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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Surprising just about everyone with its strong opening weekend (#1 spot, $32.7 million), Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are is determinedly not your typical kid flick – a fact that director Jonze, his co-writer Dave Eggers and the book’s author/illustrator (and film’s producer) Maurice Sendak are rightfully pleased with themselves about.

And one of the quirkier elements in the live-action endeavor -- which takes place mostly on a fantasy isle where behemoth horned-and-clawed neurotics build huts and bicker with their boy intruder, Max (Max Records) – is the music. Folks who saw the Where the Wild Things Are trailers over the summer recognized Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up,” with its alt-anthemic rhythms, meshing perfectly with Jonze’s imaginary world visuals. But that’s not how the director wanted to go with the final sound track. Instead, he recruited Yeah Yeah Yeah’s lead singer Karen O to come up with a set of dreamy pop ditties. This she did, working with a choir of kids to give the songs a kind of artful artlessness. 
 
 “The first Arcade Fire record is called Funeral, which that song, `Wake Up,’ is on,” explains Jonze, in an interview just before his film opened. “I was listening to that record a lot when we were writing Where the Wild Things Are and it’s a record that thematically is very similar to our movie. It’s about childhood. And so that song was always a part of the movie in some way.
 
“But we never wanted to use any known songs in the movie, we wanted all the songs to be original. And so very early on I asked Karen to do the music.... Even though Karen had never done music for a movie before, I just knew she had the heart and sensibility for it: that sort of depth and innocence, at the same time.”
 
Jonze, director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, says that the whole movie was done in that same spirit.
 
“We were trying to make something that felt like what it feels like to be nine-years-old, and nine-year-olds create really intuitively. They’re not analytical and cerebral. And I can tend to be cerebral — my first two films, I think, worked in a much more cerebral way.This time, I wanted to work more intuitively.”
 
And bringing in Karen O was a product of that intuitiveness.
 
“Karen and I talked about how we wanted the score to be more like pop songs — not like bubblegum pop songs, but pop songs like when you’re a kid and you hear a Beatles song, or you hear `God Only Knows’ by the Beach Boys. Those are songs that as a kid you might not know exactly what they’re writing about, but you know the feeling that they’re getting at. So that was the idea: pop songs with depth and feeling that were thematically related to the movie, if not literally, lyrically related.”
Posted by Steven Rea @ 9:40 AM  Permalink | Post a comment
Wednesday, October 14, 2009

 

Variety reports that Chris Pine, who starred as James T. Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ smasheroo reboot of Star Trek  this summer, might be rebooting another Paramount franchise too, the Jack Ryan CIA series that produced the ’90s titles The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and 2002’s The Sum of All Fears. If the project happens, Pine would be the fourth actor to star as the Tom Clancy spy guy (first one: Alec Baldwin, middle two: Harrison Ford, last one: Ben Affleck).
 
So, are there other dormant series out there that need resurrection? You betcha. What about bringing back Harry Palmer, the tousled '60s secret agent played by Michael Caine in The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain. Jude Law – Caine’s sparring partner in the not-so-great 2007 remake of Sleuth – could fit right in if the Len Deighton tomes were to be retackled.
 
And I for one would love to see a new Thin Man series, although it’d be hard to find anyone as tipsily droll (or drollily tipsy?) as William Powell, and as cool and classy as Myrna Loy, the Nick and Nora Charles of the six Thin Man movies. Suggestions, anyone? 
Posted by Steven Rea @ 5:37 PM  Permalink | Post a comment
Thursday, October 8, 2009

Carol Altschuler, of Elkins Park, left a voicemail earlier this week: Based on a two sentence description she’d read in the Inquirer, she ventured into town over the weekend to catch Bird’s Eye View at the Roxy Theater.

This is part of her review, the message she left on the phone: “Unbelievable … The movie was a riot… The whole animal thing, the alien thing… I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a real find!”

Ah yes, the animal thing, the alien thing. Cybela Clare, the Rittenhouse Square writer/director/producer and star of Bird’s Eye View, communes with cockatoos. She has an ardent animal rights agenda that makes Brigitte Bardot look like Mademoiselle Milquetoast. And then there’s the alien stuff: a flashback to Clare’s character’s childhood, a little girl gone missing in a blast of light. There’s are testimonials from women who were abducted and impregnated by aliens. There’s even stuff about missing bovine body parts – cow organs taken into space on flying saucers.

