Tag: Oliver Stone (Page 2 of 2)

Midweek movie news

April 7, 2010 /

Getting a bit of an early start and catching up with some news we didn’t discuss yesterday.

* In terms of raw cash, the movies had a record March this year, largely thanks to those inflated, and then extra-inflated, ticket prices for “Alice in Wonderland” in 3-D. We’ll see how long this lasts.

Alice in Wonderland

* RIP Corin Redgrave, of one of the world’s great acting families.

* Reading this Nikki Finke item about what sounds like the increasingly fraught auction of MGM, it really does make it seem like a million years ago when MGM was the absolute epitome, for better and for worse, of Hollywood power.

* I’m breaking a confidence here with this super-secret Twitter leak by Jon Favreau, but it appears that Harrison Ford will be in “Cowboys and Aliens.”

* Universal, which hasn’t exactly been rolling in cash lately, has pulled the plug on “Cartel.” It would have been a remake of the fact-based Italian mafia thriller from 1993, “La Scorta,” set admidst Mexico’s drug wars. Josh Brolin was set to play the lead. Mike Fleming doesn’t specifically mention insurance or the cost of security, but considering the topic and what’s been going in throughout Mexico — apparently including Mexico City where the film was to be shot — it must have been through the roof.

* Master cinephile blogger Dennis Cozzalio checks in and brings word of some cool film fests.

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Actors, Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movie DVDs, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News

I’ve got those midweek movie news blues

April 1, 2010 /

Leonardo DiCaprio* It’s not really new news and I even posted about it before, but Mike Fleming has returned to the possibility that Leonardo DiCaprio may eventually be undertaking the role of John D. MacDonald’s great gumshoe, Travis McGee. However, there’s more this time around. If DiCaprio strikes a lot of us as a counter-intuitive pick for the laid-back, heroic tough guy, the choice of possible director seems even stranger: Oliver Stone. Stone’s often hyperactive style simply strikes me as wrong, unless he can turn himself into Howard Hawks or Clint Eastwood or someone more in that vein.

Still, my discomfort is nothing compared to Drew McWeeney, who is obviously a huge, huge fan of the books and who read a script that he was none too fond of — though it’s been so long since I’ve read the books that I’m so sure why introducing McGee on a surfboard is all that terrible. However, I do remember McGee as being more a fishing-with-his-buddy-Meyer-while sipping-whiskey kind of a guy. By the way, if they don’t cast Paul Giamatti as Meyer, the world just doesn’t really make any sense.

* If some people are made nauseous by the camera work in the Bourne movies, how many more will be made ill if the approach is set in some guy’s bloodstream and in James Cameron-style immersive 3-D? It appears we may be finding out because director Paul Greengrass, whose high-budgetted “Green Zone” has been a commercial and critical disappointment, is “in talks” to be the director on the Cameron-produced 3-D remake of “Fantastic Voyage.” I’m thinking about buying shares in whoever manufactures Dramamine.

* Screenwriters, playwrights, aspiring TV scribes — are you ready for Script Frenzy? I just found out about it. Remember, there are only thirty days in April and the goal is 100 pages.

* Big news for this movie mad, West L.A. bred Bruin boy. Regency chain has purchased the endangered, historic twin single-screen movie theaters that anchor UCLA-adjacent Westwood Village, the appropriately named Fox Village and Bruin theaters. The chain recently let go of an important neighborhood theater a couple of miles east which was turned into a triplex back in the eighties or early nineties, the Fairfax, which anchors the traditionally Jewish neighborhood that is home to Canter’s Deli. Win a few, lose a few, I guess.

Bruin_Theatre,_Westwood,_Los_Angeles,_CA_,_at_night

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/celebrities/201001/william-shatner-captain-kirk-interview?printable=true

* GQ’s Andrew Corsello has a very cool piece up about William Shatner and his battles with irony. But if anyone out there has seen him in Roger Corman’s sole non-genre film, “The Intruder,” they know there was a time when he was a very good actor who could it keep it fairly simple, even playing a villainous antihero, back in 1962.

* I’m a little late on this, but Steven Spielberg absolutely does not, repeat, does not, have Asperger’s Syndrome. In other news, I can now announce that I am 100% free of ovarian cancer.

* Bryan Cranston, star of AMC’s “Breaking Bad” and also the upcoming “John Carter of Mars” is a popular guy around these parts. He’s currently “eying” a part in “Larry Crowne,” the upcoming Tom Hanks starring/directed by dramedy co-starring Julia Roberts and written with Nia Vardalos of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” The character in question is  Roberts’ husband, whose a blogger who spends way too much time “looking at” porn. I wouldn’t know anything about that.

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies

Natural Born Killers: Unrated Director’s Cut

November 7, 2009 /

I have to admit I was a little surprised when Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” was released on Blu-ray before some of his other films, but for Warner Bros. to release another version one year later is just plain unnecessary, not to mention a pretty shitty way to treat your fans. You’d think that if Warner Bros. was going to release an unrated director’s cut, they would have done so the first time around. Instead, those that purchased the R-rated Digibook version last year are going to have an awfully tough decision to make.

Personally, I’ve always found “Natural Born Killers” to be extremely overrated. It’s not that Stone’s satirical message about the media is beyond my understanding, but rather that I think he goes about it in the wrong manner. There’s just nothing to like about the movie (except maybe Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as Australian journalist Wayne Gale), and it really makes me wonder how much better it could have been if the film’s original scripter, Quentin Tarantino, had made it his way instead.

That doesn’t change the fact that “Natural Born Killers” has its share of admirers, but even if you are a fan of the film, it’s difficult to recommend this latest release. Though some people will be insistent about owning Stone’s original vision, the added violence doesn’t really add anything new to the experience. Additionally, with the exception of a new introduction by the director, the only other new extra is a 22-minute documentary on how the media would react to Mickey and Mallory’s killing spree today. Some predict they would be using social media sites like YouTube and Twitter, but I find that hard to believe. After all, wouldn’t it be pretty easy to track them down if they were posting videos and images for everyone to see?

All of the other extras from the previously released Blu-ray also appear, including an audio commentary by Stone, a retrospective documentary about the making of the film, and a handful of deleted scenes that don’t amount to much. The scene featuring Denis Leary going off on one of his trademark rants is definitely worth checking out, but unfortunately, it really has no place in the film. Then again, neither does a lot of the stuff that’s in “Natural Born Killers,” but for those that want to pretend it’s some kind of masterpiece, you’d still be better off sticking with the original Blu-ray.

Action Movies, Movie DVDs, Movies, Reviews

Bush gets Stoned in new GQ interview

September 29, 2008 /

Admit it: you were too busy drooling over Megan Fox on the cover of the October issue of GQ that you completely forgot to check out director Oliver Stone’s candid interview about his new film, “W.” It’s all right if you haven’t, because the brief chat can also be found online, and let me tell you, it’s well worth reading. Though it may seem like Stone is gunning for the incumbent president with his self-proclaimed political satire, the veteran director actually appears to have a good understanding of the man. In the article, Stone admits he’s cut from the same cloth as Bush, and if it weren’t for the fact that he took a completely different route growing up, he may have turned out the same way. Oh yeah, and “Vietnam drove out whatever arrogance [he] carried.”

The rest of the interview covers everything from the difficulties of making such a film to his long-running problems working within the studio system. Posted below are some excerpts, but to read it in full, click here.

On his first choice for the lead role:

“Originally I went for Christian Bale. We did some rigorous prosthetic tests and spent a lot of dough—thousands and thousands of dollars—and then Christian said, “I just don’t feel like I can do it.” I met Josh and liked him. He was more rural Americana. But man, he was scared shitless.”

On why “W” could be considered a comedy:

“Well, it has to be done with an ebullience and a certain fun, because the guy is goofy. He’s a goofball! And I think he endeared himself to people because he couldn’t get anything right. Kubrick was an idol of mine. I grew up on “Strangelove” and movies like “Network,” and they made a big impact on me. So yeah, W. is a satire.”

On the state of his Mai Lai massacre project, “Pinkville”:

It can probably only come back if UA would give us the movie without paying them the money they’ve already spent. We started to make the movie. I mean, we built a whole village in Thailand! We have tons of stuff sitting in crates! There’s $6 million against the movie. And I don’t have that kind of money. They didn’t even pay all the bills. They stuck us with a bunch of them.

First they kept cutting our budget. We had our locations, we had our actors, we had everything picked out, and it was a very reasonable plan. Then Bruce Willis walked, and they were thrilled, because that gave them the final excuse to call it, even though we got Nicholas Cage. That was three weeks before shooting and right before Christmas. Let me remind you, that’s 120 Americans and 500 Thais put out of work right before Christmas. It was a cruel, heartless decision, and it was probably made because “Lions for Lambs” was perceived as a mess, a failure, and we were linked to these Iraq movies that weren’t working.

Actors, Interviews, Movie Comedies, Movies

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