In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • With love from Michael Moore

    Capitalism: A Love Story“Capitalism: A Love Story.”

    That, Variety informs us, is the title of Michael Moore’s latest, which you may remember remained nameless even through its own teaser trailer. So, simply by waiting this long, he even turns the choosing of a title into a publicity opportunity. You sort of have to admire the way he plays the game, right down to his cornball blurb:

    “It will be the perfect date movie … It’s got it all — lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It’s a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let’s just say it: It’s capitalism.”

    Spooky that I asked yesterday for a documentary to step forward and report for awards season duty, and a mere few hours later we get this. The film bows October 2nd, courtesy of smart indie outfit Overture Films.

  • ‘Funny People’ goes red band

    Thanks to commenter AmericanRequiem for reminding me to post the new “Funny People” trailer. (Hey, I have to sleep sometime.) From where I’m standing, it’s a notable improvement on the previous trailer, not least because it’s considerably more tight-lipped about plot developments than that one was. Shame about that.

    Interesting that this one seems to place more emphasis on the Seth Rogen character, who was pretty much just parsley on the side in the first one.

  • New ‘District 9’ trailer and poster

    Expanding on the teaser that generated much excitement among genre aficionados a few months back, comes this more revealing trailer for South African Neill Blomkamp’s freshman feature “District 9,” produced in association with Peter Jackson.

    Can’t say I’m as sold on the venture as others are — and the new trailer makes it look rather broader and less enigmatic than what we were originally led to expect — but I’m always up for seeing my hometown of Johannesburg show its sun-bleached colors on screen. Represent, Joeys. (Newish one-sheet after the cut.)

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  • Sri Lanka kicks off foreign film race

    Flowers of the SkyWow, the Oscar off-season gets shorter by the year. Before we know it, they’ll generously let us have a single night’s sleep after the ceremony before plunging us into campaign hell.

    Of course, I exaggerate — this is hardly news to set pundits’ pulses racing. Still, last year we at least got to wait until late August before the convoluted (and invariably disheartening) process of assembling the contenders for Best Foreign Language Film began with Denmark submitting first. (And promptly sinking without trace.)

    This year, Sri Lanka comes first — and early — out the gate by naming its official Oscar submission as “Flowers of the Sky,” a melodrama from director Prasanna Vithanage than screened earlier this year at the Palm Springs fest. The flim’s site describes it as follows:

    Faded film star Sandhya Rani (Malani Fonseka) unexpectedly sees her profile rise again when she is embroiled in controversy. As a media-crazy nation draws her into its net, she is confronted with a changed, compromised industry – more commercialized, media savvy and value-less. As she faces her new found fame, Sandhya comes to confront her darkest demons – and also herself…

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  • International ‘Hurt Locker’ one-sheet

    You’re probably aware that the opening 8 minutes of Kathryn Bigelow’s staggering “The Hurt Locker” are available to view online. I’m not linking on point of principle — the increasingly popular tactic of marketing movies via isolated clips rather than trailers doesn’t sit well with me anyway, but in particular, an opening sequence as tense and electrifying as that of “The Hurt Locker” deserves to be experienced unspoiled on the big screen. Seek it out if you must, but I advise against it.

    Meanwhile, IMP offers a pair of new international posters for the film: they’re nothing like as strong as earlier designs, but I guess floating heads still sell for some folks. Glad to see they’ve kept that terse tagline, though. Similar second design after the cut.

    The Hurt Locker

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  • 28 docs boost their Oscar profile at DocuWeeks

    Racing DreamsFor documentaries, qualifying for Oscar consideration can be a rough ride. Academy rules stipulate that a film must at least enjoy a week-long theatrical run, in both New York and Los Angeles, to be eligible — which can be a tall order for tiny movies on tricky subjects.

    So — acting as a kind of fairy godmother to independent documentary makers struggling for exposure — we have DocuWeeks, a three-week-long showcase sponsored by the International Documentary Association, in which a selection of features and shorts screen on both coasts. In doing so, they both qualify for the Academy awards and raise their profile to potential voters.

