Month: April 2010

I don’t know where the below photo below was taken (the guy who sent it to me didn’t say, and he hasn’t answered my follow-up e-mails) but I’m really, really hoping it wasn’t taken at the Angelika in lower Manhattan. If it was this would imply that supposedly ahead-of-the-curve New Yorkers can be just as stubbornly conservative in their tastes as hinterland types. Please tell me it was taken in Orlando or Natchez or Des Moines.

I knew when I first saw Greenberg that it obviously wasn’t Night at the Museum, but I figured that the usual indie suspects would discover and support it, and that it might eventually find its way to cult success as one of the finest character-driven, psychologically acute, no-laugh-funny flicks in a long while.

There’s really no disputing that Greenberg is one of the best films released this year (along with Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer), and yet guys are bolting out of Greenberg showings and going up to theatre managers and saying “I want a refund”? What?

If I didn’t like Greenberg I would slink out quietly and keep my feelings to myself and my friends. I would at least defer to its reputation among most critics and tastemakers and say, “Okay, fine, critics and their weird tastes…but it’s not for me.” I certainly wouldn’t turn my animosity into a vocal lobby rant.

People not liking or recommending a film is standard, but this kind of hostility, I suspect, means Greenberg is touching some kind of nerve. It’s not just about a somewhat dislikable neurotic, but about a guy who’s at best treading water at age 40 and looking at a lot more of the same as he gets older. Speaking as the older brother of a guy whose life ended tragically because of this syndrome, I know this is about as scary as it gets. There are millions of people out there who are not that different from Ben Stiller‘s character, or who know people who are in this kind of head-jail.

As I said in my initial review, “Greenberg is about what a lot of 30ish and 40ish people who haven’t achieved fame and fortune are going through, or will go through. It’s dryly amusing at times, but it’s not kidding around.”

Many people feel as I do, of course, but Greenberg is clearly a major polarizer. It’s all evident on the Greenberg IMDB chat boards. Here’s how one fellow (i.e., “Famous Mortimer,” the guy who sent me the photo) defends it:

“I think it is provoking such strong levels of resentment from viewers because it is a movie very much of these times but not made in the style of these times. It exposes the toxic levels of conceitedness and alienation today with the sincerity and empathy of ’70’s films by Ashby, Altman and Allen.

“First off, it’s a story about people. There is no high concept or shoehorned stake-raising set piece. Viewers either have the patience to connect with the human pain on display or they are lost. Unlike Sideways, there is no charming countryside setting or buddy comedy hijinks to punch up the mood.

“Second, the dialogue is the action. Only when the viewer is willing to think over the dialogue will characters’ seemingly ambiguous motivations and back-stories become clear. There’s no juicy monologue or nauseating flashback to convey these points. Instead, the viewer comes upon them over the course of the film in the form of passing references made by various characters. It is up to us to take these bits and pieces together and unlock the character revelations for ourselves. No more spoon-feeding cinema.

“Third, this film is a labor of love. That means idiosyncratic details are to be found at every level of its making. Only by thinking these details over and feeling the connections between them do we appreciate what the movie is trying to do. It’s a really thoughtful and heartfelt experience.”

Clash of the Titans earned $29 million yesterday, and is expected to end up with $62 million by Sunday night. Think of those hundreds of thousands of Eloi lemmings in their shiny brown pelts, staring at those murky sub-standard 3D images and most of them muttering to themsleves “jeez, this isn’t all that great…if I’d only known!….but then I couldn’t or wouldn’t know because I refuse to read reviews…burned again!”

The usual bozos who go to Tyler Perry films spent $12,390,000 yesterday to see Why Did I Get Married Too?, and will eventually contribute a projected $30 million by the weekend’s finish. No taste, low brain-cell count, hopeless.

The second weekend for DreamWorks’ How To Train Your Dragon is looking at a relatively sturdy 38% three-day drop from last weekend — $11,100,000 yesterday and $27 million by Sunday night for a cume of $90,126,000 million.

Hot Tub Time Machine — a perversely inventive, crazy-assed comedy despite the naysayers — has dropped about 40% from last weekend. But it only took in a lousy $2,886,000 yesterday and is looking at $8,017,000 by Sunday night for an overall cume of $27,860,000.

