Category Archives: Musings

Hostel: Part II Thoughts

Musings

Written and
directed by Eli Roth and executive-produced by Quentin Tarantino, 1996’s Hostel opened to $19.5 million, the eighth
biggest bow in January history, and rang up more than $80 million worldwide, against only a $5 million production budget. It was only natural, then, that distributor Lionsgate would ask for a sequel.

The first film — about three pals backpacking across Europe who, bored with Amsterdam
(!), fall sway to the stories of a fellow partier and head to a hostel in Bratislava, where there are supposedly
drugs, liquor and scorchingly hot women aplenty — was pretty much a willfully depraved exercise in stimulus response. After the neon-lit pleasure trip of its first act, Hostel tilts, in
rather gruesome fashion, toward impressively staged gore-porn, with the guys finding out in firsthand fashion that the hostel is actually a front for a black market
business that provides a homicidal service for disenfranchised thrill junkies.

If it was a xenophobic travelogue gone horribly awry, its sequel follows three young American females down the same rabbit hole, and is an even more starkly realized portrait of amorality. Hostel: Part II isn’t the type of movie you call “good” or leave with any sense of surging, cathartic excitement — rather, you sort of want to find some Purell and scrub your brain clean — but it is accomplished and authentically sketched within its own clearly defined parameters. “Impressively sick,” I guess you’d say. A proper full-length review will follow tomorrow or perhaps later tonight, but for more about Roth’s thoughts on the NC-17, first-pass cut of the movie, click here.

UPDATE 6/10: For the full review, click here.

Naomi Watts to Play Angelina Jolie?

Casting About, Irritations, Musings

So according to Variety, Naomi Watts has inked to star in We Are All the Same, an adaptation of Nightline correspondent Jim Wooten’s 2004 book about Gail Johnson, a white South African woman who adopted a black baby stricken with AIDS, then traveled the world with the child to raise awareness about his plight.

A bit ridiculously on-the-nose, that title, don’t you think? (It also smacks of that’s-a-mouthful similarity to Watts’ We Don’t Live Here Anymore, a poor-grossing, enervated adaptation of Andre Dubus’ short stories, which in turn sounded like a Ryan Adams song.) Geopolitical hot-riser Keir Pearson (a co-writer on Hotel Rwanda, and author of the announced Son of Al Qaeda) is adapting the story, which holds some promise, but a lot about this movie depends on who comes on board as director. Why do I feel like John Curran or John Madden or Sydney Pollack are already fielding calls about this project? Ugh. My left field vote would be someone like Niels Mueller. Or, if I’m being completely unrealistic, D.J. Caruso, who desperately needs to escape the genre ghetto, but won’t do something like this, because the fact that Disturbia was such a big hit means he’s getting hot-shit offers to do the Wolverine movie and other big, summer-type flicks.

Moore Flogs Sicko on Oprah

Musings

Once again I yesterday caught part of Oprah Winfrey’s eponymous show (see: TiVo, girlfriend), but I was given pause by the fact that filmmaker Michael Moore was her first guest (reclusive author Cormac McCarthy was the other interview, involving a roadie to New Mexico for Oprah). The subject, of course, was Moore’s forthcoming documentary about the American health care system, Sicko, which premiered at the recent Cannes Film Festival, and is set to bow Stateside on June 29, from the Weinstein Company.

For today, at least, Moore was in the form of more of a plaintive wheedler than a Cuban-beach-storming firebrand (incidentally, I believe that bit of pre-release flogging is why Martin Lawrence, Will Smith and Michael Bay will respond to the movie), and it worked. Among the more compelling footage shown was a clip from the Congressional testimony of a contrite Dr. Linda Peeno, who talked movingly about the great career benefits she gained as a managed care adjustor denying claims she knew to be legitimate, including one that eventually directly led to a man’s death. With President Bush’s popularity hovering at all-time record low levels, and even massive chunks of his base disgusted with his leadership in Iraq and on matters of immigration, it will be interesting to see if Sicko can punch through partisan chatter and add health care to the national political debate, particularly since Senator Barack Obama has now outlined his own health care overhaul, coming on the heels of former Senator John Edwards’ detailed plan. One positive sign — Oprah’s already planning to flag the issue for continued web site dialogue and future show updates, meaning its flames won’t soon turn to embers.

Kevin Smith Does Porn

Ephemera, Musings

Per the Los Angeles Times, the Weinstein Company has pulled the trigger on Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno, a bawdy sex comedy budgeted at $15 million. Inspired/shamed by a 15-year high school reunion, two Minnesotan slacker friends dive into amateur porn, to characteristically comedic effect.

Granted, this sounds a little bit like The Amateurs (now The Moguls), but that movie should be rated PG-13, and we all know that’s not going to happen with Smith’s film, which he’s said will feature nudity, but of the “funny, not gratuitous” variety. Smith and filthy sex talk go together like fat kids and cake, so this pairing of filmmaker and material seems a natural, and a good financial bet as well. Too bad it’s not Zak and Sara Make a Porno, though, if only to include the Ben Folds song…

On Halloween’s Trailer

Musings, Trailer Watch

The web site for this August’s new spin on the Halloween franchise has gone live, featuring a pretty substantive trailer warning that viewers must be “age-appropriate.” OK, thanks. Written and directed by Rob Zombie, the film is of course an origin story of sorts, with Malcolm McDowell inheriting the role of Dr. Loomis, made so famous earlier in the series by the late Donald Pleasance. I’ll be getting into this more later in the summer, but I’m not necessarily one of those franchise purists automatically set to hate this picture. Zombie, after all, did some pretty amazing things with The Devil’s Rejects, which was merrily depraved and of a singular vision, whatever one’s value judgment of it. In old-school fashion, though, I do miss the frittered-away, tattoo-fed, man-in-black plot strands of Halloween V. Call me crazy, I guess. I would’ve loved to have seen something pick up on those, though maybe they’ll be interwoven into this picture, if only slightly; Zombie was noncommittal on that matter when I last interviewed him. At any rate, the trailer works as a sort of sermon to the choir, I guess, but younger genre fans may need a more focused sales job. To access the Halloween site, click here. Be aware, though, that its base-level sound is cranked to bejesus-high levels.

Happy Birthday, Angelina Jolie

Birthdays, Musings



It’s a happy birthday to Angelina Jolie, who turns 32 today, but celebrates presumably with a tattoo rather than another adoption. The hoi polloi give Jolie a lot of shit, but I’ve always found her candor refreshing, and I can tell you that her advocacy work and humanitarian efforts as a goodwill ambassador on behalf of the United Nations is legitimate and to be admired. She has a true global consciousness. Having interviewed her several times, I can also vouch for the fact that she’s in a much better place — emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, however you want to couch it — than she was earlier in her career, when she was vicariously living out damaged roles such as her Oscar-winning turn in Girl, Interrupted. I’m sure she’d agree that motherhood has helped center and calm her, and that comes through in her work, be it in something politically topical like Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart, or even a piece of spry, mischievous commercial fare like Mr. & Mrs. Smith. One can’t always draw connections between an actor’s public faces and performances, but in Jolie’s case it’s appropriate. She’s found her groove, hopefully in lasting fashion.

Thoughts on A Mighty Heart

Musings

Angelina Jolie stars in Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart, which releases June 22 from Paramount Vantage. A film of glancing emotional blows, the movie tells the story of the ill-fated investigation into the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), who disappears in Karachi while researching a story on captured shoe bomber Richard Reid. Donning brown contacts and a light French accent, Jolie plays Mariane Pearl, Daniel’s wife, who was six months pregnant at the time of the ordeal in January, 2002.

That this isn’t ordinary summer fare is stating the obvious, but I was a bit surprised at just how much of a tangled procedural A Mighty Heart is. Full of two steps forward and one step back, it’s all about the labyrinthine investigation and intelligence agency finger-pointing that plays out over the course of a few tense weeks, as mysterious names are cross-checked and connected to other suspects and organizations, all in a mad effort to identify (much less locate) Daniel’s captors.

Jolie’s portrayal, meanwhile, recalls that sort of Magic Shell chocolate syrup — the stuff that hardens when it hits ice cream. It should be pointed out that this is by design, and in lockstep with the script, which convincingly sketches Mariane’s resoluteness, but does so in an inwardly reflected fashion. Two emotional moments leap out for me — very obviously designed as poles to one another. The first can be intuited; it’s a protracted howl of anguished grief when Mariane finally learns of her husband’s fate, and it’s notable because of how it stands in contrast to the manner in which so many films (and especially TV shows) peddle sorrow and pain in polite strokes. The other bit, though, is a light and almost impulsive moment. Giving an interview several days after her husband’s kidnapping, Mariane is asked if there is anything she would say to her husband if he could now hear her. The answer itself is brief and obvious — “I love you” — but Jolie puts such a personal spin on it, and the reflexivity of the reply is heartrending. More thoughts and a proper review will follow closer to the A Mighty Heart‘s release date, but for more information, visit the movie’s eponymous web site by clicking here.

