Day: July 12, 2008

Here‘s a 7.13 chat between Patti Smith and N.Y. Times reporter Deborah Solomon, the subject primarily being Steven Sebring‘s Patti Smith: Dream of Life, which I saw and fell for six months ago at the Sundance Film Festival. When will Los Angelenos get to see it? Or San Franciscans, for that matter? No clue.

Palm Pictures is opening it at Manhattan’s Film Forum on August 6th. Some scattered openings will follow in September and October. San Diego, it appears, will have it before Los Angeles.
Six months ago I called it “an authentic spiritual adventure film — a mostly black-and-white exploration of Smith’s life, loves, history, poetry, music, alliances, relationships, etc. It feels at times like a companion piece to D.A. Pennebaker‘s Don’t Look Back (the monochrome classic about Bob Dylan touring England in the mid ’60s), at other times like a patchwork meditation, a home movie, a concert film, a fashion show. It’s about music, heroes, rants, chants, parents, deaths, declarations and determinations.
“For me, the authenticity is in the way Sebring has captured (or emulated) the grit and textures of Smith’s prose, and the fierce spiritual tension that her band music has always injected in one form or another. ‘Life is an adventure of our own design…a series of lucky and unlucky accidents,’ yes…but having a locomotive inside you helps. There is no boredom or lethargy in this lady’s life…not a lick of this. The movie is a pleasure, a journey, an attic sift-through, a huge charge.”

A clip of Heather Ledger‘s “Joker” taunting the actual Sen. Patrick Leahy — awesome.

I finished Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Bastards this morning at 2:30 am, and yesterday’s opinion (based on having read the first 80 pages) is basically unchanged. I’m still calling it a categorically insane World War II attitude comedy on top of a quasi-“exploitation film” about angry Jews paying back the Nazis for their many atrocities. It begins and ends in QT’s movie-nut head, and is very entertaining for that.
The film is going to seem loony-tunes to some, and that’s good. The Cinema Paradiso section (pretty young Jewish refugee running a Paris cinema, changing reels, not smoking for fear of burning the stored silver nitrate film reels) goes on a bit, page 50 to 100, give or take. A lot of bodies hit the floor from page 100 to 165. A lotta blood and bullets. The violent finale is wackjob. It’s either insane beyond measure or wildly imaginative in a good way, or both.
Oh, and the actor who gets to play the role of Colonel Landa (a.k.a. “the Jew Hunter”) is going to have a field day. Brad Pitt‘s “Aldo the Apache” part should be beefed up a bit; he’s too peripheral over the last 30 or so pages.

“Clearances” are gentleman’s agreements between theatrical chains that are basically about respecting territory and boundaries. One L.A. clearance arrangement that’s been in effect for some time is between the Landmark plex on West Pico Blvd. and the AMC Century City 15 plex, located about a mile or so to the northeast. The basic deal has been to give each other economic breathing room by not showing each other’s films. Simple.

Landmark plex on Pico

But all that has recently changed. The Landmark has essentially decided that with times being tough all over, their indie-movies-for-upscale-audiences plan hasn’t been bringing in enough dough and it’s time for a new strategy. And that means showing more mainstream-y films even if their AMC cousins are showing the same titles. Which is a roundabout way of saying fuck the Diaz brothers.
Situation: The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! will be opening at both the Landmark and the AMC C.C. plex next weekend, and it may be that the Landmark will beat out the AMC as far as Mamma Mia! business is concerned due to the latter having a stronger 25-and-over female customer base.
“Landmark just decided to do it,” a friend confides. “They decided they really wanted The Dark Knight and WB was perfectly willing to let them show it. Landmark, meanwhile, had Mamma Mia! exclusively for that area, but now AMC is going to go show Mamma Mia also.” In short, a little tit-for-tat, quid pro quo action.
Landmark CEO Ted Mundorff was unavailable, but his sentiments were summed up by a professional colleague: “Let’s just show good films that everyone likes and not be so exclusionary.”

AMC Century City 14

The friend believes that the Dark Knight booking is as much about appealing to Landmark regulars who are serious Chris Nolan fans (Memento, Insomnina) as much as anything else. I’m not sure I can buy that one but whatever. I myself am a Nolan fan first, a Heath Ledger fan second and a Batman fan second.
Before they altered or broadened their identity by letting mainstream popcorn movies in, Landmark had been…how to say it? The term is either “suffering” or “somewhat hurting,” but then so has everyone else in the indie exhibition sector. It’s not a flush time right now. The Landmark has been plugging along, but the biggest indie films they’ve been showing have been The Visitor, Mongol and Guillame Canet‘s Tell No One. That’s fine as far as it goes, but an operation like the Landmark needs more grease on the axles.
As someone else put it, “There’s so much good product around now. Why not just just give people what they want?”

