Salt Earns $36 mil + Jolie Premieres Film in Moscow, Sans Spies

The Red Queen (Scarlet Woman?): Jolie in Moscow.

By Jason Apuzzo. The new Angelina Jolie anti-communist thriller Salt, which we loved here at LFM, took in $36 million at the domestic box office over the weekend.  That was a strong opening for the film – strong enough that producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is already dropping hints in Hollywood Reporter today about the potential of a sequel.

This is why LFM readers need to go see this film, and continue to spread the word about it – because if we get a franchise out if this, what we’re going to get is … SPOILER ALERT … Angelina Jolie stalking the land, eradicating communists from our midst.  And we want that, right?  … END OF SPOILERS.

Salt finished second at the box office this past weekend to Inception, as Christopher Nolan’s fanboy-zombie army continues to show up in droves to that film, eager to have their brains scrambled.  It’s worth mentioning, however, that Salt is on fewer screens, and – depending on whom you believe – its budget may only have been half of Inception‘s.  And, of course, we know how the critics have been (for the most part) carrying Nolan’s water for him.

Meanwhile, the big news is that Jolie premiered the film in Moscow on Sunday, and the Russians went wild.  Here’s Reuters:

Clad in a floor-length Versace gown she described as “Russian Red”, Jolie blew kisses to thousands of fans who came to watch her play a suspected Russian double agent in the blockbuster, which opened at No. 2 in the U.S. at $36.5 million. “I think this film is positive for modern Russia,” a broadly smiling Jolie told Reuters television at her first ever premiere in Moscow. Earlier, she took four of her six children to see the gold onion domes and iconic red walls of the Kremlin.

“As much as there are bad guys that are Russian, there are also heroes that are Russian in this film,” she said as her diamond stud earrings sparkled in the sunshine of Moscow’s record-setting heatwave … “It really makes me happy that we have returned to the theme of Russian spies in Hollywood films,” 23-year-old architect Alexander said after watching the film.

Good stuff.   “It really makes me happy that we have returned to the theme of Russian spies in Hollywood films.” Don’t you love how eager these guys are to re-start the Cold War?  To all my Russian friends (and I do have them, including someone who worked in The Kremlin): we miss you guys too!  The Cold War was such fun, especially compared to today.  Hugs and kisses.

Watch Jolie work the crowd below at the Moscow premiere.  They obviously ate it up.

If you haven’t seen the film, it should be pointed out that Salt makes a strong and obvious differentiation between the retro-communist bad guys who are the villains of the film, and those forces within modern Russia who are trying to achieve a reconciliation with the West.  That’s why the Russians are undoubtedly so eager to embrace this film – because it sort of allows everyone to have their cake and eat it, too.  The Russians get to look cool and villainous and relevant again, while at the same time the genuine changes in Russian society that have taken place since the communist collapse are fully acknowledged.

Here’s more about the Moscow premiere, from today’s New York Daily News:

“Angelina, Angelina” chants and clapping filled the air as Jolie, who plays a CIA officer accused of being a Russian sleeper-spook, signed autographs, posed for the cameras and kissed one little girl on the cheek at the Oktyabrskiy theater … Jolie had the Russians cheering at “Spasibo,” charming the audience with her Russian during the film’s introduction.  Her “Dobriy Vecher!” – Russian for Good Evening – greeting was met with screams and whistles.

“This is my first premier in Moscow and I’m so excited to be here,” she said switching into English. “I hope you enjoy the film. I tried to speak a bit of Russian. I hope I did okay.”  Once the projectors started rolling, the audience cheered and clapped for any references to Russia and with particular zest for a scene where a fur hat clad Jolie rides the Staten Island Ferry.

Yes, Jolie wearing the fur hat was a great scene in the film, as I mentioned in my review.  And actually, I would’ve like a lot more of that sort of thing from the film.  One of the few problems I had with the film is that you never see her in a great outfit like the one below.  Why couldn’t they put her in a red dress?  The film cries out for it.

Improving Russian-American relations.

Meanwhile, rumor has it that Jolie tried to arrange for Russian spy Anna Chapman to be at the Moscow premiere (Sony claims to know nothing about it).  I don’t know whether I believe this rumor – but it’s fun to think about, isn’t it?  In any case, Chapman didn’t show.  [Or did she … perhaps in disguise?]

