Good Morning, everyone.
Here’s the official trailer for “Upside Down,” a new sci-fi romance starring Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst.
According to /film, the two actors star as lovers who “inhabit two different worlds, visualized in the film as inverted images of one another, and where the world ‘up top’ is far more well to do than the one ‘down below.’”
Here’s the trailer:
Is there any female character in modern film as immediately identifiable as Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in 1961’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”
A half-century on from its original release, director Blake Edwards’ adaptation of the Truman Capote novella continues to captivate new generations of fans. And Hepburn’s classic look in the film — the iconic little black dress, the tiara and cats’ eye sunglasses — has been taken up by such young actresses as Jennifer Love Hewitt to even former Page 3 Girl Keely Hazell.
In another installment of The Guardian’s long-running My Favourite Film series, writer Lisa Allardice takes a clear-eyed look at this now-classic, reminding us, once again, that Hepburn’s Holly was a long way from the character that Capote originally envisioned:
“To admit that Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of your favourite films, these days, is to out yourself as the emotional and intellectual equivalent of a cupcake. The iconography of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly has become as neatly packaged and commodified as a duck-egg blue Tiffany’s box – a world away from Capote’s booze-and-nicotine-fuelled 1958 original. A revisionist feminist take on Breakfast at Tiffany’s would be as unconvincing and ill-advised as Mickey Rooney playing the Japanese Mr Yunioshi – there’s no getting away from the fact (although Hollywood tried) that Holly takes money “for the powder room”, and that she is in many ways the creation of a series of Svengali-like men.”
But for all that, Allardice argues that it’s George Peppard’s Paul who’s just the window dressing here. The movie is Hepburn’s from beginning to end.
“For once the love interest is a man, and he isn’t even that interesting. Despite this being his only memorable role (the, ahem, A-Team notwithstanding), George Peppard is as smooth and bland as a bar of soap: the cat has more personality,” she writes.
Allardice expertly sums up the difference between Capote’s Holly and Hepburn’s:
“The film is the sparkling champagne to the novella’s dirty martini (which led Mailer to crown Capote “the most perfect writer of my generation”), and each have their distinct pleasures. Where the mean reds smoulder dangerously at the edges of the pages, like Capote’s endless cigarettes, the film is drenched in sunshine (we know it’s not far away even in the final downpour).”
And as to her look — often imitated, sometimes to the point of parody, the fashion of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” had an indelible effect on filmdom.
“Capote was very specific as to Holly’s sartorial tastes. “She was never without dark glasses, she was always well groomed, there was a consequential good taste in the plainness of her clothes, the blues and greys and lack of lustre that made her, herself, shine so.” Hepburn, in other words, who shines as if lit from within: the only thing on which director Blake Edwards strayed was the leading lady’s hair colour.”
Yet for its flaws, both Capote’s novella and Edwards’ film share one thing in common: escapism. And “when my own world starts taking on an a mean tint, playing it can be as reassuring as a trip to Tiffany’s,” Allardice concludes. “And no – I don’t watch it eating a box of chocolates and painting my nails. But I might cry – a little.”
And there are far, far worse ways to spend a few hours on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, which is always when I seem to catch the movie. And for a few minutes, I can imagine seeing a woman like Hepburn peering into the iconic shop window and imagine, myself, that I’m a part of that bygone age as well.
The Wrap reports this morning that officials at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences might consider leaving the Oscars’ longtime at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles.
Citing a story in The Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap says Oscars honchos have exercised an option in their 20-year contract with the Kodak’s owners.
That doesn’t mean that a move is imminent, only that the Academy will “consider other venues” before it decides to “recommit to the Kodak for the final 10 years of its contract,” The Wrap reports.
According to The Wrap, there are some compelling reasons for staying at The Kodak and some compelling reasons to look elsewhere.
On the pro side:
“The building was constructed specifically for the awards, and includes a number of technical innovations designed to facilitate production of the show. But because the space was not originally envisioned as a theater – instead, it was to have been the location of an above-ground parking garage at the rear of the Hollywood & Highland Center – it always had certain problems for the Oscars.”
On the other hand:
“Unlike the Chandler and the Shrine, the Kodak is not a freestanding building whose approach can be decorated to advertise the Oscars. Instead, it is located at the rear of a shopping center, whose stories and commercial signage have to be painstakingly covered for the pre-Oscar telecast.
