In Contention

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  • 12-year-old Tarantino

    I went searching on YouTube for an embed of last night’s Letterman show featuring Quentin Tarantino and ended up stumbling onto this 12-year-old clip of the director promoting “Jackie Brown” on the show in 1997.  I was immediately struck by his humility, his sense of humor, his all around manners, etc.  It’s a completely different Tarantino than the guy we’re putting up with these days.  I like this guy.  I miss this guy.

    Last night’s appearance, with a slightly more pompous “look at me” Tarantino (or maybe it’s just me), after the jump.

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  • ‘Up in the Air’ poster

    (You’re probably wondering why this post is gone.  Well Paramount has asked us to remove the image and I see Empire, which had the original exclusive, has done the same.  My best guess is it wasn’t final artwork.)

  • 8/18 Web Round-up

    Metropolis• “District 9” and the legacy of high-brow sci-fi. [Film School Rejects]

    • Roger Ebert talks “Inglourious Basterds” with Quentin Tarantino. [Chicago Sun-Times]

    • Patrick Goldstein weighs in on the Redbox brouhaha. [The Big Picture]

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  • ‘District 9’ receives most Academy applause in years

    Sharlto Copley in District 9The unexpected fiscal and critical success of “District 9” has stirred the proper awards talk in the right circles.  The film looks to be pretty stiff competition in the nomination races for sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects, perhaps even film editing.  But given the mood of a recent Academy screening here in Los Angeles, as conveyed by Variety’s Peter Bart, one might want to consider the film’s reach elsewhere.

    Applause is a difficult thing to understand in circumstances like this.  Generally, a big ovation at the end of, say, a well-attended press or industry screening, can be chalked up to ever-manipulative publicists doing their part to raise the roof.  But at a screening such as the one this weekend at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, a screening meant specifically for Academy members, the claps take on a different meaning.  I have a friend, AMPAS member, who always says you can place a smart bet on a film’s Oscar chances across the board based on the way applause ebbs and flows during the closing credits.

    If that’s the case, Sony might have stumbled onto a real live Oscar horse for the season.  Because the response was uncharacteristically enthusiastic for the sci-fi summer closer.

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  • The same, but different

    Friend and reader Nick just pointed me to this international one-sheet for Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island,” which apparently hit the web last week, though I must not have noticed.

    Hardly a drastic departure from the domestic poster we saw last month — and while I like the clearer photo-collage motif here, I think the American design has the upper hand in typography, and a more arresting expression from DiCaprio. So after an international team trounced the U.S. designers in last week’s “An Education” one-sheet showdown, the scores are now level. Riveting stuff. What do you think?

    Shutter Island international poster

  • Spelling it out

    The Time Traveler's WifeAt a dinner this weekend, two female friends of mine were contemplating whether or not to see “The Time Traveler’s Wife” in the face of largely withering reviews. They eventually decided in the negative, one of them sagely (if irrationally) concluding: “If they can’t even spell the title, what are the odds of them getting anything else right?”

    The issue cropped up again this morning, as a bus emblazoned with the film’s poster hovered a few yard away from my living-room window. My dad, visiting for the week, looked up and pointed out the supposed spelling “error” with resigned irritation. Then, while browsing through The Guardian site this afternoon, what complaint should I happen upon but this:

    First they knock our NHS, then they mess with our film posters; truly, there are days when it’s hard not to believe that America hasn’t launched a stealth war against us … The latest attack involves the promotional campaign for The Time Traveler’s Wife, the big-screen adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s novel of the same name. Your eyes do not deceive you: they have indeed spelled it Traveler, as opposed to Traveller.

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  • Seeking refuge in festival season

    The Golden Lion at the Venice Film FestivalThere’s been much prophesying of doom among film journalists lately, with everyone from Roger Ebert to Jeff Wells harping on about an imminent cinematic dark age, brought on by mainstream audiences who prefer “G.I. Joe” to “The Hurt Locker.”

    If I don’t quite share their alarm, it’s because it’s a cry that is repeated at least every other year, as we near the end of another summer stuffed with celluloid shit — that this year’s better blockbusters didn’t quite catch on to the degree of a “Dark Knight,” or (in pop-culture impact, at least) a “WALL-E,” to me suggests a return to the status quo rather than a significant dip.

    Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE shares in the general dissatisfaction with this summer’s crop — bemoaning in particular the dearth of originally-scripted hits — but hits a more upbeat note than his colleagues by painting the upcoming fall festival season as a kind of beacon of hope for serious film lovers.

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  • Paul Schneider: Someone get this guy a movie

    Paul Schneider in Bright StarAt one of the countless awards show this past Oscar season, Meryl Streep took to the stage to accept an award, announce a clip from “Doubt,” something, I can’t remember, but somewhere along the way she mentioned her respect for actress Viola Davis and exasperatingly belted, “Someone get her a movie!”  The indication, of course, was that Davis is clearly an actress with chops who has been grinding away at supporting role after supporting role and, if given the chance, could light up the screen in a leading role.

    To many of us who’ve been feeling the same way for a number of years, a big, “Thank you,” was all we could say to that.

    I remembered this moment today when I sat down to commit my thoughts on Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” to print, because while the film, with its moody lingering and awkward emotional disconnect (it did not affect me in the slightest), doesn’t work on a number of levels, it most certainly announces, once again, that actor Paul Schneider is ready for some intrepid producer or director to take a chance on him.

    It’s unfair to say that Schneider (who, full disclosure, attended my alma mater and shares some mutual acquaintances with your humble host) hasn’t had a chance at a leading role.  After all, his big coming out party was David Gordon Green’s (also a fellow alum) “All the Real Girls” in 2003.  In that film Schneider showed real promise, but it was perhaps muted given the independent setting and the fact that co-star Zooey Deschanel took off, while Schneider kept grinding out solid background work.

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  • Baldwin on Vick

    What [Michael] Vick did is, obviously, senseless and reprehensible. But I believe Vick, as a wealthy and talented athletic superstar who performs his job out in the open before crowds of amped-up and highly opinionated fans, suffers an unfair disadvantage as compared to, say, the heads of a meatpacking plant or the directors of a medical research lab where animals are suffering the cruelest imaginable abuses behind walls and doors that remove them from our sight and, therefore, judgments. Vick did horrific things and he deserved to be punished. He served his time and now I wonder what good does it do to exile him in shame and not let him show his example of how one can be rehabilitated after that kind of behavior.

    From a recently posted Huffington Post item that I read with Alec Baldwin’s smooth, whispery syntax in my mind throughout.

  • In praise of model and practical effects work in ‘Moon’

    MoonThe success of Neill Blomkamp’s “District 9,” (thoughts) and hopefully (eventually), Duncan Jones’s “Moon” (review) has fed into what I’ve been consistently calling a banner year for sci-fi cinema in 2009.  That is, of course, assuming “Avatar” does come along and lay a giant egg in December.

    One of the galvanizing aspects to, well, two of these films, anyway, is the independent focus.  The modestly budgeted aspect that keeps the spirit of high concept indie filmmaking alive.  And in the case of Jones’s film, the use of practical effects free of frivolous CGI is cause for celebration.  At least that’s what Guardian writer Phelim O’Neill is getting at with a recent piece that declares the film’s old-school effects should be a model for today’s sci-fi films.

    In particular, it’s the model work in the film that is so exciting to O’Neill.  There is a humorous “then and now” photo of George Lucas that has made the rounds, the underlying point being that the director lost his creative drive when he began using heavy CGI in the “Star Wars” franchise.  Personally, I think that’s silly, because, well, the “Star Wars” films are bad with models or without them (my opinion).  But there is something about the tangible quality of practical effects that makes the reward of watching a film that much richer.  “Moon” is one level on that scale.  “The Dark Knight” is another.  It doesn’t have to be a money concern. C reatively, it can have a more visceral impact.

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  • Werner Herzog talks ‘Bad Lieutenant’ remake

    Old news but I wanted to share:

  • How ‘Basterds’ fits into the Tarantino mythos

    Eli Roth in Inglourious BasterdsOne of the most exciting aspects of Quentin Tarantino’s breed of cinema for this cinema obsessive who held the guy in a rather glowing light back in the mid-1990s was the idea that all of the directors’ films were connected in some way.  It went beyond the simplicity of, “Hey, cool, Vincent Vega from ‘Pulp Fiction’ and Vic Vega from ‘Reservoir Dogs’ are brothers.”  It said something about the power of creativity, manifesting a vast fictional world and playing God with its characters.  It was something, for me, that defined Tarantino as unique.

    Perhaps because the novelty wore off, perhaps because he got slightly bored with it, Tarantino eased off the throttle on this particular aspect of his films somewhere along the line, leaving people to making stabbing guesses, such as the idea that Samuel L. Jackson’s piano player in “Kill Bill” is actually Jules from “Pulp Fiction” walking the earth.  Or perhaps it all just got a bit subtler, I don’t know.  I would have liked a vast expansion of all of this, however.  It could have been rather defining and exciting.