    It’s a nifty tradition that has already seen 16 films go on to make the Oscar ballot, including 2007’s winning feature  “Taxi to the Dark Side” and last year’s champ in the short race, “Smile Pinki.”

    This year sees a total of 28 films — 18 features and 10 shorts — in the DocuWeeks lineup, so it seems safe to wager that we’ll be hearing more about at least some of them as the awards season progresses. I admit I don’t keep up the documentary side of things as much as I should, so I know next to nothing about most of the inclusions in the globally diverse group.

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  • Always a day away

    I’ve had a chaotic day today, so I regret to inform that I haven’t yet finished hammering out this week’s edition of Page to Screen. Apologies. Be sure to check in tomorrow for a discussion of Dennis Lehane’s “Shutter Island.” Promise.

  • It was always you, Rhett

    Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone With the WindChad’s excellent Sunday Cents columns have previously inspired discussion amongst readers about the rights and wrongs of adjusting box-office figures for inflation. I must say it’s always made perfect sense to me, and I’m even more in favor after reading this interesting Bloomberg chart, which lists the top grossers of all time after inflational adjustment.

    Under these circumstances, “Gone With the Wind” handily see off all challengers with a gross of $1.45 billion — a satisfactory outcome for me, given that it’s my personal number-one film of all time too. Meanwhile, “Titanic” — the all-time champ on the unmodified chart — drops all the way to #6 when inflation enters the equation. Result.

    Below is Bloomberg’s inflation-adjusted Top 10; after the cut, the equivalent ranking irrespective of inflation.

    TOP 10 ADJUSTED FOR TICKET PRICE INFLATION

    1. Gone with the Wind ($1,450.7)
    2. Star Wars ($1,278.9)
    3. The Sound of Music ($1,022.5)
    4. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial ($1,018.5)
    5. The Ten Commandments ($940.6)
    6. Titanic ($921.5)
    7. Jaws ($919.6)
    8. Doctor Zhivago ($891.3)
    9. The Exorcist ($793.9)
    10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves ($782.6)

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  • 7/8 Web Round-up

    Woodstock• AMPAS elects its governors. Among those returning to the board: Tom Hanks, James L. Brooks and eternal Oscar bridesmaid Kevin O’Connell. [Variety]

    • Nat Rogers reflects on his favorite thesps of the decade’s first half… and how they’ve fared since. [The Film Experience]

    • Martin Scorsese looks back on Woodstock. A good read, this. [Times of London]

    • Ebert has some choice words for the “Transformers” defenders. [Roger Ebert’s Journal]

    • Noah Forrest boards the “Hurt Locker” train. [Movie City News]

    • Ahead of “Frozen River”‘s long-delayed UK release, Melissa Leo talks about how an Oscar nod has changed her career. [Times of London]

    • Celebrating the delights of the movie-mangling “Cinemash” web series. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Why Nicolas Cage should still be in the conversation for Superman. Uh, right. [The Guardian]

  • “Do or die, Bed-Stuy”

    Do the Right ThingLike others, we’ve been paying mind on these pages to the 20th anniversary of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” a film that now finds itself in the odd position of being both a period piece and a still-resonant state-of-the-nation address. Certainly nothing in the two decades since its release has surpassed it as a study of the intricacies of race relations in modern America. (Even supporters of “Crash” would have to admit that.)

    Anyway, my attention was brought to this beautiful tribute to the film’s legacy in black-interest magazine The Root, in which Kai Wright reflects on what changed — and remained — in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood that the film immortalized:

    Much has changed since 1989, my older neighbors say, but much hasn’t. We’ve got a few coffee shops for hipster art students—black and white alike—but Spike’s Sweet Dick Willie, Coconut and M.L. still set up their own corner cafes. They lounge on paint buckets and tumble out of parked gypsy cabs, interrupting their endless debates only to ogle women young enough to be their daughters.

