In Contention

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  • Agree or disagree?

    Quentin TarantinoI’m not advocating or making a statement here in the slightest. I’m merely putting out a colleague’s thoughts to the readership to gauge a reaction:

    I don’t know Tarantino, but I believe he’s stuck his finger up his ass and given it a good sniff and smelled lilacs and gardenias so many times that he’s lost his mind, which is to say he’s lost whatever sense of proportion he may have once had about the relationship between juicy creative imaginings (which he’s obviously had a rollicking good time with in years past) and the way life actually is when you get dressed and put your shoes on and get in your car and put the key in the ignition and deal with the situation.

    From Jeffrey Wells’s skewering of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.” The early graphs about “arrogance” and “sadism,” by the way, are what I was getting at when I wrote that the film depicted “a world that might appeal to an angst-ridden child, perhaps. The rage that courses through its veins is pure, concentrated tantrum.”

  • 8/11 Web Round-up

    MacGruberApologies for the lateness today.  I’m hammering this out on the plane en route to Los Angeles.  God bless Virgin America/on-board Wi-Fi.

    • Alan Duke talks to the Jewish Eli Roth about his pro-Nazi short “Nation’s Pride.” [CNN]

    • Saturday Night Live star Bill Hader on why a hard R “MacGruber” might work. [Vulture]

    • The top 10 gangster films ever. [Daily Telegraph]

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  • Better education

    Thanks to Glenn at Stale Popcorn for pointing out this Australian one-sheet for “An Education.” It’s not much more revealing of the film at hand than the rather vague American version, but for me, it’s a significant improvement in terms of design and composition.

    And expression, too: Carey Mulligan’s melancholy moue gives slightly more indication of the dramatic stakes here than her impassive face in the U.S. poster. (Plus, showing a bit of Paris will always earn bonus points from me.) Looking forward to seeing what the Brit designers conjure up in the quad format.

    An Education (Australian poster)

  • Getting it wrong on both sides of the pond

    What follows is an actual conversation overheard this evening at Arsenal tube station in North London, as a (slightly inebriated) twentysomething couple stared idly at this international one-sheet for “Funny People.” I was so excited to hear strangers giving voice to my own musings that I began scribbling down a sneaky transcription. (Don’t judge me.)

    Funny People

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  • James Cameron on being original with ‘Avatar’

    James Cameron on the set of AvatarJames Cameron’s “Avatar” is ramping up as “Avatar” Day swiftly approaches.  Some think there is a conscious effort afoot to tone down expectations, while others are more and more unable to contain themselves at the industry prospects represented by the film.  All the while, a December release date inches closer.

    Will it be a game changer?  Will the world be the same the next day?  Will we all remember where we were when “Avatar” was unleashed to the masses?  It’s getting that out of hand in some quarters.

    Me, despite a definite sense of anticipation, I checked my expectations long ago.  The Comic-Con footage was great, but I’ve become more of a “show me” kind of guy as of late.  Burned too many times, I guess.  What hasn’t settled, however, is the reason the hair on the back of my neck stood on end when we all got our first glimpse.

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  • Debating ‘G.I. Joe’ on Attack of the Show

    IC friends David Poland (Movie City News/The Hot Blog) and Robert Sanchez (IESB) appeared on G4’s Attack of the Show today to talk the “G.I. Joe” brouhaha and it was a pretty decent discussion.  I was hoping for more fireworks since I know Sanchez is a fan and Poland, of course, not so much.  But no such luck.

  • Apparition will release ‘The Young Victoria’ Stateside

    Emily Blunt in The Young VictoriaBob Berney’s new outfit is filling out nicely, having acquired “Bright Star” out of Cannes, announcing plans to release Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” in 2009 last week and now, snatching the domestic rights to Jean-Marc Vallee’s “The Young Victoria.”  Anne Thompson has the scoop:

    Over the weekend, Apparition closed a U.S. distribution deal for Toronto Film Festival closer The Young Victoria, starring Emily Blunt in what could be her breakout role carrying a movie as the youngest British monarch. As is typical these days, the new distrib run by Bob Berney and backer Bill Pohald did not put up a minimum guarantee, but rather beat out several competitors (including Miramax, Overture and Roadside Attractions) by committing to $4.5 million in P & A and a 250-screen release. Appariiton will open the movie November 13.

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  • ‘Up’ vs ‘Coraline’ vs … the Jonas Brothers?

