In Contention

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  • The trouble with sci-fi

    Christian Bale in Terminator SalvationIt’s never too late to give another stiff kick to the ribs of “Terminator Salvation,” it seems.  The film just opened in the UK last week, opening the doors for this David Cox blog entry on the Guardian website.  It’s a thorough, well-conceived, smart piece about the fact that Hollywood seems to be making a mess of science-fiction these days, choosing nostalgia over novelty and sadly missing the boat on some of the most captivating ideas that lie right in front of our faces.

    Of course, this is why we should all rally around a guy like Duncan Jones who is clearly interested in those ideas and could push the genre, finally, into its brave new world.  But until creative people make the calls rather than fiscally conscious business conservatives, it’ll just be more of the same.  I’m elated that “Star Trek,” a film that at least touches on some more intriguing possibilities if by way of plot device alone, is the highest grossing film of the year.  Maybe that can help signal a change and guys like Jones can get their work out there more and more.  Ditto James Cameron’s “Avatar” when it finally makes its way to theaters.

    Here’s Cox’s argument, in a nutshell:

    A quarter of a century ago, when The Terminator hit the screen, things were a bit different. Then, advances in computing were a disquieting novelty to many. Hal’s terrifying takeover of the Discovery still haunted cinemagoers’ imaginations from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was a time for murderous cyborgs. Now, however, we take artificial intelligence for granted. It’s become humdrum rather than chilling.

    Future global conflict was an all too real prospect in the era of the cold war. Post-apocalyptic, Mad Max worlds, like the one in which Terminator Salvation is set, were far from fantastical for a generation living in genuine terror of imminent nuclear holocaust. Today, our fears lie elsewhere…Our own age ought to provide it with plenty of raw material for the performance of these functions. Cosmology, sub-atomic physics and the life sciences are transforming our understanding of reality, while the way human life should be organised has come once more into question.

    Yet, Hollywood continues to offer us sci-fi spectaculars that, like Terminator Salvation, seem strangely out of time. Star Wars: The Clone Wars was perhaps the most egregious example of an attempt to suck box-office dollars from the decaying corpse of a cold war masterpiece. Our decade’s superhero sagas carry a whiff of nostalgia for the age of the comic book. Star Trek was a reminder that space was once the final frontier. We’ve learned since then that the frontiers that matter are closer to home.

    Read the rest over at The Guardian.  Also, I have to say, I don’t think there is another traditional media outlet that has utilized new media, specifically blogs, as completely and smartly as The Guardian.  The posts are consistently interesting, never derivative and always reflective of the best op-ed journalism or commentary.

  • 6/8 Web Round-up

    Golden Gate Bridge• “Tonight Show” drummer Max Weinberg splits his attention between his new west coast late night gig and his east coast responsibilities with the E Street Band. [New York Times]

    • Nikki Finke reveals the real life Hollywood story that inspired the spec script for “The Hangover.” [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

    • Todd Leopold talks to “Hurt Locker” director Kathryn Bigelow. [CNN]

    • Noah Forrest questions the motivations of studios hoping to cash in on sequels nobody asked for. [Movie City News]

    • As “Land of the Lost” tanks at the box office, Chris Nashawaty asks what most of us have been wondering for a while: “Is America over Will Ferrell?” [MSNBC]

    • Patrick Goldstein treads similar territory, wonders whether Ferrell’s “movie-star credentials should be revoked.” [The Big Picture]

    • On the emo dorks actresses find appealing these days. [The Independent]

    • The Golden Gate Bridge: a sci-fi director’s favorite target. [The Guardian]

  • And again

    Sorry for the down time this morning, folks.  We had some final server issues to work out and things spilled over into the work day.

  • If at first you don’t succeed…

    I Hate Valentine's DayHas Nia Vardalos cloned herself? That’s a pretty terrifying thought, granted, but don’t shudder just yet, because my next statement is even more troubling: Vardalos has another movie out next month.

    Yes, fresh from the roaring success of “My Life in Ruins,” Hollywood’s favorite recycler of Hellenic schtick is striking while the iron’s, uh, hot with a romantic comedy titled “I Hate Valentine’s Day.” IFC are the fortunate distributors; I’d say riding the coattails of Fox Searchlight’s Vardalos project must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but, well, how could it have done?

    Unlike “My Life in Ruins,” this one is written and directed by the star herself, so Vardalos’ numerous fans can rejoice in the fact that her talent will be unbridled this time. And look! John Corbett is back for the ride, to rekindle that old Greek magic. I bet July 3 suddenly seems too long to wait, huh?

