The Austin Film Society and Fantastic Fest's August 15 dusk-til-dawn Cinemapocalypse marathon in Austin, Texas will screen Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which played well during Comic-Con last weekend. The writer-director will introduce the film as well his chosen double feature. Clearly, the Weinsteins are chasing the young male demo. The full release is on the jump.
Brad Pitt graces the cover of Wired Magazine's August issue, which just arrived in my morning mail. (The mag hits newstands July 21, and will post on Wired.com Thursday night after E.T.'s broadcast break.) He's frowning at wearing a bluetooth headset, and the coverline reads "With advice from Inglourious Basterd Brad Pitt"---about all the mention his new movie receives in the magazine.
That's because Wired doesn't tend to sell magazines with movie stars. Truth is, with Premiere gone, there aren't many classy monthly magazine covers left for male stars of Pitt's stature. And he's already done the good ones. Tabloids like People, Us and In Touch have taken over the supermarket racks. Old media moguls like Tina Brown and Bonnie Fuller are jumping into the online fray. (Tabloid queen Fuller is joining Mail.com owner Jay Penske's HollywoodLife.com.) Gone are the days when uber-press agents like Pat Kingsley batted off cover requests like flies while demanding deal terms like photographer and writer approval. Pitt doesn't even pay a PR rep anymore.
So what's a matinee idol to do? Several months ago, Pitt had his agency CAA call Wired--Conde Nast's tech-savvy mag with a growing circulation of about 700,000 readers, predominantly male--and suggest him for the cover. Neil Patrick Harris had just turned the magazine down. After much back and forth, Wired confirmed that Pitt really did want to be on their August cover.
The magazine was interested in fitting him into their August package "New Rules for Digital Gentlemen and Other Highly Evolved Humans," but he had to meet their specific needs. In the end, he did it their way. Pitt turned up at L.A.'s Smashbox Studios alone, sans entourage, for a photo shoot with Dan Winters. He was interviewed for the cover story about bathroom text and phone etiquette and offered some advice to Twitter King Ashton Kutcher about posting pictures of his wife's butt, among other things. His cover pull quote is delicious: "Who cares if your Warcraft wife is really a dude. If it's good, don't check under the hood."
This change in star behavior is indicative of an overall sea change in Hollywood. Talking about her plans for Hollywood Life, Fuller told the NYT that celebrity is "not just about movie stars any more." As studios slash budgets, they are reevaluating what stars are worth. That measurement used to be about opening movies: you paid a major star $20 million to put audience butts in seats. All that is clearly not working any more, as robots, reboots and animated characters are selling better this summer than the likes of Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell and Christian Bale. I see smart star Pitt, 45, recognizing that a cool cover on a cool magazine might sell some tickets to his Quentin Tarantino World War II flick this August. Therefore it was worth chasing--and then going with the flow.
As much as I want to see the Steven Soderbergh/Brad Pitt version of Moneyball, reality needs to return to the movie business. Soderbergh himself occupies a strange nexus within Hollywood. He once told me that he didn't want to direct movies out of the back seat of a limousine. And he is willing to play studio ball or indie ball, as he sees fit. At the same time, like all gifted directors, he wants to push himself, and the art form. But he often loses interest in what movie audiences might want. (UPDATE: On Soderbergh's upcoming Warners' agro-business comedy The Informant!, starring Matt Damon, which is set to debut at September's Toronto Film Fest, the director was eager to be "audience friendly," says co-financeer Groundswell CEO Michael London.)
That's the real reason that reality has set in. Soderbergh has also stated that the economics of the movie business are out of whack. He's right. A correction is long overdue. But I hate to see worthy movies going by the wayside. It would make sense for more filmmakers to step into the "specialty" side of the business and make these risky movies for a price.
Of course the Soderberghs and Michael Manns of the world want to express themselves as artists. And ride the studio gravy train. But the studios are not going to indulge their whims anymore at high budget levels. I'd hate for Public Enemies' mixed reception to give the studios an excuse to not make movies like this anymore. I also don't want Universal execs to abandon their willingness to try out-of-the-box movies that sometimes work (Wanted, Mamma Mia!) and sometimes don't (State of Play, Duplicity). The last thing we want is for them to make more movies like Land of the Lost!
Because it's only going to get tougher for smart movies for adults to get made, moviemakers who land a chance at bat need to hit these films out of the park--and connect with audiences. Now is not the time for navel-gazing and experimentation at big-budget levels. That's the deal.
Here's what I learned on my rounds at the Transformers: ROTF premiere Monday night:
Transformers 2 cost north of $200 million, plus $150 million in global marketing. That's $350 million going in. It could outgross the last one ($708 million worldwide) and score $1 billion around the world. There's no question it will open. (The record to beat for a five day weekend is Spider-Man 2's $152.4 million, reports Variety.) The anxiety is about what the second weekend drop-off will be--will it play, in other words. I think so.
The movie is critic-proof, and needs to be, the reviews will suck. (The NYT uses the word "cretinous.") It's a nonsensical, eye-rolling macho fantasy--it's about Megan Fox running in slow motion, and artillery fire, and giant roiling robots desecrating ancient pyramids, and rows of pointy-nosed fighter planes taking off in formation. But there are sequences--one where the Decepticons attack and sink an aircraft carrier comes to mind-- that are stunningly beautiful. Bay has the gift of visual poetry--as well as chaotic pixel excess.
The problem is, when movies like this do so well, it encourages the studios to keep thinking in terms of big-scale brand-names. At the after-party, Paramount chairman Brad Grey admitted that the studio will keep chasing these movies. It's where the money is. (And they'll probably keep passing on iffy ventures like Steven Soderbergh's resolutely uncommercial Moneyball--even with Grey pal Brad Pitt attached. The back end was still a problem, even with Pitt's upfront price slashed. The movie would have had to make $100 million. And that wasn't likely to happen.)
What made the Transformers sequel so expensive was ILM's robots, which are ingenious. (So is the sound design, which helps to make the characters more distinctive and cut through the clutter.) I prefer the little gremlin-like robot characters, partly because my brain can comprehend them. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura (who came out clean in Michael Cieply's NYT profile) says there are about three times more transformers in this one--the last one had about 13--and they're best viewed in big-screen IMAX. Here's an interview with ILM genius Scott Farrar. And EW runs a Megan Fox layout and interview.
Pay boosts are another added sequel expense. Shia LaBeouf, who hung with Emile Hirsch at the Transformers street party as Linkin Park rocked out, almost didn't make the sequel when his manager demanded $20 million. LaBeouf had made a deal for $750,000 for the first two films. After the first one scored, Paramount offered $3 million for the next two. They wound up settling for $5 million each. LaBeouf talks to Kim Masters about his wild, wild life.
Michael Bay wishes he had one more week to edit the picture, which everyone, including him, agrees is too long. It could use a trim. Paramount's new production chief Adam Goodman, who supervised the movie, asked Bay to cut it, but he wouldn't, partly because they ran out of time. Paramount wants another installment to go real soon, on a slightly smaller-scale. Bay has other plans. He says he wants to do something else first. Clear his head a little.
It was a bad week for Steven Soderbergh and his $57-million screen version of Michael Lewis's baseball book Moneyball, which Sony shut down as of Friday--with a Monday start-of-production date. (How odd that "producer" Michael DeLuca was on his honeymoon last week and still has not returned. Soderbergh's producer Greg Jacobs was in charge, clearly.) The problem with the Sony spin over the weekend is that it doesn't make sense for Sony chief Amy Pascal to be suddenly discovering that she didn't like a script that had been in circulation--and active pre-production for weeks. Soderbergh was open about his documentary-like approach, and had obtained Major League Baseball cooperation.
So the Brad Pitt theory-- that he got cold feet (not for the first time) and used Pascal as his beard-- makes more sense. But that is not what I'm hearing from Pitt's camp. They say he was ready to make Soderbergh's movie. It's hard to imagine Pitt agreeing to make the movie with another director at this point. It would have to be Soderbergh or no one. Pascal was demanding certain changes that Pitt and Soderbergh refused to make and threw her foot down, perfectly willing to walk away. Point is, she would have made the movie a year ago. She can't afford for this movie to lose money right now, bottom line.
Soderbergh had the weekend to line up another studio, but his bad luck was that Paramount was in disarray. And Warners passed. Either he makes some kind of rapprochement with Sony or the project's dead. Here's Michael Fleming. UPDATE: And the LAT.
In the overall scheme of things, a $57-million budget is pocket change to a studio, especially a big-spender like Sony. So why would Sony chairman Amy Pascal risk alienating a star like Brad Pitt and a director like Steven Soderbergh by pulling the plug on baseball movieMoneyball hours before it was to start shooting? She's sending a message to Hollywood, loud and clear. She's asserting her power to just say no. Finally, in this economy, the studios are spending less on fewer available slots. That's also what Brad Grey is signalling at Paramount by ditching production execs John Lesher and Brad Weston: he's saying, "There's no room for error."
