Its debut animated offering, Igor, is more than 17 months from release, but the Weinstein Company has already announced plans for a sequel, and that they have
formed a strategic alliance with Exodus Film Group to jointly develop, produce
and finance a multi-picture slate of CG-animated feature films, DVDs and
television series, with TWC distributing the titles worldwide.
The joint
announcement was made today by Harvey Weinstein, Co-Chairman of The Weinstein
Company and John D. Eraklis, CEO of Exodus Film Group. “With our first collaboration Igor looking so strong we thought the timing was right to further the relationship,
and to begin work on an Igor sequel,” Weinstein stated. “John Eraklis and his team, led by Max
Howard, have the unique ability to create dynamic animated entertainment that
attracts kids, parents and everyone in between.”
Final terms of the first-look, multi-year deal were not released, but to complement the strategic alliance with TWC, Exodus will establish
a New York presence, iin addition to their headquarters in Los
Angeles and European operations in Paris.Other CG-animated projects in the works for the Weinstein Company
include Escape From Planet Earth, Opus, Cricket In Times Square and Hoodwinked
2: Hood vs. Evil — the sequel to the surprise 2005 box office hit Hoodwinked, which pulled in more than $100 million-plus worldwide. Igor is currently slated for release on October 24, 2008.
The films of Guillermo del Toro are so memorable because he
combines storytelling acumen with the eye of a great visual artist. I still
vividly recall seeing Chronos in an
arthouse theater in Washington D.C. in 1993, and not merely because CBS News
reporter Bob Simon was there, looking for all the world like a European spy
making some sort of clandestine drop at the local cinema. Whether making
overtly commercial fare like Blade II
and Hellboy or more personal movies,
such as The Devil’s Backbone, del
Toro intermingles themes in fascinating ways.
Set in 1944, Pan’s
Labyrinth is a sort of gothic fairy tale set against the postwar repression
of Franco’s Spain.
The winner of three Academy Awards, the film takes as its protagonist the
introverted Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a quiet 10-year-old girl who moves to the
northern mountains with her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) after being
summoned by the latter’s new husband. Ofelia’s cruel stepfather, Captain Vidal
(Sergi López), is a humorless fascist officer under orders to rid the territory
of a small group of rebels that fight on unbroken in the Navarra region.
Ofelia, who is fascinated by fairy tales, discovers an
overgrown tangle of brush behind the nearby mill. In the heart of the labyrinth
she meets Pan (Doug Jones), an ancient satyr who claims to know Ofelia’s true
identity and secret destiny as the reincarnation of Princess Moanna, and tasks her
with completing three clandestine assignments before the arrival of the next
full moon. Instructing Ofelia that no one must know about her mission — not her
ailing mother or her new friend Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) — Pan lays out a very
specific series of rules, and warns her that if she does not follow them there
will be harsh consequences. So time is running out, both for Ofelia and for the
rebels who stand in opposition to Captain Vidal. Each will have to battle
hardship and brutality in order to gain their freedom. But who can be trusted
in such a time of lies and danger?
Pan’s Labyrinth is
dreamy and at times unnerving, faintly recalling Alice in Wonderland and, in its own glancing way, The Lord of the Rings, all while still
retaining an inimitable style all its own — a style that might be called “fantastical
revisitation,” owing as it does to florid inner worlds of a creative adolescent
imagination. If the comparison to the latter film series seems far-fetched, it
has less to do with pure alignment of fantasy vision and more to do with the
fact that, as in that series, the conflicts seem at once intimate and grand.
Still, at its heart Pan’s Labyrinth
is an intimate and surrealistic fable, marked by historic underpinnings. There
is little majestic, surging questing; it’s a more intimate and idiosyncratic tale
of good and evil, bravery and sacrifice, love and loss — and to that end a film
that produces more variable reactions. Arthouse patrons with a healthy sense of
whimsy will most appreciate this film, “mere” foreign film aficionados likely
less so.
Available in both single- and double-disc versions, Pan’s Labyrinth comes stored in a
regular Amray case in turn housed in a sturdy cardboard slipcase. It is
presented with animated menu screens in 1.85:1 widescreen, preserving the
proper aspect ratio of its theatrical exhibition. And it’s a gorgeous transfer,
marked by consistent colors, deep blacks and no problems with edge enhancement
or grain. Audio unfolds in Spanish language Dolby digital 5.1-EX, stereo
surround 2.0, and 6.1 DTS-ES mixes, with separate English and Spanish
subtitles, as well as optional closed captioning. Del Toro provides a video
prologue introduction as well as an engaging feature-length audio commentary
track, and the guy approaches the DVD releases of his movies just as a diehard
fan would, as any owner or renter of Hellboy,
in either of its tricked-out iterations, can attest.
Four hearty featurettes kick off the second disc, beginning with a
15-minute look at the mythology and origin of the movie’s more fantastical characters.
Conceptual sketches and preproduction sculptures feed into a superlative,
30-minute look at the film’s visual effects, which points up the breathtaking value
of simple imagination over wads of cash and CGI. Del Toro’s use of colors and
textures are also examined, as is composer Javier Navarrete’s work on the
film’s music. Another big extra is a 50-minute chat from PBS’ The Charlie Rose Show, presented in
full-screen, featuring an interview with del Toro and friends and fellow filmmakers Alfonso
Cuarón (Children of Men)
and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel).
An interactive production scrapbook gives viewers a look at
the film’s design work, and del Toro also shares his own notes and sketches,
some dating back many years. Four, minute-long “DVD Comics,” meanwhile, offer
up comic book artists’ interpretations of Pan, the Giant Toad, the Pale Man and
the Fairies. A visual effects plate comparison and collection of trailers and
TV spots round out the bonus slate, along with DVD-ROM, dual-language versions
of the screenplay, synchronized storyboards and photo galleries. B (Movie) A+ (Disc)
Ummm… I’d love to be able to justify this post by having something intelligent to say about Monaco’s work on the daytime soap opera General Hospital, or her bit roles as “pole-dancing cheerleader Sharon” in BASEketball or “Marisa, the landlady’s daughter” in Mumford. Alas, David Zucker and Lawrence Kasdan wouldn’t return my messages on what it was like working with her. So, uhh, you know… you’ll have to settle for the pictures. Sorry about that.
Not that I’m a skeezy deejay and we’re opening up the
request line here at Shared Darkness, but a reader e-asked me about the Uma Thurman flick Prime a couple days ago, and so I thought
I’d drop this slightly tweaked and redacted review, originally published to
coincide with the film’s DVD release, and penned for a site that still owes me
money. To wit:
The Boondock Saints,
and it happened in 2000 with writer-director Ben Younger and Boiler Room, a sort of pre-Enron mash-up
of Wall Street
and The Firm for the Gen-X millennial
set in which a college dropout quickly rises the ladder at a suburban
securities and investment firm only to discover seedy goings-on. Unfortunately,
though, commercial grosses are often misread as qualitative tea leaves, and
when Boiler Room pulled in under $17
million at the box office despite the presence of a marquee young cast
including Ben Affleck in a supporting role, Younger went from Next Big Thing to
Just Another Forgotten Thing.
2005’s romantic comedy Prime
represents his return, and it’s in some small ways triumphant while in most other
ways right in lockstep with his debut — interesting and awkward, and more packed
with promise than fulfillment. Despite the presence of a post-Kill Bill Uma Thurman and exalted
national treasure Meryl Streep, Prime
did hardly better in its theatrical release ($22 million domestically), the
result of a somewhat lackluster promotional campaign that couldn’t convincingly
sell the movie’s offbeat sense of humor, and/or convince audiences to come see
a film in which the male romantic lead was a virtual unknown.
The story centers around career-driven 37-year-old Rafi
Gardet (Thurman), who finds herself on the relationship rebound with 23-year-old
aspirant painter David (Bryan Greenburg, of the short-lived HBO series Unscripted),
the doted-upon son of Gardet’s very Jewish psychoanalyst, Lisa Metzger (Streep). The more Rafi tells Lisa about her new young fling, the more Lisa catches on to
his true identity, and so she tries to subtly nudge both parties away from
continuing the relationship. It’s a great concept, but a lot of the trite relationship
stuff rings relatively false, and proxy Greenburg can’t quite pull the weight
of his part. Still, upon further consideration, the movie plays better on the
small screen, where one can more fully give into the joys of Streep’s
pitch-perfect performance.
Younger has an idiosyncratic taste and voice, as evidenced
by a subplot in which David’s friend Morris (Jon Abrahams) seeks revenge on a
woman who spurns him by thrusting banana crème pies in her face. In some ways
both of his films have had palettes too large for conventional genre pieces;
you can tell he takes great delight in writing tangential bits, and for
supporting characters, and when required to push forward the chief narrative boulder he
falls back on clichés that are beneath him. While neither of his studio films
have completely wowed me in aggregate, Younger seems like he would be better
suited toward more intimate, indie-scaled productions, like those of Whit Stillman, Noah
Baumbach and Nicole Holofcener.
DVD extras on Prime‘s single-disc release include nine minutes
of cast and crew interviews in which Streep praises Younger as having “the
confidence of an old soul,” and producer Jennifer Todd talks about her initial
attraction to the material. Eight minutes of deleted scenes feature all kinds
of interstitial bits, odds and ends, and showcase in unique fashion the
challenges of feigning a loud party scene with no music. Also included are four
minutes of outtakes, though these are frequently less outrageous bloopers than
halting, alternative versions of scenes, with a few laughs thrown in for good
measure. C+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)
Kelly Monaco, who turns 31 today.
The Boondock Saints,