    Why had I not heard about this film until today? Why was I not warned? (Hat tip to Stale Popcorn for breaking the news to me gently.) And why, given the title of the film, could they not at least wait until Valentine’s Day 2010 to give us time to recover?

    Remember when it looked like a very real possibility that Nia Vardalos could win a Best Original Screenplay Oscar? And then when, in a rare and frankly astonishing gesture of common sense and good taste, they went for Pedro Almodovar instead? It’s days like this when I feel inspired to write a personal thank-you note to every member of the Academy.

  • HBO ‘Dark Knight’ promos featuring the Pixies

    Last year’s box office hog (and Best Picture no-show) “The Dark Knight” premieres on HBO this Friday, June 13.  There is nothing particularly creative about using the Pixies’ “Where is my Mind?” on these promo commercials of course, but I love the juxtaposition anyway.

    (Courtesy: Superherpo Hype)

  • Teasing tomorrow’s edition of The Lists

    Happy 25th:

  • Megan Fox at Tokyo ‘Transformers’ premiere

    Sorry for the testosterone overload on this admittedly pointless post, but I just…I…

    Megan Fox at the Tokyo premiere of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

  • So who’s going to make the first iPhone movie?

    Now that the new iPhone has been announced (releasing June 19), fit with video recording and editing right on the device, I find myself wondering when the first iPhone movie will be completed.  You know the hoop-la would be considerable and certainly someone’s going to give it a try.

    iPhone 3G S

  • Guessing games

    Carey Mulligan in An EducationOK, I held off compiling a set of 2009 Oscar predictions for as long as I could. Actually, I tried to hold off even thinking about them — so long and largely depressing was the 2008 derby that I felt I owed myself a few months of pretending that movies are their own reward. (Not that the artistically desolate spring season is the best time for idealism.)

    Year-in-advance predictions are the strict preserve of crazy people. (And we love them for it.) By contrast, in offering up my first predictions a mere 7-8 months before nomination day, I feel only slightly unhinged.

    Before you peruse my predix, I should offer the disclaimer that my best guesses may just as easily be my worst. Living a continent away, I can’t approach Kris for ear-to-the-ground expertise, and I often run with notions that are fanciful, to say the least. This time last year, I was predicting 5 nominations for “Happy-Go-Lucky,” including a Best Picture bid.  Then again, I walked out of “In Bruges” last April convinced I’d seen a future screenplay nominee. I have my isolated (often very isolated) moments of clarity.

    All of which is to say to say that these predictions aren’t to be taken terribly seriously. At this early stage in the game, with so many variables in the equation, why not have a bit of fun and float a few wild-card possibilities? By the time the unknowns become known and the race starts narrowing down, there’s little room to be playful, so I like to get it out of my system now.

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  • Dr. Ken Jeong gets his day in the media sun

    Ken JeongI think it’s safe to assume that if you saw “The Hangover” this weekend (tell us what you thought), you caught Ken Jeong’s performance as a Korean Vegas crime lord.  Jeong has been on the rise ever since his first big screen cameo in Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up” two years ago, but according to this Chris Lee profile in the Los Angeles Times, there’s an unlikely backstory to all of this.  “Before a casting coup landed Jeong an enviable spot on the batting order for some of movie comedy’s heaviest hitters…[his] day job didn’t involve making people laugh at all,” Lee writes.  “Unless prescribing pain medication for, say, an angry patient with a herniated disc is your idea of funny.”

    North Carolina native Jeong was practicing internal medicine at Kaiser in Woodland Hills before Hollywood came knocking.  Comedy, it turns out, was just a hobby to keep him loose and sane away from the job.  Now he’s landing the most laughs in what will surely be the summer’s biggest comedy:

    “I practiced internal medicine at Kaiser in Woodland Hills,” Jeong said over lunch near his home in Calabasas. “Comedy was a hobby. It was like my golf. I had another life.”

    According to “Hangover” director Phillips, Jeong’s defining characteristic is his “fearlessness” — something put on prominent display in the bawdy R-rated comedy…

    “He just comes in and crushes those little parts in films,” Phillips said. “That’s what you look for: a guy who can come in and just destroy it. He’s crazy!”

    It’s hardly the career path Jeong, 39, set out for himself. The North Carolina-born Korean American attended Duke University (major: pre-med, with a minor in drama) then attained his MD from the University of North Carolina. It was around that time he began going to open-mike nights at local bars and delivering his earliest stand-up routines.

    “It was just goofy Asian stuff,” Jeong recalled. “Definitely high energy, but I was too afraid to say I was in medicine. I’m just an educated idiot: I took that as my persona.”

