September 2009
If movies are niche, shouldn't critics be too?
By Vadim Rizov on 09/30/2009
Filed under: Critic watch
The Playlist is a useful blog that aggregates the day's major entertainment news. They're also been dabbling in reviews, which is how I came across Drew Taylor's take on the acclaimed if by no means Romanian film "Police, Adjective," which is screening at the New York Film Festival. Taylor calls it "the most boring fucking movie that's ever been filmed. Ever," as well as "pretentious nothingness," and gives it an F. At the end of the review is a curious editorial note: "Not to undermine our writer here," it begins shrinkingly, before going to point out that NYFF movies are... MORE »
Eight offensive quotes on the Polanski situation.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/30/2009
Filed under: Controversy
In a case as tangled with moral, legal and straight-up emotional arguments as the ongoing Roman Polanski one, there's plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree. But wherever you stand, you'd hope at least people would avoid making the debate needlessly glib. And you'd be wrong. Here are eight of my favorite stupid statements made, in the interest of being fair and balanced, by both the media's prosecution and defense of Polanski: Prosecution 1. "He raped her in a lot of different ways. We're talking sodomy and... other styles of rape." --Wendy Murphy on MSNBC's "Hardball". Without being too... MORE »
Those 30-Second Bunnies better watch their backs.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/29/2009
Filed under: Watchy
There's a lot of garbage on College Humor (today's featured content: "Jake & Amir: Tampon"), but there's also England's Will Tribble, who's been churning out some way funny 60-second live-action parodies of famous movies that deserve your love. Tribble and his merry band of British film students are dedicated to summarizing film in one minute, in one take, with little "South Park" voices on the soundtrack blurting out key lines. The results are pretty impressive, dependent on elaborate shots that either pull backwards really fast or track sideways equally fast, with someone literally running through the plot of the movie,... MORE »
Keeping the barbarians at bay.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/29/2009
Filed under: Festivals
Every year someone makes a fuss over how snobbish/exclusionary/whatever the New York Film Festival is; this year's money quote came from Jeffrey Wells, who complained that the festival committee had become "a gathering of Trappist monks who've been slurping too much goat's milk with their granola." (I keep meaning to bring mine to the screenings and forgetting.) It's nothing new -- as Michael Guillen points out in his review of "Film Festival I: The Festival Circuit," a journal dedicated to, yes, film festivals -- those annual complaints haven't shifted one bit since the festival's founding in 1963. Rahul Hamid reports,... MORE »
How to be good.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/28/2009
Filed under: Biz
This past Friday, 60-odd representatives of indie film gathered at MoMA for a state of the nation meeting about what's going on in the world of indie film, whether there is a true crisis and how it can be fixed. Unlike earlier provocations like Mark Gill's "The Sky Is Falling" speech from last summer, the Indie Film Summit was a private gathering, unpublicized, with attendees encouraged to speak off the record. As Gill said in his speech, "it's fashionable to bitch in the independent film world. It's what we do." Coming up with actionable fixes has proven more elusive. The... MORE »
Rob Lowe, keeper of the '80s grail.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/28/2009
Filed under: In quotes
Hell hath no fury like a British journalist scorned. Even by the notoriously scathing standards of UK interview profiles, Elizabeth Day's take on Rob Lowe is a pretty stiff read. The first sentence: "Rob Lowe announces his presence as he walks into the hotel bar by shouting across the room to order his coffee." It gets worse from there: when Lowe spouts platitudes ("I enjoy meeting people and I enjoy interacting with humanity"), Day is "left with the impression that he has been told so frequently that he is charismatic and hilarious that he no longer feels he has to... MORE »
Free range product placement.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/28/2009
Filed under: Biz
Brett Ratner, modelizer, man about town and hack director responsible for such fare as "X3" and the "Rush Hour" movies, has always been best at marketing himself as the face of smooth Hollywood craftsmanship. So his talent as an adman is no surprise. Speaking Thursday at New York's Advertising Week on "consumer attention in a media-saturated world," Ratner offered advice on product placement and how to do it right. Ratner's working on "Beverly Hills IV," and -- since Eddie Murphy will obviously drive a car -- he has to figure out which one. But rather than cut a deal first... MORE »
Alain Resnais on the death of cinema.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/28/2009
Filed under: Festivals
