Reviewing the Reviewers
8/18/2006 4:30:00 PM
Reviewing the Reviewers for this week is up at its own page, for those interested. Special mention has to go this time, however, to Manohla Dargis and Stephanie Zacharek, who managed to turn in two of their better reviews of the year virtually overnight, as they were reviewing the not-screened-for-critics Snakes on a Plane.
Also, boo (surprise!) to Armond for pissing on Funny Ha Ha as if it were some kind of pop-culture juggernaut that must be destroyed.
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Take Five: Siblings on Film
8/18/2006 2:52:21 PM
Was anyone over the age of twelve clamoring for Hillary and Haylie Duff to appear in a film together? Well, the under-twelves have spoken; Material Girls is now playing in a theater near you. Frankly, it looks a little too New York Minute for our comfort. Here are five films featuring famous siblings you may actually want to see onscreen together.
Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko Next time you see this, watch for the Darko siblings’ conspiratorial glares across the dinner table, and their tiny gestures of affection (like Donnie kissing his passed-out sister on the forehead). Observe how they can’t have a conversation without insulting each other, but can’t insult each other without cracking up. Only a real brother and sister could strike this perfect balance between affection and exasperation. Bill Murray and Brian Doyle-Murray in Caddyshack Beneath the raunchy comedy façade, a profound metaphor. The Bushwood Country Club is a microcosm of the universe itself, defined by the duality of blissful chaos and gruff order. Bill Murray’s Carl Spacker spends the movie in a perpetual state of happy madness, encouraging those around him to smoke his homegrown grass and be happy. He laces the world around him with explosives in the pursuit of enlightenment, vis-à-vis destroying the dancing gopher. Older brother Brian’s Lou Loomis meanwhile maintains harmony across the club, acting as both father figure and friend to his keepers of peace, that is to say, caddies. We guess that, all that being said, Rodney Dangerfield’s supposed to be God. Or something. Ben and Casey Affleck in Good Will Hunting Gus Van Sant’s earnest 1997 film is full of improbabilities, but its depiction of young, working-class Boston men feels totally authentic. This is due in no small part to the Affleck brothers, playing Matt Damon’s lifelong drinking buddies. Casey’s tough swagger belies his character’s youthful eagerness, while Ben shows legitimate acting chops as the gruff best friend, imbuing the line "I’ll fucking kill you" with more tenderness than any of Robin Williams’ smiling-through-the-tears monologues. At the end of the film, when Ben offers Damon’s old shotgun seat to his real-life brother, you can feel the love behind the smirk. John and Joan Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank The Cusacks consistently manage to shine when performing alongside each other, but it’s their portrayal of Martin Q. Blank and his assistant Marcella that's stuck with us for years. It’s in the scene where Marcella reads Martin’s high-school reunion invitation to him over the phone and insists he deal with his past. It’s when Marcella begins to dismantle their shared office with an axe and a tank of gasoline. It’s when she screams out loud after she discovers the enormous amount of cash Martin’s left her as a parting gift. Their overplayed expressions of love and trust are so convincing we like to think they’re fueled wholly by the off-screen truth.
Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez in Men at Work So where are those delightful Wilson boys on this week’s Take Five? Well, sure, when it comes to dysfunctional, odds-defying brotherly love, the emotional turmoil Wes Anderson wrung from that duo is fairly potent. But ultimately, their dynamic is little more than homage to the true champions of the form: Martin Sheen's spawn Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez. When your brother — and fellow garbage man — decides to shoot a stranger with a BB gun, then the two of you find that same stranger dead in a garbage can the next day, then you hide the body together before adventure ensues, that’s more than just love for your acting craft. That’s the bonds of blood borne out through performance. — John Constantine and Gwynne Watkins promise that this is their last Donnie Darko reference for the next six months.
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Ebert Speaks
8/18/2006 2:30:00 PM
This email from Roger Ebert appeared on his site today, detailing his progress as well as his recent setback. (It was probably partly a response to some recent speculation that he was not as well as had been assumed.)
Here's the full text. As always, we wish him a speedy recovery.
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I have always believed in full disclosure. When I announced that I had a recurrence of salivary cancer that required surgery, I had no idea when I went into the hospital on June 16 that I would still be here on August 16.
