Film Web Blog

There’s a little something for everyone in this bag of December theatrical treats. We all know the studios love to pack the last few weeks of the year with heavy dramatic fare, however there’s also a sprinkling of lighter films thrown into the mix this year. That’s great news for moviegoers ready to relax and escape into the make-believe world of films.

The batch of potential Oscar contenders hitting cineplexes during the last 31 days of 2007 include The Great Debaters, Charlie Wilson’s War, Atonement, and There Will Be Blood. Juno, The Bucket List, and Sweeney Todd are also likely to pick up a few nominations here and there. And for lovers of fantasy, romance and adventure films, December offers up P.S. I Love You, The Golden Compass, The Water Horse, National Treasure: Book of Secrets and I Am Legend. Read On…
_{(Photo DreamWorks Pictures/Warner Bros Pictures)}

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Anthropomorphic critters are as old as animation itself, so perhaps it’s a bit late in the day to start complaining about them. But I can only greet with weariness news of Nicolas Cage’s casting as a mole - literally; this is a Disney flick, not a spy movie - in the forthcoming G-Force. Not because Cage himself is involved; it could be any star with a familiar set of mannerisms (although that said, when Cage announced last December that he was going to act less, some of us hoped he meant in specific scenes).

Cage’s rodent will be one of trio of CGI animal commandos: Steve Buscemi and Tracey Morgan are set to play a hamster and a guinea pig respectively. It’s all but inevitable that these CGI creatures will be cute incarnations of the actors playing them; that they will banter, mug, wisecrack, dance and drop pop culture reference after pop culture reference; that the overriding theme will be: “Hey, their lives are - you’ll love this - just like ours“; that - in short - they will look and sound exactly like every other troupe of animated animals in every other family film for what is starting to seem like an eternity.

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Smoke and mirrors … Dennis Hopper in 1982. Photograph: Jane Bown

Oddly, of the various emotions the film lover routinely puts him or herself through - frustration, confusion, impotent rage - disappointment doesn’t often figure. The longer you’re watching movies, the more experience counsels you to lower your expectations, and the better you become at gauging a film from a hundred yards - so while you might, for whatever masochistic reasons, willingly submit to something you know is doomed to be a clunker, it’s rare to find yourself surprised by it.

But now and then your optimism still betrays you - and the sorrow that results came to the blogosphere this week courtesy of Filmbrain. The cause was Believe in Me, an early 70s showcase for the fleetingly modish Michael Sarrazin and Jacqueline Bisset, directed by Israel Horovitz (father of the Beastie Boys’ Adam) and rooted in the then popular drug peril subgenre. The blog had high hopes - hopes then conclusively dashed: “Unravelling with all the warmth of a government-sponsored anti-drug screed, the film lacks a human element [...] Believe in Me is an embarrassing mess, made tolerable only by a handful of street scenes that capture the true grit of Manhattan circa 1971. That, and hearing Bisset utter the line ‘I steal, I shoot dope, I fuck.’”

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Sam Riley in Control, which won five awards in the 2007 BIFA ceremony

Welcome to the shadow world. At first glance, one of the stranger aspects of contemporary film culture is that almost every event, whether an awards show or a film festival, has its shadow. For Sundance, it’s Slamdance. For the London Film Festival, it’s the Raindance Festival. For the BAFTAs, it’s the BIFAs.

The 10th “BIFAs” (or British Independent Film Awards, to give them their full name) were held in London earlier this week, with Anton Corbijn’s Control (about the life and death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis) winning a hatful of awards.

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Christopher Campbell
Filed under: Documentary, Independent, Sundance, Cinematical Indie

Before I had ever attended the Sundance Film Festival, I imagined the event as this small mountain town overrun with an abundance of celebrities, who could be seen just walking around, outnumbering the actual moviegoers. Why? Because that’s what a lot of the media concentrates on. And yes, when I did finally attend, I was able to spend five minutes walking up Main Street, in which little time I walked past Evan Rachel Wood, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tom Arnold and others. Sure, they weren’t the biggest names, but it seemed my imagined world actually existed. Of course, most of the big celebs are probably not walking around so casually. But I wouldn’t know; the rest of the fest I spent my time watching 37 features, mostly far away from Main Street and the celebs, inside the Yarrow Hotel’s press screening rooms.

For many attendees, though, it’s all about the celeb sightings and the big-name movies, of which Sundance seems to premiere more and more of each year. However, 2007 didn’t seem to have as many popular titles (as far as I noticed from my non-attending standpoint). In contrast, the 2008 festival appears to have more stars than the Academy Awards ceremony. Some of the big films that will be premiering or screening this year include Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind, Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened?, Morgan Spurlock’s new doc Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (U.S.), George Romero’s Diary of the Dead and the directorial debut of Michael Keaton, The Merry Gentleman. And, for the sightseers, some of the attending stars include Robert DeNiro, Sean Penn, Maria Bello, William Hurt, Sharon Stone, Bruce Willis, Dennis Quaid, Ellen Page, Ben Kingsley, Ewan McGregor, Sean Combs, Julianne Moore, Charlize Theron, Brian Cox, John Malkovich, Matthew Broderick, Jacqueline Bisset, Meg Ryan, Jack Black and Mia Farrow.

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Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Drama, Romance, Celebrities and Controversy, Politics

Woody Allen has always been the man of New York — and not just because he made a little flick called Manhattan. It’s been infused in much of his work, that is, until he headed across the Atlantic. After some UK forays, he headed to Spain to show it love. As he previously said: “I hope I can present Barcelona to the world as I see it, the same way I presented Manhattan to the world as I saw it with my eyes. I want to write a love letter to Barcelona, and from Barcelona to the world.” Well, the course of true love never did run smooth.

In July, Woody ticked off some Catalonians, who were upset that Barcelona was giving so much money to an American filmmaker, rather than than local talent. According to some, Catalan films are faced with much difficulty getting made, so Woody’s ease has rifled more than a few feathers. But now, a few months later, the ill will continues and Spain might not want to be Allen’s object of affection. The Guardian reports that Mediapro, the production company behind Vicky Cristina Barcelona, says Woody’s next two will be filmed “neither in Catalonia nor in Spain.”

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Erik Davis
Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, From the Editor’s Desk

… If people stopped bitching about The Golden Compass and, instead, waited to go see the actual movie? Sure, according to a recent Hollywood Reporter article, they’ve “removed all references to the church, the Bible and sin …” — but does it really matter? It’s a kids film. And I don’t blame New Line or director Chris Weitz for wanting to tone down the “heavy” material so that the more fantastical elements of the books could remain front and center. Film is a visual medium after all. The Christian groups are pissed the flick will make kids want to go buy the books and — God forbid — learn more about the world. Like the film is some sort of ridiculous gateway drug that could potentially corrupt the minds of millions of children everywhere. The Golden Compass — it’s the new heroin! Here’s how I imagine a conversation between child and parent will go immediately after watching The Golden Compass:

Parent: [sweating, shaking] So … did you, gulp, like the film?

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Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Drama, Casting, Newsstand

Bites for your Thursday:

• Tony Hale hasn’t gone anywhere, but I’m sure that I’m not the only one who misses his work as Buster Bluth on Arrested Development. Frankly, I miss all their work, although I’m still glad George Michael Cera has been unleashed into the world of film. Anyway, according to Variety, Hale has signed on to co-star with Jeremy Piven in his car salesman movie — The Goods: The Don Ready Story. The film also boasts the likes of Ving Rhames and Kathryn Hahn. The film will slip into high gear this Monday in Los Angeles.
• He co-starred as Memnon in The Scorpion King, his name is floating around James Bond rumors, and now Steven Brand has found himself more presumably action-infused work. Variety reports that he’s not only got himself a regular role on a television series (Samurai Girl), but he’s also got a part as “Boyd” in Jada Pinkett Smith’s upcoming film, The Human Contract. As IMDb describes it, the drama is about a businessman with a dark secret who gets caught up with a stranger who convinced him to dump his life for another lived with “reckless abandon.” I wonder if the stranger wears a red suit, horns, and a tail, carries a pitchfork, and is small enough to sit on his shoulder as well…
• Ah, Alan Blumenfeld. To some, he’s the good-natured rabbi from Gilmore Girls. To others, he’s the super bad guy Molly didn’t want to find on Heroes — the man otherwise known as Parkman’s dad. (Bit of trivia: He also played Greg Grunberg’s dad on Felicity.) Now Variety reports that the actor has a part in Righteous Kill — that 2008 action flick with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Will he be a good guy, or a bad guy? I’m guessing on the latter, since the cast is already full of cops. We’ll be able to find out some time in 2008.

Tags: Alan Blumenfeld, AlanBlumenfeld, Righteous Kill, RighteousKill, Steven Brand, StevenBrand, The Human Contract, TheHumanContract, Tony Hale, TonyHale

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Patrick Walsh
Filed under: Comedy, Casting, Disney, Scripts, Family Films

Variety is reporting that Keri Russell will follow in the footsteps of such beautiful actresses as Drew Barrymore, Winona Ryder, and Jessica Biel. In Disney’s Bedtime Stories, Russell will romance Adam Sandler. She’ll play “a potential love interest for Sandler’s character, a harried real estate developer whose life is suddenly turned upside down when the lavish bedtime stories he tells his niece and nephew become real.” Adam Shankman, a director who totally underwhelmed me until Hairspray, will direct. Matt Lopez (the upcoming Witch Mountain) wrote the script.

It might not be the most challenging role Russell could tackle — women in Sandler comedies historically don’t have much to do other than laugh at the star. But I’ll be thrilled if appearing in the film bumps Russell into the stardom that has bafflingly eluded her all these years. I was a big Felicity fan, I’ve enjoyed her in pretty much everything else, and she was just wonderful in this year’s Waitress, now on DVD. Her lovely performance in Adrienne Shelly’s romantic comedy just might snag her an Academy Award nomination. And here’s hoping this gets Sandler comedy back on track. I’m not expecting another Happy Gilmore, but I can’t sit through another Click. Get ready for your Bedtime Stories next year at Christmas. Read the rest of this entry »

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With the new Knight Rider TV Movie on its way I am getting a little itchy for that snappy banter between the Hoff and his smartass TransAm but then I felt a disturbance in the force.

IWatchSTuff says:
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