Creative Screenwriting: Summer Blockbusters
6/18/2007 5:00:00 PM
Do screenwriting magazines really want to help their readers break into the movie biz? Competition is already tough, and most screenwriting mags are themselves staffed with wannabes, but perhaps part of their evil plot is to give the public bad advice! Be that as it may, Creative Screenwriting's Summer Blockbuster issue provides some useful material. None of the content is online, but readers who subscribe to the email newsletter receive free excerpts. Films covered with screenwriter interviews include Pirates 3, Harry Potter 5, Disney's Ratatouille and Knocked Up. Shorter script analyses include Mr. Brooks, Ocean’s 13, Eli Roth on Hostel: Part II, Paris, Je T'Aime, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard and Shrek the Third. One of the more interesting pieces is Hal Hartley's essay on why he writes: "I know that if a Hal Hartley film did the same kind of business as Kill Bill, we would be living in a very different world." — D. K. Holm
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Movies We Missed: Code 46 (2004)
6/18/2007 4:00:00 PM
Michael Winterbottom's docu-drama A Mighty Heart comes out this Friday. Starring Angelina Jolie, it's an adaptation of the memoir by the wife of murdered reporter Daniel Pearl. We could have easily chosen Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People or even last year’s Tristram Shandy for this Movies We Missed entry, but Code 46 may be the inventive director's most overlooked and quite possibly best work.
Why we missed it:
A strange combination of genres (science fiction mixed with romantic drama) that didn’t feature enough spaceships and creatures for the sci-fi geeks or enough critical buzz for the indie geeks.
After flops like The Claim and strange experiments like 9 Songs it’s hard to know what to expect from the risk-taking Winterbottom.
Why we should have known:
After so many engaging Samantha Morton performances, making bad movies worth watching (In America, Enduring Love) and good movies great (Morvern Callar, Jesus’ Son), any movie starring Morton should be upgraded to "consider" status.
The trailer proves that at the very least this movie looks cool. . .
Why we ended up kicking ourselves:
The beautiful photography, shot mostly on location in Shanghai, uses that city’s exoticism (at least to Western eyes) as a way to project the near future with very few sets. The film also features an excellent atmospheric soundtrack by David Holmes and The Free Association.
Morton is a joy to watch especially when she’s rolling off clever lines like, "Everybody’s children are so special. It makes you wonder where all the ordinary adults came from."
The film is really about the power of attraction and its ability to push us temporarily outside the realm of logic. The two lead actors have a strange chemistry.
Sometimes in his docu-dramas Winterbottom hammers you with his pet causes — overreaching government, hard-line law, encroachment on personal freedoms. Here he takes a subtler approach.
Why we may have been justified to begin with:
Had to be a better casting choice than Tim Robbins out there. It’s hard to take him seriously when he delivers every line with a half-smirk.
In an attempt at futurism, Winterbottom breaks up the dialogue with Spanish inserts that are more annoying than effective.
— Bryan Whitefield
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Special Bonus Trailer: There Will Be Blood
6/18/2007 3:00:00 PM
This has been linked to virtually everywhere by now, but in case you haven’t seen it yet, P.T. Anderson’s new film, There Will Be Blood, has a teaser. While the overall visual style of this is quintessential PTA, many of the shots are darker than we’re used to seeing from him, which could be interesting. Overall, this is pretty clearly meant to be an online-only job, considering that it doesn’t even attempt to sum up the plot or even to announce the star or director’s name. Still, for anyone who has been eagerly awaiting more from Anderson, this is manna from heaven. Here’s hoping the film turns out to be more Days of Heaven and less Heaven’s Gate. — Paul Clark
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Alex Thomson, 1929 - 2007
6/18/2007 2:00:00 PM
Cinematographer Alex Thomson passed away on the 14th. He wasn't well known outside of British filmmaking circles until late in his career, and didn't receive as much attention as colleagues like Jack Cardiff or Freddie Francis. This is a pity, as he came up with beautiful images in a lot of flawed films. Starting his career as a clapper loader on low-budget British productions, he climbed the ladder until he broke through by working on the Clive Donner comedy, Here We Go Around the Mulberry Bush. But an accident on the set of Jesus Christ Superstar in the mid-seventies stopped him working for five years.
His career was revived by his work on John Boorman's Excalibur, with an extraordinary opening sequence of medieval warriors whose horses seem to breath fire. It was a look that proved influential not only to fantasy films (check out the Lord of the Rings trilogy) but also hundreds of pop promos. It was also the film that got Thomson his only Academy Award nomination.
Thomson's work on Excalibur led to collaborations with some well-known directors such as Michael Mann (The Keep), Ridley Scott (Legend), Michael Cimino (Year of the Dragon) and David Fincher (he was brought in at the last minute on Alien3).
For me though, Thomson's finest work was on Kenneth Branagh's underrated Hamlet. The entire play was shot on 70mm, and it's a pity that it was rarely screened in the format or even in its full four-hour cut. Given the difficulty of shooting this way, Thompson and his crew gave the film a fluidity unseen in previous productions. As of 2007, it is still the last film to have been entirely shot in 70mm. — Faisal A. Qureshi
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Trailer Roundup: No Country for Daddy Day Camp
6/18/2007 1:00:00 PM
No Country For Old Men
Holy crap, this looks great. Gets off to a roaring start with Javier Bardem as the villainous Chigurh, deeply unsettling with his Anna Karina haircut and bizarre voice. And look, it’s Josh Brolin (suddenly cool after Planet Terror) and a drawlin’ Kelly MacDonald. I should read the book, so I’ll be able to tell where Cormac McCarthy leaves off the the Coens begin — who gets the credit for "it’ll do till the mess gets here?" And what’s going on with Bardem’s compressed air tank? Man, I can’t wait for this, and after The Ladykillers, that’s saying something. The trailer looks somewhat watered down for general audiences, but still. Bad. Ass.