A true indie, a piece of cinematic outsider art, Clare’s faux-doc thriller combines Dan Brown huggermugger with paranormal X-Files intrigue with dialogue that’ll make you laugh. But behind it all is a sentiment, and a sense of spiritual adventure, that defies ridicule. Bird’s Eye View is an odd and goofy enterprise, shot with the aesthetics of an infomercial, and boasting a plot that’s literally all over the map (the Mediterranean, South America, Central Park).

Altschuler says she’s urging her friends and family to check out Bird’s Eye View. I second that emotion. Really. It’s weird, wacky, kitschy, campy, and ultimately kind of sweet, too.

Playing at the Roxy Theater, 2023 Sansom Street, 215-923-6699. Click on the Bird’s Eye View website here.

Posted by Steven Rea @ 4:23 PM  Permalink | Post a comment
Wednesday, September 23, 2009

 

Francophiles, francophones, French cinema aficionados, take heart: Beginning Wednesday, Sept. 30, and running once a month year-round, “La Cinematheque” – a new series of new films en francais – kicks off at the Prince Music Theater.
 
Presented by the Philadelphia Cinema Alliance – the non-profit overseer of the annual Philadelphia CineFest – La Cinematheque debuts with French Kissers (Les Beaux Gosses), a reportedly raunchy teen farce that won fans at Cannes, and includes supporting turns from Emmanuelle Devos, Valeria Golino and Irene Jacob.
 
The big news for the series is that October’s premiere, Eden Is West (Eden a l’Ouest), is the latest from famed filmmaker Constantin Costa-Gavras, and that Costa-Gavras himself will be on hand to introduce and discuss the film. Starring Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio, Eden is a comedic road movie about immigrant life in the new Europe. The Paris-based filmmaker is famous for his intense political dramas Z and State of Siege. 
 
Other titles slated for La Cinematheque so far: OSS 117: Lost in Rio (OSS 117: Rio ne repond plus), a spy spoof, and The First Day of the Rest of Your Life (La premier jour du reste de ta vie).
 
Screenings will start at 6:45 pm, admission is $9.50 for one screening, $25 for four. Sudents with valid Ids get in for $5, and members of the Philadelphia Cinema Alliance and the Prince Music Theater also get discounts. A special “Food, Wine and Film” food event will precede next Wednesday’s La Cinematheque launch (at additional cost).
 
For ticket and scheduling info: www.phillycinema.org, or 267-765-9800, ext. 4.
Posted by Steven Rea @ 10:36 AM  Permalink | Post a comment
Wednesday, September 16, 2009

 

Had to duck out of Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans to make it to my interview with Vera Farmiga (great in Up in the Air), but 40 minutes in, the Bad Lieutenant had all the makings of a camp classic. Both an homage and a parody of cheeseball B-pictures like Abel Ferrara’s own Bad Lieutenant (with Harvey Keitel, of course), BL:POCNO stars Nicolas Cage as a N’awlins police detective who descends into a painkillers-and-coke haze of corruption and parking lot couplings with trashy babes. Set post-Katrina, Herzog’s film pins most of Cage’s problems on a bad back. If he had just found a good chiropractor. Oh, and by the way, Herzog, Cage and company want you to know THIS IS NOT A REMAKE!
 
The Toronto hotels that play host to the visiting filmmakers and stars – the Four Seasons, the Hazelton, the Park Hyatt and the Intercontinental among the tonier of  'em – are pretty accommodating when it comes to letting fans stake out their respective entryways, at the ready with cameras, iPhones and autograph pads. (The Hazelton is probably the least welcoming – with a barricade rimming its perimeter – but even then all you have to do is take a sidewalk table at the Starbucks across the street.) Among the celebs spotted over the past few days: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, George Clooney, Woody Harrelson, Mischa Barton, Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Clive Owen and Bright Star’s bright star, Abbie Cornish. And if cranky documentarian Michael Moore is a star, we eyed him, too, shuffling down the Hazelton hallways -- rich digs for the maker of Capitalism: A Love Story, a powerful piece of corporate-America-is-ruining-us muckrakery. I was all set to interview Mr. Moore back in Philly, but that visit has since been cancelled. Will try to get him on the phone.
Posted by Steven Rea @ 5:11 PM  Permalink | 1 comment
Sunday, September 13, 2009

Let’s see -- 271 movies in ten days, that’s 27.1 movies a day. Which means that most Toronto Film Festival-goers are going to have wildly divergent takes (and tickets) as they queue up with their circled and underlined schedules, waiting for whatever the next show is at the Varsity or the AMC plexes, the Elgin or the Cumberland, or the other venues spread around town. (A town celebrating its 175th year.)

