In Contention

Blog

  • All together now — awwww…

    Dev Patel and Freida Pinto at the 2008 Screen Actors Guild AwardsAs if Dev Patel hadn’t had enough luck this year, he’s only gone and nabbed Freida Pinto into the bargain. The relationship between the 19 year-old Brit and the stunning 24 year-old actress has been something of an open secret for a while, but the couple have finally confirmed it to the press:

    The pair have been photographed cuddling up in Israel and ring shopping in London since the Oscar-winning film was released. The 24-year-old has now called 19-year-old Patel “a lovely boy”, according to The Sun. She added: “The friendship blossomed after the film, it got even stronger. This is all new to us.”

    Pinto’s ex, Rohan Antao, blamed Patel for their relationship breakdown. “I don’t know if they were having a sexual relationship but if I came face to face with him I would have things to say. Now everywhere I go I see them on billboards. I am devastated,” he said.

    Ring shopping! Cuddling! A love-rival barney! This riveting story was brought to you by Slow News Day, Inc. But hey, any excuse for a picture of Ms. Pinto, right?

  • ‘Creation’ trailer

    I’m not quite sure why it fell to the Telegraph to unveil this trailer for Jon Amiel’s Darwin biopic “Creation,” starring real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, but so it has. Take that as a measure of excitement elsewhere, if you will. Anyway, some have had awards expectations of this — I can’t say I have, and this creaky 100 seconds does little to change that.

    Amiel’s glory days of “Queen of Hearts” and TV’s “The Singing Detective” are long behind him. His last feature was 2003’s “The Core,” a film so appalling it sent him scuttling back to the small screen — where, coincidentally or not, this film looks to belong. (By the way, what’s up with the wholesale lifting of the beach cartwheel shot from “The Piano?” Ms. Campion, call your lawyer.)

  • What’s on your wall?

    The powers that be have conspired to put me in a decorating frame of mind this week. First Kris contemplated adding a “Double Indemnity” poster to his home gallery. Then I came across this Empire blogger asking the pertinent question: “What do your movie posters say about you?” And finally, this afternoon I happened to pass a private London gallery displaying in its window a luscious framed print of my all-time favorite film still (minus that pesky web watermark):

    Nastassja Kinski in Paris, Texas

    If you need to be told that that’s Nastassja Kinski in “Paris, Texas,” then you need to see the film, fast.

    Anyway, I have to have it. I’m finding myself over-familiar with the film posters I have, but too broke for the ones I want. I’m beginning to play with framed stills as an alternative, and I think Ms. Kinski would sit very nicely on my mantelpiece. (I also like the idea of her in a movie-versus-music face-off with Macy Gray, who presently occupies the opposite wall in a similarly mistrustful pose. I am a man of eccentric tastes.)

    (more…)

  • *chirp* *chirp*

    Wow, there is quite literally nothing worth discussing today.  This has been a pretty eventless two-week spread, actually.  I have no interest in writing about the baseless “G.I. Joe” speculation.  Nothing to offer the “Taking of Pelham 123” discussion because I’ve yet to make my way to a screening.  Nothing to say about the limited releases that I haven’t already said.  Nothing to say about “Ponyo,” which I saw earlier in the week, until LAFF amps up.

    Nothing.  Just the healthy anticipation for the approaching fest, an upcoming look at “Public Enemies” and finally running an interview piece with Denis Leary that was a Santa Monica delight last week (even though we don’t cover TV — but I couldn’t resist an hour with the man).

    Call this an open thread to discuss what you will.  I got…nothing.

  • 6/11 Web Round-up

    Preliminary watercolor for Mars Attacks!, by Tim Burton• Nathaniel Rogers and Katey Rich offer an early rundown of the best of 2009 thus far. [The Film Experience]

    • Breaking down the world premieres at the Edinburgh Film Festival, which yours truly will be covering. [Screen International]

    • Shia LaBeouf calls the “Transformers” sequel “literally the biggest movie ever made.” What a shame I won’t see it. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Tim Burton gets a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Freaky sketches included. [New York Times]

    • Anne Thompson asks why nobody will fund movies for mature audiences, gets Clint Eastwood’s thoughts on the matter. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Patrick Goldstein on the return (kinda) of Alexander Payne. [The Big Picture]

    • Random list of the day: 10 movies that didn’t need girls. (Sorry, but “Wedding Crashers” totally needed Rachel McAdams. Most movies do.) [Cinema Blend]

    • Okay, another list, but I really like this one: the 10 greatest multiple-role performances in history. (Yes, #1 is exactly what you think it is, and rightly so.) [Vulture]

    • Something belated for the “Bolt” fans: a video interview with Rhino the hamster. [The Guardian]

    • Not exactly new, and not exactly movie-related, but have you heard Scarlett Johansson’s duet with Pete Yorn yet? I dig it. [The Break Up Album]

  • ‘Shutter Island’ trailer

    Even though the thriller throttle is wide open, the moody atmospherics of this just-released trailer for Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” had me from frame one. DiCaprio looks in confident control, everything in stride these days. Kingsley conveys subtle sinister panache with the best of them. Haley is having the time of his life, taking the bull by the horns. And how can Bob Richardson be at the top of his game each and every time he turns his light meter on?

    This one just shot to the top as must-see. Now. Give it to me ASAP.

    See it in HD at Apple.

  • POLL: What is your favorite Pixar film?

    Now that our “most influential” series is complete, I figured a light and frothy poll would be just what the doctor ordered.  Now that “Up” has been in theaters for a couple of weeks here in the US (and as it slowly makes its way to other territories), I figured I’d go ahead and poll the readership on your favorite feature Pixar endeavor.

    For my thoughts on this issue, check my list of the studio’s efforts from a few weeks back.  Have your say in the sidebar poll and in the comments below.

  • Remembering The Duke, 30 years later

    John WayneAnne Thompson points us to a pair of John Wayne appreciations today that mark the Pearl anniversary of The Duke’s death.  Wayne lost his battle with cancer 30 years ago tomorrow and I have to say, it completely slipped my mind.

    Almost a year ago, our own John Foote wrote at length about The Duke and the lack of appreciation for his work as an actor, rather than merely an icon.  I’m keen to agree with many of John’s points, and having just completed a thesis on the western genre a few months back, Wayne has been very much on my mind as of late.  But that was a piece about how the genre has evolved far beyond that simplistic, iconic persona into something more nuanced, much as the country has done the same.  Still, an occasion such as tomorrow’s anniversary is one for remembering his place and legacy.

    Over at Cowboys & Indians magazine, Joe Leydon writes up The Duke with fond remembrances of his legendary roles and even a tip of the hat to his various steeds, never linked to one horse was Wayne.  Here is a section with thoughts from Wayne’s family:

    Just as important as the film roles for which he is most beloved, Wayne continues to be widely admired as a real-life hero because of the grace-under-pressure courageousness he displayed in his battle against cancer and for his legacy John Wayne Cancer Institute.

    Indeed, even Wayne’s sons and daughters express grateful surprise at the degree to which their father’s legacy continues to survive and thrive.

    “Here it is, 30 years since my father passed away, and he still has the popularity, celebrity, and visibility of a living person,” Patrick Wayne marvels. “That’s a phenomenal feat in the entertainment business. It’s something I can’t really explain — it’s just a fact of life, like he’s a force of nature.”

    “I think that even while he was alive, he had no idea how popular he was and how beloved he was,” says daughter Marisa Wayne. “And I think he’d have no clue that, even after being gone 30 years, he’d still be so popular and so beloved. I think that would mean a lot to him.”

    Roger Ebert, meanwhile, has also penned a love letter to the man, with all the childhood reminiscence you could want from a write-from-the-heart sort such as Ebert.

    (more…)

  • PAGE TO SCREEN: “Playing the Enemy” by John Carlin

    Playing the Enemy by John CarlinThere are few things as antithetical to great drama as an unmitigated hero, a character rendered almost inhuman by unfailing nobleness and valor. In fiction and non-fiction alike, we are inevitably more compelled by the flawed and conflicted of our kind – whether in lurid warts-and-all celebrity biographies or more subtly probing character studies. In film, true-life heroes often make for worthily sanitized Oscar bait (from “Gandhi” to “Milk”), but they rarely provoke great art.

    Few figures bear out this truth as handily as Nelson Mandela – a man who is surely the greatest political hero of our time, but who has nonetheless inspired a number of crashingly dull books and films. It’s not that the man wants for character or complexity: Mandela’s deserved (if artfully self-engineered) modern sainthood belies his early days as a fierce firebrand, but few biographies (and to date, no biopic) have bridged that gap, or made much of an attempt to study the man beneath the myth.

