To many, Carr explains later in the same New York Times piece, A Prairie Home Companion” is “a kind of secular religion.” Robert Altman, the film’s director, offers the following assessment: “Garrison [Keillor]’s audience is like the Mel Gibson Jesus audience. This movie is going to play for two weeks in places like Chicken Switch, Arizona, because the program has such strong rural appeal. The cast and myself will have our own audience to draw on. I think given that we have Meryl Streep and Lindsay Lohan, a lot of different people will be curious to see what this movie is about.” Chicken Switch! I love where Altman’s head’s at.
You can tell from reading Zach Helm’s script of Stranger Than Fiction that the movie, being directed by Marc Forster, will probably be a good score for everyone involved, including star Will Ferrell, when Columbia releases it next year. And Ferrell will kick ass in The Producers: The Movie Musical (Universal, 12.23) in the Franz Leibkind role — i.e., the one played by Kenneth Mars in Mel Brooks’ 1968 original. But it must be said right now that Ferrell is in trouble. Partly due to over-exposure (appearances in five films in ’05 not counting the un-released Winter Passing and The Wendell Baker Story). Partly because his stuff is feeling really labored and unfunny. Partly because Kicking and Screaming was awful and died. Partly because he was especially grating in Bewitched. Partly because his appearance in a forthcoming comedy is so unwelcome and groan-inducing he poisons the comic atmosphere and (temporarily) stops the film in its tracks. Is Ferrell over? Could the two-year spurt that began with ’03’s Old School and Elf, peaked with Anchorman and then received a late-inning boost from his appealing supporting performance in Melinda and Melinda be winding to a close…or am I just over-reacting to Ferrell’s death-cameo in that comedy I just referred to? What’s everyone thinking? Please send in reactions for a piece I’m going to cook up for Wednesday’s column.
Here They Come…
That Vince Vaughn profile in the current Newsweek doesn’t lie. His performance as a motor-mouthed, totally scheming hound in Wedding Crashers — a very sharp, at times inspired comic romp — is so hilarious at times that it feels off the earth.
I was saying to myself during last night’s press screening, “This is astounding…the great dialogue just keeps blasting away and Vaughn isn’t missing a beat.”
Immaculate deception: Owen Wilson and Vince Vaugh in David Dobkin’s Wedding Crashers
It’s not just Vaughn, of course, but Vaughn and Owen Wilson — also playing a schemer but at the same time the half-soulful counterpoint to Vaughn’s totally sociopathic manipulator — and the banter between them. These guys are a better comic team than Wilson and Ben Stiller. The back-and-forth is fantastic…it’s Martin and Lewis-level.
Vaughn’s comic timing and manic energy make this far and away his best performance since Swingers, and yet he’s so much better here than he was in that 1996 film. It’s Vaughn finding his groove the way Cary Grant kicked into gear when he made The Awful Truth and Bringing Up Baby.
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Vaughn never falters except at the end when the movie makes him go all sappy and sincere. But mostly (and let’s just admit here and now that Crashers doesn’t quite make it all the way around the track) he’s perfect. We’re talking major current here.
Wedding Crashers (New Line, 7.8) stumbles at the close of the second act and doesn’t get its groove back until the very end (it flops around like a goldfish for about 20 minutes), but most of it works. Just because a section of the final act doesn’t play like it should doesn’t mean the first 80% isn’t glorious.
Nobody sings anything in The Wedding Crashers, but the gags and especially the His Girl Friday-on-steroids banter between Vaughn and Wilson is so hilarious and whip-smart that it feels like great music. We’re talking kick-ass dialogue of an exceptionally high order…flip, smarty-pants stuff that doesn’t quit and keeps building and getting funnier.
Plus a reasonably decent stab at romantic sincerity here and there and a very winning, career-making performance by Rachel McAdams.
It’s Vaughn and Wilson (giving the warmest, most fully developed and winning performance of his career…as much of a career-bump thing as his breakout performance in Shanghai Noon was) hitting comic highs that haven’t been felt in a mainstream studio comedy in ages.
It’s the whole concoction — the chemistry between Vaughn and costar Owen Wilson, the wit and attitude in Steve Faber and Bob Fisher’s script (jazzed by Vaughn and Wilson’s on-set improvs), and echoes of not just Meet the Parents but Mike Nichols’ The Graduate.
The Wedding Crashers isn’t as successful as it could be with the sincere emotional stuff, but it does a half-decent job of working with the Graduate scheme of the Three D’s (desire, deception, discovery).
The Graduate is about Benjamin Braddock’s desire for the sultry Mrs. Robinson, the deception he has to throw around to pursue his weeks-long affair with her, and the discovery of true love when he meets and falls for Elaine, her classy and soulful daughter. The last act is about Benjamin’s trying to stop Elaine from marrying a sexist arrogant asshole named Carl.
The Wedding Crashers brings a slightly different order to the formula — discovery preceded by desire preceded by deception.
It’s about a likable deceiver (Wilson’s John Beckwith) — a guy who spends all his time crashing weddings with his pal Jeremy (Vaughn) so he can score with emotionally receptive bridesmaids by lying his ass off about everything…whatever works so he can get in their pants.
Emotions thicken when he falls for a very classy and soulful girl (McAdam’s Claire Cleary), a daughter of a powerful man (like Elaine’s attorney dad was). The discovery comes when he realizes he’s in love and absolutely has to prevent her from marrying an arrogant asshole named Sack (Bradley Cooper, who bears a resemblance to Brian Avery, the actor who played “Carl” 38 or 39 years ago).
I don’t want to make too much of the Graduate analogies, but they do exist and The Wedding Crashers is at least trying to fuse sincere emotionality with rollicking humor. Call me an easy lay, but the fact that it’s not too bad during the heartfelt portion (the last 20 minutes or so) strikes me as acceptable.
The bottom line is that most of this film sails above the clouds. I realize the R rating is going to restrict business among kids in the hinterlands, and it may be too hip for the room in the red-state areas and especially among those who thought Meet the Fockers was the schizzle.
Rachel McAdams, giving the most winning and emotionally grounded performance in a romantic comedy in a long time.
The Wedding Crashers is so much sharper and scalpel-ish than Fockers, they’re not even in the same ballpark. I think it’s funnier and a lot hipper than Meet the Parents even.
There’s only one seriously “off” element, and this is elaborated upon in a transcript of a back and forth I had last night with a guy (see below).
This is a great, great guy comedy…it accepts and celebrates the fact that 95% of the time the only way to get rolling with a woman is to give a sincerely tender, bullshit-stuffed performance. And the first two-thirds (or three-quarters or whatever) take you on a ride with a couple of serious pros who know all the ropes and the angles and still get thrown for a loop and are made to suffer for their sins.
And it’s 80% pure pleasure.
Debate
A guy named “Erasmus” wrote last night to say he’d recently seen Wedding Crashers at a screening held by Creative magazine, and that he thinks it may be getting mixed word-of-mouth because of the ending.
“Not true,” I answered him. “This movie really sails for the first two thirds. I was howling. I was in fucking heaven. It loses its way when the guys get busted, yes, but it gets it back at the very end. And those first three-quarters are incandescent.”
And here’s how it went from there….
Erasmus: To be fair the first two acts which would roughly be the first one hour and ten minutes work reasonably well.
Wells: Not “reasonably well”….inspired. When this movie is in the groove it is in the damn groove and three or four times funnier than Meet the Parents when it is. I’m not exaggerating my feelings. It is awesomely funny at times.
Erasmus: In a Hollywood genre-go-lucky way.
Wells: I really think you’re missing it. I think it’s brilliant, wonderful, ecstasy-time during those first two acts.
Erasmus: But the third act falls apart and everyone knows it’s how the audience feels as they walk out of the movie that matters.
Wells: The third act is bit of a fumble, yes. The movie loses the heat when the guys are busted and sent packing. But the end of it works pretty well. It’s not inspired but it’s pretty good. It touches the bottom of the pool.
Erasmus: And then there’s that big-name supporting cameo that totally kills the movie.
Wells: [Name]’s appearance is not a good thing for this film…you’re right. He’s not funny. He’s actually a drag. He’s actually tedious. He’s a monkey wrench…a chemistry killer.
Erasmus: In fact, some people will say, why is this guy is every comedy all the time? They did not need him.
Wells: Correct.
Erasmus: Any other actor but this guy would have been fine.
Wells: Agreed.
Erasmus: And so in a summer filled with many movies with serious third-act problems — War of the Worlds, Bewitched, Mr. and Mrs. Smith — another has been added to the list.
Jane Seymour, Owen Wilson
Wells: You’re not wholly wrong, but the third-act problems are not fatal. They just wound it somewhat.
Erasmus: This movie will still be a hit, despite the stock characters.
Wells: Isla Fisher’s character — the little redhead Vaughn hooks up with — brings a certain freshness to the piece. Rachel McAdam’s character is on the stocky side, fine, but she’s such a good actress she makes her character feel more believable than she’s actually written. Walken is a bit more supple and less obsessive in his father-of-the-bride role than De Niro was.
Erasmus: And a Jane Seymour development that is
started and then dropped right this.
Wells: Why did they do that? Drop her, I mean.
Erasmus: The first two-thirds work. But they had a chance for Meet the Parents-like numbers of $160 million but will get, at the maximum, $80 million.
Wells: I don’t think so. This thing sails so well during the first two thirds, it will be as big as Parents….I think.
Clone Wars
To cover their bases, critics planning to review Michael Bay’s The Island (DreamWorks, 7.22) should probably take a gander at a 1979 low-budget sci-fi flick called Clonus, which came out on DVD last March.
I won’t be seeing The Island until this weekend (it’s sneaking Saturday night) and I haven’t seen Clonus (a.k.a., Parts: The Clonus Horror), but I know they’re both paranoid thrillers about people being cloned by some super-secret government agency.
It’s being widely alleged by a lot of geeks out there (as well as the “movie connections” references for both films on the IMDB) that The Island is a remake of Clonus.
Scarlett Johansson, Ewan McGregor in The Island
Here’s a link to one of the many websites making this claim.
The general view seems to be that the makers of the 26 year-old Clonus — director Robert S. Fiveson, screenwriters Bob Sullivan and Ron Smith — should have received credit or compensation or something.
If the remake allegations have merit (I say “if”), the Island producers and the DreamWorks attorneys probably compared the 1979 film to their about-to-be-filmed screenplay and calculated there was no way the Clonus team could come after them legally.
Clonus, which has apparently been shown on the Sci-Fi Channel and Mystery Science Theater 3000, is about a character named Richard, a resident of some kind of remote micro-managed outpost. Like all the inhabitants of this carefully controlled environment, Richard hopes to be chosen to be sent to a country where everything is ultra-cool and civilized, or something like that.
He eventually discovers that everything about his existence is bogus. He and all of his friends are actually clones whose basic purpose is to provide spare parts for their organic human counterparts. Knowing it’s only a matter of time before this happens, Richard and a fellow clone named Lena attempt an escape to an outside world, blah blah.
The IMDB’s synopsis for The Island reads as follows: “A man (McGregor) goes on the run after he discovers that he is actually a ‘harvested being’ and is being kept along with others in a utopian facility.”
For what it’s worth, if you do a Google search for ‘Clonus’ and ‘The Island’ you’ll get thousands of hits commenting on the similarities.
There’s a difference of opinion about whether Clonus is a moderately worthy little sci-fier or a grade-Z enterprise that sucks eggs. Reader opinions will be considered and possibly posted.
Considering
At the beginning of my so-called journalistic career some 26 years ago, I came up with an idea for a magazine called Nothing.
It was supposed to be a half-serious, half-satiric look at celebrities and media matters and movie culture, etc. It seemed to me back then that the tendency of magazines and newspapers to cover the especially puerile and shallow aspects of entertainment culture was getting more and more pronounced.
I figured it might work if a magazine came out that pretended to play this game along with everyone else but was actually satirizing it on some level. Maybe the idea was a little ahead of its time, but it doesn’t seem to be that now with David Spade planning to host a Comedy Central show that lampoons celebrity and movie coverage on shows like Extra and Access Hollywood.
The idea wouldn’t be to suggest that the people profiled or subjects covered in Nothing are empty in and of themselves, but that everything is seeming more accelerated and vacant, and less and less deserving of even our passing attention.
Nothing is all we have, all we’re left with in the end.
It could be kind of a two-tiered thing, actually — satirical as well as existential commentary. I don’t mean to draw a specific reference, but I guess I was half-thinking about Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness when I thought up the name.
The magazine wouldn’t so much as cast a glance in Sartre’s direction, of course. It would be aimed, I suppose, at the readers of…I don’t know, Radar or Giant…the usual under-40 males with a sense of humor who’ve had a brush with higher education.
I just know that the culture is about as far away from matters of real substance as it’s ever been, and seems to more and more into pointless diversion. And we need more magazines…well, not exactly deploring this but at least pointing it out in some appropriately dry fashion.
This test cover (thrown together by the intrepid Michael R. Felsher, author of the new HE column “Cinema Obscura”) is what it could look like…maybe. I’ve always imagined something a little dryer, a bit more like Harper’s or The Atlantic.
Another idea I came up with 25 years ago is a regular column called “Hollywood Weltschmerz: The Celebrity in Pain.”
Every damn article about every celebrity is always about how great their life is…how productive, creative, exciting, challenging, etc. I’m not imagining a column that would seek to portray celebrities as gloom-heads but something that would attempt to portray hard-driving filmmaking types in mock-bleak terms…kind of like what Art Linson goes for in his books about producing.
Webster’s Online defines “weltschmerz” as “sadness over the evils of the world…an expression of romantic pessimism.”
New Guys
Here are logo headers for some of the new columns that have been going up. Some of the columnists are just getting going and probably won’t hit their stride for a few weeks yet, but when you get a chance….
Plexes should extend that satisfaction-or-your-money-back offer for all films, all the time…except for big crowd-pleasers like Fantastic Four, Bewitched, etc. Nobody will lose any money (it’s been reported that only a relative handful have asked AMC and Cinemark theatre staffers for their money back after seeing Cinderella Man) and it might goose things up a bit.
Persistence of Crash
Sometime within the next week or two, Paul Haggis’s Crash is going to pass the $50 million mark in theatrical revenue. That’s an extraordinary haul for a film that’s not exactly a downer but is about as divorced from the conventional definition of a feel-good audience hit as you can imagine.
It’s a socially observant thing that ends with a hopeful or balanced view of who and what we are in terms of racial attitudes. It also says that widespread racism has made us all fairly miserable inside the prison of our own skins. And yet people are going for it.
Terrence Howard’s character, a Hollywood filmmaker, during a contemplative, settle-down moment in Crash.
Crash has performed so surprisingly well that year-end awards and Oscar nominations are starting to seem inevitable. The year-end hoopla will be spurred along by the release of the DVD sometime in the early fall, and a limited theatrical re-release aimed at Academy voters sometime in December or perhaps January.
