Saturday, July 31, 2010
Zaragoza
Warner Bros. refuses to issue The Devils on DVD stateside or on iTunes, but for some reason they've released a DVD of Ken Russell's film in Spain. Which I don't get. If it's bad for the U.S. market, why is it good for the Spaniards?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:34 PM on Saturday, July 31, 2010
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:31 PM on Saturday, July 31, 2010
Strafed
Cinemablend's Katey Rich, a sharp reviewer but never a take-no-prisoners Christopher Hitchens type, has torn The Expendables a new one. She's calling it "a bloated mess, a bunch of guys past their prime punching and kicking each other and pretending its for our benefit, when it's really just one last self-congratulatory hurrah.
"The giant list of beefy male names is the major draw of The Expendables, but it's also what kills it. A movie about Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham's lead characters kicking ass and taking names in a foreign country might have gone somewhere, but the movie is utterly overstuffed,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:16 AM on Saturday, July 31, 2010
Premature
I was in the upper lobby of AMC's Lincoln Square the night before last when two ushers started dismantling the Expendables standee. "Whaddaya doin'?" I asked. "Takin' it down...it's opening, time to take it down," he said. If I'd been Sly Stallone I would have said, "Wait...whadda ya mean, take it down? Movie doesn't open for another two weeks!" But I just watched. "Are you trashin' the figures?" I asked. I thought I could take Jason Statham back to the apartment and put him in the kitchen. "Naah, just the structure part."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:52 AM on Saturday, July 31, 2010
Slight Russsell Deflation
I regret to report that last night's Film Society of Lincoln center showing of Ken Russell's The Devils -- a kickoff of a seven day, nine-film Russell tribute -- was a disappointment in some respects. Russell attended with Devils costar Vanessa Redgrave, and it was of course delightful to see them sitting together, and to share in the love. But they showed the wrong version of this 1971 classic, the print was less than mint, projection was substandard, and a befogged Russell offered no hard answers about the Devils controversy.
Legendary director Ken Russell, Vanessa Redgrave following last...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:37 AM on Saturday, July 31, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Total Write-Off
Joe Queenan has written a Hollywood ripjob piece for the Wall Street Journal that basically says 2010 is the suckiest movie year since...ever. Maybe or maybe not, or (my view) unsupported by the facts. But the best portion of the piece reads as follows:
"Every year, by tacit agreement with the public, Hollywood is expected to produce at least one surprise hit, one out-of-nowhere dark horse or, in a pinch, one cunningly hyped movie that either exhumes a noted actor from the grave or greases the skids so some solid journeyman can ascend to the ranks of the Oscar Winners of yore....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:07 PM on Friday, July 30, 2010
No Citizen Hef
There's nothing especially wrong with Brigitte Berman's Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel (Metaphor, 7.30) except that it's (a) a half-hour too long, (b) utterly lacking in dramatic judgment, and (c) way too obsequious. It feels or plays like a Playboy-commissioned blowjob documentary intended to glorify Hefner's rep (which it does) but which is mainly or currently intended for viewing by stockholders and potential investors.
The intent was solely to catalogue and promote Hefner as a cultural revolutionary (whch he absolutely was in the '50s and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:03 PM on Friday, July 30, 2010
Morgan for King
As initially reported some 40 days ago by "Page Six," Piers Morgan -- a sharp and fairly aggressive British journalist and TV personality -- is taking Larry King's CNN gig. I've never watched Morgan interview anyone of any substance (he always seems to be talking to women who are famous for being famous, who've never actually "done" anything) but he seems like he may be a bit nippier than King.
The 45 year-old is a former editor of News of the World ('94 to '95) and the Daily Mirror ('95 to '04). His Wiki bio says he...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:39 AM on Friday, July 30, 2010
A Contradiction Finessed
Dinner for Schmucks "is not a great movie, or even a coherent one, but in nearly every scene it draws laughter from an impressively eclectic array of sources, both obvious and new. People fall down, things break, funny accents are used, crazy misunderstandings occur, and an impressively high number of witty, bizarre and outrageous lines are uttered. It is less a full-scale comic feast than a buffet of amusing snacks, and while it does not necessarily exalt or flatter your intelligence, it doesn't treat you like an idiot, either." -- from A.O. Scott's N.Y. Times review.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:21 AM on Friday, July 30, 2010
More Of This
People voted for Barack Obama because they wanted transformation, a house cleaning, religious uplift, fervor. Instead he became Jimmy Carter -- moderately progressive, mild accomplishments, turn the other cheek, currying favor with Republican scum, mildly mellow, Bush lite in terms of Afghanistan, etc. What people wanted (and still want) is the kind of moral clarity and righteous hellfire that Rep. Anthony Weiner let go with on the floor of the House yesterday afternoon.
Maddow Blog's Laura Conaway posted the following at 10:35 this morning: "The House...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:34 AM on Friday, July 30, 2010
Way It Is
In a 7.30 piece called "Lure of The Dark Side for Bright Young Things," The Independent's Tom Teodorczuk explores the syndrome of younger big-name actors (Kristen Stewart, Amanda Seyried, Robert Pattinson, Zac Efron, Amber Heard, Emma Roberts) making low-budget indie flicks alongside tentpole blockbusters.
The pattern, of course, is that the mob that pays to see these actors in tentpole flicks usually avoids their indie-ish outings. It's not the stars they're interested in as much as the moods and colors and exhilarations that big movies tend to deliver. Name-brand stars matter to some extent when appearing in a primary-color movie made...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:25 AM on Friday, July 30, 2010
Down With Low
It's perfectly allowable to take shots at Get Low and thereby lower its Rotten Tomatoes rating to 88 and Metacritic rating to 78. But I'm having trouble comprehending how any critic could say to himself or herself, "Wow, this film really deserves to be slammed and I'm going to tear it a new asshole." I know that feeling and the qualities that tend to motivate it, and, trust me, Get Low doesn't deal those kind of cards.
(l. to r.) Bill Murray, Lucas Black, Robert Duvall in Aaron Schneider's Get Low
Aaron Schneider's period drama is one...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:00 AM on Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Seal of Approval
I got stuck on a story late yesterday afternoon and consequently missed my last shot at seeing Scott Pilgrim vs The World (Universal, 8.13) for free. Okay, maybe I half-wanted to miss it due to serious concerns about sitting through another default, deadpan, deer-in-the-headlights Michael Cera performance.
Michael Cera (l.), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (second from left) and the cast of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (including Allison Pill, second from right).
It's gotten to the point where the very thought of Cera and that annoying look on his face -- a look that says (a) "Uhhm, do...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:43 PM on Thursday, July 29, 2010
Leo Bailing on Mel?
MTV.com is reporting that Radar Online has posted a non-attributable quote from a source close to Leonardo DiCaprio saying there's "not a chance" that Leo will star in Mel Gibson's untitled Viking movie, for obvious reasons.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:37 PM on Thursday, July 29, 2010
Oh...
Okay, Biutiful may not be a Sony Classics movie after all, I heard today. Maybe it will and maybe it won't, but don't bet the farm. Sometimes the winds shift.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:06 PM on Thursday, July 29, 2010
A Few Arrows More
A forthcoming Bluray combo-pack of Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (Universal Home Video, 9.21) will include a director's cut running 156 minutes, or 15 minutes longer than the 141-minute theatrical version. The question, of course, is whether the extra length will make it a stronger film or just another case of directorial indulgence or lost "darlings." Scott's longer version of Kingdom of Heaven was, of course, far superior to the theatrical cut, so here's hoping.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:52 PM on Thursday, July 29, 2010
Venice Blahs?
The only officially announced Venice Film Festival selections that seem even vaguely pulse-quickening are Juian Schnabel's Miral, Vincent Gallo's Promises Written in Water (nice title), Tom Tykwer's Three, Ben Affleck's The Town (out of competition), Casey Affleck's I'm Still Here: The Lost Year of Joaquin Phoenix (ditto), Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones' A Letter to Elia (ditto), and John Turturro's Passione (ditto).
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:45 PM on Thursday, July 29, 2010
Believe It
This recently released trailer for Titanic 2: Electric Boogaloo is not a mash-up. It's selling an actual, honest-to-God, straight-to-DVD movie about a second Titanic hitting a second iceberg. The stars are Bruce Davison and Brooke Burns. Okay, I'm kidding about the Boogaloo but everything else is genuine. Really.
Asylum will be releasing Titanic 2....wait, is it Titanic 2, Titanic II, or Titanic 2: The Asylum Version? Or Clash of the Titanics? Anyway, it's out on 8.24.
HE takes its hat off to Titanic 2's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:33 PM on Thursday, July 29, 2010
Curious Call
According to DVD Beaver's Gary Tooze, Criterion's forthcoming Bluray of Terry Zwigoff's Crumb "has bright colors, heavy grain and looks far more film-like than either of the previous Sony DVDs (1999 and 2006 Special Edition). However, I don't know that it is a film that benefits extensively from the move to Bluray 1080p."
Wells translation: Who's running the show over there? They take a funky little film like Crumb and Bluray it? Why?
Back to Tooze: "Although saying that, it is true that much of the comic art and facial close-ups can look surprisingly impressive...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:48 AM on Thursday, July 29, 2010
Tussaud's Lookalike Bridges
On the left, a 31 or 32 year-old Jeff Bridges in a scene from Tron ('82). On the right, a CG plastic-surgery version of "young" Bridges in the forthcoming Tron Legacy. The latter was achieved by youthing down the present-day Bridges, 60, with digital scrubs and touchups. Except the result doesn't really look like Bridges. It looks like a cross between a celebrity lookalike and a Bridges dummy you might find inside Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. It's a lazy effort.
Jeff Bridges in Tron; 60 year-old Bridges de-aged through CG scrub-down in Tron Legacy.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:51 AM on Thursday, July 29, 2010
More Marvel Comic-Book Crap
The Pursuitist has posted the trailer for Kenneth Branagh's Thor that was shown a few days ago at Comic-Con. Branagh + Thor = whore. You can't tell me that an esteemed middle-aged British actor-director who knows from William Shakespeare did this film for any other reason than a large stinking paycheck, or that he didn't retire to his hotel room every night during shooting and throw up.
Look at Chris Hemsworth -- the brawn, the blonde hair, the Nolte-Schwarzenegger facial structure, the non-Barrymore-esque profile. He's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:19 AM on Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
De-Affleck-ted
Yeesterday Cinematical's Eric Snider posted a hilarious review of the trailer for Ben Affleck's The Town, which will debut on this continent at the Toronto Film Festival. Snider should do a separate trailer-reviewing column. Here's a portion:
"'From the acclaimed director of Gone Baby Gone...' The acclaimed director of Gone Baby Gone happens to be a fellow named Ben Affleck, who also happens to be the star of The Town. You think, 'Why wouldn't they just say, 'From acclaimed director Ben Affleck'?' Then you realize...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:00 PM on Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Jig Is Up, Vittorio!
Apocalypse Now cinematographer Vittorio Storaro is (in)famous for having long insisted upon cropping Apocalypse Now, originally filmed in 35mm widescreen Panavision at an aspect ratio of 2.35 to 1, to a somewhat less wide shape -- either a 2.00 to 1 aspect ratio (which are the dimensions of Storaro's Univisium system, which he would like to see adopted as a universal standard) or a 70mm aspect ratio of 2.21 to 1.
But now the gates have been stormed and Vittorio's rule has been overturned. Lionsgate announced today that the forthcoming Apocalypse Now Bluray, set for release...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:50 PM on Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Grubby Mitts
Can the reputation of the late Simon Monjack sink any lower? Yes! People is reporting that according to Brittany Murphy's former business manager and accountant Jeffrey Morgenroth, Monjack was "squandering the late actress's fortune just before his own sudden death in May from pneumonia and anemia, which also killed Murphy.
"'There were huge amounts of money in [Brittany's] pension plan and bank account, and all of that's gone,' Morgenroth tells People. "I would see it on the statements. There was money being withdrawn by Simon, hundreds of thousands." Monjack had spent nearly 80 percent of the 32-year-old star's assets in the months...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:59 PM on Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Lucky Break
Every time I read about an attractive female school teacher getting popped for predatory behavior with a teenage male student, I frown and shake my head and mutter to myself, "If only I'd been so fortunate." I was miserable when I was 15 or 16, and would have dropped to my knees and thanked God if I'd been hit on by a hot 40 year-old blonde of this calibre. And if I wasn't interested I certainly wouldn't rat her out by sharing her provocative photos with my friends. The authorities obviously aren't "wrong" to enforce the law, but...well, I've said it.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:25 AM on Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Noodles
As I stated yesterday, the controversy about the half-Jewish Oliver Stone being an alleged anti-Semite is hysterical and anti-historical and petering out as we speak. It follows that reported attempts by action-cartoon schlockmeister Haim Saban (of Saban Entertainment) to persuade big-wheel pallies to try and suppress Stone's "A Secret History of America" Showtime series are the actions of a thug.
