Director: Thomas Mignone Writer: Thomas Mignone Producer: Jeff Most Starring: Brittany Snow, Josh Janowicz, Shanna Collins, Paul Ben-Victor, Eddie Jemison, Candice Accola, Chloe Domont MPAA Rating: NR Running time: 102 min
My first thought at seeing the trailer for On the Doll was that it seemed to be borrowing a page from David Slade’s brilliant Hard Candy and to an extent, Thomas Mignone does follow the same broad theme of sexual abuse and sexual predators. The films share something else as well: a unique visual style though wile Slade’s is clean and bright, Mignone’s is dark and dirty.
The film tells the unrelated stories of a number of individuals, all of whom appear to be little more than teens, somehow involved in the sex trade. Chantal is an escort, working to make money to support her boyfriend’s dream of recording an album. Melody and Courtney are high school students lured by a teacher into an on-line porn site while Balery, a call girl and dancer, employs Jaron to help her exact revenge on a cheap customer. Individually, the ideas for these stories are all interesting but they suffer from a number of problems ranging from poor acting to painful dialog.
One of the film’s major drawbacks is the script. Written by Mignone himself, the film tries hard to tell important stories but it only manages to touch the surface, providing interesting ideas that are never fully developed. The dialog itself is juvenile and awkward and though this can be seen as somewhat realistic and an argument can be made that that is how kids in those situations might really talk, I didn’t buy into it. To make matters worse, a number of the back stories and situations feel forced, as if they were written to make a point rather than tell a story, and as a result, the characters are flat.
For this week’s excerpt, I present one of my favorite stories from Hollywood’s early years. Had I been able to locate this book last week, I would have definitely launched the series with the following. As it is, I’m just happy to be able to share it with you now. Not only does it show that, even in the early days of studio-produced motion pictures, there were those fighting to get the truth up on the screen, but is also proof positive that a mogul as powerful and influential as Jack Warner sometimes didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.
This particular passage is lifted from the book Film Crazy, published by St. Martin’s Griffin in 2001, which features a series of interviews that the author, Patrick McGilligan, conducted throughout the 1970’s with some of Hollywood’s earliest players (including the likes of Raoul Walsh, Alfred Hitchcock and George Stevens). In the following, McGilligan is interviewing screenwriter Sheridan Gibney about the Warner-produced 1935 film, The Story of Louis Pasteur, directed by William Dieterle and starring Paul Muni.
Let me know what you think of it:
McGilligan:I gather The Story of Louis Pasteur was another dubious project – dubious at least from Warner’s point of view.
Gibney:I’m sure they thought Pasteur would finish me off at Warners, because nobody else wanted to touch it. The studio didn’t believe in it. They didn’t believe in it at all. Pierre Collings had written a very brief treatment on the life of Pasteur, which (Paul) Muni was dying to do. (Producer Hal) Wallis read it, Jack Warner, I suppose, also read it. The only reason they went ahead with the project at all is that Muni had story approval. He had gone into Jack Warner’s office and said, “I want to do Pasteur”. They showed him the outline, he thought it was a good beginning, and asked if I could write the script.
McGilligan:Why was Muni fixated on doing Louis Pasteur?
Gibney:I don’t know. His wife told me that he had always wanted to play someone with a beard and that is what intrigued him [laughs]
McGilligan:Had you become friends with Muni?
Gibney:Muni had been about finished when he did I Was a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, and this revived him. He became, overnight, a box-office attraction. Warner Brothers signed him to a five-year contract, and they gave him story approval, which is very important to what happened with The Story of Louis Pasteur. I didn’t get to know him at all until I came back to Warner Brothers in 1933 with The World Changes. After The World Changes we started to become friendly because he liked that story very much and the film turned out very good, with Muni getting older and older, which he loved to do. I really had great admiration for him. He thought of himself basically as a character actor, not in any sense a leading man. And his instincts as an actor were almost always right.
McGilligan:Was Wallis the hands-on producer of the picture?
Gibney:No, it was Henry Blanke, who also supervised Green Pastures. Blanke was very good with writers, very good with me certainly, very patient and understanding and supportive. I always liked Henry. He had taste, unlike Wallis.
Anyway, Jack Warner was just doing Pasteur to oblige Muni. When Muni talked to me about the script, he said, “Let’s make it as true and factual as possible, a kind of documentary film”. I said, “Well, then I have to work with some scientists and I have to research some experiments to make it believable. I don’t know anything about science”. I talked to Henry Blanke, who arranged for me to go to the L.A. County Hospital. There was a pathologist there who made me cultures of anthrax and other things. I spent eight weeks doing nothing but research, not writing a line. I read all the material I could find about Pasteur. I was so full of research that it only took me about four weeks to write the script.
When I got through with the screenplay, it came back from the stenographic department, about twenty copies, and Muni happened into the office. He asked, “How’s it coming?” I said, “It’s finished”. He took a copy and said, “I’ll read it over the weekend”, and went home.
Apparently Jack Warner also read it on Saturday night, and Jack was horrified. He called up Hal Wallis, who was, I believe, at Lake Arrowhead or Tahoe, and sent the script up by special messenger. Monday morning, when I got to the studio, I had a three-page telegram from Hal Wallis, saying that I was to be taken off the script immediately and Laird Doyle was to be put on the project. And there was to be no mention in the script of any disease that would frighten women, no experimentations with dogs , because of the Cruelty to Animals Society, no mention of Russian scientists , because that would offend [Randolph] Hearst, who was anti-Russian, and Mr. Muni could not wear a beard, and that the whole story would take place while Pasteur was in college. There he falls in love with the daughter of the Dean of the Medical school, but the problem is that Pasteur is not a medical student, he is a science and chemistry major! The Dean of the Medical school will not allow his daughter to marry a chemistry student. “Take it from there…”, wrote Wallis.
Also, I was called immediately to report to Jack Warner.
Just then Muni came by with the script under his arm, slammed it on the desk and said, “I love it!’ I showed him the telegram from Wallis and he was furious – I’d never seen him so mad. He grabbed a pen and wrote on the cover of the script: “I approve this as written”.
So then I went up to Jack Warner’s office and Jack bawled the hell out of me. Jack said I had committed insubordination, that no actor should ever see a script unless a producer has first examined it. Now, they were in a terrible state and it was going to cost the studio hundreds of thousands of dollars because they couldn’t make this dog of a picture, yet Muni insisted upon it.
Well, Muni did insist and Henry Blanke was the only other one holding out for it. They gave it the lowest possible budget an A star like Muni could work with, which was $330,000, and they cast it all with company people under contract. They gave it an unknown director brought over by Reinhardt, who could barely speak English at this time – Bill Dieterle. He could read, but his vocabulary was limited, and he had to have the script translated to him by his wife, who spoke excellent English. And Bill Dieterle hated the script. This is the way we went into the picture.
We had to repaint an old Busby Berkeley set for the palace interior. I remember the whole film was done on a shoestring. I was on the set every single day of the filming to make sure the actors spoke the words I wrote, and to explain the English to Dieterle, who was a little afraid of Muni. Of course, Henry Blanke, who spoke German, was there to help also. When it was done, my contract was up and [I] was told I’d never be back at Warner Brothers and I left for London to work on a play.
I was gone about six months, and I got a cable saying I should come right home. The picture was nominated for an Academy Award! When I got home, I was met at the dock, to my amazement, by the top New York executive of Warner Brothers, who had a limousine waiting to take me to my hotel. Sure enough, I won the Academy Award. But winning the Academy Award meant my salary automatically tripled, and even if they had wanted me back now, I was beyond the range of Warner Brothers. So I signed with [Darryl] Zanuck, who was over at 20th Century Fox by now and wanted me to come to work for him.
The aftermath of this whole story is, two years later, Jack Warner was invited to Paris by the President of France and given the highest arts decoration, and kissed on both cheeks by the President himself, for this wonderful monument to French science. And for years afterward, Warner wouldn’t let Muni appear in anything without a beard!
My first real experience with true Summer Blockbuster hype that I can really remember was Independence Day (or ID4 as some of the promotional materials touted it as). I was 20 years old and walked into the flashy new theater at the Mall of America (which is now a completely crap theater) around 4:30 in the afternoon, only to find out that ID4 was sold out for every screening until 10:50 that evening. “Holy shit” I thought. I’ve never seen this before. I convinced my girlfriend at the time to hang out at the mall all day until our screening at 10:50 that night. Reluctantly she agreed. And I’m so glad she did. It was the most memorable and maybe the best theater experience I’ve ever had in my life. And probably why I saw the movie in the theater at least 5 times back in late ‘96.
Now, does ID4 have some holes and get a little cheesy here and there? Most certainly. Is some of the dialogue a little corny? Yeah. But the rest of the film is so enjoyable and successful and cool and fun and exciting that these very minor problems are so easy to overlook. Instead of the typical review, I’ll assume everyone’s seen the movie and present a list of reasons why I love ID4 so much (currently at #53 on my list of favorite movies of all time) and why I had such a great experience.
Video of the day is too simple a moniker for this fantastic clip.
The UK’s Film 4 will be running an entire season of Stanley Kubrick’s work and to promote the season, they’ve created this fantastic commercial which is well worth a looksee. It’s a single-take tracking shot that goes around the set of The Shinning built specifically for the commercial and it takes in a number of the details of the original film, including the tricycle used in the movie. According to Empire, they even hired actors to resemble the cast and crew of the original. This isn’t a viral video that’s been thrown together. There’s thought and meticulous execution here and it’s wonderful to watch.
But don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself:
I know nothing about roller derby but you say roller skates and full contact sport and I’m definitely curious to find out more. I’ve seen a couple of videos and though I haven’t read the entire wiki entry on the sport yet, it looks like I’m missing out on a whole lot of action. Hopefully, a new film on the horizon will help fix all of that.
Drew Barrymore’s feature film directorial debut Whip It! has been abuzz since it was originally announced. With a script by Shauna Cross adapted from her own novel, it’s the story of an indie-rock loving misfit who finds a way of dealing with her small-town misery when she discovers a roller derby league.
Ellen Page had already been cast in the central role but four more cast members were announced last week: Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig (busy girl!), Juliette Lewis and the fabulous Zoe Bell. I’m guessing this thing is going to be darn funny and with the inclusion of Bell in there, I’m also assuming we’ll be seeing some serious action sequences. Can you say girl fight? This one’s sounding mighty interesting!
To get you pumped, I dug through YouTube for a few clips of roller derby action and I found a few but the one below gives a nice feel for the physical contact involved in the sport.
I recently caught the last 20 minutes of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines on TV and I was surprised by how watchable it was. The film was widely panned when it was released a few years back and I remember why, mostly because they were the same complaints I had with the film: too over the top, the effects weren’t as cutting edge as those of the previous two films but for me, the biggest drawback was that I simply didn’t buy into the characters. A surprising turn considering I like both Nick Stahl and Claire Danes and watching only the ending of the film, I was surprised by their good performances unfortunately, combined with the rest of the package, it made for a forgettable film.
I’m not much of a fan of director McG so when news arose that the series was in line for a reboot titled Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, I simply didn’t care but over the last few months the production has added a number of pretty big players, most of them good actors, which leads me to think that perhaps this reboot idea isn’t quite so bad.
Confirmed cast include Christian Bale, Anton Yelchin, Sam Worthington (who I really liked in Somersault (our review)), Moon Bloodgood (one of the few good things of Pathfinder), Bryce Dallas Howard and Josh Brolin is rumored to be in talks to star as the terminator. If that’s not impressive enough, news now is that Helena Bonham Carter is also in talks to star.
Could it possibly be that writer John D. Brancato has finally written a good script? Looking at his credit list, nothing, and I mean nothing, stands out as being even entertaining, never mind actually good. But with such big names signing on, I’m willing to assume that they’ve peeked the script and are happy with what they see.
I don’t think the franchise really needs a reboot, mostly it just needs to be left alone, but it’s an interesting universe for telling stories and it looks like this one will be looking at the origins of the battle between humans and Skynet with John Connor leading the rebellion against the world’s mechanized occupants.
