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Men Who Stare At Goats Trailer is Classic Coen-esque Clooney. Today in Film Bloggery 08/27/09

SpoutBlog — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:00:40 GMT

Will Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats be the greatest George Clooney movie of all time? If you’re a fan of the actor/director’s work in Three Kings, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Burn After Reading and Syriana, then it’s possible you’ll see this as the military/CIA satire he’s been working towards his whole career. The fact that it seems like it should or could have been directed by the Coen Bros. — costars Jeff Bridges, Stephen Root and J.K. Simmons have all worked with the filmmaking duo in addition to Clooney — provides further evidence that this might well be the epitome of Clooney’s career.

Based on the non-fiction book by Jon Ronson, Goats is about a reporter (Ewan McGregor) working on a story about a U.S. Army unit employing psychic soldiers. Clooney is one of these “Jedi warriors,” as you can see in the trailer when he bursts clouds and knocks over goats with his mind. One particular bit of slapstick stolen from the underseen Special has me a little worried about the humor here. But how can I not want to see a movie that basically seems to insert “The Dude” into a modern day cross between DePalma’s The Fury and Spies Like Us?

Check out other film blog reactions to the trailer after the jump:

Mark at I Watch Stuff sees this as “Coen with aspartame”:

This trailer for Men Who Stare at Goats is basically Diet Coen Brothers. I’m not going to say it will completely fulfill you in the same way a refreshing Coen Brothers will, but I think you’ll detect enough of that distinctly Coen flavor in Grant Heslov’s comedy–especially with a mustached George Clooney and long-haired, druggie Jeff Bridges–that it should at least tide you over until you can get the real deal
Lane Brown at Vulture offers some more similarities to a Coen Bros. film:

[Clooney's] regrown his O Brother mustache and cast himself alongside Jeff Bridges, who appears to be playing a telekinesis-enhanced cousin of the Dude in military dress…As we learned with Leatherheads, it’s difficult to intuit simply from a trailer whether Coen-y Clooney movies will be funny or lame, but the use of “More Than a Feeling” here is clever enough.
Anne Thompson at Thompson on Hollywood is excited to see another Coen-esque Clooney role:

Grant Heslov’s comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats looks pretty funny, I must say. I love George Clooney in full-on dimwit mode (see: O Brother, Where Art Thou?).
Rob Hunter at Film School Rejects references another great Clooney in Coen Bros. role:

I love goofy ass George Clooney. He’s a solid dramatic actor, but (much like Brad Pitt) he’s at his best when he explores the more quirky, smirky, crazy bastard roles. His character here looks to be an extreme example of the weirdo he played in Burn After Reading which can only be a good thing.
The Playlist doesn’t want to mention the Coens, but does:

We’ll try to not use the term Coen-esque because it doesn’t seem that screwball-y or quirky (not to mention, it’s facile and overused), but there are some similar shades there. Jeff Bridges as a hippie-like teacher who helps these guys kill and maim people with “Jedi mindtricks” seems pretty damn funny.
Vince Mancini at Film Drunk thinks it could possibly use a little less slapstick:

I’m on the fence…I counted four jokes in the trailer that involved someone getting hit in the face, which is never a good sign. But on the plus side… Boston. Man, if I had a nickle for every time I got date raped to that song.
Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere is also disappointed by the Blake Edwards-style slapstick all over the trailer:

All I can tell you is that before watching the trailer, I was semi-pumped about seeing this film in Toronto. I had presumed Heslov, a very smart guy on Clooney’s wavelength and vice versa, would play down the inherently bizarre material and keep it real and let the wackazoid stuff speak for itself. But now, having seen the trailer, I’m feeling a little bit worried. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe this is just a matter of the Overture trailer guys looking to bring in the dumb-asses.
Michelle Collins at Best Week Ever, responding to an earlier post wondering if the film’s title is literal, thinks the movie could still use more goats:

Even if this is a war movie that might not have any goats, we will choose to believe it is full of them.

Today, we catch our first glimpse of the trailer. And, you guys… there is NARY A GOAT TO BE SEEN. OK, maybe one, but we’re pretty sure that’s George Clooney…
Gabe at Videogum wishes the book was made into a documentary (which it was) instead:

if it had been a documentary, then the very weird and hilarious details from the book, which are real, would have been super weird and super hilarious because of how when things are real then there is no willful suspension of disbelief, there is just belief and disbelief mixed together, because that is life, jump into life. Instead, it has a semi-generic, strangely common-place military farce feel to it (has anyone else noticed how common-place military farces have become? It’s a real catch-22).
Big Hollywood is not into the constant military mocking from Hollywood:

With so many tales of military heroism left to tell, Clooney and Company choose this…

“But “The Men Who Stare at Goats” is inspired by a “true” story,” they’ll say…

But why is it always these kinds of “true” stories that get picked?
Kofi Outlaw at ScreenRant believes even pro-military people will find the trailer funny:

Come on, even all you pro-military Screen Rant readers out there have to admit its pretty funny to try to develop psychic weapons by having soldiers stare at goats! In that context, the title really speaks to the absurdity of warfare and certain militaristic mindsets (I AM NOT BAD MOUTHING THE MILITARY). So scary to think this all happened (is happening?) in real life…
S.T. VanAirsdale at Movieline, who sees this as “Inglourious Basterds for the Iraq era,” isn’t even certain the trailer does poke fun at the military:

I’m not quite sure what’s being sent up (if anything): Army decorum? The military-industrial complex? Journalists? Enh, who cares? Heslov and his ensemble know what they’re doing, as does Overture, which even makes one of the fall movie season’s most unwieldy, unsellable titles look good in the end.
Owen Williams at Empire sees this potentially more like a Dr. Strangelove for the Iraq era:

The movie, which is looking awesome, gives us McGregor in the Ronson role (renamed Bob Wilton and saddled with an American accent), and a twitchy Clooney as Lyn Cassidy; a reactivated psychic spy and “Jedi warrior”…We’re intrigued about the part where McGregor is being strangled by a guy with a Dr Strangelove arm.
Dustin Rowles at Pajiba celebrates the film’s screenwriter and hopes for his sake and career that this is a hit:

Peter Straughan, wrote the script. And it’s a great goddamn script about an Army Battalion that employs paranormal powers in their missions (assuming Goats performs well at the box-office, Straughan has two other scripts in development: The Inventor is a dark romantic comedy about what would happen if a fan could become the person he idealizes; and Our Brand Crisis, which has been optioned by Clooney, focuses on American political campaign strategies used in South America.

