Thursday Wrap: The Southland Shuffle, X-Men's Bewildered Reviews, and More
5/25/2006 7:10:56 PM
- Jeff Wells reports that the makers of Southland Tales had to rush to finish the film on time for the Cannes date, and are probably going to go back into the editing room. I have sympathy for them, and this may well turn out to be a case similar to Brown Bunny, which lost a good chunk of footage and suddenly became critically-acclaimed. At the same time, rushing to finish in time for the festival isn’t exactly an excuse, guys. I mean, this is different from what almost every other filmmaker goes through how? Let’s not forget that back in the day Francis Ford Coppola won the Palme d’Or with a rough-cut of Apocalypse Now.
- A.O. Scott takes on the politically-themed movies at Cannes this year. The title suggests the article will be about political films from America, but read the article and see if you agree.
- Let me be frank. Given that Brett (Rush Hour) Ratner has now taken over the franchise, I am somewhat amazed that the new X-Men movie evidently does not suck. And even the reviews seem to be expressing that same puzzlement: “Eventually gets the job done,” says Variety. Brett Ratner “isn't as competent behind the camera as Mr. Singer, but such niceties can be irrelevant when it comes to industrial products like these,” says Manohla. “Diminished,” but “not without its wow-inducing, SFX-driven moments,” says the Reporter. It’s like they’re all vaguely annoyed that it’s not a complete stinkbomb.
- Scott Foundas hearts what he’s seen of Dreamgirls.
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Sssomebody ssstopped them!
5/25/2006 2:00:00 PM
The big news story that everyone’s been linking to today is a pretty fascinating piece in The New York Times by Sharon Waxman, about Fox’s pulling the plug on the Jim Carrey-Ben Stiller sci-fi comedy Used Guys, which was set to go into production next month, under the direction of Austin Powers and Meet the Parents maestro Jay Roach. Apparently, the budget was around $112 million, and the studio began to get cold feet. Roach appears to be quite heartbroken over it: “How could this happen? I keep asking myself that every second,” he’s quoted as saying. Waxman’s sources argue that the film’s main talent had so much financial participation that the film would have had to have been a truly gargantuan hit for the studio to even begin seeing money on it. And believe it or not, not all Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller movies wind up being gargantuan hits.
David Poland over at The Hot Blog has a good set of “footnotes” to this story that are worth repeating. First is that Waxman’s story makes no mention of the previous Stiller-Carrey collaboration The Cable Guy, which was also a genuine financial disaster. (I happen to think it’s a pretty good movie, btw.) Granted, it was before Stiller became a huge draw (and he didn’t star in it -- he directed and had a cameo). He also notes that only tangential mention is made of Ben Stiller’s other in-production Fox comedy A Night in the Museum. It’s safe to assume that if the Fox suits were jumping for joy over what they were seeing coming out of that production, then they would have been a lot more hesitant to pull the plug on Used Guys. Also, there’s that small matter of sci-fi comedies not really doing all that well to begin with. It just doesn’t seem to be a genre people are gonna hop in their SUVs to drive miles and miles to see. (I am personally hoping that all changes with this.)
One other thing I’d like to note: While $112 million is a lot of money for a comedy, it’s not that above and beyond what was originally budgeted for this film: $90 million or $102 million, depending on your source. In other words, while this project was over budget even before shooting, it doesn’t appear to have been a runaway production. Which suggests that part of the story here might be that the execs have at long last decided to really take a long hard look at the numbers they’re working with on these films. George Lucas recently predicted that by 2025, movie costs will plummet down to the mid-teens. Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a major (and way overdue) correction sometime soon.
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Perfect Pitch: Jack Hill Enters the Building
5/25/2006 11:46:51 AM
So, this is the first installment of what we hope will be a regular feature, detailing some of the more notable and/or ghastly pitch meetings various screenwriters, directors, producers, and execs have had to endure over the years (or in this case, arranged). Since a lot of these folks are still working in the biz, I’m keeping the names anonymous when requested. I’ll have some more outrageous ones in the future, but for now, this one is short and sweet, and comes from an indie producer, concerning an exploitation legend’s short-lived Hollywood comeback.
“Years ago, in 1994, I was working as an assistant to a talent agent. One day, I was digging through a drawer of material that had been submitted previously to her for consideration, and I found a stack of tapes and a letter from someone that caught my attention: Jack Hill, the director of such exploitation classics as Foxy Brown, Switchblade Sisters, and Spider Baby. At this time, Quentin Tarantino was the hottest new director in Hollywood, and I knew Jack Hill was one of his idols. Although I wondered what Hill had been doing for the last 15 years, I was enthusiastic, and convinced my boss to meet him.
“Jack Hill came into the office to see us. He was so much more delicate physically, and a lot more intelligent and refined than one would imagine the director of aforementioned titles to be. I liked him very much. We told him we'd let him know if we found any opportunities for him. Not long after that, I mentioned the meeting to a young up-and-coming executive at New Line, one of the really nice guys in Hollywood. This executive got excited, knowing Jack Hill's films and his influence on Tarantino, and asked if he could meet with Hill. So I set it up. It wasn’t supposed to be a pitch session – just a general meeting, letting the executive chat with the artist and get to know him.
