WEIRDLAND

Ad Sense

Monday, August 13, 2007

"The Lookout" DVD release

AVC: "The character also feels this lingering shame about his responsibility in causing the accident.

JGL: That's true. And I think that Chris suffers from that more than he suffers from the brain injury. And that's something we can all identify with, whether you've been hit in the head or not. You know what it's like to be ashamed of yourself, to regret something. And those are powerful feelings, and they can tear your life apart. And I think that they are tearing Chris apart even more so than the scratches on his brain." Source: Avclub/content

"The Lookout" has a strangely purposeful way of tipping its narrative "surprises".
Pratt, for instance, takes a menial job swabbing floors as the lone overnight employee at a rural bank. This is a situation that an unscrupulous person could exploit, and when just such a shady character (Matthew Goode) befriends Pratt, "The Lookout" immediately tips us that he's up to no good.

Frank also lets us know, right away, that Pratt's gorgeous new girlfriend (Isla Fisher) is too good to be true.

This studied series of anticlimaxes (a variation of the techniquein "Zodiac") handled better may be Frank's way of saying the movie isn't really about twists and turns, but people.

But so was the livelier "Memento," since its final twist revealed the ghastly truth about its lead character, played with sardonic intelligence by Guy Pearce."
Source: Philly.com/dailynews

"Gordon-Levitt effortlessly burrows into the character's frazzled mental and emotional state. He makes Chris a sympathetic stand-in for anyone who has ever felt crippling self-pity over failing to achieve one's dreams.
Fisher plays Luvlee with a sweetness that nicely contrasts against the usual femme fatale archetype, while the most memorable supporting performance comes from Goode, oozing riveting menace and persuasive charm as the heavy". Source: Newyork.metromix.com

"Gary eventually clues Chris in on his plan to rob the bank after the bank receives an influx of cash from the winter harvest. Gary promises Chris a cut of the heist’s proceeds and a shot atnormalcy with Luvlee. Chris agrees to become the lookout for the heist. But Gary isn’t to be trusted, Chris begins to have second thoughts, Lewis suspects something is amiss, and the winter harvest money is due to arrive any day now.
From the emotionally and cognitively impaired hero haunted by his past, to the gang leader who induces the hero into breakingthe law, to a femme fatale who seduces the hero with the promise of intimacy, to the build up and execution of the heist, double-crosses, and voice over narration, it’s obvious we’re firmly in noir world". Source: Sfstation.com

"Frank wrote the screenplay for “The Lookout” almost 4 years ago, and it has long been rumored, like Lem Dobb’s still unproduced “Edward Ford”, to be one of the greatest unfilmed scripts on the studio shelves. David Fincher toyed with it a bit before chasing the “Zodiac” instead and left it for Frank to direct himself. Frank acquits himself very effectively in the director’s chair, but this isn’t so much a director’s picture as it is a true “auteur” film, as in “author”.

The film’s effectiveness is entirely within the pages of the script, and the talent of its fine cast. Like John Huston, who debuted with his own crime adaptation, “The Maltese Falcon”, Frank clearly sees writing and casting as the most important parts of making a successful film. Huston once remarked that 75% of a picture’s success could be attributed to good casting. If the material is any good, the director merely has to photograph it cleanly." Source: Beyondhollywood.com
"Between The Lookout and Brick, it's interesting how Gordon-Levitt's become a sort of post-modern noir hero. In Brick, he was the classic detective; in The Lookout, he's the classic sap." from Source: Cinematical.com/SXSW review.
"Is Joseph Gordon-Levitt the new king of neo-noir? Could be. [...] It’s an extension of - and, yes, improvement on -his stunning, multifaceted turn in “Brick” subtly layered and richly realized. New king of neo-noir? Undoubtedly, and after this performance, most deservedly." from Source: Efilmcritic.com

"In the old-school noir pictures that The Lookout nods to —such as "Black Angel" and "Somewhere in the Night" —the heroes needed to remember what they did to get to the end of their stories; here, Chris has to remember who he is. For real." from Source: Premiere.com/moviereviews

