Youth in Revolt continues to amuse me. Though it is widely rumored that my sense of humor has been broken in some way (see reviews of The Hangover and Land of the Lost if you don’t believe me), I hope Revolt delivers.
The release date has changed a couple of times since I posted the first trailer. Originally the film was scheduled for October 30 and then it got bumped to January 15, 2010 and now it’s set for January 8, 2010 with a sneak preview on January 2.
Harry Knowles’ rhapsody on a theme of “lovely” caused some stir yesterday because it was the first known review of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, a film that has been seen but for which a review embargo was in place. Today finally a couple of reviews have arrived from the UK by people who are more than sub-literate. I’m sure Harry is a nice fellow, but his childlike grasp of his native language is a little bewildering considering how long he’s been at this.
I was pretty harsh about the first new Nine poster to be unveiled yesterday. Luckily this was quickly followed by three more, one of which (the first above) is pretty great. The other two are better.
Click either one to visit larger versions at their original homes: Yahoo, MSN and In Contention.
Apple has the trailer for Greenberg, the latest from Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding). Ben Stiller plays a man approaching middle age who is in between jobs and has no clear idea of what he wants to do next. Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Chris Messina also star.
It opens March 12, 2010 and I’m sorry but I have almost no earthly interest in it whatsoever. I feel like I should like Baumbach more than I do. I liked about 75% of The Squid and the Whale but found Margot at the Wedding to be mostly unbearable. I’m a little tired too of stories about 30-40-somethings who don’t know what to do with themselves.
It’s a sad state of affairs when the marketing for a movie I’m otherwise interested in makes me not want to see it. So it is with Rob Marshall’s Nine. First the recent musical number fell with a thud and now this wretched one sheet from Cinematical.
Forget about the ugly photoshopping. Why are the biggest names on the poster Rob Marshall, Michael Tolkin and Anthony Minghella? If you’re trying to sell this thing to people like me who have no familiarity with the Broadway show, you go with Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman and Marion Cotillard. Yes I know they’re prominently pictured, but would non-movie obsessed types know who they are as they see this poster between the popcorn counter and the auditorium?
I try not to be fooled by marketing one way or the other (I often am anyway), but I at least enjoy an effort to stand out from the crowd. This poster practically begs you not to notice it.
While the rest of the world lined up for New Moon (to the tune of $140 million in the US and $118 million worldwide), I headed over to the historic Chinese Theater in Hollywood to watch Nicolas Cage chew the scenery in Werner Herzog’s The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. It was a solid B picture with some terrific highlights, but I was a little disappointed at how conventional it all was. Instead of really flying off the rails like he’s capable of (cockroach anyone?), Cage was pretty tame most of the time.
Nevertheless, the movie was enjoyable and it has all the markings of a cult favorite. The amusing irony of it all is that Cage’s character is a decent person motivated by good intentions who ends up doing increasingly bad things to get himself out of a series of unfortunate situations. Neither Cage nor Herzog are playing this with a straight face. They’re clearly having fun and the audience is in on the joke. I guess I just had it in my mind that it would be more over the top.
In other news, James Cameron was featured in a 60 Minutes puff piece tonight to help push Dances with Thundercats. There was some talk about the future of 3D, a few glimpses behind the scenes of filming and Morley Safer hit all of Cameron’s career beats, but there was really nothing new to carry away from it. A big chunk of the 60 Minutes audience probably doesn’t even know what Avatar is and this might have been their first introduction with the film only a few weeks away. Are enough aware of it and interested now to make it a hit?
That’s all I’ve got this weekend. Now it’s your turn.
Hands down my favorite Oscar winner this year was Kunio Kato’s sublime animated short La maison en petits cubes. So it is with interest I turn to yesterday’s announcement of the short-listed animated shorts for next year.
The only two names to jump out are Peter Sohn’s Partly Cloudy which played before Pixar’s Up and Nick (Wallace and Gromit) Park’s A Matter of Loaf and Death.
You can see trailers for a number of the following pics around the web and you can stream The Cat Piano above.
Here are the short-listed potential nominees:
The Cat Piano - Eddie White and Ari Gibson, directors (The People’s Republic of Animation)
French Roast - Fabrice O. Joubert, director (Pumpkin Factory/Bibo Films)
Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty - Nicky Phelan, director, and Darragh O’Connell, producer (Brown Bag Films)
The Kinematograph - Tomek Baginski, director-producer (Platige Image)
The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte) - Javier Recio Gracia, director (Kandor Graphics and Green Moon)
Logorama - Nicolas Schmerkin, producer (Autour de Minuit)
A Matter of Loaf and Death - Nick Park, director (Aardman Animations Ltd.)