Oh, and the two best movies now playing — Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer and Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg — will earn estimated weekend totals of $1,110,000 and $738,000, respectively. The Sunday-night Ghost cume will be $10,999,000 and Greenberg will be looking at an all-in total of $2,307,000.

The death of John Forsythe at age 92 will inevitably result in obits that start with the words “best known for roles on TV’s Dynasty and as the voice of Charlie’s Angels boss Charles Townsend” — the blandest credits and the biggest paychecks. Film lovers will of course default to his lead roles in Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Trouble With Harry and Topaz, and especially his performance as FBI man Alvin Dewey in Richard Brooks‘ In Cold Blood.

But my first thought when I heard the news was Forsythe’s role as the gruffly sophisticated Al Manheim in the Breck Sunday Showcase “live” broadcast of Budd Schulberg‘s What Makes Sammy Run?, which was shown in two parts in 1959.

Forsythe will definitely be included in the 2011 Oscar telecast “death reel”…right? Or will they Farrah Fawcett the poor guy? Doubt it. The two Hitchcocks and the Brooks will save the day.

Tell me the following press release doesn’t sound fascinating. It arrived at 12:06 pm and (partially) reads as follows: “Director Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers, RoboCop, Black Book) will host a special ‘Movie Night’ about Jesus Christ at [Manhattan’s] IFC Center on Thursday, April 8 at 7:30 pm.

“Verhoeven will screen Monty Python’s Life of Brian, followed by a discussion of the film, Verhoeven’s own work, and his new book “Jesus of Nazareth” (Seven Stories Press). A book signing will take place after the discussion.

“Verhoeven is also the first non-theologian admitted into Los Angeles’s Jesus Seminar, a group of 77 eminent scholars in theology, philosophy, linguistics, and biblical history. His new book explores his lifelong fascination with the facts and fictions surrounding the life of Jesus. Building on the work of the great biblical scholars of the twentieth century, he presents a portrait of Jesus as political and ethical leader, dismantling the myths about Jesus’s life to reveal a complex human figure. The book has received acclaim from experts in a host of disciplines.”

Remember the old resemblance aesthetic that used to carry weight in Hollywood circles? The one that said actors cast as famous historical figures had to sorta kinda resemble the Real McCoy? Which is why Henry Fonda and Raymond Massey were chosen to play Abraham Lincoln, respectively, in Young Mr. Lincoln and Abe Lincoln in Illinois? And Charlton Heston was cast as Gen. Andrew Jackson in The Bucaneer? And blue-eyed Jeffrey Hunter was cast as Jesus Christ in King of Kings? You know…actors you could physically half-buy in these roles?

Comparison pic totally stolen from Awards Daily

That system is totally out the window with Leonardo DiCaprio reportedly talking to Clint Eastwood about playing J. Edgar Hoover in a Universal-funded biopic.

Billy Crudup playing Hoover with a mincy British accent in Public Enemies was bad enough, but this? Hoover was short (5’7″) and thick with a jowly bulldog face — he had a stern, weathered, middle-aged look when he was in his early 30s. DiCaprio is tall (around six feet) and broad-shoulder with Nordic-Germanic features, and will look like a guy in his late 20s or early 30s when he’s 45 or 50, if not older.

Not only is there zero resemblance between the two. DiCaprio-as-Hoover is so outrageously wrong that it’s almost like an insult joke directed at ticket-buyers. It’s almost as if the filmmakers are saying, “We can cast anyone we want as Hoover. We don’t care what you think about resemblances because we make the movies and you buy the tickets. You think DiCaprio is wrong for Hoover? You haven’t seen anything yet. We’re thinking of casting Jerry Seinfeld to play Thomas Alva Edison next, and then we’re going to get Christopher Mintz-Plasse to play Joe Namath. You don’t like this? Suck on it.”

Nikki Finke reported yesterday that the script by gay screenwriter Lance Black (Milk) will “[peel] back the curtain on the life of Hoover.” Meaning, of course, that the film will probably punch up the allegedly gay undercurrent in Hoover’s private life, particularly regarding his relationship with longtime amigo Clyde Tolson. Something tells me the old-school Eastwood won’t want to delve too deeply into this aspect but Black’s script (which I’d love to read if anyone has a copy) almost certainly deals with it in a fairly up-front way.