"Scott Frank's "The Lookout" makes atmospheric use of the wide spaces at its outskirts and surrounding farms to tell a compellingly neo-noir tale of an unusual recruit in a bank robbery. Film noir may have been born in an urban world (Los Angeles, perhaps, with a few childhood visits to San Francisco and New York) and defined by the look of a labyrinth of seedy bars, dark alleys, mansions in the hills, crowded lunch counters and broad sidewalks, but modern noir is just as likely to be found in Midwestern suburbs as in your pick of America's big, bad cities." from Source: http://blogs.indiewire.com

"I’ve been ripping through the pulp noir of Charlie Huston recently, so I slipped comfortably into "Get Shorty" screenwriter Scott Frank’s directorial debut -a dark neo-noir about ChrisPratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt of last year’s criminally overlooked Brick), a high-school hockey standout whose future crashed into a stalled combine on Highway 24 along with his Mustang, girlfriend and two passengers - without hesitation. [...] Frank gets a lot of the little stuff right. He nails the tragic, stupid, teenage romanticism of Chris’ accident and the stiff shot of humor provided by the blind roommate (Jeff Daniels). The Lookout could have been a bit of a tougher talker. Also, stories like this -good guys pressed into morally questionable action by really bad guys don't usually end like this one does. A tougher Lookout could have scared two broken thumbs up out of me". -Drew Wheeler. Source: Flagpole.com/Arts

Jeffrey M. Anderson: "I was curious about the restaurant that Lewis wants to open with Chris, "Lew's Your Lunch." Does everybody have a secret dream of opening a restaurant?
Scott Frank: "Well, in the movie, it's such a ridiculous idea. It's so clearly a "Lewis" idea. It's another example of someone imposing their agenda on Chris. The only one who's being honest is Gary. He's telling the truth: you're not independent, you have no friends, you have no life, you have nothing. You think you're doing fine; you're not. Whereas Lewis, because Lewis doesn't want to be left alone, so "Let's open this restaurant together." He kind of imposes it on Chris. I wanted to make it a real Lewis thing". Source: Greencine.com/central

Andrew O'Hehir: "And it seems like you hit on the idea that one of the main things that manifests for Chris is that he gets angry when he's not able to do something the way that the so-called normal part of him would want to. Was that one of the key things for you?
JGL: It's true, there's two edges to an injury like this. There's the injury itself, which does change your brain, but then I think the even more severe and painful truth of the condition is that he remembers who he used to be and wishes so badly that he could be that and isn't. So it makes him insecure and it makes him feel bad about himself, and that's way more painful than not being able to have your brain work like it used to -- way more painful. I think that's something he has in common with everybody. Everybody's fears and insecurities, those are the real demons. The problem is when you're scared. The problem is when you don't love yourself. And Chris has a healthy portion of lack of self-love, and that's what's really holding him back, I think, even more than the brain injury". Source: Salon.com

MY LAST VIDEOCLIP OF "THE LOOKOUT" _________________


Saturday, August 11, 2007

Reese's companions

Possible romance with Jake? Hmmm, how did Reese's other romances end? Does Reese have so much chemistry with Jake as with other of her partenaires? Let's see:
With Mark Wahlberg, whom Reese starred in "Fear" (1996).
With Joaquin Phoenix, whom she shared main roles in the Johnny Cash's biopic "Walk the line" (20005), Reese won an Oscar for her performance as June Carter.
Reese with Ryan Phillippe, which will be soon her ex-husband, they hooked up during the shooting of "Cruel Intentions" (1999).

Friday, August 10, 2007

Political Message Movie

"Message Pictures are done with the best of intentions: to raise awareness about said Social Issue in the General Public and to whip said Public into such a fury over said Issue that moviegoers all but storm out of the theater with pitchforks and torches to march down to the Capitol to overthrow the government. (Of course, what they really do is whip the audience into the fury for the duration of the movie, after which they...wander in a daze toward their car in the parking lot, drive home, and wonder what will be on TV when they get there).

