Category: 1. Jason Apuzzo

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.

Watch Disco & Atomic War Now!

Watch more free documentaries

By Jason Apuzzo. A film from the recent LA Film Festival that we loved was Disco & Atomic War.  Disco is an extraordinary new Estonian documentary about the so-called ’soft power’ influence of American and Western culture on the minds of Soviet citizens living in Estonia during the Cold War, who were able through clever means to watch Finnish television broadcasts emanating from just over the border. As Disco informs us (in amusing detail), American popular culture – especially in the form of glamorous TV shows like “Dallas,” or movies like Star Wars and even Emmanuelle – was deeply feared by Soviet authorities due to the ideas and expectations such programming planted in the minds of Soviet citizens. This led to amusing co-optings, such as the Soviets creating their own officially sanctioned disco instruction course for TV(!).

You can read the LFM review of Disco and Atomic War from the LA Film Festival, and also read LFM Contributor Joe Bendel’s recent review on Joe’s personal site.

This is documentary filmmaking at its finest, and easily one of the best – and most drily amusing – films I’ve seen this past year.  We want to thank the folks at SnagFilms for making the full-length film available for everyone to see, for free.  Also: special thanks to SnagFilms for following Libertas on Twitter!

Posted on July 30th, 2010 at 1:58pm.

Hollywood Round-up, 7/30

DiCaprio is fed up with Mel Gibson.

By Jason Apuzzo. • The big story right now is that Leonardo DiCaprio is apparently dropping out of Mel Gibson’s forthcoming Viking epic due to Mel’s recent … do I need to tell you?  As I said when this story first broke about Gibson’s ranting and physical abuse, he wasn’t going to survive this scandal.  And now we’re seeing it.  For what it’s worth, I think DiCaprio has made the right decision.

• In the wake of the recent debate here at LFM over alien-themed projects, Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel has a new screenwriter, who also happens to be the guy working on both the new Star Trek films and also Cowboys & Aliens.  Should the same guy be doing all this?  Incidentally, Ridley Scott is also apparently circling around Gucci, which may star Angelina Jolie as Patrizia Reggiani – who was sentenced to 29 years in prison after being convicted of plotting the murder of her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, after he’d taken control of the family’s fashion empire.  It would be an alluring femme fatale role for Jolie – and I’m sure the opportunity to be around Gucci products has absolutely nothing to do with her interest in this project.

• In other Jolie-related news, what’s with all these sexy Russian spies?  The latest is Anna Fermanova, a young Russian beautician now facing a federal felony charge in Texas for allegedly trying to smuggle night vision scopes to Moscow.  Unreal.  I’ve never seen such a bizarre run of coincidental publicity for a movie, ever.  This would be like the Russians introducing a new stealth fighter just in time for Firefox.

• Another very big alien project just got announced: Guillermo del Toro is set to direct and James Cameron produce a 3D adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s famous novel, At the Mountains of Madness.  I would love to see this, even given my current intense displeasure with Cameron.  At the Mountains of Madness is one of my favorite novels, and is one of the most influential science fiction novels of all time.  You could say, in a sense, that it already has been adapted by way of such films as The Thing and Alien … but it would be wonderful to see a new take on the original material, provided everybody is respectful toward Lovecraft’s novel (which I assume they would be).  Del Toro seems to have the right florid sensibility for this.

JWoww in Harpers Bazaar.

• In other sci-fi news, Len Wiseman wants to do a remake of Total Recall.  Yawn.  And there are some new set pics out from Transformers 3.  Also check out director Alex Aja’s fun interview about Piranha 3D.  I’m so ready for that film.  It’s my treat for having sat through Inception.

• Obama says he doesn’t actually know who Snooki is. But I’ll bet he knows who JWoww is, right?  Come on Barry, fess up!  Don’t go on The View and pretend you don’t know these things.

• Did you know that Paul Giamatti will be playing Nikita Krushchev, in a new HBO movie?  The title of the movie is K Blows His Top, about Krushchev’s famous visit to the United States – during which he blew his top in public after his Disneyland trip was cancelled.  Tom Hanks is producing on this one.  Hanks recently blew his top when The Pacific was released.

