http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/ Copyright 2009 Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:49:49 -0800 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=4.23-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss "The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere," writes Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi in a 7.2 posting called "The Great American Bubble Machine." It's a tough, exacting, unmerciful portrait of a bunch of really bad guys. If Michael Moore doesn't use Taibbi as a key talking head in his forthcoming financial meltdown doc, he'll have made a mistake. Taibbi has really made a name for himself with this and his previous piece about the biggest theft in U.S. history. "The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/taibbis_goldman.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/taibbis_goldman.php Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:49:49 -0800 http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/electric_sheep.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/electric_sheep.php Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:42:34 -0800 In a decently shot-and-cut video conversation, Entertainment Weekly critics Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum take turns ripping Public Enemies. A guy told me that Owen addresses that claim I made when we discussed it last week -- i.e., "it's an art film!" But the wifi is so shitty up here in Walton that I can't watch video.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/torn_and_frayed.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/torn_and_frayed.php Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:27:14 -0800 Ariel Levy has written a fair-minded, carefully observed and super-readable profile of Julie & Julia director-writer Nora Ephron in the 7.6.09 issue of The New Yorker . You'll need a subscription or a daypass (or whatever they call it) to read the full article, but trust me -- an excellent read. That said, I'd be derelict if I didn't quote the last three paragraphs, which describe this August 7th Sony release, which costars Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, as half-transcendent and half-flat. "I feel bad about what I'm going to do here," Ariel begins, aping a phrase that Ephron herself used in a... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/up_against_the.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/up_against_the.php Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:33:58 -0800 Jim Sheridan's long-delayed Brothers, initially regarded as a 12.4.08 release before being bumped into '09, finally has a trailer up and running. Once upon a time the expectations for this domestic drama were very high, at least for the Sheridan fans among us. I couldn't wait to see it, but the stalls and duck-outs have persuaded most of us that something must be wrong. As noted several times before on HE, Brothers is a remake of Susanne Bier's 2004 Danish-language original about a younger "bad" brother (Jake Gyllenhaal in Sheridan's version) stepping into the familial shoes of his older "good" brother (Tobwet Maguire)... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/brothers_peek-o.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/brothers_peek-o.php Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:56:46 -0800 Sarah Palin's decision to resign from the Alaska governorship means she's done, finito...a dead political figure. If you have a job or a responsibility, you don't walk away. That's the responsible American way. You do your best and see it through as best you can. Unless...you know, you're emotionally unbalanced and unable to man up and do the thing. Either way you've lost all credibility. NBC's Andrea Mitchell has just said that she's heard Palin has told friends that "she's out of politics, period...she doesn't want to seek elective office." My first reaction -- hell, everyone's first reaction -- was that nobody resigns... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/ding-dong_witch.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/ding-dong_witch.php Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:10:30 -0800 A few days ago I posted a short piece about a letter posted by Carson Reeves' Scriptshadow that seemed to come from the Soderbergh side of the fence about the Moneyball shutdown. But that was only the beginning. Reeves soon after removed this letter after threat of legal action. But an HE reader who'd copied the original letter pasted it into the HE comments section after the Scriptshadow deletion. Which led to my being told by the same people (not Sony legal, apparently) that the letter had to be removed because it was extremely actionable. I didn't see how or why, but I... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/more_moneyball.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/more_moneyball.php Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:50:53 -0800 Martin Ritt's Hud (1963) pays off beautifully in the final 60 seconds -- actually the last ten or fifteen. Paul Newman's fuck-it gesture reflected a strain of nihilism in the culture that hadn't been acknowledged very much in previous American films, which had always sold a certain tidy morality. I'm trying to think of other films over the last 45-plus years that have ended as coldly and cleanly. I'm not saying they haven't been made; they're just not coming to mind.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/no_skin_off_min.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/no_skin_off_min.php Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:22:15 -0800 2012 standee in 2nd floor lobby at AMC 34th Street -- Thursday, 7.2.09, 9:05 pm. A depiction of Los Angeles getting walloped by what looks like a combination massive earthquake (with huge rectangular chunks of the city uprooted like a buckled sidewalk) and ocean flooding in the style of When Worlds Collide. North Bergen Sunset -- Wednesday, 7.1.09, 8:20 pm 42nd Street, east of 9th Ave.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/roundaout.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/roundaout.php Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:40:14 -0800 A lot of man-boobs in this thing, which is always cause for concern if you share my psychology. Otherwise Couples Retreat (Universal, 10.9) feels like a possible return to Wedding Crashers-level humor for Vince Vaughn. The downside is that it also feels a bit like the Hawaiian resort section of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, partly, I suppose, because Kristen Bell costars. Other topliners: Jon Favreau, Malin Akerman, Ken Jeong, Jason Bateman, Jean Reno, Kristin Davis, John Michael Higgins.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/problem_island.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/problem_island.php Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:24:08 -0800 Like everyone else and fool that I am, I thought it might be nice to go somewhere for a night or two over the July 4th weekend. I first thought about Long Beach Island, but every motel owner I spoke to insisted on a three-night minimum. I finally found a nice-looking place called the Drifting Sands that was willing to rent for just Friday night -- great. Except they wanted $325.00 for a simple beach-facing room with a TV and a king-sized bed and a cot. That turned me off. If there was a big drought these guys would charge $20 for a... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/get_outta_town.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/get_outta_town.php Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:05:11 -0800 This rehearsal video, released a couple of hours ago, obviously shows that MJ was active and energetic 48 hours before the wrong dosage of the wrong drug sent him on his way. It also suggests there was something vaguely Heather Ledger/Jokerish about his facial appearance. I'm looking for a pure embed code without all that CNN copy stuck to the bottom -- ugly. Embedded video from CNN Video... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/ghost_dancer.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/ghost_dancer.php Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:53:37 -0800 I've never seen Erick Zonca's Julia, a dysfunctional melodrama with what's said to be a tour-de-force performance from Tilda Swinton, in part because I was invited to exactly one screening -- a lah-lah thing at the Tribeca Grand on 4.30 -- that I couldn't attend. It opened on May 8th in NY and LA and now it's gone from sight. Except Roger Ebert reviewed it yesterday. I just called to see if there's a screener I can look at over the weekend, got a voice mail... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/skipped_town.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/skipped_town.php Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:59:29 -0800 The news about the firing of former Paramount Film Group chief John Lesher broke on the afternoon of Friday, 6.19. Four days later Arthur-the-Deadline Hollywood Daily-cartoonist completed a cartoon that depicted Lesher's fate. Nine days later or 13 days after the whacking -- yesterday, in other words -- the cartoon appeared on DHD. Worse, it used a future-tense caption -- "There Will Be Blood." Obviously if it had run a day or two before the Lesher firing....whatever. But it's decently done.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/why_so_late.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/why_so_late.php Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:37:16 -0800 "I wanted the audience in the period, in 1933, standing right next to John Dillinger. I wanted them to feel like they're right there, like it's really happening. I'm mainly interested in extreme conflict, in men who find themselves in extreme circumstances and really threatened to the point of annihilation. [At the end of the film] Dillinger is alone, the last man standing. How is he supposed to think about what he'll do next? How is he to think about how his life has happened? That to me is what the film is...about character and ferocity and determination." -- Public Enemies director Michael... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/right_there_1.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/07/right_there_1.php Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:17:11 -0800