Reeling

On ''Dune,'' ''Shadowland'' and trying to film unfilmable novels

Actor-turned-director Peter Berg (Very Bad Things, The Kingdom, The Rundown) has told MTV News the Dune remake that was announced last year is really going to happen. Writer Josh Zutamer has turned in a script that is a whopping 200 pages long.

Berg said he must now figure out how to whittle down that screenplay into a manageable, feature-length film "without offending the purists ... filmmakers have struggled [in the past] because it's a very complicated book to crack."

Berg also promises a radically different Dune than we've previously seen on movie and TV screens.

"My experience with the book was different than David Lynch's experience or the people behind the Sci Fi Channel's experience," Berg said. "I found it to be more of an adventure tale, more of a muscular action/adventure story. I think that's my approach, not as an R-rated film, but as a pretty hard PG-13 film about a young man dealing with issues of vengeance over the death of his father and wanting some payback and having to come to terms with his destiny along the way."

Ted, one of the friends who went with me to see the awesome Springsteen show on Sunday, is a hardcore Dune/Frank Herbert fan. On the way to the concert, we happened to be talking about the book and what he liked best about it, and none of what he said bears any relation to what Berg is describing. Maybe that's why Ted said he has no interest in ever seeing a Dune film adaptation, because the movie that is in his head will always trump whatever an actual filmmaker comes up with.

That's the same way I feel about Peter Straub's 1980 novel Shadowland, which I first read while in high school and remains one of my favorite books, all these years later. I read that book obsessively. I carried it with me everywhere and secretly read while my 10th grade English teacher, Brenda Feldman, was going on about dangling participles and other such nonsense.

 I've always thought Shadowland would make a sensational movie, except it would have to be R-rated and about four hours long (also, I would need to be the one who directed it). Shadowland also deals with teens and magic, so a film made today would forever be compared to Harry Potter, except this one is much, much darker. Although the novel was unfilmable 29 years ago, it would be a cakewalk with contemporary CGI. Still, I don't think a Shadowland movie is ever going to happen, post-Potter. And I'm totally fine with that. 

I got to interview Straub at his home in Manhattan's Upper West Side a few years ago. Even though I was there to talk about his new book, I immediately started babbling about Shadowland and asked him why no one had ever turned it into a film. He told me many had tried but they all eventually gave up, because no one could lick the screenplay, which is pretty much the problem with Dune.

Then Straub asked his wife to bring him a copy of a just-published new edition of Shadowland and he signed and dedicated it to me. That's one of only two times in my career I have accepted an unsolicited autograph from someone I was interviewing. It was awesome. I also think Straub liked me immediately because we both stutter when we speak.

Review: ''The Informant!''

A whimsical and light-hearted spin on a serious story of corporate whistleblowing, The Informant! is the movie Erin Brockovich might have been if director Steven Soderbergh had been smoking some funny weed on the set (and if Brockovich has been a compulsive liar). Everything about The Informant! - from Marvin Hamlisch's carnival-funhouse score to the exclamation mark added to the title of Kurt Eichenwald's nonfiction book on which the film is based - hints at daffiness.

Soderbergh has taken Scott Z. Burns' script, which on paper must have read like a straightforward thriller, and given it an unexpected, and at times inexplicable, comic spin. Nothing that happens in The Informant! technically qualifies as comedy. But Soderbergh's off-kilter take on the material, and the gradual way in which he peels away the many, many layers of his protagonist, keep you smiling throughout.

The director is helped considerably by a terrific bit of dryly funny acting from a chunky Matt Damon, who wields reams of dialogue here as efficiently as he dispatched baddies in the Bourne pictures. The actor gained 30 pounds for the role of Mark Whitacre, a former biochemist who helped concoct a profitable additive for the food conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and by 1992 had transferred to its accounting department.

When Whitacre informs his bosses that a Japanese client is trying to extort $10 million from ADM, they call in the FBI. But Whitacre, concerned that the case could broaden and potentially taint him, secretly reaches out to two agents (Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) and tells them about a world-wide price-fixing scheme at the company.

