I remain a loyal Obama supporter, but this Sopranos finale spoof is the best thing Hilary Clinton has done for herself and her campaign since she announced her candidacy.
And it was done so quickly…my God! It costars Bill Clinton (“No onion rings?…my money’s on Smashmouth”) and the Sopranos‘ “Johnny Sack”, it alludes to Chelsea Clinton parallel parking her car outside, and it has a lot of the same shots and some of the same rhythm.
The spot was shot to announce that Hilary’s official campaign song is Celine Dion‘s “You and I.” I am constitutionally opposed to any and all things Celine Dion so that’s a problem as far as this column is concerned.
A friend has seen Ben Affleck‘s Gone Baby Gone (Miramax, 10.17.07), a Boston-based crime drama about the search for a missing four-year-old girl by a pair of private detectives, played by Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan. And he’s telling me it’s a break-out performance for Casey, which makes the early fall an especially flush time when you add the younger Affleck’s reportedly exceptional turn in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which Warner Bros. is bringing out in September.
Gone Baby Gone is based on Dennis Lahane‘s novel (one of four he’s written about the two fictional detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro). Ben Affleck both directed and co-adapted the screenplay (with Aaron Stockard). How can it not be at the Toronto Film Festival in September? In fact, how can Jesse James not show up there? Easy — it’s a Warner Bros. release, and there’s a view among WB marketers and publicists that a Toronto Film Festival association isn’t necessarily a plus (or else they would have offered The Departed last year).
The saga of George Hickenlooper‘s Factory Girl will be reshuffled once again with a third version set for release on July 17th. The cliche would be to call the film’s arduous shape-shifting “a long strange trip,” but it really has been that.
I was lucky enough to see the first version — ’60s Andy Warhol-ish, instinctual and somewhat raw, downtownish — last summer, and I raved about it soon after, and particularly about Sienna Miller‘s tragically fluttery performance as Edie Sedgwick.
Then I saw the second version — Harvey-ized, newly shot footage, Santa Barbara psychiatric flashbacks, beefed up Guy Pearce‘ dialogue — last December. I wrote that the second version “is a much better film — far more precise and filled in and rounded out — but I liked Factory Girl a bit more when it was funkier, rawer and less ‘complete’. Strange but strangely true.
I realize, of course, that the choppier, more instinctual, not-quite-as-layered version that I liked or believed in a bit more wouldn’t play as well with general audiences. I’m just saying that the old Factory Girl felt less self-conscious — it seemed hipper and more fuck-all Warholian.”
The third Factory Girl is apparently closer to the first version. Hickenlooper reports that Factory Girl producer Harvey Weinstein “was so happy with it he is only releasing my version on DVD…he isn’t going to release the theatrical cut at all.”
Hickenlooper further reports that the New York Times got wind of this and wanted to get to the bottom of all the mythology, and so critic Charles Taylor is writing a piece about the whole back-and-forth mishegoss. The piece will run be in the 7.15 Sunday edition, or two days before the release of the Factory Girl DVD.
Of course, you’d never know any of this from the DVD packaging, which is only selling it as sexier (i.e., a presumed reference to Sienna Miller‘s nude scenes). But that’s DVD marketing for you.
2019 Update: An HD version is now streaming on Amazon.
“Ratatouille is not only the best animated film of this year and the best animated film to land in American theaters since Spirited Away, it is the best work of Brad Bird‘s already legendary career, and the best American film of 2007 to date. If that is not enough, there are only a couple of films due this summer that have any hope of matching this film for quality.”
If the previous words were written by anyone but David Poland, I would be even more jazzed about Ratatouille (Disney, 6.29). But unfortunately they were in fact written by the man who couldn’t stop praising Dreamgirls, who told everyone that Quills was miraculous, who trashed Brokeback Mountain and United 93 and Zodiac, who banged the tin drum for Munich and who once wrote about shedding a tear (he may have mentioned more than one) over Finding Forrester.
Ratatouille may indeed be wonderful, but I’ll be the one to decide this yea or any after I see it this Saturday morning — five days from now.
