* No more complaining about not being able to see all the top films of the year. At AMC movie theaters around the country on Feb. 23, watch all five of the best picture Academy Award nominees back to back for only $30. Your pass allows you to come and go, plus you get free popcorn all day. It's time for a movie binge, baby.
* Reading alert: Mike Russell from CulturePulp interviewed graphic novelist/filmmaker Marjane Satrapi and then drew it. The medium and the subject, both super cool.
* Last night, Cinecultist caught the pre-backlash-to-the-backlash, record release performance of Vampire Weekend at Bowery Ballroom. We trotted out our snarkiest remarks and our most cutting observations about the super enthusiastic 16+ crowd, but the fact of the matter is this young foursome plays a catchy, danceable tune. The nostalgia for Paul Simon's Graceland pulled strong on our heart strings and their earnest rocking made us want to cut class and lay out on the grass on the Quad. Expect to see VW freakin' everywhere really soon.
"Sischy, Brant Resign at Interview" from Women's Wear Daily.
Rumors and speculation had been swirling that the company was up for sale, so Cinecultist is not surprised to see both women step down from running the magazine. It's still a little sad though, oddly enough. We'll be very curious to see Ingrid's next projects. She's a smart (albeit unconventional) cookie.
For an older, but still intriguing, look at Ingrid's career and relationship to the art world, track down a copy of Janet Malcolm's brilliant New Yorker essay, "A Girl of the Zeitgeist." You can find it in her collection, The Purloined Clinic.
Not the Cinecultist, that's for darn sure. Our report on how the New York contingency is faring out in Park City at this year's Sundance Film Festival is up on Metromix.
Thanks should go to fellow bloggers from MTV's Movie Blog, the Reeler, Matt Dentler, and Tom Hall for their perspectives and excellent reporting on the festival. Hopefully next year, we'll be wading through the snow banks with them.
Swedish director Ingmar Bergman passed away this morning at 89 years old. Cinecultist blogged about it over on Gothamist and GreenCine Daily has a nice round up of links.
CC's only recently become more acquainted with Bergman's movies. After muscling through Persona while working on our undergrad film studies minor, we always thought his work would be too "art cinema" for our taste. But in fact, his movies are often quite funny, sweet and bracingly humane. Only a few months ago, we rented the miniseries version of Scenes from a Marriage and even recommended it to our mainstream-minded mother as a Must See. Bergman filmed some shockingly honest interchanges between characters. You can hardly believe anyone could admit such naked and brutal things to another person, let alone film them. As we learned from the docu Bergman's Island, Ingmar had a pretty tumultuous personal life, but what a film artist. Very sad news indeed.
Oooo, exciting Dylan buzz: a clip from the new Todd Haynes movie, I'm Not There. Have you looked at the cast list for this thing? It's a cinephile's damp dream. In the aforementioned clip we get to see a bit with Cate Blanchett and David Cross as Allen Ginsburg. Our downtown compatriot looks good; CC hardly recognized him in that Howl-ish beard. Sept. 21 (now known as "BD Day" on our calendar) can't come soon enough. [Via]
Happy Birthday (yesterday) Ingmar! Looking good for 89, baby.
Sienna Miller says the darndest things to reporters like NY mag's Logan Hill.
"I’m not too skinny—definitely not at the moment." AND "I have told the paparazzi to fuck off—that sounds like something I’d do."
"Car Talk, a popular car advice talk radio program hosted by mechanics Click and Clack, is being made into an animated television show, the Public Broadcasting Service said on Wednesday. The show will launch with ten, 30-minute prime-time episodes in summer 2008 and will be named with the help of fans." [via Reuters]
Although to be honest, news and jokes about cars are slightly less funny when you live in New York City and primarily ride the subway or the bus or walk. However Cinecultist used to love listening to Tom and Ray Magliozzi (aka Click & Clack) laugh at their lame puns. They think their shtick is heee-larious and thus, it is.
"After much foreplay, the feature version of the long-running HBO series is gearing for a fall start, with New Line near a deal to finance and distribute," according to Variety today.
Frankly, Cinecultist is a little "meh" about it. We own most of the series on DVD, got HBO when we moved to New York in order to watch it, and even paid good money to go on the SATC tour while in graduate school. (CC wrote a cultural studies paper about the show and its branding of the New York City experience, so shut up about it.) In other words, we should be able to muster more excitement about the news.
Maybe it's because we can't imagine any sort of interesting plot line for the "girls" to explore. The series finale really wrapped it up pretty tidily. Besides, as everyone keeps pointing out with a tinge of evil gloat, the actresses are all getting up there in years. SATC was a product of its moment—financially solvent, sexually expressive 30-somethings living in New York during the booming '90s. But now those chicks have moved on, bought the co-op in Park Slope and retired the Blahniks. What's interesting or sexy about that? Frankly, the whole retread, been-there-seen-it-done-it-bought-the-tshirt aspect is depressing.
"Brett Ratner is set to direct Playboy, the Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment film about the life of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner. Brian Grazer is producing," according to Variety. [via Defamer, who is positively gleeful in anticipation.]
P.S. Did you know that Brett Ratner has an official website which hosts a blog that monitors all of Brett's appearances in the media? He does.
Are you a British kid between the ages of 15 and 18? Do you long to be in the movies and know a bit about the wizarding world invented by J.K. Rowling? Well, then get your butt down to the Earls Court Exhibition Center in London on July 1, this could be your chance to be a part of the Harry Potter legacy. Producers will be holding an open casting call for the roles of Tom Riddle and Lavender Brown in the next film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The parts of Luna Lovegood and Cho Chang in Order of the Phoenix were cast with an open call.
BTW, Cinecultist already has a plan to see a midnight screening of Order of the Phoenix with Matty and Zack on July 11. We have not however pre-ordered our copy of Deathly Hallows but we're intended to attend some sort of midnight release party on July 21. Hopefully the local guy who dresses as Dumbledore and rides a Segway will be out and about too. Now that's a Potter superfan.
As you surely have already heard on the Interweb, Michael Moore's newest documentary, Sicko, wherein the pudgy Michigander takes on the health care industry, has been leaked. Cinecultist has plans to see an advance press screening this evening and when we mentioned it to a coworker, he promptly IM'ed us a URL to download it. According to Brandweek, "One site, thepiratebay.org, lists at least roughly 2,000 downloads of the flick, and the Web site p2pnet.net, which tracks torrents, or P2P downloads, writes that the movie “is already thoroughly entrenched on the p2p networks.”
Not surprisingly, Moore has come out on the side of content sharing, as long as the folks passing his work around aren't making money from it. Or course, Lionsgate and Weinstein Co., the movie's distributors, may not be so happy with Moore's (public) live and let live attitude. It should be really interesting to see if the box office seems significantly lower than expected after the movie hits theaters on June 29. Or, on the flip side, if the increased internet buzz gets more butts into theaters, even if it is for a repeat viewing.
For CC, we'd much rather sit in a comfy theater seat watching a movie than be hunched over our laptop peering in on a free feed of potentially sketchy quality. Also, part of the fun of any movie, though particularly Moore's work, is being part of an enthusiastic audience. When we saw Fahrenheit 9/11 three years ago, it was a total event what with the highly vocal crowds and sold-out late night screenings. Frankly, seeing it with a press/industry crew for free tonight probably won't be as much fun as waiting in line late at night in the East Village in two weeks. Bear that in mind before you rush off to right-save-click.
Director, fine artist, hotel interior designer and Jeff Bridges look-alike Julian Schnabel has unveiled the facade of his West Village town house and the sucker is hot damn pink.
As Andrew Berman, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation’s director told the Villager, “I don’t know for sure — but my fear is that this will be the color. I think virtually any other color would be more acceptable.”
