Archive for the ‘Classics’ Category
Filed under: Classics, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, New Line, Universal, Warner Brothers, RumorMonger, Scripts, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels
With re-imaginings and reboots being the keyword for every movie being churned around Hollywood’s grist mill, it’s no surprise that they’re turning to L. Frank Baum and The Wizard of Oz for some fresh content to churn around. According to The LA Times, Warner Bros and New Line (blood brothers) are both looking at remakes of The Wizard of Oz in the hopes of grabbing some of that sweet cash that Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is raking in.
Warner Bros’ Oz is very much taking the Alice route. Written by Josh Olson, and produced by Basil Iwanyk, it centers on a granddaughter of Dorothy returning to Oz to vanquish evil. Todd McFarlane is involved somehow, either as producer or consultant which suggests they’re really inspired by his Twisted Land of Oz series. (That link is a bit NSFW.) Who wants to see S&M Dorothy and a monster, flesh-hooked Toto? Hollywood might! Wheee!
New Line’s project is a lot more mysterious. It has a script by Darren Lemke, but no title and it doesn’t come up on his IMDB credits at the moment. It’s also being produced by Temple Hill who has made a killing with Twilight. Could it be something focusing on the later books of Baum’s Oz series? Could they be attempting a more faithful adaptation of Baum’s book? There’s a difference between doing that and a straight-up remake of MGM’s iconic film. For now, at least, no one is looking at doing that.
In the meantime, those who favor Broadway’s re-imaginings over Hollywood’s still have Wicked to look forward to. It’s still in the works at Universal with producer Marc Platt, and all this fervent interest in all things Oz might just give it the fuel injection it needs to make it to the big screen.
Filed under: Classics, Comedy, Scenes We Love
As any Achiever knows, it’s pretty difficult to pick a favorite scene or a favorite quote from Lebowski, but if there’s one scene that I’ll stop and rewind, it’s the dream sequence. Everything about it is pitch perfect — Bridges’ crazy anime eyes when he beholds the rack of bowling shoes, his slick dancing, Julianne Moore’s spear choreography, her outfit, the music, and the fever dream quality of it all. As impeccable as it is, we’ve all had dreams like this, usually thanks to substances both legal and illegal. (At least I have. And while I’ve had Viking helmets in mine, Bridges never showed me how to bowl and I count myself the poorer for it.)
You actually get two scenes for the price of one here, because it also melds into my other favorite scene of the Dude being told off by a real reactionary, but not before singing the theme song to Branded in the back of a cop car. The scene is embedded below, and it’s a little NSFW.
Filed under: Animation, Classics, New Releases, Disney, New in Theaters, Remakes and Sequels
The original Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is a delicious Victorian oddity, a children’s book whose bizarre dream world, unforgettable word play, and young heroine have captured the imaginations of artists as diverse as James Joyce, Dali, Jefferson Airplane, Jan Švankmajer, and, of course, Tim Burton.
It was only a matter of time until Burton tackled this classic, a dive into the subconscious littered with nonsensical rhymes and literally crazy characters. As the wonderful Annalee Newitz points out, “As [Carroll's] protagonist Alice moves from dreamy encounter to dreamy encounter, watching nursery rhymes coming to life and fighting bloodthirsty monarchs made of cards, we witness something that for the Victorians was just as stunning as a giant dynamo. Psychiatry was in its infancy in the 19th century, and this brave new science suggested there was a method in madness. The muddle of our dreams might illuminate the truth about human consciousness; the murmurings of madwomen could shed light on how so-called sane people think.”
Sounds like perfect fodder for Burton and his misunderstood oddities and lovable outsiders, right?
Oh, so wrong.
As in the video game American McGee’s Alice from 2000, a much-older Alice returns to Wonderland. In McGee’s version, Alice is returning to a terrible place in shambles which she must fight through in order to get to the bottom of why it’s falling apart in the first place. I’m not going into more detail here on the plot in McGee’s Alice because there is a nice little twist that makes it a much more compelling story than Linda Woolverton’s poorly paced script. Woolverton’s script feels like an afterthought to Burton’s desire to make a 3D Wonderland loaded with CG creatures. In actuality, the 3D effects were added later, making it a less authentic 3D experience than, say, Avatar. The AMC/Odeon squabbles might have been for naught, since Alice would be best enjoyed on the big screen, if only because there’s so much going on, it’s almost impossible for the human eye to keep up. And as wondrous as the talking animals are, as fabulous as the costumes are, as huge as the Red Queen’s head is, it’s nothing but a house of cards.
