Friday, May 09, 2008 - 15:13:29
Many years ago I had the pleasure of going to the Sundance Institute in the summer for an afternoon. While I was there, I walked the grounds, checked out the cabins where the writers worked, and rode the chair lift to the top of a nearby mountain and hiked down.
In this week's issue of LA Weekly, Ella Taylor takes a behind the scenes look at the Writer's Lab, one of three prestigious labs affiliated with Sundance, Robert Redford's magnificent creation.
Friday, May 09, 2008 - 15:03:53
Film criticism continues to take a hit. Glenn Kenny of Premiere.com was just cut loose by the magazine that had been struggling for years. Kenny was a fine critic, and I enjoyed his blog immensely.
David Folkenflick of NPR has this story with Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere.com and Jack Matthews formerly of the New York Daily News.
Friday, May 09, 2008 - 14:59:20
Thursday, May 01, 2008 - 11:35:53
Last year, we participated in the 48 Hour Film Project: a whirlwind trip to write, shoot and edit your own short film (with a series of limitations) in 48 hours. Our film, "Zombie: The Musical" picked up several awards. It was a great time.
Today, the Washington Post profiles a few teams competing in the project (there is a rolling calendar throughout the summer). The project comes to Little Rock the weekend of June 6th.
Thursday, May 01, 2008 - 11:25:04
I've been asked to bring back "What's in your queue?" For me, the following:
"Long Day's Journey into Night"
"Doctor Doolittle"
"Absence of Malice"
"Judgement at Nuremburg"
"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead"
You?
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - 21:02:02
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - 18:23:07
TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
The Tribeca Film Festival opens tonight in Manhattan. Stephen Holden of the New York Times previews the festival in print and with this narrated video. Arkansas Democrat Gazette film critic Philip Martin makes an annual trip to this festival so I'll look for his comments.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - 18:13:44
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
The official line-up for the Cannes Film Festival has been announced. In my view, the most intriguing is the Steven Soderberg double-bill "Che" which consists of two films: "Guerilla" and "The Argentine" starring Benicio del Toro as Che Guevara. Clint Eastwood's new film "Changeling" is there as is "Synedoche" from Charlie Kaufman. All three play in competition.
"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," and Woody Allen's new film "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" screen out of competition.
The festival runs from May 14 - May 25.
Continue reading "" »
Sunday, April 20, 2008 - 09:52:26
David Carr of the New York Times profiles Robert Downey, Jr. who takes the lead in "Iron Man" set for release on May 2nd. "When Robert was cast in ‘Iron Man,’ it was as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. He was not the obvious choice, but my larger fear was making a mediocre movie; the landscape of the superhero is very picked over. I knew that Robert’s performance would elevate the movie,” says director Jon Favreau.
Sunday, April 20, 2008 - 09:45:02
The Little Rock Film Festival has announced its 2008 line-up. "War Eagle, Arkansas" was selected as the opening night film. A Charles B. Pierce retrospective hosted by Harry Thomason also highlights the four-day festival.
Sunday, April 13, 2008 - 12:55:31
Here's a link to three new photos of Heath Ledger as the Joker in "The Dark Knight." I'm not sure how long these photos will stay up, but they're pretty chilling.
This is easily my most anticipated movie of 2008. I fully suspect that Ledger's performance will be in line with what co-star Michael Caine said: "Heath's like the most murderous psychopath you've ever seen on the screen.'' That means that we should probably expect an Oscar nomination for Ledger. Only one acting Oscar has been bestowed posthumously: Peter Finch ("Network") in 1976. When Ledger died he generated immediate comparisons to James Dean who was twice nominated posthumously for an Oscar ("East of Eden" (1955) and "Giant" (1956)). He lost both.
Sunday, April 13, 2008 - 11:08:41
MOVIEGOER REVIEW: SMART PEOPLE
It is not uncommon for films about quirky intellectuals to strike our fancy. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney were brooding smarties in "The Savages," which played late last year. Paul Giamatti was an unaccomplished writer unable to get a novel published in "Sideways." Frustrated high-caliber thinkers were, for decades, staples of Woody Allen's finer works. Max von Sydow, Judy Davis and Mr. Allen himself have played roles of the hyper-cultured unable to co-exist with the less sophisticated world around them. And there's Jeff Daniels, whose performance as Bernard Berkman in "The Squid and the Whale" is the filet of the frustrated smartie.