Pascal can afford to let this movie go because it was always a risky play, and she clearly isn't willing to take a gamble right now unless she believes in it. (That might not have been true a year ago.) According to sources close to the movie, last week Soderbergh turned in a shooting script that was different from the earlier Zaillian draft that the studio had green lit. (Sony producer Michael DeLuca is on the movie.) Pascal felt the honorable thing to do was to allow Soderbergh to take the film to other studios, where he could presumably make the film he wanted to make.
If Soderbergh can't get the movie financed--which includes coming up with some $10 million already charged against the movie, including Zaillian's scripts and pre-production costs; the movie was slated to shoot Monday--it will return to Sony, who will go back to their Zaillian draft and presumably seek another director. (David Frankel, director of Devil Wears Prada and Marley and Me was circling the project at one point.) The studio may choose to take a write-off.
The question is, does Pitt stay on board? What does he think? He is loyal to Soderbergh, who has done well by him through three Oceans movies. Pitt can be notoriously indecisive about choosing projects--he dropped out of The Fountain, State of Play, and The Bourne Identity. For all major movie stars, there's a great deal at stake every time they step up to bat. They cannot afford to miss. Pitt is coming off a strong Oscar-nominated role in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , which was expensive and barely scraped into profitability. He and CAA will wield some clout here.
Sony will meet in the next day or so to determine what happens next. Pascal and her production chief Matt Tolmach are fans of the Michael Lewis bestseller and Zaillian's script. What did Soderbergh do to change their tune? While he knows how to make popular Oceans movies, his track record on other studio mainstream fare is less consistent. (See: The Good German and Solaris, both starring one-time partner George Clooney.) Besides, Soderbergh's primary affiliation is with Warner Bros., not Sony.
What's so risky about this movie?
Baseball movies are hit and miss. Hits like Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and Major League are exceptions. For Love of the Game starring Kevin Costner is more typical, grossing $35 million domestically. Also, baseball doesn't translate overseas.
No star is a sure thing anymore. Even Pitt. (See: The Assassination of Jesse James by that Coward Robert Ford, The Mexican, Snatch.) His next, Quentin Tarantino's Cannes entry Inglourious Basterds, is far from a guaranteed hit.
Soderbergh isn't a tentpole director, outside the Oceans franchise. And he's coming off micro-budget The Girlfriend Experience and Che, both strictly high-end audience plays. But Soderbergh's a good match for this material. He used to play serious baseball in Baton Rouge; he had a great arm but lost his mojo at age 12. "I woke up one morning and I didn't have it," Soderbergh told Jess Cagle in 2001. "And I knew that I wasn't gonna be able to get it back. Whatever the thing was, it was just gone."
Soderbergh told ESPN what he wanted to do with this movie, including shooting this summer at baseball games, interviewing real athletes, and rebuilding parts of the Oakland As coliseum on a soundstage:
"We have the dramatic building blocks, so the question is how real can we make the world? My clearly stated goal is to set a new standard for realism in that [sports] world."
I really want to see him make Moneyball. I hope this contretemps gets worked out in his favor.
Who came out ahead and behind on their Cannes jaunt this year?
Disney
The studio won big by using Cannes as the European launch for Pixar’s Up. John Lasseter and Pete Docter had the time of their lives being treated seriously by the most prestigious festival in the world, which gave them some auteur cred they wouldn’t get any other way. At Disney’s after-party on the Carlton pier, Lasseter got misty-eyed. “It’s one of the greatest things to happen in our careers,” he said. The often stuffy festival stepped up to the times, passing out 3-D glasses to the opening night black-tie glitterati at the Palais.
Disney also took advantage of the global media to introduce the motion capture pic Christmas Carol, bringing director Bob Zemeckis and Jim Carrey to the Croisette for a snowy photo opportunity. (I remember meeting Carrey for the first time when he came to Cannes to promo The Mask.)
Miramax
On the other hand, it’s utterly depressing that Disney may be putting its specialty subsidiary Miramax on the block. Studio boss Robert Iger wants to stick to his family-movie brand/theme park mandate, and Miramax doesn’t fit with its other businesses. While the studio denies the unit is for sale, their asking price is said to be $1.2 billion; buyers are interested, especially in the Tiffany library built by the Weinsteins, but are waiting for the price to come down.
Miramax topper Daniel Battsek has done a solid if not spectacular job, including Oscar winners Tsotsi and No Country for Old Men. But many projects were too pricey to turn a profit in the tough specialty market. Battsek kept a low profile on the Croisette this year, with no buys announced. As Harvey and Bob Weinstein struggle in a sour economy to keep their company afloat, the irony is that if they had not only raised but made some money, they might have been able to afford to buy their company back.
Harvey and Bob Weinstein
15 years after Pulp Fiction, the brothers brought Quentin Tarantino to the Cannes main competition with the raucous World War II drama Inglourious Basterds. Loaded with expectations (always a dicey position) the movie played fine for the global press, especially with its top-notch European cast, but will face a tougher time at home in a challenging environment for specialty pictures. To Tarantino’s credit, he shot it in four languages, French, Italian, German and English. The movie breaks out French actors Denis Menochet (who stars in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood) and Melanie Laurent as well as German actors Daniel Bruhl, Diane Kruger and language whiz Christoph Waltz (who won best actor). Here's Hollywood Wiretap.
Less interesting in some ways are the titular Basterds, led by a one-note Brad Pitt as a Nazi hunter, supported by Eli Roth and Til Schweiger. It feels like this part of the movie was given short shrift. Tarantino, who was in a rush to Cannes, now has some time to fine-tune his film. Irish actor Michael Fassbender (who also scored in Fish Tank) may get a new scene when Tarantino returns to the editing room. At two hours and 27 minutes, Tarantino has final cut.
The Weinsteins also debuted for buyers and press a featurette made by Rob Marshall of his musical Nine, which was adapted by the late Anthony Minghella from the Broadway musical inspired by Federico Fellini’s 8 ½. In the role of the womanizing director having a midlife crisis (played on-stage by Raul Julia and Antonio Banderas) is Daniel Day Lewis, who looks handsome and charismatic in the movie. (Yes, he sports an Italian accent. And sings. And dances.) Much of the story, like Marshall’s Oscar-winning Chicago, unfolds in the director’s mind as he muses over the women in his life: his mother (Sophia Loren), the village prostitute (Fergie), lover (Nicole Kidman), wife (Marion Cotillard), mistress (Penelope Cruz), interviewer (Kate Hudson) and costume designer (Judi Dench). The movie looks sumptuous, elaborate, visually dazzling. It also looks expensive, and was shot in London and Cinecitta (estimates range from $80 to 90 million). The risk for the Weinsteins: is there a market big enough to pay back the cost of a studio-scale all-stops-out musical? The movie opens during awards season, November 25.
There’s good advance word on John Hillcoat's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron, but it looks like a narrow niche up-market film. While the Weinsteins may get what they want: renewed cred from a series of well-reviewed movies that might make it into the Oscar race, these days, that can be as much a curse as a blessing, as Oscar campaigns can turn a profitable movie into a money loser.
Bob Berney, Bill Pohlad, Jane Campion
Ex-Picturehouse chief Bob Berney and his new partner Bill Pohlad made official their new distribution combine, which will enter the middle ground between art-house distributors Sony Pictures Classics, IFC and Magnolia and remaining studio subsidiaries Fox Searchlight, Miramax and Focus Features. Berney and Pohlad (who are waiting for their company name to clear) boldly acquired all U.S. rights to Jane Campion’s Bright Star sight unseen ahead of the fest (for about $2.5 million). They saw the film two weeks ahead of Cannes, where it played well, but won no prizes. While Berney plans to target young women (it will also score with Anglophiles, Jane Austen fans, and the Academy), the movie is an austere and tragic love story that lacks mainstream appeal. But the two stars, Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish, are potential breakouts. After a six-year-gap, Campion reestablishes herself as a major director. But she has never been a particularly commercial one.
Sony Pictures Classics and Pedro Almodovar
Steady as they go, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard came out of Cannes having landed the top two prize winners, Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon and Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet. They came into the fest with Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, starring Penelope Cruz, which is not the best of the Spanish auteur’s films, but is more fun to watch than most flicks. It was not a factor with the jury, either. But it wasn’t hurt by being in the festival, which sorely needed the combined star power of the director and Cruz.
While American art-house audiences don’t pay much attention to Cannes prizes, they do push the films' countries of origin to submit them for the foreign language Oscar. Thus SPC now has two more potential Oscar submissions for next year, from Germany and France. The Envelope looks at how Cannes impacts the Oscar race.
