The Coppolas: Behind the scenes with America's great film-making clan - The Independent

But Who Will Watch the Studios?

Sounds like Fox is playing dirty to get a piece of Watchmen...

Fox Suing Warner Brothers Over Watchmen

Movie Review: Hamlet 2

The Steve Coogan weekend continues. After getting a small dose of Coogan last night in Tropic Thunder, I saw his star turn in Hamlet 2 at a screening put on by the NYU Tisch West Cinema Club, which was followed by a talkback with two of the actresses from the film, Phoebe Strole and Melanie Diaz. They didn't have a great deal to say about the movie and neither do I.

Hamlet 2, a Sundance sensation earlier this year, tells the story of a high school drama teacher, former small time actor Dana Marschz (Coogan, brilliant), whose life is falling apart around him. Desperately clinging to a script that he wrote, a patently obscene sequel to Hamlet, he and his drama class attempt to perform against opposition from families and administrators.

The cut has apparently evolved from Sundance. According to a friend who saw the movie there, the changes were pretty imperceptible. It was definitely streamlined, she said, especially near the end, where it seemed to be missing a musical number. She didn't mind and said it played better shorter. I agree.

Hamlet 2 has some jokes that are tired (gay jokes), some jokes that fall flat (impotence jokes) and many that land. What this reported $9M movie has over Tropic Thunder is that it has some real heart to it. This silly comedy actually becomes a paean to freedom of speech and the transformative power of theater. It won't win any Tonys (or Oscars), but it's a ton of fun.

Movie Review: Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder is a full-on satire of Hollywood's reality-distortion field, and it is hilarious from beginning to end, but especially in the middle. Robert Downey, Jr. is astoundingly funny as Kurt Lazarus, an Australian method actor who undergoes surgery to make himself appear black and who gets so lost in the character he can't get out. Ben Stiller's action star parody character, Tugg Speedman, has a similar dilemma. Watching Kurt Lazarus in character try to talk Tugg Speedman out of character was one of my favorite moments.

Hollywood loves to satirize itself, and here the studio showed its love by sparing no expense. Just like the movie within the movie of the same name, Tropic Thunder takes place in deep jungle locations, features many an egocentric star and redonkulously huge explosions.

You probably already know the 30-sec synopsis plot. Kurt and Tugg are two of a team of five prima donna actors who get lost in the jungle while making a Vietnam war movie, but still think they are making a movie. Jack Black, Jay Baruchel and Brandon T. Jackson are the other three in the 'elite special forces unit,' but they never develop much in the way of subplots. Additional supporting players include Steve Coogan, as a Brit director who is in over his head; Danny McBride, whose turn in Pineapple Express made it so I will never forget his name, again stealing scenes as pyrotechnics expert (who nearly ended his career when he almost blinded Jamie Lee Curtis on Freaky Friday); and Nick Nolte as the Vietnam vet upon whom the movie is based.

But Tropic Thunder is really a three man show, with Stiller, Downey Jr. and surprise guest--

Continue reading about Tropic Thunder (spoilers)... Tom Cruise (!) having the time of his life playing a Machiavellian studio head.

The movie starts out with some great parody trailers (pay attention to the studio logos for each film) then quickly goes into the climactic scene from the movie-within-the-movie. The rather realistic-looking gore in this scene, and in Steve Coogan's last scene, repulsed me more than made me laugh. Thankfully, after that the movie had less gore and more funny.

Once the team is wandering in the jungle, bickering with each other and generally behaving almost uncannily like real Hollywood stars have behaved in a similar situation, the movie really starts firing on all cylinders. I don't think I will ever get over how hilarious it is that Tugg Speedman kills a panda.

As for controversy around the Simple Jack backstory, I would've said before I saw the movie that it was pretty obvious that it was satirizing actors who think playing characters who are mentally challenged is a shortcut to an Oscar. And it was. As Robert Downey, Jr. playing Kurt Lazarus playing Sergeant Osiris says, the key is not to "go full retard" but to be only partially mentally challenged like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump or Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Sean Penn, he says, did so in 2002 with I Am Sam and "went home empty-handed." This sort of cold calculation on the part of actors drumming for awards is spot on. I'm not sure how I would feel about the part where Tugg is forced to play 'Jack' for the gang of drug-runners if, say, I was the parent of a mentally challenged kid. The drug-runners appear to be emotionally moved by the portrayal, and the underlying suggestion is that Tugg can connect with the role because deep down he has a certain empathy for the character. On the other hand, are we the audience supposed to laugh at Tugg's delusion or just that he's walking and talking funny? It's a fine distinction, and I don't blame those who are sensitive for believing that many audience members won't be able to make it.

