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With the Weinstein kingdom resting on the success of Inglourious Basterds, it’s no surprise to see Quentin Tarantino hitting the press circuit as if his scalp depended on it. Knowing Harvey, it just might. But what’s bad news for the director’s sleep schedule is good news for connoisseurs of amusingly pompous movie rants.
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The film-director dress code hasn’t changed that much since the Fellini: a solid pair of shades, a deceptively casual jacket, and an expression of permanent detachment. And if you want to throw in a few whiskers…just make sure they match the jacket.
This snap just surfaced catching anime guru Hayao Miyazaki in one of the nattier getups we’ve seen this side of Tokyo. His shoulders look a little too sharp to be unstructured, but the chest pocket makes it seem casual enough for just about anything. Add in a pair of transparent shades, and you’ve got a movie mogul on your hands.
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We were skimming through Vanity Fair when we came across this alluring picture and potentially earth-shaking bit of information: Eva Green’s next film—demurely titled Cracks—concerns lesbian awakenings at an all-girls school. Ms. Green plays the stern-but-curious swim coach, naturally.
We’re understandably excited, partially because of Ms. Green’s involvement and partially because of the plot’s similarity to a number of straight-to-cable films we saw in the mid-90s. We’d say Sapphic boarding school dramas are about due for a comeback.
Hollywood’s been trying for upwards of fifty years now, but 3D movies have just never caught on. Our theory? It’s the glasses.
So these aviators from Bless should be good news for more than just painfully hip Angelenos. Sneak them into the next enhanced Up screening and you’ll be the most comfortable person in the theater…just be sure to trade them for something a little less disorienting before you hit the streets.
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For anyone who was worried (500) Days of Summer was going to be a soufflé of hipster melancholy…here’s a Smiths cover! For the soundtrack of the upcoming flick, Zooey & M. turn in a retro version of the maudlin Mancunian waltz, about what you’d expect given their track record. And based on what we’ve seen of the film, we’d guess it captures the mood almost exactly.
Nobody does brooding crime dramas quite like the brits. And while the best of the lot is already a bonafide masterpiece and a touchstone for modern style…there’s plenty more where that came from.
For instance, Stephen Frears’ The Hit was just rescued from obscurity by way of a Criterion release. The plot’s pretty simple—Tim Roth and an unusually Astley-esque John Hurt chauffeur mob informer Terrence Stamp across Spain to an all-but-certain death in Paris—but the real draw is the casual bleakness, flights of existential fancy, and practical lessons in how hired killers dress for the desert.
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Just Like Us: Salma Hayek’s email account is significantly less glamorous than this picture. [Gawker]
Lots of Screaming: Patton Oswalt informs us that fatherhood is a lot like Crank: High Voltage. Good to know there’s still graphic sex. [Myspace]
Behind the Mask: A closer look at C.P. Company, courtesy of Aitor Throup. [SwipeLife]
Top of the Pile: Tribeca’s finest short films are surprisingly light on car chases. [Vulture]
Filmmaker and noted Rubik’s cube enthusiast Michel Gondry just launched MichelGondry.com (via NotCot), and it’s well on its way to becoming the most whimsical thing on the internet. As you might imagine, it’s a pretty competitive title.
The site’s launch is timed to coincide with the director’s second music video compilation, but trust Gondry to use rudimentary Flash animation to create something both childlike and strangely troubling. The site begins with a mountain-nosed caricature of the Gondry standing at attention, and each product is explained by a new arm emerging, Quatto-like, from one of the director’s orifices with an informative placard.
The products include custom sketches, pre-drawn sketchpad toilet paper (“Wipe your ass with Michel’s good ideas”), and a disaster-themed calendar for 2007—which, the site notes helpfully, will be date-accurate again in 2018.
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Regardless of what you think about Sean Avery, you have to agree he’s entertaining. If only there weren’t so much hockey involved…
Well, Mr. Avery’s long-gestating biopic is finally getting a bit of worth press. This New York Times article even goes so far as to grace it with a title: Puckface. It’s not the most flattering name we could think of, but he did always seem a bit puckish.
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We’ve always held Charlie Chaplin in high esteem—if only as an early aficionado of the bowler hat—so we were surprised to find the tramp as the subject of some belated controversy in India.
Chaplin’s already the subject of twelve different statues throughout the world, but when Indian filmmaker Hemanth Hegde tried to erect a thirteenth statue at Maravanthe Beach for an upcoming film, he provoked furious protests from crowds that saw the tramp as a symbol of the colonial legacy of oppression.
In our capacity as international moderators, we have a suggestion»
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By now, there are far more deluxe editions than there are movies that deserve the treatment, but that’s not to say we don’t get excited from time to time.
Being There, the swan song of the impeccable Peter Sellars, just hit its 30th anniversary, is getting a retrospective edition from Warner Brothers. The plot is the usual holy fool business: Sellars’ mentally stunted gardener (named Chance, aptly) manages to rise to a spot just shy of the presidency through a combination of beatitude and luck.
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Angry outbursts never look good, but we’re going to have to call this one as fair play. Or at least not obviously foul.
A true gentleman would have exercised a little more politeness, but frustration is just a byproduct of passion, and passion is always a good thing. Hundreds of actors would have let a few slips from the crew slide, and in the process accepted less from the movie and less from themselves. Much as the gossip press wishes it were otherwise, there’s no shame in caring about what you do.
Even if it means getting a little unkempt.
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The Seven Veils…: Lily Allen tries out Interview and apparently joins the army in the bargain. [FashionIndie]
The New Crew: Obama loves J. Crew more than we ever would have guessed. Does that mean we can look for a few v-neck sweaters in the months to come?
[Racked]
TB + GB: Apparently Tom and Gisele aren’t quite as engaged as we thought. [The Cut]
The Best of the Best: The definitive Sundance roundup, if you were curious…
[Vulture]
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We haven’t been keeping up with Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy much lately—to be honest, once they got married, we lost the spark—but a lucky documentarian is about to catch us up.
Tomorrow in Paris, the spectacularly fortunate Scottish filmmaker George Scott is premiering an 80-minute documentary on the couple that follows the French power couple from their first meeting through their eventual marriage, with apparently unrestricted access.
Naturally, it’s already tabloid fodder (via The Cut), but the surprising thing is how much access he seems to have gotten. Early reports have him filming the couple nuzzling and taking a tour of the Elysee palace. Anyone hitting the Parisian film festival circuit should feel free to drop us a line, but otherwise we’ll have to wait until it crosses the Atlantic.
Stickball—and street games in general—are relics of an earlier time and an earlier city. It’s hard to imagine street games taking hold in a place like Los Angeles the way they did in New York in the 50s and 60s. The street was the front yard for most kids, and it saw more action from tennis shoes than tires.
Since then, the virtual world has tempted kids back inside, but the old guard is putting up a fight. A documentary called New York Street Games is bringing together Old New Yorkers like Regis Philbin and Hector Elizando to reminisce about playing Johnny-on-the-Pony and mourn the loss of the good old days. It’s a little too backward-looking for our taste, but it’s good to know what a common space looks like.
But if they’re really serious about keeping the commons alive, maybe they should give the skateboarders a break.
Speaking of the movies, the most recent Bond outing recently brought our attention to an entirely new kind of director: the Kansas City graphics firm MK12.
You may have seen their work before in the titles of The Kite Runner or detailing Will Ferrell’s humdrum existence in Stranger than Fiction (both from Quantum director Marc Forster), but the opening titles of a Bond film are iconic enough to be any animation worker’s dream job. Add in a desert setting and Jack White and Alicia Keys’ fantastic title song, and you’ve got one of the best intros in the series.
Well played, gentlemen.
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The trailer for Mickey Rourke’s comeback vehicle, The Wrestler, just hit the web, and we’re suitably impressed. The Rocky parallels are piling up, right down to the fresh wounds in the economy, but the real show is bound to be the morbid fascination with what the last twenty years have done to Mickey Rourke. At this point, he’s every bit as humiliated and broken as the role requires, so we should be in for some real life pathos. And anything that gets Darren Aronofsky out of director’s jail is fine with us.
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from LIFEFrank Sinatra has been an icon of pre-counterculture masculinity for upwards of half a century now, but as anyone who’s heard “It Was a Very Good Year” can tell you, there’s more to him than the old playboy routine.
One example is Watertown, his 1970 sendoff dedicated to the isolation and despair that comes in the wake of a divorce, but Lincoln Center has dug up another paean to Frank’s softer side. It’s called Some Came Running, and it might be the most honestly emotional work he ever did…on film, at least.
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We’ve gotten pretty jaded to gadgets over the years, but every once in a while we come across something so cool we have no choice but to completely geek out over it.
It’s called a Red Scarlet, and we doubt anyone’s getting ready to drop ten grand on it just to videotape their kid’s birthday parties, but anyone who wanted to make a movie in their backyard just got quite a boost. Even three years ago, a camera like this would have cost twenty times as much, and as more Scarlets reach more places, a lot more ideas are going to see the light of day. Don’t be surprised if the next decade’s multiplex fare looks a little more homemade.
As the saying goes, writing about music is a lot like dancing about architecture. When you’re dealing with intensely visual directors, writing about movies isn’t much better. Most of the time, you’d do better telling the story in pictures.
Taschen has been doing just that, telling stories through notes, production stills, and frame englargements. Their most recent edition for Stanley Kubrick takes a tour from his early noir trappings—especially the overlooked *Killer’s Kiss*—through the immersive, dreamlike approach that made him famous.
His frames also make better coffee table fodder than any other Hollywood director we could name, which matters a lot more than you’d think.
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We’ve known about Guy Ritchie’s upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie, but the fine ladies at Jezebel were kind enough to draw our attention to this picture of the leading man (the inestimable Robert Downey Jr.) in full costume.
Unfortunately they were more interested in his coffee cup than his ascot, but we’ll call this one a victory without seeing another frame. Between the striped waistcoat—which has a touch of Mr. Smith about it—and the finely checkered pants, we’re ready to declare Dr. Holmes the unlikely style icon of the year.
Plus, bowlers are coming back in a big way. And the usual double-brim is so last century.
One of the quintessential masculine movies is getting a Blu-Ray enhancement, complete with a restored print, a set of somewhat off-the-wall appreciations (Sara Vowell?), and the usual commentary tracks and deleted scenes.
A lot’s been written about *The Godfather*, but so many elements of it seem worth their own film, from the corrosive effects of power, the decaying family unit, and the increasing paranoia of postwar America. The unflinching brutality of the killings still strikes a chord, even after twenty years of horror-movie densitization, and the cinematography is still some of the best in American film.
And, in case you’d forgotten, Part III still sucks.
We’re already more than hyped for *Quantum of Solace*, the new Bond film due in November, but before now we were relying on a teaser trailer and a few posters, which didn’t reveal much more than our protagonist’s preference for lightweight fabrics and heavyweight weaponry. Until now, that is.
The newly released trailer gives us a closer look at the sequel, a closer look at new Bond girl Gemma Arterton, and a glimpse at the surprising direction our favorite secret agent is heading. Apparently one place he’s heading is towards sequential plots; this one picks up right at the end of *Casino Royale*, with a heartbroken Bond out for vengeance. Unlike Connery’s Bond—whose relationship towards his companions was somewhat more casual—this Bond is shaping up to be mopey, vengeful and more than a little emo.
Not that we’re judging. We’d find Eva Green pretty hard to get over too.
As more than one rapper has memorably commented, haters are everywhere. Eventually, they were bound to get around to Warren Beatty.
A recent Entertainment Weekly post took aim at the actor’s AFI nomination, charging Beatty with a thin filmography and a late career full of clunkers. We’re not going to defend *Ishtar*—although some have—but judging Beatty by that standard is like judging Michael Caine by *The Muppet Christmas Carol*. Let’s remember the good times, shall we?
