I just recently finished reading Spin‘s profile on Amy Winehouse, the British, up-and-coming, vaguely horse-faced jazz and R&B belter, and then I was struck yesterday, while blasted with her catchy hit single “Rehab” while stuck in traffic, that if it hasn’t already been snatched up by some bottom-feeding teen flick, this is a potentially great big screen song. It likely won’t find its perfect match; the quite literal if rather deliciously sardonic lyrics dictate that. But the tune’s superlative horn and trumpet work — working in concert with that slap-happy, click-clackitty percussive loop — give it an undeniable sense of thrift-store uplift. No big production for production’s sake, just everything working in unison.
Rather than finding its cinematic soulmate in the tale of some alcoholic drifter-grifter who makes good, “Rehab” will more than likely be used as spackle to cover up some narrative inanity. You know, kind of how Lincoln Park’s “What I’ve Done” is slapped over the end of Transformers and cranked up to spleen-rattling levels, in an effort (mostly successful, it turns out) to make you momentarily forget that the movie just told you that a massive, city-leveling battle between giant alien robots could be covered up merely by dumping its wreckage into the ocean.
The trailer for The Bourne Ultimatum, the next installment of the Jason Bourne series, is of course out, along with the long-lead television ads and the billboards somewhat strangely pitching the movie’s tag (“On August 3, Jason Bourne comes home”) but with no mention of its title. I guess I say strangely because it’s still hard to think about the sleeper hit of summer 2002 as now being its own sort of instantly recognizable franchise. A spry melding of up-to-date aesthetic and worldview, hand-to-hand combat, and a narrative that dovetails perfectly with its protagonist’s panicky quest for self-actualization, The Bourne Identity has an awful lot to do with James Bond’s Casino Royale reinvention than most mainstream audiences might think. The TV ads for The Bourne Ultimatum are so-so, with David Strathairn as the new barker of orders, to Joan Allen’s returning witness of Bourne’s squirrelly escapability, but the long-form trailer hints at a full temporal memory awakening, as well as featuring some kick-ass car chase bits.
Fiscally, look for a slight uptick on the worldwide grosses of the first two films, which made $213 and $290 million, respectively. A big part of that will be eaten into by a budget that reportedly almost doubled from The Bourne Supremacy, however. Stealing away from his work on the third film, director Paul Greengrass made a special trip to the Los Angeles Film Critics Association dinner this past January to accept Best Director honors for his work on United 93 (his only awards season appearance), and he appeared a bit haggard, to be honest. Granted, a trans-Atlantic flight will help do that to you, but there were other problems born of the movie’s staggered shooting schedule and many locations.
In other news, as part of its promotional campaign for The Bourne Ultimatum, Universal is teaming up with Google for “The Ultimate Search for Bourne,” kicking off on July 16. Using various Google tools to track Bourne across various continents, contestants will make themselves eligible for a variety of prizes, including a bag full of phony passports. No, just kidding about that last part…
Dimension’s boozy teen horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, starring 21-year-old looker Amber Heard (Alpha Dog) as a virginal object of affection who gets caught up in a greater, downward-spiraling tug-of-war, releases in a little over a week, on July 20. Yet for some reason its web sitestill isn’t up and operational as of this morning, July 11. For a film about and largely for teenagers, that strikes me as a quite bad idea, no matter how limited the movie’s opening. How much could it possibly cost to slap something low-fi up, produced in-house?
UPDATE 7/13:Mandy Lane‘s placeholder web site is now completely down, and the film’s July 20 release has been scuttled. According to folks at the Weinstein Company, there is currently no new release date set. Two Los Angeles press screenings for next week have been canceled.
At the recent press day for Hairspray, John Travolta put to rest rumors that his work in the film — a colorful, toe-tapping musical based on a stage musical based in turn on John Waters’ 1988 film — might have inspired a desire to return to roots, so to speak:
“You know, honestly, I did stage from the time when I was 12
to 26 years old — even when I was in film — and I know it’s sacrilegious to say,
but I did my 13 or 14 years on stage,” Travolta relates. “It’s a lot of work in a different way.
Movies are hard, there’s no doubt about it, but then they’re over. You commit
to a year-long run, or a two-year run of a Broadway show, and you want to be digging
ditches at the end of it, because it’s the same show, same dialogue, same
everything — and after about six months you run out of ideas. It’s take 500,
and you don’t know what to do with it.”
