michael lehmann Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Who says you can't go home again? Winona Ryder says that a sequel to 1988's Heathers is definitely on its way -- "swear to God"!!! She told Empire Magazine: "Whatever you hear, there is a sequel in the works. I swear to God ... For some reason the writer Dan Waters and director Michael Lehmann don't want to talk about it. I've been wanting to do a sequel forever. There is a story, and Christian [Slater] has agreed to come back as a kind of Obi-Wan character."

If those words sound familiar, it's because they're almost exactly the same words she uttered nearly three years ago: "It takes place in Washington and Christian Slater agreed to come back and make an Obi-Wan-type appearance. It's very funny." Last fall, Slater expressed his interest in a sequel: "I would do it in a heartbeat. I would totally love to do that character again."

The Obi-Wan references would seem to indicate that Slater's character, J.D., could return as Obi-Wan did in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Twenty years on, Ryder and Slater are still a very appealing pair, so the question returns to Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, without whom a sequel would be a pointless, tawdry affair. Lehmann has been busy directing TV shows (True Blood, Big Love, Californication). Most recently, Waters wrote and directed the well-received Sex and Death 101, in which Ryder appeared. What can they do to make Heathers 2 better than Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo?

[ Via US Magazine. ]

Student films must be graded on a curve, and Flakes is basically a student film. If you overlooked the fact that the three leads are all moderately high-profile actors, I'd estimate the budget to be less than twenty thousand dollars. Most of the action takes place in or around the titular establishment, a cereal bar in which slackers and stoners assemble on a daily basis to eat their favorite cereals -- everything from standard fare like Cheerios to rare delicacies like Fruit Brute -- and make of themselves a quirky movie character. The two leads are a boyfriend-girlfriend, Neal Downs (Aaron Stanford) and the improbably named Miss Pussy Katz. (Zooey Deschanel) Their boss at Flakes is a 60-ish hippie played by Christopher Lloyd, and his performance is the biggest thing hindering my plan to give Flakes a better review than it deserves. Lloyd comes from some long forgotten school of acting where naturalism is never as a good a choice as creating a character with such a forced way of speaking that no one could ever mistake them for a human being.

With a movie like this, they base their plot on whatever is on sale at the 'cliched plot device' factory, and it appears that what was on sale that week was 'business is threatened by newer, flashier rival across the street.' A nerdy businessman comes walking into Flakes one day and is impressed by the concept but dispirited by the stoner attitude -- he doesn't get what Flakes is all about, man! -- and determines to open an upscale cereal bar directly across the way which will put Flakes out of business. This causes much tension. Miss Pussy Katz -- I can't believe I keep having to type that -- and her boyfriend have a number of rows over how Flakes should respond to the crisis at hand and the loyal customers alternately declare their loyalty or decamp to the new establishment across the street. As bad as this all sounds, there are a couple of things about Flakes that I really liked, and I'm more than happy to point them out and to remind everyone that this is from the director of Heathers.

What do you do when a hero takes a fall? For years I've been tracking the career of director Michael Lehmann, convinced that he had a kind of hidden brilliance packed somewhere in the corners of his films. If I persevered, I would have been the first to discover the hidden connection and trace the line that would lead to a major re-discovery. But then I saw Because I Said So (152 screens). I breathlessly arrived at the screening, excited by the possibilities the evening would have in store for me. The movie started, and I re-adjusted my expectations, thinking that maybe I'd have to work a bit harder to find something good. The movie kept going and I began to despair that I'd find anything good. The movie went a little further and I became convinced: this movie doesn't have anything good. It's one of the worst, most annoying movies I've ever seen. This was re-affirmed when the critic sitting directly to my right leaned over at one point and whispered, "kill me."