Linkily Every After

Movies Kick Ass how the Palme D'Or is not unlike the Oscar, thought its partisans will protest
Movie|Line interviews one of our favorite people in the movieverse, Ari Graynor
TOH! Will Luke Evans be the next big thing once Tamara Drewe opens?
/Film Mark Romanek has completed work on Never Let Me Go. It's due October 1st.
Acidemic would like you to stop judging Lindsay Lohan. Her downward spiral is none of your concern


Total Film has the 21 most storied, insane movie shoots. I refuse to scroll through 21 pages to read it (a blight on all the traffic whores out there!) but I'm guessing you get some Werner Herzog (Aguirre: The Wrath of God) and Coppola's Apocalypse Now therein. Those jungle movies are brutal on filmmakers and cast
Subway Cinema Asian Film Festival in NYC very soon. Lots of exciting stuff including the NYC premiere of the award winning Bodyguards and Assassins [prev post]
Pfangirl has a lengthy look at the superhero genre, where it's been and where it's going. This is the DC edition. Marvel later this week.
Empire Soapdish (1991) is jumping on the remake train along with everyone else. Good luck to however has to top Cathy Moriarty's bitch goddess this time around
Golden Trailer Awards that's happening in June. I don't really understand their nominees but whatevs

Shrek Forever After?
I "love" that the tagline is the final chapter but the movie's actual title promotes Shrek in perpetuity. That's a nightmare ending for me since I hate that lazy green franchise. I am still dumbfounded that Dreamworks suddenly learned how to make good animated films (Kung Fu Panda & How To Train Your Dragon) in its aftermath. Usually studios try and repeat successes rather than find a way to make films that are way better than them. You'd think they would have tried to repeat its success rather than tried to be Pixar (a far worthier goal) given that Shrek films make more than Pixar films (a sad audience-damning truth). So HAPPY ENDING, however improbable. I do so love How To Train Your Dragon. Anyway, Erik Lundegaard looks at Shrek's franchise box office and understands, unlike Hollywood, the math that goes into sequel numbers. Opening weekend is never about the movie you're seeing but about the one before it... provided that there is one before it. If there's not it's about the marketing. Meanwhile Tim at Antagony & Ecstasy shares my fear that this won't be anything like The End

The ostensibly final film in the Shrek franchise (which I'll believe the moment that everybody involved is dead, and not a second before)

He goes on to say that the movie isn't half bad. for this sort of thing. But definitely half bad all the same!

Port of Call: Zoo Orleans

While I'm on the Bolt bus from Boston to NYC -- I whale watched this weekend and loved it -- I am watching Bad Lieutenant Port of Call: New Orleans. Why? Because you demanded I write something about it. I hope y'all don't make me regret this.

*Serpentus Coluber caspius

The movie begins with a shot of a snake slithering through Hurrican Katrina water as the credits pile up with familiar batshit crazy types: Werner Herzog, Nicolas Cage, Val Kilmer. I am not at all afraid of snakes and like all phobias, if you don't have it you think it's strange that other people do. What's scary about snakes? They're beautiful and the way they move is intoxicating.

The snake is moving through a flooding prison and a prisoner named Chavez, seeing the snake, says "oh shit". It's the first line of dialogue in the movie. The first and last series has made me hyper aware of how movies begin and "oh shit" doesn't give me much hope for anything beautifully scripted. But it's Herzog so at least it'll be watchable.

I didn't see the original Bad Lieutenant (1992). The only thing I remember hearing about that movie when it came out was that it was 'sick' and that Harvey Keitel went full frontal. There was an uproar because a) you're not supposed to see penis in movies and b) if you do it's supposed to be porn star size. At least that's the rule according to the internet which always collectively freaks out when confronted with anything approximating reality.

I have no phobia about snakes or trouser snakes but I sure as hell don't want to see Nicolas Cage's!!! I bring this up because in this sequence he talks about his $55 underwear and then he takes off his jacket off. For a second I was very afraid. In the end he just jumped into the 'oh shit'ty water with his clothes on to rescue Chavez.

Six months later Cage is investigating a crime and snorting...vicodin? That rescue apparently messed up his back forever. At least that's what I think he's snorting. I didn't even know it was possible to snort prescription medication but I recently watched the first season of Nurse Jackie (so good) and you learn a lot about how creative people get with their addictions, prescribed and otherwise.


Cage's bad lieutenant is investigating an execution style massacre of an entire family in New Orleans. It's drug related as is virtually everything in the movie. In a little dead boy's room he reads a sad poem about a fish, which sits in a glass. I'm currently undecided about the movie but the cinematography (by Peter Zeitlinger) is pretty great.

During a precinct meeting about this bloody crime there's a fun pan left through assembled cops that ends on Nicolas Cage, his shoulders are asymmetrical with pain and his face wears an odd hung expression. He has the most unlikely of movie star faces. If a woman were as ugly as Nicolas Cage she would only get to be a character actress. She would never in a million years get any leading roles and certainly wouldn't earn millions while phoning it in in numerous action pictures.

