In Contention

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  • Patton Oswalt begs for ‘Watchmen’ understanding

    Patton OswaltFrom the actor’s MySpace blog, via /Film (who uses MySpace anymore?):

    Because Zack Snyder STEPPED UP, motherfuckers…[he] delivered a 2 1/2 hour, honest attempt, and broke his ass cranking out tons of free extras.

    And no, the movie will not have EVERY LITTLE ELEMENT FROM THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. That’s why the graphic novel exists — you can go read it after you see the movie. Adaptation. Parallel visions. When you adapt a book, you cut things out, combine and conflate, streamline and linger.

    L.A. CONFIDENTIAL stands as the best Ellroy adaptation to date, and it throws away massive chunks of the novel’s narrative. THE BLACK DAHLIA slavishly sticks to its source material and it’s almost un-watchable.

    I do not invite debate.

    Again, the bold is mine.  And by the way, no — Oswalt has not seen “Watchmen” yet.

  • David Hayter begs for more ‘Watchmen’ business

    From a recent open letter:

    The reviews are out — Some outstanding, others rankly dismissive, which can be frustrating for the people involved, (though I can only speak for myself,) because I firmly believe that WATCHMEN, the novel, must be read through more than once to even have the faintest grip on it. And I believe the film is the same.

    I’ve seen it twice now, and despite having run the movie in my head thousands of times, my two viewings still don’t’ allow me to view the film with the proper distance or objectivity. Is it Apocalypse Now? Is it Blade Runner? Is it Kubrick, or Starship Troopers? I don’t know yet.

    All I know is that I had a pretty amazing experience the two times I’ve seen it. And both viewings produced remarkably different experiences. The point is, I have listened for years, to complaints from true comic book fans, that “not enough movies take the source material seriously.” “Too many movies puss out,” or “They change great stories, just to be commercial.” Well, I f***ing dare you to say any one of those things about this movie.

    This is a movie made by fans, for fans. Hundreds of people put in years of their lives to make this movie happen, and every one of them was insanely committed to retaining the integrity of this amazing, epic tale. This is a rare success story, bordering on the impossible, and every studio in town is watching to see if it will work. Hell, most of them own a piece of the movie.

    So look, this is a note to the fanboys and fangirls. The true believers. Dedicated for life.

    If the film made you think. Or argue with your friends. If it inspired a debate about the nature of man, or vigilante justice, or the horror of Nixon abolishing term limits. If you laughed at Bowie hanging with Adrian at Studio 54, or the Silhouette kissing that nurse.

    Please go see the movie again next weekend.

    The bold is, I feel, the problem.  The rest of the letter is basically a plea to fans to see the film again and not make the inevitable steep second weekend drop a reality.

  • Changes

    Obviously we’re a bit slow to get the gears moving with consistency in these post-Oscar days, but I just wanted to drop in to mention a few brief changes to the site.  As noted a few weeks back, the weekly Page to Screen column will be reverting back to the old source material review idea of its roots.  Guy and I will be hammering that out and I’m thinking we’ll kick it off some time in April.  Tuesdays.

    Meanwhile, John is moving over to a weekly columnist position.  He’ll be coming at the film landscape from all angles (home video, books, general topics of interest, etc.).  The first installment will hit this Friday and he’ll be back each week on the same day, a nice segue to the weekend.

    Finally, we’re also looking at adding a box office component on the weekends.  Still hammering out the specifics there, but keep a lookout.

    As you were.

  • Kubrick, a decade later

    Stanley KubrickSomehow the 10-year anniversary of director Stanely Kubrick’s death completely flew under my radar over the weekend (the day was Saturday).  Between painting a bedroom, dealing with server issues and the usual day-to-day, I guess forgetfulness can get the best of us.  But Kubrick was (and remains), to my mind, the greatest filmmaker to ever try his hand at the cinematic form.  I’m a bit ashamed to be coming to the table two days later.

