For only $2.3 million, you can own a house featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It’s not the title character’s residence, though; it’s the home of “Cameron Frye.” You’ll recall this as the setting of the film’s ending, where Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari is accidentally hurled through the garage window and into a forest ravine.

While any memorable location from a favorite movie would be a treat to own, Cameron’s house from Ferris Bueller is desirable for the opportunity to relive that famous scene — perhaps with a less-valuable vehicle. In fact, we think the person who buys this home should turn it into a museum, a la the house from A Christmas Story, and offer visitors the chance to crash a disposable car into the ravine for whatever it would cost to maintain such an attraction.

The listing for this Highland Park, Illinois, property has inspired us to come up with ten more movie homes we wish we could own, whether as a dwelling or a plaything. What favorite film location would you want to live in?
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A few weeks ago, Summit Entertainment released the first seven minutes of The Brothers Bloom online. Normally, this kind of marketing strategy is useful, particularly if the movie isn’t well known. However, it helps for such a movie to have a terrific opening, which grabs the viewer in and makes him/her need to see what happens after that teased beginning. The Brothers Bloom, unfortunately, has an unbearable start, enough that I couldn’t even get through the entire seven minutes. I turned the streaming video off at the 4:24 mark.

The primary cause of my annoyance was the voice-over narration, provided by actor/magician Ricky Jay, a man whose speech is easily recognizable, only not for good reason. His lisped reading, sounding like a poor man’s Wallace Shawn, ruined the movie for me immediately. And I decided within those few moments that I wouldn’t bother to go see The Brother’s Bloom in its entirety.

I later learned that Jay’s narration is only in the film for that seven-minute prologue that opens the film, so I am willing to give it another shot, with hope that it gets better. Due to my initial irritation, though, I’ve decided to share a list of ten other movies ruined by their voice-over narration.
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Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar recently announced he’s working on an American TV series based on his Oscar-nominated film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. While it seems odd for Fox Television to be interested in adapting a 21-year-old foreign film to the small screen, the age of the source material is hardly surprising given the fact that both NBC and ABC are similarly working on new shows based the 1989 ensemble dramedy Parenthood and 1987’sThe Witches of the Eastwick, respectively, for the fall.

Is this the beginning of a trend? We hope so, and we’re even going to lend TV producers a hand by suggesting ten other 1980s movies that would make interesting shows. To make it a little less random, though, especially given how many appropriately sitcomish films were released in the decade, we have limited our selections to one per year. If you have any additional ideas, please pitch them in the comments section below.
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Thanks to David Hudson of IFC.com’s The Daily and just about everybody else for so clearly letting me know what “everyone’s talking about” today: the new trailer for the sci-fi Sundance sensation Moon. I find the excitement interesting for two reasons. First, I think it’s odd when people who’ve already seen a movie go ga-ga for its trailer. Such subjective write-ups also tend to hint that spoilers abound, which can be quite obnoxious. Second, I think it’s strange that we still go completely insane for films like this, even as we immediately address their influences in Kubrick and Tarkovsky. I’m not complaining, of course; I love all derivatives of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solyaris, Alien, Metropolis, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, etc. There’s just something about sci-fi that overcomes the usual complaints against lack of originality.

Anyway, because I haven’t yet seen Moon (Karina has, though, read her review from Sundance here), I’m going to attempt to ignore the commentary from people who already love the film (sorry Billington, Goss, etc.). Objective reactions only, after the jump:
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“The best part about the 81st annual Academy Awards on Sunday night—y’know, besides Zac Efron, OMG!—is that once it’s over, we’ll never have to think about Slumdog Millionaire again.” — Christopher Rosen, at The New York Observer.

As the last weekday before the big event, today seems to be filled with more Oscar bloggery than all previous awards-season days combined. There are last minute predictions, last minute commentary and, most enjoyable, last minute Oscar nonsense. Are you ready? Are you bored? Are you so behind that you really need to attend tomorrow’s Best Picture nominee marathon at your local AMC theatre?

Whether or not you care about who or what wins on Sunday night, you may enjoy some of the following stories, quotes and video:

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Last week I offered a list of movies that made ambitious predictions about the near future, only to lose credibility when their dark futures didn’t become a reality. As meaningful as this exercise is, it’s also very limited, I can only debunk movies whose futures have already failed come true, or can I? Using FutureMe.org, I sent my future self an e-mail, asking how movies which predict what the next ten years have fared. Luckily, PastMe.org must be up and running in 2019, because I received a prompt and courteous response from my future self. Here is the response, which I will write in ten years:

Past Self,

Got your e-mail about failed movie predictions. I knew it was coming Here’s what I’ve got for you:

2012

I realize this Roland Emmerich mega-budget doomsday picture hasn’t come out yet in your time. I don’t recommend seeing it when it does, unless you were so impressed with Emmerich’s filmmaking in Godzilla and 10,000 BC that you actually want to see more. The film predicts that multiple apocalyptic catastrophes befall the world in 2012, in accordance with an ancient Mayan calendar which stops on December 21 of that year. What we know now is that the Mayans simply ran out of room on the rock they were carving, and were not trying to warn future generations of anything. Promoters of New Age Mayan mysticism did make a big deal about what they said would be the end of the world, making several appearances on popular talk shows. Of course, nothing happened on December 21, 2012, except that the special edition Blu-Ray of 2012 went on sale, hoping to make up for poor sales by becoming the ironic Christmas gift of choice.

I Am Legend

This 2007 Will Smith vehicle is another example of revisionist futurism, when a story’s prediction doesn’t come true, the story is retold and the date is moved further into the future. This is the third film adaptation of Robert Matheson’s original novel. Published in 1954, the book follows a scientist named Robert Neville from 1976 to 1979. Neville is apparently the sole survivor of a pandemic which resembles vampirism. The Will Smith version takes place in 2012, clearly a favorite year for doomsday prophets. While the prediction of a virus that turns everyone into rabid beasts didn’t exactly come true, that year’s American Idol competition was particularly brutal, inspiring an outbreak of backyard gladiatorial battles, similar to those now used to choose the winner of the show.

The Postman

This 1997 film, directed by and starring Kevin Costner, was generally regarded as a flop when it was released. It grew in popularity, however, as its prophetic vision of 2013 began to look more like reality. In the film, society is in ruins after a nuclear war. Costner’s character inadvertently brings hope to the destitute survivors when he starts delivering mail. While there was no global nuclear war in 2013 (that doesn’t happen until 2015), the film did accurately predict the return of pony express style mail delivery. Due to the ongoing financial crisis, the US government shut down the Postal Service, assuming that private carriers and e-mail would fill in. It worked for a few months, until bad loans and $300-per-barrel oil drove the private delivery firms out of business right during the Great Broadband Crash of ‘13. It was a bad year. But letters from loved ones did seem that much more meaningful when they were hand delivered by a disheveled vigilante fighting off dysentery.

Back to the Future Part II

The 1989 film Back to the Future Part II made several predictions about what the world of 2015 would look like. Having lived through that memorable year, I can tell you things didn’t turn out as shown in the film. In reality, flying cars were not released commercially until 2036, but never became widely available due to the market domination of flying Segways. Hoverboards, on the other hand, were widely available by 2015, but were pulled off the market following the unfortunate death of Tony Hawk during the 2016 X-Games. Many blamed the incident on Hawk’s malfunctioning cybernetic legs, rather than the Hoverboard, but the toy was still unable to recover from legal trouble. One prediction Back to the Future Part II did get right was Marty McFly’s futuristic Nike shoes. Nike released the Air McFly, in July 2008. While they were a limited edition, there’s no reason you couldn’t wear them in 2015.

Blade Runner

In Ridley Scott’s 1982 science fiction noir, Harrison Ford plays Deckard, a hard boiled detective hired to assassinate several illegal androids known as replicants. The film’s predictions about what a gritty futuristic Los Angeles would look like were pretty accurate. Genetically engineered pets are also available, but you need to go to some rather unsavory neighborhoods to find people who produce them. Super realistic androids, similar to replicants, also exist in 2019. Which brings me to a rather important point. This e-mail is not actually from your future self. I am a replicant. Your memories were transferred to me shortly before your grisly death.

Thanks for writing. If you have any more questions about the future of movies, let me know!

Best,

Future Kevin

It’s only a couple of short weeks before the 2008 Oscar nominees are announced, and the internet is abuzz with prognostications. One hotly debated topic is whether or not Wall-E can pull off a Best Picture nomination, or even a win. It would be the second animated film to be nominated in the category, after Beauty and the Beast, which got the honor before the Animated Feature prize existed. Will the stodgy old Academy seat Wall-E at the kid’s table, giving it an easy win in the animation category, or will it be allowed to play with the big boys?

A best pic nomination for Wall-E would be a rare honor for animation in general, but it would also be a long over due rarity for another reason: Wall-E would only be the second best pic nominated film in the history of the Oscars to be set in the future. The only one to date is A Clockwork Orange. When you consider how many nominees are period pieces (I didn’t care to count), this represents a massive bias on the part of the Academy. It’s clear that they love the past, but they hate the future.

What would the history of the Academy Awards look like if the Hollywood elite wasn’t terrified of speculative fiction? Below, seven movies about the future that should have been nominated for Best Picture:

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• Let the dream casting for the Jerry Garcia biopic officially continue. Favorites so far include Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jack Black, Jeff Bridges, Peter Jackson, Jorge Garcia, Paul Giamatti, John C. Reilly and Vincent D’Onofrio. Or how about Adam Herschman, who played the Grateful Dead frontman in Walk Hard?
• Also official is Monopoly, which Ridley Scott will direct with a “futuristic sheen along the lines of his iconic ‘Blade Runner.’” So the Scottie dog is an animoid and that racecar can fly?
• Another documentary filmmaker heads for the easier road of romantic comedies, as American Teen director Nanette Burstein is set to helm the long-distance-relationship movie Going the Distance for New Line.
• I thought this news was a joke when I first read the headlines yesterday, but as long as Variety lists it as a top story, I guess it is to be believed and taken seriously. Didn’t Turkey already do enough damage to DC Comics and Warner Bros. with their awful 1979 Superman ripoff?
• Coming soon to Academy members’ computers: streaming screeners for Oscar contenders.

Gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello have drawn an increasingly large following as the decade as worn on, but this year their cinematic profile has raised dramatically. In Berlin this year Madonna unveiled her Filth and Wisdom, staring frontman Eugene Hutz, and now comes a full blown tour documentary filmmaker Margarita Jimeno, Gogol Bordello Non-Stop. The film made its North American bow at AFI over the weekend and screens again this Wednesday at the Arclight. The Bogota, Columbia born, Williamsburg based Jimeno, who has made shorts and worked in the art and editorial departments of NYC indies for a decade, caught up with us to discuss her fascination with There Will Be Blood, her desire to adapt Que Viva La Musica! and where to catch Sid Vicious on You Tube. …Read more

• Is it a sign of the end of the world, or simply an effect of the economic crisis and the presidential election? Beverly Hills Chihuahua has won the hearts of an America that apparently doesn’t want anymore serious content to think about. The talking dog movie came out on top for the second weekend in a row with $17.5 million (for a total of more than $50 mil.), easily defeating Leo, Russell and Ridley, and especially Bill Murray, whose City of Ember barely beat out the Christian hit Fireproof to make it into the top 10. An announcement about Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 is expected by the end of the week.
• At least specialty division films are doing well enough, with The Duchess expansion bringing the period piece into the top 10 and both RocknRolla and Happy-Go-Lucky debuting in limited markets with per screen averages around $20,000. Rachel Getting Married is also still seeing success with its old-fashioned slow rollout, now grossing about $17,000 on each of its 27 screens. And Religulous continues its path towards surpassing Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed as the top grossing doc of 2008.
• Ridley Scott will finally direct the epic sci-fi adaptation The Forever War, which he describes as “a bit of The Odyssey by way of Blade Runner” and which he’s been attempting to make for 25 years. Is it terribly cynical of me to think that it will be a major disappointment? Certainly the expectations are going to be extremely high since Scott’s other efforts in the genre are two of the most influential sci-fi films of all time.
• Back to signs of the end of the world: Variety posted this ludicrous sentence, which fits with audiences favoring dumb, happy fare during hard times, late last Friday: “So if Oscar voters rebel against the pervasive darkness, does this mean “Mamma Mia!” and “High School Musical 3″ could become front-runners?”

io9 has confirmed an earlier report that Ridley Scott will direct an adaptation of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian future novel. Scott says that Leonardo DiCaprio approached him about adapting the book, and it looks like he will star in the film as well. This is exciting news; not only does it herald the return to science fiction for the director of Blade Runner and Alien, it also means that Leo, who is working on a live action adaptation of Akira, has two dystopian future projects in progress.

Brave New World is one of my favorite books, and Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies, for many of the same reasons, but I’m still having trouble getting excited about this news. Scott’s work on Blade Runner was amazing, but that was 26 years ago, and he hasn’t made a science fiction film since. I’d like to believe he can jump back in the saddle, but considering what he’s been up to for the past two and a half decades, I have my doubts. While the quality of Scott’s filmography is admittedly debatable, it’s safe to say he’s made some pretty terrible movies, Kingdom of Heaven and A Good Year come to mind. Even his films that have some potential end up falling short. American Gangster, while not a bad movie, felt like only like a sufficient execution of a script Scorsese would have passed over in the nineties.

Even if Scott can get his Blade Runner mojo working again for Brave New World, it could still be really bad. …Read more

Fame. Money. Success. These are the accolades reserved for only the Hollywood elite, the great artists of the silver screen. Or not. Some adored filmmakers leave us scratching our heads. Paul and Kevin look at Ridley Scott’s latest, American Gangster, in light of his yet-again re-released classic Blade Runner. Does he belong in the pantheon of great gangster-epic directors or is he just an imitator? Karina questions whether the Coen brothers are anything more than competent genre directors. She calls Erica Rowell, author of The Brothers Grim: The Films of Ethan and Joel Coen, to discuss No Country for Old Men and other their other “masterpieces.”

 

 FilmCouch 46 [23:32m]: Play Now | Download

FilmCouch 46

indieWIRE has the full lineup for the 2007 New York Film Festival, which is about six weeks away. Pretty much everything I expected to see on this lineup made it, including the highly anticipated latest works by Noah Baumbach, Julian Schnabel, Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant. But there are also some surprises — who could have foreseen a doc about Don Rickles made by the guy who directed “Thriller”?

You can click here to read the whole thing, but here are what stand out to me as highlights:

Blade Runner: The Definitive Cut 

Ridley Scott promises this is the last time he or anyone else is going to tinker with his now-considered-classic 1982 slice of dystopia. NYFF will screen this new version in advance of its upcoming release on DVD, in honor of the film’s 25th year anniversary.

The Axe in the Attic

An ultra-selective festival with no separate program for documentaries, NYFF is usually fairly light on non-fiction films. Of the handful of docs on this year’s slate, I’m most interested in this collaboration from Lucia Small and Ed Pincus delves into “the hardships and sorrows of the Gulf Coast Diaspora two years after Hurricane Katrina.”

The Last Mistress

Catherine Breillat’s adaptation of Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s An Old Mistress is the Romance director’s most expensive film to date, and by some reports, her most conventional. It’s also one of two films on the NYFF lineup to star divisive sexpot Asia Argento, after Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Running Down a Dream

“Rarely, if ever, has the history and development of a major rock band been explored with the care and the depth with which Peter Bogdanovich approaches Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,” promises the press release. I’m just interested to see what Bogdanovich has been doing since his last comeback, 2001’s The Cat’s Meow.

I stumbled across this story via the FILMMAKER Mag blog: in a lengthy story for the Contra Costa Times, Mary F. Pols talks to a number of female filmmakers, from super-indie to mega-Hollywood, about working in a business that is still overwhelmingly run by dudes. There’s a lot of good stuff in the piece, but an anecdote from actress/director Julie Delpy particularly caught my eye.

Delpy’s second feature film as writer/director, 2 Days in Paris, opens in the U.S. next month. Festival buzz has generally been positive, but no one who’s seen the thing can overlook the similarities between it and the film that marks Delpy’s greatest triumph as an actress, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset. Well, turns out, there’s a reason for that. After working for some of world cinema’s greatest directors and attending NYU film school, Delpy “had a drawer full of scripts that reflected her love of science fiction and other nongirlie topics”–none of which she could find financing for. Then, as Pols tells it,

[A] friend suggested she write a script that bore some similarity to Before Sunset, the successful 2004 film Delpy had starred in and co-written. She had shared an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, and her friend’s supposition was that financiers would feel “safe” with a project that seemed like Before Sunset.
The trick paid off. Delpy wrote 40 pages of a relationship farce set in Paris, which she then shopped around. She found financing for it in Germany. The result is 2 Days in Paris. [...]
“This is why my first film is a romantic comedy,” said Delpy, now 37, with evident exasperation. “It is only because it is the first time people will give me money to make a film. People will trust a woman to do something with a relationship more than they will to do something with a war story or science fiction.”

Delpy goes on explain that she’d “sell out to direct a big action movie” in a heartbeat. Her lifelong dream, she says, is to make a film like Blade Runner. “But you need money to make Blade Runner.”

Ignoring, for a moment, that Delpy probably shouldn’t be whining about how the big boys won’t give her money to make a summer tentpole before her first real feature is even released, I’d be fascinated to see what kinds of scripts are lying dormant in other filmmakers’ drawers. Does Harmony Korine have a high school comedy that no one wants to pay for? Does Sofia Coppola secretly want to remake Raging Bull? And considering how many relatively nameless, style-less directors are handed “big action movies” these days, does demonstrable competence in a specific genre actually hurt more than it helps?