« BYOB - Up In The Air | Main | The Devolution Of The Dependent »
October 10, 2009
In London...
Nothing too terribly interesting at home to discuss... does it matter that the weather in London was surprisingly beautiful yesterday?
Aside from that, the one surprise of the day was running into (well... seeing and avoiding eye contact with...) Rob Marshall at The Young Vic production of R&H's Annie Get Your Gun. He's in London putting the final touches on Nine, which needs to lock and load for sound in order to be ready by the December release date that was obviously coming last month. (I'll avoid the onanism of self-linking.)
The production, starring AbFab and Little Voice's Jane Horrocks, has all the unavoidable charm of a score that features wall-to-wall classics. Director Richard Jones, who is known for pushing the envelope, brings some good ideas to the table... and fails to deliver fully on many of them. The most striking things about the show, for instance, are that it feels more age-realistic than any other version I have seen, bends the issues of period, casts blindly multi-racially (including what looks like a Jewish guy with a bad wig as Sitting Bull, a Black guy as Buffalo Bill, and a young Black girl as Annie's sidekick and reading tutor as they wander around the world), and is set against fake wood paneling on a boxed in 10-ft high set with a screen door splitting the stage for most of the show.
Sounds horrible, no? But it's not.
Aside from a lighting plan by Mimi Jordan Sherin that seems to be endlessly (and aggravatingly) disinterested in detail while the production design of the show by Ultz (just Ultz) screams out for precision lighting to make the Hopper stage images feel like Hopper images and the Bus Stop moments feel like Bus Stop, etc, a lot about this odd-looking production works.
The subtext, which seems intended, that everything is show biz and that it was run then, as it is now, by Jews who count the money and other wandering types who have more energy than integrity, is actually interesting. In other productions, the irony of "There's No Business..." is muted by a certain glamour to the proceedings. Not here. I loved the idea of Indians in suits dominating the trains or that Buffalo Bill is a brother getting one over on the white man in the one game where they fear another race enough to look the other way or the idea of Frank Butler bedding four bored, horny sisters at one time. But like the lighting, the director seems unwilling to punch in and push the ideas he has added over the top.
This problem manifests itself most profoundly when you realize that Jones seems profoundly bored with the songs that everybody walked into the theater humming and only turns on his big creative funnel when it comes to the least-known tunes. "Moonshine Lullaby" is the conceptual highlight of the first act, though I still was hoping it would become a greater piece of magic than it did. But a beautiful idea - a true classic - is in there.
Jones grabs onto interesting, twisted ideas but never quite finishes them with the flourish that would make the groundbreaking, manifested most clearly in the cheesy but funny videos of travels in the US west and then internationally. Basically, they have taken stock footage of the west and put a couple of kids - a boy and a girl... Frank and Annie as represented by children - in front of them using hacky green screen. I found the exercise endearing, though it never quite went anywhere. At the top of the second act, Annie touring Europe is done in a similar way, though I am not sure that her acceptance and later, rejection of Adolph Hitler's metal - time anomalies aside - really matches up with her embrace of Stalin and Mao. In any case, it's an interesting, cute, kitschy idea... and again, doesn't quite climb the hit it aspires to climb.
Still, in the end, with little more than some terrific orchestrations that get a lot out of a 4-piece orchestra and a heavy dose of sexualization, the classic songs survive more than thrill as they turn up in the show. It's hard not to love them, especially the raunchy version of "Doin' What Comes Natur'ily." Jones has a horrible habit of making every big number stop dead, grab applause, only to start it again, leaving it feeling like a reprise and not part of the organic original of 30 seconds earlier.
In the end, this feels like an interesting revisionist piece that is still in rehearsals... still not coming together. The lighting was aggravating me all night because it seems so obvious what the director is chasing and yet, as I wrote, the lighting seems downright random at times. Interesting ideas - like a conveyor belt that rolls the scenery past the train car and then, the boat - are a step away from being great, though the audience chose to enjoy many of them in spite of their incompleteness. (The home run of the conveyor belt, btw, is an "Indian" sitting with his back to the audience, in a chair, catching each of the items that has come down the belt and feeding them to another belt that heads backstage. It is subtle and perhaps done out of necessity, but takes on a metaphoric humor to which the production always seems to aspire.)
