Tag: Martin Scorsese (Page 4 of 10)

Monday movie news

The Deadline crew has really been working overtime these last few days, so there’s much to talk about as a new week begins.

* I’m not kidding about the pace of news from Deadline today. Just as I was starting to finish writing this, Mike Fleming broke the news that we have a “Superman” director who’ll be working with producer Christopher Nolan, and he is one Zack Snyder of “300,” “Watchmen,’ the “Dawn of the Dead” remake and that owl movie that’s out right now. Expect a fightin’ Supes. Should you expect a good Supes movie? Dunno. I never understood the grief that “Superman Returns” got. It was a nice, fun movie in the best senses of the words “nice” and “fun.” Will this one be all grimness and unnecessary darkness? I hope not.

*  Fox landed the film adaptation rights for apparently the hottest book of the moment, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter which is being produced by Tim Burton and directed by Timur Bekmanbetov (“Night Watch,” “Wanted“), who purchased the rights with their own money. And it’s not like they were afraid to show they really wanted it:

When Tim and Timur and their entourage of reps came to the Fox…they were met with a huge banner at the gate. It had the title treatment of the script and was emblazoned, “Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov present Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”. At their parking spot were signs saying “Parking For Vampire Hunters Only: park at your own risk,” and so forth. There were bloody footprints lining the walkway and stairs leading from their cars to the meeting in Building 88 with images from the book and lines from the script. As if that were not enough, there also were bloody axes strewn about, and a bugle player in a Confederate uniform playing “Taps” as the filmmakers walked to the meeting..

Yes, like Camelot, Hollywood is a silly place, and I sort of like it that way. I just wished I enjoyed Bekmambetov’s movies, because I didn’t.

* Re: silliness. Check out this promotion for “Jackass 3D”

* I seriously dislike writing about stories that say that so-and-so is “about to be” “offered” a part. There are simply too many items like that and too many “ifs” (maybe the studio will change their minds; maybe the star will say “no,” etc.) and I prefer to wait until the story is further down the road. Nevertheless, Mike Fleming has reported that Emma Stone is about to be offered the part of Mary Jane Watson in the Marc Webb-directed 3D “Spiderman” reboot opposite Andrew Garfield.

awsmmj

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Boardwalk Empire 1.3 – Feet of Clay

So where were we? Oh, right: the blood-covered guy in the woods.

The lone gunshot victim is being hustled into the emergency room, having somehow managed to survive for several days in the woods. How he managed to do this, however, remains a mystery…or, at least, it does to Eli, anyway. “He’s fat?” suggests Eli. “He’s insulated? I don’t know. How should I know? I’m not a doctor.” Nucky’s pissed off about the whole situation, but he’s particularly angry at Jimmy…and, really, can you blame him? Nucky tells Eli to take care of the situation, and he certainly gives it his best shot, but attempts to smother the poor bastard with a pillow fail, though it’s not clear whether it’s because Eli’s a bad smotherer or if the guy just has really good lungs. Either way, it’s a minor miracle that Eli manages to quickly set aside the pillow just before Van Alden and his boys swing in to the question the fellow.

Catching the tail end of Nucky’s charitable phone call served as yet another piece of evidence that he’s had his own issues with a child at some point in his past. As ever, it was nice to see as much of Lucy’s body as possible – little did we know how much more we’d be getting later – but when she started talking about the possibility of having a baby, I thought the way she said “mommy” was highly disconcerting. I know some guys get off on baby talk, but hearing her talk that way while half naked and seconds away from giving a blow job, all I could say was, “Ew.”

Wow, I knew Nucky was a big shot, but when you’re big enough to get Eddie Cantor to play your private party, you’re really something. Eli pops ’round to tell Nucky about the situation at the hospital, but when Nucky tries to give him shit for not having stayed at the hospital to protect their patient, Eli – otherwise distracted by Cantor’s goo-goo-googly eyes, basically says, “This ain’t my problem, go be pissed at Jimmy,” and to echo my statement from a few paragraphs back, can you really blame him?

Speaking of Jimmy, when they put the focus on his fascination with how his wife could keep their son still long enough to take his picture, followed by him flipping through the photo album, I thought it was simply to offer a sense of how depressed he was with the lost time between him and his family and how different he and his wife have become. I didn’t anticipate that it would lead to that scene with Jimmy and Tommy ending up at the photographer’s studio. I can see why he would’ve been suspicious of the photographer at first, based on the scandalous shot of his wife baring her shoulder, but once Jimmy had met the man and his wife and seen how comfortable Tommy was around both of them…I dunno, I guess I just thought it would dissipate somewhat. Instead, he seemed to get even more jealous, though part of that could simply be because he’s dealing with so many emotions that he just doesn’t know what to feel.

