Maya Entertainment, Blockbuster Pair Up for Latino Film Series
Los Angeles-based Maya Entertainment has signed a partnership deal with home entertainment giant Blockbuster to present a curated slate of groundbreaking Latin cinema in eight major U.S. markets, from July 17 through September 10. More after the jump...
Transformers Sequel Will Destabilize Your Limbic System
Charlie Jane Anders, over at io9, makes a tongue-in-cheek case for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen being one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, and "a movie that will destabilize your limbic system, probably forever, and make you doubt the solidity of your surroundings."
Michael Pollan To Sit for Live Food, Inc. Facebook Chat
For those interested, author andFood, Inc.interview subject Michael Pollan will be part of a live Facebook chat this Thursday, July 2 at 6 p.m. Eastern. If you have a Facebook or Twitter account, it's simple to participate; click here for more information.
Jada Pinkett Smith makes her feature debut as both a writer and director with The Human Contract, a deeply weird stab at a sort of humanistic erotic thriller, in which an emotionally stolid businessman becomes entangled with a seductive stranger. More after the jump...
The trailer for Peter Billingsley's directorial debut, Couples Retreat (Universal, October 9), is online just now via Apple, and looks like a good bet to wrangle the lion's share of fall comedy dollars. Notwithstanding the domestic underperformance of The Heartbreak Kid, exotic-set laffers that splurge a bit with scenery and setting have obviously worked out well recently, from Tropic Thunder to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Couples Retreat has a gorgeous, crystal-clear backdrop — the sort that causes women to start nudging their boyfriends and husbands to call travel agents — to go with a solid, hell-in-heaven conceit that allows for plenty of good-time opposites-of-the-sexes friction. Malin Akerman's auburn dye job will help hold at bay awkward memories of Watchmen emoting, and the rest of the cast (Kristen Bell, writer-actor Jon Favreau, Kristin Davis, Faizon Love, Kali Hawk, Vince Vaughn and Jason Bateman, clockwise from top left) shows no evidence of a weak link. Color me stoked, in moderate-to-high fashion. Vaughn isn't a huge international draw, but I don't see how this does under $140 million worldwide.
It's been a decade since Jennifer Lynch, daughter of noted filmmaker David Lynch, made her directorial debut with the wildly divisive Boxing Helena, and her return behind the camera, the thriller Surveillance, has on the surface the trappings of something much more traditional and straightforward. Naturally, though, because it's filtered through the younger Lynch's canted, nurture-influenced prism of warped "normality" and co-existing extremes, there's a ghoulish, off-kilter quality to the proceedings. A sort of dread-heavy, wholly engaging partial misfire — the film feels awkwardly stitched together, and it ultimately bites off more than it can chew — Surveillance still tackles a provocative premise: that truly nasty violence can be birthed from wildly different sources, even marginal places of flattened affect, proper order and limited means. More after the jump...
War may indeed be hell, but on screen the polarity of its heightened stakes can make occasional fodder for some wicked comedy, which is certainly the case with the very funny In the Loop, a feverishly pitched political satire in which low- to mid-level British diplomats and their American counterparts all try to advance their own contrasting agendas during the lead-up to a preemptive war in the Middle East. It's rare, the movie that consistently delivers this much towel-snapping pleasure in its dialogue, and it's rarer still that it comes attached to something that wants to make you think. For that reason, In the Loop is the perfect indie antidote to so much droning, effects-laden summer fare. More after the jump...
Step Up 3 Commences Filming, Funky Popping-and-Locking
Per press release, the third film in the Step Up franchise has begun its scheduled 10 weeks of dance-infused principal photography, in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I don't know about its digital 3-D presentation — though I guess that's the next logical step for this type of film, and a lot of youth-skewing genre pictures in general — but after returning director Jon Chu's work on Step Up 2 the Streets, I can legitimately endorse another installment in pop-and-lock, coming-of-age theatrics. Adam Sevani and Alyson Stoner both reprise their roles from the second and first films, respectively, and are joined by newcomers Rick Malambri, Sharni Vinson, Keith Stallworth, Kendra Andrews, Stephen Boss and Joe Slaughter.
LAFF: Spike Jonze Premieres New Short Film with Kanye West
In breaking news pegged to the Los Angeles Film Festival, Spike Jonze's new short film, We Were Once a Fairytale, starring Kanye West, will screen before tonight's 8:30 p.m. screening of Jonathan Caouette's All Tomorrow's Parties at the Ford Amphitheatre. Special guests are expected, and self-packed picnics are welcome for the event. Also, just on a festival-related note, Examiner.com's Marvin Miranda takes a swing at four flicks: Harmony & Me, Zero Bridge, Dear Lemon Lima, and For Those Who Remain.
