A HARRISON FORD STORY FOR YOU: On January 14, 2010 Richard hosted a screening of Extraordinary Measures the new medical drama starring Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell. Backstage before the intro Ford jokes to Richard, “If you say nice things about me in the intro I’ll say nice things about you.” Richard nodded enthusiastically. “What would you like me to say?” Ford continued.”Say whatever you want,” Richard joked back, but if you can use the words ‘brilliant’ and ‘beloved.'”
On stage Richard read the intro for Ford: “Our guest tonight is a master carpenter, a licensed pilot and ranked #1 in Empire magazine’s “The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time” list… his films have grossed approximately $5.65 billion worldwide… he has a species of Central American ant and spider named after him in honor of his conservation work (Peidole harrisonfordi) (Calponia Harrisonfordi)… but you know him better as CIA man Jack Ryan, as Indiana Jones, as Rick Deckard and Han Solo… tonight in Extraordinary Measures, a film he executive produces, he plays the gruff Dr. Robert Stonehill, a real life doctor who saved countless lives with his discovery of a treatment for Pompe disease… Would you help me welcome one of our favorite movie stars… Harrison Ford!”
Returning the favor Ford began his speech with, “Before I talk about my film I want to thank Richard for his ‘brilliant’ introduction… I know he is the most ‘beloved’ film critic in Canada… what he doesn’t know about films ain’t worth knowing…” then continued into his regular speech about film’s ability to create a “common humanity” before wrapping things up with another joke about his “real” reason for making the film. “I’m in this,” he said, “as always… for the money…” Awesome. Thanks Han Solo…
Youth in Revolt is the new Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It’s a film about the benefits of behaving badly and, like the famous 1986 John Hughes movie, it is headlined by an actor who brings charm and wit to the role of the rebel.
Hoodie heartthrob Michael Cera plays fourteen-year-old Nick Twisp, a mild mannered collection of raging hormones and quirky personality traits who loves Sinatra and foreign films.
When his family relocated to a Christian trailer park, he meets his dream girl, Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday), a similarly anachronistic teenager with a taste for anything French and a dream of being swept off her feet by a bad boy named Francois.
When circumstance steps in to keep them apart he (with the help of an imaginary friend named Francois Dillinger) reverses his goody-two-shoes image and becomes a rebel with a cause — he wants to impress her.
Cera has a corner on the awkward coming-of-age movie, and as Twisp he doesn’t do anything he didn’t do in Juno or Superbad, but he’s charming and easy to watch. His work takes on a different dimension, however, when he slips into alter ego mode.
As the mustachioed Francois, he’s a refugee from a Belmondo film, equipped with a cigarette, and too tight white trousers. It’s not often that an actor gets to show his range playing two characters in one film, but this is a step forward for Cera, who has been locked into the wisecracking virgin stereotype since he left the small screen’s Arrested Development, grew some peach fuzz and started chasing girls on the big screen.
In Youth in Revolt, Brampton, Ontario-born actor Michael Cera plays an anachronistic Frank Sinatra fan who falls for the anachronistic Jean-Paul Belmondo loving girl who lives next door at the trailer park.
When circumstance steps in to keep them apart he — with the help of an imaginary friend named Francois Dillinger — changes his life to be with her.
Cera admits the idea of having one of his favourite books pared down from 500 pages to a 90-minute script made him nervous, but he couldn’t resist the opportunity to sign on to the project.
“I just love the book,” he says. “It’s very cinematic and I thought the humour of the book would work very well on screen. That was the thought behind the movie; to capture the humour on screen.
“You can’t tell the whole story of the book because it is so huge, but the book exists for that reason. The book is its own enjoyment.”
His character, Nick Twisp, appealed to the actor because it had a ring of authenticity often missing from teen comedies.
“I love the voice of the character,” he said, “and it’s nice when you’re reading the book because you’re reading his journal, so you are really tapping right into his mind. It feels like you are feeling the thought process of the author. I connected with that.
“The character was real,” he said. “C.D. Payne wrote it really personally. It felt like he wrote it in his own voice. He wasn’t trying to write like a fourteen year old kid. He didn’t add in any false naiveté or didn’t try and sound less intelligent he was just writing and it was personal. I think that’s why people connect to things; when they feel personal.”
