Movie-theatre drama 'The Flick' wins Pulitzer

Annie Baker's play The Flick, which follows the employees of a struggling movie theatre in Worcester County, MA, has won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for drama, it was revealed earlier today. Last spring, our Doris Toumarkine reviewed the lauded production. The following article appeared online in April 2013:

Saving 'The Flick': Off-Broadway hit ponders the future of an indie movie theatre

By: Doris Toumarkine

Rare indeed it is that any Times Square-area play, Broadway or Off, with no bold-faced names among cast, playwright or director can generate at least three major New York Times pieces. But Annie Baker’s current play The Flick, about a struggling single-screen theatre in Worcester County, Mass., and its three struggling employees, has had sold-out shows during its extended run at 42nd Street’s Playwrights Horizons, which ends Sunday.

Yes, the cast is terrific, their dilemmas stirring (more later), but the damsel in distress here doesn’t have long hair or long legs but short lines and a short life expectancy. The dubious fate of the theatre itself makes The Flick, which is the name of the theatre, a dramatic spin on the children’s classic tome The Little Engine That Could. Call it The Little Theatre That Could.

What grabs eyes and touches hearts (at least for audiences who toil not in live theatre but the movie theatre business) is the play’s amazing set, which provides a wide screen, wall-to-wall view of the shabby coral and beige, roughly 200-seat auditorium that is the entire stage, the venue’s vinyl walls (four speakers and four light sconces) and ceiling (two large fans and florescent overheads).

Fortunately, the theater’s floors between rows (usually ripe for cleaning) remain unseen. (Über-designer David Rockwell clearly had no hand in this auditorium; David Zinn served as admirable overseer of the play’s scenic and costume design.)

Sounds and flickering projector lights also contribute to the veracity. Pounding movie scores pierce the dark room during unseen end credits, lights go up as the projector clatters to a rest and the theatre’s two-man cleaning squad goes to work. Need it be said that The Flick is one of the last theatres in the Worcester area to remain 35mm and stuck way back in the previous century? (Its projector is even called the Century.)

Co-starring with the set are the play’s human characters, three lost but worthy souls who run the place for absentee and unseen owner Steve. There’s bald, speech-impaired Sam (Matthew Maher), a sweet but mentally slow 35-year-old projectionist wannabe who has found a second home at the theatre while serving for years as popcorn, soda, box-office and cleanup guy. He’s totally in love with the younger Rose (Louisa Krause), a cute (green hair aside) wild-child local cycling through boyfriends and excess but having somehow found her own kind of orgone box in the theatre’s projection booth as the resident projectionist.

Finally, there’s 20-year-old newcomer Avery (Aaron Clifton Moten), Sam’s trainee and a refugee from a broken home in which his professor father (a linguistics and semiotics professor, no less) left his mother and injured the son. Bright, articulate and passionate about film (the references fly), he’s on a break from college as he struggles with the family trauma. As the iconic, obsessed film buff (and no doubt closest to the playwright’s alter ego), he’s also a human database of all things movies and, furiously anti-digital, a passionate defender of all things celluloid and analog. The endangered theatre seems the perfect temple for him.

The trio mull the ethical ramifications of people sneaking food from the outside into the theatre (Sam takes a “philosophical” stance against this even though he was guilty of same) and speculate about owner Steve trying to sell the venue. After hours, they take a busman’s holiday and run The Wild Bunch, one of the many old orphaned 35mm prints that clutter the booth.

Newbie Avery learns from mentor Sam that part of the ceiling had come down but Steve wouldn’t pay a penny to fix it (apparently a pro tem job did the trick). Also annoying is that Steve refuses to upgrade to nachos at the counter.

As a picture of things that can go down after the picture winds down, The Flick give us extended scenes of Sam and Avery cleaning the room as they play the parlor game of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” in a verbal contest to link two unlikely stars in a chain of the films they’ve been in. No surprise that Avery cannot be stumped and even navigates the long chain that joins the unlikely pairing of Pauly Shore and Ian Holm. (Lots of film references pepper this three-hour play, a length that has stirred some criticism but nothing compared to the raves that came in.)

In the theatre between shows or after closing, Sam and Avery face a quiet war zone. One annoyance is the laggard who is sound asleep after the picture ends. Less amusing are the challenges of cleaning the place, not just gum off seats or food-coated floors but filthy restrooms better left not described.

And, yes, with the unseen cinema owner Steve always AWOL, there’s some skimming off ticket sales as the three staffers confiscate some stubs and resell so they can have their “dinner money.” Avery balks but turns that corner when convinced that it’s their well-deserved “employee tradition” and his reluctance would destroy that. Only a later closer look at the theatre’s books from a prospective buyer may awaken suspicions. And then there are the oversized jerseys staff will be required to wear when new proprietors take over.

Yes, new owners and digital conversion bring good and bad. Those jerseys aside, there are better ways to clean the butter dispenser and no more splicing together of previews. And Avery, who quit The Flick once digital was declared the winner, returns to gleefully haul away as booty a bunch of 35mm reels and prints, further assuring that celluloid, like life, will go on.

Veracity abounds here. Sally Strasser, owner of the two-screen State Theater in the small Adirondack town of Tupper Lake, New York, was thrilled to notice that the play’s seats are identical to hers in one room.

As if mimicking many of today’s films, The Flick unfolds as short bursts of scenes but borrows from the past with its many fadeouts. Much of the action comes with existential despair (Avery endlessly scraping seats; Sam scraping the icky bottoms of the large waste containers; both employees endlessly sweeping). But nothing here is depressing, as the play is a celebration of survival and moving on. And of the power of movies in all lives.

Playwright Baker, with a number of off-Broadway productions and awards to her credit, has a growing cult following, no doubt boosted by a recent New Yorker magazine profile. She just crossed into her 30s but grew up a serious young movie fanatic in Amherst, Mass. In fact, the third of the three New York Times pieces focuses on the buff-in-the-making aspect of her life that as a teen took her to a local mall for compulsive film-viewing (Pulp Fiction was the big one), to frequent consultations with video-store savants regarding what to see, and into repertory immersion at places like New York’s Film Forum. With The Flick, she works again with her frequent collaborator and director Sam Gold.

Already having had an extended run and bursting with potential for expansion and improvement for the real big screen, The Flick, like its star theatre, need not end. If adapted as the kind of cool, knowing little hipster indie that might attract a cool, knowing cast, it might make a good bet for art houses. In an era when anything can get resurrected (Moose Murders? Heaven’s Gate?), anything is possible.

Deadline looms for 35mm

Two recent blog postings take impassioned stands on the film vs. digital debate. Kyle Westphal's excellent roundup 2013 in Review: Whose Film Is It, Anyway? considers the consequences to artists and viewers when film is no longer available. Don't Worry About the End of Film, argues Richard Brody in his New Yorker blog, The Front Row.

Both writers agree that the era of theatrical projection of 35mm features has passed. (It was hard to ignore recent news articles announcing that Paramount has stopped distributing film prints.) But they reach different conclusions about what this means for moviegoers.

Westphal points out that 35mm projection was supposed to continue in art houses, museums, and other niche theaters, but finds that digital has dominated those markets as well. The last New York Film Festival screened mostly digital, the Chicago International Film Festival exclusively digital. Even To Save and Project, the Museum of Modern Art's annual film preservation festival, had to resort to some digital for its 2013 series.

