NewYorkPost Tagged Articles at Cinematical

A couple of people have been griping about Wall-E director Andrew Stanton's refusal to admit that his cute little movie about a robot in love actually contains some pretty upfront green politics, but there's a far more polarizing reference in the film than its harmless pro-environment agenda. It's no major plot spoiler to reveal that, about an hour or so into the story, Fred Willard appears in a recorded message as the mysterious president of Earth's corporate government and orders the ship's captain (Jeff Garlin) to "stay the course." Wait, we've heard this one before: It was the go-to statement used by the Bush administration for about three years or so when describing its modus operandi in Iraq (the term was abandoned when staying the course started to sound like a bad idea). In Wall-E, the context is quite different -- it's an order to not do something, rather than take action -- but hard to ignore nonetheless.

Certain critics with (surprise!) conservative slants have taken issue with this. At Dirty Harry's Place, John Nolte expresses his disappointment in the first paragraph of his review: "Have we lost the wonderful studio who brought us The Incredibles and Ratatouille to Bush Derangement Syndrome?" he asks. New York Post critic Kyle Smith picked up the rant and decided to write his own, even though he hadn't seen the film yet: "This kind of crack, lame as it is, also breaks the spell of the movie by hurling you out of the theater and back into reality."

Since Sex and the City has screened around the world and critics have weighed in, it's time for a little nitpicking -- and nobody seems more up to the task than that unflagging beacon of urban gossip, Page Six. Today, the New York Post column reports that New Line Cinema and Radio City Music Hall are facing off in a blame-fest following the mistake that lead to 1,000 ticket holders getting turned away at the New York City premiere. At the close of the piece, however, the article gets into some of the details of the plot: "Those who've seen Sex and the City are buzzing that its story owes much to widely reported episodes involving Jonathan Tisch and Ellen Barkin," it reads, and that's just one of the alleged rip-offs. There's also a supposed reference to Tisch's canceled engagement to Jill Swid, and a "scene where Carrie freaks out about having a 347 area code seems just like one in an old Seinfeld episode."

Not having seen the movie, I can only judge from afar, but this sounds like two very separate complaints. That Sex and the City would use real life incidents to inspire its metropolitan plot shouldn't bother anyone (except the real life inspirations, of course). But borrowing from Seinfeld? Now that's a low blow.

On Wednesday, Martha let you in on a rumor circulating around about a possible new film version of Gypsy film from The Weinstein Company, which would star Catherine-Zeta Jones. Well, it turns out that Gossip Queen Liz Smith was talking about the Weinstein conception of the film ... which is but a dream of Harvey Weinstein's, nothing more. After the Post published her "announcement", Smith received a phone call from Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book for the musical, and he stated that Weinstein, "doesn't own the rights." In her column Friday, Smith made the correction, while still stating that, "I didn't say he had the rights. Just that he has a dream of producing a Gypsy movie, with Rob Marshall at the helm. And he does have such a dream."

Well, conveniently for Smith, I can't seem to pull up the original Post printing of her statements, but thanks to ComingSoon.net, which quoted her word for word, I can tell that she neither said that Weinstein has the rights nor that it is just a dream. She actually said, "Now the rumor is out and hot that the Weinstein Company is close on the heels of director Rob Marshall for a movie version of the show about the evolution of that famous stripper - Gypsy Rose Lee - and her infamous stage mother, Rose." From there, I don't know how Zeta-Jones became part of the mix, except that she has mentioned interest in playing Rose a few years ago, though she was talking about a Broadway revival then.  

Anyway, the film could still be a possibility in the future, if Weinstein does decide to buy the rights. For someone with as much power as Harvey Weinstein, dreams do come true.

[via Playbill]