“‘On every major foreign policy and domestic debate of the last quarter-century, I’ve been there,’ Dodd said. ‘I happen to believe this time around that matters, that you demonstrably can get things done.'” Another Dem officially joins the presidential race: Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Like Joe Biden, Dodd’s clearly on the outside looking in right now, but I’ll reserve judgment until I hear more of what he has to say.
Rockets, Rear Windows, and Triple Axles.
More new trailers: Shia LaBoeuf (of Bobby, Constantine and Michael Bay’s forthcoming Transformers) takes a page from Jimmy Stewart while on house arrest in the new trailer for Disturbia, also with David Morse and Carrie-Anne Moss. Billy Bob Thornton attempts to get into space on his own volition in this look at The Astronaut Farmer, also featuring Virginia Madsen (seemingly stuck in wife roles these days), Tim Blake Nelson, and J.K. Simmons. And Will Ferrell joins Jon “Napoleon Dynamite” Heder in the rough-and-tumble world of men’s figure skating in the trailer for Blades of Glory, his next Anchorman/Talladega-type project. (Also hanging around this one, Craig T. Nelson and Will Arnett.)
Five Hands for Kaufman’s Pen.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, and Tilda Swinton line up behind Charlie Kaufman’s next project, Synecdoche, New York. “Hoffman will play a theater director who ambitiously attempts to put on a play by creating a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse…Keener is set to play his first wife, Williams will play his second wife, Morton will appear as his sometime lover, and Swinton will portray Keener’s best friend and the dubious mentor to the daughter of Hoffman and Keener’s characters.“
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dem.
The Dems go Rocky Mountain high for 2008, choosing Denver as the site of the next Democratic convention. “‘It’s important in politics to put your money where your mouth is,’ Dean said. ‘If we are going to have a national party, we are going to get Westerners to vote Democratic again on a regular basis.‘”
Spend it like Beckham.
“‘The main thing for me is to improve the soccer, to improve the standard, and to be part of history really because I think soccer can be a lot bigger in the U.S.,’ the 31-year-old former England captain said Friday morning on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.'” I think so too, but is overpaying Becks really the answer? Soccer superstar David Beckham signs with the Los Angeles Galaxy for a cool $250 million.
It Takes an Empire.
[%@*#, that’s aggravating. Movable Type just ate my entire review. Ok, let’s try this again.] A lush, operatic saga of a cancerous ninth-century family fracas that threatens to topple the Tang Dynasty from within, Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower is the type of film for which the cliche “sumptuous visual feast” was coined. True, this sordid tale of betrayal, corruption, incest, and time-release murder is overwrought to the point of self-parody, and the action sequences — like those in Zhang’s House of Flying Daggers — eventually veer well past rousing to the far corner of preposterous. But, my, is this film gorgeous to look at: From start to finish, Curse of the Golden Flower is an explosion of riotous color. (Particularly after sitting through two hours of Letters from Iwo Jima‘s bleak, monochrome grays, viewing the veritable kaleidoscope on display here felt even more sensuous and indulgent.) Throw in some very watchable performances by Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, and others, and Curse comes across to me as the best entrant in Zhang’s recent trilogy of fanciful-historical Chinese epics (That would be Curse, Daggers, and the scarily nationalistic Hero — Fortunately the political subtext is more restrained and ambiguous here. In fact, Curse may even be revolutionary, depending on how you read the film’s final image.)
