In lieu of anything interesting today, here is an image from Michael Winterbottom’s “The Trip“, which stars Steve Coogan as “Steve Coogan” and Rob Brydon as “Rob Brydon” and is one of my most eagerly anticipated TIFF films.
Don’t get excited; I’m not seeing it today or anything. I just wanted to share the still. It makes me smile.
It’s not the low box-office numbers for the weekend that smarts so much as the way the Reuters writer treats the movies. I mean, sure, “The American” taking the top spot with a Friday-to-Sunday gross of $13 million (for $16.1 million overall) isn’t exactly a triumph, but is this description really appropriate?
The film, in which Clooney plays a stone-faced gun enthusiast holed up in a picturesque Italian town, was directed by rock photographer Anton Corbijn.
Note the clever juxtaposition of “stone” and “rock”. (And note my sarcastic usage of “clever” just there.) Also, “gun enthusiast” isn’t really an accurate summation of Clooney’s character.
But let’s not forget this:
The opening is slightly better than industry forecasts, but is similar to that of his 2008 flop “Leatherheads,” which ended its brief run with $31.3 million.
The opening may be similar, but there’s really no other connection to “Leatherheads” — a period rom-com that opened in the springtime — besides the fact that both films starred Clooney.
After that, we go on to smack Drew Barrymore around for a bit:
“Going the Distance” stars Barrymore and Justin Long as bi-coastal lovers. It is the latest in a string of rom-com flops for the actress, including “Lucky You,” “Music and Lyrics” and “Fever Pitch.”
“Lucky You” wasn’t a romantic comedy, and “Music and Lyrics” wasn’t a flop, was it? It made, like, $50 million. I know it’s a long weekend and the regular beat reporter’s probably taking the kids to college, but really, even a throwaway piece like this should be as accurate as possible. And maybe a little less bitchy.
If it’s September — and it is — then it must be time for my elaborate Fall Movie Preview, now up at MSN Movies.
My one regret is that there wasn’t room for the M. Night Shyalaman-produced “Devil”, which seems to suggest that the former wunderkind’s future lies exclusively in thinking up ideas that wouldn’t have passed muster on the original “Twilight Zone”, and letting someone else make them.
(See, there’s a bunch of people stuck in an elevator … and apparently one of them is … THE DEVIL!!!)
(Yes, seriously.)
(No wonder people are laughing the trailer off the screen.)
The weekend before Labour Day is traditionally the slowest of the year for moviegoing. Everyone has something else they have to be doing — packing for school, enjoying the last free days of summer, avoiding whatever garbage the studios usually dump.
But this year, the selection is better than average. In fact, I liked all three of this week’s new releases … didn’t love them, but enjoyed them well enough. Here, I’ll walk you through ’em:
“The American“: Technically, Anton Corbijn’s broody Eurothriller — with George Clooney hiding out in an Italian village and discovering the redemptive joys of smoking-hot whores — isn’t a Labour Day weekend release, since it opened on Wednesday. But still.
“Going the Distance“: In which real-life couple Drew Barrymore and Justin Long struggle with a long-distance relationship, while various wacky friends and family members egg them on in different directions. The stars are charming, the script is just a little smarter and funnier than it could have been, and it has Charlie Day from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. Wild card!
“Machete“: When Robert Rodriguez announced he’d be reverse-engineering a whole movie out of that “Grindhouse” trailer, I scoffed. (Didn’t everyone?) But he’s done a really entertaining job of it, and if this doesn’t vault Danny Trejo to the top of the action-hero A-list, nothing will. (I’m kidding. Nothing will. But he’s pretty awesome, all the same.) My review should be going online later this afternoon. UPDATE: There it is!
And there you have it! Go see something!
The latest issue of NOW is on the stands, inviting you to leap headfirst into the gathering TIFF madness — you’ll find our first wave of reviews, my five most-anticipated titles and much more.
But there’s non-festival stuff happening, too — like the release of “Going the Distance”, for which I spoke to Drew Barrymore, Jason Sudeikis and director Nanette Burstein a couple of weeks back. And the world premiere of the documentary “Song of the Lodz Ghetto” tonight at the Sheppard Centre as part of the Ashkenaz Festival. Oh, and the release of “The American” yesterday. So, you know, busy times for all.
Not exactly the week you’d want to come down with a cold. Still, better now than next Thursday, right?