The cultural-political element seems to have caught on also and made Crash into a shorthand term for crude racial pigeonholing, and, in another sense, a recognition that racism is as pernicious as ever.
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Like Oprah Winfrey spokesperson Michelle McIntyre describing Winfrey’s being denied entrance to that Hermes store a few days ago in Paris as “her Crash moment.”
Or Al Sharpton visiting Mexico president Vicente Fox in late May and slipping him a DVD of Crash to watch.
Or recently elected Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villagrosa referring to the film while making a point about racism during an interview last Monday (6.20) on Ted Koppel’s Nightline.
When Crash opened seven weeks ago — on Friday, 5.6 — the commercial expectations were upbeat but modestly so. Lions Gate had acquired it for about $3.3 million at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, and this seemed like an appropriate price. “We thought it would do a minimum of $25 to $30 million,” Lions Gate president Tom Ortenberg recalls.
It’s now in 492 theatres and has taken in over $47 million.
Crash costar Thandie Newton
A sharply written ensemble piece about racial divides in and around Los Angeles, Crash had been generally well reviewed with a 78% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and yet it was panned by some big guns — N.Y. Times lead critic Tony Scott, L.A. Times second-stringer Carina Chocano, Jamie Bernard of the N.Y. Daily News, the Boston Globe‘s Ty Burr.
The reactions were very favorable when I showed Crash at my UCLA Sneak Previews class in early April, which seemed significant in that the class is mainly composed of people in their 40s and 50s, who tend to shy away from push-comes-to-shove dramas.
Crash‘s co-screenwriter Bobby Moresco says he knew something was up when he went to see how the film was performing at a Burbank megaplex during the opening weekend. “It was a show in the middle of the afternoon, there was a long line waiting to get in, and the theatre was 80% filled,” he said.
Moresco noticed the same level of response when he went back the next day — i.e., Sunday afternoon.
“It was obvious to us that we had something,” Ortenberg told me yesterday. “The Friday to Sunday trajectory was very strong, there were great exit polls, and business was very good on the Monday and Tuesday after the first weekend.
“And then week after week, it was clear not only that audiences were discovering Crash, but the picture was becoming a water-cooler movie.”
Crash “is really the perfect Lions Gate film,” he said. “Indie crediblity along with commercial viability.
“We opened up at #4, and yet we stayed in the top five for four weeks. Kingdom of Heaven more than doubled our gross on opening weekend, but by the third weekend we outgrossed them. Clearly we had a film that was affecting people.”
Crash star Don Cheadle, director and cowriter Paul Haggis during filming
My opinion is that it’s working with audiences because it hits hard in showing racial incidents but at the same time leaves you with a sense of balance and even compassion.
Everyone in this sharply written ensemble drama is shown to be a racist or a victim of racism, but they’re also given a balancing trait or shown having a moment of clarity and self recognition. Matt Dillon’s beat cop is depicted as racist pig on one hand, but also a guy capable of heroism when he saves Thandie Newton from that car fire and also a guy who grieves over his ailing father…that kind of thing.
“In many respects today’s movie-marketing world is about cookie-cutter distribution and massive ad budgets and the usual usual,” Ortenberg comments. “And so it’s especially gratifying when you have a film that needs TLC to get through and is benefiting from word of mouth and really taking off on this level.
“If I could single out one person at Lion’s Gate who orchestrated this more than anyone else, it would be (exec vp publicity) Sarah Greenberg,” Ortenberg says.
“Sarah did a text book long-lead critic and opinion-maker screening program where she was able to identify the supporters and champions of the film, and get them to come out visibly for the film in a big way. Ebert and Roeper went with their rave fairly early, about two weeks before the release. David Denby at the New Yorker wrote a great review, and he also hosted a New Yorker screening program showing.
“Unlike some of the others who bid on this film in Toronto, we always saw Crash as a wide release movie.” It opened on 5.6 in about 1800 theatres.
Crash Larenz Tate, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges.
“I have gotten more calls and e-mails from colleagues…more calls congratulating Lions Gate for picking this movie up and doing well with it,” Ortenberg remarks. “And we always got similar reactions from screening programs around the country.
“Our two worst reviews in the country came from the New York Times and the LA Times . There were naysayers, there always are…but the film really did well at the end of the day.”
The movies that tend to connect are the ones that prompt a sense of basic recognition. I think people are privately acknowledging their feelings of racism when they see Crash. Remember what Randy Newman said a long time ago about us all being rednecks, etc.?
I think people are also responding to the film’s optimistic view of this common failing. It says that we’re flawed, yes, but we’re not that bad, and we’re capable now and then of being noble and kind.
Earnestly
I wrote this up in the WIRED section late last night but I’m feeling emphatic and I don’t care if I’m repeating myself: I was blown away by Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener (Focus Features, 8.26) at a screening last night, and I found this surprising since I was told a few months ago by a filmmaker in a position to know that it might not be all that much.
As murder mysteries go (and it does fall under this category…sort of), this Focus Features release may be too thoughtful and complex and emotionally subtle to play big with younger audiences, and we all know that Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz are not marquee names. But trust me when I say it’s very high-quality merchandise with a decent shot at year-end awards and Oscar noms.
This is easily the best theatrical adaptation of a John le Carre novel since The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1966).
Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz in Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener.
I expected something fairly good, as anyone would from the director of the magnificent City of God, but I didn’t expect The Constant Gardener to be quite this smart and impassioned and as pointedly political.
Why is it that American directors (Oliver Stone and Warren Beatty excepted) never seem to deliver films with hard political content? Meirelles seems to understand this story about poor Africans being exploited by rich drug companies because he’s made a film about poor Brazilians coping with similarly oppressive conditions.
It’s a combination love story and whodunit wrapped inside a realistic political drama that feels as raw and teeming as City of God and then some. Set mostly in Kenya, its about the murder of activist Tessa Quayle (Rachel Weisz ) and the efforts of her mild-mannered diplomat husband Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) to find out why she was killed and who did it.
The only disappointing aspect is the casting of Danny Huston in a supporting role as yet another morally compromised scumbag.
I’m not quite sure why Focus Features is opening this exceptional film in very late August, which is kind of a dumper period. It seems as if October or early November would be a better time to open it, but maybe they know something I don’t.
Here’s the trailer.
Delayed Action
I have to put things on hold for a few hours, but I promise to do what I can to tarnish or call into question the reputation of March of the Penguins (Warner Independent, opening today) when I return.
This French-made nature doc is a bore and a con and I’m not buying it, and neither should you unless you’re a sucker for the general cuteness of penguins. Women love this film but there are times in life when sentimentality must be resisted, and this is one of them.
David Straitharn as legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck.
One of the stories I’m especially cranked about is the apparent intention of Warner Bros. to put George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck, a modestly budgeted black-and-white feature about the 1954 battle between CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow (David Straitharn) and the anti-communist demagogue Sen. Joseph McCarthy, into theatres in October or November.
The idea is apparently for the film to play either the Venice or Toronto or New York film festivals, or perhaps all three. I know nothing at all about the quality of Straitharn’s performance, but one presumes he will be quite good in the role. When has Straitharn ever not been exceptional?
I have to cut out in order to attend an NYU Pre-College Orientation class that starts at 2 pm. Jett should be attending this but he’s taking his last two finals at Brookline High School today so I’ll be there with my notepad.
I’ll put up the remaining material tonight and tomorrow morning.
Armond Says…
When New York Press critic Armond White rips into someone, he really goes to town. If I were Nora Ephron I would grab a hard copy of this Bewitched review and frame it and put in on my wall, as a way of showing my friends (and myself) what a good sport I am.
Here’s a photo and here’s the online page link
I’m thinking of something Joseph P. Kennedy once said about his son Robert: “The kid hates like I do.” I don’t think of White as any kind of junior-level presence (quite the contrary), but he does tend to assign notions of almost Biblical-scale evil to certain mainstream filmmakers, and I’ve always found this endearing on a certain level.
Grabs
Wednesday’s Mare photo tweaked by Ken Bell of Graphic Planet.
I’ve thought and thought about what to call this photo, and I’ve finally decided upon “Cement Guy.”
Sign hanging on chain-link fence bordering far eastern barrier of Ground Zero.
Latest in a series of R.O.T. photos. I relate to R.O.T., or rather the spiritual condition alluded to by this acronym.
The Ground Zero crucifix made out of a remaining portion of a steel framework that was part of one of the towers.
Back by popular demand! Many people (okay, guys) have sent in compliments. A director friend told me yesterday he believes this photo deserves to be hung in the Museum of Modern Art. I completely agree.
The hostility levels are rising between celebs and photographers and the public. It may be coincidence, but I’m picking up vibes from that mob riot scene at the end of Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust. First, the confrontation levels between celebs and crazily aggressive paparazzi started to lunge way out of control, prompting Us editor Janice Min to pledge that the magazine wouldn’t run photos captured via ruthless methods. At the Bewitched premiere last week Nicole Kidman went up to a New York photographer and called him “very rude” after he booed her. Then Leonardo DiCaprio got cut with a broken beer bottle at a party last Friday…not by a media person but an unbalanced woman who apparently didn’t know him. (The facts aren’t in yet, but it looks like she wanted to hurt him because he was Leonardo DiCaprio.) Then Tom Cruise got squirt-gunned (doused from a fake water-loaded microphone) in London on Sunday by a guy working for a new comedy show for Channel 4 in which celebrities are the targets of practical jokes. Nathaniel West was saying there’s a very thin line between fans worshipping movie stars and hating them and even wanting to hurt them, and that these frenzied emotional states are located on flip sides of the same coin. I think on some kind of weird subliminal level this psychotic atmosphere is heating up and starting to spill over. Something is going on…I can feel it.
Well, at least there’s one thing that works in Bewitched (Columbia, 6.24), and that’s Steve Carrell‘s third-act cameo as Paul Lynde’s “Uncle Arthur.” If only director-cowriter Nora Ephron had decided to weave Carrell into the film as a major character, things might have turned out differently. Lynde played the Uncle Arthur character (as a bitterly witty gay warlock, natch) on the original Bewitched series off and on from ’65 through ’71, and Carrell does Lynde quite well. Known mainly as an off-and-on Daily Show correspondent as well as one of Will Ferrell’s better friends (he previously costarred with Ferrell in Anchorman and Melinda and Melinda), Carrell has an obvious knack for playing acutely hyper alien-visitation characters. He’s the star of Judd Apatow’s The 40 Year-old Virgin (Universal, 8.19) and is currently shooting Little Miss Sunshine. Apparently those reports about him starring as Maxwell Smart in a feature version of Get Smart have some basis in fact.
Good Stuff
It’s possible that Martin Scorsese’s The Departed won’t work, but it appears as if all the elements for a genuine Scorsese comeback are in place. An urban crime movie (Marty’s home turf), a terrific cast (Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga) and a really fine script.
This is probably Scorsese’s last chance to raise himself back up to the level of Goodfellas or better. If he screws this up he should just throw in the towel.
Slapdash pseudo poster art for The Departed that I would normally be too embarrassed to put up, but I can’t find anything else.
I’m saying this because I’ve finally read William Monahan’s script for this remake of Infernal Affairs, a 2002 Hong Kong crime flick about a pair of moles infiltrating the mob and the police department at the same time. Frankly? I saw it in Toronto and I found it too complex and hard to follow.
Monahan’s version is much more clearly plotted, not to mention tight and slangy and gritty in the good old east-coast street fashion. It’s also a well-constructed suspense piece.
The two moles, Billy and Colin, are respectively portrayed by DiCaprio and Damon. Billy is an angry undercover cop infiltrating the mob; Colin is a calm and collected mob guy serving as a police detective.
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Jack Nicholson is playing Costello, a ranking mob boss Billy is trying to take revenge upon for an old family wound, one that’s fairly close to what drove DiCaprio’s character in Gangs of New York.
Just as DiCaprio’s Amsterdam Vallon won the affection of Daniel Day Lewis’s Bill the Butcher by being extra-snarly and game for anything, Billy wins Costello’s trust by being exceptionally loyal, smart and ferocious.
Damon’s Colin works his way up the ranks of the police department and eventually lands a job as the head of Internal Affairs and is given the job of trying to find out who the mob mole is — i.e., himself.
Costello knows there’s a mole somewhere under him, and to uncover the truth he leans entirely on Colin, whom he’s known since the latter’s childhood. All kinds of stuff goes down, and yet DiCaprio and Damon never face off until the last 15 or 20 pages.
The Departed costar Vera Farmiga
The only thing vaguely dismaying is the fact that Farmiga has the lead female role, that of a therapist who’s has sessions with both Billy and Colin. Farmiga is a very good actress (last in The Manchurian Camdidate) but she does nothing for me chemically. She’s one of those obliquely attractive museum-pretty types that everyone loves except for regular guys who buy burritos at the 7-11.
A good part of the flavor of The Departed, apart from the bounty of Monahan’s rich and robust dialogue, will, I presume, come from the performances of supporting actors Peter Mullan, Anthony Anderson, Winstone and Baldwin. These guys are aces every time out so…
Warner Bros. will release The Departed sometime in ’06. It reads like a fall movie, but it’ll probably be finished in editing by mid-fall ’05 so maybe it’ll come out sooner.
And…
I’ve got three other scripts I’m going to try to read this weekend:
* Russell Gewirtz’s Inside Man, a bank robbery-hostage drama that Spike Lee will be shooting in Brooklyn this summer, with Denzel Washington, Jodi Foster and Clive Owen in the lead roles. Universal will release it in ’06.
* Terence Winter’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’, the drama based on 50 Cent’s struggle to leave behind a drug-dealing life and become a successful rapper. The great Jim Sheridan (In America) is directing. 50 Cent is playing himself, and the costars include Viola Davis, Bill Duke and Terrence Howard (who stars in his own film about an underworld type trying to become a musician, Hustle and Flow, this summer).
* Terrence Malick’s The New World, about explorer John Smith (Colin Ferrell) and the clash between Native Americans and the British in 17th century Virginia. The subtitle is “Story of the Indies.” New Line is releasing on 11.9.
Rock My Wordsoul
Every time I get on the subway I get out my new copy of “The Rock Snob’s Dictionary” (Broadway Books), a very snide and tidy little sum-up guide about the who, what, when and why of rock-music elitism.
Last night I pulled it out on the R train going downtown from 42nd Street and when I looked up we were pulling into Cortland Street, about five or six stops farther than I wanted to go. I wasn’t very happy about that, but at least this tells you how much fun this thing is to flip through.
I read this 148-page paperback whenever I can because it’s so exquisitely written. Every sentence is a Hope diamond, chiseled and honed and phrased to perfection with just the right seasoning of know-it-all attitude…aimed, naturally, at the snobs who initially created it.
I don’t get rock music as fully as I do movies, but I understand it well enough to recognize that the authors, David Kamp and Steven Daly, who both write for Vanity Fair, know it over under sideways down.
Their definition of a rock snob, found on the book’s front cover, is “the sort of pop connoisseur for whom the actual enjoyment of music is but a side dish to the accumulation of arcane knowledge about it.”