This is to say that Mr. Quaid has large blazer of Harris tweed to fill as Lawrence Wetherhold in the intelligent and funny “Smart People,” directed by Noam Murro. Lawrence is an English professor at Carnegie Mellon. He's a miserable guy who treats his students and his colleagues with disdain, not to mention failing to adhere to university parking codes. He's raising a daughter, Vanessa (Ellen Page), who possesses his intellectual prowess. She too despises those less intelligent, and she doesn't have any friends as a result. Lawrence's son, James (Ashton Holmes), is a promising poet who, unlike Vanessa, appears repulsed by their behavior.
Lawrence gets himself into a fix when he falls while trying to climb a fence. He can't drive so he's left to the company of his adopted brother Chuck (Thomas Hayden Church) to get him from place to place. His doctor, Janet (Sarah Jessica Parker), a former student, hasn't seemed to get over her school girl crush and agrees to a night of adult fun with Lawrence that evolves into the film's emotional core.
It's difficult to talk about "Smart People" in a linear fashion because there are so many detours away from the film's central plot. There's an unplanned pregnancy, a poem sold to the New Yorker, a book deal, a college acceptance and relationship that borders on incest. These are each quite interesting, but to explore any one of them in depth would have further muddied the film's salty waters.
But the film still makes its point, well, actually because of Mr. Quaid and Mr. Church who banter around in hilarious fashion like the non-biologically connected brothers that they are. Ms. Page, who destroyed the screen in "Juno" en route to an Academy Award nomination, is a fine addition. She plays a spunky young Republican with ease. But she's a nasty little whiz; she asks her classmates to their faces what it's like to be stupid.
If there's anything expected in "Smart People," it’s that the circumstances they face force them to change, only slightly, to allow them to better cope with the outside world. But the filmmakers don't force them to undergo such drastic changes so as to hide their imperfections. They hold their true nature in tact; a realistic calculation, and a smart one.
Sunday, April 13, 2008 - 11:02:23
There's more on the decline of the film critic in this piece from A.O. Scott of the New York Times on Roger Ebert. Writes Scott,
". . . And if the print media were inhospitable then to the survival and flourishing of criticism, many of them seem now to have become actively, lethally hostile. Sean P. Means, who writes for The Salt Lake Tribune, has compiled a list of 27 critics who have, over the past year or so, been downsized, laid off, bought out or otherwise subjected to a corporate logic of streamlining and syndication. Local dailies and weeklies, increasingly enfeebled links in national chains, no longer see a need to keep employees on the payroll whose job is to see movies before everyone else does and report back knowledgeably on what they’ve seen.
"Such attrition is hardly limited to movie reviewers, and it has more to do with the economics of newspapers than with the health of criticism as a cultural undertaking. If you spend time prowling the blogs, you may discover that the problem is not a shortage of criticism but a glut: an endless, sometimes bracing, sometimes vexing barrage of deep polemic, passionate analysis and fierce contention reflecting nearly every possible permutation of taste and sensibility. . ."
Saturday, April 12, 2008 - 08:40:44
I'm late in posting this excellent profile of George Clooney from the New Yorker. Writes Ian Parker, "Clooney is America’s national flirt, a pitchman on talk shows and red carpets who, against the background hum of the world’s lust and envy, is lightly ironic, clever, and self-deprecating, with furrowed brow and bobbing head, and a gyration in the lower jaw suggesting something being moved around under his tongue."
Friday, April 11, 2008 - 09:06:13
Patrick Golstein of the Los Angeles Times has an interesting piece in today's paper on the decline of the critic. He observes, "There was a time when critics were our arbiters of culture, the ultimate interpreters of intellectual discourse. When I was growing up, eager to write about the arts, it was just as important to read Pauline Kael, Frank Rich and Lester Bangs as it was to see a Robert Altman film, a David Mamet play or listen to the latest Elvis Costello album. Critics gave art its context, explained its meaning and guided us to new discoveries."
I've written about the decline of film critics frequently in this space. It's troubling, but the web has proved to be a medium where people - former film critics or emerging ones - can find a voice. Today, Michael Wilmington, formerly of the Chicago Tribune, posted his first review for the popular internet film site Movie City News. As Goldstein notes, "The Web isn't the enemy of critical thinking. The land of a million blogs is a medium brimming with opinion. What's different is the reader gets to decide whose opinion matters the most. It's a big adjustment, but maybe it's time critics, like many artists, realize they should pay more attention to their audience."
Friday, April 11, 2008 - 08:43:58
David Ayer, the writer of "Training Day," directs "Street Kings," starring Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker and Hugh Laurie opens in wide release. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times writes, "It’s easy to laugh at “Street Kings” for its bigger than big emotions, its preposterously kinky narrative turns and overwrought jawing and yowling, but there’s no doubt that it also keeps you watching, really watching, all the way to the end." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly notes, "Every so often, Keanu Reeves' robo-voiced blankness serves him well, but when he has to play a pulpy, tormented demon-saint, scraping up insults and spitting them out like bullets, he's like the host of an infomercial doing an impersonation of a badass."
Dennis Quaid attempts to rebound from the miserable "Vantage Point" with the intellectual comedy "Smart People" also starring Ellen Page, Thomas Hayden Church and Sarah Jessica Parker. Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal raves, "With a title like "Smart People," a movie should be, at a minimum, reasonably bright. This one is unreasonably bright; it passes the IQ test with flying colors. And intelligence plus genuine wit aren't its only distinctions (as if they were in such plentiful supply these days that we could dismiss them). The people in question -- primarily Dennis Quaid's college professor, Lawrence; his precocious daughter, Vanessa, played by Ellen Page; and Sarah Jessica Parker's Janet, an emergency-room doctor who once had a crush on Lawrence when she took his Victorian literature class -- are also wounded, angry, yearning for love, emotionally stupid and wonderfully affecting."
Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park" won the 60th Anniversary Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. It opens at Matt Smith's delightful Market Street Cinema. J. Hoberman of Village Voice opines, "The pleasing circularity of Gus Van Sant's masterful Paranoid Park is not only a function of the film's narrative structure but reflects the arc of its maker's career. Few directors have revisited their earliest concerns with such vigor."
I can't get excited about "Prom Night." No one seems have been able to see it prior to release which always means it sucks. That doesn't mean, however, that it won't draw crowds.
Monday, April 07, 2008 - 18:11:03
MOVIEGOER REVIEW: LEATHERHEADS
It was a little more than one month ago that George Clooney was making the rounds in defense of his recent film, the exceptional "Michael Clayton." In that movie, Clooney played a renegade attorney who uncovers a extensive plot to hide the truth in a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit. He received an Oscar nomination for his performance.
However, no such honor will be bestowed upon him for his latest effort, "Leatherheads," a quirky and silly comedy about the advent of professional football in the 1920's. The film stars Clooney as Jimmy 'Dodge' Connelly, an aging pro player traveling from one blue collar mining town to the next playing games in front of small crowds. His team, like most other teams in the league, has gone belly up. In response, Dodge conceives of a plan to bring Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) a great college player onto the team. He's a war hero and he'll boost ticket sales. He's right, but Rutherford has a secret: his fame is predicated on an embellished war record. Fast on his trail is Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), a Chicago reporter angling for a promotion.
Mr. Clooney also directs the film. He's hardly a novice behind the camera; his last directorial effort, "Good Night and Good Luck," earned him an Academy Award nomination. For such a talented artist, "Leatherheads" is hardly indicative of his abilities. Like the multitude of failed Woody Allen comedies that have appeared this decade, "Leatherheads" is a misguided attempt at funny. Not even Mr. Clooney's charm, which rears its head at the most inopportune times, can save a film this bland.
But perhaps we should temper our criticism. After all, even recent Oscar winners Joel and Ethan Coen, for whom Clooney will act in the upcoming "Burn After Reading," made "The Ladykillers."
Thursday, April 03, 2008 - 08:15:00
Sunday, March 30, 2008 - 10:54:49
Mark Harris, the author of "Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood," appears on Elvis Mitchell's radio program "The Treatment." Also, you can read an excerpt of Harris's book in Entertainment Weekly. The books traces the evolution of the five films that were nominated for Best Picture in 1967: "Bonnie and Clyde," "The Graduate," "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," "In the Heat of the Night" and "Dr. Doolitte." I'm about halfway through it, and it's certainly one of the best books on film I've read in many years.