The arrival of Michael Bay's latest film needs no real introduction. A sequel to 2007's global smash hit Transformers, it's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and it is a posed, pop-art, cinematic ejaculation of instinctive, unthinking extremes. More after the jump...
On the run all day today, with multiple interviews for Michael Mann's Public Enemies, and the rather striking Los Angeles Film Festival documentary competition film Branson. Plus a couple other screenings that'll keep me out past midnight. And I've already been up for over two hours. Huzzah!
Gaffe-Laden End Credits Help Reinforce Year One's Goodwill
It's worth noting that Year One deploys the old "goodwill end credits" tack, displaying a montage of gaffes under its closing credits.
This is nothing new, per se, of course, but crucial to any theatrical blooper reel is the fact that it must be funny, of a piece with the tone of what preceded it, relatively fast-moving (repeatedly flubbed lines from a single sequence often serve to undercut this dictum) and, if it wants to really stand out, cast one or more of its stars in a marginally bad light (e.g., Chris Tucker's cell phone repeatedly going off during the filming of Rush Hour 2). In this sense, the end credits for Year One really work, crammed as they are with Jack Black ruining a scene by accidentally farting, and the sounds of a train in the distance repeatedly disrupting shots; the latter especially connects, because it underscores in winking fashion the movie's mock-period setting, which is faithfully if not exactingly rendered.
Incidentally, of arguably the same genus if not family is the leave-'em-dancing credit sequence. Going back at least a decade, the Farrelly brothers pioneered the use of an end-credit, out-of-character, cast and crew sing-along montage set to a single, particularly peppy song (was this part of 1996's Kingpin? I can't remember), a move which has on occasion been appropriated by dreadful films like Lethal Weapon 4, in an attempt to erase any memory of the previous 100 minutes or so of pain and suffering. Will Smith's Hitch, with its shut-down set to Heavy D's "Now That We Found Love," worked fantastically in this regard, since there was both a wedding closing the film, and the instruction of rhythm and appropriate dancing figured at least nominally into the movie's plot.
Owing to Jeff Daniels' starring role as a cranky, screwed-up intellectual, first-time writer-director John Hindman's film will doubtlessly spawn comparisons to Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, and there are some similarities between the two erudite works. Honestly, though, the point of comparison that first leapt to my mind was As Good as It Gets, another movie in which ingrained personality issues mark and color a fitful romance between an older man and a younger single mother. There's also a pinch of Finding Forrester, in the reluctant bloom of a gruff flower kept too long indoors.
In the most immediate sense, though, there's plenty of fun, philosophically-tinged pleasures all around the edges of this barbed, humanistic, romantic comedy, both in the dialogue and the tenor of its performances. More after the jump...
The 1970 German sex comedy The Hostess Also Likes to Blow the Horn may have one of the greatest, cheekiest titles of its under-respected sub-genre. More after the jump...
The trailer for Surveillance, Jennifer Lynch's first film since Boxing Helena, is online, and does a pretty job of selling the movie's Rashomon-like, B-movie egg scramble of n'er-do-wells, corrupted authority figures and vengeful sociopaths. Maybe too good a job, almost. I mean, only in the sense that the trailer comes across as streamlined, hook-y and conventional, while the final product is — in keeping with the writer-director's surname — a bit more wildly unhinged. Full review to follow later in the week, along with some interviews probably early next week, coinciding with its limited theatrical release. Surveillance is currently available via VOD, by the way.
Passenger Side had its world premiere at the L.A. Film Festival Friday evening, with a handful of boutique distributor reps in attendance amidst the three-quarters-full crowd at the Mann Regent in Westwood. More after the jump...
Music Documentary It Might Get Loud Cranks Amp to 11
I caught the music documentary It Might Get Loud earlier in the week, and yesterday interviewed director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), as well as Jimmy Page and Jack White — who, along with U2's The Edge, form the triumvirate of axe-men which the film takes as its subjects — for a feature piece a bit further down the line. Part compare-and-contrast piecemeal biography, part godhead gathering, the movie is in sum never less than in-the-moment engaging, even if there's a lingering feeling that the moderator-less roundtable gathering that forms its spine could perhaps have used a bit more prodding or structure, to get at the marrow of exactly why and how even trite musical expressions sometimes achieve significant emotional lift-off. Nevertheless, music fans will jam on this title big-time, as the above trailer amply demonstrates. For those in the SoCal area, the film screens in the afternoon on Monday, June 22, at the Los Angeles Film Festival in Westwood.
