The UBS Evening Movie News 09.27.07
Posted by George H. Sirois on 09.27.2007
The “And Now For Something a Little Different” Edition…
Welcome everyone to the latest edition of The UBS Evening Movie News. I'm George H. Sirois, and this week's running topic will be of the entertainment industry trying to go about their business a little differently. You'll see where I'm getting at as we go.
We'll also have my friend Ryan Thompson chiming in with his thoughts about Rob Zombie's Halloween in this week's Vox Populus. Remember, if there's something you want to get off your chest, feel free to e-mail it to me and I'll give it plenty of attention. And you'll get to read my review of Jeff Garlin's I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, and in keeping with the running topic, Jeff might like what he's reading here.
And now, let's get on with the news…
TOP STORY
Director John McTiernan has been sentenced to four months in federal prison for lying to the FBI about hiring disgraced private eye Anthony Pellicano to illegally wiretap producer Charles Roven.
U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer sternly admonished the Die Hard helmer Monday for suggesting that his crime did not justify prison time, and that he suffers from depression.
"He (McTiernan) will certainly not be the only depressed man in custody," Fischer said during the Monday court hearing. "He has shown no remorse, just excuses."
The sentence, which also included a $100,000 fine, was issued after the court rejected McTiernan's motion to withdraw his earlier guilty plea.
In April 2006, the 56-year-old McTiernan became the highest-profile Hollywood player to be charged in connection with the Pellicano scandal.
He is the second person who used Pellicano's services to receive prison time. Earlier this year, Daniel Nicherie was sentenced to 4½ years after pleading guilty to hiring Pellicano to wiretap a Hollywood businessman.
Prosecutors say McTiernan lied to the FBI when he told investigators that he had no knowledge of Pellicano's illegal wiretapping activities. In fact, FBI said McTiernan hired and paid Pellicano to conduct an illegal wiretap of producer Roven in summer 2000. Roven and McTiernan had worked together on the movie Rollerball."
Shortly after McTiernan was indicted, he agreed to plead guilty to one count of making a false statement in connection with a Justice Dept. investigation, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.
On Sept. 10 – 17, months after entering the plea agreement, McTiernan and his new attorney notified prosecutors that he would seek to withdraw his plea on the grounds that he was given bad advice by his then-attorney.
McTiernan and his new attorney argued that he was jet-lagged and under the influence of alcohol and medications when he made his false denials to FBI agent Stanley Omellas during an after-hours phone call to McTiernan's home.
McTiernan said his former attorney should have advised him that he had good defenses, and a valid basis for suppressing evidence used against him.
Federal prosecutors argued, however, that McTiernan decided to try to withdraw the guilty plea only when he learned prosecutors were planning to recommend six months prison time at the sentencing hearing. Fischer agreed with prosecutors that McTiernan was fully cognizant when making the false statements to the FBI.
Going further, Fischer said McTiernan was not acting like a person sorry for his crime, as a plea agreement requires, but rather like someone "incensed" that he'd ever been charged in the first place. Following the hearing, McTiernan's legal team said they would immediately seek an appeal.
"I am somewhat stunned. I just don't see locking a person like this up," said defense attorney Milton Grimes.
What a way to kick off the news report, huh? It's no big shock that someone from the film industry has a run-in with the law, but it's almost refreshing to see anyone other than a pop star or socialite speeding with a suspended license after a hit-and-run, with cocaine found in her glove compartment.
And not only is it an established director – one with quite a few respected hits under his belt – but it's a crime that the Democrats have been fighting about with our President! If that's not a story that's worth getting top billing for this report, I don't know what is. Of course, McTiernan also directed Last Action Hero and the re-make of Rollerball, so I guess this would be the ideal way for him to get his name back in the papers.
Credit: Variety.com
SYBIL THE SOOTHSAYER
UPCOMING MOVIES
The Kingdom: Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper and Jennifer Garner are members of an elite law-enforcement squad sent to catch a murderer in Saudi Arabia - but the locals prove to be less than cooperative.