This despite the fact that the actual people who make movies still want to work with and watch film. Of this year's nine Best Picture nominees, four were shot on film: American Hustle, Captain Phillips (on 16mm!), 12 Years a Slave, and The Wolf of Wall Street (both Wolf and Phillips have some digital shots).

Westphal cites a Joel Coen comment that Inside Llewyn Davis might be the last project he and his brother Ethan make on film. (J.J Abrams said something similar about why he used film for Star Trek Into Darkness.) And as I pointed out in my piece on The Grandmaster, Wong Kar Wai would still shoot on film if he could. It took months for the director to see The Grandmaster projected on film.

Digital enthusiasts keep insisting that a DCP (Digital Cinema Package) delivers an as good as or better image than a 35mm print. There's no question that DCP's are cheaper in the long run than film, which degrades a little (or a lot) with each projection. And after years of viewing poor quality commercial prints projected poorly, most customers probably prefer the rock-solid, spliceless, scratchless digital experience.

For Brody, "ultimately, what matters is not film or video but the idea." He points out that artists have manipulated film since its origins, and brings up the dirty secret that's often missing from this debate: just about every feature* is digitized for post-production work, usually with 2K scans. (*I can't think of a recent feature that was edited by hand, but one could exist.) Basically all the movies we see in commercial theaters have already undergone a digital conversion.

I don't think anyone can argue for a return to 35mm distribution and projection. It doesn't make economic sense, and in almost all cases it doesn't make artistic sense. That doesn't mean digital is superior or even preferable to film. It only means that seeing 35mm in a theater will become more and more difficult.

Try this analogy. Few would insist that an e-book reads the same as a hardbound version published on a letterpress with rag paper. Is the digital version cheaper? Does it contain all the text? Is it endlessly clone-able? Sure. But reading a book on a Kindle is not the same experience as holding a book in your hand.

What looks better? A jpg of oil canvas, or the real thing? A digital file, or a platinum print? No matter how much you manipulate pixels to look like painting or still photography or motion picture film, the differences remain obvious. The whole goal of digital movie formats is still to look "just as good as" film.

Lost in the debate is the fate of our film heritage prior to the digital takeover. It turns out that film is an excellent archival medium—digital, not so great. Archivists are battling these issues out right now on the AMIA listserve, but I will point out that there are no industry-wide standards for digital preservation, no long-term case studies, no real idea what the costs will be.

And there is no market formula right now for the thousands of films from the pre-digital age. Who will pay to digitize them? And if they aren't digitized, how long will it be before the machinery required to see them becomes obsolete?

As one AMIA poster put it,

Caches of nitrate film are still being found—we were nitrate would only survive for 50 years, but there it is, 100 years old and older. Much of it can be saved digitally, but some deserves to survive as film as long as we are able to save it. Should Potemkin or Casablanca or The Red Shoes or Paisan or Caligari or [fill in a title] only survive in digital versions?

'Celluloid Ceiling' survey results released

The industry news of the day is a far cry from the delights of watching the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler-hosted Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday. The telecast enjoyed its best ratings in seven years, thanks, in large part, to Fey and Poehler. But the realities of working females in Hollywood is nothing to smile about, so say the results of the annual “Celluloid Ceiling” survey released earlier today.

The employment survey focused on the top 250 domestic movies of 2013. According to the analysis, just 16 percent of the year’s 2,938 filmmakers were women, a figure that is down 2% from 2012. One of its unsurprising findings included a breakdown of employment by genre: women were most likely to be found working on drama, comedy and documentary films, and least likely to be found contributing to animation, horror and sci-fi projects.

Two major roles, those of director and writer, saw a decrease in women participants. The number of women directors currently stands at 6 percent, a downturn of 3 percent from 2012, while women make up 10 percent of working writers in Hollywood, down 5 percent.

As disheartening as it is to read a litany of these statistics, the female talent that is currently breaking through the ranks, bumping into that “celluloid ceiling” until it gives, is top-rate. There have been many articles written about the untapped wealth of women filmmakers, and they have inspired us to contribute our own small share of the positivity. The below list names just a few of the successful women working behind-the-scenes today, in roles that are indispensable to their lauded projects.

And for a great, thorough breakdown of female influence in Hollywood, take a read through indiewire’s “A to Z” list of women in film here.

Director: Nicole Holofcener, Enough Said
The pack of talented directors whose 2013 films have been raking in award nominations and box-office receipts is undoubtedly one of the strongest in years. Steve McQueen, David O. Russell, Alfonso Cuaron… they have produced important, fun work all. But the acknowledgment of their talent doesn’t make it any less of a shame that an innovative, albeit unshowy director like Nicole Holofcener should get widely overlooked when it comes time to tip our hats to the best films of the year. Enough Said is small, quiet, awkward, funny, sad, awkward-funny, awkward-sad, and pretty darn true to life. We love that star Julia Louis-Dreyfus has received some well-deserved attention, but Holofcener should be running the awards circuit alongside her. We do have confidence, however, that someone with such a resonant voice can’t be marginalized forever, and Hollywood at large will eventually catch up.

Eventually.

 

Writers: Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, Saving Mr. Banks
It seems only natural that one of the best female roles of the year, the difficult and complex Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers, should have been written by two women. Saving Mr. Banks is a tough story to tell, as so much of the present action between Travers and Walt Disney is dependent upon an understanding of Travers’ past. Although some, like our critic David Noh, found the Banks script a little thin, Marcel and Smith succeeded in fully fleshing out the most important part of the film, Travers herself. It helped that they had feminist firebrand Emma Thompson to bring their character to life, too. Marcel will next tackle the hyped 50 Shades of Grey script. If that choice gives some female advocates pause, no one can say Marcel hasn’t landed one of the most hotly anticipated, and therefore most competitive, films of 2015.

 

Producer: Megan Ellison, American Hustle
Ellison is a fascinating story, one which may warrant a film in its own right someday. The daughter of the third-richest man in America, software company Oracle Co-Founder Larry Ellison, 28-year-old Megan’s brief list of producing credits thus far is, frankly, ridiculous. True Grit, The Master, Spring Breakers, Zero Dark Thirty, Her, and, of course, American Hustle (you might have noticed her up on stage with the rest of the cast when Hustle won for Best Musical or Comedy at the Globes Sunday night), to name just a few. As a 2013 story in Vanity Fair recounts, when Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal were seeking financing for Zero Dark Thirty, trying to find backers for their film outside of the major studios, Ellison offered to write a check for the movie’s entire budget herself. Lest you think Ellison is one who simply likes to swing her weight about with the help of Daddy’s hefty checkbook, however, the aforementioned list of projects testifies to the fact that she has a nose for this kind of thing. She’s currently working on the new Terminator reboot series, and the Seth Rogen-penned animated comedy, Sausage Party. Starting off with money helps, of course, but clearly Ellison knows how to make her own.

