Video of the Day 2: Metro-Nomo by Luciano Larobina
5/2/2007 4:45:00 PM
Re:new Media, the organization entrusted with giving Rockefeller Foundation grants to filmmakers and new media artists, celebrated the 20th anniversary of its Media Arts fellowships last night with a party at the Tribeca Film Festival. Over the years, they have provided funds to artists as diverse as Craig Brewer, Tony Oursler, Kenneth Anger, and Carlos Reygadas, among countless others. (One of their recipients last night was the legendary Ken Jacobs.)
To celebrate this anniversary, they commissioned five original pieces from five of their previous fellows. The idea is that the five shorts will all be made available online through Eyespot, which will also allow people to sample and re-edit the videos. (Go here to see all five.)
I was particularly taken with this short, Metro-Nomo, by Luciano Larobina, set in a subterranean metro system. That’s about all I can say, except that it totally freaked me out, but in a good way.
— Bilge Ebiri
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Shepherds and Zodiacs: Welcome to the New Reticence
5/2/2007 4:00:00 PM
Of all the DVDs that are piling up around me awaiting review, the one I've been coming back to, disastrously (since to re-view a DVD is to fall behind one film in the mountain before me), is The Good Shepherd. One of the two "good"-titled spy films from last year that more or less bombed at the box office, it turns out to be a film that I want to revisit, and each re-acquaintance reveals deeper interconnections and larger mysteries.
There are a lot of things different about The Good Shepherd. It doesn't feel like a typical spy movie, especially in comparison to Matt Damon's Bourne spy film franchise. It doesn't feel like a Robert De Niro movie (especially in comparison with his first directorial effort, A Bronx Tale). It doesn't even feel much like the other films that Hollywood is turning out, except in one aspect — it's quietude.
Based on a script credited to Eric Roth, writer of Forrest Gump, another generation spanning tale of an inward character, The Good Shepherd tells basically the same story as The Company, Robert Littell's novel right now being turned into a mini-series. Damon is a composite figure with a lot of James Jesus Angleton in him, especially concerning his friendship with Kim Philby. Yet despite the fact that the film covers events from about 1939 to 1961, all the people are linked and there are recurring themes. For example, both De Niro's Bill Sullivan (aka, OSS founder "Wild" Bill Donovan) and Michael Gambon's Dr. Fredericks (a sort of cross between Auden and Graham Greene) give Damon's Ed Wilson the same speech, that they, we, are nothing more than clerks who serve the king. And gradually the viewer realizes that virtually everyone (except the person he likes least) betrays him: his father, his wife, his son, his boss, his brother in law (at least in the deleted scenes), his various lovers, all of them. Yet, despite being corrupted and compromised almost from the get go, America still "wins" the Cold War.
There may be a personal element in the film. De Niro, as anyone who saw him promoting the movie on the Charlie Rose show knows, is an inarticulate, nervous person. Perhaps he can relate to Wilson's closed-down somnambulism, his sense of siege from all quarters, from his wife and kid to his superiors and enemies.
But The Good Shepherd isn't sui generis. There are several other recent films of rather quiet effect, including Breach and Zodiac, which also happen to be films I've watched several times, in defiance of deadlines. These are films that embrace a severe, almost self-strangling realism, coupled with a fascination for procedure, and a dread of emotion, or at least emotionalism. Let's call it The New Reticence. The Dead Girl and Inland Empire might also fit under this rubric. These films are the true descendants of the 70s New Hollywood style.
The New Reticence is diametrically opposed to typical Hollywood protocols. Plot points are subtle, allusive, almost evasive, demanding concentration (like all the good TV shows); people speak in whispers. You have to lean forward to catch the dialogue because the movie acts as if it doesn't want to disturb you. In fact, these films are better made for DVD than theater viewing, where you can turn on subtitles and pause and rewind.
This approach is perfect for spy movies, and a certain kind of crime film, where brooding and silence and subtlety are at a premium, but I don't know if the New Reticence is applicable to anything else (certainly not to comedies). And I doubt that, if it is a movement, it will last long, given the box office returns. Still, for a brief time period, at the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, there was a time when Hollywood movies acted all grown up and repressed. We probably shall not see their like again.
— DK Holm
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Tribeca Review: Lost in Beijing
5/2/2007 3:15:00 PM
This excellent, complex and emotionally devastating film is one of the highlights of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and one of the year’s best in any category. Lost came into the festival with some considerable buzz behind it, not only for its nomination for the Golden Bear at Berlin earlier this year (the eventual winner, Tuya’s Marriage, is also screening at the fest) but also because this version of the film will not be shown in China due to censorship issues.
There’s a major cultural shift underway in that country, and nowhere do we see a better example of this than in Beijing. Director Yu Li’s focus is clearly on creating a contemporary point of view in an effort to capture a glimpse of the many changes the city and its people are experiencing. The turbulence, instability and anxiety of the film’s characters and the city that surrounds them is translated through hand-held close-ups and out of focus shots — Li’s intention was that the audience feel “the camera breathing.” The film is also shot entirely in the city center of Beijing, which is a rare vision for cineastes in itself, and uses the moody beats of Portishead to background two key scenes.
The project was written and developed with producer Li Fang, and revolves around the lives of its four main characters; a young massage girl, her boss, his rich, icy wife, and the young girl’s husband. When the young girl is raped by her boss while her husband watches from his window-washing post outside, the couples have to first deal with the anguish of a forced infidelity, and then the discovery that the young woman has become pregnant, with no clear answer to the father’s identity. Then, another secret comes rushing to the surface: The older man’s wife is barren, and this may be his only chance to have the son he so greatly desires. The two men quickly become engaged in the business of negotiating with physical and emotional currency. A deal is eventually struck that after the baby’s birth the rightful father will leave with the child, with the older man agreeing to pay the younger a substantial amount of money for this privilege.
It would have been very easy for this film to plunge headfirst into melodrama, but Li keeps the tone even, rarely playing the story for dramatic effect. Her one misstep comes late when in the midst of absolute turmoil a friend of the young girl’s from the massage palace is found raped and murdered, which feels like an unnecessary diversion from the high stakes of the four main characters. The director said in the Q&A after the film’s screening that she was influenced more by the city itself than by any one director. That sense of purpose is felt throughout the film and Lost in Beijing’s attempts to show what is happening in China right now through a well drawn story of two very different married couples (old vs. young, rich vs. poor, traditional vs. modern) is part of what has caused so much turmoil in her homeland. But this picture of modern life will translate easily to a worldwide audience. In fact, I left the theater thinking that if this were an English language film we’d almost certainly be hearing early Oscar buzz about the very capable cast and this talented and fearless young female director.
— Bryan Whitefield
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What Is It About Nicolas Cage and Las Vegas?
5/2/2007 2:30:00 PM
When is Nicolas Cage finally leaving Las Vegas? His new film, Next, which opened Friday, April 27, is about the fourth film he's made set partially in or around Vegas. His earliest was Honeymoon in Vegas. Then in 1995, he won an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas, which he must have taken as a good luck sign, for he made Con Air in 1997, with its Vegas climax. For all I remember, maybe Ghost Rider had parts set in Vegas (though it was filmed in Australia). Now comes Next, and since he is a co-producer, one has to believe that he favored the Vegas location. And there is something about Cage — although he has never played Elvis (as far as I know) I feel as if he has, or as if he always is secretly playing Elvis. (Actually, he came pretty damn close in Wild At Heart.)
Next is 24 meets Medium (his ex-wife's show), as Chris Johnson, a sleazy strip magician, becomes embroiled in a scheme by Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore), an FBI agent, to use his psychic power to circumvent a plan by what appear to be Russians to blow up a nuclear device somewhere in America. Johnson's Heroes - X-Men style gift is that he can see two minutes into the future things that might affect only him.
Sadly, this is a terrible movie. It is based on a Philip K. Dick story, and though I haven't read the story and so can't speak to the accuracy of the adaptation, one can see the bare bones of a clever premise in the film, with interesting political implications, though it fails to explore all the ramifications in favor of chase scenes and explosions, favoring fustian over thought, and narrative rabbit holes that only postpone the inevitability the writers are striving for. Why does Johnson steal a car for a high-speed flight from the cops when he is already presumably a public personality, regardless of how minor? How do terrorists manage to follow around the FBI, plus man helicopters in downtown Los Angeles? Why does a camera stay on a newscaster long after she has clearly broken down? And then there is the end. Hoo, boy. Not since Emilio Estevez and Wisdom has a movie so betrayed and exhausted its viewers.
