Category: Daily
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End of days
Ever since the detrimental Telecommunications Act, the world’s information sources have been owned by, what, five or six entities? It’s been the downfall of the press as we know it for over a decade. So if General Electric sells NBC/Universal to Time Warner (via Thompson on Hollywood), that’s lateral disaster. One more cat gets even fatter. The conglomerates hold sway. The apocalypse approaches.
I’m starting to buy into the old geezer mentality. Get a good seat. Grab the popcorn. Watch the doom and gloom unfold because that’s all we can do.
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Coppola goes to Cannes after all
After turning down an out-of-competition slot at Cannes earlier this week, it seems Francis Ford Coppola has had a change of heart. Variety reports that his new film, “Tetro,” will open the festival’s Directors’ Fortnight on May 14, marking the much-awaited film’s world premiere.The addition of Coppola adds some welcome lustre to a sidebar that frequently gets unfairly neglected in favour of the Official Selection (where “Tetro” was previously offered a place). The Director’s Fortnight may also attract attention for showcasing significantly more US talent than the selection of competition films announced yesterday, which included a mere two American titles (and only one from a Yank filmmaker, at that).
In contrast, five American features make the Fortnight lineup, including Sundance talking-points “Humpday” and “I Love You, Philip Morris.” (Meanwhile, Lee Daniels’ much-garlanded Sundance sensation “Precious” (AKA “Push”) will appear in the Un Certain Regard strand of competition.
Though the media focus tends to remain on the 20-odd films up for the Palme d’Or, Cannes runs far deeper than that. Some have complained that yesterday’s competition lineup, with its high quotient of previous winners and established auteurs, feels a bit too safe and insular (though “safe” hardly seems an apt adjective when the likes of Gaspar Noe and Lars Von Trier are involved), but it’s not just new talent lurking in the sidebars.
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Caine confirmed in small role in ‘Inception,’ Gordon-Levitt also joins the cast
I just got off the phone with Michael Caine for a piece I’ll have up momentarily concerning his rather striking performance in John Crowley’s “Is Anybody There?,” but while I had him cornered I thought I should ask him point blank about his potentially staring in Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” a rumor that’s been bouncing around unconfirmed as of late. As it turns out, Caine will be in the film, albeit in a very small role. Here’s what he had to say specifically:I have a little part in it, yes. Just a tiny part. Chris and I are very good friends so I’ll do that little part. I think I’ll work about three days. It’ll be extraordinary, wait until you see this one. I think if I say another word he’s going to kill me!
Also officially joining the cast today is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, stepping in for James Franco (who had scheduling conflicts). Here’s The Hollywood Reporter on that news:
A veil of secrecy exists over loglines, though the project, which Nolan also wrote, is described as a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within “the architecture of the mind.”
It is known that Gordon-Levitt is taking the role to have been played by James Franco, who bowed out over scheduling issues. He would play an associate of DiCaprio’s character, a CEO-type.
The cast sure is filling out nicely. But I’m just…dying to know what the heck this movie is about. “Set within the architecture of the mind” isn’t cutting it for me anymore, and now I have Michael friggin’ Caine telling me “it’ll bee extraordinary.” The last time he went on the record regarding a Nolan film, an Oscar resulted. Aggggh! Maybe I should take a lead from J.J. Abrams and patiently wait for what’s coming to me.
Keep an eye out later today or over the weekend for that interview.
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Mixed-to-positive notices for ‘Whatever Works’
Even with the success of “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” having partially righted the course of Woody Allen’s career, I can’t help holding my breath when the reviews roll in for his latest effort. Few auteurs inspire more haphazard uses of the term “return to form” (roughly applied to anything that doesn’t go completely off the rails from the word go), with so many critics seeming to forget that Allen’s best form is, well, anyone’s best form. (“Vicky” was a delight, to be sure, but Barcelona is a long way away from “Manhattan,” if you will.)In the case of “Whatever Works,” which just opened the Tribeca fest, the trade reviews — while uniformly encouraging — vary between gently disciplining expectations and wildly inflating them. Performing the latter task is David D’Arcy’s all-out rave in Screen International,which declares the film Allen’s best in over a decade:
Writing a New York story and shooting at home has given Allen a sureness to his voice. The dialogue here has a familiar ring yet a crackling freshness … Whatever Works transcends Allen formulas thanks to David, who is taller, balder and more foul-mouthed than the usual types Allen himself has played. Spitting out his lines, David finds a deeper nastiness here than the everyday bile of his character on the autobiographical Curb Your Enthusiasm. Allen does wonders with a character who isn’t seeking to be loved.
