The Screengrab

DUSTIN HOFFMAN (1937 - )



He isn't on this list so much for his work in the later years, though Ishtar definitely gets honorable mention. It is more for the deliciously anti-leading man stuff he did way back when. He redefined the romantic hero in The Graduate: "Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?"  So lost and confused, so attractive. No wonder he gets the girl (and her mother). Then there's more heroes against the odds:  Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, the somewhat psychotic-seeming protagonist of Marathon Man and, well, Tootsie. Here's to you Dustin Hoffman.

JEAN-PAUL BELMONDO (1933 - )



How goes the plot of Breathless again? Can't remember? Well maybe that is because you were distracted by the dreaminess of Jean-Paul Belmondo. Seriously, the man took the Humphrey Bogart cigarette thing and improved upon it. How many actors can do that? He made this film nerdess get a Jean Seberg haircut and take up a Gauloises Blondes habit when she was sixteen. Unfortunatly she never ended up with Jean Paul in a hotel room. Oh well. At least Pierrot Le Fou is coming up on my Netflix list.

Read More...

PETER O’TOOLE (1932 - )



The standard line on Peter O’Toole is that he’s the greatest actor to never win an Academy Award. He should have won it for Lawrence of Arabia, of course:  selected by David Lean based on his stage work (like most great British leading men, who come from a culture where theatre is not synonymous with frothy mass-market musicals, O’Toole carried on a very successful stage career contemporaneous to his film acting), he became an instant superstar. Perhaps the Academy simply assumed, around the time he appeared in My Favorite Year, that if drinking hadn’t killed him by age forty, he’d be around forever and they could award him at their leisure. Though raised in Leeds and soaked in London theatrical tradition, O’Toole is the most Irish of actors: not only for his name and his reputation as a hard drinker, but also for his whimsy, his sly charm, his often self-deprecating humor, his reputation as a raconteur without peer (his autobiographical series Loitering with Intent are some of the most enjoyable books ever penned by a movie star, and show that he shares more in common with Flann O’Brien and Brendan Behan than nationality), and, when a role calls for it, fiery intensity. His roles have run the gamut from savage countercultural tour de forces (The Ruling Class) to respectable grand-old-man performances (The Last Emperor), and he’s got a third installment of his autobiography coming out, as well as a performance alongside John Malkovich in a big-screen adaptation of “The Song of Roland”. Hurry up, AMPAS; no one lives forever.

Read More...

BURT REYNOLDS (1936 - )



It may be hard for you young whippersnappers to believe, but 30 years ago, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world. He'd be the first to admit that his career management skills were never a match for his good ol' boy charisma and winking, bubblegum-popping likability – in fact, he's practically made a second career out of admitting it. His forgettable early career in television and B-movies (Navajo Joe, anyone?) isn't what convinced John Boorman to cast Reynolds in his breakthrough role in Deliverance; rather, it was his easy command of the Carson panel as a guest host of The Tonight Show that led to his star-making turn as Lewis Medlock. His Southern charm and Marlboro Man looks led to a series of redneck roles, from White Lightning to Smokey and the Bandit, which became the second-highest grossing movie of 1977, behind only Star Wars. Reynolds went to that well a few times too many, famously turning down Terms of Endearment to reteam with hick flickster Hal Needham for Stroker Ace. His career never came close to returning to the heights of Smokey, but he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Boogie Nights. True to form, he fired his agent after seeing the rough cut, fearing his career was ruined…and then when the movie instead revived his career, he squandered the comeback opportunity by going right back to making crap again.

Read More...

5. PAUL NEWMAN (1925-2008)



As the man who inspired this list, it's entirely fitting that Mr. Newman wound up in our Top 5...and we recently posted 10 good reasons why (in addition to the official Screengrab obituary by Phil Nugent) so, uh...moving on to number 4...

Read More...

