passed along (as of 4.25.06) a comprehensive rundown of websites and various other online p.r. initiatives regarding this film called ...wait a minute...written here somewere....Snakes on a Plane!
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:25 AM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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Michelle Rodriguez is expressing regrets
Michelle Rodriguez is expressing regrets about the factors that led to her Hawaii drunk-driving bust and...I feel funny going on about this but given the temperament and tendencies of most actresses I've known or heard stuff about, I'm deeply impressed with MR's decision to take the slammer over community service. "This has more to do with her street cred than anything," says Manhattan-based journalist Lewis Beale . "She's a tough babe from Jersey City, and I'll bet if she hadn't turned up in Girl Fight she'd be gang banging or in jail for armed robbery. She's always struck me as someone who was...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:06 AM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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"...undeniably the most gut-wrenching and
"...undeniably the most gut-wrenching and captivating film released this year." -- USA Today's Claudia Puig on United 93.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:59 AM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
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N.Y. Times reporters David Halbfinger
N.Y. Times reporters David Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner are reporting that Hollywood divorce lawyer Dennis Wasser is now entangled in the Anthony Pellicano investigation. On a scale of 1 to 10, how sexy is Wasser as a prosecution target and subject of a Times story? Is it just me or is this story starting to deflate somewhat?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:18 AM on Wednesday, April 26, 2006
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Faced with either 240 hours
Faced with either 240 hours of community service or five days in the slammer in Honolulu over a drunk driving conviction, Lost costar Michelle Rodriguez ("How ya livin'?") has chosen jail. This is obviously the less spiritual and less nourishing option, but any gainfully employed actress who says "okay, I'll do time" deserves (and I know this may sound strange to some) a slight tip of the hat. There are intimations of obstinacy in this choice, yes, but also intestinal fortitude.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:05 AM on Wednesday, April 26, 2006
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Hollywood Elsewhere is jetting to
Hollywood Elsewhere is jetting to Houston today and four or five days at Worldfest, a longstanding local-flavored film festival with interesting shadings. A slight interruption in WIRED postings, yes...but only for a few hours.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:59 AM on Wednesday, April 26, 2006
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An amusing N.Y. Times story
An amusing N.Y. Times story by Bill Carter about the creation of Rob Burnett's Let's Rob Mick Jagger series.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:57 AM on Wednesday, April 26, 2006
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Tom Cruise was "at his
Tom Cruise was "at his best, and most unlikable, as the misogynistic self-help guru Frank T.J. Mackey in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia," writes MSNBC's Eric Lundegaard. "Here's the fascinating part. As he was being interviewed by the female reporter, and glared at her warily through a big tight grin, the character seemed only a step or two removed from the Cruise character we see promoting his latest film on entertainment shows. That is: spooky." I alluded to the same thing when I wrote on 4.19 about Cruise's Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible III, to wit: "He's made Hunt into a kind...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:45 AM on Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
1 comment
Rollover
Rollover
I don't want to say too much about Wolfgang Petersen's Poseidon (Warner Bros., 5.12) because this isn't a regular "review" or anything. Maybe if I begin by talking about the 1972 Ronald Neame film (a piece of big-budget schlock that was a major blockbuster in its day), it'll seem like less of one.
The original The Poseidon Adventure, which I just saw on a new double-disc DVD, was a bit rough to begin with -- cornball characters, lumpy dialogue, cheesy special effects -- and time has not helped. It's almost painful by today's standards -- a movie with a two...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:20 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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Horror films have reinvigorated the
Horror films have reinvigorated the movie business. Great. Break out the champagne. Only people who have next to no interest in the transcendent power of great movies, who see them only as dollars-and-cents delivery devices , would take any comfort from this. I've always liked good horror films, but c'mon...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:13 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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A just-launched site for Richard
A just-launched site for Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly , which will play at the Cannes Film Festival.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:52 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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"I just saw Sofia Coppola's
"I just saw Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette," says a French film critic whose name I should probably keep under wraps. "Empty shell, boring as hell. Don't know if the Cannes jury is gonna buy it, but the average moviegoer will suffer deeply watching gilded 18th-Century types people get bored, eat, drink, and get bored again. Movies about boredom and filling spaces are tricky to film. Coppola did it right with Lost in Translation, but this time she fails completely, in my opinion. You were right about the parallel between Marie Antoinette and the Paris Hilton crowd . It's here. The rock soundtrack works in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:47 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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Research is saying that audiences
Research is saying that audiences aren't that interested in Vince Vaughn playing a quasi-romantic lead, which is what he's trying to be in The Breakup. They prefer him as a non-romantic hound- dog motor-mouth, as he was in last summer's Wedding Crashers. I think most of us knew that going in.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:40 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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A friend told me the
A friend told me the other night that Paul Bettany had thought up a simple way to keep papparazzi from taking his picture...or any celebrity's picture if, say, they're at a film festival or staying in some small vacation village and they want to be left alone. Wear the same outfit every day. Photographers won't snap you two days in a row if you're wearing the same clothes because it'll look the photos taken on day #1, and editors won't run them. Brilliant! The hitch, of course, is that humble selfless types like Angelina Jolie and/or Jennifer Aniston wouldn't be caught...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:32 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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A sidewalk observer described Poseidon
A sidewalk observer described Poseidon star Josh Lucas as looking "bloated" the other night in Manhattan, according to N.Y. Daily News "Lowdown" columnist Lloyd Grove . Lucas "was with a group of guy friends [and] looked like he was out for a night on the town, and like he'd been out quite a few nights in a row." This is a sign, a harbinger...an indication of Poseidon sentiment among the media.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:25 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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Catherine Zeta Jones: a capitalist
Catherine Zeta Jones: a capitalist first and foremost, and an actress, wife, mom and everything else second.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:14 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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Seventeen reviews so far of
Seventeen reviews so far of United 93 and it's got a 92% positive and a 100% creme de la creme ratings. Will RV, which is apparently opening in a lot more theatres, do more business than United 93 this weekend? Quantitively, possibly. (And that in itself is depressing enough.) But if it does more on a per-screen basis...I don't want to go there.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:56 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper
Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper on United 93...very well said. Ebert: "All the time the military is looking for authorization and trying to find the President, trying to find the President. And I don't know about you but all I could think about was that moment in Fahrenheit 9/11..." He means that footage of Bush sitting on a chair in front of the grade-school class, reading from "My Pet Goat" and basically doing nothing while crucial minutes ticked by.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:48 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
1 comment
"United 93 costar Christian Clemenson,
"United 93 costar Christian Clemenson, an excellent actor, [has invoked] Tolstoy's conviction that the aim of art is to state the question clearly -- not to provide answers . I'm not sure what that question is in United 93. There's the obvious one about why communications broke down. There's a question about what these hijackers looked like, how they saw themselves. And there's the central question: With more fictionalized 9/11 films to come, including one by Oliver Stone, is it too soon? My answer is that if they truly help us -- as the brilliant, tightly focused, and momentous United 93 helps us...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:36 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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Dispatch from last night's all-media
Dispatch from last night's all-media screening of Barry Sonnenfeld and Robin Williams' RV (Warner Bros., 4.28): "RV is no Benchwarmers, I can tell you that! What's shocking to me is that there have been about 12 pictures that haven't been advance-screened for the press this year. Silent Hill, I think, was the 12th. And so this is the trend so far...they're not screening lots of films for the obvious reason...and they turn around and screen RV? What were they thinking? The critics are going to hate it. This film is not funny. The people in the cheap seats -- people they brought in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:59 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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Another brilliant "My Life, My
Another brilliant "My Life, My Card" American Express ad, this one by Wes Anderson. Clever, dryly amusing, beautifully choreographed, a cast of dozens (including Jason Schwartzman and Anderson's producer Barry Mendel) and obviously shot in France, where Anderson has been living and working over the last several months. Obviously very Wessy in terms of style, tone, attitude...in the same way that M. Night Shyamalan's AmEx ad, which I mentioned on 3.7, is very much his own. Theere's a self-mocking thing going on (in the piece, Wes pretends to be a spoiled, relentlessly-catered-to, extremely-full-of-himself director on the set of an...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:40 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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I didn't leaf through each
I didn't leaf through each and every page of the "L.A. People" section in the current L.A. Weekly because the hand-held version looked too page-heavy and time-consuming, so I shined it when it came out last Thursday. But the insightful, extremely shrewd and ever-gracious Laura Kim -- the Warner Independent marketing vp who co-authored of I Wake Up Screening with Jon Anderson -- is briefly and affectionately profiled by Ella Taylor here, and it's my lazy-ass fault I didn't pay attention sooner.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:24 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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And this one about publicist
And this one about publicist Mickey Cottrell, a crafty and diligent hombre who knows the right people, always manages to push the right buttons, has excellent taste as far as the films and filmmakers he represents, and is a mensch on top of all that. And he's a pretty good actor besides. (In theatre productions, I mean.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:20 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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It's kinda too bad Jack
It's kinda too bad Jack Black and Stanley Kubrick will never work together. Something in this Nacho Libre clip tells me Stanley K. would have made an effort to know Black and possibly cast him in something. The rolling-eyebrow thing aside, Black's clear lack of interest in trying to be even half-funny in this clip, or even somewhat energetic, spells, to me, the mood of a fuck-you genius. (I realize that "genius" is a bad word...it's a Larry King word ...but I know it when I see it...."genius" is fuck you, leave me alone, I don't give a shit...genius is always...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:59 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
1 comment
"So we" -- corporate Hollywood,
"So we" -- corporate Hollywood, she means -- "can't put a bad blockbuster over anymore, as in the golden era of 2002, when The Scorpion King could open at $36 million, or Blade II at $33 million. And we have to kill our singular addiction to teenage boys. We need to diversify the meaning of 'our audience.' We have a few audiences. Baby-boomers have a movie habit and an IV hooked up to pop culture (look at Inside Man or The Interpreter ). You would have thought that Something's Gotta Give proved that older women were worth making movies for, but one strike...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:46 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Monday, April 24, 2006
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"A fair amount of distaste
"A fair amount of distaste for [United 93] has been building in recent weeks. Would the heroic event -- which ended when the plane crashed in Pennsylvania, killing everyone aboard -- be exploited in some way? And why do we need to take this death trip? But United 93 is a tremendous experience of fear, bewilderment and resolution, and, when you replay the movie in your head afterward, you are likely to think that Greengrass made all the right choices. This is true existential filmmaking: there is only the next instant, and the one after that, and what are you going to do?...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:18 PM on Monday, April 24, 2006
1 comment
There's a choice tonight between
There's a choice tonight between an all-media screening of Barry Sonnenfeld's RV (Columbia, 4.28), the new Robin Williams family comedy which looks like an absolute masterwork (you can sorta kinda tell from the website), or an Academy showing of a restored black-and-white Scope print of Jack Cardiff's Sons and Lovers (1960), an adaptation of a D.H. Lawrence work that costars Dean Stockwell, Trevor Howard and Wendy Hiller. (I'd forgotten it was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture.) And...uhmm, I think I'll try and catch the Williams film at a plex this weekend, or on a plane five months...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:53 PM on Monday, April 24, 2006
1 comment
I can't find a link
I can't find a link to Daniel Zalewski's brilliant sprawling piece in last week's 4.24 edition of the New Yorker about Werner Herzog and the arduous, financially troubled shooting of Rescue Dawn in northwest Thailand last year, but it's a fantastic read, and there must be some way to say this without sounding like Larry King. "Herzog likes to say that he is 'clinically sane and completely professional,'" Zalewski writes early on, "but he is keenly aware that his reputation is otherwise." A dramatic re-do of Herzog's 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and set in Laos in 1965 or...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:31 PM on Monday, April 24, 2006