I’m still not completely sold but do admit that I’m curious to see the final line-up and if they manage to improve on number three. At this point, I think it’s useless to even hope for meeting the greatness of the first two films in the franchise though I’m always open to surprise.
My good friend Jon sent this to me and it was just too priceless not to share. I’m not going to spoil the hilarity of it, I’m just going to say that this is a leaked excerpt from a script for the The Dark Knight written by Michael Bay that was ultimately rejected by Warner Bros.
The discussion of Mike Judge’s last film Idiocracy, pops up fairly regularly around here as it did in the recent discussion of Wall·E (our review). I didn’t find Idiocracy to be a great film but it was fun to watch once, even if if didn’t work for me. That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on Judge. He brought us one of my favourite comedies not to mention a TV show that constantly makes me laugh. I’m more than willing to give him a second chance, especially when it includes Jason Bateman.
A few months back it was announced that Judge would be returning to the life of the average worker with Extract, a comedy about the personal and professional problems endured by the owner of a flower-extract plant. At the time, it was also announced that Jason Bateman had joined the cast, presumably in the title role.
According to Joblo, the project has added a few more cast members. SNL’s Kristen Wiig will play Bateman’s wife while Mila Kunis will play a plant worker that has an affair with Bateman. I haven’t seen too much of Wiig so I can’t comment on whether she’s funny but I’ve been impressed with Kunis’ performances, both in and in small rolls outside of That 70s Show and she’s, so far, proven to be more than just a pretty face. The true test will be her performance in the upcoming Max Payne.
We’ll have to wait to see if Judge can pull himself up from the flop of Idiocracy but I have faith and so far, things look to be shaping up nicely.
Nice. My favorite film of the year will be watchable again. This looks like a pretty decent month actually. Something good each week.
Ass-Kickery: Doomsday
Chuckle worthy: Harold and Kumar
Gut busting: Star Wars Robot Chicken
Scream-fest: Shutter and The Ruins
Stealable: The Bank Job
Criterion: Vampyr or Mishimi
Nostalgia: Heathers
Indie fun: Penelope
Que Pasa?: The Band’s Visit
…or the sweet taste of My Blueberry Nights
I’m a bit late with this post, but as always, if you have more titles I might’ve missed, by all means post ‘em in the comments section. So without further ado, here are the DVDs for July…
Most browsers will allow you to rollover an image for the complete title
Each image links to the IMDb profile for that title
It’s safe to say that the announcement that Werner Herzog would be directing a remake, some people are calling it a continuation, of The Bad Lieutenant with Nicholas Cage and Eva Mendes, surprised a lot of people. The project is getting ready to kick off later this summer and as a result, we’re starting to get a few more casting announcements.
According to Empire, the cast has grown exponentially to include a number of small names and two biggies namely Val Kilmer, who will play the partner of Cage’s eponymous crooked cop, along with the fabulous Fairuza Balk.
Never having seen it, I’m not familiar with the original other than to know it was rated NC-17 and that it was a favourite pass time of partner and his buddies to try sneaking into see this, finally succeeding only to be thrown out during the apparently gruesome rape scene. I feel like I should probably give this a watch but I’m not sure if that’s completely necessary. I’m open to persuasion either way.
I love the fact that Gillian Anderson is a woman not afraid to stay under the limelight. Though the upcoming The X-Files: I Want to Believe movie is likely to thrust her back into the mainstream, she’s making a point of quickly pushing herself back into the indie route.
Filmstalker has news that Anderson has bought the film rights to a biography of female war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn was a woman of many talents but she is widely considered to be one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century. Aside from her talents as a writer, she also had quite the personal life with numerous affairs including French economist Bertrand de Jouvenel and H.G. Wells as well as having been married to Ernest Hemingway. She lived a full and fascinating life not to mention that she appears to have been well ahead of her time.
It doesn’t surprise me that Anderson would be drawn to Gellhorn’s life story. The film will be produced by Anderson and she will star in the title role but at the moment, no further news on who will co-star or direct the project. I’m willing to bet we’re going to see some fairly big names attached and I’m thinking this could provide Anderson, a very talented actress, a run at Oscar.
How on earth did I miss this news? Doing a little bit of back-peddling research I can’t even find an announcement of the project but better late than never.
The guys at WAMG have uncovered the first photos, very small photos at that, of James McAvoy and Helen Mirren in the upcoming The Last Station, a film adaptation of the best selling novel of the same title. According to IMDb, the film is “a historical drama that illustrates Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s struggle to balance fame and wealth with his commitment to a life devoid of material things”.
If McAvoy and Mirren aren’t enough of a sell, the film also includes Anne-Marie Duff, Paul Giamatti and Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy.
Not much to go on at the moment. Director Michael Hoffman has a few film credits to his name, most of which are mediocre titles including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Restoration. To boot, the photos don’t reveal much about the film other than the fact that Mirren seems to be in fine form. We’ll be keeping you updated as new details of the project develop.
In the recent past, we’ve postedabout the upcoming sci-fi/zombie/war movie The Mutant Chronicles starring Ron Perlman, Thomas Jane and John Malkovich. I’ve been particularly curious, mostly because of the photos and posters that have been released of the production have appealed to me and now with some moving images up for scrutiny, I’m even more impressed.
A bit surprisingly, general response to the teaser has been lukewarm and I can’t quite tell why. Thankfully the folks of Quiet Earth, experts on all things apocalyptic, seem to be as excited as I am. You can check out the teaser trailer below but be sure to head over there for a Russian trailer they’ve uncovered which has a little added footage.
At the moment, The Mutant Chronicles doesn’t have a US release date.
It’s no secret that we’re all eagerly anticipating Baz Luhrman’s newest effort, Australia over here. Luhrman seems to be one of those film makers who lets things simmer in a pot and gestate warmly for years before churning something out. I think we’ll all be glad about that fact after seeing this newest trailer out of France. This is more epic than anything he’s ever done and might possibly be one of the best for its two leads: Jackman and Kidman. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Australia…
With the release of the newest Blindness trailer also come some cool looking character posters. We showed you the Asian import poster and the original poster which resembles a doctor’s eye chart (a poster that I thought was really cool). We even have a very early review of the movie.
And now here are the last five posters for the film that I am VERY much looking forward to - if for no other reason than the amazing cast. More Gael Garcia Bernal please.
Fernando Meirelles’s Blindness has been much discussed around these parts with the release of the teaser and then a reader review of the film. The lukewarm critical reception has done very little to turn me away from this award winning tale of society’s breakdown during a moment of weakness. This is the material classics are made from and from everything I’ve seen to date, I find it difficult to believe that a cast and director as talented as those behind this project, could present anything less than fantastic.
Only a few months to go. Blindness opens on September 26th.
It’s here. The trailer for the next unnecessary remake has arrived and it’s difficult to tell if this will be any good.
Directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, The Day the Earth Stood Still stars Reeves as Klaatu, an alien visitor who comes to earth with a robot called Gort. This is classic sci-fi at its best and although the Robert Wise original still stands up, I am curious to see this new vision of the classic tale, even with it’s multi-million dollar budget and slacked face acting from Reeves, who may just be brilliant casting in the lead role.
The trailer isn’t fantastic quality so it’s hard to tell just how good or bad these effects are but I do like a few of them. I just hope they haven’t gone just for an effects heavy film but have also paid a little attention to the story.
The Day the Earth Stood Still opens on December 12th.
Anyone catch the image in which diesel fuel costs $123/gallon? Whoa.
The film tells the unrelated stories of a number of individuals, all of whom appear to be little more than teens, somehow involved in the sex trade. Chantal is an escort, working to make money to support her boyfriend’s dream of recording an album. Melody and Courtney are high school students lured by a teacher into an on-line porn site while Balery, a call girl and dancer, employs Jaron to help her exact revenge on a cheap customer. Individually, the ideas for these stories are all interesting but they suffer from a number of problems ranging from poor acting to painful dialog.
