Covered from John Greyson on Vimeo.
The Canadian filmmaker withdrew his short from Toronto International over political disagreement with a sidebar on film in Tel Aviv.
Archive for August, 2009
Covered, by John Grayson
Saturday, August 29th, 2009The Canadian filmmaker withdrew his short from Toronto International over political disagreement with a sidebar on film in Tel Aviv.
TV New Zealand Follows PJ To Comic-Con
Saturday, August 29th, 2009Some Things That Bore Some Of You Do Matter
Saturday, August 29th, 2009I’m not going to go off on a long rant about it.
But here are three pieces about the web and how we all bounce off one another which reflect some of the ideas I have been shoveling out around here too often for some of your tastes…
Media Shift – Simon Owens – Newspaper Editors Want Clear Credit When Bloggers Link to Them
Media Shift – Mark Glaser – Using the ‘Steal-O-Meter’ to Gauge if Stories Steal or Promote
TheGuardian.co.uk – Michael Tomansky’s Blog – The man who helps rule the media’s world
A Little Inside Basseball
Saturday, August 29th, 2009Please excuse me while I implore fellow film writers to get themselves to How To Fold A Flag, which is screening selectively, pre-Toronto, in LA on Monday.
The film is the final part of an Iraq trilogy by Michael Tucker and Petra Eperlein… and I consider all three films to be amongst the very best made on and around the subject. Gunner Palace took us into the lives of the soldiers in the cities of Iraq for the first time, as they lived in one of Uday Hussein’s former summer palaces and tried to survive IEDs when they went on patrol. The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair told the story of an Iraqi journalist, swept up by a US patrol (as seen in passing in Gunner Palace), who gets abused by both the US and the Iraqi government for no reason but the madness of war. And now, How to Fold A Flag brings it all home to the US, literally. Characters we’ve met in the other films and some new faces try to adjust to coming home… some for better, some for worse… mostly in between.
This team has been ahead of the curve in these docs every time. They are hard and funny and only ever as sentimental as survivors get.
If David Magdael hasn’t already sent you an invite – and you are press and you know who he is, which you should if you are legit – drop him a line. This is exactly the kind of film one can miss on opening weekend… and it won’t play again until the second Friday. So do yourself a favor and get on it now.
Friday Estimates by Klady – H2FD
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
Halloween 2 is down a few million on opening day from the last one… The Final Destination in 3D is up a few million from the opening day of the last one. Combined, they are about a million off of the horror opening high of the year, Friday The 13th, which started with $19.3 million in February.
Questions -
Why would you put both of these films out on the same day? M.A.D.
Is this a better indication of what the 3D thing can do commercially for a movie? This looks like the best FD opening day by about 25%… so how did that break down with the 3D, which charges a premium of about 25%.? Did the audience increase or was it just the same audience as in the past paying 3D prices?
Did FD shoot its 3D load in one night? We’ll see.
Based on these numbers, H2 should be looking at about $40m domestic and TFD at about $65m domestic. But history is not always kind to these films at this time of year.
Inglourious Basterds dropping 59% is not a big deal. The weekend should end up with more like a 50% drop, which is about normal these days for a strong opener with a niche appeal… and though more women went than expected – according to TWC’s claims about exit polls – it is still a niche film. And yes, niche films can do $100 million now.
District 9 is holding fine, but is not growing… even though Sony threw some new ads at Weekend Three this week. The drop is normal. Anyone who uses the words “Best Picture Nomination” in the same sentence as the title, “District 9″ needs a trip to the optometrist to have their to have their August perspective checked… quickly.
Interestingly, Inglourious and D9 are traveling in near-lockstep at the box office. D9 was about $500k ahead of where IB is after the second Friday. The two movies, compared day by day, have split “top spot” almost evenly. And on Friday 2, Inglourious is up. Will it hit D9′s $7.2m second Saturday? We’ll know tomorrow. But it looks like the two films will run neck-n-neck to the end, each ending with between $110m and $125m domestic.
GI Joe looks like it is heading to a $300m worldwide final. 6 years after Hulk did $245m worldwide, you’re looking at a similar financial situation. GI Joe will be trying to get out of the red ink for years to come – a couple of million DVD units will make the difference between a loss and a breakeven film – but is not an unmitigated financial disaster. Then the question of the sequel… and if you think an announcement is the same as a film getting made, you are too green to live. Marvel lost money on The Incredible Hulk, even though it did a better job of giving the core audience what it wanted. It grossed slightly more than the first Hulk film… but cost more – which says so much, given that when Universal made the first film in 2002/3, it was their priciest effort ever – and it lost money.
