Monday, December 31, 2007

In fact, if you Google "Jamie Campbell Bower Harry Potter" as I did while looking for the article I linked to above, my site is the first hit. Interesting...
Persepolis
Away from Her
The Band's Visit
12:08 East of Bucharest
King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters
I know IFC mainly focuses on indie films, but excluding Michael Clayton and Gone Baby Gone from this list seems wrong. Craig Zobel's Great World of Sound is also a strong candidate. Although I am really sorry I missed 12:08 East of Bucharest while it was at the RiverRun Film Festival back in April.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
1 | National Treasure: Book of Secrets | $35,632,000 | |||||||||
2 | Alvin and the Chipmunks | $30,000,000 | |||||||||
3 | I Am Legend | $27,500,000 | |||||||||
4 | Charlie Wilson's War | $11,768,000 | |||||||||
5 | Juno | $10,300,000 | |||||||||
6 | Alien Vs. Predator - Requiem | $10,050,000 | |||||||||
7 | The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep | $9,200,000 | |||||||||
8 | P.S. I Love You | $9,100,000 | |||||||||
9 | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | $8,000,000 | |||||||||
10 | Enchanted | $6,500,000 |
Source: Box Office Mojo
This weekend's box office champs stayed pretty much the same from last week, with National Treasure: Book of Secrets winning the weekend. Christmas day openers Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem and The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep failed to make a major impression at the box office, earning around $10 million and $9 million, respectively.

BEST SCENE
Elegy for Dunkirk, Atonement

BEST SCORE
Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood

BEST SOUNDTRACK
I'm Not There

MOST ROMANTIC
Once

MOST INSPIRATIONAL
The Great Debaters

BEST ENDING
Michael Clayton

BIGGEST SURPRISE IN THE SMALLEST PACKAGE
Great World of Sound

MOST CHARMING
Waitress

FUNNIEST
Knocked Up

MOST UNDERRATED
In the Valley of Elah

FEEL GOOD MOVIE OF THE YEAR
Paris, je T’aime

BEST POSTER
Black Snake Moan

FILMS EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD SEE
For the Bible Tells Me So
God Grew Tired of Us
No End in Sight
Sicko (tie)
It's been an excellent year for documentaries, but these four films tackle gay rights, the Lost Boys of Sudan, the bungling of the war in Iraq, and what's wrong with America's healthcare system with such power that they are impossible to ignore, and essential viewing for anyone living in this country. Each takes a different approach to its subject, and some are more evenhanded than others, but they are all eye-opening experiences that should not be missed. These are films with the power to make a difference, if only they could find the right audience.
Saturday, December 29, 2007

You see, your amalgam of quirks meant to signify personality that everyone thinks are so cute don’t work on me anymore. A person is not defined by the fact they listen to Astrud Gilberto or Iggy Pop. Being able to argue the difference between Herschell Gordon Lewis and Dario Argento doesn’t make you a more interesting person. Admit it. These are just things to hide the fact that you’re kind of empty inside. You can’t just put on a Kinks song and have it stand in for genuine emotion. Well, Wes Anderson can, but it works when he does it...Great review, I love the 'break-up letter to Juno' effect. It's good to know that when it comes to Juno, I'm not the only one who has stood up to say that the emperor has no clothes.
It’s also telling that your two most interesting characters, the adopting couple Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner, feel out of place in the world you’ve created. You’ve set them up to be the butt of jokes, but they’re the most real and human of all the people in your movie. The rest of your characters are nothing more than machines built to spout spunky dialogue. This would be ok if you made me laugh more. Unfortunately, you made me chuckle once in awhile, but mostly I just smiled and wondered what everyone around me found so damn funny.
Click here to read the full review.
Yes, shutting down The Golden Globes is a show of power. But what is the purpose? How does it serve the goal… which for all the anger, is to get a deal done and for the writers to get back to work?I'm glad I'm not the only WGA supporter who feels this way. Poland makes an excellent case for the fact that the union may be hurting themselves at this point more that they are hurting the producers, especially with their scattershot granting of vouchers.
Well...actually the hotel the airline put us in is in Romulus. It's like being trapped in a Star Trek episode.
My flight out of Charlotte arrived in Detroit late, causing us to be 5 minutes late to our connector flight to Green Bay...which was the last one of the night with nothing available tomorrow. Lovely. Apparently they couldn't wait 10 minutes...even though they were the same airline and knew there were quite a few people on the flight out of Charlotte going to the Green Bay flight. We finally found a flight going to Wausau, and we'll be driving to Green Bay from there.
But I will definitely have a WiFi connection once I reach Green Bay, so I will be able to keep up with the news and buzz and keep up the posts.
Look for updates soon.
Friday, December 28, 2007

With many stars refusing to cross WGA picket lines to get to the ceremony, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is looking for alternatives to a live television broadcast on NBC. WGA strike coordinator Jeff Hermanson has been quoted as saying: “If the Globes is telecast and it is produced by Dick Clark Productions, which is a struck company, we will picket the show.”
With the fate of the Oscars also in question, this presents an interesting dilemma for Hollywood. We webcast for the Globes would be an interesting prospect, and probably the best compromise. However, the WGA seems hellbent on shutting down the Oscars - the biggest night of the year for Hollywood. But my question is, what purpose will that serve?
I have been behind the WGA all along. They deserve what they are demanding and the AMPTP has been nothing but arrogant and antagonistic to their demands. But this move to shut down the awards shows seems counterproductive, and - dare I say it - self-centered.
The Oscars are about unity - or they're supposed to be. This is the night when everyone from the stars to the sound technicians sit down in the same room and honor each other's achievement, and 2007 is Oscar's 80th birthday, one of the best years for film in recent memory. By trying to stop the awards shows the Writers' Guild is denying recognition for the cinematographers, the costume designers, the art directors, the editors - everyone. This is their night to shine, and I think it would be a great gesture of goodwill on everyone's part to let the Academy Awards proceed as normal. Anything else seems unnecessarily divisive. Stopping the Oscars not only hurts the producers - it hurts everyone involved.
The Academy is honoring 80 years of film this year, and the WGA won't even let them show clips of the nominated films. To me anyway, this seems to be too much.
I support the WGA strike...but I'm starting to question their methods. Am I alone in this, or is the WGA shooting themselves in the foot by appearing too standoffish?
1. THE WRITERS GUILD STRIKE -- ADDRESSING STORYTELLING IN THE DIGITAL FUTURE
2. BERGMAN AND ANTONIONI--THE END OF AN ERA
3. iPHONE --SYMBOL OF THE EXPLODING ON-DEMAND CULTURE
4. "WAR ON TERROR" CREATES CULTURAL SPASM
5. PLANET EARTH--LANDMARK PROGRAMMING IN HIGH DEFINITION
6. THE HYPER-TABLOIDIZATION OF TV "NEWS"
7. SUMMER ON CABLE REDEFINES YEAR-ROUND PROGRAMMING
Click here to read the entire article.
But in case I don't write again until I return, have a happy new year, and I'll see you in 2008!

His subject is the Wiley College debate team from rural Texas, an all black college in the Jim Crow south in 1935. Washington himself stars as Melvin B. Tolson, their passionate and controversial coach, who leads them to greatness, challenging white colleges for the first time in a town filled with long standing, historical racism, and makes history in the process.

Never before have I seen an audience break out into applause in the middle of the movie, much less twice, and then again at the end. It is that kind of movie - a crowd pleaser of the highest order, not cinematically groundbreaking by any means, but extremely well made. There is a fiery heart burning bright at the center of The Great Debaters, and it ignites the screen through a talented cast, featuring Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett, Denzel Whitaker, and Jermaine Williams as the debaters themselves.

It's an old fashioned feel-good movie, well acted and solidly crafted - the kind of which there will always be room for. It's almost enough to restore my faith in mainstream filmmaking altogether.
GRADE - ***½ (out of four)
THE GREAT DEBATERS; Directed by Denzel Washington; Stars Denzel Washington, Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett, Denzel Whitaker, Jermaine Williams, Forest Whitaker, Gina Ravera, John Heard; Rated PG-13 for depiction of strong thematic material including violence and disturbing images, and for language and brief sexuality.

My biggest problem with the film, interestingly enough, was Diablo Cody’s much ballyhooed screenplay. Whereas most people have seen charm and wit, I saw self conscious quirkiness and an excessive smugness that I found off-putting.
It all centers around a precocious 16 year old girl named Juno, who after a single night of passion with her best friend Paulie (Michael Cera) becomes pregnant, and decides to find put it up for adoption. She finds an ad in a sale paper for a couple of wealthy yuppies (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) who are desperate for a child of their own, and ends up forging an unexpected relationship with them as her pregnancy causes her to grow up faster than she had originally planned.

The rest seems to be filled with zinging one-liners but very little substance. Yes the jokes are clever, but I never felt a beating heart behind them outside of Garner.
Now I know it sounds like I think this is a bad film. I don’t. I just felt the need to explain why I don’t like it as much as everyone else seems to. I have seen many other comedies that I thought were better in 2007 - I thought Margot at the Wedding was sharper, Waitress was sweeter, Knocked Up was funnier, Superbad had more teenage insight, and Great World of Sound was more original.

I know I’m in the minority here, and maybe I missed something. Who knows, I may return to it another day in another frame of mind and feel differently. But right now I feel that Juno is an OK film that got mistaken for a great one, and is the most grossly over-praised film of 2007.
GRADE - **½ (out of four)
JUNO; Directed by Jason Reitman; Stars Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, J.K. Simmons, Allison Janney; Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content and language
Thursday, December 27, 2007

It's a gleefully ghoulish premise, and Burton embraces it in all of its gothic, Grand Guignol glory. Under his direction, "Sweeney Todd" is a thing of bloody beauty, sumptuously designed by production designer Dante Ferretti and costume designer Colleen Atwood, in which blood sprays in ruby-colored geysers covering everything from the actors to the camera lenses, the sublime Sondheim score soars simultaneously on the surprisingly strong voices of Depp and Carter...Click here to read the full review.
This year, that film is Atonement, which thankfully does not fall victim to the Cold Mountain syndrome (which was just as cold and distant as its title suggested), and is every bit as emotionally affecting as it is visually sweeping.

Pride & Prejudice was an uplifting romance, the kind that sent you soaring out of the theater with your heart aflutter. Atonement is a tragedy of decisions, consequences, and a lifelong quest for redemption that bears some thematic similarities to another year-end adaptation of a prestigious novel, The Kite Runner, except it is far more adept at achieving its goals.
On the surface, the film appears to be a love story between Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), an upper class woman and her gardener's son against the sweeping backdrop of WWII, but the story really belongs to Cecilia's younger sister Briony (Saorise Ronan; later Romola Garai and Vanessa Redgrave), an imaginative aspiring writer who, at the age of 12 years old, witnesses something she doesn't understand and makes a false accusation that tears Cecilia and Robbie apart and sees them separated as the second world war wreaks havoc on the world around them.

The film also boasts a superb score by Dario Marianelli, who uses ingenious instrumentations to add greater depth to the characters, especially in his use of rhythmic, pounding typewriter keys to represent Briony, and his blending of score and a choir of soldiers singing on the beach in the Dunkirk scene that really adds up for one of the best scenes of the year. If nothing else in the film was worth watching (which it thankfully is), the film would still be worthy of recognition for that scene alone. It is one of the most powerful and perfect marriages of direction, sound, music, performance, and mise-en-scene of the decade.

GRADE - ***½ (out of four)
ATONEMENT; Directed by Joe Wright; Stars James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave, Brenda Blethyn; Rated R for disturbing war images, language and some sexuality

It's a fascinating story, the kind of thing that wouldn't be believable if it weren't true. Nichols treats the story like a breezy caper film, call it Ocean's 11 meets Wag the Dog - where beautiful people speak in snappy, Aaron Sorkin scripted dialogue, drink champagne, and influence world events without mussing their perfectly coiffed locks. In other words, it's fun, nimble-footed, glamorous Hollywood entertainment.

And I'm not saying this as the bleeding heart liberal that I am, I'm saying this as a person who likes his topical films to be, well, topical. There is more to this story than the one being told, and from the looks of things it was trimmed to be more mainstream friendly. Americans have stayed away from movies about Iraq and Afghanistan in droves, and the people behind Charlie Wilson's War clearly didn't want to be the next casualty.

If only Charlie Wilson's War could have been both.
GRADE - *** (out of four)
CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR; Directed by Mike Nichols; Stars Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Warren Beatty, Emily Blunt; Rated R for strong language, nudity/sexual content and some drug use
1 | Spider-Man 3 | $336,530,303 | ||||||
2 | Shrek the Third | $321,012,359 | ||||||
3 | Transformers | $319,071,806 | ||||||
4 | Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End | $309,420,425 | ||||||
5 | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | $292,004,738 | ||||||
6 | The Bourne Ultimatum | $227,471,070 | ||||||
7 | 300 | $210,614,939 | ||||||
8 | Ratatouille | $206,445,654 | ||||||
9 | The Simpsons Movie | $183,135,014 | ||||||
10 | Wild Hogs | $168,273,550 |
Source: Box Office Mojo
The fact that Wild Hogs is on that list depresses me. Hell, the fact that most of those movies are on that list depresses me. The only ones that really deserve to be there are Ratatouille and The Bourne Ultimatum. And Harry Potter 5 I guess...why not? Everybody loves Harry. But I would prefer to see something else get the attention.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Nomination ballots for the 2007 Academy Awards were mailed Wednesday to the 5,829 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts Sciences.Completed ballots must be returned to PricewaterhouseCoopers no later than 5 p.m. Jan. 12.
Nominations for the 80th annual Academy Awards will be announced Jan. 22. Ceremony will be held Feb. 24 at the Kodak Theater and telecast live on ABC.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007

There are worse ways to spend two hours than National Treasure: Book of Secrets, the agreeably breezy adventure sequel to the surprise 2004 hit National Treasure. The story is similar in structure to the first one, except this time Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage) is out with the whole family to clear his great-grandfather's name, a Civil War hero who recent evidence has cast in the light of the mastermind of the Lincoln assassination. Their quest turns into a search for a lost Incan city of gold, the treasure his great-great grandfather was trying to protect from Confederate hands.

This is not the kind of film that I am generally drawn to, but despite being pretty much a retread of the first one it's a pretty passable diversion. There is nothing earth shattering or extraordinary about Book of Secrets, but it accomplishes its goals and should be commended for that if for no other reason. The crowd around me enjoyed it immensely...I probably only cracked a smile two or three times, and chuckled out loud a couple of times - nothing special but nothing heinous either. At least they were only messing with history instead of a much beloved novel like Love in the Time of Cholera or The Kite Runner.

GRADE - **½ (out of four)
NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS; Directed by Jon Turteltaub; Stars Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Ed Harris, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Bruce Greenwood, Helen Mirren; Rated PG for some violence and action
Such as noticing that the book Mrs. Lovett is reading during "Not While I'm Around" in this scene from Sweeney Todd is a book of manners. Nice touch.
Monday, December 24, 2007

1 | National Treasure: Book of Secrets | $45,500,000 | |||||||||
2 | I Am Legend | $34,225,000 | |||||||||
3 | Alvin and the Chipmunks | $29,000,000 | |||||||||
4 | Charlie Wilson's War | $9,618,000 | |||||||||
5 | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | $9,350,000 | |||||||||
6 | P.S. I Love You | $6,505,000 | |||||||||
7 | Enchanted | $4,152,000 | |||||||||
8 | Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story | $4,100,000 | |||||||||
9 | The Golden Compass | $3,980,000 | |||||||||
10 | Juno | $3,400,000 |
Source: Box Office Mojo
What an utter disappointment.
Review coming soon.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Of course Lansbury's effervescent interpretation of the character would not have fit in Tim Burton's more grim adaptation, but she is a joy as always - and will remain the definitive Mrs. Lovett.
I would love to see this song get an Oscar nomination, but its chances are pretty slim. I love this girl's voice...she is a feisty spark in an otherwise dull film.


The film as a whole took my breath away, but their story is the one that made my heart melt. Bower deserves much more attention than he is getting.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Of all the LOTR scores, I always felt that Return of the King was missing the most from its original soundtrack release, due to the fact that the album was pressed before recording was completed. Even then it was a staggering achievement, but when viewed all together it can be seen for the masterwork that it is. This is truly one of the most stunning works of film music ever composed.
Friday, December 21, 2007
THE HEARTBREAK KID

2
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

3
RENO 911: MIAMI

4
FANASTIC 4: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER

5
30 DAYS OF NIGHT

SPECIAL MENTIONS:
WAR, August Rush
As a fan of Baumbach’s last film, the savagely brilliant divorce drama The Squid and the Whale, I had high expectations going in. And while Margot may not be as deep or as fully realized as Squid and the Whale, Baumbach’s flair for dialogue and keen observation are still in top shape.

As a character, Margot recalls Jeff Daniel’s pompous writer from The Squid and the Whale in the way she constantly criticizes those around her, seemingly unaware of her condescending nature and the effect it has on others. But her cynicism is less pointed and pretentious than Daniels’ - Margot seems more internally wounded and conflicted, and as a result constantly takes her emotional distress out on her son, instead of using him as a pawn as in Squid and the Whale.

Many find Baumbach’s films unpleasant because his characters tend to be highly self-centered and unintentionally cruel, and Margot at the Wedding is no different. Everyone on screen is often despicable - but they are a fascinating lot. They’re like ants under a microscope, aliens from a dysfunctional planet. This is more true of Margot than of Squid…there is less to connect to here on a personal level. But you can’t help but feel for Margot, and especially her son, who forms the film’s emotional core. He is the film’s one likable character, and through our caring for him, we come to care for Margot, as exasperating as she may be. She is a woman who simply does not know how to love, and if nothing else, for that reason alone, she illicits our sympathy.

GRADE - ***½ (three-and-a-half stars out of four)
MARGOT AT THE WEDDING; Directed by Noah Baumbach; Stars Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, Zane Pais, John Turturro, Ciaran Hinds; Rated R for sexual content and language