Dug up by a friend of the site, this hilarious anecdote from composer John Ottman, who both edits and provides the score for Valkyrie, about how he was corralled into re-recording the music for John Wayne’s McLintock! after its rights — minus all the sound elements, whoops — were snapped up by a distributor. Is that really a wise use of resources?
All posts by Brent
The Beach Boys and the Satan
Most people imagine California during the 1960s to be an idyllic, peaceful and highly creative place in which some of the greatest and most imaginative music of the last half century was created. In many ways this is true, but there was also a dark social undercurrent that took hold during the later part of the decade, and it stretched out and infiltrated what many people believed to be “America’s band” when Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson for a time became involved with a cult led by Charles Manson. The Beach Boys and the Satan, a hour-long German documentary
directed by Christoph Dreher, explores some of the more dubious events
and people of the 1960s, spotlighting the yin and yang of a much-discussed era.
The movie details the Beach Boys’ rise to success in a broader context than just your typical music documentary. Rarely seen footage of the band is interspersed with clips of some of the more controversial characters of that period, like Anton La Vey and Kenneth Anger. A fairly comprehensive portrait of the band’s history and
development is illustrated with this rare footage, as well as interviews with Kim
Fowley, Don Was and none other than the reclusive creative force behind
the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson. At the core of The Beach Boys and the Satan, though, is Dennis Wilson’s much speculated about involvement and friendship with
Manson and his “family” of followers — the dark side of the Summer of Love’s setting moon. While the speculative/comparative conceit at its core is intriguing, and a nice point of attack, it’s the solid interview “gets” that anchor the movie, which was originally released in 1997 and has since then been commercially unavailable, except on the black market.
Housed in a clear plastic case with a segmented cover that spotlights its putative subjects, as well as a lonely surfer, The Beach Boys and the Satan comes on a region-free disc. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features, which is a shame, since extra interview and/or commentary material with Dreher about the inspiration and genesis of the project would have likely been fascinating. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) C- (Disc)
Eliza Dushku Has Great/Crappy Last-Minute X-Mas Gift Idea
With the economy in the crapper, what sort of gifts is Eliza Dushku planning to give for Christmas? From the press day for Nobel Son earlier this month, this bon mot: “Last year I tried to be cute and get my family these carbon-emission things. My oldest brother is a conservationist, and the only one that really appreciated it. My other brothers were like, “What? You gave me nothing!” It’s to cancel out the carbon footprint that you emit flying, or from your home — you print out a year of carbon credit. It wasn’t a big hit, but I might just do it again because it’s important.” There you have it, folks — adjust your opinion of Ms. Dushku accordingly.
Kate Beckinsale on Going to Prison, Not Playing Judith Miller
It’s not just the phone connection for our interview — Kate Beckinsale speaks quite softly, perhaps a result of her prim-and-proper London
upbringing, and study of literature at Oxford University. No matter.
Beckinsale has two big-stick 2008 performances, the first in David
Gordon Green’s Snow Angels, from earlier in the year, and the second in
writer-director Rod Lurie’s Nothing But the Truth, in which she plays a
reporter whose life — professional and personal alike — begins to
fray after she’s imprisoned for refusing to reveal a source in an
after-the-fact story about a drummed-up case for war. Just in advance
of the release of the latter, ripped-from-the-headlines film,
I spoke with Beckinsale about the challenges of not playing New York Times reporter Judith
Miller, how Lurie is like Martin Scorese, and how black leather made her famous. For the Q&A feature, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here. For more on the method behind her
“schizophrenic” filmography and the insight she’s gained into the interview process after now having played a reporter, jump forward in time by clicking here.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Since his memorably shirtless introduction to the broader filmgoing public in 1991’s Thelma & Louise, Brad Pitt has alternately run from (Twelve Monkeys) and embraced (Troy) his status as a heartthrob pin-up. It’s ironically fitting, then, that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button re-teams Pitt with filmmaker David Fincher, his Seven and Fight Club director, as a man who mysteriously ages in reverse.
Born an arthritic, wrinkled mass in 1918 New Orleans (he could be kin to the baby from Eraserhead), Benjamin is abandoned by his birth father (Jason Flemyng), and raised in doting fashion by Queenie (Taraji Henson), an African-American nursing home attendant. Though not originally given long to live, Benjamin grows up and fits in amidst these aged folk, his tottering facilities and simple interests matching theirs. It’s here that he meets Daisy (Cate Blanchett), a precocious adolescent who eventually blossoms into a world-class ballerina.
