Look, I know the drill. If any element of the Twilight movie varies even slightly from the way you pictured it in your head, then it is the worst film ever made and you hate it and Catherine Hardwicke has ruined your childhood. Or, alternatively, you've built up so much anticipation for the movie that you're going to love love LOVE it no matter what, even if it's bad, you don't care, you refuse to listen to any criticisms LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU. I know how it goes.
The book's most devoted fans are seeing the film anyway, so I guess I'm talking to everyone else -- those who haven't read the book, or who (like me) read it, mostly enjoyed it, then didn't give it another thought. Is the Twilight movie of any use to those people? Or, as a friend asked me, does it work purely as a vampire movie?
Oh, heavens, no. Noooooo. This is not a vampire movie. This is a somber teen romance that happens to have some vampires in it. Little attempt is made to establish the mythology of the bloodsuckers, and the supernatural elements are downplayed -- a wise move, since the special effects, when they are necessary, are at about the level you'd expect from a movie that is more focused on romance than sci-fi action.
All of which is in keeping with the tone of Stephenie Meyer's book, which is eight parts romance and two parts action/fantasy. That's why it's been such a phenomenal success with women, and why the male-dominated geek industry -- the Nerderati, if you will -- has been so skeptical of that success. "What?" they scoff. "A super-popular vampire book that we, as men, AREN'T interested in? Inconceivable! It must be terrible, and its popularity is probably being over-reported!"
Remarkably faithful to the spirit of its source material, the film version of Twilight crams most of the key episodes from Stephenie Meyer's novel into its breathless, 122-minute running time. Under the direction of Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), Twilight gallops along handsomely, showcasing the cloudy, misty beauty of its gorgeous Pacific Northwest forest locations; you can practically smell the pine trees and feel the crunch of fallen leaves beneath your feet. Using voice-over narration sparingly, screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg trots out all the major (and most of the minor) characters from the book, recounting the story in abbreviated fashion while demonstrating respect for Meyer's novel and its huge, faithful audience.
Twilight may not add up to much more than the sum of its parts, but those parts can be mighty entertaining, especially when handsome Edward (Robert Pattinson, oozing uncertain charm) is whooshing through the woods with plucky Bella (Kristen Stewart, self-assured and determined) on his back. Still, the romance at the heart of the book has been shorn of some of its heart in the translation to the big screen, sacrificed on the altar of a broader demographic. Readers of the book could feel somewhat shortchanged by the relentless emphasis on forward momentum rather than romantic fantasy; the flip side is that newcomers can enjoy the whirlwind pace and the brooding, ominous atmosphere, and everyone can revel in the spectacle of flying vampires playing a pinball version of sandlot baseball.
Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston are going to prison, according to Just Jared -- admittedly not the most accurate source for film news. But considering that tabloids have obsessively documented the meetings, it's probably close to being a done deal.
Goree Girls is a 1940s musical to be produced by Aniston. MSN describes the plot as a semi-true story inspired by Skip Hollandsworth's article "O Sister Where Art Thou." It's actually a pretty cool story of the first female country-and-western musicians who just happened to be prison inmates. Hollandsworth's article is definitely worth reading for the whole story, which is a pretty heartbreaking one, despite the relatively happy ending.
And that's kind of my problem with the concept .I love the story, but ... Jennifer Aniston as an inmate? As a singing inmate? Already, it looks like this is getting the slick and shiny Hollywood treatment rather than something truthful. I want to see Walk the Line, not Chicago. The article convinces me there's a brilliant movie here, the MSN description initially just made wince and wonder where Gerard Butler's promise went.
By now, you're probably wondering what part Butler does play in a women's prison movie. From the article, I'm guessing he plays the "strapping Paul Mitchell," an inmate who narrowly escaped death row (literally -- he was strapped to the electric car when his pardon came in) and drove the Goree Girls to their shows. He eventually married one of them, so for once, the Hollywood love angle is actually part of the true story.
