February 2006

A longer trailer for A Scanner Darkly is now online. Richard Linklater’s much anticipated (by me anyway) adaptation of Philip K Dick’s novel looks like it could be something really special.

> Long trailer (Quicktime needed)
> Official Site at WIP (there is no direct link so click on "Upcoming Releases")
> IMDB link for A Scanner Darkly
> Philipkdick.com on the new adaptation (features some behind the scenes pics)

A beautifully crafted homage to an earlier era of broadcast journalism, George Clooney’s second film as a director is an intelligent and prescient depiction of CBS newsman Ed Murrow and his battle with Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.

The narrative follows Murrow (brilliantly realised by David Strathairn) as he and his producer Fred Friendly (Clooney) try to convince a reticent CBS that an investigation of McCarthy and his questionable tactics is both valid and necessary. Despite pressure from sponsors and the network boss, William Paley (Frank Langella), Murrow and his team manage to engage McCarthy into a debate that exposes the shameful scare tactics of the senator from Wisconsin and the climate of fear his communist witch hunts had created.

Although it unashamedly romanticises Murrow and the journalistic values he represented Clooney’s film (co-written with Grant Heslov) also takes a wry attitude to the period. Cigarette ads and an comically cautious interview with Liberace imply that some things have changed for the better. Aside from the underlying political themes, the film is technically first rate: the black and white photography and seamless editing between real footage of the time (McCarthy effectively plays himself via the magic of archived film) are all highly impressive. The acting (especially Strathairn) is uniformly good and although the running time is little over 90 minutes, the issues explored will run in your head for a lot longer. (Redbus, PG)

> Official Site
> IMDb Entry
> Read reviews of the film at Metacritic
> PBS mini-site dedicated to Ed Murrow
> Participate on the issues behind the film

It would seem the protracted search to find the Bond girl for Casino Royale is finally over.

Steve Gorman of Reuters reports that Eva Green will play Vesper Lynd opposite Daniel Craig in his first outing as 007. Green’s breakthrough performance was in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers in 2003 and she was also in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven last year. With Paul Haggis writing the script, Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter, Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen as villain Le Chiffre and now Green cast, I’m intrigued as to how this one is going to turn out.

> Eva Green at the IMDb
> Bond fansite MI6.co.uk on the casting
> Sony’s official site for Casino Royale
> Wikipedia’s rather impressive entry for Casino Royale

The AP movie writer David Germain has joined the merry band of speculators that think that Crash may pull off a surprise Oscar win.

Whilst Brokeback Mountain has been the clear frontrunner for most of the awards season it isn’t too outlandish to suggest that Paul Haggis’ LA set drama could score an upset. I’m still sceptical that it will walk off with the Best Picture Oscar on March 5^th but if it does, here may be a few reasons why:

• The SAG Awards Win: The recent triumph at the SAG awards would seem to indicate that it has a lot of support from the largest voting block in the academy.

• Lionsgate’s DVD blitz: Unlike the other Best Picture nominees Crash has been out sine May in the States and is already on DVD. Without any DVD screener/piracy issues to worry about Lionsgate - the studio releasing the film – have bombarded voters with DVDs. Last month Variety reported that:

  "While most studios consider the mailing of 12,000-15,000 screeners to be a major push, the indie distrib is sending out north of 130,000 — including the unprecedented move of including all members of the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild”.

  It remains to be seen whether this ‘unprecedented’ move has any effect but it is hard to see it doing any harm.

• The LA Factor: In a recent Q&A with readers, Manohla Dargis of the New York Times hit on some simple but telling points about the film:

  “There are a few obvious reasons why “Crash” connected with the Academy. First, Los Angeles, where most of Academy members live, is a profoundly segregated city, so any movie that makes it seem like its white, black, Asian and Latino inhabitants are constantly tripping over one another has appeal. If nothing else it makes Los Angeles seem as cosmopolitan as, well, New York or at least the Upper West Side. Second, no matter how many times the camera picks out Oprah Winfrey on Oscar night, the Academy is super white. Third, the Academy is, at least in general terms, socially liberal. You see where I’m going, right? What could better soothe the troubled brow of the Academy’s collective white conscious than a movie that says sometimes black men really are muggers (so don’t worry if you engage in racial profiling); your Latina maid really, really loves you (so don’t worry about paying her less than minimum wage); even white racists (even white racist cops) can love their black brothers or at least their hot black sisters; and all answers are basically simple, so don’t even think about politics, policy, the lingering effects of Proposition 13 and Governor Arnold. This is a consummate Hollywood fantasy, no matter how nominally independent the financing and release.”