Right from the start, The Informant! makes us privy to Whitacre's random thoughts via voiceover, clueing us in from the outset that there's something not quite right with this otherwise seemingly brilliant and sane man (''Paranoid is what people who are trying to take advantage of you call you. I read that in an in-flight magazine''). The trouble with Whitacre, which becomes clearer as the investigation stretches into years, throws a gigantic wrinkle into the otherwise familiar story of someone who dares take on a powerful corporation.

Soderbergh's decision to emphasize the loopier aspects of the case does not detract from the story's fascinating bizarreness, and there are moments late in the film when Whitacre's increasingly desperate plight becomes genuinely affecting. The Informant! may be cartoonish, but it is a cartoon inhabited by real people. Some of them just happen to be certifiably nuts.

Patrick Swayze RIP

Patrick Swayze, who died Monday at age 57 after a long and much-publicized battle with pancreatic cancer, became a big star after the huge success of two romantic dramas, Dirty Dancing and Ghost. Those films also turned Swayze into a sex symbol.

But I much preferred the grace and poise Swayze brought to his tough-guy roles: The exasperated older brother of two poor Tulsa orphans in The Outsiders; the defacto leader of a gang of youthful rebels fighting off Russian invaders in Red Dawn; the bouncer hired to clean up the toughest honkytonk bar on the planet in the guilty pleasure Road House; the mastermind behind a pack of surfing bank robbers in Point Break.

There was a nobility to Swayze that came across in his screen performances, and his choices of roles - including a drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar and a pedophile in Donnie Darko - were indicative of a confident actor willing to take chances with his People-anointed mantle of "Sexiest Man Alive." I don't know anyone who would describe Swayze as a great actor. But he enjoyed a popularity and public good will talent alone cannot guarantee.

Life after ''Basterds''

Nikki Finke reports actor Christoph Waltz will follow up his memorable performance as the snaky Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds by playing another baddie. Waltz has been cast as the main villain in The Green Hornet, which is currently filming with Seth Rogen, Cameron Diaz and Jay Chou as Kato.

Even with Michel Gondry directing (and that awesome theme song), I remain completely apathetic toward the prospect of a Green Hornet movie. The whole thing just has an aura of dud about it. That's not based on anything other than my own gut instinct. And the addition of Waltz - not exactly a daring or creative bit of casting - just makes it all seem more ho-hum.

Even though he stars in it, Woody Harrelson thought ''Zombieland'' was going to suck

Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg (photographed above by El Nuevo Herald's C.M. Guerrero at the Shore Club on Miami Beach) spent the day doing interviews before tonight's red-carpet premiere of Zombieland at the AMC Sunset Place.

Considering how played out the zom-com genre seemed to be, I asked them if they were skeptical when they first received the Zombieland script, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. Here's what Harrelson said in his laidback drawl:

"I was running around with five scripts in my bag at the time, and my first reaction was to read it last. My agent kept asking me 'When are you gonna read Zombieland?' But I just thought ... 'A zombie movie; it's gotta be stupid.'

"Eventually I whittled down the pile and got to that script and I was like 'Well, I guess I better read it.' But within moments of starting it, I thought 'Oh my God. We're in good hands here.' When you watch this movie, you immediately know you're in good hands with the director. I felt the same way about the script."

Harrelson admitted he had some qualms about working with a first-time director (Ruben Fleischer) with no experience in the feature-film arena.

"It did give me pause. And even though [Ruben] was great to work with, and so fun and open to everything - in spite of all the good experiences during the production, when I went to see the movie at a screening in Orange County, I was really worried it was going to be terrible. Because you never know. But I was delighted. It turned out great. I'm really jazzed about it."

I also asked Harrelson about his exit scene in No Country For Old Men, which I always thought was a terrific bit of acting. Without saying a word, Harrelson conveys his character's terror after realizing he's about to die and has no way of dodging the bullet.