Partly Cloudy - Sohn, director (Pixar Animation Studios)
Runaway - Cordell Barker, director (National Film Board of Canada)
Variete - Roelof van den Bergh, director (il Luster Productions)
IFC Entertainment and online rental service Netflix announced a partnership yesterday to offer 53 IFC titles for streaming online. This is good news and bad news.
The good news is it that it makes some of IFC’s great titles easier for people to see. Older stuff like John Sayles’ The Brother From Another Planet and Return of the Secaucus Seven, James Toback’s When Will I Be Loved, Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line and Gates of Heaven, plus some more current foreign titles including Susanne Bier’s Brothers (Jim Sheridan’s remake starring Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal opens soon), Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Three Times and others.
The bad news is that Netflix’s streaming service leaves a lot to be desired. It’s available at no extra charge to Netflix’s unlimited subscribers (and was recently made available on Sony’s PS3), but the video is at times sub-YouTube quality (at least on my internet connection) and navigating within a movie is sketchy at best.
It works in a pinch and it’s very convenient, but it’s not up to par for videophile types. Nevertheless, it’s yet another way somewhat obscure films are being made available to the masses. IFC has already experimented with offering their films on VOD concurrently with a theatrical realease and this is an interesting attempt to keep their strong catalogue of films alive. In the changing landscape of indie/foreign film distribution, I hope it works for them.
The second trailer for Brothers, Jim Sheridan’s remake of Susanne Bier’s Brødre, is a modest improvement over the first, but it still kind of looks like unbearable melodrama.
Natalie Portman plays a woman who believes her husband was killed in war. She takes up with brother-in-law Jake Gyllenhaal only to find out her husband Tobey Maguire is still alive.
Apple has the trailer for Romanian director Corneliu Poromboiu’s drly comic and thoughtful Police, Adjective, a film that explores the grey area between what is right and what is law. Dragos Bucur plays a conscientious young policeman being pressured by his superiors to arrest a teenaged hash smoker when he’s convinced the arrest won’t lead to the boy’s dealer but only ruin a young life.
Winner of the Un Certain Regard jury prize and the Fipresci Critics prize at Cannes, Police, Adjective is Romania’s official entry for the foreign language Oscar. It opens in limited release on December 23.
Yahoo has a clip of one of my favorite scenes from John Woo’s Red Cliff.
It’s not a narrative spoiler of any kind (it’s not even the climactic battle), but if you want to experience every ounce of action goodness in context for the first time, you’d best skip it. On the other hand, if you need to be convinced to see this movie, please enjoy bad ass Tony Leung getting shot with an arrow and, instead of rolling over and dying in pain like an ordinary mortal, ripping out the offending projectile in a spray of blood, charging his enemy and plunging the arrow through the back of the poor bastard’s neck. The bad news for the other side is that he’s just getting started.
I invite you to tell me how that is not awesome and I laugh in advance at your feeble attempt.
John Woo’s Red Cliff starring Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro is now playing in New York and on VOD (probably HDNet since this is a Magnolia film). Coming to LA on 11/25.
Watch a few minutes of Red Cliff after the jump and/or check out the LiC review here.
I have to concede I’m just not the target audience for any of the wide releases this weekend. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to see Werner Herzog’s batshit crazy looking Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans opening in New York and LA. Also, if you live in Los Angeles, Hal Holbrook, Dixie Carter, Carrie Preston and writer/director Scott Teems will participate in a Q&A following the 7:15pm showing of That Evening Sun at Laemmle’s Royal on Santa Monica Boulevard. Stay tuned for LiC interviews with Mr. Holbrook and Mr. Teems. Also recommended if you live in New York: John Woo’s Red Cliff.
Opening in wide release:
The Blind Side. The by-the-numbers trailer for this inspirational, torn-from-real-life feelgooder about a plucky southern mom (Sandra Bullock) who rescues a poor black kid from the streets so he can fulfill his human potential playing football while teaching her comfy white family a thing or two about themselves would be laughable if it didn’t make me want to do bad things to innocent people. To be fair, this kind of better-living-through-sports crap can work when it’s delivered with just the right touch. It’s not my cup of tea, but it could be just the thing to pull your mom away from Dancing With the Stars. Enjoy!
For better or for worse, here are the 15 documentaries that will vie for the Oscar next March.
I haven’t seen all of them, but I can tell you No Impact Man should’ve been included in favor of one of them. Here’s a hint: it rhymes with The Shmove.
I’m not terribly shocked to see Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story ignored since almost no one really seemed to go for it.
