IT'S hardly a great movie, and it seems quite square and timid in its embrace of what we now know as "the '60s" -- art, bohemia, individualism. But I'll never forget Elizabeth Taylor's role in The Sandpiper and those great shots of the Big Sur Coast -- perhaps this blog's favorite West Coast locale.Liz plays a free-spirited singled mother, with raffish friends, and nearly bursts out every … [Read more...]
Philip K. Dick at the Movies
Tomorrow a new film based on a Philip K. Dick story, The Adjustment Bureau, opens. I’ve not yet seen the Matt Damon/Emily Blunt film yet, but the PKD fans I know are not impressed with it and don’t think it’s true to the author’s vision and thinks it's been skewed too much in a conventional-romantic direction. (Here is a mostly approving review by the NYT's Manohla Dargis.)The film is based on a … [Read more...]
Return of the Found Footage Festival
ALL I can say is, it's one of the funniest things I have ever seen. The Found Footage Festival, a collection of oddball training videos, celebrity promotions and home movies, rolls though Los Angeles every year or so, curated and presented by two Letterman-like dudes who scour thrift stores and garage sales.One of host Nick Prueher's favorite videos from this year's festival, on Tuesday (March 1) … [Read more...]
Social Network Producer Mike De Luca
From the outside, The Astaire Building, the early-‘90s structure on the Sony lot where Michael De Luca Productions is housed, is about as rock ‘n’ roll as the dancer which lends the edifice its name.But De Luca’s office – which includes the usual neat stacks of scripts on the desk, scattering of books, and LCD television – shows that something a little more personal is at work here. The … [Read more...]
The Long Career of Michael Medavoy
NOT long ago, Mike Medavoy was hanging out with a bunch of other producers – most of them guys who had been too young to work in the business in the ‘70s but looked back with longing at its maverick glory. Medavoy, by contrast, had played a small but important role as a studio exec who’d helped Rocky, Apocalypse Now and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest see the light of day.“They all said, almost in … [Read more...]
Masters of Cinema, Through French Eyes
THE French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema may be the most important, game-changing publication in the history of film, thanks to its role in the auteur theory and its instigation of the New Wave. The magazine also rethought film history in a way that honored directors like Hitchcock and Hawks at the expense of supposedly more serious French filmmakers. Some of Cahiers’ advocacy (Sam Fuller) now … [Read more...]
Clowes’ Wilson Headed for Hollywood
JUST announced: Alexander Payne of Sideways fame will direct an adaptation of Daniel Clowes Wilson, his latest graphic novel. Deadline.com has the story of the deal with Fox Searchlight here.A few months ago I met the Bay Area-based Clowes, whose Ghost World and Art School Confidential have been adapted, to discuss Wilson. The character is an enraged loner who sometimes shows flashes of heart and … [Read more...]
Casey Affleck Comes Clean
I DON'T think anybody's terribly surprised. But Casey Affleck just admitted to the New York Times that is bizarre documentary on Joachin Phoenix, I'm Still Here, was a piece of performance art.From Michael Cieply's piece in today' NYT:His new movie, “I’m Still Here,” was performance. Almost every bit of it. Including Joaquin Phoenix’sdisturbing appearance on David Letterman’s late-night show in … [Read more...]
Christopher Nolan’s Early Years
About a decade ago I was tipped off to an odd, inscrutable film by a budding English director living in LA. Christopher Nolan's Memento, which starred Guy Pearce in an ill-fitting pale suit and bleached hair, knocked me out, and I spent an afternoon talking about movies, memory and fragmented narrative with the 30-year old director at his apartment near the LACMA while he played Radiohead's Kid A … [Read more...]
Ozu’s Films vs. Adrian Tomine
It's one of the best and most natural aesthetic marriages imaginable: The nuanced, meditative Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu and the nuanced, meditative comics Adrian Tomine, best known for the Optic Nerve series.Tomine has designed some covers for Ozu's lesser known films, The Only Son and There Was a Father. Here is more info on the films, which the Criterion Collection will release next week. … [Read more...]