So it seems The Weinstein Co. has opted to release Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds on August 21, 2009, which seems to be a strange date for not only a Tarantino flick, but also one starring Brad Pitt that's set during World War II. Late August is usually dumping ground for iffy action flicks and C-grade comedies. This past August 22 saw the release of Death Race, The House Bunny and The Longshots, to give you an example of the type of films we expect to arrive on that weekend.
Tarantino has already stated that he wants to screen Basterds at the Cannes Film Festival in May, so we assume some sort of cut will be finished by then. One imagines the buzz from that first screening will dictate the film's final release date. Personally, I can't see it staying in late August. Remember a similar move was attempted with the WWII flick Valkyrie, which was originally a June release before being pushed back to Christmas. If Basterds receives any type of awards buzz out of Cannes, the Weinstein Co. will package it right up, toss it into the Toronto Film Festival or The New York Film Festival and release it in the fall.
All I know is that both The Weinstein Co. and Tarantino should think real hard about when they want to release this film, especially after the botched release of Grindhouse on Easter weekend. It should be interesting to see where this sucker eventually ends up. When do you think a film like Inglourious Basterds should hit theaters?
A lot of the time, watching a movie, we recoil or start at something in it: That's fake, we say, and dismiss the whole film. On many occasions, that impulse is correct because the film is fake, but on rare occasions, we feel that sensation of dislocated wrongness not because the film is fake but because our world is; we can't wrap our heads around the facts and ugly truths of what we see, can't comprehend how such things are possible, and recoil from them out of refusal to believe, not because they aren't believable. This is one of the challenges Defiance, the newest drama from Edward Zwick (Glory, Blood Diamond) faces as it tells the true story of the Bielski brothers, three Belorussian Jews and outlaw petty criminals who, during World War II's pogroms and purges, protected hundreds of Jews from the Nazis, some surviving and others actively fighting back.
We witness Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig) make the decision to kill his horse so it can be eaten, and we cannot imagine such hunger. We watch Zus Bielski (Liev Schrieber) fight alongside Russians who hate him to stop Germans who hate him, and we cannot imagine such a grim choice. We watch Asael Bielski (Jamie Bell) fall in love, or a quick quip between two supporting characters, and we cannot imagine love, or laughter, in such a place. But there must have been such hunger; there must have been such anger; there must have been laughter, and love, in the years of exile. It's hard to imagine, but that doesn't mean it's not true.
Oprah Winfrey might be one of the most powerful women in the world, but one thing's for sure: the gal has no talent for spotting literary scams. Variety has reported that Herman Rosenblat's Oprah-endorsed Holocaust memoir, Angel at the Fence, has been pulled from publication by Berkley Books just weeks before the book was scheduled to hit the shelves. But that's not all -- plans for a $25 million film based on the book have been compromised following allegations by scholars, friends and family members that Rosenblat's tale was fabricated (New Republic has the whole story over at their website).
According to Rosenblat's tale, his family was forced into the Schlieben Labor Camp in Germany, where he supposedly met his "angel" -- a young Jewish girl who lived outside of the camp and met Rosenblat at the fence to give him apples and bread, and he never learned her name. After the war, he relocated to New York and on a double date finally met the young girl who had kept him alive during his time at the labor camp. The two eventually fell in love, and it was that love story that earned them the spot the Oprah show (twice!) where she referred to their tale as "the single greatest love story" she had encountered in her 22 years on the show. Oprah has since declined to comment on the current controversy.
After a distinguished career as a stage director, Stephen Daldry debuted as a film director with Billy Elliot; after that film's rave reviews and warm reception, his follow-up was The Hours, an ambitious adaptation of Michael Cunningham's novel that earned Daldry an Oscar nomination for Best Director. Daldry's new film The Reader, adapted from the German novel by Bernhard Schlink, tells the story of Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes), a lawyer who looks back at his youth (with David Kross playing the young Berg) and his fierce sexual affair with a much older woman, Hanna (Kate Winslet) in post-war Germany and the secrets and truths that come to light years after their affair ends.
