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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Beowulf animation
The Envelope's Tom O'Neil wrote earlier today to ask for a quote about the Best Animated Feature race as it looks now. His piece just went up, but here's my summation in my own words: Ratatouille is the front-runner but the matter of Beowulf's classification is far more interesting.
I've seen most of the 3D Beowulf product reel that played at Comic-Con, and the digital work has convinced me that it's the most out-there and avant-garde-ish animated stuff I've seen in ages -- far more so than Richard Linklater's Waking Life or A Scanner...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:49 PM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Voice of Jackson
Sixteen minutes of Samuel L. Jackson talking about a few things --- his role as "Champ," a charismatic, grimy-ass derelict revealed to be a former champion boxer in Resurrecting The Champ and the real-life story behind it, the intriguing success of 1408 (in which he played a relatively small role), the respective failures of Black Snake Moan and Snakes on a Plane, and his refusal to name a favorite among the Presidential candidates because nobody's saying anything," or words to that effect. (Recorded at yesterday's Resurrecting the Champ junket at the Four Seasons hotel.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:06 PM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Obama's situation
Three factual statements: (a) Hilary Clinton has more black supporters than Barack Obama, (b) the archetypal Barack Obama voter "is a 28 year-old white woman with a Masters degree," as Tucker Carlson said on MSNBC a few minutes ago and (c) there's a certain portion of the electorate who will never vote for Obama because he's black. The last statement especially. We all know this deep down, and that the no-way-in-hell voters are not just old-school Jim Crow types with shotguns racks in their pickup trucks. But no one will ever address it, least of all the Obama campaign.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:35 PM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Podhoretz vs. Bergman
Ingmar Bergman "stopped making motion pictures in 1982, though he wrote and directed several small films for television," writes N.Y. Post columnist John Podorhetz. "And the truth is, he quit just in time. His day had passed. After decades of declaring modern life worthless and offering only suicide as a way out of the nightmarish tangle of human existence, Bergman had nothing more to say."
Podhoretz also says that "the critics who described Bergman as the greatest of film artists were people embarrassed by the movies. They didn't admire the medium. They were offended by...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:19 PM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Terkel on Bergman
"Ingmar Bergman had an audience of one aside from himself. The one he always sang about was you. His was one symphony with slight variations -- from childhood to old age. (My favorite is obviously Wild Strawberries, aging, I hope with some slight honor). The two warriors have always been life and death, who had deep respect for one another. There is no death unless there is no throbbing life; otherwise you never die because you have never lived." -- Studs Terkel as quoted on Roger Ebert's tribute page to Bergman.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:05 PM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
A little residual Ingmar
The closest contact I ever had with Ingmar Bergman, so to speak, was a night in 1981 or '82 when I talked for a long while with Harriet Andersson, who had a relationship with Bergman in the '50s and starred in various Bergman films of that general period (including Summer With Monika, Sawdust and Tinsel, Through a Glass Darkly) and later costarred in Fanny and Alexander.
There was actually a little more than talking going on. There was enough of an attraction that after 90 minutes or so Andersson suggested that we could perhaps leave...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:19 PM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
No "Bourne" surge above $50 million?
I've been told that a $70 million-plus haul for The Bourne Ultimatum this weekend is out of the question. I've been thinking that it might just happen because the word is out that it's the best action film in many a moon -- an instant genre classic -- and that it's not particularly sadistic or even brutal, and that these elements may result in heavier-than- normal patronage from teens, women and family auds. The counter-argument is that Casino Royale opened to $40.8 million and The Bourne Supremacy did $52.5 million "so there's very little family/four-quadrant element to this, so it virtually...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:01 PM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Maxim-Screen Gems horndog movies
Why were films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky's, American Pie and The Last American Virgin "both commercially and artistically successful? Because the creators drew from real-life experiences, and therefore made movies that reflected the genuine nostalgia they felt for those experiences.
"These films weren't made from an assembly line, where a group of old men sitting around a boardroom tried to come up with 'shockingly hilarious' bits to stitch into a sex comedy. These films -- well, except perhaps for Porky's -- had sincere characters and solid story construction upon which to hang the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:25 AM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Big Duhhh?
Which director working today is the ultimate anti-Antonioni? A filmmaker who not only expresses an overwhelming indifference to the "haunting nothingness" element woven into the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, but whose films seem to be strenuously arguing with this -- films that seem to say over and over that there's no such thing as spiritual ennui or alienation, and that each and every particle of each and every moment in our lives is filled with vibrancy and connectivity. Or should I ask if there's any filmmaker at all out there who seems to be at least aware of this age-old current? Or has...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:07 AM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Antonioni is dead
When I wrote my Ingmar Bergman obit yesterday morning, I called him "one of the four or five greatest film directors of the 20th Century." And now Michelangelo Antonioni, the director of such drop-dead classics as L'Avventura, Blow-Up, L'Eclisse, La Notte and The Passenger who also belonged to this select quartet or quintet, is dead also. He and Bergman passed the same day -- yesterday -- according to most news services. An old man dying is never a tragedy, but two guys of this stature going within hours of each other...whoa.
...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:15 AM on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Hartnett and "Mozart and the Whale"
Agreed -- Josh Hartnett gives an exceptional, above-average performance in Resurrecting The Champ (Yari Film Group, 8.24). He plays an ambitious sports writer...I don't want to get into this just yet. (Tomorrow, the next day...it's a good film and all in good time.) What I asked Hartnett about instead was an earlier performance -- the best he's ever given, if you ask me -- in a movie that very few people saw called Mozart and the Whale.
Resurrecting the Champ star Josh Hartnett in 12th floor suite in the Four Seasons hotel -- Monday, 7.30.07,...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:40 PM on Monday, July 30, 2007
Guider new HR editor
Will Elizabeth Guider, a smart Variety veteran, being named editor of The Hollywood Reporter (effectively replacing the departed Cynthia Littleton) make any difference in the fortunes of the second trade? This sorta feels like a status-quo, within-the-perimeter move. Not bold or radical enough to keep Reporter revenues from...I was going to say "sliding even further in this, a declining marketplace for print." Put it this way: does anyone think the Guider hire is likely to improve matters? Not in the view of Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke, who filed this story late Monday morning.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:11 PM on Monday, July 30, 2007
Not selling cars
To judge by his lean appearance, Robert De Niro was several years younger when he filmed this promo spot on behalf of the Tribeca Film Festival. It's for some kind of profile of the festival that was destined to appear "Tuesday on Fox," as De Niro says. The funny...no, hilarious part comes when the off-camera director asks him to sell it "with a little more energy" and De Niro goes, "I'm sorry but that was energetic....you don't know what you're talking about...sorry...I'm not selling cars, okay?" (Posted recently or six months ago -- don't know the story -- on GorillaMask.net.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:39 PM on Monday, July 30, 2007
Bergman and Cavett
An excerpt from a Dick Cavett interview with Ingmar Bergman on a show that originally aired August 2, 1971. Key quote: "It is absolutely impossible for me to work with a producer who would try to tell me what to do. If he tries, I would ask him to go to hell." Here's a second excerpt with Persona costar Bibi Andersson taking part.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:42 PM on Monday, July 30, 2007
Weekend projections
Judd Apatow and Greg Mottola's Superbad, easily the sharpest and funniest teen-sex comedy in ages, has an issue of concern. New tracking is in and it's not doing all that well -- 26, 25 and 1. For a film that's opening in two and a half weeks -- Friday, 8.17 -- that's not awful (things can change) but the marketers have to start scrambling. The film clearly sells itself, so Sony should sneak it this weekend. The trailer plays nicely, but it doesn't really convey how above-par exceptional this film is.
The Bourne Ultimatum, opening this weekend, is running at 91,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:13 PM on Monday, July 30, 2007
Theyr'e dropping like flies
The rule-of-three once again applies: French actor Michel Serrault, best known for his role as Zaza in La Cage aux Folles, has died of cancer at age 79.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:53 AM on Monday, July 30, 2007
"South Park" brilliance
A South Park episode I happened to catch last night called "Make Love, Not Warcraft" was laugh-out-loud funny and flat-out brilliant. The site says it's been nominated for a primetime Emmy, which is no surprise. This is one of the most perceptive and subversive takes on the psychology and emotional babycake lives of hard-core gamers I've ever seen. I don't laugh out loud all that much, but I did last night.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:29 AM on Monday, July 30, 2007
Bruce Lee and philosophy
This 1964 Bruce Lee interview (which I happened upon this morning on nerve.com) is worth watching for Lee's expression when he mentions that he majored in philosophy in college. He hesitates for a brief instant before admitting this, and his eyes flick to the side just after.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:06 AM on Monday, July 30, 2007
Passing of Tom Snyder
Tom Snyder cracks have been de rigeur since the '70s when Dan Aykroyd began spoofing him on SNL, but Snyder -- who died yesterday from lukemia at age 71 -- always had my absolute respect for a single interview he did with Sterling Hayden in, I think, 1977 or thereabouts.
That interview, which ought to be on You Tube or at least on DVD, felt to me like one of the greatest TV chats I'd ever seen because it was so nakedly confessional. I knew Hayden slightly in the late '70s to early '80s -- he was my first movie-star interview...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:25 AM on Monday, July 30, 2007
Ingmar Bergman has died
That hooded, black-robed figure with the stern expression and almost Kabuki-white face paid a visit to Ingmar Bergman's home on the island of Faro last weekend (or certainly within the last few days). I like to think he would have been polite about it and knocked on the front door, but one way or the other he sat by the bed and took the one of the four or five greatest film directors of the 20th Century by the hand, and that was more or less that -- a final transition and fade to black.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:33 AM on Monday, July 30, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
"Once" = comfort food
In this 9.29 L.A. Times essay, critic Kenneth Turan seems to be writing about Once from a slightly different angle -- i.e., how come it took so long for this exquisite little film to get picked up? -- than the one I went with yesterday, which was basically "how come more Average Joes haven't paid to see it?" But he gets around to saying the exact same thing at the conclusion.
"The Once experience worried me," Turan writes, "because it underlined how much the risk-averse studio mindset of being indifferent to quality, of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:39 PM on Sunday, July 29, 2007
God hates us
"After watching Evan Almighty, I noticed that the exiting audience -- pale, wan and harrowed -- were collectively singing the post-movie equivalent of the lamentations of Jeremiah, emitting cries not unlike those of the sorely tested Job or the benighted citizens of plague-fatigued Egypt, and generally cursing His Holy Name with every obscenity in the biblical lexicon.
"All the Big Questions popped rapidly into my mind: 'Why does God inflict Bad Movies on Good People?' and more pertinently, 'How can we know for certain that God is good if he permitted this piece of dung to reach our screens?'
"Certainly Evan Almighty...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:20 PM on Sunday, July 29, 2007
Norton's not a tribe member
Edward Norton participated in a Hulk dog-and-pony show in front of 6500 Comic-Conners yesterday along with costar Liv Tyler, Hulk director Louis Leterrier, and producers Avi Arad and Gale Anne Hurd. It had to have felt a little forced. Norton simply isn't part of the tribe -- doesn't talk geek, look geek....the genes and the attendant belief systems simply weren't passed along by his parents -- and no amount of good-sport promo whoring can change that fact. (Original reporting by MTV.com's Larry Carroll.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:50 PM on Sunday, July 29, 2007
Walken cooks a chicken with pears
"And heah, out of the oven...the chicken and the peahs....very nice...sort of a French thing....a little pepper on the top....400 degrees...one hour....these peahs are very nice, very tasty...they've gotten kinda candied ...pehrfect with the chicken...they go very well togetheah." -- Christopher Walken cooking what looks like a delicious upright chicken along with six or eight sweetened pears. Walken's a serious foodie, but it's hard to watch this video without wondering when the punchline's coming, even though you realize there probably won't be one. And you'd be right.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:28 PM on Sunday, July 29, 2007
Superbad "Hornet" Rogen
We've all chewed on the notion of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and maybe Neal Moritz co-writing a Green Hornet movie in which Rogen will play the title role as well as his alter ego, the "debonair newspaper publisher" Britt Reid. But what can be made of this report from Coming Soon's Edward Douglas about a Comic-Con Superbad q & a in which Rogen "stated very clearly that the movie is 'not a comedy, it's an action movie.'"
Is there anyone in the world who believes Rogen & Co. won't be tweaking the material for at...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:58 AM on Sunday, July 29, 2007
"Bee Movie" poster
I watched the Bee Movie footage at the Cannes Film Festival, I listened to Jerry Seinfeld do a funny riff about it, and it all seemed fine. I said on the day of the Cannes thing that "I'm half into it...I like 'silly' if the movie really goes for it whole-hog." But this one-sheet is just...what is it? It's dull and smug like cereal-box art. It seems afraid to say or do anything that might define the movie in some specific attitudinal way, and thereby persuade some of us to actually sit up and take notice.
...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:13 AM on Sunday, July 29, 2007
Geekboy regimentation
A hundred years hence, film historians will look back at the epic-quest CG fantasy fanboy-adventure genre (Arthurian comic-book fables, other-worldly milieus, mind-blowing visuals, Joseph Campbell-esque heroes in their 20s, constant insinuations and threats from all-powerful reptilian villians, relentless physical combat or sword-fight scenes, gah-gah finales) and be absolutely agog that tens of millions went to these films over and over again for decades (geek culture has sprayed shorts over these films since Star Wars opened 30 years ago) without making a peep about how oppressively similar they were from year to year, decade to decade.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:29 AM on Sunday, July 29, 2007
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Jabba at Comic-Con
There's a funny caption that needs to go with this photo, which accompanies Michael Cieply's readable but slightly ho-hum Comic-Con story in the 7.27 N.Y. Times. Who would've thought when Jabba the Hut first appeared in Return of the Jedi 24 years ago that he would gradually become an icon of...naahh, not today.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:00 PM on Saturday, July 28, 2007
"Fire" trailer
The high-def trailer for Susanne Bier's Things We Lost in the Fire (Dreamamount, 10.26). It's a working-through-tragedy story about the best friend of a dead guy -- a dad who had a wife and two or three kids -- slowly edging into intimacy of one form or another (perhaps not sexual) with his widow. One viewing and you can tell that Benicio del Toro (i.e., the best friend) is giving one of his most appealing performances -- his most accessible since Traffic. Halle Berry is the widow; David Duchovny is the deceased ex.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:31 PM on Saturday, July 28, 2007
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:57 PM on Saturday, July 28, 2007
Five "Blade Runner" versions
Come 12.18 you'll have the option of paying between $55 and $70 dollars for the Blade Runner Five-Disc Ultimate Collectors' Edition DVD set from Warner Home Video, and you'll get no less than five versions of Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi noir. There's something insane about a package like this. You don't have to be a Blade Runner obsessive living in your parents' basement to want to own one, but it would help.
The thing for us level-headed types to do, of course, is buy or rent a stand-alone of Scott's all-new, restored and remastered "final...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:49 PM on Saturday, July 28, 2007
Women prosecuting women
Bidisha, a British author and art critic, is claiming in a Guardian piece that it's the gossip publications and not the whacked-out celebs who are the true orchestrators of pain and meltdown and ruination. And not so much the publications as the women who work for them.
"The media that deal in pop freakouts don't report these stories so much as create them," she says. "If Britney Spears has had any kind of meltdown, who can blame her? She is followed wherever she goes by stalker-violators: some have cameras...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:05 PM on Saturday, July 28, 2007
Headless Lady
I'm slow from time to time, but I hadn't seen the headless Statue of Liberty art for J.J. Abrams' monster film (i.e., the one that absolutely cannot be called Monstrous) until last night. Was it revealed at some earlier point?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:52 AM on Saturday, July 28, 2007
"I'm Not There" going to Film Forum
Wait...Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, the long-awaited Bob Dylan mystique movie with six actors inhabiting Dylan at different life-stages and incarnations, is going to open on two screens at Manhattan's Film Forum on 11.21? That's what The Reeler's Stu Van Airsdale is saying. Doesn't this news constitute a kind of advance review?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:40 AM on Saturday, July 28, 2007
Saturday numbers
The Simpsons Movie made $28,689,000 last night and is looking at a projected $72,102,000 for the weekend. The tracking projected only $30 to $40 million, but this often happens with kid movies. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry will come in second with $19,291,000....off 44%. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix will earn $16,151,00 by Sunday night -- off 60%, at $240 million now, probably won't reach $300 million. Hairspray, off 44% from last weekend's opener, will make $15,402,000.
Transformers -- $10,965,000, now at $284 millon, will crest $300 million. No Reservations will make $10,937,000, or about $4500 a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:21 AM on Saturday, July 28, 2007
"Once" is still trying
I was talking to a nice-enough twentysomething guy from Thousand Oaks before last Monday night's Bourne Ultimatum screening. He doesn't work in the business and it was clear soon enough he wasn't a film buff, but he seemed an intelligent, well-groomed adult. So I asked him at one point, "Have you seen Once? One of the best films of the summer, the best date movie in years?" Not only had the guy not seen it -- he hadn't heard of it.
I know what you're thinking because I thought the same thing for a second...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:49 AM on Saturday, July 28, 2007
Friday, July 27, 2007
High Noon vs. Rio Bravo
Talk to any impassioned, ahead-of-the-curve film snob about classic westerns, and he/she will probably tell you that Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo (1959) is a much better, more substantial film than Fred Zinneman's High Noon (1952). More deeply felt, they'll say. Better shoot-em-up swagger, tastier performances, more likable, more old-west iconic. Many people I know feel this way. And now here's director Peter Bogdanovich saying it again in a New York Observer piece -- Rio Bravo is even better than you thought, High Noon doesn't hold up as well, etc.
Something snapped when I...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:43 PM on Friday, July 27, 2007
Two "Atonement" trailers
Here are two trailers for Joe Wright's Atonement (Focus Features, 12.7), an adaptation of an Ian McEwan period drama which will play at both the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in early September. The film doesn't appear to be monumental art, but it's almost shocking how differently these two trailers sell the film.
This cooler trailer makes it appear serious, adult, thoughtful, grounded; the other trailer makes it seem tawdry, vaguely cheap and almost soap opera-like. The differences are really amazing -- the cooler version is posted...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:02 PM on Friday, July 27, 2007
Helicopter, death, flames
This video footage from the fatal crash this afternoon of those two Pheonix news helicopters is, of course, ghastly -- there's a crash sound and then the picture goes out. (Four guys died -- two pilots, two news phtographers.) But what was that Stepford Wife blonde anchor thinking as she totally ignored the visual and aural implications of what had seemingly just been broadcast?