    In any case, Jeffrey Wells saw the anniversary as a nice time to run a Kubrick trash piece that is itself nine years old.  Classy.  Noah Forrest over at Movie City News, meanwhile, has put together a more appropriate remembrance.  Here’s a taste:

    By watching his films, I got to understand what an “auteur” is and how filmmakers can have themes that stretch over the course of their filmographies like Kubrick’s ongoing analysis of dehumanization. I got to see how music can be used to wonderful effect in everything from 2001’s spaceship ballet to Barry Lyndon’s final duel to Full Metal Jacket’s end credits to the haunting and heartbreaking finale of Paths of Glory and to, of course, his use of “Singin in the Rain” in A Clockwork Orange. I saw how lighting could effect mood and how important camera placement could be to how the audience feels about a scene, like when Jack Nicholson is locked in the pantry in The Shining and he’s shot from below. Basically, watching Kubrick films helped to give me a baseline for which I would judge not just all great films, but all great works of art in general.

    Ray Pride also has a mess of links up for your Kubrick perusing pleasure, including lots of interesting stuff at Jamie Stuart’s Mutiny Company site.

    Of course, a moment such as this should give everyone a chance to reassess their feelings of Kubrick’s swansong, “Eyes Wide Shut,” which hit theaters 10 years ago this July.  When I walked away from it (I was freshly graduated from high school and set to enter film school in the fall — this was the movie event of the year), I knew I needed more time to turn it over, but I also knew that somewhere, deep down, I truly loved it, even if it wasn’t what I expected or wanted.  It was something else, something deeper, something with more nuance than the beefiest of reviews could begin to address.  It was also one of the first films I found myself defending in the face of consistent disapproval (and there was plenty vitriol), but I never wavered.  I still love the film, love the man, love the legacy.

  • REVIEW: “The Young Victoria” (**)

    The Young VictoriaSomewhere out there, wherever such souls reside, Anne of Great Britain must be wondering what she had to do during her reign to merit her own prettily mounted biopic. She may be the last relatively untapped figure in British heritage cinema’s well-worn library of queenly narratives, but she has once more been passed over for the privilege of fronting the latest middlebrow, true-life royal drama, fast becoming an annual fixture on the UK film calendar.

    Instead, the powers that be (noting with reluctance that the lives of both Elizabeths have been sufficiently plundered of late) have returned to that old stalwart, Queen Victoria, for inspiration. Marginal inspiration, at that –- that “young” inserted in the title is intended as the film’s creative and commercial trump card, promising a sprightlier, sexier take on the figure more frequently depicted in her latter years as a stern, cabbage-faced matron.

    Indeed, from the sly casting of impish Emily Blunt in the title role to the Easter-egg hues of Sandy Powell’s typically immaculate frocks, Jean-Marc Vallee’s film works overtime to convince us that the 18-year-old Victoria could be very amused indeed: as Blunt barely suppresses laughter at a stiff royal function, or skips down a corridor after being informed of her impending coronation, she effectively severs any connection or comparison with Judi Dench’s Oscar-nominated interpretation of the role in “Mrs Brown.”

    Meanwhile, in depicting its subject as a modern woman suffocated by her surroundings and dated gender trappings, complete with adorable lapdog and an accent that is decidedly more Sloane Square circa 2009 than House of Hanover circa 1837, the film pulls a similar trick of characterization to last year’s “The Duchess.” Working, however, in an even softer register than that already lightweight film, “The Young Victoria” plays down court intrigue in favor of dewy-eyed first love; if “Elizabeth’s” populist coup was restyling royal history as political thriller, this lands squarely in rom-com territory, with Rupert Friend’s Prince Albert the dreamy yet ever-deferred suitor.