All I know is that I’m having a lot of trouble imagining DiCaprio dressed in “a fluffy black dress with flounces and lace, stockings, high heels and a black curly wig,” which is how Hoover was allegedly described on a certain occasion by society lady Susan Rosenstiel, as reported in Anthony Summers‘ Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover.

You’d think from all the vigorous marketing and online buzz that Kick-Ass will rule the box-office on the weekend of 4.16, when it opens against Death At A Funeral. Except the across-the-board awareness of Death is slightly or solidly higher than Kick-Ass‘s, which, as a seasoned number-cruncher notes, “is surprising among 17-to-34 year olds.”

And there are higher Kick-Ass negatives at this stage with “definitely not interested” among under- and over-25 women at 15 and 13 vs. 10 and 8 for Death at a Funeral.

The bottom line is that Kick-Ass seems to be doing well only among under-25 males. The current Kick-Ass numbers for this demo “aren’t even close” to where Clash of the Titans was tracking with them two weeks ago,” I’m told. Right now under-25 males are at a definite interest 48 for Kick-Ass compared to Clash‘s opening-day number of 65.

“Next week’s numbers should be interesting when and if Kick-Ass‘s first choice number, which is currently at 7, bumps up higher with Clash removed from the equation,” the guy remarks. Clash‘s first-choice number is currently 25.

Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones‘ Breaking Upwards (IFC Films, 4.2) is — no exaggeration — the best shot, best written, best acted and best-edited New York relationship drama made for $15,000 that I’ve ever seen. If it had cost $50,000 or even $100,000 I’d still be in the wheelhouse. I expected something a little rough or meandering, but it’s an unusually bright, engaging and robust little film for what it is.

At last night’s Breaking Upwards after-party (l to r.): Julie White, Pablo Schreiber, Andrea Martin, co-writer/director/costar Daryl Wein, co-writer/costar Zoe Lister-Jones, Francis Benhamou, director of photography Alex Bergman.

Wein and Lister Jones have based their co-written script (along with Peter Duchan ) on their own real-life history, playing themselves with Wein directing and editing. I heard at the after-party that it actually cost more than $15 grand but we’ll let that one slide.

It’s about a 20something couple going through the stales and looking to shake things up agreeing to give themselves some time off and maybe nookie around. Which of course puts Breaking Upwards in the same realm and even in a kind of quasi-competition with Katie Asleton‘s The Freebie.

Breaking Upwards is in no way cute or farcical in the mode of those idiotic chick-flick romances that the studios release in January-February (and which female Eloi support with way too much enthusiasm.) The script seemingly focuses on Wein and Lister-Jones’ actual social/work milieus, which means acting classes and West Village bike rides and Jewish gatherings and parental kitchen chats, etc. And the enterprise feels utterly genuine and authentic and perceptive within these perimeters.

Breaking Upwards co-writer/director/costar Daryl Wein, co-writer/costar Zoe Lister-Jones prior to last night’s IFC Center screening.

Honestly and no offense? Lister-Jones comes off as a handful and a bit of a snippy bitch. Wein hooks up at one point with Olivia Thirlby (Juno, The Wackness) during one of his roam-arounds, and as soon as this happened I was muttering “dude, go for it…take a chance on the new talent…Zoe is way more trouble than she’s worth!”

Which obviously isn’t an indication of any real-life judgment or observation on my part. I’m just saying that Lister-Jones comes off, fairly or intentionally or whatever, as prickly and bothered with more than her share of thorns.

Sincere and believable backup is provided by Andrea Martin as Zoe’s mom (“You’re needy, honey…you’ve always been very needy”) and Julie White and Peter Friedman as Daryl’s good-egg parents.

Alex Bergman‘s cinematography is clean and unfettered and well-framed, and Wein’s editing is fast and nimble and keeps the ball in the air at all times.

Here’s that Larry Rohter story about the making of the film that ran in last Sunday’s N.Y. Times. Good on Falco Ink for making this happen.

