Year: 2010

Will Tony Scott‘s Unstoppable turn out better than The Taking of Pelham 123? It looks kick-ass to me, and hail to those that know how to really and truly deliver on these terms. As long as the reason(s) for the train being unstoppable seem logical and reasonable, all will be well. It’ll be total ice cream. You know Scott can do this kind of thing blindfolded with one hand tied.

Last fall I wrote that Pelham 123 should be considered as a Best Picture candidate. And it should have been. So maybe people will consider Unstoppable a bit more seriously in this light. 2010 is looking like a shitty year as we speak so who knows? Shouldn’t there be at least one high-end popcorn movie to round things out?

Will Unstoppable land with a thud? Will it be come to be regarded as the best train movie since Andrei Konchalovsky‘s Runaway Train or Buster Keaton‘s The General or — the all-time greatest — John Frankenheimer‘s The Train, which used real trains and not a single frame of CGI? Or will it be thrown out with the trash?

When the words gets out that you’re toast and it’s just a matter of time, some people have a tendency to step back a few paces, or turn away and cut off contact. I’d like to think that I’m not one of them, but I’ve seen these responses time and again. One thing’s for sure: Christopher Hitchens is evading nothing in terms of analysis. He’s dealing with it like a man.

When my sister was on her way out with cancer, days or hours from liftoff, my brother (who’s now dead himself) told me he hadn’t visited her in the hospital because “I don’t want to sit in a room and watch her die.” You effing asshole, I thought to myself. It’s not about you, it’s about her.

Death is like walking across a rickety wooden bridge across a huge and deep chasm. It’s not the other side of the chasm that scares you, but grabbing hold of the railing and stepping out and making your way across. People about to do this want people with them, I think. It comforts them that they have people supporting them and telling them in a roundabout way that it’s okay to cross, and that it’s safe and pleasant on the other side.

The MPAA’s decisIon to give an R rating to Yael Hersonski‘s A Film Unfinished (Oscilloscope, 8.18), a respected Holocaust documentary, seems petty and lame. The board reportedly didn’t want minors exposed to two sequences containing frontal nude shots of Warsaw Jews being shoved around by Nazi soldiers. Brilliant!

“In a world where young people are bombarded with meaningless entertainment, it’s unfortunate that a film with real educational and historic value would be denied to them by an organization that is supposed to be working to help them,” Oscilloscope’s Adam Yauch said in a press release.

Throughout the ’90s and into the early aughts I knew, liked and sat down a few times with Richard Sylbert, one of the finest production designers who ever lived. Thinking about Emma Watson ‘s haircut led me to clips of Rosemary ‘s Baby, and then a two-part piece (taken from the RB DVD) about its making, and five or six clips of Sylbert on it. And I was just taking a few moments to think about him. Here are links to part #1 and part #2.

Sylbert discusses this and that decision about Rosemary’s Baby — the New York locations, the writing of the script with Roman Polanski, his advising Polanski to use Charles Grodin to play Dr. Hill, and how this Paramount film, which came out in ’68, was the beginning of the ’70s, in a sense. Sylbert was a wise and perceptive and eloquent man — he knew everyone and everything about 20th Century filmmaking, and knew all the biggest people and their foibles and neuroses, and he always told the greatest tales, and with a great New York voice.

I feel the same way about Emma Watson‘s radical hair removal as John Cassevetes felt about Mia Farrow‘s Vidal Sassoon cut in Rosemary’s Baby — appalled. “The stylist just grabbed the back of my hair and took a whole ponytail of hair out,” Watson tells EW. “It felt amazing.” This is what happens when you let a hairdresser do whatever he wants and you don’t show authority. Those guys will always, always cut a client’s hair shorter, every time.

Elena Kagan has been approved by the U.S. Senate to serve on the Supreme Court, 63 to 37…hooray! Kagan’s sexuality is her own affair and no one’s else’s — it certainly didn’t belong in any discussions about her suitability for the court — but if Andrew Sullivan’s writings about this can be accepted it seems like a fairly significant day for gay people everywhere.

This is actually pretty good, this thing. The creators are Jeff Loveness, Kyle Helf, Luke Sommer, Scott Takeda, Jared Lagroue, Seth Allison. (Kyle Helf sounds like a mixture of kelp and Uriah Heep.) I’m not saying the Social Network team needs a new trailer. The most recent one is quite sharp and effective. But this parody trailer may be stepping out in front as we speak.

