Abdicating the morning…
I feel like I am getting all the Cannes I need from Anthony Breznican, Ebert’s tweets, and Manohla at the NYT.
The trend of reporting on the opinions of others has gone past the boredom barrier for me. And sadly, when it comes to Cannes, the flash consensus is almost always wrong or at least wrong-headed. Do we really need to fight over I
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” ā some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it ā I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury ā he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” ā and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging ā I was with her at that moment ā she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy namedā” “Yeah, sure ā you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that Iām on the phone with you now, after all thatās been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didnāt seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereās not a case of that. He wasnāt using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had ā if that were what the accusation involved ā the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. Iām not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, āYou know, itās not this, itās thatā? Because ā let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. TimesĀ piece, thatās what it lacked. Thatās what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Not to get super-negative, but is anyone else kind of bummed not just at the prospect of a second-tier summer, but a possible second-or-third-tier rest-of-2010? Don’t get me wrong; there are always at least a few upcoming movies, but I was looking over the release schedule, and at the moment it’s a pretty thin year for awesome distinctive directors. For summer, there’s stuff that looks like dumb fun like Predators or MacGruber, but as far as potentially GREAT or near-great movies, I see Pixar (Toy Story 3), Nolan (Inception), and maybe McKay (The Other Guys). But after that, there are just a few big-name movie-nerd directors: Fincher (The Social Network), the Coens (True Grit), and Coppola (Somewhere). Maybe Greg Mottola, if Paul makes it this year, but that seems like a spring type of release, not fall/holiday. It doesn’t help that a couple of my favorites, David Gordon Green and Michel Gondry, both had big, potentially weird studio movies pushed into 2011.
Maybe contributing to this is the lack of exciting projects is the lack of new exciting American directors. A lot of the directors who came on the scene in the late nineties or early aughts are comfortably into an every-three-or-four-years pace, or have moved on to try out a lot of studio work (like DGG or, even more successfully/excitingly, Nolan). I’m not sure if there has been an influx of stylish, distinct filmmakers lining up to take their place in the indie leagues over the last few years. Or maybe I’m just not as aware of who those people are. I adore Rian Johnson, but can’t think of many others off the top of my head. I look at the weak 2010 line-up and think “OK, we’re missing Spielberg and Spike Lee and Jonze and Gondry and both Andersons,” and they’re all pretty established.
jesse: I kind of agree. A lot of my favorites seem to be taking the year off, Nolan being a huge exception.
Then again, maybe this makes 2010 an opportunity to discover somebody new? I’ve been wondering lately where the great new directors of the 2000s are. I think 1999 launched the careers of more than all the 2000s put together have. That’s probably an exaggeration. But maybe with a lot of the established names on the bench for the year, somebody new will catch our attention. You never know.
I think there’s a lot of good stuff coming out this summer, but most of it is on the fringe.
Please Give
Holy Rollers
Splice
Ondine
Toy Story 3
Winter’s Bone
Cyrus
The Killer Inside Me
The Kids Are All Right
Predators
Inception
Get Low
The Tillman Story
Centurion
A lot I’m looking forward to, but overall Hollywood’s offerings leave something to be desired. Unless you’re Lex.
Jesse, how dare you, sir? There’s a new Woody and a new Clint before year’s end– though I guess those are annual givens and maybe not so much as a treat as a grinding obligation for some people at this point in their prolific careers; I’m sure Soderbergh can whip up six movies by December 31 too.
On an island of my own that no one will care about, I will point out that SIR TONY SCOTT has a big fall movie (“Unstoppable”), though even I’LL concede with some mild frustration that, yes, it’s just another icy Denzel Washington conspiracy potboiler, and NOT one of his occasional, artier bits of fever-dream mania (The Hunger, Revenge, Domino, Man on Fire.)
But you still have a Coens, Payne, Stone, etc… The fall Clooney and Damon movies, respectively, could be kind of awesome. You’ve already had a Scorsese, a Polanski, and a Ridley Scott, to name but a few big-timers in the first half.
