"Dennis Quaid is set to star as President Clinton, with Julianne Moore taking on Hillary in an upcoming HBO film called The Special Relationship. While, at first glance, this might seem like a tale that will discuss certain forays in the Oval Office and risque behavior with cigars, the piece will look at an entirely different relationship -- the "sometimes turbulent political relationship" between Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- who will be played by Michael Sheen.
You might remember that Sheen already played Blair in both The Deal and The Queen, so this will be old hat. (Helen McCrory, who played Cherie Blair in The Queen, is also set to reprise her role.) He was also the Frost to Langella's Nixon, and Frost/Nixon playwright Peter Morgan wrote the screenplay to this project and is hoping to make his directorial debut with the feature, should it get greenlit."
Well? What do we think? Is it giving the project too much of a "he's a closet-case and she's sleeping with the help" vibe?
I like to believe that there's a human-character equivalent to Roger Rabbit's Toon Town and that The Princess Bride's Westley and Forrest Gump have gotten over the constant drama Princess Buttercup and Jenny keeps putting them through and have found each other, moved into a ice little apartment together, and at last found peace.
I like to believe that.
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What ridiculous movie character fantasies do you harbor? .
JA from MNPP here, gently tapping on the screen door to Film Experience headquarters, politely requesting some eggs for your neighbors. Nevermind the white gloves, can I just have the eggs? Please? Thank you. Oh your cat jumped up on me, Nat, and I dropped the eggs. Can I have the other ones? I see them right there. You can go to the store tomorrow. No I am not being rude. No, I will not leave without the eggs.
Hey everybody, sorry about that, but... Nat's not gonna be here today! He's... preoccupied. Much like Susanne Lothar (sidenote: who else adores Susanne Lothar?) and Naomi Watts before him, he's... preoccupied.
But I'm here! Ready, willing, full-bodied, able, to guide you through your Wednesday. And it's funny that I brought up Michael Haneke's dueling Funny Games pictures here because I actually mean to speak a bit about the "Home Invasion" movie genre here for a moment. (Funny how that I works! I brought it up, and I want to talk about it! Funny!)
Although it's a genre near and dear to my heart, I've been thinking about the genre this past week or so more than often than usual. I just finished the chapter in David Hughes' book The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made on Steven Spielberg's never-happened Close Encounterssort-of sequel, to be called Night Skies. Night Skies was going to tell the story of a family on a farm who come to be terrorized by a group of outer-space aliens who trap them inside their farmhouse and kill their cattle and are generally bad guys (and yes, if that immediately made you think of M. Night's Signs, you are not alone.) Anyway, the story goes, Spielberg wasn't liking where the story was heading, but did like the side-story in the script of the farm-family's son who befriended the only nice alien out in the group, which turned into you guessed it again E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. And then Spielberg got his home invasion ya-ya's out by "producing" "Tobe Hooper's" Poltergeist the same year (switch out the aliens for ghosties, and wha-la).
And besides that sordid tale, I also saw the remake of The Last House on the Left last week, which, befitting the current "Home Invasion" film renaissance - Ils (Them), The Strangers, and Funny Games being recent torch-bearers - feels more like your standard Home Invasion film than it's previous Bergman/Craven incarnations. The bad guys are still invited into the home like they've been since The Virgin Spring, but due to alterations in certain outcomes (trying to stay spoiler-free here), it becomes more about maintaining the safety of the home space than just straightforward vengeance. (as an aside, if you can handle the brutality of what Last House has to offer, I'd say that Dennis Iliadis' film is a mostly artful contemplation on The Horrors Men Can Do... at least until that slightly silly denouement).
I'd be remiss, in discussing Home Invasion movies, without giving a shout-out to three of the genre's most important figureheads, so here they be:
(Sam Pekinpah's still controversial Straw Dogs, Jodie "Mother Hen In A Confined Space" Foster, and Attempted-Child-Brutality-Has-Never-Been-So-Funny superstar Macauley Culkin)
Alright, so now that I've lured y'all in here and quietly clicked the lock into place, behind you, you ain't going nowhere without telling me your favorite Home Invasion movie. And why do you think these movies have been so popular specifically the past couple of years? What I'm getting at is, do you think the genre will subside a bit now that we don't feel locked in this country with a madman who seemed to have swallowed the keys to the Oval Office anymore? .