Obviously something of a sudden, possibly catastrophic nature had just happened -- it at least warranted a question or a moment of pause -- and all this bimbo could could do was talk about a just-concluded...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:35 PM on Friday, July 27, 2007
"Dark Knight" teaser, Joker photos
Here's a fairly engrossing teaser for Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight (Warner Bros., 7.18.08) -- medium and high. It's mainly about darkness and voices and laser light piercing same, and a simulation of what might happen to a Batman logo if it were to enter the earth's atmosphere and start to flake apart like a faulty heat shield. Plus a relatively recent still of Heath Ledger as "the Joker" -- the crude stitchwork applied to a sliced-open mouth makes for a Leatherface effect. This shot has already turned up on AICN and other sites:
And...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:25 PM on Friday, July 27, 2007
Full-name movie titles
What do Michael Clayton, Dolores Claibourne, Jerry Maguire, Audrey Rose, Susan Slade, Mildred Pierce and King Kong have in common? They're all titles of movies that are named after their main characters because...well, hard to say. Nothing poetic or allusive in them. Were they so named because a first and last name sounds straight and unpretentious? You tell me.
(l. to r.) George Clooney in Michael Clayton, Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce, Kathy Bates in Dolores Claibourne, King Kong
Using a plain, simple-sounding "name" title that doesn't imply...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:05 PM on Friday, July 27, 2007
L.A. Times correction
Yesterday's (7.26) L.A. Times CFCA correction read as follows: [Both] the headline ('Online Critics Expand Boycott Against Fox') and deck ('Supporters Nationwide Join Chicago Group in Protesting Its Limited Access to Screenings') on a July 20 article in the Calendar section inaccurately suggested that the Chicago Film Critics Assn.'s online critics alone were protesting 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Films' alleged practice of limiting access to screenings and that supporters nationwide had joined Chicago's protest.
"Film critics in other cities voiced support for the Chicago group but did not formally join it. The organization's chief, Dann Gire, now says...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:45 PM on Friday, July 27, 2007
"No Reservations" bitch-slapped
Opening weekend reviews don't matter at all with most under 30s, and they probably don't matter that much with the slightly or somewhat older female crowd that Warner Bros. is hoping will take a chance on Scott Hicks' No Reservations this weekend. Many of them will, probably, although it would be better for WB if they don't consult the pic's Rotten Tomatoes score.
No Reservations has so far amassed a failing grade of 43%. Anything under 70% or 75% means trouble. Slip under 50% or 60& and you're really in Shit City.
My
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:31 AM on Friday, July 27, 2007
Venice = Toronto
Per tradition, each and every film playing at the 64th Venice Film Festival (8. 28 to 9.8) will most likely play at Toronto, and many of these at Telluride just before. Except (possibly, know nothing, just guessing) for Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, which will show out of competition at Venice, and which has unveiled itself skittishly (i.e., at that hidden-away Aviles Flm Festival in Spain) beforehand. And Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, of course, which can't play Toronto because it's the opening-night New York Film Festival attraction.
Put it this way -- if one of these films plays Venice but doesn't play Toronto,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:00 AM on Friday, July 27, 2007
Lane on "Sunshine"
Danny Boyle's "change of tack" at the end of Sunshine (Fox Searchlight, 7.20) "feels jagged with impatience and panic," writes New Yorker critic Anthony Lane in one of the best-written critiques of this interesting but enormously infuriating sci-fier that I've read anywhere. (It's suddenly hit me that I haven't posted a word myself -- sometimes I just turn away and say nothing when a film seems as shockingly miscalculated as this one.)
"Villainy descends upon the spaceship, but so pressing is the question of why and how it got there, and what factor sun cream...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:18 AM on Friday, July 27, 2007
Spielberg, China, Darfur, Steidle
That 7.26 ABC News story by Russell Goldman stating that Steven Spielberg "may quit his post as artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics unless China takes a harder line against Sudan" has so far been disputed twice -- in a piece yesterday by Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke, and in a portion of an audio interview I posted earlier this week with The Devil Came on Horseback spokesperson/figurehead Brian Steidle.
In that Tuesday, 2.24 interview I asked Steidle about the Spielberg/Beijing Games/Darfur situation, and he said that he and other Darfur experts had sat down with Spielberg...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:45 AM on Friday, July 27, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Kubrick Collection coming
Warner Home Video will release a nine-disc "Director Series: Stanley Kubrick Collection" on 10.23.07. New two-disc special editions of 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut and The Shining as well as a "deluxe edition" of Full Metal Jacket (which would be...?). Also included: the doc called Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. The whole kit 'n' kaboodle with set you back $79.92, but titles will also be sold individually for $26.99 a throw.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:32 PM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
"Red Dawn" returns
Ruthless, ogre-ish, heavily-armed invaders descend from the sky, take over the reins of government, and before you know it rebel groups are forming into grass-roots militias, fighting back like proud guerillas and asserting their nativist rights -- this is our country! Death to the invaders! Death before submission! Does this like, uhm.. remind anyone of anything?
This double-disc DVD of John Milius' Red Dawn hit stores on 7.17. Do you think the MGM/UA Home Video guys had any ideas about present-day parallels, or were they just after some 20th anniversary bucks? I once asked Milius...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:06 PM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
Karen Allen in "Indy IV"
An MTV.com observer at today's Paramount panel at Comic-Con reports that Karen Allen appeared on a video feed earlier this afternoon to confirm that she'll have some kind of supporting or cameo role in Indiana Jones IV.
Spielberg and Allen on Indy IV set in Hawaii.
Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf and Ray Winstone "were all appearing via satellite when Spielberg left the scene for a moment to [grab] another director's chair. He came back with a chair with Marion Ravenwood written on it, and of course the crowd went bananas" -- bananas? -- "and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:09 PM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
Iklipz Lindsay Lohan Lohan
A brilliantly edited spoof trailer for I Know Who Killed My Career, the Lindsay Lohan film that ought to be opening this weekend, by an outfit called the Mashturbators (who don't have their own website). Should have had this up earlier. Sitting on Iklipz.com.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:22 PM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
Farrow vs. Spielberg
Mia Farrow has told Slate's Kim Masters why she submitted that blistering public letter last March to Steven Spielberg (via a Wall Street Journal article) about how China's bankrolling of the Darfur genocide might mean that his serving as artistic director for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games would paint him with a Leni Reifenstahl brush.
Mia Farrow, Steven Spielberg
The short answer is that Farrow sent Spielberg two urgently-worded letters that were either (1) blocked by obsequious staffers or (b) were seen by Speilberg and duly ignored until Farrow submitted that now famous...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:17 PM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
"No End in Sight" review
"If failure, as the saying goes, is an orphan, then Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight can be thought of as a brief in a paternity suit, offering an emphatic, well-supported answer to a question that has already begun to be mooted on television talk shows and in journals of opinion: Who lost Iraq? On Mr. Ferguson’s short list are Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and L. Paul Bremer III. None of them agreed to be interviewed for the film. Perhaps they will watch it." -- from A.O. Scott's 7.27 review in the N.Y. Times.
Bush...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:57 PM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
No heroes anywhere
"You've mentioned that your father served in WW II (Iwo Jima ,wasn't it?). I wasn't close to my father, but he served also. I may not have known him well, but he didn't consider himself a hero, as I suspect your father didn't. We may not always agree, but that's the meaning I took upon reading your parenthetic on 'Iraq war hero.' I don't think Audie Murphy considered himself a hero either." -- HE reader Chuck Wagner.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:37 PM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
"Sweeney Todd" tremors
"Never forget, never forgive"? A slouching Johnny Depp in striped pants and a shock of white hair with a big straight razor? Tim Burton doing his usual indulgent production-design wallow with cooler-than-cool photography? Is this anyone's idea of a likable slogan and an enticing "key" image for a big-studio, gotta-see-it, end-of-the-year musical?
I've seen Sweeney Todd twice on stage and enjoyed it greatly both times -- it's a brilliant work -- but there's something about the energy and attitude that this DreamWorks-funded film (opening 12.21.07) is putting out that I don't much care for. Call me...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:15 PM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
Young People Fucking
"We both were looking to do something different. We both were single at the time, and we would compare these stories [about our personal lives]. We wanted to do a frank, romantic comedy about sex and relationships. Aaron Abrams is fond of saying romantic comedies usually end with a kiss. But for us, the really interesting stuff happens after the kiss." -- Vancouver-based director Martin Gero speaking about Young People Fucking, his $1.5 million feature that ThinkFilm has picked up, and which will launch Canada First! program at September's Toronto Film Festival.
Does that title set off warning alarms with anyone...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:36 PM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
Cieply Hollywood Iraq
Paul Haggis's In The Valley of Elah (Warner Independent, 9.14) turns on an act of savage murder by a group of soldiers recently returned from the Iraq War, and the efforts of the father of a victim of this act (Tommy Lee Jones) to find out what the hell happened. In the view of N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply, Elah will be asking moviegoers "to decide if the killing is emblematic of a war gone bad."
Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon in Paul Haggis's In The Valley of Elah
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:50 AM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
Response to lynch mobbers
In yesterday's item about Kimberly Pierce's Stop-Loss (Paramount, 3.8.07), I quoted a plot synopsis that used the term "Iraqi war hero" and thereafter wrote in parentheses, "What would that be exactly?" Those five words brought down a torrent of hate. I won't dignify what was said by quoting the bashers (read 'em if you want), but I tapped out a response this morning.
Wells to All Vigilant Defenders of U.S. Military Guys in Iraq: Sorry, but as soon as I read the term "Iraqi war hero" in that synopsis of Stop-Loss, I flinched. I regard the word "hero" seriously, you see, unlike...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:18 AM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
Adding "Grace is Gone"
Good heavens, another movie -- Grace is Gone, a Sundance '07 entry that echoes Iraq anguish but doesn't quite deal with it in a specifically confrontational sense -- wasn't previously put on the Hollywood- Iraq-Afghanistan list. So make it eleven films now -- six Iraqs (In The Valley of Elah, Redacted, Stop Loss, The Hurt Locker, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Grace is Gone), four Afghanis (The Kite Runner, Lions for Lambs, Charlie Wilson's War, Jawbreaker) and the Riyahd shoot-em-up thriller that is Peter Berg's The Kingdom.
I'm not at the present time including Gavin Hood's Rendition (New Line, 10.12.07), although I...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:59 AM on Thursday, July 26, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Another Iraq film
Okay, I missed another Iraq film -- director Kimberley Pierce and producer Scott Rudin's Stop Loss (Paramount, 3.08). About an "Iraqi war hero" (what would that be exactly?) who freaks when his enlistment is extended and he's ordered to return to Iraq. Channing Tatum, Ryan Phillipe, Mamie Gummer, Timothy Olyphant, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jay Hernandez and Abbie Cornish costar.
So that makes ten upcoming Hollywood movies either set in or dealing in some way with Iraq and Afghanistan -- five Iraqs, four Afghanistans, and a thriller set in Riyahd, Saudi Arabia film (i.e., The Kingdom). The Drudge Report is saying that...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:05 PM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
"Michael Clayton" riff
A professional guy who knows the dog track has seen Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton (Warner Bros., 10.3), and he's calling it "a superior, impeccably crafted piece of big-studio entertainment.
"Aside from being a terrific legal drama, it's especially noteworthy for the astonishingly assured direction by Gilroy. The pared down, rat-tat-tat efficiency he brought to the Bourne scripts is very much in evidence here. Pic otherwise reeks of the serious-cool craftmanship of other Soderbergh/ Section Eight productions like Out of Sight, Traffic and Syriana. What a debut!
"Onscreen talent is all top grade. The front-and-center Clooney manages...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:20 PM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Stockwell out of jail
John Stockwell, whose career took an exploitation turn after the success of crazybeautiful and Blue Crush, has finally broken out of the youth-in-peril genre that he's been shackled with over the last three years (Into The Blue, Turistas). He's about to direct Middle of Nowhere, a decently written relationship drama with Susan Sarandon as a flaky, irresponsible mom who squanders her eldest daughter's college fund ($30 grand) on her youngest daughter's beauty pageant campaign. I had a chance to flip through Michele Morgan's script earlier today, and it's obviously a straight character-driven thing -- no babes in bikinis, no buried booty, no tropical...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:51 PM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
"Redacted" in November, and possibly in Toronto
It turns out that Film Jerk's announcement about Brian De Palma's Redacted now being a December 14th release came from a bum source. (FJ's Edward Havens simply ran with what he was given; bogus information was put out.) A Magnolia Pictures source has just told me that this lower-budgeted Iraq War feature will in fact hit theatres sometime in November, and that a booking at September's Toronto Film Festival wouldn't be totally out of the realm.
The fact that Redacted, which has been described on the IMDB as "a montage of stories about U.S. soldiers fighting in the Iraq conflict,"...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:01 PM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Brazilian GIrls "Jique"
That pounding fuzz-bass rock track on that Blackberry Curve ad that's been playing over and over and over again on MSNBC is called "Jique", by a New York group called the Brazilian Girls. The embedded code has been withdrawn by request, but here's the YouTube video of the group performing the song. Everyone's heard it. A sassy-voiced lady singing, "You know I really, really like you...he said I really, really like you," etc. The Blackberry people are obviously going for 30-and-under single women.
Brazilian Girls, a quartet, has no Brazilians and just one girl -- vocalist Sabina Sciubba, who performs...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:29 PM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Winstone way back
The Guardian's Geoffrey McNab has written about the the radical youthifying of Beowulf costar Ray Winstone by director Robert Zemeckis and the sophisticated CG monkeys hired to facilitate. Interesting, but I'll take bets with anyone that the final visuals won't be convincing. I just don't think we're "there" yet. Ian McKellen's digital facelift in Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand didn't get it.
Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast ('01); in Robert Zemeckis' upcoming Beowulf
I first met Winstone in '79 at a Manhattan party for Scum, a good tough drama about British "borstals" (prisons...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:54 PM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
CFA, Fox squabble is over
Windy City film critic Erik Childress has announced that the Chicago Film Critics Association and 20th Century Fox have resolved their screening and embargo issues. Of course, I posted an e-mail heralding this agreement last Friday (7.20) and was asked by two or three CFCA members to please take it down because Fox flacks were angry about some parliamentary detail. (Trust me, it takes very little to raise the hackles of certain Fox publicists.) And it only took another three business days for Fox and CFCA to iron things out.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:38 PM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Impeachment passion
"I think we need a trial, in this country, where Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush would be brought up on charges for causing the deaths of so many people." -- Michael Moore on Chris Matthews' Hardball, 7.23.07, on MSNBC. A portion of a PBS documentary called "The Dark Side" that supports this view. Rep. Dennis Kucinich explaining three months ago (to CNN's Wolf Blitzer) his reasons for wanting Cheney impeached.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:21 PM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Disney vs. smoking in movies
It's hard not to sympathize with the Walt Disney Co.'s decision to become the first major Hollywood studio to ban depictions of smoking [by] "saying there would be no smoking in its family-oriented, Disney-branded films and it would 'discourage' it in films distributed by its Touchstone and Miramax labels," according to a 7.25 Reuters report. They'd be wrong to push this too far with Touchstone and Miramax films, however. Life is life and some people still smoke for this or that reason, and any film that artificially suppresses that reality will devalue itself.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:38 AM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Zenovich Polanski, cont'd
Last October 15th a Charles Lyons piece appeared in the N.Y. Times about Marina Zenovich's documentary about the great Roman Polanski. I ran a shout-out and followup that same day. The Lyons article described Zenovich's film as "untitled and unfinished," but the timing of it, as I noted, indicated "a possible debut at [the 2007] Sundance Film Festival and some kind of commercial exposure in '07."
Sundance never happened, and a commercial opening is now an '08 prospect, at best. But it's been nine months since the Lyons' piece so something must have happened....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:11 AM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Lohan in stripes
I don't know if this Lindsay Lohan figure was actually snapped at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum or not, but if it was, the staff is to be commended for some very fast work.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:02 AM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Clean My Ride
Clean My Ride is a pro-ethanol, anti-big oil website pushing fuel efficiency and ethanol use as a means to reduce global warming. The webmaster is a guy named Phin -- a spirited, 32 year-old, Michael Moore-sized activist from Springfield, Vermont. No last name, man beard, and chummy with GenX celebs like Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner and Sarah Silverman. These four have appeared in four Phin videos. Excellent message, meh quality. The best moment is in #4 when Damon slugs Phin.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:19 AM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Dargis on "Devil"
Brutal, urgent, devastating -- the documentary The Devil Came on Horseback demands to be seen as soon as possible and by as many viewers as possible," N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis has written. "An up-close, acutely painful call to action, the movie pivots on a young American, a former Marine captain named Brian Steidle, who for six months beginning in the fall of 2004 worked for the African Union as an unarmed monitor in Darfur.
"What he saw in Darfur was unspeakable. And then he returned home, his arms, heart and head filled with the images...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:08 AM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Ulrich Muhe is gone
Shattering news -- Ulrich Muhe, 54, who delivered one of the most touching and devastating performances of '06 as the Stasi agent in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others, has died of stomach cancer. I'm told he had an operation immediately after the Oscar ceremony five months ago, but he lost the fight last Sunday.
I fell deeply in love with Muhe's Lives of Others performance, yes, after seeing it at the Toronto Film Festival last...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:56 AM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Bourne vs. Bond
James Bond is "an imperialist and he's a misogynist," Bourne Ultimatum star Matt Damon has told an unnamed AP writer. (Let me guess....Dave Germain?) "He kills people and laughs and sips martinis and wisecracks about it." Jason Bourne, on the other hand, "is this paranoid guy. He's on the run. He's not the government -- the government is after him. He's a serial monogamist who's in love with his dead girlfriend and can't stop thinking about her. He's the opposite of James Bond."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:37 AM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Lohan is uninsurable?
"I hope they put her in jail for as long as they can. Maybe she'll realize how serious it is. I believe she's uninsurable. And when you're uninsurable in this town, you're done." -- manager-producer Bernie Brillstein, whose company once represented John Belushi and Chris Farley, referring to Lindsay Lohan in a 7.25 piece by N.Y. Times reporter David Halbfinger.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:25 AM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Saying no to something or someone
"I hate these movies. I won't see these movies. Never saw Saw or its sequels, never will. I'm not impressed with the 'quality' of the gore or the 'wit' of the filmmaking. I'm not enjoyably scared; I'm horrified, and not in the way horror fans get off, groaning and screaming with pack-mentality excitement. Instead, my horror is one of disturbance and anger: Who makes this vile crap?" -- Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbuam in a column not yet on the magazine's website, but quoted by Moving Picture Blog's Joe Leydon.
See? Schwarzbaum has provided the thin end of the wedge. If Schwarzbaum...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:06 AM on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Simpsons' red donut
Israeli journalist Yair Raveh of www.cinemascope.co.il reports that Israeli marketers for The Simpsons Movie "recently sent out Simpsons treats to newsrooms and writers, but the content was less than appetizing. Journos brave enough to put the red blob in their mouths said it tasted horribly. The general hope is that the movie will be better.' Donuts, it should be added, are not easily found in Israel but it's still unclear how they managed to mess this up so badly."