But hey, Julian just won the best director prize at Cannes for his most recent movie Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), he's entitled to his hideous day glow effrontery, right? [via Curbed]
According to Variety today, Regina King will be producing and starring in a remake of Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill. The movie will be updated to today and feature an African American cast. (Just as a reminder,
The Big Chill is that '80s paean to baby boomer touchy-feely navel-gaving as a group of 30-something college friends get together for a funeral, reminisce about where it'd all gone wrong and boogie to Motown hits.)
A few actors Cinecultist hopes the producers and casting director are considering:
Sanaa Lathan
Omar Epps
Taye Diggs
Anika Noni Rose
Larenz Tate
Gabrielle Union
Mekhi Phifer
Movies with a very specific niche cast are so the new hottness and Cinecultist is psyched to see how this project develops.
A moment of silence please, for the marriage of actors Catherine Keener and Dermot Mulroney. If those two crazy kids couldn't make it work, then what's that to say about the chance for the rest of us?
...CC was happy to contribute our $11 to the $37.1 million dollar take for Ocean's Thirteen this past weekend. The boys are back and the nose does play. Also, our love for the Cloon and the Pitt grew even deeper with this exchange in their Entertainment Weekly cover story interview.
You guys have been buddies for a while. When did you first meet?
CLOONEY: The baths.
PITT: On Pico Boulevard. That's right. I forgot about that.
CLOONEY: You wouldn't have recognized me with the leather hood on. [Laughs]
PITT: [Makes a disgusted face] I'm eating here.
...We enjoyed some brisket, sausage and sweet pickles at the Big Apple BBQ in Madison Square Park on Saturday. Brisket outdoors is enough to put anyone in a satisfied summertime mood.
...We're still working on the New Yorker's summer fiction issue but are finding the cryptic summer movie personal essays by such literary stars at Dave Eggers, Miranda July and Jeffrey Eugenides odd but intriguing. Best line award so far goes to Gary Shteyngart for his recollection of ogling young Tahnee Welch in Cocoon: "The fact that my sexual awakening peripherally involved Steve Guttenberg I have gradually accepted."
...On two sad notes for world cinema, African director Ousmane Sembène and French actor Jean-Claude Brialy recently passed away. We added Xala, Black Girl, A Woman Is a Woman and Claire's Knee to our home viewing schedule in memoriam. [via John, thanks.]
...Season premiere of Big Love tonight! Backstabbing, freaky religious types and sexual secrets in suburbia, wahoo.
...Just in case you hadn't noticed, The Movie Binge crew is back to their glutenous summer viewing ways. Last week CC wrote a long rant about how much we hated Mr. Brooks. If we hadn't seen this movie for free at an advance screening, we'd be writing a threatening note to Kevin Costner demanding our admission plus pain and suffering back.
While the Cinecultist has been enjoying a birthday in Manhattan, Mr. A.O. "Fancy Pants" Scott has been in the South of France soaking up the sun and cinema at the Cannes Film Festival. He reports today in the Times about the scene on the Croisette and his early, albeit self-aware, opinion about the much-anticipated English language Wong Kar Wai starring Norah Jones, My Blueberry Nights. Scott declares Wong's newest is self-indulgent, but with more adjectives:
"One of the more annoying tics of the kibitzers at Cannes (including this correspondent) is the habit of rendering authoritative, often hyperbolic snap judgments before the final credits are done. Thus, while the soundtrack music from My Blueberry Nights... was still echoing in the Palais des Festivals, you could hear dyspeptic grumbling about Mr. Wong’s American venture, along with a certain amount of defensive praise. There will be plenty of time to sort it out. My initial impression is of a sweet, insubstantial movie that might have been more exciting — more meaningful — to make than it is to see."
The part that troubles CC, a fan of Wong's work but not an unequivocal one, is that the characters emoting in English seems to have rendered them more breezy and less neurotic in Scott's opinion. A breezy Wong Kar Wai character sounds like a contradiction in terms. What could our obsessive auteur be doing if he's not making every mere gesture and costume change hyperbolic? CC is increasingly skeptical but still curious about the Blueberry.
Not Rory and Lorelei! Don't take them now, Lord.
From Variety today: 'Gilmore Girls' canceled. CW, WBTV wrap production on show
Good news Potter fans, Daniel "I'm getting older but I totally have a sense of humor about myself" Radcliffe has officially signed on to appear in installments VI and VII of the Harry Potter films. Number V, Order of the Phoenix comes out this summer, VI begins shooting this fall and in case you haven't marked your calendars yet, volume VII of the books, The Deathly Hallows, comes out in July.
Many years ago, an impressionable young Cinecultist saw a community theater production of Equus and was mighty shocked by the nakedness and the simulated horse sex. Eeep. If Danny boy is savvy enough to involve himself in both edgy, psychological theater and something written by Ricky Gervais where he flings a condom at Dame Diana Rigg, it's pretty safe to bet he'll become more than just a former child actor. Cinecultist is looking forward to what you do next Daniel, make us proud.
Wherein Two Known Offenders Comment on Lengthy Movie Running Times...
David Fincher:
"I do agree you can't just make movies three hours long for no apparent reason. For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages. Sometimes, maybe filmmakers can fall in love with the story they're telling and maybe need to be more diligent in how they're telling it. There's stuff in the narrative [of Zodiac] that's not essential to the investigation, but if you start removing that stuff, it becomes even more of a dry police procedural.You need to have that characterization in there but not wear out its welcome. It's not my intention to be boring. The hope is you're able to walk a fine line."
Zodiac, 160 min.
Fight Club, 139 min.
Jerry Bruckheimer:
"[Pirates' distributor Disney] loved the film. They always would like things shorter to get more screenings in in a day, but they also recognized we made a very effective movie that held people's interest. When you walk out of that theater, you want to feel like you've had a complete meal."
Pirates: Dead Man's Chest, 150 min.
Bad Boys II, 147 min.
[via]
Some things to look forward to while Cinecultist still tries to cope with the frigid New York winter weather. Oh April, where are you dear spring-time friend?
* David Fincher's new movie Zodiac. Love that Gyllenhaal and love that grey/green palate. The New York Times reports.
* One week to go until the Oscars. Web coverage has really increased this year, as per this NYT trend article. CC's looking forward to continuing with our liveblogging tradition with fellow Gothamist and Oscar telecast junkie Jen Chung.
* CC has already read it, but you should be looking forward to getting your hot little hands on Lisa Graff's very excellent kids book, The Thing About Georgie. We interviewed Lis (aka our favorite Mandy Moore movie going partner) as part of her blog tour on Gothamist.
* Turns out DVR may not necessarily equal the imminent death of television commercials because Nielsen discovered "people who own digital video recorders, or DVRs, still watch, on average, two-thirds of the ads." Durr.
* Money making scheme of the week: Make some extra bucks by listing your home on a movie locations website. Though the Cinecultist probably won't be doing it anytime soon, our Eee Vee residence is barely big enough for us and our DVDs, let alone a movie crew.
* Stuffmagazine.com spends some time thinking about iconic songs from movie soundtracks and have included imbedded YouTube clips for some quality procrastination time. Unfortunately their list is missing Carly Simon's "Let The River Run" from Working Girl but that could be because Stuff is more of a dude publication.
* Cinecultist Viewing Tip: Iraq In Fragments, one of our favorite documentaries from last year and an Oscar-nominee, begins a run at Cinema Village this weekend.
* Ben Sisario stood in a lot of lines in the bitter cold for free TV show taping tickets. Check out his New York Times article for tips on that very New York experience. P.S. For the music-minded, we hear 50 highly coveted Arcade Fire tickets at each Judson Memorial Church show are available via a stand-by line. Hypothermia, shmypothermia.
* Bizarre, Anna Nicole Smith died. We'll probably need a whole miniseries to understand what happened in that woman's media saturated life.
