Film Fatale

Looking for something cool to read? Pick up anything by Donald Westlake, whose novels and short stories you know even if you've never read them -- that's how often the writer's work has been adapted for film.

The best known is John Boorman's POINT BLANK, the 1967 version of The Hunter, with Lee Marvin as revenge seeking-thief. When Warner Bros. released a second adaptation starring Mel Gibson -- doing a creditable job in the badass avenger role -- writer/director Brian Helgeland was said to be unhappy about about the final cut. Though Helgeland had just won an Academy Award for writing L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, somebody (the studio? Gibson?) got anxious about the then-nice-guy star playing such a hard edged leading role, and edged Helgeland out of the editing room. The result got mixed reviews and middling box office success.

Finally, as Dennis Lim writes in the Los Angeles Times, Helgeland got a chance -- as part of a DVD set -- to restore the PAYBACK he wanted to make. Excised scenes and a new, retro-sounding score make for a different and better movie. Check it out. It's worth the wait.

http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/suncal/cl-ca-second8apr08,0,16444.story?coll=cl-suncal

Continue reading "PAYBACK Time for Brian Helgeland--Finally" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rage, rage, rage against the machine auteur Terry Gilliam thinks -- wait -- he knows there's something cockeyed and screwy with ThinkFilm's DVD treatment of his most recent film TIDELAND. Via FilmIck and Ain't It Cool News comes word that...

The aspect ratio is messed up.

If you caught the brief film festival and arthouse run of this unforgettably Grotesque adaptation tale filial love and dark childhood fantasies (imagine Dorothy Gale from Kansas with a smack-addict dad), and you made it all the way to the end without puking your guts (I nearly didn't), the cinematography by Nicola Pecorini was overwhelming. Gilliam, with his background as an illustrator and artist, knows how to compose a shot for maximum effect.

The cinematic TIDELAND's aspect ratio was 2:35 to 1 -- not an uncommon ratio these days, especially not for a film set on the American plains. (The other common ratio is the TV-ish, squarer but still rectangular ratio of 1:85 to 1.) What you'll pretty much never see is an aspect of 2:25 to 1 - but that's what Gilliam preferred when he personally mastered the film for DVD, according to a statement that ran on FilmIck

That's when the tide turned -- somebody at ThinkFilm thought: No. Let's go a different way.

From Ain't It Cool, the blog post fury, featuring Gillliam and hopping mad cinematographer Pecornini (I regret that we cannot hear the this man's fabulous Italian accent as he types. There's nothing like a European director of photography -- a painter of light from the land of Leonardo, people! -- throwing down.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 02:24 PM | Permalink

Fly IDLEWILD, the other flashy-cool musical of 2006.

Stephanie Zacharek of Salon put it on her year's ten-best list.

"Messy and extraordinary, Bryan Barber's Prohibition-era musical, starring OutKast's Andre 3000 and Big Boi, is a dream history of black pop culture, and a testament -- to paraphrase a line from Stanley Crouch -- to the ways that inventing, borrowing and refining can bring us closer to the lives we want to lead. One of the most beautiful-looking pictures of the year (the cinematography is by Pascal Rabaud), "Idlewild" slipped out of theaters before most people could see it on the big screen. It deserves an immediate rep-house revival."

Continue reading "Fly 'Idlewild' - The Other Flashy Musical of '06" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another year end critics poll: Film Comment surveys film writers and critics, asking for twenty top films and the 10 best movies still unreleased in the U.S.

Martin Scorsese's Boston-set crime drama THE DEPARTED led critics picks, followed by Romanian Academy Award submission THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU, and the old-but-new Melville noir ARMY OF SHADOWS.

Here's a poll in which an early 2006 release (TRISTRAM SHANDY) wasn't forgotten, and cool pop movies like CASINO ROYALE make a strong showing.

What's up, though, with the unreleased film list? Many of the unreleased titles are scheduled for North American theatrical distribution in 2007.

Spike Lee's searing New Orleans documentary, WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE, shown on HBO in September, was probably seen by more people than some of the top 20 movies -- and it's now on DVD. (The six-hour documentary played at Toronto Film Festival, but only after it had debuted on HBO

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The annual Village Voice film critics poll moves over, with Dennis Lim and Michael Atkinson, to Indiewire, and the No. 1 film is a surprise: THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU, a Romanian drama about life and death in a hospital.

Explore the whole poll, starting with the list of films, directors and performances that earned the most votes.

Here are the critics who participated. Movie City Indie guy Ray Pride and me, Justine Elias, are in there.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a to-do list from the Observer that'll have cine-cultists clamoring for revival screenings and overdue DVD rentals: fifty overlooked English-language movies thought ought to be more widely available.

I just saw ACE IN THE HOLE (1951, Dir. Billy Wilder for the first time on the big screen -- and the same day as Kirk Douglas' 90th birthday -- and I'd love to see the Observer's top two picks, SALT OF THE EARTH (1953, Dir. Herbert Biberman), PETULIA (1968, Dir. Richard Lester), the same way. Turner Classic Movies is all right, but nothing beats Kirk Douglas, bigger than life, sneering over the line to to New York.

Lucky New York: Film Forum will play Ace In the Hole Jan. 12-18.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The fur will fly this Saturday as IFC network's angriest, artsiest puppet ensemble takes on Mel Gibson in their version of THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. Watch Greg the Bunny, Warren the Ape, assorted felt-covered apostles and Pharisees attempt to scourge our memories of the 2005 blockbuster. This episode, the final one of the second season, features special guests Mark Borchardt and Mike Schank of AMERICAN MOVIE.

IFC will let you download webisodes and, of course, buy buy buy DVDs of their shows on its website.

More GREG THE BUNNY love here.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 08:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The producers hated how it turned out, and at the first screening, nobody laughed. But twenty years after it was made, WITHNAIL & I remains a cult favorite, a much-quoted, dark and savage comedy of the end of youth. Boozy, boyish, boy-loving, and bitter, Withnail & I "struck a chord with anyone out of synch" with the Thatcher years' get-rich ethos. It still holds up, particularly if you're young and moody.

The Independent takes a loving look at the movie, its stars and its elusive writer director, Bruce Robinson.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 07:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bravo to Charles Taylor, Mr. DVD of the New York Observer, for his appreciation of Faye Dunaway's "reckless and extreme performance" as Joan Crawford in MOMMIE DEAREST.

While Christina Crawford's tell-all book dredged up every never-published rumor (verbal and physical abuse, bizarre obsessions, creepy sexual competition with her adolescent daughter), the movie was something more. "Ms. Dunaway gave audiences something they didn't want: a sense of how they helped create the monster before them."

As Taylor points out, the film opened to mocking reviews in 1981, but it soon became a camp classic. That's how Paramount's home entertainment division is marketing the new DVD of MOMMIE DEAREST--it's the "Hollywood Royalty Edition," with astute critical commentary from John Waters and John Epperson, aka Lypsinka.

Have a look at Paramount's DVD offerings.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Taking the view that it's never too late to bash last year's movie, Ross Douthat, writing in Slate, pounces on Ridley Scott's new, what-he-wanted-to-release-in-theatres cut of KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, which is now out on DVD. Why Scott was denied the chance to release this three-hour version, we may never know (the director mentions "some people" who were against the longer but paradoxically swifter-paced version.

If you missed the film on the big screen, you missed out. KINGDOM was an old-fashioned epic with a rare intelligence--and relevance to current events. Like all of Scott's movies, it was magnificent to look at, with a deep blue and golden hued beauty and sweeping battle scenes.

Slate's been running these "How Hollywood Works" essays every so often, and this essay has the grandiose title "How the Historical Epic Died With Kingdom of Heaven'--as if we won't be seeing any more attempts at this genre for a while.

In short, the critic has problems with Orlando Bloom, whom he says "never looks like anything but what he is—a handsome, unreflective 21st-century guy dropped down in a medieval setting, with none of the hardened masculinity or the defiant otherness that would make you believe that he belongs to a different time."

Continue reading "KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Revisited" »

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I always laugh when skinny little actresses are cast as ass-kicking, Ripleyesque heroines. One I don't laugh at is Milla Jovovich: what she lacks in heft, she makes up for in martial arts skill and sheer feral intensity. When she gets in an onscreen fight (in the RESIDENT EVIL movies or in the futuristic something or other ULTRAVIOLET, she always seems ready to fight to the death.

The Independent has an interview with Jovovich, who's over in London promoting Ultraviolet. I must be a philistine, but I failed to notice the film's John Cassavetes references. It all seemed to be an excuse to give Jovovich an Anna Karina wig and excuse to beat the shit out of people in a sci fi setting.

Which seems to be a real crowd pleasing formula.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Who listens to DVD commentary tracks?

The Onion's A.V. Club does, rounding up the oddest of the not-so-special-features for its Commentary Tracks of the Damned column.

Now the magazine's critics have come up with The 15 People You Meet Listening to DVD Audio Commentaries: the hack helmers who insist that all the good stuff got cut, the dreary academics, the kings of nostalgia (hello, Peter Bogdanovich), the tired and emotional cast and crew reunions.

Despite the proliferation of director's commentary tracks--and I've been listening to them since they were laserdisc commentary tracks--most of them are skippable. Sci fi and horror movies directors and producers who started in the 1980s and earlier love to tell the secrets behind every practical effect and gag, and they tell these stories not just because they're well spoken, funny guys. Fans of the numerous re-issues buy the new editions, and the commentators (Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, Wes Craven) actually have something new to say to the next generation of filmmakers.

I'm not sure what can be learned from the contractually obligated chats from the directors of movies like Stealth and The Island, but it's wicked boring to hear how many times a CG visual effect was sent back to the effects house.

It's like hearing an MBA tell you how many times he told his assistant to revise a PowerPoint presentation. That's not making movies. That's manufacturing.

Posted by Justine_FilmFatale at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)