Month: June 2010

Hollywood Round-up, 6/30 + Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher?

The new dominant film audience?

By Jason Apuzzo. • Twilight: Eclipse netted $30 million last night at the domestic box office, and I am now really angry at Congress for nixing movie futures trading.  My retirement would’ve been set by this morning.  And just imagine if I’d rolled my winnings into a double-down bet against Last Airbender?  Fat city.

We’ll have our Twilight review up soon. The film is apparently headed for about a $180 million haul by Monday, which is genuinely astonishing.  The long-term, macro-significance of the Twilight franchise is going to be to eat away at the current fanboy dominance of the cinema – and it’s about time, frankly.

• Talk about an odd career niche: Andy Serkis has been ‘cast’ as the lead ape in the Planet of the Apes prequel/reboot/preboot.  Serkis played Kong and Gollum for Peter Jackson.  The man has absolutely locked down all major simian roles for himself, and apparently has no competitors.  Can a Curious George reboot be far off?

Danny Kaye as Walter Mitty.

• A teaser trailer for Paranormal Activity 2 is out. News flash: this stuff works only once, guys.  You’ll need to deliver more than a barking dog by the time this one comes out.

• Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski will apparently be taking a crack at a remake of Danny Kaye’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Just don’t cast Adrien Brody.

• Now The Last Airbender is getting hammered for its bad 3D conversion. Btw, is Larry King available in 3D?

• A new movie about the young Barack Obama has opened in Indonesia. According to the director, audiences will have the opportunity to “see Obama eating chicken satay.”  I love chicken satay.  I might see this film.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … the key line of Christopher Nolan’s recent, lengthy interview with The New York Times comes from actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt : “It’s just not that common that someone as creatively inspired as Chris just gets carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants … Anything he can think of — anything — he got to do it.”  Those are not lines one wants in print if a film fails.

Margaret Thatcher.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

[UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter is saying today that Meryl Streep is in talks to reteam with her Mamma Mia! director Phyllida Lloyd for Thatcher, a biopic of Margaret Thatcher.  Jim Broadbent is apparently also in talks to play Margaret Thatcher’s husband, Denis.

The film is being developed by Pathe and BBC Films. Mamma Mia!, by the way, did a whopping $600 million worldwide in 2008.  We’ll keep an eye on this story as it develops.

The Iron Lady was of course one of Britain’s greatest Prime Ministers, and a genuine hero of the Cold War.  So we hope they don’t screw this one up.]

Posted on June 30th, 2010 at 5:19pm.

Is the New Spider-Man in Red Dawn?

"Red Dawn"'s Josh Hutcherson: the new Spider-Man?

By Jason Apuzzo. We know that actor Josh Hutcherson is in the forthcoming remake of Red Dawn … but has Hutcherson also been just cast as Spider-Man, for Sony’s forthcoming reboot of that franchise?   Blue Sky Disney is reporting that Hutcherson has already accepted an offer from Sony to take the role.

Meanwhile, in an interview today with ComingSoon.net, Hutcherson had a few interesting things to say about Red Dawn:

“I don’t know when it’s coming out, but it was such an amazing shoot and the action is so good, but MGM is just making sure they have everything set and ready before they release it, which is good actually. They really care about this movie, which is nice to see, and they want to make sure they have all their ducks in a row before they just throw it out there. They want to make sure they have the right marketing campaign set up and everything.”

“It’s definitely more modern,” he said of the remake, which is following the current summer trend for ’80s remakes. “It has the same idea about a group of teens fighting against an entire army, which is hard and definitely fictional, but they have the same characters and the same heart that the original had. This time, the Chinese are invading instead of the Russians to modernize it a little bit, so yeah, it’s just a modernized version of the original.”

This certainly confirms what we’ve been told about the project by an executive at MGM.  Spider-Man and Tom Cruise’s son Connor fighting Chinese communists in the Pacific Northwest(!).  This really should be something – at least it will be more interesting than The Last Airbender, right?  We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.

[Major update to this post here.]

Posted on June 30th, 2010 at 3:22pm.


LFM Review: Winter’s Bone – It’s Safe to Go Back to the Art House

Jennifer Lawrence in "Winter's Bone."

[LFM welcomes a new contributor today, Patricia Ducey, an LA-based screenwriter and film essayist whose work we’ve admired over the years.  Her screenplay on Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang was a finalist in the 2006 Liberty Film Festival screenplay contest.  We’re glad to have her on board.]

