Screener

Zhang Ziyi to star in book club hit 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan'

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a novel about a secret language, nu shu, used by women in China.  Often written on fans, the language provided a rare opportunity for women to interact with each other in 19th-century China, since the women's feet were bound, they remained cloistered in their homes, and were subject to their husband and sons.  Written by Chinese-American writer Lisa See, the novel follows two such women who were chosen as laotong (old sames) by a matchmaker, a rare form of friendship that requires being born on the same day, in the same birth order, and having other complementary characteristics.

The novel's historic setting and theme of friendship made it a big hit on the book club circuit.  So perhaps it's no surprise that two middle-aged wives, the book club stereotype, are producing a film based on the book, though they bring some unusually high-powered connections to the table.  The producers behind it?  Wendi Murdoch, wife of Rupert Murdoch (the president and CEO of Newscorp.), and Florence Sloan, wife of Harry Sloan (the chairman of MGM).  They just added actress Zhang Ziyi to their list of producers.  The star of Memoirs of a Geisha, another book club hit, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has a rare appeal that extends across cultural boundaries.  Her role in production could also help the film get past China's film quota, which limits the amount of foreign films that are exhibited each year.  Wendi Murdoch is Chinese-born, and Florence Sloan is Malaysian and Chinese.  For a cross-cultural, Chinese-based production like this, their cultural fluency will be a prized asset.

The project is in search of a distributors and backers at the American Film Market, though the production has already set a start date for next year.  While the project is commercial and has a global audience, it's worth noting that so far it is being produced outside the studio system.  Certainly those currently on the project are uniquely suited to the task, but was Memoirs of a Geisha's $162 million gross on an $85 million budget just not good enough for the big studios?  Or did the producers of the project snag the rights before anyone else?

Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin to host the Oscars

This year's Oscars will have ten nominees for Best Picture and two hosts sharing the limelight.  Steve Martin had hosted the Oscars twice before, but Alec Baldwin will be hosting for his first time.

Over at The Envelope, The LA Times' award blog, Elizabeth Snead suggested that Baldwin was either discovered or taken for a test run at Elle's Women in Hollywood awards.  After watching the YouTube videos of Baldwin's performance, it's clear that he's an ace at hosting.  While most hosts seem to put so much energy and song-and-dance into their duties, Baldwin's persona is detached and deadpan.  It seems like he's doing the act for himself, not the audience.

Baldwin passed the test of making fun of celebrities without coming off as mean-spirited.  His wry delivery lets flat jokes pass and good ones receive a roar of appreciative laughter and applause.  As a fan of his pompous, self-interested character on "30 Rock," I look forward to seeing Baldwin take a little bit of Jack Donaghy to the Oscar stage.

Perhaps the Academy is hedging their bets by having Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin co-host.  Martin's style involves more interaction with the audience.  His opening monologue in the 2001 Oscars seemed like he was talking to his friends.  He picked out and picked at celebrities in the audience without them seeming to mind.  If the Oscars maintain anything from last year's ceremony, they'll need someone comfortable sitting down in seats with people.  If that role could go to Martin, Baldwin could complement Martin by continuing to be his aloof self.

Baldwin and Martin.  Let the Oscar shake-up continue.

Tales of infidelity at the London Film Festival

FJI Executive Editor Kevin Lally reports on some highlights from the recently concluded Times BFI London Film Festival.

I'm back from a week's vacation in London, England, but I couldn't avoid making it a bit of a busman's holiday, since the 53rd annual Times BFI London Film Festival happened to coincide with my visit. I left before the closing-night screening of a film this Beatle fan can't wait to see, the John Lennon drama Nowhere Boy, and I was too late to secure one of the remaining press seats for the Q&A sessions with Clive Owen and Julianne Moore, but I still managed to sample a number of intriguing films amidst my theatregoing and museum-gazing.

This year's festival, which hosted 193 feature films, sought to raise the event's profile with more star-driven U.K. premieres and a new awards ceremony. Among the stars turning up to represent films like The Road, Chloe, A Serious Man, and the George Clooney trifecta of Up in the Air, The Men Who Stare at Goats and Fantastic Mr. Fox were Bill Murray, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and, of course, Mr. Clooney himself. Jacques Audiard's acclaimed A Prophet took the award for Best Film and Defamation scored the Grierson Award for Best Documentary.

For my own screening choices, I opted for films that haven't yet screened in New York or may never appear stateside. By sheer chance, a recurring theme of my selections was the price of marital infidelity.

