Mike Scott at New Orleans' Times-Picayune notes the impeccable taste Lionsgate is showing in releasing "Disaster Movie" on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, August 29th:

Around these Katrina-scarred parts, Aug. 29 is still -- and will be for some time -- a black-armband kind of day.

For Lionsgate studios, however, Aug. 29 isn't quite as sacred. For them, the third anniversary of the day the levees were breached and New Orleans slipped under is something on the order of perfect timing: a ripped-from-the-headlines release date for the big-screen, low-concept spoof "Disaster Movie."

Oops. [Hat tip to Nikki Finke]

Also in honor of the occasion, Slate's rerunning Josh Levin's unsparing piece on "Disaster Movie"'s spoof-specializing director-writer team Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer from earlier in the year, when "Meet the Spartans" graced theaters with its presence:

Isn't it massive consumer fraud to charge $10.50 for a barely hour-long movie? Perhaps, but it would've been unforgivable to make Meet the Spartans any longer than an hour. This was the worst movie I've ever seen, so bad that I hesitate to label it a "movie" and thus reflect shame upon the entire medium of film. Friedberg and Seltzer do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it. They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline under the weight of too many pop culture references.

[Photo: Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's "Disaster Movie," Lionsgate, 2008]

+ 'Disaster Movie' a case of disastrous timing (Times-Picayune)
+ Meet the Charlatans (Slate)

By Alison Willmore in Versus | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (1)

Tags: Aaron Seltzer, Disaster Movie, Jason Friedberg, Meet the Spartans

While the folks behind "Tropic Thunder" had obviously soldiered up in advance for -- and were probably counting on -- controversy surrounding Robert Downey Jr.'s (totally hilarious) turn as a method actor in surgically applied blackface, the vehement protests surrounding the film's frequent, gleeful use of the work "retarded" seem to have blindsided them. Bonnie Goldstein at Slate points to the 11-page kit released by a group that includes the American Association of People With Disabilities and the National Down Syndrome Congress, encouraging boycotting and picketing of theaters throughout this week. Timothy Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics and another vocal opponent of the movie, admitted to NPR that, in true movie-protest tradition, he hadn't actually seen the film beyond the key r-word sequences and didn't plan to, a fact director/star Ben Stiller leapt on on Good Morning America yesterday:

"We screened the movie so many times and this didn't come up until very late and I think the guy spearheading [the protest] hasn't seen the movie. So in the context of the film I think it's really clear, they were making fun of the actors and actors who try to use serious subjects to win awards. It's about actors and self-importance. I think the context of the movie it's pretty clear."

And screenwriter Justin Theroux pointed out to New York that "Simple Jack," the film within the film in which Stiller's character plays a broader than broad caricature of a mentally disabled man in hopes that it'd lead him to an Oscar, isn't that much of an exaggeration from projects that have actually been made: "There are MANY films we're lampooning there, and TV movies included, just a bunch of movies we found completely outrageous."

So, sure, Hollywood is the ultimate butt of all the jokes. And sure, what Orlando critic Roger Moore is attempting to label "the New Outrageousness" is also turning out to be a convenient way to pack in all the -ist jokes that will fit while crying no foul because, hey, those jokes aren't aimed at who they seem to be aimed at. But I particularly enjoyed a judicious bit of word choice in Manohla Dargis' review in the New York Times, in which she twice uses "retard" as it's utilized in the film: "one misbegotten attempt to bait Oscar with a weepie called 'Simple Jack,' in which he played a bucktoothed retarded man," and "Kirk's explanation for why Tugg's performance as a retarded man in 'Simple Jack' doomed his chances for an Oscar." The PC copy-edit would be "mentally disabled," though the Times seems to use both terms freely, but why not apply the term directly to the role? Stiller's "Simple Jack" character bears about as much resemblance to someone with an actual disability as Mickey Rooney did an Asian person in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" -- maybe "retarded" could become something like "minstrelsy," used only to describe offensively bad roles in films, like, say, "Riding the Bus with My Sister."

[Photo: "Tropic Thunder," DreamWorks, 2008]

+ How To Picket Tropic Thunder (Slate)
+ Disabled Group Calls For 'Tropic Thunder' Boycott (NRP)
+ Ben Stiller: Taking Chances with "Tropic Thunder" (ABC News)
+ 'Tropic Thunder' Writer Justin Theroux on 'Simple Jack,' 'Iron Man 2,' and Stupid Actors (New York)
+ War May Be Hell, but Hollywood Is Even Worse (NY Times)

By Alison Willmore in Versus | Link | 1 Comments | Recommended (1)

Tags: Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux, New Outrageousness, semantics, Special Olympics, Timothy Shriver, Tropic Thunder

HBO was forced to change the ending of Marina Zenovich's acclaimed documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" shortly before its TV premiere on Monday, after Los Angeles Superior Court officials "complained the film's conclusion was a 'complete fabrication.' " Said conclusion, which relates an incident that allegedly occured in 1997, is explained in the LA Times:

The documentary originally asserted that a local judge had offered [Polanski] a deal whereby he could return to the United States with no jail time if he allowed the legal proceedings to be televised...

Allan Parachini, public information officer for the court, said that the offer alluded to in Marina Zenovich's documentary "never occurred."

