 | Choke - Trailer Actor-turned-director Clark Gregg shows he is as adept behind the camera as he is in front of it with CHOKE, a wickedly colorful dark comedy about mothers and sons, sexual compulsion, and the sordid underbelly of Colonial theme parks. Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida (Huston), in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical reenactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park. At night Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who “save” him. When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father’s identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Denny (Henke) and his mother’s beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall (Macdonald), to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever. Directed by: Clark Gregg Starring: Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly Macdonald, Brad William Henke, Jonah Bobo |
Archive for June, 2008
Choke – Trailer
Thursday, June 5th, 2008Boy A – Trailer
Thursday, June 5th, 2008 | Boy A - Trailer Jack has a terrible secret. He is really the notorious Boy A (Andrew Garfield) who committed a terrible crime when he was just a child. Recently released from a juvenile prison, he enters a world he has never been part of. He is haunted by his grim past, and is more a boy than a man at 24. His caseworker Terry (Peter Mullan) sees the good in him and does everything in his power to give Boy A a second chance. Boy A chooses the name Jack and is set up with a job, a home and the opportunity for a new life. At his job he forms adult relationships for the first time. He bonds with Chris (Shaun Evans) and finds a girlfriend in Michelle (Katie Lyons), both co-workers who witness Jack’s newfound compassion and loyalty. Others are drawn to his shy, kind ways. As relationships develop, he is torn between the deceit in concealing his past and the potential exoneration by revealing his crime. Jack no longer doubts his capacity to love and has more to lose than ever. He seeks Terry’s approval to confess the truth to Michelle but is implored to keep his secret for fear of his own safety. Spending 14 years in prison has done nothing to persuade the public he’s paid his dues. Accompanying his release is a widespread, media frenzy which re-ignites public indignation. The crime and trial are covered as current news and feed a hunger for revenge. Although Jack bears little resemblance to the young Boy A, it becomes increasingly clear that the past may be impossible to escape. Directed by: John Crowley Starring: Andrew Garfield, Peter Mullan, Shaun Evans, Katie Lyons |
Harold and Maude and Yusef
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
If you're of a certain age -- like, old -- you may have cut your adolescent movie teeth on "Harold and Maude," the 1971 cult Hal Ashby comedy about a suicidal young man (the great Bud Cort) who falls in love with a feisty old lady (the even greater Ruth Gordon). The movie's certainly an artifact of its day, but I must have seen it 25 times back when it played the Allston Cinema for two years.
Now comes word that the film's Cat Stevens soundtrack is finally available after all these years -- on vinyl. Sort of. Per this Variety blog posting, filmmaker and "H&M" fan Cameron Crowe issued a 2,500 run of the soundtrack on his Vinyl Films imprint last December. It quickly sold out but you can find it with a simple eBay search. So if you want to sing out sing out -- and be prepared to pay up.
Twilight – Trailer
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 | Twilight - Trailer TWILIGHT is an action-packed, modern day love story between a vampire and a human. Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) has always been a little bit different, never caring about fitting in with the trendy girls at her Phoenix high school. When her mother remarries and sends Bella to live with her father in the rainy little town of Forks, Washington, she doesn’t expect much of anything to change. Then she meets the mysterious and dazzlingly beautiful Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a boy unlike any she’s ever met. Intelligent and witty, he sees straight into her soul. Soon, Bella and Edward are swept up in a passionate and decidedly unorthodox romance. Edward can run faster than a mountain lion, he can stop a moving car with his bare hands - and he hasn’t aged since 1918. Like all vampires, he’s immortal. But he doesn’t have fangs, and he doesn’t drink human blood; Edward and his family are unique among vampires in their lifestyle choice. To Edward, Bella is that thing he has waited 90 years for - a soul mate. But the closer they get, the more Edward must struggle to resist the primal pull of her scent, which could send him into an uncontrollable frenzy. But what will Edward & Bella do when James (Cam Gigandet), Laurent (Edi Gathegi) and Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre), the Cullens’ mortal vampire enemies, come to town, looking for her? Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser |
Kicking It – Trailer
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 | Kicking It - Trailer In the summer of 2006, while the football world's attention was focused on Germany, thousands of players around the globe were training hard and competing to be part of the World Cup...The Homeless World Cup. It began in 2001 as a wild idea by a Scot and an Austrian—to give homeless people a chance to change their lives through an international street soccer competition. Five years later, the annual Homeless World Cup had become an internationally recognized sports competition. 500 homeless players from 48 nations would ultimately be selected to represent their country in Cape Town, South Africa—coming from such disparate parts of the world as war torn Afghanistan, the slums of Kenya, the drug rehab clinics of Dublin, Ireland, the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, the overflowing public shelters of Madrid, Spain, and the unforgiving city of St. Petersburg, Russia, where the homeless have no rights or identity. Win or lose, for these players it would be the journey of a lifetime. The film follows seven players in their own tough worlds as they confront the daily challenges of life on the streets, battle drug and alcohol addiction, and fight for the right to be recognized as human beings. We witness their struggles, hopes, and determination. The teams are greeted by the South African President, as they make their spirited entrance in to two newly built street soccer "pitches", located at the precise spot where Nelson Mandela was released from prison—with the glorious Table Mountain as the backdrop. Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu joins the players, declaring homelessness the new "apartheid." For 7 days of fiercely competitive matches, the teams vie for the championship cups. Despite the fact that they may not have a home, the players wear the colors of their country with pride. From shattering misconceptions about the homeless to seeing people living at the edge of society discover that they also can be winners, the film shows in a real and powerful way that sports can and does change lives. As the Russian coach observes, "To me, football is the best model for real life. There is no last game in football and there is no last game in real life. You always have another chance to win." Directed by: Susan Koch Starring: |
What the Universal fire really means
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
I'm busy writing review copy today (and screening one or two items: a Chinese documentary, the Zohan thing) but to keep you busy, here's a link to a blog posting by my old college film professor David Thomson on seeing the smoke rise in Burbank and fearing for the reels. Hollywood eats its young but it burns its history, and David's not the only person who saw the news footage and thought of Charles Foster Kane.