A Wrap story says that Saban has urged CBS chief Leslie Moonves, WME chairman Ari Emanuel and CAA partner Bryan Lourd to pull the series. Saban "said he considers Stone to be 'clearly an anti-Semite and an anti-American,'"...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:24 AM on Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Get Snooki
Vulture's Emma Rosenblum has called Cathy Horyn's Sunday Styles profile of Jersey Shore costar Snooki "a cheap shot." Horyn's descriptions of this elfin egomaniac are "shocking," she writes, because one never reads anything negative at all about any celebrity these days, but at the same time the piece is "an unnecessarily nasty takedown of a somewhat oblivious target."
Except honest observation is honest observation, and a profile writer who doesn't dispense this probably isn't worth reading. The better ones, of course, do more...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:09 AM on Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Chaykin's Exit
I'm very sorry about Maury Chaykin's passing, which happened yesterday in Toronto. A seemingly kind and delicate fellow, Chaykin, 61, was best at conveying bottled-up rage. My two favorites in this vein are the software-programming beardo in War Games (with his rage directed at the Jerry Lewis-like Eddie Deezen) and his four appearances as Harvey Weingard (based on you-know-who) in Entourage.
He's also quite good in George Hickenlooper's Casino Jack , which will play at the Toronto Film Festival. I know I'm supposed to rave about Chaykin's Sam...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:34 AM on Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Maverick
Aaron Aradillas and Matt Zoller Seitz have posted the fifth chapter in a six-part series called "Razzle Dazzle." The focus is "a disreputable offshoot of the traditional hero: an eloquent, exuberant, often impolite figure who serves as a town crier or truth-teller figure (or seems to)." A very wise and well-cut piece, but who's the female narrator?
I love the vaguely implied analogy between Lonesome Rhodes and Glenn Beck.
"Unlike the traditional hero, the maverick seems to take a more active role in shaping...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:15 PM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
'I Can't Stress Enough..."
What does this kid know? Okay, he knows what he likes. He's seen a lot of Stallone films (even Paradise Alley!) but has he seen The Dogs of War? "Taste is a result of a thousand distastes" -- Francois Truffaut.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:07 PM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Big Cake, Lotta Candles
Stanley Kubrick would have turned 82 yesterday if he'd lived. He'd still be directing, of course, but considering that the periods between his films became longer and longer the older he got, he probably would have made only one more film after Eyes Wide Shut, and he'd still be cutting it now. His relationship with Warner Bros. wouldn't be the same, needless to add. He probably would have jumped ship, now that I'm thinking it through, and gone over to Fox Searchlight.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:47 PM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Air Delivery
So you've got Universal Home Video's Psycho Blu-ray out on 10.19, and the British version of what I presume is the exact same disc, via Universal Pictures UK, released on August 9th, or 13 days from now. So I'm figuring I'll order the latter and watch it way before. Except (and here's where the dumb part comes in) I'm not 100% certain if British Bluray is playable on a US non-multi-region Bluray player. I'm really that clueless.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:14 PM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Fine Print
As we speak, Aaron Schneider's Get Low (Sony Classics, 7.30) has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score. Which it fully deserves, in my book. Except the review by Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt is a little sourpussy, so the film isn't pulling a perfect score in the sense that Don Larsen pitched a perfect game. Metacritic has taken Honeycutt's review into account and given Get Low an 81% score.
it's early yet, of course. We haven't yet heard from Armond White, I...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:14 PM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Funny Is Relative
"I kept waiting for Jay Roach's Dinner for Schmucks to run out of steam or jokes -- but it rarely did," writes Marshall Fine. "Not that the laughs built to a big payoff. Nor did they evoke the kind of gasping-for-air quality that, say, The Hangover did. But director Roach, working from a script by David Guion and Michael Handelman, regularly jolts you with enough unexpected and wonderfully weird moments that you rarely grow impatient with this broad comedy.
"Indeed, I'd count this film...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:43 PM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
No Big Rumble
I feel moderately so-so about the 2010 Toronto Film Festival, based on the lineup announced so far. But I'm not, to be honest, feeling that old drooly-mouthed sensation. When I go to Toronto I want a nice ripe spotlight feeling -- "this is it! right here! nowhere else!" -- and all I'm getting from the current lineup is a kind of pretty-good, very-promising, B-plus (or possibly A-minus) response. All this means, I'm presuming, is that the light switch hasn't been turned on yet.
I want to see William Monahan's London Boulevard there. I've said before that I want Terrence Malick to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:47 PM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Can't Feel It
I don't believe that David Fincher's remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo can amount to very much unless screenwriter Steven Zallian somehow incorporates some form of thematic or emotional resonance that amounts to something. Because the Danish-Swedish original is about nothing except (a) an angry hot tough cyber chick, and (b) an endless unfolding of plot-clue, plot-clue, plot-clue, plot-clue, plot-clue and more plot-clue.
The original trilogy by the late Stieg Larsson is not an interesting or intriguing work. At best it's an airport lounge page-turner. It's just "popular," especially among younger women, which of course means nothing to the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:00 PM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Plain Stone Talk
What did Oliver Stone say that was so inaccurate and/or offensive? He used a certain kind of Tea Party-associated anti-Semitic shorthand -- "Jewish domination of the media" -- that is considered a huge no-no in this country, for obvious reasons. That plus the wearing of a thin, sinister-looking moustache is what essentially prompted the dust-up, which began with a two-day-old interview in the London Sunday Times.
Stone is an old anti-corporate, antiwar-machine lefty from way back. I've come to know him fairly well through personal contact over the years and through mutual friends, and because it takes one to know...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:00 AM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
"See What They Did"?
Recently posted by New York/"Vulture's Edith Zimmerman.
Update: HE reader Jonathan Hartman reminds that Inception composer Hans Zimmer "already publicly talked about this at the SCL Screening in Los Angeles a week before the film opened. He and Inception's sound designer explained the musical concept, and particularly this specific link.
"Edith Piaf is all over the movie, in many scenes where the casual viewer wouldn't even recognize it. For the record, Nolan has Edith Piaf in the script, but only played as the 'wake up' music. It...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:09 AM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Lolita "Disorientation"
"He's a monster, a sexual predator, and the most sensitive and civilized fellow you'd ever meet." And "our disorientation [about these disparate qualities] is the strongest evidence of the filmmaker's mastery." So says N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott, very succinctly, in his Critics' Pick essay about James Mason's Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita ('62).
The Times web guys being who they are and always have been, they haven't put this latest Critics' Picks up on YouTube yet (although all of them end up on...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:37 AM on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Ice Bath
This video took me back to the malicious things that kids sometimes do to each other under the guise of pranks. The nature of the relationship of John, the ice-water splasher, to Nikki, his victim, is unclear, but this is the kind of thing that ten year-old boys will sometimes do to their older teenaged sisters. What does Iceman John mean by "Merry Christmas"? Why do I find this amusing? Sometimes the cruelest jokes are the funniest.
I've never pranked anyone like this; if anything I tended...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:35 PM on Monday, July 26, 2010
Incidents
In recognition of last weekend's Comic-Con pen-stabbing, ranker.com's Brian Gilmore has compiled a list of the Top 10 Most Violent Movie Theatre Attacks.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:59 PM on Monday, July 26, 2010
Sucker Punch
As seen at Comic-Con and reported by The Pursuitist, the HD trailer for Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, a fanboy-friendly action fantasy about "a young girl whose dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality," blah blah.
The costars are Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone, Carla Gugino, Jon Hamm, Scott Glenn and Oscar Isaac.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:43 PM on Monday, July 26, 2010
Actual Line
The previous headline may not ring a bell for some. It's taken from a scene in Ken Russell's Altered States. Brainy psychotherapist Blair Brown says to brainy but eccentric psychotherapist Bill Hurt that their careers are in alignment, they're both moving to Boston, love is obviously there, sex is great or at least impassioned, and all the pieces are in place so "I think we should get married."
A mildly surprised, faintly amused Hurt says, "You know of course that I'm supposed to be at least a little bit nuts?"
Blair's reply: "A little bit? You're an unmitigated madman. You don't have...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:46 AM on Monday, July 26, 2010
Harpooned by Raging Monk
The programming of the Film Society of Lincoln Center's seven day, nine-film Ken Russell tribute, which begins on Friday, 7.30, with a showing of The Devils, is more than a bit curious. I'm very glad for the opportunity to finally see the long and extra-brazen British cut of The Devils and the chance to see, if I so choose, Russell conducting a q & a each and every day of the series, but the film selections are wanting if not perplexing.
The FCLS...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:57 AM on Monday, July 26, 2010
Fish Lips
I suffered last night on a Continental red-eye from LAX to Newark. 275-minute flight, 90 minutes to two hours of sleep, if that. Bulkhead seating, no legroom to speak of, wedged between two women...awful. On top of which they played The Last Song, a Miley Cyrus stinker (based on a Nicholas Sparks book) that opened last March to a 17% Rotten Tomatoes rating. I was at least able to decide on my own whether or not Cyrus has a "trout pout." She does indeed.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:53 AM on Monday, July 26, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Old Ways
Hollywood Farmer's Market, a weekly thing that you have to hit early and evacuate from before 10 am. A lower San Joaquin Valley Latino vibe. I had tacos for breakfast. A block west and a block north of the Arclight -- Sunday, 7.25, 9:05 am.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:15 PM on Sunday, July 25, 2010
Smash Palace
"The glittering young blonde in a low-cut gown is sipping champagne in a swank Manhattan restaurant back in the day when things were still swank. She is on a first date with an advertising man as dashing as his name, Don Draper. So you don't really expect her to break the ice by talking about bad news.
"'The world is so dark right now,' she says. 'One of the boys killed in Mississippi, Andrew Goodman -- he's from here. A girlfriend of mine knew him from summer camp.' Her date is too busy studying her decolletage, so she fills in the dead...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:26 PM on Sunday, July 25, 2010
Said and Done
The Salt vs. Inception competition has been settled and resolved, and the plain fact is that Chris Nolan's film -- complex plot and all -- has beaten Phillip Noyce's despite the supreme skill and relative ease with which Salt goes down. So the Eloi weren't intimidated and turned off by the Inception challenge, or not to any significant degree. It was a misreading on my part to suggest that they might be. I stand corrected.
This weekend wasn't a photo finish. Inception was #1 with almost $44 million (a relatively slight 31% drop from last weekend) while Salt came in second with...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:40 AM on Sunday, July 25, 2010
Social
I wanted to catch the final 45 minutes of The Apartment last night, but it seemed exorbitant to pay $12 bucks (or whatever the Aero charges) for that small pleasure. (That's me standing near the main door.) I've never seen Billy Wilder's 1960 dramedy on a big screen. By the time we (two friends and myself) got there today's Wilder films -- Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole -- were up on the marquee. Of all the things I miss about Los Angeles, the Aero may be on the top of the list.
Saturday, 7.24, 8:55 pm
You have to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:07 AM on Sunday, July 25, 2010
"Expressed Through Punching"
"There's a thunder god, there's a green giant rage monster, there's Captain America from the 40s, there's Tony Stark who definitely doesn't get along with anybody. Ultimately these people don't belong together but the movie is about finding yourself [through] community. And finding that you not only belong together but you need each other, very much. Obviously this will be expressed through punching but it will be the heart of the film." -- Joss Whedon describing his forthcoming Avengers feature.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:30 AM on Sunday, July 25, 2010
Indy/Han Love
"Yesteday's roof-blowing was owed completely to Harrison Ford's first-ever appearance at Comic-Con to promote Jon Favreau's Cowboys & Aliens. It was a geek's wet dream as Han Solo/Indiana Jones took to the stage at Hall H in handcuffs (which we all thought was making light of an earlier stabbing incident but was actually a pre-planned gag, as in Favreau had to drag Ford to the convention in shackles)." -- reported by In Contention's Kris Tapley.
"The crowd was treated to close to 10 minutes of not just...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:54 AM on Sunday, July 25, 2010
Robert Benton's Stab
As the Comic-Con eyeball-stabber was led away yesterday by authorities, he was reportedly "wearing a Harry Potter T-shirt," according to CNN.com. The attacker was reportedly provoked by the victim "sitting too close," according to reports.
Attacks of this sort are abhorrent. I naturally feel for the victim. That said, I've never been one to jump to conclusions but could "too close" mean the victim was (not atypical for a fan boy) Jabba-sized and was therefore lounge-bulking into the privacy space of the attacker? I'm just thinking out loud.
$100 bucks says that at least one 2011 or 2012 fantasy-crap comic-book movie shows...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:18 AM on Sunday, July 25, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Horse Sense
Will Rogers State Park corral -- Saturday, 7.24, 8:15 pm.
Will Rogers State Park corral -- Saturday, 7.24, 8:10 pm.
Saturday, 7.24, 8:55 pm
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:55 PM on Saturday, July 24, 2010
Snapshot
Inception nudged ahead of Salt yesterday, but just barely. The bottom line is that Inception has caught on big-time and Salt is being sampled. Reactions to the latter?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:39 PM on Saturday, July 24, 2010
For The Birds
Last night I took an instant dislike to Sur, a white-walled, Moroccan-appearing restaurant in West Hollywood that a lady friend (an ex-literary agent, now producing a feature) talked me and a couple of friends into patronizing. It's nicely lit with candles and decorated with large flower urns and has a kind of casbah-in-Tangiers vibe, but it's essentially an environment for vaguely shallow, easily-impressed, Maxim-magazine-reading, out-on-the-town tools who don't know any better.
Listen to the music that kicks in when you visit the website...good God! I was particularly offended...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:09 PM on Saturday, July 24, 2010
Parable
I too now have a copy of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life script, and will consider sharing it with specially trusted correspondents. It's dated 6.25.07, and runs 126 pages. I love how someone -- Malick? -- has hand-written various words on each and every page, words that weren't printed clearly enough and/or required clarification, whatever.
"Eternity -- that realm of pure and endless light. How shall we represent it? A single image might serve better than several combined. The whole creation is in the figure of a tree. The smallest leaf communicates with the lowest root, all...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:32 PM on Saturday, July 24, 2010
Fossils With Muscles
Empire's Genevieve Harrison has broken the embargo on The Expendables (Lionsgate, 8.13) with a fairly tough pan. "More The Wild Geese than The Wild Bunch, The Expendables is not a wasted opportunity, but is one not fully exploited," she writes. "Even action fans raised on Commando and Cobra might wish for something better.
"Clive James once described Arnold Schwarzenegger as looking like 'a condom filled with walnuts' -- now it's the other way round. Perhaps that's why director-writer-star Sylvester Stallone (64) has recruited young upstarts like Jason Statham (38) and Jet Li (47) to accompany fellow fossils-with-muscles Dolph Lundgren (52),...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:20 PM on Saturday, July 24, 2010
Gloom Clouds
The Second Recession is looming and threatening to spread across everyone and everything. One million home-owners are expected to lose their homes this year. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has just said that the country faces "unusually uncertain prospects." Does this suggest that Company Men (Weinstein, 10.122) will strike a kind of communal chord when it opens three months hence, or will the opposite effect happen?
In a 1.23.10 Sundance review, I wrote that this drama of layoffs and despondency affecting three Boston-area white-collar guys...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:34 PM on Saturday, July 24, 2010
Streaks
Yesterday morning I met with the famous LexG at Mel's Drive-In, and he gave me an idea for a riff -- established actors afflicted every so often with bad movie streaks. They'll step into a pile of dogshit and won't be able to get the smell off their shoes for three, four or five years (or longer), and a can't-win thing settles in. Before they know it they're stuck in in the mud, mediocre film to mediocre film, no end in sight.
And then, if they're lucky...deliverance. A good part in a good film comes along, and their karma changes. Maybe...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:00 AM on Saturday, July 24, 2010
Stay
Salon's Matt Zoller Seitz has asked an array of film writers and filmmakers to share their greatest (most vivid, transporting, surprising, impassioned, absurd) moviegoing memories. Or, as the subhead puts it, "the sights, sounds and feelings that have stayed long after the lights came up."
I'm one of about 14 or 15 contributors. (My story is about a calamitous Manhattan screening of North by Nothwest that happened about...good God, 30 years ago.) The articles are short, nicely edited, illustrated. It seems extra cool that under each movie title the where and when (i.e., which theatre and in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:58 AM on Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Tree of Life Synopsis
A friend has read an early draft of Terrence Malick's Tree of Life script "and here's what I can tell you, other than that it's wonderful," he writes. "Of course, there is a very good chance that the finished film will look nothing like this, given Malick's track record. But it really does appear to have borrowed not just a page, but several whole chapters from 2001: A Space Odyssey's book.
"The bulk of the script takes place in the 50s, as has been reported. The protagonist is Jack, the oldest of three brothers in a Texas family with...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:15 PM on Friday, July 23, 2010
Of Mice and Mausers
96% of Kirk Douglas's activities in Paths of Glory involve standing around and talking. Every now and then he strolls or sits or walks up stairs, but mostly he stands and talks. Strategy, protocol, orders, arguments for the accused. He spends 4% of the film leading the charge against the German "Ant Hill"and getting dirt and dust on his face. I nonetheless accept Criterion's decision to exploit this 4% to sell their upcoming DVD/Bluray of Stanley Kubrick's 1957 film.
"I apologize for not being entirely honest with you. I apologize for not revealing my true feelings. I...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:57 PM on Friday, July 23, 2010
"The Limits of Discomfort"
Videogum's Gabe is my kinda guy. A serious Comic-Con hater who knows how to explain why any reasonable person might feel the same way. Here's half of his 7.22 posting called "Comic-Con is Humanly Impossible."
"It's difficult to fully capture the scale of this shit show. And I don't mean to be a wet blanket, or to harp on a broken record about a dead horse, but Comic-Con is a shit show.
"We showed up this morning at what we considered to be a perfectly reasonable time, and it turned out that it was not...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:28 PM on Friday, July 23, 2010
Penn Haiti
This kind of thing plus numerous ventings of hostility toward celebrity paparazzi makes Sean Penn a better-than-okay guy in my book.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:52 PM on Friday, July 23, 2010
"I Literally Would Kill Myself"
At a recent Mexican press conference for The Last Airbender, director M. Night Shyamalan recently defended himself against charges from a questioner that "he's lost it and is a sell-out," according to this Popeater account.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:37 PM on Friday, July 23, 2010
Drop The Dinos?
A wild-card vision came to me late last night, just before nodding off. The only way Terrence Malick can save The Tree of Life from embarassment and possible ruin is to deep-six the dinosaur sequence. How do I know that embarassment and possible ruin are likely or even possible scenarios for this much-dithered-over film, which may or may not be released in 2010? I don't. I haven't the first clue about how Malick's dinos integrate with the whole. Nada, nothing. It may turn out that The Tree of Life will be seen as a work of genius because of the dinosaur sequence.
But...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:57 AM on Friday, July 23, 2010
Machete Red Band
Is the red rage effect -- Danny Trejo's character literally becoming Hellboy red -- a trailer-only effect or part of the film? It's mildly cool, I'll grant that, but also a way for director Robert Rodriguez to say "you get what we're doing, right? We're fucking around and don't care all that much so why not throw in a comic-book-styled visual signature thing?"
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:20 AM on Friday, July 23, 2010
Scott Pilgrim Nation
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is "not a perfect movie -- the ending is rushed, and the serialized graphic novel doesn't lend itself well to a three-act structure," Cinemablend's Katey Rich reports from Comic-Con. "[And] it probably won't fly with older critics" -- cranky-heads burdened with cinematic standards, she means -- "[because] it's too shallow, too silly, too obsessed with pop culture references to mean anything on its own. But I suspect anyone young enough to grow up with video games will feel an instant connection.
"Lucky for [director] Edgar Wright and Universal, that young audience...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:47 AM on Friday, July 23, 2010
Comic-Con Is Nothing
Does anyone care about anything going on at Comic-Con? Like, at all? Scott Pilgrim vs. The Shallowness? Okay, a new Tron Legacy trailer with a de-aged Jeff Bridges -- fine. And a forthcoming Brad Pitt zombie movie called World War Z...great. Seven minutes of Machete previewed by Robert Rodriguez. It's all toilet water. Just a Big Geek trailer-watch, walkaround, drink-in and schmoozathon.
I wish I could think of something else that will help to disparage and/or de-value Comic-Con, which I regard as Command Central for the end-of-the-world deconstruction, infantilization and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:47 AM on Friday, July 23, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Jailbird Hair
There was a "bad," muddy-looking trailer for Stone that I posted briefly and then took down. Now the good one is up. I have to be upfront and say I really don't like Norton's corn rows. But there's something about Milla Jovovich this time out, so maybe. DeNiro will be okay, but he's diluted his brand to such a degree that his prescence no longer moves me.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:49 PM on Thursday, July 22, 2010
Last-Minute Wakeup
Salt numbers have bumped up sharply over the last couple of days. Unaided awareness, particularly, has risen 10 points to 19 -- a very good number. Aided awareness is 84, definite interest 40, first choice 13 (presumably rising to 17 or 18 by tomorrow or Friday). Older and younger females are almost as gung-ho as 25-plus males. Younger Eloi males appear to be the weak link.
Either way the basic indicators suggest that moviegoers are too scattered and ADD to focus on films until the final week, and that's why Salt is finally kicking in now.
Distracted iPhone-Obsessed Lazy Brain: "Whadaya...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:05 PM on Thursday, July 22, 2010
Del Toro Cash-In
Guillermo del Toro announced during a Comic-Con Tron Legacy panel this morning that his next gig will be to co-write and possibly direct a 3D Haunted Mansion reboot. "We are not returning Eddie Murphy's calls... and we are not making it a comedy," del Toro said. "We are making it scary and fun, but the scary will be scary." The story, he said, will be built around the Hatbox Ghost. Jesus God!
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:27 PM on Thursday, July 22, 2010
No American in Venice
Yesterday a Variety story speculated in a kind of half-predicting way that Anton Corbijn's The American would play the 2010 Venice Film Festival. Well, it won't. I have this straight from the horse's mouth. From one of the horses, I mean.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:21 PM on Thursday, July 22, 2010
Mel's Bells
Something about the hazy milky whiteness of the L.A. sky and the sound and smell of a big gurgling truck passing by as I stood outside of Mel's Drive-In near the corner of Sunset and Alta Loma this morning...something about this made me think, "I'm in hell...this is why I like New York better. This is ugly, bleachy, over-commercialized...a sense of architectural soul is distinctly lacking."
Friendly, married, five year-old son, likes to boogie-board.
Mel's installed free wi-fi about a year ago, I'm told. Very cool. The Hollywood Elsewhere seal of...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:54 AM on Thursday, July 22, 2010
Freebies
A video essay about unpaid interns by Huffington Post college page contributor Jett Wells went up a short while ago. Lotsa tweets. "I'm an unpaid intern who made a short documentary about unpaid internships," the intro reads. "For someone who's worked for free since I was 17 (besides a few short stints as a bus boy), this project hit close to home.
"Not only did it open my eyes to what constitutes an illegal internship, but it brought to light how touchy the issue is -- the amount of interns and companies that employ interns who turned down the opportunity to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:38 AM on Thursday, July 22, 2010
Genre in a Cage
Watch this 55-second clip from John Irvin's The Dogs of War (1981). Fast, savage, high-octane, rip-roarin'... right? As battle sequences went in the early Reagan era, this was a little fiercer than most. But by today's standards, it doesn't deliver enough. Not nearly. It might even be considered boring.
And yet Irvin uses all kinds of visual exaggeration. An actual assault on a Central American compound would be darker, less noisy, and generate very few fireballs.
But the hard fact is that a 2010 film using...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:01 AM on Thursday, July 22, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Another Snapshot
I really do need to know which ten 2010 films are going to be nominated for Best Picture. It's not too early to figure this out. All the Oscar-campaign publicists have been hired, they all know what's going on, and we at least need to take a reading. Obviously things will evolve and develop over the next four or five months, but anyone who says it's too early to get a fix on things now just isn't being candid.
Definitely Inception and Toy Story 3 -- both pretty much locked as we speak. I'm told that The Kids Are All Right has burrowed...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:23 PM on Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Just Sayin'
All I want from Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables is some integrated Dirty Dozen action. I want a solid ensemble piece, and not three or four of them (Stallone, Jason Staham, a couple of others) getting most of the screen time while the rest parachute in for quickie cameos. I will not be happy if either Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke or Arnold Schwarzenegger do walk-ons a la Frank Sinatra in The Cannonball Run II.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:12 PM on Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Hand-Off
Movieline's Stu Van Airsdale is reporting that All Good Things, "that Andrew Jarecki/Ryan Gosling/Kirsten Dunst shelf-dweller," has moved from the Weinstein Co. to Magnolia.
Plus "according to info buried on the website for [Laemmle's Encino plex], the film could make its first appearance as early as next week," he reports. What -- no similar showing in NYC?
Stu recounts the basics: (a) the film "is based on the tabloid-ready life of New York real-estate scion Robert Durst"; (b) "Furst's wife disappeared in 1982"; and (c) Durst "was later acquitted of murdering his neighbor in Texas -- he claimed self-defense, despite...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:41 PM on Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Noyce Tapes
Here are three ten-minute mp4s from last Sunday's chat with Salt director Phillip Noyce. I delayed posting because I'd asked Jett to prune them into a single piece with three or four Salt clips integrated into the whole. But after a day or so Jett decided that Noyce's comments, no offense, were "too short or too long" and that he didn't have time to make it right. So I'm just running them raw.
Here's chapter 2 and chapter 3.
A certain chatty informality always creeps in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:08 PM on Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Los Olivos
Los Olivos' Wine Merchant Cafe -- the place where the Sideways quartet had dinner and where Miles drank-and-dialed.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:49 AM on Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Predator
I don't know many specifics about Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, which will reportedly debut at the Venice Film Festival six weeks hence, but the term "supernatural thriller" obviously sounds cooler and classier than "horror film," which is how a certain fellow described it to me several weeks ago.
"Supernatural thriller" means films like The Orphanage and Don't Look Now; "horror film" means allegedly scary Eloi gruel.
A Variety report says that Aronofsky's Swan "is likely to be the Venice opener, providing plenty of star power, with Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Winona Ryder and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:45 AM on Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Monsieur Blam-Blam
For me, the two Mesrine movies feel like the most intriguing adrenaline rides of the late summer. A total of 245 minutes (112 + 133) = a French Scarface by way of Carlos minus the politics with more sex and shouting. The usual self-destructive violent arc, life as a roman candle, this way madness lies, '70s sideburns, etc. The name is pronounced "Mayreen."
