Archive for January, 2010

Publicity photo for Johnston's "The Wolfman"

Director Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, October Sky, Hidalgo) spoke with FilmJournal.com about his upcoming movie The Wolfman starring Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins, and Hugo Weaving, which opens February 12th, as well as some ideas regarding is next movie The First Avenger: Captain America.

Regarding The Wolfman: Johnston had only three weeks of pre-production, he says, because the studio “had already spent so much money and had gone down this road with Mark Romanek, and said, ‘We have to start shooting the movie at this point.’ I think a lot of it involved possibly actors’ contracts and a release date. Fortunately for me, Mark Romanek [the film's original director] made a lot of good choices. He cast some great actors”—the three leads were all aboard by this point—“I was able to cast a few more good ones, and I was able to change a few of the locations that I didn’t think were great.”

Concerning Captain America: “We’re in prep,” Johnston says. “Rick Heinrichs is production-designing and we’re set up down in Manhattan Beach [California]. It’s the part of the process that I love the most,” he enthuses. “We have eight or ten really talented artists, and we all just sit around all day and draw pictures and say, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this?’ It’s that phase of the production where money doesn’t matter: ‘Let’s put all the greatest stuff up on the wall and [then later] see what we can afford.’” The film, he says at this early stage, will begin “in 1942, 1943″ during World War II. “The stuff in the ’60s and ’70s [comic books] we’re sort of avoiding. We’re going back to the ’40s, and then forward to what they’re doing with Captain America now.”

To read more (which we recommend) see the full article.

"Flight of the Conchords" actor Bret McKenzie, actor Jemaine Clement, and co-creator/executive producer James Bobin

“Flight of the Conchords” co-creator James Bobin has signed on to direct the next Muppet-starred movie from Disney after original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) backed out to direct 21 Jump Street with Sony. Bobin had the choice to direct either the Muppets movie or a Judd Apatow comedy titled Bridesmaids.

Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller wrote the script for the Muppet movie, Segel being a confessed Muppet fanatic.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

According to Variety.com’s Todd McCarthy, this year’s apparent running theme of the Sundance Film Festival is to rebel. This theme, he expresses, spans across many of its meanings and hidden meanings (from the social, to the political, to the philosophical, etc.), however an irony presents itself when he finds a film that he believes truly does rebel against many norms but hasn’t garnered much praise for it. From the program booklet to festival director John Cooper, everyone and everything at the festival is calling for rebellion. It’s a shame then, insinuates McCarthy, that what is really rebellious isn’t credited much for being so.

McCarthy seems to look upon the Sundance Film Festival as a place where liberalism pats itself on the back and preaches continuously for better environmental care, better treatment of “different” people, etc. No one is really against such things. McCarthy suggests, however, that what would really be daring and rebellious is if a film were to challenge the festival’s liberal partiality. This is just one suggestion.

Two films that McCarthy mentions stuck out to him actually seemed rather non-partisan: A documentary titled Waiting for Superman (which is about the failing American school system and how both democrats and republicans have both failed to improve it over the years) and Obselidia (which takes place in the 1930s and is about a young female movie projectionist and her male companion sharing intellectual conversations, many of which orbit topics about life). He claims that Obselidia stood out not so much because he thought it was “great art,” but simply because it was so different from everything else at the festival. Its differences, apparently, are not so much in its content but its conveyance. To sum up his words, the visual details in the film say just as much as its explicit messages, and shares a temperamentality similar to the French New Wave and Robert Bresson. These elements, McCarthy claims, make Obselidia one of the more truly rebellious films at Sundance this year.

Read the full feature article here.

In Other News…

In another Variety.com feature article, this one by Timothy M. Gray, the topic of awards and award snubs is introduced yet again. Gray makes a case that some films like, say comedies, don’t get the recognition they deserve by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and other such organizations, and that actors like Paul Rudd (for I Love You, Man) aren’t getting the credit they deserve for contributing complex and layered character portrayals, and in Rudd’s particular case it might be because such a performance is within the parentheses of humor and farce.

Quick Opinion: Concerning the Sundance Film Festival, I’ve heard many similar opinions floating around places like film school classrooms and other film-related publications. McCarthy makes a solid point, however in relation to the United States subjects like the environment and homosexuality are still volatile issues that continue to polarize a number of people. Because these issues are volatile, institutions like Hollywood like to more or less steer clear from them – if for no other reason than because the U.S. recession is still ongoing and studios aren’t convinced that controversy will sell better than formulas and franchises. So in a sense, because films that tackle “important” issues are still far more rare than special effects extravaganzas, they can still easily be considered “rebellious” (regarding the U.S. that is). Personally, I find torture films to be far more “rebellious” than documentaries warning us that we’re destroying our planet.

Concerning awards and award snubs and the people who continue to bicker about who or what isn’t getting the credit it deserves, I’m loosing my patience. People need to realize that there are only so many awards to give out. There are only a few of them, which is why winning one is supposed to be an honor. If every notable job or performance was given an award, there would be so many given out that receiving such awards would cease to mean much except to those who might profit from including such an accomplishment on their résumés. Audiences appear to be caring less and less about awards in general, relenting to the already known fact that artistic awards, in the grand scheme of things, don’t mean much – if anything. There are plenty of great movies throughout history, many of which were not “recognized” for their quality at the time of their release. Citizen Kane is considered by an overwhelming number of critics and film historians to be the greatest movie ever made, yet it did not win 1941’s Best Picture Oscar. Orson Welles is considered by almost all critics and historians to be one of the best film directors ever, yet he never won one directing award throughout his career. Awards don’t make careers, and they certainly don’t guarantee memories. Being fondly remembered is the highest award/reward that a work of art and/or an artist can receive, and audiences need to realize that one award snub here and there isn’t going to prevent such an honor from occurring.