Day: August 2, 2010

Hollywood Round-up, 8/3

The new, War on Terror-tinged "Battle: Los Angeles" poster.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Inception was the #1 film at the box office for the 3rd straight weekend. This is unbelievably depressing, and I’m having flashbacks now to Avatar‘s box office run from earlier this year.  Salt slipped to #3, behind Dinner for Schmucks.  Actually, if you go to the cineplex these days, mostly what you’re getting is Cinema for Schmucks.

Sony really should’ve courted Fox News and others of us in the alternative media – far in advance – given how strongly anti-communist Salt is, and given the rather obvious fact that the film’s star is Jon Voight’s daughter.  [Does this stuff really need to be spelled out?]   The film’s somewhat tepid performance – in summer tentpole terms – is now basically killing its chances for big-time success, along with the potential of a franchise.  What a shame.  [Sigh.]

• Battle: Los Angeles has some interesting new posters out, including one (see left) that riffs off the War on Terror.  [Look closely and you’ll see the film’s alien in the background.]  Just last week the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein and I had a kind of on-line discussion over whether the current new crop of sci-fi flicks are reflecting contemporary anxieties about war, terrorism, etc.  I think this poster more or less makes the point, yes?  It’s fascinating to me that while extraordinary movies about the actual terrorist threat like Four Lions struggle to get distribution, Hollywood apparently has no trouble sublimating the exact same anxieties into sci fi projects like this one.  Don’t get me wrong … I think it’s great that they put this stuff into sci fi, because it makes these pictures more relevant to our world – but I would also appreciate it if movies about the actual terrorist threat got a chance, yes?  This is something that, for example, Frank Miller has recently been saying.

• In other fantasy/sci-fi news, the new Frank Miller/Zack Snyder Xerxes may be further along than previously thought, and David Fincher talks today about his possible forthcoming adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  Basically 50% of Hollywood has been attached to a 20,000 Leagues remake at some point.  Also there’s also some minor news today about the forthcoming Jack Ryan reboot Moscow, starring Star Trek‘s Chris Pine.

• BREAKING: Variety says MGM has apparently also been developing its own sci-fi/alien feature, an updated big screen adaptation of The Outer Limits. Our old acquaintance Cale Boyter, who’s been a guest at the Liberty Film Festival, is overseeing this project for MGM.

• The Wall Street Journal has just figured out that foreign audiences are starting to shape what kind of projects get green-lit in Hollywood. Those of us here at LFM would like to congratulate the Journal on this fresh insight!

The curvy Christina Hendricks of "Mad Men."

• The ladies of Mad Men are apparently under orders to keep their curves, and not get too thin! Isn’t this refreshing!  This is ostensibly to preserve the period look of the show, but I think the emaciated look is also getting old.  Jolie didn’t always look convincing in her fight scenes in Salt, for example, because she looked almost as gaunt as Michael Jackson.

• Shocker: more showbiz money still goes to Democrats, by roughly a 73%-27% margin. This isn’t just because of all the liberal messaging in films; it’s also because Republicans rarely encourage artists sympathetic to their side, particularly if those artists happen to be under the age of 80.  You reap what you sow.

• Stallone’s Expendables is tracking well, and is otherwise getting plenty of hype.  I wish I cared.  Nothing I’ve seen about this flick looks even remotely interesting – it just looks like a bad 80’s action film rehash that would normally go straight to DVD.  We’ll see.  I’ll be happy if it does well … but does that mean I have to see it?  [Sigh.]  Stallone’s also making noises about a Rambo prequel that he might direct but not star in.

• Liam Neeson has dropped out of Steven Spielberg’s Abraham Lincoln project. It sounds like this project’s just been too long in development, basically, and there still isn’t even a script.  (Tony Kushner’s writing it.)  I think this film isn’t going to happen, because Spielberg’s doing his World War I flick next and then probably Indy 5.

Erica Cerra wants to play "Wonder Woman."

• David Hasselhoff got roasted the other evening, and former Baywatch girls showed up to participate. That must have been fun.  In related news, some former Baywatch girls are about to get their own reality TV series, just like everybody else!

• Mel Gibson is hiring! Don’t you love this?  Icon Productions is looking for its next batch of interns.  Really what they should be looking for are paralegals.

• Spike Lee is doing a documentary on the BP oil spill, but BP won’t talk to him. Actually I think that’s because of how bad Inside Man was.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Percy Jackson star Erica Cerra says she’d like to play Wonder Woman. I’m glad somebody wants to play that role nowadays!  Erica’s already got a head start on everybody else because she doesn’t have tattoos …

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

Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 6:16pm.

Classic Movie Round-up, 8/2

Talos, from "Jason and the Argonauts."

By Jason Apuzzo. • If you’ve been looking for reasons to move to Blu-ray, you now have them: both Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts and Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux (see here and here) are coming to Blu-ray.  For what it’s worth, Jason and the Argonauts was the first movie I ever owned on DVD – it’s what sold me on the format, actually, and this is the first digital upgrade of that film since the 1990s.  [Footnote: check out Greenbriar Picture show’s fine recent post on the great Ray Harryhausen here.]

Nancy Kovack as Medea in "Argonauts."

On the Apocalypse front, Lionsgate will be releasing the film along with a variety of other American Zoetrope classics in a new deal struck by the two companies.  The best news here is that Hearts of Darkness, the behind-the-scenes documentary by Eleanor Coppola on the making of Apocalypse, will also be included in one of the new Blu-ray sets.

