September 25, 2008
It looks like the big showdown between Barack Obama and John
McCain won’t be taking place since McCain refuses to participate until all the
economic problems go away.
In the meantime you might want to drop by the Brattle Theatre which will be
hosting a panel discussion that I’ll be moderating (okay, I admit it -- all
that snarky self-righteousness is just a smokescreen for my own shameless
self-promotion) for the United Nations Association Film Festival.
Among those participating
are filmmakers Iris Adler, Sam Kauffmann, Jamil Simon and Ian Slattery.
Slattery’s powerful documentary “Soldiers of Conscience,” an even-handed and
provocative look at troops serving in Iraq who have opted for conscientious
objector status, screens as the Festival’s opening film tonight at the Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard. Adler’s poignant “Hidden Wounds,” about
veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, screens Sunday also at
the Kennedy School. Simon and Kauffmann will
probably be screening shorts at the panel discussion.
The subject? “A Call to Action: Making Powerful
International Documentaries.” It would have been a useful tie-in to the debate,
which was supposed to focus on international issues and answer the question as
to which candidate would be better equipped to handle foreign policy. Another
question comes to mind: would anyone watching the debate know the difference? It’s not
exactly like there’s a glut of information in the media on the subject. Newspapers
have cut back or eliminated their foreign bureaus. Cable and network news
programs feature celebrity gossip, sensationalism and fulminating blowhards. So
maybe that leaves documentary filmmakers as the best alternative source of news about the rest of the world. That
is, of course, if anyone really cares.
If you do, you might want
to drop by.
September 24, 2008
What happens when two geeks get together? They talk about
geeks and superheroes and how they are very much the same as Brett Michel and
Simon Pegg demonstrate in this second part of the interview.
BM.Moving on, superhero films – I’d imagine you’ve been
keeping up with them?
SP: Yeah. It’s interesting, actually. There’s been a
parallel – this is something that I’d like to write about – the evolution of
the hero from the kind of superman from the 80s; the bodybuilder there, and the
90s; the Van Damme, the Schwarzeneggar – to a degree that that hero has been –
and this is after John McClane – the hero has become more and more ordinary,
more geeky, so that you have Seth Rogen as a leading man, and, you know, Steve
Carell. People who are just kind of regular guys have become like the heroes of
film. “Superbad” is a great example: two geeky guys. But then, running parallel
to this, you have also the rise to prevalence of superhero. But it’s
interesting that all these superheroes are, to a degree, geeks. You know? Tony
Stark, Peter Parker, even Bruce Wayne. Even Clark Kent. I mean, he is a geek. They’re
all kind of…it’s brilliant. There’s definitely a sensation in there somewhere
about how we are perceiving the male…
BM So, “Ant Man?”
SP: I mean, Edgar [Wright, Pegg’s collaborator and director
of “Shaun” and “Hot Fuzz,” who is planning to bring the somewhat obscure Marvel
superhero to the screen]just chose that.
I’ve got nothing to do with “Ant Man,” but…
BM. Really?
SP: That’s Edgar’s project. He’s developed that with Joe
Cornish. But, I would hope for a cameo.
BM: Back when you spoke of ant man when you were in Cambridge with “Hot Fuzz”, I got the impression that you
would be playing Ant Man.
SP: Well, we were kind of joking there…I’m too old to play
Ant Man, I think. Edgar needs to get, he needs to get Hank Pym. He needs a
young guy. I would hope to play something in the movie, just to keep an ‘in’
with my boss, but Edgar – and this is Edgar down to a ‘T’ – is that he
specifically picked a lower-level Marvel character, a sort of…a less than
popular Marvel character [laughs] and I have no doubt that he will make it
better than any previous Marvel film, because he is that good at what he does.
But, yeah, he’s one of the kind of lower-tier heroes. I’m sure the film will be
about that: the ‘small man’ complex.
BM: It didn’t quite work out in “The Incredible Hulk.”
