Film Fatale
BEOWULF Without Gerard "300" Butler? No!!!!
Comic-Con will get a preview of Robert Zemeckis’ intriguing BEOWULF, starring Ray Winstone as the Old English hero, Crispin Glover as Grendel, and Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s Mother.
Sheigh Crabtree of Los Angeles Times had an early look and puts us in the picture.
I retain an irrational fondness for the Icelandic-Canadian coproduction BEOWULF & GRENDEL, starring a pre-300 Gerard Butler — born to play the hero. If anyone could have swum for seven days in the open sea, it’s him. (Winstone’s a magnetic, ultramanly actor in his own way, but no matter how much CG muscle work they do to the guy, he doesn’t have what Butler’s got: major chick appeal)
From BEOWULF & GRENDEL:
Some classic quotable dialogue: When Beowulf, as clever as he is strong, realizes that Grendel’s bloody attacks on the Danes aren’t as random as they seem, he questions king Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgard) about the creature’s motives, he gets a hilarious answer.
“Beowulf! It’s a fucking troll! It’s what they do!” yells the mead-drunk Danish king. “Somebody probably looked at it the wrong way.”
MAN VS. WILD Critics Demand Bear Facts
My new favorite TV show — and TV personality — have come under attack.
Discovery Channel’s MAN VS. WILD, the survival-travel-adventure show hosted by ex-SAS man Bear Grylls takes viewers on a thrilling, vicarious trip to parts unknown and unpleasant. Host Bear Grylls, a sturdy/geeky looking ex-SAS man who’s alway announcing how uncomfortable and scared he is, parachutes into faraway places (Australia, Iceland, the Alps, the Everglades), braves the elements, and lives on whatever he finds there: snakes, bugs and worse.
Though MAN VS. WILD (and Bear in his to-camera narration) indicates that he and his camera person are alone in the wild, the credits indicate a “Fixer” — presumably an expert in local climate and wildlife. Some sequences, such as the host jumping from the top of a cliff and then being seen landing at the bottom, indicate a two-man camera crew. Or at least two cameras.
Now he’s been accused of living it up in luxury spas and lodges while claiming to be roughing it in the WILD. New York Times blogger Mike Nizza has a report here. The Hollywood Reporter has more.
What do you think? Is a little fakery okay in the service of educational and entertaining TV?
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/columns/e3i740157b4a6e7f150ecd17a0a52227304
Julia Stiles Gets Re-BOURNE in ULTIMATUM
Native New Yorker Julia Stiles gets a New York magazine profile this week — she plays CIA op Nikki, the young woman who (surprisingly) survived the first two BOURNE thrillers and plays an even more prominent role in THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM.
Though Stiles first made her mark in offbeat film adaptations of Shakespeare (O, 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU), she hit it big with the MTV audience in SAVE THE LAST DANCE. And she’s just directed her first movie, a short film called RAVING.
A Unique Critical Vision
In the movie KNOCKED UP, Seth Rogen’s character — as a mark of his nightmare-date, slovenly, man-caveyness — hopes to start a web set that catalogues only nude scenes from movies. He’s crushed to discover that someone called MrSkin has already developed the idea.
The New York Times discovers that MrSkin is not only real, but really popular, attracting 2.9 unique visitors a month.
Hollywood Bitchslaps CAPTIVITY
Creeping into cinemas without benefit of preview screenings comes CAPTIVITY.
So many questions demand answers. Is the movie as torture-porny as its billboard ad campaign? Can the film’s director, Academy Award winner Roland Joffe, surpass his heavy breathing treatment of THE SCARLET LETTER?
Peter Sobczynski of Hollywood Bitchslap dares to view CAPTIVITY outside the safety of Chicago’s Lake Street screening room and files this report.
“In a scene that plays like a educational film for starlets on the dangers of not having an entourage, Jennifer is drugged and kidnapped at the nightclub (thanks to one of those completely empty women’s bathrooms that are so commonplace at charity functions at hip nightclubs).”
And then he gets harsh.
CLOVERFIELD Trailer!
Will Cthulhu make an appearance in this movie? Rumors abound.
Watch the CLOVERFIELD trailer without having to see TRANSFORMERS.
Promise us, J.J. Abrams, that “Rob” — if he’s the hero — is not stupid teenage son Robby from WAR OF THE WORLDS, who should have died when he walked into the alien blast zone.
And don’t kill Roma Torre of NY1 news.
The peril from the sea movie’s release date is Jan. 18, 2008 — the title will be something other than CLOVERFIELD.
Harry Potter: The NY Times Endings, Illustrated
The Sunday New York Times gives up its opinion page to some fan fic and art, allowing a few writers and one illustrator to end the HARRY POTTER series. For me, the artist Andrea Dezso’s Guernica-meets-Kara Walker vision of the final battle is the most compelling.
Tom Cruise, VALKYRIE BendlerCockblocked
Variety provides yet more daily, international coverage of Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer’s struggle to make VALKYRIE, the story of the plot to kill Hitler from within.
“Operation Valkyrie” is one of WWII’s more fascinating “what if” stories — a July 1944 conspiracy by top level German military men to kill Hitler and seize power. (These were ultra-patriotic elite officers distressed about the losing direction of Hitler’s military strategy — professional soldiers who’d been shut out of the Fuhrer’s inner circle of advisors.)
German government and film commission officials, though, haven’t been receptive to the idea of the film. Location permits have been denied, and one of Stauffenberg’s sons opined that the actor — who actually looks rather like photographs of the man he’s playing — should “keep his hands off my father.”
The Bendlerblock building which as we all know, “ist ein historischer Gebäudekomplex in Berlin-Tiergarten” where the anti-Hitler conspirators, including von Stauffenberg, were executed after torture.