Filed under: Classics, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers
I love hypothetical questions regarding movies, especially because they’re not so easy for me to answer. I’ve got such a wide taste in film that I can’t always pinpoint something like which one movie I wish I could see again for the first time. So the other night when my girlfriend asked, I drew a blank. For her, it was easy. She loves the twists in Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner so much that she wishes she could go back and watch it again without knowledge of what’s going to happen.
If I was going with the surprise factor, I guess I’d like to see Psycho again for the first time. But not as I actually saw it for the first time, which was with full knowledge of all the twists in the film. I was unfortunately born into a time when Hithcock’s classic and both its shower scene and its ending is completely embedded into pop culture and the collective conscious. I’d prefer to go back to 1960 and see it as everyone else saw it for the first time, when it somewhat revolutionized the moviegoing experience and spawned the very concept of movie twists and spoilers.
Continue reading What Movie Do You Wish You Could See Again for the First Time?
Filed under: Classics, Drama, Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, New Releases, Critical Thought, Fandom, Remakes and Sequels
“I saw it with my mother when I was nine, and I didn’t like it,” the young woman next to me said. “But last night I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. watching it.” She was talking to her friend about 1986’s A Room with a View, the splendid Merchant-Ivory period piece. “Tim Burton’s wife [Helena Bonham Carter] was in it, but she was all young. Daniel Day-Lewis was in it, too, but he was playing an awful character.” Although I didn’t intend to listen to their conversation, I’m glad I did. We were all waiting to see The Crazies, Breck Eisner’s horror remake of George A. Romero’s original thriller, and the woman was hopeful and excited to see that too. In short, she appeared to be open to seeing all kinds of movies.
Too often, moviegoers seem to clump into camps: I only watch romantic comedies; I stick with horror; I gotta have my action fix; I won’t watch anything made after 1950; I won’t watch anything in black and white; I won’t watch anything with subtitles. To some extent, we’re pushed that way by modern media, as niche marketing gets more and more specific. Go to Netflix or Amazon, search for A Room with a View, and suggestions for other similar, period dramas may pop up as recommended choices for you, as determined by computer algorithms. The computer won’t recommend The Crazies.
Filed under: Action, Classics, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Casting, Warner Brothers, Fandom, Newsstand, Remakes and Sequels, War
War of the Gods / Dawn of War boasts Singh, the producers of 300, and the stunning Henry Cavill as Theseus. But he’s sat alone and waiting for costars until today, as Variety announced that Frieda Pinto will play Phaedra, an oracle priestess who accompanies Theseus to the front to lend 
her mystic powers. I imagine her access to the gods won’t dissuade her from looking a little favorably on Theseus, though. You don’t cast an actress as lovely as Pinto and not let Theseus dream of sharing some watered down wine with her, do you?
But a bigger question might be whether or not anyone will buy a ticket to find out. War of the Gods got underway the same time as Clash, but has been delayed for unknown reasons. While it probably benefits both films to come out months (perhaps even a year) away from one another, War may now be crippled by whatever happens to Clash. Add in that you could suddenly see movement on Warner Bros’ Odysseus, Anabasis or that much-discussed and long rumored 300 prequel / sequel, Xerxes, and you have the potential for an overdose of the classics.
Continue reading How Many Times Can Audiences Sail With The Greeks?
Filed under: Classics, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Fandom, Columns
For those of you just joining us, this is The Basics. In short: Drew McWeeny of HitFix and AICN fame tried to kick off a series of columns with a fellow blogger all about the essential films that any film writer or fan ought to be familiar with. When that blogger flaked out on him, I approached some time later to get it back off the ground, and here we are with our second installment…
From Drew’s first post back in May 2009 to my first response earlier this month, we’ve both made mention of hoping that these posts would help promote a greater conversation about movies, particularly on those that we’d chosen to discuss. Then a funny thing happened: producer of films and Tweets alike Keith Calder wondered aloud if anyone could throw their hat into our shared ring.
