The Screengrab : harry potter

Dance with a Ranger; Johnny Depp and "Donnie Brasco" Director Break Out the Silver Bullets

Phil Nugent — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

It's been reported that director Mike Newell is in talks to direct a new movie about the Lone Ranger for producer Jerry Bruckheimer. This news confuses us. We go far enough with Newell that we will always think of him as a specialist in dark-toned, downbeat British films such as Dance with a Stranger, The Good Father, and An Awfully Big Adventure. That last one has a title that sounds kind of fun until you remember that it's Peter Pan's description of what death must be; even Newell's big romantic comedy hit, Four Weddings and a Funeral, had a funeral in it. It's not the kind of resume that one associates with high-spirited Western action, but Newell was allowed to direct a Harry Potter movie that Guillermo del Toro couldn't fit into his busy schedule, so apparently that makes him Howard Hawks. The big casting news about this picture concerns not who's playing the Ranger, but Johnny Depp's eagerness to play his faithful Native American sidekick, Tonto. Leaving aside the question of whether Depp intends to go traditional with the "Me Tonto, you kemo sabe" business or attempt something more multiculturally cutting-edge, there's the fact that his previous collaboration with Newell, Donnie Brasco, was a gangster movie that nobody has ever described as frolicsome.

The thing is, we've been here before. 1981's The Legend of the Lone Ranger was a heavily touted fiasco that, in attempting to revive the character, succeeded only in dumping mountain load of dirt on the heads of his resuscitators. It was directed for maximum pomposity by William Fraker, an artist best known as a cinematographer, though he had already directed Monte Walsh, a grotesquely depressive Western that seemed to run for half the lifetime of it dazed star, Lee Marvin, and that was lit with a 30-watt bulb. Fraker's Lone Ranger movie was most notable for the tsunami of bad publicity that hit it when the Wrather Corporation, which owned the rights to the character, sicced its lawyers on Clayton Moore, the actor who had played the Ranger on television, and who the company wanted to prevent from showing up at any grocery store openings in his die mask and cowboy hat. The company won in court, but in the process reaped more bad karma than Caligula. Some of it hit the new Lone Ranger, a fellow named Klinton Spilsbury, whose performance so dazzled the suits that they had his entire performance re-dubbed by the uncredited James Keach. Lone Ranger was Spilsbury's acting debut, and since he never got work again, he has the special distinction of being the rare star of a major motion picture of the talking era who seems likely to leave no evidence of what he sounded like behind for posterity. Spilsbury subsequently won Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Actor and Worst New Star of the year, which means that he has twice as many Golden Raspberry Awards as he has movie credits.

On the plus side, the new Lone Ranger movie is being written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who wrote the ferociously whimsical Pirates of the Caribbean movies, so maybe their surfeit of jolliness will balance out Newell's natural dolor. That still leaves the question of how Depp will approach his role. In the Fraker movie, Tonto was played by Michael Horse, later of Twin Peaks, who went into the project with some trepidation and who seems to have wound up basically taking the attitude that he was just out there enjoying the scenery while some idiots shot a Lone Ranger movie around him. In an interview, Horse recalled telling the fillmakers "that in this day and age, if you portray Tonto with disrespect, there will be more Indians on your lawn than Custer saw." (Horse also recalled being bothered late one night because Spilsbury had gotten into a brawl, possibly with someone who made fun of whatever his voice sounded like: "Some guard called me at three in the morning to come and get him. I said, ‘whoa, that faithful companion stuff is only in the movies.'") As we've all been well-informed by now, Depp modeled his performance in the Pirates movies on his good buddy Keith Richards. Maybe he can model his Tonto on Jimmy Carl Black.

Early April Fool’s Day? “Three Stooges” Casting Bombshell

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

As we posted here a while back, the Farrelly Brothers have a Three Stooges movie in the works. This is not a biopic of Moe and Curly Howard and Larry Fine, as we’ve previously seen with the 2000 TV movie starring Paul Ben-Victor, Michael Chiklis and Evan Handler, but rather a new comedy “built around the antics of the three characters that Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Howard played in the Columbia Pictures shorts.” Who will play the Stooges this time around? The answers may shock and astonish you!

According to Variety, MGM “has set Sean Penn to play Larry, and negotiations are underway with Jim Carrey to play Curly, with the actor already making plans to gain 40 pounds to approximate the physical dimensions of Jerome ‘Curly’ Howard. The studio is zeroing in on Benicio Del Toro to play Moe.”