The Beaches of Agnes – Agnès Varda
Burma VJ – Anders Østergaard
The Cove – Louie Psihoyos
Every Little Step – James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo
Facing Ali – Pete McCormack
Food, Inc. – Robert Kenner
Garbage Dreams – Mai Iskander
Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders – Mark N. Hopkins
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers – Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
Mugabe and the White African – Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey
Sergio – Greg Barker
Soundtrack for a Revolution – Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman
Told in simple, broad, memorable strokes, John Woo’s Red Cliff is the kind of historical action epic Hollywood seems to have lost the ability to reliably deliver. Based on a 700-year-old Chinese novel set in the 3rd century AD, it tells the story of an ambitious general who bullies his weak emperor into crushing two less powerful warlords to the south. Realizing the two kingdoms can’t stand alone, a military strategist from one kingdom convinces a war hero from the other that they must form an alliance and use their superior knowledge and tactics to defeat the more powerful enemy.
Originally shown to Asian audiences in two parts totaling 5 hours, Woo always intended an edited version that would be more appealing to Westerners. The version opening this week for US audiences (and already playing on VOD) has been pruned back to 2 hours and 30 minutes, a length barely enough to contain the film’s massive scope, but it just manages to work. The result is a breathlessly paced bit of action entertainment that is a little simplistic at times, but never less than entertaining.
I have to admit my interest (such as it was) in Alejandro Amenabar’s Agora starring Rachel Weisz cooled somewhat as the luke warm reviews started to waft in at Cannes, but I was a little surprised it took so long to pick up a US distributor. Now it has one.
Perhaps encouraged by the box office records it broke in its home country of Spain, Newmarket Films grabbed Agora for release in the US in the first half of 2010.
In case you’d forgotten, this is the one where Weisz plays Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathematician, philosopher and astronomer who was murdered by a Christian mob in 391 AD.
You could be forgiven for not realizing the Oscars embarrassed themselves two times in a single weekend. First of all they called attention to the fact that Gordon Willis and Lauren Bacall don’t have Oscars. Though he’s a cinema giant, it’s fair to say Roger Corman hasn’t exactly trafficked in Oscar type material so we’ll forgive AMPAS that oversight, but there’s no excuse for the other two, especially Willis.
It’s all well and good that Oscar atoned for these shortcomings with a trio of honorary awards, but then they had to go and separate the ceremony from the usual Oscar telecast to an un-televised November gulag with only the guests in attendance able to watch. In the name of making the March broadcast more entertaining for the masses, the honorary awards were stripped from their rightful place during the Oscar show where millions of people would be watching. Instead they were dumped where they wouldn’t bother anyone like senior citizens whisked off to an old age home. The result is a cheapened Oscar telecast and a batch of honorary awards stripped of much of their impact.
A sense of history and a connection to the industry are the only things keeping the Oscars above the Golden Globes, but this year AMPAS has taken one step closer to awards irrelevance and in the process they’ve insulted three worthy recipients who have earned their places in the spotlight.
Congratulations anyway to cinematographer Gordon Willis, producer/director Roger Corman and actress Lauren Bacall. Though your honorary Oscars aren’t quite the honor they once were, they’re no less deserved.
Apple has the trailer for Oscar Flavor of the Minute Crazy Heart starring Jeff Bridges as a down-on-his-luck country musician. Basically Fox Searchlight looked out over the wreckage of Amelia and realized they didn’t have a Slumdog or a Wrestler or a Juno or a Little Miss Sunshine or an Oscar pot to piss in so they dusted off this summer pickup and are pumping it for a few gold statuettes.
If it gets The Dude a richly deserved Oscar, I can abide with that.
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall also star.
For your consideration, Crazy Heart opens in New York and Los Angeles on December 16.
Journo types finally recently got a look at Rob Marshall’s Nine, but they’re not allowed to so much as Tweet what they saw. The best we can do for now is enjoy this new(?) trailer on Yahoo featuring Kate Hudson singing Cinema Italiano.
I don’t know jack about the musical other than that it’s based on Fellini’s 8 1/2, but I hate this song. I think it’s the first thing I’ve seen or heard about Nine that I haven’t liked.
I never watched TV’s The Equalizer for which Edward Woodward was probably best known in this country among my generation and younger, but LiC marks his passing by remembering Breaker Morant and the original (non comedy) version of The Wicker Man.
Mr. Woodward died Monday at the age of 79. May he rest in peace.
Here’s the first official trailer (not safe for anyone afraid of words like “fuck” and “cocksucker”) for Tim Blake Nelson’s comedy Leaves of Grass starring Edward Norton as twin brothers – one a successful professor and the other a pot dealing screw up.
Leaves first popped onto LiC radar when it played at Toronto. It looks a little broad… much of it ringing in a key of Delmar (”Gopher, Everett?”), but the cast including Nelson, Susan Sarandon, Melanie Lynskey, Keri Russell and Richard Dreyfuss just might make it work.