I've enjoyed the three previous Peter Berg movies that I've seen – Very Bad Things, The Rundown, and Friday Night Lights – and it looks like he's got a solid cast and an interesting story behind him here as well. I expect Berg & Co. to have a hit on their hands here.
The Game Plan: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays a star football player who learns the true meaning of life when his 6-year-old daughter moves in with him.
Back in my college days, my roommate would hear about movies like this and say, "He / she must have a light bill from Hell!" Consider this Rock's "light bill" movie. The man got the torch passed to him on screen by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he goes ahead and follows Vin Diesel's career. That said, I'm looking forward to watching Southland Tales.
Feast of Love: A meditation on love and its various incarnations, set within a community of friends in Oregon.
Ahhh, the obligatory adult-oriented ensemble love story. I was shocked that Natalie Cole's "An Everlasting Love" wasn't used in the trailer. This one looks funny enough, but I'm not feeling the big rush to go see it. Oh, and the title sucks.
Lust, Caution: An erotic thriller, directed by Ang Lee, about an ordinary young woman (Tang Wei) assigned to seduce and assassinate an enemy agent (Tony Leung) during the Japanese occupation of China.
I'm sure you've heard about the controversy that the NC-17 rating stirred up, but in all honesty, it doesn't look like anything a typical teenager under 17 would be interested in seeing anyway. It does look like a hell of a film, and I can't help but wonder if some members of the Academy might overlook its rating and give it some consideration.
Credit: TheMovieBox.net
DVD NEWS
I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!!! Earlier this year, I cashed in a Best Buy gift card with some DVD purchases. (What a shock.) And one of those purchases was the 3-disc collector's edition of Titanic. When it first came out, it was priced at over $30 and here it was, one of many copies available for purchase priced at $15! As soon as I picked it up, that little voice in my head was telling me, "They're planning another release."
Sure enough, I was right! On November 20th, a 2-disc 10th anniversary edition of Titanic hits the stores. There's no word yet on what kind of extras will be included this time, but if you hadn't gotten the previous collector's edition, you really can't go wrong with the current price tag of $15 - $20.
Credit: DVDReview.com
MOVIE TRAILER OF THE WEEK: Lust, Caution
JIM WEBBING AND HIS IT'S-THE-HONEST-TRUTH-DEPARTMENT
Thankfully, it's not Disney this time: A movie about how the 1995 Rugby World Cup helped heal post-apartheid race relations in South Africa is fast becoming a major film event.
Morgan Freeman had already signed on to play Nelson Mandela in "The Human Factor," an adaptation of the John Carlin book "The Human Factor: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Changed the World." Now, Warner Bros. is in talks to finance the picture, with Clint Eastwood eyeing it as a directing vehicle, and Matt Damon in preliminary talks to play the captain of the Springboks.
Freeman and Revelations partner Lori McCreary are producing with Mace Neufeld, and South African scribe Anthony Peckham ("Don't Say A Word") wrote the script.
Freeman, who stars with Jack Nicholson in the upcoming Rob Reiner-directed WB film "The Bucket List," went to South Africa with McCreary last spring to get Mandela's blessing on the project.
The story is set right after the fall of apartheid, and after Mandela was released from a long imprisonment and became South African president. Mandela recognized the significance when South Africa was selected host of the 1995 Rugby World Cup after the team had been barred from even competing since the 1980s because of apartheid.
Eastwood was brought onto the project by Freeman, who starred in the Eastwood-directed "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby."
Eastwood next directs Angelina Jolie in "The Changeling," a Universal co-production between his Malpaso and Imagine Entertainment.
When I first heard that Clint Eastwood was going to do a film like this, and Morgan Freeman was going to be in the lead role, I was thrilled. The film sounds terrific. Then I heard that Disney wasn't going to be releasing this, but Warner Bros. was going to instead, and I was overjoyed.
