Thompson On Hollywood

Trailer Watch: A Previous Engagement, Mamma Mia!

I'm smack dab in the bullseye of the target audience for the indie comedy A Previous Engagement, which will likely only play for folks over 40 when it opens May 9 in NY and LA. But the trailer for this movie is hilarious. This reminds me of Enchanted April, the ultimate older women escapist fantasy. A Previous Engagement stars Brit thesp Juliet Stevenson, who can do comedy (Bend it like Beckham) or tragedy (the late great Anthony Minghella's romantic drama Truly Madly Deeply).

In this romantic comedy, written and directed by Joan Carr-Wiggin, Seattle librarian Julia Reynolds (Stevenson) coaxes her dull hubby Jack (Daniel Stern) to take a family vacation on Malta. Her undisclosed agenda is to keep the date she made twenty-five years ago with her first love Alex (Tcheky Karyo). When he shows up with a younger girlfriend in tow, all hell breaks loose.

Here's the trailer.

Trawling similar terrain is the movie version of the hit theater musical Mamma Mia!, starring Meryl Streep as a free-wheeling mom whose daughter is getting married and invites to her island wedding three possible fathers--handsome charmers all-- Brit Colin Firth, Swede Stellan Skarsgard and Irish Pierce Brosnan. Here's the HD trailer.

Summer Movies: Women Want Sex and the City

The NYT's Manohla Dargis seems to think that there aren't many women's pictures coming out this summer. True, much of the summer movie advance buzz and online hype is about what the fanboys are interested in. The women's pictures, which appeal to one or two audience quadrants and don't necessarily target men, won't be blockbusters. That's one issue. (Another is the current phobia about putting sex in movies, like Speed Racer and Iron Man, because it will scare off men and younger folks. Please.)

But several movies in theaters now and still to come are aimed at women, from Made of Honor and What Happens in Vegas to the Meryl Streep Abba musical Mamma Mia! and Sex and the City. Even Get Smart, starring Steve Carrell and Anne Hathaway, is going to pull women. And don't mess with Wanted's Angelina Jolie: she can kick ass on-screen as well as any male action star.

Finally, some marketing is starting to hit on Sex and the City, from Parker hyping her role as a mother on the cover of Parade, to early raves from Oprah and Fox News' Roger Friedman. Cinematical and Women and Hollywood debate Sex and the City's b.o. mettle. Carrie Bradshaw's getting married to Mr. Big? It will be huge.

Do I agree with Dargis that we could use more and better movies targeted at women? Fuck yeah!

Garland Sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Sung by the adolescent Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, Somewhere Over the Rainbow never ceases to move me.

Sinatra at the Movies

Frank Sinatra was a far better singer than he was an actor, but that doesn't mean he didn't leave a few great Hollywood performances behind--out of a slew of bad film choices. Here's a portrait of Sinatra as movie star.

My faves are the musicals: On the Town, Guys and Dolls, Young at Heart and The Tender Trap. But Sinatra did turn his sagging career around--and won the supporting actor Oscar-- with the drama From Here to Eternity. I have fond memories (misted in 60s nostalgia) of Von Ryan's Express and The Manchurian Candidate. But that's about it. Jean-Luc Godard was fond of Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running, which I need to look at again.

Weekend Boxoffice: Leatherheads vs. Nim's Island

At the weekend boxoffice, George Clooney's period screwball comedy Leatherleads (54% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes) dukes it out with family film Nim's Island, starring Jodie Foster (46 %). Here's Variety's boxoffice forecast.

The one to see, especially if you appreciate Martin Scorsese's mise-en-scene and the Rolling Stones in performance, is Shine a Light, which earned 86% fresh on the Tomatometer. (Here's Stephen Schaefer's report of the Stones' NYC press conference.) I will be catching up with Stop-Loss (62%) while it is still in theaters.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 4/4/08 10:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Nim’s Island “Go” 15%

Leatherheads “Go” 12%

Shine a Light “Go” 12%

21 “Go” 7%

Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! “Go” 7%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 4/4/08 10:00 a.m. PT)

George Clooney's Leatherheads opens this week. Of the movies below, which one is your favorite Clooney flick?