The big, blustery physical comedy of Jack Black makes for a mostly amusing fit with Michael Cera's quiet comedy of self-negation in Year One, a ramshackle banished-buddy picture which connects more on the strength of its scene-to-scene joke writing than a startlingly grand execution of its premise. Pushing far away from one's brain any recollections of of historical or religious antiquity is of paramount importance given the historic license the story takes. Once that is accomplished, though, there's airy delight in the mixing of slightly contemporized but socially inept consciousnesses with a primitive setting. More after the jump...
For those interested, Food, Inc.director Robert Kenner will be part of a live Twitter chat this Friday, June 19. It's simple to participate; at 10 a.m. Pacific time, log in to Twitter, put #foodinc in the search bar, and hit enter. You're now following the conversation. If you have questions, be sure to include the #foodinc tag.
While its behind-the-scenes machinations are mined for laughs in another superlative film this summer, In the Loop, war is also very much at the heart of The Hurt Locker, a punishing, devastatingly well-made Iraq-set thriller with an implosive but no less powerful emotional impact. Eschewing the whirling, bird's-eye helicopter shots of so many war movies (this is most assuredly not a Tony Scott film), director Kathryn Bigelow tightens her focus in laser-like fashion, examining the effects of combat and danger on the human psyche. More after the jump...
Full review goes live at midnight or so, but Year One is better than expected, at least based on the bulk of its TV advertising. Well, let me qualify that somewhat...
Studios Increasingly Look to Lead with Foreign Foot
Screen International's Mike Goodridge takes a nice swing at the new studio calculus of foreign theatrical gate when it comes to greenlighting certain films, using as a case study Angels & Demons, among a few other movies. This new slide-ruler will continue to play a more and more prominent role in Hollywood decision-making, which on a certain level has to mean even less support for original spec drama and comedy scripts, since — absent the pre-sale attachment of big stars and directors — there's more X-factor variability in those types of production go-aheads.
It's a happy 31st birthday to Emma Heming, aka Mrs. Bruce Willis, a leggy Maltese falcon if ever there were one.
I don't know whether they met on the set of the perfectly awful Perfect Stranger — one of Heming's few acting credits — or that's a later gig Willis helped her get, but either way that's not something they should ever really spend much time discussing. Which then begs the question: what do they discuss? How she was 10 years old when Die Hard came out?
Trailer for Fame Remake Doesn't Sport Leggings, Headbands
The trailer for the remake of Fame is up now, on Yahoo, and it seems a fairly sincere and earnest thing, a reworking that can at least hold its head up in the company of Step Up 2 the Streets and its predecessor, and maybe even something like Rent. More after the jump...
Discussing the slow-drip revelations of steroid use in baseball with a friend recently, I made the point that if a professional athlete didn't know what he or she was putting in their body (as Barry Bonds and now Manny Ramirez have each claimed), it was only because they didn't want to know. My friend agreed. If your livelihood depends on peak-performance physical fitness, knowing the details of any supplement you ingest takes on extreme importance.
That point is still valid, I think. And yet, watching Robert Kenner's powerhouse, revelatory documentary Food, Inc., one comes to realize just how much of our diet is outside our personal control, almost no matter how healthy we aim to be. More after the jump...
Irish filmmaker Frank Kelly is only two directors away from the final bookings on his Twitter compilation film, to be shot simultaneously, on June 21, by 140 different directors. In true entrepreneurial fashion, though, he already has a design... and T-shirts, even. Should be interesting to see how this turns out; hopefully I'll have an interview with Kelly shortly after completion.
Long story, but apparently the past week's entries have to be manually re-posted, since I'm for the moment lacking code from other laptop. Sigh. I've made the determination that this doesn't rise to the level of an emergency, though. Que sera sera. It'll take more to ruin my weekend. Like a bullet.
Beware: the trailer for this fall's Old Dogs, starring John Travolta, Robin Williams and Seth Green, is more than just unfunny — it steals a part of your soul. Seriously, it reminds me of Joaquin Phoenix's line to Nicolas Cage in 8MM, about not being able to unsee things. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Technology is a Fickle Mistress, or Perhaps Just a Bitch
Well, it seems like an entire week's worth of posts are missing. That's decidedly uncool. Working to resolve and rectify that. Meanwhile, some information which might help expedite this is held hostage on old laptop. Major suckage all around, and a reminder again of how things are going to end for humanity, or at least modernity.