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‘Straw Dogs’ remake moves forward, some feel the need to bitch about it
It seems the knee-jerk reaction to director Rod Lurie’s decision to remake the Sam Peckinpah film “Straw Dogs” is just as you’d expect. Certain outlets see red and use their web space to bitch about the necessity of such a film. The Playlist and Rope of Silicon have rants up about it, if you want to wallow in the views of a couple of guys who have apparently conditioned themselves to call foul at the gall of a move like this.Thing is, Lurie is more than aware of the predicament he’s putting himself in by moving forward on this project. Though it cracks me up that the film is being held on high as a gem of cinema not to be tampered with. But some of these folks don’t seem to get what Lurie is going for with this film. How could they? They haven’t bothered to pick up a phone or get the goods on his view of things. Take this aside from the former:
The whitebread milquetoast of James Marsden playing Dustin Hoffman, in a remake of a controversial and acidic Sam Peckinpah classic about wimps and the savage nature of man? Sacrilege!
The last time I talked to Lurie about this project, he said he was remaking “Straw Dogs,” not Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs.” Lurie wasn’t raised like Sam Peckinpah and he doesn’t have the same outlook on life as Sam Peckinpah. He also never intended for his David Sumner to be a Jewish mathematician (though I think there’s plenty “wimp” stuff to go around with a silver spoon type). He wants to investigate how the events of this narrative would affect a different set, hence the casting of the “whitebread” Marsden and the role change to a Hollywood screenwriter.
Bottom line, I’m glad Lurie’s doing what he wants to do. In this age of remakes aimed at cashing in, I think it’s safe to say reworking a 38-year-old thriller that no one particularly loved when it was released is nothing if not a passion project, so good on him for doing what he wants to do.
For more even-handed viewpoints: Devin Faraci has an interesting take on how to change up the events of the narrative at CHUD, while Jeff Wells writes that Marsden’s casting means Lurie “naturally doesn’t want his film to be compared too precisely” to the original. But I think the reasoning is much more thoughtful than that.
(P.S.: I’m more than aware of my own tendency to knock films or ideas in advance based on my own views and opinions. This one just rubbed me wrong this morning, so I had to be a hypocrite for a spell.)
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Almodovar, Campion, Lee in Cannes lineup
The official list of films competiting for the Palme d’Or at next month’s Cannes Film Festival is out, and while it’s not a very surprising list — it’s been a given for some time that “Inglourious Basterds,” “Broken Embraces” and “Antichrist,” among others, would be in the mix — it still an exciting one, packed to the gills with auteur works from both regular visitors (Michael Haneke, Ken Loach) and long-absent ones (Jane Campion, Alain Resnais).I’ll dig into the selection in more depth later, but for now, here’s the list:
“Broken Embraces” (Pedro Almodovar)
“Fish Tank” (Andrea Arnold)
“Un Prophete” (Jacques Audiard)
“Vicenre” (Marco Bellocchio)
“Bright Star” (Jane Campion)
“A L’Origine” (Xavier Giannoli)
“Map of the Sounds of Tokyo” (Isabel Coixet)
“The White Ribbon” (Michael Haneke)
“Taking Woodstock” (Ang Lee)
“Looking for Eric” (Ken Loach)
“Spring Fever” (Lou Ye)
“Kinatay” (Brillante Mendoza)
“Enter The Void” (Gaspar Noe)
“Thirst” (Park Chan-Wook)
“Les Herbes Folles” (Alain Resnais)
“The Time That Remains” (Elia Suleiman)
“Inglourious Basterds” (Quentin Tarantino)
“Vengeance” (Johnnie To)
“Face” (Tsai Ming-liang)
“Antichrist” (Lars Von Trier) -
Gaiman: Cast David Bowie as the Joker in ‘The Dark Knight Returns’
I forgot to mention this in the item below regarding that Wired piece featuring Neil Gaiman and the current goings-on in the comic world. The subject of “unfilmable” comics came up, with “Watchmen” having landed in March and Gaiman’s own “Sandman” at the top of such a list for some fans.
Regarding Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” — which has, as always, been bandied about as a potential film project in the wake of “The Dark Knight,” some have speculated for “Watchmen” helmer Sack Snyder — Gaiman notes, in passing, a fascinating casting proposition that would frankly be kind of awesome:
I was reading photostats of Watchmen that Alan would hand me months before they hit the stands, and I would puzzle over everything, putting it all together in my head. That’s a different thing than Dark Knight Returns, where the details of the story are more malleable and simple. Batman comes out of retirement. Cute Robin arrives on the scene. Joker kills himself. Is Batman dead or not? He’s not. There’s not much to unpack. If someone cast David Bowie, as he is now, as the Joker, I think The Dark Knight Returns is doable.
