[film] Hollywood dismissed this man as a luckless loser. Now he just might win an Oscar — Guardian Unlimited interviews and profiles Steven Soderbergh. ‘”The prevailing wisdom,” he says, “is that in America you can’t make films with overt political content – that, commercially speaking, it’s an unwise choice. I personally don’t believe that at all. I think people are interested in politics, particularly when they see how they affect their daily lives. I think they’re really tired of politicians, but I don’t think they’re tired of politics, as long as they’re connected to something.”‘ [Related Links:Traffic at IMDB, Quicktime Traffic Trailer]
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[film] Popcorn reports that Oliver Stone is planning to quit directing films. ‘The 54-year-old director is currently working on the international aid romance ‘Beyond Borders’, and he’s been telling US film magazine Premiere that he’ll then turn his attention to a major film that will be his “final movie… a funeral oration”.’ [via Ghost in the Machine]
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January 16, 2001
[film] How Ben turns sinner from saint — a profile of Ben Kingsley. ‘With his performance in Sexy Beast, as Don Logan, the psychotic house guest from hell who terrorises Ray Winstone (think about that for a moment), he adds another notch to his thespian bedpost. Logan is truly terrifying; a walking, swearing ball of sick dynamism, a barrel of nitroglycerine waiting to be jolted; a shark in wolf’s clothing.’ [Related Links:Sexy Beast]
[animation] My flatmate is watching Dougal and the Blue Cat — which is the most deeply fucked up thing I’ve seen recently. He recommends it… ‘Something very unusual is happening in the garden. What are those strange noises coming from the old treacle factory? Why is everything turning blue? Dougal decides to investigate in this classic feature length story from the original Magic Roundabout.’
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January 13, 2001
[comics] Just what you least expect… Ang Lee to direct The Hulk?‘The story concerns research scientist Bruce Banner, who, after being caught in a nuclear explosion, finds that, when under stress, he transforms into the Hulk, a green-skinned personification of his repressed rage possessing superhuman strength. Banner is pursued by the military for a crime he did not commit. Lee’s version of the film, to be set in Berkeley, will be a big-budgeted, f/x-driven tentpole feature for Universal in 2003. No cast has been attached, nor a start date set.’
[film] Guardian Unlimited reviews Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. ‘In one scene, the brutal clash of fists and weaponry disturbs the birds in the trees and Lee interrupts our view of the fight briefly, in favour of an epiphanic vision of the birds ascending into the sky: a pleasing moment of inspiration which anticipates the climactic fight between Jen and Li Mu Bai as they float through the treetops themselves: in its exuberance and charm, it has to be one of the most beautiful moments in modern cinema. Crouching Tiger adopts the convention of the wu xia martial arts stories: in formal combat, the rules of gravity are suspended, and with them the rules of narrative and ordinary human possibility – bringing into the action genre a delirious new sort of magic realism.’
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December 31, 2000
[film] Hoffman Proves His Character — BBC News profiles Philip Seymour Hoffman. ‘And perhaps the most conclusive assessment of Hoffman is that offered by Schumacher: “The bad news is that Phil will never make $25m (£17m) a picture,” he told reporters. “The good news is he’ll be working all his life. He’s quite possibly the best character actor of his generation.”‘
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December 21, 2000
[online animation] Warren Ellis does a trailer for an online film called Bad Places… ‘Murder scenes are messy. Just ask Mike Charon, a detective who has seen the worst that killing has to offer. Inevitably, Charon gets called on every D.O.A. He’s the one who sees the stabbings and shootings before the coroner.’
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December 19, 2000
[film] Excellent collection of articles from Time covering Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. ‘As the sage said: dying is easy, filmmaking is hard. But everyone was so serious on Crouching Tiger because Lee, who made his reputation with adult dramas-of-manners like The Wedding Banquet and Sense and Sensibility, had a child inside screaming to get out. He was finally ready to pay homage to his lifelong ardor for martial-arts novels and pictures. He had made beautiful films; now he would bend his considerable artistry to make, dammit, a movie.’
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December 7, 2000
[film] Media Nugget of the Day covers Touch of Evil… ‘Charlton Heston as a Mexican (yes, Mexican) narcotics investigator is just a bonus. Welles himself plays an obese and corrupt Texas cop, and Janet Leigh is wonderfully innocent as Heston’s American bride. Welles set out to make the ultimate B-movie and with the combination of pulp-novel plot, camp dialogue, and sleazy locales, he inevitably succeeded.’