Now, Butler I can believe as a prison inmate (it's the hard knock school of Glasgow), but Aniston as his prison paramour stretches the realm of belivability. However, a lot of grit could be added by whoever lands the directing job and the rest of the cast. So, keep this one on your radar, and watch for it all to be made official.
At the end of a long day of interviews promoting Twilight, it might be exhaustion -- or high spirits -- that makes Kristen Stewart so blunt; asked if she's thought about walking away from the series just to mess with people's heads, she laughs: " Oh, God, yeah. I've totally had the thought; it would be so easy for me to send so many hundreds of girls into such a frenzy. It took a long time for me to admit that I was too bogged down by the first book, to admit to these girls that I wasn't as ... I'm just as obsessed as they are; I read it from an entirely different perspective and had to live it for three months. I can't start the next book unless I have the job to do, or I'm just gonna drive myself insane -- and even this, they don't get that. They're like "What? How could you not read the book ...?" Yeah, I have thought, many times. "What could I do?" It'd be so easy. ..."
Stewart spoke about coming to grips with a dedicated group of fans, getting into character, changing Bella's wardrobe, how she kept the natural in Twilight's supernatural story and much more in Los Angeles.
Cinematical: There's this great moment in Twilight where Bella's driving by the diner as her friends are walking out, and she's running for her life from vampires, and her friends are happy and she's sad ... Was it hard building a naturalistic character in this film, or was it a good place to retreat to, from all the special effects and supernatural stuff?
Kristen Stewart: It's funny; when we were doing the film, it didn't feel like a big effects movie. They were never around; we didn't have the money to pull it off; everything was in-camera. It always felt like a character-driven movie; it always felt like I may as well just be doing an indie, except there's like fifteen thousand more people sitting behind the monitor with opinions. In this case it was ... I feel like it's a very real world; the only little minor detail is that (Edward's) a vampire. And that could be very representative of any problem that a guy you're with may have, any sort of hang-up he may have; this is just a really sort of glorified extreme version of that. So, it was always so rooted in reality that no, that doesn't really apply.
Two new releases this week, including an animated comedy and a teen romance with a hint of horror.
Bolt What's It All About: Animated family feature from Disney about a canine actor who doesn't realize the amazing feats he performs on television are really just special effects. Featuring the voices of John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, and Malcom McDowell. Why It Might Do Well: The trailer is appealing and slapping Miley Cyrus's name on anything geared at kids is like having a license to print money. Combine that with an 85% fresh rating at Rottentomatoes.com, and this one should open to impressive numbers. Why It Might Not Do Well: The Madagascar sequel is still out, so it may siphon off some of the audience Bolt is shooting for. Number of Theaters: 3,500 Prediction: $42 million Twilight What's It All About: A teenage girl moves to Washington state to live with her father and soon falls in love with a local boy. Her new heartthrob, however, has no heart beat as he and his family are vampires. Why It Might Do Well: Twilight is based on a best-selling series of novels with an ardent fan following ensuring that come this Friday theaters will be filled with goth-tinged teen angst both on an off screen. Why It Might Not Do Well: I don't see that happening. In fact I think this will be the number one flick. Number of Theaters: 3,200 Prediction: $44 million
The big question is how well Quantam of Solace is going to do in its second week. I'm betting that both of the new releases will outdo Mr. Bond, leaving him shaken but not stirred. Here's my prediction. 1. Twilight 2. Bolt 3. Quantum of Solace 4. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa 5. Role Models
As any hardcore Little Shop of Horrors fan can tell you -- and there are tons of us -- the 1986 cinematic version once had a much darker ending ... one that was much more in line with the dual source material of this musical and this Corman flick. But since this was 1986 and Frank Oz's movie had a lot of funny people in it ... a few test audiences deemed the finale too dark, and so we got a so-so ending tacked on to an otherwise excellent musical comedy.
