The Screengrab : leonardo dicaprio

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Nine)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

And now, the worst...

THE BAD SEED (1956)

So, a few years back, my lovely Polish bride was in a production of the theatrical version of The Bad Seed, where bratty little hellspawn Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack) gets away with a whole lot of evil behavior, including (gasp!) matricide, simply because the gullible adults in the story (much like the gullible adults of today) are unwilling to see children -- especially cute little white children -- as anything but perfect little angels. But in the Hays Code ‘50s, villains simply HAD to be punished, at least in the movies, leading to one of the most ludicrous finales in cinematic history, whereby the bad seed gets her comeuppance Old Testament style with a good ol’ bolt from the blue courtesy of God (or possibly Zeus) Himself...followed by a dorky curtain call (complete with a comical “spanking” for McCormack) to reassure skittish audiences that, hey, folks! It’s just a movie! See? Everybody’s alive and well and no evil will ever befall you if you stay on the right side of the tracks with all the decent, well-dressed, respectable Christian people...honest! (AO)

THE QUIET AMERICAN (1958)

We could keep you up all night babbling about all the movies that softened and betrayed the endings of their source material (and even original screenplays, in some cases), denting otherwise excellent movies: Stella seeming to reject Stanley's blandishments in A Streetcar Names Desire, Mel Cooley squawking "Get me the FBI!" at the end of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and on and on. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel about the dangers of well-intentioned American efforts in Indochina may take the prize, though -- partly because it has so much to recommend it (particularly Michael Redgrave's performance as the aging British reporter whose disapproval of the title character -- Audie Murphy -- is gummed up with the knowledge that the younger man is his romantic rival, and the sensuous, flowing atmosphere and camera work), which makes it all the more frustrating when Mankiewicz betrays Greene in the last scenes. The revelation that the American was the moral angel he believed himself to be, and the decision to have the woman the two men shared turn away from the surviving member of their triangle in disgust, was a significant enough alteration to lay waste to everything that had come before it. (The 2002 version, starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser, is in many ways a clunkier piece of filmmaking, but it holds up better just by being true to Greene.) (PN)

NO WAY OUT (1987)

This slick update of The Big Clock relocates the action from the world of magazine publishing to Washngton, D.C., where the Secretary of Defense (Gene Hackman) kills his mistress (Sean Young, so it's not as if a jury in the world would view him unsympathetically) and launches a search for the woman's other lover (Kevin Costner) while working the angle that she may have been the victim of a possibly apocryphal Soviet mole called "Yuri." Naturally, he puts Costner in charge of the investigation. In what appears to be the ending, Costner manages to slip away after exposing the bad guys; then, in the concluding scene, it is revealed that Costner, an actor who has trouble passing for anything but a lifelong resident of California, turns out to in fact be Yuri, the Russian mole. It's a twist ending, and to steal a line from David Edelstein, it's twisted, all right. (PN)

MINORITY REPORT (2002)

For the most part, Steven Spielberg's take on Philip K. Dick is one of the director's smartest and most accomplished entertainments in recent years, topped off with one of his most mind-melting bad endings; it's like seeing an Olympic athlete ace the first nine parts of the decathlon before fleeing the course to get fucked up on hillbilly heroin. The drop is so deep and so sudden that some enterprising geeks have an explanation for it: they'll tell you that everything that happens after Tom Cruise is sealed away in his frozen prison tube is actually a dream that his character has of being rescued and redeemed; despite what the movie shows you, as the credits roll, he's actually still locked away in there and the villain is triumphant. If some guys sitting at computer keyboards could come up with a nifty idea like that, how come Spielberg, with access to every writer in Hollywood and the millions to pay them, had to settle for the ending he wound up with? (PN)

HOLLYWOOD ENDING (2002)

This Woody Allen comedy stars our hero as a washed-up movie director who, given the chance to make his comeback film, suffers an attack of hysterical blindness and has to blunder through the entire production without being able to see what he's directing. Of all Allen's recent misfires, this one feels especially revealing because of the way that he fails to leap at the chance to score some sure laughs with the obvious joke that's waiting to be made: at no point do we get to see any of the footage that's been okayed by this poor bastard working in the dark. This, it turns out, is only the fair warning for the well-worn groaner awaiting us at the end, when the disgraced director receives the happy news that his blind man's movie has been declared a masterpiece by...the French! For a guy who's spent more and more time in the late stages of his career accepting plaudits from those same French critics and audiences, this counts as perhaps the laziest instance of biting the hand that feeds on record. (PN)

GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002)

Martin Scorsese's period epic was inspired by a 1928 book that was a garish collection of tall tales recounting the "real" hidden history of New York City. By the time Scorsese and his screenwriters got through embellishing it further and welding a plot to it, the result was practically a steampunk fantasy of barbaric city dwellers with a few Mad Max extras sprinkled in having knife fights all over the Five Points district. Which is fine; it definitely counts as something to see. However, the movie crashes as it strains to build to a proper climax. The main plot, involving a conflict between the local dictator Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his arch-nemesis (Leonardo DiCaprio) happens to climax just in time to collide with the 1863 Draft Riots, an actual historic event that, as Scorsese stages it, smashes into the storyline like a runaway truck tearing through the back of the theater and steamrollers the main characters. The most charitable interpretation is that Scorsese was trying to show how petty and, in historical terms, forgotten the people whose struggles he'd been involving us in for the preceding two and a half hours really were. But it feels as if The Lord of the Rings had ended with the news that the year was actually 1945 and Mordor was on the outskirts of Hiroshima, and that just as Frodo and Gollum were battling for the ring, they were all wiped out by the dropping of the atomic bomb. (PN)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

Fat Actor Watch at New York Times: Paper of Record Alleges That When Russell Crowe Sits Around the House, He Really Sits Around the House

Phil Nugent — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Always looking for a fresh angle on the really important movie news of the day, Michael Cieply uses his perch at Thew New York Times to ask" what's with all the male movie stars who are porkers? Who does he have in mind, exactly? Russell Crowe and Jeff Daniels, sharing a screen in State of Play ("Two men. One notebook. Four chins."); Denzel Washington, going "cheek-to-jowl with the bulky John Travolta" in the trailer for the remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three; Hugh Grant; and "Even Leonardo DiCaprio, the young heartthrob from Titanic"--Photos from the set of Shutter Island, a thriller on tap from Paramount Pictures and the director Martin Scorsese in October, show a little bit more to love." Oh, snap! Are they handing out chocolate bunnies to whoever can be the biggest bitch at the Times these days?