• Carla Bruni just started shooting Woody Allen’s next film … and she blew her first scene!  Apparently she looked into the camera.  Maybe that’ll end up on the DVD.

• In the annals of overhyped bloggers, nobody quite takes the cake like Olivia Munn.  Today she had this elegant, insightful remark to make about Wonder Woman’s new costume: “She doesn’t need to wear a f**king star to be a f**king patriot.”  Thank you, Olivia.  You and your fanboy compatriots certainly elevate everything we do on the internet.

Author/celebrity Katie Price.

• In the wake of Oliver Stone’s recent impolitic musings on the Jewish people (ahem), Haim Saban wants Stone’s 10-part series “A Secret History of America” to be pulled from Showtime.  Ari Emanuel is apparently joining him in this effort.  I actually think Les Moonves might cave here.  Saban is one the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, and heads will roll if Stone’s show airs … as they should.

• Libertas favorite Jessica Simpson may be joining American Idol as a judge. Hooray!  Can you imagine how funny that’s going to be?  [UPDATE: It’s going to be Jennifer Lopez, instead.  Won’t be as fun, but it works for me.]

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … in America we have Snooki, Kim Kardashian, Heidi Montag, etc.  In Britain all these women are more or less rolled into one as Katie Price, who has a new novel out right now called Paradise.  Price’s last novel Sapphire hit #1 in the UK, and she’s already written about 6 children’s books and 3 autobiographies – while still only in her 30s.  One thing’s for certain: the woman is building up a substantial body of work.  So to speak.

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

Posted on July 30th, 2010 at 1:13am.

Libertas Responds to The LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein … on the Alien/Communist Invaders in our Midst!

Daniel Craig in "Iron Man" director Jon Favreua's "Cowboys & Aliens."

By Jason Apuzzo. Many thanks to the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein for noticing what we’ve been talking about a lot here recently at LFM, namely the new trend toward alien invasion pictures – both of the Hollywood and indie variety.  As I mentioned in my Hollywood news round-up from Tuesday, and have otherwise discussed on countless occasions here recently, we’re facing an interesting new wave of films that feature villainous aliens, communists and even space Nazis (!) in our midst.

Aaron Eckart combats aliens in "Battle: Los Angeles."

The sheer number of major films following this trend is striking.  On the alien invasion front, we’ve got Jon Favreau’s forthcoming Cowboys & Aliens with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig; Battle: Los Angeles with Aaron Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez; J.J. Abrams’/Steven Spielberg’s Super 8 (coming soon on the heels of Abrams’ Cloverfield); Oren Peli’s Area 51; the feature film remakes of The Thing and The Outer Limits; Robert Evans’ feature film remake of Gerry Anderson’s influential British TV series UFO; Spielberg’s forthcoming TV series Falling Skies; the ongoing alien invasion series V; Ridley Scott’s forthcoming reboot of the Alien franchise; the untitled Bobby Glicker-Michael Bay alien invasion flick that just got picked up by Paramount … and in the indie scene, there’s Skyline (to be released this fall by Universal), Gareth Edwards’ Monsters, Iron Sky (still in production) and The Mercury Men (the hotly anticipated web series that was just at Comic-Con) and a few others I know about in the pipeline.  And really we shouldn’t forget the obvious recent examples of Avatar, the Transformers series and Predators, all of which involve intense warfare between humans and aliens.

Angelina Jolie fighting communist infiltrators in "Salt."

What’s interesting is how this trend toward alien invasion is being matched by a new trend toward communist invasion and/or infiltration scenarios.  We just had the Angelina Jolie thriller about retro-communist sleeper agents in our midst, Salt (we loved it here at LFM); at some point in the fall or early next year we’re presumably going to get MGM’s Chinese communist invasion thriller Red Dawn; there’s the ambitious indie web series Red Storm; not to mention the recent Soviet espionage thriller Farewell (read our glowing review); and I even detect certain Cold War themes evident in things like the recent Karate Kid remake (set in communist China) and the forthcoming Mao’s Last Dancer.  [In this context I should also mention Chris Gorak’s forthcoming alien invasion thriller The Darkest Hour, which is actually set in Moscow.]