Alright, someone, somewhere. Let’s make this happen. (Although Tim Curry would probably be better.)
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Neil Gaiman pens a love letter send-off to the Caped Crusader
I don’t know how many readers became regulars as a result of last year’s “Dark Knight” awards march, but I do know there are quite a few who share my enthusiasm for comics and Batman comics in particular. This post is certainly aimed at that crowd, but anyone eager to get their hands on a great story, in any medium, this is for you, too.With the 70th anniversary of the character coming next month, author, screenwriter and comics scribe Neil Gaiman has been charged with writing up the final chapter of Batman’s existence in the books as we’ve known them throughout that history. “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” is his “love letter” to the Bat, fashioned after Alan Moore’s similar send-off to Superman 20 years ago: “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”
Wired recently posted an in-depth interview with Gaiman, already high off the successful adaptation of his novel “Coraline” this year, and you get some great insight into his off-the-wall graphic denouement, which culminates with a sequence at once touching and unsettling, an homage of sorts to the finale of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Asked whether the character has lived in his heart for a while, given the deep attention and appreciation for his history in just two swift volumes, Gaiman had this to say:
When I was 5, I was in a car with my dad and he mentioned that there was this Batman TV show in America about a man who dressed up in a costume and fought crime. The only bat I ever knew was a cricket bat, so what I thought he looked like was rather odd, based on that. Months later, the series hit the U.K., and I remember watching and being affected by it. Really worrying, genuinely worrying, on a deep primal level, “Will he be OK?” That is the way it was with every deathtrap. If I missed the end of an episode, I’d get my friends to tell me he was OK.
Because of the Batman TV show, my dad picked up Smash! comics for me, which reprinted a Batman cartoon strip, which were much more about continuity than the television program. Those were my gateway drugs into Batman. Even when batman went twee in the ’60s, Neal Adams reinvented him as a long-eared, shadowy character. And when I was in my 20s, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns came out and I found myself writing my first piece of academic criticism on it.
I wanted my comic to contain all of that, from the story to the art. I wanted it to have that love in there. I wanted to write the last Batman with honor and love.
If you haven’t read these two books, I encourage you to do so, even if you aren’t up to snuff on what’s going on in the series at the moment. It reads as an independent study of the Dark Knight’s final hour. You can find “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” in the pages of “Batman” (#686) and “Detective Comics” (#853). And catch the rest of that Wired interview here.
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I vote Polamalu
Just a little Trojan support. But Fitzgerald or Roethlisberger would be cool too. Peterson will come, in time. Or at least he better.
Back to movies…
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POLL: The most influential films of all time, round one, part two
And with that, part one of the first round of voting comes to a close. Go here for the background on our survey.Today, we have 10 fresh titles in the left sidebar for you to rifle through on the way to choosing THREE worthy of moving forward to the next round. Each poll throughout the rest of round one will include 10 films and choices of up to three. Last week’s poll was the big dive, 16 titles. The five that moved on from there were:
“Apocalypse Now” (1979)
“Battleship Potemkin” (1925)
“Citizen Kane” (1941)
“Gone with the Wind” (1939)
“Rashomon” (1959)I must say, I was sad to see “Bonnie and Clyde” left out. The Arthur Penn classic was in the top five for a while, but it was too close for comfort on “Battleship Potemkin” as far as I’m concerned. Literally, a final vote right at the deadline secured it a place in the top five over “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.” That says one thing to me: more people need to see it. So to those of you who’ve never seen it, do yourself a favor: seek it out.
No, it is not the most captivating film of all time and no, you won’t be seeing anything “new” by your standards. But do a little digging and find out why the film has meant so much to the practice of film editing and montage and you’ll discover why its impact is probably felt as much if not more than the most seminal titles on our massive list of 66.
Keep in mind when voting: this isn’t a popularity contest. Don’t just rattle off votes for your favorite films (which, I imagine, has to be the main reason “E.T” was so high on the list during part one). Take a moment to think about what the films have meant to the medium. This list represents you, the readership, after all, so vote wisely.
This poll will close Wednesday, April 29 at 2:00 pm EST.
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Billy Bob Thornton: “I’m an asshole all the time. What’s the big deal?”
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R.I.P. Jack Cardiff
Sad to see one of the greats leave us. Perhaps it’s a grand occasion to pick up the “Black Narcissus” Blu-ray, which I hear makes Cardiff’s cinematography pop and is said to be one of the most beautiful high-def discs out there.
