Day: June 9, 2008

The films directed by Mervyn LeRoy (Quo Vadis, Million Dollar Mermaid, Rose Marie, Mister Roberts, The FBI Story, The Devil at 4 O’Clock, A Majority of One, Gypsy, Mary, Mary) were very popular in their time with mainstream ticket buyers. Some of the go-along critics liked them as well, but for some reason no one today even speaks of these films, much less admiringly. And I’ll bet there’s some connection between this and the fact that the tough critics of the ’50s and early ’60s didn’t think very much of them.

James Stewart in Mervyn LeRoy’s The FBI Story (1958)

A culture needs tough critics to articulate standards. Even if those standards are seen as effete and elitist. Even if some critics are lonely, neurotic overweight drunks. Because the obsessions of the ones who know how to write are sometimes worth their weight in gold, which obviously means they’re certain to be read by future generations.
This is a point that the Brooklyn Rail’s Vincent Rossmeier seems to under-appreciate in his undated piece.
I asked this before but here goes again: who are the Mervyn LeRoys of today, Steven Spielberg Ron Howard and Michael Bay aside?

Marina Zenovich‘s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired will air on HBO tonight with a different ending than in the version of the doc shown at Sundance and Cannes, reports Slate‘s Kim Masters.
Zenovich, she reports, “concludes her film [by recounting] that in 1997, two attorneys appeared before a sitting Los Angeles Superior Court judge — not named in the film — and reached an agreement that if Polanski returned to the United States, he would not be taken into custody.
“At the very end, the film states in white letters dramatically typed on a black background, the judge imposed one condition: The proceedings would have to be televised. The obvious implication: Here we go again, another Los Angeles judge poised to turn Polanski into media chum. Polanski, the film reports, turned the deal down.
“But it doesn’t seem to have happened that way.
“There was a 1998 meeting with the judge, who was Larry Paul Fidler. He presided over the recent Phil Spector murder trial, and in that case, he allowed the cameras to roll. Spector’s case was the first criminal trial televised in its entirety in a Los Angeles Superior Court since the O.J. Simpson case in 1995. That may be why Fidler was sensitive to the film’s implication that he was another media-obsessed jurist.”
There’s almost certainly another side to this to be gotten from Zenovich. It’s a small point, in any case. The film is sharp, clear-minded, persuasive, masterful.

Because In Contention‘s Kris Tapley is totally in the tank for big-budget movies based on graphic novels (being, in his own words, “a comic book fan”), you can’t really trust his rave review of The Incredible Hulk. The only Hulk rave I will take to the bank will be one from a genre hater** like myself. (Are there any? Most critics are too cowardly to admit to biases.) Then and only then will I be persuaded.

“Louis Letterier‘s The Incredible Hulk is not only likely to be the biggest, most exhausting (in all the good ways) filmgoing experience you’ll have this year,” Tapley says, “but it also…promises to be one of the greatest cinematic roll-outs the genre has [ever seen or] will see.” Nope, not buying it. Especially considering the use of the word “exhausting.” I don’t want to know from that word unless I’m jogging or pulling an all-nighter.
This passage, however, sounds like real honesty: “And while it might miss with some and perhaps only find itself passable to others, it has struck the landing for this skeptical viewer in a big, big way.” That’s me Tapley is (probably) talking about. One the “somes,” standing tall with the “others.”
Now watch me love or half-love the Hulk, which I’ll be seeing tomorrow night.
** Yes, comic-book movies.

Tracking on The Incredible Hulk (opening Friday, 6.13) is running at 96, 37 and 14, but first choice is in the mid 20s among younger males. A similar fervor isn’t there for M. Night Shyamalan‘s The Happening, which is tracking at 72, 35 and 16. (Yes, the first choice number is two points higher than the one for the Hulk, but it has no hot-to-trot quadrant looking to see it at all costs — the support is soft.)
The two big-studio comedies opening on 6.20 — Get Smart and The Love Guru — are both in trouble as we speak. Smart is now at 81, 35 and 7, and Guru is at 81, 35 and 5. I suspect that audiences are smelling desperation on Warner Bros.’ part with all the changing Smart trailers. I’ve seen the Guru trailers in theatres with ticket buyers and nobody’s laughing.
Disney/Pixar’s WALL*E (6./27), a comedic love story between robots, is looking good. 76, 36 and 7 are very good numbers for an animated film two and half weeks out.
Universal’s Wanted (also 6.27) is running at 67, 35 and 7.