So do you make a GI Joe sequel? Do you try to rein in the budget? Didn’t the kids come to see stuff blow up real big? It’s not like they spent the budget they had on actors. I don’t know. Does this studio want to be dragged through a sequel? Remember the public apologies that came out of Charlie’s Angels; Full Frontal. Remember all the drama around M:I3? Could they mistake $300m from GI Joe for $700m from the first Transformers? And dare we invoke Superman Returns and its $391,081,192 worldwide gross? (No sequel for YOU, Bryan!)
Taking Woodstock opened with a splat. A pity. Mr. Martin was fine in the lead, but Jake Gyllenhaal would have given them a better shot. So would Emile Hirsch. But we’d be talking about the $2.8m Friday instead of the $1.2m Friday. Shia LeBouf… maybe then you’d be looking at a $6m Friday and a $15m opening weekend.
Nice number for The September Issue. Valentino: The Last Emperor announced its upcoming, self-distributed release on DVD and Blu-ray this week. Which film will be more popular in the end… and in history? I would say that they belong together in a double box… perhaps with Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags , a movie I haven’t seen yet, but which is heading to Toronto and seems like a good fit.
Trailer: When in Rome
Friday, August 28th, 2009Poll du Jour
Friday, August 28th, 2009
Results after the jump…
Amenabar/Weisz/Agora
Friday, August 28th, 2009Trailering The Men Who Stare At Goats
Friday, August 28th, 2009New Images from Twilight: New Moon
Friday, August 28th, 2009Following Bella Swan’s ill-fated 18th birthday party, Edward Cullen and his family abandon the town of Forks, Washington, in an effort to protect her from the dangers inherent in their world. As the heartbroken Bella sleepwalks through her senior year of high school, numb and alone, she discovers Edward’s image comes to her whenever she puts herself in jeopardy. Her desire to be with him at any cost leads her to take greater and greater risks.
With the help of her childhood friend Jacob Black, Bella refurbishes an old motorbike to carry her on her adventures. Bella’s frozen heart is gradually thawed by her budding relationship with Jacob, a member of the mysterious Quileute tribe, who has a supernatural secret of his own.
When a chance encounter brings Bella face to face with a former nemesis, only the intervention of a pack of supernaturally large wolves saves her from a grisly fate, and the encounter makes it frighteningly clear that Bella is still in grave danger. In a race against the clock, Bella learns the secret of the Quileutes and Edward’s true motivation for leaving her. She also faces the prospect of a potentially deadly reunion with her beloved that is a far cry from the one she’d hoped for.
New Trailer for Alejandro Amenábar’s Agora
Friday, August 28th, 2009Taking Woodstock
Friday, August 28th, 2009There are many things wrong with this film.
It attempts too much. It glides around some of the issues that it seems to want to confront. And it sets up many interesting ideas that it never finds the time to dig into.
But I kinda liked it walking out of the theater… and i have liked it more in retrospect as the weeks have passed.
Ang Lee is, obviously, a quality filmmaker. He’s got skillz. And he has put together an often compelling and unexpected cast.
The stand-out is Imelda Staunton, though she is also the actor most vulnerable to attacks for overacting. I am on the pro-Staunton train on this. Her performance as an immigrant Jew who didn’t go to the camps, but did get chased out of Europe with that threat on her heels, and then settled in rural upstate New York, is muscular. She is the bull, whether in the field or the china shop. And the reason it’s not overacting is that it all feels like it is coming right from the soul of that woman. The problem, unfortunately, is that her story is one of those that gets many interesting angles, but doesn’t get fulfilled by the overloaded blintz of a movie. Her use as a comic character would have been fine… had they given her the full expanse of her storyline.
Demetri Martin is good as the Mary Richards of the film.. though to be fair, he is a somewhat more proactive character than just being the soft center around which the crazies dance. But what is driving him? Again, this is a hole in the storytelling. The movie gives us all the touchstones of what is going on with him, but isn’t coy so much as so overwhelmed by everything else that it fails to allow the time for his issues to solidify.
Even the idea that this young man brought Woodstock: 3 Days Of Love, Peace & Music to Woodstock: The Town (or really, the town next door) but never gets to enjoy his accomplishment is given a central line through the movie… but doesn’t quite congeal into what it clearly seemed to be going for.
