The Letters from Iwo Jima-opening-in-December story that The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil reported Tuesday night (and which I later confirmed through an exhibition source and posted a followup story on around 11 pm Tuesday) has been confirmed in a Pamela McLintock Variety story that will be in the print edition on Thursday morning.
Last night and all day today Warner Bros. publicists dummied up and wouldn’t officially confirm the story. I’ve been told that Hollywood Reporter also called more than once and got no confirmations either. Obviously the fix was in for Variety to deliver the official, exclusive confirmation, a deal presumedly grandfathered by Variety editor Peter Bart‘s friendship with Letters driector Clint Eastwood.
McClintock’s story says Warner Bros. is moving up the release date of Eastwood’s Japanese-language Iwo Jima war flick from 2.9.07 to 12.20.06, which obviously puts it into the running for Best Picture and whatever else. The film will open that day — Wednesday, 12.20 — in L.A. and New York, and possibly also in San Francisco, her story said.
McLintock reports that Eastwood “approached Warners about the date change for Letters after consulting with Steven Spielberg, who brought in Eastwood to direct Flags for DreamWorks.” I heard tonight that DreamWorks marketing stategist Terry Press has been pushing the date change also. The 12.20 date was “locked in early Wednesday evening, as Eastwood was in Japan to promote Letters,” McLintock wrote.
Locked it a few hours ago, they mean? That’s funny considering that I was told Tuesday night that an arthouse exhibition chain had booked Letters into some of their theatres at least a day or two earlier, perhaps as early as last Friday.
Can we cut the crap? If Warner Bros. had had any real respect for Eastwood’s decision to make two Iwo Jima films, they would have decided from the get-go to follow the Japanese release plan and open it in December so people could fully appreciate it as a Flags companion piece. But WB execs pushed it off into a February 9th release anyway, for reasons best not shared.
Warner Bros. sources will never admit it, but the only reason Letters was suddenly advanced into December is because everyone got scared over the last week or two and said to each other, “We’re in trouble! The bandwagon is slowing down! The Oscar plan is falling apart! We need to throw a Hail Mary pass!” The concern kicked in because Flags of Our Fathers is losing theatres and is withering on the box-office vine, as well as in the court of industry opinion, and so they figured, “What the hell, let’s release Letters and see what happens! Can’t hurt at this stage!…why not?”
As Oscar contender piece by Pete Hammond turned up on Hollywood Wiretap yesterday. I heard a couple of days ago that Hammond has been talking to somebody about writiing a running Oscar blog thing, so maybe this is the berth.
Reading it led me to a familiar conclusion, which is that the four most likely Best Picture nominees at this stage are still Clint Eastwood‘s Flags of Our Fathers (pure mystique…nobody has seen anything), Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver (probably his finest flm ever, and one of the best chick flicks of all time with a serious chance of being included — maybe — among the mainsream Best Pic contenders), Bill Condon‘s Dreamgirls (so far only extended product reels have been seen), and Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu‘s Babel with the fifth slot up for grabs.
The intrepid Little Miss Sunshine could work its way in there; ditto World Trade Center, although I’m doubting this more and more. What indisputably strong and accomplished film especially deserves to take the fifth slot? Paul Greengrass‘s United 93.
If there wasn’t such an ingrained Best Picture prejudice against films in the cinefantastique realm, Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth would be at least be considered worthy of end-of-the-year distinctions. It is without question del Toro’s finest film to date — a dark political melodrama and a serenely tender child’s fable in a single package.
My gut says don’t hold your breath waiting for derby action on The History Boys. Something’s not quite happening with this film — I can just feel it with my insect antennae.
Gabrielle Muccino‘s The Pursuit Of Happyness won’t pop through for another couple of months, and the less said the better until it does. Ditto Christopher Nolan‘s The Prestige .