Annie is a fun night of theater. It's hard to miss. Everyone can sing, the songs are great, and there are fascinating touches all over the place. Perhaps the ultimate symbol of the show is a stage-wide, 6-ft high banner of Annie's image that represents her new-found stardom at one point... the art work, especially in a small space, is overwhelming. It's not quite a photo... not quite a painting... but it is quite arresting. And it just disappears after a while. There is no clear reason why it goes. There is no replacement of the image as the story evolves. It's just a great, great thing that simply goes away, never quite fulfilling its promise... another thing into the stew... clever director.
The makings of a great night of theater are there. Kerry Butler would be great in this version of the role if done in NY. In fact, Cheyenne Jackson - also of Xanadu - would make a strong Frank Butler in this piece too. That younger, sexier energy is the most compelling thing about this Young Vic production. It just needs to be finished.
** I'm a bit disappointed that Chloe, Atom Egoyan and Erin Cressida Wilson's remake of Anne Fontaine's sexually self-reflective thriller, ended up with Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisition Group. SPWAG has become, in the last year, the buyer of more and more movies that have real audience potential, but have not found major domestic theatrical buyers at the big fests. So Sony buys the films for DVD, basically, but with a theatrical commitment, which so far, has been filled exclusively by giving the films to small theatrical distributors to fulfill that commitment.
With Chloe being the 3rd or 4th buy of a TIFF premiere, SPWAG now has half the total films purchased at TIFF '09, the other being the Woody Harrelson oddball superhero comedy/actioner, Defendor. There is a good chance that Chloe is also the biggest $ buy from TIFF this year, as A Single Man has been the topper, at $1 million.
The nice thing about SWPAG buying up movies like Black Dynamite is that it does put money in the filmmakers' pockets, assures a strong DVD push, and gives them the chance to get a shot a being a theatrical surprise.
But it is a symbol of where things are right now. Films that would not have been considered risky a couple of years ago suddenly are scaring Dependents and True Indies alike. And as much as some folks want to dream of VOD being the savior, they are lemmings moving towards the cliff, not only following blindly, but dreaming that there is hope at the bottom of the cliff. (Of course, lemmings have been reconsidered, but give a man his metaphor, would ya?)
The economics of VOD are already marginal and a very few films are trying to take advantage of the pipeline right now. Imagine the cluster fornication when everyone is trying to sell VOD. Brutal. And price fighting will bring the price down to painfully low dollar figures.
** BOX OFFICE - Is anyone actually surprise that Couples Retreat opened? It's been 2 months since Julie & Julia and a a couple of weeks longer since The Ugly Truth, the last two mainstream comedies with any kind of female interest. It's not brain surgery... just look at how well both of those films held. There is an audience for this stuff and while audiences intuitively understood that Love Happens was being dumped, there is a good sized audience always waiting for these things, no matter what the reviews.
As I have written before, Paramount is doing a bang-up job on Paranormal Activity, decks cleared of anything to focus on except the November release of Up In The Air and December's limited for The Lovely Bones. That said, I still think that the drama around the box office is more than a little overstated at this point. Yes, the film will be mostly profit for Paramount. Yes, they are selling it conservatively, not spending a ton on TV. But I still think they are very creatively squeezing every dime they can out of a core audience that will soon be spent.
If this is a $100 million movie... or even a $60m movie, I will be eat my shoe. If the film ends up doing the $35m that Halloween II will do without the TV buys, than Par Marketing did a terrific job... probably slightly more profitable than Cloverfield. But it's hardly the second coming.
Posted by dpoland at October 10, 2009 11:27 PM
Comments
More sadly, SPWAG buy "Defendor" without giving it a theatrical commitment. (It is very likely that SPWAG has given "Chloe" a theatrical commitment, though, since SPWAG has said that it will release "Chloe" theatrically in the first half of 2010.)
Some of SPWAG films did got strong theatrical release treatments. SPWAG also bought "88 Minutes" , "District 9" and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus". Both "88 Minutes" and "District 9" received wide releases from TriStar, and Sony Pictures Classics is going to give "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" a strong theatrical release (for arthouse market's standard.)
Based on the reviews I read..... I think "Chloe" may deserves to get a modest wide release from TriStar. (Limited rollout strategy won't work for "Chloe", since this film is going to receive mixed reviews in the US.)
Posted by: marychan ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 11, 2009 03:02 AM
After getting the day off work Friday, I talked my wife into seeing Surrogates-since it was the only picture on our short list which would get out in time to pick up our kid from school.
I agree with a previous poster about bad choices. Did they run out of money? Some more sequences showing the capabilities of surrogates would have been nice.
Today we finally see Trailer Park Boys 2.