Jolie’s considerable publicity efforts for Salt, by the way – which have already included trips to Comic-Con and Moscow (within a few days of each other) – are leading industry wags to say that she’s definitely earning her $20 million paycheck for this film.  Is this good for women – as we’ve been asking a lot here at LFM?  Yes, I tend to think it is.  Jolie is launching a major international film in multiple markets, and proving that women can do that if given half the chance.  And she’s probably creating more good will for us in Russia right now than Obama is, although that probably isn’t hard.

Word also comes in The New York Times today that a new, unauthorized biography of Jolie by Andrew Morton will be out soon,  featuring details of her complex, strained relationship with her father Jon Voight – a relationship which Morton considers to be the source of her curious, ambivalent behavior toward men.

I’ll leave that subject to the psychoanalysts and/or the female readers of our site; all I’ll say is that Salt‘s a colorful, refreshing (for being so politically incorrect) film – powered by an engaging star performance – and we’ll be keeping an eye on it here at LFM.  Make sure you see it so we can ensure that more films like it are made in the future.

Posted on July 26th, 2010 at 1:23pm.

LFM Reviews: Kisses

Kelly O'Neill & Shane Curry from "Kisses."

By Patricia Ducey. Kisses, a 2008 Irish film and favorite at many important festivals, is now in wider release throughout the US this summer.  [See the trailer below.]  Writer/director Lance Daly spins a tale of two abused Irish kids from the unfashionable outskirts of Dublin who run away from home to find freedom from family strife. No leprechauns or legends in this Ireland – the film takes place in a modern, industrialized Ireland, chockablock with rusting warehouses, traffic jams, and pop culture references. Daly, after a few preview screenings in the US, has wisely provided subtitles to aid the American ear in decoding the Irish patois. [I implore other filmmakers whose films are not in spoken American English to do the same. I’m talking to you, Sarah Gavron.]

The Irish Film Board, Bord Scannán na hÉireann, which has been financing and promoting the national cinema of Ireland since the 1990s, helped finance Kisses. What is the “national” cinema of Ireland, though, in actuality? Films written or produced by Irish persons, or films about Ireland? Or some permutation of both? Irish filmmakers have borrowed from early American films, like the docudrama Man of Aran or the romanticized The Quiet Man, and vice versa.  I spent some time in Ireland in the ’90s, when the Board first starting supporting these films – I was researching my thesis on this subject – and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a purely national cinema. But times were good in Ireland then, and the Board plowed ahead. Irish moviegoers, though, voted with their feet and many of these board-supported films ended up, oddly, being shown in art houses in Ireland – while the likes of Mrs. Doubtfire drew the crowds near Grafton Street.  Whether it is smart for any government to support the arts is debatable – just look at the bidding war over tax incentives for movie production here in the US – but such a debate has begun in Ireland due to the now faltering Irish economy.

Young Shane Curry in "Kisses."

The truth is that film and narrative have always been ‘globalized’ and Kisses is no exception. The two runaways, Kylie and Dylan, live in a neighborhood Antoine Doinel would feel at home in. The runaways cadge a ride down the canal ala Huck Finn, courtesy of a Russian émigré boatman who introduces the kids to Dylan’s namesake – Jewish/Christian American folk rocker Bob Dylan – with his impromptu rendition of “Shelter From the Storm.”  And later Dylan learns a lesson about the give and take of love from a Jamaican prostitute eking out a living in Dublin.

Dylan and Kylie’s world, though, is a drab working class Ireland. The two families live in comfortable enough homes, but Dylan’s father, a handsome guy, drinks and bullies, while Kylie’s uncle fools everyone in the family except her – she knows from bitter experience what he really is.  Both Dylan and Kylie reach the end of their respective ropes on Christmas Day; one battle royale, one unwanted advance too many, and they are off, with Kylie egging Dylan on to make a run for it. They hop a river barge to the city, and the adventure begins – for good and ill.