SP: I didn’t mind…I kind of enjoyed that movie, but I’m a
big Ang Lee sympathizer. I like that “Hulk.” I thought that the Hulk himself in
it was brilliant – the closest thing that I’ve ever seen to the comic book – a
big, dumb, thick, scared-looking anger machine.
BM: I appreciated the climax of that film on an intellectual
level, but good god, there was no way to make that work onscreen.
SP: No. That’s where it fell down. But that sequence in the
desert is better than anything that was in the new Hulk film. The whole thing
with how he gets around, jumping about? That’s what he used to do in the
comics, just jump around! [laughs]
BM: I would love to see the motion capture footage of Ang Lee acting out the Hulk’s performance on that film.
SP: Yeah, yeah! I just remember his face, you know, his eyes
fill with tears like that. It kind of did justice. It was brilliant.
BM: Have you been following the Democratic Convention at
all?
SP: I’m behind Barack, absolutely. Just because, I think it
would be just this fabulous, poetic thing for him to become the President. I
think, for this country, it would be monumental.
BM: Sidney Young, your character in your new film, is based
on Toby Young, who I see is now working as an associate editor for the rather
conservative weekly, the “Spectator.” Seems like a strange position for him.
SP: Well, the thing is with Toby – well, Party politics in
the UK
are slightly different now, anyway. I mean, it is similar to this country, in
that the parties sort of jostle for position, so much where they’ve kind of
ended up at a middle ground. But Toby’s quite, he’s pretty middle class. He’s
not exactly a working class hero. He has enough disregard for what people think
of him to avidly support the conservatives. [laughs] We had a mayoral race
recently in London,
and our mayor was Labor affiliated. He was very much a left-wing man. He had
done a lot of fuck-ups. Some of the transport issues were just bad, and it felt
like it was time to change things, but his opposition was a conservative man.
And even though I was pissed off, I still couldn’t bring myself to vote that
side of the line. It just felt wrong. I hope Obama gets it, I really do. Just
the beauty of him as a black man. If he does get in, it’s taken 200 years from
enslavement to him being the leader of the country. Which, when you think about
it, is fucking ages! It is a long, long time. It’s taken 200 years for a black
man to be the President of the United
States. That’s too fucking long! But, it
will be brilliant, if it happens.
[a knock comes on the door; the publicist briefly enters,
saying she’s sorry, but that we’ll need to wrap things up.]
SP: Oh, come on! We’re talking about politics here! [laughs]
BM: And we haven’t really spoken about the film!
SP: Ah, it’s really good! It’s out on October the 3rd
and it’s got Megan Fox and Kirsten Dunst in it.
BM: One last question, then! Toby’s attraction to American
celebrity culture, which was followed by his eventual disillusionment of its
vanity and superficiality – have you experienced 
this yourself?
SP: I distrust that world so much, anyone who takes it on…
BM: Well, your fan base seems to be rooted in the ‘fanboy’
culture.
SP: Yeah. I’d really like to keep it that way. I’d just like
to stay there, because I think they’re in it for the right reasons. Their
enthusiasm is entirely honest, and not fickle, and I think, if…to keep working
towards pleasing people like that would be great, because you never want to let
them down, you never want to short-change them. You would continue to do the
best work that you possibly could. But, the larger world is a fickle kind of…
BM: Are you interested in getting the sort of “Entertainment Weekly” level of attention?
SP: No, I don’t know. I can’t…It just seems to me like a
sort of a necessary…I mean, obviously, “Entertainment Weekly” is a cool
magazine. The idea of being on the cover, you think “Wow, I’ve achieved
something.” But at the same time, you’re entering into an arena which is entirely
unpredictable and, you know, hard to manage. And, for me, I always look at it
as being like “fame,” for want of a better word, or the attention that it
brings you when you do a job like this. It’s the equivalent of what radiation
is to people who work in a nuclear power plant. It’s a hazard of the job, in a
way. It’s not altogether necessarily a good thing. There are no perks with
radiation, obviously. You don’t get to go to parties and things.
BM: But what about the radiation you might be exposed to
from “Aint It Cool News?”
SP: Well, you get radiation that turns you into a superhero.