Some other HE conclusions based on portions of Pete’s piece: (a) All The King’s Men is dead (in my estimation this Steve Zallian period drama has been over for months — the disastrous Toronto Film Festival reception was just the official confirmation); (b) the Running With Scissors strategy of skipping the early festivals is indicative of…uhm, something; (c) Little Children is a fine film and a major creative surge by director-cowriter Todd Fields, but it has an ick-factor thing to contend with; (d) The Last King Of Scotland is a respectably crafted real-life drama (no more that that) but it also has a great Forrest Whitaker performance as General Idi Amin; (e) due respect to tjhe illustrious David Thomson, but Infamous is nowhere near as cultured or artful as Bennett Miller ‘s Capote and is basically dead in the derby; and (f) the lead performance by Derek Luke in Catch A Fire is tender and affecting, but I don’t know if the flm will launch him or not.
And what else? Breaking and Entering is mostly middling Minghella — soulful and smartly assembled in many ways, but curiously plotted in terms of the infidelity activity between Jude Law and Juliette Binoche; Peter O’Toole‘s performance as an aging actor with a wink in his eye is Venus‘s ace in the hole; Stephen Frears‘ The Queen is…I’m not going to share just yet, but Helen Mirren‘s performance as Queen Elizabeth II is a near-lock for Best Actress; and the derision that greeted Emilio Estevez‘s Bobby in Toronto (the “Love Boat” label is going to stick) has begun to turn the film into a Jay Leno joke.
I wrote last week that Stranger Than Fiction is dead in the derby, and take no notice of anyone who says it isn’t.
Films yet to be seen and handicapped are Martin Scorsese‘s recently rebounded The Departed, Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German and Ed Zwick‘s Blood Diamond. Clouds of doubt are hovering over Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children Of Me and Robert DeNiro‘s The Good Shepherd.
Ridley Scott‘s A Good Life is agreeably escapist and goes down easy, but the bottom-line distinction is that it’s formulaic (as in predictable). Agreeably so, but formulaic nonetheless.
I wrote Werner Herzog yesterday and asked whether Rescue Dawn will be included at the Toronto Film Festival roster. “At the moment we should treat the Toronto Film Festival as some sort of a rumor, as there is no clear confirmation yet,” he answered.
“I just arrived in London for music recordings with the cello genius Ernst Reijseger — we did the music together for my two movies The White Diamond and The Wild Blue Yonder, using five Sardinian shepherd singers and an additional singer from Senegal. With Reijseger I shall work on the transition of the film into the unreal. The score is being written by Klaus Badelt (who recently scored Poseidon), but Reijseger will contribute music for a very strange moment in the film.
“Last week I have done color corrections, ADR, and sound post-production. Some of the digital effects (yes, I do have a few of them) are almost finished, and mixing has to be done. My guess is that we shall have a 35mm print before August 20th.”
In a New Yorker profile of Herzog that appeared earlier this year, writer Daniel Zalewski wrote the following: “Herzog believes that modern life has disconnected humans from their most elemental pleasures. His films, accordingly, attempt to connect modern cinemagoers to their prelapsarian selves: the emotions are always primal, and landscape is integral to the drama. Herzog says, ‘You will never see people talking on the phone, driving in a car, or exchanging ironic jokes in my films…it is always bigger, deeper.'”
San Diego Hoo-Hah
I was so backlogged by Friday midnight that I decided not to return to Comic-Con today (i.e., Saturday, 7.22). No offense but I was fairly okay with that. I heard a little voice late last night that said “fug it.” It’s a cool thing to be a Comic-Conner but after wandering around the San Diego Convention Center and sitting for several hours inside the cavernous Hall H, you start to feel like a stooge sitting there with 5000 others, watching show after show on the big screens and absorbing the big-studio sell-jobs.
In any case Friday’s action — a special screening of Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, the raucous Snakes on a Plane presentation, the colleague buzz that followed the promo for Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men — was enough to fill the tank.
