comment #1

Glenn Kenny says ...

Imagine my disappointment to learn that "Crowley" is NOT a biopic of the legendary Aleister...

comment #2

Bocephus says ...

A Crowley biopic would no doubt star Johnny Depp, but Michael Emmerson would be perfect for the part.

comment #3

Breedlove says ...

I wouldn't get my hopes up. Ford has proven again and again to be completely clueless about managing his career and picking quality projects. 'Crowley' probably won't get made, but even if it is it's set to be directed by the dude who brought us 'What Happens in Vegas.' Please.

comment #4

ZayTonday says ...

I will watch anything Wayne Kramer does. The fucking guy did The Cooler and Running Scared, two AWESOME movies. Him and Joe Carnahan seem to have a lot in common.

comment #5

actionman says ...

I agree, Kramer and Carnahan are cool dudes.

I met Kramer a few times and he was always extremely nice and genuine. When Carnahan came into the office he had that "my-shit-don't-stink" attitude but it was right after Narc came out so I probably would have been in the same mindset.

Crossing Over, from what I have heard from a friend who worked for the producers, is excellent. It's definitely not going to do any box office but I hear it's great.

Running Scared is a phenomenal action thriller. Gets better and better every time I watch it.

comment #6

Richardson says ...

I'm surprised that Harry looks younger in that picture than any shot in 'Crystal Skull'.

comment #7

MilkMan says ...

When I was a little boy, Harrison Ford was the dad I wished I had.

Rugged, stoic, able to travel without seven enormous pieces of luggage. My dad was shrill, vain, and schizophrenic in his abiltiy to communicate.

Harrison Ford would protect me; my dad was the type of man who started fights with other men over services rendered but not renumerated.

Harrison Ford was not a sex machine, an over-eager poon chaser whose erections took precedence over his child's night terrors and seizures that always seemed to end with a self-administered lukewarm bath.

Had I been more ambitious, Harrison Ford would've received a Father's Day card from me every year from about 1981 to 1988.

But ambition is shuttled in a gene that passed me by, as if I was a suptagenarian hitchhiker standing at a random 405 offramp, one eye pasted shut with conjunctivitis, the other broken and bulging.

But it takes no effort to post a comment.

Good for me.

Happy Father's Day, Harrison.

comment #8

BurmaShave says ...

Milk is back! Milk is back!

Does anyone remember as clearly as I do when RANDOM HEARTS was being talked about as 'Harrison Ford's Oscar role'? Before it came out, obviously.

comment #9

tommysunshine says ...

Burma, your random hearts observation is, at best, tepid. But two weeks ago its director died.
So in this instance you have fused unoriginality with bad taste.

comment #10

Richardson says ...

'Traffic' should've been Ford's Oscar role.

comment #11

iamjoe says ...

Richardson, you're right. TRAFFIC would have been such a triumph for Harrison Ford....who reps this guy anyway??

comment #12

Breedlove says ...

Right about after 'The Fugitive' Ford was poised to become the most beloved movie star of all time...he's just made one awful choice after another. He was my favorite as a kid too. I'll still watch pretty much any movie he makes but it's disapointing to have a guy so fun to watch in such inconsequential crappy movies.

comment #13

The Pope says ...

Let's not capsize the boat here. Harrison Ford has had an amazing career. Some of his choices (in the earlier days) were daring (Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Working Girl) and brilliant. Since The Fugitive, I totally agree, things have gone flat. But then, that is the way of most, if not all careers... evenutally. It will happen to Johnny Depp, Will Smith... it may have already happened to Tom Cruise.

But I agree. Ford should NOT have passed on TRAFFIC. However, I understand that when the script was being developed and he was attached, Stephen Gaghan's script had his Drug Czar character do some heroin or some hard drug... you know, just so he could talk about the difficulties with conviction. That particularly nutty plot line was expunged at Ford's insistance.

comment #14

lawnorder says ...

I have a friend close to the Crossing Over production and he says Kramer has been battling Darth Weinstein for months over the cut. The film has always tested well above average, but Harvey keeps cutting away at it and removing any kind of disturbing content, mostly in the sex scenes between Ray Liotta and Alice Eve. Liotta is an immigration agent and he's blackmailing Alice Eve who is an actress from Australia into having sex with him for a green card. Harvey objected to the explicit tone of the scenes - and apparently the preview audiences singled them out as well - so Harvey has cut most of it out of the film. Kramer's position was that the scenes were supposed to make people feel uncomfortable because it's a sleazy situation, but things take a different turn later in the film and we need the earlier tough content to set it up. Kramer's also pissed off that Harvey restructured his film and took his bookend device with Sean Penn and stuck it in the body of the film, which he doesn't think makes any sense. I know he recently tested his preview version against Harvey's and Harvey won by quite a few points. The big reason was, again, the sex scenes. Now, I have seen only Kramer's version from a few months ago and I don't think the sex scenes are any big deal. They certainly serve the film - to lose them would definitely hurt the story. They're not even close to being as raunchy as The Cooler. I also think the opening with Sean Penn works great - it's an exciting opening and when all is revealed at the end, then it makes a lot of sense. I don't know how putting Penn later in the film wiill effect it. Doesn't seem the right way to go because of all the different storylines. Harrison Ford is excellent in the film and the actor who really shines is Cliff Curtis who plays his partner. Jim Sturgess has some great scenes as well, especially his immigration interview, which will go down as one of the classic scenes of 2008. The movie is definitely worth seeing, but I'm pretty sure Weinstein has had a damaging effect on it. I know Kramer wanted to take his name off it at one point. I don't think he'll be talking too much about it because it sounds like Harvey has really fucked him over -- but then he's a fucking moron for even making a film with Harvey, given all that the world knows about him. It's too bad that he didn't make this for Fox Searchlight or Miramax.

comment #15

FNG says ...

More pics from Crossing Over :

http://www.blackfilm.com/20080509/features/crossingover.shtml

comment #16

lawnorder says ...

Here are some comments by a viewer calling himself Randomstranger who saw the film at a recent test screening. You can read the full post on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0924129/board/thread/107431006?d=107431006#107431006

I just watched a screening of the film and I enjoyed it a lot. The script was strong with the exception of a few blah lines of dialogue (the worst being the opening scene with Ford's character being introduced), and it handled the subject matter extremely well, showing many different views on immigration, and many different scenarios. In the end, some people got what they deserved, some people got off easily, and some people got screwed over - probably much how the system works in the real world.

The acting ranged from strong to great, with Ciff Curtis being the standout. The weakest point of the film to me was the title - "Crossing Over" sounds like a movie of the week, and unless the title changes to something really good or even generic and forgettable, I think the movie won't be taken too seriously, it's that bad. If the name changes to something worthwhile, I think this film is a serious Oscar contender - my guess would be Curtis for Best Supporting Actor, the script for Best Original Screenplay, and the film for Best Film.

comment #17

ZayTonday says ...

ugh... leave it to the Weinsteins to fuck up a good thing.

comment #18

Richardson says ...

Now I wish I'd gone to the screening I passed on, so I could compare it to whatever eventually comes out.

BTW, re: 'Traffic'...

"That particularly nutty plot line was expunged at Ford's insistance."

Being fair to Gaghan, that scene is in the original BBC miniseries. I can see how somebody adapting that mini into a screenplay would think that was a really important beat to include, until somebody who was standing a little further back pointed out it was a bad idea.

That said, I would love to see Harrison Ford shoot up in a movie. I picture the scream from 'Temple of Doom'..

comment #19

ZayTonday says ...

I'll wait for the director's cut on Blu-ray where Kramer puts all the shit back in there that he wanted in there in the first place.