I think you’re WAY wrong about the rest of the summer– June seems PACKED with awesomeness. Yes, I know, this came up here a few weeks back and everyone was all 201O SUCKS BUT 2011 IS GONNA RULE. How is this? What is the distinction? You’re really THAT much more excited about fucking THOR or whatever other Z-list Marvel guys are on top for 11 and 12 than you are for CRUISE, JOLIE, and JONAH MOTHERFUCKING HEX? FOX POWER.
CANNES: No shit… Man, after reading the daily reports everywhere, I’d say anyone who sat it out dodged a bullet.
The first day or two when 18-year-old “film critic” Breznican was boasting about seeing WALL STREET 2, I was ready to slit my wrists. But the rest of that lineup sounds so anemic… Pretty bad when a supposedly bad Taylor Hackford movie would rank in the TOP THREE of things I’d want to see, if only for the PESCI factor. Because the rest of that WORLD CINEMA dogshit Wells is chronicling with noticeable lack of enthusiasm sounds like stuff I’d pay money to LEAVE.
I like how Stella’s Boy throws that shot “unless you’re Lex,” then includes fucking *PREDATORS*, of all murky, Fox-sheened foresty cheap B-level “blockbusters.”
SALT and KNIGHT AND DAY, please. Actual awesome actors in non-superhero/fanboy action.
Also: HEX, FOX POWER.
Oh come on Lex. I just remembered your earlier post (which you referred to) raving about the awesomeness of summer 2010. I meant it in jest, all in good fun. I’m glad you’re back. I for one miss your detailed posts about movies when you’re gone for a while. I like dumb fun too. Salt looks good, but Jonah Hex and Knight & Day haven’t shown me much to be excited about yet.
CRUISE.
You should model every facet of your appearance, hair, and life after him. He is the greatest person on Earth. KNIGHT AND DAY looks like the most fun any human could ever have at the cinema.
Cruise, Diaz, guns, bikinis, Bondian travelogue, motorcycles, bulls, Mangold doing his drowsy no-style blown-out whites and drab flesh tones even though the Fox Yellow Lab is doing the color-timing….
What’s not to like?
How on earth are Salt and Knight and Day not ‘fanboy action movies’? Just because they’re not based on comic books? That’s stupid, especially since Jonah Hex IS based on a comic book.
Also, I wish Knight and Day and Killers could be put into a cage match with each other and only one could come out alive.
I like Cruise and Mangold, but it just looks really generic and forced to me, like Cruise is trying a little too hard to be universally loved and adored again. Plus the spots I’ve seen resemble an Andy Tennant film.
I wish Heigl and Diaz would do that cage-match thing.
Re: jesse
When I read your “both Andersons” comment, I immediately was like, “What? Did they pull ‘Resident Evil: Afterlife’ off its September release date?”
Ha, SJR, I actually am totally into Resident Evil: Afterlife, despite the return of the other other Anderson. I kind of love B-movie franchises like Transporter and Underworld and Resident Evil and Blade — it’s nice to enjoy pulp without the enhanced expectations of some big summer movie with some kind of decent pedigree or attempt to appeal to all ages. Also, unlike some of the bigger summer movies, I never feel like the talent involved in Transporter/etc. is wasting their time. 2010 *does* look pretty sweet for genre pulp: Resident Evil, The Expendables, Machete, Splice, Predators… I’m all for that stuff. And, for that matter, Denzel in UNSTOPPABLE. I love the Scott/Washington procedurals.
