Archive for March, 2009
March 25th, 2009
I love books about movies almost as much as I love movies themselves, but there’s no getting around the fact that, in this crazy age of the Internet, one of the truly great — and completely free! — resources for film fans is the massive, easy-to-use, amazingly informative Internet Movie Database.
Whenever someone calls me with a movie question, that’s the first place I look for an answer, and it’s usually the only place I have to go. If you’ve never been there — and if you’re a movie fan with Web access, I can’t imagine you haven’t — by all means, check it out.
Over at his always-fun blog, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, Dennis Cozzalio, looks back at the early days of the Database and how he used to to work on the film history, A PERSONAL JOURNEY WITH MARTIN SCORSESE THROUGH AMERICAN MOVIES.
And, just to tie this post back to the book-loving opening sentence, he also talks about movie books. Check it out.
March 24th, 2009
Here’s a detailed article about the urban legend that Walt Disney held the rights to the LORD OF THE RINGS books for years and tried (but failed) to make a movie based on J. R.R . Tolkien’s tale.
Turns out it’s not true, but it’s still pretty interesting. Here’s why those movies never would’ve happened — turns out Tolkien couldn’t stand Disney’s style….
The ultimate irony to the Disney-Tolkien scenario is that Tolkien simply despised Disney’s interpretations of fairy tales and fantasy literature. In a letter from 1937 that discussed illustrations for an American publication of THE HOBBIT, Tolkien stated the he would ” . . .veto anything from or influenced by the Disney Studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing).”
March 24th, 2009
Here’s a link to today’s review of the first season of AMC’s excellent chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-maker, BREAKING BAD. And, if you don’t feel like reading — or you just like watching moving images — here’s the video version.
March 23rd, 2009
Via the Huffington Post, here’s a quietly powerful photo of Liam Neeson and Vanessa Redgrave from Natasha Richardson’s funeral Sunday in Milbrook, New York.
March 23rd, 2009
This is from Glenn Erickson’s invaluable DVD Savant column. As a true classic movie aficianado, Glenn is all over the news about these films, and he got some important info straight from Warner Bros.
George Feltenstein just wrote me with this: “The goal is to eventually make EVERYTHING available, but obviously that will take a lot of time, and a lot of money. I set out some ground rules. Everything HAS to be Original Aspect Ratio, and 16×9 if widescreen. No 4×3 Letterbox. No Pan ‘n’ Scan. I also wanted consumers to be able to preview the master before the buy, so they’d understand what they were buying.”
It’s great to hear that even in these bare bones releases, the movies will be seen as they were meant to be seen.
March 23rd, 2009
BEAST OF THE CITY, a great Pre-Code crime movie that Warner Bros. is releasing as part of its new program.
There are hundreds (thousands?) of movies sitting in the vaults of the studios, all with a few fans, but few with enough fans to merit a full-scale DVD release. Well, Warner Bros., the studio that owns the rights to many of these movies, is opening those vaults and selling the films on a made-to-order basis.
Starting today, 150 movies from the silent era to the 1980s go on sale, everything from I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI to Emilio Estevez’ WISDOM. Digital downloads are $14.95, and actual DVDs are $19.95. Here’s a link to the site.
From the AP report:
Many of the titles Warner is releasing in the new venture have made the rounds on another Time Warner subsidiary, the Turner Classic Movies cable channel, and on VHS. But the studio will keep mining a 6,800-feature film library, amassed when Ted Turner bought Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s archive in 1986, which in turn was bought by Time Warner a decade later.
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.
“There are still thousands of movies that we own that consumers haven’t been able to get,” said George Feltenstein, senior vice president of theatrical catalog marketing for Warner Home Video. “I expect that we’ll be selling thousands of copies of every title over a period of time, and making a lot of people really happy.”
Heck, I’m happy. Very happy!
March 20th, 2009
I’ve been dying to see this movie, 77, since it was announced under the title ”5/25/77,” years ago. If you know what happened on that date, you’ll know what this movie is about. If not, here’s the trailer…
Various cuts have been shown at a few film festivals, and at the (of course) Star Wars Celebration Convention, but that was years ago. When are we going to see it? I was 10 years old in 1977, and obviously this movie is aimed right at my demographic.
March 19th, 2009
Have you heard about JCVD? Those initials stand for “Jean-Claude Van Damme,” and the movie itself is, by all accounts, the best thing the Muscles from Brussels has ever done — by a long shot.
Sure, his other movies don’t offer much in the way of competition for that honor, but this movie is supposed to be very, very good, and Van Damme is seriously good in it. He plays himself — or, at least, a version of himself - facing money troubles, custody hearings, bad movies cashing in on his name and, in the movie’s central scenes, a hostage situation. There’s action, drama, comedy and an apparently amazing scene where Van Damme addresses the camera — and addresses the mess he’s made of his life.
It arrives on DVD next month. Here’s the trailer:
March 19th, 2009
After being critically injured in a skiing accident Monday, actress Natasha Richardson has died.
From the Associated Press story:
Richardson fell during a private lesson Monday at a ski resort in Quebec. She was not wearing a helmet. The 45-year-old actress was seemingly fine afterward, but about an hour later, she complained that she didn’t feel well. She was hospitalized Tuesday in Montreal and later flown to a hospital in New York.
Alan Nierob, the Los Angeles-based publicist for Richardson’s husband, Liam Neeson, confirmed her death Wednesday without giving details on the cause.
Actress Lindsay Lohan, who co-starred with Richardson in Disney’s remake of THE PARENT TRAP during Lohan’s less tabloid-centric days, had this to say: “She was a wonderful woman and actress and treated me like I was her own. My heart goes out to her family. This is a tragic loss.”
March 18th, 2009
Here’s the poster for director Spike Jonze’s big-screen version of the classic Maurice Sendak book, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE…
The movie doesn’t arrive until fall, but according to Cinematical, the trailer for the movie will be attached to MONSTERS VS. ALIENS, which hits theaters next Friday, March 27. The story quotes a writer from the movie site CHUD who describes the trailer thusly:
Try as I might, I can’t verbalize how I felt about the trailer beyond the most grandiose superlatives: ‘beautiful’ and ‘gorgeous’ and ‘breathtaking’ … The environments in particular (there’s a sequence of cutting between 4 shots of Max running through different environments that is absolutely magical) are a work of incredible vision, especially in light of the production methods Spike opted for. It does feel like a ‘kids movie’ (not pejorative): the trailer repeatedly made me about eight years old, over and over again. Unless I’m an idiot, and you’ll see yourself in a week or two, the finalized monsters are some kind of incredible technical achievement.
There have been some rough times during the production of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, but it sounds like the end result might be worth all the trouble. We’ll find out this fall.
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