Here’s the trailer:

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

ST. NICK Review

SpoutBlog — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:00:39 GMT

Two kids — a boy of 11, and a girl of 9, brother and sister, apparent runaways — drag a duffel bag into a crumbly, seemingly abandoned house. Now they live there. No one seems to be looking for them, and they offer no explanation as to where they came from or why they ran away. They could as likely be aliens as lost little children. It’s almost as if they’ve drifted off into another realm, some kind of Oz.

The first half of David Lowery’s feature directorial debut St. Nick is devoted to the ways in which this family unit spends their days building a life in their new home. Procuring provisions for cheese sandwiches, salvaging furniture, fixing the toilet. Arguing about the fate of the dog they left behind, and whether or not he misses his under-age owners. Virtually wordless for long stretches of time, St. Nick relies heavily on contemplative imagery to convey meaning –– particularly, the clear-lit landscape or a Texas winter in juxtaposition with the pink-and-white faces of his two young stars, real-life siblings Tucker and Savanna Sears. As both types of images, both equally beautiful and mysterious, become increasingly gray, the film matures from a study of actions infused with a quiet magic, to a study of inaction, of waiting and drifting telegraphing an increasingly palpable sense of fear and dread.

Those who have some film festival familiarity with Lowery’s most recent short film, the largely stop-motion A Catalog of Anticipations, may be surprised by his methods here (including many long, slow, fixed, often wide shots), and how long he takes to establish their patterns. In some ways, the title of the short is applicable to the feature: Lowery literally catalogs his character’s movements, showing in painstaking detail how the kids take on some perversion of traditional male and female roles (without anything doing perverted): the boy playing fix-it, building a home by any means necessary and available to him; the girl playing mother to their new “pet” (the decayed skeleton of what used to be a dog). You wait for something to happen, and then you realize that it’s happening — St. Nick reveals itself as a string of vignettes about two lost souls old enough to get themselves lost and enjoy it, but too young to be able to fully grasp the length and obstacles of the road ahead to the point where they, like we, know to wait for the other shoe to drop. They don’t try to get a TV, or comics, or toys. They seem happy to do nothing but what they need to do to maintain their lives. We become comfortable with being with the brother and sister in each heightened moment, whether she’s crafting the world largest, messiest dessert sandwich, or he’s stumbling on a woman playing guitar on her porch and subsequently falling into some kind of love. And then suddenly Lowery gives his characters steeper stakes.

St. Nick would make for an intriguing triple feature with two other recent lyrical kids-on-their-own indies, Children of Invention and Treeless Mountain. In those films, the circumstances that lead to the siblings’ separation from parents leaves an imprint — a resentment, a frustration, a determination to get along with or without adults. In St. Nick, our unnamed brother and sister share only that determination, and increasingly, the sister seems like she’d be just as happy at home playing with the dog, with dinner guaranteed. In Children and Treeless, we meet sibling pairs in which the eldest takes on the de facto role of the little adult out of particularly dire necessity. In St. Nick, we meet a sibling pair where the eldest has created a condition of dire necessity in order to prove himself as an adult. The tragic irony is that, as a self-destructive hero in a Western of his own making, he’s mired in necessarily childish make-believe.

This review originally appeared during the 2009 SXSW Film Festival. St. Nick screens tonight in New York at Rooftop Films. See also David Lowery’s recent blog post about sitting in a waiting room with Steven Soderbergh.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE Review

SpoutBlog — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:00:38 GMT

The September Issue is an irresistible pop culture mashup: imagine the Teen Vogue segments of The Hills (though her royal highness Anna Wintour is swapped in for cut-rate LA imitation Lisa Love, the MTV reality show’s masterful manner of spinning diegetic commentary out of eye rolls taken out of context is left intact), genetically blended into an alternate universe version of The Office. Except in this office, the workers actually work, and in fact are terrified not to because their boss is Michael Scott’s polar opposite: impatient, undemonstrative, and absolutely incapable of taking no for an answer.

As a portrait of Wintour the person, RJ Cutler’s documentary does little to dig under the surface of Wintour’s iconic, impassive under bangs image. But as a meditation on art vs commerce, emotion vs rationality, and the role of fantasy merchants in the recently-burst economic bubble, The September Issue is both cerebral and accessible. If it’s not as provocative as it could be, it’s definitely entertaining.

The themes of the film emerge most clearly via the relationship between Wintour and VOGUE’s creative director, Grace Coddington. A former model a handful of years older than Wintour, Grace started working at American VOGUE on the same day as her now-superior. Both women worked their way up over the course of decades, only to land in a position where Grace is generally agreed to be the best fashion stylist in the world … and yet every move she makes is subject to Wintour’s approval.

