When I heard that the New York in the Movies Blogathon and the Self-Involvement Blogathon were happening around the same time, I got it into my head that there was one film I could write about that could legitimately fit on the nexus of both. Sure, there are “better” New York films––Manhattan, obvs, or even Metropolitan; there are films that would allow me to more deeply discuss my personal life, as the Culture Snob puts it, as it’s “filtered through movies.” But there’s no movie in any category or canon that allows me to talk about how my relationship to the city I live in has been filtered through movies since long before I lived here, quite like Ghostbusters. A close reading of the film, the way it depicts New York, and what that has to do with me, follows after the jump. The entire film is now available for streaming, but not embedding, on Hulu.
With almost-sure thing comic book blockbusters (Iron Man), long-awaited franchise extenders (Indiana Jones and The Rise of Shia LeBeouf), and chick flick counter-programming for us old maids (Sex and the City) projections suggest that this May’s box office tally may break records.
Recently installed replacement governor David Patterson showed up at the Tribeca Film Festival’s opening press conference yesterday to hype the state’s new tax incentives designed to combat runaway film production. Meanwhile, festival co-founder Robert DeNiro was shooting a film in Connecticut. Seriously.
Montreal’s Just for Laughs comedy festival is putting its Just Comedy industry conference on the map by featuring a one-on-one conversation between Jason and Ivan Reitman. It takes place on July 17.
10 features have been added to the Cannes lineup, via the Critic’s Week sidebar. Five of the films are by first-time directors; none of them are from the U.S.
The biggest shock in the Oscar nominations this year was certainly Jason Reitman’s bid for Best Director. In fact, it’s such a given that the Junohelmer won’t win the Academy Award that even the kids know it. One brave brat from the Santa Barbara Middle School Teen Press even tells Reitman to his face that he has no chance, in this slightly amusing video that’s circulating the interweb. Many are suggesting the clip was actually set up by Reitman himself, though the fact that he posted the video on both his Myspace and YouTube pages only makes it clear that he’s probably responsible for the thing showing up on the net at all. Either way, he at least has a good sense of humor regarding everyone’s doubts that he deserved the nod.
My favorite question, and one that I wish he had a better answer to, asks what his actual role was as director. That’s something I’d actually like to know. The acknowledgment of Juno having first and foremost a great script and great actors seems to indicate this is indeed an inside joke, but at least the question is a bit better when asked a second time: “but what did you do?” Anyway, the reference to the director’s father, Ghostbustershelmer Ivan Reitman is a bit sloppily handled by the kids — the fact that they are aware of Papa Reitman but don’t know Jason Reitman didn’t write the Juno script is further evidence that this is all a pre-written gag by someone other than middle schoolers. And meanwhile I still don’t really know what kind of great, Oscar-worthy contribution Reitman really made to the film.
The combo of last week’s DGA contract agreement and yesterday’s announcement of the Oscar noms may have set the WGA in a new direction towards ending the writer’s strike. Yesterday afternoon the WGA announced it had withdrawn demands for jurisdiction over reality and animation, which the AMTPT was dead against recognizing. The two sides are reportedly meeting together today.
Even if the strike is not over in a month, let alone today, there will still definitely be an Oscar telecast. It will be heavy on clips honoring the past 80s years of cinema, according to Gil Cates, who compared the strike to the presidential race.
2008 Oscar-nominee Michael Moore is making a stand on the issue of documentary and foreign film exhibition, stating that his new year’s resolution is to sit down with theater owners and urge them to reserve one auditorium per multiplex devoted to specialty films. Hopefully he’ll document it, and one day we can sit in that auditorium and watch the result.
The fate of Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassushas not been officially announced yet, but Variety points out that Heath Ledger’s involvement in the movie was integral to its financing. I doubt the film could easily replace the late actor and go back and reshoot all of his scenes, but I also hope Gilliam isn’t left with another unfinished work (ala The Man Who Killed Don Quixote). Could Gilliam & Co. go the route of The Crow and digitally add Ledger’s face to a double?
With almost-sure thing comic book blockbusters (Iron Man), long-awaited franchise extenders (Indiana Jones and The Rise of Shia LeBeouf), and chick flick counter-programming for us old maids (Sex and the City) projections suggest that this May’s box office tally may break records.