That kind of radiation. But, otherwise, I find it daunting and scary.
September 23, 2008
My colleague Brett Michel recently interviewed Simon Pegg,
who was in town publicizing his big Hollywood breakthrough movie, “How to Lose
Friends & Alienate People,” Robert Weide’s adaptation of Toby Young’s sardonic memoir about being a successful
if dissolute journalistic hack in London who tries to make the big time in New
York at hoity-toity “Vanity Fair.”
A parallel to Pegg’s own
career? In fact he’s already made inroads into the American audience, establishing
a cult following with “Shaun of the Dead” and
“Hot Fuzz” and creating
excitement with his plans to play the young Scotty in the upcoming “Star Trek” movie.
Some had turned onto Pegg as far back as his “Spaced” TV series in Britain, in which
he played a benighted “Star Wars” and superhero geek, something Pegg is in real
life as his perennial appearances at Comicon Conventions will testify.
At any rate, Brett is a big fan, and so was willing at the last minute
to fill in for me when I was unable to interview Pegg. In this first part they discuss
an interview with Brett’s other [former] hero, Harrison Ford, after which they descend
into the black hole of “Star Wars” and postmodern aesthetic theory, from which they
emerge only after turning to the requisite discussion of Krzysztof Kieslowski.
BM: I hope this goes better than the time I interviewed Harrison
Ford…
SP: I’ve heard stories. What happened?
BM: Long story short, it was the single worst interview I’ve
ever conducted. truly painful. I was scheduled to speak with him for a
half-hour, and the film he was promoting – “Firewall” – wasn’t very good, and
didn’t provide many talking points. turns out, it didn’t really matter, since
no matter what I asked him, he’d either give clipped, one-word answers –
y’know, ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – or he simply wouldn’t answer at all. Honestly, I had
run out of topics within about 15 minutes. Plus, even though he was sitting
directly across the table from me, he was turned sideways, facing the door. The
only time he actually looked at me was to shoot me an icy stare as if I was an
idiot, based on something I said – and it’s easy to come off as an idiot when
you’re funmbling as bad as I was. Still, this was Harrison Ford, for chrissakes
– one of my boyhood idols. Han Solo! Indiana
Jones! and he completely emasculated me. It was fucking awful. anyway, the
publicist had said she would give a ‘five-minute warning knock, indicating that
we should begin to wrap things up. when that knock came, he jumped up out of
his chair and exclaimed, “Saved!” – and that was it. the interview was
mercifully over.
SP: Wow. I always say that the promotion side of the job is
what you get paid to do and the acting you do for free. But, you do it with
good grace, you know what I mean? [laughs] I think it’s important to kind of
enjoy it.
BM: My readers will appreciate that. moving on… A little
background: an hour and-a-half ago, i was lying on my couch in my underwear…
SP: Wow! That’s a great image to plant in my head. [laughs]
yeah. You’re welcome. I didn’t know I’d be conducting this
interview until then…
BM: Congrats for getting here fully clothed.
what makes you think I’m wearing underwear? It was only an hour and-a-half ago, remember,
and I hadn’t yet prepared any questions…
SP: So, did you slide down a pole and jump into a
fast-moving vehicle and get here in your Brett-Mobile?
BM: Ha! Yeah -- but it was a rather ventilated ride. Before
that, though, I scribbled down as many questions as I could think of and…
actually, I cribbed the questions from my editor!
BM: Well, let’s get in as many as we can before the dreaded
warning knock! I just finished watching “Spaced” on dvd…
SP: Oh, you did? You got the “Region 1”?
BM: Yup. At the close of the pilot episode, you were about
to masturbate to Gillian Anderson’s photo. and now on your new film, you got to
work with her…
SP: Which is the first thing that Bob Weide – the director –
brought up when she stepped into the rehearsal room. We’ve met a couple of
times before, and I think the first thing he said when Gillian sat down – with
me having said, “Please don’t mention it to her” – was “So, have you seen the
episode where Simon wanks to ya?” I don’t think I’ve ever been as embarrassed.