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Ma belle
While I’m on the subject of Gallic-flavoured Best Actress contenders, I usually try not to get too invested in an individual’s awards hopes before I’ve seen the film carrying them, but I must admit to one sentimental wish this year: that Michelle Pfeiffer and “Chéri” will live up to the delicate beauty of their source material, and in that event, that Pfeiffer will be duly rewarded for her pains.Not to step on Nat Rogers’ toes, but we all have a fantasy list of people we want to see receive an Oscar one day — and nestled among the diverse likes of Mike Leigh and Samantha Morton, Pfeiffer is near the top of mine. Partly, I confess, because she was my first cinematic crush (I was nine, and our first date was “Frankie and Johnny”), but more because of the hope that an overdue career celebration might coerce her into working more often, and casting directors into offering her more tempting bait. (Why should Meryl Streep be the only woman headlining films in her fifties?)
2002’s undervalued “White Oleander” offered an intriguing glimpse of how the actress’s advanced years actually added nuance and fragility to her trademark froideur; “Chéri,” if played right, should do the same, and then some.
All of which is a long-winded way of pointing you towards this excellent interview with Pfeiffer in today’s Guardian, in which Geoffrey Macnab pays due tribute to her skill and versatility (I love his suggestion that she venture into the Western genre), and the actress explains that “Chéri” is a more complex beast than the bonbon depicted in the trailer:
“The scope of the movie turned out to be bigger than any of us had realised at the beginning. We were on a limited schedule, but when you see the film, the scope of it is huge. Usually, you have a couple of scenes where you might have pages of dialogue – but this film, every scene was five, six, seven or eight pages of dialogue. It took a tremendous amount of concentration.”
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Strong notices for Tautou in ‘Chanel’
2008’s slate of eventual Best Actress nominees may not have been the strongest of recent years, but it was certainly the most predetermined. Months before anyone had seen even a frame of their films, it was accepted wisdom that Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie and Kate Winslet (for something, at least) would be invited to the ball.This unusual star-focused stranglehold (in an unusually crowded field) made it that much harder (and ultimately impossible) for critics’ darlings like Sally Hawkins or Kristin Scott Thomas to gain a slot.
This year, however, sees a return to the usual terrain of questionmarks in the field, with the usual regrettable paucity of female star vehicles on the horizon. (Only “Amelia” smells like Oscar catnip, and it smells a little funny to me.) Can Michelle Pfeiffer and Meryl Streep score veteran nods for comedy vehicles? Could either Gabourey Sidibe or Saoirse Ronan become only the second teenaged nominee in the category’s history? Which film, if any, will turn out to be Helen Mirren’s awards pony?
With the most early buzz centred on an ingenue few have yet heard of (that would be Carey Mulligan), it’s looking like a year of few sure things from a distance, which is the way I like it. (Of course, I could be completely wrong — I bow to certain other folks’ expertise in this field.)
So with the race so delicately poised at this early point, it’s interesting to see one of the few supposedly baity contenders passing the initial critical test. On paper, Audrey Tautou’s performance in “Coco Before Chanel” has a lot going for it. Nobody needs to be reminded of the Academy’s fondness for biopics (but just for the record, 7 of the last 10 Best Actress winners played real-life figures), and they aren’t exactly averse to pretty period pieces either.
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A friendly recommendation
I’m not in the habit of imploring people to go see things — much like organic breakfast cereal, specialist cinema is tastier when you haven’t persistently been reminded how good it is for you — but I must make an exception on behalf of Paolo Sorrentino’s cracking political bio-thriller “Il Divo,” which opens Stateside on Friday (and is still on limited release across the pond).
I feel it necessary to mention the film because, for all its widespread acclaim, the press for the film tends to depict it as a far harder sell than it really is. I’ve lost count of the number of critics I’ve read referring to the film’s intense grounding in the intricacies of Italian politics, hardly a surefire way to lure even the subtitle-schooled crowd.
What they largely fail to mention, however, is that this wildly paced, darkly comedic film requires little to no previous knowledge of — or interest in — the figures at its centre to register as entertainment; it’s actually a more accessible, populist work than its ethnic and aesthetic peer “Gomorrah.” “The Consequences of Love.” As I wrote in my October capsule review (and my “Best of 2008” roundup, where it narrowly missed my Top 10), prime Oliver Stone is the closest point of reference here.
The following trailer is fairly crudely assembled (the film itself is a technical dazzler), but it captures “Il Divo’s” whip-smart energy rather better than much of the media has. As a South African yogurt brand once advertised: “Try it. You might love it.”