Word from the Cannes jury is that the votes were often split along director vs. actor lines. (UPDATE: Actress-director Asia Argento said it was more male vs.female; well, except for her, the directors were male.) This makes sense, as actors, writers and directors think very differently. As the reportedly fractious group, led by French actress Isabelle Huppert, talked over the selections (in English) three times during the fest--they saw 20 films-- they eliminated certain films that didn't raise enough votes, like Bright Star and Broken Embraces. Inglourious Basterds and Antichrist were more admired by the actors than the directors, while Fish Tank and Thirst were directors' pictures--and split the jury prize. The votes on the top two films, The White Ribbon and A Prophet were very close. But no award was unanimous. The most contentious debate was over best director Brilliante Mendoza, for Kinatay, which critics despised. The jurors weren't allowed to talk to anyone, and during deliberations, they even gave up their cell phones.
Focus Features and Ang Lee
The decision to bring a filmmaker to the fest is a calculation that, in the case of Focus and Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, backfired. I enjoyed the movie thoroughly and with some marketing fixes it could play well in the United States. It is an utterly American movie, culturally sophisticated, sweet and tender, mood-shifting, and fun. Screenwriter James Schamus (and Focus topper) and Lee nail the period. “It was a time when people had t-shirts that didn’t have logos on them,” Lee says.
Schamus and Lee explore the cultural moment that Woodstock crystallized—the ways that old and new were clashing and changing. This behind-the-scenes drama focuses on a family dynamic: two uptight Jewish parents (Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) and their vibrant, closeted gay son (Demetri Martin) who, when shoved up against the counterculture, breaks out of their world. Comedy Central star Martin never dreamed of a movie career, but the real discovery is radiant theater actor Jonathan Groff as Michael Lang. Most of the time, Lee and Schamus found that lingo from the period didn’t play, and cut much of it out. But when Groff said words like “groovy” and “far out,” he did so with such conviction that they left them in.
Taking Woodstock is not the sort of movie that goes over well at Cannes. It isn’t even what you’d call a critics’ picture. Lee must have wanted to come to the festival that had always treated him well. He probably wishes now that he hadn’t.
UPDATE: Focus came out ahead with its other Cannes entry, Park Chan-Wook's jury-prize-co-winner Thirst, which is already a hit in South Korea and will likely be a strong genre contender when Focus releases it stateside later this year. Focus Features International continues to be one of the strongest foreign sales companies, because it boasts the A-list projects (like Almodovar's Broken Embraces and the latest pics from Sam Mendes, Roberto Begnini, Zhang Yimou, Sofia Coppola and Noah Baumbach) everyone still wants to buy. "We're flying on all cylinders," says Schamus. "We've got our fingers in so many little pies all over the world."
Alejandro Amenabar's Agora
This Egyptian period drama cost $50 million Euros--and needed Cannes support. It didn't get it. The reviews were mixed, although Rachel Weisz managed to survive. The buyers waited on the sidelines for the price to decline. Clearly, even name stars and a big budget do not guarantee an American sale. Producers can't count on North American money any more. The Wrap looks at the Cannes economy.
IFC: Lars von Trier and Ken Loach
IFC came into the fest having bought the three-part Red Riding Trilogy, and then picked up Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, which built up a swell of want-to-see from Cannes controversy. IFC will show the movie uncut in a few U.S. cinemas and then trim it—working with the director—to show it on VOD. Honestly? It’s a movie-as-therapy that helped to pull Danish director von Trier out of a bout of depression that threatened to keep him from making movies. He indulged himself completely; the movie is a well-made, manipulative mess. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg give their all; she totally deserved the best actress prize. Any student of von Trier will want to see the movie. The distrib also picked up the feel-good movie of Cannes, Ken Loach's Waiting for Eric, starring soccer player Eric Cantona.
Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
The reviews were kind (here's Variety), suggesting that Gilliam returned to form with his latest film--despite losing Heath Ledger in mid-shoot, replaced by Johnn Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. American buyers, who saw the film in L.A. and NY before the festival, or attended an early screening in the market, were playing a waiting game. Nobody is taking risks any more.
Oscilloscope
Adam Yauch's neophyte distrib Oscilloscope Labs bought North American rights to a Cannes film in the official selection, a doc, natch, Michel Gondry’s look at his own family, The Thorn in the Heart.
Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro
Finally, Francis Ford Coppola is rebuilding his career and used a little Cannes pixie dust to help him do it. No, he didn't pull Tetro into the competition. But he opened the Director's Fortnight and was welcomed there. The movie, which he wrote himself with an autobiographical flair, was deemed an improvement over his last, Youth Without Youth, and more accessible and personal than anything he has done in some time. You can sense a filmmaker testing his chops, feeling his way. The next one could be even better. Hopefully he'll stay away from Vincent Gallo. He's toxic.
Wednesday night some badly needed star power arrived on the Croisette for the opening night of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Brad Pitt did the press rounds during the day, and showed up at the black tie premiere with Angelina Jolie on his arm. Later they had a great time at the Basterds late night beach party, hanging in the jammed VIP corner with Robin Wright Penn, Til Schweiger, Eli Roth, Emile Hirsch, Michael Fassbender (who was grooving to Guns 'n Roses), Daniel Bruhl, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Thierry Fremaux, Bryan Lourd, and Hylda Queally.
Brad and Angelina seemed happy, as did an ebullient Quentin Tarantino, although TWC's 50/50 partner on the picture, Universal, UPDATE: is talking to the filmmaker about returning to the editing room post-Cannes to make some trims edits that might include adding a scene, says Tarantino, who reminds that the film, at two hours 27 minutes, is well under his contractual final cut length of two hours 48 minutes.
Pitt talked to the Today Show (below). American Cannes TV coverage was down this year to just IFC, Extra, and E.T.--no Access Hollywood or E!-- CNN left after three days of no action (they should have waited). Jim Carrey got some press from driving a horse drawn carriage under snow machines in front of the Carlton for Bob Zemeckis's latest performance capture animation picture, Disney's Christmas Carol.
Thursday night, Harvey Weinstein threw his annual AmFAR Cinema Against AIDS event at the Moulins de Mougins. Sharon Stone was back to emcee the auction. She broke down crying over her tribute to fellow AID activist, Natasha Richardson. Harvey, whose daughters adore Twilight star Rob Pattinson auctioned off an impromptu set of Pattinson kisses. For $20,000 Euros each. Pattinson took it like a man.
The other big Cannes party of the week was Paul Allen's yacht party on Monday night, attended by Mick Jagger with Victoria Pearman, Tilda Swinton, Paula Wagner and Rick Nicita, Beth Swofford, Laurence Bender, Tarantino, Peggy Siegal, Paris Hilton, Bob and Jeanne Berney, and Dave Stewart, who played for half an hour. The yacht is 3000 square feet, and houses a screening room, observation deck, helicopter pad and submarine. Allen collects relics, including a bud vase from the Titanic, and explorer Ernest Shackleton's compass. The spread included Spanish Paella and oysters.
These days, many of the people who aren't interested in what's playing at the multiplex are checking out the new movie opening on HBO instead. Hollywood only has itself to blame. Ignore the adult audience and they'll get out of the moviegoing habit, rent DVDs and subscribe to HBO. This weekend many folks watched the opening of Grey Gardens, starring movie stars Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore (both strong Emmy contenders for Big and Little Edie) instead of going out to see new movie State of Play (which earned a barely respectable 63% on Metacritic to Grey Garden's 77). There was a time when Grey Gardens would have been a theatrical release. Now it's an HBO film--reviewed by the Two Bens on At the Movies:
State of Play, which opened soft to about $14 million, and the upcoming The Soloist, which is unlikely to drop 'em dead at the b.o. next week either, share the same weakness. (Here's Variety's Soloist review.) They're 'tweeners. You can see the problem. Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner want to make studio-level smart-audience movies with decent budgets and movie stars. With State of Play, they started out with Brad Pitt and a high-quality supporting cast and wound up with no Pitt on the eve of the Writers Strike, hastily replaced by Russell Crowe. He's wonderful as a stocky long-haired Saab-driving muckraker of the old school, pitted against his old college chum, an ambitious Congressman (Ben Affleck), his editor (Helen Mirren), contending with the forces fighting against the survival of newspapers, and a young blogger (Rachel McAdams).
For its part, The Soloist boasts Robert Downey, Jr. and Jamie Foxx—-who are not guaranteed marquee draws. (Nobody is, anymore.) Both movies remind us of why we need to pay for good journalism. State of Play works as a Washington corporate intrigue thriller, while The Soloist was designed as a high-minded topical headline drama, its Oscar hopes dashed by Paramount when it was pushed back to spring release. But this movie is creakier, less steady on its feet, through no fault of the actors. It might have worked better on HBO, where it could have had the courage of its convictions. It's simultaneously too dark and too light. It's overwrought to such a degree that even though it's based on a true story, the homeless man is too disturbing, and the drama, too uplifting.
Finally, both films are based on old models that just don’t work anymore. But it’s not the adult drama that should be blamed here. It’s studio execs willing to lavish spending on movies--State of Play's $60 million budget was partly funded by Relativity Media--that are unlikely to recoup.