On June 16 they removed the cancer in my right jaw area, including a section of my jaw bone. It was successfully reconstructed. On July 1, I was packing to leave the hospital when my blood vessel ruptured. We have since learned that the rupture was caused by a break down of tissue surrounding the artery as a result of radiation treatments I had three years ago.
I had a particularly intense form of radiation called neutron beam radiation, which is more effective for certain cancers, but which is also more debilitating to healthy tissue than conventional radiation. Finding a solution to protecting the arteries is what has kept me in the hospital, and in bed, since July 1. As you can imagine, it is no fun being hospitalized this long. Fortunately for me, I have received excellent medical care at Northwestern Hospital led by Doctors Harold Pelzer and Neil Fine. This is a unique situation and the doctors are moving cautiously, but they are enthusiastically optimistic about my recovery. I have also had the loving support of my bride Chaz, and good friends and colleagues. I am a lucky man.
I have learned, however, just how quickly one loses strength when confined to the bed for a long period of time. I will need rehabilitation to regain my strength, including voice rehabilitation to strengthen my vocal cords. The doctors have had me on a tracheostomy collar to keep my airways open during the period of surgeries for the ruptured blood vessels. Your vocal cords are like other muscles, they get rusty when they are not used daily. I may have other treatments or procedures as prescribed by my doctors, and so I hope you understand that while I believe in full disclosure, I also need the time and privacy to heal.
I am happy to report that despite all, I am doing well. I started physical therapy, I communicate with friends on a daily basis, I play my iPod and listen to songs with Chaz and the doctors and nurses, and I write. Don Dupree, the Executive Producer of “Ebert & Roeper” installed a plasma TV and DVD player in my room. I am going to watch "Half Nelson" and I hope Kevin Smith was right. I also thank my good friend Jay Leno for sitting in my chair in my absence, and, of course, thanks to Richard Roeper.
I thank all of you for your prayers, your well-wishes, your gifts, cards, e-mails and flowers. I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't tell you when, but I sure look forward to being back on the movie beat.
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Sometimes a Snake on a Plane is Just a Snake on a Plane...
8/18/2006 1:45:00 PM
"I just wish Ellis had gone more nutso. I wish that someone had gotten sucked out of the window as the plane is approaching the coast of Los Angeles and that the camera had stayed with this person as he/she splashes into the Pacific...and lives. I was hoping one of the really big snakes would eat the baby. I wanted to see one of the big snakes act like a phallus and sexually invade one of the terrified females. (Elsa Pataky, I was hoping.) Well, why not? This movie isn't about logic or sensitivity -- it's about pushing the bounds and making the fans howl. As long as we're talking about snakes-as-penises, why not have one of fat black guys get anally penetrated by a python?"
--We really shouldn't be doing two separate posts in one day linking to Jeff Wells, but these lines from his review of Snakes on a Plane just have to be shared.
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Video of the Day: David Lynch Keeps New York Clean
8/18/2006 12:01:00 PM
In honor of the announcement that the maestro’s latest, Inland Empire, will be premiering at the New York Film Festival, it is time to resurrect this, the greatest public service announcement ever made.
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Sienna Does Edie
8/18/2006 11:00:00 AM
 | | Sienna Miller in Factory Girl |
George Hickenlooper is one of those directors who has been hovering on the peripheries of Holywood success for years now – from his early low-budget efforts to the Apocalypse Now documentary Hearts of Darkness to TV fare…so I’m very happy to hear that his Edie Sedgwick biopic Facory Girl might actually be pretty great. And, according to Jeff Wells, Sienna Miller might just be awards-bound in the lead role. Sez he:
“It may be the most eerily accurate reanimating of a dead person I've ever seen in a film. And yet it's got dimension and gravitas in spades -- an umnistakable sadness and snap and aliveness like nothing I've gotten from an actress in any movie so far this year. If and when the Weinstein Co. puts Factory Girl into theatres before 12.31 (which may happen, I'm now hearing), Miller will be right in there against Prada's Meryl Streep, The Queen's Helen Mirren Notes on a Scandal's Judi Dench and maybe Running With Scissors' Annette Benning. She's playing the only tragic figure in the group -- the only one who goes to her doom with mascara oozing down her face.