Posted by: doug r at October 11, 2009 08:39 AM
(I'll avoid the onanism of self-linking.)
Sly self-parody?
Posted by: Eric at October 11, 2009 09:52 AM
So! If you are in London and have time, please go see my play HOW THE RAPIST WAS BORN, which is running for one more week (except Sunday) at Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden, every night at 7.30PM sharp. It's a tiny theatre, tucked between the theatres for STOMP and THE MOUSETRAP.
Couples Retreat looks horrible. I am actually surprised it's doing well at the box office while Love Happens flopped.
Posted by: DeafBrownTrashPunk at October 11, 2009 10:05 AM
"...R&H's Annie Get Your Gun." Assuming "R&H" is Rodgers & Hammerstein, I think you mean Irving Berlin. Sounds like an interesting take on the show.
Posted by: yancyskancy at October 11, 2009 10:23 AM
DeafBrownTrashPunk,
I am not a fan of Jennifer Anniston, and indeed, I am not a particular fan of Vince Vaughan, but I would hazard that there is a bigger male audience for potty-mouthed, testosterone-fuelled rom-coms than there is a female audience for get-my-life-back, oestrogen-angst rom-coms (which is the sub-sub-sub genre in which Anniston now seems to wallow... but like her public-image).
The last time I really enjoyed Vince Vaughan was the first time most of us saw him: Swingers.
Posted by: The Pope at October 11, 2009 12:18 PM
kudos on your production, deafbrown
Posted by: leahnz at October 11, 2009 12:27 PM
"The last time I really enjoyed Vince Vaughan was the first time most of us saw him: Swingers"
vince v is classic as one of film's 'most annoying friends ever' in 'made' with favreau
Posted by: leahnz at October 11, 2009 12:32 PM
For a second Deaf, I thought you wrote HOW THE RACIST WAS BORN, which I assumed was the story of Jeff Wells. HOW THE RAPIST WAS BORN sounds more like Lex's tale.
Congrats!
Posted by: christian at October 11, 2009 12:44 PM
Hey, Pope-
Leave Jen alone! I loved last Xmas' "Marley and Me," and "Management" was probably the best romantic comedy released so far this year.
"Love Happens" doesn't work, but its artistic/commercial failure has nothing to do with Aniston (or Eckhardt's) performance(s).
In fact, without Jen or Aaron, it would've been lucky to get a theatrical release at all--let alone cross the $20-million threshold.
***And notice that I didn't even feel obligated to mention "The Good Girl" in defense of Aniston--the one movie Jen-haters routinely offer a tepid thumb's-up to***
Posted by: movieman at October 11, 2009 04:31 PM
Leahnz: Made, eh?
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117798469.html?categoryid=31&cs=1
Posted by: Joe Leydon at October 12, 2009 01:00 AM
nice review, joe, i concur (the 'odd couple' friendship of vaughan and fav is why i like the movie, which like you said is a bit hit and miss, but it has some moments of brilliance and hilarity -- mainly when v and f play off one another and just wind each other up until motormouth vince's lips get to flapping so fast you could swear he's gonna blow a fuse -- and there are even some touching moments re: the nature of friendship, redemption and the unpredictable path we sometimes find ourselves travelling in life)
Posted by: leahnz at October 12, 2009 04:07 AM
"I will be eat my shoe"
Herzog style or just an empty boast?
The film did $7M on just 160 screens, so $60M seems pretty easy to hit. Especially when you consider there hasn't been a mainstream must-see film for months. Par has this film positioned perfectly - with word of mouth making screenings to get the more demanding filmgoers and I'm sure a lot more TV ad buys to drive in the usual horror crowd.
Posted by: Deathtongue_Groupie at October 12, 2009 09:49 AM
Dear lord, I would love it if there was some way Paranormal Activity could out-gross Saw VI.
Posted by: jeffmcm at October 12, 2009 01:51 PM
Although it's pure speculation at this point, I think PA will be a big hit for a very simple reason. It's a great 'watch the audience go nuts' movie. I saw it on Saturday and didn't find it all that scary. But if I were a less busy man and had an option of seeing it again with friends/family that were easily frightened, I'd do it in a heartbeat to watch them jump and squirm. It's going to be a MAJOR bruised-forearm type movie for the high-school crowd. Ironically, the film could have easily gotten a PG-13 if they had just edited a couple profanities, which would have made this a very popular first-date movie with the middle-school demo. I didn't think it was a good movie, but the audience I was with was eating it up with a spoon (it helps that the film ends well).