But, she is such a good sport, Gillian is. She’s a boy’s girl. For someone as
stunningly beautiful as she is, she’s a bit of a lad, which makes it all the
more easy. You know, she could be sort of stuck-up about it, but she was so
not. And we had such a good time. We’ve become good pals now, which is bizarre
for me; someone who idolized her and crushed on her enormously, and still do,
within the bounds of what my wife allows me to crush on. Having said that, she
has certain crushes as well, which I’m fine with. But yeah, she’s super-cool.
She’s great.
BM: Is she also aware that in another episode, you had her “X-Files”
action figure sitting on your face as you slept?
SP: Yeah. Her husband Mark is such a sweet guy. He’s a real
cool guy, and she’s having her third baby now, and it’s so safe. I can just be
like: I’m out! I’m a Gillian Anderson appreciator and there’s no shame in it
whatsoever, and she’s really cool with it. And it’s hilarious how when I met
Piper, her first daughter, her first child – Piper’s like 13 now, and she was
conceived at the beginning of the second season of “The X-Files,” and you could
see how Gillian grew on screen. And the first thing I said to Piper was, “Ah,
you must be the ‘bump’ from season two,” which she must have thought was
half-geeky, half-hilarious.
BM: Speaking of geeky and (sadly) hilarious, my notepad, as
you can see here, is the one I used while taking notes for my review of “The
Clone Wars.” Have you…
SP: I haven’t seen it yet, to be honest. I um… is it a
terrible thing to say that I just don’t care anymore?
BM: No. I’m completely there with you.
SP: I kind of think, if you’re going to do that – there’s no
question for me about the beauty and artistry of what those animators do; it’s
incredible and aesthetically, it’s a massive achievement and they should be
applauded. But, if you’re going to do it, do the OLD characters! Do the sequel
that we’ve always wanted to see, you know? Let’s pick up with Luke and Han and
Chewie and I mean, Jesus! I would care sooo much then, you know?
BM: Yes, but then how would you reach the lucrative ‘tween
girl demographic?
SP: That’s the kind of crap that... they’re not going there,
are they?
BM: Yup. And they’re using cutesy nicknames. ‘Anakin’
becomes ‘Sky-Guy’…
SP: Oh, God. Have you seen Patton Oswalt’s material about
the prequels? It’s sooo funny. He’s like [in a Southern accent]: “D’ya like
Darth Vader? Y’get t’see him when he’s a kid!” It’s so funny. I don’t give a
fuck where they come from!
BM: Well, let’s get the hell away from “Star Wars,” then.
SP: Yeah, before we get bogged down.
BM: You wrote a dissertation on “A Marxist overview of popular
70s cinema”?
SP: I did – with “Star Wars”-related works.
BM: I think we’re bogging down…
SP: It was a dismantling of consent, which was forwarded by
an Italian Marxist philosopher called Antonio Gramsci. It was all about the
fact that if you watch a movie without critically objectifying yourself, you
consent to the inherent prejudices within the film. So, if you’re watching a
film which is very sexist, if you don’t think “Hey! That’s pretty sexist,” you
are being sexist by watching it. And “Star Wars” and “Raiders [of the Lost Ark]”
embodied a certain amount of late-seventies neuroses: bomb fear and subjective
stereotypes and it was all about that!
BM: You also had a quote in the “Guardian,” which said that
“an awareness of the postmodern condition is still the intellectual bedrock” of
your comedy…
SP: Did I say that? Man, I must have had a couple of cups of
coffee! Yeah, I think you can’t not be aware of popular culture and what’s gone
before you now; you can’t not be postmodern. The stamp of popular culture is
such an important part of day-to-day life for modern human beings that it’s
hard not to refer to it. You can’t just pretend that you’re starting from
scratch these days. You’re part of a huge legacy of expression that is fun to
refer back to.
BM: Like “Star Wars.”
SP: There I go again!
BM: I’ve actually seen you a couple of times before here in Boston, sitting in the
audience during both your promotional tour for “Shaun of the Dead” and for “Hot
Fuzz…”
SP: Always a pleasure to return.
