The trailer for Crazy Stupid Love (Warner Bros., 7.29) suggests that Ryan Gosling is playing a glib, semi-shallow, mind-fucking hound. That’s just what the doctor ordered for this fine and exceptional actor who, I’ve long felt, is too caught up in fascinating technique. He needs to play an average dipshit in a semi-average way. Steve Carell, Julianne Moore and Emma Stone costar. The film is written by Dan Fogelman and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (I Love You, Phillip Morris).
Here’s what I wrote about Gosling during Sundance 2010, after my first viewing of Blue Valentine: “He drives me nuts every time [because] he’s always doing that rop-bop-a-loo-bop, always focused on behaving in his own particular way and making damn sure that we notice this.
“Part of his being inventive and never predictable is that he always imprints and infiltrates each and every film he’s in with a Ryan Gosling mood spray. He’s a behavioralist who lives inside a very deep mine shaft, and when he takes over a movie you’re suddenly deep in that mine with him and noticing that the air is thin and wondering why and feeling it might be time to get the hell out of there, and yet knowing this would be heresy because Gosling is, at the end of the day, a very intense presence with a very shifty bag of tricks that most other actors would never devise, much less resort to.”
The just-out official teaser for Roland Emmerich‘s Anonymous (Sony, 9.23), an Elizabethan period drama that explores whether Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans), the 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays attributed to William “Bardo” Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), begins with a present-day sequence in which a lecturer (Derek Jacobi) suggests/speculates that Will “never wrote a word.”
But the teaser, obviously, is selling anything and everything but literary authorship.
Inside Guy: “That’s because it’s not about literary authorship! It’s about more than that, I mean.” HE: “I’ll say…sound and fury, a naked backside, a guy getting his head chopped off.” Inside Guy: “That’s a naked guy, you realize…right?” HE: “So no undraped women?” Inside Guy: “We fought for that and it’s in there. And the guy getting his head chopped off is the Earl of Essex. The Essex rebellion happens in the third act.”
I don’t know, man. Emmerich has always been Emmerich, y’know? A leopard can’t change his spots.
Inside Guy: “You will not believe this is a Roland Emmerich film. He’s truly made a fantastic film, one that has almost nothing to do with his other work. I think it will really challenge some people’s preconceptions about his filmmaking abilities.” HE: “I’m not doubting you for a second, but the Sony trailer is obviously suggesting that Anonymous is right off the Emmerich assembly line…no offense.”
Is this one of those concepts that kicks in nicely as a trailer, but would run out of steam as a feature? Because I love this trailer. If I wasn’t on screening lists I’d definitely pay to see a 94-minute version. Grampires and other FunnyOrDie shorts will screen tonight at downtown L.A.’s L.A. Comedy Shorts Film Festival opener.
Kim Cattrall‘s performance in Meet Monica Valour (limited, 4.8) has, I feel, broken her out of that MILFy blonde-sexpot Sex in the City persona and shown she can get down, dig deeply and go for broke. This on top of her less-than-large-scaled but respectable performance Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer, I mean. She’s forgiven, she’s cool…she’s earned entry into the serious-over-40-actress club.
Now, if only I could learn to shut up when an interview subject is talking and not go “hmm,” “uh-huh” and “yeah” all the time. I need to go to school to learn to stop doing this.
From my 2.18 Meet Monica Velour review: “Velour actually has a clear theme — a kid growing up by way of dispensing with illusion. And it offers a genuinely strong and ballsy performance from Kim Cattrall as an aging ex-erotic actress on the skids and heading further down — alcoholic, lumpy-bodied, living in a trailer park. And a relatively steady and affecting one from Dustin Ingram (Glee), who’s 20 or 21 now but plays 17 in the film. (Velour was shot in ’07, it appears.)