Instead of trying to inflate these movies by pumping them up with mainstream commerciality, the studios should hand them over to indie subsidiaries able to produce them on more a modest scale. At which point, Crowe and Affleck and Downey and Foxx would get paid a lot less. And their movies might make their money back.
Tuesday night, American Idol mentor Quentin Tarantino returned to the show sporting a Nazi haircut. Needless to say he didn't miss a chance to hype his World War II action epic set to debut at Cannes, Inglourious Basterds, with new footage. Here's the clip featuring Brad Pitt and Mike Myers as a British military mastermind who plots to wipe out Nazi leaders. The Weinstein Co. opens the movie stateside August 21.
As I wrote sometime back, Quentin Tarantino is committed to delivering his World War II epic Inglourious Basterds for Cannes. The writer-director has loved going to Cannes ever since Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or in 1994, and had long wanted to debut Basterds there. Last year we had a blast hanging out with Marina Zenovich and Tim Robbins at the Hotel du Cap.
Here's Tarantino's acceptance speech from 1994 (they all look so young!):
Felicity Huffman, star of Desperate Housewives, is married to Bill Macy, the guy who saved the day on David Mamet's Speed the Plow after Jeremy Piven left the show, pleading mercury poisoning (from ingesting too much sushi). On Letterman, she deliciously gets in a few licks on Piven. [Hat tip: Hollywood Elsewhere]
Inspired by the movie adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen, Rotten Tomatoes lays out which graphic novels actually made good movies. Here's one of three Alan Moore comics so far that didn't score with audiences, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:
Brad Pitt makes tough-as-nails Congressional majority leader Nancy Pelosi flutter a bit when he pitches New Orleans on Capitol Hill:
Here's the Inglourious Basterds trailer that debuted on E.T. Tuesday night--in all its glory. I have a feeling that we're just starting to see what Brad Pitt can do. This is where maturity pays off for male movie stars--who tend to come into their own in their 40s. Look at Pitt's year: Burn After Reading and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button were both home runs. And he looks great in this too:
The London broadcast of the BAFTA Awards on Sunday does not cue what will happen on Oscar night. Suddenly, everyone says, as they did after the Golden Globes, Mickey Rourke will win. The folks voting for the BAFTAs are from the UK film industry, they aren't the same as the 5800 Academy voters. Of course the ceremony does take place smack in the middle of Oscar voting. (Still, many Academy members have already filled out their ballots, due February 17.) But they aren't widely viewed. More people see reports of the winners than the actual show. So rather than being predictive, the BAFTAs may have some slight influence on momentum. Winners look like winners, and so on.
"Will there be a Slumdog backlash?" asked my pal Dan as Slumdog took home seven wins. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sat patiently, as did producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy and director David Fincher, as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button picked up technical awards only (three)--as it likely will on Oscar night.
Slumdog will also be a big winner on February 22. But maybe not as big. My hunch is that more films will win more awards through the categories, including Benjamin Button and Dark Knight and Wall-E. The actor race is still tight between bad boys Sean Penn and Rourke (who will have to watch his potty mouth on live TV); Cruz has won more than Viola Davis has, at this point, and Winslet and Ledger seem good to go. Milk still plays into the soft spot of the politically-correct Academy; it's very American, it's about our history. If Milk doesn't win picture, Penn could get actor, and Dustin Lance Black may beat Wall-E for screenplay.
I won't soon forget the sight of Brad Pitt, wearing a snug vested tweed suit, standing patiently on Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall's chilly patio in the moonlight, listening to a Russian blonde list the things she didn't like about Benjamin Button. He wanted his Button nom, and he did the things you do to get it, and now the campaign is on for best actor. Which will go to Penn, I think. But look at this fab W Pitt cover shot at his request by Chuck Close.
Defamer's Stu Van Airsdale argues that given the current odds and despite its awesome Oscar nominations lead (13) and Paramount ad support, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button could whiff on Oscar night. The January 31 DGA awards will tell the tale: if Danny Boyle wins, David Fincher will likely lose the directing Oscar. My sense is that the DGA and Oscar voters could go either way. The Academy respects Fincher: it could be a career prize.
And through the tech categories, Dark Knight, Wall-E and Button will divide the spoils, with Button having the decided Best Picture nom advantage. When in doubt, voters will go that way. Wall-E will win animation, as usual. And Dark Knight will win Heath Ledger. So that leaves plenty of room for Button to pick up a few prizes in the non-major categories, especially VFX.
The Oscar nominations are in and The Dark Knight did not make it to best picture. The Reader landed the slot instead, also scoring noms for Stephen Daldry for best director (over The Dark Knight's Chris Nolan), David Hare for adapted screenplay and Kate Winslet (instead of Revolutionary Road). The Dark Knight was in the running though, with eight noms, including a posthumous nom for Heath Ledger, who is the frontrunner for best supporting actor.
Harvey Weinstein is a happy man.
A late-entry in the Oscar race, The Reader was barely finished in time. But Weinstein knew he had a winner and several Oscar-watchers were telling me Golden Globes weekend that their Academy pals weren't saying they voted for The Dark Knight. They were hearing they liked The Reader, which finally landed five noms. (Penelope Cruz also landed a nom for supporting actress for TWC's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but Woody Allen was shut out for original screenplay.)
Media prognosticators who reach a consensus on these things aren't always right--check out The Gurus 'O Gold. Everybody said The Dark Knight--including me--because it was hard to figure anything else for that slot. The Reader was one of several possibilities, including two other films produced by Scott Rudin, Doubt (five noms) and Revolutionary Road (three). Rudin took his name off The Reader when he kept wrangling with Weinstein.
The other news was actors' actors Melissa Leo and Richard Jenkins landing nods. Many Academy voters loved Sony Pictures Classics' Sundance pick-up Frozen River, which also landed an unexpected nom for Courtney Hunt for original screenplay. The nom for Jenkins' quiet performance in The Visitor meant that Clint Eastwood did not get a slot for Gran Torino, nor did Leonardo DiCaprio for Revolutionary Road, which landed three noms, for costume design, art direction and supporting actor Michael Shannon. Eastwood had to console himself with Changeling's three noms (Jolie, cinematography and art direction). Gran Torino was shut out.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are also happy today, as both won noms. Jolie won an Oscar in 2000 for Girl Interrupted, while Pitt hadn't been nominated since his supporting role in Twelve Monkeys in 1996.
The best actress category was open for some surprises. Button's Cate Blanchett did not make it, nor did critics' faves Sally Hawkins and Kristin Scott Thomas, who were overlooked mainly because not enough people saw art-house entries Happy-Go-Lucky and I've Loved You So Long. Oscar perennial Mike Leigh did land his sixth Oscar nom, for his Happy-Go-Lucky original screenplay. He has never won.
Animated film Wall-E, from Pixar, didn't make it to best picture but it did earn six noms, including original screenplay, tying with Beauty and the Beast (which had four music noms). Pixar's Ratatouille earned five last year and won best animated feature, as Wall-E is likely to do.
Here's the list of noms, led by David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with 13. Someone asked me to make my Oscar pics before this morning, and I backed out. You have to get a feel for the whole list. Heading toward the Academy Awards night on February 22, Benjamin Button will be slugging it out with Slumdog Millionaire. But Milk also did very well, which is why I'm still picking Sean Penn to beat Mickey Rourke, partly because The Wrestler landed only two acting noms. Milk is going to have to win something.
Quentin Tarantino is rushing production on his World War II epic Inglourious Basterds, which has been described as The Dirty Dozen meets Cross of Iron, not only because his mentor Harvey Weinstein could use a big hit sooner rather than later--and Tarantino is deeply loyal--but because the director is trying to finish it in time for Cannes in May.
Chapter One: Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied France
Chapter Two: Inglourious Basterds
Chapter Three: German Night in Paris (filmed in "French New Wave Black and White")
Chapter Four: Operation Kino
Chapter Five: Revenge of the Giant Face
Tarantino was up and running and shooting by October, after pacting with Weinstein Co. for domestic and Universal/Focus Features International for foreign.
Tarantino puts his all into shooting and editing. The ensemble cast is led by Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender, star of Steve McQueen's Cannes breakout Hunger. Pitt leads a team of Jewish-American Nazi-hunters (The Basterds) who get caught in a No-Man's Land much like Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. (He wanted to use Ennio Morricone, but it didn't work out.)
While Tarantino went over-sked and budget on Death Proof, fussing and tinkering, this time he's on track and almost finished with the movie, which began production in Germany in October, and will soon get into the editing room to prep for his Inglourious Cannes preem. Can't wait.
Golden Globes weekend brings parties and more parties, both Saturday and Sunday. Predicting the Globes is a frustrating exercise; it's only 80 people. Who knows what they're thinking? The good money appears to be on Slumdog Millionaire for drama. I'll go with The Curious Life of Benjamin Button.