The problem for Music Box Films, of course, is that however you want to pronounce it, "Mesrine" means nothing to Joe Popcorn.
The wiser...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:41 AM on Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Two Lousy Weeks?
A Hollywood Reporter story quotes Los Angeles sheriff's officials saying that Lindsay Lohan "will likely spend about two weeks of her three-month sentence in jail." What happened to estimates that she'd serve about 25% of her 90-day sentence, or about three and a half to four weeks? The system is already cutting her slack?
That said, the lighting is strangely flattering in this mug shot. The skin tones are smooth and beguiling. The eye makeup looks professional. And I love the faintly flirtatious, come-hither expression.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:21 AM on Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Chops Are Everything
If you're like me you love filmmaking style as an end in itself. I'll always admire Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura for that jaded ennui thing, but I adore the shooting and cutting. The brushstrokes are so clean and confident and assured, the kind that only a master scenarist can apply. Phillip Noyce, the director of Salt, has never lived (or sought to live) in Antonioni's realm, but he's just as good at dispensing high-powered, studio-funded action flicks (along with quieter, smaller-scaled films like The Quiet American and Rabbit-Proof Fence) as Antonioni was in fashioning his kind of experience.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:26 PM on Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Red Salt Ball
Phillip Noyce's Salt was premiere-d and after-partied last night at Grauman's diminished Chinese (i.e., no more balcony) and then at the ballroom atop the Kodak theatre. The red motif (lighting, drapes, wall coverings) was chosen because the baddie Russians in the film are sentimental Commies at heart -- psycho assassins who live to perpetuate the glory of belligerent pre-Gorbachev Russia. It was glorious to just stand in the middle of it all and just drink in the redness. Along with the champagne, of course.
Monday, 7.19, 9:40 pm.
I missed Mr. Noyce and only saw Angie and Brad from...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:01 AM on Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Sky Pigs
What a wonderful thing it is to sip your morning coffee while listening to the thundering sound of two helicopters hovering over West Hollywood, 800 or 1000 feet up, about a quarter of a mile to the northeast. It's like that scene in Costa Gavras' Missing ('82) when John Shea and Melanie Mayron wake up in Vina del Mar on the day of the coup against Salvador Allende, and helicopters are hovering just outside their hotel-room window.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:38 AM on Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Insect Patrol
I begin each and every day by manually banning spammers, and then manually deleting their posts. Every damn day. The column is a 24/7 party/debating society/primal-scream therapy session, but the locks are open and Taiwanese and Eastern European riff-raff drop by every night, and every morning I have to kick them out, clean up their mess, tidy up. Eating up 45, 60, 90 minutes every morning.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:22 AM on Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Last Licks
Four pics from my last full day in San Francisco -- Saturday, 7,17 -- which included a hike in the Mt. Tamalpais/Muir Woods vicinity. City weather was windy and borderline chilly at times; Marin County was somewhat warmer but nothing to write home about. They barely have summers up there.
Saturday, 7.17, 3:40 pm.
Saturday, 7.17 -- neighborhood Italian joint near corner of Hayes and Gough.
7.17, 3:25 pm.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:26 PM on Monday, July 19, 2010
20 Days?
I had dinner in San Francisco with an ex-girlfriend who's into astrology, and she told me that some astrological guru she knows is predicting that the second Big Recession will kick in on August 8th. I didn't say anything to the ex, but a part of me froze when I heard this. I shared my fears with a friend over dinner last night, and he said he doesn't see it happening.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:49 PM on Monday, July 19, 2010
I, Claudius
The Sunday afternoon poolside scene at the Hollywood Roosevelt, where I did an interview yesterday afternoon with Salt director Phillip Noyce, is pure Roman decadence. It's Caligula meets New Babe City with lotsa drinks, string bikinis, body oils, etc. Not that many WASPS, though, and some of the guys looked a little dorky. (Like that shirtless guy talking to the hottie at the beginning of the video.) But it was quite a thing to see. You couldn't help but chortle.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:32 PM on Monday, July 19, 2010
Choice
If you've seen The Kids Are All Right, you need to read this ugly Andrea Peyser piece which appeared in the N.Y. Post's online edition on 7.15. She basically feels that Mark Ruffalo's "sperm donor" character, who's a little on the impulsive and immature side, deserves more respect and understanding than director-writer Lisa Cholodenko shows him over the course of the film. And that the film itself is basically Hollywood lefty gay propaganda that won't play in the heartland.
Peyser seems down with Ruffalo's character because he's straight, and she appears to dislike or at least disapprove of the gay-mom characters,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:14 PM on Monday, July 19, 2010
Early Cobb
I've never seen Chris Nolan's Following, which came out 12 years ago. It played a few festivals (Toronto, Palm Springs) but not Sundance, and I'm still too lazy to pick up the DVD, which came out in late '01. IFC Films is guessing lot of folks who've seen Inception are just as lazy, and might be in the mood to check out this 16mm monochrome mood flick, shot in London. They're re-releasing it on demand for three months via various cable providers.
"A struggling, unemployed...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:27 AM on Monday, July 19, 2010
New Zone
We all know about the theology of grain monks (i.e., an old film should never be refined beyond what audiences saw when it played the local Bijou), but do they have allies in the TV-transfer realm? I'm asking because it seems a bit curious (and at the same time very cool) that a forthcoming Bluray of the first Twilight Zone season ('59 to '60) will look better than what Rod Serling was able to see in his private screening room, and far better than what Average Joes saw on their Sylvania or RCA Victor sets.
"All new...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:00 AM on Monday, July 19, 2010
Full Tank
A financial-sector guy who always sends me reactions to HE stories rather than post a public comment says he's totally smitten by Inception. "I saw it yesterday and the only knock I can come up with on it is that it might be too good," he writes.
"I was telling some co-workers that this guy might be the answer to every gripe people have about Hollywood these days. 'There are no original stories,' 'Too much CGI,' 'Sick of 3D,' 'Everything is dumbed down,' etc. Nolan is making high-level high stakes popcorn movies that deliver on almost every angle and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:11 AM on Monday, July 19, 2010
Soul Snatchers
If by clapping three times I could eradicate all forthcoming comic-book movies (and thereby impose a permanent frown on the faces of Devin Faraci, Drew McWeeny and the rest of the die-hard Comic-Con crowd), I would clap three times. Same difference if I could magically eliminate the notion of a superhero from the minds of all men, women and children on the planet earth, you bet.
For comic-book movies are surely the scourge of the film industry -- agents of infantilism and same-itude, a pox upon the art and intrigue of storytelling, a tumor inside the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:15 AM on Monday, July 19, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Her London Moment?
95 minutes after my L.A. arrival I was speaking with Ophelia Lovibond, whom I took an instant shine to when I saw her in Sam Taylor Wood 's Nowhere Boy, which the Weinstein Co. still hasn't released. (It'll open domestically on 10.8) So Joe Popcorn doesn't know Lovibond at all.
But the fact that she was chosen to costar in William Monahan's London Boulevard (which she says will open in November) and Ivan Reitman 's Friends With Benefits makes her, at the very least, an "industry" favorite -- i.e, a name, a comer, a significant presence...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:30 PM on Sunday, July 18, 2010
Southbound
I'm about to catch a flight from Oakland to Burbank. A busy day awaits. A chat with Ophelia Lovibond (Nowhere Boy, London Boulevard) at 3 pm, an interview with Salt director Phillip Noyce at 6 pm, and then a dinner at 8 pm.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:00 AM on Sunday, July 18, 2010
Passion Reviled
N.Y. Times columnist Frank Rich has written a tasty retro-bashing of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ in today's edition, "The movie was nakedly anti-Semitic, to the extreme that the Temple priests were all hook-nosed Shylocks and Fagins with rotten teeth," he states. "It was also ludicrously violent -- a homoerotic 'exercise in lurid sadomasochism,' as Christopher Hitchens described it then, for audiences who 'like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time.'
"Nonetheless, many of the same American pastors who routinely inveighed against show-business indecency granted special dispensation to their young congregants...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:54 AM on Sunday, July 18, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Ghost Syndrome
What's the deal if you're the author of some excellent magazine articles from the '90s, '80s or before that have never been scanned or archived, and therefore aren't findable on Google? I'll tell you what the deal is. Your work pretty much ceases to exist, and if you've retired or moved to Tibet or what-have-you then you're pretty much a ghost. Magazine writers have to have their hands and pawprints in the 21st Century cyber world, or they're dead.
Last night I heard from TV and feature writer David Handelman, who's in the prime of his life and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:39 AM on Saturday, July 17, 2010
Welcome Difference
The second time is the charm with Inception, especially if you catch it in IMAX. It definitely comes together with a second viewing while the things you enjoyed the first time are agreeably underlined and intensified. My ambiguous feelings about Chris Nolan's epic have now been significantly lessened. I am pretty much in the boat now. Faraci was more right than Scott. Inception is dense and challenging, but a masterpiece of its kind.
Sound quality is a key factor. I made my 8:30 pm showing at the Metreon last night, and what a pleasure to (a) actually be...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:25 AM on Saturday, July 17, 2010
Vigorous and Then Some
Boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino reports that by Sunday night Inception will have $58,500,000 in the domestic bank. It made $21.3 million yesterday on 3792 screens, counting about $3 million made from the Thursday midnight shows. So it really made about $18 million last night -- let's be fair.
The last figures I saw were 18 first choice, 23 unaided awareness, and a 48 definite interest, which indicated to me (and I realize I'm not exactly a box-office wizard-slash-Nostradamus) a $45 to $50 million take. So this is a little better than expected -- fine.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:41 AM on Saturday, July 17, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:24 PM on Friday, July 16, 2010
"Grrl Power"
This afternoon's shock is that while Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt is down with Salt, Variety is silent -- slacking off! And no Todd McCarthy Indiewire review either. But the Star's Marshall Fine is on the job: "Long story short: It's the most exciting popcorn movie of the summer."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:26 PM on Friday, July 16, 2010
Brown Suits Don't Make It
The one thing that holds Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo back from full emotional/psychological integration is a thing that Hitchcock himself lamented after the fact: James Stewart looks too old and square and plugged-up to be a tragic romantic figure. You just can't invest in him as a man with an unruly libido. And that awful brown suit he wears in the early to middle portion of the film is like anti-matter. It's the worst looking suit ever worn by a movie star in Hollywood history.
I understand that...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:53 PM on Friday, July 16, 2010
Band-Aid Response
Apple announced this morning it will give free "bumper" cases to iPhone 4.0 owners suffering from the "death grip" problem -- i.e., losing reception bars due to holding the lower-left portion of the phone with a bare hand.
I've had a bumper from Day One and never had any reception problems (i.e., other than the usual call-dropping that I've gotten used to with Apple and AT&T).
When I was waiting in line to buy this phone at the Apple store on West 14th on 6.24, I read that the bumpers were being given free to buyers in England. Anyone paying...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:09 PM on Friday, July 16, 2010
Furious Brushstrokes
I was just listening to a Barbie Doll CNN showbiz reporter discuss the most recent Mel Gibson tape with a CNN anchor. The reporter said people were "confused" by the disconnect between the rage in Gibson's voice and the fact that he's such a devout Catholic and had "made such a beautiful film about Jesus Christ." Okay, stop right there. Every sharp critic in the country noted that The Passion of the Christ was first and foremost about bleeding, beatings and bludgeonings, which is what Apocalypto was also largely about (along with beheadings). How thick do you have to be to not sense...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:51 PM on Friday, July 16, 2010
Travers Caresses Salt
A review of Salt by Rolling Stone's Peter Travers won't appear until next week, but it's quite positive (apart from carpings about credibility). Reviews from Variety, Hollywood Reporter and Indiewire's Todd McCarthy will probably hit today, or certainly by tomorrow.
"Starring slinky-sexy-scary Angelina Jolie as a CIA agent accused of going over to the Russians, Salt is primed to keep your pulse racing so your brain will stop thinking, 'WTF!' Go with the illogic or you'll miss the fun. Salt has the action to slam you hard, batter your senses and make a case for Jolie as a superpower with the figurative...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:18 PM on Friday, July 16, 2010
Out Of The Gate
Variety's Andrew Stewart is reporting that Inception made a "healthy" $3 million from midnight showings on 2000 screens. A lot of people have to go work on Friday morning, but $1500 a screen doesn't sound like much to me. Boxoffice's Phil Contrino reminds that Avatar's midnight debut was $3.5 million, and that "huge midnight grosses are usually reserved for sequels or established properties."
If any HE readers caught Inception last night I'd love to hear what happened. What they thought, what the room "felt" like, predictions, etc.
Today's tracking has Inception with an 18 first choice, 23 unaided awareness, and a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:07 AM on Friday, July 16, 2010
Sorkin Edwards Hunter
Naomi Watts, obviously, is the likeliest candidate to play Rielle Hunter in Aaron Sorkin's forthcoming John Edwards biopic, which Sorkin will direct as well as write. The film will be based on Andrew Young's "The Politician: An Insider's Account of John Edwards' Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down."