Ocean's Eleven 43%

O Brother, Where Art Thou? 31%

Michael Clayton 10%

Three Kings 7%

Out of Sight 6%

Syriana 3%

Scorsese Shines a Light on the Rolling Stones

I talked to Martin Scorsese's editor David Tedeschi (The Blues, Bob Dylan: No Man Home) about the upcoming Rolling Stones doc Shine a Light. (Here's the story.) It's a must-see for any cinephile, aside from the concert itself, for the sheer quality of the 35 mm photography shot by some of the greatest cinematographers in the world, including Robert Richardson, Robert Elswit, John Toll, Declan Quinn, Ellen Kuras, Stuart Dryburgh and more. Each shooter had a back-up for when the film roll had to be replaced, so they wouldn't miss anything. For Tedeschi, it was a cutter's fantasy.

[Jack White and Mick Jagger in Shine a Light]

Met's Tristan und Isolde Transmits Live

The staid old Metropolitan Opera has gone high-tech.

The Met will air a live HD transmission on March 22 of Wagner's romantic opera Tristan und Isolde via satellite to movie theaters worldwide. The opera will deploy live editing techniques to bring viewers into the onstage action. Conducted by music director James Levine, the Met will use multiple-frame effects so that global audiences will see as many as six frames on the screen at once. Thus they will see simultaneous close-ups, wide angles, and reaction shots—all cued to the music.

The transmission is Saturday, March 22 at 12:30pm/ET, 9:30am/PT. This presentation will be re-edited for later broadcast on public television.

Tristan und Isolde is the sixth of eight performances to be transmitted live from the Met in New York via satellite to more than 500 movie theaters around the world. Here's more info.

ShoWest: Summer Preview

Every year ShoWest screens an honor reel of movies that grossed over $100-million the year before. Which of the 2008 ShoWest promo pics will be on next year's reel?

Based on what I saw and reactions gleaned, here's my best guess:

Movie that could pass $300 million: the sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which will likely improve on its predecessor with more action and more mature protagonists.

Movies that could go well past $200 million: sequels The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, starring Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf, Rob Cohen's China-shot Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, and Guillermo del Toro's epic-scale actioner Hellboy II: The Golden Army; plus non-sequels Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman as assassins training rookie James McAvoy, the invulnerable Will Smith as a homeless hero in Hancock, Judd Apatow's dumb male comedy Step Brothers, starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, Marvel's Iron Man, which boasts femme appeal via Robert Downey Jr. and co-star Gwenyth Paltrow, and animated family originals Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks Animation) and Wall-E (Disney/Pixar).

Movies that could break $100 million: a remake of Marvel's The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton as a thinking man's Bruce Banner; for the femme audience, a remake of the HBO classic Sex and the City, a remake of the boomer TV show Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Ann Hathaway, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's surrogate nightmare comedy Baby Mama, and a movie version of the Broadway musical Mamma Mia (also for musical fans); Judd Apatow factory comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express; Ben Stiller's starry R-rated action comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Stiller, Downey, Jack Black and Steve Coogan; the frere Wachowski's adaptation of the anime classic Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci; and George Lucas's animated sequel Star Wars: The Clone Wars. (Am I the only one who feels a shock that the film is going out through Warners? Even though Lucasfilm controls and markets the movies and collects the lions' share of the take, I feel like all Star Wars movies are supposed to have the Fox fanfare in front of them.)

Rolling Stones Shine a Light

While Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stone concert doc Shine a Light grabbed some flat reviews out of Berlin (here's Variety), I was delighted with it when I saw it Tuesday night. That's partly because Scorsese gives camera operating duties to 10 top cinematographers (Robert Richardson! Robert Elswit! Ellen Kuras! John Toll! Declan Quinn!) to shoot two Stones concerts at the Beacon Theatre in New York. The results are dazzling for those of us who get a kick out of swooping cameras and brilliant editing and the whirling Stones.

Like any self-respecting Boomer, I grew up on the Stones. My 4th grade class at St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's did gymnastics to "Satisfaction." I argued to pals that the current Stones hit was called "Groovy Tuesday." I went to see Jean-Luc Godard's "Sympathy for the Devil" and the upsetting concert doc "Gimme Shelter." No dance party was complete in high school or college without "Jumpin' Jack Flash." And I attended my share of concerts, most memorably Madison Square Garden in 1969. Years later, I actually grabbed ten minutes with Jagger at Sundance for Premiere (for Enigma, I think).

Here's a clip from the Stones concert at Madison Square Garden in 1972:

There's no question that the Stones look old now. But Mick is still sexy. Sings like a devil. Dances like a dervish. And never seems out of breath. (Although he may be acting.) Other members of the band like Charlie Watts are willing to show the effort they're putting in. (This Guardian reviewer has some issues.)

