Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Karyn Kusama's Aeon Flux (Paramount,

Karyn Kusama's Aeon Flux (Paramount, 12.2), the superhero action chick flick with Charlize Theron, is opening without any critic or all-media screenings whatsoever. Quality! No word-of-mouth, no tell-your-friends...just a shitload of ads and a wing and a prayer. And yet Kusama's last film, Girlfight, showed lots of personality and emotional focus. It was a tight little character-driven film about a female boxer with its attitude completely worked out. And so what happens? Kusama moves up and takes on a big-budget popcorn movie and wham....a flurry of jabs and body blows...right cross, left hook...down for the count.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:43 PM on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

It's King Kong night in

It's King Kong night in Manhattan tonight (Wednesday, 11.30)! Peter Jackson's three-hour ape flick is showing to junket press at Leow's Lincoln Plaza (i.e., the one with the big IMAX screen) right about now (7:40 pm NY time). I'm told that members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are also attending. Working New York press screenings will begin in Manhattan next Monday, as they will in Los Angeles at the Arclight. The very first Los Angeles Kong screening will actually happen Sunday night (12.4) for Academy members, at the Academy theatre on Wilshire and La Peer.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:19 PM on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Here are the Spectrum, Frontier

Here are the Spectrum, Frontier and Midnight selections for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, as passed along by IndieWIRE. Two Spectrum selections have caught my eye: (1) Stewart Copeland's Super 8 documentary about the adventures of The Police in the '80s, "from CBGB's to Shea Stadium," and (2) Brent Hamer's Factotum, the latest indie feature about the honestly grimy, up-and-down adventures of L.A. poet and ribald boozer Charles Bukowski (called Henry Chanski in the film, and very well played by Matt Dillon). I saw Factotum in Cannes last May and it's a definite recommend. Lily Taylor, Fisher Stevens, Marisa Tomei

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:01 PM on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Here it is 11.30.05 with

Here it is 11.30.05 with six weeks to go before the start of Sundance '06, and I still haven't put myself into a Park City crash pad that I'm happy with. It seems like I do this every year. I need a share with a bed, a desk, a chair and at least a phone line for dial-up. If anyone wants to talk about anything, please get in touch.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:52 PM on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

I don't know if you'll

I don't know if you'll be able to hear this audio clip with any clarity, but it's Syriana director-writer Stephen Gaghan telling an oddly humorous story during an interview a couple of nights ago with Variety editor Peter Bart. It's about a visit Gaghan made to the home of high-level conservative and Iraq War-supporter Richard Perle in early 2003 just before the invasion of Iraq, and what happened when former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped by, and how Perle's dog (whose name is "Reagan") related to Netanyahu, and how Netanyahu responded.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:15 PM on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Why is Julia Roberts still

Why is Julia Roberts still "perceived" as the highest-paid actress who pulls down $20 million per film? Back in the days of Notting Hill and Runaway Bride, okay...but now? Isn't she starting to be over, winding down, etc.? No big movie roles on the horizon, on the mommy track, doing a New York play next March called "Three Days of Rain", etc.? Roberts' alleged standing is contained in a special piece by Hollywood Reporter's Christy Grosz about the town's most highly-paid actresses. Nicole Kidman is listed as #2 with a payday in the realm of $16 to $17 million. (Hold...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:52 AM on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

It bears repeating that Disney's

It bears repeating that Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (12.9) is one of the only two December releases that are tracking really strongly now, the other being King Kong. I usually bypass those Saturday daytime all-media screenings because family films are bad for my spiritual health, but I don't think there's any choice as far as this weekend's Narnia showing at the Arclight is concerned. Honestly? If I could clap my hands three times and make this film disappear (which would thereby release me from any obligation to see it), I would clap my hands three...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:29 AM on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Steven Spielberg's Munich (Universal, 12.23)

Steven Spielberg's Munich (Universal, 12.23) will run about 2 hours and 40 minutes with credits, according to Universal and DreamWorks sources. (Terrence Malick's The New World, which opens on 12.25, runs about the same.) Spielberg's spokesperson says he'll be vacationing starting around 12.20 or so and isn't planning on doing any dog-and-pony-show appearances in Los Angeles to promote Munich, but the word for some time has been that "we're letting the film speak for itself"). Spielberg does have a history, however, of enjoying Time or Newsweek cover stories to promote his important films (which he got from Time for Saving Private Ryan). The...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:22 AM on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

A certain industry observer was

A certain industry observer was working last week on another story about Oscar bloggers, and then along came Patrick Goldstein's thing yesterday in the L.A. Times so who knows? Maybe this other piece might get changed around over said journo's concerns about not being first or following Goldstein or whatever.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:11 AM on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Match Guilt

Match Guilt

I'm feel I should be beating the drum more loudly for Woody Allen's Match Point (DreamWorks, 12.28) because it's not just his best in a long time, but one of the best of the year. And I need to stop being wimpy about this.

It really is Allen's darkest and most precisely calibrated film since Crime and Misdemeanors...clean, cruel and ironic as hell.

Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in Woody Allen's Match Point

Any film worth its salt has to have thematic clarity. Match Point's theme is clear as a friggin' bell, and with echoes of...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:53 PM on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

"Studio publicists say they cater

"Studio publicists say they cater to [Oscar] bloggers because their top executives react hysterically to every little slight they see on the web," writes "Big Picture" columnist Patrick Goldstein in his current L.A. Times posting. I can testify about the reverse end of this. I've just been disinvited to two events I've RSVP'd to -- in one instance because I've run negative postings about a certain big-studio feature, and in another instance because I used some initiative to get myself into an Academy-members screening of an upcoming film. I think it can be said without any particular prejudice that some people really love...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:44 PM on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

There's concern out there...concern bordering

There's concern out there...concern bordering on distress...about what moves L.A. Times' Calendar Entertainment editor Betsy Sharkey and senior editor Lennie Maguire are planning to make in order to cover independent films after Kevin Thomas, who's been reviewing indie releases for the Times for eons, leaves the paper at the end of the year. Sharkey and Maguire didn't pick up, but the understanding is that the Times won't be hiring a "new Kevin" and will have to depend on a Dave Kehr-like pinch-hitter (or perhaps a freelancer) to review the releases from Magnolia, IFC, Strand, Cowboy, et. al. Sounds like a fairly simple solution,...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:01 PM on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Attaboy's to the principal IFP

Attaboy's to the principal IFP Spirit Awward nominees, i.e., those with three nominations or more. The big winner was Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale with six -- Baumbach for Best Director and Best Screenplay, Jeff Daniels for Best Male Lead, Laura Linney for Best Female Lead, and Jesse Eisenberg (one of the more intriguing young actors out there as well as a very cool, sharp and thoughtful dude to shoot the shit with) for Best Supporting Male performance. Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, Bennett Miller's Capote, George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck and Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:57 AM on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

The IFP Spirit Award gang

The IFP Spirit Award gang has nominated Robin Wright Penn's brief but pulverizing turn in Rodrigo Garcia's Nine Lives for a Best Supporting Actress award...all right! Maybe the Academy and the Gurus of Gold prognoticators will listen up and consider this. I went apeshit over her performance in a 10.19 piece.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:21 AM on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

I don't want to make

I don't want to make too much of this, but it comes as a jolt that the IFP Sprit Awards nominating committee has given a pat on the back to Hans Petter Moland's The Beautiful Country by nominating Sabina Murray's script for a Best First Screenplay award. (Veteran screenwriter Larry Gross also worked on it, no?) Country was so roundly ignored by the media and public alike (or so it seemed) that I'm feeling a bit shocked. I fell hook, line and sinker for The Beautiful Country way back on 4.20.05...not that it mattered.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:58 AM on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

