Given the general…well, at least marginal view that Elaine May‘s Ishtar (1987) is better than its rep and is actually hilarious in portions, it seems odd that today, 22 years after its catastrophic release, there’s no domestic DVD available. (A tape was released in 1994, but no DVD was ever pressed.)
Think about that for five or ten seconds. A major event movie that cost $55 million in 1985, ’86 and ’87 dollars (which would be what by today’s dollar? $120 million or so?) with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman and miles of sand and a rich supply of dry underplayed humor (including some of the stupidest song lyrics ever written), and you can’t buy or rent it. And yet it’s available on home video in Europe.
Obviously Columbia TriStar Home Video execs still regard this legendary flop (which made only $14 million and change) as some kind of mongoloid child that needs to be kept chained in the basement, even though they had nothing to do with its production. This is residual corporate cowardice in action. Over 15 years since it came out on VHS and not one home video executive has had the courage to say, “Hey, let’s put out an Ishtar DVD! Infamy makes for a kind of fame, and maybe it’ll sell if we put some effort into the marketing. Times have changed, tastes have evolved.”
Ishtar was one of the first “no-laugh funny” films ever released. That was a completely new concept back then, and people didn’t know what to make of it. Beatty and Hoffman played a pair of profoundly untalented New York-based songwriters — I remember that much clearly. I also recall that the first half hour or so played pretty well, and that the film’s troubles didn’t start until they travelled to Morocco…Ishtar, I mean. I remember that the best no-laugh humor happened when Beatty and Hoffman were compulsively composing awful songs.
Ishtar costarred Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin, Jack Weston, Tess Harper and Carol Kane. It was shot by the great Vittorio Storaro. The intentionally awful songs were written by Paul Williams.
“Come look, there’s a wardrobe of love in my eyes / Look around and see if there’s somethin’ in your size.”
Ishtar is a Sony asset, a decent (some would say inspired) piece of entertainment, a legendary Hollywood debacle that, like Heaven’s Gate, gradually found a measure of respect. Okay, among people with a slightly corroded and perverse sense of humor but still, no one today thinks of Ishtar as a film to be shunned. I haven’t conducted a poll, but I’ll bet very few critics would put it down, and that most would probably say “not half bad.”
So why not put out a no-frills DVD? In fact, why not a DVD/Bluray with a documentary about how one of the biggest bombs in history came to be made (I’ve been reading the tragicomic story in Peter Biskind‘s Warren Beatty biography), and how, after time, it came to be seen as a half-decent, curiously off-funny thing, and in some circles as a kind of misunderstood gem. Certainly nothing to be ashamed of.
“Life is the way / we audition for God / let us pray that / we all get the job.”
Here‘s Janet Maslin ‘s moderately positive N.Y. Times review. And Roger Ebert‘s pan.
For some reason Page Six decided to axe the best quip in a 2009 ten-best list compiled by Forbes.com’s Bill McCuddy. “Kill Adolf” seems a decent-enough witticism in a Tarantino context, no? Maybe this is due to my newfound respect for McCuddy after he predicted that Larry King quote about Nine. A longtime Fox News entertainment guy, McCuddy does stand-up at Caroline’s on Mondays.
I chatted last night with legendary director Whit Stillman, who’s been living in Manhattan and writing screenplays for the last several months after an extended expat period in Barcelona and Paris. The occasion was a screening at the 92YTribeca of Metropolitan (1990), which will have a 20th anniversary showing at next month’s Sundance Film Festival. Sometime during the first weekend, I was told, with a social gathering to follow. Calling all Stillman heads!
Stillman and Metropolitan star Chris Eigeman did a q&a after the screening, and then everyone hit the bar and drank beer.
My favorite Stillman film is Barcelona by far, but Metropolitan (which came out on a Criterion DVD in ’06) is still dryly amusing and faintly bizarre in its weird and chuckly anthropological way. It’s a carefully ordered tale of some Bush-era rich kids that has some of the sharpest (and at times almost surreal) young-person dialogue ever written.