Cieply briefly notes that there's a gender-based double standard regarding the weight and age rules in Hollywood so far as leading players are concerned, but after dropping Kathleen Turner's name, he seems to feel that he's discharged his duty, as if the subject bored even him. He seems more taken with the idea that this is an utterly new phenomenon, but despite the historical examples he digs up, that may be a non-starter. "Photos of midcentury stars — Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, Clark Gable and others — show them to have remained rather gaunt at an age when many of the current crop are anything but." Good thing those photos are handy, since it's not as if movie actors left behind filmed records of their performances so we'd be able to remind themselves what they looked like. That said, it seems a little callous to drag Bogart, one of the best-known victims of cancer sticks ever to go down coughing, into a discussion of how movie stars used to keep themselves svelte. (One well-circulated story has it that, when illness had left Bogie too weak to handle the stairs in his own home, he used to navigate from one floor to another by stuffing himself in the dumb waiter.) It's also worth remembering that Gable, who died of a massive heart attack after completing his last film, The Misfits, had lost 35 pounds on a crash diet to get his weight below 200 before shooting began. If there's any less of that sort of thing going on nowadays because more stars feel comfortable about appearing in public looking something other than whisper-thin, surely it's for the better.

It's also true that, as Cieply would have known if he'd put down the "photographs" and spent a couple of days watching Turner Classic Movies, there have always been counter-examples one could offer to his role call of manly waifs. Wallace Beery never looked as if he'd had trouble locating the desert cart, Spencer Tracey rolled into his onscreen middle age looking as if he'd swallowed a tether ball, James Cagney was getting pretty squared-off by the time of Yankee Doodle Dandy, Robert Mitchum often had an amorphous mass surrounding his midsection that he used to abruptly suck up into his chesticological region whenever he was required to take his shirt off, Gene Hackman's weight always flunctuated, sometimes wildly, depending on just how regular his latest "regular guy" character was supposed to be, and as for Jack Nicholson, in his mid-forties when he more or less officially entered his "middle-aged" period with Terms of Endearment--please. Of course, with movies as with everything else, memory can be a great deceiver. Lawrence Turman, "a veteran film producer who is chairman of the Peter Stark producing program at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts", told Cieply that "“John Wayne always looked a bit portly." I find it disturbing that the Peter Stark producing program at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts can do no better for its chairman than a guy who's never seen Stagecoach. It may be a tribute to the lingering effect of the image that Wayne cast from around the mid-1950s until his death in 1979 that even some professionals think he always looked like that, but I would propose that, unlikely though it may seem, that if Wayne had looked in his youth like a guy who was fated to someday look the way he did in True Grit, he never would have gotten the chance to grow into that later incarnation--at least, not on movie screens.

This still leaves the question of whether some of these stars, heavier though they may undeniably be, are as hideous to behold as Cieply seems to be implying they are. I will confess that when I saw Travolta, say, in the trailer for Pelham, I did not catch myself thinking, "Here comes Wide Load." (I did catch myself thinking, "Get a load of Weird Hairline with his Fu Manchu mustache. Each of us has his issues.) One possibility worth considering is that such stars as Travolta, Washington, and Hanks, who came up in the 1980s, when a perfect storm of society-embraced body issues and new technology in the gym led to a new species of Americans who seemed to be armor-plated in their own skin and muscle, some of whom hastened to show off their new packaging on the covers of magazines, such as that infamous shot of Travolta on the cover of Rolling Stone to promote Stayin' Alive, looking as if his abs were about to jump out of his torso and his brains had already leaked out of his ears. Maybe, having fallen for that when you had the energy and free schedule to pursue it all the way, you have to let yourself go a little later on or else you'll explode. But then, in the interests of full disclosure, I should concede that I am from The South, where we deep fry our veggie plates and the lost causes that we love to get misty-eyed about include our own arteries in their pre-clotted state. Because of my own cultural conditioning, if I had my way, every other movie made since 1984 would have starred Joe Don Baker, and the others would have been divided between Randy Quaid and the late Dub Taylor, with the result that Michael Cieply would be even more confused.

Screengrab Review: "Lymelife"

Nick Schager — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:00:00 GMT

In case you haven’t been listening to what prestige and art-house films have been blaring, the suburbs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. The carefree contentment projected by all those white-picket-fence homes, and the smiling cheer of all those good-looking people in their nice clothes and fancy cars? It’s all lies, joyful facades that mask serious social dysfunction. Despite seeming like the place where happily-ever-afters come true, the suburbs are in reality hotbeds of familial discord, of tumultuous adolescent anger and misery, and of deception, greed, selfishness and alienation. If you thought that moving there from the vile, corrupting city was smart, think again. Relocating to a comfy home, and mingling with your undoubtedly Yuppie neighbors, will only warp you into a desolate conformist zombie like those seen in American Beauty, The Ice Storm and countless other likeminded dramas. And desperately running through the streets like Leonardo DiCaprio’s wretched Revolutionary Road hubby, or performing fatal makeshift abortions on yourself like Kate Winslet’s hopeless wife, are your only avenues of escape!

Excuse the sarcasm, but seriously – does anyone still find this gibberish relevant? Pulling the curtains back on picture-perfect suburbia is such a stale, clichéd modus operandi that it’s long ceased to be of any use. And one suspects that the reason so many recent films address this topic from the detached confines of an earlier era (anywhere from the ‘50s to ‘80s) is because only in the past would characters actually view as revelatory the fact that non-city-living isn’t a surefire blissful existence. Which brings us around to Lymelife, a late-‘70s-set tale about screwed-up Long Island high-schooler Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin), whose crumbling family includes cold, philandering real-estate developer dad Mickey (Alec Baldwin), military brother Jimmy (Kieran Culkin), and gloomy, quietly suffering mom Brenda (Jill Hennessy). His life a checklist of movie clichés about adolescence, Scott is picked on by the local bully, loves Star Wars, and pines for his pretty older neighbor Adrianna (Emma Roberts), who flirts with and teases him. Also in the mix are Adrianna’s crazy parents: mom Melissa (Cynthia Nixon) is an adulteress sleeping with Mickey, and her dad Charlie (Timothy Hutton) is a mess of a man who, instead of looking for work, smokes pot in his basement, his deterioration ostensibly instigated by a case of lime disease.

I say ostensibly because Charlie – like everyone else in Derick Martini’s film (co-written with brother Steven) – is really suffering from suburbanitis, that stultifying malady in which moving to the ‘burbs not only doesn’t solve, but in fact amplifies, barely suppressed problems. Lymelife shows directorial restraint in depicting Scott’s confused headspace, and its performances are universally solid, with both Rory Culkin and Hennessey conveying a tempered soulfulness that helps prevent their characters from succumbing to cartoonishness. Yet the narrative they’re assigned to breathe life into is irrevocably moldy, a portrait of father-son and husband-wife strife, as well as of budding teenage sexuality and maturity, that’s defined by groaningly bittersweet, paradise-is-an-illusion shots of middle-class homes spied out of school bus windows. Apparently semi-autobiographical, Lymelife sporadically nails sharp (if familiar) details, for example a shirtless Scott rehearsing how to be cool and macho while staring into his mirror, or Scott and Adrianna’s awkward maiden sexual experiences. Too bad, then, that such authenticity is drowned out by an overarching don’t-judge-a-book-by-its-cover message that long ago lost its luster.

Morning Deal Report: Basterds Bound for Cannes

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited World War II epic Inglourious Basterds will have its world premiere at Cannes next month. “The Brad Pitt starrer, set in Nazi-occupied France, has been invited to play in competition at the Cannes Film Festival,” Variety reports. “Insiders said Tarantino, a longtime favorite of the French, has accepted the offer and has told the film's backers -- the Weinstein Co. and Universal Pictures -- that the pic will be ready for its world premiere during the May fest. The movie, which follows a band of Jewish-American soldiers whose mission is to take down a group of Nazis, will bow Aug. 21.”

Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard and Cillian Murphy are all in talks to join Leonardo DiCaprio in Christopher Nolan’s latest, Inception. “DiCaprio's character is mentioned as a CEO-type, while Cotillard would play his wife. Page is a young college grad student and DiCaprio's sidekick,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Inception is the sci-fi thriller “set within the architecture of the mind,” lest we forget.

Barry Sonnenfeld will open The Spellman Files for Paramount Pictures. The adaptation of Lisa Lutz's novel “revolves around a single private eye who has to juggle the demands of running her family's business with her dating life.”

Related:
Trailer Review: Inglourious Basterds
Ellen Page Whips It for Drew Barrymore

Morning Deal Report: Megan Fox Goes Deep

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Transformers star Megan Fox is taking additional steps to shore up her fan base with comic book nerds. Not only is she in negotiations to co-star with Josh Brolin in Jonah Hex, but according to The Hollywood Reporter she is also set to star in the comic book adaptation Fathom. The story “follows a young woman named Aspen who learns she is a member of a race of aquatic humanoids who possess the ability to control water.” Aquaman, eat your heart out.

Kevin Smith has two stars and a new title for his project formerly known as A Couple of Dicks. The newly titled A Couple of Cops will star Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in Smith’s major studio debut for Warner Bros., “centered on a pair of cops who track down a stolen baseball card, rescue a Mexican beauty and must deal with gangsters and laundered drug money,” per Variety.

Christopher Nolan’s latest has a title – Inception – and a star – Leonardo DiCaprio. “Script has been kept under wraps but the studio calls it a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind.” I’ll show you the architecture of the mind!

Related:
Beyond Spike and Clint: More Filmmaker Feuds
When Good Directors Go Bad?: Insomnia (Christopher Nolan)

Up The Academy: Screengrab Salutes The All-Time Best & Worst Best Picture Winners (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:00:00 GMT

THE BEST:

CASABLANCA (1943)

For all the iconic Hollywood films from The Wizard of Oz to Star Wars that DIDN’T win Best Picture, it’s nice to know that Casablanca, at least, was properly enshrined. Whether you measure by cultural cachet, quotable lines, dorm room posters or AFI ranking, Humphrey Bogart’s finest hour is a classic among classics...and not in that “eat your broccoli” grad student dissertation way, either. The pace is crisp, the intrigue is intriguing, the writing is sharp and funny and the romance (not to mention the bromance) is swoony, even for cynics who’d normally gag on a sentiment like, “We’ll always have Paris.” In fact, Roger Ebert claims in his commentary on a special edition DVD of the film that he’s never heard a bad review of Casablanca, which he says is “probably on more lists of the greatest films of all time than any other single title, including Citizen Kane,” a masterpiece which may be “greater,” but nowhere near as beloved. Normally, such unquestioned, universal adoration would trigger my contrarian side (I’m lookin’ at you, Hanks!) – but that friggin' “La Marseillaise” scene gets me every goddamn time. (Now if you’ll excuse me, I seem to have a little something in my eye...)

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)

This inside-show-business comic melodrama isn't the greatest movie ever to be garlanded with Oscars. It probably isn't even as great as Sunset Boulevard, another inside-show-business movie that happened to be nominated for Best Picture the very same year. But it's the choicest possible example of a certain kind of entertainment that looks especially fetching come awards season, the glittering self-hating bitch-fest, with actors jumping at the chance to show what overgrown, treacherous babies actors -- other actors -- really are behind the scenes, and also with the writer-director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, preserving some of the pearls of wit that he'd been test-screening at all the best Hollywood dinner parties for the preceding couple of years. Mankiewicz was lucky to get to assign his dialogue to a couple of the greatest bitches ever to stalk a soundstage: Bette Davis, in her archetypal role as the actress and force of nature Margot Channing, and George Sanders, who picked up a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his purring critic, Addison DeWitt. The movie even opens with an awards ceremony, which Sanders can be heard snarking at in voiceover. With that opening, Mankiewicz was making it clear to the Academy that he was setting up a joke that only they could satisfyingly complete by giving his movie the prize, and the voters were happy to comply.

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)

On its surface, this movie about labor racketeering on the New York docks could easily be mistaken for the kind of torn-from-the-headlines melodrama that Warner Bros. used to whip up into flavorful, punchy stories in the '30s and which by the 1950s was often served up in bloated and sanctimonious form. (Directed by Elia Kazan from an original script by Budd Schulberg, the movie is also widely taken as its creators' attempt to rationalize their friendly witness status before the House Un-American Activities Committee by showing the informer as a beleaguered hero.) But the actual New York locations, the strong work by such actors as Eva Marie Saint and Rod Steiger, and the best-observed moments in Schulberg's script transcend the movie's built-in limitations. And Brando himself embodies transcendence. Working quietly at first and slowly building to a full boil, he makes Terry Malloy into a real human being even as he's defining the image of the alienated '50s hero, a working-class outsider whose anger and confusion -- the instinctive, untutored emotions of a trapped animal -- make him seem more alive than the society he can't fit into, a society that no one guessed at the time was rotting from deep inside. In addition to marking the end of Brando's professional collaboration with Kazan, it also turned out to mark the end of Brando's first phase as a culture hero: his next movie, representing the start of a long stint in the wilderness, was Desirée, in which he played Napoleon. But it was enough to live on for awhile.

THE GODFATHER (1972) & THE GODFATHER, PART II (1974)

The early seventies were such a wild time for American movies that a bloody, historically sophisticated use of a criminal family as a metaphor for the capitalist system and the corruption of the American dream served as the era's answer to Gone with the Wind. Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece, as intelligent and emotionally complicated as any epic ever to come out of Hollywood, would stand as a high point both in the history of film and the Academy's fluctuating record of shows of good sense all by itself. It's to the Academy's considerable credit that it did the right thing when it was presented with Part II, which was not the automatic commercial blockbuster that the first film had been. It must have been an especially sweet moment for Coppola, considering that the other Best Picture nominees included not only his own The Conversation but Chinatown, which was the first film independently produced by Robert Evans after Evans left Paramount Pictures, where he and Coppola had a difficult time working together on the first Godfather. Plus he beat The Towering Inferno!

