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Hollywood Round-up, 7/15

jenlaw — 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.

• 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?).

• 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.

Mao’s Last Dancer + Asian-American Film Fest

By Joe Bendel. The Chinese government is very protective of its international image. That is why it is so remarkable Bruce Beresford’s Mao’s Last Dancer was allowed to film there. [LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty has covered Mao’s Last Dancer previously in-depth here.] Evidently, the government “suggested” some revisions to the script once shooting was underway, but according to the press notes, the Australian director categorically disregarded them, even though it jeopardized the entire production. The centerpiece film of the upcoming Asian American International Film Festival, Dancer is one of several selections that will interest China watchers when the fest kicks off tomorrow night in New York.

Full reviews of Dancer are embargoed until the week of its theatrical release, but expect to hear terms like “crowd pleasing” after its festival screening this Saturday. The story of ballet dancer Cunxin Li’s defection to America, Dancer depicts the Cultural Revolution as a period when art was debased by ideology. Madame Mao herself makes an appearance, despite “requests” to the contrary from the Chinese government. Offering plenty to discuss, look forward to a proper review of Beresford’s film here at Libertas in the near future.

Ballet also figures tangentially in Taipei 24H, an anthology film commissioned by Taiwanese Public Television that captures vignettes of life throughout the capitol city during one average but eventful day. Appropriately, 24H saves its deepest and most accomplished film for last—4:00 AM to be exact.

Featuring renowned Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang, directed – in a reversal of roles – by his cinematic alter-ego, actor Kang-sheng Lee, Remembrance is deceptively simple. Having sold her business, the proprietress of a late night coffee shop is joined by a regular customer for a final cup of java and to watch a documentary on Luo Man-fei, a Taiwanese ballerina who died of lung cancer – but whose celebrated performance of choreography, shaped by the experiences of Tiananmen Square survivors, still has the power to move the night owls decades later. Brief but elegant, Remembrance celebrates quiet moments of beauty, and those who inspire them.

Once, rural peasants represented an ideologically privileged class in China. Today, they mostly lead hardscrabble lives of strife and want, particularly when compared to urban professionals. It is an iniquity frequently captured by the Digital-Generation of independent Chinese directors, as well as two American-based filmmakers whose stylistically compatible shorts set in China will also screen during AAIFF ‘10.

D-Generation documentaries represent with scrupulous accuracy the living conditions of the unfortunates who exist on the margins of Chinese society. However, their length and studiously languid aesthetics can try the patience of some audiences. In contrast, Tani Ikeda’s documentary short Turn of the Harvest is a manageable twelve minutes, but still gives viewers an honest, tactile sense of its subjects’ lives.

A late middle-aged couple works their wheat field, quietly joking between themselves. The man has a broken finger he has not treated for three weeks. Yet, outwardly they seem happy. However, as Ikeda interviews his wife, it becomes clear their relationship is not all it might appear. Especially painful for her was a decision to relinquish one of the twins she gave birth to, out of economic necessity. Surprisingly, they choose to give up their son, because boys cost more to raise.

Of course, boys tend to be preferred over girls, which accounts for the looming shortage of marriageable women under China’s restrictive family planning. Take for instance the family of fourteen year year-old Maple in Chloé Zhao’s narrative short Daughters. With a coveted baby boy on the way, her parents suddenly have one daughter too many. Coldly pragmatic, they see only two options. Either they foist off her sweet tempered young sister on a distant family member, or they arrange her marriage to a disturbingly old man. Not surprisingly, such news causes confusion and resentment for the preteen.

Daughters is nine minutes of focused heartbreak, featuring a devastating performance from young Luo Qian as Maple. Though brief, it is undeniably assured filmmaking, all the more impressive considering it was the NYU alumnus’ second year film.

AAIFF’s centerpiece, Dancer, screens this Saturday (7/17), in advance of its late August opening. Well worth seeing for Remembrance alone, Taipei 23H screens on Sunday (7/18). Daughters screens as part of AAIFF’s Oh Family, Where Art Thou? block of shorts this Sunday, while Harvest screens the next day as part of the Untold Stories shorts program.

Posted on July 15th, 2010 at 11:16am.

Rex Reed Demolishes Inception

By Jason Apuzzo. As I mentioned several days ago, critical tongues are starting to loosen on Inception, as at least a few sensible critics are starting to call the film what it actually is … which I will be telling you more about later this week.

The latest evisceration of Inception (coming right on the heels of David Edelstein’s much-discussed attack on the film) comes from the marvelous Rex Reed today, writing in The New York Observer. Reed’s review is a delightful, witty take-down that more or less encapsulates my own view of Nolan’s work – which is essentially that his films are always less than they seem, not more.

So what’s going on here? Why has it taken so long for serious film writers to begin evincing skepticism toward Christopher Nolan’s work? The reason is fairly simple: many critics were taken aback a few years ago when Nolan’s The Dark Knight did as well as it did, and are now trying to be ahead of the curve. Or another way of putting it: a lot of critics don’t want to be on the wrong side of fanboys. We have no such fears here.

Allow me to quote extensively from Mr. Reed’s artful and acerbic demolition of the much-indulged Nolan:

At the movies, incomprehensible gibberish has become a way of life, but it usually takes time before it’s clear that a movie really stinks. Inception, Christopher Nolan’s latest assault on rational coherence, wastes no time. It cuts straight to the chase that leads to the junkpile without passing go, although before it drags its sorry butt to a merciful finale, you’ll be desperately in need of a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

Writer-director Nolan is an elegant Hollywood hack from London whose movies are a colossal waste of time, money and I.Q. points. “Elegant” because his work always has a crisp use of color, shading and shadows, and “hack” because he always takes an expensive germ of an idea, reduces it to a series of cheap gimmicks and shreds it through a Cuisinart until it looks and sounds like every other incoherent empty B-movie made by people who haven’t got a clue about plot, character development or narrative trajectory.

Like other Christopher Nolan head scratchers-the brainless Memento, the perilously inert Insomnia, the contrived illusionist thriller The Prestige, the idiotic Batman Begins and the mechanical, maniacally baffling and laughably overrated The Dark Knight – this latest deadly exercise in smart-aleck filmmaking without purpose from Mr. Nolan’s scrambled eggs for brains makes no sense whatsoever. Is it clear that I have consistently hated his movies without exception, and I have yet to see one of them that makes one lick of sense. It’s difficult to believe he didn’t also write, direct and produce the unthinkable Synecdoche, New York. But as usual, like bottom feeder Charlie Kaufman, Mr. Nolan’s reputation as an arrogant maverick draws a first-rate cast of players, none of whom have an inkling of what they’re doing or what this movie is about in the first place, and all of whom have been seen to better advantage elsewhere.

I’d like to tell you just how bad Inception really is, but since it is barely even remotely lucid, no sane description is possible … Through the use of computer-generated effects, buildings fold like cardboard containers, cars drive upside down and the only way you can wake up within the dream is death. None of this prattling drivel adds up to one iota of cogent or convincing logic. You never know who anyone is, what their goals are, who they work for or what they’re doing. Since there’s nothing to act, the cast doesn’t even bother. It’s the easiest kind of movie to make, because all you have to do is strike poses and change expressions. …

Inception is the kind of pretentious perplexity in which one or two reels could be mischievously transposed, or even projected backward, and nobody would know the difference. It’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect from summer movies in general and Christopher Nolan movies in particular, but I keep wondering: Can he do anything of more lasting value? He’s got vision, but creating jigsaw puzzles nobody can figure out and using actors as puppets who say idiotic things, dwarfed by sets like sliding Tinker Toys, doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment to me.

I’ll be weighing-in on Inception myself later in the week, but this will do for now.

Posted on July 14th, 2010 at 2:48pm.

Hollywood Round-up, 7/13

By Jason Apuzzo. • Iron Man 2 will be available on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download on September 28th. Has anybody watched Iron Man yet on an iPad? Just curious as to what that would be like. Does Gwyneth Paltrow actually become likeable that way? Is there an app for that?

• It looks like Despicable Me will be getting a sequel (Even More Despicable? Utterly Deplorable Me?), after that film’s big opening weekend. Just ask Pixar or Dreamworks – children’s animation represents the ultimate gold mine right now for any studio. And now, if perhaps a few more movies could be made for we adults in the audience …

• More lukewarm reviews coming out now about Inception. Here’s one from influential blogger Eric Kohn. Money quote: “Inception bucks any sort of lasting emotional impact in favor of brainteasers. It’s awesome, sure, but also a bit cold.” No surprises here. This has been Nolan’s problem all along – among others. I’ll be weighing-in more about all this soon.

• A “sex scene” may appear in the extended cut of Avatar that arrives in theaters in August. It’s bad enough that Julia Roberts and James Franco just did a sex scene together. Do we really need this?

• Industry watchers are asking (see here and here) whether Mel Gibson can survive his latest scandal. This is becoming an increasingly practical problem because of all the projects Gibson is tied in to. Most people don’t know, for example, that Gibson currently owns the film adaptation rights to the great Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. See here what Ray has to say about that …

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Helena Mattsson has been cast as a “statuesque, educated, ice cold and lethal … 6-foot blond assassin” in the new film Guns, Girls and Gambling starring Christian Slater and Gary Oldman. And since all of us have a few statuesque, educated, ice cold and lethal 6-foot blond assassins in our lives, I hope she does justice to the part.

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

Posted on July 13th, 2010 at 1:10pm.

The Reputation of Classic Women’s Pictures: Gone with the wind?

By Jennifer Baldwin. I ran across an interesting list from Filmcritic.com the other day: The Top 50 Movie Endings of All Time. The list was compiled in 2006. Many of my favorite endings were listed, including the endings to Casablanca, The Godfather, and Bonnie and Clyde. But as the list got closer and closer to number one, I waited giddily for my favorite ending of all-time to appear. I knew it would be near the top spot, at least top five, maybe it would even be the number one ending. It is, after all, one of the most famous endings in all of Hollywood’s history, and includes two of the most famous lines in all of cinema. It’s one of the greatest classics of all time, how could it not be near the top of the list?

I’m writing, of course, of the ending to Gone With the Wind. There is no more iconic and well-known ending in all of cinema, with the exceptions of perhaps The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, or The Empire Strikes Back. But Gone With the Wind stands as one of the greats, arguably the greatest, if only for the thrill of hearing the word “damn” uttered for the first time in mainstream cinema and to see Scarlett rejected so deliciously – only to see her rise again with indomitable resilience. I knew it was coming. I kept reading. I was almost to the end of the list …

And Gone With the Wind was nowhere to be found. They had left it off.

I couldn’t quite believe it. A few people in the comments section couldn’t believe it either. Where was Gone With the Wind? Where was “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”? Where was “After all, tomorrow is another day”? Where was that last gorgeous Technicolor shot of Scarlett returned to Tara, the sweeping main theme of Max Steiner’s unforgettable score rising to a crescendo on the soundtrack? I was in a bit of shock, sitting there looking at a list of the Top 50 Movie Endings that did not include Gone With the Wind.

But then again, why should I be surprised? GWTW has been losing its place in the pop culture pantheon for a while now. The writing was on the wall when the revised AFI Top 100 American Films list came out and GWTW had slipped from fourth place to sixth place, replaced at #4 by Raging Bull. Not a huge slip, of course, but a telling one I think. GWTW is too iconic, too huge (still the top box office of all time, adjusted for inflation), to really go away altogether. But slowly, in little drips and quietly telling ways, it’s losing stature in the film community – especially in the mainstream online film community. And it’s not surprising because the online film community – which drives so much of film culture and conversation these days – is simply not that interested in what gets called, for better or worse, a “chick flick.”

And despite its status as a Civil War epic, GWTW is a women’s film. Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara is in nearly every scene. It’s her story that we watch unfold, even as Rhett Butler pops in and out of the narrative. It’s her emotional journey that dominates the film. And in the second half especially, it is her domestic drama that takes up most of the action (and it’s not surprising to read commentary from guys online who think the second half of the film is “weak” compared to the first, more war-focused half – the domestic struggles of Scarlett hold little interest for the online fanboy types). Continue reading The Reputation of Classic Women’s Pictures: Gone with the wind?

Hollywood Round-up, 7/12

0709_Scene_mov-despicable1.embedded.prod_affiliate.36.JPG — From "Despicable Me."

By Jason Apuzzo. • Despicable Me won the weekend box office race, and it looks like Pixar may have some new competition – in the form of Universal’s family unit Illumination, combined with the French animation outfit Mac Guff. Glad to see some new players emerging on the animation front.

• New York Magazine’s David Edelstein and The LA Times’ Steven Zeitchik have posted tepid reviews of Inception. Money quote from Zeitchik about the film: “more headache-inducing than pleasure-producing.” From Edelstein: “clunky and confusing … I truly have no idea what so many people are raving about.” Expect more of this to come as critical tongues slowly loosen prior to the film’s release.

• Roman Polanski has been set free, and the Swiss will not cooperate in extraditing him. And frankly I would care more about this story if Polanski wasn’t so long past his prime as a filmmaker, anyway. What’s worth seeing after Frantic?

• Ed Norton has apparently been dumped by Marvel from playing The Hulk due to his bad attitude, although his attitude can’t possibly be as bad as mine was after seeing him botch the role. Better give it back to Bana.

• New set pics are out from Transformers 3, featuring cars. And more cars. And still more cars and … where’s Rosie Huntington-Whiteley?

3420963674_29bc6cb317 — Amanda Seyfried.

• Kevin Costner’s oil/water separator has been deployed in the Gulf. It’s amazing that Waterworld would have such a positive legacy.

• Hollywood power players turned out to raise money for Barbara Boxer the other night, which makes perfect sense given how wonderful Boxer’s tenure has been in terms of keeping film production right here in the Golden State where it belongs. [Sigh.]

• Volvo is the latest corporation to piggyback off Twilight for advertising purposes. That’s odd; I always assumed vampires drove Hyundais. Meanwhile Twilight: Breaking Dawn starts shooting this fall in Vancouver and Baton Rouge, provided the entire state of Louisiana isn’t covered in crude.

• The Mel Gibson Thing is started to have wide consequences in the industry, with questions even being raised about the forthcoming Gibson-DiCaprio collaboration on a Viking epic (!). And, of course, as you’ve probably heard by now, the Gibson situation continues to spin further out of control by the hour. I’m really hoping we don’t see Mel driving a Ford Bronco down the 405 next week, because this is getting really ugly.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … According to Variety, Amanda Seyfried will be starring in the forthcoming Andrew Niccol science fiction film I’m.mortal, about a future dystopia in which no one has to age … although to keep the population in check, people can only stay alive as long as they can pay their way. Hey – why set this in the future? All of this sounds like West Los Angeles right now!

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

Posted on July 12th, 2010 at 11:10pm.