You are browsing the archive for May 2012.
Filmmaker Chris Eyre made his name with his 1998 debut Smoke Signals, a delicate indie adapted from a short story by Sherman Alexie about two young men living on the Coeur D’Alene Indian Reservation who go an a road trip to retrieve the belongings of one’s recently deceased estranged father. It was a small, wistful thing that offered a look at characters and a community that don’t get a lot of time on screen. Hide Away, Eyre’s newest work — since Smoke Signals he’s made four features that have mostly headed to TV — is in the same emotional vein as that first film, but heads away from the rez for a setting that’s more figurative and characters that are more generic (by choice, though it’s also a problem). It’s a slender story of mourning that manages some lovely bits of mood while also being dreary and a little preposterous in its spareness.
Josh Lucas does a heroic amount to ground Hide Away in real feeling in the lead role, an unnamed man who is in mourning for reasons we slowly start to understand, one related to the wife and kids we see him with in gauzy flashbacks. “Are you divorced?” people ask him. “No, I’m not,” he responds numbly. He’s told by the man from whom he buys a boat at the start of a film that a lot of divorced guys apparently do what he’s doing. He doesn’t know anything about boats — what he’s looking for is an escape, a refuge — which is why he ends up with a sailboat in barely functioning condition, the Hesperus, named for the evening star. Arriving in a black suit like he either fled straight from a business meeting or a funeral, the would-be mariner pokes around the decrepit vessel on which he…
This just in from Disney HQ: After bashing records across the globe, The Avengers will go from puny Earthbound box office domination to the final frontier, screening for six lucky multinational cosmonauts currently in orbit: “Marvel Studios announced today that they arranged with NASA to transfer their record-breaking blockbuster film Marvel’s The Avengers to NASA’s Mission Control in Houston, which will uplink the film to the International Space Station (ISS), currently orbiting 220 miles above Earth. The film will then be screened for the space station crew’s exclusive enjoyment.” (Take that, Pentagon!) Keep an eye out for Loki up there fellas, eh? [Press release]
Why can’t heroines just be heroines anymore, instead of micromanaged personalities who may as well have the words “Role Model” tattooed across their foreheads? That’s the fate suffered by poor Kristen Stewart as the warrior princess athlete orphan Christ figure Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman. She’s not just Joan of Arc — she’s Joan of Archetypes.
Moviegoers who love Kristen Stewart — and they include a distinctive subgroup who avoid the Twilight pictures as a vampire eschews sunlight — have long been waiting for Snow White and the Huntsman, hoping to see this enormously appealing actress in a role that is, at last, worthy of her. I think Stewart has held her ground admirably enough in the Twilight pictures, particularly the profoundly crazy-ass Breaking Dawn – Part I, which gives her character something to do other than swan about moodily. (They don’t call her Bella Swan for nothing.) She also made a fine and fierce Joan Jett in Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways. But Snow White and the Huntsman, the debut feature of Rupert Sanders, does her no favors. This Snow White is clearly designed to be a young woman of agency, not a girly-girl victim who waits around for a prince to save her. The problem is that she’s so admirable, so aggressively self-reliant, so beloved and respected by little forest animals as well as simple-minded villagers, that she barely has time to be a woman. Stewart is laced so tightly into her character that she can hardly breathe, let alone give a performance. Luckily, Charlize Theron — as the really, really wicked Queen Ravenna — is on hand to give us something to watch, and boy, does she.
This is, of course, a “dark” version of the…
In the wake of Rich Ross’s departure from Disney, former Warner Bros. chairman Alan Horn has landed the job of replacing him — and turning the studio around from its John Carter epic fail. Horn, who guided WB to hit franchises like Harry Potter and The Dark Knight (and, fun fact, was also in the Air Force!), will now head all of Disney, Pixar, and Marvel Studios films, along with Touchstone-distributed DreamWorks titles. So, best of luck. No pressure or anything!
Full press release:
BURBANK, Calif. – May 31, 2012 – Bob Iger, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, announced today that Alan Horn has been named Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios effective June 11. Horn will oversee worldwide operations for The Walt Disney Studios including production, distribution and marketing for live-action and animated films from Disney, Pixar and Marvel, as well as marketing and distribution for DreamWorks Studios films released under the Touchstone Pictures banner. Disney’s music and theatrical divisions will also report to Horn.