It's evident why David Poland

It's evident why David Poland would be miffed at Patrick Goldstein's just-up column about Oscar bloggers ("Making Oscars a mule race"), but I'm not going to squawk about Goldstein calling me "the Lewis Black of Oscar bloggers." Plus he compounded whatever impact my anti-Memoirs of a Geisha views may have on the local populace by imprinting my words on wads of actual lumber-mill paper, which, for some people over the age of 45 or so, carries a certain legitmacy that cyber copy lacks. I have to say that I agree with Poland in his dispute with Goldstein...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:18 AM on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Monday, November 28, 2005

IndieWIRE has put up the

IndieWIRE has put up the complete list of competition titles for Sundance '06 -- Dramatic, World Cinema Dramatic, Feature Documentaries and World Cinema Docs. (Hey, three films from that discredited Film Finders list are included! Dito Montiel's A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Julian Goldberger's Hawk Is Dying and Hilary Bourgher's Stephanie Daley.) Spectrum, Park City at Midnight, and Frontier lineups will be announced Wednesday, 11.30 at 1:00 a.m. eastern (Tuesday, 11.29 at 10pm). The Premiere's section lineup will be announced on Thursday, 12.1 at 1:00 a.m. eastern (Wednesday, 11.30 at 10 pm). The short film lineup will be released...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:40 PM on Monday, November 28, 2005

Excellent news on the Best

Excellent news on the Best Actress nomination front for The Upside of Anger's Joan Allen, whom I went to town for last weekend in a lead Elsewhere feature. Allen is now in sixth place on MCN's "Gurus of Gold" Best Actress nominee list, right behind non-actress Keira Knightley, who's been bizarrely favored for some reason because of her looks and coy charm deployment in Pride and Prejudice. Knightley lovers should ask themselves how much better that film would have been with Rachel McAdams, a real actress, playing Knightley's character. I admit Allen is far behind with only 24 points to...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:36 PM on Monday, November 28, 2005

Laura Holson's N.Y. Times story

Laura Holson's N.Y. Times story about the value of Steven Spielberg these days ("So, What's The Spielberg Magic Worth?") as Universal prepares to buy his creative services via their purchase of DreamWorks can't be easily answered. What's the value of a guy whose name automatically spells "quality thrill ride" as far as the general public is concerned? Big value, I'd say. What's the value of a guy who was at his creative peak from 1974 to 1982, and then briefly bounced back with Jurassic Park and Schindler's List and then again with Saving Private Ryan and Minority Report? And who...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:33 PM on Monday, November 28, 2005

Check out this slide show

Check out this slide show of Mike Russell's "history of Aeon Flux" strip that ran in the Boston Globe last Sunday. There are infer- ences about the general worthiness of the Charlize Theron-Karyn Kusama movie that Paramount is releasing on 12.2, although there's an explanation at the end of the Globe slide show that "all snark aside, the author has absolutely no idea how the live-action movie turned out." (He doesn't? Kids from Tibet and Afghanistan with their ears to the rails have an "idea" about this.) There will also be a one-page, slightly expanded "CulturePulp cut" of this comic available...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:10 PM on Monday, November 28, 2005

Forget that whole Sundance Film

Forget that whole Sundance Film Festival '06 thing I posted in this section a few days ago, and in the main column last Saturday. I've now been persuaded that a good portion of the titles I mentioned won't be at the festival, and that some weren't even submitted (!). Five or six days ago a friend from the festival circuit sent me a document put together by Film Finders called "Tipped for Sundance," and it had those 22 films listed. I went for it because (a) the Film Finders people are known to be fairly well connected on a business affairs level, (b)...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:33 PM on Monday, November 28, 2005

Last July 15th I ran

Last July 15th I ran a column piece about a very tangy and well-respected redneck race-car movie called The Last American Hero (1973), which was directed and co-written by Lamont Johnson. Hero didn't do much business and kind of sank beneath the waves after its initial release, and it hadn't been seen on laser disc or DVD since, and I was pushing for Fox Home Video to think about releasing a DVD now. Hero was loosely based on Tom Wolfe's legendary 1965 Esquire article about one-time moonshine smuggler and stock-car racer Junior Johnson. Wolfe's piece was called "The Last American...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:39 AM on Monday, November 28, 2005

"Well, ya really don't know

"Well, ya really don't know much about nobody until ya lend 'em money or punch 'em hard." This is just a mock Rocky Balboa line from that Robert Welkos L.A. Times piece about Sylvester Stallone's Rocky 6 that ran a week or so ago...but it's true. You kinda don't know a person until you lend them money or punch 'em hard. I would add that the way a person reacts in any kind of heavy-duty, act-now-or-die situation can be revealing. Was it Norman Mailer who wrote that a man never truly knows who his wife is until he meets her in court?

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:28 AM on Monday, November 28, 2005

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Newsweek's Devin Gordon has seen

Newsweek's Devin Gordon has seen and written about Peter Jackson's King Kong (Universal, 12.14), and right off the top he uses the same "I" word I've been using to describe Jackson for the last four years. (What columnist would use such a term, after all, if he/she wasn't unfairly biased against Jackson?) "Some critics will complain that the film's length is an act of Oscar-drunk hubris," Gordon allows, "but while Kong may be indulgent, it's not pretentious. And it's certainly never dull. Jackson has honored his favorite film in the best possible way: by recapturing its heart-pounding, escapist glee." Keep in...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:46 PM on Sunday, November 27, 2005

The New World producer Sarah

The New World producer Sarah Green is blowing dubious smoke in a piece by New York Times writer Steve Chagollan about Terrence Malick's latest film, which New Line is opening on 12.25. "First and foremost we've created a love story," Green declares. "We're definitely not doing a historical piece. We try to set it properly; we try to give that background and that feeling, but we focus on the love story." It's too early to riff about The New World -- which is in many ways rapturous and magnificent, by the way -- but Green is being truthful only in a partial...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:08 PM on Sunday, November 27, 2005

The timestamp of each WIRED

The timestamp of each WIRED item is now a Permalink, which means each and every item can be summoned as a separate link, and each HE column has been Permalinked also.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:02 PM on Sunday, November 27, 2005

This piece by L.A. Times

This piece by L.A. Times reporter John Horn about how and why Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha (Columbia, 12.9) was spoken in English is almost...I was going to say "hilarious" but I think "staggering" is a better term. Especially this paragraph: "American moviegoers aren't terribly keen on subtitles, but in truth that wasn't the sole reason that Marshall filmed only the opening segment with Japanese dialogue. Had the actors performed the entire movie in the language, the director says, 'I never would have known what they were saying.'" My God, the sheer, take-it-or-leave-it bluntness of that statement! If that isn't a...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:39 PM on Sunday, November 27, 2005

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Defamer's Mark Lisanti may be

Defamer's Mark Lisanti may be lackadaisical, disorganized or pussy-whipped (he backed out of attending Charles Fleming's USC class on internet journalism last Monday because his girlfriend told him they had previously-committed-to "plans"), but he's also got that Los Angeles magazine profile in the current issue, and now he's got a mention about the piece in the New York Post's "Page Six" column. He's quoted in the Los Angeles article as saying, "People should not care about Lindsay Lohan or Tara Reid, but this is what the cultural tennis ball machine is firing at us. This is what I have to swing...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:52 PM on Saturday, November 26, 2005

Friday, November 25, 2005

Joan and Toni

Match Guilt

I'm feel I should be beating the drum more loudly for Woody Allen's Match Point (DreamWorks, 12.25) because it's not just his best in a long time, but one of the best of the year. And I need to stop being wimpy about this.