Chloe, the new film from Canada's Atom Egoyan, is a remake of the 2003 French drama Nathalie, about a gynecologist (Moore) who hires a young call girl (Amanda Seyfried) to test the faithfulness of her college professor husband (Liam Neeson). But Seyfried's Chloe is more of a wild card than Moore ever anticipated, and the experiment wreaks havoc on the elegant wife and mother's pristine home life. Moore brings depth and subtlety to her performance, but ultimately Chloe is an unconvincing melodrama that goes way over the top.

A much more persuasive infidelity tale is Leaving, a French-language drama with a sensational performance by Kristin Scott Thomas. The bilingual actress plays a married mother of two teenagers who falls madly in love with the Spaniard (Sergi Lopez) who's been hired to fix up a home office for her return to work as a physiotherapist. But husband Yvan Attal refuses to accept this attack on his marriage and does everything he can to thwart his wife until she agrees to return to him. Briskly directed by Catherine Corsini, this feminist look at a woman's right to choose passion could be a smart pickup for an American distributor.

Infidelity also propels the narrative in Adrift, a 1980s-era Brazilian drama from writer-director Heitor Dhalia. The story centers on 14-year-old Filipa (poised and pretty newcomer Laura Neiva) during a summer holiday with her family at the beach. The girl adores her novelist father, but soon discovers he’s having a fling with an attractive American who lives nearby. As Filipa deals with the sexual games of her teenage friends, she also learns that her parents’ marriage is far more complex and troubled than she ever knew. The film is well-acted all around (including by French star Vincent Cassel showing off his fluent Portuguese) and the locations are handsome, but this coming-of-age tale is far too familiar to travel much beyond its native Brazil.

A more original family drama came from Spain: Ander, the story of a single, forty-something Basque farmer whose life changes when he breaks his leg and his family hires a Peruvian ranch-hand to take over his chores. The awkward rapport between Ander and his temporary replacement suddenly turns sexual, and the lonely farmer struggles to come to terms with what he has made of his life. With distinct echoes of Brokeback Mountain (and a similar leisurely pace), this debut feature from Roberto Castón, director of the Bilbao Gay Film Festival, should intrigue audiences at various gay festivals, but its understated style limits its theatrical potential.

Groundbreaking music-video and feature director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) has also been in a family frame of mind lately. His documentary The Thorn in the Heart pays tribute to his feisty Aunt Suzette, a teacher who worked at various schools in rural France from the 1950s to mid-’80s. This is a film of very modest pleasures, with far more resonance for the admiring director than for a general audience. Still, it wouldn’t be a Gondry film without quirky touches like the makeshift cinema he builds in one village, or the experimental short he creates with a group of schoolchildren wearing “invisible” bluescreen costumes. The one dark element in the portrait is Suzette’s relationship with her struggling gay son, a model-train aficionado who built the miniature villages which charmingly introduce each stop in Gondry’s nostalgic journey.

Finally, family is the enemy in Glorious 39, the new melodrama from well-regarded British writer-director Stephen Poliakoff (Gideon’s Daughter, Close My Eyes). Romala Garai (Atonement) stars as a young actress in 1939 Britain who discovers that the aristocratic clan that adopted her as a child is full of dark secrets, mainly driven by their desire to appease the growing Nazi threat at any cost, including murder. The movie is like a Merchant Ivory version of a paranoid thriller—lushly appointed and completely daft. Top Brit actors like Bill Nighy, Julie Christie, Jeremy Northam, David Tennant, Hugh Bonneville and Christopher Lee try but fail to lend this overwrought tale some credibility.

The London Film Festival also showcased the British premieres of many of the year’s most acclaimed festival films, such as The White Ribbon, Lebanon, Mother, Precious, Vincere and Sweet Rush, plus “Treasures from the Archives” like Abel Gance’s J’Accuse, Anthony Asquith’s silent Underground, Capra’s Dirigible, Bergman’s The Touch, and John Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven. It’s a world-class festival and a treat for Londoners, who probably don’t care that the earlier Toronto and Venice events get a lot more press.

'This Is It' shows Michael Jackson as we want to remember him

I knew Michael Jackson first as someone photographed with scarves and clothes covering his head.  Magazine articles speculated about his appearance and plastic surgery, allegations were put forth about his sexual abuse of children, and his own children had mysterious paternity and maternity.

That's not the Michael Jackson you see in This Is It.  For a younger generation, many of whom filled the seats at my Wednesday night screening, the concert documentary offers an opportunity to see the King of Pop back in peak form.  He's guarded, not reclusive, and his exacting nature comes across as perfectionism, not diva behavior.