He added that the "fabricated reference" to the televised hearing had "the potential to . . . enormously" injure the reputation of judge Larry Paul Fidler and that court officials had been pressuring Zenovich and HBO to correct the film for about a week.

Kim Masters at Slate explicates further:

Fidler... presided over the recent Phil Spector murder trial, and in that case, he allowed the cameras to roll. Spector's case was the first criminal trial televised in its entirety in a Los Angeles Superior Court since the O.J. Simpson case in 1995. That may be why Fidler was sensitive to the film's implication that he was another media-obsessed jurist.

Now, former Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson and Polanski's attorney Douglas Dalton, who are both featured in the film, have issued a statement indicating they have issues with the Superior Court's issues. It's up on Deadline Hollywood Daily:

During the meeting, Mr. Dalton pressed Judge Fidler for a resolution of the case that would allow for minimal news media. Mr. Dalton recalled that Judge Fidler would require television coverage at the proposed hearing due to the controversy. Mr. Gunson recalls television coverage discussed at the meeting. Mr. Dalton told documentary director Marina Zenovich of this requirement. It is our shared view that Monday's false and reprehensible statement by the Los Angeles Superior Court continues their inappropriate handling of the Polanski case.

No takesies backsies, LASC.

[Photo: "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," THINKFilm, 2008]

+ L.A. Superior Court called for revision of Polanski doc (LA Times)
+ HBO's Roman Polanski Problem (Slate)
+ EXCLUSIVE: Polanski Prosecutor and Defense Attorney Charge L.A. Court Made "False And Reprehensible Statement" (Deadline Hollywood)

By Alison Willmore in Versus | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (2)

Tags: Larry Paul Fidler, Marina Zenovich, Roman Polanski, Roman Polanski Wanted and Desired

In the left corner, you have the highly quotable, controversy-courting filmmaker Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee. In the right, the generally taciturn but sometimes just as headline-quote worthy actor-director Clinton Eastwood, Jr. At stake: the accuracy of the racial makeup of the casts of "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima."

Lee threw the first punch at a Cannes press conference on the film he's just finishing up, "Miracle at St Anna," a drama about four "Buffalo Soldiers" in the 92nd Division fighting in Tuscany during World War II that he suggests is a corrective to films like Eastwood's:

"There were many African-Americans who survived that war and who were upset at Clint for not having one [in 'Flags of Our Fathers' and 'Letters from Iwo Jima']. That was his version: the negro soldier did not exist. I have a different version.... It's not like he could say he didn't know. It was a conscious decision not to have any black people."

Eastwood refused to respond at his own press conference for "Changeling," which took place half an hour later, but had no such hesitations in an interview with the Guardian on Friday. Not one to mince words or, apparently, think twice when speaking on record to a reporter, he said:

"He was complaining when I did Bird [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else." As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, "but they didn't raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate"...

Eastwood pauses, deliberately - once it would have provided him with the beat in which to spit out his cheroot before flinging back his poncho - and offers a last word of advice to the most influential black director in American movies. "A guy like him should shut his face."

And now back to Lee, who's responded to the ABC News:

"First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either. He's a great director. He makes his films, I make my films ... And a comment like 'A guy like that should shut his face' - come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there...

"If he wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I'd like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist," he said. "I'm not making this up. I know history. I'm a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II... Not everything was John Wayne, baby."

Clint, you had me until "shut his face." I love approximately 50% of Lee's films and still wish he would shut his face approximately 90% of the time, but no one's going to throw my ill-considered remarks far and wide on the news wires. By taking Lee's bait, Eastwood does look like a grumpy codger, albeit one who's very generously doing his part to help publicize Lee's latest work.

Elsewhere, on the main IFC.com site, Aaron Hillis gets clarification from Werner Herzog on the tiff with Abel Ferrara we're all longing to see play out:

That's "Bad Lieutenant," right?

Yes, it's a completely new version that people think is a remake, but it's a completely different story. I've never seen the "Bad Lieutenant" that was made sometime in the '90s, I guess.

You told Defamer you hadn't even heard of Abel Ferrara.

I don't know who he is, but I heard he has a good, gruff face and maybe he would be good as a gangster in the movie. The last James Bond is not a remake of the previous one. They're completely different stories, but the leading character is somewhat similar.

But the Bond movies are a series. So basically, the only thing your film has in common is its title?

Well, there is a bad lieutenant in the previous film and in this one. We may even drop the title. I don't know yet. [It's] not to avoid it, even if people think it might be a remake. You see, once this kind of rumor is out, you can never stop it. It's like slashing open a pillow on the roof of your house and the wind blows in it and spills all the feathers out into the landscape. Now go out and find those feathers again and put them back in the bag. It's impossible. We have to enjoy it as it is. I think we have to allow the rumors to live on. We cannot stop them, so let them live on.

[Photo: Lee's "Miracle at St. Anna," Touchstone Pictures, 2008]

+ Spike Lee accuses Clint Eastwood of erasing black GIs from history (London Times)
+ Dirty Harry comes clean (Guardian)
+ Spike Strikes Back: Clint's 'an Angry Old Man (ABC News)
+ Werner Herzog on "Encounters at the End of the World" (IFC)

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Tags: Abel Ferrara, Bad Lieutenant, Clint Eastwood, Flags of Our Fathers, Letter From Iwo Jima, Miracle at St. Anna, Spike Lee, Werner Herzog