And so far, my festival has been a grim one – thematically, that is. With the exception of the happily loopy, sort-of-true The Men Who Stare at Goats and its tale of secret paranormal military ops and New Age army dudes (including a Dude-like Jeff Bridges), I’ve seen nothing but doom, death and depression.

Sure, the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man – drawn from Joel and Ethan’s experiences growing up in 1960s suburban Minnesota -- is laced with typical Coensian irony and close-up absurdity. But the film’s protagonist, a physics professor played by Michael Stuhlbarg, has the luck of Job: his wife wants a divorce, his brother, a jobless social misfit, has moved into the family house, the tenure committee has been receiving unfavorable, anonymous letters, and a foreign student is threatening to sue. On top of that, the X-rays from this ill-fated father and husband’s most recent doctor’s visit seem ominous. Laff riot.

Consider Up in the Air, Jason Reitman’s adaptation of the Walter Kirn novel about a guy who fires people for a living (George Clooney). This dark, quiet comedy achieves levels of documentary-like pathos with a series of talking head “interviews” with everyday Joes (and Jills) who have just been laid off, let go, made redundant. Tears, rage, despair and suicide permeate the pic, which also stars Vera Farmiga, Jason Bateman and Anna Kendrick and which addresses the current economic climate (and near-10% unemployment rate) with chilling relevancy.
 
Or The Road, the post-apocalyptic tale of a father and son (Viggo Mortensen and the Australian Kodi Smit-McPhee) slogging across gray, dangerous landscapes looking for food and safe haven. John Hillcoat’s adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel is bleak, powerful stuff.
 
And then there’s Triage, Danis Tanovic’s drama about an Irish photojournalist (Colin Farrell) covering the strife in ’80s Kurdistan: a bloody report about battle, bombings, amputation, mercy killings and debilitating post-traumatic stress. At the world premiere at the Winter Garden, Tanovic (No Man’s Land, Hell) introduced the film with grace and humor, and then introduced Farrell, who shuffled out onto the stage, nodding nervously. He could be up for an Oscar.
 
Friday and Saturday, interviewed Penelope Cruz and Lluis Homar for Almodovar’s Broken Embraces (more loss, more melancholy); The Art of the Steal’s Philly-based doc director, Don Argott; Viggo Mortensen (talking like a proud dad about the talents of his pipsqueak co-star), and Jeff Bridges, reflecting on his career, his dad, and the upcoming remake of True Grit he’s going to do with his Big Lebowski auteurs, the Coens. (He hasn’t run into them here.) Upcoming interviews: Abbie Cornish (Bright Star), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air and Niki Caro’s The Vintner’s Luck.)
 
Sick parenting moment on Yorkville Avenue, as a father and his toddler daughter negotiate the sidewalk near the Four Seasons and the crowd of celebrity gawkers stationed there: “Want to try your sunglasses on so you can look like a movie star?” 
 
Sick marketing moment in same Yorkville nabe: a stand emblazoned with Matt Damon’s image and a The Informant! sign, distributing corn, still green in the husk, to passers-by, promoting Steven Soderbergh’s tonally wacked agri-business whistle-blower comedy thriller.  

 

Posted by Steven Rea @ 6:54 AM  Permalink | Post a comment
Friday, September 11, 2009
TIFF 2009 – Day One

Never mind health care, here’s the real difference between the U.S. and Canada: Driving into the country from the States side of Niagara Falls, you pull up to the Customs officer’s booth, he asks you the purpose of your visit and when you say you’re covering the Toronto Film Festival his next question is “What’s your favorite movie?” And then he tells you his (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and then he wants to know what’s up with James Cameron’s Avatar because he heard that it’s going to revolutionize the movie-going experience.

And then: What are you looking forward to seeing in Toronto? Are there going to be a lot of stars?

Somehow I can’t picture the Homeland Security dude on my return through New York asking me if the new Pedro Almodovar is as good as All About My Mother.

Speaking of which, Broken Embraces, with Almodovar muse Penelope Cruz as a woman leading (at least) a double life, and her relationship with a blind screenwriter (Lluis Homar) who has his own secret past, isn’t perfection after all. But this moody, labyrinthine soap opera is never less than compelling.

Forget Jennifer’s Body, though. A self-consciously hip horror thing with Megan Fox striking various teen-seductress poses as she gnashes and gnaws her way through Devil’s Kettle High, this might have felt fresh 15 years ago, but then again, maybe not. Amanda Seyfried, as the kinda nerdy good-girl and Jennifer’s improbable best-friend, voice-overs the tale, directed by Girlfight’s Karyn Kusama, from an arch script full of pseudo-cool teen patter from Diablo Cody of Juno fame.

