The Screengrab : paris hilton

Razzies Honor “The Love Guru,” Paris Hilton

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Lest we forget, another set of awards were handed out in Hollywood this weekend. Actually “handed out” is probably a poor choice of words, as it implies that someone actually showed up to receive their Golden Raspberry at the 29th Annual Razzie Awards. That has happened before, but as far as we know, not this year. The Love Guru was dishonored as the Worst Picture of 2008, and its star Mike Myers named Worst Actor. Myers shared Worst Screenplay with Love Guru co-writer Graham Gordy.

Other big losers include:

Worst Actress: Paris Hilton, The Hottie and the Nottie

Worst Director: Uwe Boll, 1968: Tunnel Rats, In The Name of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, and Postal

Worst Supporting Actress: Paris Hilton, Repo: The Genetic Opera

Worst Supporting Actor: Pierce Brosnan, Mamma Mia!

Worst Prequel, Remake, Ripoff or Sequel: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Smells Like Indie Spirit: Our Favorite Sundance Movies Of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Like Saturday Night Live, people never get tired of complaining about the Sundance Film Festival, comparing it unfavorably to its glory days of yore...and yet, just as Lorne Michaels’ 34-season comedy juggernaut (despite decades of grumbling and reports of its imminent demise) has and continues to spawn everything from the Blues Brothers and Bill Murray to 30 Rock and Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin impression, Robert Redford’s love child has likewise changed the face of American filmmaking for (mostly) better and (sometimes) worse since its inception in 1978, 1981 or 1985 (depending who you ask...especially if you ask our own Phil Nugent).

I was tempted to illustrate this introduction with a sexy naked picture of recent Sundance carpetbagger Paris Hilton tied up in microphone cord to (A) draw the prurient eyeballs of Nerve.com sex enthusiasts, but also (B) to make a snarky statement about the way Redford’s annual celebration of the “indie spirit” is really little more than a high-altitude version of the same old Hollywood rat race, where the usual suspects pimp low-budget versions of the same old crap while patting themselves on the back for their "edgy" artistic integrity at pricy soirees that would fund a dozen projects by the real indie filmmakers shivering in the cold on the wrong side of the velvet ropes separating them from the A-list glitterati.

But, no...instead I chose a still from “Any Given Sundance,” because (A) the Simpsons are cooler than Paris Hilton and (B) as a reminder that, for all its faults, Redford’s indie film revolution (like the Easy Riders and Raging Bulls of the 1970s American film renaissance) has penetrated mainstream culture and generally expanded the boundaries of what audiences see, both in the art house and (to a certain extent) on multiplex and television screens.

And so, partly to wrap up our extensive coverage of this year’s festival and partly to remind ourselves of the hours and hours of fine entertainment Mr. Redford has indirectly unleashed upon the world, this week we here at the Screengrab are hitting the slopes with our FAVORITE SUNDANCE MOVIES OF ALL TIME!

STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1985)

The first Special Jury Prize winner at Sundance way back in 1985 was also the movie that really put Jim Jarmusch on the cultural map. Watching it today, it’s easy to see why judges found it so charming, but it’s also easy to see how little Jarmusch’s overall aesthetic has changed: he’s got bigger budgets now and can afford actors who demand bigger paychecks than the goofy Richard Edson and the lovely Eszter Balint (making her film debut here), but his technical approach – long static shots and drifting movement from the middle distance – has hardly changed at all. His obsessions with untethered losers, people with their own inexplicable moral code, and the vagaries of American culture as viewed through the eyes of foreigners, likewise haven’t changed very much. When they first appeared, though, in this alternately hilarious and depressing film about a disconnected New York scenester and his Hungarian cousin wandering to Cleveland and then to Florida for no particular reason, it looked like something that had dropped in from another world. Stranger Than Paradise is one of the films that helped define the modern era of indie film, and helped establish Sundance as the tastemaker’s festival for that particular aesthetic. More than 25 years later, the movie and the festival have a strong connection.

POISON (1991)

By the time Todd Haynes won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for his first widely released full-length, Poison, he was already famous (or, rather, infamous) for making Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story – a film about the late pop singer made entirely with Barbie dolls. A pair of lawsuits drove that film underground, but Poison proved that Haynes was more than just a gimmicky joke: its technical skill and audacity placed him at the forefront of a growing movement that became known as the New Queer Cinema, and its unsettling tone marked him as a filmmaker with a distinct and not always pleasant point of view. Poison consisted of three distinct narratives, each done in a different style: “Homo”, an adaptation of a Jean Genet short story, is the most visually sumptuous, telling a disturbing tale of gay prison romance. “Horror”, an unsubtle AIDS metaphor, evokes 1950s sci-fi shockers as a scientist turns into a deformed madman after isolating a chemical extract that is pure sexuality. The most disturbing, eerie, and inexplicable of the three is “Hero”, a pseudo-documentary of a child who murders his abusive father and flies away, never to be seen again; the straightforward way this bizarre story is told is what makes it so memorable. Haynes’ next movie would be the absolutely brilliant Safe, but Poison remains a powerful signal of a newly arrived talent.

BOTTLE ROCKET (1996)

A lot has gone wrong since Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket tipped at Sundance in 1996. Anderson has become a highly controversial director, and for everyone who finds him innovative and engaging, there are those who finds his movies facile and self-indulgent. His star and co-writer, Owen Wilson, has occasionally shown signs of his old talents, but more often has become a smirk in search of a paycheck, much more content to collect a fee than to push himself artistically, and his personal life has been a shambles marked by substance abuse and a suicide attempt. But there’s no denying their first, and best, moment of greatness: Bottle Rocket is a surprising, clever, well-made, and extremely likable film that came more or less out of nowhere to become one of the best-loved movies of the 1990s and a touchstone of that decade’s indie movement. Though it didn’t take home any of the big prizes at Sundance, it generated a huge amount of buzz there, and its later success was largely due to the positive reviews and publicity it garnered in Park City. Anderson’s direction is ambling but never aimless, Wilson’s writing and acting are funny and charming but not lazy, and the whole movie gets the best out of its small budget and creates a rarefied atmosphere that’s worth revisiting. It’s sad to think of Bottle Rocket as a high point its writer and director would never reach again.

WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (1995)

The winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 1996, Welcome to the Dollhouse is another film whose director somewhat wore out his welcome with later films. Todd Solondz has established himself as a filmmaker so determined to push boundaries that he’s become alienating rather than empathetic, and who seems to confuse relentless bleakness with clear-eyed realism; the incredible depths of understanding that make Welcome to the Dollhouse such an appealing and moving film are soured or nearly absent from his later work. (He even manages to piss away the good will generated by his most famous creation by killing off Dawn Wiener for no particular reason in Palindromes.) However, no amount of excess can rob his first feature of its power; Welcome to the Dollhouse is still one of the most touching and sympathetic, albeit incredibly uncomfortable, views of adolescence ever captured on film. Dawn’s negotiations through the bitter lessons of bullying, pre-teen sexuality, parental neglect, and sibling rivalry are as real as it gets, and all the more surprising for how well a male writer/director was able to communicate the specific problems of an adolescent girl. Welcome to the Dollhouse would also likely have been less successful had the role of Dawn not been assayed with such perfection by the young Heather Matarazzo, who, like Solondz himself, never quite recaptured the greatness of her debut.

BALLAST (2008)

One of the big winners at this year’s Sundance film festival, Lance Hammer’s Ballast took home well-deserved prizes for directing and cinematography (astonishing work by Lol Crowley). Hammer has been around for a while, but this is his first full-length feature film, and it came at a key moment for Sundance: many critics at this year’s festival complained about burnout, the fragile state of the economy has seen a number of established festivals shutter their doors, and much wringing of hands has taken place over the future of independent film. That’s why it was important for a movie like Ballast to come along, to signal the continuing strength of indie cinema and the continuing importance of places like Park City for them to find an audience. The quiet, powerful story of a Mississippi family plunged into despair and inertia by the suicide of one of its members, Ballast features some incredible naturalistic acting, a mesmerizing pace and visual sensibility, and an emotional punch that’s become increasingly rare in the growing inward smirk of a lot of American independent film. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s one that completely justifies the importance of the festival circuit and neatly answers at least a few questions about the state of indie movies in 2009.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce

Sundance Roundup: Day Six

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:00:00 GMT

More wheeling and dealing, via The Hollywood Reporter: Fox Searchlight snapped up the rights to the New York romance Adam, which it “hopes to turn it into the next Once, which it acquired here in 2007.” Sony Pictures Classics won the bidding war for An Education, “for a price in the $3 million-$4 million range for North American and select Latin American rights.” Lionsgate picked up “The Winning Season, James Strouse's tale of a high-school girls' basketball team starring Sam Rockwell.”

This year’s Sundance It Girl has been coronated. Per Entertainment Weekly, it’s 23-year-old British actress Carey Mulligan. “The star of Lone Scherfig's An Education and the bright spot in Shana Feste's melodrama The Greatest, Mulligan is transfixing audiences with her angelic looks and broad acting range.” You can also catch her in Michael Mann’s upcoming Dillinger epic Public Enemies, with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale.

E! Online is on the celebrity swag watch. Any truth to the rumors that Paris Hilton walked off with 30 goodie bags? Apparently so, but not all Sundance stars are so greedy. Screengrab sweetheart Zooey Deschanel refused all handouts, saying it “it takes away from the festival.” Awwww.

Previously:
Sundance Roundup: Day Five
Sundance Roundup: Day Four

Movies for a New Depression: "Kabluey" (2008)

Phil Nugent — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Kabluey, which was recently released o DVD after a brief run in theaters, is supposed to be a comedy, which given the state that its characters are in makes a statement right there. Almost ten years ago, Office Space captured an economic landscape where people had to rely on a soldierly camaraderie to keep from going insane at their shit jobs. In Kabluey, there's no camaraderie: an invisible bubble seems to have been lowered around each individual character, cutting off their ability to reach out or even empathize with their fellow sufferers, and it's everyone for himself. The movie starts with Leslie (Lisa Kudrow), who is as good as marooned in her cluttered Texas home, trying to watch over her two small sons while her husband is off in Iraq, getting his tour of duty endlessly extended. If Leslie doesn't go back to work, she's about toe get her health benefits cut off, but she can't afford day care, so she reluctantly calls in her husband's brother, Salman, a doofus and loser who is played by the movie's writer-director, Scott Prendergast. He, in turn, answers a job offer and finds himself reporting to a hollowed-out building--construction was completed just before the Internet company that paid for it hit the skids--where a harried woman (Conchata Ferrell) explains that he's part of a modest boondoggle, being used to burn off cash set aside to attract attention to the doomed company. In quick order, she stuffs him into a blue , top-heavy, foam-rubber costume that makes him look like a penis at half-mast and deposits him on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, with a pile of flyers announcing the availability of office space tucked under his arm. She's almost out of sight before it occurs to her to stop the car and yell, "You need a ride back?"

This is Scott Prendergast's first film, aside from some shorts and a small acting role in the instant-punchline Paris Hilton vehicle The Hottie and the Nottie, which probably taught him a great deal about the demoralizing nature of taking money for thankless work perforned in the course of an ill-conceived venture. He's not exactly a natural, either as a director or a leading actor. As a director, he tends to push too hard, going for broadly zany visual effects; as an actor, he leaps at the chance to give himself an opening scene here that may give viewers the mistaken idea that his character is meant to be some sort of medium-end functioning autistic, though it develops that he's just supposed to be "quirky" and a little withdrawn. But Prendergast has caught onto two of the best-kept secrets in movies: one, that you can forgive a movie a lot if it's constructed around the right central image, and two, that it's hard to go wrong with a big, stupid-looking costume. The recurring image of the poor shmuck encased in that sweltering suit, alone on a deserted highway, his foam-rubber head hanging in the Texas sun, does for Kabluey what George Stevens seemed to think a shot of the family house framed in the center of the wide screen would do for Giant.) The movie has other attractions, such as Christine Taylor as a well-heeled mother who hires the corporate logo to entertain at a kid's birthday party, and Teri Garr as a woman who lost her money in the company and is last seen gingerly poking the (abandoned) costume with a stick. And Lisa Kudrow is terrific, as is her wont: her ability to suggest a mind that's whirling at top speed trying to think her way out of a set of circumstances so crushing that it would lay a less resilient person down for the count could make her the movies' face of a new depression. Maybe it's time for somebody to launch an all-girl remake of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

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!