 

Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker, The Wolf of Wall Street
Behind every successful man is a woman, and behind every successful director is an editor. You’ve got both in the person of Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese’s longtime collaborator. The 73-year-old Schoonmaker is the recipient of three Oscars herself, for Raging Bull, The Aviator, and The Departed, accolades that only underscore the fact that without her, there would be no heralded Scorsese oeuvre. More recently, there would be no Wolf of Wall Street if Schoonmaker hadn’t worked tirelessly to cut the film down to its current runtime of 179 minutes. In an interview with Variety, Schoonmaker admitted the final stretch of cutting Wolf was “particularly horrendous.” But does she mind not being front-and-center alongside Scorsese, mind never having directed a picture herself? “I think if I was working on disappointing films, well maybe” she would direct, she muses. “But I get this wonderful treasure trove. How many editors can say that?”

 

Cinematographer: Rachel Morrison, Fruitvale Station
Young film student and director Ryan Coogler may be the hot topic of conversation surrounding Fruitvale Station, but, like Schoonmaker, without Morrison’s expertise, there would have been no Fruitvale Station, and no breakout for Coogler. Morrison has been carving out her niche in one of the industry’s most male-dominated roles (which is saying something), cinematography, since 2002. She’s worked on kitschy TV series “Room Raiders” and “The Hills,” and, more recently, on the Alan Cumming indie Any Day Now. But it was her collaboration with Coogler that brought her work to a broader audience, a coup that will hopefully land her more of the same interesting, progressive projects in the future.

 

Black List reveals best of 2013's unproduced

Earlier today The Black List unveiled its top picks for the year’s best unproduced screenplays. Holland, Michigan by Andrew Sodroski earned the most number of votes out of a pack that includes such enticingly titled projects as Randle is Benign, The Shark Is Not Working, Time & Temperature, The Boy and His Tiger, and the we’re-pretty-sure-we-know-what-this-is-about (and-we’re-excited-for-it) A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

Since 2005 The Black List, founded by Franklin Leonard and Dino Sijamic, has compiled an annual roster of screenplays that is meant to represent the best of the industry’s exponential pile of unproduced works. The organization tends to be spot on. Of the past five Best Picture winners, three were made from Black-Listed scripts: Argo, Slumdog Millionaire, and The King’s Speech. Juno, The Social Network, The Descendants, and Django Unchained all won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, and were all once listed on The Black List.

The upcoming Fathers and Daughters, starring Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried and “Breaking Bad’s” Aaron Paul, was a Black List selection from 2012, as was the Hillary Clinton biopic, Rodham, currently in development at Lionsgate.

See if you can spot 2015’s Best Picture winner out of this year’s group of 72 (listed in no particular order) below:

MISSISSIPPI MUD by Elijah Bynum

PATIENT Z by Michael Le

MAKE A WISH by Zach Frankel

RANDLE IS BENIGN by Damien Ober

A MONSTER CALLS by Patrick Ness

QUEEN OF HEARTS by Stephanie Shannon

HOLLAND, MICHIGAN by Andrew Sodroski

HOT SUMMER NIGHTS by Elijah Bynum

DUDE by Oliva Milch

PAN by Jason Fuchs

SUPERBRAT by Eric Slovin & Leo Allen

SEED by Christina Hodson

CAKE by Patrick Tobin

DIABLO RUN by Shea Mirzai and Evan Mirzai

SEA OF TREES by Chris Sparling

FRISCO by Simon Stephenson

WHERE ANGELS DIE by Alexander Felix

SUGAR IN MY VEINS by Barbara Stepansky

SECTION 6 by Aaron Berg

LAST MINUTE MAIDS by Leo Nicholas

BROKEN COVE by Declan O'Dwyer

TIME & TEMPERATURE by Nick Santora

POX AMERICANA by Frank John Hughes

THE FIXER by Bill Kennedy

HALF HEARD IN STILLNESS by David Weil

THE LINE by Sang Kyu Kim

BEAST by Zach Dean

THE REMAINS by Meaghan Oppenheimer

TCHAIKOVSKY'S REQUIEM by Jonathan Stokes

AMERICAN SNIPER by Jason Dean Hall

THE POLITICIAN by Matthew Bass and Theodore Bressman

BEAUTY QUEEN by Annie Neal

REMINISCENCE by Lisa Joy Nolan

FREE BYRD by Jon Boyer

DIG by Adam Barker

MAN OF SORROW by Neville Kiser

THE GOLDEN RECORD by Aaron Kandell and Jordan Kandell

NICHOLAS by Leo Sardarian

FROM HERE TO ALBION by Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirivani

1969: A SPACE ODYSSEY OR HOW KUBRICK LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LAND ON THE MOON by Stephany Folsom

CLARITY by Ryan Belenzon and Jeffrey Gelber

ELSEWHERE by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis

THE KILLING FLOOR by Bac Delorme and Stephen Clarke

REVELATION by Hernany Perla

THE CROWN by Max Hurwitz

THE CIVILIAN by Rachel Long & Brian Pittman

AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE by Richard Naing and Ian Goldberg

THE SHARK IS NOT WORKING by Richard Cordiner

THE INDEPENDENT by Evan Parter

FAULTS by Riley Stearns

THE SPECIAL PROGRAM by Debora Cahn

I'M PROUD OF YOU by Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue

SOVEREIGN by Geoff Tock and Greg Weidman

DOGFIGHT by Nicole Riegel

INK AND BONE by Zak Olkewicz

A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD by Alexis C Jolly

GAY KID AND FAT CHICK by Bo Burnham

BURY THE LEAD by Justin Kremer

EXTINCTION by Spenser Cohen

SPOTLIGHT by Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy

THE MAYOR OF SHARK CITY by Nick Creature and Michael Sweeney

THE END OF THE TOUR by Donald Margulies

FULLY WRECKED by Jake Morse & Scott Wolman

PURE O by Kate Trefry

CAPSULE by Ian Shorr

SHOVEL BUDDIES by Jason Mark Hellerman

BURN SITE by Doug Simon

THE COMPANY MAN by Andrew Cypiot

SWEETHEART by Jack Stanley

INQUEST by Josh Simon

THE BOY AND HIS TIGER by Dan Dollar

LINE OF DUTY by Cory Miller

SAG Announces 2014 Nominees

With four nods, including a Best Actor bid for Chiwetel Ejiofor and one for the coveted Best Cast, 12 Years A Slave has racked up the most 2014 Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

In the next tier down, SAG awarded three nominations each to Dallas Buyers Club, August: Osage County and Lee Daniels' The Butler. Nebraska, American Hustle and Captain Phillips have all earned two nods per film.

The list of this year's movie nominees is outlined in full below. Combined with last week's NYFCC awards, which film do you think has the edge at this year's Oscars?

