The Screengrab : zac efron

Morning Deal Report: Sofia Coppola Goes “Somewhere”

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

Sofia Coppola’s latest directorial effort Somewhere has secured the participation of a jackass. Chris Pontius of the Jackass crew “will play Sammy, best friend of the character played by Stephen Dorff, a decadent, bad-boy actor living at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood who begins to re-examine his life after a surprise visit from his 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning),” per The Hollywood Reporter.

That Dreamworks dream may be deferred. Yesterday we told you the studio had the blessing of the King family to proceed with their MLK biopic. Two of King’s children disagree. “Bernice King and Martin Luther King III have been embroiled in a legal battle with brother Dexter King, who is chairman-CEO of the King Estate, over who controls the personal papers of their late mother, Coretta Scott King,” Variety reports. “Bernice King told the Associated Press on Tuesday: ‘This is a deal that Mr. Spielberg and his people ... have entered into believing that they have the blessing of the King Estate. They don't have the blessings of Bernice and Martin King.’”

And we can all breathe a sigh of relief: the new Footloose has found its Bacon. You’ll recall that Zac Efron dropped out of the project, which had us all worried there for a while, but now Chace Crawford has stepped into his dancing shoes. “With a more mature, edgy version of Footloose than the original, Paramount will likely benefit from the fact that Crawford's Gossip Girl following skews a bit older than Efron's High School Musical audience.”

Morning Deal Report: Reese Witherspoon to Get Naughty in “Nice”?

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

The tween demographic was once again in control of the weekend box office, as Zac Efron in 17 Again topped the charts with $24.1 million. Apparently they’ve already had their fill of Hannah Montana, which slipped to fourth place with $12.7. Enough adults turned up at the multiplex to secure a second place finish for State of Play with $14.1 million. Monsters vs. Aliens and Fast & Furious rounded out the top five.

Is Reese Witherspoon finally sick of the rom-com carousel? Witherspoon may get back to her black comedy roots with Nice, about “a magazine writer who accidentally kills her boyfriend. She finds a way to get rid of the body and discovers that killing boyfriends is easier than breaking up with them,” Variety reports. Witherspoon is not yet signed, but those of us who miss the spitfire of Freeway and Election are hoping it happens.

Felicity Jones has been cast as the female lead in The Men at the Pru, the “1970s insurance-world dramedy” from Ricky Gervais. “Jones will play Julie, who is led to believe by the men around her that a woman should focus on raising a family but who wants to break out and pursue a career in photography,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Related:
Giamatti and Witherspoon Are Downsizing
Truth or Date with Ricky Gervais

Precursors: Vice Versa (1988)

Nick Schager — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Big is the most obvious predecessor of this weekend’s adult-turned-kid 17 Again, the first stand-alone starring vehicle for High School Musical’s song-and-dance Ken Doll, Zac Efron. Yet for those interested in stories featuring adults trapped in children’s bodies, one must inevitably turn to Vice Versa, the insanely corny 1988 body-swapping saga in which Judge Reinhold’s dad winds up having his brain magically transported – by a mystical Asian skull – into the noggin of Fred Savage’s son…and vice versa! Hot on the heels (by which I mean, blatantly copying the formula of) 1987’s Dudley Moore-Kirk Cameron classic Like Father, Like Son, Brian Gilbert’s film seemed at the time like merely reheated leftovers. And truth be told, given that I saw it in the theater upon its initial release and then never again, I can now barely remember any of the story’s specifics. But one glance at the below trailer makes clear that what’s waiting to be rediscovered is a lost-gem of unintentional humor. The Incredible Hulk-ish transformation sequence. Reinhold’s “cool dude” strutting with a skateboard under his arm. The hockey game crotch shot. Fred Savage having to hide his “unit” from his mom/wife. The dated Grey Poupon reference. Seriously – this film is just about pleading for critical reconsideration. Or, at least, begging to be laughed at again.