Because Michael Jackson is holding back on singing in the rehearsals to preserve his voice, the most stand-out songs are those staged with elaborate choreography.  The dancing has incredible energy, precision, and ingenuity.  Even surrounded by powerful dancers half his age, Jackson comfortably holds the lead.  The dancers also help cue our awe.  A casting session whittles down the hundreds of immensely talented dancers vying for a spot, and the ones that remain seem overjoyed by the opportunity to work alongside one of their idols.  They applaud during rehearsals and show an incredible amount of respect for the man who has influenced contemporary dancing.

For those curious about the challenges of staging big concert productions, plenty of behind-the-scenes moments abound.  The audience at my screening got a big kick out of Jackson's direction to let a song intro "simmer," and shouted the phrase back at the screen with a joyful glee--"Let it simmer, Mike!"  One of Jackson's accompanists, after getting grilled by Jackson about the "simmering" pace, goes on to convey his respect for a pop artist who is such a perfectionist.  He actually knows all his records and exactly how everything should sound.  In the age of Auto-Tune, Jackson is a welcome anomaly.  Though it seems he was planning on using echo effects live, judging from one performance, he brings with him a history of pop singing independent of the technological crutches standard in today's music world.

This Is It is worth going to the theatre for the crowd, but not necessarily for the IMAX.  While the quality is far better than you would expect, the aspect ratio sometimes shifts to something smaller and grainier.  Director Kenny Ortega, who was in charge of both the stage and film production, puts together an engaging two-hour experience.  He expertly conveys half-completed effects, and instead of feeling like you missed something, you fill in what could have been.  By showing us the strength of Jackson's would-be stage performance, This Is It seals his reputation as an icon.

Two Matt Damon trailers in one day

Two trailers of movies starring Matt Damon in one day?  And just after I wrote about him yesterday?  I guess there's a reason I consider Matt Damon one of my favorite actors.  Oddly enough, his highly lauded Bourne movies leave me cold, but his memorable roles in the Ocean's series, Good Will Hunting, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The Departed, among others, always make me eagerly anticipate his films, even more uneven ones like the recent The Informant!

The first trailer is for Invictus, which releases on December 11.  It's a feel-good, based-on-a-true-story kind of tale that appeals to Oscar voters.  Damon plays a rugby captain who is enlisted by South African President Nelson Mandela to win the 1995 World Cup.  Mandela hopes the economic and racial divisions within the country can be mediated by national pride.  The trailer has some heartbreaking looks at the Johannesburg slums, last seen in District 9 (albeit in a sci-fi context).

Next up is The Green Zone, which was pushed back and is now set for a March 12, 2010 release.   Paul Greengrass, who helmed the Bourne movies, directs.  It shows all signs of being your typical action thriller, but distinguishes itself with its hyperreal historical setting.  Damon plays a CIA agent who has been tasked with finding the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  When they don't show up, he tries to find the misleading source and get to the bottom of the intrigue.

Currently, Damon's filming The Adjustment Bureau.  They've been shooting in New York City's  West Village, with trailers set up on Greenwich Avenue a couple weeks ago.  From Darren Aronofsky, the movie centers on a politician (Damon) and the mysterious ballerina he falls in love with (Emily Blunt).  I seriously hope there is an element of Vertigo or Ghost in here--who doesn't love a good romantic mystery?

Casting underway for Coen Bros.' 'True Grit'

The Coen Bros.' remake of True Grit, a classic Western follow-up to their modern Western hit, No Country for Old Men, has lined up two more actors.  Matt Damon is in talks to take on the Texas Ranger role, and Josh Brolin is in talks to play the hunted man.  In the movie, a fourteen-year-old girl (who has not been cast) enlists the ranger and a U.S. Marshal to help her track down her father's killer.  The role of the marshal, an Oscar-winning role for John Wayne in the 1969 original, will be taken on by Jeff Bridges (The Dude in The Big Lebowski).  With top producers Scott Rudin and Steven Spielberg behind the film, and a fast-track from Paramount, this movie is scheduled to head into production this spring, for a release the following year.

Why has the 40-year-old film, based on the novel by Charles Portis, interested the filmmaking duo?  Let's consult the archives.

1. Weird, affected dialogue.  In Roger Ebert's review of the original, he notes that "Portis wrote his dialog in a formal, enchantingly archaic style that has been retained in Marguerite Roberts' screenplay."  The Coen Bros. are known for utilizing accents and unusual speech, which is already present in the original work.

2. The Eye Patch.  George Clooney has his pomade in O Brother, Where Art Thou?  Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men has his bowl cut hairstyle.  The Dude has his bathrobe and his white Russian in The Big Lebowski.  This irresistible bit of costuming (working in tandem with Wayne's star image) just amplifies the characterization of Wayne as an "unwashed, sandpapered, roughshod, fat old rascal with a heart of gold well-covered by a hide of leather" (from Ebert's review).

