In Contention

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  • Three days left to catch ‘Melancholia’ in LA

    I should really have drawn attention to this earlier, but as Jeff Wells pointed out on Hollywood Elsewhere, Lars von Trier’s Cannes hit “Melancholia” began a one-week, once-a-day screening run at Los Angeles’ out-of-the-way Laemmle Fallbrook 7 theatre on Friday — a handy opportunity for local film buffs with free afternoons to sneak a look at the film months ahead of its November 11 release in the US. (Most European viewers haven’t quite so long to wait.)

    As you can gather from my enthusiastic Cannes review of the film, it’s worth getting impatient for. One of von Trier’s most elegant and elegiac works — the silly controversy over his unwise Nazi-related comments at the festival is a red herring that doesn’t reflect remotely on the surprisingly subdued film — it showcases the man in full command of his formal powers, as well as a fascinating ensemble, the pleasures of which extend beyond Kirsten Dunst’s fairly rewarded performance.

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  • ‘Avengers’ assemble in concept art revealing Hulk

    Okay, one more superhero dip before we leave Comic-Con behind. Click for larger, expanded version.

  • COMIC-CON: It all ends

    Well, like I said. Another year, another Con.

    For a convention I expected to be a bit more laid-back than usual, it sure was anything but. I guess I put that on myself by hustling back to LA for a concert and back down again to wrap things up, but even having covered just a sliver of the event (compared to the thorough coverage from outlets with multiple on-hand correspondents, who do it so well), boy am I glad it’s over.

    If you’ve read the coverage then you know my extended thoughts, but here’s a recap nevertheless.

    The highlight of the entire weekend was, for me, finally seeing Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive.” The film is an invigorating experience, an artful meditation that takes the most simplistic of narratives and turns it into a thorough character study.

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  • BOX OFFICE: ‘America,’ f*** yeah

    So “Captain America: The First Avenger” managed to hold the Harry Potter buzz wave to one weekend crown by coming out on top this week. I think it’s a pretty solid number given the givens, but anyway, my eyes are on that #10 spot. Woody Allen’s locomotive keeps chugging along.

    (Courtesy: Box Office Mojo)

  • COMIC-CON: ‘Haywire’ trailer

    I missed Relativity’s panel featuring Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire” and the John-Cusack-as-Edgar-Allan-Poe flick “The Raven.” This was very much a bummer, seeing as “Haywire” star Gina Carano has been a personal crush ever since she suited up as, well, Crush, in the rebooted American Gladiators. So the trailer, released via Apple, is the first of the footage I’ve seen. I’m not quite sure why Soderbergh is bathing in the warm water of commercial plays lately (this and “Contagion”), but I’ll give it a look. Nothing is standing out, though. Other than my…crush. Anyway, check out the trailer for “Haywire” by clicking the image below, or watch an embed after the jump.

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  • COMIC-CON: Andrew Garfield’s touching ode to Spidey

    Just a few Comic-Con clean-up odds and ends before I officially bid this year’s convention farewell, starting with this. I missed the Sony panel Friday but this nugget was clearly the best part of it, from what I can tell.

  • ‘Moneyball’ poster

    I’m still in a bit of wait-and-see mode on “Moneyball.” It could be an awards play, it could just be a bit of bankability in the fall movie season, but I do dig the one-sheet that hit the net this week. The trailer hit last month. Check out the full poster after the jump.

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  • COMIC-CON: Francis Ford Coppola takes Best in Show

    My Comic-Con coverage came to a close this morning with Francis Ford Coppola’s first appearance here in 19 years, and a glimpse of his latest film, “Twixt.” There’s still the “Cowboys & Aliens” screening tonight, but reviews will be embargoed, so my big send-off is the master himself. And what a send-off it was.

    “Twixt” is film chock-full of genre trappings starring Val Kilmer as Hall Baltimore, a genre writer working on a new premise based on a grisly discovery in a seedy town, where he’s holed up for a book signing. Edgar Allan Poe shows up. In a dream. Like Virgil to Baltimore’s Dante. (And based on an actual dream Coppola had.)