    It’s hard to imagine a race riot anywhere in New York City these days, let alone Bed-Stuy. Frustrations are more likely to erupt inward—into domestic violence, drug abuse and depression, small beefs that spiral up into shootings. Maybe Spike can make another film about it, and this time Bed-Stuy’s people will actually do the right thing—and take their riot over to Wall Street.

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  • Jennifer Hudson sings for Michael Jackson

    I’m sure many of you have been watching the Michael Jackson memorials proceedings just as I have, so there’s no need to remind you of what went down. A largely tasteful, moving affair, I’m pleased to say.

    In the interests of keeping things movie-related (I mean, how many other Oscar winners can claim to have performed for the King of Pop?), I thought I’d put up this clip of Jennifer Hudson belting “Will You Be There” with immense spirit. Not the man’s greatest song, but it hardly matters. Say what you like about Hudson as a thespian, but by God, that voice can move mountains.

  • Small victories

    As “Transformers” hangs on by a hair to the the top spot for another week Stateside, there’s at least some minor consolation for the film’s detractors (and Michael Mann champions) in the weekend figures for the UK box office, where it wasn’t even a contest for the win:

    Title Weekend Takings Total to Date
    1. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs £7 639 884 £7 639 884
    2. Public Enemies £2 228 291 £2 228 291
    3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen £2 214 505 £20 785 050

    .

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 first-half releases that deserved better

    Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston in He's Just Not That Into YouAround this time last year, we did a mid-year stocktake of sorts, wherein the site’s various contributors named the best (and worst) of what the cinematic year had presented thus far. You may have noticed that we haven’t offered up a similar piece for 2009. Time constraints may have had something to do with it, but given the slow start we had to the year, I suspect regular readers won’t have found it particularly hard to pick our favorites from the crop.

    As we’ve made clear on these pages, Kris and I are united in our admiration for such 2009 releases as “Public Enemies” on the large end of the scale, and “Sugar” on the much, much smaller end and, of course, “The Hurt Locker” somewhere in between. On our own individual tangents, Kris loudly declared his love for “Star Trek,” while back in May I went to bat for Olivier Assayas’s gorgeous “Summer Hours” – with the caveat that it wasn’t a 2009 release for me at all.

    (Release dates play havoc with such lists – using the U.S. release calendar as my guide, I could just as well hand year-best status to something like “Hunger,” if I hadn’t already done so in 2008. Even in the list below, I’ve technically cheated three times by including films that saw the light of day in my neck of the woods last year.)

    In any case, all of these are films that, wonderful as they are, either have already built devoted critical and/or public followings, or (as in the case of “Enemies”) hardly need further exposure. (Do you really need one more critic this summer to remind you about the wonders of Pixar?)

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  • Really, Hollywood? Really?

    Charlie Sheen in Major LeagueWe’re all accustomed by now to Hollywood’s insatiable appetite for rehashes, but nonetheless, two reports yesterday of imminent sequels still gave me pause. While one is as depressing as it is predictable, the other is just, well, weird.

    To deal with the former project first, by now you’ve probably all heard the confirmation that Mssrs. Spielberg, Ford and LaBeouf are set to dethaw Indiana Jones’s frozen corpse one more time. Of course, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull” all but promised a sequel itself last year, but there was always the hope that time might stop, gravity might reverse itself, and the fifth film might not come to pass.

    Cinematical yesterday expressed faint hope that the series can be salvaged (if only because it could hardly get worse), but suffice to say the majority of the blogging world isn’t with them. Of course, I’d say this is the sequel that nobody asked for, but since last year’s atrocity still raked in the dollars, I can’t.

    No, yesterday’s title of “sequel that really nobody asked for” had to go to “Major League 4.” That’s right, “Major League 4.” (If you’re too young to know what I’m talking about, look it up. And then please kill me.)

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  • 7/7 Web Round-up

    Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard in Humpday• Good piece from David Poland about the age-old disconnect between audiences and critics. [The Hot Blog]

    • Marshall Fine implores you to see “Humpday” instead of “Bruno.” Why not see both, I say. [Hollywood & Fine]

    • While we’re on that subject, “Transformers” won the weekend box-office battle after all. Ew. [New York Times]

    • At the mid-year point, Peter Knegt reflects on the indie box-office winners and losers. [indieWIRE]

    • Cute feature, this — a rundown of the greatest credit sequences. Today: “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” [Cinematical]

    • On the web’s smartest new blog, a panel of critics re-evaluate Michael Mann’s “Miami Vice.” [The Auteurs’ Notebook]

    • Pamela McClintock contemplates the implication of the PG rating — after the franchise’s dip into PG-13 waters — for the latest “Harry Potter” effort. [Variety]

    • Speaking of which … my, how they’ve grown. [The Guardian]

  • Baldwin, Ford, Affleck … Clooney?

    George ClooneyIsn’t it funny how there are some high-profile films that you anticipate, see, thoroughly like at the time … and then promptly forget about until they crop up on late-night TV, in conversation or in some news archive, and you think, “Hey, that wasn’t half bad?”

    Such is the sort of flashback I had while reading on Anne Thompson’s blog about the possible resurrection of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan franchise.  My first thought was that the films are collectively something of a 1990s time-capsule item, and perhaps best left in that era — but then, my first thought was that we’d left the franchise in Harrison Ford’s hands 15 long years ago.

    For whatever reason, it entirely slipped my mind that the Ryan saga had already been rebooted and de-aged for the 21st century, in the shape of Phil Alden Robinson’s disposable but thoroughly enjoyable 2002 “The Sum of All Fears,” with a pre-backlash Ben Affleck doing the honors. Whether or not the film, with its terrorist-heavy plot, came too soon after 9/11, it did respectable business, but the overhaul didn’t seem to stick in the wider public imagination.

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  • Celebration of amorality?

    Johnny Depp in Public EnemiesAmid the mixed critical reaction to “Public Enemies,” I’ve been surprised at how few critics have responded to the film’s contemporary resonances: the dialogue (intentional or otherwise) between the film’s portrait of the Great Depression and the bleak economic landscape of the present day.

    One reader recently (and rather astutely) noted the film’s general lack of interest in the “people’s champion” side of Dillinger’s persona, which might indeed have brought the film’s social agenda more to the fore. But David Cox at the Guardian believes the film already celebrates Dillinger quite amply, and draws parallels between the film’s events and the present-day corruption of the banking system. The only difference, he argues, is that the Dillingers of today lie within the system:

    As he did in Heat, Mann toys with the much-favoured Hollywood theme of moral equivalence between wrongdoers and their state-ordained antagonists … It’s this air of pervasive amorality that most clearly links Mann’s tale with its present-day analogue. We may be seeing less bloodshed now, but we’re not short of our own kind of depravity. In some ways it’s even worse than the version that Mann portrays.

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  • Cheap thrills

    I was tickled by — and completely related to — this piece by Cinematical’s Elisabeth Rappe in which she expounds the joys of embarrassing bargain-bin DVDs.

    You know, the movies you know you shouldn’t own (and in some cases, don’t even like that much) but can’t resist picking up when you’re in the store and spy a mark-down sale sticker slapped on the cover. The ones you bury at the back of your bookshelf lest your cineaste friends see that you actually spent money on “13 Going on 30.” (Yeah, I did … and a well-spent pound it was too. Anyway, “Legally Blonde” needed company.)

    Here’s Rappe on her latest red-faced purchase:

    This week’s guilty grab was Australia, a film I was very disappointed in, and planned never to see again unless I stumbled on it while flipping through cable channels. But there it was on half.com, “watched once, brand new” for $5.00 … It’s really the perfect movie for knitting to, because I can just concentrate on turning my sock heel, and look at the pretty cinematography.

    My DVD shelf is chock full of such films. Kate and Leopold, The Long Kiss Goodnight (worth far more than whatever I paid), my entire Mel Gibson collection, Marie Antoinette, The Wedding Singer, and so on. The list is long and not very illustrious (Vanishing Point remake, anyone?), but at least I can say I didn’t go out of my way for most of them.

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