My first thought after reading this and cleaning up the Coke Zero I spit out all over my computer monitor was that this has to be a mistake. The mistake being that someone at the Variety.com office hit a switch about a week too soon, and that this article was meant to go up on April 1st. It’s too close to such brilliant pranks as Scorsese to Direct Final Harry Potter Film to be real, right? I’m sure we can expect a retraction any minute now.

Either that, or…this is real? Sean Penn did almost display a detectable sense of humor in his Oscar acceptance speech, even if ever so briefly. So maybe…nah. Gotta be a mistake.

Trailer Review: Twilight

Paul Clark — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

So this is Twilight? The Hollywood adaptation of “the hottest books since Harry Potter”? Because, to run the risk of pissing off the same contingent that took offense to my Trailer Review of High School Musical 3, I’m not really feeling this one. To me, this looks pretty cheesy, with some half-baked vampire mythos and second-rate, TV-ready special effects. Come to think, the whole trailer looks less like a spot for a would-be blockbuster than an ad for a new series on the CW- impossibly pretty characters who are sexy yet sensitive, plenty of self-aware “hip” dialogue (the “radioactive spider” line is a real groaner), and so on. Nonetheless, I’m hoping that this movie will allow Kristen Stewart the opportunity to do more substantial work in the future.

Entertainment Weakly: Attacking EW’s Defense of The Clone Wars

Andrew Osborne — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:21:00 GMT

Okay, I realize it’s dumb to get annoyed by articles in entertainment magazines, but I do write for The Screengrab...and isn’t public venting what the InterTubes are all about? So allow me to respond to Jeff Jensen’s defense of George Lucas and The Clone Wars in the current issue of the usually somewhat less annoying Entertainment Weekly (which at least had the good sense to give the feature-length animated infomercial in question an F). Bemoaning the aforementioned F, the poor box office showing of The Clone Wars and general fanboy discontent with Lucas, columnist Jensen writes, “Missing from the overheated bashing of The Clone Wars was the crucial point that it was made for kids, not the grown-ups for whom the original trilogy remains (ridiculously) sacred.”

Um...okay. Because Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were edgy Scandinavian Dogme 95 films made for grad students and aging Cannes jurists, right? That same "for kids!" argument has been used to defend The Phantom Menace, the Elmo-fication of Sesame Street and the general dumbing down of family entertainment from the time I actually was a kid ‘til now: hey, chill out, Grandpa...it’s okay if insert TV show or movie here is shallow, poorly written and generally dimwitted. It’s for kids!

Now, it’s not that everything I watched as a child of the ‘70s was primo high quality Art. I though Welcome Back Kotter was the height of urbane, sophisticated wit in my formative years, and was shocked to discover how incredibly crappy the program seemed when I caught a stray episode a few years back.

But Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back hold up (and, okay, we can argue later about Return of the Jedi). I may not be as goofy-nerdy-crazy about them now as I was in my pre-pubescent geekery, but I can still appreciate the craftsmanship that hooked me as a child. Yet more important than sheer craftsmanship is the lack of condescension in those earlier films. Lucas took his storytelling seriously then: much of his audience may have been youthful, but he didn’t treat us like kids. He took his goofy, made-up characters and the goofy, made-up world they lived in as seriously as J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis or J.K. Rowling all took theirs, without mugging for his young audience like a birthday party clown.

In The Clone Wars, a character refers to Jabba the Hutt’s son as “Stinky.” That’s not dumb because I’m an adult. It’s just dumb. It breaks the fourth wall. It breaks the reality of the storytelling universe, because it’s a cheap, easy, “hip” reference from our world, not the fictional world of the story. And even kids who may like that schtick today (a small number, judging by the film’s box office results) will realize it’s dumb when they get a little older. Nobody has to defend the Harry Potter-verse by reminding adults that, hey, it’s for kids! Adults like Harry Potter DESPITE the fact it’s made for kids...they like it because it’s good.

Later in his article, Jensen informs us that, in addition to thinking aging hipsters (and, I guess, kids) shouldn’t expect quality from kid stuff, we should also realize “Star Wars is a stream of content – books, comic books, toys, micro-cartoons, videogames, DVDs, and, soon, a TV series. This new generation sees no distinction between movies and their merchandise, and that’s just fine with them.”

Which means today’s kids must be dumb as a sack of hammers, except Jensen then goes on to elucidate that today’s biggest movie franchise (Harry Potter) is a “literary franchise [accessory].” Which, as far as I can tell, has no meaning whatsoever nor relation to all the kids out there who actually CAN tell the difference between a certain work of art that moved their souls and, say, a Harry Potter toothbrush from Wal-Mart. “The Clone Wars will not be remembered as a great animated movie,” Jensen concludes, “or an awful one, for that matter. But it might be remembered as part of a larger pop moment that is wiring the future of entertainment.”