Just as a reminder, Disney was responsible for the 2004 hit film Miracle. And while I loved the film and is proud to have it as part of my collection, it seemed that even though they had plenty of true-to-life material that made the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team story seem just like a Disney movie, only better since so much of it was true, they couldn't resist putting in one false note to spike the patriotism and almost derail the whole damn thing.
A story like this sounds like something that Disney would have taken and run with. The fact that Warner Bros. – who has a tendency lately to back away from proven filmmakers and just let them work – is doing this with Clint shows that we could very well see something special here.
Credit: Variety.com
You know, we don't HAVE to just use the main character here.: Dominic West, Doug Hutchison and Wayne Knight will strap on the bulletproof vests for Lionsgate and Marvel Studios' "Punisher: War Zone," the actioner based on the Marvel Comics character being directed by Lexi Alexander.
Ray Stevenson already is on board to portray the Marvel vigilante.
West is in negotiations to play the Punisher's archenemy known as Jigsaw, a mob assassin whose face was torn to shreds and stitched back together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Hutchison has taken on the role of LBJ aka Looney Bin Jim, a chemically unbalanced lunatic who considers the world his own private killing field and goes on a maniacal rampage.
Knight is in negotiations to play Microchip, the Punisher's armorer and confident — the man who supplies him with his stockpile of weapons and one of the few people who knows the Punisher's true identity.
Gale Anne Hurd and Marvel's Kevin Feige are producing, and Avi Arad is executive producing. Shooting is scheduled to begin in October in Montreal.
West starred on HBO's "The Wire" and most recently was seen in "300." Hutchison recently wrapped production on the Lionsgate horror film "The Burrowers" as well as the indie feature "Moola." Knight, who is best known for playing Newman on NBC's "Seinfeld," next will be seen in the indie feature "Throwing Stars."
Now, granted I'm not the biggest authority figure when it comes to The Punisher. But it's always encouraging to see filmmakers going deeper into a comic book than just the cover. When I heard about the character of Microchip, I looked him up online, and I can immediately see Wayne Knight in this role.
Plus, you have Jigsaw, and I'm glad that Lionsgate didn't wuss out and change the name of the character, thinking that people will be thinking that the Saw villain is in this film. As for Loony Bin Jim, I'm not sure if he's one of the characters from the book, but I love the name, and if he is another part of the Punisher canon, then even more kudos to everyone involved.
Even though I wasn't a fan of the first film, this one's shaping up to have potential.
Credit: HollywoodReporter.com
Whatever turns you on, man…: Quentin Tarantino has confirmed that he is interested in doing a 3D soft-core porn flick.
"I came up with the idea of like a cool sex movie that would take place in Stockholm, with a couple of Americans visiting a couple of Swedish friends," he told the Telegraph in the UK. "Kind of like the girls in 'Death Proof,' just going out drinking, having a good time, hooking up."
"If I actually do an erotic movie, I'm going to have to reveal what I find sexy, what turns me on. And when it comes to sex in movies, it's got to be kind of kinky, because that's what's cinematic, that's what's fun. Everything else is just - shagging. But my problem wouldn't be revealing myself. My problem would be doing a press tour talking about me revealing myself. And how creepy that would be, how creepy the questions would be."
I have to agree with Quentin on how creepy it would be knowing his fantasies. Considering the amount of projects he's started and then abandoned, I'm not sure when or if we'll be seeing something like this in the near future. But it is pretty cool that Quentin's always willing to shift gears and give us something that's different from the last project he did.
Credit: Telegraph.co.uk
FILM MUSIC NEWS
* NES Full Orchestra Buyout Sessions Begin in Los Angeles
* Charles Bernstein Elected Vice President of Academy
* Nuendo 4 Announced
* Deutsche Grammophon Releases Two Film Scores
* Santaolalla and Soderqvist Collaborate on Bier Score
* Signings and Projects by Graeme Revell and David Kitay
* The "A" List - Top Composer Agencies Ranked by Box Office
* Music Technology and You - by Peter Lawrence Alexander - "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas - well, sorta..."
* The Chart Doctor - by Ron Hess - "Hiring a Lifesaver"
* Soundtrack Review - By Daniel Schweiger - "Godzilla - Limited Edition" by David Arnold
* The Scoreboard: Hundreds of composers and what they're scoring
Download This Week's Issue at: www.filmmusicweekly.com.
VOX POPULI
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: SEPTEMBER 21 - 23, 2007
1. Resident Evil: Extinction - $23,678,580
Total: $23,678,580
2. Good Luck Chuck - $13,652,001
Total: $13,652,001
3. The Brave One - $7,313,437
Total: $25,003,347
4. 3:10 to Yuma - $6,157,624
Total: $37,718,878
5. Eastern Promises - $5,641,788
Total: $6,443,748
6. Sydney White - $5,196,380
Total: $5,196,380
7. Mr. Woodcock - $4,923,896
Total: $15,648,584
8. Superbad - $3,110,322
Total: $116,181,146
9. The Bourne Ultimatum - $2,872,565
Total: $220,239,735
10. Dragon Wars - $2,596,278
Total: $8,657,527
This week's Vox Populus comes from my friend Ryan Thompson, who suffered with me through the travesty that was Rob Zombie's Halloween. Personally, I think Bryan Kristopowitz's review took it a bit easy on this "film" and I thought it deserved a bit more bile to be thrown at it. Luckily, Ryan was locked and loaded to bring the hate, so take it away…
Rob Zombie's Halloween is scary indeed. Thirty years have gone by since the original catapulted a genre and its remake is a fitting tribute to the uninspired and unoriginal wasteland that is Hollywood.
Zombie spends the first half of his redo exploring the psychosis of Michael Myers, a pointless exercise that shows us a troubled kid who likes to torture and kill animals when he's not busy fending off bullies and being coddled by his stripper mother. Daddy's in heaven, his older sister is your typical hedonistic teenager and mom's vagrant boyfriend is a crude, rude and vulgar drunk. The allure of the original film and franchise was the mystery of the Michel character and the unexplainable inhumanity of his evil. Zombie chose to delve into that complex realm by repackaging every after school special and cliché into a few contrived and contorted scenes.
But don't worry. There's more. Zombie's Halloween has plenty of gimmicks and homage's. The cast includes the mom from Cujo (Dee Wallace), the guy who supplied the voice of Chucky the doll (Brad Dourif), the once little girl from Halloween 4 and 5 (Danielle Harris), and last, but certainly not least, the busty Callahan from the Police Academy movies (Leslie Easterbrook), who is back in a blue uniform as a member of Michael Myers' ill-fated security transport detail. While it's nice to see that all these actors could take a break from the horror convention circuit to film this movie, they add little to the film aside for some cheap kitsch value.
There is plenty of recycled dialogue from the original to go around and you can even hear Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" in a couple of scenes. However, rather than creating fond feelings of nostalgia, the tune sobers the audience to the fact that John Carpenter and Deborah Hill's original is long gone and we have to suffer through the bastardized reality of the present.
So suffer we do, and after little Michael goes on his first murderous rampage, opportunistic child psychiatrist Samuel Loomis Malcolm McDowell is there to provide some much needed therapy. His hair extensions in the first half of the story are as pointless as the entire movie. But what is even more reprehensible than Loomis cashing in on Michael's plight with his eventual bestselling book is the real life actions of producer Malek Akkad, whose late father kept the franchise alive for more than twenty years before his son decided the time was right for Rob Zombie to deliver some euthanasia. At the end of the film, Loomis acknowledges that he failed Michael. I can't help but wonder if Malek made a similar confession to his father.