So Fired Up! (yes, inclusive of exclamation point), with its glossy colors, horndog conceit and middling theatrical PR campaign, is not on the surface the type of movie one expects much from. Perhaps that's part of its appeal. Or it could be Philip Baker Hall's repeated exclamations of "Shit!", if that's your thing. Either way, there's much more good than not here, with sly jokes abound. And girls in cheerleading uniforms. More after the jump...
A relatively straightforward hostage thriller with the benefit of two A-list leading men in John Travolta and Denzel Washington, The Taking of Pelham 123 is a professionally mounted genre exercise which tries to please both thriller and social drama crowds, and suffers mightily as a result. A streamlined update of Joseph Sargent’s 1974 original, director Tony Scott's film ultimately collapses under the weight of its clashing, disparate styles of storytelling and acting. More after the jump...
British import StagKnight is a low-budget, medievally-inflected comedy-horror hybrid that has the unfortunate distinction of, A) not being very good, and B) releasing close to The Hangover, so that it suffers even further in guys-gone-wild comparison. And no, despite the lovely ladies pictured after the jump, it's not even that laden with gratuitous nudity...
More rudely silly than funny, action-comedy Land of the Lost is staged with color and a fair amount of forward-moving energy, but not much in the way of inventiveness or surprise. A big screen adaptation of the mid-1970s time-traveling children's show of the same name, the movie is scant on plot but heavy on scatological humor, and over-relies on the well-worn performance shtick of star Will Ferrell. Like an early morning mist from its quasi-primordial setting, the result — tonally consistent, but consistently underwhelming — dissipates immediately upon conclusion, and doesn't hold a candle to its star's stronger efforts, like Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. More after the jump...
David Lynch's Interview Project Spotlights Old Coots
The first two subjects from David Lynch's short-form, 121-part Interview Project series, 64-year-old Jess and 54-year-old Kingman, Arizona resident Tommie, are online and available for viewing, and they both look a bit like crazy prospectors, which I suppose is a casualty of the road trip production starting west and moving east. Though only three minutes apiece, there's some real, honest heartbreak here ("I ain't proud of nothin' except being alive," says Jess), a reminder of just how hard a series of knocks life can deliver, especially to the young. There's also a revelation totally deserving of the adjective "Lynchian." Because, you see, it seems parolee Tommie is separated from his girlfriend for helping her bury a man without a permit.
Van Wilder: Freshman Year Trailer Promises Beer, Boobs
Through almost sheer, Herculean personal effort, Ryan Reynolds elevated the original Van Wilder into something moderately funny and attractive, despite the presence of Tara Reid; its spin-off sequel, Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, took the anarchic collegiate party-planning overseas, focusing on Kal Penn's character, Wilder's protégé-turned-playa. It was a down-market blend of pretty much exactly the sort of set
piece comedy and very occasional flashing of boobsthat one would expect, and I don't remember it doing well enough either in theaters (where it received an abortive release) or on DVD to give anyone the idea that another movie was in high demand.
Yet the name still has some cachet, I guess. So that leaves us with the trailer for the direct-to-DVD prequel, Van Wilder: Freshman Year, starring the improbably eyebrowed Jonathan Bennett (Mean Girls) and Kristin Cavallari. Flatly scripted, unimaginatively staged and weirdly framed/edited (though perhaps to cut around audience-pleasing nudity?), this clip really does nothing except make one pine for the original, and appreciate Reynolds even more. If it delivers on the baser elements its base desires, it could prove tolerable. But there isn't much manifested evidence of cleverness and, you know, we don't even seem to find out why Van first wears the mask, or kills his sister, or... oh, sorry, wrong prequel. Bennett (above left) does seem to be having a go at channeling Reynolds' vocal rhythms, though. That might either work, or become annoying in fairly short order. Van Wilder: Freshman Year hits DVD on July 14.
In 2002, Nia Vardalos' My Big Fat Greek Wedding was The Little Film That Could, an ethnically specific romantic comedy that mainstream audiences discovered and celebrated as their own. It played in theaters for a full year, en route to a $240 million domestic gross and a cumulative $370 million box office haul. The question surrounding Vardalos' latest film, then, the Greece-set My Life in Ruins, is whether one can ever really go home again. The answer, it turns out, is kind of, but not really. More after the jump...
Seven months, six to eight phone calls and probably around 45 emails later, I finally extricate last fraction of overdue payment from a now deceased outlet. Still ongoing: one lawsuit and three minor skirmishes, including a missing, month-plus-old wire transfer. Welcome to the glamorous writer's life!
