A series of clips inspired by guess which movie, starting with my favorite sixties war flick, Robert Aldrich’s brilliant, deeply cynical “The Dirty Dozen.” Here, mega-man-among-men Lee Marvin gets his first look at his new charges and shows John Cassavettes a little tough love.
Category: Movie Dramas (Page 139 of 188)
A few last minute items as the the inglourious weekend gets seriously underway.
* If the movie world had a “Friday news dump” the way they do in D.C., the news that Martin Scorsese’s Dennis Lehane adaptation, “Shutter Island,” has been moved from November of ’09 to February of ’10 might be so handled. No such luck for Paramount as Nikki Finke, Anne Thompson and Screenrant and pretty much every two-bit blogger on the ‘net, including me, has something to say. This is not the first promising film to be so switched. “The Wolf Man” was also shunted by Universal from the traditionally good-movie rich fall to the less auspicious late winter.
Finances are obviously at the root, but speculation is rife on how the move might have been influenced by the Academy’s recent switch to ten awards annually. In any case, I tend to buy at least two of Nikki Finke’s reasons — a simple delay to spread out the financial cost of marketing the film around during tough economic times (perhaps with the hope of a better 2010) and the fact that star Leonardo DiCaprio wouldn’t have been able to promote the film this autumn. Considering they had people already fairly worked about the film, it’s a definite sign of some fragility, I’d say.
* Will the Twitter effect make movies better? Is it even real? Michael Sragow has a decent, yet frustrating, article on the ongoing topic. (H/t Anne Thompson.)
* After making one deal to direct an extremely ill-advised possible “Battlestar Galatica” re-reboot, Bryan Singer has also signed on to do a remake of John Boorman’s King Arthur epic, “Excalibur.” I love John Boorman’s work in general and also tales of chivalry and swordplay, yet I kind of hate (or at least can’t sit through) the original film, which many love but I find unspeakably turgid. So, I guess I’m open-minded about what Singer will do with it. Can almost only be an improvement for me. Of course, neither of these films may ever actually happen. Bryan Singer’s next film is expected to be “Jack, the Giant Killer.”
An interesting note about the 1962 movie version of the fairy tale (one no one ever bothered to tell me…I always thought it was another name for “Jack and the Beanstalk”). Many musicals have had their songs removed to be released in non-musical versions over the years, this is one of the very few where a producer attempted to turn it into a musical after the fact.
* And because everyone else is giving it to you, I might as well also serve up the trailer for Michael Moore’s new “Capitalism: A Love Story.” It made me laugh but of Christopher Campbell, whose favorite words lately seem to be “dated” and “derivative” (but not “delightful” or “delovely”) and his crew of usual suspects mostly think it disappoints. Do these guys ever like anything? Campbell never seems to. In comments, JoblessInTampa has some choice words for the Eastern film geek elites on the issue of being out-of-step.
There are actually four new major releases coming out this weekend, but only one you’ll likely be hearing much about…and you’ve already been hearing about it, and hearing about it, and hearing about it, and we (mostly me) here at Premium Hollywood have been as guilty as anyone.
Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” is set to make upwards of $25 million says jolly Carl DiOrio of THR and The Wrap’s Lucas Shaw. Those of you who have been following this know that the film’s take has been given more attention than a lot of movies because many suspect it will be crucial to the fortunes of Harvey and Bob Weinstein, formerly of Miramax and now of The Weinstein Company. (They say that they’re actually doing okay.) Harvey Weinstein is such a well known character that all the makers of “Entourage” had to do was hire similarly proportioned character actor Maury Chaykin and call him “Harvey” and 1/3 of the audience probably knew who was referenced. The Weinsteins have always been something of a throwback to the movie moguls of old times with their seat of the pants judgments and risk taking, so that lends a bit drama to the matter.