Leaves of Grass is scheduled for limited release on 12/25.
Everyone who told me not to see 2012 was right. It wasn’t as bad as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but there are better ways I could’ve spent 2 hours and 40 minutes of my Friday night – trimming my nose hair for example.
All of the best bits were in the trailers and none of them had any kind of gravity in context. Everything in between was a waste of time. I went in with minimal expectations in the mood to be entertained by some mindless destruction and I came away underwhelmed. It could’ve been worse – at least there were no robots humping anyone’s leg – but it could also have been better.
Ah well. I should’ve known better.
In box office news, Precious pulled in a respectable $6 million after expanding from 18 theaters to 174 this weekend. It should do even better next weekend when it goes wide. Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox meanwhile had the best average with $65,000 per theater in 4 locations in New York and Los Angeles. It opens wide on 11/25.
That’s all I’ve got from a quite weekend. What about you?
Click to enlarge… you know in case you really need to see the details
Perhaps eager to shake up Oscar predictions that even in this new 10 BP nominee year are already calcifying around the same group of boring choices, a number of prognosticator types have seized upon Fox Searchlight’s late entrant Crazy Heart starring Jeff Bridges as a… wait for it… down-on-his luck country singer. I don’t think anyone is predicting this one as a best picture candidate, but one guy is already predicting Jeff Bridges for the win and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a possible invitee.
The film will get an Oscar qualifying run in mid-December in New York and Los Angeles.
This poster hearkens back to the old-school ’70s and ’80s style of anatomical reality being eschewed in favor of compositional necessity. Doesn’t it look like that’s someone else’s hand holding the guitar?
From France, here’s another look at one of the last few Oscar unknowns: Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. It’s a more dramatic and ethereal take than the first US trailer and better I think.
The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band)
Directed by Michael Haneke
What to make of the latest from Michael Haneke? A more than cursory dissection of the plot of this Palme d’Or winner is fruitless because, as usual, Haneke is more interested in character and behavior than he is in story. Narrative is just a means to get his characters to expose their true natures and the results aren’t pretty.
In this case we’re talking about the seemingly peaceful citizens of a pastoral German town on the eve of World War I. Haneke’s focus bounces from one character or group of characters to another as a series of mysterious self-inflicted traumas occur that slowly erode the village’s placid façade and reveal the dark currents of hatred, mistrust, selfishness and genuine villainy in everyone from the most respected of citizens to the most apparently innocent. Imagine Cluzot’s Le Corbeau with elements of The Bad Seed mixed in.
Here’s an amusing clip of Nicolas Cage in fine scenery chewing form for Werner Herzog’s The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. You have to put in your age before you watch it to prove that you’re old enough to hear the word “fuck.”
I love when Cage really lets loose and Bad Lieutenant was high on my list of films to catch at AFI, but I didn’t make it.
I’ll be in line November 20 when it opens in NY and LA. It opens wider on December 4.
indieWIRE has the IDA Documentary Award nominees with Afghan Star, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Diary of a Times Square Thief, Food Inc. and Mugabe and the White African all vying for the top prize that will be awarded at the Directors Guild of America on December 4.
A notable omission is The Cove, though that film will compete for the Pare Lorentz Award along with other films including Food, Inc., Mugabe and the White African and Earth Days.
Last year, James Marsh’s Man on Wire and Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir split the top honor.
Check out indieWIRE for a full list of nominees in all categories.
Behold the weekend forecast. Though it’s only opening in 4 theaters this weekend, LiC’s pick of the week is Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. It’s cussing great.
Opening wide:
2012. It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. Sure I’ll probably regret it, but I’m tempted to see Roland Emmerich wreck the world one more time. Then again, I imagine we’ve seen all the money shots in the trailer. If it blows, I have no one to blame but myself.
The excellent PBS documentary program POV is screening The Way We Get By for Veterans Day tonight and I recommend you check it out. It tells the moving story of a group of Bangor Maine senior citizens who have taken it upon themselves to greet soldiers coming in from or shipping out to Iraq and Afghanistan. No dolphins get stabbed in the head so it didn’t get the press of certain other sensationalistic documentaries, but it sticks with you.
Sunday: 11/22/09 The Watercooler
Talk about the weekend's movie watching, or anything else that's on your mind.
Tuesday: 11/19/09 Weekend Forecast
A look at the upcoming weekend's theatrical releases (Normally posted on Thursdays)
Saturday: 8/8/09 Movies You May Have Missed Updated semi-regularly, these are DVD releases of interesting films that may have slipped under your radar.
