criterionforum.org

chaddoli wrote:

swo17 wrote:I thought Scorsese was doing that one...

I thought most Entourage fans kept it to themselves out of shame.

Touché.

Robotron wrote:

chaddoli wrote:

Robotron wrote:Supposedly, Cronenberg is currently adapting a Robert Ludlum novel with Denzel Washington and potentially Tom Cruise attached. This career has long since shark jumped.

You must not have seen his last three films.

Spider is fine, Viggo Mortenson acting tough slitting throats and shooting faces while Cronenberg is pretending he has some kind of interesting message about violence that we haven't been hearing since the 70s in movies, and that he didn't explore more comprehensively in Videodrome anyway, while otherwise going "subversively mainstream" (read: not bringing anything experimental, radical, adventurous or complex to his films in aesthetics or content) is not.

He made one movie you didn't like three years ago so you declare his career has "long" jumped the shark?

I like this new phase in Cronenberg's career. Can't spend your whole life blowing up heads.

Mr_sausage wrote:He made one movie you didn't like three years ago so you declare his career has "long" jumped the shark?

I like this new phase in Cronenberg's career. Can't spend your whole life blowing up heads.

A History of Violence and Eastern Promises were both equally vapid. I'm not complaining about a lack of gore, not that there is a lack of gore in his recent work, but about the lack of hard to decipher layered realities and the effortless slips between them that he brought to life with his own unique metaphors in his earlier stuff. If he wants to reject what gave him value at one time, that's fine, but with nothing to replace it apart from hard hitting action and a few muted sexual implications there's nothing to see.

I can understand your point about the layered realities you mentioned, but I doubt anyone let alone Cronenberg would be able to make something like that convincing in the kind of films he's making now. And of his earlier stuff, it's the more dramatic material (IE Dead Ringers & Crash) were what appealed to me most. And neither of those two films I cited had those layered realities as far as I could tell. But I'll say that I too like the direction he's going in, no matter how mainstream it looks to his "rabid" followers of his earlier material.

A History Of Violence and Eastern Promises are just as much about "layered realities" as anything Cronenberg has ever done.

Antoine Doinel wrote:A History Of Violence and Eastern Promises are just as much about "layered realities" as anything Cronenberg has ever done.

In a very shallow, pedestrian kind of way. The layers are merely two in both cases, and they are never anything but standard movie realities, in the case of AHOV, the world of small town/happy family life and Rambo(or Straw Dogs, if you're looking for some kind of art house equivalent), and in EP, the world of big town/happy immigrant life and The Godfather/random foreign mob movie. The only thing unique in the world of Hollywood here is some mildly brutal sexual sequences in both, but little compared to how imaginative and integrated sex used to be in his films.

I would argue there is a bit more going on in those films. In AHOV (a film I didn't like all that much actually), the reality in question is that of a man trying to live with the violent physical/sexual urges within him and what happens when that past catches up with him. As for EP, it's about two people from two different sides of the immigrant experience, crossing over into each other's existence (and that film had its own flaws as well). If anything, Cronenberg seems to be trying to use standard genre tropes to explore that which has always interested him. I can easily see how it could be viewed as Cronenberg becoming more conventional - and there's certainly a strong argument that could be made - but I think with those two films Cronenberg is coming within reach of something truly great.

That said, working with Denzel and Cruise won't get him there.

Cronenberg's films have only rarely been preoccupied with layered realities in the sense Robotron is talking about (only Videodrome, eXistenZ, and Naked Lunch, and Spider come to mind). He has, however, become interested in the multiple realities underneath character. In both A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, Viggo Mortensen's character is ambiguously two people at the same time. It's not a simple facade-reality dialectic or what-have-you; it's two real, earnest identities living simultaneously in one body, which makes it difficult to figure out the total personality of the character or come to a definite conclusion about them. As Mortensen says in A History of Violence: "I'm Tom and Joey." I think this kind of thing began in earnest after M. Butterfly, about another character with two realities.

Another day, another reboot. At least, this comic character deserves it.

An early Christmas gift from Hollywood: Rosemary's Baby remake scrapped

Jeff wrote:NOT LIKELY UNTIL 2009 - These are either former 2008 releases that have been pushed to 2009, or films that are in a very early stage of production and may not make it out this year.
Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)

This is to start shooting in May 2009 (with co-production backing from Italy’s Bi Bi Film). Starring Juliette Binoche, the film traces the encounter in Tuscany of a French gallery owner and an English-speaking writer studying the relationship between originals and copies in art.

Just wondering if anyone has any information on the Wachowski Bros's Ninja Assassin, which should be fairly close to release. The star, Korean pop star / actor Rain, (aka Bi, aka the guy with the minor role in Speed Racer and the duel with Stephen Colbert), stands a good chance of becoming the first Korean actor to make a successful crossover into Hollywood films.