Miller isn't just a dead ringer for the real McCoy -- she gets her fluttery debutante laugh, that mixture of Warholian cool and little-girl terror, the giddy euphoria, the cracked voice. It's more than convincing -- it's a kind of rebirthing.”
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Morning Deal Report: Snakes Buzz, Swag Dissed, Spike Cheered...
8/18/2006 10:00:00 AM
- Well, the geeks certainly appear to have dug it.
- Say goodbye to those crazy-ass Hollywood swag bags, thanks to the IRS. “Asked why the IRS is cracking down now, decades after the phenomenon began, Kevin Brown, IRS commissioner of the small business-self employment division, said simply, ‘It had gotten out of hand.’” Amen. Maybe this will keep Paris Hilton out of Sundance.
- Make no mistake about it, America. There will be a Species 4. I’ll let Cinematical give the rest of the scoop: “You probably won't believe this, but the plot revolves around a hot woman who's part alien getting angry, and wreaking blood havoc on all the asses she can find.”
- New Orleanians got to see Spike Lee’s Katrina doc When the Levees Broke…and they liked what they saw. (Money quote: “Guffaws broke out at blunt lines, especially those criticizing President Bush and the Federal Emergency Management Agency…’Somebody needs to go to jail,’ trumpeter Terence Blanchard announced on camera, setting off cheers in the audience.”)
- The New York Film Festival has announced its lineup. Included: Marie Antoinette, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Climates (YAY!), David Lynch’s Inland Empire (YAY! two times), and Cannes hit The Host. Conspicuously absent: Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain and Ken Loach’s Palme-winner The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
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It's the Beer Talking, Right?
8/17/2006 4:00:00 PM
“Now the film, BEERFEST is fucking funny. I mean that. It’s not that I was drunk and thinking everything was funny, it might be that, but if it was funny just because I was drunk… isn’t that exactly what a movie called BEERFEST is supposed to be?…What happens? Well – there’s a lot of fucking beer drunk. A lot. These strangely compelling games, that made more sense the drunker I got were captivating, and all I could think was… this is so much better than Celebrity Poker. There should be a “BAR CHANNEL” where it’s just the best beer drinking, story telling, quarters playing folks in the world – interrupted by sporadic boobs being bared. That channel would rock. Of course – fuck watching it, Drink Beer, hit a tit bar and have fun. Wait. That’s a sure way to kill your liver. But I never really liked liver, unless it was fried at Threadgill’s and came from a chicken. That’s some good shit.”
--A drunk Harry Knowles reviews Broken Lizard’s Beerfest. While reading this, you might want to remind yourself that Harry Knowles looks like this:
Also, we have no idea what this means: ”The director apparently became, like Rav, one of those trolls that hang under bridges letting you touch their cock for a dollar – but will suck you off for $5. I know it doesn’t make sense – but it really was funny.”
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"All-Snakes Day," They're Calling It...
8/17/2006 2:00:00 PM
 | | This comic will never be not funny |
Snakes on a Plane has obviously not screened for critics, which only sucks in that the critics who will be filing their last minute reviews after the first screenings late tonight won’t have had enough time to come up with clever puns like “Send these snakes back on the plane they came in!” or “It’s sss-slitheringly good!” So you might be better off checking in later tonight at Jeff Wells’s Hollywood Elsewhere, where he promises to post fan reviews as they come in later tonight.
That is, if he’s still alive…since Jeff helpfully adds he has to “visit a doctor and get a tetanus shot because my left hand is swollen from an infection that came from accidentally stabbing myself with an exacto knife three or four days ago and failing to disinfect and clean it out thoroughly enough.” Dang.
(Oh, also, for old times’ sake, read the comic here.)
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Obligatory Vern Link of the Week (Wait...Make that 2nd Obligatory Vern Link of the Week)
8/17/2006 1:00:00 PM
"WELCOME to the 2006 revised edition of the BADASS 100 LIST. The original Badass 100 was created in the late '90s as a response to the AFI's list of the supposed greatest movies of all time...The revised list was voted on by 43 volunteer Badass Cinema scholars from 11 countries."
- Vern reveals the Badass 100. And sure enough, "Clint Motherfucking Eastwood" is all over it.
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