Insectum Aphidoidea

Not that he's phoning it in in this movie.

I suppose you could say that Nicolas Cage is a good actor but i think you'd have to define good acting first. At any rate he's unarguably an inventive actor. But invention and "good" are not always simpatico. You should also be consistent and you should maybe work towards cohesive characterizations and end goals. In short, there should be a method to your madness... especially when there's actual madness. Otherwise it'll all tip over into self-parody or self-aggrandizement or self-love or all three. I sometimes think that Nicolas Cage is, as an actor, as compulsive a masturbator as his Adaptation altar-ego. Take his Big Daddy role in Kick-Ass for another example. Yes, it's funny that he's mocking Adam West's Batman cadences but to what end?

The bad lieutenant is sometimes working on his murder case but just as often he's preying on club goers outside of a bar named Gator's Retreat to score more dope. Somewhere in the world right at this very moment, a grad student has just proposed a dissertation on animal imagery in Bad Lieutenant ... or possibly the films of Werner Herzog. Herzog's got a complete menagerie inside that filmography: monkeys, iguanas, grizzlies... you name it.

Anyway the lieutenant just forced a guy some poor sap to give up his drugs and then made the guy watch as he banged his girlfriend. Pleasant. While doing this naughty deed, Cage emits these sounds that are meant to function as sexual grunting but sound closer to guffawed barking. He's such a weirdo (character and actor). There are many shots of animals in this movie, but there's many more of Nicolas Cage behaving like a beast. Now I am beginning to remember vague implied descriptions of perversity from the first film and also why I never saw it. I understand that the two Bad Lieutenants are not especially related as films, outside of their shared perversity?

Because of my policy about not showing you photos of Nicolas Cage -- a policy I just invented during this post -- I've decided to only share animal photos during this train of review-thought thing. So far we've seen gator signs, snakes, teddy bears, zebra print fabric... and now an actual alligator, or two of them. One, twitching and dying, appears to have caused a car accident and is belly up on the ground. The other functions like an exclamation point, question mark or punchline to the scene. He's been watching his buddy dying. At first I thought he seem sad but later I decided malevolent. Maybe he chased his friend into the traffic... and was using him as bait for human meat? It must be the framing of his massive jaw.

Alligatoridea Mississippiensis

As the gator wanders away from the scene of the accident, we get the 100th or so shot of Cage chasing his particular dragons: crack, vicodin, heroine. You name it. And then he goes on a date with Fairuza Balk. He's still working angles on how to get more drugs and saying amusingly truthful things while doing so.

Whatever I take is prescription. Except for the heroin.

Oh, yes, I said Fairuza Balk. Plus Kilmer and Michael Shannon? They're all swirling around Cage in this film. I think Herzog must miss Klaus Kinski like crazy. Perhaps he's experimenting like Dr. Frankenstein, assembling the parts or essence of as many unstable, livewire or "off" screen personas as he can find by shoving them all into the same movie and squeezing.

Canis lupus familiaris

The further along the movie goes -- I'm done with it now. T'was too hard to write and watch and bus at the same time -- the more clearly we see the lieutenant's insanity. The animal motif keeps building, too. After the snake, fish, and gators we get an adorable white dog that keeps trading owner hands, prompting Cage to utter what might be my favorite of his line readings in the movie.

I got a friend. She just loves animals. All of 'em. Dogs, too.

As if dogs were the least lovable of animals. Heh.

The dog doesn't really own his scene. He's too subservient. The reptiles are another story altogether. Not to be outdone by the gators, iguanas show up rather memorably and twice over. Plus more fish and stray sightings like a bull fight on the television. The plot is a pileup as Cage, almost continually high, fucks up his investigation (he loses the only witness) and gets deeper and deeper into drugs and debts and danger as he juggles police duties, drug fixes, criminal activities, and relationship infighting with his family and prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes, pretty solid throughout).

For all of that, I think the movie is a comedy. The story turns give the impression that the whole thing is an unreliable farce or satire or... possibly political satire? This does take place after Hurricane Katrina and the white guy fuck-up keeps being rewarded for his insanity. Maybe that's a stretch. I'm tired. I'm on a bus! In addition to the narrative being jokey or at least absurdist, the hallucinatory bits, like a double iguana sighting, are so vividly performed and directed. The famous iguana sequence is as good as I'd heard but not for the reason I was expecting. I had thought that the scene would be a hallucination from the bad lieutenant's perspective as iguanas distract him from the investigation. Instead Herzog begins and ends the scenes with the iguanas rather than the cops and its shot from their side of the room. It's the cops not the iguanas that are the intrusion.

Iguana Iguana

It's a brilliant choice, which forces the surreal joke that maybe the animals are imagining the movie rather than being drug fueled hallucinations themselves. What do iguana dream of anyway? Like the alligator watching the car accident, one has to wonder what these reptiles are up to. Whatever their master plan, they're ready for their close-up. Mr. Herzog will give it to them.