Here's the trailer. The movie opens April 4.

Beatles Video: A Hard Day's Night Credits

This will cheer you up.

Weekend B.O. and Reviews

I am so not interested in what's playing in theaters right now. I'm still catching up on screeners and watching a lot of TV and letting screenings go right by. I saw Jumper, which got a 14% rotten tomatoes ranking today. It will still open to more than $30 million, I think. It's a fun mess. Spiderwick Chronicles seems to be worth checking out, as it ranked 76% fresh and will probably play well for families. Variety's Justin Chang loved it.

I want to see Working Title's Definitely Maybe, which was reviewed at 69%, pretty good considering most critics are males who don't tend to respond to the romantic comedy genre. I liked Step Up and this piece on rookie director Jon Chu in the LATimes made me want to see the sequel, as I'm a fan of the movie musical--even though it only rated 25 % rotten.

Here's Variety's weekend boxoffice take. And here's how the movies have done so far.

Weekend Boxoffice: Femmes Rule

On Super Bowl weekend, Hollywood leaves the boxoffice to the girls. Thus it's a 3D Hannah Montana concert movies vs. Jessica Alba in The Eye this weekend.

Oscar Watch: Will the Academy Disqualify Once Song?

The Bagger is reporting that yet another music nominee, the Once song Falling Slowly, may get the Academy hatchet for ineligibility. (It would follow Jonny Greenwood and Eddie Vedder's music for There Will be Blood and Into the Wild, respectively.) I was pegging Once for the best song Oscar. It looks to me like the song should be eligible, even if it came out on CD and appeared in a short movie before Once. It was still written for the film (other songs in the film were not). There are plenty of folks vested in hoping the song gets cut, among them producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, who are crossing their fingers that their Hairspray song is next on the list.

Sundance Watch: U23D

Yet another hot doc screened at Park City's Eccles Theatre Saturday night: U23D (here's the trailer). Bono and U2, Robert Redford and Al Gore (revisiting the scene of his first Inconvenient Truth triumph) were there. Why Al Gore? "He's with his friend Bono," said one of the National Geographic contingent.

The fans were rocking the house to U2 concerts in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Australia, seamlessly woven together by long-time U2 graphics artist turned rookie director Catherine Owens and director Mark Pellington. Owens spent two years editing the film in 2D before "knitting" together the 3ality 3D. "Thank you Bono for saying yes," said Owens. After Bono and U2 took the stage, Bono said, "There's a lot of love and Irish whiskey in the house. If this festival were in Dublin it would be called Raindance." After the screening, which inspired moviegoers to applaud as if they were in the live venue and wave their cellphones in the air, the gang trooped back on stage for a Q & A.

When one audience member asked Bono if he'd follow this movie up with something narrative like Yellow Submarine, Bono said, "You're telling me that Yellow Submarine has a deep narrative? You know how to hurt a fellow's feelings. Underneath this movie there is a narrative operating; it starts with social action and moves through ideas that have fired up our engines over the years--non-violence, human rights--it's hardly a flippant thing to do, under the circumstances, in this country."

Scorsese's Shine a Light Opens Berlinale

Scorsese's Rolling Stone documentary Shine A Light will open the 58th Berlin Film Festival on February 7. Scorsese and a squadron of cinematographers shot two 2006 concerts at New York's Beacon Theatre. This I cannot wait to see.

Preview of 2008

Tis the season for previews of 2008.

Here's this weekend's annual LAT sneak preview of 2008.

Reelz Channel.

Jeff Sneider.

The Vanity Fair cover story on Indy 4, plus follow-up blog.

[Vanity Fair photo by Annie Leibovitz.]

Sweeney Todd Opens in 5th Place

Sweeney Todd opened to excellent reviews (87% fresh on Rottentomatoes.com) and strong initial numbers on Friday, but the movie dropped an estimated 28 % (actually 25%) between Friday and Saturday. (Here's Sunday's Variety weekend boxoffice report.) This indicates that many viewers were lured by Paramount's mainstream horror-driven ad campaign, which did not sell the film as a Stephen Sondheim musical, and walked away disappointed. (The company also seeded the internet with clips showing the musical numbers.) Selling a unique movie like this, where there is no tried-and-true pattern to follow, is admittedly tricky. So Paramount made the call to go wide with 1200 runs--and not build the movie from fewer runs in sophisticated urban markets. It now looks like Dreamworks' initial strategy might have been the right way to go. That way early adopters would spread good word and build an audience slowly over time, rather than folks being lured into seeing a movie that they wind up not liking--and spreading bad word.

