In Contention

Category: Daily

  • Get a haircut and get a real job

    OK, so this story of Daniel Day-Lewis becoming the first person to receive the freedom of County Wicklow, Ireland, isn’t really of immense interest to anyone outside, perhaps, breathless followers of the Wicklow social scene. (My apologies to those of you reading.)

    But this photo of Day-Lewis certainly grabbed my attention, if only because of just how unnervingly normal he looks in it. He’s barely recognisable as the floridly coiffed bohemian dude who rocked up at the Academy Awards last February. I’m hazarding a guess that the cropped hair is for his Jesuit priest role in Scorsese’s “Silence,” but where are the pirate earrings? The oddball Paul Smith tailoring? And we can’t see them, but I’ll bet his shoes even match.

    I feel strangely let down. What next, Mickey Rourke in simple black tie? Let your freak flag fly, sir.

    from left: Wicklow council chairman Derek Mitchell and Daniel Day-Lewis

  • Bored?

    I figured I’d come home tonight and throw in the “X-Men” Blu-ray trilogy as “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (which I saw this afternoon) makes for a nice lead-in to the series.  For no reason whatsoever, I’m thinking I’ll live Tweet the proceedings, so if you’re bored and/or have no life like yours truly, feel free to keep up.  Just put in “X2.”

  • Fox tries to explain the ‘Wolverine’ fib

    Hugh Jackman in X-Men Origins: WolverineOkay, so last week when junketeers got their first look at “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” many (especially the AICN crowd) were quick to dog-pile the studio for having the gall to “lie” when the film leaked earlier this month.  Fox honcho Tom Rothman, at the time, said the completed version of the film contained 10 minutes of footage not seen in the leaked workprint.

    As it turns out, this was reported as false (albeit through the heavy glaze of snark).  But that didn’t stop the studio from going on the record with Patrick Goldstein today to clarify:

    Fox’s senior vice president of corporate communications, Chris Petrikin…explains that he was probably the person who told Rothman that 10 minutes were missing from the pirated version of the film. He stressed that the studio was under enormous pressure after the piracy as it attempted to sift through a host of often wildly speculative Internet reports about the theft.

    “There was no ‘fibbing’ involved — that would imply that we were so on top of things that we anticipated having one of our biggest films of the year stolen and had time to concoct a plan to purposefully ‘spin’ wrong information,” Petrikin told me. “Remember, Tom gave this [Entertainment Weekly] interview a day after we learned of the theft. A lot of information and misinformation was flying back and forth then, and there was no way to sort it out quickly or definitively. In fact, I think I told Tom that there might be 10 minutes missing from the stolen version, based — obviously — on misinformation I was given or misinterpreted. The real issue is the scale of this crime and that the film was not finished when it was stolen.”

    Eesh.  I might have just embraced the old adage “Mum’s the word.”  Pieces like this seem to be making more of a mess of things.

    Anyway, I’ll get into why “Wolverine” doesn’t suck near as bad as I thought it would tomorrow.

  • Important

    Since it’s a level-headed assessment of another journalist’s work and not the bitching and shouting that has come to color similar exchanges, I think it is important to pass along two links: Bill Wyman calls foul on Nikki Finke’s re-editing of a story that got the facts wrong, and Patrick Goldstein links to same, giving more from his side of the story and giving Finke the chance to comment.

  • ‘Wall Street’ sequel moving forward with Oliver Stone, Michael Douglas and Shia LaBeouf?

    Michael Douglas in Wall StreetNot long ago, what with the housing market on the fritz and certifiable capitalistic ruin staring down the face of America, not to mention stoke brokers being painted as the devils of the earth, it seemed a great time to revisit Oliver Stone’s 1987 film “Wall Street,” the Michael Douglas starrer that put “greed is good” into the lexicon of trade pushers everywhere.

    Back before the release of Stone’s “W.,” screenwriter Stanley Weiser talked about the prescience of “Wall Street.”  At the time, “Gekko’s character was written to create an engaging, charming, but deceitful and brutal being,” Weiser said.  “I have nevertheless run into quite a number of younger people, who upon discovering that I co-wrote the film, wax rhapsodic about it . . . but often for the wrong reasons.”