The movie will make room for a few more animal references and sightings. The most vivid is the story of man becoming an animal. After smoking crack Cage tells a local drug dealer about a football player who sprouted antlers... "like a gazelle! like an elk!" peppering this tall tale with Jack Nicholson laughter. But the iguanas have already claimed the movie for their own and will steal this very scene from both the human gazelle and Cage himself.

The investigation plot -- the least interesting but constant part of the movie -- wraps up and the movie loses me. Why did Herzog and screenwriter William M Finkelstein end this drug fueled comedy with a serious rehab coda? Still, all is not well in New Orleans even after justice has been served. The bad lieutenant is still bad. All that has changed is that he is now aware of his depravity. The movie ends by reuniting the lieutenant with the prisoner he rescued from the hurricane.

Bad Lieutenant: Do fish dream?

...he asks ex con Chavez in a wonderful non-sequitor after a rehab discussion.

Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos et. all

I hoped that the movie would end right there in an imagined animal kingdom. Instead there's one more line. We jump to a shot of Terrence and Chavez visiting an aquarium, the water that first threatened them two hours back is now safely behind glass. Unfortunately Herzog and screenwriter William M Finkelstein can't resist one last full circle joke about Cage's underpants as the movie's last line. Did they have to?

Bad Lieutenant: You know Chavez, I still hate that I ruined my underwear for you.

*
*all species names herein are potentially innacurate. I wasn't going for research or realism.

Happy 50, Kristin Scott Thomas

.

I know that she can play so much more than a bitch,
but I do love it when she plays a bitch most of all.
.

Yes, No, Maybe So? Love Ranch

We've been ignoring trailers, so we might play catch up this week. Today's future enticement is the 70s brothel drama Love Ranch. Let's map out what makes us want to see it... and not.

If you'd rather not know the entire story, I'd advise you not to watch this particular trailer and just reading the less revealing text.



Most marketing teams don't realize (or perhaps have statistical evidence to the unfortunate contrary) that a well told concept, plot hook and name actors should be enough to hook your target audience. Why do they always think a point by point three act summary is best?

Do we want to see it?

YES.


The cinema has always had a preoccupation with prostitutes; Movie makers see the kinship between show & 'ho business' as well they should. Despite this infamous love affair, the brothel setting is underused. [This is completely tangential, but wouldn't a fictional brothel series be fascinating in the hands of the right HBO or Showtime creative team? There's more than enough TV shows about cops, lawyers and doctors so why not try some other drama-magnet workplaces! Those aren't the only three places where drama is a given.] Anyway, from the looks of the trailer the art direction (Bruno Rubeo and team), costumes (Melissa Bruning) and overall setting should provide moments of interest even setting aside the unknown quality of the script, directing and acting.

Plus there are the girls they're selling which include Bai Ling, Taryn Manning & Gina Gershon. Taylor Hackford and his casting team definitely weren't afraid of scene stealers when they went to work. Or maybe they knew that with Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci leading, scene stealing is a far less likely outcome than scene tug-of-wars.

NO.

The movies love boxers almost as much as hookers. Perhaps filmmakers see a kinship between show & body-blow business? But do we need both in the same movie? Love Ranch could be two full hours of clichéd story beats since we've got entrepreneurs, whores and boxers all battling it out for screen time and narrative arcs in the same movie. Those are three of the movies most familiar types right there. Explosive clichés are probably buried everywhere in that Nevada sand like so many film-derailing landmines.

MAYBE SO.

The casting intrigues. Helen Mirren is always worth a look (though "accent" work is always hard to adjust to in the time span of a trailer) and perhaps her chemistry with Joe Pesci will be odd couple fascinating? But I worry. I can't say that I'm a huge fan of Joe Pesci. He strikes me as an... um... excessive actor and I have a much easier time with 'over the top' when the performer taking me there has a vagina. It's just how I'm wired.

When it comes to Love Ranch are you a Yes, a No or a Maybe So?
And does 'maybe so' mean "wait for reviews" or "I'll watch it on DVD" for you?

First and Last 3.39

the first image after the opening credits and the last image before the closing credits


If you still can't guess it highlight this first & last screenplay clue
first: [a woman screaming]
last line [V.O.]: "That would be miracle enough, wouldn't it?"

Can you guess the movie?

Highlight for the answer: It's AGNES OF GOD (1985)
*

Cannes Awards

Robert here, to let you know that the Cannes awards are official, some surprises and some not.

Palme d'Or
<--Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Weerasethakul's film was one of the few widely praised ones at the festival.  Add to this a sense of topical unconventionality that many thought would appeal to Burton and his jury.

Grand Prix
Of Gods and Men directed by Xavier Beauvoi

 Best Director
Mathieu Amalric for directing Tournee

Definitely a bit of a surprise.  Amalric's film premiered early to lackluster response and many people expected it was forgotten by now.  Apparently not

 Jury Prize
A Screaming Man, directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

Another of the few almost universally praised films at this year's festival.