At age 87, Alain Resnais has produced one of his boldest films. "Wild Grass," which opened the New York Film Festival on Friday, is just wild, blending the audacity of "Punch Drunk Love" with the mindbinding qualities of Charlie Kaufman. The film's about a married man (André Dussollier) who finds a woman's (Sabine Azéma) stolen wallet and becomes obsessed with her -- it reads like farce, but it's far, far stranger, a portrait of romantic willfulness staving off death. The New Wave legend was here for a rare press conference, along with Dussollier and Mathieu Amalric, who plays a particularly... MORE »
Fantastic Fest: Nothing But Butts at "RoboGeisha"
By Stephen Saito on 09/27/2009
Filed under: Festivals
In Fantastic Fest's famous secret screenings, the identity of the movie being shown isn't revealed until it's about to begin. While it's a gamble, it's one that prompts devotees to line up for year-in-advance VIP badges -- past secret screenings have included the first-ever looks at "There Will Be Blood," "Apocalypto" and other high profile premieres, But, as festival head/impresario Tim League remarked in his intro, this year's first secret screening, of Noboru Iguchi's "RoboGeisha," was "perhaps one of the worst-kept secrets in Fantastic Fest history." After the film appeared and disappeared from the schedule in past weeks, he told... MORE »
Indie Rock: A Love Story.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/27/2009
Filed under: Watchy
There are people out there who leap on any chance to fling the epithet "hipster" as the ultimate insult. As a wise editor of mine once pointed out, all the adjective really means is "people in my scene who I don't like and don't want to identify with." But when a movie pops up with its title in all lower case, its lead roles cast from indie rock institutions, and its trailer kicking off with the line "Did you ever get your heart broken?" against some kind of warm ambient backdrop, it's kind of begging to have that finger pointed... MORE »
David Lynch explains himself.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/25/2009
Filed under: Abroad
David Lynch has an exhibition up at the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris. Not in Paris? Writer Dennis Cooper has a useful round-up for the rest of us. On the outside are 11 windows about "Machines, Abstraction and Women," some involving 3-D elements -- Lynch is a big fan of the Alioscopy 3-D process, which he thinks could revolutionize 3-D home viewing technology. On the inside is an exhibition called "I See Myself," with Lynch's seven-year-old-comic strip images in lithograph form and a screening room for such early Lynch "gems" as "Six Men Getting Sick." Walking into the screening... MORE »
Iranian filmmakers keep the heat on.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/25/2009
Filed under: Abroad
At the San Sebastian Film Festival yesterday, filmmakers Hana and Samira Makhmalbaf (of "Green Days") led a protest against Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presence at the UN Council. It was the latest salvo by Iranian filmmakers against their current government, and it could go on as long as there are festivals where Iranian filmmakers are in attendance, just as Jafar Panahi and his Montreal World Film Festival jury wore long green scarves earlier this year. Earlier this summer, as protesters took to the streets to contest the quite-probably-rigged re-election of Ahmadinejad, there was a lot of excited talk of how... MORE »
There & Back: Joel Schumacher.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/23/2009
Filed under: Marketing
For years, Joel Schumacher's name was one to be hissed out with great venom: despite some nostalgic goodwill from '80s kids for "St. Elmo's Fire" and "The Lost Boys," unleashing "Batman and Robin" on the world made him as ripe a target as Michael Bay. But this weekend, his latest film, "Blood Creek," wasn't just dumped; it was dumped to an unspecified number of theaters under a name whose box office results can't even be tracked. This has to be some kind of new record for fastest fall from grace. Just two years ago, Schumacher was directing Jim Carrey in... MORE »
Megan Fox is no Brigitte Bardot.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/23/2009
Filed under: Zeitgeist
Brigitte Bardot, screen goddess, national icon and late-life bigot, is nearing her 75th birthday. As the Guardian notes in an audio slideshow tribute, Charles de Gaulle once compared her importance as a French export to that of Renault cars. Meanwhile, over at the Los Angeles Times, Chris Lee attempts to name her successor, a starlet on the path to becoming "a sex symbol of the highest order: a woman whose hotness has become emblematic of a specific era. Call Megan Fox the first bona fide sex symbol of the 21st century." Somehow... it's not quite the same. For one thing,... MORE »
Why Wisconsin won't be the next Hollywood.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/23/2009
Filed under: Biz
A few years ago, states were playing tax incentive chicken with each other to see who could offer the best deals to lure film and TV productions away from the familiar confines of California and Toronto to shoot in their neck of the woods. And now they're paying for it. As the Los Angeles Times reports, some of those states are starting to find that those tax breaks don't always add up. When Wisconsin's Department of Commerce looked at the 32 days "Public Enemies" spent shooting in Oshkosh, Columbus and Madison, they concluded the production had received $4.6 in tax... MORE »
