The Screengrab : jj abrams

In Other Blogs: The Blogger Experience

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Some Came Running proprietor Glenn Kenny recounts his Girlfriend Experience at The Auteurs. Kenny has a role in the film that was pitched to him as “the Harry Knowles of internet escort reviewers.” Kenny was not immediately flattered. “Harry Knowles, if you don’t know, is famous for founding Aint It Cool News, a movie fan boy website of large popularity and no small industry influence. Knowles (and I hope he won't mind me saying this) is also, as Kyle on South Park would put it, a great big fat fuck. I am, hence, slightly put off.”

At Beyond the Multiplex, Andrew O’Hehir talks to Girlfriend Experience director Steven Soderbergh about his prolific, unpredictable career. “I'm always trying to be Howard Hawks, sure. I envy the opportunities that the studio directors got in the '30s and '40s. It was assumed that you would make more than one movie a year, and that that movie could be a western or a musical or a comedy or a drama. Very early on, before I made sex, lies, and videotape, I fantasized that I could have a career in which I could move around like that. It's not easy.”

Ali Arikan breaks from the Trek pack at The House Next Door. “Which is all by way of saying there is absolutely no nuance in J.J. Abrams’s film, not even a soupçon of subtlety, no genuine humour. It’s all piff-paff, whack-bang, etc, packed with heaps of post-modernist “irony” or whatever it is they call this bollocks. Nudge nudge, wink wink ahoy. We are all wallowing in a never-ending adolescence these days. So, instead of making us laugh, J.J. Abrams just wants to make us feel clever, and the whole thing becomes a big ego-massage”

Bright Lights After Dark considers the geography of 3 Women. “It's a point that many viewers miss, though it's difficult to blame them: Robert Altman's 3 Women is really "about" California, and quite distinctly so -- it doesn't belong to its contentual municipality in the sense that, say, Nashville does. And it's not about the psycho-sprawl urban California of Los Angeles or the spittle, cardboard and tinsel California of Hollywood or the plugged culture retro-future sophistry California of San Francisco. It's about the other California, by which one means the smattering of middle-of-nowhere cities always on the brink of suburbia these days, and always reminding us of somewhere else. The dusty, mid-western-like cock-and-bull towns that flank the interstate 5 with ranches and groves. The shattered-shell-and-hanging-kayak-wind-chime Mediterranean beach villas that dot the coastal region from Monterey to Santa Barbara. And, of course, the boilingly barren, frenziedly phallic desert settlements that circle the parched Mojave and Joshua Tree territories.”

And finally in List-o-Mania, Topless Robot offers the 10 Most Blatant Terminator Ripoffs, including Cyborg Cop. “A renegade cop (is there any other kind in these movies?) goes to the tropics to find his long lost brother, who has been transformed into a cybernetic killing machine by a mad scientist in this '93 movie. As the scientist, John Rhys-Davies seems to be under the impression he's filming an episode of Gilligan's Island as his performance has to be seen to be believed.”

Yesterday's Hits: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986, Leonard Nimoy)

Paul Clark — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

With this week’s release of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, I thought the time was right to look back at an earlier big-screen installment of the franchise. But which one? Despite the enduring popularity of the Star Trek brand, few of the Trek movies could be classified as blockbusters. Even The Wrath of Khan, the current fan favorite among the original-cast adventures, only grossed a fairly unremarkable $78 million domestically. As of earlier this week, the biggest hit out of the Trek movies is the series’ fourth entry, 1986’s The Voyage Home, which was the only pre-Abrams Trek movie to gross upwards of $100 million.

So why, out of ten Star Trek movies to date, was this the one that struck a chord with moviegoers? Much of it had to with the idea that it was, to quote a recent essay at The House Next Door, “the Star Trek film for people who don’t actually like Star Trek all that much.” The Trek franchise won legions of fans with its futuristic stories set in far-flung worlds, but others were turned off by the more science fiction-heavy aspects of the show and movies. So, by setting the majority of its story in 1980s San Francisco, The Voyage Home gave devotees another agreeable two hours to spend with their beloved Enterprise crew, and allowed non-fans to enjoy a Star Trek movie without feeling so, for lack of a better word, geeky. When the film hit theatres over Thanksgiving weekend, it took in the largest opening weekend haul of 1986, and eventually became one of the year’s biggest hits.

