Out of Focus

I’m not sure how I missed this one. Better yet, I’m not sure how everyone missed such casting news. I just happened upon it by accident and then I scoured all the blogs that would know. I must believe that had it not been for his bandwidth issues, Uncle Grambo would have been all over this. How did I miss the news that Justin Timberlake is looking to star in an adaptation of Rent to be directed by Chris Columbus?!?!?!

Believe it or not, Fiona Shrek’s boyfriend doing this film wouldn’t be the worst news, assuming he’d be Roger and not Mark. The role of Roger was created by Adam Pascal, at the time a wannabe musician who had never acted professionally before, and even by the time I saw the show (about a year after it opened on Broadway), you could still tell. He could sing, though, and basically, that’s what you’d be getting with Justin. A guy with a strong pop voice, the right pop look, who can be overdramatic when necessary to the pop-rock music, and wouldn’t have to carry the movie alone since the show is a complete ensemble piece.

But Chris Columbus as director? Is this for real?

Continue reading “THE FIFTH SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE: FIRST THE EAST VILLAGE, NOW RENT — GENTRIFIED”

Geez, were the cinetrix and Filmbrain sitting around watching Variety in anticipation of the big breaking news? Both of them posted last night (as did The Movie Blog) last night … not long after the news hit the Variety web site. To be fair, though, those kings of inside indie info, the indieWire Insider, had it first … before 8 PM no less.

I don’t really need to say what I’m talking about, do I? The little movie directed by the really big guy that won Cannes? Oh fine: Fahrenheit 9/11. You happy? I said it. So I don’t really have that much to add, except that the cinetrix’s take is by far the best (as usual). Filmbrain takes a closer look at the name The Weinsteins bestowed upon their new shingle, and Anthony Kaufman goes even deeper in examining all the parallels between this distribution deal and The Lord of the Rings, thanks to Michael Moore’s statement:

With Frodo (Harvey) and Sam (Bob) now in charge of the Fellowship, I welcome the addition of Lions Gate and IFC to our quest in bringing good family entertainment to the viewing public.

The interesting thing to me about this deal according to the Variety story (subscription req’d) is that Showtime has already secured pay cable rights for the film thanks to their regular output deal with Lions Gate, but IFC Films — another partner in this distribution deal — did not manage to capture the basic cable rights for its sibling basic cable channel whose name it carries — the Independent Film Channel, i.e., the IFC in IFC Films. I would think that would be the most important part of any deal for IFC Films and for the Weinsteins. Why else would they need both Lions Gate and IFC?

Also, back to the Frodo and Sam comparison … does anyone think the Brothers W would fight over who should get to be whom? I mean, Frodo is the main focus of much of the story and the caretaker of the ring, but ultimately, doesn’t Sam become the real hero? What with his unconditional love and friendship, and always working behind the scenes to save Frodo, and ultimately saving Frodo from the power of the ring itself, even if Frodo will still get most of the glory?

Hey … wait a minute ….

(Psst: indieWIRE has a full story on the, uhm, story too now.)

Can this be true? It comes from Star Magazine (via iWon), so chances are a solid 50-50, but is Jake Gyllenhaal the final answer as to who will next don the most famous of all superhero tights and a big red S? Does Toby Maguire’s almost-replacement as Peter Parker have enough to masquerade himself with glasses and become Clark Kent? I like Gyllenhaal, but this casting, if it’s true, seems a little off to me.

The saga of this Superman film is long and not very exciting. Numerous scripts (including a decent one by Kevin Smith), a revolving door of directors finally settling on (sigh) McG, and a lead role that has been rumored to be every young actor who a major studio could potentially consider as carrying a franchise on his back. I seem to remember reading a while ago that many actors were turning down the role because Warner Bros. wanted a multi-picture/multi-year commitment up front, and apparently a somewhat strict and restrictive one giving various sequels precedence over any other work. Even the terrible Paul Walker, once a supposed shoo-in for the role, reportedly turned down the role because of these potential restrictions and typecasting possibilites. Walker would have been awful (as always), as would have been Ashton Kutcher, so I guess we should be happy they’re choosing someone who can actually act, but Jake just feels wrong to me here. Hopefully, my gut will be wrong, rather than this casting, and if he does end up in the role, I suppose either Warner Bros. loosened their demands or Jake just really wants to be a superhero, and he doesn’t plan on missing out twice.