Morning Deal Report: Jon Hamm on the Howl

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:30:00 GMT

Fans of Mad Men’s Don Draper may see some irony in the fact that the actor who portrays the beatnik-scorning ad exec has taken a role in Howl, the upcoming movie centering on Alan Ginsberg’s obscenity trial. “Hamm will star as defense attorney Jake Ehrlich, whose life was the inspiration for the TV series Perry Mason,” Variety reports. The cast also includes James Franco, Mary-Louise Parker and Jeff Daniels.

Another alien invasion is on the way. Aaron Eckhart will star in Battle: Los Angeles for director Jonathan Liebesman (The Killing Room). Scott Silver (8 Mile) will rewrite “Chris Bertolini's original screenplay, about an alien invasion pulverizing its way across L.A.” per The Hollywood Reporter.

Anyone heartbroken over the news that Zac Efron has dropped out of the Footloose remake – all is not lost. Efron is negotiating to star in The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, “about a caretaker at a cemetery who manages to have weekly meetings with a younger brother whose accidental death he feels was his fault.”

Related:
James Franco Will Howl
SXSW Review: Me and Orson Welles

SXSW Review: "Me and Orson Welles"

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

The SXSW Super Special Screening this morning turned out to be Me and Orson Welles, the latest film from Richard Linklater, a director so long associated with Austin and SXSW that the screening shouldn't have been much of a surprise at all. (And apparently it wasn't a surprise to many in the audience, so I assume Twitter was all a-tweet with the news.) Suprise or not, it was definitely a treat.

Zac Efron - yes, the High School Musical kid - stars as Richard Samuels, a high school student circa 1937 with dreams far beyond his class musical. He knows he's an artist at heart, he's just not sure whether he's an actor, writer, musician or what. He does have a crucial knack for bullshitting that will serve him well, as we learn when he happens upon members of the Mercury Theater announcing their latest production to a throng of New York pedestrians. Richard manages to charm Mercury honcho Orson Welles with his bravado, insisting he can play the ukelele and sing like an angel. While he's not quite clear how these skills will come in handy for the modern-dress production of Julius Caesar Welles is masterminding, he does get the tiny part of Lucius in the show.

What follows is a lightly comedic mix of coming-of-age story and classic backstage intrigue. Richard gets quite an education in how theater really works, not only from Mercury mainstays Joseph Cotton, Norman Lloyd and John Houseman, but from Welles' assistant Sonja (Claire Danes), who briefly indulges Richard's romantic interest before revealing the full measure of her ambition. Efron is perfectly bland as the callow youngster, which is appropriate for the role; it doesn't matter much that he's not terribly exciting to watch, as his primary co-star picks up more than his share of the slack.

Me and Orson Welles may technically be more about the former than the latter, but there's no question that the movie belongs to relative newcomer Christian McKay as Welles. I'm not one to start trying to generate Oscar buzz in March, but I'm dead certain you'll be hearing his name in connection with the O-word when the film opens later this year. It's a dead-on impression, but much more than that; McKay nails Welles on pretty much every level you can imagine - his charm, theatricality, humor and megalomania all weave in and out of one another in a seamless portrait of the artist as a young man.

Linklater's last attempt at a period piece was his disappointing take on The Newton Boys, but he's on much firmer ground this time around. There's a hint of Woody Allen in his nostalgic Radio Days mode here (even the elegant white-on-black opening credits seem like a wink toward Allen), although Linklater's own experience in the film business surely informs the behind-the-scenes tensions and backstage farce, as well as the camaraderie that develops as showtime approaches. Me and Orson Welles probably isn't destined to be considered a major Linklater work, but it's one of the most purely enjoyable films of the festival so far.

The Farting Deal Report

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Now that we know America loves a talking dog, Hollywood is asking the musical question, “How about a farting dog?” Tween sensations the Jonas Brothers, apparently lacking any agents or adult career advisors of any kind, have signed on to star in Walter the Farting Dog. Peter and Bobby Farrelly may direct the story of “a fat dog with severe flatulence. The brothers play musicians whose parents are asked to care for the dog by an aunt just before she passes away…While his brothers play music, Frankie and the gaseous hound get involved in a plot that involves liberating a koi fish and thwarting jewel thieves,” Variety reports.

