Day: August 31, 2009

I’ve been as anxious as the next guy to see Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor Wood‘s biopic about the young John Lennon in Liverpool. I’ve written about it several times, praised Matt Greenhalgh‘s script (saying it “has the same concise, straight-from-the-shoulder British scruffiness that his Greenhalgh’s script for Control had”), expressed interest in Kristin Scott Thomas‘s portrayal of Aunt Mimi, etc. But I’m thinking the good vibes may be over.

(l.) Aaron Johnson as John Lennon in Nowhere Boy; (r.) ex-Beatle Pete Best sometimes around 1961 or ’62.

The reason is that after seeing the above still of Aaron Johnson playing Lennon (and presumably looking out upon Liverpool’s Mersey River), I experienced severe disappointment on three levels. Actually, make that four.

One, Lennon had light honey-brown hair and Johnson’s hair looks either dark brown or jet black. How many brain cells did it take for Wood to say to the movie’s hairdresser at the start of production, “Okay, Lennon’s hair was light brown so let’s make sure Aaron’s hair is as dark as Elvis Presley‘s was…perfect!” I warned Wood not to do this in a piece that ran last January (i.e., two months before Nowhere Boy began shooting), to wit: “They’d better get the hair color right — light honey-brown. If they screw this part up they’re dead.” And Wood screwed it up!

Two, this photo told me that Johnson doesn’t really resemble Lennon at all. You could sense Lennon’s impertinent and somewhat snippy personality in his features. Johnson looks like a doleful Italian longshoreman or short-order cook. If he resembles anyone, it’s ex-Beatle Pete Best — i.e., the drummer who got fired in 1962 to make way for Ringo Starr. Obviously Johnson’s performance could make all the difference. But I’m really steaming about the hair-color thing. You just don’t mess with hair when you’re trying to physically be someone as well as re-animate their spirit.

And three, Lennon had a somewhat large, distinctive and pointed British honker with a very pronounced bridge. Johnson’s nose looks nothing like this — it’s a thicker, rounded-off, slightly bent-to-the-right nose that isn’t the least bit Lennon-y. Wood could have told the makeup people to make it right, but she didn’t. Was the idea to make Johnson resemble Lennon as little as possible?

And look at the 19 year-old kid Wood chose to play Paul McCartney. His name is Thomas Sangster, and his hair color is wrong also — it’s too light. (Unless, of course, Wood had it darkened for the film.) Look at the picture below — does anyone think Sangster resembles McCartney even faintly? He doesn’t look like Macca — he looks like a chipmunk. Look at him! At best he could possibly play a 13 year-old version of George Harrison. Is Wood insane?

I have to be honest. The hair cock-ups suggest that all kinds of other things may be wrong with Nowhere Boy. If you get the hair-color wrong (something that’s easy to get right), the odds are you’re going to screw up in other ways. People tend to be consistent, I mean. If you have dishes stacked two feet high in your kitchen sink, you probably don’t brush your teeth or pay your bills on time. I’m feeling a little queasy about it now. This is a blade of grass that may tell the tale. I still like the script but all bets are off until further notice. I smell trouble.

The key sentence in Katrina Onstad‘s profile of director Atom Egoyan in yesterday’s N.Y. Times reads as follows: “A complex, Egoyan-esque meta-narrative has been imposed on the film that was supposed to be [Egoyan’s] most direct” — i.e, Chloe, an emotionally-intimate drama that will play at the Toronto Film Festival. “It’s now the tragic movie about marriage during which one very famous marriage ended so tragically.

Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore in Atom Egoyan’s Chloe.

Onstad refers, of course, to Chloe star Liam Neeson having lost his actress wife, Natasha Richardson, last March when she died from a head injury caused by a bizarre skiiing accident. The tragedy occured as Chloe was nearing completion of shooting in Toronto. Neeson left the shoot for a brief period, saw to his family and his wife’s burial, and returned for a final couple of days of filming.

Egoyan tells Onstad about how Neeson “pulled him aside on the set and told him of Ms. Richardson’s fall. ‘He’d just talked with her, and everything seemed to be okay. But there was a feeling of: ‘You should go.’ And it just changed the course of everything.'”

“First you think, ‘Oh my God’…the human side takes over, and you try to proceed in a way that’s respectful and honorable,” Chloe producer Ivan Reitman tells Onstad. “But there are always one’s financial obligations. Films involve hundreds of lives.” A flood of insurers and completion bonders came on the set, and everyone went over the script, altering sequences for to give Neeson time to attend Richardson’s funeral and whatnot.

“But within days he quietly returned to Toronto in a private plane, undetected by the news media,” Onstad writes. “‘He conducted himself in an extraordinary manner,’ Mr. Reitman recalled. ‘He was under pressure from the sadness of what had happened, and he channeled it into the performance of those two days.'”

“Over the summer Mr. Egoyan attended test screenings of Chloe with audiences in Los Angeles and Toronto, reviewing the feedback with Mr. Reitman. The response has been extremely positive, Mr. Egoyan said; no clarity issues.”

Chloe director Atom Egoyan, costar Amanda Seyfried

I’ve read the Chloe script. It’s an intriguing, mildly erotic, better-than-half-decent thing about a middle-aged wife (Julianne Moore) hiring a young prostitute (Amanda Seyfried) to try and get her middle-aged husband (Neeson) to cheat on her. It’s actually rather good. Written by a pro. The story takes some interesting turns, but it’s on the restrained and earnest side. I don’t recall any hot madness in it, but maybe I read it too quickly.

But I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit to having I have a little man inside telling me that Chloe may underwhelm on some level. Part guess, part intuition. Haven’t Egoyan’s films been generally seen as underwhelming in this and that way for the last several years? (I’m not trying to be an asshole but for me The Sweet Hereafter was his last truly stirring film.) Why wasn’t Chloe chosen to open TIFF? Why are distributors being stand-offish? I’m just asking. I have no dog in this fight, although — honestly? — I want to see Chloe because I suspect it may contain certain oblique echoes. Okay, so I’m a tabloid-reading lowlife.

“It will have interesting overtones because it is about how precious a marriage is,” Egoyan tells Onstad. “Maybe it will always be known as the film Liam was working on when that happened. But ultimately we finished the film, and Liam is magnificent in it. Now all we can do is wait and see.”

Disney’s decision to buy Marvel (i.e., hundreds upon hundreds of Marvel-created characters and storylines) for $4 billion is such glorious news that I can’t stand it. The identity of the corporate entity that will henceforth be free to exploit the Marvel elements is a huge thing for me personally. Well, not really, but I’m sure it’s a big deal for millions of Marvel fans worldwide. Okay, maybe not.

The only angle of any interest is whether or not this will serve to bland down the Marvel brand and take things in a kind of corporate Mickey Mouse direction. Wouldn’t this give Disney the force to veto any edge-pushing content from future Marvel character and creations? What’s the last genuinely cool and edgy film to come out of Disney culture? Would Iron Man have been the same film if Disney had been pulling the strings?

Transferring ownership of a major brand from corporate entity A to corporate entity B is a meaningless thing. All 21st Century entertainment corporations are invested in selling the same basic heroin. And make no mistake — Marvel mythology is in the business of pushing opiates to the masses. No clear light can come of this, and I will not go “hoo! hoo!” about this deal like all the other fansite monkeys out there. I will not wave and shout as Jack Hawkins‘ Quintus Arrius walks up the steps to greet George Relph‘s Tiberius Ceasar.