"I was really interested in adding some stuff that was in the book that didn't make it into the scene. I had the audacity to rewrite that scene. The night before we shot it, me and Javier [Bardem] practiced the new version - just little cool things we added, like this line where he said 'You look in my eyes because you think if you don't blink and you just stare in my eyes, I won't kill you.'

"It was some cool stuff. But when we did it for [the Coens], they were like 'No, let's do it how it was written.' It was still fun. Just a little exercise in futility."

''The Road'' gets a new release date - again

For the umpteenth time, the Weinstein Co. has changed the release date of John Hillcoat's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, although they are promising the new date will stick.

Variety reports the film will now open wide on Nov. 25, instead of the previously announced date of Oct. 16.

The Road already screened at the Venice Film Festival, where it generated mixed reviews, and will be shown at the Toronto Film Festival, which starts tomorrow. I don't get to go to Toronto anymore, so I will have to wait a little longer. But seriously, Weinsteins. Stop being such teases.

After a brief reprieve, the dolphin slaughter documented in ''The Cove'' resumes

Although there was hope last week that the mass slaughter of dolphins in the Japanese coastal town of Taiji had ceased after the release of The Cove, the reprieve was only temporary. According to a report on Nikkan Sports (translated here), thirteen fishing boats rounded up 100 bottlenose dolphins and 50 pilot whales earlier this morning and herded them into the cove.

And so it starts all over again. For suggestions on what you can do, go here.

UPDATE: Apparently none of the captured dolphins will be killed, due to a nonslaughter policy adopted by the Taiji fisherman after mounting pressure resulting from "The Cove." Unlike previous years, dolphins that are not sold to aquariums and theme parks will be set free. The whales, however, won't be so lucky.

Review: ''The September Issue''

The devil doesn't sprout horns or bare her fangs in The September Issue: She doesn't even wear that much Prada (she likes her Chanel, though). In director R.J. Cutler's brisk and snappy documentary about the making of the September 2007 issue of Vogue - the fattest ever published, clocking in at more than 800 pages back when people still bought magazines - editor Anna Wintour exhibits an icy, unflappable veneer.

If something were to make Wintour angry, she'd just vaporize it with laser beams shot from her eyes. At least that is the impression left by Cutler's film, which never digs too deeply into the psyche of fashion's fascinating goddess. The film also leaves you with a newfound respect for The Devil Wears Prada, in which Meryl Streep and the set designers got everything so right that The September Issue incites startling moments of déjà vu.

When Wintour says "Just because you wear something from Kmart doesn't mean you're a dumb person," she's trying to be warm and compassionate. We learn that Wintour's father was the product of a strict Victorian upbringing ("I'm not sure his mother ever spoke to him"), which explains a little about her. And there is a glimmer of warmth in her dealings with her daughter, who ridicules the whole fashion industry and wants to go to law school instead ("We'll see," Wintour says ominously), and with Thakoon Panichgul, a young designer whose career she helps launch.

Mostly, though, Wintour remains an enigma: When she looks off to the side and rolls her tongue when someone dares disagree with her, you can't tell whether she's annoyed or has just lost interest. For personality, The September Issue relies on Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley, a colorful whirlwind who plays tennis with a Louis Vuitton towel fashionably draped around his shoulders, and, particularly, on Grace Coddington, the magazine's creative director.

 A former Vogue model who joined the staff after a car accident, Coddington becomes the movie's real star - a passionate, endlessly creative woman who labors over the most minute detail of the magazine's photographs and layouts only to have her work overruled by Wintour's whims and tastes. The constant tug of war between the women gives The September Issue its drama and narrative spine. The movie also celebrates the considerable creativity that goes into each issue. But as for getting close to Wintour - or even explaining the unfathomable mystery that can be haute couture - the film comes up empty. Some things are just not meant for us puny mortals to comprehend.

The September Issue opens in South Florida on Friday, Sept. 11.

Review: ''It Might Get Loud''

The first thing we see in Davis Guggenheim's documentary It Might Get Loud is The White Stripes' Jack White building a makeshift electric guitar from a couple of pieces of old wood and an empty Coke bottle. The musical capabilities of the contraption are highly dubious. But when he's done, White plugs his makeshift instrument into an amplifier and plays it, as if to imply that anybody could do the same thing.