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
BRUCE DERN / Woody Grant – “NEBRASKA” (Paramount Pictures)
CHIWETEL EJIOFOR / Solomon Northup – “12 YEARS A SLAVE” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
TOM HANKS / Capt. Richard Phillips – “CAPTAIN PHILLIPS” (Columbia Pictures)
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY / Ron Woodroof – “DALLAS BUYERS CLUB” (Focus Features)
FOREST WHITAKER / Cecil Gaines – “LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER” (The Weinstein Company)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
CATE BLANCHETT / Jasmine – “BLUE JASMINE” (Sony Pictures Classics)
SANDRA BULLOCK / Ryan Stone – “GRAVITY” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
JUDI DENCH / Philomena Lee – “PHILOMENA” (The Weinstein Company)
MERYL STREEP / Violet Weston – “AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY” (The Weinstein Company)
EMMA THOMPSON / P.L. Travers – “SAVING MR. BANKS” (Walt Disney Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
BARKHAD ABDI / Muse – “CAPTAIN PHILLIPS” (Columbia Pictures)
DANIEL BRÜHL / Niki Lauda – “RUSH” (Universal Pictures)
MICHAEL FASSBENDER / Edwin Epps – “12 YEARS A SLAVE” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
JAMES GANDOLFINI / Albert – “ENOUGH SAID” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
JARED LETO / Rayon – “DALLAS BUYERS CLUB” (Focus Features)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
JENNIFER LAWRENCE / Rosalyn Rosenfeld – “AMERICAN HUSTLE” (Columbia Pictures)
LUPITA NYONG’O / Patsey – “12 YEARS A SLAVE” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
JULIA ROBERTS / Barbara Weston – “AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY” (The Weinstein Company)
JUNE SQUIBB / Kate Grant – “NEBRASKA” (Paramount Pictures)
OPRAH WINFREY / Gloria Gaines – “LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER” (The Weinstein Company)

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
12 YEARS A SLAVE (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH / Ford
PAUL DANO / Tibeats
GARRET DILLAHUNT / Armsby
CHIWETEL EJIOFOR / Solomon Northup
MICHAEL FASSBENDER / Edwin Epps
PAUL GIAMATTI / Freeman
SCOOT McNAIRY / Brown
LUPITA NYONG’O / Patsey
ADEPERO ODUYE / Eliza
SARAH PAULSON / Mistress Epps
BRAD PITT / Bass
MICHAEL KENNETH WILLIAMS / Robert
ALFRE WOODARD / Mistress Shaw
 
AMERICAN HUSTLE (Columbia Pictures)
AMY ADAMS / Sydney Prosser
CHRISTIAN BALE / Irving Rosenfeld
LOUIS C.K. / Stoddard Thorsen
BRADLEY COOPER / Richie DiMaso
PAUL HERMAN / Alfonse Simone
JACK HUSTON / Pete Musane
JENNIFER LAWRENCE / Rosalyn Rosenfeld
ALESSANDRO NIVOLA / Federal Prosecutor
MICHAEL PEÑA / Sheik (Agent Hernandez)
JEREMY RENNER / Mayor Carmine Polito
ELISABETH RÖHM / Dolly Polito
SHEA WHIGHAM / Carl Elway
 
AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (The Weinstein Company)
ABIGAIL BRESLIN / Jean Fordham
CHRIS COOPER / Charles Aiken
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH / “Little” Charles Aiken
JULIETTE LEWIS / Karen Weston
MARGO MARTINDALE / Mattie Fae Aiken
EWAN McGREGOR / Bill Fordham
DERMOT MULRONEY / Steve
JULIANNE NICHOLSON / Ivy Weston
JULIA ROBERTS / Barbara Weston
SAM SHEPARD / Beverly Weston
MERYL STREEP / Violet Weston
MISTY UPHAM / Johnna
 
DALLAS BUYERS CLUB (Focus Features)
JENNIFER GARNER / Dr. Eve Saks
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY / Ron Woodroof
JARED LETO / Rayon
DENIS O’HARE / Dr. Sevard
DALLAS ROBERTS / David Wayne
STEVE ZAHN / Tucker
 
LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER (The Weinstein Company)
MARIAH CAREY / Hattie Pearl
JOHN CUSACK / Richard Nixon
JANE FONDA / Nancy Reagan
CUBA GOODING, JR. / Carter Wilson
TERRENCE HOWARD / Howard
LENNY KRAVITZ / James Holloway
JAMES MARSDEN / John F. Kennedy
DAVID OYELOWO / Louis Gaines
ALEX PETTYFER / Thomas Westfall
VANESSA REDGRAVE / Annabeth Westfall
ALAN RICKMAN / Ronald Reagan
LIEV SCHREIBER / Lyndon B. Johnson
FOREST WHITAKER / Cecil Gaines
ROBIN WILLIAMS / Dwight D. Eisenhower
OPRAH WINFREY / Gloria Gaines

The SAG awards will be broadcast live on TNT and TBS on Saturday, January 18 at 8pm ET/5pm PT.

12 Years A Slave
 

American Hustle
 

August: Osage County
 

Dallas Buyers Club
 

Lee Daniels' The Butler
 

Nebraska
 

Captain Phillips
 

Kaufman carves out piece of film history

Situated in the “suburbs of New York City,” as one member of the press put it, The Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, New York, is now the proud home to the city's very first backlot. The space made its official debut earlier today at a well-attended ribbon-cutting ceremony. Though the weather was mild, sunny, and cooperatively ripe for the public display of an outdoor facility, the attenuating press conference was held inside Kaufman studios itself. Journalists and the city’s cultural movers and shakers schmoozed by the set of Amazon’s hit Web series “Alpha House,” though they were cordoned off from the show’s important, breakable items (facades of painted-brick houses and a long, imposing hallway with the look of sterile governmental officiousness about it provided the backdrop for what was really a congenial photo-op for the event’s politician speakers).

After getting off to a late start – not that many of the attendees minded, given the dark chocolate and peanut-butter cupcakes available – several important personages, figureheads and influential personalities alike, discussed the benefits of the new Kaufman Studios backlot. Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer was the day’s master of ceremonies, providing the opening remarks and setting the excited and hopeful, if often self-congratulatory, tone. “We like to think of it as Hollywood East,” he said of the studio space. “What [Head of Kaufman Studios] George Kaufman started here has produced billions – literally billions – of dollars in revenue,” and countless jobs.

Photo credit: Jill Lotenberg

Subsequent speakers, including Senator Charles Schumer, George Kaufman’s right-hand man Hal Rosenbluth, Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, Senator Michael Gianaris, Assembly Member Aravella Simotas, and Senior Vice President of Film, Arts and Culture Development for New York State Rhoda Glickman, each echoed Van Bramer’s sentiments in turn. George Kaufman’s achievement – renovating the studio space after it fell into disrepair around 1980, subsequently revamping New York City’s film industry – was universally lauded, as were the benefits of the city’s film tax exemptions.

“The breaks come back to us – so much money comes back to us,” said Senator Schumer. The reinvigorated movie business has “created hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs – not tens of thousands,” he was quick to emphasize.

Rosenbluth sounded, “Today is the celebration of a vision coming true,” while Senator Gianaris challenged the haters (none of whom were in attendance). He asked that “for all those who want to be critical, to rewind 10 years… It’s not just the talent, Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford, that’re making money off these productions.” He ticked off carpenters, electricians, and caterers as examples of those who benefit from a healthy entertainment business. Later, Rosenbluth cited the end credits of a film. “Each name [you see] is a job,” he said, “and each company is many jobs.”

George Kaufman, the man of the hour and its least loquacious, spoke briefly of how proud he felt and of his hopes for the future development and success of those projects that utilize the lot.

The conference moved along at a nice clip. Afterwards, the press was invited outside for more officially staged photos, including those that included the cutting of the ribbon. The speakers grouped together before the lot’s gates and beneath an outdoor catwalk, accessible via a broad spiral staircase and headed by large metal letters spelling out “Kaufman.”

