In Contention

Tag: Wall Street

  • On the art of ‘Wall Street’

    Last week, Kris and I came to a disagreement over the merits of Oliver Stone’s splashy, silly and consistently surface-level sequel “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” Neither of us is disputing that the film is a mess, but where Kris thought it clumsy, ill-judged junk, I was more forgiving in my Cannes review: for me, the film partially succeeds on the level of campy self-satire.

    One thing we can both agree on, however, is that subtlety is not in the film’s vocabulary — least of all when it comes to its gaudy collection of visual cues and symbols. Four months after watching the film, the one that sticks most insistently in my mind is a certain highly recognizable painting in the office of Josh Brolin’s character Bretton James.

    Not content with underlining James’s Mephistophelean deviousness by clothing Brolin in a maroon-colored suit, Stone and ace production designer Kristi Zea (“GoodFellas,” “Revolutionary Road”) have Francisco Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” (pictured) as his office backdrop to drive home the capital-E Evil of the character.

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  • Stone charges back with subprime ‘Money Never Sleeps’

    It’s taken me some time to get around to writing about Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” because watching the film was like have your bubble burst (no pun intended).  Where the director’s 1987 original worked from a tight, disciplined script that never took its eye off the ball, this follow-up is a loose, less refined piece of work with a forehead-smackingly bad ending.

    Also, due respect to Rodrigo Prieto (one of the best lensers working in the business), I feel there is something lost without Robert Richardson’s hand behind the camera.  The lenser hasn’t worked with Stone since 1997’s “U Turn,” but he gave the original film a palpable energy (as he does any film he shoots, whether it’s for Stone, Scorsese or Tarantino).  The energy on screen in the sequel is cooked up, awkward, false.  There’s an obsession with quirky transitions and visual flourishes (which comes to a head in an over-bearing closing credits sequence) that Stone can’t seem to relinquish.

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” (**1/2)

    Cannes Film Festival

    “Is greed good?” Gordon Gekko asks near the beginning of Oliver Stone’s glib, gleaming and endearingly trashy sequel to his 1987 corporate morality tale. Delivering the line, a looser-haired but stiffer-skinned Michael Douglas can barely resist licking his lips and winking; this is his earlier, Oscar-winning performance turned inside-out, emerging as lascivious pantomime, and he wants us to be certain he’s in on the joke.

    Provided you are, too, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” is one of the more pleasantly surprising studio pictures of the year thus far, and a significant improvement on its po-faced (and, 23 years on, now fearsomely dated) predecessor. If the sequel could never have been deemed “necessary,” it’s certainly as handily timed as can be. As the original served as dumb but not ineffective allegory for the coke-fuelled iniquities of 1980s capitalism, the new film not only does the same for credit-crunch sobriety in the post-2000s, but allows Stone his “Toldja!” moment to boot.

    Not that the film is nearly as concerned with socio-economic commentary as it is with smirking self-parody: it arguably blew its best gag in the trailer, as Gekko’s bread-loaf-sized cellphone is returned to him on his exit from prison, but there’s plenty more idle fun where that came from, culminating in a slithery cameo from the original film’s star, a bronzed glamazon on either arm, that may as well have been credited: “and starring Charlie Sheen as himself.”

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  • TORONTO: Douglas tops in the tedious ‘Solitary Man’

    Michael Douglas in Solitary ManPeople tend to forget that Michael Douglas won his first Academy Award not as an actor but as a producer, bringing the classic film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to the screen in 1975.

    His father Kirk had given him the project after years of trying to get the things going and Michael went outside the industry to find the money to make the picture, approaching music giant Saul Zaentz. The rest, as they say, is history, and Douglas became a major player in the business who has no doubt gone toe-to-toe with many a studio executive to get what he wants for his films.

    I wonder, however, even with an acting Oscar eventually to his credit (for Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street”), has Douglas ever been given his proper due as an actor?

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  • 6/10 Web Round-up

    Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator• A belated Happy Birthday to Kim Voynar, who digs back into the not-so-subtle themes of “Up.” [Movie City News]

    • Counting down the worst movie politicians. [Empire]

    • Taking a look at the key films of Palme d’Or winner Michael Haneke’s career. [Daily Telegraph]

    • Patrick Goldstein talks to Tony Kaye about his most recent off-the-wall art project. [The Big Picture]

    • A.O. Scott looks back at Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” [New York Times]

    • Speaking of which, Michael Douglas is all set to receive a lifetime achievement award from AFI. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Christopher Campbell aggregates all the speculation over who should play B.A. Baracus in the new “A Team” movie.  Shouldn’t we just hand it over to Craig Robinson and be done with it? [Spout Blog]

    • IMAX popularity sparks copycats.  Enough tweaking the distribution, let’s get back to basics.  You know, like quality of product? [Wall Street Journal]

  • ‘Wall Street’ sequel moving forward with Oliver Stone, Michael Douglas and Shia LaBeouf?

