Mean Streets To Clean Streets: The New York Times In 60 Seconds
Filed under: New Releases, Tribeca, Exhibition, New York Times in 60 Seconds, Newsstand
- The
history of filmmakers using New
York City as a location for films. I don't really buy the idea that NYC is a "city without character."
Sure, times have changed, but I think that it's up to the filmmakers to make the city (or any city) a part of a
film.
- The globalization of the
American independent film.
- A look at Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows.
- OK, so we're giving you all the Tribeca Film Festival coverage that you could possibly need, but that doesn't mean you can't read Caryn James' reports too!
- In an audio slide show, Catherine Keener and Nicole Holofcener discuss their movie Friends With Money.
Tom Lazarus Interviews Scott Frank via Screenplay
Filed under: Fandom, Scripts, Interviews
Writer Tom Lazarus has written two
of the best screenplay how-to books you can find on bookshelves (Secrets of Film Writing and Rewriting
Secrets of Film Writing), and Scott Frank (Out of Sight, Get Shorty, Minority Report,
Little Man Tate, Dead Again) is one of the best screenwriters working today. So when the two get
together you know it's going to be something quite interesting. Lazarus has an interview with Frank at his web site (Frank did the forew0ard for
"Rewriting").But it's not just a simple Q and A; not only is the interview itself wide-ranging and a must-read for film buffs, but it's also a good lesson in screenwriting -- Lazarus has structured it as a screenplay itself, complete with fade-in's and camera directions. Frank talks about the writing process, the dos and don'ts of screenwriting, and offers tips to young screenwriters.
Superheroes and Stupid Haircuts on MySpace
Filed under: Fandom, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Lists
With all these superhero movies coming out (Superman
Returns, X-Men 3, Spiderman 3) or in development (Ant Man, Iron Man, Hulk
2), it makes you wonder, where will Hollywood get their ideas for the next big superhero flick? Why, MySpace of
course!Demonbaby.com presents the First Annual MySpace Stupid Haircut Awards! These aren't just bad haircuts, they're haircuts that oddly resemble those of superheroes, both famous and not-so-famous. The site shows you the MySpace pic on the left, and the superhero that the man/woman most resembles on the left.
My favorites? The guy who looks like Wolverine and the girl who looks like Karnilla (whoever that is).
Robin Williams' RV Hits Angst-y Heights, Says Slate
Filed under: Comedy, New Releases, Sony
Rather fascinating review of RV by Grady Hendrix
over at Slate. Hendrix doesn't have much to say about it (calling it a "disaster"), but the way that Hendrix
describes the movie makes it seem like there's something truly unexpected going on with the film and that it's more
than just a loopy, gross-out family comedy:"Faces, disfigured with boredom, gaze dully out over blasted landscapes. Septic hoses drip fecal matter onto the body of a middle-aged man. The sun blasts an anonymous , flat landscape interrupted only by rundown bars and empty campsites. Welcome to the world of RV ... its bleak dissection of middle-class angst and emotional depth is guaranteed to shock audiences, some of whom might even cry."
Wow, I had no desire whatsoever to see this movie (Robin Williams hasn't been funny in a long, long time), but this actually makes me want to see it. Well, maybe on DVD later this year.
Who Are The Magnificent Seven Directors?
Filed under: Newsstand, Steven Spielberg, Lists
Gerald Peary over at The Boston Phoenix asked readers to come up with their list of The
Magnificent Seven -- the seven greatest living narrative film directors -- and the results are interesting. Not a
single vote came in for Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Ang Lee, Pedro Almodovar, or any Italian, African, Spanish, or
Russian filmmaker. So who's left?The readers chided Peary (his list included Bergman, Antonioni, Godard, Altman, Herzog, Polanski, and Chabrol) for not including Martin Scorcese, and had votes of their own, for Clint Eastwood, Stanley Donen, Woody Allen, Gus Van Sant, Atom Egoyan, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Patrice Leconte and several others.
I might have added Steven Soderbergh. Who do you think is missing from the list? (The Guardian had a list recently that picked the top 40.)
Hey Screenwriters: Forget About the Damn Air Vent!
Filed under: Critical Thought, Scripts
Funny, clever - but very useful - post over at John August's screenwriting blog.