1 comment
Don't get the Farrelly brothers
Don't get the Farrelly brothers to remake Francis Veber's The Valet -- steer them back to that Three Stooges movie they were talking about making a couple of years ago. That's what the proles on the street want to see...not this dumb thing. The comic sensibility of Mssr. Veber is totally '80s (at best), and movies about valets are from the 1930s and 40s. (Who knows anyone who works as a valet?) The fact that DreamWorks chief Stacey Snider brought this project to Dreamamount is seen as an act of one-upsmanship against Paramount chairman Brad Grey. See? All he...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:04 PM on Monday, April 24, 2006
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The "too-soon"-ers are obviously going
The "too-soon"-ers are obviously going to have an effect on the opening weekend gross of United 93 (Universal, 4.28), but tracking is improving somewhat, and it looks like an okay opening...the word is modest...1500 theatres, $5000 to $6000 a print, around $9 or $10 million. Monday's figures put general awareness at 61%, definite interest at 30%, first choice at 10%, and definite non-interest at 14%.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:42 PM on Monday, April 24, 2006
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It took me a total
It took me a total of six hours earlier today to get a new passport on a "rush" basis...six hours and $137 bucks...and I have to go back and pick it up.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:21 PM on Monday, April 24, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
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Another major-daily news story with
Another major-daily news story with another United 93 story that begins with the words "too soon." Written by Joe Neumaier in the N.Y. Daily News. Unbelievable.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:00 PM on Sunday, April 23, 2006
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The Da Vinci Code marketing
The Da Vinci Code marketing and publicity team is apparently planning things so that the advance-peek crowd -- U.S. critics and reporters, the entertainment press at the Cannes Film Festival, etc. -- will see the film at roughly the same time, particularly since the Ron Howard film will open day-and-date worldwide on 5.19 . So it may (I say "may") boil down to an all-media stateside showing three or four days before opening and nothing before that. (Except for those elite critics and reporters who always manage to see big-deal films a bit earlier than other media types...you know who I mean.)...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:21 PM on Sunday, April 23, 2006
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To get those Poseidon numbers
To get those Poseidon numbers up, sneak it next weekend (4.28 or 4.29)...both nights even. Sneaking it the following weekend against Mission: Impossible III would diminish the impact, and it opens on the 12th so it's next weekend or never.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:33 PM on Sunday, April 23, 2006
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J.J. Abrams, a geek director,
J.J. Abrams, a geek director, has succeeded with M:I:3...fine. So now Paramount wants him to revive the Star Trek franchise because the Trekkies are still out there and hungry for another feature set on the Enterprise, especially one directed by a guy who understands geek attitudes and geek love. What a bummer...a total downer.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:07 PM on Sunday, April 23, 2006
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A fairly dismissive piece on
A fairly dismissive piece on Tom Cruise (and one extremely disdainful of Scientology) by the N.Y. Post's Sara Stewart. A little HE plug in the middle of it, but there's no links in these stories so I don't know. The other shoe in this story, of course, is J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible III, which doesn't improve after a second viewing (it kinda drops a little) but is still better plotted and more action-filled than the original Brian DePalma M:I and better than John Woo's M:I:2 sequel.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:58 PM on Sunday, April 23, 2006
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N.Y. Times freelancer Ross Johnson
N.Y. Times freelancer Ross Johnson on the sexually-enticing double-track that is Black Snake Moan (Paramount Classics), a new gritty-southern-atmosphere film from director-writer Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow). It's about a bearded, older-looking Samuel L. Jackson trying to cure a blonde, hot-looking Christina Ricci of sexual addiction or nymphomania (or something in that realm). The reason people will pay to see BSM , of course, will be the "ooh-ahh" interracial-sex angle, which the title (which seems like a reference to a line in Full Metal Jacket when Dorian Harewood unbuttoned his G.I. fly and spoke of the "Alabama black snake" hiding inside) obviously...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:37 PM on Sunday, April 23, 2006
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Not much happening in the
Not much happening in the movie world today, so how about this? Slate's Mickey Kaus has spotted an error in a 4.23 N.Y. Times profile of billionaire Ron Burkle's chummy relationship with Bill Clinton. The Times story traces their relationship back to the L.A. riots in '92, when then-candidate Clinton, touring around the damaged areas of L.A., noticed that some supermarkets were untorched. This was "because the owner, Mr. Burkle, treated his customers and employees fairly," the ,em>Times story says. Kaus did a NEXIS search and learned that Burkle's markets, operated by his company Food4Less, "sustained some $25 million to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:28 AM on Sunday, April 23, 2006
Saturday, April 22, 2006
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The best thing I've seen
The best thing I've seen today (Saturday, 4.22) is this 4.18 "CNN Showbiz Today" video interview with Neil Young about his new album "Living With War," and especially a song called "Let's Impeach the President."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:13 PM on Saturday, April 22, 2006
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Rocket Man
Rocket Man
The great critic F.X. Feeney told me the other day about a short film about 9/11 called The Falling Man, and that it was about to be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival. With Paul Greengrass's United 93 set to open the festival on Tuesday, 4.25, I thought right away, whoa...I should see this. So I did on Friday afternoon (4.21), and I went "whoa" again.
Directed and written by Kevin Ackerman, The Falling Man is an M. Night Shyama- lan-styled spooker about a real-life guy who bought it on 9/11...probably the best known of the 200-something people who...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:11 PM on Saturday, April 22, 2006
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Take no notice, none whatsoever,
Take no notice, none whatsoever, of anyone telling you to see John Hillcoat's The Proposition (First Look, 5.5), under the guise of it being one of the year's best films. It's an exercise in grungy outlaw sadism. What gives it a certain dignity is a moral undercurrent about compromise and making bargains with the devil and doing terrible things in the name of personal freedom. But the real subject, for me, was about how grueling it is to watch an Australian period western in which you don't give a shit about the characters because all you can think about is how...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:22 PM on Saturday, April 22, 2006
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Silent Hill, the weekend's #1
Silent Hill, the weekend's #1 film, is projected to do about $20,965,000, having earned over $8 million Friday night. And Paul Weitz's American Dreamz in projected to finish in ninth place with a $3,503,000 haul...forget it, opened-and-closed. Scary Movie 4, the likely 2nd place finisher, will do around $17,738,000...off 57%. The Sentinel , the Michael Douglas-Keifer Sutherland film, will do about $14,602,000 for a third place finish. Ice Age 2 will come in around $13,109,000, The Wild at $7,692,000, Benchwarmers at $7,507,000, Take the Lead at $4,207,00, Inside Man at $3,606,000, then American Dreamz and then Friends with Money in tenth place...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:20 AM on Saturday, April 22, 2006
Friday, April 21, 2006
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...Read More
Aroma, Sizzle, Steak
Aroma, Sizzle, Steak
I used to love movie poster art, but there are so few today that pop through in any kind of sexy or distinctive way that the fun, for me, just isn't there any more. Or not enough.
Take five or ten minutes and browse through this British website devoted to classic one-sheets, and you'll see what I mean. (Make sure you check out the Saul Bass page.) A lot of them were standard primitive sells, but the better ones from the '50s, '60s and '70s had flair, smarts, suggestiveness...a kind of art-gallery urbanity.
...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:32 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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A funny Defamer thing: quoting
A funny Defamer thing: quoting ABC-TV film critic Joel Siegel's remark that "the summer's best counter-programming is The Devil Wears Prada [being] set for release the same weekend as Superman Returns," the assumption being that "no one in America wants to see both movies." But [while] Hollywood's demographic marketing research and fancy spreadsheets may spit out nonsense suggesting there's no audience overlap, anyone who has ever engaged their hair colorist in conversation knows [that] Superman and Prada are the two must-see homo movie events of the summer. Fox may find itself disappointed after Prada's opening weekend, when it loses a sizable...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:01 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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My Cannes lodging is fine,
My Cannes lodging is fine, but a sharp journalist friend out of New York is suddenly looking, so if anyone knows of any kind of flat share she could get into, please get in touch.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:29 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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In case you haven't checked
In case you haven't checked its Rotten Tomatoes page, The Sentinel -- the Michael Douglas-Keifer Sutherland White House thriller that wants to be No Way Out -- has a 29% positive creme de la creme rating and a 31% positive overall. In other words, this 20th Century Fox release more or less blows. My favorite quote, from Efilmcitic's Scott Weinberg: "C'mon, how seriously are we supposed to take a film in which the President of the United States is played by Sledge Hammer!?" (He means David Rasche, who's also in United 93.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:08 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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Journalist Rob Scheer spoke to
Journalist Rob Scheer spoke to United 93 director Paul Greengrass yesterday about that closing-credits line -- "America's war on terror had begun" -- that has been removed "It was absolutely my inclusion, and my exclusion," Greengrass said. "I wouldn't read too much into it. What was seen [by critics] was a very early version of it...it wasn't finished. The thinking was, I wanted the story to feel like it was relevant to today. But when I saw that particular card at the end, I thought 'that's not right' because that's going to divide people. People are going to think, 'Oh does that mean...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:00 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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You can read between the
You can read between the lines and tell that Variety's Janet Sphrintz and Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke aren't happy with the California Supreme Court's decision to throw out an old sexual harassment suit (filed six years ago) by a female assistant against three producer-writers on NBC's Friends (as well as their Warner Bros. TV employers) for speaking profanely during story meetings. The woman, Amaani Lyle, felt being exposed to this was a form of sexual harassment, and it may have been that on some level. (Talking about big boobs and anal sex in front of female coworkers is certainly...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:47 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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"Poseidon is a remake of
"Poseidon is a remake of a classic film, but when you do that without having a big name it means either you'll have a money generator with disappointing figures or a complete flop. Replace Josh Lucas with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, et, al. and you'll probably have a success. Replace Wolfgang Peterson with James Cameron, Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, M. Night Shalaman, et. al. and you'll probably have a success. With Lucas starring and Petersen directing, Warner Bros. will probably have another King Kong situation at the end of the day -- sizable revenues that will nonetheless finally disappoint in relation...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:24 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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"Another part of the reaction
"Another part of the reaction to United 93 is a certain craven American fear of looking at terrifying or unpalatable moments in history head-on. It's as if examining these events or ideas might be too disturbing or challenging -- as if we were all five years old. It's Homer Simpson logic: if we can't see it, it isn't real. It isn't happening. It will all go away." -- the Guardian's John Patterson about how U.S. media have responded to the release of United 93 "in the stupidest of terms" and how "they don't understand the British tradition of documentary."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:15 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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"In American Dreamz, a comedy
"In American Dreamz, a comedy about a faltering American president, a wildly popular TV talent show and the Svengalis behind them both, the jokes don't just fizzle into insignificance; they flop about with gaudy ineffectualness, gasping for air like newly landed trout. Unlike fish, alas, gags about nitwit com- manders in chief, oily television hosts and rabidly ambitious young performers with stars in their eyes and sometimes their beds can't be tossed back in the water; only a blunt instrument, like a hammer, will do. Consider this a hammer, humanely but firmly applied." -- Manohla Dargis in Friday's [4.21] N.Y....
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:46 AM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey
Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey has little to fear from that upcoming John Connolly piece about the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping mess in an upcoming Vanity Fair, according to L.A. Indie 's Ross Johnson. "Grey, who hired Pellicano and frequently dropped by [his] office, is probably resting a little easier today," Johnson begins. "Vanity Fair's June issue was put to bed yesterday [Thursday, 6.20]. Our spies at the magazine say that Grey, a friend of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, got the velvet glove treatment in the Pellicano piece. Grey's corporate overlord, Viacom's Sumner Redstone, has not taken kindly to Grey...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:31 AM on Friday, April 21, 2006
Thursday, April 20, 2006
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Kurt Russell (front & center)), Josh Lucas (behind...Read More
Glub-Glub
Glub-Glub
What are the odds that Wolfgang Petersen's Poseidon (Warner Bros., 5.12) will be an above-average thrill ride? Pretty good, I'd say. And if you scan the saleable elements it looks like something a lot of people are going to want to see.
The trailer tells you the effects are going to be cool. (That rogue wave gives me the creeps.) Petersen is nothing if not a dependable craftsman, and the movie he's made, to judge by the trailer, has the look and feel of something fairly well-rigged.
