Filmmaker and Panavision cofounder Richard Moore was probably the least famous person whose passing today received any notice, but he certainly had a big impact on what you see at the movie theater and on DVD. Below are a few trailers for films made the Panavision 65 process he is credited with developing. (Technically, all 70 mm films are really 65mm — 5 milimeters are required for the magnetic sound strips.)
All of these, particularly “Lawrence of Arabia” and “2001” are movies you should try to see on the biggest screen possible, ideally projected on film and in a movie theater. If you’re lucky enough to live someplace where older movies are occasionally still shown on 70mm prints, leap at the chance. Seeing movies like that is too much fun to be left only to hardcore film geeks.
As at least a large chunk of America mourns the passing of Ted Kennedy, today is a day when we honor William Faulkner’s phrase: “The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”
* Did you know that the late Walter Cronkite stumbled into a den of Colombian narco-terrorists? The result was that a few years later the most trusted man in America gave testimony before a Florida jury. No surprise, a major conviction resulted. Now, as Michael Fleming tells it, international thrillmeister Luc Besson wants to turn Uncle Walter into a movie action hero, or something close. Interesting.
* Great news for those of us who are involved with cinema’s past here in Southern California. The endangered film program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has been given a $150,000 reprieve.
* Something tells me that maybe Vin Diesel is taking that Faulkner quote a bit too seriously. Does anyone want XXX III?
* Martin Anderson of Den of Geek wonders about the future of Blu-Ray in general and a newer superduper 3-D compatible version being tied to “Avatar.” He’s right about the still-problematic nature of at least some of the glasses and the fact that we quickly forget we’re even watching 3-D after the first few minutes, so there’s a point of diminishing returns for the viewer which might prevent folks from making the large initial investment in the technology. For me, I love 3-D as a novelty for certain kinds of movies, but I really don’t think we need it to become standard. Having 3-D available to me at home would almost defeat the purpose and ruin the fun.
* More deaths: Writer turned film producer turned diarist Dominick Dunne (h/t David Hudson) and widescreen/large format pioneer, Panavision cofounder, cinematographer, and director Richard Moore.
A few more items with a retro cast, starting with a sad one.
* It’s simply too big a show business and media story not to mention that the death of Michael Jackson has been ruled a homicide. Though you can argue that it shouldn’t be more than a legal story, there’s really no underestimating the pop-cultural impact of something like this. Certainly, it won’t be lowering the temperature around the upcoming movie built around Jackson’s last performances.
* On a far more pleasant note, Anne Thompson has casting news on Andrew Stanton’s upcoming non-Pixar film of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars.” I’m not familiar with most of the names, but Samantha Morton is definitely cool with me.
* Anne Thompson also posted a trailer that I’m borrowing below for Christopher Nolan’s new film with Leonardo DiCaprio, “Inception.” Ms. Thompson calls it a “mind movie.” I wonder if everyone doing well in Hollywood from studio heads to head waiters shouldn’t just tithe to the estate of Phillip K. Dick without whom we’d have none of the film’s in this subgenre would exist. If ever a writer’s impact was underestimated in his own lifetime, he’d be the guy.
Either the Weinstein Company did an extremely good job of managing expectations or box office prognosticators simply underestimated the potential of a director/brand name with a strong suit for entertaining a large swath of the moviegoing public, a premise with fairly proven guy appeal (revenge + WWII), and the additional gravy of an A-lister in a juicy, semi-lead role. In any case, for the second time in as many weeks, a very well-reviewed genre film has significantly over-performed and “Inglourious Basterds” has raked in an exceedingly healthy $37.6 million, say the box office estimates promulgated by THR, Nikki Finke, Variety, Box Office Mojo, etc.
Concerns which I brought up last time that the latest from Quentin Tarantino might be too cinema-esoteric for mainstream audiences have apparently proven to be a non-issue, at least for weekend #1. It’s outstanding foreign performance totaling $27.5 million is no surprise at all, especially given the subject matter and Tarantino’s choice — which almost certainly made his job harder — to film the movie in several different languages rather than opting for the traditional mid-Atlantic or vaguely nation-specific accents we usually see in American-shot international tales. These are both, by the way, significant financial personal bests for Tarantino. Of course, that’s not “Transformers” numbers, but people will actually still likely be watching this one twenty years from now and probably longer, which means it will be making money for the putatively on-the-edge Harvey Weinstein and Universal for that time as well. The same is also probably true in re: Tristar and Sony for this week’s #2 performer and that other transnational “well reviewed genre film” I mentioned above, “District 9.” The South Africa-set, politically charged violent sci-fi action piece brought in $18.9 million for a drop of just under 50% from last week, as there proves to be a market for combining a certain amount of brains with violent brawn. That’s even more impressive given the stiff competition from “Basterds” for largely the same audience.
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.