On the surface the film is well cast with an occasional good idea for special effects. But on closer thought, it is, well, predictable. You always know what is going to happen next. Jessica Biel continues to be a potentially attractive leading lady trapped in slightly glorified girlfriend roles. Meanwhile, a haggard Moore seems to be in a rut of playing hard, acerbic bossy boots. And Cage seems both ageless and static. If he is essentially always playing Elvis, we are always seeing him in glorified TV shows. In fact, Next would have been a great pilot for a TV show, just a very expensive one.
— DK Holm
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Let the Scapegoating Continue…
5/2/2007 1:45:00 PM
There is nothing more horrifying or depressing, when faced with the spectacle of an act of violence on the level of the Virginia Tech massacre, than the pointless and brutal loss of life. But things don’t improve much when members of the media — reporters, pundits, commentators and other professional busybodies looking to fill air time and column-inches — go questing for some convenient target on which to pin easy blame for an unfathomable crime. The usual suspects have already been trotted out in full force — video games, music, and, in what has to be the most ridiculous take yet on the subject, immigration.
But, of course, our old friend the motion picture stands up to take its lumps, as always. After the usual round of absurd speculation as to whether or not this or that movie “inspired” the terrible act, there is now the usual round of hand-wringing over how we could have let our movie theatres and DVD players become such a moral sewer, followed by the usual round of predictions that things are going to be different this time around, that nothing will ever be the same again.
Of course, things will be the same. Just exactly the same. People will look for meaning in a sickening, insane act where none exist; people will try to place the blame with something they can understand and condemn, instead of where it belongs: in the impenetrable, unreachable mind of a deeply damaged human being. Blaming Hollywood for what happened at VA Tech not only excuses Seung-Hui Cho, the one person truly responsible for the act, but insures that we’ll still be looking in the wrong direction the next time this sort of thing happens.
— Leonard Pierce
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Video(s) of the Day 1: Michael Mann Curiosities
5/2/2007 1:00:00 PM
Whilst flicking through Taschen's new book on Michael Mann, I found that it was less comprehensive than it could have been. Though an excellent detailed book on the filmmaker, it is a work that doesn't dig up the interesting sidelines that Mann has gone into during his career. One of these is a forgotten pop promo he directed for the Peter Wolf track, "I Need You Tonight" in 1984. Reminiscent of the pastel shades of Miami Vice, there is not much known about his work on this little project which plays as a miniature episode of the TV show. Interesting, as though Mann did develop and write on the show, he never directed a single episode. So this promo is probably the closest he came to helming an episode.
An even more interesting curiosity is this Mercedes commercial, dubbed “Lucky Star,” that Mann directed in 2002. Starring Benicio Del Toro and shot on a pretty high budget, this film is more significant for introducing the director to HD filmmaking, thus paving the way for Collateral and Miami Vice to be shot digitally.
When first unveiled in cinemas, it was widely perceived as the trailer for a new film with a few hints that what we were actually seeing was a commercial for the Mercedes SL (just count how many times this car actually appears and is used in the commercial). Mann had already experimented with video briefly in Heat and Ali, but this was the first time he significantly played with the HD format.
During its brief run, there were rumours that Mann was going to develop the idea into a feature, talking to Film Four he commented on his work:
"'The picture itself I can almost imagine as a complete motion picture... It feels like Kiss Me Deadly which was made I think in 1956. A kind of noir-ish private investigator Mike Hammer character. Another attraction was simply the notion of making the trailer for the film without making the film. What was interesting about the structure of a trailer is that it pulls pieces from many different parts of a two-hour narrative. So, by definition continuity is never the same. Each location is the polar opposite of another, so there's maybe five or six different counter-pointed places and geographies and cultures that this takes place in.’”
Though I doubt the film will ever appear itself, the commercial is a rapid little watch and something that needs to be at least a footnote when it comes to Mann's larger work.
— Faisal Qureshi
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This Week’s DVD Releases: El Topo, Don Power, and La Ross
5/2/2007 12:15:00 PM
The biggest news this week is the release by Anchor Bay of an Alejandro Jodorowsky box set that includes El Topo, The Holy Mountain, La Cravate, and Fando Y Lis, the first two films also sold separately.
Jodorowsky is deemed a surrealist, but as he is less interested in dreams and psychoanalysis than social structures and alienation, he has always struck me more as a Theater of the Absurd practitioner. El Topo is, of course, his masterwork, a faux spaghetti western with a spiritual journey thrown in, later expanded upon in The Holy Mountain. Like the career of James Joyce, Jodorowsky's films became more complex and private language oriented as they went along. For completists, there is La Cravate, an early film (more like a filmed play) long thought lost, and Fando Y Lis, based on a play by Fernando Arrabal, who in large part served as Jodorowsky's entry point into cinema.
The box set is packed with supplements, many of them new. La Cravate has restoration specs and DVD credits; Fando Y Lis has a commentary track imported from an earlier disc, plus, helpfully, Louis Mouchet's feature length documentary about Jodorowsky, though it too has been on other discs, along with a stills gallery, a DVD and restoration credits screen; El Topo has a new audio commentary from Jodorowsky, in Spanish with English subtitles, along with a new seven-minute video interview with him, plus the film's original trailer presented, disc credits, a photo gallery and script excerpts; finally, The Holy Mountain has another new audio commentary from Jodorowsky, deleted scenes with optional commentary, and a short called The Tarot, in which Jodorowsky expounds on his fascination with Tarot fortune telling. In addition, there is the theatrical trailer, a featurette about the restoration, and a photo gallery with production stills and script excerpts. Most interestingly of all, Anchor Bay also includes in the box complete soundtrack discs for El Topo and The Holy Mountain.
For the art house crowd lite, there is Shirley Valentine (Paramount), which plays a bit like Desperate Housewives Goes to Greece. Among indie films comes the unaccountably popular Old Joy, about mismatched friends walking through the woods, a sort of Dinner with Andre via Euell Gibbons. Supplements include a yak track with director Kelly Reichardt, DP Peter Sillen, and Michael Almereyda.
Among revivals are box sets gathering seemingly random films by Richard Gere (An Officer and a Gentleman, Runaway Bride, and Primal Fear from Paramount), a slightly more unified clustering of similar Tyrone Power films (The Black Rose, Blood and Sand, Captain from Castile, Prince of Foxes, Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake, from Fox), and a trio of especially robotic Jean-Claude Van Damme films (Kickboxer, Replicant, and Universal Soldier from Lions Gate).
Genre works include the recent The Hitcher remake (Universal), the latest homage to the 1970s slasher film (though the original Hitcher came out in 1986). Dave Myers's refashioning (with Jake Wade Ball) of Eric Red's script makes the girl part the Final Girl, in line with recent commercial and theoretical thinking in the horror genre.
TV releases are also modest. There's The King of Queens — The Complete Eighth Season (from Sony), Melrose Place — The Complete Second Season (from Paramount), and What I Like About You: The Complete First Season, from Warner.
Among the big Hollywood releases are Alpha Dog, in various flavors, and with modest makings of, and the dread Dreamgirls, in various forms, including a rather premature special edition (we, the public, don't think this film is so special, at least not yet). Competing for attention with Dreamgirls is the "real" Diana Ross in Mahogany (Paramount), which is in a sense Berry Gordy's version of the Supremes, transmuted into the career of a fashion model by way of the Sidney Sheldon school of literature. For mental density of a profoundly ignorant sort, please do look up Pauline Kael's review of the film in her collection, When the Lights Go Down. Extras on the disc consist of only a photo gallery.
— DK Holm
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British Politicians and Film: A Long and Sordid History
5/2/2007 11:30:00 AM
Whilst having a general election in the US will result in the public being bombarded with a lot of TV advertising, in the UK things are a lot more placid. A British viewer would get the full election coverage on the News but when it comes to the political party stating what they want to say without being edited down, all the British network channels are obliged to provide up to 10minutes worth of airtime for the politicians to say what they want, without being cut down. Usually these party broadcasts are quite dull and involve watching a lot of stock footage, with a politician talking to the camera about why you should vote for them. Check out this particularly dull example from 1970:
As you can see, these were usually quite different from their US equivalents. They were also very open to satire, as this deleted Monty Python sketch illustrated:
The problem (or actually advantage) of early British Party Political Broadcasts were that they were more about discussing issues than getting an emotive response. Partly this was due to the length of these broadcasts, as under the British political system, parties were not allowed to bombard TV audiences with 30-60 second TV adverts. Instead, they tried to compensate for this via print and sometimes even cinema advertising.
When the Conservative Party started campaigning for Maggie Thatcher to get into Downing Street, they hired the British advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi to manage their PR blitz, and this created and unleashed in Britain the infamous "Labour Isn't Working" campaign on posters and in cinemas. Insiders within the Conservative Party cited this campaign as one of many significant reasons that helped the Conservative Party get into power.
The Labour Party at the time didn't feel the need to respond in a similar fashion, and it was only in the second half of the eighties that the party decided to do something about it by hiring former TV Producer Peter Mandelson to come in and shake up the party's image.