When Warner Bros. first released Little Shop of Horrorson DVD, the original ending was included as part of the special features -- but that release was recalled right quick, which means that most of us actually own this particular DVD. But now, through the magic of YouTube + Cinematical, we can finally sit down and pick through the original ending of Little Shop. Obviously it's not "final print" material in any way, but you can definitely get enough to make you wish, oh I dunno, that someone would toss some money at the flick and let Frank Oz re-create a director's cut.
So if you own the "original" WB DVD, well goody for you. The rest of us can watch the fascinating footage right after the jump...
If teens who lust for vampires, or fight dastardly sorcerers, aren't your thing, what about mind readers? Variety posts that MGM has picked up a young adult novel by Amy Kathleen Ryan called Vibes, and Nancy Drew scribe Tiffany Paulsen is on board to adapt it. The book focuses on a girl named Kristi who wakes up one day to discover that she can read people's minds. She learns what people think of her (like that she's fat or gross), but finds that her gift isn't helping her actually read people. She's a Sookie without the sexy vampire!
In other news, Variety reports that Warner Bros. is hungry for Nicholas Sparks' The Lucky One. They cut a seven-figure deal to score The Notebook scribe's latest bestseller, which will be produced by Denise Di Novi, an old pro in the world of Sparks on screen (she produced Rodanthe, Walk to Remember, and Message in a Bottle). This latest novel focuses on a Marine named Logan who is lucky enough to survive three tours in Iraq. He thinks that his fortune is attached to a photo he carried of a woman he never met, so he sets out to meet her. And, I'm sure, to fall in love. For now, however, you'll have to appease yourself with other Sparks fare, like Dear John, which is currently in production.
There's a pretty strict embargo on Twilight reviews until opening day, this Friday, which is why you haven't seen everyone and their ageless vampire boyfriend shoveling out review upon review in advance of one of this fall's biggest films. For those who don't run in movie world circles, an embargo means the studio has asked all of us to kindly not post our reviews till opening day -- and since we're good like that, fly like that and hip like that, we respect them. That said, Twilight screened for critics a couple weeks ago, and again last night -- and my Twitter has been lighting up with all sorts of feedback. I won't say who these comments are coming from since some belong to other prominent film critics and movie bloggers, but the majority of buzz seems pretty all over the board. Here's a taste:
"Not that it was great, but I actually enjoyed Twilight more than Quantum of Solace (bracing for impact...)"
"TWILIGHT: cheap looking and often hilarious. DARK SHADOWS at DEGRASSI JR HIGH. With half the budget."
"Wow. Twilight not bad. "
"Twilight, seen. It wasn't terrible... Wasn't great, either. I hate movies that are painfully mediocre. They are worse than bad movies."
" It's a sad, sad day when "Twilight" has better action than the latest James Bond movie."
"If you want to hang out with a lot of teenage girls and sexually frustrated middle-aged women, get yourself to a "Twilight" screening!"
It's important to note that all these comments came from men, who are probably not exactly the target audience. I know a lot of folks have been giving Twilight a hard time, but when it's all said and done, I think we'll have the beginnings of a very popular and lucrative movie franchise on our hands. Stay tuned Twilight-ers, the first of two Cinematical reviews will arrive first thing Friday.
I haven't read Twilight, but a friend who has described it as chapter upon chapter of Kristen Stewart's character swooning over Robert Pattinson's youthful 108-year old vampire. Males the world over are running for the hills -- but maybe they shouldn't. After all, the horror-romance has a long and venerable history. The juxtaposition makes sense: just like clowns can become scary with just a small tweak in their make-up, love stories can turn into horror stories by edging just slightly toward the sinister. I have some hope that Twilight might be creepy rather than gooey; we'll see soon enough. In the meantime, here are a few examples of films that have done a nice job with the horror-romance combination.
