Category: 1. Jason Apuzzo

Hollywood Round-up, 7/20

"The Hills'" Kristin Cavallari at the "Salt" premiere.

By Jason Apuzzo. • It’s been a great week for Russian spies.  Yesterday here in LA we had the Salt premiere (see here and here).  A lot of big names showed up to this premiere – including the estimable patriarch of the Jolie/Voight family, Jon Voight; I wasn’t aware, incidentally, that Russian model Olya Zueva had snuck her way onto the cast of Salt – an added attraction, clearly.  But word also comes today that in her ongoing rush to cash-in on her notoriety, Russian (not so super-)spy Anna Chapman may have some exciting new opportunities opening up for herself in the entertainment world.  Ahem.

Without giving anything away, let’s just say this new job opportunity of hers gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘sleeper agent.’

• Is über-Producer Jerry Bruckheimer losing his mojo?  Wags are wondering whether 4 straight flops in a row may be jeopardizing Bruckheimer’s relationship to Disney. My guess?  Jerry’s fine, because this is still coming out next year.

• Do we finally have a universal digital video platform? The creators of UltraViolet certainly hope so as that format finally debuts in public today.  I’m still skeptical about this, and have about a million technical questions regarding how transitioning to this new platform/codec is going to play out.  The basic problem here, as far as whether this platform will actually take hold, is that people are always going to want to innovate and come up with something better – and no industry consortium (no matter how powerful) can shut that process down.

Olya Zueva.

• The Star Trek sequel should be shooting by next summer, although there’s still no script.  The next film will apparently be bigger and more thematically ambitious than the first.  I’ve been a little concerned about noises from the screenwriters that the next film may be more ‘socially relevant’ than the first one, which I enjoyed very much.  We all know what ‘socially relevant’ usually means these days (“Get out of Iraq!!!”) … here’s hoping they don’t go there.

• According to imdb’s estimable readers, Christopher Nolan’s Inception is the 3rd greatest movie of all time! [Citizen Kane, by comparison, weighs in at only #36.]  And you’re wondering why some of us don’t like Mr. Nolan’s fanboys dumbing down standards of excellence?  Still, the adults continue to weigh-in negatively on Inception.  The latest today comes from Nolan’s own backyard in the UK Guardian.  The title of their article on Nolan says it all: “The Emperor Has No Clothes.” Money quote: “Christopher Nolan’s films are full of big ideas hinting at deep profundities. But are we investing meaning where it isn’t?”  Answer: yes.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … with Russian spies and Russian mistresses all over the media, we thought we’d take a quick look at Olya Zueva, the Russian model appearing in the new spy thriller, Salt.  We try to stay on theme, here.

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

Posted on July 20th, 2010 at 7:08pm.

The Communist Menace is Back in Salt

Jolie vs. re-born Russian communists ... or is she one of them?

By Jason Apuzzo. • In his review today, Todd McCarthy (formerly of Variety, and author of a very fine biography of Howard Hawks) confirms that re-born Russian communists – in the form of a long-dormant Soviet sleeper cell – are indeed the villains of the new film Salt. The goal of these Reds? To kill the current Russian president on American soil, and – I’m guessing here – take advantage of the resultant chaos to seize control back of Russia? The suspense in Salt apparently consists in the question of whether CIA agent Angelina Jolie, who was apparently captured and brainwashed in North Korea (shades of The Manchurian Candidate here), is part of the sleeper cell or not.  I’m guessing not.

All of this may also suggest why, as we’ve reported here previously, Salt has already been banned in China.

I’m loving the sound of this, frankly, although I assume in penance for this neo-Cold War scenario the filmmakers will feel the need to take gratuitous pot shots at the CIA, and make them the ‘enemy lite’ of the piece. Still, you take what you can get, right?

Don't get in her way.

We’ll be keeping an eye on all this.  Here at LFM we’ve been documenting the return of Cold War fever (see here, here, here, here and even here), and I’m certainly looking forward to this latest outbreak. Jolie does an interesting interview on the film today, as does director Phillip Noyce (who did the early Jack Ryan films).

