Reeling

Joker's wild

Here's a first glimpse of what Heath Ledger will look like as The Joker in next summer's The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan's follow-up to his excellent Batman Begins. Judging by the creep-out factor of the photo, it's safe to assume Nolan is preserving the mature, camp-free tone of the first movie.

Viewing log

Tuesday May 29

Knocked Up (2007): In which writer-director Judd Apatow proves The 40 Year-Old Virgin was no fluke.

Paris, Je T'aime (2006)

Monday May 28

Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981): Reminds you what a vibrant and engaging actor Richard Dreyfuss was in his prime. Didactic and manipulative but still thoroughly engaging, marred only by what could be the most pretentious dream sequence ever put on film.

Friday May 25

Crazy Love (2007): Truth really is stranger than fiction.

Thursday May 24

The Fallen Idol (1948): Further proof, as if any more were needed, that Carol Reed deserves a spot alongside Hitchcock, Ford and Wilder as one of the all-time great directors.

Everything sounds snootier in French

The stand-alone cut of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, which clocks in at 127 minutes (or 40 minutes longer than the version seen in Grindhouse), premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week, awesomely retitled Boulevard de la Mort. Premiere's Glenn Kenny was there and liked what he saw.

No word yet on whether U.S. audiences will have a chance to see the long version in theaters - doubtful, considering Grindhouse's weak box-office grosses - but it's practically guaranteed to hit DVD later this year.

X marks the spot in The Departed - the prequel

Universal Pictures has finally released Howard Hawks' 1932 masterful Scarface as a stand-alone DVD (it was previously available only as a bonus on a deluxe gift set of the Brian De Palma/Al Pacino remake).

To go along with my previous post on how Martin Scorsese stole paid homage to Hawks' use of the letter X as a symbol for impending doom in The Departed, here are a few screen grabs from the movie in which X makes a cameo appearance.

 

 

Technically, any scene Paul Muni appears in contains an X, if you count his scar.

Finally, the momentous episode of The Sopranos that aired two weeks ago contained a blatant reference to The Departed and the appearance of not one but two Xs moments before the death of a major character. Coincidence or not? You decide. Click on images to make them bigger.

Check out the rearview mirror!

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. . A plus sign is just an X turned sideways.

Viewing log

Monday May 22

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

* Scarface (1932)

Endangered species

Q: What do the Dallas Morning News, the Atlanta Constitution-Journal, the Rocky Mountain News, the Tampa Tribune and now the Fort Lauderdale South Florida Sun-Sentinel have in common?

A: They are all daily newspapers that, over the last few months, have decided they can do without a full-time movie critic on staff.

This troubles me greatly for two reasons: One is purely selfish, self-preservational and obvious.

The other, though, has nothing to do with my personal job security. The fact that film writing is increasingly being deemed expendable by newspaper owners at a time when newspapers are scrambling to reinvent themselves and remain relevant in the Internet age should alarm infuriate anyone who cares about film and film culture.

To say that critics (not just of movies, but of TV, dance, music, etc.) are not worth saving devalues the importance of the role of the arts in our everyday lives and the public's interest in them. And that, in turn, feeds the de-evolution of the general discourse on popular art.

In other words, if I want to read a discussion of, say, last night's harrowing episode of The Sopranos, I want to read this, not this. You have to believe that a sophisticated culture would not only agree with that, but also deem it something worthy of financial investment.

Here's a great essay by Time magazine's Richard Schickel on why critics still matter.

Saving the best for last

The Miami Beach Cinematheque is bringing David Lynch's Inland Empire to town for a one-night only screening on June 24 at the Colony Theater on South Beach. This will be the last time the movie, which Lynch distributed himself, will be projected in a theater before it hits DVD on August 14.

Shot on digital video over a span of two years and running three hours, the movie has been a love-hate proposition for critics, described as everything from "an interminable bore" to "an amazing and unshakeable experience."  In other words, it sounds like almost every movie Lynch has directed, which automatically makes it a must-see.

Making the evening even more special is that Lynch will introduce the movie from the Colony stage via live webcam from his own living room. Lynch himself will be introduced via a musical interlude by stream-of-consciousness guitarist Sasha Weisfeld, whose improvisational performances are based on what just took place in the room he happens to be in at the moment.

The Inland Empire screening is part of the Cinematheque's month-long "Let's Experiment!", which will be showcasing experimental and avant-garde films throughout June. Tickets go on sale today via Ticketmaster for the general public and are available here for Miami Beach Film Society members.

For a quick Lynch fix to tide you over until Inland Empire arrives, check out this short he unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival last week.

Viewing log

Saturday May 19

* Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992): I enjoy this one a tiny bit more every time I watch it, which means by 2015, I may actually like it. But I still think it was a mistake to go the prequel route.

Speaking of Twin Peaks, anyone who's been watching the DVD set of the show's second season and wants to feed their obsession will find a welcome home here.

Friday May 18

Coming to America (1988): Had never caught up with this Eddie Murphy blockbuster. Why do John Landis' movies age so badly (with only a couple of exceptions)?