Kurt Russell (front & center)), Josh Lucas (behind...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:27 PM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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Focus Features has just announced
Focus Features has just announced a pickup of Woody Allen 's Scoop, a London-based comedy that he shot last summer costarring himself, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson and Ian McShane. Allen also wrote and directed. Johansson plays an American journalism student who happens upon a great news scoop while visiting London. An affair with an aristocrat (Jackman) is also part of the mix. A Focus rep said he didn't know the debut date, but Variety's Ian Mohr posted a story this afternoon that says Scoop is coming out "this summer."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:13 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who not
Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who not only wrote The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada but is a longtime collaborator of Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu (having written the screenplays for Amores perros, 21 Grams and Babel, which was just accepted as a competition entry at the Cannes Film Festival)...Guillermo is telling me to take a close look at Andrea Arnold's Red Road, a U.K.-Denmark production that has also just been accepted as a Cannes competition film. "She was at a Sundance workshop when I was an advisor and I can tell you that her screenplay [of Red Road] was great and that it will be...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:59 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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Are entertainment journalists ready at
Are entertainment journalists ready at long last to stop using that same tired-ass lead in their stories about United 93, to wit: "Is America ready for a film like this"? I'm ready for this question to go away and stay away starting right now. The straw that broke it was Lou Lumenick's New York Post story. You can tell he likes the film, but Lumenick is the second critic to get it wrong about the now-removed statement -- "America's war on terror had begun" -- that appeared on the closing credits in an unfinished digital version of the film. (The Village Voice's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:34 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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"Humans are drawn to looking
"Humans are drawn to looking at the unwatchable as a way of cheating death. We willingly look at terrible things, often over and over -- real footage of war and dramatizations, actual catastrophes and historical re-creations, the tragic outcomes of which are never in doubt -- for the thrill of being alive . Perhaps we're as astonished by our own good fortune as we are horrified by the worse fates of others who could just as well have been us. We grieve, we resolve, we call loved ones, we replay the images, humbled by our own relief." -- from Lisa Schwarzbaum's positive...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:30 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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This latest David Halbfinger-Allison Hope
This latest David Halbfinger-Allison Hope Weiner New York Times story about the Anthony Pellicano investigation is about how Pellicano tried to shake down billionaire Ron Burkle in 2002, telling him that he would not investigate him in exchange for payment of a fee between $100,000 and $250,000. It's basically a portrait of how Pellicano used to drum up business by "holding himself out as a broker between rich and powerful adversaries, thereby drawing them into his realm at Hollywood's underbelly," the Times story says. Burkle, of course, had a similar-type enounter with New York Post "Page Six" reporter Jared...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:55 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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Another generic ready-or-not, here-comes-United 93
Another generic ready-or-not, here-comes-United 93 story, this one by USA Today's Anthony Breznican...right down the middle of the tarmac. It mentions a USA TODAY/Gallup poll of 1,006 adults conducted between 4.7 and 4.9, that found that "38% of respondents were very or somewhat likely to see a 9/11 movie, while 60% would not be inclined to watch one. If they turn out in theaters, that 38% is enough to supply very solid box-office numbers." People were split evenly, 44% to 44%, over whether it was a good or bad thing for Hollywood to tackle 9/11. (The margin of error was plus or...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:47 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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The official Cannes Film festival
The official Cannes Film festival selections have been announced, and I deeply regret the non-inclusion of Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain...I've been told since last November or thereabouts that Aronofsksy wanted to show it there, but apparently the Cannes chiefs wouldn't offer him a competition slot and that's what he was insisting upon so that was that. The upside surprise is that Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly will be shown under Un Certain Regard. Otherwise, the big four U.S. films in competition are Linklater's Fast Food Nation, Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette (gotta remember that hyphen), Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's Babel and -- as my French journo...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:19 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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Keri Russell, Tom Cruise in J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible III (Paramount, 5.5)
Bunny Rabbit
Bunny Rabbit
I saw Mission: Impossible III (Paramount, 5.3) this morning at screening room #5 at Paramount Studios, and I'm not dissing anyone or anything with the title of this piece. Not even a little bit.
The MacGuffin of J.J. Abrams' power-packed thriller, after all, is a smallish device called "rabbit's foot", and Tom Cruise's hard-wired performance as IMF agent Ethan Hunt feels, to me, like something new: he's made himself into the energizer bunny of action heroes. And it works.
Keri Russell, Tom Cruise in J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible III (Paramount, 5.5)
The advance buzz about...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:09 PM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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On one hand you've got
On one hand you've got this cottonball, press-release-sounding New York Times story about Paris and its many depictions in movies, centering on a retrospective at the Hotel de Ville (i.e., city hall) called "Paris au Cinema." And on the other hand you've got this Variety story about Woody Allen suddenly bailing on shooting his next film in Paris because the costs were getting prohibitive. I can relate to that.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:07 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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In the announcement about Brian
In the announcement about Brian Grazer filing for separation from his wife Gigi Levangie-Grazer, the Associated Press story mentions that Levangie-Grazer is author of two well-known works -- the screenplay of Stepmom and an '05 book called "The Starter Wife" -- that are about a somewhat older wife being edged aside by her husband's younger girlfriend. The couple has two young boys...a tough one. My own sons were three and half and two when my ex and I divorced.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:40 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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Mattheiu Carratier's Cannes Film Festival
Mattheiu Carratier's Cannes Film Festival tips were 75% correct, by the way: Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain (Warner Bros., October) will not, sad to say, be screened there, in competition or otherwise. (Perhaps via a market screening...?) And Richard Kelly's Southland Tales will not only play Cannes but in competition! Congrats, Richard! (Carratier had half-incorrectly been told it might be shown as a non-competitor or even as a midnighter.) Another French source confides that the reason The Fountain won't be playing Cannes is that Aronofsky wanted his film in competition but the festival didn't, so he withdrew it. That was it...plain and...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:11 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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Patrick Goldstein and others feel
Patrick Goldstein and others feel that the arrival of United 93 is not only healthy but overdue. And if it's a less-than-soothing experience for some...well, get used to it. "With the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching, it is not too soon for movies to offer some unflinching perspective," Goldstein writes in his "Big Picture" column. "The cold truth is that great art -- or at least, as in the case of United 93, sober, thoughtful art -- is unruly and impatient. Studios and politicians take polls to see if they are too far out in front of the public. Artists...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:01 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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"It may be the film's
"It may be the film's most compassionate gesture -- its single most humanizing touch -- to indicate that the heroes of Flight 93 were motivated not by patriotism, as it may be comforting for some to think, but by unthinkable fear and a primal survival instinct." -- critic Dennis Lim's review of United 93 in the Village Voice.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:43 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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The final Bushian war-cry epilogue
The final Bushian war-cry epilogue that appeared on the tail end of unfinished versions of Paul Greengrass's United 93 (Universal, 4.28) -- "America's war on terror had begun" -- has been removed from the film. The finished version, screened in Beverly Hills Tuesday night, ends with the words "Dedicated to those Americans who lost their lives on September 11, 2001"...or words very close to that. So the final graph in Dennis Lim's Village Voice review is now invalid. It partly reads,"Perhaps mindful of his target audience, Greengrass makes sure to dangle some red-state red meat...United 93 slips into propaganda with a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:32 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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The Hollywood Foreign Press saw
The Hollywood Foreign Press saw Mission: Impossible III Tuesday night and some Entertainment Tonight people saw it earlier in the day, but the Wednesday M:I:3 junket was suddenly cancelled by Tom Cruise due to Katie Holmes having given birth to their daughter Suri sometime prior to 4 pm on Tuesday, which is when her arrival was announced. (Ancestry.com says that "Suri" is a Hindu and Sikh term..."Sanskrit suri for sun, priest, sage." It is also "an epithet of Krishna.") And by the way: Brooke Shields, Cruise's philosophical opponent last year over the subject of post-partum-depression, gave birth to a baby girl yesterday...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:01 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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So who is "Film Fatale",
So who is "Film Fatale", the new MCN blogger? Like other mysteriously-reclusive-women-friends-of-David-Poland I've barely spoken to in years past, the lady (I'm assuming she's not a gay guy doing a Libby Gelman-Waxner) is being reclusive and, for the time being, hiding her identity. I'm not saying she's busted or anything, but if you click on a 2.13.06 post called "Welcome to Hollywood" it says "posted by Justine." It would be very easy to guess it's Justine Elias. Perhaps too easy. I wonder...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:15 PM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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You can't see An Inconvenient
You can't see An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount, 5.26) "and not think of George W. Bush, the man who beat Gore in 2000," observes Richard Cohen in the N.Y. Daily News. "Bush has been studiously anti-science, a man of applied ignorance who has undernourished his mind with the empty calories of comfy dogma. For instance, his insistence on abstinence as the preferred method of birth control would be laughable were it not so reckless. It is similar to Bush's initial approach to global warming. It may be that Gore will do more good for his country and the world with this...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:40 PM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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David Poland thinks that because
David Poland thinks that because he links to a news story before others do then on some level that story kinda half-belongs to him and that others who link to the same story are feeding off his site, or his initiative. The ridiculousness of that view aside, here's a Poland Hot Blog thing I'm bouncing off....Poland had it first, all right? But it's also the best riff I've ever read by a mainstream newspaper guy -- the Guardian 's Alan Rusbridger -- about how and why old (i.e. print) media is on the way down and new (i.e., online) is on the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:24 PM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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I saw Bruce Willis at
I saw Bruce Willis at a party last night for Andy Garcia's The Lost City (Magnolia, 4.28), and although I've spoken to him at junkets my first thought was that he's taller than he looks in films. Apparently he's friendly with Garcia, perhaps in some small way due to Willis having turned down the part of the Steve Wynn-type Vegas mogul in Ocean's 11, which led to Garcia getting it. And Willis and Garcia are both political conservatives in a heavily liberal town, so there's also the strategic alliance thing to consider. In any case, I was sent this online video...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:42 PM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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Paramount is showing Mission: Impossible
Paramount is showing Mission: Impossible III this evening to the Hollywood Foreign Press in preparation for interviews happening tomorrow (Wednesday, 4.19) with Tom Cruise and (perhaps) others from the film. You'd think with all the negative press on Cruise happening right now (the high NRG negatives I reported on last weekend, the women-don't-like-him angle from Peter Howell, the placenta-eating put-on story that broke this morning, the rigged Parade poll story, the American College of Radiologists critique, etc.) that Paramount might want to step out of the box a bit and have columnists like me see the film this evening...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:51 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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"The title was what got
"The title was what got my attention," Samuel L. Jackson tells USA Today's Susan Wloszczyna in the last and final Snakes on a Plane story of the spring. "I got on the set one day and heard they changed [the title], and I said, 'What are you doing here? It's not Gone with the Wind. It's not On the Waterfront. It's Snakes on a Plane!' They were afraid it gave too much away, and I said, 'That's exactly what you should do. When audiences hear it, they say, 'We are there!'"
