By Jason Apuzzo. Yesterday, after my post on the new film Tomorrow When the War Began (which appears to be a kind of Australian Red Dawn), a reader reminded me that this new film is coming out at roughly the same time as the new videogame Homefront - which is actually written by Red Dawn writer/director John Milius, and is quite obviously inspired by the subject matter of his original film. Check out the two trailers for the game, above and below. My understanding is that Homefront will be coming out in February.
John Milius' forthcoming video game.
Homefront is actually set about 15 years from now. The idea is that North Korea has become a mini-expansionist empire, invigorated by a young new leader, and that this empire grows to consume both South Korea and Japan. Meanwhile, the United States’ economic and military profiles continue to weaken. The North Koreans then launch some kind of advanced electronic pulse weapon that takes out our defense systems. Enter North Korean invaders.
Whether one finds this scenario especially plausible, by the way, isn’t really the issue here. What’s fascinating is how prevalent this type of scenario is becoming in current projects.
We’ve been documenting these invasion scenarios here at Libertas all summer, as regular readers know. These scenarios are truly starting to appear everywhere – most prominently in science fiction films. Suffice to say that Homefront is looking not only a lot like the forthcoming MGM remake of Red Dawn, but also this new Australian film Tomorrow When the War Began, plus the forthcoming web series Red Storm, and about a hundred different sci-fi invasion stories coming down the pike. Plus, this summer we’ve seen the return of films depicting the Cold War Soviet spy threat in Salt and Farewell, and vivid depictions of communist tyranny in indie films like Mao’s Last Dancer, Disco & Atomic War, and The Red Chapel (which deals specifically with North Korea).
How big of a trend is this? It’s a very big one that’s impacting us in many different ways. Two recent films greenlit with $200 million budgets – Universal’s Battleship and the Warner Brothers Battle of Midway – both seem to partake in the trend, for example. [Midway was the World War II battle that permanently scuttled any Japanese hopes of invading America; Battleship is a World War II-style naval battle, set in the future, pitting a combined Earth navy against an invading alien force.]
We’ll keep an eye on all this here at Libertas, to be sure. I personally think these films reflect deep domestic anxieties about the direction the country’s going in … and I don’t think these anxieties are waning. They’re only growing in intensity.
One final word: I spent a pleasant evening several years ago with John Milius; we smoked cigars and talked about the White Rajah of Sarawak … and, ironically, about Mao. I want to wish him the best with this new project.
Posted on September 1st, 2010 at 4:37pm.
[Editor's Note: Recently I came across this striking video above, by New York-based filmmaker Richard Mosse. At first glance, I was shocked by what appeared to be a shahid-style terror video made by a Western filmmaker. Watching the video through, however, it occurred to me that this likely was not an actual terror video, so much as a kind of 'genre' piece or riff on terror videos. My thoughts then moved to the question of what an expert in this area might think of it. Fortunately I was able to turn to LFM Contributer 'Max Garuda,' who works in the field and has access to Arabic translation.]
“A short terror video made in Gaza. Possibly the only such video ever made by non-Palestinian producers. As a result, the representation breaks with the conventions of the Palestinian suicide video genre. In Arabic, ’shahid’ means martyr, or witness.” - Filmmaker/photographer Richard Mosse, describing his video Shahid.
By ‘Max Garuda‘. The artist’s commentary above alerts the viewer to the existence of a ‘terrorist video genre,’ and that Mosse’s creation breaks with that category. This assertion raises two questions: what is the ‘terrorist video genre’ and what conventions does Mosse’s video contest? (An argument can be made that any film belongs in any genre if anyone can make a compelling argument for inclusion. Or, said differently, film/video genres are not fixed sets of criteria by which categorizations are easily made. Rather, they are fluid, evolving bodies of work, responding to artistic practice, distribution/marketing strategies and audience expectations.)
That being said, why does Mosse desire to characterize his video within the ‘terrorist video genre’ or by comparison to it – especially when the differences that do exist are so significant enough to make a strong argument that his video doesn’t break from the genre, but rather has nothing to do with the genre. But first, a little background on the ‘terrorist video genre.’
The 'theater of terror.'
As the title might suggest, the most obvious distinguishing characteristic of the genre was originally the provenence of the video followed by content. Generally speaking, only terrorists made ‘terrorist videos,’ which were used to showcase the terrorizing act or transmit a message requiring some expression of authenticity. The terrorist act depends on shock and a visceral reaction by the ‘public’ of the terrorized. A beheading that occurs in the forest is just a beheading; a beheading captured on video and spread globally by broadcast news or the Internet is an act of terror. Videos showing murders, explosions and other deadly acts were created to broaden the impact of the terrorist act. The ‘theater of terror’ is a common framework for understanding terrorism, in which the terrorist’s act must have the paralyzing effect of fear – because the scope of the actual violence is quite limited. Even the 9/11 attacks, with their relatively high death toll, depend on the ‘theater of terror’ effect for their power–changing how Americans (and other countries and their citizens) conduct their daily lives, from intrusive security measures to a simple constant state of fear. Many early terrorist videos operated in this domain.
The other common example of early terrorist videos were simply video-based messages. Whether VHS tapes smuggled out of remote bivouacs to eager news outlets or digital videos posted to websites, the form of the terrorist video was targeted primarily at followers of the movement, to ensure them that the leadership was still alive and in control. Hence, the periodic release of a video of Osama bin Laden exhorting his followers or Ayman al-Zawahiri expounding on a facet of Islamic exegesis that fits his extremist goals. The target of these videos was generally the faithful, and secondly the ‘contested populations’ or those that don’t openly support the extremists but aren’t too convinced of the piety, competence and forthrightness of local government.
Strategic messaging.
More recently, though, we see a fusion of these two goals (theater of terror and strategic messaging) into the genre of the ‘terrorist video’ that Mosse and his collaborators purport to produce. In this newer class of terrorist videos, we usually see direct address of the camera by the producing group, images of their heroes (Bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi, etc.), and sometimes images of their terrorist acts or types of acts the video implies are imminent. Because these newer videos are not as gruesome as the beheading type video, and because they are frequently hagiographic in their treatment of extremist heroes and martyrs, their access to the ‘theater of terror’ is less about instilling fear in a subject population, but rather in making a spectacle of the process of terrorism and thus improve recruitment within the contested population (particularly disaffected youth). Continue reading »
By Jason Apuzzo. It looks like MGM’s forthcoming Red Dawn remake may have some competition.
A new Australian film called Tomorrow When the War Began, distributed in Austalia by Paramount (starting September 2nd) and based on an Australian teen novel series of the same title, is getting a lot of buzz right now (see The Hollywood Reporter’s HeatVision blog and Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood today) because the film is currently unspooling for potential distributors at the Toronto Film Festival. The film marks the directorial debut of screenwriter Stuart Beattie, whose credits include Collateral and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Here’s the HeatVision summary of the project:
“Tomorrow” is based on the best-selling Australian novel by John Marsden, which is the first in a series of seven books that have sold over two million copies in Australia and New Zealand. In a “Red Dawn” from Down Under way, it tells the story of a group of high school teenagers who decide to take an end of the year camping trip and return home to find houses deserted and phone lines cut. They soon learn that their country has been invaded, and they’re forced into a battle of life and death against the deadly occupying force.
Check out the trailer above – the parallels to Red Dawn are quite obvious. You can otherwise read some early reviews of the film here and here.
The film, and John Marsden’s original novels, are coy on the matter of who the invading force happens to be – but all indications are that they are most likely the communist Chinese, potentially with the aid of other southeast Asian forces. Tellingly, Marsden apparently dedicated the most recent book in the Tomorrow series to “the people of Tibet, East Timor and West Papua” … all of whom have been invaded either by China, or Indonesia. For an in-depth look at the controversy over this project in Australia, I strongly advise watching the interview below with Marsden – who talks about the novels and the film, and discusses the political implications of both. Expect this exact same controversy to play out once this film is released in the U.S. – assuming that’s allowed to happen.
It’s fascinating to me that films like this are suddenly getting made right now (e.g., Salt) – although certainly a great many more of them are getting made outside Hollywood (and America, generally) than from within. [In American films right now, fears of foreign invasion are currently being sublimated into the science fiction alien invasion genre. See my exchange with the LA Times' Patrick Goldstein here.]
