The Screengrab : leatherheads

DVD Digest for September 23, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a number of classic crime stories hit DVD, plus the big summer movie whose blockbuster gross surprised almost everyone with a Y chromosome.

DVD of the Week: Okay, so maybe there are more high-profile titles in the mix this week, movies that are both more popular and more critically acclaimed (see the next paragraph). But to my eyes, the big DVD news this week is the arrival of Eclipse Series 12: Aki Kaurismaki’s Proletariat Trilogy. For years, Kaurismaki’s work has been woefully underrepresented on Region 1 DVD, with only his recent films The Man Without a Past and Lights in the Dusk currently in print. So Eclipse’s release of three of his best early works is cause for celebration among his fans, in whose company I count myself. In evidence in each of the set’s three films- Shadows in Paradise, Ariel and The Match Factory Girl- is Kaurismaki’s patented deadpan humor, although in Match Factory Girl, the best of the three, the comedy can be a little difficult to spot at times amid the pathos generated by the film’s title character. If you already know Kaurismaki’s work, you’ve already reserved a copy of this, no doubt hoping that Eclipse will continue their commitment to Kaurismaki with eventual releases of Drifting Clouds and Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana. But if you’re looking to get into Kaurismaki, this is as good a place as any to start.

Additionally, as most of you know this week also brings the release of Paramount’s The Godfather: Coppola Restoration Collection (also Blu-Ray), which includes newly remastered versions of the first two films, commentary tracks by the director, and special features both old and new. There’s also the L.A. Confidential Two-Disc Special Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray) that includes a new commentary track featuring the cast and crew, plenty of new special features, and even the music-only feature that was a highlight of the original pressing. Finally, two new collections of note: Sony’s new line of “Martini Movies” (whatever that means), which includes Dollars, The Garment Jungle, Affair in Trinidad, The Anderson Tapes, and The New Centurions; and the Warner Brothers Pictures Gangsters Collection Vol. 4- includes The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, The Little Giant, Larceny, Inc., Invisible Stripes, and Kid Galahad.

This week’s new releases coming to DVD include: Sex and the City: The Movie (Warner, also Blu-Ray); George Clooney’s Leatherheads (Universal, also Blu-Ray); Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman in the Skinemax-ready Deception (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Dario Argento’s final installment in the “Three Mothers” trilogy The Mother of Tears (Dimension); the Flatliners-style thriller Pathology (MGM); and Simon Pegg in Run Fatboy Run (Warner).

This week has plenty to offer in TV on DVD, including: Boston Legal Season 4 (Fox); Brothers and Sisters Season 2 (Disney); Cashmere Mafia: The Complete Series (Sony); CSI: New York Season 4 (Paramount); Friday the 13th The Series: The First Season (Paramount); and Samantha Who? Season 1 (Disney).

Finally, this week’s relatively small slate of Blu-Ray only releases includes: Blow (Warner), and Cirque de Soleil: Corteo (Sony).

Summer of ’78: “Heaven Can Wait”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78!

Heaven Can Wait

Release Date: June 28, 1978

Cast: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Charles Grodin, James Mason, Jack Warden, Dyan Cannon

The Buzz: McCabe and Mrs. Miller together again – this time in a lighthearted romp!

Keywords: Sweat Suit, Poisoning, Quarterback, Afterlife, Saxophone, Super Bowl

The Plot: In this sort-of remake of the 1941 comedy Here Comes Mr. Jordan (although the opening credits cite the original play Heaven Can Wait, on which Jordan was also based), Warren Beatty stars as L.A. Rams backup quarterback Joe Pendleton, who is about to get his big break. Trainer Max Corkle (Jack Warden) informs Joe that he’ll be starting Sunday’s game against the Dallas Cowboys, which is good news, but then Joe is hit by a car while riding his bike, which isn’t so good. Joe finds himself in a way station en route to the afterlife, but it turns out that his handler (Buck Henry) has made a mistake: he whisked Joe out of his body immediately before the accident, but Joe would have survived and lived 50 more years. Mr. Jordan (James Mason) finds a replacement body for Joe – multi-millionaire Farnsworth, who has just been poisoned by his scheming wife (Dyan Cannon) and executive secretary (Charles Grodin). Joe agrees to take over Farnsworth’s body on a temporary basis so as to help environmental activist Betty Logan (Julie Christie), who has been protesting Farnsworth’s development plans. Joe falls for Betty and trains for the Super Bowl in Farnsworth’s body after convincing Corkle he’s the real deal. Since it’s a little much to expect an audience to root for a guy who looks like Warren Beatty to win over Julie Christie and win the Super Bowl while also being the richest man in the world, Farnsworth is finally killed by Grodin and Joe must scramble for yet another new body. Fortunately for him, the current Rams quarterback suffers a football fatality in mid-game and Joe takes over.