Unwatchable #67: “Nine Lives”

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

It’s an unfortunate coincidence of timing that finds Nine Lives at the top of my Unwatchable queue on the same day I’ve reviewed Donkey Punch. There are some notable similarities between the two movies: a predominantly British cast of young unknowns, a confined setting, a Ten Little Indians structure. But Nine Lives has a secret weapon: Paris Hilton.

The presence of Paris probably ensured Nine Lives a spot on the Bottom 100 list, even if the movie had otherwise been good. (It’s not, but we’ll get to that.) Check out Ms. Hilton’s IMDb page, click on a few titles, and you’ll find that Nine Lives is far from her only effort to engender widespread scorn and derision among the users of that fine site. My guess is that Nine Lives would never have made the list without her participation; it’s hard to imagine anyone even bothering to hate it otherwise.

What we have here is a reunion of nine upper crust classmates from a posh school, gathering at a remote Scottish estate. Eight of them are interchangeable underwear models from British GQ and the ninth is our gal Paris. As a blizzard swirls outside, the very, very boring young people drink wine and exchange snooty quips. One of them – it’s either Tim or Tom or Pete or Paul or Andy, I’m not sure – finds a musty old tome telling the tale of the ancient Scot warrior whose name alone evokes the most primal of terrors: it is he who is called…Murray.

Yeah, so Murray is pissed off about some old slight or another, and his spirit escapes from the book and starts jumping from one bland young Brit to the next. When he’s in your body, your eyes go blank and you get all stabby on your friends. Despite that, Nine Lives isn’t particularly gory, which leads me to believe writer/director Andrew Green is aiming for suspense. His aim is off. It is a little surprising that the Hilton haters are all over this one, though, since – spoiler! – Paris is the first one killed. I am forced to conclude that few of the IMDb users who ranked Nine Lives so low actually saw the movie. And who suffers for this? Only poor Paris and me.

Previously on Unwatchable:
68. Kazaam
69. The Perfect Holiday (pending)
70. Epic Movie
71. Gigli
72. Meet the Spartans

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Sept. 6-12, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

In a world where Aronofsky’s Wrestler Bodyslams Venice Competition…where Paris Hilton Pulls the Bullshit Train to Toronto…where Good Directors Go Bad and Charlie Kaufman Gets Wired...a world we will call, for lack of a better term, a Lebowski World…

In a time when Harry Potter Fans Revolt….when Johnny Depp is a household pet and Michael Caine is a Batspoiler…when Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains is rediscovered and a Classless Man gets in a Voiceless Brawl…

One blog dares to bring you the Arab Movie Hall of Shame. One blog looks back at City Slickers and Kazaam and lives to tell the tale. One blog celebrates the Local Hero soundtrack and the dinosaurs of the Wheel Inn . And one blog stands alone to bring you Coming Attractions: A Screengrab Salute to Movie Trailers, Parts One and Two!

The Screengrab! Now playing on a computer near you.

In Other Blogs: Canadian Edition

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Many luminaries from the film blogosphere attended the Toronto International Film Festival this week. (I would have gone, but I don’t speak Canadian.) Spoutblog chatted with Paris, Not France director Adria Petty to find out the story behind those cancelled screenings. “I’ll just tell you the truth,” she said. “The truth is that we just didn’t want the film pirated. There’s a lot of people involved in the film that own it or financed it. It was in a lot of different camps and different layers. And basically, at the end of the day, instead of having the whole thing canceled or pulled because of all these greedy or annoying people, Paris and I, who wanted the film to screen at Toronto and were honored by it, we were like, look let’s just do it once in one big theater. And then we put the night vision goggles in one time––because everybody is like, who pays for the night vision?”

In this Toronto dispatch, Green Cine Daily asks the musical question: “Does postmodernism have a future?...Without a doubt, this year's grand test case for the future viability of any form of large-scale political cinema, if not for outsized American auteur cinema in general, is Steven Soderbergh's Che. Divided into two full-length films, each slightly over two hours, Che could be the ultimate sinkhole for our day, a giant leftist vacuum into which someone's money vanished without a trace. How can this film even exist, and who is its presumed audience? To Soderbergh's credit, there seems to have been little consideration of this question. I would like to be able to weigh in passionately on the debate around Che, but the sad truth is, there's little onscreen to justify passions in either direction.”

At Scanners, Jim Emerson applauds our Canadian oppressors. “One difference between Canadians and Europeans: They are not into power-tripping you at the entrance to movie theaters. I arrived too late (about ten minutes before starting time) for the one and only press/industry screening of Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker yesterday…Then word came that no more seats could be found. Some of us (the Americans and Canadians) were saddened and disappointed and frustrated. Others (those with European accents, though it is possible they were Quebecois) were indignant. They waved their passes and accused the theater staff of ignoring them or cheating them in some way….Finally, a staffer had to explain: There. Were. No. More. Seats. She was not trying to cheat people out of seeing the Kathryn Bigelow movie. She was not attempting to wield arbitrary authority over a gaggle of eager festivalgoers in order to make herself feel powerful and important. She was doing her job and telling the truth: The theater was full.”

Slant supplies its own Canadian content with a look at Adoration. “A characteristically masterful welter of bad vibrations, Atom Egoyan's latest finds the director back in Canadian Traumaland after his Hollywood sojourn in Where the Truth Lies. Keyed to the characters' sense of lingering grief, the narrative unfurls as a time-hopping maze of action and consequence—its deftness and delicacy shame Arriaga's tawdry temporal gymnastics in The Burning Plain. A button-pushing essay by a high-schooler (Devon Bostick) gives the absence-riddled film its center: Turning an article about a failed terrorist plot into a faux-eulogy to his dead parents, the boy uncorks a reservoir of sorrow that brings together his uncle (a surprisingly excellent Scott Speedman), teacher (Egoyan axiom Arsinée Kanjian), and other members of the community… Moody, gliding filmmaking and ripples of quizzical humor save it from being a lugubrious game of therapeutic musical chairs.

