The Observer Of London …
… has a great look this morning at the resurgence of activity in England’s legendary Pinewood Studios on the occasion of its 75th birthday.
If the name sounds familiar to American ears, that’s probably because most of the James Bond franchise was filmed there, as were some of the “Star Wars” movies.
In fact, as it turns out, director Sam Mendes has just started shooting the 23rd installment of the adventures of the British super-spy, with Daniel Craig once again donning the tux and Walther PPK. It’s said to be Craig’s last turn as Bond and speculation is fast and furious on who will replace him. As I noted here yesterday, English actor Idris Elba has said he wouldn’t mind playing Bond.
Also shooting at Pinewood is the live-action reimagining of the Snow White tale “Snow White and the Huntsman,” with Kristen Stewart as the princess and Charlize Theron as the evil queen.
Here’s the nut graf from The Observer’s story:
Grade feels it may answer criticisms that Pinewood and its sister in Shepperton are both now so successful it is hard for smaller-scale British films to get a look in. “Well, we are not going to keep one stage open here for small British films then turn away a huge Hollywood blockbuster. British films have to queue up like anyone else. But we have started investing in British film. We are putting something back,” he said.
The Snow White set on the North Lot is right next to the block known as Stage 007, a name that gives one of many nods to the studios’ close association with the James Bond films. Around the corner is a road named after Cubby Broccoli, the late producer of the franchise, while the main spine running through the complex is called Goldfinger Avenue. This weekend the Bond connection is closer than usual, because, although there has been no official announcement, Sam Mendes, has begun filming Bond 23 on site.
“I can’t believe we are on number 23,” says Grade. “As a young man for me the new Bond was the hot date film and it is still the same.”
Thanks To The Success …
… of his “Mortal Kombat: Rebirth” Web short and the ensuing “Mortal Kombat: Legacy,” director Kevin Tancharoen has been tapped by New Line Cinema. to helm a reboot of the video game/film franchise.
Nerd Repository reports that writer Oren Uziel will handle the script for the film, which is being timed with the release of a new game. The development deal is in its early stages.
“Moreover, like his oeuvre as a whole, it is, to quote the most famous, most melancholy of Danes, “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought”. Indeed like Hamlet, von Trier is a depressed, attention-seeking malcontent, forever insulting and playing malevolent games with those around him and inventing dramas such as Hamlet’s “The Mousetrap”, designed to disturb and expose the audience and leave it in a state of disarray.”
It’s Saturday night.
And on Saturday nights, here at Casa de Cineaste, Saturday nights are Film Noir nights. So what better way to get things going than with a quick look at one of the icons of the genre?
According to her biography on IMDB, Lake was born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in 1913 in Brooklyn, N.Y.
She made her film debut in 1939 in RKO’s “Sorority House,” playing a co-ed. That was followed by roles in two other films “Women Have Secrets,” and “Dancing Co-Ed,” both released in 1939. In both films she appeared under her given name, Constance Keane. Small appearances in two more films in 1940 followed.
In 1941, cast in “I Wanted Wings,” she shed her birth name, taking on the name that would grant her legacy, Veronica Lake.
The movie was a hit and her studio, Paramount, put her in “Hold Back the Dawn,” and “Sullivan’s Travels,” both released in 1941. In 1942, she was cast opposite Alan Ladd in one of her best-known movies “This Gun for Hire.”
By 1943, she was earning top billing, and starred in just one film that year, “So Proudly We Hail,” with Claudette Colbert. She was not so lucky in 1944. Her only movie that year “The Hour Before Dawn,” was neither a popular nor a critical success, Lake’s IMDB biography indicates.
A trio of films in 1945 were also not well-received. But Lake found success in 1946 with “The Blue Dahlia.” Paramount let Lake go in 1948 and she moved to 20th Century Fox in 1949, starring in “Slattery’s Hurricane.” It would be her last film appearance until 1952 with “Stronghold,” her IMDB bio indicates.
From 1952 to 1966, Lake worked primarily in television and made the odd stage appearance. She also spent time working as a bartender. She returned to film in 1966 with “Footsteps in the Snow.”
Lake’s final screen appearance came in 1970 with “Flesh Feast.” She died in 1973 in Burlington, VT., aged 50, from hepatitis.