The Test of Time: You need only witness Christie’s tragic Greatest American Hero hairdo to see that Heaven Can Wait is dated; the ‘70s SoCal vibe is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Still, it does hold up better than its 2001 remake Down to Earth, in which Chris Rock takes over the body of a rich, old white guy to no discernable comic effect. It’s a surprisingly lightweight comedy given Beatty’s usual proclivities for injecting social significance into his projects, although there is one scene in which Farnsworth gives a disjointed lecture on corporate responsibility that anticipates the later political satire Bulworth. But there’s remarkably little chemistry between Beatty and Christie despite their history together; the romance is barely developed. The screwball aspect never really builds up a head of steam either, despite Grodin’s best efforts and a chuckle-worthy turn by Vincent Gardenia as a homicide detective obsessed with Farnsworth’s sudden disinterest in hats. So many plot gears are grinding that Heaven Can Wait always seems in a hurry to get onto the next scene, to the detriment of both comedy and character development. It’s breezy and enjoyable enough, but it’s less substantial than the cloud Mr. Jordan calls home.

Quotable Quote: “This isn't going to work. You're playing football with a bunch of butlers!”

2008 Equivalent: Football plus screwball romantic comedy = Leatherheads.

Previously on Summer of ’78: The Cheap Detective

George Clooney Leans In, and Other Insights

Phil Nugent — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:00:00 GMT

In a long profile in The New Yorker, Ian Parker calls George Clooney a "Hollywood emperor" and "America’s national flirt," whose "stardom has had an air of earlier, pre-therapeutic times." Parker notes that, while Clooney is often described as the closest thing we have these days to Cary Grant in his prime, "the comparison falters at the level of physical movement. In one’s memory of Grant, he leans back a little. Clooney leans forward. Clooney’s masculinity is ambitious: he is a pickup artist, a flicker of locker-room towels...he is the fellow at the end of the bar, who, on a scale running from James Stewart to Jack Nicholson, has found an enviable midpoint of courteous roguishness." In some of the movies he's made lately that have been closest to his heart, Clooney has also insisted on letting his characters remain alone, in a way that's almost unthinkable for Grant. In both Syriana and Michael Clayton, his love interests wound up on the cutting room floor, a decision that Clooney was all for. Speaking of Michael Clayton, he told Parker, “If he’s loved, then he has a buffer, and somehow it isn’t as awful.”

Clooney comes across as a guy who, having achieved major stardom after many years in the trenches, is intensely aware of his place in the Hollywood pecking order but treats it as a joke, as part of his campaign to be seen as a regular guy. During the buildup to this year's Academy Awards season, he appeared at a Newsweek-sponsored panel discussion where, on behalf of his entire profession, he made an elaborate show of fealty to Daniel Day-Lewis, and here he recounts an evening in the company of other big-time actors, including Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem, where “we got hammered and we all came to the conclusion we wanted to be Javier Bardem.” And though Clooney takes his politics seriously, a few years ago "he seemed to read politics through the prism of his own expertise in handling public perception. He would often mention an unnamed magazine that, before the Iraq war, had his photograph on its cover with the word 'traitor' running 'across my chest.'” Parker was surprised to learn that the slandering rag in question was "the National Examiner, a second-rung supermarket tabloid; its “Traitors!” cover, in late February, 2003, did have a picture of Clooney, along with five other stars, as well as a competing story about the death of Kathie Lee Gifford’s dog. Although it isn’t for anyone but Clooney to say how insulting he found this, it does seem an obscure, even camp, place to find an insult."

These days, Clooney's primary public, non-movie focus is on Darfur, the subject of a speech he recently delivered at the United Nations. Afterwards, "He answered questions, and then moved to a suite of offices on the thirty-second floor, where he gave a dozen separate television interviews, speaking in a very low voice, without taking a break. Clooney’s publicist and a few others borrowed an office, marked 'Situation Room,' until the news that rebel forces were poised to topple the government of Chad caused the U.N. to ask for the room back, and the publicist moved into the corridor." Meanwhile, his professional focus may be drifting to what he'll be doing, perhaps behind the camera, when, as they say in Scorseseland, he ain't pretty no more. (I guess you have to worry about something.) The article is of course timed to coincide with the release of Leatherheads, the third movie he's directed (and the first that he's directed and taken the starring role in), a movie with a period setting a throwback slapstick-romantic-comedy feel that may be Clooney's way of addressing the Cary Grant thing head-on, but on his own macho turf. It's been judged a disappointment, and this has actually occasioned news stories, which may have been in the pipeline since the movie's release date was shoved back from last fall. But Clooney might take some comfort in knowing that there are other famous movie actors who turn out bombs all the time without anybody thinking that it's news.

