The Screengrab : beverly hills chihuahua

DVD Digest for March 3, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

I’ll be reviewing this week’s most notable DVD in a separate post later this morning, but for now here’s a list of this week’s other major releases.

This week’s list of recent releases coming to DVD is looking pretty paltry, with the highest-profile new arrivals being Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (Fox, also Blu-Ray) and (ugh) Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Disney, also Blu-Ray). Also this week is Kristin Scott Thomas in I’ve Loved You So Long (Sony, also Blu-Ray) and Bertrand Tavernier’s long-delayed In the Electric Mist (Image, also Blu-Ray). And, just in time to be tied in with the release of the big-screen blockbuster, Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic (Warner, also Blu-Ray), which got reviewed here by former Screengrabber Kent Beeson.

Aside from the subject of my DVD review later on, this week’s most notable classic release is Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time Redux (Sony). Likewise, not much in the way of TV on DVD, with the biggest-ticket item being ER Season 10 (Warner).

Finally, in Blu-Ray only releases, this week brings Brokeback Mountain (Universal) and The Silence of the Lambs (MGM).

Trailer Review: Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Trailer #2)

Paul Clark — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Okay, this is just getting silly. Last summer, I took a look at the first teaser for the third Ice Age adventure, and mused on the Scrat-centric nature of the series’ marketing so far. But at the time, I figured that, hey, it’s just a teaser, and surely the folks at Blue Sky Animation would show some footage of the films’ actual protagonists by the time a real trailer came around. But nope- this full-length trailer for the upcoming installment in the series is, once again, all about Scrat. Frankly, I’m a little torn. On the one hand, this seems pretty dishonest to me, selling audiences on the material in the trailer when it’s probable that most of this won’t show up in the actual film- or, if it does, it’ll be just like this, thereby making it unnecessary to buy a ticket. It feels a lot like the marketing for Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which promised dancing, singing dogs and didn’t deliver anything of the kind (or anything else that was remotely entertaining, for that matter). On the other hand, I like the idea of Blue Sky making a series of Scrat shorts- the little guy’s pretty irresistible, and the shorts have a Tex Avery-style flair for cartoon slapstick that the movies themselves lack. I guess I just want to see the ongoing adventures of Scrat untethered from Fox’s need to use them to sell tickets. Is that so much to ask?

Better Late Than Never: Phil Nugent's Oscar Predictions

Phil Nugent — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Here at the Screengrab, we happily embrace our responsibility, as movie bloggers, to approach the massive, steaming mountain of Oscar speculation coverage and, having considered it, to grab a shovel and do our part. I personally missed the recent group "Oscar predictions" feature, because I hadn't had the chance to see most of the movies nominated for the major awards. Now that time has passed, I still haven't seen them, but a wino who hangs out by the mall near Columbus Circle briefed me on what he'd heard people saying about them as they were filing out of the Loew's multiplex across from Lincoln Center and running their mouths while he was trying to sleep, and now I think I'm all up to speed. Let's do this thing.

BEST PICTURE: Last year, just as our country was collapsing into economic meltdown and post-imperial despair, one movie stood out for its ability to bring a smile to faces whose owners thought that they would never smile again, to fill the air with the laughter of children, to defy the iron laws of miserable reality and nature itself. That film was, of course, Beverly Hills Chihuahua. It's a lead pipe cinch to win Best Picture this year--or would be, if it were nominated. It isn't, due to a terrible blunder. Because most of the rich and powerful industry figures who select the nominees have very busy schedules, what with all the time they spend entertaining the troops overseas and home schooling their children, they entrust the actual selection process to their servants, asking them to fill out and submit their ballots for them. This year, most of them naturally advised the help to vote for the movie about the rich dogs who visit the slums, and something got lost in the translation, much to the benefit of Danny Boyle's movie, which is apparently about some folks in India. Once the voters recognize this slip-up, Slumdog's chances are sure to plummet.

The Weinstein Company has put a lot of muscle behind The Reader, but the film, which turns on the act of reading, and even announces as much in its title, will not be forgiven by the representatives of the movie business for so brazenly calling attention to, and perhaps seeming to encourage, an alternative method of entertainment. If the company wanted to antagonize the entire industry, why didn't they just make a movie called The Video Pirate Who Cost That Poor Studio Janitor in the Short Film You Just Saw His Daughter's College Fund? One film that might stand to profit from these movies' obvious missteps is Frost Nixon, Ron Howard's fact-based follow-up to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. (The movie stars Michael Sheen, the most talented and British of the countless actor sons, some legitimate and officialy recognized, some not, of Apocalypse Now star Martin Sheen, as Skid Roper, an itinerant washboard musician who wreaks bloody revenge on his former parter, Mojo Nixon, after Nixon dissolves their partnership and abandons him for solo stardom just as poor Skid was beginning to enjoy the earthly pleasures known only to novelty artists making it big on the collegr radio circuit.) But I predict that the Best Picture award will go the The Dark Knight. Since it's not nominated, its win would constitute a shocking and unexpected twist at the end of the evening, and that's just how Batman rolls!