* The Chinese Communist Party says in an editorial Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower is too excessive. Morality, shmorality, this movie is just bad. Is it too much to ask that Party officials just object to the badness?
* This week in New York movie going is officially East German Secret Police themed. All Stasi, all the time. J. Ho liked The Lives of Others (as did CC) as well as the Film Forum docu, The Decomposition of the Soul. Make it a double feature! Then rejoice that we don't live in a totalitarian regime! Yet.
* Ian Buruma's great essay in The New York Review of Books reminded CC that we still need to see Flags Of Our Fathers, since we loved Letters From Iwo Jima so much. Maybe when we're not watching Stasi movies this weekend. It is on DVD now.
This New York Observer article probably only amused Cinecultist as much as it did because we went to a drinks thing just last night hosted by Krucoff. Fortunately, it was not at the Magician. Also, thank god CC only lives in the suburbs of the blog ghetto (aka just north of "Hell's Square") and thus never get asked to comment in such faux-ironic, self-aggrandizing trend pieces.
Sigh. It seems like most people in the movie universe are in Park City, UT this week for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Unfortunately, the Cinecultist is home in the East Village enjoying a few vicarious snow flakes today and the bounteous web coverage of said festivities. It's not the same, but CC was never really the puffer jacket and ear-covered headband wearing type anyhow.
Some other spaces to visit for vicarious thrills:
Our dear editor at Janemag.com, Julie is out there as is fellow NYC movie blogger Stu VanAirsdale of The Reeler.
Also, we were sad again reading today in the NY Times David Carr's article about slain filmmaker Adrienne Shelly. He describes her movie, Waitress which stars Keri Russell and has its premiere at the festival as, "A tragicomic mash-up with a high/low music score, it ends in a very significant hug, one that in light of subsequent events could be easily mined for allegorical meaning."
When Cinecultist saw the Sundance fave from last year, Kirby Dick's documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated we could hardly believe how bizarre the MPAA's governing practices are. Between secretive review boards, seemingly fluctuating standards and a Byzantine appeals process, it hardly seemed possible that this secretive organization could wield so much power over the movie distribution industry. Interestingly, and at this year's Sundance no less, Motion Picture Association of America chairman Dan Glickman and Classification and Ratings Administration chairwoman Joan Graves will sit down at a breakfast with producers, directors and filmmakers to discuss changes to the rating's board policy, according to Reuters.
Some of proposed modifications to be announced officially at ShoWest:
- Expand the appeals board membership
- Allow filmmakers to cite precidents when appealing a rating decision
- Reveal more information about the board's demographic
- Identify the senior raters
- Formalize the rules of who can be on the board and for how long
- Formally train the raters
- Explain more to the public about the MPAA's role and standards for ratings
But the real question is did the docu, wherein Dick interviews filmmakers censored by the board and tries to reveal the board members identities with the help of private detectives, directly cause this announcement? Glickman says no, that "he began reaching out to the independents as soon as he took over from Jack Valenti, the lobbyist who came up with the ratings system, in September 2004. 'There was a feeling of detachment and alienation, and I wanted to open a dialogue with them,'" he told Reuters.
We're skeptical of this denial but still excited for the movie industry that they're own self-regulating body will be more responsive to the changing cultural tastes of America and the artistic envelope-pushing of moviemakers.
[Pictured (from left): Director Atom Egoyan interviewed by Kirby Dick in This Film Is Not Yet Rated]
This article in Variety today announcing that the totally brilliant English comedian/writer Jennifer Saunders (one of the minds behind Absolutely Fabulous!) will be producing two new series for BBC America inspired Cinecultist to click around on YouTube for classic French and Saunders episodes. We found the above Bergman parody which features Death asking for a Hob Nob. Ridiculously funny, you must admit.
By the way, CC has also had Ingmar Bergman on the brain lately because the documentary Bergman's Island will be screening at Film Forum starting tomorrow. Bergman is such a cute old coot reminiscing about his career from his home on Fr Island. Did you know he was married 5 times, had 9 children and that sequence from Scenes From A Marriage where the husband comes home only to announce he's leaving his unsuspecting wife for another woman, Bergman really did that to wife number two? The film is quite a tribute to the amazing life of a true cinema artist.
* If you missed the Simpsons last night (or if like our friend, Brian, you've taken an ethical stand against sub-par, late era episodes of the long running cartoon) they aired a teaser for the feature length Simpsons film during a commercial break. The nature of a teaser is that there's no actual plot of the movie involved, just planned imagery and mood, thus the segment was pretty sparse on actual news about the movie. However, hope springs eternal when it comes to something as beloved as Matt Groening's work. CC is still holding out that something this long in the works will have some early Simpsons caliber smarts behind it.
* Oscar-winner and on-screen gunslinger Jack Palance (pronounced PAL-ance, not pa-LANCE, according to the New York Times obit) passed away over the weekend. News you can use courtesy of the NYT: In addition to being able to do one-arm pushups, Palance also wrote poetry and did pen-and-ink drawings.
* One of our favorite essays so far on Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is David Mendelsohn's analysis in the current issue of The New York Review of Books. Mendelsohn nicely picks out the running thread through all of Coppola's work ("spirited young women chafing at social restraints") and the autobiographical nature of preoccupations in his article.
"The final silent image in this movie, so filled as it is with striking and suggestive images, tells you more about Coppola, and perhaps our own historical moment, than it could possibly tell you about Marie Antoinette. It's a mournful shot of the Queen's state bedchamber at Versailles, ransacked by the revolutionary mob the night before the Queen and her family were forced to leave, its glittering chandeliers askew, its exquisite boiseries cracked and mangled. You'd never guess from this that men's livesthose of the Queen's guardswere also destroyed in that violence; their severed heads, stuck on pikes, were gleefully paraded before the procession bearing the royal family to Paris. But Coppola forlornly catalogs only the ruined bric-a-brac. As with the teenaged girls for whom she has such sympathy, her worst imagination of disaster, it would seem, is a messy bedroom."
* Yick. Maya Rudolph had bedbugs at an apartment she rented in SoHo with her boyfriend and is now suing the condo management company plus their broker for damages. (Related: Did you know Maya and director Paul Thomas Anderson have a kid together? Where the hell has CC been on that one?)
* Lindsay Lohan continues to insist upon an association between her and Liz Taylor by starring in a previously unproduced Tennessee Williams screenplay called The Loss Of A Teardrop Diamond. Guess who plays her aunt? Ann-Margret, LiLo's other purported muse, of course.
* Becca Thacher (or Kellie Martin, as the actress from one of our favorite pre-teen dramas, "Life Goes On," is also known) gave birth to a daughter on Saturday.
* Speaking of sitcom stars, HIMYM's Barney only plays a womanizer on TV, in real life he came out to People magazine! Good for Neil Patrick Harris. This announcement makes him look a) look someone who's quite well-adjusted and comfortable with himself and b) a really, really good actor. Suit up!
If you're like Cinecultist and peacefully enjoying your total conversion to a red envelope way of renting DVDs, you may have completely forgotten about movie rental chains like Blockbuster. Going to an actual store to pick out a film, then bringing it back there? It's behavior that's become very alien.
However, your local video clerk has become quite lonely, and to counteract their ebbing subscriber base Blockbuster announced a new initiative today called Total Access. According to this Reuters article, Blockbuster customers can now return DVDs rented online to a stores with a free in-store rental bonus. Also, Blockbuster says when you return in-store that your next rental in the online queue will get to your home a day faster.
But, the beauty of online rentals in our mind is the ease of returning by mail. It's like have a friendly video drop box on every corner, a completely genius concept. While CC does still have our membership to Kim's, because it can be fun to visit a specialty shop with obnoxious well-versed employees, for new releases we just wouldn't bother with Blockbuster anymore. Best go back to the drawing board B-buster folks. Maybe a free snacks with every rental initiative?
