The Screengrab : james mcavoy

A Girl and a Gun: "Wanted" Ads (Belatedly) Banned in Britain

Phil Nugent — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

A "media watchdog" group in Britain have banned a TV ad campaign for the DVD release of the Angelina Jolie-James McAvoy thriller Wanted. In the ads, Angie Baby can be seen attempting to extract McAvoy's appendix through his mouth with her tongue in the middle of a "high-speed car chase before the pair turned and fired their guns in the direction of the viewer. For good measure, a voiceover," presumably delivered by somebody who never saw WALL-E, can be heard touting Wanted as "the coolest movie of the year". Critics of the ad have decided that all this amounts to the glamorization of violence, which is apparently actionable over there, a move that is probably the next step in the vile machinations of those who would bring us a New World Order. (Seriously, have you read the comments section there? It never gets old. Pack a sandwich.)

According to the Guardian, the ad "received just one complaint from the public, but the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it suggested that 'using guns was sexy and glamorous', which breached the code for television", and which also rates a resounding chorus of "No duh." The ASA previously banned "billboard posters for the film's theatrical release. These featured Jolie and McAvoy holding guns in a variety of positions in a comic book-style montage of pictures." One doesn't want to seem too much in support of high-speed chases and gaudy shootouts--though when it comes down to it, how much is too much, really?--but the groups' judgement does seem almost as arbitrary as it does schoolmarmish. This is one occasion when we might actually be able to get wholeheartedly behind a movie studio, if only Universal had taken the right approach in protesting the ASA's decision. (I'm picturing them hiring a large, heavyset man, who may perhaps have been in the employ of Ron and Reg Kray in his younger and more supple days, and having him go around to the home of each ASA member to swat them repeatedly about the face and neck with a rolled-up newspaper.) Instead, Universal chose to put out a release implying that the ASA's objections to Wanted are actually based on their being uncomfortable with seeing a "strong woman" in an action movie. This charge seems wrongheaded in at least a couple of areas, starting with the idea that the definition of a "strong" woman is someone who acts like the Terminator with cleavage (okay, with more cleavage), and not excluding the fact that terms like "woman", "human being", and "mere mortal" seem inadequate to describing Angelina Jolie. Our final verdict: there are no heroes here.

DVD Digest for December 2, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, the big studios continue to roll out their summer releases, and the holiday DVD cash grab continues.

DVD of the Week: While it certainly isn’t the most revered movie getting a DVD release this week, I’d say that the new Criterion Collection edition of Sam Fuller’s White Dog is almost certainly the biggest DVD news. A controversial indictment of violence and racism, Fuller’s adaptation of Romain Gary’s story was withheld from theatrical release in 1982 due to its subject matter and violence, which essentially killed Fuller’s career in the U.S. Now, after more than a quarter of a century, White Dog is finally getting a home video release for the first time, in Fuller’s original “uncut” version. Criterion has included a handful of special features on this DVD, but really- isn’t the fact that the film is out there for everyone to see enough?

This week’s recent releases coming to DVD include: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Disney, also Blu-Ray), the second installment of the C.S. Lewis-penned fantasy series; James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie in Wanted (Universal, also Blu-Ray); Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s sibling rivalry writ large in Step Brothers (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Mulder and Scully’s return to the big screen in The X-Files: I Want to Believe (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Ice Cube in The Longshots (Weinstein Company), a film by Fred Durst; and Bam Margera Presents: Where the #$&% Is Santa? (Warner, also Blu-Ray), a title I’d say speaks for itself.

Aside from White Dog, the highlights of the week’s classics on DVD are: The Day The Earth Stood Still Special Edition (Fox, also Blu-Ray), a tie-in with the upcoming remake, featuring numerous new extras; and Casablanca Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray), which is basically the same old edition in a snazzy new package.

Only one major TV on DVD release, but it’s a doozy: Saturday Night Live: The Complete Fourth Season (Universal).