    UpLast month I mentioned that the Venice Film Festival is making a rather large gesture of faith in the current 3-D fad by introducing a new award for the best 3-D film of the year. The prize will be awarded by a separate three-person jury comprising critics Dave Kehr and Scott Foundas and experimental filmmaker Nadia Ranocchi.

    The award is not limited to films competing at the festival — but in case you didn’t get that, the point is made abundantly clear by this frankly bizarre 9-title shortlist for the gong that was unveiled yesterday. Via Variety:

    “Battle for Terra” (Aristomenis Tsirbas)
    “Coraline” (Henry Selick)
    “The Hole” (Joe Dante)
    “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” (Carlos Saldana)
    “Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience” (Bruce Hendricks)
    “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (Eric Brevig)
    “Monsters vs Aliens” (Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon)
    “My Bloody Valentine” (Patrick Lussier)
    “Up” (Pete Docter)

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  • Tell us what you thought of ‘G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’

    G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

    Okay, so I shelled out the cash last night to see “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” while I’m away in San Francisco.  It’s awful in many ways (most of them beginning with Joseph and ending with Gordon-Levitt, surprisingly enough).  But it was also, I thought, unbelievably enjoyable.  I’m on the tongue-in-cheek bandwagon, I guess. It’s kitsch, certainly not high kitsch, but kitsch nevertheless.  Channing Tatum should never be in another movie, of course, but, well, I had a good time.  Sue me.  But I’d love to hear what the readership thinks, so rifle off your thoughts in the comments section below.

  • ‘The Lovely Bones’ behind-the-scenes featurette

  • Hollywood focused on the end of the world as we know it

    Denzel Washington in The Book of EliI’ve been meaning to write this piece for a while now, but I never got around to it.  Paul Harris at The Guardian beat me to the punch, so I’ll run his thoughts instead.

    The recent wave of post-apocalyptic films flooding and being prepared for the marketplace is intriguing indeed.  Fads always pop up in Hollywood output, whether it’s the one-two punch of “Volcano” and “Dante’s Peak” in 1997, “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” a year later, “The Truman Show” and “EdTV,” etc., studios know when something is hot and when to strike.  But it’s usually two or three projects and then on to the next thing.

    But this year and next, we have Alex Proyas’s “Knowing,” the Cormac McCarthy adaptation “The Road,” Roland Emmerich’s “2012,” Shane Acker’s “9,” Ruben Fleischer’s “Zombieland,” The Hughes brothers’ “The Book of Eli,” television’s “The Colony” and a new “Terminator” installment, all productions either depicting a post-apocalyptic environment or the end of days in some manner or another.  It all perhaps started with the Will Smith vehicle “I Am Legend” in 2007.  The trend even extends to animated films, as our commenters shrewdly note “WALL-E” as an example.

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  • Streep on the Oscars: Preempt other awards shows already

    Meryl Streep at the 81st annual Academy AwardsAs we all are well aware, one of the assumed reasons for the Academy’s recent decision to expand the Best Picture category to 10 nominees is the potential for the inclusion of popular films, which, the thinking goes, could help with the telecast’s ratings woes.

    I’m less and less convinced that, had films like “The Dark Knight” and “WALL-E” been nominated, viewership would have been much better.  And the dirty little secret of the animated feature film category is that it wasn’t a field pushed through by animators wanting their work to be selectively rewarded but, in actuality, an earlier attempt to widen the net to more populist entertainment.

    I have always been of the mind that it’s not the films in the mix that necessarily affect the ratings (though that certainly has an affect), but the fact that the Oscars air after months and months of awards shows that essentially numb the public to kudos fests by the time the big daddy ceremony finally rolls around.  And it seems 15-time nominee (and soon-to-be 16-time nominee) Meryl Streep agrees with me, going so far as to suggest the Academy move it’s telecast all the way up to January 1st.

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  • A.O. Scott remembers John Hughes as the Godard of a generation

    John HughesI’m stilling a bit bummed from the news of director John Hughes’ sudden passing last week in New York.  Even though he was years past his prime, these things come to mark the end of an era and signify an abrupt change that is, well, slightly unwelcome.

    The tributes and remembrances have been coming fast and furious, of course.  But my favorite take so far has come from the newly tube-bound A.O. Scott, who penned this surprisingly thoughtful dedication in The New York Times over the weekend.