    (more…)

  • ‘The Damned United’

    In a recent interview, Michael Sheen bristles at being labelled an impressionist. Understandably so — he’s a fine actor. However, the answer may be to stop doing quite so many biopics of figures from recent British history: so far, we’ve had Tony Blair (twice), David Frost, Kenneth Williams and now Brian Clough, the controversial British football manager whose brief, ill-fated attempt at heading up Leeds United in 1974 is the subject of “The Damned United,” which drops in the UK on March 27.

    Originally developed with Stephen Frears but now helmed by TV journeyman Tom Hooper (“John Adams”), the film also represents yet another dip into fact-oriented waters for writer Peter Morgan — another talented man who I’d like to see try his hand at something different. The trailer below looks jaunty and entertaining enough (though I don’t see the heavily football-steeped story resonating much across the pond), but am I the only one feeling a bit of déjà vu?

  • Better late…

    Last week’s server switch-induced hiatus prevented me from commenting on the César Awards — perhaps the ceremony I was eyeing most keenly this year given the prominence of my personal favourites in their rich pool of nominees. (I’ll say it again: France ruled 2008. End of story.)

    You’ve probably read the winners elsewhere by now. Nonetheless, I would like to offer a quick shout-out to the delightful IC interviewee Elsa Zylberstein, who deservedly took Best Supporting Actress honors for “I’ve Loved You So Long” (which also grabbed the Best First Film award). One of my many disappointments last season was watching Zylberstein enter the derby with a measure of dark-horse buzz, only to fall by the wayside at every single opportunity — I was thrilled to see her finally take home some hardware for a mighty career breakthrough.

    Zylberstein’s magnificent co-star, on the other hand, was just one of many frontrunners derailed by a surprising sweep for “Séraphine,” a modest biopic of historically neglected painter Séraphine de Senlis that garnered some warm notices at Toronto, but has otherwise been below the radar outside its home country. (It missed Oscar eligibility by a single day, though perhaps we should bear it in mind for next year.)

    I look forward to seeing it when it drops in the UK this summer. If it honestly deserved to beat the likes of “The Class” (which finally got some notice for its extraordinary screenplay), “A Christmas Tale” or “I’ve Loved You So Long,” it must be one hell of a picture. Full list of winners below the cut.

    (more…)

  • Could still be worth it

  • David Gordon Green catches his stride in comedy

    (from left) Danny McBride and David Gordon Green on the set of Eastbound & DownIt has to be doubly sweet for my southern brethren to take in HBO’s “Eastbound & Down” every Sunday night, but even if this country detail or that passes below your radar, or heck, even if you don’t know a blatant Ric Flair gag when you see one, I can’t imagine anyone not laughing their ass off at this thing week after week.

    Then again, maybe I’m wrong.  The Danny McBride brand of humor might be seen as an extension of the Apatow/Rogen trajectory we’ve been on, toilet humor a bit too low on the brow for some.  Not me.  I’m eating it up.

    Strikingly, I think the last three episodes (plus last year’s “Pineapple Express”) prove that David Gordon Green should stick to comedy and prepare to make his mark there, because this seems to be his calling.  I’m all for the era of artistic stretching he’s been interested in since “George Washington” leaped off the neighborhoods of North Carolina and onto Roger Ebert’s top 10 list, though 95% of all of that never worked for me.  And I’m sure he’ll go there once again.  But as long as he wants to stick in this vein, I’m game.

    Not only is the timing something special (and just take a look at the editorial choices made in “Pineapple” by flipping between the extended and theatrical cuts on the Blu-ray or DVD for evidence there), but the mundane is represented like never before.  Last July I wrote of “Pineapple” the following:

    Yes, the man who staked a claim on the mundane mumblings of children and the love-struck in films like “George Washington” and “All the Real Girls” has applied those sensibilities to a niche genre that roots itself in same.

    And it works! It works so well it’s a shame Terrence Malick never tried his hand at “Up in Smoke.” The pieces slide into place and find a cohesive fit that couldn’t have been more unexpected.

    And that’s the case with “Eastbound & Down.”  100%.