It really is Allen's darkest and most precisely calibrated film since Crime and Misdemeanors...clean, cruel and ironic as hell.

Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in Woody Allen's Match Point

Any film worth its salt has to have thematic clarity. Match Point's theme is clear as a friggin' bell, and with echoes of...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:56 PM on Friday, November 25, 2005

Walk the Line (20th Century

Walk the Line (20th Century Fox) has really caught on. A $28 million haul is being projected for the five-day Thanksgiving holiday, plus a three day projected total is $20 million, a very good hold and very slight drop from the opening weekend total of $22 million. The word-of-mouth is obviously a factor, meaning that the only thing Fox screwed up on was not sneaking it a week before opening. If they'd done that they might've had an opening frame of $30 million or so.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:26 PM on Friday, November 25, 2005

I've said before that 20th

I've said before that 20th Century Fox probably made a bad call in delaying the opening of The Family Stone from mid-November to 12.16. Maybe they'll luck out with Diane Keaton or Sarah Jessica Parker getting Golden Globe-nominated for a Best Female Performance in Comedy or Musical...or maybe the Los Angeles or New York critics will give Diane a nod. All I know for sure is (a) The Family Stone is the best home-for-the-holidays family dramedy I've seen in a long time, on the level of You Can't Take It With You and/or The Man Who Came to Dinner, (b) neither the trailer...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:36 AM on Friday, November 25, 2005

Hold up on Kevin Smith's

Hold up on Kevin Smith's Clerks 2 going to the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, which I reported a few days ago as part of a long Word item about 22 films "tipped" for the festival. Clerks 2 (the "Passion of the Clerks" title is out) just wrapped last Friday, and the soonest they'd be ready to hit a festival would be the Cannes Film Festival in May. Smith, however, will be attending Sundance with a documentary he and Scott Mosier produced for Malcolm Ingram called Small Town/Gay Bar, which is in the documentary competition.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:19 AM on Friday, November 25, 2005

Thursday, November 24, 2005

As much as I enjoyed

As much as I enjoyed Syriana and as much as I understand and (mostly) agree with director-writer Stephen Gaghan's decision to keep the audience guessing about exactly what's going on because the various characters (played by George Clooney, Matt Damon, Christopher Plummer, et. al.) don't really get the whole picture either....even though I get and support all that, I couldn't help but chuckle at David Edelstein's Slate review.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:40 AM on Thursday, November 24, 2005

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke

L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke has startled the film world with a gut-punch quote from producer and longtime Steven Spielberg loyalist Kathy Kennedy that Munich (Universal, 12.25), which Spielberg directed and Kennedy produced, "could be his best." The quote comes from a friend of Kennedy's, who adds that Kennedy "wasn't talking that way about War of the Worlds." First, War of the Worlds was a pretty good film (except for the last ten minutes with the dipshit happy ending) so anyone who uses that film as an example of a big Spielberg miscalculation or letdown is a suspicious source to...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:37 PM on Wednesday, November 23, 2005

The comic tone of Lasse

The comic tone of Lasse Halstrom's Casanova (Disney, 12.25) isn't exactly "farcical," which, for some of us, means humor that's cloddishly broad and frequently unfunny. Casanova's alchemy is more subtle; it's selling laughs through the filter of a certain subdued old-world lunacy. It almost feels as if Hallstrom and his cast were on mescaline when they shot it. Does Casanova feel as whimsically stoned as Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers? Maybe not, but it's a very close relation. I saw it earlier this week and concluded right afterwards it's the most satisfying Lasse Hallstrom film since....I was going to say...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:34 PM on Wednesday, November 23, 2005

That rumor about Terrence Malick's

That rumor about Terrence Malick's The New World (New Line, 12.25) having been shot in 70mm is only a little bit true. They used 70mm film only twice during the shoot, for FX shots. 70mm used to be a gold-standard way of shooting a prestige film (the clarity of image on older 70mm films like Lawrence of Arabia is ummistakable), but no longer because 35mm has become so light-sensitive and technologically tuned-up.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:07 PM on Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (Warner Bros.)

Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (Warner Bros.) opens today with a 75% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating. I haven't yet written my piece about it, but despite what you may be hearing about the narrative being a little oblique for some viewers, this a riveting and deliciously cynical geopolitical drama for the ages. The best people have been speaking about it in reverent tones over the last two or three weeks, and its reputation is only going to grow as the years advance...and for good reason. I did a pretty good phone interview with Gaghan last Saturday, which you can hear by clicking on...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:21 PM on Wednesday, November 23, 2005

The town is shutting down

The town is shutting down for Thanksgiving already. Five days of friends-and-family kickback time (and a chance to catch up with all the movies and DVDs I've been putting off seeing) is about to begin. A friend sent me a "have a Happy Thanksgiving" note this morning and I replied, "I've been a Turkey-McNuggets-on-Thanks- giving guy for years, and the notion of holiday respite is a joke given the relentless demands of this column...but thanks for thinking of me, [name], and I hope you have a heathwarming time on Thursday as well." The same sentiments are hereby passed along to the readership.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:42 AM on Wednesday, November 23, 2005

I love Chris Columbus's Rent,

I love Chris Columbus's Rent, but it has a 47% Rotten Tomatoes rating so all right, okay...I'm clearly in the minority. But at least William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer likes it and the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt is seriously supportive. And the New York Times's A.O. Scott is also, to his admitted surprise, a fan. "The lyrics to one of its frenetic, show-stopping songs celebrate the idea of 'being an 'us' -- for once -- instead of a 'them'," Scott Begins, "and the world around Rent may be similarly divisible, into those viewers...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:47 AM on Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Man From Decency

Man From Decency

Every now and then you need to take a break from all the Hollywood crap, and I got a really nice one last Saturday from an encounter with former U.S. Senator George McGovern. In so doing I felt an emotion that I haven't had much contact with lately. I felt a kind of familial love.

The occasion was an early-Saturday-evening showing at Laemmle's Music Hall of Stephen Vittoria's One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern, which I've been trying to catch since last July or so, when I happened to see a poster for it in the...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:31 PM on Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Memoirs of a Geisha star

Memoirs of a Geisha star Ziyi Zhang "looks like a virtual shoo-in for a [Best Actress] nomination, and the early leader for the statuette," writes Tom O'Neill on the L.A. Times-funded site, "The Envelope." Really? On the basis of what? It can't be her acting, so this must be about Academy members believing that giving "Zi" a nomination would inject an element of graciousness and good manners in the relationship between Hollywood and the Chinese film industry. I like to show love as much as O'Neill does, but Zhang's performance ranges the gamut of emotions from A to B...she's stiff,...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:43 AM on Tuesday, November 22, 2005

"The era of moviegoing as

"The era of moviegoing as a mass audience ritual is slowly but inexorably drawing to a close," proclaims L.A. Times film industry columnist Patrick Goldstein. He repeats the standard observation about the business having been "eroded by many of the same forces that have eviscerated the music industry, decimated network TV and, yes, are clobbering the newspaper business." Then comes the Sobering Statement: "Put simply, an explosion of new technology -- the internet, DVDs, video games, downloading, cellphones and iPods -- now offers more compelling diversion than 90% of the movies in theaters, the exceptions being Harry Potter-style must-see events...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:08 AM on Tuesday, November 22, 2005