    Rodrigo Perez at The Playlist has stumbled onto a connection between “Inglourious Basterds” and “True Romance” that keeps the Tarantinoverse light burning a little longer.

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  • Slamming Scorsese for staying out of the trenches

    Martin ScorseseI was thinking along these lines last week when I read Martin Scorsese’s open letter to LACMA.  The director was speaking out against the closing of a 40-year-old weekend film program at the museum due money matters.  But here’s what Tom Gregory had to say about the matter at The Huffington Post:

    Martin Scorsese’s open letter to LACMA’s head Michael Govan is flawed. Mr. Scorsese has never been a member of, or financially supported LACMA in anyway. Ever. Not a dime. Nada. Zip. His L.A. Times letter is an example of a bankrupting trend across California and America. Everyone wants to complain, but no one wants to pay. In LACMA’s thirty plus years, the institution has received scant money from the film industry, certainly none commensurate with capacity and responsibility.

    Los Angeles is entitled to a film program, but in a city where so many have prospered from the industry’s fruits, the dearth of monies from Hollywood is shameful. We should be celebrating the LACMA’s massive leaps forward. The Broads, the Resnicks, Wallis Annenberg, the Koticks, the Ahmansons and scores of others have been faithful to the institution, but it’s always the same LA names. Where is the high-profile film community? With their endorsement, LACMA’s film program could soar.

    Agree?  Disagree?  Discuss.

  • 8/17 Web Round-up

    (from left) Bob and Harvey Weinstein• Amid sticky financial days for The Weinstein Company, Harvey Weinstein tells you to “sit tight” and “don’t bet against” him and brother Bob. [New York Times]

    • It must be going around, because ditto Universal execs Mark Shmuger and David Linde. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Sharon Waxman is frustrated at the word-count of the Weinstein piece yielding little insight into the company’s financial woes. [The Wrap]

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  • Quentin Tarantino’s top 20 films to be released since he became a filmmaker

    I’m almost ready to give him a big hug for having the balls to put “Speed” on this list. He’s dead-on about the fact that it’s somewhat taken for granted now. It also cracks me up that he says “M. Night Shama-lama-ding-dong. No idea why.  It’s an old joke, of course, but somehow funny from a colleague.

    “Battle Royale” gets Tarantino’s top spot. The full alphabetical list after the jump.  Can you guess which one will actually be on my best of the decade list later this year?

    (I’m not sure when this was recorded, but it first crossed my path today when I saw it at Hollywood Elsewhere.)

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  • Brad Pitt on Real Time

    Here’s part one. Part two after the jump:

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  • Streep sells

    Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia!I may have said a while back that Meryl Streep is the most bankable actress in the business at the moment (despite her lowly ranking on the Forbes 100), but I didn’t quite mean it in this way.

    “Julie & Julia” may not be performing at quite the same level as “Mamma Mia!” or “The Devil Wears Prada,” but it still marks the third time in four years that Streep has successfully spearheaded a healthy piece of mainstream counter-programming amid the testosterone-fueled dross of summer.

    With Nancy Meyers’s “It’s Complicated” looking to apply that same populist Midas touch to the Christmas season, that’s a pretty remarkable track record for any woman in the business, much less one in her sixties.

    But this article by Jonathan Romney in today’s Independent takes Streep’s commercial viability even further, and outside the movie theater, by pointing out the peripheral economic effects of her recent hits, in departments ranging from the music industry to the leisure sector.

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  • A statement I can get behind

    Marshalling an ensemble is something that the 46-year-old director has always excelled at, and throughout his career he has made a habit of resuscitating ailing careers – most recently, the late David Carradine in the martial arts double Kill Bill. But with his latest film, it’s Tarantino’s willingness to cast outside his Hollywood postcode that deserves praise: with Inglourious Basterds, he’s taking risks on German stars such as Til Schweiger, August Diehl and Daniel Brühl.

    From this James Mottram story in London’s Independent newspaper.  I find it hard to fault most of the performances in the film, actually.  Save for Brad Pitt and, to a lesser extent (shockingly) Eli Roth, of course.  But for the most part, I think Tarantino was pretty shrewd in the casting.

    By the way, scroll down to the various comments from actors on the crew.  Roth’s thoughts are the most insightful, but Pitt’s win best in show.