Few authors have had cinematic champions as powerful as Hunter S. Thompson.
For that, you can thank Johnny Depp.
The charismatic actor brought Thompson’s doppelganger, Dr. Raoul Duke, to deranged (and disturbingly accurate) life in 1998’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
If you’ve never seen it (or, more importantly, read it), the drug-addled chronicle of a weekend in Sin City, where he’s ostensibly been sent to cover a stock car race, is one of the great examples of the 1970s flowering of New Journalism that Thompson helped invent.
Depp presided over Thompson’s funeral in 2005 after the author’s death by self-inflicted gunshot wound. The actor helped launch Thompson’s ashes from a giant cannon set up on the grounds of his Colorado compound.
Now Depp is at it again with “The Rum Diary,” which is Thompson’s fictionalized account of his early days as reporter in Puerto Rico. The movie debuts on Oct. 28 with Depp in the lead role as itinerant reporter Paul Kemp.
Joss Wheedon’s superteam flick is wrapping up filming in the fair city of Cleveland. But courtesy of ComicBookMovie, here’s a few pics from the set of Chris Evans as Captain America and Tom Hiddleston as Loki.
The city appears to have been transformed into Germany for the filmmakers’ purposes here. Early spoiler gossip indicates that this is a pivotal scene in the film. We won’t spoil it for you.
First one, Chris Evans as Cap.
And here’s Tom Hiddleston as Loki.
I haven’t seen a plot summary yet. But based on what I’ve been seeing so far, it looks like Wheedon’s film might be following the plot-line of the very first Avengers’ adventure from 1963. You’ll note from the cover below, however, that a few characters are missing and some have been added to the movie.
Nice to know that I am not alone in my bewilderment that Hollywood has apparently run out of original ideas.
Written By Kat: I’m feeling a little annoyed as I browse through upcoming release dates of movies and seeing rumors online about directors wanting to remake classic movies. The entire time I’m reading this, I’m asking myself WHY?! Why would you do this? Are you that hard out for an original idea that you have to resort to remaking Dirty Dancing? And then I find out you want Ashley Greene to play Baby… oh my God, please make it stop right now. Foo … Read More
The decision to kill $190 million “Ouija” project marks the third such time that Universal has killed a project in recent months, The Wrap reports. Other casualties include “Clue” (again based on a Hasbro game) and films directed by Ron Howard and Guillermo del Toro.
Here’s the nut graf:
“The trend at the studio may reflect “the new normal” in town, with downward pressure on budgets meeting ongoing pressure from corporate suits to hit the bottom line.
Movies like “Ouija” have to make almost three times their production budget before they hit profitability, which with the ongoing decline in DVD sales is harder than ever to achieve, according to knowledgeable studio executives.
But the cancellations create friction with the studio’s relationships with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, and leave its slate lighter on tentpoles.”
The Wrap piece points out that, courtesy of the cancellation, Universal will have to eat preproduction costs and pay a $5 million kill fee to Hasbro, with whom it inked a seven-picture deal in 2008.
Universal has three of the seven films in the can with the Transformers trilogy, which got progressively louder and more obnoxious with each installment.
Movie four was taken care of with the hugely stupid “GI Joe.” And there’s a sequel on the way, so that’s five of seven films accounted for.
The upcoming “Battleship” flick looks like another piece of inanity. So we’ll offer the suits at Universal some unsolicited (yet thunderously obvious) advice: Please stop making movies based on board games. They’re mostly insulting to audiences’ intelligence and they make you look desperate for material when you’re mining the darkest depths of the culture.
This summer has been an object lesson for studios: Courting the fanboys/girls at ComicCon doesn’t really get you anything. And the surprise success of Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” is proof that little movies, done intelligently, can still make money at the box office.
It’s time for Tinseltown to get back to doing what it does best: Creating myths and legends, not ransacking old and increasingly threadbare existing ones.
So WordPress has a “tags” function, which allows you to search out similarly themed blogs. Thus, I’m starting a new Cineaste feature “Film Bits” to see what others out there in WordPressland are talking about when it comes to life on celluloid.
The Rau Lists compiles his picks for the Top 100 Movies of All Time. Which sounds, y’know, exhausting after I just wracked my brains to come up with a top five.
With the kids heading back to school and Labor Day celebrations just around the corner, I’m already starting to feel pangs of nostalgia for the summer that was. And, inspired by fellow WordPress film blogger RaveReader, here’s the Top Five movies that always remind me of the closing days of summer.
Hardly any of the films below qualify as deathless art. Mostly, they are movies for which I have a sentimental attachment. They bring me back to those dying days of summer, when it got cold enough at night to wear a sweatshirt and jeans, and when — if you listened closely enough — you could just about hear the ticking of the clock counting down the days until classes started again.
Feel free to leave your picks in the comments section.