The cinematography is lovely. Daly shoots the opening scenes of the housing development in bleak black and white, and lets the color slowly seep into the frame as the kids and the boatman get farther and farther away from home (a nod to The Wizard of Oz? Again, the cross-pollination of film). The two child stars, real Dublin kids Kelly O’Neill as Kylie (a Drew Barrymore look-alike) and Shane Curry as Dylan, shine as newcomers. Daly draws joyous and heartbreaking performances from both of them, without the wise-assery or precociousness we see in so many preteen stories. I wished that perhaps Kylie was a little less heroic a heroine, but that’s a minor quibble.

If you liked a recent Irish film Once, you will like Kisses. Kisses is the anti-Inception. It is small and slight but you won’t forget it – just like your first kiss.


Posted on July 26th, 2010 at 12:45pm.

Jolie vs. The Communists; LFM Reviews Salt

Winning the Cold War and looking fabulous: Angelina Jolie in "Salt."

By Jason Apuzzo.  Now we know why the Chinese communists banned this film.

Before I tell you how deliciously pleasurable and cathartic Salt is, before I begin to gush in embarrassing ways over Angelina Jolie’s pouty lips and high cheekbones – and how sexy she looks decked out in a Russian fur hat (I’m buying one for Govindini immediately; every beautiful woman should have one) – I need to let you in on a few things that may shock you.  So here we go:

The premise of the new Angelina Jolie/Phillip Noyce action-thriller Salt is that the United States has been massively penetrated by Cold War-era Soviet communist sleeper agents, who even in exile from contemporary Russia are dead set on America’s destruction.  These agents are nasty, dangerous, and out to get every one of us.  They hide out in the open, but also in upper echelons of power – where they wait patiently to strike.  And there are a helluva lot of them, far too many for our otherwise overloaded intelligence bureaucracies to handle.

A dangerous woman on the run.

How dangerous are these sleeper agents?  For starters, their first successful operation – as we are informed by way of flashback – was nothing less than the killing of President Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, who (and here Salt’s fictional story dovetails nicely with actual history) spent several years living in the Soviet Union before returning to his life as an underworld drifter in New Orleans.  And now our nation is flooded with such men – cold, calculating, highly effective killers trained to strike on command and plunge America into its final, richly-deserved (from the communist perspective) apocalypse.

Oh, and by the way – one of them might be Angelina Jolie.  [I knew those lips were too good to be true!]

Does this premise surprise you?  It certainly surprised me, because Hollywood hasn’t been telling stories like this since the 1980’s.  But in point of fact, I don’t even recall films with this sort of premise appearing in the 80’s!  And it’s for this reason that Jolie, Noyce and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura deserve a lot of credit for bringing this taut, intelligent and politically incorrect thriller to the screen right now, when – ironically – we would seem to need it the most.

I’d like to tell you more about the plot of this film, actually, and take you through every suspenseful twist and turn, but that would spoil the fun when you see it – and really you should see Salt.  Because months before Red Dawn is released, months before Mao’s Last Dancer hits theaters – and even, frankly, with an otherwise commendable film like the French Cold War thriller Farewell in theaters right now – Salt is the dealbreaker for me that suggests that Hollywood is not as irretrievably left-liberal-progressive as we’ve been led to believe.  It can’t be, at least not any longer; there is simply no way this film could’ve been made, were it so.  The sense I have is that a fight is underway in the industry right now, that our national narrative is up for grabs.  Maybe it’s backlash against Obama causing this.  Maybe it’s too many years of bad movies belittling the war on terror.  Who knows?  [Plus, there’s also the issue of Jolie’s father, noted Tea Partier Jon Voight.  Is some of the old man’s craggy wisdom finally rubbing off on his formerly estranged daughter?]

Good girls wear black.

In any case, Salt really helps matters right now, provided that you’re oriented toward liberty.  Salt won’t take back Avatar or a lot of other nonsense that the industry has been dishing out, but it definitely is a shot in the arm.  All you really need to know about Salt‘s storyline is this: the film has two major cathartic moments in it, both of which revolve around Angelina Jolie terminating communist agents.  And if that doesn’t get your freedom-loving blood flowing, you’re insensate  [Or, alternately, you’re one of those well-tailored, narcotized characters in a Christopher Nolan film.]

Salt sets up a situation in which C.I.A. agent Angelina Jolie may be a Soviet sleeper agent.  For quite a while we don’t know – indeed, we’re not even sure she knows, a la Bourne.  Outwardly, she appears to be a highly effective C.I.A. field operative.  We first get to see her in the midst of a harrowing, torture-filled captivity by the North Koreans (the North Koreans wisely keep her in lingerie, however), before she’s released by way of a spy transfer; listen in this sequence, by the way, for the film’s nice potshot at Kim Jong Il.  Once back in the States, Jolie just wants to settle down with her nerdy, German entomologist husband and retire upward to a desk job.

Jolie married to a nerdy German entomologist.  Holding down a desk job.  I know – I laughed, too.

But events won’t let her settle down, of course, because in through the C.I.A.’s door (literally) walks a Soviet agent with a story to tell – a story about a secret communist operation, dating back decades, to train a generation of super-spies to infiltrate the West.  These agents are trained to remain undercover, to adopt Western ways (in Jolie’s case, this obviously includes looking fabulous in a pant suit), and to then strike at the opportune moment. Continue reading Jolie vs. The Communists; LFM Reviews Salt

Hollywood Round-up, 7/21-22

"Greetings, Earthlings!" Jolie at Comic-Con.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Angelina Jolie showed up at Comic-Con yesterday, in black leather – and the audience nearly blew the roof off in approval.  She talked about her character in Salt. Money quote: “She’s an interesting, damaged type of person … She’s not just heroic, or even brave. There’s something a little off about her … and maybe there’s something a little off about me. Maybe it’s a good match.”  Um, right.  I’ll be talking more about this film tomorrow.  In the meantime, director Phillip Noyce does an interview about Salt with the Wall Street Journal today.  Plus check out related Cold War-themed buzz about the new Jack Ryan reboot, Moscow.

• Jolie hubby Brad Pitt will apparently be both producing and starring in World War Z, the adaptation of the blockbuster all-out-zombie-war novel.  I skimmed through this novel when it came out – it read fairly well, although it’s certainly nothing special.  My sense is that it will adapt well to the screen – unless the zombie genre is already dead, so to speak, by the time Pitt gets to it.

• There’s a deluge of news coming out of Comic-Con right now (see here).  Tron: Legacy has a big new trailer out, for example, and frankly I’m disappointed with it.  It looks incredibly trite – with the hackneyed, Baby-boomer inflected ‘search for the father’ theme dominating throughout.  Isn’t there any other story these guys can tell?  My enthusiasm for this film just dropped about 3 floors, although it’s not quite in the basement just yet.

• The rumor mill currently has The Riddler as the new villain for Batman 3, with the potential of Inception‘s Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the role.  How much do I care about this?  Actually very little because The Dark Knight bored me to tears.

"Tron's" Olivia Wilde: thrilled to be at Comic-Con.

• We’re now learning more about Captain America … and apparently the redoubtable Captain is no longer going to be a “flag waiver,” or “jingoistic” (thereby defeating the point?) … and now probably I’m “not going to see this film” and its creators have “just lost my business.”  And you can quote me on that.  Making a quick visit to Comic-Con, Captain America director Joe Johnston had this to say about his film, which is currently shooting in London: “[T]his is not about America so much as it is about the spirit of doing the right thing … It’s an international cast and an international story. It’s about what makes America great and what make the rest of the world great too.”  Does that include the Nazis, by the way, whom Captain America fights in Johnston’s film?  Are they ‘great’ too?

• In other Comic-Con news: Alien invasion flick Battle: Los Angeles is making a big splash (see here and here); Zack Snyder is moving forward on the script for Frank Miller’s Xerxes (we covered this project previously here); Karl Urban (Bones McCoy in Star Trek) may be tapped to play Judge Dredd in the long-developing Judge Dredd 3D reboot; Jennifer Lawrence talks about ‘prepping’ to play the sexy Mystique in X-Men: First Class; the Wonder Woman character will soon have her own Mac cosmetics line;  and Pixar is being consulted on Disney’s forthcoming reboot of the Muppets movie franchise.

• Natalie Portman and director Darren Aronofsky are set to open the Venice Film Festival with their new ballet thriller, The Black Swan, featuring Portman as a ballerina who has a steamy erotic relationship with a rival ballerina played by Book of Eli’s Mila Kunis.  And we certainly are a long way from Queen Amidala now, aren’t we?  [Side note: setting The Wrestler aside, has Aronofsky really done sufficient penance for The Fountain?]

Katherine Heigl rolls on.

• In the new wave of film projects being launched in the wake of the Twilight craze, we now have a post-apocalyptic teen girl novel, The Hunger Games, being adapted by the same screenwriter who’s writing the new 24 movie (which takes place Bourne-style in Europe, by the way).  Get ready to see a lot of this.  Teenage girls are the new teenage boys in Hollywood.

• The Islamist punk who was threatening the South Park guys has been arrested in an anti-terror sting, thank goodness.  What they should now do is lock the guy up and force him to watch South Park, which would actually be worse than waterboarding.

• Apparently inspired by Sex and the City, a British woman claims to have spent the past 10 years bedding a thousand different men. She’s now making her way through Law and Order DVDs, and plans to sue the men for harassment.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Katherine Heigl’s career rolls on, implacably, without a hit in sight. The sturdy blonde is now set to star in Adaline, billed as an “epic romance”; and she’ll also be playing a bounty hunter (?) in the forthcoming One for the Money. Adeline is described as being about “a beautiful woman who hasn’t aged in 100 years but hasn’t found love, either,” which sounds like about half the women in West LA.  Ph.D. dissertations will someday be written on how Heigl has blown her career, but in the meantime we wish her well on these increasingly Sisyphean projects.

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

Posted on July 22nd, 2010 at 11:45pm.

Hollywood Round-up, 7/20

"The Hills'" Kristin Cavallari at the "Salt" premiere.

By Jason Apuzzo. • It’s been a great week for Russian spies.  Yesterday here in LA we had the Salt premiere (see here and here).  A lot of big names showed up to this premiere – including the estimable patriarch of the Jolie/Voight family, Jon Voight; I wasn’t aware, incidentally, that Russian model Olya Zueva had snuck her way onto the cast of Salt – an added attraction, clearly.  But word also comes today that in her ongoing rush to cash-in on her notoriety, Russian (not so super-)spy Anna Chapman may have some exciting new opportunities opening up for herself in the entertainment world.  Ahem.

Without giving anything away, let’s just say this new job opportunity of hers gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘sleeper agent.’

• Is über-Producer Jerry Bruckheimer losing his mojo?  Wags are wondering whether 4 straight flops in a row may be jeopardizing Bruckheimer’s relationship to Disney. My guess?  Jerry’s fine, because this is still coming out next year.

• Do we finally have a universal digital video platform? The creators of UltraViolet certainly hope so as that format finally debuts in public today.  I’m still skeptical about this, and have about a million technical questions regarding how transitioning to this new platform/codec is going to play out.  The basic problem here, as far as whether this platform will actually take hold, is that people are always going to want to innovate and come up with something better – and no industry consortium (no matter how powerful) can shut that process down.

Olya Zueva.

• The Star Trek sequel should be shooting by next summer, although there’s still no script.  The next film will apparently be bigger and more thematically ambitious than the first.  I’ve been a little concerned about noises from the screenwriters that the next film may be more ‘socially relevant’ than the first one, which I enjoyed very much.  We all know what ‘socially relevant’ usually means these days (“Get out of Iraq!!!”) … here’s hoping they don’t go there.

• According to imdb’s estimable readers, Christopher Nolan’s Inception is the 3rd greatest movie of all time! [Citizen Kane, by comparison, weighs in at only #36.]  And you’re wondering why some of us don’t like Mr. Nolan’s fanboys dumbing down standards of excellence?  Still, the adults continue to weigh-in negatively on Inception.  The latest today comes from Nolan’s own backyard in the UK Guardian.  The title of their article on Nolan says it all: “The Emperor Has No Clothes.” Money quote: “Christopher Nolan’s films are full of big ideas hinting at deep profundities. But are we investing meaning where it isn’t?”  Answer: yes.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … with Russian spies and Russian mistresses all over the media, we thought we’d take a quick look at Olya Zueva, the Russian model appearing in the new spy thriller, Salt.  We try to stay on theme, here.

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

Posted on July 20th, 2010 at 7:08pm.

Winning the Cold War in L’Affaire Farewell

David Soul (left) with Fred Ward as Ronald Reagan in "Farewell."

By Joe Bendel. Instead of the man who knew too much, he was the spy who knew everything.  Codenamed “Farewell” by the French, Colonel Vladimir Vetrov was charged with reviewing the intelligence the KGB gathered on the free world—every speck of it, including the extent to which each western intelligence agency had been compromised.  He also knew the Soviet government had failed to live up to its promises.  President Ronald Reagan called the resulting L’Affaire Farewell: “one of the most important espionage cases of the 20th century.”  It also inspired Christian Carion’s espionage drama Farewell (trailer below), which opens in Los Angeles and New York this Friday night.

Like the real-life Vetrov on whom he is based, Colonel Grigoriev was once stationed in Paris, where he rebuffed the advances of the French and American intelligence services.  However, by 1981, the Colonel had come to the conclusion the Soviet Union needed drastic reform – so he approached the DST, the French equivalent of the FBI (the only western intelligence agency the KGB had not bothered to infiltrate) through Pierre, a French businessman with no formal involvement in the world of espionage.

Out of his element, Pierre wants to extricate himself from the affair as soon as possible, but Grigoriev insists on dealing only with him, considering the professionals untrustworthy.  Partly in recognition of the value of Grigoriev’s intel and partly out of a sense of budding friendship, Pierre becomes the Colonel’s amateur handler, passing a wealth of information on to the DST.

While Pierre and Grigoriev meet in parks and train stations, another alliance in being forged between President Reagan and Mitterrand, France’s newly elected socialist prime minister.  The President is less than thrilled at the prospect of Communist ministers in the new French cabinet, but Mitterrand has an olive branch to offer: “Farewell.”

Farewell’s portrayal of these influential world leaders is quite fascinating and surprisingly even-handed.  Philippe Magnan’s Mitterrand is intelligent but aloof, coming across like more than a bit of a cold fish.  Refreshingly, Pres. Reagan is not depicted as a doddering bumbler, but as an engaged and commanding leader.  Yes, there are scenes of Reagan using classic film as a metaphor with his National Security Advisor (played by an almost unrecognizable David Soul), but never in way that calls his judgment into question.

Yet, there is something about Reagan’s distinct mannerisms that are hard to emulate without lapsing into caricature.  American actor Fred Ward takes a good shot, but he still sounds more like a Saturday Night Live impersonation than a real flesh and blood individual.  Frankly, Ronald Reagan remains such a commanding presence in the national consciousness it makes any dramatic representation problematic.

Not too friendly: Vselovod Shilovsky as Gorbachev in "Farewell."

Fortunately, Farewell’s primary leads are uniformly excellent.  Though he looks appropriately rumpled, Emir Kusturica plays Grigoriev sharp as a tack, keenly aware of his own personal contradictions.  As Pierre, Guillaume Canet’s performance is also smart and understated, avoiding the headshaking “what-did-I-get-myself-into” histrionics.  As a result, viewers believe the unqualified trust Grigoriev places in him.

Technically well produced, cinematographer Walther Vanden Ende and designer Jean-Michel Simonet effectively capture the oppressive drabness of the Brezhnev era.  Yet ideologically, Farewell resists easy classification.  While it certainly conveys the repressive and corrupt nature of Soviet Communism, the film sometimes suggests a John Le Carre-like equivalency, at least between the rival spy masters.  However, the shrewd conclusion again challenges the audience’s conceptions of faith and loyalty, within the context of the preceding “L’Affaire Farewell.”

Considering how long it has been since a brainy spy film sneaked into theaters, Farewell is quite welcome indeed.  Featuring two compelling lead performances and a meaty story that intrigues on several levels, it is an engrossing film.  It also might be the fairest shake Pres. Reagan has gotten on screen since his inauguration in 1981, ironically coming by way of France.  Definitely recommended, Farewell opens Friday (7/23) in both Los Angeles and New York, expanding to other cities the following week.

Posted on July 20th, 2010 at 9:13am.