Just go to the site and read their writing samples (which Kamp is a bit more responsible for than Daly, being the editor between them) and you’ll see what I mean.
If you care about rock music at all, you have to get this thing. I’m serious. It’s so sublime I’ve read it through twice. And there’s a nifty English school-book quality to the hand-drawn illustrations by Ross McDonald.
Why am I writing about this, apart from the fact that it was a much-appreciated gift from departing Doubleday/Random House publicist Marc Winter, who’s moving into film producing? Because Kamp and Lawrence Levi have written The Film Snob’s Dictionary, which will come out in February ’06, and this is something I imagine readers of this column will want to have.
The preview page for this book on the Random House website describes it thusly: “By helping to close the knowledge gap between average moviegoers and incorrigible Snobs, the Film Snob Dictionary lets you in on hidden gems that film geeks have been hoarding (such as Douglas Sirk and Guy Maddin movies) while exposing the trash that Snobs inexplicably laud (e.g., most chop-socky films and Mexican wrestling pictures).”
Mexican wrestling pictures? Somebody help me out here.
I called Kamp yesterday morning to talk about the currently available Rock Snob’s Dictonary ($12.95). I tried to reach him through normal channels but it was taking too long so I just found his number and called and he picked right up.
“Whenever you talk to rock people or when you read the rock press, there’s this curve that pretty much goes unexplained,” Kamp said. “People refer to Brian Eno or Televison without any acknowledgement of what these terms mean.”
Their book, obviously, intends to close the gap between snobs and Average Joe’s.
“It’s a very simple idea,” he told another interviewer who was better at asking the right questions. “Just put some things in boldface and define them: these terms that make up this code you can’t quite crack when you’re reading rock magazines or discussing music with people in your dormitory.”
Kamp and I had a nice conversation but it was kind of boilerplate (my fault) without any really great quotes coming forth.
He did tell me, however, that other Random House snob books are being worked on. He’s preparing a wine snob book now with a guy named David Lynch, who works as the wine director at Babbo, the Italian restaurant on Waverly Place. There’s also a food snob and a football snob book coming up.
The Rock Snob’s Dictionary originated as a feature in Vanity Fair, as did some of the Film Snob material.
“I would say that [this] particular condition of rock snobbery is probably a lack of sexual intercourse,” Daly told an interviewer last month.
“Think of when a person becomes interested in rock music: the teen-into-college years,” Kamp has explained. “Politically, that’s when you’re going to change the world. It’s also when you have your most strongly held taste convictions. So you take everything very seriously, you’re very territorial. You really think these bands are the most important bands.
“At the same time, you don’t want them to be too well known, because then they wouldn’t be yours anymore — they’d be sellouts. So there’s this whole proprietary quality to rock snobbery that isn’t there even with film snobbery.
“To me, actually, film snobs are more insufferable. But rock snobs are the most, ‘this is my turf, keep off!'”
Grabs
Lexington and 61st, during Thursday’s (6.16) rainstorm around 3:30 pm.
Last Days star Michael Pitt following round-table journalist chit-chat — 6.16, Regency Hotel, Park and 61st, 5:25 pm.
Marquee of Bernard B. Jacobs theatre, 242 W. 45th Street — 5.15, 10:25 pm.
L train heading east to Williamsburg, Brooklyn — Thursday,6.17, 11:15 pm.
Rainwater and plastic detritus flowing into drain at corner of 2nd Ave. and 62nd Street — Thursday, 6.16, 6:10 pm…during Thursday afternoon’s rainstorm.
Exterior of Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th Street — Wednesday, 6.15, 10:12 pm.
Tom and Katie
“Isn’t this whole Tom/Katie thing just totally creepy? I don’t fault her – she’s been swept up into his celebrity and personality, although you’d think a woman of 26 would be a bit more cautious. But Tom’s creep-out factor is through the roof!
“I’m not a fan of his as an actor but he certainly has his niche in the movie world. Still, why suddenly all of these public declarations and displays of love from this man who sues anyone who dares to encroach on his privacy in even the smallest way? And the Scientology thing just makes it all more discomfiting.
“I believe that every move Tom Cruise makes, every minute of every day, is calculated and planned. The man does not have a spontaneous bone in his body, so all of the leaping and shouting and kissing is just…icky because it seems so orchestrated.
“I usually find these high profile celebrity relationships nothing more than light entertainment, because they normally play out in a predictable and harmless way. This one is just plain disturbing because Tom Cruise is so weird and Katie seemed so normal …until recently. Let’s hope the frog realizes the water is close to boiling and hops out before it’s too late!” — Lisa in Denver
“I like Tom Cruise. He’s made some good films and I applaud him for some of the roles he’s taken on. I have to confess I don’t know much about Katie Holmes, but she seems like a nice young lady. I wish them both all the best. But when you add the Scientology aspect to the mix, things start to get very strange.
“I’m all for religious freedom and tolerance, but this so-called religion strikes me as more than a little weird. My skepticism automatically kicks in because the founder of Scientology was an author of science fiction. Scientology may actually help some people handle this crazy life, but any religion that requires you to pay for the various states of enlightenment increases my skepticism.
“And then to add a Scientologist shadow (i.e., Jessica Rodriguez) to follow Ms. Holmes around, and things are certainly getting curiouser and curiouser.” — Edward Klein.
“As a pretty unapologetic Scientology basher, I can’t help but wonder how the 26 year old Jessica Rodriguez is OT-IV. Have you any idea how much money that takes? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of anyone getting past OT III before their 30th birthday, and it takes several $100K more, plus time, to get to OT IV. Not that it really matters, but it doesn’t really jibe.
“Why, in any event, is the ‘serious’ entertainment press afraid to touch this with anything resembling a magnifying glass?
“Cruise’s publicist sister is a pussy compared to Pat Kingsley. Tom Cruise is actively proselytizing for a government recognized cult! He fired Kingsley when she disagreed with his desire to speak out about $cientology, and now he’s spitting out their ridiculous lies (Carl Jung was an editor for the Nazi papers in World War II, methadone was originally called Adolophine and named after Adolf Hitler, etc.) and being quoted in bold in major wire stories.” — Joel Sadler
“Congratulations to Cruise for finally finding love…even if it is with a woman who seems less extraordinary, magnificent and especially less of a woman than Cruise has proclaimed her to be. Holmes’ way of responding to questions reminded me of a 13 year old, but the heart wants what it wants and I’m sure Holmes isn’t on the rebound at all after calling off a five-year relationship including some years of
engagement.
“I’m not buying George Hickenlooper’s explanation that Holmes rejected the role of Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl because of her obligations to the promotional tour for Batman Begins. The Bat movie is an already-hyped big movie with its own in-built fan base. Holmes’ role doesn’t serve as any kind of crux in the story line, and the bottom line is her role in the movie is not big enough to require her to be a key part of the promotional tour. Choosing to make a movie like the Sedgwick project or going on a promotional tour for Batman is certainly a no-brainer.
“I wonder if Cruise was under a rock during Bennifer or if he believes that he is likable enough for people not to care too much about his very public relationship.” — Akilis.
Cinderella Blues
“My gut feeling is that while Russell Crowe’s phone tag incident certainly didn’t help matters, I can’t imagine some guy in Gary, Indiana, refusing to see a movie because Crowe is a hot-head. Maybe some concerned soccer mom in Denver, perhaps, but I don’t think that would be the rule.
“If anything, Cinderella Man‘s embarrassing returns probably have something to do with the title, for one. You’ve got tough guy Russell Crowe in a boxing film and you call it Cinderella Man? Why not just call it Girly Man? I can see that guy in Gary, Indiana, saying to his buddies, `Hey, wanna go see Cinderella Man?’ and them saying back, `Cinderella what?’
“The second and biggest thing is that Cinderella Man has the unfortunate timing of following another critically acclaimed boxing movie, directed by a respected Hollywood veteran. Million Dollar Baby was a tough sell (as are most boxing films, it could be argued), but it won out commercially and critically because the quality was there.
“You and I know that a great film is a great film, no matter what the concept is, but to an average filmgoer out on a Saturday night, the quick and easy appraisal of Cinderella Man is: “Hey, didn’t we just see a boxing movie? Let’s go see Brangelina!”
“Sad, but true.” — David Scott
Wells to Scott: You’re describing or hypothesizing the behavior of a group of people committed to an instinctual, submental, “what, me read reviews?” approach to seeing movies. You’re talking about people who are flat-out refusing to use that arcane skill they were taught early in life called “reading” or deploy that trait known to many thousands of us called “curiosity” and take five minutes and go online and look into a new film.
I know…that’s out, can’t happen, forget it. But as long as it’s Gorilla Cage time out there, movies will rise or fall for gut-response reasons, and trailers and TV spots will continue to be the propelling factor in spurring people to see or not see a film, and the quality of mass-market movies will get more and more abysmal.
“I have a tough time believing that Russell Crowe’s recent headline-grabbing fracas had much at all to do with the box office slip of Cinderella Man. My guess is that those that were inclined to see it (and I’d imagine a fair share of blue hairs were in this bunch) jumped on it the first weekend, especially considering the drought of decent flicks at the local ‘plex. Nothing new here. The thing just didn’t have legs. Tweens and teens couldn’t care less, and the core audience already paid their $8.50.
“I think another big issue is the fact that the film, however well crafted, is simply predictable. We all know how it’s gonna end. It’s an age-old story we’ve all seen a hundred times. No surprises. Why bother?
“I’d venture to guess a vast majority of the paying audience doesn’t pay to see a movie for nuanced performances or beautiful picturesque cinematography or finely crafted period production design. The across-the-middle crowd just wants to be entertained and sometimes surprised. My guess is there is a huge cross section of audience that when push came to shove, wavered on seeing it because they already knew how it ends. I know I did.” — Jeffrey Wright
Wells to Wright: From my perspective, from any perspective that presumes a certain awareness on the part of the general public (which may be a mistake, I realize), there was simply no glaring negative attached to Cinderella Man other than Crowe’s phone-throwing incident. That was and remains the only downside to this film in actuality, dumb-ass presumptions and suspicions aside.
“Cinderella Man isn’t just entertaining, but quite touching. It isn’t depressing unless you’re a complete idiot. It uses a gloomy 45-minute setup as a springboard into a soulful, feel-good payoff that lasts for over an hour. It’s a somewhat predictable tale, yes, but most people over the age of twelve or thirteen realize that there are only so many stories out there and what really matters is the singer, not the song.
C’mon…to not see a movie because you know how it’s probably going to end is absurd. The percentage of movies that knock you flat with a surprise ending or twist of some kind is very small, and everyone knows that. What counts is how good the ride is along the way.
“It is not necessarily the culture of tabloid, as New York Times writer Caryn James has stated recently, that somewhat causes the movie experience to be tarnished due to the burring of the line between the art itself and the offscreen exploits of the actor playing the character.
“The actor as well as the film industry is arguably at fault for much of this. Many of them simply enjoy the attention for whatever narcissistic reasons they have. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Angelina Jolie on Actor’s Studio talking openly about things that are completely insane. It’s as if these people feed off the system.
“You even said yourself that maybe they think they can follow different rules than ourselves. Christian Slater and his late-night ass-grabbing, for one example.
“For what it’s worth, if someone self-destructs there is always another fine performer to replace the burnout. Sure, some very good films may be damaged by the offscreen antics, but other movies are always there. But in general, I’d say it really doesn’t matter that a film is damaged by such activity and causes it to be dismissed. No one has to watch a film and if they do not want to view it because of the actor’s political beliefs, their criminal record, or they don’t like people with red hair, so be it. Heck, I wouldn’t choose to view a chick flick even if it did get four stars…there really is no difference.” — Phillip C.Perron.
“I saw Cinderella Man last Friday night and it was obviously first rate, if a little schmaltzy. My father loved it in a way I’ve never seen him like a picture before. But he’s 73, not exactly anyone’s target audience.
“Anyway, I think the picture became a commercial disappointment for the following reasons:
1. Bad title. Yeah, I know that this was Braddock’s nickname, but so what? It’s obviously a turnoff for some.
2. Period Pieces are Tough Sells, and this period in particular — the Great Depression. And yes, the film is emotionally wrenching at times and some may think a bit depressing (that is, if they haven’t seen it). My sister is ill and hasn’t been to a movie in 18 months. Feeling well enough to go yesterday, she thought about CM, but thought it would be too depressing. She went to see Brad & Angie instead (and loved it, as did my other sister and her female friend).
3. Summer Release — Big Mistake. This would’ve been the perfect fall release, lining it up right timing-wise for year-end awards. Do you think it’ll get any now? Universal’s Nikki Rocco and Mark Schmuger must be reeling, not to mention Grazer and Howard.
4. Russell Crowe — This guy is a great actor, but his own worst self-destructive enemy. A colleague of mine, a first rate assistant director, did a picture with him years ago, before he was a star, and said he was a total prick. And my buddy gets along with everyone!
“Looks like a perfect storm of negativity. Too bad, because it really is a good picture. So is The Lords of Dogtown, which most thought would do some business. But it really tanked…hard. Don’t you love the movie biz?” — Dixon Steele, Hollywood, CA.
“I think they made a strategic mistake in opening it simultaneously with the first wave of big summer films. I believe you can open an essentially serious, quality-level picture in summer. But I think they missed the crucial lesson of Seabiscuit‘s success, which was that you open such a film mid-summer, after even the dimwits have begun tiring of the big-budget crap and are willing to search around for something with a slightly different flavor. I truly believe if Universal had waited a month, they’d have been in much better shape with this one.” — Todd.
“To suggest that Russell Crowe’s career is in trouble after the phone incident and the poor second-weekend box office returns of Cinderella Man is premature. Who would we replace him with, Brad Pitt?
“This is not condoning his actions in NYC, for which he has already apologized for and undoubtedly will have to suffer consequences. But in the end he will survive this and continue his unparalleled work. Universal should take the blame for releasing Cinderella Man at an inappropriate time. Why release the film here in June while releasing it in the fall in the rest of the world? Which marketing genius took the credit for that?” — Tommasina Papa-Rugino.
“I saw your column on the murphsplace site and noted the comment from one journalist about the possible loss of an Oscar nomination for Russell Crowe. As your column is widely read do you think you could do a favor for those of us who belong to the more fair-minded part of society, and remind the Academy’s members that they are…
“NOT PERMITTED to vote on moral grounds but only on the basis of what they have seen and heard in the cinema not what they read in the gossip columns or seen on the chat shows, and NOT QUALIFIED to sit in moral judgment of anyone (let he who is without sin cast the first stone, as a much better man than any of them once said.
“Whilst on this issue you might also try reminding your readers of the concept of the Presumption of Innocence, and how important that right is — particularly your fellow journalists who happily crucified Russell Crowe on the front pages of their newspapers without once bothering to ask whether or not he should even have been arrested.