Speaking with Cinematical in Los Angeles, Daldry talked about nudity, morality and the perils of adaptation: "We didn't want to make a film that reminded us of Bernhard Schlink's The Reader; we wanted to make a film based on Bernhard Schlink's The Reader. ..."
Cinematical: What was the prime source of appeal for you in adapting The Reader?
Stephen Daldry:The subject. I spent a lot of time, as a schoolboy, in Germany, learning German; as an adult, I spent a lot of time in Berlin when I was running the Royal Court Theater, working with a theater in Berlin. So it's a country that I know well, that for all its contradictions and shadows, always fascinates me. And Berlin has always seemed to be on the fault line of the 20th Century. And how that country has always, from generation to generation, and continues to -- (had) to struggle with the fact that they invented Auschwitz ...it's not just interesting, it's also important.
My main (and only big) problem with Bryan Singer's Valkyrie is the same problem I have with "movie stars" in general. For example, I believe that Tom Cruise is a very fine actor, or at least a generally underrated one, but since he's a Movie Star before he's an Actor (and yes, he is), I find it almost impossible to LOSE him in a role. Sean Penn gets lost in a role. He just vanishes! Johnny Depp does it a lot, too. (Or at least he used to before the Pirate flicks came along.) Julia Roberts as a Victorian Queen is still Julia Roberts to me, which is why I prefer those chameleon-ish character players like Gary Oldman and John Malkovich.
In other words, I never once (for a second) "bought" Tom Cruise as a grizzled, burnt-out, one-armed German army officer in the new wartime thriller Valkyrie -- but because he's a movie star who knows how to carry a flick, he still anchors the tale with a strong and crisp screen presence. And while, yeah, it is a little distracting to hear high-ranking German soldiers speaking with American, British and Irish accents, the simple fact is that Valkyrie is a very slick old-school-style adventure movie. In some ways it feels like a perfectly enjoyable mid-'50s war movie that's been re-made with only the finest in modern cinematic technology. The plot is pure potboiler, but the look is grade-A Hollywood.
Best known as the writer of The Usual Suspects, Christopher McQuarrie has an impressive number of films on his resume (including his criminally overlooked directorial debut, The Way of the Gun), but Valkyrie -- opening nationwide this week -- saw him also serve as a producer alongside director Bryan Singer and star Tom Cruise. A thriller about the 1944 plot inside the German military to try and assassinate Adolph Hitler, Valkyrie turns one of history's nightmares into a taut modern thriller -- a tricky balancing act that the film pulls off: "What we tried to do was to always maintain the focus that this was a movie about an event, that this was a movie about the events of July 20th (1944), and remain focused on that. We weren't making a bio-pic, we weren't making a film about the Holocaust -- all of those things were happening ... (but) this movie is about this incredible event that happened. ... And at the same time, maintaining a sense of responsibility."
McQuarrie spoke with Cinematical from New York about working alongside the German government, how producing a mega-million war film was like "drinking from a firehose," forgoing German accents, his possible future take on superheroic franchise The Champions and much more. You can listen to the podcast here at Cinematical by clicking below:
You can also download the interview in full right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.
The pre-Christmas weekend was good to Jim Carrey, Will Smith and an animated mouse. The rest of the top five was filled out by holdovers from previous weeks, including Four Christmases in its fourth week of release. Here's the top five: 1. Yes Man: $18.2 million 2. Seven Pounds:$14.8 million 3.The Tale of Despereaux:$10.1 million 4. The Day the Earth Stood Still: $9.9 million 5. Four Christmases: $7.7 million
Santa is leaving five presents under the tree for movie fans. Whether they contain coal or a GI Joe with Kung Fu Grip remains to be seen. All five of these are opening on Thursday, Christmas day, rather than the usual Friday.
Bedtime Stories What's It All About:Adam Sandler stars in this comedy about a man who realizes that the fanciful tales he's telling his niece and nephew are coming true. Why It Might Do Well: This seems tailor-made for people who liked Sandler's 2006 film Click which had a $40 million opening weekend and went on to earn $237 million worldwide. Why It Might Not Do Well: Rottentomatoes.com is currently rating the film 21% rotten. Number of Theaters: 3,500 Prediction: $36 million
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button What's It All About: Brad Pitt stars in a film based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man who is born at the age of 80 and ages in reverse. Why It Might Do Well: Mr. Pitt carries some serious box office clout, the trailer looks intriguing and Rottentomatoes.com give the film 78%. Why It Might Not Do Well: It is to laugh. Number of Theaters: 2,900 Prediction: $22 million
Here's a glimpse of the post-apocalyptic to send you off to holiday cheer. Two new Terminator: Salvation photos have leaked online and landed at /film and Film School Rejects from the mysterious Christopher M., but reportedly hail from Total Film Magazine. If you've been paying close attention to the concept art that has popped online, you'll know that John Connor is examining one of the hydrobots. Let's hope it's well and truly dead, and that Connor doesn't come away with a minced hand seconds later -- these things can supposedly attack via air or water. I'm not sure how humanity can win this one either, John.
The second photo is just a nice atmospheric one, featuring one of humanity's lone warriors facing the wreckage of a downed plane. The post-Judgment Day landscape still manages to produce lovely sunsets, at least. I was expecting this movie to take place in the perpetual darkness of the first Terminator, so it's reassuring to see nuclear winter hasn't actually set in. Both pictures (as well as the brand new poster) have been added to the gallery below, along with the concept art of the hydrobots.
Jack Ryan will live again, if Paramount gets their way. According to The Hollywood Reporter, they've hired Hossein Amini to pen a brand new Jack Ryan picture for the studio.
Amini is best known for his classic literature adaptations like Jude, The Four Feathers, and The Wings of the Dove (for which he was nominated for an Oscar). But he seems to be moving into action films these days, like the upcoming Elmore Leonard adaptation Killshot, and he's currently working on James Sallis' Drive for Hugh Jackman. So, Tom Clancy should be a relative breeze in comparison to Leonard, Sallis, and Thomas Hardy.
However, he won't actually be adapting a Clancy book -- Amini will be penning an origin story that reboots the character into a young man, and puts him at the center of an original story. Paramount is hoping that Ryan can become a new franchise, just like they're aiming for with Star Trek, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, among others.
But really ... is Jack Ryan really worth franchising? I enjoyed The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games like most of the civilized world, but am hard pressed to name anything very memorable about Ryan. He's not James Bond, with cars, women, and martinis, or Bourne with his amnesia, lethal skills, and boxes of passports. What is he, other than a smart guy who thwarts international plots? I've never read the books, so I could be missing something important. But from what I can see, he just has a cool name, and that translates to a brand these days?
Okay, maybe Tom Cruise and Valkyrie screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie won't be together forever ... but they are in for a very long haul. Variety reports that McQuarrie is penning no less than three projects for Cruise to star in.
The first up is likely to be The Tourist, which has Cruise and Charlize Theron attached as the leads. A remake of the French thriller Anthony Zimmer, the original script was penned by Julian Fellowes. McQuarrie is quickly rewriting it so that the film can begin shooting by March.
The pair also might be returning to World War II, as McQuarrie and Mason Alley are teaming up to write Flying Tigers, the real life story of a volunteer fighter squadron that was formed to assist the Chinese in fighting the Japanese during WWII. Cruise isn't formally attached, but he has been itching to do another fighter pilot movie since the days of Top Gun.
But the most intriguing film on the McQuarrie-Cruise slate is the UA project The Champions, which McQuarrie is penning and producing alongside Guillermo del Toro. Based on the British television series about super-powered government agents, it's now being developed for Cruise to star in. It was inevitable that Cruise was going to want in on this whole "superhero" trend -- the aura around his Tropic Thunder costar Robert Downey Jr. was espcially hard to miss. How could he not want some of that? Remember, he's already attached to Sam Raimi's Sleeper, so he's obviously waking up to the trend and franchise potential of superpowers. Well, best of luck to McQuarrie and Cruise -- may the relationship be a fruitful one.
As the season marches on, 'for your consideration' ads litter the trades and various awards analysis websites. However, there aren't nearly enough campaigns for the year's worst performances.
Oh, and then there's just about the entire cast of The Happening. (If I had to pick just one person, though, I'd go with the gardener who babbles on about hot dogs. The man's priceless.)
So, unless we're about to let Witless Protection sweep the Razzies, what were some of your least favorite performances of the year?
It's only the middle of December, and already I feel like Summer 2009 is just around the corner. It feels like I was bombarded with Terminator: Salvation and X-Men Origin: Wolverine all weekend, and now G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra is coming back into the mix of things with a few new character posters. They're not entirely new, as they first appeared over the summer at a licensing fair, but have been scanned online for the first time thanks to Film.ru. There's four in all -- Duke, Snake Eyes, Baroness, and Ripcord, and all four have been added to the GI Joe gallery below. Unfortunately, they haven't appeared in a big, hi-res version yet.
Paramount might want to reconsider the design since they look just like the Star Trek character posters. You can't have people wandering into Trek, and wondering where the heck Snake Eyes is. G.I. Joe is the All American Hero! Make these screamingly obvious -- red, white, and blue all the way! At least throw in the camoflauge I remember (and probably wrongly) from the packaging. None of this classiness and silver font -- that has to be left for Mission: Impossible installments.
I don't need much of an excuse to visit Austin, Texas. Find me an event that A) strings more than four movies together, and B) takes place at one of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters, and there's a good chance I'm checking my bank account, desperately scrambling for flight money. But despite the fact that I've done five SXSW visits, three Fantastic Fest trips, and a few more Austin journeys just for the heck of it ... I'd never attended a BNAT shindig. But I made it to the tenth annual Butt-Numb-a-Thon, and of course I had a damn good time once it got rolling.
Let's just do a quick run-through, chronologically speaking, and I'm listing just the FULL movies here. At the end I'll go over the various clips we were treated to...
Lots of maddening hints in the news today -- I share them merely in order to tease you as they have me.
Like this one, for example -- Justin Theroux says he and Jon Favreau have now decided on a villain for Iron Man 2, and the announcement will be held "at some Comic-Con or something." [IGN]
Or this: Guy Ritchie has a lead in mind for Sgt. Rock, but he won't say who, except that it's no one from his past films. So you can cross Jason Statham, Mark Strong, Robert Downey Jr., and Gerard Butler off the "Names That Rumor-Mongerers Love" list. He did say the script is done, it will be set in WWII, and it will feature Easy Company. However, the biggest hurdle in getting it made is its budget which is "slightly intimidating." [MTV Splash Page]
David S. Goyer says the Master of Magnetism's origin movie is on hold until X-Men Origins: Wolverine comes out. If Wolverine is a success, then Magneto gets his origin movie. I think that seems unfair, don't you? [Superhero Hype]
Check out the full Japanese trailer for Terminator Salvation, which should be attached to The Day The Earth Stood Still, not to mention shown on Entertainment Tonight -- um -- tonight, and will likely be yanked from YouTube in favor of a proper online premiere later this week. I don't know about you, but this doesn't look half-bad -- even if it doesn't quite feel like Terminator proper. (Then again, I think Rise of the Machines is tolerable, so what do I know?)
You've got your Christian Bale yelling, you've got big robots, small robots, ones the size of your bike, and explosions are in no short supply. Something tells me that probable PG-13 might not be so distracting given the scale of the piece. I never thought that I'd say it, but I think I want to give director McG (Charlie's Angels 1 & 2, We Are Marshall) the benefit of the doubt here.
If the trailer's still up by the time this post is, what say you guys and girls? Does this look like next summer's primo blockbuster to you or not so much?
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Oprah Winfrey might be one of the most powerful women in the world, but one thing's for sure: the gal has no talent for spotting literary scams. Variety has 
Bedtime Stories
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Jack Ryan will live again, if Paramount gets their way. According to 
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As the season marches on, 'for your consideration' ads litter the trades and various awards analysis websites. However, there aren't nearly enough campaigns for the year's worst performances.
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