    Of course, plenty of credit is due to co-creators McBride and Jody Hill (directing this summer’s “Observe and Report”), but the guidance behind the camera is exceptional.  I only hope I’m not the only guy taking this stuff for more than surface level, however, because it deserves more — whether it knows it or not.

    (And hel-lo Katy Mixon.)

  • Congrats to a friend

    I haven’t yet addressed IC friend John Campea (editor of The Movie Blog) and his recently completed feature “The Anniversary,” but allow me to do so now.

    Anyone who knows how hard it is to get a feature film together knows that the mere accomplishment (regardless of quality) deserves a big pat on the back.  I’ve been happy to sit back and watch old friends succeed so far: Aaron Katz and 2007’s “Quiet City,” Chad Hartigan and last year’s “Luke and Brie are on a First Date,” and now, Campea’s flick.  It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to get out from behind the computer monitor and jump back onto the set.

    Read up on Campea’s production here.  A lot of fortunate winds blew his way on this, but he also had a hell of a head on his shoulders (as always).  A solid cast, a wonderful crew and a savvy producer (IESB.net’s Robert Sanchez) went a long way, but it takes something special to stick it out as the guy in charge when it comes to a business as taxing as this one.  I told him in private at a recent wrap party for the film at L.A.’s Golden Apple Comics, but allow me to do so in public now: huzzah.

    Keep an eye on the cineplexes in the next year or so.  “The Anniversary” should be coming your way soon enough.

  • I am human

    I was amazed at the number of trailers I caught over the weekend for films I actually wanted to see.  I’m usually rolling my eyes or, better yet, taking a refreshment and/or bathroom break, but I lit up a little bit.

    The new “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” materials could really do no wrong for a guy like me at this point, though I’m dreading that release more and more.  The whispers are ugly.  Still, even if all the good stuff is in the trailer — it’s a hell of a trailer.  Even fluff like “The Proposal” looks appealing at this point.  And I’m totally on board for “Observe and Report” (which reminds me I need to address “Eastbound and Down” at some point).

    All of this is a long way of coming to that new “Terminator Salvation” trailer I’m sure you’ve all seen by now.  Maybe I’m alone, but this is one of the most exciting trailers I’ve seen in a long, long time.  Of course NIN’s “The Day the Whole World Went Away” is put to great use throughout, but I was a little surprised at the idea of spilling a major plot point maybe a minute into the thing (which might not be that big of a spoiler in this age of AICN obssessive pre-release plot excavation — I can’t keep up).

    Anyway, I’ve been amped up for the film for a long time, despite the expected lingering atmosphere of anxiety.  I think we dodged a bullet with “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” a film I actually respect quite a bit, but the potential for outright disaster is right there in front of our faces on this thing.  Here’s hoping…

  • Different strokes

    Alan Moore

    “Did you hear My Chemical Romance’s pop punk cover of Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’ over the film’s end credits? It illustrates the same point. Each version follows the same chords and same lyrics, but as done by Dylan, the song is a classic. As done by My Chemical Romance, it’s a disposable piece of junk.”

    “Pop punk is as different from folk as film is from the graphic novel, as animation is from live action, etc. The chords and lyrics that resonate in one form won’t in another. Play Moonlight Sonata on a piano and its beautiful. Play it on a clarinet, not so much. In a similar way, an ink brush and a movie camera are different instruments. Snyder tries to hit most of the same beats and uses the same words that work in the graphic novel, but they don’t resonate on screen.”

    A pair of insightful comments from a guy calling himself Kyle_D at Hollywood Elsewhere, perhaps indicating how “Watchmen” misses the mark a bit more succinctly that I did yesterday.

    Also, from Geoff Boucher’s September 2008 interview with Alan Moore re: the then upcoming “Watchmen” adaptation:

    “Moore said that with ‘Watchmen,’ he told the epic tale of a large number of characters over decades of history with ‘a range of techniques’ that cannot be translated to the movie screen…”

    A week ago, I’d have said “bullshit” to that.