In a certain sense Metropolitan is arguably a more interesting film now than it was in 1989/90. Because it shows more than ever that Stillman is Wes Anderson‘s uncle. (Or older brother, older cousin or whatever.) Because they both make/have made films about brilliant, curiously charismatic people who breathe rarified air and live on their own clouds. Stillman is a little more in the UHBs (urban haute bourgeoisie) than Anderson, but it’s a similar line of country.
Stillman and Anderson are also somewhat similar in the sense that they shoot with an exacting visual aesthetic. (Anderson a little more so). Plus they both dress nicely and have both lived in Paris (Stillman previously, Anderson currently) and probably share several other similarities. And yet they’ve never met, Stillman told me last night. Weird. (Hey, Wes? If you’re reading this get in touch and I’ll hook you guys up.)
Metropolitan/Barcelona/Last Days of Disco director Whit Stillman, Metropolitan star Chris Eigeman — Saturday, 12.12, 9:25 pm.
If you ask me Stillman laid the foundation, built the house and then moved to Europe, and then Anderson moved in and remodelled and made it his own. Anderson obviously has his own thematic signature that has manifested in many different ways, but I can’t help but think of Stillman’s three films (including The Last Days of Disco) when I think of Anderson’s. The linkage is unquestionable.
Anyway, it would be great to see Stillman get out of Director’s Jail and get back on the horse and start composing more films about witty rich oddballs who needs to find their souls. I would kill to see a Whit Stillman film about the Goldman Sachs culture — it’s a subject that has his name on it. Maybe if Anderson really and truly doesn’t feel that he wants to direct The Rosenthaler Suite (which I think he should), producer Brian Grazer could discuss it with Stillman, who’s one of the few directors who understands the ironic quirk character of uptown Manhattan realms.
What would the last couple of weeks before a new super-costly James Cameron movie be without a Kim Masters article saying “uh-oh…big financial risk…look out!” But her 11.29 Daily Beast piece, titled “James Cameron’s Titanic Gamble,” does introduce an Avatar impression that I’ve never heard before. The Na’vi don’t look like cats but goats, in the view of “a veteran producer of A-list films.”
My initital Na’vi impression, which I posted on 8.14, was that they reminded me of the old Pinocchio donkeys in the 1940 Walt Disney film. Then I switched over to Captain Planet With Cats and then the wide Na’vi cougar noses. But after reading Masters’ piece I can’t get the goat thing out of my head, despite the above photo comparison not lending much support.
The other Masters quote that leaps out is one from a studio chief, who says, “I’m curious to see [Avatar] — I’m not anxious to see it.”
There’s a kind of a spillover effect between comments about the “dead eyes” in the characters populating Robert Zemeckis‘ A Christmas Carol, which under-performed, and the wary expectation comments about Avatar. (I had to read the piece a second time to realize the guy complaining about “dead eyes” was referring to the Zemeckis film and not Cameron’s.) But Masters makes it clear a paragraph or two later that Avatar isn’t expected to look the same or suffer a Christmas Carol fate.
Avatar producer Jon Landau and Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman have both said that the film has the ‘emotionality‘ that previous motion-capture films have lacked,” she writes, adding that Cameron “used tiny cameras mounted on his performers’ faces to avoid the dead-eye look.
“No one has seen a full version of Avatar yet but those who have seen pieces of it say the technique is more immersive than flashy.” But when I visualize goats I don’t think of emotionally expressive eyes — who does?
Here’s another expression — written by the THR/Reuters’ Alex Dobuzinskis — of the current Hollywood thinking that stars matter less and less these days.