On the other hand, these critics, namely Timothy Shriver, Chairman of the Special Olympics, have their own kind of delusions if they can go on NPR and baldy assert that the movie is offensive while openly admitting they haven't seen it. All they are doing is getting more people to see the movie (fine with me) and putting their cause on the wrong side of freedom of speech. Better that they actually used the movie as a platform for raising consciousness on the issue and demonstrate that they realize the filmmakers were joking, even if Shriver himself doesn't find it funny. Zen koan: Would you take someone without a sense of humor's opinion about a comedy seriously?

One last technical note, I don't know if it was the acoustics of the theater I was in, but several of the lines seemed to have gotten lost in the mix. In a movie where every line is so funny, this was a palpable loss. Or maybe it was intentional, to spike DVD sales.

PREVIOUSLY:
Ben Stiller and Justin Theroux Q&A

MORE:
Co-Screenwriter Justin Theroux Vulture interview

What Happened at Netflix?

Something happened at all of Netflixes shipping centers?

We’re happy to report that all of our shipping centers resumed normal operations on Friday (after 3 days of issues). If you should have been shipped a disc Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, with rare exception it shipped Friday.

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. To all of you whose shipments have been delayed, we’ll be automatically applying a 15% credit to your next billing statement. Or, if you are new to Netflix and your first shipments have been delayed, we recognize that this is not a good way to begin your Netflix membership and we’ll automatically extend your free trial by a week.

Again, we apologize for the delay and thank you for your understanding.
The Netflix Team

--From an unlinkable message after member sign in

Was it a database upgrade? Or was it malicious? Netflix has been such a technologically-savvy company, it's hard to believe they had a database snafu.

John August on the Politics of Superheroes

johnaugust.com » Aquaman is a Pescepublican

A Grand Don't Come for Free

PrepShootPost: ADVICE TO MY FRIENDS WITH 100 GRAND

Tropic Thunder Q&A

Ben Still and Justin Theroux were, big surprise, inspired by Apocalypse Now and Platoon to write a comedy about making an out-of-control Vietnam movie:

STILLER Those iconic war movies like “Apocalypse Now” or “Deer Hunter,” “Platoon,” even “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Hamburger Hill,” were very affecting at different times in my life. In ’87, around the time they were casting “Platoon,” I went in to meet Oliver Stone, and a lot of my friends were making war movies and going off to these fake boot camps. It seemed slightly ironic that these actors were talking about this incredible experience that in no way comes close to a real war.

--Film - Spoof Within a Movie Within a Movie Within ... - Question - NYTimes.com

Putting it all on the line

DIY Filmmaker Wins Big With Midnight Kiss | The Underwire from Wired.com

RIP Isaac Hayes

YouTube - Isaac Hayes scores Shaft

MORE: Filmmmaker Kevin Willmott remembers Isaac Hayes

Moview Review: The Dark Knight: The IMAX Experience

Three weeks now since its release, and I have little to add to the sprawling discussion of The Dark Knight. An ambitious sequel -- wrongly compared to Godfather II by some, more accurately compared to classic crime drama Heat -- The Dark Knight for me very much exposed Iron Man as a low-fat, snack-pack superhero movie. The Dark Knight is a juicy steak, a full day's serving of cinematic calories.

It was especially impressive on the IMAX screen. The cutting between aspect ratios was not at all jarring, and I've heard speculation that the editor was careful to make sure that a dark shot preceded the expansion and contraction cuts. Unfortunately, the framing has to work for 35mm, so you're not getting much additional information in the IMAX shots except in the peripheral-vision, immersive sense. What I did take away from the IMAX is the excellent, and in the case of this film, bowel-shaking sound system. The sound cue at the end of the Hong Kong sequence vibrated my internal organs.

