Month: April 2010

I say this all the time but this time I’m really serious. If anyone can score a copy of Noah Oppenheim‘s Jackie Kennedy script — the one reported to be a Darren Aronofsky-Rachel Weisz project by Entertainment Weekly‘s Nicole Sperling — and pass it along, I would be most grateful and would reciprocate in kind.

The plan is for Weisz to play the former First Lady and Aronofsky to direct-produce. The script is basically about the former Mrs. Kennedy’s experience from the day of JFK’s assassination in Dallas on 11.22.63 to his burial in Arlington Cemetery four days hence. It would obviously involve all kinds of CG blending of newly-shot material with newsreel and videotape footage of the actual events, etc.

I’m curious because this frankly doesn’t seem like Aronofsky-type material, to be honest.

I’ll be attending tonight’s Zeigfeld screening of Barry Levinson‘s You Don’t Know Jack, the Al Pacino-as-Jack Kevorkian biopic that will debut on HBO on Saturday, 4.24. All along Kevorkian’s aim has been to end suffering. If there’s one thing the American Medical Association is not interested in doing, it’s acting compassionately in the face of prolonged agony caused by a terminal illness.

Until this morning I’d never seen Francois Alaux, Herve de Crecy and Ludovic Houplain‘s Logorama, which won the Best Animated Short Film Oscar six weeks ago. It appeared online around April 5th. It’s a ironic, inventive, devastating critique of what a corporate-branded nightmare this country has become. The dry laceration effect is sublime. That Dean Martin tune is perfect.

Logorama was presented at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, and also opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival — missed it both times! I love the Strangelove ending. The Pringles are voiced by David Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker; actors Joel Michaeley and Bob Stephenson are also featured.

I really don’t like going to hot places that are always crowded and noisy, and which always make you wait for a table, and on top of these humiliations will sometimes give your table away if a name-brand actor happens to show up — which is precisely what happened last night at Cafe Habana on Prince Street. The renowned Luiz Guzman (The Limey, Out Of Sight) waltzed in and snagged a table that I and filmmaker pals Svetlana Cvetko and David Smith had been waiting 25 minutes for.

Cafe Habana hostess Kamela Arandelovic, director-screenwriter David Smith — Tuesday, 4.13, 7:50 pm.

But the food was okay and the hostess-slash-waitress, a Croatian film student named Kamela Arandelovic, was a hot number so it wasn’t a total loss. Svetlana was the dp on Untitled, and is the co-dp of a financial-meltdown doc that is so top-secret and so strictly under-the-radar Moscow rules that even now it can’t even be alluded to except in the vaguest and haziest of terms. As I speak goons are on their way over to my apartment to rough me up for having written just this.

A block or two west of Cafe Habana — Tuesday, 4.13, 6:55 pm.

Half of my recently-posted Cannes big-wish scenario — screenings of Doug Liman‘s Fair Game plus a presentation of at least an extended reel of Chris Nolan‘s Inception — will be fulfilled, sez Variety‘s Justin Chang. Liman’s political thriller was “screened earlier this week” for Thierry Fremaux‘s Cannes selection committee, and is now “looking like a strong possibility” for a competition berth.

Okay, now gimme that Nolan and I’ll be a pig in shit.

Chang also discloses that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Biutiful, a Spanish-language, Barcelona-shot drama toplining Javier Bardem, and Mike Leigh‘s Another Year, a “slice-of-life ensembler” featuring the usual Leigh grotesques, are definitely set to premiere in competition.

Chang repeats the recent tremor about it being “unclear” if Terrence Malick‘s Tree of Life will be ready in time. Is there a more obsessively reclusive dandelion on the face of the moviemaking planet right now than Malick? If I was his manager or distributor I would barge into that editing room and go all Harry Cohn and Daryl F. Zanuck on his ass, and Tree of Life would be permanently removed from the realm of “unclear,” you bet.

Among the official selections being announced tomorrow, Chang foresees Bertrand Tavernier‘s La Princesse de Montpensier, a historical costumer, as likely. Ditto Francois Ozon‘s Potiche, costarring Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu, for an out-of-competition slot.

Two other French pics likely to show, says Chang, are Xavier Beauvois‘ Of Gods and Men, a drama set among Cistercian monks, and Tournee, directed by French actor Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), which could screen in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar if not the official selection.

Also likely choices include Susanne Bier‘s The Revenge and Julian Schnabel‘s Miral, which costars Willem Dafoe, Alexander Siddig and Freida Pinto.

The Cannes Film Festival will go from Wednesday, 5.12 to Sunday, 5.23, although for most journalists it’ll be over after seven or eight days. I’ll arrive on Tuesday morning, 5.11, and intend to hammer away for ten solid days (counting arrival day) until departing on the evening of Thursday, 5.20.

I never cared for the films of German oddball director Werner Schroeter, and even now, having just read of his death, I can think of nothing to say except sorry, due respect, and 65 is too young.

Is in fact this Marmaduke trailer more infuriating than the one for Furry Vengeance? HE reader Josh insists that Marmaduke is the 2010 champ thus far. It doesn’t, however, have Brendan Fraser fighting a weight problem, and that, for me, is significant.

20th Century Fox is releasing Marmaduke on June 4th.

There’s something extremely engaging and heartening about this re-print of a Vanity Fair article, written by Brooke Hayward, of a conversation she had in ’01 with ex-husband Dennis Hopper and daughter Marin about their life together from the early to late ’60s. It’s hard to pin down exactly why it feels so levitational but it is.

“Double Standard,” 1961, silver print, Dennis Hopper collection, Los Angeles.

I found their recollection of Hopper’s heroism during the 1961 Bel Air fire especially moving. Brooke tells Marin about how “your dad ran up and down Stone Canyon saving everybody.” And then Hopper recalls “a double-page picture of me in Paris Match — ‘Unidentified man, hero of Bel Air fire’ — with a Juan Gris in one hand and a Picasso in the other, coming out of this woman’s house.

“Everybody had abandoned this house with the roof on fire, and I kept thinking, Somebody’s in there. I ran in, and this woman was sitting on the toilet. I said, ‘You’ve got to leave.’ ‘No, no, I’m staying, I’m staying. I don’t care.’ Anyway, I got her out of there, and that’s when, I guess, they took the picture!”

L.A. Times/Envelope columnist Pete Hammond heard last weekend from the Cannes people that he was good to go with his press pass. But I was only just told today. I first became accustomed to being one of the last kids to be chosen in grade school, because my last name ends with a “W.”

“Nom/Name: WELLS

Prenom/First Name: Jeffrey

Media/Publication or outlet: HOLLYWOOD-ELSEWHERE.COM

“Nous avons le plaisir de vous confirmer votre accreditation pour le 63e Festival de Cannes. Vous pourrez retirer votre badge a Cannes sur presentation de cette confirmation et d’une piece d’identite. L’entree des bureaux des accreditations se situe entre l’Office du Tourisme et l’entree principale du Palais des Festivals.

“Merci de consulter votre dossier d’informations pratiques personnalise, accessible avec votre reference de dossier, a l’adresse http://reg.online-festival.com. Vous y trouverez a partir du vendredi 9 avril des documents d’informations ainsi que votre bon de transport aeroport de Nice-Cannes.”

CBS Films’ The Back-up Plan (4.23), the Jennifer Lopez romcom, is partnering with the American Humane Association for pet adoptions across the nation in 12 select markets. And Participant Media and Summit Entertainment’s Furry Vengeance (4.30) has announced a campaign to “bring a message of wildlife and habitat preservation to over 16,000 schools – approximately a half a million students around the country,” according to a release.

The idea is to counter-balance the karma of the films themselves with socially nourishing acts. Better this, I suppose, than just doing a take-the-money-and-run.

I reported on March 7th about having seen the trailer for Furry Vengeance, the latest from director Roger Kumble, and coming away with an impression that it may be “the most infuriatingly awful film of the year thus far.”

Wilson Morales reported yesterday about Chris Rock embarking on a rewrite of Akira Kurosawa‘s High and Low — an emotional variation of Ed McBain’s King’s Ransom — for Mike Nichols to eventually direct. This reminded me of Nichols’ other project, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith‘s Deep Water by Joe Penhall. If anyone has Penhall’s script, I’d love to read it.

This Focus Features trailer — a slick professional job — sells the notion that Lisa Cholodenko‘s The Kids Are All Right is tart and punchy and taut like a trampoline, bouncing its material high in the air. It’s an okay film, but it’s more like a blanket spread out on the back lawn on a Sunday afternoon in the shade with glasses of lemonade and NPR on the radio.

I saw The Kids Are All Right in a slightly haggard and pressured state at Sundance and would like to give it another shot. I didn’t hate it or anything. I’d just like to see it in a fresher, more robust state of mind.