josh horowitz Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Over at MTV-land, Josh Horowitz has a rather clever short up in which he inserts himself into the nominees for the Best Picture Oscar. Horowitz gets verbally abused by Keira Knightley, finds out he got Juno pregnant, uses his hamburger phone to call Javier Bardem's serial killer to take care of his "little problem," has a chat by the fire with Daniel Plainview, and gets yelled at by George Clooney. The editing isn't seamless, but it looks quite good, and Horowitz, when he's not being annoying, can be funny.

It's pretty darn amusing (or at least, it was to me, but I've only had one cup of coffee this morning, so it's possible I'm just not awake yet), and just the kind of thing Jon Stewart might do for the Oscars. I wonder if Stewart had something similar planned, saw this online and said, "Damn that Horowitz! He stole our idea!"

What do you think about the video? Funny, or not?
[Hat tip: Hollywood Elsewhere]

Every once in a while, news about a potential sequel makes some people ooh and ahh, rather than hawk up a phlegm globber. Is that the case with a potential Throw Momma From the Train 2? I wouldn't think so, but both Josh Horowitz at MTV and our beloved EIC, Erik Davis, seem into the idea. The former spoke with Danny DeVito recently about the possibility of a Momma return, and it seems the dude doesn't think his train days are done.

DeVito said: "I actually haunt Billy [Crystal] all the time. I always call him and say we should do a sequel. I called Billy at 7 AM one morning. I must have woken him up and I was like: 'I have this idea.' He was like: 'Are you done?' He went back to sleep." So really, this is only in the vague musing stage if he's serious, although I'm sure it would gear up soon if movie companies caught wind of some audience interest. But do the rest of you really want it?

I enjoyed Throw Momma from the Train and Horowitz is right -- it has some great lines. However, as he also notes -- Anne Ramsey is no longer with us. I would have trouble seeing The Goonies return without Ma Fratelli just as much as I couldn't see a new Throw Momma without the actual, wonderfully-mean mom. Heck, she got an Oscar nomination for the role! If she was still around, I'd be all for it, but I don't know if I could watch a sequel without her. Could you?

WNYC's Brian Lehrer did a segment this morning with Joshua Horowitz, author of the new book, The Mind of the Modern Moviemaker: Twenty Conversations with the New Generation of Filmmakers, and Kerry Conran, creator of that strange hybrid of painterly geekery and celebrity charity, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It's a good piece of radio, but Horowitz' book is an odd bag, comprised as it is with interviews with both card-carrying hipster aesthetes like Michel Gondry, and dude-movie heroes like Todd "Old School" Phillips. To many of us, a lot of the guys that Horowitz singles out for investigation are unremarkable hacks; to Horowitz, they're a new crop of auteurs, stamping a generation-specific brand of irony and self-referentiality and digital savvy on classical filmmaking.

I'm sure he's probably right, but I'm not sure this is cause for celebration. The segment reminded me of a coversation I had last week about the state of the jump cut, and other technical tactics that filmmakers employ to remind you that you're watching a film. The person I was speaking with praised a certain filmmaker's use of such tactics as "Godardian". In response, I said something along the lines of, "I think if Godard was dead, one would hope that the post-digital flurry of self-referentiality would have him rolling in his grave." (As it is, the old New Wave master seems to be too far afield of relevancy to cause much of a fuss about anything). 

The running theme of Horowitz's argument seems to be that it's easier now, for people who want to badly enough, to make films: Conran spends years developing virtual sets on his home computer and eventually finds himself directing Gwyneth Paltrow in front of a blue screen; Kevin Smith maxes out his credit card, feeds his friends lines about blow jobs and Yoda, and we get Clerks. Which all reminds me of a line from a little dino-film by Steven Speilberg, who probably deserves as much credit for the filmmaking foibles of this new generation as anyone: "You spent so much time worrying about whether you could do it, you didn't stop to think if you should."

Later today, you'll be able to listen to the interview here.