Tell No One is a decidedly modern thriller that also, wisely, respects the great examples of the genre's past; strip away all the e-mail and web video and it's a classic Hitchcockian thriller, where a regular-but-resourceful man is squeezed between those who have committed a crime and the cops who think he's committed it. Based on a novel by American best-selling author Harlen Coben, Tell No One is transplanted -- gently -- to France by writer-director Guillame Canet, who turns Coben's breezy summertime page-turner into a breezy summertime movie. Yes, there are plot points in the film where you'll later go back and puzzle over how who knew what when, but trust me, you won't be thinking about that while Tell No One's running up on the big screen.
Alex (François Cluzet) and Margot (Marie-Josee Croze) are happy, childhood sweethearts who've made a real and adult marriage out of that foundation; they're relaxing at the family's country estate enjoying a little night swimming when Margot gets out of the water to check on something. There's a shout, a scream; Alex swims to help her ... and is knocked unconscious by a blow. And then a title jumps the film "Eight Years Later." It's an eye blink for us; for Alex, it's been an eternity.
Even the weirder artists of the twentieth century have been attracted to the allure of Hollywood filmmaking, and Salvador Dali was no exception. In the fall of 1941, the surrealist painter hosted a masquerade party at Pebble Beach during one of his regular visits to the town. Called "Surrealism Night in An Enchanted Forest," the fundraising event, intended to assist European refugee artists, brought out a number of stars, including Bob Hope and Ginger Rogers. It was here, the story goes, that Dali became attached to a major studio production called Moontide. The great German emigre Fritz Lang was hired to direct the movie, and asked Dali to create a three-minute nightmare sequence for the film. Unfortunately, after the incident at Pearl Harbor later that year, Twentieth Century Fox deemed the project too bleak. Lang was replaced, and Dali's nightmare sequence went with him.
Although inspired by the movies, Dali didn't always have the easiest time making them. He would get another chance to inject his hallucinatory vision into American cinema with the hypnosis scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, but it's his unrealized projects that truly indicate the scope of the painter's ambition. So many ideas, such little time. Dali: Painting and Film, a breathtakingly unique exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, surveys Dali's completed cinematic works in addition to tidbits from the ones that never came to fruition. Marvelously structured to show how his paintings were intentionally cinematic, the exhibit contains all the obvious highlights from Dali's movie career alongside lesser-known productions. The importance in film history of his collaborations with Luis Bunuel remain uncontested; two large screens in separate rooms showing Un Chien Andalou(where the opening eye splicing retains its original gross-out impact) and L'Age D'Orattest to that. Fewer visitors, however, might know about Dali's collaboration with the Marx Brothers on a deliriously strange movie that sounded too good to be true.
When we last saw a (teaser) trailer for Eagle Eye - the forthcoming thriller that reunites star Shia LaBeouf with Disturbia director D.J. Caruso and Transformers executive producer Steven Spielberg - I commented with something along the lines of, after "reading the synopsis, I've always thought that Caruso and company were following their Rear Window re-do with North by Northwest 2.0."
...which I then followed up with "Whether that's the case or not, I'm a sucker for a chase movie, and more so for [co-star Michelle] Monaghan. Count me in." Well, judging from the new trailer up at Yahoo! Movies, I'll be having a modest amount of crow for lunch later today, as there now seems to be enough distinct differences between that Hitchcock classic and this paranoid techno-thriller that it'll likely excite on its own merits (fingers crossed).
Sure, we seem to have another one of those incredibly elaborate plans on behalf of the baddies that already appears to have too many variables for its own good, but you know what? So long as the thing moves, I'm not above setting aside brains in favor of brawn.
With a cast that also includes Rosario Dawson, Billy Bob Thornton, and Michael Chiklis, Eagle Eye hits theaters on September 26.