When ticket price complaints lose their sting.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/22/2009
Filed under: Abroad
If you feel in need of perspective amidst all the recent film industry panic, just turn to Pakistan. Local reporter Shaheen Buneri notes that Swat valley in northwest Pakistan will be reopening one of its two theaters after three years. And why were they closed for that long? Because the government was fighting off Taliban militants. So there. Northwest Pakistan, which is close to Afghanistan, is one of those areas where the war on terror never ends -- which would seemingly make the screening of movies a low priority. But never underestimate people's hunger for entertainment. "Today I am planning... MORE »
Advertising is the new music video.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/22/2009
Filed under: Zeitgeist
Shane Meadows is a remarkably pragmatic director. Today he appeared at London's Nokia store to hype a promotional stunt tied to the London Film Festival, in which aspiring filmmakers are invited to submit a 90-second short showing "what being connect in 2009 means to you." First prize gets you a trip to the fest and the (ambiguously worded) "chance" to work on Nokia's next ad campaign, but showing up at the store got you the more realistic chance to talk with Meadows and have him view your work, If anyone knows how to pragmatically negotiate the line between getting paid... MORE »
Sam Mendes, American dreamer.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/21/2009
Filed under: Abroad
"Away We Go" is hitting the UK, and the London Times' Kate Muir points out the weirdness of director Sam Mendes -- a native of Reading -- setting himself up to be the premiere chronicler of the "American Dream." Muir cites the scolding given the film by New York Times critic A.O. Scott, who castigates Mendes as "a literary tourist from Britain who has missed the point every time he has crossed the ocean": "The vague, secondhand ideas about the blight of the suburbs that sloshed around 'American Beauty' and 'Revolutionary Road' are now complemented by an equally incoherent set... MORE »
Monday morning massacre?
By Vadim Rizov on 09/21/2009
Filed under: Biz
The recession is officially fading and box-office grosses are as strong as ever, but the entire film industry seems to contracting in pain today, from major to micro. Variety reports that Universal has frozen development for the rest of the year -- if your project wasn't already realistically getting made, there'll be no more cash for rewrites and meetings. Disney's allegedly doing the same, and Warner Bros. is dealing with its financial woes by stiffing writers. Meanwhile, indieWIRE's Anne Thompson calls this year's Toronto an "indie bloodbath," with only one big-name title sold for seven figures -- Tom Ford's "A... MORE »
Narcocinema: Mexico's drugsploitation genre.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/21/2009
Filed under: Abroad, Watchy
I'd never heard of narcocinema until I took a gander through Vice's substantive new film issue. Well, consider me schooled. Narcocinema is just what it sounds like: violent drug war movies shot in a manner that could be kindly dubbed "functional," frequently based on narcocorridos (drug songs). Only 18% of the Mexican population can afford to see movies in theaters, so most narcocinema features are shot digitally or on low-grade video straight for the "videohome" demographic. The titles are as amazing as the best '70s exploitation: "I Was Screwed By The Gringos," "Weapons, Robbery, and Death" and lots of car-fixated... MORE »
Buying in and selling out.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/18/2009
Filed under: Critic watch
The Toronto International Film Festival ends tomorrow, but most journalists have already skipped ahead to extrapolating trends. There's much loose talk about potential Oscar front-runners -- "Up In The Air" apparently has a lock -- and much free-floating despair about the tough climate for making, purchasing and marketing indie films. But at least one person thinks the recession's been good for movies, by getting those arty directors to tone it down. Peter Howell of the Toronto Star wraps up the festival sounding exhilarated and gratified for all the wrong reasons. He salutes Steven Soderbergh, Atom Egoyan, Werner Herzog, Todd Solondz... MORE »
Almodóvar gets left off the list.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/18/2009
Filed under: Abroad, Controversy
There's a hot new drama from Pedro Almodóvar; it's just not his new movie. Spain's most famous living filmmaker has had a tempestuous relationship with the Spanish Cinema Academy for year. He and his brother Agustín left the Academy in a huff in 2005 to protest the new voting rules for the Goyas (Spain's Oscars). Now the Academy's returned the favor by leaving "Broken Embraces" -- Almodóvar's latest -- off the short-list for their official Academy Award submission. The nods instead went to Daniel Sanchez Arevalo's "Gordos," Fernando Trueba's "The Dancer and the Thief" and the Isabel Coixet's little-loved "Map... MORE »
3D rules, OK?
By Vadim Rizov on 09/17/2009
Filed under: Biz
Turns out, Jeffrey Katzenberg was right all along. Two years ago, the Dreamworks Animation CEO was confidently predicting that they're be 12-18 full 3D movies in the year 2010. At the time, it seemed like a huge gamble. And now he wins: next year there will be something like 30 3D features. And that's going to be a problem. Because, as Variety reports from the 3D Entertainment Summit in (natch) L.A. (an event Variety also happens to be co-presenting), 3D movies have been too successful too fast, and now there aren't enough screens to go around. Katzenberg was wrong about... MORE »
Down and out in Saudi Arabia.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/17/2009
Filed under: Abroad
I've never seen a film from Saudi Arabia and, thanks to Jeffrey Fleishman's fine article in the L.A. Times, now I know why: the country only produced its first feature in 2006, and there are no theaters to show movies in anyway. In his report on how tough filmmakers there have it, Fleishman focuses on the Talashi Film Group, which is pretty much just ten dudes who make short films however they can and gather in an apartment regularly to chat and review each other's work. The story is bleak. The filmmakers import actresses from Syria because Saudi women aren't... MORE »
Werner Herzog declares war. Again.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/16/2009
Filed under: Controversy
No content to simply pick a fight with Abel Ferrara, whose 1992 film may or may not have provided source material for his own, Werner Herzog is now using the press kit for "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" to launch barbs at the academics in the audience who dare to compare the two. The Wrap has an excerpt from the apparently awesome director's statement: It does not bespeak great wisdom to call the film The Bad Lieutenant, and I only agreed to make the film after William (Billy) Finkelstein, the screenwriter, who had seen a film of the... MORE »
Star Trek II: The Wrath of the Allegory.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/16/2009
Filed under: Coming attractions
As someone who dug the way this year's "Star Trek" reboot dug up memories from a few years of a wasted youth (let's not talk about it), I'm none too thrilled at this piece in the LA Times that suggests that for the sequel, J.J. Abrams & co. are considering adding topical political allegory. Co-writer Robert Orci says that in post-release interviews with "the fans," a phrase that came up a lot was "Make sure the next one deals with modern-day issues." Boucher inquired if that meant "Starfleet grappling with the ethics of torture or dealing with a rising terrorist... MORE »
Michael Moore marches out the door.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/15/2009
Filed under: Activism
Michael Moore may be abandoning documentaries. In an AP interview from Toronto, he complains "I've done this for 20 years. Two years ago, I tried to get the health-care debate going, and it did eventually, and now where are we? We may not even have it. What am I supposed to do at a certain point?" As usual, Moore's stuck somewhere between good intentions and supreme egotism. On one hand, he makes it sound like his has been a one-man crusade for various righteous liberal causes ignored by everyone else who couldn't be bothered to try as hard. On the... MORE »
How to outhype "Avatar."