Though nearly universally praised, the movie does have flaws that are readily apparent --

Continue reading about The Dark Knight (major spoilers)...Dent's descent into twofacedness is too swift, Scarecrow's brief reappearance too useless, Lucius Fox's assent to unconstitutional surveillance too easy, the Chinese businessman character too racist, Maggie Gyllenhall's performance too Katieholmesian -- but these are all subsumed by grand meditations on the nature of good and the nature of evil.

Director/co-writer Christopher Nolan has said that he sees a theme of 'escalation.' But 'escalation' is really not a theme, just an pattern of action. Every great plot is constantly raising the stakes. Like Nolan's earlier films Memento and Following (even The Prestige), The Dark Knight hinges much more on 'identity.' Bruce Wayne seeks both to protect and to shed his second identity; Harvey Dent develops a second identity; and The Joker seems to lack an identity altogether.

In the same way David Mamet's House of Games tipped his hand in how he builds his plots in the structure of confidence games, Christopher Nolan's work on The Prestige reveals his attentiveness to the structure of magic tricks. The Dark Knight is full of misdirection and sleight-of-hand. There are two (if not three or four) faked deaths and a myriad of fake clown thugs and Batmen. The Joker himself seems to be a parody of a magician. ("Watch me make this pencil disappear.") He gets his giggles from seeing his marks behave in predictable ways -- as one trick is finishing, he lays the groundwork for the next.

Heath Ledger is a wonderful psychopath, but I'm beginning to wonder with all the Oscar speculation about his performance whether 'psychopath' is the new 'mentally handicapped.' Witness Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood and Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.

Where Nolan's Batman series might hope to surpass The Godfather Trilogy is by having a great third movie. Already there are rumors of Johnny Depp as The Riddler and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin. We might assume that The Joker won't be back for the next installment, but I think a poor precedent was established in faking Commissioner Gordon's death. Already word is that Aaron Eckhardt's contract provides that Two-Face will be back and I'd lay money that Gyllenhall's Rachel Dawes will be too.

So what did this movie add to the mythology? Nolan and co-writers David S. Goyer and Jonathan Nolan have done a great job of exploring Bruce Wayne's psychology without getting touchy-feely. If anything, Bruce has receded behind the mask of Batman, to the point that he can't control its image. All that's left is for him to fake Batman's death. Of course, we will all sit smugly by, knowing to ourselves that Batman is immortal.

Forget 3D - Try 6D

Movies of the future may be super-, ultra- or even hyper-realistic:

MIT developing super-realistic image system - MIT News Office

Your Weekend Viewing: Foxhall Films on YouTube

Foxhall Films, producers of Rain in the Mountains now has a YouTube Channel. Check it out.

Movie Review: The X-Files 2: I Want to Believe

As a fan of The X-Files, I wanted to believe that I would enjoy this unnecessary sequel. And I did, mostly.

I Want to Believe is a self-contained story, which plays like a beefier version of the t.v. show. Many years on, we find Scully is a doctor at a Catholic hospital and Mulder is, well, still Mulder. They are not married, but they are living together.

An FBI agent (played by Xantha Radley who, a little birdie tells me, was also in the famous "Frankenstein" episode of the show) goes missing, and a defrocked Catholic priest (an excellent Billy Connolly) is claiming he has visions about her abduction. Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) wants to find her, and needs Mulder and Scully's help to determine if he's really a psychic or just wasting everyone's time.

From there, there's lots of action, scares and moody atmosphere. There's also some camp and some lines that are entirely too on-the-nose, as when Scully openly accuses Mulder of making this case about his long-ago abducted sister, despite his knowing that she's dead.

To be honest, it's been so long since I followed the labyrinthine twists and conspiratorial convolutions of the show and first film, I couldn't remember whether Mulder and Scully had ever gotten together, or had a child together, or whether Mulder had confirmed his sister's death or who Skinner was to them and other such references. Not that you need to know to enjoy the movie.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe is kind of like having dinner with a friend that you fell out of touch with years ago. You can see why you were once friends, and enjoy the dinner, but they occasionally refer to people and events you only vaguely remember.

Keep an Eye on On the Down Low

Soon, over at Kayak Film, a movie called On the Down Low will be released in its entirety - free! - as both HD and iPod/iPhone digital downloads. If you like the movie, you can buy the DVD for $9.99.

This is the distribution model we've all thought about, but no one has had the guts to do. I'm going to be watching with a keen eye.

Photo from a Flickr stream of production stills from the film