Most recently, for example, it was an Australian production team that made Mao’s Last Dancer, which is in theaters right now (see the LFM review). Mao’s Last Dancer deals with a ballet dancer’s defection to the United States, in a much-celebrated case that even involved the intervention of (then) Vice President George H.W. Bush, and yet it was apparently impossible for that film to be made here in this country by American filmmakers.
So we now apparently have a case where a kind of ersatz remake of Red Dawn, made by Australians, may actually hit theaters before MGM’s ‘official’ Red Dawn remake (due to MGM’s complex financial situation). Personally, by the way, I’m still waiting for Chris Morris’ incredible new film Four Lions to get its U.S. release (see the LFM review); that release seems very much up in the air, sadly, due to frightened domestic distributors.
So what’s going on here? I think it’s this: that the climate for freedom-oriented filmmaking is actually better these days outside the United States than within. What a shift that represents. And what a tragedy.
Let’s hope Tomorrow When the War Began gets a U.S. release. We’ll be keeping an eye on this story as it develops.
Posted on August 31st, 2010 at 3:19pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. Yesterday we reported on how both: 1) Avatar: Special Edition tanked at the domestic box office, debuting behind Piranha 3D; and 2) how James Cameron had bad-mouthed Piranha 3D’s use of the new 3D technology as “exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D.” Furthermore, and perhaps most tellingly, Cameron distanced himself from his own direction of Piranha 2: The Spawning.
Today, Piranha 3D producer Mark Canton (who also produced 300, another technically innovative thriller I liked) bites back!
As reported today at the LA Times’ 24 Frames blog, Canton has apparently fired off an open letter to Cameron on a variety of issues – including not only Cameron’s proprietary attitude toward 3D, but also the narrative problems with Avatar. Good for Canton.
Here are some choice excerpts from Canton’s letter:
“Mr. Cameron, who singles himself out to be a visionary of movie-making, seems to have a small vision regarding any motion pictures that are not his own … Let’s just keep this in mind Jim — you did not invent 3D. You were fortunate that others inspired you to take it further … To be honest, I found the 3D in ‘Avatar’ to be inconsistent and while ground breaking in many respects, sometimes I thought it overwhelmed the storytelling … Technology aside, I wish ‘Avatar’ had been more original in its storytelling.”
As you can imagine, I’m very much in agreement with Canton about this. You know what Avatar is without the cumulative impact of 3D, ILM and Weta Digital? It’s Green Zone. That’s the little secret Cameron wants to hide, and why he’s weirdly distancing himself now from his roots in the world of campy, Roger Corman-inspired cult movies like Piranha 2. Cameron’s above that stuff now, you see – because he’s got 20th Century Fox and a massive production apparatus backing him now. What a phony.
By the way, I’ve actually seen Cameron’s Piranha 2: The Spawning, and the original Joe Dante/Roger Corman Piranha – and, of course, Alex Aja’s new Piranha 3D … and I can tell you that Piranha 3D is easily the best of the three, and Cameron’s film is easily the worst.
Is that part of the subtext here? Could Cameron possibly be that venal – that he doesn’t like being reminded of his all-too humble origins … just as some younger guy borrows ‘his’ technology and makes an obviously better film?
Perhaps the true problem Cameron faces is that – unlike George Lucas, and unlike Peter Jackson – he’s just a litte too easy to copy.
[UPDATE: in the wake of Piranha 3D's surprising success as a critical and cult phenomenon, we're apparently now going to be getting Shark Night 3D, according to the Hollywood Reporter's HeatVision blog today. The film is set in the Louisiana bayou, with the usual sexy teenagers as fish chowder. Also read today how James Cameron - with Guillermo Del Toro's help - is about to ruin H.P. Lovecraft's classic sci-fi horror novel, At the Mountains of Madness, with their new 3D film adaptation. A new, highly unflattering script review of that film is out.]
Posted on August 31st, 2010 at 1:26pm.
"Mad Men" star Jon Hamm (Don Draper) at the Emmys.
By Jason Apuzzo. • You couldn’t ask for a better weekend: Mad Men pulled off a rare 3-peat, winning the Best Drama Emmy for the third consecutive year, while James Cameron’s Avatar: Special Edition tanked at the box office, finishing at the #12 spot. Making this failure all the more delicious is the fact that Avatar finished behind Piranha 3D (at #11), even after Cameron recently bad-mouthed Piranha 3D (“[E]xactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s”) … even going so far as to distance himself – unconvincingly, I might add – from having directed the Piranha 2: The Spawning!
Hey, Jim, what really “cheapens the medium” is the political propagandizing you’re doing in Avatar.
• We’re apparently about to get a huge, heaping dose of World War II action coming our way because Warner Brothers has apparently greenlit a $200 million 3D Battle of Midway film, and John Woo’s Flying Tigers movie will indeed be going forward in the IMAX format, as we previously reported. We look forward to both projects.
• On the 3D front by the way, the great Werner Herzog has apparently just done a 3D documentary on the Chauvet cave paintings of southern France, called Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I’m really looking forward this – I hope there’s an LA screening in the near future. What a perfect use for the 3D medium.
• If Machete isn’t enough for you … there appears to be a new genre forming: alien invasion movies set on the border … about illegal aliens of the extraterrestrial variety! Go figure. We’ve reported previously on Monsters (see an intriguing new production still for that here), and now comes the new Mexican alien invasion thriller, Seres: Genesis. The Hollywood Reporter has the new trailer for it here. Are we starting to reach the shark-jumping point in this burgeoning alien invasion genre?
The girls of "Mad Men" at The Emmys.
In related sci-fi news, there’s an interesting new rumor out about the storyline for the J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg alien invasion thriller, Super 8. According to Dark Horizons, the story for the film “revolves around a 14-year-old boy growing up in a steel town in 1979 where a train crash forces the town to come together.” The weblink from which Dark Horizons discovered this information has mysteriously vanished …
• In other random news and notes, YouTube is apparently investigating the idea of doing pay-per-view movie downloads (they’re actually already doing this for some indie projects); available for free right now on YouTube, however, is a new documentary that follows Taliban fighters as they clash with U.S. forces (why is YouTube hosting this?); and speaking of getting things for free, William Hurt will be playing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in HBO’s new movie Too Big to Fail about the 2008 financial crisis.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … wags at the LA Times ask today whether Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks (along with TV’s Sofia Vergara, and a few other gals) more or less made the case at the Emmys for 3D TVs. Answer: yes.
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on August 30th, 2010 at 2:32pm.
Jessica Alba & Michelle Rodriguez talk Machete.
By Jason Apuzzo. Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez recently sat down for an interview with ComingSoon.net about their participation in Robert Rodriguez’s new film, Machete.
Here’s Alba, speaking about the film:
“I love the political message. I love the exploitative platform to kind of talk about something that I feel is so relevant. It’s been something that’s been ripe in the Latino community for a long time.”
I love the exploitative platform? I hope what she means by that is the fact that Machete is basically a 70s-style, exploitation-film knock-off … not that she loves ‘exploiting’ the platform of the cinema. [Sigh.]
In any case, ‘exploiting’ seems to be what Robert Rodriguez is doing with this film. As we reported to you on Friday, there are some extraordinary new details we’re learning about what’s in Machete, including this tidbit from The Hollywood Reporter:
Among “Machete’s” more provocative elements are border vigilantes led by Don Johnson as a kind of avatar for Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio and fake political ads for an incumbent senator whose platform is built on his “hard line against wetbacks” and a description of them as “parasites.” That the two characters murder a pregnant Mexican woman to prevent her baby from being born in America and then shoot her distraught husband while uttering the line, “Welcome to America,” underlines the point.
I’m really hard-pressed to understand how this sort of thing helps matters in terms of the ongoing immigration debate. It seems more like a flaming gas can thrown on an already roaring fire … by narcissist Hollywood celebrities who themselves won’t be around to clean up the mess after they’ve helped cause it.
Posted on August 30th, 2010 at 12:52pm.
We think: "bad idea."
"Yo! Let's go for the low-blow, again!"
By Jason Apuzzo. Someone needs to get to Sly Stallone and tell him to stop digging.
On Sly’s Twitter account from three days ago, he indicated that he wants Bruce Willis playing a “super villain” in Expendables 2.
