I'm way late off the dime on this, but flipping through Paul Sherman's book "Big Screen Boston" has been so much fun I just have to logroll it in this space.

You'd think that, aside from the recent flurry of Hollywood-on-the-Charles action, there wouldn't be enough Boston set and shot movies to fill a book. And you'd think wrong. Sherman, a former Boston Herald film critic and past president of the Boston Society of Film Critics, exhumes all sorts of fascinating forgotten films, like 1950's "Mystery Street" (aka "Murder at Harvard," photo above) and 1979's "Billy in the Lowlands." Of course the usual suspects are here: "The Departed" and "Boondock Saints," "Charly" and "Good Will Hunting." And 1973's "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," which Sherman rightly cites as the best Bahston movie evah. "Big Screen Boston" gets into the history and into the vast gulf between real Boston and screen Boston; he lays out everything that got left on the cutting room floor in "A Civil Action."

The Harvard documentary axis is fully represented, as are all those indie strivers making neighborhood movies that seemingly went nowhere. They went into Sherman's memory banks is where they went, and now they're between the pages of his enclusive, smartly-written book. An essential purchase for Bay State cinemaniacs, this does what all good movie books do: Makes you want to run out and see the movies.

There's a nice interview with Sherman on the New England Film website.

Filed under: Action, Thrillers, Casting, Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels

Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant cast just became a whole lot crazier. Variety is reporting that Val Kilmer and Xzibit are joining Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes in the much-maligned remake / re-imagining / re-something of Abel Ferrara's cult classic.

Kilmer will be playing Cage's police partner, presumably the straight arrow to complement Cage's cop-on-the-edge. This comes right on the heels of Kilmer being cast in Silver Cord, so I think it's safe to say someone's trying to make a comeback. (Am I the only one who laments the passing of years, and what it has done to one of my biggest crushes? Has it really been so long since The Saint?)

Xzibit, fresh off The X-Files: I Want to Believe, will be playing their nemesis, Big Fade.
Remember, folks, it's a re-imagining, which is why you don't remember any of these characters from the original.

If there aren't shockingly hilarious tales of egos and fistfights from the Lieutenant set, I'll be among the bitterly disappointed. While I suspect Kilmer has chilled with the passing of years, I'm thinking that combining him with Herzog is bound to be tempestuous. Is it too much to ask that Herzog just goes even further, and hires Sean Young and Gary Busey? Perhaps even Mike Myers? Throw the script out the window, and just film the production. I think it would be far more fun than any re-imagining.

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Filed under: RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy

Apparently, Hollywood (and all watching) cheered too soon -- a representative for Rose McGowan has hit back at the reports that she has split with Robert Rodriguez, or scrapped their movies. McGowan's rep told People Magazine that "the production of all three films is moving forward with Rose to star." And one of those mysterious sources "close" to the actress insisted their relationship was fine.

Now, naturally we here at Cinematical could really care less about the status of their engagement -- we just wanted to know what was going to happen to those movies. And that all depends which dubious glossy you believe -- the New York Post, who broke the story, or the damage controlling People. We all know those official statements and mysterious sources can mean nothing in six months.

But even if this was all tabloid fiction, it really should serve as a wake-up call for Rodriguez and McGowan. What must it be like to turn on your television, laptop, or radio and hear people rejoicing over your break-up in the hopes that, now, Red Sonja would not be remade? They've even gone so far as to "officially" recast Barbarella with Jessica Alba on many news sites. That has to hurt. So, maybe it's time for you crazy kids to scale it back a bit. Pick one of your three love projects to make (we can give you that much), and then devote your time and talents to a movie that doesn't involve your other half. I can't really speak for McGowan, but might I humbly suggest A Dame to Kill For to Rodriguez?

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Filed under: Animation, Classics, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Foreign Language, Independent, New Releases, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom, Scripts, 20th Century Fox, DIY/Filmmaking, Politics, Obits, Images, Stars in Rewind

Even the weirder artists of the twentieth century have been attracted to the allure of Hollywood filmmaking, and Salvador Dali was no exception. In the fall of 1941, the surrealist painter hosted a masquerade party at Pebble Beach during one of his regular visits to the town. Called "Surrealism Night in An Enchanted Forest," the fundraising event, intended to assist European refugee artists, brought out a number of stars, including Bob Hope and Ginger Rogers. It was here, the story goes, that Dali became attached to a major studio production called Moontide. The great German emigre Fritz Lang was hired to direct the movie, and asked Dali to create a three-minute nightmare sequence for the film. Unfortunately, after the incident at Pearl Harbor later that year, Twentieth Century Fox deemed the project too bleak. Lang was replaced, and Dali's nightmare sequence went with him.

Although inspired by the movies, Dali didn't always have the easiest time making them. He would get another chance to inject his hallucinatory vision into American cinema with the hypnosis scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, but it's his unrealized projects that truly indicate the scope of the painter's ambition. So many ideas, such little time. Dali: Painting and Film, a breathtakingly unique exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, surveys Dali's completed cinematic works in addition to tidbits from the ones that never came to fruition. Marvelously structured to show how his paintings were intentionally cinematic, the exhibit contains all the obvious highlights from Dali's movie career alongside lesser-known productions. The importance in film history of his collaborations with Luis Bunuel remain uncontested; two large screens in separate rooms showing Un Chien Andalou (where the opening eye splicing retains its original gross-out impact) and L'Age D'Or attest to that. Fewer visitors, however, might know about Dali's collaboration with the Marx Brothers on a deliriously strange movie that sounded too good to be true.

Continue reading Cinematical Visits MOMA's "Dali: Painting and Film" Exhibit

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Filed under: RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom

We usually don't report the goings-on of Hollywood relationships (be them long term or of the booty call variety), however this one is pretty epic. According to -- ugh -- the New York Post, sweethearts Rose McGowan and Robert Rodriguez are no longer together and no longer getting married (they were engaged prior to this). Why is this important news? Why should people care? Well, partly because Rodriguez was in the process of lining up a few interesting movie remakes (Barbarella, Red Sonja) with McGowan in the lead. One imagines McGowan had snagged the roles because, well, she was boinking Robert Rodriguez. But when there's no more action between the sheets, does that mean there's no more McGowan in the starring role?

The Post claims their break-up was partly due to the fact that Rodriguez was having a hard time finding financing for Barbarella with McGowan in the lead because she's not a big enough box-office draw. I know some of you beg to differ because she's got the hot "I'll sleep with your man if you leave him alone for five seconds and he can put me in one of his movies" seductress thing going on, but could you seriously see a flick starring Rose McGowan bringing in at least $70 million (reported budget for Barbarella) to the box office? Personally, I can't. With Jessica Alba or Charlize Theron or Angelina Jolie? Sure. Not Rose McGowan. (Last time I checked, her ass didn't exactly ignite a box office firestorm for Grindhouse.)

Should be interesting to see what develops from here. What would you like to see happen?

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