American Gangster
Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, hoping to rekindle that old Virtuosity magic. . . although this time the roles are switched, with Denzel as the baddie and Crowe as the cop. Looks like another rise-and-fall-of-a-gangster story, a la Scarface, which should if nothing else give this a built-in audience. Naturally, Washington makes the gangster protagonist an antihero, violent and dangerous but somehow noble. Could be a solid dose of seventies-era grit, although with Ridley Scott helming I'm skeptical, since grit has never been his strong suit. Also, nothing says seventies like Jay-Z.
Daddy Day Camp
Jesus, how bad does a movie have to be for Eddie Murphy to turn it down? This time out, daddy duties have fallen to Murphy’s non-union equivalent, Cuba Gooding Jr., who once again suggests that rescinding Academy Awards for shitty post-Oscar work is a damn good idea. The usual kid-movie crap is on display here — one-note characters, bodily-function humor, forced slapstick, and the requisite fat sidekick getting beaned in the balls (twice!) Dear parents, we know that your kids like movies, but you have the power to steer them towards good ones. So if you want Hollywood to stop making bad kids’ movies, stop going! Seeing them and complaining later won’t cut it, since they’ve already gotten your money, and the cycle will just continue. — Paul Clark
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Living After Midnight: Turkey Gets a Long Overdue Apology
6/18/2007 12:00:00 PM
Billy Hayes, the American whose harrowing ordeal in a Turkish prison on drug charges led to the book and the film Midnight Express, has returned to Turkey to participate in "an international security conference" and to "mend fences over the damage the movie caused to the country's image abroad."
Might seem like an odd item, but it’s huge news for us Turks: purportedly based on fact, Midnight Express ruined Turkey’s image in the West for over a generation — many would say unfairly. Hayes admits now that "the image the movie created of Turkey and the Turkish people 'was not fair to them or true to my experience. . . I always wanted to come back to Istanbul to correct the wrongs that Midnight Express did."
It’s worth noting that the film’s most notorious scenes were not in the original book. Hayes was never raped in prison; instead, according to his book, he engaged in consensual sex with another inmate. Nevertheless, the damage was done. Telling Americans you were Turkish during the '80s was basically an invitation for a whole host of Midnight Express references, including all sorts of rape jokes. (Ironically, rape in prison appears to be much more of an issue in American prisons than in Turkish ones, but try making that point during the gung-ho '80s.)
As for the film’s screenwriter, one Oliver Stone, he apologized several years ago. Producer David Puttnam actually admitted the facts presented in the film and the book were false way back in 1984. No word yet on whether director Alan Parker, has anything to say.
(Obligatory bit of shameless self-promotion: you can read about my own inadvertent run-in with Oliver Stone over Midnight Express here.) — Bilge Ebiri
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Morning Deal Report: Owen Wilson in Ben Stiller Movie (Presses Stopped)
6/18/2007 11:00:00 AM
Ben Stiller and Justin Theroux wrote a script about the making of a war movie during an actual war, and now Owen Wilson and Nick Nolte are going to be in it. I find it difficult at this point to get particularly excited about Stiller/Wilson projects, but this could be funny.
Adam Sandler's company bought the first script by Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie). This seems like a tonal clash at first, but Sandler's sentimentality could actually jibe with Albom's perfectly.
In The Year 2000... everything will be in Three Eye-Popping Dimensions, says Variety.
The new Star Trek will be "less geared toward traditional Star Trek fans than the previous film series and more towards a general, 'non-Trekker' audience." Given the last two movies, even "Trekkers" will probably agree that change would be good.
Filmstalker reports Bruce Campbell may not be in Bubba Nosferatu, the sequel to the endearing Bubba Ho-tep. Hard to imagine it being even watchable without him.
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First Signs of Sunshine
6/18/2007 10:00:00 AM
Nerve writer and author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction Gabriel McKee takes an early look at Danny Boyle's Sunshine, which comes out on July 20th. I haven't read it yet cause I'm supposed to see/review the movie myself in a few weeks, but history shows you can usually take Gabe's word for it. — Peter Smith
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Daniel Robert Epstein, 1975 - 2007
6/15/2007 10:00:00 PM
Daniel Robert Epstein, a fellow writer and pop culture junkie, has passed away. I knew nothing about the guy except that every time I went to do an interview with someone, I'd find a better one he'd just done for SuicideGirls. They have what there is of the story; you're also well-advised to peruse the pretty amazing archive of great work he did on their site. If you like the kind of directors and actors that Nerve tends to feature, he interviewed them all. Newsarama, to which he contributed as well, has a nice collection of tributes too. Mr. Epstein, I am honestly sad that I will no longer be scooped by you. What a downer. — Peter Smith
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Today in the Nerve Film Lounge
6/15/2007 9:00:00 PM
Q&A: Billy Connolly: "I don't lie awake wishing I'd been in Braveheart or anything like that. But possibly at the time I wondered why every Scotsman who could walk upright was in it except me."
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer: "A pretty good time."
Lights in the Dusk: "The message: life sucks, and then you forbear."
Strike: "You know, the one that led to the creation of the first free unions and ultimately the downfall of the Soviet system? Yeah, that Gdansk shipyard strike."
Unborn in the USA: "All too often, documentaries like these preach to the choir. Maybe that's why Unborn in the USA feels like it was made by space aliens."
Eagle vs Shark: "I've spent time with these people. I went to computer camp for three years. Trust me when I say that losers are not always lovable."
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