Problem: In The Expendables Willis played a CIA front man who goes by the name ‘Mr. Church.’ [By the way, isn't the name a little interesting there?] So it’s apparently the CIA guy again who gets to become the “super villain” in Sly’s next Expendables film.
Memo to Sly: since you’re such a patriotic guy, who believes that “America apologizes too much,” maybe the “super villain” in your next film could be … a terrorist? Or Kim Jong Il? Or one of Castro’s thugs? Or Chinese communists? Instead of the American CIA operative, again. Just a thought.
Regular Libertas readers know I haven’t been falling for this ‘Stallone has wrapped himself in a flag of patriotism’ nonsense that’s been coming from certain quarters of the media recently. The Expendables is a nasty hit-job on the CIA, pure and simple. Now we’re getting a sense of just how committed Stallone is to this anti-CIA plotline as a cornerstone for his new, mini-franchise – despite his unconvincing denials to that effect.
On the box office front, by the way, Stallone’s film slipped to third place over the weekend, against weak competition. Oh, and three weeks in Expendables still isn’t performing as well as Salt (compare the two films here and here), as Salt had made about $9 million more by its third week.
I promise to stop posting on this Salt-Expendables comparison, because it’s becoming quite obvious who’s coming out on top here.
Posted on August 30th, 2010 at 11:52am.
[Editor's Note: Mesrine was the #1 film at the indie box office this past weekend.]
By Joe Bendel. Jacques Mesrine was white and bourgeoisie, but he wanted to be the French Iceberg Slim. A veteran of Algeria, Mesrine became France and Canada’s “Public Enemy #1,” eventually getting his wish, dying in a hail of bullets. Before the inevitable, he glamorized his exploits in two memoirs/novels, making him something of a cult hero to the French-speaking counter-culture. As a result, he became a very PR-conscious public enemy, who would be delighted to know his story has now been adapted in Jean-François Richet’s two-film bio-epic, the first of which, Mesrine: Killer Instinct opened Friday in select theaters nationwide, with Part Two to follow a week later.
In Algeria, Mesrine killed and tortured without a second thought. Returning to France, he is incapable of following in his timid father’s footsteps of working, middleclass respectability. Of course, he has certain talents to offer, which the “establishment” gangster Guido recognizes. While Mesrine takes to racketeering like a fish to water, his wild streak is an obvious liability. He also has issues with women. While his conquests are many, he also seems primed for some rather ugly misogynistic violence.
Vincent Cassel as Mesrine.
Despite his unruliness, Mesrine eventually finds himself married with children. When he even gets a straight job after an early prison stretch, it appears Mesrine might be ready to settle down. Unfortunately, when he is laid off during an economic downturn, Mesrine soon returns to Guido’s organization.
Ironically, as the violence of Mesrine’s criminal endeavors escalates, his press becomes increasingly favorable. He became the gentleman bandit, with a strict code of conduct and New Left street cred. When things get too hot for Mesrine in France, he takes a sojourn to Quebec, falling in with French nationalists – further refining his revolutionary persona.
Killer Instinct is a decent gangster movie on its own, but it is really meant to establish the characters and storyline that continues in Public Enemy No. 1, the second film (that confusingly has the number one in the title). True to its function, Instinct handles the heavy-lifting of character development, setting up the slam-bang action sequences of Enemy. Yet, Richet presents a compellingly unvarnished portrait of Mesrine in the first film, never ameliorating his abusive behavior.
The bulked-up Vincent Cassel is like a French old school De Niro as Mesrine, vicious yet undeniably charismatic. Gérard Depardieu also adds plenty of color as the Jabba the Hutt-like Guido. Unfortunately, Mesrine’s women (even his Spanish wife) are not well delineated either in the script or in the various supporting performances, problematically seeming to exist only as plot devices. Still, Instinct is not bereft of humanity, thanks to Michel Duchaussoy’s touching turn as Mesrine’s father.
After a tour-de-force opening, Richet allows Instinct to lag somewhat in the middle. This is definitely not a problem with the next installment opening September 3rd. Essentially, Instinct sets up the pins and Enemy knocks them down. Altogether, it is an ambitious, shrewdly executed crime drama worth the investment of two trips to the theater.
[Note:This article contains SPOILERS. I love Leave Her to Heaven, but I was spoiled for one of its biggest scenes. Ideally you should watch it first, then come back and we’ll peel the face off the Technicolor mask.]
By Jennifer Baldwin. Is there a better movie about romantic obsession than Leave Her to Heaven? Is there another movie as disturbing and unflinching in its portrayal of a woman obsessed as this film, this nightmare vision in Technicolor? To see the film only once is to remember it forever. It’s no wonder, then, that I’ve been obsessed with Leave Her to Heaven for over a decade. It’s a movie not only about obsession, but one that invites obsession on the part of the audience. We are invited to obsess over the colors, the beauty, the horribly evil acts committed by Gene Tierney’s Elle Berent. That Ellen is a deadly enigma only makes it more fascinating to obsess over her.
I blame Martin Scorsese. One night, many years ago, I stumbled onto his documentary A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies playing on TCM. Three movie clips from the documentary stayed with me long past that night, haunting me, nagging at my mind: clips from Cat People, Scarlet Street, and Leave Her to Heaven. As time went by, it became a kind of quest to track these movies down. First came Cat People and I was spooked by the shadows and the dreaded suggestion of horror. Next came Scarlett Street and I was shocked by the brutal violence and even more brutal cynicism.
When I finally saw Leave Her to Heaven it was almost too overwhelming to describe. The colors, the murders, the pounding tympani, Gene Tierney’s eyes – all the lurid perversity of it burned forever into my brain. I loved it. It was the most delirious melodrama I had ever seen. It still is. It’s woman’s melodrama with a black soul. It pulls the mask back on the notion of romantic, all-consuming love and gives us the horror underneath. And yet, it is achingly beautiful to look at, the beauty and the horror intertwined so that it becomes more than just the story of a monstrous, murderous woman – it becomes a tragedy. Fitting that the title should be a line from Hamlet.
Leave Her to Heaven is essentially two things: Leon Shamroy’s color cinematography and Gene Tierney’s lead performance. Bringing these two essentials together, of course, is the underrated director, John M. Stahl. It is Stahl, in an act of alchemical wizardry, who is able to fuse Tierney’s subtle, disturbing performance with Shamroy’s wild, unrestrained use of Technicolor (all with a handy assist from the set design, art department, and costuming).
Stahl’s film is popular art at its best, a finely balanced creation that melds melodramatic, expressionist visuals with naturalistic, subdued, almost mannequin-like acting styles, so that the effect is a kind of hallucinatory hyper-reality that nevertheless remains remote and mysterious. We never quite know what to make of Ellen’s character.
Why does Ellen act the way she does? Why is her love so ruinously obsessive? Is she evil? Is she merely insane? Is it possible to feel sympathy for her even as she scares the hell out of us? What about her love? Was her love completely rotten and selfish to the core or was there some small piece of it that was true and human and only later became twisted?
Gene Tierney doesn’t get enough credit either as an actress or as a movie star. As far as Leave Her to Heaven is concerned, she is the whole movie. The film loses something – some spark, some energy – when her character dies and Tierney has left the screen. Only Vincent Price’s theatrical courtroom shouting saves the last quarter of the film from collapsing into anticlimax.
And lest anyone doubt Tierney’s performance or her star quality, answer this: what was 20th Century Fox’s highest grossing movie of the 1940s? Leave Her to Heaven. You don’t deliver the studio’s highest grossing picture of the decade if you’re not a star. And who was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar in 1945? Gene Tierney. It’s a shame that she is not more well known today.
Leon Shamroy’s cinematography won the Oscar that year, deservedly so. But it really should have been a double win for Shamroy and Tierney at the Academy Awards of 1945, because Shamroy’s cinematography is merely an extension of Tierney’s performance and vice versa. No one can fault the Academy for giving Joan Crawford an Oscar for Mildred Pierce, but I think in a perfect world it would have been Tierney.
I’m fascinated by the decision to shoot the film in color. Most color films in the mid 1940s were musicals or big budget Westerns. A melodrama like Leave Her to Heaven would ordinarily be a black and white affair. Except Leave Her to Heaven was based on a bestselling novel by Ben Ames Williams – a novel that was wildly popular with audiences, resulting in one of the most highly anticipated film adaptations of the day. It was the kind of prestige picture – and potential moneymaker – that could justify the extra cost to shoot in Technicolor.
