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  • Sporting chance

    Matt Damon and Clint Eastwood on the set of Untitled Nelson Mandela ProjectRegular visitors to his entertaining blog will know that Nathaniel Rogers has become the latest lunatic to enter the fray of (nearly) year-in-advance Oscar predictions, and as ever, they make for great reading. He has a number of pretty interesting hunches, some of which line up with my own (sight unseen, I also think “An Education” could emerge as a biggish deal) and some in a decidedly crazysexycool vein. (Terry Gilliam a Best Director nominee? I can’t see it, but I wish I could.)

    For his top pick in the Best Picture category, however, Rogers sticks a little closer to the presumed script, guessing (like many others) that Clint Eastwood’s Mandela project is in the driver’s seat. He does, however, cannily note what too many other pundits have not — that the possibly-still-untitled film (we can only hope they find a more flavourful moniker than the bone-dry “The Human Factor”) is not strictly a Nelson Mandela biopic, but a sports drama of sorts:

    The inspirational sports film is a regular staple of the multiplex. Most of them come and go with nary an Oscar blip. It’s kind of the ugly stepchild within the family of stories Oscar really loves, the true story period piece. Every once in a while, though, this overly populated genre does attract Academy eyeballs (Chariots of Fire, Seabiscuit, Hoosiers) and if there’s any pairing that comes with automatic prestige cred and appealing “important!” political background, it’d have to be Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman mixed with Nelson Mandela and South Africa. It’s guesswork. Maybe it’ll be too light for the Academy.

    Having now read both Anthony Peckham’s script and John Carlin’s source book “Playing the Enemy,” I think Rogers might be on to something with the word “light” — though a serious-minded piece, the political content that you might expect in a film concerning arguably this era’s most revered politician is notably played down.

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  • ‘Kill Bill’ in 60 seconds

    This is silly, but I laughed:

  • Thornton cancels Canadian tour after being an asshole

    Comeuppance.  From the AP:

    Billy Bob Thornton’s band has canceled the rest of its Canadian tour after the actor compared the country’s fans to mashed potatoes with no gravy in a testy interview that caused a sensation online.

    The Boxmasters opened for Willie Nelson on Thursday in Toronto, where they reportedly were booed and met with catcalls of “Here comes the gravy.”

    A note posted on Nelson’s Web site Friday said the Boxmasters were canceling the rest of their Canadian dates “due to one band member and several of the crew having the flu.”

    Click here for the background.

  • Remembering ‘Blow Out’

    Blow OutThe name Brian De Palma first came to me when I saw a screening of the director’s new film “Phantom of the Paradise,” a high energy rock and roll fantasy based loosely on the classic “Phantom of the Opera” story. The film was a knockout, with a marvelous score by Paul Williams that should have earned the attention of the Academy for the many outstanding songs within.

    Shortly thereafter I saw a De Palma double feature: “Carrie” and “Obsession,” the former a superb adaptation of the Stephen King novel that earned Oscar nods for lead and supporting actress, while the second was a Hitckcockian thriller with a great musical score. The Hitchcock homage continued with “Dressed to Kill,” a superbly shot thriller that gave Michael Caine one of his most bizarre, yet finest roles. Sexy and terrifying, the film was a huge hit with critics and audiences in the summer of 1980.

    One year later De Palma gave us his masterpiece, a moody noir with John Travolta in his first role as an adult. Here we had a director at the top of his game and an actor made into a superstar with his previous films, “Saturday Night Fever,” “Grease” and “Urban Cowboy.” Travolta was hungry, looking for the role that would bring him greater attention as an actor.

    People forget Travolta was nominated for an Oscar for “Fever” and won the National Society of Film Critics Award for the performance, which launched his career. His one career fumble, at that time, was the goofy love story “Moment by Moment” with Lily Tomlin that left everyone who saw the film puzzled as to why it was ever made. In De Palma, the actor had a director who understood cinema, who adored actors and allowed them their freedom while gently guiding them towards his vision of the film. Travolta could not have been in better hands.

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  • Put this in your pipe and smoke it

    Rod Taylor in The Time MachineI love watching the end of the world unfold on screen.  It’s just something I enjoy.  And sue me if I was a little bummed at a certain caution on the part of Hollywood to offer up the apocalyptic imagery it had serviced to the masses in the action-packed summers of the 1990s following 9/11.