Due, just to repeat, to the successes of the star-less Twilight/New Moon, Paranormal Activity, The Hangover and District 9. And, of course, to underwhelming returns from big-star vehicles like A Christmas Carol (the sunset-ing of Jim Carrey?), Duplicity (a too-smart chess-game movie or the near-fatal wounding of the Julia Roberts legend due to passage of time?), Surrogates (Bruce who?), Funny People (serious Adam Sandler doesn’t sell like the Eloi-friendly version), Land of the Lost (the spearing of Will Ferrell), and Imagine That (further decline of Eddie Murphy).
Steve Mason is reporting that Roland Emmerich‘s 2012 made $25 million yesterday and is looking at a $60 million weekend total. Varietysaid it might go well over $40 million, and I predicted the high 40s and maybe a nudge over $50 million — and we were both too cautious. Everyone was.
Robert Zemeckis and Jim Carrey‘s A Christmas Carol took in $5.5 million yesterday — a “decent” hold — with an expected $20.4 million weekend tally and a 10-day cume of just under $50 million. The big indie story is Lee Daniels‘ Precious (Lionsgate) taking in $1.75 million yesterday from just 174 screens and a likely $5.3 million by Sunday night, for roughly a $30,000 per screen average.
This weekend Lionsgate’s Precious averaged $100,000 per location in 18 locations — an indie-level record. An Oprah Winfrey-propelled mix of upscale black-and-white audiences (plus middle-scale and downscale black crowds) resulted in a $1.8 million Friday-to-Sunday gross.
The Robert Zemeckis/Jim Carrey/3D A Christmas Carol only managed $31 million from 3,683 locations for a $8,417 average. Not bad but a bit of a shortfall, given the broad family-market potential. I suspect it was because parents decided that the mo-cap Scrooge character looked too scary for toddlers.
Sony’s This Is It was down 40% from last weekend — a relatively decent hold — for a second-place showing of $14 million from 3,481 screens. It has now $57.9 million in the domestic tll and more than $100 million from overseas bookings
Overture’s The Men Who Stare at Goats came in third with $13.3 million earned in 2,443 situations for a $5,444 average.
As expected, Richard Kelly‘s The Box didn’t do too well. The James Marsden-Cameron Diaz horror pic took in about $7.9 million from 2,635 theaters for an average of $2998.
Robert Zemeckis‘s A Christmas Carol “turns a 19th-century morality tale into a 21st-century funhouse ride, replete with digital greasepaint and 3-D gaping,” says the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell. “Look past all the techno tinsel, and the uplift is the same as always. You might even enjoy the 3-D faux snow landing in your lap.
“The bad news is that all this glitter is not gold. This is the third film by Zemeckis using motion-capture technology, the others being The Polar Express and Beowulf, and he has yet to prove the worth of a dubious hybrid that is not quite live action and not quite animation.
“Indeed, with A Christmas Carol he comes closest to disproving his own strenuous arguments in favor of the process, and 3-D only serves to further gild the lily. He’s taken an immortal story and an A-list cast – including Jim Carrey, Colin Firth and Gary Oldman – and nearly smothered them with the digital equivalent of cellophane.
“It’s like taking a Christmas wreath and dipping it in wax or laminating a Christmas card in plastic. Zemeckis risks creating another Yule ghoul: the Ghost of Christmas Without Soul.”
I won’t purchase the new VCI Bluray of Bryan Desmond Hurst‘s A Christmas Carol (1951) until sometime this evening, but the frame scans posted by DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze look stunning. I’ve written repeatedly that Hurst’s is the most emotionally affecting, the best acted, the spookiest and the most atmospherically correct of all the versions. So it’s great to finally have an immaculate Bluray rendering to have and hold.
The great Alistair Sim captured on VCI’s Bluray
Scanned off VCI’s 1998 DVD
Tooze chose to compare the Bluray to scans of VCI Video’s 1998 DVD, which looked fairly murky even back then. The contrast would have probably seemed less striking if Tooze had comparison-scanned VCI’s 2007 Ultimate Collector’s Edition, which I own and regard as a relatively decent mastering.
It goes without saying I’m much more cranked about this Bluray than the Robert Zemeckis/Jim Carrey version coming out on Friday — no offense. No matter how good this Disney film looks or plays, it can’t hope to match Hurst’s old-London flavoring and the constant sense that the ghost of Charles Dickens might have co-directed, or at least would have given his stamp of approval.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s Stephen Zeitchikreported this morning that Robert Zemeckis and Jim Carrey‘s A Christmas Carol, the 3D motion-capture pic opening Friday (11.6), “is a faithful retelling (in tone and dialogue) of the Dickens classic” and “a technical marvel, uncannily beautiful and attentive to detail. But narratively, the story of Ebenezer Scrooge’s visit to his past, present and future feels less compelling.
“Some of the biz and media people we talked to at Wednesday’s screening weren’t showing overwhelming support,” Zeitchik writes. “The buzz was of a masterful filmmaking feat that’s nonetheless lacking in charm. (The movie has its dark moments, and while it’s not like we wanted easy uplift, it still feels like only a wonderfully constructed series of set pieces without the emotional and storytelling swells you’d want from a story like this.)
“Meanwhile, the kids — or at least the kids sitting behind us — could be heard registering several times that it was ‘scary.’ Which is fine if your movie is Paranormal Activity and your target audience is 16-year-olds, but it’s less encouraging if your movie is a holiday tale and your target audience is 8-year-olds.
I’m ignoring the paragraph that suggests that a film filled with wintry snowfall moments might have a problem coming out in early November with jacket-and-sweater only just beginning…that stuff doesn’t matter.
“:If Disney did manage to turn the film into a hit, then it would validate Zemeckis — who, strangely, sees this brand of motion-capture filmmaking as the future of the movies (after Beowulf two years ago failed to do same). And it would reinforce the 3D-first strategy increasingly adopted by studios. There’s also a comeback story for Jim Carrey, who’s had two consecutive live-action underperformers.
“But the fact that there’s so much riding on it also has is downside. If it’s not a hit, some of these ideas/people could be…well, Scrooged.”
Which reminds me that the finest Christmas Carol ever made — the 1951 British version with Alistair Sim — has a Bluray version coming out on 11.3
Amy Rice and Alicia Sams‘ By The People: The Election of Barack Obama will finally debut on HBO on Tuesday, 11.3 — precisely 365 days after the ’08 Presidential election came to an end. I reviewed the film in early August after catching a showing at the Sunshine Cinemas, and there wasn’t any way to be kind or charitable. It’s a political chick flick with no edge — butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth. And it’s way too easy in its depiction of Hillary Clinton ‘s campaign.
I began by calling it “a fairly bloodless portrait of one of the most fascinating, breathtaking, sometimes ugly, occasionally transcendent, up-and-down racial-tinderbox elections in our nation’s history. It’s up-close and somewhat intimate and sorta kinda dull at times. Not novacaine dull but glide-along, yeah-yeah dull.
“You’d never know what a heart-pumping ride Obama’s two-year campaign for the White House was by watching this nicely assembled but excessively mild-mannered film.
“Rice and Sams were given extraordinary close-up access to candidate Obama and his innermost circle (David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, etc.) as well as Michelle, Sasha and Malia. The co-directors caught some good stuff along the way (Obama tear-streaking when speaking about his recently-deceased grandmother, a ten year-old campaign worker patiently dealing with a contentious voter over the phone, etc.) but it almost seems as if Rice and Sams agreed to let Axelrod and Gibbs co-edit the film with an aim to de-balling and up-spinning the final version as much as possible.
“This seems especially apparent given the overly-diplomatic and toothless portrait of Hillary Clinton‘s campaign. Her current position as President Obama’s Secretary of State obviously means it would have been very politically awkward for a documentary to bring up her frequently ugly, race-baiting campaign tactics and so — I don’t mean to sound over-cynical and pat-minded but how else am I to process this? — Rice and Sams have given her a near-total pass.
“There’s no mention of Hilary’s incessantly playing rhetorical race cards, talking about how working white people support her, etc. There’s no footage or even a mention of Bill Clinton, and therefore no mention of his post-South Carolina primary remark that Obama’s victory in that state was somehow comparable to Jesse Jackson ‘s win there in the mid ’80s. There’s no mention of Hillary’s cynical campaign speech about how Obama “will bring us together and the heavens will part” speech, which she delivered, as I recall, during the Ohio-and-Texas primary campaign. There’s no mention of Hillary’s made-up Bosnia story about dodging bullets when she visited that country in the mid ’90s. There’s no mention of Samantha Power‘s “Hillary is a monster” comment. There’s no mention of Hillary’s bizarre refusal to concede when she should have (i.e., after Obama had his electoral-vote triumph sewn up) and how she had to be stern-talked into doing so by Congressional and Senatorial colleagues.
“It’s even more bizarre that the racial resistance factor among white voters — surely the central hurdle of Obama’s campaign — is only faintly acknowledged. We’re shown a clip of a couple of younger Bubbas stating that Obama’s ancestry is a problem, but that’s just about it in terms of Rice and Sams catching the backwater attitudes that were brought up by reporters and the political talk-show crowd nearly every damn day during the primaries and the general election,
“The Reverend Wright issue is raised (how could it not be?) along with Obama’s historic Philadelphia speech about racial relations. But there’s no mention of Michelle taking heat for saying that the positive response to her husband’s campaign was cause for her feeling proud of the U.S for the first time in a long time. There’s no mention of that idiotic terrorist fist bump flap. No YouTube clip of that West Virginia cracker lady on the back of that motorcycle expressing cultural shock at the sound of Obama’s name. There’s no mention whatsover of the fear of the Bradley Effect, a now-discounted concern that white voters might change their minds about voting for a black candidate in the privacy of the voting booth due to latent racism. And Obama’s decision to finally cut all ties with Reverend Wright is completely ignored also.
“And there’s very little mention of the general campaign against John McCain and Sarah Palin. It accounts for maybe ten minutes out of the film, which runs somewhere close to two hours. (I should have timed it but didn’t.) No right-wing stirring of the racial pot, no mention of McCain’s ‘The One’ ad (and no clip of David Gergen explaining that the racial coding of that ad was clear to anyone who grew up in the South), no expressions of bone-dumb ignorance (‘He’s…I think he’s an Arab’) and/or racial hatred at McCain and Palin rallies (‘Kill him!’).
“There’s some good B-roll footage of Obama playing basketball with friends, but the best photo-op basketball moment of the entire campaign — i.e., the moment when Obama made a near-perfect shot from outside the penalty circle in front of an audience of troops in Iraq — is missing. It leads you to suspect/presume that Rice and Sams didn’t cover last summer’s Middle East/European tour, and to ask why.
“In sum, For The People emphasizes emotionality and intimacy at the expense of the fierce melodrama and primal intensity that were fundamental aspects of the story. I could be mean and call it a puff piece and….you know something? It’s not being mean to say that because it more or less is that. I’m not saying that Rice and Sams were in fact emotionally entwined with the Obama campaign, but the doc makes it seem as if they were. And that’s a no-no. You have to step back and disengage and be merciless, if necessary.
“There are several little things in the film that are pleasing or revealing in this or that minor way. But the fact is that most of the film is not focused on Obama himself as much as his campaign staff, and much of this footage feels like B roll. The narrative emphasis in the doc is akin to the kind of backstory you might pass along to your grandmother as you show her your family photo album and explain this and that. It’s too kindly and considerate and smoothed over..
“It’s been pointed out by a friend of Rice and Sams that ‘the filmmakers made the film they wanted to make…it’s called By The People. And they captured the emotion of the campaign.’ On this last point I respectfully disagree.”