Wintour is credited with transforming VOGUE by putting actresses on the cover, thus greasing the wheels for high fashion and its associated esoterica to enter the entertainment media. Grace is more of a purist; she puts her shoots together with the artistry of the image as the first and only concern, only to continually suffer the humiliation of having her work end up on the cutting room floor by the market-minded Wintour. Coddington is the only person around the office who doesn’t seem to buy into the Fear of Wintour, which is palpable on film not because her near-peers and underlings speak to it, but in the way they speak to her. When Anna asks a question, the answer offered is almost always inflected like another question; the people around her are terminally non-committal, as if the worst crime one could commit in Wintour’s presence is to have an opinion.

If the dominant media image of Anna Wintour, from The Devil Wears Prada and beyond, is that she’s a villain, she doesn’t do much here to disabuse us of that notion, and certainly Cutler does her no favors in the way they present her moments of tyranny. The director begins the film with an clip from a sit-down interview with Wintour, in which the VOGUE editor attempts to defend high fashion from unnamed critics. “Just because someone wants to wear Carolina Herrera instead of” — here she reaches for an example, as if she couldn’t possibly think of anything anyone would “want” to wear more than Carolina Herrera –– “something from Kmart, doesn’t make them a dumb person.”

Of course, only a “dumb person” would accuse someone of being “a dumb person” based solely on what they “choose” to wear. The issue is that for most of us the choice between Carolina Herrera and Kmart isn’t actually a “choice”, but a financial imperative. You could chalk this flub up to linguistic imprecision, but Cutler chooses to include right it at the beginning of the film for a reason: it sets the tone for a character whose extreme focus on the bottom line of her magazine causes her to tune out countless realities, up to and including that most of the critics of the fantasy she sells wouldn’t be able to afford that fantasy for themselves.

Cutler may not offer much evidence that Wintour is deeper than our pre-conceived image of her, but he does offer revelations in terms of her actual image. Wintour is often shot from below, the classic angle given to a person in a position of power, but in this instance, it reveals the imperfections of the facade. We see that her neck and the area under her chin are severely bagged, and up against her comparatively smooth face, one gets the sense that this is less from age or surgical restraint than from her habit of lowering her chin in pursed-lip frown. And yet, she’s so concerned with her own image that Grace is able to use Cutler’s camera crew against Wintour to get what she wants.

Grace and Anna embody the age old conflict between art and commerce, given new spin for an age of luxury obsession with the trap door dropped out. A VOGUE couture spread (Grace’s specialty) was the old, safe way for the masses to indulge in luxuries they couldn’t actually have. But when this kind of photo journalism-as-entertainment is pushed out in favor of cover stories revolving around not just non-models, but “it” girl actresses promoting films via carefully calibrated stories of “relatable” personal heartbreak, the fantasy sold within the pages of VOGUE becomes several degrees less blatant in its fantasy, and moves several steps toward actual accessibility. In a climate in which both the pursuit of art and beauty for the sake of it, and of journalism as mass-culture record of the present and contextualization for the future, have been swiftly pushed to the margins, the pretense of escape via advertisement still soldiers on. Though Cutler’s footage was shot over nine months in 2007, September seems to anticipate our current withdrawl from the addiction of spectacular accumulation. More than just aping the escapism of VOGUE itself, it may be the ideal film for those bitter and bedraggled by our current economic fix.

A slightly different verson of this review appeared during the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Heathers the TV Show Could Be Very. Today in Film Bloggery 08/27/09

SpoutBlog — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:00:37 GMT

Though I didn’t include it on my list of 80s movies that need TV series, I could actually see a show based on Heathers being pretty cool. No, I’m not pulling your dick. And no, I didn’t have a brain tumor for breakfast. I’d continue the quoting by saying this isn’t just a spoke in my menstrual cycle, but I don’t have one of those. What I do have is a nearly twenty-year obsession with the movie as well as an odd exception when it comes to the idea of adapting it to other media. Certainly I don’t want anyone remaking Heathers on the big screen, but I’d be first in line for a campy musical version, and I’d read a comic book based on it (the thing would have to be published by Archie Comics, obviously).

Of course, I don’t expect this newly announced series idea to be very good. Network television is no place for a show based on Heathers. Not even Fox can get away with what the thing should be like. It wouldn’t be Heathers without all the swearing. And it couldn’t be as dark as it must be, either. However, provided there were some smart minds behind the idea, it could work quite well as an HBO or Showtime program. With a tone somewhere between The Sopranos and Weeds. The way I’m expecting it to be, as long as it’s on commercial television, the show may as well be called Mean Girls instead. Which would be a great idea, actually, if Tina Fey was behind it.

So, yeah, Heathers: the TV Show could be very, but it won’t be, and I see what everyone’s damage is over this news. But don’t worry, if it does ever end up on the air, it’ll soon be off and just as forgotten as the shows Ferris Bueller, Dirty Dancing and My Big Fat Greek Life.

Check out some blog responses to the news — imagine them recited in a montage of lunchtime poll answers — after the jump:

Perez Hilton thinks the show might indeed be very:

It may not be the sequel that Winona Ryder had hoped for, but maybe they could get her to play someone’s mom…We actually kind of like this idea. A sequel could come off cheesy, but an elongated, modernized storyline may breathe new life into the Heathers mania.
Jarett at PopWrap likes the idea enough to “wear its scrunchie if asked.” He also wonders if there’ll be any cameos:

Basically this will be Fox’s version of “Gossip Girl,” which in my opinion, you can never have too much of. No word yet on whether OG stars Winona Ryder, Shannen Doherty, Christian Slater or Martha Dumptruck will return, but considering they could all use the work, I’d expect to see some familiar faces roaming the halls of Westerberg High.
S.T. VanAirsdale at Movieline already sees a part for Ryder:

All of the principal characters from the original are expected to return for the series…Assuming her unsettling new appearance is reversible, Winona Ryder could be great as the touchy-feely teacher-monster Pauline Fleming. Just saying.
Devin Faraci at CHUD.com isn’t too worried about the show given the success of another adaptation:

To be honest I’m not going to get up in arms about this for the simple reason that a TV series based on the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer seemed like a truly awful idea at the time…The show obviously can’t just be JD and Veronica killing students every week, so there has to be something else planned for it, unless it’s just going to be a bitchier, darker version of 90210. Which is possible as well.
Scott Thill at Underwire acknowledges the same shows as being followers of and yet potential influences on Heathers:

But keeping the cult favorite strange could be tough. The original Heathers skewered social cliques and suicide pacts with absurdist glee…But it’s been replicated by genre freaks like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and mainstream soaps like Beverly Hills 90210, whose star Shannon Doherty started out as a hated Heather. Plus, its story hinged upon surreal teen suicides, a thin foundation on which to base a television series for more than one season.
Paul Tassi at JoBlo.com responds to a quote in Variety claiming this “seemed like a fresh and original idea”:

You know what would be a fresh and original idea? A fresh and original idea. Prefereably one that wasn’t based on a vastly overrated ‘80s teen angst movie. Yeah that’s right, in my estimation, the original HEATHERS had a great concept, but shit execution. And don’t get me started on Christian Slater.
Gabe at Videogum also responds to the claims quoted in Variety:

It’s not a franchise if there’s just one movie, and it doesn’t need dusting off if people still care about it. More importantly: doing it for TV isn’t even a fresh and original SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT MEDIUM, much less “idea.” They literally don’t have a clue what that word even means anymore. “I want an everything bagel with idea cheese, and a no-fat venti ideaccino.” Jerks.
Krystal Clark at ScreenCrave spots a trend and also offers the show’s developers some things to think about:

They’ve already adapted 10 Things I Hate About You for ABC Family, so I’m starting to see a theme here. I don’t know how they’ll rework it. Will someone die every episode? Will the entire run of the series focus on whether or not the killers get caught? That’s what they have to think about when tackling this story.
Mark at I Watch Stuff assumes the show will be unrecogniable to Heathers fans:

So it will be Heathers without all the murdering and suicide? (I assume, in the interest of maintaining some sort of cast.) That doesn’t sound like much of a Heathers to me. Irreverent pranks will never be a substitute for making someone drink drain cleaner.
David Wharton at Cinema Blend doubts the movie will translate easily to TV:

Its source material at least sets it apart from the glut of other modern teen dramas, but I’m extremely skeptical that any of the edginess or bleak humor of the original will survive a modern TV development process.
Sean at Film Junk also doubts the subject matter will remain intact. But it could be popular anyway:

It’s a very dark comedy that seems pretty risque even today, so you have to wonder how well this will work on network TV. Still, if done right, it could probably turn out to be a hit. There’s no shortage of teen angst out there today, that’s for sure!
Owen Williams at Empire thinks a ten-year-old tragedy would make a faithful adaptation difficult:

Heathers was a pretty self-contained story, and a sequel would have been tough to pull off successfully…The fear is that it would have to seriously have its teeth pulled in these post-Columbine times, but we can see a TV series working, especially given the diary-entry structure of the film.
Company Town unintentionally presents us with the kind of censorship we’ll be seeing on the series:

We have a feeling that Heather No. 1 would react to this news by suggesting an inappropriate act involving a chainsaw, but since we’re a family site we’ll just say “corn nuts.”
Amos Barshad at Vulture wonders how this will affect the other Heathers adaptation:

Loyal readers of Vulture’s the Industry may recall hearing about a musical version of Heathers starring Kristen Bell. We’re not sure where that’s at in development, but we can only assume that the race is now on for one of the two Heathers remakes to fake the other’s suicide.
Mark Lisanti at Movieline suggests some casting ideas for the series, apparently hoping for a Gossip Girl tone. He also uses the opportunity to imagine one of the changes that will occur in the transition to the small screen:

Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk)
Sadly, this role will be eliminated during development, following the network note, “Do there really have to be, like, three Heathers? That’s, like, a lot of Heathers. Our testing shows anything more than two Heathers and the demo gets totally confused.” Sorry, Heather McNamara, the focus groups have spoken.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Batman 3 Rumors Return. Today in Film Bloggery 08/26/09

SpoutBlog — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:00:35 GMT

I was hoping the Inception teaser trailer would keep the Christopher Nolan-obsessed fanboys puzzled and therefore occupied for a while. But someone had to go and spoil the premise of that otherwise cryptic film and now the geeks and gossip rags are back to their old favorite online game: spreading rumors about Batman 3.

British tabloid The Sun has made up a story claiming Megan Fox has “signed on” to play Catwoman, despite the fact that there’s no script to guarantee that such a role will even exist. But hey, Fox News has picked up the “news” so it must be true. Then there’s the Harry Knowles-ignited rumor about the third installment potentially being shot “FULLY” in IMAX.

Certainly speculating about big and highly anticipated movies is fun. Whether we discuss why Nolan shouldn’t even try to follow The Dark Knight or if we write a list of actresses we’d like to see cast as Catwoman, it’s important that we recognize that it’s all just wishes and wonders. And being able to tell the difference between a viable scoop and a rumor is what separates us respectable blogs from the unreputable people at British tabloids and, umm, Fox News (which, like The Sun, is owned by News Corp.).

The only silver lining is those websites that immediately nip such rumors in the butt and then proceed to make fun of the idea further through some kind of list or whatever. Especially when it’s a slow news day, such posts provide good reading.

