Next week, Vin Diesel returns (along with Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordanna Brewster) to the Fast and the Furious franchise, which he’d abandoned after the first movie (he did have a cameo in part 3). When news first hit that he’d be reprising the role of Dominic Toretto for the fourth installment, simply titled Fast & Furious, most of us saw the actor as returning under a veil of shame. Because he initially departed the series with an inflated ego — and with it unrealistic salary demands — it does seem obvious that Diesel is now only desperately crawling back because his career failed to take off the way he’d hoped it would.
This is quite sad considering not even Steve Guttenberg ever crawled back to the Police Academy movies, nor did Burt Reynolds ever get dragged back for a fourth Smokey and the Bandit. But there have been other shameful returns by stars to franchises they’d previously sat out of (whether the hiatus was of their own choosing or not). Only one of these may have been as desperate as Diesel now appears, but it’s worth looking at four additional actors and actresses who should be very embarrassed of their delayed reprisals. …Read more
Each day this week, Christopher Campbell will take a look back at a “classic” film that played the Sundance Film Festival. Today’s installment: Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton’s Little Miss Sunshine (2006).
If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many big-budget films with all-star casts at Sundance in recent years, here’s why: the Little Miss Sunshine scenario. While this particular film is not the cause nor was it the first studio-like movie to arrive in Park City sans distribution, it is perhaps the most exemplary of a situation that’s currently very familiar at the festival. Sometimes a film can come out the worse for the scenario, as in the case of last year’s What Just Happened? But sometimes it can create a “Cinderella story,” as it did for Little Miss Sunshine. …Read more
Elliot Gould said a few words Friday night before a BAM screening of Little Murders, the 1971 film based on Jules Feiffer’s play, which Gould starred in and produced for first-time feature director Alan Arkin. The event came towards the midpoint of a retrospective at the Brooklyn theater dedicated to Gould’s 70s-era peak, and the actor seemed humbled by the thought of so many snapshots of an era lined up for quick consumption. “It’s my life,” he said wistfully. Then, with a little wave of a hand and a vigorous shake of his head, he corrected himself: “Well, it’s all of our lives, isn’t it?”
Gould noted that he’d “probably never” seen Little Murders “with a real crowd”–when the film was released in the States in February of 1971, Gould was in Sweden shooting The Touch for Ingmar Bergman, and thanks to its disappointing box office, it didn’t have much of a life for a while. Not that Gould took time out at the time to dwell on its failure. After the screening, Gould’s answers to questions from both the audience and moderator Bruce Bennett continually circled around a kind of “fear” the actor experienced at the peak of his career. After a 1970 TIME Magazine story in which he was anointed both “the urban Don Quixote” and “a star for an uptight age”, Gould worked constantly because he was afraid that if he stopped to catch his breath––or picked the wrong project and fell on his face––his allure would cool off and he wouldn’t be able to find a job.
I’m pretty sure I am not related to actor Bill Campbell, but I am sure that we think alike, at least when it comes to desires for a Rocketeersequel. Campbell, who starred as the title character in Disney’s 1991 superhero adventure, tells MTV Movies Blog that he’s still interested in the idea of a Rocketeer 2:
“I was talking to [writer] Dave Stevens just the night before last. We always talked about having a sequel,” Campbell confessed. “[Unfortunately] the movie didn’t make as much money as Disney had hoped and that coupled with the acrimonious relationship that the director [Joe Johnston] and the studio had contributed to them not even considering it.”
Yes, like Timothy Dalton in that awesome clip above, The Rocketeer unfortunately crashed and burned. And considering its been almost 17 years since the first film and there’s been nothing to indicate the public is more interested in pulpy period superheroes than they were back then, Rocketeer 2 is never going to happen. Even if now Oscar-winning actors Jennifer Connelly and Alan Arkin and now Emmy-winning actor Terry O’Quinn (John Locke on Lost) wanted to return, I doubt Disney would even discuss the chance. But that’s a shame, because if I remember correctly (and I must admit I haven’t seen the thing since it came out — when I was a just a teen), the original was a blast. Anyway, I’d like the idea to at least be thought about. Hollywood is making another attempt at a Shadow movie after failing back in the ’90s, so why not this ’30s-era tale, too?
Last night’s Oscars threw me for some loops, especially the winners for Best Foreign Language Film (The Lives of Others beating out Pan’s Labyrinth?) and Best Cinematography (Pan’s Labyrinth over Children of Men?). Alan Arkin’s Best Supporting Actor win was just a mildly pleasant surprise, especially since I was the only one in a family pool of 11 to pick him. Melissa Etheridge winning in the Best Original Song category with her piece for An Inconvenient Truth, beating out three nominations from Dreamgirls, was pretty clearly a political move (not necessarily a partisan move, but political, nonetheless). But does anyone really care about the Best Original Song category?
As I was scanning other blogs and sites this morning, I found a few post-Oscar pieces especially worth looking at. Pajiba writes in today’s post that although they’re not interested in big awards shows…
Mostly, we just provide this post so that our readers have a space to bellyache, though it’s hard to get too worked up about anything in last night’s show. In fact, the biggest complaint we have was that the 79th Oscar telecast offered so little to kvetch about.
Pajiba’s post and some of its comments (there are lots and they’re kind of fun to sift through) also brought up some suggestions on how to make the Oscars program shorter. Not surprisingly, everyone has an opinion.
GreenCine Daily also has a day after post worth checking out. And HairyLime on Spout wrote a “Post Oscar breakdown” that was followed by a couple interesting comments. Let us know what you liked, hated, and were bored or surprised by on Oscar night.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Each day this week, Christopher Campbell will take a look back at a “classic” film that played the Sundance Film Festival. Today’s installment: Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton’s Little Miss Sunshine (2006).