    Moving to New Orleans for his medical residency, Jeong didn’t let a 90-hour workweek keep him from the comedy clubs. “It was grueling, but I had a work-hard, play-hard mentality,” he said. “Everyone has something to keep them sane outside medicine. Mine was comedy.”

    This is the first I’m hearing of Will Ferrell’s used car comedy “The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard,” by the way.  Make it stop.  Anyway, check out the rest at the LA Times.  And a taste of Jeong’s stand-up after the jump.

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  • French ‘Imaginarium’ poster

    This French poster for Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarioum of Dr. Parnassus” (courtesy of The Playlist) looks like a snipped shot of a banner, but I had to post it because it caught my eye:

    The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

  • 6/8 Web Round-up

    Cover of Batman and Robin #1• The “Oh yeah, what happened to her?” blurb of the week. [Associated Press]

    • Yours truly covers Grant Morrison’s latest monthly, “Batman and Robin.” [Batman on Film]

    • David Poland analyzes the brave new world of media ad buys. [The Hot Blog]

    • Tom O’Neil on Geoffrey Rush’s new acting triple crown with last night’s lead actor Tony. [Gold Derby]

    • Marcia Gay Harden won lead actress from “God of Carnage,” by the way, while the film won best play.  “Billy Elliot” cleaned up, though. [TonyAwards.com]

    • With “Brüno” on the way, Michael Deacon digs into the elusive Sacha Baron Cohen. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Mickey Rourke works “The Wrestler” across the pond. [The Guardian]

    • Out-of-the-blue story of the day: motorcycles big on the big screen have retailers hopeful. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Glenn Kenny sees no grain in the “Dr. Strangelove” Blu-ray release, thank you very much. [Some Came Running]

  • A taste of ‘An Education’

    Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard in An EducationOne of the more popular Oscar bets doing the rounds is that, along with rising star Carey Mulligan, writer Nick Hornby will find himself in the race for Sundance favorite “An Education.” (I have a hunch the film may do even better than that, but that’s me.)

    In contrast to the wealth of popular books reaching our screens this year, however, Hornby’s adaptation has taken a rather more circuitous journey: his script is a fictionalisation of journalist Lynn Barber’s autobiographical short story which appeared in Granta magazine a while back, but is actually just a taster for Barber’s full-length memoir, which is only being published later this month. Still with me? Good.

    I will of course be covering all this in a Page to Screen column eventually. For now, the Observer has helpfully provided a 6000-word extract from Barber’s memoir that essentially covers the events that inspired the film, wherein a wide-eyed 16 year-old girl experiences the rush of first love and heartbreak at the hands of an older man in early 1960s London. It’s a delightful read — warm, melancholy and streaked with acerbic humor — and gives some idea of what to expect from the film. I particularly liked this extract, which balances specific personal emotion and sly social critique quite beautifully:

    Events overtook me in the last few days of term. Miss R Garwood Scott the headmistress somehow got wind of my engagement and summoned me to see her. Was it true I was engaged? Yes, I said, but I would still like to take the Oxford exams. She was ruthless. I could not return to school (in those days you had to stay for an extra term to do Oxbridge entrance) if I was getting married. When was the wedding and which church would it be in? Not in church, I said, because my fiancé was Jewish. Jewish! She looked aghast – “Don’t you realise that the Jews killed Our Lord?” I stared at her. “So I won’t take the Oxford exams,” I said. My little gang was waiting for me outside her study. “I told her I was leaving,” I announced. “She tried to persuade me to stay but I refused.” They all congratulated me and begged to be bridesmaids. Then I went to the bogs and cried my eyes out.

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  • Passing prettiness

    Amy Adams As I’ve mentioned before, David Thomson’s trademark star profiles can exert a kind of car-crash fascination these days, the result of a once invaluable critic giving in to his shallowest impulses. Flashes of insight still show through on occasion, but the navel-gazing (and often inappropriate fawning) of his pieces can be hard to take.

    One of the things that has always distinguished Thomson’s analysis of actors is his preoccupation with physicality. At his best, this manifests itself as artful articulation of the intangibles of screen presence. At his worst, this tilts into ‘dirty old man’ territory, as in his repulsive “biography” of Nicole Kidman, in which he waxes lyrical over her breasts and pubic hair.

    This week, the object of his physical scrutiny is Amy Adams, and this time, his gaze is a lot less admiring:

    If Adams is a star now, she had better make the most of it. This may sound harsh, but she has the kind of look that could shift from trifle to pudding by the time she is 40. You may rise up in wrath and say that a critic is not supposed to make personal remarks about an actor’s appearance – but if you really take away that appearance, there is precious little to talk about in acting.

    Ms Adams is where she is now because of a kind of passing prettiness that carries no threat. By contrast, Reese Witherspoon, Emily Blunt and Natalie Portman all carry the promise of intelligence, character and something to say that will trouble many men and the kind of society that relishes passive, pretty girls. That a movie career can still be made out of meek sweetness is a measure of how little progress we have made.

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  • Live your life

    Rubina AliMake no mistake, I found 9 year-old Rubina Ali as adorable in “Slumdog Millionaire” as everyone else did. I also found her a rather more expressive actress than her elder incarnation, Freida Pinto. And I was as sad as anyone to hear of her home, along with those of many others, being bulldozed by the Indian government.

    But with all that said, I can’t summon much enthusiasm for the idea of her impending autobiography, even if it is for charity:

    Rubina Ali, one of the child stars of the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, is to publish her life story.

    Madeline Toy at Transworld Publishers said on Friday that “Slumgirl Dreaming: My Journey to the Stars” will be published in Britain in mid-July. She said both Transworld Publishers and Random House Children’s Books will publish the book at the same time. Both companies are units of Random House Group Ltd. Toy said all royalties will go to Rubina and Médecins du Monde, a French medical aid organisation.

    I tend to be of the mind that people should have a bit more life under their belt before they commit it to paper. (Or rather, have some anonymous hack do so for them.) I get irked when 20-somethings publish their life stories (as is de rigeur for British celebs, be they footballers or former “Big Brother” contestants), but this is a whole new level of bizarre.

    Can the film adaptation be far away? Can the Academy resist the appeal of “Slumdog” redux, now with added biopic power? How meta would that be?

  • SUNDAY CENTS: Dark clouds ‘Hangover’ Ferrell

    The Hangover(6/8 UPDATE: Variety is reporting this morning that, in a rare occurrence, “The Hangover” topped “Up” once actual numbers rolled in.  “Final figures will show that ‘Hangover’ grossed $45 million from 3,269 runs,” Pamela McClintock writes. “‘Up’ should finish at $44.3 million to $44.4 million from 3,818 theaters.)

    “Up” has now joined “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and “Madea Goes to Jail” as the only 2009 releases to spend more than one week at the top of the box office. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Strike that.  See update above.) A slim drop of 35% led to a weekend gross of $44.2 million and kept Carl Fredrickson floating above the competition en route to what surely will be one of the highest grossing totals of the summer. With $137 million in the bank already, it is pacing ahead of the 10-day tallies of “WALL-E,” “Ratatouille” and “Cars.” Anybody willing to bet on “Toy Story 3” breaking Pixar’s hot streak next summer? Didn’t think so.

    Coming in a close second is “The Hangover.” Starring a bunch of nobodies (relatively speaking) and from a director five years removed from his last hit, there’s no reason this should have made $43.3 million this weekend. But it did and the only explanation is that audiences loved it. Test screenings started the word of mouth and it rolled all through the marketing campaign and what many of us saw coming as a possible sleeper hit of the summer has turned into something else entirely: a bona fide blockbuster. Even if it fails to double its debut (doubtful with word of mouth so good), it would still be a massive success for Warner Bros. No word yet on how much of the gross came from people so hungover that they forgot they already paid to see the movie the previous night as well.

    Third place went to “Land of the Lost,” an unmitigated disaster. $19.5 million is what Universal would have hoped for in one day when they greenlit this sucker with a budget north of $100 million. Will Ferrell and dinosaurs seem like a smart combo to me but the trailers and buzz for this one labeled it a stinker long ago and nobody could decipher whether it was for kids or young adults. Director Brad Silberling has now sunk two potential franchise starters in a row (with “Lemony Snicket” being the other) and has to be sweating his career right now. And Danny McBride deserves better.

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  • Floating Robinson

    I’ve had my eye on this “Double Indemnity” poster for the last few days.  I have a hole on my bedroom wall and it would work splendidly.  The colors, the contours, the smoothness goes well with the vibe I have going on in there.  But there’s something about that borderline-creepy floating bust of Edward G. Robinson that’s giving me pause.  And I’d be lying if I didn’t say the pink is a bit off.  But I like it otherwise.

    I’m also considering this “12 Angry Men” poster, but if I can ever find my friggin’ Italian “Midnight Cowboy” print, problem solved.  I’ve got this “Metropolis” poster and this “Citizen Kane” poster on the walls as of now, to give you an idea of what I’m going for.

    Double Indemnity

  • First look at Freeman as Mandela in ‘Invictus’

    To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time we’ve seen Morgan Freeman on the set of Clint Eastood’s “Invictus.”  Everything has been Matt Damon in rugby garb so far.

    Morgan Freeman on the set of Invictus