Photo credit: Jill Lotenberg

Though she didn’t speak during the press conference, “Orange is the New Black” actress Dascha Polanco was on hand to discuss her experience filming Netflix’s popular series on the Kaufman property. As someone living on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, she said, she felt “proud” when she first got wind of a Kaufman backlot. “It’s a great representation of how things [here] keep getting better and improve. I’m witnessing history, and that’s an honor.” Not to mention a memorable way to kick off your 30th birthday.

Polanco’s reference to history is apt. Back when it was known as Famous Players Lasky, the studio officially opened for show-business in 1920. It later went on to house Paramount Studios, and, for many years, was the largest film stage outside of Hollywood. Early luminaries like Gloria Swanson, Claudette Colbert and W.C. Fields all starred in productions filmed in the space. More recently, Kaufman studios continues to play host to TV series “Nurse Jackie” and "Sesame Street," as well as “Alpha House” and “Orange is the New Black.” The Bourne Legacy filmed there, as did the upcoming Ben Stiller drama The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

“This is a game-changer for New York,” Schumer stated. We have the talent, he said, as so many people would rather live here than in California. In other words, and in sum:  “Hollywood, watch out!”

'American Hustle' wins top NYFC honor

The New York Film Critics Circle has announced its 2013 list of awardees, kicking Oscar punditry, predictions, and proselytizing into high gear. David O. Russell's American Hustle walked away with the Best Picture title, while star Jennifer Lawrence was named the year's Best Supporting Actress (cue mockingjay hand signal of solidarity). The list of winners is below:

 

 Best Picture: American Hustle
 Best Actor: Robert Redford, All Is Lost
 Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
 Best Director: Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave
 Best Screenplay: American Hustle
 Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
 Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
 Best Animated Film: The Wind Rises
 Best Cinematographer: Bruno Delbonnel, Inside Llewyn Davis
 Best First Film: Fruitvale Station
 Best Foreign Film: Blue Is the Warmest Color
 Best Non-Fiction Film (Documentary): Stories We Tell
 Special Award: Frederick Wiseman

 

Preserving Ebert's legacy

“See you at the movies.”

It’s easy to understand the unprecedented popular success movie critic Roger Ebert enjoyed when you take a look at his signature signoff. Whether or not he liked the films whose merits he had just spent the past half-hour debating, at the end of each episode of “At the Movies” with fellow critics Gene Siskel or Richard Roeper, Ebert would leave his audience with an invitation. His was an inclusionary approach to viewership. “You” were sitting beside him in the theater and therefore it was “you” to whom he was speaking. The cinema was an “empathy machine” so far as Ebert was concerned, with the ability to transcend, engage and connect disparate sensibilities. It’s a nice way to look at any work of art, if one that sometimes trips along the fault lines of prequels, sequels and arty delusions of grandeur. More importantly, with its allusion to a future full of sights yet unseen, it’s an eminently hopeful phrase.

All of which is a fancy way of saying Roger Ebert was a likable guy, the People’s Critic. Hoop Dreams director Steve James, along with executive producer Martin Scorsese, has taken it upon himself to film the first documentary on Ebert, who died last spring. James began shooting before Ebert passed away and is now well into post-production on the film that shares a title with the reviewer’s memoir, Life Itself. Now, James is calling upon Ebert's fans to help finish his paean to the industry luminary.

The director has set up an Indiegogo campaign to help raise funds for costly movie polishes: the documentary’s soundtrack, animation work, and archival footage licensing, among others. Crowd-funding sites like Indiegogo are inherently inclusionary and communal, but James is taking these ideas so important to Ebert’s legacy several steps further. If you donate $25 to the campaign, you’ll be sent a private link that will enable you to live stream the movie ahead of its premiere. After he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2006, Ebert was eventually forced to relinquish hosting duties of his TV show. Instead of retiring, however, he continued to review and build out his fan base via social media. James’ chosen tech angle is apt for a man who used the Internet as stage for his third act.

 

Depending on how much they donate ($25 is at the lower end of the price points), contributors can receive a variety of prizes. You can attend a screening in New York or LA, chat with the filmmakers, even receive a private editing tutorial from director James. My favorite reward, however, is that which is sent to every participant regardless of how much she donates. Throughout his career Ebert wrote 7,202 reviews. The first 7,202 people who contribute will be sent a review corresponding to their member number (if you’re the 57^th person to give, you’ll receive the 57^th review Ebert wrote). Pretty cool.

Click here for the link to the Indiegogo campaign.  You have until December 20^th to help James, on behalf of Ebert, be able to say with confidence: See you at this movie.

More than window dressing

It’s been more than 60 years since Hollywood last adapted Gustave Flaubert’s classic, some would consider the ur, novel, Madame Bovary. Now, Mia Wasikowska has signed on to play the tragically imaginative heroine, a woman whose dissatisfaction with her comfortable provincial life (“she has read too many books and it has addled her brain,” as the popular Louisa May Alcott saying, emblazoned on many a modern tote bag, goes) leads to her downfall.

The production helmed by director Sophie Barthes will likely feature another acclaimed turn by Wasikowska, and Paul Giamatti and Rhys Ifans can always be counted on to lend their films a bit or bushel of their personal magnetism. But for many fans of classic novel adaptations, the scenery and especially the costumes are a large part of the appeal. Imagining the contemporary milieu, from Dickens’ dirty cobblestone streets to the Bronte sisters’ foggy ad-infinitum moors to Flaubert’s French farmland, is often half the fun of reading a golden oldie. Their exterior descriptions, so often lacking in comparable expansiveness among modern novels, do more than their bit to help the reader “lose herself” in the story.

When it comes to a cinematic reimagining, an emphasis on production value is necessary and tricky: It can go a long way towards capturing the tone and distracting from the original material both. On those occasions where the director, cinematographer, set and costume designer are all in accord, you get nothing less than the industry ideal: movie magic.

Here, then, are those novel adaptations where content and costume walked hand-in-hand towards film (or at least fan) canonization. Below these, we’ve included a few stinkers, the bad apples that give the whole bunch of “costume dramas” or “period pieces” their pejorative ring. Where will Wasikowska’s Bovary fall?

Best:
Pride and Prejudice (1995)
 
Apocalypse Now (1979; based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – army fatigues are costumes, too)
 
Emma (1996)

 
Gone With The Wind (1939)

 
A Little Princess (1995)

 
Valmont (1989; not as classy as the 1988 Dangerous Liasons, but its campiness gives it an added cult boost)
 
The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

 
The Wizard of Oz (1939)

 
The Godfather: Part II (DeNiro flashbacks)

 

Worst:
Vanity Fair (2004)

 
Wuthering Heights (2011)

 
Anna Karenina (2012)

 
The Three Musketeers (2011)

 
Troy (2004)

 
The Scarlet Letter (1995)

 
The Great Gatsby (2013)

 

'Just when you thought I was dead...'

Harvey Weinstein was back in the media and the MPAA’s bad graces this morning after appearing on "CBS This Morning" to announce the launch of yet another attack on the ratings system. This time, the MPAA managed to incite the very, very public irritation of Weinstein by giving one of his awards-season contenders, Philomena, an audience-restricting R instead of a PG-13 rating. Like that time they tried to give Blue Valentine an NC-17 instead of an R rating (Harvey won that one), or that time they gave The King’s Speech an R instead of a PG-13 rating (Harvey did not win that one), the MPAA has apparently once again acted in a manner that could hurt the success, of the fiscal or Academy Awards variety, of a Weinstein film. A thing not to be borne.