It’s a happy birthday… sigh… to Jessica Simpson, who turns 27 today, probably celebrating by making some comically misguided and dunderheaded malapropism. I’m going to endeavor to avoid saying anything needlessly cruel and misanthropic, but Simpson’s appeal escapes me, always has. Sure, she’s got a huge rack, but she’s an awful screen performer, and endearing only insomuch as one appreciates those who aren’t in on the fact that everyone’s laughing at them instead of with them.
How to be as delicate as possible, here? Umm… some women are not meant to speak, really. (Before anyone gets up in arms, I’d certainly say the same thing as well about an equal percentage of men, many of whom I believe appear in Abercrombie & Fitch ads.) Simpson’s allure, as it were, dates back to another era — she’s a Betty Grable pin-up queen, tantalizing only as an unknowable commodity. The second she opens her mouth, the illusion is shattered. Both on screen — with her forcedly, faux-sexy twang — and off, Simpson is play-acting what she’s been told is sexy, and the dimness and swallowed panic come through in equal measure.
Hollywood Boulevard offers up its own very particular freak show, and I’ve written before about rampaging Wookies and the like. Now it seems, per E! Online, that a Marilyn Monroe look-alike has called the cops on a Chewbacca character, alleging that someone touched her on her right shoulder “without her permission,” LAPD officer April Harding said on Monday. She also told officers that about a month ago a man in a Chewbacca costume grabbed her hand and placed it on his genitals, hence the filed battery complaint. Wait a second… battery and/or sexual harassment, or just some good old role-playing hanky-panky? Hmmm… maybe I’ve revealed too much…
Actually, one funny thing is that this entire incident was apparently set off by a group of tourists approaching the Monroe character — whose name police refused to release — and telling her that she was the worst Marilyn Monroe impersonator they’d ever seen; “Marilyn” then thought that the guy dressed as Chewbecca had egged them or convinced them to say that. The funnier thing is that two weeks ago I was in Hollywood, right around the Hollywood & Highland complex and Grauman’s Chinese, where these folks congregate. From about 30 feet, I saw what I presume to be many of the same characters described herein, and I remember being struck by and even saying at the time to a couple friends of mine, “Jesus, who’s that supposed to be… Marilyn Monroe?” She looked awful, really. Donn Harper, though, quoted in the aforementioned piece, shouldn’t get too uppity… his run-down Elmo costume was equally pathetic and derisible.
So… random, and certainly quite small in the grand scheme of things, but I have it on good authority that Jonathan Spinks and famously penitent actorStephen Baldwin will be appearing at the Pentagon for a prayer breakfast (“scheduled for 0700 hrs”) on August 8. Quoth the interdepartmental email posting/invite: “Jonathan has traveled throughout the United States with the OSU Tour, providing care for our troops and families. Stephen is a Hollywood
celebrity, who loves God and our country too! …Come join us for prayer and a meaningful message.”
Those thinking the phrase “culture wars” is so much empty theater, designed to stoke the flames of partisan politics… well, they’re right, actually. But they do also exist, and are ongoing. Sometimes a single word says a lot. Take the above tag “too,” for instance. It ostensibly refers back to Spinks, but its juxtaposition works two ways — the second and somewhat unnerving implication, of course, being that big ol’ liberal celebrities and shady Hollywoodites certainly don’t love God or country.
David Lynch has signed on to direct a commercial for Gucci’s eponymous new perfume, according to Stylephile.com. While ad work isn’t new or necessarily unusual for the director — who’s helmed a memorable pregnancy test commercial, among others — it will be interesting to see what Lynch comes up with for what should be a relatively high-end launch. Parent company Procter & Gamble released a statement which indicated why they tapped the avant garde filmmaker to tackle
the task: “Lynch was selected for his holistic ability as an artist,
his professional experience and knowledge, his never-ending research
for beautiful images, his use of music and his modernity.” Take that, Brett Ratner! One also has to figure that Lynch can knock out half of his Christmas shopping with this gig.
With the success of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and now Knocked Up, the Judd Apatow imprimatur is safely established, and now the further comedic branding is really began to pop and sizzle, with the writer-director putting his stamp of namesake approval on projects as a producer. First it was Seth Rogen who rode this Apatow-inspired wave from costar to leading man, and now Jonah Hill is charting the same trajectory, with this August’s Superbad and next year’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall among the titles on his busy schedule.
