Category: Articles

Hollywood Round-up, 8/4


By Jason Apuzzo. • In the buildup to The Expendables, new clips of the film are being released (see above), and Sly Stallone is talking a little bit more freely about the political situation in Hollywood.  Here’s what he says today, in an interview conducting with Aint It Cool News readers:

[I]t’s a minor miracle the last RAMBO would even be released, but I took a gamble there … [for people who] desire to see an action film unfold that wreaks of pride and manly individualism that has unfortunately fallen out of vogue. I believe that everything is a cycle. And once again America will have its cinematic heroes reflect the incredible honor it is to be defending the most extraordinary country the planet has ever known. Just give it time, everything is a cycle.

I sincerely hope he’s right – that these things proceed in cycles.  Suffice it to say that if he’s right about this, then we’re long overdue for a correction toward more pro-American, pro-freedom material.  We’ll see.  Most of the action on the pro-freedom front seems to be coming from independent filmmakers, not from within the Hollywood system.

"Transformers 3"s Rosie Huntington-Whiteley .

• The debate rages on over the merits of 3D cinema.  Today J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon are more or less weighing in against 3D.  What’s interesting here is that nobody was having this debate right after Avatar.  It’s the recent run of crappy 3D conversions that have been causing doubts.  I continue to say: filmmakers should shoot natively in 3D, or not use the technology at all.

• Communist China is apparently eager to have Inception playing in its theaters. It’s no wonder; the film’s basic subject matter is brainwashing!  It doesn’t surprise me in the least that they would be enthusiastically courting this film, and otherwise banning Salt.  In related news, the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein notes the age-difference in critics who love/hate Inception – with older ones hating it.  I guess I’m breaking the mold here, because I’m under 40 and I hated it, too!

• The Jack Ryan reboot Moscow may have a director: Lost’s Jack Bender. In related Cold War movie news, you may not have known that until his recent meltdown Mel Gibson and Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black were apparently collaborating on a picture called Cold Warrior, which would have featured Gibson as “an ex-Cold War spy who comes out of retirement and teams up with a younger agent to stop a Russian terrorism threat.”  There’s also news today that Joel Silver may be trying to lure Gibson back to revive the Lethal Weapon franchise.  I can’t begin to describe what a bad idea that would be.

• Transformers 3‘s Rosie Huntington-Whiteley appears on the cover of LOVE Magazine today. Yowza.  Where does Michael Bay find these actresses?  Oh, right – from the pages of Victoria’s Secret catalogues.

"Mad Men"'s curvy Christina Hendricks in GQ.

• Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells asks a fascinating question today: “[W]hat about the next generation of Hollywood Republicans? Are there any industry righties from among [the] under-35 set? A movement without young blood is no movement at all.” How true!  Boy would I love to answer this question in detail for Mr. Wells, whom I suspect would be fascinated by the answer.  Let’s just say that it’s to the benefit of certain people’s media careers that you never hear about the younger crowd – or about anyone currently involved in actual filmmaking, for that matter. You’ll always here about them here at Libertas, though, because that’s our entire mission: to promote and support pro-freedom filmmaking.  Plus we have great pin-ups.

• And speaking of which, Tron‘s Olivia Wilde, who is quickly establishing herself as a go-to sci fi babe, apparently just shot a nude scene for Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens in which she stands “naked in front of a bonfire in front of 500 Apache warriors.” Hey, this sounds like my kind of film!  Maybe Favreau read this.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Mad Men‘s Christina Hendricks does an interview and photoshoot for this month’s UK GQ. We’re big fans of Mad Men here at LFM (see here), and are pleased to see this retro-curvy bombshell is popping up (and out) everywhere these days …

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

Posted on August 3rd, 2010 at 1:42pm.

What Rules Hollywood? Fear

[Editor’s Note: Today we introduce a new contributor to LFM, The Joker.]

By The Joker. I’m a comedy writer who works mostly for studios on mainstream movies.  Trust me when I tell you that you’ve seen some of my films.