    So it comes as no surprise that John Carlin’s “Playing the Enemy,” which forms the inspiration for Clint Eastwood’s recently-titled film “Invictus,” does little to change this, casting the first black president of South Africa less as a freestanding character than as a perma-haloed symbol of democratic benevolence. Of course, in this instance, Carlin’s intent was not to write another Mandela biography – just as it should be stressed that Eastwood’s film isn’t really a Mandela biopic.

    In narrowing his focus to South Africa’s monumental victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the currency of which extended beyond simple sporting patriotism to a kind of symbolic consolidation of the country’s international post-apartheid rehabilitation, Carlin’s aim is precisely to dehumanise Mandela to an extent. At the book’s core is the somewhat tenuous thesis that Mandela almost single-handedly enabled this against-the-odds triumph via an elaborately strategized charm offensive – though Carlin pays sporadic attention to Mandela the man, his chief interest lies in the mid-1990s invention of Mandela the brand, and the influence it could wield.

    (more…)

  • INTERVIEW: Francis Ford Coppola

    Francis Ford CoppolaThe words sound like they might be spoken by a young up-and-comer experiencing his first big break, someone fresh off the bus with stars in his eyes and the unbreakable, still unsoiled spirit of art coursing through his veins.

    “Here I’ve finished this film and now I can dream up some new adventure that I know I can finance and keep doing that and learning from it and learning how to make movies.”

    Except this isn’t a young up-and-comer experiencing his first big break.  This is a filmmaker whose contributions to the cinema have altered the course of the medium.  And only now is he able to do what he really wants to do.

    At 70 years old, Francis Ford Coppola is embarking on the career he says he thought he was going to have from the start, back when he was a post-UCLA film student training as an assistant to filmmaker Roger Corman.  When he and colleague George Lucas established American Zoetrope in the Bay Area in the late 1960s, the sky was the limit.  But life had other plans.

    “In a sense we never really got it going,” he says.  “We were all there at Zoetrope in San Francisco wanting to make personal films and films that were not usually expensive so they could afford to be more extravagant in ideas and freedom, and yet I was never able to get any money to do ‘The Conversation.’  In the despair of the on-coming poverty I took this job that was offered to me and it turned out to be ‘The Godfather’ and it was like getting hit with a tsunami of success.  I didn’t know that was going to happen to me and that opened up all sorts of possibilities.”

    Possibilities that came with fiscal consequences, of course.  The next thing Coppola knew after a wave of creative successes in the 1970s, he was in debt and “had to make a movie every year for 10 years in a row.”

    (more…)

  • Your ranked list of the 10 most influential films of all time

    Citizen KaneAnd with that, our poll series comes to a screeching halt.  I’ve already offered some thoughts on how all of this turned out.  I hope readers unfamiliar with some of the films I’ve been harping on will take that to heart and at least seek them out.  You owe it to yourself as a film lover, believe you me.

    Here is your ranked list.  For background on all of these shenanigans, click here.  I want to thank everyone who participated in the polls and made this a real community effort.

    1. “Citizen Kane” (Orson Welles, 1941)
    2. “Star Wars” (George Lucas, 1977)
    3. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
    4. “The Godfather” (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
    5. “The Wizard of Oz” (Victor Fleming, 1939)
    6. “Psycho” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
    7. “Jaws” (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
    8. “Pulp Fiction” (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
    9. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (David Hand, 1937)
    10. “Toy Story” (John Lasseter, 1995)

    Honorable mention: “Annie Hall,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Battleship Potemkin,” “The Birth of a Nation,” “Casablanca,” “The Godfather Part II,” “Gone with the Wind,” “The Matrix,” “Metropolis” and “Rashomon”

    One of these days I’ll cook up my own list.  Until then, once again, thanks for participating.

  • Top 100 movie lines in 200 seconds

    A healthy selection.  Perhaps not exactly the “best” throughout, but a pretty sweet trip down movie memory lane.

