Day: June 18, 2010

The new one-sheet for David Fincher‘s The Social Network (Columbia, 10.1). Since reading Aaron Sorkin‘s screenplay about the rough-and-tumble beginnings of Facebook, I’ve been calling the film a cyber version of Treasure of Sierra Madre. The poster’s basic conveyance is that Jesse Eisenberg portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will not be endearing.

In a 2009 interview with the Baltimore Sun (which I can’t find the link to), Eisenberg allegedly said that Zuckerberg “seems so much more overtly insensitive in so many ways that seem more real to me in the best way…I don’t often get cast as insensitive people so it feels very comfortable, fresh and exciting. The Social Network is the biggest relief I’ve ever had in a movie.”

Pic costars Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara and Armie Hammer. Sorkin’s script was adapted from Ben Mezrich‘s “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal,” published in 2009.

In a November 2009 set-visit article, Baltimore Sun critic Michael Sragow noted that Zuckerberg “was a controversial figure even before Mezrich’s book came out, accused of hogging credit for Facebook and manipulating other people’s ideas.”

One result of Zuckerberg having never told Mezrich his side of the story, Sragow writes, is that he’s portrayed in the book “as at worst a heartless user, at best a ruthless genius so divorced from normal human discourse he doesn’t even know he’s ruthless.”

“[David] Fincher laughs quietly when asked if Zuckerberg will seem more sympathetic in the movie. ‘I’m not the one to talk about the need for ‘likable’ or ‘sympathetic’ characters,” he said.”

Anecdotal: BBC Urdu is reporting (according to a Google Translation) that Pakistan’s Deputy Attorney General has launched a criminal investigation against Zuckerberg and others “in response to Facebook hosting a ‘Draw Muhammad’ contest on its site late last month.” No charges have been filed, but the Pakistani law (Section 295-C of the penal code) that the contest may have temporarily violated (as Facebook removed the contest from its site last month) calls for a punishment of death or imprisonment for life.

Not half bad in the usual no-laugh-funny way. I was moderately amused, I mean. It’s cool that it’s performed by “real” WME agents. Who’s the adrenaline guy playing the young Ari Gold?

The frame captures in Gary Tooze‘s review of the WHV Bluray of George Cukor‘s A Star Is Born (1954) underline what I said a couple of months ago, which is that the film doesn’t really work because Judy Garland looked way too old to play an ingenue, even a late-blooming one.

In the pic above the 31 or 32 year-old Garland arguably looks a bit older (and certainly no younger) than costar James Mason, who was born in May 1909 and was 43 or 44 during shooting. Look at her! She could be 45 or 46, certainly by today’s standards. And it’s the Bluray detail, I gather, that’s exposing this for the first time.

As I noted in April, Garland’s Esther Blodgett “looks stressed, worn down and plain with a too-short haircut and her chin starting to disappear — there’s a straight line between the tip of her chin and the base of her neck. Garland herself was clearly a wreck at a relatively young age. She’d lived a tough life up that point, and it didn’t get any more peaceful. She died in 1969 at age 47 — barely into middle age.”

I said before that Garland’s Blodgett “looks like a 39 year-old New Jersey housewife who’s taken too much speed and sipped too many Manhattans.” I misspoke. The women on Real Housewives of New Jersey, most of whom are in their early to late ’40s, look younger, hotter, spunkier. Don’t agree? It’s at least a debatable point.

Below is a slightly more flattering frame capture. Garland had perhaps gotten some extra sleep the night before or had been cutting down on the pills. But by today’s standards she could be 38 or 39. (Aging doesn’t happen today like it used to.) There’s certainly no way you can buy her as a 25 year-old, which I think is what Blodgett was supposed to be. Not fresh out of high school but not that far along either.

And look, by the way, at that 1954 WarnerColor widescreen texture. Almost a Georges Seurrat pointillist painting. Tooze says “the new transfer shows grain…film textures exist in some scenes more than others.” Naturally. I’m not hating on the prospect at all. 1950s color is what it is, or was — but this still does seem to give you an idea of what this forthcoming Bluray (due on 6.22) might be like.

I saw and reviewed Animal Kingdom (Sony Classics, 8.10) at Sundance 2010, except I can’t find the link. The first reports about it being an Australian At Close Range were partly right, but it has its own kind of malice, easy and neighborly-like. The Codys, a drug-dealing crime family, don’t act or look the “part” but you can’t help but believe — trust — that they’re quite dangerous when push comes to shove, or when they slip into a foul mood.

Two characters are especially chilling — Ben Mendelsohn‘s “Pope” Cody and Jacki Weaver‘s Janine Cody — a Lady Macbeth to be watched very carefully. The only soft spot in the film is the young lead, James Frecheville, who has a way of convincing you that his character, Josh Cody, is on the slow side. He just has that “duhhhh” look in his eyes.

