variety Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Beginning with the summer of Surf Ninjas and concluding with last year's Underdog, Vulture has compiled a list arguing that August movies generally blow. Sifting through the titles from the past fifteen years, it's hard to ignore their point. If Bushwhacked, Spawn and The Thirteenth Warrior don't convince you, how about Hollow Man? The Adventures of Pluto Nash? Anacondas?

August usually means a lot to America. It's big for vacationers. The sun comes out and everyone gets one last hurrah before the summer recedes for the year. So why would studios dump their worst movies at this time? Maybe it's just a coincidence, but either way, it's hard to say whether or not this August will break the trend. Swing Vote seems to confirm Vulture's dire prediction, but Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder will surely find some appreciative audiences. And we all know The Dark Knight will continue to make bank. However, before you start thinking that a turnaround is on the way, consider the third Mummy movie -- and, once again, Vulture might have something here: Variety has called it "cheeseball stuff." Could that be the codeword for "typical August movie"? It would seem so.

Love him or hate him, you've got to hand it to Brett Ratner for keeping his career in motion. Variety brings word that the hustling filmmaker plans to take his Rat Entertainment company from New Line, where it first settled in 1996, to a first-look deal with Paramount Pictures. Ratner says the departure of New Line execs Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne in February convinced him it was time to move on. At Paramount, Ratner will probably get bigger budgets and executives more receptive to his blockbuster-ready concepts. Stating the obvious, Ratner told Variety he "will not be pitching art films. I want to make major tentpole movies." You don't say?

Unless you're Scott Foundas, you probably balk at the idea of more Ratner movies populating the mainstream film scene, but the guy does fit the proper archetype of the classic Hollywood powerhouse. A modern day Sammy Glick, he knows how to make movies that bring out the audiences, whether or not they're any good. But maybe that determination means that, one day, Ratner will make a lot of great movies. His planned Hugh Hefner biopic sounds promising -- or at least, appropriate.

Still, that's a little ways off. Encouraged by his experience with X-Men: The Last Stand, Ratner decided he wanted to work on a new superhero franchise, so he's adapting Valiant Comics' Harbinger. Also in his queue: Beverly Hills Cop 4, The Incredible Shrinking Man and The Boys From Brazil. Do these projects get anyone excited? Anyone at all?

On a cloudless January day in 1966, Los Angeles was such a dull small town that children could be alerted to something as small a skywriter at work. My parents must have been watching the Rose Bowl, as they did every New Year's Day. In those days we lived five miles or so away from the arena, on the heights over the Arroyo Seco. They saw the plane on TV buzzing the big game and urged me to go outside and have a look. Up in the sky, the small plane, low enough that you could hear the drone of the engine, spelled out the words in smoke B-A-T-M-A-N I-S C-O-M-I-N-G.

A bunch of bloggers and Peter Travers have already weighed in with glowing early reviews of The Dark Knight, but you were justified if you reserved judgment. The bloggers who were fortunate enough to get a look at the film were pretty squarely in the geek demographic -- which is not any sort of indictment, but just an indicator that they had a very specific perspective on the film. And Peter Travers is... Well, he's Peter Travers. Now, though, come some reviews you shouldn't so readily ignore -- and they're gushy, (almost) unqualified raves.

This from Kirk Honeycutt in the Hollywood Reporter: "[Nolan] builds movies around ideas and characters, and "Dark Knight" is no exception. The ideas here are not new to the movie world of cops and criminal[s], but in the context of a comic book movie, they ring out with startling clarity. In other words, you expect moralistic underpinnings in a Martin Scorsese movie; in a Batman movie, they hit home with renewed vigor . . . . With the film's race-car pace, noise levels, throbbing music and density of stratagems, no one will follow all the plot points at first glance. Not that the story with its double crosses and ingenious plans isn't clear, but to enjoy the full glory of these urban battlefield strategies, multiple viewings are required."

Whoo! And then this from Justin Chang in Variety:

His last movie didn't do so hot, but George Clooney's still making headlines. This time, he has spoken out about the recent split between the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. According to Variety, Clooney has decided to stay neutral where many prominent actors have taken sides, and he's urging others to take the same route. If Hollywood actors go on strike, it'll probably be SAG's fault, considering the eagerness of AFTRA to negotiate a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. AFTRA's biggest defender is Tom Hanks, while Jack Nicholson is heading up the other side. "Stories about Jack Nicholson vs. Tom Hanks only strengthen the negotiating power of the AMPTP," Clooney said in a statement.

Like many actors, Clooney wants to take any measures he can to prevent a strike. As a member of SAG, the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America, he wears many hats. "I'm hoping that there might be a way out of this," he said. "To be sure, I'm not the brightest bulb out there. So maybe someone has a lot better idea." Then he got personal: "I just happen to believe so strongly in both unions... my father, my mother, aunt, uncle, even cousins were all members." Nobody's doubting his allegiance, but after souring his relationship with the WGA after Leatherheads came out, it's hard to say how the other unions will regard him in the coming months.

I was out carousing around my fave blogs today, looking for something interesting to write about (hey, it's a slow news day) when I came across this post over on Mike Jones's The Circuit blog on Variety about a guy trapped in an elevator for 41 hours.

The New Yorker website has a time-lapse video up of this poor dude who went for a smoke break and then got stuck in the damn elevator. The video is kind of harrowing if you, like me, are prone to claustrophobia and already have an irrational fear of elevators. A commenter on The Circuit noted that the video is better than most of the shorts he'd juried recently for fests, which got me thinking ...

Talk about a wacky supporting cast, Variety has just announced the names of folks who have just signed on to star opposite Kevin Costner in Swing Vote -- and the list is about as diverse as they come. Dennis Hopper, Nathan Lane, Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, George Lopez and newbie Madeline Carroll will join Costner in a comedy that revolves around a working-class single dad who becomes the most important man on the planet when the entire presidential election comes down to his vote. I'm not sure how on earth that would ever happen (is he voting after all the votes are counted?), but I'm sure writers Joshua Michael Stern and Jason Richman found a way to make it somewhat believable. Perhaps they can work some of that magic and also make Kevin Costner a bankable star again? Or is that asking a bit too much?

For their part, Hopper and Grammer will play the Democratic and Republican candidates respectively, with Lane and Tucci as their campaign managers. Lopez will show up as a local TV station manager for the town that gets caught up in all the hoopla. Dennis Hopper for President? I can certainly dig it. The film, which will be directed by Joshua Michael Stern, begins shooting in Albuquerque, New Mexico on July 23. I'm curious to see how they spin this one -- will Grammer play villain; the guy who will do just about anything to win Costner's vote? Or will they decide not to choose sides, and simply play up to the difficult decision one small town guy eventually has to make? Costner financed the film himself through his Treehouse Films, and we'll all get to see who the next big-screen President will be when the film hits theaters next year (just in time for our next real presidential election).

I don't know about you, but the arrival of a new Coen Brothers movie is a really big deal to me. (Yes, even after Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, both of which I enjoy more than most people seem to.) Their latest is a return to the old-school film noir form a la Blood Simple or The Man Who Wasn't There. Miramax won't be releasing No Country for Old Men until November 21, but we've got a handful of very enthusiastic reactions from that big French film festival.

Our pals over at Rotten Tomatoes say: "not only does No Country deliver another excellent Coen Brothers film, it also delves thematically deeper than your average crime thriller with its sprawling saga of a drug deal gone wrong, a bag of cash, a hunter on the run (Josh Brolin), and the philosophizing psychopath on his trail (Javier Bardem)." The Tomato gang also mentions that the flick "created an audible buzz in the Debussy theater lobby as members of the press spilled out of the aisles after tonight's press screening." Cool! (Also in the cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson and the adorable Kelly Macdonald.)

Our own James Rocchi shares his thoughts: "A brilliant example of how plot devices as simple as murder and money can be used to explore larger sweeping themes of mortality, morality and more -- while still delivering rousing, intelligent pure entertainment." Over at Variety, Todd McCarthy was in agreement: "Cormac McCarthy's bracing and brilliant novel is gold for the Coen brothers, who have handled it respectfully but not slavishly, using its built-in cinematic values while cutting for brevity and infusing it with their own touch. Result is one of the their very best films, a bloody classic of its type destined for acclaim and potentially robust B.O. returns upon release later in the year." Argh, who wants to wait until November?? Then again, only a fool would release a Coen film in the middle of the summer.

Do the trades really focus on business at the expense of show? Do people now get what you mean just by saying you're a "blogger?" And what killed Premiere dead -- and why isn't there a glossy, mass-market movie magazine in America? The Rocchi Review, our bi-weekly look at the online film community, is joined this week by Variety's Anne Thompson -- a veteran journalist, commentator and blogger -- and Anne and I talk about all the topics above, and much more. You can download the entire podcast right here -- and we hope you enjoy.

Over at Variety, Anne Thompson wrote an excellent piece yesterday on Premiere Magazine ceasing publication, and how it's getting harder and harder to find places to publish long-form movie journalism. Space for writing of any decent length about film has all but disappeared from most mainstream print publications, and the proliferation of movie writing on the Web has made it harder for print pubs about movies to continue to exist, Thompson says.

Part of the issue is that readers who have grown accustomed to the tendency on websites and blogs to write shorter posts with less commentary have less interest in (and patience for reading) longer, more thoughtful pieces about film.

Here at Cinematical, we have always supported longer reviews than readers will typically find at places like People or Newsweek, where real estate for more in-depth film coverage is hard to come by. Our regular reviews tend to run around 1,000 words, with fest reviews typically clocking in around the 500-750 word range. This gives our writers a lot more room to delve into things like the history of a genre as it relates to a given film, or to compare a particular film with previous works by the same director, or even to just talk about things like how the editing or cinematography or production design affect the film overall.