After a train wreck of an initial trailer, the marketing gurus at Columbia Pictures borrow liberally from Splash in the new trailer for Nora Ephron’s Bewitched. Nope, still won’t see it.
Category: Cinema
Eternal Crossing of the Spotless Fink.
In between film projects, the Coen Brothers and Charlie Kaufman have teamed up for Carter Burwell’s Theater of the New Ear, a pair of radio plays recently performed at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The cast includes Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Marcia Gay Harden, and Philip Seymour Hoffman for the Coen’s “Sawbones,” and Meryl Streep, Hope Davis, and Peter Dinklage (taking time off from Lassie, I presume) in Kaufman’s “Hope Leaves the Theater.” (These apparently were also performed in Brooklyn two weeks ago, but tickets were hard to come by.)
Welcome to the layer cake, son.
Disgruntled supporters of mutantkind, take heart: X3 is in very good hands. I caught Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake this afternoon, and it’s a smart, stylish, and sublimely smooth British crime film that does Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch one better. Well, ok, Layer Cake isn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as Lock Stock can be at times, but it’s much cleverer than Snatch and, frankly, better-made. And, for that matter, it takes less joy in violence for its own sake than Ritchie’s oeuvre (one grisly scene set to Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World” notwithstanding.) In fact, in terms of tone, Cake is probably more akin to Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast.
Layer Cake centers on cocaine dealer Daniel Craig (burnishing his possible Bond credentials), a consummate smooth operator who treats his criminal enterprise like a business and, as per the usual, is just looking forward to an early retirement around the corner. But his best-laid plans are interrupted by two ugly developments: 1) His boss Jimmy (Kenneth Cranham) enlists him to track down the junkie daughter of even bigger crime-lord Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon, relishing the dark side), and 2) a loose cannon flunky known as the Duke (Jamie Foreman of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead and Roman Polanski’s forthcoming Oliver Twist) has just rolled in from Amsterdam trying to unload a million doses of Ecstasy (a drug haul with a nefarious history of its own.)
The rest of the movie consists of Craig trying to navigate the increasingly narrow straits between these two troubles, with the occasional aid of muscle Colm Meaney, middle-man George Harris, and a host of other ne’er-do-wells. Essentially, you know the drill — this is a puzzle film in which you’ll have to listen carefully and learn to distinguish between various delinquents with names like Tiptoes, Kinky, Slasher and Shanks. And, while the final few grifts just get a bit too big to be believable, for the most part the story holds together with intelligence and verve, in no small part to Daniel Craig, who’s a magnetic presence here, and Matthew Vaughn, who displays a crisp, confident direction that’s all the more impressive for being showy without ever seeming flashy. To him, his X-Men.
Casting Collie.
What’s that, girl? Peter O’Toole got wasted and fell down a well? Lassie returns to the big screen with O’Toole and Peter Dinklage in tow. I wouldn’t normally post this, except it means that even more people are going to shout “Lassie!” at Berk on the street every day.
We Break Easy.
The Henson Company announces a forthcoming sequel to 1982’s The Dark Crystal, entitled The Power of the Dark Crystal. Hopefully, at this point, I’ll no longer be frightened by Garthims or that weird soul-sucking Skeksis torture room.
Without chemicals he points.
So, that‘s what he’s been up to. Apparently, David Lynch has been shooting a film called Inland Empire, with Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, and Jeremy Irons, for the past two years. “‘It’s about a woman in trouble, and it’s a mystery, and that’s about all I want to say about it,’ said Lynch recently.“
Drive the Wayne.
For completists out there, Coming Soon obtains the international Batman Begins trailer, which follows the domestic one but includes some previously unreleased footage.
III like a bird?
“The bottom line is that ‘Sith‘ has a discipline missing from Episodes I and II. It is just repeatedly not-embarrassing at nearly every turn. Most of the flabby expository walks to landing pads have been neatly snipped. Important things are said with images instead of words. The special effects are better, but draw less attention to themselves.” Ok, now I might be a bit enthused. Alexandra du Pont, far and away AICN‘s best reviewer and a fangirl who loathed the first two prequels, gives Episode III an enthusiastic (and spoiler-filled) endorsement. Her verdict: “Not even close” to ANH and Empire, but Sith “edges out ‘Jedi’.”
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.
AICN‘s Moriarty checks out the early sets and pre-viz for Paul Greengrass’ The Watchmen, a project apparently still under the gun at Paramount.
E for Elrond.
From agent to revolutionary…Word is Hugo Weaving has replaced James Purefoy as the lead in V for Vendetta. I must say, that casting switch makes this project considerably more exciting.