Milk director Gus Van Sant and writer Dustin Lance Blac will reteam for an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I don’t need to tell you it’s the true “account of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author Ken Kesey and a group dubbed the Merry Pranksters as they drive across the country in a DayGlo-painted school bus dubbed Furthur, reaching personal and collective revelations through the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs.” But I just told you anyway, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter.

It’s going to happen, and by “it” I mean a remake of Footloose. High School Musical 3 director Kenny Ortega and star Zac Efron are attached to the project, and Variety reports “the studio is working on new songs that will complement some of the memorable original tunes.”

Related:
Recreating Gay Liberation in the Seventies for "Milk"
Trailer Review: High School Musical 3

The Gay Pride Top Twenty (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT

MALA NOCHE (1985)

"You drive like you fuck!" Walt (Tim Streeter) yells at Pepper (Ray Monge), the Mexican boy toy who has accepted Walt's offer of driving lessons, with the result that Walt's car is resting in a ditch. Walt is actually in love -- painfully, head over heels in love -- with the pretty boy Johnny (Doug Cooyeate), who doesn't mind putting up with his adulation so long as it gets him handouts, but has no intention of letting Walt touch him, so Walt, in a spirit of compromise that is familiar to inhabitants of the independent filmmaking scene, makes do with Johnny's friend, the scruffier Ray, and takes what satisfaction he can in being one degree of separation away from his obscure object of desire. This grungy erotic fever dream of a first feature by Gus Van Sant was made for $2500.00; hard to see for most of the years before it came out on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection last fall, it was one of the most exciting directorial debuts of the 1980s and announced Portland's placement on the indie film map.

ROCK HUDSON'S HOME MOVIES (1992)

When Hudson died of AIDS in 1985 while still trying to remain in the closet, a number of people felt that he had missed his last chance to make his stand against the homophobes. This hilarious illustrated lecture by the experimental filmmaker Mark Rappaport argues that Rock was trying to tell us something all along; you just had to know how to listen. Rock, represented by actor Eric Farr, walks us through a series of clips from Hudson's career, pointing up the suddenly obvious messages conveyed by his skittish relationships with Doris Day and his other virginal leading ladies, his verbal pas de deux with Tony Randall, the mysterious nudge-nudge wink-wink underworld inhabited by the remade men of Seconds, and the shift into horror movies as Rock's youthful beauty began to fade. Like certain films of Todd Haynes, the movie is a satirical commentary on certain strains of pop criticism and a cunning work of criticism itself.

SCORPIO RISING (1964) & UN CHANT D'AMOUR (1950)

Between the two of them, these two short films, made by directors (Kenneth Anger, who made Scorpio Rising five years after the best-selling success of his book Hollywood Babylon, and the legendary playwright, novelist and poet Jean Genet) famous in the literary world, established a whole visual language of gay eroticism, based on fetishistic totems of power on the one hand and a defiant romantic tenderness in the face of imprisonment and institutional mistreatment on the other, that other artists have fed off for generations since. And not just gay artists: Anger's cutting to rock music paved the way for everything from Scorsese to MTV, and Oliver Stone, a director not noted for his sensitivity to homosexuals (see JFK) did his own butch version of the shared-cigarette scene from Genet's film in Platoon, with Willem Dafoe putting a rifle to Charlie Sheen's pliant lips and giving him a little something-something.

VELVET GOLDMINE (1998)

In his later Far from Heaven (after honoring Genet in his 1991 Poison), Todd Haynes paid tribute to the 1950s Technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk and the closeted gay subculture that many see being given a shout-out in those movies. In his salute to the glitter rock scene of the 1970s, Haynes sets out to recreate a very different era in pop culture, one that celebrated letting it all hang out -- and he also administers a bitch slap to those who would write off the music as an opportunistic sham. Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), Haynes' David Bowie stand-in, may ultimately sell out to arena rock and heterosexuality, but the fire he lit in the hearts and minds of young adepts such as the rock writer played by Christian Bale continues to burn even as all the color and spark has bled out of the conventional show business world he's joined. Keep watching the skies!

