Interview has done Zac Efron no favors. He’s too generic, too pretty, too mild, and too accomodating to be any kind of tomorrow guy. If anything he’s the past in the sense that he’s Guy Madison, Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, the Bay City Rollers, etc. His best performance so far was in Me and Orson Welles (which I saw in Toronto). His cautious manner in that film is oddly appealing in that he seems to know he’s not much of an actor and is wisely staying within a safe perimeter.
Borys Kit‘s 3.26 story about Summit Entertainment buying film rights to William Kalush and Larry Sloman‘s “The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero” invites mockery, as Summit intends to do the same thing with Harry Houdini that Joel Silver and Guy Ritchie are doing with Sherlock Holmes in their upcoming film, which is to turn him into a generic bullshit superhero with washboard abs.
The operative portion of Kit’s story says that “the studio is not looking to make a biopic but rather an action thriller featuring a character who is part Indiana Jones and part Sherlock Holmes. Summit hopes to cash in on worldwide recognition of Houdini’s name while potentially launching a franchise.”
Summit is into the idea because Kalush and Sloman’s book claims that Houdini “acted as a spy for Britain and was asked to be an adviser to Czar Nicholas II’s court in prerevolutionary Russia.”
Indications are that the spy angle is, at best, a nugget. Amazon reviewer John Cox acknowledges that in 1902/3 Houdini sent “reports” from Germany and Russia back to Superintendent William Melville of Scotland Yard (who was then head of what could be considered British Intelligence). Does this mean Houdini was a spy, or just a letter writer who felt compelled to report what he was seeing to his friend in London?
Kalush and Sloman “do make some interesting connections back to America and the shenanigans with Houdini’s passport application,” says Cox, “but it’s all very speculative.”
I studied Harry Houdini extensively during the preparation and writing of a 30-page report, written for producer Ray Stark in 1989, about the viability of several Houdini scripts that Stark had optioned or bought. The bottom line with Houdini was that he was always a romantic eager-beaver who saw himself as a dramatic figure, and his letters to Melville, I believed (and still believe), were more about Houdini’s love of being involved in the espionage hurly burly of the day…nothing more.
Ramin Bahrani‘s Goodbye Solo, which no one invited me to see at a press screening but which I was going to pay to see at the Angelika this weekend (largely because of Tony Scott’s review), has reportedly grossed $40,540 from three screens in New York and Chicago. The reason I didn’t go Friday night or yesterday is because I’m only feeling intrigue and/or interest, which is not the same thing as serious hunger.
Yesterday afternoon Variety‘s Tatiana Siegel reported that David O. Russell is attached to direct The Silver Linings Playbook, his own adaptation of Matthew Quick’s novel, for the Weinstein Co.
Russell’s last teaming with the Weinstein brothers was on Flirting With Disaster, which was released in ’96. Wow….doesn’t seem like 13 years ago.
Seigel rotely mentions Russell’s Nailed, the Jessica Biel-Jake Gyllenhaal dramedy which had a troubled stop-and-start shoot due to Capitol Films’ shaky financial footing. But she doesn’t even hint when the film may be seen. Isn’t that the chief pressing issue as we speak? I’m hoping to hear it’ll play in Cannes. Wouldn’t that make sense, given the stakes?
Publisher’s Weekly provides the following synopsis for Quick’s novel:
“Pat Peoples, the endearing narrator of this touching and funny debut, is down on his luck. The former high school history teacher has just been released from a mental institution and placed in the care of his mother. Not one to be discouraged, Pat believes he has only been on the inside for a few months — rather than four years — and plans on reconciling with his estranged wife.
“Refusing to accept that their apart time is actually a permanent separation, Pat spends his days and nights feverishly trying to become the man she had always desired. Our hapless hero makes a friend in Tiffany, the mentally unstable, widowed sister-in-law of his best friend, Ronnie. Each day as Pat heads out for his 10-mile run, Tiffany silently trails him, refusing to be shaken off by the object of her affection.
“The odd pair try to navigate a timid friendship, but as Pat is unable to discern friend from foe and reality from deranged optimism, every day proves to be a cringe-worthy adventure. Pat is as sweet as a puppy, and his offbeat story has all the markings of a crowd-pleaser.”