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December 3, 2000
[comics] Jon Katz reviews Unbreakable. A film which improbably casts Samuel L. Jackson as a comic book collector….‘The Superhero stories are among the great and most enduring American myths, an often unacknowledged part of this country’s original and unique folklore. One of the distinctive traits of the Superhero genre in comics is the ambivalence of many of the characters. Heroes (Batman, Spiderman, the literal Superheroes themselves) are often innocents. They are ambivalent, reluctant. They are far from indestructible, in fact they are all oddly vulnerable. They never asked for their gifts or reveled in their powers.’ [Related Links: Unbreakable Trailer, Unbreakable at IMDB]
[comics] The full script of Sam Hamm’s Watchmen movie adaptation is online. ‘EXT. LIBERTY ISLAND – THAT MOMENT – DAY — as a LUMINOUS BLUE-SKINNED GIANT, SIXTY FEET TALL, wades through the harbor and steps up onto the island. He stares in dismay at the demolished statue . . . like a modern-day Colossus of Rhodes wondering what the hell happened to his date. Meet the last — and most powerful — member of our happy band: DR. MANHATTAN. Down below, THE COMEDIAN and SILK SPECTRE — battered but intact — are crawling out of the wreckage. The COMEDIAN looks up at the huge blue figure looming over them, and shakes a gnat-sized fist. COMEDIAN: ASSHOLE! WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?!?’ [via Haddock]
[movies] Guardian Unlimited interviews Joel Schumacher about his new film Flawless. ‘”Well, my friend David Geffen always says, ‘The devil is the one who comes with the biggest pay cheque.’ And I say to him, ‘You ought to know.'” And what about him? Has he ever felt that he sold out, sold his soul even? “Only on Batman and Robin. There was simply too much pressure, and that breeds fear and conservatism. I was in merchandise meetings with Walmart and K-Mart and McDonald’s, and you’re being told to make the film more ‘toyetic’, which means you can sell toys off the back of it. That was the only time when I felt that the box office was more important than the story.”‘
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October 31, 2000
[film] Another interview with Darren Aronofsky… ‘Heroin, to Aronofsky, is the least of it. “When you’re chasing after a future you’re never going to get, you create a hole in the present. You use anything to fill that hole, whether that’s drugs, or the dream of a better life. And what happens is, the hole keeps growing until it engulfs you.” Presumably that also goes for a film-maker as obsessive as Aronofsky? “Oh, definitely. Completely. Work fills the hole. Sure.”‘ [Related Links:Aronofsky at IMDB]
[film] Salon covers two books looking at Hollywood moviemakers durning the 70s and 80s… ‘Both books deliver memorable quotations, the best of them apparently generated at extreme moments of showbiz humiliation and exasperation. One source, describing the Simpson/Bruckheimer negotiating style, says, “It’s not ‘good cop, bad cop.’ It’s ‘bad cop, worse cop.'” Remembering the night his two-timing wife, Ali MacGraw, accompanied him to a party for his greatest triumph, “The Godfather,” the ineffably embarrassing Robert Evans recalls sadly: “She was looking at me and thinking of Steve McQueen’s cock.”‘
[movies] Film Unlimited profiles Jerry Bruckheimer, Perl Harbor and Bruckheimer’s dead partner-in-crime Don Simpson. ‘They appeared on the cover of Newsweek in matching black suits. They bought matching black Ferraris and matching black Mustang convertibles. They dressed in black Levis that they wore only once – Simpson said they quickly lost “their essential blackness”. In a final act of power-drunk solipsism, they even hired identical (white) twins as their respective secretaries. “It was so sick!” remembered one of their employees.’ [Related Links: Pearl Harbor Trailer, Upcomingmovies.com on Pearl Harbor]
[movies] Brief interesting interview with Darren Aronofsky [director of Pi and Requiem For A Dream] on ign.com… talks about his work on the latest Batman movie with Frank Miller and his interest in comics… ‘I was not a comic book fan at all until…I really never was a comic book fan. I got into the artwork in high school, like late high school and then in college. But before that I never really read ’em.’ [via CiPHER]
[movies] Guardian Unlimited profiles Peter Bogdanovich. ‘[…]only time seemed to separate him from legendary status in Hollywood. But then he fell. “I felt that by the mid-70s I’d blown it,” says Bogdanovich, now 61, sitting in a deserted Thai restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “William Friedkin had blown it, Robert Altman went into eclipse, one flop after another, Coppola went crazy, even Raging Bull didn’t do any business. Everybody kind of blew it in varying shapes and sizes.” ‘ [Related Links: Bogdanovitch at IMDB, Sopranos Web Site]
[film] An HTMLized 2001: A Space Odyssey Program. Amazing photo’s… ‘I was inspired to create this site partly because of the program’s curiosity value for fans of 2001, and partly because it is a stunning piece of late-1960s graphic design. The cover is metallic silver (an actual metallic ink was used) and sections of the text are printed on translucent paper – these novel techniques combine to create a non-verbal experience analogous to the film itself. Certainly, the program’s authors utilised the print medium to communicate as much information about the film’s intentions as the text does.’