Lex, I concede Payne; I forgot about him. And yeah, I’ve enjoyed Scorsese and Baumbach movies in the first quarter, which is nice. But Polanski is sort of hit and miss for me (though I really enjoyed Ghost Writer, so good on him), and fuck Ridley Scott and all of his overrated tedium. I’ll see Robin Hood because my girlfriend will see anything Robin Hood related, but until he makes another Matchstick Men, I’m probably not interested. Good luck with the Monopoly movie, Ridley. Can’t wait to see Russell Crowe as Rich Uncle Pennybags, or the boot (actually, maybe that would be kind of awesome). So it’s looking kind of weak for a prospective ten-best list, that’s all. I’m totally seeing most of that summer junk like Jonah Hex and Knight & Day and Salt,
Stella’s Boy, most of those movies look interesting or better but you can pretty much tell ahead of time that a lot of the indies, especially, will be more “hm, interesting” than a movie to love. I’d love to be surprised, and I’m definitely looking forward to Cyrus, and already really liked Please Give (Holofcener’s best movie, I think)… but, like, The Killer Inside Me? Is that movie going to be amazing? Probably not. It’s Michael Winterbottom, the British Steven Soderbergh. He makes interesting movies, not great movies (imagine Soderbergh’s filmography without either a masterpiece like Out of Sight or something thoroughly enjoyable like Ocean’s 11). And I can warn you right away that Get Low is not nearly as great as you’ve heard. Bill Murray is great in it but the praise, to me, is puzzling, bordering on crazytown. It’s at least 50% cornball/old coot story that doesn’t warrant a feature film.
… forgot to finish that thought. I’m totally seeing that summer junk-food but only Inception and Toy Story 3 really give me that holy-shit type of feeling. Hell, I’m more excited for MacGruber as a potentially rewatchable movie than most of the action stuff coming out in June and July.
Jesse I’ll take interesting. I don’t expect to love everything I see. They all appeal to me for one reason or another. Example: The Killer Inside Me. Great source material and Casey Affleck. I also like most of Winterbottom’s movies. I’m sure a few of them will disappoint, but at least I’m looking forward to seeing them (unlike, say, Prince of Persia or Killers).
I think what’s so great about Winterbottom and Soderbergh is their absolute, it’s-okay-to-completely-fail risk taking approach to filmmaking. Soderbergh’s admitted right and left when he’s made a film that doesn’t work whereas I still remember Woody Allen saying that “Hollywood Ending” was his best film when he was promoting that (WTF!?).
But yeah, I’m also at that age where once May gets here, it’s all arthouse flicks for me until August/September. I used to love summer movies, but I’m just so often disappointed these days. That said, this August you’ve got “The Expendables,” “Takers,” “Centurion,” “Piranha,” “The Last Exorcism,” “The American,” “Eagle of the Ninth,” etc.
And related, was at “Iron Man 2” last week and there were just groans and “what the FUCK was that?” catcalls at “Scott Pilgrim.” Love the comic, love the filmmaker, but could it be another “Kick-Ass?”
Jesse, you WILL BOW to SIR Ridley Scott, THE single greatest director in the HISTORY OF CINEMA, there is NO dissenting opinion on this, I command it.
ROBIN HOOD POWER. MASTERPIECE. BOW.
Other than that, I liked the rest of your post. And KILLER INSIDE ME is going to RULE THE WORLD.
On that Jim Thompson note, anyone who hasn’t seen James Foley’s AFTER DARK, MY SWEET needs to QUEUE it with the quickness and show Jason Patric the proper reverence. (Though what was up with Rachel Ward in that, I have no idea.)
What is Eagle of the Ninth?
Also: ALL WILL BOW to Heigl in “Killers.”
That looks DELIGHTFUL.
“I feel like I am getting all the Cannes I need from Anthony Breznican, Ebert’s tweets, and Manohla at the NYT.”
I think Ebert’s reporting on his main site has better Cannes coverage than his twitter page, which convey more about the atmosphere surrounding the reactions to the movies than information about the movies themselves.
On a side note, a real pet peeve I’m developing when it comes to reports from Cannes is the abundance of the “One of the things you need to know about Cannes is…” flights of bitching fancy that certain reporters feel like they need to do year after year on the Croisette as if any of the nonsense they’re pointing out is even close to news.