White is being disingenuous, of course. Yes, anyone can pick up a guitar and wrest noise from it. But only people such as White, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and U2's The Edge - the other subjects of this quietly exultant movie - can turn that noise into an indelible, seminal part of musical soundtrack of one's life.

As a follow-up to his Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth, Guggenheim has opted for a much less controversial subject, bringing three generations of revered guitarists together in a warehouse to see what happens. The result is some polite and awkwardly self-conscious conversation, a little fawning (watch White and The Edge's awestruck smiles as Page plays a bit of Whole Lotta Love), and, inevitably, the occasional impromptu jam (including Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground and In My Time of Dying).

The best parts of It Might Get Loud, though, occur when Guggenheim visits with the musicians one on one. The reclusive Page, immensely likable and eloquent, invites us into his British mansion, plays old records, talks about his early career (including a stint with The Yardbirds and his decision to quit music and devote himself to painting) and says that when the album Led Zeppelin II was released in 1969, the group was so dismissed by critics that the record received a one-paragraph review in London newspapers.

The Edge revisits the Dublin high school where he met his U2 bandmates (even pointing out the bulletin board on which drummer Larry Mullen Jr. posted his "Musicians Wanted" notice), digs up a pile of unlabeled four-track demo tapes, plays them to find out what's on them (jackpot: Where the Streets Have No Name) and reveals that the secret to his success rests with the filters he uses to process the sounds that emanate from his guitar.(When he plays the opening riff from Elevation with and without distortion, the difference is shocking). There is also footage of an early, amusing video of U2, made when the men were teenagers, in which a disastrously uncoordinated Bono appears to be feigning an epileptic seizure onstage.

White concentrates on his love of the blues (he shares with us his favorite song of all time, the Son House's classic Grinnin' In Your Face, which consists solely of warbly vocals and handclaps), talks about his decision to make red and white the official colors of his current group, and reminisces about the rock band he formed with his boss while working at an upholstering factory (its name? The Upholsterers).

Guggenheim wisely eschews the sort of formal structure that might have given It Might Get Loud the dry tone of an educational documentary. Nor does he recount history that has already been documented exhaustively. Instead, the film flits from subject to subject, allowing you to bask in the company of its subjects as they pull back the curtain a tiny bit to reveal how they do what they do. It Might Get Loud won't teach you how to play the guitar or make you quit your job to pursue a rock-'n'-roll dream. But it does make you want to pull out some old records and listen with a new appreciation for certain sounds you once might have taken for granted.

It Might Get Loud opens Friday, Sept. 11 at the Regal South Beach, Cinema Paradiso and Shadowood.

Wanna crash the ''Zombieland'' red carpet premiere for free?

Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg are coming to Miami on Monday Sept. 14 to promote their new film, the horror-comedy Zombieland, which looks pretty awesome. They will also attend the local premiere at the AMC Sunset Place 24 theaters at 7:30 p.m. that night. Unlike most red-carpet premieres, which are invitation-only, you can actually attend this one. For free, even.

There are two ways to get your undead little hands on a ticket. First, you can send your name and mailing address to miamipubpromo@43kix.com with the subject line "ZOMBIELAND screening" and you'll get a pass in the mail good for two people. There are only 50 passes available via this route, though.

The other way to get in is to dress up as a zombie and show up at the theater by 6:45 p.m. Anyone with a convincingly undead look about them will be allowed to the show, as long as there are seats available. Same goes for the passes: Just because you have one doesn't guarantee admission, so if you get there late, you're not getting in. Biting tantrums will not be tolerated.

As a bonus, the studio will have a professional make-up artist available inside the theater to turn you into a Hollywood-quality ghoul for free. It will be fun - not to mention thematically appropriate - to watch Zombieland in a theater filled with zombies. If you don't manage to get in, the movie opens in theaters Oct. 2.

The Germans love their ''Basterds'' too

The GlobalPost's Paul Hockenos reports audiences in Germany are going ga-ga for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, despite that country's understandable sensitivity toward movies that take liberties with World War II history.