Of course, there were other factors that contributed to Star Trek IV’s box office success. Even more than most Trek movies, this one was pretty family friendly, with a few mild expletives (or, as Leonard Nimoy's Spock calls them, “colorful metaphors”), but nothing stronger than a “damn,” “hell,” or “double dumbass on you!” Its timely save-the-whales message didn’t hurt either. Through some deliciously convoluted plot developments, the fate of the human race depends on the survival of two humpback whales, which allowed director Nimoy and his co-screenwriters to shoehorn a lesson into the story in the classic Trek fashion.

But most importantly, The Voyage Home was- and still is- funny. The 1980s were the heyday of the fish-out-of-water comedy, and by placing the familiar Enterprise crew four centuries into the past, the film afforded the characters plenty of opportunities to get laughs from their cluelessness about 20th century life. The film, to its credit, makes the most of the disconnect between the characters and their unfamiliar surroundings, and our knowledge of the crew’s personalities only makes it funnier. So when engineering whiz Scotty (James Doohan) comes face to face with an old-school computer, or Chekov (Walter Koenig) wanders around San Francisco inquiring about “nuclear wessels” at the height of the Cold War, the comedy is richer than it would have been had the characters not been so well established.

One of the better surprises the movie holds is William Shatner’s performance. In the more serious Trek episodes and on the series, Shatner had a tendency toward hamminess, especially when the situation called for big emotions. Here, in a more lighthearted movie, Shatner isn’t exactly natural, but that’s the point- his cartoonishly stalwart bearing allows for a nice contrast with the casualness of the eighties setting. One of the more amusing running jokes in the film is that while Kirk repeatedly admonishes Spock for looking out of place, Kirk really doesn’t fit in any better, although he’s convinced that he does. Because of this, he’s able to sell lines like the scene in which he feels the need to apologize for Spock, explaining that he’s an old hippie who “took too much LDS.” Rather than leaning on the line to milk the joke, Shatner practically throws it away, which makes it that much funnier. In recent decades, Shatner has become a parody of himself, so it’s nice to see him getting intentional laughs.

Aside from the comedy, the movie is more uneven, but it’s still one of the better Star Trek movies. Yes, the plot is ridiculous, but that’s part of the fun. Too many big-budget franchises play it safe in their narratives, setting up a formula and sticking to it from film to film. With Star Trek (especially the movies) the formula is less in the plot than in the characterizations- Kirk’s unconventional but instinctive leadership sense, Spock’s unflappability, Dr. McCoy's (DeForest Kelley) cantankerousness, and so on. Because the characters are firmly established, the filmmakers could afford to be more adventurous with the stories themselves. It’s hard to think of another movie series that could get away with a plot that hinges on an alien intelligence that communicates in humpback whale-song, but somehow The Voyage Home makes it work.

Of course, maybe I’m biased. After all, Star Trek IV was the first Trek movie I saw as a kid, although had already seen quite a few episodes from the series. But while I remember laughing a lot back then, it plays better for me now that I’ve doubled back and caught the rest of the movies. One may not have to be a fan of Star Trek to enjoy the comedy scenes in 1986, but a working knowledge of the movies, especially the second and third films, makes the 23rd Century sequences much more worthwhile. The Voyage Home brings the storyline that began with The Wrath of Khan to a satisfying end in the movie’s final scene, in which the crew takes a long, loving look at their new ship- the all-new Enterprise A. It’s an obvious ending, but at the end of this long, strange journey, the crew has earned it, and so has the movie.

Star Trek Showdown II: William Shatner Responds to Sulu Snub

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

When last we checked in with the YouTube sensation William Shatner is Off His Meds, the Shat Man had a bone to pick with new Star Trek auteur J.J. Abrams. Shatner (enabled by his daughter Liz) claimed that he had never been approached to make a cameo appearance in the new movie, and went on to offer some advice as to how Captain Kirk could be resurrected for the film. (It’s as simple as putting his DNA in the hovering machine and throwing the switch on the right, after all.) Now Shatner is compelled to comment on the news that, unlike many of his former Star Trek cohorts, he was not invited to George “Sulu” Takei’s big gay wedding.

Way back when he wrote the first volume of his Star Trek Memories in 1994, Shatner was startled to learn that most of his co-stars from the original series considered him to be something of a dick. Takei elaborated in his own memoir, To the Stars, in which he complained of Shatner stealing lines and close-ups from him, and even went so far as to claim on the Howard Stern show that the Shat had denied Sulu a promotion to captain. So it’s not like there’s no crazy at all to be found on the Takei side of this story…but Shatner really outdoes himself in this latest clip. Who knows what he thinks he’s up to here? It would be nice to think he’s playing the character of “William Shatner, Unhinged Asshole,” sort of like Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm or Bruce Willis in What Just Happened, but…well, judge for yourself:

DVD Digest for April 22, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a cinematic master gets the Eclipse treatment, and a viral-marketing-phenom makes its DVD debut.

DVD of the Week: In the past few years, a number of Yasujiro Ozu films have made their way to DVD, but he was so prolific that there are still many films missing, especially from his earlier work. For this reason alone, the arrival Eclipse Series 10: Silent Ozu- Three Family Comedies is cause for celebration. Comprised of three films made between 1931 and 1933, the Silent Ozu box has no extras to speak of (Eclipse doesn't really do extras), but each film features a brand-new score by silent-film composer Donald Sosin, as well as the high-quality transfers we've come to expect from the Criterion family. To date, I've only seen the box's centerpiece film, I Was Born, But..., but that film and the other Ozus I've seen have been so delightful that I have no reservations about recommending the other films- 1933's Passing Fancy and 1931's Tokyo Chorus- as well. Here's hoping that Eclipse continues to do right by Ozu in the years to come. He's certainly worth it.

Releasing today from Criterion itself is Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bardem's seminal, long-overlooked melodrama Death of a Cyclist. The class-oriented of a respected professor whose life goes into freefall when after a hit-and-run accident, the film is at times heavyhanded but always striking and beautifully shot. In addition, the film should provide a fitting introduction for many moviegoers to the charms of leading lady Lucia Bosé. An Italian stunner with screen presence to burn, Bosé was a mainstay of the early films of Michelangelo Antonioni, as well as appearing in work by Buñuel, Fellini, and Marguerite Duras. The DVD also includes a featurette on the life and work of Bardem, but the real story is the film which, like its female lead, is ripe for rediscovery.

Also of note on the classics front is the release of four comedies from Universal's Cinema Classics series. The four films are: the Mae West/Cary Grant vehicle She Done Him Wrong; Billy Wilder's early film The Major and the Minor starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland; and two films from director Mitchell Leisen, 1939's Midnight starring Claudette Colbert, and 1937's Easy Living with Jean Arthur. Each film is a gem, but of particular note is Easy Living, perhaps the greatest film written by Preston Sturges before he reigned over Hollywood comedy in the 1940s. And if it's sexy action you want, check out Image's new DVD of the Shaw Brothers cult classic Intimate Confessions of a chinese Courtesan, a movie I'm pretty sure I dreamed one night.

Compared to this week's selection of classics, the new titles can't help but look a little paltry. The big-ticket DVD this week is of course Cloverfield (Paramount), the Matthew Reeves/JJ Abrams rampaging-monster movie. For me, the film was never so much fun as when I first saw the trailer before Transformers, but the DVD should give people a chance to approach the film separated from all the hype. This week also brings a Philip Seymour Hoffman double feature, with Hoffman hitting DVD shelves with Tamara Jenkins' The Savages (Fox)- in which he appears opposite Laura Linney- and his caustic, Oscar-nominated performance in Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War (Universal), which also features mediocre turns by Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and a pretty hot scene in which Emily Blunt slinks down the stairs wearing only a man's dress shirt.

In addition, there's a trifecta of indie releases hitting the market today: Andrew Wagner's Starting Out in the Evening (Lionsgate), which garnered awards buzz for the ever-dependable Frank Langella; Paul Schrader's The Walker (ThinkFilm), featuring Woody Harrelson as a too-helpful escort for society women; and Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs (Genius Productions), starring "mumblecore" darling Greta Gerwig. Also worth mentioning are the second season of Friday Night Lights (Universal), J.A. Bayona's supernatural chiller The Orphanage (New Line, also Blu-Ray), and the mostly-ignored Hollywood remake of One Missed Call (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Mind you, the latter is only worth mentioning for the sake of completism, but there you go.

Finally, David Huddleston would like the announce that there are no HD-DVDs hitting the market today. Frankly, he couldn't be happier.

Salting the Earth: Cloverfield II

John Constantine — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:56:00 GMT

When you make $80 million on a $30 million investment in less than two weeks, it’s understandable that you want to go back for seconds. As the ‘Grab pointed out earlier today, Paramount is already talking about making Cloverfield II: Field of Dreams with Matt Reeves.

Here’s why this is an exceptionally bad idea. Reeves already mentioned that a sequel might could focus on different perspectives of the same attack on New York. There’s logic there. There are undoubtedly other people filming the event on cell-phones and digital cameras. The problem is that the audience already knows what the monster does in New York. They know where it goes up until the climactic bombing. New York is, literally and metaphorically, done. The movie does tease that the monster survives but a sequential sequel doesn’t seem smart either. Watching the monster head upstate and start scarfing bed and breakfasts along the Hudson doesn’t sound too thrilling (maybe a little). Paramount and Reeves should sit down, savour their success, and consider how to intelligently explore what has the potential to be a lasting franchise.

Our two cents? Cloverfield is excellent genre deconstruction so there’s only one place you go next with the genre: GIANT MONSTER FIGHT! Have it fight some enormous yeti that comes out of a melting polar glacier. Or have the Statue of Liberty come to life Ghostbusters 2 style and seek out revenge. Both good ideas.

Star Trek Teaser Follow-Up: The Real Deal

John Constantine — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:45:00 GMT

We, like many others on the internet, got fished in by the fake JJ Abrams Star Trek teaser a couple of weeks back. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the genuine article. It's surprisingly similar to the fake teaser as far as content goes, right down to Leonard Nimoy getting all gravelly voiced to talk about what is still the final frontier.

I caught this trailer last Friday when I went to see Cloverfield. Actually yawned in the theater. I was kind of tired, but still. It's just not a very good sign when the coolest part of your trailer is usage of the transporter sound effect.

Grey Takes Paramount From Red To Black

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Brad Grey is a TV guy. (You know him, if for no other reason, because he is one of the men behind The Sopranos.) TV guys are not supposed to know anything about movies.

And yet, Brad Grey is running one of the oldest and most respected movie studios in America -- Paramount Pictures, an outfit which, according to one of Grey's collegues, is "on our way to making money", quite an accomplishment in today's Hollywood -- and this weekend will see the release of Cloverfield, a huge gamble that Grey greenlighted at significant personal risk (and which is the product of J.J. Abrams, another TV guy).

In an interesting interview with the New York Times, Grey discusses his trial by fire as the head of Paramount, the management shuffles that accompanied his rise to the top, and his conception of Abrams as the Spielberg to his Lew Wasserman. It's fascinating not only because of what Grey has to say -- a typical producer's mix of cautiousness and braggadocio, but without the guarded defensiveness that usually comes with habitiual ass-covering -- but because of the insight it has into the business of running a studio at a time when business is shakier than ever and very little gets produced at the top end without a guarantee of making money. It's in light of situations like this that whether or not Cloverfield succeeds will mean a lot more than the failure of a single movie.

Even if Abrams doesn't prove to be the next Steven Spielberg, Grey has the real thing to fall back on: Paramount has just acquired DreamWorks, and will be working with Spielberg on the development of many properties the company purchased over the years, including ones slated for production or direction by Spielberg himself. Grey calls the acquisition his best movie in the business to date; "Oh, God, I've made many mistakes," he says of his relatively brief career (he just turned 50), but buying into the Spielberg machine is not one of them.

Selling the "Cloverfield" Monster

Phil Nugent — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

In anticipation of the arrival on Friday of Cloverfield, S. James Snyder reviews the marketing of the movie, which started last summer with a trailer strategically attached to the release of Transformers. (If you're going to try to coax people out to see a new movie in the misbegotten month of January, you can't start too early.) "By the end of the weekend, that cryptic preview — which purported to show the home video of a New York house party at the moment it erupts into chaos, as something gigantic, but never seen, attacks the city with huge explosives — had spawned its own universe of online traffic. Initially, people simply tried to find the title of the film, but as word spread that this was, in fact, the new unlabeled disaster film by producer J.J. Abrams, fans of Mr. Abrams's secret-filled TV serial "Lost" quickly scoured the trailer for clues. It didn't take long for Mr. Abrams himself to add fuel to the fire, identifying www.1-18-08.com as one of the film's Web sites, but ensuring fans there were others out there, waiting to be found."