Swing Vote – Trailer
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 | Swing Vote - Trailer SWING VOTE follows the story of Bud Johnson (KEVIN COSTNER), an apathetic, beer-slinging, lovable loser, who is coasting through a life that has passed him by. The one bright spot is his precocious, over-achieving twelve year-old daughter Molly. She takes care of both of them, until one mischievous moment on Election Day, when she accidentally sets off a chain of events which culminates in the election coming down to one vote…her dad’s. SWING VOTE is a comical look at the journey of one father and daughter who discover that everyone has the power to change the world. Directed by: Joshua Michael Stern Starring: Kevin Costner, Paula Patton, Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper, Nathan Lane |
Bo Diddley 1928 – 2008
Monday, June 2nd, 2008The R&B pioneer and architect of one of rock and roll's most primal rhythms has passed to that great radio show in the sky.
Dig it, from 1966's "The Big T.N.T. Show". Oh, this man was cool.
BO Report: “City” slickers
Monday, June 2nd, 2008In a chat on Friday afternoon, I hazarded the guess that "Sex and the City" would gross between $40 and $50 million over the weekend, and that was being kind. Not quite kind enough, apparently; despite meh reviews, the further adventures of Carrie and company raked in $56 million at 3,000+ theaters, for a strong $17,000 per theater average. Estimates of Friday's audience put the number of women ticket buyers at 85%.
The surprise here isn't that fans of the HBO series and their dates turned out en masse to revel in the clothes and the banter, but that the film came out on top over "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which dropped over 50% from its opening weekend to pull in $46 million. I still think the Spielberg film's a perfectly acceptable if not terribly inspired late-inning sequel, and I still think the backlash against it in some quarters (see the comment field under my review posting below) is absurdly overblown, but this blog entry by an anonymous screenwriter does, for once, articulate the case against "Crystal Skull" with scrupulous attention to detail.
The latest home invasion horror film, "The Strangers," scared up an unexpectedly strong $20 million, probably from teenage boys who couldn't get a date to "Sex and the City." Down in limited-release land, foreign language dramas "Reprise" and "Roman de Gare" have strong per-theater averages, as does the visually splendid adventure saga "The Fall." Then there's "War, Inc.," an indie political satire with a big-name cast (John and Joan Cusack, Marisa Tomei, Ben Kingsley, Hilary Duff, and Dan Aykroyd as the Vice President of the United States); it averaged $12,000 at two theaters (one in NYC, one in LA) and comes to Boston on June 13th. Opening this coming Friday is teeny-tiny indie comedy "The Foot Fist Way," which averaged a sharp $9,000 PTA at four theaters over the weekend.
More number parsing from Box Office Mojo and Movie City News.
Yves Saint-Laurent at the movies
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
The fashion legend Yves Saint-Laurent died yesterday but, obviously, his clothes will live forever. At the movies, he mostly dressed the stars who wore his designs off screen, Catherine Deneuve being the most luminous and eroticized of his muses. Saint-Laurent did the dresses for her in Luis Buñuel's S&M classic; "Belle du Jour" (1967); Alain Cavalier's "Heartbeart" (1968); "Mississippi Mermaid" (1968), Francois Truffaut's idea of how shady paperback mystery novels should work on screen, (which is to say like an unhappy vacation getaway); Jean-Pierre Melville's smoldering heist picture "Un Flic" (1972), "avec Catherine Deneuve dans le role de Cathy"; and, most ridiculously, Tony Scott's "The Hunger" (1983). The big question with Saint-Laurent's clothes on Deneuve was whether she'd be taking them off, so it's OK if you don't remember what he designed for her to wear. But he helped make the most arresting skins for her to consider peeling off.