Name: Ed Wood Release Date: 1994 Writers: Rudolph Gray (book), Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (screenplay) Director: Tim Burton
Cast:
Johnny Depp: Ed Wood
Martin Landau: Bela Lugosi
Sarah Jessica Parker: Dolores Fuller
Patricia Arquette: Kathy O’Hara
Jeffrey Jones: Criswell
G.D. Spradlin: Reverend Lemon
Vincent D’Onofrio: Orson Welles
Bill Murray: Bunny Breckinridge
Mike Starr: Georgie Weiss
Max Casella: Paul Marco
Brent Hinkley: Conrad Brooks
Lisa Marie: Vampira
George ‘The Animal’ Steele: Tor Johnson
Juliet Landau: Loretta King
Run-Time: 127 mins. Studio: Touchstone Pictures
For me, “Ed Wood” belongs to a pretty elite class of movies.
Johnny Depp as 1950s Film Director Ed Wood
It’s one of a handful of flicks, where, despite no matter how many times I’ve seen it, I’ll stop what I’m doing and watch it again. Also included in the ranks of these repeat-watchers is the first “Star Wars” movie, Richard Curtis‘ 2003 ensemble rom-com “Love Actually,” Sam Jones‘ Wilco documentary “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” and (please don’t laugh) the 2000 remake of the classic Peter Cook/Dudley Moore vehicle “Bedazzled,” with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley in the lead roles.
Despite winning two Academy Awards, the film didn’t make a ton of money. On a budget of $18 million, it only returned $5 million at the box office. But one suspects that DVD sales made all that cash back and much more. It was critically well-received, earning plaudits from, among others, Roger Ebert, The Washington Post and The Austin Chronicle, which called it the “strangest biographical film ever made,” but also “one of the most charming.”
At the heart of the movie is Depp’s manic performance as Wood, a man so clearly in love with the magic of the movies and the purity of his vision that he believes every shot is a keeper. Wood’s exploitation movies, shot on a shoe-string and with special effects that would make modern audiences cringe, earned him the honor of “The Worst Director of All Time.”
But undeterred by either a lack of technical skill or critical praise, Wood pressed on with his films anyway, putting together features so guilelessly artless that they never fail to charm.
In one hilarious scene, wrestler Tor Johnson (Steele) bangs into a door-frame, shaking the entire set. Wood yells “Cut” and plunges heedlessly to the next scene. When his colorblind cameraman asks him whether he wants a reshoot because of the obvious technical blunder, Depp/Wood enthusiastically and confidently fires back, “No, it was perfect,” arguing that. in real life, Johnson “would be struggling with that problem” all the time.
In many ways, Wood’s breathless Sci-fi (“Bride of the Monster,” “The Ghoul Goes West,” and the classically atrocious “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” have an energy and vitality in them lacking from respectable Hollywood. Anyone remember the sword-and-sandal epics that respectable Hollywood churned out with stunning regularity in those days? Try sitting through “Demetrius and the Gladiators,” for instance, and see if you’re not in stitches from the pretentious dialogue and the faux-Shakespearean affectations of most of the cast. Star Tony Curtis, it should be noted, may be the only gladiator to ever emerge from the ring with his Brooklyn accent fully intact.
Some of “Ed Wood’s” best scenes are between Depp and Martin Landau’s Bela Lugosi, who, when Wood finds him, is in a funeral parlor trying on a casket for size.
When Depp/Wood asks him what he’s doing, Lugosi shoots back in a borscht-belt accent, “I’m plannink on dyink soon.”
By the 1950s, Lugosi’s heyday as the original screen “Dracula (Universal, 1931),” was far behind him. In 1948, for instance, he played The Count for laughs in “Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein.”
Landau’s Lugosi is living in a flimsy tract house, is a recent divorcee, and is addicted to morphine (“I’m just an old bogeyman,” he tells Wood, shortly after admitting that he hasn’t had a film role for years and is making ends meet by playing dinner theatre Dracula.).
It doesn’t matter. Depp’s Wood is starstruck. And you can see the wonder in his eyes as he goes home to tell his long-suffering girlfriend Dolores (Parker) all about his meeting. And in return, all Wood gets from his best gal is “I thought he was dead.”
A tender father-son/mentor-student/doctor-patient relationship soon develops between the filmmaker with a predilection for women’s clothing and one of the scariest actors ever to strap on fake fangs.