The remainder of the film is essentially the original in fast forward, with plenty of over-acting and underdeveloped characters to make a bad movie even worse. To make sure that three named actresses remain represented, Jamie Lee Curtis's lovable and lanky Laurie Strode is updated by a loud and obnoxious Scout Taylor Compton, whose virginity becomes less and less shocking every time she opens her mouth. Her bland friends are equally annoying and the movie's only redeeming quality is Tyler Mane's embodiment of the silent and stealth stalker Michael Myers, who is as creepy as he is massive. If only he were enough to save this movie from itself.
THE INTERACTIVE BABE PHOTO NEWS BRIEF
This week, the UBS Evening Movie News is celebrating the birthdays of longtime friends Charlie Kessler (who has been a big help in the shaping of this news report), Jason Goodman (he of The Starting 5, right here on 411) and Rob Duffy (aka DJ Stealth)! Pay homage to them all!
And when you're done paying homage, enjoy looking at a DJ who's maybe a little prettier than DJ Stealth. I present to you the third great gift from Hungary – with the other two being Bela Lugosi and Keyser Soze – the lovely Niki Belucci!
There's a moment early on in Jeff Garlin's new movie I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With, that lets you know exactly where Garlin is coming from. As struggling Chicago actor James Aaron, he is assigned to play a fake government agent for a practical joke television show. He's ordered by the director to go into a place of business and inform the target that he has a long lost daughter, and when the daughter-actress runs in, the target's weeping with joy.
James is supposed to break up the hug and inform the poor guy that this is a practical joke and basically crush the guy, considering the sort of unexpected emotion that the target is showing. But he just can't do it. The director's laughing hysterically at this situation, but James doesn't see the humor in it. He just sees this as mean and stupid, and he can't lower himself to that. The fact that he's a nice guy at heart unfortunately does him in on this job.
That's Jeff Garlin in a nutshell. He's a nice guy trying to keep working and not willing to be in something that's going to knock someone else down. That's why he didn't work as the roastmaster for Denis Leary's roast. So many different introductions were as simple as, "Ladies and gentlemen, Nick DiPaolo" or in Dane Cook's case, Jeff gave him a very flattering introduction that unfortunately Dane couldn't live up to with his performance. And that's why Jeff's stand-up routine is very self-effacing, since he knows he can take it.
As the film unfolded, I realized that so much of what was in this film was a re-interpretation of the half-hour comedy hour that I hated. Told like this, strangely enough, it works. Instead of playing for belly laughs, Garlin goes for the chuckles and succeeds.
The film is a very simple introduction of the character James Aaron – basically, Garlin's alter-ego – who is trying to scratch out a living doing what he loves to do. His agent barely pays him any attention, he still lives at home with his mother and, in one day, he loses his spot in the Second City improv ensemble and his girlfriend dumps him. James quickly goes back to his usual spot by a local convenience store to get a bunch of fattening food and wallow in his own self-pity.
But then one day, he meets an eccentric woman at a pastry shop named Beth (Sarah Silverman) who completely throws James off because she pays so much attention to him but backs away as soon as he responds. He has no idea what to make of her, but he has a lot of fun trying to figure her out, and the fun quickly turns to frustration and then back to fun. (It's a role that Silverman is perfect for since she's gone from funny to not funny and then back to funny again.)
I'm not going to go any farther into the film, since the story itself requires very little breakdown. What makes it work is how consistently charming it all is, from the various characters that go in and out of James' life, to watching him baring his soul in front of a class of first-graders only to have one student raise his hand to tell him he's bored, to the early moments of James and Beth hanging out in the park where she says the line, "I want someone to eat cheese with." It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but it doesn't have to be. What Jeff did here was put together a very good little film that is closer to the heartwarming tendencies of Woody Allen's classics than Woody's present films.
I give the film a solid 7.0, and I look forward to seeing more from Garlin on the big screen. It goes to show you that a big part of a joke is how it's told, and just because the lines he performed onstage didn't work, that didn't mean they wouldn't work as film dialogue.
And that's a wrap for Chapter 32 of The UBS Evening News. I'm George H. Sirois, and I'll see you next week!