* Caryn James hearts Leonardo DiCaprio and his goatee in Blood Diamond.
* Borat is going to be on less screens than originally projected by 20th Century Fox, but Universal Pictures is still feeling the Sacha Baron Cohen love to the tune of 42.5 million.
* Shocking: Ryan Phillippe is single again. He and Reese were one of those Hollywood couples you couldn't help but love. And this comes just when he's finally appearing in a well-reviewed film too.
* Getting to know fellow TheMovieBinger Matty's taste in burgers on A Hamburger Today.
After a subdued but charged screening one of the major buzz movies from Toronto, Death of A President has been purchased by Newmarket for distribution, according to Reuters. The "fictional documentary" takes footage from three visits by President Bush in Chicago and through the magic of CGI constructs a "realistic" assassination of him by a sniper followed by a flowery eulogy by Vice President Cheney. Director Gabriel Range told Reuters after the screening, "I hope people will see it as a balanced film and compelling drama. It is an oblique look at the ways the United States has changed since 9/11. We use the lens of the future to explain the past."
It's set for an airing on Britain's Channel Four next month and a U.S. theatrical release sometimes this fall. No word yet whether the plot implication that Cheney would become our Commander in Chief will lead the flick to be classified as a horror film.
Production still via Channel 4 Television/Handout/Reuters
With September comes word from the hinterlands regarding screenings of big fall releases getting their try outs at film festivals. Cinecultist always salivates a little over these reports, making little mental tally lists of what audiences liked what. It's obsessive we know, but fun.
From Venice: folks on the Lido are loving The Queen with Helen Mirren but sort of luke warm or mixed on The Fountain, Children of Men and The Black Dahlia according to Garth Franklin's wrap up on Dark Horizons. La Mirren just got an Emmy for her portrayal of the first Queen Elizabeth, could this be her year to finally Oscar it too?
Out at Telluride, there was a strong launching of Fur, The Last King of Scotland and Little Children. In his dispatch for indieWire, Eugene Hernandez reports favorably about the Idi Amin biopic and talked with Shainberg about how his Diane Arbus movie, which interestingly was not picked up for the New York Film Festival.
Toronto starts tomorrow and they'll have "the most star wattage and premieres in its whole 30 year history," according to Reuters. Cinecultist will be curious to hear what their viewers think of All the King's Men and Babel as well as Infamous the "other Capote movie" with Daniel Craig. Seriously, worst unintentional tag line ever for this movie's marketers. We feel for those guys.
Cinecultist has been getting a real kick out of this bickerfest going on between the established Venice Film Festival and the young upstart Rome Film Festival. When Rome first announced that they'd be starting a fest this year, Venice made a big show of supporting their efforts and not competing. But those feelings of Italian brotherly cooperation have broken down since Rome announced the other day that Fur will be their opening movie. Don't you be taking Nicole Kidman from the Lido, or out the claws will come!
Also, there's kerfuffle about how close the dates are to each other (Venice opened yesterday, Rome in October) and whether funding will be government supported or private. "If I find out that Rome is getting state funding for its festival, I'll go for my gun," Venice's mayor Massimo Cacciari, a center-left philosopher, said in a recent interview. Ha. It's all going to get ugly over there, we can just tell.
CC's particularly interested in this whole thing because we recently bought our plane ticket to be under the Tuscan sun in mid October. Now we're thinking we might head down to Roma for a day or two to catch some cinema. Or maybe this will be our trip when we finally visit Cinecitta, we've wanted to do that for years.
Cinecultist's interest, though guarded, continues unabated for Martin Scorsese's new movie The Departedespecially since we read about this interesting advertising twist they're using from Variety. The film will be the solo sponsor on the pilot for a new CBS program, Smith starring Ray Liotta.
The pilot's running time would ordinarily need to be stretched into a 90 minute schedule block but with Warner Bros., The Departed distributors, paying for the sole 4 minute block of ad time, the show can run in a 60 time slot. According to Variety, "At the start of the Smith premiere, an announcer will let auds know that the episode is being sponsored with limited commercials by The Departed. It's likely Warner will then split its four minutes of ad time into a pair of two-minute pods, each offering an extended look at the pic." Both parties involved get an oddly sweet deal, Smith can run nearly uninterrupted and The Departed gets a buzz boost with the commercial's exclusivity and unusualness.
There aren't any other major connections between the projects (other than both stories center around career criminals and Smith was produced by Warner's TV division) but if Ray's show turns out to be cool, it could only mean better associative word of mouth for The Departed. Good work CBS, Marty Scorsese and Warner Bros., you're a crafty bunch of old dogs with your synergy, your product placement and your one hand washes the other. Oh wait, that's another underbelly that doesn't really involve TV advertising.
Paramount tells Tom Cruise to take his things and go. Or is that Tom was already thinking about breaking up with the studio for ages? Here's what Cinecultist knows: TC needs to finally acknowledge that his behavior is Not Normal. Up until now it seems that he's been exhibiting what most of us think are errant actions, yet playing them off as "part of his religion," "because he's in love," or whatnot. Now the cat is out of the bag. Big name businessmen are telling the New York freakin' Times that Tom's acting crazy town and it affects their million dollar business relationship, regardless of whether this is the actual reason for the split. That's a seismic shift in attitude towards the ultimate A Lister.
Netflix told Blockbuster to stop being such a copycat. Now Blockbuster has said Netflix just wants to have all the marbles for themselves, and that's totally not fair. The judge hearing these claims from both corporations are allowing the two suits to be tried together, which is pretty interesting. It really will be Netflix versus Blockbuster in a (sorta metaphorical) cage death match for DVD by mail supremacy. Goes to show that this movie rental business is really big bucks in the making. Cinecultist is still reserving judgement to see who will get out of the cage alive, but we're mostly rooting for da 'Flix. They're our boy.
Thank goodness Steve Soderbergh has come to his senses. The director told an audience at the Edinburgh Film Festival the other day that he has no plans to do an Ocean's Fourteen. Some might argue that the installment Twelve was taking it too far in terms of sequels, and to be now in production on Ocean's Thirteen is hardly a case of restraint against the demands of box office success. But Soderbergh explained, "George wanted to go out strong" and that they "wanted the series to return to its comedic roots this time."
Fine, if it's what George wanted. The Cloon surely knows what's best.
Cinecultist doesn't often say this about a report on a late night in the West Village but OMFG. A sound mixer from Queens was hanging out in front of the IFC Center on Sixth Avenue over the weekend when a group of attractive young women passed by. A comment about one girl's hair led to insults thrown, slapping, spitting and finally a group melee between the man and the group of women resulted in him getting stabbed! With a serrated knife! In the West flippin' Village! Guess it's time for erstwhile movie types to rethink their late night plans to "hangs out in front of the I.F.C. to chat with film people, to watch life in the Village." [NYT via Gawker]
The numbers are in this morning and it looks less than promising for the "bloggers enthusiasm molds studio policy" trendlette. While Snakes on a Plane was the number one movie for the weekend, it did not hit the $20 million mark for distributors New Line as they hoped. The flick cost only $30 mil to make, which is quite slight for a summer action/horror film, but so far the numbers for the past three days only added up to $15.3 million and that's including the $1.4 from Thursday late night.
Here's what Cinecultist has said all along about the idea that public opinion can change the outcome of big studio filmmaking: Awesome, but it'll only be a success if that final movie is actually good. We're living in an age of audience participation with comment sections, text message voting and amateur blogging run rampant. More power to the people, we say. But really all of this feedback only works if the product is worth seeing. A segment of the movie going public will plunk down $11 bucks for camp fun and screaming at the screen, but not everyone. If the word of mouth after Thursday or even Friday was that Snakes on a Plane is fun AND a good movie, we'd be seeing something different in the numbers. Which leads Cinecultist back to the Captain Obvious point that New Line refused to screen this movie to critics before release. They knew it still wasn't good, despite adding after the first wrap more violence and more cursing. Critical opinion, and the notion of absolute merit, still holds true.
