The Screengrab : the strangers

Screengrab Review: "Adoration"

Nick Schager — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

A sense of deep loss and confusion hovers over Adoration, Atom Egoyan’s follow-up to his disappointing mainstream-courting Where the Truth Lies, which finds the director employing the gliding cinematography, sparse, mournful music, and splintered chronology of his earlier successes. Like The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan’s latest pivots around a fatal car accident that directly affects both a community at large as well as, specifically, one family. Having lost his American mom (Rachel Blanchard) and Lebanese dad (Noam Jenkins) years earlier in a smash-up that his now-deceased bigoted grandfather (Kenneth Welsh) claimed was intentionally caused by his father, high-schooler Simon (Devon Bostick) lives in the custody of uncle Tom (Scott Speedman), a tow truck operator struggling to make ends meet and cope with the ingrained intolerance bestowed upon him by his father. Their lives are thrown into turmoil when, assigned by his French teacher Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian) to translate a news item about a pregnant woman whose fiancé secretly stowed explosives in her bag before boarding a plane for Israel, Simon instead passes off as true a version of the story in which he claims to be the couple’s child. Predictably, once Simon’s dramatic experiment hits the Internet, controversy and emotional chaos ensue.

Blending together past and present, reality and fiction, and straightforwardly shot material with cell phone and laptop-filtered imagery, Adoration attempts a ruminative meditation on a variety of issues, including cultural compatibility, the morality of terrorism, the nature of grief and victimhood, and the means by which identity is shaped by imagination and passed-down beliefs. An ambitious task, to be sure, and one that Egoyan isn’t fully capable of lucidly accomplishing, too prone is his script to expository declarations – mostly during Simon reading his counterfeit family story in front of class – and character behavior and plot revelations that seem at once puzzling and contrived. Sabine’s support for Simon’s ruse extends to her testing his uncle Tom’s tolerance for other cultures by posing as a cloaked Muslim neighbor, while Simon spends an inordinate amount of time engaging in, and listening to, online arguments about his (phony) terrorist parents made by classmates, their parents, and survivors of the actual near-disaster. They’re two of the many threads that Egoyan weaves into his multimedia tapestry, his film’s aesthetic delicacy and restraint (aided by Mychael Danna’s hauntingly melancholic string score) frequently at odds with his script’s overt attempts to provoke and edify.

If Egoyan’s elliptical narrative flirts with pretentiousness, the director nonetheless encases his action in an affecting mood of regret and longing, with Simon’s fictional tale coming to function as his means of working out pain and sorrow over his own mom and dad’s deaths. Likewise, Simon’s stunt instigates others to confront their pasts, and though the story eventually arrives at a surprise about Sabine’s true motivations that comes off as lamely artificial, Adoration finds grave poignancy in Tom’s concurrent attempts to come to grips with his father-fostered misery. That’s primarily thanks to Speedman, who – best known for his role on teen soap opera Felicity, and after impressive work in last year’s The Strangers – turns out to be the film’s true revelation. The guilt-ridden heartache spied in the corners of his hard eyes and the resentful sadness one can feel propelling his curt, angry outbursts, are both articulated with a subtlety and earnestness that cuts through Egoyan’s puzzle-box plot machinations to deliver jolts of authentic anguish, rage, and remorse.

"The Haunting in Connecticut" and the Evolution of the Bullshit "True" Horror Movie

Phil Nugent — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:00:00 GMT

The Haunting in Connecticut, a horror movie that opens this weekend, is being promoted with a poster and TV ads built around an image of a boy who appears to have tobacco leaves three times the size of his lead sprouting from his mouth. My first impression of this image was that the movie must have been made as part of a tax write-off scheme and that the publicity department, knowing that the film was meant to fail and understanding that they weren't expected to attract people to the theater, were having a little fun, but it turns out that a lot of people think that it's one selling ad. The intended reaction is, what the hell is supposed to be going on there!? Or, more precisely, because Haunting is touted as being "based on true events", what the hell is supposed to have been really going on there!?

It seems clear that a significant percentage of the audience for scary entertainment gets a charge out of hearing that whatever's freezing their marrow is "true"--or, at least, "based on a true story", or in the case of the just shamelessly fraudulent, "inspired by actual events." Last year, Brian Bertino's The Strangers was promoted with the "inspired" line; in interviews, Bertino revealed that the inspiration in question came from his having read Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi's book about the Manson murders, when he was a kid, and also that someone who may have been a burgler once knocked on his door. So The Strangers was inspired by true events in the sense that it's true that, in a very different era, in circumstances very different from those in Bertino's movie, people very different from the people in his film were knifed in their home by people with very different motivations than those assigned to Bertino's masked creeps. And that if you've been reading Helter Skelter and know that there are some crazy sumbitches with knives running around out there somewhere, hearing a knock on the door can really freak you out. But the existence of psychos with knives is a well-established fact. Movies about supernatural events that claim to be somehow rooted in actual events are another kettle of fish, right?

As with so much else, your standards of veracity here may depend on how much you want to believe--or, if you're a filmmaker, how much you stand to gain in box-office revenue and media attention if you have a weird story that you can peddle as true. The Haunting in Connecticut purports to tell the story of the Snedeker family (called the Campbells in the movie), who in 1986 moved into a house in Southington, Connecticut to be close to a hospital at Yale University, where one of the two sons was receiving treatment for cancer. The boys moved into the basement, which had previously been used as a mortuary, and became witness to all manner of ghostly visitors--presumably, ghosts who either had complaints about their embalming or had enjoyed the process so much that they were reluctant to leave. The story was turned into a book, In a Dark Place, by horror novelist Ray Garton, who worked in concert with the Snedekers and Ed and Lorraine Warren, a married team of paranormal investigators who had looked into the case and vouched for its authenticity--which is reason enough to set off the screaming red light on the bullshit detector.

The Warrens, you see, had a hand in the granddaddy of bullshit "true" paranormal stories, that of "the Amityville Horror." That particular load began in November 1974, when 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo, Jr. murdered his parents and four siblings in the Long Island home where they had lived since 1965. DeFeo, who was known to use heroin and LSD, first tried to convince the police that his family had been wiped out by a Mafia contract killer before confessing to the murders himself; he was sentenced to six consecutive terms of 25 years to life, despite his lawyer's plea of insanity. A year later, George and Kathy Lutz and their family moved into the DeFeos' house. They lived there about a year, which turned out to be just enough time to gather the "experiences" that, embellished and augmented by the author's imagination, were plowed by Jay Anson into the 1977 bestseller The Amityville Horror. Reviewing the 1979 movie, which shocked the shit out of everyone involved in it by becoming one of the biggest hits of the year, Veronica Geng wrote that the filmmakers "had to add the horror" and that the book, which tries to make your skin crawl by recalling how the Lutzes were tormented by flies in the house in winter and the haunting sounds of a "German marching band tuning up", "should have been called The Amityville Nuisance.

For the Lutzes, the real Amityville nuisance turned out to be Ronald DeFeo's lawyer, William Weber, who published an article claiming that he and the Lutzes had jointly come up with the idea of concocting a haunting hoax and worked out the outline of what became Anson's book "over many bottles of wine." The idea was to provide a pretext for Weber to appeal DeFeo's case while giving the Lutzes a chance to break away from a house they now realized they couldn't afford, a make a bundle in the process. When the Lutzes sued Weber, the judge threw out the case, saying, "Based on what I have heard, it appears to me that to a large extent the book is a work of fiction, relying in a large part upon the suggestions of Mr. Weber." Kathy Lutz died in 2004, and George died in 2006. He continued to maintain that the book was "mostly true", although he remained vague about the not-mostly part that wasn't and declined to give details about just what happened the night the family claimed to have fled the house for good, saying that it was all "too frightening". (It would have to be better than the 1979 movie, which climaxes with everybody piling into the car and starting to drive away in a heavy rainstorm, only to have George go back on foot to collect the dog and falling through a hole in the floor into a pool of evil-looking black goop.) In 2003, George's stepson Christopher told somebody that the story was "mostly" fiction, and damned if George didn't sue him, too. Meanwhile, the house on Long Island is still there, and in the thirty-three years since the Lutzes got the hell out of Dodge, many occupants have come and gone. None of them has reported having "experienced" shit. That hasn't put a dent in the Amityville Horror industry, which now totals nine films, including direct-to-video specials, the 2005 remake of the 1979 original, and Amityville 3-D.

Compared to the story behind the more recent The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), the sheepish hucksterism of George Lutz and company seem downright adorable. Scott Derrickson's "based on a true story" film is framed as a courtroom drama starring Laura Linney as a lawyer who defends a priest (Tom Wilkinson) who performed an exorcism on a young girl who, the movie shows Linney slowing realizing, really was possessed by demons. The "true story" that this thing is based on is that of Anneliese Michel, a German woman who suffered from clinical depression and epilepsy, the symptoms of which her parents and local church authorities diagnosed as demonic possession. After almost a year at the hands of self-styled exorcists, Michel died of malnutrition and dehydration; both her parents and a pair of dipshit priests were tried and convicted of manslaughter. (This was in 1976; one thing this case and that of The Amityville Horror have in common is that neither might have happened if it hadn't been for The Exorcist.) The 2006 German film Requiem, directed by Hans-Christian Schmid and starring the talented Sandra Hüller, gives a truthful (as opposed to "based on a true story") account of the case. The on-line edition of National Review recently named Emily Rose as one of the 25 best "conservative" movies. Since I didn't vote for it, I trust that I won't take any flak for interpreting this as NR's way of saying that it's intrinsically conservative to starve your daughter to death and tell the judge that you thought it was what God would have wanted.

As for The Haunting in Connecticut, I haven't seen it yet, but Ray Garton has gotten the jump on the inevitable debunking claims, distancing himself from his own book and saying that it took considerable professional skill on his part to just craft a semi-coherent narrative from his discussions with the Snedekers because none of them could “keep their stories straight.” He also implied that drug and alcohol abuse might have been responsible for some of the "unusual" behavior, and has even implied that he's not sure the Snedekers' son was really being treated for cancer. (Meanwhile, used copies of the paperback edition of the out of print book are going for upwards of $160 on Amazon.) For her part, Lorraine Warren has complained that the movie distorts what happened to the Snedekers and that what "really" happened is actually "much scarier" that the movie. (Ed Warren died in 2006). How much you care about all this may depend on how bored you are by the real world, or maybe by whether or not you live in the house that the Snedekers vacated. No one but them has detected any paranormal activity going on, but the current inhabitants are now having to put up with what might be called the Southington Nuisance--rubberneckers who, turned on by the publicity campaign for the movie, have started invading the vicinity in hopes of seeing Bloody Mary waving at them from the attic window. The current homeowner, Susan Trotta-Smith, told a reporter that "Most people are respectful. They stay on the road. They might take a picture. But we have had a few problems with people kind of rudely coming up to the door and scaring our kids, telling them the house is haunted." Now all she has to do is slip her kids copies of Helter Skelter, and they'll be on their way to their own Hollywood careers.

The Best of 2008: Leonard Pierce's Picks for the Best Movies of the Year, Part Two

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:45:00 GMT

5. WALL*E (Andrew Stanton, dir.)

Pixar has been on such a roll of late that if they were a single director, they’d be getting mention in the same breath as the golden age greats. But they’re not; they’re an aggregate of many clever, talented folks who make computer-generated cartoons that are at least partly intended for children. I’m not going to argue that this isn’t sometimes a weakness; in WALL*E, the environmental message only seems fitting and appropriate because I happen to agree with it, and the crypto-Objectivism in The Incredibles only bothered me because I don’t. But regardless of the heavy-handedness of the moral, it can’t be denied that WALL*E is flat out the most wonderful film of the year, hopeful and funny and romantic and bittersweet all at the same time, and wrapped up in a package so beautiful to look at you wonder why anyone ever questions the potential of CGI. And if this astounding motion picture spawned an obnoxious marketing empire, one can only shake one’s head and say “Damn kids don’t know how good they’ve got it.”

4. RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (Jonathan Demme, dir.)

If you ever want to flummox a music critic, ask him to describe one of his favorite new bands without comparing them to another band. Of course, Rachel Getting Married proves that the same can occasionally be said for movie critics: it seems impossible to talk about without referencing something else. It’s got the dysfunctional family dynamics of Il y a Longtemps Que Je T’aime; the comeback-kid story of The Wrestler; the hateful-misanthrope-as-vehicle-for-joyous-redemption jawn of a Wes Anderson film (only better) and the structure and form of the late Robert Altman’s best work (only different). With all of these elements at play, though, it never seems derivative of anything else, only reminiscent in the best possible way. In the end, Rachel Getting Married is its own film, familiar yet new and impressive, and carried along by some of the finest acting of the year, most especially from Anne Hathaway and Bill Irwin.

3. CHE (Steven Soderbergh, dir.)

Steven Soderbergh keeps on making great movies, and never the same one twice. His latest is getting lots of what child care experts call “good attention” and “bad attention”; it’s certain that Soderbergh intended it that way, with its rigid formal structure, back-spasm-inducing length, difficult tonal shifts, and…oh, yeah, it’s a biopic about one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. It’s just as hard to figure out how much of the negative reception is due to political and moral judgment of the revolutionary Che Guevara as it is to figure out how much of the positive reception comes from those who valorize him, but taken purely as a movie, Che is hard to beat: it’s formally daring, adventurously directed, risk-taking, well-made, and held together by a powerful performance that shows its subject neither as a heroic rebel or a vicious murderer, but simply as a man so consumed by his cause that he didn’t know what else to do than keep fighting for it.

2. WENDY AND LUCY (Kelly Reichardt, dir.)

There have been a number of exceptionally well-done documentaries in recent years about ordinary people dangling from the precipice of financial ruin in economically uncertain times, but successful narrative films dealing with the same subject have been few and far between. That’s largely because it’s hard to approach the topic in fiction without becoming didactic, maudlin, or treacly – and those challenges are certainly, and perilously, evident in Kelly Reichardt’s story about a young woman in brutally limited circumstances who loses her beloved dog while pursuing a slender chance at a decent job. But the miraculous thing about Wendy and Lucy is that it toes that line from its first frame to its last without ever tumbling down and making a mess of itself. That’s a testament to the top-notch script, the surprisingly deep direction, and the beautiful performance by lead actress Michelle Williams. No one could ever have predicted that an heir to the Italian neo-realist tradition would emerge in 2008 from America’s Pacific Northwest; that it happened is one of the year’s greatest surprises.

1. SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK (Charlie Kaufman, dir.)

There are so many things that could have gone wrong with Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut. I first heard him talk about his desire to direct way back in 2004, when I interviewed him for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and when Synechdoche, New York was finally announced, I was full of dread. The video stores of America are choked with mediocre-to-bad movies by talented writers who decided what they really wanted to do was direct. I needn’t have worried: Synechdoche, New York is easily my favorite film of the year. Kaufman approached directing with the same meticulous, self-searching approach that he does writing, and the result is nothing short of astounding. The best movies, for me, are the ones that seem to completely rewire my head – that are so profound and well-crafted that they redefine my basic approach to their subject, form or content. Charlie Kaufman accomplishes that his first time out of the gate, and that’s the mark of a major talent.

ALMOST MADE IT: The Strangers, Doubt, Iron Man, The Wrestler, Bigger Stronger Faster*.

DIDN'T SEE THEM: Entre les Murs (The Class), Standard Operating Procedure, Lat den Ratte Komme In (Let the Right One In), Dear Zachary: A Letter To His Son About His Father, Trouble the Water, Full Battle Rattle, Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon).

PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler; Bill Irwin, Rachel Getting Married; Kristin Scott Thomas, Il y a Longtemps Que Je T'aime; Viola Davis, Doubt.

MADE IN 2007, BUT GREAT IN 2008: 4 Luni 3 Saptamani si 2 Zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days); Paranoid Park; My Winnipeg; Une Vielle Maitress (The Last Mistress); Auf der Anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven); Encounters at the End of the World; Chop Shop.

OVERRATED: Waltz with Bashir; In Bruges; Happy-Go-Lucky; Slumdog Millionaire; Kung Fu Panda.

Click for Part One

2008 in Review: Paul Clark's Favorite Movie Moments

Paul Clark — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Starting tomorrow, the writers of Screengrab will be unveiling their lists of the top 10 films of 2008. But before that begins, I’d like to post a different sort of list of highlights from the past year. For those of you who’ve only started reading recently, I used to write a bi-weekly column called “The Movie Moment,” in which I’d explore in depth some of my favorite scenes from movies both old and new. This past spring, I had to put the column on indefinite hiatus for various reasons, but I wanted to bring it back for this week only so I could celebrate some of my favorite Movie Moments of 2008. However, I had such a devil of time trying to narrow down my list that I’ve decided to simply list all of the moments that made me laugh out loud, cry like a baby, bite my nails uncontrollably, or which otherwise rocked my world this past year. This list is by no means meant to be taken as comprehensive, but merely were the moments which readily sprang to mind while I was writing the piece. So without further ado, I give you…

2008: The Year in Movie Moments:

(in no particular order)

The little boy’s confession notes- In Bruges

“No-no-no. I kill the bus driver.” - The Dark Knight

The security guard makes his rounds - Man on Wire

Sidney’s musical vows - Rachel Getting Married

The kiss that launched a thousand lens flares - Silent Light (only one of several transcendent moments in the film- the swimming-hole scene or the epic rainstorm might just as easily have qualified)

Mike’s late-night visit (or really, anytime Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” is played) - The Strangers

Peekaboo nudity - The Romance of Astrea and Celadon

Harry unveils the machine - Burn After Reading (honestly, who could possibly enjoy THAT?)

Madame Gaudens’ confession - A Girl Cut in Two

Incident at the race track - My Winnipeg

Most hilarious random line of the year: “When it comes to women, you’re Michael Jordan. I’m… Bill Laimbeer.” - Baghead

The new army suits up for battle - Role Models

Alex takes a shower - Paranoid Park

Brandi forgets her cell phone - Stuck

Black Kold Medina puts on a show - Trouble the Water

Runaway penguin - Encounters at the End of the World

Jung-rae Kim diagrams his neuroses - Woman on the Beach

Alex’s sex surprise, both inevitable and strangely erotic - XXY

The director’s big exit - Tropic Thunder

Most unlikely tearjerking moment of the year: Fred Knittle sings “Fix You”, Young@Heart

Three-way fist fight: Seth Rogen vs. James Franco vs. Danny McBride - Pineapple Express

The Richard McGuire segment - Fear(s) of the Dark

Ninjas! - In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (yes, really)

And finally, my five favorite openings and finales of the year:

Perfect openings: “Put on Your Sunday Clothes”, WALL*E; Sunrise, Silent Light; The piano, The Silence Before Bach; The Jean-Claude Van Damme Stunt Spectacular, JCVD; The Legend of Po, Kung Fu Panda

Great final scenes (no spoilers): Synecdoche, New York, The Duchess of Langeais, Shine a Light, The Visitor, Burn After Reading

I would invite all of you to share some of your favorites in the comments section. After all, I’m surely missing at least a couple of really good ones.

DVD Digest for October 21, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a Japanese master gets the Eclipse treatment, and the first wave of 007 Blu-Rays hits the shelves.

DVD of the Week: To those who are getting acquainted with Japanese cinema, the three biggest names to know have long been Kurosawa, Ozu, and Mizoguchi. But while the first two directors have been getting the DVD treatment for years, only a handful of Mizoguchi’s best-known films (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) have been released on DVD. This week, Eclipse is taking steps to rectify this, by gathering four of the master’s greatest achievements in a lovely box set. Entitled Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women, the box set includes four of Mizoguchi’s finest and most poetic films about the plight of Japanese courtesans and geishas, a subject to which he’d return numerous times throughout his career. Two of the inclusions are pre-war titles- Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion- while the others came after World War II, those being 1948’s Women of the Night and his final feature, Street of Shame. One of the most interesting aspects of the box set is seeing the differences between how he observes his subjects pre-WWII and post-WWII. As for the films’ other (considerable) pleasures, I’ll leave those for you to discover.

This week’s recent releases coming to DVD are headed up by two Universal releases which costar Liv Tyler, The Incredible Hulk (Universal, also Blu-Ray) and The Strangers (Universal, also Blu-Ray). But those more adventurous viewers out there shouldn’t require much persuading to watch Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first feature made outside of Asia, Flight of the Red Ballooni (Genius), starring the ever-enchanting Juliette Binoche. Also of note: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Universal), and Anaconda 3: Offspring (Sony).

On the classics front, Warner will be releasing two new DVD sets of Looney Tunes favorites: Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 6 and Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Volume 6. And Criterion will be represented this week with their new DVD pressing of Missing. Finally, James Bond is back with new “Collector’s Editions” of both versions of Casino Royale- both the late-sixties lark (MGM) and the lean, mean 2006 take on the story (Sony, also Blu-Ray).

In TV on DVD news, this week brings the latest box set for the seemingly deathless animated phenomenon, Family Guy Volume 6 (Fox). Or if you’re looking for something less oppressively “hip”, today also brings a handful of old-school series: The Incredible Hulk: The Complete Series (Universal), The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Series (Warner), and The Outer Limits: The Complete Series (Fox).

Finally, the big Blu-Ray only news this week is the release of the first six MGM-made James Bond titles in the format. James Bond Blu-Ray Box Set Volume 1 (Fox/MGM) includes Dr. No, Live and Let Die, and Die Another Day, while Volume 2 (Fox/MGM) contains From Russia With Love, Thunderball, and For Your Eyes Only. I suppose we’ll have to wait for volume 3 to get more of Connery’s classics, but it should prove worth the wait. Also this week, the bloody trio of Diary of the Dead (Weinstein), Halloween (2007) (Weinstein), and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Paramount).

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: August 24-30, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

My fellow Americans, I am here to humbly accept your nomination of Recapper of the Week in Screengrab! I think we all know it is time for a change. No longer can we sit by, complacent, while the screenwriter of Showgirls turns to Jesus. No longer can we allow Robert Downey Jr. to badmouth The Dark Knight. No longer can we stand by while good men like Phil Nugent and Andrew Osborne face-off over Judd Apatow and Pineapple Express!

No, my friends, this is a time for unity. A time for us to gather together and marvel at the World’s Greatest Animated Shorts – Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five! We must respect the Screengrab Fall Preview Picks of Andrew Osborne and Leonard Pierce, as different as they may be, as equal planks in our broad platform.

Some will tell you Guy Ritchie is caught up in the zeitgeist of slaggery. Some will insist that Fascination and Meet the Spartans are actually watchable movies. Some will wonder when Robert Zemeckis went bad, or why Terrence Howard would record an album, or under what circumstances David Lynch met Devo.

We don’t have all the answers! But we do know that That Guy is Bob Hoskins! We do know that Sukiyaki Western Django is some fucked-up shit! We do know that An American Carol is coming out whether we like it or not! And if we all stick together we can survive anything, even RocknRolla or a sequel to The Strangers !

God bless the Screengrab, and let’s make it a Wet Hot American Summer!

Morning Deal Report: Liv Tyler Meets More Strangers

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The Strangers was one of the pleasant surprises of the first half of 2008 – not a great movie by any means, but it generated maximum suspense with a minimum of torture porn before running out of steam in its last half hour. The last thing it needs is a sequel, but it looks like that’s exactly what it’s going to get. “The expectation is that Liv Tyler, along with several of the original villains, will return,” Variety reports. “Production is being slated for early 2009” with original writer-director Bryan Bertino handling the scripting duties.

George Clooney is in discussions for Up in the Air, to be adapted from a Walter Kirn novel by Jason “Juno” Reitman. “The Oscar-winning actor will inhabit an unapologetic corporate downsizer whose untethered life is consumed by collecting air miles,” explains The Hollywood Reporter.

As he announced on his Facebook page, Aaron Sorkin will be making Facebook: The Movie. “Sorkin's declaration, presumably done so he could experience Facebook as a research tool, came as a surprise to the studio, which was trying to fly under the radar on the project,” Variety notes. “The film will focus on the evolution of Facebook from its 2004 creation on the Harvard campus by sophomore Mark Zuckerberg to a juggernaut with more than 60 million members.” Now if only Sorkin could straighten out this Scrabulous mess.

Related:
Liv Tyler Should Have Totally Made Out with Kate Hudson
George Clooney Leans In, and Other Insights

Screengrab Exclusive: "Baghead" Clip

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Mark and Jay Duplass, the duo behind the seminal mumblecore feature The Puffy Chair, are back with what has been most often described as "the mumblecore horror movie." That's a fun marketing hook, but you shouldn't expect Baghead to be a nerve-jangling exercise in terror ala The Strangers, even if both movies feature menacing figures with bags on their heads. At once a self-reflexive send-up of the lo-fi movement they helped launch and a sly love quadrangle, Baghead is more funny than scary, although some of the relationship issues it explores may give you the heebie-jeebies. The set-up is simple: four struggling actors hole up in a cabin in the woods for a weekend, planning to write a movie for all of them to star in. In this exclusive clip, available only on the Screengrab, a brainstorming session turns into an awkward attempt at seduction.

Click here to check it out.

Baghead (Sony Pictures Classics) opens in selected cities Friday.

The Halfway House: Von Doviak’s Unwatchables of 2008 (So Far)

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:00:00 GMT

My, my, my, isn’t this a lovely thing! The sun is shining, the birdies are singing, and my fellow Screengrabbers are raving about their favorite movies from the first half of 2008. So far, Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark and Leonard Pierce have all weighed in with their rainbows and pretty, pretty ponies, so I guess it’s up to me to poop in the punchbowl.

Don’t get wrong – it’s not that this year’s first half has been completely worthless as far as cinema is concerned. I enjoyed Wall-E as much as the next guy – I’m not made of stone, you know! (Not entirely, anyway.) Iron Man was about as good as it gets with the superhero genre, which still makes it a movie that ends with one guy in a big metal suit beating the crap out of another guy in an even bigger metal suit, but an awful lot of fun up until that point. Like Mr. Pierce, I’ll go to bat for the terrifying first hour of The Strangers, as well as most of Baghead, the offbeat indie Wellness (screened at SXSW) and the documentaries Crawford and The Unforeseen. But let’s be honest – so far 2008 has been overflowing with crap, and as the resident movie janitor, it’s my job to dig through it. Without further ado, here are the five least watchable movies I’ve seen this year.

1. The Love Guru. Everything you’ve heard is true. This isn’t a case of mass hypnosis or the critical brotherhood sticking together – it really is that bad. Mike Myers described this comedy about a self-help guru’s attempts to help a hockey player win a championship as “a delivery system for some wonderful ideas.” Actually, it’s a delivery system for dick jokes, each one dumber than the last.

2. First Sunday. So bad that I’ve already covered it here as part of the Unwatchable series. Nuff said.

3. Step Up 2 The Streets. A movie that raises many questions, not least of which is: “There was a Step Up 1?” A teenage street dancer (Briana Evigan, the next Demi Moore, if we needed one) is forced to enroll in an upscale school for the performing arts, leaving her old crew to accuse her of NOT KEEPING IT REELZ. This can only be settled with a dance-off! A thoroughly unconvincing dance-off that looks like an outtake from Night of the Living Dead: The Musical.

4. The Ruins. Reviewed here at the time of its release. At least, it was in theaters when I started writing the review; I think it had been pulled by the time I posted it. A gripping, intense read becomes a dead teenager movie with laughable CG effects.

5. Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show. You loved The Original Kings of Comedy! You tolerated The Blue Collar Comedy Tour! Now run and hide, because Vince Vaughn’s Indistiguishable Frat Dudes of Comedy are coming to town! Vaughn’s brainstorm was to bring unknown comics from L.A. to heartland cities where folks apparently never get the opportunity to laugh in person at jokes about bumper stickers and apple martinis. And we wonder why middle America hates Hollywood.

Related:
SXSW Review: Wellness
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Liv Tyler Should Have Totally Made Out With Kate Hudson

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:30:00 GMT

You heard me. Liv Tyler should have totally made out with Kate Hudson. This isn’t just a thought that occurred to me over my bagel and cream cheese this morning, although that’s not an unfamiliar direction for my breakfast musings to take. That’s straight from the horse’s mouth – the horse in this case being Liv Tyler herself. (I should probably rephrase that. I’m not saying you look like a horse, Liv! Call me!)

Doing the publicity rounds on behalf of The Strangers and The Incredible Hulk, Tyler made that forthright admission in response to a question from the U.K. Metro: “When playing a lesbian in Robert Altman’s film Doctor T And The Women, what was it like having to snog your friend Kate Hudson?” (Those of you not up on your British slang should not confuse ‘snogging’ with ‘shagging.’ It’s more like ‘smooching.’) Tyler replied, “We were always so shy about the kissing but in retrospect we were like: ‘We so should have just totally made out and tongued each other.’ But we never did, we were just too scared to do it.” Somewhere in the ether, Robert Altman is nodding vigorously in agreement.

Tyler also managed to share some thoughts on her role as the Hulk’s scientist girlfriend Betty. “My agent called me late one night saying: ‘Will you get on a plane in the morning and go to LA for a meeting on The Hulk?’ I was, like: ‘What do you mean? Didn’t they make that already?’…I’ve been working as an actress and a model since I was 14 and so my education in the world was wonderful but I graduated from high school and didn’t go to college. And Edward Norton is so intelligent it’s ridiculous. He likes to improvise so he’d just start riffing with me and I’d say: ‘I’m not really a scientist, I can’t do this with you. Please write something for me!’”

No word yet on whether Tyler regrets not snogging the Hulk.

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Trailer Review: The Strangers

Paul Clark — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Most of today's horror movies feel like they're trying to one-up each other, either with clever displays of violence and gore or with wacked-out plot gimmicks. So it's pretty refreshing to see Hollywood make an old-fashioned domestic thriller. Like last year's Vacancy, The Strangers places two mid-level stars (in this case Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) in a confined space to do battle with mostly faceless baddies, although The Strangers carries the added charge of taking place in the protagonists' home. As dicey a proposition as summer-release horror films can be, I'm actually curious about this one — the trailer suggests a classically-styled thriller, which is okay by me. Two quibbles: (1) I can't remember the last time a big-budget thriller featured an actual record player and didn't eventually have an LP skipping for spooky effect, and (2) didn't the trailer's final exchange come from an old Richard Pryor standup routine?