PINK FLAMINGOS (1972) & HAIRSPRAY (1988, 2007)

Back in 1972, when underground filmmaker John Waters had his starlet and muse, the 300-pound drag superstar Divine (neé Harris Glenn Milstead) eat dog shit as a glorified publicity stunt in the final moments of Pink Flamingos (a.k.a. the Citizen Kane of bad taste cinema), the wise-ass, openly gay, proto-punk director probably thought he was being pretty damn subversive in his blatant attempt to shock the bejesus out of the hopelessly square “straight” world he never had any particular interest in joining. Little did he know at the time that the most subversive act of pop culture would come sixteen years later, when he achieved crossover indie success with the (mostly) family friendly Hairspray, starring Ricki Lake as an indomitable plus-size, racially politicized Mashed Potato enthusiast and Divine as haggard Baltimore housewife Edna Turnblad. Tragically, Divine passed on to the great Hefty Hideway in the sky just as Hairspray made Waters and his Baltimore crew of “Hillbilly Rip-offs” shockingly respectable (and at least as famous as Pia Zadora)...but “the Filthiest Woman Alive” lived on (in a beautifully ironic twist Flamingos’ Babs Johnson would have adored) as a beloved family-friendly icon, first as the inspiration for the under-the-sea witch Ursula in The Little Mermaid and later in the gender-bender casting of Harvey Fierstein, Bruce Villanch (and, recently, George Wendt??!?!?) as Edna Turnblad in the smash hit Broadway musical version of Hairspray and (egad!) John Travolta in the super-smash hit re-movie-fied 2007 version of the musical that introduced Waters’ racially and sexually egalitarian Baltimore fantasia to the High School Musical crowd (thanks to that dreamy Zac Efron). Waters’ never bought into the peace & love banalities of the Flower Children he mocked so mercilessly in his earliest films, yet the musical Hairspray’s triumphant showstopper “You Can’t Stop The Beat” rivals “The Age of Aquarius” in its joyous, unabashedly hopeful vision of a world where literally everyone is welcome and accepted at the dance...even assholes like the vain, villainous Van Tussels (as long as they’re willing to chill out, play nice and, of course, shake those fanny muscles).

Click here for Part One, Part Two & Part Three

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne

Jailbait Cinema: 16 Films That Make Us Nervous (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

If we all hit puberty overnight on our 21st birthdays, American life would be a helluva lot less complicated. But, as the recent Miley Cyrus “back-gate” scandal revealed, teenage sexuality is a topic that America doesn’t want to think about, even as it just can't seem to stop thinking about it.

On the one hand, most of us had (or at least thought about) sex in high school...on the other hand, once we’re adults, we’re all supposed to conveniently forget our memories and fantasies of adolescent lust. On the one hand, sex education is viewed as promoting underage promiscuity...but on the other hand, abstinence-only education tends to lead to a lot of unwanted pregnancy, since teenagers somehow figure out how to have sex even without classroom lectures about condoms. On the one hand, innocent teachers, day care workers, 19-year-olds with 17-year-old girlfriends and that 6-year-old boy who smacked a female classmate on the butt have all been branded for life as sexual offenders based on false or flimsy charges in hysterical witch hunts to “protect the children” at all costs...on the other hand, research indicates 20-25% of girls and 5-15% of boys in the U.S. experience some form of molestation at the hands of adults, the Catholic Church ignored its own institutional abuse scandals and the international sex trade in young flesh is thriving.

Clearly, we’re a little conflicted about the whole sex thing. Sure, we’re all shocked and disgusted by those creeps on To Catch A Predator...but somebody out there is watching Gossip Girl, sneaking peeks at Barely Legal magazine, lusting after Zac Efron and buying sexy cheerleader outfits from the Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue...and it’s not all just teens and predators. In fact, if we here at the Screengrab didn’t know better, we’d almost think Americans fetishize taboos instead of just being honest about them, leading to some pretty screwy behavior...AND the following list of films that reside in that dangerous grey area between sexual initiation and exploitation.