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the weekend’s #1 film — it did $13.7 million last night and is projected to earn $35.8 million for the weekend. I was foreseeing something in the mid to high 20s, so this is a bit of a surprise. Of course, sequels are always hot the first day. And Hellboy II may be down 50% or more next weekend when The Dark Knight rolls in. it may be a push to reach $100 million domestic.
Awful-third-act Hancock will come in second with $34.6 million by Sunday night. It’s off only 35% from last weekend, and the cume right now is $166 million. It’s going to top $200 million easy, which is quite a marquee-draw accomplishment on Will Smith‘s part given the conviction in most quarters that it’s a piece of shit. The last 35%, I mean.
Journey to the Center of the Earth will come in third with about $19.6 million….fair.
WALL*E will come in fourth with about $19 million. It’s down to about $4900 a print, which means it could be a push to $200 million. It’s one of the two or three best films of the year and obviously a sizable financial success, but some are going to call these numbers disappointing. For whatever reason, the real-life tele-tubbies in the hinterlands aren’t going for it the way they could. Too arty, too adult? Are they hip to the satire element and not coming due to an undercurrent of resentment? “Make fun of us and our high-starch, high-cholestoral Jabba lifestyle?,” etc. “We’ll show you, Disney/Pixar!”
Fifth-place Wanted will take in $11.7 million. Get Smart will be sixth with $6.9 million — a current cume over $112 million. Eddie Murphy‘s Meet Dave will pull in a pathetic $4,927,000 with an average of $1600 a screen for a seventh- place showing.

It’s not that I haven’t been reading Larry Gross‘s “48 HRS. Journal” series — a note-paddy, stream-of-consciousness memoir of his experience as a screenwriter on that semi-legendary Walter Hill film — at MCN. I’ve been swigging it down along with everyone else. A lot of it feels like solid first-person stuff, sharply observed, perceptive at times, honest.

Walter Hill

But the occasional Sloppy Joe aspect has begun to to grate and piss me off. At times it reminds you of that Truman Capote “this isn’t writing, it’s typing” crack. You can say “hey, where’s the editing?” or you can say, “Wow, Gross’s avoidance of traditional sentence and paragraph structures is too cool!” Call me an old-school guy. Why didn’t Gross just buckle down and tighten this sucker into shape?
It is very nice knowing, however, that that the legendary four-minute-long shot of Nick Nolte prowling around a police precinct — uncut, moving from desk to desk, cop to clerk and back again — was shot on June 16, 1982. And it’s mildly interesting knowing that the Paramount brass — Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, etc. — wanted Eddie Murphy axed from the film because he wasn’t funny enough, or a good enough actor.
Whatever happened to Walter Hill? He sounds like such a wise and tough hombre in the Gross series, but he’s been convincing many of us that he’s been in a creative dead zone for 20 years now. I mean, it hurts but let’s face it.
The fact is that the Walter Hill label really meant something for about a ten-year period. He made seven strong (or reasonably half-decent) stylish actioners with a recognizable auteurist stamp from ’75 to ’84 — Hard Times, The Driver, The Warriors, The Long Riders (which I consider his absolute best), Southern Comfort, 48 HRS. and Streets of Fire. He was regarded back then as a class act — a bright, thoughtful and seasoned fellow who read lots of books — even though he carried a slight swaggering-hack aura. A little touch of that skilled-whore Sam Peckinpah vibe.

Larry Gross

Then came the long gradual downturn into schlock and mediocrity — Brewster’s Millions, Crossroads (which was awful — I knew Hill was in big trouble the minute I saw it), Red Heat, Johnny Handsome, Another 48 HRS., Geronimo, Wild Bill, Last Man Standing, etc. He hasn’t been “Walter Hill” for so long, it looks like up to me.
It doesn’t figure that a guy who “had it” and was considered one of the Big Guns would gradually cheese out and melt down on a slow-mo basis unless….well, unless some sort of personal problem took over. I’m presuming that was the case, or maybe Hill just ran out of gas. He’s been working and all, but the best thing he’s done this century is direct a Deadwood episode. Hill is not that old (66 is the new 51), and an artistic comeback in the big-screen arena would be a truly great and exciting thing.

Peanuts, popcorn…hey, getcha “Wilhelm Scream” ring tone right heah!