And more at the film’s buzz page here.
Tag: Clint Eastwood
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PAGE TO SCREEN: “Gran Torino” by Nick Schenk
“I didn’t buy all this stuff blockhead. I’ve lived here for fifty years. A man stays in one place long enough he tends to attract a decent set of tools.”There are a lot of admirable things about “Gran Torino,” a simple yarn precariously told by screenwriter Nick Schenk. It wallows unforgiveably in the bigotry of its central character, Walt Kowalski (to be played by Clint Eastwood), pushing that boundry to laughable distances at times. But thematically, it works.
Walt hates gooks, chinks, slopes, call the Asians who’ve moved onto his block what you will. He’s a Pabst-chugging, VFW-trolling, inner-child- and soft-undberlly-suffocating ex-military man with a chip on his shoulder for religion and a dysfunctional relationship with his children. He’s pretty standard, by all indications.
We come into Walt’s life at the funeral for his deceased wife, Dorothy, and we’re given the immediate indication that this won’t be a weeping widower. Walt looks on as a fresh-faced preacher hangs a string of fancy words out over the crowd, and in ironic disgust he can only mutter, “Jesus.”
When a Hmong family moves next door, it seems to be the last straw for Walt, who has watched the neighborhood’s decline for a number of years. His house is pristine amid the rubble of homes unkempt by their Asian inhabitants, so it’s one more log for his racist fire.
The thematic thread woven into the character from the start is Walt as the fixer. A former Ford employee of 30 years, Walt’s prized posession is the 1972 Gran Torino sitting under a tarp in his garage. He has a tool collection to rival a small construction outlet and is persistent with maintenance and upkeep. The tendency drifts to the people in his life as well, always finding a solution to whatever he perceives as a problem. It’s the workhorse in him — even if, ultimately, he won’t be able to fix himself.
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Reading ‘Gran’
I’m about half-way through Nick Schenk’s script “Gran Torino,” the Clint Eastwood surprise of 2008 waiting to jump up and bite us all in the ass this December. So far it’s a really casual, satisfying read. Some bumps in the first act as Schenk has some trouble settling into the style of the narrative, the consistent racial slurs and the hard-ass Walt Kowalski character (to be played by Eastwood), but it settles in soon enough.
Kowalski is an interesting mix of Paul Newman’s Sully from “Nobody’s Fool” and Eastwood’s own portrayal of Frankie Dunn in “Million Dollar Baby.” Maybe even a dash of Walter Matthau’s Max Goldman thrown in. In fact, I’d place “Torino” right in “Baby”‘s wheelhouse so far, lots of that young-people-shedding-light-on-an-old-codger’s-life stuff going on.
More on Tuesday, when we review “Gran Torino” in our Page to Screen column.
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WB fall preview…nothing for ‘Gran Torino’
Rope of Silicon beat us to the punch and posted the new shots from Warner Bros. Pictures’ fall preview press kit. There are new shots from “Appaloosa,” “Body of Lies” and “Yes Man,” among others. Then you get to the one we’re all foaming at the mouth for in anticipation, Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino,” and there’s nothing. Just this bit of prose:
Clint Eastwood stars in the drama “Gran Torino,” marking his first film role since his Oscar-winning “Million Dollar Baby.” Eastwood also directs the film in which he plays Walt Kowalski, an iron-willed veteran living in a changing world, who is forced by his immigrant neighbors to confront his own long-held prejudices.
Wow. Thanks, WB.
Anyway, I especially dig this new “Appaloosa” image:
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More Eastwood…
These must be hard times for anyone who doesn’t like Clint Eastwood, and I realise that we at In Contention aren’t doing much to reduce the saturation. But with two pictures coming up in the space of four months, and a massive retrospective at the BFI Southbank (formerly the National Film Theatre, for those of you who haven’t been in London recently), he is – again – the man of the moment.To tie in with the retrospective, the UK press has been awash with Eastwood coverage, but this piece in last week’s Independent was only just brought to my attention, and rather nice it is too. It’s more in line with the idolising tone of Sight and Sound’s recent profile than Alex Cox’s hastily executed contrarian view in the New Statesman (a missed opportunity, to say the least). Writer James Mottram doesn’t really have anything new to add, but in true Independent fashion, it’s considered and thorough, with a nice sprinkling of typically pithy Clint quotes. This one in particular raised a smile:
Now he is 12 years into his second marriage, to former journalist Dina Ruiz, some 35 years his junior. And with seven children by five different women, it’s no surprise that he says: “I still feel film-making is the second most fun thing to do.”