The simulated-home-movie technique of the Cloverfield footage immediately calls up memories of The Blair Witch Project, as does the whole idea of selling a movie through hints and teases located on-line. But part of the brilliance of the Blair Witch campaign was the way the website and other paraphernalia attached the movie, such as a fake "documentary" that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel, created an instant urban myth; some viewers enjoyed being able to pretend that the movie was "real", while some other, less canny viewers actually thought that it was based on something real and felt outraged about being hoaxed when they saw the stars on TV next to Jay Leno. That option isn't really open here; there can't be too many people who've seen the TV commercials showing a mysterious, bellowing something decapitating the Statue of Liberty and generally wreaking havoc on Manhattan who thought that it was really happening, though if there are any such people, they're probably planning to vote for Mitt Romney. Another point of comparison is Snakes on a Plane, the viral-marketed B-movie whose title and catch phrase were all but decreed by Internet feedback. That movie whipped up a firestorm of on-line interest that didn't carry over to the box office; the lesson that the makers of Cloverfield may have taken from it is that if you give the geeks too much control of the pre-release party, then everyone may have started fishing for their car keys by the time the picture opens. (Incidentally, "Cloverfield" was originally supposed to be a temporary code name for the movie, taken from a street address of the Bad Robot company offices, but it's become so identified with the project that now they're stuck with it.)

The Cloverfield marketing team has risen to the challenge of this brave new marketing world with an intricate set of interlocking come-ons, including one surprising tie-in: "In a recent episode of the NBC series Heroes, fans took note of the name and logo of a soft drink that also appeared on the T-shirt of a character in the trailer for Cloverfield — 'Slusho' — which led them to the Web site (www.slusho.jp) and a bizarre online commercial (viewable at YouTube.com) that seemed to have nothing to do with the New York disaster in the Cloverfield trailer. But that was until a new series of fake news reports was released online, all detailing the destruction of a drilling platform out in the middle of the ocean, supposedly owned by Tagruato, the fictional Japanese company that owns the fictional Slusho." In an effort to mix up all this Internet activity with a little real-world buzz, Paramount has also invited a couple hundred of the movie's close, personal "MySpace friends" to " 'Rob's surprise party' — the fictional party interrupted by rumbling explosions in the trailers — on January 17, the night before the film opens." Ultimately, though, an online marketer named Adam Paul insists that, "The key is that the movie has to actually live up to what you've promised in the hype," which sounds very old-school. We don't know any more about what's actually going to be on those screens come January 18 than you do, but we do know this: if audiences get their first clear look at the Cloverfield monster, whatever it is, and respond with laughter or snores, this surprise party is going to wrap itself up very quickly.

New Star Trek Teaser Leaked, Looks Like Old Star Trek

John Constantine — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:15:00 GMT

Here’s a first look at J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot due out next Christmas. It is, quite literally, just the intro sequence from the original ’60s television show with two notable differences. Check it out after the jump.

First, instead of a chirpy, young Shatner talking about frontiers and whatnot, we get super-old Nimoy on monologue duty. This is especially strange considering Abrams’ picture is supposed to feature these characters as ambitious young go-getters. The second difference is that, traditionally, the Enterprise bursts into the screen going crazy space-fast at the end of the monologue. Here it’s just sitting in some kind of giant space shoebox. What the hell man? For a series you’re trying to infuse with new life, this teaser is pretty lifeless.

Get it while it’s hot and still available on the internet, kids. This one won’t be up long.

When Good Directors Go Bad: Regarding Henry (1991, Mike Nichols)

Paul Clark — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

In the past four decades, the career of Mike Nichols has gone through its share of ups and downs. Nichols made his name as a director with a number of popular, acclaimed films, but he also has several inexplicable films to answer for. I might have spotlighted 2000’s awful What Planet Are You From? had Nathan Rabin not done so already. But Regarding Henry is a more than acceptable alternative, with the bonus of demonstrating the worst tendencies of Nichols’ later films.

Nichols has long been one of Hollywood’s go-to filmmakers for classy star vehicles, particularly “dramedies” geared to adults like Working Girl, Postcards From the Edge, and Primary Colors. But much of Nichols’ enduring critical rep still rests on his seminal early classics Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, and (my favorite) Carnal Knowledge. Without these films, Nichols would be little more than a slightly more upscale version of Lasse Hallstrom.

In short, Regarding Henry is a pandering comfort blanket of a movie that’s smothering instead of cozy. It’s also a textbook White-Collar Guilt movie, in which an affluent protagonist (in this case, a lawyer played by Harrison Ford) suffers a tragedy (here, a shooting that causes memory loss) that forces him into a crisis of conscience that makes him a better person. Movies like this invariably divide people into two categories- morally-compromised rich people, and salt-of-the-earth poor people. This dichotomy feels like a cynical attempt on Hollywood’s part to flatter the less financially successful viewers while allowing the more privileged to vicariously experience the hero’s awakening before speeding home in their BMWs.

Regarding Henry, based on the first produced screenplay by Jeffrey (later J.J.) Abrams, contains no surprises on this front. In fact, the film is so intent on concentrating on the psychological stuff that it skates right through the physical healing process. Once Henry learns to walk and talk (his first word is “Ritz,” the significance of which feels like a bad joke) again, he’s soon ready to go home. After he arrives back in his expensive apartment, everything happens as it should- his once-rocky marriage is quickly mended, he becomes a better father, all that. Heck, the movie begins with Henry successfully smooth-talking a jury in defense of a hospital that’s being sued by a dying old man. If you can’t see where that subplot is going, then congratulations, because you’ve finally seen your first movie! Too bad it’s this one. And let’s not get started on the film’s simplistic view of minorities, especially Bill Nunn’s ever-cheerful Magical Black Man caregiver.

After his shooting, Henry’s memory loss causes him to regress to a state of childlike naïveté. But while Ford is about the 500th actor one would cast to play childlike, the movie itself does a bang-up job of regressing to a grade-school mindset. Regarding Henry is a movie in which the hero’s problems are solved by getting a puppy, moving to a new house, quitting his job, and pulling his daughter out of her exclusive boarding school. Sure, the money won’t hold out forever, but you don’t think about those things when you’re young, do you? The way Regarding Henry paints it, it’s a wonder more rich people haven’t tried to put themselves through the profound spiritual experience of getting shot in the head.

Click here for previous When Good Directors Go Bad posts.

Trailer Roundup: Cloverfield, Definitely Maybe, The Other Boleyn Girl

Peter Smith — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Cloverfield

While the 1.18.08 teaser that played before Transformers this past summer appeared to simply be a brilliant piece of viral marketing, it now appears that the project, now titled Cloverfield, will actually be shot largely by characters wielding personal camcorders and camera phones, instead of in a conventional style. Frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I think it's a good idea in theory to make a kind of Godzilla for the YouTube generation. But a movie like this is tricky to pull off. The Blair Witch Project worked because you always got a sense that there were really three people lost in the forest and beset by forces they couldn't explain, but it'll be much harder to get that same vibe with a project this large-scale and effects-intensive. I'm not sure the director of the 1996 David Schwimmer vehicle The Pallbearer is the man for the job. Regardless, I'm curious to find out.

Definitely, Maybe

About the best thing I can say about this trailer is that Ryan Reynolds doesn't look to be as insufferable as he usually is. Plus his three romantic partners — Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz, and Isla Fisher — are all pretty smokin'. But otherwise, gag me. Much of the blame can be placed on little Abigail Breslin, who has taken over the mantle of Hollywood's go-to moppet from Dakota Fanning. Or maybe it's just that the character feels less like a precocious kid than a screenwriter's conception of same, a little girl who gives voice to all the clever, self-aware ideas on the scribe's oh-so-clever mind. How else to explain lines like "what's the male word for slut?" This is the kind of crappy Valentine's Day release that makes me glad to be single. And who signed off on that title?

The Other Boleyn Girl

Okay, who cast this thing? When your least problematic lead is Aussie Eric Bana (Henry the Eighth he ain't, he ain't), you know there's trouble. I'm not sure who's more ill-fitting in this story, emo pixie Natalie Portman as the defiant Anne Boleyn, or princess of pout Scarlett Johansson as her sister Mary. Based on her ignominious work in previous period films, I'm inclined to lean toward Johansson here, but it's a tough call. Either way, couldn't they find two English actresses who (a) suited their roles, and (b) were more convincing as sisters? With Elizabeth: The Golden Age and now this, Hollywood might want to consider laying off the British history for a while, lest our friends across the pond think we've got it in for them.

