A Remake for Bird Brains

By Katey Rich

Is there ever anyone who thinks up the idea of a remake, particularly a remake of a bona fide classic, and says "This can't go wrong!" Do the producers in Hollywood honestly tell themselves "Yes, I know the original is universally beloved, but I can't imagine anyone will complain about a remake!"

Clearly, yes. The latest classic on its way to the remake block is The Birds, the grande dame of "When Animals Attack" horror films, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1963. Tippi Hedren starred as a wealthy San Francisco heiress who travels to a tiny West Coast hamlet for trivial reasons, but gets caught up in an enormous, vicious invasion from--dum dum dum!-- the birds.

The idea of a Birds remake has been floating around for a while, but  yesterday The Hollywood Reporter announced that Martin Campbell would be joining the Universal project as a director. Campbell's latest projects include The Legend of Zorro and the critically praised Casino Royale, which was credited for jump-starting the venerable Bond franchise. Naomi Watts has been attached to star for a while now.

For I think the first time in my life, Tippi Hedren has said it for me. MTV interviewed her at some point about the upcoming project, and her video response sums it all up.

"Must you be so insecure [that] you have to take a film that's become a classic and a great success and then try to do it over? They tried to make �Psycho" over and it didn't work."

Here's the thing about Hitchcock that Ms. Hedren didn't say, but probably was thinking. His films were so much less about the story than what he does with it. He's the man who invented the McGuffin--the meaningless item at the center of the story that nonetheless sets the whole thing in motion-- think North by Northwest's microfilm or Psycho's suitcase full of money. The Birds, boiled down its plot description, is pure exploitation horror. It's what Hitchcock crafted these films into that made them great, whether it was the simple direction of Cary Grant or Anthony Perkins or the brilliant, ahead-of-its time sound design in Birds. Hitchcock remakes fail because, without the man himself, the material you're working with is barely existent.

I would say we can at least hope that this film will be above the torture porn aesthetic of late, but given that scene in Casino Royale in which Mr. Bond is flagellated with a rope, I make no promises.

Vampires, Detectives and CIA Terror Operatives-- Oh My!

By Katey Rich

In what will hopefully become a regular feature here, we'll take a look at the big releases coming up this weekend and what chance they stand both at the box office and under the critical lens. This weekend continues the month's trend of releasing a huge amount of prestige films at once, while throwing in some vampires and a formulaic sports spoof-- you know, for the kids.

30 DAYS OF NIGHT. Call me a sucker, but I don't think I've heard of a better horror movie concept than this one. A town in Alaska is in permanent darkness for a month each winter, making it a convenient stop for a troupe of vampires. Josh Hartnett and Melissa George play a married pair of sheriffs who try to stop the invaders, led by Danny Huston, while Ben Foster shows up as the mysterious Stranger, who seems to know everything about the bloodsuckers coming to town. (Foster's character, it should be noted, will have a bigger role in the planned sequel).

My favorite review for this film comes from my friend Josh Tyler at CinemaBlend.com, who promises that "David Slade hasn't revolutionized the vampire genre, but he may make you wet your pants." This inspired the independently-owned Eagle Theater in Robinson, Ill. to keep a supply of Depends on hand for 30 Days of Night ticket-buyers; you can see the ad they placed here.

Unfortunately most reviews aren't as glowing as Josh's. The Seattle-Post Intelligencer sums it all up with the headline "What's really scary about 30 Days of Night is the boredom." The Hollywood Reporter has praise for the vampires themselves--"Feral and brutish and only vaguely human"--but concedes that the film is "more akin to an excruciatingly long Marilyn Manson clip." Owen Glieberman at Entertainment Weekly was feeling the passage of time as well, noting "the movie itself feels about a month long."

Nonetheless, the experts are calling the weekend in favor of 30 Days of Night, giving it the edge over its pretigious competitors as well as the fellow young man-skewing The Comebacks, a sports parody that hasn't screened for critics.

