Archive for September, 2011
Sean Penn In #OccupyTahrirSquare
Friday, September 30th, 2011Charlie Kaufman’s Next To Use Film Bloggers As Leaping-Off Point
Friday, September 30th, 2011“There’s a lot in there about the internet and anger: cultural, societal and individual anger. And isolation in this particular age we live in. And competition: it’s about the idea of people in this world wanting to be seen.”
Charlie Kaufman’s Next To Use Film Bloggers As Leaping-Off Point
Picturing John Lasseter’s Winery
Friday, September 30th, 2011Has Abduction Abbreviated Taylor Lautner’s Abilities?
Friday, September 30th, 2011Times Marvels At Scale (Per Capita) Of Reykjavík Int’l Film Festival
Friday, September 30th, 2011Pinewood Studios At 75
Friday, September 30th, 2011Wilmington on Movies: 50/50
Friday, September 30th, 2011
U.S.: Jonathan Levine, 2011
Your best friend looks you in the face and tells you that he’s dying. Wait a minue, it’s not quite like that…He tells you that he has a rare form of spinal cancer and that his chances of survival, according to the doctors, are 50/50. (Which is, obviously, where this movie got its title.) What do you say? What can you say?
In 50/50, the best friend, a good-hearted loudmouth named Kyle (played by Seth Rogen), listens and points out to Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) — with whom he works (as a writer) at a Seattle radio station — that in casino, 50/50 would be the best odds at the table.
Overly glib, predictable wisecrackery? In the standard Rogenish glibmeister key? Perhaps. But in this case, Rogen actually was the friend who heard the bad news, and he heard it from his pal Will Reiser, a fellow comedy actor-writer with whom Rogen worked on “Da Ali G Show.” Reiser later wrote the screenplay for 50/50, based on his own experiences with that same form of rare spinal cancer, and that’s the script that Rogen has now produced and co-stars in. So we can’t exactly say he doesn’t understand the character or the situation. He does. He lived it. We didn’t.
Ditto for Reiser, whose surrogate character Adam is played by Gordon-Levitt with a self-effacing vulnerability, an unforced sensitivity, and a quiet determination to survive, that definitely suggests a real person, one we’d want to know, reacting in real ways. And since both of these actors are probably jokers in real life — comedy writers even more comedically inclined than the young NPR writers they’re playing in 50/50 — it’s likely they would talk and behave like this, and try like this to extract humor from even an awful, frightening situation, like a diagnosis of cancer.
50/50 is one of the better American comedies and one of the better dramas of the year, even though, at first glace, the subject matter seems an open invitation to bathos and over-sentimentality and a compensating over-reliance on coarse “life-embracing” comedy, and toward the kind of cute secondary characters that often pop up in movies like this — to supply little life-lessons, or to relieve the monotony of anguish. Writer Reiser and director Jonathan Levin and the actors elude most of these pitfalls, and others, and they do so well that we should really cut the movie some slack for anything it missed.
The movie follows Adam relentlessly but compassionately right from the early scene when he learns of the cancer, though his revelation to Kyle, through his sometimes unhappy encounters with his girlfriend Rachel (Bryce Dallas Howard), a mediocre painter whose will to sacrifice quickly evaporates, through his meetings with doctors, therapists, and fellow cancer sufferers, right up to the not-exactly-predictable climax. And even though we might not expect this mixture of heavy, near-weepy drama and sharp-tongued, sometimes bawdy comedy to work all that well, it mostly does.