One major result of this image shaking was getting Hugh Hudson, a long time Labour supporter and fresh from the disaster of Revolution (a film I refuse to condemn until I see a proper print or widescreen DVD), to direct a biographical short "documentary" following Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and his wife strolling over the landscapes of England and chatting about how great Britain is for the 1987 General Election.
Yeah, as if that was going to get the country to suddenly go to the Left. The country once again chose Maggie Thatcher and we had to tolerate a few more years until internal political bickering, the small matter of the poll tax and, finally, her own cabinet finally deciding to get rid of the Iron Lady freed us of our misery. A day well remembered by me as all school lessons were suddenly cancelled as the teachers bought in TVs for all the kids to watch.
When John Major was elevated into power in 1990, he had two years to prepare for the next British general election. With this in mind, Conservative Director of Communication (and now a Minister at the Department of Culture, Media & Sport), Shaun Woodward, hired Oscar-winning British director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man) to direct the 1992 Conservative Party broadcast, christened "The Journey".
This was met with some controversy. Schlesinger, who had finally publicly come out as gay, was attacked for supporting a party which had bought in the controversial Clause 28, which basically outlawed any local government sanction for any teaching or support of anything that would promote homosexuality as anything other than an abnormal perversity.
Schlesinger defended his decision by pointing out that he thought John Major was an honourable man. Though the broadcast was well received, Schlesinger was attacked by close friends for taking the job and, according to his official biographer William Mann, it even caused a brief rift between him and his friend and actress Julie Christie.
Unfortunately this video isn't available on the web. (Yet.) A pity, too, as it is a simple but effective piece of work which tried to sell Major to the electorate as a man of the people as it followed him from his place of birth in Brixton onwards to Downing Street. It did the job, and is reminiscent of Schlesinger's early documentary work for the BBC. Not only that, it was also a well crafted piece of political propaganda.
The Labour Party responded with their own video, "Jennifer's Ear", this time directed by Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco) and focused on the Conservative Party's failure in supporting the NHS. It was a manipulative piece, playing at your heart strings and was taken from a true incident about how a young girl had to wait for treatment for "glue ear" whilst another got treatment immediately as her parents could afford private health care.
Unfortunately for the Labour Party, what followed was not a debate on the failures of the NHS but about how true the piece actually was. Though lauded for its dramatic quality, the film was investigated by the papers and it was revealed that the story was less simplistic than it was shown, and became a full-fleded catastropher for Labour, which was made to look like it was lying about a little girl. (Go here for the BBC’s rundown of the event.)
A Labour broadcast that was better received was this little broadcast for the 1993 Local Elections which starred Hugh Laurie (House) and Stephen Fry (a personal friend of Labour image-maker, Peter Mandelson) which attacked the Conservative's links with tax dodging rich businesses.
It’s not only the two big British parties that have had well known film names contribute to their cause. Lets not also forget Screengrab favourite John Cleese, who has been a long time Liberal Democrat and who helmed this party political broadcast for the short lived SDP-Liberal Alliance merger during the 1987 General Election. As the man says, this isn't a Monty Python repeat so compare to his original Monty Python sketch above.
And the smaller parties can also rely on reputable film talent to support them, In the 2001 General Election, Ken Loach directed a broadcast for the Socialist Labour Party whilst for the 2005 General Election, Alex Cox directed a promo for the Scottish Green Party with Franz Ferdinand providing the soundtrack.
Even the racist and homophobic British National Party has someone to rely on with professional film experience, this time coming from Richard Barnbrook, who had worked for Stephen Frears and notoriously homosexual filmmaker Derek Jarman.
But in his BNP broadcasts, he displayed little filmmaking ability. Embarrassingly for Barnbrook, despite being an active member in a party with a strong anti-gay agenda , it was also revealed that he had directed and acted in a gay porn film, thus allowing him to be further ridiculed by his more serious far right colleagues.
When the Labour Party got into power exactly ten years ago, it received a lot of celebrity endorsements, and this period was quickly christened "Cool Britannia". Filmmakers, musicians and actors flocked to be photographed next to Tony Blair or other members of his cabinet. During the long years of Maggie Thatcher's reign, more and more celebrities had been attracted to the Labour Party as the Conservatives were generally perceived as not being a party friendly to the arts (especially cinema) and Blair's entry into office promised something different.
But there was trouble in the Cabinet, those not familiar with the UK political scenes maybe unaware of the rivalry between the retiring Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Chancellor Gordon Brown, who over a decade ago had argued over the leadership of the Labour Party after the death of previous leader, John Smith (incidentally this rivalry was later dramatised by Stephen Frears and Peter Morgan’s first collaboration on the Channel 4 TV-Movie, The Deal). Stories of this rivalry, particularly noting differences between the two men concerning government policy, would be exploited by the Conservative Party in the General Election of 2005.
With this in mind, the Labour party asked Oscar winning director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) to helm their Labour Party Broadcast. Instead of the bickering Blair and Brown, the electorate was shown a film about the two men working together. I personally found it so insincere that I didn't want to vote for either of the buggers.
Yes, Labour won the 2005 election, but more due to a weak and fragmented opposition than any popular support for their policy. The film was roundly ridiculed, especially for its portrait of a relationship that really didn't exist. Experienced political reporters know that friends and colleagues from both Blair and Brown's camps had been leaking information stressing just the opposite, and the film was seen as a way to paper over the cracks. More entertaining was this psychologist’s report on what he interpreted from the broadcast. Dr. Peter Collett, a psychologist formerly from Oxford University, commented on the film:
“The Anthony Minghella party political broadcast last year was full of body language fibs. When you are talking to me, I’ll give you my full attention only if I think you are of very high status or if I love you. On that party political broadcast, they are staring at each other like lovers. It is completely false.The relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is an endless game of political poker.”
But more seriously, is the tide turning in the British film world against the Labour Party? Given Tony Blair's imminent resignation, will British Filmmakers embrace Gordon Brown as they did his predecessor a decade ago? Who knows, but I would hazard not quite yet. As Chancellor, Brown had first initiated various schemes to help encourage British film productions, but he has more recently contributed to a sudden decrease in production by closing various tax loopholes.
While I was attending the media trade union BECTU's Annual General Meeting in Bournemouth, Assistant General Secretary Martin Spence told delegates to expect a downturn in British film production. The feeling is that Gordon Brown has certainly played a part in this downturn. With Brown expected to become the next British Prime Minister, one has to ask if he will also be relying on his buddies in the film industry to come up with a visually rich and emotive political broadcast that will have him elected into office?
When it is finally broadcast, expect me to switch over to another channel.
— Faisal Qureshi
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The HDDVD Code
5/2/2007 10:45:00 AM
Slashdot rounds up information about the remarkable recent incident in which the secret 32-digit code that unlocks encrypted high definition DVDs made its way onto the Internet.
Here's what happened. About three days ago, someone in the video/manufacturing or legal community accidentally let slip the decryption code for all current HD DVDs. Websites like Digg and Slashdot quickly posted stories publishing that number, and warned everyone that it wouldn't be up for long.
And they were right. The MPAA jumped in immediately and started issuing a blizzard of takedown notices to anyone who published the string of numbers, and threatening lawsuits.
But that hasn't stopped the geeks. The first two pages of Digg, as of this writing anyway, are completely filled with inventive ways of "revealing" the numbers: as words to a song, color scheme for a house, a "random" number. In short, they're allowing everyone who "gets the joke" to view this top secret number, as the secret number comes and goes, vanishes and then pops up somewhere else. It's hilarious if nothing else. And the traffic is as huge as anyone has ever seen.
Now, how one actually uses that number … well, that's a whole other story.
— DK Holm
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Morning Deal Report: Gibson Considers Maverick Sequel, the Japanese Worry Over Babel
5/2/2007 9:54:39 AM
- Of all the projects that might bring Mel Gibson back to acting, could a Maverick sequel be it?
- The Japanese are warning that watching Babel might make you sick. Well, duh.
- John Cusack has joined Jan (Speed) de Bont’s action movie Stopping Power, in which “he will play a test pilot who sets off on a series of high-speed chases to save his kidnapped daughter from an escaped thief.” Like Firefox meets Nick of Time.
- Warner Brothers has bought the rights to Frank Miller’s infamous graphic novel Ronin, to be directed by Stomp the Yard director Sylvain White.
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt has signed on to star in Darren Star’s Bret Easton Ellis-scripted romantic drama The Frog King, about “a ne'er-do-well assistant editor whose penchant for messing up threatens a relationship with his dream girlfriend.”
- Warner Independent Pictures will be distributing Leonardo DiCaprio’s environmental doc The 11th Hour.
— Bilge Ebiri
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