The Simpson's Movie, Raveh adds,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:50 PM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
"Monstrous" doesn't get it
J.J. Abrams wants to call his monster-on-the- loose-in-Manhattan movie (i.e., the one he's producing but not directing) Monstrous? Absolutely doesn't make it. Back to drawing board. Terrible title. End of meeting.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:14 PM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Eight Middle Eastern films
My latest tally of Hollywood-funded Iraq-Afghanistan movies -- narratives, not docs -- comes to eight. Well, nine if you count Peter Berg's The Kingdom, which is set in Riyahd. (There may be others I'm missing.) All but one look like chocolate sundaes to me -- dramas about things harsh and seething and generating impact waves as we speak.
allegedly from Brian De Palma's Redacted (Magnolia/HD Net, early '08)
Great rivers of hurt are flowing through these two countries right now (God help the people caught up in it), and this, obviously, is where the dramatic...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:06 PM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
McCarthy "Ultimatum"
"If they could bottle what gives The Bourne Ultimatum its rush, it would probably be illegal," writes Variety reviewer Todd McCarthy. "The third and purportedly final installment in the mountingly exciting series is a pounding, pulsating thriller that provides an almost constant adrenaline surge for nearly two hours.
"In setting Jason Bourne on the home stretch of his search to discover who and what made him the killing machine he is, director Paul Greengrass has outdone himself, creating a film of such sustained energy and tension that the infrequent pauses for breath seem startling in their quietude. In other hands, unrelenting...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:59 PM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Steidle interview
Earlier this afternoon I interviewed former Marine Cpt. Brian Steidle, author of "The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur" (Public Affairs) and the "star", so to speak, of the just-emerging doc of the same name, which I wrote about yesterday.
The Devil Came on Horseback has been well directed by Annie Sundberg and Rikki Stern. I was a little suprised to learn that Sundberg and Stern never visited the Darfur region, much less shot any footage there, apparently because it's too difficult to get into the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:57 PM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Goldstein column killed
For the sin of thinking like a free-associating innovator rather than a limits-observing company guy, Patrick Goldstein's latest "Big Picture" column -- the one that should have been published today -- was killed, allegedly by associate editor John Montorio. As L.A. Observed Kevin Roderick reports, "Goldstein's offense was to propose that the Times follow the lead of the U.K.'s Mail on Sunday (which distributed 2.9 million free Prince CDs) and partner with older artists to give away music in the paper.
Goldstein's column has been reprinted in full by Roderick.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:10 PM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
"Stardust" trailer
I think it's fantastic that Michael Apted's Stardust (1974), one of the best movies about the exterior and interior life of a rock musician ever made, is being re-released on August 10th. Okay, kidding. The Stardust that is being released on 8.10 is another matter -- an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's fantasy novel, with the direction by the undeniably talented Matthew Vaughan (Layer Cake).
The synopsis -- "a young man makes a promise to his beloved that he'll retrieve a fallen star by venturing into the magical realm" -- does not set my heart...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:48 AM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
YouTube debate
Although there wasn't much in the way of hardball debating and there were no breakthrough moments, the YouTube format -- sometimes eccentric Average Joes asking questions instead of the usual jaded media types -- used in last night's Democratic contender debate was revolutionary. It definitely added a newly alive aura -- a sense of engagement with the pace of information and the back-and-forth of current online conversation. There were at least a couple of "whoa, that was different" moments. It should become a permanent fixture.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:25 AM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Lohan busted again
The conventional view is that Lindsay Lohan's latest DUI bust in Santa Monica at 1:35 this morning, or roughly nine hours ago (TMZ reported the arrest at 8:45 ayem), means that she's really finished this time -- finito, toast, done. Not because she can't dry out and come back a la Robert Downey -- she could obviously do that -- but because she's become such a pathetic metaphor for our own much-feared inability to defeat our private demons.
One look at Lohan and you're reminded that you, too, have the potential to not...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:13 AM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Caveman series on ABC
Inspired by those perfectly dry Geico caveman commercials, ABC is definitely going with a Geico caveman series this fall. This despite a rumble in early May that the pilot was allegedly awful. It'll all come down to the writing, of course. The calibre of the writers and, of course, the acting. ABC could screw it up. I haven't heard any backstage rumble, but they could elbow aside the guys who did the ads and blow off the dry sardonic tone and try to make the cavemen softer, goofier and more red-state. You know...dumb it all down.
...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:41 AM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
"Darjeeling" trailer
The trailer for Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited (Fox Searchlight, 9.29) is up and rolling. Trailers speak with forked tongues -- you can no more trust a movie trailer than a 17 year-old high school girl can trust the base intentions of a cute guy in a tuxedo taking her to the junior prom -- but it's immediately likable, and I can smell that old intimate- chemistry-between-brothers Wessy thing that I remember from the '90s. I said to myself, "Please, please...make this Sons of Bottle Rocket and not The Life Aquatic Goes to India."
I read...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:46 AM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
"3:10 to Yuma" meets Fosse
James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma (Lionsgate, 9.7) is said to be a rough, rugged tale of the Old West -- no CG, nothing slick, back to the cowpoke basics. Which is why this poster surprised me. It makes it look like a Bob Fosse western. The guy holding the two handguns has his head down like he's waiting for a musical cue before going into a hot and slinky dance number. In fact, he could be Catherine Zeta Jones with her hair up.
"It looks too cool,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:09 AM on Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
Eric doesn't get it
In last Sunday's Entourage (episode #48 -- "The Weho Ho"), Kevin Connolly's Eric -- the manager of Adrien Grenier's Vincent -- decided to bail out as producer of Vincent's next film because he can't stand the abrasive personality of the film's director, Billy Walsh (Rhys Coiro), despite his considerable talent. (According to Vincent and at least one other character.)
In so doing, Eric not only acted like a picky-prissy -- he also ignored one of the most essential laws of survival and success in this town, which is that you can never afford to pass up a chance to work with seriously talented...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:20 PM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Howell on "people of size"
Speaking of Hairspray star Nikki Blonsky, National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance spokesperson Peggy Howell has told The West that "we're delighted to see a young, beautiful woman of size have an opportunity like this. About 65 per cent of the American population is now considered overweight or obese, yet people of size are really under-represented in the media, television and movies."
"Right now, in terms of acceptance of overweight people, it's maybe even worse than it's ever been," Howell says. "There are people who identify more with anorexic and bulimic-type bodies than they...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:52 PM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Darfur growth trip
U.S. authorities looked the other way when the Rwandan genocide happened in '94, and there hasn't been very much said or done about the current slaughter in Darfur either, despite George Clooney and Don Cheadle trying to ignite attention. (And men like Congressman Tom Lantos writing articles like this one in Vanity Fair.) Racist indifference about the fate of dark-skinned peoples is surely part of the reason, but did anyone in this country get wildly aroused by the Serbian slaughter of Bosnian Muslims in the '90s, or by Pol Pot's Cambodian genocide in the mid '70s?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:40 PM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Ari and Lloyd
New York's "Vulture" columnist Ben Mathis-Lilley hit it right on the head in his assessment of the Ari-Lloyd thread in last night's Entourage episode. He calls it "a subplot that wavered with surprising skill between comedy and tragedy," and that it "points to the odd fact that the ostentatiously hetero Entourage writers do a much better job writing monologues for a hyperactive gay Asian than they do writing shit-talking bro-down exchanges between the four dudes.
"It also led to the scene in which Ari tracks down Lloyd's ex and reveals that Lloyd was actually at work...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:46 PM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Kovacs memorial
Audrey Kovacs, widow of the recently departed dp Laszlo Kovacs, informs that some kind of memorial gathering will happen at the ASC Clubhouse in Hollywood within the next three to four weeks. The details, as they become available, will be posted on www.theasc.com.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:05 PM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Spoilers require offense
"I wouldn't dare unmask the secrets in the movie A History of Violence out of respect for the artistry of David Cronenberg and the integrity of his booby-trapped plot," writes Village Voice film cricket Nathan Lee in a 7.21 N.Y. Times piece. "But there isn't a single frame of The Number 23 I wouldn't mock in great, guiltless detail for the simple reason that I find it extremely silly.
"A spoiler requires something to spoil and someone to take offense at the spoiling, and I'm confident that my readership does not include humorless scholars of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:22 PM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Smith's Next Two Films
Wow, missed this one, all the way back to 7.18: Kevin Smith talking to MTV.com's Shawn Adler about two films he's shooting in tandem -- Zack and Miro Make a Porno, a comedy about two Minnesota guys starting an amateur-porn business on the eve of their 15-year high school reunion, and a Shining-type horror flick called Red State. The former will be "done shooting by Christmas," with Red State expected to begin production "sometime in February or March."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:58 AM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Spielberg & Co. leaving Paramount?
If you believe in the maxim that fire follows smoke, those recent stories about the DreamWorks guys (Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg) possibly looking to sever ties to Paramount -- written by Business Week's Ron Grover, Variety's Peter Bart, DHD's Nikki Finke and Hollywood Wiretap's Tom Tapp -- suggest something's probably up.
What's the rumpus exactly? What does it all boil down to? A small group of super- rich older guys (50ish, 60ish and beyond) rubbing each other the wrong way. One pissed about another's dismissive manner, one dissing another over an evident pattern of credit-hogging, all...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:33 AM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Hungarian translation
Laszlo Kovacs ' death was confirmed to me this morning by Lisa Muldowney of Creative Communication Services, which represents the American Society of Cinematographers. He died Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills.
On 7.18 a Hollywood Reporter story by Carolyn Giardina said that "Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, Mark Rydell, Owen Roizman and Haskell Wexler are slated to be interviewed for inclusion in a new documentary about two of the community's most influential directors of photography, Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond.
"In production, Laszlo & Vilmos: The Story of Two Refugees Who Changed the Look of American Cinema is being written...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:27 AM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Second Worst Man
At yesterday's launch of "The Mistress and the Muse", a Manhattan retrospective of Norman Mailer's film work, the legendary author spoke about the second worst man he'd ever met, and The Reeler's Stu Van Airsdale wrote it all down:
"I sat across the table from him. He had about the stature of a man who's a publicity director for a Midwest corporation of medium size. There were about 12 of us at the table. I never met his eyes once even though I was sitting this far away from him. [Holds palms three...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:16 AM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Another yay for "Ultimatum"
Another cartwheel for The Bourne Ultimatum, this one from In Contention's Kris Tapley. Went up the same day as my own, too lazy to link to it until now.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:46 AM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Laszlo Kovacs dead
MNO, a Budapest-based website, is reporting that the great cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs has passed on. Working backwards and choosing randomly from his credits: My Best Friend's Wedding, Multiplicity, The Scout, Radio Flyer, Say Anything, Little Nikita, Legal Eagles, Mask, Ghostbusters, Frances, Heart Beat, The Runner Strumbles, New York, New York, Shampoo, Freebie and the Bean, Paper Moon, Slither, Steelyard Blues, The King of Marvin Gardens, What's Up, Doc?, Pocket Money, The Last Movie, Alex in Wonderland, Five Easy Pieces. One of the very best. A legend. Met him a few years ago at the Newport Film Festival, heard him speak...Excellent human being.
...posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:07 AM on Monday, July 23, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Power of writing
"Speed is not the key to web success. It is the power of writing and tone and analysis and the draw of personality. Same as it ever was. Defamer breaks very little, but it is fun to read. Same with La Finke." - MCN's David Poland in a short piece about this morning's discussion of growing web power on AMC's Sunday Morning Shootout between hosts Peter Bart, Peter Guber and Variety columnist Anne Thompson. Of course, you can't see clips from this morning's show on the SMS website -- that would be too helpful. And if the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:06 PM on Sunday, July 22, 2007
Mr. Skin omnipotence
"We don't care about cinematography or great acting or anything like that," says Mr. Skin's chief "sexecutive" officer Jim McBride to N.Y. Times guy Andrew Adam Newman. "We're concerned about the nudity -- who's naked, and what they show."
Mr. Skin "had revenue of $5.3 million last year, primarily though $29.95-a-month subscriptions," Newman reports. "With more than 175,000 revealing pictures and video clips of about 15,000 actresses (yes, only actresses), the site drew 2.9 million unique visitors in June, according to comScore, the Web traffic tracker."
Five or six years ago a Film Threat guy let me use his...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:30 PM on Sunday, July 22, 2007
"Simpsons" review
"Homer Simpson, the oafish paterfamilias of America's favorite dysfunctional family, emerges from his big-screen debut a bona fide Hollywood action hero," begins a confusingly written London Times review (dated 7.22) by James Bone.
"At the start of The Simpsons Movie, Homer's dreams of glory are limited to helping his new pet pig to walk upside down on the ceiling while singing 'Spiderpig, Spiderpig' to the Spider-Man theme song."
Why would anyone want to see a movie that's even briefly interested in a guy who wants to walk his pet pig upside down? Is Bone putting us on? Is he insane?
"But when...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:31 PM on Sunday, July 22, 2007
No Reservations
No Reservations (Warner Bros., 7.27) had a nationwide sneak last night, so it's fair game to write about it. Except I don't know what to say. It's one of the most puzzling "meh" movies I've ever seen. It didn't do anything to me or for me. I didn't hate it, love it or like it that much -- I just sat there, waiting and watching and hoping for something to happen, checking my watch two or three times as I sat slumped and vaguely sneering. And then it ended. And then the audience clapped for three or four seconds.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:00 PM on Sunday, July 22, 2007
Wilmington is out
Thirteen months after Chicago Tribune managing editor Jim Warren gave Michael Phillips the job of senior film critic and downgraded the venerated Michael Wilmington to a second-string position, Wilmington has apparently resigned. Some kind of contractual go-away, buy-out deal. I know not why.
Departures of major writers are always political, but was this a budgetary matter? Another sign of a weakened newspaper in the face of internet encroachment? Or a personal decision on Wilmington's part to head for some greener pasture? I don't know the particulars, but Wilmington is the latest addition to a growing list of credentialed boomer-generation film critics...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:34 PM on Sunday, July 22, 2007
Telegraph on Michael Bay
"It's no wonder that Michael Bay is gun-shy," a 7.22 Telegraph profile observes. "Newsweek has said he embodies 'Hollywood's capitulation to mindless, meaningless razzle-dazzle -- a poster boy for the death of cinema.'
"The New York Times described Bad Boys as 'stitched together, like some cinematic Frankenstein's monster, from the body parts of other movies'. In a recent episode of Entourage, the mention of Bay's name as the director of the main character's next film drew on-screen groans, the implication being that even fictional creations don't want to work with him."
"Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:29 PM on Sunday, July 22, 2007
"Playboy" Without Music
Playboy, the Hugh Hefner biopic that Brett Ratner is supposed to direct sometime soon (next year?), is being scripted by John Hoffman, who most recently wrote Queen of the Jews, a piece about former Miss America Bess Myerson that Bill Condon will direct.
This presumably means that the musical biopic approach -- first attempted by 8 Mile screenwriter Scott Silver -- is out the window. Hoffman's rewrite is reportedly being penned right now. Late last month Variety's Michael Fleming wrote that Ratner and Hoffman found a way to [tell Hefner's story] that pleased...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:57 AM on Sunday, July 22, 2007
Sunday numbers
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry dipped 5% from Friday to Saturday, but the expected Sunday night tally will nonetheless be about $34,775,000, which will make it the weekend winner. Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix will be a close second with a projected $33,209,000. And Hairspray was off 15% from Friday to Saturday, and is now looking at a weekend total of $28,729,000 instead of Saturday morning's projected figure of $30,367,000. How much of the general Saturday falloff was due to the much-discussed coast-to-coast cocooning of Harry Potter fans reading the latest novel ("Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows")...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:41 AM on Sunday, July 22, 2007
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Blonsky meets Corcoran
Besides being a great singer, Hairspray star Nikki Blonsky seems pretty inside and out -- a woman of buoyant spirit with sparkly eyes and an intoxicating smile. And in Monica Corcoran's 7.22 N.Y. Times profile of Blonsky, it is said that "this native of Great Neck, N.Y., has yet to develop starlet tendencies. She doesn't twirl her hair or carry a lap dog." And "when plates of ribs and roast chicken arrived" during a recent sit-down with Blonsky at a recent Queen Latifah concert at the Hollywood Bowl, "she dug in with gusto."
Hairspray costars Elijah Kelley...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:46 PM on Saturday, July 21, 2007
Bambi II vs. Bambi
Now here's a guy -- Slate's Dan Kois -- who thinks for himself and stands his ground. No go-alonger, he! The articles's about how Disney's Bambi II (i.e., one of those animated sequels-to-classics that everyone loks down upon) is better than the original.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:34 PM on Saturday, July 21, 2007
"Ultimatum" review
I can't decide which adjectives or catch phrases to use in this review of Paul Greengrass 's The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal, 8.3). I'm really kinda stuck. Pulse-pounding, edge-of-your-seat, bobsled, warp-speed, heart-in-your-throat...how many hundreds of times have I read those terms? It's gotten so they don't mean very much. But this final Bourne flick does, I feel, "mean" something. That is, apart from the fact that all I could say for the first five or ten minutes after coming out of last night's screening was "whoa" and "wow."
The Bourne Ultimatum is, naturally, one steriod orgasm...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:05 PM on Saturday, July 21, 2007
Miklos Rozsa
A weekend-long salute to legendary composer Miklos Rozsa, who was Oscar-nommed 17 times, will be screened starting on Friday, August 17, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn theater on Wilshire and La Peer.
Wait a minute...they're showing only four films (Ivanhoe, The Thief of Baghdad, The Killers and El Cid at the Linwood Dunn)? That's a joke, right? This quartet doesn't come close to representing Rosza's best work. Any half-thorough retrospective would have to include The Killers, Brute Force, Criss Cross, The Asphalt Jungle, Quo Vadis, Lust for Life, Ben-Hur, Kings of Kings,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:57 AM on Saturday, July 21, 2007
Saturday numbers
Last night's figures say it's a neck-and-neck thing between I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry , which is being projected to do $34,336,000 (almost 3500 screens, over $9000 a print), and Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, which is projected to make $34,236,000 (down 56% from last weekend). The respective Universal and Warner Bros. releases are apparently so close that it'll probably come down to a question of which studio will inflate its figures enough to beat the other.
The irony is that the third-place Hairspray, which is looking at a $30,367,000 weekend total ($9700 a print, about 3100 theatres),...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:20 AM on Saturday, July 21, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
"Babel" boner
Those damn gringos in the Paramount Home Video art department have made an error -- culturally insensitive, clueless -- on the cover for the Babel two-disc special edition that comes out on 9.25.07. DVD Beaver's Eddie Feng pointed this out in a 7.19 e-mail to Paramount Home Video's Deborah Peters, to wit:
They couldn't fit Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's full name on the DVD cover art, so they simply shortened it up a bit. Yo...got a problem wit dat? The all-inclusive art on the Babel DVD
"Hey, Deborah -- You should talk to someone who puts...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:06 PM on Friday, July 20, 2007
"Sueprbad" clips
MTV.com has a series of video interview clips with Superbad's Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. The guys are quick, but then you knew that.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:58 PM on Friday, July 20, 2007
Spielbeg, Darfur, China
Steven Spielberg needs to "figure out what to do about Darfur," Slate's Kim Masters wrote earlier today. "That may not seem to make sense at a glance but it does in light of his role as an artistic adviser to the Chinese for the '08 Olympics. The Chinese have clout in Khartoum, and Spielberg, as fate would have it, has influence in China. Bizarrely, Spielberg may be one of the most powerful people in the world when it comes to pressuring the Chinese to lean on the Sudanese government.