1. Weird Science (1985).
For me, this has always been the last of the classic John Hughes’ teen flicks. Oh, sure, he’d go on to make “Career Opportunities” featuring the young Frank Whaley and an improbably pneumatic Jennifer Connelly. But this Anthony Michael Hall-starrer, set in Hughes’ fictional Shermer, Ill., was the last one to include a member of his repertory company of Brat Pack actors.
Though it’s filled with raunchy jokes and Porky’s style sight-gags, there’s the same sweet heart beating at the center of this movie as in every classic Hughes film. And I defy you not to leave the theater without bearing a crush on the dark-haired dream girl (Judie Aronson) who eventually wins Wyatt’s (Illan Mitchell-Smith) heart.
2. One Crazy Summer (1986).
The second installment in a trio of weirdly wonderful 1980s flicks from director Savage Steve Holland. Known for their quirky animation segments and geeky jokes, Holland burned brightly for three straight summers with “Summer” and “Better Off Dead,” both of which starred John Cusack. The third film of the bunch “How I Got Into College” is largely forgettable.
If you haven’t seen this one, and shame on you if you haven’t, “Summer” focuses on the post-graduate adventures of “Hoops McCann” (Cusack) and his pals on Nantucket as they go through one, last blowout before college. Along the way, they end up saving the home of an aspiring singer (Demi Moore) from a pack of ruthless developers.
The movie also stars comedian Bob “Bobcat” Goldthwait, who basically spends his allotted screentime playing an even more enervated version of his screechy stage persona. There’s a nice turn from Moore, who had yet to become DEMI MOORE, MOVIE STAR, as the sweetly hippie singer Cassandra (who also becomes, natch, the apple of Hoops’ eye).
Again, this is hardly deathless art. But my friends and I are stil able to recite whole chunks of this film (along with “Better Off Dead“) from memory. Holland, in a neat turn, now directs episodes of the ‘tween show “iCarly” so he lives on in our household through my six-year-old daughter.
3. “Star Wars” (1977).
In the summer of 1979, the summer before I started fourth grade, my parents would deposit me, my sister and a carload of neighborhood kids at the front door of the 99-cent theater in the New England town where I grew up, there to spend nearly every Saturday afternoon eating popcorn and having this sci-fi classic permanently imprinted on our neurons.
These were the days when you could still drop off nine or 10 sun-strained and sugar-crazed 9-year-olds at the front door of a theater and leave them there without a: worrying about their safety or b: worrying that some psychotic helicopter parent would sic child protective services on you.
Those were dramatically different days. Now I get nervous if my daughter disappears out of the front yard for more than 10 minutes at a clip. And you can forget about letting her ride her bike the three or so miles to the local mall as my friends and I used to do on endless Saturday afternoons in the early 1980s, when we’d spend hours pumping hard-won quarters into juiced-up Galaga and Pac-Man machines.
4. “She’s The One” (1996).
And we’re back to talented young directors — in this case, Edward Burns — and their shining early work. This was the second of what I’ll call Burns’ “Irish Brothers from Brooklyn” flicks. The first was “The Brothers McMullen” from 1995.
This one follows the romance between Burns’ taxi-driving Mickey Fitzpatrick and the free-spirited Hope (Maxine Bahns) as they get to know each other after a spur-of-the-moment marriage. The family drama also stars John Mahoney, Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston, as well as Mike McGlone (the guy in those insurance ads).
My wife hates this movie. But I’ve always thought it was filled with a kind of romantic hopefulness (do we sense a theme developing here?). It also features a killer soundtrack from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
5. The Thomas Crown Affair (1999).
Didn’t know it at the time, but I saw this movie with the girl who’d eventually become my wife. ‘Nuff said.
The Week of Hathaway continues this morning with the news that Ms. Hathaway turned to the venerable English soap “Emmerdale” to hone her Yorkshire accent for the newly released “One Day.”
The Telegraph has the story:
“The American actress was in Britain for the film’s London premiere last night waring a white lace Alexander McQueen dress. British actor Jim Sturgess, who portrays Dex, and the film’s director, Lone Scherfig (“An Education”), also attended.
Scherfig faced critcism for choosing Brooklyn-born Hathaway instead of an English actress. She admitted the hardest part of the role was learning to speak with a Leeds accent.
But she also admitted her secret was watching Emmerdale and asked anyone she met from Yorkshire to speak to her.
She said on the pink carpet screening at the Westfield Shopping Centre in West London: “Emmerdale’s great. We don’t have programmes like that in America so it was actually quite exotic for me.
In an earlier interview she said: “People feel so possessive over Emma and so it’s not only that they want you to get her right, they really don’t want you to get her wrong”
So here’s a display of honesty you don’t often see in the movie biz.
Sean Hood, one of four scriptwriters who worked on the recently released “Conan” reboot shares what it’s like to work on a movie that flopped. The reimagined adventures of the famed barbarian, which cost $90 million to make, did just $10 million at the box office in its opening weekend.