Still… as unset a pudding as it is… as prone as it is to want to recreate the experience on the ground there and then become a drawing room comedy and then turn into Meatballs and then become a 70s coming out movie… the warm spots stay with me. Emile Hirsch seeming like he is about to go off the rails and then bringing it all back again… Eugene Levy giving a solid performance without resorting to schtick… Paul Dano looking handsome and Kelli Garner feeling completely real as a girl you’d get into the VW bus with just in case the drugs have loosened her belt as much as her memory… Liev Schreiber set up to fail horribly, but pulling it out regally… the folks who make up the town… Carmel Amit and Jennifer Merrill as the girls you can’t take your eyes off of in the Earthlight players… Henry Goodman, best known in the US for failing to replace Nathan Lane in The Producers, delivering a relaxed turn as a so-familiar aging man who just wants to get along… Jonathan Groff, who played Claude in Hair in Central Park last year and gets to play a wealthy spin on Berger – he’s still a little young – in this film… Mamie Gummer looking more like her mom here, but seeming more of her own actress than in other roles…
The number of little gems – and that is just a partial list – is why this film overcomes its weaknesses for me. It’s a tapas movie when I was expecting a full meal. But the tapas are tasty. And that lingers with me.
BYOB Weekend
Friday, August 28th, 2009Slow enough out there for ya?
Super Movie Friends 4 – AntiChrist
Friday, August 28th, 2009This sneak peek is light on spoilers, though the central themes of nature and psychology are addressed.
With an unreviewable weekend upon us, we decided that this week’s SMF would be about a movie that is heading to Toronto, will not be released in the US until December, but which is sure to be talked about a lot, as it has been since Cannes. Lars Von Trier’s AntiChrist.
THERE WILL BE SPOILERS… the movie is discussed from open to close.
This week’s show. with guests Kim Morgan and Larry Gross, is here. And yes, Virginia, there is an mp3 on the page if you want it.
A sneak peek YouTube clip will soon be available as well.
Indie is screenering
Friday, August 28th, 2009
Dark movies by daylight…
Box Office Hell – August 28, 2009
Friday, August 28th, 2009
Killwe Films Chronicles A Project
Friday, August 28th, 2009The adventure of it is on Massify… Here is the most recent addition…
Massify + Killer Films Episode 1 from Massify on Vimeo.
Early Looks…
Friday, August 28th, 2009
BYOB On A Sleepy Thursday – 8279
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Tarantino on spaghetti westerns and non-homaging
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Tarantino wanted to clarify for Sight & Sound how his films are about language. Not so much film language: “I don’t know if this film does that quite so much. When I read Nick James’ piece in Sight & Sound [in the July issue], obviously 
I didn’t agree with where he was coming from in a lot of the aspects of it, but that’s all well and good. The thing I took exception to – and he’s not the only one to do it – is that there’s this aspect when critics write about my work, partly it’s because they know I’m such a film aficionado, where they try to match wits with me and show their own cinema knowledge. I give them a licence to show off their knowledge, and they apply that to me. So the part I don’t like about Nick’s piece is, like, “Oh, here’s a big slice of Leone, and a dollop of Cimino, and a side order of Tinto Brass.” I take exception to that! I don’t think like that. Now, I’m going to address what you’re saying. In the case of Kill Bill, that completely applies. Uma Thurman isn’t just fighting her way through her death list, she isn’t just fighting her way through the Deadly Vipers, she’s fighting her way through the annals of exploitation cinema from all over the world. That actually is part of it. I don’t think that’s necessarily what I’m doing with Inglourious Basterds. Having said that, there definitely is, in the first two chapters, an idea of doing a spaghetti western with World War II iconography. I thought that would work its way through the whole movie, but it actually doesn’t. I think it ends after the second chapter and it becomes something else. But one of the hooks I had to hang that on, as opposed to it just being a groovy idea, is this: one of the things I always enjoyed about spaghetti westerns was the brutal landscape, the brutal world in which they took place. It was much more unforgiving and hostile than most American western landscapes. It’s very violent, life is cheap, death is around the corner at any moment. Well, that describes Europe during World War II – right there in the 20th century, a very close approximation of a spaghetti-western landscape. And something I find very, very interesting about the opening chapter of Inglourious Basterds is that, even with the Nazi uniforms, even with the motorcycles and the car, it doesn’t break the western feel. It almost adds to it in a strange, shouldn’t-work-but-does kind of way. It just feels like a western. And not even just a spaghetti western: it could be Shane.”
But here’s the snappy capper: “The shot through the doorway of Shosanna fleeing can’t help but recall The Searchers.” “I’ll take slight exception to that too – and I’m having a good time clarifying this – in that I think it’s safe to say that if John Ford’s mother had never met John Ford’s father, I’d still have figured out that shooting through a doorway like that would make for a cool shot.” Tarantino laughs loudly.