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:08 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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It appears that those Tom
It appears that those Tom Cruise Parade poll results were rigged. Question is, by whom? Parade.com recently asked readers to opine about whether Cruise was responsible for his wackzaoid public image last year or if it was mainly the media painting him that way. As I reported a few days ago, 84 percent blamed the press. But Parade publicist Alexis Collado has told "Page Six" that "we...found this a little bit fishy, so we did some investigating. We found out more than 14,000 (of the 18,000-plus votes) that came in were cast from only 10 computers! One computer was responsible for...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:58 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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A nice page of graphic
A nice page of graphic steals from the opening credit sequence of Jason Reitman 's Thank You for Smoking. And here's the credit sequence itself. Composed by an outfit called Shadowplay Studio, the titles draw from the look of classic cigarette packaging.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:57 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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The Tom Cruise-eating-baby-placenta quote was
The Tom Cruise-eating-baby-placenta quote was a jape that was misinterpeted by a clueless writer, Patrick Mulchrone, in a story for the Daily Mirror. Based on quotes from a brand-new GQ interview by Lucy Kaylin , it has Cruise saying he intends to eat his newborn baby's placenta right after birth. Cruise was goofing around with Kaylin and Mulchrone took it straight, but still...more weirdness at this point doesn't help M:I:3. Cruise knows he's got negatives because of last summer's hijinks, he knows he's on the ropes, he's most likely heard about that Roger Friedman item (true or not)...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:48 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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Having a baby is not
Having a baby is not a walk in the park. It's not like meditating. I've been there, and to me all that delivering-the-baby-in-silence Scientology crap that Tom Cruise has been talking about is deranged. If you've been there in the room during birth (as I have, twice), and you know what a mother goes through, the notion that loud vocal exclamations are bad for the baby's spirit is totally diseased. Cruise has been quoted as saying that "scientifically it is proven...now there are medical research papers that say when a woman's giving birth, everyone should be quiet." He apparently told GQ magazine that...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:25 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Monday, April 17, 2006
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Director John McTiernan pleaded guilty
Director John McTiernan pleaded guilty today in federal court in Los Angeles to lying to the FBI when questioned about dealings with Hollywood wiretapper Anthony Pellicano. The Die Hard helmer faces five years in the can, probation and fines, etc., but he almost certainly won't be punished too hard because he's said to be cooperating with investigators. When is something going to happen in this case? The readers are restless and I can hear the jungle chant: "We want Brad...we want Brad...we want Brad." No, the other one.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:27 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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The word on John Lasseter's
The word on John Lasseter's Cars (Disney/Pixar, 6.12) still ain't good. That or the old Showest buzz is still banging around. "It's okay but it doesn't really work...it's not The Incredibles ...nobody bats 1000," etc. Is anyone over the moon about this thing? I mean, someone who isn't on the Disney-Pixar payroll?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:43 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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According to New Yorker critic
According to New Yorker critic Anthony Lane, Paul Weitz's American Dreamz (Universal, 4.21) is "physically horrid to behold." On top of which "any attempt to defend [the film] for its political venom, or for the surfeit of its surreal conceits, is doomed to founder on a single, obstructive fact: this picture ain't funny. I winced three times, and gave a couple of short laughs, but that was it."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:36 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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The trick in giving your
The trick in giving your kid a really cool name is to avoid dull pokey names like Pete or Mike or Ted, but don't make it too cool or strange. You know...don't fix it so the kid is guaranteed to have a hard time at school with their classmates because his first name is Pilot Inspektor (the believe-it-or-not first name of Jason Lee's son) or Moxie Crimefighter (real name of Penn Jillette's son) or Moses (sired and condemned by Gwynneth Paltrow and husband Chris Martin). When Pilot Inspektor turns 22 or 23, he's going to find his father sittin'...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:48 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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A pretty tasty piece by
A pretty tasty piece by N.Y. Times reporter Sharon Waxman about the temporary downfall of Amanda Scheer Demme. The widow of director Ted Demme ran the two hottest clubs in Los Angeles, Teddy's and Tropicana Bar, at the Roosevelt hotel on Hollywood Blvd. That is, until Stephen Brandman, honcho of Thompson Hotels, which manages the Roosevelt for the owners, gave her the boot about two weeks ago. Demme's clubs were very cool and attracted big stars, which made Demme herself a kind of star, and she certainly acted like one and so did other people who came to the clubs. (Anything goes!)...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:15 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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The 79th Annual Academy Awards
The 79th Annual Academy Awards will happen a bit earlier next year -- on Sunday, 2.25.07. Nomination polls will close on 1.13.07 with the nominations set to be announced ten days later -- Tuesday, 1.23.07. Final ballots will be mailed a week later (1.31.07) and final polls will close at the end of the day on Tuesday, 2.20.07. It's been suggested that these earlier dates may make it appear as if the Broadcast Film Critics Association and their Critics' Choice Awards are influencing things a bit more than their nearest competititors, the Hollywood Foreign Press and the Golden Globes. It's obvious that the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:51 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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Rudy Youngblood, who plays the
Rudy Youngblood, who plays the lead character (called "Jaguar Claw") in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (Touchstone, 12.8), has his own site. And on the main page he writes about how he's unable to say anything about his part in Gibson's bloody action film about war among the ancient Mayans: "I have had an amazing year and a lot of things have happened for me in my life," Youngblood relates, "[and] I wish I could talk about where I am right now, but contractually I can't." In a piece about Apocalypto in the current Esquire, Luke Dittrich writes about an...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:02 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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Oh...that item that mentioned a
Oh...that item that mentioned a scene in Mission: Impossible III in which Tom Cruise "gets beaten up pretty badly" and an alleged "Paramount insider" saying that a "test audience clapped" when they saw it, and that "it was kind of weird...you'd think Tom’Äôs people wouldn't have allowed it to stay in the film"? It came from Roger Friedman's column from last Tuesday (4.11), which I obviously should have zeroed in on earlier.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:44 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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On 12.1.05, a story about
On 12.1.05, a story about Emilio Estevez and the making of his film Bobby , a portrait of Robert F. Kennedy through the eyes of his supporters and admirers just before, during and after his assassination on June 4, 1968, at L.A.'s Ambassador hotel, ran in the New York Times. Staff writer David Halbfinger covered the basic points -- Estevez's struggle to get at least a portion of the film shot at the Ambassador before it was torn down, how he broke through on the writing of the script (i.e., by absorbing the recollections of a former Kennedy volunteer, a desk...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:20 AM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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"In about 15 years, when
"In about 15 years, when the studios and exhibitors finally get their acts together and come up with digital delivery systems and digital projectors, it's my belief that film will be dead... images will never touch emulsion again . And from what I've seen, abandoning film will cost us little or nothing in warmth and quality, and gain us so very much more." -- Craig Mazin posting to "The Artful Writer" about the Panavision Genesis HD system, which Scary Movie 4 and Superman Returns were shot with.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:12 AM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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"You're forgetting another primary reason
"You're forgetting another primary reason for [potential] animosity towards The DaVinci Code. I think the religious aspect has both extremes -- devout Catholics and Jesus followers on one side, and agnostic-atheists on the other -- sneering. And I think the word you're looking for with the Tom Cruise situation is his 'Q rating.' It may be on the downswing, but my 16-year old is oblivious to his antics and can't wait for M:I:3." -- Doug Pratt, editor, DVD Newsletter
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:37 AM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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"The Celestine Prophecy played two
"The Celestine Prophecy played two days in Portland (the town that gave What the Bleep? its boost) at the beginning of April, and no press previews were involved. As I wasn't gonna pay money to go see this thing on a weekend, and that was that. I have heard exactly nothing from anyone who saw it." -- Shawn Levy , film critic, The Oregonian
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:29 AM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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Newsweek is doing a double-track,
Newsweek is doing a double-track, opening-round trashing of The DaVinci Code. That is, reporting that people around town (i.e., Newsweek's sources) are trashing Tom Hanks' longish, vaguely unwashed-looking hair in the film, and then going, "Tsk-tsk...those sources sure are shallow, but it's fun to report on what they're saying!" And here I am doing the same thing, dinging Newsweek a bit but at the same time spreading the bad word about Hanks' hair. And I don't even see anything wrong with it. A little long in the back, a little unkempt...so what? The guy' has to wear the same You've Got Mail...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:42 AM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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Don't get me wrong --
Don't get me wrong -- I understand the need to trash The DaVinci Code. Like I said earlier today under that photo of that big fat DaVInci billboard, I can feel the urge building without really knowing why. Okay, here's why: book too successful, ads too big, Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou running everywhere and always holding hands and always frowning, too much money likely to be made...Ron Howard, Dan Brown, Brian Grazer...that dead naked bald guy on the floor...Alred Molina sneering and hamming it up...you just wanna throw a spitball at all of 'em. Consider this snapshot of DaVinci costar...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:34 AM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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Speaking of Hollywood's favorite parlor
Speaking of Hollywood's favorite parlor game, I'd say right now that Tom Cruise is against the ropes and has a cut over his left eye, and that the industry crowd is starting to get a little bit excited at the possibility of seeing him hit the canvas, or at least watching him get slugged so many times he goes all wobbly in the knees. And yet Mission Impossible III (Paramount, 5.5) is paradoxically hanging in there , if for no other reason than the fact that people are hot for Phillip Seymour Hoffman' s bad-guy performance and, to a lesser extent,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:28 AM on Monday, April 17, 2006
Sunday, April 16, 2006
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I missed this when it
I missed this when it went up last Wednesday, but Steve Berry does a this-and-that column for the Columbus Dispatch, and the 4.12 edition has the following Tom Cruise items: (a) a "Quote of the Day" in which a "Paramount Pictures insider" comments about an "audience reaction" to a Mission: Impossible III test screening, to wit: "There's a scene where Tom (Cruise) gets beaten up pretty badly. And the test audience clapped...it was kind of weird"; and (b) "In a new poll at Parade.com, 84 percent of respondents blame the media for the negative publicity that Tom Cruise has received during...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:33 PM on Sunday, April 16, 2006
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This is among the most
This is among the most Quixotic and futile things I've ever said in this column, but I genuinely believe there are metaphors of rot and doom and a swirling toiled-bowl fate contained in the popularity of the Scary Movie series, with the latest permutation having made just over $40 million this weekend. I know what I sound like in saying this, but will somebody who's seen this latest bucket-of-urine, dumb-ass David Zucker movie please explain what it says about the kids going to see it that betokens any interior traits other than smugness, intellectual sloth and a profound aversion to anything the least...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:59 PM on Sunday, April 16, 2006
Saturday, April 15, 2006
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"I wrote a story last
"I wrote a story last summer [for the Toronto Star] about Tom Cruise that sparked a lot of email and walk-up conversations from women. Every single one of them, young and old, said they no longer liked Cruise. Many expressed the belief that he'd gone crazy. It was surprising to me how firm and how consistent they were in their opinion. I've talked to many women since, and their view of Cruise hasn't mellowed one iota. He's damaged goods as far as women go, while men never had that much time for him anyway. I find off-the-cuff reactions from people to be a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:10 PM on Saturday, April 15, 2006
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So what's the deal with
So what's the deal with the extremely low profile apparently being sought by the makers and promoters of The Celestine Prophecy (Celestine Films), which is opening on 4.19 in San Francisco, and then in Seattle, Austin, Boulder, Berkeley and other mid-size cities later in the month? Based on James Redfield's famous best-seller, directed by Armand Mastroianni and costarring some good and respectable actors (Matthew Settle, Thomas Kretschmann, Sarah Wayne Callies, Annabeth Gish, Hector Elizondo, Joaquim de Almeida, Jurgen Prochnow), Celestine is a film about spiritual matters, to go by the trailer. It may be a piece of shit, but you'd...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:38 PM on Saturday, April 15, 2006
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"There have been three actors
"There have been three actors in Hollywood history that I can think of ...Douglas Fairbanks, Burt Lancaster and Jackie Chan...who've done their own stunts, but they all had either a natural facility or training of some kind. I think that for Tom Cruise to announce that he's doing his own stunts on Mission: Impossible 3....for a movie star of his calibre to do this, that can only come from a wild insecurity on his part." -- "name" guy who likes anonymity
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:28 PM on Saturday, April 15, 2006
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This sound file is taken
This sound file is taken from the opening five or six minutes of HBO's Too Hot Not to Handle, a global warming doc that will debut at 7 pm on 4.22 -- "Earth Day." It's smart, absorbing...a very thorough rundown explaining how bad things have been getting, and how much worse they'll get if we don't do something about C02 emissions and greenhouse gases.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:12 PM on Saturday, April 15, 2006
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Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (Touchstone), an
Mel Gibson's Apocalypto (Touchstone), an ancient-history metaphor piece about a civilization destroying itself, has abandoned its August 4 release date and will now open on December 8. So either Gibson and Disney distributors have decided Apocalypto has year-end awards potential, or they didn't like the idea of opening in the same late-summer period as Oliver Stone's World Trade Center and Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers, or they decided they need a lot more time to get it ready.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:37 PM on Saturday, April 15, 2006
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I guess I misheard that
I guess I misheard that insider's analogy between the Chicago Tribune's first-string film critic Michael Phillips and the recently deposed (i.e., downshifted to second-tier position) Michael Wilmington, so let's try again. Phillips "is indeed an elegant writer, but I don't think he and Wilmington are coming from the same aesthetic place. Wilmington runs hot and enthusiastic. Phillips runs cool and measured . Wilmington has lived and died for flickering lights in dark rooms his whole life. Phillips is more detached and analytical and a converted theater critic, albeit one with previous experience with movies as well, and is therefore more likely to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:26 AM on Saturday, April 15, 2006
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Scary Movie 4 is estimated
Scary Movie 4 is estimated to do around $44,379,000 for the weekend, or $12,320 per print. Seriously...what does it say about American culture that this dumb parody film did as well as it did? How unhip do you have to be to really enjoy this? Ice Age: The Meltdown is off 41% from last weekend and estimated to earn $19,059,000. Benchwarmers is down 50% for a $9,797,000 haul. The reportedly very expensive Disney animated film The Wild, directed by Steve "Spaz" Williams, is a fourth-place disaster...$9,094,000 at $3180 a print. Take The Lead is down 38% for earnings of $7,490,000. Inside Man ...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:55 AM on Saturday, April 15, 2006
Friday, April 14, 2006
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Gotta Have It
Gotta Have It
I finally finished reading I Wake Up Screening: What To Do Once You've Made That Movie (Watson-Guptill) last week, and it's one of the most easily processed, best written, most thoroughly sourced books ever written about how to get your indie movie seen (and maybe even distributed!) once it's more or less finished.
