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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

BYOB: Let The Sundance Begin

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69 Responses to “BYOB: Let The Sundance Begin”

  1. MarkVH says:

    Man, next week’s Blu-Ray catalog release week is just STACKED. Annie Hall, Manhattan, three Hitchcocks, The Apartment, and the new restoration of Wings. My wallet weeps.

  2. matthew says:

    This new trailer for Resident Evil: Retribution is one of the evil-ist trailers I’ve seen in a long time:

    http://www.slashfilm.com/resident-evil-retribution-trailer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+slashfilm+%28%2FFilm%29

  3. LexG says:

    Was talking with someone about this on Twitter yesterday, but… Anybody psyched for UNDERWORLD 3D or whatever it’s called? I like the “look” of the series and Wiseman and Beckinsale, but god damn do those things always feel vaguely homework-like… in that from one entry to the next, I TOTALLY forget the whole “mythology” or what happened in the last one or who SPEEDMAN is or whether Beckinhotness is a vampire or a lycan or what/who Bill Nighy is… It’s like my brain just WILL NOT retain any memory of them 5 minutes after they’re over. So much like the SAW movies (which I liked a lot more than UW), I have to spend the week leading up to a new one watching DVDs of at least 1 and 2 (3 was set in olden times, right?) to even remember what the fuck they were all about.

    Thought of that at the mention of ANOTHER Resident Evil, since that series is the same exact deal. These things are always hits, but does anyone remember the PLOTS from one entry to the next?

  4. Paul D/Stella says:

    I saw the first two Underworld movies in theaters and vaguely remember them, but I haven’t seen part III (aka Kate Beckinsale Takes a Brief Hiatus From the Series to Try and Become A-List). I want to see part 4 for the super werewolves. That’s just something that immediately gets my attention, like sharks in a Louisiana lake. I don’t need to know anything else. And yeah it is just like the RE series in many respects. I watched most of the last RE on Starz last year but fell asleep before it was over. I remember people yelling and arguing on top of a building, hoping to be rescued, but got bored in a hurry.

  5. jesse says:

    I won’t retain any knowledge of Underworld backstory, either, but I find it doesn’t much matter. In fact, I know a lot of people found the movie third frustrating (to the extent that anyone cared about it) because it basically goes back and tells a story that was already told as exposition in the first movie. But I remembered so little about the first movie, apart from finding it kind of boring and, yeah, homeworky, that I enjoyed the medieval pulp of the third one. I liked the second one, too; go figure. I don’t follow them at all; I just like Beckinsale and werewolves and carnage and blue-gray-black anonymous cities.

    The first one is the worst beacuse it seems most focused on vampires and werewolves fighting each other with guns, which is pretty dumb.

    Resident Evil, the other big Screen Gems franchise which I am semi-inexplicably ALL ABOUT, is notable for always ending with some huge “OH SHIT! THINGS ARE GOIN’ DOWN!” game-changing cliffhanger, and then dispatching that threat or whatever it is in the first five minutes of the next one, and then going back to being pretty much a regular Resident Evil movie because they can’t actually afford to shoot the AW SHIT! huge stuff they always tease at the end. It’s practically ritual at this point; I couldn’t tell you how far the story has actually progressed at this point. The third one is this post-apocalyptic landscape and then the fourth one is pretty much just another zombies-attacking-abandoned-warehouse movie.

    But I do like them — 3 and 4 especially, actually. Maybe these junky movies just wear me down until I give up and like them, because I didn’t particularly like the first Underworld OR Resident Evil. But yeah, totally going to see Underworld 4 this weekend, probably alone because hardly anyone I know will abide that crap!

  6. LexG says:

    HA! TOTALLY true about how each RE movies ends with some EPIC STINGER with like 300,000 zombies racing through some nuked citiscape as some METAL cranks on the track… then the next movie they’re back driving around in trucks on some back road or hanging out in an abandoned building or lab. I also like how over the course of the series, Ali Larter (more like Ali LookAtHer) has become some nominal sidekick, despite my NEVER remembering what her character’s deal is, whatsoever.