LOLITA (1962 & 1997)

Of course, no list of jailbait cinema would be complete without the grandmother of them all, or this previous Screengrab post on the screen adaptations of Nabokov's novel.

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

The best joke in Martin Scorsese’s masterful meditation on violence and alienation is when Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle is turned into a hero for ‘rescuing’ Jodie Foster’s teenage prostitute by gunning down her pimps and johns; the best joke outside Taxi Driver is that a lot of critics actually believed Scorsese was being sincere in his depiction of the event. More than one film writer, including a few who should have know better, saw in the movie’s chaotic ending an endorsement of vigilantism, a baffling interpretation that came back to haunt Scorsese – who clearly couldn’t have been more taken aback by this turn of events – when realities like the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan and the saga of subway shooter Bernard Goetz impinged on the fantasy of his film. The notion that Bickle is any kind of a hero is subverted at every turn: his diary is filled with racism and paranoia, his targeting of lowlifes and criminals only happens when he’s frustrated in his attempt to assassinate a politician; ordinary people can’t spend more than a few minutes in his presence without thinking he’s crazy; and even his targeting of Iris’ pimp (as with his targeting of presidential candidate Charles Palatine) is motivated as much by sexual jealousy as it is any kind of desire for justice. Travis is rightly appalled by the menu of sexual acts Iris will perform when read to him by the pimp Sport, and he does seem to have some genuine concern for her well-being, but he’s as oblivious to his own sexual desire for her as he is the impropriety of taking a date to a porno theater. Iris herself treats Bickle like he’s from another planet, and the film’s crowning irony comes at the end, when Travis, a marginalized psychotic only saved from suicide by a redemptive bloodbath and only saved from being a spree killer by his fortuitous choice of victim, receives a letter from Iris’ parents, filled with gratitude for having saved their daughter. It’s certain that if Travis ever took up the Steensmas’ invitation to visit them on their farm, they’d peg him for a maniac within seconds, but it’s the intricate chain of happenstance that turns a maniac into a hero which forms part of the genius of Taxi Driver – and totally upends Travis and Iris’ ‘relationship’ in a way no other jailbait movie has managed.

MANHATTAN (1979)

Woody Allen’s lovely, funny Manhattan is to movies about jailbait-chasing creeps what Citizen Kane is to, er, movies not about jailbait-chasing creeps. Mariel Hemingway earned an Oscar nomination for her performance as Tracy, the high school paramour of Woody’s Isaac Davis, and the Wood-Man himself got a nod from the Academy for his light, adept screenplay. So successful was Manhattan as a breezy, skillful romantic comedy that hardly anyone got creeped out by the fact that Woody’s character was technically committing statutory rape; when he explained “She's 17. I'm 42 and she's 17. I'm older than her father; can you believe that? I'm dating a girl wherein I can beat up her father”, he wasn’t being grammatical, but he was at least being really funny and self-deprecating. Those were the qualities that let us overcome our moral compunctions about what was really happening in the movie, and ignore the fact that, when Isaac tries to convince Tracy not to go away for six months to act with a theater group, he’s actually trying to talk her out of leaving him just long enough to be legal when she comes back. It was all very amusing, and even redeeming when he makes the ‘mature’ decision to start seeing Diane Keaton’s Mary Wilkie instead. Of course, all good things must come to an end, and the plot of Manhattan, one of the few times a Hollywood movie allowed us to not be utterly skeezed out by a middle-aged man jumping into the sack with a 17-year-old, took on a whole different dimension when the Soon-Yi Previn scandal broke. The prospect of a real-life Woody, then in his mid-50s, carrying on an illicit affair with a girl barely in her 20s was, somehow, much less appealing and light than a fictional Woody carrying on with a teenage girl, and all the worse that he was still married and the girl was his adopted daughter. For moviegoers, the worst thing about the scandal is that it’s made Manhattan almost impossible to watch without feeling an edge of ickiness it hadn’t previously possessed.

GHOST WORLD (2001)

Jailbait all-star Thora Birch’s performance as Enid Coleslaw in Ghost World is well-played on a number of levels: as we showed in our Girl Geeks list a few weeks back, she appealed to audiences (especially the, uh, male members thereof) because of her intelligence, hipness, cynicism and what seemed to be a wisdom beyond her years. But the other edge of the blade was the fact that for all her toughness and sophistication, she was still a high school girl. She was vulnerable and emotionally fragile and bound to get herself into situations she couldn’t handle. When she first encounters Steve Buscemi’s sad-sack loser Seymour, she toys with him the way she does her bewildered peer Josh; but when she gets to know him, she discovers that he’s as bitter, resentful, and out of step with the mainstream world as she is. They begin to develop a deep friendship based on the things they mutually hate (hey, there are worse things on which to base a relationship), but the astonishing thing about the way things develop between Enid and Seymour is that it’s an almost total inversion of the normal jailbait romance. Almost from the beginning, we sense that somehow, the two are going to end up in bed together, but unlike in most such movies, where no matter how much the writers try to pretty it up with the language of love, it’s still a predatorial relationship where the man has all the power, in Ghost World, we feel just as sorry for Seymour as we do for Enid. They’re both out of their depth, and as much as we like them both and are glad they’ve found each other, we know it can only end in disaster and we almost beg them not to hook up. When they do, we can tell it’s the beginning of the end for Seymour – and sure enough, he disappears from the film soon after, leaving Enid more vulnerable than she’s ever been. Because of this sense of sadness and loss, it’s one of the truest portrayals of such relationships ever put on film.

INNOCENCE (2004)

One of the principal allures of cinema has always been the way it affords its audience a chance to peek in on activities that would normally go unseen. However, this sort of voyeurism can occasionally feel like a curse when it confronts people with images they aren’t comfortable seeing. So it is with Innocence, a strange yet somehow magical film about a remote boarding school for young girls. Sequestered from the world, the girls are free to live and play without a single male gaze being cast upon them, which makes for the movie’s most fascinating conundrum- by showing us this hidden world founded upon the girls not being seen, director Lucile Hadzihalilovic forces us to deal with the question of why we’re so uncomfortable seeing them this way. Hadzihalilovic (wife of Irreversible director Gaspar Noé) doesn’t shy away from some potentially controversial images- a group of prepubescent girls swimming, a bathing teenager staring at her still-developing nude body in the mirror- which played a large part in the film being dismissed by many critics as fodder for the raincoat crowd. Yet Hadzihalilovic knows exactly what she’s doing, and this becomes obvious in the film’s final reel when we discover that the girls’ dance lessons are designed to train them for nightly performances the school puts on for shadowy male benefactors. That this revelation coincides with the beginning of the girls’ sexual development is deliberate, as Hadzihalilovic suddenly re-introduces men back into the lives of the girls just at the time they would begin paying them serious attention. With this final twist of the knife, Innocence asks whether the loss of the girls’ innocence is merely part of nature, or if others force it upon them, and Hadzihalilovic wisely leaves it for us to decide.

THE PROFESSIONAL (1994)

Luc Besson's violent fantasy about a hit man (Jean Reno) who takes in an orphaned twelve-year-old (Natalie Portman) and tutors her in the art of murder may go farther than any other commercial Hollywood movie in blatantly eroticizing a preteen girl. Other actresses not much older than Portman was here have played girls who aroused inappropriate feelings in older men; Portman, with her perfect little features set off by a Louise Brooks haircut and something around her neck that makes her look gift-wrapped, is treated as an object, or a pet, who first begs to be taken in by Leon the professional, and then (in a scene that was first cut from the American prints) begs him to make love to her. How did Besson get away with this? Partly by casting Jean Reno, who's a whiz at holding the camera while signaling that his pilot light has long since gone out, so you can feel confident that he'll stoically decline her entreaties. (Before she showed up, his best friend was a plant.) And partly by the black humor scenes of Leon teaching his little soul mate to become a killer, so that if you object to the film on moral grounds, you're liable to become dizzy from not being able to decide where to begin. It seems a little odd to complain about the unrequited, consensual pedophilia if you have no problems with the violence, but complaining about the violence just makes you feel like a square. The Professional is a truly outrageous movie, but it's extremely (and self-protectively) calculated in its outrageousness.

