By Jason Apuzzo. Tomorrow brings Tron: Legacy, Disney’s $320 million attempt (including marketing costs) to ‘reboot’ a sci-fi franchise that never was. Naturally we will be reviewing it here at Libertas.
In the meantime, I’m wondering whether Tron will even be as good as this relatively quiet little sci-fi short above, called “Modern Times,” that was apparently made by some UK filmmakers for peanuts. It just arrived on Vimeo about a week ago.
And below, incidentally, I’ve put the Tron-ified Modern Times from Charlie Chaplin that filmmaker Nick Tierce did recently for the AintItCoolNews contest.
By Jason Apuzzo. We’ve gotten out of the habit here at Libertas of showing you short films, and I wanted to get back to that when we have the opportunity.
This new short film above from a group of Indian animation students has won a variety of awards, and was just uploaded to Vimeo about two weeks ago. Its subject matter is terrorism, and fears associated with the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. The film is interesting, and unpredictable. Make sure to watch it all the way to the end.
The premise of the film is simple and powerful, as with any good short film. A guy is traveling home on a late night Mumbai train. The passenger car is empty, except for one sleepy passenger. Suddenly, a man who matches a description of a terrorist – carrying a briefcase – boards the train and decides to sit directly in front of our protagonist. Suspense ensues …
The interesting question the short seems to raise is: whose expectations are being played upon here – the passenger’s, or the audience’s? Another way of putting it is: is the title intended ironically, or not?
For more information on the film, visit its Facebook page.
By Jason Apuzzo. When you’re the biggest female movie star in the world, and your personal man-servant is Brad Pitt, you can order up a film like The Tourist – more or less as you would order up room service at The Ritz.
That’s the ‘truth,’ such as it is, behind the new Angelina Jolie star vehicle that opens today, co-starring – technically, at least – Johnny Depp, and directed (so the advertising claims) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
Because if the phrase ‘vanity project’ has any meaning, then it applies with full force in describing The Tourist.
That’s not necessarily such a bad thing, in so far as Ms. Jolie is a genuine star – albeit, occasionally a star in the same way that Medusa was a ‘star’ of Greek mythology, earning her points by way of force rather than charm. But in the strange world we live in, in which people like Sandra Bullock or Reese Witherspoon are routinely and incorrectly referred to as ‘stars’ (rather than as what they are, which is ‘actresses’) Angelina Jolie is the genuine article, and The Tourist only confirms that. If there ever was a woman the camera loves as she walks into a crowded ballroom, or as she skeptically raises an eyebrow at a would-be suitor, or as she fixes an appraising gaze on a man she intends to possess – and destroy? – then it’s Angelina Jolie.
The problem is, star vehicles don’t always make for good films – and at a certain point, they also corrode the star’s image. (Ask John Travolta about that.) The Tourist is almost – if not quite – a disaster, a woeful and expensive attempt to mimic charming romantic espionage capers of the past like North by Northwest, Charade or Arabesque; and in the generally misogynistic calculus of today’s Hollywood, Jolie likely can’t afford many more films like it.
Angelina Jolie, with some guy.
There’s more to The Tourist than that, though. There’s also a kind of snarky, dismissive tone taken by the film toward America and Americans that left me with a bad taste in my mouth. More on that below. The bottom line is that whereas I was ready to pass this film off as a harmless failure, an expensive lark – now I’m actively rooting for it to fail.
Frankly, I hope The Tourist tanks.
I’ll go through the motions and describe the film’s ‘plot,’ although ‘plot’ in this film is strictly an afterthought. We start with Jolie, who’s in Paris being surveilled by Scotland Yard for reasons as yet unknown. The Scotland Yard team is led by Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton (highly underrated as James Bond, I might add) – just two members of this film’s expensive supporting cast, which also includes Steven Berkoff and Rufus Sewell. Jolie gives Scotland Yard the slip, and finds herself on a train bound for Venice where she picks up Depp as a decoy to keep her pursuers guessing. Complicating matters is that a crime lord (Berkoff) who’s also pursuing Jolie mistakes Depp for a criminal who recently made off with about a billion dollars’ worth of his dirty money. Double-crosses, pseudo-adventure, predictable revelations and passing glances at romance ensue.
What non-chemistry looks like.
