The Times of Harvey Milk
This November, 16 years after producers Craig Zadan and Neil Maron (Chicago, Hairspray) began trying to get The Mayor of Castro Street made, the story of Harvey Milk is finally coming to the big screen. Unfortunately for Zadan and Maron, Milk, the Gus Van Sant directed film starring Sean Penn as [...]

Filed under: Movies | 13 Comments »

Yeah, I know “box office” is a dirty word around here, but just because it’s an over-emphasized subject doesn’t mean it isn’t occasionally important.
In this case, while we’re all sitting here chatting so enjoyably, Sex and the City is raking in some serious coin at the cinemas. Most estimates had Indiana Jones and the Whatchamacallit [...]

Filed under: Analysis, Movies, News | 51 Comments »

Family Day: Westwood Village of the Damned? 
Though the closing night film, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, screens on Saturday June 28 after the narrative and documentary competition awards are handed out, the Los Angeles Film Festival technically continues on Sunday the 29th with Family Day.
The daylong event includes all manner of free outdoor activities for [...]

Filed under: Film Festivals, Movies | 10 Comments »

Danny R. McBride in The Foot Fist Way 
The self-proclaimed “King of the Demo,” Fred Simmons teaches Taekwondo to little kids, old ladies and awkward teens at a second rate strip mall dojo in Concord, North Carolina. That he isn’t very good at what he does is irrelevant because there isn’t anyone around who seems to [...]

Filed under: Current, Movies, Reviews | 9 Comments »

For a guy who didn’t set out to be an actor, who’s never been to an audition and who doesn’t have a head shot, Danny McBride is doing pretty well for himself lately.
He stars in The Foot Fist Way which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday. Before that he was in David Gordon Green’s [...]

Filed under: Movies, News | 5 Comments »

Due to an LiC Level 7 Coen Brothers News Blackout, I can neither confirm nor deny that this is a trailer for the alleged upcoming Coen film Burn After Reading. The movie is purportedly about some people doing some stuff played by some movie stars.
In theory, the rumored film might be scheduled to open September 12, [...]

Filed under: Movies | 27 Comments »

Though I remember him best cracking up on The Carol Burnett Show on television for 10 seasons, comedian Harvey Korman earned his place in cinema history for his role as Hedley Lamarr in Mel Brooks’ classic Blazing Saddles, a film I just finished re-watching earlier in the week (”That’s Hedley!”).
According to an AP report, he [...]

Filed under: Movies, News, Obituaries | 32 Comments »

Besides all the other things that have irritated so many people about the new Indiana Jones movie, has anyone noticed the sound dropping out at random during your screening?
Joel brought this Boing Boing post to my attention where a movie theater posted a sign apologizing for sound drop outs during Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 17 Comments »

Days after Sharon Stone wondered aloud whether the devastating May 12 earthquake that killed 70,000 people and counting was some kind of karmic payback for China’s controversial dealings with Tibet and the Dalai Lama, organizers of the Shanghai International Film Festival have banned the actress for life.
Despite subsequently saying she was “deeply sorry” for her [...]

Filed under: Movies | 2 Comments »

Forget about Brett Ratner, the disturbing angle on news that the long-rumored Beverly Hills Cop sequel may finally be making some headway is that for every note of justified skepticism, there’s someone who actually thinks it’s a good idea.
Why do the studios keep churning out sequels and remakes? Because there are always enough dumbasses who can’t let [...]

Filed under: Movies, Rumors, Upcoming | 20 Comments »

 
 A day early, here are this weekend’s new releases:

Sex and the City. Hey, look everybody. It’s a Sex and the City movie. You know, the ode to mating and materialism with the cosmos and the vibrators and whatnot, but longer and R rated.
The Strangers. Who are The Strangers and why are they terrorizing cute couple [...]

Filed under: Movies | 62 Comments »

Add Gomorra to busy IFC’s growing list of Cannes acquisitions. Matteo Gorrone’s violent, deglamorized weaving of five tales that tell the story of rampant organized crime in Naples received some positive reviews and won the Grand Prix, the runner-up award to the Palme d’Or.
There’s no telling how the exclusive deal IFC has with video satan Lackluster is [...]

Filed under: Movies, News | 8 Comments »

 
“There are 8 million stories in the naked city…”
The word on everyone’s lips this weekend was: Indy. Believe it or not, I didn’t see it. I didn’t make a single trip to the movie theater despite having an extra day in which to do it. There were only a few movies I was interested in [...]

Filed under: Movies | 56 Comments »

Where do you begin to talk about the long and varied career of Sydney Pollack?
Sure, he was an actor and an Oscar winning producer/director in a career that spanned nearly 50 years, but that only seems to scratch the surface.
Though I had been aware of his work since the 1970s - Jeremiah Johnson was a [...]

Filed under: Movies, News, Obituaries | 10 Comments »

Who’s the last person you should believe for information about upcoming Quentin Tarantino projects? That’s right, Tarantino himself.
Yet, the man speaks and everyone (including LiC) jumps.
JoBlo links us to a Cannes interview where, at 10 minutes in, Tarantino is asked about future Kill Bill movies and the notoriously indecisive filmmaker replies that he’s actually just finished the first draft of [...]

