I haven’t confirmed this directly with Warner Bros., but a fairly well-planted exhibitor source tells me the running time of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner Bros., 11.18) has been “confirmed” at 157 minutes.
I haven’t confirmed this directly with Warner Bros., but a fairly well-planted exhibitor source tells me the running time of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner Bros., 11.18) has been “confirmed” at 157 minutes.
I’ve said it before: the snaggle tooth that Peter Jackson has given his big ape is, I suspect, a blade of grass that hints at what may be going on in the emotional universe of King Kong (Universal, 12.14). The snaggle-tooth is a way of Charlie Chaplin-izing Mr. Kong…of making him seem vulnerable and endearing. (But that’s Jackson…an incorrigible emotional underliner.) Harry Knowles agrees — he says “the wonky tooth [is] a bit lame” and gives Kong “a goofy look.” I’m just saying that the comparison shots that Harry has run (with and without snaggle-tooth) probably don’t mean anything. The tooth footage would almost certainly be locked in at this stage (wouldn’t it?). Beware the tooth…the tooth is the movie…beware the tooth…the tooth is the movie. Although I have to say the stills on the official Universal-Kong site are fantastic. This is going to have wonderfully composed, exquisitely lit visuals. Each and every still looks scrumptious.
The shooting of Michael Mann’s Miami Vice (Universal, 7.28.06), which stars Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, is generating talk among guys in the production-chat circuit. Before I pass this along, understand that similar yarns were spun during production of Mann’s Collateral (i.e., shooting and shooting with no end, unhappy crew, budget overruns, etc.) and look how that one turned out…brilliant. Remember also what Uma Thurman said in Pulp Fiction about guys gossiping with each other, and that the stuff I’m getting now is second-hand. That said, the Vice chatter is that “Mann, Foxx and the budget are out of control,” a friend confides. “One thing that has slipped out is that Mann’s inner circle is turning on him — they can’t deal with him anymore. My source says Farrell’s mullet hair style is the least of the problems. He also worked on Collateral and he wouldn’t say too much about Vice except that he feels like a character in ‘Devil’s Candy 2.’ Mann still doesn’t have an ending to the film and the production is going to Latin America for a month and a half. He said that a majority of the gossip coming off the set is true.” I don’t know about this at all. To me, Mann is the king and can do no wrong. I had a gut feeling about about this second-hand source when the Collateral stories were coming in, which is that he’s one of those whiners who likes his relaxation, doesn’t like to work long hours or do the hard-core thing in order to create lasting quality. In other words he’s a candy-ass, so I wouldn’t put that much stock in these stories…although those mullet reports are troubling. Has anyone heard anything from real men on the set (i.e., non-girls) in a position to actually know stuff?
Matthew Modine’s upcoming coffee-table book about his experience making Full Metal Jacket with Stanley Kubrick (“Full Metal Jacket Diary,” Rugged Land, 10.25) costs about $20 bucks on Amazon…which is a lot cheaper than Taschen’s $200 dollar The Stanley Kubrick Archives . The Publisher’s Weekly review says Modine’s writing “isn’t graceful” — I’ve read another comment claiming Modine adopts the syntax and attitude of his Private Joker character from the film — “but his insider’s view of events have enough acrid flavor and authenticity to compensate. The book is filled with Modine’s excellent photographs, which powerfully supplement the sometimes sketchy narrative. The stainless steel-covered book — each one laser-etched with a serial number — should become a collector’s item for fans of the legendary director.”
DVD distributors re-issue classic titles so often, each time claiming that the film has been beautifully remastered and made to look much better than before…that after a while the pitches don’t register. The marketing of Warner Home Video’s brand-new The Wizard of Oz DVD packages (both a two-disc and three-disc set, out 10.25) on the WHV website promises the same-old “dazzlingly restored picture”…but this time (and I can feel the skepticism before even saying this) it really is exceptional and the best-looking-ever because of a process called “edge detection.” The WHV marketers are figuring there’s no point in trying to reach average-Joe DVD buyers with technical particulars, but this new Oz is in the same class as those relatively recent WHV DVD’s of Gone With the Wind, Meet Me in St. Louis and Singin’ in the Rain. A special software program (called “Ultra resolution” on the disc’s Amazon page) that re-registers and re-aligns Oz‘s three-strip Technicolor separations brings all kinds of new details and textures to the eye. It does more than restore Oz to its former glory, blah, blah…it presents a degree of radiant color and needle-sharp definition than was ever visible in the celluloid versions. Fred Kaplan wrote an excellent explanation piece about the edge detection process on Slate last February.