Listen (and this goes even more for all of you Park City correspondents at Sundance) I don’t care about your tiny hotel rooms and your fucking wi-fi issues and how much the late night parties really wear you down. I don’t care that you’re tired, sleep-deprived, malnourished and watching four or five films a day. I don’t care how long you waited in line for THIS movie versus how long you waited in line for THAT movie. As a human being, okay sure, I care about your miseries. But as a reader, who’s looking for information about the movies at Cannes and the people who make them, CAN YOU PLEASE SHUT IT WHEN IT COMES TO YOUUUUUUUUUU?
It’s really like turning on a news report about Afghanistan with the correspondent spending 80% of his camera time kvetching about how tiresome the flight to Kabul was for him since the woman next to him had coughing fits and the peanuts weren’t salted. That’s not why you’re there, and it isn’t the damn story.
On a positive note, although Cannes’ own website synopses border on the satirical in 8000 different dimensions, the press kit links on a given film’s page are usually impressive, and they give you a much better sense of what the film is trying to be than some of these howler haikus the festival staff (or who?) put out there.
Somebody go look at the page for Mike Leigh’s “Another Year”, whose synopsis reads thusly:
“Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Family and friendship.
Love and warmth. Joy and sadness. Hope and despair.
Companionship. Loneliness. A birth. A death. Time passes…..”
http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/11021910/year/2010.html
“…you WILL BOW to SIR Ridley Scott, THE single greatest director in the HISTORY OF CINEMA, there is NO dissenting opinion on this, I command it.”
Just single? I’d really prefer the double or triple greatest director in the HISTORY OF CINEMA. Tell Scott to kick it up a notch.
“Eagle of the Ninth,” bizarrely enough, is a competing project to “Centurion” – a movie about Roman soldiers in the UK battling the locals when it was part of the Roman Empire. Kevin Macdonald of “Last King of Scotland”/”State of Play”-fame is directing, stars Mark Strong, Channing Tatum, Donald Sutherland, a few others.
SJR, totally agree on Soderbergh/Winterbottom, and it’s something I like about Woody, too. There’s something to be said for artists who keep moving like that, and I’m a lot less heartbroken when one of their movies don’t work. Same with albums. Just make a lot of ’em and it won’t be such a big deal when you don’t create masterpiece after masterpiece. The Coens are even doing that, lately: if True Grit holds for 2010, it’ll be their fourth movie in four years. That is great. But still, a Winterbottom movie isn’t an event for me like a Soderbergh movie. And I like 9 Songs more than most people (I mean, I assume; I’m not sure if I know anyone else who saw that movie. Anyone?)
What I think this year is lacking — and I hope I’m wrong — is those top-tier four-star movies that you want to buy on DVD. It looks like it has plenty of potential extra stuff — good genre exercises, interesting indies, etc. But 2009 had a bunch of those too, PLUS it had Up and Brothers Bloom and Inglourious Basterds and Coens and the first Spike Jonze movie in seven years and Michael Mann and a gloriously overstuffed Apatow movie. I was looking at the release schedule for October 2010, and there are several weekends in a row where I don’t care that much about anything! And I see two or three movies a week usually! I was hoping Spielberg would do one of his impeccable rush jobs and get something out for December of this year but that’s not happening, I guess.
Speaking of Centurion, apparently that’s coming out via Magnolia?! I guess it makes sense as Neil Marshall has never had a, how you say, actual hit in this country. But still: Magnolia. So it’s going to play on like 15 screens??
Oh, and Tony Scott is, on the balance, way cooler than Ridley Scott in terms of actually getting me to want to see a movie. I’m sure this argument has happened before, but still: Ridley has two sci-fi masterpieces that came out decades ago plus Matchstick Men, which is great and underrated as any movie with Nic Cage and Sam Rockwell must be. Oh, and American Gangster is pretty good, especially if your video outlet has no copies of Zodiac or Heat or Public Enemies in stock for some reason. Meanwhile, Tony Scott has True Romance, Spy Game, Deja Vu, Crimson Tide, and a bunch of other movies you know you watch whenever they’re on cable. Hell, even Domino is far less boring than at least half of Ridley’s movies. Although I haven’t seen Tony’s eighties movies like Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop II and (eighties-in-spirit) Days of Thunder and Revenge, so maybe that would lower his average for me.