Star Trek‘s Zachary Quinto (i.e., Monsieur Spock) and two guys I didn’t recognize (sorry) at last night’s Breaking Upwards after-party.

So I loved Chloe Moretz in Kick-Ass and the audacity of having an 11 year-old midget-sized girl murder dozens of bad guys with pistols and knives and swords, and I was also able to half-enjoy, at times, the suspended idiocy and self-referential absurdity that director Matthew Vaughn uses to explain away all the stuff that wouldn’t otherwise work and in fact would choke a horse.

Warning: Kick-Ass spoilers lie ahead. Spoilers, I mean, for those who haven’t watched the recent trailers and don’t know what the shot is and haven’t been to any comic-book action films over the last decade or so.

The problem for me is that hard-bodied, highly trained little girls like Moretz might be able to hurt or dodge or out-kick older heavier guys, but little girls are utterly incapable of whipping older, muscular, bigger-guys’ asses, and you can totally forget about these same whippersnappers wiping out several guys in one crazy-ass, stabbing, kick-boxing, balletic shoot-em-up and slice-and-dice. Even if you stretch physics like turkish taffy in an exaggerated fantasy realm, it’s completely ridiculous.

During the big finale Moretz’s Hit Girl becomes Neo in The Matrix. She wipes out 17 or 18 guys, if not more, and at one point dodges a bullet. (I think.) All comic-book action is lunacy, of course, but Kick-Ass takes things to a new extreme. It’s another exaggerated, self-mocking piece of ludicrous action pulp, only this time it takes you over the waterfalls. It’s not happening in a cyber-realm but a comic-book realm, which means that absolutely anything can happen and nothing matters. And yet in the minds of Vaughn and the geeks who are having kittens over this film, this is a cool way to go.

All they care about is the fact that Hit Girl rules. Which she does. I get that. I love Moretz in this thing. But we’ve come to a point in which the comic-book sensibility that allows her to run wild is ruining action movies. It’s been doing this for years, of course, but I was really fuming about this last night. “Where does this crap end?,” I was asking myself. “What’s next — a five-year-old action hero? How about a cat — not a cartoon cat Felix but an actual Siamese or Abyssinian or Tabby who shoots Glocks and beats the shit out of human hitmen and drug-dealers who are ten times his size and outweigh him by over 200 pounds? Why not?”

It’s gotten to the point that I’d like to arrest and incarcerate every last geek-pandering filmmaker and every last pudgy-bodied, ComicCon-attending comic-book fan and truck them all out to re-education camps in the desert and make them do calisthenics in the morning and swear off junk food and straighten their heads out about the real value of great action movies, and how their stupid allegiance to comic-book values is poisoning the well.

I’m sorry but Kick-Ass pushed me over the edge. I know I’m mostly alone on this. I understand that 94% of the mostly male, action-savoring audience is going to be more or less down with Kick-Ass and calling me clueless, etc. John Anderson, a very sharp critic and no slouch, was sitting in the front row of my screening and seemed to be half-chuckling and enjoying himself as the lights came up. I spoke after the screening to a respected critic for a well-known weekly, and even he was giving it a pass. I know it’s over. The temple walls are cracking. I realize that.

I’ve come to truly despise comic-book action flicks, and particularly the metastisizing comic-book sensibility in mainstream movies, for a reason. By this I mean the total disregard by comic-book filmmakers for setting up the rules and the reality system in which amazing things might happen within the world of a film. Just telling the audience “hey, it’s a comic thing” doesn’t cut it.

I am ready and willing to buy anything when I sit down for a movie. I will accept any bullshit premise you throw at me (even the idea of opening a small door, crawling through a mud tunnel, becoming John Malkovich for five minutes and ending up on the New Jersey Turnpike) as long as you allow me to buy it. Set it up for me…please! All I ask is that you pour the cement and bolt down the beams before making the film.

All the comic-book guys ever seem to say is “look, man…it’s cool to watch and it’s funny and has great CG…isn’t that enough?”