The slump is not a

The slump is not a myth, as this Hollywood Reporter/Reuters story explains: "Because ticket prices have increased slightly, estimated admissions for the fall present a bleak picture. Estimated ticket units were 208.1 million, down nearly 8% from the 223 million reported a year earlier and well shy of the record 268.3 million rung up in 2003. And with overall year-to-date sales running behind the year-ago period by nearly 7% -- which translates to a deficit of around $550 million -- it will be up to the films of the seven week year-end holiday period to close that gap." I've said...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:58 AM on Tuesday, November 22, 2005

A good interview/career analysis piece

A good interview/career analysis piece on Brokeback Mountain star Heath Ledger by Time's Belinda Luscombe ("Heath Turns It Around"). It reminded me of what I wrote hours after seeing Brokeback in Toronto, which was that between that and Ledger's then-upcoming Casanova, he has saved his career. The 26 year-old Australian tells Luscombe that he pretty much decided to kill his movie-star persona after A Knight's Tale, a film which made Ledger feel he was being sold and packaged as a slicked-up commodity. The result of Ledger's Sean Penn-ish career stratgey since then was that, with the exception of Monster's Ball,...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:25 AM on Tuesday, November 22, 2005

So Time's Richard Schickel respects

So Time's Richard Schickel respects Brokeback Mountain for its "its assault on western mythology [and] its discovery of a subversive sexual honesty in an unexpected locale," but feels it loses steam as it goes along and "finally fails to fully engage our emotions." Odd how reactions can vary so greatly. For me the ending -- the last 20 minutes especially -- is the part that ties it all together and finds the primal emotional chord.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:03 AM on Tuesday, November 22, 2005

The following films are set

The following films are set for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, which will run from Thursday, 1.19.06 through Sunday, 1.29.06: (1) Steven Shainberg's Fur, the Diane Arbus biopic with Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey, Jr., from Picturehouse; (2) Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia, a period crime thriller with Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johanson, Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhardt; (3) Joby Harold's Awake, a Weinstein Company thriller with Hayden Christensen, Sigourney Weaver, Jessica Alban; (4) Fabiane Bielinsky's The Aura, an Argentine film about a taxidermist involved in criminal intrigue; (5) Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential, a sardonic comedy about a young guy (Max Minghella) who enrolls...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:26 AM on Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Monday, November 21, 2005

Step On It

Step On It

Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha (Columbia, 12.9) is this year's model of the big bland Best Picture contender that everyone who isn't a sucker for this kind of thing -- expensive, beautifully produced, Oscar-hungry, terminally boring -- needs to throw tomatoes at.

Seriously...let's start the ball rolling now. IM your friends and coworkers and tell them you've heard it's a tedious costume-movie drag, but also that it's caught a certain headwind and there's a slight chance it could metastasize into this year's Chicago.

Ziyi Zhang during her big geisha-in-a-snowfall performance number that...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:28 PM on Monday, November 21, 2005

L.A. Times reporter Claudia Eller

L.A. Times reporter Claudia Eller has a first-rate piece about the years and years it took to bring Rent (Columbia, 11.23) to the screen, but why has almost every article I've read about this Chris Columbus film contain an allusion to a possibly cloudy box-office future? It's not the deepest or most complex thing you'll ever see -- Rent is Rent -- but Columbus has done it proud. "In its vibrant, open-hearted, selling-the-hell-out-of-each-and-every- song-and-dance-number way, Rent is a knockout," I wrote earlier this month, "and an ass-whooper and damn near glorious at times. I didn't just like...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:13 AM on Monday, November 21, 2005

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Let the word go forth

Let the word go forth from this time and place that the the new King Kong DVD (Warner Home Video, 11.22) has a wonderfuly detailed multi-chapter "making of" documentary, but (and I'm very sorry to report this) the film itself doesn't look that fantastic. Maybe a little bit better than versions shown on VHS and laser disc, but there's no great visual-leap factor. The film is marked by the same dirt and grain and speckles its had since playing on "Million Dolar Movie" in the 1950s. WHV should have John Lowry-ed this thing -- i.e., removed a portion of the grain (i.e., not...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:45 PM on Saturday, November 19, 2005

If anyone wants to talk

If anyone wants to talk about anything during tomorrow's debut airing of Elsewhere Live, send an e-mail with your phone number any time between tonight and when the show starts at 7 pm Sunday...and tell me what you want to discuss. If you really want to get my attention, send an AOL Instant Message -- my AOL user name is gzornplatt2.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:17 PM on Saturday, November 19, 2005

I was right about Walk

I was right about Walk the Line exceeding expectations. (One of the film's p.r. reps was urging me to go with a safe projection of $15 million or so.) Jim Mangold's Johhny Cash biopic did about $7.7 million yesterday, so figure about triple that for the weekend. And I hear the cards have been very good-to-excellent all along. The ace-in-the-hole is that it's doing especially well among red-state rurals. In short, a very good showing over a weekend totally swampled by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ($39 million yesterday -- i.e., Friday -- and a total of about $120 million by...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:05 AM on Saturday, November 19, 2005

Friday, November 18, 2005

A smart, strongly worded piece

A smart, strongly worded piece by the Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson about how the big-studio marketing departments only know how to sell fat tentpole movies these days, and why they should let their indie "dependent" divisions make and market the smaller-budgeted, character-driven quality level stuff. Probably true, but Thompson comes to her conclusion because of the failure of six character-driven films releases by the majors: 20th Century Fox's In Her Shoes and Stay, North Country and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang from Warner Bros. and Paramount's Elizabethtown and The Weather Man. The truth is that only one out of the six --...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:37 AM on Friday, November 18, 2005

The Hollywood Foreign Press has

The Hollywood Foreign Press has voted to move Hustle & Flow into the Drama category. This means Hustle star Terrence Howard will have to be nominated for Best Actor, and not Best Actor in a Musical, and if he gets nominated (which of course he should be...he's monumental in that role) he'll be going up against Heath Ledger, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ralph Fiennes...and one of those three will almost certainly win. So even though it's idiotic (to put it mildly) to call Hustle & Flow a musical, the HFPA should have stuck to their loony-tunes classification because now the most Howard can...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:45 AM on Friday, November 18, 2005

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Cowpoke Surge

Cowpoke Surge

It's time to say it straight (and I don't mean that as a pun): Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features, 12.9) is the movie to beat in the Best Picture race this year.

I'm not saying it will win or lose, but it's the one film everyone in the country will be talking about over the next five or six weeks and deciding where they stand deep down. And it's safe to say that a lot of convictions about this film will go far beyond issues of cinematic criteria.

On the brink of a...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:18 PM on Thursday, November 17, 2005

One thing is clear about

One thing is clear about the box-office come early December: Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (openign 12.9) will be through the roof.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:40 AM on Thursday, November 17, 2005

None of the Thanksgving movies

None of the Thanksgving movies -- Rent, The Ice Harvest, Syriana, Yours Mine and Ours, 39 Pounds of Love -- are tracking that well. Rent is soft. Jett, my 17 year-old son, says he and a couple of his friends are into seeing Syriana but the first tracking postings came out today and that it awareness and interest levels aren't much right now.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:32 AM on Thursday, November 17, 2005

Walk the Line (20th Century

Walk the Line (20th Century Fox, 11.18), the Johnny Cash biopic with Joaquin Pheonix and Reese Witherspoon, may do better this weekend than tracking figures are projecting, which is somewhere around $15 million. Surveys of moviegoers tends to focus on the big cities and miss out on the views of folks from the boonies...red-state pickup-truck country...which is where a lot of Cash's fans live. Figure something closer to $20 million, give or take. The big champ, of course, will be the Harry Potter film, but nobody cares about that..ignore it.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:25 AM on Thursday, November 17, 2005

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

"Tales of crusty Manhattan critics

"Tales of crusty Manhattan critics spending two hours weeping in the screening rooms are flooding the city," writes Choire Sitra in a New York Observer piece about the emotional chords being struck by Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features, 12.9). He also reports that "at a screening yesterday a few [critics] could be heard sniffling, [and] one of New York's most jaded reporters admitted afterward that he found it impossible to be cynical about the film -- and this admission was somehow even more shocking than tears." And Choire Sitra's a guy. (I knew that.)

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:22 AM on Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

I thought the same thing

I thought the same thing everyone else thought when I heard Ken Tucker is going back to Entertainment Weekly and giving up his New York magazine film critic gig. I thought, shit, give the job back to Peter Rainer, who was whacked last year to make room for Tucker.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:51 PM on Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Thank God someone shares my

Thank God someone shares my feelings about the Harry Potter franchise, which is that I've had it...want nothing more to do with wizards or Hogwarts or Robbie Coltrane...be gone. I didn't even go to last Monday's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire all-media screening...even though I'm vaguely enticed by the idea of seeing Emma Watson again. MSNBC contributor Dave White calls this syndrome (one I've been suffering from since the summer of '03) "Harry Potter fatigue"...whatever. Goblet of Fire opens 11.18, and we all need to look the other way.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:28 PM on Tuesday, November 15, 2005

All new things are a

All new things are a little awkward and off-balance at first and I'm not exactly a seasoned radio personality (and I don't want to sound like some motor-mouth KABC talk-show hyena anyway), but this coming Sunday, 11.20, at 7 pm Pacific, "Elsewhere Live" -- a new twice-weekly live internet movie talk forum -- will launch. Airing every Sunday and Thursday at that hour, it'll be an actual "live" thing. Click on the "Elsewhere Live" ad this Sunday and you'll be able to listen in with Winamp or iTunes, and each segment will be saved and archived for anyone who wants to listen to...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:19 PM on Tuesday, November 15, 2005

The Envelope is reporting that

The Envelope is reporting that David Cronenberg's A History of Violence is a possible early favorite to win the Best Picture award from the New York Film Critics Circle. "A veteran Oscar campaigner not involved with the film" says so, and so does NYFCC chairperson Thelma Adams. Adams hasn't "snooped and made an early vote count"...oh...but she's a big fan of A History of Violence and...what? I love the Cronenberg, but it's not the film that Brokeback Mountain is...c'mon. And Capote is far more haunting and aromatic. And nobody's seen The New World or Munich yet. I really don't get it....Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:45 PM on Tuesday, November 15, 2005

I've been asked to refrain

I've been asked to refrain from running my review of Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (Warner Bros., 12.3) until 11.23, but Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers is running his because...he's Peter Travers! We all know he gets quoted too often, and that he's creamed over far too many mediocre films, but I agree with Travers all the way this time. "Written and directed in a fever of risk-taking provocation, [Syriana] takes off with the lightning speed of a thriller, the gonzo force of frontline journalism and the emotional wallop of a drama that puts a human face on shocking statistics," he proclaims....Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:34 PM on Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Here comes the gay Superman

Here comes the gay Superman movie...whoops, sorry...that just slipped out. It's the lavender-red bikini briefs worn by Brandon Roush more than anything else. Sorry, but they've always looked a little bit West Hollywood gay bar-ish, which sort of argues with the standard notion of Superman/Clark Kent being a kind of a big-hearted dork from the Middle-American heartland. And I don't care about the Superman saga either. Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White...I'm sick of all of 'em. This movie is a metaphor for Hollywood's cancer of the imagination.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:31 PM on Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Fifteen documentaries have accumulated enough

Fifteen documentaries have accumulated enough points with the Academy's selection committee to be considered semi-finalists, and Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man doesn't make the cut? Uhhhm... it's only one of the finest films of the year. I'm also a big fan of Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace and that didn't make it either, although Occupation: Dreamland, another U.S.-grunts-in-Iraq doc, did. The other fourteen finalists: After Innocence, The Boys of Baraka, Darwin's Nightmare, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Favela Rising, Mad Hot Ballroom, March of the Penguins, Murderball, On Native Soil: The Documentary of the 9/11 Commission Report, Rize,...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:53 AM on Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Terrence Howard killed in Hustle

Terrence Howard killed in Hustle & Flow. This alone warrants a Best Actor nomination. He was easily the best thing in Get Rich or Die Tryin'...he raised the energy levels in the third act. He gave one of the best performances in Crash...right up there with Matt Dillon and Don Cheadle. He was first-rate and fully invested in his detective role in the likable if not stallar Four Brothers, and I didn't even see Lackawanna Blues. This has really been his year and...well, I trust the SAG membership isn't thinking about blowing him off. He may not win, but he's at least assured...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:20 AM on Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Movie City News columnist Kristopher

Movie City News columnist Kristopher Tapley has included two whoppers in his just-posted article about the dearth of suitable Best Actress contenders. Fantasy #1: Apart from Mrs. Henderson Presents star Judi Dench and Walk The Line's Reese Witherspoon, the only other person Tapley would "put money on is Ziyi Zhang in Memoirs of a Geisha." The 26 year-old Chinese actress, he says, "really comes into her own opposite Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh in one of the only satisfying films of the awards season thus far." The other concerns Keira Knightley. Tapley says buzz is building for this pretty but talentless...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:35 AM on Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Monday, November 14, 2005

There's a good South Park

There's a good South Park show on Comedy Central on Wednesday night...good, I'm told, because it'll rip into Scientology, Tom Cruise, etc.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:52 AM on Monday, November 14, 2005

Every DVD-covering journalist in North

Every DVD-covering journalist in North America must be pushing Warner Home for a review copy of the special edition two-disc DVD of King Kong, due out 11.22, because WHV is telling me "nope" and they usually say "sure, no problem." If anyone has an advance "screener" lying around...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:26 AM on Monday, November 14, 2005

An informative, nicely written piece

An informative, nicely written piece by Time's Josh Tyrangiel about Stephen Gaghan's researching of Syriana (Warner Bros., 11.23). And a good New York Times piece by Stephen Farber about the current popularity of multi-narrative Syriana-type films.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 12:10 AM on Monday, November 14, 2005

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Beware of two highly touted,

Beware of two highly touted, nicely production-designed, supposedly audience-friendly movies that have been frequently mentioned as Best Picture contenders. You may go to them when they open and like them, etc., and that'll be fine...but everything I've heard so far tells me these two are going to get slammed by a majority of the critics. Both are broadly-based and aimed at the shmoes, and at least one of these will probably do very well with audiences, based on NRG test scores. But every now and then you see some- thing you've heard will be quite the thing because a couple of prominent journos...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:18 PM on Sunday, November 13, 2005

The Big Question in Anne

The Big Question in Anne Thompson's "Risky Business" piece about Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain isn't really answered, so let's boil some of the snow out. The question is, will the quietly homopho- bic Bubbas out there go for Brokeback Mountain the way they might if they weren't vaguely weirded out about gay people? And if they don't, what will this do to the film's chances of winning the Best Picture Oscar? Thompson quotes Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation spokesperson Damon Romine saying that Brokeback Mountain "is the first film I've seen about two men in love, [that's been] told in a...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:55 PM on Sunday, November 13, 2005

Did I read or just

Did I read or just hear a line allegedly said by a gay jounalist- critic to a friend, which is that Brokeback Mountain is "our Gone With the Wind"? B. Ruby Rich wrote something along those lines a couple of months ago, but Anne Thompson says that a Toronto journalist said it specifically. Who was it?