Fountain director Darren Aronofsky (l.), composer Clint Mansell (r.) at small party following Friday night’s Fountain screening
The Snakes presentation was a lot of fun for everyone, but for me it was also a bit of a downer — a final official confirmation that Snakes on a Plane isn’t going to be anything like Tremors (i.e., a smart, crafty comic thriller), and possibly more like a cheeseball B-movie with special effects out of the mid ’90s, and enhanced by the reverse Midas touch of a go-along, second-tier director.
Aronofsky’s The Fountain (Warner Bros., 10.13), which I saw with about 20 other journalists last night in a plex on 5th Street, is the most beautiful and best-cafted cosmic head-trip movie since I don’t know what. 2001: A Space Odyssey? Fight Club? The first half of Altered States ? (I was never a big fan of Bertolucci’s Little Buddha. Was anyone?)
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And for a movie with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz playing three characters each in three different eras (the 1500s, the present and the 24th Century), it’s remarkably easy to sort through and make sense of. You have to let it seep into you like any great book or perfectly brewed cup of tea, and you have to seep yourself into it also, but it’s an extraordinary place to go to and then return from….like a planet unto itself.
It’s one of those films that takes a little seasoning to appreciate. Mature educated types will like it more than typical 20-something hormonals, women probably more than guys who watch football and smoke cigars and drive SUVs, etc.
I’m presuming that anyone who’s ever tripped on anything will definitely respond to The Fountain. (Most columnist-critics are afraid to admit they’re “experienced”, but a lot of people of character and conviction dropped in the old days). This means, I guess, that at least part of the marketing effort will have to be directed at boomers who’ve been around that particular block.
Samuel L. Jackson during yesterday’s Snakes on a Plane presentation at Hall H
But a good nutritious film is a good nutritious film, and The Fountain is tight and rich and well-crafted enough that it will play just as well ten or fifty years from now.
I guess you could call it an odyssey. It’s about parallels, echoes and refrains between Jackman and Weisz’s three characters over a thousand-year time-span. The three settings are 16th century Spain, here-and-now America and somewhere in the nether cosmic regions some 500 years from now. It’s a movie about healing, loving…trying to break through.
The Fountain will play at both the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in early September. I’ll get into it more sometime around then.
I don’t know where I was when the presentation for Children of Men (Universal, 9.26) happened, but one look at the trailer tells you it’s a gripping futuristic thriller and a class act that steers clear of generic Comic-Con elements — i.e., mythical terrain, geek wonder, visually driven, monsters and mutants, etc.
On top of which it’s got Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) co-writing a script with Timothy Sexton (Live from Baghdad) and with Clive Owen, Julianna Moore and a hippie-haired, pot-smoking Michael Caine costarring. You can feel the focus and and smell the pedigree.
Clive Owen, Julianne Moore in Children of Men
Set in Britain a few decades hence, it’s about mankind facing extinction and anarchy because of an infertility defect that has spread across the globe. Cuaron was quoted as calling it “the anti-Blade Runner.” I’m guessing that Children will be shown at the Toronto Film Festival and that screenings starting next month in Los Angeles are also likely. The great Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) Interviewed Cuaron during the presentation.
I don’t know how I managed to avoid thinking about Child of Men until yesterday, but I’m all over it now.
The Warner Bros. presentation include a briefing onThe Reaping, which looks like The Birds by way of The Swarm except it’s about locusts and (I presume) frogs and other Biblical plagues visited upon a small southern town. The director is Stephen Hopkins, a moderately talented, very friendly Britisher (The Life and Death of Peter Sellers) whose involvement in a film of this sort means….competency.
Problem is, I’m having trouble remembering the title. The Reaping, The Gleaming, The Shining, The Reaming, The House-Cleaning…hard to hang onto.
Next on the bill was Superman Returns director Bryan Singer, who told the crowd he intends to shoot a Supie sequel for 2009, and that he hopes to “go all Wrath of Khan on it.” After a while Singer brought on Richard Donner, director of the original ’78 Superman with Chris Reeve. Donner was there to plug a new Superman II DVD. He showed a cool Superman-deceives-Lois scene from that film that was never used in the film. The disc will also include footage of Reeve doing screen tests.