— Paul Clark

Morning Deal Report: Wino Forever

Peter Smith — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Winona Ryder (odd picture, eh?) has joined JJ Abrams' Star Trek. Wonders never cease. Now, the last time she jumped into a science-fiction franchise, it was. . . uh oh.

I love videogames. And I love movies. But the two really don't belong together. The most annoying trend in videogames over the past fifteen years has been the desire to turn every game into an "interactive movie." The pleasure of a videogame is not narrative; it's explorative, physical. As for movies based on games, I think the record is pretty clear. In any case, Mark Wahlberg will star in Max Payne, playing "[a] cop who is haunted by the tragic loss of his family and has little regard for rules". . . um, why do you people even need a license? Can't you make this shit up on your own?

Josh Hartnett will star in an adaptation of Don DeLillo's second novel, End Zone. "Yet to be cast," says Variety, "is a teacher of international terrorism and mass destruction." Yep, that sounds like DeLillo.

— Peter Smith

Morning Deal Report: If Variety's Short on Stories, Think How I Feel

Peter Smith — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Some big names were picketing outside Rockefeller Center yesterday, and now a certain colleague who was trying to get me to go up there with him is mad at me for ruining his chance to propose to Tina Fey. John, I think she's spoken for.

JJ Abrams's Star Trek has put out an open casting call for extras. Cinematical has the dope on what the production's looking for: Talent with interesting and unique facial features such as: long necks, small heads, extremely large heads, wide-set eyes, bug eyes, close-set eyes, large forehead, short upper lip, pronounced cheekbones, over- or undersized ears and/or nose, facial deformities, ultra plain-looking people, ultra perfect-looking people, pure wholesome looks, twins, triplets, emaciated talent, regally poised and postured talent, or other visually unique characteristics. Awesome. It's too bad John Matuszak is dead.

Jack Nicholson is apparently working on a second sequel to Chinatown, claiming a trilogy was always the plan.

— Peter Smith

Morning Deal Report: Actually More Like Star Trek Deal Report These Days

Peter Smith — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Karl Urban is Dr. McCoy (uh, that's him on the right.)

Nicolas Cage plays a father searching for his Muslim-American son in The Vanished. Here's the question: is Cage's character Arab-American? Cause if so, I really hate that shit. Like there aren't any actual Arab-American actors who could use an interesting role. But they don't just cast a white actor — oh, no — they cast the most ridiculous white actor available. Talk about a slap in the face.

Tony Scott, that lovable scamp, will direct a biopic of Don Aronow, who invented the cigarette boat. That doesn't really sound like Tony Scott material, until you realize that Aronow was killed in 1987 by Columbian drug smugglers. Now we're talking.

Steve Pink, the cowriter of High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank, just signed on to the Kevin James comedy Mall Cop. Mall Cop just got slightly more interesting. But then, the guy also wrote Accepted.

— Peter Smith

Morning Deal Report: In Shatner's Image

Peter Smith — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Chris Pine — Lindsay Lohan's foil in Just My Luck — will play Captain Kirk in JJ Abrams' Star Trek. We'll take on faith that he can act, but can he over-act? To be honest, he looks a little bland. In related news, Harold and Kumar's John Cho will play Sulu. This whole thing is starting to look a little hairy.

Will Smith won't be remaking Karate Kid after all. (Whew.) But he will star in the comedy Time Share with Nicolas Cage. (Gulp.)

Dimension is remaking Hellraiser. You'll have to provide your own zinger here; this one's lost on me.

— Peter Smith

Morning Deal Report: Remake Watch

Peter Smith — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Despite the (rightfully) tenuous status of the $100m+ comedy, Universal is adapting of Land of the Lost. The big-screen version will star Will Ferrell and a large number of Sleestaks. (Or is the plural still Sleestak? Not sure on that one.)

Eric Bana will play Uhura in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. Wait, I'm sorry — he'll play the villain.

Terminator will be back, in the first film of a trilogy set in the post-apocalyptic future seen briefly in the original films. The budget, as Variety memorably puts it, will be. . . "event-sized." Arguably, no Terminator has been great since the first one, but if you have to do it, one request: bring back Eddie Furlong!

Videogame art director Jerry O'Flaherty will direct the film adaptation of Thundercats. The best thing to ever come out of Thundercats is this map. Top that, O'Flaherty.

— Peter Smith