BM: …and the first time I ever heard of cornetto was at that
screening of “Hot Fuzz.”
SP: Apparently, McDonalds are doing a Cornetto now. It’s
coming to the States. So by the time we do the third film, it will be a known
quantity.
Oh, ok. At that screening, you guys went off on a whole riff
about King cone, cornetto’s american ice cream cone equivalent…
BM: That’s right. “Shaun,” “Hot Fuzz” and an upcoming film
will make up the “three flavors cornetto trilogy,” I believe?
SP: We decided to call it that because “Shaun” featured a
strawberry one, heavily; “Hot Fuzz” obviously features the blue original; and
the last one is the mint chocolate.
BM: Why mint?
SP: We don’t know yet. We just will.
BM: You’ve already decided on a title?
SP: Well, we have a title that we’re kind of playing with
and Edgar [Wright, director of “Shaun”
and “Hot Fuzz”] kind of announced it as if it’s the actual thing, and it’s not.
BM: So you’re not willing to go on record with it?
SP: We are! The working title is – they were so desperate to
announce that deal with Edgar, that they pre-empted our working title for the
movie – “The World’s End.”
BM: Care to elaborate on what the film might be about?
SP: We know what it’s about, but I cannot say.
BM: Ok. I think that I might be able to kind of intuit…
SP: You think? [laughs]
BM: Ok, maybe not. although, if you’re painting an ‘end of
days’ type of scenario, you’ve kind of covered that ground already.
SP: Well, our standard line at the moment is that the third
one will be like the first one, times the second one. It will be the answer to
that equation: “Shaun of the Dead” times “Hot Fuzz” equals The World’s End.”
BM: Is the ‘three flavors cornetto trilogy’ a reference to
Kieslowski’s ‘three colors trilogy’?
SP: Yeah, but only in a very flippant way! [laughs]
BM: That’s ok.
SP: Yeah, we’ve reduced a masterful trilogy to an ice-cream
snack. And isn’t that the very crux of what we do, as filmmakers. We’re
reductionists. [laughs]
BM: Like George Lucas.
SP: Hey! Don’t lump me in with that guy! You started off so
well… [laughs] Keep going!
BM: Better filmmaker: Kieslowski…or Lucas?
SP: I think we both know.
Next: What movie are you promoting, by the way?
September 19, 2008
The box office demographic for the rest of 2008, usually
dominated by the male 12-24 year-old
perpetual adolescent crowd, might be
switching genders. So suggests Steve Mason writing in the “Hollywood Wiretap”
website, where he speculates that the fourth quarter of 2008 will belong to the
“below 25 female” audience. Among the upcoming films he sees as drawing big box
office from this group are “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” “High School Musical 3:
Senior Year” and “Twilight.”
He might also have included “The Secret Life of Bees,” in which Dakota
Fanning plays a lonely 14-year-old girl in the South who finds solace and
wisdom with some local beekeepers.
But he probably would not have included another Dakota Fanning
vehicle, Deborah Kampmeier’s “Hounddog,” in which Fanning plays another young Southern girl seeking solace. It will be opening nationwide on October 3
[which is when my review will be coming out]. First premiered at the Sundance
Festival in 2007, it earned the moniker the “Dakota Fanning rape movie” from
the outraged and the titillated. Critical response was universally disastrous,
focusing as much on the hamhanded cliches as on the alleged exploitiveness.
Which strikes me as odd since critics at the same festival largely adored
“Black Snake Moan,” in which Cristina Ricci plays a nymphomaniac chained in her
underwear to a radiator by a wise old bluesman played by Samuel L. Jackson.
I mean, isn’t that kind of clichéd and exploitive, too? In fact, having seen
both films, I’d have to give the edge on odious racial and sexual stereotypes
and solaciousness to “Moan.”
Maybe I’m alone in that opinion. Not to pick on Ebert-beater Lou
Lumenick of the “New York Post,” but his reviews are a case in point.
“Hounddog” he dismisses with one star and the phrase: “trailer trash of the
worst kind.”