The film’s side players: Bill Murray as the drag queen Bunny Breckenridge; Jeffrey Jones as The Amazing Criswell (who makes a living as a TV psychic whose gift is for shockingly inaccurate predictions); and a quick turn from Vincent D’Onofrio as Orson Welles also conspire to make the film shine.
In his few minutes of screentime, D’Onofrio/Welles provides one of the movie’s best moments, as he encourages Wood to fight for his artistic vision. Never mind that the artistic vision in question is “Plan Nine from Outerspace.”
If you weren’t familiar with Wood’s body of work going into the movie, you’d emerge with the impression that he was a huckster, a charlatan only interested in churning absolute schlock.
Burton’s film highlights the howlingly bad acting that infected many a Wood feature. One scene, between Parker and Juliet Landau, looks like it was blocked out by a high school drama class.
So shortly after watching “Ed Wood,” I searched out “Bride of the Monster (1955)” on Netflix and settled down to watch it one rainy Sunday afternoon.
The first couple of minutes of the movie, shot during a rainy storm and featuring some of the most wooden dialogue I’ve heard on film, is a reminder of why Wood isn’t mentioned in the same breath with the other great directors of his era.
But once you get past that and into the meat of the movie, it actually turns into a diverting little romp that never becomes much more than it was apparently intended to be: A 1950s monster movie.
The Wood repertory company is in force here. Lugosi plays a mad scientist looking to “create a race of atomic supermen”; Steele plays the mute giant Lobo, who eventually turns on his master; Wood’s girlfriend Dolores Fuller makes a brief cameo and the star turn goes to the now–forgotten Loretta King (played in the biopic by Juliet Landau).
I found my viewing of “Bride of the Monster” informed by my earlier experience with Burton’s movie, though that, in no way, detracted from my enjoyment of it. The film moves energetically through its allotted hour to the inevitable triumph of good over evil through a combination of hammy dialogue, a clearly fake octopus and some awkwardly edited stock footage.
And by the time I got to the credits, I found myself wishing that Hollywood had more characters like Ed Wood haunting its backlots.
It’s one thing to fail with nobility as Wood did. It’s quite another to make an honest effort, spend millions and still end up with the unimaginative junk that now populates the multiplex.
With Daniel Craig set to turn in his license to kill after the next installment of the long-running spy saga, the speculation has already started on a potential successor.
Enter actor Idris Elba who tells The Guardian that he wouldn’t mind playing filmdom’s most famous secret agent.
Here’s the nut graf:
Elba has been touted as a prime candidate to become the first black 007, but the actor said he was not interested in that definition during an interview on the US’s National Public Radio.
“I’d definitely consider it,” he told host Linda Wertheimer. “I just don’t want to be the black James Bond. Sean Connery wasn’t the Scottish James Bond, and Daniel Craig wasn’t the blue-eyed James Bond; so if I played him, I don’t want to be called the black James Bond.”
Not to torture a metaphor, but The Wrap suggests this film could have been built upon a more sound foundation:
When a movie with an A-list cast like Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz, under the direction of Oscar nominee Jim Sheridan (“In America,” “My Left Foot”), doesn’t get screened for the press, the assumption is that the studio has a colossal stinker on its hands.
But if the makers of “Dream House” had been willing to knock down a few walls and get back to the foundation, they might have really had something. The premise and the execution hold a lot of promise, but the film’s climactic reveal will be incredibly obvious to anyone paying even the slightest amount of attention.
Let’s start with the synopsis, which went public earlier this week:
“Ridley Scott, director of Alien and Blade Runner, returns to the genre he helped define. With Prometheus, he creates a groundbreaking mythology, in which a team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a thrilling journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.”
Here’s the nut graf from writer Ben Child:
“The suggestion that mankind’s origins are somehow tied to the events of the series is intriguing, while at the same time utterly outlandish. Scott has long hinted that the new film will shed light on the dead “space jockey” from the scene in the first movie in which the crew of the Nostromo land at the doomed planetoid after receiving a distress signal. Are these creatures somehow our creators? Because … you know … I remember reading something in the school library about monkeys. It’s been suggested that the space jockeys may have created the xenomorphs for terraforming purposes – they certainly seem like a utilitarian choice if your aim is to wipe out all intelligent life in a given area in quick-sharp time. Does Prometheus revolve around some sort of three-way encounter between the space jockey race, humans and a nascent form of xenomorph?”
I’ve never been a big fan of the “Alien” flicks, but this does sound intriguing.
The Cineaste's Lament. 