FILMdetail

This week we review Charlie Bartlett, Smart People and Shutter.

Listen to the review podcast here:

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> Download this review podcast as an MP3 file
> Get local show times for your area via Google Movies
> Check out other reviews for these films at Metacritic

Private investigator Anthony Pellicano has been found guilty in the long running trial that exposed a murky world of wiretapping and intimidation in Hollywood.

Carla Hall and Tami Abdollah and of the LA Times report:

Anthony Pellicano was found guilty Thursday of scores of federal charges for conspiring to wiretap and intimidate dozens of celebrities and business executives, including Sylvester Stallone, Garry Shandling and developer Robert Maguire

The jury also delivered guilty verdicts against all four of Pellicano’s co-defendants who played various roles in the private eye’s sophisticated and illegal schemes to gather personal information on people, which he often used to gain advantages in the courtroom or in business dealings.

The co-defendants were former Los Angeles Police Sgt. Mark Arneson, former telephone company field technician Ray Turner, computer expert Kevin Kachikian and businessman Abner Nicherie.

The four were ordered to return to court for sentencing Sept. 24.

Pellicano, meanwhile, was ordered to remain in federal custody until his sentencing.

The whole saga had a cast of high profile Hollywood figures, with the likes of Garry Shandling, former agent Mike Ovitz and studio executives such as Paramount’s Brad Grey and Universal’s Ron Meyer, all connected in different ways to the unfolding drama.

The affair began when LA Times reporter Anita Busch received threats back in June 2002. She was  investigating alleged links between the actor Steven Seagal and the Mafia, when one morning she found that her car had been vandalised.

In a twist worthy of a bad mob movie, a note was taped to the windscreen saying “Stop” along with a dead fish. The FBI were called in and the trail led to an informant who taped a small-time criminal, who then in turn named Pellicano as the man who had hired him to intimidate Busch.

Seagal was cleared of any involvement in the scheme and the actor (and singer, let’s not forget) has always denied any links to the Mafia.

Meanwhile Pellicano’s office on Sunset Boulevard was raided by the FBI. According to official documents leaked to The Smoking Gun they found around $200,000 in cash and a cache of explosives, which included:

Fresh military-grade C-4 plastic explosives, anti-personnel grenades (along with the C-4, investigators found a detonation cord and blasting cap).

The amount of C-4 found, agents noted, could easily blow up a car and ‘was, in fact, strong enough to bring down an airplane’.

Pellicano was charged with illegal possession of explosives and sentenced at trial to 30 months in prison.

A further investigation into the threats then followed and revealed an extraordinary wiretapping operation run by Pellicano, which cast a shadow over many high profile figures in Hollywood.

It turned out that actors such as Sylvester Stallone and Keith Carradine were wiretapped, whilst Garry Shandling was subjected to an illegal criminal background check.

It also emerged that stars like Chris Rock and Courtney Love received advice from Pellicano.

More seriously, director John McTiernan was sentenced to four months in jail for lying to the FBI about his relationship to Pellicano, although he has since appealed that decision.

The question now is, will all this be made into a movie?

Check out this VH1 video profile fom last year:

> Full story at the LA Times on the Pellicano verdict and an article from 2006 on his web of connections
> New York Times on the verdict
> Listen to audio of Mike Ovitz, Chris Rock and Courtney Love speaking to Pellicano via The Huffington Post
> A lot of information on Pellicano at Luke Ford’s site
> Leaked document about the case at The Smoking Gun

Last night saw the out of competition premiere of Kung Fu Panda - the latest animated film from DreamWorks Animation.

After Jack Black posed yesterday for photographers alongside a bunch of pandas and inadvertantly confirmed that co-star Angelina Jolie was pregnant with twins, people finally got a look at the film.

Here is a summary of the critical reaction.

James Rocchi of Cinematical is impressed:

Dreamworks Animation’s latest effort may stick out a little on the Red Carpet at Cannes — where it’s screening out of competition — but it’s certainly a well-made kid’s film that earns high points for how directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne clearly crafted and contemplated its look and feel with ambition and style.

Richard Corliss of Time is also taken with the cartoon panda:

Today DreamWorks unveiled its latest ani-movie, Kung Fu Panda. As cunning visual art and ultra-satisfying entertainment, it proved an excellent choice.

…some sequences [are] so smartly thought out and spectacularly executed that they might have been designed by an ace stunt coordinator like Yuen Wo-ping.

Todd McCarthy of Variety is more circumspect:

How many underdog kidpic characters have been told “You just need to believe” in recent years? Whatever the ample number, add one more to the list with “Kung Fu Panda,” a nice looking but heavily formulaic DreamWorks animation entry.

It looks like this is going to do solid business when it opens in the US on June 6th and the UK on July 4th.

Here is the moment where Jack Black accidentally let slip Jolie was pregnant with twins whilst in an interview with Natalie Morales of the Today show:

> Kung Fu Panda at the IMDb
> Official site for Kung Fu Panda

Legendary Hollywood publicist Warren Cowan has died at the age of 87.

Variety report:

Warren Cowan, known to many as the “father of Hollywood press agents,” died Wednesday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from heart failure after a long battle with cancer.

He was 87, according to his childhood friend, Variety columnist Army Archerd.

The celebrated publicist’s firm Rogers & Cowan became the biggest entertainment PR firm in the world, with a list of clients that reads like the entertainment industry’s “Who’s Who.”

He repped just about every major star during the past 50 years, from Paul Newman to Elizabeth Taylor, Danny Kaye, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Shirley MacLaine, Roberto Benigni and Elton John.

But whenever asked who his favorite client was, Cowan’s constant answer was always “the next one.”

In the 1950s he became a partner in the public relations firm Rogers & Cowan and was named president in 1964.

It grew to become the largest entertainment PR firm in the world, but Cowan was also known for his extensive charity and volunteer work.

He was involved with organisations such as UNICEF, the Scott Newman Foundation, the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts Foundation, the National Foundation for Ileitis and Colitis, and the Young Musicians Foundation.

> Full story at Variety
> Variety’s Army Archerd pays tribute to his late friend
> A triubute at Movie City News by Valerie Van Galder

Here is the trailer for Woody Allen’s latest film Vicky Cristina Barcelona:

It premieres in Cannes on Saturday (out of competition) and opens in the US on September 5th.

> Vicky Cristina Barcelona at IMDb
> See our preview of the Cannes films showing out of competition