10. SIDNEY POITIER (1927 - )



Poitier's breakthrough as the first African-American actor fully recognized as a leading man and star secured him a permanent place in the cultural history of the movies, but his status as a major actor and one of the great talents of his day may have eroded a little. In part this is because a lot of the movies he starred in were high-minded tosh that have dated very badly, not least because of the perceived need to present Poitier's characters as being superhuman and even morally superior to whites, the thinking being that a black man wouldn't be worth building a movie around if he were merely human. But just as Jackie Robinson had to play baseball extraordinarily well to earn his place on the roster of the Brooklyn Dodgers, it was Poitier's enormous talent that made most of his movies watchable at all. Even in something like To Sir, With Love, his powerful presence and banked fires seems informed by the mixture of intelligence and anger that made him stand out as the student worth saving in the juvenile-delinquency melodrama The Blackboard Jungle. It would be nice to report that, as the sixties gave way to the seventies and opportunities began to open up for black artists, Poitier was able to drop the black messiah act and take more challenging, morally complicated parts, but instead, he seemed to accept the idea that "Sidney Poitier" was a fixed concept that had no place in the era of Super Fly and Shaft. (In one of his 1971 movies, Brother John, his mistreated black Southerner character turned out to really be Jesus.) Poitier withdrew from the center of the film world, concentrating on directing and appearing in light comedies, aimed at the underserved African-American family audience, in which he played tightass straight man to such co-stars as Harry Belafonte and Bill Cosby. Them after a long layoff, he turned up acting again in such movies as Shoot to Kill, Little Nikita, and Sneakers. He didn't look as if he'd aged much and he could still command the screen, but the new scripts sucked about as much as the old ones had. He appears to have been effectively retired for the last decade or so.

Read More...

15. AMITABH BACHCHAN (1942 - )



Devotees of Bollywood cinema won’t need any explanation for why Bachchan is included here. But for those of you who are scratching your heads, imagine a movie star with the brooding good looks of a young Al Pacino, combined with formidable gifts for goofy comedy and intense drama alike. Now imagine that this supposedly imaginary star is one hell of a dancer as well -- maybe not Fred Astaire, but with an infectious dance style nonetheless. Put those ingredients together and you’ve got Bachchan, who was the reigning superstar of Bollywood cinema in the late seventies and early eighties before being temporarily sidelined due to a stunt gone bad on the set of his movie Coolie. Bachchan -- known to fans as “Big B” -- began his career as the Mumbai film industry’s resident “Angry Young Man,” but quickly segued into more heroic roles in a string of hits that came at the end of the 1970s. With his imposing figure and deep baritone voice, Big B became best-known for what were called “masala movies” (such as the 1978 classic Don, featuring Big B in a dual role) that required the combination of comedy, drama, romance, action, and dancing that few actors could provide, but which Bachchan could pull off almost effortlessly. And he looked good doing it, too -- who else could not only keep his dignity, but actually look cool in that purple outfit and newsboy hat ensemble he sported in Amar Akbar Anthony?  Since appearing on the scene in 1969, Big B has appeared in more than 175 movies, plus innumerable television appearances and a stint as host of India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, all of which have helped to make him one of Bollywood’s biggest names even today. Unlike many leading men of foreign descent, Big B never made the move to Hollywood. But then, he didn’t have to -- with his talent and charisma, Hollywood clearly needed Amitabh Bachchan more than he needed Hollywood.

Read More...

