The Screengrab : David Milch

Morning Deal Report: Freaks and Straights

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Fresh off the Pineapple Express, David Gordon Green is preparing to lead the Freaks of the Heartland. The horror flick will be based on a Dark Horse graphic novel by Steve Niles. The “six-part 2004 series about the horrible secret of a rural Middle American town involves Trevor Owen's attempts to protect his ‘monster’ of a 6-year-old younger brother and Gristlewood Valley's other ‘freaks’ from their parents' worst instincts,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

If you couldn’t get enough of John From Cincinnati, there’s more surf-noir on the way. Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban have optioned Tijuana Straits, a novel by Kem Nunn, who collaborated with David Milch on the aforementioned HBO obscurity. Variety reports: “The novel's about a reclusive ex-surfer drawn into helping a Mexican woman who's being hunted by a killer hired by cartels to silence her before she exposes corruption in Tijuana.”

Rob Reiner, who apparently missed the Blair Witch sequel a few years ago, will direct Book of Shadows for Castle Rock. “The story follows a young man who must embark on the perilous journey of first love and face many trials of maturity while on the dangerous quest to close a mythical tome called Book of Shadows in order to restore balance to the world,” sez THR.

Related:
Face/Off: Judd Apatow and "Pineapple Express"
OST: This Is Spinal Tap

Screengrab Review: “Surfer, Dude”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

It’s not always a pretty sight when documentary filmmakers make the leap to fictional features. See – or rather, do whatever you can to avoid seeing – Michael Moore’s Canadian Bacon and Errol Morris’s The Dark Wind. As I implied in this post yesterday, I’m a big fan of S.R. Bindler’s documentary Hands on a Hard Body. Even so, I wasn’t exactly stoked to learn his follow-up (nearly a decade later) would be a surfing movie starring The Shirtless One, Matthew McConaughey. I dunno, maybe it’s just because I watched the entire goofy-ass David Milch series John From Cincinnati, but there’s something about the whole mystical-spiritual aura surrounding surfing that makes otherwise talented people a little loopy.

Surfer, Dude definitely qualifies as loopy – even that comma in the title is a little too self-consciously quirky. McConaughey, a friend of Bindler’s since high school, produced the film through his production company j.k. livin and brought his essential dudeness aboard in the lead role of Steve Addington, a free-spirited “soul surfer” who lives for the waves. Upon returning to Malibu from his latest world tour, Addington is informed by his manager (Woody Harrelson) that his board and shorts sponsorship contracts have been sold to Eddie Zarno, a former surfer turned multimedia mogul. Zarno has big plans for Addington, including a role in a beach house reality series and a virtual reality videogame bearing his image.

Addington’s “not feelin’ it.” He’s an all-natural dude and all he needs is his friends, his weed and his waves. “I’m not some assclown in a green room. I’m a surfer, dude!” Despite his manager’s warnings that cash is in short supply, Addington wants nothing to do with the digital world. His spiritual crisis arrives when the waves disappear. As the days pass with no surf to ride, he goes on a fast (including the ganja), but can he remain true to himself and resist selling out to the Man? Duuuuude.

Surfer, Dude has a green theme in more ways than one – in addition to McConaughey and Harrelson, Willie Nelson is on hand as a goat farmer to complete the trinity of Texas stoner icons. But the movie is so lightweight, it’s hard to invest too heavily in Addington’s existential dilemma. It’s a vanity project to the core, an ode to its producer-star in all his toned-and-tanned golden glory. With his lazy honeydew drawl, allergy to shirts and “awright awright awright” party-guy vibe in full effect, McConaughey isn’t playing a character so much as his US magazine persona come to life. His wink and nod towards his lovable rogue image recalls the Burt Reynolds of the late 70s, and that’s one way of looking at this movie: it’s Smokey and the Bandit with surfboards.

Related:
Woody Harrelson Eats Your Brains
Trailer Review: Fool's Gold

In Other Blogs: Seitz and Sounds

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

If you felt the film blog world shift a little on its axis this week, it’s probably because The House Next Door founder and proprietor Matt Zoller Seitz has departed for greener pastures. Of all things, Seitz has decided to concentrate on making his own films. Can you imagine? Why, if we all did that, there’d be no one left to snark about our work.

Seitz says goodbye with a lengthy interview with new House Next Door honcho Keith Uhlich, in which he discusses his plans as well as his lifelong love of movies. “There was this thing called The Scholastic Book Club, which I guess they still have because my daughter brings home the sheets for me to fill out. They had a book on the making of King Kong and I believe it was available before the movie had even come out. And I ordered it, along with some other things, and when it came I just read it from front to back. That was the first instance I can think of of my wanting to find out how movies were made. I don’t think I really knew anything about how movies were made. I just thought they were these things that kind of magically appeared on the screen when you went to the theater.”

Tributes to Seitz have been proliferating ever since his announcement. At Scanners, Jim Emerson has assembled his own personal “best of Seitz” retrospective, and shows the good taste to include this snippet from “McCabe and Mr. Milch”: “To some degree, nearly all of Altman’s films are anatomies of community. Ditto Deadwood, which week to week showcases a panoramic concentration that recalls Altman at the top of his game. Like Altman, Milch is not content to fixate on the plight of one individual -- a fundamental creative choice that puts both men temperamentally at odds with much of American popular culture. Both Altman and Milch prefer to see the big picture, the pointillist mural that takes shape when an artist asks the audience to take a few steps back from the canvas. They study human constellations comprised of distinct human beings who embrace different religions, inhabit different social strata, imbibe different substances, muse on their own pet obsessions and pursue their own strange agendas, all the while remaining largely oblivious to their impact on everyone else. Both Altman and Milch are not just storytellers. They are dramatic anthropologists, devising a collective organism in order to scrutinize it.”

At Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells offers his own, uh, “tribute,” I guess. Maybe it’s tongue in cheek. Who knows. “Seitz seems to think that a film critic's life doesn't provide enough in the way of cleansing ‘happiness moments,’ like what some people get from walking in the woods or watching basketball or going bowling or murdering a deer in the forest with a high-powered rifle. Well, it's not supposed to do that...hello? If you've been lucky enough to be called to the profession of film criticism (or any profession that most people are unable to do for lack of talent or persistence or both), then you do that thing until you die at your desk -- simple. And no moaning.” Be sure to read the comments if you’re up for a good old fashioned flame war.

Of course, when one door opens, another window closes, or something like that. In other words, Jonathan Rosenbaum, late of the Chicago Reader, has now joined our little club with the self-explanatory JonathanRosenbaum.com. “Here’s the basic plan: Although I’m hoping that this site will grow and sprout more features in the weeks and months ahead, including links and other items, for the time being it will consist of two weekly features: (1) a reprint of an older text of mine (in alternate weeks, this will consist of a piece of mine that may not otherwise be readily available, and a piece of mine formerly published in the Chicago Reader between 1987 and 2007), and (2) a brief list of recent publications and upcoming events.”

And finally, it wouldn’t be the week in blogs without another installment of List-o-Mania. In honor of Iron Head or whatever his name is, here are Ten Superheroes Who Deserve Their Own Movie from Film School Rejects. I think we can all agree, now more than ever, the time for She-Hulk has come. “Okay, I’ll admit that I never really read the comic, but what red-blooded American male could say no to the buff green beauty? The sexy Maxim cover shoot alone should be reason to make this film (and if The Incredible Hulk does well this summer, it could be a go).”

Aronofsky Takes Up Residence In Riverview Towers

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

If Lost is too straightforward and predictable for your television palette, take heart: The Hollywood Reporter reported last week that indie film darling Darren Aronofsky is currently developing a series for AMC, the network that's recently out-HBO-ed HBO with edgy, critically-acclaimed new shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

The psychological thriller (originally an HBO project, as it happens) is being scripted by John J. McLaughlin (screenwriter of Aronofsky’s upcoming film, Black Swan) and unfolds within the titular Riverview Towers apartment complex, presumably located somewhere south of Colorado’s Overlook Hotel and Twin Peaks’ Great Northern, east of The Kingdom hospital and within shrieking distance of Zuul's old haunts, Room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel and the building where Rosemary had her baby.

As a fan of Aronofsky’s Pi, a foe of the humorless, overrated Requiem For a Dream and an unashamed defender of The Fountain, I’m curious to see whether Riverview Towers plays to the director’s edgy, imaginative strengths or disappears up its own psychological abyss like David Milch’s recent disaster of self-indulgence, John From Cincinnati. Here's hoping for the former, although I suppose the latter could be equally entertaining in its own way.