In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Peter Morgan to join Bond team

    Peter MorganSometimes wishes really do come true in the movies. After March’s depressing (to me, at least) announcement that writer Peter Morgan was returning to the biopic well once more with a third take on Tony Blair, these were the exact words I wrote:

    I’d love to see his evident grace and wit as a dramatist put to work on something loose and fictitious — perhaps even more genre-based.

    Well, somebody somewhere listened to me (okay, probably not), and voilà — Morgan will be co-writing the 23rd film in the James Bond franchise. Collaborating with now-regular Bond writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, Morgan will essentially be taking Paul Haggis’s place as the prestige talented drafted in to class up the joint.

    (more…)

  • Michael Moore’s untitled bailout film gets a trailer

    Really, a trailer before the film has a title?  Has that ever happened?  Anyway, it’s not much.  A simple tease:

  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Island’ sighted, ‘Ghostbusters’ quoted

    Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter IslandA quiet week round these parts — and everywhere else, for that matter:

    • The week’s biggest talking point was the unveiling of the first trailer for Scorsese’s “Shutter Island.” Still mopping the drool from the floor.

    • We celebrated the quarter-century (!) anniversary of “Ghostbusters,” listing the most quotable lines from that eminently quotable film.

    • Our poll of the most influential films of all time finally wrapped … in rather muted fashion. But hey, democracy rules.

    • We had the privilege of interviewing the great Francis Ford Coppola.

    • This week’s Page to Screen examined “Playing the Enemy,” the inspiration for Clint Eastwood’s upcoming “Invictus.”

    • In a rare last-minute coup, “The Hangover” stole “Up’s” thunder at the box office.

    • The 30th anniversary of John Wayne’s passing provided the impetus to wallow in The Duke’s finest screen moments.

    • And finally, yours truly dipped his toe into the murky waters of Oscar predictions.

  • New ‘Hurt Locker’ poster

    The Hurt Locker

  • Looking down the nose from across the pond

    Cary Grant in North by NorthwestBoy, the Brits sure are down on Hollywood this afternoon.  First and foremost, perhaps as an off-set to that “here come the franchises” piece linked in this morning’s round-up, David Thomson writes nearly 1,400 words before coming to his fairly reasoned thesis.  If you get through the painful film school lesson (and really, I love a good talk about Hitchcock and his methods as much as the next guy, but come on), you’ll get to the meat of the matter:

    And where has this stylishness gone? As I think about the present range of film-makers I can see very few where one might reliably recognise their work simply from the way it looks – Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson. But who could say there has ever been an evident personal style in Steven Soderbergh, Ron Howard, George Clooney, the Coen Bothers, or even George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone, Barry Levinson, Stephen Frears or Milos Forman?

    It’s not that those people aren’t considerable directors. These may rely on modesty (Howard), a sense of overriding efficiency (Levinson), or a wish not to show off (Frears) or an eclecticism that can do all styles (the Coens). It may be a lack of authorial character or ambition (Lucas). But you can’t tell their style, in the way you could with Antonioni, Bergman, Godard or Fassbinder.

    Probably arguable points all.  And that’s if you can get past the fact that somehow a thumbprint is necessary for “personal passion” to be present in the filmmaking.  Watch “Hearts of Darkness” and tell Francis Coppola his films don’t convey “personal passion.”  But it was a nice excuse to write some pleasant words about Hitch’s best film (in my opinion), “North by Northwest,” which is playing at BFI as part of the director’s retrospective.

    And the hits keep coming.  Over at The Independent, Geoffrey Macnabb bemoans the remakes of classic 1970s films and the subtlty they have discarded in favor of pyrotechnics and unnecessary star power.

    (more…)

  • Twisted summer movie theories

    Alison Lohman in Drag Me to HellAlright, I had to let Hunter Stephenson’s rather suspect LGBT theory at /Film, vis a vis Kevin from Pixar’s “Up,” slide earlier in the week.  I’m not seeing it.  However, this Peter Sciretta item (which references an IMDb message board post) drawing parallels between Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell” and eating disorders is a fascinating one that deserves the space.

    Here’s a portion of the argument:

    [IMDb commenter] Micobiella thinks that Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell isn’t actually a horror movie, but instead a story of a farm girl with an eating disorder, who starves herself to fit a certain image and begins hallucinating and going crazy. Apparently you can watch the entire movie from this viewpoint, with few exceptions, and it all makes sense…

    Allison Lohman’s character Christine Brown admits that her mother had an addiction, and at one point in the film we see an overweight photo of Christine as a child in front of a sign that read “SWINE QUEEN”. She doesn’t want to become addicted to food. She doesn’t want to be like her mother. At the beginning of the movie, she is listening to a tape trying to correct her southern accent. She doesn’t want to be a farm girl. She has a good boyfriend, and is trying to move her way up with a career at the bank.

    She never touches food, because she is afraid it will make her fat and disgusting. According to the theory, there really isn’t a scary demon from hell, she’s just imagining everything. Hunger is making her irritable, she imagines the old woman’s creepy hand tapping on the desk when it was really just the other banker. Early in the film she passes out in her car and drives into a bunch of other cars in the parking lot. The woman from the bank never followed her, she imagined everything…

    The food is a key factor in most of the hallucinations. Notice that when food is introduced on screen, Christine gets attacked by the spirit. Every time the spirit appears at her house, she is in the kitchen. When she locks the spirit outside of her room, see sees the spirit in the form of a shadow of Pig hooves.

    And so on and so forth. Intriguing.

  • Danny Boyle parks at Searchlight for three years

    Danny Boyle on the set of Slumdog MillionaireA wise investment for both parties.  Patrick Goldstein had the exclusive story yesterday:

    Fresh off his best picture Oscar triumph, “Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle has signed a three-year deal with Fox Searchlight, which will co-finance and co-distribute the British filmmaker’s future films. The director already has identified a possible initial production under the first-look deal, a drama about Aron Ralston, the American mountain climber who amputated part of his arm when it was pinned in a 2003 back-country hiking accident.

    Fox Searchlight and Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” producing partner, Christian Colson, declined to discuss the pact, and Boyle did not immediately return an e-mail seeking comment. But two people familiar with the deal said that Fox Searchlight will team with Pathe Films, which co-financed “Slumdog Millionaire,” as part of the agreement.

    The rest here.

  • The Duke’s greatest hits

    John Wayne in Sands of Iwo JimaAs Kris mentioned Wednesday, this week marks the 30th anniversary of John Wayne’s death.  I’ve always respected Wayne’s performances and have for a long time, long before it was fashionable, to be sure.

    It was considered somewhat ridiculous for an acting student to admire Wayne’s work in the 1970s and 1980s. My God, we were supposed to be worshipping at the altar of Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino! Our professors hammered home the importance of truth in a performance, which I of course believe to be essential.  But I’ve always felt that Wayne’s finest performances were as truthful and as real as anything Brando did.

    Wayne could not do Shakespeare, and was horribly out of place in certain genres, but in his element — the American western, the war film, high adventure or romantic comedy — he was as good as anyone working in movies. There were some critics who appreciated his work while he was alive, but most came around after his death in 1979, which to me is rather sad.

    I have proposed a book on Wayne, slightly different from those out there already, that would focus on his best work on film. There are 11 performances in the Wayne filmography that were truly outstanding, in my opinion.  Here is perhaps a primer for Wayne fans, new, old and emerging — a list of his best performances and some comments as to why I think they deserve to be remembered forever. Let me know what you think.

    (more…)

  • Duncan Jones makes the ‘Moon’ rounds

    Duncan JonesI’m already on the record as being well in the tank for Duncan Jones’s “Moon,” a shock to the sci-fi cinema system that sports a tour de force portrayal(s) from actor Sam Rockwell.  So with the domestic release right around the corner, it warms my heart to see Jones lighting up the circuit, spreading the good word.

    David Poland dedicated one of his lengthy interview segments to the director recently, while Peter Knegt at indieWIRE has written up a lovely discussion with the man.  Here’s a taste:

    During film school, Jones worked his way into the “low, low budget” music video & commercials business.  After building up a reel, he started shooting short films, and later some bigger commercials. “Eventually [I began] working with a guy called Trevor Beattie, who ran a pretty big advertising agency in the UK,” Jones recalled. “He asked me to join his agency as a creative, where I would still get to direct, and I had the time of my life!  After 18 months of working at the agency though, I could feel the itch again, and knew it was time to take a shot at making a feature film.  I felt like I had acquired all the right tools through the many, many years I had spent since film school, and set about making ‘Moon,’ with my trusty gang of collaborators.”…

    The “science behind the fiction” came to Jones – who co-wrote the script with Nathan Parker – via a book called “Entering Space,” by Robert Zubrin. “This is an amazing piece of non-fiction,” he explained, “that goes into detail about how we might colonize the solar system, and do it in a way that is fiscally viable.  One of the early chapters in the book was about going to the Moon to mine Helium-3, an isotope that has the potential to be a ‘fuel of the future,’ clean burning, and to be used in fusion power stations, when we get them online.”