GONE BABY GONE. Ben Affleck--what a surprise. The Onion AV Club has a nice feature this week offering second chances to people, projects or things that were maligned the first time around, and predicts that Affleck's reconsideration will come thanks to Gone Baby Gone. The first adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel since the critically-anointed Mystic River, Affleck's film returns to the same gritty Boston mileu to depict the search for a kidnapped four-year old girl, the daughter of good-for-nothing junkie Helene (Amy Ryan). Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan play the detectives on the trail, who must tangle with the established police force (Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman) who have more sinister intentions than just foiling the young sleuths. The plot twists in any number of different directions--this is one of those thrillers in which absolutely no one is as they seem--but stays rooted nonetheless, delivering a satisfying but troubling emotional climax. Monaghan is wasted in a prettied-up stock girlfriend role, but Affleck is mesmerizing as the lead; this plus his work in The Assassination of Jesse James  should finally banish "Ben's younger brother" from his name. Ben proves himself admirable here too, mishandling a couple of plot revelations but largely keeping the whole thing on an even keel.

The critics were as impressed as I was, if not more so. Our own Bruce Feld calls it "a thinking man's crime film" and lauds the younger Affleck's 'breakthrough performance." Ryan is also getting raves--"Note to Oscar: Get Ryan on the nomination list pronto" demands Rolling Stone's Peter Travers--and Ben Affleck earns praise from even the more so-so reviews ("Affleck the director shows excellent instincts" writes Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum, before giving the film a B-). Most critics weren't so harsh, with Hollywood Reporter raving "it's going to be remembered as one of the best crime movies of this decade," and The Village Voice giving it a thorough, favorable comparison to that master of crime himself, Raymond Chandler.

The Hollywood Reporter specifically calls it "perilous" to predict Baby's chances, but given the huge success The Departed had last fall with a Boston-centric crime drama, the combined star power of the Afflecks and the great word of mouth potential (not to mention the lovely poster), lets hope Baby can get a fair shake at the box office.

THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE. Try as I might, I still haven't been able to make sense out of this title. Is it going to be one of those metaphoric ones, where halfway through some character says the title and everyone groans? Or are we just supposed to accept that "fire" is a reasonable stand-in for the death of a husband and a heroin addiction, which are the ailments that afflict Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro's characters here. Berry's husband Brian (David Duchovny) is killed in a random act of violence, and she invites his childhood friend Jerry (Del Toro), a heroin addict, to live in her home. Recovery--and maybe romance?--ensue.

As can often happen when reviews are middle-of-the-road, the number of "fresh" ratings over at Rotten Tomatoes is a little misleading. Our Bruce Feld, credited with a postive rating, still notes that we feel "much more pity for the addict who is ordered about by a hysterical widow than fear for Audrey for allowing an addict into her house." He and others, though, credit Del Toro's performance: "A live-wire performance by Benicio Del Toro sparks an otherwise morose study of loss, addiction and catharsis," writes Variety. Carrie Rickey, a fan of director Susanne Bier's work in her native Denmark, doesn't see this one adding up to her previous Danish efforts: "The tears that come feel unearned."

Even considering that it's opening against other middle-of-the-road Oscar hopefuls, Things We Lost seems particularly challenged at the box office by Reservation Road, another full-on family drama dealing with loss and recovery. As we'll see below, Reservation Road isn't faring much better with the critics either.

RESERVATION ROAD. Joaquin Phoenix is hiding in plain sight lately, showing in meaty roles in last weekend's We Own the Night and now Reservation Road. He plays a father who life falls apart when his son is killed in a hit-and-run accident; frustrated with the police, he seeks out the car's driver on his own, eventually discovering Dwight (Mark Ruffalo), a lawyer and a family man wracked with guilt over his actions. Jennifer Connolly, Mira Sorvino and Elle Fanning also star.

