Daily Archives: September 29, 2007

On Milla Jovovich’s Evil Bankability

Film Reviews, Musings

Star bankability is a subject of endless debate around Hollywood,
especially when it comes to female leads. Studios want guarantees on
their investments, which increasingly means big opening weekends and
overseas receipts equal to — or greater than — a film’s domestic yield.
Respect, photogenic worth and the ability to sell magazines are of far
less importance than the simple ability to put butts in seats.

Resident Evil: Extinction, the series looks alive and fresher than ever, despite its co-starring hordes of the undead.

Sure, the data can be cherry-picked in Bush-ian fashion (2006’s Ultraviolet, after all, only grossed a combined $31 million the world over), but since 2002 (and not yet counting Extinction),
Milla Jovovich has had the same number of $100 million movies as
Academy Award-winning Best Actress Hilary Swank, and one more than
fellow Oscar winner Charlize Theron. And with the release of Extinction this past weekend, Jovovich did something that even Angelina Jolie couldn’t do with the Tomb Raider
franchise — lay claim to an action heroine videogame franchise that
will feature three $100 million international hits. All of Theron’s
smoldering sex appeal could barely push Aeon Flux past the $50 million mark worldwide. So what gives? For a Jovovich-centric review of Resident Evil: Extinction, from FilmStew, click here.

Ryan Gosling on Physicality, Mannerisms

Interviews

At the Los Angeles press day for the forthcoming Lars and the Real Girl, Ryan Gosling talked about finding the look and actions of his characters, and in particular the Midwestern loner he portrays in his latest film. “Those things — like I had a beard and I was shaving it off
for the film,” explains Gosling, interrupting himself. “Then I caught a glimpse of myself with the
mustache and I saw him, I thought, ‘There he is.’ So the mustache just came
that easily. And everything, for me, I have all these, what I think are great
ideas about the character, and then they never make the movie. They are never
very good. But then in the process of me trying to attain these goals, all
these little things happen. They are things that are specific to each movie
that I work on.”

“All
those mannerisms and stuff are not conscious is I guess what I’m saying,” continues Gosling, “or
things that I plan. They just kind of happen. It’s up to the filmmaker whether
he wants to put them in or not. And most films that I work on, directors always
cut them out because they think they are distracting or something. Craig is
great because he recognized they are specific to that character. And in Half Nelson they included a lot of that
stuff too. Then when I finish the film they kind of go away.”

A Weekend Love-In

Ephemera

Robert Benton’s Feast of Love opens today, September 28, and while I didn’t get to tap out a full-fledged review, it is worth pointing out that it’s a frank movie, about adult problems and told at a deliberate
pace, and yet it still has a sheen of positivity to it. All of which means it will probably completely bomb at the box office — sacrificed at the altar of The Game Plan.

Movie Ads Don’t Talk Good

Ephemera, Irritations

FilmStew has up an amusing piece today about the increase in grammatical laxness with respect to critics’ quotes and blurbs on movie ads. Among other bits, it rants about misplaced hyphens, ampersands, generally mangled sentiments and of course, words that don’t exist. I heartily second a lot of their points, and also would like to add that the recent poster for The Kingdom baffled me a bit, because of its mixture of fragment and sentence: “An elite FBI team sent to find a killer in Saudi Arabia. Now they have become the target.”