“As to the arrest itself, let’s try for a few facts, just for a laugh…
“1. Russell Crowe was paying the better part of $4,000 per night for the use of a room which was supposed, among other things, to contain a working international telephone.
Soho’s Mercer Hotel on Prince Street.
“2. By the time of the disputed incident he had been staying there for a week and the telephone had not worked properly in all that time.
“3. The hotel had failed to address the problem in any way, despite by this point having taken nearly $28,000 from Russell.
“4. After finding the phone to be no use for making an international call yet again Russell tried calling down to Reception to sort out the problem for the 7th time.
“5. Apparently being unable to make himself clearly understood he disconnected the phone, which he was entitled to do as its licensed user having given valuable consideration (nearly $28,000) for the duration of his booking, and took it downstairs to prove that it was not working.
“6. The receptionist was apparently unhelpful and rude, to the point where Russell lost his temper, (what on earth did the man say to get such a reaction?!), and threw the telephone at the wall, from where it rebounded and hit the recalcitrant clerk. This DOES NOT constitute assault in the 4th or indeed any other degree as again there is no evidence of intent to cause injury – an absolute prerequisite when bringing a charge of assault. What it does constitute is disorderly conduct and possibly criminal damage.
“7. Why was the receptionist so rude to a man known to have a short fuse, and at a time of day (4.20am) which repeated academic research has shown to be the lowest point of the human psyche?
“8. What if any training policy and customer service policy does the hotel have and did the receptionist comply with them?
“9. Why did the hotel make no effort to provide a working telephone after receiving complaints every day for a week? What is the hotel’s equipment replacement policy and did the hotel’s staff comply with it? The Mercer’s contract with Russell included the use of a working telephone for which, and for other services including common courtesy from the hotel’s staff, he had paid nearly $28,000.
“10. Where has the figure of $1,000,000 in damages come from? No jury, American or otherwise, is going to award such a sum for a 1” long cut, which has caused no permanent damage of any kind and which will be invisible to the naked eye in six months’ time. If a jury did make such an award it would be struck down on appeal for being a perverse award, as the law requires.
“Moreover, Russell has an overwhelming case for a counterclaim of contributory negligence which could reduce any award by as much as 50%.” — Amelie Smith, London, England.
“Russell Crowe is the best actor alive today, and the unfortunate incident at the Mercer Hotel doesn’t change that. To be fair, why don’t you remind folks of Johnny Depp’s drug arrests before his Tim Burton movie opens this summer? Or Sean Penn’s…?
“At least Mr. Crowe was just trying to get in touch with his family, and had the character to own up to his mistake.” — L. Steinberg.
Bad Collars
“With regard to those bad-collar shirts at Banana Republic, you need to understand that 90% of post-college, under-35 men have to wear these things because instead of getting raises and job security, most of us work for companies that would rather let you wear khakis and golf shirts to work rather than having to pay you.
“Some of them must be aimed at an urban gay group, but the rest of us are just simply left with nothing else to wear to work. Chalk it up to trying to find pants and shirts that don’t make you look like you work at radio shack. ” — Evan Boucher.
Smiths
“I had no interest in seeing Mr. & Mrs. Smith when I first heard about it and would have happily passed on it except my wife wanted to see it and it was our anniversary, so I decided it wouldn’t kill me and besides, if I take her to see the films she really wants to see I can then get her to go to films I want to see — the give and take of marriage.
“While I didn’t loathe it quite so much as you did, it wasn’t a complete waste of our time and money. The stars were decent and it had moments. The first quarter of the film wasn’t bad, but it did get bad…very bad. After it was over we chatted about the pointlessness of it all and the stupidity of the gunfight in the store and why it had to be so over the top.
“There was a kernel of an idea in the film; it could have been something fun and maybe inventive. It seems that Doug Liman had no choice in making something good. He had lots of money thrown at them and the studio wanted something expensive big, loud and stupid. I have to wonder how much control a director has in today’s Hollywood. And why anyone would want to make something like Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
“Why couldn’t Liman have said he could save the studio some money and re-tool the script cutting out the crap and trying to make something reasonably clever and original? Obviously there was a fat paycheck involved, but don’t directors ever read these scripts and have some input on what the final product is? In this case the answer was a big no.” — Edward Klein
“I always enjoy your stuff, but please get a grip about Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
“I saw it last weekend largely because of the positive reviews from Kenneth Turan and Desson Thomson, two movie critics that I have tremendous respect for. I am a woman, but I do not read tabloids, so I’m not quite the demographic that you denigrate for flocking to the film this weekend. I wanted some adult summer fun that received pretty decent reviews, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith fit the bill.
“I also saw the heartwarming Mad Hot Ballroom this weekend so it’s not like I lack for taste.
“So keep up the good work with your website and chill on the Mr. & Mrs. Smith vitriol. Far worst things have happened to the movies.” — Quin.
Wells to Quin: Ahah…Freudian slip! “Far worse things” have happened to movies, eh? Then you admit Mr. and Mrs. Smith constitutes some kind of bad thing, right? That’s because you’re basically an honest woman and you know deep down, even though you “liked” watching it for the “summer fun” element, that movies of this type are not just bad but aesthetic pollutants…the spiritual movie-aura equivalents of pesticides in the water table.
I am telling you, Quin, that if there is any aesthetic justice in the after-life, Liman, Pitt, Jolie and the New Regency guys who produced this thing will eternally roast on a spit for their contributions to this film.
More Grabs
Last Days director-writer Gus Van Sant at start of one-on-one interview at Manhattan’s Regency Hotel — Thursday, 6.16, 4:15 pm.
Several men execute a daring hostage-taking scheme aboard a New York subway train in order to persuade the city of New York to pay them one million dollars. Wasn’t this a joke in one of the Austin Powers films?
Exterior of Barrymore Theatre, 242 W. 47th Street — Wednesday, 6.15, 10:20 pm.
Last Days guitar picks…I grabbed at least five or six.
Soon-to-be-destroyed Beekman Theatre prior to all-media screening of the not-very-good but relatively inoffensive Bewitched — Thursday, 6.16, 6:25 pm.
I read the hardbound version of Steve Martin’s original Shopgirl sometime in ’03 (I think) and found it concise and well observed and psychologically probing. The sadness of it — the bittersweet stuff — stayed with me. Martin wrote the screenplay, and if the movie (Touchstone, 10.21) is half as good it’ll be a fairly absorbing piece. What finally makes it, for me, is the casting of Jason Schwartzman (and not, thank God, Jimmy Fallon) as the younger guy who muscles in and makes a play for Claire Danes and basically ushers in an end to her relationship with Martin’s character, who is partly exploiting her youth and vulnerability but at the same time feels genuine tenderness and caring. The trailer isn’t up yet, but here’s the Touchstone site…just click through.
Best Batman
Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (Warner Bros., 6.15) is the smartest and most adult-minded superhero film Hollywood has ever made.
For the first time ever, a major studio has made a comic-book movie that plays it fairly straight and grown up without letting the usual downmarket distractions run the show.
Batman Begins is somewhere between exceptionally good and awesome during the first hour or so, which is what sold me and put me in a relatively placated and open-to-whatever place for the film’s slightly more conventional remainder, which — don’t get me wrong — is entirely decent and rousing and even spooky here and there.
I love the way Christian Bale’s Batman is always hunching over and scowling…this is one very pissed-off bat…and the general fact that Batman Begins is always a sharp, intelligent, well-written ride, and is exceptionally well acted by everyone.
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Especially by Bale (in the dual role of Batman/Bruce Wayne), Michael Caine (Alfred the butler), Liam Neeson (Zen criminal Henri Ducard) and Morgan Freeman (Batman’s congenial tech-support guy Lucius Fox). It’s just pleasurable as hell when a movie is as well-cast as this one and nobody drops the ball.
I was even excited by Katie Holmes, who nails her part as a childhood friend of Wayne’s and a Gotham City prosecutor so nicely and skillfully that I momentarily forget about the bogus offscreen show she’s been putting on lately with a certain couch-bouncing actor.
But then at the very end, after the bad guys have been wasted, Batman is told by his plainclothes detective ally, Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman), that there’s a new troublemaker on the horizon, a guy with a flair for the theatrical…
Christian Bale, star of Batman Begins.
And Gordon hands Batman a business card that says “Joker” on it, and my heart sank.
Nolan has saved the Batman franchise by taking it seriously and treating every aspect and line of dialogue and character like they really and truly matter without any Joel Schumacher attitude mucking things up, and for his Big Follow-up he’s going back to the old Batman vs. Joker routine?
Screw that, Chris. Create new villains, new perils…the hell with the damn comic book.
I thought this was going to be the Nolan Way when I realized the big threat to Gotham in Batman Begins is, believe it or not, mass psychedelic insanity…a gas that sends people into a state of instant hallucinatory psychological torment. This is way darker and stranger than the kind of material that Bob Kane, the original Batman comic-book guy, used in the ’40s and ’50s.
Well, enjoy this installment anyway. Batman Begins is the only comic-book superhero movie I’ve ever truly admired and enjoyed. And for a crabhead like myself, that’s saying something. I know a tiny bit about the original Batman comics, and that they never smirked or screwed around or cracked wise. This movie gets that, honors that.
Especially in the how-Bruce-got-to-be-Batman section, which is edited in a not-entirely-linear, time-flipping way that, for me, improves the delivery. Cosmetic improvements can really enhance a film if they’re well applied, and this is one such occasion.
This section is about overcoming rage and cynicism…about channeling energy and facing one’s fears. About Wayne getting past his parents’ violent death by blowing town and ending up in some snow-blanketed section of what appears to be northern India or Tibet.
Here in Kundun-by-way-of-Insomnia country (surrounded by the same chunky bluish-gray ice fields that put the spell on Al Pacino) Wayne learns to be a hard-core opponent of evil from a team of gangster monks called the League of Shadows, led by Henri Ducard (Li am Neeson) and Ra’s Al Ghul (The Last Samurai‘s Ken Watanabe).
I love Nolan and co-screenwriter David S. Goyer’s decision to bring Neeson and his Zen goons back in the third act in a nicely symmetrical way. I guess what I really mean is that I love their not using some prancing-around supervillain to go mano e mano against Batman/Wayne.
I’m amazed, frankly, that a genre film this good came out of Warner Bros., a studio that encouraged and supported the anti-Christ Schumacher in the making of Batman and Robin and Batman Forever…movies that everyone despised and which showed, really, that Warner Bros. was kind of an anti-Christ movie studio, which is a harsh way of saying they couldn’t stop being clueless.
And then came all that ridiculous floundering around with Darren Aronofsky’s Batman: Year One and those different Superman movies (including one proposed with McG as director) and also that moronic notion of making a Batman vs. Superman film. It’s obvious these guys never had an idea what works, and still don’t.
Nolan’s pitch to Alan Horn about how to save the Batman franchise (which I read about recently) was probably approved with some kind of hunch on the way to lunch.
“Let’s see…everything we’ve tried to do to revive Batman and Superman has been a total embarrassment or a wipeout or has run out of steam,” Horn probably said to himself. “We look like total fools, the fanboys think we’re retarded…how badly can Nolan’s approach turn out, given our embarrassing track record?
“I don’t know if it’s a good or bad approach…I don’t know anything…but I know nothing’s worked so far so I might as well roll ’em.”
Batman Begins director Chris Nolan, Christian Bale, and Ken Watanabe.
Don’t get the idea that Batman Begins is anything more than a very smart and well-made programmer. It’s not Tokyo Story or highbrow suggestive like Val Lewton’s Cat People or anything in that realm, but it is high-quality merchandise because it digs in and tells a mythical, hyper-real story about people who think and behave with logic and reason.
Aside from Tom Wilkinson’s Falcone, a grossly mannered gangster guy, and 28 Days Later star Cillian Murphy as a double-dealing (make that drug-dealing) psychopath called Scarecrow. Both are a bit mannered, but then criminals in a comic-book movie can’t act like notary publics.
There’s plenty of action in this film, but it all flows from Wayne’s pain. I liked Bale for the first time in this role, and I say this having never warmed up to him before this. Nolan’s decision to have him bend over and get all raspy-voiced and rodent-like when he puts on the suit was inspired. Bale’s character is no smoothie. The ground he’s standing on is never that solid, and he’s just waiting for the next trap door to fall through.
Batman Begins is definitely breakthrough material. The fanboys are going to love it. It’s going to be fairly big and stay that way for, I don’t know, five or six weeks….maybe longer.
I’m glad I finally found a comic-book film I could stand behind. It’s a relief. I’m just sorry I was too backed up by Wednesday’s column to go see the IMAX version, which will surely be a trip in itself.
Bad Collars
I’m shocked — shocked — that there are guys out there who will walk into a Banana Republic tomorrow or next week and look at these shirts and go, “Cool…gotta pick these up.” Or a wife or girlfriend pointing them out to a significant other and saying, “Look…perfect for you.”
I shot these utterly revolting dress shirts two days ago at a Banana Republic in the West Village, on the corner of Bleecker and Sixth Avenue. I would go to jail before putting one of these on. It’s the bulky collars. They’re getting close to the size of those elephant collars of the `70s, so named for their resemblance to elephant ears.
Collars are for the wearing of ties. Without a tie they’re the stupidest and most pointless fashion accessory of all time, unless you’re X-factor and wearing some cool Italian-designed thing and the collars are narrow and delicate or in some way unobtrusive.
Clunky collars prove nothing, add nothing, accomplish nothing…and they’re ugly.
Tell this to the Ed Norton-Brad Pitt generation. These guys wet themselves over collars and zippers and shirts with absolutely horrible designs and rancid color schemes. I’m tellin’ you, men’s stuff was in a much cooler phase back in the late `80s…before the tastes of GenX Fight Club-bers started running the show.
Country Guy
“Thanks for mentioning my contribution to The Beautiful Country , since the Writer’s Guild arbitrated me out of credit, and when Pressman and Malick listed me as a producer they were threatened with a lawsuit for the sin of offering ‘consolation credit.
“That’s the Writers Guild for you, harming its own membership for as long as I can recall, but that, as they say, is another story.
“The project began as an idea of Terry Malick’s and was developed by Sunflower Films, a company belonging to Malick and [producer] Ed Pressman. I believe they had a low-budget overhead deal with Sony.
The Beautiful Country screenwriter Larry Gross.
“Sabina Murray, a published writer of fiction, had worked with Terry as a consultant on The Thin Red Line because of her expertise concerning events in Asia during WWII. She worked initially on the Wonderful Country script under the guidance of Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers).
“Around this time Terry was offering Zhang post-production assistance on some of the smaller films he made in cooperation with Sony Classics. After a couple of drafts Zhang Yimou stepped away.
“Then Wayne Wang came on, and suggested that I rewrite Sabina’s script. I wrote a couple of drafts for Wayne, and then he stepped away too.
“Pressman, however, finally had a script everyone now liked. He had a list of indie and foreign directors with English-speaking experience or credentials, and Hans Petter Moland was on the list.
“I had just been at Telluride and seen Moland’s superb Aberdeen, a dysfunctional family drama, with Stellan Skaarsgaard, Lena Heady and Ian Hart. Moland had also been responsible for launching Skaarsgaard’s movie career in Scandinavia with a naturalistic period action film called Zero Kelvin.
The Beautiful Country director Hans Petter Moland, star Damon Nguyen during filming.
“Moland is a filmmaker of wide humane interests and tremendous skill I recommended him avidly to Pressman. Terry screened Aberdeen and promptly told Ed that Hans Petter Moland was the guy who should do this.
“It took two years to get the money. And it was a ridiculously tiny amount of money to make so physically arduous a film.
“The element that stayed firm and true to the project from before my involvement, I`m forgetting to mention, was Nick Nolte. I think his fifteen minutes at the end is some of the finest work in his glorious career. The most recent bit of comparable stature was his superb part in The Thin Red Line. Obviously he and Terry have a connection;
“Again, thanks for supporting the work.” — Larry Gross (also screenwriter of We Don’t Live Here Anymore, the excellent Gunshy, Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, 48 HRS.
Rent
“Great riff on the new Rent trailer, although I have to say I share your fears about Revolution Pictures (i.e., the can’t-get-it-right Joe Roth) and Chris Columbus having their mitts on this one.
“This was arguably the best musical of the 90s. It helped to push the boundaries of what the mainstream could digest in that wonderful pre-millennium time. The rawness of the piece just might be best suited for the dreary Nederlander Theatre. Time will tell if it translates to the screen.
Adam Pascal, Rosario Dawson in Rent, due Nov. 11 from Columbia.
“I am encouraged that 90% of the original cast is back to do the movie. If they can bring one tenth of the energy to the screen that they brought to the stage, they might just push the film to the fresh side.
“I will say this: the Rent trailer is the best music video I have seen this year. (Not that I watch them anymore.) You are 100% right — Jonathan Larson wrote a beautiful song in ‘Seasons of Love.’ The cast knows it, the audience knows it — I just hope Columbus can do the whole thing justice.” — Brendan Noone
Smith Shame
The only significant addition to the Mr. and Mrs. Smith roster of shame, announced two days ago in this space to try and hold certain critics accountable for liking or giving even a mixed pass to Doug Liman’s action thriller, is Jamie Bernard’s review in the N.Y. Daily News.
Smith Agonistes
“I was so happy to read your reaction to Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Perfect. I haven’t seen the film itself, but I saw the trailer, and that was all I needed to see. Ever.
“I’m so tired of films that not grounded in reality. It seems like 90% of all action movies have to have The Matrix style of effects, without being in a sci-fi world that would allow any of it to be remotely plausible. The action is so ludicrous that it takes me right out of the picture.
“The real stunner is that Doug Liman would resort to the McG school of filmmaking. Why, why, why?!? There are so few directors that can lay down a quality, gritty, realistic action picture, and Liman is, or at least was, one of those guys. It’s an awful waste of talent, and it’s disgraceful for him as a filmmaker.
“I know that people eat this crap up, as I always hear the classic line `the story was o.k., but the effects were really great.’ It kills me. I really, really hope this thing tanks.” — Jeff Horst
“I’m beginning to develop this theory that marquee-level critics in the last 10 years seem to have resigned themselves to the realization that certain films are critic-proof and to attack them is a fruitless Tar Baby exercise.
“Films like Mr, and Mrs, Smith may have their merits, but we all know if they starred the guy from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and one of the chicks from Charmed instead of Brangelina then all those 13 to 35 year olds would deny it the $45 million opening it will most probably earn and just make it an X-Box weekend.
“Certain critics apparently have a `choose your cinematic battles carefully’ attitude when it comes to major studio releases. The worst offender seems to be Roger Ebert who has given a pass to a veritable sewer of shitty films.
“I mention this because I was thinking of the reaction to the Mr. and Mrs. Smith trailer I witnessed on opening day of Revenge of the Sith. In a crowd of Summer ’05 blockbuster-to-be trailers that included War of the Worlds and Fantastic Four, the loudest reaction was for the Smiths, so be prepared for more positive reviews.” — Steve Coppock
“The overriding thought I have whenever I see a promo for Mr. and Mrs. Smith is not that it’s about gorgeous people acting out their fantasies — shooting guns, doing stunts, not acting but play-acting the way children do. What I think of is what Hitchcock could’ve done with the same basic premise.
“Instead of allowing Carole Lombard to hornswoggle him into directing a rather tepid domestic comedy, imagine he and, say, Ernest Lehman, coming up with a black comedy centered not around big guns and explosions, but a couple surreptitiously and cleverly trying to kill each other, all the while remaining polite to each other’s faces and never admitting openly what they’re up to.
Brad Pitt
“Of course, at the end, after one of them finally, perhaps even accidentally, dispatches the other, he or she sits down to eat the sandwich and glass of milk the other one so courteously laid out for them.” — David Ludwig.
“I agree with you on this movie. There is no way I am seeing this thing. It seems to me that the director knew of the happenings between Pitt and Jolie, and he used that chemistry (if there is any) to try to make the movie slicker, because people are going to see it just to check out said chemistry between the two.
“I also can’t help thinking about True Lies. They just made the Jamie Lee Curtis part as a spy. How many people would like to see Ms. Jolie in the bedroom dance scene from that movie?” — Gil Padilla, Dayton, Ohio.
Alien Confusion
Werner Herzog
“It’s been a while since I’ve actually laughed out loud at something I had read online, but your piece about that War of the Worlds picture made me do just that this morning. Thanks for that — made my day. ” — Jeremy Wockenfuss
“I always love your stuff, but there’s something wonderful and, I dunno, vaguely magical about your breakdown of that War of the Worlds publicity photo in [Wednesday]’s column. Every face you describe just makes the description you’re writing a little more perfect, until you’re no longer just making a point, you’re creating a perfect little work of art. That’s really beautiful writing, man.” — Name lost in the shuffle
“Your description of that War of the Worlds still is hilarious! I love that you caught that girl smiling behind Tom Cruise. Also love the NYC shots you’re putting in – I miss it there. ” — Sharon Mann, Paris, France.
Grabs
Not an all-girl restaurant, appearances to the contrary. Tartine on West 4th Street — Wednesday, 6.8.05, 7:35 pm.
West 4th Street near Charles — Wednesday, 6.8.05, 7:20 pm.
There’s a Whole Foods on 14th street in Union Square — full of exquisite pickings and a great salad bar and costly as hell. (The nickname, I’m told, is “Whole Paycheck.”) I was there the other night and filled up one of those plastic trays full of salad and vegetables, and was told by the cashier that I owed them $20. I’ve never paid $20 for a salad in a restaurant. Le Basket (pictured above) is about four or five blocks south of Whole Foods with a nice salad bar of their own, and they only hit you for about $10, so Whole Foods can bite me.
Northeast corner of Broadway and 47th — Thursday, 6.9.05, 6:10 pm.
Dragon
“I remember seeing Year of the Dragon when it came out and enjoying it. It became a guilty pleasure of mine. I rented it a couple of times over the years and always enjoyed the performances of some of the supporting actors (Raymond Barry, Caroline Kava).
“Mickey Rourke’s hair is quite strange, but what also is curious is the noticeable sore on his nose, which changes shape and size depending on the scene.
“And Ariane, giving the worst performances by an actress in the history of movies.
“And Rourke’s salty language in front of couple of old Nuns. And the old character actor who I remember being on Barney Miller speaking through what Howard Stern calls a ‘cancer kazoo.’
“And Rourke interrogating a chinese gangster girl that he’s just shot (‘Look, you’re not gonna make it.’) It’s the gift that keeps on giving.” — Sean Griffin
Litter
“As a lifetime New Yorker, I was amused by your comments about the garbage littered sidewalk … Please realize, nobody in NY gives a crap about anyone or anything but themselves. The only ones who can be nice (and its rare) are the tourists who don’t know any better.” — Ron KofflerCinderella Slogan
“When the country was on its knees, he threw a telephone at its face.” — Kevin Kusinitz, New York, NY.
“I think the real problem is the title. Cinderella Man reads to your average moviegoer like a film about a transvestite. People equate Cinderella with the fairy tale who’s main character happened to be a female. It’s not that people are stupid but in today’s headlines about Michael Jackson it subconciously has a negative vibe.
“I don’t care for the title either mainly because it comes off too cloying or clever.” — Steven Hanna, brother of Detective Vincent Hanna, LAPD….keeping on the edge, with his angst, where he needs to be.
Werner Herzog
“The problem with the punchdrunk ad syntax for Cinderella Man is that it goes from a generalization to a specific, in essence choosing one out of many possible paths, and calling undo attention to itself as a result.
“Simply by switching it so the specific flows into the generalization, there is no subliminal ‘surprise’ and it is less disorienting, such as: When America was on its knees, he brought the country to its feet. Although, that said, ‘When America was on its knees, he brought the nation to its feet,’ is somewhat better focused, and ‘When America was on the ropes, he found the strength to inspire the nation,’ gets rid of that bothersome sexual double entendre.” — Doug Pratt DVD Newsletter.
“The reason for the repetition of `country’ and `America’ in the Cinderella Man slogan seems pretty straightforward to me. The marketing guys want to make the movie sound as broadly-appealing as possible and connect it to a certain patriotic sentimentality, so the word `America’ has to be in there somewhere. But at the same time, people don’t want to think of `America’ as being on its knees, implying that America is weak. So they have to make it abstract, substituting a pronoun, and making the sentence awkward.” — Jason Edgecombe
Herzog
“Just read your excellent article on Werner Herzog. I’ve been an authentic fan of his ever since seeing Aguirre, the Wrath of God many years ago in San Diego. I lend this movie out whenever I can and to whomever I can, but always with the caveat that the movie be watched without interruption at a time when there is no chance of being too tired to pay adequate attention.
“But I’m writing to say how pleased and surprised I was to read the following which you wrote, `Herzog’s films should not be rented — they should be owned and pulled out every few months and not just watched in a social way with friends but seriously absorbed in a state of aloneness…like meditation, with incense burning.’
“Never were there truer words said on any subject under the sun. I thought I was strange admonishing my friends the way I described, but you’ve given me vindication. The paragraph above perfectly describes how I feel about Herzog and Aguirre especially. It took me by surprise, it was so on the mark.” — John Rosen.
Werner Herzog
“Thanks for the piece on Werner Herzog. Thank God that there are filmmakers like him — filmmakers with vision and passion still plugging away. In this age of loud, empty, mindless, obscenely expensive, loud, dumb films there is at least one filmmaker who, as you say, `cares more about getting viewers to trust their eyes … or more importantly their dreams.’
“How many filmmakers today are as obsessive, or crazy as Herzog to follow their vision to completion, like he did with Fitzcarraldo? I’ve been a fan ever since Aguirre, the Wrath of God, but unfortunately haven’t seen any of his documentaries. I’ll take your advice and head to the video store to purchase one of his docs and relish it. Then I’ll have to decide which of his narrative films to purchase; one that my family, who don’t care for foreign language films, should see. If they only knew the glut of riches they were missing out on.” — Edward Klein, Salem, Oregon.
“Cheers for your Herzog plug. I’d also recommend some other of his older documentaries, particularly Lessons of Darkness. On the feature film front, the recent Herzog/Kinski box set is a showcase for the (arguably) greatest director/actor pairing ever.” — Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews.
Grabs, Part 2
Extra Virgin, 259 West 4th Street. Appetizers, $6 to $12, Entrees from $17 to $19. All major credit cards.
Waiting for L train in Union Square station — Thursday, 6.9.05, 10:05 pm.
West 4th near Jane — Wednesday, 6.8.05, 7:50 pm.
Midnight Hour
I haven’t paid to see a midnight movie in a lonng time. I don’t even go to midnight madness screenings at film festivals. I don’t even watch DVDs at midnight in my crib. But I’m glad they’re happening and that people like going to them. If for nothing else than tradition’s sake.
Today’s midnight movie culture (if you want to call it that) may not have much of a relation to what it was in the `60s and `70s, when the phenomenon was festive and throbbing and influencing this and that mainstream filmmaker. Youth culture was turning everything upside down back then, and midnight movies were the cinematic component of this.
Zombie shuffle scene from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
The difference is that today’s midnight screenings, however enjoyable they might seem to you or your friends, are about marketing. There are eclectic venues here and there — Seattle’s Grand Illusion cinema comes to mind — showing fringe stuff. But the feeling of grass-roots taboo-breaking and discovery has fallen away, for the most part.
It was de rigueur to get high before seeing these `70s films, partly (largely?) because they played better this way. I almost don’t want to see Greaser’s Palace or Putney Swope again because I don’t turn on any more and I don’t want to spoil memories of laughing my ass off, ripped, at the absurdist humor. Directed and written by the once-great Robert Downey Sr., these films never said to the audience, “This is funny — you’re supposed to laugh now.” Either you got it or you didn’t.
In any event, for those too young or insufficiently adventurous to have sampled this culture in its prime, there’s now an authoritative documentary by Stuart Samuels called Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream.
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It will air on Starz Encore sometime this summer, and maybe, says Samuels, in a theatre somewhere near you before that. It should play the midnight circuit, right? And there will be a long shelf life for the DVD, which will have all kinds of extras.
Midnight Movies is about the “hidden history” of six low-budget cult flicks — Alejandro Jodorowky’s El Topo, George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead, Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come, John Waters’ Pink Flamingos, Jim Sharman’s Rocky Horror Picture Show and David Lynch’s Eraserhead.
The reason these films played and played and played at theatres like New York’s Elgin, L.A.’s Fox Venice, Cambridge’s Orson Welles cinema and other such venues is that underground flicks were fairly exotic back then, and cineastes and stoners looking for a couple of skewed or outrageous hours in the dark had nowhere else to go.
Weird movies have since become corporatized, of course, and kids don’t go to theatres as much these days with DVDs and downloading and other distractions. But at least the midnight syndrome has kept on in some form. The ritual is well ingrained and people have a good time, and that’s great.
I sat down with Samuels during the Cannes Film Festival (where it played a couple of times) and talked about this $600,000 production, which he says was made for Mpix and Movie Central, the Canadian TV stations. Starz Encore has some kind of tie-in with these guys. And Telefilm, the Canadian government agency, paid for Samuels’ trip to Cannes, so they’ve got their fingers in also.
Samuels based the film on his own 1983 book, “Midnight Madness.”
“I taught film at ‘Penn’ (University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia) in the `70s, and I wrote the book as my going-away present,” he says. “Things were changing, you could feel the chill as the `80s began, and I figured that 30 years hence people are not going to know what the midnight movie experience was all about.
“I knew there was something special about this group of films. So I sat down and wrote it as an academic, but there was another midnight movie book by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Jim Hoberman that came out four weeks after mine, and we wound up canceling each other out.
Stuart Samuels, director-writer of Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, at the American Pavilion during the Cannes Film Festival — Friday, 5.20, 11:20 am.