It is the hour of the rat for the Tang Dynasty, chrysanthemums bloom throughout the Middle Kingdom, and opulence comingles with palace intrigue in the halls of the Forbidden City. For the Emperor (Chow Yun-Fat, both fierce and serene), in his Divine wisdom, has seen fit to slowly and secretly poison his Empress (Gong Yi, equally good), by means of a deathly black fungus added to her daily medicine. The Empress, meanwhile, strains to rekindle her romance with the Emperor’s first son (by a previous marriage), the Crown Prince Wan (Liu Ye), but he only has eyes for a fetching maid (Li Man) in the imperial employ. (In fact, she is the daughter of the doctor administering the poison.) And also residing in this increasingly broke down palace are the Princes Jai (Jay Chou) and Yu (Qin Junjie), both of whom discover they have their own roles to play in the schemes of their feuding parents, particularly after the ailing Empress weaves a plot of vengeance to coincide with the coming festival…
Also milling about the Forbidden City is a cast of hundreds: the cooks, maids, laborers, soldiers, ninjas (Yes, this film has ninjas, or at least their Chinese equivalent), and ladies-in-waiting that make up the infrastructure undergirding the Tangs’ divine rule. Zhang goes out of his way here to emphasize the sheer amount of sweat and toil expected of this teeming support staff for even the most mundane task — It takes at least four servants to administer the Queen’s medicine and considerably more to cart the Emperor to and fro. Yet, Zhang seems to suggest, these people are as much part of the story as the resentful royals. They are the props of the extravagant ritual, rigid hierarchy, and striking beauty that characterize the Tang’s rule, and they are ennobled by knowing and playing their appropriate role in this imperial order. Whether or not you agree with this sentiment (and Zhang himself seems to cast doubt on it by the final shot), it does make for several breathtaking scenes of elaborate ceremony throughout the film.
And, yes, some of these are battles. To be honest, both Hero and House probably exhibited better fight choreography. If you come to Curse expecting a martial arts extravaganza akin to those films, you may well leave disappointed. I found the final Helms’ Deepish “silver versus gold” sequence to be too bloodthirsty (beheading prisoners and such), too unrealistic (here, more than anyone else in the film, physics don’t apply) and too obviously CGI for my taste. That being said, there are a few notable melees interspersed throughout the picture, most of them involving the black-clad, scythe-wielding “Flying Monkey”ish ninjas of the Imperial Army, who tend to swoop down from above and bury their scythes in the nearest possible revolutionary with extraordinary aplomb. (Sigh. Only one movie after Iwo Jima, and war and violence are already being made to look artful again.)
King (of the World) and Avatar.
“The Banshees and the other creatures are going to be about 90% or 95% animated. And with the humanoids hopefully we’re going to be coming down to 95% capture with the exception of ears and like I said clothing and hair and stuff like that.” I’m behind on this one — Sorry, I’ve been saving up links to space out the flurry of movie reviews, and then overestimating how much I can actually get written on a given day — but James Cameron has announced more details about Avatar (not to be confused with M. Night Shyamalan’s Avatar, which I couldn’t case less about) and granted AICN’s Harry Knowles an extended interview on the performance-capture project. Set for a 2009 release, the film will “star” Sam Worthington (recently in the Aussie Macbeth update) and Zoe Saldana (late of Pirates of the Caribbean II.)
Caribbean Blue.
Since I just mentioned Pirates 2, which is a film I sadly kinda hated, I should perhaps note that the promotional materials for Pirates of the Caribbean III: At World’s End are now online, and they include a decent look at Chow Yun-Fat in samurai-pirate regalia. Why do I get the sense I’ll be seeing this despite myself?
The War of Middle Earth.
“I don’t want to work with that guy anymore. Why would I? So the answer is he will never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I’m still working for the company.” More troubling news for The Hobbit: In an interview with Sci-Fi Wire, New Line president Robert Shaye lays into Peter Jackson over the outstanding lawsuit filed by Wingnut films over ascertaining LotR revenues. (PJ’s response is here, and I’m inclined to agree with him. What reason would New Line have to hide the books, unless they’ve been practicing shady math?)
The Starbuck Stops Here?
“It’s a fundamental and permanent change in the makeup of the show’s cast and of the show itself and how the show operates and what the show is about. It’s a very dramatic change of direction.” Speaking of Sci-Fi, the Chicago Tribune publishes a revealing interview with Battlestar Galactica creators Ron Moore and David Eick on what’s to come for the rest of Season 3. The article also includes this pic of what potentially may be the Final Five, in which some eagle-eyed fanboys have adduced a significant spoiler… (More spoiler-ish pics here.)
