The Screengrab : the daily show

Thursday Poll for January 15, 2009

Paul Clark — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

With the Oscar ceremony little more than a month away and nominations being announced next week, I used last week’s Thursday Poll to ask you about your tastes in Oscar hosts. And you responded rather decisively that when it comes to recent Oscar emcees, your preference was for Jon Stewart, erstwhile host of The Daily Show and star of such cinematic gems as Death to Smoochy, Big Daddy and Playing By Heart, who brought in 57% of the votes. By some not-all-that-odd coincidence, Stewart also shared the screen with your second-favorite recent host, Steve Martin (24%), in Stewart’s big-screen debut, 1994’s Mixed Nuts (yeah, we’ve expelled it from our memory banks too). In third place was one-timer Ellen DeGeneres, with former Oscar mainstay Billy Crystal and the hugely divisive Chris Rock in a dead heat for last. How will Hugh Jackman compare? Well, he couldn’t be any worse than Rock, could he?

This week, on the tail of Clint Eastwood’s latest directing effort Gran Torino, we look at the iconic actor/director’s most celebrated films. A perennial Oscar favorite, Eastwood’s films have been nominated for Best Picture four times to date, winning twice. Which Eastwood-directed Best Picture nominee is your favorite?

Which is your favorite? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is open. See you next week!

Morning Deal Report: A Brad Pitt Odyssey

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

No need for a recount: Max Payne has defeated George W. Bush at the box office polls. The Mark Wahlberg shoot-em-up took in $18 million over the weekend to claim the top spot. Finishing second was that pesky Beverly Hills Chihuahua, just edging out The Secret Life of Bees. Oliver Stone’s W. was fourth with $10.6 million.

After dumping Darren Aronofsky from his dance card, Brad Pitt is preparing for a space Odyssey. “After turning Homer's epic poem The Iliad into the 2004 film Troy, Warner Bros. and Brad Pitt are teaming with George Miller to adapt the Greek poet's other masterwork, The Odyssey,” Variety reports. “Their intention is to transfer the tale to a futuristic setting in outer space.”

Miramax is “developing Daily Show head writer Ben Karlin and Stu Zicherman's satirical comedy A.C.O.D. (Adult Children of Divorce), the story of a grown man still caught in the crossfire of his parents' 15-year-old divorce,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “‘We're very glad to get the validation from Miramax, especially since we've been working on the script longer than any of our parents were married,’ Karlin and Zicherman said.”

Related:
Brad Pitt Jilts Aronofsky Again
Screengrab Review: "W."

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "War, Inc."

Phil Nugent — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

John Cusack gets his smug on in War, Inc., a satiricial action comedy with a touch every bit as light and precise as its sledgehammer title. Cusack, who co-produced the movie with Grace Loh for his New Crime Productions, and splits the screenplay credit between himself, novelist Mark Leyner, and Bulworth scripter and Huffington Post blogger Jeremy Pikser, plays a hit man who is hired by Tamerlane, a Halliburton-like corporaton that is staffing America's first war that has been fully outsourced to the private sector. The movie intends an attack on how big business profits from, and may even influence, American foreign policy, but its ideas about how that's reshaping the world seem to have only gotten as far as slapping company logos on the sides of tanks and in smoking urban war zones, a device that mainly results in some really questionable product placement deals. (The Get Smart-style entrance to the lair of the American intelligence officers is through a Popeyes chicken joint, arguably the most prominent space that franchise has been awarded in a major Hollywood production since the Adam Sandler vehicle Little Nicky established that the denizens of Hell thought quite highly of their product.) The movie hits its targets only once in a great while, particularly when it goes after the gullibility and culpability of the media. There's a choice sequence about an imbedded group of reporters who get a taste of what it's like in a war-ravaged country by being treated to a Sensurround-style simulated ride through rough terrain. (They cheer with excitement, just like Geraldo every time he sees his name in the paper spelled right.)

War, Inc. positions itself as a sort-of-sequel to the 1997 New Crime Production Grosse Pointe Blank; it doesn't continue that movie's story or revive its characters, but it does reunite some if its key personnel while aiming for something similar in tone and approach. Cusack's emotionally confused master assassin with a streak of white in his dark hair is Martin Blank with ten years on him in all but name; Joan Cusack is once again his personal assistant (but this time, infuriatingly, is subjected to unflattering lighting and funhouse lenses and camera angles), and Dan Aykroyd turns up to do his Dick Cheney impression as the self-satisfied master of the universe dealing Cusack his orders. (They are joined by Marisa Tomei, who, as usual, pumps an incredible amount of sexiness and vitality into her corner of the vaccuum, and Ben Kingsley, who attempts what I think is meant to be a Texas accent, though it could just as easily have labeled his character as an Australian, a Venusian, or just a raving nut.) This is actually a clever approach--just as it was when the cast of A Fish Called Wanda did it in Fierce Creatures, a movie that didn't work either--but it mainly serves to highlight how opportunistic the difference between the two pictures feels. Grosse Pointe Blank, which came riding in on the last fumes of the Pulp Fiction bandwagon, treated murder as a hip slapstick joke. War, Inc. has the same kind of what-me-worry approach to violent chaos and the same admiring attitude towards its hero's murderous prowess, but it expects to be taken as being on a deeper, more meaningful level of smirking cynicism because Cusack has sunk to working for Republican CEOs. (In both films, Cusack is paired with a heroine--Minnie Driver in Grosse Pointe Blank, Marisa Tomei here--who expresses horror at his violent side until she needs rescuing.) War, Inc. is set to go straight to DVD after a non-victory lap of the festivals and a token New York/Los Angeles theatrical release, and Cusack and company are welcome to console themselves with the thought that their movie was punished for the sharpness of its bite. But its "satire" is the kind of thing that The Daily Show regularly makes fun of.

Oscars Suck

Peter Smith — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:15:00 GMT

At least that's the word from the people. According to Nielsen (Media Research, not Leslie), last night's telecast may have been the lowest-rated Oscar broadcast ever. Preliminary estimates suggest this year's show was watched by 21% fewer people than last year's, and 14% than 2003's, the current booby-prize holder. It's possible that a large percentage of potential viewers were just stuck on an immobile Amtrak train for two-and-a-half hours, like me, and thereby unable to watch. But it seems unlikely. Too bad for the Academy, but at least this will give Jon Stewart something to be wry and self-deprecating about for another few Daily Shows.