BEST ACTOR: Everyone agrees that this will be a pitched battle between the two leading candidates: Frank Langella, who plays Mojo Nixon in Frost Nixon, and Brad Pitt for his performance as an eighty-year-old baby in the twenty minutes of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that some people saw before they fell asleep or went out for a smoke and forgot to return to the theater. In both cases, it will very likely come down to the two bravura musical numbers performed by the stars. Langella's pitched rendition of "Burn Down the Malls" has become a cult sensation, especially since the Gap built their holiday TV commercials around it, but Pitt set the screen on fire with the spectacular production number in which he dances around his New Orlean orphanage, performing Benjamin Button's Oscar-nominated theme song:

Alakazam and whoa, hot damn!

I'm an eighty-year-old baby!

The devil must have sent me here to freak y'all out,

And no, I don't mean maybe.

Oh, I go in my pants like a baby do

But that's what the old folks do too, woo!

Prayin' every night, God, kill me, please!

I'm an eighty-year-old baby!

The rule of thumb with actors nominated for their performances in singing parts is that their odds greatly improve if they did their own singing. When Jamie Foxx was nominated for Ray a few years ago, the general consensus was that he was badly miscast as Johnny Ray, but Foxx was assured of a win as soon as voters heard his own wrenching performance of "The Little White Cloud That Cried". And while Langella did his own singing, not only was Pitt's singing voice dubbed, but his face was CGI-generated, and his dancing was performed by that old guy who used to appear in the Six Flags commercials. Normally, this would give Langella an edge. But we're probably going to have to give Pitt one of these things eventually, and there may never be another time when a Brad Pitt performance has so little Brad Pitt in it. And since the less Pitt contributes to a Brad Pitt performance the better it's likely to be, I think the Academy will do the right thing and strike now while the iron is hot.

BEST ACTRESS: Anne Hathaway is nominated for her performance in Rachel Getting Married, but as I understand, she doesn't play Rachel. Getting nominated for a movie that has a character's name in the title when you didn't play that character is just confusing. It makes Academy voters' heads swim, and trust me, these people don't need that. Kate Winslet is nominated for The Reader, and we've already discussed what's the matter with that title, and I hear that Winslet actually plays the person who the reader reads to, which...well, see above. Sometimes I don't think people even take these things seriously. Melissa Leo is nominated for Frozen River, which is a peerless example of the kind of performance and movie that wins at the Independent Spirit Awards exactly one day before the same names are read aloud at the Oscars ceremony and a murmur passes through the crowd that goes something like, "I dunno, I think maybe she's from Canada." Meryl Streep is nominated for playing a nun in a film based on an acclaimed Broadway play, and that sure sounds like an Oscar sure shot, as I was saying just the other day to President Ronald Reagan and MTV VJ Martha Quinn as we were playing Ms. Pac-Man and eating Frusen Glädjé washed down with New Coke while wearing our "Frankie Say" T-shirts and waiting to go over and stand in line for the opening of Epcot Center...oh, really? That was all that long ago, huh? Okay, then I guess it'll have to go to Angelina Jolie for The Changeling. It should have hit me immediately that they'll need to do that to make it up to Clint for not nominating him for having had jack shit to do with Gran Torino, especially since watching that movie amounted to spending two hours seeing Eastwood screaming at the voters, "Look at these wrinkles! Listen to this raspy croak of a voice! Y'see this kisser? I'm not gonna be here forever, for God's sakes, don't you get it!?" The nice thing is that now Brad and Angelina will both carry one home, on the same night. It'll probably extend the life of the marriage by a good two years.

BEST DIRECTOR: Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire. Just the voters' way of saying that they understand that the mix-up about nominating him instead of whoever directed Beverly Hills Chihuahua wasn't his fault and everybody feels bad about any possible embarrassment this whole mess has cost him

THE JEAN HERSHOLT HUMANITARIAN AWARD: This guy.

Dear Santa: Cinematic Comebacks We'd Most Like To See (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

WHIT STILLMAN (& CHRIS EIGEMAN)

Like caviar or triple-malt scotch, the films of Whit Stillman are rarified, WASPy treats best savored while the rest of the world noshes on Big Macs and beer. Around the time Richard Linklater was eavesdropping on his beloved Austin eccentrics in Slacker and Kevin Smith was chronicling the lives of hyper-articulate, dirty-minded New Jersey wage slaves in Clerks, Stillman’s indie debut, Metropolitan, focused on yet another chatty, self-contained subculture: the privileged debutantes and awkward urban haute bourgeoisie of the Upper East Side twentysomething social circuit. Dry, sardonic Chris Eigeman and nervous, schleppy Taylor Nichols were Metropolitan’s standouts, and Stillman wisely paired the sweet-and-sour comic duo as brothers in his follow-up, Barcelona, a witty, extremely low-concept picaresque about boorish Americans abroad in 1980s Spain. Eigeman also starred in The Last Days of Disco, the final installment of the director’s overeducated white people trilogy (and also his last film to date). For reasons I’ve never entirely understood, given its thematic and tonal similarity to its predecessors, Disco (which also features Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale and Robert Sean Leonard) was considered a disappointment by most fans and critics (if not by Stillman himself, who enjoyed the tale of bed and club-hopping yuppies enough to retell the story again a few years later as a fake roman-a-clef in the voice of one of the film’s characters). Sadly, Stillman’s vision was too wordy, insular and quirky even for art house audiences, making it impossible in recent years for him to finance subsequent projects, the worst result of which (to my way of thinking) is the resultant lack of good roles for the hilarious (and criminally underused) Eigeman. Yet the Internet Movie Database says that Stillman is currently adapting Christopher Buckley’s novel Little Green Men, and though no cast is listed yet, with luck maybe it’s a good sign that Eigeman (recently Spirit Award-nominated for his directorial debut, Turn the River) will someday appear in front of the camera again and not just behind it.