For all my tussles with David Poland, attention and respect should be paid for his having declared on 5.27.04 that Rachel McAdams “may be the next huge female movie star”…just after he saw The Notebook. I was bored by The Notebook and didn’t care for Mean Girls, so I didn’t get on the McAdams bandwagon until Wedding Crashers and then Red Eye last summer. (And she’s excellent again in The Family Stone.) We have to give the devil his due (and that’s not an inference, just an expression)….Poland called it way before me, before anyone.
It sure is exciting news that NBC/Universal might want to buy DreamWorks after all, and if they don’t maybe Paramount will.
If I was 17 and into seeing a movie with my girlfriend and didn’t care about anything except cheap thrills and maybe getting some action? I’d take her to The Fog, the weekend’s #1 film with a projected $13 or $14 million haul. In Her Shoes is #4 and on track to make $6 million-plus, amounting to a 40% drop from last weekend. I spoke last night to a married movie buff in his 50s who’d just seen The Fog and thought it was shit. I asked if he’d seen In Her Shoes and he said no but he’d like to. (I could tell he wasn’t that into it.) He said his wife wants to see Elizabethtown, which will come in second, by the way, with $11 or $12 million.
Check out this 30 year-old trailer for Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger, which Sony Pictures Classics is re-releasing on 10.28. The stuffed-shirt narration sounds so stuffy and forced it’s almost funny. The Passenger is an intriguing, sometimes fascinating film but honestly…? It’s never been in my Antonioni pantheon. L’eclisse, L’aventura, Blow-up and Il Grido are much better films. It’s a notch or two ahead of Zabriskie Point and Red Desert. I haven’t seen it in ages, but part of the problem was casting Maria Schneider opposite Jack Nicholson. On the other hand, there’s that awesome final tracking shot that starts in Nicholson’s hotel room and the moves toward the window…slowly, slowly…and then through the window bars and into the street.
Columbia’s Amy Pascal’s claim in Sharon Waxman’s N.Y. Times piece (10.15) that Daniel Craig, the new 007, “is the same size as Sean Connery” is hooey. I’m not calling Craig a shrimp, but he’s a good two inches shorter than me. I’m 6 foot 1/2 inch, and I’d say he’s about 5 foot ten and a half inches, give or take…maybe 5′ 11″. (I stood next to him after we did a Layer Cake interview in Park City last Janaury during the Sundance Film Festival.) And I’ve stood next to Connery, and he’s at least 6’1″ or 6’2″. The website www.celebheights.com says he’s 6 foot and 1 and 1/2 inches. The site has Craig at 5’11”.
20th Century Fox is pushing back the release date of The Family Stone from early November to December 16th. It’ll probably be explained that the home-for-the-holidays mood makes it a perfect Xmas release. But of course, Fox has known it’s a Christmassy movie for many months. This is probably about wanting more time to sell it properly and get the definite-interest and first-choice numbers up.
It’s official: Daniel Craig is the new James Bond. The first blonde 007, and…the shortest. Sorry but I had to throw that in. I’ve stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Connery, Moore, Brosnan and Craig and I know whereof I speak. But this is easily maskable on-screen. Craig told journos at this morning’s London press conference that the Casino Royale script (I presume he means the revised one by Paul Haggis) is “incredible” and “once I’d read that, I realized that I didn’t have a choice. I had to go for it.” I still say a film can only be as good as the most clueless powerful person on the above-the-line team, and not even a good script can entirely overcome the influence of…well, I’m repeating myself.
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