Sweeney Todd is a great movie. But it is the kind of unusual and arty film that requires delicate, special handling. OK, so what if it isn't a movie with mass-market appeal? Will the Academy come through for a great film that is tainted in the marketplace? And what happened with the Screen Actors Guild bypassing Sweeney? It's quite possible that many of the SAG committee members did not see the late-breaking Sweeney; the DVD finally went out Saturday.

UPDATE: According to DreamWorks, the plan was to start at 800 screens; based on tracking and reaction to the movie they expanded to l200. The two studios agreed to the plan. There were several different spots for the movie, some with music, some not.

NYT Calls Sweeney Todd "Masterpiece, Genius"

The NYT's A.O. Scott calls Sweeney Todd "close to a masterpiece." Wow. This is one hell of a great review, in every sense.

Tim Burton makes fantasy movies. Stephen Sondheim writes musicals. It is hard to think of two more optimistic genres of popular art, or of two popular artists who have so systematically subverted that optimism. Mr. Sondheim has always gravitated toward the dissonance lurking in hummable tunes, and has threaded his song-and-dance spectaculars with subtexts of anxiety and alienation. Mr. Burton, for his part, dwells most naturally (if somewhat uneasily) in the realms of the gothic and the grotesque, turning comic books and children's tales into scary, nightmarish shadow plays.

And so it should not be surprising that "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," Mr. Burton's film adaptation of Mr. Sondheim's musical, is as dark and terrifying as any motion picture in recent memory, not excluding the bloody installments in the Saw franchise. Indeed, "Sweeney" is as much a horror film as a musical: It is cruel in its effects and radical in its misanthropy, expressing a breathtakingly, rigorously pessimistic view of human nature. It is also something close to a masterpiece, a work of extreme-- I am tempted to say evil-- genius.

This will help push people to see and accept the movie--and to understand what they're seeing. Because Sweeney is so different.

SAG Nominees Go Indie

The Screen Actors Guild nominees took some surprising directions. (Here's Variety's story.) They reflect a few things about SAG, and may not predict Academy voting behavior. The two groups often share noms but also go their separate ways.

Actors LOVE Sean Penn, whose Into the Wild grabbed four noms. Hal Holbrook is still the most likely Oscar nom for this film, but Emile Hirsch and Catherine Keener get a leg up. Remember, actors adore Penn, but the rest of the Academy voters may not.

I hope the attention SAG voters gave Lars and the Real Girl's Ryan Gosling, Eastern Promises' Viggo Mortensen and A Mighty Heart's Angelina Jolie will inspire Academy voters to watch those three films.

Actors love Cate Blanchett. Like the Golden Globes, she grabbed two noms, for best actress for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and supporting actress for I'm Not There. I doubt the Oscar actors will go for Elizabeth.

SAG voters are somewhat more mainstream than the Academy actors. They steered away from such late-breaking high-brow Academy contenders as Sweeney Todd and Atonement. No Johnny Depp, James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saorise Ronan. They went for There Will be Blood's Daniel Day Lewis, but not Paul Dano. Michael Clayton's George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson continue to gain traction for Academy Oscar slots. SAG voters skipped such foreign-language fare as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Kite Runner, but came through for Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, which was a hit here. It makes sense that they embraced the great ensemble acting in the hugely entertaining 3:10 to Yuma, American Gangster, Hairspray and No Country for Old Men (both Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem got supporting actor noms).

American Gangster won a best ensemble nod and Ruby Dee is a supporting actress nominee, but Denzel Washington got nothing, not for American Gangster nor The Great Debaters, which some SAG voters may not have had a chance to see. While American Gangster seems to be losing momentum (it has fallen out of the LAT's Buzzmeter poll's top five for best picture) my sense is that many Academy voters like it a lot. Charlie Wilson's War, on the other hand, which opens this weekend, hasn't got a pulse.

The full SAG nominations list is on the jump:

Sweeney Todd: The Singing

I've had Sweeney Todd in my head for weeks now. I have a great deal of respect for what the filmmakers and actors did to make this movie musical work on screen. It was a tough nut to crack, but with Stephen Sondheim's help, they did it. Here's the LAT story explaining how.