As Benjamin undergoes a physical de-maturation, a sense of wanderlust develops. He gets work on a tugboat, which in turn takes him to ports around the world. Tangentially, in this manner he sees service during World War II. In the spring of 1962, though, Benjamin and Daisy reconnect for good, their biological ages converging. In love, they move into a duplex together back in New Orleans. When Daisy eventually announces that she’s pregnant, though, Benjamin is forced to grapple with their diverging futures.
Truth told, there isn’t much fault to be found in the film with the direction of Fincher, who marshals an impressive array of detailed, enveloping production design and mostly convincing effects work. No, the movie’s sins are of the first-trimester variety, story flaws that set the narrative off on the wrong, wobbly path. Benjamin Button is a curious film in many respects, including as a vehicle for Pitt, who has to play a placid, reactive character. Forrest Gump will strike many as an obvious comparison — another central figure blithely bobbing through history, with both films penned by screenwriter Eric Roth, to boot. But simpleton Forrest still acted in ways that indicated a self-interest, whereas Benjamin is in one sense a hostage to circumstance, but also little more than a blank slate upon which an audience is meant to project their own wistful pasts, and trapped or uncertain futures.
Because of this, wide swatches of the movie’s first two acts — time at the nursing home, time at sea and a foreign-set love affair with the wife (Tilda Swinton) of an English diplomat — seem like time injudiciously spent. In all honesty, an expansion of the film’s final half hour would have made for a much more interesting and dramatically wrought experience. But Roth and Fincher duck the hard, heavy questions.
Most damningly, there’s also a puzzling incuriousity about the central conceit, Benjamin’s affliction. All the characters around him, to the extent that they acknowledge his condition at all, just shrug and marvel, and we never see Benjamin seek medical opinion as an adult, which seems baffling, especially when he opts for a life ordered of domesticity with Daisy. I understand that this isn’t necessarily in keeping with the more esoteric, emotionally-based ruminations about mortality for which the film is aiming, but it further underscores Benjamin’s problematic passivity as a character, and it renders the movie little more than an ornate bauble.
Finally, the film’s modern day framing device, with Hurricane Katrina bearing down on a deathbed-stricken Daisy while her adult daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormand), holds vigil, has a doubly distinct disadvantage. First, it doesn’t pay off with any true catharsis. Furthermore, it again sets Benjamin apart, since Caroline reads from a diary that we’ve never seen him keep. It’s yet another gauzy scrim of separation between the audience and this fascinating but oblique, unknowable protagonist, another way for us to observe and hear him but not feel the depth or clarity of any of his emotions. (Paramount, PG-13, 167 minutes)
Laemmle Marks Anniversary with 70mm Screenings
In celebration of its 70th anniversary, Laemmle Theatres is pleased to present “70/70,” a special series of 70mm film screenings ceremonializing its notable longevity in the exhibition business. All screenings will take place at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles and benefit the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic, the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Diabetes Association and AIDS Walk Los Angeles.
Screening today, Friday, December 19, are The Remains of the Day at 5:15 p.m., 1975’s Tommy at 8 p.m. and Pink Floyd: The Wall at 11 p.m. Saturday, December 20 is a James Cameron triple feature; The Abyss screens at 4 p.m., the Oscar-winning Titanic at 7 p.m. and Aliens at 11 p.m. Screening on Sunday, December 21, are Top Gun at 1 p.m., Gremlins at 4 p.m. (with actor William Schallert in person), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at 7 p.m. and The Untouchables at 10 p.m. The line-up for Monday, December 22, consists of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan at 5:15 p.m. and 1979’s Alien at 8 o’clock. On Tuesday, December 23, Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey screens at 5:15 p.m., followed by The Hunt for Red October at 8 p.m. The Royal Theatre is located at 11523 Santa Monica Blvd., in West Los Angeles. For more information, click here.
I Love You, Man Trailer Earns Man-Hug, Respect
The trailer for I Love You, Man — a “bromance” in which Paul Rudd, lacking in the substantive male friendship department, seeks out the perfect best man (Jason Segal) following his engagement to the lovely Rashida Jones — is online, and I’ve decided it’s a winner.
