The Screengrab : smart people

DVD Digest for August 12, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

After last week’s thin selection of new DVDs, this week brings a number of high-quality releases.

DVDs of the Week: DVDs couldn’t be much different than this week’s two most notable new releases, the Criterion release of Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain! and the final season of The Wire (HBO). But in its own way, each is pretty indispensible. Maddin’s film is, like his entire body of work, indescribable to anyone who hasn’t already seen it, but for those who are on his wavelength, it’s magical. That Criterion has finally embraced this most movie-drunk of filmmakers is exciting enough. But they’ve also gathered half a dozen different narration tracks for the sake of variety, including narration by Isabella Rossellini, Laurie Anderson, Eli Wallach, and Maddin himself. In addition, there’s a new documentary on the director, plus two new short films by Maddin, made especially for this release. So yeah, good news.

But if anything, the release of Season 5 of The Wire is even more of a cause for celebration. The groundbreaking, critically-acclaimed HBO series has been praised to the heavens in venues both classier and more authoritative than this one, so I’ll refrain from heaping still more effusive praise on a series that hardly needs it. All I can say is, if you haven’t experienced The Wire yet, you’ve got some great times ahead of you. And if you have, you don’t need me to convince you to buy the final season on DVD.

This week’s recent releases coming to DVD include: Dennis Quaid and Ellen Page in Smart People (Disney, also Blu-Ray); Stephen Chow’s cockeyed kids’ movie CJ7 (Sony, also Blu-Ray); and Val Kilmer and Stephen Dorff in Felon (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Also, three DVDs by Lech Majewski: The Garden of Earthly Delights, Glass Lips, and The Gospel According to Harry (all Kino), the last of which features a young Viggo Mortensen.

In TV on DVD, this week brings South Park Season 11 (Paramount), Prison Break Season 3 (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and Caroline in the City Season 1 (Paramount).

Finally, in Blu-Ray only news, the week’s big release almost certainly has to be Sony’s “Action” Box Set, which includes Jean Claude Van Damme in Maximum Risk, Steven Seagal in Half Past Dead, Wesley Snipes in 7 Seconds, and Ice Cube in xXx: State of the Union. I mean, come on- Van Damme, Seagal, and Snipes all in one box set? The 1993 version of me is stoked. Also this week: The Doors (Lionsgate) and Belly (Lionsgate), in case you were wondering.

Video of the Day: Ellen Page's Screen Test from "Juno"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

So, we don't know if you've heard of this Ellen Page kid. Rumor around the Screengrab water cooler is that she's gonna be big. We're talking Nancy McKeon big. Maybe even bigger! As you may recall, America's favorite wise-ass teenager starred in a little movie called Juno a few yoinks back:

As the clip indicates, Page — who already seemed preternaturally assured in front of the camera in the problematic Hard Candy — took to the role of Juno right from the jump, imbuing even script read-throughs with a great deal of maturity and poise. Will her performance in Smart People be as winning? Stay tuned, girl-geek fans...

Geek Love: The Ten Sexiest Nerds in Cinema, Gen-XX Edition (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

With Smart People, Ellen Page reprises her wise-ass, brainy-sexy persona from Juno, reaffirming her place as the current It Girl for a brand new generation of future I.T. professionals and I.T.T. graduates.

Lord knows I enjoyed the standard-issue sex dolls of my Gen X adolescence, from Catherine Bach’s Daisy Duke to Sylvia Kristel’s steamy French maid in Private Lessons (which my parents naively allowed me to go see all by myself because it co-starred that nice Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP In Cincinnati).

But horny fantasies aside, I knew from the get-go I was far too much of a Starlog-reading, drama club-joining, Honor-Roll attaining nerd to ever wind up with the hot blondes or the Bond babe, and so it was always the relatable, approachable freaks and geeks of cinema that gave me hope. And while most of the actresses on the following list were actually gorgeous starlets in real life, it was reassuring to believe the following characters, at least, would maybe lend you their panties if you ever needed to win a bet for a dozen floppy disks. (And don't worry, we'll get to the GUY geeks next week...but suggestions are certainly welcome!)

10. MOLLY RINGWALD AS SAMANTHA BAKER IN SIXTEEN CANDLES

Sure, she wound up with the hunky popular guy at the end, but she WAS nice enough to lend Anthony Michael Hall’s Geek her underwear, and I was always hot for Ms. Ringwald, especially when I read in later interviews that she eventually grew up, fell hard for a French guy and became quite the sex enthusiast.

9. ALLY SHEEDY AS ALLISON REYNOLDS IN THE BREAKFAST CLUB

A pivotal character in my early development, who inspired a life-long love of freaky Goth girls but also broke my heart, dropping the knowledge on my adolescent ass that even the misfit girls would usually choose the Jocks over the Brains of the world if given half a chance. Traitor!

8. MEG TILLY AS CHLOE IN THE BIG CHILL

Sexy, exotic and a little odd-looking, Chloe made me want to be the kind of cool, smart rebel her soulful misfit would dig (a.k.a. William Hurt’s drug-dealing Vietnam vet Nick) as opposed to the gabby neurotic Jeff Goldblum-y type I actually was (and am).

7. HOLLY HUNTER AS JANE CRAIG IN BROADCAST NEWS

Friends still mock me for my obsession with Holly Hunter’s t.v. producer character, but Broadcast News was the movie to beat in 1987 for nailing the friends vs. lovers dilemma faced by supportive, dorky guys in love with female “friends” who think of them as brothers. The scene where Albert Brooks’ character finally tells off Jane, then dumps her from his life is still one of my all-time favorites, finally teaching me the best way to avoid “nice guy” syndrome with girls was not to be so goddamn nice all the time.

6. DAPHNE ZUNIGA AS ALISON BRADBURY IN THE SURE THING

This Gen-X version of It Happened One Night dramatized the other side of the friends vs. lovers dilemma: once you finally figure out how to attract girls, do you go for great sex or great conversation? With Alison Bradbury, John Cusack’s Walter Gibson found the perfect balance.

Click here for part 2!

Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of April 11-13, 2008

Paul Clark — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Move over, Juliette Binoche, Jude Law and Natalie Portman. There's a new arthouse star in town- Richard Jenkins. The character actor extraordinaire, known to many as the deceased father on Six Feet Under, parlayed a rare leading role in Tom McCarthy's new film The Visitor (Overture Films) into the weekend's top per-screen box office take. The film took in a mighty $22,622 per screen average on four screens this past weekend, which promises a healthy overall gross once the film expands wider in two weeks.

Finishing in second place was Fox Searchlight's crowd-pleasing documentary Young@Heart, raking in a sturdy $12,734 average on four screens. The film, about a chorus of retirees who perform rock'n'roll songs, has received mostly ecstatic reviews thusfar, which leads me to think the awful trailer may simply have been a botch by Fox's marketing department.

Making strong showings in the their second weeks of release were last week's top two, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon (IFC Films) and Wong Kar-wai's English-language debut My Blueberry Nights (The Weinstein Company). Rounding on the top five was the Vietnam drama Holly (Slowhand Cinema).

Also of note were: First Independent's release Dark Matter, whose sturdy grosses can be mostly attributed to the presence of Meryl Streep in a supporting role; Body of War (The Film Sales Company), an Iraq documentary co-directed by Phil Donahue (last seen puking in the trombone); and the weekend's top-performing wide-ish release, Miramax's Smart People. Less successful was Sony Pictures Classics' new English dub of Persepolis, taking in a mere $561 per screen- little more than the already-on-DVD There Will Be Blood.

Top 10: Weekend of April 11-13:
1. The Visitor [Overture Films] ($22,622 per screen)
2. Young@Heart [Fox Searchlight] ($12,734)
3. The Flight Of The Red Balloon [IFC Films] ($11,959)
4. My Blueberry Nights [The Weinstein Company] ($7,292)
5. Holly [Slowhand Cinema Releasing] ($5,994)
6. Dark Matter [First Independent Pictures] ($4,351)
7. Body of War [The Film Sales Company] ($3,850)
8. The Dhamma Brothers [Balcony Releasing] ($3,710)
9. Smart People [Miramax] ($3,700)
10. Priceless [IDP/Samuel Goldwyn Films] ($3,604)

Source: IndieWire.

Smart Person Mark Poirier: How to Become a Hot Screenwriter Sort of by Accident

Phil Nugent — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

“I didn’t even start writing until I was in graduate school,” says Mark Poirier, “and it took me a really long time to call myself a writer. I thought it sounded pretentious.” Poirier, who has published two novels and two short story collections, says that he'd now best like to think of himself as a short story writer. But when he wrote the script for Smart People, a new movie starring Dennis Quaid, Ellen Page, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Thomas Haden Church, what he mainly was, was hungry. Poirier had received the Chesterfield Screenwriting Fellowship at Paramount Pictures, but “I kind of applied out of desperation, not out of any passion to write screenplays. I’d been teaching at Portland State, in Oregon, and my contract didn’t get renewed, and I was, like: ‘What am I going to do? How am I going to eat?’ ” The movie, a story about a stalled, middle-aged academic (Quaid) in which, as its author puts it, "nothing really happens," didn't even begin as a movie. It "had been living in my head for a couple of years as the novel I was going to write next. And when I couldn’t think of anything to write for a screenplay, I figured, what the hell, let’s try this.”

Now Poirier, who studied writing at the Iowa Writers' Workship, and at John Hopkins, Georgetown, and Stanford Universities, is working on film treatments based on both of his published novels, as well as a story by Alice Munro and a novel by Douglas Copeland, among other projects. The suggestion that he may presently be closer to being a working screenwriter than anything else does make him wince. But a lot of people who've labored long and hard and struggled to make connections with the idea of being able to call themselves "screenwriters" with a straight face must wish that they could run him over with a semi. I don't care how professorial you are by nature, that ought to feel kind of good.

Trailer Review: Smart People

Paul Clark — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It's almost gotten to the point where these quirkily articulate off-Hollywood comedies practically write themselves. Hard-working single dad has trouble relating to his children? Check. A domestic crisis that puts him back in touch with a sibling with whom he has a decidedly strained relationship? Check. An unlikely romance between our hero and an attractive woman, preferably one who first meets our protagonist in a professional capacity? Yeah, that's here too. Hell, there's even a comically tense dinner-table scene involving all of the film's principal players. Smart People isn't nothing we haven't seen before, so the film must sink or swim on its performances, and if nothing else the film's cast is pretty solid. I worry that Ellen Page might get herself stuck in a dry-sarcasm rut, but Dennis Quaid is proving to be more interesting in middle-aged character roles than he ever was as a leading man. Meanwhile, Thomas Haden Church continues to remind me of my uncle, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.