  • In search of ‘Chéri’

    I can’t remember the last time I first laid eyes on a trailer for a prestige film in the cinema rather than on a computer screen. I kind of miss it — as a kid, the unexpectedness of such sightings, combined with the darkness of the theatre, made trailers something of an event for me.

    So it was this afternoon when, sitting in my local London multiplex, I was taken off-guard by the trailer for Stephen Frears’ “Chéri” — which, to my knowledge, hasn’t surfaced online yet. Hoping to share it with you all once I got home, a thorough scouring of the internet proved fruitless. What gives?

    As for the trailer itself, it surprised me in more ways than one. The film appears more openly comic than I was expecting, with a shrill tone that recalled “Mrs Henderson Presents” more than “Dangerous Liaisons” on the Frears scale. Of course, as we saw with “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Miramax isn’t averse to painting subtler material with a broad marketer’s brush, so we’ll see.

    Anyway, even with the film’s UK release set back to early May, the trailer is bound to appear online soon. Watch this space.

  • Película negra

    I’m sure many of you by now have seen the gorgeous European poster artwork for Pedro Almodóvar’s upcoming “Broken Embraces,” in all its lurid Warholian variations. (If you haven’t, Nat Rogers has the lot here.)

    Now, even more enticingly, we have the first full-length Spanish trailer for the film, an expansion of sorts of the enigmatic teaser that was revealed a few weeks ago. Obviously, it comes without English subtitles, and I’m afraid my college-boy Spanish is not what it was a few years ago, so I still have only a vague grasp of what it’s all about. Fine by me … when I’m looking forward to a film as much as this one, I prefer to remain as unspoiled as possible.

    Regardless, the trailer appears to confirm suspicions that this is a return for the master to the cruel, contemporary noir territory of “Live Flesh” and “Bad Education” — which might come as a relief to those, like me, who found “Volver,” for all its candy-coloured beauty, a little fey for its own good. As it stands, the pristine femme fatale styling of Penelope Cruz, and the popping hues of Rodrigo Prieto’s apparently luscious lensing, immediately call to mind John M. Stahl’s dayglo melodrama/noir/kitsch hybrid “Leave Her to Heaven.”

    Which is fine by me. But that’s just going on appearances. The Spanish, of course, get to find out on March 18. The rest of us have rather longer to wait.

  • Fearful symmetry

    (from left) Malin Akerman and Patrick Wilson in Watchmen(I was going to hold onto this and some more stuff until the beginning of the week, but we’re ready to go so let’s hit it during the weekend.)

    I’m not one of those guys who says this work or that cannot be filmed.  I don’t share the arrogance that demands faithful representation of a beloved piece of literature on the screen, and even with my own devotion to comic books and, of course, Alan Moore’s “Watchmen,” I always thought there was a great movie in there waiting to be unleashed.

    I think it was Quentin Tarantino who once said he would never translate a comic book to the screen because there are just too many damn people to please.  There’s some truth there, mixed with a little pomposity.  I had Zack Snyder’s back.  I enjoyed “Dawn of the Dead” enough and was one of “300”’s few serious vocal champions.  I would have preferred a director with a penchant for grit take up the reins on “Watchmen” but I found myself curiously okay with the stylized ballet Snyder seemed to be interested in creating.

    But in a nutshell, “Watchmen” damn near stole my faith in movies.  Maybe that’s a stretch, but come on, it’s all up there on the screen.  Minus a climax that was likely changed for the better given what will and won’t work in a film, every inch of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s hard work is laid out for us at 24 frames per second.  And you know what?  It doesn’t work.  And we can’t say anyone involved in the production botched the adaptation because it’s faithful to a fault.