BROOKE ADAMS

In the late '70s and early '80s, Adams' dark-haired beauty, sense of fun, and tantalizing hint of neurosis (in such films as Days of Heaven, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Tell Me a Riddle, The Dead Zone, and Almost You) made her the thinking horndog's indie movie star of choice, but then she drifted out of sight. She only turned up in movies a couple of times during the '90s, most notably in Alison Anders's 1992 Gas Food Lodging. That same year, she married Tony Shalhoub, with whom she had a daughter the next year. In 2002, she had her only big movie role of recent years in Made-Up, a charming but barely seen comedy that Shalhoub co-starred in and directed, from a script by her sister, Lynne Adams. About the only other way to have gazed on her in recent years would be to monitor Shalhoub's TV series; she's made guest appearances on both Wings and Monk. So long as they're happy, I'm happy. I miss her, though.

MARE WINNINGHAM

In 1985, Winningham co-starred in the prototypical Brat Pack movie St. Elmo's Fire, when she was 26. Dramatically, she was at a disadvantage for being cast as the least emotional, mildest mannered of the seven lead characters, though she also had an edge in that she was the only one of the movie's stars, besides Ally Sheedy, who could act a lick. (At the time, anyway: Rob Lowe had his moments fifteen years later on The West Wing.) Winningham has the kind of virtues that can easily be cast as negatives, but she's such a capable, talented actress that her honesty and decency can seem radiant and illuminating rather than starchy and prim; to fully appreciate her, check out the 1995 Georgia, where her superb performance as a hard-working, mess-cleaning musician can be viewed aside Jennifer Jason Leigh's gruesomely self-immolating, exhibitionistic display as her self-immolating sister. The worst thing that could ever be said of Winningham is that her honorable acting style has sometimes failed to make the dull, underwritten roles she's been stuck with seem livelier than they are, but anyone who saw her as the unconventional love of Anthony Edwards' life in Miracle Mile (1989) or the blubbering girlfriend who's quick to dump the jobless Timothy Hutton in Made in Heaven (1987) knows that her gifts include a wild streak. As she enters her middle years -- she turns fifty next year -- it sure would be something to get to see the nice girl be given the chance to cut the hell loose.

PAMELA REED

It's easy to imagine aspiring directors in Hollywood being sent forth into the valley armed with one basic, flawless piece of no-brainer advice: if you have a scene that you want the audience to stay awake for, stick Pamela Reed onscreen. Since 1980, her first year in movies, inviting David Carradine and Sonny Landham to have a knife fight for her honor (Carradine: "What does the winner get?" Reed: "Nothin' you ain't both already had.") in The Long Riders and presenting Paul La Mat with a marriage proposal that should have come with a free toaster in Melvin and Howard, she's been practically storming off the screen and slapping the cell phones out of people's hands. Why has this woman never been offered the chance to carry a movie? Is it thought that a woman with her energy and internal strength would alienate audiences if they had to put up with her for more than a few scenes at a time? Sure, that makes sense: it's not as if Bette Davis had a career. But I don't mean to suggest that we shouldn't be grateful for what we get of her, especially given that she's spent most of the past decade hanging around TV sets. This did give her the chance to revive one of her greatest roles, the fully caffeinated political campaign manager T. J. Cavanaugh of Robert Alman's Tanner '88 and its 2004 sequel Tanner on Tanner. On the other hand, that Jericho thing didn't do anybody any good. She belongs on the big screen, where she can take on dragons big enough to make it seem like a fair fight (as does her co-star from Tanner and The Right Stuff, Veronica Cartwright, and Amy Madigan, another actress who doesn't need to chug kerosene before she arrives on the set to breathe fire).