    Yeah, I liked the Russell Mulcahy one a lot, and the last one (which had actual good 3D.) At this point, for me the second RE has become like the Elm St 2, where it seems a step down from all the others.

  7. jesse says:

    I do wonder if I went back and rewatched either Underworld1 or RE1, if I’d actually like them just as well as the others. Because I remember liking RE2 more than the first one by a substantial margin, and in retrospect it seems pretty unlikely that it’s way better.

    But part of the fun of these movies is that instead of watching any of them again, I’ll just wait for the next one to come out and enjoy that without any pesky “wait, is this really stupid?” questions nagging at me.

  8. leahnz says:

    having just recently watched all the res evil flicks with my gaggle of teen boys (they are hard-out into it and hanging out for the 5th, i forgot what it’s called…my boy is this unexpectedly massive ‘alice’ fan – his numero uno action hero(ine) he is nuts about alice, so much so he has this huge-as almost-life-size poster of milla from i think res evil II in his room, which kinda of freaks me out when i walk in and there’s this huge freaking alice as big as life staring at me, it’s like ‘oh hey there milla, jesus, could you be any bigger’), the only time the story jumps forward in time as (wrongly, really) stated in this thread is (sorry should have SPOILER WARNING)

    between the second and third movies ‘res: apocalypse’ to ‘res: extinction’, during which 6 years has passed or something like that, can’t remember exactly — otherwise ‘res evil 2’ picks up EXACTLY where the original res evil ends (even backtracks a tad), not in a warehouse, and res evil 3 goes pretty much straight into res evil 4: afterlife (also not in a warehouse), the only thing you don’t see is alice getting her army of unborn alices from the desert to tokyo where they take their revenge, which isn’t really much of a thing unless you want to see them all at the airport or something. the story flows well enough and makes sense for the most part.

  9. LexG says:

    Hey, Leah’s kid actually sounds pretty awesome… That Alice standee sounds like the Bella Swan standee I kept trying to buy from FYE in Burbank but kept pussying out ’cause the cashier would laugh at me. (I did figure out a way to make a K-Stew pillowcase later.)

    Speaking of irony, sounds like my favorite Kiwi is raising a Little Lex. AWESOME.

  10. torpid bunny says:

    Michael Sheen. Shirtless and hairy beefcake. That’s all you need to retain from the third movie.

  11. LexG says:

    Michael Sheen? I don’t get it… Rachel McAdams, one of the sexiest women in the WORLD EVER, dates/dated him… What am I missing? He’s the Tony Blair guy! Isn’t it like thinking Jonathan Pryce is a hot dude? I will never understand a) women b) gay men. If you were a chick or a gay dude, wouldn’t ALL OF YOU 1000% AGREE that Brad Pitt or Sam Worthington or Fassbender or whoever was the hottest guy? But, no, you’ll hear them throw out Michael Sheen or even say they like that goofy looking kid from X-MEN and CONTRABAND… There’s never any rhyme or reason.

    Straight guys agree 1000% on all women and what is hot. I am asking in earnest, what are these variables where women or gay guys will think some weird/old/Euro/assholish dude is good looking?

  12. scooterzz says:

    “…sounds like my favorite Kiwi is raising a Little Lex…”

    according to your endless recent posts, you can’t even raise ‘little Lex’….

    ZING!

