American Gangster There's nothing quite as unsightly as smuggling your heroin into the country by hiding it with the slain soldiers returning from Vietnam. But what is quite slightly is a cast of excellent actors to tell the story -- namely Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Josh Brolin, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. From the directorial hands of Ridley Scott, the film follows the story of the infamous Frank Lucas -- a man who soared from lowly driver to huge drug kingpin -- one who controlled Manhattan's heroin trade. On the one side there's Frank, making boatloads of money and being a heroin powerhouse. On the other, there's the man (Crowe) who tries to bring him down.
And, in my continuing efforts to give Joe Morton as much props as I can, he pops up in the film as Charlie Williams.
As for the DVD, the main one looks pretty darned tempting. You've got both the original theatrical version and extended, unrated version on the first disc, plus a whole slew on the second: deleted scenes (inc. an alternate opening), a feature-length documentary on making the film, and "Case Files" -- 3 segments on how the film was brought to life.
However, there's also a super 3-Disc Edition: Aside from the above goodies, there's a booklet, and a whole third music-centric disc if you want to get down with guns, drugs, and tunes.
Michael Clayton It's already surprised many for scoring itself 7 Oscar nominations this year, including Best Motion Picture and Best Director, but while it may come as an awards surprise, it is still a solid film and a great alternative to George Clooney's Ocean's fare. This time around, Clooney stars as Clayton, the "fixer" at a big law firm who knows how to clean up the messes and avoid embarrassment at work, but not so much at home. When his colleague goes nuts, he is not only struggling with himself but also the fight to save the company's name. As James Rocchi described it in his review: "Michael Clayton is at its best when it sticks to hard-bitten, this-is-how-the-world-works scenes between employers and employees, fathers and sons, executives and lawyers. Gilroy (with the help of supremely talented cinematographer Robert Elswit) captures a chilly world of urban grandeur and decay where the light's as gray as the choices people make."
The DVD features aren't plentiful, but there are some additional scenes and a commentary that features writer/director Tony Gilroy and editor John Gilroy.
As my wife said, it's just not the Oscars if there's nothing to complain about. However, I was impressed that two of the year's toughest films, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (389 screens) and Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men took the most nominations. Typically, the Academy is attracted to much less challenging and easy-to-categorize films (like Atonement). Both films are fairly bleak in their vision, but I suspect There Will Be Blood will sneak out ahead for two reasons: it's an epic, and epics almost always win. And, to quote a character from Sunset Boulevard, it "says a little something" about the current sociopolitical climate.
One of the biggest controversies cropped up over the foreign film category, which came up with five nominations that no one has ever heard of. (The Counterfeiters opens sometime next month and Mongol opens in June.) Not to mention that they ignored top contenders like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (opening this week) and Persepolis (30 screens). Thankfully the outrage has begun discussions on changing the stupid, ancient rules for the category. Currently these rules require each country to submit one film, and multi-national films, such as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (107 screens), to be disqualified. A small group of "specialists," rather than the Academy as a whole, votes on the small list of films. The documentary category was less obscure, and although I saw 19 documentaries in 2007, I only managed to see two of the five nominees, No End in Sight and Sicko. I have an Academy screener for Operation Homecoming that I hope to catch soon, and Taxi to the Dark Side (1 screen) is screening for Bay Area press next week.
Not much of a race here. The Cinematical staff (indeed much of the film-watching world in general) thinks that Mr. Day-Lewis is a dead-solid lock to win the Globe, the Oscar, and even the vaunted People's Choice. (As if "the people" want to see a three-hour movie about oil.) Even if There Will Be Blood (somehow) leaves you cold, there's no denying that DDL's performance is a thing of thespianic beauty.
No Country for Old Men could go on to win Best Director at the Oscars, but unlike the Academy, the Hollywood Foreign Press will actually recognize both of the Coen Brothers. Everyone knows that Ethan and Joel co-direct their films, but due to Director's Guild and Academy rules, only Joel is allowed credit for them. Therefore their win of the Golden Globe for Best Director will be the better honor. And boy do they deserve it! With No Country, they've delivered a stunning film that exemplifies the two major dimensions of the craft: visual storytelling and management of the acting performances.