    God bless him.  Smart people are actually taking a crack at the genre once again.  Read the rest here.

  • 6/12 Web Round-up

    John Travolta in The Taking of Pelham 123(Wow…that week went by fast.)

    • Patrick Goldstein thinks the new “Shutter Island” trailer is overkill for those who don’t want everything spoon-fed. [The Big Picture]

    • More on the alleged misogyny of Lars von Trier. [CNN]

    • Shia LaBeaouf talks “Transformers” with John Hiscock. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Sarah Palin, the bold, the bright, turns her own daughter into a rape joke punchline.  Idiot.  (Sorry for the politics but it was worth conveying.) [Politico]

    • Is “Bruno” coming along at an inopportune time for the good fight? [New York Times]

    • Eight documentary dos and don’ts from Sundance programmer Basil Tsiokos. [indieWIRE]

    • Jeffrey Wells reports from a “Whatever Works” press conference in New York. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Speaking of which, Jeremy Kay has something to say on the franchise glut. [The Guardian]

    • In honor of the out-dated plot of “The Taking of Pelham 123,” Christopher Campbell offers up 10 stock market scams from the movies. [Spout Blog]

  • All together now — awwww…

    Dev Patel and Freida Pinto at the 2008 Screen Actors Guild AwardsAs if Dev Patel hadn’t had enough luck this year, he’s only gone and nabbed Freida Pinto into the bargain. The relationship between the 19 year-old Brit and the stunning 24 year-old actress has been something of an open secret for a while, but the couple have finally confirmed it to the press:

    The pair have been photographed cuddling up in Israel and ring shopping in London since the Oscar-winning film was released. The 24-year-old has now called 19-year-old Patel “a lovely boy”, according to The Sun. She added: “The friendship blossomed after the film, it got even stronger. This is all new to us.”

    Pinto’s ex, Rohan Antao, blamed Patel for their relationship breakdown. “I don’t know if they were having a sexual relationship but if I came face to face with him I would have things to say. Now everywhere I go I see them on billboards. I am devastated,” he said.

    Ring shopping! Cuddling! A love-rival barney! This riveting story was brought to you by Slow News Day, Inc. But hey, any excuse for a picture of Ms. Pinto, right?

  • ‘Creation’ trailer

    I’m not quite sure why it fell to the Telegraph to unveil this trailer for Jon Amiel’s Darwin biopic “Creation,” starring real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, but so it has. Take that as a measure of excitement elsewhere, if you will. Anyway, some have had awards expectations of this — I can’t say I have, and this creaky 100 seconds does little to change that.

    Amiel’s glory days of “Queen of Hearts” and TV’s “The Singing Detective” are long behind him. His last feature was 2003’s “The Core,” a film so appalling it sent him scuttling back to the small screen — where, coincidentally or not, this film looks to belong. (By the way, what’s up with the wholesale lifting of the beach cartwheel shot from “The Piano?” Ms. Campion, call your lawyer.)

  • What’s on your wall?

    The powers that be have conspired to put me in a decorating frame of mind this week. First Kris contemplated adding a “Double Indemnity” poster to his home gallery. Then I came across this Empire blogger asking the pertinent question: “What do your movie posters say about you?” And finally, this afternoon I happened to pass a private London gallery displaying in its window a luscious framed print of my all-time favorite film still (minus that pesky web watermark):

    Nastassja Kinski in Paris, Texas

    If you need to be told that that’s Nastassja Kinski in “Paris, Texas,” then you need to see the film, fast.

    Anyway, I have to have it. I’m finding myself over-familiar with the film posters I have, but too broke for the ones I want. I’m beginning to play with framed stills as an alternative, and I think Ms. Kinski would sit very nicely on my mantelpiece. (I also like the idea of her in a movie-versus-music face-off with Macy Gray, who presently occupies the opposite wall in a similarly mistrustful pose. I am a man of eccentric tastes.)

    (more…)

  • *chirp* *chirp*

    Wow, there is quite literally nothing worth discussing today.  This has been a pretty eventless two-week spread, actually.  I have no interest in writing about the baseless “G.I. Joe” speculation.  Nothing to offer the “Taking of Pelham 123” discussion because I’ve yet to make my way to a screening.  Nothing to say about the limited releases that I haven’t already said.  Nothing to say about “Ponyo,” which I saw earlier in the week, until LAFF amps up.