For more jailbait: Part Two, Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Paul Clark, Phil Nugent

In Other Blogs: Blogwars!

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:30:00 GMT

There’s nothing we enjoy more than a good old-fashioned feud between movie bloggers (that is, if anything in the world of blogging can actually be called ‘old-fashioned’). This one begins at Hollywood Elsewhere, with Jeffrey Wells bemoaning the Eclipse of the Hunk. “A very significant revolutionary concept has been pushed repeatedly in films produced, written or directed by movie-comedy maestro Judd Apatow over the last three or four years, and I'm not sure it's been explained as thoroughly as it should be. The idea, admittedly old hat for anyone half-familiar with Apatow World, is that marginally unattractive guys -- witty stoners, clever fatties, doughy-bodied dorks, thoughtful-sensitive dweebs and bearish oversize guys in their 20s and 30s -- can be and in fact are the new ‘romantic leads’ (for lack of a better or more appropriate term) in today's comedies.” He cites Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall as Exhibit A, thanks to his “chunky, blemished ass and little white man-boobs.” Wells is deeply concerned about this trend. “Question is, what if this starts to manifest in realms outside Apatow World? Young teenage girls will always have a thing for the Zac Efrons and young Leonardo DiCaprios, but what if Hollywood, looking to follow Apatow's lead in reflecting the real-life shlumpiness of typical GenX and GenY guys, generally starts to divest itself of conventionally good-looking actors as far as the over-21 ranks are concerned?”

Yes, that’s our biggest fear exactly: that Hollywood will stop churning out good-looking stars. Clearly Jim Emerson of Scanners shares our concern. “Can you tell the person who wrote this lives in West Hollywood? All I can say is, my sympathies to Matt Damon and Adrien Brody and Brad Pitt for being 'totally out' where attractive women are concerned. At least they can console themselves with pedicures and higher thread-counts…Why is Wells so upset? He sounds like a Dixieland racist spouting off about miscegenation in the 1950s. It's an outrage, a threat to the species!” Emerson also notes one possible – and quite logical – reason that Apatow might be drawn to this scenario: as a shlump himself, he is married above his station to Leslie Mann. In any case, Wells has since responded to Emerson, but not in any interesting way.

Elsewhere in blogdom, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule talks up Dante’s Inferno, a Joe Dante film festival that kicked off last night at the New Beverly in Los Angeles. “Dante has long been one of my favorite directors, an unrepentant appreciator of the camp qualities and the genuine wit and scrappy creativity to be found among the many titles to have filled the B-movie bucket over the past 50 years or so. His encyclopedic knowledge of seemingly every movie ever released, his unimpeachable cinematic acumen, is never show-offy, either in his films or in the many interviews and DVD commentaries he has graced during his career. Nor is his command of film style and artistry. He is that rarity, a smart filmmaker with a degree of humility who allows his intelligence to shine through his work in ways that are often misinterpreted or devalued by the keepers of the cultural flame. For this reason, not nearly so many people as should tend to understand that movies like Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Explorers, The ‘burbs and his HBO film The Second Civil War are masterpieces of design, effect, satire and social commentary that far outstrip most of the movies that august bodies tend to crown with awards. Dante's movies are firecrackers, ones you shouldn't hold in your hands for long. They snap, crackle, pop and outright supernova with the kind of exuberance that most directors half his age can’t muster”

And finally, this week in List-o-Mania brings The Top 10 Places You Should Never Visit According to Hollywood, via Film School Rejects. We’re now forced to reconsider the Screengrab company retreat in Brazil. “Need a kidney? Or a spleen? Why not try the lucrative world of human organ trafficking? Whether or not you believe this concept to be an urban legend, would you blindly follow someone into the jungle of Brazil and not worry they might take your liver?” Hell, we need what’s left of our livers.