Death threats from Mexican gangs have reportedly persuaded the makers of Queen of the South, an adaptation of a popular pulp novel about murder and revenge among Latino mafiosos, to not only abandon shooting in Mexico but shut down altogether.
Queen of the South costars Josh Hartnett, Eva Mendes, Ben Kingsley.
The initial graph in Guy Adams‘ 3.29 story Independent story reports that the death threats led director Jonathan Jakubowicz and his producers to abandon plans to shoot in the Mexican coastal region of Sinaloa.
But a followup graph says “the plug has now been pulled on the project. Adams then posts a statement from Jakubowicz, to wit: “I’ve worked really hard to make this beautiful movie, but the safety of my family and my team comes first. Making this movie [would have] put us all at risk, not only in Mexico but in the U.S.”
Queen of the South costars/would have costarred Eva Mendes, Josh Hartnett and Ben Kingsley.
“Jakubowicz and his family apparently received threats while at home in Los Angeles,” the story says. “The shaken filmmaker this week warned colleagues to think twice before attempting to take on similar projects. “I beg those involved to be responsible and mindful of the dangerous territory the subject matter inevitably gets them into,” he said.
Adams writes that “the news will heighten fears that Hollywood production, which has become a growing contributor to the Mexican economy, may disappear from the country, amid the surge in violence which has killed nearly 7,000 people in the past year.
“Many other Hollywood producers, who may be tempted to shoot south of the border because of lower production costs and tax incentives, are also now starting to think twice. Security has been a growing problem since 2005, when Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas‘s Bordertown was forced to move production to New Mexico after its crew was followed and had their hotel rooms ransacked.
Queen of the South might (I say “might”) have been a good thing for Mendes — the part of Teresa Mendoza would basically be that of a female Tony Montana.
Publisher’s Weekly describes Arturo Perez-Reverte‘s Queen of the South novel as follows: “The gritty world of drug trafficking in Mexico, southern Spain and Morocco, offering a frightening, fascinating look at the international business of transporting cocaine and hashish as well as a portrait of a smart, fast, daring and lucky woman, Teresa Mendoza.
“As the novel opens, Teresa’s phone rings. She doesn’t have to answer it: the phone is a special one given to her by her boyfriend, drug runner and expert Cessna pilot G√ºero D√°vila. He has warned her that if a call ever came, it meant he was dead, and that she had to run for her own life. On the lam, Teresa leaves Mexico for Morocco, where she keeps a low profile transporting drug shipments with her new lover.
“But after a terrible accident and a brief stint in prison, Teresa’s on her own again. She manages to find her way, but Teresa is no mere survivor: gaining knowledge in every endeavor she becomes involved in and using her own head for numbers and brilliant intuition, she eventually winds up heading one of the biggest drug traffic rings in the Mediterranean.
“Spanning 12 years and introducing a host of intriguing, scary characters, from Teresa’s drug-addicted prison comrade to her former assassin turned bodyguard, the novel tells the gripping tale of ‘a woman thriving in a world of dangerous men.'”
Maureen Dowd is in double-lite mode this morning, reacting to Lula’s statement that the worldwide economic crisis was caused by “irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes.” Which he meant metaphorically, of course, which Dowd chooses to ignore for humor’s sake. Life does occasionally favor those with blue eyes, but the things that can trip you up despite this supposed advantage are myriad. I should know, having (a) blue eyes and (b) made more mistakes than I’d care to mention.
Pear cake purchased yesterday afternoon at Dean & Deluca. All natural tasting, no sugary flavors, good as it gets, enjoyed by all.
There are so many newspaper buyouts, layoffs, firings and salary rollbacks these days that every time I see a flurry of fresh reports along these lines, I write anyone I know who’s working for one of the beseiged publications and I say “how goes it?” I wrote this to two friends today. One of them wrote back with the following: “Am I okay as in ‘do I still have job security’? Yeah. Am I okay as in ‘how do I cope with an 11.5% paycut’? Remains to be seen.”
In an essay that introduces Newsweek‘s Paul Krugman-profile cover story, titled “Obama Is Wrong,” editor Jon Meacham notes that “every once a while, a critic emerges who is more than a chatterer — a critic with credibility whose views seem more than a little plausible and who manages to rankle those in power in more than passing ways.