Sweeney Todd: First Five Minutes

The first five minutes of Sweeney Todd are online. I'm looking forward to seeing the film for the second time tonight.

Weekend Boxoffice: I am Legend's Vampires vs. Alvin's Chipmunks

Will Smith's futuristic actioner I am Legend and the family-friendly Alvin and the Chipmunks should both make strong debuts this weekend. According to Fandango's stats, the upcoming Hannah Montana and Celine Dion concert films are already fueling brisk movie ticket sales.

UPDATE: Here are weekend b.o. predictions from Fantasy Moguls and Variety, which also assesses the b.o. impact of the Golden Globes.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 12/13/07 9:00 a.m. PT):

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

I Am Legend “Must Go” 40%

Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds (concert movie) “Go” 18%

Alvin and the Chipmunks “Go” 12%

The Golden Compass “Go” 5%

Celine Dion (concert movie) “Must Go” 4%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 12/13/07 9:00 a.m. PT):

Will Smith returns this week in I Am Legend. Among his movies that opened during a holiday season, which was your favorite?

Independence Day 27%

The Pursuit of Happyness 24%

Men In Black 17%

Bad Boys II 14%

Hitch 12%

Enemy of the State 6%

Trailer Watch: Mamma Mia!

Something to look forward to for fans of movie musicals, if not Abba, Mamma Mia!

Here's the international trailer.

And here's a better res (but worse all-around) U.S. teaser.

Golden Globe Nominations: Atonement Leads Pack with Seven

With seven nominations, Joe Wright's Atonement led the field of Golden Globe nominations Thursday morning. It was a good day for Denzel Washington, who stars in two films out of seven in the motion picture drama category: American Gangster, in which he stars as a Harlem kingpin, and The Great Debaters, a heart-tugging period drama about an upstart debate team at a black college who take on Harvard, which he also directed. He was also nominated for best actor for American Gangster.

The 80 or so Hollywood Foreign press voters wound up with three ties for fifth place, they say; hence the seven drama slots.

Michael Clayton earned five noms, including George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson. Cate Blanchett landed two noms, for dramatic actress in Elizabeth: The Golden Age and for her supporting role as one of six Bob Dylans in I'm Not There. And Philip Seymour Hoffman won two comedy side noms, as best actor in The Savages and supporting actor in Charlie Wilson's War.

While considered a bellwether for the Oscars, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association generously breaks its best picture and actor candidates into two categories: drama and musical/comedy, while the Motion Picture Academy does not. Thus, on January 22 the Academy may not find room to reward all the musical/comedy Globe entries: Across the Universe, Hairspray, Juno, Sweeney Todd and Charlie Wilson's War, which landed five noms.

The director category reveals the strongest five Globe candidates: Sweeney Todd, No Country for Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, American Gangster and Atonement. I would not be surprised if those five also wound up as Oscar's best on January 22. While its youthful director Jason Reitman did not land a director Globe mention, Juno, which got nods for comedy, actress (Ellen Page) and screenplay (Diablo Cody) is gaining momentum in the Oscar race.

There's no question that Hairspray got a significant boost from the Globe nominations, especially John Travolta in the supporting actor category, who had been overlooked by critics' groups. Also getting much-needed recognition was Casey Affleck for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Among the Globe surprises that may not be mirrored on the Oscar side of the ledger:

David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises and star Viggo Mortenson earned drama nods.

Angelina Jolie landed a dramatic actress nom for A Mighty Heart.

Jodie Foster was recognized for her role as a Manhattan vigilante in The Brave One.

On the musical/comedy side:

Hairspray's Nikki Blonsky and Sweeney Todd's Helena Bonham Carter landed noms.

Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts won noms for Charlie Wilson's War.

John C. Reilly landed a nod for the musical comedy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Ryan Gosling got a much-needed boost for the indie flick Lars and the Real Girl.

Of the musical/comedy actor nods, the likeliest one to score with the Academy voters is Sweeney Todd's Johnny Depp.

Because the Globes have less stringent criteria for inclusion in its foreign film category, several films that are not eligible for the Oscars made the cut: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Lust, Caution and The Kite Runner. Nominees 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Romania) and Persepolis (France) are considered strong contenders in the foreign Oscar race.

While many would-be awards-season contenders are crying in their beer today, all is not lost. It is possible to forge ahead without Globe noms, as Half-Nelson star Gosling did last year.

The full list of movie nominations is on the jump.

