http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/ Movies Copyright 2012 Wed, 16 May 2012 04:58:51 -0800 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=4.23-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss The Orange Cafe was the streets of Calcutta after the Moonrise Kindgom press conference so I retreated to the American Pavillion...mistake. After 90 minutes the wifi crapped out right in the middle of two video uploads and now it's slower than molasses in February, even for no-big-deal JPEG uploads. I really hate this. So now I have to start all over again but there's no point because it's 3:20 pm and I have catch Laurent Bozereau's Roman Polanski doc at 4 pm, and it's playing the Salle Bazin which always means lines. Here are are my Moonlight Kingdom tweets, at least: Tweet #1:... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/normal_wifi_ang.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/normal_wifi_ang.php Wed, 16 May 2012 04:58:51 -0800 Sony announced yesterday that they've hired Aaron Sorkin to adapt Walter Isaacson's biography of the late Steve Jobs for a feature to be produced by Scott Rudin, Mark Gordon and Guymon Casady. In so doing they're declaring that they don't expect that the Ashton Kutcher biopic to really get it or do it. They expect their film to be the definitive screen version, and with Sorkin writing it...most likely.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/jobs_completion.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/jobs_completion.php Tue, 15 May 2012 21:11:31 -0800 I probably would have bought the Bluray of Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret (Fox Home Video, 7.10) for its own sake, but now it's really essential with the 186-minute cut included with the 150-minute theatrical version. Which I want to see with as fresh an attitude as I can muster. The longer one, I mean. Will Margaret's 186-minute cut acquire the status that Leone's full-length cut of Once Upon A Time in America has? (Not to be confused with the four-hour-plus version that will show in Cannes in a few days' time.)... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/takes_her_time.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/takes_her_time.php Tue, 15 May 2012 20:51:07 -0800 The big news is that MCN's David Poland is here this year...not a rumor! Another big story is that there are two market screenings of Jeff Nichols' Mud this week (tomorrow at 2 pm and on Friday at 6 pm), which I'd love to quietly attend and hold my reactions until the official Cannes screen date on Saturday, 5.26, but the Wearefilmnation guys keep telling me "nope, sorry, we can't." And of course the journos all got together this evening at La Pizza, but that happens ever year...meh. Tuesday, 5.15, 8:35 pm. There's a Rise of the Guardians breakfast and press conference tomorrow... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/night_on_the_to_4.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/night_on_the_to_4.php Tue, 15 May 2012 13:12:27 -0800 My Dusseldorf-from-Berlin plane touched down in Nice at 1:50 pm. 45 minutes to retrieve bag from carousel. 25 minutes waiting for and then loading onto the bus. Bus left Nice Airport 40 minutes ago and we're currently slogging through traffic -- another 5 or 10 minutes. 110 minutes, all in. Not awful...okay, it 's fine. Update: Waited 25 minutes to get into pass-dispensing portion of the Pslais only to be told at the gate that no bags are allowed inside, and that I'd have to lug my gear back to the Place Maritime and leave them there. Par for the French course.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/as_predicted.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/as_predicted.php Tue, 15 May 2012 05:25:47 -0800 My Berlin-to-Nice plane (by way of Dusseldorf) leaves in a half-hour or so. I'm due to arrive at 1:45 pm. Then comes the sluggish ground transportation to Cannes. And then the press badge pickup and dropping off the bags and whatnot. And then the 7:30 pm gathering at La Pizza. So not much filing until later tonight. Maybe some photos around dinner hour.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/slow_boat.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/slow_boat.php Mon, 14 May 2012 23:35:20 -0800 Let me get this straight: Alfonso Cuaron's allegedly groundbreaking Gravity, an IMAX-filmed 3D space drama that wrapped principal photography roughly eight months ago, won't open later this year but sometime in 2013 because of competition for IMAX screens from Skyfall and The Hobbit and one or two others? That sounds to me like 2001: A Space Odyssey being bumped out its April 1968 release slot because of competition for screens from Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang or...you know, something of that calibre. The vision of Alfonso Cuaron doesn't make way for safe audience-pleasing franchise films from Sam Mendes or Peter Jackson...c'mon. Especially with George Clooney and... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/they_bumped_gra.