On behalf of all the old fogies AND the youngsters of America, I hope to God he’s wrong.

Related Stories: Star Bores: Five Reasons to Skip The Clone Wars, George Lucas and the License to Print Money

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Sept. 6-12, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

In a world where Aronofsky’s Wrestler Bodyslams Venice Competition…where Paris Hilton Pulls the Bullshit Train to Toronto…where Good Directors Go Bad and Charlie Kaufman Gets Wired...a world we will call, for lack of a better term, a Lebowski World…

In a time when Harry Potter Fans Revolt….when Johnny Depp is a household pet and Michael Caine is a Batspoiler…when Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is rediscovered and a Classless Man gets in a Voiceless Brawl…

One blog dares to bring you the Arab Movie Hall of Shame. One blog looks back at City Slickers and Kazaam and lives to tell the tale. One blog celebrates the Local Hero soundtrack and the dinosaurs of the Wheel Inn . And one blog stands alone to bring you Coming Attractions: A Screengrab Salute to Movie Trailers, Parts One and Two!

The Screengrab! Now playing on a computer near you.

Harry Potter Fans Revolt

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

They seem so harmless, the Harry Potter nerds. They line up at bookstores in an orderly fashion, decked out in their cute pointy hats and spectacles. They write loving odes to Dumbledore on their MySpace pages. Some of them form bands and play non-threatening “wizard rock.” Alan Horn, president of Warner Bros., certainly must have thought them harmless enough when his company switched the release date for the latest Potter film from November to next summer. Imagine his surprise when the Potterheads reacted like Patriots fans after Brady went down for the season.

“To a world of wand-wielding Harry Potter loyalists, the studio executive had crossed to the dark side,” writes Lauren A. E. Schuker in the L.A. Times. “Within hours of Warner Bros.'s decision to postpone the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to next July, hate mail began to pour into the studio. An online petition expressing fans' disgust with the decision garnered more than 45,000 signatures. The studio says it even received death threats. ‘I hope you choke on your own saliva,’ snarled one fan in an email.”

The official Warner Bros. explanation for moving Half-Blood Prince – “that the film would make a bigger splash in the middle of summer” – doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. They didn’t already know this before they scheduled it for November? And wouldn’t the Potter fans turn out in droves no matter when it was released? Horn did issue an apology, but the faithful aren’t having it. In addition to the petitions, they’re turning to YouTube to express their dismay. As you can see, even Hitler is upset.

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: July 26-August 1, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The weekend is here and you could probably find something to do outside, like go to the beach or the dog track, but we both know it’s way too hot out there. For your own safety, I implore you to stay home, crank up the air conditioner and relax with a fruity drink and the finest Screengrab posts of the week.

You know us, always finding diamonds in the dung, like the Top Ten Great Scenes From Not-So-Great Movies (Parts One, Two and Three)

We got up close and personal with Sean Connery and Melissa Leo, but kept a safe distance from Shigeo Tokuda, the Godzilla of geriatric porn.

We bucked the trends and chose to pay some attention to that arthouse curiosity The Dark Knight – including the top 10 reasons it isn’t as good as you think and the foolish editorials comparing Batman and Bush.

We wondered who was goofier – Jon Voight or George Lucas? Then we wondered why Tim Burton had to remake Planet of the Apes.

We looked back to Around the World in 80 Days and ahead to Body of Lies, W and the next Harry Potter.

We checked out the Venice Film Festival lineup (not to mention Anne Hathaway)

And some would say we nuked the fridge.

Revenge of the Nerds - The 10 Sexiest Guy Geeks In Cinema (Part Deux)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

5. Steve Carrell as Andy Stitzer in The 40 Year Old Virgin

The poster said (and showed) it all: the painfully earnest expression, the terrible haircut, the little kid shirt and, of course, the no sex. For 40 years. Long past the point when even the nerdiest of nerds have usually managed to score at least a mercy jump from some kind soul, Andy is still living in a lonely geek paradise of pop culture, complete with an incredibly bad-ass video game chair that may, in fact, be even better than sex. But, in his isolation, Andy has also developed a tender soul and some not unimpressive pectorals (beneath a thick pelt of manly chest hair) that, combined with the stealthy square-jawed good looks beneath all the silliness, is sheer catnip to Catherine Keener’s E-Bay entrepreneur (not to mention my wife and most of her friends).