All right, somebody needs to find the Criterion staffer who thought up the rabbit clue in the latest newsletter and slap him around. The words “WUV’ and “ATE” on the rabbit’s fingers are obvious allusions to “LOVE” and ‘HATE” tattooed on Robert Mitchum‘s fingers in Charles Laughton‘s Night of the Hunter, meaning that a Criterion DVD/Buray of this 1955 classic is in the works.

Why a rabbit in the first place? Because rabbits are frequently hunted or something? No, some guy says in the thread. Mitchum’s nickname as a kid, he claims, was “Robbie the Rabbit.” Sure thing.

Presumably the footage titled “Charles Laughton Directs Night of the Hunter,” that two-hour look at rushes and outtakes that were part of almost eight hours worth of footage that Laughton’s widow Elsa Lanchester donated to the AFI, and which UCLA helped to restore, will be a part of the package. I saw a good chunk of this footage in Los Angeles, although I forget where and when. A couple of years ago, I think, at the Billy Wilder in Westwood or at one of the American Cinematheque houses.

I’ve always winced at the moment in All The President’s Men when the actor portraying Kenneth Dahlberg says “I…uhm, I gave the check to Stans” and Robert Redford pauses and goes, “Beg your pardon?” As if to say, “Whoa…did you just spill the big beans?” One should never express excitement when a source has revealed something big. That’s like jerking too hard on the fishing pole after getting a nibble. If anything, you should indicate that the just-revealed info is almost yawn-worthy, or certainly no big deal. Otherwise you could scare them off.

Jonah Hex has been ripped to shreds by critics — a 5% positive from Rotten Tomatoes creme de la cremes and a 12% positive from the hoi polloi. I saw it a couple of days ago in a jam-packed Warner Bros. screening room, and it was like “oh, I see…it sucks but not that badly.”

I realize what I’m supposed to think and feel. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I couldn’t feel the hate. I got through it and never felt anything stronger than “okay, this isn’t much but it’s not agony to sit through.”

Expectations are everything. I was prepared for something truly awful and rancid, so when it turned out to be merely mediocre — a familiar supernatural “eastern” (much if not most of the action happening along the eastern seaboard and climaxing in Washington, D.C.) that moves along from episode to episode in a heavily CG-ed but reasonably sufficient way, I almost felt placated.

Of course, someone reading this is going to pay to see Jonah Hex and…whatever, become enraged at its awfulness, and then turn around and blame me for saying it was okay. I’m not saying that. It’s a moderately bad film. I’m saying that somehow I managed to watch it without gagging.

It contains echoes of Civil War trauma — feelings of betrayal, the need to settle scores, unresolved rage, etc. — and in so doing seems to be about psychological war wounds in general, which gives it a certain something or other.

Josh Brolin‘s half-dead Jonah is a chip off the Clint Eastwood /”Man With No Name” block — he’s got that gruff, grizzled, greasy hard-boiled thing down pretty well. Megan Fox, to my considerable surprise, isn’t all that bad as Lila, the two-fisted, gun-totin’ prostitute who doesn’t wear too much eye makeup. Michael Fassbender‘s perfomance as Burke, the chuckling Irish-hooligan assistant to John Malkovich‘s Turnbull, the film’s chief baddie-waddie, is spirited and high-sprung.

Friends tell me Jimmy Hayward’s film dishonors the original comic-book series — i.e., isn’t as well written, has invented stupid/inane material, lacks basic intrigue, etc. Okay, fine, no arguments. I couldn’t care less about either property. I’ll probably feel the same way about Cowboys and Aliens.

Speaking as a semblance of a spotlight guy with two sons in their early 20s, I find it cruel and despicable when tabloid reporters and gossip-mongers dive into some private aspect of a life of a kid solely because of parentage — i.e., a famous dad or mother (or both). It’s difficult enough for a teenager to sort things through without the media vultures peering in and commenting and digging for strands.

Whatever the truth of the matter, most of us presumably understand that exploring a trans-gender lifestyle or even crossing the surgical Rubicon can, given the particulars, constitute a healthy step in the right direction, as the Larry Wachowski/Chastity Bono situations have indicated. I wouldn’t have mentioned this, but it’s out there and snap-crackling and there’s no putting a cap on it.

I have only three concerns about George Gallo‘s Middle Men (Paramount, 8.6), which is selling itself as a kind of Goodfellas of the internet. One, it wrapped shooting in late ’08 — what’s been the holdup? Two, it closed the 2010 Santa Barbara Film Festival, which I attended, and I didn’t hear zip about it from anyone. And three, Luke Wilson really needs to work out and get himself back into Family Stone shape.

These are my concerns, but there’s also the issue of Gallo himself — a member in good standing of Hollywood’s eccentric authentic goombah cool cat-from-back-east club. He had a good run from ’86 through ’95 when he wrote scripts for TV’s Wiseguys and Matin Brest’s Midnight Run and Bad Boys, not to mention his direction of 29th Street (’91), a reasonably decent New York drama. But not much has happened over the last 15 years, and I just don’t trust him at this stage — sorry.

Here’s a red-band trailer: