Here’s a bit of candy to keep you entertained while I settle into the post-Cannes, post-holiday bloggy business as usual. Continuing the Muppets revisionist cinematic history trend (first came Sesame Streets by Martin Scorsese, then Elmo auditioned for a remake of Casino (he lost the role to Ernie, apparently), here comes The Muppets Take Manhattan. We always suspected that Kermit was the Woody Allen of Sesame Street, and now we have the visual proof.
The Tribeca Film Festival continues its mission to wow us with quantity over discovery by booking a full sidebar of festival leftovers like Savage Grace (which will have been on the festival circuit for about 50 weeks by the time it hits lower Manhattan courtesy of Robert DeNiro and American Express) and The Wackness(which will make its multiplex debut via Sony Classics a month or two after its Tribeca screening). But, as always, the festival’s Restored and Rediscovered program offers hope, including screenings of new prints of Fellini’s Toby Dammit, and Curtis Harrington’s Cat People–inspired, young-Dennis Hopper-starring Night Tide.
While we’re on the topic of festival exports: Nanette Burstein’s American Teenwill open the 2008 edition of Sundance at BAM on May 29.
Would it even be news that a new Patrick Swayze movie is having its world premiere in Austria, if Swayze’s battle with cancer wasn’t currently grade-A tabloid grist, and if his health didn’t preclude his attendance? Yes––but only because Uwe Boll is distributing the movie.
Kit Blog takes a look at Woody Allen’s use of Windsor-EF Elongated, the font in which the director has rendered the opening and/or closing credits of almost every project since Annie Hall. The analysis doesn’t fully answer Kit’s question of whether Allen’s Windsor addiction is “a Kubrick-eque case of typographic fetish or if Woody Allen built a visual identity in order to brand his products,” but through a commenter, he is able to offer a clue as to how the filmmaker landed on his font of choice.
On her blog, Variety’s Anne Thompson is linking to a subscription-only New York Times item which states that Lionsgate (who are distributing the pic in partnership with The Weinstein Company) have pushed up the opening of Michael Moore’s Sicko in response to the film’s widespread piracy. The health care doc will now open on one screen only in Manhattan this Friday, only to expand on its original opening date a week later.
I guess this is what passes as aggressive action against piracy these days, but I’m not sure what good it will do. It’ll force the Times to run their review a week early, possibly pushing Evan Almighty off the the Arts front page (which, if Nikki Finke is to be believed, could do further damage to the already poorly-tracking most expensive comedy ever made). I don’t know what the stats are regarding the rate at which online piracy decreases once a film is in theaters, but I do know that releasing the movie a week earlier in Manhattan just ensures that camcorder bootlegs will be available a week earlier on Canal Street. And by admitting that piracy is enough of a problem that they need to change their release date (I believe this is the first time a studio has shifted an opening date in response to a leak, but do let me know if I’m wrong), aren’t Lionsgate effectively letting the terrorists win?
Some movies are violent, some are disturbing, and others are just plain wrong. Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race is a fun ride with some gnarly crashes, but it can’t hold a candle to its demented predecessor, Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 (1975).
Cinema’s favorite weirdo, Cripsin Glover, is taking his film across the country, personally [...]
The Tribeca Film Festival continues its mission to wow us with quantity over discovery by booking a full sidebar of festival leftovers like Savage Grace (which will have been on the festival circuit for about 50 weeks by the time it hits lower Manhattan courtesy of Robert DeNiro and American Express) and The Wackness (which will make its multiplex debut via Sony Classics a month or two after its Tribeca screening). But, as always, the festival’s Restored and Rediscovered program offers hope, including screenings of new prints of Fellini’s Toby Dammit, and Curtis Harrington’s Cat People–inspired, young-Dennis Hopper-starring Night Tide.