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/they_bumped_gra.php Mon, 14 May 2012 23:16:28 -0800 Variety's Andrew Stewart is reporting that Alan Rickman has landed what sounds to be his first truly decent role in years...maybe...as downtown Manhattan showman Hilly Kristal in CBGB, which Randall Miller (Bottle Shock) will direct from a script by Miller and Jody Slavin. Playing a guy like Kristal will allow Rickman to go all madman and ticky and impassioned and tough at the same time...if the script is any good. My concern is that I saw Bottle Shock two or three years ago at Sundance and I didn't exactly levitate. I was a half-hearted CGBG attender in the mid to late '70s.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/rickman_lucks_o.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/rickman_lucks_o.php Mon, 14 May 2012 20:50:20 -0800 I have to get hold of the first two or three episodes of The Newsroom (HBO, debuting 6.24) as soon as possible because this looks so effing great I can't stand it. The three trailers indicate this is the new Network. Creator-producer-writer Aaron Sorkin gets to say everything he thinks under the cover or guise of televised drama, and therefore: "We were not attacked by Muslims -- we were attacked by sociopaths."... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/mcavoy_erupts_t.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/mcavoy_erupts_t.php Mon, 14 May 2012 20:04:28 -0800 The Blues Brothers was about John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd riffing on the white-guys-playing-the-Chicago-blues concept, which was originally personified with utter sincerity by the scowling, grittily-posed, Rayban-wearing Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The Blues Brothers were nervy and funny when I first saw them perform on Saturday Night Live in April 1978, and they doubled down on that when I saw them live at Carnegie Hall later that year (or was it '79?). But the coolness went all to hell with the release of John Landis's The Blues Brothers ('80). What was it about The Blues Brothers that obliterated and suffocated? Oh, I don't... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/chicago_blues_n.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/chicago_blues_n.php Mon, 14 May 2012 18:53:22 -0800 In an undated but presumably recent article for some WGAW-related newsletter or whatever, director-screenwriter Nicholas Kazan recalls how Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman was nearly picked to death by well-meaning collaborators before it opened on Broadway in 1947. "If the most successful producer of that era wanted to change the title [of Miller's play]," Kazan writes, "and if he and two of the leading directors of the time considered the play 'unproducable' and further agreed on what the problem was, and if all these 'experts' were wrong in every respect about a play regarded as a masterpiece, how does anyone ever dare... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/kazan_notes_suc.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/kazan_notes_suc.php Mon, 14 May 2012 09:10:10 -0800 "I'm Barack Obama, and I approved this message"...gangsta!... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/the_vampire_bai.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/the_vampire_bai.php Mon, 14 May 2012 08:45:48 -0800 I hung out yesterday with a little German mutt who was somewhat behind the eight ball. She came in barking, howling, scared, aggressive. All little dogs do this. So I tried to disarm things by sitting still, but she got upset whenever I got up or moved or eyeballed her. So I said "eff it" and pretended to be another dog -- panting, mock-barking, making dog noises. Then I chased her around the room in a playful way. We gradually got down to the petting and stroking and "I'm okay, you're okay" part. All was cool. Joey is not the dumb dog of... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/dumb_dog.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/dumb_dog.php Mon, 14 May 2012 03:38:09 -0800 I've learned that it's best to pack multiples of needed items on the theory that one or even two will be misplaced or lost or God forbid damaged before the journey ends. So I've got two Mac Powerbooks w/ cords and connectors for each, two digital cameras, four power adapters, four combs, four reading glasses, four sunglasses, four 3D glasses for glare reducation, etc. It's not a theory, actually. Somehow and some way, losses (or to be more precise mystifying vanishings) always happen on trips. No preventing this and certainly no understanding why.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/system.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/system.php Mon, 14 May 2012 03:20:08 -0800 I'm amazed that someone believes that Walmart-frequenting Bluray obsessives will be even slightly interested in glancing at The Barbarian and the Geisha, easily one of John Wayne's worst films ever. "Before release, the film was heavily re-edited by the studio" and "director John Huston denounced this version and even wanted to have his name removed from the credits. Huston had wanted to make a particularly Japanese film in terms of photography, pacing, color and narration but only a few edits representing his vision were left intact." And how much better, really, can Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers possibly look on Bluray?... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/measuring_stick_1.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/05/measuring_stick_1.php Sun, 13 May 2012 23:50:36 -0800