What Stahl and Shamroy did with that color is nothing short of breathtaking – not just in the look of the color, but in the way color was used. I’m hard-pressed to think of another movie that depends so much on the use of color to affect mood, theme, and character. It’s been said that the color cinematography in Leave Her to Heaven is so powerful that it’s almost a character in its own right. I think a better way to put it is that the color cinematography isn’t a separate character so much as an extension of one character, the central character of the story: Gene Tierney’s Ellen Berent.
Gene Tierney was one of Hollywood’s greatest beauties, but one thing I’ve heard is that the camera didn’t quite capture how beautiful she was. Part of this had to do with the fact that she made a lot of black and white films and those films weren’t able to display one of her greatest features: her blue-green eyes.
No such problem in Leave Her to Heaven. In fact, the color scheme of the film – dominated by blues, greens, reds, and pinks (along with an eerie amber glow that hovers over most of the film) – is primarily dictated by Tierney’s appearance. Her blue-green eyes and striking red lipstick are used as a template to color almost every frame of the picture. Everywhere there is blue, green, and red. Just as Ellen promises Richard (Cornel Wilde) that she’ll never let him go, so too do Ellen’s “colors” never let the film go– they dominate to such a degree that her presence is felt in almost every frame, even when she’s not there. Continue reading »
By Joe Bendel. It is 117 A.D. and the Roman “conquest” of Britain has been a miserable, blood-soaked experience—for the Romans. Just ask Centurion Quintus Dias, whom we first meet running for his life from a very ticked-off war party of Picts in Neil Marshall’s Centurion, which opened this Friday in select theaters nationwide.
Posted to the most distant Roman outpost, Dias is miserable in Caledonian Britain (what is more or less Scotland today). Things only get worse when his fort is over-run by a Pict surprise attack. The sole survivor, Dias escapes his captors, making his way to what just became the newly Northern-most Roman outpost. Tired of taking a beating to his prestige back in Rome, the local governor commands General Virilus to hunt down the mysterious Pict leader Gorlacon with his vaunted Ninth Legion, to which Dias is now attached.
Virilus is not thrilled with his assignment, but he supposedly has the advantage of the services of Etain, a Pict tracker ostensibly civilized by the governor. Given the way her eyes smolder with hatred, following her into battle is probably a bad idea, but they do it anyway, with predictable results. Now Dias must lead the remnant of the Ninth as they try to rescue their revered General behind enemy lines.
Centurion is a fairly straight-forward historical hack & slash, with maybe a hint of the fantastical. At one point Dias and his men find refuge with Arianne, a woman shunned by the Picts as a purported witch—not that she really is one. She just seems to know a lot about healing herbs. Neil (The Descent) Marshall definitely has a knack for gritty battle scenes, and the clever symmetry of his opening and closing scenes perfectly suits the story of ancient (if misplaced) heroism. Unfortunately, the film lags a bit in-between, with too many scenes of rock-climbing and weary shuffling through the Caledonian forests.
Michael Fassbender is one of the few actors working in film today with potentially movie star-like screen presence. Yet in Centurion, the grizzled badness of Dominic West’s Virilus somewhat outshines him. Still, he has some credible chemistry with Imogen Poots as Arianne the witch. Unfortunately, Ulrich Thomsen is a bland villain as Gorlacon (probably because the film is too conscious of its alleged modern parallels), while as Etain, former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko looks distractingly blue, almost like she walked out of Avatar. Oddly, the Centurion’s Romans are played by Brits, whereas the Britons are mostly played by Scandinavians, Slavs, and even the Belgian Axelle Carolyn.
Centurion’s craftsmanship is definitely above average for action films. Cinematographer Sam McCurdy’s dazzling vistas make the Caledonian mountains look like the Alps. It also boasts one of the cooler opening title sequences of the year. Still, its heavy-handed “occupiers” versus “insurgency” themes often sabotage the film’s momentum. Ultimately, it is an okay summer diversion, but it is effectively limited by its reluctance to definitively pick a side and stick with it.
Posted on August 28th, 2010 at 9:55am.
Danny Trejo & Steven Seagal go at it in "Machete."
By Jason Apuzzo. • The Hollywood Reporter is running a big article today on the controversy expected from Robert Rodriguez’s forthcoming Machete, which comes out next week. Essentially, the film is landing smack in the middle of the ongoing immigration debate (particularly, re: Arizona), and here are some of the delightful episodes we can apparently expect to see in Rodriguez’s film:
Among “Machete’s” more provocative elements are border vigilantes led by Don Johnson as a kind of avatar for Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio and fake political ads for an incumbent senator whose platform is built on his “hard line against wetbacks” and a description of them as “parasites.” That the two characters murder a pregnant Mexican woman to prevent her baby from being born in America and then shoot her distraught husband while uttering the line, “Welcome to America,” underlines the point.
What complicates this sort of thing, of course, is that Rodriguez’s films tend to be done in a tongue-in-cheek manner … but it’s difficult to understand how the murder of a pregnant Mexican woman and her husband – mixed with the genuinely cheap, gratuitous “Welcome to America” crack – is really all that conducive to an amusing storyline.
Or to put it another way: this isn’t very funny.
Rodriguez has made quite a nice career for himself in America. Does he ever reflect on that, at all? I’ve generally been a fan of his – even through the weird, 9/11-related anti-military subplot of Planet Terror - but I’m getting the sense he might be pushing the envelope a bit too far in this film. Why? Why does he feel the need to do this?
• In related news, Machete’s Jessica Alba says she’s going to try to start taking more family-friendly roles, now that she’s a mother. It’s getting a little late for that, frankly. The family-friend roles, that is – not the motherhood.
• On the family-friendly front, by the way, the LA Times has a nice little article today on Disney’s new ‘Tinker Bell’ movie series, which Pixar’s John Lasseter and a variety of other talented people are involved in … so check that out.
Earth in the world of "Avatar."
• One of the things I neglected to mention yesterday in my remarks on James Cameron is that he also gives away too much in his interviews. Even if I was interested in seeing in Avatar: Special Edition – which I’m not – it’s become quite plain that a much longer, fuller version of the film is headed to DVD and Blu-ray. This version of the film, which will include about 16 new minutes (instead of the 9 new minutes in the current version heading into theaters today), is apparently going to include a prologue featuring Sam Worthington’s character on a “polluted, dystopian Earth … shots of lead character Jake in a sports bar” with “polluted, crowded cityscapes.” The picture to the left, taken from this website, apparently gives you the flavor of what Earth looks like in these scenes. I believe the phrase here would be ‘Blade Runner-esque.’
Beyond all this, the new Avatar DVD is also going to have about 45 minutes of unfinished and/or deleted scenes, apparently – so there doesn’t really seem to be much reason to sit through the 3 hours this weekend, except for the fetishists and/or completists.
• No surprises here: a Karate Kid sequel is coming our way. Will the Chinese government get to edit this one, too?
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Katy Perry talks career vs. Christianity today over at Access Hollywood. Sorry, no pin-up today! I promise to make up for it next week …
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on August 76th, 2010 at 2:37pm.
Blue female: Beau Garrett as Jem in "Tron: Legacy."
By Jason Apuzzo. • It would be very easy these days to devote a post per day to James Cameron. He’s everywhere, commenting on everything, seeing analogies to Avatar everywhere, and apparently not turning down many interviews. Perhaps this is what working out of the public eye for so many years does to you. In any case, Cameron is in the news again today for many different reasons on the eve of the Avatar re-release. In the LA Times he indicates that he wants Avatar to compete with Star Wars, Star Trek and the Tolkein ‘franchise’ on a macro-pop culture scale (it won’t, for many reasons). He also sees analogies to the despoiling of Pandora in the BP oil spill, and now comes word today – and this certainly is no surprise – that the Iraq war represented a major impetus behind Cameron’s writing of Avatar.
Mr. Cameron strikes me as being something akin to a mad scientist from a 1950s sci-fi film, in that there is undoubtable genius at work in what he does … yet this ‘genius’ (which is of both a technical and narrative variety) is put to ends that are, ultimately, insane in their basic conception. The irony is that Avatar reverses so many things that Cameron’s films seemed to stand for in the past in terms of the basic justness of American military interventions abroad – whether one thinks here of Aliens or True Lies or even Rambo II (which Cameron co-wrote). Cameron has gotten lost in his own technology, his own personal Pandora of anti-Americanism, pseudo-mysticism and eco-extremism – and it’s becoming increasingly unpleasant to watch.