    The time for a sequel, likely with a much more pointed message, seemed at hand.  Then word came that Stone had dropped out of pursuing a follow-up in favor of the long dormant “Pinkville” project.  But today, Patrick Goldstein offers the following juicy (but sourceless) tid-bit:

    …Fox is now saying the movie has a green light again. Stone is back aboard as director, Michael Douglas will reprise his role as Gordon Gekko and the studio is in negotiations with Shia LeBeouf to play a young Wall Street trader under Gekko’s spell — a somewhat updated version of the character Charlie Sheen played in the original film. The sequel’s original writer was Stephen Schiff, who has now moved on, with Allan Loeb (“Things We Lost in the Fire”) having done a rewrite of the script. Fox hopes to have the film in production as early as sometime this summer.

    The film is now simply going under the title of “Wall Street 2,” having shed its original “Money Never Sleeps” moniker. No one is offering a lot of specifics about the storyline, except to say that the focus remains on the Gekko character, whose exploits will closely reflect much of the greed and chicanery seen in the past year on Wall Street.

    I’m not really sure how I feel about it.  Getting someone like LaBeouf seems like the obvious play, but Stone is also something of a master at making an impact with the obvious, so perhaps this could work.  Read the rest over at The Big Picture.  (UPDATE: There’s also this AP story with quotes from Douglas and Fox spokesman Gregg Brilliant.)

    Meanwhile, allow me to submit this: Could “Wall Street” be the most dated film of all time?  Seriously.  That cell phone!  The art work!  Darryl Hannah!  Anyway…

  • ‘Silence’ smack-down

    (from left) Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster in The Silence of the LambsI stumbled onto Noah Forrest’s ribbing of Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs” over at Movie City News today toward the end of this piece, and frankly, I found little I could argue with.

    Here’s the key graph:

    I think seeing Bill Hader’s brilliant impression of Jame Gumb on a recent SNL made me question a lot of things about The Silence of the Lambs. First off, Jodie Foster is plain old not good in that film. Her accent is awful and she over-emotes constantly. Secondly, Ted Levine’s performance as Jame Gumb has turned out to be the most memorable thing about that film (“Is she a great big fat person?”). Thirdly, that film is really not that great and it pains me to say that because I always held it in high esteem. In fact, it plays better as an unintentional comedy than as a thriller.

    Ever since the film was released back in February of 1991, I’ve found myself scratching my head at its somewhat over-elevated status as a modern classic.  I fully agree with Forrest’s assessment of Jodie Foster’s Oscar-winning performance, for starters, and beyond the sheer thrill-factor of the film (it can’t be said that it’s not a solid genre entry), I never…ever…understood the awards train it dominated in the fall of that year.

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  • Get your votes in!

    Just a reminder that today is the last day for the second part of round one in our “most influential film of all time” poll series.  Get your votes in over in the left sidebar.  The new poll will hit tomorrow at 2:00pm PST.  I’m still shocked “The Godfather Part II” is surging ahead of the pack, but oh well.

  • Watch Chad’s film, ‘Luke and Brie are on a First Date’

    Some of you may not know that our own Chad Hartigan recently finished up his first feature, “Luke and Brie are on a First Date.”  The film played in and around the festival circuit and is finally available to buy or rent via Amazon Video on Demand.  Pretty decent price for a rental if you ask me, so give it a look if you have the time.  Here’s the trailer for the film:

  • The professional

    Liam NeesonIt’s not as if we were short of reasons to admire Liam Neeson in the first place. The man is a remarkable actor, by all accounts an intelligent, decent human being, and even in the face of his wife’s untimely passing, has always managed to keep his private life laudably, well, private.