    Nothing.  Just the healthy anticipation for the approaching fest, an upcoming look at “Public Enemies” and finally running an interview piece with Denis Leary that was a Santa Monica delight last week (even though we don’t cover TV — but I couldn’t resist an hour with the man).

    Call this an open thread to discuss what you will.  I got…nothing.

  • 6/11 Web Round-up

    Preliminary watercolor for Mars Attacks!, by Tim Burton• Nathaniel Rogers and Katey Rich offer an early rundown of the best of 2009 thus far. [The Film Experience]

    • Breaking down the world premieres at the Edinburgh Film Festival, which yours truly will be covering. [Screen International]

    • Shia LaBeouf calls the “Transformers” sequel “literally the biggest movie ever made.” What a shame I won’t see it. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Tim Burton gets a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Freaky sketches included. [New York Times]

    • Anne Thompson asks why nobody will fund movies for mature audiences, gets Clint Eastwood’s thoughts on the matter. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Patrick Goldstein on the return (kinda) of Alexander Payne. [The Big Picture]

    • Random list of the day: 10 movies that didn’t need girls. (Sorry, but “Wedding Crashers” totally needed Rachel McAdams. Most movies do.) [Cinema Blend]

    • Okay, another list, but I really like this one: the 10 greatest multiple-role performances in history. (Yes, #1 is exactly what you think it is, and rightly so.) [Vulture]

    • Something belated for the “Bolt” fans: a video interview with Rhino the hamster. [The Guardian]

    • Not exactly new, and not exactly movie-related, but have you heard Scarlett Johansson’s duet with Pete Yorn yet? I dig it. [The Break Up Album]

  • ‘Shutter Island’ trailer

    Even though the thriller throttle is wide open, the moody atmospherics of this just-released trailer for Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” had me from frame one. DiCaprio looks in confident control, everything in stride these days. Kingsley conveys subtle sinister panache with the best of them. Haley is having the time of his life, taking the bull by the horns. And how can Bob Richardson be at the top of his game each and every time he turns his light meter on?

    This one just shot to the top as must-see. Now. Give it to me ASAP.

    See it in HD at Apple.

  • POLL: What is your favorite Pixar film?

    Now that our “most influential” series is complete, I figured a light and frothy poll would be just what the doctor ordered.  Now that “Up” has been in theaters for a couple of weeks here in the US (and as it slowly makes its way to other territories), I figured I’d go ahead and poll the readership on your favorite feature Pixar endeavor.

    For my thoughts on this issue, check my list of the studio’s efforts from a few weeks back.  Have your say in the sidebar poll and in the comments below.

  • Remembering The Duke, 30 years later

    John WayneAnne Thompson points us to a pair of John Wayne appreciations today that mark the Pearl anniversary of The Duke’s death.  Wayne lost his battle with cancer 30 years ago tomorrow and I have to say, it completely slipped my mind.

    Almost a year ago, our own John Foote wrote at length about The Duke and the lack of appreciation for his work as an actor, rather than merely an icon.  I’m keen to agree with many of John’s points, and having just completed a thesis on the western genre a few months back, Wayne has been very much on my mind as of late.  But that was a piece about how the genre has evolved far beyond that simplistic, iconic persona into something more nuanced, much as the country has done the same.  Still, an occasion such as tomorrow’s anniversary is one for remembering his place and legacy.

    Over at Cowboys & Indians magazine, Joe Leydon writes up The Duke with fond remembrances of his legendary roles and even a tip of the hat to his various steeds, never linked to one horse was Wayne.  Here is a section with thoughts from Wayne’s family:

    Just as important as the film roles for which he is most beloved, Wayne continues to be widely admired as a real-life hero because of the grace-under-pressure courageousness he displayed in his battle against cancer and for his legacy John Wayne Cancer Institute.

    Indeed, even Wayne’s sons and daughters express grateful surprise at the degree to which their father’s legacy continues to survive and thrive.

    “Here it is, 30 years since my father passed away, and he still has the popularity, celebrity, and visibility of a living person,” Patrick Wayne marvels. “That’s a phenomenal feat in the entertainment business. It’s something I can’t really explain — it’s just a fact of life, like he’s a force of nature.”

    “I think that even while he was alive, he had no idea how popular he was and how beloved he was,” says daughter Marisa Wayne. “And I think he’d have no clue that, even after being gone 30 years, he’d still be so popular and so beloved. I think that would mean a lot to him.”

    Roger Ebert, meanwhile, has also penned a love letter to the man, with all the childhood reminiscence you could want from a write-from-the-heart sort such as Ebert.

    (more…)