The moral of the story (one which the studios still won't get from this experience but oh well): Make good movies. All the rest shall follow.
But of course in the face of bad movies, bring plastic snakes to throw at the screen and hiss every time Samuel L. Jackson appears. [P.S. Cinecultist was out of town this weekend and missed this movie. For a fun review plus a video clip of cheering audiences check out Matty's review on The Movie Binge.]
Drew Barrymore. Gary Coleman. Danny Bonaduce. Now, Haley Joel Osment has entered their hallowed company.
[Insert some lame joke about seeing drunk drivers or paying it forward with that joint. Poor Haley.]
We're about to get even more advertised to, so get ready cinecultists. According to this article in Reuters today, by 2010 advertising embedded in tv shows and movies will have tripled. The culprit for this spike in subversive product placement? The rise in commercial skipping technology like DVRs, downloadable shows on your iPod and internet video like YouTube.
Recently Cinecultist was chatting with our friend Ryan who works in advertising. One of his clients is PowerAde and while watching Talladega Nights he was literally having conniptions calculating how much his client earned (with no cost to them, by the way) during Will Ferrell's PowerAde sponsored dinner time grace.
While this scene, and in fact most of the movie, was a hilarious send up of the pervasiveness of sponsorship in certain entertainment, it's a pretty scary thought to imagine it increasing so drastically. In a few short years, the cast of The O.C. won't just be quietly drinking Diet Coke in a diner scene, but they'll be working for the company as an after school part time job while driving cars emblazoned with their logo. The potential for icky consumerism in the movies and on TV is infinite. Drat. And Cinecultist does so love the fast forward feature on our DVR, we knew it would come back to haunt us eventually.
You're Terry Gilliam. You're a former Monty Python-ite and have directed movies like Brazil, that are entertainment and art. But lately you've thought some good ideas included a $90 million dollar creepy fairy tale with Matt Damon and Heath Ledger and a Man of La Mancha adaptation that died on the vine with a star who was too aged to ride a horse. Frankly, Cinecultist is worried about you, Terry, especially now that we've heard about your new project.
Tideland features a 10-year-old prepping her father's daily heroin dose, her fervent religiosity and her fantasies about having a baby with an older simpleton she's seducing. He told Reuters, "I just felt we are constricting the way we look at the world and the way we think, particularly about children. I knew full well when we were making it there would be a lot of adults who would really squirm and be very uncomfortable, but that's because of what goes on in their heads, not because of what children are about."
Yeah that's it, Terry. It's the other adults who are messed in the heads.
Tideland is scheduled for an October US release.
Watching Vincent Chase get handed a $1 million check on Entourage a few weeks ago, it's easy to assume that this is the beautiful way Hollywood works when producers have a box office and critical hit on their hands. Not so, says today's New York Times article about the slow pay off dribble for folks associated with last year's Oscar-winning film, Crash. Writer/director Paul Haggis plus eight of the principal actors have yet to see much in the way of compensation and it seems like from the article that a lot of this has to do with business practice by producer Bob Yari.
"In Hollywood it is not unusual for squabbles to erupt over dividing the spoils when a small film becomes a very big hit. But part of what is creating bruised feelings with Crash is the sense among the starring cast members that their initial sacrifice has not been acknowledged with a gesture, whatever the precise state of collection accounts.Youd think that for a movie that won best picture, what you would do is write the actors a check against their profits, or you give them a car, or something, said a representative for one of the leading actors, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his client had barred him from speaking on the record. That would be the classy thing to do. He added: The money is dribbling in. Its almost offensive how little money it is.'"
This is sad news for anyone who likes to root for little movies that could but who also have to pay the mortage.
One of the most interesting things to come out of the hype and hoopla around Bryan Singer's Superman Returns this summer is the film and its director's admiration of Richard Donner. Donner directed the 1978 Superman movie with Christopher Reeves and began work on a sequel when he was given the boot in favor of Richard Lester. However, Singer has said in numerous interviews how influenced he was by Donner's movie and now that unseen Donner Superman II will get the DVD treatment from Warner Bros. at the end of November, according to E! Online. Apparently there's a bunch of great Marlon Brando as Superman's father and also a totally different opening and ending, as well as less jokiness from Gene Hackman as Lex Luther.
It always tickles the Cinecultist when questions of taste change. What was so very bad in '78, is now worth saving according to superfans like Singer. Another point on the blackboard for movie obsessives.
Cinecultist doesn't claim to completely understand that lovely, mysterious figure that is "the boy," but we'd guess it's probably common sense not to call them "drama queens" especially when they are being shelled by rocket fire from Lebanon. Actors Macaulay Culkin and Mila Kunis were on vaca in the beachy part of Northern Israel until the recent heightened unrest in the region.
"The couple were enjoying a relaxing holiday when rocket fire hit the Israeli town of Haifa, where the couple was staying. Culkin insisted the pair immediately leave the country, but Kunis was reluctant to end her holiday early, telling the Jerusalem Post, 'He's a drama queen.'"
Takeshi Kitano's collection of stories, Boy will get an English language release by Vertical, Inc. The translation will be done by Alfred Birnbaum who worked on a number of Haruki Murakami's early works. Think the pages will turn in hyperstylized slow motion with fountains of blood spurting out? Because that'd be kinda sweet. [via GalleyCat]
Actress June Allyson passed away at 88 on Saturday. She was born in the Bronx, she taught herself to dance after being crushed by a tree branch, and she appeared in 25 MGM films over 11 years, many of them musicals. She also fell for married fellow actor Dick Powell who left his family for her, a little shocking biographical detail from a primarily second tier studio actress known for playing the nice girlfriend or nice wife.
Women identify with me, she said in a 1986 intervew, and while men desire Cyd Charisse, theyd take me home to meet Mom.
Allyson played heroine Jo March in the 1949 version of Little Women with Peter Lawford, Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh and Mary Astor. Her obit from the New York Times.
- Apple is in talks to make full length films available for download through iTunes. The part that gives us pause: in the New York Times article yesterday, the author suggests that someone might want to watch the Godfather on their iPod. Not to be one of those annoying movie purists but the article further goes on to point out that the resolution quality on an iTunes download is really best suited for watching the video on an iPod screen. Most movies, particularly shot in the scope of Francis Ford Coppola's flick, shouldn't be seen that small. It's just not right (says Cinecultist in our best Chris Rock voice).
- Motherfucker: the Movie. The part that gives us pause: that filmmaker David Casey had a "vision" before making the mere trailer for his documentary about the famed New York party. "While in the pit, directing our steadicam operator, I experienced the most intense emotion - looking through a viewfinder, yelling for him to tighten the shot, and holding up the barricade behind me (the audience was going insane!) - people were being crushed: screaming, euphoric. That morning, while sleeping, the trailer came to me - literally. I saw everything, set to Cosmic Dancer, image and emotion completely united . . . .within." Hyperbole of this magnitude shouldn't be rewarded. But what the hay, add the movie's MySpace page as one of your friends, we're not stopping you.
PS. The only time Cinecultist has ever seen anyone actually get punched in the face was at the Motherfucker party that featured Bloc Party. Does this further recommend the parties or freak you out? Could be a good litmus test to determine whether you should see the film.