August is the screenwriter of such movies as Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Titan A.E., Big
Fish, Charlie's Angels, and Corpse Bride, and his screenwriting blog is one of the best sites
for aspiring and veteran writers (for the big screen or the little one).In this post, August talks about watching a recent episode of Lost where one of the characters climbed through an air vent to escape a locked room. August is sick of this plot device:
"I've lived a fairly adventurous life. I've travelled to five continents. But the only time I've seen the inside of an air duct is television and movies, when a character -- generally the hero -- has to be clever enough (and small enough) to climb through a convenientally-accessible air duct ... be it action-adventure, comedy, or horror, the air duct has become the hack screenwriter's go-to passageway."
He's right, of course. Just relying on memory and not checking the web, I can think of several movies where the air vent is a main plot device: the first Mission: Impossible, the first Die Hard, and on television, every other episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Though it was pretty funny in Top Secret!
Sam Neill and Julian Glover Were Almost James Bond
Filed under: Action, Casting, Fandom, James Bond
There is a long, interesting post over at TV
Guide's FlickChick, recapping the history of
the James Bond franchise. Who almost became Bond, who played Bond when, who turned down the role and why. I already
knew that Barry Nelson was the first person to play Bond (he played "Jimmy Bond," in a 1954 episode of
Climax) and that Timothy Dalton was asked to play Bond many years before he got the role in the late '80s, but
I didn't know that Patrick "Number Six" McGoohan turned
down the role, or that both Sam Neill and Julian Glover auditioned to play 007 before Dalton came into the picture.
Richard Johnson and Sid James almost became Bond too, but I've never heard of either of them.I was asked to play 007 too, back in the early '80s, when Moore was going to be replaced, but I had a biology paper due and had to turn them down.
Summer Movie Blow Out! Entertainment Weekly In 60 Seconds
Filed under: Action, Animation, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Foreign Language, Horror, Independent, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense, RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy, Box Office, Fandom, Entertainment Weekly in 60 Seconds, Family Films, Newsstand, Home Entertainment, Movie Marketing, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels, Games and Game Movies, Lists, Cinematical Indie
Holy crap, it's supergigantic, megacolossal Summer Movie Preview issue! Everything
you need to know about all the big pics, including Superman Returns, Mission: Impossible 3,
Clerks II, X-Men 3, Little Miss Sunshine, The Da Vinci Code, and 4 millon others,
including smaller, independent films (note: above link goes to EW's list of movies they're anxious to see -- buy the
issue for the whole summer preview guide).- Steve Carell on mastering the squirrel and finding his nuts.
- Owen Glieberman on which actors and actresses have surprised him the most with their movie singing.
- New movies: they give United 93 an A-, American Dreamz a B , and a C- to The Sentinel.
- Just as The Da Vinci Code is about to open
in theaters, Dan Brown says his
follow-up book won't be ready by the end of this year as originally planned. I guess this means that everyone will have
to find some other book to read.
- Augusten Burroughs talks about the movie adaptation of Running With Scissors, having kids, and why James Frey is like Milli Vanilli.
Cruise and Holmes Welcome Baby Girl - BREAKING NEWS
Filed under: RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy, Tom Cruise
Yup, it's finally here. Katie Holmes
has given birth to a baby girl. Her name is Suri (not sure what that means), and she weighs 7 pounds, 7 ounces.More details soon ...
The Season of the Gumshoe?
Filed under: Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Critical Thought, Newsstand
Part of me really wants to agree with
the premise of this article (that there is a
resurgence in stories about private eyes and detectives and the mystery genre in general, especially in film), but the
author uses Superman Returns, Miami Vice, and X-Men 3 as examples, and that just makes me
scratch my head.But as long as James Sallis is one of the people interviewed, I'm all for it. Of course, calling Sallis "a Phoenix author whose crime novel Drive has been optioned by Universal" is a bit like saying "William Shakespeare, a Stratford-upon-Avon writer, will have his Romeo and Juliet made into a film later this year." Sallis is one of the great writers of our time.
Another way you know this article, a piece about the return of the gumshoe, is woefully incomplete? Brick isn't even mentioned! If anything, it should be the main point in the piece.
'Ridgemont High' Inspirations Are Now Protective Parents
You Say 'Twilight,' Taylor Swift Says 'Firelight'
Robert Pattinson Talks 'Breaking Dawn' & 'Unbound Captives'
Gwyneth Paltrow Joins Nicole Kidman in 'The Danish Girl'
Discuss: The Movies That Haunt You
