wired

“The World Cup probably isn’t even on your radar, but on July 7th, two days before the final, Miramax is opening Once In A Lifetime , an incredibly entertaining documentary about the astonishing rise and fall of the New York Cosmos soccer team in the 1970s and ’80s. Founded on a whim by Time-Warner chairman Steve Ross and the Ertegun brothers, the Cosmos, for a too-brief period, boasted the talents of Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto, three of the biggest stars in the world. And they were selling out games at 77,000 seat Giants Stadium. And stars like Mick Jagger visited the locker room. And the team members were welcomed as VIPs at Studio 54. And by 1985, only eight years after Pele retired, the team was defunct. And now two Brit documentarians, Paul Crowder and John Dower, have turned this story into a very hip film on power, excess, stardom and the wild and crazy ’70s in New York. Once in a Lifetime has a great soundtrack filled with soul and disco music of the time, and plenty of tasty interviews with the parties involved. What makes it so great is also the fact that you don’t have to know anything about soccer or the Cosmos to enjoy it — it’s just flat-out entertaining and informative. A real winner.” — Lewis Beale

Good God…of course, of course! Rachel McAdams should have played Lois Lane in Superman Returns. Maybe Bryan Singer offered her the part and she passed or something got in the way. Given the reaction to Kate Bosworth so far, one imagines that Singer is probably wishing deep down he’d somehow gotten McAdams. Nothing on Google about this. Was she ever approached? She’s the friggin’ “it” girl. How could Singer not have wanted her?

The ’06 Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off two and a half months from now, is going to be a kind of old-home week for anyone who went to Cannes. Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu‘s widely-praised Babel will be screened there…great. Ditto Ray Lawrence‘s Jindabyne, Ken Loach‘s Palme d’Or-winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Andrea Arnold ‘s Red Road and Aki Kaurismaki‘s Lights in the Dusk. Hey…what about giving Richard Kelly another shot with a new cut of Southland Tales? And what about showing Sofia Coppola‘s Marie-Antoinette for another round of whatever happens? (I was going to type the words “deeply loathed” before the title, but then I remembered that some people, including French critic Michel Ciment, stood up for it.)

Sincere regrets over the death of Marine Staff Sergeant Raymond Plouhar, who was featured in a sequence in Michael Moore‘s Fahrenheit 9/11 as he and another Marine went around Flint, Michigan, trying to recruit local youths. Plouhar, 30, was killed by a roadside bombing on Monday “while conducting combat operations in Iraq’s Anbar province”, the Defense Department said Tuesday. HE’s condolences to Plouhar’s family and friends. I’m sorry to report that as of 4:42 L.A. time, Michael Moore’s site hasn’t reported the news of Plouhar’s death…unless they’re hiding it somewhere. I don’t think is good form on Moore’s part.

Sorry…bunnies not funny. Blah, blah, blah…I got as far as the third paragraph. And you can’t read this unless you have a Wall Street Journal subscription.

Every online go-getter has been publishing that nude Britney Spears photo that will adorn the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar. I’m hours behind the pack (blame Superman Returns and James Ellroy) but no harm in following suit.

I’m guessing that sometime tomorrow morning an e-mail from an attorney for the magazine will arrive telling me to take it down or else…but maybe not. Remember when Spears was hot and thin? She’s obviously pregnant now, but during her recovery period from the last baby she was a sea lion.

“Isn’t it odd that Superman is here to save the world, but the things that end up threatening the world are elements he brought with him to earth? Isn’t it strange that a guy who could, perhaps, save the world, spends eight hours a day sitting around in an office where everyone is obsessed with celebrating him, and then a few hours performing a few random acts of rescue instead of addressing the world’s fundamental problems?” — excerpted from a response to the “Superman Again” feature, written by Looking Closer‘s Jeffrey Overstreet

A very curious decision has been made by the people at Taschen, at the request of Miami Vice director Michael Mann , to delay the release of what that big Taschen book about Mann’s career until sometime in the fall, instead of releasing it concurrent with Miami Vice‘s 7.28 opening, which is what the plan apparently was a few weeks ago.

What could Mann’s motive possibly be? Does he want the Taschen book coming out at the same time as the Miami Vice DVD, which I presume will street sometime in November? The only other fall-release motive would be to goose awards consideration, but Miami Vice is not being seen, good as it may be, as an awards-level thing. What a shame, in any event. For me Miami Vice is the Big One to watch for, and I was so looking forward to leafing through this book (and through F.X. Feeney’s essay about Mann) sometime next month as a kind of anticipation exercise.

Now Playing‘s Scott Collura had some problems with the IMAX 3-D portions of Superman Returns, and here’s a summary: “The technology still leaves something to be desired…there was some blurriness and darkness… folks sitting near me had the same take… perhaps the theater we were in was not calibrated correctly? Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that we were sitting on the side of the theater and not directly in the middle? But at other times one could garner an idea of what the technology can offer.”

I hear what Scott’s saying. For me, the issue is mainly one of “ghosting“, a kind of cigarette-smoke, double-image effect that kicks in very faintly from time to time. Superman Returns wasn’t shot in 3D. What you’re seeing in IMAX theatres is a new-generation 3D that’s been artificially created in post. I presume it will get better as the process moves along, but the Superman 3D is somewhere between pretty good and not bad. It seemed just as satisfying as the 3D in that James Cameron underater-exploration IMAX thing, or even a touch better. And all tech concerns are out the window when it comes to that scene in which Superman saves the jet plane from crashing into terra firma, which is knock-your-socks-off fantastic.

All those thoughtful HE readers in denial about global warming (this site is teeming with right-wing libertarian types who love their profligate lifestyles) are asked to look at this. It’s obviously crap propaganda put forward by a bunch of liberal distortion dweebs — people who refuse to accept that each and every American is entitled to do whatever he/she wants, and the atmosphere can go fuck itself — but if you’re not doing anything and you want a laugh…here you go.

I’m not quite convinced that I want to hang with these people for 80 or 90 minutes. There’s something touching and yet profoundly underwhelming about being a background extra (and maybe a wee bit sad), but here’s the trailer regardless. The doc’s called Strictly Background and I’m told it’s “about to make the festival rounds.” I trust I don’t have to explain what that probably means.

“When was the last time we had a great fantasy film to watch? M. Night Shyamalan‘s Lady in the Water is the best film of its kind since The Princess Bride, another fantasy movie that also begins with a bedtime story and deals with many of the same themes.”– Mike Sampson on JoBlo.com. In the Shyamalan annals, Sampson also claims it’s “one of his best.” That’s a little vague, no? It’s not as if Night has made 12 or 15 films. “One of his best” means…what?…that it’s better than Unbreakable or…?