20. GENE HACKMAN (1930 - )



Hackman was 33 when he made his movie debut in Robert Rossen's Lilith; he got to play a scene with Warren Beatty, who, admiring his colleague's mastery of his craft and maybe also thinking that his potato-faced plainness provided a splendid contrast on-screen to his own Colgate smile and dashing looks, cast him as his brother in Bonnie and Clyde. By that time, Hackman, voted Least Likely to Succeed by the good folks at the Pasadena Playhouse (a title he shared with his roommate Dustin Hoffman), had begun to build a steady career on the basis of his hard-won dependability as an actor. The impression he made as Buck Barrow lit a fire under his career, one that fanned out four years later when he starred in The French Connection and won the Academy Award for his performance as the obsessive cop Popeye Doyle, a job that he has often cited as something less than his favorite. Hackman's admiring notices in this period are full of tributes to his "anonymity" and lack of sex appeal; it was as if everyone was glad that he was getting treated by the casting office as if he were a star but wanted to get their personal disavowals of responsibility on the record in anticipation of the day when the world realized that a terrible mistake had been made. But Hackman remained a genuine movie star, a testament to the surprising fact that every once in a while, exceptional ability and hard work just seem to pay off.

Read More...

My friends, last week in this space we paid tribute to the Top 10 films of the late, lamented Paul Newman, one of our favorite movie stars of all time...which, not surprisingly, got us thinking about the very qualities that separate the film industry’s classic, iconic Leading Men – the true gods of the silver screen – from, say, Shia LaBeouf.

My friends, I ask you: what is that special something, that ephemeral je nes sais quoi that makes for a truly great Leading Man? Is it talent?  Sex appeal?  Box office clout?  Are we drawn more to the stars who remind us of ourselves or those who embody exactly the qualities we lack (but do our best to imitate in hopes of meeting girls)?  Do the off-screen good deeds and/or drunken racist ranting and/or pro-Xenu proselytizing of the men behind the movies matter?  Do we forgive the occasional bombs and missteps in a long, prolific career, or do we prefer a shorter resume packed with performances of a generally higher quality?  And do foreigners count?

My friends, these difficult questions led to much consternation and debate within the hallowed halls of The Screengrab...but in the end, we all came together as a website, setting aside our individual differences to bring you this historic document, our bipartisan, multilateral picks for THE TOP 25 LEADING MEN OF ALL TIME!

Read More...

Inspired by the terrific new documentary Not Quite Hollywood, the Screengrab is proud to present Ozsploitation!, our own survey of the golden age of Australian drive-in movies. Pop a tube, throw another shrimp on the barbie and try not to chunder.

Last time we looked at Dark Age, about a giant crocodile on the loose Down Under. This week we’re looking at Razorback, which is about a giant wild boar on the loose Down Under. Totally different thing! I almost felt sorry for the big croc – he just wanted to be left alone. The razorback, on the other hand, just seems like kind of an asshole.

Plotwise, the movie is your basic Jaws in the Outback.

Read More...

Jean-Luc Godard once said that Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 had surely done its part in getting George W. Bush re-elected. You may disagree, but if an investigating committee of impartial wise men were formed to rank every statement of a political nature that Godard has ever issued in descending order of just how deranged they sound, it's doubtful that the sneer at Moore would make the top hundred. (Maybe not the top five hundred.) Moore said back in 2004 that he hoped that his movie would have an effect on the election, and maybe it did. (How he though that he might inspire some effect that was hurtful to Bush by making a movie specifically designed to comfort those who already agreed with him one-hundred percent while confusing anyone on the fence and pissing off and galvanizing everyone on the other side is a question for a different investigating committee of impartial wise men.) To hear them tell it, David Zucker and the other conservative Hollywood players who worked on An American Carol would like to have an impact on this year's election but are having trouble breaking through that gosh-darn media filter. Zucker, who will probably always be best known, especially at the rate he's going, as part of the team that wrote Kentucky Fried Movie and went on to create Airplane! and the Police Squad/The Naked Gun franchise, has weighed in on political matters before. A few years ago, he produced and directed a series of political ads, including the one above, which chastises the Democrats for being too soft to dictators and terrorists, and the one below, which compares James Baker and the Iraq Study Group to Neville Chamberlain.

Read More...

Kirk Cameron is a born-again Christian evangelist and former teen star who believes that God sometimes miraculously grants the wishes of true believers. If you were Kirk Cameron and had some kind of movie career, you might believe it too. Those who were children or just had no lives during the 1980s may remember Cameron from the Alan Thicke sitcom Growing Pains. It was during the run of that series that Cameron, already well-established as the show's meal ticket, discovered religion and reportedly started throwing his weight around backstage, demanding script revisions when he was unhappy with their "moral content" and even sparking a rumor that he had a hand in the dismissal of a supporting cast member who had posed nude. (He also chose not to invite any members of his "TV family" to his wedding, a slight that he later apologized for.) In 1989, Cameron starred in a major feature film about heroic college debaters who appear before the Supreme Court and make an unanswerable argument against legalized abortion. (The film was called Listen to Me. Last year, when director Kasi Lemmons made a movie about a black ex-con turned radio DJ who connects with Washington, D.C. audiences and helps counsel them through the travails of the 1960s and early 1970s, it was called Talk to Me. In a comparison of the two titles, one might detect the key difference in conservative and liberal pop culture, in a nutshell.) Since that film bombed, Cameron has mostly focused on "Christian-themed" projects: he starred in the movie versions of the Left Behind books. Now he's starring in a new movie, Fireproof, "about a firefighter who saves his marriage by turning to God." As Julie Bloom reports in The New York Times, it was made for $500,000 by "an almost all-volunteer cast and crew" and in two weeks has made more than twelve million dollars. Miracles are breaking out all over.

Read More...

Here’s an idea I have for an ongoing series: Double Threats, in which I discuss the acting careers of people mostly known for other artistic endeavors.  Or conversely, the other artistic endeavors of people primarily known as actors.  Inspired by tonight’s debate between the quick-witted enigmatic younger man and the proverbial Mr. Jones who seemed unsure of what, exactly, was going on here, didn't he?...  OK, I’m stretching at this point, aren’t I?  Actually, I’ve just had Bob Dylan on the brain recently and thought he might be a good test subject for this idea.

The double-aughts have been pretty good for Dylan in the movies.  The man who made a household phrase out of “the sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken” managed to baffle critics and audiences alike with 2003’s Masked And Anonymous, which (this may surprise you, unless you saw it) he wrote himself.  Then Martin Scorsese made the epic 3+ hour documentary No Direction Home in 2005, which included footage that shocked and amazed rock fans, such as the famous “Judas” moment from the misnamed Royal Albert Hall Concert, Dylan at the March on Washington in 1963, or (and this blew my mind) contemporary gnomic-old-man Dylan cracking a smile.  And then 2007 saw Todd Haynes’ brilliant I’m Not There, which created an alternate universe where all of Dylan’s mythologies sprang to life.

Read More...

Frank Darabont is back and Stephen King is nowhere to be found. Darabont will direct Law Abiding Citizen, set to star Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. “Written by Kurt Wimmer and Darabont, the script follows a successful assistant D.A. (Butler) who finds himself at the center of a vigilante plot hatched by a traumatized victim of the legal system (Foxx). Foxx's character is devastated to learn that, because of a plea bargain, one of his wife and daughter's murderers will be set free. So he unleashes revenge on the killers and those who made the deal,” says The Hollywood Reporter. Hey guys, Charles Bronson just called. He wants his big-ass gun back.

Julie Taymor is collaborating with her first screenwriter, William Shakespeare, again.

Read More...

Last week, in honor of Paul Newman, we run a poll to determine which of Newman’s performances was your favorite. Based on our findings, it appears that the resounding favorite of Screengrab’s readership was Newman’s work as Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler. Newman’s iconic turn in Robert Rossen’s classic low-key poolroom drama was chosen by 40% of readers, followed by his autumnal performance as Sully in Nobody’s Fool (27%) and his work as the first of the two titles characters in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (20%). Bringing up the rear was a tie between the world-class SOB title role in Hud and the “wild, beautiful” protagonist of Cool Hand Luke. But can you really go wrong with any of these performances?