All the dog crap stuff is a push — supposedly revelatory character humor forced into a box of test audience-approved crassness — but the rapport between all the major players here seems great. Segal’s schlubby vibe is a good fit, seemingly, for this sort of role (the edgy new pal), and Rudd scores with the same sort of smart, tone-appropriate yet still slightly canted delivery (as with “Deep — in my mouth” after Thomas Lennon’s kiss, and “C’mon!” after the walk-by belch) that’s been a hallmark of his comedic screen performances dating all the way back to 1995’s Clueless.
Commercial prospects will be partially determined by rating, but the R-rated Role Models has done $64 million and counting, so things look good for a mid-sized spring hit. Directed by John Hamburg, from a script by Hamburg and Larry Levin, I Love You, Man is currently slated for release on March 20, from DreamWorks/Paramount. It will also open the South by Southwest Festival on March 13, in Austin, Texas.
Happy Birthday, Alyssa Milano
It’s a happy birthday to erstwhile Who’s the Boss? tyke Alyssa Milano, who — all growed up, indeed — turns 36 today, and celebrates by trying to find a major league pitcher she hasn’t dated, and probably not reconnecting with former childhood beau Corey Haim.
Would that there was more to report… I was to have recently reviewed Milano’s Wisegals, which streeted on DVD on December 2, but that fell apart. I can report, however, that Milano is an entirely serviceable tennis player, since she used to live near me, and strike balls every once in a while.
Last Holiday (Blu-ray)
Queen Latifah came of age, as an actress, in 2002’s Oscar-winning Chicago, a $306 million worldwide earner, and the following spring’s Bringing Down the House, a $162 million global hit. From her earliest days, though — whether on her platinum-selling rap albums or in something like 1996’s ensemble bank heist tale Set it Off — Latifah’s strengths have been her brassiness, sassiness and volume. The bigger, the better: she’s always been able to locate and articulate a recognizable point-of-view amid so much swirling craziness.
So it’s strange to endure a film like Last Holiday, which
makes its Blu-ray debut just after Christmas, since it so clearly
represents a wan attempt to dampen down so much of what makes its star
special. Alternately forced-cute and painfully obvious, it proves a
weird, shot-on-location, multicultural mash-up — imagine a jumble of
Under the Tuscan Sun and How Stella Got Her Groove Back — with a
declamatory litany of costume changes and falsely empowering imparted
life lessons.
Last Holiday opened to just under $13 million on the second weekend of January in 2006 — good enough to take third place behind Hoodwinked and Glory Road in a tight
debut frame — and went on to gross just over $38 million domestically, a figure in line with Latifah’s two previous headline outings,
the Barber Shop spin-off Beauty Shop and Taxi, her ill-fated action-comedy
pairing with Jimmy Fallon. But Last Holiday isn’t a film that anyone but the hardest of hardcore Latifah fans will appreciate, given the degree to which it relies on contrivance and emotional gimmickry.
A shy cookware department store clerk, Georgia Byrd (Latifah) lives a
modest and demure life, singing in her church choir and eschewing risk
in favor of simplicity. Once she’s told that she has but a few weeks
to live — and is rejected by her healthcare provider for treatment
reimbursement — she cuts loose, cashing in her life’s savings and
leaving New Orleans for a dream vacation in Europe. She ends up at the posh Grandhotel Pupp in the Czech Republic,
“blossoming” by trading in her sensible outfits for high-end fashion and
indulging in all manner of culinary indulgences.
Newly uninhibited, she also befriends the hotel’s venerated chef,
Didier (Gerard Depardieu), and teaches lessons to unscrupulous
businessman Matthew Kragen (Timothy Hutton), conveniently also her up-the-ladder boss, who’s convinced by Georgia’s blithe manner that she’s actually a
shrewd business rival. Finally, sensitive co-worker Sean Matthews (LL
Cool J) enters and the requisite love affair ensues, feeling more like a dictated necessity than an artful
or even florid indulgence. In the end, Georgia learns of her
misdiagnosis, something one could surmise from Jeffrey Price and Peter
Seaman’s problematic script, which has trouble balancing disparate
tones throughout.
Director Wayne Wang, who burst onto the scene in earnest with 1993’s
The Joy Luck Club, has impressed most with a string of esoteric and
sometimes impressionistic character pieces, including Smoke, Blue In
The Face and The Center of the World. He previously segued into
mainstream fare with the serviceable Anywhere But Here, but Last
Holiday feels more of a piece with the joyless and anonymous Maid in
Manhattan. There’s little of note to the direction, and nothing beyond
the promise of a sizeable studio paycheck to particularly suggest his interest or
psychological investment in the project. Giancarlo Esposito is underutilized in a small supporting role.