3. Cash, Crime, Cover-ups and Complications.   The U.S. Marshal and the Texas Ranger are both in it for the money.  According to Ebert's review, the ranger "claims he has a reward for the killer (who also, it appears, plugged a state senator in Texas)."  Sounds like an ulterior motive could come in play--a complication--in Coens' treatment.

Many of the Coen Bros.' films include journeys to either find the booty or hide it (the baby in Raising Arizona, the buried treasure in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the kidnapping/money in Fargo, the money in No Country for Old Men).  Inevitably, things do not go according to plan, and Coen Bros. take pleasure in piling on the complications and twists to make things interesting.

The Challenge:  According to many reviews, John Wayne makes the movie.  The absence of Wayne's star presence could be a problem.  In fact, both Roger Ebert and the Variety review use the same word, "tower," to describe Wayne's presence.  Ebert notes that "one of the glories of True Grit is that it recognizes Wayne's special presence...He is not playing the same Western role he always plays. Instead, he can play Rooster because of all the Western roles he has played. "  He also mentions a parodic scene that works because of Wayne's star image.  Making this movie without Wayne will require screenwriting and directing magic.

Playing films across borders: 'Agora'

We live in a global village, where worldwide distribution of Hollywood blockbusters is standard practice.  But many films don't play well overseas, and some never get picked up to play across borders.

One such example is Agora, a historical epic.  It was passed over for domestic distribution at Cannes, where it appears price was one of the main issues--though concerns about length led to filmmakers chopping 21 minutes from the film, which previously ran almost two and a half hours.

While the movie was made in English, it had its box-office debut in Spain last weekend, where director Alejandro Amenábar (Abre los Ojos, The Others, The Sea Inside) is famous.  It earned $7.9 million in three days, and $17 million through Tuesday, making it Spain's top opening of the year (It beat Ice Age 3!).  U.S. distribution is back on the table, and other foreign buyers, who normally would wait for a U.S. pickup, are interested solely because of its performance in Spain.

As for the film itself?  The trailer is sure to point out all the by-the-book elements of a historical epic: angry mobs, period costumes and sets, impassioned speeches made to leaders who will go on to make terrible decisions painfully apparent to the modern audience.  The movie's epoch, the fall of the Roman Empire, includes a high-drama invasion of Alexandria.  But most intriguing is the movie's heroine, Hypatia (Rachel Weisz), an astronomer, teacher, and mathematician who is killed by newly empowered Christians.

The movie was made for $70 million, a pricy sum when you're betting on foreign sales.  And while the trailer didn't wow me, I think Amenábar is a talented director who seems quite capable of handling an historical epic.  But until this film gets picked up, American audiences will have to wait to see for themselves.

Modern Love column heading into theatres

For those that read the New York Times, the "Modern Love" column is often one of their first stops in the Sunday Styles section.  The stories can be contemplative, whimsical, bizarre, and cute--sometimes to a fault.  A couple who adopts a dog, a daughter who searches for her birth mother on Facebook, and a woman who refuses to let her husband leave her are all fodder for the column.  In fact, the last story sounds a lot like the forthcoming movie Serious Moonlight, in which a woman (Meg Ryan) holds their husband hostage in her house in an attempt to save their marriage.

Columbia Pictures now has a first-look deal with "Modern Love," with the idea that they can use the material for romantic comedies.  As much as I like to mock the  column, I think the stories, which are all based on the authors' real experiences, are more nuanced than typical romantic comedies.  While the film genre tends toward the obvious or unbelievable, the unusual circumstances remain believable since they are, in fact, true.  While some of the stories are small in scope, most seem condensed to fit into a column.  The addition or a few details and subplots could easily fill up a 100-page screenplay.

Still, the series of columns may lend itself better to the second production deal it has in the works, which is an HBO show about a fictional male editor of the column, who has recently divorced, as well as the stories in the column.  It sounds like a (slightly depressed) male version of the Carrie Bradshaw role from "Sex and the City."  In television form, the show would be able to take advantage of the column's consistent tone, in my mind an asset.

These deals are but the latest New York Times articles to be acquired with an eye for adaptation.  Since signing a contract with the paper, the ICM agency has successfully sold several of the paper's stories--but at least it's another revenue stream for the Old Grey Lady in a tough climate for journalism.  Just don't let them make a movie about balloon boy.

Will 'Where the Wild Things Are' enchant or repel audiences?