(l.) Rielle Hunter, John Edwards; (r.) Aaron Sorkin.
So who will play Edwards, Young, Elizabeth Edwards, etc.? Movieline's Kyle Buchanan is saying Amy Ryan might be the best Rielle.
If this film is done right it will be...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:04 AM on Friday, July 16, 2010
Show Me Someone
...who's not a parasite, and I'll say a prayer for him. And it doesn't matter if the quote is actually "name me someone," etc. Sometimes the author is wrong and the listener is right.
This Museum of Moving Image essay by Aaron Aradillas and Matt Zoller Seitz "is about damaged loners who stand outside the spotlight looking for a way in -- people who fantasize about knowing, becoming, protecting, or destroying their heroes. All About Eve, Star 80, The King of Comedy, The Assassination...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:14 AM on Friday, July 16, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Blue Paycheck
It was reported earlier today that Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) will play Mystique in Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class. The 20th Century Fox pic, due on 6.3.11, will also stars Kevin Bacon, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Aaron Johnson, A Single Man's Nicholas Hoult, Alice Eve and Caleb Landry Jones. Rebecca Romijn played Mystique in the first three X-Men films.
Jennifer Lawrence; Rebecca Romijn as Mystique.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:28 PM on Thursday, July 15, 2010
Them Green Hills
If I do say so myself, the shot used for the cover of Criterion's forthcoming The Thin Red Line DVD/Bluray (out on 9.28) is exceptional, and so is the creased paper/folded magazine design. Terrence Malick's wack-a-doodle decision to all-but-eliminate Adrien Brody from this film nearly killed the latter's career. It was saved, of course, by Roman Polanski's The Pianist.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:21 PM on Thursday, July 15, 2010
Tribute, Respect
On 10.26 Criterion will be releasing Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) on DVD and Bluray, and with a 1.66 to 1 aspect ratio....thank God they didn't crop to 1.78 to 1! HE's Moises Chiullan asks if "all this 1.66:1-ification is Jan Harlan's doing? He's the guy with the authority, and has been involved in all the 1.66:1 releases of 1.33:1 Kubricks." I've been a 1.66 advocate for years, fighting back against the 1.78 to 1 fascists and losing. Pop the champagne.
[Moises edit 7/16: For...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:01 PM on Thursday, July 15, 2010
Scott vs. Faraci
"The accomplishments of Inception are mainly technical, which is faint praise only if you insist on expecting something more from commercial entertainment. That audiences do -- and should -- expect more is partly, I suspect, what has inspired some of the feverish early notices hailing Inception as a masterpiece, just as the desire for a certifiably great superhero movie led to the wild overrating of The Dark Knight. In both cases Mr. Nolan's virtuosity as a conjurer of brilliant scenes and stunning set pieces, along with his ability to invest grandeur and novelty into conventional themes, have fostered the illusion that he...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:52 AM on Thursday, July 15, 2010
Gough and Ivy
It was light jacket-and-scarf weather in San Francisco's Haight district last night. A welcome change for a veteran of New York's inferno-like temperatures, but nonetheless odd. Leaves were fluttering and tree branches were slightly swaying in the ocean winds. But what an appealing place to savor for a few days. In Alan Parker's Shoot The Moon ('82), Albert Finney quipped that San Francisco "could die of quaint." I think it's more stricken with exquisite design sense than anything else.
Even the bums...excuse me, the homeless have a little something extra, a slight panache. This morning I passed...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:17 AM on Thursday, July 15, 2010
Night and Devil
"Five people stuck in an elevator, and one of them is the devil." Obviously a catchy hook, although it should have ideally been shot 50 years ago as a half-hour Twilight Zone episode. Although produced by M. Night Shyamalan and based on a Shyamalan "story," the screenwriter of Devil is Brian Nelson, and the co-directors are Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle.
I feel good about this because I'm down with the leading cast members -- Chris Messina (Vicky Christina Barcelona, Julie & Julia), Geoffrey Arend (husband of Christina Hendricks) and Bojana Novakovic.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:35 AM on Thursday, July 15, 2010
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:16 AM on Thursday, July 15, 2010
Son of Planes, Trains?
Whenever I see that Zach Galifianakis beard, I go "all right, here we go again...the unbridled, unregenerate, barrel-chested man-child in another comedy!" Todd Phillips' Due Date (Warner Bros.) is due on 11.5.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:29 AM on Thursday, July 15, 2010
Inception Crossfire
It's being suggested by Sasha Stone and David Poland that Warner Bros. publicity pretty much engineered the Inception backlash by giving that early looksee to the online Cool Kidz (i.e., bloggers like Faraci, McWeeny, Pond, Tapley, Stone, Hammond, Gilchrist), which goaded the Second Wavers (straight-critic essayist types like Edelstein, McCarthy, Zacharek, White, Pinkerton, Reed) to slap down the Cool Kidz for being impetuous and overly fawning.
"The situation was set up improperly," Stone writes. "Critics are the elders of the tribe. They see themselves as a cut above everyone else but more than that, they have to see...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:15 AM on Thursday, July 15, 2010
The Killers
Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu's Biutiful still hasn't landed as distribution deal two months after its Cannes Film Festival debut. The reason, I gather, is that distributors fear that it's too much of a downer (scruffy Barcelona, a gloomy-eyed protagonist, ghosts, cancer, mental illness), especially with a significant percentage of Cannes critics (like EW's Owen Gleiberman) having put it down.
A lot of people (myself included) thought Biutiful was the shit -- one of the finest 2010 films thus far. And you'd think that Javier Bardem...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:34 AM on Thursday, July 15, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
No Sale
Six-plus years ago screenwriter William Goldman (Marathon Man, All The President's Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), explained what a "drop out " moment is -- i.e., when something happens that just makes you give up interest and faith in a film. He cited a bit in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation.
He observed that as the film begins, Bill Murray's character "has just been in a movie where there is a fabulous vehicle chase, buses destroyed, explosions and, we find out, he did his own driving." Murray, in short, "is playing a famous action star.
"Look, I started following him...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:15 AM on Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Funny Face
I'm not trying to sound like an asshole but I don't like Keir Gilchrist, the kid playing the kid. He's too dweeby looking, too deadpanny, like a young Jack Webb or something. Sorry, but seeing or not seeing a movie comes from snap judgments like this one. It's Kind of a Funny Story (Focus Features, 9.24) is from director-writers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson).
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:02 AM on Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Four More Slams
In the space of 24 hours Inception has been fired upon by five name-brand critics -- New York's David Edelstein (revealed yesterday) plus Indiewire's Todd McCarthy, N.Y. Press critic Armond White, the Village Voice's Nick Pinkerton and the N.Y. Observer's Rex Reed.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:27 AM on Wednesday, July 14, 2010
My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama
Are you man enough for Inception? Or are you a punk who runs for cover when challenged or threatened? It's early Tuesday evening at the Lincoln Square plex, and the lights go down and I'm telling myself, "Okay, just remember...this is primarily about Leonardo DiCaprio's family issues (a bit like what his character was dealing with in Shutter Island, only in a trippier and more GQ vein), and that Marion Cotillard's 'Mal' is the monkey wrench, and there are three dream states (deep, deeper and deepest), and bathroom breaks are out of the question.
But soon my...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:22 AM on Wednesday, July 14, 2010
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:16 AM on Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
She Says
"Considering how many inaccurate media claims have been made regarding myself and the potential series Tilda for HBO, I wish to set the record straight," Nikki Finke wrote earlier today. "I had no prior knowledge that this show was being created or put into development. I have never written about the show. I have never encouraged Deadline.com journalists to write about the show. I had no prior agreement with HBO or anyone regarding the show. I had no creative or consulting involvement with the show.
"So why am I making my first and last statement about Tilda today?
"Only because there is...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:45 PM on Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Double Down
"I was suffering from the very beginning of Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime (IFC Films, 7.23)," I wrote during last year's Toronto Film Festival, "and there was very little respite until I bolted, which was about 65 minutes in. I'd been seething, scowling, muttering, looking at my watch and asking myself, 'Should I do the full suffer and stick it out until the end, or can I escape after an hour or so?'
"I left because I've never related to Solondz's more-or-less constant theme -- the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:22 PM on Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Unthinkable?
"Just a month ago the tech market was gripped by iPhone 4 fever," writes cbsnews.com's Charles Cooper, "[but] the conversation has shifted and some public relations executives say that a recall is likely, if not inevitable."
The tipping point is Consumer Reports having recently said no dice after testing the iPhone 4 and determining that the antenna problems aren't caused by software issues and that it's basically a hardware design issue.
"What are the odds that Apple would feel enough pressure to order a recall? Place your bets. Apple continues to sell huge volumes of iPhone 4s, [but] this is...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:41 PM on Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Heat
7.12, 8:10 pm.
Chelsea Clearview Cinemas, rear lobby -- Sunday, 7.11, 8:40 pm.
I can see Henry Hill (i.e., the real-life model of Ray Liotta's character in Goodfellas) being confident enough to walk around, but if you were Hill would you announce your presence at a particular event in advance in the New York area?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:17 PM on Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Shift in Weather
The rain currently drenching Manhattan is a metaphor for the wet-blanket wrath of David Edelstein and the other Inception naysayers to come. The first euphoric wave is over, and now it's time for those who were kept out of the early screenings to beat the shit out of this film...if, that is, it seems like the right and fair thing to do.
This is all speculative horseshit, of course, but going au contraire seems like the only independent way to go now. Unless, of course, Inception...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:08 AM on Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Big Day
A screening of Salt happens this morning, and then the big all-media screening of Inception this evening for all us low-priority caboose types. The seven-hour break will be split between Starbucks filing time and stuff to take care of before tomorrow's flight to California.
Oh, and Starbucks wifi blows now. It was fast and smooth when I was paying for it, but it's been free since July 1st and that means everybody's using it, which means it's slower than molasses and barely worth the effort. It's like municipal wifi in Cleveland. Whatever's free to the public is usually a wash. Quality comes...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:47 AM on Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Da Coolness + 7
Six and a half years ago I ran an extended version of an Empire piece called "The Top 100 MVP's -- Most Valuable Players." It was based on a telephone and e-mail poll I conducted in the summer of '03, and then updated the following November. The central question went as follows: "Which Hollywood folk are due the most credit for making (or otherwise significantly contributing to) those relatively few movies each year that really deserve to be called cool, high-calibre, great, memorable, or some kind of really special?
It was all relative and depended, obviously, on who I was talking to, and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:08 AM on Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Brilliant
Cheers to Garrison Dean and the Monocular Group for making an Expendables trailer that Tim Palen and this Lionsgate marketing team probably should have created themselves. Wait...was this a secret sub-contract?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:47 AM on Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Kids!
I was whipped when I last saw The Kids Are All Right, or half of it, at last January's Sundance Film Festival. It struck me as good enough -- believably written, unaffected acting -- but not levitational. I was in and out, waiting, checking my watch. I decided to duck out and catch another film I had to see.
I saw Kids again last night at the Clearview Cinemas, and this time to the finish. It went down pretty well! Not a great film but a much better one than I recall. (Being well rested makes a difference.) I don't think it's the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:19 PM on Monday, July 12, 2010
All The Same
I was a bit confused about Magnolia opening Leon Gast's Smash His Camera theatrically on 7.30 despite the doc having preemed on HBO roughly seven weeks ago (on 6.7.10) and still being available via HBO On Demand. (I reviewed it favorably just prior to this debut.) The solution, according to a publicist, is that "the film is scheduled to stop airing on HBO and will no longer be available on HBO On Demand next week."
Why not, right? It's an amusing, above-average film, and well worth a theatrical looksee. Not everyone has...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:02 PM on Monday, July 12, 2010
Hedge Clippers
Why would any semi-healthy person want to watch a brand-new, grosser-than-the-original I Spit On Your Grave? What kind of animal wants to watch cartoony yee-haw woman-haters humiliate an actress and then watch her get some payback by going all medieval Antichrist on their asses? Who's the audience? Under-20 lowlife males and who else?
Scurvy violent scumbags in violent movies are always, always played by actors with no talent or crude chops. And if they have anything good to show they aren't allowed to make use of it....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:24 PM on Monday, July 12, 2010
"You Need Medication!""
Radar Online posted a second Mel Gibson tape about three hours ago. I think the point was made with the first recording, and that this is, like, overkill. Gibson has an ugly mouth, an uncontrollable temper and may be physically violent -- we get it already.
But as long as some of us are listening to this horrible-ness, it would at least serve the cause of good storytelling if someone could try to explain what led up to the arguments. The tit-for-tat that resulted in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:07 AM on Monday, July 12, 2010
Adieu, Mr. Pekar
Harvey Pekar, the 70 year-old author of the ground-breaking comic book series "American Splendor" who was portrayed by Paul Giamatti in the much-admired film of the same name, was found dead earlier today in his Cleveland home. He'd been coping with prostate cancer, high blood pressure, asthma and (naturally) depression. Tough deal but he made his mark.
Joyce and Harvey Pekar at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival -- taken by myself.