PIPER PERABO

Can it really be called a comeback if a star never quite hit it big in the first place? Consider the sad case of Piper Perabo. In 2000, she was being called Hollywood's It Girl, with two high-profile projects on the horizon. Unfortunately for her, those projects were The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Coyote Ugly. The former was a notorious stinker in which Perabo's performance got lost amid the second-rate animation and hammy turns from Robert DeNiro and Rene Russo. The latter was a modest success, but one that had less to do with its nominal lead than audiences flocking to see scantily-clad dancing female bartenders. Having gained no momentum whatsoever from her alleged star-making vehicles, Perabo's career quickly hit the skids, with the actress appearing in a string of lame-brained thrillers and forgettable comedies, with the occasional supporting role in the Steve Martin-headed Cheaper By the Dozen franchise. Eight years after being declared the Next Big Thing, Perabo was last seen playing second banana to a cast of talking Chihuahuas. Frankly, that's a shame, because despite the disappointing trajectory of her career, Perabo remains a vibrant, fetching actress with an infectious smile and a surprisingly soulful side. Just look at her brief appearance in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige -- as Hugh Jackman's ill-fated lover, Perabo brings more genuine spark and feeling to her role than her more tabloid-friendly costar Scarlett Johansson could hope to muster. Even better is 2001's Lost and Delirious, a mostly forgotten Canadian film about teenage sexuality in an ivy-covered boarding school. Perabo steals the show as Paulie, a rebellious young woman nursing a hopeless love for her reluctant classmate. It's a performance that's so white-hot with intensity and charged with eroticism that she eventually becomes more than the film can really take. So why exactly was she last seen in a movie that called for her to bark into a telephone? Your guess is as good as ours.

Click Here For Part One, Three & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark

Trailer Review: The Tale of Despereaux

Paul Clark — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Ever since I began dating a single mother, I’ve become more conscious of upcoming kids’ movies than I ever needed to be before. The ever-reliable Pixar and Miyazaki notwithstanding, this naturally means wading through a lot of dreck, as when I took the boy to (ugh) Beverly Hills Chihuahua when mom came down with the flu. So I’ve learned to value movies geared to kids that actually look like they have some value. And while The Tale of Despereaux may not appeal to adults who don’t have kids to care for, to me it looks pretty worthwhile. For one thing, I enjoy the look of the animation, which is somewhat lusher and more picturebook-ish than most computer-animated films nowadays. But I also like the voice casting here- instead of filling the roles with caffeinated comics and encouraging them to ham it up, many of the voice actors actually sound like they’re underplaying. Besides, how can I not love an animated movie in which Screengrab fave Richard Jenkins provides a voice? I end up getting dragged to a lot of kids’ movies nowadays, but The Tale of Despereaux is an exception- a family animated movie I’m actually looking forward to seeing.

Oscar Launch: The Silly Season Commences

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

As the days of 2008 dwindle down to a precious few, the year-end think-pieces, Oscar prognostications and meta “we’re not really prognosticating, but rather ironically commenting on the ridiculous awards process” articles proliferate at an alarming rate. How to keep up? How to ensure that you’re familiar with not only the consensus Academy Award front-runners, but also the reasons they have been anointed, while more worthy efforts have been snubbed? Now more than ever you need to the Screengrab, where we consume and digest this information, then regurgitate the salient points in tasty bite-size increments.

We begin with The New York Times, where David Carr calls himself The Carpetbagger, an alias that lends him the aura of being above it all while he’s actually wallowing in it. “Against the backdrop of a historic presidential election and a vortex of economic dysfunction, the burgeoning Oscar season seems even sillier than usual,” Carr harrumphs. “After all, who really cares about the throwdown for best supporting actor at a time when the citizenry seems poised for a run on its own banks?” With that out of the way, he proceeds to handicap the horse race thusly: “This year, by the Bagger’s count, seven or eight films have a shot at best picture. The consensus, in no particular order — well, O.K., in a little bit of a hierarchy — includes The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, Revolutionary Road, Milk, Doubt and The Reader. And a surprise may be waiting in the wings: Clint Eastwood, a durable crush object of the Academy, has a habit of swinging out of the trees late in the game, as he did two years ago with Letters From Iwo Jima, so keep an eye on Gran Torino.” This all seems commonsensical enough, although to my eyes The Changeling looks more Oscar-y than the “get off my lawn” movie. I guess Gran Torino has the advantage of not having already flopped, however.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Steven Zeitchik wonders if indie film awards have become redundant. “The indie film movement sprang up as a reaction to mainstream Hollywood, so its awards should do the same. It's also good. The awards business may be awash in star and industry back-scratching, but in the Spirits and Gothams, a category of writers, directors and producers have trophy shows to call their own. But there's one thing these awards didn't count on as they forged their contrarian mission: They'd become too successful. Indie movies are now such a part of the awards mainstream that they regularly trump studio movies… the downside is that the shows now no longer seem like a necessary antidote to the Academy Awards; they seem like the Academy Awards lite.” Zeitchik suggest setting a ceiling of a $10 million budget and making previous Oscar winners ineligible for consideration for “indie” awards. Methinks the horse is already out of that particular barn; adopting these stringent guidelines is the best way to make these awards disappear entirely.

Dan Zak of The Washington Post would like the Oscars to lighten up. “In February, the Oscar for Best Picture went to No Country for Old Men, a highbrow slasher movie, the bleakest contender to take the top prize since -- well, since the year before, when The Departed won. Further cementing the notion that bleak movies get made in order to strike gold, three out of four acting Oscars were given to people who played villains: Daniel Day-Lewis as the monstrous oilman in the nihilistic There Will Be Blood; Tilda Swinton as the sniveling attorney in Michael Clayton, a movie in which every person has mortgaged his soul; and Javier Bardem as the dead-eyed killer Anton Chigurh, who cattle-gunned the entire cast of No Country save for Tommy Lee Jones, whose character ended the movie on a note of despair, not death. This year, that might count as a happy ending. Big movies have tent-poled 2008 with a tarp of cruelty. No resolution, no absolution. Just the raw misery of the human condition. Buh-leak. We expect this of fringe foreign films, the confounding subgenre of torture porn, and most documentaries, but not the biggest hits and highest-praised movies of the year.” How to cure this case of the bleaks? Why, the recession might just be the ticket! Expect an onslaught of inoffensive feel-good movies, which is good news for everyone except those of us who find the likes of Beverly Hills Chihuahua infinitely more depressing than any Cormac McCarthy adaptation.