Cera hopes audiences will relate to Youth in Revolt. “I hope maybe people will feel inspired,” he says. “That would be the best case scenario. That’s the best feeling I have walking out of the movies. That’s a hard thing to accomplish but it is special when it happens.”
In a year when “bailout” and “layoff” became buzzwords in everyday conversation there was good news in Hollywood. Attendance at US theatres actually increased by five percent and research firm OTX reported consumers ranked movie going as the best value for their entertainment dollar.
That’s the good news, but even though movie money doesn’t seem to be in short supply it isn’t business as usual in Tinsel Town. The average moviegoer, however, probably won’t see a difference.
“In the end I don’t think the consumers will notice the difference at all,” says MovieCityNews.com editor David Poland. “It’s gotten to the point that there are so many studio movies in any given week there is often a lost movie or two. Customers may find it a little less frustrating [next year] because there may be fewer titles being advertised and fewer titles that make them think ‘I wish I could have gone to that if it was still in the theatres three weeks after I first saw the ad.’”
The business, however, is changing. The buzzwords of the biz is “risk displacement.”
“My sense isn’t that lower budget or riskier movies will dry up; instead, I see the big budget and low budget films continuing, but the middle dropping out,” says Cameron Bailey, Co-Director, Toronto International Film Festival. “Paramount’s recently announced start-up of an ultra low-budget digital division on the heels of Paranormal Activity is one sign. Avatar is another. What I think we’ll see much less of is the $15-$40 million star-driven drama, the kind that wins awards.”
2009 confirmed Bailey’s theory. Among the victims of downsizing were the $30 million Cate Blanchett vehicle Indian Summer and a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, starring Anthony Hopkins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Watts and Keira Knightley.
“I don’t like that hollowing out sound I hear in the industry,” says Bailey, “and I hope it’s just a stage in an ongoing evolution.”
Maple Pictures Co-President Brad Pelman has a more sanguine viewpoint. “The economic conditions will be challenging for film makers to get their projects financed, but as can be expected, the cream will rise to the top, and the best projects will always stand out. This year’s crop includes Precious and The Hurt Locker, two films Maple distributes in Canada. Our team will continue to focus on building relationships with film makers who clearly understand the end game of this business: entertaining the audience.”
SIDEBAR: MOVIES TO KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR IN 2010
Nightmare on Elm Street: Robert Englund is out but that’s OK, Watchmen’s creepy Jackie Earle Haley is in.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse: The third part of the series and one of only two guaranteed hits of the year.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I: Harry, Ron, and Hermione star in the year’s other guaranteed hit, the penultimate Potter movie.
The Three Stooges: Not a biopic, ynuk, ynuk, ynuk, it’s a brand new Three Stooges comedy starring Jim Carrey, Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro.
Grown Ups: Former SNLers Adam Sandler, Chris Rock and David Spade play reunited high school friends.
The Last Airbender: Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel stars in this M. Night Shyamalan film based on the popular anime television series.
The Book of Eli: Based on the trailer this Denzel Washington movie will be the coolest action picture of 2010.
Alice in Wonderland: Tim Burton directs Johnny Depp in what should be the trippiest fairy tale of the year.
Inception: “A contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind” is Christopher Nolan’s description of his first post Dark Knight project. Cool.
Date Night: TV’s funniest actors, Steve Carell and Tina Fey, team-up for this story of a romantic night out gone wrong.
Director: Terry Gilliam
Stars: Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp
Classification: PG
As you may have guessed from the title, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is an odd movie. Directed by Terry Gilliam, it’s the strange tale of a mysterious immortal who complicates his life by making deals with the devil.
Complicating Gilliam’s life during production was the unexpected death of his star, Heath Ledger, but, the show, as they say, must go on and here we are after the untimely January 2008 passing of the young actor with a completed film. How did Gilliam finish the movie? A new credit, A Film from Heath Ledger and Friends tells the tale.
Three of Ledger’s buddies, Johnny Depp (seen dancing on a leaf!), Colin Farrell and Jude Law, stepped in to play “through the looking glass” versions of the late actor.
