The Screengrab : mike newell

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

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

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

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

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

DVD Digest for May 5, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the fifth and final Best Picture nominee from last year makes its DVD debut, and a whole lot of TV and Blu-Ray releases hit the market.

Recently, there was some uproar over the announcement that Criterion would be releasing David Fincher’s latest film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, on DVD and Blu-Ray. Frankly, the naysayers sort of had a point- while Button is Fincher’s first stab at Oscar glory, it’s hardly the best-regarded film of his career, and it looked like Criterion was grabbing a big-ticket title in order to make some money to find its more esoteric efforts (such as last month’s Jean Painlevé box). But it turns out that we all underestimated Criterion- while the movie itself might be nothing special, the new 2-disc DVD is, boasting nearly three hours’ worth of documentaries on the making of the film, from on-the-set footage of Fincher at work to exhaustive features on the movie’s technical marvels. Paramount will also be releasing a film-only version as well, but if you really want to own this, the Criterion set is the way to go, and besides, if enough people buy the Criterion Button, maybe they’ll be persuaded to release some other Finchers as well. I for one long for a snazzy new version of The Game, but that’s just me…

Other recent releases coming to DVD this week include the Bollywood hit Chandni Chowk to China (Warner) and Azazel Jacobs’ priceless indie Momma’s Man (Kino).

The only notable classics release that’s on my radar this week is Mike Newell’s 1992 arthouse hit Enchanted April (Disney).

The week’s TV on DVD include: Spader and The Shat in Boston Legal Season 5 (Fox); the Daniel Defoe reworking Crusoe: The Complete Series (Universal); Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: The Final Conflict Season 1 (Paramount); the Candace Bushnell-penned Lipstick Jungle Season 2 (Universal); and the since-cancelled drama October Road Season 2 (Disney).

Finally, this week’s selection of Blu-Ray only releases has plenty of fun to help lead movie watchers into summer. We’ve got comedy- Big (Fox), There’s Something About Mary (Fox), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Paramount). We’ve got love stories- It Could Happen to You (Sony) and Roxanne (Sony). We’ve even got a double dose of dancing Travolta, with Grease (Paramount) and Saturday Night Fever (Paramount). Or if none of these does it for you, there’s always Michael C. Hall as everyone’s favorite serial-killer-hunting serial killer in Dexter Season 2 (Paramount).

Morning Deal Report: Adapt or Die

Peter Smith — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Guillermo Del Toro will adapt The Champions, a late-'60s BBC series too goofy to summarize here.

Roman Polanski will adapt Robert Harris's thriller The Ghost.

Mike Newell will adapt Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, from the legendary videogame series. If he were adapting my experience with Prince of Persia, it'd have to be ten hours of the Prince getting killed over and over again, possibly with a twelve-year-old screaming curses in the background. That game ruled.

— Peter Smith