It's violent, powerful, beautiful to look at, and it might just go down as the Coen Brothers' greatest film to date. There's no need to flip a coin on this one; Cinematical staff members feel No Country for Old Men is a lock for best picture of the year.
What sounds like the more highbrow date? Going to see the artsy film I'm Not There while sitting on a couch, eating a pizza and drinking a cold beer, or going to see the mainstream blockbuster National Treasure: Book of Secrets while sitting in a VIP section with reserved, "luxury seating," eating a "sophisticated entree" and drinking an "elegant martini creation?" Both options feature wait service, great picture quality and the benefit of not having any youths around. In their own way, each is equally lowbrow and highbrow, but depending on your definition of those terms (dumb vs. intelligent; cheap vs. expensive), you might have said one or the other. To me, highbrow is intelligent and intelligent is cheap; so I pick the former, which will cost a whole lot less.
The first option was what you might have experienced this weekend at Oakland, California's Parkway Speakeasy (other movie choices were Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and American Gangster). Your movie ticket would have been a mere $6, your personal cheese pizza a fair $8.50 and your pint of Sierra Nevada only $4.50. The second choice was one of this weekend's offerings at the new Lux Level of Randolph, Massachussetts' Showcase Cinema (the other available movie was I Am Legend). The movie ticket cost $21.25 (you definitely bought it online and paid that $1 service charge), the personal cheese pizza about $8 (I don't see anything on the theater's online menu appropriately considered to be "sophisticated entrée", though other Showcase Cinema menus feature items such as "Bourbon Street Steak Medallions") and your Raspberry Mocha Tini was about $9.
For some horrible reason Josh Brolin continues to be left out of the awards season party this year, despite his terrific performances in No Country for Old Men, American Gangster and In the Valley of Elah (he was also in Planet Terror, the Robert Rodriguez half of Grindhouse). All I can say is that I hope he continues to be offered great roles and never has to go back to being in movies like Hollow Man and Into the Blue. Meanwhile, his No Country co-stars Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones have been nominated for Screen Actors Guild awards for their supporting roles. Bardem's presence in the category is not surprising -- he's the front-runner for the supporting Oscar, isn't he? -- but it's great to Jones here, since he's been ignored by the Golden Globes, the Golden Satellites and pretty much everything else.
Another surprise with the SAG nominees is Ryan Gosling as best actor for Lars and the Real Girl, beating possible contenders Johnny Depp, Denzel Washington, Phillip Seymour Hoffman (also missing from the supporting category) and Tom Hanks. Also, there's sweet little old Ruby Dee in the supporting actress race for having the cutest reaction to being given a mansion (and for later putting Denzel in his place) in American Gangster. She goes up against the usual 2007 supporting actress contenders Cate Blanchett, Amy Ryan and Tilda Swinton, as well as somewhat surprising addition Catherine Keener, who helped to make Into the Wildthe top receiver of nominations with four -- others include Emile Hirsch, Hal Holbrook and ensemble cast. Other ensemble casts nominated include those of Hairspray(no single acting noms), 3:10 to Yuma(no single acting noms), No Country for Old Men, and American Gangster. Very, very, very surprisingly left out of this category is Juno (Ellen Page is nominated for best actress, however).
This year the SAG Awards are introducing two new categories. They are both for best stunt ensemble, one for film and one for television. The film category features nominees The Bourne Identity, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, I Am Legend, 300 and The Kingdom. The rest of the motion picture nominees and categories can be found after the jump or over on Moviefone.
I was a little hard on the International Press Academy last year, but they made some ridiculous decisions when handing out their Satellite Awards. Still, at least they came off as being different than every other year-end awards giver by picking winners like Joseph Cross and X-Men: The Last Stand (best comedic actor and best editing, respectively). Those are at least some interesting, unpredictable picks, right? This year, I feel the need to be harder on the organization, because it's gone totally predictable in honoring No Country for Old Men, Juno, Sicko, American Gangster, Ratatouille, Diablo Codyand Christopher Hampton, among others. The actors they honored -- Marion Cotillard, Viggo Mortensen, Ellen Page, Ryan Gosling, Tom Wilkinson/Casey Affleck (tied) and Amy Ryan -- aren't all the most obvious choices, but they aren't shocking, either. Couldn't they have at least gone with nominee Clive Owen or his nominated "comedy or musical" Shoot 'Em Up(!?!?!?), or something?