As for the critical reception, it’s about as good as Tarantino and the Weinsteins could have asked for, especially given that the film’s Cannes premier was greeted with a chorus that some have described as negative but was really all over the place; some proclaimed instant love, others expressed varying degrees of disappointment, and others were baffled. Now, after some apparently very effective tinkering on Tarantino’s part, the U.S. chorus at is singing mostly in harmony with an 88% “Fresh” at Rotten Tomatoes. Though there has been a smattering of controversy over the film’s “once upon a time in Nazi occupied France” tone/plot no-longer-surprises, it’s a far cry even from the debates over violence that raged over “Kill Bill, Volume 1.” Oh well, one less source of free publicity.
There is an additional lure this time. For once, Tarantino isn’t reviving the career of his lead actor but is actually benefiting from the presence of an A-lister in no particular need of a comeback in Brad Pitt. The possible fly in the ointment is that we critics are different from other people: we see more films. No director on the planet so makes movies for movie fans as Tarantino and, as with his other films, there’s always the chance that viewers who aren’t fully steeped in cinema might be lost at sea. As Anne Thompson wrote a couple of weeks back after seeing what she thought was a greatly improved cut of the film:
“Inglourious Basterds” is great fun—for cinephiles. It’s not a mainstream movie. If it gets to $50 million domestic there will be cheers through the corridors of Universal and Weinstein Co. And it should easily do better than that overseas.
That second part of Thompson’s prophesy has already begun to be proven, with Variety‘s Pamela McClintock reporting Tarantino’s strongest opening yet in France, Belgium, and Francophone Switzerland. As for the reaction of regular ol’ Americans, only time will tell. Still, everybody seems to be expecting it to defeat the similarly male-leaning and violent “District 9” and at least match the $25.1 million opening weekend of “Kill Bill, Volume 2.
The week of Tarantino continues with some left over material from last night. First, I implore you to watch the terrific video below from cinephile critic turned cinephile critic/filmmaker Matt Zoeller Seitz on the verbiage of Tarantino. (You can read more about his thinking at his link above.) (H/t Jeffrey Wells.)
Actually, there’s even more because Matt and the very cool Keith Uhlich of the very cool blog, The House Next Door, had a very lengthy and in-depth discussion about Tarantino back in 2007 that’s well worth your time if you care about the state of this sort of movie making. It’s funny that I agree more with Keith on Tarantino (well, I’m not at all sure about the spirituality), but I certainly wouldn’t choose the same list of favorite critics, which makes it even more intriguing to me. I guess I should finish reading it, then?
On a somewhat related topic, Anne Thompson considers this moment in the career of Tarantino’s mogul benefactor, Harvey W.
Quentin Tarantino has eaten my day! And there’s no guarantee it won’t also be Tarantino Wednesday-Sunday!
Nothing to do but share a few links you may have missed and I’ve failed to include here prior.
I tend to fight the temptation vigorously, but we film geeks love our lists, and Tarantino has participated in two this week. The first is his twenty favorite films that have come out since he began directing in 1992. It’s been on every blog on town, so I don’t see why we should be any different. (H/t Anne Thompson and every other blog in town.)
Do I agree with his choices? Nah, not very many. Some are downright baffling, including his favorite, “Battle Royale.” It’s an entertaining/disturbing little movie but, though it was a huge film for many, it wouldn’t come close for me to something like, say, the vastly less well known “A Dirty Carnival” — it might make my top twenty for the year it came out. On the other hand, agreeing is never the point of this film criticism game; that’s a mistake too many make. Also, my list covering the same period would have at least two, maybe three, but no more than four, Tarantino movies, so there’s that.
And that other list. In this case, Tarantino collaborated with the critics of England’s Time Out on a catalogue of what they see as the “The 50 Greatest World War II Movies.” It’s a genuinely interesting group of movies, and there isn’t a single film that I don’t think should be seen on it (including a few I need to get caught up on myself). Actually, there is one exception. I was essentially praying for death through of all “The Thin Red Line,” so bored was I with the intense beauty of Terence Malick’s imagery, so I can’t really recommend that one. Some people think it’s great. Also, thanks to my WWII movie-loving buddy, Randy Reynaldo, for sending me the link. And we both agree: Where’s “Stalag 17” Where???
The invaluable David Hudson has tons more, some of which may still end up here, too. More to come, for sure, in any case.
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