Day: June 4, 2010

Hollywood Round-up, 6/3-6/4

By Jason Apuzzo. • The full Captain America costume has been revealed – in hi-def, multi-angled detail. And, thankfully, there appear to be no UN markings or indications of one-world cooperation.  Also: there’s some Captain America casting news coming down the pike.  Inquiring minds want to know: are Iron Man and Captain America going to suck the life out of Superman and Spider-Man?  May be too late for re-boots on those.

• In related news, Rush Limbaugh biopic being shopped around Hollywood. It’s tempting to say something political here, but you know what the problem is?  Hollywood isn’t doing good biopics on anybody these days.  They’ll miscast this (my prediction: Philip Seymour Hoffman), spend too much, take snarky liberal pot shots, and make it 3 hours long.  [Still reeling from how Amelia Earhart’s story was botched last year.  How do you botch that?]  Important question here: who gets to play Ann Coulter?

• You can’t stop James Cameron, you can only hope to contain him. Cameron going around everywhere griping about BP, the oil spill, how he and his team of experts need to clean the thing up … Plus he’s going to re-release Titanic in 3D in 2012 (100th anniversary of ship’s sinking), and probably his next project will be the Avatar sequel.  If you’re Michael Moore or Oliver Stone right now, you’ve got to be hating life.  How did Cameron so quickly steal their gig?  Maybe Moore can re-issue Roger & Me in 3D.

• The Sex and the City 2 controversy rolls on, and now there’s word that a “Sex and the City” prequel may be in the works in order to import young babes into the franchise.  (Maybe a few hunky vampires while they’re at it?)  There’s no way they’re going to let this franchise go, given the money it’s making.  Film’s snarky p.c./misogynist critics looking irrelevant right now.

• Actress Q’orianka Kilcher ties herself to White House fence in support of indigenous peoples worldwide, gets arrested. I thought this wasn’t supposed to happen in the Obama era.  Her mother is also described as having “poured a black substance over her.”  [BP oil?]  Brando spent half his adult life impregnating chicks like this, without having to pour anything over them. By the way, it’s nice to see that Obama’s got to deal with this stuff now, instead of just Bush.  Hope you enjoy this stuff, Barry!

The newer, 'edgier' Snow White?

• Sean Penn featured in Vanity Fair, picturesquely helping out Haitians. It’s great that he’s helping, but can this guy go anywhere without a camera crew?  Is that even possible anymore?

• Rock band Rush tells Rand Paul to stop playing their music at his events. Battle of the Libertarians.

• Bret Ratner to do new, ‘edgy’ version of Snow White legend. Snow White to be deflowered?  Ratner should stick to what he knows best, which is … actually I’m not coming up with anything here.

• Comedy Central has a new comedy show mocking Jesus, which they’re able to broadcast in perfect freedom and legality because American Christians aren’t threatening to chop Comedy Central executives’ heads off, despite what Rachel Weisz may tell you.

• FINALLY, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY … Fox News is currently featuring an on-line American flag bikini show, perfect for a Friday afternoon in June.  Click on over to see precisely how much – and in what proportions – God has so generously blessed this country of ours.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

Now That’s a First Lady

By David Ross. I notice that Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is slated to appear in Woody Allen’s next film, Midnight in Paris, due out in 2011. For the first time in about twenty years, I feel a genuine impulse to eavesdrop on the suffocating repetition and solipsism of Allen’s once great, now moldering career.

I keep my eye on Carla Bruni not only because she is one of the most beautiful women in the world and it’s hard not to keep one’s eye on her, but because the hint of wit and personality makes her beauty fascinating. Who can resist the Cleopatran glamour of a comment like this:

“I grew tired of rocks stars. I wanted a man with his finger on the nuclear trigger.”

Musically, she has been tasteful but not timid, turning, for example, an obscure Yeats poem, “Those Dancing Days are Gone,” into a creditable shuffle. Yeats delighted in beautiful women. I’m sure his shade is amused and gratified.

For the full effect, however, Carla must be experienced in French. Her first album, Quelqu’un M’a Dit (2002) is particularly fetching (you can see her perform Raphaël here). She delivers the entire album in a breathy purr, as if whispering in your ear.

Bruni is not a weighty or ambitious artist, but she is a completely feminine artist. In the American musical tradition, by contrast, even the most demure maidens – Norah Jones, for example – have inherited at least a suggestion of the old blues salt, a certain existential bone to pick in the gruff tradition of Robert Johnson. I would not trade this blues sinew for all the kittenish purring in the world, but Bruni makes for a delicious change, as well as makes clear what, in part, it means to be American.

In related news, widely reported rumors have it that Bruni’s marriage to the French president has become, shall we say, modern. Only in France could the first lady and the president simultaneously carry on affairs while the nation watches in a mood of mild titillation and amusement.

[Editor’s Note: rumors of the Bruni-Sarkozy simultaneous affairs remain unsubstantiated – although the folkloric appeal of these rumors seems potent to the French.]

Review: Neil Jordan’s Ondine

By Joe Bendel. Life as the only admitted alcoholic in a small coastal Irish village is difficult for Syracuse (Colin Farrell), especially with his mean-spirited ex-wife constantly belittling him in front of his wheelchair-bound daughter, Annie. It is easy to see how both father and daughter would welcome a bit of fantasy into their lives in Neil Jordan’s Ondine (see the trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, following its high-profile run at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Syracuse made a hash of his life through binge drinking. Now on the wagon, he uses the church confessional as his surrogate AA meeting. Barely eking out a subsistence living, one day he pulls up his fishing nets and finds a beautiful woman tangled up inside. Adamant that she not be seen by anyone, Syracuse lets her recover at his recently deceased mother’s ramshackle cottage.

Though Syracuse tells Annie about the mystery woman calling herself Ondine as if it were a fairy tale, the bright young girl automatically assumes it to be the truth. Inevitably, Annie soon meets the woman she believes to be a ‘selkie,’ a mermaid like creature from Celtic mythology, half convincing her father and perhaps even Ondine herself with her ardent conviction. Yet, Jordan periodically drops hints that Ondine’s origins might be darker and worldlier than Annie’s romanticized version of reality.

The human need to believe in something good and edifying lies at the heart of Ondine, but Jordan also deftly incorporates themes of family and personal responsibility. Completely shedding his movie star persona, Colin Farrell is thoroughly convincing and undeniably likable as Syracuse, despite the character’s myriad faults. Indeed, he is the lynchpin of the movie, serving as the tragically flawed moral center of this emotionally deep film. Continue reading Review: Neil Jordan’s Ondine