LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

By Jason Apuzzo. • Twilight: Eclipse has taken in $175 mil domestically so far, and $280 mil worldwide – and it’s not even through its first week.  So it’s a hit, and a big one, and now I’m going to stop talking about Twilight for a while because I’ve hit the saturation point.

• DC Comics is already doing a second print run after more than 60,000 copies of the Wonder Woman issue #600 (the re-boot we’ve been discussing here at LFM) got gobbled up. A DC source tells Nikki Finke that downloads of the free issue preview have been “phenomenal.”  No surprises here – she’s a popular character, despite what some may say.  And is the new costume really ‘anti-American’?  I still think that’s debatable, unless you’re looking to be offended by everything.

• You get the sense James Cameron’s been let out of a cage, or something. Now he’s going to be directing Black Eyed Peas videos in 3D. This must be driving the studio brass at Fox nuts as they tap their fingers waiting for the Avatar 2 launch date.

• Kevin Smith begins shooting his ‘political horror movie,’ Red State, this August with a cast of no-names. Or since it’s a Kevin Smith film, is it a cast of no-brains?

• The fix is in.  You’re going to like Christopher Nolan’s Inception (see here and here) … or else!  Wake me when someone writes a review of this film that doesn’t look like it came out of the Warner Brothers press packet …

• … and in any case the summer’s most anticipated film (by me) is not Inception, but Piranha 3D.  The French poster for the film has been released … and frankly it looks better than the American one.  Why?  The French one focuses on the sex.  The American one focuses on the fish.  [The French really understand these things.]  And otherwise here are some great screen grabs from the film’s fantastic trailer.

• News comes today that George Miller’s Mad Max reboot will actually involve two films that will be released back-to-back: Mad Max: Fury Road and Mad Max: Furiosa. Miller is an uber-lefty, but this is a great franchise – and I love the new titles.  Hopefully this will work, and not be like the limp reboot of Death Race 2000.

• The Wrap has just figured out that Hollywood isn’t producing any new stars these days. Um, yeah!  We want to congratulate them on this striking new insight.

• With a Russian spy ring being caught recently, a lot of people are drawing comparisons to Angelina Jolie’s new film, Salt. It’s true – the timing couldn’t be better for the release of that film … provided you’re going to Salt to see a realistic depiction of contemporary Russian spycraft, and not Jolie’s legs.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … somehow I missed that actress Gloria Stuart turned 100 on the Fourth of July! Happy Birthday!  Govindini and I met Gloria a few years ago at an Academy event, and I actually ran into her at a Beverly Hills post office a few years ago, as well.  What a charmer.  She looks phenomenal, and has that old-school Hollywood graciousness in person that is so rare nowadays.  We wish her the very best.

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

Posted on July 6th, 2010 at 3:03pm.

By Jason Apuzzo. I thought it would be appropriate on this day, the Fourth of July, to mention a new exhibit that just opened of Norman Rockwell’s paintings being put on in Washington D.C. at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, entitled “Telling Stories.”  The exhibition features 57 major Rockwell works held by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, who are among the most significant collectors of Rockwell’s work.  The exhibit explores Rockwell’s connections to the movies, and also his thematic legacy by way of Lucas and Spielberg’s films.  You can read Ted Johnson’s nice article on this exhibit in Variety.

Something that we talk about a great deal here at Libertas is the portrayal of America and what is perhaps its defining attribute – the freedom of its citizens – in film and popular media.  Occasionally this is something that is expressed in film in a literal way, in terms of a film’s overt political agenda.  More often, however, it’s something that is communicated in a general feeling one gets about whether a filmmaker harbors affectionate feelings toward America and its people.

I happen to think this basic sort of affection or warmth toward America and its people is something that radiates from Lucas and Spielberg’s work when they’re at their best.  One thinks here in particular of Lucas’ American Graffiti, with its Capra-esque portrayal of small town California – or of Luke Skywalker, the paradigmatic American farm boy-hero from the original Star Wars.  And has there ever been a more stirring invocation of small-town American entrepreneurialism and innovation than Lucas’ film, Tucker: The Man and His Dream?  I doubt it.  The film, which Lucas made with his friend and fellow innovator Francis Coppola, is a personal favorite of mine.

In Spielberg’s case, almost his entire career has been an exercise in portraying the American Everyman (for which Spielberg endured an enormous amount of criticism early in his career) – from Duel through to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Saving Private Ryan and beyond.  Even in their most recent collaboration, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you feel this same sort of affection for America and Americana … particularly in Crystal Skull‘s fun, romanticized approach toward the 1950s, rock-and-roll, Marlon Brando-style motorcycle culture, and Cold War anti-communism. Continue reading George Lucas & Steven Spielberg Present New Norman Rockwell Exhibit