Check out the film blog responses to today’s ridiculous rumors after the jump:

Joseph Baxter at The Feed agrees that it’s almost nice to see these sorts of Batman 3 rumors circulating again:

While they were rampant at the end of 2008, amidst more credible ones such as Rachel Weisz’s possible casting, it’s been a while since we heard some off-the-wall, “wtf,” Batman 3 rumors. This latest one, therefore, almost seems like an old friend has come to visit. Of course, it joins some others of its ilk such as the “Cher as Catwoman” rumor and of course, the UK Sun’s previous pre-Christmas masterpiece, “Eddie Murphy as the Riddler and Shia LaBeouf as Robin.” Hey, in the bizarro world where these reports are even close to being truthful, it seems that Batman 3 will be a Transformers reunion.
Lane Brown at Vulture has one good reason why this rumor is false. And he points out what today is the anniversary of:

The Sun “reports” that Megan Fox has “signed on” to play Catwoman in the next Batman movie, which means that Megan Fox will almost certainly not play Catwoman in any upcoming Batman movie. Also, today is the one-year anniversary of last summer’s made-up rumor about Cher playing Catwoman.
Kyle Buchanan at Movieline has a list of ways to tell a British tabloid casting rumor is fake. The only one that matters is #5, but here’s the one directly dealing with Batman 3:

1. The rumor in question is about an actor cast in the next Batman film, when even presumptive director Christopher Nolan (currently shooting the Leonardo DiCaprio starrer Inception) has not signed on yet, nor struck a deal to write the script.
Mark Lisanti, also at Movieline, has a list of other people who won’t be playing Catwoman. Here’s the one that says the most about how these tabloid rumors get started in the first place:

3. Renee Zellweger
Zellweger’s people are still waiting for Warner Bros. executives to return a call from 2002.
Proposed tabloid headline: “Renee Zellweger’s Publicist Promised Us An Exclusive On ‘Bridget Jones 3’ If We’d Float Her Name For Catwoman! So, Zellweger Might Be Catwoman, Maybe!!! OK, We Can’t Do This. We Just Can’t. Let The Daily Mirror Be Their Filthy Little Whore This Time. We’re Going Back To Cosmetology School, This Is Getting Undignified.”
Mark at I Watch Stuff has come to a conclusion regarding who/what will indeed be playing Catwoman:

To sum things up for those of you who haven’t been following every British tabloid casting announcement, the part of Catwoman will now be played by the ensemble of Angelina Jolie, Cher, Miley Cyrus, Julie Newmar, an actual cat, a CGI cat, a lab-created, actual cat-woman, a lady who just owns a lot of cats, Eddie Murphy, and Megan Fox.
Todd at IDontLikeYouInThatWay.com guesses how simple and disturbing the Batman 3 plot would be if this rumor were true:

Nobody is reporting this except The Sun, so who knows if this is true or not. If it is, congratulations. 120 pages of Batman jacking off seems like it would be pretty easy to write.
John at The Movie Blog claims that if the Fox rumor is true then “Santa Claus is real, O.J. didn’t do it and the Oscars love comedies.” Here’s his simple argument:

This is not Michael Bay. Nolan is not all about tits and ass. This is his Batman franchise, and there is no way in hell this genius is going to put Megan Fox in it. Period. End of story. No questions asked.

I simply can not believe how many people I’ve read on the web today that actually believe this tripe.
David Oliver at CHUD.com says it’s not true unless his site says so:

Now, until you read it from Devin, Nick or some other outlet way, way more reputable than a British rag, make of that what you will. Chalk it up to however you like. I feel I’ve done my civic duty to disseminate info with a flatbed of salt with which to to take it.
Neil Miller at Film School Rejects has a list of reasons Batman 3 will not be shot completely in IMAX. Most of his arguments have to do with the expense, but his fourth point is still the most important at this point in time:

4. The movie might not happen at all. Through all of this, I think we miss the most obvious points. There is no script, the director has not signed and there has been no official indication that a third Batman movie will happen anytime soon. Sure, it is easy to assume that Warner Bros. will want to make another film and capitalize on the heat generated from The Dark Knight, but that doesn’t mean they will be able to get Chris Nolan back on the horse. He has said time and time again that the story needs to be there. What if it is never there? And if the movie never happens, it can’t be in full IMAX then, can it? I know it’s semantics, but I like to reinforce my arguments — especially when I’m clearly right.
Alex Billington at FirstShowing isn’t entirely in the doubting boat regarding an all-IMAX Batman:

At this point in time, almost anything we hear about the third Batman is always a rumor, because Chris is 100% dedicated to Inception right now and they haven’t so much as even written a single line of the script yet (or so we’ve heard). But then again, if IMAX is to work with Nolan to develop a camera that is smaller, quiet, and can shoot more than 3 minutes, they might as well start working on it now. Nolan is shooting Inception as we speak and an IMAX rep told me that “Inception is definitely one of the titles that we are looking at for 2010.” I have a feeling that means he’s already shooting with IMAX as much as possible.
Simon Dang at The Playlist represents the fanbase that wouldn’t even want an all-IMAX Batman:

Rumor has it, Christopher Nolan wants to film the third “Batman” film totally in the IMAX format he toyed with in “The Dark Knight.” As good as those certain scenes looked, we hate to admit the idea of having to watch long features on that wide screen doesn’t sound too appealing.
Harry Knowles at Ain’t It Cool News pretty much showed us the best way to handle the spreading of an unsourced tip (aka a rumor) in his introductory disclosure. If only all tabloids used this sort of line:

I have to say upfront that the nature of this story is a rumor, not because I don’t have solid sources, I do… but because it could simply NOT WORK OUT. That happens sometimes. It is something that the production team are “considering” - but it is an extremely costly process, but one that I believe we would all love to see happen.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

LACMA Film Program Saved! For Now!