Finally, plenty of Blu-Ray only releases this week. There’s Mike Myers telling the same half dozen jokes again and again in Austin Powers Collection (Warner)! The Christmas mayhem double feature of Home Alone (Fox) and Jingle All the Way (Fox)! A double dose of Luc Besson with La Femme Nikita (Sony) and Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (Sony)! The first installment of the would-be X-Files movie franchise, The X-Files: Fight the Future (Fox), coincidentally released the same day as the DVD of the second movie! And finally, the perennial IMDb favorite and TNT standby, The Shawshank Redemption (Sony)!

Geek Love: The Unmanliness of the New Action Heroes

Phil Nugent — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:00:00 GMT

"Now the geek is god in Hollywood." That's emerging conventional wisdom as expressed by publicist Tony Angellotti. emerging declares the veteran publicist and Oscar campaigner Tony Angellotti. "Every generation redefines its heroes and the heroes of today are slight of stature and geeky." The emergence, not just in starring roles but in action hero roles, of such as Shia LaBeof (Disturbia, Transformers, and now Indiana Jones's kid), James McAvoy (Wanted), and Emile Hirsch (Speed Racer) is apparently setting off a wave of soul-searching in Hollywood, where it seems somehow significant that these are the fellows stepping up to "replace" the likes of Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone. If this were, say, 1968, there'd probably be think pieces appearing analyzing this development in terms of a political shift in the zeitgeist; the Iraq war and other setbacks to our great national ego trip have tarnished the steroid-addled heroes who emerged full-bore in the 1980s and made audiences quicker to look for heroes who seem more thoughtful and capable of self-doubt. But nobody talks like that anymore, and today's self-appointed experts are more likely to speak the language of the pop psychologist. Angellotti, who seems personally affronted by some of the newer success stories ("Do these kids even shave?"), has this theory: "For decades, we wanted our heroes to be who we could never be, but this generation of filmgoers wants heroes they can relate to, who are similar to them. They see themselves in these somewhat awkward, geeky, hairless-faced guys. They can relate to them. Stars like Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis were men; these are boys, and they're appealing to younger audiences."

Others, such as Peter Safran, a man so smart that he freely admits to having produced Meet the Spartans, thinks it's a supply-and-demand issue. "I don't think it's happening because it's what the audience is demanding; it's happening because the old-style action hero isn't emerging. These are the people who are emerging now and clearly audiences respond to seeing themselves up on the screen. Shia LaBeouf's audience grew up with him - they are very familiar with him and he's a legitimate star today." Some of these deep thinkers may be getting a bit ahead of themselves. Whatever he can or can't bench-press, Shia LaBeouf is a talented guy with tremendous reserves of audience rapport; whatever his future holds, he's much more plausible star material than a lot of the people who've been hyped as alleged up-and-comers since Andrew McCarthy and Judd Nelson were figuring out which end of the razor you held to your face. (Judd's still working it out.) More to the point, some of the "men" that these guys (who, let's face it, may have their own deep-seated personal reasons for preferring heroes with hairline issues and calorie-intake counselors) love so much had their own callow periods when they first appeared on film. There were a few years there, between the point where Moonlighting started to turn brown and Die Hard's opening weekend, where it wasn't clear that Bruce Willis would ever wipe the smirk off his face and evolve into something more durable than an overage frat rat, and Mel Gibson's early success as the stone-faced pain merchant Mad Max was something he had to grow past on his way to becoming an assured, emotionally expressive leading man. (Then space worms ate his brain. But that's another story.)

In the end, the overmuscled, inaccessible terminators of the last couple of decades may be the ones who look like an aberration in the history of Hollywood stardom. Pauline Kael once defined the recipe for success as a male movie star as having the strength "to be one's own man" while still expressing "the sensitivity that is attractive to women." Stallone conveyed some of that sensitivity in the movie that made him a star, Rocky, then lost it when he pumped himself into a cartoon killing machine, a move that proved to have only short-term dividends at the box-office. And Schwarzenegger never became enough of an actor to express it even if he had access to it; if his political career continues to prosper, it'll enhance the likelihood that he'll ultimately be seen as an all-around celebrity success story whose movie career was just a stepping stone to bigger things. These guys were big, the biggest stars in the world at a time when testosterone overload was what the world seemed to want, but when the world moved on, they were painted in a corner, and left behind no progeny above the level of, say, Dolph Lundgren. (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who Arnold more or less officially designated as his rightful heir in a cameo in The Rundown, has shown himself more interested in developing as a character actor than in making a quick payday from walking away from explosions in slow motion.) The Shias and the Emiles may actually be closer to the true face of Hollywood tradition.