Yeah, “Centurion’s” getting a pretty small release and it comes with “good, but not great” word-of-mouth, so who knows? Personally, I think Marshall’s one of the most interesting filmmakers in this generation, kind of the new John Carpenter, but again, that doesn’t guarantee a masterpiece every time out.
And I found “9 Songs” excrutiating to sit through, but I kind of like it regardless in a weird way for it’s kind of document-status. That said, it’s the kind of thing I’ll never rewatch.
Tony Scott. Ugh. I feel he tends to bring material down, not up. Give me Ridley any day. Despite all their flaws, I’d rather watch BODY OF LIES, AMERICAN GANGSTER, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, MATCHSTICK MEN, or GLADIATOR than PELHAM, MAN ON FIRE, or DOMINO. Ridley (again, despite his flaws) brings an elegance and scope to his visuals… to me, Tony just makes things frantic.
Agreed about Heigl in “Killers.” Looks like a return to likeability for her.
If anyone wants to hear my lovely, foul mouth Mark Bell and I are podcasting over at Film Threat. I have fun doing it and I think they’re pretty entertaining. There’s a new one up on the site (filmthreat.com) and it’s also available at iTunes if anyone is bored at work or wants to hear my voice in their car while they drive. Or work out. Or, whatever.
What guys, no anticipation for Splice????
I saw a preview screening of it, last week, and it was all kinds of fucked up craziness, only in the best way.
POLLEY POWER – I forgot not only how hot Sarah Polley is, but just how fearless she is as an actress. She has yet to appear in a bad movie.
Very freaky-twisted movie that will really upset some folks – I will be very curious to see how the critic react. Check it out!
Also, got to see an advance screening (thanks to AICN) this evening of Cyrus – awesome and touching. Very funny and great performances by all – Marisa Tomeii is excellent and Jonah Hill’s best performance ever.
But the film is OWNED by John C. Reilly – Chicago’s own Mr. Reilly even appeared for a Q&A after, which was very cool. Sorry in Chicago, that’s a pretty big deal – I know you Angelinos are always running into movie stars at the neighborhood Whole Foods, but just not as common, here. How many great movies has that guy been in? Think about it.
But the film to end all films right now is Exit Through the Gift Shop – I cannot praise this movie enough and it might be the first documentary I actually pay to see in theaters TWICE. Just hilarious, biting stuff.
As for the rest of the summer, I’m looking forward to the return Noyce directly Salt – Patriot Games and Clear & Present Danger have been on cable a lot, lately, and I forgot just how effective this guy was at crafting effective thrillers.
Toy Story 3 and Inception are givens, of course, but I’m most jazzed about the dumb fun that will be The A Team – just how can you not enjoy those trailers?
I’m digging more and more docs, lately – even saw the new Abramoff one, which was not bad – and the one that looks the coolest is Countdown to Zero. Indepth graphics about the effects of a nuclear blast??? I’m there….
ECLIPSE POWER.
That new trailer that ran before Letters to Juliet was THE BEST TRAILER EVER. Enough action and horror elements to reel in anyone who’s stayed away up til now. BANK ON IT. It’ll be the biggest one yet.
On a positive note, although Cannes’ own website synopses border on the satirical in 8000 different dimensions, the press kit links on a given film’s page are usually impressive, and they give you a much better sense of what the film is trying to be than some of these howler haikus the festival staff (or who?) put out there.
99% sure those synopses come from whoever handles the film’s PR. The goofy Another Year summary is straight out of the Focus press kit.
Prince of Persia is down to 43% thanks to RottenTomatoes counting the same reviews twice.
I know Don Murphy likes to point out how meaningless the rating becomes by including almost anyone with a few pixels to rub together, but this kinda takes the cake.
You know how I know you’re gay?
You rave about Twilight trailers. š
“99% sure those synopses come from whoever handles the film’s PR. The goofy Another Year summary is straight out of the Focus press kit.”