Filed under: Movies, Rumors | 14 Comments »

I’ve already opened this can of worms, so I’ve got to keep eating them until they’re all gone.
According to Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil, The London Daily Express (aka fish wrap) is tossing around the latest name to record a theme for the upcoming James Bond film Quantum of Solace. That’s right, it’s the Dreamgirl herself: Beyonce.
But, not so [...]

Filed under: Movies, Rumors | 3 Comments »

LiC will never be mistaken for a Hollywood business blog (thank the gods), but the real business of film festivals like Cannes is…well…business. If a film doesn’t get bought, it doesn’t get seen.
Though the market this year was repeatedly described as tepid, particularly for domestic US distributors, several potential gems were picked up during the [...]

Filed under: Film Festivals, Movies | 2 Comments »

The setting is France, but the message is universal.

Wishing you a peaceful Memorial Day, in honor of those who have died on our behalf.

Filed under: Movies | 12 Comments »

Qualifying the story as “not a 100 percent done deal,” Bill Zwecker is reporting in the Chicago Sun-Times that Robert Downey Jr. could play Hugh Hefner in the upcoming film Playboy.
Cinematical’s Erik Davis picked up the story and that’s where I read about it.
Let’s look at what “not a 100 percent done deal” means. In this case [...]

Filed under: Movies, Rumors | 12 Comments »

It screened yesterday after most buyers and many journalists had already gone home, but Laurent Cantet’s Parisian classroom drama Entre Les Murs (The Class) took the top prize Sunday night at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. It’s the first French film to win the Palme d’Or since Maurice Pialat’s Sous le soleil de Satan (Under [...]

Filed under: Film Festivals, Movies | 25 Comments »

 
Askat Kuchinchirekov in Sergei Dvortsevoi’s Tulpan
Kazakh director Sergei Dvortsevoi’s drama Tulpan was awarded the Un Certain Regard Prize on Saturday night while the Hope Prize went to Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s Johnny Mad Dog, the KnockOut Prize went to James Toback’s documentary Tyson, Cloud 9 by Andreas Dresen won the One-From-The-Heart Award and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata [...]

Filed under: Film Festivals, Movies | 10 Comments »

Cannes is winding down and many journalists have already bolted from what is being called a lackluster festival in some quarters. I couldn’t let a whole day go by with a single two-sentence post, so here’s a collection of Cannes odds and ends I’ve overlooked in the past few days. All of these films played [...]

Filed under: Film Festivals, Movies | 10 Comments »

I found out more than I wanted to about Che, so with the Charlie Kaufman film I’m only posting one link. Here’s Todd McCarthy’s Variety review.

Filed under: Film Festivals, Movies | 33 Comments »

 
Campino and Wim Wenders - star and director of Palermo Shooting (Getty Images)
Palermo Shooting, the latest film from LiC favorite Wim Wenders, is scheduled to be unveiled in competition at Cannes on Saturday, but according to a Reuters interview from Scott Roxborough, Wenders was still working on mixing the film when the festival began and the [...]

Filed under: Film Festivals, Movies, News, Upcoming | 8 Comments »

That silhouette looks awfully familiar 
First up, a wide release so big, there’s only room for one:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Word on the street is that there’s a new Indiana Jones movie. This is the first I’ve heard of it so I’ll do a little surfing around on the Internets and [...]

Filed under: Movies | 79 Comments »

The Internet is getting its collective panties in a twist again. The big trades like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are routinely ’scooped’ by various Internet movie sites with news on upcoming projects. When the trades get around to making the news ‘official’, they never credit whoever broke the story.
Both Collider and Latino Review have [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 21 Comments »

Due to ’scheduling conflicts’ (like maybe he’s just signed on to too many movies), Martin Scorsese is out as director of the upcoming Bob Marley documentary and Jonathan Demme is in.
Demme is no stranger to non-fiction music films, having made the classic Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense and, more recently, Neil Young: Heart [...]

Filed under: Movies, News, Upcoming | 5 Comments »

Jeff Wells appears to have gotten the Lawrence of Latin America he was hoping for. Here he is on Soderbergh’s Che and Guerilla. I didn’t read what he said, but the headlines sum it up.
[Updated 3:40pm PST] Variety’s Anne Thompson…not so much.
[4:20pm PST] Austin360’s Charles Ealy describes the scene more than the movies themselves.
[5:00pm PST] Variety’s [...]

Filed under: Film Festivals, Movies | 4 Comments »

…to form a production company?
Two if they’re Mark and Michael Polish, the identical twin writing-directing-producing (and sometimes starring) brother team behind such enigmatic films as Twin Falls Idaho, Northfork and the more recent (and more mainstream) The Astronaut Farmer.
According to Variety’s Michael Flemming, the two have formed Prohibition Pictures with the aim of producing four [...]

Filed under: Movies, News, Upcoming | 5 Comments »

Studio Pinhead #1: You know, there just aren’t enough movies with swords anymore.
Development Weasel: You mean like light sabers?
Studio Pinhead #1: No, none of that phony sci-fi samurai shit. I’m talking about man swords.
Studio Pinhead #2: …like porn?
Studio Pinhead #1: No! Metal swords. Big ones. Like claymores. Like, roll a d20, score a critical hit [...]

Filed under: Movies, News, Upcoming | 22 Comments »