This week’s MSN DVD column hopes to draw some attention to the “Red Riding” trilogy, which is going straight to video in Canada this week.
That’s kind of shameful, really; the three features (produced for the UK’s Channel Four) constitute one epic theatrical experience — or at least they did in the U.S. earlier this year. They should have been given the same shot at becoming an art-house sensation here.
Sadly, Alliance chose to go with the DVD route, probably because selling three separate titles to consumers (and the few remaining video stores) is far more lucrative than any art-house run might have been. Of course, that art-house run wouldn’t necessarily have taken any revenue away from the DVD release; in fact, the theatrical publicity surely would have helped raise awareness for the title in the right corners. Whaddaya gonna do, right?
It occurs to me that this is precisely the sort of thing that shiny new TIFF venue should be doing — the three films could be staggered to run daily within an hour of one another, with breaks strategically timed so you could run down to grab a snack in the canteen. Maybe there’ll be a revival down the road.
In the meantime, just see them. They’re solid, even if Anand Tucker’s final chapter buggers up the cumulative impact.
My MSN DVD column has yet to go live — I blame the pre-TIFF crush — so I’m stuck for something to blog about this morning.
Oh, I know: Did you see this great AV Club interview with Kristen Schaal and Rich Blomquist last week? They’ve written a book, “The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex“, of which I was shamefully unaware when I interviewed Schaal back in June. So consider this my way of working in a post-facto plug, and giving you something fun to read.
Also, given the book’s overall theme, I think she’d appreciate my use of the word “shameful” in the last paragraph.
The weekend box-office results are in, and “The Last Exorcism” has claimed the top spot — barely. The virally marketed creeper earned just $300,000 more than its closest competition, the anonymous actioner “Takers”. The former made $21.3 million; the latter, $21 million. (Sylvester Stallone’s “The Expendables” dropped to third place with $9.5 million.)
Imagine what a savvy producer could do with a movie about fashionably dressed hoods who try to rob the Vatican, only to accidentally unleash all the demons stored in its vault. That’s a $42.3 million opening weekend, guaranteed!
… aw, crap. Someone’s going to make that now.
When Patricia Neal died earlier this month, most of the obits and memorials played up her co-starring role opposite Paul Newman in “Hud”. And that made sense; it’s a great performance, and she won an Oscar for it.
But the coverage of Neal’s death also puts the lie to the “liberal media” canard waved around by angry conservatives at every opportunity. If there really was a liberal media out there, looking for any chance to embarrass those noble Real Americans who believe in the flag, apple pie and keeping “mosks” away from Ground Zero, Neal’s obit would have put her role in the 1957 drama “A Face in the Crowd” in the first graph.
“A Face in the Crowd” — sprung from the acid pen of Budd Schulberg, and directed by Elia Kazan — was and is a terrific, terrifiying movie. It’s the story of a man named Lonesome Rhodes, who emerges from obscurity to become the voice of simple, humble America in the 1940s. He’s a poser and an egomaniac — nowadays, we’d call him a sociopath — but he’s embraced by the people because he pretends to share their concerns. In the end, he’s exposed as a contemptuous fraud, and balance is restored to the world.
If you’ve never seen “A Face in the Crowd” … well, you really should. It’s a tremendous movie, a biting satire and an incisive drama, and Andy Griffith gives his finest screen performance as Rhodes, playing against his established persona as one of America’s most lovable hicks.
It’s one of Kazan’s best films, too, and that’s saying something. Not for nothing did the Library of Congress add it to its list of preserved films in 2008 — right around the same time Sarah Palin was rising to national prominence, as it happens.
Which brings me to the guy in the picture.
Glenn Beck is holding his “Restoring America” rally in Washington today. He’ll be speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which — it just so happens — is the same place Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his profound and sadly-still-relevant speech about having a dream in 1968, just months before his assassination. 1963. (UPDATE: That mistake was totally my fault.) Beck claims that the time and place of his rally were merely coincidental; he just happens to have been talking about reclaiming the civil-rights movement for weeks. This is disingenuous bullshit, but of course so much of what Beck says is disingenuous bullshit that no one really cares any more.
And that’s the problem.
Rather than fact-checking the wild claims of Beck, and Palin, and Hannity, and Malkin, and all the rest, the American news media — possibly afraid of being tarred with the “liberal” brush — just let things go. They let the crying clown man jump and dance, and leave the mocking to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. (Not that they don’t do a fine job, mind you, but they provide the same consolation to their audience that Beck does for his — telling them that it’s okay, the world’s not crazy, someone understands.)
