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.

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.

The 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.

In 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.

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.

It's gearing up to be a strange summer at the movies.

Three of the big guns have already come and gone -- "Iron Man," "Prince Caspian," and "Indiana Jones etc etc" -- making piles at the box office without much of a dent in the cultural consciousness. (I confess to being confused by some of the sheer rage expressed toward Spielberg's return to this series: what were you expecting? This was always thin but fun Saturday matinee cheese.) Coming up are "Kung Fu Panda" (looks great, less filling) and Adam Sandler in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" (which Wes swears is pretty funny; maybe it's the Judd Apatow influence)

Now comes the big-screen "Sex and the City," and while many people care, I'm honestly not one of them. But Wesley liked it, and some of the other reviews are positive. And some of them are not.

If you want mindblowing eye candy in the service of a chilly, tonally wobbly "Princess Bride" imitation, by all means check out "The Fall," playing at the Kendall. The photo above is a tasting sample, and two others are here and here. Tarsem Singh's labor of love is a continent-spanning design layout that needs to be seen on a big screen if at all.

At the other end of the scale is "Chop Shop," a gritty little realist fable about a kid in the third-world automotive shops of Queens, New York. It's playing at the Brattle. Two solid documentaries kick in today, too: James Carroll's "Constantine's Sword" sticks it to church orthodoxy for ignoring Christ's message of peace in favor of war-mongering and anti-Semitism, while Laura Bialis' "Refusenik" is a thorough accounting of the struggle to save Soviet Jewry the 60s, 70s, and 80s. (Bialis will be present at the 6:50 screening tonight at the Kendall Square).

"The Strangers" is the latest torture porn movie from a young and soulless director out to prove himself. Liv Tyler showed up, but you don't have to.

Over at the Harvard Film Archive, the quite essential round-up of Shaw Bros. classics continues through the weekend. You want to see the originals that everybody from Quentin Tarantino to "Kung Fu Panda" have been ripping off for so long? Look no further. That's 1972's "14 Amazons" below; it's at the HFA Sunday at 3 pm.

The Armenian Film Festival takes over the Museum of Fine Arts for the weekend. Tonight is "The Lark Farm," the latest from Italy's Taviani brothers.

By the way, please join me in saying hello to the Globe's new art critic, the marvelously named Sebastian Smee, who we've somehow convinced to move here from Australia. Welcome, Sebastian, and I hope your family's adjustment from the Antipodes to the, um, Podes, goes smoothly. Here's his piece today on the Anish Kapoor show at the ICA. Like all good criticism, it provides the context and whets my appetite to experience the thing for myself; it also reads like a charm.

So the 77,000 members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists -- mostly TV performers from non-prime time shows -- signed up for a three-year deal with the studios, averting a strike. Where does that leave the Screen Actors Guild, whose 122,000 members work in film and prime-time TV? Against the wall. The SAG contract runs out June 30 and pressure is on to avoid another strike like the writers put the industry through recently. But there are enough union concessions in the AFTRA contract to give a labor negotiator agita, or so says the L.A. Times. And Variety. And everyone.

The sticking point is, as ever, DVD residuals and control over film clip use. AFTRA gave in, to a degree; SAG has been sabre-rattling. Film and TV producers are already running for cover and getting their projects out of the way of a still-possible strike; presumably the exit rows are clearly marked by now.

Here's Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily stirring the hornet's nest of who got hosed by who in typical demure fashion; the reader comments, many by Hollywood working stiffs, are where the gloves really come off.

Filed under: Independent, Awards, Deals, Sundance, Cannes, ThinkFilm, Celebrities and Controversy, Distribution, Exhibition, Home Entertainment, Politics

It's been clear for several weeks now that the independent distribution company THINKfilm has been suffering from some money troubles. Around the time the Cannes Film Festival kicked off this month, blogger AJ Schnack assembled reports from various sources that the company owed a lot of money to many different places. Now, Nikkie Finke reports that Allied Advertising Ltd. filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court today against THINKfilm owner David Bergstein, claiming that THINKfilm failed to pay for Allied's advertising services in a timely manner, while the distributor pretended that wasn't the case. A serious problem indeed.

It's a little unfair, however, for Allied to complain about THINKfilm's decision to continue doing what they do best -- buying films. The lawsuit says that the company embarked on a "lavish film licensing buying spree at various film festivals around the world," rather than exclusively focusing on paying off debt. It's worth noting that THINKfilm remained fairly withdrawn at Cannes this year, and while they did pick up theatrical rights for Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired at Sundance, the film already had a television deal in place with HBO. Meanwhile, the company has dropped Battle in Seattle, which it originally purchased at the Toronto Film Festival. The "buying spree" sounds like needless exaggeration on Allied's part. Whatever the case, given THINKfilm's track record (they did guide Ryan Gosling to his Half Nelson Oscar nod), one hopes they'll survive this nasty legal snafu.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Comedy, Drama, New Releases, RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy

Since Sex and the City has screened around the world and critics have weighed in, it's time for a little nitpicking -- and nobody seems more up to the task than that unflagging beacon of urban gossip, Page Six. Today, the New York Post column reports that New Line Cinema and Radio City Music Hall are facing off in a blame-fest following the mistake that lead to 1,000 ticket holders getting turned away at the New York City premiere. At the close of the piece, however, the article gets into some of the details of the plot: "Those who've seen Sex and the City are buzzing that its story owes much to widely reported episodes involving Jonathan Tisch and Ellen Barkin," it reads, and that's just one of the alleged rip-offs. There's also a supposed reference to Tisch's canceled engagement to Jill Swid, and a "scene where Carrie freaks out about having a 347 area code seems just like one in an old Seinfeld episode."

Not having seen the movie, I can only judge from afar, but this sounds like two very separate complaints. That Sex and the City would use real life incidents to inspire its metropolitan plot shouldn't bother anyone (except the real life inspirations, of course). But borrowing from Seinfeld? Now that's a low blow.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Action, Classics, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Mystery & Suspense, Warner Brothers, Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek

Let us close out the week with a third Watchmen story, shall we? Dave Gibbons, the artist behind the iconic book, gave an excellent interview to Den of Geek. Of course, the first questions directed at him centered on the upcoming movie -- and while he's not officially involved, Gibbons visited the set and blogged about it in December. He has been unfailingly supportive of the film and all involved; the guy even created the first promo poster handed out at 2007's ComicCon.

He was a little more guarded during this interview, but still admired what he had seen of the filming: "The most important thing is that the Watchmen movie be a good movie. From what I've seen of it, I think it is going to be a good movie, and I think it's going to be as faithful to the original graphic novel as is possible, given the constraints of a movie and the nature of a graphic novel. I think that as long as it's true to the spirit of the comic book, and as long as - in broad strokes - it follows the plot and the characterisations ... I don't think you can ask for every individual detail to be replicated. There are hardcore fans out there who'll be satisfied with nothing less than a word-for-word, line-for-line, scene-for-scene recreation of the comic book. I didn't believe that was ever going to happen. Certainly, from what I've seen of the movie, it looks like it'll be a good movie and very faithful to the comic book. If it isn't, it won't be for want of trying. Everybody's using the graphic novel as their bible, and really doing their best to pay tribute to it, I think. "

Continue reading Dave Gibbons On 'Watchmen' and Alan Moore

Permalink | Email this | Comments