By Vadim Rizov on 09/15/2009
Filed under: Marketing
Robert Zemeckis is still trying to make motion capture happen. His upcoming Jim Carrey-starring version of "A Christmas Carol" will be his third made using the process, despite the fact that neither 2004's "The Polar Express" nor 2007's "Beowulf" was an overwhelming triumph at the box office. There's little indication that the public cares what sets "motion capture" apart from original recipe CGI; at press time, it does not yet appear to have escaped the uncanny valley. That Zemeckis keeps getting away with this suggests that being willing to test-drive unwieldy new technology is still worth a large investment to... MORE »
"Creation" vs. America.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/15/2009
Filed under: Controversy
Biopics about Important Men ironically tend to be Very Mediocre. So the fact that Toronto opening night film "Creation," a Charles Darwin drama directed by Jon Amiel (who once helmed the original "The Singing Detective" but lately has turned out the likes of "The Core") premiered to roundly indifferent reviews is no great surprise. What is a surprise is the fake controversy the film's producer is trying to drum up to get attention. Jeremy Thomas, clearly no fool, took to the UK's Telegraph to complain that the film's been sold everywhere but the U.S., because, of course, of the evangelical... MORE »
When Judi Dench swears, people cry.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/14/2009
Filed under: In quotes
Here in the U.S., Judi Dench is gazed at with the same gauzy reverence given to all British actors with crisp enunciation, but in the UK she's a bona fide cultural treasure (she was once voted second only to the queen as the most-liked and respected Brit in a poll). Which is what makes the long, prickly profile of her by Kira Cochrane in the Guardian so great. For one, she doesn't care for the designation: "That sounds pretty dusty to me. It's [playwright] Alan Bennett and I behind glass in some forgotten old cupboard. I don't like it at all."... MORE »
China doesn't need your ticket.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/14/2009
Filed under: Abroad
On the heels of China's announcement that it's planning 50 films to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, Newsweek's Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop reports on the rapidly changing face of the film industry there from the set of "Bodyguards and Assassins," a big-budget, star-studded action film about a group of bodyguards hired to protect Sun Yat-sen from assassins in 1905 Hong Kong. While, as Kolesnikov-Jessop points out, mainland China only has 4,100 movie screens (as compared to 38,834 in the U.S.), its domestic box office has risen from $117 million five years ago to a predicted $800 million this year,... MORE »
There & Back: Diablo Cody.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/11/2009
Filed under: Coming attractions
Unless she changes her schtick, Diablo Cody, last year's fresh face of screenwriting success, could become next year's Shane Black or Joe Eszterhas, screenwriters who were briefly brand names until too many of their films tanked. In Cody's case, the rise/fall cycle's accelerated by the way she served as the main talking point related to "Juno." With a stripper backstory and a pin-up girl tattoo, she was a journalist's dream, shot to fame fast, and just as quickly sparked a backlash and sophomore slump anticipation. Five months ago, the New York Times was profiling Cody and her posse as the... MORE »
Disney loyalty in Tomorrowland.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/11/2009
Filed under: Biz
Today is day two of the first ever D23 Expo, one of the weirdest flexings of corporate muscle I've ever seen. D23 is like Comic-Con for Disney fans. Adults are invited to pay $90 for a four-day pass or $30 for one (kids get in for $66/$22) to go listen to an extended sales-pitch. Well, some of the time: the schedule is vast and unwieldy, with something for everyone (...who is rabidly into Disney). Just like in Disneyland, you can take a photo with a widely beloved character. The type of person who wishes he were a business reporter can... MORE »
Steven Soderbergh perks up...?
By Vadim Rizov on 09/11/2009
Filed under: Coming attractions
It's been a rough summer for Steven Soderbergh. "The Girlfriend Experience" folded domestically at under a million. "Che," despite netting $2.5 million in the U.S., barely made back half its reported $58 million budget worldwide. And, despite best-selling source material and Brad Pitt set to star, "Moneyball" collapsed a mere three days before shooting was supposed to start. An upcoming Vanity Fair feature will supposedly vindicate Soderbergh from studio charges of irresponsibility, but at the time, in late July, it looked as if his career of hopscotching between indie and studio work was in jeopardy. In a despairing interview with... MORE »
Censorship trouble in Indonesia.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/11/2009
Filed under: Abroad
China's notorious for letting in only 20 carefully chosen and often edited foreign films each year (though recent WTO rulings might change that) and requiring all domestic ones to pass through vigorous government approvals. But Indonesia might be giving the PRC a run for its money with its new "Law on Film," which combines a quota with strict censorship. As Katie Hamann at Radio Australia reports, the law mandates that 60% of the screenings in cinemas in the world's fourth largest country have to be of local films. Since, according to the AP, only 87 were produced last year, that... MORE »
It takes a village to release a Zac Efron movie.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/10/2009
Filed under: Biz
Richard Linklater's "Me And Orson Welles" -- which has been kicking around for a year since its premiere at Toronto 2008 -- finally has a distribution deal in place, and it's a doozy. The company that funded it -- Cinemanx, based on the Isle of Man -- has partnered with no less than four others to put the film out. Cinetic Media is managing sales, Freestyle Releasing will handle theatrical, Pandemic Marketing will tackle the (duh) marketing, and Warner Bros. will put out the DVD. Phew. Obviously, this is not how things are usually done. And on the surface, it's... MORE »
Hugo Chávez's "Repo Man" sequel.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/09/2009
Filed under: Coming attractions
I'm among those who was intrigued by the prospect of "Repo Chick," Alex Cox's sorta-sequel to his 1984 cult favorite "Repo Man." The film premiered last night at Venice, and alas, Leslie Felperin's Variety review is in and not so hot. Felperin deems the film a patchy, occasionally amusing mess, "what you would get if Michael Moore directed an episode of Nick Jr. kiddie series 'Lazy Town,' " though halfway through it does turn into a mock thriller. "The terrorists' ultimate demands," she summarizes with an admirably straight face, "are for the President of the United States to close all... MORE »
George Clooney does the airport stare.