    (Courtesy: Liquid Generation, via /Film)

  • Shane Acker’s ‘9’ gets a beautiful poster

    9

    (Courtesy: Film School Rejects)

  • 6/10 Web Round-up

    Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator• A belated Happy Birthday to Kim Voynar, who digs back into the not-so-subtle themes of “Up.” [Movie City News]

    • Counting down the worst movie politicians. [Empire]

    • Taking a look at the key films of Palme d’Or winner Michael Haneke’s career. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Patrick Goldstein talks to Tony Kaye about his most recent off-the-wall art project. [The Big Picture]

    • A.O. Scott looks back at Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” [New York Times]

    • Speaking of which, Michael Douglas is all set to receive a lifetime achievement award from AFI. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Christopher Campbell aggregates all the speculation over who should play B.A. Baracus in the new “A Team” movie.  Shouldn’t we just hand it over to Craig Robinson and be done with it? [Spout Blog]

    • IMAX popularity sparks copycats.  Enough tweaking the distribution, let’s get back to basics.  You know, like quality of product? [Wall Street Journal]

  • First look at Mickey Rourke in ‘Iron Man 2’

    Courtesy of USA Today, Screen Rant and Jon Favreau’s Twitter page, we get our first peek at Mickey Rourke as Whiplash in “Iron Man 2.”  Quite low-tech, which is interesting.  Thoughts?

    Mickey Rourke in Iron Man 2

    Side-by-side comparison with a comic depiction of Whiplash after the jump.

    (more…)

  • Mark-Paul Gosselaar, in character as Zack from ‘Saved by the Bell,’ interviewed on Late Night

    Frankly, I think this bit on last night’s “Late Night” is one of two or three funny ideas Jimmy Fallon has ever had.  And it totally sings.  Nikki Finke, by the way, is taking heavy fire for hating on the sketch.

  • Sam Mendes on Kate, Chekhov and cricket

    Sam Mendes and Kate WinsletPerhaps it’s telling that this recent Times interview with Sam Mendes mentions his latest film “Away We Go” in a single sentence, while focusing rather more attention on his upcoming theatrical double-bill, directing Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” and Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” for Kevin Spacey’s Old Vic in London. I have yet to see the thus-far coolly received new film (I’ll catch up with it in Edinburgh next week), but I’ve booked my theater tickets — and I know which evening I’m more excited about.

    Be that as it may, it goes to demonstrate just what a busy guy he is at the moment: not many people can claim to have unveiled two major feature films and a weighty stage project in a six-month period. Not content with that, he also finds time to play cricket for a county team — there’s something I didn’t know.

    As the interview makes clear, Mendes’ sudden spurt of creativity is a sort of compensation for four rather quiet years which he devoted to raising his young family. I hope he maintains the newfound energy level, given the variable nature of his filmography thus far — for a gifted filmmaker, inconsistency is best accompanied by prolificacy. (Ask Woody Allen or Clint Eastwood.)

    (more…)

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 lines from ‘Ghostbusters’

    GhostbustersAs I briefly noted yesterday, “Ghostbusters” has just celebrated the 25th anniversary of its June 8, 1984 release.  The film went on to make considerable box office dollars and launched the post-SNL careers of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, along with co-stars Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson, further into the stratosphere.  Okay, well, Hudson’s career never really took flight, but still.

    The anniversary is certainly not going by unnoticed.  Sony is prepping the Blu-ray release of the film for next week while Atari, Inc. is all set to launch the heavily anticipated cross-platform video game on June 16.  I knew I wanted to do something special for the site, but I just couldn’t come up with the right idea.  Then it hit me.

    In my view — and this is, of course, quite the disputed opinion — “Ghostbusters” is the most quotable movie of all time.  And it’s not just the one-liners that have me howling every time I give the flick another look (which understandably dominate the list below), but it’s the thoroughness of the comedy.  Witness, for instance, Egon Spengler’s (Harold Ramis) description of the consequences of “crossing the streams,” or the way Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) rifles off the particulars of Ted and Annette Fleming’s fiscal business at a dreary clients’ party.  It is, quite frankly, one of the most ingenious comedy screenplays ever assembled.

    So…why not a list of the film’s 10 best lines?

    This quickly became a painful process.  I ended up with at least a dozen lines that, on another day, might have made the list.  Annie Potts’s “I’ve quit better jobs than this,” or Hudson’s sincere, “That’s a big Twinkie.”  I wanted to give a shout-out to “Let’s run some red lights” and “Somebody blows their nose and you want to keep it,” and especially a personal favorite that hits my funny button more firmly than others: “I looked at the trap, Ray.”  Not to mention “Yes it’s true, this man has no…,” well, you get the picture.  But you have to whittle it down, and so I have.  On to the list.

    And Happy Birthday, “Ghosbusters.”

    (more…)