THE DEPARTED (2006)

Yes, we can all agree that it's a sham of a mockery of a travesty that Martin Scorsese never won an Oscar until 2007, and it makes no sense at all that The Departed is the only movie he directed to ever win Best Picture. Let's get past that, can we? Consider the competition this spectacularly entertaining Boston crime epic faced in the category: Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen. Not really a group with a lot of staying power. If I came across any of them while channel surfing tonight, I doubt I'd pause, but The Departed sucks me in every time. William Monahan's underrated script is an endlessly quotable encyclopedia of pungent tough-guy banter. Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg in particular make the most of it, and although Jack Nicholson doesn't make the most convincing Boston mob boss, even he has his inspired moments. Scorsese isn't reinventing the wheel here, he's just showing all his imitators who have been trying to recreate Goodfellas for the past two decades how to really put on a show. There's an exhilarating pace and crackling energy to his relentless storytelling here, no matter that we've seen the story before (in Infernal Affairs, the Japanese thriller upon which The Departed is based) and that it may not actually make a lick of sense. I may be an apologist for late-period Scorsese (I think I love Gangs of New York even more), but even if you're not a Departed fan, who could begrudge one of our greatest living filmmakers (and one of the world's most enthusiastic movie fans) his moment in the Oscar spotlight?

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Six & Seven

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent & Scott Von Doviak

Screengrab Predicts the Oscars: Nominations (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:30:00 GMT

BEST ACTOR

Scott Von Doviak Predicts:

NOMINEES
Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

If Sean Penn can get nominated for I Am Sam, there's no reason to think his beautiful work in Milk will be overlooked. Everyone loves a comeback, so even if they're a little worried he'll take a drunken stumble into Jack Nicholson's lap, Mickey Rourke will be nominated for The Wrestler. Rounding out the leading men will be Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon), Brad Pitt (Benjamin Button), and this year's sentimental "Hey, you're almost friggin' 80!" nominee, Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino).

WINNER
Rourke. Watch out, ladies!

Sarah Clyne Sundberg Predicts:

NOMINEES
Christian Bale (The Dark Knight)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Synecdoche, NY)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Since Philip Seymour Hoffman appeared in two movies likely to figure in the Academy Awards this year, it follows that he must be nominated for at least one. Brad Pitt will be nominated for long and faithful service, Christian Bale for being in a blockbuster that didn't suck, and Mickey Rourke for appearing again out of nowhere. Sean Penn will win, because he is playing a gay man. But also because this is the best role he has done in a good while, if not ever. Madonna will be jealous.

WINNER
Sean Penn

Paul Clark Predicts:

NOMINEES
Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Where’s Richard Jenkins, you ask? The Screengrab favorite won numerous early accolades for his work in The Visitor, but the risky plan to open the film early to build steam for Jenkins has led to the unassuming actor getting lost in the end-of-the-year shuffle, as most of the honors have been split between Penn and Rourke. With early predictions such as Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road) and Benicio Del Toro (Che) having largely stalled out, Jenkins is the only potential spoiler here, but between Rourke’s comeback-kid status, the high-profile biopic turns of Penn and Langella, and two big stars in Eastwood and Pitt, I’m predicting that Jenkins pulls a Paul Giamatti and gets shut out of a nomination despite the early hosannas. As for the eventual winner, it seems too soon for Penn to win a second Oscar, and unless Rourke torpedoes his chances between now and February 22, I suspect that capping off his comeback with a statuette will prove too perfect an ending for voters to resist.

WINNER
Mickey Rourke

Andrew Osborne Predicts:

NOMINEES
Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino)
Richard Jenkins (The Visitor)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

After all the endless hype about Mickey Rourke’s comeback in The Wrestler, it’d be heee-larious if he didn’t actually get nominated. And I’m guessing there’s more than a few Academy voters not exactly wishing Mickey well...but Hollywood and professional sports are all about storylines, so a Rourke nod seems inevitable. Unlike Rourke, Frank Langella and Sean Penn were playing other people in their movies rather than semi-autobiographical stunt-casting versions of themselves...and doing it well: Penn, in particular, seemed like an entirely different human being in Milk (which, y’know, is probably why the award is “Best Actor” instead of “Best Comeback”). Then again, there’s something to be said for a beloved screen icon just playing a stylized, hyper-real version of themselves, especially when they’re still kicking more ass in their seventies than alleged action star Shia LaBeouf will kick on the ass-kickingest day of his life, and especially when said role occurs in what may be said icon’s last screen role ever...in other words, I’ll be surprised if Clint Eastwood doesn’t grab a nomination for Gran Torino. And speaking of beloved movie stars, I’m supposed to pick Brad Pitt for the fifth spot, but what if the Academy decides his performance in Benjamin Button was more to do with CGI than acting chops? In that case, they might choose a dark horse, under-the-radar industry vet who’s paid his dues and (unlike Pitt) may never get another shot at the brass ring: the lovely and talented “that guy” Richard Jenkins for his role in The Visitor. (But Penn’s gonna actually win, partly thanks to Proposition 8...and I mentioned that whole crazy “acting” thing, yes?)

WINNER
Sean Penn

Leonard Pierce Predicts:

NOMINATIONS
Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Goodness knows why anyone continues to insist that Leonardo Di Caprio is a good actor, but I’d bet my next paycheck on him getting the nod. Frank Langella, likewise, plays Nixon like a broad majestic Shannon – that ain’t acting, that’s overacting – but the Academy loves an old pro. Pitt’s Button nom makes up for the Burn After Reading one he won’t get. In the end, though, it’ll be a battle between comeback kid Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler and Sean Penn’s well-deserved nomination for Milk; I’ll predict that Rourke gets it, though, since Penn has had (and will have) many more moments in the sun, while this is likely Mickey’s last dance. BIGGEST SCREWJOB: Benicio Del Toro’s incredibly tight performance in Che won’t get recognized because the public won’t sit through a 17-hour movie, and right-wing critics will yap endlessly that the movie glorifies a killer, which has never, ever happened before in a Hollywood movie.

WINNER
Mickey Rourke

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: NOMINEES
CLINT EASTWOOD, FRANK LANGELLA, SEAN PENN, BRAD PITT, MICKEY ROURKE

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: WINNER
MICKEY ROURKE

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five & Six

Contributors: Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Scott Von Doviak

Screengrab Predicts The Oscars: Nominations (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:30:00 GMT

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Scott Von Doviak Predicts:

NOMINEES
Josh Brolin (Milk)
Robert Downey, Jr. (Tropic Thunder)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt)
Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon)

Heath Ledger was penciled in here even before The Dark Knight was released. Philip Seymour Hoffman's work as the Penguin…er, the potentially pedophilic priest in Doubt should secure him a nod. Michael Sheen is probably the lead in Frost/Nixon, but his publicist will push him for this category. Josh Brolin drinks your Milk. That leaves one spot for the other comeback kid, Robert Downey, Jr. in Tropic Thunder.

WINNER
Ledger, who will not attend the ceremony.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg Predicts:

NOMINEES
Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Josh Brolin (Milk)
Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire)
Leonardo Di Caprio, Revolutionary Road
Ralph Fiennes, The Reader

Being that Heath Ledger gave an excellent performance and then went and died, there is no way he won't be nominated for The Dark Knight. For the same reason it isn't unlikely he'll win. Otherwise Josh Brolin stands a fighting chance. Especially given that his performance as Harvey Milk's killer in Milk is the type of role this category was made for. Well, that and taking care of actors that for whatever reason didn't end up in best leading actor. Which would explain why we find Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire in here. Let's face it; he just isn't famous enough (yet) to get nominated for Best Actor. Ralph Fiennes seems like a perennial nominee; if he didn't get a golden man for Schindler's List there is no way he will this year, but consider the nomination a consolation prize. Leonardo DiCaprio will be in here too, but we all know he's just filler.

WINNER
Heath Ledger

Paul Clark Predicts:

NOMINEES
Josh Brolin (Milk)
Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder)
James Franco (Milk)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt)
Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)

We all agree that this is Ledger’s to lose, right? Likewise, Brolin and Oscar perennial Hoffman are looking pretty locked at this point. With The Soloist moved to spring, Tropic Thunder is the best chance for the Academy to honor the clean-and-sober Downey, while filling the annual comic scene-stealer slot for this category. The race for the final nomination is pretty wide open. Nominating Dev Patel here would be the voters’ best shot at giving crowd-pleaser Slumdog an acting nomination, but while a Patel nomination would likely signal a Best Picture win for the film, the actor’s only major nomination to date has come from the SAG, who are generally more inclined to recognize youth performances. Besides, will the voters really go for his relatively colorless performance, which is really a lead? Other possibilities include Happy-Go-Lucky’s driving instructor from hell Eddie Marsan (who’s been cleaning up the critics’ awards), or such reliable character actors as Bill Irwin (Rachel Getting Married) and Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road). But I’m predicting a second supporting nomination for Milk in James Franco, whose relationship with Sean Penn’s Harvey is the emotional center of the film.

WINNER
Heath Ledger

Andrew Osborne Predicts:

NOMINEES
Josh Brolin (Milk)
Robert Downey, Jr. (Tropic Thunder)
James Franco (Milk)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt)
Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)

So, yes, of course Heath Ledger will be nominated and win, resulting in a two-hanky “on-behalf-of” acceptance speech from...hmm...Michelle Williams? Christopher Nolan? Well, that’s a guessing game for another time. And the nomination for Ledger’s whiteface performance will book-end with Robert Downey, Jr.’s blackface role in Tropic Thunder (overshadowed in the comeback kid department by Mickey Rourke’s meatface role in The Wrestler, natch). Philip Seymour Hoffman and Josh Brolin seem like safe, SAG approved bets for their solid performances in Doubt and Milk respectively, and while I liked Tom Cruise’s what-the-hell performance in Tropic Thunder a lot more than some of my Screengrab colleagues (and think it would be a hoot if the Academy followed the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s lead and nominated him), I think the fifth nod will officially go to James Franco for Milk (but really for Pineapple Express).

WINNER
Heath Ledger

Leonard Pierce Predicts:

NOMINATIONS
Josh Brolin (Milk)
Robert Downey, Jr. (The Soloist)
Ralph Fiennes (The Reader)
Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Liev Schreiber (Defiance)

Schreiber, a terrific actor who’s long been ignored by most of Hollywood, will get the nomination Defiance earns. Fiennes will be a perfunctory pick, but Brolin’s nod as Dan White will be well-deserved. Downey gets the nomination for The Soloist because he’s had an amazing year, but they won’t nominate him for a comedy (Tropic Thunder) or an action blockbuster (Iron Man). In the end, though, who’s kidding who? Especially since The Dark Knight won’t be getting anything else, Ledger is – forgive me – a mortal lock for his unforgettable turn as the Joker. BIGGEST SCREWJOB: Though Brolin deserves his nomination, it’ll come at the expense of James Franco and Emile Hirsch in the same movie.

WINNER
Heath Ledger

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: NOMINEES
JOSH BROLIN, ROBERT DOWNEY, JR., JAMES FRANCO/RALPH FIENNES (TIE), PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, HEATH LEDGER

SCREENGRAB CONSENSUS: WINNER
HEATH LEDGER

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Paul Clark, Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Scott Von Doviak

Morning Deal Report: Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Mickey Rourke isn’t taking any chances with this whole comeback thing. Just yesterday we told you Rourke has joined The Expendables, and today The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop on The Wrestler’s role in Iron Man 2. “Marvel has been keeping a very tight lid on the script for the sequel, being written by Justin Theroux, but it is known that Rourke would play a tattooed Russian heavy named Ivan who becomes Whiplash, a man with deadly, technologically enhanced coils.” Wait, isn’t that Dr. Octopus? Anyway, Rourke won’t be alone in terrorizing fellow comebacker Robert Downey, Jr. – since one villain never seems to be enough for any superhero sequel, Sam Rockwell is also aboard as “Justin Hammer, a multibillionaire businessman and a rival of industrialist Anthony Stark, AKA Iron Man.”

Leonardo DiCaprio will try to Beat the Reaper. “The protagonist in the novel penned by Josh Bazell is a Manhattan emergency room doctor, whose life becomes complicated when a mobster recognizes the doc from his former life as a hitman who went into the witness protection program,” Variety reports.

It’s official: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards really is called Inglourious Basterds, and it now has a release date. The World War II epic starring Brad Pitt will reach theaters August 21st, courtesy of The Weinstein Company. Or is that the Winesteen Kumpanee?

Related:
Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler" Pleases Mankind, Annoys Iran
Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" Unleashed

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Nov. 15-21, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

I have no wacky character to introduce this week’s Highlight Reel. I have only this goofy photo of Ginger Spice in a Wonder Woman costume. But really, shouldn’t that be enough? After all, Spice World is one of the entries in our survey of Guilty Pleasures (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six). And comic book movies are all the rage, I am told. Besides, I’ve run out of story – just like Hollywood! So I might as well just tell you about the highlights from the week and Screengrab and be on my way:

We welcome back Vadim Rizov, who wonders Why Action Heroes Must Have Manly Haircuts

Despite my physician’s warnings, the Unwatchable project continues with Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie and Carry On Columbus

Phil Nugent explores The Short Career and Strange Legacy of Tom Graeff and explains Why Cinemark Shouldn’t Get Your “Milk” Money

Paul Clark reveals how Brian De Palma went bad with Bonfire of the Vanities and revisits Thunderball and Moonraker

Leonard Pierce cranks up Rushmore: OST and Hayden Childs gives us The View Through the View-Master: Iron Giant

Kate Winslet Allows Leo DiCaprio to Strangle Her until She Passes Out

Film Threat Unveils Frigid 50 of 2008

Kate Winslet Allows Leo DiCaprio to Strangle Her until She Passes Out

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:00:00 GMT

We’re learning a lot about Kate Winslet as we get closer to the release of her two latest films, Revolutionary Road and The Reader. We already know she doesn’t use a stunt ass. Now Leonardo DiCaprio reveals a bit more of her process than she may have wanted us to know. “We're old friends and we know where we can go with each other,” DiCaprio is quoted as saying in The Guardian. “She will let me strangle her until she literally passes out in the scene.” I don’t remember the strangulation scene in Titanic, so presumably that’s something to look forward to in Revolutionary Road, which reunites the sinking ship co-stars for the first time.

“‘We were very interested to let it go and see where it went. I was like, “If you want to smash me up, OK, you want to smash me up”,’ said Winslet at a Q&A session which followed a screening of the film in Los Angeles at the weekend… In the middle of [filming a confrontation scene over breakfast] Leo and I became completely hysterical. We had to laugh or else we were going to cry.”

As for The Reader, it probably won’t come as much of a shock to learn that the oft-nude Winslet bares all again. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Winslet “refused to use a body double or lose weight for the scenes, wanting a completely realistic look for her character. Describing her own body, Kate admits to having aged, but maintains she is proud of her flawed physique, saying: ‘Here we go, I have a crumble baby belly, boobs are worse for wear after two kids... I'm doing all right. I'm 33. I don't look in the mirror and go, “Oh, I look fantastic!” Of course I don't.’” We at the Screengrab respectfully disagree.

Related:
Leonardo DiCaprio in "Pong: The Movie"?
The Top 25 Leading Ladies of All Time

Morning Deal Report: Seth Rogen's With Cancer

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

In our time of financial crisis, a nation turns to a tiny talking dog for comfort. Hey, we’ve all been there, right? Er…not that my tiny dog talks out loud. Not often anyway. Heh heh heh. Anyway, Beverly Hills Chihuahua continues to rule the box office chart, digging up $17.5 million over the weekend for a total haul of $52.5 million so far. And then there are those who seek respite from our trying times in the comfort of flesh-eating monsters, as Quarantine took second place with $14.2 million. The one-two punch of Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe had to settle for third, as Body of Lies debuted with $13.1 million. America apparently decided a terrorism thriller wasn’t really the salve it was looking for.

Seth Rogen will make you laugh at cancer. That’s the plan, anyway. Rogen will co-produce and co-star in I’m With Cancer, from an autobiographical script by Will Reiser. Rogen will have a supporting role in “Reiser's account of his struggle to beat cancer, with the story centering on a 25-year-old who finds out he has the disease,” per The Hollywood Reporter. I’m laughing already.

Ridley Scott has apparently put that Monopoly movie on the back burner. He’s now planning to adapt the 1974 Joe Haldeman novel The Forever War, which Variety reminds us will be the director’s “first science fiction film since he delivered back-to-back classics with Blade Runner and Alien.” I guess G.I. Jane doesn’t count.

Related:
Face/Off: Judd Apatow and "Pineapple Express"
OST: "Blade Runner"

Trailer Review: Revolutionary Road

Paul Clark — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Once again, Sam Mendes turns to suburban ennui, which previously won him Oscar gold in American Beauty. But while that film had plenty of sassy (some would say snarky) humor courtesy of screenwriter Alan Ball, Revolutionary Road is pretty sober stuff. Of course, the production values look pretty impeccable here- with Roger Deakins behind the camera it’d almost have to be a great-looking movie. And given the movie’s pedigree, the filmmakers clearly have Oscar in their sights again. Who knows- this buzz could very well be warranted. But I worry that the “Leo and Kate reunited” angle perpetuated by the Hollywood hype machine could overwhelm anything else about the movie. Sure, it might put a few more asses in the seats, but in the long term I’m not sure it does the movie any good, especially when it’s quite likely that the original Titanic audience simply hasn’t grown up like its stars have.

Trailer Review: Body of Lies

Paul Clark — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Does anyone out there actually buy Leonardo DiCaprio in tough-guy roles? Don’t get me wrong- I think he’s a talented actor, and given the right part he can knock it out of the park. But I didn’t find him convincing in Gangs of New York and Blood Diamond, and I’m certainly not convinced here. If you look at Leo’s best recent roles- Frank Abagnale, Howard Hughes, even Billy Costigan in The Departed- they all make use of his innate boyishness and knack for playing psychologically damaged characters. But there’s just something about him (the reedy voice, the scraggly facial hair) that doesn’t work when he’s supposed to be tough and street-smart. Just like he was in Gangs, he looks hopelessly overmatched here by his more experienced costar- Russell Crowe this time around- and it’s going to require a lot of work from director Ridley Scott and screenwriter William Monahan to convince me that Leo’s character can hold his own opposite Crowe’s. Also, it seems sort of sinful that the gorgeous Carice Van Houten (playing Leo’s wife) is nowhere to be found in the trailer, but maybe that’s just me.

Leonardo DiCaprio in "Pong: The Movie"?

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Okay, so that headline is a little misleading; we’re not trying to give Uwe Boll any ideas here, although with movies based on Monopoly (Ridley Scott is on the case) and Ouija (Who ya gonna call? Michael Bay!) in the works, a motion picture adaptation of Pong might not even be the stupidest idea of the year. But the invention of the “little game called Pong that transfixed kids in suburban rec rooms across the country and led to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of video game sales” will no doubt be dramatized in the latest effort from the biopic-crazed Leonardo DiCaprio.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, DiCaprio – who has already played Howard Hughes and Arthur Rimbaud onscreen and will soon take on Theodore Roosevelt for favorite director Martin Scorsese – will produce and star in Atari, the life story of the famed videogame company’s founder Nolan Bushnell. Even those of us who spent our formative years with joysticks in hand attempting to master Space Invaders and Yars' Revenge might be a little skeptical that Bushnell’s story could make for compelling cinema – but wait, there’s more! Bushnell is also the mastermind behind Chuck E. Cheese. With any luck, the film will explore this dark side of his character as well.

Scorsese Passes the Baton to Demme on Bob Marley Documentary

Phil Nugent — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In what might just be a propitious turn of events, Martin Scorsese has dropped out of what was intended to be his next film--a documentary about Bob Marley that he was working on with Steve Bing's Shangri-La Entertainment and Fortissimo Films, the same team with whom he made the Rolling Stones concert movie Shine a Light--and Jonathan Demme has stepped in. The movie, which everyone wants finished for a release date of February 6, 2010--the late, Jamaican reggae legend's 65th birthday--would have been Scorsese's fourth music documentary of this decade, counting the Bob Dylan film No Direction Home and Scorsese's episode of the PBS series The Blues. (It also would have taken him out of his comfort zone of music and musicians associated with the 1960s, unlike another project that's still reportedly on his plate, a documentary about George Harrison.) Apparently Scorsese was forced to bow to scheduling reality. Besides the Harrison doc, he's also preparing The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt with Leonardo Di Caprio and an adaptation of the Shusako Endo novel Silence from a script by Jay Cocks, even as he's already begun shooting Shutter Island, also with DiCaprio, and based on a novel by Dennis Lehane.

