The world in quotes:

"I definitely reached a point in my career where I felt confused about where I was going and felt somewhat stuck in rut. So I took a break, but [I] never did any sort of announcement about stopping or quitting and just sort of tried to keep doors open. I think I was somewhat creatively spent after a film that I did in Russia that took a year. It was never actually distributed here. It is called The Barber of Siberia, and it was huge in Russia. But I took a break to really try and throw the creative balls back up in the air, and try and find roles that were different for me in terms of coming back in. I fell in love and got married and had a kid, participated in setting up two different NGOs that deal with different things."
       —Julia Ormond on where the hell she went, at Premiere.

"I'll be honest, it's all about selling. If I have Werner Herzog and Nic Cage and Eva Mendes, I can go to market and say, 'Hey, Mr. German Guy, I know this is a dark movie, but you get Nic Cage and Werner Herzog and all I need from you is $2 million. When the German guy says yes--because it's a good deal for him--then I go to the French guy and the Italian guy and the Japanese guy. They all say yes and if I add up the numbers and it's more than the cost of the movie, with a little tax benefit from Louisiana, where we're shooting, then I'm a happy guy. It's as simple as that."
       —Producer Avi Lerner on why he got involved with the "Bad Lieutenant" remake, at the LA Times.

"You're credited as one half of the first inter-racial screen kiss on US TV. Do you think that moment and indeed Star Trek as a series, helped to break taboos and bring down boundaries?
Yes, I do think Star Trek had influence in that area. It also apparently influenced a lot of people in making serious decisions about their lives."
       —William Shatner takes questions from the crowd at BBC News.

"My aim was to have the audience 'experience' the protagonist's internal confusion instead of the thrill or suspense on the exterior. We who were involved in the creation of this film called this feeling a sense of 'intoxication' or 'drunkenness.'"
       —Satoshi Kon on his 1998 film "Perfect Blue," at Kaiju Shakedown.

"I'm really pleased with the changes. There are so many comic book in-jokes in the book that wouldn't make sense for a general audience. And I think having costumed characters that are unknown to the general public is a hard sell, especially when it's an R-rated movie. Everyone knows who Spider-Man and Superman are. So it was a good idea to get rid of the costumes and just focus on the core story, which the director did. He actually shot scenes directly out of the book, from looking at the scenes that I drew."
       —J.G. Jones, the artist who with writer Mark Millar created the graphic novel on which "Wanted" was sort of based, at the Chicago Tribune.

[Photo: Julia Ormond in "The Barber of Siberia," Intermedia, 1998]

+ Phoenix Rising: Julia Ormond Returns (Premiere)
+ 'Bad Lieutenant' makes a comeback (LA Times)
+ William Shatner answers your questions (BBC News)
+ Satoshi Kon interview (Kaiju Shakedown)
+ Q&A: J.G. Jones (Chicago Tribune)

By Alison Willmore in In quotes | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (1)

Tags: Avi Lerner, Bad Lieutenant, J.G. Jones, Julia Ormond, Satoshi Kon, William Shatner

Late yesterday it was announced that Sacha Baron Cohen has been cast as Sherlock Holmes with Will Ferrell as Watson in a new, Judd Apatow-produced comedy inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's detective -- the second Holmes major reinvention in the works, with Guy Ritchie working on a version that will "be more adventuresome and take advantage of his skills as a boxer and swordsman."

At the Guardian's film blog, Maxim Jakubowski has already expressed his displeasure: "The mind boggles. In the left corner Sherlock getting involved in over the top ultra-violence and in the right corner a farting Sherlock (or would it be Watson?) with the sensitivity of an average American teenager." He does allow that "there have been hundreds of Sherlock Holmes books written by others since Conan Doyle's demise," and that "Holmes has been impersonated by a legion of actors since he was first adapted for the screen." But Holmes has also already been reinterpreted in various, er, unconventional ways that would have ruffled the feathers of the protective Sherlockians Jakubowski mentions long before Borat stepped on the scene. A few TV/movie versions that come to mind:

Darryl Zero (Bill Pullman)
"Zero Effect"

The first film from Jake Kasdan (who went on to direct "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story") is essentially an update of Doyle's story "A Scandal in Bohemia," with Pullman as "the world's most private detective," a man so reclusive that he only interacts with clients by way of his assistant, played by Ben Stiller. The mysterious blackmailer and Irene Adler equivalent is played by Kim Dickens, who pulls Zero into a romance that's definitely not part of the original text.

By Alison Willmore in Lists | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (1)

Tags: Guy Ritchie, Judd Apatow, Sacha Baron Cohen, Sherlock Holmes

Sorry for the radio silence — vacation, then the always more challenging vacation recovery.