I did have a slight problem with the character of Adams girlfriend Rachel, not because of the way Howard played her (she’d be the best or near-best actor on screen in many another recent movie), but because Rachel, and Kyle‘s acerbic hostility toward her, seemed a little
I’d like to say something about Philip Baker Hall — even though I‘m not talking so much about this movie (in which he plays a man facing his own death with some bemusement and a touch of rage) as I am about his many other movies. It’s just this: Hall is a great movie actor, one of the absolute best we have, or have ever had. His portrayal of a turbulent, sobgbing, screaming, semi-drunken, nightmare-stricken “Richard Nixon” in Robert Altman‘s 1984 Secret Honor, is one of the most amazing tours de force and greatest performances in all of American movies — and he was also great as Sydney, the quiet gambler in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight and as Jimmy Gator in Magnolia and in many others, including the little supporting roles he often gets, and always perfectly fills.
Hall is 80. It seems a little unfair that, because of the intrinsic ageism of most American movies and TV, we mostly get only snatches of an actor like Hall, that he’s slotted for just supporting or cameo roles, and we don’t more often get to see him tear down the house the way he did in Secret Honor. We can’t say very much more about him because Gordon-Levitt, Rogen and Kendrick obviously have the stand out roles here, and they do them beautifully and deserve all the praise they’re getting. But Rogen, Gordon-Levitt and Kendrick, all young and hot and very gifted, can get almost all the roles they want, while older, plainer-looking actors like Hall can’t and didn’t.
The best he can, the real Seth Rogen scenes here, are the ones where he watches Adam shave his head and the one where he takes Adam out to a bar to get laid (after Rachel walks) and explains that he’s going to use sympathy games and play the cancer card for his buddy. This is the kind of scene that, told baldly like that, seems tasteless, and might be in other hands, but that actually plays both funny and sad — and the kind of funny that trumps sad.
50/50 is not a perfect movie. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s one of those movies where, when you hear the premise, you may be convinced that it can’t possibly work. But it does. Reiser’s and Rogen‘s show fulfills its goal. It moves us and makes us laugh. It‘s honest, true, very well done, the kind of movie we should see much more often. Reiser does what an artist should do: He uses his life and his technique to illuminate the lives of all of us. As for Rogen, he may be loud, he may act obnoxious (deliberately), and he may make a shtick out of talking dirty. But this movie shows he’s a good, if wild and woolly, friend and a good actor, on screen and off. So, apparently, are Gordon-Levitt, and Kendrick. And Philip Baker Hall.
Reiser, by the way, is in remission. I won’t tell you what happens to Adam, but I will tell you that you’ll probably like this movie, even if you’ve lost someone you loved to terminal illness. Maybe especially if you’ve lost someone.
Dargis And Scott Wax Autumnal From Festival Fever
Friday, September 30th, 2011Utah Fines Salt Lake City’s Brewvies Cinema Pub $1,627 For Hangover II’s Ladyman’s Parts
Friday, September 30th, 2011Woody Joins Mile-High Club With $100 Million-Plus Worldwide For Midnight In Paris
Friday, September 30th, 2011“They’re like postcards. He makes charming portraits of cities that are essentially for tourists.”
Woody Joins Mile-High Club With $100 Million-Plus Worldwide For Midnight In Paris
More Rumors About THR’s Owner, Prometheus Group, Readying To Shake Up Other Trades
Friday, September 30th, 2011Paul Bettany Sez Movies Useta Be Better
Friday, September 30th, 2011Extras Want More Money For Mingling With Anna Karenina
Friday, September 30th, 2011Dargis On NYFF 49
Thursday, September 29th, 2011“Given how profoundly the film world has changed over the last half-century, the festival’s overall shift from a boutique to something like a souk may make sense.”