1. The Fly (1986) - I actually think that Cronenberg's take on The Fly is the scariest movie I've ever seen, albeit for reasons having little to do with the romance between Jeff Goldblum's Seth Brundle and Geena Davis's Veronica. (I'm generally freaked out by genetic weirdness.) But the film gets much of its poignancy from their relationship, which both sets things in motion and brings them to a close. Consider that Brundle tries his invention on himself out of jealousy, imagining an infidelity that didn't exist. And Veronica's final heartbreaking gesture is one of both pity and love.
Last week, I had the chance to visit the set of Dear John, Lasse Hallström's adaptation of Nicholas' Sparks heartbreaking novel. I'll get to tell you all about the visit and the movie at a later date, so keep an eye out. In the meantime, though, I thought I'd tease fandom with a Captain America soundbite. While talking to the film's leading man, Channing Tatum, I couldn't resist asking him if he'd play the First Avenger, mentioning that at least one reader had nominated him for the part last week. Surprisingly, that reader isn't the first one to think of him for the part -- a crew member tried to soften him up, too! Here's his unvarnished response:
"Captain America? Oh my God! Oddly enough, I just got given a book – one of the painters came up and here gave me a book. I would think about it. Maybe it's destiny! I would definitely think about it – I just got done doing G.I. Joe, though. If Joe does well, and it doesn't seem to be the exact same story, then I would. I don't know. They seem to be very, very similar – almost identical. Except for the – I think he takes a serum? Like a strength serum? [But the WWII setting] could be very very cool. "
So, there you have it. Tatum is definitely a bit reluctant to jump into the All American Hero mold again -- but it is Captain America, which is a pretty tempting superhero for any actor to play. I'll freely admit a bit of bias in saying that Tatum has risen on my personal "Who should play Cap?" list, because he certainly has the right personal qualities. He's a genuine, stand-up guy -- there's a reason Hollywood is itching to have him play in uniform so often. And hey, there's worse things than being typecast as the heroic soldier!
Asked what she would tell theatergoers who have no interest in vampires that might make them want to see Twilight, her new film adapting Stephenie Meyers' best-selling story of immortal longings and teen love, director Catherine Hardwicke laughs: "I would say that when you come out of the theater you might be in danger of whoever went with you ... just grab(bing) you and start making out with you. ..." The director of gritty urban fare like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, Hardwicke also explained how she truly identified with Twilight's teen heroine and got into the supernatural series: "When I read the book, I just got drawn in, and ... as I read the book I just started becoming Bella, and just breathing and hyperventilating, like her, and getting mezmerized by the whole experience. ..." Hardwicke spoke about undead romance, adapting a much-loved book, the classic vampire visions she avoided, and much more with Cinematical in Los Angeles. You can listen to the podcast here at Cinematical by clicking below:
You can also download the interview in full right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.
Just a month ago, we learned that Adrien Brody and Michael Chiklis were heading back to High School -- a rather unique comedy about a high school valedictorian (Matt Bush) who gets high with the school stoner (Sean Marquette), and then tries to use his smarts to get out of an upcoming drug test. Rather then messing with his own results, he schemes to get the entire school stoned to beat the system. Brody's the drug dealer, Chiklis is the principal, and now The Hollywood Reporter posts that Lisa Simpson, aka Yeardley Smith, will play a homeroom teacher while Luis Chavez (Crash) plays a druggie friend of the valedictorian.
Meanwhile, Variety reports that Navy NCIS actress Cote de Pablo is making the jump to the big screen with Scott Speedman's The Last Rites of Ransom Pride. The Calgary Herald describes it as "a violent ransom about a woman trying to bring her lover -- a murdered outlaw -- home for burial." I've no idea how this will turn out, but it's got an interesting cast that also includes the V-loving Lizzy Caplan (True Blood), Jason Priestley, Peter Dinklage, Kris Kristofferson, and Dwight Yoakam.
And Richard Jenkins is putting aside his Burn After Reading gym ways to board Lasse Halstrom's Dear John, according to Variety. More dramatic romance from Nicholas Sparks, the film will follow a soldier who falls for a conservative college student while on leave. There's no word on Jenkins' role.