Set in present day London, the film begins with a look at Doctor Parnassus’ (Christopher Plummer) bizarre travelling show that offers people a chance to step through Dr. P’s magical mirror into an alternate reality. He’s selling imagination, but his gift of mind’s eye manipulation came with a heavy price.
Eons before, he made a trade with the devil (Tom Waits): Remarkable power in exchange for his first born daughter on her sixteenth birthday. That anniversary is now days away but with the help of a mysterious stranger named Tony (played by Ledger, Depp, Law and Farrell) and the magic mirror, Dr. P just may be able to save her.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is more a piece of surrealist art than a traditional movie. Imagine watching a Salvador Dali painting come to life and you’ll get the idea. Gilliam, who co-wrote the script as well as directed, has allowed his imagination to run riot.
While the story meanders to and fro he fills the screen with unforgettable images; Old Nick dangling Dr. P from the end of a branch or a multi-eyed hot air balloon shaped like a man’s head or the ensemble of skirt-wearing, dancing Bobbies. Visually, it’ll make your eyeballs do the Watusi.
The story, however, may leave some a bit baffled, but so what if it warps the brain a bit? The film oozes Gilliam’s trademarked anarchic spirit — he might be the only filmmaker who could replace his leading man with three other actors and actually pull it off — and is the most original movie of the year.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a flight of fancy that was very nearly grounded in mid production. The untimely death of star Heath Ledger in January 2008 almost put the brakes on the film until Terry Gilliam had an idea: Why not continue filming with three of the late actor’s friends taking his place?
“I just started calling friends of Heath,” Gilliam said. “It’s as simple as that. Johnny (Depp), Colin (Farrell) and Jude (Law) turned up. It was important that they were friends, because I wanted to keep it in the family. I wanted people who were close to him because, as Colin said when he was doing his part, he was channelling Heath part of the time, so Heath was very much still alive in some sense.
“I didn’t know whether this would work until I got back to London. We were working on autopilot. Working because that’s what we decided to do and we got back to London and I showed the first cut to the post-sound guy, who hadn’t been involved in the process, and he just assumed it was written that way. I thought, ‘It works.’”
Co-star Christopher Plummer says he thinks it works better than the original script.
“The audience needs to be rejuvenated at the eleventh hour and they are by the presence of the three guys,” he said. “I think Heath would have thoroughly approved of that and probably have been relieved not to go, ‘OK fellas, it’s time I had a break.’”
One of Heath’s co-stars, however, had a harder time accepting the loss and the replacements. Lily Cole says she cried on the first day of shooting without Ledger, but soon realized that by stepping in Depp, Farrell and Law were doing a “brave and lovely thing” to honor the late actor.
Gilliam agrees, viewing the finished film as homage to Ledger. A credit where the director’s name usually sits is a tribute to the late actor and the respect he earned.
“Contractually, it was supposed to be a Terry Gilliam Film,” he said. “That’s what the lawyers said, but I said, ‘No way it’s going to be that. It’s going to be a film from Heath Ledger and friends.’ The cast sat around one night and that idea came up and I said, ‘This is it. Perfect. That’s how we do it.’”
Canadian film critic Richard Crouse seems to have his hands full with regular gigs in mainstream television, radio and print journalism, yet still manages to find the time to indulge in his lifelong passion for cult cinema. His most recent tome is The Son of the 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, a follow-up to The 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, both of them containing a heavy amount of the macabre.
Making up a list like this is tough. I’m sure I’ll remember a classic or two that I should have included after I hit the send button, but, off the top of my head, here are my faves…
1. The Exorcist 1973, Directed by William Friedkin. The single scariest night at the movies this ten year old ever experienced.
2. Let the Right One In 2008, Directed by Tomas Alfredson. A vampire film without a castle, a cape or coffin. Loved it.
3. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein 1948, Directed by Charles Barton. Perfect mix of corny laughs and scary stuff.
4. Ginger Snaps 2000, Directed by John Fawcett. Great reinvention of the werewolf myth.
5. Frankenstein 1931, Directed by James Whale. For my money the best of the classic Universal monster movies.
6. Dawn of the Dead 1978, Directed by George A. Romero. Probably the greatest zombie flick ever.
7. Rosemary’s Baby 1968, Directed by Roman Polanski. Evil atmosphere you could cut with a knife.
8. Psycho 1960, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. I still get creeped out in the shower.
9. May 2002, Directed by Lucky McKee. Really underrated horror film that deserves to be better known than it is.
10. The Host 2006, Directed by Joon-ho Bong. Big bug movies don’t get much better than this.
Tomorrow comedian Chris Rock adds a new entry on his resume: Documentary filmmaker.