4. Michael Cera as Evan in Superbad and Paulie Bleeker in Juno

My sources inform me that Michael Cera is more cute than hot, although his junk-accentuating yellow shorts in Juno and the fact that he manages to attract Ellen Page’s titular wise-ass are mitigating factors in the case of his performance as teenage Tic-Tac enthusiast Paulie Bleeker. Of course, the geek side of the equation is more obvious...neither Paulie nor Evan seem to be especially popular in their respective high schools, but they earn their spot on this list by personifying exactly the sort of unspoiled misfits who are just on the verge of coming into their own as confident young adults (i.e., a tasty morsel and/or excellent boyfriend material for perceptive partners like Juno and Martha MacIsaac's teen temptress Becca.)

3. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter in all those damn Harry Potter movies

And speaking of manly transformation...to quote blondychik1 over on YouTube regarding a certain nude scene from a certain notorious West End revival of Equus: “When did Daniel grow into a MAN?!?!” Meanwhile, over at Hogwart’s, the Harry Potter Nation has been watching the slow cinematic transformation of their favorite wizard from bespectacled young misfit to post-pubescent master of his wand in a mounting hormonal frenzy that even Muggles can feel way down deep in their Bertie Botts.

2. Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent in Superman I-IV

Respect.

1. Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker in Spider-Man 1-3

My wife and my female friends think he’s hot. My gay friends think he’s hot. Mary Jane Watson (personified by smokin’ hot, soakin’ wet Kirsten Dunst) thinks he’s hot. But he’s not JUST hot...he’s also a smart, sweet romantic superhero who’s nice to his cloying, annoying Aunt May...hell, he’s even nice to frenemies like Harry Osborn who try to kill him...AND he can deliver a stack of pizzas to your door from just about anywhere in just over ten minutes. Ladies and gents, I think we have a winner...(but please be sure to let us know who we missed)!

Click here for part 1.

Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Hollywood Accountants

Phil Nugent — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Moviemaking is "still a very challenging business," says media analyst Richard Greenfield. "The average movie still loses money." The question is, will Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull turn out to be an average movie? In a piece calculated to make you break out the crying towels, Claudia Eller of the Los Angeles Times reports on "the new economic realities of the movie business" and how they're reflected in the deal that Paramount Pictures cut with director Steven Spielberg, star Harrison Ford, and fount of contemporary mythology George Lucas in order the get the fourth Indiana Jones picture up and running. The franchise is different from most of the more recently forged brand-name pictures (such as your Spider-Mans and your Pirates of the Caribbeans) in that the producer, Lucas, rather than the studio, owns the property, which puts Paramount more in the position of a distributor than a proud parent who can expect the movie's long-term revenue potential to take care of it in its old age. After it became clear that the picture was going to cost much more than originally projected--not an unheard-of occurrence in Hollywood--the major participants agreed to sweeten things for them by forgoing their upfront salaries. Eller reports that the studio "spent about $185 million to make the movie and will pay at least $150 million to market it worldwide. The studio will earn a distribution fee of 12.5% of the revenue it receives from the film's release in all media, including theaters, DVD and television." Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford will stand to make 87.5 cents off every dollar the movie makes after the studio has been fully reimbursed for the cost of the movie and been paid their distribution fee, but that means that they won't start to clear anything until after Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has made $400 million.

The thing is, if the movie makes less than $400 million, Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford will have spent a year of their lives killing themselves--well, Ford, anyway--just for the exercise. Is there a chance in hell they'll go home empty-handed? Eller: "Although the "Indiana Jones" franchise is considered one of Hollywood's surest bets -- the first three pictures amassed $1.2 billion in worldwide ticket sales -- there is no guarantee that younger moviegoers will turn out in droves to see a now 65-year-old action hero in a fedora dust off his trademark leather jacket and crack his bullwhip. Today's under-25 action junkies are wowed by computer-generated effects spectacles, such as Spider-Man, Harry Potter, 300 and Fantastic Four." Stress the age of the leading man (and the franchise) and the fact that the movie is built around old-school physical stunts instead of CGI, and it starts to sound more and more like Live Free or Die Hard, a movie that did better than respectably at the box office (and not half bad with the critics) but that has yet to clear the $400 million hurdle. Hollywood: where success has a thousand fathers, and failure sometimes clears $3,999,999 in profits.

Happy (Almost) Birthday, MAD! (a tribute by Andumb Osboring)

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:00:00 GMT

According to the recent 286 glossy-page “green” issue of Vanity Fair, E.C. Comics was founded 60 years ago by William M. Gaines, kicking up an important early skirmish in the ongoing American Culture Wars by publishing influential, controversial horror, action, science fiction and fantasy titles like Tales From The Crypt, Two-Fisted Tales and Weird Science.

