New York-based distributor Rialto Pictures has announced the U.S. release later this fall of The Wicker Man: Final Cut, the definitive version of Robin Hardy’s bizarre 1973 thriller of pagan worshippers on a remote Scottish island. Seen for decades only in mutilated copies, the new Studiocanal restoration is the culmination of a long search, conducted via Facebook, for the complete director’s cut of the cult classic, which marks its 40th anniversary this year. Rialto will roll out the restored version beginning September 27 at the IFC Center in New York City, with runs in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington and other cities throughout the fall.
Starring Edward Woodward, Ingrid Pitt, Britt Ekland and horror film legend Christopher Lee, The Wicker Man is a deliciously strange and provocative film, and the search for its essential version represents one of recent cinema history’s great detective hunts. Butchered during its initial run by its doomed U.K. distributor in order to fit on double bills, its original camera negative was apparently lost. Some missing scenes were recovered from an obsolete one-inch broadcast tape, but over the years there were only rumors of a small handful of complete 35mm prints floating around.
Earlier this year, the search intensified when worldwide rights holder Studiocanal initiated a Facebook campaign to recover the missing 35mm material, resulting in the discovery of a 92-minute 35mm release print at the Harvard Film Archive. This print was scanned and sent to London, where it was inspected by director Hardy, who confirmed that it was the same edit he had put together for his movie’s American distributor in 1979. This culminated in a digital restoration of the complete U.S. theatrical version, which director Hardy recently anointed as The Wicker Man‘s final, authoritative cut. Says Hardy, now 83, of this restored version: “It fulfills my vision.” No word on Hardy’s thought’s regarding YouTube edits of Neil LaBute and Nicolas Cage’s 2007 remake, though.
Category Archives: Ephemera
Lewis Black’s Old Yeller Gets PPV, VOD Date
Image Entertainment has set the pay-per-view and VOD date for Lewis Black: Old Yeller — Live at the Borgata. In his ninth special, the notorious stand-up comedian tears into a country that is going nowhere at the speed of light, touching on everything from cable television and computers to Facebook and Twitter, while lambasting humankind’s failure to find alternative energy sources while also creating cell phones out of the realm of science fiction. The first ever live comedy special to air simultaneously on all cable, satellite and telco platforms — including Xfinity, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Dish, Cablevision, Charter Communications, AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS and many others — the show will premiere on Saturday, August 24 at 9:30 p.m., followed by replays on those platforms.
Tiffany Shlain Inks for AOL On Network Series
AOL recently announced that Tiffany Shlain, the founder of the Webby Awards and an award-winning filmmaker in her own right, has joined the roster of tech luminaries and pop culture icons to launch an original web series on its AOL On Network this fall. The eight-episode series, which will be produced by the filmmaker’s San Francisco production company, the Moxie Institute, is called The Future Starts Here, and will showcase Shlain’s signature blend of archival footage, original animation, humor and personal commentary to explore the past, present and future of technology and what it means to be human in the 21st century. For a peek at its sizzle reel/trailer, click here.
Wrong Redux
Writer-director Quentin Dupieux‘s follow-up to the delightful Rubber, the somewhat similarly absurdist Wrong, also hits theaters in New York, Los Angeles and Austin tomorrow (it’s also already available on VOD), so why not reset that review as well?
Blancanieves Redux
Psst… writer-director Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves, the Spanish entry for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award category, saw a brief awards-qualifying run earlier in the year, but opens wider tomorrow in theaters, so now seems as good a time as any to reset my previous review.
Writer Don Payne Passes Away
It’s very sad to hear today about the passing of Don Payne, a writer on The Simpsons, My Super Ex-Girlfriend and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, among other projects. Like Scott Weinberg, I had kept in touch with Payne just a little bit ever since first interviewing him years ago, and he was always smart, thoughtful, forthcoming and generous with his time — a guy who cared a lot about his work but wasn’t overly sensitive to criticisms or differing opinions. Heartfelt condolences to his wife and family.