I'm not going all kiss-ass on this book because I'm friendly with its authors, critic- journo John Anderson and Warner Independent marketing exec Laura Kim, or because I know just about every distribution exec, producer's rep, indie publicist, film festival director, critic and entertainment journalist they've...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:07 PM on Friday, April 14, 2006
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"I think United 93 takes
"I think United 93 takes away the detachment of media reports, as well as the passage of time, and puts you directly into these situations. By doing so, the Hollywood-influenced concept of heroism that invariably exists in our mind is replaced by something more visceral and potent. Paul Greengrass is giving us a modern version of You Are There. David Poland 's being a contrarian and not rising up to the concept of being challenged by what is right there on the screen. He wants dramatization and fiction." -- L.A.-based director-screenwriter who saw United 93 before the press screenings started.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:37 PM on Friday, April 14, 2006
Thursday, April 13, 2006
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Hollywood Elsewhere's main page is
Hollywood Elsewhere's main page is going to be changed, I decided today. In a week or two it'll become just a series of paragraph blocks -- the beginnings of WIRED items mostly, along with the beginnings of regular features. Bang-bang, rat-a-tat-tat. Each paragraph will have jumps taking readers to a page where either the WIRED item of the feature story will appear in their entirety. And yet the current format of the main page will continue; the difference is that it'll be called "Hollywood Elsewhere Classic" and you'll have to click on a Nav Tab bar on the top left to get to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:51 PM on Thursday, April 13, 2006
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Government prosecutors apparently still regard
Government prosecutors apparently still regard Paramount Pictures chief Brad Grey and former CAA honcho Mike Ovitz as witnesses in their probe of Anthony Pellicano's wiretap activities, and not targets. But New York Times reporters David Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner are reporting in Friday's edition that Grey and Ovitz "had far more direct dealings than they have acknowledged publicly with [Pellicano] at the center of a rapidly expanding wiretapping scandal, according to govern- ment evidence." And "the government's questioning of the two Hollywood executives...shows that authorities [are] circling the heavyweight entertainment lawyer Bert Fields, who worked for both." The Times basically...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:03 PM on Thursday, April 13, 2006
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Does Columbia Pictures' decision to
Does Columbia Pictures' decision to release the delayed All the King's Men (the original release date was 12.16.05) on 9.22 mean it might turn up at the Toronto Film Festival? No matter how much it gets talked up by friends of producer Mike Medavoy or director Steve Zaillian, Men is regarded as a damaged-goods movie that, fairly or unfairly, has something to prove. I'm sorry but last December's delay left a mark, and Columbia knew that pulling it would create one. If it's as good as the "friends" say it is, Columbia publicity should start screening it early....no later than...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:34 PM on Thursday, April 13, 2006
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The Biblical word "Babel" refers
The Biblical word "Babel" refers to "Babylon," which generally means a place in which the serenity of God's path is not heeded. In Genesis 11:9, Babel "is etymologized by an association with the Hebrew verb balal, which means 'to confuse or confound.'" This should give you an oblique idea about where Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu 's Babel (Paramount Classics, 11.17) is coming from. I've read Guillermo Arriaga's script because the film is most likely going to play at the Cannes Film Festival, and I want to be up to speed. Like Innaritu and Arriaga's Amores perros and 21 Grams, Babel about how a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:02 PM on Thursday, April 13, 2006
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It was officially announced yesterday..."officially"
It was officially announced yesterday..."officially" being a euphemism in this instance for "at long last"...that Chicago Tribune editors had finaly gotten their nerve up and permanently replaced big-wheel film critic Michael Wilmington with former hotshot theater critic Michael Phillips, whom I spoke to last September during the Toronto Film Festival. It was obvious back then that Phillips (whom a Chicago Tribune colleague describes as "an elegant writer" and coming from "more or less in the same [aesthetic] place as Wilmington"] was on the upswing and Mike, a flat-out brilliant critic and scholar from way back, was on the downswing. A friend of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:48 PM on Thursday, April 13, 2006
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MSNBC film critic John Hartl
MSNBC film critic John Hartl has made a good if obvious point, which is that regular audiences tend to embrace mediocre films that don't tend to stand the test of time, and that the really good films tend to more celebrated by critics and, to a lesser extent, awards-giving orgs like the Academy. I've always maintained that the most popular films of any year always amount to a kind of portrait of where the mass audience is at deep down...a reflection of what they're longing for, or how they would like to see themselves in some way. What does it say about...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:00 PM on Thursday, April 13, 2006
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Regarding the Jared Paul Stern/"Page
Regarding the Jared Paul Stern/"Page Six" shakedown fiasco, Lewis Beale offers the following: "The 'Page Six' people play by their own rules, and they ain't the rules anyone else in the industry abides by. I collaborated with the Daily News' George Rush on and off when I was a staffer there, and I can tell you that George (a sober, upright, pleasant, Midwestern kind of guy) was not accepting free first-class plane rides to L.A. and comp stays at elite hotels. If he had, he would have been fired, plain and simple. The whole Stern/'Page Six' flare-up is about two things: the total...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:42 AM on Thursday, April 13, 2006
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The last line in United
The last line in United 93, seen in white type against black background before the end credits, is "America's war on terrorism had begun." My gut tells me this proclamation was muscled into the film. Universal knows the right is going to be suppporting this film big-time, and I think it was thrown in as a sop to the Bill O'Reilly crowd. This is merely a suspicion, and far from a factual assertion. It's not a huge deal and obviously not central, but it's stuck between my teeth at the moment. It's the one and only incongruent note in the film.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:29 AM on Thursday, April 13, 2006
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Director Paul Greengrass during filming of United 93
Boiled Down
Boiled Down
Movie City News editor David Poland saw United 93 last night (I know because I saw and spoke to him at the screening), and he has asked two questions on his Hot Blog about it: What is it really about and who is it really about?
The answer to the first question isn't that simple, but the answer to the second is as plain as a green apple sitting on a glass table in a nice restaurant in the late afternoon.
Director Paul Greengrass during filming of United 93
United 93 may have...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:14 AM on Thursday, April 13, 2006
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Filmmakers tend to be a
Filmmakers tend to be a bit more affectionate and supportive of other filmmakers than, say, critics or the public, but that aside, Kevin Smith has seen Mission: Impossible: 3 (Paramount, 5.5) and passes along the following: "I saw it last month in [director-writer J.J. Abrams'] editing room, and it's really great: far, far superior to the second one, and as good (if not better) than the first. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the most believable bad guy since Anthony Hopkins in Silence -- he's just plain frightening. [The film has] great tent-pole scenes and Tom Cruise is in top form. There's no fat...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:45 AM on Thursday, April 13, 2006
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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John Travolta's the only guy
John Travolta's the only guy I ever spoken to with a son named Jett (just like me), and here's a Rush & Molloy piece about an affliction (possibly autism) that Travolta's 14 year-old son seems to be coping with. The autism info comes from Mark Ebner's Hollywood Interrupted site. Tough cards either way, and I'm sorry.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:56 PM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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Here's an interview with film
Here's an interview with film critic Godfrey Cheshire, who wrote the influential two-part essay, "Death of Film/Decay of Cinema," on Matt Zoller Seitz's "The House Next Door." The Cheshire interview is by guest contributor Jeremiah Kipp . Definitely worth a read-through.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:45 PM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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"I haven't read the orginal
"I haven't read the orginal script for The Break-up, but it sounds like the girly-girls in the audience just didn't want Jennifer Aniston guy-less at the end. If there wasn't another strong viable male character for her to end up with, then I guess the director and the writers had to figure out how to put her back with Vince Vaughn, even if the rest of the movie is telling us they don't belong together. That's an awfully big change. Maybe they should just have a final scene of her sitting alone in a bar...free at last, free at last, thank Dod...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:18 PM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal
Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal are my idea of a serious talented couple with very relaxed, no-problemo cool-cat dispositions, and now on they're on the way to taking things legit and having a kid and all that...cool.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:05 PM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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N.Y. Observer "Transom" columnist Choire
N.Y. Observer "Transom" columnist Choire Sicha visited the besieged and embattled Jared Paul Stern at his home in the Catskills two days ago, and here's what came of it.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:00 PM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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"I think United 93 is
"I think United 93 is the best film of the year so far. I almost wished I hadn't seen the A&E telefilm. I thought it was cool that John Rothman (older brother of Fox honcho Tom Rothman) and David Rasche (star of TV's Sledgehammer series) were in it as two of the passengers. [Director Paul] Greengrass is opposed to the war in Iraq, so the ending card -- 'America's war on terror had begun' -- that you cited smacks to me of studio meddling." -- Connected industry guy
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:38 PM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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This is hilarious: Defamer has
This is hilarious: Defamer has a comment from a reader who says he just attended a screening on the Universal lot of the new, happy-ending version of The Break-up (Universal, 6.2), which came out of a recent re-shoot that came about, according to that "Page Six" item, because of negative reactions to the original finale of the film in which costars Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn don't get back together. Anyway, the reader says he "saw a test screening of [the version with the happier ending] last night at Universal (yeah, I was recruited at AMC in Burbank), and at the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:05 PM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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Some folks at Cinematical have
Some folks at Cinematical have responded to my United 93 review, and I responded to some of what they said, etc. Sorry for my misspelling and dyslexia, but I was in a rush. Anyway, I've been able to correct the boo-boos since. A woman named Martha Fischer who doesn't want to see United 93 took exception to being called a coward, which is what I more or less said earlier, and I responded thusly: "Sorry to be the bearer but yeah...you kind of are that, Martha. No offense and all but yes, I feel that you are definitely a run-and-hider. I respect...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:49 AM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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People have written this morning
People have written this morning about CNN.com's "quick vote" question of the day, asking how many readers intend to see United 93 when it opens on 4.28. (CNN's idiot search engine won't take you to it, but the "quick vote" thing is on the lower right portion of the page.) One reader told me 80% of the respondents have said they would not see the film. Another reported that as of 10:15 this morning that of the 42,555 who've answered the poll so far, only 8474 respondents -- a bit less than 20% -- said they'd be seeing the film. Maybe if Universal...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:38 AM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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Jurors at the trial of
Jurors at the trial of accused 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui yesterday "heard the first public playing of the cockpit voice recorder of United Airlines Flight 93, the hijacked jetliner on 9/11 that missed its target thanks to a passenger uprising," says this CNN story. The ending of this story (aknowledging this can't be avoided) conflicts with the ending of Paul Greengrass's United 93, but certainly not in spirit. And that's all I'll say.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:27 AM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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If you look down on
If you look down on the lower-left search engine you'll notice you can now conduct two separate site searches -- one for the Hollywood Elsewhere column archives and one for the WIRED column. The WIRED search engine works just beautifully, and I think the page is pretty nicely designed also. A big thanks much to the great Jim Stanley, a very creative and diligent guy, for throwing this together.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:10 AM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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"I'm not one of those
"I'm not one of those 'too soon!' types, and I work in the Pentagon. I luckily managed to be out of town on 9/11, but I had many coworkers and friends in the building that day, and my brother lived in Manhattan at the time, so I'm about as close as one can get to that day without actually being there. And I have no problem seeing United 93. It's history, and as long as it's done as history -- i.e. no JFK-like inventions of fantasy -- it's worth our time. Anyway, I had one tiny beef with your piece: whereas I may...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:54 AM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
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As rock-music documentary quizzes go,
As rock-music documentary quizzes go, this one's easy. A little too easy. Here's a question of my own: In Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock (1970), Hugh Romney (i.e. Wavy Gravy) offers many sage remarks from the stage of the Woodstock Music Festival. In response to stage manager Chip Munk's concerns about the "brown" acid, Romney says (a) "That one's easy...we all know what brown is the color of!" (b) "Hey, man...I did one of those brown tabs...I think, sometime in the last 12 hours or so...and I'm okay so whatever, man...God loves you, okay?" or (c) "Hey, man, I happen to be one...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:35 AM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
18 comments
Christian Clemenson (kneeling) as Thomas Burnett in the middle of passenger huddle during last act of United 93; Cheyenne Jackson, as Mark Bingham, is standing...Read More
Blown Away
Blown Away
Is Paul Greengrass's United 93 (Universal, 4.28) a knockout, a time-stopper, a mind-blower? It sure as hell is.
You're probably going to need to stand outside the theatre for a few minutes after it's over and just chill...trust me. And then you're going to want a drink, even if you don't drink. And then talk it out with friends for an hour or so. See it with some. Don't go alone.