  13. I didn’t see even the first Underworld until last summer, when it was one of my ‘watch a movie while I feed the newborn’ movies. How much did I hate it? Despite basically having free rentals at a walking-distance Blockbuster due to their mail-in/trade-in program, I have still so far resisted the urge to watch Underworld 2 or 3 and won’t even try part 4. I’m a bit of a completest so I’ve been tempted, but not yet. As for Resident Evil, I saw the first one in theaters ten years ago, hated the crap out of it and never got around to seeing the sequels. As the fourth one was coming out in theaters, I decided to give RE1 another chance and hated it all over again (it has the production values, scale, and scope of a direct-to-DVD horror film). But surprise surprise, I rather enjoyed RE2 and RE3, only to dislike RE4 when it came out on DVD. It has a great first scene, but the rest of the movie stunk and felt cheap/small scale just like the first one despite the large budget (blame shooting in 3D, which looks/feels like cheap video unless you’re Cameron, Scorsese, or Bay). I guess I’m only a fan of the series when Paul WS Anderson isn’t directing…

    Last strange note – The two longest lasting and most prominent female-driven action franchises are both spearheaded by actresses who are married to the primary director in each respective ongoing franchise. For what it’s worth…

  14. jesse says:

    Leah, I don’t remember them in a ton of detail; I just mainly remember RE3 ending like #4 was gonna be this crazy shitstorm of Army o’ Jovovich ass-kicking, and then the bulk of the movie, no, it’s not LITERALLY in a warehouse, but it’s in a big abandoned building in a city infested with zombies. So basically a low-budge Dawn of the Dead. And I LIKED the movie, it’s a fun little zombie action movie… but Anderson obviously gets these grandiose ideas about AWESOME set-ups that he can’t actually pay for and the sequels never really up the ante. RE3 does a little by actually doing the post-apocalyptic landscape, but a lot of it is just generic desert with a few cool shots of Vegas under sand.

    His Three Musketeers movie ended the same way: here comes a SHITLOAD OF AIRSHIPS!!! But you know if he ever did get to make a sequel, it would start with all of those airships getting shot down and then the rest of the movie would take place on two sets.

  15. LexG says:

    Speaking of, kind of amused that Tarantino had THREE MUSKETEERS on his Best of 2011… I kind of enjoyed it, probably more than I should have, or at least it got better as it went along and Orlando Bloom’s mincing was FANTASTIC… but in general what the fuck? I know Tarantino’s off filming and maybe doesn’t see 150 movies a year anymore, but I don’t think 3M would’ve cracked most people’s top NINETY… He seemed to like it better than DRIVE, FWIW.

    Tarantino has that geek thing where he likes pretty much everything, then one random thing will set him off, and it’s usually something actually pretty good– like how he hates Usual Suspects more than ANY of his ripoff movies from the mid 90s, how he won’t watch NBK, how he bagged on Oliver Stone about YEAR OF THE DRAGON, which you’d think would be right up his alley. Whatever, I guess. Usually it’s a movie that’s encroaching on his shtick, which I guess is why he gets all territorial, and probably why he ranks DRIVE a nice try but no cigar.

    Or he’s just kind of a douche sometimes.

  16. LexG says:

    Also, yeah, Leah with the LITERAL thing. I imagine if she watches some comedy routine where a comedian uses EXAGGERATION for HUMOR like EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, Leah stands up and stops the show. Like Dane Cook doing that bit about movie concessions where he goes, “They have the same thing they’ve had since ’57– popcorn and soda pop,” Leah would HALT THE SHOW GOING “That can’t be funny because THOSE CONCESSIONS WERE INVENTED IN 1962, not 1957, so you are LYING and this is not true so it can’t be funny!” Then Christian would go “RIGHT ON SISTER!”

  17. leahnz says:

    ok jesse, i get your drift… but i can’t say i agree, for the most part anyway…i think.

    pt anderson & cohorts in general up the ante for each installment re: both setting and prod values, until ‘afterlife’ (i disagree w/scott, the 3D photography in res: afterlife is well-staged and enhances the action in the movie quite a bit)

    to wit:
    the original res evil is staged underground in the hive, low prod values, mostly small sets/close quarters stuff w/the umbrella militia going into unknown/seemingly abandoned setting, fighting unexpected horde in a sorta crap-ass aliens wannabe by way of the original vid game, alice is human, loses a man she cares for…

