Another “Superman”?

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Honestly, truly — if you were Alan Horn and Jeff Robinov at Warner Bros., would you greenlight a second Superman film? Would you want Bryan Singer to “go all Wrath of Khan-y” on it or would you hire someone else of his general calbire?
If it was my call I’d say yes to Singer but under the following conditions:
(1) He has to bring in a two-hour film — no ifs, ands or buts;
(b) Kate Bosworth is dimissed as Lois Lane and Rachel McAdams replaces her in a no-big-deal way, like it was when Val Kilmer was suddenly the new Batman;
(c) All major plot turns and occurences in the script would have to be submitted to a three-person Logic Review Board made up of Superman movie geeks who would ixnay stuff like Superman falling back to earth from gravity when he’s well beyond the earth’s gravitational pull;
(d) No special effects sequences that make you want to go for a bathroom or popcorn break the second time you see the film; and
(e) Singer doesn’t get his sign off on marketing.

Ratner’s “Boys”

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Being a big fan of Ira Levin‘s “The Boys From Brazil”, which works extremely well on the page, I was more than a little disappointed with Franklin Schaffner‘s film version, which (I don’t believe this) opened 28 years ago. And now New Line is financing a remake of the Shaffner film to be directed, God help us all, by Brett Ratner, who just keeps digging himself in deeper and deeper with each new film. Has Ratner nudged aside McG, Michael Bay, Roger Kumble and Stephen Sommers for the title of the most despised commercial director on the planet? I don’t know. I’m asking.
New Line reportedly has the idea of Boys being Ratner’s immediate followup to Rush Hour 3, with (I’m guessing) a possible ’08 release.
It’s not just that Ratner’s The Boys from Brazil will probably eat shit on a stick; it’s that a reconstituted Adolf Hitler (brought back through cloning) doesn’t mean all that much to the I-Pod-ers. Baby boomers, whose parents fought World War II, were the last generation to have Hitler’s evil impressed upon them first-hand. And I wonder how much the Hitler brief impresses in the shadows of 9/11, Middle East suicide bombings, Islamic fundamentalism , ethnic cleansing killings, poison-gassings and all the other horrors that have manifested over the past 25 or 30 years. He’s not the superstar he used to be.
Michael Fleming‘s Variety story says Richard Potter and Matthew Stravitz‘s script “pitched a take that sticks close to Levin’s novel but sets the action in the present day” — in other words, they seem to be sticking with Adolf. I really don’t get it. Ratner told Fleming that Schaffner’s version “was a flawed film with a brilliant concept…you no longer have to spend time explaining cloning as you did then.” Cloning wasn’t a problem with the Schaffner version at all, trust me.
(Personal disclosure: I was fairly friendly with Jeremy Black, the kid who played all the Little Hitlers in the Schaffner film, back in the mid ’70s. He comes from Wilton, Connecticut, as I do, as is the son of B’way producer David Black and kid brother of poet Sophie Black.)

Lt. Dan in Iraq

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Reader Neil Harvey passed along a story that hard-core Chicago actor Gary Sinise is reportedly going to Iraq to perform for the soldiers with his band, the Lt. Dan Band. “I think it’s a good thing that he’s taking time to do something for the troops,” Harvey writes, “but given that in Forrest Gump, Lt. Dan was a fictional soldier who followed a family tradition of being cannon fodder in wars and lost his legs in Vietnam, then returned home to alcoholism and horrible living conditions, it just seems…well, It feels kind of like having the deck band from Titanic perform on a cruise ship with a special appearance by Billy Zane, or to have Bruce Willis‘ “John McLane and the Nakatomi Tower Trio” show up to christen a new skyscraper.”

WTC word-of-mouthing

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The thrust of this N.Y. Times David Halbfinger story about World Trade Center ‘s first few days of commercial release is…uhm…that it’s doing well for a 9/11 film? I guess. It’s done much better so far than United 93 did, primarily because word has circulated that it’s a warmer, more conservative-minded, hooray-for-the-regular-guys film. And that it did better in the New York area that in Los Angeles. And that Snakes on a Plane (opening this Friday) poses no challenge. And the word-of-mouth is primed to take flight.
“Everything that we hoped about the movie has started to happen,” Paramount marketing chief Rob Moore tells Halbfinger, “and now it√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s about ‘Can you still in this day and age have a movie that can be propelled by word of mouth? You take the movie Oliver made, the initial turnout, the response of the audience and critics, and all of that feels, to us, that we should be able to play and not have a movie that falls 65 percent from Week 1 to 2 and then does all of its business in two weekends. This to us was always a movie that should have exceptional hold. We think it should play for a very long time.”

Locarno head-scratcher

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How strange….how very strange. The reputation of Andrea Staka‘s Fraulein, winner of the Locarno Film Festival‘s Golden Leopard award, has been tainted somewhat by an admission by festival juror Barbara Albert that she co-wrote the film with Staka. How could the festival have allowed even the appearance of a possible conflict-of-interest go unchallenged?
When the news broke last Wednesday, Albert said she would recuse herself from jury discussions relating to the film. And then three days later — Saturday, 8.12 — she resigned from the jury entirely in opes of wanting to avoid the appearance of bias. Obviously, to avoid any trouble whatsover Albert should never have been on the Locarno jury in the first place. One half-presumes she would have never taken any measures if she hadn’t been “outed.” Amazing.
On top of this the festival’s artistic director Frederic Maire, 44, collapsed last Friday night while introducing Little Miss Sunshine in front of a big crowd at Locarno’s Piazza Grande. It’s not fair to throw these two incidents together, but tey do leave you with a vague impression that team Locarno is either eccentric or on wobbly footing, or both.

L.A. despair

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You can always count on the flatter, slightly less-affluent sections of Los Angeles if you’re looking to absorb a profound sense of emptiness while taking an evening walk after dinner. They just give you that feeling in waves, in torrents. It’s Flotation Land, and it seeps into your soul. L.A. isn’t as despairing a place as Honolulu or Houston, agreed, but it’s up there.

Carter’s the New Miranda

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Variety‘s Adam Dawtrey on Curb Your Enthusiasm helmer Robert Weide planning to direct a Vanity Fair version of Devil Wears Prada. The feature, Weide’s first, will be based on Toby Young‘s “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People“, about his none-too-politically-successful stab at working for VF as a contributing editor in Manhattan several years ago. Shaun of the Dead‘s Simon Pegg will play Young; the part of VF editor Graydon Carter — the character will be called Clayton Harding, an editor of a fictional monthly called Sharps who will presumably share certain Type A characteristics with Meryl Streep‘s fashion magazine editor — isn’t yet cast. I missed a party for Young thrown by the L.A. Press Club three or four weeks ago, and I haven’t read his book either. The script adaptation is by Peter Straughan. The producers are Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen of Number 9 Films.

A Summer It Was

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A Summer It Was

August is toast in two and a half weeks so I guess it’s time for a summer ’06 wrapup piece. I don’t feel like doing a typical why-they-failed-or-succeeded analysis, so I’m just going to run a listing of the stories that felt like standouts in terms of my weekly Elsewhere agonistes. There were 25 punchers in 14 weeks.
I will, however, reiterate what I felt was the most welcome and most dramatic story of the season: the out-of-the-blue “just say no” decisions of some big-studio chiefs about some hugely expensive big-star vehicles & fee deals (Used Guys, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not), which may be harbingers of a trend.

This felt welcome because big budgets always diminish the entertainment factor, on top of which this seemed like the first breath of upper-level fiscal sanity in this business in a long time. To me it felt analogous to the chain-reaction topplings of socialist governments in 1989. Suddenly studio honchos seemed to be saying, “Sorry, dudes, but you’re going to have share more of the risk and make do with two vacation homes instead of three or four.”
This attitude is also part of the industry cutbacks and contractions going on right now, at least tangentially, and of course this has everybody terrified or at least biting their nails. And I say this: Fear is not a pleasant thing but it’s a good thing to wade into every so often. It cleans out the blood, sharpens the mind and usually results in needed change and discipline and re-thinks.
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Hollywood’s summer begins in late April these days, but let’s kick back and be liberal and call it April 8th so I can link once more to that Flags of Our Fathers piece I ran just over four months ago.
1. What Is Flags of Our Fathers, and How Will It Play? (“Regarding Fathers“, 4.8)
2. HE Inaugurates Reader-Comments Feature, which was up and rolling as of 5.3. One of the liveliest and most enjoyable things to happen to this site in a long time.
3. The End of Super-Tom as signalled by the un-terrific domestic grosses for Mission: Impossible: III The piece was called “The Upside of Taps“, and it ran Sunday, 5.7. The next day came links to Nikki Finke and Mark Ebner‘s stories about scientologists buying up M:I:3 tickets. Still later came news that the South Park Cruise-in-the-closet episode had been Emmy-nominated, which never would have happened if Cruise wasn’t perceived as vulnerable and not-the-man-he-was five years earlier.

4. Runnng With Babel, first in a 5.14 interview with Alejandro Gonzalez Inna- ritu called “Bullet Time” and then in a 5.23 Cannes Film Festival review of the film.
5. The DaVinci Code Blows, as conveyed in “Hissing Balloon“, a Cannes Film Festival review than ran on Tuesday, 5.17. Not that anyone cared. It was soon after kicking worldwide box-office ass, and it didn’t quit until early August. The U.S domestic tally alone was $216,385,837 by late July.
6. The Bitch-Slapping of Southland Tales at Cannes Film Festival, as sadly reported in this 5.21 review/article called “California Dreamin“. A regrettable thing because I know director-writer Richard Kelly slightly and consider him a good hombre.
7. The Booing & Despising of Marie Antoinette at Cannes, as contained in a review that than ran Wednesday, 5.24, called “Blood of a Lady“.

8. Surprise — The Break-Up Isn’t Half Bad (Saturday, 6.3). I’m not sure that running a positive review helped mitigate my running tracking numbers that were accurate as far as they went but which forecast the wrong financial future for this film. This episode highlighted, properly, the less than 100% reliability of tracking, certainly without understanding timing isses and demographic factors in their right proportion.
9. The Up, Down & Really Down Ride of Superman Returns, starting with my initial 6.19 review, written from my Las Vegas hotel room while visiting Cinevegas. Followed by a Superman Returns may-actually-be-a-little-long piece. Which was followed by a 6.30 piece about Superman Returns fighting for its life and possibly being in trouble. The whole cycle was over in the space of less than three weeks
10. Nacho Libre Ain’t Half Bad Either (Mexican Goof Ride” on 6.13).
11. The Devil Wears Prada is a Smart, Above-Average Chick Flick with Two Especially Good Performances (“Fashion Abrasion” on 6.25).
12. Pirates 2 Eats It (“The Big Empty” on 6.29). Which mattered not, of course, as acknowledged in this 7.8 item.
13. Little Miss Sunshine is the Best Comedy of the Summer (“Sunshine Is It“, Monday, 7.3)

14. The De-Hippifying & Dumbing-Down of Snakes on a Plane Hype (the dumbed-down U.S. one-sheet, 7.5 — the dumbed-down Euro one-sheet, 7.6 — The Fun’s Over, 7.23 — Snakes Checklist.
15. Dupree and the GenX Arrested-Development Syndrome (“Party On“, 7.6 — “The Legend of Owen Wilson, a True Original“, 7.9 — “Down on Dupree“, 7.12.
16. M. Night’s Confession and the Subsequent Drowning of Lady in the Water (“Feel Night’s Pain“, 7.9 — “Soggy All Over“, 7.20).
17. Love and Respect for Miami Vice (“Nice Vice“, 7.11) — although the public pretty much said ‘fuck this’ — “Vice Aftermath“, 8.6)
18. Talladega Nights Is Okay, Even If It’s Not Funny (“As I Lay Dying“, 8.3)
19. A Surprisingly Strong Sandler Film Surfaces… (“Men Apart“, 7.24) …And Is Soon After Bumped Into ’07 (“Why Reign Is On Hold“).
20. The Official De-Oscarfying of Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (“Forget the Toronto Film Festival“, late July)
21. The Gibson Mess (“Goony Bird“, 7.28 — “Terrible News“, 7.29). I wrote so much stuff about this that I’m sick of it now and don’t feel like linking to each and every item.

22. The Solid Crafting of Oliver Stone (“Comfort Blanket“, 7.31).
23. Robert De Niro and Eric Roth’s De-Wackifying of James Jesus Angleton (“Sussing Shepherd“, 8.9).
24. The Proceed-With-Caution History Boys Campaign (“Art of the Dodge“, 8.11).

Madonna is gone

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On the occasion of Madonna‘s having announced that she’s given up acting, let me say once more that she was pretty close to impressive in Alan Parker‘s Evita (’96).
I respect that film enormously — it’s my favorite Parker flick after Mississippi Burning and The Commitments — and I think it works in part because of Madonna’s singing, which is fairly soulful and stirring. (Perhaps not up to Patti Lupone‘s level but she holds her own). She was as good in Evita as her talent allowed her to be. All she had to do was punch out the tunes and weep and glare and hit her marks, and she did that pretty well, I thought.
And we all agree she was also pretty good in Susan Siedelman‘s Desperately Seeking Susan (’85). And I liked that blowjob she gave to a water bottle in Truth or Dare.

Summer of ’07

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Variety‘s Gabriel Snyder reports that three super tentpolers will be released within a four-week span next May — Sony’s Spider-Man 3(5.4.07) , Dreamamount’s Shrek the Third (5.18.07) and Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End (5.25).
Obviously, if any of these films are going to take a hit (i.e., be hurt) it’ll be Shrek the Third, but then it’s a family film and isn’ really going mano e mano against the other two. Somewhat but not really.
After this comes a ten-week stretch in which a big-studio tentpole will launch every weekend from June to August: Warners’ Ocean’s Thirteen (6.8), Fox’s Fantastic Four 2 (6.15), U’s sequel Evan Almighty (6.22), Pixar /Disney’s Ratatouille (6.29), Dreamamount’s Transformers (7.4), WB’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (7.13), a Universal Adam Sandler comedy We Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry(7.20), Fox’s long-awaited The Simpsons Movie (7.27), Universal’s The Bourne Ultimatum (8.3) and New Line’s Rush Hour 3 (8.10).
Of all these films, I am interested in seeing exactly two — The Bourne Ultimatum and Ocean’s Thirteen. I am vaguely interested in Spider-Man 3 in Evan Almighty. I spit on all the rest of them, especially thePirates 3 (the prospect of seeing Keith Richards in pirate garb grabs me not), Rush Hour 3, the Harry Potter, the Michael Bay, etc. More of the same old crap.