Jesus, you’re right. Why even put that in there when you know somebody’s going to attach it to their film guide? Ugh.
I’m looking forward to seeing SPLICE although a lot of the sleazy business that was reported about the making of the film has left a bad taste in my mouth. Still, I’ll give it a fair shot.
Natali has been on a serious downhill slide (Cube was a great first feature, but Cypher was bland, and Nothing was shit) so I’m hoping this marks an improvement for him.
I wonder if he’s ever going to get around to making JG Ballard’s High Rise?
“Splice” is a funny one because, even though I know it’s going out on a million screens and has this marketing budget and all, it’s in my “arthouse” stack of to-be-bought tickets as it’s all the great word-of-mouth and the fact that I’m into Natali that I’m seeing it. All the ads are for “those other people,” I feel like I’m part of the audience that was locked in after the first few people lost their minds over it a few months back.
Hopefully Splice is as awesome as Species.
I’ve actually removed Ebert from my follow list. Way too much unnecessary re-tweeting.
I know I mentioned it before, but I really enjoyed “Splice.” I’m a sucker for “kids” who are the monsters in horror films and I love mad scientist stuff and I love twisted, unexpected storylines and “Splice” hit all those notes for me. Plus, it’s beautifully shot and the creature is reallllly cool in all stages (and, pale, off-white! YAy!) except when it looks like a loaf of bread in the beginning.
That being said, the cut I saw did come off a bit “silly” at some fairly crucial points in the film where it really shouldn’t be silly at all. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s different from the Sundance cut.
I saw Splice at a test screening last September and it was fantastic (although the rest of the audience didn’t think so). I’m hoping nothing changed in between then and Sundance, although Natali was talking about tightening up the last act before the theatrical.
Funny that Geoff thinks the ads are cool, they seem pretty lame to me, not nearly as good as the movie.
Besides, I think Canadians have a responsibility to see Splice. $2.5 million of our taxes went into it.
Well, if we’re talking pure, unadulterated awesomeness, anyone in or near Boston must hasten to the Coolidge Corner beginning Friday, where Larry Blamire’s two latest and greatest, THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN and DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, kick off their theatrical release in the home town of Larry and roughly 1/3 of the cast. See them together–but don’t see them alone!
A loco, I never said anything about the ads – I had seen the one teaser trailer before actually seeing the movie, which looked decent enough, but nothing earth-shattering. Though, my wife has seen the TV ads and she thinks it just looks “gross.”
However, whenever I showed her ads online for Avatar, last year, she thought it looked like a silly cartoon with blue people. On a bet, I took her to see it for Valentines Day and she LOVED it – still proud I was right on that one.
Hey, I have no idea about the questionable history of Splice and it certainly didn’t come up at Natali’s Q&A afterwards (shock), but what happened?
Wow, Alice in Wonderland is heading towards $1 billion worldwide???
My 10 seconds of googling couldn’t find a more detailed writeup, but from memory the story roughly goes that during development a designer was discussing what the infant Dren (the Splice creature) would look like and he showed some rough sketches of his ideas. He was told they wouldn’t need him… and the resulting Dren was almost identical to his sketches.
Cue “Hey, you stole my ideas!” “What do you mean YOUR ideas? You just sketched what we described to you” dispute.
Foamy, that’s very interesting because Natali made it sound like the design was purely his creation at the Q&A – don’t get me wrong, he seemed like a nice, humble guy – and he talked about he was inspired by Kronenberg.
As far as I’m aware, Natali’s side is that it WAS purely his creation and the designer just duplicated what they already had. Of course, that’s not what the designer says… and considering he only met with Natali 2 or 3 times and never got anything in writing the producers are (understandably) taking a “Who’re you?” stance.
Ah. It appears that all the original articles regarding the dispute have been pulled, which is why my google search didn’t turn anything up. I’m guessing that means the designer has backed down – we can only speculate as to why (and it’s likely that all parties will adopt a “what dispute?” stance… at least until well after release).
Splice looks cool but it opens opposite THE GUARANTEED FUNNIEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME, starring the single funniest man on Planet Earth:
GREEK POWER. JONAH HILL = PURE GENIUS.
Actually interesting how that’s going to go, pairing the world’s funniest man (Hill) opposite the unfunniest (Russell Brand).
Get Him to the Greek looks amusing, but Lex I am surprised you find that much variance in the comedic charms of Hill and Brand.
That distorted-camera shot of Hill tripping balls on absinthe is the single funniest image ever. Even after seeing the trailer two dozen times, I still burst out laughing at that one-second image EVERY time.
I also want to see Cyrus. Looks like a good summer for Hill.
I want to see Cyrus too (seems extra relatable) but the title always gets me excited that it’s going to be MILEY Cyrus (YEP YEP YEP YEEEEEP), then instead it’s just Catherine Keener and Marisa Tomei engaged in a Nancy Loomis lookalike contest.
It’d be like calling a movie K STEW then it’s about a soup competition.
BAIT AND SWITCH.
Gotta get people into the theater however you can.
“I’ve actually removed Ebert from my follow list. Way too much unnecessary re-tweeting.”
Ditto. I cringed every time he’d write “It’s time to play Tweeto!” Nice of him to use his clout like that, but the retweets were invariably total banality.
Remember when Kevin Smith did that 24-hour tweetathon and it wore everybody down and clogged up everyone’s screen with bullshit and got old real fast?
That’s what Ebert’s like 24/7.
LexG, I think you’ll realy like Cyrus – as far as I’m concerned, it’s the quality of movie that Greenberg wanted to be. The comparisons are a little iffy, but you’ll see what I mean when you see it.
Jonah Hill is truly fantastic – I have always found him hysterical. His convenience store rant about his sexual history in Superbad still holds up as one of the funniest dialogue scenes in recent years for me. He brings more of the snarkiness to Cyrus, but dials it down a bit – very good performance. If the movie hits, I see no reason why there can’t genuine Oscar talk for him.
So Megan Fox has been booted from Trannies 3 (sorry, Lex). So, I’m wondering, unless Jonah Hex become a huge smash (unlikely), are her 15 minutes about up?
WHAT THE HELL. That CANNOT BE TRUE.
I demand explanations.
Our host’s arch-nemesis just ran the story.
… which Fark has linked to.
Well, THE MASTER usually knows what he’s doing.
Would be a perfect time to bring in K-STEW and finally have her do a movie with BIG HAIR and ORANGE SKIN and RED NAILS instead of her usually hooded-sweatjacket naturalism.
Lex, I didn’t take you for an Oompa-Loompa fetishist.
“Lex, I didn’t take you for an Oompa-Loompa fetishist.”
Sounds more like Starfire from The Teen Titans actually.
Here’s something for Lex I found today:
Stoned pornstars (including Sasha Grey) play Dungeons and Dragons
Surprisingly safe for work – and moderately hilarious in their coked-out enthusiasm.
Does anyone else feel like there’s a double standard in the reactions to Shia LaBeouf criticizing Crystal Skull and Matthew Goode dissing Leap Year compared to how people reacted to Heigl’s comments about Knocked Up?
What simply because Shia is being called brave and brutally honest while Heigl was called an ungrateful bitch and told to shut her mouth? Definitely no double standard there.
As others have pointed out, there is a difference between criticizing the movie, and taking shots at the actual people you work with.
Speaking of potshots, I have to thank the Tea Party for bringing us the face of their idiocy in Rand Paul. He’s more than a gift:
“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'” Paul said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.””I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/05/21/politics/p064105D87.DTL#ixzz0oa5MskrJ
“What simply because Shia is being called brave and brutally honest while Heigl was called an ungrateful bitch and told to shut her mouth?”
Seems pretty obvious to me what the difference is there. Knocked Up was a popular film, and Indy IV was not. Whether sexism comes into play or not, what REALLY riles people up is other people expressing differing opinions about movies.