There are no racist rubes, under-educated dumb-asses and ultra-resentful Hillary supporters (older, bitter, blue-collar) in the Appalachian areas. Their alleged mindset — their existence, in fact — has been completely manufactured by urban media elitists like myself. But if they did exist, they’d all be going for McCain — let’s face it.
The distortions don’t stop with guys like me. The Columbia Dispatch‘s Mark Niquette has quoted another deluded guy, Herman Kaiser, 73, of Martins Ferry, Ohio, saying that he doesn’t think race “is much of a factor for younger people, but it will be an issue for his generation.” He adds, “Don’t let anyone tell you (some people) aren’t prejudiced.”
Will somebody get in touch with Kaiser and straighten him out? People have to stop ragging on hard-working, rust-belt Americans out there. They have as much of a voice and a vote as anyone else, and it’s just mean.
The Page‘s Mark Halperin has written that Obama “has work to do” with these people. Work? As in an achievable goal?

Update: Jamie Stuart‘s “Salo short” — a quasi-satire that made fun of ThinkFilm in a friendly joshing way — has been voluntarily pulled. Went up last night, was viewable for 15 to 16 hours, and now….phffft. Certain parties, I gather, could use more of a sense of humor.

Earlier posting: Stuart is calling his latest short film “an homage to early Bunuel.” But it’s really a demonstration of what good sports the people at ThinkFilm are, especially considering their recent press. Because Stuart is portraying them — satirically, of course — in very perverse terms. I would actually call his short an oblique homage to Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Salo minus the graphic footage.
The highlight is a performance by Werner Herzog (who’s apparently looking to become the new Sydney Pollack in terms of side acting gigs) as a corrupt and congenial plunderer of young flesh.

The big thing about the just-announced iPhone 3G, apart from a guarantee that it’ll load websites twice as fast, is cost — the 8 GB version will retail for $199 and the 16 GB version for $299 vs. $400 for the current 8 GB version, which started out selling last June for $600 or thereabouts. A $400 drop in price plus improved features means every 8GB iPhone user in the world will give their ’07 phones to their kids.

The 16 GB version will come in solid black and white models. Here are the specs for both sizes.

Clint Eastwood‘s Changeling, a 1920s kidnapping melodrama starring Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich, was going to open on November 7th. Now Universal is announcing a new date that’s two weeks earlier. The limited release will be on Friday, 10.24, and the wide on Friday, 10.31.

Angelina Jolie in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling.

There’s no ambiguity about the title, by the way, as was indicated during the Cannes Film Festival. Eastwood’s films will definitely be called Changeling, despite that festival rumble about a possible switch to The Exchange and producer Brian Grazer having told Variety‘s Anne Thompson during the festival that he “thinks” it’ll be called that.
My reaction after catching the Cannes makeup screening: “Longish and leisurely paced. Delivers a keen sense of humanity and moral clarity. Offers a complex but rewarding story. Really nice music, as usual, that lends a feeling of warmth and assurance. Superbly acted, shot, and paced (not every movie has to feel like a machine gun).
“More than a few top-notch performances — Jolie’s leading the pack. A movie that understands itself and its subject matter completely. Some overly black or white-ish characterizations, but not to the extent that they bug you horribly. Aimed at adults (i.e., those 25 and over with the ability/willingness to process this sort of thing). Not a great film, but a very fine one. Terrible last line, though.”

Count on it — Cameron Crowe will direct his self-written, Sony-financed comedy-adventure with Ben Stiller and Reese Witherspoon, which will roll early next year under producer Scott Rudin.

Ben Stiller, Cameron Crowe, Reese Witherspoon

Variety‘s Michael Fleming and Tatiana Siegel posted a story last night about Columbia’s Amy Pascal having beat out various bidders for a C.C.-authored “comedy adventure” project with Stiller and Witherspoon costarring and Rudin producing. Fleming/Siegel said the film, which will begin shooting in January ’09, is based on a Crowe script, and that Crowe will produce. But it didn’t say he’d be directing.
That seemed weird. Why wouldn’t the director of Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous want to take the reins on his latest creation? So I wrote and was told a few minutes ago by a Rudin spokesperson that Crowe will in fact be the helmer. Hooray — the post-Elizabethtown afterburn era is finally over (after two and a half years) and the Man Called C is again strapping on the leg irons, just like Gene Wilder‘s gunslinger did in Blazing Saddles.
Way back in April ’07 I wrote about the E-Town trauma and how the abysmal failure of that ’05 dramedy had affected Crowe’s rep around town.
I passed along a second-hand piece of information in that same story about Crowe having written a vehicle that he wanted Adam Sandler to be in — is this the same thing?