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‘Che’ and ‘Porno’ among 20 new films announced for Toronto
John hasn’t addressed this yet, so I’ll put it out there…Variety’s Anne Thompson is reporting on 20 new films added to the line-up of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Following suit with yesterday’s New York fest news, Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” (listed as “Part One” and “Part Two” for Toronto) will make the trip up north.
Other special presentations of note include Rian Johnson’s “The Brothers Bloom,” Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles,” Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” Kevin Smith’s controversial “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain” (could be Oscar bait for actress Charlize Theron), Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” and Marc Abraham’s “Flash of Genius” (which could be an awards vehicle for Greg Kinnear).
The big news, however, seems to be that Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” will not be heading to the fest. Here’s Thompson on that front:
Clint Eastwood’s Cannes Fest entry “Changeling,” which will be the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival, will not be at Toronto because there was uncertainty about new mother Angelina Jolie’s availability to participate in a gala premiere. “We would have loved to have had Clint Eastwood,” said Bailey, “but the only way to present the movie in a big way was as a gala with Eastwood and Jolie.”
Basically, the Toronto crew can’t star-fuck, so they’d rather not show it. Gotcha.
Anyway, read all about the new additions here. The full line-up will be unveiled next Tuesday.
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Alex Cox rips into Clint Eastwood…but why?
When I was in London over the summer, a friend landed a position at New Statesman magazine, so I became familiar with the periodical. I enjoyed it’s dry, slightly askew view of the world (and it fit my friend’s outlook like a glove). It also seems a perfect fit for this somewhat lifeless op-ed from multi-hyphenate Alex Cox regarding Clint Eastwood’s debt to filmmakers Sergio Leone and Don Siegel.A wandering, seemingly aimless swath of prose that eventually comes to the conclusion that Eastwood has become an uninteresting filmmaker, Cox spends much of his word count praising Leone’s work in The Man with No Name trilogy. He’s on board for Eastwood when discussing the actor’s shrewd decision to pare down much of his dialogue in the films, but he jumps ship immediately when Eastwood’s falling out with the director is discussed.
Here’s a taste:
Resisting the usual actor’s temptation to expand his role and to increase his share of the dialogue, Eastwood took a red pencil to the script. Something like 90 per cent of his scripted dialogue was eliminated. What remained counted: “Now, if you’ll just apologise to my mule . . . like I know you’re gonna . . .”
But the shoots for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) were longer, and – at times – dangerous, as when Leone wanted Eastwood and Eli Wallach to crouch near a bridge that was to be blown up.
Originally Leone had planned to have Volontè appear in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but he fell heavily for Wallach’s charms and cast him instead. Wallach’s character, Tuco, dominates the film to such an extent that both Eastwood and Van Cleef tend to become his foils. Eastwood wasn’t interested in this development. It was the last time he and Leone worked together.
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OFF THE CARPET: Calm before the storm
The season is upon us. One month from today the industry’s first major stepping stone on the way to the Kodak Theater will arrive in the form of the Toronto International Film Festival: 10 days of put up or shut up by a number of the year’s prospective contenders.Oddly enough, however, there will be a few considerable no-shows at this year’s festivities. In a business increasingly proving the precariousness of an early “frontrunner” status, studios and publicists seem to be slowing the machine down…but a few hands have been forced this season.
Heavily anticipated entries like “Revolutionary Road” and “Milk” will be absent at Toronto next month. Neither is expected to be ready, actually. Sam Mendes has been hard at work on “Farlanders,” while Focus Features would probably prefer to take the slow road after emerging from Toronto as the “frontrunner” in 2005 and 2007, but ultimately coming up short on Oscar night.
This is probably for the best on both. Gotta maintain those expectations. Early raves are as dangerous as early pans.
Meanwhile, the lineup is currently littered with modest independent efforts that depend on the festival circuit to find their groove: “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “The Other Man,” “Rachel Getting Married,” “The Secret Life of Bees,” etc. The major stuff — so far — seems to be steering clear.
Regardless, we’ve got one more month of full blown speculation before the season begins to settle into a tangible state…so let’s get to it.
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Sight & Sound celebrates Eastwood
Now I know I mention British film publication Sight & Sound quite often (I don’t work for them, honest), but they keep printing such good stuff. The September issue, just out, has an extensive career profile, with accompanying interview, on Clint Eastwood – a happy coincidence in the week that our friend Mr Foote’s book on the man has emerged.The piece, by the venerable Geoff Andrew, echoes the oft-stated view – one I understand, but still don’t share – that Eastwood is America’s finest living filmmaker, one who “believes in the old-fashioned art of drawing us into a film rather than in displays of virtuosity.”
There’s also an evaluation of “Changeling” in which Andrew disagrees with S&S’s editor, and matches the breathless trade paper reviews at Cannes, making lofty comparisons to “Chinatown” and “LA Confidential” to boot:
J. Michael Straczynski’s deft script and Eastwood’s measured, quietly meticulous mise en scene manage to fashion (many) disparate elements into a complex, multi-stranded but entirely coherent drama … What’s possibly most impressive is the way Eastwood makes it all look so easy; as the story steadily grows broader and deeper in its import, it still feels like a damned good yarn.
With each review I read, I change my mind regarding the contender status of this oddly-scheduled film – Andrew’s take certainly suggests it has the gravitas to the distance, though there’s nothing on Angelina Jolie’s much-hyped performance. (Neither the profile nor the interview, however, feature any reference to “Gran Torino,” which is still something of a mystery package sitting in prime awards-season territory.)
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Plugging away: John’s new book
Some of you may know that our own John Foote, in addition to toiling away in the life of a film critic and educating the next generation of Canadian filmmaking talent at the Toronto Film School, is also an author.His most recent release is “Clint Eastwood: Evolution of a Filmmaker,” which is available now at Amazon.com and through the publisher, Greenwood Publishing Group. Many of the posts he has written about the director have no doubt been informed by much of the research he has put into this project.
Next up, John has a contract with Greenwood to write a book about director Steven Spielberg, so be on the lookout for that when it comes down the pike. And if I’m not mistaken, he has also written an unpublished book about actor Robert Duvall (who we all know he cherishes as the screen’s greatest thespian). Here’s hoping he can get that one into the hands of someone willing to distribute it to the masses.
Exciting stuff all around. Congrats, John. Now…send me a copy already. Autographed. And that’s Kris, with a “K.”
(Seriously…bravo.)
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Clint Eastwood: the unlikely Oscar favorite
Had anyone said to me in the 1970s that Clint Eastwood would in time become one of the finest and most important American directors in modern cinema, I would have laughed — quite loudly — in their collective faces.The star of “Dirty Harry” and “Every Which But Loose?” The guy who shares the screen with apes? Are you kidding??? Yet here we are, 37 years after he first pulled that 44-Magnum (“The most powerful hand gun in the world”), and things have changed. He has won four Academy Awards — two as director, two as producer. He has been nominated for each on two other occasions and has two Best Actor nominations to his credit as well. He has twice been honored by the Directors Guild of America for and won countless critics awards.
Eastwood is indeed among the filmmaking elite. And with the upcoming releases of “Changeling” and “Gran Torino,” he looks primed to flirt with the film awards season yet again.
While researching my book “Clint Eastwood: Evolution of a Filmmaker,” my respect and admiration for the man has grown considerably. Obviously there was a great deal of admiration to start, otherwise I wouldn’t even begin a bhook on the subject. But leanring more and more about Eastwood and his work has, understandably, taken things up a level.
Eastwood challenges himself each time he makes a film. His choices to act in films such as “Any Which Way You Can” were driven by the fact that he knew the studio would then finance a personal project such as “Bronco Billy.” What really astounds me, though, is his growth as an actor through the years.
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Variety ponders the season at the mid-way point
We’ve already been over what a thin year it’s been so far for Oscar candidates – or good films at all, for that matter. Now Variety has come to the same conclusion. In his mid-year awards-season study, Timothy M. Gray goes so far as to say that “the past six months have offered fewer potential contenders than any January-June period in memory,” and wonders if we’re seeing a return to the days when the Oscars were dominated by winter releases from the majors.Indeed, Gray only finds one title from the first-half of the year that he thinks has main category potential: Overture Films’ “The Visitor,” the prospects of which I discussed extensively yesterday. I’m not sure I’d boil down an entire half-year to a sole film (“In Bruges,” anyone?), but I agree that “The Visitor” has a real campaigning advantage:
Keep an eye on Overture’s “The Visitor”: Lead actor Richard Jenkins has rightly earned awards buzz, but the film has many other virtues (Thomas McCarthy’s script and direction, the other performances, etc.). McCarthy, a talented actor in his own right, has crafted an actors’ movie — a character study with current-event concerns — that will play well on DVD, so late-year mailings could pay off.
(Indeed, the more I think about the film’s position in the awards derby, the more it reminds me of a certain tiny spring release from last year: “Away From Her.”
Looking forward into the rest of 2008, Gray ends up pondering most of the same questionmarks that we all are, including the following questions:
Will the early buzz sustain for Disney-Pixar’s “Wall-E” and WB’s “The Dark Knight” and Heath Ledger?
What effect will the Clint Eastwood double whammy — November’s “Changeling” and the December bow of Warner Bros.-Village Roadshow’s “Gran Torino,” in which he stars as well as directs — have on kudos? Similarly, Scott Rudin, who was in the winner’s circle with “No Country,” has two December openers — but will he have a third with “The Reader,” whose opening date is not yet set?
Benicio Del Toro won Cannes’ actor award for Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” but will it find a U.S. distrib this year and, if so, in what form will the two-part film be released?
And then there are … other questions. In the last few years, the song category has been dominated by tunes that were production numbers (as opposed to those end-credit or background songs). So does this bode well for Disney’s “High School Musical 3” and Focus’ “Hamlet 2”? (If the song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” can win, there may be hope for the latter pic’s “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.”)
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The western keeps on truckin’
It’s no real secret that yours truly is in the tank for the western genre. Being brought up on the films of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood tends to make an impact in a young man’s life. I watch Charles Bronson square off with Henry Fonda on a daily basis. I’m knee-deep in research on the genre for a grad school thesis.I dig it, okay?
The resurgence of saddles and spurs on the big screen has been moving steadily through the industry. I don’t think anyone expects a return to the 1950s, with pistol-toting heroes plastered on every television screen and nearly every silver screen across America, but I see these efforts taking on more introspective subject matter, perhaps giving way soon enough to the neo-western. And it is, after all, time.
Today I see that screen tests may have been revealed of Thomas Jane in the upcoming DC Comics adaptation “Jonah Hex” The film is set to be directed by the team behind “Crank,” Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. This might be real, might not, since the duo is filming “Crank 2” in Los Angeles at the moment. But I can’t say I’m loving it…seems quite amateurish. Regardless, “Hex” is a hell of a property with some storylines that just sing, and seeing it on the big screen will do this western fanatic a lot of good.
Meanwhile, of course, Ed Harris is set to release “Appaloosa” later this year, formerly under the New Line Cinema banner and now, presumably, as another in a long tradition of genre entries from Warner Bros. Pictures. Harris stars along with Viggo Mortensen and Renee Zellweger.
These efforts are coming on the heels of a tweak in the genre as of late, with the more abstract works of Cormac McCarthy making their way to the screen (“No Country for Old Men,” “The Road” and, soon, “Blood Meridian”) and David Milch showing in the sadly cancelled HBO series “Deadwood” that the genre could be taken to levels almost Shakespearean. Meanwhile, a revamp of “The Lone Ranger” is looking like a go, with the team behind the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films hoping to bring an element of sensationalism into the mix.
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Is Dennis Lehane the new Jane Austen?
Okay, perhaps not. Maybe more like the new Elmore Leonard. But the quintessential Boston writer is clearly Hollywood’s favourite author du jour. After the adaptations of “Mystic River” and “Gone Baby Gone” reignited the careers of Clint Eastwood and Ben Affleck, respectively, it seems the studios are snapping up his titles faster than he can write them.I hardly need to remind you about a little film coming up next year called “Shutter Island,” based on Lehane’s 1950’s-set suspenser. With Scorsese hoping for lightning to strike twice for him in Beantown, and Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow and Michelle Williams just some of the names on board, who isn’t excited about that?
With less fanfare, but interesting nonetheless, we also have an upcoming adaptation of Lehane’s brilliant short story “Until Gwen,” with Josh Olson, the Oscar-nominated writer of “A History of Violence,” taking both scripting and directing duties on the project.
Now Variety reports that the latest filmmaker to take on Lehane is Sam Raimi. Columbia has got in early and nabbed the author’s yet-to-be-published “The Given Day” for Raimi to direct.
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Spike Lee = the Jesse Jackson of film?
Roger Simon seems to think so:Why would Lee pick this fight?
Unfortunately, it couldn’t be more obvious. Like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, time has been passing Spike Lee by. His worldview comes from another era and he has never really sought to revise it, to open his eyes. Proof of that is that for more than a decade Spike has barely made a film any of us can remember. Compare that to Eastwood, who, although some twenty-seven years Lee’s senior, is at the top of his career, having scored big in 2003-2004 with Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby.
No wonder Spike’s jealous. So what does he do? He reaches back to an era when he was more successful. He plays the old identity/race card. Now we could all laugh and say this is just another case of an (prematurely) aging artist grasping for attention, but these times are more complex than that. We don’t know which way we are going – toward a post-racial future or back to a racist past.
His argument is interesting because it is equal parts over-simplified and shrewd. The Lee/Eastwood dispute has been talked to death…and again…and again, but the overriding feeling I had following the initial Cannes fracas was sadness — sadness that Lee has shown yet again that he is unable to prove his (at times justified) contradictory opinions without the stench of clichéd rhetoric and steadily outdated reason.
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Eastwood’s ‘Gran Torino’ set for a 2008 bow, but…
…didn’t we already know this? Variety’s Pamela McClintock is claiming it as an exclusive, but the film has been on our contenders charts for at least a month now. And Guy Lodge was talking about “Gran Torino” and “Changeling” looking “to keep [Eastwood’s] profile high in 2008” just last week.
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Spike vs Clint: Round Three
Oh dear, this really is getting ugly. As we all knew he would, Spike Lee has responded to Clint Eastwood’s instructions that he “shut his face” about the issue of the supposed sidelining of African-Americans in “Flags of Our Fathers.” And, in an interview with ABC News’ Sheila Marikar, it seems Lee hasn’t picked his words any more tactfully than Eastwood:First of all, the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation either. He’s a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn’t personally attack him. And a comment like ‘a guy like that should shut his face’ — come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there.
If he wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I’d like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist. I’m not making this up. I know history. I’m a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II. Not everything was John Wayne, baby.
Now I’m actually more sympathetic to Lee’s views than some, and I think Eastwood could have phrased his remarks more delicately. But the plantation line takes the argument to a place it really doesn’t need to go, and frankly makes me cringe. These are two of the best, most thoughtful filmmakers in the business, and this is the level of discussion they come up with?
Lee closes the interview with a peace offering that strikes me a somewhat half-hearted, not least because he can’t resist inserting a political barb there too:
Even though he’s trying to have a Dirty Harry flashback, I’m going to take the Obama high road and end it right here. Peace and love.
Not cool. I hope Eastwood has enough smarts to let this go. I suspect he won’t. For my part, I hope “Miracle at St Anna” is a terrific enough film to overshadow this squabble.