He spent a lot of time voicing Sonic the Hedgehog, but Jaleel White is much more well-known for playing Steve Urkell, that nerdy dude who annoyed his way from guest appearance to most memorable star on Family Matters. But, God, that was ten years ago now, and Jaleel has not only grown up, but stretched his way outside the acting world.
The Hollywood Reporter posts that White has written a romantic comedy called Did You Get My Text, which Joel Zwick (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) will direct. The film follows a young man who somehow "starts a relationship with a girl on his friend's phone, turning their courtship into a comedy of technological errors." Just how does that happen, anyway? And by comedy of errors, I imagine that means this poor girl finally thinks the young man's friend is into her? Oh dear. Right now, there's no word on cast, but we'll probably hear more about the players soon enough.
Since the film is being produced by Matthew Cooke and Bert Marcus, the THR piece also mentions another project -- Propaganda. Adrien Grenier is on-board to produce the documentary, from writer/director Cooke, which deals with free speech struggles in the wake of the Patriot Act as well as Internet materials being removed due to copyright laws.
Well, that was cleared up quickly! Just the other day, I reported on rumors flying about the ending of Australia, and claims that Fox had pressured its director, Baz Luhrmann, to change it. Luhrmann quickly informed The Sydney Morning Herald that the film's ending was entirely in his hands, bristling at the suggestion that it wasn't. "It's really simple: on a Baz Luhrmann film, I decide."
I'll fill in the spoilery blanks for you now -- rumors were that test audiences were quite appalled that Hugh Jackman's character, The Drover, died at the end of the film. Fox was certain that Jackman's tragic end spelled doom for the box office, but Luhrmann brushes off the rumors, calling them "naive" and "profoundly misinformed." He also points out that Fox would hardly have taken issue with The Drover's death, since they happily froze Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, and we all know how that box office turned out.
It turns out, he filmed three different endings and tested two -- one where Jackman lived, and one where he died. Audience reactions were the same for both endings, but he decided to choose the third, which remains a mystery to all but him and his cast. "There was always a struggle within me," he said. "There's the way Titanic ends and there's the way Gone With The Wind ends. It's neither of those. It's an ending specific to this moment and it's what I want the film to give out and what I need in my own life. It's what I want to feel. On that level, it's completely personal."
So, now you have it -- Luhrmann is firmly in control, we'll be delightfully surprised by the ending, and I may not have to watch The Drover die. Good news all around! (We won't talk about the fact that its reportedly still not done ...)
Well my friends are gone And my hair is gray And I ache in the places where I used to play And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on I'm just paying my rent every day In the tower of song -- Tower of Song, Leonard Cohen
Harvey Shines (Dustin Hoffman) is a New York jingle-writer who doesn't quite toil in the tower of song; maybe in a small office in a nearby strip mall. But the rest of it applies; he's older, tired, headed to London for his daughter's wedding and obsessing about getting back fast in time for a job-related meeting. Harvey's dreading the trip before he even takes it, which guarantees it will be dreadful, but then he meets Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), another single, singular person unwilling to confront the terrifying possibility of happiness. ...
Written and directed by Joel Hopkins (who previously gave us the younger-skewed Jump Tomorrow), Last Chance Harvey may be easily -- in fact, too easily -- dismissed as "Before Sunrise for the sunset years," as Harvey and Kate meet accidentally, mesh immediately, dare to hope, get brought together by chance and separated by accident. Younger audiences will ignore Last Chance Harvey like a an overdue bill notice in the post, but if you've been around the block of life a few times -- on the bus or under it -- you'll find that it wins you over, bit by bit, in no small part thanks to the mix of effortless charm and contemplated sincerity Hoffman and Thompson bring to their work; the whole film has an air of lightweight gravity to it, and Hopkins may not be swinging for the fences, but he knows just how to swing and hit for a solid double.
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