The Exhibitionist: Indiana Jones and the Lost Art of the Serial
May 18, 2008
Remember serials? I don’t, because I’m too young, and by the time I began going to the movies, it was already the practice for cinemas to stick to single, self-contained, feature-length fare. With the way screenings are arranged this day, scheduled so that both theater owners and studios can get as much money from as many showings as possible, there’s just no room for any accompanying shorts, especially the kind that don’t end in a conclusive manner.
I’d probably be okay with being left out of that experience from the moviegoing past, but each time another Indiana Jones movie is released, I can’t help but think I’m at least a little less appreciative of George Lucas’ intent than some of the older folk in the audience. When Lucas thought up the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, he partly meant the film as homage to the serials he remembered from his childhood.
New DVD Picks of the Week: Indiana Jones & ‘The Great Debaters’
May 13, 2008
Filed under: Action, Drama, New Releases, DVD Reviews, New on DVD, Home Entertainment, Remakes and Sequels
Indiana Jones — The Adventure Collection
… or any of the three special editions — Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, Last Crusade
We’re just over a week and a half away from seeing Harrison Ford run around as Indiana Jones for the first time in nearly twenty years in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and hopefully not collapse in an arthritic fit. Of course, that means putting out a collection for Indy buffs to purchase — just in time for a late-night triple feature before the big release. However, unlike the Die Hard re-do, which stripped tons of extras away, and other releases that just fill up landfill space, there’s a perk in this whole money-grab: aside from getting them as a collection, you can pick them up for the first time separately.
Cinematical Seven: When an Animated Series Goes Live Action … and Gets it Right
May 9, 2008
Filed under: New Releases, Movie Marketing, Cinematical Seven, Columns
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Whether or not shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force or The Simpsons succeeded in translating their television dynamics to the big screen depends on your point of view, but the release of Speed Racer this weekend raises a more specific question about the viability of turning an animated series into a live action spectacle on the big screen. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Underdog both suggest how this goal can go wrong — namely, by imploding on its absurd conceits. You may disagree with the inclusion of some of the following titles, all of which culled their material from animation, but it’s fair to say that each of them takes its subject matter at face value, allowing the natural ingredients of the original sources to remain intact. Well, maybe not Super Mario Bros., but that one is a special case (fire away, if you must). Until somebody makes an Animaniacs movie with real actors, I’m sticking to this list.
Sony Hopes to Release Greg Mottola’s ‘Daytrippers’
May 8, 2008
Filed under: Comedy, Independent, Casting, Deals, New Releases, Cannes, Slamdance, Sony, Distribution, DIY/Filmmaking, Home Entertainment, Movie Marketing
With five nominations, it looks like Superbad will be the star of the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, and its three jubilant male leads – Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse — deserve the kudos. But one major talent behind the whole affair has stayed relatively anonymous while these young up-and-comers bathe in the spotlight: Director Greg Mottola. The erstwhile independent filmmaker, responsible for some of the best installments of Arrested Developed and Undeclared, launched his career a solid decade before the rise of Judd Apatow with a charming little low budget comedy called The Daytrippers. Starring Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, Parker Posey and a host of other fantastic character actors, the film follows a wildly dysfunctional family over the course of a single day, as Davis, playing a worrisome housewife, tries to track down her unfaithful husband (Tucci).
Mixing warm humanity with pitch-perfect screwball timing, Daytrippers marked the sort of debut that told you a filmmaker had a big career ahead of him. After a modest premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival, it landed at Cannes, barely got a theatrical release and promptly vanished thereafter. Mottola turned to TV work, and slipped out of the film scene for a good ten years. These days, it’s no easy task to track down Daytrippers on DVD — you can nab second-hand copies on Amazon for decent rates, but not a single retail outlet carries it. Aside from the occasionally airings on cable, the movie has vanished.
SFIFF Review: Still Life
May 7, 2008
Filed under: Foreign Language, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Cinematical Indie
With only a handful of films to his credit, Sixth Generation Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke has become one of the world’s great master filmmakers, and he has the lack of distribution to prove it. Like many other greats from Orson Welles to Hou Hsiao-hsien, he has struggled to get spectators and his movies together at the same place and the same time. His film Still Life won the Golden Lion at the 2006 Venice Film Festival and promptly sat on the shelf. It received a cautious and limited release in New York earlier this year, but since it never turned up on the West Coast, the San Francisco International Film Festival picked it up as an entry in the 51st fest (after failing to secure it for their 50th), and it opens at the end of this week at the Roxie Cinema. It’s by far the best film I’ve seen in this year’s fest, and it probably would have been the best of last year too.