By Patricia Ducey. Winter’s Bone (written by Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini, directed by Debra Granik; see the trailer here) garnered the Sundance Film Festival’s top award this year and received near universal critical praise, especially for young actress Jennifer Lawrence as the central character of Ree Dolly. Some have called Winter’s Bone a crime story, a western, a quest, or even a ‘country noir’—a definition that Daniel Woodrell, author of the original novel, might quibble with – but noir seems accurate enough.  The film has a chilly atmosphere, shot in the relentless gray of winter, in perpetual twilight filtered through bare-limbed trees. We sense there are dark secrets in these hundred-year-old woods that are about to be disturbed.

The film introduces us to teenager Ree Dolly and her web of extended kin who eke out an existence in the Missouri Ozarks with a little ranching and a lot of ‘cookin’ (methamphetamine production). Ree is the sole provider for her two younger siblings and a nearly catatonic mother, since her father Jessup has run out on his bail bond when faced with a long stretch in prison for drug offenses. If Jessup doesn’t show up for his sentencing in one week’s time, the bondsman will take the ranch as collateral – and Ree and the family will be homeless.

A survivor.

A cinematic set-up like this usually prompts an “uh-oh” for anyone hoping for more than another cringe-inducing anthropological foray into the backwoods. Kudos to writer/director Debra Granik, though, for taking pains to avoid the usual stereotypes of flyover country in several key aspects of the story, especially in Ree’s complex character.

Ree may be desperate for money, all right, but she reaches neither for the government teat nor for the family business of ‘cookin’ – the easiest ways to make a quick buck – because she does not see her or her family as victims of society entitled to an easy way out. Instead she sets out to find Jessup, dead or alive, and bring him back to justice. Ree has little but her own sense of honor and family duty to carry her, but that’s enough.

When Ree runs into the wall of silence from the local drug dealers (most of them are Dolly relations), she decides to enlist in the Army instead for the $40,000 bonus. The local Army recruiter, surprisingly, is presented as a sympathetic character: he probes her motives and actually talks her out of enlisting.  He counsels Ree that she needs a better reason than the money to enlist, and it may be best to tend to her family for now.  Watch closely for an early scene depicting the ROTC and the baby-tending classes at the high school.  A PA announcement for college advising plays over the ‘two bad choices’ visual, indicating that the military here is a choice – not a dead end. Continue reading LFM Review: Winter’s Bone – It’s Safe to Go Back to the Art House

Explorations of Free Speech and Alienation: Two Short Films on Iran

By Govindini Murty. Today we commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Iran democracy protests.  I’ll be commenting at greater length later on some of the fine recent films by Iranian filmmakers that have explored Iran’s current social and political issues.  For now, though, I wanted to show you two interesting short films on Iran.

The first film, titled Iran: A Nation of Bloggers, is a fast-paced, informative two minute short about how Iranians have embraced blogging in order to express themselves freely to the rest of the world.  It was directed by Aaron Chiesa as a project for the Vancouver Film School.  (I have fond memories of Vancouver Film School from my early days as an actress when I was living in Vancouver, as I acted in some of the school’s short films.)  The short features striking animation reminiscent of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (in fact, I think a couple of shots were used from Persepolis) – and a catchy, exotic, pop-music sound track.  You can watch Iran: A Nation of Bloggers above.

The second film is Exile Paranoia, a ten minute short by Iranian filmmaker Nassrin Nasser.  The film explores in a haunting, meditative manner Nasser’s own feelings of alienation and confusion as she seeks to get a visa/passport to leave Iran and come to the West.  Exile Paranoia moves at a dreamlike pace that is the opposite of Iran: A Nation of Bloggers, but I like the contrast.  And while Iran: A Nation of Bloggers features black and white animation done in the radical-chic, populist style that dates back to Soviet constructivist art (and that was most recently seen in Obama’s “Hope” poster), Exile Paranoia is a softer, more intimate film that explores one woman’s emotions in a poetic, understated style.  I like the subtle use of color in Exile Paranoia – from white to cream to green to blue – and the dream-like, computer-composited shots of night-time Tehran.  I also find it interesting to see a brief glimpse of life from the viewpoint of an Iranian woman filmmaker.  Whether I would agree with her feelings about the West or not (the one Western male in the film is portrayed as a cold jerk, but maybe that’s just what this filmmaker has experienced), it’s still interesting to see life from her viewpoint.

Posted on June 29th, 2010 at 9:26pm.

Hollywood Round-up, 6/29 + Happy Birthday Ray Harryhausen!

From Ray Harryhausen's "20 Million Miles to Earth."

By Jason Apuzzo. • Happy 90th Birthday, Ray Harryhausen!  Ray’s an acquaintance of ours, and we want to wish him all the best on his big day.  Ray’s birthday happens to coincide with a new exhibit of his work at London’s National Film Museum, and today’s announcement by the UK’s National Media Museum that they’ll eventually be receiving Ray’s collection of memorabilia from his career.

The great Ray Harryhausen.

Anyone who’s ever met Ray or worked with him knows what a consummate gentleman he is, and also how warm and generous he is in giving of his time and knowledge to younger generations of filmmakers and movie fans.  Ray’s place in the history of cinema is special: he is, in effect, the creator of the modern fantasy genre – a genre he needed to create almost single-handedly in order to bring his unique vision to the world.  The technical sophistication of Ray’s work is matched only by the breadth of his vision, which encompasses not only ancient mythology but modern science fiction.  He’s one of the absolutely essential figures in cinema history.

Tributes to Ray are pouring in today, and you can see them collected at MUBI.  Congratulations, Ray!

• The trailer is out for the next 2 Harry Potter films that will be wrapping up that series … but it isn’t nearly as good as the trailer for the new Japanese film Space Battleship Yamato!

• Confirming what we’ve reported here before, Tommy Lee Jones has joined the Captain America cast, apparently as Col. Chester Phillips.  Is this to make up for Valley of Ellah?

• The “Christopher Nolan’s Inception is the ‘smart’ alternative to summer pap” meme is gaining steam in advance of the film’s likely-to-be disappointing performance at the summer box office.  What a farce.  Once again audiences will be insulted by critics in order to protect a director’s reputation.  Btw, what’s Inception done exactly to so swiftly merit this ‘smart’ sobriquet?  All the ads actually show of the film are explosions.  Maybe they should market this film as ‘The Thinking Man’s A-Team.’

• It’s circle-the-wagons-time around Team Cruise, as one Fox executive falls on his sword to protect Tom, post Knight and Day. I’m also seeing some meaningless chatter on-line right now about a potential Top Gun sequel, but those rumors are old and long-debunked.  The reality is that Cruise has got nothing left in the tank right now beyond the Mission Impossible franchise.  We’ll see if he can reinvent himself again, or else find himself doing cop movies.

• M. Night Shyamalan is taking heat over the racially insensitive casting of his Last Airbender, and the reality is that Hollywood filmmakers are going to continue taking heat on this until they stop second-guessing who the American audience will ‘accept’ in major roles.  Have any of these guys noticed how multi-ethnic America is right now?  Do we really still need white people to ‘sell’ films domestically?

• Check today’s The Wrap to find out where the Hollywood money is going this political season. Funny that Bob Iger is giving money to Jerry Brown, given that Meg Whitman interviewed for Iger’s current job.

• New Malaysian TV show looks for Malaysia’s Next Top Young Imam. Reality TV for the rest of the world.  But is it as good as “Basketball Wives”?

Authentic Russian supermodel.

• Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart is debuting her new red hair just prior to her film’s launch.  I’ve always had mixed feelings about redheads, but I’m rolling with this.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Fox News does some hard news reporting today on the seedier aspects of recruiting Russian supermodels. Who knew?  So here at LFM we’re taking the occasion of posting a picture of former Russian supermodel, Bond girl and Centurion star Olga Kurylenko – just to provide some needed news context to Fox’s story.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

Posted on June 29th, 2010 at 2:49pm.

China Salt-Free? Jolie’s Salt Banned in China

By Jason Apuzzo. Over at Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells is reporting that the People’s Republic of China is currently refusing distribution for the upcoming Angelina Jolie/Phillip Noyce/Sony actioner, Salt.  As Wells puts it, this is:

… [n]ot one of those “scenes must be removed before your film is allowed to play in China” problems, but a “sorry, but no amount of edits will satisfy us” problem. Meaning that Salt is apparently cinema non grata in that country until further notice – no theatrical bookings, no DVDs, no Blurays.  Which, of course, means a huge opportunity for Chinese video pirates and a huge potential loss for Sony Pictures.

As I recall, Wells is tight with Salt director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger), so I’m assuming this story is kosher.

I’m laughing at all this because Sony just did a gigantic co-production with China on Karate Kid – and went so far as to grant the Chinese communists limited editorial control of that film’s content.  Presumably Sony agreed to this in order to grease the rails for future Sony products making their way into China … and now the Chinese have predictably stabbed Sony in the back, now that their travelogue-propaganda piece Karate Kid is already out in theaters.

This is why American filmmakers should never give in to the Chinese communist regime, or to any tyrannical regime when they demand editorial control.  Tough luck, Sony!  You can always film in Tehran, Pyongyang – or maybe just West LA.

Btw, Jolie’s doing an anodyne interview in Vanity Fair right now.  She’s still one of the sexiest women in Hollywood, but a decade of weirdness has taken its toll and frankly she’s looking a little hard …

Posted on June 29th, 2010 at 1:09pm.