Read More...

How did we miss this in the last DVD Digest?  Yesterday saw the debut of Let's Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin, an instructional video featuring the Russian prime minister and former Olympic champion Yasuhiro Yamashita teaching the Japanese martial art to the nation's youth.  We weren't able to get a copy of the video (lousy publicists), but here's some highlights from the AP:

Read More...

At the Guardian, Xan Brooks has a diverting account of how he came to get ejected from Faye Dunaway's presence while conducting her "first British press interview in nearly 20 years ". Dunaway is across the pond for the Raindance Film Festival showing of her latest film, Flick, a horror movie directed by David Howard. Brooks opens his account by describing how Howard listed for him all "the things I am absolutely not to ask her. Firstly, there must be no mention of Mommie Dearest, the Joan Crawford biopic credited with destroying Dunaway's career. Nor must I ask her about Andrew Lloyd Webber, who bumped her from the Los Angeles production of Sunset Boulevard in 1994; or about her adult son, who may or may not be adopted; or about the cosmetic surgery that she may or may not have undergone. Is that it? 'Yes,' says Howard. 'I think that's the lot.' He turns out to be wrong." Brooks veered into a minefield when he chose to ask her about Roman Polanski's Chinatown and how much reports of tensions on its set might have damaged her career. ("Oh," Dunaway says, "The Roman thing.") When our intrepid correspondent asks the ladylike Dunaway if it's true that she once threw a cup of urine at her pint-sized director, the interview wraps itself up in short order.

Read More...

Coming this Christmas... at least, until MGM changes its mind again.

Read More...

It's not easy being Nick Nolte.  His last Oscar nomination was ten years ago, his recent roles are less memorable than his recent mug shots, and his role in Ang Lee's version of The Hulk was the cherry of incoherence on the top of its incomprehensibility frosting.  On top of everything else, his house in Malibu just burned down.

Then again, maybe it ain't so bad.  After all, the guy has appeared in a handful of beloved films; he just became a father at the ripe old age of 66; and, in one of the most stunning displays of celebrity unflappabilty since a BB-wielding assassin went after Werner Herzog, he actually broke a window and leapt to safety during the fire.  Not bad for a guy pushing seventy!

Read More...

Back in the early days of the interwebs, I used to butt heads with a contrarian boob who insisted that Tony Danza was our greatest comic resource and that Robert Ludlum was a modern-day Dickens, among other dubious claims. While Danza remains sadly under-appreciated (although he did appear on a 2005 All My Children episode as Erica Kane’s wedding planner, so there’s that), Ludlum has been the recipient of a posthumous reputation bump thanks to the Bourne movies. Now creepmaster David Cronenberg is getting in on the action, as he negotiates to direct The Matarese Circle, a thriller based on a Ludlum novel. Denzel Washington is attached to star in the movie in which “two rival intelligence agents -- one American, one Soviet -- find themselves working together to ferret out and vanquish members of a mysterious group of criminals called the Matarese that has infiltrated the highest levels of American government,” per The Hollywood Reporter. No word yet on whether or not there’s a part for Tony Danza.

Forest Whitaker’s first leading role 20 years ago was Charlie Parker in Clint Eastwood’s jazz biopic Bird. Now Whitaker takes on another jazz legend as the director and star of What a Wonderful World, the first Louis Armstrong biopic authorized by Satchmo’s estate.

Read More...

If you've been following the "OST" feature here at the Screengrab for a while, or even if you're just familiar with the kind of chicanery that goes on in the music business under the guise of protecting intellectual property, you'll know that an astonishingly large number of movie soundtracks present you with a product that's wildly -- even borderline fraudulently -- different from what you encountered in the movie.  The difficulty and cost of obtaining clearance rights to music, especially for small, cash-poor independent films, and the greed and short-sightedness of record companies (or just their willingness to butt heads with equally greedy movie companies over the size of their slice of the pie) has sunk many a soundtrack.  Jim Jarmusch's inventive, compelling Ghost Dog:  The Way of the Samurai ran afoul of this very problem, but with a curious endgame:  there are, in fact, two available records affiliated with the movie -- one best described as a soundtrack, and the other a score.  Both are extremely worthwhile, but neither is completely successful on its own; both are very different in character, although they were written by the same person; and both feature material from the film as well as material that never appeared in it, though only one is available in the United States.

It should come as no surprise that Jarmusch's 1999 pseudo-remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's fantastic Le Samourai features a terrific soundtrack.  As befits his image as a New York hipster filmmaker, Jim Jarmusch's movies have always placed music in a prominent position; from the haunting, unnerving guitar wails of Neil Young that formed the basis of the soundtrack to Dead Man to the exotic, emotionally powerful jazz-funk of Ethiopian composer Mulatu Astaque that was featured in Broken Flowers, Jarmusch is one of a handful of directors -- others include Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, and Sofia Coppola -- who can be counted on to take as much care with the soundtrack as they do with the film itself.  After reading that Italian-American mafiosi were fond of gangsta rap, and consulting with his star Forest Whitaker, Jarmusch decided to bring in the RZA, producer and mastermind behind the hugely influential Wu-Tang Clan, to write both the score and the soundtrack to Ghost Dog.  This began a collaboration between the two that became deeper and more profound than either had anticipated; the RZA ended up consulting with Jarmusch on some of the language of the street hustlers in the film, helped out with the design and costuming, and even appears briefly in the film (as do Timbo King and a handful of the Wu-Tang Killa Bees auxiliary).  The movie and the music are gorgeously integrated on every level, reflecting a realness that couldn't have come about if any other director and any other musician had been behind it:  scenes are perfectly broken up by the intrusion of killer hip-hop tracks (all of which the RZA wrote, produced, or both); the scenes themselves feature gorgeous nighttime driving shots of Whitaker's lethal but loyal assassin, accompanied by evocative, skeletal beats also made by the RZA.

Read More...

Usually, when I watch a potential When Good Directors Go Bad title, I’m pretty sure of how I feel about it. Generally, it’ll be a movie I already know that I dislike, or one that I’ve heard enough negative things about that I’m almost positive I’ll join the chorus of naysayers. Occasionally, I’ve tried to defend movies which are much better than their reputations would suggest. But I don’t think I’ve ever been so conflicted about my feelings about a selection than I was with William Friedkin’s Cruising.

Read More...

Tina Fey's potentially game-changing impression of Sarah Palin has been the featured attraction on Saturday Night Live for the past three weeks, but since this is neither a TV blog nor (ostensibly) a political blog, let us turn our attention instead to bona fide movie star Mark Wahlberg...or, to be more specific, "Mark Wahlberg Talks To Animals," one of the highlights of this past weekend's unusually strong SNL, and another great moment for Andy Samberg, whose two second cameo in Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist is the latest evidence he's may be slowly building to a smart, impressive feature film career (Space Chimps and Hot Rod notwithstanding).

Maybe he's best in small doses (and I'll write more about Samberg's brilliant, surreal contributions to the history of SNL's short films in an upcoming post), but for now, enjoy or re-enjoy the previously untapped comic possibilities of Mark Wahlberg and a goat (and say hi to your mother for me)!

Read More...

Just released in Britain and set to hit the U.S. early next year, Me Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood is a "humorous" memoir in which Tarzan's simian sidekick reflects back on his starlit career. Reviewing the book, Lynne Truss writes that, while funny, it also manages to use Cheeta's story to illuminate something real and even poignant about life in Hollywood. What did the monkey do out there? “What does any organism ever do except - survive?” writes Cheeta. “In this business, if your profile ever drops, you're dead." Cheeta, Truss points out, "views the great days of Hollywood in zoological terms...modesty does not prevent him from pointing out that, in his great middle-period work on the Tarzan pictures, he was a pioneer of “simian thespianism”. How much of his success in films was down to him being an animal? Cheeta will accept it's as much as 10%; the rest, however, was talent." And he is not without his opinions regarding his collegaues. “For three decades I think I ‘phoned it in' a bit. It happens to actors. Look at De Niro.”

