If all you remember of Patrick Swayze, who died yesterday of cancer at age 57, is his dance moves, you may be forgetting what an iconic tough guy he was. Sure, he started out specializing in arguably unmanly ventures like ballet and gymnastics, and many of his most memorable scenes show him as a limber romantic with thick, luxurious hair. But he was really best when he portrayed macho, domineering and otherwise badass dudes.
We grew up thinking of him first as a big brother type, thanks to movies like Red Dawn and The Outsiders. And even when he went on to sappier fare like Dirty Dancing and Ghost we accepted him as a man in control of every situation he was in. Later in his career, he would play more desperate and vulnerable characters, such as in Donnie Darkoand the underrated 11:14. Still, we never got over believing that Swayze was the boss.
Below we spotlight ten favorite movie quotes that display the power commanded by his characters. …Read more
Apparently Hollywood isn’t happy enough ruining my generation’s childhood, so it’s now also reaching back to my dad’s. Steven Spielberg is set to direct a remake of the 1950 classic Harvey, which stars James Stewart as an alcoholic who talks to an invisible, 6½-foot-tall rabbit. Based on Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the movie kept “Harvey” the rabbit up to viewers’ (and Stewart’s) imaginations, but many are fearing that this new version will feature a computer-generated character. Because that’s how Hollywood ruins childhoods best, with CG.
But this is Spielberg we’re talking about. No stranger to remakes — he redid A Guy Named Joeas Always, gave us an updated War of the Worlds and apparently did some second-unit work on Jan De Bont’s The Haunting — he’s still a lot classier than most Hollywood directors. He may go a somewhat boring route by casting either Tom Hanks or Will Smith in the lead, but there’s no way he’d show us Harvey. I think.
Check out what the rest of the film blogosphere is saying about this news after the jump: …Read more
Are you one of the many sci-fi and comic book geeks who’d be more interested in Push were it not for Dakota Fanning? Sure, the precocious child star is now a teen actress (she’s about to turn 15), yet that probably makes you even more worried about her appearance in the movie. But what can you do? She’s literally everywhere this week – voicing the title character in the animated Coraline and starring in two new video releases, Hounddog and The Secret Life of Bees, both of which were released Tuesday. In the tradition of child actors continuing careers into adolescence, it’s only a matter of time before she ruins a movie that would have been better without her.
We’ll have to wait until this weekend to see if that time is now, with Push, but in the meantime let’s take a look at some of the past offenders in this tradition. Most of the following former child actors (our definition: actors that began their career below the age of 13) have done great things in their adulthood, but each has done at least one film that could have been better without him or her. You may disagree with some of these picks, and you may think we’ve forgotten some (was Christian Bale really the worst part of The Dark Knight? did Mary-Kate Olsen’s disturbing kiss with Ben Kingsley take away from The Wackness?), so do share your own thoughts on former child stars below. We just ask that you keep your comments somewhat tasteful and law-abiding. …Read more
The Two Boots Pioneer Theater in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which opened in February 2000, quickly developed a track record of supporting niche interests. It’s where the Donnie Darkocult was born, via midnight screenings that began four months after Richard Kelly’s film had opened in mainstream theaters and lasted for 28 consecutive months. It’s also where a number of recent indies we’ve supported at Spout had their first and/or only New York engagements, including Dance Party USA, LOL, Jones and Kamp Katrina. And now it’s gone, the victim of a rent increase and general economic fatigue.
The theater had its last screening on Halloween night (of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, natch) — but with no direct competition in the area (we love Anthology Film Archives, but while they are a reliable home for spelunked jems past and present, they don’t roll with the lowbrow very often), it won’t be easily forgotten. So if you’re in the neighborhood tonight or can easily be, come out to the Pioneer’s going away party. It starts at 6pm, and the theater’s website (which you should check out regardless of whether you’re looking to attend the party, to see testimonials/triubutes to the theater from the likes of Bingham Ray and In The Soup director Alexandre Rockwell) promises “free movies, popcorn and reminiscences.” I’m going to try to stop by a little later in the evening — hopefully right when the reminiscences are starting to get smutty and incriminating — so if you see me, come say hi.
At Portfolio, Fred Schruers profiles Austin Chick’s dot com crash period piece August, which the filmmaker and his stars will cheekily promote by ringing the bell at the NY Stock Exchange on Friday. “The film will need all the promotion it can get. In this summer of tent-pole behemoths…even an art-house film that won plaudits at the Sundance Film Festival faces a challenge.” Yup. So imagine how hard it’s going to be for virtually plaudit-less August!
Focus Features sent Variety a ComicCon Survival Kit, complete with a copy of Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics. Mike Jones recommends leaving it at home. “If the geeks see you reading this there, you’ll get the worst eye-roll ever. Their equivalent of a beat-down.”
There’s a New York in the Movies blogathon happening at 12 Grand in Checking (blog named after a throwaway line on 30 Rock? Very good sign.) and a Self Involvement Blogathon at Culture Snob. I’m going to try to work up something tonight that fits both.
In the meantime, watch a video that has no application to either: above, The Mind of Danny Tanner, a wrangling of sound and image from Full House into the poetic style of Bergman and the soundtrack of Donnie Darko. Via Mark Lisanti.
Screen Daily reports that the sequel to Donnie Darko, which begins shooting on May 18, will be looking for international buyers in the Cannes Market. Wait, back up––there’s a sequel to Donnie Darko? Yeah, and Richard Kelly, who is quietly working on a mainstream horror film in the aftermath of Southland Tales, has nothing to do with it. S. Darko will focus on Donnie’s youngest sister, played as she was in the earlier film by Daviegh Chase, and will catch up with the character seven years after her brothers death, when she and a friend embark on “a roadtrip to Los Angeles when they are plagued by bizarre visions.” So presumably, her commitment to Sparkle Motion will not be an issue. The film, which will be helmed by Nightstalker director Chris Fisher, has apparently already secured U.S. distribution through Fox.
Could any film ever hope to overcome a festival drubbing like the one that greeted Southland Tales at Cannes 2006? Screened in competition, in an early incarnation clocking in at 2 hours 40 minutes (director Richard Kelly later claimed it had been a rough cut all along, but that’s apparently not how it was billed to the press at the time), Kelly’s follow-up to the slow-burning cult hit Donnie Darkowas roundly, emphatically, infamously booed. Sometime after the first shockwave of bad buzz hit the States, a handful of critics rose to defend Kelly’s vision. The rest of us sat back and waited a year and a half to get a look for ourselves.
Southland Tales may never be able to live down that first, fateful, fatal screening, but you can’t say Richard Kelly didn’t try to reverse the damage; in fact, he spent a good portion of the 18 months following the film’s ill-fated premiere streamlining his disasterpiece. The 2 hour 24 minute cut premiering in theaters tomorrow boasts a newly-fashioned prologue (wherein a July 4th barbecue is interrupted by a mushroom cloud, touching off World War III), a re-recording of Justin Timberlake’s narration (stoney and oblique, but purposefully so), and the exorcism of one or two subplots (Janeane Garofalo used to be in this film; now she is not).
Most auspiciously, Kelly brokered a deal with Sony that required him to shave a sizable chunk off the running time in exchange for their bankrolling of 90 new effects shots. It would seem that this money was put to good use: I’m not someone who usually takes much pleasure from good CGI, but if there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on when it comes to Southland Tales, it’s that the effects are truly special. Particularly in the film’s spectacular final twenty minutes, Southland Tales contains some of the most purely beautiful digital effects that I’ve ever seen on a big screen.
And the rest of it? It really comes down to what you’re willing to let Kelly get away with.
While you wait (and wait and wait and wait) for further word on Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, take a look at this Donnie Darko-inspired video for “What’s a Girl To Do” by Bat For Lashes [via Ultragrrrl]:
As for Southland Tales… we are about halfway through completing all of the new visual effects. We have to deliver everything by the end of summer. I have to tell everyone that the amount of visual effects work being added to the film is SIGNIFICANT… and I am so grateful for the work being done by Thomas Tannenberger and his team at Gradient VFX in Venice Beach.
And I can confirm that a company has been hired by Sony to begin work on a trailer. The release date will be announced very soon.
This post would seem to be carefully designed to telegraph two messages:
1) Those are his caps on SIGNIFICANT. At ComicCon last summer, Kelly distanced himself from the Cannes cut of Southland, insisting that the version shown to critics the previous May lacked the special effects needed to flesh out the story. (Post-Cannes 2006, there were rumors that the stars of Southland were looking for distance, too–rumors which were given credence by the fact that not a single boldfaced name joined Kelly on stage in San Diego.) He’s clearly saying, “This movie looks totally different from the movie that got those crappy reviews.”
2) Based on the phrasing of the final sentence, it;s sounds like Sony isn’t planning on setting a release date until they have a trailer/a better idea of how/when/to whom they can market the film. Considering the time and money they’ve already invested, that would make sense.
The verdict? This news is better than no news, but Kelly fans can hardly breathe easy.
Word hit the web yesterday afternoon that Richard Kelly, the writer/director of cult hit Donnie Darko, has been hired to direct The Box, a PG-13 horror film based on his own script, and set to star Cameron Diaz. “My hope is to make a film that is incredibly suspenseful and broadly commercial, while still retaining my artistic sensibility,” Kelly told Variety.
Okay, fine. But what about Southland Tales? An allegedly unfinished cut of Kelly’s second film (a gonzo sci-fi meta-epic starring The Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Justin TImberlake) was savaged by most critics when it screened at Cannes last year, but staunchly defended by Amy Taubin and J. Hoberman. That summer, the film was acquired by Sony, and Kelly made an appearance at Comic Con promising fans that the studio was committed to releasing the film. Then, in early April of this year, Kelly posted a message on his MySpace page saying that Sony had agreed to fund one last round of special effects. “The film will be completely finished for the first public screening sometime mid-summer,” Kelly promised.
Wouldn’t that be … now? Kelly hasn’t updated his MySpace page since the Variety story hit, but I’ve sent him a message asking for more details. I can tell you one thing: there’s no lack of curiousity about Southland Tales amongst comic book geeks. I’ve been trying to get my hands on the third installment of the Southland Tales prequel graphic novel series, but Forbidden Planet has been sold out for weeks.
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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Apparently Hollywood isn’t happy enough ruining my generation’s childhood, so it’s now also reaching back to my dad’s. Steven Spielberg is set to direct a remake of the 1950 classic Harvey , which stars James Stewart as an alcoholic who talks to an invisible, 6½-foot-tall rabbit. Based on Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the movie kept “Harvey” the rabbit up to viewers’ (and Stewart’s) imaginations, but many are fearing that this new version will feature a computer-generated character. Because that’s how Hollywood ruins childhoods best, with CG.
The Two Boots Pioneer Theater in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which opened in February 2000, quickly developed a track record of supporting niche interests. It’s where the 
