If you’ve ever looked at slapped-together covers for bootleg DVDs, you know that the pirates who put them out sometimes create their own cover art based on generic but reality-divorced concepts of what will appeal to Average Joes. So when boots of The Tree of Life begin to show up on the streets of Tijuana and Beijing and Manila, it’s not inconceivable that the jacket art might look something like this. (Jacket design by Mark Frenden.)
I don’t know what exhibitors and distributors felt about Terrence Malick‘s Badlands or Days of Heaven or The Thin Red Line or The New World when they first saw them, but I’ll guess they weren’t swooning. Exhibitor and distributor types are always bitching about art films, and that’s the only kind of movie Malick makes so he and they are natural-born adversaries. Industry guys have always hated ambitious cinema — Francis Coppola once told me about exhibitors complaining about how dark and gloomy The Godfather was — so their views need to be taken with a grain.
I was reminded of this mindset by a producer pal when I told him yesterday that a journalist friend, quoting a US distribution source, had told me that a group of foreign distributor-investors saw Malick’s The Tree of Life almost exactly a year ago (i.e., March 2010) and felt that it was commercially catastrophic — a movie ostensibly costarring Sean Penn and Brad Pitt “and they’re not even in it,” according to one complainer. (Possible translation: the source felt that Penn and Pitt aren’t in it enough.)
On top of which a second journalist friend told me two or three months ago that he happened to be sitting near a table of distributor types at last September’s Toronto Film Festival “and they had a furious, angry attitude about the movie,” my friend says. “It was really a sense they had that it was beyond repair…they didn’t want anything to do with it, and they couldn’t imagine what any legitimate distributor could do with it.”
Again — that’s par for the course when guys whose main goal in life is to sell popcorn are talking about an art film. It doesn’t mean The Tree of Life doesn’t have value in and of itself. Knowing Malick and his abilities and inclinations as I do, it seems unlikely if not inconceivable that he could create a film utterly lacking in artistic/spiritual value.
It was reported in May 2009 that The Tree of Life had been sold to a number of international distributors, including Europacorp in France, TriPictures in Spain, and Icon in the UK and Australia, but that it lacked a US distributor. In August 2009 it was announced that the film would be released in the US through Bob Berney and Bill Pohlad‘s Apparition. There had been speculation in Screen Daily and elsewhere that Tree might be ready for Oscar contention release in late 2009, but nope. Then came talk of its possible debut at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and the subsequent squashing of that dream due to “it’s not ready.” And yet it’s believed that Tree of Life was “absolutely finished” in the spring of 2010, and that it had been seen by European distribs who bought pre-sales rights, and they “were shocked and appalled and rejected it” after that alleged March 2010 screening.
Summit Entertainment sold distribution rights to EuropaCorp in France, Icon (UK and Australia), TeleMuenchen Group (Germany), Svensk (Scandinavia), O1 (Italy,) Belga (Benelux) and TriPictures (Spain). Journalist friend #1 “was told by two more people in the Euro biz” that the appalled or angered reactions about a supposed catastrophe “were absolutely true, but I was not told this by anyone with one of the rejecting companies. That’s where I got stuck. Three sources, but none direct.”
“This is like the 9/11 conspiracy theory,” journalist #1 concludes. “How could so many people be keeping this secret?”
Early last May I ran a complaint piece about Paramount Home Video’s failure to punch out a Shane Bluray. It’s my responsibility, I feel, to bitch about this until they finally give in and agree to fund the proper restoring and remastering of George Stevens‘ 1953 classic. An off-the-lot source says it’ll be a moderately expensive project, which is mainly why Paramount has been stalling for so long. Except Shane is one of the respected jewels in the studio crown, and what monarch would allow one of its legacy symbols to lose its shine?
Shane is one of the most beautiful color films shot during the big-studio era, but if you pop the current DVD version into a Bluray player and watch it on a 50″ plasma, it just looks okay…and it should make your eyes pop out of their sockets.
The Shane elements need to be upgraded, but Paramount doesn’t want to spring for this. The applicable term is “bad parenting.” A father doesn’t refuse to send a talented child with great potential to college because tuition is too costly, or because there’s not enough of a back-end profit motive. A person who’s doing well in life doesn’t allow a member of his/her family to live in declining circumstances if he/she is able to help. A son or daughter doesn’t keep an aging parent in a musty, second-rate assisted living facility when a first-rate one is affordable.
Other DVD/Bluray sites should make an annual rite of shaming Paramount into doing the right thing, but most of them won’t, I’m guessing, because they don’t want to risk alienating a big advertiser.
Last year’s posting: It feels mildly irksome that Paramount Home Video has never to my knowledge stated an intention to issue a Bluray of George Stevens‘ Shane. Wouldn’t this fit almost anyone’s definition of a no-brainer? It’s all but de rigueur for major studios to give their classic titles Bluray upgrades, so it seems odd that one as beautiful-looking as Shane would be sitting on the sidelines.
It’s been almost seven years since Paramount Home Video’s Shane DVD, which was fine for what it was. But it’s time to step up and do this film proud and give a nice angel erection to George Stevens, who no doubt has been wondering from whatever realm or region why Paramount hasn’t yet bit the bullet on this thing.
The Bluray format (coupled with an exacting, first-rate remastering, of course) would dramatically enhance if not do wonders for Loyal Griggs‘ legendary capturings of this iconic 1953 western. To my eyes Griggs’ richly-hued color lensings — he shot The Buccaneer, The Ten Commandments, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, White Christmas — were on the level of Jack Cardiff‘s.