SpoutBlog — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:00:33 GMT

The LA Times’ Culture Monster blog is reporting that, thanks to donations totaling $150,000 from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Time Warner Cable/Ovation TV, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has reversed their decision to end their film program in October, and will now keep the program alive “at least through the end of the fiscal year in June 2010.” The Culture Monster post doesn’t indicate whether or not the LACMA’s Michael Govan and the film fan activist group Save Film at LACMA will go through with the much-hyped “popcorn summit”, scheduled to take place on September 1, to discuss LACMA’s film future, but apparently the Museum is newly committed to “thinking about the history and future of film as art as well as film’s increasing importance in the larger narrative of art history.”

Interesting side fact/road to conspiracy theory: David Segal’s recent NY Times profile of The Weinstein Company blamed Harvey’s acquisition of Ovation as one of TWC’s biggest missteps. Is Saving LACMA Film the Brothers’ way of backing up Inglourious Basterds’ big opening weekend with a big “we’re back” gesture? Maybe!

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

WE LIVE IN PUBLIC Review

SpoutBlog — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:01:14 GMT

“I was the smartest kid in town, and the reporters knew it,” brags Josh Harris in We Live in Public, Ondi Timoner’s documentary on the rise and fall of the Internet’s first (and still its most charismatic) video mogul. It’s a telling statement, in that it points to both Harris’ 1990s raison d’etre, and also his Achilles heel: it’s not what you do that matters, it’s that people are watching you do it. Timoner’s portrait of the prescient (and quite possibly crazy) web pioneer will be a must see for anyone interested in internet fame and the phenomenon of casual over-sharing, even if her storytelling tactics are surprisingly stale.

A quick-cut pileup of stock footage, video captured by Timoner over a decade on Harris’ trail, and footage recorded during his surveillance projects, Public outlines Harris’ troubled childhood and tricky relationship with his alcoholic mom before clicking into its comfort zone with Harris’ founding of Pseudo.com. Pseudo, launched in 1993, morphed from a Prodigy chat service into an internet TV network, complete with themed channels and on-air personalities. The company –– and Harris –– became best known for throwing wild parties, which by the late 90s had formed the core of the Silicon Alley social scene. For a brief, heady moment in time, celebrities mingled with nerds, and nerds became celebrities — just because, as Silicon Alley Reporter & Weblogs Inc founder Jason Calacanis puts it, “you knew how to set up a modem.”

Riding high on hype (and an $80 million “on paper” net worth), in 1999 Harris launched a massive art project called “Quiet,” where he invited dozens of artists to live with him in a bunker complete with firing range and communal showers, with each bed outfitted with a camera and a TV screen. Life was filmed constantly, residents were subject to the interrogation of a CIA operative, and no one was allowed to leave. When the FBI broke into the bunker and made everyone evacuate (they thought it was a cult, and as one member says on screen, “We were quacking and walking like a duck”), Harris and his girlfriend Tanya moved into a loft outfitted with motion control cameras in every room, broadcasting their relationship 24 hours a day to an audience of eager chatters. This project, called “We Live in Public,” fell apart when the relationship cracked under the pressure of surveillance. By this point, Harris’ sanity was slipping away as fast as his fortune, and in late 2001, the entrepreuer disappeared to an apple farm upstate.

Harris is a great anti-hero, and the film more than convinces that we haven’t even begun to grapple with the ramifications of our “always on” internet personas. But for all of its fascinations, the frantic pace is frustrating. Timoner’s montages move so quickly that you can’t begin to connect to or contemplate the bulk of her images. This technique is effective in conveying what it felt like to be in the middle of the whirlwind, but it blocks any beyond-superficial understanding of what that whirlwind meant. (The exception to this rule is the section of the film using footage from “We Live in Public” to talk about Josh and Tanya’s break-up; Timoner gives this material time and space to breathe, which only draws attention to the airlessness of the rest of the piece.) Timoner also relies a little too heavily on pop music for commentary. It’s one thing to set a montage of “Quiet” footage to Le Tigre, to remind us what 1999 felt like; it’s another to ask LCD Soundsystem’s “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” to bring the poignancy to a 9/11 montage. The song might have been a fresher choice had it not been used not long ago (and to greater ironic effect) on an episode of Gossip Girl, but it still would have been a lazy, literal way to inject feeling.

But Public ultimately overcomes its grating stylistic flourishes. Most striking is the footage of “Quiet,” which looks like a mash-up of The Real World and Abu Ghraib. In the late 90s, Harris anticipated not just our country’s use of quasi-fascist interrogation, but the fascination with documenting it and sharing that document on social platforms. Every Harris project seen in the film includes a chat room. He figured out the core truth behind social media years before the rest of us: the news, the art, the event itself is nothing unless you enable people to talk about it.

This review first appeared during the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. We Live In Public opens in New York this week.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Luke and Brie are on Amazon

SpoutBlog — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:01:15 GMT

The following review appeared during the 2008 Hamptons Film Festival. Luke and Brie Are On a First Date is now available for rental or purchase via Amazon Video on Demand.

Luke and Brie Are On a First Date, which world premiered in the Hamptons last weekend, is the debut feature by Chad Hartigan, a frequent collaborator of Aaron Katz, and there are definitely some superficial similarities between the two filmmakers’ work. Like Katz’s Quiet City, Luke and Brie follows two attractive young people (George Ducker and Meghan Webster) around a city as they break through awkward uncertainty to forge a tentative romantic connection, and with their dreamy, super-intimate videography, both films have a way of enveloping a viewer in the action (or what passes for action), ultimately serving as delivery vehicles for the kind of heightened realism that marks an unexpectedly life-changing night out. But Luke and Brie plays its drama much closer to the surface, and through a little bit of self-reflexivity, a film that’s virtually wall-to-wall conversation manages to avoid feeling too talky.