But Mad magazine, which premiered in 1952, would prove to be the company’s most iconic, longest-surviving contribution. Much has been written about the generations-deep influence of Alfred E. Neuman and “the usual gang of idiots” on American satire and popular culture in general...but, this being the Screengrab, I wanted to pay special tribute to six decades of Mad’s sometimes brilliant, sometimes sophomoric movie parodies.

According to our old friend Wikipedia, the first film spoof featured in Mad was 1953’s Ping Pong (get it?), followed shortly thereafter by Noon!, Sane!, From Eternity Back To Here!, Wild 1 (correction) Wild ½, Stalag 18 and approximately a zillion others over the subsequent decades, up to and including contemporary jabs like The Da Vinci Coma, Spider-Sham 3 and Harry Plodder & The Torture of the Fan Base.

I became familiar with the older parodies through repackaged, full-color mini-comic inserts in the Mad Super Special editions, but it’s the mid-‘70s Mort Drucker era that I remember most fondly, with its takedowns of movies I knew and loved (Star Roars, The Spy Who Glubbed Me), “grown-up” movies I experienced in Mad long before viewing the actual objects of ridicule (The Ecchorcist, A Crock o’ (Blip!) Now) and countless flicks I never bothered to see (The Eyes of Lurid Mess, The Calamityville Horror) figuring they’d never be as entertaining as the Mad versions.

Was I annoyed when, halfway through reading the gazillion-page Lord of the Rings trilogy Mad blew the ending of the epic for me with 1979’s The Ring and I, a parody of 1978’s animated Lord of the Rings (which only went as far as the Battle of Helm’s Deep)? Yes. Very annoyed.

But I had to give credit to the magazine for brutally savaging its own 1980 celluloid fiasco, Up The Academy (directed, curiously enough, by Robert Downey, Sr.). And, in addition to the laughs, attitude and cinematic sensibility it offered, Mad also provided my pubescent, pre-internet libido with any number of smokin' hot pen-and-ink fantasy girls to ogle (Undressed To Kill’s semi-clad Nancy Allen caricature, in particular) as fondly remembered now as any Playboy centerfold.

Eventually, of course, like an elder sibling cast out of Narnia, I drifted away from Mad in later years, never to return...but as long as there’s Bleccch in my Kaputnik, the usual gang of idiots will live forever in my Portzebie.

The Curse of the Rolling Stones

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:30:00 GMT

My profuse apologies for the lame Harry Potter prank. Here’s your actual Scorsese news of the day, concerning a movie that does exist: the new Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light. Scorsese, as you may know, is no stranger to the rock and roll music. An editor on Woodstock, director of both the quintessential concert film The Last Waltz and the acclaimed Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home, Scorsese was also an early adopter of the wall-to-wall classic rock approach to movie scoring, for better or for worse. His frequent use of Rolling Stones music, in particular “Gimme Shelter,” has become something of a running joke, with Mick Jagger noting that Shine a Light may be the first Scorsese movie that doesn’t feature the 1969 track.

“I'm not really that knowledgeable about how music is put together,” Scorsese told the San Francisco Chronicle, in an interview from the set of his upcoming adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island. “I love music. I wish I could write or perform music. I can't do it. I love it, and it's one of my main sources of information. I was fascinated that if Jagger would sing a line in lyrics, Keith (Richards) would respond with two notes on his guitar or a strum. I found I wanted to capture all that. I wanted to capture the look on Keith's face when he decided to respond to that lyric.”

The project may seem a tad redundant to anyone familiar with the cinematic history of the Stones. A number of concert films precede Shine a Light, and as the L.A. Times notes, most of them have been touched by controversy and even tragedy. “Most infamously, the 1970 film Gimme Shelter by the Maysles brothers documented the nightmarish scene the previous year at Altamont Speedway, where the Hells Angels were hired as security but went on a rampage. One 18-year-old concert-goer was stabbed and stomped to death. There had been other dark tinges to the film library. The Rock and Roll Circus (recorded in 1968 but not released until 1996), directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, turned out to be a grim time capsule as the last public performance of Stones guitarist Brian Jones. The politically ominous Sympathy for the Devil (filmed in 1968 and released in 1970) was beset by a studio fire, the arrest of Jones on drug charges and a dispute between director Jean-Luc Godard and the producer that climaxed with a fistfight at the premiere. Then there was Let's Spend the Night Together, directed by Hollywood rebel Hal Ashby, who filmed the band in 1981 at Arizona's Sun Devil Stadium and then hours later was wheeled out of the band's hotel on an ambulance gurney after slumping into a drug overdose."