I know I'm not the only one to have mentally written off "Hancock" once its marketing campaign stopped presenting it as a comedy and started pitching it as an action movie, indicating that studio higher-ups somewhere had begun to doubt the film's ability to generated Big Laffs, and decided to pretend it was never really intended to generate said Laffs to begin with. Despite what look to be some awesome tonal problems, "Hancock" has the most promisingly complex premise of the summer tentpoles, and while the reviews have been the definition of mixed, they've also suggested the film at least flirts with some semi-ambitious themes and goes places you wouldn't expect from July 4th weekend fodder. A selection:

Wesley Morris at the Boston Globe: "As a courtesy I won't be terribly specific, but the movie suggests a rather incredible racial odyssey. It culminates with an intriguing Hollywood metaphor for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's endless tussle for the Democratic nomination."

Manohla Dargis at the New York Times: "He's Pothole Man, Train Wreck Man, but mainly he's Seriously Ticked Off Man, which, given that he's also a black man in Los Angeles, suggests that this superhero story comes with some bite, even a few nibbling sharp teeth."

An extremely supportive David Denby at the New Yorker: "We're also puzzled by Berg's visual style, which, in these intimate scenes, depends on a handheld camera, restlessly moving yet pinned to the actors in super-tight closeups. It's as if he were making a Cassavetes psychodrama. Suddenly, we realize why he stays so close. We are watching genuine actors at work, not well-paid hired hands filling up the space between agitated zeroes and ones."

Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times: "I have been waiting for this for years: a superhero movie where the actions of the superheroes have consequences in the real world."

Stephanie Zacharek at Salon: "I still can't get over the movie's suggestive reference to Hancock's coke use, or even just his reckless swilling of liquor -- we are talking about a character played by one of the most popular stars in Hollywood today, an actor who, whether he wants it or not, has been draped with the mantle of role model."

[Photo: "Hancock," Columbia Pictures, 2008]

By Alison Willmore in Critic wrangle | Link | 1 Comments | Recommended (1)

Tags: Hancock

I don't think the otherwise gloriously shiny teaser trailer for David Fincher's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" needs such twinkly Tim Burton music, and Brad Pitt's accented voiceover at the beginning worries me a bit, but it does look awfully good. The film is an adaptation of a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald (that can be read online) about a man who's born elderly and who ages backward, a conceit that's lodged itself in the plenty of noggins — most recently, Andrew Sean Greer's novel "The Confessions of Max Tivoli," the title story of Gabriel Brownstein's collection "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W" and even, sort of, Coppola's "Youth Without Youth." The film's due out December 19th — the trailer's here.

My head knows that the "CSNY" part of concert/anti-war doc "CSNY Déjà Vu" stands for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but my heart kind of expected the trailer to start off with a riff from "Baba O'Riley," giving way to Gary Sinise solving crimes. This may be because I'm starved for television. "CSNY Déjà Vu" is directed by Young, and will be Roadside Attractions' big experiment in day-and-date releasing — the distributor plans to open it July 25 in theaters, on VOD and online on Netflix Inc's "Watch Instantly" streaming service. The trailer can be found here.

"Life is Cool" seems to be Korea's answer to Richard Linklater's "Waking Life," similarly all animated via rotoscoping, though in this case the story's one of three men falling for the same woman. The trailer (unsubtitled) is here. (Hat tip to Kaiju Shakedown.)

[Photo: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," Paramount Pictures, 2008]

+ Trailer: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Apple)
+ Trailer: CSNY: Déjà Vu (Moviefone)
+ Life is Cool Korean Movie Trailer (YouTube)

By Alison Willmore in Trailering | Link | 2 Comments | Recommended (2)

Tags: CSNY Deja Vu, David Fincher, Life is Cool, Neil Young, rotoscoping, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Yesterday, the Toronto International Film Festival announced that its opening night film will be "Passchendaele," a $20 million World War I epic from actor/director Paul Gross, whose other helming credit is 2002's "Men With Brooms," as far as I know, the only curling rom-com in existence.

Guy Dixon at the Globe and Mail talks with Gross, who based the film on the life of (and stars as) his grandfather Sergeant Michael Dunne:

"About two-thirds of the film is set on the home front, so it is a romance that culminates in battle," Gross said. "It is at times epic and at times terribly intimate."

When it premieres at TIFF and then hits Canadian screens this fall, the movie is expected to draw inevitable comparisons to the 1981 Australian film Gallipoli. In many ways, Passchendaele tries to do what Gallipoli did: portray a key moment in a country's history for that country's audience.

Over at his blog at the New York Post, Lou Lumenick wonders if the May 15, 2009 opening date that Universal has set for Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat" follow-up "Bruno" will mean it's Palais-bound: "Cohen's 'Borat' created a sensation on the late-summer festival circuit, including Venice and Toronto, that helped turn it into a box-office hit. So don't be surprised if 'Bruno' opens the 2009 Cannes Film Festival." Using a premiere date to guess at a film's presence at Cannes doesn't always work — see "Sex in the City"'s non-appearance this year — but if "Bruno" does make it to the festival, I can only imagine the bathing suit photo-ops to come.