How close did Stauffenberg and his cohorts come to killing the Fuhrer?
Not very, according to a recent book by Joachim Fest.
THE SIMPSONS: We Are All Springfield
Which of these fourteen American Springfields has mounted the most compelling campaign to host the premiere of THE SIMPSONS movie?
Obviously I’m partial to Springfield, Massachusetts clip – which includes a celebrity endorsement from Senator Edward Kennedy (the vocal inspiration for Mayor Joe Quimby).
Voting ends July 9 at midnight. May the best Springfield win.
via USA Today
Disney Rejection Letter, 1938: No Girls Allowed
Is this letter for real?
New York Magazine’s linked to this astonishing rejection letter to a Mary V. Ford, who’d applied for a job as an apprentice animator in 1938. Answer: No. Because women don’t do that kind of thing.
Typed on pretty Snow White stationery.
New York Mag archly points out how things are different now. Or are they? Searching the credits for Disney’s RATATOUILLE, not a single female name appears among the credited animators.
Steve Zahn Gets Serious in RESCUE DAWN
Steve Zahn and Christian Bale search for a way out in Rescue Dawn.
Breakthrough roles can happen anytime – and this week, Steve Zahn, best known as a young comic actor (REALITY BITES, HAPPY, TEXAS, ), may score a breakthrough with audiences and critics for the second time in his career for his dramatic portrayal as an American flyer battling despair and the elements in Werner Herzog’s RESCUE DAWN.
Here’s Nathan Rabin’s interview with Zahn from The Onion’s AV Club. And you can read Choire Sicha’s conversation with him here.
Zahn’s always been an endearing actor, but this time his performance lingers in the mind long after the movie’s over. According to a radio interview, he’d been obsessed with Herzog’s documentary LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY to the point of ordering multiple DVDs to give to friends. When he heard that the feature version was in the works, he knew he had to be a part of it.
Fortunately for us, he is.
Bored With Torture Horror? You're Not Alone
In 1408, John Cusack doesn’t believe in ghosts. But they believe in him.
Was it the web piracy of the HOSTEL sequel, the overexposure of director Eli Roth, market saturation of torture-porn horror, that led to the film’s underwhelming box office performance?
Among this weekend’s releases: 1408, the Stephen King adaptation starring an ideally cast John Cusack as a supernatural-debunker who dares to stay in a haunted hotel.
When 1408 comes out near the top of the heap, expect a bloodbath of Monday morning box office analysis declaring the death of slasher movies and the demand for suspense-driven terror. The next test for hard core horror is CAPTIVITY, already notorious for its Los Angeles billboard campaign. Starring Elisha Cuthbert as a fashion model in a SAW-like predicament, the movie’s been pushed to mid-July.
SICKO Piracy: If Only Health Care Were Free, Too
Michael Moore’s new documentary SICKO – an exploration of the US’s health insurance mess – has been pirated and downloadable for free over the weekend.
Bad news for the Weinstein brothers, who have (as Miramax and now as Weinstein Co.) long supported Moore’s non fiction films. But director Moore says he’s more interested in getting people talking about health care solutions. The New York Times quotes him as saying, “I don’t agree with the copyright laws and I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off my labor.”
The film went over well at the Cannes Film Festival, and the issue is a hot one in the upcoming US presidential election. (My home state of Massachusetts has just begun a program of universal health insurance: it’s better than nothing. But it isn’t cheap.)
Read more about SICKO.
The New York Times: here
Movie City News: David Poland
Projectionist Framed! "Memflix" Sacked For Web Review
I am shocked – shocked! – to discover that there’s a cinema projectionist out there who actually stays in the booth to watch the movie, even during a critics’ preview screening.
Usually they just press ‘start’ and fall back to sleep or walk away, leaving the grouchy/whiney reviewers to wonder just how much more out of focus the print could get.
No, it seems Memphis’ Malco Theatre chain had an actual movie fan in their employ, a dangerous person named Jesse Morrison who not only watched the films, but wrote about them for Ain’t It Cool News under the none too subtle nom de plume Memflix. After working an early screening of Fox’s FANTASTIC FOUR: SILVER SURFER, Morrison wrote a scathing review that was posted on Ain’t It Cool.
As the Hollywood Reporter tells it, the studio got mad, found duplicate reviews on Morrison’s blog, and made angry phone calls to Malco’s management. Now he’s been suspended.
Says the 29 year old film and video student, “I’m hoping to get a job as a professional movie reviewer.”
Get a Clue With The New Nancy Drew: Emma Roberts
For female readers of crime fiction, there’s one name who got you hooked: Nancy Drew. Sleuth (a cool word for detective). Titian haired (you had to look that one up).
A brainy girl with a keen sense of adventure — “as sharp as Miss Marple and as brave as Emma Peel – all while navigating the perils of girlhood. For 75 years and in dozens of books, graphic novels and video games, she has never failed to crack a case or outwit a villain.
That’s why casting the title role in the big-screen NANCY DREW opening Friday, was key: beyond her titian hair and penny loafers, everybody has a different idea of just who Nancy is and how she should look.”
Warner Bros. new NANCY DREW (with Nickelodeon-minted starlet Emma Roberts) is fine-tuned for the ‘tween girls who’d like to think they’re the first to discover their crime-solving heroine, and their big sisters, moms and grandmothers who’ve been enjoying the books for decades. Opening this weekend against FANTASTIC FOUR: SILVER SURFER and the kickass DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE, this kind of teen-girl adventure won’t be a blockbuster. But it will make a movie star out of young Roberts.
I doubt that her young fans will appreciate the comparison, but her Nancy Drew — transported by the screenwriters from River Heights, U.S.A. to Los Angeles — does more serious, nuts and bolts private investigating than a Raymond Chandler hero.