I Know Who Killed Me Spoiler

Ephemera, Musings

Lindsay Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me, through someone who worked on the production.

Before I get to that tidbit (bail now if you don’t want to read a potential story spoiler), it’s worth mentioning, I guess, that more of the in-character video blogs on the movie’s spin-off site have gone live — seven more, by my count, as of this afternoon, June 1. They’re seemingly ramping up the rate of revelation in the wake of Lohan’s recent DUI arrest, but any malingering sense of ominousness — which I already thought was rather wan — is being squeezed out by more of the same silly, discursive narration (“Breathing and transforming — solid becoming gas, pain becoming a gift, awareness expanding…”) and the fact that these entries are so breathlessly paced.

Again, to briefly reiterate the film’s major apparent story points, Lohan plays a student, Aubrey Fleming, who gets kidnapped and tortured by a killer, then turns up two weeks later claiming to be Dakota Moss, a stripper. Dakota, it seems, is also a bad girl character Aubrey created for a classroom writing assignment, so where does the line of fiction end and reality begin? Blah blah blah…

Well, according to the aforementioned source, Lohan’s character loses an arm and a leg. Like, seriously. This tidbit, combined with the trailer and video blog, seems to point the movie, and its obligatory twist, in one of two directions, one of which is distinctly Scream-ish (minus that movie’s tone, naturally). The other might be slightly more interesting, and generally jibe with reports of a long-running assembly cut of the movie, but it would have a bit higher degree of difficulty and additionally be much harder to sell in the summer, and certainly now with Lohan’s troubles. The script no doubt features copiously interwoven red herrings, so unless more information leaks out, the guessing game continues until the film’s release on July 27.

On I Know Who Killed Me’s Trailer

Musings, Trailer Watch

In the wake of her arrest on suspicion of DUI, the trailer for Lindsay Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me has bowed, and is available online here, to complement the low-fi, in-character video blog site that distributor Sony has set up. The trailer offers up a few story point clarifications (Lohan’s Aubrey Fleming is a student, while her post-abduction alter ego Dakota Moss is the stripper and doppelganger), but also raises more questions. I guess that’s the point, really, but they’re also not necessarily questions that seem to have any haunting hold beyond the trailer’s two-plus-minute running time.

Lohan’s dual characterizations seem of such bland, split-the-difference tonalities, and some of her line readings sound like drama class exercises. (Also, her ability to play around her age isn’t helped by the fact that her voice, shredded by cigarettes, already sounds like that of a 40-year-old.) Finally, I’m awaiting word from a source this weekend on a copy of the movie’s script or, failing that, confirmation on a plot detail that would, um… prove fairly interesting. Watch carefully for the glimpses of prosthetic limbs, that’s all I’m saying for right now.

Knocked Up Thoughts

Musings

Late in the summer of 2005, Steve Carrell’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin defied
conventional wisdom about R-rated comedies — helped in part, no doubt, by a
self-effacingly chipper poster
— and in the process became a $100-million-plus smash, pretty much allowing
writer-director Judd Apatow the autonomy to do whatever the hell he pleased as
a follow-up.

Apatow smartly diversified his holdings as a producer, but chose
to center his next own feature film around Freaks
and Geeks alum and The 40-Year-Old
Virgin costar Seth Rogen. The subject: a harmless if mismatched one-night stand gone awry
between a driven career gal (Katherine Heigl) and amiable loafer — and thus, by
extension, the onrushing traumas of adulthood and all its attendant responsibility.
Further, proper reviews will follow later this week, but it suffices to say
that Knocked Up, anchored by a very
funny breakout performance from Rogen, is rightly poised to inherit the mantle
of this summer’s great, lasting comedy.

Part of the genius talent of Apatow lies in the manner in
which he seemingly sublimates his own comedic voice to that of his star or
stars. It’s only upon further reflection that you realize how crafty of a
marionette master he really is. While his lack of allegiance to a strict narrative
drumbeat means his work very occasionally drags (Knocked Up’s second and third acts have essentially three or four
tent-pole moments around which everything else is constructed), his scenes aren’t dumb (they refreshingly have
intros and outros), and Apatow is also
not afraid to let improvisational runs extend into idiosyncratic terrain,
confident that the law of averages will bail him out.

