Thanks to Rollerboy at Awards Daily for linking to the poster.
August 2007
Monthly Archive
August 31, 2007
August 30, 2007
This new film by David Cronenberg looks VERY promising.
Also, check out the soundtrack preview over at Soundtrack Net, Howard Shore’s score seems to have a haunting, melancholy quality that could make it a major year end Oscar contender.
August 30, 2007
Here we go again?
I’m almost ashamed to say that I actually want to see this. The last one wasn’t great, but it was reasonably entertaining trash. Maybe it’s just because Helen Mirren is in it. Or at least that’s how I’ll justify it to myself.
August 30, 2007
I must say I had high hopes for this one, because it is directed by Stranger than Fiction scribe and promising new talent, Zach Helm, features Dustin Hoffman in an eccentric role, and has a musical score composed by Alexandre Desplat. Alas, Desplat has left the project (but he has left it in capable hands, Patrick Doyle [Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire] was hired to take his place) due to scheduling conflicts (he’s also composing the scores to Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution and the children’s fantasy epic The Golden Compass), and from the looks of this trailer, the film is going to be almost panderingly childish.
I hope I’m wrong, but this isn’t promising:
August 29, 2007
Von Donnersmarck Discusses the Late Ulrich Mühe
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Ulrich Mühe (pictured above), the star of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s masterful Oscar winner The Lives of Others (still by far the best film I have seen this year), died suddenly of stomach cancer on July 22nd at age 54. Recently, Entertainment Weekly sat down with Von Donnersmarck to discuss Mühe’s extraordinary performance:
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Looking at Mühe’s other films, like Costra-Gavras’ Amen (about Pope Pius XII’s relationship with the Nazis during WWII) and your film, it seemed like the actor favored movies that made large political statements.
FLORIAN HENCKEL VON DONNERSMARCK: He said that the role of art is not just to leave people at peace, it’s really to get them to think and to feel and to realize what an exciting thing life is.The Lives of Others was your first film. How did a relatively unknown director like you get Mühe (a vet who’d also done movies for Michael Haneke) to join the cast?
Well, the thing is, he really liked my screenplay. He interviewed me for several hours to see if I was up to directing my own script! How much I knew about all the details of the GDR [German Democratic Republic]. So he actually took out his own Stasi files that he had claimed and put them in front of him.When did you know that he’d take the role?
He asked me, ”Okay, you’ve written a screenplay where this person is in an attic for the duration of two hours and he’s moved all the time by everything he hears — how do you act that?” I said to him, ”I don’t think you act it at all.” And then he said, ”Okay, I’ll do it.”
August 27, 2007
The 100 Greatest American Films of All Time
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I recently participated in a poll of movie bloggers from Daily Film Dose to create a list of the 100 greatest American films as an answer to the much contested AFI list. Here is my ballot,in chronological order, and while I probably overlooked a few films, I think it’s pretty complete. Bear in mind these are just American films, so there are a lot of great foreign films that were ineligible.
- The Birth Of A Nation
- Intolerance
- All Quiet On The Western Front
- Dracula
- Frankenstein
- Freaks
- Footlight Parade
- King Kong
- Modern Times
- Bringing Up Baby
- Destry Rides Again
- Gone With The Wind
- Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
- The Wizard Of Oz
- Rebecca
- Citizen Kane
- Sullivan’s Travels
- Casablanca
- Mildred Pierce
- It’s A Wonderful Life
- Sunset Boulevard
- Ace In The Hole
- Singin’ In The Rain
- From Here To Eternity
- Shane
- Rear Window
- All That Heaven Allows
- The Night Of The Hunter
- The Searchers
- Sleeping Beauty
- Psycho
- The Longest Day
- The Manchurian Candidate
- To Kill A Mockingbird
- The Birds
- The Great Escape
- Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
- Mary Poppins
- The Sound Of Music
- Cool Hand Luke
- The Graduate
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Midnight Cowboy
- Little Big Man
- M*A*S*H*
- Patton
- A Clockwork Orange
- Cabaret
- The Godfather
- The Exorcist
- Last Tango In Paris
- Young Frankenstein
- Jaws
- One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
- All The President’s Men
- Network
- Taxi Driver
- Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
- Killer of Sheep
- Star Wars
- The Deer Hunter
- Halloween
- Alien
- Apocalypse Now
- The Empire Strikes Back
- The Shining
- E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
- Sophie’s Choice
- Amadeus
- Blue Velvet
- Platoon
- The Untouchables
- Rain Man
- Batman
- Dances With Wolves
- Goodfellas
- The Silence Of The Lambs
- Unforgiven
- Jurassic Park
- Schindler’s List
- Pulp Fiction
- Braveheart
- Titanic
- Saving Private Ryan
- American Beauty
- The Sixth Sense
- Gladiator
- Gosford Park
- The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring
- Moulin Rouge
- Mulholland Drive
- The Hours
- The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers
- The Pianist
- The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
- Brokeback Mountain
- Good Night, And Good Luck.
- Munich
- Children of Men
- Flags of Our Fathers
August 27, 2007
The Epic 5-Minute Comic-Con Preview of "The Golden Compass"
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August 27, 2007
"Superbad" Tops Weekend Box Office for the 2nd Week in a Row
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Weekend box office estimates:
1. Superbad – $18,000,000
2. The Bourne Ultimatum – $12,361,000
3. Rush Hour 3 – $12,250,000
4. Mr. Bean’s Holiday – $10,121,000
5. WAR – $10,000,000
6. The Nanny Diaries – $7,811,000
7. The Simpsons Movie – $4,400,000
8. Stardust – $3,954,000
9. Hairspray (2007) – $3,450,000
10. The Invasion – $3,140,000
Source: Box Office Mojo
The dorky teenagers of Superbad conquered the weekend box office once again, while international hit Mr. Bean’s Holiday wasn’t as big as it was overseas, despite being the top opener of the weekend, topping out at #4, leading other debuts WAR and The Nanny Diaries at #5 and #6 respectively.
August 26, 2007
This looks amazing…and potentially incendiary. Look for some controversy to swell up around this one when it comes out.
August 26, 2007
Is it just me, or does this trailer give away way too much?
From the Front Row 