From 1964’s “Robin and the Seven Hoods,” which I’ve never actually seen all the way through. Considering what an astonishing talent Mr. Davis was and how he never quite his due, you can’t really blame the guy for wanting to blow off a little steam.
Category: Actors (Page 132 of 343)
I’ve been distracted wrapping up another project, but a few things of note did transpire to cap off this doozy of a week while I was otherwise absorbed.
* Both Variety and Nikki Finke are reporting that Miramax, the once groundbreaking “mini-major” founded and eventually sold by Harvey and Bob Weinstein that was named after their parents, Mira and Max, is being downsized/restructured by Disney. Meanwhile, grinning Disney Channel head Rich Ross is apparently a near-certainty to step into the void left by the departed Mousehouse chair, Dick Cook. I’m not sure why, but I have a funny feeling about this.
* Finke also has word that The Hollywood Reporter (aka THR) may well become a weekly as well as going behind a ‘net “wall.” If so, that’s going to leave a heckuva void for someone to fill online. If Finke has any visions of empire, this could be her moment — but she can’t do that alone. Personally, I’ll miss the video versions of the box office prognostications of the man I call “jolly Carl DiOrio.” He just seems so happy when he talks how well movies are going to do each week.
* THR has details on the 1993 settlement between Roman Polanski and his now adult victim. The odd part is that the records here don’t show whether or not Polanski ever paid it. If he didn’t, the woman is one extra-forgiving lady. I suspect he did.
* I’m not quite a diehard member of his cult, but I’ve always had a soft-spot for director John Carpenter (“The Thing,” “They Live,” “Escape from New York”) since seeing the original “Assault on Precinct 13” — a clever combination of Howard Hawks “Rio Bravo” and George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” with gang members replacing frontier desperadoes and zombies. His latest project, reportedly called “Riot” deals with another relic of my childhood, Arnold Shapiro’s “Scared Straight.” I’ll never forget how shocked I was to hear F-words coming from my TV set. Who knew that one day cable TV would make that a near daily occurrence.
Now, I was the kind of kid who freaked out if a teacher even looked at me in a cross fashion. Nevertheless, it definitely worked on me as I’m here to tell you that I’m pretty sure I’ve never committed a felony, even by accident, though it’s always possible I’ve forgotten something. On the other hand, my parking ticket past is thoroughly checkered.
Anyhow, the latest news on the project via Krystal Clark at ScreenCrave is that Nicolas Cage, who was at one point attached, has likely left the project and the same may also go for Carpenter. Could’ve been fun, I guess.
And now a moment of vintage Carpenter.
There was a time — I think it was, I don’t know, two weeks ago — when horror comedies were supposed to be, now and forever, box office poison. “Too funny to be scary and too scary to be funny” was the not so intelligent line. Such was the Hollywood conventional wisdom, until someone went and made a horror comedy that struck a chord.
So, apparently the peanut butter of horror can be blended with the chocolate of comedy if you have lots of action and sufficient gore, the trailer for the movie in question is funny enough that audiences will be sold on it as a more or less straight comedy…and, oh yeah, almost everybody who can stomach seems to love it. Such certainly seems to be the case with “Zombieland.” The flick, which features indie stars Jesse Eisenberg and Abigail Breslin, is eliciting excitement both from industry types and critics who have graced it with an 89% “Fresh” Rotten Tomatoes rating (just two points shy of 2004’s instant zombie comedy classic, “Shaun of the Dead.”)
Still, for yours truly who loves comedy horror but has a well documented issue with gore, particularly of the zombie variety, this means a probable long period of movie procrastination followed by a small bonanza for our nation’s distillers. For top-billed costar Woody Harrelson, though, it means a comeback. Jolly Carl DiOrio of THR and Andrew Stewart of Variety guess that it will gross somewhere around $20-$25 million or perhaps further north in over 3,000 theaters. If it wasn’t such a busy weekend, I might think it could do even better.
As for the number two spot, I gather most of the prognosticators expect yet another very good weekend for the animated family hit, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” but after that, the playing field gets a bit crowded. For one thing, Pixar is making things interesting with 3-D redoes of “Toy Story,” and “Toy Story 2” being released as a double feature. It’s a pretty awesome package of family entertainment and I could see it cutting into this weekend’s “Meatballs” take.
I’ll be back late tonight with what I’m sure will be a Polanski-free edition of the weekend box office preview. However, at the risk of walking this particular vicious dog around the park too many times, below are some semi-random clips with examples of that special Roman Polanski touch that might have been a bit too effectively creepy and/or offbeat for the director’s own good.
Here’s one of my favorite film openings with one of the best movie themes of the sixties by Christopher Komeda.
And here’s a scene from one Polanski film I’ve never seen — but not for lack of wanting to — it’s “Cul-de-Sac” and below is an incendiary moment between the very stylish Françoise Dorléac and the very distinctive Lionel Stander, while Donald Pleasance snoozes off to the side.
With a debt of gratitude to Dennis Cozzalio here is our belated presentation of “The Making of ‘Nation’s Pride’,” i.e., a fake promo for the movie within a movie of “Inglourious Basterds.”
It ain’t perfect. (If you thought Eli Roth’s performance as “the Bear Jew” was lacking, wait till you see him as the shades wearing Nazi director Alois Von Eichberg — oy vey!) but Sylvester Groth as producer Joseph Goebbels and Julie Dreyfuss as his, er, muse, Francesca Mondino are great. This is just the thing for those of us who just can’t get enough of what I think is almost certainly going to be this year’s most irresistible movie.
And, as a bonus, here’s the a film clip from the film within a film, directed by Eli Roth (and, fortunately, not starring him).
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