wired

I know I give the impression of disliking popcorn movies for the most part, but nobody loves good crap as much as I when it’s really done right. I was thinking last night about John Badham‘s Stakeout, which I saw and loved 21 years ago at the Cinerama Dome, and wondering why no-big-deal caper movies like this don’t happen more often.

The reason Stakeout works, of course, is that it’s not some throwaway buddy-cop movie about trying to catch an escaped fugitive. It’s a movie about a thoughtful 40ish poilceman suddenly and surprisingly falling in love (i.e., Richard Dreyfuss + Madeline Stowe), and his knowing without question that the girl in the house across the street is vitally important to know, be with, care for and protect. The trick is that Stakeout is disguised as as an amiable jerkoff buddy-cop thing. Plus it’s one of the best films ever about voyeurism, second only to Rear Window.
“Stealth” is what genre filmmakers never seem to get, or don’t have the talent to follow through upon. The way to make a run-of-the-mill genre film special is to pay attention to the undercurrent and shape it so it’s about something personal and intimate — any kind of heart issue, including creative ambition or career or whatever — while adhering to genre conventions.
98% of genre filmmakers (fantasy, crime, you-name-it) always seem to think in terms of elements. They think success of failure is defined by stars, plot, fights, car chases, FX. They never seem to realize that while these things work as selling points, they don’t matter to all that much to anyone (except for the under-20 morons) and are actually profoundly secondary. Movies that really work are always about characters trying to connect with some fundamental emotion or goal. If you get that part right, then you can add in the genre conventions any old way and you’re off to the races.

Here’s a Russian website with Watchmen trailer and clips, but I can’t get the clips to play. The trailer isn’t working at empireonline.com either, possibly on purpose. (There’s a note up about “Friday morning.”) Why can’t I find a nice easy embed code? When it appears, it may be at this currently inert URL.
I know it’s not worth suffering through a Comic-Con experience to absorb the hype close-up.
I’ll be doing a double-feature this evening — Stepbrothers in the early evening and then The Dark Knight IMAX around midnight. Bringing the laptop, intending to file between shows, etc.

A new trailer for Ridley Scott‘s Body of Lies (Warner Bros., 10.10) — clearly a first-rate thing about a CIA/Middle East/war-on-terror type deal. A tense, antagonistic partnership between pudged-up Russell Crowe (as a senior-level strategist) and bearded Leonardo DiCaprio (as some kind of agent-operator). Whatever happened to that announcement about changing the title to House of Lies? History, I guess. “Rock out on me…know what that means?” Looks a bit more like a Tony Scott film than a Ridley.

Scott is quoted on the Body of Lies Wikipedia page as saying “it’s about Islam, where we are and where we’re not, and it’s a very interesting, proactive, internalized view of that whole subject.”

Arizona Daily Star critic Phil Villarreal claims this is the first “Joker” Oscar image. Hats off to local reader Phllip Lybrand for creating it. The implication is that Heath Ledger‘s Joker performance is the front-runner as far Best Supporting Actor heat is concerned. But isn’t there something a bit translucent and see-through about Oscar’s chest in this shot? Isn’t he more buff than this? My first reaction was “Joker as Mr. Bill.” Or “Mr. Bill taken hostage by terrorists.”

Somebody needs to boil the spin snow out of the SnagFilms-purchase-of- IndieWIRE story and, you know, put out a statement that doesn’t include any tap-dancing or cheerleading. I’ve read the press release and stories about the press release three or four times and I still don’t understand what’s actually going to happen At least, not according to my own no-b.s., hamburger-eating, cut-to-the-chase standards.

Talk to me like a drunk leaning against a car in a 7-11 parking lot…okay? Is Indiewire as we’ve known it still going to cover the indie waterfront on a comprehensive basis during and between film festivals, or is it henceforth going to be some kind of half-Indiewire, half-SnagFilm hybrid that will somehow lessen or compromise the Indiewire brand? Sounds like the latter, but I’m not sure I get the whole picture regardless. I don’t care very much about or identify hugely with SnagFilms, but I do like Indiewire a great deal. When somebody out there figures it all out and musters the courage to just say it (whatever “it” is), I’d like be included on the e-mail list.