I interviewed Harvey and wife Joyce (who was played by Hope Davis in the film) on the big green lawn of the Grand Hotel at the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:53 AM on Monday, July 12, 2010
Wise, Tough, Humane
With pretty much everyone resigned to the notion of Roman Polanski being extradited to the U.S. very soon and almost certainly doing time for a few months for having had unlawful sex with a minor 33 years ago, Swiss authorities have manned up and told the Los Angeles district attorney's office to suck it -- no Polish sausage for you to taunt, humiliate and kick around. Too bad, assholes!
For RoPo is a free man this morning. Probably on a train or a plane back to Paris as we speak. Hardcore Polanski coddlers need to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:22 AM on Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Ninety and Change
Apart from its reportedly strong entertainment value, exhibitors are doubly delighted with Phillip Noyce's Salt because of its 95-minute running time (plus titles), which obviously allows for more shows per day than the 148-minute Inception. Five or six 11 am-to-midnight shows daily vs. four, not counting midnighters. What's the shortest action thriller ever released? I'm asking.
The Boston Herald's Stephen Schaefer, fresh from this weekend's Washington, D.C. Salt junket, has called it "the best damn thriller I've seen in years. Noyce once again nails the political thriller, mixing high octane action with, as we've learned from recent headlines, real-world spy issues. Angelina...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:02 PM on Sunday, July 11, 2010
Loose Lips
Opening opposite Salt and Countdown to Zero on 7.23 is Christian Carlon's Farewell, a fact-based espionage drama involving Russian secrets funneled to the French, and set in the early '80s. There's an immediate Day of the Jackal/Smiley's People vibe from the trailer. It played in Telluride last year. An intriguing John Anderson piece in the N.Y. Times got me started.
The costars are Guillaume Canet, Emir Kusturica, Guillaume Canet, Ingeborga Dapknaite, David Soul, Dina Korzun, Phillipe Magnan, Yevgeni Kharlanov, Willem Dafoe and Fred Ward.
Only one...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:18 PM on Sunday, July 11, 2010
Jack Is Back
The beginning of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's Jack Goes Boating (Overture, 9.17) "isn't terribly made or horribly off its game," I wrote last January. "It establishes an amiable, easy-going tone with dabs of low-key humor, but I really, really didn't want to hang with Hoffman's Jack, an oafish Manhattan limousine driver. Jack is pudgy -- okay, fat -- and rumpled and conversationally slow as molasses. He wears a dim and drowsy expression, and seems borderline stupid and to some degree emotionally shut down.
"'I don't like...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:35 AM on Sunday, July 11, 2010
Rockwell and Hollywood Beards
Todd McCarthy's 7.9 Indiewire column about visiting the just-opened Norman Rockwell exhibit as the Smithsonian Museum with his 12 year-old son Nick didn't quite ring my bell -- sorry. McCarthy attended the 7.2 opening because he'd been hired to write the catalogue notes, and because he's chummy with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who lent their 57 Rockwell originals for the show (which will go until 1.2.11).
But I love the photo of Nick and Spielberg. Nick could almost be a Rockwell kid out of a 1930s painting, and Spielberg (who has stubby-looking fingers) gives...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:54 AM on Sunday, July 11, 2010
Banshee vs. Rabbi
Last night around midnight MCN's David Poland tweeted that Deadline's Nikki Finke had written him the following message: "YOU ARE BEING SUED (INCLUDING FOR YOUR DEFAMATORY TWITTERS) NO MORE DELAYS. THAT'S IT." More bluster and brimstone, or does she really mean it this time?
We all know about harsh judgments from Rabbi Dave, but if legal action results he's clearly the Good Guy and Finke is not. The matter will never go to court, but it would be delightful if it did. It would be like the O.J. trial -- the whole town would be watching. If I was the right...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:51 AM on Sunday, July 11, 2010
Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Two nights ago at Houston's Angelika Film Center, one of the stars of Restrepo -- Sgt. Misha Pemble-Belkin -- dropped by for a q & a. The following day Culturemap's Joe Leydon (who may or may not have conducted the interview with Pemble-Belkin) posted an admiring account of his visit.
Restrepo is a narrowly focused, bravely captured documentary about U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan's Korangal Valley from '07 to '08. Pemble-Belkin, now stationed at Louisiana's Fort Polk, was one of those interviewed and befriended by co-directors Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington during their year-long stay....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:10 AM on Sunday, July 11, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:42 PM on Saturday, July 10, 2010
A Hatful of Rain
Last night a friend attended a special American Cinematheque/Aero theatre presentation of two Don Murray films -- The Hoodlum Priest ('61) and Bus Stop ('56). Murray, 81, sat for an interview between showings. This reminded me of Fred Zinneman's A Hatful of Rain ('57), a black-and-white CinemaScope drama in which Murray plays a heroin addict whose effort to hide this fact from his wife (Eva Marie Saint) convinces her he's having an affair.
I've been a fool for monochrome 2.35 to 1 all my life, and would eventually love to see at least a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:17 PM on Saturday, July 10, 2010
Free The Beaver!
I'm presuming that Summit Entertainment chief Rob Friedman is currently in uh-oh mode about what to do with Jodie Foster's The Beaver, the oddball Mel Gibson dramedy that Summit was going to release in the fall. Gibson's latest public-relations disaster, I suspect, has led Friedman to think about bumping Foster's film into spring or fall 2011 on the assumption that the blowback to Gibson's racial rhetoric will be less damaging if they let everything simmer down, etc.
That would be very unwise. Because they've got a hot iron in Gibson playing a nutbag, and they...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:54 AM on Saturday, July 10, 2010
McWeeny Zone
I've made a recent decision to visit Los Angeles from 7.18 to 7.25, and so I figured I'd drop in for a day or so at ComicCon 2010 as long l'm as I'm in the neighborhood. I can stand about two days' worth, at most. Make it 36 hours. I wrote and got the usual "forget it"/too late"/"registration is closed" crap, but that's to be expected. If I can wangle it, fine. And if I can't, fine. ComicCon is usually hell to deal with, but I wouldn't mind a quickie.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:46 AM on Saturday, July 10, 2010
Amarcord
"I saw the lamest minds of my generation driven mad by overdeveloped, freeway-clogged hills and valleys, filthy with condos and malls and fast-food joints and corporate chain stores and looking for an angry cappuccino. Everyone cruising around in their late-model cars and talking/texting on their smart phones and driving in a sort of mad-impulse way, accelerating and then hitting the brakes whenever and doing sudden U-turns between slurps and sips and bip-bip-bips on their iPhones. It's psychotic -- tens of thousands of Louis the Sixteenths driving over/under/sideways/down through grandiose remnants of the over-leveraged Clinton-Bush economic boom. It's all less than zero." -- posted...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:11 AM on Saturday, July 10, 2010
No More Hiding
Yesterday I briefly posted a pic of the "other" Matthew Wilder (i.e., the "Break My Stride" singer) in my riff about Matthew Zoller Seitz's Salon interview with the presumed director of Lindsay Lohan's next film, a Linda Lovelace biopic. Here are photos of the actual guy, taken two years ago at Cinevegas.
Matthew Wilder, director of the possibly upcoming Inferno, during an appearance at Cinevegas '08 to promote Your Name Here.
HE reader Circumvrent reported that E!'s The Soup "has a clip in...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:23 AM on Saturday, July 10, 2010
Real Machete
Machete (20th Century Fox, 9.3.10) looks pretty good -- funny, cheesy, retro -- but it's been half-directed and half-written by Robert Rodriguez, and that's bad. And good for Danny Trejo -- an excellent fellow -- but I wonder how many under-30 Eloi will flock to the movie because of his powerfully built, bulging-neck-muscles Hispanic machismo thing.
And speaking of that, there's the sardonic Latino flavor in this trailer? The last one had a little more smirk humor. And where's the scene where Machete beats the shit out...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:23 AM on Saturday, July 10, 2010
Interlude
I used to think I was some kind of half-Libertarian, half-lefty hybrid, but I'm not. I'm basically a tax-and-spend, Polanski-coddling, hunt-down-the-rightwing-nutters-and-put-them-in-green-reducation-camps Rooseveltian elitist liberal, but I respect Libertarians, and I like listening to Penn Jillette explain the basic Libertarian drill. I don't agree with him (how could he be for a weak and ineffective government in the wake of the BP Gulf spill?), but I admire his phrasings.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:18 AM on Saturday, July 10, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Perfect Finish
Sixtyish Rich Guy: "Nice shootin', son. What's your name?" Young Cop: "Murphy."
The greatest thing about this finale is that when this moment unspooled during my first viewing of Robocop, in July of '87 at Grauman's Chinese, a guy right next to me knew what Peter Weller's final line was going to be before he said it. As soon as the Old Man asked, he said "Murphy." Everyone knew that line! That's when a movie is really working.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:26 PM on Friday, July 9, 2010
Outta There
Congratulations to Rose Kuo on being named the new executive director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. She's replacing Mara Manus, who stepped into the job only two years ago. So what happened with Manus? I"m not one to voice unwarranted suspicions, but people generally don't give up prestigious high-paying gigs with the Film Society of Lincoln Center unless formidable forces have allied against them.
"[Manus] has been persona non grata over there for a long while," a New York distribution source says. "She tried to relationship things in a positive way over the last six months, but I think...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:15 PM on Friday, July 9, 2010
Gandolfini, Stewart, Leo
This is an okay, down-to-business trailer for a very decent little character drama, which Samuel Goldywn & Destination are bringing out on 11.5. But why doesn't the footage look a little more vivid? And I think it's probably a good idea to never use the word "sometimes" in a trailer slogan, as in "sometimes it takes a stranger to help you see the world outside." That may be true, but it hurts to hear that.
It would be nice, by the way, to forego commentary alluding...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:17 AM on Friday, July 9, 2010
Don't Wanna Hear It
Yesterday morning Salon's Matt Zoller Seitz posted a q & a with Matthew Wilder, director of the possibly forthcoming Inferno , a Linda Lovelace biopic that Lindsay Lohan has agreed to star in. My humble opinion is that his comments suggest the mind and values of a delusional, self-promoting, truth-denying weasel.
Not once does Wilder allow that Lohan might have even a mild substance-abuse problem, or that she might have caused her troubles by being reckless and ignoring court orders. With Iagos like Wilder giving support and comfort to Lohan, you can see why she...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:45 AM on Friday, July 9, 2010
Predators Club
Having seen Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal's Predators, I was shocked this morning to see a Rotten Tomatoes riff-raff rating of 71%. Some film critics are just go-along whores. Anyone who tells his/her readers that Predators is some kind of rock-out popcorn thriller is just slacking off. All it is, at best, is a time-passer. No tension, no originality, no rooting factor. It's a re-tread and a re-hash, which is what you always get when Rodriguez, who produced, is behind the curtain in any capacity.
The opening shot is of Adrien Brody, playing...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:12 AM on Friday, July 9, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Best Hillcoat Ever
This is better than that grizzly western in which everyone was lathered with chicken grease, and more spiritually resonant than The Road. (Well, how could it not be?) The narration sounds Terrence Malicky, obviously. The music is what finally makes it. Where's it from?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:55 PM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Stealth
A New York media guy who's seen Phillip Noyce's Salt (Columbia, 7.23) says it "plays like gangbusters. It's a thoroughly entertaining piece of popcorn that may very well launch a new franchise for Angelina Jolie (forget those horrible Tomb Raider abominations -- this really is her Bourne).
"Clearly it's more accessible than Inception and goes down a whole lot more easily (not to mention it's at least 30 minutes shorter). That said if I had to guess both Sony and WB will be quite happy with what they get back on these. Inception will no doubt be the cool film to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:48 PM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Statement
David Fincher's The Social Network (Columbia, 10.1) will be the 9.24 opening night attraction for the 48th New York Film Festival. I've said plenty about this film -- I don't think I need to repeat myself. Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield costar. The NYFF runs from 8.24 through 10.10.
The Scott Rudin-produced drama, in other words, wont be playing at the Telluride, Venice or Toronto film festivals. So when's the press screening? When should...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:29 PM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Longer Avatar
A slightly longer version of Avatar with a bit more than eight minutes of added footage will be released in theaters on 8.27 in both Digital 3D and IMAX 3D. One presumes that the Jake-and-Neytriri sex scene will be included. In a statement Cameron only said that the footage will contain "new creatures and action scenes."
Cameron told me at a Santa Barbara Film Festival gathering last February that he and 20th Century Fox believed that Avatar could have kept going and going if it hadn't been for 3-D theatrical commitments made to Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:49 AM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Carson's Hopper Doc
There's a "Cinefamily" screening tomorrow night at L.A.'s Silent Movie theatre of L.M. Kit Carson and Lawrence Schiller's The American Dreamer, a 1971 doc about the late Dennis Hopper. The 90-minute feature, which hasn't been seen in eons, will begin at 9:30 pm. (Following a 7:30 pm showing of Easy Rider.) It's the kickoff attraction for Cinefamily's Hopper tribute series.
Carson will regale with Hopper stories after the show ends, or roughly around 11 pm. I wrote Carson and asked for a sample. He wrote back with the following: "Hopper's 50th birthday hit while we were shooting Texas Chainsaw Masaacre...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:14 AM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Asking
If anyone has PDFs of the scripts for (a) David Guggenheim's Safe House, the Denzel Washington project, and (b) Dustin Lance Black's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which Gus Van Sant will direct, please send along. Thanks.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:20 AM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Handles
Kisses director Lance Daly after Tuesday night's screening at the Tribeca Grand. Here again is my review.