Christian Clemenson (kneeling) as Thomas Burnett in the middle of passenger huddle during last act of United 93; Cheyenne Jackson, as Mark Bingham, is standing...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:35 AM on Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
25 comments
Puck Everlasting
Puck Everlasting
The movies that seem to grab me the most are the ones that ask us to consider the mystical, the undefined, the intangibles...the ones that say "look up, look out, look beyond...there's more to this world than what you can own, eat, taste or feel."
The latest film to do this kind of thing well, and frankly one of the more interesting, amusing and affecting films I've seen over the last few weeks (if you don't include An Inconvenient Truth, that is), is a new documentary about a bunch of guys who love to play air hockey.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:16 PM on Tuesday, April 11, 2006
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Now I'm hearing from a
Now I'm hearing from a Univeral spokesperson that this morning's "Page Six" item about a newly-shot happy ending patched onto the finale of The Break-up (Universal, 6.2) that has costars Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn staying together at the end, isn't...uhm, well, I'm not sure. But the re-shoot wasn't, I've been told, about adding a simple-ass, about-face, switcheroo happy ending just to make it "happy." I guess that means it's been finessed or something.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:42 PM on Tuesday, April 11, 2006
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Davis Guggenheim and Al Gore's
Davis Guggenheim and Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount Classics, 5.26), which I saw for the second time last night, is, I strongly suspect, going to win the Best Feature Documentary Oscar in March '07. It may or may not emerge as the year's finest doc (nobody has a clue about anything at this stage), but what it says is so damned important and vital for the survival of the planet, and it makes its case so persuasively, that any Academy member with a smidgen of concern about the perils of global warming is going to want to give it...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:25 AM on Tuesday, April 11, 2006
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A straight-talking, lay-it-on-the-line Paramount publicist
A straight-talking, lay-it-on-the-line Paramount publicist (there are always exceptions to any rule) says Mission: Impossible: 3 is crafty and crackerjack and totally delivers...despite Paramount's policy of deciding not to invite print or online journalists to the L.A. junket later this month, and to not let critics see it until the all-media screening on Tuesday, May 2nd -- three days before the May 5th opening. Tom Cruise always conrol-freaks his way through press junkets (he's only talking to TV interviewers) but I'm being told that even a run-of-the-mill phoner with director- writer J.J. Abrams is something less than a slam-dunk. This would normally indicate...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:59 AM on Tuesday, April 11, 2006
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"Page Six" has stumbled upon
"Page Six" has stumbled upon an item that may (for a minute or two) take everyone's attention away from the Jared Paul Stern magillah: a re-shot happy ending for The Break-up (Universal, 6.2) with costars Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn deciding to stay together at the end. The original script by Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender (Vaughn worked with them on the original story) had them going separate ways at the finish and "it was shot that way but test audiences hated it. It tested really...and I mean really badly," a "source" tells "Page Six." So Aniston, Vaughn, director Peyton Reed (Down...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:55 AM on Tuesday, April 11, 2006
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Things imploded at Hollywood Elsewhere
Things imploded at Hollywood Elsewhere on Monday. Several dribs and drabs and strands of this and that (including my second exposure to David Guggenheim and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth , in the early evening), and I didn't feel like writing a single damn thing. Stuff happened, things emerged, but you need more than just material. You need the will . Without that...nothing. I think that's a universal metaphor all around.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:44 AM on Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Monday, April 10, 2006
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It's common knowledge that Lauren
It's common knowledge that Lauren Weisbeger, former Vogue slave and author of the book, "The Devil Wears Prada", that's been adapted into a fashion industry comedy-drama of the same name (20th Century Fox, 6.30), modelled her magazine-boss villain on Vogue editor Anna Wintour. And now Women's Wear Daily 's Jeff Bercovici is passing along remarks taken from a W interview with Meryl Streep, who plays the Wintour character, Miranda Piestley. "I thought [Weisberger's book] was written out of anger...she seemed not to have an understanding of the larger machine to which she had apprenticed," Streep is quoted as saying. "So she...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:15 PM on Monday, April 10, 2006
Sunday, April 9, 2006
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"When did Oliver Stone stopped
"When did Oliver Stone stopped being the guy willing to 'spit out some hard political truths'? Go back and watch his 1998 TV documentary on the downing of TWA Flight 800. Oh right, sorry...you can't go back and watch it. ABC/Disney killed it. But any kid with a webcam knows how to get footage out into the world. In the age of the internet the line 'the corporations won't let me show you what I've shot' is hard to buy. So where's the film, Ollie? I haven't trusted him to come up with any hard truths since." -- Christian Oates, Seattle, WA.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:10 PM on Sunday, April 9, 2006
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Memory Lane
Memory Lane
April has barely begun and the media drumbeat over the year's two big 9/11 films, both produced with the upcoming five-year anniversary in mind, is already pretty loud.
Press screenings for United 93 are beginning this week, stories attempting to gauge the public's interest in seeing this and other 9/11 presentations are running (the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek ran theirs on 4.7 and 4.10, respectively), and we'll be hearing more and more about Oliver Stone's World Trade Center next month when a 20-minute reel from the 8.11 Paramount release is shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
...Read Moreposted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:13 PM on Sunday, April 9, 2006
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There's a 4.9 Time story,
There's a 4.9 Time story, written by Richard Corliss and reported by Clayton Neuman and Rebecca Winters, about the various 9/11 films, and it includes these comments from Andrea Berloff about World Trade Center (Paramount, 8.11), which she wrote the screenplay for: "It's a boy-down-a-well saga with no politics. This is a small story. We're in the hole with these two guys for practically the whole movie. You don't want people leaving theaters slitting their wrists. I don't think the world is ready for the Towering Inferno version of 9/11. I don't know how you would make that movie."...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:46 PM on Sunday, April 9, 2006
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The industry view about Oliver
The industry view about Oliver Stone directing World Trade Center (Paramount, 8.11) is that apart from whatever he feels about the story or the theme or the characters, it's basically his making-up-for-the-failure-of-Alexander movie. A Stone movie by way of a dutiful head-down attitude and an application of craft rather than any kind of fire-in-the-belly motivation. A submissive Stone, almost. Bending over backwards to make a corporate "heart" movie without even tangentially getting into his political beliefs or intuitions about 9/11, which he expressed at a panel discussion called "Making Movies That Matter: The Role of Film in the National Debate"...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:11 PM on Sunday, April 9, 2006
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Also in the 4.9 Time
Also in the 4.9 Time story is a mini-review of United 93, which Time was given an exclusive look at: "The saga of this flight makes for, in 9/11 terms, a feel-good movie," the article reads. "Just as important, United 93...is a good movie -- taut and implacable -- that honors the deeds of the passengers while being fair, if anyone cares, to the hijackers' jihad bravado. (At one point the passengers are heard murmuring the Lord's Prayer while the hijackers whisper their prayers to Allah.) If this is a horror movie, it is an edifying one, a history lesson with the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:10 AM on Sunday, April 9, 2006
Saturday, April 8, 2006
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"I share your feelings about
"I share your feelings about The Last Temptation of Christ and I'm far from what anyone would consider a rightie fundamentalist Christian, but I don't think the discovery of this ancient Gospel of Judas text is quite as faith-shaking or earth-shattering as you believe or hope. The legitimacy of the content by the highly- biased Gnostic group can be likened to the objectivity of an account of Ronald Reagan by, say, Rush Limbaugh, and at best it exonerates Judas from nearly two thousand years of loathing. As someone resigned to his own persecution and capture is it so blasphemous to believe that Christ...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:16 PM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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"Not sure if you've heard
"Not sure if you've heard about this, but before this afternoon's showing of Lucky Number Slevin there was a new trailer for United 93 that should really open some eyes." [Editor's note: this is apparently "A Look Inside", the alternate trailer than went online a week or so ago.] "It's all director Paul Greengrass and the widows/relatives of some of the people who actually died in the crash of United # 93 explaining why this film is important and why it should be seen. If anyone has the right to complain about this movie being 'too soon' it's the people most impacted...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:45 PM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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I meant to get into
I meant to get into Nicole Holofcener's Friends with Money (Sony Classics) on the occasion of its limited opening yesterday, but I dropped the ball or vegged out or whatever. And it's...well, an honest, well-observed relationship drama I enjoyed in some respects, but that I wanted to like more. And yet I'm glad it was made because of its here-and-there satisfactions. (During these portions it seems to almost approach the level of wholeness and character refinement found in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives.) But as much as I tried to roll with Friends I found it hard to like...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:08 PM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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Feeling half-good about Friends With
Feeling half-good about Friends With Money, I spoke last week to Sony Classics co-chief Tom Bernard the day after last week's Friends with Money premiere screening and after-party. We got into how the "dependents" -- the studio-funded indie divisons -- aren't making or distributing "indie" films as much as smart, character-drivien middle-budget films for upscale audiences...the kind of movies that the big studios used to churn out but pretty much gave up on sometime in the early to mid '90s.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:00 PM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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Second paragraph in article by
Second paragraph in article by Al Gore called "The Moment of Truth" on page 170 in current issue of Vanity Fair: 
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:50 PM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation
Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ is a film that stood gleaming and transcendent the day it opened in 1988 and has done nothing but gain ground over the last 18 years, but now it's looking all the wiser. The relationship between Willem Dafoe's Jesus and Harvey Keitel's Judas Iscariot is pretty much as described in the recently uncovered, just-revealed Gospel of Judas, which says Judas was a close and respected Jesus homie and ally who was acting on orders from the Nazarene to carry out his Garden of Gethsamane betrayal and thereby help him fulfull his earthly...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:14 PM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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"It's hard to feel sorry
"It's hard to feel sorry for celebs with oceans of money who employ armies of sociopathic [expletives] to call you up and bitch about every little item. You sign away your privacy when you become a star or boldface bigshot and agree to play this game. You took our money, so we own you. If you don't like it buy an island and stay on it." -- quote attributed to embattled "Page Six" reporter Jared Paul Stern by way of a Washington Post piece about the scandal that exploded in Stern's face a couple of days ago.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:03 PM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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Here we go with another
Here we go with another Dead Sea Scrolls newspaper article that first appeared about 36 hours ago on the N.Y. Times website, making it barely worthy of comment due its withered condition and sad lack of relevance to the constantly evolving here-and-now. Written by director-screenwriter Nora Ephron, it nonetheless reads like a fairly acccurate piece of reporting, and amounts to yet another reason why it often seems like a more sensible idea to watch a DVD on your big-ass flat-screen rather than fork over $10 or $11 bucks at a neighborhood theatre. Ephron had a bad experience at Manhattan's AMC Loews Orpheum...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:21 PM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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Case in point about shit-level
Case in point about shit-level projection: the first time I saw David Cronenberg's A History of Violence was at the Grand Theatre Lumiere in Cannes, and it looked pretty close to perfect. Then I saw it again at the Pacific Grove in Los Angeles and did a reaction piece, and somehow this local experience overwhelmed my recollections of Cannes because I included the following: "One beef with this film: Peter Suschitzky's cinematography looks like it was soaked in Bolivian coffee during lab processing. I started to wonder if the projector lamp at the Grove's theatre #1 was dying, but the lamps...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:42 AM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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I felt a bit deflated,
I felt a bit deflated, frankly, after Thursday night's "101 Greatest Screenplays" tribute at the Writers Guild theatre in Beverly Hills. It was nice to be there, and the WGA staffers were gracious, and I spoke to some good people during the pre- and after-parties (screenwriters mostly...Larry Karaszewski, Holly Sorenson, L.M. Kit Carson, Brian Herzlinger). But the the film clips were all AFI-level mainstream groaners. (I'm going to lose it if I see a clip of Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy lamenting his squandered boxing career one more time.) And the "101 Greatest" list is basically the same oppressive "best films of all...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:20 AM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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Poor Jared Paul Stern. A
Poor Jared Paul Stern. A smart, on-top-of-it gossip journalist who, according to all the news accounts, has voluntarily and stupidly fried himself by recently trying to solicit $220,000 from billionaire Ron Burkle in return for a year's "protection" against "inaccurate and unflattering items" about him in the New York Post's "Page Six" gossip column. Walked right into it...putz. And out of this comes a report that Harvey Weinstein , the co-chief of the Weinstein Co., has "finessed" his dealing with "Page Six" in the past. A 4.7 New York Times story is asserting that "while the accusations against Mr. Stern [are]...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:24 AM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
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A smart, attractive professional woman
A smart, attractive professional woman I know is into HBO's polygamy series Big Love. She finds the notion of having a committed relationship without the full-time, the day-to-day maintenance vaguely appealing. And my ex-wife is a hard-core watcher. I haven't read about any research but is this the Big Love deal? A show over-30 women? It's not exactly surprising, but...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:53 AM on Saturday, April 8, 2006
Friday, April 7, 2006
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Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo in David Fincher's Zodiac (Paramount, 11.10)
Obsession
Obsession
The last truly exceptional hunt-for-a-serial-killer movie was David Fincher's Se7en. And the next one, I'm fairly convinced, is going to be Fincher's Zodiac (Paramount, 11.10).