  The last point is a little harsh but the LA aspect to the film is well made. Although a film set in the present rarely wins Best Picture (the only two I can think of in recent years were American Beauty and The Silence of the Lambs) a film about big, important issues is always going to go down well, especially if they are issues on your own Californian doorstep.

• The Critical Reaction: Although it would be fair to say critical reaction to the film has been mixed-to-favourable, it is a film people that people tend to have strong opinions about. Roger Ebert named it as his film of the year. Scott Foundas of the LA Weekly hated it. People agree, disagree and word of mouth about people’s reactions just raises its profile further. 

• The Brokeback Backlash: Maybe because it has been frontrunner for so long, potential voters have become sick of Brokeback Mountain. Perhaps they will vote for Crash - or another of the nominees - just to be different. Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly speculated last month that Crash could emerge triumphant due to liberal hypocrisy and “Hollywood homophobia”. That notion seems a little too fanciful to me but if the clear favourite doesn’t win then expect the phrase “peaked too early” to be all over the awards blogs like a rash come the morning of March 6^th.

So, who will win? For me, it still has to be Ang Lee’s film. Despite the reasons listed above it is surely too far ahead to be caught. That said, the idea of a Crash win seems more plausible by the day.

> The latest Oscar odds from Oddschecker
> The Awards Scoreboard at Movie City News
> Wikipedia on the 78^th Academy Awards

What about the great sci-fi films that were never made? Or those that were, but fell short? Here is a very interesting selection of the best sci-fi films that never existed courtesy of David Wong at Pointless Waste of Time.

> Wikipedia on Sci-Fi Films
> The Guardian’s top ten sci-fi films

Martin Lawrence returns for the sequel to 2000 comedy that made an inexplicable amount of money at the box office and the result is just as bad.

Like the first film, it is basically an extended riff on Mrs Doubtfire with Martin Lawrence instead of Robin Williams dressing up as an older woman. The plot here sees Lawrence go undercover as a nanny to a family in the hope of thwarting a threat to national security but essentially, this is a clumsy selection of unfunny situations centred on a man in a dress. Lowlights include the improbably quick transformations into Big Momma, a seemingly endless supply of laboured and truly unfunny gags laboured gags and a cheesy underbelly of ‘family is important ‘ sentimentality. Despite all this, the stone faced reaction of the critics I saw it with was funny in a surreal way. At the climax - which seems to hint strongly of a Big Momma’s House 3 on the horizon - someone cried "Christ!" in desperation. Need I say any more? (20th Century Fox, PG)

> Official Site
> IMDb Link
> Reviews at Metacritic

Although it looked all set for Oscars when it went into production this adaptation of David Auburn’s Pulitzer prize winning play is a flat affair that only hints at what might have been.

An enigmatic young woman living in Chicago (Gwyneth Paltrow) is haunted by her mathematician father (Anthony Hopkins) after his mental breakdown and subsequent death. Fearing that she may have inherited both his genius and madness, she has to deal with a pushy sister (Hope Davis) and a graduate student (Jake Gyllenhaal) who is keen on reading through her father’s notebooks. Forgetting the cardinal rule of stage to screen adaptations, director John Madden and screenwriters David Auburn and Rebecca Miller (the former adapting his own Pulitzer Prize winning play) never really open the action out. Consequently, we are left with a series of talky scenes which may well have been powerful in the theatre but lack the necessary sizzle for the screen. The actors all do their best (though Gyllenhaal is badly miscast) and the underlying themes are interesting, but the creaky way in which the play has been treated makes it a glossy disappointment. (Buena Vista, 12A)

> Official Site
> IMDb Link
> Reviews at Metacritic