    I think we can blame the woeful, stomach-churning, cringe-worthy failure that this is on the frothing-at-the-mouth fandom that scared Snyder and company away from being creative, from understanding the value of compositing (a tactic Christopher Nolan has so expertly employed with the Batman franchise) and from, at best, realizing that the tone we manifest in our minds as we flip through a work of graphic fiction can’t be satisfied by lifting nearly every inch of hard-boiled, wordy (if eloquent) narration.  God bless him for trying to please them all, but what they wanted ain’t art.

    “Watchmen” is an awful, awful film.

    (more…)

  • Stay tuned…

    Still dealing with the server switch and various other things (Vegas and a bad night at the craps tables will take the motivation out of anyone).  Plenty to chew on (DiCaprio and “Inception,” the “Public Enemies” materials that look oddly un-Mann, etc.  We’ll be here griding away soon enough.  Sorry for the delays.

  • Bidding the 2008-2009 season farewell

    Hugh Jackman hosts the 81st annual Academy AwardsIt’s been a blast the last six or seven months.  Before long we’ll all be in the thick of the Oscar mess once again, but before we close this chapter, I really should take a moment to thank our contributors for assisting in keeping the big machine running.

    Thanks to Gerard for the consistently comprehensive coverage of the technical categories, something of a commodity to us here at In Contention and still poorly represented across the Oscarweb.  Thanks to John for the informative and controversial stances he takes, which give the readership an opportunity to really cut loose with opinions and make this a fully realized community.

    Thanks to Brian and Blake for their help filling in the cracks, and a big wet kiss to Guy for hitting the pavement with me day in and day out.  It’s a tough gig, believe it or not.  Guy’s a believer now.

    We’ll be making some changes to our coverage in the upcoming year.  I’ll get into specifics at a later date, but for now, expect the following:

    Daily coverage continues
    When we debuted the new look of In Contention last May we shifted slightly away from awards-only seasonal coverage to day-to-day commentary.  We’ll keep that going in the off-season as Guy and I will continue to contribute regularly.  The summer months offer lots of enticing options at the multiplex, but before we know it, it’ll be September and a whole new season will be breathing down our necks.

    “Page to Screen” goes back to the source
    I’m doing away with the somewhat recent evolution of our “Page to Screen” column as a screenplay review column.  Instead, I’m going back to the roots of the idea — roots set way back in 2002 — and reverting back to reviews of source material.  The idea has already been lifted in other quarters (name and all), but we’ll be looking at novels like “The Lovely Bones” and “Cheri,” as well as films set to be remade, such as “Bad Lieutenant.”  We may even have a bit of fun with it — “G.I. Joe” anyone?

    More festival coverage
    I’m warming up to the festival circuit finally, after years of resistance.  I had a good time this year at the AFI and Santa Barbara fests, but I plan on making the Telluride and Toronto treks this year if credentials come through.  Guy will certainly be back on board for the London Fest and, as always, John will be filing from Toronto.  I was going to try my hand at Cannes but time is slipping away from me.  Maybe.

    That’s a taste of what you can expect.  We’ll address all of these in full, plus a few other changes, in due time, but for now, sit back, relax and enjoy the Oscar silence.  One final note, however: we’ll be changing servers over the weekend so things will be quiet post-wise.  If any technical glitches show up, bear with us until we come through the other end.

  • How lies stay alive

    It really pisses me off that the LA Times would allow Tom O’Neil to perpetuate falsehoods on his Gold Derby blog without any editorial oversight.  Tom, God love him, just can’t help himself sometimes.  He has to create a controversy where there isn’t one and this two-year-old idea that Eddie Murphy was “furious” over his Oscar loss to Alan Arkin is rearing its ugly head yet again with the recent news that the actor will portray Richard Pryor in Bill Condon’s biopic.

    We put this issue to bed in February of 2007, but there it is with the LA Times masthead proudly above: “When [Murphy] lost to Arkin, he reportedly stormed out of the ceremony.”

    Using “reported” is a nice attempt at shifting the attribution, but the caption to O’Neil’s photo: “Eddie was furious when he lost his Oscar bid for Dreamgirls.”  It’s terribly frustrating.