Now, per MTV’s Movie Blog site, Hill is having a fit of Pure Imagination, headlining the second of two scripts he’s also written. This one — still shopping for a director, but described as marrying the sort of improvisational guy’s guy comedy of Knocked Up with the flight-of-fancy of Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry — will star Hill as a traumatized twentysomething oaf whose only pal is of his own creation. When he strikes up a relationship with a girl, but starts to in turn wonder if she’s real, he has only this imaginary friend to fall back on for advice. Presumably the friend won’t be named Tyler Durden… but it’d be a lot cooler if he was. Filming looks to start in early 2008, for a possible release the same year.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a crop of screen comedians with such an active hand in writing (rather than just “developing”) their own material. It would be interesting if Rogen, Hill and fellow Apatow disciple Jason Segel could all hone their own popular voices and score big, but the long odds are against it.
In news surprising absolutely no one (even Punxsutawney Phil took last week off), Transformers topped the box office chart this past weekend, parlaying its July 2 evening sneak screenings, July 3 proper opening and big mid-week business to a $155 million total haul, around $70.5 million of that coming during the weekend frame. Disney/Pixar’s latest animated masterwork, writer-director Brad Bird’s Ratatouille, rang up $29 million Friday through Sunday, taking its total box office tally to $109 million. Placing third, meanwhile, Live Free or Die Hard pulled in another $17.7 million, raising its cumulative domestic numbers to just under $85 million.
The only other wide release new opener, Warner Bros.’ comedy License to Wed, opened to $10.4 million, while the deadly word-of-mouth on Universal’s Evan Almighty still hadn’t found everyone, resulting in another $8.7 million in theatrical receipts. People want to like Steve Carell, make no mistake about it, but Evan is a neutered film all the way through, and its $79 million-and-counting gross won’t be enough to offset its production costs, conservatively estimated at $175 million.
Rounding out the weekend’s top 10 were John Cusack’s 1408, with just over $7 million, for a $53 million total haul; Knocked Up, with $5.2 million, $132 million total; the Fantastic Four sequel, with another $4.2 million, $123 million total; Michael Moore‘s documentary Sicko, with $3.6 million, $11.5 million total; and Ocean’s Thirteen, which has now tallied just under $110 million domestically, but another $140 million abroad.
A friend and (presumably occasional) site reader passed along these shots of a transformed 7-Eleven convenience store from Orlando. As part of its promotional efforts for The Simpsons Movie, 20th Century Fox is tricking out certain branches of the chain nationwide, converting them to the Kwik-E Marts, the show’s equivalent convenience store. (Why am I telling you this, honestly? If you don’t already know…)
On the outside, “Thank you for loitering, please come again” reads the sign above the store’s front, and if you look up and to the left (not a phrase that Mayor Quimby would like to hear, thank you very much), you can see Bart and Milhouse perched on the corner of the building. Marge’s blue hair, meanwhile looms at the bottom of the frame. Maybe she’s about to get egged.
The amusing re-branding doesn’t stop there, though. The Slushee machines have been rechristened Squishee machines (below), and series foodstuff staples like Buzz Cola and Krusty-Os cereal are also garnering shelf space. If you live in Los Angeles or its
Burbank suburb, New York City, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Seattle or the aforementioned Orlando, snap some photos for friends, and consider entering the Internet-peddled collectibles market — I’m sure it will be quite lucrative. Smaller markets also graced with transformed stores include Henderson, Nevada; Bladensburg, Maryland; and Mountain View, California. The Simpsons Movie opens nationwide July 27.
I went for a jaunt around Santa Monica yesterday, traversing pretty much the entire beach from Temescal Canyon to far south of the pier, and was struck by the literally hundreds of trashcans bearing wrap-around advertisements for Paramount’s new comedy Hot Rod, starring Andy Samberg. I get that these types of things, along with item separators in grocery stores, are the new frontier of “public impressions,” a nice, low-cost supplement to conventional P&A. But does it strike anyone else as subversive commentary on the relatively disposable nature of the piece? Too-easy ammo, I suppose. Some reviewer will make hay of this… maybe me, since I should be seeing the movie this week, so as to also lay to rest any controversy over its running time.
Sex farce and wriggling softcore T&A showcase meets foreign-shore political satire in SSI: Sex Squad Investigation, the latest spoof from the EI Cinema folks, who’ve made a nice cottage industry out of lampooning — in often sapphic fashion — recent film and TV hits as well as genre moviemaking in general.
Written by Andy Sawyer and directed by Thomas J. Moose (Zombie Toxin, The Girl Who Shagged Me), SSI is a wobbly-legged thing, done in by the fact that none of its makers seem to really be on the same page. Detective John Honeysuckle (John Fedele) is a troubled cop struggling in his duties as the top dog in the city’s toughest criminal investigation unit. Set up to enforce President George Shrub’s “Illicit Sex Bill,” which has made premarital sexual intercourse punishable by life behind bars, the SSI unit is a mess. With unsolved cases mounting, sexy rookie Katrina Lightbody (AJ Khan) arrives as Honeysuckle’s new partner.