Fine and Zandi

Phil Nugent — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT

You may not have heard of David Zandi. If so, from the sound of it, you don't know what you're missing. The twenty-nine-year-old, Iranian-born Zandi, says that he's one of the last surviving male members of the Persian royal family. His IMDB page, which lists two acting credits--Marci C, in which he played "Musician", and Men in Black II, in which he stretched for the role of "Alien"--is full of other intriguing personal information, including the news that he's "a champion equestrian", "loves going skiing in the winter", "Turned down the offer to be a model for Gucci and Calvin Klein to stay in acting school", and that he "Coached his girlfriend with her acting and speech in 2001 so she could work on his project." (Is that what the kids are calling it these days?) This stuff goes over pretty well with the people who hang out at IMDB message boards: one post there is headed, "MARRY ME!" The page also features quotes from Zandi, including this beaut: "Even as Talent, I see it as my sole duty to do that which is in the best interest of the Studio, regardless of my own personal desires." Right now, Zandi is trying to serve the best interests of Disney by offering himself to star in the forthcoming movie version of the video game Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Zandi isn't exactly lobbying for the role: he just wants the studio to recognize that logic is on his side. "I'm very logical for this part," he explains, "because of the way that I was raised as a child, his personality, his mannerisms. It's something I could easily pull off. It would be like playing myself. It would be an opportunity to play myself because of my ancestry."

But though he's above begging, he "will accept the role from Jerry Bruckheimer when he decides to meet the demands of the fans. I just want to give the fans what they want." Zandi knows what the fans want because of "an official-looking poll obtained by movie news service IESB.net" that shows him leading the field s voters' top choice for the role, ahead of such notables as Orlando Bloom, Zac Efron, and James McAvoy. IESB says only that they received news of the poll from an anonymous source who asked that his identity be kept confidential, a Disney spokesperson said only the official spokesperson equivalent of, "Pull the other one," and Zandi disclaims any connection to the poll but does say that he thinks it would be an awful thing for his family and everyone involved if his ancestor wound up being played by Orlando Bloom. (We hear him on that one.) Will Jerry Bruckheimer come to his sense and hire Zandi? Right now, things don't look that good, but maybe if things don't work out, maybe Zandi can maintain his poise by repeating this mantra, from his IMDB quotes section:"In this world, there are many forms of deception, but perhaps the greatest of them all, is self-deception."

Trailer Review: Wanted (Second Trailer)

Paul Clark — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Let me get this on the table — I don't read comic books, I didn't care for director Timur Bekmambetov's previous films (Night Watch, Day Watch et al), and my imperviousness to the charms of Angelina Jolie has been well documented. So if I say I'm not in the target audience for Wanted, you'll agree. Yet I'm sort of intrigued by this trailer. For one thing, it looks like the comic book source material has given Bekmambetov an honest-to-goodness framework on which to hang his outlandish visuals, rather than just throwing a bunch of random effects at the audience and expecting them to stick a la Night Watch. Who knows — the film may turn out to be almost coherent, at least by the director's standards. In addition, the Jolie factor is balanced out in part by the casting of James McAvoy, who is quickly becoming Hollywood's go-to guy for flawed, rakish heroes. In fact, Jolie's presence annoys me less here than the umpteenth incarnation of Morgan Freeman, Voice of Wisdom — come on people, can't we cast someone else for a change? Wanted is hardly at the top of my must-see list for summer, but this trailer has gotten me interested, and that's a start.