Cinefamily Hosts Bobcat Goldthwait, Screens Shakes the Clown
For those in the Los Angeles area, Bobcat Goldthwait will appear in person at the Silent Movie Theatre on June 16, screening "a selection of his favorite found footage from his private collection," followed by his 1992 directorial debut, Shakes the Clown. Festivities kick off at 8 p.m., and tickets are $12. For more
information on the event, and the Silent Movie Theatre in general, click here.
Michael Lynton Performs Corporate Penance, Pens Op-Ed Piece
In response (corporate community service?) to backlash over his remarks about hating the Internet, and nothing good ever coming from it, Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton has performed penance by penning a piece for Huffington Post in which he "welcomes the Sturm and Drang [he's] stirred," and yet seems to still misconstrue criticism and entangle two separate arguments. More after the jump...
Cinefamily Fetes Mitch Hedberg with Special Tribute
For those in the Los Angeles area, the Silent Movie Theatre celebrates the life and career of the brilliant, late Mitch Hedberg on Sunday, June 14. Before dying at the age of 37 in 2005, Hedberg dealt in surrealist snippets and ingeniously obvious wordplay, where the only real set-up needed for any joke was a grasped appreciation of his wry, shy personality. Whereas fellow deadpan comic Steven Wright's delivery is incredibly dry and snail-paced, however, Hedberg's came as a fast, engaging drawl, spoken to the floor while he hid behind a pair of sunglasses. With generous assistance from Mitch's widow and fellow comedian Lynn Shawcroft, Cinefamily has combed through voluminous archives to unearth and compile rare footage of live performances, TV appearance and Hedberg's unreleased MTV reality pilot. The evening will climax with a screening of Mitch's lone directorial effort, the autobiographical 1999 feature film Los Enchiladas. Festivities kick off at 8 p.m., and tickets are $12. For more
information on the event, and the Silent Movie Theatre in general, click here.
Cinematheque Screens The Hurt Locker, Fetes Kathryn Bigelow
Native Californian Kathryn Bigelow gets celebrated by the American Cinematheque next weekend, when her quite excellent new film, the Iraq-set war drama The Hurt Locker, screens at the Egyptian Theatre on Friday, June 5 at 7:30 p.m. Following the advance screening, a discussion with Bigelow and various, yet-to-be-confirmed cast members will be held. Then, over the next two nights, she'll get some double feature love, and return for in-person introductions to each film. Saturday, June 6, spotlights Near Dark and Strange Days, while Sunday, June 7 features Point Break and K9: The Widowmaker.
The historic Egyptian Theatre is located at 6712
Hollywood Boulevard,
between Highland
and Las Palmas,
in Hollywood.
Tickets for these screenings and all events at the Egyptian are available through Fandango, but for 24-hour recorded information on screenings,
directions and other matters, phone (323) 466-FILM, or visit the Cinematheque’s eponymous
Web site.
Part of a new breed of highbrow "concept" horror that shrugs off and/or embraces the constraints of limited production means and instead picks at the nasty mental scabs of what truly unnerves, Pontypool is a unique thriller that has the twin advantages of a provocative premise and a superb cast. Together, these things hold an audience's attention forthe bulk of the movie's running time, holding at bay some frustrations with a third act that doesn't seem quite certain of which direction to head or what sort of energy level to embrace. More after the jump...
American Premiere Set for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Today Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival, announced that director Michael Bay's highly anticipated Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will have its American premiere on Monday, June 22 at the Los Angeles Film Festival, just in advance of its theatrical bow two days later, June 24. The festival runs from Thursday, June 18 to Sunday, June 28.
Cinefamily Grants Michael Winslow Soundtrack Powers
Police Academy's Michael Winslow — yeah, that guy — gets some love when the Silent Movie Theatre celebrates his unique talents of mimicry by giving him center stage to embark on a never-before attempted challenge that only he could possibly fulfill. Yes, on Wednesday, June 10, Winslow will be providing a live music-and-effects track to a varied sampling of classic and not-so-classic shorts from the silent era. Not so silent anymore, it turns out! Festivities kick off at 8 p.m., and tickets are $14. For more
information on the event, and the Silent Movie Theatre in general, click here.
Watching the new TV ads for Drag Me to Hell, which are generally effective and have the added advantage of a good, winking pitch line ("This Friday... even good people go to hell!"), what's still notable and interesting is the manner in which the film's marketing campaign is avoiding the tonal variance of the finished product. Not placing a value judgment, just sayin'...