But this particular campaign has gotten off to a remarkably likable start. The hullabaloo managed to transcend a typical Weinstein publicity blitz the moment Judi Dench, in character as James Bond’s late boss M, swiveled to face the camera in a 20-second video spot and pronounced herself resurrected. “Just when you thought I was dead,” M (or PhiloMena) wink-winks, before telling the audience she has an important mission for them. “Are you familiar with M-P-A-A?” she asks at video’s end. Presumably, when the next spot airs tomorrow, we’re to be charged with virtually accosting the MPAA as Weinstein brow-beating stand-ins until the bad guys relent and stop picking on poor old PhiloMena. It’s silly, but also fun, as Weinstein himself acknowledges (“I’m having fun with them”). One would think after 20-odd years – Weinstein launched his first attack on the MPAA back in 1994 when they tried to give Clerks an NC-17 rating (Harvey won that one) – the organization would be a little tired of the Weinsteins’ kind of fun. But the rest of us can enjoy the video clips.

A special M.essage:
 

Weinstein on "CBS This Morning:"
 

I do think Weinstein has a point. The difference between one F-word and two F-words in a film that doesn’t otherwise feature unduly adult or mature material seems negligible. I’m less sure how all those Southern church-going families will react to the negative portrayal of the movie’s nuns, but perhaps Philomena’s embodiment of Christian ideals will salve the wound. The ratings appeal is scheduled for next Wednesday, but count on at least another video or two before then.

Bidding farewell to Schamus' Focus

For many still reeling from the news of James Schamus’ recent departure from Focus Features, the company’s latest bulletin has the tenor of a protracted funeral knell. Focus Features International will shut its London offices at the end of the year.  Though cause for hand-wringing and sad-blogging among arthouse aficionados and Hollywood holdouts, this most recent development is by no means unexpected, as the company announced only weeks ago it would close its New York headquarters and relocate all operations to LA. The writing was on a wall that, if slowly crumbling, will soon be rebuilt to the specifications of the new CEO, Peter Schlessel, formerly of FilmDistrict. Under Schlessel, Focus will increase the number of films it releases each year and broaden beyond its characteristic emphasis on specialty fare.

If nothing else, time away from the office is only that much more Schamus can spend with frequent collaborator, Ang Lee. The two have produced some of the best indie films of the past 20 years, including the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain.  The rest of Focus’ output wasn’t too shabby, either. Below, we’ve listed some of the best films released by the production/distribution company. Did we miss anything…?

Top  Films Focus Features Produced:
Far From Heaven (2002)
 
Lost In Translation (2003)
 
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
 
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
 
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
 
Lust, Caution (2007)
 
Eastern Promises (2007)
 
In Bruges (2008)
 
Milk (2008)
 
Coraline (2009)
 
The Kids Are All Right (2010)
 
Somewhere (2010)
 
Jane Eyre (2011)
 

Top Films Focus Features Distributed:
The Pianist (2002)
 
Swimming Pool (2003)
 
The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
 
Brick (2005)
 
Atonement (2007)
 
A Serious Man (2009)
 
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)
 
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
 

Saying goodbye to 'The Booth'

Earlier today, Slate published a brief spread of gorgeous photos from Joseph O. Holmes’ ongoing exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image, “The Booth: The Last Days of Film Projection.”

The exhibit’s themes are neatly summarized within the title: Intimacy and farewell, the former a natural byproduct of those small working spaces, the projection booths, often made homey with “family pictures [and] notes between the projectionists;” the latter an implied echo behind the word “last.”

“These things are going away, so I wanted to preserve what I think is a really beautiful setting,” said Holmes. “Those reels and the projectors and the film and the editing equipment almost feel like they could come from any decade in the last hundred years… It feels like tapping into something ancient.”

Which is precisely how your kids will feel when they flip through these photos, bound in a coffee-table book (should those still exist), only a few short years from now.

To view Slates’ full spread and interview with Holmes, click here, or keep scrolling for Holmes’ own moving-image paean to the projection booth, a 12-minute compilation of film clips where the space serves as a key setting, below:

 

'Gravity' proves its staying power, plucky 'Phillips' is No. 2

Continuing to monopolize film industry headlines and ticket receipts, Gravity soared through a banner sophomore weekend. The film experienced only a minor drop-off in sales these last several days, slipping just 21% to gross $44.3 million. That’s the strongest box-office hold any non-holiday movie that debuted over $50 million has ever experienced.  To further contextualize: Gravity had the second best weekend ever in IMAX sales, grossing $9 million – ahead of previous IMAX juggernaut The Dark Knight Rises.

All in all, Alfonso Cuaron’s trendy thriller – and we’d imagine one of this year’s most popular Halloween costumes – has managed the difficult task of impressing both critics and audiences alike,  earning itself the title of bona fide success story. The early Oscar favorite currently boasts a $123 million haul – and counting.

Itself no financial slouch, Captain Phillips grossed a respectable $26 million its opening weekend. While this stable debut may not elicit the awe of, say, a $50 million premiere weekend, it’s a much-needed hit for Tom Hanks: His last few movies, including Cloud Atlas, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Larry Crowne, were financial disappointments.

As many pundits speculated last weekend, Phillips drew an older crowd. The film’s demographic breakdown is unequivocal: 62% of audience members were over the age of 35. Fifty-two percent were also male, so we think Sandra Bullock’s Oscar campaign should begin in full force… yesterday.

If the adults were all out gripping their armrests in a wonderfully fun state of suspense at Captain Phillips and Gravity, where had the kids got to this weekend? The littlest ones were watching, and perhaps re-watching, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, which took a bit of a tumble, down 32% with a $14.2 million draw. The movie has earned $78 million so far, which is just a little less than what the first Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs had taken in at the same point in its theatrical run.

Older kids/teens were most certainly not out mooning over Romeo & Juliet. The poorly received reimagining of the Bard’s story of doomed love and overactive hormones earned a meager $509,000 at the box office. While R&J’s decided flop may come as no surprise to those who read our David Noh's review of the adaptation, more disappointing is the poor showing of the generally well-received The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete, which grossed just $260,000 after playing in 147 theatres.

The box-office doom and gloom for those films that are not either Gravity or Captain Phillips continues with the intake (or lack thereof) reaped by Machete Kills. The sequel to the more successful Machete can now claim one of the poorest openings of the year. It did just a third of the business its predecessor managed, bombing with $3.8 million. Not even a wacked turn by Charlie Sheen/Carlos Estevez as the leader of the free world could drum up much interest in the lackluster effort.

Escape From Tomorrow amounts to another debut unable to spin novelty into profits. Though the film had generated early buzz for its unique/stunt shooting – all on location at Disney World, without the consent or approval of Walt’s camp – the end product doesn’t appear to be nearly as interesting as the story of its creation. It earned just $66,100.

Ending this Monday’s weekend wrapup on a lighter, promising note, the little rom-com that could, Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said, earned another $1+ million this weekend after expanding to 606 theatres. That boost has brought the film’s total up to over $8 million, and, with strong word-of-mouth continuing its laudatory chatter, it’s looking as if next weekend will only see more gains.

'Gravity's' record-setting haul flies past expectations

While many of us were expecting Gravity to achieve great financial heights over its opening weekend, the 3D thriller performed even better than predicted. The latest film from Alfonso Cuaron, his first since 2006’s Children of Men (don’t call it a comeback), earned a soaring $55.6 million this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It now holds the record for the largest opening in October, outpacing previous record-holder Paranormal Activity 3, which clocked in at $52.6 million back in 2011. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Gravity’s impressive haul is its breakdown: 80% of the film’s revenue came from 3D showings, amounting to roughly $44 million in sales. With #Gravity blowing up social media, I think it’s safe to call the movie a cultural phenomenon, granting pop-culture enthusiasts a much-needed trend on which to expound following the end of last week’s hot topic, “Breaking Bad.” Both star Sandra Bullock and her chatty partner-in-space George Clooney can also thank the survival flick for giving them their best – biggest – domestic opening ever.

More in-line with last week’s expectations and predictions, Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck’s Runner Runner failed to drum up much foot traffic. The stars’ action/drama feature earned a disappointing $7.6 million in domestic box-office; its international gross has been tallied at $23.6 million. Luckily, the movie only cost roughly $30 million to make, so stars and studio alike can pretty much cut their losses on this one and, much like Gigli or JT’s blonde curls, move beyond it in the interest of making wiser choices. (Let’s hope Ben Affleck’s turn in the new Batman movie falls into the latter category!)

The charming Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2 continues to hold strong sway with audiences. The animated sequel boasted the second-best weekend behind Gravity, earning $21.5 million and bringing its total domestic earnings up to $60.5 million.

Tom Hanks’ new, captivating thriller Captain Phillips, based on a true sequence of events involving modern-day pirates, also saw some enthusiastic responses when it opened for several preview showings this past weekend.  On average, theaters at most of the 800 screening locations were 75% full, with many playing to sold-out crowds. The movie opens wide this coming weekend.

Though we could write all day about box office grosses and who’s out-drawing whom, we’ll end today’s recap with an update on the late James Gandolfini’s final feature, Enough Said. The romantic comedy co-starring the woman with an infallible sense of comedic timing, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, finally cracked the top 10 over the weekend, earning $5.4 million.  It will expand to around 650 more theatres this Friday.

'Gravity's' Box-Office Should Be Out of This World, Make for Tough Competition

Alfonso Cuaron’s acclaimed intergalactic thriller Gravity is poised for a stellar opening weekend,with predictions running as high as a $40 million debut. That would amount to quite a few 3D glasses needing to be recycled. Given its heavy advance buzz (it’s currently trending 98% on Rotten Tomatoes), it seems the film’s plastic pileup is only fated to grow: Boasting a wonderful performance by Sandra Bullock, which has Academy Award pundits seeing Oscar (not to mention a charming turn by George Clooney, in which he plays George-Clooney-acting-charming-in-a-spacesuit), Gravity is already outpacing modern -effects posterchild Avatar in 3D pre-sales, with 91% of advanced tickets reserved for 3D viewings. In other words, expect this star vehicle to snuff the competition.

Looking to give Cuaron’s early Oscar contender a – pardon the phrasing – run for its considerable money, the Justin Timberlake/Ben Affleck vehicle Runner Runner also opens this weekend. Most critics have panned the action/suspense flick about gamblers acting shady, although our Maitland McDonagh is a bit more understanding. “Both Affleck and Timberlake have fought uphill battles to be taken seriously as actors,” she says, citing the difficulty many have encountered when they try to picture JT as the adult version of the boy who once matched denim outfits with Britney Spears, and when they attempt to look beyond Ben Affleck’s extraordinarily gifted face. However, “Runner Runner gives both room to show what they can do,” she concludes.

Parkland, boasting yet another all-star cast with turns by Billy Bob Thornton,
Paul Giamatti, Zac Efron, and Colin Hanks, is being released (in 217 theaters) 50 years and a little over a month to the day JFK was assassinated.  Reviews of the feature, which takes place in the hospital where the president was rushed the afternoon of the shooting, have been mixed to negative. Even given its full talent roster, Parkland's box-office expectations are pretty grim.

More promising is the new feature starring the elder Hanks, Captain Phillips. The thriller based on the real-life captain and his harrowing encounter with a band of Somali pirates will have a sneak preview in 800 locations this Saturday, with a wide release scheduled for the following week.

Traveling to the world of smaller specialty releases, a pair of foreign dramas is slated for an American premiere. The French movie Concussion takes a frank look at a lesbian’s couple sexless marriage – and one partner’s risqué efforts to rebel.


Dramatic in a more over-the-top and epic way is the new Chinese film from director Jia Zhangke, A Touch of Sin, which, with its interconnected stories espousing  a dour view of modern China,  has been called by our Chris Barsanti “a sprawling tragicomedy” that amounts to an “exhilarating expose” on the country’s increasingly troubled state.

Metallica Through the Never will see a wider expansion this weekend, to 650 theaters. The documentary about the popular metal band had a solid opening weekend this past week, grossing$1.07 million from 305 Imax theaters.

In all, the nascent fall season is shaping up to be excitingly varied. However, it remains to be seen whether any of the above will have the popular appeal to match, let alone compete with, the Gravity juggernaut.

Music in Toronto: 'Can a Song Save Your Life?' and a Jimi Hendrix biopic

Twelve years ago today,
like everywhere else in North America, all business stopped at the Toronto Film
Festival as the world watched the terrifying attacks on the World Trade Center.
Here in Toronto this morning, thinking of that day, it seemed appropriate to be
watching a film that’s an unabashed love letter to New York City. Can a Song Save Your Life?, the new
film from John Carney, the Irish director of the sleeper hit Once, is a
fairytale about the music business and as far from somber as a movie can get.
The festival has certainly hosted better films this edition, but Carney's lovely
location shooting all around the city was a sweet antidote to today’s
melancholy.

Keira Knightley plays an
aspiring songwriter and sometime singer who we later learn has broken up with
five-year boyfriend Adam Levine (the Maroon 5 front man and “Voice” coach)
after he’s achieved stardom and cheated on her. Singer pal James Corden
encourages her to perform a song at one of his bar gigs, where she catches the
ear of Mark Ruffalo, playing an alcoholic record company co-founder who’s just quit
over long-simmering “creative differences” and after a dry spell without a
successful new discovery. Ruffalo (platonically) pursues Knightley, who, after
putting up considerable resistance, decides to cast her fate with this wild
card. They hit on the idea of recording a demo album outdoors at various spots
around the city, incorporating the sounds of the neighborhoods.

You can surely predict
where all this is going, but Can a Song Save Your Life? is very genial, the songs are catchy, and screen
beauty Knightley reveals a fine singing voice. The Weinstein Company pounced on
this feel-good musical after its debut screening in Toronto.

Another musical
attraction today was All Is By My Side, which traces the early career of Jimi Hendrix from
his time playing backup with a funk band at New York’s Cheetah Club to his
extended stay in England, up to just before his jaw-dropping breakthrough at
the Monterey Pop Festival. The

biopic marks the second feature directing effort of
writer John Ridley, also represented in Toronto by his gripping screenplay for
the festival smash 12 Years a Slave. Ridley adopts a jagged style both visually and aurally,
evoking the whirlwind life of the groundbreaking, spacy and introspective
guitarist during a time when he was still finding his artistic identity and
sometimes confounding his listeners. It’s Hendrix before he became Hendrix, the
rock ’n’ roll wunderkind who briefly thrilled audiences before his death at 27.

All Is By My Side is still awaiting a
U.S. distribution deal, most likely because it’s an art film about the rock
legend, eschewing narrative drive for a more naturalistic approach to Hendrix’s
relationships and his evolution as an artist. Two women play central roles in
the story: Imogen Poots as Linda Keith, Keith Richards’ girlfriend, who is
presented in the film as the first true believer in Hendrix’s exceptional
talent and an important catalyst in his career; and Hayley Atwell as Kathy
Etchingham, a not-very-bright groupie who is utterly devoted to her man (and
sometimes oversteps her bounds). Hendrix is played by Andre Benjamin of
Outkast, who not only creates a reasonable surface facsimile of the music icon
but burrows into his earnest ’60s flower-child personality (and seems to be
doing the virtuosic guitar work required).

Even though it portrays
the pre-Monterey years, the film could have included Hendrix’s early U.K.-based
hits “Hey Joe” and “Purple Haze.” It doesn’t. But you will hear a pretty wild
version of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” nervily performed by
Hendrix before an audience including two Beatles. For the rest of the canon,
there’s always the documentary Jimi Plays Monterey.

Cult horror film 'Jacob's Ladder' to get a 21st century update

Jacob’s Ladder, a
psychological horror film that came out in 1990, scored a respectable 70% on
Rotten Tomatoes, but grossed a dismal $26 million domestically. It has achieved
far greater success, however, in the years since its release. Since 1990, Jacob’s Ladder has developed a cult
following, spurred by a DVD release in 1998 and a Blu-ray release in 2004. The Hollywood Reporter announced Friday
that the studio LD Entertainment has agreed to finance a remake of the film.

Jacob’s Ladder is
now seen as one of the most influential thrillers in recent memory.
Specifically, it has been cited as a direct influence on The Sixth Sense and on the Silent
Hill videogame series and Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill film. Ryan Murphy, the “American Horror Story: Asylum” co-creator
and showrunner, has also stated that Jacob’s
Ladder inspired parts of his hit horror miniseries.

The original Jacob’s
Ladder was directed by Adrian Lyne (Flashdance,
Fatal Attraction) and starred Tim
Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption, Mystic River) as Jacob Singer, a Vietnam
vet with severe PTSD. Jacob’s mental illness causes him to experience vivid and
increasingly horrific, violent hallucinations. The film jumps back and forth in
time and setting, switching from Jacob’s tour in Vietnam to his life before and
after he returns home. The film ends in an unforeseeable plot twist, an element
that fans often refer to as the movie’s main attraction.

The new Jacob’s Ladder
is being written by Jeff Buhler (The Midnight
Meat Train)—who is working from an earlier draft by Jake Wade Wall (writer
of the 2006 When a Stranger Calls remake).
It is unclear at this point how Buhler will handle the twist ending,
considering that any audience member who has seen the original will know what’s
coming. Producers Michael Gaeta and Alison Rosenzweig have explained that their
Jacob’s Ladder film will be more of
an homage than a direct remake, and that the update will be set in current
times and feature new characters. Which elements of Lyne’s movie will be left
intact remains to be seen. It seems likely that the new film will make Jacob a
veteran who suffers from PTSD-caused hallucinations, as in the original, but
that the war in which he fought will be updated to Iraq or Afghanistan, rather
than Vietnam.

Gaeta and Rosenzweig have previous experience bringing older
horror films into the 21^st century. The pair worked (as executive
producer and producer, respectively) on 2011’s Fright Night, a remake of Tom Holland’s 1985 vampire flick. The
2011 flop, which starred Colin Farrell, grossed just $37 million worldwide. A
direct-to-video sequel, Fright Night 2,
is expected to be out later this year, indicating that Gaeta and Rosenzweig
aren’t being blacklisted in the industry despite the film’s poor performance. Though
the Fright Night remake was seen as
artistically and critically unequal to the 1985 film, Farrell was praised for
his performance.

The producing pair, who are currently searching for a
director for Jacob’s Ladder, are also
in the process of developing yet another horror remake about a veteran with
PTSD. This project will be an updated version of Alan Parker’s 1987 film Angel Heart. Unlike Jacob’s Ladder, however, Angel
Heart is told not from a soldier’s point of view, but through the eyes of a
detective (Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler,
Iron Man 2) who is searching for him.

Audiences may eventually become fatigued by the fad of dark
protagonists dealing with the fallout from war—the trend even made its way into
Tony Stark’s latest outing, Iron Man 3.
With the box office dominated by remakes and sequels, however, it’s a sure
thing that studios will continue to churn out updates on older films and
concepts, even after it appears the trope has overstayed its welcome.

Look Who’s Talking

This
Friday, exhibition history is being recorded at Prestonwood Creek in North Dallas, Texas. Universal Studios’ Oblivion
will be presented at Look Cinemas in the first auditorium built from the ground up with the revolutionary audio format in mind. The opening also marks the premiere of the very first film that was natively
rendered – or mixed and conceived from the start – in Dolby Atmos.

“We wanted
this to be the finest presentation house in the country,” explains Tom
Stephenson, founder and chief executive of Look Cinemas. “Simply put, it offers the best possible way in which to watch a movie. Everybody
gets that the theatrical experience is about the screen, digital projection,”
he adds, “but to Look Cinemas, the audio side was terribly important as well. For
us, Dolby Atmos is the best immersive, multi-dimensional sound experience ever created.”

Since
Stephenson and his team were building their state-of-the-new-art, 11-screen,
1,900-seat complex, co-located with two top-chef restaurants that also serve
three dine-in auditoriums, from the ground up, they saw and seized upon an additional
opportunity. “We asked the Dolby tech guys how could we build the most perfect
auditorium for them. They really helped us out. The auditorium became a little
bit shorter and a little bit fatter, more of square shape,” if you will. “Everything,
including speakers on the sides and ceiling, was designed to show off Dolby
Atmos to its greatest advantage. It wasn’t just a matter of re-adapting another
room,” though this is something that Dolby has been doing with much success around
the globe, “but
to be purposely building an auditorium for this technology.”

The process
resulted in a wider 70-foot wall-to-wall and 50-foot floor-to ceiling screen (21
by 15 m). “I literally mean that,” Stephenson keeps his finger less than 8 inches
(20 cm) apart. “Obviously one of the great things about Dolby Atmos is how pure
and great the audio is. While this is terrific in the actual auditorium,” he
laughs, “you don’t want it to end up in the next auditorium. We spent a lot
more time and money and worked with sound engineers to make sure that sound didn’t
bleed through.”

“We call
it ‘Evolution,’ and the tagline is ‘It’s Not Just a Theory,'” Stephenson
concludes his observations. “Sight, sound and screen technology have evolved
and we believe that our cinema is literally the next stage in great presention
and the next step in a long, great history of theatrical exhibition creating
better and better spaces to enjoy movies in.”

Here’s looking
at you, Tom.