    the second ‘res: apocalypse’ ups the ante quite a bit with t-virus escaping into the much larger setting of raccoon city (wtf is the dealio w/ the name ‘raccoon city’, who came up with that for the game, so bizarre, i’ve never understood what it’s supposed to mean if anything) – another somewhat larger police/umbrella militia scenario set mostly in city streets/in and on top of buildings, kinda low-voltage ‘predator 2’esque, alice grapples with becoming less human/more of a reluctant warrior, loses the man she cares for yet again;

    then ‘extinction’ (my weird soft spot of the series), similar/perhaps better production values from ‘apocalypse’, scenario moves into the (near) future, wide-open post-apocalyptic desert exteriors, kinda sad ‘mad max deux road warrior’ homage survival struggle, alice transformed into lonely psychic warrior in addition to physical badass, again loses the man she cares for… thus completing the arc of the t-virus moving from cramped underground hive out into the city streets and then out into the greater ‘environment’ where alice roams the dessert trying to find any survivors while evading umbrella in the most ‘epic’ of the three, while alice as the protagonist completes her transformation into full-blow psychic warrior…

    i think there is an extended build-up and payoff in setting and the development of the protagonist.

    now i don’t quite see why one would expect the alice army to then go on to a crazy shitstorm of large-scale asskicking in the fourth, when the 3rd movie clearly shows her telling the small group of men ensconced around their cozy, safe round-table in their underground hidey-hole in tokyo that she’s coming for them, which is exactly what she does (the army of alices isn’t that big really, maybe a hundred or so as shown in their cocoons at the end).

    i do get how going back into the prison setting in ‘res: afterlife’ is a step back, somewhat ‘dotd’-ish in that much of the film reverts to close quarters/rooftop stuff somewhat akin to that of the original res evil and dotd (remake esp), but i didn’t really ‘expect’ anything particularly epic from the story; also of note is that alice as a character also reverts back to almost human as her burgeoning psychic power is knocked out by the villain early on giving her a t-virus antiserum, so it would seem there was a concerted decision made to take it all down a notch for res: afterlife, whether for budgetary reasons or other — but in a way i find it a refreshing alternative from the status quo wherein for every sequel it seems mandatory/a decree to go bigger and more kaboom and ‘epic’ than the one before, which i personally find annoying, so at least ‘afterlife’ bucks the trend going the other way.

    and hell in a handbasket that is more than i ever expected to write about the resident evil movies during my entire lifetime, yikes

    (oh, and of course i didn’t take the ‘warehouse’ comments literally, what i took them for is mostly nonsense, since at pretty much no time do the actual movies resemble the scenarios described by either lex or jesse previous to my post at 2:17, so suck it)

  18. scooterzz says:

    “Also, yeah, Leah with the LITERAL…Then Christian would go “RIGHT ON SISTER!”

    asshole…

  19. leahnz says:

    assholes and elbows

    state of the badass art, you do not wanna fuck with me

    check it out… we got tactical smart missiles, phase plasma pulse rifles, rpg’s, we got sonic electronic ball breakers, we got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks…

    (don’t do it scoot, ignore him, not worth it)

  20. yancyskancy says:

    To Whom It May Concern: The home page link to Robert Dozier’s obituary mistakenly refers to him as William Dozier (his late father).

  21. leahnz says:

    To LexG:

    I’m writing on “leah’s” laptop, so try not to get too confused when I tell you I’m not her and asking, do you appreciate the irony of trying to insult her by claiming she takes things too literally while you yourself took her ‘not in a warehouse’ comments entirely literally, as if she actually believed the claim to be that the Resident Evil movies were set in warehouses? Don’t strain yourself, spoon.

  22. LexG says:

    Spoon?

  23. Ray Pride says:

    Thanks, yancy

  24. leahnz says:

    oh no way, nobody’s allowed on my lappy from now on, impostors

  25. LexG says:

    Was probably Leah’s son, trying to get on the comp to send a message about how awesome I am and how I’m his idol and please get him away from his wacky mother. Hey kid, I read your SOS loud and clear. Your mother’s a CRAZY PERSON, but guess what? IT GETS BETTER.

