Month: July 2013

I don’t know what I’ve been thinking all along about Paul Greengrass‘s Captain Phillips (Columbia, 10.11) but in the wake of the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin tragedy are you going to tell me that the Ted Nugent crowd isn’t going to perceive this movie as being about Tom Hanks, the Ultimate Mild-Mannered, Extra-Decent White Guy Whom Everyone Likes, going up against some scary, no-good, bad-ass black psychopaths waving guns around? I’m not saying Greengrass’s film is going to stoke racial fires in any way, shape or form. I’m talking about what Captain Phillips looks like on this international poster, and how the Zimmerman-sympathizing Bubbas out there are going to respond in gut-level terms. Be honest. Our culture is our culture. Tell me I’m crazy because I’m not.

There’s real-deal Italian ice (i.e., the kind I used to eat when I was a kid) and there’s the bogus corporate kind, which is what this place in Point Pleasant is selling. When I was young Italian ices were sold in round cardboard containers with a little wooden spoon. You’d peel off the top lid and the ices (my favorite was cherry) would be nearly rock-solid. It would always take a few minutes of chipping away on a hot summer’s day before the ice gradually softened and you could eat actual chunks of it. But this Point Pleasant joint is selling….I don’t know what to call it but it’s like a Slurpee sorbet that’s just firm enough to hold its shape.

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For me (and, I suspect, for most of us), Relativity Media’s Romeo And Juliet (10.11) will hinge on how well Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth can breathe life into William Shakespeare‘s prose. I’m presuming that Steinfeld, who turns 17 on 12.11.13 but who was 15 when during principal photography, has the chops to be at least pretty good as Juliet. Stellan Skarsgard, Damian Lewis, Paul Giamatti and Ed Westwick costar. Julian Fellowes‘ adaptation was directed by Carlo Carlei.

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Yesterday afternoon a Deadline story announced that Exclusive Media’s 9.20 theatrical unveiling of Peter Landesman‘s Parkland was an “Oscar-Season Release Date.” I wouldn’t go that far. True, the JFK assassination drama will be opening soon after the slated Venice and Toronto film festival showings (and perhaps with critical huzzahs to boot), but in my book a 9.20 release is just three weeks after Labor Day. A real Oscar-season release means mid-to-late October and beyond. It means you’re wearing jackets and sweaters on your way to the theatre.

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On 7.25 Indiewire contributor Matthew Hammett Knott posted a piece called “Heroines of Cinema: The 10 Most Exciting Young Female Directors in the World Today.” Actually not that young — most of the women mentioned are their mid to late 30s. Anyway, in addition to Sally El-Hosaini (My Brother The Devil), Miranda July (The Future), Celine Sciamma (Tomboy), Lucia Puenzo (Wakolda), Dee Rees (Pariah), Mia Hansen (The Father Of My Children), Lena Dunham (Girls), Haifaa Al-Mansour (Wadjda), Sarah Polley (Take This Waltz, Stories We Tell) and Ava Duvernay (Middle of Nowhere, the forthcoming Selma), I would add Shannah Laumeister, director of the elegant and admirably ballsy Bert Stern: Original Madman, Circumstance director Maryam Keshavarz and Sam Taylor-Johnson (a.k.a., Sam Taylor-Wood), director of the forthcoming 50 Shades of Grey.

Stories rise and fall so quickly these days that print media almost always seems to be trailing. John Cuneo’s New Yorker cover portraying the ghastly death of Anthony Weiner‘s mayoral campaign is one of the rare instances in which a dead-tree publication seems right on top of it. I mean, not even a day or two late.

With James Ponsoldt‘s teenage-boozer flick The Spectacular Now opening next Friday (8.2), it’s time to re-post a bitch rant from last January: “Few things make me more irate than driving-and-talking scenes in which the driver primarily looks at the person riding shotgun (usually a woman) and only glances at the road sporadically. Five or six seconds of eye-contact for every one or two seconds of road-watching. It never works that way in reality, even in the case of sloppy reckless drunks. I never, ever look at a passenger except when we’re at a stop light or stalled in traffic.

Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller in James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now

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Among the less costly ways of getting to the Telluride Film Festival is to fly to Durango and then rent a car or pay for a limo shuttle. Both ways cost over $300. I’ll be arriving in Durango on Wednesday afternoon, 8.28, and renting wheels and driving the 100 minutes to Telluride and then returning to Durango sometime on Monday, 9.2. I’m looking for one or two folks who’d like to tag along, and all I want is gas. I’ve got the rental — you fill up the tank and keep it filled. At most that’ll cost you….what, $70 or $80 bucks round-trip? Cheap deal.

The fact that Robert Luketic directed The Ugly Truth, 21, Monster-in-Law and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! should warn you away from Paranoia (Relativity, 8.16). The trailer suggests it’s a formulaic, second-tier programmer. Mediocrity tip-off #1 is Gary Oldman playing Gordon Gekko by way of Al Pacino‘s Devil’s Advocate character. Tip-off #2 is Liam Hemsworth‘s character talking about wanting to take care of his father who worked hard all his life “with nothing to show for it.” Tip-off #3 is Harrison Ford looking like he’s had chemotherapy. (He has one of those heads that needs hair — I know this because I have one of those heads.) A friend believes that Liam is hotter than his older brother Chris. Maybe so, but Liam having costarred in two Hunger Games films plus The Expendables 2 plus Paranoia tells me he’s probably not a long-distance runner.

A friend saw Lee Daniels’ The Butler earlier today. I asked him how it was. All right, what I really said was “how bad is it?” And then I said, “Be warned — I don’t want to hear how surprisingly good it is. Please don’t tell me this if you had that reaction.” He replied as follows: “Sorry, but I found it movingly corny in the same mold (except with a historical sweep and some stunt casting) as The Help, which it reminded me of. It’s a much more disciplined film than Daniels’ Precious or The Paperboy. Not a good film but an effective one.” I wrote a one-word reply: “Goddammit!” Then he wrote back and said that Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman “was applauding at the end, as was the bulk of the (SAG) audience.”

You’ve got beards, you’ve got flannel shirts and hunter hats, you’ve got twangy shitkicker accents, you’ve got a flawed loser protagonist, you’ve got the No Country For Old Men-resembling plot…what else you got, man?