It’s hard not to have mixed feelings about Jolie at this point.  What is undeniable, however, is that Jolie’s baroque, decadent personality in public is something that can work to her advantage on-screen in over-the-top-roles like this one.  So few ‘stars’ nowadays actually have personalities; that’s obviously not a problem here.  The question is whether middle America is really interested in following her any more.  [By contrast, I expect this film to go gangbusters overseas.]  We’ll find out, starting Friday.

The funny thing is how universally acknowledged it is (including by me) that Jolie is probably better at this stuff than 90% of the male action stars.  That’s both a credit to her, and to some extent a rebuke of what passes for male action stars these days.  I mean, I’ve been kidding a lot here lately about Adrien Brody being in Predators (he was also in King Kong, of course) – but this is the whole problem, isn’t it?  Adrien Brody should not be battling aliens, unless you’re eager to have the aliens win. I’d feel more confident about Jolie under such circumstances.  Wouldn’t you?

Oh, and one other juicy tidbit about the film from today: apparently Salt was originally intended for Tom Cruise … who opted instead for Knight and Day. Ouch.

Posted on July 19th, 2010 at 5:20pm.

Hollywood Round-up, 7/19 + More Thoughts on Inception

Reboot in development.

By Jason Apuzzo. • No surprises here: due to the initial hype, Inception finished first at the weekend box office – but I suspect the drop-off on this one will be significant over the next few weeks. Opinions on the film continue to be sharply divided, of course.  The New Yorker’s David Denby is the latest influential critic to pan the film, calling it “an engineering feat, and, finally, a folly.”

Momentarily setting aside my own highly sarcastic, upside down review of the film, I can tell you that I otherwise found Inception to be a perfect example of the soulless, technocratic filmmaking that we’ve  all become accustomed to from Hollywood – although Christopher Nolan is very clever at disguising his film as being something else (i.e., upscale art house fare). Besides also being a deeply nihilistic and (as is so often the case with Nolan’s films) creepily misogynistic film, the film offers a dull, rationalist’s take on the fundamentally irrational dream state – and thereby misses the point of what dreams are actually like.  The film is pedantic when it should be uncanny, too swift to get to the next explosion rather than actually explore a character.  Basically the film’s a bore, put together with a slide-rule instead of inspiration.  And I suspect audiences will grow cold on it over time.

I’d like to thank our wonderful readers for putting up with my upside down review, so to speak, and for keeping the debate on this film civil – something that (unfortunately) doesn’t always happen when Nolan’s films are being discussed.  LFM’s readers are the finest out there.

• Will 50% of Hollywood’s box office take be coming from 3D films within the next 3 years? One major theater chain thinks so, and is putting its money behind that technology.  And probably they’re right.  The pressure to release in 3D is immense right now, and is already changing how movies are being conceptualized, even at the script stage.

• And speaking of which, Tim Burton is apparently developing the board game “Monsterpocalypse” into a summer 3D tentpole project. And if it were still legal to trade movie futures, that would be the one to put your money on …

• Did you know Breck Eisner is developing a Flash Gordon project? What a shame.  He hasn’t done enough penance yet for Sahara to get such an important franchise.  What happened to Stephen Sommers?

• It looks like the new Maggie Thatcher movie might be a hit job.  The family is apparently “appalled” at the project.  Here’s the money quote from the UK’s Guardian:

“… the screenplay of The Iron Lady depicts Baroness Thatcher as an elderly dementia-sufferer looking back on her career with sadness. She is shown talking to herself and unaware that her husband, Sir Denis Thatcher, has died.

“Sir Mark and Carol are appalled at what they have learnt about the film,” says a friend of the family. “They think it sounds like some Left-wing fantasy. They feel strongly about it, but will not speak publicly for fear of giving it more publicity.”

