Liev Schrieber Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Discuss: Dwayne Johnson, Philanthropist
Filed under: Documentary », Foreign Language », Independent », Celebrities and Controversy », Fandom », DIY/Filmmaking », Politics », CineVegas »
There's no way around it: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson owes at least some of his fame to the way his dominating figure fits the blockbuster action stereotype with near-mechanical sleekness. However, he also offers an alternative to that reductive perspective. Looking sharp in a business suit and speaking with the relaxed professional discipline of a CEO, Johnson showed up at a screening of Get Smart on Sunday at the CineVegas Film Festival displaying sheer confidence. The screening took place at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, where Johnson had recently acted in Race to Witch Mountain ("We just added to the chaos," he said), but on this visit, Johnson got a chance to remind people that he's not just a one-note performer, but someone who plays an active role in the international film community (not to mention the health community, since The Rock Foundation pushes obesity prevention).
Outside of his supremely meta performance in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, Johnson has made his interests in adventurous cinema increasingly clear, and boldly champions independent artists. You can get a small glimpse of this aspect of his personality in Operation Filmmaker, documentarian Nina Davenport's account of an Iraqi filmmaker named Muthana Mohmed whose aspirations tragically fall short of the expectations surrounding him. Landing the opportunity to work for Liev Schreiber on the set of Everything is Illuminated, the 25-year-old Mohmed grows increasingly frustrated with the boring tasks given to him, and continually blows opportunities as a result of his unbalanced work ethic.
Sony Hopes to Release Greg Mottola's 'Daytrippers'
Filed under: Comedy », Independent », Casting », Deals », New Releases », Cannes », Slamdance », Sony », Distribution », DIY/Filmmaking », Home Entertainment », Movie Marketing »
With five nominations, it looks like Superbad will be the star of the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, and its three jubilant male leads -- Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- deserve the kudos. But one major talent behind the whole affair has stayed relatively anonymous while these young up-and-comers bathe in the spotlight: Director Greg Mottola. The erstwhile independent filmmaker, responsible for some of the best installments of Arrested Developed and Undeclared, launched his career a solid decade before the rise of Judd Apatow with a charming little low budget comedy called The Daytrippers. Starring Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, Parker Posey and a host of other fantastic character actors, the film follows a wildly dysfunctional family over the course of a single day, as Davis, playing a worrisome housewife, tries to track down her unfaithful husband (Tucci).Mixing warm humanity with pitch-perfect screwball timing, Daytrippers marked the sort of debut that told you a filmmaker had a big career ahead of him. After a modest premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival, it landed at Cannes, barely got a theatrical release and promptly vanished thereafter. Mottola turned to TV work, and slipped out of the film scene for a good ten years. These days, it's no easy task to track down Daytrippers on DVD -- you can nab second-hand copies on Amazon for decent rates, but not a single retail outlet carries it. Aside from the occasionally airings on cable, the movie has vanished.
Review: The Omen
Filed under: Horror », Thrillers », Theatrical Reviews », 20th Century Fox », Remakes and Sequels »
Friends have asked me why Hollywood would remake The Omen, a film remembered fleetingly, if at all, for a few images of terror, Gregory Peck, and the pulsing, moody Carmina Burana-like score, an Oscar-winner for composer Jerry Goldsmith. Their concern is a slightly embarrassed mix of indignation and curiosity: Their attitude is that if movies they remember fondly don't need to be remade, what justifies a return to The Omen, which wasn't very good the first time?
But remakes often happen to correct significant errors with original films, namely that they didn't make money for the right people. Why should Dr. Seuss's estate alone profit from How the Grinch Stole Christmas? Can't Ron Howard get some of that sweet Who-ville coin? And so, we get remakes -- even remakes of films as marginal as The Omen.
But then again, if pop culture is often a indicator of how people are actually feeling -- if there's a link between the stories on the front page of the New York Times and the books at the top of the Best-seller lists in the Book Review section -- then we can see that supernatural claptrap with one foot in the Dark Ages and the other somewhere around the End Times has been selling pretty good recently: The Da Vinci Code, the Left Behind book series. So at the beginning of John Moore's version of The Omen, footage from 9/11, Katrina and the Indonesian tsunami provokes plenty of long, serious looks from The Vatican's top men, who've met to decipher symbols from the Book of Revelation with a series of PowerPoint slides...
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The International 'Iron Man 2' Poster Subtracts a Suit
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