[...] The burning Social Issue that Rendition is all about is, well, rendition. More specifically, the U.S. government’s practice of “extraordinary rendition,” wherein high level terror suspects are taken off the grid, flown to a friendly country (to the U.S., not to the suspect) with more lax regulations on the use of torture, and interrogated for time-sensitive information. It was started during the Clinton administration and cooked to sinister perfection under Bush, and it’s repugnant and a black eye on the U.S.’s reputation as a force for good. It’s Totalitarian, police state type tactics put to use by the country that outwardly defines itself as being opposed to all things Totalitarian.

The plot of Rendition, in brief: an easy-on-the-eyes, Americanized Muslim played by Omar Metwally is renditioned to “North Africa” after a suicide bombing kills a CIA officer. Reese Witherspoon, playing his pregnant wife, goes to former college friend and Congressional current Aide Peter Sarsgaard to find information on where the hell he is. Meryl Streep plays a high-level administration official who orders the rendition and defends the practice by wrapping herself in an American flag and speaking with a patronizing Texas accent. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the CIA officer with a heart of gold designated to observe the torture of Metwally. There’s also a subplot about the suicide bomber and his girlfriend, who in typical movie logic is the daughter of the man who tortures Metwally. Kelley Sane is the writer, Gavin Hood is the director, and you can tell they spent a lot of time studying the work of Stephen Gaghan. Rendition is built on the same structure that Gaghan stumbled onto adapting "Traffik" for Steven Soderbergh and worked out to its logical endpoint in Syriana: Multiple, thematically-linked characters in disparate locations who, by the end of the movie, are connected in a way that makes us say, “Hey, we’re all affected by this social problem!”

Rendition, then, is a textbook Message Picture. And it’s a very well-crafted one at that. It’s well acted, competently written, and very capably directed. But like all Message Pictures, it’s totally airtight and DOA as a piece of living, breathing art. The Good Intentions and Important Message are hammered at you with typical Oscar-baiting Hollywood subtlety. There’s no room for the audience member to bring anything of their own to the movie. And it's definitely No Fun. Watching Rendition is like getting stuck in a conversation about politics with an overly earnest college student who stridently regurgitates every P.C. trope in the book and screams Bloody Murder if you try liven things up with an off-color remark or a sigh of resignation about the gigantic-ness of the social problem being addressed and the impossibility of solving it with a conversation like this.

It’s possible to imagine a Message Picture that simultaneously succeeds as a movie independent of it’s Good Intentions, but they are rare creatures indeed. Talented filmmakers (such as the afore-mentioned Steven Soderbergh in "Traffic", or, say, Steven Spielberg in Amistad) take a stab at them every now and then as they try tuck an Oscar under their belt and assure their legacy with mainstream history. Almost inevitably, though, the filmmaker gets caught up in the Importance of the issue and forgets the wit and sense of humor they, as Talented Filmmakers, inevitably burned into the DNA of their great movies to bring them to life. I remember that multi-Oscar winner and mainstream critical darling Traffic came out the same year as Soderbergh’s all-style, no-“substance” The Limey. Guess which one I still watch every couple months? These prestige Message Pictures are often made with world-class craftsmanship (again, Traffic and Amistad leap to mind), and Rendition is, too. It’s well-cast, it’s very well-directed, and it’s intelligently-written. But craft does not equal art, and Rendition is missing whatever that key alchemical element is that makes a piece of art come to life.

[...] You don’t really need a “tough” two-hour movie to tell you that. The movie isn’t really enjoyable beyond the somewhat pleasing way it panders to your liberal conscience. Going to a movie isn’t going to stop the Bush administration from continuing with this practice: it’ll just make some money for the studio and hopefully pad Reese Witherspoon’s mantelpiece with another Oscar for her “brave” performance. So anybody who’s aware of the practice of extraordinary rendition doesn’t really need to see this movie.

That leaves people who don’t know extraordinary rendition is going on…and yet who are likely to go see an “important” movie like this. The size of this group is difficult to gauge. When Kelley Sane started writing the script, it was probably fairly big. But in the two or three years it’s taken for the project to go from concept to a theater near you, the abuses and excesses of the Bush administration are all-too-common knowledge. That’s the danger of making a Hollywood movie ripped straight from the headlines: the typical Hollywood movie takes three years to go from conception to theaters (if it's lucky), and if you’re trying to address specific things in the news, you’ll never be able get there fast enough.

But, okay, there are lots of people who totally ignore current events. The problem is, if you ignore the newspapers enough that you don’t know the Bush administration has been sponsoring torture in our name, it’s unlikely you’re the kind of person who’s going to see Rendition instead of License to Wed, or whatever Lowest Common Denominator film is playing at the multiplexes that weekend. I could be way off, here, and millions of ill-informed American “citizens” will see this movie, rise up in indignation, and put enough pressure on Congress to get Bush impeached. That’d be a case where I’d love to be wrong. But I have serious doubts that will turn out to be the case. So the question remains: Who is Rendition for?" Written by Lance Carmichael, CC2k staff writer Source: Cincity2000

Kirsten and Megan Fox

"Kirsten Dunst arrives at her SoHo Hotel on Wednesday for the same movie we recently saw Megan Fox on set for, where she was hounded by adoring fans wanting autographs.

"How to Lose Friends & Alienate People" also stars Simon Pegg, who plays a disillusioned intellectual who both adores and despises the world of celebrity, fame and glamour.
So which of these two actresses, Megan Fox or Kirsten Dunst, is most likely to lose more friends and alienate people in the movie? Source: Just Jared.buzznet

Thursday, August 09, 2007

New affiliate Sarah Roemer

Sarah Roemer in "The Grudge 2" (2006).
"Cult films are generally a hit-or-miss proposition, and the horror genre seems particularly replete with such pictures. One of the better films recently to attain cult status is Donnie Darko. First released without much fanfare in 2001, this film has since amassed a substantial following of truly avid fans.
As an enigmatic hybrid between psychological horror and 1980's John Hughes-style teen angst, Donnie Darko apparently struck a sensitive chord with the disillusioned youth of Generation X, who identified with many of the film's characters, particularly Donnie Darko.As "Unbreakable" was to the super-hero genre, so "Donnie Darko" is to the horror genre, a cerebral portrayal of a spiritual or psychological voyage in face of great adversity. [...]

Summary: With a fine cast, innovative story, and exceptional re-watchability, Donnie Darko is a film well-deserving of its immense cult following. This director's cut of the film is essential viewing for anyone interested in experiencing one of the most unique "horror" films in recent years." Source: DVD Moviecentral.com

Celebrating our new affiliate site: Sarah Roemer Online,
I've made a videoclip with scenes from another horror film "The Grudge 2" mixed with scenes from other recent Sarah Roemer's film "Disturbia":

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Quirky romance

Quirky Girl says: "The bonding session between Drew and Claire over their cell phones is so well written, edited and acted. It'll remind you of that first warm feeling that you get when you are getting close to someone you like" Source: Amazon.com
It's funny how one of the quirky quotes that Claire Colburn (Kirsten's character in "Elizabethtown") said: "Everybody is less mysterious than they think they are" was an habitual motto used by my Literature teacher in high-school.


Tuesday, August 07, 2007

New "Rendition" stills

Kirsten as film director

"Kristen Dunst puts her acting on the back burner and puts on her director’s cap, directing small crew and actors in Los Feliz on Friday for a “Glamour Reels” short film.

Director Dunst, who was in Studio City, Calif. all day, was given this opportunity by Glamour Magazine, where women who are normally in front of the camera are given the opportunity to direct.

Kiki has mentioned that she wants Michelle Williams (Heath Ledger’s wife) to star in her directorial debut: “Michelle Williams is a friend of mine and we did a movie together when we were younger and so I want her to be my star. She said she would, but now it’s all about dates.”This follows Jennifer Aniston’s short film "Room 10" for Glamour Magazine.Later in the day, Kiki headed for the veterinarian (flashing her navel on the way) to pick up her beloved pet cat."
Source: Just Jared.buzznet

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Rendition feeling

“Hi there Lashers,
I saw Rendition's trailer tonight when my son and I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum!!!
Jake is fuking beautiful. The cast and movie seem even more intense on the huge curved screen downtown.
The audience was very quiet after the last scene....they seem shocked, Hell, the man next to me stopped talking, thank God Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee nitenite sass“(From someone who saw the trailer in the movie theater last night in the States).
Source: DaveCullen Forum