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Hollywood Elsewhere - Movie news and opinions by Jeffrey Wells

“There’s Hollywood Elsewhere and then there’s everything else. It’s your neighborhood dive where you get the ugly truth, a good laugh and a damn good scotch.”
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(Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Super 8)

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“So when I said I’d like to leave my cowboy hat there, I was obviously saying (in my head at least) that I’d be back to stay the following year … simple and quite clear all around.”
–Jeffrey Wells, HE, January ’09

“If you’re in a movie that doesn’t work, game over and adios muchachos — no amount of star-charisma can save it.”
–Jeffrey Wells, HE

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46 Comments
Out Of The Gate

Variety‘s Andrew Stewart is reporting that Inception made a “healthy” $3 million from midnight showings on 2000 screens. A lot of people have to go work on Friday morning, but $1500 a screen doesn’t sound like much to me. Boxoffice‘s Phil Contrino reminds that Avatar‘s midnight debut was $3.5 million, and that “huge midnight grosses are usually reserved for sequels or established properties.”

If any HE readers caught Inception last night I’d love to hear what happened. What they thought, what the room “felt” like, predictions, etc.

Today’s tracking has Inception with an 18 first choice, 23 unaided awareness, and a 48 definite interest. That’ll mean $60 million or so for the weekend, but it also means that a lot of Eloi are holding on to their ticket bucks for the time being.

Chris Nolan‘s multi-levelled mind-tripper opens today at 3,792 locations, including 197 IMAX runs. As noted previously, I’m catching an 8:30 pm IMAX screening at San Francisco’s Metreon tonight.

July 16, 2010 11:07 amby Jeffrey Wells
43 Comments
Sorkin Edwards Hunter

Naomi Watts, obviously, is the likeliest candidate to play Rielle Hunter in Aaron Sorkin‘s forthcoming John Edwards biopic, which Sorkin will direct as well as write. The film will be based on Andrew Young‘s “The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’ Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down.”


(l.) Rielle Hunter, John Edwards; (r.) Aaron Sorkin.

So who will play Edwards, Young, Elizabeth Edwards, etc.? Movieline‘s Kyle Buchanan is saying Amy Ryan might be the best Rielle.

If this film is done right it will be a kind of black comedy mixed with a chilling portrait of an absolute cyborg — a hustler and a freak with appalling disassociative tendencies. Scott Rudin should produce this.

Sorkin said that Young’s book contains “a first-hand account of an extraordinary story filled with motivations, decisions and consequences that would have lit Shakespeare up. There’s much more to Andrew’s book than what has been reported and I’m grateful that he’s trusting me with it.”

July 16, 2010 10:04 amby Jeffrey Wells
21 Comments
Show Me Someone

…who’s not a parasite, and I’ll say a prayer for him. And it doesn’t matter if the quote is actually “name me someone,” etc. Sometimes the author is wrong and the listener is right.

This Museum of Moving Image essay by Aaron Aradillas and Matt Zoller Seitz “is about damaged loners who stand outside the spotlight looking for a way in — people who fantasize about knowing, becoming, protecting, or destroying their heroes. All About Eve, Star 80, The King of Comedy, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and other films in this vein show anonymous voyeurs, fringe dwellers, wannabes and hangers-on doing whatever it takes to grab their 15 minutes of fame.

This is the fourth part of “Razzle Dazzle,” a six-part video essay that looks at how movies have examined the many facets of fame. Previously posted: Part 1 (The Pitch), Part 2 (The Hero), and Part 3 (The Fraud).

July 16, 2010 8:14 amby Jeffrey Wells

76 Comments
Blue Paycheck

It was reported earlier today that Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) will play Mystique in Matthew Vaughn‘s X-Men: First Class. The 20th Century Fox pic, due on 6.3.11, will also stars Kevin Bacon, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Aaron Johnson, A Single Man‘s Nicholas Hoult, Alice Eve and Caleb Landry Jones. Rebecca Romijn played Mystique in the first three X-Men films.


Jennifer Lawrence; Rebecca Romijn as Mystique.
July 15, 2010 2:28 pmby Jeffrey Wells
66 Comments
Them Green Hills

If I do say so myself, the shot used for the cover of Criterion’s forthcoming The Thin Red Line DVD/Bluray (out on 9.28) is exceptional, and so is the creased paper/folded magazine design. Terrence Malick‘s wack-a-doodle decision to all-but-eliminate Adrien Brody from this film nearly killed the latter’s career. It was saved, of course, by Roman Polanski‘s The Pianist.

July 15, 2010 12:21 pmby Jeffrey Wells
36 Comments
Tribute, Respect

On 10.26 Criterion will be releasing Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory (1957) on DVD and Bluray, and with a 1.66 to 1 aspect ratio….thank God they didn’t crop to 1.78 to 1! HE’s Moises Chiullan asks if “all this 1.66:1-ification is Jan Harlan‘s doing? He’s the guy with the authority, and has been involved in all the 1.66:1 releases of 1.33:1 Kubricks.” I’ve been a 1.66 advocate for years, fighting back against the 1.78 to 1 fascists and losing. Pop the champagne.

[Moises edit 7/16: For the record, I’ve been corrected on my incorrect assumption regarding aspect ratio in the comments below. Please extinguish the torches.]