By Alison Willmore on 09/09/2009
Filed under: Zeitgeist
If you weren't already aware of how our recent economic state has made the source material for Jason Reitman's new film "Up in the Air" extra-extra-melancholy, the teaser trailer, released earlier today, makes it perfectly clear. You don't even need to listen to George Clooney's corporate keynote-cum-voiceover about literal and metaphorical baggage -- simply note the incredible amount of airport staring that's going on. It's hard to say when the airport stare became American indie and pseudo-indie film's favorite visual shorthand reminder of the modern empty coldness of our cold, empty modern lives. But it's become inescapable -- a character... MORE »
Five horror movie-worthy PSAs from the UK and Australia.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/09/2009
Filed under: Sundry
Have you seen that ridiculously prolonged, gory Welsh PSA about the dangers of texting while driving? Probably -- it's already managed to amass over six million hits and counting. Personally, it isn't as outre as I'd like: it dwells too long on ambulances and grim faces. But the gratuitous splatter factor is high. Over at the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw muses on the PSA as "an unacknowledged Brit horror genre of remarkable ingenuity and power": "Its official licence to shock and upset and to unleash one-off moments of horrible violence and inspired nastiness which in any other context would be condemned... MORE »
A small festival buzzkill.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/09/2009
Filed under: Festivals
According to a widely cited number from Film-Releases.com I can't actually find on their site, American distributors will release 40% fewer films this award season, compared to last year. (This figure presumably doesn't take into account the five-plus niche releases flooding New York and LA -- and nowhere else -- every week.) For those lucky enough to be able to attend this fall's film festivals, you can make up the drought there; the rest of us are left reading along in order to see what we have to look forward to, maybe. And even then, as Richard Porton spells out... MORE »
"At The Movies" about as good as it could be.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/08/2009
Filed under: Critic watch
We're a long way from Siskel & Ebert, but the new "At The Movies" -- featuring The New York Times' A.O. Scott and The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips -- is on the air. They are, of course, the replacements for the short-lived, universally reviled duo of the Bens (Lyons and Mankiewicz); Mankiewicz himself didn't seem to get people too fired up, but Lyons was such an aggressively stupid guy that a site specifically devoted to relentlessly dogging him (a Web site that's the first result to pop up when you Google him no less) was the least of the protests.... MORE »
Walt Disney's covert mission in Latin America.
By Stephen Saito on 09/08/2009
Filed under: Biz
Last week's purchase of Marvel Entertainment signified the start of a new era at Disney, but the studio has quietly spent much of this year commemorating their past with a series of feature documentaries that have not only provided insight into the nooks and crannies behind the Mouse House, but have been among the year's most compelling docs, period. This week is a particularly notable one for documentary fans, Disney devotees, and history buffs in general with the release of "Walt and El Grupo," a recreation of Walt Disney's trip to South America in 1941 when the U.S. government asked... MORE »
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad People's Republic.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/08/2009
Filed under: Abroad
Earlier this year, the Chinese government's media authority -- the China Film Group -- announced plans for 50 movies to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution. Worker heroes like "Iron Man Wang," a nation's moment of unity in the face of last year's earthquake in Sichuan Province, and many more cultural touchstones from the last 60 years will receive the motion picture treatment. (I'm particularly keen to see the intriguingly titled "College Entrance Examination of 1977." Maybe it's a wacky college sex comedy.) But the centerpiece is undoubtedly "The Founding Of a Republic," a Chairman Mao biopic focusing... MORE »
Football movies that are not for export.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/07/2009
Filed under: Abroad
Being a holiday and all, it's a slow news day in the States, so let's turn to the U.K. for fodder. In The Times Online, we find an absolutely fascinating profile of Nick Love, a moderately high-profile figure in the U.K. and pretty much absolutely unknown in the U.S. Love is the director of a new remake of Alan Clarke's "The Firm," a really superb and terrifying movie starring Gary Oldman; if you've never seen it, you should make an effort. "The Firm" is probably the only movie about hooliganism on the soccer turf to make a dent in American... MORE »
Celebrating Labor Day with Michael Moore.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/07/2009
Filed under: Coming attractions, Festivals
Happy Labor Day! Here, let Michael Moore make you feel better about working. Most of us, now more than ever, would prefer not to lose our jobs; Moore, on the other hand, views permanently severing himself from his financiers as something to be desired. As Arifa Akbar reports from the Venice Film Festival in The Independent, Moore mocked Paramount for funding his latest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," saying, "Why would these companies give money to me, a guy who is diametrically opposed to everything they stand for?" Furthermore, he's had a grand plan ever since "Sicko" to save up... MORE »
There was a "Ferris Bueller" sequel.
