If Tyler Perry gets an Oscar nomination for his acting in Madea Goes to Jail, can a washed-up actress scold him for taking away female roles? Actually, could it just be Cuba Gooding Jr. in drag, a la Boat Trip?
Seriously, though, Madea won’t be up for any Academy Awards next year, but damn is Perry’s character popular. Enough that the sassy matriarch has now evolved from a supporting character into the star of her own vehicle (which gave the filmmaker his biggest opening yet this past weekend). Yes, it’s true that Madea is a central figure in most of Perry’s films and has previously been the main protagonist in his plays (including the one Madea Goes to Jail is based on), but in the movie world she was introduced as a secondary role in Diary of a Mad Black Woman. So, now she belongs in that small club of supporting characters who’ve earned their own film(s); other members of which include Jay and Silent Bob, Bruce and Lloyd, Cousin Eddie, Marshal Samuel Gerard, the Scorpion King and Wolverine.
And Madea is one of the very few female characters to belong to the club, which is another good reason for an actress to scold Perry. But the problem also lies with the people who write woman characters, apparently, since in coming up with ten other supporting characters who deserve their own spin off, we managed to only include two females on our list. Perhaps if we’d permitted classic film characters there’d be more to choose from — though even then we might be more likely to include a Peter Lorre or a William Demarest role than a Thelma Ritter or Eve Arden. …Read more
Last month, on the opening day of Gran Torino, I went up to Lincoln Center to participate in a roundtable discussion about Clint Eastwood for a Film Comment podcast. Kevin B. Lee, who also participated in the roundtable, has since adapted the conversation into three video essays: one on Changeling (in which I am extremely quiet; I guess I was playing by the “if you have nothing nice to say…” rule); one on Gran Torino, and one (embedded above) on the look of Eastwood’s films, and particularly his use of light. I’m quiet in that last one, too, but in this case it’s because my knowledge of Eastwood’s filmography was brutally overmatched by that of the Film Society’s Evan Davis, Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine, Akiva Gottlieb of The Nation.
I’ve always had major problems with Eastwood’s work, but being part of the conversation made me excited about going back and watching some of his directorial efforts that I hadn’t seen, including The Bridges of Madison Country, which coincidentally ended up showing the weekend after we recorded the podcast on the WE network, where I gave it about four hours of my life, counting the frequent breaks for Rich Bride, Poor Bride promos. It was worth it.
Of Clint Eastwood’s two 2008 directorial efforts, Gran Torino is by far the “better” film, in that it’s the picture that’s vastly more entertaining and much less clumsy in execution –– although up against the monumentally ill-conceived Changeling, that’s not saying much. But it is worth saying that the things about this end-of-year entry that are appealing are extremely appealing. In drawing the conflict in a broke-down Midwestern suburb between the white ethnic stragglers who originally gentrified it, and the non-white ethnic groups who have more recently moved in and made it their own, Nick Schenk’s script is gleefully unafraid to go to extremes. Eastwood’s starring performance, which requires him to be on-screen, often alone, for a good 90% of the picture, has been lauded as a career high, but this might stem from a kind of “Whoops –– if not now, when?” collective guilt; the fact is; the man is clearly running out of runway to be honored on. Again, what’s interesting about what Eastwood does on camera it is not nuance or technique, but the willingness to go balls out, to turn every casually racist wisecrack up to 11 and to crank out every unnecessarily externalized shard of internal monologue with the subtlety of burlesque.
I have not been kind to Changeling, the Angelina Jolie-starring, Clint Eastwood-directed Oscar bait which opens wide today –– but admittedly, I also haven’t taken it very seriously. After seeing the supposed true-to-life drama at the New York Film Festival last month, I made the snap judgment that the film didn’t deserve my time –– it was such a silly, blatant exercise in statuette fishing, I thought, that the energy that I could expend detailing all its faults and falsehoods would be much better spent elsewhere. And certainly, plenty of other critics have covered some of the film’s key problematic factors. Dana Stevens‘ review pretty much sums it up, whether she’s citing Eastwood’s “clomping heavy-handedness” or his need to create a “deeply phony moral universe” in which to surround his victim-as-martyr manipulation shtick, which “keeps us at a stately remove, presenting Christine’s suffering as a kind of religious tableau.” But it was a throwaway line in A.O. Scott’s NYT review that made me realize that Changeling isn’t just a bad film –– it’s the final sign in a long line of them that Angelina Jolie, as we once knew her, has ceased to exist. That’s worth a minute or two.
High School Musical 3had the biggest opening weekend of any musical, ever, grossing $42 million to leapfrog over Saw V’s respectable-for-an-effing-fivequel $30 million. What the latter number will mean for Lionsgate’s reported turn away from genre film is anyone’s guess, but when Saw V grosses another $2 million, that franchise will surpass Friday the 13th as the highest grossing horror franchise in history. Also, Changeling had a ridiculously high per screen average, which might indicate that it’ll be able to hold on through Oscar season despite extremely mixed reviews.
Richard Linklater and Todd Haynes will participate in a conversation on indie filmmaking at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival. The festival, which will go forward next year under the direction of Janet Pierson for the first time, will also welcome Stanley Kubrick’s brother-in-law/producer Jan Harlan and IMDb founder Col Needham.
Christine Vachon’s Killer Films will produce its first big-budget action movie, a medieval period pic called William the Conqueror.
Trying to make an independent film about a gay man and a terrorist bonding in a Brazilian prison cell was not an easy thing to do in the early 1980’s. Nevertheless, producer David Weisman did exactly that, making Kiss of the Spider Woman not only a reality, but an Oscar-winning hit. We talk with Weisman about his beginnings, and the struggle of making an independent film without a road map.
While independent filmmakers certainly have more options in 2008, one hurdle that remains is distribution. We talk to documentarian Anne Sundberg about her latest film, The End of America. Five months ago it was an idea, today it can be viewed for free online at SnagFilms.com.
So Warner Brothers showed about 2 minutes of Watchmen footage on an awards show this week, and they’ve now put that footage online. I’m pretty sure this is the same as the brief “sizzle reel” they showed alongside the three full scenes at the roadshow a couple of weeks ago. So there’s not much new for me to say about it, other than that I really do wish Zack Snyder was a little less enamored with motion effects, but then, post-Changeling, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to take slow motion seriously again. What say you?
Pasadena, 1928. Single mom Angelina Jolie is a switchboard supervisor who glides around the telephone company on rollerskates. It’s adorable, but her signature smoky eyes and blood red lips mean she’s probably moonlighting as either a tramp or a clown. Scenes confirming one option or the other were, unfortunately, left on the cutting room floor.
The LAPD is corrupt –– so corrupt that the holiest man in town is John Malkovich. So when Angie’s son goes missing, they give her back a “fake boy,” and the evil detective (Jeffrey Donovan) can’t figure out if the ensuing scandal means he should have an Irish accent or not.
We drink every time Angelina hysterically proclaims, “He’s not my son!” We get very drunk, and this may be why we can’t figure out why Clint Eastwood made a cheap-looking Lifetime movie that eventually turns into an “And justice for all!” episode of SVU. Just when the drinking game is starting to get really out of control, there’s a twist so shocking that it’s punctuated by two inches of ash falling off a policeman’s cigarette … in slow motion.
This sobers us up pretty quick. “Really, Clint?” we say out loud, right in the middle of the screening. But no one can hear our cry, they’re so overwhelmed by the sound of Angelina’s constant tears, which just keep flowing, long after the stakes have vanished, because Eastwood can’t help but indefinitely extend the misery. So we shrug. “Oscars for all!” Now for another drink.
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.
filmcouch-114
Last month, on the opening day of Gran Torino, I went up to Lincoln Center to participate in a roundtable discussion about Clint Eastwood for a Film Comment podcast. Kevin B. Lee, who also participated in the roundtable, has since adapted the conversation into three video essays: one on Changeling (in which I am extremely quiet; I guess I was playing by the “if you have nothing nice to say…” rule); one on Gran Torino, and one (embedded above) on the look of Eastwood’s films, and particularly his use of light. I’m quiet in that last one, too, but in this case it’s because my knowledge of Eastwood’s filmography was brutally overmatched by that of the Film Society’s Evan Davis, Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine, Akiva Gottlieb of The Nation. 
High School Musical 3