    But even by his own stand-up guy standards, Neeson went above and beyond the call by returning to the set of Atom Egoyan’s new thriller “Chloe” to complete his scenes, a mere week after Natasha Richardson’s death. A deeply impressed Egoyan says:

    “He was very committed to the film and finishing his role, and he didn’t need to come back that soon … But he really thought it would be best for the film, and it was just such an unspeakably generous thing for him to do. And he’s an extraordinary, extraordinary person.”

    As for the film itself, I must say I’m intrigued. Egoyan, Neeson (who co-stars with Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried) and ultra-left-field scripter Erin Cressida Wilson (“Secretary”) occupy very different artistic spheres in my mind — given the auteur’s patchy form of late, the combination could get messy. Still, together with Sundance winner “Five Minutes of Heaven” (in which he does sterling work), it indicates a move into the kind of gutsy arthouse territory Neeson hasn’t entered much in recent years.

    In any case, Neeson’s recent mini-comeback has been one of the more pleasantly surprising developments of the past year. “Taken,” for all its sleeper success, was a rote effort, while you may recall I was none too impressed with “The Other Man” — but it’s encouraging to see a 56 year-old thesp (and one who has always seemed more comfortable as an actor than a star) getting major leading-man roles. Meanwhile, “Lincoln” and “Clash of the Titans” await him. Score one for the good guys.

  • Megan Fox in ‘Jonah Hex’

    I’ll leave it to the readership to answer the question, lest I seem like some kind of ass (too late).  But is it okay for one site to take another site’s exclusive pics and slap a watermark on them?  Anyway, Megan Fox is looking great in these new pics from the set of “Jonah Hex,” a project that has my fingers crossed:

    Megan Fox on the set of Jonah Hex

    Check out the rest at Movie Gab.

  • New stills and trailer for ‘Antichrist’

    Chances are it won’t net him the same level of mainstream kudos as “Slumdog Millionaire,” but a series of newly released stills for Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” confirms that we can expect some pretty special work from Academy Award winner Anthony Dod Mantle. (How great does it feel to read those last six words, by the way?)

    You can view more stills here, but it’s the milky lighting and Brothers Grimm-style atmospherics of the following shot that really got my attention. Whether the film is straight-up, balls-out horror fare or not (and given Von Trier’s ever-defiant track record, I can’t help wondering if we’re being wrong-footed by the marketing here), it’s clearly going to be a thing of considerable beauty. Cannes can’t come soon enough.

    A second gorgeous still after the cut, plus a new (presumably European) trailer: the latter isn’t significantly different from the first, but it quickens my heart nonetheless.

    AntiChrist

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  • The trouble with ‘Margaret’

    Anna Paquin in MargaretLast month, I discussed my frustration over the terminally delayed status of Kenneth Lonergan’s sophomore feature “Margaret,” while sharing a slender hope that linking of composer Nico Muhly to the project might bode well for its eventual completion.

    Unfortunately, an extended LA Times investigation into the matter suggests that “Margaret” is a long way from seeing the light of day — if that ever happens at all. John Horn’s interesting piece provides by far the most comprehensive breakdown to date of the factors delaying the film, and it doesn’t make for encouraging reading. With Lonergan apparently incapable of completing an edit that satisfies him and/or the film’s backers, “Margaret” is now deeply tangled in legal limbo.

    A number of producers and editors — including (Scott) Rudin, (Sydney) Pollack and Martin Scorsese’s legendary editor, Thelma Schoonmaker — have tried but failed to help Lonergan complete his movie, court documents and interviews show. With his financing from (Gary) Gilbert and Fox Searchlight cut off, Lonergan borrowed more than $1 million from actor and close friend Matthew Broderick (who has a small part in “Margaret”) in an attempt to complete the editing of the movie, according to a person close to the production.

    The film’s lengthy post-production sparked two lawsuits, which are scheduled to be tried in June and September. Last July, Fox Searchlight sued Gilbert and his production company, claiming he failed to pay the studio half of the film’s production costs. Two months later, Gilbert’s Camelot Pictures sued Fox Searchlight and Lonergan, alleging that the studio and Lonergan thwarted Gilbert’s many attempts to finish the movie, forcing Camelot to pay for “a clearly inferior and unmarketable film” that Lonergan, several people say, will not support.