Oscars Face the Music

The Oscar song submissions are in, all 59 of them. Which ones will make the cut? The ones with the most recognizable names--and biggest ad campaigns--natch. This is the category where pop stars like Sting, Bowie or Collins, as well as a Disney animation song or two, often land a nom.

Thus Eddie Vedder's three Into the Wild songs, Hairspray's Come So Far (Got So Far to Go) and Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz's two Enchanted entries are strong contenders. The voters are going to want to give something to the indie phenom Once, so this could be the appropriate category to reward one of the songs from the Frames' Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. And it was a brilliant move on Harvey Weinstein's part to suggest that Academy fave Clint Eastwood compose the score for Grace is Gone; he also a supplied a song.

Here's Phil Gallo's take.

The entire list of original songs is after the jump:

Sweeney and Charlie Q & As

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton talk to New York Magazine about the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. And Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman talk to Time about Charlie Wilson's War.

[Photos: Hoffman, Roberts and Hanks for Time; Depp and Burton for New York]

Sweeney Todd Clips

Interestingly, DreamWorks is drumming up interest in Tim Burton's movie take on Stephen Sondheim's musical by making a whopping nine clips, mostly musical numbers, available on the web. That's a lot!

Sweeney Todd: Reviews

Days after the blogs weighed in, the trades posted the first lengthy reviews on Sweeney Todd Monday, a full week earlier than DreamWorks had initially intended. They are favorable. Here's Todd McCarthy in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Screen International.

Sweeney Todd Reactions

DreamWorks has been holding Sweeney Todd back. Well, they finally screened it last week, and elicited "non-reviews" from the Internet folks. The two trades are sufficiently alarmed by all this activity to consider running their reviews sooner rather than later, I hear.

I saw the movie Sunday. I now understand why DreamWorks has been treading so carefully on the marketing. This is not your every day movie musical. Stephen Sondheim is filtered through the sensibilities of Tim Burton and his muse and alter-ego, Johnny Depp. It worked for me. I already love this musical; it was fascinating to see the narrative that I'd seen on stage so many times unfolding in a more literal close-up space. The story is the same, but intimate close-ups bring emotion and wells of feeling (and blood and gruesome gore). The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is not exactly a warm and cuddly fellow. And yet Depp (pictured here with Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett) makes him human.

Sweeney Todd will likely earn a rash of Oscar nominations, including cinematography, production design, makeup, costumes, sound categories, and Depp. But even if Depp is long overdue, Daniel Day Lewis remains a formidable opponent. And a best picture slot is not a sure thing. It never is.

Check out these tip-toed Internet reports about Sweeney: Newsweek blogger Ramin Setoodeh, In Contention, Fox News, Hollywood Elsewhere, The Hot Blog, The Carpetbagger, and Sweeney champion Tom O'Neill at The Envelope.

Weekend Boxoffice: Enchanted Holds Firm

As I predicted, Enchanted continued its boxoffice surge this weekend. Here's Pam McClintock's report.

DVD Watch: A New Beatles Help

The Oregonian's Shawn Levy on the new refurbished Help DVD.

Here's the trailer:

Oscar Watch: Weinstein May Not Push Blanchett into Best Actress Race

Over the weekend, David Poland at Movie City News reported that Harvey Weinstein was planning to push Cate Blanchett as best actress for I'm Not There, rather than supporting. Which didn't necessarily mean that the Golden Globes, SAG and the Academy would go along with it. UPDATE: And it doesn't mean Weinstein will take this route, either, it turns out. "Nothing is changing," said one Weinstein Co. spokeswoman. These games are often played. In this case, some of the
I'm Not There folks are pushing for TWC to make this change. Blanchett is off Down Under doing a play, but apparently has no intention of backing off her support for Elizabeth, which Universal has been backing handsomely via "for your consideration" ads. If Blanchett were to withdraw her support for an Elizabeth push, she might land best actress, but she's weaker in that category. She was a surefire winner in supporting.

Poland didn't check with TWC to verify the assertion of his good source, he admits. And his weekly memo to his Gurus of Gold voters told them to place Blanchett in the best actress category.

So why take the chance? Economics. Even a nomination in the lead categories means more in global boxoffice and DVD sales than supporting does. Think Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda. That movie did far better than it would have done otherwise. And I'm Not There is strictly an art-house play without some Oscar attention.

Here's a Blanchett clip that's been on YouTube for a while:

And the real-life limo video of John Lennon and Bob Dylan that may have inspired it: