ghost town Tagged Articles at Cinematical

You may have noticed there was no release list this past Tuesday, as the big releases are all hitting shelves today (or yesterday or tomorrow -- it' seriously varies depending on store), and we're fully in the Christmas lull. Read on for today's handful of Hollywood films and 12/23 releases.

The Duchess
Ah, another film with Keira Knightley in period clothing. This time around, she's Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, and she's a powerful woman reduced to love in secret under the reign of a rigid and mean husband (Ralph Fiennes). However, while Mr. Fiennes pulls off a chilling performance as the Duke of Devonshire, this period offers little of Georgiana's triumphs, much of her romantic turmoil, and not enough compelling cohesiveness to give her story a chance. Skip it.

Eagle Eye
First, DJ Caruso brought us Shia LaBeouf under house arrest in Disturbia. Now he's let Shia run around maniacally with Michelle Monaghan for Eagle Eye, as two innocent strangers become at the whim of a powerful phone caller who turns them into fugitives. This is one of those action flicks that did well in the box office, but didn't get a lot of critical love. Nevertheless, it's action to break up the holiday monotony, so Rent it.

Last December, Cinematical was the only movie blog invited to visit the set of Ghost Town over at the beautiful Steiner Studios in Brooklyn, New York. Directed by David Koepp, Ghost Town stars Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Téa Leoni, Billy Campbell and Kristen Wiig, and it arrives in theaters on September 19. Check out our report below ...

I always get nervous whenever visiting a film set. In the past, I've been a part of a larger group, which meant I could simply follow behind three other people and hopefully fade into the pack. I never want to stand out. I never want be the guy who's standing in the wrong place, on the wrong wire, or the guy who accidentally coughs during a three-minute period where everyone is silent. Sometimes a film set can be an intimidating place to visit if you're not working there, slaving away for hours upon hours -- there's a sort of team mentality and closeness that's shared amongst the crew that you're not a part of. You're the outsider, the blogger -- the guy who's there to criticize and report back on a project that's not yet complete. In some cases, you're the enemy.

But when you're part of the pack, it's easier to digest the experience. It's easier to not be that guy. However, when I showed up to the set of Ghost Town on a very cold day in December, I suddenly realized I was the only web outlet invited ... and knowing I'd be all by myself on this one, my Neurotic Jew Meter (Thanks Mom!) went through the roof.

Death is ever present at the Toronto International Film Festival, both in the movies and in the eyes of the patrons dragging themselves to 9 a.m. screenings after a night of partying. Plenty of films treat the subject seriously -- you are never far from an indie drama in which someone mourns someone else's death -- but it's played for laughs quite a bit, too.

Ghost Town does the best job of it so far, neatly toying with the Sixth Sense model and finding plenty of comedy in people who see dead people. It stars Ricky Gervais as Bertram Pincus, a curmudgeonly dentist who, after a near-death experience, finds that he can see and hear the many ghosts who wander Manhattan. The comic twist: He hates people, dead or alive, and has no interest in helping anyone finish their unfinished business.

His most persistent dead acquaintance is Frank (Greg Kinnear), an adulterous jerk who wants to prevent his widow, Gwen (Tea Leoni), from remarrying. Pincus agrees to interrupt her new relationship solely because he has a crush on her himself, and that's good enough for Frank.

There's an awful lot going on here -- fulfilling dead people's requests, breaking up a romance, and learning to love humanity comprises a busy agenda for one character, and Ghost Town could stand some trimming and toning. But it's often hilarious, too, primarily because of Gervais' fine-tuned snark and misanthropy. If the film is little more than his attempt to break out of the "cult following" category and find mainstream American success, more power to him. He deserves it, and Ghost Town is an auspicious start.

Ghost Town's premise is supernatural but reasonably familiar to filmgoers. Somewhat more bizarre is Dean Spanley, a wonderfully charming and whimsical comedy about an Anglican priest who believes he is the reincarnation of a dog.

This week, the eyes have it. We're looking at films for which vision is key.

Knowing
Nicolas Cage has the only new film going into wide release this week with Bangkok Dangerous, but frankly this tale of prophetic doom better grabs my attention. Cage plays a school teacher who digs up a time capsule and finds several pages of hand written numbers. He finds dates within those numbers, each of which corresponds to a major disaster that has occurred since the capsule was buried. More importantly the numbers apparently list disasters which have yet to occur. I'd be a little more enthusiastic if Cage's record hadn't been so hit and miss lately. (Ghost Rider? Puh-leeze.) Still the premise sounds kind of cool, despite reminding me of the lackluster The Number 23, and there's a disaster in the trailer that's pretty chilling, especially if you've ever been to Logan Airport in Boston. The preview is pushing the fact that director Alex Proyas helmed I, Robot, but I'm more impressed that he was the man behind the excellent Dark City.

Milk
This one isn't so much about visions of the future as visions for the future. Gus Van Sant directs and Sean Penn stars in this true story about Harvey Milk, who in 1977 became the first openly gay man to hold public office in the United States. Penn is engaging in the role, and we see him struggle against bigotry and death threats to give a voice to the gay community. I wasn't familiar with Milk's story, but now I'm curious. Here's William's take on the trailer.

For every hero, heroine, and sidekick, there's a nuisance -- that person who's there to mess things up and foil the plan. This week, we've got a bunch of men who make trouble and quickly become the thorn in someone, or someTHING's side.

Terminator Salvation
As if Christian Bale taking on Batman wasn't enough, now he's taking the shoes once filled by ol' Eddie Furlong and becoming John Connor in Terminator Salvation. That's right -- it's the future and Bale wants to bring those metallic jerks down. It's 2018, and John's understanding of the future has been changed by the appearance of a stranger named Marcus Wright. Connor and Wright head for the heart of Skynet and discover "the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind." Bale's being all breathy, there's lots of flashes and demolition, and Connor gets a bit of a surprise from one Hulk-sized machine. Erik thinks it's the perfect teaser trailer. Me, I'm not sold, but I'm not disappointed yet either.

Whoopi Goldberg sort of had it coming in Ghost. She was a hack of a psychic, so it was poetic justice to get haunted by Patrick Swayze.This time around, it's still justice, but not the kind you would expect. Up above, you can check out the trailer for Ghost Town, which popped up on YouTube over the weekend.

Ricky Gervais stars as a jerky dentist who can't be bothered to do the simplest thing for another person -- like, say, hold the elevator. But then he goes in for a colonoscopy and dies for a little less than seven minutes. Upon leaving the hospital, he discovers he can see dead people. Lots and lots of dead people. Of course, in a predicament like this, he has to face his jerkish past, but he also has to do something else -- help the ghost of Greg Kinnear keep his widowed wife from shacking up with the wrong guy. The comedy looks cute -- if a bit too familiar. It'll hit theaters this September.

I think it's fairly safe to say that when Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant get together on a project, the outcome is nothing short of comedic gold. These are the men who brought us the original TV version of The Office, and they're also the guys who dreamt up the very awesome (but no longer around) HBO series Extras. These days, Gervais has officially crossed over to Hollywood, and he's starring in all kinds of films -- his latest being Ghost Town (which he just wrapped) and This Side of the Truth. Now, the BBC tells us that Gervais and Merchant are reuniting once again; this time, as writers on a film script.

As of right now, the working title for the film is The Men at the Pru, and according to the BBC, it's "about a group of 20-somethings in the early 1970s." Gervais notes, "They work for the building society and they're having a great time but it's about them coming of age and having to grow up." The idea of having to grow up is a constant theme in their work, but it will be interesting to see what Gervais and Merchant can do with a screenplay -- a feature film that clocks in at around an hour and a half or so. He adds, "We're really getting excited. We went down to the Prudential headquarters and got all this old footage so we're really getting into it." Gervais has only co-written one script so far, and that's the upcoming This Side of the Truth (which he's also co-directing). This new project will mark the first time the duo has teamed on the script for a feature. Unfortunately, there's no word yet on when The Men at the Pru will be ready for production. My only request is that they please please please give Merchant a starring role. That man is beyond hysterical.

Today, I'm happy to say I achieved one of my many many goals in life: To meet Ricky Gervais and geek out with him over The Office. I couldn't help myself, and when we first sat down for our exclusive interview on the set of his new film Ghost Town, the first thing I said to him was something along the lines of: "I'm such a nerd when it comes to your version of The Office; I could talk to you for three days about that." Thinking Gervais would nod, smile and contemplate stabbing me for bringing up The Office when the guy's been there and done that ages ago, he was surprisingly open and, well, we geeked out ... just a bit. In fact, he said "No worries, I'd talk about that work till the cows come home; I'm very proud of it." I'll have my full interview with Gervais as we get closer to Ghost Town's release date, but I wanted to share just a tiny bit of casting news regarding the highly-anticipated sequel to one of last year's most successful holiday films.

Yes, I'm talking Night at the Museum, and its sequel Another Night, currently scheduled for a 2009 release. Since Gervais was such a big part of the success of that movie (his small role stole the entire show), we were wondering whether he'd show up in part two. According to Gervais, he's (kind of) involved; he said, "Yes, if I can. I've got the script and I really want to do it." We asked if his character is in the script, to which he replied, "Yeah yeah, and I really want to do it. I can't promise yet, because there might be a bit of overlap ... but I really want to do it. I love working with Ben, and I really really enjoyed working with Shawn Levy. He cares about the comedy ... and I want to do it. The answer's yes ... but I'm filming this, then I'm in post-production, then I'm on tour. The answer's yes, though."

Additionally, the series finale for Gervais' successful HBO show Extras airs this Sunday, and when asked why we should watch it, Gervais joked that, because of the writer's strike, it's the only original programming airing on Sunday night. So go watch it! (I guess it's funnier if you're there and listening to his sarcastic British accent ... but try your best to see the humor. Oh, and watch Extras -- it's a blast.)

Cinematical was lucky enough to visit the set of Ghost Town earlier today, where we spoke exclusively with writer-director David Koepp about this new film, as well as how it was writing what will probably go down as the biggest film of 2008: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We'll have a full set report on Ghost Town a little down the line as its late summer (tentative) release date approaches, but in the meantime, we wanted to find out a couple things from Koepp (who was the nicest guy, by the way) on Indy 4. Primarily, has he seen any of the finished product yet? Says Koepp, "Well I saw Indy's death scene, which was very moving. Um, I probably shouldn't have said that." We both laugh, since Koepp was obviously joking. He was joking, right? "I saw little bits here and there, and at first I felt a lot of pressure [writing the script] because you don't want to be the one who screws up a beloved franchise. But there's nothing you can do except work extra hard -- so I worked extra hard. You can't approach it except as you would any other movie."

One of the things that's been talked about for some time now is whether Frank Darabont's old Indiana Jones 4 script was used while Koepp was writing the new script. Darabont's been pretty outspoken about the whole thing recently, admitting that he hasn't seen the final product, but has heard that elements of his script were used. We asked Koepp about this -- whether he used Darabont's script as a reference -- and he had this to say: "I looked at everything that everyone had written. It's been in development since the early '90s; anything that was any good, I tried to use -- sometimes it stayed, sometimes it didn't. We're all assistant storytellers; there was a ton of material there already. Part of my job was shaper, and part of my job was coming up with new stuff."

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull arrives in theaters on May 22, 2008.

Okay... Before I get to the wonder that is Bruce Campbell, I've got to take a second and complain. If you remember anything about our previous coverage of Ghost Town, such as David Koepp signing on to direct Greg Kinnear and Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni signing on, and then Kristen Wiig, you probably remember the premise. A dentist (Gervais) heads in for a colonoscopy under the knife of Wiig, and he dies for seven minutes. When he comes back to life, he can see the dead -- especially a ghostly businessman (Kinnear) who wants him to break up his widow's (Leoni) upcoming marriage.

Anal surgery is no longer the culprit. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the dentist temporarily kicks the bucket during a "routine dental surgery." Now that is a really boring and lame change. What's wrong with a colonoscopy? Gah. At least we've got Campbell to soften the news. He has signed on to play Leoni's character's fiance -- the one that the dentist really isn't into. Since this ghostly apparition isn't through Whoopi, I keep wondering if it'll end up with Kinnear taking over Gervais' body to have a second chance with his wife. Or maybe Campbell will go Ash on his ass and take him out of the picture. He could always just say Deadites possessed the dude. Shooting has already begun in New York, and hopefully they haven't vanilla-ed anything else.

Post edited as the original THR post now says "Billy Campbell" is the other man, and not Bruce. Thanks to ***Lance*** for spotting that. What a shame.