Hartigan, who is a Los Angeles-based box office analyst by day, said after the Hamptons screening that Luke and Brie, based structurally on his own first date with his current girlfriend, was shot in 5 days on a budget of $3000. The small scale of the project opens it up to an obvious criticism: surely, all of us could come up with a single night in our romantic lives that seems worthy of dramatization, and many of us could round up some friends and scrape together a few dollars and take a week off work to tell it. So what makes Luke and Brie special? Maybe nothing, and maybe that’s it — maybe it’s not interesting because it’s entering into unchartered territory, but because it takes us through universal, well-worn feelings and makes them feel new. With his camera often seeming to float over faces in extreme close-up, Hartigan’s micro-focus on the nerves, uncertainties, and ambiguities, the posturing and reflex self-medication and unexpected moments of honesty that fuel the night so nails the harrowing aspect of navigating modern romance — in which it’s always easier to do nothing than to do what one really wants — that he’s able to turn the film’s ultimate surrender to traditional romantic closure into something of a surprise.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

Inglourious Basterds Will Be Oscar-Nominated. Today in Film Bloggery 08/25/09

SpoutBlog — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:01:03 GMT

Here’s a story that broke yesterday but has continued to pick up steam through the movie blogs today: The Weinstein Co. is planning to release box office champ Inglourious Basterds on DVD by the end of the year in order to use the discs for a cheap but aggressive Oscar campaign. This isn’t surprising news considering Harvey Weinstein’s Oscar addiction, but it has suddenly made me aware that Basterds is both deserving of and sure to receive a nod for Best Picture, which would be Quentin Tarantino’s first such nominee since Pulp Fiction 15 years ago.

Seriously, if we can be talking about District 9, Star Trek and other genre movies for the top category now that it will include ten contenders, how couldn’t Basterds be seen as a likely nominee? People have celebrated Christoph Waltz’s performance since Cannes, and he’s sure to garner a Best Supporting Actor nod, but few have noted how the film itself is a lock, too. Certainly if Weinstein can get The Reader a surprise Best Picture nomination with only five available slots, he can get this film onto a ballot double the size.

Don’t forget the Holocaust rule; how could the Academy ignore a movie that features vengeful Jews assassinating Hitler and 300 other Nazis all at once in a blaze of glory? Never mind that they didn’t get some of the worst offenders involved in the genocide.

Could Basterds garner more than the two obvious nominations? I doubt Tarantino will receive recognition for either directing or screenwriting, but who knows? Any other performances worthy? Any tech fields? Variety has an interesting article today on the costume design by Anna B. Sheppard. She’s been twice nominated for, interestingly enough, Holocaust films (Schindler’s List and The Pianist), but this time she was presented with more of a challenge. I have a feeling this third Holocaust-related project could be the one to get her the Oscar.

Check out what the other film blogs are saying about Basterds‘ Oscar chances after the jump:

Tom O’Neil at Gold Derby first scooped the Weinstein’s Oscar plans, claiming they’re modeled after the Crash strategy. Here is his expectation of the outcome:

Beware, Hollywood. Given how red rivers flow in Tarantino pix, the town will be engulfed in a blood tide this December when Harvey unleashes his “Inglourious Basterds” DVD campaign. It will probably pay off with two Academy Award nominations: best screenplay (Tarantino) and supporting actor (Christoph Waltz). Maybe more. “Pulp Fiction” got nommed for best picture when there were only five slots; this year there will be twice as many.
Ross Miller at ScreenRant is worried this campaign means a slim, feature-less DVD release, for now anyway, but here are his thoughts on what Basterds‘ Oscar future looks like:

Having seen the film twice now, it easily deserves a Supporting Actor nomination for Christoph Waltz (he should also win, IMO), and also a couple for Original Screenplay and Best Director for Tarantino. I have a feeling that at least a couple of those will end up being the case (Actor and Screenplay), with Best Picture maybe slipping in there as well, since the Academy has expanded the Best Picture nominees from five to ten entries.
C. Jerry Kutner at Bright Lights After Dark celebrates the return of Rod Taylor in a post that has me wondering if maybe the Academy will honor his very short performance as one of those lifetime-achievement-type nominations. It’s not that unlikely, even if he hadn’t put in such effort:

Taylor came out of retirement to play Sir Winston Churchill in Tarantino’s highly personalized take on World War II (as much about the cinema as it is about the War). According to the Miami Herald, Taylor “watched dozens of DVDs to get Churchill’s voice, complete with lisp, and the hunched body language”…Taylor as Churchill appears in one scene only of Inglourious Basterds, saying very little, but dominating the scene with his presence as only a true star can.
Brad Brevet at RopeofSilicon would love to see Michael Fassbender nominated, but he just doesn’t see any potential for Basterds outside the Waltz nomination. He presents why the film won’t make the cut for Best Original Screenplay:

The Academy can sometimes be hard to judge and I think categories such as Best Original Screenplay will be much easier to sort out as we move along, but I won’t be writing off Inglourious Basterds anytime soon considering the news Inarritu’s Biutiful may not be released this year and the fact Apatow’s Funny People didn’t do so well. But that still has Tarantino battling out with the likes of the following in alphabetical order:

* (500) Days of Summer – Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber
* Bright Star – Jane Campion
* Broken Embraces – Pedro Almodovar
* The Hurt Locker – Mark Boal
* A Serious Man – Joel and Ethan Coen
* Up – Bob Peterson

You tell me, do you see it fitting inside the top five with those names?
Kristopher Tapley at In Contention sees Basterds more deserving of tech nominations than a writing one:

A couple of pieces caught my eye today featuring talent associated with Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” a film that, despite my feelings of the narrative, had a rather refreshing visceral sheen to it. That’s a tribute, no doubt, to folks like Bob Richardson, David Wasco, Anna B. Sheppard, etc.
One of the pieces Tapley highlights is the pre-Variety showcase of Sheppard at Boxwish, which points out the achievement:

Clearly her CV made her an ideal fit for whipping up the era’s authentic period costumes, but it was a challenge that Sheppard was slow to accept until assured that Inglourious Basterds wasn’t a traditional by-the-book retelling of World War II’s horrors, but a boisterous, imaginative and spiky vision of it. As the trailer’s tag-line says “you haven’t seen war until you’ve seen it through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino,” and Sheppard was thrilled to learn that this applied to costumes as well.
Lane Brown at Vulture questions the merit of Basterds:

Why didn’t the Weinstein Company release Inglourious Basterds closer to awards season? We figured it was because it they didn’t plan on it winning many awards. But Tom O’Neil posits today that Harvey’s plan is to make an Oscar push around the time of its DVD release later this year…It worked for Crash, so we suppose anything’s possible.
Bob Westal at Premium Hollywood has doubts about the Academy’s appreciation for both Tarantino and his treatment of the Holocaust:

Quentin Tarantino’s films are not Oscar-friendly. The older members of the Academy have traditionally leaned strongly towards a very traditional, essentially literary and middle-class, view of quality which is pretty much the antithesis of the Tarantino aesthetic. It’s only been through his widespread acclaim and a subtle loosening of old prejudices that his films have gotten the definitely limited Oscar recognition they have and, considering what some regard as a too lighthearted view of World War II horrors, I wouldn’t expect this one to be much different. Of course, with ten nomination slots for Best Picture, and the universal groundswell of acclaim for heretofore internationally unknown German actor Christoph Waltz, two or three nominations (including the semi-inevitable “Best Original Screenplay” nod) are almost a certainty.
Peter Bart at Variety less-directly addresses Basterds‘ qualifications for the Holocaust rule:

Writing in The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg struggles to find a subtext in “Inglourious Basterds” dealing with “Jewish empowerment.” I would argue the only thing on display here is Tarantino Empowerment. He has the power to make very long movies with very self-referential dialogue. He owns the play pen.
Kevin Jagernauth at The Playlist sees a potential for four major nods but wonders if Basterds will be hurt more by the fanboy rule than helped by the Holocaust rule:

But as the Oscar season shapes up, it will be interesting to see how viable (or not) of a player “Inglourious Basterds” will remain in the major categories. The danger with throwing Tarantino’s film into the Oscar mix is that Harvey could end up with a “The Dark Knight” situation on his hands. As readers might recall, that film did boffo box-office numbers and was universally loved by critics, but as far as the Academy was concerned, it was still just a fanboy film.
Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere sees the problem being the film’s violence, despite the fact that we’ve seen a movie like The Departed win four Oscars, including Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. His argument:

The only Inglourious Basterds Oscar nomination that’s going to happen is Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor — end of story. Harvey can blanket Hollywood with DVDs to make sure this happens, but isn’t Waltz’s nomination already pasted into most people’s heads? Tarantino’s screenplay hasn’t a prayer of being nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Not with that damn baseball-bat/brain-matter scene. Gran Shaggy Poo sez the over-50s ain’t goin’ for it.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog

SpoutBlog: The Book

SpoutBlog — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:01:21 GMT

In the 26 months or so since I started editing SpoutBlog full time, we have published thousands of posts, covered dozens of festivals, and reviewed hundreds of films. In that time, blogging has become the default format for online content, while at the same time what it means to be a professional film critic has — to put it kindly — evolved. The meme is that the media is dying, but more precisely, information distribution is in a weird kind of limbo: blogs still seem ephemeral, printed matter legitimate.

So! We are going to publish a book, a compilation of SpoutBlog’s “greatest hits,” with special emphasis on my reports from festivals, writings on below-the-radar films, and posts that reflect the evolution in online film culture. We’re going to publish it through CreateSpace, then sell it on Amazon and at film festivals and like events. The goal is not necessarily to make money (although we do hope to break even on publishing costs), but to create a physical snapshot of this thing that I’ve devoted the last two years of my life to creating, and that many of you have gotten into the habit of reading. Also, I made an empty promise to myself in grad school that if I wasn’t able to publish a book by the time I was 30, it would be a sign that this writing-about-movies racket wasn’t the right vocation for me. I’m no longer such a believer in signs, but I do still like the idea of publishing books.

To do this, we need your help, in three specific areas:

1. Curation: Right now we’re thinking that the book will probably include about 40 posts — about 1-2 per month since I joined the fold. I’m in the process of creating a short list of candidates; I’ve currently whittled the 3,000-something posts down to 53 pieces, although I’m still trying to figure out which posts to include to reflect my coverage of documentary film. If you have favorite SpoutBlog posts that you think absolutely need to be included in this volume — or, if there’s anything specific you think shouldn’t be included — please let me know in the comments.

2. Photography: I’m looking for a New York-based photographer with access to equipment who can shoot the cover image. We have a concept in mind but would love to find someone who could contribute their own ideas. This would need to happen as soon as possible — preferably within the week — and there would be some small compensation — a couple hundred dollars, a couple sample copies of the book. You can email me at karina AT spout DOT come if you’re interested or know someone who is.

3. Promotion: The goal is to have physical copies of the book in hand by the beginning of October. If you are associated with a film festival/event, an independent bookstore, video store, or anywhere else that would be interested in hosting a reading or signing some such endeavor related to the book this fall or winter, please email me.

If you have any additional thoughts or questions, please let me know in the comments. Maybe it’s pollyannaish, but I really do want this to be something that benefits from the input of the audience — you, after all, are the reason why I get out of bed every morning. Or, at least, fire up my laptop from bed.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog