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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Invictus,’ ‘Bones’ and a billion remakes

    Matt Damon in InvictusSlipped my mind to do this on Friday, but better late…

    • We broke the news that Clint Eastwood’s upcoming Mandela film finally has a title: “Invictus.” (And if you’re wondering what it means, we explain that too.)

    • And with that, much “Invictus” talk ensued, as we learned that Eastwood directed the film at Morgan Freeman’s request, and that it’s going up against “The Lovely Bones” in December.

    • Speaking of “The Lovely Bones,” this week’s edition of Page to Screen put Alice Sebold’s bestselling novel under scrutiny.

    • Our slightly disappointing (to some, at least) poll of cinema’s most influential films entered its final stage.

    • With the news of a “Total Recall” remake the final straw, we got on Hollywood’s case for being so apparently allergic to original material.

    • This week’s list counted down the all-time greatest champs in the Best Foreign Language Film category. (Hint: The just-released “Departures” ain’t on it.)

    • We considered the wealth of female filmmakers in the mix for awards consideration this year.

    • A bit of respect for the great Elia Kazan.

    • “Up” stormed the box office, as we all knew it would.

    • Finally, in sadder, and much less expected, news, we said goodbye to actor David Carradine.

  • Tell us what you thought of ‘The Hangover’

    The Hangover

    I figured I’d wait until Saturday to see what most folks are paying to see this weekend, and it appears “The Hangover” is taking the new release crown.  I never got around to a review of the film, though I offered some fleeting comments last weekend.  Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.

  • WALL2-D2 and EVE-3PO

    EALL2-D2 and EVE-3PO

    (Courtesy: Worth 100, via /Film)

  • Conan addresses the Super Mario thing

    Thursday we told you about the intriguing similarities between Conan O’Brien’s new “Tonight Show” backdrop and the art of the Super Mario Bros. video games.  I honestly didn’t expect O’Brien to address the matter but sure enough, one day later during the opening monologue, we got this:

    Of course, he doesn’t offer an outright confirmation or denial, but I think the fact that he took the time to do this says a lot.

  • Google wishes Tetris a happy 25th

    I always love it when the Google folks get crafty and offer up a logo redesign for a day or two.  Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Tetris video game, so when you head on over to the search engine, you get the following in the way of homage:

    Google Tetris

  • On TCM now…

    Richard Schickel’s documentary “Spielberg on Spielberg.”  Just finished talking about “Duel” (what I maintain to be a top five Spielberg effort to this day) and “Jaws.”  Ths is critical viewing to anyone interested in filmmaking.  It’s a treat to hear the director talking at length about his own work.  This is a guy who has never provided a director’s commentary track for a DVD release, so it’s a rarer treat than you’d expect.

    Speaking of “Jaws” (a personal all-time top 20er and a finalist in our influential films poll), I’ve always laughed out loud at Roy Scheider’s reaction to first seeing the shark.  You know it well, the “chum” scene.  That bolt-upright snap of his, cigarette sticking out, that unmistakable “holy shit” look of shock.  I don’t know, cracks me up every time.

  • “You can put a cat in an oven, that don’t make it a biscuit.”

  • Freeman tapped Eastwood to direct ‘Invictus’

    Morgan FreemanToward the top of this John Powers profile of Morgan Freeman (published in part online and appearing in full in the June issue of Vogue), the actor drops an interesting bit of information I wasn’t aware of until now.  Most people were (as always) quick to call Clint Eastwood an Oscar hound for his choice of material this time around.  Obviously a film featuring a revered individual such as Nelson Mandela and covering the historic events of John Carlin’s book “Playing the Enemy” sets off the Oscar bait alarm, but it appears Eastwood didn’t exactly go searching for his next big awards season get:

    Effortlessly dapper in a black jacket and a white polo shirt at breakfast in Beverly Hills, [Freeman] says that at this point in his storied career, “there aren’t many challenges in making movies.” Luckily, he’s about to embark on one of them—going to South Africa to produce and star in a big-budget Hollywood film about Nelson Mandela. “If you are playing a living figure who’s revered by the world, you’ve got yourself a major, major undertaking. You’ve got to do this without embarrassing yourself, your audience, and especially Madiba [Mandela’s nickname]. Knowing that, you can be entirely too self-conscious. There are pitfalls, but I am going to be working with Clint.”

    He’s referring, of course, to his good friend Clint Eastwood, who’s directing the film at Freeman’s request. “Morgan is just right for the role,” says the man who helmed Freeman’s Oscar-winning turn in Million Dollar Baby. “His stature in the acting world is like Mandela’s in his world.” (Eastwood’s confidence turns out to be well-founded. “Things are going fantastic here,” Freeman later tells me by phone from Johannesburg. “Everything has just fallen into place. The thing that’s surprised me is how easy it’s been to adapt to being Mandela.”)

    Also, I have to say, “Invictus” is growing on me. Even though it’s totally wrong for the scope of the film and isn’t commercially appealing, I think it’s a very attractive title.  Strong.  Confident.  I dig it.

  • Lasseter on his Disney ups and downs

    John LasseterTotal Film has done a notably thorough interview with John Lasseter, which takes the form of a chronological tour through the animation maven and “Toy Story” director’s career. It’s a fascinating read, particularly if you, like me, are not entirely au fait with the early history of Pixar and computer animation. I hadn’t realized how the dots all joined between Lasseter and such diverse figures as Steve Jobs, Tim Burton, George Lucas and Chris Wedge. Small world, and all that.

    The overarching narrative that emerges from the interview is Lasseter’s complicated history with Disney Animation Studios. He may run the place now, but getting fired by them decades ago has clearly left its mark. He’s too genial a guy to remain bitter, but he’s still frank about how unpleasant his early Disney days were:

    When I got there I found it was led by people who felt threatened by young talent. I kept suggesting stuff but I remember being told by one of them, ‘Look we don’t want to hear your ideas, just do what you’re told. There are plenty of guys who’d be happy to take your place.’

    In two sentences some guy made me not care about the studio; he made me not care about the project I was working on. And I thought to myself, ‘One day if ever I’m in charge I’m never going to say to a young person what that guy just said to me’. But it didn’t stop me, I just kept trying to push and make things better.

    When we showed the test and gave a pitch (for “The Brave Little Toaster”), the head of the film studio just said, ‘The only reason to produce this by computer is if it makes it cheaper and faster.’And he walked out. Within five minutes I get a call: ‘Your project is incomplete and your employment with the Disney Animation Studios is now terminated.’

    (more…)

  • Two sugars

    As you know, we really love Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Sugar” here at InContention. The film opens today here in the UK, and I sincerely hope discerning Brit audiences can get past the unfamiliar baseball angle and see this for the lovely, universal character piece it is.

    Anyway, I thought I’d share this beautiful poster art from AllCity Design, easily the best in the game when it comes to UK release one-sheets. I love that they include rejected designs on their website — this one didn’t make the cut (the design they went with is pictured after the jump), but the elegance of its palette and composition caught my eye.

    Sugar

    (more…)

  • Elia Kazan sparks renewed interest

    Elia KazanSo many of today’s youth have not seen films made before the year they were born and they are missing so much. I remember being 18 and spending some time with my girlfriend at the time at her job, which allowed for me to get a lot of reading done. One of her co-workers expressed some surprise that I was reading Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography.  “Do you have to know everything about movies John?” Without hesitation I answered, “yes,” and still feel that way.  The great directors of cinema past and present knew as much as they could ABOUT cinema past and present.  Aspiring filmmakers should certainly take their cue.

    Once, while showing “Psycho” in my film history class, a student suddenly shouted, “Marcellus Wallace and Butch…man Tarantino lifted this,” and he was right. There is a scene in the film where Marion Crane encounters her boss crossing a street in much the same manner Butch encounters Marcellus in “Pulp Fiction.”  It’s small but I’m so happy someone in that class picked it up.  You have to know where you’ve been to understand where you are and, certainly, where you’re going.

    There is a retro-interest in Elia Kazan, the great director of the 1950s, that I find quite thrilling.  Known as a bi-coastal director, Kazan enjoyed great success in film as well as stage, helming some of the first productions of the greatest plays of the 20th century, including “All My Sons,” “Death of a Salesman,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”  He would direct the film version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1951 to great acclaim.

    No other director before Kazan so understood the art of acting and was able to work with actors in the manner he did. He was among the first directors to make the actor part of the creative team, listening to his or her ideas and admitting when he had actually been wrong. It was unheard of for directors such as John Ford, William Wyler, Chaplin or Orson Welles to admit being wrong — they never were in their minds — but Kazan had no fear, believing the creative process allowed for error.

    Having been trained as an actor befor he became a documentary filmmaker, Kazan understood the actor’s process, but as a director he wanted to be more than just the sort of director who blocked talent; he wanted to work with actors to create something as realistic as possible. Though he started his career as a director with Method Acting guru Lee Strasberg, the two parted ways when Kazan began evolving the style. Kazan went off to direct with his new ideas about the Method and found great success, winning two Academy Awards, Tony Awards and in 1999, under the cloud of controversey, an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

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  • Raymond Chandler’s secret ‘Indemnity’ cameo uncovered

    (from left) Fred MacMurray and Raymond Chandler in Double IndemnityI don’t dig into my list of all-time greatest films often beyond this brief mention/hint or that, though I regularly get emails and comments asking me to chart them out.  One of these days I’ll crank out the whole collective.  One fixture of the top 20, however, has always been Billy Wilder’s seminal film noir effort “Double Indemnity.”

    So it was with considerable surprise and enthusiasm that I stumbled across this Guardian story from Adrian Wootton that uncovers the until-now-undiscovered cameo from author Raymond Chandler in the film.  Chandler, of course, co-wrote the screenplay with Wilder, which was itself based upon the novel by fellow noir legend James M. Cain.

    The discovery comes 60 years after the film’s release and 50 years after Chandler’s death.  I’m stunned no one has uncovered it until now.  Author (and blogger) Mark Coggins is credited with the discovery (thanks to a tip from fellow author John Billheimer).

    Writes Coggins:

    The scene where Chandler appears comes relatively early in the move, just after Fred MacMurray, as insurance salesmen Walter Neff, leaves the office of Edward G. Robinson playing the character of claims adjuster Barton Keyes. Keyes has just told Neff that “his little man” tells him whenever a claim is crooked and Neff shines him on and then lights his (cheap) cigar with a kitchen match and walks out of the office.

    As he exits the office, he goes down a corridor, and there is Chandler waiting outside reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette.

    (more…)

  • No reason

    A reader sent me this pic, it amused me, so I’m posting. Simple as that:

    (from left) posters for Let the Right One In, Rachel Getting Married and I've Loved You So Long

  • 6/5 Web Round-up

    James Cameron on the set of Avatar• Carmike Cinemas honcho S. David Passman III gets back to basics, like cleaning the bathrooms. (This story hits home with me because I grew up going to a shoddy Carmike theater.) [Company Town]

    • Headline of the month.  Not film related, but necessary for your morning LOL dose. [MyFoxBoston.com]

    • Drew McWeeny dives head-long into the tank for Ubisoft’s “Avatar” video game with a detailed description of what must have been a breath-taking E3 demonstration. [Motion/Captured]

    • Why Cannes awards mean squat for Oscar. [The Playlist]

    • How “Slumdog Millionaire” is changing filmmaking in India. [The Guardian]

    • Dumb list du jour… [Premiere]

    • Paul Dano, “prince regent of independent film,” rides the subway.  Just, you know, FYI. [The Times]

    • Sam Mendes drew on Hal Ashby for “Away We Go” (he just missed the poignancy). [The Hollywood Interview]

    • Searching for the Berkeley home that inspired Carl’s “Up” abode. [San Francisco Chronicle]

    • CAA reaches out to James Cameron to represent the director’s new Fusion Camera System technology. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

  • Jolie tops female-powered Forbes list

    Angelina JolieI must say I’m always somewhat fascinated by the annual Forbes 100 Most Powerful Celebrities list, not least because I’ve never really understood how they arrive at it.

    I have no doubt the financial publishing behemoth has some sort of intricate formula that factors in earnings and media exposure to somehow arrive at a rank order, but as a total idiot in such matters, I remain bewildered by a list that compares the wholly disparate (to me, at least) achievements of such  figures as Rush Limbaugh, Ryan Seacrest and Roger Federer.

    But compare them they have, and this year’s number-crunching informs us that Angelina Jolie is officially the most powerful celebrity in the world.

    I suppose I won’t argue with that: while I wouldn’t call Jolie the most influential actress in the game at the moment (surely that title goes to Meryl Streep in her newfound incarnation as summer-movie titan, which landed her at #64 on Forbes’ list), “celebrity” is a very different animal, and the number of magazine covers Jolie graces weekly at a newsagent’s near you speaks for itself.

    Clearly that kind of exposure is a more crucial factor in Forbes’ estimation than earnings, as I’d reckon Jolie’s personal fortune is meagre compared to that of runner-up Oprah Winfrey. Interestingly, the top four spots in the list are held by women, which belies more than a few media perceptions.

    (more…)

  • Eastwood goes head-to-head with Jackson this December

    Clint EastwoodIt’ll be Clint Eastwood in one corner, Peter Jackson in the other for round two this Oscar season.

    Tuesday we broke the news that Clint Eastwood’s untitled Nelson Mandela/1995 World Cup film would be titled “Invictus.”  Now comes word form Variety that the film will be released December 11, the same day as Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” (featured this week in Guy’s Page to Screen column).

    “Invictus” follows Mandela’s attempt to use the 1995 Rugby World Cup to heal his nation following his release from prison, the fall of apartheid and his election as president of South Africa…

    Eastwood drew the title of the film from a short poem often recited by Mandela. “Invictus,” penned by William Ernest Henley, speaks to the will to survive in the face of adversity.

    “Invictus” isn’t the first picture to claim Dec. 11. Also opening that weekend is Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones,” from Paramount and DreamWorks.

    The Dec. 11 release puts “Invictus” and “Lovely Bones” in the heart of awards season.

    Also note the utter lack of sourcing our story from two days ago. Nothing new there, but you roll with the punches in this racket.

  • Is Conan’s new backdrop Mario-inspired?

    Lots of “Tonight Show” talk this week.  I would apologize but, at the same time, come on, it’s transition week.  Plenty to discuss.

    The guys over at Serious Lunch (via Joe Quesada’s Twitter page and Gizmodo) have either stumbled onto a coincidence or an awesome ode to the Mushroom Kingdom.  If you’ve been watching the show this week, you’ve probably noticed the nifty stained glass backdrop that appears during O’Brien’s opening monologue. It seems the design may have been inspired by elements from the Super Mario Bros. video game series.

    I don’t know, I think it’s way, way too similar to be a coincidence.  You have a look and decide:

    Conan O'Brien backdrop

    This animated gif really seals the deal for me.  AWESOME.

  • Julia Louis-Dreyfus wants her Oscar