• In related sci-fi/fantasy news, check out this interesting interview featuring Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, circa 1980, in which we learn that George Lucas was, indeed, planning his Star Wars prequels even back then (down to the 20 year timeline interval between trilogies). George is nothing if not methodical. Also today: someone has put together a ’silent film’ version of The Empire Strikes Back, which is a lot of fun; there are also indications that big news will soon be coming out about Peter Jackson’s Hobbit; and Tron: Legacy has a new international teaser poster out, featuring Beau Garrett. I’m really looking forward to this film, and hoping it’s been worth the wait.
Blue female: Riley Steele at the "Piranha 3D" premiere.
• The Wrap thinks movie ticket prices are too damn high. They’re right. The major culprit? 3D. It’s true; I caught a 10am screening of Piranha 3D last week and the ticket cost $9, which is crazy. For that price, the underwater ballet should’ve been at least 5 minutes longer.
• The Academy will be giving honory Oscars out this year to Francis Ford Coppola (Irving Thalberg Award), Jean-Luc Godard, Eli Wallach and Kevin Brownlow … all richly deserved, in my opinion. Coppola and Godard are among my all-time favorites, Kevin Brownlow is easily one of our best film writers … and who doesn’t love Eli Wallach? The funny part of all this is, though, that nobody can find Godard to tell him! Typical Godard. He’s probably living in Alphaville.
• Did you like Frank Miller’s Gucci ad from the other day? Not to be outdone, Martin Scorsese just shot a slick new ad for Chanel.
• Katy Perry looked and sounded great on Letterman’s show yesterday. We’re eager to promote her stuff, in the midst of this bad economy, because we recently learned from the LA Times that the ‘real’ subject of her music is “consumerism.”
• Christina Hendricks is now doing ads for London Fog, which provides trenchcoats for Mad Men. I didn’t think trenchcoats could fight so tightly on a gal.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Piranha 3D’s Riley Steele has a birthday today, which is appropriate considering that she’ll be wearing her birthday suit on screens all across America this weekend.
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on August 26th, 2010 at 6:57pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. Earlier today I read what has got to be one of the most unintentionally funny excrescences from a Hollywood liberal that I’ve ever encountered. Jeffrey Wells today over at Hollywood Elsewhere, a site renowned for its faux-insider musings on the industry – not to mention Wells’ retro-ducktail haircut – engages in some decidedly breathless speculations over whether Angelina Jolie might be … a closet right-winger!
Jolie gets 'politically profiled.'
Who is ‘Salt,’ indeed!
But that’s not all! In conspiratorial tones redolent of his apparently deep, penetrating insights into female psychology, Wells also speculates on whether Ms. Jolie’s alleged conservatism is somehow responsible for her legendary sexual prowess in bed! Well!
Even if I tried, I couldn’t make this stuff up.
Some context here: we’ve been talking-up Jolie’s Salt for months here at Libertas (see here and here) because of that film’s blistering critique of the communist cause – a cause which lingers on today, as we all know, in other guises … both domestic and abroad. And as regular Libertas readers know, it remains astonishing to me that the right wing media in America continue to ignore Salt while promoting Stallone’s anti-CIA hit job The Expendables, which still isn’t even doing as well at the box office as Jolie’s savvier, more pleasurable film.
So here comes Jeffrey Wells stumbling into the mix, with his conspiratorial musings on whether Jolie is some kind of puppet for her “saliva-drooling Tea Party nutter” father (Jon Voight), along with some Rat Pack-level psychology on the female of the species. [By the way, all of this comes fast on the heels of the LA Times' Tom O'Neil political 'profiling' of Ernest Borgnine, based solely and exclusively on Borgnine's refusal to see Brokeback Mountain.]
Here’s Jeffrey Wells, sans irony:
Angelina Jolie isn’t just the once-estranged daughter of Hollywood’s worst saliva-drooling Tea Party nutter, Jon Voight. She may also be a closet ally of Voight’s, at least in terms of despising Barack Obama. (Call this a flimsy maybe.) She also seems to be a supporter of America’s military adventures in Iraq and perhaps also Afghanistan and…well, basically anywhere that the poor are suffering due to the deprivations of war. …
I only know what Jon Voight has said and stands for, and that I saw him standing near his daughter and Brad Pitt inside a roped-off area at the Salt premiere after-party. And the old cliche about the acorn not falling too far from the tree flew into my mind, especially considering her rep as a closet rightie (including her alleged support for McCain during the ‘08 campaign) and that “stay the course in Iraq” Washington Post article she posted in ‘08. And being…okay, maybe she’s more of an Ayn Rand libertarian, given her interest in making a film version of Atlas Shrugged.
It’s fair to say that if Rush Limbaugh is singing your praises, something stinks in the kingdom of Denmark.
The basic conservative impulse is to bow down and show total allegiance to authority. This obviously links up with the old cliche about right-wing women (like Rand) being especially passionate about worshipping strong males, which is incidentally why they’re said to be so great in bed. This could be one possible explanation for those reportedly overheard sounds that suggested “an animal being killed.”
I’m not one to take unsourced Us magazine quotes as anything to rely upon, but combine the Washington Post op-ed piece with this 11.09 non-attributable quote that Jolie considers Obama to be a “closet socialist,” and I’m at least thinking “hmmm.”
The term “closet socialist”….well, what’s so bad with that? FDR was one, and he had it right in my book. Anyone who uses such a term is clearly a closet rightie. I mean, that’s a symmetrical way of looking at it.
“‘She hates [Obama],” a source close to Jolie told an Us reporter, according to the article. “She’s into education and rehabilitation and thinks Obama is all about welfare and handouts. She thinks Obama is really a socialist in disguise.”
So let me summarize some of what we’ve learned from Mr. Wells here, because it’s really quite fascinating.
• One of the reasons Jolie might be a right winger is that Mr. Wells spotted her standing next to her father at the premiere of Salt. My, that does seem incriminating!
• Another reason she must be a conservative is that she was interested in playing the Dagny Taggart role in Atlas Shrugged … which, apparently unbeknownst to Wells, famous Hollywood liberals like Charlize Theron and Julia Roberts have also been attached to because it’s a great female role. Does that make them ‘closet righties’ too, Jeffrey?
Right wing women: "great in bed."
• “The basic conservative impulse is to bow down and show total allegiance to authority,” asserts Mr. Wells. And blissfully unaware of the ironies involved, just a few lines later Wells goes on to praise the presidency of FDR. I’ll leave that fun little contradiction alone because I don’t believe in shooting turkeys while they’re squawking in a barrel.
• This is my favorite Wells-ism, though: that right-wing women worship strong males, and for this reason are “great in bed.” Well! Among other things, we’re learning here about what Mr. Wells himself apparently thinks makes a woman “great in bed”: namely, the worship of “strong males” … like him? Fascinating! It’s amazing how retro some of these ‘liberal’ guys can be!
• I also like Wells’ efforts to tie Jolie’s right-wing politics to celebrity gossip about some apparently loud lovemaking (the “animal getting killed” stuff) between Jolie and Brad Pitt at an African resort, from five years ago. Apparently in Wells’ mind that’s a strong journalistic lead in the hunt to uncover Jolie’s secret, reactionary worldview!
I could go on here, but I think you get the point. I’m less interested here in whether Jolie is actually a right-winger (I doubt that, frankly) than in a typical Hollywood liberal’s image of what a conservative must be like.
I’m also intrigued by what Mr. Wells’ heated musings suggest about what the average Hollywood liberal really thinks of the female of the species, by the way. Who’s really the caveman here? It sounds like it’s you, Jeffrey. Or maybe you’re just not getting your ducktail stroked enough.
Posted on August 26th, 2010 at 2:02pm.
Betty & Edna.
By Jennifer Baldwin. After two blessed Betty-free weeks, the former Mrs. Draper returns in this week’s episode. And wouldn’t you know it, this episode gave us Betty at her worst (the vindictive, Sally-smacking, “I’ll cut your fingers off!” mother from hell) and at her most sympathetic (Betty in the therapist’s office).
I’ve always been sympathetic to Betty when she’s in these therapy scenes. In the first season, her vulnerability with the (duplicitous) psychiatrist was heartbreaking; it was Betty at her most likable and human. Whenever she gets talking on the therapist’s couch, Betty often reveals more about herself than she knows — there’s a very wounded and messed up human being in there beneath the cold, aloof, shrewish surface. This is Betty at her most honest (even if she’s unaware of the honesty bleeding through her pretense) and as a result, it’s hard to hate her in these scenes. Perhaps that’s why I was so anti-Betty last season — we were only given the surface pretense and the outward coldness and very little of the inner, human Betty.
Well, we get human Betty again this week — after a long absence. In a meeting with a child psychiatrist (for Sally), Betty unknowingly starts having a therapy session with the shrink herself. This makes sense, of course, since Betty has been much more of a “child” than the other adult characters on the show (recall her twisted, sometimes tender, but ultimately creepy relationship with young Glenn Bishop). Betty doesn’t really reveal much outwardly, but the little pauses, the half sentences, the tone of her voice and her demeanor all show just how much pain Betty is in — and how much she’s trying to suppress and disguise it. Eeesh. Betty is so screwed up.
However, Betty does make a good point, re: Don. Why did Don plan a date when he knew he’d have the kids? Of course, Don reveals later to Faye in the break room that he doesn’t see his kids enough and he doesn’t know what to do with them when he does. He feels relief when he brings them back to Betty – but then afterward, he misses them. Eeesh. Don is so screwed up.
This episode had weird shifts in tone, from strange and disturbing (the Betty/Sally storyline) to comical and bouncy (all the stuff with Don and Miss Blankenship and the caper involving a rival agency and the Honda account). An uneven episode, and probably the season’s weakest overall (also: the first episode this season to not be written or co-written by Matthew Weiner).
Miss Blankenship.
Which is not to say it doesn’t have some spectacular moments. The trick Don and Co. pull on rival agency CGC is pure delight — accompanied by the kind of swinging mid-60s music that makes it all seem like a Tony Curtis comedy. And everything involving Roger’s WWII service and his continued animosity toward the Japanese is precisely the thing that makes historical drama fascinating. It’s a peek inside the mind of a WWII vet, twenty years after the war. It’s hard for us to imagine now — that lingering hostility towards our WWII enemies — but Roger’s words and actions show how hard it was for some men to forget. Plus it gives us another perfect scene between Roger and Joan. Forget Peggy and Pete, and Don and Betty — Roger and Joan are my all-time favorite pairing.
Other points and observations:
On the weekly Pete front, I must say, Pete’s vocabulary always amuses. Vincent Kartheiser rolls out lines like “A Deerfield chum of mine” as if he’s been saying it his whole life. Also: “Christ on a cracker!” Seriously, where does he get this stuff?! And Pete speaks for many of us when he asks: “Who the hell is Dr. Lyle Evans?” (Is the line a red herring?).
I might be in the minority opinion, but I find the never-ending vaudeville comedy routine between Don and his new secretary, Miss Blankenship, to be a hoot. Yes, it’s rather low comedy, but it’s added a bit of levity to a show that sometimes takes itself too seriously.
Also good for some comedy gold: The Japanese, their translator, and one Joan Holloway Harris.
Honda Honcho (in Japanese, while staring at Joan’s breasts): “How does she not fall over?”
Joan (to the translator, noticing the Japanese staring eyes): “They’re not very subtle are they?”
Translator: “No.”
Bethany — who looks like Virginia Mayo — makes a reappearance this week. Also, who knew Benihana was around in the 60s? Apparently I need to bone up on my cultural knowledge!
Pete & Ichiro.
Continuing Cultural Reference Watch: “A Margaret Dumont-sized disaster” (note that she died just about the time this episode took place); Man from U.N.C.L.E.; and of course, the title of the episode: The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.
It’s interesting how the Japanese this season are playing the role the British played last season. Culture clash and the growing influence of Asian culture on American culture: business and entertainment, Honda and Godzilla.
Also of note: I was indeed right — Dr. Faye was wearing a wedding ring. But … she’s not married! It’s basically a “keep away” sign for all the wolves. Of course, now that Don knows the ring is a fake, how long before he and Faye are “doing it,” as Sally would say? I predict it happens in two weeks.
Finally, the closing credits song was “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” as sung by Doris Day. “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” of course, is from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Flower Drum Song, made into a film in 1961, and starring James Shigeta and Miyoshi Umeki. Both Japanese.
Posted on August 26th, 2010 at 10:05am.
Scott & Ramona.
By Patricia Ducey. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is an action-packed, coming of age adventure that even non-gamers – or those unfamiliar with the original graphic novel – can enjoy. Pilgrim is adapted from Canadian Brian Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels of the same name by writer/director Edgar Wright (of comedy classic Shaun of the Dead) and remains true to the visuals and the spirit of O’Malley’s story. But Wright grabs every film and cultural reference he can and brings the novel to life in a bold and raucous romp through 20-something slackerdom and redemption.
Michael Cera, of Superbad fame and present day reigning filmic geek, graduates in Pilgrim vs. the World into action hero and possibly into mature manhood. Cera plays a 22-year-old bass guitarist living in a one-room shack with best friend/gay roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin in a fine performance). He and his buddies are trying to break into indie rock stardom with their garage band Sex Bob-omb, while Scott manages or mismanages his complicated, feckless love life. (The band is actually pretty good, with songs written by Beck.)
Scott lives partly in Toronto and partly in his own fevered dreams. He is a serial heartbreaker who refuses to take responsibility for the trail of tears he leaves behind when he bails. He negotiates the vagaries of a multiculti, multi-sexual limbo of 20-something slackerdom; he and his buddies are adrift, jobless, unable to commit to anything or anyone. His chaste romance with a 17-year-old (and thus unavailable) schoolgirl Knives Chau personifies that emotional paralysis.
His hesitant heart explodes, though, when he spies the beautiful and aloof Ramona Flowers, a woman his own age, whose disinterest proves the headiest of aphrodisiacs. After one date, he discovers the roots of her melancholy withdrawal—a string of mean ex-boyfriends who have wounded her, she fears, for good. To win her, he must first defeat these 7 jealous ex-boyfriends, now allies in the nefarious League of Evil Exes (Axis of Evil?) and release her from the past. Scott easily vanquishes first ex Mathew Patel, an Indian-Canadian hipster, who then breaks into a Bollywood danceoff accompanied by his demon chick backup dancers. After defeating an angry lesbian and a vegan rock star, Scott approaches the last level and last ex, Evil Exes ringleader Gideon, the one who still holds sway over Ramona’s affections. In a nod to the classic Rushmore, Gideon is played by the grandfather of all lovelorn nerd heroes, a now grown up Jason Schwartzman.
Canadian O’Malley’s Toronto, filmed in lovely tones of winter black and white, proves a lovely palate cleanser when sequences of dazzling special effects and primary-colored graphics threaten to overwhelm. Wright borrows visuals from PacMan to Wii, the original TV show Batman, manga, comic book split screen close-ups, and even inserts of O’Malley’s original pen and ink drawings from his Scott Pilgrim novel series.
Pilgrim has been described as the first movie for the joystick generation, and it may well be the first ‘post-liberal’ film, as well. The characters exist in the fullness of well-developed character, not as motes in some polemicist’s eye. Wallace’s sexuality is but one facet of his character: he is neither Magical Gay nor Victim Gay. The racial identity of Knives Chau or Mathew Patel is as important to the narrative as Scott’s — which is to say, not at all. Pilgrim also merrily and mercilessly jabs at a few PC targets like vegans, in a laugh-out-loud sequence involving one of Ramona’s exes.
Pilgrim vs. the World at almost two hours may be a couple of villainous exes too long — O’Malley claims they structured the story like a game, with confrontations that lead to higher levels or to doom — but its heart and its values redeem it all in the end. Pilgrim is probably safe for teenagers, with a few sexual references and excesses, but Scott and his buddies learn a few lessons about responsibility and empathy, and the world rights itself.
Kudos to Wright for keeping it PG and exploiting fully the dispensation from cynicism that Hollywood grants to Young Adult fare; for all its techno razzle-dazzle, Pilgrim v. World honors a very traditional narrative that respects its ‘message’ and its young viewers both.