Latifah, meanwhile, generally acquits herself, but this tepid outing
proves that her talents are best suited to projects where she shies
away from such early forced timidity.
Bowing on Blu-ray on December 30, Last Holiday is presented in 1080p high definition. Though there’s not much need for action crispness (apart from a cringe-inducing ski sequence) or special effects/small object detail, the picture in the film’s
Blu-ray release is, as advertised, solid, and a noticeable step up from regular DVD quality. Audio is
anchored by a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix, with French
and Spanish 5.1 Dolby digital mixes and optional English, French
and Spanish subtitles as well. Special features include a high-definition version of the movie’s original theatrical trailer and, imported from its original DVD release, a pair of deleted scenes and three behind-the-secnes featurettes which chart the movie’s pre-production history, location shooting and filming style. To purchase the film on Blu-ray, click here. C- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Bryan Greenberg on Abusing Alan Rickman
Since it’s a known fact that certain Shared Darkness readers have a Bryan Greenberg crush, I thought I’d pass along this bon mot from the recent press day for Nobel Son, about the joys of working with Alan Rickman, even if it involves getting a bit physical:
“I was looking forward to torturing Alan Rickman for a
whole day, and I think he got a bit annoyed with me, because I kind of
one-upped him in the scene,” says Greenberg. “I had these files (in my hand), and in a wide shot I hit
him on the head with them and (director) Randall Miller said, ‘Oh I like that!’ And I saw this
look on Alan’s face like, ‘Oh great, now he has to do that all day.’ But it
was great to work with Alan, to see an actor who makes specific choices
and sticks by them. It’s kind of rare, actually. I’ve worked with a lot of actors
who kind of rest on their own laurels, and kind of get by on their own
charm and charisma and give up on the process, the work. But Alan is
really a big believer in the work and creation of character, and it’s
really inspiring as a young actor to be around something like that. You
learn a lot from a guy like that.”
Last Chance Harvey
On the verge of losing his job, rundown New Yorker jingle writer Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) flies to London for a weekend to attend his daughter’s wedding, but promises to be back on Monday morning to make an important meeting. He arrives to learn his daughter has chosen her stepfather to walk her down the aisle instead of him. Devastated, Harvey leaves the wedding before the reception, misses his plane and ends up drowning his sorrows at the airport bar, where he strikes up a conversation with Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), a slightly prickly, 40-something singleton whose life is limited to work, the occasional humiliating blind date and endless phone calls from her smothering, delusional mother, Maggie (Eileen Atkins). The growing connection between the pair energizes and inspires both of them, even as they grapple with difficulties of adult-onset romance.
Not yet 40, British-born writer-director Joel Hopkins (Jump Tomorrow) perhaps doesn’t have the necessary life experience to pull off the injection of a credible depth of feeling into this tale. The resultant harmless inconsequentiality is a lumpy, sentimental mass that clumsily strikes many of the familiar surface keys of melancholic regret. But there’s a crinkle-eyed mischievousness that pokes through in Hoffman’s performance and robs the character — and thus the movie as a whole — of a chance at something darker, and more arresting. (As Harvey’s grown but still wounded and emotionally distant daughter Susan, it’s Liane Balaban who makes a lasting impression.) Hopkins doesn’t necessarily want to play on that field, but he should, since his film doesn’t have the wit to compete with Something’s Gotta Give, the movie that it most clearly wants to emulate. Ergo, when the silly montage of Kate trying on dresses inevitably arrives, you don’t forgive it and just go with the flow of the movie, you turn on the film, and hold a grudge. (Overture Films, PG-13, 99 minutes)
Rosario Dawson on Will Smith’s Post-Coital Nervousness
After chasing around Shia LaBeouf in the $175 million-grossing techo-thriller Eagle Eye earlier this year, Rosario Dawson spends Seven Pounds with her pulse very much under control. Opposite Will Smith‘s tightly wound, curiously hermetic IRS agent, Ben Thomas, Dawson plays Emily Posa, a terminally ill young woman with a slew of past-due medical bills who sparks an unlikely connection with her auditor. In advance of the film’s release, I spoke with Dawson recently spoke about her own comic book series, her debut film Kids, and lying around post-coital with an awkward Will Smith. For the Q&A feature, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.