“So imagine my surprise the next day at finding out, from a very shaken executive, that Jack Hill spent the whole meeting pitching a long, convoluted idea about a drunken doctor and several nurses with very large breasts set inside a seedy hospital –- in short, a Jack Hill exploitation masterpiece. Knowing how intensely scrutinized all of us newcomers to the film industry were as we scratched our way up the ladder, I tried to imagine this young executive sitting in that meeting desperately watching his bosses walking by outside, praying that none of them peeked in to hear what he was listening to. It has probably provided him with a great story to tell people over the years, though. And I have no regrets either; I'm glad I made the time for him, however briefly, during the era Tarantino made Jack Hill hip again.”
Got a good pitch story to tell us? Send it to screengrab@nerve.com
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Morning Deal Report: Spring Break in Bosnia (Really), Korean Monster Flicks, and Wanker's Glasses
5/25/2006 10:00:00 AM
- Believe it or not, this is not a National Lampoon movie. Richard Shepherd, he of The Matador fame, is next making a film called Spring Break In Bosnia, starring Richard Gere and Terrence Howard. Apparently, it’s about “three journalists looking to make their name in the hunt for a Bosnian war criminal who get mistaken for a CIA hit squad.” Oh.
- This little cycle is always fun to watch. Some hotly anticipated titles don’t show up at Cannes, either because they’re not ready in time (David Lynch’s Inland Empire was probably one of those this year) or because they were rejected (Brokeback Mountain was one last year), and they show up at the Venice Film Festival later in the year and clean up. The Reporter has a good roundup of which missing-from-Cannes titles are in play this year for Venice. At the head of the list, of course, is Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, which may well wind up benefiting from major press at both festivals, thanks to that well-received twenty-minute tease at Cannes.
- Craig Brewer, last year’s Sundance conqueror with the indie rap drama Hustle & Flow is set to make his next movie, Maggie Lynn, a country-music melodrama, for Paramount. And Brewer has already finished Black Snake Moan, a blues story featuring Christina Ricci, Samuel L. Jackson, and Justin Timberlake. There’s something really invigorating about the speed with which Brewer has been working; many Sundance phenoms wind up shooting themselves in the foot by waiting years and years before making their next films. (See also: Richard Kelly.) Of course, it also helps that Hustle & Flow was not Brewer’s first feature; that would be 2000’s The Poor and Hungry, a low-budget DV-shot melodrama that did quite well on the ultra-indie festival circuit.
- Forget about Volver or Babel. The one film at Cannes that everyone truly seems to be wowed by is Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s monster movie The Host. Unfortunately, it’s not playing in the main competition; it’s in the Directors’ Fortnight, now considered a Cannes sidebar but actually a festival in its own right. Anyway, Magnolia Pictures has now secured US, UK, and Australian rights for it, which means we’ll all be getting to see it soon.
- Many film buffs have wondered, and now we have the answer: Wong Kar Wai “wears those glasses because he has sensitive eyes… He's not trying to be cool or anything."
- Fuckin’ A. Outlaw Vern, the finest working critic in English, reviews The X-Men.
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Wednesday Wrap: Cannes Gets Divisive (Again), Linklater Keeps Working, and Borat Rules
5/24/2006 4:00:00 PM
--I guess by now everyone’s caught up with the news that Sofia Coppola’s much-anticipated Marie Antoinette got booed at Cannes, setting it up to be the fest’s most genuinely divisive movie. (This time for real: Check this out. Then this. Then this. And this.) I haven’t seen it, but I’d like to add one thing here: A lot of the coverage seems to be suggesting that it’s the French who are the film’s most vociferous opponents. But this film actually screened for the French press some time ago, in view of its impending release there. (It’s hitting screens, like, today, in France.) And the word then was generally positive. Cahiers du Cinema loved it, as did several other notable publications and critics. So I think some of those accented boos might have been coming from elsewhere. (The long-suffering Austrians, perhaps?)
--Man, that fucker moves fast. Richard Linklater has signed on to do a film about “one day in the life” of jazz legend Chet Baker before he became famous. Let it be noted that this will not be a standard-issue Chet Baker biopic. (Bruce Beresford and Josh Hartnett are already working on that.) Let it also be noted that Linklater’s already got two completed films, A Scanner Darkly and Fast Food Nation (both currently at Cannes) forthcoming this year. [One final additional note: I will eat the oldest pants in my closet if either of these Baker projects turns out to be even half as good as the definitive Chet Baker film.]
--Irreversible director Gaspar Noe is set to make his English-language debut. Be afraid. Be very very afraid.
--This filmmaker has a reputation for being solid, but this might just be the most dismissively scathing review I’ve ever come across in a major industry paper.
--Dude. Three words: A Borat Movie.