Admission Redux
Well, Tina Fey and Paul Rudd’s Admission opens tomorrow, so it seems like a good time to reset my previously published review, without really touching too much on the calf-birthing scene.
The Girl Redux, Yet Again
David Riker’s The Girl, starring Australian-born Abbie Cornish as a negligent Texas single mother who becomes embroiled with a young, would-be illegal immigrant, opened last December for a brief, awards-qualifying stint, and after bowing in New York City last week hits Los Angeles and other cities this week, starting tomorrow. Ergo, this re-set of my review.
The Girl Redux
Pssst… David Riker’s The Girl, starring Abbie Cornish, saw a brief awards-qualifying run last December, but opens tomorrow in New York City. My review reset, here.
Hey, Remember When the Last Die Hard Was Rated PG-13?
With both a look at the new Blu-ray set and the theatrical release of the fifth Die Hard installment, A Good Day to Die Hard, on deck for later this/next week, it’s time to take a glance back at the ratings controversy that engulfed Live Free and Die Hard back in 2007. No such kerfuffle this time around, which speaks to Fox getting some things ironed out in advance. Still a strange one, though, that very public fight, especially given all of the terrible dubbing on display in the movie.
Magnolia Picks Up Best Man Down
Magnolia Pictures announced today that they acquired North American rights to Best Man Down, a new comedy from writer-director Ted Koland starring Justin Long, Jess Weixler, Tyler Labine, Addison Timlin and Frances O’Connor. The plot centers around Kristin (Weixler) and Scott (Long), a bride and groom forced to cancel their honeymoon and fly home to the snowy Midwest when the latter’s obnoxious and over-served best man, Lumpy (Labine), unexpectedly dies at their wedding in Phoenix. When they arrive, they begin to realize there was a lot more to their friend than met the eye.
“We’re pleased to be handling Best Man Down, a charming film that features excellent performances from a completely winning cast,” said Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles. Magnolia plans a summer release through their Ultra VOD program, debuting the film on all VOD platforms a month prior to its theatrical release.
Sylvester Stallone Weighs In On Assault Weapons Ban
Wow, so even Rambo himself supports a ban on assault weapons. Hey, it makes sense, I guess… in his latest movie, handguns, TNT booby-traps and axes get the job done just fine.
Jeff Sneider Let Go By Variety
In surprising news, well regarded film reporter Jeff Sneider has ankled been fired from Variety, it seems, but in characteristic fashion the reportage on the split from the Wrap makes things cloudier rather than clearer. Getting fired over an innocuous joke tweet after getting beat on a scoop? The definition of bullshit — I’m not buying it. The real question, then, is why is this story even out there?
Blood Demands Blood, Gets Confusion
I’ve returned to Los Angeles to find, among other things, this bullet in the mail awaiting me. It’s a novelty USB drive, but neither its Quicktime file nor the touted website on the back of the accompanying card (“Blood demands blood,” reads its wooden keepsake box) works/loads — via Firefox, Internet Explorer, nada. After a bit of noodling around, it seems it might be the trailer for Dead Man Down (FilmDistrict, March 8), starring Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace. This would make some sense, given that the otherwise unmarked package did have FilmDistrict’s name on it in small letters. So it seems I’m a marked man. Marked for exactly what I’m not sure, however.
UPDATE, 1/2/2013: My instincts were spot-on. A placeholder page now exists for the website, and Dead Man Down‘s trailer is available here, with Kendra Morris’ enchanting cover version of Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” providing the mood underneath lots of gunfire and Terrence Howard‘s threats.
Brad Schreiber Shares His Top 10 Films of 2012
Zero Dark Thirty Cast Chat Up Movie at Screening Q&A
With Oscar season upon us, all sorts of special moderated screenings are underway in Los Angeles, never mind that it was still a holiday weekend for many these past several days. On Saturday, director Tom Hooper and his Les Misérables cast crisscrossed the city for a half dozen guild and press showings, introducing their movie and doing Q&As. Sunday night, it was the turn of director Kathryn Bigelow and her screenwriting partner Mark Boal, the team behind the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, who were joined on stage after a Zero Dark Thirty screening at the Pacific Design Center by stars Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Jennifer Ehle and Edgar Ramirez. For an overview of some of what they talked about, including Ramirez’s most traumatic audition story, click here to hit up ShockYa.