And in List-o-Mania, PopMatters offers the Top Ten Things I Loved About TIFF 08, including the return of Debra Winger. “She was only in about four scenes of Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, but in her scant screen time, she conducted a master class in scene-stealing as the mother of the title character and Anne Hathaway’s noxious Kym. Yes, it may be the ‘mother’ role, but Winger is understatedly elegant, and rock-solid. Here’s to hoping this high-profile release gains her some traction on the awards circuit, in tandem with Hathaway. It’s a small, quietly fuming turn that should be lauded for its poetic simplicity.”

Paris Hilton Pulls the Bullshit Train to Toronto

Phil Nugent — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

In the long-awaited follow-up to her last film triumph The Hottie and the Nottie, Paris Hilton stars as herself in Paris, Not France, described as a sociological-themed documentary about what "the Paris phenomenon" says about "this moment in culture." The director, Adria Petty, seems to enjoy likening her movie to Darling, the 1965 John Schlesinger film Darling, which was a non-documentary, and also non-good, character study of a shallow, beautiful actress (Julie Christie) whose shrill emptiness and jet-set lifestyle were once thought to have said just reams about their moment in culture. (The movie won Christie an Academy Award for her willingness to behave unpleasantly, so maybe the idea is that Paris, Not France will win some kind of meaningful artistic credibility for Hilton' creepy, dead-eyed smirk. One of several points at which the comparison breaks down: Christie's character, being a movie star, was actually famous for something.) Petty (who, being the daughter of Tom Petty, can be assumed to know something about the joys and hazards of being born into dynastic celebrity), who also shot the film, is about to enjoy a break that many first-time directors would sell out their grandmothers for: on Tuesday, she'll get to see her baby screened at the Toronto Film Festival, arguably the best-loved of all big-name international festivals, and the one with the best reputation for its focus on serving the interests of filmmakers and film lovers instead of providing one more circus of hype and celebrity sleaze. So it's leaving a bad taste in some mouths that Paris, Not France has turned out to be the center in what may be a cynical publicity stunt and bid for another fifteen minutes of the the attention of a jaded world.

The problems began last week, when word hit the papers Hilton had waved her lawyers at the Festival organizers and forced them to scale back their plans to award the movie three public screenings as well as a showing for the press. The implication was that the movie is so hot and critical of the talentless heiress that Hilton wants it suppressed, and if your first thought is to wonder what the hell could be in the movie that would embarrass the star of The Simple Life, not to mention her own homemade bedroom calisthenics tape, that's clearly the point. Thom Powers, who programmed the documentary arm of the festival, seemed to be taking credit for a coup when he told blogger Katrina Longworth, "From my standpoint, of course, I wish we could do additional screenings. But this is certainly a better option than not showing the film at all.” Presumably he's seen the film, and if he thinks that showing it at all is a good option, we'll trust his judgement for now. Longworth herself, though, speaks for the crowd when she writes that she's "got to wonder if there’s more to this than meets the eye. On the surface, you’ve got a rich, fame-hungry girl who allows a filmmaker to document her for publicity purposes as she tries to legitimize her outsized fame by recording an album. A couple of years later, that album is universally considered a joke, and those publicity materials have been expanded into a stand-alone film about Hilton’s relationship to her own celebrity. Paris has obviously lost control, and she’s obviously siccing Daddy’s lawyers on Petty et al in an effort to take that control back...but Paris has made a career out of managing the release of imagery that she supposedly didn’t want us to see. From the sex tape which she first sued over and then transformed into both a cash cow and a career platform, to the prison stay that turned into a week-long, weepy melodrama and dominated the news cycle all the way up to Paris’ march out of the county jail and into her mother’s waiting getaway vehicle, all of Hilton’s career high points have involved the transformation of humiliation into triumph. It’s not that her reputation is “based on shamelessness”––it’s that she continually turns events that should be shameful into products for public consumption. I don’t think we’re dealing with anything different here, and I don’t think we should be surprised."

As Longworth points out, the really odd thing about this fiasco is the announcement that Hilton had somehow "pressured" the festival to cancel all screenings of the film but one." "It would be one thing," she writes, "if the Hilton camp has insisted that the film be removed from the festival completely––I don’t know the laws, but this is something I assume they would have the right to do, considering that Petty’s footage came from her contract to produce publicity materials for a DVD and is now going towards personal use––but they didn’t. Instead, they’ve made tickets to Paris‘ single TIFF screening a hot commodity." Now the New York Post's "Page Six" is explicitly reporting that Hilton " "has craftily manipulated the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival in an attempt to gain more publicity for a new documentary about herself." Hilton's flak even issued a statement acknowledging, "We wanted to create more buzz - create some hype . . . We felt the impact would be more extreme if we had one screening." Hilton, described as "a partner with the documentary", will attend the Tuesday screening. (The flak declined comment on whether or not Hilton has a financial interest in what's being advertised as her own takedown documentary.) To the people who care about the people whose activities are covered on Page Six, manipulating the programming of a serious film festival and robbing real movies by struggling artists of a little time in the spotlight in order to get more attention paid to your little home movie is the kind of thing you brag about.

In Other Blogs: The Top 25 L.A. Movies

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:00:00 GMT

The L.A. Times recently published their list of the 25 Best L.A. Films of the Past 25 Years. Naturally, some of the choices proved controversial (a lot of folks have trouble with the selection of Jackie Brown over Pulp Fiction, for instance), but Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule thinks it’s a decent list. “There were only eight, perhaps nine instances where I felt like the choices could have been replaced, by another film in the director’s filmography, or by another similarly themed film, or just by another movie to replace one that just shouldn't be there at all. For example, I can certainly understand why Boogie Nights is on the list, but it’s ultimately too diffuse and far more conventional than its electric style would suggest. I much prefer P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), a high-wire act in which Anderson gets more directly in touch with his inner Altman and dashes all concerns over whether anyone’s having a good time or not, planting Old Testament visual clues that subliminally lay the groundwork for that shocking rain of frogs. (And speaking of Altman, while I'm not the biggest fan of The Player, I was far happier to see it representing the great director here rather than the dour and sour Short Cuts.)”