Some of Knocked Up’s
funniest bits, to me (Rogen’s character remarking that Paul Rudd’s hapless
married guy looks “dressed up like a cholo on Easter,” say), might barely register
in Nebraska, but Apatow isn’t overly
precious about his jokes, which is why Serpico, Matthew Fox, pink eye and Robin Williams’ knuckles all come up. He instead crafts relatable characters who
demonstrate a real investment in their angst and panic, establishes a few loose
parameters and then pitches all around a theme. A bit bawdy but mostly
heartfelt, the results — in the case of both of his movies — are pieces of equal enjoyment and distinct personality. For a full review of the movie, click here.

On National Treasure 2’s Teaser

Musings, Trailer Watch

The teaser trailer for producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Jon Turteltaub’s National Treasure follow-up, Book of Secrets, is online and in theaters, and though extremely short on action, it does a decent enough job dizzying up a plot of conspiracy centering around Abraham Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, and 18 missing pages from his diary — pages which doubtlessly do not include a simple list of family muffin recipes.

Starring Nicolas Cage, the original National Treasure, from 2004, was a throwback treat — one of those rare PG-rated adventure flicks that still legitimately work for audiences above 14 years of age. It was also something of a surprise smash hit, nearly perfectly halving its $347 million box office haul between domestic and international receipts, despite the fact that its plot centered around desperately American items and contrivances, like stealing the Declaration of Independence. Future trailers will no doubt pump up the adventure in leaping fashion; full of shots of Cage pulling open shelves and peeking around, this one was for the parents. To that end, the cast, too (Harvey Keitel, Ed Harris and Oscar winner Helen Mirren, plus a returning Jon Voight), gives this project a sheen of respectability that helps mark it as terra firma for adult audiences.

Pushed back a month from the Thanksgiving perch of the original, Buena Vista will release Book of Secrets on December 21, and hope that the aftertaste of The Blair Witch Project follow-up Book of Shadows has abated. Again, to access the film’s teaser trailer, click here.

On The Golden Compass’ Trailer

Musings, Trailer Watch

The trailer for The Golden Compass has bowed, and while it has some visual effects pop, I’m not sure that, to the uninformed masses, it could look any more like a reactionary knockoff of The Chronicles of Narnia without actually being accused of nipping footage from either that film or Epic Movie.

The film — the first adapted work from yet another series of fantasy adventure novels, these by Philip Pullman — centers on a 12-year-old orphan, Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards, no doubt rocking the three names in an attempt to differentiate herself from young Ms. Fanning), who tries to rescue a kidnapped friend and ends up on an epic quest spanning parallel worlds. Nicole Kidman (above), Sam Elliott, Eva Green and Daniel Craig costar, with Ian McShane providing some burly voice work. Chris Weitz directs, (the Weitz brother not responsible for American Dreamz, but the co-director on American Pie, Down to Earth and About a Boy), and if there’s precious little in his filmography to indicate he’s particularly well versed in this sort of level of effects work, all the right strings seem to have been pulled in securing the proper state-of-the-art support staff.

Still, this is pretty baldly New Line’s grand attempt to reclaim the holiday fantasy throne, wrestled away in 2005 by Walden Media and Narnia after The Lord of the Rings series became a genre mainstay for three seasons. I mean, we’ve got the inclement weather, young children, shape-shifting creatures, a talking polar bear, et al. With the next Narnia tale not due until 2008, there’s a bit of an opening here, purely in terms of scheduling, but will moviegoers beyond fans of the book series bite? After all, audiences have a way of punishing late-comers to the party that they deem too overtly similar to previous hits. (Take 1993’s Menace II Society, for an out-of-field example; though superior in many ways to 1991’s Boyz N The Hood, it grossed $27 million to $57 million for John Singleton’s debut film.) I have a glossy advance mailing packet around here somewhere, sent to me as a teaser last holiday season, so I’ll try to dig that up and post some thoughts on it in the next week or so. In the meantime, to access The Golden Compass‘ trailer, click here. And, of tangential interest, meanwhile, for a review of Kidman’s Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, click here.

On Lohan DUI, Who Killed Me Gossip

Ephemera, Irritations, Musings

As embodied above, let’s all pause to remember the good times with Lindsay Lohan. The, umm… more innocent times? Well, sort of, actually. In news that comes as a shock to only… well, no one, Lohan was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence after her 2005 Mercedes SL-65 (how’s that for a product plug?) convertible struck a curb and crashed on Sunset Blvd. at 5:30 a.m. She was subsequently released from custody because she was admitted to the hospital, police said. The rub is that investigators also found what they suspect is cocaine at the scene; they declined to say where the drug was found other than to say Lohan was not carrying it. (Two other passengers were with her at the time of the crash.)