Govindini and I had the pleasure years ago of sitting in on the editing and remixing by Walter Murch of Apocalypse Now Redux – and what an education that was!  I’ve never learned so much about sound mixing in such a brief, concentrated period of time.  As a sound and picture experience, Apocalypse is easily one of the greatest films ever.  So whatever hesitations you’ve had about Blu-ray, jettison them now.  The classics are truly now arriving on this format.

• A new DVD box set, The Kim Novak Collection, is coming out … and the lovely Ms. Novak has a long interview up today over at The New York Post.  What a star!  We’re so glad she’s still around and looking so lovely.

• Some of the very best Errol Flynn action pictures from the World War II period are finally coming to DVD in a new box set.  What took so long?  I’ve owned most of these for years – recorded off Turner Classic Movies – but it’s a shame it’s taken so long to get Desperate Journey, Edge of Darkness, Northern Pursuit, and Uncertain Glory to DVD (another film in this set, Raoul Walsh’s Objective Burma, has already been out for a while).  I’m a lifelong, confirmed Flynn fanatic, for those of you who don’t know.  [Side note: we showed a pristine print of Desperate Journey, featuring Flynn and Ronald Reagan, at the 2004 Liberty Film Festival.]  This box features some neglected Flynn classics – Desperate Journey and Northern Pursuit in particular are really crackling pictures, while Objective Burma is already widely regarded as one of the great World War II action spectacles.  Most of Flynn’s greatest films finally now have decent DVD releases … although there are still a few left that should get better treatment (such as Against All Flags with Maureen O’Hara).

• A handsome new coffee table book about Duke Wayne is being released, called John Wayne: True Grit American.  Click on over and check that one out.

• Several of director Clarence Brown’s movies are just coming to DVD, including Conquest with Greta Garbo, and The Gorgeous Hussy with Joan Crawford.

• Chuck Heston’s early noir thriller Dark City is finally getting a DVD release – it was his first major starring role – along with the underrated Warner Brothers World War II thriller Background to Danger, starring Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet in an adaptation of the Eric Ambler novel.  The film was directed by a favorite of mine, Raoul Walsh, and otherwise stars the lovely Brenda Marshall from The Sea Hawk (who was also at that time Mrs. William Holden).

• Kimberly Lindberg’s has a great piece over at TCM’s Movie Morlocks on photographer Julius Shulman, who was so influential in defining the ‘L.A. modern look.’  Check that out.  I really love Lindberg’s writing.

• On the book front, a new biography is coming out on Josef von Sternberg, the LA Times has a review of the new book Furious Love about the Burton-Taylor romance, and a great-looking new book called Confessions of a Scream Queen is coming out, featuring interviews with (among others) Carla Laemmle, Coleen Gray, Kathleen Hughes, Karen Black, Ingrid Pitt, and Adrienne Barbeau!  Fabulous.  Govindini and I met Carla and Coleen a few years back, and I would love to meet the others – especially Ingrid Pitt!  She played Heidi the Barmaid in Where Eagles Dare.  Yowza.

• New York Times film critic and Libertas reader A.O. Scott takes a look back at the Jean-Luc Godard classic, Contempt this week. It’s one of my favorites from Godard – possibly my all-time favorite.  Or is this simply my overreaction to Bardot?  Tough to say.  One thing’s for sure: Palance is quite a crack-up in that film.  Makes me laugh every time.  I also love how the limp, pitiful husband is a Communist.

• The great Italian writer Cecchi d’Amico has died at age 96 in Rome. She wrote the screenplays for The Bicycle Thief and The Leopard, among many other classics.  Our condolences to her family, and to the Italian film community.

And that’s what’s happening today in the world of classic movies …

Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 2:38pm.

Aint It Cool News Calls Terrorist Satire Four Lions ‘The Comedy of the Year’; Still No U.S. Release

By Jason Apuzzo. As regular LFM readers know, we loved Chris Morris’ striking new comedy about Islamic terrorism, Four Lions (see our glowing Libertas review from when the film unspooled at The LA Film Festival).

Four Lions is currently playing at the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), and a reviewer for Aint It Cool News had this high praise for it:

The day ended with one of my most highly-anticipated films of MIFF, Chris Morris’s FOUR LIONS. There are so many comedians who operate under the assumption that they are “edgy” because they make lots of forced references to things they think are taboo. Chris Morris is one of the few who actually is, shining a sharp, satirical spotlight on our own hypocrisies.

FOUR LIONS, his first film as director and co-writer, is possibly the bravest skewering of cultural mores since LIFE OF BRIAN. When comedy shows or films proudly proclaim they have no political correctness, it usually means they like making fun of a politician’s obesity. FOUR LIONS genuinely discards political correctness, but in an exceptionally smart way, not allowing a single likable character, refusing to present anyone who (a) plays into our own comfortable stereotyped beliefs, or (b) allaying any white or middle-class guilt by having a “Good Muslim” or a “White Politician Who Actually Does Get It”. There are no safe havens in this film, and this — the story of four suicide bombers trying to attack a London target — is all the better for it. I probably missed about 50% of the jokes because I was laughing at the other ones, which is simply an excuse to see it again.

I don’t mind calling it early: FOUR LIONS is the comedy of the year.

We heartily agree.  Do whatever you can to see this film.  Unfortunately one of the things you won’t be able to do is see it in an American theater, because no company has picked it up for distribution here – even though it was a box office hit in the UK, won the audience award at the LA Film Festival, and was even a hit at Sundance.  And this is shameful, because this is an extraordinary film that people should be given the chance to see.

We will continue to bang the drum for this film here at LFM until it gets its American release.

Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 12:46pm.