His three star review of “Moan,” however, opens with the lede:
“I could practically smell the sex and sweat while watching Craig
Brewer's arty exploitation film, ‘Black Snake Moan,’ even as my jaw was
dropping repeatedly to the floor.”
Maybe that’s what struck Ebert, and not the festival binder that Lumenick is said to have hit him with in the notorious Toronto Film Festival incident. That
or something else. Anyway, it seems to me that perhaps he liked “Moan” more
than “Hounddog” because Ricci is sexier looking in her underwear than Fanning.
And also older. The main reason “Hounddog” got panned, no doubt, was because it showed a prepubescent girl who
displays sexual curiosity and is sexually assaulted. Nobody wants to think
about these things happening. Certainly not the good people from the Concerned
Women for America (CWA) of North
Carolina, who are especially peeved because the film
was shot in their state and with the approval of the North Carolina Film
Office.
Donna Miller, “a CWA Prayer/Action
Chapter Leader for the Fayetteville
area and No More Child Porn Campaign Director” is leading the campaign to get
citizens “to fight this graphic movie from being shown in their local theater.”
Quoting disdainfully from the director’s statement in the film’s press kit,
Miller says, “This movie is about a
nine-year-old girl, not an adult woman. She should be outside skipping rope or
riding her bike, not ‘celebrating the power and creative force of her
sexuality.’”
Indeed she should, even though in the
movie the character is more like eleven or twelve than nine, though the age is
never specified. And if Miller had seen the film, she’d realize that the only
thing “graphic” about it is David Morse’s (he plays the redneck father) bare
butt. That, and Fanning impaling her hand on a nail during the assault. If
anything, it’s the opposite of child porn -- an earnest attempt to depict the vulnerability
of children and a cautionary tale for parents and children alike about the
dangers of pedophiles. Not that that necessarily makes it a good movie.
Come to think of it, it’s not unlike
the brouhaha disingenuously stirred up by the McCain campaign about the Illinois
legislation Barack Obama supported for “age appropriate” sex education to teach
children to avoid potential predators. Yes, there’s definitely something
obscene going on here, but it’s not on the movie screen.
September 16, 2008
Even some Republicans were skeptical about the box office
potential of David Zucker’s conservative satire, “An American
Carol,” in which,
as I’ve mentioned before, a Scrooge-like Michael Moore-ish filmmaker is taken
through a tour of American History by George Washington and other patriotic
spooks. But maybe the success this Spring of Nathan Frankowski's anti-evolution
documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” changed some minds, because
Vivendi plans to release the film on October 3 on 2,000 screens. On the other
hand, last weekend another right wing documentary, Nathan Frankowski’s “Proud
American,” took in the lowest per screen average ($180 on 750 screens) of any
film in Hollywood history. Perhaps not coincidentally that was the same weekend that
Lehman Brothers folded and caused the Dow to have its biggest decline since
9/11.
Nonetheless, the jolt of energy that the Sarah Palin nomination
has injected into the right wing has convinced the “Carol” people that this is
the perfect time for releasing the movie. Plus, according to producer Steve McEveety
(he was also behind “The Passion of the Christ” ) the film is a comedy in the
mold of previous, non-political Zucker farces as “Airplane!” “Sure, it takes a
position, but it's fun,” McEveety told the “Hollywood Reporter.” “Can’t we have
a little fun during this election?”
I guess it depends on whether or not your idea of fun is Dennis
Hopper as a judge gunning down ACLU lawyers trying to take down the Ten
Commandments from his courthouse. Or whether this trailer leaves you rocking
with laughter. What do I know? Lots of people seem to think this is as much fun
as a barrel of monkeys.
Speaking of Palin, the people promoting “Carol” are
taking a hint from those marketing the VP nominee by keeping the film away from
the press. There will be no preview screenings of “An American Carol” before its opening.
However, the press is invited to interview Zucker and other members of the cast
and crew beforehand. Without seeing the film, that is.
This is a first in my experience. Say what you will about
Michael Moore, but at least he has enough backbone to let you see his movie
before you interview him about it.