    There are vampires. A seven-sided clock tower tells seven different times. 3D is employed here and there, but not for the whole film. (We wore Edgar Allan Poe masks outfitted with 3D lenses.) Elle Fanning is a pasty living-dead pixie. Bruce Dern is creepy. But let’s get into why this is the best Comic-Con panel I’ve ever seen.

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  • COMIC-CON: Refn’s ‘Drive’ is a bullet of vision

    I’ve had to sit on my feelings on Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” which had a special screening here Thursday night, because I haven’t found a window to write about it. That’s either good or bad, I don’t know, because the film has just continued to grow in my mind, but I don’t want to over-inflate expectations.

    In so many words, though, I think Refn is the most exciting filmmaker working today. And I haven’t even seen “Valhalla Rising” or his “Pusher” trilogy yet, but just to go by “Bronson” (a personal top 10er in 2009) and his latest, I feel an invigorating injection of originality in the cinema landscape.

    Guy reviewed and enthused about “Drive” at Cannes, so you’ve already digested one thorough assessment here (and one we share completely). So allow me to be a bit more abstract in my thoughts. I’ll just rattle them off as they come to me.

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  • COMIC-CON: Paramount brings Spielberg, Jackson and a taste of ‘Tintin’

    Before I ducked out of town for the day yesterday, I hit up Paramount Pictures’ panel for Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.” The Beard was on hand to discuss the film (and pick up this year’s Inkpot Award), and a surprise appearance by Peter Jackson got the crowd buttered up nicely for the footage.

    So let’s start with that. We were first shown test footage from six years ago featuring Jackson as Captain Haddock and an animated Snowy. This was back when Spielberg was still trying to decide what the best filmmaking technique on the film would be. After that, it was a collage of scenes from the film (which Spielberg noted represented some of the earliest renderings out of Weta).

    My immediate reaction was that the film is Spielberg through and through. In other words, it has the energy, the cinematic thumbprint of a Spielberg film, the in-scene pacing and editorial signature of so much of his work. I wasn’t fully expecting that, but the truth is, they wanted a system of performance capture that would allow the director to be right in the middle of things.

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  • Spinning

    Apologies for the black-out yesterday. After the Paramount panel (which I covered on Twitter, FYI), I had to jet back to LA for the Soundgarden show (easily the best concert experience I’ve had — unbelievable). But I’m going to try and write on the ride back down to San Diego this morning. For now, I’ll leave you with this shot of “Cowboys & Aliens” director Jon Favreau and Faizon Love from Thursday night’s JoBlo/Latino Review party to keep you company. More soon.

  • Tell us what you thought of ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’

    You all know I’m way in the plus column on Joe Johnston’s “Captain America: The First Avenger.” The film hit theaters nationwide yesterday. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so head on back here with them once you get around to it this weekend.

  • Clint Mansell scoring ‘The Iron Lady’

    I’ll level with you, folks: there are a lot of prestige titles coming out in late 2011 that I’m itching to see, and “The Iron Lady” isn’t one of them. Putting to one side concerns about Phyllida Lloyd’s filmmaking prowess — I thought her ill at ease with the medium in “Mamma Mia!”, but she’s an accomplished theater director and everyone deserves a second chance — Margaret Thatcher’s story requires ambiguity and incisiveness in the telling (and playing) to avoid predictable rhetoric, and the margin for error is a fine one.

    That teaser trailer released a few weeks ago wasn’t terribly illuminating: the writing is jokey, while the flash of Meryl Streep’s performance hints at “Julie & Julia”-scale broadness, but it’s altogether too brief and context-free to offer a sense of the film’s overall tone.

    Indeed, the most intriguing thing about the trailer is the unexpected use of Clint Mansell’s brooding “Moon” score as accompaniment — and as it turns out, there was more to that particular choice than initially met the eye. A reliable first-hand source informs me that Mansell is on board to score the actual film, which adds some lustre to a respectable but slightly unsexy list of below-the-line contributors.

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  • ‘Drive’ red-band trailer

    As you can see from the previous post, Kris is every bit as punch-drunk on Nicolas Winding Refn’s electric throwback thriller “Drive” as I was at Cannes — read my review here — where it deservedly won the Best Director prize. It stands as my favourite narrative feature of the year so far; the rest of 2011 would have to be nothing short of miraculous to dislodge it from my year-end Top 10. Anyway, on the heels of last night’s Comic-Con screening comes a neatly assembled red-band trailer via IGN — and as sleek, smart and propulsive a taster as it is, it still can’t quite capture what a rush the film is. I’d almost recommend saving yourself for the full movie, but who am I kidding? Click on the image to watch it at IGN, or check out the embed after the cut.

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  • “You don’t want to be trapped inside with me, sunshine.”

    So I was sitting down for a casual interview with Nicolas Winding Refn this evening, after seeing his ABSOLUTELY AMAZING OMFG FILM “Drive” at a special screening. Guy Pearce walks up with Tom Hardy in tow, so I couldn’t pass up the photo op. As you know, “Bronson” was comfortably one of my top 10 films of 2009. And I managed to not utter the words “Dark,” “Knight” or “Rises” while chatting briefly with the classy and ultra cool Hardy. I hope these two work together again soon.

  • COMIC-CON: Live, via satellite, Ridley Scott!

    So Fox’s big reveal Thursday was footage of and chatter about “Prometheus,” Ridley Scott’s (hopefully) triumphant return to the science-fiction genre.

    Out of the gate, moderator Damon Lindelof asked Scott (who was checking in via satellite from Iceland) why it’s been so long since he saddled back up to “the genre he redefined,” as the marketing material notes triumphantly. Said Scott, “I was too busy doing other movies and exploring other genres. I honestly never thought about science-fiction until there was something of the first ‘Alien’ that no one ever asked a question about. No exploration of that one big question.”

    Surely he’s talking about the Space Jockey of the first film, but nevertheless, everyone’s playing coy about the “Alien” connection. Scott said the new film has the DNA of the original film, but that they go off in another direction. Nevertheless, he hinted that by the end of “Prometheus,” you’ll understand the connection.

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  • COMIC-CON: Fox brings ‘Apes’ and Andrew Niccol’s new vision of the future

    After all the “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” riff-raff cleared the drain this morning (sorry), I finally made it to Hall H in the afternoon, for 20th Century Fox’s panel. The slate of films previewed included Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” Andrew Niccol’s “In Time” and Rupert Wyatt’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”

    I figure I’ll start with the latter, since it’s fresh on the brain. This is actually a film I haven’t been able to really take seriously for quite some time. I have a blind spot for it and just have kind of ignored it (while admitting that the effects stuff we’ve seen is impressive).

    Well, after seeing two clips and a sizzle reel of the third act action sequences, I’m not only sold on seeing it, but I think it could actually be something great. Not to be all breathless. Maybe my expectations are so low that any favorable morsel would have been delicious, but I’m stoked for story elements now, not just technical aspects.

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  • COMIC-CON: Rick Baker, a fan like the rest

    My first panel of this year’s convention was a delightful focus on makeup artist Rick Baker, who is coming off his seventh Oscar win for last year’s “The Wolfman.” He drew a nice crowd of die-hards at the Hilton Bayfront’s Indigo Ballroom, which let out a massive cheer when moderator Geoff Boucher of Hero Complex quipped, “Congratulations for not being at the ‘Twilight’ panel.”

    Ostensibly Baker was on hand as a bit of early buzz-stirring for Sony’s “Men in Black III,” and we got some great glimpses of the makeup work on the film. Baker said he was “so glad” to get the call from Barry Sonnenfeld, but when it came to expanding on the work he’s already done on the series, it took some thinking.

    “Everyone always says, ‘We want to see aliens like we’ve never seen before,’” he said. “But it’s a little hard now. Back when I did the ‘Star Wars’ Cantina scene, it was a lot different.”

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