The current Comic-Con sensibility is primarily a product of (a) the Asian martial arts boom of the early ’90s, (b) the Quentin Tarantino hipster handbook (everything is smirky-ironic, all action is derivative and self-referential, violence is a style fetish, aping or referencing the sensibility of ’70s exploitation is a holy calling) and (c) the Robert Rodriguez B-movie, shameless-wallow sensibility in which macho action cliches are seen as eternally cool. Plus the influence of Marvel and Ang Lee‘s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the sad willingness of the faithful to cream in their pants for pretty much any super-hero of any kind.

All these influences have grown into an attitude and a sensibility that is working like cancer upon the action genre. For it’s not just comic book movies but all action flicks that are covered with this sauce.

Every year there are more and more comic-book/fantasy movies and directors and writers who are not only opposed to but actively doing their best to undermine the concept of action you can believe in. By this I mean action sequences (including physical combat/martial-arts moves) taking place in a realm that the filmmakers have carefully prepared and guided and persuaded you to accept as semi-trustable and “real” as far as it goes.

I’ll always be cool with smart metaphor actioners like The Matrix, but I’m worried that we might be moving into a world in which there will be very little allegiance or respect for the kind of violence that really hurts and bruises and is scary to face. A world in which guns fire randomly or accidentally (remember that bit in Out of Sight when the guy fell on the stairs and shot himself?). And has foot chases that involve fatigue and heavy breathing. And beatings that bear at least a slight resemblance to schoolyard or back-alley beatings that you might have observed as a kid in which guys don’t get clobbered so hard and so often that they’d be dead in reality, or at least maimed for life.

The vast majority of action films used to live by the realism creed. Now it’s pretty much the exception to the rule. Many if not most action films these days are committed to the willfully surreal if not absurd. They’re all angled towards aficionados of Asian sword-and-bullet ballet. We seem to be fast approaching a time in which the Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix, Tony Scott‘s Man on Fire, Phillip Noyce‘s Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games, Wiliam Friedkin‘s The French Connection, Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker, Fernando Meirelles‘ City of God and Alfonso Cuaron‘s masterful Children of Men will be seen as icons of a bygone age.

Comic-book action filmmakers aren’t fit to shine Cuaron’s shoes. They aren’t fit to wipe up phlegm that he spits on the sidewalk when he has a cold. All they’re fit to do is follow the system that we have in place in which the director of the next comic-book movie feels obliged and is in fact eager to top the last director of the last comic book movie, but always without setting it up — they just do it, knowing that the ComicCon and South by Southwest faithful will lap it up and yell “Yeeaahhhh!”

The South by Southwest reactions that I read about Matthew Vaughn‘s Kick-Ass (Lionsgate, 4.16), which I saw last night, buried the lede. The star of this almost sociopathic comic-book actioner isn’t Aaron Johnson, who plays Dave Lizewki, the lead character who invents a faux-super hero called Kick-Ass. The star is Chloe Moretz, the 13 year-old who plays Hit Girl.

Moretz, who’s 5′ 2″ but looks smaller in the film, actually plays Mindy Macready, the daughter of an angry but amiable vigilante named Damon Macready (Nicolas Cage). Hit Girl is Mindy’s purple-wigged alter-ego when she and dad (in the guise of a Batman-ish figure called Big Daddy) go on crime-bashing rampages.

Johnson’s character seems too wussy, too “gee-gosh,” too intimidated by everything. He looks scared or amazed all the time, and his mouth is always hanging open. But Moretz is the shit. She’s got spunk and sass and vertebrae of steel. And she’s not compromised by the fact that her Matrix-like fighting skills and multiple triumphs over able-bodied, full-grown men (particularly during the finale) are completely ludicrous. What matters is that Moretz has the character and personality of a super-tough chick who doesn’t mess around. Presence, conviction, charisma…got ’em all.

A guy asked if I’m buying an iPad this weekend. Certainly not, I said. For the reasons listed last night/today by N.Y. Times tech correspondent David Pogue. Which I’ve pasted below. No camera, no mutitasking, no flash, no USB receptacles, etc.

The guy mentioned, however, that “under the glass of the units that are shipping this weekend is a hole built specifically for a camera to be fit into the current device. Between that and other postings on the rumor sites for camera tech jobs at Apple, there’s no question that there will be a camera built into the next version.

That’s fine, I told him, but I’m waiting for version 3.0, not 2.0. Nobody with a connected laptop and a 3G iPhone really needs this thing. Not until 2012, I’m thinking.

There are two iPad models — wifi-only and wifi plus 3G cellular service. The one that goes on sale this weekend is wifi-only, but the one with 3G data will start selling in about a month for an extra $130 a pop. If you get the wifi-only, there will be no “internet everywhere” ability that people have on their iPhones right now.

Pogue’s shit list reads as follows:

“The Apple iPad is basically a gigantic iPod Touch.

“It’s a half-inch-thick slab, all glass on top, aluminum on the back. Hardly any buttons at all — just a big Home button below the screen. It takes you to the Home screen full of apps, just as on an iPhone.

“One model gets online only in Wi-Fi hot spots ($500 to $700, for storage capacities from 16 to 64 gigabytes). The other model can get online either using Wi-Fi or, when you’re out and about, using AT&T’s cellular network; that feature adds $130 to each price.

“You operate the iPad by tapping and dragging on the glass with your fingers, just as on the iPhone. When the very glossy 9.7-inch screen is off, every fingerprint is grossly apparent.

“There’s an e-book reader app, but it’s not going to rescue the newspaper and book industries (sorry, media pundits). The selection is puny (60,000 titles for now). You can’t read well in direct sunlight. At 1.5 pounds, the iPad gets heavy in your hand after awhile (the Kindle is 10 ounces). And you can’t read books from the Apple bookstore on any other machine — not even a Mac or iPhone.

“When the iPad is upright, typing on the on-screen keyboard is a horrible experience; when the iPad is turned 90 degrees, the keyboard is just barely usable (because it’s bigger). A $70 keyboard dock will be available in April, but then you’re carting around two pieces.

“At least Apple had the decency to give the iPad a really fast processor. Things open fast, scroll fast, load fast. Surfing the Web is a heck of a lot better than on the tiny iPhone screen — first, because it’s so fast, and second, because you don’t have to do nearly as much zooming and panning.

“But as any Slashdot reader can tell you, the iPad can’t play Flash video. Apple has this thing against Flash, the Web’s most popular video format; says it’s buggy, it’s not secure and depletes the battery. Well, fine, but meanwhile, thousands of Web sites show up with empty white squares on the iPad — places where videos or animations are supposed to play.

“YouTube, Vimeo, TED.com, CBS.com and some other sites are converting their videos to iPad/iPhone/Touch-compatible formats. But all the news sites and game sites still use Flash. It will probably be years before the rest of the web’s videos become iPad-viewable.

“There’s no multitasking, either. It’s one app at a time, just like on the iPhone. Plus no U.S.B. jacks and no camera. Bye-bye, Skype video chats. You know Apple is just leaving stuff out for next year’s model.

“The bottom line is that you can get a laptop for much less money — with a full keyboard, DVD drive, U.S.B. jacks, camera-card slot, camera, the works. Besides: If you’ve already got a laptop and a smartphone, who’s going to carry around a third machine?”

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson reported yesterday that word ’round the Cannes campfire says that neither John Cameron Mitchell‘s Rabbit Hole nor Bruce Robinson‘s Rum Diary will be “done in time.” I hadn’t heard that. I’m sorry. That’s a shame.

I’m presuming, of course, that “not done in time” is a euphemism in the case of Rum Diary. Because it was shooting in Puerto Rico an entire year ago so…you know, c’mon. The film is apparently experiencing issues of one sort or another.

On the other hand Shoot Online.com posted a press release on 3.29 about Nina Saxon Design (which has composed Rum Diary‘s main-title sequence). It says that the film is “currently seeking distribution at the Cannes Film Festival.”

I purchased a download of Corel Paintshop Photo Pro X3, and of course it didn’t acknowledge the existence of this software on the final download page. So I called tech support and the message said today’s a holiday and they’ll all be back at work on Monday, April 5th. Who gets April Fool’s Day off?

From here on no work holidays except Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, 4th of July and Labor Day. All the other piddly-dink holidays are hereby shit-canned. And no sending people home early when the weather acts up, as I explained several weeks ago.