When, as the DVD’s back cover text explains, a “highly profitable crime spree of illegal inhibitions and seductions” hits New York City, Honeysuckle must put aside his differences and work together with Lightbody. As the serial seducer continues her haughty onslaught, though, dirty secrets involving the president (Frank Bowdler) and his promiscuous daughter Jessica (porn star Natalie Heck) come out. Vice President Selina Moon (McKenzie Matthews) eventually reveals herself as someone not to be trusted… after, of course, blouses are doffed and skirts dropped.
I’m generally all for judging a movie on its own terms, within the genre parameters it uses to define itself, if it all. But simply putting whimsical goofball shenanigans and play-acted indulgences to film (or video, as the case may be) doesn’t a “satire” make. Such behavior has a shelf life and appreciatory audience that doesn’t much extend beyond high school English class group projects, and the friends involved in such rib-nudging, look-at-me nuttiness. That pretty much defines all the non-nude portions of SSI. Fedele is a world-class mugger, which serves some spoof work well, but here undercuts everything. This is a low-rent yawner, through and through. There are much easier ways to see naked women, really. Also, for reasons not entirely clear, the movie is shot in the United
Kingdom but set Stateside, which makes for all sort of cross-cultural
bunglings.
Housed in a regular Amray case, SSI is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions. Three minutes of bloopers are set to tune that very much owes a debt to Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone,” and there’s also included a 31-minute short from 1992, The FBI Guys, that costars Fedele and apparently played at the Meadowland Showcase, according to a rambling commentary of reminiscence tagged on as well. Crap stew with an extra side serving of feces cornbread, you say? You bet. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. For more general information, meanwhile, visit Pop Cinema’s web site by clicking here. F (Movie) C- (Disc)
From the Hollywood starlet files, it’s
a happy birthday to Sophia Bush, who turns 25 today. While she takes a big hit
for having once been married to squinty-eyed hair gel champion Chad Michael Murray
(who’s only a step above Devon Sawa
in the poor-man’s-Shane-West sweepstakes), Bush will always hold a special place
in my heart for showing me her zebra-print panties on the set of The Hitcher (don’t ask).
I’ve never seen One
Tree Hill, but Bush starred in Stay
Alive and John Tucker Must Die,
the latter of which made box office hay out of its savvy Comedy Central ads
featuring costar Brittany Snow in a red bra-and-panty set.
And upcoming she has The Narrows,
costarring Vincent D’Onofrio, Kevin Zegers and Monica Keena,
from director François Velle, who helmed the quite funny, underrated comedy New Suit, from 2002. All in all, Sophia is really
charming and cute, and capitalizing on her time in the sun fairly well, though I’d
love to see her cast in a smart indie romantic comedy, though I guess those are
few and far between. The main problem, perhaps? The surname Bush isn’t exactly
doing her any favors right now. Don’t laugh (too hard) — while she won’t be mistaken for Dubya or anything, these things sometimes have a way of percolating in subconscious fashion in the minds of filmmakers and casting directors. Just ask ’70s starlet Rhonda Nixon. Who, you ask? Exactly.
Sweet Jesusthe summer is hot in the San Fernando valley! The heat has me thinking about popsicles, which has me thinking about summer camp, which in turn has me thinking about Meatballs. So… “Are you ready for the summer… are you ready for the hot nights?” Just sayin’…
Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga) are well-to-do Manhattan parents whose idyllic lives begin to unravel after the birth of their second child. Baby Lily’s arrival is celebrated by Abby’s effete brother and Brad’s born-again mother, but the exceptionally precocious and well-coiffed nine-year-old Joshua (Jacob Kogan, above center) seems to harbor a swallowed resentment of his new sister — or at least that’s what the movie’s tremulous, piano-inflected score tells us. As Abby starts showing signs of wild-eyed strain that may or may not be an acute case of postpartum psychosis, Brad comes to suspect that the unnervingly mature and angelic Joshua may be the manipulative mastermind behind a series of increasingly unfortunate events.
This is another fashionably miniaturized sociopath’s tale, in the mold of last year’s remake of The Omen, but filtered tonally through the more cloistered disquiet of 2004’s Birth. To the nominal credit of director George Ratliff (the documentary Hell House, ha) and his co-writer David Gilbert, the film doesn’t load up on jump-scares and obvious music cues; its makers are reaching for a sense of accumulated domestic unease. Their methods, though, come across as indulgent of a whole other set of art-house clichés. Joshua may be unsatisfying in very precious, upscale ways, but it’s unsatisfying nonetheless. For the full capsule review, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down.