When I showed up at my neighborhood theater in Berlin, the ticket line reached out to the curb. Once inside the jam-packed theater, I found myself as intrigued by the reaction of the German cinema-goers as I was by the film.

It was plain from the bursts of laughter and applause that they thoroughly relished all two-and-a-half hours of it, even though the graphic, blood-soaked farce would appear to break every German's rule for political correctness.

 

The article also points out that $11 million of Basterds total budget was financed by State-financed German foundations. German critics have also responded warmly to Basterds, Hockenos states, in part because of the film's revisionist history (warning: major plot spoilers below!).

One of Germany’s foremost critics, Georg Seesslen in the magazine Der Spiegel, noted that Inglourious Basterds was the first film to actually show Hitler die. Why, he asks, had no one ever thought of killing off Hitler on the silver screen? By the end of Inglourious Basterds, he wrote, Hitler is "more than dead. He is kaputt — all shot up, burned and chopped to pieces.”

All other films symbolically left the book open, thus turning Hitler’s evil itself into a spectre that never perished. By implication, Germany could never be “normal” because Hitler lived on, at least on film.

German audiences also probably appreciate the extent of the cultural homework Tarantino did while writing Basterds. My German friend Sven saw the movie last week and was impressed with Tarantino's scrupulous attention to detail, such as the way Germans use their thumb when flashing a number three with their hand.

Has the documentary ''The Cove'' succeeded in halting the dolphin slaughter in Taiji?

In a blog post written yesterday, animal-rights activist Richard O'Barry claims the mass slaughter of dolphins in the Japanese coastal town of Taiji as seen in the documentary The Cove has ceased.

"Today is September 1st, the first day of the dolphin slaughter season in Japan," O'Barry writes. "But when I arrived today by bus from Kansai Airport with media representatives from all over the world, the notorious Cove from the movie was empty. There were no dolphin killers in sight."

O'Barry also says there were a slew of Japanese TV news crews at the site, which is a huge deal, because Japanese media had never covered the slaughter until now.

"These TV stations have REFUSED to cover the story in Taiji for years and years," O'Barry writes. "NOW, for the first time, they have shown up, with cameras rolling. The head policeman talking with me even said, for the cameras, that the police are not there to support the dolphin killing fishermen. We shook hands, and they left.

"As I said, it is a good day for the dolphins. And for me personally, as the police only wanted to talk with me, not arrest me!"

The Polish are better at movie posters than anybody

Regular readers of this space may have noticed I am a huge fan of movie poster art. For some reason, Poland makes the most striking film posters of any country in the world, although they make every single movie look like a demented and nightmarish horror film.

It's kind of comical. For example, here is the American one-sheet for 1989's Weekend at Bernie's:

 Here is the Polish poster for the same movie:

 The U.K. Guardian has posted a preview of an exhibition of Polish film one-sheets opening this Friday in London's Cinephilia West. I have posted a couple of my favorites below. Go here to check out their full preview. For more awesome examples of Polish movie poster art, go here  and here and especially here.

Review: ''Extract''

 

Mike Judge's Extract has some huge belly laughs, a terrific ensemble cast and more than a few instances of inspired comic brilliance. So why doesn't the movie ever really take off? Judge, the creator of TV's Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill and director of the little-seen Idiocracy and the much-beloved Office Space, knows how to write a great gag and has a sharp observational wit. But he still hasn't learned how to blend a roster of characters and story incidents into a satisfying whole.

Although never boring and almost continually amusing, Extract doesn't work as a movie because you don't buy a minute of it, even as silly satire. You can't anchor a film with a likable, smart, normal protagonist - self-made businessman Joel (Jason Bateman), owner of a successful flavor-extract company - and then surround him with characters so resoundingly broad and stupid they make Looney Tunes seem like quantum-physics documentaries.

Everyone in Extract either lives in the real world - like Joel and his wife Suzie (an underused Kristen Wiig) or the beautiful con artist (Mila Kunis) who has trained her sights on the extract company, which is about to be bought out by General Mills - or hails from an alternate universe where the barest semblance of human intelligence is fabled and elusive.

The utter preposterousness doesn't detract from the humor of characters such as Joel's next-door neighboor (David Koechner), a comically bland and dull man unaware that people fear he may bore them to death, or the forklift operator (T.J. Miller) at Joel's company who is obsessed with promoting his thrash-metal rock band.

Ben Affleck practically steals the movie as a bartender with a drug - and drug-spawned idea - to solve any problem (a scene in which he convinces Joel to smoke pot is one of the film's best), and Gene Simmons is hilarious as a slimy personal-injury lawyer who hawks himself on Spanish-language TV as "El Tigre."

Extract has no shortage of fine performances, and Bateman, as on TV's Arrested Development, forms the nobly suffering center toward which they all gravitate. But the lack of connection to anything resembling the real world renders the film as a series of strung-together moments. (Part of what made the summer hit The Hangover so effective is that you completely bought into the surreal circumstances that the movie thrust upon its characters.)

There's nothing plausible about Extract's main plot, which follows Joel's efforts to recharge his sex life by hiring a slack-jawed gigolo (90210's Dustin Milligan, amusingly making everyone else seem smart) to seduce his wife. Yes, the plot is admittedly hatched while Joel is under the influence. But still.

Nothing is ever at stake in a movie in which you can't believe, so Extract amiably floats along from gag to gag, effectively killing 90 minutes without leaving a trace. The picture is funny enough to live forever on home video and cable TV, like Judge's Office Space did. But at the theater, Extract leaves you still hungry for a movie.

Review: ''Lorna's Silence''

There is more plot and narrative in Lorna's Silence than we normally get from Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne - more story and characters to keep track of than there were in Rosetta, The Child, The Son or The Promise. But the quiet tension and growing desperation of its heroine, Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), will feel familiar to fans of the brothers' films.

An Albanian immigrant living in Belgium, Lorna is in the process of attaining her citizenship status after marrying a drug addict, Claudy (Jeremie Renier), in a pre-planned arrangement. Lorna and Claudy are like roommates who don't necessarily like each other: When she fetches him something from the grocery store on her way home from her job at a dry cleaner, he has to pay her for it on the spot.

Except that Claudy has gotten serious about kicking his heroin habit, and he increasingly leans on the reluctant and exasperated Lorna for help. Gradually, we discover that Lorna plans to open a snack bar with her real lover, Sokol (Alban Ukaj), and she has agreed to a complicated scheme with a local hustler (Fabrizio Rongione) to remarry a Russian mobster, a plan that will get her the cash to kick-start her dream business, and her life along with it.

But in time-honored Dardennes tradition, fate and conscience have a way of messing with best-laid plans. Along with its more complex structure, Lorna's Silence also features several other departures for the Dardennes. Their near-documentary realism (which has been infinitely mimicked by other filmmakers but rarely with the same skill) is tempered by writerly touches, including a major plot shift that takes place off-screen and an unannounced jump forward in time, that jolt you out of the movie just as it reaches its most engrossing, heart-rending point.

The mid-film story turn is necessary for the second half of Lorna's Silence to play out as the Dardennes intend, but it's a miscalculation - the first time in their careers when the brothers don't recognize the engine that is really driving their picture. And the movie's gradual drift, in its closing scenes, into territory tentatively bordering on surrealism simply doesn't gel with what has preceded.

Still, even a not-entirely-satisfying work from the Dardennes offers plenty of pleasures, including their eloquent, often silent expression of empathy for their protagonists (this may be the first movie I've seen in which someone has to go to a morgue to identify the body of a loved one and the camera doesn't go in with them, opting to give them space and privacy).

Lorna's Silence also contains a long sequence, culminating with an unusually realistic and passionate sex scene, that is as good at depicting the vagaries of the human heart, and our innate capability for forgiveness toward those who have earned it, as anything in the Dardennes' canon. Lorna's Silence doesn't work, but it's a beautiful misfire.