Dining last night with some friends, including one in the know, there was some information gleaned about The Wolf Man, the Andrew Kevin Walker-scripted project, starring Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt, from which director Mark Romanek walked away. While he indeed quit over budget concerns and considerations (he refused to commit to a production kitty that had already ballooned from $100 million to around $120 million-plus), Romanek was also on the verge of being fired before he chose to walk. Universal called in the director over the weekend several weeks back, in a last-ditch, ass-covering effort to get him to toe the line; by quitting, he voided his contract, and made things a lot easier.
Jurassic Park III and October Sky helmer Joe Johnston has already officially been tapped as The Wolf Man‘s new director, as announced by Variety last week, but this after both Brett Ratner (who of course jumped into the driver’s seat on X-Men: The Last Stand when Bryan Singer abandoned the franchise he originated to take the reigns on Superman Returns) and Frank Darabont (who most recently directed The Mist, an adaptation of Stephen King’s source text of the same name) were each given hearty consideration. One of those names is entirely expected, one decidedly less so, in my opinion…
Written and directed by Julie Delpy, 2 Days in Paris is a valentine to some of the more freewheeling, open-hearted work of French New Wave directors like Eric Rohmer and Jean-Luc Godard. At its core is churned-up moral inquiry and self-reflection about all matters sexual, romantic, social and artistic. All the packaging, though, is hand-crafted and loosely bound.
Though she’s made her mark in the States as an actress (most recently in The Hoax), Delpy has a varied filmography and skill set. She’s perhaps best known here for the charming, alluring Before Sunrise/Sunset pictures, costarring Ethan Hawke and directed by Richard Linklater. It’s less well known, though, that Delpy’s off-screen contributions to the movies — particularly the second film, which she co-wrote with Linklater and Hawke — were absolutely integral to their success.
Another tale of romantic turmoil, albeit more comedically inflected, 2 Days in Paris unfolds, as the title indicates, entirely in the City of Lights, following a New York couple — American-born interior designer Jack (Adam
Goldberg, above right) and French-born, alpha-female
photographer Marion (Delpy) — as they attempt to re-infuse their relationship with romance on the
end leg of a European vacation. The combination of Marion’s
offbeat parents (played by Delpy’s real-life folks, Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet) and a seemingly endless supply of her flirtatious ex-boyfriends, along with the
natural language barrier (Jack doesn’t speak French), all make for choppy waters.
The movie is rooted in fancifully re-imagined biography, given the fact that Delpy and Goldberg used to be an item, and it’s driven by the same sort of philosophically introspective patter found on display in many of Linklater’s films, including the aforementioned series, an obvious antecedent. The angst here, though, is lot more cheery and soft-edged. Delpy keeps things moving briskly, and her offhand style is a nice match with the material. Part of the point, and a rather radical one, that Delpy seems to be making is that love can be a fickle thing, not for every season. It can last for years, then dissipate into a fog in the span of a few weeks or a month. Does that make it less important or valuable… or more?
Housed, one presumes, in a regular Amray case, this watermarked screener disc was presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 audio track and optional English and Spanish subtitles. DVD extras consist of a 16-minute chat with Delpy about the origin of the idea and production of the film (for which she also did some of the music), as well as five extended scenes running just over a dozen minutes in total. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B- (Disc)