God bless the Internet(s), truly. If there was ever proof needed that Hollywood is like a giant microcosm of high school, except with better cars, more bok choy and yoga and even bigger egos, this is it…
Horror and comedy is a tough mix, but Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon for the most part
inventively juggles the disparate tones of both types of films — certainly
impressively showcasing why the former genre is so frequently traded in by low-budget
filmmakers — and in the process undeniably establishes career beachheads for
all of its young principal players.
The names of both Wes Craven and Christopher Guest have been
invoked in countless reviews of Behind
the Mask, which enjoyed a brief theatrical run in limited markets
nationwide earlier this summer, and it’s not entirely inappropriate, really. Directed
and produced by Scott Glosserman from a generally smart and often quite funny script
co-written with David J. Stieve, the film is set in a world where Freddy
Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees all actually exist. Despite its very
specifically evocative title, and the downward-arc biographies of washed-up entertainment
figures that such a designation summons forth, Behind the Maskunfolds in mockumentary form as the grad-school
project for non-fiction filmmaker Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals), who follows
around up-and-coming homicidal maniac Leslie Vernon (Invasion’s Nathan Baesel) as he plots the labyrinthine killing
spree that will launch him into infamy.
Leslie has graciously given Taylor
and her documentary crew unprecedented access to his life as he trains and
plans for his reign of terror over the sleepy town of Glen
Echo. Along the way he dines with an old mentor (Scott
Wilson), scouts and preps locations, and explains the necessity of the sort of convoluted
rules of procedure that, in the world outside the movie, govern horror films.
Per their agreement, Taylor
refrains from rendering judgment on Leslie’s aspiration, though she finds that promise
more and more difficult to keep as things wear on. A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Robert Englund, meanwhile, plays Doc
Holloran, a vaguely Dr. Loomis-esque figure bent on exposing the truth about
Leslie’s past (“the Ahab of the piece,” as Leslie explains), and stopping his
murderous plans.
As a slice of deconstructive, tongue-in-cheek entertainment, Behind the Mask is certainly beaten
to the punch by Scream, yet it still
offers a fresh perspective since so much of the movie unfolds in casual
fashion, and through the eyes of the putative villain of the piece. Baesel is a
great guide here; there’s a bit of Seann William Scott’s American Pie mischievousness in his performance. The script is also
deftly balanced between droll and whimsical. One moment Leslie is running
through his training regimen (“You have no idea how much cardio I have to
do…”), the next he’s waxing rhapsodic about his search for the perfect victims,
and the order in which thy must die (“How do the swallows find Capistrano?”).
If there are knocks, it’s that the elements of mythology and back-story that
drive the movie’s latter third don’t fully coalesce, and (another seemingly
minor quibble, I’m sure), Leslie’s killer garb includes an extremely small
mask (above) that, well, seems kind of silly. That said, this is a rather
ingenious little independent movie, and certainly one well worth a look for
genre diehards.
Presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9
televisions, Behind the Mask comes
with Dolby digital 5.1 and Dolby surround 2.0 audio tracks. It’s housed in a
regular Amray case which is turn stored in a cardboard slipcase with a gatefold
cover that sticks shut courtesy of a small touch of non-marking adhesive. It’s
nice to see such a small title, all things considered, anchored by a solid
slate of bonus features. Kicking things off is a rather cluttered audio
commentary track with actors Baesal, Goethals, Britain
Spellings and Ben Pace. This is recommended only for those who’ve seen the
feature once or twice before; while some of the stories and good-natured
ribbing (“Oh, the Yannic imagery!”) are amusing, the constant talking over one
another does get old.
The best supplemental bit is a fantastic 32-minute making-of
featurette, constructed around video diary segments from director Glosserman
(who, humorously, talks about the cast getting together and getting drunk just
prior to the start of production). There’s also six minutes casting tapes from
the audition process, and a clutch of deleted and extended scenes with optional
commentary with Glosserman; the latter runs just over 25 minutes in aggregate. Teaser
and full-length trailers for the movie, along with a DVD-ROM copy of the film’s
screenplay rounds things out. It’s a fantastic package for an inventive, neat
little film. B+ (Movie) A- (Disc)
A featured selection at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, Driving Lessons is a decently touching, passingly amusing and laid-track heart-warming little look at a young guy’s coming-of-age, starring
Rupert Grint, of the Harry Potter
films, and further anchored by respected Academy Award nominees Laura Linney and
Julie Walters. If it’s by and by a quite familiar tale, it’s earnestly acted, and one that at least offers
Grint the opportunity to stretch his legs a little bit, which should be
welcomed by fans of the aforementioned series.
We first meet Ben, a shy, bookish 17-year-old, as he’s approaching
a very unpromising summer vacation. While the other kids are out having fun,
Ben spends these precious few weeks attending bible classes, suffering the
titular instruction with his overbearing and self-righteous mother (Linney) and
helping out at a local old people’s home. It’s certainly not his ideal
summer break but, with a demanding, vigilant mother and a passive vicar for a
father (Nicholas Farrell), Ben is anything but in control of his own destiny;
he’s marking time, caught up between adolescence and adulthood.
Ben’s absurdly straitlaced world is turned upside down when
he gets a job assisting Evie (Walters, Grint’s mother in the Potter flicks), an eccentric retired actress. Refined,
vulgar and childish all at once, Evie enters Ben’s life like a hurricane.
Suddenly caught up between these two very different storm fronts, Ben starts to
gravitate more and more towards his employer’s unconventional and often bizarre
ways, even though it continually gets him into trouble with his mother. Evie
drafts Ben as her partner in a series of adventures, culminating in a camping excursion
that turns into a full-fledged road trip when she cajoles unlicensed Ben into
driving her to the Edinburgh Festival. Ben reluctantly ignores his conformist
instincts and jumps behind the wheel. What follows is a journey in which Ben
and Evie help each other move forward in their radically different lives, as
Ben is forced to confront how he was brought up and who he ultimately wants to
be.
Written and directed by feature debut director Jeremy Brock (the co-writer of The Last King of Scotland), who apparently based a
good bit of Driving Lessons on his
own childhood experiences, the movie trades in fairly familiar archetypes to
anyone who’s seen their fair share of repressed-Christian and/or otherwise stifled
adolescent tales of keenly pitched woe and awakening. For all her wild energy, Evie
is essentially just another manipulative force in Ben’s life, and it takes both
him and the movie a while to recognize and own up to this fact. Gangly Grint is
ample as Ben, and Linney and Walters hold serve on screen through the force of
their personalities, but the characters as written are rather thin, and the movie itself doesn’t fully engage so much as glide
smoothly through its conflicts, to its rather unsurprising final resting point.
Though not as harsh a judgment as it sounds, Driving Lessons is essentially a whiler of time, engaging but not
necessarily remarkable.
Housed in a regular Amray case, and presented in a rich 1.85:1
anamorphic widescreen transfer, the film comes with a Dolby digital 5.1
soundtrack which acquits itself nicely, and optional English and French
subtitles. Supplemental special features consist of a perfunctory 17-minute making-of
featurette, which includes on-set footage and interviews. There is also a quartet
of deleted scenes and a very short blooper reel, complemented by trailers for
other Sony arthouse and indie-inflected releases. C (Movie) B- (Disc)
So a portion of this piece from Variety, on the German government’s decision to help fund United Artists’ Valkyrie — a rooted-in-truth drama, directed by Bryan Singer, about an assassination plot against Adolf Hitler during World War II — struck me as interesting. The project has already been in the news, of course, due to the government turning down the production’s repeated entreaties to shoot at an actual historical location, all owing to Cruise’s beliefs as a Scientologist, which the German government views as totalitarian.
What I don’t get, I guess, is how the government’s $80 million annual federal film fund — $6.5 million of which will go to Valkyrie — doles out its kitty. Production incentives and enormous tax rebates are one thing, and totally old hat, part of the game of luring Hollywood flicks abroad, but chipping in cash on a foreign production would seem to be the role of an investor, no? What, exactly, does the government get for its money? I know production money then flows back to local economies via catering, room and board, local artisans, etcetera, but how does it benefit German filmmakers or fans to throw that kind of money at a Hollywood flick?
Meanwhile, if the grant — which exceeds the total cost of most German
features — seems generous, it’s not the biggest of the year. In April, the same government agency put up $12.3
million for Warner Bro.’s Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci and Matthew Fox, which is currently shooting at
Studio Babelsberg just outside of Berlin.
It’s not particularly surprising that Michael Bay personally introduced a recent screening of Transformers
by enthusiastically announcing that he was there “to make sure it’s
fucking loud.” This is a director, after all, who has built his entire
career around action brawn, pumped-up soundtracks, slow-mo visuals,
canted close-ups and a penchant for somewhat tacky
exclamation. Nuance is not really part of his vocabulary. Luckily for
him, it’s not the public’s most coveted quality in entertainment either. Having pulled in $8.8 million during its nationwide Monday
night sneak previews, and a record $27 million-plus from its opening
day haul (biggest Tuesday opening ever… blah, blah, blah), Transformers
is a big, old-fashioned blockbuster, that much is certain. Nothing that
I or any other critic might say about the movie will derail its
downhill momentum. Sequels will be spawned, a hearty line of spin-off
products launched, and a somewhat struggling studio (the newly
betrothed Paramount/DreamWorks) rejuvenated with a new franchise.
So what to make of Transformers’ success, especially coming on the heels of the all-out domestic implosion of Bay’s last film, 2005’s The Island? The most immediate lessons are two-fold: 1) That special effects and a
suitably rousing trailer can really still rally the youth dollar; and,
2) As depressingly close-minded as such backwards-gazing nostalgia is,
Hollywood studios will continue to value name-brand properties — really
any franchise, almost — over original ideas, if only for their
perceived ability to deliver a built-in audience. Transformers, of course, is based on a toy line of convertible kids’ action figures from the 1980’s; with G.I. Joe I believe already in development, can a live-action Centipede, Pac-Man or Donkey Kong movie be far behind? For another full review of the movie, from FilmStew, click here.
Fronted by the gloriously gloomy Ian McCulloch, Echo &
the Bunnymen’s melancholic post-punk sound — studded with elements of both New
Wave and psychedelic rock — brought the group a slew of hits in the United
Kingdom in the early 1980s. In the United
States, meanwhile, the band attracted a
significant cult following after their self-titled release in 1987. Through the
past two-and-a-half decades, the group has undergone a number of lineup
changes, somewhat messy break-ups and half-hearted reformations, but earlier in
2007 they re-signed to their original record label, cut a new record and
embarked on a mini-tour.
The performance on the new concert DVD Dancing Horses was filmed and recorded at the Shepherds Bush Empire
in the UK in November
of 2005. It includes a robust 20-song set, and serves as outstanding proof of
the group’s songwriting ability and musicianship, if not necessarily their stage
presence. “Going Up” kicks things off, followed by “The Back of Love,” “Bring
on the Dancing Horses,” “Scissors in the Sand” and “The Cutter.” It’s not until
“With a Hip” and “Stormy Weather,” though, that the show really gets some lift,
though McCulloch promptly squanders a good portion of that with an affected, cigarette-smoking
performance of “The Killing Moon.” The cyclical guitar work and steady bass
line of “Never Stop,” scores high marks, and the show’s simple but artistic direction
effectively puts one in the moment, but overall the Bunnymen could stand to
benefit from an infusion of dynamism. “Of a Life,” “The Disease,” “All That
Jazz,” “In the Margins,” “Villier’s Terrace,” “Show of Strength,” “Rescue,” “Nothing
Lasts Forever,” “Ocean Rain” and the radio hit “Lips Like Sugar” comprise the
rest of the disc’s set list.
Housed in a clear plastic Amray case, Dancing Horses is presented in a 16×9 aspect ratio, with 5.1 Dolby
digital surround sound and PCM stereo audio tracks, the latter of which actually
seems a bit stronger and clearer. The disc’s main motion menu screen gives way
to the 86-minute concert, but the real added value of this release lies in its
47 minutes of interview offerings with McCulloch and Sergeant, who in their
separate chats dish on everything from the origin and metaphorical nature of
the title of their new album, Siberia
(“I don’t wanna say juxtapose, because it’s a crap word…” says Sergeant,
amusingly), to how their songwriting collaborations have changed over the years
(in short, much less in-room jamming these days). Title cards with the
off-screen interviewer’s questions set the table, and McCulloch and Sergeant
take it from there in fascinating fashion, with only the thick brogue of the former
giving one occasional pause. C+ (Concert) B (Disc)
It’s a happy birthday to leggy Dane Connie Nielsen, who turns 42 today. We’ll celebrate with some shots of her in her birthday suit, though it’s not mere prurience, I assure you. Whenever I think of Nielsen, I think chiefly of her temptress’ work in 1997’s The Devil’s Advocate (above), I suppose because I randomly stopped in Albuquerque during a solo cross-country drive and caught the movie, which proved the perfect trashy-delight diversion for a heat-addled mind. I look at that screen-cap now, though, and think, “Sweet Jesus, she looks skinny.” I mean, I know a thing of two about sucking in one’s stomach, but what’s up with that middle shot?
Nielsen is interesting as an actress because, like Juliette Lewis, she can look alternately stunning or a bit haggard and run-down — va-voomish and dangerous (The Ice Harvest), casually attractive in a foreign-correspondent kind of way (The Situation), something a bit more severe (Basic) or even a little more suburban (One Hour Photo). Without dipping into a bag of prosthetic tricks, there’s a subtle range to her mere physicality that not many actresses possess. While she doesn’t necessarily elicit heaps of sympathy (a function of the roles she’s offered, really), check out some of her Danish work if you’re not convinced of her talents.
Fox Searchlight Pictures Chief Operating Officer Nancy Utley
announced Tuesday that the company acquired the Northern American rights to the
inspiring nonfiction movie Young @ Heart,
which picked up the Audience Award for the Best International Feature at the
recently concluded 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival.
“Young @ Heart is
everything one could want in a movie-going experience: surprising, moving,
enlightening and entertaining,” said Utley. “The audience becomes a community
as they laugh, applaud, and shed some tears. We couldn’t be more honored to
have this film as Searchlight’s first documentary in over a decade.”
Directed by Stephen Walker, the movie stars a New
England senior citizens chorus that has delighted audiences
worldwide with their covers of songs by everyone from The Clash to Coldplay. Produced
by Sally George and funded by Channel 4 in the UK,
the film is scheduled to be released in the spring of 2008. “I am absolutely
thrilled,” said Walker. “This is
the first film for our new company, Walker George Films, and my producer and I
are incredibly excited to be working with the wonderfully talented and
enthusiastic team at Fox Searchlight.”
Walker should be stoked — this is exactly the sort of small picture that Fox Searchlight excels in marketing, and squeezing its full potential from.
Michael Moore first made his name as the director and namesake star of 1989’s critically touted Roger & Me,
about the effects of General Motors’ plant shutdown in Moore’s hometown
of Flint, Mich. He then parlayed that to-scale success into two
television series and a flourishing life as an author and guest
lecturer. After the turn of the century, Moore would further hone his
own particular brand of “shanghai journalism” in the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine and the all-time box office documentary champ, Fahrenheit 9/11.
For years fairly consistently lampooned by the Rush Limbaugh set because of the left-leaning nature of his political views, it was around this time — in 2002, leading up to the Academy Awards in the spring of 2003 — that the level and volume of vitriol directed
Moore’s way became downright deafening. If we were a nation in the
midst of a cultural war, 2004’s Fahrenheit 9/11 was regarded outright as a weapon by the Republican right, and all sorts of measures were taken to blunt its impact.
This cottage industry of politicized “response” (read: retaliation) is
nothing new, really, and despite the level of chatter, Moore was only
the latest in a long line of public figures to feel the sting of
righteous reaction — novel, perhaps, merely because he was a successful
filmmaker. But if teenage crushes burn bright and long, the same could
be said of political grudges. So as things got worse and worse in Iraq,
Moore — and his pointy-headed reasoning — became a point-of-comparison
whipping boy for those who would assail the decisions or policies of
the Bush administration. With no Democrats of note in positions of
significant power (until the midterms of 2006), if you wanted to either
insult a dissenter or (more likely) rally the base, you dragged out Moore’s name.
What does that do, though, moving forward, for Moore’s viability and
stature as a filmmaker? Regardless of the message in his latest film, the health care documentary Sicko, he’s
the main story wherever he goes, and his high negatives — while almost
certainly topping Bush’s numbers — aren’t exactly the foundation on
which to build a populist progressive agenda. It’s so bad that
otherwise perfectly reasonable adults I know — both folks who’ve voted
for Bush twice but now consider him adrift, those who voted against him
in 2004, and those who never voted for him at all — speak of Moore with
conspicuous malice in their voices, and talk, sight unseen, of not
going to see “movies like that.” For more on Moore, in the form of a feature from FilmStew, click here.
Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga) are well-to-do Manhattan parents whose idyllic lives begin to unravel after the birth of their second child. Baby Lily’s arrival is celebrated by Abby’s effete brother and Brad’s born-again mother, but the exceptionally precocious and well-coiffed nine-year-old Joshua (Jacob Kogan, above center) seems to harbor a swallowed resentment of his new sister — or at least that’s what the movie’s tremulous, piano-inflected score tells us. As Abby starts showing signs of wild-eyed strain that may or may not be an acute case of postpartum psychosis, Brad comes to suspect that the unnervingly mature and angelic Joshua may be the manipulative mastermind behind a series of increasingly unfortunate events.
We first meet Ben, a shy, bookish 17-year-old, as he’s approaching
Michael Moore first made his name as the director and namesake star of 1989’s critically touted Roger & Me,