    Leez, does your kid like Kristen Stewart? You should get him one of those standees of her too, to go along with Milla so he can have them pretend to make out and grind clam.

  26. PastePotPete says:

    I like that the new Underworld movie is set in a future where the humans have upended the vampire’s control over the world. Why? Because Kate Beckinsale spent the first two movies getting rid of all the vampire leadership who set up the whole system… so basically it’s her fault that the vampires are now hunted by mankind. I wonder if they even mention that.

  27. JS Partisan says:

    Triple P, or if they mention that girl is her daughter. That has to be her daughter, right? She ended part 2 preggers if I remember correctly, so her daughter has to be the child.

  28. LexG says:

    THE DAUGHTER looks AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWESOME.

    Pouty lips? Teenage girl? SIGN ME UP.

  29. Tom says:

    The girl who plays Beckinsale’s daughter in Underworld 4 also plays Shailene Woodley’s sister on Secret Life of the American Teenager on ABC Family.

  30. Joe Leydon says:

    And while the cat’s away…

  31. Tim DeGroot says:

    Happy Birthday to good old David Lynch
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFGroZJnklY

  32. Sideshow Bill says:

    Spoon is my new favorite insult.

  33. jesse says:

    Leah, I don’t MIND the scaling-down (or at very least keeping of the same scale) in the series, and in fact shows smarts in terms of keeping the series unpretentious and profitable — and decent-looking in terms of sticking to effects they can afford.

    But I do think Anderson tends to bite off more than he can chew because he wants to have those big cliffhanger-y stingers at the end. I guess another example for me would be how RE3 just cuts to the post-apocalypse, rather than actually showing the worldwide apocalypse that it feels like RE1 and RE2 are building towards. Which is fine! I just think Anderson has a bit of that carnie-barker thing where he wants to promise so much more than he can deliver.

    I like that you actually seem to like this series, and I want to stress, I do, too. Taken on their own, I find them really fun and silly and neat to look at. I even kind of LIKE how they’ll end with some huge impending-attack sequence that you know will be over in thirty seconds at the beginning of the next one. I still go.

    I also like that apparently you and I and Lex all really dig Resident Evil: Extinction. Yeah Russell Mulcahy!!!

    Lex, spot-on about Tarantino and Three Musketeers. I’m sure he has some weird obscure geeky reason that he loves it, it reminds him of some other sub-genre of movies he loves, and he’s convinced it’s a legit reimagination of that genre or whatever… the same way he must, Harry Knowles style, be able to “read” the Green Lantern movie as a certain type that works within its genre, even though it’s pretty much a failure on most conceivable levels.

    And yet I’m kinda with Tarantino on not liking Usual Suspects that much. I mean, it’s fine, and there’s a lot that’s cool about it, but I prefer most of Singer’s other movies and find that one kind of overrated and not nearly as much fun as a lot of people do.

  34. Paul D/Stella says:

    This is the best discussion of Resident Evil/Underworld ever.

    Shame’s Milwaukee opening has been pushed back at least twice, from early January to January 20, then the 20th to the 27th. Now it is off the schedule entirely. Guess I’ll be waiting for DVD.

  35. Joe Leydon says:

    Saw Underworld: Awakening at midnight with unexpectedly large and conspicuously enthusiastic audience. I wouldn’t be surprised if it exceeds tracking — and quickly spawns another sequel.

  36. Paul D/Stella says:

    It’s got a devoted following. Each one has opened north of $20 million. And Beckinsale’s return can probably only help. Haywire and Red Tails might take away some of the younger male viewers Underworld is seeking though.

  37. jesse says:

    Unfortunately, I think Underworld will hurt those two movies more than vice versa.