Steven Spielberg, Kim Masters,...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:07 PM on Friday, July 20, 2007
Spielberg vs. Gray
"Could Paramount Pictures lose Steven Spielberg and the DreamWorks studio it bought just 20 months ago for $1.53 billion?," Business Week's Ron Grover asked in a 7.19 piece. "It's entirely possible. People close to Spielberg say he is vexed that Paramount has treated his team shabbily and grabbed credit for DreamWorks productions. If Spielberg were to leave, says a person familiar with the situation, he could take several of his hitmakers and the DreamWorks name with him."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:49 PM on Friday, July 20, 2007
White on "Hairspray"
Hairpray "isn't noxious like Dreamgirls, but it isn't nearly good enough," declares N.Y. Press critic Armond White. "Based on John Waters' 1988 satire of civil rights-era nostalgia, this movie-musical adaptation makes the same mistake as the 2002 Broadway incarnation -- it domesticates Waters' parodistic anarchy into general-audience silliness. All of Waters' ideas about social conventions, race and sex rebellion are flattened; the characters representing subversive ideologies are broadened into caricatures."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:44 PM on Friday, July 20, 2007
Why Lohan film sank
The N.Y. Post's "Page Six" team is reporting that the producers of Poor Things, a Lindsay Lohan flick about a couple of women who befriend and then kill homeless guys in order to collect their life insurance (i.e., a kind of avaricious 21st Century Arsenic and Old Lace), has pulled the plug. One stated reason is because "Lohan's antics in Las Vegas over the weekend have scared the bond companies" -- will she go back to boozing and passing out in cars? -- and this has resulted in the funding for the film collapsing.
I'm hearing otherwise. A guy involved in Poor...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:28 PM on Friday, July 20, 2007
Mailer Torn Scott
In a 7.20 piece about a three-venue retrospective in Manhattan called "The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer," N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott confesses to a lurid fascination for the famous fight scene between Mailer and actor Rip Torn in Maidstone, an experimental film that Mailer directed in the late '60s and which was given some kind of release in 1970.
The fight scene is one of the finest ever captured on film because it's the most clumsy and embarassing. The aggression -- biting,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:15 PM on Friday, July 20, 2007
"No Country" one-sheet
If I were in charge of creating the one-sheet for No Country for Old Men, I would go this way also. Thriller, run for your life, rifle, scary guy, etc. But I would create an alternate poster also -- one that links the threat element to the tone of sadness and old-guy regret in the Cormac McCarthy novel, that underlying current of "wow, what's happening to this country?"
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:25 PM on Friday, July 20, 2007
Relers on critic fracas
"The Chicago Film Critics Association has attracted scads of attention and even more sympathy this week for its boycott of films released by 20th Century Fox," the Reeler's Stu Van Airsdale has written.
"The notoriously press-hating studio pushed back its previews of The Simpsons Movie to all-media screenings a few nights before the July 27 release; this was the last straw for the group led by Chicago Daily Herald critic Dann Gire, who sent word to Fox publicists that he and his colleagues would no longer contribute features or profiles about Fox films.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:59 AM on Friday, July 20, 2007
Fox hissy-fitters vs. online critics
How much of the current 20th Century Fox-vs.-internet critic hoo-hah is about simple communication skills, or a lack thereof? The thorniest relationship problems have a way of disappearing like that when this or that combatant decides to apply a little charm and openness and friendly back-pats. And yet I've long noticed a curious reluctance on the part of certain Fox publicists to being responsive and friendly (as opposed to be polite or "correct") and talking frankly about things -- the upper-crusters believe they're too good to actually talk to writers who don't work for Newsweek or the N.Y. Times -- and returning phone...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:40 AM on Friday, July 20, 2007
I Fly With Leslie
"Rupert has confirmed to me that we will have Page 3 girls...but in a concession, they will be dot drawings" -- a Wall Street Journal staffer indulging in gallows humor under the shadow of Rupert Murdoch's looming purchase of the newspaper, as related in a 7.19.07 N.Y. Times story by Richard Perez-Pena.
Leslie Hill, a member of the Bancroft family who has opposed selling the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch, is depicted in a poster hanging in the paper's offices.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:08 AM on Friday, July 20, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
"Darjeeling" poster
The brand new one-sheet for Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited (Fox Searchlight, 9.29). The trailer apparently isn't online yet, but it will be exclusively attached this weekend to two Searchlight pics -- John Carney's Once and Danny Boyle's Sunshine (which opens this weekend).
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:11 PM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Lurie's Plame-Wlson moie
Okay, it's official: director Rod Lurie intends to get his own movie about the Joe Wilson-and-Valerie Plame affair -- a roman a clef that will costar Vera Farmiga, Kate Beckinsdale, Edie Falco, Matt Dillon and Alan Alda -- into theatres before Warner Bros. and producers Akiva Goldsman and Jerry and Janet Zucker write, shoot and release their version, which, if it happens, will be based on Plame's memoir, Fair Game.
Vera Farmiga; Valerie Plame
Goldsman and the Zuckers once looked like Wilson-Plame front-runners, but no longer. It seems fair to say that they...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:12 PM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Moreno cast in Che pix
A few months ago I read Peter Buchman's two Che Guevara scripts, The Argentine and Guerilla, that Steven Soderbegh will begin turning into moving images starting on 7.25 in Spain. I'm bringing it up because Catalina Sandino Moreno has joined the cast of both films. Emiliano de Pablos' Variety story doesn't say which character she'll be playing, but pretty much everyone on the Che side of the battle in Guerilla winds up dead.
Obviously political and terse and rugged, Buchman's scripts are about how living outside the law and fighting a violent revolution feels and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:42 PM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
"No Reservations" sneak
Warner Bros. No Reservations (7.27) is sneaking nationwide on Saturday night, which obviously means that studio strategists believe it will sell itself. You could also take the hard-nosed view and say it hasn't been tracking all that well and they need to do something to wake people up. I know they wouldn't be showing it if didn't work, so maybe there's reason for a little uptick.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:19 PM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Gunslinger stance
If the no-end-in-sight hunt for Osama bin Laden "was a movie, we'd trace the saline in Osama's dialysis machine, target it with a laser and blow up the mountain," writes N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
"W. swaggers about with his cowboy boots and gunslinger stance. But when talking about Waziristan last February, he explained that it was hard to round up the Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders there because 'this is wild country...this is wilder than the Wild West.' Yes, they shoot with real bullets up there, and they fly into buildings with real planes.
"If W. were a real...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:10 PM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Literary Terrorism
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows doesn't come out for another [two] days, and already I'm seeing 'SPOILER ALERT!' in my sleep. We might as well all unplug our broadband connections and sit in a corner going 'La la la la la' until 12:01 a.m. Saturday when we can get the book, [and then] hide in a cave with a flashlight and start reading." -- from a Mark Caro/Popcorn Machine riff titled "The Literary Terrorists Have Won."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:00 PM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Emotional Arithmetic
Paolo Barzman's Emotional Arithmetic, a drama about three Holocaust survivors reuniting at a Canadian dinner party after 40 years apart, sounds moderately intriguing, especially with actors like Gabriel Byrne, Susan Sarandon, Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer costarring. All the better that Emotional Arithmetic will be the closing night film at the Toronto Film Festival.
But talk about a title that will grab each and every low-thread-counter in each and every city across the globe and say to them, "Don't see this movie unless you know exactly what 'emotional arithmetic' might specifically mean. Clearly, the use of this title indicates that we...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:38 PM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Fox hates critics
MCN's David Poland has written a calm, intelligent, maturely reasoned assessment of the 20th Century Fox vs. online critics hoo-hah going on right now. It's so calm, intelligent and maturely- reasoned that the sound and smell of the emotional elephant in the room is made even more palpable than if Poland had acknowledged its presence.
I heard a few minutes ago from a reputable online critic and commentator, and while I'm sure he would strive to put his thoughts together in a mature Poland-like manner if he were to address this issue in print, he has no problems with acknowledging the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:54 AM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Cruise Valkyrie photo
Rope of Silicon has posted photos of Tom Cruise's in-costume appearance as Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the German officer who led a failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944, in Bryan Singer's Valkyrie. And it was announced yesterday that the World War II drama has a release date -- August 8, 2008.
I don't know that it means anything one way or the other for the Cruise- Wagner United Artists to release a high-profile thriller in the beginning of the August dump season, but I'm sure this story will further the Paul Dergarabedian...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:23 AM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Torgan's passing
My deep regrets over Sherman Torgan, owner and manager of the New Beverly Cinema, having unexpectedly passed yesterday -- Wednesday, 7.19 -- while bicycling in Santa Monica.
I was sent a letter this morning written by old Torgan friend and colleague Jeffrey Rosen, stating that "this is quite a shock being so unexpected. Plans are not yet finalized as to a funeral or a tribute. Any ideas or suggestions as to the latter would be greatly appreciated. I'm sure there are many who will miss Sherman."
Rosen added that Sherman's wife, Mary, and his...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:49 AM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
20th Century Fox and Comic-Con
20th Century Fox's decision to withdraw a high-profile panel presentation out of Comic-Con (Wednesday, 7.25 to Sunday, 7.29) only a week before the San Diego convention begins seems more than just "sudden." Suddenness always smacks of sturn und drang, and given recent Fox decisions concerning the online journo community it's hard not to at least consider the implications.
Coming on the heels of (a) that Radar report about the Fox vs. CFCA confrontation, (b) the decision to keep onliners and other media types from seeing The Simpsons Movie until 7.26 (i.e., a day before the nationwide opening), and (c) a certain...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:04 AM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Payne replies
The plot thickens regarding that Alexander Payne-Jim Taylor script of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, which I reviewed yesterday. Payne had nothing to do with handing me the script, but wrote in to say thanks anyway. He added that "I think you didn't read the actual version we turned in, which we called Flamers. The son Eric was an ice-skater in our version, not a dancer. Also did you not notice that one of them -- either Chuck or Larry, I can't remember -- was scripted clearly as African-American? Other details too suggest that you were sent a rewrite of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:28 AM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Passing of Richard Franklin
Australian director Richard Franklin, a very skilled and exacting craftsman who was best known for thrillers such as Roadgames (an excellent genre piece; reportedly a favorite of Quentin Tarantino's), Cloak and Dagger, Link, Psycho 2 and F/X2, died of prostate cancer in Melbourne on July 11th. The poor guy was only 58.
I got to know Franklin a bit when I was working at Cannon Films in '87 and writing the press notes for Link, which I rather liked. (Before the press screenings at Cannon we used to play The Kinks' "Ape Man"as a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:26 AM on Thursday, July 19, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Cruel, Cruel World
For films that are not...franchises or did not quite work the way they were intended to, the summer's crowded movie schedule has created a cruel, cruel world," writes N.Y. Times reporter David Halbfinger. "If you come up with a movie that doesn't hit, the consequences are as dire, if not more dire, than they've ever been," said Adam Fogelson, president of marketing at Universal Pictures, which experienced those dire results with Evan Almighty after succeeding with the modestly budgeted Knocked Up."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:16 PM on Wednesday, July 18, 2007
N.Y. Times "Potter" review
J.K. Rowling's monumental, spell-binding Harry Potter epic "is deeply rooted in traditional literature and Hollywood sagas -- from the Greek myths to Dickens and Tolkien to Star Wars -- and true to its roots, it ends not with modernist, Soprano-esque equivocation, but with good old-fashioned closure: a big screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation and an epilogue that clearly lays out people's fates," writes N.Y. Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani.
"Getting to the finish line is not seamless -- the last portion of the final book has some lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours -- but the overall conclusion of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:02 PM on Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Ferguson "No End" interview
Here's a phone interview I did last week with No End in Sight director Charles Ferguson. You might want to read the various reviews on the NEIS site, and maybe my post about it earlier this month before listening.
No End in Sight director Charles Ferguson (l.), former Iraq Ambassador Barbara Bodine (middle) and U.S. Marine Seth Moulton (r.) at a press conference in Park City last January.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:11 PM on Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Fox explosion over nothing
Believe it or not, 20th Century Fox suits have decided that a reaction story I ran yesterday -- i.e., the one about Radar's Alan K. Raymond seemingly being wrong about a threatened Chicago Film Critics Association editorial boycott of Fox films (except for reviews) because I'd been told that the matter had been put to bed -- crossed some kind of line, resulting in their telling me a couple of hours ago that they're out of business with Hollywood Elsewhere.
I wasn't even going to mention the CFCA situation until Raymond's piece came along. I spoke to Fox publicity...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:11 PM on Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Payne and Taylor's "Chuck and Larry"
Everyone knows that Sideways screenwriters Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor worked on a rewrite of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry before it was "Sandlerized." Well, I finally got my hands on a copy of Payne and Taylor's version -- a 136-page revision [dated 8.24.05] of a script originally written by Barry Fanaro based on a treatment by Lew Gallo, and what I read wasn't at all surprising. Theirs is a much better piece. [Warning: Chuck and Larry spoilers ahead.]
Jim Taylor, Alexander Payne
As anyone who's seen Sideways and Election might expect, the Payne-Taylor is way...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:27 PM on Wednesday, July 18, 2007
"Chuck and Larry" review
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (Universal, 7.20) is the ultimate yaw-haw straight guy comedy about gays. That's a way of saying it's a chowderhead thing (i.e., made for chunky guys who slurp down pitchers of beer at sports bars and wear low-thread-count T-shirts) that's not very hip. That'll be no problem at all for 85% or 90% of the viewing public, but what will take it down with the somewhat more thoughtful 10% or 15% is that it's a creative house divided.
Adam Sandler, Kevin James
The Chuck and Larry dialogue says all the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:27 PM on Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Moore vs. CNN again
Sicko director Michael Moore, who will again appear on Wolf Blitzer's "Situation Room" later today, is pointing out that CNN has admitted that "they did indeed fudge at least two of the facts in their coverage of my film and apologized for [this].
And yet "no apology seems to be coming for the rest of their errors," Moore adds. These days, to get the mainstream media to admit they were wrong is rare; to get them to admit it twice, as they have with Sicko, I guess should be considered a whopping victory. Will they eventually apologize for...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:55 AM on Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Bigelow's "Locked Door"
For whatever reason, the Hollywood Reporter's Borys Kit decided not to mention in a 7.17 story that Mark Boal, the screenwriter of a semi- fictional Iraq War drama called The Hurt Locker, is the writer of the 2004 Playboy magazine article that Paul Haggis 's In The Valley of Elah (Warner Independent) is based upon.
They're both Iraq movies (Elah less so in terms of in-country footage), but Boal has obviously begun to carve himself a rep as Hollywood's go-to guy for moralistic Iraq material.
Kathryn Bigelow will begin directing Locker next week in Jordan...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:13 PM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Naff vs. Shankman and "Hairspray"
Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff explaining his call for a gay boycott of Adam Shankman's Hairspray to Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly a while back. The beef is about star John Travolta's affiliation with Scientology, which Naff feels has been injurious and insulting to gay interests by offering gay-to- straight therapy sessions.
I don't like quoting from WENN, but Hairspray director Adam Shankman is quoted by the British news org as being "astonished" that Naff "has made the dumbest claims on the entire planet. Everybody involved...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:51 PM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
More "Potter" Pages
It's looking more likely that the one-page Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows summary and final-chapter spoiler site that I linked to but didn't discuss yesterday is legit, except (I won't mention any particulars) for statements about a certain character biting the dust.
Some other guy (or maybe it's the same dude from yesterday) has posted almost the entire book online. The links went dead about an hour ago -- the Potter lawyers are clearly hard at work. Someone also posted an assortment of big-plot-turn links -- this one is still active. The only...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:56 PM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Eastern Promises & others
The Toronto Film Festival will, of course, be showing the latest from Canadian filmmakers, but my keenest anticipations are for David Cronenberg Eastern Promises, Denys Arcand's Days of Darkness (which I missed at Cannes), Francois Girard's Silk, Roger Spottiswoode's Shake Hands with the Devil and Daniel Lanois' Here Is What Is.
Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:41 PM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Carney's "Town House"
Missing in Michael Fleming's Variety story about Town House, a film that Once director John Carney will begin shooting in January for Fox 2000, is that it's fundamentally about a character grappling with agorahobia, i.e., a fear of open spaces.
Doug Wright's script is an adaptation of Tish Coen's recently released book. Coehn's story unfolds in Boston; Fleming reported that the film "will shoot on the East Coast." Does that mean New London? Asbury Park? Does Carney have a problem with Beantown, or was Fleming just writing the story under a hard deadline?
Here's an...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:13 PM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
RT, Metacritic Midyear Reports
Rotten Tomatoes has compiled a Midyear Report with an '07 Best Reviewed Movies list, and the top ten are Ratatouille, Away From Her, Once, Knocked Up, Hot Fuzz, Sicko, The Host, Zodiac, Waitress (Waitress?) and The Lookout (really?).
The top '07 releases in Metacritic's list of All-Time Best Reviewed Films is also Ratatouille, but the second best-reviewed is Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep, and the fifth best reviewed is Jafar Panahi's Offside, "a smart comedy illustrating the fight for women's rights in Iran" which Sony Classics opened in March.
The second, third and fourth best-reviewed '07 Metacritic films...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:32 PM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
"Ratatouille" belongs in its own category
L.A. Times reporter Robert Welkos has written that Brad Bird's Ratatouille "probably won't be in the running" for a Best Picture Oscar as opposed to one for Best Animated Feature, which it has a good shot at. What am I missing here? What critical criteria would have to be surpassed for an animated feature to leapfrog out of its own category and into the running for a regular Best Picture Oscar? Implicit in Welkos' piece is a notion that a Best Animated Feature Oscar is a second-tier honor. Media by Numbers analyst Paul Dergarabedian supports this by saying "there's an innate bias...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:02 PM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
H'wood political contributions
Yesterday Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke posted an admittedly "incomplete" list of Hollywood political contributors to the campaigns of Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Rudy Giuliani, etc. Finke's source is CNN Political Research Director Robert Yoon. It's okay for a fast amusement scan, but I like the Newsmeat figures better. They have Adam Sandler down as a Giuliani contributor (along with David Zucker, Brad Grey, Kelsey Gramer and Ben Stein) but not Yoon. Yoon has Tom Hanks down as a HIlary suppporter and so does Newsmeat (he gave her $2100 in '06) but the latter also lists Hanks...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:08 AM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Chicago critics vs. 20th Century Fox
The Chicago Film Critics Association has reportedly (per Radar's Adam K. Raymond) instituted a coverage boycott against Fox releases (i.e., no features, profiles, and interviews -- just film reviews) over unequal access to screenings and/or "being shut out of screenings entirely" by local Fox publicists.
Except I asked about this last week, and was told by a 20th Century Fox spokesperson on Friday, 7.13, that Fox publicist Chris Petrikin had connected with CFCA spokeserson Dan Gire and "they had a good chat," "we see their side and they see ours," and "they are not...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:12 AM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Franklin, Barnett are leaving?