Scorsese was working on the Marley movie with the blessing of the singer's family. When he signed on, Marley's son Ziggy Marley, who's serving as executive producer, was quoted as saying, "I am thrilled that the Marley family will finally have the opportunity to document our father's legacy and are truly honored to have Mr. Scorsese guide the journey." Now Ziggy's gone back to the well and said of Demme, "His empathy with my father's body of work and his unique understanding of the musical documentary form makes me confident that this film will be the ultimate celebration of my father's life." Even if it's intended as spin control--Marley would probably do his best to sound upbeat if he woke up tomorrow morning to find that Demme had been replaced by Uwe Boll--the sentiment computes. Not only has Demme made his own string of superior rock movies (Stop Making Sense, the more recent Neil Young picture Heart of Gold), but some of his other films, notably the documentaries Haiti--Dreams of Democracy and The Agronomist reveal a passionate feel for the Caribbean culture and the mixture of pop and politics that informed Marley's career. Warming up to his assignment, Demme has referred to Bob Marley as "one of the greatest human beings of modern times".

In Other Blogs: Blogwars!

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:30:00 GMT

There’s nothing we enjoy more than a good old-fashioned feud between movie bloggers (that is, if anything in the world of blogging can actually be called ‘old-fashioned’). This one begins at Hollywood Elsewhere, with Jeffrey Wells bemoaning the Eclipse of the Hunk. “A very significant revolutionary concept has been pushed repeatedly in films produced, written or directed by movie-comedy maestro Judd Apatow over the last three or four years, and I'm not sure it's been explained as thoroughly as it should be. The idea, admittedly old hat for anyone half-familiar with Apatow World, is that marginally unattractive guys -- witty stoners, clever fatties, doughy-bodied dorks, thoughtful-sensitive dweebs and bearish oversize guys in their 20s and 30s -- can be and in fact are the new ‘romantic leads’ (for lack of a better or more appropriate term) in today's comedies.” He cites Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall as Exhibit A, thanks to his “chunky, blemished ass and little white man-boobs.” Wells is deeply concerned about this trend. “Question is, what if this starts to manifest in realms outside Apatow World? Young teenage girls will always have a thing for the Zac Efrons and young Leonardo DiCaprios, but what if Hollywood, looking to follow Apatow's lead in reflecting the real-life shlumpiness of typical GenX and GenY guys, generally starts to divest itself of conventionally good-looking actors as far as the over-21 ranks are concerned?”

Yes, that’s our biggest fear exactly: that Hollywood will stop churning out good-looking stars. Clearly Jim Emerson of Scanners shares our concern. “Can you tell the person who wrote this lives in West Hollywood? All I can say is, my sympathies to Matt Damon and Adrien Brody and Brad Pitt for being 'totally out' where attractive women are concerned. At least they can console themselves with pedicures and higher thread-counts…Why is Wells so upset? He sounds like a Dixieland racist spouting off about miscegenation in the 1950s. It's an outrage, a threat to the species!” Emerson also notes one possible – and quite logical – reason that Apatow might be drawn to this scenario: as a shlump himself, he is married above his station to Leslie Mann. In any case, Wells has since responded to Emerson, but not in any interesting way.

Elsewhere in blogdom, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule talks up Dante’s Inferno, a Joe Dante film festival that kicked off last night at the New Beverly in Los Angeles. “Dante has long been one of my favorite directors, an unrepentant appreciator of the camp qualities and the genuine wit and scrappy creativity to be found among the many titles to have filled the B-movie bucket over the past 50 years or so. His encyclopedic knowledge of seemingly every movie ever released, his unimpeachable cinematic acumen, is never show-offy, either in his films or in the many interviews and DVD commentaries he has graced during his career. Nor is his command of film style and artistry. He is that rarity, a smart filmmaker with a degree of humility who allows his intelligence to shine through his work in ways that are often misinterpreted or devalued by the keepers of the cultural flame. For this reason, not nearly so many people as should tend to understand that movies like Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Explorers, The ‘burbs and his HBO film The Second Civil War are masterpieces of design, effect, satire and social commentary that far outstrip most of the movies that august bodies tend to crown with awards. Dante's movies are firecrackers, ones you shouldn't hold in your hands for long. They snap, crackle, pop and outright supernova with the kind of exuberance that most directors half his age can’t muster”

And finally, this week in List-o-Mania brings The Top 10 Places You Should Never Visit According to Hollywood, via Film School Rejects. We’re now forced to reconsider the Screengrab company retreat in Brazil. “Need a kidney? Or a spleen? Why not try the lucrative world of human organ trafficking? Whether or not you believe this concept to be an urban legend, would you blindly follow someone into the jungle of Brazil and not worry they might take your liver?” Hell, we need what’s left of our livers.

DVD Digest for April 8, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a cracked fantasy favorite finally gets the DVD it deserves, and DVD lovers can finally order their milkshakes to go.

For most moviegoers, the big news this week is the arrival of Paul Thomas Anderson's latest masterpiece There Will Be Blood in DVD. But while that's cause for celebration, be warned- as with Sweeney Todd last week, Paramount is releasing the film in two separate versions, a bare-bones single-disc release and a two-disc set featuring some deleted scenes and a number of featurettes about the making of, and history behind, the film. Normally, I'd be skeptical about the relatively slim pickings even on the two-disc set, but Anderson's recent DVD releases haven't contained too much in the way of commentaries and the like, so this was to be expected from him. Besides, it's not like you're NOT going to buy There Will Be Blood- it's awesome enough to stand on its own merits without all the snazzy bells and whistles.

But no less noteworthy is the release of a new version of Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Munchausen, a notorious flop in its day, has since become something of a cult favorite, and it's good to see Sony finally giving it a good DVD treatment. Naturally, there's a Terry Gilliam commentary track, which should be reason enough to buy the DVD, considering that Gilliam's commentaries are never better than when he's talking about films that were mishandled by their distributors. The two-disc set also includes the three-part documentary "The Madness and Misadventures of Munchausen," as well as storyboard sequences that supposedly feature "all-new vocal performances by Terry Gilliam and Chris McKeown." Dare I hope Gilliam drew the storyboards in Pythonimation style?

In other classics coming to DVD news, Fox is continuing the celebration of Bette Davis with a six-disc Bette Davis Centenary Celebration Collection that includes a new two-disc version of All About Eve along with bare-bones discs of The Nanny, The Virgin Queen, Phone Call From a Stranger, and the gothic-horror classic Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Other than that, not much to write about in the classics department, unless of course the Blu-Ray release of Arnold Schwarzenegger in The 6th Day blows your hair back. In which case don't let me stop you.

More recent titles being released on DVD this week include John C. Reilly in the musical biopic spoof Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (Sony, also Blu-Ray), the family fantasy The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Robert Redford's star-studded Iraq War dud Lions For Lambs (MGM), and the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced and -narrated tree-hugger documentary The 11th Hour (Warner).

Finally, David Huddleston's checking in again this week, this time to offer his condolences to Warner's HD-DVD release of I Am Legend. You know, Huddleston's condolences might make me feel bad for Will Smith's character in the film, except I'm guessing he'd be grateful for the company.

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!”