I've been having problems with my left eye due to screen brightness. Hours and hours of writing each day is causing my left eye to get red and puffy. (The right eye is feeling left out.) So I've been (a) turning the screen brightness down and (b) wearing these green glasses while I write. It helps. It definitely feels less stressful.
One of the things that Brooklynites love about the L line...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:08 AM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Poor Little Suddenly
From a home-video perspective, Suddenly ('54) is one of the most shat-upon little movies of all time. A moderately decent political-assassination thriller with Frank Sinatra as a psycho bad guy, it's been in the public domain for decades, and has always looked gray, hazy and diminished. Until a year ago, I mean, when Legend Films put out a slightly better looking b & w version. Now it has a bluish tint, and is more sharply defined.
The Legend guys also included a colorized version that corrected the legendary error made by the bozos at Hal...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:19 AM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Try, Try Again
One of the best analysis pieces I've ever posted to this column (and we're talking literally thousands of items and stories since HE's August 2004 launch) was my High Noon vs. Rio Bravo thing, which I wrote about three years ago. I'm very proud of having made it clear to God and Peter Bogdanovich and Quentin Tarantino and all the other Bravo cultists out there why I feel Howard Hawks' 1959 film has, okay, some merit (it's a half-decent film) but doesn't hold a candle to Fred Zinneman's 1952 classic.
Howard Hawks had to know that...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:36 AM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Only If You Notice
I'm reminded of Jean Luc Godard's intriguing assessment of Rio Bravo, which is basically that it's a better film than High Noon because the exceptionally good things in Rio Bravo can be ignored, and therefore may be unnoticable to a good-sized portion of the audience.
"The great filmmakers always tie themselves down by complying with the rules of the game," Godard wrote. "Rio Bravo is a work of extraordinary psychological insight and aesthetic perception, but Howard Hawks has made his film so that the insight can pass unnoticed without disturbing the audience that has come to see a Western like all others. Hawks...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:02 AM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Principles
The initial title of Tuesday's Lindsay Lohan post was "Throw The Key Away." I wrote this on my iPhone early Tuesday evening while waited for a screening of Kisses to begin at the Tribeca Grand. The thought was "this woman has shown herself to be all but hopeless and needs to be slapped awake or she'll be dead in ten or fifteen years, so don't slap her on the wrist -- hit her hard and pretend to throw away the key. Maybe that'll get through."
So the headline didn't quite say it. But it was close, and sometimes you just need...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:20 AM on Thursday, July 8, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Two Years After
I'm way late to the table regarding Lance Daly's scruffy and charming and very well-acted Kisses, which Oscilloscope Laboratories is opening on July 16th. And yet it's one of the best films I've seen in 2010. It's not without issues, but it has this honest, no b.s. young-love groove that I believed and fell into in a sort of Ken Loach-y way. The problem is that it's been around forever and I can't expunge that fact from my mind.
It may seem too inside-baseball to go...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:39 PM on Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Fresh Hints
It's true, apparently, about Criterion Co. offering a visual hint in their latest newsletter about their intention to release James L. Brooks' Broadcast News (1987), presumably in DVD format only but Bluray would be extra nice. I tend to regard the passage of time in terms of acts or chapters or movements rather than years, but even with that buffer in mind it feels...well, not exactly queer or curious to think of this film being 23 years old. But damned if it ain't.
There's also been a recent indication somewhere within Criterion's Facebook page that Alexander McKendrick's Sweet Smell of Success...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:57 PM on Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Tampico Hot
New York City's sweatbox agony will soon be over. It was 103 yesterday and right now -- 3:15 pm -- it "feels" like it's 101, although the thermometer is actually down to 96. Thursday will be in the high 80s and on Friday the average may actually settle down to the 70s.
I know that the climate in Manhattan yesterday felt like Abu Dhabi mixed with Panama mixed with a hot frying pan, and with everyone afflicted with an energy-depleting virus . The air felt trapped and uncirculated and unholy, as if a sadistic God had...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:01 PM on Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Minor Scuffle
In a response to last week's Greatest Insults video (which I posted on 7.1), Philadelphia Inquirer critic Carrie Rickey yesterday voiced a preference for ridicule with "more polish and less profanity." Like, for example, Burt Lancaster's kiss-off to Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success (1957): "You're dead, son. Go get buried."
That is slightly incorrect. The line is actually "You're dead, son. Go get yourself buried." No biggie in itself, but Rickey used the quote in her headline. So I wrote her yesterday afternoon at 5:48 pm (sitting in Fanelli's, using my...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:10 AM on Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The Crowd Roared
Lindsay Lohan has been sentenced to 90 days in jail -- yes! suffer! -- followed by 90 days of rehab in a lockdown facility of some kind. (I think.). In a pre-sentence statement she was tearful, submissive, pleading, plain-spoken. "I have to provide for myself...I have to work," she said. "I'm not taking this as a joke. It's my life, it's my career."
I love it when people who've lived upper stratosphere lah-lah lives get taken down and have to submit to Average Joe rules and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:05 PM on Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Adrift?
I'm iPhoning and therefore can't embed a link, but Rope of Silicon's Brad Brevet is reporting that Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life was screened for the MPAA within the last couple of weeks and has been rated PG-13. The big news, he reports, is that Bill Pohlad's Apparition wasn't listed as the distributor.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:51 PM on Tuesday, July 6, 2010
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:19 AM on Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Restrepo Caveat
Rope of Silicon's Bill Cody has ripped into Restrepo co-director Sebastian Junger by (a) noting the film's non-political, no-bigger-picture viewpoint, which bothered me greatly in my own review, (b) noting that Junger has recently advocated a pro-war position on TV talk shows (stay the course, send in more troops), and (c) wonders if the lefties who've praised this film really understand what it (and Junger) are saying?
"Did Sebastian Junger sucker Sundance into supporting an Afghanistan War with no end in sight?," the article begins.
"Junger lucked into a perfect storm when Restrepo, his feature...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:12 AM on Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Respectful Dispute
Marshall Fine has posted a top-ten half-time assessment of 2010 films. I throughly agree with his putting Greenberg, The Ghost Writer and Toy Story 3 on the list. But we part company after these. Not in a Grand Canyon sense -- more like we're standing on opposite sides of a creek.
I liked When You're Strange as far as it went, but it wasn't anything to jump up and down about. (Never saw the Johnny Depp-narrated version.) I gave Conor McPherson's The Eclipse a 7 -- nice mood, gripping vibe at times, horrible emphasis on Aidan Quinn's boorish-and-boozy-Irish-writer character. I hated most...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:24 AM on Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Post-Coital
I begged again this morning to be allowed to see Inception at this afternoon's Manhattan screening. You could hear a pin drop. After yesterday's love-in, I'm wondering how to approach Chris Nolan's film without any kind of attitude. It's a natural thing. All those ecstatic critics, all that moisture. Something tells me MCN's David Poland will attend tomorrow's screening with a bit of an "oh, yeah?" mindset.
I actually feel good about having grilled folks who've seen it, and having learned all about the third act revelations, and asked several logic-driven questions. As part of the fourth wave, I'm fully prepared...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:47 AM on Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Game Preserve
I was mistaken. Nimrod Antal's Predators (20th Century Fox, 7.9), which will be shown to critics tomorrow morning, is more than it seems (i.e., Aliens in the jungle without Ripley or Newt or Burke, and without Cameron at the helm). And the name Robert Rodriguez is not an automatic assurance of cheeseball "style over content" exploitation jizz. I don't know what I was thinking. I need to cut back on the snarly commentary.
And...what else did I say? Oh, yeah. The cast members -- Adrien Brody, Topher...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:05 AM on Tuesday, July 6, 2010
To Sap and Impurify
I'm truly delighted -- really, honestly -- at the prospect of not attending this week's press screenings of Jon Turtletaub and Jerry Bruckheimer's The Sorcerers' Apprentice (Disney, 7.16). Does Bruckheimer assemble his staffers every Monday morning and say, "Okay, guys -- what new movie material can we find that will allow for numerous action scenes with brazenly digital effects that'll look exactly like brazenly digital effects?"
Another Jon Turtletaub hack job/whore move with an extra icing of slick...wonderful. Another reminder that the Jerry Bruckheimer brand of the mid'...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:06 AM on Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Tunnel Vision
While Patricia Leigh Brown's 7.4 N.Y. Times piece about the revival of small-town movie theatres is an upper -- a piece of agreeable, spirited reportage about people coming together -- the photo shows precisely the kind of theatre that I can't stand to watch a film in. Long and narrow, a cinematic bowling alley, a 13 foot wide screen that can't present real 2.35 to 1 Scope and looks way too small from the rear of the house.
With viewing conditions this crappy, it just goes to show that movies aren't the draw -- communities just...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:12 PM on Monday, July 5, 2010
They All Gushed
Inception review sample #1: "Inception is a movie so vibrant, so alive, so relentlessly original that it can be forgiven its transgressions in an instant. It's an entertainment with vivid, profound ideas, precisely the kind of daring that ought to be backed by big money." -- In Contention's Kris Tapley.
Inception review sample #2: "Imagine a film being made in 2010 where you have absolutely no idea where it is going or how it will end. These were the worlds created by revolutionary filmmakers, like...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:45 PM on Monday, July 5, 2010
Dream Lover
I found a possibly-legitimate quote about Inception in which a guy says that "the best way I can put it is, imagine if The Matrix raped The Fountain...but in a good way." (What the hell does that mean?) Another guy, I've been told, feels it's a close kin of Shutter Island, apart from Leonardo DiCaprio being the star. In both films there's tragic current involving emotional loss that's affecting the lead guy, and is causing lots of pain and stress and disturbance.
So I ran this by a friend who saw Inception a while back, and he said he gets the Shutter...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:04 PM on Monday, July 5, 2010
Baddies
I was all jazzed about this until I realized it was posted 10 months ago. And then my heart sank and the devaluation kicked in. Except I never saw it or ran it so...why not?
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:48 PM on Monday, July 5, 2010
Downtown
With the five-screen TIFF Bell Lightbox finally completed, the entire Toronto Film Festival is moving downtown this year. I don't know to what extent the old Bay-Bloor haunts and hotels will be included, if at all, but I know that press and industry screenings at the Varsity 8 are total history. They'll now be held at the Scotiabank theatre on John and Richmond Streets, just south of Queen.
A handful of P & I screenings will also take place at the NFB Mediatheque, I'm told, and perhaps a few will be held at the
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:19 AM on Monday, July 5, 2010
My Soul, My Orgasms
This Eat Pray Love trailer is slightly different than the last one (which surfaced in mid June). More dialogue. No patronizing mom. Billy Crudup gone. Two shots of perfect pasta dishes. Wise-man dialogue from Richard Jenkins, playing some kind of bearded Zen master. Same basic emphasis on relationships vs. spirituality. Same hip travelogue vibe.
We see James Franco calling Julia Roberts' "my queen" as he hands over folded "delicates" in a laundromat. There's a bit more dialogue from Javier Bardem doing his charming Latin...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:45 AM on Monday, July 5, 2010
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:43 AM on Monday, July 5, 2010
Two Clips
Rolling Stone's website has posted two clips from Vikram Jayanti's The Agony & The Ecstasy of Phil Spector. Clip #2 -- an explanation by Spector of how his crazy-ass Jewfro came about -- is especially entertaining. I'd watched it smiling a couple of times on disc at my home, appreciative but silent, but when I saw this portion at a Film Forum showing last Thursday, people were laughing uproariously.
After posting the embed codes I discovered that the videos automatically launch. The hell with that. I posted one of them on the jump page.
From Daniel Kreps' Jayanti interview piece:
...Read Moreposted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:07 AM on Monday, July 5, 2010
Spector Tapes
Over the last three days (on 7.2 and 7.4), Michelle Blaine, former personal assistant to Phil Spector and webmaster of wallofguilt.com, has put up two videos of Spector talking about the Lana Clarkson murder case. They were recorded by Blaine in '05, and portions were shown on Inside Edition in May of '07.
The video clips are fascinating -- anyone who's seen Vikram Jayanti's The Agony & the Ecstasy of Phil Spector is obliged to watch -- but the site itself is a trip also....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:03 AM on Monday, July 5, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Inception Beans Monday
It's very nice to be a friend of Warner Bros. again after being placed on their shit list in late '07. But I'm not really "in" with them in an In Like Flint sense. In their eyes I'm sort of in a halfway house -- on a kind of probationary status -- in which I get to see their films but fairly late in the game. Which is basically what's now happening with Chris Nolan's Inception (Warner Bros., 7.16).
Most of your civilized upscale journalists (i.e., the people in the know & in the glow) have already...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:17 PM on Sunday, July 4, 2010
Winning Stripes
Speaking of Mike Nichols' Silkwood, I recently read a story about Cher going to see the film's trailer at a theatre in Westwood (which would have been sometime in the fall of '83) and feeling crushed when the audience laughed upon realizing that she was a costar. She called up Nichols in tears and he said "don't sweat it, hang in there...it'll all change when they see the film." And it did. Two years later she did Mask, and then she won her Oscar for Moonstruck in '87.