Related:
Top Five Oscar Moments
Jokers Wild About Heath Ledger's Oscar Chances

Film Threat Unveils Frigid 50 of 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:30:00 GMT

As we enter the final weeks of 2008, there can be no doubt that the season of listing is upon us. Exhibit A is today’s unveiling of the 2008 edition of Film Threat’s annual hatchet job, The Frigid 50: The Coldest People in Hollywood. (As a former Threat-er myself, I mean “hatchet job” in the most loving way, of course.) “Unlike those other lists that brown-nose their way into some pampered celebrity's good graces, the Frigid 50 is a written declaration of who or what in Hollywood needs a reality check, detailing the least-powerful, least-inspiring, least-intriguing people in all of Tinseltown. Before a career is over (or in some cases, immediately after), it finds itself sitting in Frigid 50 territory.”

So who made the cut this year? Hit the jump for a few choice selections.

Some of FT’s calls are fairly obvious. For instance, M. Night Shyamalan earns a berth for continuing “to burn audiences with arty, overly indulgent films that fail to entertain, let alone intrigue or frighten. The Happening was supposed to be his artistic comeback, but it was his worst movie to date (and no one thought it could get worse than The Village)." No one can be surprised to see perennial punching bags like Mike Meyers or Nicholas Cage on the list.

There are a few surprises, however. For instance, number ten is “You.” “You made Beverly Hills Chihuahua #1 for two weeks. You’re the reason we have to be frisked when we go to a movie to make sure we're not smuggling in cameras. You bring toddlers to a 10pm screening of The Hills Have Eyes. You show up late to the movie, then loudly ask questions about shit you missed because you couldn’t be bothered to leave the house five minutes early.” Wait, that was you? I have to agree, you are a real pain in the ass.

The real surprise to me – given that Film Threat founder Chris Gore has always been such a huge Star Wars fan, he found a way to write about it in the introduction to my book Hick Flicks – is number two. “We remember when it was actually ‘cool’ to wear a Star Wars t-shirt and ‘uncool’ to glue on Vulcan ears. How the times have changed. Let’s face it, Star Wars is dead. The reasons for the demise of Star Wars may be numerous, but it really comes down to three prequel films that are not only awful in retrospect, they make the original three look worse knowing the full back story. It doesn’t help that George Lucas and company continue to deliver things the fans never really asked for or don’t care about.” I for one welcome this new age of Star Wars hate.

As for the number one selection…well, it’s bound to be controversial. Check it out for yourself.

Related:
M. Night Shyamalan Straight Up, Hold the Twist
Star Bores: Five Reasons to Skip the Clone Wars

Morning Deal Report: A Brad Pitt Odyssey

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

No need for a recount: Max Payne has defeated George W. Bush at the box office polls. The Mark Wahlberg shoot-em-up took in $18 million over the weekend to claim the top spot. Finishing second was that pesky Beverly Hills Chihuahua, just edging out The Secret Life of Bees. Oliver Stone’s W. was fourth with $10.6 million.

After dumping Darren Aronofsky from his dance card, Brad Pitt is preparing for a space Odyssey. “After turning Homer's epic poem The Iliad into the 2004 film Troy, Warner Bros. and Brad Pitt are teaming with George Miller to adapt the Greek poet's other masterwork, The Odyssey,” Variety reports. “Their intention is to transfer the tale to a futuristic setting in outer space.”

Miramax is “developing Daily Show head writer Ben Karlin and Stu Zicherman's satirical comedy A.C.O.D. (Adult Children of Divorce), the story of a grown man still caught in the crossfire of his parents' 15-year-old divorce,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “‘We're very glad to get the validation from Miramax, especially since we've been working on the script longer than any of our parents were married,’ Karlin and Zicherman said.”

Related:
Brad Pitt Jilts Aronofsky Again
Screengrab Review: "W."

Morning Deal Report: Seth Rogen's With Cancer

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

In our time of financial crisis, a nation turns to a tiny talking dog for comfort. Hey, we’ve all been there, right? Er…not that my tiny dog talks out loud. Not often anyway. Heh heh heh. Anyway, Beverly Hills Chihuahua continues to rule the box office chart, digging up $17.5 million over the weekend for a total haul of $52.5 million so far. And then there are those who seek respite from our trying times in the comfort of flesh-eating monsters, as Quarantine took second place with $14.2 million. The one-two punch of Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe had to settle for third, as Body of Lies debuted with $13.1 million. America apparently decided a terrorism thriller wasn’t really the salve it was looking for.