    Unfortunate because Haywire is AWESOME, totally loved it even if it lacks the emotional pull of The Limey; and because while Red Tails is middling, it would be nice for Lucasfilm to get some encouragement to make, you know, more than one movie every four years. Maybe they’d even get better at it. 😉 (Although: I love the Star Wars prequels, as I’ve mentioned here before. That some of the Red Tails reviews have said “oh at least it’s better than the prequels” really bugs me, especially given that the prequels had something like twice the Tomatometer ratings of this movie. I don’t know why backlash always gets set in stone these days.)

  38. torpid bunny says:

    My stance, which I think is reasonable, is that Lucas can still be a great producer. The best proof is the visual achievement of the prequels. As a producer he’s at the very least still in the league of Cameron and Jackson. Even as a director he’s defensible. His cinematography holds up, even when the art direction is pure kitsch. But he should never ever do the screenplay AND direct on top of mega-producing. That’s just too much power for him! If he wants to do all three it should be on a totally different scale which perhaps he’s now finally embracing, despite promising a latter, more serious phase since at least the mid-70s.

  39. leahnz says:

    ftr, NOT my boy who posted using my moniker last night while i was out – he knows better than to touch mum’s stuff without permission – but another very naughty boy (well a couple of them actually), one of them got a good spanking anyway

    (kind of highlights the pitfalls of always being logged in here by default)

    jesse, jts i’m not even a big fan of the res evils (cept for my soft spot for ‘extinction’), just like to babble about them apparently; i do get what you’re saying about what you perceive as a bit of a bait-n-switch w/anderson, i just don’t happen to share your opinion about the promise of/expectation of epic-ness undelivered, i think he pretty much promises and stays within his purview/wheelhouse (the point about not seeing the demise of civilisation between ‘apocalypse’ and ‘extinction’ is a good one tho, i guess the end of the world takes a lot of cash money; not sure but from reading a little bit about res evil 5, i think some of that gets covered in flashback, with a few of the key deceased cast coming back to fill in the gaps, but not certain about that by any means)

  40. jesse says:

    torpid, I think you’re totally reasonable on that, too. Really, it comes down to he’s not a very good detail-oriented writer, and I have no idea why he didn’t enlist more screenplay help on Eps 1-3. I like the stories of the prequels. He should’ve mapped ’em out and had someone else give them a slightly better flow (although really, coin toss to me as to whether I’d rather listen to slightly more laughable Star Wars dialogue or slightly less fun/heavier handed LOTR dialogue). His editing is sharp, his imagination seems fertile (or he has no trouble deferring to others in the world-building types of areas), his movies look great. I very much think of him like Jackson in that respect: great command of a production more than a really terrific director in the Spielberg or even Cameron vein. I know Jackson is revered
    (and I loved his King Kong), but for me he’s better with images than shots, if that makes sense. They’re similar, but not the same. Spielberg will compose these really amazing shots integrated into action, while Lucas and Jackson, it’s more what you’re seeing than what it means.

    And that’s not a bad thing! I think people often underrate the sheer visual experience of a movie (one reason I love Ebert’s criticism; he’s gone even further and given a shit movie a pretty positive review just for its art direction/effects, or given a pretty good movie four stars for being visually rapturous). The prequels have that for me, and I like the characters. I like the Star Wars universe and the prequels actually develop it in really inventive and complex ways. But Lucas gets caught up in every aspect and he obviously hates the writing process and it’s too bad, because as you say, his actual production sense is strong.

    I hope there’s a prequel trilogy making-of book as exhaustive as these awesome Star Wars/Empire hardcovers, btw.

  41. jesse says:

    Leah, yeah, I was wondering about the deal with Resident Evil 5, ’cause I’d first heard it was going to be a prequel (hence the inclusion of long-dead characters), but then the synopsis definitely includes next-chapter type of stuff for Alice, so if they’re able to integrate them both, that would be cool — as I don’t really see what could be gained by prequelizing fully. In general, seems like they’re probably jumping on that Fast & Furious/Fast Five get-the-stars-back bandwagon, in a smaller way.