I'm trying to think of another professional slumper or go-alonger who was looking to...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:47 PM on Sunday, July 4, 2010
Sit Down, Stand Up
When an actor sitting down is almost eye-level with an actress who's standing up, and the actress isn't playing his six year-old daughter and the actor is slumping a tiny bit in order to compensate, you're talking about a fairly unusual physical dynamic in a movie. You do have to admit that. Perhaps this isn't even a frame-capture from the film, and therefore a moot point. Directing 101 says to never compose a shot that emphasizes radical physical disparities, and Chris Nolan is no dummy.
Thankfully, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page play colleagues in Inception and...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:56 AM on Sunday, July 4, 2010
Burden of Brains
Now that the word is out about a certain upcoming film possibly being too smart for the room, I'm trying to recall which other films have earned this distinction.
Obviously it's an honorable thing for a mainstream film to be accused of dealing cards that only the A students are going to fully appreciate. Lord knows that most films cater to C and D students on the theory that they cast a wider net.
Critics as a rule don't like to even acknowledge the existence of "too smart" movies because to do so implies that perhaps they themselves didn't...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:35 AM on Sunday, July 4, 2010
Know-How
Fred Ward tells a joke -- familiar now, not so much then -- in this scene from Mike Nichols' Silkwood ('83). It starts at the 6:18 mark. I've told this joke myself for the last 26 or 27 years, but I can never quite tell it with just the right timing and emphasis. The singer, not the song. I made this same point last December.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:19 AM on Sunday, July 4, 2010
Cake Frosting
I love the way David Lynch says "When you don't have final cut, you stand to die the death....die the death." I don't like that look of solemn de-emotionalized conviction on Catherine Breillat 's face. I'm irritated by the gray-white streaks in Agnes Varda's dyed red hair (either embrace au natural or do regular salon visits). And it's great hearing John Sayles say that "New York-area Hispanics do talk loudly but we don't like to talk about this." And I love blonde hair.
Which is a...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:33 AM on Sunday, July 4, 2010
Just Not Done
This is a minor thing I'm about to complain about, but yesterday I was watching a video of Leonardo DiCaprio talking about shooting portions of Inception in Paris, except he called it "Pair-iss." And at that moment the ghosts of Arthur Rimbaud, Honore de Balzac, Edith Piaf and Yves Montand howled in unison.
DiCaprio was raised in East Hollywood, Los Feliz, and Echo Park areas of Los Angeles, and has a kind of twangy, flagrantly non-boarding-school accent. I'm not trying to make this into a huge thing but as soon as I heard "Pair-iss" I said to myself, "Good God...that's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:39 AM on Sunday, July 4, 2010
I'm Not There
There's a certain kind of mannered "attitude acting" among under-30 actresses that's been driving me vaguely nuts for the last decade or so. Megan Fox heavily relies on this affected speaking style (as the video below indicates) but real actresses like Amanda Seyfried and Zoe Kazan resist it. It's a style of delivery and a tone of voice that basically conveys mock-haughty, insolent smirk and contemptuous put-on.
It's basically an underlying attitude that says "what you're saying right now is, like, such a turn-off for...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:28 AM on Sunday, July 4, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Well Enough?
So M. Night's Airbender had $33 million as of last night, and is probably looking at $64 or $65 million by Sunday night. So once more, horrible reviews didn't seem to matter much. $65 million seems relatively decent for a four-day run, especially given the young-kid demographic. Perhaps not enough to match or surpass the cost of making and marketing Airbender within a desired timeframe, but still.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:02 PM on Saturday, July 3, 2010
Stalloney
Marshall Fine has written a profile of Expendables auteur Sylvester Stallone for Cigar Afcionado, the super-slick, exuding-the-'90s older-guy magazine that doesn't believe in offering online samples or one-time-only online access. Fine was good enough to supply the first 400 or so words.
"Sylvester Stallone aims a remote-control device at the flatscreen TV in his Beverly Hills production office, and an image pops up from a documentary about the making of his newest film, The Expendables.
"It shows Stallone -- still in remarkable shape at 63 -- being body-slammed into a brick wall in the...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:31 PM on Saturday, July 3, 2010
In and Out
Independence Day decoration on a 19th Century home in Redding, Connecticut -- Saturday, 7.3, 12:30 pm. Love those half-moon flags.
Lobster flip-flops -- Saturday, 7.3, 8:15 am.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:10 PM on Saturday, July 3, 2010
"What's Your Name?"
I paid $30 dollars earlier today for a Taiwanese DVD of Eliza Kazan's Viva Zapata, which has never been on a legitimate domestic DVD. The packaging was low-grade, the copy was crudely written, and the word "remastered" across the top smelled of bullshit. But to my great surprise, this 1952 film looks tolerable. Second-generation, not detailed enough, jumpy action footage, etc. But it could have been much worse. It would be wonderful someday to see a Bluray created from good elements.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:38 PM on Saturday, July 3, 2010
Last of Elegant Breed
I didn't know Ed Limato, the admired ICM, William Morris, ICM and finally WME talent agent who'd had emphysema for a long while, and who slipped away earlier today. Limato apparently wasn't one to consider, much less invite or nurture, relationships with journalists. But like everyone else I knew his rep as a classy, elegant fellow. Here are tributes by (a) WME story editor Christopher Lockhart, and (b) Indiewire's Anne Thompson.
"Limato was old-school," Thompson writes. "He was courtly, well-mannered, well-spoken, charming. He was blind-sided when Michelle Pfeiffer left him for CAA, but took her departure gently, told her that...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:13 PM on Saturday, July 3, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
"Where Am I?"
A little Greaser's Palace never hurt anyone over an Independence Day holiday.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:09 AM on Friday, July 2, 2010
"Some Place I've Never Been"
I have to hump it uptown to Grand Central in order to catch a 3:24 pm train to Stamford and then pick up a rental car, etc. Perhaps another posting or two from on the train, but in a few hours the main order of business will be listening to live music and doing a little beer-guzzling at the Georgetown Saloon. Things always ease down during the 4th of July weekend.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:03 AM on Friday, July 2, 2010
Tripping in Hollywood Hills
There's a fascinating article in the August Vanity Fair (i.e., the Angelina Jolie cover) about the early days of professionally-supervised LSD therapy among the Hollywood elite, with samplers including Cary Grant, Sidney Lumet, Esther Williams and Betsy Drake, beginning in 1958.
This was two or three years before the Harvard University LSD experiments with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, and seven years before various rock stars (including the Beatles) first began to drop, and nine or ten years before LSD began to catch on with adventurous middle-class youths in the cities and well-to-do suburbs.
It's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:04 AM on Friday, July 2, 2010
Dog Yummies
Call this a nice paycheck gig for a lot of people who didn't let pride stand in the way. Christina Applegate and Fred Armisen have actual acting roles, and I gather that Michael Clarke Duncan, Neil Patrick Harris, James Marsden, Bette Midler, Roger Moore, Nick Nolte and Chris O'Donnell voice animals. Is that right?
How deaf are the people who made this film and particularly those who are planning on seeing it? Deaf to God's symphony, I mean. One time at a party some drunken friends...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:14 AM on Friday, July 2, 2010
Rough Sailing?
The Movie Godz would like to be gracious, but they'll never look kindly upon a film that kills off a cute kid and then returns him to earth as a ghost. They just can't. Even with the respected James Schamus** having co-written the script, it seems too manipulative, too Lovely Bones, too give-us-a-break-already. Especially with Zac Efron in the lead.
That said, the most significant piece of information that I got from this trailer is that Efron's face has filled out -- he's no longer boyish. He's...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:40 AM on Friday, July 2, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Shakedown
Sixth Ave. and 14th Street station -- 7.1, 10:05 pm.
7.3 Update: The digi-pixellated texture of the photo I posted earlier was bothering me, so I found the original and re-cropped without the noise.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:41 PM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
Garfield as Spidey
Congrats to Andrew Garfield (and his agent) for landing the role of Peter Parker/Spiderman. Good break, good money. But it doesn't matter. I don't mean to be a killjoy but it really doesn't. It never matters if you're the guy replacing the original star (i.e., Tobey Maguire) in the fourth film in a diminishing superhero franchise. Will people flock to see Garfield-as-Spidey? Yeah, possibly. Maybe, probably. But it won't matter.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:42 PM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
"Are You Saying...?"
Vulture: Have you read the reviews for The Last Airbender?
M. Night Shyamalan: No, I haven't.
Vulture: Well, are you aware of the reviews?
Shyamalan: No, actually.
Vulture: Well, for the most part, critics have not been kind. Are you just ignoring them? Will you read them this weekend? Have you just not had time?
Shyamalan: Are you saying that in general they didn't dig it?
Vulture: In general, no. Roger Ebert, who liked The Happening, did not. The first line of his review is, "The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category that...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:32 PM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
Shoot Me
Mel Gibson has done it to himself again, in spades. Just when he was finally starting to chill down Hollywood Jews over his 2006 anti-Semitic tirade, now he has to spend several more years trying to convince African Americans that he didn't actually mean it. Radar claims to have "heard the tape," so when does the mp3 file go online?
On the other hand: While I have no sympathy for Gibson and can only feel appalled by his racist broadsides as well as his stupidity in saying anything inflammatory to anyone that he's in a contentious legal battle with, he...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:38 PM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
Carol Reed Is Singing
What possible reason would Lionsgate and Studio Canal have for putting out a new Bluray of Carol Reed's The Third Man if not to appeal to those who were turned off by Criterion's grain-monk Bluray of this legendary 1949 film?
Joseph Cotten in Carol Reed's The Third Man.
I realize that the Criterion version is out of print and all, but it only emerged 18 months ago (i.e., on 12.16.08) and I'm sure it was bought or at least sampled by most of the Reed freaks out there so it's not like...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:52 PM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
Shades
(l. and r.) Gregg Kinnear-as-JFK on Montreal set of The Kennedys, that allegedly-hostile History Channel drama that Robert Greenwald and Ted Sorenson were in a huff about a while back.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:37 PM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
Bad Cards
I heard about Christopher Hitchens' announcement about having esophogal cancer last night. I gather his condition may have been caused by years of cigarette smoking. I'm very sorry. Here's hoping for some luck.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:03 PM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
Lucky Break?
A journalist friend told me last weekend that he believed that the Russian spy ring story that broke three or four days ago would increase interest in Philip Noyce's Salt in the same way the Three Mile Island disaster did a favor for James Bridges' The China Syndrome, only to a lesser degree.
I dismissed this because of the anachronistic comedy aspects of the story (a N.Y. Times story said the the spies "could have been more efficient [in their search for information] by surfing the web" and that "none of the accused face charges because in all those years...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:39 AM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
What's Missing?
I kept waiting and waiting for the mother of all grand-slam insults, and the only ones that popped through were two old-timers: (a) Joe Pesci's elephant dicks line from Raging Bull (starting at 5:03) and (b) Jack Nicholson 's withering analysis of female character in As Good As It Gets (starting at 4:23).
The best insults are (a) those that are delivered so deftly that the victim doesn't realize he/she has been zinged until three or four seconds have elapsed, and (b) those that are coaxed out...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:22 AM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
Contact Sheet
Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right (Focus Features, 7.9) had a premiere last night at the Sunshine Cinemas followed by a swanky Peggy Siegal after-party in lower Tribeca. Me and another photographer swooped in when Ed Norton showed up to chat with costar Mark Ruffalo, but Norton wouldn't pose more than three or four seconds.
I was on an express train two nights on my way to Times Square, and fearful that I might be late for a screening. The train stopped at 34th Street due to "congestion up ahead," the recording said. We...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:11 AM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
That's It?
In a 7.1 piece, The Guardian's Ryan Gilbey states that there are five milestones in film animation worth nothing -- silent cartoons (J. Stuart Blackton's first-ever animated fim in 1906, a 1917 full-length Argentinian feature by Quirino Christiani called El Apostol), Disney features, Japanese fantasies and Pixar's digital innovations. There just be more to the grand history of animation than that. More chapters, more details, more names...c'mon.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:22 AM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
A Little Romance
The broadest response, I'm guessing, to the just-posted trailer for Matt Reeves' Let Me In (Overture, 10.1), a remake of Tomas Alfredson's Let The Right One In, is how visually similar the two films seem. Greig Fraser's cinematography has less in the way of hard fluorescent lighting than Hoyte Van Hoytema's lensing of the original, but otherwise they're almost identical.
My first gut response was that I was glad to see Chloe Moretz holding down the little-girl vampire fort as I had a negative...okay,...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:56 AM on Thursday, July 1, 2010
Clash of the Stinkers
Going by the curious and sometimes perverse numerical critical rating system of Rotten Tomatoes, M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender is the lowest-ranked major release of the year so far. Hoi polloi critics have given it an average of 5% and the elite have given a 7% rating for an average of 6%.
A film's ratings can be mixed/so-so (60% to 75%), mixed shit (40% to 60%), shit (20% to 40%) and steaming piles (under 20%). At least 11 other major releases this year have been generally condemned as time-wasters, but Airbender, so far, is the King of Shit Mountain....Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:56 AM on Thursday, July 1, 2010