Day: August 11, 2010

Hollywood Round-up, 8/12

By Jason Apuzzo. • SCI-FI GETS POLITICAL. Some of you may recall my recent exchange with the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein on the political/ideological overtones of Hollywood’s current sci-fi craze.  I think the new trailer (see above) for the forthcoming alien invasion pic Skyline makes this point more vividly than anything I’ve seen, although the poster for Battle: Los Angeles certainly comes close.  [Is there some reason aliens are targeting LA, these days?  Is it the traffic?]

The trailer basically associates the film’s frightening alien invasion of Los Angeles with the ‘invasion’ of the New World by Europeans in the 15th and 16th centuries.  And these associations are spelled out in the trailer by … Dan Rather, and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell!  [By way of quoting Stephen Hawking’s recent comments on the dark possibilities associated with alien contact.]  Talk about ‘on-the-nose’ filmmaking.

So it looks like Skyline will thematically be taking us directly into Avatar territory: i.e., sub-rosa critiques of White European Invaders as the metaphorical ‘aliens’ we really need to fear.  [Sigh.] That’s too bad, because the trailer otherwise looks promising … except for the fact that I’ve already seen this film before, when it was titled War of the Worlds.

One might potentially interpret Skyline as a reverse-riff on the theme of Christian ‘rapture,’ by the way.  Just a thought.

Alien invaders gobbling up innocent citizens of Los Angeles. Expect indigestion.

• In other sci-fi news, Disney/Pixar’s John Carter of Mars has a release date (June 8th, 2012, in 3D); Scarlett Johansson and Blake Lively are currently tussling over a role in the Robert Downey, Jr. sci-fi thriller Gravity (a role turned down by Angelina Jolie after they wouldn’t pay her $20 million fee); and there’s some colorful casting news for George Miller’s forthcoming 3D-native Mad Max: Fury Road – about which I’m getting quite excited.  It turns out that Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, model/actress Riley Keough, has been cast in the film – along with other babes like Zoe Kravitz, Teresa Palmer , Adelaide Clemens and Charlize Theron (of whom I’m not a fan, however).

Elvis' granddaughter up for "Mad Max: Fury Road."

By the way, according to Hollywood Reporter’s HeatVision blog, here’s Fury Road’s storyline: “Keough will play one of the ‘Five Wives,’ a group of women that [Mad Max] must protect from the bad guys.  Zoe Kravitz, Teresa Palmer and Adelaide Clemens are three of other wives.”  This film is looking better by the day – much more enticing than what I was expecting.  Book me in.  Incidentally, since Mad Max is actually protecting women in this film, it’s now obvious to me why Mel Gibson won’t be playing Max anymore.

• The Expendables is coming out soon, and Stallone says he’s already got a ‘radical’ idea for a sequel – provided this first film does well.  I’m guessing Stallone sends his team after Bin Laden.  You heard it here first.

• Actor James Caan tells Fox News that he’s an “ultra conservative” – which is ironic, given that Caan is currently in the news because he’s starring in a movie that more-or-less glamorizes the porn industry.  Just sayin’.

While on the Fox News front, incidentally … the network really earned its name today by having 3 Victoria’s Secret models on as part of a hard-hitting, investigative segment on a new line of brassieres.  It really was a great segment – I learned a lot.

• In a recent post entitled, “Christopher Nolan’s Dead Women,” Culture Snob’s Jeff Ignatius notes something that I’ve detected, as well:

In at least four of Christopher Nolan’s seven feature films, the plots and/or fixations are initiated or propelled by the death of a man’s spouse or girlfriend. Considering that Nolan’s primary thematic interest is obsession, isn’t this a little strange?

Yes, it is.  Ignatius later dances around the obvious question: namely, whether some, dark misogynistic impulse is at the imaginative core of Nolan’s work.  I wish more people would take note of this, because it’s a deeply disturbing aspect not only of Nolan’s work, but of the fandom that worships him.

• Want to see the Hollywood breakdown of who’s donating to Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown? Interesting oddity: Anschutz Entertainment giving $45,400 to Jerry Brown.  Also: Haim Saban giving $25,900 to Whitman, even though Saban’s perhaps the Democratic Party’s biggest donor.

• Nikki Finke talks with Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks today. Best exchange:

DH: Is it weird to be a sex symbol?

CH: You know, the good part about that is maybe I’ve contributed to helping women appreciate themselves the way they are, that we don’t all have to be a Size 2 to be beautiful. Anything I’ve done to help change people’s minds about that is something to be proud of, I think.

We share her pride.

Kelly Brook of "Piranha 3D."

• The new trailer for the Christina Aguilera/Cher/Stanley Tucci Burlesque runs through about every biopic cliché in the book, but the funniest part to me is the ending when you learn that Burlesque is going to be out in time for Thanksgiving!  Yes, perfect Thanksgiving fare! I know I’ll be there, right after passing the gravy boat.

In related news, Katy Perry also has a new video out today for Teenage Dream, which somehow manages to be both racy and dull at the same time.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Piranha 3D’s Kelly Brook has a new interview out today in which she reveals that Piranha 3D’s French director Alexandre Aja discovered her in an LA restaurant … while she was eating fish and chips.

The fish get their revenge on August 20th.