I was told this morning that Dimension's senior production vp Steve Barnett and director of development and production Alex Franklin are thinking about following production president Richard Saperstein out the door.
If the Barnett-Franklin story is true, this would leave Dimension honcho Bob Weinstein with no L.A. production execs, no creative presence...headless for the time being. No comment so far from Weinstein/ Dimension publicity staffers in Manhattan, so I called Franklin's L.A. office. Franklin picked up and said that (a) he and Barnett are involved "in an ongoing situation that we're all trying to resolve," (b) that things are "up in the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:14 AM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Welcome Back, Potter
I don't have a comprehensive tally of all the Welcome Back, Potter spoofs have appeared over the years. I know there was one that ran on SNL in '02. This one is British-produced (Dawn Patrol Prods., apparently) and droll and, for me, freshly funny.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:05 AM on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
"Deathly Hallows" spoiled
Wow...the finale of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book has already been spoiled. Apparently. I'm not at all sure but that's how it appears. I mean, this zendurl.com saboteur has posted precise and exacting summaries plus photos of the final chapter pages -- an epilogue that lasts nine pages and takes place "Nineteen Years Later." Thanks to HE reader Peyton Westlake. I won't reveal anything but if you're so inclined...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:39 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
The Catholic Church
A three-week-old interview report by Louis CK about the Catholic Church. Before jumping to any conclusions, understand that Louis was raised Catholic. Bitter, angry, funny...and the ending is perfect.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:57 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
"Chuck and Larry" review
"Relentlessly juvenile and awash in stereotypes, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is the kind of buddy comedy Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau might have starred in 40 years ago, when the material would have felt less dated, if no less silly. Kevin James and Adam Sandler hardly approach that standard, and it will be slightly depressing if a barrage of schoolyard gay jokes passes for 'edgy' a quarter-century after Victor/Victoria." -- from Brian Lowry's 7.13 Variety review.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:57 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
"Potter" countdown
Four days, three hours and 45 minutes before the spoiling of the finale of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The first spoiling will come from the East Coast, of course. Figure sometime around 9:30 pm Pacific time. Okay, 10 pm. Make it 10:30 with all the steps involved -- buy the book, run outside, read last five pages, hook up laptop in wi-fi-area, write spoiler with details, post spoiler.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:46 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
"No End in Sight" trailer
Here's a pint-sized trailer for Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight (Magnolia, 7.27.07 in NYC -- 8.3 or 8.10 in Los Angeles). Like I wrote a week or so ago, Ferguson's analysis of the Bush administration's appalling handling of the ground situation in Iraq starting in May 2003 is truly arousing and sickening....in a good way. I had a marginal, not very detailed grasp of the situation in Iraq before seeing Ferguson's film. After seeing it I felt as if someone had leaned over and turned the lens and sharpened the focus.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:08 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
David and Wendy
Today's press conference by Republican Sen. David Vitter and his wife Wendy, which I watched on MSNBC, was an attempt by the Louisiana-based legislator to put the D.C. Madam hooker scandal behind him. The press should probably stop camping out on his front lawn, but any guy who allies himself with Bush administration attempts to push "family values" by voting against stem-cell research and making things tough for gays, and is then caught in a moral issue of his own deserves every last thing he gets.
Sen David Vitter and wife Wendy
I love it when...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:08 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
Dump Season vs. Oscar season
Late July is traditionally regarded as the beginning of Dump Season. I don't know if that applies to the next six weeks the way it has in years past. There are many films coming out between now and Labor Day that I've seen and know are good, or that at least have me going -- Goya's Ghosts, The Devil Came on Horseback, Moliere, No End in Sight, This Is England, Blame it on Fidel, The Bourne Ultimatum (obviously), Charlie Bartlett, 2 Days in Paris, The 11th Hour, Superbad (obviously), Resurrecting the Champ, Right at Your Door, etc.
But for the least two or...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:10 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
"Jesse James" is seen
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Warner Bros., 9.21) was shown last week to a group of elite Fifth Estate cool cats. Digitally projected, sans credits...despite the 9.21 release date only two months away. We all know by now that poor, embattled, unloved Jesse James needs all the help it can get from sympathetic journos -- i.e., those with a vulnerable soft spot for a long, painterly, Terry Malick-styled western shot by Roger Deakins, no matter how it plays otherwise.
Lord knows there's very little sense that WB distribution execs...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:16 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
Tell Me You Love Me
HBO's Tell Me You Love Me, which isn't featured at all on the HBO website but is scheduled to air on September 9th, is about the emotional but mostly sexual lives of three middle-class couples. I haven't received any HBO screeners yet, but it's being described here and there as a precedent-setter in its depictions of graphic, no-holds-barred sexuality.
Tell Me You Love Me costar Michelle Borth
"No previous series, on pay cable or anywhere else, has dared show anything even close to this much skin," writes L.A. Times guy Scott Collins. "The climax, if you...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:32 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
Obama Girl
As I wrote before, the notoriety of "Obama Girl" Amber Lee Ettinger is mildly troubling because of what that website video she performs in (www.barelypolitical.com) says about the intellectual and spiritual vistas of average 20-something women, which is that they can only get excited about a Presidential candidate (Rudy Giuliani has a few "girls" also) based on their perceptions of sexual power and/or charisma -- i.e., the "Daddy factor."
Imagine if Hilary Clinton looked like Valerie Plame. Can anyone imagine a guy (or guys) performing in a music video that expresses how aroused they are with...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:43 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
lower case, please
One of these decades mainstream print editors are going to give up on their absurdly stubborn insistence on referring to this or that "Web site" or "Internet traffic." Wired magazine editors put this issue to bed three or four years ago...hello? It's either "web site" or "website" (i.e., my preference) and "internet" is always lower case. It's infuriating running across these damn caps in old-line print publications.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:18 PM on Monday, July 16, 2007
More "I'm Not There"
My Toronto sources won't cough up, but the odds are favoring a Toronto Film Festival unveiling of Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, the apparently episodic/impressionistic/multi-stranded Bob Dylan film that has six actors (Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw) playing the legendary poet/singer. It'll probably show up at the slightly-earlier-breaking Venice Film Festival also, but Weinstein Co. publicists are claiming they don't know the score with that. (The Venice lineup will be announced on 7.26.)
The U.S. release date, however, is clear: November 21st and not September 21st (which is what the IMDB is...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:42 AM on Monday, July 16, 2007
Chiullan on "Factory Girl" DVD
The unrated Factory Girl DVD (out tomorrow) is "among the best single-disc releases of the year thus far," writes HE columnist Moises Chiullan, "featuring not only the much more fleshed-out Unrated Cut of the film, but supplemental materials that aren't just there to fill space like so many other DVDs."
Chiullan adds, however, that he "really detest[s] the SEXY UNRATED UNCUT marketing design on the cover and spine, but that's the only qualm I have with the whole thing. I thought the theatrical poster would've made a great cover, and having SEXY UNRATED UNCUT on the spine makes it look like...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:03 AM on Monday, July 16, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Sleepy Meyer profile
"Though profitable for the last nine years, Universal has been noticeably short on blockbusters to call its own," N.Y. Times reporters Michael Ciepley and Brooks Barnes observe in the 7.16 issue.
"That is largely by design. In a strategy that is starkly different from other top film studios, [studio chief] Ron Meyer has determined that Universal should stay well behind the leaders, allowing the flashiest and most expensive projects -- and typically the biggest payoffs -- to go elsewhere.
''We gauge ourselves to be in the middle,' Meyer said. Universal currently ranks last among major studios at the domestic box office and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:29 PM on Sunday, July 15, 2007
Denby on "Hairspray"
"I admire John Travolta, but using this movie star, rather than the [Broadway stage version]'s Harvey Fierstein, as Edna Turnblad, is an idiocy on the same level as replacing Julie Andrews with Audrey Hepburn for the movie version of My Fair Lady, declares New Yorker critic David Denby.
New Yorker illustration by Jonas Bergstrand
"Both Fierstein and Divine, who played Edna in the [1988 John Waters] movie, worked as female impersonators who confidently let us in on the joke. In the show, when Fierstein held forth on life and love and the Gabor sisters in his basso...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:59 PM on Sunday, July 15, 2007
Travolta's Pickup Lines
The Newark Star Ledger's Stephen Witty has written the following about some overworked repartee used by John Travolta:
"Here is the first paragraph from a story by Jesse Green on the front page of the New York Times' Arts & Leisure section for Sunday, July 15:
"We had only just met, but John Travolta, big and handsome and hypnotic, was fondling the lapel of my navy blue blazer. 'Ooh, what a great idea to match this with a cobalt blue shirt,' he cooed. 'I wouldn't have thought of that.'"
Here is the first paragraph from a story I wrote for...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:15 PM on Sunday, July 15, 2007
Blanchett Dylan
Unlike The Envelope's Tom O'Neil, who sharply criticized this 7.13 I'm Not There YouTube clip that he linked to earlier today, I don't have a big problem with Cate Blanchett's inhabiting of a 1964-ish Bob Dylan. I find her voicings and mannerisms intriguing, curious...oddly cool.
I also love that it's been shot in black-and-white, and that David Cross is such a convincing looking Allen Ginsberg.
I was told last May that the reason that Todd Haynes' long-awaited film wasn't submitted to Cannes was that it...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:55 PM on Sunday, July 15, 2007
Hairspray
There will be no hating on Adam Shankman's Hairspray (New Line, 7.20) by me. It's a spunky early '60s musical with "fun" performances (i.e., spirited by way of pronounced insincerity), dead-on retro clothes and hair styles, some well choreographed musical numbers and a few laughs here and there. The trick is to watch it without getting bored or suffering a major migraine. I was going through my usual movie-agony spasms (leaning forward, hands covering bottom half of face, quiet groaning, frowning) but I'm a sorehead who doesn't get musicals, right?
John Travolta, Nikki Blonsky
Hairspray is wafer thin,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:29 AM on Sunday, July 15, 2007
Bush's apology
"The people trusted me with an important position. I didn't live up to expectations. If only I had kept my promise to go after the thugs who attacked us on 9/11, because now I've made Osama and Al Qaeda stronger. I know my false claim about Al Qaeda's ties with Iraq led to Iraq's being tied down by Al Qaeda. I see now that my bungled war on terror has created more terror, empowered Iran and made America less secure. Oh, yeah, and I'm sorry I broke the military." -- an imagined letter of apology from George W. Bush, inspired by a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:00 AM on Sunday, July 15, 2007
Cell-phone movies
"If there's a specter that's haunting Indiewood and Hollywood alike, it's the shambling figure of [a] semi-shaved, post-collegiate 22-year-old watching movies on his cellphone," Salon's Andrew O'Hehir wrote a couple of days ago.
Why do people keep bringing this up as the next big shift in viewing habits? Cell-phone moving images are strictly about fast and short and move on to the next distraction. If I'm stuck or locked down somewhere I might be persuaded to watch a news show on a iPhone for 20 or 30 minutes, but sustained viewing of anything on a screen...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:52 AM on Sunday, July 15, 2007
Danse macabre celebrities
"We're all on the web, weighing various kinds of data we get -- eBay listings, blog posts, Craigslist solicitations -- and trying to read between some pixels, and connect others," writes N.Y. Times reporter Virginia Heffernan. Her topic is a strange mass compulsion to indulge in dispassionate visual dissection of celebrities, which even sophisticated journalists are prey to. Not something akin to fan behavior, but obsession with a white lab coat -- a kind of coldly analytical scientific curiosity.
"I don't expect we'll break any big news reading PerezHilton.com," she explains. "But maybe we're not...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:55 AM on Sunday, July 15, 2007
Neeson's Lincoln Still Floundering
Liam Neeson recently spoke to London Times profiler Tom Charity, and there's not a single...wait, there is a glancing mention of what may be Neeson's finest unplayed role, which would be Abraham Lincoln during his White House years. But it's not enough to suit me. Neeson is obviously the right height (6'4"), the right age (55) and the right everything else (acting chops, an aura of solemn rectitude, wiry frame, similar bone structure) in order to fill Lincoln's shoes and reanimate him every which way.
Abraham Lincoln; how Neeson might look in the role
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:47 AM on Sunday, July 15, 2007
WTC asbestos
Gawker posted this 1981 magazine ad ("...around the time that asbestos manufacturers were starting to take serious heat for their cancer-causing product") four or five days ago; I didn't happen upon it until earlier today.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:38 AM on Sunday, July 15, 2007
Saturday, July 14, 2007
HIlary Good and Bad
"After 16 years on the national stage, Hillary Clinton is still a bafflement -- a formidable building that appears, no matter how many times you circle it, to have no door" -- from Jennifer Senior's 7.15 N.Y. Times review of two new Hilary books -- Carl Bernstein's Woman in Charge and Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.'s Her Way.
"This impenetrability doubtless accounts for the wide range of feelings she generates (absent knowing what's inside, voters can ascribe motivations both good and evil). And it's this impenetrability that doubtless explains why...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:58 PM on Saturday, July 14, 2007
Mods 'n' Rockers
I dropped by the American Cinematheque last night for the kickoff of Martin Lewis's "Mods and Rockers" festival, which runs between now and August 1st. The outdoor courtyard (where I took some snaps) was a lively scene, and the auditorium was packed. I saw some friendly familiar faces milling around -- Sidney Kimmel exec Bingham Ray, director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, In Her Shoes) and Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass.
"Mods and Rockers" festival director Martin Lewis in the Egyptian-styled courtyard of the American Cinematheque -- Friday, 7.13.07, 7:15 pm; Sunset Blvd. adjacent to Cinerama...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:34 PM on Saturday, July 14, 2007
Ignoring "Sicko"
Michael Moore's Sicko is looking at a push to $20 million by the end of its run. Okay, it may crest $20 million but not by much. Agreed -- health care isn't as dynamic a subject as the Iraq War or American's firearm fetish, but it's a much closer-to-home subject that everyone can relate to on some level.
And yet millions of potential moviegoers haven't gotten past the impression I had before seeing the film in Cannes, which is that health care isn't very sexy and do I really care? I felt very differently after seeing it -- Sicko is funny (well,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:37 PM on Saturday, July 14, 2007
Jackson and Knowles
Peter Jackson has produced an eight-minute video celebrating the marriage of Harry Knowles and Patricia Jones? I'm chummy with various directors, producers and screenwriters and I enjoy the access this gives me, but boundaries need to be observed and this obviously crosses it. Well...doesn't it?
Best wishes to the couple (the nuptials are apparently happening in Austin this weekend), but does the Jackson element cement impressions of AICN being grossly cozy with this and that heavyweight filmmaker or what? Is it fair to call Jackson an oozy glad-hander looking to keep his toast buttered? You tell me. These guys need to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:46 AM on Saturday, July 14, 2007
iPhone blender
The element that makes this iPhone smoothie-blender clip so hilarious is that guttural groaning sound that someone overdubbed. I don't often laugh out loud at stuff. I'm more of a heh-heh type, and sometimes I just smile and don't laugh at all (which is what I was doing all though I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.) But I laughed at this longer and louder and from a deeper place in the diaphragm than anything in Superbad, and that's the funniest film I've seen in years. (Thanks to Anne Thompson for the link.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:29 AM on Saturday, July 14, 2007
Finke Bernstein WWD
Women's Wear Daily's subscriber-based website has one of the dumbest web-search engines currently operating, so there's no finding Jacob Bernstein's profile of Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke, which apparently went up within the last day or two. (Media Bistro's Kate Coe sent me the text, but there's no link on her site to the original piece.)
Bernstein's article seems throughly researched and reported, although I'm sure Finke will have a beef with it one way or the other. She comes off as smart, headstrong, dogged, hot-and-cold, obsessive -- a tough cookie in a tough town.
Significant Finke quote #1:...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:39 AM on Saturday, July 14, 2007
Broccoli-Wilson want more gags
Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, the caretaker producers of the 007 films who are regarded industry-wide as stooges and "stoppers", are apparently back to their tricks by trying to take the brutish edge off of Daniel Craig's James Bond character in Bond #22, which Marc Forster will direct. Take a moment to slap yourself hard on the side of the head. Craig's rough brutish edge is precisely the thing that made Casino Royale feel fresh and revitalized.
"They just want more gags," Craig says in the 7.13 edition of the Daily Express, referring to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:23 AM on Saturday, July 14, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
"Captivity" review
"Destined to be better remembered for its grisly billboard imagery than for its relatively tame torture-porn tropes, Captivity is a thoroughly nasty piece of work that nonetheless earns credit for generating modest suspense after a predictable but effective plot twist around the 50-minute mark. Pic likely will be a nonstarter as a theatrical item -- given the recent B.O. performance of Hostel: Part II, the subgenre may be in at least temporary decline -- but devotees of such disreputable product may pony up for an unrated DVD edition." -- from Joe Leydon's 7.13 Variety review.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:00 PM on Friday, July 13, 2007
Chaykin as Harvey Weingard
The hilarious final scene from "Sorry, Harvey," the Entourage episode (#46) that aired a few days ago. Maury Chaykin's "Harvey Weingard" character (based on the old Harvey of the mid to late '90s) first appeared in an '05 episode called "The Sundance Kids." The next Entourage episode (#47) wil focus on the posse's visit to the Cannes Film Festival.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:03 PM on Friday, July 13, 2007
Senator taking "Mandy"
The story about Dimension's abandoning of All The Boys Love Mandy Lane was given to me an hour ago. The announcement obviously came a little late, but the film's been bought for domestic distribution by Marco Weber's Senator Entertainment, Inc., a production and finance company based in Berlin and Los Angeles with an established relationship with Bob and Harvey. Dimension will handle the home video distribution. Okay, but what persuaded Dimension to sell Mandy Lane in the first place? Halitosis?
Mandy will be the first film that Senator will release in the U.S. It's also financing/producing Fireflies in the Garden with Ryan...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:07 PM on Friday, July 13, 2007
Slowly I crept
There's something vaguely therapeutic about this routine. I listen to it every two or three months. And it wouldn't be funny if millions didn't understand that a lot of people out there are in the grip of an obsession, and that they're compeletely powerless against it. No controlling it, no taming it....slaves under the whip. Doesn't sound very funny at all, and yet...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:51 PM on Friday, July 13, 2007
Maher, Charles vs. religion
I've been hearing stuff about the Bill Maher-Larry Charles anti-religion doc for a few months now, and I wasn't invited to see the "sizzle reel" in Cannes two months ago. (No journalists were -- only buyers.) But now Lionsgate has bought the domestic distribution rights, and the plan is to release it sometime "next spring." Wait...eight or nine more months? One of these guys is an ass-dragger. Why don't they take another year?
Bill Maher, Larry Charles
Charles (the Borat helmer) "followed Maher all over the world as the irreverent host of HBO's Real Time...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:01 PM on Friday, July 13, 2007
Alba cone slurp
This already famous shot of Jessica Alba for Good Luck, Chuck (Lionsgate, 9.21) is so much better than the mock Lennon-Ono one-sheet I posted yesterday, I'm surprised there's even the slightest uncertainty.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:47 PM on Friday, July 13, 2007
Waxman off to NYC and Metro section?