    Go back and take a look at “Armageddon,” for instance.  Hardly great cinema but I got a kick out of it just as I did “Independence Day” or anything comparable.  The shot of the Chrysler Building being sheered in half by meteorites as people plummet to their death — the imagery is obviously prickly in the post-9/11 environment.  And everything from “War of the Worlds” to “The Dark Knight” has gone out of its way to comment toward the disasters of that year, to put forth the sense that a thought process is being injected into blockbuster entertainment, that the mayhem actually means something on an artistic level.  And I’m all for that.  But I prefer not to be held hostage by it, either.

    I remember talking with a colleague in New York last month who was bemoaning the failure of Alex Proyas’s “Knowing.”  I had not seen the film yet at the time (though I have sense, and it’s certainly a…lesser accomplishment, shall we say, but it also deals with interesting ideas that really should be in mainstream Hollywood cinema).  I rebutted with the notion that maybe a good, spectacle, end-of-the-world trip to the movies is just what Hollywood needs to shake out all the cobwebs.

    When my list of the year’s most anticipated films hit on New Year’s Day, more than a few people raised an eyebrow at the inclusion of Roland Emmerich’s “2012.”  I should come clean with the admission that Emmerich’s films, more often than not, work for me on some primitive, Neanderthal level.  But I have to also admit to being fascinated with all of the speculation over the year 2012, which I wrote about nearly a year ago.

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  • Tweet of the day

    Kevin Smith tweet

    He then proceeded to “wake and bake” and tweet the goings on that resulted.

  • Mann and music

    Michael MannI interviewed Michael Mann on Halloween night back in 2006.  Tons of traffic.  And there was a Lakers game, so getting back from the West side was a pain.  The sit-down was part of a larger piece I was writing for The New York Times on Mann’s friend and colleague, screenwriter Eric Roth.  It was a solid hour-long chat and one of the few moments in this business where I really had to buckle down and keep the geekgasm out of sight because not only is Mann my favorite working director, but he’s also a hell of an intimidating cat.

    I pulled out my recorder, set it on the desk for the interview.  He proceeded to do the same thing with his own recorder.  Serious guy.

    Anyway, all of this is a long way of getting around to the point that I was floored by Mann’s music collection.  It may have become exaggerated in my head by now, but I seem to recall a wall of CDs behind his desk — TONS of music.  It made total sense, of course, seeing as Mann has a knack for tossing wonderful, moody, sometimes refreshingly fringe music into his films.

    In the 1980s he had a big crush on Tangerine Dream, for better or worse.  Moving into the 1990s, the Randy Edelman/Trevor Jones score for “The Last of the Mohicans” was beautiful stand alone work (mostly Jones’s contribution), but Mann also made great use of a couple of Moby tracks in “Heat” (the famous closing credits finale and “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” being a key moment in my own discovery of cinema as something more than I thought it was.

    “The Insider” made fine dramatic use of Lisa Gerrard a year before Hans Zimmer and “Gladiator” made it “cool,” while the opening montage of “Ali” under a live version of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me” is the best part of the film.  “Collateral” and “Miami Vice” allowed for Mann to hold on to an obvious interest in Audioslave for a one-two punch (with some nice Roots and Groove Armada mixed in to the former), and now, the trailers for “Public Enemies.”

    Both have utilized Otis Taylor “Ten Million Slaves,” perhaps the first trailer doing a better job of showcasing it.  The latest example, which debuted today, opens with an eerie tune that I couldn’t place at first.  After doing some digging, I discovered the track is “Black Heart” by Calexico.

    Of course, a number of our musically savvy readers probably knew that already, but it’s new to me.  And further evidence that Mann knows how to use music to drive home his already striking imagery.  Here’s a weird YouTube video with the song played over an old burlesque routine by Amalia Aguilar.  It’s totally twisted and worth a link here at the end of this somewhat newsless day:

    (By the way, there’s also a double CD out there called Director’s Cut: Music from the Films of Michael Mann if you’re REALLY into it.)

  • As good as it gets

    Tilda Swinton at the 2007 Academy AwardsEver come across a match of star, director and project so uncannily perfect it gives you chills just thinking about it? That’s how I’m feeling upon learning (belatedly, I admit) that Tilda Swinton has signed on to star in Lynne Ramsay’s long-delayed adaptation of the Lionel Shriver bestseller “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”

    I’m not sure how it took the news so long to reach me (the NYT’s Carpetbagger blog reported this last month), given that “Kevin” has been my most anticipated cinematic endeavour — bar none — for several years now.

    There are a number of reasons for this. Shriver’s extraordinary novel (for the uninformed, it’s an epistolary breakdown of the circumstances leading to a high school massacre, as told by the teenage killer’s guilt-ridden mother) hit me like a well-aimed punch in the gut three years ago and resonates with me still. And Ramsay utterly earned my devotion with her first two features, “Ratcatcher” (1999) and “Morvern Callar” (2002): the young Scot could have the most distinctive aesthetic sensibility of any British filmmaker currently working.

    Meanwhile, the lead role is as complex and risky a challenge as any actress could hope to take on — a mother bereft of any maternal connection to her offspring from the outset, as candid as she is ultimately self-deluding, she both invites and repels empathy. Few actresses walk the line between fragility and opaqueness as intelligently as Swinton, and fewer still would be brave enough to take on such a defiantly unsympathetic part. This is a casting bullseye.

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  • When does he sleep?

    Only the other day, I mentioned how glad I was to see David O. Russell keeping himself busy after the lengthy, hobbled production of his upcoming comedy “Nailed.” But I didn’t realize he was keeping himself this busy.

    Mere days after the announcement of his attachment to the Weinstein Company’s “The Silver Linings Playbook,” comes news of yet another directorial commitment for the man: this time a romantic comedy, “Aaron and Sarah,” that apparently has John Hughes overtones. Variety reports:

    Story centers on a nerdy guy and a popular girl who meet as freshmen and, over four years of high school, four proms and one funeral, become friends and eventually fall in love. Husband-wife team Chad Gomez Creasey and Dana Resnik Creasey penned the screenplay.

    Producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen (“American Beauty,” “Milk”) lend extra cred. Meanwhile, if I don’t hear word of another new Russell project before the month is out, I’ll be deeply disappointed.

  • Tweet of the day

    Jon Favreau tweet

    I guess it’s pretty serious when the director can’t even snap off a few keep-sakes.

  • New ‘Public Enemies’ trailer

    Last month the first materials for Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies,” starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, finally hit the net.  At the time I thought the trailer (and certainly the poster) had something of a sheen to it, a high-gloss studio vibe that didn’t say “Mann” to me.

    Well this new trailer is a bit more slap-dash, less contrived and starts to dig into the characters with a little more grit.  It seems to be more of a trademark Mann construction to me, and I just love the eerie opening moments with the strings.

    (I believe MSN had the exclusive on this, so I’ll link there.)

  • ‘Departures’ trailer debuts

    Remember “Departures,” that little Japanese film that everyone (almost everyone) expected to be an also-ran for the foreign language film Oscar last year?  Well the film is finally going to see a domestic limited release on May 29.  The new trailer has premiered over at Apple.  Here’s an embed:

    “[‘Departures’] deals with death in a really affecting way, at once eerie, humorous and, ultimately, moving,” I wrote of the film back in February.  “When it threatens to pass into trite territory, it finds a way to stay fresh and alive, very human and absolutely satisfying.”

    “Departures” is also set to play the Tribeca Film Festival later this month and the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival in May.

  • Liam Neeson = Hollywood’s go-to mentor

    Liam Neeson in Batman BeginsCan we just assume that whenever the Hollywood moguls in all their infinite, maniacl wisdom decide to actually film an unending epic based on the Bible, Liam Neeson is likely to get the role of God?

    We’re already talking about the guy who mentored both Batman and Obi Wan Kenobi, who starred as the magical authority figure of “Chronicles of Narnia” series, who brought inspiration in the early 20th century to those seeking a free Irish state and, of course, saved a bunch of Jews.  Let’s not forget he’s also set to play probably the country’s most universally praised president of all time whenever the filmmakers decide to light that fire.

    Now, naturally, Neeson has been cast as Zeus in Louis Letterier’s “Clash of the Titans” remake.  The role was originally played by Laurence Olivier, which surprised many filmgoers back in 1981, that the celebrated film and theatre actor would stoop to genre depictions.  Ralph Fiennes is reportedly in talks to play Hades, making for an irresistible showdown of good versus evil.

    But back to Neeson, Hollywood’s go-to guy for mentor types and overall heroic displays, I’m very happy to see him hit the ground running and keep his chin up after the awful tragedy he and his family endured last month.  Keep working.  It’s all you can do.

    And regarding the “Clash” remake: part of me wishes it wouldn’t happen, because I love the original so much.  But part of me REALLY wants to see this thing, too.

  • WB soundstage mural before and after

    Warner Bros. mural before

    Warner Bros. mural after

    Brooks Barnes has a detailed write-up on the studio’s updated Burbank facade here.  For obvious reasons, I love it.

  • One from the vault

    No, it’s not a vintage Grateful Dead gig poster, but it’s close enough. I love that this new one-sheet for Ang Lee’s upcoming “Taking Woodstock” made its first appearance on the Rolling Stone site. I love that they’ve fully embraced the fabulous-slash-hideous design possibilities of its era. And I love that a relative prestige picture isn’t disguising the tongue-in-cheek element in its marketing approach. Good work.

    Taking Woodstock

  • Under the radar: ‘Song of Sparrows’

    Song of SparrowsAs the box office charts reveal, spring can be a harsh season for the discerning filmgoer — with the industry shifting its focus from prestige product before February’s Oscar winners can even shake off their hangovers, we have to dig deeper than usual for fare with more on its mind than monsters, aliens and petrol.

    The good news is that this fallow period affords a few miniature gems more breathing room than they would otherwise receive in the crush of awards season. With so little else to entice them, more adventurous viewers may be inclined to take a chance on a range of challenging stragglers from last year’s festival circuit, the brilliant “Hunger” and “Sugar,” and the much-acclaimed “Goodbye Solo,” among them.

    Joining this selection of specialist titles in New York last week (and in LA this Friday) is “Song of Sparrows,” an unusual and thoroughly winning comedy-drama from Majid Majidi, the veteran Iranian auteur best known for such gently humanist works as “The Colour of Paradise” and “Children of Heaven.”

    The latter film made him the only Iranian filmmaker to date to receive an Oscar nomination — no minor distinction considering his compatriots include Abbas Kiarostami and Samira Makhmalbaf. Though “Song of Sparrows,” Iran’s official 2008 Oscar submission, fell short of repeating that feat, it displays many of the same aesthetic and thematic principles — its mellow, deliberate pacing, its observational, sentimentality-skirting use of child’s perspective, its unwavering concern with issues of faith and community — that distinguished his earlier works.

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  • Is Billy Bob Thornton smoking Joaquin’s stash?

    Jeez. What an ass. Saw this over at Hollywood Elsewhere:

  • ‘The Matrix,’ 10 years later

    The MatrixLots of reminiscing going on this year.  After all, it was 10 years ago that Hollywood unleashed its most creatively exciting batch of domestic product in, some would say, 60 years.  A master filmmaker, some might call him the greatest to ever try his hand at the cinema, passed away just before leaving us his swan song.  Soon enough, those “best of the decade” lists will be unveiled.

    And once upon a time, “The Matrix” was a brilliant accomplishment unphased by hackneyed revisitation and bloated sequelitis.  Things change, I guess.

    Anyway, Shawn Levy, film critic for The Oregonian, has blogged the occassion of the film’s tenth anniversary (it first bowed on screens April 2, 1999).  Here’s what he has to say:

    I remember the press screening of the film — or, rather, the screening that would’ve been the press screening had much of the Portland film press bothered to show up. It was held at the (then new) Eastport multiplex on a Monday or Tuesday night and it was nearly empty of both critics and the usual horrifying screening rats. It was, after all, a science-fiction film starring Keanu Reeves — his first since “Johnny Mnemonic”! — and written and directed by a pair of brothers whose debut, “Bound,” was a terrifically good noirish chamber drama that did little business. If ever a movie had a pedigree that said, ‘you can catch it in three weeks at a brewpub,’ this was it.

    “But walking out of that theater after that screening in the thrall of the wire-fu, the stop-motion FX, the mind-blowing script, the wicked-cool look-and-feel and breakneck pace, well, I was abuzz. It was the edge of Y2K, remember, and even if you knew enough not to fear the computer changeover that was approaching, there was an electric sense of possibility — and not entirely positive — in the air. Somehow “The Matrix” crystallized that energy, packaged it in superb visuals and a crackerjack story, and turned angst and giddiness and trepidation and exultation into brilliantly entertaining popcorn art.”

    I still remember the trailer hooking me immediately:

    Warner Bros. recently released the film as a stand alone on Blu-ray (though it has that lame-ass book style packaging because Warner Home Video, as usual, has to be so different form the standard). And there’s always The Ultimate Matrix Collection for the die hards.