  42. Red Tails was much better than I was expecting. I too am a fan of the prequels and would love to see Lucas actually make movies more regularly as well. What shocked me was frankly how low-key the whole film was and how it existed in this alternate universe where African-American mid-budget genre fare was a perfectly regular concept. The score was not the least bit overpowering and I was impressed at the film’s unwillingness to highlight the ‘big important moments’ with blaring music or even have all that many ‘big important moments’ in the first place (even the action sequences often have little-to-no music under them). It’s a character drama, yes often very much a 1950s-style B-movie, but with a story that doesn’t inflate its own importance and some terrific action sequences to boot. Considering we’re probably going to award the Best Picture Oscar this year to a film that would have been considered a solid B-movie back in 1927, I don’t think we should knock Red Tails for merely being what would be a solid B-movie back in 1952.

  43. LexG says:

    Kristen Stewart > Gina Carano.

  44. jesse says:

    K-Stew is probably a better, more natural actress than Gina Carano, Lex, but don’t look now: Gina Carano just starred in a movie better than ALMOST ANY movie of Stewart’s save Adventureland and her bit part in Undertow.

  45. LexG says:

    You know what else would rule if HAYWIRE was the same movies except with Elle Fanning in it but directed by Luc Besson in PROFESSIONAL perv mode.

    GOOD IDEA. I haven’t seen the movie yet, I’m sure it’s good, but K-Stew’s movies are ALL four-star affairs, so I doubt it’s better than anything Kristen has ever been in. I doubt, for example, HAYWIRE is better than INTO THE WILD.

    Mostly I don’t think I’m gonna like Gina’s a) sneer b) STUPID HAT c) attitude d) bulky tree trunk legs e) boring hair.

  46. Joe Leydon says:

    Gosh. Sure has been a while since anyone posted a comment here.

  47. leahnz says:

    eww, picking up the thread from where i left off at my last comment, it kinda sounds like i gave a child a spanking…just to clarify the naughty boy in question was of the fully grown adult variety

  48. Joe Leydon says:

    Leah: That actually sounds worse.

  49. anghus says:

    this is truly the douchiest tweet i’ve seen in ages:

    RT @FilmmakerMag: To everyone who prefaces their emails with “I’m sure you’re busy at Sundance…” – I am!

    what a dick.

  50. anghus says:

    oh, and the way too early box office is in.

    If it holds up, Underworld does 23-25 million. Red Tails does 15-17 million. Contraband does another 12, Extremely Loud does 11 million and Haywire does 10.

    So whoever said Red Tails doesn’t have 16 – 18 million in it’s entire run doesn’t understand how marketing works.

  51. leahnz says:

    oh, well originally the comment was made in jest, kinda weird to jest about smacking kids. never mind.

  52. Foamy Squirrel says:

    What you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is your own affair.

  53. The Big Perm says:

    I would never joke about hitting a child. When I hit them, it’s fucking serious.

  54. LexG says:

    Haywire does about 10?

    I don’t know if that falls under the rant about how mainstream audiences don’t really “get” meta action where there’s some showoff angle instead of playing it safe… or just that it wasn’t promoted very well (other than every Soderboner-popping film blogger greasing the wheels for it.) I mentioned it offhand the other day to someone who had NO idea what it was, even though they’d been at the movies with me at least twice when the trailer ran. Apparently it made zero impression.

    And I liked Contagion, which was a lot more like a “real” movie than Soderbergh’s made in a few years, but that whole “master experimenter” scientist formalist deal– there’s always something so detached and NOT VISCERAL about his movies; Granted, audiences have NO IDEA who the director is usually, but noticeable that even something pretty damn mainstream on paper like INFORMANT or HAYWIRE gives this “eh, what’s THIS THING?” worry to generic ticket buyers.

  55. Triple Option says:

    A lot of African Americans are going to see Red Tails this w/e whether they want to or not. Bet the overs.