[columns] New Kevin Smith column regarding the development on his new movie… ‘Last week, my life became a thrill-a-minute joy ride through the glamorous and exciting world of making motion pictures, and I figure that’d probably be more interesting to share with you guys and gals than a weekly dissertation on what comics I like and why, or who I think is fucking up the comics industry, or whether Hal or Kyle is the one, true Green Lantern. We pretty much all know the answers to those questions (Green Arrow because I’m writing it, anyone who’s thinks the kids will ever come back to this medium, and Hal Jordan), so there’s little point in talking about it.’ [via Sourground]
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October 6, 2000
[mallrats] Long, interesting interview with Jason Lee [Mallrats and Chasing Amy]. Lee On Mallrats: ‘I had no idea. Again, being as far out of the loop as I was – the wide-eyed new kid on the block – I was thinking this was going to be the greatest, most successful film of all time. I had these hopes and dreams, so I was a bit disappointed once I found over the weekend that it didn’t do well – which meant to me, not dollars, but that people didn’t see it. That was a letdown for me. But now it’s gone on to be a classic, in a lot of ways for a lot of Kevin’s fans – and he has many – that’s their favorite movie.’ [Related Links:The View Askewniverse]
[degrees of seperation] Margaret Thatcher has a Bacon Number of three… ‘Margaret Thatcher was in Some Mother’s Son (1996) with David (I) O’Hara David (I) O’Hara was in Link (1986) with Elisabeth Shue Elisabeth Shue was in Hollow Man (2000) with Kevin Bacon ‘ [Related Links: Thatcher at IMDB, Bacon at IMDB]
[london] Thora Birch describes “My London” in This is London. ‘What was the last conversation you had with a London cabbie? This guy offered me and my mom some pot (which we politely declined) and then told us what every member of his extended family did for a living.’ [Related Link:Ghost World Movie]
[movies] The Observer on “special editions / director’s cuts” of films — includes mentions of The Exorcist and Apocalypse Now… ‘The Apocalypse Now Book, published by Faber this month, contains a detailed description of the five-hour film. The French plantation sequence is the most fully formed and vital omission. For those who have even a casual acquaintance with Apocalypse Now, it comes after the death of Larry Fishburne’s teenage conscript Clean, when the boat commandeered by Willard (Martin Sheen) pulls up to a fog-bound quay which leads to the genteel quarters of a group of colonial French. The US soldiers eat dinner with the French, and Willard shares an opium pipe and bed with a young woman.’
[degrees of seperation] What is Adolf Hitler’s Kevin Bacon Number? 2! ‘Adolf Hitler was in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) with Maximilian Schell. Maximilian Schell was in Telling Lies in America (1997) with Kevin Bacon’ [idea via NTK’s Hitler Filmography… ]
[walken] Guardian Unlimited accuses Christopher Walken of being mild. Apparently his real name is Ronnie and he wants to do a cookery programme on TV… ‘Measured by his screen persona, the 57-year-old actor is anything but normal. Take the wheelchair-ridden Man With The Plan in Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, or the psychotic mob boss Vincenzo Coccotti in True Romance. Indeed, many thought his performance as the demented Frank White in the super-violent gangster flick King Of New York was his most extreme – until last year’s Wildside showed him whipping his chauffeur with his underpants while attempting to sodomise him at gunpoint.’
[film] Guardian Unlimited talks to Quentin Tarantino about his current obssesion with Roy Rogers and Trigger. ‘Nowadays, Roy Rogers seems almost too good. I find myself being moved by his common decency. Life’s events and other people’s actions have no effect on him and his heart. He didn’t save Trigger to become a bitter man; he did it because it was what he had to do. His code is his code. The whole world can change, and it doesn’t change his code.’
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September 17, 2000
[gummo] The Loafer’s Guide to Harmony Korine… ‘What next? Korine has been making Fight Harm, a film in which he provokes fights with strangers, a camera recording the violence. ‘I wanted it to be the funniest movie ever made, a cross between Buster Keaton and a snuff movie,’ he says. Work was stopped after he ended up in hospital or jail too often. After breaking his ankles in one fight, he’s had to abandon his plan ‘to invent a new form of tap-dancing’.’