Today I want to dispel a major myth about the environment of movie studios, at least when it comes to comedies: that the powers that be are trying to enforce a political agenda.  If you’ve spent any time at all at a studio, you know how ridiculous that sounds. That’s because studio executives are governed by one – and only one – emotion: fear… of losing their jobs.  If Hollywood has one reigning ideology, one overriding “agenda” that governs everything that happens, it’s this fear of being fired.

Fear is the unified field theory of Hollywood.

I have great respect for most executives at the studios, because they do generally have a skill set. They are fairly good with story structure, and give surprisingly well-thought-out notes. But on certain issues, the political ones, the notes tend to gravitate towards the absurd because their Number One Rule of Comedy is: Offend No One.  Why?  Because executives are basically afraid.

So given the mandate of “offending no one,” comedy writers are generally asked to excise all politics from the plot, characters, and themes. When in doubt, go to a cliché – a tried and true device – so the executive can point to the market research if the movie bombs. Since the underlying plot of many comedies is usually irrelevant (e.g., who remembers that Happy Gilmore is trying to save his grandmother’s house?), no executive wants to go out on a limb by depicting something out of the ordinary. Go for the safe bad guy (corporations), the pat ending (the divorced couple gets back together), the inoffensive villain (Russians and Nazis okay, Arabs and African-Americans not so much).

The Joker dispenses advice about Hollywood.

This leads to a haphazard situation in terms of the values that are promoted in a mainstream Hollywood comedy.  Sometimes those values will be liberal, but sometimes conservative.  Instead of realistic behavior befitting the year 2010, for example, we’ll substitute family values straight out of the 1950’s – such as the total ban on characters having abortions in studio movies. But sometimes the dice roll the other way, and the cliché is a modern liberal one.  So real estate developers are the bad guys, and homeless people are always white (unless they’re down-on-their-luck geniuses or violin virtuosos). But no matter what, it’s got to be a cliché – because clichés don’t offend anyone (except for people looking for something original).

This reminds me of a romantic comedy I worked on for a major studio, in which the couple has sex with other people during a break in their relationship, only to get back together in the end. The studio’s one note was: The girl can’t have sex with another guy.  She can almost have sex (whatever that means), but she can’t go through with it.  I asked, “Okay, so they both ‘almost’ have sex with other people?”  But the studio said,  “Oh, no, the guy can have sex with someone else, just the girl can’t.”  And the executive giving the note was a woman.  So was her boss and the head of the studio.  How’s that for progressive Hollywood feminism?

So don’t think that studios are always nefarious cabals with an evil liberal agenda.  It’s more like Office Space, with fearful corporate bureaucrats just trying to keep their jobs – even if it means making comedies dumber and less original.  Because at the end of the day, it’s not that important for an executive’s career advancement to make hit movies. It’s much more important not to make a bomb.  That’s really something to be afraid of.

[Editor’s Note: Special thanks to the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein for posting on this piece.]

Posted on August 3rd, 2010 at 10:38am.

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.

Classic Cinema Obsession: Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête

By Jennifer Baldwin.

“Not only can fairy-tales be enjoyed because they are moral, but morality can be enjoyed because it puts us in fairyland, in a world at once of wonder and of war.”
G.K. Chesterton, Fairy Tales

“It was in fairy stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories

“You stole a rose, so you must die.”
Jean Marais as The Beast in Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête

ONCE UPON A TIME…

A frightened merchant is lost in the woods. He is trying to get back to his home and his children, but instead he stumbles into an enchanted part of the forest.

Branches part; a castle stands in the clearing. Tired and cold, the merchant enters the castle.

The castle itself is enchanted. It is a living castle, where arms come out of the walls to hold candlesticks and statues see with living eyes.

It is a castle where doors and mirrors talk and a rose holds the power of life and death.

It is the castle of a Beast. A beast with a curse.

And only by a look of true love will he find release from his curse. That look will come from a Beauty, a young woman who sacrifices her freedom to save her merchant father, who comes to be a prisoner in the Beast’s castle, and who will eventually come to love him. Continue reading Classic Cinema Obsession: Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête