The Screengrab : the life before her eyes

Morning Deal Report: Can Pee-Wee Herman Find Happiness?

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

The Dark Knight joined the exclusive $500 million club with its weekend take of $11 million. It’s still nearly $100 million behind the only other member of that club, Titanic. Tropic Thunder remained on top of the box office for a third straight week, taking in $14.3 million and keeping the Vin Diesel vehicle Babylon A.D. down in second place. In a sign that we may soon be free of the tyranny of the spoof movie, Disaster Movie finished in seventh.

For some reason, I have failed to mention Todd Solondz’s sequel to Happiness in this space. Let me rectify that immediately. Todd Solondz is making a sequel to Happiness. Actually, Variety describes it as “an untitled part-sequel, part-companion piece to his controversial dark comedy Happiness.” Take that for whatever it’s worth. To me, not much, but your mileage may vary. Emma Thompson, Demi Moore and Paul “Pee Wee” Reubens are rumored to be attached. Attached to the movie, I mean; I’m not trying to imply some sordid love triangle.

Now that you’ve lost your breakfast, take heart in the news that the Poltergeist remake has found its director. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ukrainian-born Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog, The Life Before Her Eyes) is in negotiations to take the helm. “The film's exploration of an ordinary family's reaction to an extraordinarily intense situation likely appealed to Perelman,” claims the Reporter.

Related:
A Hobbit, a Gnome and a Poltergeist Walk Into a Bar
How Batman is the New Beatles

DVD Digest for August 19, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

The seemingly endless run of crappy spring releases continues unabated this week, as I reach into last week to select a noteworthy release I somehow overlooked.

Belated DVD of the Week: With Criterion still digging into film history to bring cinephiles the best of classic cinema, it’s easy to overlook what’s going on at their kid-sister company, Eclipse. To wit: I was so caught up last week’s in Criterion’s impressive DVD of Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain that I completely forgot to mention the release of Eclipse Series 11: Larisa Shepitko. As with Eclipse’s previous box sets devoted to William Klein and Raymond Bernard, Eclipse has rescued a worthy if unsung filmmaker from semi-obscurity, this time by releasing two of her greatest achievements on DVD. This Shepitko set includes the war films Wings and The Ascent, two key films in her all-too-brief filmography, and which gives some insight of what a major director she might have become had she not died in a car accident at the age of forty. As with Shepitko’s husband Elem Klimov’s masterpiece Come and See, both films in this Eclipse set are hardly cheerful entertainment, but like Come and See they’re indispensible viewing, and I’m glad Eclipse has taken the care of releasing them.

Meanwhile, Criterion this week has new DVDs of Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room and Keisuke Kinoshita’s Twenty-Four Eyes. Also in classics coming to DVD: Oliver Stone’s Nixon: Election Year Edition (Disney, also Blu-Ray).

New releases coming to DVD this week include: Frances McDormand and Amy Adams in Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day (Universal); tween-bait Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds 3-D Concert (Disney, also Blu-Ray); Jay Roach’s funny/depressing HBO film Recount (Warner); yet another horror remake in Prom Night (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Keanu Reeves as a crooked cop in Street Kings (Fox, also Blu-Ray); and the grief-porny The Life Before Her Eyes (Magnolia). Also, two notable direct-to-DVD releases: My Sassy Girl (Fox), a remake of the Korean cult hit starring thespian extraordinaire Elisha Cuthbert; and mixed martial arts champ Randy Couture taking over for The Rock in The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior (Universal, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s TV on DVD releases include: Dexter Season 2 (Paramount); Gossip Girl Season 1 (Warner); House Season 4 (MGM); Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 1 (Warner). And in Blu-Ray only news, this week brings the release of Justice League Season 1 (Warner).

Trailer Review: The Life Before Her Eyes

Paul Clark — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Well, it appears that it's Changed Title Week here at Trailer Review, first with Monday's Starship Meet Dave, and now this one, which was originally titled In Bloom. It was under this title that the film premiered to lukewarm reviews at last year's Toronto Film Festival, where Premiere's Glenn Kenny called it "basically Sophie's Choice meets Incident at Owl Creek Bridge meets Columbine." The trailer conveys this pretty effectively, with a sudden flash-forward from the teenage protagonist driving to the adult version behind the wheel. But what I have a hard time stomaching is the film's grief-porn aspect, for lack of a better word. Yes, a school shooting is a tragedy, but the film looks less like a complex examination of the psychological fallout from this central incident than a wallow in the heroine's misery. And in what universe does Evan Rachel Wood grow up into Uma Thurman without, uh, surgical enhancement? Just sayin'.