You’d think the senior citizen Stones would have put all that behind them, but even Shine a Light fell victim to the Stones movie curse. No, we’re not talking about the mysterious appearance by Christina Aguilera (“I'm still not sure who that is,” says Keith Richards), but the death of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, who stumbled backstage and hit his head, never to recover. “I loved him,” says Richards. “But you know, what better way to go? Backstage at a Stones show? That's how I wanna go.”

Scorsese to Direct Final Harry Potter Film

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Will the final Harry Potter movie be the first to receive an R rating? Will Harry and his pals graduate from Hogwarts to the Bada Bing? These are just two of the questions that spring to mind after this morning’s surprise announcement that Martin Scorsese has been tapped to direct Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, next year’s adaptation of the seventh and last book in J.K. Rowling’s beloved series.

“Believe or not, I’m a huge Potter fan,” says Scorsese. “That may not fit people’s image of me. But Harry will still be waving a wand, not a .45, rest assured.” On rumors that Leonardo DiCaprio will cameo as the adult Harry Potter, Scorsese was noncommittal, though he did add with a laugh, “I may ask De Niro to do it. I’ve been trying to drag him out of those Focker movies or whatever they are. I want to see him in a wizard hat. You hear me, Bobby? I’m bringing the wizard hat!”

Scorsese added, “April fool!”

When Good Directors Go Bad: The Brothers Grimm (2005, Terry Gilliam)

Paul Clark — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Terry Gilliam is as widely known for his production troubles as he is for the quality of his films. Gilliam has had to contend with studio interference on nearly all his recent films, and has weathered such troubles as litigation over screenplay credit on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a literal pain-in-the-ass star who shut down production on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and the death of leading man Heath Ledger while shooting his latest project, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. It’s gotten to the point where it’s a shock when a Gilliam project runs smoothly.

After finally abandoning Don Quixote, Gilliam needed a new project, and around the same time, Bob and Harvey Weinstein of Miramax were looking for a fantasy franchise to cash in on the recent success of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Of course, the eternal troublemaker Gilliam and the famously meddling Weinsteins were hardly an ideal match, but I’d guess that Gilliam was so frustrated with not making films that he took The Brothers Grimm so that he could keep working.

However, from the beginning there were problems. Both Gilliam and leading man Matt Damon wanted Oscar nominee Samantha Morton for the film’s female lead, but the Weinsteins vetoed her, allegedly because she wasn’t deemed attractive enough. Let me repeat that: she wasn’t good-looking enough for these guys. Another point of contention was a prosthetic nose that Gilliam wanted Damon to wear in the film, but which was nixed by the studio. And the troubles continued throughout production (regular Gilliam cinematographer Nicola Pecorini was fired mid-filming) and even post-production (the film’s most expensive effects sequence was cut from the film after the effects were nearly finished). Gilliam and the studio differed so greatly over the film’s final cut — surprising, I realize — that Gilliam placed the editing on hold for six months and shot his subsequent film, Tideland, in the interim.

But though The Brothers Grimm clearly suffered from studio meddling, Gilliam is hardly blameless. The screenplay is mediocre at best, cribbing the main storyline of The Frighteners — a charlatan exploiting people’s superstitions for personal gain suddenly comes up against a genuine supernatural threat. Into this formula, Gilliam, screenwriting collaborator Tony Grisoni, and Miramax house scribe Ehren Kruger shoehorn as many references to Grimm fairy tales as they can, most of which practically club you over the head with their obviousness.

Perhaps sensing how thin the material was, Gilliam tries to compensate with his direction, which is brimful with such familiar Gilliam tropes as swooping camera shots, wide-angle lenses, and all manner of extreme tilts. Likewise, he directs his supporting players to go wayyyyyyyyy over the top instead of giving them three-dimensional characters. Most embarrassing is Peter Stormare as the bumbling Cavaldi, giving less a performance than a failed parody of commedia dell’arte-style acting. At one point, Cavaldi says of the German tongue, “every word is like an execution,” but the line would more aptly be applied to his performance.

Amidst the chaos, there are elements of The Brothers Grimm that work. Chiefly among them is the performance by Heath Ledger as the nebbishy Jakob Grimm, who actually believes in the stories that he and his brother are exploiting. Ledger makes the most of what he’s given to create a funny, surprisingly touching character who gives the film what little heart it contains. In 2005, Ledger was beginning to really demonstrate his range, and based on the evidence here we might have expected some richly comic performances in his future. Damon is solid as well in a more conventional role, but it’s Ledger who steals the show.