Best Performance for an Actor
Javier Bardem in Biutiful &

Elio Germano in Our Life

This was largely expected.   Will Oscar take notice?  They've liked Bardem and director Inarritu in the past.  Or does the miserablist tone of the film hurt?


Best Performance for an Actress

Juliette Binoche in Certified Copy -->

This probably won't be on Oscar's radar (Abbas Kiarostami's films have never been).  This is however the first Cannes Best Actress award for 2010 poster girl Ms. Binoche.


Best Screenplay
Lee Chang-dong for writing Poetry

Take Three: Veronica Cartwright

Craig here with the first in a new Film Experience series: Take Three. Each Sunday I'll write about a different character/supporting actor's work through three of their most notable films.

First up is Veronica Cartwright.

Take One: Lambert's Game (not Ripley's)

Through circumstance or by design, Veronica Cartwright's career, more than most, epitomises the accomplished character actor perfectly. She's an ideal starting point for this series by the fact that one of her first major roles was to be the female lead in a certain 1979 sci-fi-horror film. But, upon arriving on the set of Ridley Scott's Alien for a wardrobe fitting, her role was instead re-allocated at the last minute to one Sigourney Weaver. Cartwright could have been sci-final girl Lieutenant Ellen Ripley who went on to destroy several planets/spaceships and save countless people from Xenomorph hell over three more Alien films, but she was given the film's secondary female role of Nostromo Navigator Lambert. In space no-one could hear her scream 'I was robbed'.

So close, yet so far. It wasn't to be her big breakthrough role. (Although I did wonder if one excised scene, that was reinstated for the 2003 Director's Cut, where Lambert slaps Ripley contained a modicum of triumph.) But Cartwright made Lambert her own: imagine Alien without her identifiably fretful and very human distress and maybe we, the audience, wouldn't have so closely experienced that feeling alongside her and everyone else aboard the Nostromo. Really, she was the only crew member who you could almost see thinking, 'All this, right here, is messed up!' Her reactions were authentic (as has been widely reported, particularly during the 'chestburter' scene), and surely we too would've had a WTF! moment if a phallic, acid-toothed E.T. leapt from John Hurt's midsection right in front of us - especially when you were expecting breakfast. But regardless of the demotion, before and, particularly, after Alien Cartwright's career of incomparable supporting roles has been truly singular all the same.

Take Two: Invasion of the scene-stealer

Many of Cartwright's characters seem to be a moment's unexpected shock revelation away from hysteria. She often plays women almost permanently on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And how she does it. The very last scene of Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is apt proof of Cartwright's ability to make her characters almost implode with psychological strain (especially when faced with a tightly-permed, faux-Donald Sutherland pointing and screaming at her). And here, as with Lambert, her Nancy Bellicec is the eyes and ears of the audience, and, ultimately, the sole vessel in whom the audience can replicate, and see reflected, their fears (that's when she's not the sole vessel for a devilish disposal of cherry stones - see below): Sutherland is fingering her/us out as the next unwilling victim(s) in the film's last shot. That last scene, and actually much of the film, belongs to her: but what would we do in her shoes? (Apart from run like the wind!)

She's the last woman standing (as opposed to the second-from-last a year later in Alien), and her final, palpably frenzied trauma-fit at having got so far only to be betrayed is conveyed through her thoroughly convincing decent into head-shaking hysteria. If Not-Quite-Sutherland and co. didn't actually get their slimy hands on her in 1978 (I like to think Nancy did actually manage to escape alien conversion), she wasn't so lucky when their 2007 pod-peep-ancestors eventually got to her when she cropped up - as Nicole Kidman's rightfully paranoid patient Wendy - in the fourth Snatchers incarnation The Invasion. (I may as well chuck in two Invasions for the price of one here.)

Cartwright & Kidman having a staring contest in The Invasion - whoever blinks first is clearly still human

Again she stands for everything that's worth remaining human for, providing a heartfelt turn during the most affecting scene in the film, when she breaks through her fears and admits, "my husband is not my husband". This all points (no pun intended) to the fact that on-screen aliens have been following Cartwright characters around for years: she also added much distinguished gravity to 2005's loose Snatchers telly revamp Invasion (revisiting of past work in new formats continued again recently in TV's Eastwick, though she doesn't reprise her role as Felicia) and was Emmy-nominated as alien abductee Cassandra Spender for four episodes of The X-Files. She works well opposite organisms of otherworldly threat, it seems.

Take Three: One order of cherry pie - to go!

When that trio of love-starved New England women became The Witches of Eastwick someone had to provide staunch opposition to all that magical mayhem ("Oh, Clyde, I have nothing against a good fuck, but there is danger here and somebody has to do something about it!"). For a short spell she turned the film's plot into a witch-vs-bitch-fight. Cartwright's God-fearing nutjob-on-crutches Felicia Alden got all hot under the buttoned-up collar as the ideal sparring partner for Jack Nicholson's "horny devil" and provided two of the film's very best scenes: her church freakout and, yup, that prolonged fruity puke-a-thon.