Jennifer Aniston on The Late Show
Jennifer Aniston sat for three segments last night on The Late Show, most of which, little shock, was devoted to her private life — awkward if pleasant non-talk about holiday plans, tabloid/cultural scrutiny, current boyfriend John Mayer, and of course that recent nude photo shoot for GQ. The obviously planned capper to all this — Aniston giving David Letterman the very necktie she sports on the cover, sans clothing — was funny, but dragged on a bit too long, with Letterman swapping out ties and Aniston undercutting the pinch of the moment by repeatedly commenting on how “great” it was. For those wondering, Aniston did also briefly mention matriculating at Green Meadow Waldorf, the New York performing arts school made famous by Fame, though she said there weren’t legwarmer-clad impromptu dance-offs, alas.
The Heartbreak Kid (Blu-ray)
A story of awkwardly overlapping romances liberally seasoned with the patented, over-the-top humor of the brothers Farrelly, The Heartbreak Kid — new to Blu-ray this month — reunites the behind-camera comedy specialists with star Ben Stiller in a careening showcase for serial outrageousness that favors potent commercial formula over strict adherence to narrative through-lines.
Stiller stars as San Francisco sports store owner Eddie Cantrow, who, after years of bachelorhood and ample pressure from his widowed father, Doc (Jerry Stiller), and best friend Mac (Rob Corddry), starts to wonder if he’s being too picky about the women he meets. The wedding of a former girlfriend only serves to amplify these feelings of isolation, so when a chance encounter with an alluring blonde marine researcher named Lila (Malin Akerman, above right) leads to the sweet bloom of romance, Eddie believes he’s finally found true love. When the threat of a potential job transfer for Lila endangers the relationship, he impulsively proposes.
But as the newlyweds drive down the California coast on the way to their honeymoon to Cabo San Lucas, Eddie feels familiar pangs of unease and discomfort. Soon after reaching their exotic Mexican hideaway, he’s convinced he’s made a terrible mistake, put off as he is by Lila’s aggressive bedroom demeanor and a chain of kept secrets that range from merely unnerving (a deviated septum) to jaw-tighteningly negligent (a mountain of debt, an old drug habit). It’s here that Eddie also happens to fall for the down-to-earth Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), who’s visiting with her family.
Miranda has no clue that Eddie has just married, and with Lila confined to the honeymoon suite with a brutal case of sunburn, Eddie struggles to find a way to extricate himself from his days-old marriage without losing the (new) girl of his dreams. A tangled bit of misunderstanding leads Miranda to believe that Eddie is a widower, but when that gives way to the truth, and Miranda returns home, Eddie sets off to try to win her back.
While The Heartbreak Kid retains the Farrelly’s trademark humanistic touch (evident with the care paid to Miranda’s country-raised family, including Danny McBride) it also doesn’t hesitate to offend, chiefly through Lila’s sexual voraciousness, but also a wide variety of casual brusque language and one-liners.
Presented on Blu-ray in stunning, 1080p high definition, The Heartbreak Kid comes with three audio options — English language 5.1 Dolby True HD, French language 5.1 Dolby digital and Spanish language 5.1 Dolby digital — as well as optional subtitles in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Imported from the movie’s previous DVD release are a series of fairly brief standard definition featurettes and gag reels, along with a high definition of the movie’s original theatrical trailer.
An audio commentary track with the Farrelly brothers anchors this release, and anyone who’s heard previous alt-audio tracks with these guys knows that their chats are anecdote-laden and full of love for all the background players, which typically consist of their extended family and friends. This track is no different; it’s breezy and lively, but short on what you might call psychologically penetrating analysis. Still, there’s mad affection dished out for the production leeway granted them by DreamWorks, and unsuspecting viewers might be surprised to learn about a plot tidbit suggested by none other than Steven Spielberg. Clocking in at 16 minutes is “The Farrelly Brothers: In the French Tradition,” a short, tongue-in-cheek joint biographical sketch about the filmmaking siblings, and what pointed them down the occupational path they eventually chose.