Long Drive for “Leatherheads”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:00:00 GMT

After spending the better part of two decades in Development Hell, Leatherheads finally reaches theaters on Friday. Or as co-screenwriter Rick Reilly puts it on his website, “My writing partner, former Sports Illustrated colleague Duncan Brantley, and I wrote this thing 16 years ago! Sixteen years! Do you realize how many Joan Rivers faces ago that was?”

Actually, it’s even worse than that. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Leatherheads project predates Reilly’s involvement by several years. In the late 80s, Brantley was “researching pro-football's colorful early days and became interested John McNally, a pioneer star player. By calling himself ‘Johnny Blood,’ McNally found he could play for the Duluth Eskimos in the National Football League without losing his eligibility to continue playing college sports under his real name. Brantley decided the birth of pro-football had the makings of a movie and got started writing a screenplay. After a few years, he brought his Sports Illustrated colleague Reilly on board to add some humor to the script.”

That script attracted the attention of Steven Soderbergh, who considered making Leatherheads as a follow-up to his debut sex, lies and videotape. He made Kafka instead, but the project remained on the back burner, periodically resurfacing. Or as Reilly remembers it, “First, Mel Gibson was going to do it, then didn’t. Then George Clooney was, then didn’t. Then Michael Keaton was, then didn’t. Then Ray Liotta was, then didn’t. Then Clooney again, then didn’t. Then it propped open a door at Universal for a few years. Then one day my agent called and said, ‘Hey, would it be alright if George Clooney started filming Leatherheads in February? He’d star and he’d direct. He’s been rewriting the third act all summer in Italy.’”

Things moved quickly from that point and Reilly, who has since left Sports Illustrated for a new gig at ESPN, was thrilled to not only visit the set but appear as an extra in the press box scenes with Renee Zellweger. “I mean, do you know how cool it is to walk around a world that you and your buddy invented? Or watch George Clooney and John (The Office) Krasinski and Renee Zellwegger deliver lines you wrote, while characters you fabricated out of whole beer are coming up to you and saying stuff like, ‘Hey, I’m Hardleg. Nice to meet you!’? And I’m like, ‘Hardleg? We dreamed you up at Chili’s one night!’ It was like taking a 3D tour of your own brain.”

"Leatherhead"s Extras Stage Their Own Damn Premiere

Phil Nugent — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:00:00 GMT

"“Decade after decade, for well over a century now, the lowly movie extras have been ignored," Robert McClure tells Michael Cieply of The New York Times. Cieply should know; when he's not working as a paramedic, he's a lowly movie extra who has a dual role in the forthcoming George Clooney comedy Leatherheads. The movie was shot on location in the Carolinas, and the local population, which was thrilled to be a part of it all, does not expect to see Mr. Clooney or his co-star Renee Zellweger again in this lifetime. (Not that they don't think Clooney is a nice guy who isn't always welcome down at the barber shop. Tom Ervin, a disability lawyer who appears in the movie as a football official, recalls that Clooney would allow the extras to watch him watch fresh footage: "He'd turn around to us and say, 'Do you guys like that?'") After all, There Will Be Blood, which was shot in Marfa, Texas, didn't even play within twenty-five miles of Marfa, Texas. So, as Cieply reports, the enthusiastic micro-supporting cast of Leatherheads threw together their own premiere of the picture in Greenville, South Carolina, a real nice place to raise your kids up. Tickets go for $25, with proceeds earmarked for a charity fighting starvation in Darfur. (Truly the do-gooding spirit of George Clooney takes root wherever he goes.) What the local premiere lacks in star power it gains in timely edge: it takes place on April 4, four days before the stars are expected to see the fruit of their labors at the "premiere" at Grauman's Chinese Theater. (The proceeds for that one go to the American Film Institute. All this charity is a fine thing, but when is the studio expected to start making some of its money? No wonder Hollywood is going under.) Of that wingding, the good-natured Mr. McClure simply notes: "None of us were invited."

Trailer Roundup: Leatherheads

Paul Clark — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

If a movie about the early days of professional football seems a strange directorial follow-up for Clooney after his Oscar-nominated Good Night and Good Luck, it shouldn't. After all, Clooney has long been most at home in period pieces and comedies that take advantage of his classic leading man appeal and interest in old-school media stories, and this definitely fits the bill. I also like the casting of The Office's John Krasinski as the young hotshot who becomes Clooney's teammate and romantic rival (should be better than License to Wed anyway). But Renée Zellweger? Really? Maybe I'm just not a fan, but she doesn't seem to quite fit into the period setting, although I suppose I should be grateful Clooney didn't cast Jennifer Jason Leigh instead. Still, I'm inclined to give the movie the benefit of the doubt. When was the last time Clooney steered me wrong?