There are many things to admire about Dark Streets, a film noir set against a 1930s backdrop of jazz, blues, and booze. Unfortunately, the story isn't one of them. It's your basic Chinatown-inspired tale of double crosses and femmes fatales, with dialogue that has the form of the classics but not the content. Take this exchange, for example, between a nightclub owner and the singer who has been displaced in his affections by a new girl:
HIM: You're a great belter, but we've got a real chanteuse now. HER: She can chanteuse my ass!
Yeah. Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame you ain't.
But plot and dialogue aside (and sometimes those elements really are secondary), Dark Streets effectively creates its world in other ways. Sharone Meir's sumptuous cinematography and smooth, fluid camera movements bring the nightclub performance scenes to life, while the rest of the film plays with light, shadows, and colors. Director Rachel Samuels, in her third feature, shows a singularity of vision that will serve her well later, when she gets a better script to work with. (This one is by Wallace King, based on a play by Glenn Stewart.)
The latest Spirit poster comes to us by way of Yahoo! Movies (click image for larger version). It looks like we may be getting a new poster for The Spirit every Friday night -- which is appropriate given their tone so far. Last week brought us a saucy Eva Mendes, this week's poster is an equally naughty Scarlett Johansson. Her tagline is quite the eyebrow raiser, isn't it? I am not sure if she's directing it at the audience, or if you are meant to be instructing her. Given that Silken Floss is a villainous young secretary, I am thinking the latter. (How very Maggie Gyllenhaal of her!) I'm not sure I like this ad campaign so far, but then, I am a girl and clearly not the target audience.
It's hard to say which event in midtown Manhattan on Thursday night was cooler: New German Cinema legend Werner Herzog in conversation with director Jonathan Demme at the Times Center, or the two crazed climbers who attempted to scale the New York Times building right next door just a few hours earlier. In some ways, the two occurrences worked together: It was later announced that one of the climbers did it in order to raise awareness about global warming, a relevant issue for anyone interested in Herzog's latest film, the remarkable Antarctica odyssey Encounters at the End of the World. Like most of Herzog's documentary work, it's a brilliant amalgam of gorgeous imagery and Herzog's personal philosophies. Not a scientist himself, he spends time in their company down south, seeking to understand their behavior ("Is this a big moment?" he asks when they nonchalantly announce the discovery of a new bacterium).
Demme, admitting that he and Herzog had just met earlier in the evening, opened the conversation by reading an effusive letter to Herzog written by Roger Ebert after the critic discovered that the director dedicated Encounters to him. Herzog seemed displeased that Ebert printed the letter ("Those things should stay between two men") but had only praise for his friend. "I salute him, a good soldier of cinema," he said. "We have very few left."
Well, if chewing diamonds is a dead giveaway -- no, Ms. Saref, you do not. If you were dying for a new Eva Mendes poster, Yahoo! Movies has debuted a new one from The Spirit. Click on the photo to see a giant version.
So far, two posters out of five have featured Sand Seref, which seems rather unfair to the titular hero and the man behind the mask, Gabriel Macht. I think it is disappointing that the early marketing is pandering to the geek stereotype. Fans of the Will Eisner series read it for the main man, not his femme fatales, so putting him on posters is a safe bet for those ticket buyers. As for non-fans, they don't know Sand Seref from the Spirit at this point, so either poster will elicit a "Hmm." I suppose featuring Mendes as opposed to Macht gets a "Hmm, Mendes is hot," but does it really excite interest in the film itself? Then again, I am not a guy, so perhaps this is more memorable in the long run. But to me, it seems akin to putting Virginia "Pepper" Potts or Betty Ross on an Iron Man or The Incredible Hulk poster. Of course, it is a long way until December 25th, and there will be many posters between now and then.
Are you liking this poster, or are you wondering "Where's my Scarlett Johansson / Silken Floss poster?" instead?