The five-minute “Ben & Jerry” finds Ben Stiller and his real-life father yukking it up, and talking about how they love working together, while “Heartbreak Halloween” showcases the cast and crew donning Halloween costumes and having a grand old time on set. Extending that theme is another eight-minute featurette, this one about the off-book egg-toss contests held on set, as well as a four-minute gag reel of flubbed lines and interactions from the film. These segments are basically all of a piece, and while they’re fun and jokey, they don’t necessarily bear repeat or scrutinizing viewings. Rounding things out, along with the aforementioned trailer and a gallery of some other previews, is a small collection of a half dozen deleted scenes. To purchase The Heartbreak Kid on Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)
SAG Doles Out 2008 Awards Nominations
The Screen Actors Guild announced its award nominations this morning, ass-crack early, and while there was some spread in the nods, there was also no doubt as to the biggest winner. The headlining nominations, for Outstanding Performance by an Entire Cast, are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Doubt, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire. In the Male Actor in a Leading Role category, the nominees are Richard Jenkins for The Visitor; Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon; Sean Penn for Milk; Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; and Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler. In the Female Actor in a Leading Role category, the nominees are Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married; Angelina Jolie for Changeling; Melissa Leo for Frozen River; Meryl Streep for Doubt; and Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road.
For the Male Actor in a Supporting Role category, the nominees are Josh Brolin for Milk; Robert Downey, Jr. for Tropic Thunder; Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt; Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy… err, sorry, Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight; and Dev Patel for Slumdog Millionaire. For the Female Actor in a Supporting Role category, the nominees are Amy Adams for Doubt; Penelope Cruz for Woody Allen’s otherwise long ago disregarded Vicky Cristina Barcelona; Viola Davis for Doubt; Taraji P. Henson for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; and Kate Winslet for The Reader.
To my mind, the only real surprise is Patel, who’s been lambasted in some reviews of Slumdog; a nominal surprise is Brolin, whose been getting plenty of critical love, but hadn’t really broken through with a top-shelf prize yet to more firmly establish himself as an Oscar contender. There was as much love for Che as for The Love Guru, it turns out — which is to say none. Which doesn’t bother me, I confess. The SAG Awards will be simulcast live on Sunday, January 25, on TBS and TNT, at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific times.
Fired Up! Trailer Induces Heavy Sighs
The trailer for Fired Up! (Screen Gems, February 20) is online, and not inspiring much confidence about the current state of genre screenwriting. The plot? Two high school guys, Nick (Eric Christian Olsen) and Shawn (Nicholas D’Agosto, great in the under-seen Rocket Science), are dreading the prospect of another summer at football camp. So when Nick hatches a scheme for the two to follow their school’s cheerleaders to cheer camp instead, they find themselves awash in a sea of gorgeous young women. Everything goes great until Shawn falls for Carly (Sarah Roemer), the beautiful head cheerleader who sees right through their plot.
The sort of naked brazenness with which Bring It On is ripped off comes across as eye-stabbingly bad, sure, but more damning is the fact that this trailer seems to go on for-ever, which is not a good sign for the movie’s long-play prospects. With presumably a bit more forward-leaning of a character, Roemer, aka the chick from Disturbia, gets a chance to prove her mettle in something else, and survive and advance in the Hollywood starlet sweepstakes. Other thoughts: the 31-year-old Olsen as a high schooler, no matter how jocked out, is a real stretch… and if John Michael Higgins shouldn’t yet completely stop receiving work, he should definitely be excised from trailer rotation. His hiring now says one thing, and one thing only: sure, we didn’t write a funny character, but we paid a little bit extra to get this guy you’ve seen before, in the hopes that he has some residual goodwill still in the tank.
Third Van Wilder Flick Goes Straight to DVD
Ryan Reynolds cut a nice comic figure in the original Van Wilder, elevating the movie despite the presence of Tara Reid. Then Kal Penn took the anarchic collegiate party-planning overseas in Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, about Wilder’s protégé-turned-playa. Now there’s the announcement of the not-particularly-clamored-for completion of the trilogy, in the form of Van Wilder: Freshman Year, which hits DVD and Blu-ray on March 17 and promises to be “packed with panty raids, wild parties and shocking behavior,” according to the press release. For those wondering, the curiously-eyebrowed Jonathan Bennett (Mean Girls) takes over as “Van the Man,” Kristin Cavallari is the requisite eye candy, and Steve Talley, Kurt Fuller and Linden Ashby costar as Van’s partners in mayhem.
Yari Film Group Files for Bankruptcy
Oldish news by industry standards, I certainly realize, but Bob Yari has placed the releasing division of his Yari Film Group into Chapter 11 reorganization, per Variety and others, which can’t bode well for Brian Goodman’s What Doesn’t Kill You and Rod Lurie’s Nothing But the Truth, two solid, meat-and-potato-type dramas that were trying to use limited, boutique awards qualification runs in New York and Los Angeles to boost long-play theatrical commercial prospects. Also somewhat in peril, just from an available resources point-of-view, is Assassination of a High School President, starring Bruce Willis, which was/for now still is slated for a late February ’09 release.