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Cannes, sex, internet, porn, and anything else that helps us get a Google hit
5/24/2006 2:30:00 PM
Nearly three years after Chloe Sevigny blew Vincent Gallo on screen, someone catches on to the fact that, gee, there are a lot of movies at Cannes about sex and pornography. (Money quote: “Journalists watching the film generally agreed that Mitchell had succeeded in taking much of the eroticism out of the sex.” And this is supposed to be a good thing how, exactly?)
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John Waters for FEMA Chief
5/24/2006 2:00:00 PM
Pink Flamingos, Hairspray and A Dirty Shame director John Waters defended Sundance this past Sunday at the BAM/Sundance panel, which included Hal Hartley, David Russell, Allison Anders and moderator Janet Maslin. "I don't understand today when people say it's often too commercial. The people who give away gift bags and free stuff treated me this year the way the government should treat Katrina victims. I think it's the most incredible, successful film festival for a young person in the country right now." — Sarah Harrison
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Trivia Question of the Week: A big, bright, shining...whaaa?
5/24/2006 1:00:00 PM
I’m sure many readers are familiar with Filmwise’s occasionally baffling, almost always unsettling “Invisibles” quizzes, wherein they take stills from films, render the characters “invisible”, and ask you to name the movies. Perusing these quizzes is a fascinatingly unnerving experience, and often a hilarious one.
The above still appeared several weeks ago. I’m pretty sure that in some parts of Utah, this is what viewers actually saw in the film. (I’ve also been told in no uncertain terms that this is what Val Kilmer’s rejected screen test for this film actually looked like. Zing!)
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This Just In
5/24/2006 11:25:03 AM
- Hugh Jackman’s wife makes him wear his Wolverine costume in bed.
- Please enjoy the following sentence: “The movie is the most expensive adult film ever created, and has been edited down to be the very first hardcore adult movie to ever receive an R rating, and follows a group of pirates as they search for treasure.”
- The New Yorker's Anthony Lane has gone apeshit on The Da Vinci Code. Where’s your legendary sang froid, big guy? — Peter Smith
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Voyages in Dystopia: Godard Phones It In
5/24/2006 11:00:00 AM
So, as I briefly mentioned in an earlier post, there’s exhibit from New Wave legend Jean-Luc Godard at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. It's called "Voyages in Utopia" and it's meant to be a kind of artistic journey through the incredibly prolific, impossibly influential filmmaker's career -- focusing on his films, his influences, and the subtle interplay of intellectual ambition and irreverent nose-thumbing that has characterized his work. Except that once you actually see the exhibit, it becomes clear that something has gone horribly wrong. The thing is an absolute mess -- a half-finished cacophony of aborted installations, words sketched out on walls, TVs blaring out loud video images. There's no rhyme or reason to the thing. You feel like you've accidentally stepped into a construction site. (See images below.)
I suppose one could be (extremely) forgiving and say that this is just Godard's typically cutting way of saying his career is a work in progress. But word on the street is that the irascible Godard had lots of problems with the bureaucracy he encountered at the Pompidou Center. They also clashed over “the size and nature of the exhibit.” Their disagreement led to him abandoning the project midway through, and the exhibit going up in its unfinished form -- scaffolding, half-exposed wood and all. (Apparently, this thing cost nearly a million dollars.) Some have suggested that Godard just wasn’t ready to commit the kind of time and effort needed to actually physically put up an installation.
I spoke to some well-placed friends in the French film industry, and their accounts aren’t exactly flattering towards old Jean-Luc. Example: When the Pompidou folks submitted a complete list of his films for his approval (there’s also a retrospective of his films going on in the Center’s screening rooms), Godard became irate and threw the list back in their faces: They had forgotten to include a short commercial he had made for Nike some years ago. The real source of these hissy-fits, apparently, is that whereas the museum originally had an idea of giving Godard one large room for an installation, the director wanted the whole museum for himself. They eventually reached a compromise (the “exhibit” now occupies nine galleries on the first floor), but the great auteur was already soured on the project by that point.
And it’s apparently not unprecedented for Godard to act like this. One producer who worked with him numerous times in the past described him as “a crook, but a very talented one” and described how the director would often ask that sets be repainted when he was uncertain of what to shoot, leading to two-week gaps in production. (It should be noted that one of these delays occurred on a film I consider to be one of Godard’s masterpieces, so maybe the ends justified the means.)
The results are fascinating to anyone who has been privy to the ways Godard’s cinematic language has changed over the past four decades. What was once a stunningly vibrant body of work that liked to undercut and interrogate genre conventions has now become an often impermeable and repetitive (though still occasionally brilliant) string of politically-minded, reflective discourses. There used to be a certain zippiness to Godard’s films that suggested that he wanted to entertain at least as much as he wanted to deconstruct. The later films, however, feel very much like installations: They elaborate some intriguing ideas, but don’t follow any kind of path, suggesting that you could step into or out of them at any point and not miss all that much. That’s why I was interested in seeing this exhibit in the first place: It seemed like this was what Godard’s later work had been building up to. He’ll always remain one of my favorite directors, but what remains of this exhibit turns out to be a lot more poignant than he probably ever intended it to be.
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