Catch-a-Fire director Phillip Noyce has attracted the ardent interest (if not the actual signatures on a contract, piece of paper or napkin…yet) of Heath Ledger and Rachel Weisz for the eventual filming of an Autralian-based marital discord drama called Dirt Music. The film will be adaptation of Tim Winton‘s novel by Pip Karmel and respected playwright Justin Monjo. Variety‘s Michael Fleming is reporting that the financing hasn’t been quite put together either, but with Ledger and Weisz on-board that shouldn’t be much of a problem. Noyce is also reportedly working on a sailing-race movie called Sydney to Hobart with producer Lynda Obst.
I’m getting blasted by readers for revealing an alleged fatherhood angle in Superman Returns. All I did was link to a Roger Friedman Fox 411 column that was up for all to see, and then a guy wrote in and said the son was the sire of Lois Lane and James Marsden ‘s Richard White character (which may be the case…haven’t seen the film), so I ran a commment from a guy who claimed to have read the Superman Returns script and who said the Friedman item was accurate. I wouldn’t have revealed the possible paternity issue on my own, but when a well-read columnist has written about someting it’s out there and that’s that.
It’s not “Page Six” editor Richard Johnson‘s DUI charge as much the fact that he was driving at all in Manhattan that surprises me. There is no point in driving your car around Manhattan…none. It’s one of the greatest places in the world to keep your weight down from walking your ass off all the time, or at least for highly-absorbing people-watching in the subway. Cars are bad for the soul because they insulate the senses and amplify the ego. If you don’t walk you’re not living a Manhattan-type life…it’s that simple.
“As a generation of top critics move into their 50s and 60s, newspapers are chasing the same young demographic as advertisers and studios. Just as film distribution and marketing are adapting to the rise of digital delivery, the internet is altering the face of film criticism. [As] daily newspapers are losing circulation, [so are they losing] Hollywood advertising and their influence over moviegoers. As publishers struggle to hang on to their readers via online content, blogs and podcasts, some are replacing experienced critics with younger, less expensive models.” — Anne Thompson in yesterday’s (6.2.06) “Risky Business” column, which obviously captures a portion of what’s happening, although a moviegoing world without the usual array of older, seasoned and richly expressive print brahmins would be extremely distressing to me personally. The older dug-in writers can be 91 or 79 or 66 years old…age being immaterial unless the writer for emotional or biological reasons decides to start thinking and behaving like a somewhat older, less-open-to-the-here-and-now observer. Obviously the general ad-bucks swing away from Old Media towards New Media is real, etc., but the older writers can get into the groove if they want to…just start writing more, forget for the most part about “deadlines” (except when it comes to serving the print versions) and just keep it coming on a daily-hourly-nonstop basis….whatever feels right, whenever it surfaces.
Anne Thompson‘s article is one of a string of pieces along these lines. A couple of days ago I spoke to New York magazine’s Stu VanAirsdale about pretty much the same subject, which I gather will be online on Sunday or Monday. VanAirsdale had an idea that somehow Manhattan-based critics, who are presumably more in thrall to the aesthetic legend and criteria of NYC-based critics like Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Stanley Kaufman, James Agee and Otis Ferguson than, say, critics from New Mexico or Iowa might be, are somehow being affected more profoundly by the incursion of New Media writers and the aesthetic downgrading, editorial malleability and youthifying of cineaste culture that is apparently happening here and there.
“The man is a liar and a murderer, and I say that with all due respect.” — a line from Woody Allen‘s Scoop (Focus Features, 7.28.06), in which Hugh Jackman (to go by the trailer) appears to be the above-described, which seems like a red herring. The descriptive term that applies to the film seems to be “ frothy comedy“. Costarring with Jackman are Scarlett Johansson, Ian McShane, James Nesbitt, Jim Dunk and Allen himself. The trailer tells it, but the plot’s about a London-visting college journalist (Johansson) who happens upon “the scoop of a lifetime.”
“There is no one quite so boring as a man who is universally liked and admired. By this standard, Bob Berney is a very, very boring fellow. He needs just a little Harvey Weinstein flavoring to jazz up his image. Right now he’s too mellow, too considerate, and has made too many shrewd decisions about which movies to acquire or co-produce.” — An observation from a certain smart-ass in Ann Hornaday‘s Berney profile in the Washington Post, which turns on Berney’s — Picturehouse’s — efforts to launch and sell Robert Altman‘s A Prairie Home Companion (opening 6.9).
“Look…it’s a bird!…it’s a plane!…it’s a young, well-built, good-looking man who resembles Chris Reeve as he looked 28 years ago in a blue skin-tight suit with a red cape and boots and a very large erection, flying across the sky!”…yes!. (For the knee-jerkers out there, the exclamatory sentence I’ve just written — wrote last night, I mean — is not an example of straight intolerance of gay echoes or subtexts in mainstream films but (in my head, at least) a goof on that syndrome. Straight reactions are obviously reflected in John Horn‘s L.A. Times piece about perceived homoerotic subcurrents, reflections and cushion-shots in Bryan Singer’s fantasy film.
