Day: November 6, 2011

Hollywood Reporter film critic Kirk Honeycutt, who’s been with the trade for a very long time, has been cut loose. Tough break. Can’t feel good. Honeycutt had been THR‘s first-string critic for…I can’t find a decent online bio but at least since the early Bill Clinton era, no? He was demoted to “international critic” status when THR honcho Janice Min hired former Variety critic Todd McCarthy a little more than a year ago.

Here’s hoping that Honeycutt, a knowledgable critic and a good writer, lands a suitable new gig in short order.

No Kirk Honeycutt recap will ever be complete without a mention of the Courtney Love Sundance incident (“What am I, a piece of shit?”). Love hit the roof when Honeycutt’s wife took a photo without asking, which prompted the actress-singer to snatch the camera. A People reporter wrote that Honeycutt “is said to have then grabbed the camera back from Love, prompting Love’s boyfriend, music exec Jim Barber, to jump the critic, who reportedly referred to Love as a ‘pig‘ (preceded by a very descriptive adjective),” etc.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s Tyrannosaur screening fund-raising campaign was kind of exciting while it lasted and I’m glad I did it, but you know what? Not that many people showed up. I was able to pay for three extra screenings on top of what Strand had booked so the people who needed to see this film would have a few more options, and at the end of the day the silence was almost deafening.

The Aidikoff screening on 10.27 lured about nine or ten journalists, the 10.31 showing at the Ocean Ave. Screening Room attracted three or four, and the third & final screening at the Sunset Screening Room on 11.2 played to five or six people. Several top-drawer Los Angeles journalists that I expected to see attend didn’t attend. So either they saw it at Sundance 2011 or LAFF 2011 last June, or they plan to see it at the 10 am screening at the Royal on 11.8, or they’ve figured some other way to catch it. It just feels like not that many people give a shit. I figured the “Olivia Colman as a deserving Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress” factor would attract a few more rsvps. But no.

If people have something better to do, you can’t stop ’em.

Some kind of police-protestor standout recently captured in Oakland. Real deal, real bodies, real choreography….”owwww! arrgghhh! Fucker shot me!”

Some kind of Dark Knight Rises brawl recently shot on Wall Street. Real deal, real bodies, real choreography.

Read more

There are light or semi-frolicsome heist films like Topkapi, The Hot Rock, Sneakers or the Oceans films, and there are dead-serious ones like Rififi, The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing and Odds Against Tomorrow. Obviously Tower Heist belongs in the former category. Its closet cousin, I feel, is Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock. Smart chat, amusing antics, likable perps, etc,

Okay, it’s good natured and even funny now and then, and yes, Eddie Murphy has definitely given his funniest comic performance since Bowflnger. I actually started liking him again after I don’t know how many years of throwing mental spitballs at the guy.

But I was a little bothered that director Brett Ratner didn’t seem very invested in the fantasy of actually doing the job, much less getting away with it. Too few details, no suspense to speak of…no way to believe that Ben Stiller and the guys had any kind of serious shot at success. An audience needs to believe a little bit in the reality of the job, and my sense was that Ratner didn’t give a shit. The whole thing felt larky.

As silly and japey as The Hot Rock was, I had a better time with it, and I was at least half-invested in the realistic terms of the various heists. Yes, even the helicopter attack on the Manhattan police station. Even Afghanistan Bananistan. I didn’t believe the Tower Heist guys were all that committed.

Two weekends ago (or was it three?) I made the mistake of renting four Blurays at Vidiots. I watched them within a couple of days, took them down to the car, threw them into the back seat and forgot about them. This morning a Vidiots clerk called and said I owe them $160. That seemed excessive. I told the clerk that my first reaction would be not to return the Blurays, but to build a fire outside and burn them. More emotionally satisfying, etc. He said fine, but if I keep them or burn them they’ll charge me $160 plus the cost of the Blurays. This is why I don’t rent, and why I’ll never go back to that store again.

Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire (Relativity, 1/20./12) will be shown tonight at the AFiFest under a “secret screening” heading at 9 pm. A brief q & a with Soderbergh and star Gina Carano and maybe a couple of others will follow.

The costars, as everyone knows by now, are Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Angarano, Antonio Banderas and Michael Douglas.

Haywire (originally called Knockout) was shot mostly in Ireland from early February 2010 to 3.25.10 at a cost of $25 million, give or take.

A full fight clip of Carano and Michael Fassbender was reportedly shown at Comic Con last July. “All the stunts in this movie are meant to be more realistic than your normal Hollywood action film. No wire work. No stunt double for Gina except for 2% of the film. No cutting away or shaky cam during the fights. Channing, Ewan, and Michael did most of their stunts also.”