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

Posted on August 11th, 2010 at 3:52pm.

Mad Men Season 4, Episode 3: “The Good News”

By Jennifer Baldwin. One of the things I love about Mad Men is the tone of the show. It’s dispassionate, restrained, observant. In its first season, the show had a tendency to get a little condescending towards the era, but thankfully, show runner Matthew Weiner has managed to pull back on this tendency and just let the era “be” — he doesn’t flinch from showing the faults of these characters and their society, but he also doesn’t preach at us about how horrible these people and their world were. He just lets the world of the show play out, and it’s up to us how we judge things. Compared to other shows and movies set in the 1960s, Mad Men is one of the least preachy.

The increasingly detached, observant tone of Mad Men is what helps make it so fascinating, both as drama and as social commentary. This third episode of Season Four is no exception. The characters and their choices are given to us with very little commentary or editorializing from the writers and it’s up to us, the audience, to decide how we feel about them.

Anna and Don.

At its most basic, Mad Men is a character study. People who’ve tried just watching one episode here or there find they can’t get into the show, but that’s because it’s hard to jump in midstream when you’re watching the lives of fully developed people unfold before your eyes. It takes time to get to know someone, and the characters of Mad Men — the life blood of the show — are as multi-faceted and complex as fictional characters get. It takes time to get to know them.

This week’s episode, in fact, made me feel something I never thought I’d feel for a character I never thought I would like: Greg, Joan’s husband (a character I had previously nicknamed “Doctor McRapist Jerkface”). But somehow, just as they did with Pete over the course of the first couple of seasons, the Mad Men writers have made Dr. Greg sympathetic. When he bandages Joan’s finger after she cuts herself in the kitchen — the way he calms her down, comforts her, takes charge — it was endearing. Suddenly, a character that I couldn’t wait to leave for Vietnam so he could get killed was a character I kinda, sorta, unbelievably cared about. It was a moment that made me realize that Joan married him not just for the stability and because he was a good-looking doctor, but because he has a heart, that she saw something good in him, even though he had committed a despicable act against her (the rape scene from Season Two). It’s the kind of character moment that Mad Men excels at:  a seemingly “bad” character doing a good thing.

Lane.

Of course, that’s the whole appeal of a character like Don Draper; a character we’re fascinated by and care about, even as he does some pretty bad things. This week’s episode gave us the two sides of Don: the caring, sensitive, wounded Dick Whitman and the swinging, boozy, divorcee businessman Don Draper. When he visits Anna Draper in California and finds out she has terminal cancer (and that she hasn’t been told about it), we witness his heart breaking before our eyes.

But then Don returns to New York, takes recently-left-by-his-wife Lane Pryce under his wing, and the two go out for a night of drinking, excess, and eventually, prostitutes. Don echoes the line from last week — about the conflict between doing what we want versus doing what’s expected of us — and he encourages Lane to do what he wants and not what’s expected of him. Lane sleeps with the prostitute that Don has gotten for him; he’s chosen self over duty. Lane won’t be jetting off to England any time soon to try to repair his marriage.

And so, another thread in the fabric of a stable society is thereby cut. “Don Draper” seems to be winning out over “Dick Whitman” this season. And he’s bringing characters like Lane Pryce with him. It remains to be seen whether these two will find any lasting happiness on the path they have chosen. Welcome to 1965.

One final thought: Don and Lane really should have gone to see The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of my favorite films, instead of Godzilla vs. The Thing (or Gamera, or whatever Japanese monster movie that was). At least they didn’t go see It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Posted on August 11th, 2010 at 12:20pm.

The Tyranny Of Likeability


By The Joker. Studio note number 63: “The protagonist isn’t likeable enough.”

My response: “Likeability?  That didn’t stop the studio from hiring you.”

Welcome to The Tyranny of Likeability.

You’ve just read a very common studio note that suggests the basic problem with today’s compulsive over-tinkering on comedies. Sometimes characters aren’t supposed to be likeable. Sometimes that’s why they’re funny.

Take Dinner for Schmucks. Based on the vastly superior French film, Le Diner de Cons (“The Dinner Game”) – written and directed by Francis Veber – Dinner for Schmucks is about a group of mean-spirited executives who invite idiots over for dinner in order to make fun of them.

In other words, the film is about a group of actual schmucks.

"Please like me."

Surprise, surprise, after the French film was remade by the studio, test audiences found the executives to be “too unlikeable.”  The studio panicked, the film was recut, and voilà, the characters were suddenly redeemable.

Too bad the movie wasn’t funny anymore.

Part of the problem here is relying on test audiences and focus groups.  A studio questionnaire will literally ask, “What was your least favorite scene?” Invariably, audiences choose scenes in which something bad happens. (I’m sure if they had NRG screenings in the 1970’s, the audience’s least favorite scene in Rocky would have been: “when Rocky loses the fight.”) The studio interprets this as a scene that needs to be fixed instead of a scene that merely evokes negative emotions (perhaps masterfully). And since the studio is afraid of films testing badly, they force absurd changes on the story.

Because as I mentioned previously, fear is what rules Hollywood.  And when people are afraid, they want to be liked.  Call it The Tyranny Of Likeability.

Posted on August 11th, 2010 at 10:02am.