So, virtually unchallenged, Beck gets to co-opt King’s legacy. Palin’s there, too; in fact, she’s probably babbling about the glories of America right now, throwing red meat to her admirers, who will tell you without a hint of irony that abandoning her gubernatorial post in Alaska doesn’t make her a quitter. She left the job so she wouldn’t be a lame duck! If she stayed in the post, why … well, that would have been quitting!
That’s the world Beck and Palin play to. Their truths aren’t true, but they feel true. Obama must be a secret Muslim; he has a weird name! (Never mind that he isn’t, and he doesn’t.) And the evil terrorists are planning to launch more attacks on American targets from that mosque at Ground Zero … never mind that the guy trying to build it worked with George W. Bush on American outreach to Muslim nations, and that the community center isn’t actually a mosque, and that it’s not at Ground Zero.
Ronald Reagan said facts were stupid things, and he’s being proved more and more right with every passing week. It’s all about shouting the truth as you perceive it, and shouting it as loud as you can. When the other guy gives up and walks away, you’ve won!
Okay, some people are pushing back. Bob Herbert and Charles M. Blow have some very powerful columns in today’s New York Times. But they’re coming awfully late in the game, and like Stewart and Colbert’s damning work, they can be dismissed as insubstantial lefty blather by people who already have a vested interest in not letting their truths be contaminated by facts.
Glenn Beck, the self-described “rodeo clown“, needs his Lonesome Rhodes moment. He needs to be exposed. The problem is, this isn’t fiction and the rules aren’t the same; if Beck was outed as a phony, his admirers will probably just ignore it and keep watching … just like they did the last time.
I love America, I really do. I just recognize so little of it these days. I guess that’s the same problem Beck’s followers have, huh?
Ah, Friday. An insanely busy Friday, what with TIFF 2010 now less than two weeks away and my major deadlines earlier than ever. But there are movies, and there are reviews. Let’s take a look.
“Flipped“: Hey, remember when Rob Reiner was a director of remarkable range and tenderness? I do, and that’s why this pleasant but featherweight attempt to reclaim his “Stand by Me” auteurship feels so thin on the ground.
“The Human Centipede (First Sequence)“: Technically, Tom Six’ gross-out cult classic-to-be doesn’t start its Toronto engagement until tomorrow, but I’m lumping it in with the rest of the reviews to make it easier on everybody. And by everybody, I include myself; this way, I can go with an image from one of the week’s other new releases, thus letting everyone keep their breakfast down. I’m thoughtful like that.
“The Last Exorcism”: Daniel Stamm’s faux documentary about a fraudulent exorcist who runs afoul of the real deal is being marketed with all the booga-booga you’d expect from an Eli Roth production. But Andrew says it delivers at least some of the goods.
“Life During Wartime”: More than a decade after “Happiness” made writer-director Todd Solondz’ dark-comedy bones, he revisits that movie’s characters — played by an entirely new cast — in this left-field sequel, which I’ve been trying to catch for nearly a year now. Susan was wowed, which makes me even more annoyed that I don’t have two hours to spare right now.
“No Heart Feelings“: Full disclosure: I didn’t enjoy this charming little no-budget relationship dramedy entirely because two-thirds of it was shot within a hundred yards of my front door. But it certainly didn’t hurt. Let’s try that again: The fact that two-thirds of this charming little no-budget relationship dramedy was shot within a hundred yards of my front door isn’t the only reason I enjoyed it. But it certainly didn’t hurt. (Thanks, Kate!)
“Teenage Paparazzo”: “Entourage” star Adrian Grenier turns the camera on the shutterbugs — well, one of them, anyway — in this documentary about baby-faced shooter Austin Visschedyk. Glenn liked it well enough.
“The Tillman Story”: Amir Bar-Lev, who made the excellent “My Kid Could Paint That” a few years ago, looks at the death of U.S. Ranger Pat Tillman, whose death by friendly fire in Afghanistan was not only covered up by a morally bankrupt military, but used as a recruiting tool by Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. Until his family refused to play along, that is. Susan didn’t like it as much as I did, but she’ll come around someday.
And if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to run off and see … I dunno, something at the Varsity, probably. Catch you later.