    There’s a lot more messy detail where that came from, and the article lays it out better than I can. Horn also offers the bittersweet revelation that the troubled film buried beneath these unfortunate circumstances may well be worth saving.

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  • Best Actor watch: Hal Holbrook

    Hal Holbrook in That Evening SunIn his roundup of highlights from the Nashville Film Festival, Nathaniel Rogers chalks up a highly plausible contender for Best Actor honours this awards season: Hal Holbrook in “That Evening Sun,” an indie debut feature from Scott Teems.

    Playing an 80 year-old farmer desperately trying to hang on to his land, Holbrook’s performance has already drawn praise at last month’s SXSW  fest, where the film won an ensemble award. Amid a rave for the film itself (“an exceptionally fine example of regional filmmaking”), Variety declared Holbrook’s turn the best of his career, calling it “a vividly detailed yet subtly rendered performance.” Rogers clearly agrees:

    It’s based on the short story by William Gay about a farmer who escapes the old folks home and returns to his beloved farm only to find it occupied by new tenants. The film is well directed by Scott Teems, graduating from short films to his first feature, and an Oscar campaign could materialize for Holbrook if this movie gets a solid enough release. Holbrook plays a stubborn old ornery codger… one could say it’s an Eastwoodish role with less of Clint’s squinty menace and more of Hal’s weary sensitivity.

    There’s a theory I can absolutely buy into. From Richard Farnsworth to Richard Jenkins, the Academy has shown a soft spot for veteran character actors in gentle independent dramas, while their affection for Holbrook was made clear last year when they nominated him for a film they otherwise couldn’t have cared less about. Hell, in a weaker year, he could easily have won. (On a trivial note, the 84 year-old thesp could beat his own record as the oldest male acting nominee.)

    No indication yet of what kind of release the film might enjoy, but it sounds like one to keep an eye on. Powerful trailer after the cut.

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  • Switching channels

    Women on the Verge of a Nervous BreakdownIt’s been a full two decades since “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” Pedro Almodovar’s engagingly ramshackle, day-glo farce with a baldly self-explanatory title, garnered the then enfant terrible of European art cinema his first Oscar nomination and put him on the road to crossover respectability.

    Twenty years, ten films and two Oscars later, the auteur’s mainstream gentrification is complete, with the rather bizarre news that an Almodovar-produced TV drama series based on “Women” is in the works for Fox. Completing one of the odder talent pairings in recent memory, a pilot is being penned by “Grey’s Anatomy” scribe Mimi Schuir. Allow me a moment for that to sink in.

    It’s not that I mind Almodovar being embraced by a broader medium — to do so would be akin to those tiresome underground music fans who turn on their favourite bands the second they receive a smidgen of radio play. I’m actually pretty thrilled to see such a challenging, eccentric filmmaker finding this level of pop influence; if it brings new audiences to his rougher, earlier work, so much the better.

    Moreover, Almodovar’s ascendancy to the title of ‘America’s favourite Euro auteur’ has, by and large, been achieved by audiences adjusting to his sensibility rather than the other way round. (I would venture that “Talk To Her” is the most quietly subversive Best Original Screenplay of all time.) That he continues to alternate warm, humanist audience-pleasers like “Volver” with more probing, sexually contentious fare like “Bad Education” proves he’s no less audacious a filmmaker than he was in his early days — just a more mature and technically proficient one.

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  • ‘Funny People’ an ‘award-level thing?’

    Adam Sandler in Funny PeopleI don’t mind admitting that I wasn’t entirely won over by the trailer for Judd Apatow’s “Funny People,” which, for all its smartness, seemed to me a little too calculated in its bid for laughing-through-the-tears pathos. Like pretty much everyone else, James L. Brooks struck me as an obvious point of reference — but whether we were talking Brooks on a good or bad day was unclear to me. It’s just a (very long and over-expository) trailer, after all.

    Now Jeff Wells has chatted to a couple of folks who have seen it, and is passing along the word that Apatow has seemingly channeled Brooks on a very good day indeed. Awards-season good, even:

    Possibly an award-level thing, a director friend said this morning, although he was just passing along the chatter. It’s more in the realm of Sandler for Best Actor and Apatow’s script for Best Original Screenplay, he speculated, than a Best Picture shot…but you never know.

    So I called a non-vested guy who’s seen it, and here’s what he said: “Really funny, a really sweet movie, a lot of veracity…really a brilliant film. Everybody’s game goes up a lot. It’s a James L. Brooks-level thing and a great role for Adam. It’s a perfect blend of everything Sandler has done in a serious vein. The film could be a bit of a marketing problem because it’s about show business but it’s so real.. It’s about a famous guy, a comedian, having to deal with the fact hat he has no life and nobody to turn to. But he gets better [through a relationship with a younger comic]…it’s basically a love letter to having a family.”

    No specific mention of Leslie Mann, who struck me on paper as the film’s likeliest awards prospect, but that was a shot in the dark. Anyway, I seem to recall hearing near-identical chatter about “Spanglish” before it finally surfaced, so I’ll remain guarded. (I’m expecting something better than that fiasco, of course, but I’m just sayin’.) Encouraging buzz, nonetheless.

  • Visions of ‘The Road’

    Out there was the grey beach with the slow combers rolling dull and leaden and the distant sound of it. Like the desolation of some alien sea breaking on the shores of a world unheard of. Out on the tidal flats lay a tanker half careened. Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat of slag and then the grey squall line of ash.

    No adaptation this year is as dependent on matters of location and production design as John Hillcoat’s take on Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” a novel in which landscape is the narrative’s dominant antagonist. If the film can’t visually evoke McCarthy’s tangible sense of the familiar made alien through desolation, then it’s dead in the water.

    On the other hand, the sparsity of McCarthy’s prose leaves a lot of room of visual interpretation — contrary to what some have suggested, the novel is a highly cinematic work. So I’m intrigued by this gallery of conceptual “style frames” for the film, a collection of paintings, sketches and photo montages that give a vivid sense of the story world Hillcoat and his team have come up with. And on this evidence, at least, it looks to me like they’ve nailed it:

    The Road

    A couple more of my favourites after the cut. Check out the full collection here.

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  • Which moments hooked you?

    (from left) Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin in The Phantom of the OperaI love the current poll series about the most influential films of all time, but it got me thinking about the moments in movies that hooked me on cinema forever. You know, the ones we see as kids that have an enormous impact on us, forever bonding us to this art form we all so love?

    For me, as I’ve mentioned before, it was a scene in “The Ten Commandments,” Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of his own epic, which I saw in 1972 (I think) in a re-release of the picture. In the days before video (yep, that old) the studios would re-release their films every few years and this was a major re-release for Paramount. My dad, also a movie junkie (though not as bad as his son), had talked about this for years and now that it was back we were going.

    Admittedly, I was a tad cynical at 12 years old.  I fully expected to be disappointed.  Still I wanted to see it because I enjoyed going to the movies. Little did I know my life would be changed forever.

    We piled into the car and made the drive to the theater, which was packed with familes similar to ours. The lights went down and for the next four and a half hours I was swept back in time, stunned by the size and scope of the film, amazed at the colors, and most of all, astonished at Charlton Heston. Never before had I realized how an actor could command the screen.  I never felt like I was watching a performance, either.  In awe I watched the Exodus scene as literally thousands of actors moved out of Egypt, led by Moses.

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  • ‘Whatever Works’ clip

    Guy told you yesterday about those mixed-to-positive notices that have been rolling out of Tribeca for Woody Allen’s “Whatever Works.” I’m hopeful the film works since I’m certainly on the Larry David bandwagon and I snapped to attention last year with “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” one of the year’s best films and Allen’s best work since “Sweet and Lowdown.”

    Well today I stumble onto this clip from the film, which is pretty short and doesn’t give you much.  But it’s something.  Have a look: