Day: January 10, 2008

Every now and then a director comes along who is presumed to have directed a film “in name only” with the producer believed to be the real creative maestro. Like poor Cloverfield director Matt Reeves, who barely exists as far as most of the journalists I know are concerned. (True powerhouse: JJ Abrams.) As well as poor Greg Mottola, whom almost no one would credit for having directed Superbad. (True powerhouse: Judd Apatow.) Not to mention poor Victor Fleming, who merely “directed” — traffic-managed — Gone With The Wind. (True powerhouse: David O’Selznick.) Is there a book in this?

Poor Matt Reeves, director of Cloverfield

Another steal from New York‘s “Vulture” team, posted earlier today:

“Zodiac‘s real protagonist is the hive-mind of obsession blanketing the Bay Area. By and large, the human characters in this tale aren’t given your standard (and often cliched) screenwriting tools of backstory or personal quirks or fleshed-out lives. These actors have to fend for themselves, living off the scraps James Vanderbilt‘s screenplay throws at them.

“This is precisely the kind of situation in which Robert Downey thrives. He brings to Paul Avery‘s early scenes a kind of swaggering, wisecracking aura, shot through with vulnerability — which pays dividends as the film’s relentless trajectory brings these characters down.
“Compulsion and self-destruction are nothing new to Downey, whether he’s acting them out in fiction or in real life. And in its portrait of a society coming out of the 60s and plunging headlong into (and out of) the 70s, Zodiac becomes a film about those very things.
“Even though he gets significantly less screen time than nominal lead Jake Gyllenhaal, Downey becomes the film’s chief human connect — the embodiment of nobility and charm, boozing and snorting his way into oblivion as the society he knows crumbles around him. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, and it is absolutely one of the best performances of the year.” — from a 1.10.08 Bilge Ebiri piece, posted by New York‘s “Vulture” column.

In the Cloverfield press notes, the concept for the monster — affectionately known in-house simply as “Clover” — is explained by producer JJ Abrams: “He’s a baby. He’s brand-new. He’s confused, disoriented and irritable. And he’s been down there in the water for thousands and thousands of years.” The notes also reveal that the beast is 25 stories tall.

A video of JJ Abrams schpieling in front of an audiences last March — not spilling anything about Cloverfield, talking about the concept of the “Mystery Box,” the democratization of movie-making and special effects, Tom Cruise using his own hand to drill himself in the nose in MI:3, etc.

With a Scripter nomination and now a WGA nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, Zodiac is at least getting a little institutional love. And without a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, Atonement has taken still another hit. Poor, poor Atonement…an extremely well-made (and quite moving) film that went looking for love and has come up empty at every well.
The WGA’s original screenplay nominations went to Fox Searchlight’s Juno (writer: Diablo Cody), Michael Clayton (writer: Tony Gilroy), Fox Searchlight’s The Savages (writer:Tamara Jenkins), Universal’s Knocked Up (writer: Judd Apatow) and MGM’s Lars and the Real Girl (writer: Nancy Oliver).
Adapted nominations went to James Vanderbilt‘s Zodiac, Ethan and Joel Coen‘s No Country for Old Men, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood, Ronald Harwood‘s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Sean Penn√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s Into the Wild.
The WGA winners will be announced on February 9th at simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York.

More apparent fan art of the Cloverfield monster. No indication whatsoever that this rendering represents the real deal, or if it’s just another doodle. But I’m excited by the enormous scale of it, and I like the multiple aquatic flippers.

To go by the Statue of Liberty scale, this guy is almost too big to seriously buy into, given the molleuclar-mass issues and all.

The big question with the 1.29 release of a digitally remastered El Cid — a two-disc box set with all kinds of extras from Bob and Harvey Weinstein‘s Miriam Collection — is “what elements did they work from?” Did the guys who did the digital remastering scan the original negative (which should be in excellent shape, a restoration authority believes) or did they work from the same separation masters with registration problems that resulted in that slightly cruddy-looking, bordering-on-despised Criterion laserdisc from the ’90s?

Let’s be optimistic and hope/presume that this new El Cid will be a lot better looking. I’ve called around and no one seems to know who oversaw the digital remastering, much less which elements it was taken from. A guy named Gerry Byrne appears on the DVD in a short video piece in which he discusses “the importance of film preservation and restoration.” My restoration source didn’t know Byrne from Adam.
The film was originally shot in 35m 8-perf — the same sideways-through-the-gate format that Spartacus was shot on. It was then blown up to 70mm and called Super Technirama 70.
Directed by Anthony Mann and starring Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren, Raf Vallone and Herbert Lom, El Cid is a dramatically respectable film with a still-interesting subtext — a battle between valiant Christians and marauding, wild-eyed Moors. A little stiff, a little too stately for its own good…but that was the style of the day.

The somewhat despised Criterion laserdisc of El Cid

I remember liking the first half (i.e., the part mainly concerned with love and honor — Heston’s personal issues and his hunger for Loren’s Jimena) better than the second half in which Heston wears a beard and struts around like a great God-like figure. I remember a pretty good jousting-and-sword fight sequence in an arena.
The single best element in the whole film, if you ask me, is Miklos Rosza‘s score.
Martin Scorsese, naturally, offers an introduction on the DVD. If you buy the big box you can own the original El Cid comic book. The box will cost $39.92; the deluxe two-disc package without the extras will sell for $24.95.
The film itself will be projected at an Arclight screening on 1.28.08. I’m definitely attending.

Jimena: Why did you come?
El Cid: I tried not to come. I tried, I told my love it had no right to live. But my love won’t die…
Jimena: Kill it.
El Cid: You kill it! Tell me you don’t love me.
Jimena: [long pause] I cannot. Not yet. But I will make myself worthy of you Rodrigo,. I will learn to hate you.

The Envelope’s Tom O’Neil reported this morning that instead of broadcasting some kind of stately upmarket press conference announcing the Golden Globes winners (in place of the awards show that has been 86-ed due to the WGA strike), NBC intends to have their Stepford Showbiz News duo from Access Hollywood — i.e., the alpha- smiley Billy Bush and Nancy O’Dell — hand out the awards within a kind of “Wheee! Let’s have fun!” pseudo-news event.

Billy Bush, Nancy O’Dell

I don’t know that NBC has locked the Access Hollywood decision, but O’Neil reports that “when word leaked out early Wednesday that NBC wanted Bush and O’Dell to host the one-hour special Sunday night, a top Golden Globe consultant told me, ‘The HFPA will never permit it!'”
Talk about a degradation Talk about an ick factor. The Golden Globes have always been a kind of boutique hotel chain compared to the Oscars’ Plaza or Carlyle pedigree, but they’ve been around for decades and have helped a lot of deserving people get the meritorious attention and career boosts that they deserve, blah, blah. They’re not Tiffany class, but to have their usual glitzy awards ceremony replaced by a desperate awards-handout ratings grab starring a pair of cheap entertainment news whores — copy readers with pasted-on smiles and robotic personalities who would be perfectly cast as sedative-dispensing orderlies in a re-do of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest — is a real comedown.
“Only reluctantly did HFPA agree earlier this week to NBC’s plan for a televised press conference to announce winners in place of its usual awards banquet proceeding without TV coverage,” O’Neil writes.

“In both cases, HFPA loses the $5 million fee it normally gets from NBC to telecast the dinner ceremony. Many members wanted the usual gala to proceed so that it would send the message that HFPA cares less about its TV show than gathering the titans of Hollywood together in order to reward their best film and TV work of the year.
“But NBC had pre-sold more than $20 million in advertising and pressured HFPA to accept some form of substitute program.
“HFPA leaders caved under network pressure only when assured that the TV show would be a serious press conference produced by NBC’s news division. They never thought they’d get stuck with ‘a puff show’ with Billy Bush and Nancy O’Dell, says a source. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has enough trouble being taken seriously by some media observers who criticize the freelance status of many members. It’s doubtful that the group would’ve agreed to this plan if NBC had been clear up front, is the sentiment I understand is now coming from the HFPA camp.
“‘The show isn’t a real press conference,’ a veteran TV producer told O’Neil. ‘It doesn’t look like [the] journalists present will be able to ask questions of Golden Globe officials. They’ll be there as captives to watch Billy and Nancy read off nominees and winners in 25 award categories.'”