Seth Rogen will make you laugh at cancer. That’s the plan, anyway. Rogen will co-produce and co-star in I’m With Cancer, from an autobiographical script by Will Reiser. Rogen will have a supporting role in “Reiser's account of his struggle to beat cancer, with the story centering on a 25-year-old who finds out he has the disease,” per The Hollywood Reporter. I’m laughing already.

Ridley Scott has apparently put that Monopoly movie on the back burner. He’s now planning to adapt the 1974 Joe Haldeman novel The Forever War, which Variety reminds us will be the director’s “first science fiction film since he delivered back-to-back classics with Blade Runner and Alien.” I guess G.I. Jane doesn’t count.

Related:
Face/Off: Judd Apatow and "Pineapple Express"
OST: "Blade Runner"

Special Election Year Report: Unfunny Conservatives Battle Racist Chihuahuas at the Box Office

Phil Nugent — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Jean-Luc Godard once said that Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 had surely done its part in getting George W. Bush re-elected. You may disagree, but if an investigating committee of impartial wise men were formed to rank every statement of a political nature that Godard has ever issued in descending order of just how deranged they sound, it's doubtful that the sneer at Moore would make the top hundred. (Maybe not the top five hundred.) Moore said back in 2004 that he hoped that his movie would have an effect on the election, and maybe it did. (How he though that he might inspire some effect that was hurtful to Bush by making a movie specifically designed to comfort those who already agreed with him one-hundred percent while confusing anyone on the fence and pissing off and galvanizing everyone on the other side is a question for a different investigating committee of impartial wise men.) To hear them tell it, David Zucker and the other conservative Hollywood players who worked on An American Carol would like to have an impact on this year's election but are having trouble breaking through that gosh-darn media filter. Zucker, who will probably always be best known, especially at the rate he's going, as part of the team that wrote Kentucky Fried Movie and went on to create Airplane! and the Police Squad/The Naked Gun franchise, has weighed in on political matters before. A few years ago, he produced and directed a series of political ads, including the one above, which chastises the Democrats for being too soft to dictators and terrorists, and the one below, which compares James Baker and the Iraq Study Group to Neville Chamberlain. Basically, the spots look a lot like what you might get if a smart new comedy troupe were to fantasize about what would result from one of the Airplane! guys got it into his head that he was a political satirist. Politically and historically, they're garbled all to hell--for instance, you might get the impression from the first one that Zucker thinks that the Clinton administration's negotiations with North Korea had resulted in Kim Jong Il developing his own nuclear weapons and the Bush administration's refusal to talk to that government had cowed them, instead of the other way around--but you do get to see an overweight Madeleine Albright impersonator in a bad dye job split her skirt. As the Drudge Report noted at the time in an exclusive report on a screening for political insiders, "One GOP strategist said 'jaws dropped when the ad was first viewed. "Nobody could believe Zucker thought any political organization could use this ad."

An American Carol stars Kevin Farley--Chris's brother--as a Michael Moore-like filmmaker who, after a setback with the failure of his latest cinematic diatribe Die, You American Pigs!, tries to regain his rad-lib street cred with a campaign to ban the Fourth of July. To set him straight, he is visited by a vision of John Kennedy and then by the ghosts of George Washington (Jon Voight), General George Patton (Kelsey Grammar--and if you were forced to pick out one role best associated with George C. Scott that could also be a good fit for Sideshow Bob, wouldn't this be the one to jump out at you?), and an angel of death, played by a typecast Trace Atkins. The all-star cast also includes Leslie Nielson, who Zucker must keep stashed in a safety deposit box between films, as well as James Woods, Dennis Hopper, Robert Davi, Paris Hilton, Kevin Sorbo, Gary Coleman, and Bill O'Reilly--as "himself", thank God. (Really, does anyone want to see Bill O'Reilly stretch himself as a performer?) Considering what's known about the movie, including its trailer and the stuff you just read here, it doesn't strike me as shocking that it didn't do well in its first weekend. Especially since the movie wasn't screened for critics, meaning that the first real reviews didn't start dribbling in until the day after it opened. This is a well-known sign of a stinker, one that moviegoers have learned to pick up on. It should be noted, though, that Zuvker has explained that in this case it was a protective measure, meant to shield the film from liberal critics who would never judge it fairly. (Full discolsure: This writer's politics are probably closer to Michael Moore's than to Jon Voight's. However, I once had to kill a blog that I had worked on for a over a year because of the flood of comments from people wishing me a slow, painful death after I wrote there that I had problems with Michael Moore's work and suspected that his farts do not smell like sweet honey. Also, though basic human sensitivity keeps me from describing my actual reaction to the news that Chris Farley had died, I can say that it was not anything like, "Oh, if only he has an equally unfunny, lookalike brother who can some day continue his mission on Earth!")

The filmmakers might have been expected to react to the collapse of their box office hopes in any number of ways. They might have re-thought the no-press-screenings rule, for instance, or maybe regretted not having asked Kevin Sorbo to do full frontal. Maybe even regretted not having asked Kelsey Grammar to do full frontal. (Dennis Hopper and Gary Coleman hardly need to be asked.) But instead, they have floated the notion that a kind of voter fraud is going on: At a page at the movie's slow-moving web site (was it designed by John McCain?) they wrote: "We have had heard from numerous people across the country that there has been some ticket fraud when buying a ticket for An American Carol this past weekend. Please check your ticket. If you were in fact one of those people that were "mistakenly" sold a ticket for another movie please fill out the form below. Hold on to your ticket so we can have proof. If you have noticed other irregularities with the theatres in your area please let us know in the comment section below. For instance, Rated R film rating (when in fact we are rated PG-13), posters not being up, not being listed on the marquee, image or focus problems, sound issues, etc. Please email us a picture of your ticket stub to fraud@americancarol.com.") The page has since been taken down, indicating either that liberal hackers are making mischief or the filmmakers' lawyers gave them a pep talk explaining such arcane concepts as "baseless charges", "talking out your ass", and "sue you back to the Stone Age." (Meanwhile right wingers on-line are keeping the spirit alive. Still you'd think that the director of BASEketball and My Boss's Daughter would be better equipped to shrug off failure; it's not as if he hasn't had some practice at it. Then again, maybe even Ed Wood would have trouble processing the information that his labor of love got its ass kicked by Beverly Hills Chihuahua. It can't help that a recent article in Slate tagged Beverly Hills Chihuahua as an implicitly conservative movie that uses racist images of Mexico and Hispanic dogs to, confusingly, peddle a message of tolerance, brotherhood, and hitting on the landscaper. Take it away, Lou Dobbs!

Morning Deal Report of the Living Dead

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

We take no blame for the fact that Beverly Hills Chihuahua debuted at the top of the U.S. box office with a whopping $29 million weekend take. It’s true that I am the proud owner of a Chihuahua-American, but he wanted nothing to do with what he perceived as a showcase for offensive stereotypes. Eagle Eye was second with $17.7 million, and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist took in a finite $12 million for third place. Blindness didn’t attract many eyes and finished outside the top 10, but both Bill Maher’s Religulous and the conservative coalition’s An American Carol made the lower reaches of the list, with Maher’s documentary boasting the higher per-screen average.

George Romero can’t seem to stop making zombie movies. He’s already shooting an as-yet untitled film – we fearlessly predict the word Dead will be in there somewhere – in Ontario. “Plot involves inhabitants of an isolated island off the North American coast who find their relatives rising from the dead to eat their kin,” Variety reports. “The leaders of the island feud over whether or not to kill their reanimated relatives or preserve them in hopes of finding a cure.” That’s a no-brainer, gang.

Screengrab It Girl Kat Dennings will team up with Woody Harrelson and Sandra Oh for the oddly-spelled Defendor. “Written by Peter Stebbings, who also is making his directorial debut, the film centers on a regular guy (Harrelson) who believes he has a secret superhero identity. Dennings will play a teenager he befriends, while Oh is cast as his psychiatrist,” says The Hollywood Reporter.

Related:
Screengrab Review: "Religulous"
George Romero Runs the Voodoo Down

Screengrab Fall Preview: Leonard Pierce's Picks

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

So,my fellow Screengrabbers have thrown down the gauntlet, and once again, I gotta clean it up. What movies am I really looking forward to this fall? Burn After Reading, The Road and Synedoche, New York, among others. But thanks to the quirky rules we set up just to get on each other's nerves, we're trying not to repeat ourselves, so I've chosen to focus on a few films that have gone unmentioned by my beloved associates.

Of course, there's plenty to look forward to in theaters this fall above what's on my top three list below. The indie film about an Arab-American teenager's crisis of conscience, Towelhead; the wide release of the clever Assassination of a High School President; the American big-screen debut of Wong Kar-Wei's breathtaking Ashes of Time; and the mainstream debut of the sparkling Lily Rabe in the otherwise uninteresting What Just Happened are all enough to put your butt in a padded theater chair if you're a film fan. But beyond that, there's the movies I'm most -- and least -- looking forward to, beneath the cut.

3 UP

Milk: The story of San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California history, would be compelling enough, but with the sporadically brilliant Gus Van Sant behind the camera and three terrific actors playing the key roles (Sean Penn as Milk, the always-compelling Victor Garber as Mayor George Moscone, and Josh Brolin as the homophobic ex-cop who becomes their assassin), this is one I'm going to look forward to until its opening night.

Miracle at St. Anna: Will this World War II epic be directed by the good Spike Lee or the bad Spike Lee? A pointless feud with Clint Eastwood during production suggests the latter, but the screenplay (by the book's author), a cast mixing young newcomers with skilled veterans, and the fact that Spike's movies are never less than interesting even when they're not great pull me towards the former and ensure I'll be in line to see this come Christmas.

Lakeview Terrace: Much like Spike Lee, Neil LaBute can deliver precise hits and broad misses. But this story about racial tension in Los Angeles is right in his wheelhouse, with its themes of hidden anger, authority abused and real ugliness burbling under residential bliss. And a menacing Samuel L. Jackson is a good Sammuel L. Jackson, as Grand Theft Auto fans can testify.

3 DOWN

Beverly Hills Chihuahua: It's a tiny little CGI dog! Who hobnobs with the rich and famous! In Hollywood! And it's got...attitide! And sass! If you need me, I'll be over here in the corner, killing myself.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: From the asinine title to the 'gosh-isn't-New-York-uniquely-wonderful' feel to the promise of a soundtrack filled with precious tunes by indistinguishable groups of mildly sad white people to the calculated air of cuteness to the presence of one-note Hollywood darling Michael Cera, there's pretty much nothing about this movie that doesn't make me want to punch somebody.

Punisher: War Zone: Sick of superhero movies? Waiting for a real stinker to come out so that everyone will just shut up about them already? This oughtta do it.

WILD CARD

The Spirit: In the world of comics, Frank Miller -- in recent years, at least -- has developed a reputation as an exquisitely skilled artist, a craftsman nonpariel, but also a man who increasingly takes less and less care with this plots and stories, which grow ever more abstract and nonsensical as his art gets better. Which one will show up behind the camera for The Spirit? I'm afraid it'll be both, but there's no denying the appeal of the project, so I'll be taking a chance.

Related Posts

Screengrab Fall Preview: Andrew Osbourne's Picks

Screengrab Fall Preview: Scott von Doviak's Picks

Screengrab Fall Preview: Paul Clark's Picks

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: July 5-11, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

And so ends another thrilling week at the Screengrab. It’s always hard to say goodbye, but let’s concentrate on the good times we’ve shared.

Paul Clark and Leonard Pierce divulged their favorites from the first half of 2008. Always a ray of sunshine, yours truly brought you the Unwatchables from the year so far.

Speaking of Unwatchables, Anus Magillicutty definitely qualifies. And though it’s not an official entrant, it sounds as if Three on a Meathook gets an honorable mention. But The Quick and the Undead deserved (slightly) better.

We shared two summers in one week: Summer of ’42 and Suddenly Last Summer.

We finished up our trilogy of patriotic lists with America the Dissonant: Seven Movies That Send Mixed Messages About U.S. And we asked for your help in picking the lists of the future.

We looked ahead to Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards, remakes of Red Dawn and The Day the Earth Stood Still, Alex Cox’s proposed Repo Chick, and…Beverly Hills Chihuahua?

We listened to the He Got Game soundtrack while enjoying a big bowl of Jeff Garlin. Then we looked at pictures of Maggie Gyllenhaal in her underwear.

And we wrapped the whole thing up with our favorite Psychics. My crystal ball says: it’s Miller Time.

Trailer Review: Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Paul Clark — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I was lucky enough to attend an advance screening of WALL *E, so I wasn’t subjected to this trailer. But not being smart enough to leave well enough alone, I decided to watch it despite warnings from friends about its potential toxicity. So I just want to say that I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you guys- I’ll try not to let it happen again. Initially, I was expecting something akin to a movie told from the point of view of Reese Witherspoon’s dog in Legally Blonde, but this actually turned out to be much, much worse. It doesn’t really get noxious until the dogs actually start singing a song that’s both unspeakable and really catchy, so much so that I had to listen to Penderecki for half an hour to expel it from my head. But while this is awful to watch, I’m sort of glad I did, if only because now I’ll never be even the slightest bit curious to watch the movie itself.

A “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” By Any Other Name

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

In Jack Mathews’ book The Battle of Brazil, which recounts Terry Gilliam’s struggle to get his director’s cut of Brazil released by Universal Pictures, the author reprints a list of alternative titles the Universal suits presented to Gilliam. Apparently they felt Brazil was confusing or misleading – after all, the movie didn’t take place in Brazil, and they certainly didn’t want to give audiences the wrong impression. And you can certainly see how these titles would have proved clearer and more appealing to the masses: If Osmosis, Who Are You?, Explanada Fortunata Is Not My Real Name, The Girl in the House on the Truck That's on Fire, and my all-time favorite, Gnu Yak, Gnu Yak and Other Bestial Places.

The point is, choosing the title of a movie can be a multi-million dollar decision, as Josh Friedman reports in the L.A. Times. It’s so important, there’s even a consulting firm called TitleDoctors, started by marketing consultants Seth Lockhart and Jamil Barrie. Imagine, this is a job you can have – meeting with movie executives and presenting them with a list of old song titles you think would be a perfect fit for their new romantic comedy or crime drama.

“Getting studios to agree on a name change is never easy (none of the titles for the 13 films Lockhart and Barrie consulted on during their first year in business has been adopted),” Friedman writes. “Filmmakers and production executives can become enamored of a movie's ‘working’ title. And studios may have already invested millions in marketing a project under a particular name, making it financially costly to alter.”

Some title changes are for the best; it’s hard to imagine Annie Hall achieving classic status under its original moniker Anhedonia, after all, and if you’re making a comedy about a pampered pocket dog from the 90210, you might as well call it Beverly Hills Chihuahua. But as Friedman points out, audiences are likely to flock to Hancock as much as they would the proposed alternate titles Heroes Never Die and Less Than Hero. And it’s probably for the best that the original title, Tonight, He Comes was jettisoned. As star Will Smith told Entertainment Weekly, ““You don’t want your movie to already have the porno title.”