Things weren't so peaceful in the movie buff land when word got out a few weeks ago that Werner Herzog plans to remake Bad Lieutenantwith Nicolas Cage in the lead role. Even noted trash auteur Abel Ferrara publicly complained about having his work redone. Bad Lieutenant isn't anybody's idea of a good time: Harvey Keitel puts on a freakishly raunchy performance. Still, it definitely sounds like Herzog's pumped about the gig. Defamer cornered the director in New York today for a few questions about the project, and the responses are kind of amazing. Herzog tends to do a great job of explaining himself, no matter what crazy scheme he has cooked up, but the best part of this interview arrives when the guy claims utter cluelessness about Ferrara's work. Way to stick it to the source material.
To hear Herzog tell it, his version of Bad Lieutenant isn't a remake, although he wouldn't know, since it sounds like hasn't actually seen the original. However, he says that Cage's character's name and the plot are entirely new. Herzog apparently liked the "very, very dark story," written by William M. Finkelstein, and he can't wait to work with Cage (given Herzog's notorious appreciation of Anna Nicole Smith, this last bit actually makes sense). Hearing about Ferrara's discontent, Herzog just eggs him on: "Let him fight the windmills, like Don Quixote." It's a feud made in heaven, almost too good to be true. You might just call it ecstatic truth.
Top: Early poster art for the new 'Bad Lieutenant,' snapped at the Cannes Film Festival last month.
Frank Miller is just blogging like crazy these days. Which is great -- I wish everybody I ever wrote about had a blog, because it would make everything ten times easier and more interesting. No conjecture. Straight from the horse's mouth!
Today, Miller addressed the concerns and criticism directed at the first teaser for The Spirit, mainly centered on its resemblance to the eye-popping Sin City. "It only resembles Sin City in that I am its director, and, well, yes, I have my ways and my proclivities .... No, Sin City, that one's my own baby, folks, and it looks the way it does for its own reasons. The Spirit is, and will always be, Eisner's Spirit .... To drive the point home, The Spirit , despite any accidental impression left by that kickass teaser-trailer, is a full-color movie. Sin City - and I hope to make of it a movie trilogy all its own, come Hell and high water - is, visually, a playhouse for black and white."
This isn't really earth-shattering news on The Spirit, but it is an interesting item nonetheless. Frank Miller has written a blog for Spike all about his experiences at New York Comic Con. (And if you missed it, which I did, he also reminisces fondly about his rocky relationship with Will Eisner over on the movie's official site.)
Miller writes all about his love for New York, admiration for a comic convention that is rivaling San Diego ("San Diego -- New York's hot on your ass!"), and the excitement of debuting the teaser trailer. "It was with provincial pleasure that I got to introduce The Spirit teaser trailer in the city that so wonderfully inspired Will Eisner, and inspires me like a son of a bitch today. It was, to say the least, the perfect setting."
He continues, "The Spirit movie is a love letter to New York, and here we were: Deborah Del Prete, my producer and a behind-the-scenes warrior without whom the movie would've been unachievable, me, Eva Mendes, who brought Sand Saref to unforgettable life, and Mike Uslan, the man who held tight to the license, and the trust Will Eisner extended him, until he was confident Eisner's treasure could be portrayed with the respect it deserved. And right there, filling the hall was a raucous New York crowd, roaring in response to their first glimpse at what, I believe, is a dream come true for all of us. Only two regrets: I'd have happily suffered Eisner's inevitable criticism, and our inevitable argument, were my Mentor alive to see it."
Those lovable Twitch boys love their foreign genre fare a whole lot, but when they get THIS enthusiastic about an upcoming project, that's usually enough to get me salivating like a movie-nerd version of Pavlov's dogs. What's the movie that has the Twitch boys extra-twitchy today? It looks to be a VERY enticing flick called Iron Sky, which is a Finnish sci-fi comedy noir (I think) about the Nazis who colonized the moon in 1945 and are due for a return to Earth in 2018.
Yeah, feel free to read that description a second time -- and then click here to visit Twitch and enjoy the very cool promotional teaser for the flick. I know nothing about the movie aside from Todd Brown's basic description and what's offered in the promo clip -- but hot damn I sure hope this movie ends up at one of the genre festivals I'm covering later this year. This is a seriously impressive little mini-movie, from the noirish visual style and the haunting song to the sci-fi slickness and the (very amusing) final shot of the statue... If the movie's only half as cool as Twitch hopes it will be, it will still be pretty damn neat. (For more info, bookmark Twitchfilm and then check out the official Iron Sky website.)
It's here! The day Frank Miller is going to make or break it on his directing debut. Oh, I know it is only the trailer -- but we all know that enough bad buzz on a comic book property (especially one as beloved as The Spirit) could sink it long before its release date.
The trailer comes to us by way of MTV so unfortunately we can't embed it. I barely caught the damn thing before it flashed off the main page. It looks very very Sin City -- which has already caused no amount of criticism. But I can't deny that I think it looks pretty intriguing. Maybe it's just that oh-so-sexy tagline. The Untouchables music is a nice touch, too, but also jarring. It started making me think of that movie instead of the trailer.
So, nothing new really -- Miller may be getting a fanboy reprieve. I'm in your corner though, Miller. The Spirit comes to the theatres January 15th, 2009.
Thanks to our reader Electrix for sending us the YouTube link! Now no one has to spaz out clicking the MTV link, and our international users can get in on the fun.
Having pioneered tech-noir with Blade Runner, Ridley Scott is trying his hand at classical noir with The Kind One. Varietyreports that Scott will direct and produce an adaptation of the Tom Epperson book, with Epperson himself writing the screenplay. The novel is about an amnesiac in 1930s Los Angeles who is informed that before he lost his memory, he was a ruthless gangster named "Two-Gun Danny," and that he works for a fearsome gangland boss. Epperson is a screenwriter by trade, best known for co-writing The Gift with Billy Bob Thornton; The Kind One is his first novel.
The other person to sign on to the project is Casey Affleck, who is clearly enjoying his new lease on life following The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Gone Baby Gone. He's really the perfect noir hero, scrappy, jaded and intelligent; we saw some of that on display in his brother's film, where he practically disappeared into the tough working-class Boston milieu. He and Scott should be able to hit this one out of the park, if the source material is any good. As always, I'd love to hear from commenters who are familiar with the book.
If he wasn't already damned by writing a Paul Walker dog movie, filmmaker David DiGilio sure is now. According to Variety, the writer of Eight Below has just signed a deal with DreamWorks to bring the graphic novel The Damned to the big screen. Mr. DiGilio will be making his directorial debut on the flick, which is about "a Los Angeles detective who discovers that a new gang with ties to the supernatural has infiltrated the city." Yep, it's a horror noir.
A little more digging (over at Oni Press) reveals a bit more of a plot synopsis: "Caught in the middle of a sinister web of murder, kidnapping, betrayal, and damnation, Eddie -- cursed and unable to rest -- can't escape the city's most ruthless warring demon gangs. This action-packed prohibition-era thriller combines the supernatural sensibilities of Joss Whedon with the stark reality of Miller's Crossing and The Godfather." Sounds all fine and good, but I'd have argue about the "reality" found in Miller's Crossing. It's my all-time favorite gangster movie, but realism ain't exactly what it was going for.
So congrats to Damned creators Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt on the big Hollywood sale. We'll all keep our fingers crossed on the movie version.
IGN has been given the gift of two official character stills from The Spirit -- and doesn't Scarlett Johansson look much prettier here than in that leaked costume test? Interestingly, the first official look of Samuel L. Jackson is a very buttoned down one -- not like the leaked stills that caused such a kerfluffle before being yanked. I'm really curious if those were simply tests, and this is the final choice.
Most of them are older still-in-progress shots, starring Frank Miller and a still visible green screen. Unfortunately we were not treated to a look at Gabriel Macht as the titular hero. But as we're getting a trailer very soon, it's not too disappointing. I would rather see the Spirit living and breathing, not just a static still. Can't wait! Head to IGN for larger versions of each.
Things weren't so peaceful in the movie buff land when 
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