The Empress of Cinephile Bloggers has some great news thanks in part to the good folks over at Turner Classic Movies. As far as I know, she’ll be the first film blogger to help program a series on the network, or any network, which she’ll be doing with Lou Lumenick of The New York Post. As far as I’m concerned, it couldn’t happen to a nicer or more thoughtful and talented member of our film-crazed clan.
This scene from one of the series selections, directed by Joseph von Sternberg and featuring the wonder that was Marlene Dietrich, seems as appropriate a clip as any to help her celebrate.
* Halcyon, a somewhat odd firm with an all but empty website, has officially put its one and only asset and reason for being, the rights to “The Terminator” franchise, on the auction block. So reports Variety and Nikki Finke. Suddenly, over at Whedonesque — yes, the Joss Whedon fansite where the beloved cult TV and occasional film creator occasionally posts — Whedon links to it and posts a very serious offer. So serious, in fact, that Finke — who occasionally claims she “doesn’t do geek” runs the item. Meanwhile, back at Whedonesque, the Whe-man and a commenter who appears to be both a fan of the Joss and the late singer-songwriter Warren Zevon (some folks are just blessed with too much taste) note an earlier serious offer.
Quote of the week (probably):
Well, here’s what I have to say to Nikki Finke: you are a fine journalist and please don’t ever notice me.
* Sony Classic has picked up the rights to “Mother and Child,” the latest film from arthouse/cable director Rodrigo Garcia, still probably best known to a lot of people as the son of Columbian literary great Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s not too surprising a pick-up, even in this tough market, given that the cast includes Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, up-and-comer Kerry Washington (“Ray,” “The Fantastic Four”), and Samuel L. Jackson.
* The box office “actuals” for most of the big releases turned out to be a couple of million higher than the estimates I reported yesterday. Sorry MJ’s ghost.
* This is a few days old, but for those of us who find ourselves unduly fascinating by the Church of Scientology, via Kim Masters, here’s an interesting new story opened up last week. Writer-director Paul Haggis (“Crash”) announced he’s leaving the church.
He’s got an awe-inspiring 266 credits listed on his IMDb c.v. Nevertheless, finding good embeddable clips for Christopher Lee, one of the most beloved yet also underrated actors of the 20th and 21st centuries, hasn’t exactly been easy. Sad, considering how much enjoyment he’s given audiences, how many good movies he’s enlivened, and how many mediocre-to-godawful ones he’s come darn close to saving single-handedly. However, in honor of his well deserved knighthood today, we have what we have. And they both involve music.
My personal favorite Christopher Lee movie, and I think his as well, is 1973’s “The Wicker Man.” Below in a great scene which, for reasons much too complicated to go into here, is deleted from the most commonly seen version. In it, Lee as the avuncular and dangerous pagan Lord Summerisle takes part in a ritual with Britt Ekland as the local high priestess of sexuality. He also recites some poetry by Walt Whitman, as Edward Woodward’s repressed “Christian copper” tries to get to some sleep, snails make more snails, and Peter Giovanni sings the hauntingly erotic “Gently Johnny.”
Lee actually sings — quite well — in “The Wicker Man” but that can’t be found. So, moving with warp speed from the sublime to the completely ridiculous, I found this incredibly strange number featuring a full-throated Lee from “The Return of Captain Invincible,” an ultra-ultra-obscure very pre-“Dr. Horrible” 1983 superhero musical starring Alan Arkin and Lee, with music by a number of people including Richard O’Brien of “Rocky Horror” fame. In it, a villainous Sir Christopher sings of a subject of my own interest — cocktails. Always, a gentleman of taste.
It had to happen eventually: the Deschanel sisters – Emily and Zooey – are teaming up for an episode of the former’s Fox series, “Bones.”
Zooey, most recently seen in “(500) Days of Summer,” will guest-star in “The Goop on the Girl,” a special holiday-themed episode which is scheduled to air on Thursday, Dec. 10, at 8 PM. She’ll play Margaret Whitesell, a distant relative of Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan – that’s Emily’s character, of course – who’s discovered by Brennan’s dad, Max (Ryan O’Neal), and is invited to spend the holidays with them. All of this is going on while Brennan and Booth (the one and only David Boreanaz) are in the midst of investigating the death of a man dressed as Santa Claus who was blown up after a botched bank robbery.
Anyone want to bet on the odds of Emily and Zooey looking at each other at some point and trying to spot the family resemblance, only to have the moment end with one of them (or possibly both, in sync) saying, “I don’t see it”?
No, I’m not reminding you about your subscription to Better Homes and Gardens but merely suggesting that you check out Glenn Kenny‘s amusing post today about “Logan’s Run,” Jenny Agutter, and a certain key moment in the lives of young males in the days of a more forgiving MPAA. And, though I still a bit punchy after my epic look at the Scream Awards yesterday (which I’m still correcting punctuation errors and typos in), there is movie news to recount as second, third and fourth lives for news stories seem to be the theme of the day.
* Setting a movie going record shouldn’t be too hard to pull off if you’re one of the world’s most famous, talented, and bizarrely controversial pop stars and the memory of your unexpected death is still fresh in everyone’s mind. It’s even easier if you open your movie on a Tuesday. However, it sure seems that critics and audiences mostly agree that “This is It” delivers the goods and that the Jackson shows really would have been remarkable. Given all that, I think we can agree that yesterday’s $2.2. million is only the beginning.
I also want to direct your attention to Roger Ebert’s extremely positive review in which he wonders aloud about Jackson’s ability to perform on an extremely high level while apparently shot full of drugs. Frequent readers of Ebert will have long sensed that addiction is a topic he has some first-hand experience with (he confirmed it recently when he came out as a recovering alcoholic), so this is an especially poignant read.
* I meant to post this on Monday, but Joe Mozingo of the L.A. Times put together a pretty excellent run-down on the entire Roman Polanski debacle. I have some relatively minor differences with certain aspects of the article, but on the whole this is the best round-up of the actual information on the case that I’ve read and is appropriately tough and factual. One interesting fact that I’d actually forgotten in all this: the victim herself has said on television of the crime that “It wasn’t a rape.” You can speculate on her reasons for saying that, but perhaps people should have been a bit less hysterical in their criticism of Whoopi Goldberg over her notorious statement. You’d think she’d committed “rape-rape,” when a certain amount of confusion about this case is actually pretty natural. My single favorite word in this piece: “alleged.”
* Anne Thompson argues for a second chance and a “serious release” for “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.” I’m not a fan of the original movie, but she makes Werner Herzog’s more humorous take sound infinitely preferable to the rather pretentious original by Abel Ferrara.
* Speaking of second chances, the inspired comedy of “Black Dynamite” is in bad, bad trouble. It’s not just the man keeping it down, it’s sheer ignorance. See the damn movie, folks. In any case, if you wait much longer, you might not get to see it in a theater at all. That would straight up suck. And remember, we all deserve a second chance.
I’m still not sure what a kid from Hawaii was doing in South Central that fateful night, but you get the point.