Dargis On NYFF 49
Culver Studios, Where Kane, Kong, “America’s Next Top Model” Were Made, Yours For $150 Million
Thursday, September 29th, 2011DP/30: Melancholia, actors Alexander Skarsgard, Kiefer Sutherland
Thursday, September 29th, 2011Get Yer Print Of Disney’s Song Of The South In 16mm IB Tech For A Mere… $1,499
Thursday, September 29th, 2011Drafthouse Films Acquires North American Rights to “COMIN’ AT YA! 3D” from Fantastic Fest 2011
Thursday, September 29th, 2011The Highest Grossing Independent 3D Film Of The 1980s Becomes First Fully Restored Classic 3D Film Using State-Of-The-Art RealD Technology
AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 29, 2011 — Drafthouse Films, the film distribution arm of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, announced the acquisition of North American rights to COMIN AT YA! 3D following the premiere of its stunning new restoration at Fantastic Fest 2011. In 1981, armed with exclusively developed, cutting-edge 3D technology co-writer/producer/star Tony Anthony enlisted Italian genre veteran Fernando Baldi to realize the first-ever 3D spaghetti western – a grindhouse-fueled tale of a vengeful gunslinger. Breaking indie box office records, COMIN’ AT YA! 3D is credited with igniting a resurgence of studio-produced 3D films. Thirty years later, Anthony and producer Tom Stern of STERNCO 3D have broken new frontiers again with the first fully restored classic 3D film in high-definition, utilizing contemporary state-of-art RealD(TM)3D technology. A limited theatrical re-release tour is planned for 2012.
“We felt that Drafthouse Films, with their young and aggressive leadership, combined with a new model for 3D distribution, gave us the best chance to reach both longtime fans of the film and new audiences,” says Tony Anthony.
“In a barrage of flying arrows, snakes and old-school 3D thrills COMIN’ AT YA! certainly delivers,” Drafthouse Films director Evan Husney says, “and matching quintessential 80s-style 3D with cutting-edge contemporary technology is going to make for the ultimate 3D experience for movie-goers.”
For more information on Drafthouse Films or COMIN’ AT YA 3D visit:
http://www.cominatyanoir3d.com
http://twitter.com/drafthousefilms
http://facebook.com/drafthousefilms
http://youtube.com/drafthousefilms
About Drafthouse Films
Drafthouse Films, the distribution arm of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, debuted in 2010 with the theatrical release of FOUR LIONS (Top 10 Film of 2010 by Time Magazine). Drafthouse Films is dedicated to scouring the globe in search of amazing, challenging and unique films that we are passionate about sharing with a wide audience. Current projects include THE FP and THE ABCs OF DEATH. Drafthouse Films along with the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Mondo, Fantastic Fest and Badass Digest comprise the growing Alamo Drafthouse entertainment lifestyle brand.
About Fantastic Fest
Fantastic Fest is the largest genre film festival in the U.S., specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world. In years past the festival has been home to world premieres of THERE WILL BE BLOOD, APOCALYPTO, ZOMBIELAND and RED while the guest roster has included such talent as Mel Gibson, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Ryan Reynolds, Karl Urban, Josh Hartnett, The RZA, Dolph Lundgren, Jemaine Clement, Paul Rudd, Bill Pullman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Kevin Smith, Jon Favreau, George Romero, Darren Aronofsky and Mike Judge. Fantastic Fest also features world, national and regional premieres of new, up-and-coming genre films. The festival has launched and propelled the buzz for international genre hits like THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, MONSTERS, TIMECRIMES and TROLLHUNTER. Fantastic Fest is held each year at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on South Lamar in Austin, Texas. The Alamo Drafthouse was named the best cinema in America by Entertainment Weekly and features food and drink served to your seat without any disruption of the movie experience.
During his Keynote Address at the International film Festival Summit in Las Vegas, Variety president and publisher Charlie Koones listed Fantastic Fest in a list of “10 Film Festivals We Love,” a list which included industry heavy-hitters such as Cannes, Toronto and Telluride. We’ve also been named as one of the “25 coolest film festivals” and the “25 film festivals worth the entry fee” by Moviemaker Magazine.
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SnagFilm Owner Leonsis Blogs “Class Warfare”
Thursday, September 29th, 2011“I have great empathy for middle class or lower middle class America… Someone needs to talk our President down off of this rhetoric about good vs. evil.”
SnagFilm Owner Leonsis Blogs “Class Warfare”
