In Contention

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  • Was it worth the wait?

    Jamie Foxx in The SoloistWhen Joe Wright’s “The Soloist” was shifted from prime Oscar territory last autumn to a considerably more low-profile 2009 slot, many presumed that the film was something of an artistic disappointment. However, word also went round that the move was a sympathetic one, aimed to place less pressure on a film that, despite the talent involved, was more crowdpleaser than prestige item.

    Meanwhile, two diametrically opposed trade reviews do very little to clear up the picture ahead of the film’s release next week. (They appeared a few days ago, but escaped my notice until now.) Todd McCarthy’s Variety pan confirms the suspicions of the sceptics, actually suggesting that the film appears uncomfortably caught between awards-baiting and more populist urges:

    Neither rarefied art film nor widely accessible inspirational drama, “The Soloist” falls between the cracks both creatively and commercially … Joe Wright’s first American feature has moments of power and imagination, but the overworked style and heavy socially conscious bent exude an off-putting sense of self-importance, making for a picture that’s more of a chore than a pleasure to sit through.

    Charismatic and dynamic as they’ve been on any number of previous occasions, both Foxx and Downey seem to labor here as they grapple with roles viewers will find difficulty warming to. Downey, in particular, fails to find either outer charm or inner soul in Steve Lopez.

    The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt, however, sings a very different tune, describing the film as “excellent, if flawed.” His disagreement is most pronounced on the matter of the film’s lead performances, going so far as to suggest that they remain strong awards contenders:

    Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx are on fire in the lead roles: They’re both charismatic as hell without sacrificing any of the emotional honesty necessary for you to believe that these movie stars are a scruffy reporter and a mentally ill musician … True, Academy members tend to remember only the last three months of a year when voting, but these performances are extraordinary enough that the memory should not fade by fall.

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  • ‘(500) Days of Summer’ poster and trailer

    (500) Days of Summer

  • Question of the day

    Is it really all that surprising that a film that glorifies the profession of journalism is being well-received by film critics across the board?

  • Please no

    I don’t know.  I look at this still and I think, “God, I’m destined to despise every inch of this film.”  That’s what seriously goes through my mind.

    (from left) Eli Rotha nd Brad Pitt in Ingourious Basterds

  • Kutcher wins

    You might remember that Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN post from a few days ago.  Well, it looks like Kutcher closed the Twitter gap fast and finally topped the news organization’s Breaking News feed to 1 million followers.  Now he will “ding dong ditch” Ted Turner’s home, as promised.  And this, my friends, is what is out there to cover this morning.  CNN even Twittered a congrats:

    CNN tweet

  • Happy anniversary

    As milestones go, it’s not one for the record books, but the sentimentalist in me feels compelled to note that it is precisely one year today since I made my first modest contribution to this noble site. How time flies.

    Okay, so you all forgot, but I forgive you. No need to send flowers. (But hey, if you were looking for a tenuous excuse to have a few drinks today, let this be it.) Anyway, it’s been a consistent pleasure writing for, and conversing with, you guys over the last twelve months. Long may it continue.

    (Something else that happened exactly a year ago, by the way? My beloved twins “Happy-Go-Lucky” and “In Bruges” were born on the same day in their — and my — home country. 2008 certainly got off to a good early start, didn’t it?)

  • Sofia Coppola checks into ‘Somewhere’

    Sofia CoppolaIt seems to have become fashionable to dismiss Sofia Coppola as a lightweight in recent years, so news of her fourth feature film may be greeted with trepidation by some folks.

    Not me, though. My relationship with “Marie-Antoinette” has shifted over time from guarded admiration to fully-blossomed love, while “Lost in Translation” remains, for me, the impeccably judged mood piece I always thought it was. (Detractors call it “slight”; I prefer “fragile.”)

    In any case, the many who were on board with “Translation,” but disembarked at her hyper-stylised period piece, will probably be relieved to hear that, for her next effort, Coppola is returning to the contemporary, serio-comic territory (and studio) of the former film — luxury hotel setting included. Variety reports:

    Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning will star in the Focus Features dramedy “Somewhere,” which Coppola penned. Story centers on a bad-boy actor stumbling through a life of excess at the Chateau Marmont. With an unexpected visit from his 11-year-old daughter, he is forced to reexamine his life.

    The filmmaker, who said she has been looking to make “an intimate story set in contemporary Los Angeles,” received permission to shoot at the hotel, which has become notorious in recent years as a popular address for tabloid-friendly celebs. Film will lense in L.A. and Italy in June and July.

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  • Boss, take two

    Nothing else from me today.  I’m off to see The Boss one more time at the Sports Arena.  Here’s hoping Tom Morello comes back for another stab at “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” because that was friggin’ awesome.

  • ‘Batman: Arkham Asylum’ video game trailer featuring Bane

    Okay, I can’t friggin’ WAIT to play this thing.  You might recall the original trailer from January, but this shorter look at one of the plot points has the Bat fan within giddy as hell:

  • POLL: The most influential films of all time, round one, part one

    Earlier in the week we told you about TCM’s list of the 15 most influential classic films of all time.  I decided to use that news item as a spring board for another giant poll, something akin to the “Which Oscarless director deserves it more?” query last summer that saw Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick in a fight to the death.

    Rather than just stick with films from the “classic” time frame, I thought we’d just go all in and collectively decide on the top 10 most influential films of ALL TIME.  I’ve taken all suggestions from our commenters on the TCM thread and tossed my own ideas in for a massive slate of 66 films.  So this will take some time.

    We’ve kicked it off today with the largest poll of the lot, a 16-film query with the titles taken at random.  Your task: pick up to five of the films list in the left sidebar that you think deserve to move on to the next round.  Next week we’ll settle the rest with five more polls, each with 10 titles and allowing no more than three choices per voter.  The idea is, by the end of this first round of voting, we’ll have 20 films that can move on until we narrow it to a definitive list of the 10 most influential films ever, as voted on by the In Contention readership.  So make your vote count!

    (Brendon Connelly at /Film, by the way, has taken a different approach, listing what he feels will one day be viewed as the most influential films of the last 10 years.  Devin Faraci at CHUD takes considerable umbrage.)

  • The reality of the ‘Wolverine’ leak and box office

    Hugh Jackman in X-Men Origins: WolverineYou may have already heard about a certain workprint for Fox’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” leaking onto the Internet two weeks ago since the resulting firestorm and fallout has been covered and re-covered by bloggers, journalists and former journalists alike.  So there’s not much left to say on the issue. I do, however, want to go on record, as In Contention’s resident box office guy, as saying that this leak will have absolutely ZERO effect on the amount of money the film will pull in. Well, almost zero.

    First, let’s take a look at Fox’s logic. Potential customers see the movie on their computer before it comes out.  Customers then do not go see the movie in the theater. It does seem to make sense and this logic most likely comes from the devastating effect that illegal downloading has had on the record business.

    Now, here’s my logic. While the record business is definitely going down the tubes, the music business is doing fine. Concert business is relatively stagnant and vinyl sales are up significantly. Look at Flo Rida.  His album only sold 80,000 units its first week, which is disappointing, but his single “Right Round” has been downloaded over a million times on iTunes alone. In other words, CDs may be dying, and possibly even the album format, but the music industry will be fine.

    Look also at the top 30 Billboard debuts for artists like Animal Collective and Andrew Bird so far in 2009. Not only did both acts post career-high sales totals, but they both cater almost exclusively to the audience that is supposedly getting all their music illegally. Really, though, it’s silly to even compare the two industries, since buying a record was never a group activity or a night on the town to begin with.

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  • Rare bird

    James Gandolfini in In the LoopRegular Guardian readers will know that Peter Bradshaw, the paper’s perma-grouch film critic, doesn’t dole out five-star ratings lightly — in the past half-year or so, only “The Class” has made the grade. So I’m interested to see Bradshaw going all out for “In the Loop,” a modest British political satire that had hitherto only been at the edge of my radar, despite some tasty ingredients.

    The film, which opens Friday in the UK and in July Stateside, carries more built-in appeal for followers of recent British TV comedy, principally cult series “The Thick of It” — of which “In the Loop” is a direct spinoff, sharing some characters and the creative team led by Armando Iannucci — here making his feature helming debut.

    Meanwhile, co-writer Jesse Armstrong also is one of the geniuses behind sitcom “Peep Show,” so I’m in regardless. And throwing James Gandolfini into the very limey-flavoured mix only makes things more interesting. Looks like a political weekend at the movies for me, then.

    Very funny trailer after the cut. Here’s Bradshaw’s take:

    Some movies have the knack of arriving at the most painfully right time. Just as Damian McBride’s blood is being Dysoned off the carpet at No 10 and Derek Draper’s fingerprints removed from the Chequers dining table, here comes Armando Iannucci’s horribly brilliant comedy about this government’s culture of spin and muddle … The acting is superb, and the writing is relentlessly funny — vicious and delicious. And refreshingly, there isn’t a sympathetic character in sight.

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  • Off to The Boss

    I’m catching Bruce Springsteen tonight and tomorrow night over at the Sports Arena here in Los Angeles.  He hasn’t played my favorite tune on the tour yet — “Spirit in the Night” — so here’s hoping for a pleasant surprise.  “The Wrestler” has been a regular feature, however, and I’m sure he’ll play it either tonight or tomorrow.  I’ll try to grab a video of the performance with my still camera if he rocks it out.

    Gone for the rest of the night.  Call this an open thread if you have anything on your mind (though it’s been a pretty sleepy week).

  • Variety.com gets a new design

    Hmm.  I dig the new revamp but it seems reminiscent of…something:

    Variety.com

    HollywoodReporter.com

  • Pot, meet kettle

    American Apparel ad featuring Woody AllenToday’s most hilarious news item concerns an unlikely pair of names: Woody Allen and, uh, American Apparel.

    The root of the story is commonplace enough: Allen sued the clothing company last year for using his image on a series of advertising billboards, without the filmmaker’s authorisation. A fair enough gripe, surely, though I’d question whether it’s worth $10 million. (Is this Woody’s new method of financing pictures? If so, I’m all for it.)

    American Apparel, however, has responded by taking the decidedly low road:

    The company plans to make Allen’s relationships to actress Mia Farrow and her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn the focus of a trial scheduled to begin in federal court in Manhattan on May 18, according to the company’s lawyer, Stuart Slotnick.

    “Woody Allen expects $10 million for use of his image on billboards that were up and down in less than one week. I think Woody Allen overestimates the value of his image,” Slotnick said. “Certainly, our belief is that after the various sex scandals that Woody Allen has been associated with, corporate America’s desire to have Woody Allen endorse their product is not what he may believe it is.”

    It’s a funny tactic, to be sure, but a bit rich coming from a company whose CEO, Dov Charney, famously masturbated in front of a journalist, and has faced numerous sexual harassment lawsuits from his own employees.

    I love Allen, and am wearing an American Apparel T-shirt as we speak, but neither party exactly earned my devotion through ethical excellence — though I think Allen has the upper hand in this instance. More details here, and another of the offending billboards after the cut.

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  • ‘The Hurt Locker’ trailer

    I’ve been dying to see this since Toronto last year.  I’m also a Jeremy Renner fan and love to see him getting high notices for his work here.  Plus, I’ll be on Kathryn Bigelow’s bandwagon until it crashes and burns.

    Here’s the new trailer:

  • ‘The Cooley Zone’

    Those who’ve followed the site long enough are well aware that I’m a football guy.  The kind that watches the NFL network throughout the off-season to find out what the “10 Greatest Quaterback Controversies of All Time” might be, or to get 100% filled in on pre-draft news and notes.  It’s in my blood.

    Anyway, the schedules were announced yesterday, which has me poking around the usual corners of the web to get NFL tid-bits here and there, and of course, anything on my squad: the Washington Redkins.

    Which brings me to this hilarious extended preview of a web series that may or may not be developed in full.  “The Cooley Zone” features Redskins tight end Chris Cooley (who, despite his “what’s up, bra” exterior, genuinely seems to be one of the coolest dudes on the planet).  I got a kick out of this, so I figured I had to share.  (The framed portrait of Cooley and his ex-cheerleader wife is hilarious.)

    Have a look:

  • More on the Twitter apocalypse: Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN

    Ashton KutcherRecently I wrote about the dawn of the journo Twitter apocalypse, the idea that the micro-blogging platform will somehow have a considerable impact on the journalistic form.  I have my doubts.  And even if the possibility is there for Twitter to be a tool of the journalistic trade, I find myself wondering whether it should.

    Case in point: it seems Ashton Kutcher is in a public sprint to 1 million followers with CNN’s Breaking News feed.  The former is sitting at 888,000 followers, according to this AP news story.  The latter: 937,000.  Britney Spears, by the way, is somewhere in between.  But as much as I can’t help a natural irritation to Kutcher’s response to all of this, I also can’t deny what he offers in closing.

    From the AP:

    The 31-year-old actor recently threw down the gauntlet, challenging CNN and its founder, Ted Turner. In a Web video posted earlier this week, Kutcher said he would ding-dong-ditch Turner’s house if he beat CNN to 1 million. (For those unfamiliar with the classic adolescent prank, ding-dong-ditch is when you ring someone’s doorbell and run away.)

    “I find it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter,” Kutcher said in a video he posted on qik.com. “I just thought that was kind of an amazing comment on the state of our media.”

    Preach on.  Speaking of all of this, has CNN’s news coverage on the whole become a lot more akin to a big top show over the last year-and-a-half to anyone else?  Not that it wasn’t close to the absurd already but lately I feel like my senses are ambushed every time I turn it on.

    (Ironically, I’m off to share this post on Twitter.)