Also: David Gordon Green's "Pineapple Express" will open the Just for Laughs Film Festival in Montreal, reports Variety.

[Photo: "Passchendaele," Alliance Films, 2008]

+ PAUL GROSS'S LABOUR OF LOVE TO OPEN TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Globe and Mail)
+ Will 'Bruno' Open Cannes '09? (NY Post)
+ 'Pineapple' opens comedy festival (Variety)

By Alison Willmore in Festivals | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (1)

Tags: Bruno, Cannes 2009, Passchendaele, Paul Gross, Toronto 2008

At the New York Sun, S. James Snyder writes about both the ever-discussed endangerment of the print critic and last week's gathering/reading of selections from "Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood," a book of film essays edited by Michael Atkinson, who also writes IFC.com's DVD column. Snyder slips in a bit of news on the first front I hadn't yet heard: "Three weeks ago, what has become a familiar scene played out once again at the Washington Post, as acclaimed writers Stephen Hunter and Desson Thomson accepted buyouts and resigned their full-time positions."

Mr. Hunter is one of the few film critics to have been given the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. While I've never much cared for his work, particularly when he suggested the Virginia Tech massacre could have been instigated by overconsumption of the films of John Woo (choice sentence: "Their possible influence on Cho can be clearly seen in 11 of the photos that feature handguns."), it smarts to see that only five years after winning the prize he's gone, his position likely with him.

As for the reading, Glenn Kenny has a report at his blog Some Came Running.

[Photo: Mark Wahlberg in "Shooter" -- totally based on a novel by Stephen Hunter. Paramount Pictures, 2007]

+ Rescuing the Critical Mass With 'Exile Cinema' (NY Sun)
+ "Exile," cunning, no silence (Some Came Running)

By Alison Willmore in Critic watch | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (1)

Cyd Charisse, the impossibly long-limbed actress and dancer (born Tula Ellice Finklea) who starred alongside Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in classic musicals like "The Band Wagon" and "Singin' in the Rain," passed away today. From the AP:

Her height was 5 feet, 6 inches, but in high heels and full-length stockings, she seemed serenely tall, and she moved with extraordinary grace. Her flawless beauty and jet-black hair contributed to an aura of perfection that Astaire described in his 1959 memoir, "Steps in Time," as "beautiful dynamite."

You can watch her dance with Kelly at the end of "Singin' in the Rain" here on YouTube.

[Photo: Charisse and Kelly in "Singin' in the Rain," MGM, 1952]

+ Actress-dancer Cyd Charisse dies in L.A. at 86 (AP)
+ Gene Kelly & Cyd Charisse - from singin' in the rain (YouTube)

By Alison Willmore in Memoriam | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (4)

Tags: Cyd Charisse

George Lucas "plans for [new movie 'Red Tails'] to be based on the historic record that brought the Tuskegee Airmen fame, drawn from their own accounts." Let's see that Spike Lee try to pick a fight with me, he thinks. [AP]

David Bordwell on film restoration: "[I]t's possible to 'over-restore' a film. That is, by adding footage culled from many versions, the restorer may be creating an expanded version that nobody actually saw." [DavidBordwell.com]

Joe Leydon points out that the Western Writers of America have named "Shane" the greatest Western ever made. [Moving Picture Blog]

Thomas Doherty tackles serial killers in cinema, particularly "Dirty Harry" and "Zodiac," which trace "the emergence of a predator whose criminal profile, once a blurry police sketch, has sharpened into a wanted poster more photogenic than the western outlaw, urban gangster, or corporate mobster." [Moving Image Source]

And Erik Sofge defends Ang Lee's "Hulk":

In your standard comic-book adaptation, there's a moment when the superhero realizes his gift, a moment typically accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of power and often elation: Peter Parker, having discovered his ability to spin his webs, swings euphorically through the streets of New York. Later, of course, the hero learns that "with great power comes great responsibility"--in Parker's case, this means stopping a power-mad, creatively dressed inventor called the Green Goblin from terrorizing the city with a hoverboard. Lee's Hulk, by contrast, isn't really all that important to the future of the world, and isn't even much of a hero. He's a physical and psychological casualty who spends the entire movie trying to save himself, not the world. Considered at once a threat to national security and a potentially valuable research commodity, Banner is hunted by his own government and eventually imprisoned without a trial. While the authorities decide on whether to simply execute him, he escapes, forced to hide out in the Amazon. [Slate]

Elsewhere, Kim Newman attempts to defend "The Happening." [Guardian Film Blog]

[Photo: "Shane," Paramount Pictures, 1953]