Movie City News is saying that Google “seems to be policing the full, uncut, single-file versions of Sicko posted to their video sharing system, removing not only the one that was up all weekend, but another couple of new ones that cropped up this morning.” Okay, but what possible difference does that make when you type in “Sicko download” on Google’s search engine (as I just did ten minutes ago) and nine — count’ em, nine — sites come up offering free Sicko downloads?
Obviously pirates are pirates are pirates, but I’m also starting to consider a couple of scenarios: One, there’s a cabal of right-wing Moore haters who are behind the stealing and distributing of his film. Or two, that said haters, even if there was no political motive behind the original theft of the film, are at least relishing what’s happening and clapping their hands and fanning the flames any way they can.
A line from a recent news story about the YouTube offering of Sicko wasn’t used for obvious reasons, but the reporter passed it along. “While the motivation of the leaker(s) remains unclear,” it read, “one full copy of Sicko uploaded to a pirate website includes ‘suckourdicks’ in the file name.” Does that suggest anything to anyone? “Suck our dicks” as in “fuck you, Moore!!…and we hope this hurts as a kind of payback for stretching the truth and flim-flamming in order to push your cause in Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11“…or words to that effect.
I’m just thinking out loud and nursing a gut suspicion, but we all know how the right hates Moore. Would anyone be surprised if what I’m saying turns out to be even half-true?
Three links — a visual shot-by-shot analysis, an in-depth analysis on Gawker and another one from Bob Harris — that make a very strong (damn near unchallengable) case that Tony Soprano sleeps with the fishes. The guy with the Members Only jacket (curly haired, cold-eyed …looked a little bit like a young Phil Leotardo) came out of the bathroom and put a bullet into Tony’s right temple.
Tony Soprano’s killer takes a second look before heading for the john
Torture porn and the general gross-out horror flicks are running out of steam, but does that mean people are cool to any kind of scary movie, even an upscale, quality-level gothic horror flick like 1408? It’s tracking at 56 general awareness, 30 definite interest and 9 first choice — not bad but not a volcano either. The definitely-not-interested percentage is 12, which obviously indicates a turn-off element.
Paramount Vantage’s A Mighty Heart is only at 44, 22 and 6. There seems to be a feeling out there that people aren’t interested in anything Middle East-y or 9.11-ish. (Damn milquetoasts, ostriches, too-sooners.) This is Michael Winterbottom‘s best film ever in that it doesn’t seem to have been directed by him but by Michael Mann.
The reviews have been good-respectable-decent, but not that many critics have been saying “drop everything and see it.” Plus it’s being said that Angelina Jolie is “not that big a star, and never has been,” a guy says. Whatever that means. The knee-jerkers are going all “meh”? Jolie is a major name and (take this to the bank) she gives a first-rate performance here.
For a movie that cost more than $200 million (is it higher?), Evan Almighty‘s tracking isn’t looking all that great…89, 40 and 15. It appears fated to take in $25 million by Sunday night — that’s not big enough for a big-studio (i.e., Universal), super-sized gamble movie.
Live Free Die Hard (20th Century Fox, opening Wednesday, 6.27), the slam-bang Bruce Willis action tentpoler, is at 92, 36 and 5 — decent opening (maybe a better-than-decent one) but not through the roof….yet.
Dull-as-dishwater Evening (opening 6.29) is at 22, 2 and 1…forget it.
Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille (6.29) is going to be huge. Word-of-mouth is soaring, and it wisely snuck last weekend across the country. It’s now at 78, 36 and 7…definitely on track to be the #1 picture that weekend.
Sicko (6,29) is at 38, 22 and 3. And yet 22 % are saying “definitely not interested.” Neg-heads, cynics, rightwingers, ostriches. “A lot of the country doesn’t want to see Michael Moore,” a friend told me. Except Sicko is a major eye-opener, it delivers basic real-world truths and (trust me) it makes you choke up at the end.
License to Wed (opening 7.3), the supposedly atrocious Robin Williams comedy, is at 69, 22 and 2.
Michael Bay‘s Transformers (7.3) is at 87, 41 and 12…good but not yet sensational. It has time to build so we’ll see what’s doing next week. Obviously has the highest definite-interest and first-choice numbers.