Hilary Swank, AnnaSophia Robb in The Reaping
The best thing shown the whole day was Singer’s Superman Returns blooper reel. It’s hilarious. He only cut it together a day earlier, I was told. Singer should definitely put this on the DVD.
The second funniest thing happened when Singer was asked about the selling if Superman Returns. “I can’t talk about the marketing,” he almost whispered…but it was clear he wasn’t delighted with what happened. His hints, implications and half-utterances on this subject were priceless.
I can’t talk about 20th Century Fox’s Eragon because it struck me as another mythical CG battle flick in the crusty mold of Joseph Campbell, Lord of the Rings, Dragonslayer and Star Wars. Same deal with Pathfinder. Reno 911….low-rent but a lot of people will have fun with it. Borat ….same.
A unseen sequence from Peter Jackson’s King Kong Deluxe Extended DVD was shown on the big screens. It’s a re-do of the scene from the ’33 original with crew making their way across a swamp on a raft. It was “fun” to watch and yet it was typical Jackson crap — vigorous and inventive, overwrought, show-offy. The guys are attacked by a huge eel-like monster with big yellow teeth, and Jackson has his creature swim all kinds of wow stunts like he’s a dolphin at Sea World.
Richard Donner, Bryan Singer
Neil Labute talked about The Wicker Man (Warner Bros., 9.1) a bit, and then showed a scene from the opening of the film. Nic Cage is a motorcycle cop pulling over a young mother because her daughter has thrown a doll out in the road. The scene starts to get creepy, and then creeper still…and then shocking, and then demonic. It left me with a feeling that The Wicker Man is going to be a very scary film. Labute is one of the brightest directors around, but I wouldn’t call him warm and fuzzy. And you need a little touch of steel in your soul, I think, to push the right buttons and do the job on people.
Comic-Con is the ultimate cinegeek get-together. I love being surrounded by thousands and thousands of mellow eccentrics. Spiritually-speaking, the vibe is very cool…serene, even. But nobody looks like they work out much or eat a lot of healthy food. There were always a good amount of smokers outside. Four or five people suggested to me that Comic-Con was about movies and mythology but also drinking. Lots of that.
San Diego’s Gaslamp district has the usual-usual tourist stuff (cool restaurants, lotsa bars, pretty women), but I wish have liked to visit here during Wyatt Earp’s day. Which was one reason it feels better to just chill and work on the column today in air-conditioned comfort. I’m sitting in a guest cabin this afternoon in Escondido (about 30 miles north of San Diego), and it’s the Nefud desert out there.
Two Tom Cruise items have just broken that are going to enrage certain parties. Radar Online is reporting that Cruise made repeated calls and made certain overtures to Scarlett Johansson “weeks” before he began his relationship with Katie Holmes. (Johansson was reported by Upcoming Movies as being firm to costar with Cruise in Mission: Impossible 3 in July ’04.) The item, which quotes Johansson directly and says her publicist didn’t respond to calls or e-mails seeking confirmation, claims Johansson not only declined Cruise’s offer of a Scientology-fortified relationship, but that Cruise then made similar relationship pitches to Kate Bosworth (22) and Lindsay Lohan (18) “before settling on the 26-year-old Holmes.” The other item is from N.Y. Daily News gossip columnist Ben Widdicombe(i.e., “Gatecrasher”), and it says the following: “So here’s what I’m hearing about that relationship. A source VERY close to the deal is saying there’s a contract. It’s worth $5 million. It’s for five years. There will be no sex. The deal was sealed June 7. That’s what I’m hearing.” Hold on…only $5 million for five years? If I were repping Katie I would insist on at least $2.5 million per year (more?) with all kinds of extras and stock options and you-name-it.
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