Gawker is reporting that Hollywood-based N.Y. Times reporter Sharon Waxman will "definitely be joining the Metro desk" under editor Joe Sexton -- i.e., moving to New York City -- "when her book leave is over later this year. "A single source" told Gawker that Waxman will be on "the religion beat." Contacted in Cairo where she's doing research on a book about antiquities, Waxman told Gawker she "[has] no comment because Gawker has not shown itself to function by accepted journalistic rules." I called Sexton a couple of hours ago and haven't heard back. I called two others within the organization who...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:24 PM on Friday, July 13, 2007
Celebrities & new media
"The dynamic between celebrities and their audience is shifting," Variety's Anne Thompson wrote in a 7.12 posting. "The critics and the media no longer have the last word. Thanks to evolving technology, moviemakers and stars have new weapons to not only promote their projects directly to moviegoers, but to fight back against what they perceive as misinformation. They are taking advantage of their internet fanbases to promote their projects, skipping the marketing middlemen and interacting directly with the people who buy tickets. Fan sites offer them valuable feedback about what their audiences like and dislike. But they also offer an opportunity to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:56 PM on Friday, July 13, 2007
Head-on slammer
The amazing thing about this motorcycle accident footage is that one of these guys gets right up and runs away, like he's the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and the other guy (the one with the red helmet) staggers up and then half-hobbles away, obviously dazed and hurting. If this was depicted in a film they'd both be dead or groaning on the pavement -- no way would anyone run from the scene after being in a head-on slammer and then doing a one-and-a-half-gainer in the air. Reality trumps fiction nine times out of ten.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:39 PM on Friday, July 13, 2007
"Mandy Lane" bumped
Calling, calling, calling around to try and understand why Bob Weinstein's Dimension only yesterday decided to pull the plug on the 7.20 release of All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, a kind of Ten Little Indians/ Cabin Fever-ish slasher film with Amber Heard, Anson Mount, Michael Welch, et. al. A Weinstein Co.publicist told me that no alternative release date has been set.
Amber Heard
There have been indications over the least two or three weeks that Dimension wasn't working all that hard at promoting this unrated, 88-minute film. When a distributor decides on a release date...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:29 PM on Friday, July 13, 2007
New Harry Potter totals
Yesterday Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix sold $18 million worth of tickets -- a sharp (and expected) drop from Wednesday's record $32 million tally. Add the $12 million from Tuesday night and Wednesday's figure was actually $44 million, and that figure becomes $62 million when you throw in yesterday's $18 million,. Potter will probably earn somewhere in the mid $60s for the weekend. Make it $65 million plus the already-bagged $62 and we're talking a Sunday night total of about $127 million.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:36 AM on Friday, July 13, 2007
Return of Dergarabedian
Since writing a January 2003 slam piece about the exceedingly rote box-office spinmeister Paul Dergarabedian ("The Man Who Would Be Dull"), I've wondered every so often if anyone would voice a similar view. I had pretty much given up hope but now, four a half years later, it's finally happened. New York magazine's Vulture editor Dan Kois has written a 7.12 piece called "Paul Dergarabeidan Must Be Stopped."
"How many times can you write, 'Harry Potter was magic at the box office' before your will to live evaporates?," he says in one passage. "That's where...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:28 AM on Friday, July 13, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
"Youth Without Youth"
A Pathe Pictures sales rep for Francis Coppola's Youth Without Youth asked me this morning to take down that negative assessment of the film that was received from a trusted buyer yesterday and posted soon after. The Pathe guy said he was horrified and that airing this view would be damaging, etc. I told him I was torn between feeling that it was fair to post the comment and at the same time feeling a little bit badly about it. But I finally decided to pull it and wait for reactions from some fair-game screening down the road.
I told the rep that...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:14 PM on Thursday, July 12, 2007
Guardian vs. Ain't It Cool
"I'm not suggesting that AICN is in the pocket of the studios. Critics hang out with filmmakers all the time, and get schmoozed at junkets. Recently in a series of blogs, the Guardian tackled [this] issue. But fanboys want to be in the movies they adore and hang out with their heroes. [And these days] AICN's Harry, Quint, Capone, et. al. now seem to be doing this and as a result, this flawed but thrilling site has become smug and pedestrian.
"So here's my message to Harry: 11 years on the web is about as long as it gets. It's time to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:06 PM on Thursday, July 12, 2007
Benton's Shakespearean Romance
A trailer for Robert Benton's Feast of Love (MGM, 9.14), a seemingly upmarket relationship comedy base on William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Gregg Kinnear playing the hapless middle-class guy whose significant other (Selma Blair) leaves him for another woman, and then the girlfriend he hooks up with later on (Radha Mitchell) fools around with another guy. With Morgan Freman, Billy Burke, Alexa Davalos, Toby Hemingway and Jane Alexander.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:51 PM on Thursday, July 12, 2007
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:41 PM on Thursday, July 12, 2007
"Superbad" is almost great
It's not a rumor: Superbad is a bolt out of the blue -- the funniest, most cleverly written youth comedy in I-don't-know- how-many-years. It's going to be a huge money machine when it opens on 8.17. Produced by Judd Apatow and co-written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, it's a better teen-sex film -- funnier, wilder, more truthful even-- than The 40 Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up are in their respective realms.
(l. to r.) Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera
It also marks the return of director Greg Mottola, who's been working steadily...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:24 PM on Thursday, July 12, 2007
Arriaga, Theron
Master screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Babel, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, 21 Grams) will direct Charlize Theron in a parental-relationship drama called The Burning Plain, which will start shooting in November with funding provided by Marc Butan, Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban's 2929 Productions. I wonder, though, what the movie is really about and what the heavy element is. Arriaga doesn't write stories about moderate people adopting sensible solutions to problems and then hugging each other at the end. He writes about ruptures, potholes, illicit sex, auto accidents, etc.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:03 PM on Thursday, July 12, 2007
New numbers, tracking
If you count the $12 million earned at Tuesday's midnight shows, Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix now has $44 million in the bank. It earned $32 million yesterday, taking in $10,555 per screen in 4200 situations. Anyone who sits through this very dull film and goes "wow...if only more films could me like this one!" is suffering from a lack of cinematic experience. If you go to it and shrug and say "okay, not bad...I had to go because I love the books," etc., then fine. But you can't be over the moon about the film itself. Well, you can...but...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:59 AM on Thursday, July 12, 2007
Woody's "Manhattan" again
"When Manhattan opened in April 1979, Andrew Sarris began his Village Voice review as though granted a vision: Manhattan had 'materialized out of the void as the one truly great American film of the '70s,'" recalls Village Voice critic Jim Hoberman in a 7.10 nod to Woody Allen's 1979 classic playing at the Film Forum from 7.13 to 7.19.
"Leaving aside the decade's avant-garde and documentary productions, this is still a remarkable claim to make of a massively mythologized period. Where was the void? Why did Sarris love Manhattan so? For the first time,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:29 AM on Thursday, July 12, 2007
Kerwin Matthews
The L.A. Times reported yesterday that Kerwin Matthews, the good-looking star of The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jack the Giant Killer (and a supporting actor in The Devil at 4 O'Clock and Man on a String, among many other films), passed away "either Wednesday night or Thursday morning" at age 81.
What the Times meant to say is that Matthews died about a week ago. Matthews' partner Tom Nicoll apparently didn't get around to telling anyone for a few days. Brian's Drive-in Theatre reported earlier than Matthews died on July 5th.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:33 AM on Thursday, July 12, 2007
Downspiralling Robin Williams
In a 7.11 article, Radar's Willa Paskin notes that the Robin Williams on view in License to Wed is "a shell of the comedian we once knew," and re-states that Williams isn't the "comic genius of his generation" that he was in the '70s and '80s. Quite so, and over the last 18 months or so Williams has gone downmarket. But at least he's not doing sentimental slop or playing twitchy psychos.
After rising to fame as the sitcom alien Mork, Williams "thrilled audiences in the '80s with spastic, mostly improvisational stand-up routines, culminating in his...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:20 AM on Thursday, July 12, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
"Elah" trailer
The trailer for Paul Haggis's In The Valley of Elah has been playing in theatres since the opening of A Mighty Heart, but it went up on MSN yesterday, and...that's all I know for sure. Here's another link. And another.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:14 PM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
"Into The Wild" running time
The final running time of Sean Penn's Into The Wild (Paramount Classics, 9.21) -- the story of would-be Alaskan nature dweller Chris McCandless -- is two hours and 28 minutes. There's no such thing as a good movie that runs too long or a bad movie that runs too short, but 148 minutes is...well, attention-getting. Penn is the director, writer and producer. The cast includes Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Hal Holbrook, Catherine Keener, Kristen Stewart and Vince Vaughn.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:50 PM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Spacey returning as Lex Luthor
Is there anyone who feels honestly excited about Kevin Spacey's intention to return as Lex Luthor in Bryan Singer's Superman: Man of Steel? Variety's Anne Thompson reported yesterday that Superman Returns screenwriter Michael Dougherty is writing the screenplay.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:43 PM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Erasing residual payments
N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieipley is reporting that several Hollywood honchos are calling for the end of the industry's decades-old system of paying residuals to writers, actors and directors for the re-use of movie and television programs after their initial showings. As Warner Bros. cheif executive Barry Meyer put it, ""There are no ancillary markets any more -- it's all one market. This is the time to do it."
Cieipley said the suits "stopped short of saying they would demand an immediate end to residual payments in the upcoming, probably difficult negotiations with writers, actors and directors." (A strike is looming.) "But...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:08 PM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Sun-baked Siberia
"When the history of this sun-baked Siberia is written, these shameful words will live in infamy -- 'No chopped chicken livers!'. No garlic pickles. No Lindy's. No Madison Square Garden. No Yogi Berra. You know what's wrong with New Mexico, Mr. Wendell? Too much outdoors. Give me those eight spindly trees in front of Rockefeller Center any day. That's enough 'outdoors' for me. No subways smelling sweet and sour. What do you do for noise around here? No beautiful roar of eight million ants -- fighting, cursing, loving. No shows, no South Pacific. No chic little dames across a crowded bar. And...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:55 PM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
"In The Valley of Elah"
Paul Haggis's In The Valley of Elah (Warner Independent, 9.21 or 9.28) is more than just a respectable true-life drama, and a helluva lot more than the sum of its parts. I think it's close to an epic-level achievement because it's four well-integrated things at once -- a first-rate murder-mystery, a broken-heart movie about parents and children and mistakes, a delivery device for an Oscar-level performance by Tommy Lee Jones, and a tough political statement about how the Iraq War furies are swirling high and blowing west and seeping into our souls.
The best films are always...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:10 PM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Midnight Potter numbers
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix took in $12 million from last night's midnight shows, with a average of 5100 a print -- a sensational figure.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:33 PM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
10,000 B.C. trailer
Here's the HD teaser-trailer for Roland Emmerich's 10,000 B.C. (Warner Bros., 3.7.08), which is about "a young mammoth hunter's journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his tribe." Cliff Curtis, Camilla Belle, Omar Sharif, saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, etc.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:11 AM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
"Ace in the Hole" DVD
The long-awaited, double-disc Criterion DVD of Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (out on Tuesday, 7.17) arrived this morning. I had to immediately grapple with an instinct to stop work, turn down the lights, lock the door and spend three or four hours watching the feature and the supplementary docs and essays (including a 1980 Wilder doc by Michael Ciment called Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man). But as Richard Nixon once said to H.R. Haldeman, "That would be wrong."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:42 AM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
"Zodiac" DVDs
Paramount Home Video is releasing a boilerplate Zodiac DVD, containing the 157-minute theatrical version that played earlier this year, on 7.24.07. But the fans (i.e., guys like me) will have to wait until sometime next year to see the somewhat longer, even more obsessive version, which I'm guessing will be roughly three hours, give or take.
I'm trying to find out the particulars as we speak. Paramount Home Video is looking to siphon all the bucks it can out of this title, and that means doing the old double dip by delaying on...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:20 AM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Obama vs. Hilary videos
The "I've Got a Crush on Obama" video is obviously more upfront sexual (Daddy Lust, obeisance before power, lay down for the conqueror) than the Hot for Hilary (i.e., Hott 4 Hil) video parody, which obviously toys with the same psychology in a playfully gay vein. And yet there's real emotional sincerity in these videos. I'm kind of torn about which is the more winning. Thoughts?
It's common knowledge that many, many people in this country make their decisions about who to put in the White House based on reasonings that have nothing to do with policy and philosophy. John...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:00 AM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Hammond's early predix
Maxim critic, Hollywood Wiretap columnist and Hollywood get-around guy Pete Hammond has done a podcast chat with The Envelope's Tom O'Neil about some early Oscar favorites. His, not mine; I agree with only a couple of them.
O'Neil doesn't specifically allude to Hammond speaking about the inevitability of Tommy Lee Jones as a Best Actor candidate for his Olympian performances in No Country For Old Men and In The Valley of Elah, but apparently Hammond does speak of No Country in the recording.
Hammond also pushes the "magnificent" Don Cheadle for his Talk to Me performance as legendary...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:40 AM on Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
"Get Smart" trailer
If you've been following the rumbles and the mutterings about Peter Segal's Get Smart (Warner Bros., 6.08), you've probably got your guard up. But this trailer, God strike me down, is mildly funny. Making a film about Maxwell Smart may have been a lame idea, but Steve Carell, it appears, was the right guy to play him.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:59 PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
"Sleuth" trailer
How can Sleuth (Sony Pictures Classics, 10.12) not be good with Michael Caine starring in a Harold Pinter rewrite of Anthony Schaffer's very clever (at times delicious) hit play? If Kenneth Branagh isn't renowned as a great director, he's certainly a proficient one, and Jude Law -- inhabiting the young-cad role that Caine played in the 1972 version opposite Laurence Olivier -- will be fine. This movie can't be a problem...it can't. Here's the trailer.
Michael Caine, Jude Law
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:11 PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
More Sopranos sidestepping
American Cinematographer executive editor Stephen Pizzello has posted a podcast interview with Sopranos director of photography Alik Sakharov, and extracted this quote about the meaning of the blackout.
"To me, [it means] this person will die, whether he dies in the next second or [in] six months," Sakharov says. "It's not about whether he's dead or he's alive, really. It's not even important. What's important is the [thought] process. You know, [it's] like you have very, very fine caviar: you eat it, and then you let it sit on the palate of your mouth, and then you begin to enjoy the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:52 PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
New Toronto additions
Of all the new Toronto Film Festival films announced today, the most intriguing (for me) is Alan Ball's Nothing is Private, a Scott Rudin production that has no distributor as of this writing. I read the script last April and called it "a very solid and sharply observed thing, and sexually audacious as the dickens."
Actually I was only describing the first 55 pages, which was all I'd read at that point. But I finished it the next day, and if anything my admiration gained. It may not be a monumental film (whatever that...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:09 PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Mangold will be first
Lionsgate has decided to push out James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma, the western with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, on Sept. 7th instead of October 5th. That lets out the Toronto Film Festival (9.6 to 9.15), but does this also mean no-go's for Telluride and Venice?
Variety's Pamela McLintock is saying this will make it the first fall western out of the gate, beating Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Warner Bros., 9.21) and Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men (Miramax, 11.9)....although it's not really accurate to call the Coen's film...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:36 PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Goldstein on Landmark & Crest
"We are a Date Destination for Grownups," Landmark megaplex co-owner Mark Cuban tells L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein in a piece about a pair of cool movie-watching houses in West Los Angeles . "You aren't going to see kids running around. There won't be Hostel 33 or Saw 15 playing. We will program for our audience. The mix will still lean toward art and indie fare simply because that is how great movies geared toward adults skew."
Cuban further predicts that the Landmark will be the beneficiary of this glut of new product. "Some producers...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:59 PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Paramount theatres on the lot
There are three theatres on the Paramount Pictures lot -- a big swanky one, an older smaller one and an upstairs screening room above the older one. The theatres have different names but calling one venue "the Sherry Lansing theatre" and another one the blah-dee-blah theatre is too vague. It would be much simpler and clearer if Paramount publicists would just say in their invites that they'll be screening their new movie at "the big swanky theatre," "the older little theatre" or "that old funky screening room upstairs." Keep it simple and colloquial and you can't go wrong.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:25 PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Shortcut to Happiness
I received a DVD screener of Shortcut to Happiness last week, but I lent it to a friend last weekend and only got around to watching it this morning. It opens in six mid-size burghs (Las Vegas, Rochester, Fort Myers, Columbus, Albuquerque and Santa Fe) on 7.13 on its way to the bargain bin.
Alec Baldwin directed a version of this film six years ago (in addition to starring and producing) before washing his hands and having his name taken off -- the direction is now credited to "Harry Fitzpatrick." I reviewed the whole story...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:39 PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Moore vs. Blitzer and Gupta
Yesterday's big argument on CNN's "Situation Room" between Sicko director Michael Moore and host Wolf Blitzer was splendid, riveting television and one of the strongest truth-in-media grenade blasts that has ever been felt on a mainstream news show. Here's the YouTube video and here's the transcript.
Before bringing Moore on Blitzer presented a video report by CNN's medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta that reviewed Moore's occasional fact-fudging and simplifying in Sicko (which is true in some instances), particularly focusing on Moore's unmitigated admiration of Canadian...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:04 PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
European sex montage
Variety reported on 7.6 that a 44-second promotional clip posted by the European Commission on YouTube has angered a politician or two. Called "Film Lovers Will Love This," the montage shows 18 couples doing the mambo in various European films (Breaking The Waves, Goodbye Lenin!, Amelie, Bad Education, et. al.) with a concluding slogan -- "Let's come together." All of the excerpted films are supported by the European Union's MEDIA Program, which supports the circulation of films in other EU countries.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:21 AM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
Paramount milestone
Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason is reporting that yesterday -- Monday, July 9 -- Paramount Pictures passed $1 billion in domestic ticket sales for 2007. This is apparently the earliest date that any studio has ever topped the billion dollar mark. And sometime this weekend, Paramount will surpass $1.046 billion for the year, breaking its annual record set in 1998, i.e., the year of Titanic.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:37 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Joffe's fall from grace
In the '80s Roland Joffe was a class-A director who made two prestige-level films -- The Killing Fields and The Mission -- and one pretty good one called Fat Man and Little Boy. His stock dropped in the '90s with City of Joy (Patrick Swayze in India), The Scarlet Letter (a Demi Moore embarassment) and Goodbye Lover (a femme fatale drama with Patricia Arquette, Dermot Mulroney and Mary-Louise Parker). Then he showed up at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival with Vatel, a Gerard Depardieu period drama, and then disappeared for seven years. Now he's finally back with Captivity, which looks from a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:10 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Scott, Turan on "Phoenix"
A.O. Scott's N.Y. Times review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is up; ditto one from the L.A. Times' Kenneth Turan. Scott is thumbs-up, Turan is thumbs-down, and both are out a day and half before opening day. (Both reviews will be in the print editions tomorrow.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:57 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
New tracking
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is tracking at 98 general awareness, 52 definite interest and 31 first choice -- figure $70 to $80 million for the weekend and $110 million or more for the five days. Roland Joffe's Captivity (opening Friday, 7.13) is tracking at 27, 18 and 2...meh. John Waters' Hairspray (New Line, 7.20) is at 65, 30 and 5 with a definitely not interested rating of 13. (Musicals always draw moderately high negatives -- Dreamgirls had them in the mid teens just before opening.)
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (Universal, 7.20)...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:14 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Breznican on "Cloverfield"
"It's probably more enticing to not quite know what is that they're putting across. It's always better when you can arouse imaginations and get them wondering without making things too explicit. That's not the age and aesthetic of today. Everybody wants things right on the nose." -- a pseudo-knowitall talking to USA Today's Anthony Breznican about J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield trailer.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:01 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Schickel on Spielberg
East Coasters are just about finished with it, but Californians have another couple of hours to get home and turn on Turner Classic Movies in order to watch Richard Schickel's Spielberg on Spielberg doc, which I suspect sight unseen is going to be one of the most exuberant acts of televised fellatio ever broadcast. A Spielberg career appraisal that fails to salute his truly exceptional films would be, of course, derelict, and you can count on Schickel begin his usual vigilant self in this regard. But will he have the cojones to speak the truth about Spielberg's so-so, second-tier and flat-out-bad...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:45 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Three things led to a change
There's an Impeach Bush and Cheney office set up in West Hollywood now (8124 W. 3rd St., Ste #216, Los Angeles CA 90048), and until last week I was thinking "okay, nice sentiment but you're dreaming." But then three things happened in rapid succession that changed my thinking.
First was the Scooter Libby commutation the weekend before last, and then being floored by the Bush-Cheney record of arrogance and stupidity as I watched No End in Sight last Friday night, and now there's Bush refusing to allow his aides testify under oath before Congress over the Justice Department firings.
...Read Moreposted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:01 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
"No End in Sight" trailer
Please, please look at the trailer for Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight (Magnolia, 7.27.07 in NYC -- 8.3 or 8.10 in Los Angeles), and then go to the site and read the synopsis and reviews. Having seen it last Friday, I can say I've never been made to feel so real-world enraged by a movie in all my life. Ferguson's merciless analysis of the Bush administration's handling of the ever-worsening situation in Iraq beginning in May 2003 is truly sickening.
As of this writing, No End in Sight is an absolute contender for Best Feature Documentary. I had a somewhat...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:20 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Iraq dead poster
Sky News is reporting that some bad guys (the report isn't specific) are waging a kind of online psychological war aimed at U.S. troops by posting a series of mock-up Hollywood film posters containing "a chilling message for U.S. troops in Iraq." I would imagine that most U.S. soldiers over there will look at these images and go "haw!," or certainly without breaking much of a sweat. If you ask me the zombies-in-Iraq-by- way-of-George Romero poster is the best.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:55 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
"11th Hour" and My Space
Leonardo DiCaprio's My Space page has just posted a video message about The 11th Hour (Warner Independent, 8.17), which he produced, co-wrote and served as one of the principal talking heads. Sound words, riveting message, and a film that definitely said it all but didn't quite have that schwing when I saw it last May.
I don't know if the trio behind The 11th Hour -- DiCaprio and co-directors Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen -- have followed the suggestions I posted after seeing it at the Cannes...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:50 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
CSI: Factory Girl
Even for a pseudo-Factory Girl fanatic like myself, this Stu Van Airsdale crime scene analysis is just too complicated. What can't he just go with the Charles Taylor party line and be done with it?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:35 PM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Selling "Reservations" two ways
What is that rancid cotton-candy Aguilera or Spears-like pop song playing all through the trailer for No Reservations (Warner Bros., 7.27). Turns out it's a Liz Phair track called "Count On My Love." Just one listen and I hated it. Screechy and alley-catty with a piercing helium wail.
So now I'm asking myself why a film scored by the great Phillip Glass is sending an entirely different musical message than the one in the trailer? Is the clarinet solo music on the No Reservations website a Glass composition? It sends out a very...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:38 AM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Deathly Hallows spoilers
Certain readers have actually said they're actually going to avoid this site come July 21st because they're certain I'm going to spoil the ending of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which will go on sale just after midnight. They need to brace themselves for shocking news. The media world en masse is going to spoil the ending. You can disconnect your TV and your computer and wear earmuffs on your way out to your rented cabin in northern Idaho with your car radio shut off, and Harry's fate will find you out.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:20 AM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Another Scrooge
There've been four versions of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (the 1938 Hollywood version, the 1951 British version with Alistair Sim, the George C. Scott version and Scooged! with Bill Murray), and now a fifth is on the way -- a digital 3D/performance capture version for the family trade with Jim Carrey as Scrooge, and Robert Zemeckis writing and directing for Disney. If Zemeckis is willing to go dark and spooky (in the vein of the '51 British version), this could be intriguing with the visual opportunities provided by the three ghosts and the flashbacks and flash-forwards.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:34 AM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Pig lighter
"Pig lighter" purchased at Ralph's on Ventura and Coldwater -- Sunday, 7.8.07, 2:15 pm. Flames come out of both nostrils.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:27 AM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Don Murphy and fans
N.Y. Times reporter Laura M. Holson on the whole boolah-boolah about Transformers fans being not only listened to but creatively consulted by producer Don Murphy during pre-production, as well as the recent who-did-what scuffle between Murphy and producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and director Michael Bay.
Composite photo of Don Murphy/Transformers fan community, designed by a Transformers fan for donmurphy.net.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:07 AM on Monday, July 9, 2007
Sunday, July 8, 2007
"Phoenix" fatigue
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Warner Bros., 7.11), the fifth in the series, is unmistakably darker than the previous four Potters. But for me, there's nothing so dark and foreboding as the idea of having to sit through two more of these damn things, which is what we're all looking at.
Phoenix slams the teenaged Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) against the wall and makes him glare with rage as he responds to various taunts and assaults and rivers of inner doubt. I didn't take any of this horseshit seriously, of course, because I...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:36 PM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
"If..." again
In "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", the late Hunter S. Thompson described the 1966 to '67 era of cultural explosion-revolution as "the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle '60s was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something, maybe not in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world."
Malcolm McDowell in If...
You...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:46 PM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
Review rules
I posted a somewhat negative review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix two days ago, but I took it down 45 minutes later after a Warner Bros. publicist reminded me that an embargo demand (printed on the invitation, she said) stated no reviews until opening day -- Wednesday, 7.1. Now I don't wanna pickle, but I was scratching my head and feeling a little confused as I did the obedient thing.
It had seemed to me that the Potter cat was out of the bag last Friday with reviews already posted from Variety's
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:02 PM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
Edelstein on "Phoenix"
"Having confidently proclaimed that David Chase would learn the lesson of John Updike's Rabbit and not kill off Tony Soprano too early (Come on, folks, he's dead, dead, dead), I'm loath to predict what July 21 -- and the final Potter book -- will bring. But the film of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the best enticement imaginable. It rekindles the dread, the ache in your stomach that says, 'He can't die!' -- and at the same time, 'How can he defeat everything racist, repressive, and murderously Fascistic in the world without making the ultimate sacrifice?'" -- from a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:04 PM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
Ratner and Hilton deserve each other
Brett Ratner spoke two or three days ago to TMZ about wanting to put Paris Hilton in his Hugh Hefner biopic. Ratner is no dummy, but he can't seem to help himself. He seems to have a craving for scorn.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:52 PM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
Taylor on "Factory Girl"
I've been dinged here and there for speaking highly of the early, funkier version of George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl, and for pushing Sienna Miller for Best Actress. So it's satisfying to note that contrarian tough guy Charles Taylor has reiterated his support of this embattled film in a well-reported history in today's N.Y. Times that covers the ride from inception to production to theatrical release.
George HIckelooper, Sienna Miler
"On July 17, thanks to DVD, the public will get to see the fuller version that Hickenlooper, Harvey Weinstein and producer Holly Wiersma were frantically...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:22 PM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
Spielerg & Farnsworth
The motive behind Steven Spielberg's co-financing and co-producing the forthcoming Broadway presentation of Aaron Sorkin's The Farnsworth Invention, about a boy genius named Philo T. Farnsworth who invented television in high school in 1927 only to be ripped off by RCA's David Sarnoff over the patent, seems obvious. Spielberg is looking to produce and perhaps direct a film version. The golly-gee-gosh American-ness of that name -- Philo T. Farnsworth sounds like the cousin of Clem Kadiddlehopper -- and the theme of an innocent genius being hoodwinked by big-city tycoons is right up Spielberg's alley. The question is how different will the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:26 AM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
"Transformers" numbers on Sunday
Transformers did $25,971,000 yesterday, which was a 14% increase from Friday (an boost of $3.2 million). The weekend cume is now projected to be $68,227,000, and the six-day cume will be around $153,130,000.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:08 AM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
Bloggers AFI Ballot
Allan Bacchus of Daily Film Dose is attempting to recreate a new AFI Top 100 American films list, but one based upon the fanboys/cinephile/blogger point of view. He's using the same guidelines and procedure as the AFI (enabling a 'shadow' list to be created) and is inviting HE readers to participate. A ballot can be be downloaded from the blog posting. He's looking for 1500 voters, which is what the AFI had. It would be good if a significant percentage of the 1500 voters (presuming he accumulates that many) could be drawn from rank-and-file online journo-bloggers.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:43 AM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
Bay lampoon
A YouTube clip that lampoons celebrity couple reality shows was sent to me this morning. The kicker is that "Michael Bay" is introduced and, according to the sender, the guy who portrays him does so to a tee. I'm sitting in a low wifi cafe in Los Alamos, California (north of Santa Barbara about 25 miles), and loading a video file will take eons. But if anyone who knows Bay has a reaction...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:35 AM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
"Wilson's" aftermath
HE reader Nate West took exception yesterday to my description of Charlie Wilson's War -- the reading of Aaron Sorkin's script, I meant -- as "a feel-good ride." He said that a line I used about the admirable actions of the three main characters (played by Tom Hanks, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Julia Roberts) having consequences that reverberate throughout the world today is an oblique reference to a certain catastrophic 21st Century event.
"The real story of Charlie Wilson's War isn't about victory," he concluded. "It's about blowback. Perhaps those seeking a feel-good ride aren't interested in such ironies."
My answer was...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:12 AM on Sunday, July 8, 2007
Saturday, July 7, 2007
"Charlie Wilson's War"
I took another stab last night at reading Aaron Sorkin's script of Charlie Wilson's War, and now, on page 32, I'm finally feeling the heat of it. (I don't know why I couldn't get into it before.) I'm particularly revved about what Philip Seymour Hoffman will do with the part of Gust Avrakotos, a Middle Eastern intelligence operator. The script is a pleasure to read, but Hoffman's part is delicious. It's like ice cream.
Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts in Charlie Wilson's War
Charlie Wilson's War is the true story of how a play-it-as-it-lays, cruise-along Texas Congressman (Tom Hanks),...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:32 AM on Saturday, July 7, 2007
"Frankenstein" in Seattle
The first out-of-town, pre-Broadway run for the stage musical version of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein begins at Seattle's Paramount theatre on Saturday, 8.4, and closes Saturday, 9.1. The tickets are steep ($175 for orchestra/mezzanine) but they'll be nowhere near as outrageous as the prices New Yorkers will pay when it starts previews at the Hilton Theatre on 42nd Street on 10.11. (The official opening is on 11.8.) I'm told that premium seats will go for $450 on weekend nights and $375 on weekday nights. I could not in all good conscience part with that much money to see a Mel Brooks...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:11 AM on Saturday, July 7, 2007
The costs of "Ultimatum"
The ad slogan for The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal, 8.3) is "this summer Jason Bourne comes home." But if the Universal marketing guys were to dream up a slogan that honestly characterizes the financial realities behind the making of the third Bourne flick, it might read "the more money an action franchise earns, the more money the next installment will cost. Just ask Jason Bourne."
That's a fairly dull slogan so let's stop cute-ing around and get down to brass tacks. I was told last night that The Bourne Ultimatum, which is locking its final release...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:02 AM on Saturday, July 7, 2007
Saturday numbers
Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason is predicting a $152 million, six-day total for Transformers, but I''ve been told of a lower projection (composed by a competing studio) of $149,851,000. Dreamamount will undoubtedly claim $150 million and change if the actual final figure is anywhere close to that.
The best Transformers earning day so far has been the $29 million and change it took in last Wednesday. It did $22,201,000 yesterday, which was $2 million higher than Thursday's total but $7 million below Wednesday's.
Ratatouille's weekend projection is $30,878,000 -- a good hold. Live Free or Die Hard will take in roughly...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:32 AM on Saturday, July 7, 2007
Friday, July 6, 2007
White House Reanimator
Two things wrong with Stuart Gordon's House of Re-Animator idea, which is about Herbert West bringing Dick Cheney and George Bush back to life with one of his green-liquid injections inside the White House. One, he's a little late. The movie should be coming out, at the latest, sometime early next year, and Gordon doesn't even have the financing together. And two, a Bush White House Reanimator movie won't be worth much in terms of home video revenues because it'll be totally dated as of January 20, 2009. It should have actually come out last year, or in '05. Otherwise, it sounds hilarious.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:35 PM on Friday, July 6, 2007
Walking out
"Walking out of a movie means something," writes Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips. "It means a filmmaker has crossed a personal line in the sand. We 'ankle," as the show business publication Variety likes to put it, for different reasons. A walkout's significance depends largely on the pace of the exit (fleeing in revulsion versus schlumping out, bored beyond recognition) in relation to the crimes up on screen." I'll never forgot being bawled out by three or four journos at the Westwood Bruin for walking out on Eight-Legged Freaks. As if I'd done something wrong. Who, today, would stand up for Eight...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:14 PM on Friday, July 6, 2007
"Transformers" and Bay
Transformers will "certainly" make more than $150 million by Sunday night, I've been told. This is too depressing to write about at any length. If I could have clapped my hands and turned Transformers into a box-office bust, I would have clapped my hands and said "yeah." I have this image of a 1500-foot tall statue of Micheal Bay striding Hollywood Blvd. like the Colossus of Rhodes, and then the statue suddenly coming alive with people screaming and cars crashing down below. And then Bay hearing the commotion and looking down and grinning, and then putting his hands on his hips and throwing...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:36 PM on Friday, July 6, 2007
Lust Caution
A trailer for Ang Lee's Lust Caution (Focus Features, 9.28), a World War II espionage thriller featuring tasteful hot nude scenes featuring Chinese film star Tang Wei. The Focus copywriter says that Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love) plays Mr. Yee, "a powerful political figure in 1940s Shanghai." with whom Tang Wei "gets swept up in a dangerous game of emotional intrigue."
What the copywriter meant to say is that she does a Mata Hari on the guy, having an affair with him as part of a plan to either get information or set...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:58 PM on Friday, July 6, 2007
Gone Baby Gone trailer
No telling how good Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone (Miramax, 10.19) may be, but the trailer is very well cut -- a solid indication of a pro-level thing. You can sort of tell that Casey Affleck gives a sharp, convincing performance as a Boston-area private dick. Morgan Freeman appears to be doing his excellent usual usual; ditto Michele Monaghan. It feels like this could be Mystic River and then some. You can't trust feelings and intimations, of course. The proof will be in the pudding, which I presume will be served at the Toronto Film Festival.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:17 PM on Friday, July 6, 2007
Abrams on "Cloverfield"
A guy in the pipeline of producer J.J. Abrams, currently vacationing in Maine, informs that Cloverfield, the sea-monster movie, will open on 1.18.08.
Abrams is "very active on this one, as he plans to be on all Bad Robot projects," he says. "The only things he's been involved with which he hasn't really had any creative role were What About Brian and Six Degrees -- both shows that existed before Bad Robot really opened for business (meaning, when he put the team together).
"Cloverfield is an idea Abrams had over a year ago, which he then sold to Paramount. The point-of-view...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:01 PM on Friday, July 6, 2007
Giamatti pic
Paul Giamatti frame capture from the Shoot 'Em Up trailer. (Thanks to Jason K. Heiser for providing the art.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:58 PM on Friday, July 6, 2007
"Shoot 'Em Up" trailer
This Shoot 'Em Up trailer has re-sold me. I was into this film eons ago, but the ardor faded when no trailer turned up for months and months and then when I heard about the extra shooting. Now I'm into it all over again because of Paul Giamatti's crazy-villain performance, which looks wonderful. It also seems to slightly de-emphasize the absurdist John Woo gun-ballet aspects.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:06 PM on Friday, July 6, 2007
Thursday, July 5, 2007
J.J. Abrams monster trailer
I tried digging into the bootleg trailer for J.J. Abrams' new hair-raiser called Cloverfield, attached to Transformers in theatres but captured by video cameras and posted online. It's ostensiby "about a creature from the sea that attacks Manhattan" and sends, in the final shot, what looks like the head of the Statue of LIberty rolling and thumping down a street.
The trailer was forcibly removed from YouTube sometime this afternoon (Paramount legal takes credit for tha action in a posted statement in red letters). I wrote a guy who's in the loop for a little inside-baseball reporting, but so far it's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:40 PM on Thursday, July 5, 2007
O'Neil does Herzog, Bale
The Envelope's Tom O'Neil has posted mp3 files of chats with Rescue Dawn director Werner Herzog and star Christian Bale.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:38 PM on Thursday, July 5, 2007
"Sex and the City" movie
The only way that Sex and the City movie will emerge with any depth or distinction is if director-writer Michael Patrick King (i.e., the long-running HBO show's exec producer) makes it into a kind of Susanne Bier movie, or one that might have been directed by Lars von Trier.
It would have to be about serious female nerve-core stuff. Something tough, brutally honest -- the kind of woman's film in which the actresses are frequently shown without makeup and the chatty-girly dialogue isn't overdone. Not conventionally "entertaining" in any way, shape or form. In short, a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:58 PM on Thursday, July 5, 2007
Grown man knows the world
"Wherever there is greatness -- great government or power, even great feeling or compassion -- error also is great. We progress and mature by fault. Perfect freedom has no existence. The grown man knows the world he lives in." -- possibly written by Gore Vidal and spoken by Frank Thring (as Judea governor Pontius Pilate) in William Wyler's Ben-Hur.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:45 PM on Thursday, July 5, 2007
Clap YOur Hands
I finally got into Clap Your Hands Say Yeah early this summer, primarily due to my son Jett buying their '05 debut album at a music store in Rome and playing it to death, and then doing the same with their second album, Some Loud Thunder, when we got back to L.A.
I'm not exactly in love with these guys but their stuff grows on you. The lead singer's voice is kind of David Byrne-y, but with a whiney, spazzy, cracked-voice quality that's very much its own thing. I don't know music...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:07 PM on Thursday, July 5, 2007
"Transformers" film stock
"As I watched Transformers yesterday at the new Cine Capri in Tempe, Arizona, I was noticing, as you said, that the non-CG visuals lacked polish. Then about 2/3 of the way through, a question came to mind. Did Michael Bay intentionally use a lower-quality film stock in shooting this thing?
"The robots seemed to be a genuine part of the picture and background, better than I would have expected, even with ILM and Digital Domain doing the work. So I thought perhaps the grainy clammy texture in the medium and closeup shots of human actors was intentional, a way for...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:26 PM on Thursday, July 5, 2007
Over and done with
"When Mort Sahl first swooped, in the '50s, there was a much more homogenized, middlebrow media landscape -- fewer than a handful of television networks, no internet, no satellite radio, no iPods," James Wolcott observes in a profile of the legendary comedian in the just-delivered August issue of Vanity Fair.
"Except for cable-news junkies, keeping up on current events is practically an aristocratic pursuit these days. And cultural allusions? Forget it. You can't assume the audience knows anything beyond the latest thong-snappings in the supermarket tabloids. Fewer and fewer ticket buyers may go to Lindsay Lohan's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:16 AM on Thursday, July 5, 2007
Shya Labuff
More investigations about how to pronounce Shia Labeouf. Shia, which you're supposed to pronounce with an "eye" sound (as in shyster), delivers the exact same sound as "Chaya" as in Chaya Brasserie, an L.A./San Francisco restaurant, and that gave me pause. I've been hearing his last name pronounced by college-educated adults as Leboaf (loaf of bread) and Leboof, but it's a French name, of course, and "oeuf" (French for egg) is pronounced "uff" so I'm figuring the correct way to say it is Shya Labuff. This answers-for-kids page agrees.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:59 AM on Thursday, July 5, 2007
Villarsalinas
I overlooked this two-day-old graph in a story by L.A. Times staffer Steve Lopez about L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's admitting to a no-big-deal affair with Telemundo anchorperson Mirthala Salinas: "We need to know if the former Tony Villar, who blended his last name with that of wife Corina Raigosa, will now be Mayor Antonio Villarsalinas." Cheap and cruel, yes, but "the cruelest jokes are often the funniest," as Mort Sahl (subject of a great James Wolcott profile in the new Vanity Fair) once said.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:20 AM on Thursday, July 5, 2007
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Shia Bebeouf
Shia Leboeuf is smart and talented, all right, but he's a little too exotic to be the next Tom Hanks, despite notions to the contrary on the latest Vanity Fair cover. Unless Leboeuf gets really lucky with a perfect role in the right film (and I'm not predicting this won't happen), five years from now he'll be the new Bill Pullman.
The 21 year-old actor is mainly getting the Big Attention because he's Harrison Ford's son in the fourth Indy film, but three weeks after this film opens next year people will be saying "that's it?"...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:24 PM on Wednesday, July 4, 2007
The net is closing
ERS News is reporting sans permalink that TV reporter-anchor Mirthala Salinas may get the heave-ho from Telemundo management, partly because she reportedly didn't level with them previously about her involvement with L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and because reports of a previous power-fucker alliance (reportedly with California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez from '03 to early '04) compromises her credibility as a supposedly impartial news reporter.
"High-level officials of NBC's Telemundo are having meetings this 4th of July (not a barbecue) to consider what to do about Mirthala Salinas," the story reads. "General manager Manuel Abud and News Director Al Corral are meeting...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:00 PM on Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Worst Directors Today
Gone in Sixty Seconds director Dominic Sena is unjustly dissed in this Amazon.com listing of the 12 Worst Movie Directors Today. Apart from loving Gone in Sixty Seconds as a personal guilty pleasure, it obviously has its shit wrapped tight. It's a cleanly and confidently directed utility film with a smirky, cool-cat attitude, photographed with first-rate composition and lighting and cut like a champ. I could watch this film once a year for the rest of my life without pain or regret.
And not including Sweetest Thing director Roger Kumble on the top-ten list is...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:17 PM on Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Seeing "Phoenix" twice
Fairly or unfairly, it's my expectation that sitting through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Warner Bros., 7.11) will be less than fully transporting. (I got off the train after Alfonso Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban segment back in '04.)
Given this prejudice, I'd rather see it at next Monday's IMAX screening on the assumption that the general hugeness and clarity of this process will probably make Pheonix feel more involving on some level. There's just one problem: Warner Bros. publicists are insisting that journos won't be allowed to see it in IMAX unless they've first seen Phoenix in regular...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:51 PM on Wednesday, July 4, 2007
When stars die...
There's a passage in the Hollywood screenwriting rulebook that says if a major star is required to die in a film (i.e., obviously an unusual thing in itself), the death should not be vividly or bluntly depicted -- no knife in the chest, no bullet holes, no spurting blood, and especially no showing the star wincing or looking fearful.
To do otherwise, the rulebook says, would be disrespectful of the star -- it would make him seem mortal and vulnerable and rob him of his aura. Stars can't be killed like grubby extras -- they have to surrender their ghost in some...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:31 AM on Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Summer attendance is down so far
Movie theatre attendance "is running behind last summer's and has even fallen below that of summer 2005, a year of box-office duds that had some analysts predicting audiences were abandoning movie houses in favor of home theaters and other entertainment options," the AP's David Germain reported in a 7.3 piece.
"With studios offering a stronger late-season lineup than normal this year, attendance likely will pick up and lift Hollywood to a respectable summer. Still, early forecasts that Hollywood would have its first $4 billion summer now look like wishful thinking."
The reason seems obvious to me. Attendance is down because none of...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:10 AM on Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Donnersmarck on Cruise, "Valkyrie"
The Lives of Others director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has written a piece in yesterday's edition of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung saying it's a good thing for Germany that Tom Cruise is playing would-be Hitler assassin Col. Claus von Stauffenberg in Bryan Singer's Valkyrie.
Donnersmarck's article obviously implies that German authorities who've refused to give permits to Singer's movie to shoot at a legendary building in Berlin should re-think their position.
Cruise, wrote Donnersmarck, is "the most successful of all the [Hollywood] superstars, [and] his superstar light will illuminate this rare shining moment in the darkest chapter of our history....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:47 AM on Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Wulson-Plame movie
I've been waiting for the right thought or angle with which to jump into the Scooter Libby thing. A pretty good one hit me yesterday -- i.e., that Bush's commutation of Libby's prison sentence provides a perfect third-act climax to Warner Bros.'s Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson project, which Akiva Goldsman and Jerry and Janet Zucker are producing -- but then Sasha Stone beat me to it. (I haven't found any links, however, to support her notion that Sydney Pollack is involved.)
Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame
In any event, here's another one: Jez and John Butterworth, the guys writing...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:57 AM on Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Tuesday numbers
Fantasymoguls.com columnist Steve Mason is reporting that Transformers "scored an estimated $28 million to $31 million on its opening day, surpassing the previous Tuesday record of $15.7 million set by Pirates 2 last summer. [and] likely the 4th-best opening day of 2007 behind only Spider-Man 3, Pirates 3 and Shrek the Third.
"Ratatouille is holding especially well, adding another $7.85 million Tuesday and pushing past the $60 million mark. Live Free or Die Hard is also proving resilient with $4.44 million Tuesday and a new cume of $57 million. License to Wed, a critically-reviled comedy from Warner Bros, is a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:30 AM on Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Early review syndrome
In a 7.4.07 piece, N.Y. Times reporter David Halbfinger has looked into "the explosion of the old gentlemen's agreement by which the Hollywood studios screened movies early for critics, and the critics held their reviews until opening day," which has brought about the only card that studio publicists have to play these days -- i.e., "hide the ball."
The destruction of the old g.a. "has been several years coming," Halbfinger says. "The rise of film blogs like MovieCityNews.com and Hollywood-Elsewhere.com -- for whom there is currency in being first to have seen an important new movie -- has prompted...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:44 PM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:23 PM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
"Transformers" numbers
I haven't heard from my numbers guys, but Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke reported late this morning that Michael Bay's Transformers "made between $8 million and $9 million Monday night, a hefty amount considering the DreamWorks/Paramount pic didn't even start its screenings until 8 p.m." The more money Transformers makes, the gloomier I'll feel.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:51 PM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Blog MPAA ratings
A site called mingle2 is handing out MPAA ratings to various sites and blogs. I am completely comfortable with Hollywood Elsewhere's R rating. (Life itself is generally an R-rated thing.) Deadline Hollywood Daily also got an R. Movie City News has been handed a PG-13, Hollywood Wiretap, Fish Bowl LA, In Contention, Defamer and Drudge Report have gotten a PG, and Thompson on Hollywood, The Envelope, Perez Hilton and Awards Daily get a G. Disney World!
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:25 PM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Woz's USA Today Important List
25 movies with real impact have been listed in order of importance by USA Today's Suzie Woz (a.k.a., Susan Wloszczyna). I like, love, admire or at least respect all but one of these films. Why, then, did reading this list make me feel so bad, so trapped...so "let me out of here"? Partly, I guess, because the list feels so AFI-ish.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:52 PM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Lee's Italian WWII movie
Spike Lee's untitled World War II drama, based on James McBride's "Miracle at St. Anna", is apparently going to play like an American riff on Rachid Bouchareb's Days of Glory (i.e., Indigenes), the 2006 war film about French-speaking North Africans fighting for the French during World War II and dealing with prejudice in the ranks.
This is definitely the kind of topography you want to shoot a World War II film upon (i.e., taken by myself in an area south of Volterra in 2003)
Lee said during a recent Rome press conference to announce...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:11 PM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Goldtsein on Moore
Instead of speak to Sicko director Michael Moore (who's been quoted everywhere lately), L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein has spoken to directors Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Supremacy) and Brett Morgen (Chicago 10) for a 7.3.07 piece about Moore's style and tactics.
Moore's work, says Greengrass, is "'highly interventionist' in the sense that he's willing to use the power of film, be it clever cutting or funny archival footage or cheap melodrama, to carry the day. 'His work is often intensely tabloid, but I remember from my days as an on-camera interviewer that the question that makes you sweat...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:43 PM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Shortcut to Happiness
Shortcut to Happiness, the Alec Baldwin- directed film that was previously known as The Devil and Daniel Webster, is finally opening in U.S. theatres on 7.13 after a delay of approximately six years. I wrote about it last October, but Shortcut may have endured the longest post-production, delayed-release period in the history of motion picture distribution, which easily qualifies it as one of biggest train wrecks of all time.
New York or L.A. critics looking to see and review it for history's sake are facing a problem though. A publicist working for the Yari Film...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:31 AM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Febreze vs. Right Guard
This is just another inane side-trip riff, but I'm wondering if anyone has ever used air-freshener spray as a substitute for a deodorant if you've run out of the latter and nothing else is in the house. I'm a Febreze man myself, and as I was searching in vain this morning for my usual Right Guard gel it occured to me that applying one chemical to your person was the same as any other, so I went into the kitchen and reached for the Febreze and it didn't feel that ridiculous. (Unlike the writing of this item.)
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:20 AM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
"License to Wed" reactions
"I will confess that the only thing that kept me watching License to Wed until the end (apart from being paid to do so) was the faith, perhaps misplaced, that I will not see a worse movie this year.
John Krasinski, Robin Williams, Mandy Moore
"Come to think of it, the picture might be useful in certain circumstances, much in the way that Reverend Frank's training program is supposed to be. If the beloved with whom you see License to Wed can't stop talking about how great it was, you might want to cancel the nuptials....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:35 AM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Late summer Sony product
No major distributor seems to release as many deadhead stinkers as Sony Pictures, but even they sometimes get it right. Within a 20-day period starting on 7.27, they've got two apparent groaners and one alleged goodie coming out.
First is a dubious-sounding thriller starring Lindsay Lohan called I Know Who Killed Me (7.27). Next is the return of the hapless Cuba Gooding to career-killing mode as the star of Daddy Day Care 2 (8.8), a comedy for the dolts who paid to see Are We Done Yet? And the capper is the said-to-be very funny Superbad (8.17), the Judd...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:00 AM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Backstage romance
Every now and then the HE agenda allows for an off-topic footnote, and here's a two-sided one about today's (7.3.07) L.A. Daily News story about a months-long affair between L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Telemundo anchorperson and news reporter Mirthala Salinas.
(l.) Mirthala Salinas interviewing Antonio Villaigrossa in '05; Salinas at party within the last year.
It would be truly refreshing if everyone would just shrug this story off (i.e., the way Europeans reportedly do when stories about their own politicians' messy and/or eccentric personal lives gets out) and get...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:43 AM on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Monday, July 2, 2007
Ratner's Playboy-Hefner flick
Brett Ratner's intention to direct a biopic of Hugh Hefner will fail for one very simple reason. Ratner, one of Hollywood's more ardent hounds, is too invested in bacchanalian appetites and indulgences to look at Hefner's life (and the cosmic meaning of same) with any kind of divested perspective.
Brett Ratner, Hugh Hefner (sometimes in the late '50s), Brian Grazer
Fortified by producer Brian Grazer, a guy also known for randy recreation, Ratner will feel a natural pressure from within his own soul to not only adorn Hefner with flattery...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:17 PM on Monday, July 2, 2007
Ahmadinejad's foolery
Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shown that if you push paranoia and bullheadness far enough, you can transform these qualities into rank stupidity. Turning down Oliver Stone's request to make a documentary about him, Ahmadinejad explained that "while it is true that Stone is considered to be among the opposition in the US, the opposition is still part of the Great Satan...we believe that the American cinema system is devoid of all culture and art and is only used as a device." Idiot -- the iconoclastic Stone would have portrayed Ahmadinejad in a fairer light than he would have gotten from almost...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:44 PM on Monday, July 2, 2007
Bendlerblock is out
Hollywood Wiretap's Nancy Vialatte wrote today that "after a series of back-and-forth reports over the past week, it's finally official: Bryan Singer's Valkyrie" -- the Tom Cruise World War II flick about the German military plot to kill Adolf Hitler -- "will not be allowed to use the Bendlerblock historical site for filming." Big effin' deal -- it just means Singer will have to find a building somewhere in Europe that looks sufficiently similar to the building-with-a-courtyard pictured below. How hard could that be?
As this Wikipedia page explains, the Bendlerblock is...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:48 PM on Monday, July 2, 2007
Happy "Dawn" ending
The ending of Rescue Dawn "is triumphant, with [Christian Bale's] Dengler surrounded and cheered by his comrades," writes New Yorker critic Anthony Lane. "This is accurate enough -- the man himself confirmed it in the documentary -- and yet nobody watching the freeze-frame of Bale's grin, and hearing the thudding surge of the musical score, would guess for a second that this is a Werner Herzog film.
"I wouldn't go so far as to call it a Michael Bay moment, but in its mood -- the solid pomp of emotional relief -- it slides...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:06 PM on Monday, July 2, 2007
End of Days
The following sentence can be found in a 7.1.07 Benjamin Anastas N.Y. Times piece about various authors, radio talk-show hosts and Biblical nutjobs who believe that it's all coming to an end in 2012: "Polls indicate that up to 50% of Americans believe that the Book of Revelation is a true, prophetic document, meaning they fully expect the predictions of 'Rapture,' 'Tribulation' and 'Armageddon' to be fulfilled."
I re-read that sentence two or three times before it really sank in. Let's bend over backwards and allow for the possibility that 50% may be a little high. Maybe only 40% to 45% believe...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:51 PM on Monday, July 2, 2007
Nilsson doc stranded
At the '06 Santa Barbara Film festival -- sixteen and a half months ago -- I ran my first piece about John Scheinfeld's Who is Harry Nilsson (and Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?). I started out both liking it enormously and disliking it -- I couldn't get past the depressing aspects of a story about another '60s-era rock musician self-destructing, but I was deeply moved by the music and the obvious love and care that Scheinfeld put into his film.
For whatever reason a distribution deal never happened. A logical suspect, Sony Pictures...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:34 PM on Monday, July 2, 2007
Foster's "Death Wish"
Neil Jordan's The Brave One (Warner Bros., 9.14), otherwise known as Jodie Foster-does-Death-Wish-slash-Ms. 45, is starting to be shown to select long-lead press with the idea of interviewing Foster before she leaves the U.S. later this month to start shooting her next film, Nim's Island (20th Century Fox), in Queensland, Australia
A WB publicist told me this morning that The Brave One will play at the Toronto Film Festival a few days before it opens. An L.A. critic friend who's seen it had some positive things to say about it last weekend, calling it very compelling, interesting,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:21 PM on Monday, July 2, 2007
No-work week
Some people are actually working today and tomorrow, but virtually everyone I know will be out of the office for five days straight starting on Wednesday. I wouldn't drive anywhere during this 4th of July getaway period if you held a gun to my head. Okay, I might go hiking in Lone Pine, but no daytime driving. Holidays are hell. When the going gets easy, the tough sit down at their desks and catch up on their bookkeeping. Face it -- it's going to be a light week.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:42 AM on Monday, July 2, 2007
"Young@Heart" picked up
I was chatting with a Fox Searchlight publicist at last night's LA Film Festival finale party outside the Wadsworth, and for a while the subject was Stephen Walker's sad/funny/soulful Young@Heart, that doc I wrote about last week about a Massachucetts-based octugenarian singing group performing various rock tunes.
I shared my view that Young@Heart is an almost-certain lock to win be nominated for a Best Feature Documentary Oscar, but apparently that's a no-go due to the doc having played last year on British TV. Thanks to A.J. Schnack for pointing this out in a 6.30 posting on edendale.typepad.
I also told...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:37 AM on Monday, July 2, 2007
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Roth shocking & awe-ing
Last night I attended an LA Film Festival discussion called "Shock & Awe: New Wave Exploitation." Moderated by F.X. Feeney, the panelists were directors Eli Roth (Hostel, Hostel Part II), Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan) and Jack Hill (the '70s exploitation flicks Foxy Brown, Switchblade Sisters). I recorded the whole discussion -- here it is.
Director Eli Roth following last night's disucssion at Westwood's Armand Hammer Museum -- 6.30.07, 8:10 pm
The idea was mainly to size up the 35 year-old Roth, who's recently been on the skillet for two reasons. One...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:10 PM on Sunday, July 1, 2007
"Valance" at the Wilder
Director Curtis Hanson hosted an L.A. Film Festival screening last night at the Armand Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder theatre of John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I slipped into the theatre right after the exploitation films panel around 8:30 and caught the last 25 or 30 minutes, and then I sat through the post-screening discussion between Hanson and L.A. Weekly critic Scott Foundas. Variety critic Robert Koehler was also in attendance.
The scratch-free 35mm print was from John Wayne's private collection, Hanson said. It looked great, although it didn't seem to have that super-silvery sheen...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:37 AM on Sunday, July 1, 2007
Sunday morning verdict
Ratatouille is still way in front of Live Free or Die Hard, but it's been inching down over the last three days while the Bruce Willis actioner has continued to inch up. Both are doing very well with the French rat movie almost $14 million in front of the Willis, but a friend says that at a Marina del Rey showing of Ratatouille yesterday 80% to 85% of the crowd was adult, indicating that this "very sophisticated" film is "not really getting the kids."
Is this true in Baton Rouge and Jacksonville also? How about Portland? I plan on checking out at...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:09 AM on Sunday, July 1, 2007
Essentials