Read More...

Oliver Stone’s W. is due in theaters a week from Friday, and those of you who want to do a little homework ahead of time have a golden opportunity today. The documentary Crawford, which I reviewed during SXSW this year (and Andrew Osborne also chimed in on) is streaming for free online for your cubicle-viewing pleasure. It’s the story of George W. Bush’s hometown – but not really of course, because he just moved there before the 2000 election to secure his Texas good ol’ boy image. For everyone crossing days off the calendar until the end of the Bush era, it’s a must-see. Hit the jump for the linkage.

Read More...

Adaptations of Marvel Comics have been doing great business at the box office for almost ten years now, from X-Men to Spider-Man to Iron Man.  And, just like in the comics, when one creative team doesn't find an audience, the big bosses at Marvel Films have been more than willing to try again with new writers, directors, and stars; Fantastic Four wasn't a critical success, but it made enough money to spawn a sequel; Ang Lee's Hulk was an ambitious letdown, but Marvel handed the property over to Edward Norton for a second chance; and The Punisher is being given another go-round despite two dismal adaptations so far.  The one Marvel superhero franchise that hasn't been talked up for a reboot so far has been Daredevil (and its even worse spin-off, Elektra).  That's probably because the original -- helmed by a hapless Mark Steven Johnson and starring an out-of-it Ben Affleck -- was such a piece of junk that no one wanted a second try at it.

That may be about to change.  20th Century Fox's co-chair, Tim Rothman, insists that the studio will be pairing with Marvel Films to produce another installment of the adventures of everyone's favorite blind lawyer/costumed vigilante; he's just not saying when.  Or who.  Or where, how, or perhaps most importantly, why.  In a cagey interview with IESB, Rothman says the deed will get done, but fails to name names, and cites a curious precedent:  "I think that the thing The Hulk showed...is that it is possible, that if you really do it right the audience will give you a second chance."  Exactly what was done right about Norton's Hulk reboot and exactly who gave it a second chance is unclear:  the movie was tepidly reviewed, and made almost exactly as much money as Ang Lee's famouse 'failure'.  But hey, the spirit is willing even if the facts are weak.

Read More...

Hi, Screengrab readers!  For my first post, I thought I’d kick off a series in which I suggest various movies worth recording off of cable TV in the upcoming week.  See, I know that since you read the Screengrab, you have a fairly solid grasp on the movies and movie history, but there’s always some that slip through the cracks.  The movies I’ll mention here will give you a chance to catch up on those that you might have overlooked.  If I miss something, please post it in the comments!

Here’s the skinny: I’m assuming, of course, that you’ve gone to the trouble of getting a DVR (or have a VCR you know how to set, at the very least) to go along with the cable you pay for month after month, but you don’t always keep an eye on upcoming movies.  Since you’re reading the Screengrab, I’m not going to recommend movies that everyone recommends, such as Singin’ In The Rain (which, incidentally, I record just about every time it’s on, because I always have time to watch one of the dance numbers).  I’m not going to be too esoteric, either.  I’ll use an in-law test: I’ll stick with movies that I doubt my mother-in-law has seen, and that way will try to catch some of the great movies that are more likely to slip through the cracks.  One more thing: no premium channels, mainly because I can’t afford them.

Mon, Oct. 6:
Nothing here.  Good thing, too, since I’m not posting this until Tuesday Morning

Tues, Oct. 7: 
9:00 am: Ace In The Hole on TCM.  I don’t think this is a very good movie.  But plenty of reviewers disagree with me, so I’m going to mention it. Actually, by the time this goes live, it'll probably be too late.