On a personal level, I’m mainly really irritated because this ruined by planned July 2 post for Lohan’s 21st birthday, which was to be an open letter to her explaining all about alcohol, and what she could expect from her first libation. Confirmation of what deep down many already knew (that Lohan was into some harder stuff) takes the edge off of such dry, beautifully crafted sarcasm.

In other Lohan news, I previously touched on the in-character video blog that’s serving as the first wave of Sony’s promotional push for its July release, I Know Who Killed Me, and as of right now the site is still active. I was talking with a friend recently about someone who worked on the project, and his sense was one of a movie in some tonal trouble. He reported that the film’s first cut was well over three hours, and while a first-pass “assembly cut” of significantly longer length isn’t atypical, it does seem curiously long for a genre film of this sort. I also gleaned a very interesting plot detail that I’ll look to re-confirm and post again on next week.

On Hairspray’s Test Scores

Irritations, Musings

I’m steadfast in my blaming of both TiVo and my girlfriend for this, but I admit that I recently caught part of Oprah Winfrey’s show, I believe from May 14, with most of the cast of Hairspray. On it, Oprah indulged her longstanding crush on John Travolta by batting her lashes and goofily hoofing it with him, and there was a nice casting bit with Nikki Blonsky, who was plucked from ice cream shop obscurity to star in the film by director Adam Shankman.

As detailed here, from a peek at advance footage last month, the movie actually looks good, or at the very least of a piece and consistently energetic. What rankles, though, or at least stands out as ridiculous, was Travolta’s on-air assertion, when lobbed an obviously tipped-off Winfrey softball about its advance testing with audiences, that Hairspray was the “highest scoring movie in history.” Really?

Look, I can’t immediately summon to mind all the other examples, but in around 10 years of film reportage, I’ve heard this very statement about, no lie, probably 15 or so different movies, from producers, directors and stars alike. It always struck me as somewhat desperate — something to talk about it lieu of the actual content and artistry of the film. Distributor New Line is obviously enthusiastic about the finished product (you don’t trot out footage this far in advance if you’re not), but is pushing cotton, as it were, over the prospect of selling a grand-gesture musical to a summer audience conditioned to look for more spoon-fed explosions and thrills.

Ergo, this sort of attempt at pre-selling word-of-mouth. Travolta’s comment was partially qualified (as in prefaced by, “I think it was”) — cloaked in blithe, movie star-ese — but in my view it’s still a goddamned stupid thing to say. I get that this tack is a consequence of a world where weekend box office grosses get mainstream press coverage, but it’s cynical and it devalues, in ways both specific and less concrete, the creative and aesthetic achievements of films, even if one accepts the false supposition that such rendered statements are always true. Hairspray is currently set
for wide release on July 20. For more information, click here.

John Cusack Haunted by Carpenters

Ephemera, Musings, Trailer Watch

Just as Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe” took on its own special hell in 1993’s Groundhog Day, so too does the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun” in 1408, a thriller of containment, based on a short story by Stephen King, set for release this summer, June 22.

The film stars John Cusack as Mike Enslin, a cynical writer with a shattered past. Enslin has penned a a string of bestselling “spooky travel” tomes, centered around the most infamous haunted houses and graveyards around the country. He takes as his latest challenge the titular suite in New York City’s Dolphin Hotel, as part of a book project entitled Ten
Nights in Haunted Hotel Rooms. Defying the warnings of the Dolphin’s manager (Samuel L. Jackson), Enslin checks in and quickly becomes plagued by visions both general and unnervingly specific.

He’s also intimidated by a clock radio that, even after being ripped from the wall, occasionally blares out “We’ve Only Just Begun,” as it counts down the hour that he ostensibly has left to live. It’s a characteristically sardonic sort of detail from King, not played for laughs like with “I Got You, Babe,” but also not without its tongue-in-cheek amusement. Besides, the Carpenters’ “I Won’t Last a Day Without You” or Hall & Oates’ “Maneater” would’ve been a little too on the nose, I reckon. I’ll have more discrete thoughts on the film itself later next week, but in the meantime, for 1408‘s trailer, click here.

