Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger have two film collaborations coming up, but the first — the concert documentary Shine a Light, for which Scorsese used sixteen 35mm cameras
and one Genesis Hi Def camera to shoot more than 500,000 feet of live performance footage — will kick off
the 58th annual Berlin International Film Festival on February 7, with Scorsese and The Rolling Stones in
attendance.
Pieced together from two concerts at the Beacon
Theatre on October 29 and November 1, 2006, Shine a Light includes special guest appearances by Christina Aguilera, Buddy Guy and Jack White, and will open domestically from Paramount Classics on April 4. Its trailer, meanwhile, is an effective piece of hip-shaking solicitation — energetic, crisply photographed and even inclusive of a few sly digs at the tension between the Stones’ freewheeling style and Scorsese’s penchant for meticulous planning. Interesting, though, the seeming room-tone brightness of the light, seemingly copped from the opening of U2’s Elevation tour. For more information on the movie, click here.
It’s awful news for a friend of mine, yesterday’s announcement that 11-year-old Little Miss Sunshine star Abigail Breslin will be named the Showest “Female Star of Tomorrow” at the closing night ceremony of the Las Vegas industry professional event, held March 10-13.
“Since making her big screen debut at the tender age of five, Abigail Breslin has impressed critics and movie fans across the world with her versatile, enchanting and charismatic performances,” said Mitch Neuhauser, co-managing director of the event. “From her breakout role in Signs to her astounding performance in Little Miss Sunshine, Abigail has shown Hollywood that she is a force to be reckoned with, for many years to come.”
The commercial breakthrough of those two, above-mentioned films notwithstanding, it seems an unusual choice in some regards, as Breslin, who next appears in Nim’s Island, hasn’t been a recognized top-liner for very long. I wonder what older brother Spencer thinks of this? Well… both he and Dakota Fanning, actually. She may be sticking needles in an Abigail voodoo doll tonight.
Few filmmakers have provided as many laughs per minute as Mel Brooks, who as a writer, director, producer and actor has been responsible for some
of the silver screen’s all-time greatest comedies, including The Producers, Young Frankenstein and High
Anxiety. Trading equally in slapstick, verbal wit and social satire, his
work is marked by an unusual combination of vulgarity and sweetness, as well as
a willingness to do anything for a laugh.
To this end, the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre will
host a special one-week retrospective, January 23 through 30, with several in-person
appearances by Brooks. In addition to the above-mentioned films, other
favorites like The Twelve Chairs, Silent Movie and History of the World Part I will also screen. The Aero Theatre
is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Tickets for all the Brooks films, as well as other events, are available through Fandango, but for 24-hour recorded
information on directions and the Aero’s upcoming schedule,
phone (323) 466-FILM.
Whether or not most of us think about them, typefaces express a certain mood and atmosphere, and give the content of the words that comprise their text a subtle corresponding emotion — a private spell, if you will. Gary Hustwit’s engaging documentary Helvetica, about the ubiquitous same-named font, digs into this unspoken reality, telling the story of the modern world’s most popular script.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Helvetica is everywhere, it’s inescapable. Invented in 1957 by Max Miedinger and his corporate boss (and so named as a tweak on the Latin word for Switzerland, Helvetia, after its original moniker, Haas Neue Grotesk, was deemed a bit too unwieldy to peddle for sale in America), it’s the default font for corporate authority. (Target, American Airlines, MetLife, Staples, BMW and American Apparel headline the list of literally thousands of companies who use it in their logos and advertising.) Its clear lines and readability also make it widely used in traffic signs and public directive postings, including all of New York City’s transit signage.
Unsurprisingly, this ubiquity rubs some folks the wrong way, and Hustwit is wise enough to give Helvetica’s detractors ample screen time here as well. (One quotes from an old Village Voice piece, calling it “the typography of authority of enslavement.”) Given that this very academic-leaning pissing match is the only thing amounting to a dramatic through-line, the film lacks a strong, inherent pull. It basically just kind of bobs along. There’s lots of designers sharing their thoughts about the push and pull of the letters, and space in between them (design writer Rick Poynor is also an excellent interviewee, providing nice context, history and opinion), but Hustwit would have been wise to perhaps delve a bit deeper into specific work examples of why Company A went with such a choice, or Company B avoided the Helvetica font in a redesign. As is, the movie is predominantly a curio for fans of design and esoterica in general — no great sin, that, but something that could be fast-forwarded through and quick-watched without missing much of its punch.
Helvetica comes to DVD presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen, which preserves the aspect ratio of its original theatrical presentation. It is housed in a clear plastic Amaray case, and comes, somewhat unsurprisingly, with a cleanly designed menu screen which spotlights its ample bonus materials, which consist of 17 extra interviews, running a total of 95 minutes. There’s also an eight-page color booklet with photographs and a two-page essay from director Hustwit about why he chose to make the movie. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Twenty-five-year-old actor Brad Renfro was found unresponsive in his Los Angeles home early yesterday morning, and pronounced dead by paramedics at 9 a.m. local time. Renfro made his film debut at age 12 in the 1994 big screen adaptation of John Grisham’s The Client, opposite Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones, but the glare of the spotlight proved too much, as he struggled with issues of sobriety and addiction.
Drugs aren’t yet being cited in his death, but the actor served 10 days in jail in May 2006 after pleading no contest
to driving while intoxicated and guilty to attempted possession of
heroin. The latter charge stemmed from his arrest in Los Angeles’ Skid Row
area after attempting to buy heroin from an undercover officer in
2005 — an act that was captured in a rather astonishing photo splashed across the front page of the Los Angeles Times.
While the last several years found the work less frequent and of less consequence than much of his early work, Renfro apparently just completed a role in The Informers, Buffalo Soldiers director Gregor Jordan’s adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, starring Winona Ryder, Brandon Routh and Billy Bob Thornton.
For me, though, I’ll always remember his turns in Apt Pupil and especially Larry Clark’s Bully, the latter of which was a gripping portrait of careening adolescent excess.
What would occur if There’s Something About Mary, Wedding Crashers and the recent surge in all cinema penguin-related (i.e., March of the Penguins, Surf’s Up, Happy Feet) were somehow all combined via a strange, Hollywood in vitro fertilization process? Well, something a lot like Good Luck Chuck, new to DVD this week. A reverse-engineered, willfully loud and wacky slice of tried-and-true juvenile formula that is only intermittently, distractingly entertaining in the same way that a foghorn placed just behind your ear is frightening, it’s the filmic screen equivalent of a jukebox cover band plowing through the CD collection of your most impressionable (and regrettable) days of youth.
One of a number of recent offerings from the very busy (pre-pregnancy) Jessica Alba, Chuck rolled to a semi-respectable $35 million domestically last fall — not bad really when you consider that the film’s current RottenTomatoes.com rating stands at a rock bottom 3 percent. DVD special features include a couple mini-featurettes — one exploring the special effects work that went into creating a visual gag involving a woman with three breasts, another stacking up all of Dane Cook’s sex scenes — as well as a back-slapping audio commentary track with Cook, director Mark Helfrich, writer Josh Stolberg and producer Mike Karz. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.