No, we decided. They can’t.
Just kidding. The idea is that once Drew throws down his gauntlet (as he had last week with Woody Allen’s Manhattan, which I’ll get to in a minute), any of you can feel free to write up your own response and e-mail a link to either of us, so we can share the links in future posts. And hell, if you guys decide to flake out on us, at least we can’t say we didn’t try.
Now, about this week’s title…
Continue reading The Basics: Expanding the Conversation and ‘Manhattan’
Filed under: Action, Classics, Comedy, Drama, Warner Brothers, Fandom, Home Entertainment, Western
Even if you’re a longtime fan of an actor or filmmaker, it’s often difficult to see all or even most of his or her work. For example, I spent most of the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college trying to watch every movie Woody Allen had anything to do with, went to the lengths of tracking down a couple of titles from VHS recordings on A&E (this was ‘94, mind you), and still missed a couple of them. Suffice it to say this seems more difficult with older performers than contemporary ones, where there are fewer opportunities to see new entries in theaters, at least initially. But sometimes even the most devout cinephiles can’t find the time or just the titles to get through an entire filmography.
Last week, Warner Home Video offered Clint Eastwood fans (and soon-to-be-fans) at least a partial solution to this problem: 35 Films 35 Years collects virtually all of the actor-director’s films over the past four decades at the studio, and packages it according to subject matter, theme and Eastwood “era.” And even if the set (understandably) skips many of the seminal works Eastwood made for other studios, there have been few collections released in the history of home video that offer a more expansive and thorough look at any filmmaker’s body of work.
Continue reading DVD Review: Clint Eastwood, 35 Films 35 Years
Filed under: Classics, Warner Brothers, Home Entertainment, Trailers and Clips
Long ago, before color moviemaking became commonplace, before f-bombs replaced the incensed g-d exclamations, before bloopers made their way to television shows and special features, there was the “Breakdown.” The what? In 1936, a Breakdown was “when one or more people get ‘tetched in the head’ at a most opportune time — causing the director, the assistant director, the unit manager, the producer, etc., to lose their mental balance and their digestive organs fail to function.”
I just learned this today through a killer movie bloopers breakdown compilation from 1936, one that features the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, James Cagney, Frederic March, and other greats, which you can see after the jump. In other words, a blooper reel full of a bunch of old-school, black and white mistakes on set. But better than watching the classic actors fumble their lines is seeing the humanity that bleeds out in those moments when the delivery breaks into reality. The source of this reel discovery, How to be a Retronaut, says it nicely: “It catches the past off-guard. It shows us the people behind the accents, the plots, the conventions of 75 years ago. And it reminds us that the business of being human remains entirely the same across time.”
Continue reading Watch This: Warner Bros. Movie Bloopers from 1936
Filed under: Classics, Fandom, Lists, Polls
It’s a question that mortifies the young movie geeks and sometimes stymies even the old veterans: What’s the best movie you never saw? And by that I mean this: a film that you know is a “classic,” that thousands of people adore, and that you’d probably enjoy yourself … remains unseen by your eyes to this very day.
Could be something as obvious as Casablanca or Gone with the Wind. Perhaps it’s something foreign, new wave-ish or film noir-y, and therefore it doesn’t feel all that accessible. (Watch it anyway.) Might be a more recent favorite like The Usual Suspects, The Shawshank Redemption, or (gasp) the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
One good way to figure out which highly-regarded films you’ve missed is by rating the films you HAVE seen at Flickchart. After a few thousand votes you’ll have an interesting list of films you’ve never seen, and ranked by popularity, as well.
But this post was never meant to be a free plug for Flickchart. It’s a sincere question to all of the hardcore movie-watchers out there. Which Oscar winner / AFI list-topper / fan favorite are you most embarrassed at having overlooked? I’ll even get us started. Ahem. “My name is Scott Weinberg, and I’m a movie geek, site manager, and film critic who thinks he knows sooooo much about everything — but the best movie I’ve never seen is probably (pause for dramatic effect) It Happened One Night.”
Hey, that felt kinda good. Who’s next?