Into the Amazon…
I’ve been generously invited to attend and cover the ninth annual Amazonas Film Festival, so I’m in the air early tomorrow morning, en route to Miami and then Manaus, Brazil. Interesting times await, it seems certain. Marcelo Galvao’s Colegas (Buddies) kicks off the festival on Saturday evening, and an international but understandably locally flavored slate ensues, with a hearty selection of what should be some interesting short films. Among other attendees, I’ll be catching up with Compliance director Craig Zobel. When last we crossed paths, the Chick-Fil-A flame-up of the ongoing culture war was in full effect. Now it looks like we’ll be having an Amazon Election Watch Party together.
Hotel Transylvania Redux
Adam Sandler’s Hotel Transylvania opens this week, which makes it a good time to revisit my less-than-enthusiastic review.
Dredd Redux
Dredd opens this week, and with that in mind here’s a look back at my review of the unapologetically brawny, full-frontal assault on the senses.
Alison Pill ‘Fesses Up to Topless Tweet
Props to Alison Pill for owning up in self-effacing fashion to the topless photo of herself she accidentally tweeted out a day or two ago. Not easy to do, no doubt, but the right way to play it, for sure. No contortionist obfuscation — just shrug, call a mulligan, move on.
Summer Ticket Sales Down 100 Million Over Last Decade
I wouldn’t say this issue is nearest and dearest to my heart, exactly — business reportage and boardroom shuffle talk interests me far, far less than the artistic elements of filmmaking — but news from The Wrap noting that summer movie ticket sales are down 100 million from a decade ago is both saddening and not wildly surprising.
That’s individual admission ticket sales, again, not gross dollars or anything like that. This year’s summer slate grossed $4.27 billion combined, down a little over 2.8 percent from last year’s $4.4 billion haul. Admissions, however, were at 526 million, down from 629 million admissions in the summer of 2002. Yes, there were the Olympics at summer’s end this year, but this box office gate information again highlights that grosses are being propped up by inflated ticket prices (cough, cough, 3-D) and, less discussed, a handful of sequels and the like.
Franchises always have their (top-shelf) place in Hollywood, especially during the summer, but with few exceptions the industry is into risk management and brokered financial returns far more than any creative endeavors. They’ve done an extraordinarily crummy job of growing and conditioning a new generation of film fans, instead using the wares of videogames and comic books as the equivalent of fishing lures. At a certain point, this tack becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because you have less and less people excited by the idea of sitting in a darkened room with a lot of strangers and experiencing something new together.
Ain’t No Party Like a Bathtub Party!
Screening in theaters attached to the September 14 release of Finding Nemo 3D will be the short film Partysaurus Rex, the third installment of the “Toy Story Toons” series, directed by Mark Walsh. Click here for a little preview.
Joe Carnahan To Receive HollyShorts Visionary Award
Filmmaker Joe Carnahan will be the recipient of the 2012 HollyShorts Visionary Award, presented by Deluxe, during the opening night celebration of the eighth annual HollyShorts Festival on Thursday, August 9, at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, it was announced today. Along with accepting the award, Carnahan will introduce the world premiere of Zachary Guerra’s new short film The Devil’s Dosh, which he executive produced.
On Shelves Now: 2012 Magill’s Cinema Annual
Forgot to mention this earlier, but the 2012 Magill’s Cinema Annual, a comprehensive book of reviews to which I contributed, is out now. It possesses a steep price given its academic/reference source leanings, but check it out on Amazon if you so desire.
Interactive Poem Study Guide Explains Margaret’s Title
Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret, which suffered a snuff theatrical release last autumn, bows on home video next week, in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack that includes an additional director’s cut. But the movie isn’t named for Anna Paquin’s lead character. It’s actually based on a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. So the poem is entitled “Margaret,” right? Well, no… it’s actually called “Spring and Fall.” But here, let this interactive study guide, with film clips, explain the connections.