This morning I asked Paramount restoration/remastering guy Ron Smith (who supervised the superb work on Paramount’s recently-released African Queen Bluray) if a Shane Bluray was at least in the planning stages. Guys like Smith are told to never say “boo” to guys like me without corporate publicity’s approval, but I wanted to at least put this on the table.
Robert Aldrich‘s Kiss Me Deadly (Criterion Bluray, 6.21) is pure black-and-white splendor. You can can take or leave the plot/dialogue/theme, but you can’t ignore the magnificent visual capturings of mid ’50s Los Angeles. All those downtown locations that are gone now plus Ralph Meeker/Mike Hammer’s still-standing apartment building (10401 Wilshire Blvd, NW corner of Wilshire and Beverly Glen and the Hollywood Athletic Club (6525 W. Sunset Blvd.), where Hammer finds the black box with the bright light inside.
I’m not a coffee snob, but I’ve owned a couple of cappuccino machines and been to dozens of European cafes and have acquired a mature understanding, I believe, of what makes a really good cup. Imagine my surprise, then, when it hit me two or three weeks ago that this kind of instant coffee is really delightful — rich, rounded, full-bodied.
This is the raptor seen in one of the micro-squares on that one-sheet for Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life. Would it be out of line to ask for a poster for a screaming Sean Penn and Brad Pitt being chased by a raptor, Jurassic Park-style? If anyone has the Photoshop ability and the time….well, obviously many people do. But do they give enough of a damn to work on it and send it along?
I’m almost getting a supernatural, time-trippy Purple Rose of Cairo vibe from this Midnight in Paris trailer. Or maybe more like A Stop at Willoughby? That’s good, I think. Woody Allen hasn’t gone off the imaginative deep end in quite a while.
I know one thing for sure: I felt more than a little nauseous the second that Michael Sheen‘s character began talking about wine. So he plays (a) Tony Blair, (b) mad vampires kingpins with white hair and crazy glazed expressions, (c) soccer coaches and (d) assholes?
David Gordon Green‘s Your Highness (Universal, 4.8) was shown to select press last Friday, and I was waiting for hate tweets all weekend…and they never happened. The trailers have made it clear that this medieval stoner comedy is (a) unfunny, (b) loathsome even by stoner-improv standards, and (c) a blend of downmarket sloth and Danny McBride toenail shavings. I really can’t wait to get my hate on for this thing. So who saw it last weekend and suffered involuntary convulsions?
So once again, two years ago Natalie Portman decided on a strategy of making one good film (Black Swan) and then signing up for one contemptible piece-of-shit paycheck movie after another? Is she ever going to be in anything good ever again? Or is it all downhill from here on?
A month ago MCN’s Kim Voynar wrote about the Girls on Film clips in which famous scenes from great films starring guys are recreated with women. I paid no mind, and for whatever reason Girls on Film‘s Ashleigh Harrison waited a whole damn month to say to herself, “Let’s see, is there anyone else we haven’t gotten some attention from? Oh, yeah, this Jeff Wells guy…okay, let’s write him.” The No Country For Old Men caught my fancy most of all.
Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky has more or less dismissed claims by dance-double Sarah Lane that Natalie Portman performed only a small fraction of her ballet scenes in the film. Aronofsky’s official statement, released through Fox Searchlight, says Portman performed 80% of of the dancing seen in the film.”
“Here is the reality,” his statement reads. “I had my editor count shots. There are 139 dance shots in the film. 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. 28 are her dance double Sarah Lane. If you do the math that’s 80% Natalie Portman. What about duration? The shots that feature the double are wide shots and rarely play for longer than one second. There are two complicated longer dance sequences that we used face replacement.”
Lane claimed in a 3.28 Wall Street Journal “Speakeasy” story that Portman performed about 5% of the dancing in the film.
In other words, Lane has faux-pahhed herself out of Aronofsky, Portman, Benjamin Millipied‘s and Fox Searchlight’s good graces.
A distribution guy who knows everyone and has been around forever saw Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life a good while ago, and while discussing it with a friend several weeks ago said somewhat perfunctorily, “I’m a fan.” Now, you have to understand what it means when a distribution exec says “I’m a fan.” That’s like some dude who’s just gone out on a blind date saying the next morning that the girl has a nice personality. It means (a) the film has problems, (b) the distribution guy is being polite, and (c) he doesn’t want to say anything too strong for fear of being identified as a rapt admirer. (I almost said “raptor” admirer but that’s another thread.)
<div style="background:#fff;padding:7px;"><a href="https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/category/reviews/"><img src=
"https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/reviews.jpg"></a></div>
- Really Nice Ride
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall‘s Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year’s Telluride...
More » - Live-Blogging “Bad Boys: Ride or Die”
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when...
More » - One of the Better Apes Franchise Flicks
It took me a full month to see Wes Ball and Josh Friedman‘s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes...
More »
<div style="background:#fff;padding:7px;"><a href="https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/category/classic/"><img src="https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/heclassic-1-e1492633312403.jpg"></div>
- The Pull of Exceptional History
The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
More » - If I Was Costner, I’d Probably Throw In The Towel
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner‘s Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
More » - Delicious, Demonic Otto Gross
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg‘s tastiest and wickedest film — intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...
More »