The Story of the Yardbirds
Have trouble keeping track of exactly which 1960s bands served as incubators to other seminal groups? Answers arrive in the form of The Story of the Yardbirds, a solid documentary covering the group in question, as well as the 1963 to 1968 rock scene in general, in glancing, effective shorthand.
Running about 52 minutes, this behind-the-scenes look at an influential but short-lived supergroup includes tons of original tunes, archive convert footage, interviews with bandmates, session musicians and other associates, and of course plenty of footage of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Two 1964 live cuts with Clapton and the Yardbirds, “Louise” and “I Wish I Would,” are given the most reverential spotlight treatment, but in all honestly the title works as both a primer for classic rock neophytes and a nice little blood-pumping exercise in reminiscence for long-time fans. The rest of the track listing of musical selections is as follows: “I’m a Man,” “Heart Full of Soul,” “Still I’m Sad,” “Train Kept Rolling,” “Over, Under, Sideways, Down,” “Shapes of Things,” “Happening Ten Years Ago,” “For the Love,” “My Girl Sloppy,” “Stroll On” and a personal favorite, “Dazed and Confused.”
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Story of the Yardbirds is presented on a region-free disc in 16×9 widescreen, with an English mono audio track. The sole supplemental feature comes in the form of 14 minutes of full-frame bonus footage of the Yardbirds, with a very young Jimmy Page on guitar,
from a German TV broadcast in late March, 1967. Trippy, amusing stuff, though an academic/talking head dissection of it would have been a cool inclusion as well. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B- (Disc)
Wendy and Lucy
Alone except for her dog Lucy, a retriever, and some vaguely defined dreams of a new life, Indiana native Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) is driving through the Pacific Northwest to Alaska, in hopes of a summer of lucrative work at a fish cannery. When her car breaks down in a sleepy, boarded-up Oregon mining town, however, the thin fabric of her already tenuous financial situation comes apart, and she confronts a series of increasingly dire economic decisions, with far-ranging repercussions for herself and Lucy.
Working from a screenplay written with her Old Joy collaborator Jon Raymond, director Kelly Reichardt uses a formal minimalist style to construct an emotionally impressionistic road movie that feels rudderless in ways mostly enthralling but also sometimes frustrating. A carefully observed film about sympathy and generosity at the dirty-fingernailed edges of American life (one is reminded of the refrain from U2’s “One” — “we get to carry each other” — about the privilege of shared sacrifice), Wendy and Lucy also touches on the limits and depths of people’s duty to one another. If the film sputters a bit in conveying much of substance about what Wendy thinks about her predicament, Williams herself is never less than hypnotizing. And in the current recessional times, the film’s blank canvas and broadly sketched melancholic tones serve as an empty vessel for those who would watch a film and like to turn the personal into the political. (Oscilloscope/filmscience, R, 80 minutes)
AFI Bestows 2008 Awards
Today, the American Film Institute announced their official selections for the year’s most outstanding achievements in film, which will be honored at an invitation-only luncheon on Friday, January 9, 2009 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. “AFI Awards honors the community of artists who come together each year to create films and television programs of excellence,” said Bob Gazzale, AFI’s President and CEO in a press release. “They are not competitors at an event, but colleagues, in a world that needs art and entertainment more than ever.” In alphabetical order, AFI’s honorees are: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Frozen River, Gran Torino, Iron Man, Milk, Wall▪E, Wendy and Lucy and The Wrestler. Needless to say, as someone who has seen all 10 films listed above, this slate has both sins of omission and sins of commission, in my opinion, but we’ll be getting into that more in the coming weeks.
Fast & Furious Trailer Teaches Lesson About Gas Hauling
The trailer for Fast & Furious, the streamline-titled fourth installment in the zippy-brightly-colored-car franchise that helped Vin Diesel and especially Paul Walker eat and dress well, is a slick, well-pitched thing, even if its turbo-charged automotive shenanigans seem a little bit wince-inducing and bone-rattling after my own unnerving dance with vehicular mayhem on I-405 tonight. Sure, the moving hijacking of a “gasoline land train” in the Dominican Republic (“street value: $1.4 million”) is totally absurd and over-the-top, especially when one considers that apparently the driver of said vehicle is given only a prop-store pistol for self-defense, but this series has never been particularly concerned with subtlety or reality. Ergo, gingham-clad cholos will rejoice, among other twenty- and early thirtysomethings.