Way more engaging, and truly nutty: The Men Who Stare at Goats, with George Clooney (looking like a fried Clark Gable) and Jeff Bridges as U.S. army intelligence agents trained in paranormal, psychic powers. Ewan McGregor is the reporter along for the ride, covering this seriously strange gang (also Kevin Spacey) as they bring their unique abilities to Operation Iraqi Freedom. The line for the press and industry screening was literally out the door. And there are some Jedi jokes that take on special meaning given that McGregor is, of course, Obi-Wan Kenobi in another life. Not quite the awed audience response that greeted Slumdog Millionaire in the same theater last year, but hearty applause nonetheless.

Brian De Palma spotted walking from one screening to another, and then later out in Yorkville, sitting on a rock in a pocket park in his trademark safari jacket, adjusting his iPod. DePalma is one of the fest’s annual fixtures.
Posted by Steven Rea @ 7:38 AM  Permalink | Post a comment
Monday, August 31, 2009

 

In a huge deal that promises to shake up the superhero franchise business – and the theme park and merchandizing businesses – Disney and Marvel Comics announced today that the former was acquiring the latter, to the tune of $4 billion.
 
That means that once the dust (and the sequel rights?) settles, the likes of Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, Captain America and the Fantastic Four will be pitching their tents -- and their tentpoles -- in the Magic Kingdom. It’s a mighty stable of brand names, a gaggle of caped crusaders and costumed avengers (including the Avengers) that boasts mega-cross-generational appeal and that shows no sign of flagging in popularity. The Mouse House now has its very own squad of neurotic, wisecracking crime-busters to bust up the box office with. 
 
“By the hammer of Thor!” as 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon likes to exclaim.
 
Posted by Steven Rea @ 1:04 PM  Permalink | Post a comment
Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Maybe one of the reasons Quentin Tarantino insists on spelling Inglourious Basterds the way he does (the director’s not saying) is that there’s already a Spell-Checked Inglorious Bastards out there in the universe.

Released in 1978, Enzo Castellari’s World War II action pic remains a cult fave, revered in certain cinema circles – Tarantino’s circle being one of the more notable. (Tag line on the original poster: "Whatever the Dirty Dozen did, they do it dirtier!") To capitalize on the new Weinstein Brothers' release, the first Inglorious has just been sent out on DVD and Blu-Ray via Severin Films. Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson star as members of a gang of criminals who escape an Allied prison convoy with a plan to hop over the Swiss border, but end up ‘volunteering’ for a suicide mission deep inside Nazi-occupied France instead.

Svenson’s the head Bastard in Castellari’s flick, Brad Pitt the head Basterd in Tarantino’s. The latter film definitely veers off into different territory, plot-wise, albeit still in Nazi-occupied France. Both Svenson and director Castellari show up to do cameos in Tarantino’s $70 million over-the-top Holocaust revenge actioner.
Posted by Steven Rea @ 4:24 PM  Permalink | 8 comments
Wednesday, August 12, 2009

 

Add up the box office of the whopping summer hits Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and the number you get (and this is just the domestic tally, as of Aug. 13) is on the far side of $465 million.
So, what next for the matchup between Paramount Pictures, distributors of said films, and Hasbro Toys, owner of the trademarks on Transformers and Joe? The studio and the toymaker must be wracking their respective noggins trying to find more lucre in the vaults. Um, I mean, on the Toys R Us shelves. 
Well, Hasbro owns the Nerf Balls. How about a live-action, CG-driven action thriller about anthropomorphized foam orbs plotting to destroy the Eiffel Tower? Nerf Balls: Retaliation of the Dart TaggersMichael Bay is said to be interested.
And then there’s the venerable rainbow-hued My Little Pony gang. How about a live-action, CG-driven action thriller in which Pinkie Pie and Scootaloo must thwart an evil plot to turn Ponyville into a glue factory and destroy the Eiffel Tower? G.I. Joe helmer Stephen Sommers is already at work on the storyboards.
 
Posted by Steven Rea @ 2:33 PM  Permalink | Post a comment
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About Steven Rea
Steven Rea has been an Inquirer movie critic since 1992. He was born in London and raised in New York City, where he graduated from Stuyvesant High School. He graduated from San Francisco State University with a major in English and Creative Writing, and attended the Writers Workshop graduate program at the University of Iowa. His column, "On Movies," appears Sundays in Arts & Entertainment, and his reviews normally run in the Weekend section on Fridays.

Steven Rea's previous blog posts can be found here.