By Stephen Saito on 09/06/2009
Filed under: Events
Or so said Jeffrey Jones, who appeared this weekend as part of a group of John Hughes collaborators that gathered at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles to celebrate the work of the late writer/director in between a double bill of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." Sitting next to "Bueller" co-stars Edie McClurg (Grace, the secretary) and Cindy Pickett's (Ferris' mom) after the screening, Jones seemed to lament a planned sequel that he believed would've been set in Hawaii had Matthew Broderick wanted to reprise his most famous role, but Broderick wasn't interested in saving... MORE »
Werner Herzog and Abel Ferrara want to know who's "Bad."
By Vadim Rizov on 09/04/2009
Filed under: Coming attractions
So the long-awaited "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" -- the Werner Herzog movie whose absurdist trailer has been an Internet favorite for months now -- is finally dropping at the Venice and Telluride festivals and, predictably, people are generally underwhelmed. This is what happens when people more familiar with Herzog's reputation than his frequently uneven work get something less consistently outrageous than they expected and -- okay, maybe it's not all that. (Though I doubt it.) As a result, the media narrative is shifting back one last time to the Herzog-Abel Ferrara feud. You know the deal: Ferrara... MORE »
Tyler Perry resurrects theater history.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/04/2009
Filed under: Coming attractions
Although Tyler Perry's movies are wildly successful financially -- $400 million worldwide and counting on negligible budgets -- critical interest has been specialized, prone to esoteric theorizing and reactions generally erring on the side of baffled incomprehension at best. Like Pixar, every Perry movie is predicted to flop before release, but he almost always triumphs; his budgets are so low he's never had an outright flop. Critically, though, his respect level is about zero: his out-of-nowhere debut "Diary Of A Mad Black Woman" made $50.6 million and received a 16 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Reactions have been slightly... MORE »
Unlikely Activist Success Stories, Pt. 2: LACMA lives.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/03/2009
Filed under: Activism
I'm really impressed by how consistently the Los Angeles Times has thrown itself into the battle to preserve LACMA's repertory film program. Things have moved with surprising swiftness since the museum announced the shuttering of their repertory program for financial reasons. Enough money's been ponied up to keep the program running through next summer, and now the museum is reversing course in a major way. LACMA director Michael Govan is going to keep the program after all -- as long as he can raise five to six million dollars in the next year. If not...no promises. I don't really trust... MORE »
Unlikely Activist Success Stories, Pt. 1: "The Cove"
By Vadim Rizov on 09/03/2009
Filed under: Activism
Most people generally are bothered by watching animals getting inefficiently slaughtered and writhing in agony; it's kind of a given, regardless of context. With dolphins being killed as its climax, Louie Psihoyos' "The Cove" is a slam dunk that way: it's unambiguous propaganda with a very specific goal, using cheap but effective narrative devices (and massive entertainment value) to win you over. The titular cove is in Taiji, Japan, where dolphins are speared bloodily, then their meat sold all over Japan with toxic levels of mercury inside; Psihoyos would understandably like to stop this, so he secretly filmed it. The... MORE »
Spike Jonze, Jason Reitman and the fearsome third.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/03/2009
Filed under: Coming attractions
There's two good profiles published in the last few days about polar opposite Great White Hopes of Hollywood film. The New York Times profiles Spike Jonze in anticipation of his adaptation of Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are"; Anthony Breznican tackles Jason Reitman for USA Today in advance of "Up In The Air"'s premiere in Toronto. As befits the man, the Reitman profile is competent and occasionally absorbing, but basically pedestrian; Saki Knafo's take on Jonze is a great piece -- if you think Jonze is a major American auteur, it'll be the major piece to refer to in... MORE »
Sundance gets more annoying.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/02/2009
Filed under: Festivals
So Sundance woke up all sweaty and hungover a few days ago and apparently decided it was time to change its ways. The quirky Fox Searchlight acquisitions, the earnest Amerindie movies like "Sin Nombre" going nowhere slowly but self-righteously...something didn't feel right. Was this the same festival that gave us Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino? No. No it wasn't. It was fat and out of shape. It needed...mumblecore! Hence, as indieWIRE reports the first major act under new festival director John Cooper is the somewhat patronizing news that Sundance is adding a new section, to be called "Next," consisting of... MORE »
Mike Judge, conservative hero
By Vadim Rizov on 09/02/2009
Filed under: Coming attractions
Since he created "Beavis & Butthead" and made "Idiocracy," Mike Judge is pretty much one of my favorite people around. But he is also an unlikely conservative hero, something I wasn't aware of until "The Goode Family" dropped. It was then that my personal favorite insane right-wing site Big Hollywood started championing Judge as a True Conservative Artist, something that wasn't so clear during the "Beavis & Butthead" era. Big Hollywood's basic tenets are simple: Hollywood is run by stupid liberals enforcing a strict blacklist on conservatives. Barack Obama is a Marxist who may not have been born in this... MORE »
When indie studio heads direct.