September 12, 2008
Because we make a living sitting in dark rooms and writing about it, people think film critics are sissies. Not so, as Lou Lumenick, he-man critic for the New York Post,
never tires of proving. Back in 2006, he
was one of the few critics with the guts to squash “Ant Buddy” ,
an animated children’s film, calling it out as commie propaganda. Last year he struck a blow for all-American heterosexual horniness by
saying he wished that Diablo Cody had won the New York Critics Circle screenplay award so she
could demonstrate her stripper talents at the ceremony.
But Lou’s tough guy act
isn’t just talk, as he demonstrated the other day at a press screening at the
Toronto Film Festival. When some jerk sitting behind him touched him on the
back, Lou told him off. “Don’t touch me!” he said. Again and again! Finally, Lou turned around and smacked the guy on the knee with a
festival binder!
Turns out that his assailant was none other
than renowned "Chicago Sun-Times" film critic Roger Ebert. The cancer survivor and Pulitzer-Prize-winner can’t
talk and is partially immobilized as a result of his cancer treatments and was trying to
get Lumenick’s attention because he was blocking the subtitles for the film
they were watching. No wuss himself, Ebert remained to the end of the
screening. Luckily, his famed digits were unharmed during the fracas and he gave
the film, Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire," a thumbs up.
He also wrote about the incident on his
blog,
noting that his wife, Chaz, offered to “get a no-neck guy from the West Side to break his [Lumenick’s] knees.”
Watch your back, Lou. Remember what Sean
Connery in “The Untouchables” said about "the Chicago way."
September 11, 2008
People have been sniping at John McCain for the quality of his
backgrounds for delivering speeches -- A
green screen
a few months back and more recently the
blue screen at
the Republican Convention. Well, pipe down. As all movie buffs know, these are
screens for the CGI special effects that will be included in post production
before the campaign enters theaters everywhere. The finishing touches have yet
to be polished up, but here’s a link to part of it, a kind of trailer for what
we might expect in November. Check the video
here.
September 09, 2008
As noted below, there doesn’t seem to be a burning desire on the
part of fans for another “Poltergeist” movie. And do we really need another
“Ghostbusters,” especially after the brilliant remake featured in Michel
Gondry’s “Be Kind, Rewind?” Since the 1984 original grossed $292 million and
the 1989 sequel took in another $215 mil, Sony Pictures apparently thinks it's
the franchise to call.
Bringing it up to date will be the Judd Apatow/ “The Office” writing team of Gene
Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg.
So what is it with the spirit world and Hollywood these days? As a character says
about New York City
in the upcoming “Ghost Town,” the place
is lousy with ghosts. You’ve got the ghosts as avenging spirits as in
“Poltergeist” and as embodiments of evil seeking to possess the living as in
the Ghostbusters movies. And then you’ve got the “Christmas Carol” template
with the ghosts as harbingers of guilt, haunting miscreants with reminders of
their misdeeds (see “An American Carol” below ) or deeds undone, which is how
it works out in the “Ghost Town” formulation. And sometimes the person haunted
and the ghost are one and the same...
Sounds like the perennial problem of guilty consciences and fear
of punishment and the terror of mortality to me. But why does the phenomenon
spike periodically? “Poltergeist” came out in 1982 and “Ghostbusters” in 1984, “Poltergeist
III,” “Ghostbusters 2,” “Ghost”and “Jacob’s Ladder” all appeared from 1988-90,
and “The Sixth Sense” and “The Others” came out in 1999 and 2001. There seem
more these days than usual, too — some other recent examples include “Ghost
Rider,” “Over Her Dead Body,” “The Life Before Her Eyes.” I’m sure I’m missing
some. And don't forget the ghost hunting shows on TV.
Is this cause for spirited discussion? Or just a dead issue?
September 05, 2008
Now that we’ve gotten war off our TV screens, we can put it
back where it belongs, in movie theaters. Because it looks like the war movie
is back, repackaged and marketed anew, just like the war we used to see on TV.