Fine and Zandi

Phil Nugent — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT

You may not have heard of David Zandi. If so, from the sound of it, you don't know what you're missing. The twenty-nine-year-old, Iranian-born Zandi, says that he's one of the last surviving male members of the Persian royal family. His IMDB page, which lists two acting credits--Marci C, in which he played "Musician", and Men in Black II, in which he stretched for the role of "Alien"--is full of other intriguing personal information, including the news that he's "a champion equestrian", "loves going skiing in the winter", "Turned down the offer to be a model for Gucci and Calvin Klein to stay in acting school", and that he "Coached his girlfriend with her acting and speech in 2001 so she could work on his project." (Is that what the kids are calling it these days?) This stuff goes over pretty well with the people who hang out at IMDB message boards: one post there is headed, "MARRY ME!" The page also features quotes from Zandi, including this beaut: "Even as Talent, I see it as my sole duty to do that which is in the best interest of the Studio, regardless of my own personal desires." Right now, Zandi is trying to serve the best interests of Disney by offering himself to star in the forthcoming movie version of the video game Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Zandi isn't exactly lobbying for the role: he just wants the studio to recognize that logic is on his side. "I'm very logical for this part," he explains, "because of the way that I was raised as a child, his personality, his mannerisms. It's something I could easily pull off. It would be like playing myself. It would be an opportunity to play myself because of my ancestry."

But though he's above begging, he "will accept the role from Jerry Bruckheimer when he decides to meet the demands of the fans. I just want to give the fans what they want." Zandi knows what the fans want because of "an official-looking poll obtained by movie news service IESB.net" that shows him leading the field s voters' top choice for the role, ahead of such notables as Orlando Bloom, Zac Efron, and James McAvoy. IESB says only that they received news of the poll from an anonymous source who asked that his identity be kept confidential, a Disney spokesperson said only the official spokesperson equivalent of, "Pull the other one," and Zandi disclaims any connection to the poll but does say that he thinks it would be an awful thing for his family and everyone involved if his ancestor wound up being played by Orlando Bloom. (We hear him on that one.) Will Jerry Bruckheimer come to his sense and hire Zandi? Right now, things don't look that good, but maybe if things don't work out, maybe Zandi can maintain his poise by repeating this mantra, from his IMDB quotes section:"In this world, there are many forms of deception, but perhaps the greatest of them all, is self-deception."

Afternoon Deal Report: Some White Dudes Make Some Movies

John Constantine — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:35:00 GMT

Marky-Mark Wahlberg is adding yet another meaty role to his busy schedule. He’ll be starring in Peter Berg’s untitled dramatization of the life of infamous drug lord Jon Roberts. Roberts was the subject of 2006’s much acclaimed Cocaine Cowboys. Wahlberg’s other upcoming projects include Peter Jackson’s Lovely Bones adaptation, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fighter, and M. Night Shymalan’s hilariously titled The Happening.

2007’s boytoy du jour Zac Efron will star in Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Me and Orson Welles. I actually penned a script with the same title back in ’98. It was about me and the ghost of Orson Welles watching the animated Transformers movie for twenty-four hours straight. It was mostly just Welles crying.

Speaking of crying, it looks like Timothy Olyphant is going to continue sabotaging his once-promising career by starring in David Twohy’s A Perfect Getaway. Sure, its premise of a honeymooning couple being stalked by two killers in Hawaii sounds reasonably interesting. But Twohy’s last major writing/directing effort was The Chronicles of Riddick. Say it ain’t so, Olyphant!

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

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

(w/ apologies to Abe Simpson)

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

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

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

— Peter Smith

Morning Deal Report: I Had That Reverse-Big Screenplay Idea In College, You Bastards

Peter Smith — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Leslie Mann has joined the cast of 17, the "reverse Big" starring Zac Efron as a disgruntled adult who magically relives his teenage years. That bumps it up a bit in anticipation value.

Jessica Biel will star in Die a Little, a thriller with a hilarious title set in '50s Los Angeles.

Rumor has it that the so-called "creative differences" leading to Ryan Gosling's departure from The Lovely Bones were more personal; apparently Peter Jackson disliked Gosling immediately.

— Peter Smith