Topless Robot ogles My Little Pony. This is so wrong Public School Intelligentsia on the pull of Chlöe Sevigny as "Nicolette Grant" on Big Love. Wired has a big report on the Watchmen-related new DVDs Tales of the Black Freighter and Under the Hood
StinkyLulu digs deep into Broadway's revival of West Side Story. How does it compare to the classic film and previous Broadway incarnations? Low Resolution makes a case for the charisma of Ryan Phillippe. StarEast Asia Zhang Ziyi and camel. Does ZZ act anymore or is all about the shilling of product and the banking of cash? The Spy in the Sandwich the new Pinoy film from the director of recent Oscar submission The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros has been censored. Shame
And finally... Isn't it Bromantic?
Are Breckin and Ryan about to make out (on DVD)?
My friend Kenneth in the (212) told me that little west coast birdies told him that that awfully dull Studio 54 movie from 1998 -- that one that starred Ryan Phillipe, Salma Hayek, Mike Myers and Breckin Meyer -- is headed back to DVD this fall. Here's the good news: it's supposedly the formerly apocryphal Director's Cut version (i.e. much longer and gayer) that is being released. That cut got a surprise screening last summer at Outfest but there was no word of a follow-up DVD release. The initial studio interference with 54 (Miramax... ah, the brothers Weinstein) is one of the dumber movie-making stories from the late nineties: cut 45 minutes of this, reshoot, beef up the more traditional romance. Why anyone thought the target audiences for a movie about Studio 54 would be satisfied with a film that lacked outre behavior, sexual experimentation and excessive drug use... well, I couldn't tell you. Is the new/old version as good as they say? (I hope so. I liked writer/director Marc Christopher's early gay short Alkali, Iowa) Perhaps we'll find out in the fall.
Today's Must Read:Icons of Fright details the dumbing down of Let the Right One In by way of simplified subtitles (thanks to H-E for pointing this out). Plenty of screengrabs prove their sharp point. Eli got staked!
Why would they do this for the DVD release? The film was plenty successful in its initital form. If the distributor felt it should be dumbed down shouldn't they have just waited for the American remake to do that deed? American remakes are efficiency experts at just that. They always get the job done!
Have you heard the news that Warner Bros has opened up their vaults? Seems at least one of the major studios has realized that those who truly love the cinema love the entire history of it. They'd like to see more of that history.
Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery live Private Lives but they still want to show off their brand new DVD collections!
There's a reason that some former mega stars (Norma Shearer is a good example) fade in the public consciousness quicker than others. Actually there are many reasons: changing tastes, mediocre filmographies, undramatic personal lives -- especially if they don't end tragically, pop culture's rapid "who's next?" star meat grinder, lack of gay appeal (think about it: fascinating the gays insures a long shelf life for entertainers. I don't think I need to cite examples... they've probably popped into your head just reading that sentence). But I'm thinking of the most infuriating reason for premature fading: sometimes their work just isn't seen.
Part of that is public disinterest in film history (Boo!) but a lot of it is Hollywood's weird disinterest in their own history. They'd rather remake an old film than promote the previous best of their industry. I know that it all boils down to money but in an industry filled with so many "creatives" you'd think more of them would funnel some cash back into film preservation and film history education and promotion. It stands to reason that if everything was available, some titles and stars would not remain as obscure. Surely the renaissance of interest in Louise Brooks was fueled at least partially by Pandora's Box VHS release.
Starry titles now available include: a few from both Clark Gable and Joan Crawford, Liv Ullman in The Abdication, Spencer Tracy in Malaya and Edison the Man, Warren Beatty and Eva Marie Saint in All Fall Down (the tagline is too funny on that one... "male enough to attract a dozen women... not man enough to be faithful to one!"), Greta Garbo in both Love and Wild Orchids, Cary Grant in Mr. Lucky and Crisis, Greer Garson in Sunrise at Campobello. Shearer herself gets at least three titles: Strange Interlude,Private Lives and We Were Dancing... though it's hard to say exactly since the archive isn't very user friendly. It's not searchable in convenient ways.
As I continued reading the articles about this and scanned the archive I realized that the whole thing is less juicy than it sounds. Only 150ish titles are now available within this new "custom order" dealio. The Warner library is nearly 7,000 films strong and according to the AP
Twenty more films or TV shows will be added to the program of re-releases each month, with 300 expected by year's end. To put it in perspective, the studio has released only about 1,100 movies on DVD since the technology was spawned 12 years ago.
While I'm glad that this is happening, I'm also disappointed that it's so tentative. They haven't so much opened the vault as installed a mail slot in the wall by which they can shove a few DVDs through when they feel like it. Cinephilia needs its own Moses to storm the studios with righteous fury "Let My Movies Go!" *
Clang! Clang! Clang! Variety is reporting that Anne Hathaway is going to become Frances Ethel Gumm (i.e. Judy Garland) in a biopic called Get Happy
When will the madness end? If the pop culture on pop culture on pop culture joke weren't overplayed already, I'd be peering out from under a bedsheet, mascara running face contorted screaming...