Ah, it's a different cinema world than 2002. Those were the days when Cinecultist heard reports about Zhang Yimou, a Chinese director known for his sweeping and artsy historical epics, and his new martial arts action film, Hero. Apparently it was the biggest thing since the dumpling in China and Miramax had bought the rights, yet they had no concrete plans to release it. Even after the popularity of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for that studio, it was not until Quentin Tarantino had a hit on his hands for the po-mo hodge podge Kill Bill that those Weinstein brothers seemed to think that the American public was hungry for all things Asian. We could've told Bob and Harvey that Hero would be a hit, but they don't listen.
Though now it seems that they're whistling a new tune and this one is accompanied by an erhu. According to Variety today, the Weinstein Company is in final talks with adorable actress Ziyi Zhang for a three picture deal including a live action version of the folk legend, Mulan and a remake of Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. This is both exciting but a touch perplexing. Mulan for Ziyi we get -- as long as we don't loose the talking dragon character called Mushu -- but Samurai? It's been a few years since we watched this movie but we don't recall there being any big women parts in the film. Aren't samurai almost always men? And that production still pictured above looks like all dudes to you too, right?
Anyhow, we have faith in the pocket sized Ziyi, especially after her more complex turn in 2046, even if we don't trust those Weinstein's further than we can throw them, and we're cautiously intrigued by the idea of a new DVD label from the company called Dragon Dynasty which they announced at Cannes.
At the Cannes Film Festival press screening for Marie Antoinette, Variety reports today that members of the French press booed Sofia Coppola's new film. Apparently, some of them were cranky about the way their former queen was portrayed on screen.
What is this about exactly? Were they afraid that this new movie will make being an indulged, teenage dictator look too glamorous? Is the French Revolution really in danger of being spun by Hollywood to make the peasants look bad in comparison? This seems completely bizarre to us.
Still, despite this cultural-disconnect weirdness Cinecultist's fascination with this movie and our intense devotion to Sofia (she's muse to Marc Jacobs, come on!) continues unabated. Now we want to find a copy of Antonia Fraser's biography which Sofia's script is based on. She made such interesting adaptation choices with The Virgin Suicides. Sorry kids, you will probably have to continue reading about this level of obsessing between now and October, when the film comes out. Brace yourselves.
Here's a couple of items rattling around in the ol' Cinecultist noggin today:
- On the WTF? front: Wong Kar Wai is planning to do an English language feature. And it'll be a romantic comedy. And it'll starring the Grammy-winning singer, Norah Jones. And it'll be called My Blueberry Nights. Wha? WKW, what are you thinking? In what universe of possibility would this be a good idea? [via Variety]
- Sofia Coppola's new movie, Marie Antoinette screens at Cannes tomorrow and folks are on pins and needles to see the Kristen Dunst flick. While US audiences will have to wait until the fall to see it, it'll open to wide French release this week from Pathe as well as the festival screening. The editor of Cahiers du Cinema, Michael Frodon said: "It's very elegantly and generously directed and it has an energy that goes beyond the obstacles that hinder and slow down most historical films." Could this news instigate a weekend jaunt to Paris for the Cinecultist? [also via Variety]
- Manohla Dargis is such a darn good writer. That was our thought while reading her Cannes dispatch today. Regarding Oliver Stone's new 9/11 film which was excerpted at the festival, she writes:
He noted that the special effects looked like something out of a Japanese science fiction film (they didn't) and that "the truth must exist in some way to confront power and extremism." These words were followed by 20 unnerving minutes in which we follow a Port Authority officer, played by Nicolas Cage, from his predawn rise to when the second tower collapses on him. It would be both impossible and unfair to say more, other than that the footage looked good and was very upsetting to watch, primarily because it includes images of the actual burning towers. (That said, Mr. Cage's mustache does elicit concern since bad hair sometimes portends a bad film; witness Mr. Stone's "Alexander.") Like "United 93," this clip made me wonder why Hollywood seems so eager to turn this raw national wound into entertainment.
Eeep, Nic Cage with working class facial hair? That does sound freaky. [via the NY Times]
- The Subway Cinema festival is coming up really soon (June 16 - July 1) and we're psyched, especially as the fest organizers keep sending CC press releases with hilarious descriptions of their films. Will there be anything as good in the line-up as last year's fest winner, The Taste of Tea? Dear lord, we hope so.
For entry level administrative and errand running work, that is. This is someone's dream job, somewhere, right? And we're not just talking about Angelina fans. Somebody must still secretly worship Jon Voight, no? Even though he's nearly 70 and starred in Anaconda. [via Gawker]
The controversy and general mouth-frothing begins to heat up as we near the May 19 release date for The Da Vinci Code, the movie version of Dan Brown's behemoth of a best seller. In the NY Times today, they discuss all of the evangelical Christian's potential strategies against the film. They are three-fold:
1) See it, but "teach" others that the plot details about Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene are wrong. Maybe try to see it with a non-believer.
2) Don't go see it. "I don't have to see 'The Devil in Miss Jones' to know it's pornography, and I don't have to see 'The Da Vinci Code' to know that it's blasphemous," said [Robert H.] Knight, [director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian group based in Washington].
3) Go see something else instead, aka an Othercott. "The idea was dreamed up by Barbara Nicolosi, a former nun who now directs Act One, a program in Los Angeles that coaches Christian screenwriters."
But could all of this brouhaha really be an evil ploy by Sony Pictures publicity to make us talk about the film further? A conspiracy, even? "Talk of 'the movie being an opportunity for evangelism is a line completely concocted by the Sony Pictures marketing machine,' said Ms. Nicolosi. 'All they care about is getting the box office, and if they don't get the red states to turn out, the movie tanks.'"
This mystery sounds like a job for a dour Tom Hanks in need of a haircut and his trusty sidekick Audrey Tautou. To the Hollywood mobile, Amlie!
The complete line-up of the Cannes Film Festival (May 17 - 28) came out today and it seems to be a pretty similar kind of mix from the past few years. There's some very mainstream American fare (The Da Vinci Code, Over the Hedge), some indie US (Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, Richard Linklater's Scanner Darkly and Fast Food Nation, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette) and some highly anticipated new features from established international directors (Pedro Almodovar's Volver, Aki Kaurismaki's Lights at the Edge of the City and Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes the Barley).
Variety points out in their run down of the list that there's only one South Korean feature The Unforgiven by Yoon Jong-bin which is a surprise considering how strong Korean cinema has been in the international market for the past few years.
For our part, we'd love to be a fly on the wall in the jury room during deliberation, it's a pretty eclectic bunch: Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong director (president); Monica Bellucci, Italian actress; Helena Bonham-Carter, English actress; Lucrecia Martel, Argentinean director; Zhang Ziyi, Chinese actress; Samuel L. Jackson, American actor; Patrice Leconte, French director; Tim Roth, English actor and Elia Suleiman, Palestinian director. We sense that things might get pretty heated between Wong and Roth, then Bonham-Carter will start screeching and Jackson will have to punch a wall or just yell "Snakes on a Plane!" restore order. It'll be crazy, we're sure.
After the jump we've cut and pasted the full list of films in and out of competition.
CANNES 2006: OFFICIAL SELECTION
OPENER
"The Da Vinci Code," U.S., Ron Howard (non-competing)
CLOSER
"Transylvania," France, (non-competing)
IN COMPETITION
"The Weakest Is Always Right," Belgium-France, Lucas Belvaux
"Summer Palace," China-France, Lou Ye
"Lights at the Edge of the City," Finland, Aki Kaurismaki
"Flandres," France, Bruno Dumont
"Selon Charlie," France, Nicole Garcia
"Quand j'etais chanteur," France, Xavier Giannoli
"Days of Glory," France, Algeria, Rachid Bouchareb
"The Wind That Shakes the Barley," Ireland-U.K., Ken Loach
"The Cayman," Italy-France, Nanni Moretti
"The Family Friend," Italy, Paolo Sorrentino
"Pan's Labyrinth," Mexico-Spain-U.S., Guillermo del Toro
"Youth on the March," Portugal, Pedro Costa
"Volver," Spain, Pedro Almodovar
"Climates," Turkey, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
"Red Road," U.K.-Denmark, Andrea Arnold
"Fast Food Nation," U.K.-U.S, Richard Linklater
"Marie-Antoinette," U.S., Sofia Coppola
"Southland Tales," U.S., Richard Kelly
"Babel," U.S.-Morocco, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
OUT OF COMPETITION
GALA SCREENINGS
"United 93," U.S.-U.K., Paul Greengrass
"X-Men: The Last Stand," U.S., Brett Ratner
"Over the Hedge," U.S., Tim Johnson, Karey Kirkpatrick
MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS
"Election 2," Hong Kong, Johnnie To
"Silk," Taiwan, Su Chao-pin
"Shortbus," U.S., John Cameron Mitchell
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
"Zidane, un portrait du 21e siecle," France, Phillipe Parreno, Douglas Gordon
"These Girls," France, Tahani Rached
"Avida," France, Benoit Delepine
"Ici Najac, a vous la terre," France, Jean-Henri Meunier
"Bamako," France-Mauritania, Abderrahmane Sissako
"Volevo Solo Vivere," Italy, Mimmo Calopresti
"Boffo: Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters," U.S., Bill Couturie
"An Inconvenient Truth," U.S., Davis Guggenheim
UN CERTAIN REGARD
"Cronica de una fuga," Argentina, Israel, Adrian Caetano
"Ten Canoes," Australia, Rolf de Heer
"Surburban Mayhem," Australia, Paul Goldman
"Luxury Car," China, Wang Chao
"La tourneuse de pages," France, Denis Dercourt
"La Californie," France, Jacques Fieschi
"Meurtrieres," France, Patrick Grandperret
"Paris, je t'aime," France, 24 directors (opener)
"Bled Number One," France-Algeria, Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche
"977," France-Russia, Nikolay Khomeriki
"Re-cycle," Hong Kong, Oxide Pang, Danny Pang
"Taxidermia," Hungary, Gyorgy Palfi
"Serambi," Indonesia, Garin Nugroho
"The Wedding Director," Italy-France, Marco Bellocchio
"You Am I," Lithuania, Kristijonas Vildziunas
"El violin," Mexico, Francisco Vargas
"Uro," Norway, Stefan Faldbakken
"Hamaca Paraguaya," Paraguay, Paz Encina
"Z odzysku," Poland, Slawomir Fabicki
"Cum Mi-am Petrecut Sfarsiful Lumii," Romania, Catalin Mitulescu
"The Unforgiven," South Korea, Yoon Jong-bin
"Salvador Puig Antich," Spain, Manuel Huerga
"Bihisht Faqat Baroi Murdagon," Tajikistan, Djamshed Usmonov
"A Scanner Darkly," U.S., Richard Linklater
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION JURY
Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong director (president)
Monica Bellucci, Italian actress
Helena Bonham-Carter, English actress
Lucrecia Martel, Argentinean director
Zhang Ziyi, Chinese actress
Samuel L. Jackson, American actor
Patrice Leconte, French director
Tim Roth, English actor
Elia Suleiman, Palestinian director
CINEFOUNDATION AND SHORT FILMS JURY
Andrei Konchalovsky, Russian director (president)
Sandrine Bonnaire, French actress
Daniel Bruhl, German actor
Souleymane Cisse, Malian director
Zbigniew Preisner, Polish composer
CINEFOUNDATION AND SHORT FILMS JURY
Andrei Konchalovsky, Russian director (presi-dent)
Sandrine Bonnaire, French actress
Daniel Bruhl, German actor
Souleymane Cisse, Malian director
Zbigniew Preisner, Polish composer
COMPETITION SHORTS
"Primera Nieve," Pablo Aguero
"Banquise," Claude Barras, Cedric Louis
"Poyr," Belma Bas
"Ongeriewe," Robin Kleinsmidt
"Conte de Quartier," Florence Miailhe
"Film Noir," Parker Osbert
"Sniffer," Bobbie Peers
"Sexy Thing," Denie Pente-cost
"Nature's Way," Jane Shearer
"O Monstro," Eduardo Valente
OUT OF COMPETITION SHORTS
"The Water Diary," Jane Campion
"Les signes," Eugene Green
"Stanley's Girlfriend," Monte Hellman
"Sida," Gaspard Noe
"Un lever de Rideau," Francois Ozon
Today, our friends at Gawker asked us to contribute to their weekly feature, Looking at the Look Book wherein contributors make fun of New York magazine's man/woman-on-the-street-and-their-wacked-out-fashion-sense feature. It was a fun little diversion and you should read our responses post haste.
Did you go outside today? It was the most gorgeous day in New York. Even though Cinecultist is a slave to our day job, we did have to go on an errand around 2 pm and walking up Park Avenue and then back down Madison, we marveled at the sun dappled through the blossoming trees. Is there anything more lovely than springtime in New York?
Randy Quaid wants to see some of those Brokeback dollars, according to an article in Variety today. "Randy Quaid has filed a lawsuit against Focus Features alleging that Universal's specialty arm duped him into deferring normal pay for his role in "Brokeback Mountain" by falsely representing the project as a low-budget indie pic with no prospect of making money." Apparently, when Quaid was in salary talks with sweet little Taiwainese director Ang Lee, Lee characterized the film's monetary prospects in much more modest terms than what the Oscar-winning film ended up doing at the box office.
The best part of this article is two fold: That "defendants were engaging in a 'movie laundering' scheme designed to obtain the services of talent such as Randy Quaid on economically unfavorable art film terms" and that "Randy Quaid is an instantly recognizable household name and much-admired actor on the world's stage with a worldwide box office total of nearly $2 billion. His likeness, talent and name are worth millions of dollars and are solely his property." Hehe, lawsuit speak is the best ever.
Quaid wants Universal Pictures, the owners of Focus Features, to show him the money to the tune of $10 million. Stay tuned to see if the star of such pictures as The Paper, Caddyshack II and The Adventures of Pluto Nash is vindicated.
Probably only Cinecultist and three of our geekiest readers will be excited about this news, but here it is: Jim Henson Co is working on a sequel to the 1982 children's classic, Dark Crystal! This is very cool, but it gets even better. And! It's going to be directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, the brilliant creator behind the animated series Samurai Jack. Everything's going to be puppets but puppets with CGI backgrounds according to an article in Variety today. [subscrip. req.]
Set hundreds of years after the first pic, sequel follows a mysterious girl made of fire who steals a shard of the crystal in hopes of reigniting the dying sun."The original 'Dark Crystal' was the pinnacle of puppetry; they created characters that were as believable as the ones you see in animated films," Tartakovsky said. "There is a limited budget here, and this will be more artsy, in a 'Sin City' fashion, with characters performing over greenscreen and great backgrounds behind it," he said.
We never thought we'd be so excited about a movie about a shard. Again. Now if only they'd do something to update the Secret of Nimh...
As per usual, the announcements this morning of the 78th annual Academy Award nominations were primarily what was to be expected. It is Hollywood after all, not avant garde performance poetry. However there were a couple of moments during Mira Sorvino and Academy president Sid reading of the list that had Cinecultist gasping aloud either in excitement or puzzlement.
And they are (envelope please):
- Amy Adams' nod for supporting actress in Junebug = wahoo!
- Terrence Howard for best actor in Hustle and Flow = wtf?
- Nominations for Phillip Seymour Hoffman as best actor, Catherine Keener as best supporting, Dan Futterman's script, Bennett Miller's direction and best picture for Capote = wahoo, wahoo!
- Crash as best picture = wtf?
- Howl's Moving Castle's nom for best animated feature = wahoo!
