Movies

The Lion, The Witch and The Arms Dealer

I took the boys last night to see Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Film Franchise We Hope Will Be a Cash Machine Like Harry Potter. The film's a wonderfully realized vision of the book, at least through my hazy recollection of tearing through all seven novels 25 years ago in the Collier boxed set, which I've kept all of these years. But the logic of the C.S. Lewis novel makes less sense than it did when I was a child. I don't care if they're just a bunch of dissident animals ... (read more)

2005/12/22

Jerry Lewis vs. Jerry's Kids

At an appearance in Chicago Wednesday night, Jerry Lewis flew into a rage when heckled off the stage by disability activists in wheelchairs, telling security to eject one overweight protester by commanding "move that living waterbed out of here." The hecklers were from Jerry's Orphans, a group begun in the early '90s by Mike Ervin, a former Muscular Dystrophy Association poster child. They're angry about their portrayal in the Labor Day Telethon, as described in a documentary The Kids Are All ... (read more)

2005/11/18

Mark Evanier attended an onstage Jerry Lewis interview Thursday night, learning an odd bit of trivia about the comedian's socks: Asked about the white sweatsocks that he usually wears, sometimes even with formal garb, he said, "I wear them because I like them. They feel comfortable to me. I change socks about four times a day, always putting on a brand new, never-before-worn pair. Each year, I send hundreds of pairs of socks to --" and he gave the name of some charitable organization in Las ... (read more)

2005/11/05

Casting a Dark Horse as the Sixth 007

James Bond producers are searching for a new actor to play the role after dumping Pierce Brosnan this week. Media favorites for the next 007 include Hugh Jackman, Heath Ledger, Jude Law, and Clive Owen. I imagine they'll pick someone from this demographic: Top-of-the-marquee actors under 40 from the U.K. or Australia who can handle a black-tie dress code. British bookmakers have Owen as a 4/5 favorite, but some of their other choices are so odd you have to wonder at the collective intelligence ... (read more)

2005/08/21

Grampa Joe and the Chocolate Factory

I saw the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake this afternoon. Some parts were weak -- Johnny Depp's childlike Willy Wonka is much less interesting than Gene Wilder's menacing adult chocolateer -- but I was extremely glad to see that Grampa Joe is still a bastard. The web site Say No to Grampa Joe documents all of the ways that Joe, played by the great Jack Albertson in the original movie, was an anchor dragging down the rest of his family. At the start of the story, we meet Joe, who has ... (read more)

2005/07/31

Robert Wilonsky: Fully Loaded

Dallas Observer film critic Robert Wilonsky: To damn Herbie: Fully Loaded as soporific crap, as lazy profiteering, as yet another needless and cynical remake in a season populated by such con artists, would be as pointless as the movie itself. If you had any hope for it, you're either a Walt Disney executive or Gordon Buford, author of the story "Car-Boy-Girl" that birthed five prior features, including 1969's The Love Bug and the 1997 made-for-TV redo with Bruce Campbell in the Dean Jones ... (read more)

2005/07/15

I Heart Alan Colmes

I've been exchanging e-mail lately with Alan Colmes (namedrop!), the cohost of Hannity & Colmes and his own nightly radio show. This isn't payola; I'm doing this as an expression of love. As a huge fan of talk radio I've wanted to adopt a liberal show on the Drudge Retort, inspired by Matt Drudge's relentless self-promotion of his Sunday night show. Every night as Colmes airs, the Retort will post live links to upcoming guests and a place to talk about them. I don't know how this experiment ... (read more)

2005/06/16

In a World Where People Watch Movies

The Guardian has a great piece on how all movie trailers look alike, sound alike, begin with the words "in a world" and have the same guy doing the voiceover: ... by far the oddest practices in the world of trailers concern the music that accompanies them. Film scores tend to be completed so late in the production process that most trailer editors can't use the correct music even if they want to; normally, however, they don't. Deploying the music from a successful older film to advertise a new ... (read more)

2005/06/13

May Divorce Be With You

This weblog now has a second marriage to debate: the four-year union of the writers Carl Bernstein and Nora Ephron. I love the movie Heartburn, which Ephron wrote as fictionalized revenge after she and Bernstein crashed and burned. They had two sons, the second born prematurely after Carl was caught convening a rump parliament with the future Baroness Jay of Paddington, a member of Britain's House of Lords. In novel and film, Ephron lampooned Bernstein so hilariously that I'd be amazed if he ... (read more)

2005/06/03

Take a Bite of the Apple

Michael Moore is swimming in money after Fahrenheit 9/11, according to a Slate analysis that describes how the filmmaker and Disney rode the controversy over the movie all the way to the bank: Under normal circumstances, documentaries rarely, if ever, make profits (especially if distributors charge the usual 33 percent fee). So, when Miramax made the deal for Fahrenheit 9/11, it allowed Moore a generous profit participation -- which turned out to be 27 percent of the film's net receipts. ... (read more)

2005/05/06

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