A few other things ensue, as well. One of the film’s motifs is that of Depp acting out as a bumbling, graceless and naive American in one of Europe’s most exotic and resplendent cities: Venice. (It’s simultaneously one of Europe’s grimiest and crassly commercialized cities; even Goethe was complaining about it back in the 1790s, long before there were Americans around to ruffle anybody’s feathers.) Depp plays the 2010 version of the ‘ugly American’ overseas, although in this case he’s more like the bumbling, gauche American – and The Tourist tries to play his ‘fish-out-of-water’ status for as many cheap laughs as possible.
It’s pathetic, and none of it works. It also happens to be obnoxious – a ‘look at the dancing American monkey’ routine – and immediately reawakened my dormant contempt for all-things-Depp.
By why restrict my venom to Depp? How about the director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck? You can stick a fork in him. His 2007 film The Lives of Others was a breath of fresh air on a challenging, politically incorrect subject (i.e., the legacy of communism in Europe). Whatever good-will he established with that film has now been swiftly squandered – and for what? To play personal valet to big-dollar American movie stars on a European holiday? To indulge in cheap anti-Americanism, so he can fit in better with the Malibu gentry?
A fairy-tale Venice, with no tale to tell.
Donnersmarck does not appear to have ‘directed’ his stars here at all, actually. Perhaps he was over-awed by the talent suddenly put at his disposal. Jolie swans through the film doing her usual routine – which is fine, it’s a good routine, except that she lacks the vulnerability here that she shows in her better roles. As for Depp, he really needed to be directed because – conventional wisdom to the contrary – he is neither Cary Grant nor Laurence Olivier, and needed to bring more discipline to his performance (beginning with cutting his hair, and getting a shave) in order to be convincing as a math teacher from Wisconsin.
The deeper problem here, though, is that Hollywood is long out of practice making films like this – and it shows. The Tourist feels like a tourist ride through other, better films – films with higher stakes (as during the ideological struggle of the Cold War; one thinks here of Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews), or with more style (say, Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik). Donnersmarck doesn’t want to take too many chances here, though, and potentially risk his shiny new Hollywood career; ironically, his career may now get scuttled by this film.
The temptation to ‘go Hollywood’ is a strong one, one that only the most willful and stubborn can withstand. It’s probably very tempting even for an Oscar-winner like Donnersmarck, with serious things on his mind, to become – in effect – little more than another member of Angelina Jolie’s livery.
There are no doubt worse fates, but some of us were hoping for more from him.
By Jason Apuzzo. • Tron is approaching, a wave that’s looking smaller as it approaches shore. The film is tracking poorly; it’s also getting mixed reviews thus far (see here and here) … oh, and the total cost of the film, with marketing? Apparently around $320 million. Plus, people are starting to scratch their heads about the fact that this is the debut feature for the film’s director, Joseph Kosinski (see interviews with him here and here), whose background is in architecture and design rather than in drama or literature – you know, those old-fashioned disciplines that involve human beings.
Boomer New Age morality tale?
So, what are we about to get here with Tron? I’m guessing something stylish and dull – with a dash of retro-liberalism (of the anti-corporate variety) to keep the Boomers happy. (Incidentally, there’s some speculation that this new film may already be subtly setting up the corporate villain for the sequel … )
In the meantime, Olivia Wilde continues to flaunt herself (see here), and otherwise make herself out to be the face of the production. As annoying as she is, that’s probably a good idea given how flat Garrett Hedlund seems, and how spaced-out Jeff Bridges seems in his interviews about the film (see here). Somewhat more fun are the Daft Punk guys, whose “Derezzed” video just hit.
More sinister, however, are inferences from several people (see here and here) that Disney is psuedo-suppressing access to the charming, old version of Tron while the new film gets its marketing binge. That’s certainly an ironic development for a movie that’s supposedly a sub rosa critique of ‘fascism’ and enforced sameness. (In fairness, the old film just got remastered and will be getting a Blu-ray release in 2011.)
Incidentally, whatever happened to that Path to 9/11 DVD, Disney?
Beau Garrett in "Tron: Legacy." Maybe she knows where Disney's "Path to 9/11" DVD went.
I’m not sure how much juice the Transformers series still has, really, but we’ll probably learn something from that trailer. Footnote: Megan Fox is really seeming out-of-sight/out-of-mind right now.
Also, Nikki Finke noticed today that the one-sheet for Dreamworks’ Cowboys & Aliens looks a lot like the one-sheet Dreamworks’ other alien invasion thriller, I Am Number 4. Oops.
They’ve since put out a new poster, although it still has the same feel.
I’m getting bad vibes about this project. Cowboys right now is looking like one of those All Star teams in basketball or baseball that looks great on paper but doesn’t play well. We’ll see.
• Ridley’s Scott’s Alien prequels have been pushed back to 2013 and 2014. What’s more annoying, however, is that Olivia Wilde is suddenly in the mix to play the lead. PLEASE STOP CASTING THIS PERSON. She’s already in Tron, Cowboys & Aliens and the Logan’s Run knockoff Now (which also just halted production) … and now Alien? Look, I haven’t seen Tron yet but I’ve seen enough of House to know that she’s not that good, besides which she’s almost as abrasive as Natalie Portman.
The new poster for "Apollo 18."
• I Am Bored by I Am Number 4, but it’s marketing binge has begun. This alien invader thriller – also from Michael Bay – has a new poster, the film will apparently be converted to IMAX (why?), and there are new interviews out with the director (here) and babes Teresa Palmer (here) and Dianna Agron (here). Basically this looks like another movie about a WASP teenage guy with Special Powers. Never seen that before.
• On the Creature Invasion Front: Troll Hunter will be having its world premiere at Sundance; besides having one of the greatest titles in the history of the cinema, Piranha 3DD now also has a release date (September 16th); and David Ellis’ untitled 3D shark thriller recently got picked up for distribution. So there you go: sharks, piranhas and trolls.
• In the time since our last Invasion Alert!we’ve lost the great Leslie Nielsen from Forbidden Planet. Our condolences to his family; he certainly will be missed.
• On the Home Video Front, some classics from Roger Corman are finally coming to DVD: Not of this Earth, War of the Satellites and Attack of the Crab Monsters (not as bad as it sounds). Also: have I told you people that I caved and bought the whole first season of the new V? I’m definitely enjoying it thus far (here, by the way, is a review of the Complete Season 1 on DVD).
• It was both funny and sad to read about the Skyline guys’ surprised reaction to the torrent of abuse that film received on-line. Apparently they couldn’t understand all the trash-talking because, as they put it, “Brett Ratner liked it!”
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … I finally got around to watching the sci-fi music video “The Ghost Inside” that Christina Hendricks did this summer (see below). It’s a little odd, and slow … but it’s got Christina Hendricks in it as a robot with detachable parts, so how bad could it be – right?
And that’s what’s happening today on the Alien Invasion Front!
Former "Baywatch" star Donna Derrico, targeted by the TSA.
By Jason Apuzzo. Former Baywatch babe Donna Derrico, who once posed for Playboy, is apparently angry that she was subjected to a full body scan at LAX airport.
Libertas readers should free to conduct their own ‘full body scan’ of Ms. Derrico above (an extra service we provide here at Libertas). She certainly looks dangerous, doesn’t she?
Well, she’s also hopping mad. According to Fox News:
After being subjected to the scan by TSA agents at Los Angeles International Airport, “I noticed that the male TSA agent who had pulled me out of line was smiling and whispering with two other TSA agents and glancing at me,” D’Errico told AOL News. “I was outraged.”
D’Errico also fumed over the fact that the TSA agent, who did not give her the option of getting a pat-down search instead, had said that the reason she was selected was ” ‘Because you caught my eye, and they’ — pointing to the other passengers — ‘didn’t,’ ” she said.
Leo would be wise to keep an eye on his girlfriend (not a strenuous task), who – given the TSA’s current threat assessments – may be wanting to give Ms. Refaeli a very thorough examination. After all, she certainly seems to fit the TSA’s current ‘threat profile’!
By Jason Apuzzo. To complement our new Invasion Alert! series, today we are introducing a new series here at Libertas called Cold War Updates!
Have you noticed that the Cold War is back? At the movies at least, the Cold War seems to be returning in a big way. As LFM’s own Govindini Murty reported in her recent Human Events article on “The Cinema’s Surprising New Anti-Communist Films,” both Hollywood and the indie film scene have been producing films large and small about the communist threat in the past year – whether of the Chinese, North Korean, ex-Soviet or even homegrown-American variety. And these trends are not only continuing – they’re actually accelerating.
Angelina Jolie in "The Tourist."
It seems that each week new films, TV shows, documentaries and even video games are being green-lit featuring sexy spies, villainous Russians, jaded CIA operatives, the space race, unguarded uranium stockpiles, communist oppression … all that good stuff we remember from that nobler and altogether sexier period – the Cold War era – with its Bond girls, martinis, microfilm, Whittaker Chambers, Dean Martin, JFK … and Ronald Reagan.
I personally, for example, am currently working on a 7-hour, 3D IMAX film adaptation of the epic Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky World Chess Championship match of 1972!
(Just kidding.)
Anyway, what do all these new films portend? I’ll leave that for readers to decide (although in days to come I will be advancing certain theories), but I’ve decided to put together this regular Cold War feature to cover these new developments – or as many of them as we can. So grab a martini, plug in your Fender Telecaster and enjoy!
Two brief notes: there will likely be some occasional crossover of this series with Invasion Alerts!, as some of the new sci-fi films coming down the pike appear to have Cold War themes in them.
And of course, it goes without saying that Cold War Updates! will always feature the sexiest women around. Would you expect anything less from Libertas?
“It’s a really interesting challenge and Chris is an amazing actor” explained di Bonaventura. “So I’m confident we found the right guy.”
However, the producer claims the bigger challenge will be attracting a young audience to the film… “Tapping into Ryan’s was always a sophisticated world – it’s slightly adult. How do you bring those adults who expect that kind of sophistication and yet how do you also bring a young audience to it? That’s an interesting business challenge and a creative challenge – how do you weigh what’s in front of you and put it all together”
My take on this, for what it’s worth, is that the younger audience will come – provided you don’t gratuitously pander to them. (The folks doing Tron, incidentally, may be discovering that too late – if we’re to believe how poorly that film is tracking.) In any case, I’m looking forward to what Bonaventura’s cooking up for this reboot – this being one of the few series that actually deserves being brought back. Incidentally, Chris Pine will soon be starring (with Angela Bassett and Reese Witherspoon) as yet another CIA spy in Fox’s McG-directed This Means War.
Poster for the Joel Surnow minseries.
• A poster is already out for producer Joel Surnow’s quasi-controversial new miniseries, The Kennedys. What do you think? It seems to play it straight. The series stars Greg Kinnear is JFK, Katie Holmes as Jackie, Barry Pepper as Bobby Kennedy, and Tom Wilkinson as Joe Kennedy. Chris Diamantopoulos apparently plays Frank Sinatra. I don’t know if anybody plays Dean Martin, but somebody should. In any event, our best wishes to Joel on this 8-part series that airs on the History Channel next year.
• There are new interviews out today with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Tourist. (There are also new photos from the film here and here.) I’m liking everything I’m seeing about this film right now, although I’m alarmed that the film is apparently tracking poorly (much like Tron). I do think there’s an audience for an old-school, Hitchcockian thriller like this, but they’ll need to market the film to people who are above the age of 16. Do the studios know how to do that anymore?
• I’m annoyed to report that the obnoxious Eugene Jarecki, director of Why We Fight (definitely not the Capra version), has a documentary about Ronald Reagan in this upcoming Sundance Film Festival. Personal note here: I have three acquaintances who are working on no less than three different Reagan movies right now, and I implore all of you dudes to hurry up! before people like Jarecki are allowed to define The Gipper in perpetuity. They’d love to do it if they could.
• On the DVD front, the famous (and infamous) Red Scare thriller My Son John is finally getting a release, courtesy of the Warner Archive Collection. (It will also be available via Netflix streaming.) I have mixed feelings about that film, largely because its gifted star, Robert Walker, died before he could complete his performance – which seemed to be an interesting expansion on what he’d just done in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (and footage from Strangers was ultimately used to complete My Son John). Had Walker been able to finish the film, I think it might’ve been a lot better than it currently is, even if the film nonetheless has its moments (particularly those between Walker and his mother, played by Helen Hayes).
• AND FINALLY … it somehow seemed fitting that our first Cold War Update! pinup would be an actual Russian spy – the increasingly cheeky (so to speak) Anna Chapman – who’s currently paying her bills by posing for Russian Maxim … which should, incidentally, tell you everything you need to know about how very different the new Cold War is going to be from the old. (There’s a lot of money to be made this time!)
And that’s what’s happening today in the Cold War!