“Now that John Lesher has moved over to run the big studio motion picture division for Brad Grey, he’ll release what’s left of his Vantage slate, including Sundance pick-up American Teen, Defiance, the Keira Knightley-starrer The Duchess and DreamWorks’ Revolutionary Road, starring Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
“But a sign of what the new Vantage will be is all too obvious in this story about acquisition and production head Amy Israel leaving the studio. Guy Stodel, the guy replacing her, is a respected dealmaker from New Line Cinema who supervised two Texas Chainsaw movies. Enough said.” — a 7.15 posting by Variety‘s Anne Thompson.

HE has never been a place for hot-bod shots (and never will be), but this Helen Mirren still, taken recently in Southern Italy, is, I feel, given her decades and all, fairly stupendous. This is obviously a crop; here‘s the full thing.

The entirety of Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes is up on Google Video. Nice not to have to watch it in five separate chunks.

“I do think high school kids will relate to this movie and find this movie, but it’s very challenging, if not, dare I say it, impossible, to a sell a movie as an art house release to a high school student. We’re releasing it as an independent movie. It has a rollout and a relatively small media budget. So we’re directing our attention to our sweet spot of those 18-to-24 recent graduates who go to independent cinema.” — Paramount Vantage marketing-publicity vp Megan Colligan, speaking to L.A. Times guy Mark Olsen on how American Teen is being marketed as essentially a teen film and not a doc.

Now this is what we were looking to hear about the Josh Brolin-Jeffrey Wright arrest incident last weekend! All we heard last Saturday afternoon was “one of the W guys wouldn’t leave at closing time, the owners called the cops and they all went to jail.” Yesterday the Chicago Sun Times‘ Bill Zwecker got the real story — right-wing rednecks vs. Hollywood lefties bustin’ heads over the suspected Bush-skewering content of Oliver Stone‘s W.

“Seems a couple of good ol’ boys got wind of the fact Brolin, Wright and their crew buddies were part of Stone’s film project,” Zwecker wrote. “Some folks in conservative Shreveport — while happy to collect the bucks spent by the filmmakers during the current down economy — are not happy their town is serving as the site for a movie about a president they have enthusiastically backed in his two runs for the White House.
“According to a sober source who was in the Stray Cat, a few profanity-laced barbs about Stone, his politics and the reported anti-Bush tone of W led to harsh words from Brolin — who is known for his own short fuse. Then a few pushes (it’s unclear who started the pushing) degenerated into punches being thrown.
“A W crew member reports Wright initially tried to play peacemaker, but that changed ‘after a racial slur was yelled’ and the actor got ‘into it as well.'”
I love, love, love that Wright tried to play the pacifist Gandhi card and wound up stomping redneck ass. Remember that scene in Deal of the Century when the born-again Gregory Hines tried to turn the other check with a hostile Hispanic couple, and then finally loses it and torches their car with a flame thrower? Wright has my respect for life after this. Brolin too, of course — BurmaShave has christened him “the New Nolte.”
I want to see a short film about this incident at next January’s Sundance Film Festival, and I want Brolin — a fledgling director — to direct and star in it. Please.
Everyone knows Brolin plays George Bush in the film, right? And that Wright portrays former Secretary of State Colin Powell?
“The situation was complicated when crew member Eric Felland, Brolin, Wright and several members of their party also refused to obey bar management’s request they leave — as it was past closing time.”
Here’s some more after-the-fact reporting from KYBS News.

“About two years ago, Steve Guttenberg walked into the showbiz haunt Crustacean on Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills. ‘I walked in and the maitre d’ made a big deal for me,’ said Mr. Guttenberg. The Goot — as he’s known to his friends — appreciated the show. To hear him tell it, eating in public in Los Angeles is a dangerous business for an actor whose last box office hit was Three Men and a Baby in 1987.
“All of a sudden, the maitre d’ says, `Get out of the way!'” said Mr. Guttenberg. “And they literally threw me to the side and Tom Cruise came in. And he sat Tom Cruise and said, `I’m so sorry, but you know, Tom Cruise.’ And I’m like, `Holy fuck.’
“So after three decades in L.A., he bought a place on the Upper West Side. ‘I came to New York to find a better life,’ he said. Uprooting took some time. The 15-year-old golden retriever he loved dearly was old and sick; the golden died a month ago. So two weeks ago, the wavy-haired, Brooklyn-born 49-year-old actor, who describes his career as a ’32-year-overnight success,’ finally made it back to New York City.
“‘In L.A., I think about what I don’t have,’ he told me. ‘In New York, I think about what I do have. And I’m really tired of comparing myself to Tom Cruise.” — from Spencer Morgan‘s 7.15 N.Y. Observer article, “Look Out, New York Ladies — The Goot Is Loose.”