Hold on, Nicholson's been at the fruit bowl - she's about to blow!

Cartwright's pin-sharp skill at creating profoundly memorable characters is none more evident than in Witches: you see the very bile rise up in Felicia's face; she vehemently means every word in her religious rants, summoning up as she does some kind of wicked, wrathful acting goddess. With cherry-scented vomit (or even hospital oatmeal) smeared ungainly across her mouth, and spitting hellfire sermons at everyone who'll listen, Cartwright was unafraid to eschew vanity to maintain supporting performance perfection. If the Alien lead was stolen away, a Best Supporting Actress nod was more so here. Remote-control fruit-based possession doesn't get any classier than this.

An indication of just how great Cartwright was in Witches, for me, was how much I missed Felicia after put-upon husband Richard Jenkins offs her with a fire poker (how apt). I always thought she exited the film way too soon. Felicia was the film's mentally-unbalanced fly in the ointment, trying to keep apart the devil and the divas. In fact, I wanted a last reel comeback where - in a feat of unearthly cinematic crossover - she could've combined elements of these three key films and turned everyone into vacant pod-people by projectile-spewing acid-covered cherry stones all over them. Ridiculous, yes - but then that's how much pure, enjoyable delectability I believe Cartwright adds to a film. She's simply the supporting sci-fi-horror scream queen.

Alien invasions or no, there's very little that can dehumanise a great Veronica Cartwright role. She's been delivering supporting actor greatness to us for years, it's time once again show her our own supportive gratitude in return.

Cannes Review: More Awards, Tender Son, Burnt By the Sun 2

Robert here, scouring the internet to give you the latest on the goings on in Cannes.  The first awards and final reviews are trickling in.

Awards!

• The top Cinefondation award goes to The Top Sellers says IndieWIRE 
• In a movie that's less than shocking though I'm sure well deserved, Gregg Araki's Kaboom wins the first Queer Palm.  France 24.

In Competition

• The Exodus - Burnt By the Sun 2 Nikita Mikhalkov's follow up to his 1994 Oscar winning film, premiered recently in Russia with a massive thump.  The same can be said of Cannes.  According to Variety, viewers "won't have to be experts on Soviet history to see this is jingoistic, proselytizing, badly acted twaddle"And according to The House Next Door "The entire movie is nonstop bombast, with huge battles, epic widescreen vistas, silent-film performances, and one of the most absolutely ridiculous scores I've ever heard in a movie."
• Tender Son - The Frankenstein Project This Hungarian film deals with the return of a long lost son and is loosely based on Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. "Though the film lacks the narrative glue provided by character evolution, many of the individual sequences are strong," says Variety.  And ScreenDaily notes "Though displaying the visual sure-handed confidence already evident in Delta carries him along for a while, the script doesn’t quite manage to deliver the dramatic impact"

Cannes Prizes? We'll Know Soon

Any guesswork?

Movie|Line thinks it'll be Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives but allows for Another Year, Biutiful or Un Homme Qui Crie (A Screaming Man) as spoilers. While most cinephiles would be happy with Weerasethakul winning something as major as the Palme D'Or but I've found in the past that predicting the winner based on what we know of the jury president's aesthetic -- in this case Tim Burton's -- is not always the best way to go. Burton and team (there are other people voting after all) could hand their prizes to virtually anything. We'll see.

Update You might be able to watch the closing ceremonies streaming here at around 1:00-1:15 pm EST time.

Robert and Boorman and Drew! Oh My!

Jose here.

Was Dorothy (Judy Garland) lying to us when she told us there's no place like home in The Wizard of Oz?



Judging from the way movie people are flocking back to Oz, it seems the little girl from Kansas might've missed something in her first trip.

As of today there are six, count them, films in development that have something to do with Frank L. Baum's timeless classic or the Victor Fleming film adaptation and that's not even including the much awaited stage to screen translation of Broadway blockbuster Wicked.

Everyone wants a piece of Oz and projects in development have attracted the attention of people like Drew Barrymore, Sean Astin and even the guy who made Deliverance.
But before we surrender to confusion let's go through each of the projects.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Set for release in 2011, this CGI adaptation of the original book will mark director John Boorman's first foray into animation.
Call me morbid but I'm really dying to see what the man who made The Exorcist II brings to Oz. Boorman has a great eye for set pieces and his interest in fantasy is notable (to a good effect in Excalibur and to WTF in Zardoz, which coincidentally got its title from the wizard) and besides what is Deliverance if not a violent, testosterone driven interpretation of the Oz mythology? Sans flying monkeys of course.

Dark Oz
Based on a comic book the film is set to be directed by Pearry Teo and will star Pras Micheal of The Fugees.
While this one sounds interesting to say the least, I was left more intrigued by one of the comic book tie-ins called Oz Squad which has Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion form a secret organization appropriately named the "Gale Force" created to protect Emerald City.
I'm usually a purist when it comes to things like these but the fact that the comic book outraged Baum scholars and has only now resurfaced as a groundbreaking work makes it sound quite enticing.
My only objection? An element in the plot called the Tik-Tok, which would make a Ke$ha appearance almost inevitable.

Surrender Dorothy
The lovely Drew Barrymore (left in all her emerald colored glory from Whip It) is set to direct this sequel from a screenplay by Zach Helm (Stranger Than Fiction). In the story, Dorothy's great great granddaughter must learn to use the ruby slippers to prevent the Wicked Witch of the West from taking over Oz.
Originally Drew was set to play Dorothy but with the screenplay in development limbo for almost a decade, the now obviously older actress might just want to stick to behind the camera duties.

Dorothy of Oz
Another CGI version, this one is based on a book by Baum's great grandson Roger S. Baum and is directed by Dan St. Pierre (who served as art director for Disney's Tarzan).
In the plot Dorothy (rumored to be voiced by Lea Michele) is sent back to Oz right after her first trip where she meets a man made out of marshmallows and a china doll.
This one is also set for release in 2011.


The Witches of Oz
The official synopsis reads:
The Witches of Oz follows the exploits of the grown Dorothy Gale, now a successful children's book author, as she moves from Kansas to present day New York City. Dorothy quickly learns that her popular books are based on repressed childhood memories, and that the wonders of Oz are very, very real. When the Wicked Witch of the West shows up in Times Square, Dorothy must find the inner courage to stop her.

Sean Astin, Ethan Embry and Lance Henriksen star.
For clips, photo source and more information about this film click here.

The Great Powerful
If you've just had enough of Dorothy, this might be the film for you.
Instead of focusing on the heroine this one is more interested in the man behind the curtain.
This film will tell the tale of the wizard's life and how he ended in Oz. Robert Downey Jr. is set to play him and when you read sources describing the wiz as a man "leading a life of charlatanry" who sounds more appropriate to play the part?
The film might be directed by Adam Shankman (hmmm) or Sam Mendes (yay and hmmm).

And yes, no news on a big screen adaptation of Wicked yet (other than the one already being filmed inside my head with Anne Hathaway and Reese Witherspoon in the lead roles).

So what's your take on all this? Are you faithful to Judy Garland or are you willing to see other Dorothys? Do you think there's something as too much Oz or is this making you salivate?

Cannes Review: Outside the Law

Robert here, scouring the internet to give you the latest on the films premiering in Cannes. It's Saturday, so only a few reviews are trickling in.

In Competition

•  Outside of the Law Rachid Bouchareb who directed the Oscar Nominated Days of Glory returns with another film about Algerian struggles, this time following three brothers.  As is par for the course this year, reviews are mixed.  Time Out London likes it, calling the film "An impressive achievement as an engaged entertainment and a powerful rallying cry."  ScreenDaily is less entralled. "The film is handsomely produced and always watchable even while the clichéd story built around the history threatens to derail it," is their take.  The House Next Door is very unenthralled saying "what is necessary in order to enjoy Outside the Law is a hearty appreciation of cliché and preachy hand-wringing."

Un Certain Regard

• The Un Certain Regard competition which I admit got a little away from me as reviews got harder and harder to find, never the less has a winner.  IndieWIRE has more.

Finally IndieWIRE clues us in to the critics poll of the best films this year at Cannes.

Day of Rest "Bad Horse"

Shhhhhhhhh.
"Dances With Wolves" isn't sleeping well. It's those scary animal sounds keeping him awake. I've been watching 'DWW''s TV series Little Forts on the Prairie for a day and a half now. Will the first season ever end? I think I'm almost to the final episode. The things I do for blogging and Oscar history, I tells ya.

I've gone to Boston for the weekend. You can call me by my Sioux name "Watches The Whales".

Pssst. There will be blog updates. Craig & Jose & Robert will be in and I'll see y'all on Monday. Enjoy.
KEVIN COSTNER

Viggo, Posterized

With the Cormac McCarthy adaptation The Road coming out on DVD on Tuesday (I'm eager to give it another look) I thought we should focus on one of the best actors working: Viggo Mortensen also known as "Aragorn"

<--- Viggo at twenty-two

Aragon's filmography is super odd. Or maybe not. In many professions if you do good work, your career very gradually swells but there's plenty of detours and error along the way as you feel your way up the ladder. I guess it just feels odd in the context of the movies. When we think of leading players in Hollywood don't we tend to think of them in terms of overnight sensations, has beens, or stars that have always been and will always be with us and seem to have arrived fully formed (Streep, Pacino. That type)?

Viggo fits none of those categories but he's very much a leading actor. I remember reading a magazine article about him around 1998 or so -- I think it was in conjunction with the release of A Perfect Murder -- calling him "the hot new 39 year old" as if he were a) new and b) way too old to find stardom. As it turned out he wasn't. He was too young.

Here's the posters... albeit missing a few.
Scroll carefully as there's an intermission this time!

Witness (85) -debut | Prison (88) 1st leading role | Fresh Horses (88)

Leatherface TCM III (90) Young Guns 2 (90) The Indian Runner (91)
Viggo's first solo poster! (Thanks, Sean Penn)

Boiling Point (93) | Deception (93) | Young Americans (93)

Carlito's Way (93) | The Prophecy (95) | Crimson Tide (95)

Portrait of a Lady (96) Albino Alligator (96) Daylight (96)

INTERMISSION: At a casual glance it seems like his career is just one solid upward slope of increasingly large parts in fairly successful films (he's third billed in the Sylvester Stallone action flick) but it's actually messier than that. In the mid 90s he's also doing straight to DVD movies plus he's dipping his toe into Spanish cinema - he speaks fluently - and even taking roles where he plays characters like "homeless guy" despite already having Hollywood's attention to some degree. Did he ever say no? Perhaps he slept just 3 hours a night the whole decade.

At any rate the career heated up once Demi Moore demanded he suck her dick. This unusual career move also worked wonders for Ashton Kutcher. (I kid. I kid. I couldn't resist)

GI Jane (97) | A Perfect Murder (98) | Psycho (98)

A Walk on the Moon (99) | 28 Days (00) | The Fellowship of the Ring (01)

The Two Towers (02) | The Return of the King (03) | Hidalgo (04)

A History of Violence (05) | Alatriste (06) | Eastern Promises (07)
we never got Alatriste in the US. (sigh)

Appaloosa (09) | Good (09) | The Road (09)

Viggo Mortensen quite obviously improves with age. One could say he's like a fine wine but he's more of a whiskey, don't you think? I do worry about all three of his 2009 efforts flopping. Will the lead roles keep on coming? Next up is his third go at being David Cronenberg's muse. Actors are always better off once an auteur suddenly can't live without them.

How many of these 27 movies have you seen? I've only seen half of them. Oops.
What do you first think of when you hear the name Viggo? Tell all in the comments.
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Cannes Review: Fair Game, Uncle Boonmee and more.

Robert here, scouring the internet to give you the latest on the films premiering in Cannes. 

In Competition

• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (no I don't know how it's pronounced) directs this film about a dying man who's visited by the ghosts of his wife and son, in non-human form.  Could we have a late competitor for the Palme?  The AV Club calls it the directors's "strangest and most mysterious picture yet," and means so in a good way.  "It is a mysterious, haunting, and breathtakingly beautiful film," comes from The House Next Door. A film that's good though otherworldy and bizarre may appeal to Burton and his jury.  But it's not all praise.  Guy Lodge at In Contention says the film is "a wispy lark with no emotional payoff."
• Fair Game Director Doug Liman (Jumper, yeah really) directs this film about that whole Valerie Plame affair a few years back.  Reviews are so so.  Xan Brooks of The Guardian is unsold on it.  IndieWIRE considers its "unsentimental tone that only occasionally moves beyond the level of a solid made-for-TV routine."  And The AV Club laments that once the film gets into politics "fast-paced Beltway machinations are replaced by lofty speeches in which we’re exhorted to “demand that truth!”
• Our Life Dante Luchetti, best known for directing the film My Brother is an Only Child, returns with this film about a normal Roman whose life is turned upside down.  Lee Marshall of Screen Daily notes "Our Life has its heart in the right place. But it feels like an episode of a tough, cutting-edge TV drama."  And over at The House Next Door, the complaint seems to be "It's incredibly bizarre, and from a dramatic standpoint makes absolutely no sense."

A Link Divided

multiplex
Movie|Line suggests that Lindsay Lohan stay in France. International diplomacy is admittedly not their strong suit
The Onion Ridley Scott and Tim Burton switch action figures. 'No tradebacks!' (this article is a couple weeks old but if you haven't read it, experience the hilarity)


The Big Picture questions the hypocrisy of dissing Shia Labeouf for dissing Steven Spielberg. Good piece. There's too many "yes people" in Hollywood and Crystal Skull stank.
The Hot Blog Poland waxes philosophical about revivals of genres, musicals, and cartoons
A Socialite's Life I wouldn't normally link to a Robert Pattison on set! thing (who cares?) but in truth I have read this book they're making into a movie Water For Elephants. The whole time I was reading it -- even though it wasn't great or anything -- I kept thinking 'this should be a movie.'NatashaVC an evocative Harvey Keitel story
I Need My Fix on the Demi Moore ♥ Ashton Kutcher romance. In truth they're one of my fav Hollywood couples, too

arthouse
In Contention Guy Lodge on Cannes winding down
Vulture The Fug Girls uncover and display the 10 loopiest outfits at Cannes. Their quote on Kate Beckinsale who isn't wearing anything crazy in the picture is lol

...tends to prefer either short prom dresses or really long prom dresses; ergo, for her, this is practically Gaga City.

Scanners With Jean Luc Godard's Socialisme premiering, Jim Emerson neatly summarizes the critical conversations about Godard over the past... entire career
David Germain on Sony Pictures Classics at Cannes and with Oscar
YouTube Have you seen this "Chlöe Sevigny" dragster yet? Funny. Love the coyness when dropping Tilda's name

great white way
Just Jared Paul Reubens still in process of bringing Pee Wee Herman back. Yay.

the page
Cooley! "Inappropriate Golden Age Book: Movies R Fun" [via]

the boob tube
Antenna an interesting piece on the Joss Whedon episode of Glee just past, which gives answer to the question i had while watching it: this doesn't feel like recent episodes. Why?

in the life
The Onion "New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It Let Someone Else Report On This Bullshit."

Leaving Cannes

Julien here.

Last day in Cannes, and random thoughts on the films I saw.

Les Amours Imaginaires: Xavier Dolan's second feature was a huge disappointment for me after the gut punch of I Killed My Mother. It was probably foolish to expect a second miracle from a 20 year-old director, but although I recognized some of the qualities that made I Killed My Mother so memorable (the kid's got talent, that's for sure), I hate to admit that those who called him a narcissistic poseur the first time around were in fact not entirely wrong. Fans of A Single Man will probably revel in its overbearing prettiness, but to me the avalanche of slo-mo and Almo/Wong-isms felt too much like a self-conscious search for style, rather than the natural development of an artist.

If you thought Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's first three features were a tad too cheerful, Biutiful is sure to please you. Bleak doesn't even begin to describe the experience, which feels like being locked up in a sandbag and beaten for 2 hours and 20 minutes. As is often the case whith Inarritu, the film start with its main characters already at a very low point, and then proceeds to go downhill from there. There's no denying Inarritu has some fantastic directorial instincts, but since Babel, I'm getting the feeling that human misery is to him what oversized tits were to Russ Meyer: a huge turn-on. And his indulgence in filming squalor is increasingly nauseating, especially since there's nothing around the corner except more squalor. The only thing keeping it from complete unwatchability is Bardem's restrained, humane presence.

What can I say about Stephen Frears' Tamara Drewe? Nothing much, except that I have no idea what could have attracted a director of Frears' stature to such a trivial project, and that Gemma Aterton, who plays the title character, is outacted by every single member of the cast, including the dog. There are some funny moments, but it's mostly aimless, and all over the place.

Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy is by far the worst film I've seen during the Festival. It's the typical Cannes imposture: a film so vague and meandering that intimidated critics are sure to project some sort of profound content on it, terrified at the prospect of being the only one who didn't get it. So let me put it this way: for all its contrived central gimmick and long-winded gabbing about original vs. copy, Certified Copy is nothing more than a banal bourgeois melodrama posing as an art film. I found it not only tedious, but empty, pretentious and irritatingly lazy. Binoche may be great, but there's nothing she can do to salvage this pointless, shallow film.

Who could have thought a few months age that the go to guy for Hollywood spy thrillers, Doug Liman, would ever be in competion for the Palme d'Or? And yet here he is, with Fair Game, a retelling of the Valerie Plame affair that shook the Bush adminstration a few years ago. Sigh of relief: Fair Game has more in common with The Bourne Identity than with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Liman chooses wisely to stay close to the facts, moves quickly, and gets some good work from former 21 Grams co-stars Watts and Penn. Solid and efficient, if unremarkable.

I'm flying back to Paris later this afternoon, and though I've had a fantastic time in Cannes (I've barely slept in a week), as you may have noticed I've been mostly underwhelmed by the films I saw here. I hope you won't think I'm such a sourpuss, but believe me, I ain't the only one: everyone in Cannes was pretty much disappointed by the selection. The closest I came to being won over completely was by Mike Leigh's Another Year, and I sure as hell hope Lesley Manville will be picking up the Best Actress prize for that one on Sunday.

Kites and Whatever Happened to Busty Jane

Over at Towleroad I've reviewed the international Kites (2010) starring Bollywood giant Hrithik Roshan. Go there. I must say straight away that I feel totally gipped that Hrithik only danced once in a 130 minute movie. So here's a whole bunch of Hrithik shaking it (skip to 1.15 for his showy arrival).



♫ Work it. I need a glass of wataaahhh ♪

My double feature this week was weird / disorienting.

I also took in Jackie Beat's latest play Whatever Happened to Busty Jane? which is a totally offensive/hilarious riff on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) a movie y'all know I love. Bette Davis so shoulda won the Oscar that year. Oh wait... maybe not. I just remembered who actually did win. I'm good with that. So I reviewed Busty Jane, too.

read the reviews & comment if you please @ towleroad

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Nathaniel Trivia You Didn't Know: Jackie Beat was actually the first celebrity I ever interviewed way the hell back in 2000, one hundred years ago, just before The Film Experience launched. I sometimes think I imagined that weird life before The Film Experience. Did it really exist? Maybe I'll share that musty interview one day. We even talked Oscars.