New DVD Picks of the Week: ‘Greg the Bunny’ and ‘P.S. I Love You’
May 6, 2008
Filed under: Comedy, Romance, New Releases, DVD Reviews, New on DVD, Home Entertainment
I’m doing things a little different this week. Peter has covered this week’s great releases in his column, noting flicks like Teeth and I’m Not There. For you Hilary Swank lovers, there’s some post-death love after the jump, but below is a collection of film spoofs, rather than a plain ol’ film.
The Passion of Greg the Bunny, Best of the Film Parodies Volume 2
Picturehouse on the Way Out?
May 5, 2008
Filed under: New Releases, Executive shifts, New Line, Warner Brothers, Warner Independent Pictures, RumorMonger, Distribution, Other Festivals
Near the end of last week, Defamer spread the rumor that Picturehouse, once the indie arm of New Line Cinema and currently dangling from the edge of the hulking entity known as Warner Bros., has its days numbered. Now that New Line is history and Warners, like many studios, has faced increasing cutbacks, it might give short shrift to the shingles responsible for handling artier fare. Along with Picturehouse, this also includes Warner Independent Photos, whose current release slate includes David Gordon Green’s magnificent Snow Angels.
Defamer suggested that Picturehouse president Bob Berney might wind up at WIP or head up a new, currently anonymous company. On Friday, Variety’s Anne Thompson put it in more coherent terms: It appears quite likely that WIP and Picturehouse will merge together as a single company, with current WIP president Polly Cohen working alongside Berney. Whatever happens, let’s just hope that the final result still leaves room for the sharp selection of independent and foreign titles that Picturehouse has handled since its birth three years ago. Defamer points out that Marion Cotillard’s unexpected Oscar win for La Vie en Rose matters less than the flop of Run, Fatboy, Run, while the John Simpson-directed horror film Amusement might get dumped on DVD. It was just last year, however, that the company helped edgy fare like The Orphanage and Rocket Science get the sort of release most studios would never try. Let’s hope that bravery lives on, somewhere.
Read more
Discuss: Is Hollywood Misogynistic?
May 5, 2008
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Casting, New Releases, Executive shifts, Celebrities and Controversy, Box Office, Fandom, Exhibition, Politics, Images
In these supposedly progressive times, gender equality is one of those touchy issues relegated to the last paragraph of a trend piece nobody reads. When Katherine Heigl suggested to Vanity Fair that Judd Apatow’s movies were sexist, the assertion came across like an after-the-fact shrug of acceptance. Ever the galvanizing provocateur, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis confronts the issue head-on with a thorough analysis of the gender bias in this year’s summer blockbusters.
With “Iron Man, Batman, Big Angry Green Man” and other massive expressions of virility invading the box office, female roles appear to be relegated to the back of the multiplex. Dargis touches on the rumors that Warner Bros head Jeff Robinov believes no woman has been able to sell a movie since Julia Roberts (a point that Natalie Portman might contest, but not Paris Hilton) before sizing up numerous upcoming studio releases, with particular attention paid to Anna Faris, “who could be the next Judy Holliday but without the right material will, alas, probably end up the next Brittany Murphy.” It’s the kind of pronouncement that hits you in gut. Read more
Tribeca Update: Harmony Korine Talks ‘Mister Lonely’ and ‘Fight Harm’
May 4, 2008
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Independent, New Releases, Tribeca, Festival Reports, RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy
If you’re anywhere near New York City this weekend, you simply must check out the work of this great new filmmaker named Harmony Korine, whose strangely fantastical motion picture, Mister Lonely, opened yesterday at the IFC Center (it hits Los Angeles on May 9). Some readers might confuse this Korine for the angry young radical who wrote Larry Clark’s teen sex drama Children when he was 19 and later directed the startling divisive, sharply confrontational films Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy.
I assure you that the 1990’s-era Korine is long gone — or, rather, has morphed into an agreeably warmer artist. Mister Lonely, which stars Diego Luna as a Michael Jackson impersonator and New German Cinema legend Werner Herzog as an eccentric priest, doesn’t always make sense, but that’s precisely what Korine was going for. “I’ve always been interested in making a perfect nonsense,” he told a crowd at the Apple store in lower Manhattan Thursday night. “I never really cared much about plot. I wanted to make movies about moments that went through you, that were experiential.” Read more
Review: Son of Rambow
May 3, 2008
Filed under: Comedy, Independent, New Releases, Theatrical Reviews, Cinematical Indie, Paramount Vantage
(As Son of Rambow opens this day, here’s Cinematical’s review from the 2007 Sundance Film Festival …)