What a shame … but completely predictable, since Streep is involved.  Thatcher deserves so much better than this shabby treatment.

• … and speaking of dementia, the UK’s Guardian also does a long interview today with Oliver Stone, who is now apparently working on a new project called Oliver Stone’s Secret History of America.  Stone is becoming something like the left-wing answer to Howard Hughes back in the day – except that before going insane, and producing some very bad films, Hughes actually had some serious accomplishments to his name.

"Yeah, baby."

• Avatar is apparently very big in the Amazon. Do they have 3D down there?

• Here’s Peter Jackson showing a childhood film of his that was inspired by Ray Harryhausen’s work … with Ray Harryhausen in the audience watching along. Great stuff.  Ray is such an inspiration to everybody.

• Did you hear?  Aaron Sorkin will be making a film about John Edwards, and casting has already begun.  Given what a dud Edwards’ campaign was, does this pic have an audience?

• MUBI has some nice things to say today about Disco & Atomic War and 1428, two recent films from the LA Film Festival that we loved here at LFM (see our reviews here and here).  Thanks to them for that.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … there’s a new billboard out today featuring Tron: Legacy‘s Olivia Wilde as ‘Quorra.’  We’re looking forward to this film come December.

"Tron"'s Olivia Wilde as 'Quorra.'

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

Posted on July 19th, 2010 at 4:36pm.

Classic Movie Update, 7/18

By Jason Apuzzo. • A Star is Born is coming to Blu-ray. This gorgeous film – still, alas in incomplete form – is really the perfect sort of film for high definition viewing.  A Star is Born takes its place among the very best films made about the culture of filmmaking itself – surpassed only, in my opinion, by 8 1/2 and Sunset Boulevard.  (Another now-forgotten classic of this genre is Josef von Sternberg’s The Last Command.)

• The Criterion Collection is finally putting out more of Yasujiro Ozu’s work onto DVD. Avail yourself of Ozu’s films if your tastes run toward the quieter, more contemplative moments of domestic life – particularly in terms of how parents relate (or are sometimes incapable of relating) to their children.

• Did you know that this is the 75th anniversary of the release of Merian C. Cooper’s classic fantasy-adventure film, She?  Neither did I.  I recommend the newly colorized version of the film, the colorization of which was supervised by Ray Harryhausen.

• I recently posted on the new exhibit of Norman Rockwell’s work taking place in Washington D.C., which features the Rockwell paintings owned by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.  MUBI, one of my favorite movie blogs, recently did a post on Rockwell’s movie poster art. I hadn’t been aware that Rockwell did the posters for so many famous films – including Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (weirdly fitting).  Click on over for more.  MUBI also reports this week on the forthcoming San Francisco Silent Film Festival, one of the world’s finest such festivals.

• And speaking of silent film, a long-lost Charlie Chaplin silent short film called “A Thief Catcher” has just been discovered.  In this 1914 film Chaplin makes a brief cameo appearance as a Keystone cop.  Turner Classic Movies also reports this week on restoration efforts involving Alfred Hitchcock’s early work, efforts you the public can assist in with your donations. [ We’ve spoken here previously at LFM about the importance of preserving our film legacy.] We encourage LFM readers now to donate toward the restoration of Alfred Hitchcock’s silent films.

• Ilene Woods, the voice of Cinderella from Walt Disney’s classic film, has died at the age of 81. We mourn her passing; her delightful voice, however, will certainly live on for generations to come.

• Turner Classic Movies has an interesting blog post up this week on the Clint Eastwood Cold War classic Firefox; on a somewhat related note, there was an interesting article over at The Wrap this week on the recent evolution of the action film.  Click on over for more.

• And finally, Greenbriar Picture Shows, another one of my favorite classic movie sites, has some wonderful posts up this week (see here and here) on Orson Welles’ classic, Touch of Evil.

Posted on July 18th, 2010 at 12:39pm.

Hollywood Round-up, 7/15

She now makes comic book & sock puppet movies.

By Jason Apuzzo. • There’s a new trailer out for The Social Network, and it looks pretty good – not great, but good.  Fincher seems to be giving this film a What Makes Sammy Run? vibe, and you certainly get a feel for Facebook’s icky origins (both morally and legally) in the dorm rooms of Harvard.  Nice work.  This will clearly help the buzz on the film, although elite-college-based movies like this somehow never get the feel for what a Harvard, Yale or Stanford are actually like (hint: nobody wears those stupid secret society jackets).  Btw, I love the choral version of Radiohead’s “Creep” that plays over the visuals.  Mark Zuckerberg must really be squirming right about now.

• Despicable Me is already moving into profitability, because it cost so little to make. And this is another reason why Pixar now has serious competition, as the once-low cost of Pixar’s projects rises and rises.

• Movie futures trading has now officially been banned, and my hopes of a quick-and-easy fortune have crumbled!  I had money down on The Hobbit.

• Winter’s Bone star Jennifer Lawrence has been cast as Mystique in X-Men: First Class, making the transition from indie to franchise fare.  [See Patricia Ducey’s LFM review of Winter’s Bone here.]  She’s also soon to star in a movie featuring Mel Gibson as a man obsessed with a sock puppet.  So she’s making some interesting career choices.

• … and speaking of which, Angelina Jolie is headed to Comic-Con to promote Salt, after it was revealed today that she was given $20 million to do that film.  Jolie’s certainly found a way to beat the boys at their own game by playing action heroes … but is there a trace of warmth or femininity left in her?

• Libertas reader A.O. Scott (chief New York Times film critic) meticulously takes apart Christopher Nolan and Inception today. Money quote:

The accomplishments of “Inception” are mainly technical, which is faint praise only if you insist on expecting something more from commercial entertainment. That audiences do — and should — expect more is partly, I suspect, what has inspired some of the feverish early notices hailing “Inception” as a masterpiece, just as the desire for a certifiably great superhero movie led to the wild overrating of “The Dark Knight.” In both cases Mr. Nolan’s virtuosity as a conjurer of brilliant scenes and stunning set pieces, along with his ability to invest grandeur and novelty into conventional themes, have fostered the illusion that he is some kind of visionary.

But though there is a lot to see in “Inception,” there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness — the risk of real confusion, of delirium, of ineffable ambiguity — that this subject requires. The unconscious, as Freud (and Hitchcock, and a lot of other great filmmakers) knew, is a supremely unruly place, a maze of inadmissible desires, scrambled secrets, jokes and fears. If Mr. Nolan can’t quite reach this place, that may be because his access is blocked by the very medium he deploys with such skill.

It’s nice that the adults are finally weighing in on this film, given all the hype and nonsense we’ve had to put up with to this point.  I’ll add my own brief remarks to all this tomorrow.

Carla Bruni and her husband.

• Two things happened yesterday that I neglected to mention: France’s Bastille Day, and also Harrison Ford turned 68.  What this means is that Harrison is older than the current incarnation of the French Republic, but still – in my opinion – young enough to play Indiana Jones.  By the way, check out this picture of Carla Bruni and her husband from yesterday.  The French guys really know how to handle things, non?

• Mel Gibson has been back on the set lately filming his friend Jodie Foster’s film The Beaver, and I cannot even imagine how awkward that must be.  Ouch.  “Quiet on the set!”

• Beavis and Butt-head are apparently returning to MTV. I actually thought this show was pretty good in its day – in limited doses.  Its purpose was to depict slacker morons as … slacker morons, instead of the pseudo-venerable/jocular wise men they’re regarded as today (e.g., why does anybody pay attention to Kevin Smith?).

They're back.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … the crazy baby sitter twins from Planet Terror are apparently back for more action in Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, and now I’m slightly more likely to see this film.  I loved their schtick in the first film, and maybe they’ll make me forget Rodriguez’s politics in this new one.

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

Posted on July 15th, 2010 at 5:18pm.