And because of the relatively small footprint the builders had to work with, the Kodak is vertically oriented, with its top two balconies looking almost directly down on the stage, and with cramped space in the wings of the stage.”
Read the full story here.
And what we have here, campers, is an object lesson that critical brickbats don’t always mean box office death.
The final installment of the Harry Potter franchise led the 2011 box office, but “The Hangover II” and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” which both made year-end Most Loathed lists, finished in the top five.
Michael Bay’s increasingly silly toy robot saga finished second on the year with a jaw-dropping $352 million in domestic receipts, while “The Hangover” sequel came in fourth with $254 million, according to BoxOffice Mojo, which tracks this stuff the way some of us track baseball or soccer statistics.
Here’s the Top 10 domestic earners, by the numbers:
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 $381m
2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon $352m
3. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 $275m
4. The Hangover Part II $254m
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides $241m
6. Fast Five $209m
7. Cars 2 $191m
8. Thor $181m
9. Rise of the Planet of the Apes $177m
10. Captain America: The First Avenger $176m
Read the full list here.
So someone had to teach Mark Hamill, David Prowse and Sir Alec Guinness how to convincingly wield those light sabers.
His name was Bob Anderson. And he’s died at age 89. Digital Spy UK has the story:
“The fighting trainer was best known for his work on Star Wars and Lord of the Rings – the latter of which involved the crafting of various fighting styles for the different races.
Anderson played Darth Vader during the lightsaber duels in the original Star Wars trilogy.
The former British competitive fencer passed away peacefully in hospital at 4am on January 1, reports The British Academy of Fencing.
Mark Hamill highlighted Anderson’s contribution to Star Wars for the first time in a 1983 interview.
“Bob Anderson was the man who actually did Vader’s fighting,” he said.”
Read the full story here.
Will a legendary supervillain make his return in Joss Whedon’s superteam flick?
Movie critic Roger Moore raises that possibility:
“Many a serviceable action piece has been derailed by cut-rated villainy in recent years — Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is the most recent example.
You’ve simply got to go for someone who seems capable of whatever dastardly deeds your character is plotting to have the movie work. Good actors, fine. Denzel’s played a heavy a few times and made it work.
Good actors with menace? That’s a short list. Getting shorter, now that Anthony Hopkins/Alan Rickman and their generation have aged out of it.
So the connecting the dots, looking at toy marketing campaigns that has these folks saying Red Skull, played with villainous verve by the great Hugo Weaving in Captain America, will return to evil-up The Avengers, is good news. Dress him up in Nazi gear, he’s frightening. Give him a red skull, even more so.”
Read the full post here.
This is too cute by half.
Film critic Peter Travers runs down his most-loathed films for the year that was. The roster includes “The Hangover 2,” “Green Lantern,” “Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part I,” and “Transformers 3: The One Without Megan Fox In It.”
Rolling Stone also gets an “F” for its failure to create embed code that works properly for Travers’ video review. But you can watch it here.
Instead, I offer this traffic-enhancing video of Megan Fox doing stuff in the first “Transformers” movie.
Courtesy of Brit film site HeyUGuys, here’s the first look at “Bad Ass” the new action flick starring veteran character actor and professional tough guy Danny Trejo.
It’s summarized thus:
“Decorated Vietnam hero Frank Vega returns home only to get shunned by society leaving him without a job or his high school sweetheart. It’s not until forty years later when an incident on a commuter bus (where he protects an elderly black man from a pair of skin heads) makes him a local hero where he’s suddenly celebrated once again. But his good fortune suddenly turns for the worse when his best friend Klondike is murdered and the police aren’t doing anything about it.”
In the clip’s opening seconds, Trejo can be heard saying “I don’t want any trouble.” You just know that’s not going to last, right?
With the New Year knocking on the door here in the United States, The Guardian looks ahead to the most widely-anticipated films of 2012. I’m already geeked for the release of “The Dark Knight Rises,” “Man of Steel” and even the Baz Luhrman-directed adaptation of “The Great Gatsby.”
But included in The Guardian’s rundown are some that I’d forgotten about, including “Iron Lady,” the Meryl Streep-starring biopic of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and even “The Hunger Games,” with Jennifer Lawrence in the lead.
View the full selection here.
What are your picks for 2012? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
The Crunchable Net/Work
The Cineaste's Lament. 