Posted on August 24th, 2010 at 3:29pm.
By Jason Apuzzo. I’m curious as to what people think of this preview (above) for NBC’s forthcoming series, The Event. Here are the main elements I’m getting from this trailer:
• Heroic, charismatic young black President.
• CIA conspiracy involving illegal detainees.
• A secret detention facility in Alaska?
• Some sort of 9/11-type event.
I believe this is what is referred to as ‘on the nose’-style filmmaking. And we apparently now have the Obama Administration’s own version of The West Wing.
Somehow you knew this was coming, didn’t you?
[Special thanks to LFM's Patricia Ducey for tipping me off about this.]
[Special thanks to Hot Air for linking to this post.]
Posted on August 24, 2010 at 2:20pm.
By Joe Bendel. Americans expect their property rights to be respected, even posthumously. However, those rights evidently do not apply to when the property in question is especially valuable. At least that seems to be the case in Pennsylvania, where the state government, the city of Philadelphia, and a group of powerful non-profit foundations have in effect legally plundered the priceless Barnes Collection according to Don Argott’s eye-opening documentary, The Art of the Steal, now available on DVD.
Steal opens with the unseemly yet so appropriate video of former Mayor John Street’s news conference, in which he overflows with glee at the prospect of finally getting the Barnes in Philadelphia. All that is missing is a football for Street to spike before doing an end-zone dance. However, this display is problematic on multiple levels.
Albert C. Barnes hated Philadelphia. The self-made entrepreneur and Roosevelt Democrat amassed probably the greatest private collection of impressionist and early modern art. Yet, when he unveiled his collection in the City of Brotherly Love, it was panned by the local press and mocked by the chattering classes. Eventually, Philadelphia realized what they had missed, but it was too late. Barnes had established his Foundation in exurban Lower Merion, where career-defining Renoirs, Cézannes, Matisses, Picassos, and Degases were integrated into a progressive art school, with only limited opportunities for public viewing.
When the childless Barnes passed away, the terms of his will were explicitly designed to keep his collection intact and out of the grasping hands of Philadelphia and its despised Art Institute. However, as the original trustees passed away, control of the Barnes Foundation eventually fell to Lincoln University, a traditionally African American school safely outside the Pennsylvania establishment in Barnes’s day that became state affiliated in 1972. As Argott makes crystal clear, from that point on, Barnes’s intentions no longer governed the Foundation that still bears his name.
One of the unspoken ironies of Steal is that Barnes, the New Dealer and sworn enemy of Nixon confidant Walter Annenberg, was ultimately undone by Democrats like Street and Governor Ed Rendell. At least the governor consented to an on-camera interview, justifying the hijacking of the Barnes on grounds that incontrovertibly contradict the spirit of his will (like the fact that more people will be able to gawk at his collection on the Franklin Parkway). Conversely, representatives of the Pew Charitable Trust, which Argott identifies as the shadowy power player in the takeover of the Barnes, conspicuously declined to participate in the film. (In a further irony, the only political figure in Argott’s film speaking on behalf of Barnes’s intentions is Lower Merion’s Republican congressman Jim Gerlach, to his credit.)
Producer Sheena Joyce, exec. producer Lenny Feinberg, director Don Argott.
Though he is covering the rarified art world, Argott approaches the Barnes case like a criminal investigation, and with good reason. He also memorably establishes the mind-blowing dimensions of the stakes involved, establishing the term “Barnesworthy.” As art-dealer Richard Feigen explains at a supposedly blockbuster Sotheby’s early modern show, most of the work on display that would soon be bought for millions of dollars would not have merited a second glance from Barnes. Though Feigen himself declined to assign a dollar figure to the entire collection, its value would be estimated in court filings at twenty five billion (with a “b”) dollars. This is what “Barnesworthy” means.
Steal is a smart, persuasive documentary that challenges some previously sacrosanct notions regarding the merit of museums as public institutions. While some of the finer points of estate law might sound dry, Argott makes it all quite compelling, pulling viewers through step-by-step with remarkable assuredness.
Unfortunately, the establishment considers the Barnes’ impending move to downtown Philly a done deal, even though the rag-tag Friends of the Barnes group still fights on. Maybe so, but Argott’s film could make it a pyrrhic victory. It is hard to imagine how anyone could willingly step foot in a Barnes bastardized by machine politics after watching Steal, regardless of the significance of the collection within. Highly recommended, Steal is now available on DVD and streams on Netflix.
Posted on August 24th, 2010 at 11:29am.
Chi Cao from "Mao's Last Dancer."
By Jason Apuzzo. • It was such a pleasure seeing Mao’s Last Dancer this past weekend. It’s an emotional, stirring film that is carried by two very strong performances by Chi Cao and Bruce Greenwood. The story of how this young Chinese dancer rose to prominence during the nightmare-period of Mao’s reign, came to America – and then fought tenaciously for his freedom – is a story that everyone should see, especially when it’s told as elegantly as director Bruce Beresford tells it here.
What I was stunned by, however, were all of the flattering references in the film to (then) Vice President George H.W. Bush, and also to President Reagan. It’s made quite plain that the elder Bush was instrumental in securing this young dancer’s freedom, and this is probably going to be the most flattering take on the Bush family and/or legacy you’re going to see on film any time in the near future. We’ve got a brief except from the film below in this context, by the way.
I cannot recommend this film highly enough, as it expands into wider distribution next weekend. Mao’s Last Dancer is not only a compelling indictment of the communist system, but a rousing testimony to the opportunities available to high achievers in free societies like our own. Make sure to see it.
On the box office front, Mao did over a $192,000 in business on 31 screens in 10 markets. It opens to 15 new markets this upcoming weekend. Make sure to check out the clip below.
• From the sublime to the ridiculous … the other film I saw this past weekend that involved a ballet sequence (ahem), Piranha 3D, finished #6 at the box office this weekend with over $10 million … which is actually only about $6 million less than the #1 film, The Expendables. Despite the strikingly positive reviews this film received (Rotten Tomatoes currently has it at an 81 rating), the rather obvious problem this film faced is that its intended audience – namely, teenagers – for the most part couldn’t see it due to its R rating. [Personally I think the film easily could've received an NC-17.] Still, I think Alex Aja has created a genuine cult masterpiece here that will live long and prosper once it reaches its natural milieu of unrated home video. 
And, indeed, word is now breaking late today that Aja and Dimension films are already planning a sequel to the film, possibly to take place in Thailand.
From "Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader."
• Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks may be teaming on an adaptation of the post-9/11 Jonathan Safran Foer novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This project looks interesting, and we’ll keep an eye on it. I haven’t read the novel, but Entertainment Weekly has a brief summary of it here.
• Angelina Jolie has announced that her next project will be a low-budget love story set at the height of the Bosnian war, for which she wrote the screenplay … and which she’ll be directing (she will not be acting in the film). ”The film is a love story, not a political statement,” Jolie asserts in a recent statement about the project.
Good for her. How odd that at this point I feel more confident in how she’ll handle this material than, say, how Stallone might. Salt, by the way, has thus far grossed $216 million worldwide.
Turning heads at the Creative Arts Emmys.
• The annual article about ‘Hollywood Reaching Out to Christians’ has come out … this time from The New York Times. It’s a little tiresome reading these articles each year. Basically the only reason films get made that appeal to Christians these days is because Christians themselves – usually working outside the confines of the Hollywood system – pony up their own money and get them made.
By the way, in this context there are some new clips out today of the next Narnia film.
• The LA Times’ Tom O’Neil questions whether SAG should be honoring the great Ernest Borgnine simply because O’Neil doesn’t like Borgnine’s personal politics … which O’Neil is apparently able to divine simply because Borgnine didn’t feel like seeing Brokeback Mountain. Mr. O’Neil, this is what’s called blacklisting. It’s an ugly, retrograde practice and you should stop this immediately.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Mad Men va-va-voom star Christina Hendricks made a striking appearance at this weekend’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards. Did you really think we were going to miss this? The striking Ms. Hendricks will be competing for a Best Supporting Actress Emmy when the big-time Emmy Awards roll around this upcoming Sunday.
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on August 23rd, 2010 at 6:02pm.
From "Avatar: Special Edition."