+ Tuskegee Airmen to be subject of George Lucas film (AP)
+ American (Movie) Madness (DavidBordwell.com)
+ Shane: No. 1 with a bullet (Moving Picture Blog)
+ Portraits of a Serial Killer (Moving Image Source)
+ In Defense of Hulk (Slate)
+ Second opinion: The Happening (Guardian Film Blog)

By Alison Willmore in Odds | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (2)

Tags: Ang Lee, Dirty Harry, George Lucas, Hulk, Red Tails, restoration, serial killers, Shane, western, Zodiac

"The Edge of Love," director John Maybury's biopic about the amours of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (played by Matthew Rhys), is having its premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival tomorrow. Anna Burnside at the London Times talks to screenwriter/playwright Sharman Macdonald about how one gets such a film made, the secret being, and here's one for all the struggling writers out there to try at home, to get your daughter Keira Knightley to sign on as one of the leads.

Knightley asked to read the script, loved it, and set up some meetings in LA. It was during one of these calls that Knightley accidentally cast herself as Vera. "They said to her, 'Of course you're going to be in it', and she said, 'Well, Shar' -- that's what she calls me, she doesn't call me Mum -- 'I couldn't say no'."

Also in the Times, Andrew Lycett interviews Thomas' daughter Aeronwy Thomas, who likes the film while pointed out a few deviations from the truth: " 'The dresses all look too expensive,' she says, recalling her childhood. 'Where are the patches on the elbows of coats and cardigans?' " Sheila Johnston at the Telegraph talks with the film's producer Rebekah Gilbertson, who has her own family connection to the story — two of the people portrayed in the film, Vera Phillips (played Knightley), who had an affair with Thomas, and William Killick (Cillian Murphy), who was married to Vera and tried to murder Thomas, are her grandparents:

Her family rarely mentioned the scandal: "There was always a sort of mystery around it. I was told once that they had agreed, the four of them, not to talk about it. And my grandfather felt he had five daughters and didn't want to be considered as the person who tried to kill Dylan Thomas."

The film has yet to secure a U.S. distributor, possibly because its rumored Sapphic and threesome scenes are apparently just that. With this and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," we've almost got enough for a year-end trend piece on the vaporware ménage! Frustrated fanboys everywhere rage, rage...eh, whatever.

[Photo: "The Edge of Love," Capitol Films, 2007]

+ Sharman Macdonald: Keira, Dylan Thomas and me (London Times)
+ Aeronwy Thomas on The Edge of Love and her father, Dylan Thomas (London Times)
+ The Edge of Love: 'My granddad tried to kill Dylan Thomas' (Telegraph)

By Alison Willmore | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (2)

Tags: Dylan Thomas, Keira Knightley, Sharman Macdonald, The Edge of Love

A look at who's been saying what in interviews lately:

"There are maybe seven women who make up Caroline. But these 'Did it really happen?' questions really don't interest me. That's what everybody kept asking me when I did a Q&A at South by Southwest. I got off a couple of one-liners, like, 'I've got a BA in dope but a PhD in soul.' I'm good at those. Nowadays they call them sound bites."
       —Lou Reed on the inspirations for the main character in "Berlin," at the Independent.

"To me, it's used up. It's condescending now. The people that celebrate it are not from it. I feel that in some weird way they're looking slightly down on it. I only celebrate something I can look up to."
       —John Waters tells the AP his feelings on Honfest.

"It was sort of surreal. He is very professional and made me feel comfortable and it was pretty cool."
       —Mary-Kate Olsen on making out with Ben Kingsley in "The Wackness," at the Independent.

"They asked me if I would partake and I had to decline. Part of me would love to run around and act like a freaking a-hole again but I can't do that. I've got two kids. I saw something on VH1 or something about me in the 90s and I thought, oh my God, how am I going to explain this to my kids? I have a few years to think about how to finesse it but I do think about it on a daily basis."
       —Mark Wahlberg on why there's no Funky Bunch reunion looming in the near future, at MTV.

"I don't have a clue. But we'll figure it out, because that's what we do."
       —The late Stan Winston on what he told Steven Spielberg when asked if he could build a 25-foot dinosaur for "Jurassic Park," at CinemaTech.

[Photo: "Lou Reed's Berlin," Weinstein Co, 2007]

+ Bad boy of rock, cleaned up and making movie magic (The Australian)
+ John Waters swears off the word 'hon' and Honfest (AP)
+ Mary Kate Olsen - she wants to be alone (Independent)
+ Mark Wahlberg Passes On Funky Bunch Reunion. 'Not A F--ing Chance,' He Laughs (MTV)
+ Stan Winston on Art & Innovation (CinemaTech)

By Alison Willmore in In quotes | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (2)

Tags: John Waters, Lou Reed, Mark Wahlberg, Mary-Kate Olsen, Stan Winston