Daily Archives: August 14, 2007

Julie Delpy on 2 Days in Paris

The daughter of French actors Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet,
Julie Delpy was born into an artistic family, and the values with which
she was inculcated extended beyond those of your typical actress
.
Echoes of this are glimpsed in Delpy’s own eclectic career both in front of and behind the camera (she not
only attended but also graduated from NYU Film School) as well as the fact
that she nurses a long love of music. In fact, in 2004, in addition to
co-writing the film’s screenplay, Delpy penned and performed several
songs for Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset, a follow-up to Before Sunrise.
One of three tunes on the soundtrack, the heartrending, acoustic “A
Waltz for a Night” served as her character Celine’s pivotal confession
to Ethan Hawke’s Jesse, with whom she spent a single evening in Vienna nine years prior.

It’s seemingly kismet, and not particularly surprising, then, that music features prominently in the making of 2 Days in Paris, Delpy’s latest film — which she wrote, directs and stars in opposite former, if brief, off-screen beau Adam Goldberg. “I co-wrote a song with a band named Nouvelle Vague,
which is actually a really good French band, and it was the way that I
financed all the music in the film, all the songs playing in the
background,” Delpy says. “Because if I gave (a song)
to the music company that works with the financing company in Germany
who financed the film, then they would pay for all the songs in the
film. So I gave them the song,” she continues. “That was the deal, and that’s what you do on independent films; all sorts of little deals, and you have to give a bit of yourself to
get money from them
. But it wasn’t bad, though I had to write the song
at night while I was mixing the film. That was a bit exhausting.”

Delpy
doesn’t seem to know any other way, though. In fact, talking to her, and
listening to digressive, flight-of-fancy stories about a brisk, 20-day
production schedule on location in the City of Lights last summer
, one
can reasonably come to the conclusion that she in a way feeds off of
such chaos, breakneck pacing and on-the-fly pacts and revisions. For the full interview feature, from FilmStew, click here.

Advance Thoughts on 3:10 to Yuma

Again, I’ve been remiss about pumping out some quick thoughts on both the good and bad of what I’ve seen long lead, but James Mangold’s remake of 3:10 to Yuma , the 1957 western starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin, is a very, very good film… like, go-ahead-and-start-the-Oscar-derby good. Starring Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Ben Foster and
Peter Fonda, the movie is a slow (pleasantly so), protracted chess match of wills.

Set in Arizona in
the late 1800s, it centers on captured outlaw Ben Wade (Crowe), and his date with a train that will take him to justice. Bale plays Dan Evans, a broken down Civil War veteran struggling to keep the respect of his headstrong son (Logan Lerman) and the support of his wife (Gretchen Mol), as well as merely hold onto control of his drought-plagued ranch. Needing cash, Evans volunteers to help deliver Wade, but is set upon by the latter’s vicious gang.

The script is tight, the acting and production value top-notch, and Crowe — speaking in a low, hypno-masculine purr — drives this well-oiled baby inexorably forward in charismatic bad-boy fashion. Bale’s performance, meanwhile, is a master class in measurement and subtle reaction. Looking to beat Warner Bros.’ The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford out of the gate, LionsGate has moved the film’s release date up to September 7, nationwide; to visit its web site, click here. More to soon follow.

Uwe Boll Goes Postal

FilmStew has up a nice little piece about Uwe Boll’s response to a critic’s response to his latest film, Postal, and it’s a laugh-out-loud doozy. Among the more coherent charges levied at Wired writer Chris Kohler? That he “wrote that article in bad faith to damage me — his whole goal is to destroy my business,” as well as the fact that “people like [him] are the reason that independent movies have no chance anymore.” It gets even better than that, though, trust me.

I’ve interviewed Boll a couple times before (even talking about Postal, which he said would be “like Falling Down,
but funny”), and he’s got a bit of a hair-trigger temper, no doubt. He also speaks, though not quite as heavily accented as you might expect, in a garbled manner that certainly shows English is not his native-born language. But it’s useless trying to parse constructive criticism with him, because he then just gets wildly excitable and starts making even less sense than usual. Dry sarcasm, that’s the way to go with Boll; give him enough rope and let him hang himself…

Are We Done Yet?

Now, was there ever a chance that Are We Done Yet? — a sequel to 2005’s $82 million-grossing Are We There Yet? — was going to be a critics’ darling? No, probably not. But the first film was a harmless enough family comedy about besieged masculinity and eventual maturation. It had its moments of diverting amusement, and it actually told a linear story in some loose, relatable sense. This sub-moronic re-up, though, is completely divorced from any sort of reality (even of its own invention) and totally mind-numbing, even at well under 90 minutes.

Scrubs‘ John C. McGinley, above left), Nick’s dream home becomes a nightmare.

That Are We Done Yet? runs on comedy of the predictable is surely no surprise, but Hank Nelken’s script is especially atrocious, a desultory mix of slapstick and bland bickering, powered by mind-boggling contradictions in character. You know going in that there will be: a) toys stepped on; b) a leaky roof; c) a falling chandelier; d) a comic electrocution; and e) Ice Cube falling through said roof. And there are, courtesy of Steve Carr’s reliably awful direction. What you don’t expect, necessarily, are bits involving a talking raccoon, a deer whose eyes bug out in cartoonish fashion and Ice Cube wrestling a giant sturgeon.

Still, it’s the breathtaking manner in which the movie so immediately announces its complete gracelessness and lack of respect for its audience’s intelligence that is most amazing. After ananimated opening credits sequence that trumps the entire combined feature for imagination and sheer entertainment value, Ice Cube’s character is awakened by his alarm clock, at 5 a.m., to an outdoors that is completely bright and spilling sunlight into the room. Nothing gets much better from there, in either attention to detail or certainly cleverness. Despite its cheery pitch, this most certainly isn’t one for the entire family.

Are We Done Yet? comes housed in a regular Amray case and presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. Distributor Sony tries to put a nice face on matters, with supplemental extras consisting of a five-minute featurette about McGinley’s character, an interactive quiz on the movie, three minutes of bloopers (during which McGinley goes spitfire, and directs himself), and a short, seven-minute making-of featurette. F (Movie) C (Disc)