The Screengrab : shia labeouf

Morning Deal Report: Shia LeBeouf Goes to Wall Street

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Oliver Stone has agreed to direct the sequel to Wall Street, so insert your own “greed is good” joke here. Shia LaBeouf “is negotiating to join Michael Douglas, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko in the original pic. The sequel will once again involve a young Wall Street trader, and the recent economic meltdown spurred by rampant greed and corruption will fit prominently into the plot,” per Variety.

The Flanimals are coming! The Ricky Gervais children’s book series Flanimals, that is. Universal will adapt the series into a 3D animated feature, and Gervais will voice the lead character. “The four-volume series, illustrated by Rob Steen, encompasses a world inhabited by 50 species of creatures so ugly and misshapen they become cute and endearing. Gervais' character, a pudgy, perspiring purple creature, goes on a mission to change the world. ‘It will be great to play a short, fat, sweaty loser for a change,’ Gervais said. ‘A real stretch.’”

And finally on the Morning Deal Report…I’m looking for a new deal! As you read here earlier this morning, the Screengrab is shutting down production on movie related news, reviews and snark in about a month. So if you’re in the market for a timely and talented purveyor of such things, contact me through my blog. My new landlord thanks you.

Related:
Michael Douglas Eyes "Wall Street" Return
Shia LaBeouf...Why?

Screengrab Death Watch: Day One

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:49:00 GMT

And now, the end is near, and so we face the final curtain...

Yes, it’s true...as it turns out, the shitty economy, global warming, the death of print media and the looming Swine Flu pandemic are only the tips of the iceberg of sadness we’ll all have to deal with this year.

We learned yesterday that Nerve.com will be shuttering some of its culture blogs including...(sniff, sniff)...this one: sad to say, the Screengrab is not long for this dirty old world.

So enjoy our beloved, non-commercially viable coverage of the cinematic universe while you can...and stay tuned for plenty of clip-show nostalgia, maudlin eulogizing, a heart-tugging farewell song from Bette Midler and, in a last-ditch attempt to boost hits, 100% more gratuitous Tits & Ass...like, uh...that chick from The Hills showing her butt!

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Hits of Summer 2009 (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Paul:
Looking at this summer’s would-be blockbusters, I only see two real sure-thing titles. But while this leaves a lot of question marks to those trying to predict which titles will hit big, it also leaves a lot of room to predict some potential sleeper movies to come out of nowhere, given good word of mouth and the right marketing campaign. I’m almost sure I’ll regret these hasty decisions sometime around mid-May, but that’s just part of the game, isn’t it?

3. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (June 24)

Paul:
Remember those two sure things I mentioned before? Here’s one of them: let’s not underestimate the box office prospects of Transformers, a mistake that was made by many Hollywood insiders prior to the release of the first Transformers movie. Yes, the Michael Bay name didn’t give many people hope, but audiences turned out in droves all the same thanks to a combination of eighties nostalgia and the desire to watch giant robots kicking ass. If anything, the sequel promises even more action and destruction, hopefully with less dopey humor getting in the way. Getting released just before the July 4 weekend can only help its prospects.

Nick:
Michael Bay’s Transformers made $319 million domestically in 2007. And unless Tony Scott’s The Taking of Pelham 123 (June 12) has legs, or Michael Mann’s Public Enemies (July 1) becomes a runaway smash, there’s little slam-bang competition surrounding Fallen’s June 24th release. Consequently, there’s no reason to suspect that this more-is-better sequel – featuring a wider roster of Autobots and Decepticons, as well as mega-hottie Megan Fox – won’t be greeted with massive box-office enthusiasm.

Scott:
I don’t want this to be true, but I have to be a realist when doing these projections. Otherwise I’d have the new Jarmusch movie in this slot, and that ain’t gonna happen. Bay + LaBeouf = big box office once again.

Andrew:
Blechh.

2. STAR TREK (May 8)

Scott:
The sequel is already in the works, so you know Paramount is feeling bullish. More than four decades worth of built-in fan base can’t hurt, but even non-Trekkies are likely to be swept up by the hype, which may dwarf even William Shatner’s ego by the time this is released.

Andrew:
I noted this as one of the films I was most excited to see in 2009, even though I fully expect to be disappointed and I’m way too old for this kind of nonsense. But being a Star Trek fan is like being Catholic...it gets into your system early, and once it’s there, it’s there for good, resurfacing when you least expect it, flying in the face of all the logic and common sense you otherwise thought you had.

Nick:
Trekkies (or Trekkers, or whatever they want to be called) will turn out in droves for J.J. Abrams’ reimagining of their beloved series. So too will the uninitiated, thanks to the Mission: Impossible III director’s decision to place as great an emphasis on breathless, epic action as on franchise minutiae.

Paul:
Will old-school Trekkers be down with a reboot of their beloved franchise with an almost entirely new cast? Will non-Trek fans even care? And why do the studios continue to release their big-budget movies in the second weekend of May (a.k.a. the Speed Racer weekend), which has consistently proven to be a box-office dead zone?

1. HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (July 15)

Paul:
Here’s that other sure thing. I eventually decided to make Potter my top pick for several reasons. First, the Potter-philes have been salivating over this latest installment ever since the last movie two summers ago, and the ballyhoo over the release date (pushed back from last November) has only heightened their excitement. Secondly, Half-Blood Prince appears to be the most action-packed entry in the series to date, which should be enough to bring out the more casual fans of the series who might otherwise have waited for DVD. And finally, there’s the mid-July release date, which proved so lucrative for The Dark Knight last year. With relatively little competition in the surrounding weeks, Potter should rule the latter part of the summer, and if I was a Warner exec, I’d try my damnedest to secure this weekend every year.

Nick:
It was delayed from last Fall to July 15, meaning anticipation is high. And it’s the installment in which a key figure bites the supernatural bullet. Both of those facts (as well as a PG rating) should make this sixth Harry Potter film gargantuan.

Scott:
The Potter freaks were hopping mad when Warner Bros. delayed this release last fall, but let’s not kid ourselves; all will be forgiven when it finally rolls into theaters.

Andrew:
I haven’t read the books, but I’m devoted to the film series...and I’m a grown-ass man. For my fellow adults who keep sincerely trying to convince me the books themselves are the sorts of things that adults should actually be reading, and especially for all the kids out there who grew up on J.K. Rowling’s really pretty awesome juggernaut -- I’m still totally digging the gay Dumbledore thing, for instance -- NOT seeing Half-Blood isn’t even an option. Plus, Emma Watson is no longer jailbait, so I’m now officially allowed to look at her boobies.

Click Here For The Hits (Part One), The Bombs (Part Three), The Toss-Ups (Part Four) and The Honorable Mentions (Parts Five & Six)

Contributors: Paul Clark, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak, Andrew Osborne

Morning Deal Report: Pride and Predator

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:30:00 GMT

How many times have you been watching a frilly Jane Austen adaptation when the thought occurs to you: “You know what would really improve this movie? An alien attack!” Well, your dreams have come true. Variety reports that “Will Clark is set to direct Pride and Predator, which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about.”

My favorite Halle Berry movie is the one where she plays the jewel thief. Actually, that one hasn’t been made yet – but be patient! Berry is “attached to star in Who Is Doris Payne, a Eunetta Boone-scripted fact-based film about an international jewel thief whose career spanned five decades.

William Monahan is a busy man. The Departed writer, last seen adapting The Art of the Heist, is also set to turn the John Grisham legal thriller (as opposed to the John Grisham whaling adventure, I guess) The Associate into a screenplay. Shia LaBeouf stars as “a Yale Law School student with a sordid secret that leaves him vulnerable to blackmail.”

Related:
Morning Deal Report: The Squeakquel
Halle Berry Loses Her Mind

DVD Digest for December 30, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! This week, the big studios drop a ton of new DVDs and Blu-Rays into the market to compete for your newly-acquired Christmas cash.

In recent releases, DVD shopping begins early this week, with three new Paramount titles: Shia Labeouf and Michelle Monaghan in Eagle Eye (also Blu-Ray); Ricky Gervais in Ghost Town (also Blu-Ray); and Keira Knightley in The Duchess (also Blu-Ray). Today brings us Nick Broomfield’s Battle For Haditha (Image Entertainment), as well as a “head to head” match up (sorry) between Alan Ball’s Towelhead (Warner) and the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead (Sony).

In TV on DVD, today’s new releases include The Tudors Season 2 (Paramount) and Nip/Tuck Season 5 Part 1 (Warner).

Finally, this week’s bumper crop of new Blu-Ray-only releases includes: Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder (Paramount); the Shining-in-space thriller Event Horizon (Paramount); Demi Moore and the Swayz in Ghost (Paramount); Queen Latifah in Last Holiday (Paramount); Jim Carrey in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (Paramount); Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers (Warner); and finally, the Browncoats’ favorite, Joss Whedon’s Serenity (Universal).

Morning Deal Report: Bourne Again

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

With James Bond back in theaters, it’s only a matter of time before that other superspy who shares his initials makes his way back to the big screen. E! Online reports that “Universal has just inked a deal with Robert Ludlum's estate for exclusive rights to the Jason Bourne character and first look at his other novels.” Matt Damon “has already signed on to a fourth installment to be directed by Paul Greengrass, who helmed The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Supremacy. It's not known whether Damon will play the role beyond the next film, or whether producers will go the Bond route and keep recasting.” Here’s a guess: Shia LaBeouf.

Speaking of The Boof, he’s already following in Damon’s footsteps with his latest project. Damon starred in the John Grisham adaptation The Rainmaker, and LaBeouf is set to play The Associate. Per Variety, he’ll play “a Yale Law School graduate who is forced by nefarious figures from his past to take a job at a top legal firm to pass on top secret information about a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. It is based on the book of the same name which will be published in January - Grisham's first legal thriller since 2005's The Broker.” I could have sworn there was already a Grisham book called The Associate – it’s such a memorable and distinctive title!

It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s – Paper Man? “The coming-of-middle-age comedy chronicles the unlikely friendship between a failed author (Jeff Daniels) and a Long Island high school girl (Emma Stone) who teaches him about growing up, all under the disapproving eye of his long-suffering wife and imaginary superhero friend,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Related:
Cronenberg Does Ludlum
Shia LaBeouf...Why?

21 Stars We Hate (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Three weeks ago, we paid tribute to Paul Newman, a fantastically decent and charitable movie star possessed of great taste, artistic integrity and that elusive hat-trick of looks, talent and charisma that elevated him to the status of beloved international icon and left the world a sadder place when he left it.

Newman’s passing (and, to some extent, his dressing) got us thinking about other Leading Men and Leading Ladies we loved, or at least admired, or who at the very least satisfied most of the basic requirements of stardom: unforgettable performances in memorable films, a uniquely fascinating persona and maybe even some crazy knee-wobbling sex appeal for good measure.

But in the midst of all our recent celebrity praising, we couldn’t help noticing the preponderance of past and present “stars” who could more accurately be described as black holes: a whole lotta nothing endowed with tremendous powers of suck...false matinee idols who never really earned their overpraised, overpaid stations in the pop culture firmament, or genuine icons who long ago squandered whatever legitimacy they once had, and now just bug the shit out of us.

Given the fleeting, fickle nature of fame and the contrarian curmudgeonliness of your friends here at the Screengrab, you may notice a few of the names we praised less than a fortnight hence are back this week as figures of scorn and ridicule...

...but hey, that’s show biz, kid, so let’s get ready to RUUUUUUMMBLE!!!!!!

SHIA LABEOUF

Like Sarah Palin (but far less scary and secessionist), “The Boof” was plucked from relative obscurity and forced down America’s collective throat despite a staggering lack of qualifications for a job that any number of people could do better. Unlike Palin, whose ascendancy was engineered for cynical political advantage, I have no idea why Hollywood in general (and Steven Spielberg in particular) picked LaBeouf as their Gen-Y A-List representative...but for now I guess we’re stuck with him (and since I already posted a longer rant on the subject back in April, I’ll leave it at that...at least until Stockholm decides he’s ready for his Nobel Peace Prize for, y’know, bein’all peaceful an’ shit).

ROBIN WILLIAMS

I'll grant you that this one is like shooting fish in a barrel – but if you're going to set a barrel of fish in front of me and hand me a gun, what am I supposed to do? Anyway, it's not as if I'm a lifelong Williams hater. I was there when he debuted as Mork from Ork on a 1978 episode of Happy Days; I even remember taping the show (on audio cassette – this was pre-VCR) and listening to it over and over. (This was perhaps the 374th dorkiest thing I did in 1978. Number 212 was dressing up as Mork for Halloween, although my mother did a fabulous job with the costume.) I had his comedy album, Reality, What a Concept, some of which I even understood. He was a fine Popeye, and although it's been many years since I've seen either The Survivors or Moscow on the Hudson, I remember liking them at the time. So when did it all go awry? Some would point to Dead Poets Society, and certainly the seeds of sentiment and sanctimony were planted there, but I would argue in favor of Awakenings, in which those seeds sprouted into the Sensitive Man Beard. Into the early '90s, Williams could still garner critical acclaim by hacking through the same eight voices he always uses in Aladdin, but after a sickly stretch including Jumanji, Jack, Father's Day, Patch Adams and Bicentennial Man, defenders were harder to come by. (Somewhere in there he won an Oscar by breaking out the SMB again for Good Will Hunting, but I'd like to think a re-vote today would send it to Burt Reynolds for Boogie Nights instead.) After a brief but failed flirtation with a "dark phase" (including One Hour Photo and Insomnia), Williams has returned to serving up his patented cocktail of shtick and schmaltz. By 2007's License to Wed, even he seemed to be tired of his own act.

EWAN McGREGOR

McGregor first attracted attention for his work in the films of director Danny Boyle, with whom he was supposed to have some Scottish, post-MTV Scorsese-and-De Niro thing going on. In Boyle's debut feature, Shallow Grave, McGregor had the most prominent and sympathetic of the three main roles, alongside Kerry Fox, who made him her bitch, and Christopher Eccleston, who out-acted him into the next county. They followed that up with the much bigger hit Trainspotting, where Robert Carlyle swabbed the screen with him. The Boyle-McGregor partnership finally came to an acrimonious end when Boyle cast Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead in The Beach, thus sparing McGregor the chance to have his clock cleaned by Tilda Swinton. (They also worked together on A Life Less Ordinary, another movie full of actors who might have easily stolen it from Ewan, except who would have wanted it?) On his own, McGregor has provided evidence of an adventurous spirit by agreeing to star in several of the most unpleasantly misconceived big projects of the last dozen years, including Peter Greenaway's pervy art exhibit The Pillow Book, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, and David Mackenzie's lyrical ode to post-coital depression, Young Adam. McGregor also acted and sang in Todd Haynes' glitter rock movie Velvet Goldmine, where his famous and often-exposed physique, while certainly hunky enough as the physiques of pampered, hard-drinking young Scottish actors go, looked a little marshmallowy for someone who was meant to be Iggy Pop; however, we like the suggestion brunted by some admiring reviewers that this made it easier to accept that he was really meant to be Iggy and Lou Reed. His most high-profile role since Trainspotting was, of course, that of the young Ob-wan Kenobi in George Lucas' Star Wars prequels. Better actors than Ewan had trouble making their presence felt in those pictures, so it would be wrong to be too hard on him for that chapter of his career, though it does seem amazing that anyone could picture this guy someday turning into Alec Guinness. One hates to be too hard on McGregor for anything, really: unlike some names on this list, not to mention a whole lot of more talented people, he seems like a nice guy, and he's generally not painful to watch. It's just that, seeing him acting in a movie, you often find yourself staring at him and wondering where the rest of the donut went.

CLINT EASTWOOD

Sergio Leone, the director who made Eastwood a star with the Italian Western A Fistful of Dollars, once told an interviewer that, "When Michelangelo was asked what he had seen in the one particular block of marble which he chose among hundreds of others, he replied that he saw Moses," adding that he cast Clint after experiencing the same epiphany, except in reverse: watching Eastwood in action, "What I saw, simply, was a block of marble." The canny Leone would make some terrific pictures with that block of marble, and once the marble was established as the biggest international movie star in the world, he would go on to make a lot of other, shittier movies with a lot of lesser directors, a roll call that includes himself. During his peak years as a movie star, Eastwood established himself as the king of his thing: monolithic, inexpressive, yet implicitly self-righteous in his need to dish out retributive (and pre-emptive) violence to anyone who had it coming to him, which in most of those movies is anyone who's on-screen who he isn't fucking or who isn't played by an orangutan. Back in those days, the conventional wisdom on Eastwood was that it might be fun to watch him pistol whip people on screen, but that you wouldn't want to admit to being a fan if you were applying for a government job. But whatever you think of his earlier action hits, for the last couple of decades we've been sharing the planet with Clint the Auteur, the increasingly hard-to-listen-to, sinewy old guy with the glare of an Old Testament prophet and the voice of a rattlesnake's death rasp who keeps sliding behind the camera to direct a long string of ever more obvious movies with creaking joints that are invariably hailed as masterpieces by people who must need to get their eyeballs oiled. It's easy to think of other cases where it took the critics a while to catch up with an American original, but sometimes they do get it right the first time. John Huston -- who Clint impersonated in White Hunter, Black Heart, something he had as much business attempting as Huston himself would have had playing Shirley Temple -- said in Chinatown that politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all become respectable if they last long enough, and there's a little of all three in Eastwood.

NICOLE KIDMAN

Between Dead Calm, the 1989 Australian thriller that was her first film released in the U.S., and her Hollywood debut the next year in Days of Thunder, Kidman's onscreen image seemed to lose ten years and at least that many brain cells. Her '90s screen partnership with her then-husband Tom Cruise, which also resulted in Far and Away and Eyes Wide Shut, was like some post-modern parody of the public marriage and tie-in movie career of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, itself no great moment in the history of human dignity. By the time it was over, any personality or expressive qualities that Kidman ever had were smothered in "glamour." If she's really a star, then she's a star of a very strange kind, with an odd, limited sort of appeal: she's had her greatest successes playing characters who the audience is meant to want to strangle (as in To Die For and Malice) or in movies where somebody already beat us to it: her best performance, by miles, was in the ghost story The Others, where she was completely convincing as a woman so tightly buttoned up and horribly repressed that she didn't even know she was dead. Since the divorce from Tom Cruise, in which she seemed to win official custody of the media and the industry's solicitous respect, she's picked her roles like a politician with a desire to cover as much ground as possible without offending anyone, and they've been a testament to the awfulness of her taste: jumping at the chance to miscast herself in Oscar-bait literary adaptations like The Hours, The Human Stain, and Cold Mountain while courting the groundlings in terribly misconceived remakes of The Stepford Wives, Invasion (as in "of the Body Snatchers"), and the TV series Bewitched. Having some arch, boring glamourpuss making movies for them seems to give studio heads a kick, at least for a while: in 2006, Kidman was the most highly paid actress in movies, even though a look at the returns on her films made it seem that she couldn't draw crows to a cornfield at sundown.

Click Here For Part Two, Part Three & Part Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 25 Leading Men of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

My friends, last week in this space we paid tribute to the Top 10 films of the late, lamented Paul Newman, one of our favorite movie stars of all time...which, not surprisingly, got us thinking about the very qualities that separate the film industry’s classic, iconic Leading Men – the true gods of the silver screen – from, say, Shia LaBeouf.

My friends, I ask you: what is that special something, that ephemeral je nes sais quoi that makes for a truly great Leading Man? Is it talent? Sex appeal? Box office clout? Are we drawn more to the stars who remind us of ourselves or those who embody exactly the qualities we lack (but do our best to imitate in hopes of meeting girls)? Do the off-screen good deeds and/or drunken racist ranting and/or pro-Xenu proselytizing of the men behind the movies matter? Do we forgive the occasional bombs and missteps in a long, prolific career, or do we prefer a shorter resume packed with performances of a generally higher quality? And do foreigners count?

My friends, these difficult questions led to much consternation and debate within the hallowed halls of The Screengrab...but in the end, we all came together as a website, setting aside our individual differences to bring you this historic document, our bipartisan, multilateral picks for THE TOP 25 LEADING MEN OF ALL TIME!

25. FRANK SINATRA (1915-1998)

Sinatra's movie career had three distinct acts. In the 1940s, as a young singing heartthrob, he starred in such godawful musicals as Step Lively and The Kissing Bandit while dabbling with "acting" (as the kids call it nowadays) in such roles as a priest in The Miracle of the Bells. Some twenty years later, with his stardom set in concrete, he got paid for palling around on-screen with his buddies in such stuff as the original Ocean's Eleven and 4 for Texas, as well as for honoring his serious (or at least his self-serious) side by allowing his grumpy mid-life crisis to be recorded on camera in such downers as The Detective and The Naked Runner. But in between, starting with the famously career-reviving supporting performance as Maggio in From Here to Eternity, Sinatra had a good, solid career as a leading actor, a period which includes his political-assassination double feature of The Manchurian Candidate and the lesser-known 1954 Suddenly, in which he invades a house and plans to take out the president from a conveniently placed window. This period also included his best co-starring gig with Dean Martin in Some Came Running, his vividly sweaty impersonation of the nightclub comic Joe E. Lewis in The Joker Is Wild, and (especially) his rhythmic, convincing embodiment of a junkie poker dealer in The Man with the Golden Arm. The trick to getting work of this caliber out of Sinatra seems to have been that he felt in danger of fading away and washing out -- or at least becoming just another rich, famous entertainer -- and he had to deliver, a feeling that gave a charge to everything he did...for a while. When he felt his confidence return, he knew he wasn't going anywhere and so, in movies at least, he turned into a coaster. Maybe it's too bad that some way couldn't have been found to throw a good scare into him every ten years or so. But how the hell are you going to scare somebody after they've agreed to star in Dirty Dingus Magee, and even that check has cleared?

24. MONTGOMERY CLIFT (1920-1966)

James Dean was a tragic figure, but Montgomery Clift was a doomed one. When he finally died in 1966 (of arterial sclerosis, though his former acting teacher called it a slow-motion suicide), he was readying to play a lead role in Reflections in a Golden Eye opposite his friend Elizabeth Taylor; Marlon Brando took over the role. The two had a lot in common, including searingly handsome faces that would eventually be scarred by their self-destructive behavior and ill health, and a propensity for masterfully portraying emotionally complex working-class characters. That Brando was, at the time, considered the more stable of the two gives some indication of just how fucked up Monty Clift was. Brought up in an abusive family situation, wracked his entire life by ill health, and paralyzed by guilt over his own homosexuality and drug addiction, Clift was beloved by half of Hollywood and despised by the other half. So ruined was both his body and his career by the early ‘60s that he nearly became, with Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, the third Hollywood legend to make The Misfits their final film. Happily, Clift survived just long enough to turn in a riveting performance in Judgment at Nuremberg, but the cards were dealt for him almost from the time he was born. He didn’t live past 45, and for someone who had such a great reputation as an actor during his prime, he made precious few movies – only 17 total, and a dozen as the lead. But he left hardly a screen credit that didn’t make a lasting impression, and his legacy, curiously enough, can be seen in music: a number of bands have written songs about poor doomed Monty, including R.E.M. (“Monty Got a Raw Deal”), Jets to Brazil (“Conrad”), and the Clash (“The Right Profile”).

23. JAMES CAGNEY (1899-1986)

Cagney was originally cast as the sidekick to the hero in his first big picture, The Public Enemy, but after the director, William Wellman, saw the rushes from the first day's shoot, he had a rude shock when he discovered that nobody could take their eyes off the runty smartass guy who wasn't supposed to be the star. It is a tribute to the common-sensical, whatever-works spirit of the early talkies that Wellman, rather than agonize over this perturbing situation, marched onto the set the next day and simply informed the two actors that they'd be swapping parts. Anybody who wanted to establish, with as little effort as possible, that the movies are probably the work of the devil could do worse than to screen a few of Cagney's choicest gangster movies -- say, The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, and his middle-aged kiss-off to the genre, White Heat. In these films, Cagney emanates danger and energy as naturally as an electrified fence, and his satisfaction in being able to discharge his anger in ways that are unpleasant for the people he's discharging it all over is deeply unwholesome, but no actor in history has ever been more dependably watchable. A veteran of the vaudeville stage, he used a dancer's physicality, as well as his natural likability and an unpredictable streak ot dark wit, to keep his tough guys from ever seeming like mere brutes or bullies. He had range, and he tore it up in his hoofers' musicals, including the movie he was proudest of, the George M. Cohan musical biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy. But he remains chiefly identified as old Hollywood's favorite unromantic urban tough guy. (Bogart, who he shot full of lead in a couple of movies, has the romantic division sewn up.)

22. BURT LANCASTER (1913-1994)

Lancaster established his stardom as a big manly hunk of action star, but he's endured better than many of the trigger-happy lunks who starred in Hollywood action pictures, because he was both a throwback to the days of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and a predecessor to the gravity-defying stars of Hong Kong martial arts movies. A former gymnast, Lancaster had turned to acting after an injury cut short his career as a circus acrobat, and in such movies as The Crimson Pirate (co-starring his former circus partner, Nick Cravat, who appeared in nine of Lancaster's movies, and who died the same year Burt did) and Carol Reed's Trapeze, he demonstrated that it was possible for a big man to spin and pirouette through the air in ways that were not dreamt of in John Wayne's philosophy. At first, other aspects of the actor's art, such as speaking dialogue and making it through a whole scene without yawning, came less naturally to him than dancing in mid-air, but Lancaster, a long-range-plan kind of guy, became interested in developing the skills that would enable him to keep his career going when he could somersault no more. He also seemed to think that it would be a useful thing to make a few movies that would be good enough that he could stand to look at himself in the mirror the day after the premiere. In some of the "serious" pictures he made (The Devil's Disciples, The Rose Tattoo, Come Back, Little Sheba, Birdman of Alcatraz) when he was still in his beefcake prime, Lancaster seemed to be sponsoring his own on-the-job-training acting course. The training paid off when Luchino Visconti offered him the role of the prince in the 1963 epic masterpiece The Leopard, arguably the finest work of his career and one more film that likely wouldn't have been made at all without Lancaster's participation. Infuriatingly, The Leopard would not be seen in its full, uncut majesty in the United States until 1983. However, there was something fitting about that, because by the time it did arrive here, Lancaster's work in Louis Malle's Atlantic City (1981) and Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983), to name two, had established him as one of the great old men of the movies, a weathered but still-beautiful oak of a man whose courtly bearing seemed to mark him as an emissary from a better time.

GARY COOPER (1901-1961)

Gary Cooper is one of the greatest stars in Hollywood history, and yet he never strayed very far from one very basic role. That was both the upside and the downside of the old star system; it may have prevented more versatile actors from taking on roles that would have let them break out of their public personality, but it also kept stars of somewhat limited talents thriving by letting them play to their strengths. Cooper the actor wasn’t hard to define: he was the straight-shooting, simple fella who might not have been too bright, but damn it, he knew what was right, and he was going to do what was best no matter what. He essentially filled that narrow role again and again throughout his career, mostly in the Westerns that made him famous; it was a limitation he recognized, but probably never fully accepted. When the roles within that archetype were good enough, when they were handled by capable directors and backed up with good supporting casts, you could see why Gary Cooper became a legend: as Alvin York in Sergeant York, as Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees, and most especially, and unforgettably, as Will Kane in High Noon, he didn’t so much transcend his limitations as an actor as he did fill out the outlines of his role with complete perfection, with nothing left out. In life, Cooper was a much more complex and contradictory character than any of the roles he played on screen, but the biggest contradiction of all is that the actor, with all his shortcomings, will be remembered long after the man is forgotten.

Click Here for Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Morning Deal Report: Kenneth Branagh Wields the Hammer of Thor

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Eagle Eye gave the September box office a late bump, raking in $29 million in its first week. Yes, America, we have to start dealing with the fact that Shia LaBeouf is a movie star. The latest weepie adapted from the soggy Nicholas Sparks oeuvre, Nights in Rodanthe, landed at number two with $13.6 million, while last week’s champ, Lakeview Terrace, dropped to number three with $7 million. Somehow a Kirk Cameron movie called Fireproof finished fourth with $6.5 million. Perhaps this is the latest sign that the Rapture is nigh.

Of all the Marvel comics adaptations heading for the big screen, Thor is…well, it’s the latest one, anyway. And who better to bring this hammer-wielding blowhard to life than Mr. Shakespeare himself, Kenneth Branagh? As Variety puts it, “Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige's choice of Branagh is surprising, as Branagh hasn't really directed an action-heavy film since his debut on Henry V, a bloody telling of the British king's conquest of France.” Thor is due in 2010, so mark your calendar or your iPhone or whatever you kids are doing these days.

My friends, I recently started work on a screenplay for the first time in a few years, and now I am reminded why I gave up screenwriting in the first place: every time I come up with a new idea, I’m beaten to the punch. The latest example is The Old College Try by Brett Gursky and Scott Herbst, who I now hate. “The time-travel comedy centers on a thirtysomething commitment-phobic man who finds himself transported back to his college days at Syracuse University, where he can alter his romantic fate in what is described as a modern Peggy Sue Got Married,” says The Hollywood Reporter. It’s not exactly my idea, but it’s close enough for me too root for this project to crash and burn. That’s just how I roll.

Related:
Stan the Man and His A-Fan Plan
Screengrab Presents: The Top 25 War Films

Trailer Review: Eagle Eye (Full Trailer)

Paul Clark — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Who would have expected that one of the most intriguing-looking big-budget thrillers of this year would star Shia LaBeouf and be directed by the clown who made Taking Lives? Eagle Eye doesn’t look particularly fresh- basically it’s a twist on Hitchcock’s “innocent man wrongly accused” rejiggered for our tech-happy age. Yet there’s something delicious about how paranoid this looks, with shadowy organizations setting up innocent people as possible criminals as part of… what? A sick game? Or something more sinister? Of course, LaBeouf is a far cry from the old-Hollywood classiness of Hitchcockian leads like Cary Grant, but there’s something ratty-looking about him here that not only makes him more relatable for today’s audiences, but also makes his survival less certain. It’s entirely possible that this movie will be all premise, no execution, but the premise is good enough that for now, I’m on board.

Raiders of the Leaked Frank Darabont Screenplay

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Somewhere in the crush of publicity for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you might have heard that an early version of Indy 4 was scripted by that master of the Stephen King prison movie, Frank Darabont. Among the people who spoke highly of the Darabont script was…Frank Darabont, who made it clear while doing publicity for The Mist over a year ago that he wouldn’t be sending George Lucas any congratulatory bouquets. “I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I and he felt was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn't like the script,” Darabont told MTV. “I told him he was crazy. I said, ‘You have a fantastic script. I think you're insane, George.’ You can say things like that to George, and he doesn't even blink. He's one of the most stubborn men I know.” When asked if he’d like to share his version of Indy with the world, Darabont replied, “I would love it, but it's not my material to disseminate.”

Apparently, someone disseminated it, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Last week a PDF document purporting to be Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods by Frank Darabont surfaced online. Lawyers torpedoed it before we could get our hands on it, and although it’s probably still easy enough to track down, we’re slow readers anyway. So we thought we’d take a spin around the Indysphere and see if there’s any consensus about this alleged artifact.

The first thing that’s apparent: No LaBeouf. That’s right, the character of “Mutt” is entirely absent from City of the Gods. Again, per MTV: “No Mutt Williams; no Mac; a tougher, more Raiders-esque Marion; and a climax that not only gives Indy something to do (how in the world did David Koepp think to give Indy nothing?) but forces him to make a decision that rivals the end of Crusade (the cup or a father's love?), crystallizing the character and his history into one momentous singularity.” And here we thought One Momentous Singularity was the new James Bond movie.

According to the Feed, “the script is largely the same, storywise, focusing on the discovery of the crystal skull, as well as the lost city in Peru where the Gods were thought to live, only to discover that these "gods" were aliens with a culture advanced thousands of years beyond our own. Also, Marion Ravenwood is in the script…and, to my surprise, the ‘nuking the fridge’ sequence and the giant ants are there, as well. However, also in this script are Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. and Sallah, making awesome cameo appearances that really help cement the whole history of Indiana Jones, and tie the whole saga together.”

Of course, Darabont was not the only big name scribe to take a whack at Indy. Again we turn to MTV, where M. Night Shyamalan was queried about his involvement in shaping the story of the fourth installment. “I was just gathering information at that point from all the deities,” Shyamalan said, referring to Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, [Frank] Marshall, and George Lucas. “I haven’t seen the new one yet. I can’t wait… I understand there are a few things we all talked about that are there.” I’m going to be generous and assume Night came up with the quicksand.

Related:
Screengrab Rant: Indiana Jones in 2008
Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Hollywood Accountants

Trailer Review: Eagle Eye

Paul Clark — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I’m not sure why this movie wasn’t on my radar before, but I’ve gotta say- this trailer is pretty kind of cool. I guess some of ignorance about this movie’s existence can be chalked up to the presence of D.J. Caruso in the director’s chair- The Salton Sea was OK, but Taking Lives and Two for the Money ate away at my soul enough that I didn’t bother with Disturbia. Judging by this trailer, perhaps I was too hasty- like Disturbia, Eagle Eye gives off the vibe of a Hitchcock wannabe, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing- if nothing else, the movie does aim high. And Shia LaBeouf is pretty perfect for this role- not a prettied-up gym rat but a scruffy slacker type, one who wouldn’t necessarily be expected to jump immediately into hero mode when the chips are down. Admittedly, this just a tiny taste of the film, but this teaser does a damn fine job of making me want more. Also, is that Julianne Moore’s voice on the phone?

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 10-16, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Join us if you dare for a disorienting journey of sight and sound we call THE WEEK IN SCREENGRAB!!!

SEE!!! Scarlett Johansson make out with Penelope Cruz for two seconds!

TREMBLE!! Before the might of the Top 12 Tough Jews in Cinema!

MARVEL!! At our prognosticating ability as Speed Racer Bombs! Screengrab Two For Two!

HOWL!!! At our fierce declaration that CGI Must Die!

DESPAIR!!! At the news of the Sequel to Donnie Darko!

REJOICE!!! As Godzilla Turns 50!

RECOIL!!! At the latest entries in the Unwatchable series: the flatulent Track of the Moon Beast, the unspeakable Marci X, and the merely so-so Invasion of the Neptune Men!

BOIL!!! A rabbit, I mean! As we look back at Fatal Attraction!

HURL!!! As you discover Werner Herzog’s Very Bad Idea!

SHAKE!!! And shimmy! As you listen to OST: Run Lola Run!

DRINK!!! Along with Shia LaBeouf!

FEAR!!! The Killer Inside Me!

And finally…did we mention Scarlett Johansson making out with Penelope Cruz? All right, enough of that. Have a good weekend, Screengrabbers and Screengrabettes!

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!

Trailer Review: Indiana Jones 4 Trailer #2

Paul Clark — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

With the summer movie season now in full swing, this week brings a handful of new versions of big summer blockbusters, released just in time to play before Iron Man. Here’s the new Indiana Jones full trailer, with more footage of Harrison Ford in action, looking hale and hearty, and as irritable as ever. In other words, just the way we like him. In addition, there’s plenty of Cate Blanchett, some actual Karen Allen dialogue, and the first trailer appearance of John Hurt. Even Shia LaBeouf finally looks at home here, now that we see him in context. Plus Spielberg brings the action and makes stuff blow up real good. So yeah, I’m pretty excited about this. For some reason, my Screengrab colleagues don’t share my belief that Indy 4 is going to be the biggest hit of the summer. But I say that if the trailer is any indication, this is going to be hard to beat.

Screengrab Predicts: The Top 5 Bombs of Summer 2008

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

And now, The Screengrab’s predictions for the Top 5 box office disappointments and/or outright disastrous flops of Summer 2008!

(Want to play along at home? Let us know your Top 5 picks for upcoming Summer Bombs, and compare them to our collective and individual predictions. Whoever scores the most correct answers WINS AN IMAGINARY FANTASY DATE WITH MIKE MYERS AND/OR SARAH JESSICA PARKER!)

5. SEX AND THE CITY

I guess I shouldn't exactly say that I'm confident this movie will be a huge failure. More like I'm praying to any god that will listen that it will be. (LP)

What kind of sick, twisted, topsy-turvy world do we live in where the promised Deadwood TV movies have never materialized, yet Sex and the City gets the full-fledged big screen treatment? No sort of world for me, I know that much. As hard as it is for me to believe that anyone on the planet still cares about the sex lives of Sarah Jessica Parker and her pals, I'm sure there are a few fans left out there. But they'll all see this on the first weekend and then it will sink like a stone. (SV)

Yes, the show has a built-in fan base, but will it be enough? The fact is, this is opening the week after Indiana Jones, and there are many more women who will buy a ticket for Indy than there are men who'll pay to see Carrie and Company on the big screen. Perhaps an early-fall release would have been a better idea? (PC)

4. SPEED RACER

Who was this movie made for? Everyone's heard of the show, but who remembers it all that well? Looks too kiddish for most adults, and too hyperkinetic for the family audience. Factor in the film's release date- the second week in May, historically a bum weekend- and the outlook here isn't promising. (PC)

Dissenting Opinion: Intersecting that demographic sweet spot where NASCAR fans, nostalgic hipsters, Japanese animation buffs, and people with nothing better to do on a hot afternoon meet, this cartoon revival will score big, and drive up sales of Steve Albini records and pet monkeys. (LP)

3. THE HAPPENING

It's not happening anymore for M. Night Shyamalan, who has seen his stock drop from Hitchcock heir to 21st century Ed Wood with each successive release. (SV)

Five years ago, the M. Night Shyamalan name would have been enough to guarantee box office. However, after The Village and Lady In the Water, the studio is going to have to step up their game to recoup their investment here. And without a Bruce Willis in the lead role, it's going to be that much harder. (PC)

DISSENTING OPINION: While I am on record as a LeBeouf hater, I’m an ardent Shyamalan apologist. For me, even his stinkers are interesting (or at least amusing), and I’m apparently the only guy in America who actually enjoyed Lady In The Water enough to put it on my year-end Top Ten List. Oh, sure, it SEEMS like it’s going to bomb...but the SHOCKING TWIST ENDING is that, y’know, it might not be a TOTAL fiasco. (AO)

2. THE LOVE GURU

Is there anyone out there who doesn't think this looks like total shit? Mike Myers appears onscreen for the first time in five years, but let's not forget that his last leading-man role was- UGH- THE CAT IN THE HAT. (PC)

Coroners examining the bomb crater will have trouble separating the remains of The Love Guru from the remains of Heather Graham’s The Guru in an adjacent crater, and will thus bury them together in the Tomb of the Unseen Faux-Indian Musical Comedy. (AO)

1. THE INCREDIBLE HULK

Taking a movie, based on a very hard-sell Marvel character (whose entire existence is predicated on violence and stupidity), which was one of the few recent superhero movies to totally bomb and remaking it only a few years later with a much worse director? Now that's a formula for success! (LP)

Marvel Studios has gone out of their way to sell this film as a completely different creature than the last movie. But will people get the message? I think they underestimate how much people disliked the last Hulk, and it's going to take a lot of good press to make audiences believe they won't get fooled again. (PC)

By the way...does anyone else think a giant green ‘roid-ragin’ CGI depiction of Ed Norton is inherently hilarious? What’s next, Sean Penn as Martian Manhunter? (AO)

Memorandum Opinion: I don't want to say I'm rooting against The Incredible Hulk exactly, but as one of the few defenders of Ang Lee's version, I would feel some satisfaction if the presumably louder, faster, dumber sequel/remake/whatever-it-is met with an even worse box office fate. (SV)

DISHONORABLE MENTION:

HANCOCK

Recent presidential elections have shown us time and again that America has no tolerance for poor moral values, like this movie with 'cock' in the title and which features Will Smith, and yet does not have a single occurrence of the phrase "Aw hell naw". (LP)

GET SMART

The appeal of the old TV show -- a number of episodes of which were written by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry -- wasn't its spy satire; it was its smart, character-driven comedy. The movie looks to go for cheap retro thrills and ultra-broad laughs, and America's love affair with Steve Carrell may have peaked. (LP)

People like Steve Carell on TV, but after last summer's Evan Almighty, his box-office clout is pretty questionable. This uninspired-looking TV spinoff probably won't counter that. (PC)

THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR

Does anyone still actually care? (PC)

WANTED/HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY

2008 is the summer of comic book movies, but there's such a thing as overkill. Without the name recognition of Batman or the marketing push of Iron Man, these will probably be lost in the shuffle. (PC)

**************

The above list reflects the combined, weighted picks of four of our resident Screengrab know-it-alls. Below, our original ballots:

Leonard Pierce

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. Hancock

4. Get Smart

5. Sex and the City

Scott Von Doviak

1. The Happening

2. Sex and the City

3. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan

4. The Love Guru

5. The Incredible Hulk

Paul Clark

1. Speed Racer

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. The Love Guru

4. Get Smart

5. Wanted/Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Andrew Osborne

1. The Love Guru

2. The Incredible Hulk

3. Speed Racer

4. Wall*E

5. Hancock

-- Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce

Shia LaBeouf... Why?

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:45:00 GMT

Shia LaBeouf (whose surname, according to Babel Fish, is Spanish for “the Beouf”) has recently been spotted by millions of people in the coming attractions trailer for the awkwardly titled but hotly anticipated Indiana Jones fourquel, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, another sure-fire blockbuster hot on the heels of LaBeouf’s recent gazillion-dollar smash hit, Transformers.

Yes, by any yardstick, Shia the Beouf is clearly a certified, gold-plated movie star.

And yet, except for his comical, hard-to-spell name, he is otherwise completely uninteresting.

Sure, he seems like a nice enough fellah...I mean, hell even I managed more scandalous behavior in my early twenties than drunken Walgreen’s loitering, and I was a complete wuss.

But nice isn’t enough, not in Hollywood. Look at C. Thomas Howell. He, too, was a personable, blandly attractive star in his day, but nobody felt the need to plug him into any surefire, critic-proof blockbusters, and now the poor bastard is stuck headlining straight-to-video classics like Mutant Vampire Zombies from the ‘Hood!

So what is the Beouf’s secret? He’s not particularly funny or sexy or intense or iconic, and yet he keeps showing up in role after role, Entertainment Tonight profile after Entertainment Tonight profile. He’s been heralded as a Star In The Making and Hollywood’s Next Big Thing since at least Holes, but his success to date seems largely based on his inexplicable ability to keep getting himself cast in high concept, high profile movies where he doesn’t need to do much but slouch about looking vaguely troubled.

Does this man have an actual fan base...that is, a fan base that caused him to actually become famous in the first place?

Or did he perhaps get to appear in a bunch of movies as the result of some game show or sweepstakes, a la Survivor sweetheart Colleen Haskell’s co-starring role in The Animal?

Sadly, the riddle of LeBeouf’s continuing fame may never be solved, as each new box office success further validates his A-List stature in a self-reflexive loop of cause and effect with all the existential clarity of a Zen koan: he is a movie star because he is a movie star.

Indiana Jones 4: LaBeouf Apparently Doesn’t Mind Being Called Junior

John Constantine — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:53:00 GMT

Alright, I admit, that’s cheating. Indiana Jones doesn’t call Shia LaBeouf "Junior" anywhere in this new featurette on the official Kingdom of the Crystal Skull website. You, however, will delight in this reference to a fondly remembered film starring related characters! Ill-suited allusions aside, I found LaBeouf pretty endearing here and it’s helped get me more excited to see just what the movie’s going to be like. Given, I’m already pretty endeared towards people who get arrested at Walgreens. Nothing brings people together like shared experience.

What’s up with this picture though? Why are the Jones boys on Nickelodeon’s Legends of the Hidden Temple?

You can check out the featurette here. Thanks to Cinematical for the spot!

Woody Allen is Smokin'!

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:15:00 GMT

At least, that's what the New York Times says about his latest, Cassandra's Dream — and, more to the point, the MPAA isn't doing anything about it.

Although Brooks Barnes claims that the characters in Cassandra's Dream smoke so heavily that "some patrons have exited theaters feeling like they just paid $12 to sit in the ashtray of an 18-wheeler", the film netted a Kool Ultra-Mild of a rating at PG-13 — this despite the Motion Picture Association of America's claim less than a year ago that they'd be cracking down hard on portrayals of heavy smoking on film, with "pervasive" use of the coffin nail a virtual guarantee of a more restrictive rating.

So far, we haven't heard of a single film sporting a "rated M for Marlboro" rating. If smoking is less prevalent in movies than it used to be, it's probably due to general healthier lifestyles and the growing social taboo on smoking indoors being reflected on film. But even if it weren't Woody at the helm, it's difficult to believe the MPAA was doing more than. . . well, blowing smoke last May when they announced the anti-tobacco crackdown in film. It's served its purpose in placating public pressure groups, and it's not hard to imagine that enforcement of the standard will be much of a priority, particularly since its target isn't illegal and doesn't carry much weight with the religious right the way that sex, bad language and drug use do.

Still, Weinstein Company boss Harvey Weinstein says that when the film hits DVD, it will carry the same anti-smoking PSAs that other recent Weinstein releases have featured. An ex-smoker, he believes he has a moral responsibility to educate the young about the dangers of smoking. Then again, Harv also believes that he could end movie piracy overnight if he could just get Shia LaBeouf to convince kids that it's not cool, so take his advice with a grain of salt.

Movies We Missed: Transformers (2007)

Peter Smith — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Wait a second, you say, what the hell do you mean a movie "we" missed? With box office tallies swelling to over $700M worldwide (pre-DVD!) it's pretty obvious that this one didn't exactly fly under the radar. But admittedly being somewhat of a film snob and guessing that many Screengrab readers and writers may fit in the same category, I thought this might just fit the bill. Who knows, without a thirteen-hour flight to sit through, I may never have discovered this effects heavy, pleasant surprise of a mega-blockbuster myself.

Why we missed it:
Director Michael Bay's last attempt, The Island, was a waste of film, not to mention millions of dollars, and would probably make many people's Top 10 "I Want My Time and Money Back" lists.

As a child of the '80s, (and a proud fan of Clash of the Titans) these all-CGI-all-the-time movies can be more nuisance and nonsense than popcorn classics.

Why we should have known:
As a child of the '80s, I should have remembered one simple fact. Transformers = AWESOME!

Why we ended up kicking ourselves:
A well-cast group of actors, led by the likable Shia LaBeouf, who carries the movie with his manic chattering and off-track humor. For men, there's the jailbait vision of Megan Fox and the fresh face of Rachael Taylor. For women there are ebony-and-ivory hunks Tyrese and Josh Duhamel. And for fans of Kangaroo Jack, there's Anthony Anderson.

The big-budget effects work much better in a story about alien robots than they do for those centered around superheroes or snakes. The Transformers themselves actually manage to integrate well with actors and real settings making for some very satisfying action sequences.

The movie rests on a simple but effective formula that seems unearthed from an '80s blueprint itself. Think Back to the Future and/or any of the countless other movies where the social nobody/nice-guy fuck-up turns out to be a lovable hero who saves the world and gets the girl, by using nerd knowledge and inner strength that nobody knew he had in him. It still works because there are more Shia LaBeoufs than Will Smiths in the world.

Why we may have been better off without it:
Believe it or not, indie stalwart John Turturro is the film's weak link as an overzealous cop.

There is probably an age cap on this one. If you were an adult when kids were playing with the toys, you probably didn't get it then, and it's unlikely you'll feel much different now. But to the film's credit, it's able to bring a young generation of fans up to date with the franchise much better than the many other movie attempts at reviving old TV favorites. (Dukes of Hazzard anyone?)

— Bryan Whitefield