 

Thursday May 17

The Hitcher (2007): Just as pointless as I expected, although it's still kind of a must-see if you're a fan of the original, which I am. Baffled as to why the alternate ending included on the DVD wasn't used. Also contains one of the best examples I've ever seen of when not to use a pop/rock song as wallpaper: The extended police car chase/pileup sequence would have been 100 times better without Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" on the sountrack.

Anticipation

Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells has seen Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men and he's calling it "staggering... the Coens' best dark film ever. fuller and more refined than the classic Blood Simple, more solemn and straight-on emotional than Miller's Crossing, and at least on par with their much-loved Fargo."

This is exactly the kind of reaction I was hoping to hear out of Cannes, where No Country For Old Men is making its world premiere. The film is now being distributed in the U.S. in late fall by Miramax Films, and a long-time friend who works there e-mailed me this week and all but promised that I wouldn't have to wait too much longer to see it. This would make her my best friend in the entire world.

Gone fishing

Taking a few days off this week to rest up for the oncoming summer movie onslaught. If you're looking for something to see this weekend and Shrek 3 just doesn't do it for you, go check out Away From Her, Sarah Polley's terrific directorial debut, which is not to be missed. Trust me on this.

Viewing log

* The Matrix (1999): It's been several years since I watched this one again, and the superb new HD-DVD set is so good, it almost made me want to sit through Matrix Revolutions again. Almost.

Coppola and I

Here's a shot of Francis Ford Coppola and myself on the stage of the Colony Theater during last night's Q&A session following a screening of the documentary CODA: 30 Years Later. I was a little nervous at the beginning (OK, more than a little) but I grew more comfortable as the hour went on.

In case you didn't manage attend for some baffling reason, here's a rundown of what you missed. Thanks again to Dana Keith and the Miami Beach Cinematheque for organizing the event and bringing major-league film culture to Miami.

Watch this space in the coming days for news about the Cinematheque's next major screening, this one coming in June. Here's a not-so-subtle two-word clue for you: Inland Empire.

Viewing log

Sunday May 13

CODA: 30 Years Later (2007)

No butts

The Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board has announced it will now factor in the amount of cigarette smoking in a movie when it doles out it G, PG, PG-13, R or NC-17 ratings.

The board will use three criteria when determining whether a movie's rating is affected by its cigarette content: 1) Is the smoking pervasive? 2) Does the film glamorize smoking? and 3) Is there a historic or other mitigating creed?

This means that a whole lot of movies are going to have to be re-rated under the board's new stance. For example, guaranteed to now get the adults-only NC-17 label are:

Basic Instinct

Wild at Heart

Bridget Jones's Diary

All French movies

The horror! The horror!

Imagine being trapped in a desolate farmhouse - indulge me here - under attack by flesh-eating zombies. Your cornered spouse is screaming out for help. Do you rush to his or her side, knowing it spells certain doom for both of you? Or do you turn around and hightail it out of there, your beloved's crying out your name in disbelief as you flee?

Most of us would say we'd do the former. But at the beginning of 28 Weeks Later, in a moment of extreme panic, a man (Robert Carlyle) abandons his wife -- the mother of his children -- as she is being attacked by snarling cannibals.

The scene kicks off 28 Weeks Later, a sequel to the British import 28 Days Later, on a disturbing note. It also makes it clear that although Spanish filmmaker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (who made his debut with 2001's heady sci-fi thriller Intacto) isn't above doling out the sort of ''gotcha'' scares designed to send your popcorn flying, he's also out to make a scary movie in which the horror emanates from a deeper, more profound place than a guy jumping out of the shadows wielding a power tool.

During a recent visit to Miami to promote the film, Fresnadillo, 39, said he wouldn't categorize 28 Weeks Later as horror. ''It's more of an apocalyptic thriller,'' he said of the movie, which relates what happens after Britain, having been almost wiped out by a contagious virus that turned people into raging lunatics, begins the process of rebuilding. ``My goal was always to make a thriller that had horror elements, but right from the beginning of the movie, I wanted to ensure it was always the human beings who create the terror of a situation, not the monsters.''

Buoyed by an increasingly permissive ratings board that has allowed filmmakers to push the boundaries of R-rated violence and driven by moviegoing young adults who can't get enough of the scary stuff, the horror genre is in the midst of one of the longest and healthiest booms in history. The major studios have released 16 movies with horror or thriller elements already this year, and many more are heading our way this summer: Hostel Part II will serve up more torture and dismemberment; Kevin Costner plays a serial killer in Mr. Brooks; Lindsay Lohan loses a few body parts in an encounter with a murderer in I Know Who Killed Me, and the Michael Myers saga will be rebooted for a new generation in Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween.

Like its predecessor, 28Weeks Later falls on the gorier side of the horror film spectrum, following the tradition of rampaging zombie movies inspired by George A. Romero's seminal 1968 freakshow Night of the Living Dead.

But despite its notoriety for pushing the limits of on-screen violence, the low-budget Night of the Living Dead was also a social commentary on the civil rights movement and the changing moral climate in the United States of the late 1960s. And 28Weeks Later, despite its eye gougings and other bits of socially unacceptable behavior, could also be read as an allegory for the U.S. involvement in Iraq, showing what happens when military forces deem individual lives expendable for the sake of a greater good, as well as a cautionary tale about the inevitable societal disintegration that occurs once basic inarguable values, such as the sanctity of human life, are tossed away.

Those rigorously moral and humanistic underpinnings give 28 Weeks Later a kind of power that 100 Saws and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes could never achieve.

''The 20th century has been the most horrific in history in terms of war and blood and violence,'' said David J. Skal, author of The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. ``We live in horrifically violent times, and we've become kind of inured to it, so I don't think it's a coincidence that these movies are so popular again. But I don't think this current crop of ultra-violent films has anything to do with the world around us. They're just part of this horrible dumbing down of popular culture that is taking place.''

28 Weeks Later contains several moments destined to enthrall horror buffs, from a terrifying sequence in which a group of characters must descend a staircase littered with decaying bodies in complete darkness to a quick musical cue in which Fresnadillo pays homage to The Exorcist. The director certainly does not look down on genre: He just believes that there has to be something more going on in a film than surface effect.

''If the audience doesn't feel for the characters in a movie, then it doesn't matter what genre you're working with,'' he said. ``If there is no emotional connection, then the movie evaporates from memory the moment the projector stops. This is a story about war between the virus and the human beings, but it is also the story of a broken family in the midst of that war. And that, I hope, is what ultimately makes this apocalypse feel real,''

And for those who prefer the horror a little less realistic: Saw IV is coming to a theater near you this October.

Playing to the home crowd

Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola's first film since 1997's The Rainmaker, will make its world premiere during the second annual RomaCinemaFest in Italy in late October.

Coppola told the Hollywood Reporter he hopes the movie, which is set during World War II and stars Tim Roth, will represent a new period in his career where he will return to making "personal films" instead of working as a gun-for-hire.

You'll have a rare chance to ask Coppola about this and anything else you'd like on Sunday night, when he will participate in an hour-long Q&A session following a screening of a documentary, CODA: 30 Years Later, about the making of his new film. Tickets are available via Ticketmaster or at the Colony boxoffice.

Shrek, shmek

I never read reviews of movies before a) I've seen the film myself and b) have finished writing my own review. But since I have no plans to ever see Shrek the Third if I can help it, I read The Hollywood Reporter's pan of the film.

This line from the review pretty much describes how I've felt about the Shrek series: "The rude send-up of beloved fairy tale conventions remains - somewhat - but these playful jabs no longer come as pleasing surprises. You expect them. And you expect better."

With the exception of the Gingerbread Cookie dude and Antonio Banderas' Puss in Boots, there is practically zero wit or cleverness in these movies. I've never understood why they've been such huge hits the world over. But then some things will always be a mystery to me.

Viewing log

Wednesday May 9

The Sopranos - Episode 82: Walk Like a Man (2007): Caught up late with this week's episode, which I realize is not technically a movie. But wow. So many fantastic scenes packed into that one hour that it felt like a full-length movie. One of the best in the show's entire history, I think. And only four episodes to go before the end, which is increasingly looking to be a feel-good, happily-ever-after finale for everyone - not.

Congratulations

I first met Phoebe Flowers when she was still a teenager (or at least looked like a teenager) and working as a clerk at the Herald's Broward bureau. She sent me a very polite instant message asking me if there was any way she could attend the press screening for Ang Lee's adaptation of The Ice Storm. Being the all-around nice and friendly guy that I am, I said sure and gave her the time and place.

A short time later, Phoebe started writing backup movie reviews for The Herald, then became the film critic for the now-defunct Street weekly and is now the film writer for some disreputable rag north of the county line.

Last week, Phoebe won the first-place prize for criticism in the Society of Professional Journalists' Green Eyeshade Awards contest. I am strangely proud of her, as if she were my little sister or something, even though she always speaks to me as if I were a 10 year-old boy and occasionally still berates me for having played certain games involving paladins and ogres as a kid or giving four stars and a year-end Top 10 spot to a certain movie she dismissed as geekboy fodder.

Then again, she was one of the few critics who gave Spider-Man 3 the respect and admiration it deserves. Obviously, that Green Eyeshade Award is well deserved.

Glass houses

The man who gave the world Jar Jar Binks apparently thinks Spider-Man 3 is "silly".

Wonder why he would think that?

Viewing log

Tuesday May 8

Away From Her (2006): Is it too early to start clamoring for Julie Christie to get an Oscar?

Foiled again

My feature on Vivien Lesnik Weisman's documentary The Man of Two Havanas was going to run on 1A last week, and I like nothing better than getting film stories on the front page. Unfortunately, breaking news from Cuba kept bumping my story, until it finally ended up running inside Monday's Tropical Life section.

Anyway, the story is here, and you can watch the film's trailer here.

Viewing log

Monday May 7

Georgia Rule (2007): Why, oh why, didn't Connie Ogle review this?