Horn has been a prominent figure in the film and television industry overseeing creative executive teams responsible for some of the world’s most successful entertainment properties including the Harry Potter film franchise and the hit television series Seinfeld among others.
“Alan not only has an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience in the business, he has a true appreciation of movie making as both an art and a business,” said Iger. “He’s earned the respect of the industry for driving tremendous, sustained creative and financial success, and is also known and admired for his impeccable taste and integrity. He brings all of this to his new role leading our studio group, and I truly look forward to working with him.”
“I’m incredibly excited about joining The
…
It’s no secret that Chinese censors are tough nuts to crack when it comes to Hollywood imports like Men in Black 3. And, sure — those scenes of aliens with reptilian tongues disguised as Chinatown restaurant workers serving up contraband foodstuffs played on easy jokes, and were reportedly excised from the Chinese release. But was there something more subtle and subversive at play when Agent J “neuralized” a crowd of innocent Chinatown bystanders?
Per the Telegraph, Men in Black 3’s Chinatown scenes were the focus of China’s censors, who took pains to cut out moments from the film that painted people of Chinese ancestry — well, aliens posing as Asians working in a Chinese restaurant, at least — in a negative light. Reports vary on just how much was cut out, with The Telegraph citing 13 minutes of edited footage.
Sure, whatever. Take out the seemingly villainous Chinese folks. More interesting is the speculation surrounding why a scene depicting Smith mind-wiping a group of civilians right after his Chinatown brawl might have been removed.
“This could have been a hint on the use of internet censorship to maintain social stability,” commented China’s Southern Daily newspaper (via The Telegraph).
Censoring the MIB neuralizer from audiences because it’s a form of insidious government mind control? Hilariously ironic. I’d like to think Barry Sonnenfeld and Smith and Co. had this kind of subversive agenda in mind, but YEAH RIGHT. All I want to know is, how can I neuralyze that hideous Pitbull song from my brain?
Casting news continues to trickle out for the film based on the wild life and times of CBGB, none of which is quite as eye-opening as word that the story of one of New York City’s most legendary, lamented live-music venues will be filmed largely in… Savannah, Georgia.
So it goes! We get some stuntbozo driving a sportscar into a Sbarro for Jerry Bruckheimer, and Savannah gets Malin Åkerman as Debbie Harry, Rupert Grint as Cheetah Chrome, Joel David Moore as Joey Ramone, and Alan Rickman in the aforementioned role of club proprietor Hilly Kristal, all reviving the dawn of punk and new wave in the edgy metropolis where the Girl Scouts were founded Hollywood honchos go to self-immolate. Rock on, bitches:
All of the movie’s interior shots will be done at Meddin Studios, which will be transformed to look like the iconic New York club, said director Randall Miller.
“We’re going to build the interior of the club on the stages here,” Miller said. “Then the plan is we’ll do some shooting on the streets of downtown Savannah — and finally a few days in New York.
“We’re using both Georgia and New York for New York,” he joked. [...] “Savannah has a kind of downtown area that could really work for so many cities,” Miller said. “That translates pretty well in what we’re doing.”
Fine, do what you’ve gotta do. By which I mean cast James Franco as Richard Hell already.
[The Strut, Savannah Morning News via EV Grieve]
“That’s right, Tom Cruise is the same age that Wilford Brimley was when Brimley starred as a grandfather in Cocoon” — as are George Clooney, Eddie Murphy and eight others featured in this new, head-exploding context. “[... I]t’s not really a statement on the age of Cruise or the other people on this list — it’s the fact that Wilford Brimley was only 49 years old when he starred as an elderly man who leaves Earth with a group of aliens in an effort to escape the specter of death. (His friends were played by the more age-appropriate 76-year-old Don Ameche, 75-year-old Jessica Tandy, 73-year-old Hume Cronyn, 76-year-old Jack Gilford; today, Brimley is still only 77 years old.)” [Huffington Post]