Weirdly, this film gets nearly the same criticism from the New York Times' Manohla Dargis that Things We Lost got from Carrie Rickey: "Crying at the movies can be intensely satisfying, but you need to feel as if your tears have been justly earned," Dargis writes, going on to say "[Director Terry George] made me tear up while watching this movie, but he also made me grit my teeth." Our Bruce Feld (he's everywhere this week!) is far kinder: "George's direction is taut and authoritative [...] All performances are first-rate." Practically no one gave praise without caveats: TV Guide's (and our own!) Maitland McDonagh praises the performances as well, but adds "The pileup of awful coincidences is painfully artificial and the inevitable climax is both formulaic and takes far too long to arrive." Speaking of coincidences, can I just add that main character Ethan is a college professor, and his last name is Learner? I haven't even the seen the movie and that's enough to make me groan.

RENDITION. And finally we have Rendition, which seems to have been leaving a trail of bad press in its wake since it screened in Toronto back in September. It's an ensemble drama dealing with global politics, in the style of Syriana or Babel, but this time the topic in question is the U.S. policy of extraordinary rendition, a.k.a. outsourcing torture. Reese Witherspoon is an American housewife whose Egyptian-born husband Anwar (Omar Metwally) is apprehended while boarding a plane and taken to a remote interrogation center in North Africa. A CIA agent there (Jake Gyllenhaal) has a crisis of conscience, while at home Witherspoon's Isabella must navigate uncooperative CIA agents (Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard) and a United States senator (Alan Arkin) to find the truth of where her husband has been taken.

Like I said, this one's been almost universally eviscerated by the top critics. "Maybe the filmmakers felt that taking a stand was enough, and that a forceful plot, realistic characters, and any sense of credible drama were unnecessary," wrote our Daniel Eagan. Many other critics hated the way the film addressed real political issues, with Dana Stevens of Slate accusing it of "political deck-stacking" and The Hollywood Reporter noting "These arguments are mostly loaded by clearly appalled, liberal-minded filmmakers." Rex Reed, on the other hand, steps entirely against the grain and lauds "Powerful, shocking and mandatory, Rendition is a disturbing film that should be required viewing for every school and civic group in America."

Also out this week: Wristcutters: A Love Story, Terror's Advocate, Klimt and Mr. Untouchable

Science Is, After All, Awesome

By Katey Rich

I dare you to find me a better nominee for Picture of the Day. The man on fire is John Frazier, and that calm look on his face is not because he's a mind-control expert: he's demonstrating a fire-proof gel that's up for consideration by the Academy for Scientific and Technical Academy Awards.

The Hollywood Reporter has a whole article about demonstrations like this that went on Tuesday night, not all of which were so visually stunning. Yes, there were people literally shot out of cannons-- demonstrating the Precision Stunt Specialists' Pressure Sensor Actuator--and Look Solutions presented the Tiny Fogger, which can be attached to costumes or props (can I rent one for Halloween? Please?), but other innovations included a new film stock from Kodak and Tinsley Transfers' waterproof prosthetic that can be easily attached to an actor's face (no more complaining about long hours in the makeup chair!)

Here at Film Journal we talk a lot about the technical aspects of showing films, from digital projectors to seat sensors (seriously! read all about them here), but most of us don't think about the technical side of making the films. Sure, Beowulf is getting lots of attention for using motion-capture animation, but how about the technical whizzes and bangs that aren't computer animated? A Powerbook may be able to create Barry B. Benson or Nemo, but can it set a man's arm on fire? We can only dream.

Wolverine Sharpens his Claws for May 2009

By Katey Rich

Clear out your schedule: Twentieth Century Fox has jumped on the bandwagon of setting release dates absurdly early into the process, and has staked out May 1, 2009 for the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The Hugh Jackman-starring origin film, spun off from the X-Men trilogy, hasn't even started shooting yet, but you can bet the toy stores are already marking down the day they get inundated with Wolverine merchandise.