I'm basing this on a recent read of James Vanderbilt's script, which runs 150-plus pages. This persuades me that what I heard last week is true: Zodiac is going to be a three-hour movie, or close to it.
Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo in David Fincher's Zodiac (Paramount, 11.10)
Scripts never really tell you that much, but reading Zodiac planted an idea that Fincher is again pushing the thriller boundary....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:01 PM on Friday, April 7, 2006
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"For more than 30 days
"For more than 30 days between 10.16.02, when [indicted-accused wiretapper-of-the-stars] Anthony Pellicano was told by his then-lawyer that he was a walking bulls-eye in the FBI investigation of the threats against Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch, and 11.21.02, when the FBI served a search warrant at Pellicano's West Hollywood office and walked off with grenades, C-4 explosives, 11 computers, 24 external hard drives, a cache of zip disks, and a laminated card with computer user names and passwords on it, Pellicano sat on his butt." -- a graph from Ross Johnson's new SHAKEDOWN column on LA Indie. Contents...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:58 AM on Friday, April 7, 2006
Thursday, April 6, 2006
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It's two days old (i.e.,
It's two days old (i.e., on par with the Dead Sea Scrolls), but check out this Dave Germain 4.4 AP story about distributors deciding not to show more and more movies -- 11 haven't been advance-screened this year, compared to two that had been hidden from the press at this time in '05. It's one of those "this is unfortunately the way things are" stories -- a photo of the current malaise over the steady degradation of movie quality. Am I worried about not getting to see stuff? Naaah...you just have to set aside time each day to call your publicist friends...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:09 PM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
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The arrival date of John
The arrival date of John Connolly's "The Sin Eater" (Atria), expected to be a juicy expose about the adventures of indicted Hollywood wire-tapper Anthony Pellicano, will reportedly hit book stores sometime in early 2007. Connolly will also have a reputedly hot piece about Pellicano in an issue of Vanity Fair coming out in, I think, May. But help me out..."The Sin Eater"? Like a guy who eats sin for breakfast? Who eats other people's sins only to spit it back in their face? It doesn't mean a guy who eats sin and digests it and then...this is getting gross. The title...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:39 PM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
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There's an Associated Press story
There's an Associated Press story by the London-based Tariq Panja that just went up saying the fatal shooting of British filmmaker James Miller near the Gaza-Egypt border in May 2003 by an Israeli soldier has been called an act of murder by a British coroner's jury. But for some weird reason, Panja fails to mention the title of the doc that Miller was shooting at the time, Death in Gaza, which I happened to see on DVD about two or three weeks ago. The story also doesn't mention that Gaza makes it clear that Miller's shooting happened at night, in total...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:50 PM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
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A 20-minute preview reel of
A 20-minute preview reel of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (Paramount, 8.11) will be screened at the Cannes Film Festival in mid-May. Of course, a good editor can make almost any film look pretty good if all he/she has to do is show a "taster" reel. Columbia once invited the press to see a short reel of Roland Emmerich's The Patriot ('00), which was mostly taken from the film's first act, which was the best part of the film, and pretty much everyone came out saying, "Looks pretty good!" Then everyone saw the full-length version and realized they'd been had. Less...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:00 PM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
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I've been noticing guys over
I've been noticing guys over the last three or four months wearing "Wolverine"-type sideburns. This is a pretty awful style thing, assuming it's caught on in some kind of bona fide way. (Has it?). I suppose there's a kind of rad distinction in being willing to look like a Hugh Jackman X-Men wannabe. I'm assuming right now it's an urban blue-state thing, but maybe not. Has anyone seen Wolverine chops in rural Utah? 
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:42 PM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:39 PM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
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In celebration of today's three-years-sober
In celebration of today's three-years-sober anniversary of Jason Mewes, the Marlon Brando of suburban stoner "attitude" comedians, Clerks 2 director-writer Kevin Smith looks back at their decades-long friendship, with a focus on Mewes' past drug addiction. Smith says it's "turned into something kinda cool" becaise he's "been getting tons of feedback from folks who can identify with it because people in their lives (or they themselves) have been through similar struggles." Here's the Wednesday, 4.5 installment..the last one is due today.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:11 PM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
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I'm very sorry to report
I'm very sorry to report the death of the very witty film critic and entertainment reporter John Voland, 47, who died in his sleep from a heart attack on Monday, April 3rd. Voland had most recently worked as a writer-consultant in the video-game world. He was a staff reporter and reviewer at the L.A. Times from '85 to '88, pop music editor at the Houston Post from '89 to '90, senior film reporter and critic at the Hollywood Reporter from '90 to '92, did various freelance gigs in the mid '90s (LA Style, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire), and had a staff position at Variety...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:32 AM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
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The reported decision by Cannes
The reported decision by Cannes Film Festival bigwigs to screen Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand (20th Century Fox, 5.26) seems a bit odd. Nobody knows how this third X-Men film will play, but everyone has had their suspicions since Fox hired Ratner to direct it. Are there any cinematic standards at all being sought by Cannes programmers these days, or can any big-studio tentpoler be shown as long as it's been offered and big stars have agreed to walk up the red carpet and the European distributor needs the hoopla?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:40 AM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
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The first tracking figures are
The first tracking figures are in on United 93 (Universal, 4.28), the Paul Greengrass 9/11 film that's been catching the wrong kind of heat due to stories about negative reactions to the trailer, and it has a very high "definitely not interested" figure -- 14%. The "definitely not interested" responses "are usually 2% to 3% to 4%...usually in the case of a slasher film or a very skewed teenage film," a marketing veteran explains. "This is much higher...one of the highest I've ever seen." The public's general awareness of United 93 is 32% -- two thirds of those polled don't even know about...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:54 AM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
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Derek Elley is reporting that
Derek Elley is reporting that Steven Soderbergh's The Good German (Warner Bros.), his black-and-white, presumably Third Man-ish, post-World War II Berlin drama with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, may not be ready to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival. That's a shame from my perspective. I was really looking forward to seeing it there. Probable translation: either Soderbergh (who has a co-editing credit on the IMDB under the name of "Mary Ann Bernard") and his editor David Kirchner aren't entirely happy with the current edit, or Warner Bros. distrib execs aren't entirely blown away by it, and there are the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:19 AM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
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Good for Nicole Kidman, Blossom
Good for Nicole Kidman, Blossom Films and her new first-look deal at 20th Century Fox, but the three films she currently has in development sound awfully mainstream, and two sound like sexy spritzy formula stuff....tripe for the girl who reads Cosmopolitan. There's an adaptation of The Bachelorette Party by Karen McCullah Lutz (who shared screenplay credit on Legally Blonde...this should give you a hint) and a "Bourne Supremacy -style" spy thriller written by Simon Kinberg (Mr. and Mrs. Smith ) which will star Kidman as a female assassin....good God. (Nothing including worldwide nausea seems to get in the way of Hollywood's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:32 AM on Thursday, April 6, 2006
Wednesday, April 5, 2006
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Miami-Baghdad
Miami-Baghdad
There's been a sense of stagnation out there for the last two or three weeks. All I've been able to think or write about have been movies to come -- United 93, Snakes on a Plane, Cannes Film Festival likelies, summer movies, etc. Along with the occasional side-trip -- Anthony Pellicano, Marlon Brando, local film festivals.
I finally woke up Tuesday night (3.4) after seeing a striking, not-yet-finished film by Philip Noyce (The Quiet American) called Hotstuff (Focus Features), a true saga of an ordinary South African man's fight against apartheid in the early '80s, with Derek Luke and Tim Robbins starring....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:49 PM on Wednesday, April 5, 2006
Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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I can't hear the damn
I can't hear the damn thing for lack of the right software, but about 7 minutes into this KCRW/"Which Way LA?" sound file is an 18-minute conversation about the where the Anthony Pellicano investigation is now (4.4.06) and where it's going. Ross Johnson, hardcore legal reporter and master of an excellent site called L.A. Indie, tells me "it's the most sober analysis of Pellicano" -- does he mean the man or the scandal? -- "you'll ever hear." Warren Olney is the host; Johnson and Loyola Marymount law professor Laurie Levenson are the guests. Stay with L.A. Indie: later this week...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:20 PM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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Now wait a minute...wait a
Now wait a minute...wait a minute: in stories reporting the decision of attorneys Howard Weitzman and Dale Kinsella to leave Greenburg, Glusker, Fields, Claman, Machtinger & Kinsella to form their own entertainment law firm, Variety's Janet Shprintz and the Hollywood Reporter's Jesse Hiestand both softballed it when it came to explaining why. They both reported assertions (from Weitzman and Greenberg Glusker managing partner Norman Levine, respectively) that the departure has nothing to do the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping mess that Bert Fields, the head of Greenberg, Clusker, is in right now. You can bet it does have something to do with...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:25 PM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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Two expensive period films have
Two expensive period films have had a scheduling face-off, and the less heavily-budgeted of the two has retreated with its tail between its legs. The July '06 shoot of Ridley Scott 's American Gangster, a '70s-era crime film that will costar Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington, has delayed a planned September start of a 1930s period drama to be directed by Baz Luhrman and costar Crowe and Nicole Kidman.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:44 PM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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Following his detour into soul-stirring
Following his detour into soul-stirring otherness in Richard Kelly's apocalyptic Southland Tales, Seann William Scott is back to playing bozos in formula crap films. His next, Gary, the Tennis Coach, is about a high school janitor coaching a group of misfits to the Nebraska state championship...zzzzz. Pic will roll this summer under director Danny Leiner (Dude, Where's My Car).
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:33 PM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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"If you want to keep
"If you want to keep your argument so narrow as to say the United #93 passengers didn't enter the cockpit and/or manually force the plane into the ground, and therefore weren't quite the heroes so many of us believe they are...fine. But whatever strategy the hijackers had in mind, it was not to kill squirrels in a Pennsylvania field . Whether they made it to the cockpit or not, United #93 crashed as a direct result of the passengers revolting against the hijackers. It seems quite clear that everyone on that plane had decided and accepted they were already dead, and that they...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:09 PM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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This is Vivien Leigh as
This is Vivien Leigh as Blanche (Blanche!...Blanche!) Dubois in Streetcar, giving her "don't hang back with the brutes" speech. Substitute the behavior of Stanley Kowalski, whom she refers to in the early portion, with today's ape-cage downmarket movies, and...well, something to mull over, I think. I liked this Tennessee Williams play quite a lot when I first saw it in my late teens, but I love it now... especially the second half, starting with that scene with the visiting newspaper boy.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:58 PM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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Hey....this Movie City News link
Hey....this Movie City News link (Mel "There's No Such Thing As A Dead Language" Gibson On Apocalypto) dates back to 3.27.06, and I ran it on 3.20.06. This is an hour-by-hour racket we're in, and the rules say no links to stories more than a day old. Okay, two days at the outside.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:48 PM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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Wouldn't you say the brand-new
Wouldn't you say the brand-new redesign of the New York Times online site is a wee bit similar to the design of El Pais, the influential Spanish-language newspaper? I'm not saying the Times design guys actually ripped off El Pais, but they might as well have.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:51 PM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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I finally got my copy
I finally got my copy of the forthcoming two-disc A Streetcar Named Desire (Warner Home Video, 5.2), and here are two recordings from the 1947 Marlon Brando screen test, when he was 23. It's mainly footage of Brando and a somewhat older actress acting a scene from an early version of a script called Rebel Without a Cause, in which Brando's character wasn't named "Jim Stark" (the teenaged kid played by James Dean in the 1955 film) but "Harold." In excerpt #1, Harold, obviously angry and distressed, is talking to the girl about getting away (maybe to South...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:57 AM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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That disputed headline for Sharon
That disputed headline for Sharon Waxman's 4.4 N.Y. Times story about the currently-playing trailer for United 93 upsetting people (which has prompted West 43rd Street notions about Universal withdrawing the trailer...notions that are entirely confined to West 43rd Street, apparently) reads "Universal Will Not Pull 'United 93' Trailer, Despite Criticism." But the headline for the same story in today's (4.4) print edition doesn't imply quite the same assumption...it feels a tad less negative. Here it is... 
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:51 AM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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"The best mise en scene
"The best mise en scene is the one you don't notice. You have to make the public forget that there's a screen. You have to lead them into the screen, until they forget the image only has two dimensions. If you try to be artistic or affected you miss everything." -- director-writer Billy Wilder
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:30 AM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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Okay, so DHL (the courier
Okay, so DHL (the courier company with the yellow trucks and yellow jackets) isn't really involved in "a logistic and shipping partnership" with Paramount Pictures and Mission: Impossible: 3 . The real deal, according to Mark Ebner's Hollywood Interrupted, is that they "paid millions to Paramount for the opportunity of having Tom Cruise appear on screen driving a stupid yellow DHL truck around Italy" in the film. I for one am shocked, shocked, that this sort of thing goes on in the film industry. In Billy Wilder's One Two Three, Horst Buccholz screams in exasperation, "Is everybody in the world corrupt?" in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:59 AM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
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"To me, Flight 93 was
"To me, Flight 93 was a defining moment in the sense that the hijack victims of Flight 93, when they understood what was going on, changed themselves into the Flight 93 militia and fired the shot heard around the world, the beginning of the war against Al-Qaeda, followed by Congress and Bush officially declaring that same war. To me, this is something that I think is probably...we haven't had a moment like this since 1776. These victims said, 'We will be victims no more." They became soldiers, men and women alike, shoulder to shoulder, and took on Al-Qaeda and said, 'You will not...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:09 AM on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
Monday, April 3, 2006
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That headline for Sharon Waxman's
That headline for Sharon Waxman's N.Y. Times story about negative responses to Universal's United 93 trailer is, I feel, pretty unfair. It reads "Universal Will Not Pull United 93 Trailer, Despite Criticism." This implies that some kind of heated consensus has taken shape against the showing of the trailer, and that angry crowds are massed outside Universal's gates. There's resistance to the trailer, granted, or rather to the idea of seeing the film. I've received more than a few letters from different U.S. cities and regions since the trailer was first shown a week ago last Friday (on 3.31), and a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:08 PM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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Onetime hot-shot action director John
Onetime hot-shot action director John McTiernan (The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard, Basic) has stepped into some Anthony Pellicano wiretap crap. He is now apparently looking at felony charges for having lied to the FBI, and is scheduled for arrignment on 4.17.06. Lying to the FBI carries a maximum penalty of five years. The U.S. Attorney has charged in U.S. District Court for Central District of California that on 2.13.06 McTiernan knowingly made a false statement to the FBI by claiming he had no knowledge of any wiretapping conducted by Anthony Pellicano. The U.S. Attorney's charge is that McTiernan in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:23 PM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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Mark Ebner's Hollywood Interrupted site
Mark Ebner's Hollywood Interrupted site has passed along the news about former Hollywood agent Pat Dollard almost getting killed in Iraq while filming a pro-war documentary series called "Young Americans." Last year Dollard "ditched a lucrative career as a Hollywood agent [and] took leave from his family" -- this means what exactly? it makes Dollard sound a little bit like Scott Glenn's "Colby" character in Apocalypse Now -- and went to the front lines in Iraq to start shooting the series. On 2.18 -- about six weeks ago -- Dollard was wounded while on combat patrol with U.S. Marines in the city...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:10 PM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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I'll eventually get used to
I'll eventually get used to the new N.Y. Times web design, but right now I hate it. The old-fogey version (i.e., the one that was up just yesterday) was totally fine for me. The new design seems opposed to the storied atmosphere on West 43rd Street or even midtown Manhattan, for that matter. It makes the Times look like a weekly newspaper out of Springfield, Illinois. You can always improve a site internally by streamlining links and improving search functions, but if it looks good and bears a comfortable resemblance to the print version and everyone's down with it, why mess around?...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:35 PM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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I knew Inside Man might
I knew Inside Man might run into some trouble on its second weekend after I saw it for the second time at an all-media screening at the Avco in Westwood. A stocky African- American guy in a blue blazer was sitting with his date to my right, and providing a running commentary about the action all through the film. And then came the quiet-time final scene in the bedroom -- Denzel Washington looking at the diamond as he gets undressed, and maybe chuckling at the irony -- and then the screen went to black and the credits began, and this guy said...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:12 PM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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How normal is it these
How normal is it these days for guys to not grim up and get focused on some kind of career plan until they hit 29 or 30, or even 31 or 32? Fairly normal, I think. The bottom line is that the stuff that's funny in Kevin Smith's Clerks 2 is pretty fucking unfunny out there in the real world, but this is what gives good comic films their undertow.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:21 PM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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Not a spoiler but it
Not a spoiler but it may read like one to someone who hasn't seen Spike Lee's Inside Man, so beware: A reader has mentioned a curious detail in Inside Man that's probably nothing, but it bugged him. At the very end as Clive Owen and his colleagues drive off (and keep in mind all the discussions about Christopher Plummer's past and dealings with the Nazis and the profits that came from that), they're driving away in a Volkswagen. [I haven't verified this, but I know and trust the guy who's passing this along.] I've got a copy of Russell Gewirtz's Inside Man script...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:37 AM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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"Too soon! Too soon!"....this is
"Too soon! Too soon!"....this is the mantra of people who aren't breathing in and out, and who are basically coming from a place of emotional denial or suppression. Days pass, seasons come and go, things change and snakes shed their skin. Obviously a lot of "too-soon"-ers are talking about avoiding United 93 and/or World Trade Center...whatever. But eventually you have to move on.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:30 AM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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Okay, okay...Tom Cruise recently said
Okay, okay...Tom Cruise recently said on a German TV game show that he and Katie Holmes are going to be married this summer after the birth of their baby and the release of his new movie, Mission: Impossible III. Tomkat forever...fine. What got me about the story was going to Wikipedia and learning about the game show Cruise appeared on, which is called "Wetten Dass" (i.e., "Wanna Bet?"). Airing since '81, and broadcast live six or seven times a year with each show lasting two hours (an occasional overrun happens), it's described as the most successful show in Europe. Hosted since...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:59 AM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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On Tuesday, 3.28, I wrote
On Tuesday, 3.28, I wrote an item about having been told that David Fincher's Zodiac (Paramount, 9/22) had been retitled as Chronicles, but I also quoted a Paramount spokesperson who said "we have the rights" to use the word "Zodiac" as a movie title, which led to my observation that the rumor sounded "a tad questionable" so "don't take this one to the bank just yet." The next day (Wednesday, 3.29) I wrote that Fincher's Zodiac "is absolutely going to be called that" and that Chronicles "is just what it was called during casting and shooting, apparently ...as a ruse."...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:42 AM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim's
Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth, the global-warming documentary that knocked me and everyone else for a loop when it played Sundance '06, is being released by Paramount Classics on 5.26 -- only seven and a half weeks from now -- and there's still no website for the film. There's nothing at the Paramount Classics site, and there are no links to a Truth site on the IMDB or Coming Soon. This is perhaps the most important documentary to ever receive commercial distribution -- it's essential that mainstream Americans (especially those who voted for Bush and who...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:37 AM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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Chat-boarders have been talking about
Chat-boarders have been talking about this since early January, but I didn't care about it until yesterday. The Omen (20th Century Fox), a remake of the classy 1976 horror-thriller that starred Gregory Peck, Lee Remick and David Warner, will open worldwide on an unusual day in early June -- Tuesday -- because the date will be 6.6.06. A clever marketing idea, and certain to strike a chord with the wack-jobbers...I'm sorry, devoted religious righties...who believe we're approaching the End of Days. I've always half-liked Richard Donner's original, and re-doing it sounds cool, but the director, John Moore, is...I want to put...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:30 AM on Monday, April 3, 2006
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I'm restating the obvious, but
I'm restating the obvious, but yesterday's "Not-So-Bad Summer" piece reminded me what an unusual late July-early August we'll be seeing this year. Four audacious, high-calibre films from a cluster of heavyweight older-guy directors -- Michael Mann, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Oliver Stone -- opening within a three-week period (7.28 to 8.11). Mann's Miami Vice on 7.28, Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers and Gibson's Apocalypto on 8.4, and Stone's World Trade Center on 8.11.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:08 AM on Monday, April 3, 2006
Sunday, April 2, 2006
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Not-So-Bad Summer
Not-So-Bad Summer
A typical summer season always seems to come down to one big-budget, lowest- common-denominator no-brainer after another...Hollywood being sort of like Steve McQueen firing diseased buckshot into the body aesthetic with a pump shotgun... wham!...discharge...wham!...discharge.
I was thinking along these lines myself the other day, but that was before I began to really go over the May-to-August releases with a fine tooth comb. It gradually hit me after an hour or so that the 2006 summer is looking a little bit craftier and less dumbed-down than usual.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:56 PM on Sunday, April 2, 2006
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"I am of the opinion
"I am of the opinion that inner happiness is impossible without idleness. My ideal: to be idle and love a fat girl. For me, the greatest delight is to walk, or to sit and do nothing; my favorite occupation: to collect what is not needed (papers, bits of straw) and to do useless things." -- Anton Chekhov...who couldn't have spent too many days collecting bits of straw and making love to cute fatties, given what I know it necessary to keep the creative waters flowing, and also considering the number of plays Chekhov wrote and the debts he had to satisfy.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:03 PM on Sunday, April 2, 2006
Saturday, April 1, 2006
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A fellow movie columnist (reputable,
A fellow movie columnist (reputable, "name" guy, works for big-city newspaper) wasn't permitted to post this, so he sent it to me: "Just about every movie now gets a 'director's cut' DVD, but I must admit I still almost sprung out of my seat when I received a package containing Bambi: The Director's Cut. What really got me was the sticker: 'Contains never-before-seen footage of the death of Bambi's mother.' Holy moley! The original Walt Disney film never showed this traumatic event (it was signaled by the sound of a gunshot) and yet this sequence is credited with sending generations of children into...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:12 PM on Saturday, April 1, 2006
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"I'm on the same page
"I'm on the same page with you about Dallas, but when it comes to actual Texas work being lost, that's a whole different story. I'm a sometimes-employed actor here [in Texas], and for a lot of us the news of the Dallas shutdown is devastating. There are a lot of crew members who need something like this. (I've seen bumper stickers posted around sets saying 'Shoot J.R. in Dallas', which were made up by the Dallas Film Commission). I hope that when Fox gets this film rolling again that they hire Betty Thomas to direct because she at least knows how to do...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:43 AM on Saturday, April 1, 2006
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Huge earnings for Ice Age:
Huge earnings for Ice Age: The Meltdown (20th Century Fox), the Carlos Saldanha-directed sequel to '02's Ice Age, which was co-directed by Saldanha and Chris Wedges. One projection has the animated family film earning $69.5 million for the weekend. (Another studio is projecting just over $70 million.) Inside Man (Universal) will be #2, with weekend totals projected at $16,754,000. ATL (Warner Bros.) will come in second with close to $14 million. V for Vendetta (Warner Bros.) is projected to earn about $6,518,000...obviously losing steam. Stay Alive, She's The Man, The Shaggy Dog and Slither will most likely finish in fifth, sixth, seventh and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:16 AM on Saturday, April 1, 2006
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Were you happy, sad or
Were you happy, sad or indifferent about the Variety story two days ago (Thursday, 3.30) that the movie version of Dallas, which 20th Century Fox wanted to start shooting in May so it would be in theatres by November, had fallen apart due to the sudden depature of director Robert Luketic (Monster in Law)? I was personally delighted. Fox may find another director and the film might get made down the road, but there would be a heavy spiritual price all around. Exposure to a thing like this can give you soul cancer. The rule, of course, is that you have...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:12 AM on Saturday, April 1, 2006
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So Hal the coyote had
So Hal the coyote had a year of roaming the planet and living off the land, and then a week or so ago some New York City health services guy zapped him with a tranquilizer dart, and then Hal was caged, muzzled, bound up and whatnot. And now the poor guy's dead...inert matter. Coyotoes are renowned for their exceptional survivor skills -- they're wily, adaptable, resourceful -- and know more about the ins and outs of big city life than most humans. If Hal had never been caught he'd still be alive. We all know this. The metaphor is obvious. This...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:34 AM on Saturday, April 1, 2006