With Oscar ballots due Monday, debates rage over the fifth best picture slot. Some Oscar watchers say not enough Academy members are talking about The Dark Knight, no matter how many recent Guild noms it got. I don't see what else it could be. Revolutionary Road probably should have widened earlier, and Gran Torino kicked ass at the boxoffice one weekend too late. (Eastwood makes his own release decisions.) In the Oscar best actor race, though, the popular 78-year-old star could steal a slot from Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Jenkins or Brad Pitt.
Brangelina turned up at Saturday night's hottest jam-packed party at the Chateau Marmont, where Paramount celebrated Button's success. When I told Star Trek star Chris Pine that I grew up on the original TV series starring William Shatner as Captain Kirk, he graciously said it was okay for me to be skeptical. (He plays the young Kirk in J.J. Abrams' revamp.) Paramount's John Lesher told us that his seven-year-old loved the movie. The studio's aiming at him and me and everyone in between. Poised to be Hollywood's next breakout star, Pine has nothing on his plate--yet.
The other Oscar category that could see some surprises is best actress: critics' faves Kristin Scott Thomas (I've Loved You So Long), Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) and Melissa Leo (Frozen River) are all vying for a slot. Who gets bumped in that case, assuming Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet are locks? Rachel Getting Married star Anne Hathaway? Angelina Jolie, who did not land a nom for A Mighty Heart? At least Eastwood's Changeling was seen by Academy members.
At Saturday's annual British Academy (BAFTA) tea party at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a civilized afternoon affair, the diminutive Hawkins (pictured) charmed the room, as did Scott Thomas. She has finished up her run on Broadway in The Seagull, but is far from relieved. "I miss it," she said. She looks forward to returning to her home in France, where she plans to do more acting, despite all the English-language work coming in. She's pleased to be getting fewer offers to play prim uptight Brits (like the one in Stephen Elliot's excellent, upcoming Easy Virtue). She's up next in Confessions of A Shopaholic and just signed to play John Lennon's Aunt Mimi in Nowhere Boy.
At BAFTA, other Globes and Oscar contenders, from Danny Boyle to Clint Eastwood, wandered in for a bit and moved on. Revolutionary Road's Leonardo DiCaprio and The Wrestler's Darren Aronofsky checked out the silent auction; The Reader's Stephen Daldry (pictured here with Valkyrie star Tom Wilkinson) played with his two little girls.
Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel arrived straight from the airport from visiting relatives in rural India and begged for a glass of water. When Fox Searchlight called him about a Calvin Klein tux for the Golden Globes, he told them: "Just get me a shower!" He sports a London accent very different from the movie, and recently signed with American agency UTA over the phone. He was relieved when he met the agents and liked them. The difference between American and British agents? "The Americans talk a lot more," he said. His Brit TV series Skins is currently airing on BBC America.
Moving on from Doubt, writer-director John Patrick Shanley has two original movie scripts in mind, plus one graphic novel. He admitted to admiring Frost/Nixon, and thought Valkyrie could have used more Hitler. He's read voluminous transcripts of Hitler talking; he never stopped, apparently. Bernd Eichinger, the producer of Downfall, featuring Bruno Ganz as a more outgoing Hitler (a clip from the film keeps getting re-subtitled to comic effect), has high hopes for his latest, Germany's foreign submission Der Baader Meinhoff Komplex.
At the intimate Disney/Miramax soiree in the old Warren Beatty penthouse and rooftop at the Beverly Wilshire (where there was actually food) I learned that Golden Globes broadcaster NBC (8 – 11 p.m. EST Sunday) didn't know that presenter Shah Rukh Khan is Bollywood's biggest film star. Don't they realize that Newsweek chose him as their only movie star on their list of the 50 most powerful people in the world?
With Globes and Oscar hopes riding high for Happy-Go-Lucky and Doubt, and Sundance looming, Miramax host Daniel Battsek admitted, "I'm always anxious!"
The annual AFI awards lunch at the Four Seasons is low-key. Each of the companies behind one of the year's ten top movies or TV shows commandeers a table. Many of the major players, filmmakers and stars show up, because they don't have to do much more than walk a short press line and then hobnob and enjoy lunch with all their pals and rivals.
Emotions are running high because the Globes are Sunday night and the last remaining Oscar ballots are being filled out and each team wants their horse to win. Anxiety is palpable.
Fox Searchlight, the folks behind Slumdog Millionaire, are hoping that passionate supporters will put their little Bollywood hybrid first on the ballot--because they get more points that way.
The Wrestler's Mickey Rourke and Darren Aronofsky both showed up, sporting new facial hair. Smooth-faced Marisa Tomei wore a form-fitting knit gray dress.
Clint Eastwood and Chris Nolan presided over the Warners table. The Dark Knight is picking up steam, everybody agreed--one prognosticator I trust says it could win. Others are betting on Slumdog or Paramount's Curious Case of Benjamin Button. As we watched clips,it suddenly hit me that Brad Pitt--who delivers a performance unlike any he has ever given--might grab a nom after all. It's because he surprises people. He's like the pretty ingenue who turns out to be better than anyone suspected--even though he's still using his iconic looks.
Big-spender Universal is confident about getting a number of noms for Frost/Nixon, including Frank Langella, Peter Morgan and Ron Howard, who gave a benediction exhorting his colleagues to embrace their inner Obama and work together to entertain audiences who are facing troubling times, he said: “go into the next year supporting each other.”
Finding common ground were studio execs Kevin McCormick (WB) and Brad Weston (Par), who commiserated about unfounded exit rumors.
At the Frozen River table, Melissa Leo admitted that she's gotten many offers since this movie came out, and hopes to parlay a Sundance short into a feature. She was glowing.
Oddly, at this stage of the Oscar race, while the five Best Picture candidates--Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire--seem obvious, other races are harder to call.
While EW fearlessly forecasts the top five in the two actor races, these picks are far from clear.
While I agree that actresses Meryl Streep, Sally Hawkins and Kate Winslet are locks, an upset is possible in this category: Frozen River's Melissa Leo or I've Loved You so Long's Kristin Scott Thomas could steal slots from Changeling's Angelina Jolie or Rachel Getting Married's Anne Hathaway.
Among the men, while The Curious Life of Benjamin Button is a strong overall candidate, I'm not sure Brad Pitt is a lock--some find the digital aspects of his performance strange, even creepy. Who could get in there instead? While Revolutionary Road may seem to lack support, it is in fact just the sort of challenging actors' vehicle that the Academy tends to go for. Leonardo DiCaprio could be a surprise entry here. And The Visitor's Richard Jenkins, an actors' actor, is not beyond the realm of possibility.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
The list will be the same for the Oscar on January 22, methinks. I went over the categories for each of the top contenders. These five films have more deep support from the Academy branches than any of their competitors, including Doubt, Revolutionary Road, The Reader, Gran Torino, The Wrestler and Wall-E.
The movie my family and I went to see on Christmas Day was chosen by many others over the holiday: Marley & Me, a cannily crafted family film starring a restrained Owen Wilson, a charming Jennifer Aniston and a series of delightful rambunctious Labrador retrievers as the titular dog, Marley. My family made fun of me for crying so hard.
Written by Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex) and Scott Frank (Get Shorty) and directed by David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada), this movie delivers both a romance between a handsome couple plus their relationship with their dog. This well-calibrated studio tear-jerker doesn't go overboard on the sentimentality, hews close to the original material (the bestselling memoir by newspaper columnist John Grogan) and keeps the performances natural. Both stars are well-matched to their roles and each other; Wilson gives his most mature performance to date. (Here are diametrically opposed reviews by Todd McCarthy and Stephen Holden.)
Also doing well over the holiday, after Marley & Me, was The Curious Life of Benjamin Button, which also drew opposite reviews from Scott (a rave) and the LAT's Turan (a dismissive pan). Its Metacritic average was 70%. That's just ok, but it should score with Oscar voters for its sheer technological virtuosity in any case.
EW's Dave Karger reviews the post-Christmas Oscar landscape. Needing a serious boost from critics was Revolutionary Road, reviewed Friday. The LAT's Turan loved it. Rotten Tomatoes' top critics give it 80%, which is good, but Metacritic is at 71%. I'm not feeling the Academy love for this movie, except for Kate Winslet, who could win the best actress Oscar for the double whammy of Road and The Reader. And Michael Shannon has a shot at a supporting actor nom.
'Tis the season for Oscar publicists/campaigners/consultants/hob-nobbers. You never know who's repping what. They're everywhere. The Washington Post tries to make sense of it all.
Part of what's at stake are the careers of several high-profile movie stars who would dearly love to have critics and media and Academy members deem their holiday performances way above the ordinary...from Brad Pitt in The Curious Life of Benjamin Button to Tom Cruise in Valkyrie and Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary Road.
Other holiday stars are just hoping their movies don't go in the crapper. Newsday's John Anderson examines the major stars whose careers are on the line this season.