So observes “The Hollywood Reporter” after taking a look at the upcoming films
now being showcased at the Toronto Film Festival. Among those featured are
Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna,” which is the war movie as vindication of
overlooked African-American history and Paul Gross’s “Passchendaele” which is the
war movie as reminder of the mind-numbing and pointless slaughter of thousands of Canadians on a
blood-soaked hard to pronounce Belgian WWI battleground. And sneaking in too is
the now untouchable Iraq War Movie, called “anything but an Iraq War movie.” Such as an action-adventure movie that just happens to
take place in Iraq like Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” or a romantic
comedy involving goofy, attractive folks who just happen to be Iraq War
veterans on stateside leave in the US like Neil Burger’s “The Lucky Ones.” "Iraq
is a dirty word in film marketing right now," explains Roadside Attractions
co-topper Howard Cohen, who is distributing "The Lucky Ones." The "Reporter notes that Cohen is planning a Sept. 26 release for "Lucky" "in hop
es that the zeitgeist might change, making the
film more marketable.’
And let us not forget the war movie as Tom Cruise movie, “Valkyrie,” or as Quentin
Tarantino movie, “Inglorious Bastards,” (both of which apparently are raising controversies with German critics, who are still soreheads more than 60 years after the war ended)..
But the real sign that the war movie is making a comeback is the Hollywood script-like story of John McCain as processed
into his presidential campaign narrative. As another Hollywood Reporter article comments about the just-concluded Republican
Convention and its nominee (and you can just imagine these words being spoken by the
late voice of Hollywood trailers, Don LaFontaine) “A prisoner of war who beat the odds during
five years of brutality in a Hanoi jail cell, John McCain beat the odds again
Thursday night when he accepted the Republican nomination for president. The
story of McCain's youth was told in the 2005 TV movie "Faith of Our
Fathers." But walking up to the podium at the Xcel
Energy Center,
the now 72-year-old McCain turned another page in a new script that brought him
from nearly failed candidate to a possible Hollywood-style triumph as president
of the United States.”
And if they can’t do it in real life, there’s already the movie
version. "The Guardian" has been calling on readers for casting suggestions for all
the leading figures. The leading candidate for the role of McCain is, no
surprise, neo-Republican Jon Voight.
.
September 02, 2008
Who says movies don’t offer a window into the truth, a mirror of
the zeitgeist? The titles, anyway. A tip of the hat to the people at Mudflats.com, a site dedicated to “tiptoeing through the muck of Alaskan politics,” for this
update on what’s playing at the local movie house in Wasilla, Alaska, Republican
Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s hometown.
Meanwhile, I’ve been at a loss trying to come up with
movie-related items stranger and more implausible than the recent developments
in the Presidential election. Maybe this will do. “Poltergeist,” the 1982 Stephen
Spielberg-produced,Tobe Hooper-directed horror film about evil spirits entering
a suburban household through their TV screen, a smash hit that spawned two
sequels, is being remade with Vadim Perelman (“The Life Before Her Eyes,” “House
of Sand and Fog”) directing. That despite the alleged “’Poltergeist’ Curse,” which
supposedly resulted in the death of at least four and as many as six of the
cast members.
One of these was the waif-like
star Heather O’Rourke, who died on February 1, 1988 at the age of 12 after making
"Poltergeist 3." As fate would have it, I was one of the last journalists to
interview O’Rourke, spending a day on the set of the Chicago production for the “Chicago
Sun-Times.” Perhaps the “Curse” extends to my efforts on mustering up a copy of
my article on line; I’ve been completely stymied trying to “register” to read it. All I
remember about the experience is that Zelda Rubinstein, who played the dwarf
exorcist and whom I also interviewed, was nasty and abusive. And also that they
glued a fake moustache on my lip so I would resemble Tom Skerrit’s stand-in
double..
At any rate, perhaps the only curse Perelman and company need
fear is from fans of the original film. Here’s what “horrorchick81” has to say
about the remake:
“u gotta be shittig me......like i said NOOO NEED
TO REMAKE THIS. i hope everyone dies on this set.”
Good luck, Vadim.