Five films opening this weekend (6.22 to 6.24) are, quality-wise, exceptional. It’s almost irritating that they’re bunched into a single weekend because one or more is sure to suffer from the competition, especially given the wrist-slitting likelihood that Tom Shadyac‘s allegedly lame-o Evan Almighty (Universal, 6.22) is going to get the crowds and make the most money.
I’ve seen three of the five goodies opening this weekend — Mikael Hafstrom‘s 1408, Michael Winterbottom‘s A Mighty Heart and Zoe Cassevetes‘ Broken English. (Click on titles for links to HE reactions.)
I can’t say anything definitive (let alone personal) about Jon Dahl‘s You Kill Me or Black Sheep (seeing them both within the next couple of days) but their respective Rotten Tomatoes ratings — 100% and 85% — are obviously encouraging.
Why couldn’t one or two of these five have opened last weekend, which was fairly dead by the standards of anyone with taste or a brain? What persons of consequence gave a shit about seeing Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer?
The Sicko pirating is spreading further…good God. Last week stolen Sicko‘s were being offered on priatebay.org and BitTorrent.com. (The pirate monikers were reported by Newsweek in this week’s issue.) And now the Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Goldstein informs that viewers “could find it easily on YouTube this weekend.”
The 124 minute health-care doc (Weinstein/Lionsgate, 6.29) was “posted by at least two users in 14 consecutive video chunks,” with one version receving “500 to 600 views per segment, with one of the first segments garnering nearly 1,700 views” and “another version uploaded Saturday garnering 200-300 views per segment, with the first 10 minutes getting more than 1,200 views.”
When Goldstein asked for an official comment from late Sunday, a Weinstein Co. spokesperson “was unaware that the entire film was on YouTube,” he reports. “A Lionsgate executive and a YouTube spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.”
Check out Moore’s 6.17.07 visit to Late Night with David Letterman.
“Official estimates as to how many children Angelina Jolie now possesses, and from how many continents, change on a weekly basis. When not giving birth herself, she likes to order in. How this has affected Brad Pitt is unclear, but his expression is sometimes that of a man who stepped out to hail a cab and got run over by a fleet of trucks.” — from Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker review of A Mighty Heart.
“Experts say that the more permissive attitude of high-end residential rehab programs is primarily a reflection of the demands of a new generation of affluent addicts, more pampered and less inclined to endure the tough-minded approach of the past. There is also a recognition that four decades or so of the A.A.-based approach have produced only the slimmest evidence of success.” — from Sharon Waxman‘s N.Y. Times piece about cushy rehab facilities and their dicey efectiveness.
If you’re addicted to something and you’re 90% committed to getting rid of it (no one is 100% committed to this — there’s always that 10% doubt-and-weakness factor), my experience is that it takes about four or five tries. Sometimes two or three, sometimes a lot more. Everyone fails, stumbles, relapses. Dealing with addictive tendencies is a never-ending struggle…one day at a time.
Variety‘s Anne Thompson led a discussion yesterday at the Seattle Film Festival about the migration of film criticism to the web, but she hadn’t included a report on her blog as of 2:20 pm Pacific. Amazon.com essayist Tim Appelo also took part. I asked Appelo to send me a recording of the discussion, but he wrote me today to inform that “the recorder died so there’s no record of the event.”
Appelo had asked me to tap out a thought or two about the topic at hand, which I sent to him yesterday morning. He says he read it “to the panel audience in stentorian tones and it was a hit.” It’s no big deal, but here’s what I sent:
“Any film critic who’s not writing directly for an online audience, or at least is putting his/her stuff online so the under-35s can read and react, is writing his or her own obituary. Print is dying, collapsing, downsizing. The old models and old configurations don’t work any more, and even the most old-school media reactionaries are admitting this.
“That said, I am sentimentally distraught at the prospect of newspapers like the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle or the Boston Pheonix not being as available for a good, mid-morning read at some cool-ass cafe in Manhattan, San Francisco or Boston. An all-cyber, all-the-time world is not comforting to me. But we are in the middle of a revolution, and, as we all know, revolutions can be brutal and unkind.”
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