“When you work “above the line” on a movie (writer, director, actor, producer, etc.) watching it flop at the box office is devastating. I had such an experience during the opening weekend of Conan the Barbarian 3D.
A movie’s opening day is analogous to a political election night. Although I’ve never worked in politics, I remember having similar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment when my candidate lost a presidential bid, so I imagine that working as a speechwriter or a fundraiser for the losing campaign would feel about the same as working on an unsuccessful film.
One joins a movie production, the same way one might join a campaign, years before the actual release/election, and in the beginning one is filled with hope, enthusiasm and belief. I joined the Conan team, having loved the character in comic books and the stories of Robert E. Howard, filled with the same kind of raw energy and drive that one needs in politics.”
The full piece really is worth a read.
Elsewhere …
… fellow WordPress film blogger Alex Nevala-Lee reflects on the decade that’s passed since the release of Peter Jackson’s “The Fellowship of the Ring.”
Here’s the nut graf:
“And whatever its other qualities, the movie works. It still looks great, and the special effects, if not miraculous, do a fine job of serving the narrative and performances. And while I’m personally of the opinion that Peter Jackson never quite figured out the right tone for his material until The Return of the King, Fellowship still has the strongest story in the trilogy. There’s something inexpressibly satisfying about seeing the pieces of the epic falling into place, as the Fellowship is gathered, tested, and finally scattered. The other two movies have their moments, and Return of the King in particular is a masterpiece, but I’m guessing that when most viewers think back to their favorite scenes, whether they’re casual fans or Tolkien obsessives, this is the installment that first comes to mind. And the individual moments haven’t lost any of their power: when Aragorn beheads the Uruk-Hai at the end, for instance, the entire auditorium erupted in cheers, drowning out the orchestra.”
Weird to think that it’s been 10 years already … Time flies.
So here’s the good news: All six “Star Wars” films are coming out on Blu-ray DVD.
Here’s the bad news: According to FilmNewsDaily, George Lucas couldn’t leave well enough alone and has screwed around with the movies again.
It was bad enough when Lucas messed with the original trilogy for the 1997 re-releases and then even worse when old man Anakin Skywalker was replaced with horrid Hayden Christensen in the version of “Return of the Jedi” that was included in the 2004 DVD boxed set.
According to FilmNewsDaily (via Ain’t It Cool), the new Blu-Ray set makes some needed technical and sound corrections, but they also include:
“Once again, George has apparently added a few new “surprises” into these films. I don’t know what they are and didn’t get to see any of them on Friday, but I was assured that there will be “new things to notice” when we watch the films. I think we can safely assume that one of them will be the new all-digital Yoda in Episode I. Way back when Episode III was released on DVD, ILM digital effects supervisor Pablo Helman confirmed to me that the puppet Yoda in Episode I was replaced with a digital version to better match his appearance in Episodes II and III. In fact, the Episode III DVD extras includes a clip of the Episode I digital Yoda. However, this Blu-ray set is really the first opportunity we’ll have to see it in full. What the other changes to these films may be, I have no idea, but I suspect there will be no lack of blog posts on this very subject within hours of the first discs becoming available to fans.
That’s a potentially frightening proposition, but I tend to agree the only major change would be a digital Yoda. And whatever, I’m not going to cry about that. He wouldn’t go any further, would he?”
There are also apparently deleted scenes for all the movies, including the prequels, so that could be pretty interesting. But, at this point, the only people who are going to remember what the original trilogy looked like are those of us (like me) who are old enough to have seen them in the theaters the first time around.
It also speaks to the creative bankruptcy in Lucasland. The man hasn’t made an original movie since “Attack of the Sith.” But he’s been living in the same universe (“Raiders” excluded) since 1977. That’s practically my entire life.
Either he’s run out of things to say — which is understandable and even forgivable — or is so in thrall to the cash-cow that is “Star Wars” that he simply cannot let go. And that’s sad.
Those of us who grew up loving “Star Wars” already know the trilogy was perfect the first time around. It’d be nice if its creator felt the same way.
The chances are pretty good that even if you don’t know Jimmy Sangster’s name, you know his work.
Sangster, who died this week at age 83, was the writer behind such legendary British horror flicks as “Dracula,” starring the still-terrifying Christopher Lee, and “The Curse of Frankenstein,” along with other films for famed UK studio Hammer Films.
The BBC reports this morning that Sangster began his film career as a gopher and a clapper boy, moving through the ranks to become an assistant director. He wrote his first film “A Man on the Beach” in 1955. He won fame with his 1957 version of “Frankenstein” before moving on to write “The Mummy” in 1959.
According to the BBC, Sangster told one interviewer in the 1990s: “All of a sudden I’m a cult figure. But it’s all due to about five movies: a couple of Frankensteins, a couple of Draculas and a Mummy.”
Here’s a pretty cool mini-doco about the legendary British studio:
Thompson.
The Cineaste's Lament. 