  56. Sport67 says:

    Just saw Red Tails at a sparsely attended late show in downtwon Toronto. Quite a few unitentional laughs but I enjoyed it. The characters and its earnestness won me over. Great special effects.

    To get away from noisy people and iphone glare Ive trained myself to sit close…like first 3 rows close. Does anyone else wonder if there gonna get their throat slit by some wacko coming up behind you. You wouldnt see it coming.

  57. Don R. Lewis says:

    Greetings from non-snowy Sundance. The douchebag content remains high but not as high as the amount of PR emails I keep getting.

    I got in around 7 pm last night and tripped around to some parties. Today I saw “5 BROKEN CAMERAS” which was o.k. and I AM NOT A HIPSTER which is simply fantastic! Worst/most totally wrong title for a movie ever and the program description doesn’t do the film justice either. I was nearly overwhelmed by how good a film this is and I hope people get on the bus and give it some love. I bet half the theater was weeping by the end of the film.

    I don’t have time to go into the details of it but the lead actor (Dominic Bogart) is incredibly talented as an actor and musician. He plays the lead role of a highly talented singer/songwriter who harshly acts out all too often. He’s your basic tortured artist but the filmmakers give him amazing depth and the film looks at him from many angles. It’s a truly great movie and I can’t say enough nice things about it. I was stunned and blown away. The title gives off an air of scuzziness and the film is anything but that.

    The press/industry screening I was at was maybe half full. Alot of industry idiots left early too and I heard 3-4 comments of “great film, how would we market it?” That’s infuriating to me. You see a great film but can’t figure out how to get people to see it? What are you being PAID for? Ugh.

    Anyway, long day tomorrow. Off to bed.

  58. Rashad says:

    Lex: Where do you get Tarantino doesn’t like Year of the Dragon? I’ve seen several places where he puts the movie (or at least parts of it) in a positive light.

  59. The Big Perm says:

    Making 10 is right about what Haywire should make. Straight action movies (where the only reason to see them is fights) usually seem to be in the 30 million overall zone when they do well. Guys like Jet Li or Jackie Chan would open to 10 and then do 30. There’s nothig in that movie that looks particuarily interesting except the fighting.

    I do agree with Lex about Soderberg. It’s like he’s so icy and detatched no matter what the subject or movie is. I can admire some of his stuff but he can also be dull or just sort of plodding. He has aspirations to art but he’s still just making potboilers and he’s not willing to boil the water.

  60. christian says:

    Tarantino frequently references the big shoot-out in YOTD as one of his favorites. But I might be taking that literally. Oh and HAYWIRE was terrific fun. The Fassbender fight is one for the ages.

  61. movieman says:

    Loved the “Haywire” fight sequence you referenced, Christian.
    Fassbender’s “execution” felt like just desserts for his participation in the godawful “Shame.”

  62. christian says:

    HAYWIRE is the closet we’ll get to a Soderbergh James Bond-Harry Palmer film, so I’m happy.

  63. leahnz says:

    i want to see ‘haywire’

  64. movieman says:

    ….or a “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” movie, Christian?

  65. christian says:

    That too.

  66. movieman says:

    Sorry that project fell apart for Soderbergh (like “Moneyball” did earlier).
    I was looking forward to another “Ocean’s”-style Soderbergh lark.

  67. sanj says:

    watch the last 10 minutes of footnote –

    DP and dude talk about big and little things ..weird / funny

    http://www.youtube.com/user/thehotbutton#p/u/12/UDr9uP3njLs

  68. sanj says:

    resident evil movie trailer has 30 seconds of sony products
    in the trailer …
    \
    anybody care ?

    http://movies.yahoo.com/video/ymovies-6393699/resident-evil-5-trailer-27929139.html

  69. Whether you own an Android Pill or Phone these are 10 apps you’ll want to have.

    Still it is too early to assume that Facebook Home might be destructive.
    This revert back the lockscreen functionality.

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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” — 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 — 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 — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — 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 named—” “Yeah, sure — 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 I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s 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 didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — 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. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s 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