Writer-director Judd Apatow likes to establish a couple of main story arcs and then turn his trusted players loose, so it’s no surprise that Knocked Up has a lot of deleted material, even though it clocks in at over two hours in its theatrical incarnation. This deleted scene, featuring Jonah Hill and Katherine Heigl, finds the former’s character watching Brokeback Mountain, and expounding in fairly raunchy form upon what’s missing from Ang Lee’s movie. Some funny stuff, but very easy to see why it was left out.
Monthly Archives: June 2007
Thoughts on A Mighty Heart
Angelina Jolie stars in Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart, which releases June 22 from Paramount Vantage. A film of glancing emotional blows, the movie tells the story of the ill-fated investigation into the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), who disappears in Karachi while researching a story on captured shoe bomber Richard Reid. Donning brown contacts and a light French accent, Jolie plays Mariane Pearl, Daniel’s wife, who was six months pregnant at the time of the ordeal in January, 2002.
That this isn’t ordinary summer fare is stating the obvious, but I was a bit surprised at just how much of a tangled procedural A Mighty Heart is. Full of two steps forward and one step back, it’s all about the labyrinthine investigation and intelligence agency finger-pointing that plays out over the course of a few tense weeks, as mysterious names are cross-checked and connected to other suspects and organizations, all in a mad effort to identify (much less locate) Daniel’s captors.
Jolie’s portrayal, meanwhile, recalls that sort of Magic Shell chocolate syrup — the stuff that hardens when it hits ice cream. It should be pointed out that this is by design, and in lockstep with the script, which convincingly sketches Mariane’s resoluteness, but does so in an inwardly reflected fashion. Two emotional moments leap out for me — very obviously designed as poles to one another. The first can be intuited; it’s a protracted howl of anguished grief when Mariane finally learns of her husband’s fate, and it’s notable because of how it stands in contrast to the manner in which so many films (and especially TV shows) peddle sorrow and pain in polite strokes. The other bit, though, is a light and almost impulsive moment. Giving an interview several days after her husband’s kidnapping, Mariane is asked if there is anything she would say to her husband if he could now hear her. The answer itself is brief and obvious — “I love you” — but Jolie puts such a personal spin on it, and the reflexivity of the reply is heartrending. More thoughts and a proper review will follow closer to the A Mighty Heart‘s release date, but for more information, visit the movie’s eponymous web site by clicking here.
I Know Who Killed Me Spoiler
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Lindsay Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me, through someone who worked on the production.
Before I get to that tidbit (bail now if you don’t want to read a potential story spoiler), it’s worth mentioning, I guess, that more of the in-character video blogs on the movie’s spin-off site have gone live — seven more, by my count, as of this afternoon, June 1. They’re seemingly ramping up the rate of revelation in the wake of Lohan’s recent DUI arrest, but any malingering sense of ominousness — which I already thought was rather wan — is being squeezed out by more of the same silly, discursive narration (“Breathing and transforming — solid becoming gas, pain becoming a gift, awareness expanding…”) and the fact that these entries are so breathlessly paced.
Again, to briefly reiterate the film’s major apparent story points, Lohan plays a student, Aubrey Fleming, who gets kidnapped and tortured by a killer, then turns up two weeks later claiming to be Dakota Moss, a stripper. Dakota, it seems, is also a bad girl character Aubrey created for a classroom writing assignment, so where does the line of fiction end and reality begin? Blah blah blah…
Well, according to the aforementioned source, Lohan’s character loses an arm and a leg. Like, seriously. This tidbit, combined with the trailer and video blog, seems to point the movie, and its obligatory twist, in one of two directions, one of which is distinctly Scream-ish (minus that movie’s tone, naturally). The other might be slightly more interesting, and generally jibe with reports of a long-running assembly cut of the movie, but it would have a bit higher degree of difficulty and additionally be much harder to sell in the summer, and certainly now with Lohan’s troubles. The script no doubt features copiously interwoven red herrings, so unless more information leaks out, the guessing game continues until the film’s release on July 27.
More Thoughts on Knocked Up
Big screen comedy is of course a fickle thing. What constitutes a laugh
today can seem tired and played out only a few short years later, and
there are all sorts of barriers, both cultural and generational, that combine
to produce distinctively flavored subsets of humor. When it comes to
more willfully vulgar comedies, the slope is even slipperier. Life is
naturally a bawdy thing, but in the past 25 years there have only been
eight R-rated laffers to gross more than $80 million domestically, and
three of those were slices of the American Pie franchise.
Writer-director Judd Apatow’s feature debut, The 40-Year-Old Virgin,
joined that rare club in 2005, ringing up just under $110 domestically
and another $67 million overseas on the strength of his heady blend of
effusive personality, light raunchiness, heart, sexually frank dialogue
and quasi-improvisational hilarity. After years of still-birthing
critics’ darlings like Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared for the small screen, Apatow’s first film punched through with audiences in no small part due to its distinctive relatability, and it’s largely for this reason that Knocked Up — the story of a
one-night stand between a very mismatched couple (Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen), and a resultant
pregnancy that throws each of their worlds out of orbit — will almost
certainly join the aforementioned R-rated smashes in the box office
winners’ circle.
Refreshingly, Apatow allows for real arguments between his characters, and in Knocked Up he thankfully doesn’t feel obliged, by mandate of some test audience
scorecards, to tone
down a sequence in which his two leads say some really nasty things to
one another… and yet also never stop trying to see if they can work things between the two of them and reach some plane of accord. Despite all the masturbatory, vaginal and bodily function jokes, and
despite his high fidelity to topical one-liners, Apatow remains
seriously dedicated to assaying the
mysterious distance between men and women that alternately maddens,
entices, bemuses and confounds us all. Knocked Up is in its heart a film with a searcher’s soul. It just happens to also be a very funny, R-rated comedy. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.
Westside’s Landmark Opens Today
the Landmark at the Westside Pavilion, the new, 12-screen flagship theater of the nation’s largest chain devoted exclusively to art house and independent releases. Apart from the surface shock of any development project that actually met its original launch date, I was impressed with the wide concourses and generally smart use of space.
I eschewed snapping photos (being the proud owner of a cell phone with no built-in camera), but did enjoy the view from the windows of the new theater, which span two stories. Granted, you’re still looking out at the intersection of Westwood and Pico Boulevards, at CompUSA, the Mattress Gallery and a string of mom-and-pop bodegas and ethnic cuisine joints, but to the east one can glimpse Century City, and at sunset it’s not a bad sight.
I have no idea what its prices will be, but the theater obviously nipped a few lessons in design, amenities and service from the ArcLight Cinema in Hollywood, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either from an aesthetic point-of-view or one of practical, demographic catering. (The west side of Los Angeles, for those living in Nebraska, isn’t really the low-rent district.) The downstairs theaters are the bigger ones, with stadium-style, sloped seating and a flattened, even-level portion at the bottom. The upstairs screening rooms are a bit more intimate, with large, cushioned chairs and sofas that make it easier to mack on your date or sit together in groups. Of course, no armrests for separation could make it a bit uncomfortable in a crowded screening you’re attending alone, and those cushions are going to soon serve as catch-alls for the change, Chapstick and keys of shallow Westside pockets.
Numbering more than 3,000 free spaces, the Landmark‘s underground, wind-around parking seems to slightly mirror the Hollywood & Highland Complex, though (hopefully) with less orange cones in its future. Naturally, there’s a valet section, and Pizza Rustica and LaBrea Bakery serve as high-end concessions, among other offerings. (And yes, like the Arclight, beer is also apparently available for certain screenings of R-rated fare.) To get info on the Landmark‘s showtimes — it opens today, June 1 — or just investigate more and check out a few stock interior photos, click here.
Killing Time with Gaspard Ulliel
It was no small deal when author Thomas Harris and producer Dino De Laurentiis
agreed to cast an eye to the past, and, in the form of Hannibal Rising, new this week to DVD, explore the formative
years of the killer part made so famous by Anthony Hopkins. Casting a young actor in a role already so strongly entrenched in
filmgoers’ minds was roughly akin — in the gravity of genre terms — to
Ewan McGregor’s casting as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars
prequels. With a solid actor, you at least had a chance at critical
legitimacy. A misstep, though, could spell irreversible doom for the
entire franchise. De Laurentiis and director Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring) found their virtuoso killer in young French actor Gaspard Ulliel (below).
Hannibal Rising would stall at only $27 million
domestically, international audiences proved more willing to turn back
the clock on Lecter; it doubled those numbers abroad, and turned a
profit overall, perhaps setting the scene for further adventures in
slaying. After all, it’s an R-rated franchise whose four films have
cumulatively grossed over $900 million, not even counting the black
sheep of the brood, Michael Mann’s Manhunter. Ulliel’s
performance should certainly bolster that possibility of a
continuation; he received almost across-the-board positive notices for
his portrayal. Understandably, it’s also raised his profile. For the full feature piece, from FilmStew, click here.