Coming home from Tokyo, the fourth movie’s tagline — “New Model, Original Parts” — is representative of Hollywood studio-think at its best, and summons to mind those few times when your parents completely yielded to all the pressures of juggling work and family life and just let you eat McDonald’s and a fifth of a pound of Oreos for dinner. For more on the film, which bows April 3 from Universal, despite the “this summer” tag in its trailer, click here.
Marisa Tomei On Pole-Dancing, Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler
I recently chatted to Marisa Tomei at a mid-week press day for Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, and if there’s probably something to reports of her on-set friction with Mickey Rourke (answers regarding him ranged from coolly polite to awkwardly short and incomplete) it doesn’t dint my appreciation of her naturalistic charms, both physically and, every bit as striking, inwardly. Excerpts from the roundtable interview follow below:
On personal curiosity, and how she initially came to acting: “That is one of the great things about acting — learning about different people, different subcultures, even different skills. I mean, who thought pole-dancing was going to be on my resume? But I think that a lot of it was survival skill. I was a really shy kid, and it was [a question of], ‘How do you get to a place where you can let your emotions out really safely?'”
On My Cousin Vinny, and how Joe Pesci’s advice sometimes stinks: “It was the first time I was on location, and only the second movie I’d ever done. I was kind of overwhelmed on that level. I was a grown-up, but still kind of homesick. And Joe (Pesci) and I are still friends, he’s always looked after me. He’s always telling me when I suck and when I don’t. He told me I was an idiot for wanting to do this movie, and then he called me and said, ‘I guess you weren’t so stupid after all!’ But he’s always telling me the truth, and he’s such a good, good friend.”
On what she looks for in potential film roles: “I want to make movies with people who really, really care. And I think that I tend to respond more thematically than anything else. With this movie, it was really talking about changes of life, or facing getting older, or performers’ identity versus quote-unquote real people’s identity. I thought that those were interesting things to think about. In this case I could relate [to them more directly], yes, but it’s more is [a script] interesting, and what are the ideas about. I guess it’s all a matter of that [aforementioned] curiosity, really.”
On Darren Aronofsky: “He likes to talk, he likes to understand everything, and I appreciate that, and know where it’s coming from — it’s coming from really caring and wanting to support actors as much as he can. But sometimes I had to explain that it’s better for me not to articulate things, that it’s going to be detrimental to what he wants and what we all want, which is a natural feeling. But he’s right there, and tries to support you in every way he can, whether it’s bringing you little juices to make sure you don’t catch a cold and stay healthy to being available to talk about anything, if you want to. He totally notices everything — any little detail about your hair or your nail polish. I wonder what he’s like as a husband.”
Dance Flick Has Zeitgeist on Its Side for Genre Takedown
Sure, by all reasonable accounts heretofore Dance Flick seems just another lame spoof-o-rama (e.g., Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie) stuffed to the rafters with sight gags and over-foleyed slapstick, this time from the Wayans brothers. But I can live with it, and the one-sheet brought a smile to my face because it’s an overpeddled genre that needs to be taken down, notwithstanding the honest-to-goodness, yes-I-said-it pop-vibrance of Step Up 2 the Streets. It’s ripe material, in other words — the first ingredient for good satire. And who knows, maybe the cast will help elevate it a bit; the fact that in the trailer they’re peddling unknowns instead of Carmen Electra or some such star cameos actually gives one a modicum of hope. Yet to be rated, Dance Flick releases February 6 from Paramount.
UPDATE 1/02/09: Apparently fearing The Pink Panther 2, Dance Flick has now moved to the more wide open pastures of August 14, probably a wiser move in that it abuts the autumnal commencement of high school.
Madchen Amick Has Still Got It
It’s come to my attention though Jennifer Connelly was feted earlier today in tongue-in-cheek fashion, erstwhile Twin Peaks pie-slinger Madchen Amick also turns 38 years old today, which should be celebrated accordingly.
Though recently stuck in a host of thankless “girlfriend/wife/lover” roles (Joey, Viva Laughlin, Gossip Girl, My Own Worst Enemy), we should never forget the wham-bang, one-two punch of Amick’s eyes and those come-hither ‘brows. She’s like the rich man’s Olivia Wilde, and then some.