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September 6, 2000
[i have a cunning plan…] BBC News reports on a film about a sneaky Argentine filmaker who visits the Falklands Islands whilst trying to impregnate as many locals as possible in a inspired mission to retake the islands by love not war… the film is course called Fuckland. ‘So how hard would it be for another Argentine to find a date on the island? Las chicas en la isla no abundan, he says on the Web site, meaning that there’s not exactly a cornucopia of willing girls to begin with, and that the British military base there holds about 1,000 troops. ‘It’s terrible when you consider your competition,” Stratas says. Now you’re warned.’ [Related Link: Covert Operations in the Falklands: No Guns, Just Three Digital Cameras ]
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September 4, 2000
[films] Apocalypse Now Film Transcript — it’s on TV right now. ‘Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another.’ [Related Links: Apocalypse Now at IMDB, Apocalypse Now Tribute Page]
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September 3, 2000
[movie trailers] I’ve not done any movie trailers for a while…. here’s Sylvester Stallone in Get Carter and the teaser trailer to Pearl Harbor. [Related Links:Upcomingmovies.com on Pearl Harbor and Get Carter‘Okay, so you’re going to remake the Michael Caine crime thriller Get Carter for the 21st century, right? Who would you cast in the Caine role? Maybe Jude Law? Aidan Quinn? Ewan MacGregor? Robert Carlyle? Ah, the list goes on… but the answer is of course, Sylvester Stallone. Right. Ha. Haha. Hahahaha…’]
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August 20, 2000
[movies] The Observer interviews Joe Eszterhas on the movie business, politics, Sharon Stone and Bill Clinton. ”Politics has become entertainment,’ says Eszterhas, ‘and entertainment has become politics. Betty Thomas, who made Private Parts and Dr Dolittle, said that comedy in Hollywood was now “funny moments with liberal inserts”, and that is right, because Sixties liberals and political correctness have taken over the industry. And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives – they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet. Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock’n’roll, politics as a movie.” [Related Link: Eszterhas at IMDB]
[profile] The Observer profiles Guy Ritchie. ‘He is irritated, for a start, by the way the press have attacked him for having an affluent background and a cockney, or ‘mockney’, accent. Too many jokes about his ‘manor’ having a gravel drive and a swimming pool have made him cross. ‘I never said I lived in the East End for 30 years,’ he complains.’
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August 4, 2000
[comics] newsUnlimited takes a look at comics being turned into film after the sucess in the US of X-Men. [Includes quotes from Frank Miller, Grant Morrison, Dave Gibbons and Kurt Busiek] ‘Grant Morrison agrees: “Comics have shrunk into comic shops which now look like porn shops and people are frightened to go in there. When Superman was selling between 4m and 6m a month, you could buy them anywhere, in any shop. One of the things they must do is get them back on the streets, back in the hands of children, out of the hands of weird 35-year-old men who collect them and sustain the industry.”‘
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August 2, 2000
[comics] upcomingmovies and comics2film cover Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell. ‘Inspired by “Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution” by the late Stephen Knight, “From Hell” suggests that Prince Albert “Eddy” Victor had fathered an illegitimate child, and when four Whitechapel prostitutes attempted to exploit this information, they were executed (the fifth victim was allegedly a case of mistaken identity). Complicit parties include Scotland Yard, the Freemasons and Victoria herself, while such London notables as Oscar Wilde and John “Elephant Man” Merrick make cameo appearances.’
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July 21, 2000
[film] newsUnlimited reviews High Fidelity. “All the way through the film, from the opening titles to closing credits, there is a passionate, encyclopaedic love of music, combined with a disconcerting sense that this love is a kind of autism or arrested development, a symptom of some poignant deprivation of real love.”
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July 20, 2000
[film] UpcomingMovies.com covers Ghost World. ‘Clowes said the film is about, “the lives of two recent high school graduates from the advantaged perch of a constant and (mostly) undetectable eavesdropper, with the shaky detachment of a scientist who has grown fond of the prize microbes in his petri dish.”‘
[weatherman] Bill Giles reviews the Perfect Storm. ‘I thought the actor who played the weatherman was lightweight. The forecaster didn’t get as excited as most broadcasting weather forecasters would do if they saw this once-in-100-years storm coming along. He just sat there. For most of us, our eyes would of have gone glazed and we would have got up and started screaming “I want more time” before broadcasting”.’
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July 19, 2000
[movies] What it says on the tin — Soup goes to the Movies. ‘In a comically wrenching scene, Ewan McGregor plays Mark “Rent-boy” Renton, preparing to detox himself of his heroin addiction: “Relinquishing junk. Stage one, preparation. for this you will need one room which you will not leave. Soothing music. Tomato soup, ten tins of. Mushroom soup, eight tins of, for consumption cold. Ice cream, vanilla, one large tub of. Magnesia, milk of, one bottle. Paracetamol, mouthwash, vitamins. Mineral water, Lucozade, pornography. One mattress. One bucket for urine, one for feces and one for vomitus. One television and one bottle of Valium. Which I’ve already procured from my mother. Who is, in her own domestic and socially acceptable way also a drug addict. And now I’m ready. All I need is one final hit to soothe the pain while the Valium takes effect.”‘
[bacon] How many degrees of seperation between 
[on the buses] How many 
[film] UpcomingMovies.com