8:00 pm: Don’t Look Back on VH1CL (repeating at 11:30 pm).  Maybe you’ve seen this, and maybe not.  But it’s one of the great rock documentaries and, if you watch it, you’ll enjoy I’m Not There that much more.

Read More...

We spend a lot of time in this slot telling you, the loyal Screengrab reader, about the ups and downs of independent film.  We've also addressed, not always with tongue out of cheek, the travails of the documentary filmmaker.  But we're dead serious when we tell you that being a documentarian can be a dangerous, and even deadly, business.  That's where Andrew Berends comes in, and this is where you can really help.

Berends is a documentary filmmaker who's never shied from going to dangerous places to pursue his art.  He's perhaps known for two feature films he did during an extended stay in Iraq:  When Adnan Comes Home and the deeply affecting The Blood of My Brother:  A Story of Death in Iraq.  (Berends also worked on "Gangs of Iraq", one of the more effective Iraq War segments of TV's Frontline program).  Recently, while researching a story on corruption and violence in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta, Berends, his assistants, and several translators were arrested by the government and accused of spying.  Thanks largely to an outpouring of coverage in the film press and the assistance of the French organization Reporters Without Borders, the last of them were released last month.

Read More...

You probably already know that Tim Burton is directing Alice in Wonderland for Disney, and you most likely wouldn’t be terribly surprised to learn that Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are attached (as the Mad Hatter and Red Queen, respectively). Now Burton has found his White Queen, and it’s Rachel Getting Married star Anne Hathaway. “The White Queen needs Alice to slay a creature known as the Bandersnatch,” The Hollywood Reporter reminds us. Ah, but who is frumious enough to play the Bandersnatch? We’re putting our money on Christopher Walken.

It turns out that October brings not only baseball’s playoffs, but really bad ideas for baseball movies.

Read More...

It’s a massive week for classic films, and a surprisingly good one for new releases too, once you get past the big Hollywood titles…

DVD of the Week: There was no small amount of competition for this spot, not merely because of the jaw-dropping number of classic titles being release but also due to one of TV’s best sitcoms seeing its most recent season bow on DVD store shelves. But with all the great stuff that’s hitting stores this week, to my eyes there was only one logical choice- Universal’s Touch of Evil 50th Anniversary Edition. It would be one thing if this DVD was simply a cash-in, a new pressing of the previously released 1998 cut of the film. But joining the “restored” version of the film are both the original theatrical cut and an additional “preview version”, both of which are being released on DVD for the first time. In addition, there are plenty of extras both old and new, including commentary tracks to correspond with each of the three available versions of the movie. What more could a Touch of Evil fan ask for? How about a reproduction of the legendary Orson Welles memo that led to the 1998 restoration? Yep, that’s in here too. I don’t normally double-dip my DVDs, but I’m definitely going to make the upgrade this time.

But wait, there’s more!

Read More...

Ever since Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene with her speech at the Republican convention, cinephiles have noted a certain familiar quality to her folksy manner of speech. The sing-songy cadence, flat vowels and cheery-yet-hostile “you betchas” – we’ve heard all that before. It wasn’t from the mouth of an Alaskan hockey mom, but a pregnant police chief in Brainerd, Minnesota – Marge Gunderson (Oscar winner Frances McDormand) from Fargo. (Although Roger Ebert suggests there may be a more apt comparison from the same film: “But who did she resemble more? Marge Gunderson, whose peppy pleasantries masked a remorseless policewoman's logic? Or Jerry Lundegaard, who knew he didn't have the car on his lot, but smiled when he said, ‘M'am, I been cooperatin' with ya here.’” ) For those of us who wouldn’t mind seeing Palin interrogated by the straight-shootin’ yet persistent Gunderson rather than Gwen Ifill, some enterprising YouTuber has given us our wish.

Hit the jump for the goodies:

Read More...