Hollywood Round-up, 8/5

By Jason Apuzzo. • The Expendables had its premiere yesterday. I certainly hope it does well – but I think I’ve figured out why my enthusiasm is muted with respect to this film: the apparent lack of a major star villain.  The problem with having all these action dudes lined up together is that they need a formidable foe, and I haven’t a clue from the marketing who that might be.

I think it’s great that Stallone uses his wife’s skin care products, by the way.  He should convince Mickey Rourke to do the same thing – Rourke’s currently looking like a mummy from one of those History Channel specials.

• Revenue on 3D movies is dropping like a stone (see here and here).  I hate to sound like a broken record, but for the umpteenth time I repeat: this is the result of the cheapening of an otherwise legitimate and exciting new technology by bad, overnight conversions.  This is so frustrating, because we’re watching something novel and exciting – a technology that is the product of years’ worth of expensive, complex R&D – be ruined by greedy executives looking for short-term cash-ins.

• Did Christopher Nolan steal the idea for Inception from … Scrooge McDuck? Oh is this funny, if true!  Someone’s apparently dug up an old comic in which the Beagle Boys break into a sleeping Scrooge McDuck’s bedroom and use a small machine to tap into his mind … in order to invade his dreams and steal the combination to his vault!  Well, how about that?

This must be a tough story to take for all those critics who’ve been telling us what an original thinker Nolan is, how he’s rewriting the history of philosophy, etc.  Besides, if Nolan had been half the genius he’s supposed to be he would’ve stolen from Elmer Fudd instead.

• A lot of critics continue to rave over Salt and Angelina Jolie’s performance in it. These critics include Kathleen Murphy, David Edelstein and Charles Taylor, all of whom have interesting things to say about Jolie and how the film cleverly uses her star persona.  Salt does really take the whole ‘movies don’t need stars’ argument and renders it laughable, as I indicated in my review.  I mean, is anybody under the impression that Maggie Gyllenhaal could’ve played Jolie’s role as well?  Or Amy Adams?  Please.

Here are some delicious, choice quotes from Charles Taylor’s piece “Deconstructing Angelina Jolie”:

I’m not the first critic to note that director Phillip Noyce puts the public’s distrust of Jolie to use in his ace spy thriller “Salt.” For most of the picture, we don’t know whether Jolie’s Evelyn Salt is a CIA agent or a Soviet mole. The question of Salt’s allegiance is finally answered, but Noyce’s masterstroke is that he makes the answer irrelevant to the pleasure of watching the splendor of Jolie in her full leonine regality …

The twists and turns of the plot allow Jolie to remain a solitary being. With Salt’s allegiance constantly in question, Jolie can stride through the movie with no allegiance, except to the camera regarding her. Noyce and cinematographer Robert Elswit realize they’re dealing with one of those rare performers comfortable with allowing the camera to drink her in (a quality often mistaken for narcissism). And since the audience is there to drink her in, we bond with her …

It’s not simply that “Salt” gets us on Jolie’s side. It’s that by forging our allegiance to Salt and keeping it firm no matter what side she appears to be on, Noyce affirms the truest values of movies: beauty, style, charisma. If virtue was what we craved from movies, then the heroine of “Gone With the Wind” would be Olivia de Havilland. When, in “Salt,” Jolie starts roughing up cops and Secret Service agents, it takes us a few beats to ask why she’s doing it. The truth is, at first, we really don’t care. All we know is that they’re somehow in the way of the person we’re there to bask in, and we just want to watch her stride and fight, and to look at that extraordinary face, some more … Jolie’s appeal is about the movie aristocracy of beauty and charisma …

What Jolie does in “Salt” goes far beyond the now-clichéd move of putting a woman in a male action role. The picture is, as few recent movies have been, a demonstration of the sheer power of star power. That the star in question feels like such a solitary being may be proof of just how small the pictures have gotten.

I could not agree more.  Click on over for the rest of Taylor’s drily amusing article.

• The CHiPs TV series is getting re-booted … with Topher Grace? Whatever.  Good luck doing this without Estrada.  [Also: does this mean freeze-frames are back?]

• G.I. Joe 2 is going forward, apparently with Stephen Sommers helming. I assume that’s because of the overseas grosses because nobody stateside really cares about this franchise, given it’s newly neutered/neo-globalist configuration.

• If you want to know what vacuous L.A. entertainment culture is actually like behind the scenes, the best thing you can do is watch The Rachel Zoe Project on Bravo.

RZP is a completely hilarious show that Govindini and I catch whenever we can; it’s essential viewing if you want to understand the ditzy, narcissistic and mostly harmless people who inhabit the industry.  The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog today gathers some of the best lines from the show’s season premiere, and there’s also a new controversy brewing over at The New York Post about why Rachel’s blonde assistant Taylor really got fired! My favorite line from last night’s show: “My Blackberry is at another level.”

• The whole Katy Perry vs. Lady Gaga thing is heating up. The shapely Ms. Perry just posed for Rolling Stone, and she also amplified on her recent accusation that Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” video was “blasphemous.” Here’s Perry:

“I am sensitive to [boyfriend] Russell taking the Lord’s name in vain and to Lady Gaga putting a rosary in her mouth. I think when you put sex and spirituality in the same bottle and shake it up, bad things happen.”

I think there’s some truth to this.  The fine, razor’s edge line connecting (and separating) spirituality and sexuality is the line that, for example, Federico Fellini treaded artfully over his entire career; and it’s the boundary that dolts like Lady Gaga and Madonna stumble over bafoonishly every day.

It’s entirely possible for entertainers to be sexy and playful without crossing the line – provided they have the talent, of course.  And I think that’s what bugs me about Gaga: she doesn’t have the talent, so she makes up for it with cheap theatrics.  By contrast, Perry’s goofy, playful “California Gurls” video plays like a campy, fun burlesque show – but at no point does it make you feel that you’re watching something ugly or sacrilegious (quite the contrary, actually).  We’ll be watching this Perry-Gaga catfight as it unfolds.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Contrary to what you may think, LFM is not morphing into a Christina Hendricks fansite, but – like Angelina Jolie last week – she’s certainly got our attention!

Today the va-va-voom Mad Men star does this fun interview with The New York Post, and then you’ve also got to see this hilarious video from yesterday of an interview with Hendricks in which she renders a local LA news anchor speechless and blubbering by matter-of-factly mentioning that she was preparing a bath when she heard about her Emmy nomination.  The poor sap is just smitten.

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

Posted on August 4th, 2010 at 6:15pm.