Robert Rodriguez Signs For Barbarella

Casting About, Musings

Fresh off reaching back into the cinematic past for purposes of affectionate homage in Grindhouse, director Robert Rodriguez will helm producer Dino De Laurentiis’ remake of Barbarella for Universal, Variety is reporting, with Casino Royale
partners Neal Purvis and Robert Wade handling scripting duties. “I love
this iconic character and all that she represents,” says Rodriguez,
“and I’m truly
excited by the challenge of inviting a new audience into her universe.”

The other quote used in the Variety piece is boilerplate De Laurentiis — he’s been wandering about saying “the future is female” since at least the Hannibal Rising press day — but also indicative of the fact that this version will make its own way in the world, and not feel compelled to conform to past source material, in either the form of the (in)famous 1968 Jane Fonda film or the French comic book.

In speaking with De Laurentiis about casting for movie — which I did earlier this year — it’s clear that he has a jones for Angelina Jolie, but if she can’t be had (and frankly, why would she?), don’t be surprised to see them turn to an up-and-comer with presumed pan-ethnic appeal, someone like Eva Mendes. All in all, though, this movie doesn’t feel like it has the firmest foundation, and not merely because of the disappointing box office grosses of Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse. As Aeon Flux and the second Tomb Raider film demonstrated, there’s a certain ceiling on anonymous female mercenary/action pics. The va-voom factor still doesn’t compensate for the fact that some diehard genre fans won’t turn out for these types of movies without a guy in the lead.

Lynch Short Film Bows at Cannes

Ephemera, Musings, Trailer Watch

David Lynch dropped a new short film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, a two-and-a-half-minute offering. There isn’t much context provided with respect to its opening night unfurling, but it’s another characteristically Lynchian mind-trip, melding together a perverted (which is to say distorted) memory, muddled dread and, eventually, violence, along with a giant pair scissors (a nod to Dali, perhaps?) that pierce through a movie screen within the short work, invading the established distance and sanctuary of the piece’s extra frame. Naturally, the film is already up on YouTube; click here to watch.

Happy Birthday, Timothy Olyphant

Birthdays, Musings

It’s a happy birthday to Timothy Olyphant, who turns 39 today, and has finally grown into the gauntness of his face. After some bit parts, Olyphant got his big break in 1997’s Scream sequel, and parlayed that into a steady diet of supporting work in movies like When Trumpets Fade, Go, Gone in Sixty Seconds and the like.

Olyphant has small eyes an angular face that breeds a certain wariness, if not outright distrust. He’s found a home on HBO’s Deadwood as Seth Bullock, and his snarl will no doubt be put to use effectively as the villain in this summer’s Live Free or Die Hard. A few attempts to subvert this image (as a wounded Jennifer Garner’s bad-boy boy-toy in Catch and Release, for instance) have fallen by the wayside, but where Olyphant should be concentrating his efforts at branching out is in comedy. He absolutely slayed in 2004’s The Girl Next Door, an underrated teen comedy that I’ll have to address in long-form re-posted review sometime soon. As a smarmy, spike-haired porn producer, Kelly, who gets locked into a battle of wills over a starlet with a high school student and would-be valedictorian (Emile Hirsch), Olyphant is charming and dangerous, amusingly recognizable and inherently unknowable at the same time.

Olyphant oozes charisma, displays crackerjack timing and knows how to sharpen a casual line into a dagger with pointed subtext. The problem, of course, is that he’s too big and athletic-looking (he was a college swimmer at USC) to play the wacky neighbor or sidekick, so there’s almost always going to be that grey lining to those types of characters that he gets offered. It’s a similar problem Billy Bob Thornton faced early in his career — translating that edginess into a more rakish magnetism. Here’s hoping Olyphant finds some screwy, fun character work soon. He’d be great in a noir, too — something canted and unhinged like Red Rock West — something that allowed his exasperation to poke through in subtle, mounting ways.

Pacino, De Niro Re-Team

Casting About, Musings

Movie geeks of a certain upper-crust persuasion will soon be creaming themselves, given that Variety is reporting Robert De Niro and Al Pacino will team onscreen
for just the second time in Righteous Kill, a planned $60 million indie
production put together by Nu Image’s Millennium Films and Emmett/Furla
Films, with worldwide rights being shopped this week at the Cannes Film Festival. Jon
Avnet, fresh off directing Pacino in 88 Minutes, will helm the picture, from Inside Man scribe Russell Gewirtz’s
script about two cops chasing a serial killer. Shooting will begin the first week of August in Connecticut, with some autumnal filming in New York City to follow.

De Niro and Pacino each appeared in The Godfather II, but shared no scenes together. Michael Mann’s Heat, of course, scored big points by cleverly playing up its cat-and-mouse diner scene between the pair of legendary actors (and Kate Mantilini’s upscale truck-stop restaurant even got a boost from hosting it), but this will be much more of a partnership, so it seems. Producer Randall Emmett said the idea for the film actually originated from the two actors’ desire to work together more directly.

That’s great for screen aficionados, really, but the last part worries me. At two hours and 50-plus minutes, Heat managed only $65 million or so domestically, earning most of its laurels overseas, where it pulled in $120 million. Pacino and De Niro remain nearly unparalleled in respect, but their commercial track record isn’t exactly consistent (Godsend, anyone?), even in fare that tips toward the commercial side of the track. Contrived talent-melding projects rarely come across as less than rigged, and I’d really like for this movie not to eventually end up in the bargain bin alongside The Bone Collector. Fingers crossed, I guess…

John Travolta, Autism and Family Shame?

Ephemera, Musings

I can’t claim insider information that would shade this as either truth or fiction, but Hollywood Interrupted‘s Mark Ebner has up a piece about John Travolta’s alleged denial over his son Jett’s autism. And it’s provocative, I’ll give him that. I read Ebner’s book of the same name, co-written with Andrew Breitbart, and it was a good read, so I don’t necessarily doubt his journalistic credentials. There does seem to be an axe to grind with Scientology, though (no crime, that), and I’m also not sure how the couple cited in the story would have access to all this insider information. At any rate, something to make you go, “Hmmmm…”

On the Wall Street Sequel

Casting About, Musings

From the irony-is-blind-in-Hollywood files, the New York Times is reporting that producer Edward Pressman and writer Stephen Schiff are developing a sequel to 1987’s Wall Street for 20th Century Fox, a movie called Money Never Sleeps, in which Michael Douglas would reprise his suspender-sporting, amoral business shark Gordon Gekko. (Director Oliver Stone would not be back, having declined repeated entreaties from the aforementioned trio.) There’s not much word yet regarding plot, on what Gekko will be
doing, other than still making bank and being a glorious a-hole about
it. In theory, though, he will have gotten a smaller cell phone than the giant, face-sized sat-phone he uses from the beach at movie’s end.

Wall Street grossed (only) $43 million domestically upon its release, but connected with the upper crust and became
a zeitgeist hit, inspiring inane, self-touting repetitions of Gekko’s
catchphrases, including the famous, “Greed is good.” Still, while I understand that there would be some enthusiasm for this project in the film world, Wall Street doesn’t really hold up as completely as one might think, and expectations on such a project would do well to be dialed down to the character-update range.

It’s also all ironic because Gekko, styled in part after the insider trading king Ivan Boesky and junk bond czar Michael Milken, from the mid-’80s, was the consummate financial feeder of his time (“I create nothing, I own” he proudly bragged), a role now chiefly occupied by the owners of giant media conglomerates like Fox’s own Rupert Murdoch, who swallows up companies and plugs them into his synergistic machine, which marches inexorably forward. One doubts Schiff’s script will take too keen and uninterrupted of a gaze at that…

Sony Goes (Further) International

Ephemera, Musings

In response to the growing importance of the global cinema marketplace, The Hollywood Reporter is, well, reporting that Sony Pictures Entertainment has created an international motion picture
production department, which will be led by Gareth Wigan, vice chairman of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, and Deborah
Schindler, the former head of Red Om Films who has run the East Coast motion picture production and development operation for Columbia Pictures since 2005.

With the way the film business is expanding these days, I’m frankly a bit shocked to learn that Sony is the only Hollywood studio to maintain stand-alone, local-language production units throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America. International theatrical receipts are of course a bigger and bigger slice of the pie these days (see Night at the Museum, if you doubt). They can make a bonafide hit out of relative under-performers like Troy or Kingdom of Heaven, and help birth sequels for so-so successes like Underworld and Resident Evil. But the under-discussed subtext of that lesson is that there is such a thing as separate foreign tastes (duh), and those distinctions are bubbling to the surface more and more. Why more Hollywood studios don’t try to explicitly cater to those rabid, burgeoning bases, I’m not sure.

Sigourney Weaver to Join Baby Mama

Casting About, Musings

I wrote recently about Sigourney Weaver’s success in negotiating the perils of aging in Hollywood, and her success in balancing projects of wildly dissimilar tone. And The Hollywood Reporter now indicates that Weaver is in negotiations to join Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in the comedy Baby Mama, the directorial debut of former Saturday Night Live, Thunderbirds and Undercover Brother writer Michael McCuller.

The film, for Universal, is about a single professional woman (Fey) whose desire to have a child and simultaneously maintain her career track leads her to hire a surrogate (Poehler); Weaver will play the owner and operator of the surrogate agency that Fey’s character uses.

Coming on the heels of her recently released work in Jake Kasdan’s The TV Set and Marc Evans’ Snow Cake, opposite Alan Rickman, Weaver’s turn in Baby Mama will follow appearances in the presidential assassination thriller Vantage Point, with William Hurt, Forest Whitaker and Dennis Quaid, and her co-starring role in James Cameron’s highly anticipated Avatar. Fleet of foot and multi-talented, Weaver is definitely following through on her advice of mixing it all up with parts big, small, funny and sad, and in the process remaining one of the more flatly enjoyable screen presences out there; when you see her, you know you’re going to get something interesting, whatever the context surrounding it.

Crowe and Scott Team Again

Casting About, Musings

It seems that Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe aren’t done with one another just yet. Variety is reporting that their respective man-crushes will continue for a fourth picture, with Scott set to direct the no-nonsense actor in the Universal Pictures action drama Nottingham, sold last year as a spec script by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, creators
of the Showtime series Sleeper Cell, as well as writers of Bulletproof Monk.

Crowe will star as the titular sheriff in a revisionist take on the
Robin Hood tale, with Nottingham cast as a noble lawman who labors
under the rule of a corrupt king, and as caught up in a love triangle with Maid Marion and
Robin Hood. The movie comes on the heels of Scott and Crowe’s last collaboration, American Gangster, and will shoot after the filmmaker finishes directing Leonardo DiCaprio in Body of Lies. Brian Grazer will produce the film for Imagine Entertainment.

Casting will say a lot about this movie, which is easy to see in multiplexes, if not exactly thrilling, on the surface of things. It’ll be interesting to see how high the producers and bankrollers stretch for Robin Hood, who by default is here playing second fiddle. As for Maid Marion (assuming she’s halfway decently sketched), paging Rachel McAdams… If she can’t be coaxed into a commitment, however, one could see Rachel Weisz in the part, I suppose, depending on how high the spitfire quotient is.

Jessica Biel’s Got Next…

Musings



While some of her contemporaries cycle in and out of rehab, or simply turn down everything that comes their way (I’m looking in your general direction, Rachel McAdams), the Jacinda Barretts and Jessica Biels of young Hollywood are busy making a play for their heat.
Biel is particularly intriguing as a candidate for newly minted star, if only because probably no one saw her coming. This week she’s starring in the big-budget if somewhat bland Next, with Nicolas Cage, and she’s also got the safety net of Dennis Dugan’s big dumb gay firefighters comedy, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, starring Adam Sandler and Kevin James. In between she’s been trying to shore up her dramatic cred, with movies like The Illusionist (an important booking for her) and Bruce Beresford’s set-to-lens adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance, whose lead Biel is taking over from Linsday Lohan.
The femininity is there, but what Biel seemingly lacks is a certain softness, and relaxed charisma. Next doesn’t necessarily require it, save for a single scene with some Native American children, but if Biel is to make inroads to the sort of relatable leading lady parts that pay the truly big bucks (glossy romantic comedies and the like), she needs to dial down the energy a bit and vacuum herself free of the sort of cow-faced, sign-posted emoting that too much serial television work seems to engender in many young actors and actresses.
If she can’t pull that off — and there’s not much to suggest one way or another whether she can — there is an alternative, and that’s to embrace the whole authoritative, beautiful-shit-kicker persona she projects. Biel is still running from this 7th Heaven-era photo shoot, no doubt, but would be wise to embrace hard-edged bombshell roles in a way that Ashley Judd did early in her career.

Biel got convincingly buff in 2004’s Blade: Trinity, but has since avoided nudity, with lingering bedsheets, perfectly balanced, during post-coital kisses goodbye in London, The Illusionist and, now, Next. Judd, on the other hand, evidenced a much more casual attitude about undress, and that approach counterbalanced her toughened qualities while also allowing a (now estimable) vulnerability to mature and ripen. Biel could perhaps learn a thing or two from that.