Yes, it’s that “most wonderful time of the year” again. And unless the scent of pine turns you on or you’ve got a fetish for glittery objects (like the crazy queen who must have designed this year’s Macy’s window display after watching A Beautiful Mind on acid – there’s even a borderline creepy ode to the “diva Tinsel” stenciled on the glass. Check it out if you’re in NYC, it’s a must!), you’re probably feeling about as sexy as eggnog right now. But don’t despair. If Macy’s can turn a stalwart tradition into an LSD trip I can find the perversion in The Sound of Music. So without further adieu, here are some sexy, family-friendly suggestions for gathering around the DVD player with the clan.

Heavenly Creatures

• Dashing Cary Grant stars in Henry Koster’s 1947 The Bishop’s Wife, about an angel sent down to earth to help a holy man (played by the delightful David Niven) build a church – and recover his shaken faith in the process. Only problem is the bishop’s got a hottie wife in the form of radiant Loretta Young who the charming angel takes under his wing as well. Grant’s studly Dudley, a cuckolding do-gooder, is every bit as ambiguous as Grant himself was in real life.
• If your relatives are especially warped, have a double feature with Pasolini’s 1968 Teorema, in which an otherworldly knockout played by the breathtakingly beautiful Terence Stamp seduces the entire family kids included.
• And if you still haven’t gotten your fill of sexy spirits, throw in Warren Beatty’s and Buck Henry’s 1978 Heaven Can Wait, a remake of Alexander Hall’s 1941 Here Comes Mr. Jordan, in which steamy Beatty turns tasty Robert Montgomery’s boxer Joe Pendleton into a quarterback who prematurely gets called to the big leagues upstairs as a result of angel error.

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If you haven’t already heard the news, I’ll sum it up for you: Ridley Scott is directing a feature film version of Monopoly. It’s probably the single strangest thing I’ve ever heard in the film business. I’m not sure if Scott himself seems to know what this movie will be about, because he keeps waffling on the subject: one moment he says it’ll be a broad family comedy, and the next minute it’s going to be dark like Blade Runner. He seems to have only been wooed by the fact that it’s one of the best-selling board games in the world.

This doesn’t mean that making a movie out of a board game is a bad idea, necessarily. It worked for Clue, after all. But unless Scott’s movie features Rich Uncle Pennybags jumping around with his monocle screwed firmly in place, I’m going to have to call shenanigans on it. Check out our list below of the 10 Board Games We’d Like To See As Movies, complete with fantasy casting.

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I was reading Diablo Cody’s recent article in Entertainment Weekly about her love for Judy Blume, and started wondering why there haven’t been any movies made from anything she’s written. Earlier this summer my friend Jen Jones published a biography of Judy Blume, and when I rang her up about any Judy Blume films, she confirmed my fears: she’d been relegated to the world of made-for-TV movies and development hell.

Blume signed a multi-picture contract with Disney way back in March of 2004 (The New York Times talks about why it took so long), and since then we’ve neither seen nor heard a glimmer about the Deenie movie that was supposedly in development, nor anything about her other books. So in an effort to prime the pump, we’re going to present our top five dream casts for five of our favorite Judy Blume books. Check them out after the break.

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Every week Kevin Kelly will look at different writers whose books should be turned into films, films that were much better as books, or books that should never be turned into films upon pain of death. We’ll also talk about book to movie trends and deals if anything interesting happens.

My first introduction to Stephenson came back in the mid 90s when I was working at a bookstore in Austin, Texas. I’d read everything William Gibson had written, and was hungry for more when a coworker suggested Snow Crash. It’s a very Gibson-esque book that is probably one of Stephenson’s most cinematic works, meaning that it would probably require the smallest amount of effort to take it from the page to the screen in terms of putting a screenplay together.

Snow Crash is about a sword-wielding, pizza-delivering hacker who is trying to stop the spread of a computer virus that only affects computer programmers, along with the help of a young female courier who travels around on a high-tech skateboard using a magnetic harpoon to slalom through traffic. Sounds like a movie, right? Hollywood thought so too, since it was optioned by Touchstone Pictures and several drafts were written before it was abandoned due to budget concerns.

Neal Stephenson has been writing books since 1984, on subjects spanning the ecology, cyberpunk, steampunk, cryptography, artificial intelligence, information trafficking, historical fiction, and speculative fiction. However, none of his works has yet been turned into a movie. If you take a glance at Cryptonomicon or any of the three books in The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, or The System of the World, you’ll see why: these are massive tomes that average about about 800 pages in length, and those four titles could take up an entire shelf on their own. Snow Crash, Zodiac, and The Big U are all “normal” sized books, so why haven’t they been smacked onto celluloid?

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This is the year that print film criticism went on life support, online film critics drafted sober eulogies and the rest of the world yawned distractedly while poised over the plug. Into the ill-attended open grave my colleague Lauren Wissot just tossed a meditation on film culture titled, “The Movie-Going Public.”

I dig it because it dares to take filmgoers as seriously as it does cinema itself. Further, it manages, mostly by way of example, to pee all over the very notion of a professional film critic. I use don’t use the term “pee” lightly but with great care, thinking of readers like Anonymous, who responded to Lauren’s post with, “You’re not an elitist. But you are crass, vulgar and unprofessional… Manny Farber is rolling in his grave.” I want Anonymous, if he or she is reading this, to imagine Mr. Farber howling in pain from the beyond at my using such a crude bathroom word as “pee” in reference to the profession he devoted his life to. But another dead 20th Century critic is probably grinning in his grave. James Agee: “I suspect I am, far more than not, in your own situation: deeply interested in moving pictures, considerably experienced from childhood on in watching them and thinking and talking about them, and totally, or almost totally without experience or even much second-hand knowledge of how they are made. It is my business to conduct one end of a conversation, as an amateur critic among amateur critics. And I will be of use and of interest only in so far as my amateur judgment is sound, stimulating,
or illuminating.” (Props to Ryland Walker Knight.)
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Kevin Kelly, a contributor to Joystiq, i09 and countless other weblogs, will be weighing in on the intersection between film and video games every Thursday here on SpoutBlog. This is his introductory column; please welcome Kevin, ask him personal questions, shower him with flattery and/or rip apart his argument in the comments.

If you’d been holding onto a game controller or sitting deep in a multiplex somewhere a few weeks ago, you might have felt the shuddering groan of millions of video game and movie fans everywhere when the press release dropped the news: Brett Ratner is going to start making movies based on Activision’s cadre of video games. Maybe the Uwe Boll career path of making extremely bad movie adaptations of video games still appeals to him. It’s not clear what project will be first up, but given the fact that Ratner’s films have somehow made millions of dollars, it’ll probably be something fairly popular. Don’t rule out Brett Ratner Presents: Brett Ratner’s Guitar Hero: The Movie just yet.

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When a laugh is more powerful than a tear. The Care Bears Big Wish Movie, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? and, possibly, Iron Man share a common theme. A quiet–almost subliminal appeal–to an audience seeking a straight shot of entertainment asking them to drop apathy and get involved in a troubled world. A new subversive cinema (that I wrote about earlier this week), which isn’t a filmmaker sneaking a message past Hollywood executives, but past a message-weary audience.

 

 FilmCouch #66 [27:25m]: Play Now | Download

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filmcouch-66
Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, Iron Man, Care Bears Big Wish Movie

Sundance 10: Return of the Sucker and the Crank

Add to My Profile | More VideosWith the 2008 Sundance Film Festival now but a memory, Joe and Ronnie return to the site of their first video dispatch and sum up their week in Park City. This is the last of their Sundance video dispatches, but if you’re worried about going through Joe and Ronnie withdrawl, don’t be: Butterknife premieres here on Spout tomorrow. Visit the Butterknife page, mark your calendars, tell your friends, etc etc.

Previous Sundance video coverage from Joe and Ronnie:

Movies
The Sucker and the Crank
Opening Night
Who Killed Davey Moore?
Melee on Main Street
George Romero
Blackout
Promotion
Gifting
Sledding

Sundance 9: Movies

Add to My Profile | More VideosAs the 2008 Sundance Film Festival winds down, Joe and Ronnie try to take advantage of the diminished crowds to see some movies. Of course, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Previous Sundance video coverage from Joe and Ronnie:
The Sucker and the Crank
Opening Night
Who Killed Davey Moore?
Melee on Main Street
George Romero
Blackout
Promotion
Gifting
Sledding

I’m refreshing a couple of my favorite tech blogs every few minutes to glean the movie-related news from today’s MacWorld keynote. Here’s what I’m learning, in real time. Keep refreshing for new stuff.

12:21: It looks like watching video will become more feasible on the new version of the iPhone, which is set to ship in late February. From TUAW: “New features rolling out! Maps with location for iPhone. Webclips. Customize home screens. SMS multiple recipients. Chapters for video. Karaoke mode! (Lyrics displayable)”

12:29: The IPhone video updates, including subtitle options will be “available today as a free update for all iPhones.” [TUAW again]

12:32: ITunes sold 7 million movies last year — better than every other movie download service, but still below expectations.

12:33: “We think there’s a better way to deliver movie content through iTunes. So today, we’re introducing iTunes Movie Rentals.” [Engadget]

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In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’d like to give thanks for how much fun I have making FilmCouch each week with Kevin and Karina. I’m pulling out an old television sitcom convention. When the cast is on vacation, get a few actors around a table to reminisce and create a show of flashbacks to previous shows. Kevin and I debated doing just that, but decided it’s less annoying for me to just highlight my favorite shows from the past year here.

This is not our definitive “best of” list, but shows I have a personal love for. (Hence, I talk a lot in them.)

FilmCouch #28 - Rolf de Heer I hung up the phone after interviewing Rolf de Heer (Ten Canoes) feeling like I’d had a conversation I’ll still be unpacking when I’m 80. He simply amazed me.

FilmCouch #21 - Appropriation In talking about filmmakers who take footage they did not shoot and make a new movie out of it, we got to–I think–the very essence of filmmaking.

FilmCouch #18 - Sympathy for the Devil A little girl’s question leads to dissecting what makes a villain a villain. The answer is not just interesting, but essential in making our most beloved bad guys.

FilmCouch #11 - Jennifer Venditti At SXSW 2007, a serendipitous encounter with first-time filmmaker Jennifer Venditti (Billy the Kid) leads not only to seeing our favorite doc of the fest, but opens Venditti’s struggle over how she “uses” the subject of her documentary.

Despite having the best Wednesday ever, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix earned a relatively small sum of money for a five day release. Here’s how a handful of scribblers spun the numbers:

To Box Office Mojo, the big-Wednesday, small-weekend phenomenon is a sign of “burning off demand”–that is, the huge fans showed up at midnight on Wednesday, and there’s little to no potential for the sequel to build on word-of-mouth.

But don’t tell that to Paul Dergarabedian, the industry blurb whore recently targeted by New York Magazine who hints that the release of the final Harry Potter book next Saturday could
actually reinvigorate ticket sales. “They’ll be walking book in hand into the movie theater,” he promises. Gag.

So many blockbusters in the marketplace leave little room in the writeups for attention to indies, but there’s always space to gloat over the failure of torture porn. The New York Times devoted two paragraphs to Captivity’s sub-top-ten debut; Nikki Finke’s sole sentence on the matter can be reduced to two words: “how nice.” Meanwhile, HecklerSpray asks the rhetorical question that’s surely on everyone’s mind: “[License to Wed] is still in the weekend box office top five and a film where Elisha Cuthbert has to drink a milkshake made out of mashed-up eyeballs isn’t?”

Chicago: Nothing cuts through a mid-summer haze like the sound of Isabella Rossellini warbling a Bobby Vinton song. My alma mater the Art Institute of Chicago is sponsoring a month-long festival of David Lynch films. This week offers three chances to see Blue Velvet in the gorgeous Gene Siskel Theater. And what luck! If you prefer your Italian women to keep mouths shut, there’s an Antonioni retrospective in the very same theater complex. Via ScreenGrab.

Seattle: Quick, go home and change–you’ve finally got an audience for that Ruby Keeler impression you’ve been practicing. Cineoke starts tonight at the Jewelbox Theater at 8pm. Sponsored by the Seattle Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Cineoke is basically karaoke set to your favorite scene from your favorite movie musical. The organizers say they have hundreds of songs to choose from, but you’re also welcome to bring your own DVD or cued-up VHS. More info here [via Wes Kim].

New York: You have just four more nights to catch what is essentially the New York cinephile sequel event of the summer. Though not a literal sequel to Army of Shadows by any means, Le Doulos is another re-release of another Jean-Pierre Melville masterpiece, and it’s again packing a single screen at the Film Forum screen. Jean-Paul Belmondo (all dressed up like Bogart two years before Godard went there again in Pierrot le Fou) sneaks his way around a world where every criminal dreams of gathering some money and a girl and retreating to “a place with no cops and no hoods.” In a film flooded with casual violence, Belmondo’s character uses his charisma as his most efficient weapon. I’d see it ten times between now and Thursday … if I didn’t have anything else to do. See more at FilmForum.org.

To have your event included in a future Cinephile Calendar, please send info to Karina AT Spout DOT com.

Film festival buzz is always a tricky thing to wrap one’s head around. Almost without fail, a solid percentage of the movies that everyone seems to be breathlessly hyping the day before a Festival have vanished from the conversation by the time the Jury has issued their verdict. And, if you’ve read any of the passel of Tribeca preview stories to hit the web over the past week, you know that this is a Festival with its own unique issues concerning hype vs. delivery. So with the first big weekend of Bobby DeNiro’s sixth annual legacy-cementer about to begin, here’s an extremely scientific assesment of the films that have attracted the most early Fest buzz. We’ll revisit this list at the end of the Fest, after the awards are announced on May 3.

Earth-Shattering Buzz

Taxi to the Dark Side
World Documentary Competition
This look at the evolution of the United States’ stance on torture has an advantage of buzz-by-association: its director, Alex Gibney, established himself as a documentary brand name first with Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and then as exec producer of the recent Sundance hit, No End in Sight. The film itself is coming off a successful college tour, which resulted in quite a bit of blog buzz. Gibney and exec producer Sidney Blumenthal have pumped the film on The Huffington Post and Salon, respectively, and YouTube clips are starting to spread throughout the political blogosphere.
Notable Pullquotes: “Quickly progresses from chilling to alarming to utterly terrifying!” - Village Voice; “Meticulous!” (meant in the most positive sense of the word) - New York Times
Outlets offering an official endorsement: L Magazine, Premiere, Wall Street Journal
Odds of living up to the buzz: 10 to 1

Gardener of Eden
World Narrative Feature Competition
Variety gave Entourage star Kevin Connolly’s directorial feature debut a shot of cred when it placed the drama on its list of films that distributors are most eager to see. The fawning interviews with Connolly and star Lucas Haas are to be expected, but Tribeca is notorous for offering a home to god-awful celebrity vanity projects that vanish after their star-studded afterparties. Could this one possibly find life beyond the red carpet?
Notable pullquotes:“Whip-smart!” - New York Magazine; “Embodies the spirit of Tribeca!” (again, I think this is meant as a compliment) - E! Online
Outlets offering an offical endorsement: NY Daily News, VH1
Odds of living up to the buzz: 20 to 1

Still Life
World Narrative Feature Competition
The winner of the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice Film Festival finally makes it to the States–without a distributor. Jia Zhangke’s follow-up to The World has already been marked with the scarlet “M” (for “masterpiece”) by indieWIRE and The Reeler; though blog anticipation is thus far fairly minimal, although at least one Tribeca detractor names the film as possibly the only reason not to skip the procedings altogether.
Outlets offering an official endorsement: L Magazine, Premiere, TimeOut NY.
Odds of living up to the buzz: 2 to 1

This is England
Spotlight Section
Shane Meadows’ Thatcher-era, coming-of-age/skinhead-becoming flick unexpectedly beat awards season attention hog The Queen at the British Independent Film Awards last fall. Blog buzz is high, but the film’s struggle to secure an audience-friendly rating in its home country has sparked more chatter than the Tribeca premiere. Word on the street is universally positive, but England lost some urgency as a Tribeca must-see when IFC and Netflix announced plans to day-and-date release it in the States this summer.
Notable pullquotes: “Must-see!” - Premiere; “Feels more authentic than many documentaries!” - NY Times
Outlets offering an official endorsement: Village Voice, L Magazine, TimeOut NY
Odds of living up to the buzz: 3 to 1, but it’s going to be hard to quantify: as England’s not competing for Jury prizes and already has distribution here and abroad, its Tribeca run is basically just an early commercial for the July release.

A Walk Into the Sea
World Documentary Competition
Esther Robinson’s first film is a portrait of her uncle, Danny Williams, a sometime Factory fixture and Warhol boyfriend who mysteriously disappeared at the age of 27. The doc popped out of the pack of recent Warhol flicks when it won the Teddy for Best Documentary two months ago at Berlinale. Blog buzz is sizable, although a Technorati search produces many results related to the death of editor Jim Lyon earlier this month. Executive producer/noted doc blogger Doug Block is doing his part to spread the word.
Notable pullquotes: “Fascinating stuff!” - New York Magazine, “An emotionally complex portrait of the Factory moment!” - Village Voice
Outlets offering an official endorsement: L Magazine, Premiere,
Odds of living up to the buzz: 5 to 1

Mid-level Buzz

The Air I Breathe: According to New York Magazine, this Forrest Whittaker-starrer was the most talked-about flick at the Fest’s opening night party–but the crowd that fills the average Tribeca party doesn’t always reflect the crowd in line for morning screenings.

Times and Winds: This Turkish coming-of-age tale will be “the great discovery of the festival,” predicts indieWIRE.

Passio: This silent-film/live performance event is, according to the Village Voice, a “sublime, once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Honorable Buzz Mentions - films with one rapturous pullquote

Avida: “Wonderfully anarchic!” — indieWIRE
The Killing of John Lennon: “Haunting, intensely impressionistic!” - Village Voice
Hellfighters: “Absorbing and insightful!” - New York Magazine
The Hammer: “Pure comic gold!” - Village Voice