    In remembering the Hughes films that molded a generation, Scott goes so far as to compare the director to French New Wave titan Jean-Luc Godard for his adeptness at harnessing the attitude of the populace.  As I wrote in my brief last week, “Hughes got an entire generation.”

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  • Ang Lee re-cutting ‘Ride with the Devil’

    (from left) Skeet Ulrich, Jewel Kilcher and Tobey Maguire in Ride with the DevilGuy briefly mentioned this in Friday’s round-up, but I thought I’d address it more fully here.

    I kind of feel like I owe it to myself and to Ang Lee to give his forthcoming re-edit of “Ride with the Devil” a look.  This is, of course, despite a severe personal disinterest that settled in when I first saw the film 10 years ago.  But as a fan of the western genre, it seems only right to see what Lee originally had in mind.

    I wasn’t aware, as Anne Thompson discusses in a recent piece, that the film represents the only project Lee ever edited away from his vision at a studio’s request.  It doesn’t sound significant, but apparently the 11 minutes Lee trimmed (from an original 146-minute running time) were significant enough that Focus Features honcho (and frequent Lee collaborator) James Schamus has decided to dipped into the Focus-owned Polygram library to restore Lee’s version of the film.

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  • 8/10 Web Round-up

    Hayao Miyazaki• Charles Burress chats up legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki. [Los Angeles Times]

    • John DeVore goes fly fishing in Vermont for the “A River Runs Through It” Blu-ray junket. [Premiere]

    • A.O. Scott wraps up the summer with a tired old argument against the dumbed down summer movie season. [New York Times]

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  • Could Kubrick’s Holocaust film get made after all?

    Stanley Kubrick“Aryan Papers” is a title that is probably familiar to keen students of the great Stanley Kubrick, representing as it does a sadly missed opportunity in his abruptly curtailed career.

    For the uninformed, however, it’s the name of a Holocaust-themed Kubrick screenplay that he was due to direct for Warner Bros. in early 1990s, before the arrival of Steven Spielberg’s similarly targeted “Schindler’s List” compelled director and studio to shelve the project.

    Now it appears that Kubrick’s family is seeking to resurrect the project, which is still owned by Warner Bros., with Kubrick’s brother-in-law (and executive producer on his last four features) Jan Harlan leading the charge.

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  • Super Movie Friends on ‘G.I. Joe’

    Ray Park in G.I. Joe: The Rise of CobraI haven’t “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” yet.  I wasn’t one of the Paramount chosen and I’ve been moving my girlfriend up to San Francisco this weekend, but at some point, we do plan to dish out our hard-earned cash in town for a look-see.  Color me curious.

    Anyway, David Poland has put together a nice new feature at The Hot Blog called “Super Movie Friends,” collecting a few movie minds to discuss what’s going on at the multiplex.  Below is the excerpt where they discuss “G.I. Joe.”

    indieWIRE’s Anne Thompson and Poland clearly hated the film.  CHUD’s Devin Faraci, God bless him, has the thankless job of defending it.  And KTLA’s Toni Molle hasn’t seen it so she just kind of sits there, listening to Poland call “Speed Racer” sophisticated and Faraci chalk “Joe” up to a 10-year-old boy’s kind of film that you’re “supposed to laugh at,” among other talking points.

    Take a look after the jump.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: ‘G.I.’ dough

    G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra*All historical figures are adjusted to today’s dollars

    Paramount secured what is likely to be the last blockbuster opening of the summer with “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” this weekend. For a film that was plagued with bad buzz a few months ago and was withheld from most critics, a $56.2 million start is a fantastic result and on par with other kid-friendly action films like “Fantastic Four” and the early August start of “XXX.”

    Of course, legs will be atrocious and a total gross of around $120 million is the likely tipping point, but Paramount will be more than happy to take that to the bank along with solid international grosses. It may not be a “Transformers”-like success, but the studo must have known Stephen Sommers is no Michael Bay. And Marlon Wayans is no Shia LaBeouf.

    Sony’s “Julie & Julia” had a solid bow in the runner-up spot with $20.1 million on nearly half the screens of “G.I. Joe.” To be honest, I thought it would be bigger, but this is a film that could definitely play well through Labor Day. Reviews are good enough and older audiences are the only demographic left who don’t necessarily rush out on opening weekend. “Mamma Mia!” only debuted with $27.8 million en route to a $144.1 million finish, let’s not forget. Forget 3D, perhaps this was the film to usher back smell-o-vision.

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