Watch It (But Not For Free): “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Even if you think Amy Ryan’s wicked pissah performance in Gone Baby Gone wuz robbed on Oscar night, there’s no denying we’re living in the golden age of Boston crime movies. Mystic River kicked it off, The Departed won the Oscar for Best Picture last year, and now Martin Scorsese is set to direct an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island starring (who else?) Leonardo DiCaprio. But the granddaddy of all these films remains criminally unknown, rarely screened and never released on home video: The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

Adapted from the novel by Boston crime writer George V. Higgins, the precursor to Lehane and Spenser creator Robert Parker, Coyle is the story of a small-time gun dealer who turns informant when he learns he’s facing a stretch in prison. Directed by Peter Yates and starring Robert Mitchum as Coyle, the film isn’t big on plot twists or even much violence; its power comes from Higgins’ pungent dialogue, gritty locations and one of Mitchum’s finest performances. It has a devoted cult following, and the leader of that cult has to be Hollywood Elsewhere columnist Jeffrey Wells, who has been pursuing Coyle’s DVD release like Ahab pursued the white whale.

It began with this column from 2001, back when Wells still wrote for Reel.com. “Coyle was originally distributed by Paramount Pictures, which still owns the rights,” he wrote. “However, there are no current plans by Paramount to put it out on DVD, according to PHV spokesperson Martin Blythe. ‘But you're the second person to ask recently, so I'll mention it,’ he said earlier this week. ‘Sometimes this is how things start.’” Sometimes, perhaps, but not in this case. Wells has restated his demands periodically through the years, right up until earlier this month. Despite rumors that Criterion plans to release it (the same rumors surround virtually every rare or unreleased movie you can imagine), Coyle remains unavailable on DVD.

However, you can watch The Friends of Eddie Coyle any time you’d like, either on your computer or your TiVo, if you have such a thing. It is available as a digital download through Amazon’s Unbox service, and you can either rent it for $3.99 or buy it for $9.99. I have no information about the quality of the video – actually, I’m hoping one of our devoted readers will serve as the guinea pig and report back here. Here’s the trailer; if it interests you, why not take the plunge?

Cool Motorcycles and Dudes With Metal Arms: Akira Goes Live Action

John Constantine — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:05:00 GMT

Hollywood Reporter dropped word yesterday that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and Warner Bros are teaming up to make a live action version of Fisher-Price My First Anime, Akira. On top of that, AICN’s got the scoop that Joseph Gordon Levitt will be playing Tetsuo and have also heard that Leo Di himself will be playing Kaneda. Fans of the original manga and groundbreaking 1989 animated feature might balk at the Westernization of the property but we here at the Screengrab think Levitt and DiCaprio might be more than entertaining screaming their characters’ names at each other. Newcomer Ruairi Robinson is set to direct with Gary Whitta penning the screenplay.

Yesterday's Hits: Titanic (1997)

Peter Smith — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

What makes a movie a hit? Whatever it is, it's fascinating to look how moviegoing tastes change over the years. I hit upon the idea for a feature called "Yesterday's Hits" as a flipside to Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops, and I'll be focusing on movies that were initially popular but haven't sustained that popularity. To this end, I plan to ask three questions:

1. What made this movie a hit?
2. What happened to the movie's popularity?
3. Divorced from the original buzz, does the movie itself still work?

We'll begin with the highest-grossing film of all time, James Cameron's Titanic.

What made Titanic a hit? Titanic had something for everyone — adventure, romance, destruction, tragedy, cutting-edge effects, history, and protagonists to whom audiences could relate. Cameron mixed these elements so cannily that the movie became a must-see, even for those who almost never went to movies, like my grandfather, who trekked to the local cinema for the first time in fifteen years. But the film's biggest supporters were teenage girls, a underrepresented demographic, who famously saw the movie dozens of times.

What happened to Titanic's popularity? Teenagers — both male and female — are notoriously fickle. The movie's original fans are now in their twenties and have mostly moved on, and today's teenagers want to find a hit of their own to embrace. Likewise, Titanic isn't particularly well-served by video and DVD, its largesse diminished by the smaller screen while the cornball dialogue and nuts 'n' bolts characterization become more glaring.

Does Titanic still work? Yes and no. Titanic is a mix of classical and modern elements, and these elements don't always mesh well. Most of the supporting characters are given exactly one note to play — Billy Zane's sneering possessiveness, Frances Fisher's old-money snobbery, Kathy Bates' aw-shucks Molly Brown — which grows a little tiresome over three-odd hours. By comparison, Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) are relatable because they feel more modern than the others. It's a convenient way to elicit audience sympathy, but Cameron's more baldfaced attempts to inject their characters with contemporary traits, such as Rose's love for modern art (Billy Zane: "That Picasso will never amount to anything!"), fall flat.

In addition, a lot of smaller elements of the film don't really work. The framing story takes too long to get going, and Gloria Stuart's Oscar-nominated performance as Old Rose doesn't age well. And couldn't Cameron have found a better MacGuffin than the Heart of the Ocean diamond? Then there's the matter of the music. James Horner's Enya-inflected score is even more distracting now than it was ten years ago, and Celine Dion's end-credits number "My Heart Will Go On," never that great a song to begin with, has become so ubiquitous that it's almost unlistenable.

Still, a lot of the movie still sings. Titanic's bravura second half, containing the sinking, plays to Cameron's strengths as a filmmaker (destruction and human chaos). Both the opulence and the effects remain impressive today. And even the old-fashioned storyline plays better than I'd remembered. Cameron wisely stays mostly with Jack and Rose, and in doing so he taps into one of the great themes of epic cinema: people at the mercy of history. It worked in Gone With the Wind, it worked in Casablanca, and it still works like a charm in Titanic. — Paul Clark

Morning Deal Report: Step Up for Scorsese Pic

Peter Smith — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Mark Ruffalo has joined Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's Dennis Lehane adaptation Shutter Island.

John Cusack may star in Weinstein Co.'s period drama Shanghai. Gong Li is already attached. Sort of a departure for him.

Remember the Tom Swift books? Neither do I, but if you do have fond memories of the series, prepare for them to be trampled.

— Peter Smith

Morning Deal Report: Scorsese and DiCaprio, Sitting in a Tree

Peter Smith — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Martin Scorsese has announced his next project: the Dennis Lehane adaptation Shutter Island. (Dennis Lehane — so hot right now.) Once again, Scorsese will team up with his new De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio. . .

Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody (now there's a handle) will direct much-discussed Transformers thespian Megan Fox in Jennifer's Body, a comedy about a cheerleader who kills boys due to demonic possession.

Great World of Sound director Craig Zobel has a new project: Turkey in the Straw, about a small-town political standoff in which a candidate shoots his competitor. I am very curious what this'll be like.

Julia Stiles falls in love with her stalker Paddy Considine in Cry of the Owl.

Steve Buscemi will take a major role in John Rabe, a sort of Chinese Schindler's List about a German businessman who saved hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives in the Nanjing massacre. (Buscemi plays American doctor Robert Wilson, not Rabe.) With no disrespect to Rabe's real heroism and humanity, it's interesting how many films use massive historical crimes to elevate the filmic heroism and humanity of their (usually white) heroes. Call it the Mississippi Burning syndrome. I hope Buscemi's good judgment is in effect here.

— Peter Smith