Snapped in the Bank Street tube station on the Central Line. I like the Region 2 cover art.
Author: Kristopher Tapley
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Fresh face
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A shout from the UK
A nice view overrides an overcast (duh) drizzle here in London. I’m glancing out over the Thames as I write this, while a hop across the hallway here provides a look at Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the London Eye. Very pleasant.Meanwhile, down on the continent, the Cannes International Film Festival is catching its stride. The big news so far, as you’ll read below, seems to be that “Blindness” might have come in below expectations. Of course I’ll hold out judgment for myself when I see it, but I hope Fernando Meirelles doesn’t become a flash in the pan. As in love with “City of God” as I was, I was not impressed by “The Constant Gardener.” But his latest has been a must-see for me since the project was announced.
The crew has done a nice job of rounding up info and perspective in this space, but I always take the opportunity this time of year to spotlight Jeff Wells’s coverage of the fest, without a doubt the most eye-catching aspect of Hollywood Elsewhere in a given film year. Hopefully he comes across a change of clothes soon.
As for me, I’m sure I’ll be in and out with thoughts as the fest pushes forward and as the summer movie season continues to be unveiled. (Indy 4 posters are splattered across the double-deckers out here, of course.) Mike Leigh’s latest, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” is playing up the street at the Chelsea. I’m sure I’ll duck in there to give it a look within the week, as I’m pretty excited for the director’s latest. (Guy reviewed the film for us in April.) Otherwise it’s finding the typical balance of work and play — as always.
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Heading across the pond
I’m off to London later this evening for the next two months. I wanted to chime in and say that I’m happy the new digs and philosophy of the site has been met with a good burst of conversation, and I look forward to further growth throughout the year as we approach the Oscar season. Updating may or may not be spotty from me in the coming weeks. I’m not yet sure, as I’ll be in the throes of an internship I REALLY don’t want to screw up (at The Times of London…gulp). But I expect John, Blake, Gerard, Guy and, when he finally starts chiming in, Brian to more than pick up the slack.
Enjoy yourselves. And, as always, enjoy the movies.
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Fans anxious for the ‘Dark’ — What about Dr. Jones?
When I posted last week’s poll regarding most anticipated summer films, I had an inkling Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” would be a heavy favorite. I didn’t, however, expect it to claim nearly 75% of the readership’s votes. Impressive, indeed. (And you all know which direction I leaned on that one.) “Indy 4” and “Wall-E” were the only other competitors with numbers worth mentioning.With that assessment out of the way, and with “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” set to be the net big thing — both at Cannes and with a May 21 release approaching — I wonder what the general opinion is of this film’s actual existence. It’s been nearly two decades since Indy swung into theaters (ironically, along with a “Batman” installment and a Bond film still to come, like this year). I’ve had my reservations since the beginning, but at times, they are overridden by the strong desire fo rthis flick to kick major ass.
So what say you? Is it a disaster waiting to happen or, perhaps, the redemption of George Lucas and his recent desire to tinker with cinematic antiquity? Tell is this week’s poll!
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Out of the bag…
Call me crazy, but I think it’s a little brave for Warner Bros. to have gone ahead with marketing a Scarecrow figure for the upcoming “The Dark Knight,” despite those of us more than aware that the character shows up in the film. No?
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Indy screenings
Well the press invite to next weekend’s all media screenings of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” landed yesterday afternoon. Four showings on Sunday starting at 10 in the morning. It seems like it’s been a while since there was one of these all day free-for-alls. When was the last time, “King Kong,” maybe? I don’t know — but the tragedy (well, a personal tragedy, in any case) is that I’ll be across the pond as of Tuesday. So I’ll be checking it out on opening day with everyone else.
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‘Synecdoche, New York’ — another makeup contender?
Rope of Silicon recently posted a series of stills from upcoming releases, including Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” films and Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness.” But this image from Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” has me wondering if we don’t have another major contender for Best Makeup, a category shaping up to be more competitive than in years past.
Here’s the pic:
In addition to this new hopeful, I’d say there are solid bets to be placed on “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” and “Tropic Thunder.” Not a shabby start.
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Time Warner weeds out indie filmmaking
The news that Time Warner is phasing out Picturehouse Entertainment and Warner Independent Pictures was a bit upsetting this morning, I have to say.WIP may not have hit any major strides (though a Best Picture nominee one year after it became a brand wasn’t too shabby), but I believe Bob Berney had built something special at Picturehouse, a company that was beginning to look like a real home for filmmakers and visions you can’t put into little boxes.
Of course, the “dependent” circuit, as it were, has claimed this sort of artists’ haven thing for some time. But long ago many of them began to succumb to the same inflated budgets and profit-obsessed mentalities as their parent companies. I never got that vibe from Picturehouse.