The Toronto International Film Festival kicked off yesterday, and Spoutblog has the scoop on the film Paris Hilton doesn’t want you to see. “Paris Hilton and her team have successfully pressured the Toronto International Film Festival into canceling all but one screening of Adria Petty’s Paris, Not France, a documentary about the celebrity heiress which ‘attempts to explore the Paris phenomenon and how it defines this moment in culture’ and is also ‘modeled after the 1960s it-girl film Darling.’ Though the film’s TIFF info page still lists three public screenings, TIFF documentary programmer Thom Powers confirmed to me that Paris will screen only once at the festival. ‘From my standpoint, of course, I wish we could do additional screenings,’ Powers told me in an email. ‘But this is certainly a better option than not showing the film at all.’… As Steven Zeitchik joked when he first blogged about this, ‘the mind dances at what kind of footage can be seen so newly shameful to Paris Hilton, the enfant teribles whose entire reputation is based on shamelesness.’”

Cinematical is also on the scene in Toronto, and they’ve had a look at The Brothers Bloom. “Long awaited in the wake of his 2005 debut Brick, Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom is a magic trick of a film; the second it's over, you want to see it again so you can try to catch how you were tricked, but you also want to see it again so you can return to the joy and wonder of being wrapped up in the nimble, deck-shuffling hands of a born showman. Watching it at first, some of The Brothers Bloom's creative and thematic elements seem like they're on loan from Paul Thomas Anderson (opening narration by Ricky Jay, pop-whiz-bang camera work, the troubled-but-tender relationship between the two brothers) while others feel as if they've been cribbed from Wes Anderson (deadpan confessions, whimsical set design, a parallel-universe setting where people still travel to Europe by steamship). The truth is, as much as The Brothers Bloom may feel like it's cribbing from other films at first, this is Rian Johnson's movie, and even if my more dreary and discerning critical faculties told me the final act goes on, perhaps, a beat too long, my inner moviegoer was sitting bolt upright, smiling, bright-eyed and carried away.”

At Some Came Running, Glenn Kenny makes an interesting connection between Road House and a David Lynch movie. No, not that Road House. “The terrifying physical contrast between the behemoth and a very delicate woman brought to mind a scene from David Lynch's under-appreciated (to my mind, at least) 1992 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. This scene, too, is set in a roadhouse of sorts—the back room of the Bang Bang Bar, which actually, if one line of dialogue is to be believed, is located on the Canadian side of the Canada/U.S. border the structure sits on. As it happens, the road house of Negulsco's film is located near the Canadian border; this turns into a significant plot point once Lily and Pete are trying to escape from the psychotic Jefty, played by Richard Widmark with his then-trademark tetchy intensity… I wonder if Lynch had ever seen Negulsco's film. Some shards of it, it seems, lodged their way into the world of Twin Peaks. The road house as portrayed in the '48 picture is a piece of bygone mid-century Americana that I've always found fascinating—it looks way fun. It's got a bar, a restaurant, a sporting-goods store, and a bowling alley!”

And in List-o-Mania this week, Geekdad weighs in with 10 Movies Needing a Muppet Remake. This guy has put way too much thought into this. “Casablanca - The initial temptation is to cast Kermit as Rick, but I think Kermit is better as the utterly noble Victor Laszlo, with Miss Piggy as Ilsa by his side. Gonzo is much better as Rick, with his internal, and external, conflict between love, revenge, and the right thing to do. Rowlf is Sam, for who else could be? Captain Renault is a tough part to play, but I think Fozzie has the right cavalier attitude for the role.”

Unwatchable #72: “Meet the Spartans”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Here’s a serendipitous turn of events – not for me, of course, but maybe for somebody out there. On the very day that Disaster Movie, the latest parody from the writing-directing team of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, is released in theaters, our Unwatchable selection of the day just happens to be the humor-challenged team’s previous effort, Meet the Spartans. (And when I say effort, I don’t really mean it in any traditional sense of the word.) This is purely coincidental, but if I can do anything to dissuade even one person from spending money on Disaster Movie this weekend, I’ll consider this post a success.

I doubt that’s going to be possible, though, since it seems highly unlikely that any regular Screengrab readers would be seeing Disaster Movie in the first place. For my part, Meet the Spartans was my first experience with the Seltzer-Friedberg team, but I can’t say I was completely unaware of what to expect – basically, that these bozos are Zucker-Abrams-Zucker for people who were often dropped on their heads as children. Spartans is ostensibly a parody of 300, but really just a string of pop culture references linked by scenes of shiny-chested men in leather loinwear. Notice I say pop culture references, not pop culture jokes; Seltzer and Friedberg proved to me that they watch Entertainment Tonight and TMZ, but not that they have any ability to synthesize their crapulent media saturation into something that would make me laugh.

For example: A group of Persians arrive in Sparta to inform King Leonidas (Sean Maguire) that he must submit to the rule of Xerxes. Leonidas proceeds to kick them into the pit of death. He is about to leave when he notices Britney Spears sitting in front of the pit, shaving her head and flashing her pixilized coochie. He then kicks her in the pit of death. Really, it’s not like I’m looking for some explanation for Britney Spears being in ancient Sparta. I realize it’s all part of the free-wheeling zaniness. But you can’t just have her shaving her head and flashing her girl parts. We’ve already seen that. Likewise, when Ryan Seacrest and the American Idol judges appear in front of the pit, it’s not enough that Simon is mean, Paula is loopy and Randy says “dawg” a lot. Maybe that was enough when MAD TV did their very first American Idol send-up 147 years ago, but if you don’t want people to think you’re stupid, untalented assholes, Messrs. Selzer and Friedberg, you really need to step up your game.

Alas, I do think they’re stupid, untalented assholes and I’m just sorry anyone encouraged them as children or even told them they were the “funny guys” in high school. They weren’t, I am almost certain. Here are some things they think are funny: 1) Balls. Now, here they happen to be correct. Balls are funny, particularly when they’re getting punched and they aren’t mine. It’s somewhat less funny when a Happy Feet penguin teabags Leonidas, but again, it’s because there’s no real context. Ball jokes with context – now that’s humor. 2) Homo jokes. Yes, I imagine there is some humor to be mined from the homoeroticism of 300, but the gags here are about as subtle as prison sex. 3) Celebrities and reality TV. In addition to Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan also make appearances to reference their tabloid troubles and flash their digitally obscured vaginas. (All celebrities are impersonated, of course, except for Carmen Electra who seems to be under the impression that she’s acting in the role of Queen Margo.) We not only get the American Idol panel, but the judges from America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars. There’s even a Deal or No Deal reference, which really shows Selzer and Friedberg are invested in crafting timeless comedies for the ages.

The worst thing about these non-jokes is that Selzer and Friedberg feel the need to explain them as they’re happening. So when the fat guy from Borat shows up as Xerxes, the narrator tells us he looks like the fat guy from Borat. And when a symbiotic black Spider-Man costume slithers over Carmen Electra, the narrator tells us it’s much like what happened to Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man. An appearance by Rocky Balboa is highlighted by the lingering close-up of the ROCKY stitched on his shorts. It goes on and on. Actually, it just seems like it goes on and on, because, as we learned from this Phil Nugent post and as I can confirm, Meet the Spartans runs for a little over an hour before the end credits begin. After a while, the credits stop and some deleted scenes from the movie are played. I’d really love to know how these particular scenes became the outtakes. The only thing in the whole movie that remotely caused my mouth to twitch in the direction of a smile was Leonidas howling “Tonight! We Dine! AT HOOTERS!” Yet somewhere along the line, a decision was made to remove that scene and show it at the end to pad out the running time. I take back what I said earlier. I think it was Selzer and Friedberg who were repeatedly dropped on their heads as children.

Previously on Unwatchable:
73. Fascination
74. You Got Served
75. The Last Sign
76. Kickboxer 3: The Art of War
77. BloodRayne 2: Deliverance

Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:30:00 GMT

And now that we’re all feeling nice and empowered from our Top Ten List of films with strong female characters and themes, here’s the other side of the coin: nine movies we’re guessing you won’t find on Gloria Steinem’s Netflix queue (unless she’s researching a new book on movies that didn’t exactly do wonders for the feminist movement).

(Oh, and while we're on the subject, a special P.S. to Katherine Heigl: Really? Knocked Up is more sexist than 27 Dresses? That's a fascinating theory. Please, tell me more!)

PRETTY WOMAN (1990)

Although she later improved her girl power street credit with her Academy Award-winning turn as an indomitable single mother in Erin Brockovich, Julia Roberts’ breakthrough role was about as healthy (and irresistible) as a deep fried bacon Twinkie for the mobs of women (and men) who made it a blockbuster hit. I mean, I’m a dude and I certainly have my issues with some of the more strident tenets of feminism, but even I was offended by the film’s basic premise about the whore-with-the-heart-of-gold who charms a rich Prince Charming with her sparkling personality (and fellatio skills) to the point where he decides to keep her for himself, making her dreams come true by paying for all the overpriced jewels and fashion she could possibly want. Oh, and he goes down on her on a Steinway...the movie’s one true nod to progressive gender relations. This movie is offensive on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. The blatant portrayal of women as whores who only get what they want by attracting successful men? The offensiveness of Jason Alexander’s loathsome chauvinist pig character, a personification of the film’s equal opportunity anti-male stereotyping (unattractive men are icky slobs and probably rapists, whereas good looking men are more trustworthy and morally superior)? The ridiculous depiction of prostitution as an Outward Bound-style empowerment program (complete with Laura San Giacomo’s mother hen prostitute telling a fledgling whore at the end of the movie that she expects big things from her, y'know, on par with Roberts’ home run of man-bagging)? Oh, sure...it’s just a movie, and an insidiously charming one at that, and maybe I’m reading too much into it and getting all het up for no reason...yet, at the same time, it’s also worth noting that many of the girls who grew up watching Pretty Woman (not to mention the film’s original audience) now enjoy (and sometimes embody) the film’s sex-for-crass-materialism ethos in pervasive cultural incarnations from Paris Hilton and The Real World to just about every show on the E! network.

FATAL ATTRACTION (1987)

One of the most polarizing blockbuster hits of the '80s, Fatal Attraction presents us with Glenn Close as the image of the sexy, successful unmarried career woman and turns her into what the movie confidently assumes is every man's nightmare: the one night stand who won't go away. Seen alone in her apartment at night, she's not really confident at all: she's a lonely neurotic wreck -- this is what being without a family, or at least a man, presumably does to a woman, what all career women are really like underneath. Then, after the married guy (Michael Douglas) who thought they were both just having a little fling stops putting up with her, she turns into an avenging harpy, and in the process she says all the things that women who are sick of being badly used and treated as objects have said. They don't apply to the situation, and you may think the fact that she thinks they do shows how sick she is, but given that this is the era of Reagan, AIDS, the "new chastity" and the anti-feminist backlash, a lot of people in the audience thought the fact this fruitcake was saying them proved what she was saying must be crazy in any instance. The movie isn't exactly misogynist; its real cunning is the way it uses the recently politicized concept of "family" to justify its turning Close into a she-devil while advocating the use of violence or whatever else it takes to ward off attacks by outsiders who try to damage the holy unit of family. As everyone knows, the movie originally ended with Close committing suicide and framing Douglas for her murder, an ending that was actually more plausible in keeping with the character's psychology, and one that pissed off test audiences who were denied the revenge-killing catharsis they'd been made to expect. The movie was probably always fated to end with Close getting it, but the stroke of genius was in putting the gun in the hand of Douglas's wife (Anne Archer) and making it a battle between the good wife and the hussy, a choice that made some women in the audience cheer louder than the men. The family that slays together...

LEGAL EAGLES (1986)

Everything about this slapped-together, thoughtlessly conceived comedy-thriller, starring Robert Redford and Debra Winger as dueling lawyers and Darryl Hannah as a pair of frosted lips sitting atop mile-high legs, is a testament to the hackish instincts of the director, Ivan Reitman, and the screenwriting team, Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr. (whose other collaborations include Top Gun, The Secret of My Success, and Anaconda). It's the kind of movie that seems to have been made by people who were in a rush to get the shoot completed because they couldn't wait to show up at the red carpet premiere, the kind of movie where less important things like telling a story or entertaining an audience never crossed anyone's mind. About the only thing of note about it is the example it provides of just how much damage simple hackishness can do, because Legal Eagles also wasted the time and bent the brain of one of the white-hot talents of the '80s, Debra Winger, at just the point in her career where she was lined up on the runway and poised for full takeoff. Her role here -- a foil to Redford and, ultimately, a damsel in distress -- is so stupidly written that it's an insult, and she's the only person in the large, talented cast who still hadn't had the idealism beaten out of her to such a degree that she knew enough to just go through the motions and collect her check. You can see her trying to bring some kind of truth to what she's doing, and you can see how unhappy she is that she isn't succeeding, and her unhappiness is contagious. The movie is said to have done Winger extended career damage, partly because it soured her on the movie business but also because the industry was appalled that she was so impolite as to complain about the director in interviews. Anywhere but in Hollywood, expressing confidence in Ivan Reitman as a director would be grounds for having a judge take away your power of attorney.

FLASHDANCE (1983)

This MTV-styled sleazefest was bad for women, sweatshirts, steelworkers, strip clubs, movies, lobster dinners, pit bulls, warehouse lofts, Top 40 radio, and Jennifer Beals' dance double. (It was also a little rough on Maureen Marder, the real-life stripper-welder who "inspired" the screenplay outline, and who was persuaded to sign away the movie rights to her life story for a flat payment of $2300. After the movie grossed in excess of $150 million, Paramount, in an industry that routinely writes checks to squelch nuisance suits, actually let Marder drag them in front of a judge after she came around begging for more money, secure in the knowledge that the agreement would hold up in court. Then, in an amazing act of chutzpah, the movie studio actually sued over a Jennifer Lopez video that was painstakingly designed as a tribute to the movie. Not that people shouldn't be penalized somehow for paying tribute to Flashdance.) It makes all the horrible sense in the world that, for this "inspirational" story of a girl who doesn't give up her dream to dance, the director Adrian Lyne cast an unknown who couldn't dance (but who had the "look") and then tried to suppress the information that her dancing was performed by a double, Marine Jahan, whom he subsequently threatened to punish for daring to publicly take credit for her own work in the movie. (He may have been successful in this: Jahan only appeared in one other movie, 1984's Streets of Fire.) Given the flashy fast-cut style that Lyne developed (with his work in TV commercials before transposing it to movies), this could just as well have been the story of a carefully lit can of peas that never gave up its dream to be a zucchini. Not trying to give you any ideas, Adrian.

MONA LISA SMILE (2003)

The thing that makes Mona Lisa Smile – the story of a bohemian art history teacher who comes to shake things up at the hyper-conservative cartoon of an East Coast university in the stodgy 1950s – so incredibly frustrating, and qualifies it for inclusion in our list of movies that are particularly disempowering to women, is that it actually thinks it’s a feminist movie. Set at a version of Wellesley University so reactionary that the board of chancellors might as well have Snidely Whiplash mustaches, the movie asks us to believe that Julia Roberts’ character has come to show young women the possibility of more than just a perfunctory education to put some polish on their cocktail party chatter before settling down into marriage, but it subverts itself at every turn, to such a degree that it actually comes across as more sexist that the milieu it rails against. Roberts shows her students the liberation possible through art – but never manages to mention any female artists. Roberts teaches her young charges that there’s more to life than being someone’s wife – but all of the characters are essentially defined by their relationship to men. Roberts encourages her students not to let themselves be limited by the expectations of others – but Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character is clearly condemned in the movie for her loose sexual morals, and in one of the movie’s ugliest scenes, Julia Stiles’ character excoriates an ashamed Roberts for expecting her to choose a career over marriage. When it comes to defining women by their power and potential, Mona Lisa Smile is a path to hell that’s paved with good intentions.

Click here for Part Two of Girl DisemPowering

Click here for Part One and Part Two of Chick Hits: The Girl Power Top Ten

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

MTV Movie Awards Continue to Exist

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The ’90s live forever at MTV – in between all the dating and celebreality shows, anyway – so it probably should come as no surprise that the MTV Movie Awards are still in existence, and will be hosted this year by Mike Myers. It sounds like a very 1996 idea to me, but after checking the date on the press release, it appears to be true. Now the nominations have been announced and it’s time for the speculation to begin. Will Shia LaBeouf and Sarah Roemer win Best Kiss for Disturbia, or will those upstarts Briana Evigan and Robert Hoffman from Step Up 2 The Streets pull off an upset? Will McLovin Mania sweep Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse to the Best Newcomer Prize? And what future classic of cinema will leave with the prestigious Golden Popcorn prize for Best Movie?

In fairness, I dimly recall a time when the MTV Movie Awards were a fun, irreverent alternative to the usual award show pomp. This is a show, after all, that presented both Godzilla and Clint Howard with Lifetime Achievement Awards. A distinguished ceremony during which Will Ferrell once wet his pants. A red carpet extravaganza with a somewhat flexible dress code:

It doesn’t take long for “fun and irreverent” to congeal into “lame and desperate,” however. Last year MTV brought in Survivor producer Mark Burnett to liven things up, but sadly, the nominees were not forced to eat gross food items or vote each other out (which might be a fun twist). Instead, my sources tell me (I was out playing Bingo), the night was basically a repository of cheap rehab jokes about Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and mind-numbing moments like the awarding of Best Summer Movie You Haven’t Seen Yet to Transformers.

Still, this is a blog for film news, so here is the news. The MTV Movie Awards nominees have been announced. You can find them here if you’re interested. Heck, you can even vote for them if you really care!

Tina Fey is My Baby Mama

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Your Entertainment Weekly cover gal is Tina Fey, and why not? Not only is she riding high on television with 30 Rock, for which she won a Golden Globe, but she has some new movie product to promote. It’s Baby Mama, of course, and it’s about as high concept as it gets: upscale but infertile Fey hires white trash Amy Poehler to have her baby for her. ''I liked the topicality of the fertility issues that affect so many people,'' says Fey. ''There's so much weirdness and emotion about it. If you start with something juicy, you end up with a better [movie] than if you just start with some jokes. And Amy liked that it did not have anything to do with a goddamn wedding.'' Well, there is that to be thankful for.

Not that Fey is entirely comfortable on the A-list yet, as we learn when “she recounts her near run-in with director M. Night Shyamalan at the studio; Fey chose not to introduce herself, because she wasn't sure it was him until after he left (‘I thought it'd be racist to go up to the wrong Indian guy and ask if he was M. Night Shyamalan'’).”

There’s a lot of talk in the EW piece about how much heart the movie has and how that might translate to box office success, but we don’t care about any of that. We’re more interested in the time she called one-time SNL host Paris Hilton a “piece of shit” on The Howard Stern Show. ''I should really strive to have better manners about those things,'' says Fey. ''Pretty soon my kid's going to understand what I'm saying and be able to access it on the computer. I screwed up something a few months ago and I was like, 'You know who wouldn't do that? Tom Hanks. You know who would keep his mouth shut? Tom Hanks. I should try to be like Tom Hanks.'''

The Baby Mama website offers a clever little gimmick, if little else: it’s the Baby Mama Maker! Upload photos of any two faces and the software will reveal what your offspring will look like. I tried it using photos of myself and Tina Fey, and here, as a Screengrab exclusive, is our baby, Apple! Isn’t she adorable?

Lindsay Lohan is Charlie’s Angel in “Manson Girls”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:00:00 GMT

So you’ve spent the better part of the past year in and out of rehab, becoming a tabloid fixture in the process. Your last starring role in I Know Who Killed Me nabbed you a record number of Razzie awards for a single performance. This may be your last chance to reclaim any sort of respectable movie career. What do you do, Lindsay Lohan? What do you do?

Well, apparently you sign on to play Nancy Pitman in Manson Girls, a new take on the Helter Skelter story, hot on the heels of your appearance in Chapter 27, the latest Mark David Chapman biopic. Pitman isn’t one of your more glamorous members of the Manson family; heck, she doesn’t even have her own wikipedia page. But the good folks at the Manson Girl Info Center came to our rescue with a little biographical information. Known as “Brenda” to the family, “the former Malibu surfer girl quickly became one of the most hardcore members of the Family. She was present when Charles Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian came back to Spahn's Ranch after their night of murder and mayhem at the home of Sharon Tate on August 9, 1969. It is also widely believed that she went back to the actress's house with Manson later that night to survey the crime scene and leave false clues to throw off the police.”

We’re eagerly awaiting additional casting information. How about Paris Hilton as Squeaky Fromme? Britney Spears as Leslie Van Houten? This could be the Valley of the Dolls of our time, people.

Every Which Way to Witch Mountain

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Those of us who came of age in the ’70s long ago came to grips with the realization that there is absolutely no aspect of our childhoods that won’t be recycled, regurgitated or (guh) re-imagined by Evil, Evil Hollywood. Whether the final straw was Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Richard Linklater’s Bad News Bears or that TV movie about Evel Knievel starring the guy from CSI is a matter to be debated by scholars and historians for decades to come. One thing we know for sure, however: it isn’t over yet. We know this because Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (you know, the Tooth Fairy) has signed on for something called Race to Witch Mountain.

It’s not that 1975’s Escape to Witch Mountain is some sort of untouchable classic. If its release didn’t coincide with your time in grade school, it’s even possible that you’ve never heard of it. The story of two orphans with paranormal abilities fleeing an evil tycoon (Ray Milland) with the help of a curmudgeonly Winnebago driver (Eddie Albert) was fairly typical Disney fare of the time, but it struck a chord with those of us kids who enjoyed entertaining the possibility, however slim, that we might develop the ability to make the family station wagon fly. Also, I’m confident I was not the only seven-year-old on my block with a big crush on Tia, the girl witch played by Kim Richards. (Fun IMDb fact: Kim Richards is Paris Hilton’s aunt.)

In the new version, expected to be a more action-oriented affair, the Rock plays a Vegas cabbie who helps the witchy kids escape the clutches of Ciaran Hinds. Redundantly enough, this is not even the first time Witch Mountain has been remade. A made-for-TV version aired in 1995, and you can watch the whole thing on YouTube, beginning with the clip below.

"Nottie" Isn't Nice to Paris Hilton

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Every once in a while there’s an event that restores your faith in the American public. You know, like Hands Across America, or the failure of New Coke. Or this past weekend’s box office totals for The Hottie and the Nottie.

Honestly, I was surprised when I learned that the Paris Hilton comedy was getting a theatrical release in the first place; the title, poster art and premise all screamed “straight to video.” But after mulling it over, I had to concede that it wasn’t so shocking after all. Hilton is such a fixture on tabloid covers and gossip sites, she surely must have fans, and even a million or two of them would be enough to ensure a respectable opening weekend during the doldrums of February. Hell, Meet the Spartans was the number one movie in the country just a couple of weeks ago.

Well, slashfilm has done the math, and the news is good for anyone dreading a sequel. (The Hottie and the Nottie Go Potty?) “The final count will show that the critically reviled comedy featuring the seemingly talentless Hilton will sell a meager $25,500 in tickets at 111 locations over the weekend. That’s only $230 per screen for the theatres that were convinced to book this disaster. That means that, based on an $8 average ticket price, 29 paying customers showed up at each location over the 3-day. In a country that seems fascinated with Paris Hilton, only 3,219 unlucky Americans will have been suckered into seeing Hottie by Monday morning.”

Congratulations, America. You have reason to be proud this week. Except you 3,219 poor shmucks. But at least you’ll have something to tell your grandchildren.

Morning Deal Report: "Look At Them Sideburns! He Looks Like A Girl!"

Peter Smith — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

(w/ apologies to Abe Simpson)

Jake Gyllenhaal will play Joe Namath, in a biopic of the shaggy-maned football hero.

Liev Schreiber has joined the sci-fi adaptation Repossession Mambo, about "a futuristic credit union dealing in artificial organs" — not to be confused with Repo! The Genetic Opera, the other movie about futuristic organ reposession. (So much for Schreiber's lifelong dream of working with Paris Hilton, I guess.)

Matthew Perry will play a grown-up Zac Efron in 17, the "reverse Big" about the adult who magically returns to his teenage years. This does not bode well for Zac Efron.

— Peter Smith