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City Island

City Island is a beach-side neighborhood in the Bronx that’s so idyllic looking it’s hard to believe non-millionaires can afford to live there. Andy Garcia stars as hereditary homeowner Vince Rizzo, a prison guard — excuse me, “corrections officer” — who is also secretly an aspiring actor. When an inmate (Steven Strait) turns out to be his heretofore unknown son, he takes the handsome ex-con home without a word of explanation to anyone. This is a dangerous move, as his family is already seething with Italian-American emotion. Wife Joyce (Julianna Margulies) is lonely and convinced that Vince’s alleged poker games — cover for the acting classes he takes from a curmudgeonly Alan Arkin — are cover for an affair. The Rizzos’ beautiful college student daughter (Garcia’s real life daughter, Dominik García-Lorido) is secretly stripping for cash. Meanwhile, their gawky teen son (Ezra Miller, the funniest person in the movie) is nursing a fetish involving the giving of culinary pleasure to obese women. The final turns of the screw are Vince’s friendship with a very pretty fellow acting student (Emily Mortimer) and an audition for, naturally, the latest Martin Scorsese crime epic. Yes, “City Island” is terribly contrived, but the film is full of funny dialogue, good acting, and genuine feeling that nicely papers over the problems. Writer-director — and sometime classic film blogger — Raymond De Felitta is no visual stylist and may be too eager too please, but he knows how to entertain.

Click to buy “City Island”

Boardwalk Empire 1.2 – And the world turns…

When the second episode of “Boardwalk Empire” kicks off, it’s a snowy day in 1920, but things are starting not on a boardwalk in Atlantic City but, rather, outside a church in Chicago. It’s the funeral for Big Jim Colosimo, and the reporters are already swarming around Johnny Torrio about his possible connections in Big Jim’s sudden and untimely demise by lead poisoning…as well they should. Still, look at the lovely flower arrangement sent by Nucky Thompson. He’s a real sweetheart, that one…

They’re definitely going out of their way to underline the fact that Nucky’s still mourning his wife: this is two episodes in a row where there’s been a blatant cut to her picture that’s either been preceded or followed by a shot of Nucky looking sad and lonely. Still, he instantaneously transforms into All Business Nucky when Agent Van Alden bursts into his office, easily finding a smirk to accompany his question about whether Van Alden would like “coffee…or something stronger.” Still, the agent’s skepticism about Hans Schroeder’s connection to the shooting is clearly weighing heavy on Nucky’s mind, as evidenced by his extremely limited tolerance for George when he encounters him early in the episode. I mean, seriously, he barely even tried to mask his distaste for the man.

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Midweek movie news

No promises we’ll have a Friday news dump this week, so you’d better enjoy this edition…

* Well, the big news tonight is most definitely the reorganization going over at the Warner Brothers megastudio. As far as I’m able to suss out, what this amounts to is a consolidation of power for CEO Jeff Bewkes. Reading Nikki Finke‘s current summary of the situation is a bit like reading a Television Without Pity post for a very complicated soap opera you’ve never seen, but Anne Thompson keeps it much, much simpler. On his way out exec Alan Horn is a good guy who Thompson believes was simply superfluous. Another case of a nice guy finishing last?

Warner-Bros

However, Nikki Finke does allude to a very crucial part of the Warners empire, and that’s DC Comics now being headed by the Warners minded and Finke approved Diane Nelson. As it happens, my deep, deep connections in the comics biz were e-mailing me news earlier today — which I was somewhat aware of but failed to properly cover earlier in the week — of an onging reorganization going on over there which certainly ties into the ongoing attempts at Warners to become more aggressive regarding comics adaptations along the lines of what Marvel Entertainment has been doing for some time — and also to try and avoid more flops like “Jonah Hex.”

There was even talk some talk of DC becoming entirely a West Coast operation, but that would be a major breach of publishing industry tradition with some actual problems involved and, in any case, thanks to FedEx and the ‘net, freelancers can live where they want now. Heidi MacDonald’s great comics blog The Beat has been covering this end of the story and you read about some of what’s going on here.

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