Last night, in a theatre dotted with kids wearing cardboard crowns just like the boy lead, Max, I saw Where the Wild Things Are .  Like many of my generation, the book by Maurice Sendak was one of my favorites, in part because it defied easy explanation.  Max breaks rules and is mean to his Mom, then goes on this weird, parallel adventure that's never really explained.  All in a few hundred words.  Max's wolf suit, in particular, captured my imagination.  In the movie it's just as compelling, and comes with the addition of Converse sneakers to place the movie in a modern, but still retro, context.

I loved the soundtrack by Karen O (a singer in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs).  It would burst in with just the right note of ebullience during the rumpus or dirt clod fight.  But it's also eclectic.  Not everyone likes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and those that aren't a big fan of children choruses (apparently one of the most hated things about music, according to an NPR "This American Life" I once listened to) will probably dislike the film's music even more.  But  director Spike Jonze's choice in the soundtrack reflects his sensibility for everything else about the movie.  He's not trying to please everyone.  Maybe he doesn't even care that the movie has some slow spots in the middle.  He's certainly not trying to make a Disney movie.

In the press notes, Jonze explains that "kids are given so much material that's not honest, so when they find a story like this it really gets their attention."  It's true that Americans in particular are known for sheltering their children, which leads me to wonder how this movie will play across the world.  In an interview with Newsweek, Sendak rails against Disney for defanging the Mickey Mouse of his youth (he apparently used to have teeth) and spoke of how his immigrant parents believed in giving children the full, messy, evil truth.  Will Max's disobedience of his mother read the same across cultures?  Or the presence of monsters who want to eat you one minute and are your friends the next?

More immediately, how will the movie do this weekend? Thompson on Hollywood puts tracking at $25 million, a plausible figure.  Toy Story / Toy Story 2 has been playing this week, and the studio announced that it extended its engagement through a link on Twitter to this video.  Meanwhile, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs will be entering its fifth week, and will probably dip below $10 million.  Among family and kid-oriented fare, the field is wide open.  Let the wild rumpus start!

The journey of a scare: 'Paranormal Activity'

There are a couple of interviews of Oren Peli, who went from being a software programmer to the director of Paranormal Activity, circulating the blogosphere.  The movie has taken a non-traditional path to the theatres, from production, to distribution, to exhibition, and Peli helps fill in the blanks.

According to his interview with Cinematical, DreamWorks bought the project after Slamdance 2008 with the intent of having him remake it on a bigger budget--because you can't release a film that was made in seven days for $14,000--or could you?

The studio scheduled screenings for potential screenwriters, but the overwhelmingly positive reception led them to decide to release the movie nearly as is.  Pacing and editing were changed to make it more fast-paced--though some reviews have still faulted the film for being too slow.   The ending, which apparently "makes" the film, was also changed based on the input of none other than Steven Spielberg (DreamWorks and Paramount had ownership of the project before their split).

Peli sounds like a very organized, analytical person.  He planned the production for a year, sprucing up his house to prepare for the shoot, and looked at hundreds of people before finding his two actors (how many low-budget films would look at that many people for their casting calls?).  He spent ten months editing, and thanks to his technical background, he did the visual effects and audio mixing himself.  His hours of work was probably worth several times more than the film's budget.

Oren Peli already has his next project lined up, Area 51, which will use the same home-video camera techniques to document a group of teenagers who decide to poke around the famed UFO grounds.

Now that the studio knows it has a hit on its hands, Paramount has announced plans to expand the release to 2,000 theatres two Fridays from now, putting it head to head with Saw VI.  While there are certainly many horror fans who will have already seen Paranormal Activity (at least $8 million worth), its positive word-of-mouth could encourage more casual viewers to put the movie on their must-see list.  Last weekend, the movie ended up being more successful than early tracking figures indicated.  It actually earned $7.9 million, not $7 million, bringing its per-screen total to almost $50,000 per screen, a truly astonishing number (there must be some big theatres showing this movie--and a lot of sellouts)

So why has the movie been such a big success?  The "found footage" style has been used in films from The Blair Witch Project to Cloverfield, but there is something to be said for the fact that the camera is often fixed in the same spot in front of thehaunted couple's bed, giving the movie a more "security camera"-type look.  Also, not many horror movies have the benefit of having Steven Spielberg come in and fix your ending, nor the dedicated marketing team at Paramount, which appears to have risen to the challenge of marketing a non-traditional film.  I, for one, wouldn't have expected college towns to be the jumping-off point for a horror film, though the midnight-only screenings fit perfectly into a college student's late-night schedule.  Now that Paramount has thrown down the gauntlet by pitting their film against Saw VI--a move that, at the very least, will generate publicity--we'll be waiting to see who will emerge the winner in the battle of Saw VI vs. Paranormal Activity.