I locate the beginning of this recent trend with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (a movie I loved, by the way) – which managed to feature both aliens and Soviet communist infiltrators, who are intent on using alien technology for mind-control purposes against the West.

So what’s going on here?  Here’s what the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein thinks:

This sudden obsession with alien invaders has me wondering: Why now? Trends usually happen for a reason, even if it isn’t always clear at the time what that reason might be. There were a host of similar alien invader films in the early-mid 1950s (my personal favorite being “The Thing”), which film historians theorize were inspired by fears of the U.S. being invaded, either physically or ideologically, by communism. If you get two film professors together and let ’em watch the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” they’ll argue over the hidden meanings of the film for weeks on end.

But what’s up with all these new films? What new hidden fear do we have that is being sublimated into our movies? Glenn Beck, for one, seems almost grotesquely overwhelmed by fears of all sorts of hidden conspiracies, but I doubt that whatever is bugging him is the same thing that’s bugging this generation of filmmakers. Could the collapse of the economy have spooked so many Americans that it’s created an intense level of fear and unrest that is being channeled into film projects? And, of course, there’s always the possibility (WOO-HOO) that there really are a few aliens poking around, looking to abduct a few of us. I guess anything’s possible.

My own opinion, more or less along the lines Patrick describes, is that we are seeing a revival of the 1950’s anti-communist sensibility (Crystal Skull was even set in the 1950s) that’s getting sublimated into fantastical fears of domestic alien invasion.  And I think all of this was more or less predictable, as our society gets increasingly re-engineered along progressive-liberal/pseudo-futuristic lines, and as we face an increasingly hostile and dangerous threat from nuclear-armed terrorists and/or their client states.  What’s more, this trend is being super-charged by James Cameron’s recent revival of that old, stand-by technology that emerged directly from 1950s science fiction: 3D.  One thinks here in this context of such 1950s 3D classics as It Came From Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon.

In "Crystal Skull," Soviet agent Cate Blanchett hunts alien technology.

[I should mention, incidentally, that the best analysis of this 1950s anti-communist/alien invasion mentality certainly comes in Peter Biskind’s marvelous book, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. Biskind goes into this stuff in great detail in close-readings of Them!, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, etc. I can’t recommend Biskind’s book highly enough if you want to understand the mentality depicted in these films.]

And so ultimately this is a trend that I lustily endorse … with one proviso: pace this return to the 1950s sensibility, does this mean we can now go back to those optimistic bosoms and/or brassieres of that era?  Because the problem with most of these films – Salt very much excluded – is that they just don’t have the 3D feminine firepower, so to speak, that they should.  And even in Salt we never see Angelina in a dress!  Which is really a crime.

Kathleen Hughes, from 1953's "It Came From Outer Space" in 3D.

But there’s more to be said about this revival of the 1950s/Cold War mentality, actually.  I think the filmmaking world is gradually coming around to the side of freedom.  It’s happening in fits and starts, and sometimes awkwardly – but it is happening.  There’s no way that movies like Salt or Red Dawn or Four Lions or Mao’s Last Dancer or The Infidel would be getting made, otherwise.  It’s something that we’re talking about all the time here at Libertas, and I think this is a trend very much to be celebrated.  [We even just posted today about Frank Miller’s new project Holy Terror, which pits a superhero called ‘The Fixer’ against Al Qaeda baddies; this follows directly on the heels of Frank’s quasi-metaphorical look at the current War on Terror in the forthcoming Xerxes.]

So for every occasion nowadays when a Captain America or Wonder Woman get their patriotism downgraded by Hollywood censors (and, yes, censorship is what’s happening there), there are now counter-examples where freedom – and America’s role in promoting it – is being championed.  And that’s a very positive sign.

Some of you, for example, may be wondering why we haven’t been harping on the latest scandals involving Oliver Stone or Roman Polanski here.  The reason, in part, is because these guys are old and irrelevant and very much out-of-step with what’s going on in the filmmaking world right now.  These trends that we’re talking about here toward invasion and/or infiltration scenarios are major trends that are affecting what projects get funding at the moment – particularly among the younger, more active crowd of filmmakers.

And so on with the invasion!  Just don’t forget the brassieres.

Posted on July 29th, 2010 at 2:54pm.