I’m a bit of nervous about how a McG influenced Metropolis will look. Since Charlie’s Angels, its sequel and Fastlane all have the same look (even The O.C. has a bit of his sunbleached, color saturated, music-video montage camera edits stylings), I’m both interested and terrified to see how he plans to reinvent this world. It seems to me like Warner Bros. did a better job mixing artistry with potential commerce in handing the Batman franchise to Christopher Nolan than in their blatant aspirations for a blockbuster from a new Superman.

I don’t know about you, but I’m more than a little nervous about today’s announcement that Mel Karmazin is leaving Viacom and being replaced by two-headed monster Tom Freston and Les Moonves. I can only hope that Freston is there to counterbalance the former-actor Moonves, but as evidenced whenever he makes public appearances, Les is still keen on grabbing the spotlight (and the headlines).

Sumner Redstone and Karmazin have been fighting almost since the day Sumner’s Viacom gobbled up Mel’s CBS and Infinity. However these things happen, Les has obviously become a favorite son as his continued ascent on the Viacom corporate ladder has been relatively swift. He’s the only network head to actually oversee TWO networks. Granted, one is UPN so that shouldn’t count, but he’s still the big boss. And now, along with seemingly polar opposite Freston (sure you read his name in the trades from time-to-time, but programming head Brian Graden is the man who gets most of the MTV press … and credit), he’s going to oversee everything.

I assume that Redstone is actually trying to mimic the Time Warner corporate structure where Dick Parsons put former HBO head Jeff Bewkes in charge of “entertainment and networks” (movies, television, cable channels) and Don Logan in charge of “media and communications” (magazines, publishing, online, cable service). Maybe Sumner plans to split Freston’s and Moonves’s duties in a similar manner, but how? They both come out of television. Who’s going to oversee the movies and radio operations. Does Freston’s being a part of the cable networks give him responsibility for Showtime, even though MTV Networks and Showtime Networks are separate subsidiaries?

I’m sure all of this will be delineated soon, but there are several reasons I care.

Continue reading “LES IS NOT MORE”

Obviously the big news in the land must be that is Julia Roberts is pregnant with twins. I was fascinated to see no mention of Julia’s husband Danny Moder in the story anywhere, however AP doesn’t mind reporting that the twins will be a boy and a girl. Considering that Roberts is apparently only “nine weeks” along, that’s one super-powerful sonogram Star must have access to. I’m no doctor, but I was pretty sure that it takes a bit longer to determine such information.

Of course, if there is a girl, I hope the Moders aren’t too disappointed that the name Appel was recently taken.

Tonight is as good a time as any to discover the greatness of Turner Classic Movies. With the beginning of each month comes a new featured star, and starting tonight, TCM dedicates June to the great Cary Grant starting with a brand new documentary about his life called Cary Grant: A Class Apart followed by three of his four great collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, starting with North by Northwest.

Check the website for the rest of the schedule. Of course, if you’ve never seen it, the absolute don’t-miss selection has to be the June 15 broadcast of <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0032904/&quot;The Philadelphia Story with Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn. Strangely enough, there is one enormous omission: the benchmark Howard Hawks comedy, His Girl Friday, an obvious precursor to most modern battle-of-the-sexes romantic comedies. (I could have sworn they’ve shown it before, but maybe it’s not in their humongous library.) In any event, get those DiVos/TiVos/VCRs going.

And other highlights in June (after the jump):

Continue reading “TCM WATCH: A DAMN GOOD REASON TO NOT TOUCH THAT DIAL”

Thank you NY Times for giving the brilliant Avenue Q its due with your story in Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section. It was a good counterbalance to the useless A.O. Scott Cannes Film Festival wrap-up five pages later. Avenue Q is about to go down (in my book at least) as one of the best musicals to play Broadway and lose the Tony to a far inferior show. It will be even worse than Driving Miss Daisy beating … well, every other movie nominated, and even more than a few not, in 1989. I haven’t seen all the nominees, but I have seen the crowd-pleasing but relatively average Wicked (which will likely be the big winner next weekend) and it easily is more fun, interesting and creative than that dumbed-down crap-daptation of the novel by Gregory Maguire. (If you haven’t seen Avenue Q, go. Now. No, no, don’t wait. Go!)

But back to Scott’s piece: it’s no wonder the paper of record wanted to dump Elvis and bump Mr. Initials up to sole possessor of one of the most important positions in film criticism.

No … wait … I’m sorry. Scratch that. After reading his completely innocuous, ridiculous, trivial and flat-out boring piece, I seriously marvel at the fact that he has a job. I mean seriously … what was that? What insight … commonalities among films of dogs, food and sex. Wow. Maybe that’s all he was able to create without use of his own personal laptop.

Actually, I did learn one important thing from Scott’s article. It seems that he doesn’t feel the need to actually sit and watch an entire film as long as he’s able to “sample” it. In his opening graf, he writes about “… seeing 30 or 40 movies (or at least pieces of them) ….” Pieces? You’re a critic, jackass. You don’t see pieces. You’re paid to actually sit through the entire movie. You’re not allowed to walk-out if you don’t like something. Personally, I won’t walk out of anything. Yeah, maybe I’m a masochist that way. But I at least understand that even a movie with a terrible opening 15 minutes can get better, and vice-versa. And more importantly, any film (with the possible exception of those made by Michael Bay) has to be treated as a whole, whether one considers it high art or low “Hollywood.” If Scott doesn’t know that, he missed rule no. 1 of film criticism, at least in my book. But this shouldn’t surprise me. It helps explain why his reviews often make no sense, genuinely lack any strong point-of-view, and usually serve as nothing more than a showcase for him to brag about how much he supposedly knows.

I’m pretty sure Uncle Grambo had this info at least a few days ago, but I can’t check right now because he’s so damn popular his site went over its bandwidth limit and is now down until June comes around. And I know it was on E! online after it was reported by Star magazine last week as well. Nonetheless, I was just browsing, and it seems that the story has now made AP. I guess the wire service wasn’t comfortable running such major news without better sourcing, i.e., quotes from La Simpson herself. It just goes to prove that “journalists” such as Grambo, Jessica Blueprint and the web’s most trusted news source, Gawker, have now surpassed the wires as the place to get the news of the day!

Jessica Simpson May Play Daisy Duke the headline reads. The story includes that such a role might be “consolation” for her ABC pilot being dropped. But the scary part to me is that JSimp is obviously getting a little big-headed, with full on diva-opinions and delusions of power.

Continue reading “WILL THE WHOLE MOVIE SIMPLY BE HER TRYING TO OPEN THE CAR DOOR?”

I’m sure this has been floating around forever, but it just landed in my mailbox today. It’s kind of like the poor “Star Wars Kid” who’s video floated around a while, but this actually made me laugh more. Obviously the result of a Photoshop user with too much time on his hands, I guess this is as good a reason as any to be careful when putting your picture on the WorldWideWebternet.

The resemblances to Michael Douglas, Kate Winslet and Shrek are particularly uncanny!

Today’s Variety (sub rq’d) reports that Gwyneth Paltrow has decided to only play iconic historical real-life women from now on (thanks Reuters). Following her take on Sylvia Plath (I must confess I have not seen Sylvia; I have heard she was good and the movie was not), Paltrow apparently plans to follow her maternity leave by portraying silver screen star Marlene Dietrich.

As usual, not only has the Cinetrix beat me on reporting this news, but she also perfectly expressed what was apparently our shared initial reaction: AAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!

Variety’s story reminds us that this is the second attempt at a Dietrich biopic, a film that should most definitely be made, but with better casting. The first go ’round, Louis Malle was planning to direct from a script by John Guare. Uma Thurman was to play the title role, but than Malle passed away.

Uma would have been a more interesting choice if only because of the resemblance between the two actresses. In fact, if you can access the Variety story online or see the cover of today’s issue and see the picture they use of Dietrich, it is not so difficult to picture Uma made up to look just that way. But does she have the chops to pull-off the performance of such a strong, complex and influential screen icon? Probably not.

This role definitely needs someone of the Cate Blanchett (good one, Cynthia)/Tilda Swinton variety. A younger Meryl Streep. A less crazy (and younger) Judy Davis. I know I’ll be called crazy for this, and she’s probably too short, but it could be a (finally) starmaking role for Helena Bonham-Carter. Oooh, what about Julianne Moore — or she’s too fair-skinned, and also probably too old. And why can’t I think of any actual appropriate German actresses?

Start the suggestions … maybe we can start a petition or something.