After a career spent making people laugh, in Good Hair, Rock is tackling a subject that sounds light hearted, but has deeper roots — the relationship African-American women have with their hair.
“When people first heard I was doing it they kind of thought it was going to be frivolous,” he says. “They thought it would be some version of Punk’d where I exposed people for not having their own hair or whatever and they see the movie and they are surprised.”
Surprised perhaps that Rock uses the subject of a cultural obsession with hair as a starting point to address larger issues.
“It’s hair,” he says. “It’s self esteem. It’s race. It’s how we look at ourselves. It’s the beauty industry. It’s a black movie. It’s a white movie. It’s an American movie. It’s a world movie. It’s a really gay movie. It’s a lot of movie.”
Rock’s formal foray into the culture of hair was inspired by a question his daughter asked — “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?”— but he had his own experience with toxic hair relaxers years before.
“I’ve had my hair relaxed and it burned,” he said. “It feels like having your head set on fire. I stopped when I got Lethal Weapon. It was literally like, ‘I got a million dollars and burning my scalp … that is not being rich.’ I dreaded it. I thought if I can’t make money without doing this then I’m just not going to make any money.”
He has, of course, made money without sacrificing his scalp.
His career is thriving — he has two features coming out next year, including Grown Ups opposite his old SNL partner Adam Sandler — and, he says, Good Hair may not be his last documentary.
“I just have to find the right topic,” he says. “You can’t just do it because you have a slot. ‘OK, it’s been a year!’ That doesn’t work for me. This one was really from my heart.
“I’m not gonna get rich off of this, but this really, really came from heart.”
If aliens learned about Thanksgiving from movies and television, they’d get a skewed idea of what the day is all about. In real life we express our gratitude for life’s bounty, but on screen it’s a different story.
“Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday,” joked Johnny Carson. “People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year and then discover once a year is way too often.”
Being less than thankful for family is a common theme in entertainment. The House of Yes saw queen of quirk Parker Posey ruin Thanksgiving when her favourite brother brings home his fiancée, and in Pieces of April a pre-Cruisized Katie Holmes not only has to deal with a broken stove but a broken family as well.
Home for the Holidays has a heart warming title that promises sweetness and light but director Jody Foster’s Thanksgiving tale is anything but an ode to the holiday. It’s the family reunion from hell for the Larson family, culminating in fist fights and emotional distress. The film’s tone is summed up by Robert Downey Jr. who invites everyone to the dinner table with the words, “Let’s eat dead bird!”
The Larsons didn’t gel on Turkey Day, but as James D. Turner remarked in Trading Places, “It ain’t cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving,” so I dug deeper for examples of film families enjoying the holiday.
No luck.
The Ice Storm’s backdrop of ’70s suburban ennui sets the tone for a tragic climax on Thanksgiving Day and Christina Ricci’s acidic prayer. “Dear Lord,” she says, “thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff ourselves like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.”
Cheery stuff! But not as grim as the Thanksgiving horror trailer from Grindhouse. “White meat, dark meat,” cackles the announcer. “All will be carved.”
At least Planes, Trains and Automobiles, about odd couple Steve Martin and John Candy trying to get home for Thanksgiving, is jammed packed with laughs, even if Martin isn’t the most thankful man.
Also grin worthy is Hannah and Her Sisters, the Woody Allen film book ended by Central Park West Thanksgiving dinners.
If Thanksgiving really was like it is in the movies the only thing we’d be giving thanks for is that it only comes around once a year.
A HARRISON FORD STORY FOR YOU: On January 14, 2010 Richard hosted a screening of Extraordinary Measures the new medical drama starring Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell. Backstage before the intro Ford jokes to Richard, “If you say nice things about me in the intro I’ll say nice things about you.” Richard nodded enthusiastically. “What would you like me to say?” Ford continued.”Say whatever you want,” Richard joked back, but if you can use the words ‘brilliant’ and ‘beloved.'”