Posted by: Scott Mendelson at October 12, 2009 02:28 PM
It doesn't come out here until December, but I got a ticket to an early screening in my city as a part of a horror film festival called Hello Darkness. It'll be great to see it surrounded by other horror nuts.
Posted by: KamikazeCamelV2.0 at October 12, 2009 10:31 PM
Scott! Spoiler alert!
Posted by: Eric at October 12, 2009 10:33 PM
Anyone notice from the ubiquitious TV spots, they've decided to shoot SAW VI in color?
Like it seems to be overlit and brightly colored like a 1994 episode of Friends.
TOTALLY different vibe than the usual septic-tank sheen of 1-5.
WHAT GIVES
Posted by: LexG at October 13, 2009 01:30 AM
Um, what exactly are the spoilers in Scott's comment? That the movie has a couple of profanities and an ending that works?
Posted by: yancyskancy at October 13, 2009 02:00 AM
My comments are far less spoilery than the MPAA itself was.
Posted by: Scott Mendelson at October 13, 2009 12:07 PM
Yancy and Scott, I took Scott's statement that "it helps that the film ends well" to mean "happy ending" rather than "it's satisfying" or something like that. Apologies if I misinterpreted. (And don't tell me if I did. ;-)
Posted by: Eric at October 13, 2009 01:10 PM
I didn't like the show Friends but I have nothing against Aniston. I've like Vince Vaughn in a few things, Made, strongly so. But, holy cow, does Couple's Retreat look like a wet haired dog! I don't care when or what's opened around it, it reminds me of family vacations riding cross country in the Country Squire and my mom asking my dad to stop at the next gas station for 45 mins to an hour. She'd hurry to get the key on the coat hanger once we'd stop, only to exit out the side door with a horrified look as quickly as she'd gone in. "Forget it. I'll wait until the next town." Even before flipping over AAA Tripkit to see how far it was.
Posted by: Triple Option at October 13, 2009 05:39 PM
Lex, part of Saw VI's look is a new director (the guy who was editor on all the previous Saw movies) and part of it has to just be a need to shake up the shitty franchise. My understanding is that Saw VII will be in 3-D.
Posted by: jeffmcm at October 14, 2009 12:40 AM
Frankly, Saw V looked awfully cheap, to the point where it resembled a direct-to-DVD Saw sequel. Oddly, it actually cost $500,000 more than the previous entry. Oddly still, it was actually a better sequel than part IV, although II and III are still the best of the series. It's good to see that VI may actually have production values this go-around.
Sadly, due to travel commitments, this will be the first Saw film ever that I haven't seen on opening night. Saw II was the first date with my eventual wife - her choice - so we've made a quasi-anniversary habit out of it ever since. Gosh, how different my life might have been if I hadn't previously seen The Legend of Zorro at a test screening months earlier.
Posted by: Scott Mendelson at October 14, 2009 11:15 PM
It's official: MENDELSON IS AWESOME. Seems like a great guy.
IV is a masterpiece though; V did seem like a cheap one-off, all that lame buddy action with the toupee-wearing dude from Gilmore and Costas Mandylor instead of the usual permutations.
II, III and IV are like a hat-trick of movie magic. I is like they didn't quite have it down yet (parts of it seem like a TV movie for USA Network).
Posted by: LexG at October 15, 2009 01:32 AM
"although II and III are still the best of the series."
YES. Thank you for helping me feel not completely alone on this. If I ever met a single woman who liked Saw II, I'd never let her go either.
Posted by: LYT at October 15, 2009 01:54 AM
"If I ever met a single woman who liked Saw II, I'd never let her go either"
that's weirdly sweet, LYT. just...don't lock her in the basement in order to keep her
(esp. not with a bone saw and a little square window only her lubricated-with-her-own-blood limbless torso could wriggle thru)
Posted by: leahnz at October 15, 2009 03:15 AM
I haven't seen any of the SAW films and don't feel like I'm missing much.
Posted by: christian at October 15, 2009 10:39 AM
My issues with the original Saw were that A) it felt like a sloppy first-draft screenplay that sold because it was 'neat' and they never went back to iron out the kinks and B) the fact that they cast two famously scary character actors in glorified cameos, thus ruining both plot twists for anyone paying attention. Saw II is the most 'fun' of the series, as well as the least gruesome and grueling, plus you get two rock-solid character actors (Donnie Wahlberg and Tobin Bell) squaring off for about half the running time. Saw III is the most ambitious, with a genuinely compelling narrative involving forgiveness and empathy. The flaw of Saw III is that in order for Angus McFadyen to forgive those responsible for his son's death and/or forgive himself, the audience must be deprived of the gruesome deaths that they paid to see (so if you're genuinely into the story, you truly don't want the traps to succeed). I hated Saw IV, I thought it was a confusing and grotesque 'what the hell do we do know?' buying time film as the filmmakers figured out what to do next. Saw V was cheap and occasionally dull, but it was also less mired in gore and violence and more character-driven.
Posted by: Scott Mendelson at October 15, 2009 02:48 PM
I can understand why high-school and college kids would be into the Saw movies; it perplexes me to no end why otherwise intelligent adult movie-lovers would put themselves within a stone's throw of a Saw sequel. I mentioned 'pretentiousness' in the other thread - this has to be the most pretentious horror franchise in history. I mean, we all agree that the gimmick is basically the same as John Doe in Fincher's Seven, but dumbed down to the Nth degree, right? And then given the most ugly-looking, shitty cinematography and 'cool' editing in movie history?
Ugh. My kingdom for a new John Carpenter movie.
Posted by: jeffmcm at October 16, 2009 02:49 AM
I should add that I'm not intentionally trying to pick a fight with LYT or Scott over this - I just legitimately don't get what the redeeming features of these movies could possible be, and it drives me a little crazy. I mean, I'm the biggest horror fan that I know - I own stuff like Bloody Birthday and Silent Night, Deadly Night and Pieces. And as far as I can tell, the Saw movies offer nothing - not humor, not storytelling, not strong craft (cinematography/acting/whatever). Just gore, justified by a veneer of moralzing. Argh.
Posted by: jeffmcm at October 16, 2009 03:02 AM
"I mean, we all agree that the gimmick is basically the same as John Doe in Fincher's Seven, but dumbed down to the Nth degree, right?"
No, we don't; similar means to totally different ends. But we've had that argument before. I'll agree to disagree if you acknowledge that in fact we do disagree.
Posted by: LYT at October 16, 2009 03:29 AM
I appreciate (if not always 'like') the Saw franchise as it is alone in modern horror in having adult actors playing adult characters dealing with adult problems, and in actually bothering to have a complicated plot. Said plot may not always make sense, and said characters may not always be engaging, but what you call 'pretentious', I call 'trying'. Even the Saw films that I don't like (I and IV) are better and more artistically ambitious than any number of 'classic' 1980s slasher pictures. Trust me, I've watched several of them of late and films like Prom Night or Happy Birthday To Me are a slogging bore with no real ambition beyond slaughtering teens in gruesome ways.
Posted by: Scott Mendelson at October 16, 2009 08:14 AM
Scott, what you call 'ambition' I call 'phoniness'. I have more respect for the honesty of a Happy Birthday to Me for getting to its slaughter efficiently and without melodramatic kerfluffle than a Saw III that thinks it's making a philosophical and dramatic statement that (for me) falls completely flat on its face.
Posted by: jeffmcm at October 17, 2009 02:08 PM
"thinks it's making a philosophical and dramatic statement that (for me) falls completely flat on its face."
I've tried to explain this before, but here goes again...that's precisely the POINT. In Saw 3, Jigsaw is trying to make a a philosophical and dramatic statement, and it DOES fall flat on his face.
You aren't supposed to assume that the film stands behind everything he does...he is, when all is said and done, the VILLAIN. The fact that he the series portrays him somewhat sympathetically doesn't take that away. In fact, it's been LESS interesting dramatically since the switchover to a more blatantly bad-guy villain in parts 4 and 5.
Posted by: LYT at October 19, 2009 12:21 AM
And I've tried to explain this before, but the idea that Jigsaw's argument falls flat on its face (which I still don't agree with, but in order to argue the point properly, I'd have to watch the movies again, which I don't want to do) is false. The whole supertextual point of each movie is that each scene of torture is justified because they're in the service of a larger educational moral framework - you're watching some dude get mutilated by razor blades because he's a bad guy, so therefore it's okay to enjoy watching him get tortured. That's dubious to begin with, and then when you pile on top of it the idea that Jigsaw's ideas don't work, then you're just demolishing the underlying justification, meaning that you're watching a movie that (without realizing it) admits to serving no useful purpose except to indulge in gory spectacle.
It's late so I'm not doing the best job here, but I think, LYT, that your argument undercuts itself.
Posted by: jeffmcm at October 19, 2009 03:55 AM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)