Category: News/Opinion

Hollywood Round-up, 6/7

In the future, computers will play frisbee: the new billboard for "Tron."

By Jason Apuzzo. • Shrek takes top prize at the box office for the third week in a row, amidst an otherwise tepid weekend.  Shrek euphoria tempered by new report that Shrek glasses sold by McDonalds may kill you.

Moviegoers obviously not digging this summer’s offerings.  Also: a new report suggests just how much Avatar is saving Hollywood this year.  Subtract Avatar, and movie attendance would be down a whopping 12.9 percent this year, and revenue would be off 7.1 percent.  If that isn’t alarming enough,  James Cameron is still too busy cleaning up the BP oil spill to hunker down to his next Avatar sequel – which is not due out for 3-4 years, and other major franchises are currently in shaky condition.  Hollywood has the reverse problem of BP: not enough money gushing anywhere.

• … which is why eyes are currently turned to Christopher Nolan, whose Inception is hoped by many to rescue Hollywood’s summer.  In a new interview Nolan is calling Inception his On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which is apparently his favorite Bond film.

This is a problem.  Why?  Because On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is easily one of the worst films of the Bond series.

The new George Lazenby?

Let me be the first – apparently anywhere on the internet – to express some doubts as to whether Inception is going to be the success everyone thinks it will be, either artistically or financially.  There are reasons to doubt this film will play well beyond the fanboys; suffice it to say for now that Inception is looking a lot like The Matrix: Reloaded … long on hype, but probably with short legs.  Outside the Batman franchise (i.e., someone else’s storyline), Nolan hasn’t shown he can really connect with large audiences yet, chiefly because his themes are too obscure and off-putting, and because he apparently has no sense of humor.  [Can DiCaprio implant that, too?]

• Vadim Rizov asks whether misogyny is what made so many critics hate Sex and the City 2. Answer: yes.  Govindini has more thoughts on this in response to her readers.

• Joel Silver says the new version of Logan’s Run will be shot in 3-D. At this point I would cast Megan Fox.

• Controversy still raging over whether Robert Rodriguez’s pseudo-controversial Machete should receive Texas tax credits. There’s always carbon credits.

• The Wall Street Journal complains that Hollywood demonizes capitalists. It’s called ‘biting the hand that feeds you.’

• Hollywood currently weighing in on the Prop. 8 court battle. Is that why Miley and Sandra are now kissing girls?

Hollywood's 'new domesticity.'

• If you missed the MTV Movie Awards, here’s what you missed: griping about the oil spill, a deluge of f-bombs, Sandra Bullock kissing Scarlett Johansson, Lindsay Lohan wearing a low-cut top to distract from her alcohol-monitoring anklet, and Jennifer Lopez spanking a bald Tom Cruise.  Sounds like a pretty tame night, to me.

• Tired of celebrity ‘placement’ at Lakers games?  You’re not the only one: see here.  Can we go back to real celebrity fans at Laker games, instead of fake ones?

• New billboards are out for Tron.  See above.

• Elton John receives $1 million to play at Rush Limbaugh’s wedding. For the same price, it actually would’ve been more entertaining to watch Jennifer Lopez spank a bald Tom Cruise.  [While Lopez covers Sir Elton’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”?]

• AND FINALLY … Sir Ben Kingsley spoofs Heidi Montag today, recording his own audition video for Transformers 3. File this under ‘things to do after your knighted.’

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

Classic Movie Update, 6/6

By Jason Apuzzo.  • The original King Kong is coming to Blu-ray.  The ‘Heat Vision’ blog at Hollywood Reporter says that Kong will make its Blu-ray debut Sept. 28th.  Warner Brothers is releasing the disk, and it will essentially be a re-issue of the two-disc DVD special edition put out in 2005 that coincided with Peter Jackson’s remake.  This new Blu-ray edition will come with a 32-page booklet written by film historian Rudy Behlmer that will also feature rare photographs.  Behlmer himself actually interviewed Kong‘s director, the great Merian C. Cooper, back in the day.  I thought that two-disc edition from 2005  was extraordinary – especially the very detailed documentaries done on the making of this landmark film.  Kong was an entirely revolutionary film that changed not only motion picture visual effects, but also the development of motion picture sound.  I’m very much looking forward to this disk.  You can buy King Kong on DVD in the LFM Store below, and you can also pre-order the Blu-ray.

• Capone over at Aint It Cool News as seen the new, restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (currently billed as ‘The Complete Metropolis’).  You can see what he has to say about it here.  The film will be embarking on a nationwide tour before hitting DVD in November.  Some years back I wrote an article about Metropolis for the journal Neurosurgery, which you can read here.  Metropolis is easily one of the most important films in the history of cinema, and its influence can be felt all the way down to the cinema of today.  [Even projects like the recent indie feature Metropia – about a near-future urban dystopia – are impossible to imagine without Lang’s earlier film.]  Of all the forthcoming DVDs for this year, Metropolis ranks right at the top of my ‘to buy’ list …

• Turner Classic Movies will be showing several Dennis Hopper films this Tuesday June 8th, in honor of the late actor-director.  The selections will include: The Sons of Katie Elder, True Grit, Rebel Without a Cause, Easy Rider and Night Tide.  Visit the TCM website for further details.  If you miss the screenings, we’ve got these films available in the LFM Store above.

From "Easy Rider."

• In related news, there’s a rumor circulating (see here at The Criterion Cast) that Criterion may be putting out a special ‘New Hollywood’ DVD box set, to include Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, among other classics from that period.  Follow the link for more about that rumor.  Antonioni’s Red Desert also just came out on Blu-ray from Criterion this week.  It’s available in the LFM Store above.

• Kimberly Lindbergs over at TCM’s Movie Morlocks blog has a great review up right now of the Ishiro Honda classic, Dogora (1964) – a film which features a giant jellyfish from space with an appetite for diamonds, a giant tentacle attack on Tokyo, and a sexy Japanese femme fatale.  How could you ask for more?  Dagora is available (in ‘Tohoscope’!) in the LFM Store above.

• Excerpts from the forthcoming book on the Liz Taylor/Richard Burton romance, Furious Love, will soon be appearing in the July issue of Vanity Fair.  For more details, click on the link.  Liz and Dick probably are the all-time screen couple, and were personal favorites of mine growing up.  As a side note, I’ve grown tired over the years of hearing what a ‘disaster’ Cleopatra was – their work on that film being, of course, the catalyst for their relationship.  Cleopatra is actually a magnificent and literate film, arguably the last large-scale epic (other than perhaps Titanic) Hollywood has ever done centered around a woman.  If Liz is a bit strident in the film, one never gets the sense that the role is to big for her – arguably it was too small.  In any case, rumors of Cleopatra being a ‘financial disaster’ are as ridiculous now as they were back in 1963.  In today’s dollars, Cleopatra would’ve grossed $534 million at the domestic box office (i.e., roughly what The Dark Knight made), making it a strong hit for Fox – even when factoring in costs.  In any case, if you’re a fan of Liz Taylor or Richard Burton, feel free to pre-order Furious Love in the LFM Store above.

From "Double Take."

• Finally, one classic film related project to avoid is a new pseudo-documentary on Alfred Hitchcock called Double Take.  Double Take, directed by Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, essentially treats Alfred Hitchcock and his films as hieroglyphs of the Cold War era, an era ostensibly marked by paranoia and an existential uncanniness echoed in Hitchcock’s thematics of ‘doubling’ (one thinks here of Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, Vertigo, etc.).  The film intersperses clips of Hitchcock from his television series with archival Cold War footage and staged interviews with Hitchcock impersonator Ron Burrage.

But as film critic and LFM contributor Joe Bendel writes in his review of the film, “[w]hile there is an ostensible storyline involving Hitchcock’s encounter with his doppelganger, the film is more concerned with scoring revisionist points against easy targets from American Cold War history, like Richard Nixon.”  Apparently the film glibly ‘samples’ or ‘remixes’ footage of a body falling from a building in a manner highly evocative of the 9-11 attacks.  Do we really need this sort of thing, just to understand Hitchcock?  You can read more about this film in The New York Times, but even more recommended is LFM contributor Joe Bendel’s review.

And that’s this week’s Classic Movie Update …

Hollywood Round-up, 6/3-6/4

By Jason Apuzzo. • The full Captain America costume has been revealed – in hi-def, multi-angled detail. And, thankfully, there appear to be no UN markings or indications of one-world cooperation.  Also: there’s some Captain America casting news coming down the pike.  Inquiring minds want to know: are Iron Man and Captain America going to suck the life out of Superman and Spider-Man?  May be too late for re-boots on those.

• In related news, Rush Limbaugh biopic being shopped around Hollywood. It’s tempting to say something political here, but you know what the problem is?  Hollywood isn’t doing good biopics on anybody these days.  They’ll miscast this (my prediction: Philip Seymour Hoffman), spend too much, take snarky liberal pot shots, and make it 3 hours long.  [Still reeling from how Amelia Earhart’s story was botched last year.  How do you botch that?]  Important question here: who gets to play Ann Coulter?

• You can’t stop James Cameron, you can only hope to contain him. Cameron going around everywhere griping about BP, the oil spill, how he and his team of experts need to clean the thing up … Plus he’s going to re-release Titanic in 3D in 2012 (100th anniversary of ship’s sinking), and probably his next project will be the Avatar sequel.  If you’re Michael Moore or Oliver Stone right now, you’ve got to be hating life.  How did Cameron so quickly steal their gig?  Maybe Moore can re-issue Roger & Me in 3D.

• The Sex and the City 2 controversy rolls on, and now there’s word that a “Sex and the City” prequel may be in the works in order to import young babes into the franchise.  (Maybe a few hunky vampires while they’re at it?)  There’s no way they’re going to let this franchise go, given the money it’s making.  Film’s snarky p.c./misogynist critics looking irrelevant right now.

• Actress Q’orianka Kilcher ties herself to White House fence in support of indigenous peoples worldwide, gets arrested. I thought this wasn’t supposed to happen in the Obama era.  Her mother is also described as having “poured a black substance over her.”  [BP oil?]  Brando spent half his adult life impregnating chicks like this, without having to pour anything over them. By the way, it’s nice to see that Obama’s got to deal with this stuff now, instead of just Bush.  Hope you enjoy this stuff, Barry!

The newer, 'edgier' Snow White?

• Sean Penn featured in Vanity Fair, picturesquely helping out Haitians. It’s great that he’s helping, but can this guy go anywhere without a camera crew?  Is that even possible anymore?

• Rock band Rush tells Rand Paul to stop playing their music at his events. Battle of the Libertarians.

• Bret Ratner to do new, ‘edgy’ version of Snow White legend. Snow White to be deflowered?  Ratner should stick to what he knows best, which is … actually I’m not coming up with anything here.

• Comedy Central has a new comedy show mocking Jesus, which they’re able to broadcast in perfect freedom and legality because American Christians aren’t threatening to chop Comedy Central executives’ heads off, despite what Rachel Weisz may tell you.

• FINALLY, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY … Fox News is currently featuring an on-line American flag bikini show, perfect for a Friday afternoon in June.  Click on over to see precisely how much – and in what proportions – God has so generously blessed this country of ours.

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

Islamic Punk Rock as Voice of Protest: The Taqwacores

By Jason Apuzzo. We’re all looking for signs of hope in the Islamic world – signs of liberalization, of Westernization, of modernity seeping its way through the cracks.  Some of the most hopeful signs in this regard are starting to appear in the arts – and particularly in film.  Recently here at LFM we’ve talked about films like Four Lions, The Infidel, No One Knows About Persian Cats, and the striking web series Living with the Infidel (my personal favorite).  These are all projects that have either received mainstream distribution, have screened to critical acclaim at festivals like Sundance and Cannes, or have in some cases – particularly Four Lions – done killer business at the indie box office.  [The weekend it opened in the UK, Four Lions actually had a better per-screen average than Iron Man 2, which opened that same weekend.]

Of all these films, No One Knows About Persian Cats may have surprised me the most (see my review) – in part because it revealed how deeply Westernized today’s Iranian youth already are.  I hadn’t been aware that Iran’s young people already have a sound – a kind of pop music signature – around which they are rallying against the oppressive forces of religious conformity in their society.  This is an extremely encouraging sign that leads me to believe that revolutionary change is coming to Iran sooner rather than later.

And now another new film is coming down the pike – not specifically dealing with Iran, but more generally with Islamic young people in America for whom music is their vehicle of protest.  The name of this film is The Taqwacores (the title combines “taqwa” – the Arabic word for “piety” – with the English word “hardcore”).  You can catch the trailer for The Taqwacores above – the film premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and also ran at the South by Southwest Festival.   The Taqwacores is about an imaginary punk rock band made up of disaffected young Islamic guys in Buffalo.

Does the subject matter sound obscure?  It might, except for the fact that as The New York Times reports, The Taqwacores is based on a popular and influential novel – written by 32 year old Michael Muhammad Knight – that’s already become a kind of Catcher in the Rye for young American Muslims.  Indeed, an entire music/youth sub-culture has apparently grown up around Knight’s novel in Islamic communities all across America – communities that are now eagerly anticipating the release of the film this autumn.

Here’s a synopsis of the film, provided by the Sundance film festival:

Yusef, a straitlaced Pakistani American college student, moves into a house with an unlikely group of Muslim misfits—skaters, skinheads, queers, and a riot grrrl in a burqa—all of whom embrace Taqwacore, the hardcore Muslim punk-rock scene. They may read the Koran and attend the mosque, but they also welcome an anarchic blend of sex, booze, and partying. As Yusef becomes more involved in Taqwacore, he finds his faith and ideology challenged by both this new subculture and his charismatic new friends, who represent different ideas of the Islamic tradition.

Just because these young Muslims embrace America’s punk-rock subculture, and reject more traditional modes of Islamic observance, don’t expect that they’re watching Fox News or attending Tea Partys.  That’s not quite the vibe, if you know what I mean.  It’s obvious from the reporting on this film that post-9/11 Islamophobia is a still a concern among young American Muslims, although one would hope that the election of an American President with the name ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ – with roots in the Islamic world – would have at least comforted them somewhat on this point.  In any case, one senses that such anxieties will probably ease over time.

First time Director Eyad Zahra struck a very positive note in an interview he did several months ago:

Ultimately, we hope that this film can generate new kinds of discussion within America, for both non-Muslims and Muslims.  This film is trying to crush all social barriers that have been thrown up in recent years.  The hope is that Americans can truly see Muslims as Americans, and that Muslims can truly see themselves as American.  We are tired of the ultra politically correct, sugarcoated community bridging that been going on lately, and obviously, we aren’t fans of the disgusting Islamaphobia that has been projected on the other side of the spectrum either.  We want things to have more honest discussions about this kind of stuff, because that how things will really change for the better.

I think that’s just the right tone.  And something that would really help matters in this regard would be if America’s more conservative-leaning media outlets would give this film a chance when it comes out this fall.  Although I haven’t had the pleasure yet of seeing the film myself, The Taqwacores has gotten positive reviews, and could use the extra attention such media outlets would bring.  It’s sometimes difficult to take seriously the incessant complaining about Hollywood from America’s right wing, when so little effort is ever made by them to positively promote the work of brave filmmakers who break from conventional Hollywood liberalism.  We’ll see if this film gets the chance it deserves.

The Greatest Guitar Movies of All Time

[Editor’s Note: picking up on the music theme from Steve Greaves’ review below of the “Gemini Rising” web series, LFM contributor David Ross talks guitar movies today.]

By David Ross. Here is Guitar World’s list of the fifty greatest guitar-oriented albums. Any list that prefers Blizzard of Ozz to Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland is, to say the least, mentally and emotionally defective.

We have still not caught up with Electric Ladyland. The twin monuments of “Voodoo Child” (the long version) and “1983” are markers of rock at its farthest extreme of creativity, expressive freedom and jazz-like virtuosity, but I am equally stunned by what seem – at first blush – the album’s more modest tracks: “Crosstown Traffic,” “Long Hot Summer Night,” “Electric Ladyland,” “Gypsy Eyes,” “Burning of the Midnight Lamp,” “All Along the Watchtower.”  Each of these tunes is modest in comparison only to others on the album; on their own terms, they exceed in intricacy and originality and exuberant power just about anything ever done in the history of rock. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who never achieved anything like this dizzying, preternatural mastery.

In response to the stupidity of Guitar World, let me offer a brief list of guitar-related movies and concert films that are bound to interest the aficionado:

• Wes Montgomery: In Europe 1965 (1965)
• Devil Got my Woman (1966), featuring Skip James, Son House, etc.
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live at Monterey (1967)
• Jimi Hendrix: Live at Woodstock (1969)
• Jimi Plays Berkeley (1971)
• Jimi Hendrix (1973), the standard biopic
• Joe Pass 75 (1975)
• John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell and Paco De Lucia: Meeting of the Spirits (1979)
• Leo Kottke: Home & Away Revisited (1988)
• Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble: Live at the El Mocambo 1983 (1991)
• The Search for Robert Johnson (1992)
• Paco De Lucia: Light and Shade (1994)
• Led Zeppelin (2003), featuring a mélange of concert footage
• Tom Dowd and the Language of Music (2003)
• Jeff Beck: Live at Ronnie Scotts (2007)
• Les Paul: Chasing Sound (2007)
• It Might Get Loud (2008), featuring Jimmy Page, Jack White, and the Edge
• Remember Shakti: The Way of Beauty (2008), featuring John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain

Here is Jimi Hendrix in a unique performance on an acoustic twelve-string, from Joe Boyd’s 1973 documentary Jimi Hendrix.

I should particularly mention Meeting of the Spirits, which offers more or less undigested footage of Larry Coryell, Paco De Lucia, and John McLaughlin in concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Those who associate the acoustic guitar with Peter, Paul, and Mary are in for a surprise: imagine instead a trio of F-22s engaged in precision maneuvers at multi-mach speed.  Coryell and De Lucia are consummate musicians, but McLaughlin, who is all but nerve-connected to the guitar, his left-hand so economical that it seems not even to move, is something else entirely.  During the long title cut – a version of the Mahavishnu Orchestra standard – he seems to enter a trance and channel strange melodies from beyond the realm of logic and reason.  Meeting of the Spirits leaves no question that only Jimi Hendrix has more deeply plumbed the possibilities of the guitar, and that McLaughlin belongs with John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Charles Mingus in the starriest pantheon of post-bop jazz.  Meeting of the Spirits, by the way, was merely preparatory.  There followed an even more impressive McLaughlin-De Lucia-Al Di Meola collaboration, captured for posterity on the classic concert album Friday Night in San Francisco.

Hollywood Round-up, 6/2

He's back.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Frank Miller releases first artwork for Xerxes, his follow-up to 300; also discusses 300 controversy with the LA Times. 2007 film 300 was a watershed film in much the same way Mel Gibson’s Passion had been three years before.  Xerxes begins 10 years before 300 and kicks off with the Battle of Marathon.  The new story’s POV shifts from Spartans to the Athenians.  More from Miller:

“This is a more complex story. The story is so much larger. The Spartans in ‘300’ were being enclosed by the page as the world got smaller. This story has truly vast subjects. The Athenian naval fleet, for instance, is a massive artistic undertaking and it dwarfed by the Persian fleet, which is also shown in this story. The story has elements of espionage, too, and it’s a sweeping tale with gods and warriors.”

Story’s lead characters are Themistocles (builder of Athenian navy) and Xerxes, whose quest for godhood drives the story. Xerxes climaxes with massive naval confrontation between Greeks and Persians, ends on the same day as the events of 300.  It sounds fantastic.  Best wishes to Frank on this.

• James Cameron meets with feds to brainstorm over oil-spill cleanup. Cameron has, admittedly, spent a great deal of time at the ocean depths working on The Abyss, Titanic, Aliens of the Deep, Ghosts of the Abyss – not to mention the ‘seminal’ film Piranha 2: The Spawning, which finally gets a Criterion DVD and Blu-Ray release next month.  Just kidding.  [But you weren’t sure there for a moment, were you?]

• Transformers 3 filming extensively around LA, according to the LA Times. It’s amazing that having a major film shoot in Los Angeles is actually a news story these days.  That’s how bad it’s getting, folks.

• The Hollywood Reporter asks whether moviegoers may be getting tired of sequels. Um, yeah.

Actress Paz de la Huerta.

• Samuel Jackson/Carrie-Ann Moss terrorist thriller Unthinkable does the unthinkable and goes straight to DVD. Very surprised by this.  The trailer certainly looked compelling in a 24 sort of way.  Why does this film get canned, but The A-Team gets released?

• Blogger Vadim Rizov discovers that the latest way for actresses to prove they’re ‘serious’ is to take their clothes off.

Paz da la Huerta is apparently the latest actress to figure this trick out, both for HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and the Sundance hit Enter the Void and a string of other films. Extraordinary that these long-hidden secrets of showbiz success are finally getting some attention!

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