“Midnight movies are dead as a cultural phenomenon, but Rocky Horror is still doing business everywhere. It has always stayed because it deals with innocence and sexuality, and that is a constant that people can always relate to. It flopped when it first came out, but by the end of the `70s it was spelling the difference between profit and break-even for theatres and distributors everywhere. It’s earned about $200 million so far.
“The phenomenon is very circumscribed. It started at the end of the `60s with El Topo — that was really the first one. The films I’ve focused on in the film were handmade films, and they really changed film attitudes. But by 1980, Hollywood had co-opted it with cult films, and then video came along.
“It’s still being done now because it’s ritualized. The only new film to have been discovered by younger crowds was The Blair Witch Project, which took off because of the internet.
“I made this film for two reasons. One, we’re in the period of the end of something now. People are looking for something that’s more authentic, more direct…the young people like this film, but they didn’t know the story. And two, for older people, it contextualizes everything. I’m taking it to the heart of the enemy. I’m making a film about films that critics loved when they grew up.
“There are three elements to this story. The directors…the people who made these films. The theatre owners and distributors who showed them…Ben Barenholz, Larry Jackson, Bill Quigley. And the audiences. Like Bob Shaye, who went to El Topo at the Elgin. And I found a lot of interesting archive footage.”
Divine in a classic pose from John Waters’ Pink Flamingos
“I prescript everything. I know more about the subject than the interview subjects do. I know what’s inside that piece of stone. And I never use a narrator.
“The rights to the footage are clear. I know that morass. The only negotiation problem was with Fox. Rights are the reason no decent film can be made about the history of film. Documentaries about popular culture are going nowhere because the people who own all the rights, particularly the music rights…these people won’t give, nor will they deal on a reasonable basis. It’s insidious. One third of the budget on this film went to lawyers. This is why we get pap.”
Midnight Movies will show at the Silverdocs Festival in Silver Spring, Maryland, on 6.14. Samuels is also taking it to the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic.
Hold On…
“I’d like to remind you that Reservoir Dogs had a midnight showing every Saturday for years at the New Beverly Cinema. Midnight screenings obviously haven’t died out. The rituals are not gone — they’ve just changed.
“Surely the persistence of a small theater called the Grand Illusion Cinema in
Seattle means something. They play lots of odd choices…at 11 pm. Where else in the world will Garbage Pail Kids (i.e., the movie) get screened? Or the 1980 Flash Gordon, or Yor, or Spawn of the Slithis?
“Don’t worry — they play good movies too. But the screenings I’ve been to have never been less than wild (Transformers: The Movie screened one night to a sold-out crowd) and a smell of absurdity always seems to permeate when an equally strange picture shows.
“Most midnight movies today are shown by the Landmark Cinema chain, but their choices are somewhat conservative compared to the Grand Illusion. Even so, it’s great to see old movies in a time when revival houses are nearly extinct.
“You have no idea how spoiled you are living in Los Angeles. LA, New York and Seattle are the last places in the US where you can see old movies in a theater. And any place where you can see an old movie is welcome these days.” — Gabriel Neeb.
Echo
The visual of the Martian hand grabbing the globe has always looked pretty cool to me. It’s rich and precise and makes its point.
The similarity to the design of the cover of the L. Ron Hubbard book is probably coincidental. I don’t know if Tom Cruise has it in his contract to approve or reject concepts for Paramount’s War of the Worlds one-sheet campaigns. I would be surprised if this were the case. Marketing execs tend to treasure their autonomy.
That said, it wouldn’t surprise me if Cruise, who is one of the film’s producers, didn’t have some kind of authority about the ad art. He is known for being exacting and particular about things. And we all know about the Scientology stand (or tent or whatever it was) on the set of War of the Worlds, which was seen by observers as a kind of recruitment attempt.
Without coming to any conclusions, it seems fair to at least take note of this. I mean, it does kind of pop out.
Silverado
I always smile when I think of Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon, which comes out on DVD on 5.31. Not because I liked this 1985 Chinatown-based crime film, which I found tediously crude and violent. I know I’ve never had the slightest desire to see it since, but it’s been twenty years so I guess I could let my guard down and give it another go.
Mostly I remember Mickey Rourke as a bullying racist New York police captain named Stanley White, and Cimino’s decision to streak Rourke’s hair with a lot of white, to go along with the name or something. It sounds trite, but that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that Rourke’s hair changed color from scene to scene. It would be frosty white with dark streaks, and then grayish white and then blondish white and then brownish silver. It never seemed quite the same in any two scenes in a row.
And I smile because I’m always reminded of a term that former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell used to describe Rourke’s coif. He called it “mood hair.”
Those two words have been the foundation of my admiration for Mitchell ever since, no matter what gig he happens to be holding. (He’s an acquisition executive these days for Sony, and he might still be teaching at Harvard. I’d write him and ask, but he never answers back.)
Anyway, I intend to rent the DVD next week and take several digital photos of Rourke in different scenes in order to prove the point.
I’m also inviting Year of the Dragon‘s hair stylist Jon Sahag, who apparently tended to hair on only one other film, Michael Almereyda’s Najda, to get in touch and tell his side of the story and clear up any misconceptions.
Maybe Rourke’s hair was intended to change tints as a way of suggesting internal struggles or something.
Maybe F.X. Feeney, a longtime Cimino enthusiast, could get in touch and explain what he knows. I wrote him about this but it’s deadline time.
A reader named Joe Hanrahan has perked my interest on another front, without telling me exactly what he’s referring to.
Dragon, he says, “has at least one great scene. Rourke has left his wife for the Chinese news gal, and the scene starts with him sitting on their porch after a confrontation with her. Rourke goes back inside and notes that his wife has locked herself in the bathroom.
“Being a normal self-centered, guilt-infused male, my first thought as I watched was that she was committing suicide, but the scene takes a twist from there, and turns into one of the few mainstream movie scenes that have ever really shocked me.”
Kubrick Taschen
Instead of spending 10 bucks to see Adam Sandler stomp on prison guards this weekend, think about dipping into your slush fund and coughing up a portion for The Stanley Kubrick Archives (Taschen). Take it home and bolt your doors and let it seep in, page by lustrous page.
I’m so in love with the thing that I packed it in my suitcase earlier this month and hauled it all the way from Los Angeles to New York, and then up to my parent’s home in Connecticut. I almost took it with me to the Cannes Film Festival. It’s my best friend, my rock `n’ roll, my lump-in-the-throat. I haven’t felt this way about a mere possession in a long, long time.
Stanley Kubrick (r.) directing Peter Sellers in his President Merkin Muffley guise on the set of Dr. Strangelove, or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
I’m not buying the claim on Amazon.com that this 544-page beast weighs 14.6 pounds. It felt like at least triple that when I was lugging it around Kennedy Airport.
The cost weighs pretty heavily too. 200 dollars, according to the Taschen website. But if you’ve ever thought about laying down serious coin for a first-rate coffee-table book, this might be the deal-maker. Besides, you can get it on Amazon for only about $125. I’ve blown $125 on things that I wasn’t all that thrilled about the morning after. I know I’m going to feel good about having this book twenty years from now.
Of course, you have to be a fool for Kubrick’s films in the first place. You have to get the Kubrick thing altogether, which means not just worshipping Paths of Glory or Dr. Strangelove or admiring most of Barry Lyndon, but also coming to terms with Eyes Wide Shut, which wasn’t easy at first but I got there.
I did this by facing up to the fact that resistance was futile. I’ve watched that red-felt pool table scene when Sydney Pollack explains the facts to Tom Cruise over and over, and I don’t even know why exactly…it’s like voodoo.
I presume this same susceptibility has enveloped most of the readers of this column.
The Archives text — articles, essays, interview excerpts, all kinds of data — has been edited and assembled by Alison Castle. It’s all smart, elegant and informative stuff, but this is par for a book of this size and scope from Taschen, the Rolls Royce of prestige publishers.
It’s the purely visual stuff that does it to you, in a strategy that mirrors that of Kubrick’s films. There are something like 1600 images in this thing — 800 immaculate frame blowups from all the films, and another 800 behind-the-scenes stills and various “items” (drawings, script notes, letters), most of which have never seen before. Plus essays by Kubrick scholars Michel Ciment, Gene D. Phillips and Rodney Hill
There are two keepsakes in The Stanley Kubrick Archives that are nearly worth the price alone: a twelve-frame film strip from a 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey, taken from a print in Kubrick’s private vault, and a CD containing a 70-minute audio interview with Kubrick by Jeremy Bernstein in 1966…when Kubrick was at the summit of his powers.
All through my first reading I was feeling envious of Castle, who was given complete access by Kubrick’s widow, Christiane, and his longtime producer and brother-in-law, Jan Harlan. What an amazing job she had for two or three years.
All those details, all that minutiae…and she and the Taschen editors only got one little thing wrong. I’m referring to a photo taken on the Spartacus set that identifies costar Rudy Bond (who played a loud-mouthed gladiator, although for some reason this role isn’t listed on his IMDB page) as the film’s producer, Edward Lewis. There’s a very slight chance I’m wrong about this (Lewis may have been a dead ringer for Bond), but I doubt it.
This is a spa book…something to sink into and be replenished by. And yet it’s not quite the ultimate down-to-the-bone Kubrick book of all time. It’s more the ultimate Kubrick massage…a thinking person’s pleasure cruise…a first-class voyage into a very sumptuous and particular world.
It’s been called the most comprehensive book on Kubrick thus far. It is that, but in a selectively affectionate way.
Is it the most penetrating exploration of who Stanley Kubrick really was, and what his life and work finally amounted to, warts, missed opportunities and all? That’s not the intention here.
Does it explore the conflicts Kubrick had with Marlon Brando in the development of One-Eyed Jacks, which resulted in Brando firing him? I would have loved to have read something specific about this, but no.
Does it get into the specific clashes Kubrick had with Kirk Douglas over the making of Spartacus? Here and there, but not to any great detail.
The best books about artists should not only celebrate but dish some rude stuff here and there.
It’s been reported before that Douglas was offended by Kubrick’s pre-production suggestion that he, Kubrick, be given screen credit for Dalton Trumbo’s script, since Trumbo, it was assumed at the time, couldn’t be given this due to his blacklisted screenwriter status. (Douglas eventually gave Trumbo this credit, which helped to end the blacklist era.)
Was this the only reason that Douglas referred to Kubrick during a 1982 interview I had with him as “Stanley the prick”? Douglas was famously egotistical and a scrapper, but I always wanted to know more about his and Kubrick’s relationship.
I guess what I’m saying is that Archives would have been a tad more interesting if Castle and Kubrick’s family hadn’t been so fully committed to the late director’s perspective and had brought in a few naysayers or nitpickers for added flavor.
Does it take a hard look at Kubrick’s fastidious, increasingly isolated way of living and working, removing himself more and more from life’s rough and tumble as he got older…more exacting, more of an aesthetic unto himself? Again, not the shot.
Does it ponder the regrets and might-have-been’s and shortfalls? Somewhat, but family-sanctioned tributes are never about tough love.
It would have steered in this direction if I had been the editor. Not to take Kubrick down (I’m as much a fan as Castle or anyone else on the team) but to explore the ironies more fully. I’m saying I would have zeroed in on the paradoxical lesson of Stanley Kubrick’s life and career, which is that absolute creative control is not necessarily the glorious thing it’s cracked up to be.
The truth is that the more he became “Stanley Kubrick,” the more he ate his own creative tail. The political power Kubrick gained from the financial success and cultural esteem of Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey in the 1960s, which led to the carte blanche support he got from Warner Bros. starting with the making of A Clockwork Orange, allowed him to follow his intrigues to his heart’s content, and this became both his salvation and his trap.
This is an old tune with me, but as watchable as his movies are and always will be, the more remote and mercurial Kubrick became the more his films became about stiffness and perfection. This is why I’ve always been more of a fan of his work from The Killing to A Clockwork Orange than the last 24 years of his career, during which he produced only four films — Barry Lyndon , The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut.
I realize that the emotional bloodlessness of Barry Lyndon is partly what makes it a masterwork, but you can’t tell me Kubrick’s personality wasn’t at least a partial ingredient in this.
Christiane Kubrick signing copies of The Stanley Kubrick Archives a few days ago in London. Her brother Jan Harlan, who produced Kubrick’s later films, sits to her left.
The opening 20 or 25 minutes of The Shining are among the spookiest ever captured in any film (that interview scene between Jack Nicholson and Barry Nelson is sheer perfection) but the very last shot, the one that goes closer and closer into that black-and-white photo of Jack Nicholson’s character celebrating at an Overlook Hotel black-tie ball sometime in the 1920s, is one of the lamest epilogues ever…it’s metaphysical claptrap.
(I was one of the few who saw a version of The Shining with an excised scene between Nelson and Shelley Duvall that comes right before this shot — Kubrick cut it before the film went into general release. I don’t have the book with me as I’m writing this, but I don’t think it makes any mention of this last-minute edit.)
(And while we’re on the subject, it would have been really special if the book had included frame blowups from the reported five minutes or so from 2001‘s “Dawn of Man” segment that Kubrick trimmed out just after a critics preview. But it doesn’t.)
The labored dialogue in the Vietnam portions of Full Metal Jacket (like “I say we leave the gook for the mother-lovin’ rats” or “Am I a heartbreaker? Am I a…whoo-hoo!..life-taker?”) makes Jacket feel like some kind of stage production rather than something actually going down in that war-torn region in the late ’60s. I read somewhere that some of the actors (Adam Baldwin, for one) bitched behind Kubrick’s back about this, or maybe to his face…I don’t precisely recall.
And yet that final battle sequence (going after that female Vietcong sniper in Hue) is breathtaking.
Don’t get me started on Eyes Wide Shut, but Kubrick’s belief that he would get an R rating (which he was contractually obliged to deliver) for that mansion-orgy sequence footage indicated a man who had stopped taking the pulse of things outside his country estate.
Kubrick at his home in January 1984, in a snap taken by a friend.
And yet for a guy hooked on visual fastidiousness and an increasingly misanthropic view of human affairs, Kubrick nonetheless made films that were tantalizing and seductive….each one a feast.
There’s a Kubrick quote in this book that I’m paraphrasing here, which is that the final measure of lasting motion picture art — all art — lies in the emotional.
It comes down to simple visual pleasures…the thought-out, strongly fortified kind that has led me to watch the Barry Lyndon DVD 15 or 20 times, even thought I don’t care very much for the funereal tone of the film’s second half. I sit through it because I love the Lord Bullington duel sequence and the final epilogue card that states, “Rich or poor, happy or sad, they are all equal now.”
I wouldn’t want to suggest that The Stanley Kubrick Archives is too softball. It is what it is, and that’s a hell of a thing.
The second half takes you in to Kubrick’s deliberative mind more thoroughly (i.e., more personally) than anything I’ve read. From the perspective of first-hand creative immersion, of recreating a world as the artist himself tried to know it and lick it as best he could, it’s one of the finest books on a film director ever published.
Tom Cruise, Stanely Kubrick, Nicole Kidman on the set of Eyes Wide Shut. It never occurred to me before reading this book that Kubrick was on the short side, or shorter than Cruise anyway.
Slightly Gentler Neil
I was so traumatized by the weakness of the dollar during my stay in London last Saturday through Tuesday that I was having anxiety attacks the whole time. I did a lot of speed-walking and visiting different internet cafes and questioning my dumb impulsiveness in flying there in the first place. I didn’t eat anything except fruit and coffee and fast food….awful.
And yet in the face of this I decided last Monday night to pop for a ticket to Neil Labute’s Some Girls, which opened a day or two later at the Gielgud. I’d missed Labute’s last two, Fat Pig and This Is How It Goes (which both played in New York), as well as The Mercy Seat and The Distance From Here, which I didn’t even know about until I read the program. Anyway, I needed to catch up.
Some Girls costars Catherine Tate, Saffron Burrows, David Schwimmer, Sarah Tate, Lesley Manville.
And I wanted to see how former Friends star David Schwimmer, who began on the Chicago stage, would handle himself in the lead role. Verdict: he’s relaxed and assured and does quite well.
He’s playing a nominally sensitive short-story writer who’s run away from relationships all his semi-adult life, and is now feeling a bit guilty about this as he prepares to get married. So he pays a visit to four ex-girlfriends in four different cities to talk things over and see if any of them are still pissed about being dumped.
He’s really looking to be forgiven or at least hear that he’s not so bad. This doesn’t happen. He gets a good stiff shot of reality from each ex.
Labute’s plays and films are usually about what pigs or weaklings men are in their relationships with women, and in this light the dealings in Some Girls aren’t as searing or corrosive as usual. It’s not lacking in emotional bruisings, but it’s not quite mild-mannered either.
And Schwimmer’s character makes an effort to at least talk a sensitive game when he catches up with the women. But who and what he really is — a serial escape artist — comes through soon enough, and at the end you feel for his young fiance (whom we never meet) because you know what she’s in for.
The one-act play is funny here and there, briskly paced (at roughly 100 minutes) and sometimes very biting. A moderately engaging piece. But it doesn’t build or develop all that excitingly and it basically leaves you with a “yeah, not bad” reaction. Is it a movie? No, but maybe an HBO or a Showtime thing.
Schwimmer’s first visitation is in Seattle with Sam (Catherine Tate), whom he dropped just before the senior prom in high school. Married to a guy who works in a food store and raising kids, she’s still riled about what Schwimmer did (especially his having taken another girl to the prom) and having her emotions stirred.
Then there’s Tyler (Sara Powell) from Chicago, a randy easygoing type who needs a little time to remember what a bastard Schwimmer was to her…and then the anger catches fire.
In Boston he pays a call on Lindsay (Lesley Manville), a married woman he had an affair with behind her husband’s back, and who is also quite angry and looking for revenge.
Finally there’s Bobbi (Saffron Burrows) from Los Angeles, who is hurt but still cares for him…although she’s too smart and proud to open up a second time, even when he tells her she’s the love of his life.
The actresses are all sharp and on top of their roles, and each scene deftly reveals a surprise or two about their past relationship with Schwimmer. LaBute is a gifted writer and psychologically shrewd, but Girls is basically laying out Schwimmer’s history without adding anything urgent or present-tense to it.
Randomly
I was so upset by London I decided to get back to States as quickly as possible to take stock and lick my wounds. That meant flying Easy Jet from London to Amsterdam for the connection back home, and since I had a few hours to kill I decided to go into town and look around.
I don’t get high so the whole cannabis side of things didn’t hold any appeal, but it’s mildly startling to be in the Abraxas Cafe and see the wide variety of hallucinogenic brownies being sold. Amsterdam is cool but English is spoken so widely and there are so many Brits and Americans running around that the exotic appeal feels diminished for a European city.
It’s obviously more than just a party town for stoners, but that’s what it felt like during my three-hour visit. Stoners and flower markets (what exactly do you do with a tulip?) and prostitutes and Burger Kings.
Southern sector of Hyde Park near Lancaster Gate — Sunday, 5.22, 5:50 pm.
McDonald’s delicacy available primarily to Londoners.
Four or five blocks due south of London’s Piccadilly Square — Monday, 5.23, 4:45 pm.
Near London’s Sussex Gardens — Sunday, 5.24, 2:35 pm
Valentino and Swanson at Amsterdam’s Calypso Bellevue — Tuesday, 5.24, 3:10 pm
Tuesday, 5.24, 5:05 pm.
Amsterdam — Tuesday, 5.24, 3:50 pm.
Tuesday, 5.24, 4:10 pm.
Tuesday, 5.24, 10:10 am.
Canal-adjacent theatre in Amsterdam — Tuesday, 5.24, 3:05 pm.
Amsterdam commuters — Tuesday, 5.24, 3:20 pm.
Near London’s Sussex Gardens — Sunday, 5.22, 2:15 pm
Residential street near London’s Sloane Square — Sunday, 5.22, 4:20 pm.
Considering the Smiths
Things seem to be happening between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie these days. Stories about recent time spent together (shared vacations, swanky hotel rooms, etc.) have been inside all the supermarket tabs, including Us magazine. And the evidence seems conclusive. **
Question is, what effect will these tabloid shenanigans have on the fortunes of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (20th Century Fox, 6.10), an obviously pumped-up, very expensive action comedy from director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Go ) in which they play married-to-each-other professional assassins?
Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie in Doug Liman’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Liman is one of the best 40-and-under directors out there right now. I talk with him from time to time. He told me last January during the Sundance Film Festival that Mr. and Mrs. Smith is “the best thing I’ve ever done.” I don’t know what he precisely meant by this, but he said it persuasively.
But I have to be honest and say that right now, however great, good or not-so-good the film might be, the Pitt-Jolie affair could usher in some resistance.
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Whenever there’s hanky-panky on a movie set, especially when one of the lovers is married to someone else, women and conservative-minded types in the audience get their dander up and sometimes don’t want to go, and those who line up do so with a kind of a “show me” attitude. Okay, we’ve paid to see this thing…let’s see that chemistry!
If the romantic intrigue is there, fine. If it’s not, or if the director wimps out and tries to push it aside, the movie usually has problems.
Director Taylor Hackford cut out some love-scene footage when he edited Proof of Life , the Russell Crowe-Meg Ryan movie that had the same kind of attention from the tabloids during filming due to Crowe and Ryan’s affair. Hackford’s strategy worked against the film. The general reaction seemed to be, this is what all the fuss was about?
Gigli had problems of its own, but didn’t the Ben and J. Lo affair (which everyone was sick of before it opened) help sink it?
Besides, aren’t all those women who buy the supermarket tabs presumed to be more in Jennifer Aniston’s camp? Vaguely resentful, I mean, about Pitt having cheated on Aniston and taken up with this vaguely wacko hussy type? I’m addressing the situation with dopey tabloid cliches, but you know what I’m saying.
To me, the tone of the Mr. and Mrs. Smith trailer feels arch and a bit staid. It tells me the movie might be funny or clever here and there, and that Pitt uses his charm in a scene or two, but also that Jolie gives up very little.
She doesn’t have a screwball temperament, she doesn’t break down and weep, she doesn’t have a wacky Julia Roberts-type laugh. She’s poised and chilly.
The assassins-out-to-kill-each-other plot is apparently being used as a kind of metaphor for today’s high-powered couples who concentrate so much on their jobs and individual tasking than they don’t know how to unload all that stuff and just “be” with each other.
I know they’re supposed to be a bored married couple (initially, I mean), but the trailer never seems to show Pitt and Jolie being warm with each other or looking into each other’s eyes with any kind of excitement or fear or anything. It seems to be selling a rather dry and aloof film that’s mainly about thrills, aggression and physical comedy. And a lot of hardware.
We’re taking about the trailer, mind. I presume the movie of Mr. and Mrs. Smith is about more than what it conveys. Liman doesn’t make assembly-line crap.
Not an actual Pitt portrait, but a Worth 1000 Photoshop thing.
There’s one really funny bit at the end when a guy says to Pitt, “You’re ticking!” and Pitt realizes Jolie has planted a bomb on him.
There’s a piece about this very subject by Ann Donahue in the May issue of Premiere. It discusses the film’s “rocky” production history and on-set arguments, etc. Liman is quoted as saying he has never had a movie be under such tabloid scrutiny.
(Donahue uses the word “controversial” to describe “Liman’s belief that he can bring the small-scale independent film ethos…to major studio productions.” Wanting to make big-budget films sharper, quirkier and more flavorful is controversial?)
Pitt is a bigger star overseas than he is here. Troy earned much more over there than it did here. But he can act when the chips are down (I’ve always loved him in Se7en) and he’s basically likable.
I don’t think Jolie is very likable at all, and I wonder if she means all that much to general audiences. Her second Tomb Raider flick was seen as a tank (cost $90 million, earned $65 million in US theatres), and the responses to her last few films — Beyond Borders, Taking Lives, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow — were underwhelming.
Angelina’s got those great lips and all but she’s also seems kind of crazy, no? Heavily into her own orbit, I mean, in an over-indulged, rich-actress, Tallulah Bankhead-type way. Smooching her brother at the Oscars, refusing to speak with her dad (Jon Voight), blowing off Billy Bob with her U.N. spokeswoman thing and then jumping whole-hog into adopting third-world kids, etc.
She seems like a moment-to-moment person. Not much of an investor in long-term relationships. But really great in bed, I’ll bet…or so goes the general assumption.
I was talking about Brad and Angelina with a woman the other night in the checkout line at Pavilions. Neither of us trusts her, we decided. We also agreed that Brad is in a typically randy, post-divorce rebound mode and his Angelina relationship is not long for this world.
But for the movie’s sake, they should probably try to stay together until the opening.
** Pitt’s p.r. rep Cindy Guagenti has called stories about the Pitt-Jolie romance “untrue.” In a statement given yesterday (4.14) to the Associated Press, Us magazine, which has a cover story saying the Pitt-Jolie thing is very real, said, “Pitt has long denied stories involving his personal life, beginning with reports of trouble in his marriage to Jennifer Aniston prior to the separation. Multiple sources both on and off the record confirmed Pitt and Jolie were physically affectionate in public areas of [a desert] resort where they were [recently] staying.”
Summer Shakedown
It doesn’t matter which big-studio tentpole movies are going to make the most money this summer. What counts is which ones will be good.
The best films of the May-August season are going to be Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (20th Century Fox, 5.6); Paul Haggis’s Crash (Lions Gate, 5.6); Marilyn Agrelo’s Mad Hot Ballroom (Paramount Classics, 5.13.05); Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man (Universal, 6.3.05); Sebastian Cordero’s Cronicas (Palm Pictures, 7.1); Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow (Paramount Classics, 7.15); Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know (IFC, 6.24), and Tony Scott’s Domino (New Line, August 19).
Jon Hawkes, Miranda July in Me and You and Everyone We Know.
My apologies for being so buried in the hurlyburly that I somehow missed the announcement (earlier this month?) about Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown, which I put into this piece yesterday (4.15), having been moved from a late July opening to October 14th.
I also failed to include Me and You in yesterday’s posting. I didn’t see it at Sundance last January, but this much loved film has been urgently brought to my attention my friends and readers, so I’m accepting their endorsements on faith.
Crash went over extremely well with my UCLA Sneak Preview class, which is made up of mostly older viewers. Cronicas may do marginal business, or it could do better than this. (It’s a dark piece, but gripping as hell with an above-average John Leguizamo performance.) The rest will all be “audience” pictures. Maybe not as big as the monster tentpoles, but popular.
I’m rock solid about Kingdom, Crash , Ballroom , Cronicas and Hustle & Flow because I’ve seen them. I’ve read Richard Kelly’s Domino screenplay and can’t imagine Scott not making something startling and fully alive with it.
I haven’t seen Cinderella Man but I’ve been hearing pretty good things for a long while and the trailer sells you on the prestige-level elements.
I would like Richard Linklater’s The Bad News Bears to be a bit more than Bad Santa-manages-a-kids-baseball team…but maybe that’ll be enough.
Based solely on the trailer, I have massive hopes for The Wedding Crashers (New Line, 7.15).
I would like to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith and John Stockwell’s Into the Blue (MGM, 9.30) pan out.
(l. t. r.) Hustle & Flow‘s Taraji P. Henson, Paula Jai Parker, Terrence Howard and Taryn Manning.
Hooray, sight unseen, for George Romero’s Land of the Dead (Universal, 6.24)! And here’s hoping Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm (Dimension, 7. 29) turns out to be somewhat better than the advance word has indicated for several months.
Long Lines, Few Surprises: Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of The Sith (2oth Century Fox, 5.19); Madagascar (DreamWorks, 5.27); The Longest Yard (Paramount, 5.27); Batman Begins (Warner Bros., 6.17), The War of the Worlds (Paramount, 7.1); XXX2 (Sony, 4.29); Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (Warner Bros., 7.15); The Bad News Bears (Paramount, 7.22); The Island (DreamWorks, 7.22); Dark Water (Disney, 7.8); Fantastic Four (20th Century Fox, 7.8); Bewitched (Columbia, 6.24).
For some reason, Monster in Law (New Line, 5.13) isn’t making me tingle with anticipation. Same deal with Aeon Flux (Paramount, 8.12); The Honeymooners (Paramount, 6.10); The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe (Disney, 4.29); The Lords of Dogtown (Columbia, 6.3); The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Warner Bros., 6.3); and The Pink Panther (MGM, 8.12).
Talk Soup
That rollicking commentary track by Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church on the Sideways DVD made me think of a few others.
You can’t listen to this anymore unless you’re a laser disc collector, but Howard Suber’s commentary about The Graduate for the Criterion Collection laser disc is the most insightful I’ve ever heard or read about this film.
Suber’s commentaries on the Criterion laser discs of Some Like it Hot and High Noon are, I feel, just about perfect, and it’s a crying shame they’re not available on DVD.
The late John Frankenheimer’s commentary about the making of The Train is one of the best of its kind — the most candid, intimate and precise. It was first available on an MGM/UA laser disc for The Train that came out in the mid ’90s. Wonder of wonders, it was actually transferred to the MGM/UA Home Video DVD.
The giddy, almost drunken-sounding chat between Kurt Russell, Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale on the Used Cars DVD is a real hoot.
So is the commentary track between Ron Shelton, Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins on the Bull Durham special edition DVD.
The chat between Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs on the DVD of The Limey is a classic, especially when Dobbs starts laying into Soderbergh for ignoring chunks of his screenplay and thereby inviting commentary from critics that the explanation of story and character in the film was threadbare….when in fact it wasn’t on the page.
I loved Soderbergh’s chat with Mike Nichols on the Paramount Home Video DVD of Catch 22, and I can’t imagine that the Soderbergh-John Boorman chat on the forthcoming DVD of Point Blank won’t be worth its weight in gold.