    Michael Douglas in Wall StreetNot long ago, what with the housing market on the fritz and certifiable capitalistic ruin staring down the face of America, not to mention stoke brokers being painted as the devils of the earth, it seemed a great time to revisit Oliver Stone’s 1987 film “Wall Street,” the Michael Douglas starrer that put “greed is good” into the lexicon of trade pushers everywhere.

    Back before the release of Stone’s “W.,” screenwriter Stanley Weiser talked about the prescience of “Wall Street.”  At the time, “Gekko’s character was written to create an engaging, charming, but deceitful and brutal being,” Weiser said.  “I have nevertheless run into quite a number of younger people, who upon discovering that I co-wrote the film, wax rhapsodic about it . . . but often for the wrong reasons.”

    The time for a sequel, likely with a much more pointed message, seemed at hand.  Then word came that Stone had dropped out of pursuing a follow-up in favor of the long dormant “Pinkville” project.  But today, Patrick Goldstein offers the following juicy (but sourceless) tid-bit:

    …Fox is now saying the movie has a green light again. Stone is back aboard as director, Michael Douglas will reprise his role as Gordon Gekko and the studio is in negotiations with Shia LeBeouf to play a young Wall Street trader under Gekko’s spell — a somewhat updated version of the character Charlie Sheen played in the original film. The sequel’s original writer was Stephen Schiff, who has now moved on, with Allan Loeb (“Things We Lost in the Fire”) having done a rewrite of the script. Fox hopes to have the film in production as early as sometime this summer.

    The film is now simply going under the title of “Wall Street 2,” having shed its original “Money Never Sleeps” moniker. No one is offering a lot of specifics about the storyline, except to say that the focus remains on the Gekko character, whose exploits will closely reflect much of the greed and chicanery seen in the past year on Wall Street.

    I’m not really sure how I feel about it.  Getting someone like LaBeouf seems like the obvious play, but Stone is also something of a master at making an impact with the obvious, so perhaps this could work.  Read the rest over at The Big Picture.  (UPDATE: There’s also this AP story with quotes from Douglas and Fox spokesman Gregg Brilliant.)

    Meanwhile, allow me to submit this: Could “Wall Street” be the most dated film of all time?  Seriously.  That cell phone!  The art work!  Darryl Hannah!  Anyway…

  • 10/14 Oscarweb Round-up

    John Cusak (voice) as Igor in Igor• Tom O’Neil covers the landscape of double-dipping performers this year. [Gold Derby]

    • It looks like Don Cheadle will be replacing Terrence Howard in “Iron Man 2.”  Fucking lame. [The Hollywood Reporter]

    • How Kyle Buchanan missed the boat on some obviously awkward moments in “Rachel Getting Married.”  Seriously, what’s with the critical love-fest on this thing? [Defamer]

    • Christopher Campbell, meanwhile, thinks Anne Hathaway will be nominated for an Oscar but doesn’t deserve it. [Spout Blog]

    • David Poland spends 30 minutes with Greg Kinnear and Marc Abraham, star and director of “Flash of Genius” respectively. [The Hot Blog]

    • Tim Moore goes behind the scenes of “Igor.” [Daily Telegraph]

    • Is now time for a “Wall Street” sequel? [The Guardian]

    • Anthony Kaufman thinks this year’s Best Foreign Language Film race might be the most predictable in years. [indieWIRE]

    • Dave Karger wonders where the Best Picture nominees are this season. [Oscar Watch]

    • And finally, our hearts go out to Gerard Depardieu, who lost his son Guillaume yesterday, far too soon. [Associated Press]

  • Weiser on the prescience of ‘Wall Street’

    Michael Douglas in Wall StreetBuried in the pages of the Los Angeles Times’ entertainment section over the weekend was this intriguing op-ed from “W.” screenwriter Stanley Weiser.  But it wasn’t his upcoming George W. Bush biopic he had on the mind, it was 1987’s “Wall Street,” which Weiser co-wrote with Oliver Stone.

    It’s a real coup for the Times, if you ask me.  It’s interesting to read through the short story of how the film came to pass, the “read ‘Crime and Punishment’ over the weekend” stuff from Stone is classic.  But it’s the sad note of responsibility in Weiser’s words, the feeling that he may have helped create little Gordon Gekkos the world over.

    Here’s a look:

    Gekko’s character was written to create an engaging, charming, but deceitful and brutal being. I have nevertheless run into quite a number of younger people, who upon discovering that I co-wrote the film, wax rhapsodic about it . . . but often for the wrong reasons.

    A typical example would be a business executive or a younger studio development person spouting something that goes like this: “The movie changed my life. Once I saw it I knew that I wanted to get into such and such business. I wanted to be like Gordon Gekko.”

    The flattery is disarming and ego-stoking, but then neurons fire and alarm bells go off. “You have succeeded with this movie, but you’ve also failed. You gave these people hope to become greater asses than they may already be.”

    Read the rest here.  And a bit of nostalgic “fun” (here as well):

  • Prescient

    Might as well — the Dow is going to shit as we speak: