The Screengrab : twilight

Morning Deal Report: Michael Sheen Trades Fur for Fangs

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Apparently Miley Cyrus has been forgiven for her racy photos, as Hannah Montana: The Movie topped the weekend box office with a better-than-expected $34 million. Fast & Furious slowed to second place with $28.8 million, bringing its total to $118 million. (By the way, those of you who told me this installment was as enjoyable as the original? You misled me.) Observe and Report debuted with a disappointing (to someone, I guess) $11.1 million for a fourth place finish.

Frost/Nixon co-star Michael Sheen has joined the cast of the Twilight sequel New Moon. Sheen “will portray the leader of the Volturi, an Italy-based coven of vampires,” per Variety, which also notes that the actor has played a werewolf in all three Underworld movies. That’s quite a conflict of interest.

Brad Pitt’s production company has obtained the screen rights to the Paul Pope graphic novel Battling Boy. “The story line follows the son of a god who comes down from the top of a mountain at his father's urging to rid the giant, continent-sized city of Monstropolis of a plague of beasts,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Watchmen co-writer Alex Tse will pen the adaptation.

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Screengrab Review: "Frost/Nixon"

Screengrab Review: “Adventureland”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:30:00 GMT

It’s the summer of 1987, which means I’m cleaning rooms at a motel in Ellsworth, Maine between my sophomore and junior years of college. It’s not my dream summer job by any means; I’d much rather be manning the midway at the Blue Hill Fair, urging passersby to shoot squirtguns at the clown’s nose for the chance to win themselves a decorative and functional Def Leppard mirror. The screams from the Zipper ride, the smell of fried dough in the air, the sounds of AC/DC wafting from the Tilt-a-Whirl, the camaraderie of the carnies…what could be better?

The summer that could have been comes to life in Greg Mottola’s Adventureland, although not quite as vividly as I’d hoped. Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale) stars as recent college grad James Brennan, a soft-spoken, sensitive virgin whose plans of spending the summer in Europe are derailed when his father is demoted. Still hoping to attend graduate school at Columbia in the fall, James is forced to take a summer job at the local amusement park, where he meets cute-but-brooding Em (Twilight's Kristen Stewart). They bond over weed and a love of alternative rock, but little does James know Em is sleeping with married maintenance man Connell (Ryan Reynolds).

Mottola the screenwriter undermines Mottola the director as the relationship issues between James and Em are put through some very familiar paces, particular once James, unsure whether he and Em are an exclusive item, goes on a date with the hottie of the park, Lisa P (Margarita Levieva). The plot mechanics are a drag because Adventureland is at its best when it’s in laid-back, hanging out mode. The park is populated by an appealing cast, including former Freaks and Geeks-er Martin Starr as intellectual Joel and the underused Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig as managers Rich and Paulette. Mottola nails the seedy attraction of the park and its surroundings (including a dead-on townie bar featuring the obligatory dreadful cover band), but much of the comedic potential of Adventureland itself remains untapped. There’s a little too much puking for comic effect, although Superbad fans should be warned that gross bodily function humor isn’t a priority here.

It’s not really fair to review the movie I wanted to see rather than the one Mottola made, but I would have preferred a more freewheeling, ensemble-friendly approach – a 1987 Dazed and Confused set in an amusement park rather than the creaky rom-com that emerges. The overreliance on Eisenberg and Stewart to carry the film is misguided because their personalities aren’t up to the task; Eisenberg is fine but we already have a Michael Cera, and Stewart is a bit out of her depth in Em’s darker moments. Their ride is too familiar, and I really wanted to hear those screams from the Zipper.

DVD O'Digest for March 17, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the much-ballyhooed Luck of the Irish doesn’t extend to DVD shoppers, who will find little in the way of worthwhile recent releases to add to their collections. Nonetheless, there’s worthy stuff hitting the market today, provided you know where to look.

This week’s haul of recent releases is headed by Will Smith’s latest attempt to curry Academy favor, Gabriele Muccino’s Seven Pounds (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Other movies hitting stores today include the animated family film The Tale of Despereaux (Universal, also Blu-Ray), the comic book-inspired revenge actioner Punisher: War Zone (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray), and Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz in Elegy (Sony). Also, this weekend brings the release of two new DVDs starring newly-anointed star Kristen Stewart- the smash vampire-teen blockbuster Twilight and the Mary Stuart Masterson-directed indie drama The Cake Eaters, the movie that answers the question, “whatever happened to Mary Stuart Masterson?”

In the classics department, the big news this week is the release of Akira Kurosawa’s first color film, Dodes’ka-den (Criterion). I’ve yet to see it myself, but according to a number of critics, Dodes’ka-den is second-tier Kurosawa. All the same, it’s still Kurosawa, so I’m eager to give it a look. Also this week: The Robe Special Edition (Fox, also Blu-Ray), a lumbering biblical picture that’s justly remembered solely for being the first Cinemascope release; and the box set Eclipse Series 15: Travels With Hiroshi Shimizu, featuring four titles from this Japanese auteur.

In TV on DVD, this week brings Mr. Belvedere Seasons 1 and 2 (Universal). And in Blu-Ray only news, the highlights this week are the sword-and-sandal epic Quo Vadis (Fox) and the eighties favorite The Princess Bride (MGM).

Finally, I’d like to close this column introducing a new feature with this week’s DVD Digest, spotlighting the most bizarre DVD synopsis of any of this week’s new releases. Despite some competition from a movie that described itself as “a horrific thriller in the vein of Captivity (who’d want to be associated with Captivity???), the inaugural winner of the prize was the Media Blasters’ DVD entitled Booby Life. Here’s the synopsis, courtesy of DVD Planet:

Naoto, your run-of-the-mill young dude with a thing for top-heavy women, is the luckiest bum in the world. Ayane, a busty babe he's known for almost all his life, has a thing for him and lets him have his way with her anytime he wants. On top of that, Chika, another one of his chesty childhood friends, has just a big a crush on him too. When she says to him, "My boobs belong to you," there's no way any guy with a healthy sex drive can resist. There's now only two hard things in Naoto's life now, and one of them is choosing between two gorgeous hotties!

So much for a slow DVD week, eh?

Morning Deal Report: Scarlett Johansson, Amazon Warrior

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Are we ready for Scarlett Johansson, action hero? Ready or not, here she comes in her new dark red hairdo. Johansson is set to star in Amazon Warrior, set in the year 200 B.C. “I think I'm supposed to be a gladiatrix,” Johansson tells Variety. “These film guys are crazy about gladiatrixes. But do I fit into the Amazon mold? I'm a Danish/Jewish girl from New York. I've done weapons training. I've fired all kinds of guns: 9 mm, semi-automatics, machine-guns, shotguns. I've jumped off a 60-foot building. I learned to ride for The Horse Whisperer. But I've never done a full-on action role. I guess I'm still waiting for my Cirque du Soleil moment. It would be fun.”

The third Twilight movie may have found its director. “Sources indicate that horror wunderkind -- and Guillermo Del Toro protege -- Juan Antonio Bayona has emerged as one of the finalists to direct Eclipse,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “Bayona's name has come up in recent months, though generally in a group of other directors -- an eclectic list that's ranged from Paul Weitz to Drew Barrymore to James Mangold.” Any movie that could just as easily be directed by any of those people is surely one to look forward to.

Chariots of the Gods is returning to the big screen, but sadly it’s not a Sunn Classics documentary this time. Paradox Entertainment has acquired the rights to “Erich von Daniken's 1968 bestselling book that pressed the case that Earth was visited by aliens. The premise will be turned into a science fiction film that will be produced by Paradox's Fredrik Malmberg and Amber Entertainment's Mark Ordesky.”

Related:
Scarlett Johansson Blows. Her Nose! Blows Her Nose!
Your Thursday Afternoon "Twilight" Roundup

Hello, Dali: Al May Play in Sal in One of Three Planned Biopics

Phil Nugent — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Jerome Taylor reports that there are three biopics about Salvador Dali in the works, a perfect storm of competing productions that might make for a much bigger payoff for whoever is the first to get a completed film to market. (Who can forget the great multiple-Truman-Capote-movies dust-up of a few years ago?) The first film to arrive in theaters will probably be Paul Morrison's Little Ashes, which stars Robert Pattison, the vampire hunk from Twilght, as the young Dali, Javier Beltrán as Federico Garcia Lorca, and Matthew McNulty as Luis Bunuel, whose first film, the immortal Surrealist short Un Chien Andalou, was co-directed with Dali and featured a cameo by the artist as a priest. Another film, simply titled Dali, is being planned, by the director Simon West, for a 2010 release and would star Antonio Banderas as the older Dali, alongside his Zorro co-star Catherine Zeta Jones as Dali's wife, Gala. Then there's the chance that we'll get to see the way older Dali played by Al Pacino in a movie based on Dali & I: The Surreal Story, a book by Stan Lauryssens. Lauryssens's book, which has been translated into some thirty languages, had its own scandalous reception when it appeared. Lauryssens, who has written award-winning crime novels, five nonfiction books about the Nazis, and boasted about his expertise at writing and selling "fake interviews" with various Hollywood celebrities, also spent some time in the poky for selling fake Dalis. The book set off fire alarms in Europe for its allegation that Dali himself had effectively authorized the sale of forgeries of his work by setting up an assembly line of "assistants" to create works that he could then decorate with his signature, which amounted to printing money. By the time Dali was in his dotage, Andy Warhol was unapologetically doing pretty much the same thing, with Jeff Koons waiting in the wings; in Warhol's case, his admirers were happy to take the whole thing as some kind of postmodernist gesture and a sardonic comment on the treatment of works of art as high-priced commodities, but even if it was a gesture, Andy still expected people to pay through the nose for the damn things. If Lauryssens's depiction of Dali's operation is accurate, Dali might have been able to talk a pretty good game explaining that he was in charge of a "surreal" parody of the art world as just another industry. Of course, by that time, Dali had long since been read out of the Surrealist movement by his former brothers, who, appalled at what they saw as his selling out and turning himself into a profitable living cartoon of a wacky artist, referred to him by the anagrammatic nickname "Avida Dollars."

Dali himself had one foot in Hollywood for much of his life, engaging in publicity stunts such as presenting Harpo Marx with a "surreal" harp strung with barbed wire and cutlery, and designing the dream sequence for Hitchcock's analytic mystery Spelllbound. (That ended up being pretty much a publicity stunt, too; Hitchcock shot some twenty minutes of film based on the material Dali gave him, but the movie's producer, David Selznick, thought that it just slowed the picture down and cut it back to a few fragments.) He also spent eight months in 1945 working on an animated short for Walt Disney; it never got beyond am 18-minute test reel in Dali's and Disney's lifetimes, but the 2003 Destino was based on Dali's and Disney artist John Hench's storyboards. Back in his Hollywood-fake-journalist days, Laurysssens embroidered on that factoid and "made up a great story about how he and Disney were working on a sort of pornographic cartoon together.” Taylor writes that "That story caught the attention of a shady investment group in Belgium who assumed Lauryssens was a Dali expert and hired him as a fine art dealer. So, at just 25, Lauryssens found himself flying around Europe buying scores of Dali paintings despite having absolutely no prior experience in the world of fine art." According to Lauryssens, “everyone knew that Dali needed close to half a million dollars a month to fund his lavish lifestyle,” which Lauryssens likens to that of "a mini-maharajah,” and fake Dalis sold better by then than Dali's own later works because his "assistants" had a better handle on how to festoon the works with such familiar Dali "trademarks" as "the melting clocks." Of course, any Hollywood interest in Dali now will be based not on any debates over the degree to which he was an artist or a con man but on how sensational his life was, and here, Lauryssens, who is set to be played in the movie by Cillian Murphy, is confident that a film based on his book would qualify as a humdinger. Taylor notes that the book "portrayed the painter and his wife Gala as two voraciously charged lovers who regularly indulged in orgies with famous actresses". But by the last time Lauryssens laid eyes on him, Dali "was balding, his stomach swollen 'and his right arm shook from shoulder to wrist'." Lauryssens says that the movie is all set to go as soon as Pacino signs on. The trick there may be postponing Al's realization that he would be playing the fat old bald guy with the tremor who gets to spend his time on screen flashing back to when Cillian Murphy was involved in all those cool orgies.

Sundance Preview: Ten Must-See Narrative Features (Part One)

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Yesterday we looked at five documentaries I deemed “must-sees” based on their descriptions in the Sundance guide, their trailers (if available) and my own whims and biases. As I mentioned, I will not actually be attending the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, but why should that minor detail prevent me from having an opinion? With any luck I’ll get to see these movies sooner or later anyway, either at other festivals, in regular theatrical release or on DVD. With that in mind, let’s move on to the narrative features:

ADVENTURELAND

Admittedly, there’s not much need to waste a valuable Sundance timeslot seeing Adventureland, since it’s due in theaters on March 27th. On the other hand, it’s always nice to be ahead of the curve and in the know, so here’s your opportunity to spread either buzz or backlash. Superbad director Greg Mottola takes us back to the glorious year of 1987, when recent college grad Jesse Eisenberg is forced to take a job at an amusement park full of “belligerent dads, stuffed pandas, and screaming kids high on cotton candy.” On the plus side, it also has Twilight cutie Kristen Stewart and a supporting cast of actual funny people like Martin Starr, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig.

BIG FAN

I’m not entirely sold on the cinematic credentials of former Onion writer Robert Siegel. Granted, I haven’t seen The Onion Movie, but his bizarrely acclaimed script for The Wrestler struck me as a humdrum cliché-fest. Still, Big Fan sounds promising if only for the presence of the reliably hilarious Patton Oswalt in the leading role. It’s also timely, given the recent well-publicized troubles of New York Giants star Plaxico Burress: “Paul Aufiero, a 35-year-old parking-garage attendant from working-class Staten Island, is the self-described “world's biggest New York Giants fan.” One night Paul and his best friend, Sal, spot star Giants linebacker Quantrell Bishop at a gas station in Staten Island. They impulsively follow his SUV into Manhattan to a strip club, where they finally muster up the courage to talk to their hero. What starts out as a dream come true turns into a nightmare as a misunderstanding ignites a violent confrontation, and Paul is sent down a path that will test his devotion to the extreme.”

BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN

The Sundance guide sums it up nicely: “John Krasinski, best known for playing the charming everyman, Jim Halpert, on The Office, may seem an unlikely candidate to adapt and direct the late David Foster Wallace's caustic exploration of the hideous nature of men.” I agree that it doesn’t immediately sound like a match made in heaven, but what do I know about whatever demons the seeming nice guy Krasinski may harbor? Julianne Nicholson stars as the grad student conducting those brief interviews, which range from “the bizarre to the banal, but they are always infused with biting humor and extraordinary details.”

THE CLONE RETURNS HOME

This Japanese feature is described as being “in the tradition of Solaris and other deeply philosophical science-fiction works.” It concerns an astronaut who “agrees to participate in an experimental cloning program that will ‘regenerate’ his body and memory should he die. So when he’s killed during a space mission, scientists are able to regenerate his clone. But problems occur with its memory, which regresses to Kohei’s youth and the accidental death of his twin brother. Distressed, the clone flees the lab in search of his childhood home. Along the way, he finds his own lifeless body in a space suit. Mistaking it for his brother, he continues his journey carrying the body on his back.” There’s a fine line between dreamlike and ponderous and this one could go either way, but I’m feeling generous enough to give it the benefit of the doubt.

COLD SOULS

This “metaphysical tragicomedy” sounds more than a little Charlie Kaufmanesque. Paul Giamatti stars as himself, “agonizing over his interpretation of Uncle Vanya. Paralyzed with anxiety, he stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by deep-freezing souls. Giamatti enlists their services, intending to reinstate his soul once he survives the performance. But complications ensue when a mysterious, soul-trafficking ‘mule,’ transporting product to and from Russia, ‘borrows’ Giamatti's stored soul for an ambitious, but unfortunately talentless, soap-opera actress.” Is the debut feature from Sophie Barthes a ripoff of Being John Malkovich or “strikingly original” as the Sundance guide claims?

Part Two

Morning Deal Report: As "The Crow" Flies

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The good news is: Four Christmases is no longer the number one movie in America. (It slipped to the second spot with a $13.3 million weekend take.) The bad news is: it’s been replaced by The Day the Earth Stood Still. Do people know there’s a perfectly good version of this without Keanu Reeves available at their local video store? If they do, they don’t care, as Day scooped up $31 million of our Earth dollars. Twilight has hit the $150 million total mark; word is that Chris Weitz (American Pie) will take over as director of the sequel, New Moon.

Terminator Salvation is months away from hitting theaters, but a fifth installment in the series has already gotten the green light. Halcyon Co. execs “had originally planned to wait until the release of Terminator Salvation next summer before deciding on whether to proceed with the next chapter, but the positive studio, fan and media reaction to footage from the current pic has encouraged them to move forward ahead of schedule,” Variety reports.

Waiting for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen director Stephen Norrington’s big comeback? Looking forward to a reboot of The Crow series? In the unlikely event you’re a member of both groups, Variety has great news for you. “Stephen Norrington has signed on to write and direct a reinvention of The Crow, based on the comic created by James O’Barr.” Ca-caw! Ca-caw!

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Morning Deal Report: Uwe Boll Can't Be Stopped

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Four Christmases remains atop the box office chart, earning an additional $18.2 million over the weekend. The first weekend could have been an accident, but now the blame falls squarely on you, America. The third attempt at launching a Punisher franchise should mercifully be the last, as Punisher: War Zone took in a measly $4 million. Nixon now, more than ever? Frost/Nixon raked in $180,147, which may not look like much until you consider that the film is only playing in three theaters. Potential awards contenders Milk and Slumdog Millionaire also did well in limited release.

Twilight is still hanging in there at number two on the box office list, but that’s not enough to keep Catherine Hardwicke in the director’s chair for the sequel. “Summit and Hardwicke cite Summit's wish to rush the movie into production as one reason for their split. Summit wants to release the picture, which will demand substantial CGI work, by the end of 2009 or the start of 2010. A former production designer, Hardwicke wanted more prep time,” Variety reports.

Uwe Boll cannot be stopped. Lauren Holly and Luke Perry have signed on for the master of disaster’s latest atrocity, The Storm. “In the apocalyptic thriller, Holly plays a dedicated wife and mother who must deal with the end of days scenario -- all heightened by the arrival of a mysterious stranger named Silas (Perry) who holds the key to the approaching doom,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Related:
Your Thursday Afternoon "Twilight" Roundup
One Million Uwe Boll Haters Can't Be Wrong

Morning Deal Report: Johnny Depp Has Hand

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

“Johnny Depp's production company Infinitum Nihil has acquired screen rights to the Nick Tosches novel In the Hand of Dante,” Variety reports. “Book revolves around Dante's masterwork The Divine Comedy, and tells parallel storylines involving Dante in 14th-century Italy as he tries to complete the work, and a contemporary storyline involving Tosches, who is asked to authenticate what might be Dante's original manuscript. Depp would play Tosches.” The project will have to wait, as Depp is set to play Hunter S. Thompson for the second time in an adaptation of The Rum Diaries, beginning production in March.

Twilight star Kristen Stewart is set to play Joan Jett in the biopic The Runaways. For those of you who missed the ‘70s, The Hollywood Reporter helpfully notes, “The Runaways were hugely influential as the first successful all-girl hard rock band; its members included guitarists Jett and Lita Ford, drummer Sandy West, singer-keyboardist Cherie Currie and bassist Jackie Fox. The band was brought together in late 1975 by impresario Kim Fowley, who thought a novelty act of teenaged girls performing in leather and lace would be an easy sell, but the girls ended up proving to be serious and influential musicians with songs like Cherry Bomb.” No word yet on who will play the creepy, creepy Fowley.

Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games) is developing a remake of Captain Blood for Warner Bros. “Errol Flynn starred in the 1935 original, directed by Michael Curtiz, as a doctor wrongly sentenced to slavery in the Caribbean, where he and his comrades become avenging pirates,” Variety reminds. Aargh.

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Morning Deal Report: "Rome" Redux?

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Be it ever so crappy, there’s no resisting the new Christmas movie over the long Thanksgiving weekend. The latest evidence is Four Christmases, a big, stinky chunk of holiday coal that nevertheless filled its stocking to the tune of $46.7 million since its Wednesday opening. Bolt nipped Twilight for second place, with both taking in over $26 million. The other major debut was Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, which finished in fifth place with a $20 million total since Wednesday.

Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth are reuniting, but not for a big screen version of Frasier. They’ll both play instructors in the remake of Fame, alongside Charles S. Dutton, Megan Mullally and (of course) Debbie Allen as the principal. “As with the 1980 original, the remake follows dancers, singers, actors and artists from auditions to graduation at the New York City High School of Performing Arts,” Variety confirms.

We never got those Deadwood movies (and never really wanted the Carnivale ones), but there is another extinct HBO drama that may see the light of theaters. “Bruno Heller says he wants to produce a theatrical wrap-up to his critically beloved and prematurely canceled HBO drama Rome,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “Heller would not discuss plot ideas, but the original series outline for Rome next called for the hedonistic Roman leaders to deal with the rise of a certain problematic rabbi -- a story line that would have put a whole new spin on the Greatest Story Ever Told and potentially bring Rome a larger audience.”

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Roger Ebert: The Death of the Film Critic is the Death of Society

Vadim Rizov — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:40:00 GMT

We've seen a lot of despairing think-pieces and blog posts this year written by, for and about film critics this year — specifically, how we're all dead on the ground. Mass firings, reductions in word count for space reasons, mass syndications of writers to every newspaper in the land that eradicate distinctive individual voices — none of this is news, and even if you're part of the target audience it can be tiresome. Just in time for Thanksgiving, Roger Ebert took it one step further: the death of literate film criticism (specifically, to make room for celebrity gossip and "reporting") isn't just distressing to those predisposed to care about disinterested analysis and cinematic championing. "It is not about the disappearance of film critics," he declares. "It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out."

I'm not sure what to think of Ebert's fascinating dispatch. There's a lot in it: he's suitably pissed, for example, about the AP's declaration to all writers that film reviews must now never pass 500 words. But does the death of literate film criticism presage a larger cultural decline? Whenever you start thinking in apocalyptic, death-of-the-intellectual terms, you end up in the territory academics have made their specialty in occasional book-length diatribes, from Allan Bloom's infamously myopic and cranky The Closing Of The American Mind to the recent The Dumbest Generation. This is rarely productive territory for anyone. A smaller, better question would be not if intellectual society is dying (it's always been in the minority, something people tend to forget in the annual cri de couers), but whether the idea of getting paid to think is dying out in every non-academic context.

I'll go with yes, sort of. There's a long-standing, eternal debate of whether critics should reflect mass tastes or try to set their own, often more inaccessible critical agenda that Ebert touches on, but that's beside the point. It is, in fact, possible to think critically about mass cultural phenomena. "Why does the biggest story about "Twilight" involve its fans?" Ebert asks. "Isn't the movie obviously about sexual abstinence and the teen fascination with doomy Goth death-flirtation?" The answer is that with a movie like Twilight, as Todd Gitlin once observed about blockbusters, "the sum of the publicity takes up more cultural space than the movie itself." The only real response to a movie like Twilight is to refuse to take the movie as purported aesthetic object seriously and try to figure out why people are going crazy over it. Another Robert Pattinson piece isn't needed, but perhaps, for example, someone might like to look into the not-entirely-deranged conservative meme that Twilight is some kind of Agnew-esque homily for "traditional values." This kind of shallow but engaging acknowledgment of the overpowering — and sometimes alarmingly meaningful — place crap art can have in inadvertantly shaping mass society will be profitable, and there's a chance someone can do it well.

Is a film criticism as a paying, stable occupation dying out? Maybe. (I hope not, since it's what I do, but I've been cautioned recently not to get overly optimistic.) But, sometime soon, the role of cultural critic will have to extend beyond the purview of the New York Times Magazine. Is thinking thoughtfully about celebrity culture a bit of an oxymoron? Probably. But it's the best we'll have for a while until Web 2.0 figures out how to make intelligent criticism pay again. In the meantime, dig up your old copies of Tom Wolfe's 60s Cary Grant profile and hope someone follows his example.

Morning Deal Report: An "Arrested" Development

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Twilight was gleaming at the box office this weekend, staking its claim to $70.6 million. (Gleaming! Staking! Can you believe Variety hasn’t hired me yet?) Those are Harry Potter numbers, so it’s no surprise that the Twilight sequel New Moon has already been greenlit. Bolt and Quantum of Solace finished in a virtual tie for second place, each taking in roughly $27 million. Bolt was a bit of a disappointment by Disney standards, but Quantum has already crashed the $100 million barrier, so you can bet James Bond will return.

How about that Arrested Development movie? Apparently its development is no longer arrested, as creator Mitch Hurwitz and producer Ron Howard are close to signing on for a feature film continuation of the cult series. Per The Hollywood Reporter, “Speculation has been fueled by cast members of the show, including Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Jeffrey Tambor, who have been frequently quoted in interviews that a feature adaptation is in the works.”

Vera Farmiga has joined George Clooney Up in the Air. “Story centers on a human resources exec whose only joy in life comes from the prospect of notching his millionth frequent-flyer mile, a goal he pursues with zeal as the rest of his life falls apart because he is constantly on the road,” Variety reports. “Farmiga will play a businesswoman who develops a romantic relationship with Clooney's character through meetings in airports and hotels around the country.”

Related:
Your Thursday Afternoon "Twilight" Roundup
George Clooney Leans In, and Other Insights

Your Thursday Afternoon “Twilight” Roundup

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

You may have noticed that we at the Screengrab have more or less completely ignored Twilight. We are aware that it’s a cultural phenomenon, and that the movie is out in theaters tomorrow, and that it’s predicted to be one of the biggest hits of the year. It’s just that none of us are teenage girls. Believe me, there are some among us who wish they were teenage girls, not that I’m naming any names. (See if you can PIERCE the veil of that cryptic comment, as if you were an arrow from the bow of Ted NUGENT!) But I digress. In the interest of fairness – and page views from the teenage girls who normally avoid the Screengrab like the plague – here is a handy roundup of the latest the Web has to offer in Twilight-mania.

The first reviews are in! Entertainment Weekly gives Twilight a B; critic Owen Gleiberman oozes over Robert Pattinson’s “dreamy, sculpted hunk of a teenage vampire,” who he describes as “Romeo, Heathcliff, James Dean, and Brad Pitt all rolled into one: a scruffy-gorgeous bloodsucker pinup who is really an angelic protector.’ Get a room, Owen! Slate’s Dana Stevens calls it “flawed yet transfixing,” reserving special praise for costume designer Wendy Chuck, who “manages to make weatherproof parkas look Goth.” Claudia Puig of USA Today dissents, citing “questionable casting, wooden acting, laughable dialogue and truly awful makeup.”

The LA Times reports that the Twilight setting of Forks, Washington is getting all the tourist business that used to go to Snoqualmie (aka “the real Twin Peaks”). “Forks High School is often besieged with Twilighters, who pose for pictures in front of the Spartans sign or scan the parking lot for Edward's car, a silver Volvo sedan. Some have even wandered inside to seek out the fictional characters. Still others have requested to be transferred to the school.” That’s okay, I still have my Twin Peaks Phys-Ed Dept. t-shirt somewhere.

Movie Retriever offers Six Excuses Grown-Ups Can Use for Going to See Twilight This Weekend. “Forget about the kid-vampire stuff. You're just a big fan of Twilight's director Catherine Hardwicke, ranging back to her days as a production designer - she designed Tapeheads, I'm Gonna Get You Sucka, and Tombstone! - to her more-recent career as a big-time director, helming movies like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown.”

Of course, there’s the inevitable face-off between Twilight and True Blood: BuddyTV asks “Who's the Better Vampire Boyfriend?”

At Rotten Tomatoes, dreamy Robert Pattinson dishes on his five favorite movies. One of them is Corky Romano. How’s that crush doing now, Owen?

Trailer Review: Twilight

Paul Clark — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

So this is Twilight? The Hollywood adaptation of “the hottest books since Harry Potter”? Because, to run the risk of pissing off the same contingent that took offense to my Trailer Review of High School Musical 3, I’m not really feeling this one. To me, this looks pretty cheesy, with some half-baked vampire mythos and second-rate, TV-ready special effects. Come to think, the whole trailer looks less like a spot for a would-be blockbuster than an ad for a new series on the CW- impossibly pretty characters who are sexy yet sensitive, plenty of self-aware “hip” dialogue (the “radioactive spider” line is a real groaner), and so on. Nonetheless, I’m hoping that this movie will allow Kristen Stewart the opportunity to do more substantial work in the future.

Paul Newman, 1925--2008

Phil Nugent — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

The death of Paul Newman cuts our movie culture's last ties to a generation of 1950s leading men. Newman himself had long since transcended his film debut, The Silver Chalice (1954), a terrible performance in a terrible movie that he, typically, loved to make fun of. A paragon of classical handsomeness and unostentatiously fit-looking, with eyes that people wrote songs about, Newman arrived on the scene at the same time as Method firebrands such as Brando, James Dean, and Montgomery Clift, though at first he looked to have more in common with such male mannequins as Rock Hudson and Robert Wagner. He wound up casting a shadow as long as any of them, and better sustaining a career than any of them, by taking his work seriously and endeavoring make it mean something. As Richard Corliss writes, ""Instead of leading his talent in weird and wayward directions, like Brando, or smashing it to pieces on a California highway at 24, like Dean, he just kept getting better, more comfortable in his movie skin, more proficient at suggesting worlds of flinty pleasure or sour disillusion with a smile or a squint." At the same time, he never seemed to be in danger of letting a little thing like being the best-known movie star and sexiest man in the world go to his head.

Newman has to have been one of the most famous movie stars for whom there is no automatically recognizable caricature version; he gave nightclub impressions few outsized mannerisms to latch onto. Newman was someone who moviegoers probably felt they knew better from his offscreen image than from any carefully maintained screen image. His image was that of a superior being who laughed at the idea that he was anything but a regular guy who'd been very, very lucky; a supreme sex symbol who, if given the chance, would probably bore you blind telling you how crazy he was about his wife of fifty years, Joanne Woodward, and his family life (""I have steak at home," Newman once famously told a Playboy interviewer who had the balls to ask him what he had on the side, "why go out for hamburger?"); a celebrity liberal who put his money where his mouth was and became a leading philanthropist, plowing hundred of millions of dollars into charitable causes, much of it generated by Newman's Own, the fantastically profitable food line that Newman and writer A. E. Hotchner began in 1982 as a joke. (Dalhlia Lithwick has a great piece about Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, the summer getaway he established for seriously ill children.) Because he was Paul Newman, and because he chose his causes so well and didn't seem to possess whatever gene creates the appearance of smugness, Newman could indulge his political urges and never seem like a polarizing figure to anyone outside the ranks of the bitterly deranged, and though the news that Richard Nixon had been so thoughtful as to have included him on his White House enemies list He is sometimes said to have embodied the "anti-hero" in such movies as Hud, and that willingness and ability to play morally ambiguous and even downright rotten characters no doubt helped him keep him seem "relevant" as the 1950s crashed into the '60s and '70s, but the truth is that Newman was a logical choice for dislikable characters because, even as he gave meticulous, honest performances in those roles, his own likability took the box-office curse off them. After Newman appeared in the William Faulkner adaptation The Long, Hot Summer as Ben Quick, the sexy lout who is ostracized after being falsely accused of being a barn burner, Pauline Kael wrote that Hollywood had figured out that a hero could burn barns all day and night and audiences would love him anyway, so long as he was played by Paul Newman.

The Long Hot Summer, notable as the first of ten features in which he and Woodward acted together, was also one of three films from 1958, along with Arthur Penn's The Left Handed Gun, in which he played Billy the Kid in the big-screen version of a Gore Vidal TV play and the movie version of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, that pinpointed his transition from sincere juvenile to assurec leading man. He achieved classic status in 1961 playing the pool hustler Fast Eddie Felsen in Robert Rossen's The Hustler, a lowlife melodrama whose smoky atmosphere and acting duels between Newman and George C. Scott and Jackie Gleason retain their chewy zest more than forty-five years later. Of the aforementioned Hud, Manohla Dargis writes in yesterday's New York Times: "His lean, hard-muscled body seems to slash against the wide-screen landscape, evoking the oil derricks to come, and the black-and-white cinematography turns his famous baby blues an eerie shade of gray. The character would be a heartbreaker if he were interested in breaking hearts instead of making time with the bodies that come with them. That’s supposed to make Hud a mean man, but mostly he seems self-interested. No one is tearing him apart and Mr. Newman doesn’t try to plumb the depths with the role, which makes the character and the performance feel more contemporary than many of the head cases of the previous decade. He finds depths in these shallows." Hollywood legend has it that it was because of his success in those two movies that, in 1966, when Newman played Ross Macdonald's private eye Lew Archer, the character was re-christianed Harper so that the studio could cash in on what was apparently the sure-fire good-luck charm of releasing a Paul Newman movie whose title began with the letter "H." (Though not one of Newman's best--as in, way not--the movie was a hit, which may be why, a year later, he was rounded up to star in a Western, based on an Elmore Leonard novel, called Hombre.)

Newman's major contributions to the rebel strain of the counterculture were Cool Hand Luke (1967), in which he played a nonconformist on a chain hang who becomes a martyr figure--Christ in a sweat box--and the 1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where his performance, engaging though it is, now looks like part of a charitable enterprise aimed at making a star of his buddy, Robert Redford. He would prove devoted not just to Redford--leading to a partnership that would be dipped in gold and garlanded with Oscars in the 1973 The Sting--but to the directors of those movies: respectively, Stuart Rosenberg, with whom he would re-team for WUSA, Pocket Money, and The Drowning Pool, in which he would reprise the role of Lew Archer, I mean, Harper; and George Roy Hill, who went on to direct The Sting and Slap Shot. For some of us, these hold up less well than many of his other hits; they feel self-satisfied and smirky, with the adolescent wisecracks piling up like foam rubber peanuts. In general, a complacency seemed to settle in for Newman in this period, if not so much in his acting as in his choice of roles. There's plenty of evidence that he had grown tired of presenting himself for the camera's delectation. He had a high-profile side career as a race car driver, but he had also turned to directing. He directed six films in all, four of them--Rachel, Rachel (1968), The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1973), the TV film The Shadow Box (1980), and The Glass Menagerie (1987)-- starring Joanne Woodward, and two, the Ken Kesey adaptation Sometimes a Great Notion (1971) and Harry and Son (1984) starring himself. (Both he and Woodward won Golden Globes and New York Critics Cricle Awards for Rachel, Rachel.)

There were signs that he had begun to stir again when he signed on to star in two pictures directed by Robert Altman, but Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976) and Quintet (1979) did not mark the finest hour for either of them. But by now Newman was in his mid-fifties and wide awake, and he seemed to enter the 1980s with a renewed commitment to his craft. Unlike some other make stars who became public embarrassments by their determination to prove that aging hadn't slowed them down or cost them a drop of testosterone, Newman seemed genuinely, and even playfully, curious about seeing just what he could do with this new state of affairs and how long he could keep it going. His performances in Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981), Absence of Malice (1981), and The Verdict (1982) were as forceful and finely shaded as anything he had ever done, maybe as good as anything any star at his age had done, and the Academy Award that he received for revisiting the role of Fast Eddie twenty-five years down the line in Martin Scorsese's The Hustler sequel The Color of Money (1986) may have been even more well-deserved as it was unneeded as a confirmation of his stature.

After that benchmark, he seemed to settle in doing whatever it pleased him to do. He had what looked like a terrific time being miscast as tomcatting Louisiana governor (and secret desegregationist) Earl K. Long in Ron Shelton's Blaze, reunited onscreen once more with his wife in the Merchant-Ivory Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, indulged his taste for screwball nonsense as the capitalist villain of the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), kept a firm grip on his sex appeal even as he approached and passed his seventieth birthday in two movies directed by Robert Benton, the underappreciated 1994 charmer Nobody's Fool and the grim memento-mori detective story Twilight (1998). Some fifty years after playing George Gibbs in Our Town on TV, he returned to the play, this time playing the Stage Manager in a Broadway revival that was also recorded for television. He made his last on-camera movie appearance as Tom Hanks's gangster boss in Road to Perdition but continued to do voice work, including a role in the Pixar animated feature Cars. He also played Ed Harris's father in the 2005 HBO miniseries Empire Falls, whose cast also included Joanne Woodward. In May of 2007, he publicly announced his retirement from acting, a decision that was cause for considerable sadness among his fans. The news of his death might best be seen as cause for gratitude, both for the pleasure he gave and the example he set, and for gobstruck admiration at just how much one man was able to get right in the conduct of his life. Presumably Newman would begin any list of his achievements with the names of his children: Susan Kendall and Stephanie, from his early marriage to Jackie Witte, and, from his marriage to Woodward, Elinor "Nell" Teresa, Melissa "Lissy" Stewart, and Claire "Clea" Olivia. (Elinor appeared in both Rachel, Rachel and The Effect of Gamma Rays under the name "Nell Potts".) Newman and Jackie Witte also had a son, Scott, an actor who made his movie debut opposite his father in The Towering Inferno (1974), who died in 1978 from an accidental drug overdose. The Scott Newman Center, which seeks to prevent substance abuse through education, was established in memory.

Screengrab Fall Preview: Scott Von Doviak’s Picks

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:30:00 GMT

We’ve reached that part of the summer when Rainn Wilson comedies and films by Fred Durst are considered top new releases, so it must be time to look ahead to the fall. Traditionally this is the movie season for Oscar contenders and challenging indie fare, so let’s put away the robots and superhero tights and play a little 3 Up, 3 Down. (Feel free to weigh in with your own picks, my fellow Screengrabbers – if you dare.)

3 UP

1. Burn After Reading – No Country for Old Men was a return to form for the Coens, and we’re all happy they finally got their Oscars. But it’s been a while since we’ve had a pure shot of that Coen Brothers feeling. No Country was adapted from a Cormac McCarthy novel, The Ladykillers was a remake, and Intolerable Cruelty originated with other writers. Based on the trailer, Burn After Reading looks like a return to the inventive goofiness of The Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou?, which puts it right in my wheelhouse.

2. The Road – Speaking of Cormac McCarthy, the second adaptation of his work in as many years in due in November. The grim post-apocalyptic tale is brought to the screen by John Hillcoat, director of The Proposition, a western that certainly counts McCarthy’s Blood Meridian among its influences. Viggo Mortenson has the lead, and the supporting cast includes Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Garrett Dillahunt and The Wire’s Omar himself, Michael K. Williams.

3. Synecdoche, New York – Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut didn’t exactly wow most critics at Cannes, but the guy hasn’t let me down yet. (Well, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind didn’t really do it for me, but I’ll blame Sam Rockwell for that.) Even if it doesn’t really work, the premise – which has theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman building a replica of New York in a warehouse – should provide more of the Kauf’s trademark reality-bending weirdness.

3 DOWN

1. The Day the Earth Stood Still – Unnecessary remake of a sci-fi classic, with Keanu Reeves as an alien? The first time I saw this trailer, I thought it was a fake. The second time, I just said “No thanks.”

2. Twilight – I understand I’m not the target demographic for this “y.a.” phenomenon, but I still resent the fact that it’s in my face everywhere I go these days, and that’s only going to get worse as the release of this adaptation approaches.

3. The Women – This has got to be the uber-chick flick of the year: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Bette Midler and Debra Messing in a remake of the George Cukor classic. If I grow a vagina between now and when it comes out, maybe I’ll reconsider.

WILD CARD

Oliver Stone’s W. This can’t possibly be any good, can it? And yet I can’t wait to see it. We might be looking at a train wreck for the ages here.

Related:
Movie Magic: Making Pittsburgh Ugly Enough For "The Road"
Oliver Stone Finds His Dick

Morning Deal Report: Rogen Makes Porno

Peter Smith — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Seth Rogen has joined Kevin Smith's new movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno. He's Zack and his 40-Year-Old Virgin costar Elizabeth Banks ("Beth," from the bookstore) is Miri. This is kind of interesting, since Rogen and Judd Apatow are like the good Kevin Smith, making the filthy-but-sincere crowdpleasers that Smith always seemed to be trying for.

Meanwhile, Rogen's Knocked Up costar Katherine Heigl stars in the rom-com The Ugly Truth, by the makers of Legally Blonde.

Catherine Hardwicke's next movie is the teen thriller Twilight, with Into the Wild's (dreamy) (but maybe a little young for me) Kristen Stewart.

— Peter Smith