Paramount Pictures threw a black tie premiere for David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night at the Mann's Chinese in Hollywood, followed by a rizty party at the CAA office building in Century City. It was the Avenue of the Stars indeed: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were having such a good time working the crowd--including Jennifer Lopez, Sharon Stone, Brett Ratner, Paramount studio chief Brad Grey and Viacom topper Sumner Redstone as well as Pitt's costars Tilda Swinton, Julia Ormond and Cate Blanchett--that they stayed well after midnight.
David Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) have delivered an historic achievement, a masterful piece of cinema, and a moving treatise on death, loss, loneliness and love. As the movie proceeds, and Brad Pitt as Button ages backwards, we know where he is headed: it's where we are all going. But he feels he has to go there by himself, without his loved ones. And nobody wants to die alone. (Here is Todd McCarthy's review.)
So when the movie reaches its climax, it is extraordinarily moving (although some find the movie cold and dispassionate). It may pack a more powerful punch the older you are and the more people you have lost. In that case it will score with the Academy, who will also recognize the skillful filmmaking on display.
The movie marks a seismic shift in terms of what is possible in moviemaking. What Fincher and his team have done is no small technological feat. Button starts off as a CG-aged baby, moves through CG-altered older Pitt faces superimposed on small bodies, and then proceeds to the "real" Pitt wearing makeup and then getting younger and younger. Thus the film's central performance is in great part a visual effect. (Blanchett is also made younger digitally, but aged with makeup.) That accounts in part for the movie's high cost (well above $150 million) but is also its primary limitation.
Thus, while I admire the film's amazing accomplishment--it's hard to imagine that anyone but the digitally sophisticated Fincher, who has become adept at "painting" his digital canvases, could have pulled this off--the movie is not entirely satisfying. But given what it is, it's hard to imagine it being done done any better. The actors are superb, especially Pitt and Cate Blanchett, who should earn Oscar noms. What's missing has partly to do with the limitations of the technology. Button reminds me of Peter Sellers as Chauncey Gardner in Being There. He's oddly passive and restrained, zen-like as he floats through all the decades, watching, listening, learning. He narrates the tale via his diary, along with his dying love Blanchett. We see him engaging with people, but he never says much. We see him from the outside; we never get under his skin, and we never learn the fruits of his wisdom. He stays much the same.
Still, the movie is sadly beautiful, of a piece, as impeccably wrought as its ornate clock that runs counterclockwise. Do Paramount and Warner Bros. have a prayer of making their money back? This movie needs all the help it can get, from anyone who loves movies and wants the studios to take more risky bets like this one.
First there was the story of the Landmark Cinema digital screening of the Spanish-language Che without any subtitles at all. Critics prepared to screen the movie were sent home when the projectionist couldn't solve the problem. Then there was a Aidikoff Wilshire Screening Room digital screening of English-language Doubt, which started off with Che's Spanish subtitles. (There had been a Che screening prior.) The projectionist stopped the film and after about three minutes started over again without the offending subtitles.
UPDATE: Thursday night Paramount screened The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at two venues. The SAG screening at the Arclight went smoothly. The "print" at the DGA, which the studio had spent eight hours testing on Thursday afternoon, was missing a color. Magenta. The film was green. And eventually, after about 20 minutes, because the cinematographer and sound mixer called producer Frank Marshall, the projection was shut down. Paramount technicians tried to reboot the hard drive, but couldn't fix the problem. Those of us who sat in the room saw them come close to a full-color projection, but something was wrong with the projector, a Paramount publicist said server, according to Marshall. "On the right setting it was wrong, and on the wrong setting it was right," he wrote in an email. "Welcome to digital."
David Fincher, the original perfectionist, must not have been happy. Marshall and partner Kathleen Kennedy, who had been working on this movie for some 18 years, were distressed; the screening was packed with key critics, press and industry Academy members. Other screenings are scheduled for Saturday. "This would not have happened to Stanley Kubrick," said one wag.
EDITED TO READ: So, to be clear: THIS IS NOT A REVIEW. Not a Variety review or a review at all. What it is: Notes from a viewer's responses to a screening of David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, starring Brad Pitt as the man who ages backwards. Get annoyed, growl, sneer, be jealous... whatever you like, just don't call it a review. The person is neither a reviewer nor associated with the film in any way.
OK, moving on. Among the impressions: It's magic realism (we knew that) and great technology (figured as much), but! "It's not remotely what I'd call cold." Interesting, since it's a criticism often leveled at Fincher's work. And while there's definitely "sentimentality," it's "toughened by the continual sense of loss and deep sadness at the transitory nature of the human condition."
At this point, the writer praises it into the stratosphere, calling it "a four-quadrant art film... sure touch... deft pacing." Predicts Oscar noms for, well, everyone, with a special shout out to Jason Flemyng as Benjamin's father.
And finally this:
"Can't wait to see what the Fincher freaks make of it. For the record, I am not one of them. Liked Fight Club, somewhat annoyed by Seven, didn't like Zodiac all that much. So I am not a Fincher Kool-Aid drinker. He was employed here to bring a very difficult piece of material to life and he's sure put everything he's learned about bravura imagemaking/moviemaking into it."
UPDATE: Paramount showed this movie to Karina Longworth, who under pain of embargo, is trying to keep mum. I had a big debate yesterday with an Oscar consultant about the issue of controlling when folks get to see a movie and then write about it in this internet age. The marketers want to generate positive press but are terrified of reviews, because entire Oscar campaigns are at stake, and little nuggets seep into the culture. It's driving a lot of us crazy. Stephen Schaefer weighs in.
It seems Paramount has confirmed to EW that Brad Pitt has walked away from Darren Aronofsky's "The Fighter." The director's planned follow-up to "The Wrestler" stars Mark Wahlberg as Boston-bred Irish boxer Micky Ward. Pitt was set to play Ward's half-brother and trainer. The reversal marks the second Aronofsky film Pitt has abandoned after "The Fountain." Hugh Jackman wound up giving a career-best performance in that film so maybe another A-Lister will feel compelled to step up and try to fill Pitt's shoes.
Latino Review reports that WB execs are keen to cast none other than Ryan Gosling as The Green Lantern. I'm embarrassed to admit I know nothing about that character but as one of Gosling's biggest fans, I have to express my disappointment. If this rumor turns out to be true then Green Lantern fans have every reason to rejoice but Gosling has a knack for choosing really interesting material and I can't help but think that if he takes the role, that's one or even two fewer great indies he could be making. I realize it's trendy for talented actors to get into the superhero game (Bale, Norton, Downey Jr.) and if the film is a hit, it could give Gosling his choice of projects, but how many "Green" superheroes do we really need, seeing as Seth Rogen has "Green Hornet" coming out next year.
According to The Playlist, writer-director Quentin Tarantino has added a handful of cast members to "Inglorious Bastards," which began filming this week in Germany. Tarantino reunites with "Death Proof" stars Omar Doom and Michael Bacall (one of Variety's 10 Screenwriters to Watch), and welcomes aboard German actors Christian Berkel and August Diehl. But the casting addition I'm most excited about is that of Julie Dreyfus who memorably played Sophie Fatale in "Kill Bill Vol. 1."
Universal has enticed a trio of lovely ladies to join "Couples Retreat," the Jon Favreau-scripted comedy being directed by his longtime producing partner Peter Billingsley. (Cue wholly unnecessary "Christmas Story" reference now.) Kristen Bell will play Jason Bateman's wife, Malin Akerman shacks up with Vince Vaughn and Kristin "Charlotte" Davis will play Favreau's ball and chain. Faizon Love's love interest has yet to be cast and while I'll admit that Queen Latifah first came to mind, might I suggest Davis' "Sex and the City" co-star Jennifer Hudson. Believe it or not, of all the talented actors listed above, she's the only one with an Oscar.
And finally, the one and only El Mayimbe reports that Justin Marks' "Greyskull" is dead at WB. To be honest, this doesn't surprise me despite the fact that El Mayimbe gave Marks' script an A+ back in June. Personally, I couldn't care less and I grew up wearing He-Man underwear so I understand the nostalgia factor. I know companies like Mattel and Hasbro have toys to sell but no matter how much money "Transformers" made it was still a BAD movie and I have a feeling that "G.I. Joe" will turn out equally disappointing. Sure fanboys are excited to see their favorite childhood properties reincarnated on the bigscreen but that doesn't necessarily mean they translate that well. I don't know what will become of "Greyskull" but I'm confident Marks will land on his feet considering he's writing approximately 100 other scripts that fanboys would kill to take a crack at.
Brad Pitt makes his photography debut at W Magazine this month, which assigned him to take up-close-and-personal shots of mama Jolie with her kids. It was a brilliant idea and will be hugely successful. The intimacy of the shots is something that would be difficult for any outsider to achieve.
Apple.com has the exclusive new trailer for Warner Bros' and director David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
I don't know about you but this project feels more and more like Fincher's Forrest Gump, with Brad Pitt's hobbit-like beginnings growing into something magical. Possibly an Oscar nomination? Either way, Button's second trailer carries a lot more prowess (and footage) than the first.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button opens Christmas Day.
As the awards season gets under way, the Gurus 'o Gold have made their first stabs at weighing the upcoming Oscar race. It's early days yet. Many of these films have not been seen. For example, the gurus know more about Frost/Nixon, based on Peter Morgan's play, than anything else, which may account for its front-runner status--which is not necessarily a good place to be at this stage.
Frost/Nixon also features two head-to-head male leads who can't be relegated to supporting status: Frank Langella and Michael Sheen. That's also true of Jamie Foxx (who won Best Actor for Ray) vs. Robert Downey, Jr. in The Soloist. Actors will bend over backwards to give Downey something this year, even if it's a supporting nod for the comedy Tropic Thunder, because Iron Man is not an Academy movie (except perhaps for technical categories like FX).
It's back to the norm this year with the actors--the best actor field looks much stronger and more competitive than the best actress list.
Meanwhile fan site IGN has launched some counter-programming, their first annual IGN Summer Movie Awards, honoring the high-octane films that their readers care about most. Winners include Best Summer Movie: The Dark Knight, Best Director: Iron Man's Jon Favreau, Best Animated Movie: Wall-E, directed by Andrew Stanton, and less predictably, Babe of the Summer: Natalie Martinez, star of Death Race.
With Cannes, Telluride and Toronto, behind us, New York Film Fest press screenings are now under way. Here’s a wrap-up of what I’ve seen and learned:
Ten Best Movies in Telluride/Toronto
1. Everlasting Moments: Jan Troell’s period masterpiece is likely to be the Swedish Oscar submission (IFC).
2. Slumdog Millionaire: Danny Boyle’s Toronto audience award winner is both a likely hit and awards contender (Warners/Fox Searchlight).
3. The Wrestler: Darren Aronofsky directed has-been actor Mickey Rourke as a down-on-his-luck wrestler to likely awards contention (Fox Searchlight).
4. The Hurt Locker: Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War thriller breaks out tough-guy Jeremy Renner (Summit, 2009).
5. Flame + Citron: Ole Christian Madsen’s riveting WW II thriller won’t be the Danish Oscar submission (IFC).
6. Every Little Step: Jim Stern’s moving Chorus Line doc plays like a reality TV show full of winners and losers as dancer/actor/singers put their talent on the line to gain a slot in the revival of the Broadway hoofer classic. It’s a likely awards contender for best doc (juggling distrib offers).
7. I’ve Loved You So Long: Philippe Claudel’s two hander about two sisters could earn French-speaking Brit Kristin Scott Thomas best actress kudos (SPC).
8. Burn After Reading: The Coens return to their darkly comic roots with a skilled acting ensemble led by Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Fran McDormand (Focus Features).
9. Happy-Go-Lucky: Mike Leigh and actress Sally Hawkins could follow Vera Drake into the awards derby (Miramax).
10. Kisses: Lance Daly’s Irish runaway movie starring unknowns turns from black-and-white into color (weighing distrib offers).
Next Best:
11. Adam Resurrected: Paul Schrader directs Jeff Goldblum in a bravura performance as a charismatic showman who survives the holocaust but loses his mind (seeking distrib).
12. Zack and Miri Make a Porno: Kevin Smith is back in raunchy, gut-splitting form with two strong actors, Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks (Weinstein Co./MGM).
13. Easy Virtue: Stephen Elliott (Patricia, Queen of the Desert) directs a witty culture-clash comedy well-delivered by Ben Barnes, Jennifer Biel, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Colin Firth (seeking distrib).
14. Is There Anybody There? John Crowley’s family comedy stars Michael Caine in a brilliant performance as a senior fighting senility (seeking distrib).
15. Brothers Bloom: Rian Johnson’s ambitious second feature, a con-man caper comedy, showcases Rachel Weisz’s skills as a charming light comedienne (Summit).
16. Me and Orson Welles: Richard Linklater’s 1937 picture of the Mercury Theatre features uncanny Welles impersonator Christian McKay, a glowing Claire Danes and teen throb Zac Efron (seeking distrib).
17. Public Enemy Number 1, a work in progress from France, hangs on the powerful incarnation of notorious real-life French gangster Jacques Mesrine by Vincent Cassel. Filmed over one year in two parts, this film may be combined with number two into a single movie by distrib Senator for its 2009 U.S. release.
18. Dean Spangler: Peter O’Toole and Sam Neill shine in this strange, slow-burn New Zealand fable about reincarnation (seeking U.S. distrib).
Best Cannes Leftovers at Telluride/Toronto:
1. Il Divo: Paolo Sorrentino’s exhilarating e-ride through 70s and 80s Italian politics, while accessible, is considered too arcane for stateside release (seeking distrib).
2. Hunger: UK director Steve McQueen directs Michael Fassbender in a breakout perf as Irish activist Bobby Sands (IFC).
3. Waltz with Bashir: Iraeli Ari Folman’s animated doc could be nominated in both animation and doc categories (SPC).
4. Wendy and Lucy: Kelly Reichardt directs Michele Williams in a heart-rending performance as vulnerable woman on the road who loses her dog. Williams could be a long shot for year-end kudos consideration (Oscilloscope).
5. The Good, The Bad and the Weird: Kim Jee-woon’s non-stop kimchi western could score with action fans (IFC).
6. Synecdoche, New York: Not surprisingly, first-time director Charlie Kaufman spins a tale you have never seen before, with a sprawling ensemble led by the depressed (natch) Philip Seymour Hoffman (SPC).
7. Che: Steven Soderbergh’s bio-epic wound up as two movies in Spanish instead of one movie in English, but it’s still a must-see for Benicio del Toro’s portrayal of the controversial revolutionary (IFC).
8. Adoration: Atom Egoyan’s explores a tangled web of family history and memory; it's not Canada's Oscar submission (SPC).
9. O’Horten: Bent Hamer paints a precisely rendered, poignant portrait of a retiring train engineer trying to imagine life without trains; it's Norway's Oscar submission (SPC).
Toronto Disappointments:
Rachel Getting Married: Jonathan Demme’s movie about a dysfunctional family wedding features great actors and musicians and dizzy camera moves: eventually all three get irritating (SPC).
Blindness: Fernando Meirelles locks the audience up in a nasty prison full of piss and poop and murder and mayhem and madness and doesn’t open the doors until the movie’s almost over (Miramax).
Flash of Genius: producer-turned-director Marc Abraham turns the story of a Detroit inventor (Greg Kinnear) who fights Ford and loses all into a straight, old-fashioned, dull tale (Universal).
There's too much going on here. Lots to see, too little time.
This morning I went to the basement Silver Screening Room at the new ultra-ritzy Hazelton Hotel to catch the Coens' Burn After Reading. It's a wicked, nasty, arch, funny piece of work, very Coens, well-acted by Frances McDormand, who as usual provides warmth to what is a freezing cold view of the world. George Clooney's performance as a womanizer who happily cheats on his wife with Tilda Swinton, McDormand and anyone else who will open their legs is tinged with real sadness. And Richard Jenkins and a host of other supporting players are excellent, as usual. Brad Pitt is hilarious as a bumbling, cheery fitness instructor who tries to extort money out of CIA operative John Malkovich, with unfortunate, messy results.
What's the problem? The movie has chuckles, but people you care about--and others you don't--keep getting bumped off unexpectedly. This is not a light romp. It's fierce.
The first day of the 35th Telluride Film Festival started off hot and dry at the annual patron's brunch up the mountain. Tributee Jean Simmons sat under a melon-colored hat and blue umbrella, charming eager listeners, still beautiful. She remembered her then-husband, director Richard Brooks, telling Burt Lancaster during the filming of Elmer Gantry, "More teeth!" "Burt worked out on a trapeze every morning," Simmons said.
The Brits sat at one table, chowing down on eggs and chanterelles: Miramax's Daniel Battsek, Happy-Go-Lucky director Mike Leigh, and Hunger director Steve McQueen. Like Cannes, IFC's Jonathan Sehring and Sony's Michael Barker and Tom Bernard (pictured with Fest co-director Gary Meyer and critics Scott Foundas and Todd McCarthy) seem to be most aggressively tracking possible pick-ups.
Tracy Chapman and sister Aneta were among the patrons who came "for fun, just to see movies, not working," said Chapman.
At the Sheridan Opera House that night, doc filmmaker Ken Burns, at Telluride for his 19th straight year, welcomed the crowd with: "Can we have a good film fest?"
"Yes, we can," they crowed.
After an impressive montage of commercials and music videos of Madonna, Michael Jackson, Iggy Pop and others, plus clips of Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room and Zodiac, Todd McCarthy did an in-depth career interview with Fincher. (More of that conversation later.)
Then the crowd watched 20 minutes of artfully edited fragments of the $150 million The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, adapted by Eric Roth from a 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Newborn Benjamin Button is named by a young black woman (Taraji P. Henson) in post-World War I New Orleans after his mother dies giving birth and his father, horrified by his wizened appearance, drops him on the doorstep of an old folks home.
Taking full advantage of his ILM background, Fincher takes Button (Brad Pitt) from a tiny baby with the body of an old arthritic man through younger and more robust incarnations as he ages. He serves as a merchant seaman and in one epic sequence, runs into the deadly aftermath of a WWII attack by a submarine on a warship. Button eventually catches up with love interests Cate Blanchett, who tries to seduce him by dancing for him, and Tilda Swinton, who feeds him caviar and vodka. The movie is gorgeously mounted in minute period detail, complete with swooping crane shots and intricate camera moves. Produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall (pictured here at the Sheridan Opera House with Fincher), Button has a burnished sepia polish.
According to Paramount production exec Brad Weston, the movie has been cut by another five minutes down to "a little over two and half hours," he said. It's about to be locked. After years of stalled development the movie was greenlit by new Paramount chief Brad Grey after previous management teams had balked at its cost, revived because Grey was looking for a vehicle for Brad Pitt. Fincher, who has given Pitt some of his juiciest roles, had just the thing. The movie could go either way--toward Oscar season glory or inflated noble failure. That's the risk everyone takes with an all-in bet like this. Certainly there's never been anything like it.
IndieWire's Eugene Hernandez, Spout's Karina Longworth and I jammed into the tiny Back Lot to see Prodigal Sons, which San Francisco critic David Thomson had promoted so enticingly in the program. (Here's his Guardian write-up.) Faced with the prospect of returning to her 20th high school reunion in Helena, Montana, Kimberly Reed enlisted a cinematographer pal to help her document a complicated set of issues. She had been the popular high school football star Paul, and now she was transexual Kim, with her girlfriend Claire in tow. Clearly, she and her older brother Marc, who was adopted nine months before she was born, never got along. The movie unflinchingly shows the mentally unstable Marc trying not only to cope, after ten years estrangement, with his brother's sex change into a sister, but the news that his birth mother was the daughter of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. Oddly, Marc was interviewed for another doc "Searching for Orson," while this film was being made.
Reed tries to weave her story, her brother's story, and their dramatic family conflict into a coherent documentary, but in this case a more experienced filmmaker/outsider might have been better suited to shape this mother lode of material. "It was very turbulent to have that camera presence there," she admitted at the Q & A. "Our family was off and running with the drama we were often engaged in." UPDATE: Todd McCarthy's review.
The Coen brothers have always been nothing if not idiosyncratic, and their trademark humor is not shared by everyone. It's always possible that their Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men was lightning in a bottle, a movie that caught the zeitgeist just the right way at just the right time.
Meanwhile the Coens are casting their next, the low-budget 60s period A Serious Man, starring stage actor Michael Stuhlbarg (The Pillowman) and TV's Richard Kind (Spin City) as a college professor and his brother, which is set to shoot in the Coens' home state, Minnesota. Unlike their last Scandinavian-inflected pic, Fargo, this one is seriously Jewish. So's their next script assignment: adapting Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
The early word on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: again, David Fincher has handed in a movie to Paramount that is quite long. That hurt his last pic for Paramount, Zodiac. This film is polished to a fine sheen, I understand. The word from one viewer: "shiny."
UPDATE: According to the studio, as of their last research screening last week, the movie ran two hours and 43 minutes. Fincher is still cutting to find "the length he is happy with," said one spokesman. "The final print is due in October."
Leo DiCaprio looks hot here in Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road, which is a serious marital drama set in the 50s based on Richard Yates' novel. DiCaprio reunites with Kate Winslet more than a decade after they starred in Titanic, still Hollywood's number one blockbuster of all time. There's no early word on this because Mendes is still in the editing room.
Now is the time that the various Oscar campaigners are lining up behind certain studios and movies. They're watching early screenings and screeners to see which movies they want to back. Many producers of would-be foreign film entries hope that press agent Fredell Pogodin will agree to take on their films, because that's a sign they might actually be in contention.
42 West Oscar maven Cynthia Swartz (who worked on both Crash and No Country for Old Men) is already plotting strategy on Scott Rudin's Doubt and Revolutionary Road, which also will get a push from Paramount's new marketing co-chief, Megan Colligan, who's no slouch when it comes to Oscars (Babe, Inconvenient Truth, There Will Be Blood, etc).
People posted their hard-won $14-million Brangelina baby pics Monday morning. Will the pics make it the best-selling cover story of the year, or will most folks see the pics online?
Angelina Jolie gave birth to a boy and a girl by Caesarian section Saturday night. The obstretician who delivered the twins told the A.P. their names are Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline. UPDATE: Here's NYDN.
One of the high points of the recent Cannes Film Fest was talking to Brad Pitt at the afterparty for Clint Eastwood's Changeling, where we enjoyed some friendly cocktail banter over the appropriate length for The Assassination of Jesse James. Let's just say that we each held our own.
Pitt's antics in the trailer for the Coens' next, the CIA spoof Burn After Reading, made me laugh out loud. (The movie opens the Venice Film Festival this August.) Pitt's a movie star--and can be very funny--look at the Oceans films and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Clooney has mined a rich comedy vein in his films for the Coens, and clearly does so here, along with Tilda Swinton and Fran McDormand:
George Clooney and his father Nick have come to rely on civil rights attorney David Pressman for advice and support on his various political activities, writes the LAT's Tina Daunt:
Then the elder Clooney met one of Pressman's relatives at a party and learned of the extensive connections the young lawyer had made in the region through his work as a special assistant to then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and, later, as a Sudan expert for the United Nations. The elder Clooney called Pressman the next day. Both Clooneys quickly came to view Pressman as a member of the family. "I call him 'Cuz,' " Clooney said. "My dad seems to think we're related. I'm not sure how he came up with that."
The idea makes Pressman chuckle. "He's an Irishman, and I'm a Jew. Go figure."
Over lunch recently at a fashionable bistro near his Chelsea law office, Pressman recalls that a female friend reacted in horror when he told her that he was taking George Clooney into Darfur. "She said, 'You realize if anything happens to him, you will be committing the greatest crime against womankind,' " Pressman said.
Since the first trip in 2006, Pressman and Clooney have gone on a number of missions to Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa to lobby for peace in Darfur.
As expected, the Coens' next film, the CIA comedy Burn After Reading (starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney), which was not going to be ready in time for Cannes, will open the Venice Fest this year.
Radar reports that Brad Pitt has let go his long-time PR rep Cindy Guagenti. He's going to take it alone, like his partner Angelina Jolie. I've long thought that Pitt's PR was well-handled; we'll see where it goes from here. Remember what happened when Tom Cruise and Pat Kingsley parted ways?
While speculation runs rampant on whether or not the Coens will take their next movie, the CIA pic Burn After Reading, starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, to Cannes--obviously Thierry Fremaux will want it, but he hasn't screened it yet; UPDATE: Working Title says it probably won't be finished in time--in the meantime Focus Features has booked the Working Title movie to go wide on September 12. This suggests that after the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men (which soared 67% this weekend) the Coens have jumped out of art-film territory and boast more commercial appeal; this pic's stars are certainly big enough to warrant a wide opening.
BTW, over the weekend I caught up with Time's entertaining Clooney cover story, which involves writer Joel Stein (who has a man-crush on George) inviting the star over to his modest abode for dinner. Stein proceeds to undercook the bloody entree, sets off house alarms and sends Clooney skittering into his dusty attic.
Clooney is more accessible than most stars, and understands and therefore manipulates the press better than anyone. I've met stars who can turn the charm on and off and focus their laser-beams on you in a way that can be unnerving. But no one is a better politician, remembering first names, delivering engaging attention, than Clooney. He's got the gift. He likes journalists because he grew up the son of one. That makes all the difference in the world. Other stars may have the same ability--they just don't choose to expend their energy.
Until I get my thoughts organized on The Assasination of Jesse James, here are some strongly worded thoughts from a Variety colleague who travels the blogosphere under the nom de plume MiraJeff.
He also has an early scoop on Sex and the City, which reveals that the movie boasts a flashback with younger versions of our four heroines.
Variety blogger Anne Thompson is your trusted source for film industry news. She tracks Hollywood, Indiewood, awards season and film festivals for this daily blog.
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Starring: Emile Hirsch, Hal Holbrook, Vince Vaughn; THERE WILL BE BLOOD chronicles one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a silver miner into a self-made oil tycoon. ; There Will Be Blood; Here's an exclusive look at Joel and Ethan Coen's trailer for their Cannes hit "No Country for Old Men," starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and uber villain Javier Bardem.
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Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sylvia Earle Ph.D., Mikhail Gorbachev...;
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