David Thomson’s commentary about Out of the Past for the old Image laser disc version that came out in the mid ’90s is lost to the world (and will probably never be heard on DVD), but it was truly a masterful verbal essay.
If anyone has any others they’d like to mention….
For me, a great commentary isn’t about how brilliant or informative or well prepared the talkers are, although obviously that matters. It’s about how much they get to you.
Does what they have to say seem open, engaging, amusing? If it’s a filmmaker talking, is he/she offering some kind of deeply sincere exploration of the process, or is he/she giving what might be called a good-enough performance?
Authenticity
“Have you seen the trailer for The Lords of Dogtown (Columbia, 6.3) yet?
“As an avid skateboarder from 1975 through 1990, I can say with some authority that none of those guys would have said any of the lines in the trailer. The dialogue is atrocious. I’m predicting this thing is going to laughed right out of the theaters by skaters when it hits.” — Jody, c/o, www.guruphiliac.org.
Jeff to Jody: Like what, for example? What doesn’t ring true?
Jody to Jeff: Here are some examples:
“‘Now get out there and surf, you little grommets.’ I think it would be more like ‘you little assholes’ or ‘you little fuckheads.’
“‘With these you can do the same hard turns you do on your surf boards.’ It would be more like, ‘You can shred the street, dude.’ Or, ‘With these you won’t slide out anymore.’
“‘This wave breaks 24 hours a day, everyday. You know what, bros? You’re going to be the first to ride it.’ From Tony Alva? No way. I don’t know the man, but I do know he wasn’t known for his verbal expressiveness.
“And it’s not like these guys suddenly decided to ride pools. There was a distinct progression from ramps and drainage ditches to pools, half-pipes and full-pipes.
“Other offenders:
“‘Yeah, surf it like a wave, man.’
“‘We can’t bail on Skip. We’re Z-Boys. We’re family.’
“‘Hey Tony, it looks like it’s going to be you or me.’
“‘We’re going to be on summer vacation for the next 20 years.’
“It all sounds cloying and false to me, as if they’ve dumbed it way, way down for general consumption.
“These kids were basically the gangsters of their era and area. Some of them may have been intelligent, but none of them wanted to sound it. It just wasn’t cool back then. Insight was not approved.
“I wasn’t there, so I guess I’d have to admit I’m talking out of my ass with regards to the actual Z-Boys.
Heath Ledger (long blonde surfer hair, black shades) in scene from Catherine Hardwicke’s Lords of Dogtown.
“But I did work for a California pro skater in his distribution company. I also sold skateboards at a skateshop in Orange County. And I was at the birth of the Orange County punk movement at the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa. I also worked at Gotcha Sportwear and Stussywear, both in Orange County.
“Now I’m a middle-aged graphic designer living a few thousand miles away from the ocean, and I’m an occasional fruitbooter (rollerblader) to boot.
“I could be completely wrong, but the dialogue in the trailer just wasn’t ringing true at all for the time and venue. That’s not at all surprising given Hollywood’s penchant for dumbing everything down to the LCD, but I hoped it would be different for this movie. So far that doesn’t appear to be the case.
“Then again, maybe they used all the worst dialogue for the trailer in the hopes of pulling the widest audience.”
Pitt, Jolie, Aniston
“What is it about beautiful, confident, talented, take-charge women like Angelina Jolie that scares the bejesus out of everyone? And what is it about Jennifer Aniston, who in all her movies seems to be re-cycling simpering, clueless Rachel, that makes people want to leap to her defense and assume that everyone else in the saga is a villain?
“Jolie can act circles around Aniston, does not seem nearly as high maintenance, and does not seem to need everyone around her constantly reassuring her as Jennifer reportedly does.
“I love the spin on this. The Jennifer camp says Brad broke Jen’s heart and that all was a paradise before homewrecker Jolie came along. The Pitt camp says he’ll let her have the house and that he was powerless against Jolie…Brad Mouse to her Angelina Cat. And the Jolie camp just says the hell with all of you, I don’t need to sleep with married men, they’re lining up for me, plus I work for the U.N.
“Why can’t it be as simple as this? Pitt, wanting children, seeing his wife booking movies into her 40s and realizing that it ain’t gonna happen? And Jennifer seeing that the family promises she made during Friends don’t hold a candle to grabbing movie offers before her heat dies down and she hits the Hollywood women-over-40 ceiling?
And Jolie being flabbergasted that Pitt has allowed it all to come to this and nature taking its course?
“Will I see Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Nope. Partly because the trailer looks lame and the story does not sound that compelling. And also partly because of the whole Pitt-Aniston-Jolie saga. I am tired of reading about it and don’t need to pay money to watch Pitt and Jolie play house.” — Zoey.
Dreams May Come
The shooting and projecting of movies on 35mm film is a dying practice, and it won’t be long before everything is digital this or that…no argument there.
But when will digital projection really be here, and from what digital source or delivery system will movies be obtained and projected — satellite transmission, fibre optic cable, pirate-proof DVDs?
I don’t know how long it will all take, but probably a while. Five years, ten years. Big changes in the way things are done never happen until economic conditions demand them…until the captains of industry feel the flames licking their feet.
But while we’re waiting and trading scnearios, here’s one that’s been passed along that’s more diverting than most. Some of it is fact, the basic thrust of it seems sensible, and the parts that aren’t verified or have been denied seem…well, intriguing. And digging it all up and learning a bit about the world of digital tomorrows was fun.
It involves Regal Entertainment, the 6,273 screen chain composed of Regal Cinemas, United Artists Theatres and Edwards Theatres, and a purported, unverified but logical-sounding plan said to be under consideration by the chain’s owner, reclusive Denver billionaire Phillip Anschutz, to move a significant portion of Regal into a sophisticated digital projection mode.
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The scenario, which has been derided as “conjured,” “colorful,” “nonsense” and having “no basis in fact” by Anschutz’s spokesperson Jim Monaghan, is two-fold — partly about a new middle-American, family-values digital distribution network that may be in the offing, and partly about a nationwide fibre-optic delivery system for films to be shown digital in theatres.
The technical speculation is that movies (in the form of digital feature-film data) could theoretically be sent from a digital switching center (possibly from the St. Louis headquarters of Qwest, the phone company owned by Anschutz) over a vast network of fibre optic cable that’s been laid down by Anschutz alongside the tracks of his Union Pacific railroad company, which he also owns. The films would then be relayed to Regal theatres, booths and projectors and thereby projected.
In so doing, the theory goes, Anschutz would become not just a major digital distributor of movies (through Regal Cinemedia, the division of Regal that attends to the digital potential side) but also, producing-wise, a major market force for G and PG-rated films through Anschutz’s two production companies, Bristol Bay and Walden Media.
Anschutz, in short, would one day be the Big Kahuna of not just a digital-projection empire, but the driver of a kind of ideological market force that, in part, would deliver family-friendly films produced by the Anschutz Film Group, the parent of Bristol Bay and Walden Media.
An indicaton of Anshutz’s game plan lies in the fact that he financed Taylor Hackford’s Ray to the tune of $35 million, but only upon an insistence that Hackford deliver a PG-13 film.
As Associated Press reporter Sandy Shore reported on 2.27, “Anschutz is a devout Presbyterian, but associates say he doesn’t try to influence projects with his beliefs.” Hackford told Shore he and Anschutz “disagreed” about the PG-13 rating, but once Hackford backed off from wanting to possibly deliver an R-rated film, Anschutz “left him alone to make the film.”
“He’s a conservative Republican and he knows I’m a liberal Democrat,” Hackford told the reporter “That didn’t mean we couldn’t talk about business.”
The technical speculation is that Anschutz has a contingency plan to eventually bring cinema-grade digital projection (i.e., with a 2K capacity, in keeping with today’s higher standards, or possibly a 4K capacity) to many of Regal Entertainment’s 6273 screens, which are mainly located in the Midwest and southwest.
Before going into total pooh-pooh mode Friday morning, Monaghan said that the cost of installing cinema-grade digital projection systems is the big question mark facing Regal and other theatre chains. “Nobody has figured out how to pay for it,” he said.
And Lauren Leff, spokesperson for Regal Cinemedia, was careful to point out that
“the Christie L6 projectors Regal currently has installed to operate…do not meet the standards Hollywood is working toward for future projection of full-length digital cinema features.”
There are three ways to deliver digital movies to theatrical movie screens — satellite, fibre optic and specially encoded DVDs.
Nicole Sperling wrote last October in the Hollywood Reporter that Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. and the Walt Disney Co. were in “exploratory talks” to form a joint venture to facilitate the installation of digital cinema systems.
As I understand it, the primary idea is to come up with a way of distributing and projecting cinema-grade digital images (i.e., more or less indistinguishable from top-grade 35mm projection) through specially-encoded or encrypted DVDs.
The major Hollywood distributors formed a consortium two and a half years ago called the Digital Cinema Initiative with a plan to develop digital projection technology and settle on certain operational standards, which would be organized and facilitated by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).
Leff told me Regal Cinemedia is keeping its eye on what DCI (and/or the three above-named studios) will finally decide upon. And yet Anschutz has an enormous investment in a nationwide fibre-optic cable network, which seems to indicate his possible leanings regarding digital projection plans.
I’m a bit fuzzy here and there (I only have one body, two phones and eight hands), but more than a dozen years ago AT&T approached Anschutz with a proposal to pay a fee for permission to lay down a fiber optic cable along the entire Southern Pacific and Union Pacific right of way — in other words, all over America. Anschutz said no but we will do it for you, for a fee.
Anschutz took ATT’s money, dug the trench and used their money to buy a fiber optic cable three times bigger than AT&T’s (about six inches wide, one guy told me) and put it right down beside the smaller-capacity AT&T cable and covered it up. The cable was eventually utilized by QWest, Anschutz’s phone company.
As Lewis MacAdams put it in his 1998 profile of Anschutz in Los Angeles magazine, “Emulating the way the telegraph came west with the rails, Anschutz used the railroad’s vast right-of-ways — many of them originally granted by the federal government for building the transcontinental systems — to lay an information pipeline: Qwest, the world’s most advanced, high-capacity fiber-optic network.
“When Qwest is fully deployed [at the end of ’99], according to Wired magazine, it will have greater capacity than AT&T, MCI, Sprint and WorldCom combined to almost instantly transmit very large data files or images between 125 American cities, Europe and Mexico,” MacAdams reported.
The idea, I’ve been told (and I realize I’m repeating myself, and that I sound a bit breathless) is to send digital movie data through this fibre optic network from some kind of digital switching center under the auspices of QWest in St. Louis, which would be using a massive Cray computer as its brainiac nerve center.
I agree — the supposed plan sounds around-the-corner and not-yet-real. And if I were Monaghan, and my boss was a secretive, reclusive super-rich tycoon who refuses to deal with the press, as Anschutz does, I might say it’s all bogus too. And some of it might be.
And yet the idea makes sense, and much of what I’ve heard is verified, so I think Monaghan, a nice guy, may be stonewalling a bit.
This morning Monaghan wrote and said “there is no plan in existence…or in thought…the likes of which you have described to us by telephone and by e-mail.”
I replied, “You’re saying Phillip Anschutz has no plan or intention whatsover to eventually introduce a digital projection system within a portion (large or otherwise) of Regal Entertainment’s 6200-plus screens?
“With QWest’s vast investment in a huge fibre optic network and the capacity of this network to handle huge information files…..you can’t be saying Anschutz intends to stay with 35mm film projection in his theatres and has no plans to bring in cinema-grade digital projection for showing movies.”
Monaghan said, “You have asked me to sort out that which is factual from that which is inaccurate in terms of the information you. As the core of your information and beliefs [as convyeyed in your e-mail] is completely untrue and has absolutely no basis in fact, all of the detail supporting that false premise is moot.”
I replied, “You’re saying that the ‘core’ of the information/belief as passed along in my e-mail letter — that Anschutz is developing a system by which digital movie files could be fed to Regal Entertainment cinemas through QWest’s vast fibre-optic network…you’re saying this is complete fantasy and without a factual basis of any kind?
“I’m sorry to be blunt, Jim, but nobody in exhibition or distribution would accept that Anschutz is intending to have 35mm film projection be the technological cornerstone of his projection systems over the next five to ten years and not develop an integrated digital projection system of some kind.
“Every player in the distribution world accepts that digital is coming, is inevitable. It’s all a matter of cost and timing…i.e., when? I’d like to buy what you’re saying, but there is simply no logical way to accept that digital cinema delivery in Regal in the future is some kind of pie-in-the-sky, pot-in-the-pipe concept.
“Given this inevitability, which of the three digital cinema delivery modes, any reasonable person would ask, would Anschutz be investing in?
“The disc mode is said to be close to being finalized and worked out by SMPTE for that consortium of Hollywood distributors, so it’s possible Anschutz could be looking at this as a possibility. Is this the more likely possibility?
“He could also be looking at satellite feeds as the most economical and effective option….is he? (Satellite feeds can be affected by weather, so this is not a very secure option, I’ve heard.)
“It seems like the most logical option for Anschultz, given his huge investment in fibre optic, is to plan for the digital delivery of movies via QWest’s fibre optic network.”
Monaghan concluded, “Having been told by two [public relations reps] associated with both the Anschutz Company and Regal Entertainment that there is no basis in fact for the very colorful story you have somehow conjured, we do not expect to see any of this nonsense on your website or in any other medium.”
To which I replied, “I didn’t maintain that all of the reports and suppositions in my letter were factual, but I know that Anschutz’s investment in his vast fibre optic network is considerable. Elemental logic dictates that he would be loooking at deploying this network as part of a delivery-of-digital-movies strategy.
“I’m not saying I know that Anschutz is, in fact, doing this, but to characterize the basic elements of what I conveyed in yesterday’s e-mail as ‘conjured,’ ‘colorful’ and ‘nonsense’ with ‘no basis in fact’ defies credibility.
If this story came to you on the good authority of someone else,” Monaghan wrote, “and you feel compelled to believe them and not us, then I would expect anything you write to be fully disclaimed. That is, that you would identify the individual or individuals who have provided you this information … as well as our position that the story is completely untrue.
“I understand your position and thank you for conveying it,” I replied, “and I appreciate [the value of] your time and the courtesy that you’ve paid to me. At the same time, I hope you understand how difficult it is for me, and for anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the realities of 21st Century theatrical exhibition or distribution, to accept what you’re telling me as entirely candid.”
Monaghan had the last word when he wrote back this afternoon. “My answer was and is [that] there is no such plan,” he said. “If you find that answer misleading, so be it. To have answered in any affirmative manner would have been misleading.
“For you to twist that answer, however, to suggest that I’m claiming that Anschutz and/or Regal Entertainment ‘intends to stay with 35mm film projection’ is one of the most [amateurish] attempts at bogus journalism that I’ve seen in a long while.
“Of course the industry will change, and I assume that Regal will be competitive in whatever future environment presents itself. That’s not to say, however, that Anschutz or anyone else I know has a plan or is now developing a digital projection system.”
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