Month: October 2010

Who wants to see a revolt-of-the-robots movie called Robopocalypse? Show of hands? I personally don’t think the title has enough syllables. It’s not hard enough to pronounce. Why not call it Robopoppadiddypopalypse? (Nine being better than five, right?) Like it or not, this will be the next high-crank, super-wank popcorn movie from the billionaire hack known as Steven “Abe Who?” Spielberg.

The book it’ll be based upon, written by Daniel H. Wilson, won’t be out until next June, but it’s obviously a Transformers-type deal aimed at 13 year-olds with the once-great Spielberg, a guy who used to make films that at least sounded semi-original, picking up discarded Reese’s Pieces dropped in the forest by Michael Bay and James Cameron, whose “war against the machines” in T2 sounds fairly similar.

TheWrap‘s Jeff Sneider reports that shooting will commence after Spielberg finishes his War Horse movie and after The Adventure of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn has been released and after Spielberg has arranged for all his checks to be sent to the right bank accounts and signed off on all his merchandising deals.

Box-Office Mojo is reporting that The Tree of Life, that dysfunctional ’50s Texas family + dinosaurs movie from The Artist Known As Mr. Cuckoo Bird, and costarring slightly younger versions of Sean Penn and Brad Pitt than the ones that currently exist, will open stateside on 5.27.11. This will be just a few days after the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, which of course raises expectations that the film will debut there.

What are the chances that The Artist Known As Mr. Cuckoo Bird will attend said festival? It’s a given he won’t show up at the press conference, but will be stay at the Hotel du Cap and send out smoke signals from some remote location on the grounds? What are the chances that publicists for Fox Searchlight, distributor of The Tree of Life, will do what they can to actively prevent journalists from speaking to or even seeing Mr. Cuckoo Bird? Will Mr. Cuckoo Bird give interviews in the manner of Banksy in Exit From The Gift Shop, wearing a hoodie with his voice electronically altered?

Last night’s screening of Paranormal Activity 2 at the Regal Union Square went pretty well. I was riveted at all times, as was the woman who sat next to me who was going “uhmm-hmm” or “whoa-hoa” and so on throughout the film. I love the technique of using security cameras to catch the spooky stuff without embellishments.

But I must report that some guys were booing at the end. They felt it was too dry and cryptic/ They felt that it failed to tie things together and bring tit all home, so they rebelled. “Booooo! Booooo!”. Sorry, but that’s what happened.

The best part of this trailer for Jan Tenhaven‘s Autumn Gold is the shot of a 100 year-old guy painting a nude model in her 20s. The idea, of course, is that no one has to succumb to “old age.” We can all be wily and spirited and loose right to the end. Clint Eastwood obviously gets this.

Gold has a showing on Saturday, 10.23, at Santa Monica’s Aero theatre as part of the German Currents Festival. It will also play the following day (10.24) at San Francisco’s Castro theatre as part of a series called “Berlin and Beyond.”

Almost all documentaries are about some historical event, recent or not, or some evolving socio-political trend. Banksy‘s Exit From The Gift Shop is therefore a serious standout because it’s an exceptionally perceptive film about art and culture as currently configured. It’s simultaneously about (a) how art, once the calling of a relatively select fraternity, is now open to anyone with energy and chutzpah, regardless of how good they may be, and (b) the fact that this is happening not only because art-world “taste” is devolving, but the standards and sensitivities of an entire culture.

Gift Shop, in short, is a really important film that’s about everything that’s going on right now, including the degradation of movies themselves. Which, given the generally behind-the-times, slow-on-the-pickup nature of the typical voter for Academy documentaries, means that Exit From The Gift Shop is looking at an uphill fight to even get on the doc shortlist. Naturally. Or so says TheWrap‘s Steve Pond, who’s written a piece that explains why.

The best explanation comes from blogger, cultural seer and co-chair of the CinemaEye Honors AJ Schnack. “The hardest thing for a film like Exit Through the Gift Shop will be getting onto the shortlist,” he tells Pond. “I expect it to get nominated if it gets on the shortlist, and if it gets nominated it could even win. But its biggest wall to climb will be getting on that shortlist.”

The reason, a documentarian says, is that “the people who are really doing the work are not the ones who vote. And the ones who do vote just don’t understand what’s going on in the field these days.”

As a result, says Schnack, the field is “stacked against docs that aren’t old-fashioned and traditional, at least in the early rounds.”

The basic conditions are as follows, Pond reports. (1) “Documentaries are judged by surprisingly few people”; (2) “The most active filmmakers are ineligible or unable to vote”; and (3) “The final slate of nominees is almost invariably made up of issue-oriented docs — to the exclusion of the odder, entertaining works that make the field so vital these days.”

“In mid-November, when the Academy releases its shortlist of feature docs that will remain in contention for the Oscar, it’s a near-certainty that some eminently deserving films will be left out.

Besides Exit From The Gift Shop, the “likeliest to be snubbed,” says Pond, are Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work and Catfish and Louder Than a Bomb. Wait — what’s Louder Than A Bomb?

The Academy has “made a lot of internal changes, and the system is definitely better than it used to be,” says Schnack, “but I would argue that the folks who are really contributing to the field, who are responsible for what’s really happening in non-fiction film these days, are not participating.”

Five years ago, at age 53, Liam Neeson had a rep as a soulful prestige-level actor (Schinder’s List, Husbands and Wives, Kinsey, Gun Shy) with a soothing Irish brogue. Then he started to take macho gravitas paycheck roles (Batman Begins, voicing the Narnia lion, Kingdom of Heaven). And then Taken — the biggest hit of his career — happened in ’08, and now he’s became a total paycheck popcorn-movie guy.

It’s gotten to the point, I’m afraid, that when I see Neeson’s face on a poster or in a trailer, I immediately say “okay, what’s this piece of shit?” Next to Neeson Harrison Ford looks like Jim Broadbent.

Chloe was painful. After.Life was agony. Clash of the Titans was 3D agony. The A-Team was mute nostril agony. And now Unknown, obviously a forgettable programmer. No one’s seen Paul Haggis‘s The Next Three Days, in which Neeson plays the desperado who helps Russell Crowe bust Elizabeth Banks out of jail, but the word from a recent exhibitor convention is that it’s somewhere between good, not bad and okay.

I’ll allow that ’09’s Five Minutes of Heaven wasn’t exploitive and tried to do it right, but it still wasn’t very good. I certainly don’t mean to criticize Neeson for wanting to provide for his kids, particularly in the wake of the death of his wife, Natasha Richardson, in a freak skiing accident last year. But I miss the Liam Neeson whose choice of roles didn’t make me wince or sigh with exasperation. I miss the guy from the early to mid ’90s.

Neeson actually had an earlier run of shit paycheck roles and macho bellowers in the late ’90s and early 21st Century when he made The Phantom Menace, The Haunting, Gangs of New York and Love Actually. Okay, there was also the eminently decent K:19 and the aforementioned Gun Shy — no shame in either of those.

Update: A tipster claims that Neeson’s role in The Next Three Days is miniscule. “He has a one-scene cameo…what you see in the trailer is pretty much his entire role.”

Clint Eastwood may not be up on the fake Jimmy Kimmel-Matt Damon feud, but apart from his thighs looking a little bony he looks and sounds terrific for an 80 year-old. That’s a result of fighting what naturally happens at that age with serious daily work-outs. On top of which brown suits can be lethal, as I explained in a recent riff about James Stewart‘s brown suit in Vertigo. And yet Clint looks good in his.

Last September Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn wrote a problematic paragraph about George Hickenlooper‘s Casino Jack, to wit: “The opening shot finds Kevin Spacey in full-on Travis Bickle mode, staring at himself in the mirror and pronouncing a fatal one-liner: ‘I’m Jack Abramoff, and I work out every day.'”

“Fatal”? This line is not about laughter but showing a psychological core. It’s about the way plugged-in, full-of-beans guys like Jack Abramoff tend to see themselves. They’re special, they’re believers, they’re committed, they’re stronger and smarter than you or me, and if they can get paid what they’re getting paid then screw it — they damn well deserve it and Average Joes had better roll with that and get with the program.

For me, the greatest Blurays of older films are the ones that look much better than the finest projected image in a theatre could possibly achieve. And which look better, even, than what the director or studio guys saw in a private screening room when they were catching dailies fresh from the set. That’s what the just-out Psycho Bluray is like. It’s beautiful. Although I still say they should have issued two aspect-ratio versions — one in 1.33, the other in 1.78.

I can’t go to the 10.30 Stewart-Colbert D.C. rally. It’ll cost too much and I just can’t afford it. I don’t want to drive down. The Acela is too expensive, and the Huffington Post buses are too crowded. And I don’t believe in the message. They’re about projecting sanity and rationality, and I believe in putting Tea Party rurals into green re-education camps.

Former 42West Adam Kersh told me last summer he was starting his own p.r. and marketing company. And now, finally, the official announcement has been issued, and the company, co-launched and co-partnered with digital marketing guy Tom Cunha and Jean McDowell, is called Brigade. Sounds kinda Irish. They’re calling themselves a “next-generation” outfit, which is code for (a) “we’re looking to appeal particularly to the under-45 set” and (b) “our monthly fees aren’t as high as those for 42West or other long-established agencies…for now.”

Brigade is currently working with more than a dozen film and TV distributors in various capacities. The initial client list includes Anchor Bay, CBS Television, Elephant Eye, Film Buff / Cinetic Rights Management, IFC Films, Lionsgate, MPI Media Group, Phase 4 Films, Relativity Films, Roadside Attractions, Screen Media, Sony Pictures Classics and Universal Pictures as well as a number of independently released films, filmmakers and talent. Best of luck, full speed ahead.

(l. ro r.) Brigade’s Adam Kersh, Tom Cunha, Jean McDowell.

“I don’t think I’ve ever spent a more riveting or emotionally moving hour and a half in a theater as I did last night watching 127 Hours,” Sasha Stone wrote this morning. “It confirms that [director] Danny Boyle is a genius visually, intellectually, emotionally. He knows this film isn’t just the story of how Ralston got out of that canyon.

Rather, it’s about “that key bit of truth we all must remind ourselves of everyday. Life is not lived alone. We need each other. We need to be able to ask for help.”

Which is precisely what James Franco‘s real-life character, Aron Ralston, doesn’t believe in very strongly as the film begins. He’s no hermit but is pretty much the model of a rugged solo guy, and seems more than a little cocky about his ability to face and/or navigate around whatever tough situation that chance or nature may throw at him. Yes!

But then after putting himself into one of the worst situations any outdoor person could possibly face, he mans up and does what’s necessary. He cuts right through his arm with a nickel-and-dime pen knife, slicing through skin, muscle, soft meat, tendons and nerves, and fracturing his two forearm bones. Good effin’ God. But he does it and he lives, and watching him do this — living and screaming through it with Franco/Ralston — somehow makes you feel more alive.

Could I have done this? I don’t want to think about it. But there’s no way I’d do the lone-wolf thing in the wide-open wilderness. I’m thick but I’m not stupid. But I have to say I’m glad, very glad, for having “faced” this situation in a manner of speaking with a watching of 127 Hours. And I think I’m good for another viewing. I really think I am.