There are also a handful of magical moments in which Gilliam transcends the screenplay and lets his imagination run wild. Most effective is a scene in which a puddle of mud takes a human form to abduct a child, and it’s such a creepy image that not even a line pointing out that the mud-man is meant to be the Gingerbread Man can ruin it. I also like a macabre moment in which a girl is swallowed whole by a possessed horse, which Gilliam shows almost completely in shadow. And there’s a priceless bit involving a kitten, one of the few times in the film when Gilliam’s twisted sense of humor shines through.

After sticking it on the shelf for months, the Weinsteins released The Brothers Grimm in late summer 2005, as one of roughly a dozen films they dumped in theatres just prior to relinquishing Miramax to Disney. Leading up to the film’s release, the Weinsteins allegedly placed a gag order on Gilliam forbidding him to say anything against the film for fear that he’d try to sabotage its box-office chances. But Gilliam had mostly moved on, as Tideland would make its world premiere less than a month later. Tideland received many negative reviews, but love it or hate it, it’s unmistakably a Gilliam film, which is more than I can say about The Brothers Grimm.

Morning Deal Report: Charlize Theron and Viggo Mortensen in "The Road"

Peter Smith — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:30:00 GMT

With No Country for Old Men topping many a critic's list, the next Cormac McCarthy adaptation is just around the corner; Charlize Theron and Viggo Mortensen are set to star in the film version McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road.

Scarlett Johansson and Woody Allen are both contributing to New York, I Love You, an anthology film along the lines of Paris je t'aime, which collected twelve stories of love in Paris by major directors. But apparently Johansson will be directing her own segment, not starring in Allen's.

With Harry Potter 6 still to come, debate (among fans, if not filmmakers) rages over whether Harry Potter 7 should be one film or two.

Format Wars: One Step Closer to the End

John Constantine — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:25:00 GMT

Movie nerds and videophiles rejoice! The world is one step closer to having a single high definition home video format. Warner Bros. delivered a crushing blow to Microsoft and Toshiba’s HD-DVD on Friday by announcing that they would release their movies exclusively on Sony’s Blu-ray format as of May 2008. Michael Bay, probably the only person on the planet who cares about such things, is reportedly uber-psyched about all those Harry Potter flicks showing up on his chosen format.

That Gal!: Miriam Margolyes

Peter Smith — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:00:00 GMT

If Miriam Margolyes had never appeared in a single film, she would still have a special place in the history of British television. While attending Oxford University, she appeared on the game show University Challenge, and, after getting a question wrong during a live broadcast, had the dubious distinction of being the first person to say "fuck" on the British airwaves. Luckily for filmgoers, though, she didn't let the shame destroy her career, and has gone on to become one of the most sought-after character actresses in the English film industry. A veteran of a number of television gigs, like former That Gal! Natasha Richardson, she was a regular on The Black Adder (including a memorable portrayal of Queen Victoria), but it's on film where she's shone the brightest. The diminutive Margolyes stands only five feet tall, and doesn't have the toned body that would have made her a superstar, but her forceful personality, distinctively pitched voice (she was Fly the Sheepdog in the Babe films), and great versatility have secured her a place in British cinema history in a number of roles that it's hard to imagine anyone else doing. Equally at home with drama or comedy, and able to convey unladylike, rip-snorting hilarity with as much ease as she can towering rage or deep sympathy, the openly lesbian Margolyes got her start in theatre and is frequently cited by the gay press in the U.K. as one of the country's most prominent 'out' personalities. She's enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic among critics, even if her name isn't on the tip of every casting director's tongue; she's won Best Supporting Actress awards from both BAFTA and the Los Angeles Critics Circle. And while the public may not immediately be able to recall her name, her face, with its tight mouth and bulging eyes, is immediately memorable to everyone who sees her. Recently, Margolyes has announced her decision to become an Australian citizen; if she goes through with it, England will lose one its most talented actresses.