Just look at some of the product: “Fur,” “A Prairie Home Companion,” “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Tristam Shandy,” “Mongol” and “La Vie en Rose,” featuring a lead performance whose ultimate Oscar victory caught more than a few people off guard.
Forgive me, but the notion that the now in-house New Line Cinema is somehow going to reach the niches that Berney and WIP did is a stretch. The potential seems all too clear for the brand to go back to the genre-soaked days of old, Dimension Films to Warners’ Miramax. But I’m happy to be proven wrong.
But for me, it’s a sad moment. I liked what Berney had cooking and on the occassions that I spoke to him about this project or that, I thought he had a pretty hip (and, thankfully, realistic) vision of what he could do at the company.
But what do I know?
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Someone put Wolf out of my misery…
He’s embarrassing himself, asking the same question over and over again when it’s clear the callers from Indiana just don’t have any insight into the matter.
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That leaked Two Face photo…
Jeff Wells is running it over at his site. So is AICN. Since I saw at least two take-down orders out there on the net, I refrained from running the pic. But Jeff says he ran it by publicists at Warner Bros. and no one got back to him, so taht was reason enough for him.
Anyway — while it’s there — what do you think? Personally, if it’s indeed real, I think it’s perfect. Especially knowing what it might look like on film with Wally Pfister playing with the shadows. And it’s downright terrifying.
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What next?
As you can see in the polls archive, it looks like readers aren’t too receptive to the notion that Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia” will be a major awards contender as it sits atop the hep with four or five other “frontrunners” early in the season. Joe Wright’s “The Soloist” wasn’t far behind. We’ll see if you guys were on the money in a matter of months, but for now, we’ve got a new query for you all.Now that the summer movie season has exploded onto the scene in the form of last week’s “Iron Man,” what are you most excited about on the horizon? Well, speak up!
(I went with the nine most likely choices and an “other” option as well. If you’re more psyched for something else, come back here and let us know!)
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‘Dark Knight,’ YouTubed
You know…just to round out a few days of Bat-talk:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKSUCoN7Ioo
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Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!
Lots of revamping and updating going down on the Oscarweb lately.
I noticed Sasha Stone is pointing out that old Oscar fan site standby, The Oscar Igloo, has recently changed faces to Awards Circuit (did the Academy give them shit over the Oscar moniker, too?). Now it seems David Poland’s long-in-the-making transformation of The Hot Button into a blog has come to pass.
I like this change, personally. Poland is a go-to writer for opinion — if anything — during the awards season months, and his work has always been far too scattered between The Hot Blog, The Hot Button and Movie City News. It seems he’s finally consolidating (like the airlines!), and that’s a good thing, if you ask me.
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Bringing the truths of Skid Row to the masses
The LA Times’ Steve Lopez is enjoying plenty of publicity this month for his latest book release, “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music.” The book was drawn from a series of articles Lopez published three years ago in his “Points West” column in the Times about a Juliard-trained, homeless musician: Nathaniel Ayers.The story was cleverly recounted with amusing detail by Lopez at a book reading in Pasadena last month, which was when I first discovered that the film adaptation (releasing later this year and starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.) might actually do some good in forwarding the issue of mental disorder in the U.S., a stigmatized subject that deserves more focus.
Lopez and “The Soloist” are featured on newsstands this week as Dana Goodyear writes the story and the issue up as a “Letter from Los Angeles” in the pages of The New Yorker. And I’m happy to see that the film may actually take these issues seriously, rather than setting them aside in favor of what would obviously be a heart-warming story.
Here’s a look at the abstract (I wish the full article was online, but it’s the May 5 issue for those interested):
Since the nineteen-eighties, L.A. has been known as the country’s homeless capital. Skid Row, a fifty-block area covering less than a square mile between the L.A. River and the office towers of downtown, has the city’s highest concentration of homeless people. A January, 2007, street count showed that there were just over five thousand homeless people living in the area, thirty-three hundred of them in shelters and nearly eighteen hundred on the street. Many suffer from mental illnesses, drug addiction, or both. Thousands are in recovery.
Joe Wright, the British director of the new Ayers film, decided to take the job on one condition: that the film be made with real people from Skid Row…Open casting calls for extras in the movie were held on San Julian Street, and hundreds of people turned up. Two miles east of the real San Julian Street, a set was built. The Skid Row cast members were asked to play recognizable street types. Some days there were four hundred extras on the set, the vast majority of them from Skid Row.
“The humanness of the story has given people a rooting interest in Nathaniel’s life, and to that extent it has destigmatized homelessness,” Lopez said. “But Nathaniel pays a heavier price. He has to deal with the attention.”