LEAVE JUDY ALONE!!!
Judy Garland is one of the film experience's sacred ten* and just as She Could Go On Singing, I Can Go On Bitching that she does not get the credit she deserves. Another biopic detailing her sad life probably won't do much for her legacy whichshould be one of enormous contribution to cinematic and musical culture rather than yet another recounting of her personal tragedies. See, they didn't call her "The World's Greatest Entertainer" for nothing. Can we please talk about that.
Judy G was the subject of a popular television biopic as recently as 2001. Tammy Blanchard played her as a young starlet. Judy Davis took over as she became a great star and netted AFI, Globe, BFCA, SAG and Emmy statues, a sizeable haul by any account, for her impersonation.
Now, it's no secret that my love for Anne Hathaway has been growing exponentially (she made me love her. I didn't wanna do it. I didn't wanna do it) these past couple of years but is she right for this? She keeps getting stronger as an actress and she can sing beautifully but, here's the catch: Would they really let anyone not lipsynch to Judy? (This isn't a Tommy Femia show! It's a movie) And if Hathaway is going to be in a musical I want to hear that showtune friendly voice of hers, damnit.
Hathaway turns 27 this year and even though I'm no great fan of biopics I must admit that it's probably the perfect age to play Garland. It's young enough to just barely get away with playing her as a teen star and it's old enough to play her at the peak of her movie powers (the Meet Me in St. Louis years of the mid 40s) followed by her quick flameout and first career ressurrection. I think modern audiences tend to think that Judy Garland's comeback in A Star is Born (1954) was the comeback of a middle aged star, regaining her luster for another iconic role (in the same category as Bette Davis in All About Eve for example). But it's not so. Garland was in fact only 32 when A Star is Born surfaced. Like the last inimitable iconic vocalist to get a biopic (Edith Piaf, who some consider the French Judy) she aged rapidly. That's what numerous addictions will do to you. (Let us pray they don't feel the need to scramble Judy's narrative)
Would Hathaway win a Marion Cotillard style Oscar doing this or is this just a bad idea all around? I suspect it's a moot question. Remember when various actresses were going to play Marlene Dietrich(Uma Thurman, Gwyneth Paltrow, etc...)? That bio also didn't have a script or a director. It was merely a dream vehicle intended to drive someone towards gold statues. It never found keys for the ignition.
Updated to add ~ Paul Outlaw is right: Hathaway actually looks more like Judy's offspring Liza Minnelli
and she's never had a biopic. It figures. I have an unhealthy relationship to biopics and she's one of the only stars I'd love to see get one. Therefore it shan't happen. My love is a curse!
*for new readers, the other nine favorite actresses in alpha order: Deneuve, Davis, Fonda, Monroe, Moore, Pfeiffer, Streep, Taylor and Wood. But here's the top 20 and here's the top 100 ...because why stop at 10? There are so many actresses worth loving?
This photo of French goddess Isabelle Adjani (pictured left with Muriel Cathra) was taken 36 years ago... today! She was 3 months shy of her 18th birthday.
She seems quite pleased to be photographed... and why not? The future was bright. At the time she was doing television but her Oscar-nominated breakthrough The Story of Adele H was only two years away. That French film made her the youngest Best Actress nominee ever (a record she held until Keisha Castle-Hughes teared up in Whale Rider in 2003).
<-- Isabelle with Gael Garcia Bernal in 2003 @ Cannes
That's not her only claim to the history books. She is tied with Juliette Binoche and Simone Signoret for most Oscar nominations for a French actress (only two each --but that's more than Catherine Deneuve, Julie Delpy, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Devos, Ludivine Sagnier, Sylvie Testud, Jeanne Moreau and Emmanuelle Béart put together. sniffle). Another tie for the history books: Adjani is one of only four actresses (Sophia Loren, Liv Ullman, Penélope Cruz are the others) to have multiple nominations for performances IN a foreign language.
Highlights of Isabelle's career are many but these are the ones I think of first: She offered up the most exquisitely inviting neck in any vampire film (Nosferatu, 1979). She survived Ishtar ('87) and won an Oscar nomination for her very next film Camille Claudel ('89) and she gave birth to the first heir of Daniel Day-Lewis (Gabriel Kane Day-Lewis). On a more personal note... she also starred in one of only a handful of movies that yours truly has ever paid to see twice on opening weekend due to total in-the-moment euphoria (Queen Margot, 1994).
Rent one of her movies this week and drink up her beauty as hungrily as Nosferatu slurped from her alabaster neck. *
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