Where to see Miriam Margolyes at her best:

LITTLE DORRIT (1988)

Miriam Margolyes had already been acting for over twenty years, and making movies for a dozen, when Christine Edzard cast her as Flora Finching in her film adaptation of this Charles Dickens novel. It turned out to be her breakthrough role; she stole every scene she was in and won a Best Supporting Actress award from the L.A. Critics Circle. The part has stayed with her; she's currently touring in a one-woman show called Dickens' Women in which Flora has pride of place.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993)

When Martin Scorsese gave Margolyes the role of Mrs. Mingott in his Edith Wharton adaptation, she was fifty-two years old — the age at which an actress who'd worked as hard as she had should start to get the recognition she deserved. And as the sole comic character in the rather grim drama of manners, she finally did: it won her wide acclaim in the United States for the first time in her career, and back home, it netted her a Best Supporting Actress honor from BAFTA. Her terrific performance in The Age of Innocence signaled a career renaissance.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (2002)

It's hardly the best of the Harry Potter films, but any role in the blockbuster franchise is a healthy paycheck, and Margoyles certainly deserved one when she took on the role of Hogwarts herbologist Prof. Pomona Sprout. It would have been easy enough to just cash the check and sleepwalk through the part, but Margoyles, as she does with her best comic roles, sinks her teeth into it, getting the most mileage she can out of every moment she's on screen as the dowdy witch.

— Leonard Pierce

Kid-Lit Juggernaut Continues Conquest of Realm

Peter Smith — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Determined to crank out as many Harry Potter films as possible before the lead actors have mid-life crises, Warner Brothers has announced casting for the sixth installment. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will add Jim Broadbent and Helen McCrory to the franchise's collection of Notable Brits, as well as introducing four new child actors (all of whom, unlike Daniel Radcliffe et al, are still actually children). David Yates of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix fame will return as director, dashing our dreams of Alfonso Cuaron coming back to the fold. The film is slated for November 2008 and is projected to make fourteen hundred bazillion dollars on opening weekend. — Gwynne Watkins

Golden Compass Brouhaha

Peter Smith — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

First Dumbledore gets outed, and now this: New Line, the studio that brought off the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy but can't seem to get its act together on one measly movie version of The Hobbit, is putting its holiday eggs into one $180-million basket called The Golden Compass, a huge-scale fantasy film based on the first volume in novelist Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The studio that authorized Peter Jackson to go ahead and shoot all of Tolkien's vast saga in one mammoth shoot, to be piece-mealed out to theaters later on an annual basis, is playing it safer this time; though they stand ready to film the rest of Pullman's story if The Golden Compass is a hit, they're going to wait until the box-office returns are in before deciding whether to go ahead with the sequels. The movie is still a serious gamble. For one thing, it marks the solo directing debut of Chris Weitz, who had previously worked with his brother Paul, on comedies (American Pie, About a Boy) nowhere near as expensive and special-effects heavy. Depending on how the movie does, it seems certain to take Weitz's career to a different level, one direction or the other.

A director who finds himself working on a project this size, with potentially life-changing consequences, has to wonder if he's made a deal with the devil. In fact, some people, including right-wing evangelical James Dobson and Catholic League President William Donahue, are sure of it. Alerted to reports that Pullman is peddling atheistic, anti-Catholic propaganda in a fantasy wrapper, Donahue's organization has been mailing out a thirty-page pamphlet, "The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked", attacking the film. At the same time, many of Pullman's fans are threatening to boycott the movie because they think it won't be anti-religion enough. One point of contention is Weitz's announcement that movie The Golden Compass will omit the last three chapters of the book. He promises they'll be included in the next, as yet notional movie, but some of the book's fans think it's part of a scheme to make the material less provocative.

The Harry Potter series was enough of a phenomenon even before the first movie was made that it was able to roll right over complaints from religious loons that it glorified the dark arts; more recently, both The Chronicles of Narnia and, more weirdly, The Polar Express, managed to pull off a sort of tightrope act, presenting themselves as secular enough for mainstream acceptance while winking at Christian audiences that there was something there especially aimed at them. But if Dobson and others have their way, The Golden Compass, a film whose trailer is full of action and toy gadgets and talking animals, is shaping up to be the biggest religious debating point to hit mutilplexes since The Passion of the Christ. Pullman, meanwhile, continues to deny that his work is meant to be anti-Catholic or anti-religion. Gina Piccalo of the Los Angeles Times writes that Pullman "was unavailable to comment, the studio said, because of scheduling conflicts. But in a 2004 post still featured on his website Philip-Pullman.com, he wrote that his main quarrel is with the 'literalist, fundamentalist nature of absolute power' and 'those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchallengeable authority, in order to dominate and suppress human freedoms.'" — Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: There is Power in a Union

Peter Smith — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Looks like this Writers' Guild strike could actually happen. Now, the top-grossing films so far this year are Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Harry Potter 5, Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, and Transformers. Who needs writers?

While Peter Jackson waits on his next big-budget sci-fi action flick (Halo), he's planning a more personal project: a big-budget sci-fi action flick called District 9.

Speaking of departures, David Fincher will adapt a graphic novel about a detective chasing a killer.

— Peter Smith