- Only best actor and best actress noms for Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line = wtf?
Reading this article today in the New York Times about Harold Pinter's acceptance speech of his Nobel Prize, Cinecultist couldn't help but be pleased by his politically-aware, old man routine. Give em hell, HP! So articulate and yet so crusty, it sounds like a very uncomfortable or exhilarating moment, depending on your leanings. [HPs entire speech is available in video form.]
CC loves two particular HP and movies moments: his brilliant adaptation of one of the most unadaptable novels ever, The French Lieutenants Woman starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons and Pinter's performance as Sir Thomas Bertram in the 1999 Frances O'Conner starring Mansfield Park. He's so bracingly English and ostentatiously opinionated. It's like the splash of cold sea water on your face -- refreshing but a little painful.
We salute you, good sir on your well deserved win of such a covetable (and lucrative - $1.3 mil. no less) award. Kudos!
Question: Is the utter coolness of the Sundance Film Festival selection committee for screening the film directed by Bob Goldthwait* canceled out by the inclusion of a movie writtend and directed by Joey Lauren Adams**? [Full line up available via indieWire.]
* aka the comedian formerly known as Bobcat.
** aka the actress with the squeakiest voice since Betty Boop.
Thrilling news today for people like Cinecultist who obsess over the programming on HBO and the film stylings of Canadian director David Cronenberg: Variety reports that he has plans with HBO to turn his delightfully twisted 1988 film, Dead Ringers into a series for the cable network.
If you don't recall, DR is one of the key films that makes Cronenberg both "fucked up and awesome" (as in the question CC would ask him ie. why is he, if we met him). Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologist brothers who create baroque internal examining tools that seem like something out of Dune or The Handmaiden's Tale. Then the brothers, they go crazy. God, it's so awesome, CC wants to watch it right now. Imagine what Cronenberg could do with this material on HBO which airs like-minded ilk, as evidenced by shows like the incest-apoloza and animal sacrifice-tastic Rome on right now? The only fear would be the Jeremy Irons factor, as in, who could they get to fill his awesome shoes? This could be the tricky part, but surely worth the effort Mr. Cronenberg so get crackin'! [via Variety subscription req'd.]
Not that one really needs an excuse right? But the opening of the new Cinmathque Franaise in a Frank Gehry building is enough to make the Cinecultist pull out our beret and jaunty neck scarf and make a break for the next flight.
Through Jan. 9, is "Renoir/Renoir," presented with the Muse d'Orsay, which draws parallels between the work of the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and that of his son, the great director Jean Renoir. Some of the parallels work: Renoir's "Bal du Moulin de la Galette, Montmartre" hangs beside a screen showing similar night-life scenes from his son's "Elena et les Hommes."
File it under Durr, We could've predicted these audience numbers from last weekend with a broken calculator:
North Country's aud was 62% female and 68% over 30.Doom auds were 69% male and 61% under 25. Indicating strong appeal to the core aud, 59% had previously played the vidgame. [via Variety]
And the delicate gender balance at the movies is upheld for yet another week. Whew.
If only there were a way to "back up" clay.
Wallace & Gromit' Archive Ruined in Fire [via the AP]
Though it's important to take anything said by A.O. Scott with a grain of salt, we found this sentence from the end of his War of the Worlds review intriguing:
"All of which serves as a reminder - perhaps superfluous - that this is only a movie, and a lesser Spielberg movie at that. But "War of the Worlds" also succeeds in reminding us that while Mr. Spielberg doesn't always make great movies, he seems almost constitutionally incapable of bad moviemaking."
More of the primarily positive critic's round up via Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps you recall that Reverse Shot did a Spielberg symposium, which you might want to refamiliarize yourself with pre-WotW viewing. Also completely adorable and hilarious, Trent of Pink Is The New Blog attended the LA premiere and snapped some papparazzi style pictures.
Will all of this buzz propel Cinecultist into the theater this weekend? We're on the fence about it, to be honest. Dakota Fanning's little screams and Tom's weirdness seems to be overwhelming our usual curiousity. Stay tuned for further details.
Last week, Cinecultist was feeling a tad low and jealous to read that film critic Roger Ebert received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Sure, we haven't coined a movie rating system that's permeated the culture (yet) but heck, where's our love? That was until our boss pointed out that Ebert had to pay for his own darn star. Yes, that is correct. Upon nomination and an accompanying letter from one's representation, a star made of terrazzo and brass will only cost the celeb $15,000 out of their own pocket (click on the FAQ and scroll for more info). Sure, you have to beat out the other 200 plus applicants in one of five categories in June during the voting process and then write the fat check but then immortality is yours, just like the Rog!
Now, if only we can figure out how he rigged that Pulitzer...
[BTW, do you think Tom Wolfe knows Ebert stole his suit for the ceremony, as seen in the wire image?]
The IFC Center at the old Waverly theater in the West Vil opens on Friday with the New York run of Me and You and Everyone We Know. There's going to be a restaurant with fancy pub food in it too! And a back garden! Excitement! [full report via Curbed].
Caryn James on that fickle mistress that is movie celebrity in today's New York Times. [thanks Ilana!]
Essential reading (from a few days ago, sorry we just noticed this piece): Manohla Dargis on Jonas Mekas.
T-minus three days to Subway Cinema. OMG. So psyched.
To do very soon: Find your summer outdoor movie sheet. That's because Monday kicks off the Bryant Park Summer Film Festival. "Memories, like the corners of my mind..." "Your girl is lovely, Hubble." [Note to Jori: See you there Barbra fan! Save us a spot.] Here's a little track for zee personal soundtrack to get you in the mood:
The Way We Were - Barbra Streisand
The Scarecrow returns to his home with the chimps and "the Jesus Juice" on Neverland Ranch. "He's the Wiz and he lives in Oz."
"Jackson Not Guilty: Jurors acquit pop star of all molestation charges"
From Cinecultist's source on the mean streets of the Eee Vee (ie. whose job does not require him to be in an A/C'ed cube all day) --
file under HOMELAND SECURITYI was in Kim's on St. Mark's this afternoon looking for the new Casino dvd. The place was buzzing. It seems that yesterday at around 1pm, the cops showed up, kicked all the customers out, and arrested the cine-geeks behind the counter. Something about trafficking in bootleg dvds and cd. The raid was conducted by the NYPD -- with logistical support from some suits in the employ of the copyright gestapo. A hip village chick showed up to visit her Kim's employee boyfriend only to be told the he'd been busted yesterday, spent the night on ice, and was still at Guantanamo Soho waiting for a judge to spring him.
Well, Casino wasn't on the shelf yet (but The First Amendment Project was*).
*This is NOT a shameless plug by our tipster. No way, no how. Photo courtesy of him, as well.
BREAKING NEWS: Our buddy Fiona is so totally famous and in the New York Times today. Sure today, she's famous for being a weenie handler at the BookExpo America, but tomorrow, who knows? Lizzie Grubman or someone famous for being a book publicist better watch out, Fiona Lee is in town! Here's a picture of Fi with the giant weenie.
Just when you were thinking to yourself, "Hey, we were all wrong about Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe. He's not some crazed, over-grown hoodlum with anger management issues -- he's a family man, who owns a sheep farm, sings in a rock band and is dedicated to the craft of acting." He goes and gets arrested for throwing a telephone at a Mercer Hotel employee. Seriously, are they handing out crazy pills at the airport these days to those exiting from First Class? "Welcome to the Big Apple various celebs, feel free to assault our citizens." Don't the bold face names know they can't get away with that behavior here? Don't they know we New Yorkers have Page Six on the speed dial?
Pictured above is not a facsimile of the actual phone thrown by Crowe. The Mercer is much too hip to have such old school technology for their posh guests. Crowe is in town promoting his boxing movie, Cinderella Man. No joke necessary.