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 ...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:19 PM on Sunday, April 30, 2006
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 ...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:31 AM on Sunday, April 30, 2006
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...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:29 AM on Sunday, April 30, 2006
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...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:02 AM on Sunday, April 30, 2006
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
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
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:05 AM on Friday, April 28, 2006
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
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
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:59 AM on Friday, April 28, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:20 AM on Friday, April 28, 2006
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 More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:54 PM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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
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...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:28 PM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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 ...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:19 PM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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
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 HowardRead More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:48 AM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
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
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
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:06 AM on Thursday, April 27, 2006
"...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
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
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
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
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
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...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:45 AM on Wednesday, April 26, 2006
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...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:20 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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
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
"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 ...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:47 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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
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 AnistonRead More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:32 PM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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
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
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
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
"
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:36 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:59 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:40 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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
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
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
...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:59 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
"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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:46 AM on Tuesday, April 25, 2006
"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
...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:18 PM on Monday, April 24, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:53 PM on Monday, April 24, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:31 PM on Monday, April 24, 2006
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
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:04 PM on Monday, April 24, 2006
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
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
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
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 ...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:21 PM on Sunday, April 23, 2006
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
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
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
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:37 PM on Sunday, April 23, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:28 AM on Sunday, April 23, 2006
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:13 PM on Saturday, April 22, 2006
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...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:11 PM on Saturday, April 22, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:22 PM on Saturday, April 22, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:20 AM on Saturday, April 22, 2006
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.
...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:32 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:01 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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
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
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'...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:00 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:47 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
"
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:24 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
"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...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:15 PM on Friday, April 21, 2006
"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...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:46 AM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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 RedstoneRead More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:31 AM on Friday, April 21, 2006
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.
...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:27 PM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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
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 RoadRead More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:59 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:34 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
"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 SchwarzbaumRead More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:30 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:55 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:47 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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),
...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:19 AM on Thursday, April 20, 2006
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 M:I:3...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:09 PM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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
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
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 ...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:11 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:01 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
"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
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...
...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:32 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:01 AM on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
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
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.
...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:40 PM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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
...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:24 PM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:42 PM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:51 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
"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
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!Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:58 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:57 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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 itemRead More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:48 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:25 AM on Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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
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
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
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:48 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:15 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:51 PM on Monday, April 17, 2006
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 thing