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:38 PM on Sunday, November 13, 2005

War With Itself

The recently-issued Paramount Home Video DVD of the 1953 War of the Worlds, one of the most beautifully photographed Technicolor movies ever made, looks absolutely breathtaking. This sci-fi classic provides one of the lushest color-baths in Hollywood history and has always looked sumptuous...now it's heavenly.

But there's an unfortunate side effect to this clarity. The new DVD (released on 11.1) pretty much ruins the suspension-of-disbelief element because of the way- too-visible wires holding up the Martian spaceships. You can see them repeatedly during scenes of the initial assault against the military...a thicket of blue-tinted wires holding up each one.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:33 PM on Sunday, November 13, 2005

Friday, November 11, 2005

Bring It On

Bring It On

Shoot any kind of outdoor footage of the Middle East (especially in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, et. al.) and you get the same flat terrain...aflame, parched, bleachy...which makes for a kind of atmospheric monotony.

But movies shot there (or which happen there) don't have to be dull. The Middle East is the dramatic boiling pot of our times. It's just a matter of going there and absorbing the particulars and pruning them down into something fitting and well- sprung.

U.S. soldier involved in fighting in Falujah in '04

I've recently seen a no-pulse,...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:32 PM on Friday, November 11, 2005

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Will you listen to New

Will you listen to New York Times critic Stephen Holden jizz all over Keira Knightley and her intoxicating aura in Pride and Prejudice (which is quite tedious, by the way)? Knightley "is, in a word, a knockout," he enthuses. "When this 20-year-old star is on the screen, which is much of the time, you can barely take your eyes off her...her radiance so suffuses the film that it's foolish to imagine [her character] would be anyone's second choice." This is dereliction of duty. There should be more to a captivating actress than looks and radiance. She needs to have it inside...deep...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:37 PM on Thursday, November 10, 2005

The cathartic effect of war

The cathartic effect of war films and what they get into vs. don't get into -- particularly in the recent Jarhead, Gunner Palace and Syriana -- will be the topic at the annual "Times Talks" on Saturday, 11.12. It's happening inside theatre #10 at Hollywood's Arclight cinema. Kicking things off at 11:30 will be critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis riffing on war films past and present, followed by a 2 pm panel discussion between Times editor Gerald Marzorati and directors Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight), Michael Tucker (Gunner Palace), Garrett Scott (Operation Dreamland) and Stephen Marshall (Battleground). The finale will be a...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:07 PM on Thursday, November 10, 2005

All the big year-end films

All the big year-end films but three are either currently screening or will start to screen in a week or so. Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The White Countess, Casanova, The Producers (starting on or about 11.18), Syriana, Memoirs of a Geisha, Narnia, Match Point, et. al. The last to be considered will be Terrence Malick's The New World (there's an Academy screening set for 11.26), Peter Jackson's King Kong and Steven Spielberg's Munich (both in very early December). It's flurry time, screening-conflict time, dog-and-pony-show time.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:52 AM on Thursday, November 10, 2005

Exactly how weak is the

Exactly how weak is the Best Picture contender list? A lot of films so far have fallen by the wayside, and more will follow suit before long. The only dug-in finalists by my barometer are Capote and Brokeback Mountain. (Haven't yet seen the apparently well-regarded Memoirs of a Geisha.) The highly-rated possibles are Walk The Line, The Constant Gardener, Syriana, The New World and Crash. Tea-leaf readings are telling me Munich will fall short, but that and $1.75 will get you a bus ticket. The reality that nobody seems to want to face up to is that Cinderella Man, easily one of the...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:35 AM on Thursday, November 10, 2005

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

I'm struggling to sift through

I'm struggling to sift through my feelings and understand why I'm looking forward to seeing Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha (Columbia, 12.9) with the same anticipation one normally associates with going to the dentist. I shouldn't admit to this. Prejudice before-the-fact is not an admirable thing. If it's made with the right stuff, if it's a touching film...it will be something to cheer. And yet...and yet. Am I concerned because Gold Derby guy Tom O'Neill is over the moon about it? Yes. Am I persuaded by Time's Richard Corliss having declared that "it has a shot to join Chicago as...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:03 PM on Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Yes, I'd very much like

Yes, I'd very much like to see James D. Stern's untitled documen- tary about how thuggish Bush loyalists managed to prevent enough liberal-leaning voters in Ohio from voting (or managed to discourage them from same) in order to tip the totals in President Bush's favor and give him a second term. Stern, a Hollywood financier, has submitted the film to the Sundance Film Festival. Oh...so no seeing it until January?

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:26 PM on Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Jarhead is over, according to

Jarhead is over, according to an Envelope/Gold Derby story that went up today. Okay...but I think we all knew that a couple of weeks ago. Jarhead is the Middle Eastern grunt movie that doesn't work, and Gunner Palace is the Middle Eastern American grunt movie that does work.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:08 PM on Wednesday, November 9, 2005

The buzz on Steven Spielberg's

The buzz on Steven Spielberg's Munich (Universal, 12.25) seems to be...well, not building. First that less-than-encouraging teaser with indications that Munich is going to be some kind of dutiful procedural with a sentimental streak (a line from Eric Bana's character expressing concern that his daughter's affection may be at risk if she finds he's been killing Palestinian terrorists, or words to that effect). And now comes word that a senior Spielberg rep was talking fairly seriously about his boss's possible participation in a certain promotional event that would have stirred talk and/or fanned heat regarding possible Oscar nominations or Academy support for Munich....Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:36 PM on Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Envelope/Gold Derby's Tom O'Neill has

Envelope/Gold Derby's Tom O'Neill has seen Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha....aagghh! He's predicting "Oscar voters will bow deeply" to it. Beware O'Neill issuing proclamations like this. He's obviously partial to Marshall. I, on the other hand, have little love for the guy because of his direction of the deeply loathed Chicago. I saw a flashing warning light when O'Neill wrote that "the director of Best Picture champ Chicago has once again proven what a winner he is"...forget it, throw it out. O'Neill's claim that Geisha is a "shoo-in for a Best Picture nomination" may be a reliable call, but he's clearly too...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:52 PM on Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Rent Renewal

Rent Renewal

The advance word on Rent (Columbia, 11.23) for the last few months has been that it's going to feel slightly dated (being a late '80s piece about some young AIDS-af- flicted Manhattanites), and Chris Columbus, not the grittiest and most naturalistic of directors, will gloss it up too much, so watch out.

The buzz was wrong. Say it again: the buzz was wrong.

Rosario Dawson, Adam Pascal during "Light My Candle" number in Chris Columbus's film of Jonathan Larson's Rent (Columbia, 11.23)

Call me emotionally impressionable, call me unsophisticated, call me a...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:14 PM on Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Monday, November 7, 2005

There is much reported concern

There is much reported concern that the rescue-of-the-Port- Authority-guys-under-the-9/11-rubble movie that Oliver Stone is directing will be insensitive and/or exploitative, and so Stone and the untitled flm's co-producer Michael Shamberg are promising everyone the film will be respectful to 9/11 victims and their families, blah, blah. And I'm starting to get the idea that these guys are going to be so scared about being insensitive that it's going to be tough for them to make a movie. I don't care what the subject is, but one of the general rules of filmmaking is that the more a director feels he/she has to tiptoe...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:27 PM on Monday, November 7, 2005

Have there been that many

Have there been that many songs inspired by 9/11?? Can you think of even one? I can, and it's Bruce Springsteen's "Nothing Man". I can't put my finger on why exactly (maybe it's that line about a "cloud of pink vapor") but I can feel that day in my veins and in my heart every time I listen to this song. I happened to turn it on last weekend while driving on the Massachusetts Turnpike and it brought tears to my eyes. If Stone's 9/11 movie can arouse even a portion of the emotion that this song has, it'll be a good...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:18 PM on Monday, November 7, 2005

Girl Can't Help It

Girl Can't Help It

There's no question about Sarah Silverman being some kind of avatar of a new, out-there comic dispensation. She's had a handle on it for a while...ten years or so, she told me last Friday...but most of us, I'm presuming, are just starting to tune in.

There's something about that dry, super-perverse delivery of hers...the dingle-dan- gle rhythm of her schpiel...it's just perfect. I could listen to that reedy chatty voice for hours. And those oh-and-by-the-way-I-was-licking-jelly-off-my-boyfriend's-penis jokes...not sexy but so sublime.

Comic Sarah Silverman

I go to a comedy club maybe once every couple...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:09 PM on Monday, November 7, 2005

Sunday, November 6, 2005

The word on Stephen Gaghan's

The word on Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (Warner Bros., 11.23) is gaining, building...taking a surprising turn. And right at the top of the really-recommended list is the performance by Fat Clooney. I love that name...that's what's been missing all along...a pot belly...a belly like a bowl of jello...tell him to drop the "George," stay fat as a cow and totally become this other guy. "Fat Clooney is one of the greatest things you'll see in a movie all year," claims a reputable journo- acquaintance. "They've had some Syriana screenings...at least two that I know of"...Cynthia Swartz says it's been shown only to people who...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:37 PM on Sunday, November 6, 2005

I haven't laughed out loud

I haven't laughed out loud at anything in days, and along comes this little New York Daily News story and...it happened. Each and every kid who was in that theatre -- boy or girl, no matter how old -- probably has the memory of that young guy hanging himself burned into their brains now...for life. The cruelest jokes are the funniest. (Mort Sahl said that.)

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:41 AM on Sunday, November 6, 2005

It's called The Chronicles of

It's called The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Disney, 12.9). Fine. And I'm supposed to give a shit because...? I've read Lorne Manly's N.Y. Times article and I'm still shaking my head. Narnia would be another take-down movie if I cared enough to get into it.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:35 AM on Sunday, November 6, 2005

If I were given to

If I were given to cynicism I would say it's far more usual than unusual these days for big-studio marketing departments to distort, misrepresent and otherwise lie about what an upcoming movie is like, or is even about. If you wanted to really get cynical you could say it's not movie quality (and I don't mean esoteric Jim Hoberman-type quality, but quality your mother would recognize if she could be dragged out of her house and down to a multiplex) ...it's not quality that determines success these days, but to what degree big-studio marketers are going to fuck things up for you. That's...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:18 AM on Sunday, November 6, 2005

Let's take the kids to

Let's take the kids to Chicken Little. Supposed to be kinda crappy ...screw it...take 'em anyway. Give Disney the $30 million weekend it doesn't deserve. I read Jarhead blows also...let's go see it! Way of showing support for the troops in Iraq...sorta kinda. Boring movie...nudging $30 million by Sunday! Seen Saw II yet? Blood, dismemberment, piece-of-shit...I'm there! The Legend of Zorro movie is cruddy also...let's pay $20 plus parking, popcorn and drinks to see it and help encourage lazy Hollywood producers to make more like it! As long as I don't have to sit through a good film, I don't care.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:46 AM on Sunday, November 6, 2005

The only thing I've heard

The only thing I've heard about Steven Gaghan's Syriana (Warner Bros., 11.23 limited) that's sunk in to any degree is that it's "very political." In other words, the person who conveyed this view feels it doesn't deliver as well in emotional, beating-heart terms. Ignore it...blue-state-persuasion people really want this movie to work. The excellent trailer suggests that the aim of Syriana (a really annoying title) is to be a Traffic-type exploration of the who-what-why behind 9/11..a probing of the politics of Big Oil, Middle Eastern subcurrents, radical Islamic rage and alienation...the whole magillah. One of those tapestries with several...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:41 AM on Sunday, November 6, 2005

Hypothesis: Comedy Central or HBO

Hypothesis: Comedy Central or HBO or Showtime runs a series called "The Avengers," about a squad of vigilantes, their activities funded by some secretive billionaire, who go out and find tech- support staffers who pick up the phone for various manufacturers of computer-related products like IPAQ handhelds and Norton Antivirus...both the out-sourcing morons in India and their U.S. counterparts...and then take them to remote warehouses, tie them down and coolly and methodically torture them in ways that would appall the Marquis de Sade, gradually inducing in each victim a ghastly, horrible, beyond-painful death. I'm just saying in a very calm and loving and...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:24 AM on Sunday, November 6, 2005

Saturday, November 5, 2005

Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features, 12.9)

Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features, 12.9) is about a coupla cowpokes in love with each other, but it's not a "gay" film...not even vaguely. It's a epic modern western with a tragic twist. It's about lamenting, about fearfulness, about being stuck.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:48 AM on Saturday, November 5, 2005

So what about Rachel Weicz

So what about Rachel Weicz deserving a Best Suppporting Actress nom for her work in The Constant Gardener? Right up there with In Her Shoes' Shirley MacLaine, Match Point's Scarlett Johannson, The Family Stone's Diane Keaton, Junebug's Amy Adams, et. al. And who except a total Producers water-carrier would seriously put forward Uma Thurman's performance as any kind of competitor? Playing a dumb-blonde sex poodle in a broad, brassy comedy-musical...? C'mon!

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:26 AM on Saturday, November 5, 2005

Gold Derby's Tom O'Neill, writing

Gold Derby's Tom O'Neill, writing on the L.A.Times-owned site "The Envelope," is projecting Peter Jackson's King Kong as a credible Oscar nominee for Best Picture because director-writer Peter Jackson has taken three hours to "flesh out the love story between Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody" and "expand the psychological complexity of the movie's lead characters, thus giving them more substance, while also fleshing out the plot so it can better explore the theme of commercial man exploiting innocent beast." Uh-huh...and the 100-minute 1933 original didn't address this theme sufficiently?

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:06 AM on Saturday, November 5, 2005

It's not just me any

It's not just me any more. New York Press critic Armond White has stood up and strongly praised Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, which recently came out on a Fox Home Video DVD. Lifeboat shows Hitchcock using "suspense tactics to reveal spiritual and philosophical mystery, [and] thus achieves profundity akin to The Birds. Hitchcock's famous toying with psychological dread [in this film] has a complexity that also speaks to the present political moment. Contemporary critics feel no relation to John Steinbeck's story, to judge by the DVD's recent reviews; they simply dismiss it as WWII sentimentality. [But] Lifeboat deals with moral and sexual...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:33 AM on Saturday, November 5, 2005

An interesting coincidence that the

An interesting coincidence that the three biggest take-down movies of the holiday season -- The Producers, King Kong and Munich -- are all Universal releases. Did I just say that? I just know that prior to every holiday season a journo consensus forms about which of the big hoo-hahs are cruisin' for a bruisin' in the biggest, most self-aggrandizing way...movies coming in with such high expectations that's probably a good idea to smack them down on general principle. I don't want to hate anything or anyone, but if I had to predict which of the Big Three will give forward-thinking moviegoers the most...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:53 AM on Saturday, November 5, 2005

Has the big emotional fight

Has the big emotional fight scene between Anthony Rapp's Mark and Adam Pascal's Roger, one of the big emotional highlights of the Rent stage show, been cut from the Chris Columbus film? Rent has begun screening and there are issues...people having trouble with this and that...the staging of certain numbers, the infamous Columbus sugar-touch. Wait, there are good things. Rosario Dawson handles the singing and dancing pretty well. Pascal holds his own. Some of it works. Is it commonly known that Sarah Silverman has a brief, comedic, non-singing role? She told me so yesterday during our Boston interview. Her character is called...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:58 AM on Saturday, November 5, 2005

Saturday morning and the Munich

Saturday morning and the Munich trailer...er, teaser...is up. No surprises, no oddities...precisely the focus and tone anyone who's been following this project might expect. Impressions can be misleading, but the teaser is telling us that Munich will totally adhere to the mode of a typical hard-wired procedural about some Israelis agents killing Palestinians and then feeling guilty about it. A hard-wired procedural directed by a relentlessly praised, obeisance-before-power, affluent-bubble-dwelling, 58 year-old director named Steven Spielberg. A teaser is obviously its own thing, and usually bears a catch-as-catch-can relationship to the film it's selling...at best. But even with this acknowledgment, I'm starting...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:25 AM on Saturday, November 5, 2005

Friday, November 4, 2005

Has It Down

Has It Down

Today (Friday, 10.4) is Peter Sarsgaard Meditation Day, if you want to think like that. You know...thoughts of who he is and how sharp his mind is, what he's got stewing inside, what that easy smile and those hooded eyes really indicate deep down, where's he's heading.

Sarsgaard, 34, has two new movies opening today -- Jarhead, a Waiting-for-Godot- ish Gulf War drama in which he plays Troy, the hardest and truest Marine of them all...an intense embodiment of the modern deballed warrior...and The Dying Gaul, in which he plays a gay screenwriter involved in a sexual-ethical muddle with a...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:00 AM on Friday, November 4, 2005

Thursday, November 3, 2005

Endeavor agent John Lesher has

Endeavor agent John Lesher has taken the Paramount Classics job..the one that Ruth Vitale and David Dinerstein shared all those years. Whenever a hip, priveleged, high-strung white person leaves a job, he/she is always replaced by another hip, priveleged, high-strung white person...which is why I rarely report about Hollywood hires. That said, it's always been said of Lesher (and I've always liked the "idea" of Lesher because of this) that he doesn't think or act like a typical suit. He has the personality of a frazzled director, a struggling screenwriter...he's very much like the guys (Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu, etc.) he used to represent...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:17 AM on Thursday, November 3, 2005

Boston bus travel is going

Boston bus travel is going to get in the way of timely filings for the next few hours. I'l throw up what I can later today...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:14 AM on Thursday, November 3, 2005

Wednesday, November 2, 2005

Not Enough

Not Enough

An impassioned, extremely well-made film with a sincere emotional current (i.e., one that actually makes you feel something with an application of professional finesse rather than hokey button-pushing) opens after being acclaimed by critics or film festival audiences or both...and what happens?

The public doesn't respond with much enthusiasm. The movie opens in third or fourth or fifth place, or it opens okay but not as strongly as it should have, and then it's dead by the second or third weekend, if not sooner.

Terrence Howard, Taraji P. Henson in Craig Brewer's Hustle &...

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:53 AM on Wednesday, November 2, 2005

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

The failure of Jarhead to

The failure of Jarhead to stir any primal chords about anything ...to make anyone feel anything about what happened 14 years ago in Kuwait, or sound any echoes about what's going on in Iraq today...I think this absence of content is going to build respect for a film that dealt very precisely with young soldiers coping with an often boring war situation in a very real way. I'm speaking of Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace, a credible contender for a Best Feature Documentary Oscar. It isn't easy to go out and film an unpopular war, and the conflict in Iraq is something that's happening...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:35 AM on Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Steven Spielberg is rushing to

Steven Spielberg is rushing to get Munich finished in due time ...well, of course...yeah. John Williams is only just starting to get his musical score into shape, but pic will be done and screenable by early December. It has to be. Universal will be putting the Israeli Mossad eye-for-an-eye revenge drama in theatres on 12.23. Eric Bana, Daniel Craig and Geoffrey Rush costar.

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:52 AM on Tuesday, November 1, 2005

I can feel and hear

I can feel and hear the Oscar air hissing out of the Jarhead balloon....sssssssssssssss. I'm not just talking about my own opinion of Sam Mendes' Gulf War non-drama -- it's being written off across the board. It was noted last Friday (10.28) in a lead-in to a blog-riff by Steve Pond on the L.A. Times Oscar site "The Envelope", that Jarhead may be the first Oscar casualty of the season. "Reviews are starting to come in and so far it's not looking good," wrote Pond. "While Jarhead was assumed to be a strong contender as well, initial reviews in...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:53 AM on Tuesday, November 1, 2005

I ran my enthusiastic review

I ran my enthusiastic review of Woody Allen's Match Point (DreamWorks, 12.25) from the Cannes Film Festival five and half months ago. I opined, in part, that it's Allen's "darkest and strongest film -- certainly his most moralistically bitter and ironic -- since 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors....somewhat stiff and artificial here and there, and at the same time scalpel-like in its social observations, this mixed-bag drama deals the same kind of cards and has its footing in more or less the same philosophical realm as Crimes and Misdemeanors, and it has a finale that absolutely kills." It's not opening until Christmas...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:38 AM on Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Is this definite? Peter Jackson

Is this definite? Peter Jackson has told Empire magazine that King Kong's snaggle tooth hasn't been eliminated but reduced in size. (Recent reports/indications had suggested the dreaded s.t. had been eliminated altogether...not!) And that the basic look of Kong is that of a big grandpa ape with craggy features and silver hairs sprouting all over...the apparent equivalent of a 65 or 70 year-old. In other words, given Kong's libidinal longings for Naomi Watts' Ann Darrow, Jackson basically sees him as a dirty old ape. Other Empire divulgings: (a) As of last Thursday, Jackson was putting finishing touches on the editing, sound...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:12 AM on Tuesday, November 1, 2005

It sure is heartening news

It sure is heartening news that Eileen Newman has been named as the new exec director of the National Board of Review, following reports by Fox 411's Roger Friedman of internal dissent and discord. Is this supposed to signify that the NBR's annual awards (which are always the first out of the gate) might one day be considered as something more than a mild news snort, an anecdotal diversion...a joke?

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:04 AM on Tuesday, November 1, 2005

For no reason other than

For no reason other than a strong belief that all remnants of Danny Kaye should stay buried six feet under, last summer's news about Owen Wilson planning to star in a new version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty seemed like a dreadful prospect. Which is why yesterday's Reuters report that the Mitty project has gone into turnaround feels like a very good thing. Mark Waters (Just Like Heaven, Mean Girls) was to have directed; the screenwriter is/was Richard LaGravanese (The Horse Whisperer). The inability to find an actress to fill the Virginia Mayo role "seems to have been the main reason...Read More

posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:41 AM on Tuesday, November 1, 2005

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