He did a very good job in a number of Korean productions (I'm a Cyborg, But That's Okay is an excellent example from Park Chan-wook), and got some positive notices in Speed Racer (which I didn't see). The Stephen Colbert back and forth has to have helped. He's known in Korea for his dancing, which implies he has the athleticism to deal with the martial arts (I have zero knowledge of martial arts, this is from what little I've been able to find online plus a little knowledge of how HK martial arts actors have been recruited over time). Most importantly: he's even doing passably well with speaking English in interviews and such, although he's only been speaking the language a few years.

So even if the movie itself tanks, he might clear a major hurdle *and* open up interest in Korean film in the US market.

Now if he just didn't have that pesky lawsuit over his head (*rolls eyes*)...

I've been looking around online, and have checked the usual suspects (imdb, twitchfilm.net, etc). Just wondering if anyone here had wandered across other info. The movie doesn't have a definite release date beyond "2009."

We have Rain fans on this forum? :-k

I can only speak for myself, but - no, much more a Korean film fan. I'd like more people in the US to find out about them.

2009 PREVIEW

I did this last year, and thought some might be interested again. There are several films here that I have no interest in, but I know appeal to portions of the membership. I only listed films or directors that have been discussed here before, or ones that seemed like they might be of interest to the forum. Let me know what I've forgotten (no fanboy speculation, please).

SCHEDULED RELEASE DATE IN 2009 - These may or may not be done, but they have a scheduled release date. They are presented roughly in order of release date.
Killshot (John Madden)
Of Time and the City (Terence Davies)
Taken (Luc Besson)
Coraline (Henry Selick)
The International (Tom Tykwer)
Two Lovers (James Gray)
New York, I Love You (various)
Youth in Revolt (Miguel Arteta)
O’Horten (Bent Hamer)
Watchmen (Zack Snyder)
12 (Nikita Mikhalkov)
Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
The Horsemen (Jonas Åkerlund)
Sunshine Cleaning (Christine Jeffs)
Duplicity (Tony Gilroy)
Knowing (Alex Proyas)
Adventureland (Greg Mottola)
Sugar (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck)
Paris 36 (Christophe Barratier)
State of Play (Kevin Macdonald)
The Soloist (Joe Wright)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Gavin Hood)
Star Trek (J.J. Abrams)
Adoration (Atom Egoyan)
Bruno (Dan Mazer)
The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson)
Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
Terminator: Salvation (McG)
Drag Me To Hell (Sam Raimi)
Up (Pete Docter)
The Lonely Maiden (Peter Hewitt)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott)
The Year One (Harold Ramis)
My Sister’s Keeper (Nick Cassavetes)
Public Enemies (Michael Mann)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (David Yates)
Funny People (Judd Apatow)
Julie & Julia (Nora Ephron)
Taking Woodstock (Ang Lee)
Crossing Over (Wayne Kramer)
The Informant (Steven Soderbergh)
Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese)
Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze)
Amelia (Mira Nair)
The Box (Richard Kelly)
A Christmas Carol (Robert Zemeckis)
The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
The Wolfman (Joe Johnston)
Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie)
The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson)
Nine (Rob Marshall)
Avatar (James Cameron)
Agora (Alejandro Amenabar)
The Princess and the Frog (Ron Clements and John Musker)


PROBABLE 2009 RELEASES - These are done, in post, or wrapping up filming, but don't have a scheduled release date. They're in roughly the order of "readiness."
IN THE CAN
The Beaches of Agnès (Agnès Varda)
Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
Inju (Barbet Schroeder)
Genova (Michael Winterbottom)
Me and Orson Welles (Richard Linklater)
The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
The Burning Plain (Guillermo Arillaga)
Brothers (Jim Sheridan)
The Road (John Hillcoat)
Cheri (Stephen Frears)
Tyson (James Toback)
Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan)
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (Hayao Miyazaki)
Whatever Works (Woody Allen)
In the Electric Mist (Bertrand Tavernier)
IN POST
Giallo (Dario Argento)
Les Herbes folles (Alain Resnais)
Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodóvar)
Antichrist (Lars Von Trier)
A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen)
The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)
Whip It! (Drew Barrymore)
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog)
Green Zone (Paul Greengrass)
This Side of the Truth (Ricky Gervais)
Thirst (Park Chan-wook)
The White Tape (Michael Haneke)
Nailed (David O. Russell)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Terry Gilliam)
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
STILL SHOOTING
…of the Dead (George A. Romero)
Coco Before Chanel (Anne Fontaine)
36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup (Jacques Rivette)
Inglorious Bastards (Quentin Tarantino)
Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)


POSSIBLE 2009 RELEASES - These are films that are in pre-production and are expected to begin filming within the first quarter of 2009. They are more likely 2010 releases.
Up in the Air (Jason Reitman)
The Human Factor (Clint Eastwood)
Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
Dali & I: The Surreal Story (Andrew Niccol)
Serge Gainsbourg, vie héroïque (Joann Sfar)
King Shot (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (Werner Herzog)

lady wakasa wrote:So even if the movie itself tanks, he might clear a major hurdle *and* open up interest in Korean film in the US market.

Regardless of how Ninja Assassin performs, this doesn't really follow -- Rain is a totally insignificant figure in Korean cinema (I'm a Cyborg is his only Korean film credit), so it's kinda like suggesting Ayumi Hamasaki should do a Hollywood film to stoke interest in Japanese cinema. And from everything I've read so far, Korean filmmaking has no influence whatsoever on Ninja Assassin.

Clint is shooting a documentary on Tony Bennett for the BBC. No word if he and Tony will sing together.

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:

lady wakasa wrote:So even if the movie itself tanks, he might clear a major hurdle *and* open up interest in Korean film in the US market.

Regardless of how Ninja Assassin performs, this doesn't really follow -- Rain is a totally insignificant figure in Korean cinema (I'm a Cyborg is his only Korean film credit), so it's kinda like suggesting Ayumi Hamasaki should do a Hollywood film to stoke interest in Japanese cinema. And from everything I've read so far, Korean filmmaking has no influence whatsoever on Ninja Assassin.

Oh, I don't agree at all - someone goes on to see Cyborg, then they get curious about Park Chan-wook. If they've never seen him before, this is their entree into the Vengeance Trilogy. If they have, they see Park isn't a one-trick pony, then they might wonder about other high-profile Korean directors. They at least learn that Korean film is *not* a pale imitation of Hong Kong or Japanese cinema.

If they look online to get more info about the Korean industry, there aren't *that* many sites (in English) but Twitchfilm.net and especially koreanfilm.org gets them very quickly and very heavily into what has been going on in Korea the past 5-10 years - a very productive time for Korean film.

Plus there are the tv dramas (which, while not films, are very much tied to the industry; there's a fair amount of crossing back and forth, especially with younger actors. Moreso than in the US.) This is another potential entree into what Korea has been up to in the entertainment industry. At their best, the dramas can get crazy, but definitely are not US soap operas translated into Korean. And Full House was a MUCH larger hit in Korea than Cyborg was.

I'm not claiming that Ninja Assassin itself has any tie to the Korean industry. However, I run into a lot of people - in fact, most people I know who aren't heavily into film - and they're surprised that Korea even has a film industry. As inane as that might be, a Korean actor in a high-profile Hollywood film will introduce them to the idea that it might be worth checking into. And some will do that.

There's nothing glaringly wrong with the scenario you describe, but I'm having a hard time coming up with any comparable examples. Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li have headlined Hollywood movies (more than once, in Gong's case) and I see no reason to think this has radically altered the situation for mainland films in the U.S. By the same token, it'd be tough to argue that Vanilla Sky and Captain Corelli's Mandolin did much for Spanish cinema in this country, outside the narrow category of Spanish cinema that stars Penélope Cruz. Yes, this sort of thing is admittedly difficult to gauge -- who knows, maybe they did have an impact -- but I still can't make the leap necessary to believe that Memoirs of a Geisha leads directly to, say, Lost in Beijing getting U.S. distribution.

Now contrast this with what happened with Hong Kong cinema in the 1970s and late '80s-early '90s, where it was both the stars and the films themselves that broke through -- after all, Rumble in the Bronx and Supercop helped Jackie Chan's U.S. career a hell of a lot more than The Protector. I think the "mainstreaming" of Korean film will work the same way -- a bottom-up, cult-driven process that eventually filters into Hollywood -- and from the historical precedent, I'm unconvinced that the "top-down" approach (putting a Korean actor in a film that otherwise looks thoroughly Hollywood) will circumvent this, especially when the actor in question is only tenuously associated with actual Korean cinema.

Hugh Jackman takes himself out of Steven Soderbergh's still gestating Cleopatra project.

Clint has his eye on December for his Nelson Mandela biopic.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs a Tire-Larigot.

Mickey Rourke cashes in his The Wrestler chips for a spot in Iron Man 2.

Antoine Doinel wrote:Mickey Rourke cashes in his The Wrestler chips for a spot in Iron Man 2.

Even better: According to Variety, Rourke will play "an unscrupulous arms dealer who becomes the go-to guy for a group of mercenaries planning to topple a South American dictator" in The Expendables, written and directed by Sylvester Stallone. The mercenaries are played by...wait for it..., Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture and Dolph Lungdren. Forest Whitaker and Ben Kingsley are also "circling the project."

Jeff wrote:The mercenaries are played by...wait for it..., Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture and Dolph Lungdren. Forest Whitaker and Ben Kingsley are also "circling the project."

So are the quality vultures.