By Stephen Saito on 09/02/2009
Filed under: Odds, Watchy
On the press tour that will not end, Quentin Tarantino took a break from dishing about his favorite films and talking up "Inglourious Basterds" to shed some light on the lone film directed by his bosses, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, on last night's episode of Craig Ferguson. Following an amusing anecdote about strong-arming an Italian film festival jury into giving a 1994 Russian film called "The Dove's Bell-Ringer" a prize (and then subsequently getting snubbed by the film's producer at an afterparty), Tarantino stumbled onto discussing "Playing for Keeps," a 1986 comedy most notable for the Weinsteins' involvement as co-directors... MORE »
The men who would be Terry Gilliam.
By Stephen Saito on 09/01/2009
Filed under: Odds
If you haven't heard, today kicks off "Sketchtember" on IFC.com, and inspired by Nick Schager's look at the best and worst films derived from sketch comedy, I was reminded of Kelly Makin. Who is Kelly Makin, you ask? Well, besides giving "The Hurt Locker"'s Jeremy Renner one of his first breaks, Makin enjoys the status of being the de facto sixth member of The Kids in the Hall as the director of 30 episodes of their original series and their eventual 1996 feature "Brain Candy." And naturally when the Kids recently announced that they will return to Canadian TV for... MORE »
Meryl Streep, luckless thespian
By Vadim Rizov on 09/01/2009
Filed under: Controversy
Sometimes The Onion's stories and editorials are pointed satire and sometimes they're just goofy conceits and absurdities. The much-discussed fake Meryl Streep editorial is something else. In it, "Streep" bemusedly points out that despite her reputation as one of America's best actresses, she's never owned a flat-out masterpiece. If you rewrote it not in Streep's voice, there's actually no joke; it's actually just kind of a curious thing someone picked up on. She accurately describes "The Deer Hunter" as "overrated" and moans about her luck with directors: "The annoying thing about all of this is that I've worked with directors... MORE »
Film critics gone wild.
By Stephen Saito on 09/01/2009
Filed under: Critic watch, Watchy
Actually, that's a misleading headline if there ever was one, considering that A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips look more buttoned up than ever in this promo for the new season of "At the Movies." But after a year in the wilderness, I share the excitement of Karina Longworth and Anne Thompson in seeing the film critics from the New York Times and Chicago Tribune engage in serious discussions about films, though judging by that picture, I'd be afraid to say otherwise for fear of being found floating in the Hudson River. [Photo: A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, "At the Movies,"... MORE »
What made "Sammy" stop running and other never-were adaptations.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/01/2009
Filed under: Biz
In what's easily the best thing he's done since, uh, guest star on "Undeclared," Ben Stiller took time out from mugging, shrieking and frittering away his talent to pay affectionate tribute to the late Budd Schulberg, who died August 5th. For the past few years, Stiller's evident frustration with Hollywood has been erupting in odd ways -- spending $90 million on "Tropic Thunder" to prove how much he hates other blockbusters, mocking studios for having the gall to work with him -- so it's not really a surprise that for over a decade, he and screenwriting partner Jerry Stahl sweated... MORE »
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