By Jason Apuzzo. • Resident Evil: Afterlife was tops at the box office this past weekend, taking in about $27 million. Frankly I was surprised at how good the film was, and now Milla Jovovich is saying there will definitely be another sequel. I’m there. Please set it in Washington, D.C., if that hasn’t already been done. The undead certainly seem to be living large in our nation’s capitol – at our expense.
• Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival this past weekend, and some wags are commenting on the fact that the festival jury was headed by her ex-boyfriend, Quentin Tarantino. I think such speculation is a bit tacky; those two are long-ago Splitsville, and we all know Sofia’s got the filmmaking chops. Give the lady her due, please.
• Speaking of Italian American women, Camille Paglia conducts a marvelous takedown of Lady Gaga in the latest issue of London’s Sunday Times. I’m in complete agreement with Camille: Gaga is such a nothing, an ersatz celebrity if there ever was one.
• Mao’s Last Dancer continues to do nicely at the indie box office. The film recently expanded to 102 screens, and has now taken in over $2 million. These are great numbers, given how the film is being completely ignored by the media outlets who would presumably appreciate its message the most.
• My friend Patrick Goldstein at the LA Times has a wonderful piece out about Werner Herzog’s new 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a film covering the 32,000 year old cave paintings at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc. I will freely say that I am green with envy at Patrick’s opportunity to see 30 minutes’ worth of this film before it heads to Toronto! I worship the ground Herzog walks on, and volunteer to carry his shoes the next time he travels underground, or to the Arctic, or out into Loch Ness or grizzly country, or wherever he next makes a film. In related news, Carla Bruni and her husband recently made a splash in Montignac where they were commemorating the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the Lascaux cave paintings.
• On the sci fi front … the words “Khan” and “Klingons” were suggestively dropped in a recent interview with the screenwriters of J.J. Abrams’ next Star Trek movie. Goodie.
Also: Disney’s forthcoming alien-flick Oblivion has a screenwriter; and some more footage of Tron has been released. I’m still irked by what I reported about that film on Friday. Also: I’m troubled by how vacuous the film’s looking.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Battleships’s Brooklyn Decker tells The New York Post today that she’s not anorexic enough, or grungy enough, to be a runway model. “I have boobs. I’m very all-American.”
I’m puzzled by this fixation on her looks, because I thought she landed the Battleship role as Liam Neeson’s daughter due to her idiosyncratic, off-Broadway turn as Anya in The Cherry Orchard. Shows you what I know!
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on September 13th, 2010 at 3:20pm.
Any time a woman does well people assume it’s because she’s married to somebody or is the girlfriend of somebody. Sofia Coppola has plenty of talent of her own to make it (I loved “Lost in Translation” and yes, also “Marie Antoinette”) without needing Tarantino to give her any special favors.
And look at both Milla Jovovich and Angelina Jolie making action movies this summer that did so well! It just goes to show that movies with women in the lead, even in non-traditional action movie roles, can draw a big audience.
Great piece by Camille Paglia on Gaga. My favorite Paglia witticisms:
“For Gaga, sex is mainly decor and surface; she’s like a laminated piece of ersatz rococo furniture. … She is the diva of déjà vu.”
I couldn’t agree more.
I absolutely adore the last Star Trek….
but if Abrams & Co. have decided to “remake” Wrath of Khan they will fail.
Re: Werner Herzog
Have you seen his feature films made in the ’00s? If you did, I’d like to know your thoughts on them:
2001 – Invincible
2005 – The Wild Blue Yonder
2006 – Rescue Dawn
2009 – Bad Lieutenant
2009 – My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done
VW – unfortunately I’m too rushed right now for a detailed reply, but in the ’00s I tend to prefer his documentaries to his narrative features. I think his best narrative work was done in the 70s, typically with the participation of one Klaus Kinski …
I agree! None of his other features measure up to his Kinski ones.