Schreiber

Variety is also reporting news I hadn't heard yet, which is that Liev Schreiber is in talks to play Wolverine's nemesis William Stryker, an older version of whom was played in X2 by Brian Cox. There's possibilities of other villains showing up�the location shooting in New Orleans indicates that Gambit might make an appearance, while the commenters over at Harry Knowles' Ain't It Cool are excited/up in arms about Knowles' revelation that Sabretooth may make an appearance as well.

Full disclosure: I saw X2 and only X2, and I've never read a comic book in my life. BUT: I love that good actors are being cast in comic book movies. This trend has obviously been going on forever�from Jack Nicholson as The Joker to Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor�but with Heath Ledger turning up in The Dark Knight, Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man and even Will Smith as an existential superhero in Hancock, the caliber of talent keeps getting better and better. Schreiber is no marquee name�Jackman barely is, for that matter�but it's wonderful to imagine the kind of fast-talking bravado he could bring to a supervillain.

Things We Found in the Mailbox

By Katey Rich

Halle Berry's Oscar chances might have just gotten better.

More Oscar-related news (because it's never too early to have visions of gold statuettes dancing in your head): Paramount will be sending screener copies of the Halle Berry-Benicio Del Toro starrer Things We Lost in the Fire to the 6,000 Oscar-voting members of the Academy this Friday, the same day the film opens in theaters. This "day-and-date" release strategy for Oscar-voters often happens in December, when a gajillion Oscar hopefuls all open on the same day you've vowed to finish your Christmas shopping. As an article in the New York Times pointed out last week, that rush of content is happening earlier and earlier now that the Oscars have been pushed back to February: this weekend Things We Lost goes head to head with prestige-seeking Rendition, Reservation Road, and Gone Baby Gone, not to mention mega-hyped vampire thriller 30 Days of Night. You can see the appeal of letting Academy members have their own copy within arm's reach.

Robert Downey Jr. in Zodiac

Perhaps even odder, though, is Paramount's decision to also send to members of the Producer's Guild and Screen Actors Guild the director's cut of Zodiac, David Fincher's thriller that received good reviews (like Film Journal's) but virtually no audience when it debuted back in March. Variety reports that this is the first time the studio has sent out the director's cut of any film as screeners; apparently Paramount said it was to "show its support of Fincher and the movie." Academy rules forbid any cut other than the theatrical version for award consideration, but given that this is Hollywood, there's a lot of overlap.

As will probably become clear as this blog grows, Oscar horse races are better than real horse races as far as I'm concerned. I have no idea whether Things We Lost actually stands a chance--though our Bruce Feld had his problems with the film--but maybe these ingenious tricks to get attention are enough to make me root for the underdog.

Orson Welles' Lone Oscar Could Be Yours!

By Katey Rich

With the New York Film Festival finished and much of the Nielsen Film Group out of the office for the ShowEast convention, there's time to get around to discussing the really important stuff: namely, just how much people are willing to sell at auction.

This time the object in question is the Oscar Orson Welles won as the screenwriter of Citizen Kane, which, remarkably, is the only Oscar the film received (somewhere Gregg Toland is still shaking his fist in frustration). Sotheby's is responsible for flogging the priceless item-- literally priceless, thanks to the strange rules set up by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and how long it took them to set them up.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Academy established a condition in 1950 that Oscar winners must give the Academy a "first right of refusal" for statuettes offered for sale, which means they get first dibs on buying it and will put up a token $1 for it. This keeps hard-on-their-luck winners from auctioning off their statues, or as Academy representative David Quinto put it, to prevent Oscar from being "cheapened or tarnished by being made into articles of commerce."

Quinto's quote can be found in this article by the Australian paper The Age, which sums up a fight that took place over this very same Welles statuette a few years back. Welles' daughter Beatrice has been in charge of his awards since his death in 1985, and petitioned for a replacement Oscar 1988 when she believed the original to be lost. When the first one miraculously showed up at Sotheby's in 1994, Beatrice sued the auction house for it, and then turned around to sell it herself. When the matter went to court, they decided that awards given out before 1950-- before each winner was required to sign the "first right of refusal" contract--were fair game. Beatrice successfully sold it to the non-profit Dax Foundation, which is now putting it on the block again.

Got that? You can see why the Academy created the "right of refusal" clause, to prevent this kind of hubbub from  happening every time someone's divorce proceedings get particularly expensive. The pre-1950 Oscars that do get auctioned are incredibly rare, and few are as historic as Welles'. The most recent auction that's remotely similar was in 1999, when the Best Picture Oscar for Gone with the Wind went for $1.5 million. You can bet there will be some Xanadu-worthy figures rolling in this time too.

You have to imagine ol' Charles Foster Kane would be fine with this auction, really, since everyone trying to sell the statuette is doing basically exactly what he would have done. There's a buck to be made here, and if Kane needed the cash, you know he would have sold one of those priceless Xanadu artifacts. Or maybe, even better, one of the opera houses.

NYFF: Closing-Night Film 'Persepolis'

By Katey Rich

Adaptations of graphic novels for the screen are all the rage�just check out the upcoming slate from Warner Bros.�but Persepolis is not exactly the younger sister of 300 or Sin City. Marjane Satrapi's two-volume memoir about her childhood during Iran's Islamic Revolution has plenty of action and even guns, yes, but is much more a funny and poignant coming-of-age story with universal appeal. Given that Satrapi's film just closed the New York Film Festival, that appeal is clearly extending beyond the usual graphic novel fanboys.

In 1978 Marjane is a spunky nine year old who idolizes Bruce Lee and doesn't understand the fuss about events unfolding outside her family's modest apartment. After the overthrow of the Shah, life becomes more difficult, however, as her beloved uncle is jailed and executed and war erupts between Iran and Iraq. Marjane's parents send her to school in Vienna, but after several misspent years there she returns home, only to find a drastically changed country. Forced to wear a veil at all times and abide by strict Islamic codes, Marjane resists until realizing she must leave Iran for good.

At the press conference following the film's screening, Satrapi explained that until she went to live in France in her twenties, she had a typical false impression of the power of graphic novels. "Before that I had the idea about comics that everyone else has about comics�it's really for kids or adolescents or retarded adults. Then I read [Art Spiegelman's] Maus and it was like a slap in my face, and I realized, it was just a medium like any other to express yourself. In my mind the images and the text, they are not separated. It became an obvious way to express myself."

Satrapi teamed up with French graphic novelist Vincent Paronnaud to direct the film, as a way to distance the film from the highly-personal graphic novel she had spent so many years writing. "We took this project as something independent from the comic," Paronnaud said at the press conference. "Of course, we read the comics again, we had the story, [but] we decided that we were going to start something new out of the story, to find a new territory."

The visual look of the film is fairly different from the graphic novel�you can see pages of the book here-- and is also by far the most stunning aspect of Persepolis. The way images and scenes flow into one another, and moments of time are frozen for emphasis, would be impossible to achieve in live-action film. Despite Paronnaud's contribution, the film remains Marjane's; the power of the animation to bring the audience into the character's head keeps Persepolis a subjective, personal experience�key to a story set in an exotic location during a confusing political era. Satrapi said it best herself: " [If we had done it in live-action] it becomes the story of these people who are far from us, we cannot relate to this, they are not like us, etcetera. It's something very abstract in the drawing that anybody can relate to."

Putting pressure on a small autobiographical film to foster understanding between the United States and Iran is a tall order, but if the film finds an audience and is seen by people who otherwise would not think about Iran, it will be a success," said Satrapi. "If [people] watch this movie and say it's about a human being, and this human being could be me, then we have reached our goal." If any film has a chance of achieving that, it's Satrapi's funny and deeply human Persepolis.