Roger Friedman‘s item is correct, according to the script: the scene where this is revealed is the last one in the movie (or at least it was in the script I read) and I thought was quite well done. In the context of the movie this subplot works okay, but if they intend to make a successful franchise out of this I’m not sure how they will navigate around the idea of a super-powered brat flying around with Daddy in sequels . It’s really the sort of thing they should’ve done to give closure to the franchise, but this will likely be the first of many new Superman films. Can you imagine if they saddled Connery’s Bond with a kid at movie # 5? The Bond films would’ve never had any legs, not that I’d really miss them. The problems with Superman Returns, however, lie less with who the child’s father is and more with the movie as a whole . It is still one big, awkward Richard Donner backslap (as I told you in a previous email) and is pretty
much Superman: The Movie with a ‘who’s the Dad’ subplot.” — C.K.
The question is, what is Brad Pitt made of? — Friday, 6.2.06, 1:15 pm.
(a) Paris plex onBoulevard des Capucines des Italiens, right around the corner from the old Paris Opera — Friday, 6.2.06, 1:10 pm; (b) UIP screening room on rye Meyerbeer, where I saw La Rupture at 1:30 pm today — it has the most comfortably upholstered screening-room seats I’ve ever sat in, bar none; (c) Un object d’pasta in storefront window — Friday, 6.2.06, 3:40 pm; (d) Two turns of a streetcorner and about 150 yards from UIP screening room;(e) Lunch-hour crowd at Indiana; (f) Forget the “Lucky” and the “Number” — just Slevin will do.
Focus Features is screening Allen Coulter‘s Hollywoodland (9.6) on both coasts, and since I’ve written so much about its development (the death-of-Superman drama used to be called Truth, Justice and the American Way) over the past two years, it’s heartening to report that the reactions so far have been pretty good. “I thought it was a very solid piece of work, a noirish murder mystery with lots of Chinatown and L.A. Confidential influences,” says a Manhattan- based journalist. “Adrien Brody (who is excellent) plays a down-on-his-heels P.I. who is hired by the recently deceased George Reeves‘ mom (Lois Smith) to investigate whether he was murdered or committed suicide. Brody’s story is intercut with Reeves’ (Ben Affleck) back-story, particularly the latter’s frustrating attempts to be recognized as a serious actor, along with his affair with a wife (Diane Lane ) of a big MGM executive (Bob Hoskins). There’s also very solid character work from Robin Tunney as Reeves’ slutty fiancee, and Jeffrey DeMunn as his loyal agent. The film runs 126 minutes, with a pretty smart screenplay, and it could probably be cut a bit.” An L.A. correspondent agrees “it could be cut”, but says “it’s quite good and high entertaining…it definitely has that L.A. Confidential tone and delves into a lot of speculation about whether Reeves was killed by MGM, or maybe died accidentally, or commited suicide. Ben Affleck totally comes off the way George Reeves was, a nice, well-liked fellow who wasn’t Laurence Olivier, but the film belongs to Adrien Brody. There’s a subplot with Brody’s character trying to get closer to his son who is devastated by Superman’s death that pays off really well.” The New York guy adds that “Brody proves agains that he can definitely carry a whole picture.” He says that “the only thing I couldn’t figure out is Affleck’s performance? Is he just a bland actor without talent, or he is simply playing one? I’ve never had a problem with him in the past, but he seemed to be a black hole at the center of the film. Then again, maybe that was calculated.” The L.A. guy says, “I think that Affleck’s performance feelign that way is calculated…he’s playing a nice-guy actor who’s frustrated…there’s a great sequence in which Reeves is being watched by a preview audience as he acts in From Here to Eternity, and everyone goes ‘Oooohhh, there’s Superman! there’s Superman!’ and the director (or whoever it is) says to an assistant, “Cut him out.’ It’s a sad moment…you feel for him.”
Fox 411’s Roger Friedman is running an item about a possible paternal plot twist in Bryan Singer’s Superrman Returns (Warner Bros., 6.28), which is Brandon Roush‘s Caped Crusader is (or eventually becomes) a dad over the course of the film. “Previews already show that Lois Lane, played by Kate Bosworth , has what looks to be a four-year-old son and no husband,” writes Friedman. “The only other candidate for fatherhood would be Perry White’s son, Richard (James Marsden). But that not only makes little sense, [but] has a low-level function for a dramatic reveal. You can only imagine Lois screaming to Superman when the boy is in peril, ‘But Clark, he’s your son!'”
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