“The story is relatively well-shaped and believable as far as it goes, and you can tell right away that Bearden knows how to direct and cut as opposed to just adequately shoot a script. There’s a slight problem in his dialogue having a kind of ‘written’ quality, and some of the scenes feeling a little too ‘acted,’ but both are of a somewhat higher (or at least above-average) order so there’s not much interference
“Bearden persuading Cattrall to gain weight and look extra over-the-hill wasn’t, it turns out, such a bad idea. There’s always an impulse to applaud an attractive actress when she appears in a physically unflattering way, and I’m doing that here, but Cattrall goes the extra distance, I feel, in portraying what feels like despair but to actually be that, so to speak. She shows chops in this film that I’ve never seen before. I’m almost ready to forgive her for Sex and the City 2.”
Staring at a computer screen for seven or eight hours a day has been playing hell with my eyes over the last few months. My left eye, I mean — redness, puffiness, watering. And so I started wearing these IMAX 3-D glasses on top of my regular glasses to cut down on glare. They’re the only device I’ve found so far that doesn’t make everything look too dark and is fairly comfortable to wear.
I’m told the that the Gunnar people make good glare-reduction glasses. If anyone knows of other options, please inform.
Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson has reported that a 4.27 Academy screening of a new digital restoration of Bye Bye Birdie, the 1963 musical comedy that was old-hat the day it opened, is sold out.
I wouldn’t go this screening with a gun at my back + a promise of free quaaludes. The movie is strictly squaresville — a take on the hype and inanity of the rock ‘n’ roll industry by people whose careers peaked in the ’40s and ’50s.
The original 1960 B’way show reflected a stodgy middle-class sensibility that was half-amused and half-appalled by the Elvis Presley phenomenon (hence the Charles Strouse and Lee Adams tune “Kids”). Gower Champion did the choreography, and it costars Dick Van Dyke, Janet Leigh, Paul Lynde and Ed Sullivan, for God’s sake.
Conrad Birdie, the idiotic name of the rock star being drafted, is a riff on Conway Twitty, the rockabilly recording star who was once a quasi-rival of Elvis’s on the charts.
And I really can’t stand Ann-Marget‘s singing of the title tune in the opening credits. I mean, it’s awful. This and her performance in Viva Las Vegas…please. In my mind she was finally saved by her performance in Mike Nichols‘ Carnal Knowledge.
Critic Stephen Farber will host the Bye Bye Birdie screening, followed by an onstage discussion with Ann-Margret and Bobby Rydell.
Two days ago a fan-made, early ’60s-style main title sequence for the forthcoming X Men: First Class (20th Century Fox, 6.3) got 2000 hits. Yesterday it got 40,000 and today (as of 4:30 pm eastern) it’s at 50,000 and counting. The creator is Joe DiLeonardo (a.k.a. “Joe D”) of Trenton, New Jersey.
The sequence is a bit slow and lumpy here and there, but Joe (whom I spoke to a few minutes ago) threw it together very quickly, and at least he’s got the early ’60s style down. His only mistakes were including two or three stills that were probably taken in the mid to late ’60s, which of course violates the space-time continuum.
How will this compare to the actual Matthew Vaughn– and 20th Century Fox-approved main title sequence? They’ll be fairly or very similar, I would imagine. The forthcoming prequel is set during the time of the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, so what Joe D. has done is actually a no-brainer. In fact, if I were running the show I’d tell the designers to somehow go beyond this and…I don’t know, just punch through all that shit without losing the period vibe. A kind of hybrid.
“This sequence was designed to give a very brief primer on the time period and the setting, as well as show the relationships of the characters in this film, as they are very different from the previous,” Joe explains. “Audiences shouldn’t be confused as to why Professor X and Magneto, enemies in the original trilogy, are the best of friends in this prequel.
“Super Punch held a contest redesigning the posters for the film, which played it safe by sticking very close to the correlation to the original trilogy, and winding up rather mundane compared to the slick trailer rife with espionage, red fear and early ’60s hair. Several people were quick to make posters in the mod/Saul Bass/James Bond style that I had in mind, so I decided to make a title sequence instead.”