Hey, what about letting a few hand-picked, forward-thinking columnists see The Social Network later this month?

Six months ago I saw Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost‘s Catfish (Rogue/Universal, 9.17) at Sundance. It’s “engrossing and certainly reflective of cyber-culture relationship intrigues, but I wasn’t exactly levitating out of my seat,” I wrote. “I also found it a bit curious — the film’s depiction of hinterland culture suggests echoes of American kookery unbound.”

SPOILER WARNING: “During the first 60% of Catfish Nev Schulman — a smart, confident and attractive 24 year old who’s the main protagonist — falls into an intriguing online flirtation with an attractive 20something lady who lives in Michigan. (Or so she says.) Their exchanges become more and more emotional and sensual. Then they become explicitly sexual. And then suddenly things change.”

“Once this sinks in it’s quite clear that Nev is fairly glum — you could even say forlorn. And for me this didn’t quite calculate.

“I asked myself why would a guy in the youthful prime of his life get so invested in a woman he’s never met, and whom he knows only through a gallery of online photos and a series of increasingly erotic e-mails? Who would be naive enough in this day and age to get emotionally caught up in a relationship of this sort?

“This seemed especially curious for a guy who’s clearly smart and good-looking and creative and whatnot, and living in a city like New York with all kinds of hook-up options. I could imagine Clem Kadiddlehopper falling for this. Or an overweight dweeby type with halitosis getting caught up in an online fantasy because he might not have much going on. But a guy like Nev…? Doesn’t figure.”

A trailer that refuses to show an image for 48 seconds is probably up to something good. The film is Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (Miramax, 1.21.11), and you can sense right away that it’s a cut or two above. The news of Guillermo del Toro having produced and co-written is like a five-star review from Consumer Reports. The director is Troy Nixey. The costars are Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce, Bailee Madison, Alan Dale, Eliza Taylor-Cotter, etc.

The best parts of William Friedkin‘s The Exorcist (’73), which is out on Bluray on 10.5 , don’t involve spinning heads or pea soup vomit. I’m talking about moments in which scary stuff is suggested rather than shown.

Such as (1) that prologue moment in Iraq when Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) is nearly run over by a galloping horse and carriage, and a glimpse of an older woman riding in the carriage suggests a demonic presence; (2) a moment three or four minutes later when Merrin watches two dogs snarling and fighting near an archeological dig; (3) that grandfatherly Washington, D.C. detective (Lee J. Cobb) telling Father Karras (Jason Miller) that the head of the recently deceased director Burke Dennings (Jack McGowran) “was turned completely around”; (4) Karras’s dream sequence about his mother calling for him, and then disappearing into a subway; (5) that moment when Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) mimics the voice and repeats the exact words of a bum that Karras has recently encountered — “Can you help an old altar boy, father?”

About five months ago I ran a positive research-screening review (based on a talk with a guy I know and trust) of Ed Zwick‘s Love and Other Drugs (20th Century Fox, 11.24). Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Big Pharma, Viagra, and early-stage Parkinson’s. On 7.28 another good review popped up, based on a recent Kansas City showing. I don’t know the author but he calls himself Shep and has a reasonably well-written blog called “What Is Wrong With The World Today?”

“Chick flick and romantic comedy. These are words that will make almost any man cringe when uttered by his girlfriend. I know I do. When my girlfriend mentioned an invite for an advance screening of a new romantic comedy I almost told her to take a friend. I’m glad I didn’t.

“Love and Other Drugs is by far the best romantic comedy I’ve seen,” he explains. “It’s smart, sexy, raunchy and hilarious. The chemistry between Gyllenhaal and Hathaway works very well, and their relationship is very believable. Josh Gad‘s character adds the raunchy Hangover-style guy comedy needed to keep the male half of a couple interested.

“Director-cowriter Ed Zwick’s interpretation of Jamie Reidy‘s novel Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagara Salesman translates extremely well to the big screen and made me want to read the book. (The screenplay is by Zwick, Marshall Herzkovitz and Charles Randolph.) I know — the movie is never as good.

“But overall the film works, the cast (including costars Oliver Platt and Hank Azaria) has been perfectly picked, and I would totally recommend it.

“Hopefully Love and Other Drugs will do well at the box-office and cause a trend toward romcoms that work for both members of the sexes. I’m giving it four and a half stars.”

A bit of a blather-on piece by The Guardian‘s Ryan Gibney comparing the decline of Tom Cruise, 48, to the ascendancy of Leonardo DiCaprio, 36.