July 15, 2010 12:01 pmby Jeffrey Wells

37 Comments
Scott vs. Faraci

“The accomplishments of Inception are mainly technical, which is faint praise only if you insist on expecting something more from commercial entertainment. That audiences do — and should — expect more is partly, I suspect, what has inspired some of the feverish early notices hailing Inception as a masterpiece, just as the desire for a certifiably great superhero movie led to the wild overrating of The Dark Knight. In both cases Mr. Nolan’s virtuosity as a conjurer of brilliant scenes and stunning set pieces, along with his ability to invest grandeur and novelty into conventional themes, have fostered the illusion that he is some kind of visionary.” — from A.O. Scott‘s N.Y. Times mostly dismissive review of Inception.

July 15, 2010 11:52 amby Jeffrey Wells
16 Comments
Gough and Ivy

It was light jacket-and-scarf weather in San Francisco’s Haight district last night. A welcome change for a veteran of New York’s inferno-like temperatures, but nonetheless odd. Leaves were fluttering and tree branches were slightly swaying in the ocean winds. But what an appealing place to savor for a few days. In Alan Parker‘s Shoot The Moon (’82), Albert Finney quipped that San Francisco “could die of quaint.” I think it’s more stricken with exquisite design sense than anything else.

Even the bums…excuse me, the homeless have a little something extra, a slight panache. This morning I passed by a couple of no-accounts squatting on the swidewalk, and one of them had a fishing pole jammed into a chain-link fence with a paper cup saying “be kind” hanging from a fish line. Openly characterizing would-be good samaritans as fish that the bums are trying to hook and reel in…very cool! I didn’t give them any money though.

July 15, 2010 11:17 amby Jeffrey Wells
15 Comments
Night and Devil

“Five people stuck in an elevator, and one of them is the devil.” Obviously a catchy hook, although it should have ideally been shot 50 years ago as a half-hour Twilight Zone episode. Although produced by M. Night Shyamalan and based on a Shyamalan “story,” the screenwriter of Devil is Brian Nelson, and the co-directors are Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle.

I feel good about this because I’m down with the leading cast members — Chris Messina (Vicky Christina Barcelona, Julie & Julia), Geoffrey Arend (husband of Christina Hendricks) and Bojana Novakovic.

July 15, 2010 10:35 amby Jeffrey Wells

72 Comments
Full Social Network
July 15, 2010 10:16 amby Jeffrey Wells
39 Comments
Son of Planes, Trains?

Whenever I see that Zach Galifianakis beard, I go “all right, here we go again…the unbridled, unregenerate, barrel-chested man-child in another comedy!” Todd Phillips‘ Due Date (Warner Bros.) is due on 11.5.

July 15, 2010 9:29 amby Jeffrey Wells
38 Comments
Inception Crossfire

It’s being suggested by Sasha Stone and David Poland that Warner Bros. publicity pretty much engineered the Inception backlash by giving that early looksee to the online Cool Kidz (i.e., bloggers like Faraci, McWeeny, Pond, Tapley, Stone, Hammond, Gilchrist), which goaded the Second Wavers (straight-critic essayist types like Edelstein, McCarthy, Zacharek, White, Pinkerton, Reed) to slap down the Cool Kidz for being impetuous and overly fawning.

“The situation was set up improperly,” Stone writes. “Critics are the elders of the tribe. They see themselves as a cut above everyone else but more than that, they have to see themselves as above the bloggers because, goddam it, not just any old person can have the keen insight [that critics] have and not just any old person can write about film, define film, set a film’s place in history the way they can.”

“I think WB had good intentions on this one,” Poland comments, “but I’m not sure this approach worked either. I was not the only one who was a bit put off by the intensity of and the metaphors used by the positive wave from the first group of reviews.” He claims that “the first ‘backlash’ was not backlash at all, but opinions of the film that felt compelled to point out — as my review did — some of the silly overreaching in the first wave of post-Travers reviews.” Poland means Devin Faraci’s tab-of-ecstasy multiple-orgasm review, I suspect.

“WB tried their own hybrid process to the embargo situation,” Poland summarizes. “First, they junketed. And [then] Peter Travers, who was quoting for the studio, screwed the embargo all on his own. Still, the studio took the heat and set a screening when they were comfortable with reviews starting, which was still 10 days before opening.

“Then, confident with the film and still under fire, they moved the screening for an early review date up by 5 days. About a dozen outlets, including the trades and some non-critics, saw the film and agreed to wait 3 days, to a specific date and time of day, to review. Two days later, every other ‘major’ in NY and LA was able to see the film and the embargo was pretty much busted.”

In short, did the Cool Kidz (with WB publicity’s aid and encouragement) indirectly fuck things up for Inception? Did they inadvertently trigger a backlash mentality — a few drops in the well spreading out like blood in the Nile — that may or may not intensify once Average Joe ticket-buyers start seeing Inception tonight (i.e., at the midnight screenings)? I’m not saying this is true — I’m just asking.

My review was neither Faraci orgasmo nor White-Pinkerton-Zacharek negative. I just dove in and found the right balance, I think.

“Even if Inception is too complicated for you, it’s the right kind of complicated,” I said. “Sometimes a good grapple leaves you feeling stronger, more awake, more alive. This is one of those times. It’s a pain-in-the-ass landmark film — a cinematic stretching and weight-lifting exercise that makes you feel strong and brave at the end of the day. It made me feel as if my mind was being pulled like turkish taffy, but it’s a very good thing to live in a world in which highly intelligent $160 million mindfuck movies are still being made.”

The Wrap‘s Steve Pond has noticed how Inception is sitting on a very high fence right now, but teetering. “[Inception director] Christopher Nolan is on top of the world this week. In Hollywood, that’s not always the best place to be.”

July 15, 2010 9:15 amby Jeffrey Wells

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