By Jason Apuzzo. Most of the attention surrounding the re-release of Avatar in ’special edition’ form has centered around the extended ‘alien sex scene’ – which is sounding pretty tame, frankly. [Having recently seen Piranha, of course, pretty much everything is seeming tame right now.] Buried, however, in an article today from The New York Post, is this tidbit from James Cameron about another scene that’s been put back in the film – a scene Cameron refers to as “the drums of war.”
• A scene Cameron calls “the drums of war,” which he hopes will clarify why the humans choose to wipe out the Na’vi. He compared it to America’s decision to invade Iraq. “We had to provoke Saddam to do something stupid, and it’s like that with the humans invading Pandora,” he said. “I felt when I was writing it that the Na’vi had to counter-react and do something that is called an atrocity that gave [humans] the moral right to go in and destroy and displace them. The additional footage is pretty short, but it fulfills that purpose.”
So let me untangle this for you. Cameron’s ‘thinking’ more or less proceeds as follows:
• America invaded Iraq by ‘provoking’ Saddam into doing “something stupid.” What was that, exactly? Refusing to allow in weapons inspectors? How did we ‘provoke’ him to refuse weapons inspection?
• In Avatar, the Na’vi are thus ‘provoked’ into committing something that is “called an atrocity.” So is it an “atrocity,” Mr. Cameron … or isn’t it? Does an atrocity become less of an atrocity if it’s provoked?
• The atrocity which isn’t actually an atrocity because it was provoked then becomes the pretext for the humans moving in and exploiting the Na’vi’s land. Or something.
Did you get that?
By the way, I’d like all the people out there who still aren’t sure whether Avatar is a political film to please raise your hands – so Mr. Cameron can hand you some free, prune-flavored suckers.
Incidentally, Cameron says today that an Avatar sequel may not arrive in theaters until 2014. What a relief.
Posted on August 23rd, 2010 at 12:51pm.
From "Mao's Last Dancer."
By Jason Apuzzo. • Mao’s Last Dancer is in the news a lot right now. The LA Times has a piece on the difficulties associated with shooting the film in China, and director Bruce Beresford does a new interview on the film over at IndieWIRE.
Predictably, the NY Times has attacked the film as “brainless,” but the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern had this to say about the film:
The movie’s strengths are considerable. The first section summons up a tormented period of Chinese history when art was bent to the breaking point in the service of a ruthless state … The film celebrates artistic freedom without preaching a sermon, and often flies when Mr. Chi is on screen. When he is on stage, spinning and leaping to the strains of magnificent music, the film soars.
I’ve put another clip of this extraordinary new film below. Make sure to see it this week. You can read the LFM review of it here.
• While on the subject of China, possibly the only film that America and China should be able to cooperate on, without Chinese censors getting involved in the mix, is a movie about Army Air Corp Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault and his Flying Tigers, who protected China from Imperial Japanese invaders during World War II. And that’s exactly what director John Woo is apparently trying to do, as he attempts to put together a U.S.-China co-production for a huge film version of the Flying Tigers’ story, that would end up in the IMAX format and possibly starring Liam Neeson in the title role. This sounds intriguing, and we’ll hope for the best on that.
The girls of "Piranha 3D," at the LA premiere.
• Everybody’s talking about Piranha 3D right now! Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of this film’s debut is that – as of the writing of this post – the film is receiving an 80 rating among critics over at Rotten Tomatoes. The film had a splashy (so to speak) debut in LA the other night at the Chinese theater, featuring some of the jaw-dropping (as it were) ladies from that film – and there are some new interviews out with director Alex Aja (see here and here), and with newly minted star/Playboy covergirl Kelly Brook (who’s also adorning the cover of Love Magazine this month). Ms. Brook, by the way, is dueling it out with her ex-boyfriend – the Expendables’ Jason Statham – at the box office this weekend.
As regular Libertas readers know, we expressed our enthusiasm for Piranha 3D early on – eagerly devouring each marketing ploy for this exceedingly cheeky and sexy little thriller. It’s for this reason, sensing the possibility that this film might be a cult classic, that we dispatched noted film critic and theoretician Prof. Jacques de Molay to review Piranha 3D for Libertas. He delivered a decidedly impassioned and idiosyncratic review.
I just got off the phone with Jacques, and frankly he’s still raving about the film. I could barely hear him, because he’s currently kayaking down the Amazon river, but some of the phrases I made out were: “Cult masterpiece … easily the best film of the year, possibly of any year … ecstatic pleasure … dream-like … watching hyper-real, 30-foot high females floating underwater in free space in 3D … like something out of a Botticelli painting … or Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage … why couldn’t James Cameron think of this?!” At a certain point I had to cut Jacques’ call off, frankly, because he was just going on too much. I suppose I’ll have to see the film now.
Underwater sirens: Riley Steele, Kelly Brook.
In related Piranha news, Lake Havasu is apparently worried that Piranha 3D is going to take a bite out of tourism due to unfounded fears of piranhas. (It’s the exact opposite; hordes of teenage guys are likely to now descend on the place looking for Riley Steele … probably quite willing to risk their lives in the process.) “Girls Gone Wild” mogul Joe Francis has also fired off an unintentionally funny legal letter to the producers of Piranha 3D over concerns regarding ‘defamation’ (the film’s primary villain is obviously based on him). I suppose it is a bit humiliating to watch one’s member getting chewed by piranhas on a 30 ft. screen in 3D, but maybe he should’ve thought about this sort of thing years ago when he started exploiting teenage girls.
Finally, Alex Aja has announced his next project … which will be a big-budget adaptation of the French space-pirate comic book series, Cobra. That looks absolutely fantastic, and we wish him the best with that.
• The trailer for the new Valerie Plame movie Fair Game is out, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, and apparently Richard Armitage – the man who leaked Plame’s identity to Robert Novak – isn’t even mentioned in the film (or at least, no character by that name is listed in the credits). This is kind of like making All the President’s Men and not mentioning Deep Throat.
Jolie in Berlin.
• From real-life spies to fictional ones, Angelina Jolie premiered Salt in Berlin this week. This worldwide tour of hers is really colorful, and I enjoy covering it … but I’m wondering if one visit to, say, Greta van Susteren’s show might actually do more good for this film’s box office right now. Has Salt really been promoted as aggressively here in the States as it should be?
• The first review of David Fincher’s new Facebook movie The Social Network is out, and it sounds like a whopper. The Facebook camp isn’t happy about the film, not surprisingly. And now Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page may get the biopic treatment. [Why do I think Steve Jobs is next? He's the biggest character of them all.] Memo to the Silicon Valley crowd: you’d better start financing your own movies, if you want to start writing your own history … because otherwise, Hollywood will write your histories for you. Hollywood has a financial interest in keeping Silicon Valley egos in check, because the Valley is constantly threatening to take Hollywood over. Expect this inter-California rivalry to get a lot hotter.
• In sci-fi news, an interesting casting notice has leaked for the forthcoming J.J. Abrams’/Steven Spielberg Super 8. I’m very much looking forward to that film – actually much more so than any of the forthcoming sci-fi projects on the books that we’ve been covering here, simply because I have greater confidence in the filmmakers involved. We’re also learning that X-Men: First Class will apparently be taking place in the 1960s. According to Aint It Cool News:
[T]he film takes place in the 1960’s. John F Kennedy is the President of the United States. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X are on TV doing marches. There is a spirit of a hopeful future that was prevalent in that time.
Now receiving transmissions.
Interesting. In other sci-fi news, the new poster for Skyline is out, and Shia LaBeouf is apparently very excited about the storyline that’s been revealed to him for Indy 5.
Word on the street is that Indy 5 will be headed to the Bermuda Triangle, potentially with a final stop in Atlantis. Indy 4, along with the suprise-hit Cloverfield, kicked off the most recent wave of alien invasion projects … and I expect Indy 5 to add a new dimension to this whole craze before it’s all over, due to Lucas and Spielberg’s deep immersion in sci-fi lore …
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … would you buy iPod accessories designed by Brit celebrity Katie Price? [They adorn her headgear to the right.] These things look like they’re designed to receive transmissions from outer space – of which she may already be receiving her fair share. She may be trying to snag a role in Area 51, although Battleship or Piranha would probably be more appropriate given that she already comes equipped with artificial flotation devices.
And that’s what’s happening this weekend in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
Posted on August 22nd, 2010 at 9:06am.
