Certainly no one will be confusing the Los Angeles Film Critics Association with the Golden Globes this morning. The LA crit pick for best picture of the year is the little-known arthouse curiosity WALL-E, with the vaguely Scandinavian-sounding The Dark Knight as runner-up. When will these artsy-fartsy dweebs in their berets and monocles figure out that they’re simply out of touch with the movie-loving public?

Perhaps you sense sarcasm.

Read More...

LOCAL HERO (1983)



Whither Bill Forsyth? Withering, apparently: after a charming run of movies in the 1980s (including Gregory’s Girl, Comfort and Joy and Housekeeping), the Scottish director flamed out with 1993’s Being Human (a terrible film which, unsurprisingly, stars Robin Williams), disappearing for good after 1999’s Gregory’s Two Girls (which may or may not be terrible, since I only just learned of its existence through the Internet Movie Database). But Forsyth can make sequels and terrible Robin Williams movies from now until doomsday and he’ll still be one of my favorite directors of all time, if only for bringing Local Hero into existence. A simple but compelling vision of utopia, the film takes place in a gorgeous Scottish fishing village where everyone is welcome and accepted at the local ceilidh, from punk rockers and homeless beachcombers to American businessmen, Russian sailors, African preachers and pretty big city scientists who just might turn out to be mermaids. Movies (especially the Hollywood variety) are usually too impatient, loud and cynical to capture the best parts of actually being human – the beauty of a fantastic night sky, the electric giddiness of a new flirtation, the relaxed camaraderie of smart, decent people – but Forsyth seduces us with the salty sweetness of his celluloid world the way the fictional village of Ferness eventually seduces the film’s shaggy dog protagonist, Mac (played with deadpan cable-knit sweater warmth by the ever-reliable Peter Riegert), an oil company executive tasked with paving paradise to put up a shiny new oil refinery...and, like most real-life utopias, the sense of bittersweet impermanence only heightens the appeal of the place.

Read More...

In Jack Mathews’ book The Battle of Brazil, which recounts Terry Gilliam’s struggle to get his director’s cut of Brazil released by Universal Pictures, the author reprints a list of alternative titles the Universal suits presented to Gilliam. Apparently they felt Brazil was confusing or misleading – after all, the movie didn’t take place in Brazil, and they certainly didn’t want to give audiences the wrong impression. And you can certainly see how these titles would have proved clearer and more appealing to the masses: If Osmosis, Who Are You?, Explanada Fortunata Is Not My Real Name, The Girl in the House on the Truck That's on Fire, and my all-time favorite, Gnu Yak, Gnu Yak and Other Bestial Places.

The point is, choosing the title of a movie can be a multi-million dollar decision, as Josh Friedman reports in the L.A. Times. It’s so important, there’s even a consulting firm called TitleDoctors, started by marketing consultants Seth Lockhart and Jamil Barrie. Imagine, this is a job you can have – meeting with movie executives and presenting them with a list of old song titles you think would be a perfect fit for their new romantic comedy or crime drama.

Read More...

Almost as deadly for an actor as a face made for radio is a style made for theater.  An actor who is thought of primarily as a stage presence will often be considered either too overblown and theatrical for film, from years of playing to the back row, or too subtle and mannered to have the kind of dynamic charisma one looks for in the image-intensive medium of motion pictures.  Occasionally, though, a highly praised stage actor breaks through in film and establishes himself as the class of his field, and if Wales' Jonathan Pryce lacks the good looks and intensity of a Laurence Olivier, he has at least managed — largely due to his longtime association with the troubled, talented director Terry Gilliam — to become one of the most skillful and reliable character actors working today.   A veteran of RADA (on an acting scholarship) and the former artistic director of the celebrated Liverpool Everyman Theater, Pryce's stage credentials are impeccable, but he's also a stalwart movie veteran who's appeared in everything from James Bond movies (he played the main villain in 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies, opposite Pierce Brosnan) to summer blockbusters (he's been the Don Knotts-esque governor of Jamaica, Weatherby Swann, in all three installments of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise).  But despite these occasional gestures at superstardom, he's most at home assaying highly distinctive and memorable character roles, even imbuing his occasional lead performance with a nervous energy and sublime competence that comes straight out of his theatrical training and perfectly feeds into his on-screen persona.

Read More...

If nothing else, you have to give Michael Radford credit for ambition.  With nothing more than one minor feature film and a Van Morrison tour documentary to his credit, he somehow finagled his way into tackling one of the most colossally important novels of the 20th century.  He wrote the screenplay himself, rejecting all offers of assistance from any number of literary lions; he was determined to film in in London, regardless of the expense; and he decided to release it in the year 1984, cementing it for good in the public consciousness as the definitive version of the classic novel of a totalitarian future.  Determined or not, though, Radford encountered endless difficulties in making the film, and it very nearly didn't happen.  George Orwell's widow very nearly didn't give him the rights to the property (she'd previously blocked David Bowie from crafting a rock opera -- the record that ultimately became Diamond Dogs -- out of the story), and billionaire Richard Branson, who bankrolled the project, tacked all sorts of demands on Radford under which he bristled until he publicly denounced Branson's meddling at the BAFTA awards that year.  But the fact that he attended the BAFTA awards should give you an idea of whether or not the director -- then a 'young buck' at 37 -- managed to realize his titanic ambition.

For all its formidable reputation, though, Nineteen Eighty-Four is, among the 'great books', one of the most filmable.  It has a memorable set of characters, a linear plot, a comprehensible storyline that took place both internally and externally, and, for all the feuding that later took place between liberals and conservatives about which of them, exactly, Orwell was complaining, an overall point that was hard to miss.  It also contained enough science fiction elements to keep fanboys entertained (though one of Sonia Brownell's conditions for granting Radford the rights to film her husband's novel was that it not contain hi-tech special effects), a juicy sexual subplot, and a richly detailed, yet highly believable, fictional world to be relaized on screen.  Despite his onerous conditions, Branson ponied up a lot of money for Radford to play with, ensuring that he could pursue the look he wanted, the feel he needed, and the cast he depended on to make a successful adaptation.  If he did it right, Nineteen Eighty-Four could be a huge success.  So did he?

Read More...

Review by Bryan Whitefield.

When City of God was released in 2002, it became an international sensation for its mix of stylized violence and gritty portrayal of life in the Brazilian favelas. It launched the career of director Fernando Mereilles, who used the same location and several of the non-professional actors from the film to create an episodic series for Brazilian TV called City of Men.

Read More...

The setup: After making a name for themselves with a series of unique and relatively small-scale crime stories (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and Miller's Crossing), Joel Coen and his producer-cowriter brother Ethan won the Palme d'Or at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival with their Hollywood-themed comedy Barton Fink. Their next film saw them collaborating with super-producer Joel Silver and working with a budget of upwards of $25 million back when that still meant something in Hollywood.

Read More...