Not that the winners aren't deserving, but what good is yet another awards ceremony if it's not going to distinguish itself from the Golden Globes, which are the Satellite's unrecognized yet unmistakable "baby daddy". Yeah, the Hollywood Foreign Press will likely go with some other winners, but they won't seem that different. Again, I do salute the IPA for having a documentary category, though it wouldn't have hurt to give The King of Kongits one possible prestigious(?) award -- not that it was actually a better film than fellow nominee No End in Sight. Also, it's always enjoyable to see what the IPA picks for best DVDs (ThePrestigefor overall; Boratand Masters of HorrorSeason 1(tied) for extras; Ratatouille for youth-oriented; Ken Burns' The Warfor documentary; The Graduate40th Anniversary Edition for classic). For the rest of the nominees and winners, head over to Variety.
Last night I was having drinks with a Manhattan film critic who told me that he was putting both Zodiac and Black Book on his end of year list, no matter what the establishment thought of their awards chances. I was very happy about the latter, since I'm sure that it's one of the best films of the year, and although I didn't see Zodiac until recently, I also feel that it would be absurd if that film loses a slot in awards consideration to lesser (and later released) films like American Gangster or Enchanted. The Academy is, of course, notorious about forgetting what came in the January -- April period of the year, but sometimes they can surprise you, especially in a weak year for Best Picture like this one is. (Aside from No Country for Old Men and Atonement, what other sure bets for a Best Picture nomination are there?) Zodiac in particular seems to be catching some late momentum -- today Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere has released his top ten list and declares Zodiac to be the best of the year. I doubt he really thinks that, but putting it at the top spot may succeeded in the true goal -- getting it noticed.
When we take a look at The Envelope's Buzz meter -- the most comprehensive awards buzz calculator known to man -- we see very few early year contenders, except for Julie Christie forAway from Her. In fact, every movie on The Envelope's Best Picture slate is a movie I've seen in the last few weeks, except for Atonement, which I caught at a festival. A great film like Black Book isn't even a blip on The Envelope's horizon at this point. What early 2007 films do you think are being overlooked?
He was the man who literally jumped the shark. Among the feats of the one and only Evel Knievel was riding his motorcycle over a tank of sharks. It was his last grandstanding stunt, which broke both his arms and gave him a concussion. The Australian Age obit may be the best-- naturally, they appreciated a man of Knievel's peculiar talents Down Under. This one from the OC Register in Orange County gives a more chronological account of Knievel's crashes, as well as as a tribute from a US Congressman. Somewhere I read that Knievel said that he'd broken every bone in his body except for the stirrups in his ears. This was a lie, it was only either 35 or 40 bones. It is of course a downbeat ending to be carried off by a treacherous liver (that terrible Hep C) and something called "idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis." ("Idiopathic" is your doctor's word for "damned if we know what caused it or how to treat it".)
Knievel's memory is burnished by today's generation of 1970s worshippers. He lives on in cultural spaces as varied as Kayne West videos (Knievel was not to be sampled for free) and the ineffable Hot Rod. Steve Mandich's stunningly well-researched webpage shows the remarkable amount of bands and songs named after the daredevil. Mandich also provides the tidbit that Kurt Cobain said that Knievel was his only hero. (College radio disc jockeys, looking at this huge roster of songs and bands, may be overwhelmed with riches: one recommends the real prize in this list, the 1974 Amherst album Evel Knievel. Ebay has a sealed and autographed copy for a mere $100. but there's bound to be other copies floating about for cheap. "Why?" by Knievel is a spoken-word song over guitar and harmonica, in which he tries to explain his penchant for jumping his Harley over everything from a pit of rattlesnakes to the Snake River Canyon. Having no c-note to blow on the record, I spent 99 cents the day after Knievel died to pick up a DVD of Evel Knievel (1971) at the Grocery Outlet. Surprise: it's pretty good!
The ever-astute Anne Thompson, over on her Thompson on Hollywood blog at Variety, has an analysis up of the Oscar buzz around Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. I've not yet seen the entire film though I did see a 20-minute sneak-peek at Telluride that was more than enough to whet my appetite for the film (Cinematical'sScott Weinberg saw it at Fantastic Fest, much to the jealousy of the rest of our reviewing team) Thompson has seen the film twice now and recommends highly that people see it twice in order to fully digest it.
Thompson recently went to a WGA screening of the film, where the audience gave a standing ovation to director Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis afterward. Day-Lewis is looking like a cinch for an Oscar nom for Best Actor, and I'd be pretty surprised not to see the film get a Best Picture nod as well. What I'm really more interested in is whether Paul Dano gets a nod for his dual role as twins Eli and Paul Sunday. Dano was one of the best parts of Little Miss Sunshine, and in the part of his performance in There Will Be Blood that I caught at Sundance, he more than held his own playing opposite Day-Lewis -- and that's saying something.
There Will Be Blood continues to stand firmly in fifth place on the Oscar watch list for Best Picture over at Movie City News' Gurus o' Gold, with Atonement still pretty firmly in the top slot. Beneath Atonement, the Gurus have No Country for Old Men, American Gangster, and Charlie Wilson's War. Gurus 2.0, in which our own James Rocchi is participating, has four of the five same top films, but has There Will Be Blood up in second place right behind Atonement, followed by No Country for Old Men, American Gangster and Into the Wild.
For some reason (well, partly because I skipped out on going to Toronto this year) I've not seen any of these films save Into the Wild yet, but I'll be catching them all over the next couple weeks as the For Your Consideration screeners flood the mailbox ( I think my DHL guy is convinced I'm into something illegal here -- every day when he brings me yet another package he gives me a weird look -- he just ought to be glad no one is delivering me packages of sexy panties and pigs-head masks like some people).
I have a favor to ask of Ridley Scott: please, sir, can you stop announcing movie projects until you're in the middle of shooting Monopoly? That's the only one I really want to see you committed to right now. So, just finish up with Body of Lies, then begin production on Monopoly, and then you may announce other gigs, including this new project, Stones, which The Hollywood Reporter now tells us you're set to direct. Sure, the film sounds really interesting -- its a supernatural thriller that deals with ancient landmarks like Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids -- but how can you be thinking about mystical places when you need to be concentrating on Rich Uncle Pennybags and how you might integrate the thimble and scotty dog into your board game adaptation.
Yes, the American Gangsterdirector has too many films in the pipeline. And Monopoly isn't even one of the projects listed on the IMDb, which shows only the Robin Hood-based Nottinghamand the Cormac McCarthy adaptation Blood Merdian as being lined up after Body of Lies. Other Scott-attached projects we've written about in the past include Child 44 and Gladiator 2, but those were both a long time ago. We know Scott has confirmed involvement in Monopoly, so where's the greenlight? Doesn't Hollywood know how huge this thing will be? Oh well, I guess we can take a little peak at what this Stones thing is all about. Scripted by Matthew Cirulnick (Paid in Full), the movie features the destruction of ancient religious structures throughout the world and the revelation that they are all tied together, with Stonehenge being the central site, and that they all retain supernatural powers meant for a specific purpose.
The Hollywood Reporter confirms that following Body of Lies, Scott will head straight into Nottingham, while Stones will have to await the end of the Writers Guild strike, because Cirulnick has not finished writing it. The trade also mentions another mythical project written by Cirulnick titled Elysium, which deals with Greek mythology, and going by the title, I presume it focuses on the afterlife.
Last week I went to see American Gangster and had a terrible problem figuring out where certain scenes were supposed to be taking place. Basically, I kept seeing familiar Brooklyn locations and assuming the scenes took place in Brooklyn. But in reality these scenes were supposed to be accepted as being in New Jersey. So, throughout the first half of the movie, I didn't get that Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) lived and worked in the Garden State. Instead, I kept associating him with McCarren Park and other Williamsburg locales. The main confusion, though, stemmed from one early scene in particular, which features the Williamsburg Bridge prominently in the background. Where in New Jersey could this be intended to be? Sure, I can understand filming in Brooklyn and pretending it's elsewhere, but to use such a glaring landmark seems strange. Had the scene been shot from the opposite direction, the bridge wouldn't have been there. And this is a film that apparently used a computer to digitally add in the World Trade Center. So, there had to be some seriousness when it came to the film's locations.
Many of us have watched movies where we know the exact filming location of a particular scene. Often, we notice the movie has taken liberties with the location, such as when a character leaves a familiar building and then appears to walk across the street, yet the other side of the street is (known to us to be) actually somewhere across town. Whatever, that's the magic of the movies. But it's different when the movie is substituting one location for another yet includes a well-known structure such as a bridge. On an elevated level, it'd be like filming in San Franciso and calling it Seattle, yet clearly featuring the Golden Gate Bridge in a number of shots. Okay, that is obviously a too extreme case, as everyone recognizes the Golden Gate and maybe only us New Yorkers recognize the Williamsburg. In any event, I ask you: when have a movie's filming locations been so off that they disrupted your whole sense of setting?
In an Esquire piece celebrating "The Casting Mistake of the Year," Joel and Ethan Coen explained how Josh Brolin wound up cast in one of No Country for Old Men's lead roles: "Our movie version of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men had Tommy Lee Jones in place -- no mistake there -- as a crusty west-Texas sheriff on the trail of a bad man to be played by four-time-Goya-winning Spanish sex symbol Javier Bardem. And to round out the cast we hired -- we thought -- rugged everyman Jim Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, the aging Vietnam vet caught in the middle. Well, there were some red faces on the set the first day of shooting when Jim Brolin's son Josh showed up to play the part ..." This, of course, is a joke, but Brolin's not hurt; in fact, as he explained to Cinematical, he helped the Coens write the very piece that mocked him. Brolin can afford to laugh; with 2007 roles in films like American Gangster, Planet Terror, In the Valley of Elah and No Country for Old Men, the veteran actor's proven it's his year to shine. Brolin spoke with Cinematical in San Francisco about how he really got the part that's made him an Oscar contender, working with the Coens, his admiration for Cormac McCarthy's original novel, and much more. You can download the entire podcast right here; those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.
I can't help but think that the huge audiences that flocked to American Gangsterthis weekend cut into the box office for indie films. it's a big-budget, star-driven, "based on real life" vehicle that has nothing to do with the Iraq War or other Serious Issues, yet it's an adult drama that screams quality. While there were no big break-out numbers posted, though, two docs performed quite respectably, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News.
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten averaged $9,450 on two screens in New York for distributor IFC Films. Our own Jeffrey M. Anderson found the doc to be a frustrating experience, chiefly because director Julien Temple "has never figured out how to move past a short attention span. He's constantly worried that we'll lose interest, even in a story as ferocious and passionate as Joe Strummer's." Other reviews were more positive. The film is also available as part of the IFC InTheaters video on demand service nationwide.
Darfur Now "spotlights six individuals," according to Cinematical's Christopher Campbell, "some of whose stories directly inter-weave, who are affected by the tragedy in Darfur and have been successful at making a difference." The film itself did not generate much enthusiasm among critics, but no doubt its subject matter helped the doc to earn $7,800 at three screens in New York and Los Angeles for distrib Warner Independent.
Sidney Lumet's widely-praised Before the Devil Knows You're Dead expanded into 35 theaters and had the highest per-screen average ($9,830) among limited engagements for distributor ThinkFilm, according to Mr. Klady.
American Gangster
Michael Clayton
Best Actor (Drama)
Best Director
Best Picture (Drama)
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SCOOP: Spider-Man 4 and 5 Might be Shot at the Same Time!
Cinematical Seven: Disney's Awesome Live-Action Kid Adventures