Every time I use a big bath towel in a hotel or a rented home, it’s very natural-fibre feeling and nicely absorbent. I love it. And every time I try to buy a nice high-quality bath towel for myself at Nordstrom or Bed, Bath and Beyond, I come home with something that’s a little too soft and smoothly pampered — not natural feeling enough with that 100%, slightly rough cotton touch. It’s infuriating.
L.A. Times guy Steven Zeitchik is calling the currently-rolling Playing The Field, a Gerald Butler film directed by Gabriele Mucchino, “a dramedy about soccer, the suburbs and sexual attraction” and “a kind of Shampoo set amid American manicured lawns.”
It’s about a Beckham-like soccer star (Butler) who returns to his estranged American wife (Jessica Biel) and child to try to redeem himself after tom-catting around Europe for a long spell. He starts coaching youth soccer to show he means it, but various local women convey a certain moist receptivity, including characters played by Uma Thurman (the wife of Dennis Quaid‘s character), Catherine Zeta Jones (a local newscaster) and Judy Greer (a hot-to-trot housewife).
Zeitchik reports that The Kids Are All Right co-screenwriter Stuart Blumberg has been brought in to punch up (or deepen or whatever) Rob Fox‘s script. The key, I think, to making the film connect is to make Butler’s character as honest and personal and even confessional as possible. In other words model his ways and attitudes on Butler himself, who is quite the hound himself. This self-reflecting quality is what made Warren Beatty‘s womanizing hairdresser character in Shampoo so interesting.
Zeitchik reports that the half-comedy “has distribution around the world and will be seeking a U.S. home.”
Three years ago the word went out among a rarified strata of film critics and feature writers that seriously praising House Bunny star Anna Faris was a hip thing to do. And now New Yorker writer Tad Friend is calling her “Hollywood’s most original comic actress” — sorta kinda Judy Holliday in a coarse-obvious-stoner vein.
Maybe, if you say so, but Faris, I swear to God, is never very funny. Puckish and animated but…huh? Always playing highly spirited, slow-on-the-pickup (okay, semi-stupid) women who are parked (or driving around in circles) in their own cul de sac. Honestly? The only thing she’s done that I’ve even half-liked is when she played herself in three Entourage episodes in 2997. Okay, I half-enjoyed her Cameron Diaz imitation in Lost in Translation but…well, let’s get down to it, shall we?
Faris isn’t bad and could perhaps someday be special, but so far she hasn’t worked with top-drawer directors and writers. She’s been more or less scrounging around with second-raters. Her next movie is Mark Mylod‘s What’s Your Number?, about a girl wondering if one of her 20 lovers was the one and she somehow missed that. Are you going to tell me this isn’t going to be another perky piece-of-shit girlie comedy? With a premise like that?
“Onscreen, Faris is fearless,” Friend writes in his article, “Funny Like A Guy.” “Her trademark is the power-through: after her character has done something incredibly stupid or embarrassing, she doubles down. Mentions Mark Mylod, Ryan Reynolds, Amy Pascal, Seth Rogan.
“The Bechdel Test is a way of examining movies for gender bias. The test poses three questions: Does a movie contain two or more female characters who have names? Do those characters talk to each other? And, if so, do they discuss something other than a man? An astonishing number of light entertainments fail the test. This points to a crucial imbalance in studio comedies: distinctive secondary roles for women barely exist. For men, these roles can be a stepping stone to stardom.
“On the other hand, relatively unraunchy female-driven comedies have all done well at the box office. So why haven’t more of them been made? The answer is that studios, as they release fewer films, are increasingly focused on trying to develop franchises. Female-driven movies aren’t usually blockbusters, and studio heads don’t see them as repeatable. Men predominate in Hollywood, and men just don’t write much for women.
“Relatability for female characters is seen as being based upon vulnerability, which creates likability. So funny women must not only be gorgeous; they must fall down and then sob, knowing it’s all their fault. Ideas for female-driven comedies are met with intense skepticism, and it’s even more intense because Faris isn’t aiming at the familiar Type A roles played by Jennifer Aniston and Katherine Heigl. She said, “I’d like to explore Type D, the sloppy ones.” Mentions The House Bunny and Observe and Report.”
Why do the N.Y. Times tech guys insist on using titles and reducing the video image and forcing it over to the left margin? Just offer the video in the style of YouTube or Vimeo and let it go at that.
David Gordon Green‘s Your Highness (Universal, 4.8) is so poorly written, so uninvested in genuine stoner humor (a la The Big Lebowski and Wonder Boys), and so appallingly unsuccessful that it’s a bit of a challenge to accurately describe it. But it’s definitely not funny — that you can take to the bank.
I’m not exaggerating in calling this a landmark in the annals of crapitude and dick jokes and the fine corporate art of farting in the audience’s face. It’s easily one of the worst films I’ve ever seen in my life. But I stayed to the end! And I’m almost proud of this because everything in my mind was saying “go…escape…free yourself!”
Your Highness is a mixture of a kind of 12th Century, Lord of the Rings/Robin Hood-y backdrop atmosphere, showoff CG and action scenes with eye-filling cinematography and a full-blast orchestral score, a completely moronic and non-cohesive genre-spoof story with — this is the core marketing element — unregenerate pig-slob-lameass-burp-stoner dialogue and attitudes as performed by Danny McBride, whose dirtbag prince character, Thadeous, can be seen as a kind of time-travelling emissary from degraded 21st Century culture.
Thadeous is a boorish, unrefined, masturbating, overweight slob forced by his king father (Charles Dance) to accompany his heroic, big-hearted brother Fabious (James Franco) on a quest to save Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel), fiancee of Fabious, from the clutches of Leezar (Justin Theroux), a standard-issue demonic wizard who’s kidnapped her and who poses a general threat, etc. Natalie Portman is some kind of wandering samurai bow-and-arrow girl who jumps into the story in Act Two.
It’s one of those inert exercises in ironic distance — another SNL skit stretched to feature length and amplified, wide-screened and CG’ed to a fare-thee-well. “We’re just kidding, nobody’s in this stupid thing, we’re all getting paid,” etc. At best the crowd at last night’s Arclight screening was smirking and tittering now and then. There were no laughs to speak of and for damn sure no belly laughs.
Take out the oppressive action scenes and nudity titillation and production values that Universal execs probably insisted upon — the CG, costumes, eye-filling landscapes, sweeping score, etc. — and you’re left with a dopey story that’s basically about a selfish low-life swearing and dick-joking his way through a series of unconnected sketches about supernatural threats that aren’t even fake-real, and nothing that anyone (in the film or the audience) really cares about.
Question: If Theroux and his three old-witch allies have the power to throw electric flash-bolts at their adversaries and throw them against walls and knock them cold, why don’t they have the power to slice their heads off? Or change them into farm animals? Or wound them so badly so they’re left unconscious, or can’t do anything except lie on the ground and groan? We all know the answer, and I think we’re all sick of these rules.
There’s one bit — one! — that I half-smirked at. It’s performed by Theroux and involves the fate of a tiny Tinkerbell-like fairy. That’s all I’m going to say.
I was 90% delighted with Green’s Pineapple Express, but this thing is a disaster. Green is a longtime pally of McBride’s, who wrote the script with Ben Best, and their friendship (along with the stunning cluelessness of Universal executives) is apparently the key reason why audiences will be grappling with Your Highness this weekend.
Has there ever been a more radical transformation…corruption, I mean, in the style and tone of a once-respected director than what has happened with Green? Some day the New Beverly Cinema will show a double bill of Your Highness and George Washington, Green’s small-scale 2000 film that struck almost everyone as being Terrence Malick-y. And the people that experience that double-bill are going to come out staggering and saying, “What kind of sell-out kool-aid did Green drink?”