“As the debate over the rescue of the financial system–the crucial step toward stabilizing the economy and returning the country to prosperity–unfolds, [Krugman] has emerged as the kind of critic who, as Evan Thomas writes, appears disturbingly close to the mark when he expresses his ‘despair’ over the administration’s bailout plan. …
“There is little doubt that Krugman — Nobel laureate and Princeton professor — has be come the voice of the loyal opposition. What is striking about this development is that Obama’s most thoughtful critic is taking on the president from the left at a time when, as Jonathan Alter notes, so many others are reflexively arguing that the administration is trying too much too soon.
“A devoted liberal, Krugman hungers for what he calls ‘a new New Deal,’ and he prides himself on his status as an outsider. (He is as much of an outsider as a Nobel laureate from Princeton with a column in the Times can be.) Is Krugman right? Is the Obama administration too beholden to Wall Street and to the status quo, trying to save a system that is beyond salvation? Does Obama have — despite the brayings of the right — too much faith in the markets at a time when prudence suggests that they cannot rescue themselves?
“We do not know yet, and will not for a while to come. But as Evan — hardly a rabble-rousing lefty — writes, a lot of people have a ‘creeping feeling’ that the Cassandra from Princeton may just be right. After all, the original Cassandra was.”
The Film Forum’s 12-day Jules Dassin retrospective began yesterday. I’ve never seen Night and the City (Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, 1950), and so I’ll be catching the 5:40 pm show. I’ve never seen Dassin’s Up Tight! either, but the rep on this one — a militant black revolutionary riff on The Informer — is pretty bad. Such that it’ll probably never make DVD. I’m guessing that another late ’60s black-militant melodrama, Robert Alan Aurthur‘s The Lost Man with Sidney Poitier and Joanna Shimkus, will never see DVD either. Like they never existed.
Posters for Dassin’s Up Tight!, Authur’s The Lost Man.
Eight days of play and Tony Gilroy‘s Duplicity, by any measure an above-average, extremely satisfying film on the terms that it lays out and works with, did $2.3 million yesterday, and will probably end up with $6 million and change by Sunday night. That’s a greater-than-50% drop from its opening weekend tally of $13,965,110, which wasn’t that great to begin with. Which basically means over and out.
Gilroy’s Michael Clayton cost about $26 million to make, and took in $92,991,835 worldwide not counting DVD and whatnot. Duplicity was much pricier — a guy in a position to know told me $80 million, give or take — and will probably finish with less than half of Clayton‘s take, ancillaries aside.
I’m sorry. Life is unfair. Gilroy did as good a job as anyone could have with a sophisticated corporate-suspense brain teaser such as this. And it certainly got the reviews. But Julia Roberts is over and that’s the bottom line. Both my kids, 19 and 20, have told me they don’t like her at all. Even my ex-wife says she doesn’t harbor any affinity. J.R. still has plenty of juice as a feisty lead or character actress as long as she drops her price sufficiently. She had her run. She’s worth $400 million or thereabouts. She’ll obviously be fine.
I’ve been fuming all my life at the martian-head rule that dominates each and every full-body statue in every corner of the world. A naturally proportioned full-body statue will create an impression, viewed from below, of the figure’s head being too small. The age-old solution has been a rule that all statues must have disproportionately large heads. Except every sculptor in the known world has over-submitted to this rule, and — this is the odd part — to the exact same degree. I’m talking 100% uniformity.
The bizarre result is that every statue in the world, from Beijing to Bangor to Timbuktu, seems to have a genetic commonality in the same way that people afflicted with Down’s Syndrome seem to have the same kind of slanted eyes and doughy bodies. Every statued figure in the world (including John Wayne on his horse at the corner of Wilshire and La Cienega) looks like a space alien with a strangely swollen cranium.
This has been driving me insane for years. I know this rule will hold throughout eternity because the standing-statue mafia is too dug in, and that no one will ever listen, and I’ll be alone with this for the rest of my life. But I’m right. It almost seems like a deliberate provocation on the part of the powers that be. We’re going to put martian-head statues in every city around the world, they almost seem to be saying, and we want to see how far we can push it. Or rather, we want to see if anyone will have the spirit to say anything about this, or if people will just accept it like they accept everything else.
I know that every time I come upon a standing statue (most often in Europe), I mutter a tiny little “fuck you” under my breath. It gets me every time.
<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 »