Joe's View

With Joe Meyers, entertainment writer

Archive for May, 2012

Why the 3D boom isn’t about to bust anytime soon

Thursday, May 31, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Paramount Pictures startled Hollywood recently when it decided to pull “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” from its June 29 release slot.

Release dates tend to be engraved in stone in Tinsel Town, with studios staking out a claim for a Memorial Day weekend or July 4 release date several years in advance.

Pulling the plug so close to a release date costs a considerable amount of money in terms of the marketing that begins two or three months in advance of a film’s release — the trailers for “Retaliation” have been up and running in theaters for weeks now and Hasbro has already launched a line of action figures tied in to the original release date.

Paramount is known as one of the most fiscally conservative studios. Many of its “tentpole” blockbusters are actually co-productions or releasing deals in which the studio only owns a piece of the action — limiting its profits but also putting a lid on its losses. Paramount almost never takes the sort of high stakes risk Disney did with “John Carter” (resulting in a $200 million write-off).

Because of the studio’s deal with Marvel coming to an end, it is getting “only” eight percent of the proceeds from “The Avengers” but that already amounts to $100 million.

“Retaliation” was recalled in order to do a 3D conversion on the film — and to avoid competition with the new “Spider-Man” reboot that will open the first weekend in July.

Moviegoers in this country might be tired of the 3D invasion launched by “Avatar,” but moviegoers overseas are still crazy about the process, especially the huge new audiences in Russia and China. The surcharge on tickets for 3D films can add 30 percent to the potential gross (this is one of the reasons “The Avengers” has been making so much money so quickly).

Hollywood’s relationship with China, in particular, is getting much closer. The studios holding their noses on free speech issues there in order to tap into a huge entertainment consumption market. China places restrictions on the number of non-Chinese films that can be released in that country, so Hollywood is quickly patching together co-production deals on forthcoming blockbusters that will exempt them from “foreign” quotas.

So, you can expect to see even more 3D films in your multiplex and don’t be surprised when scenes filmed in China start popping up in more Hollywood productions.

The sophisticated sex appeal of Romy Schneider

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

If I could hop into a pop culture time machine, I think I would want to make a 1961 stop in Paris to check out the stage production of John Ford’s “Tis Pity She’s a Whore” that co-starred Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.

Perhaps the sexiest acting couple of the 1960s, Schneider and Delon were lovers in real life, too, and the great Italian director Luchino Visconti brought these neophytes together on stage for the first and only time.

Schneider was only 23 at the time and was about to become a major international film star who would work on both sides of the Atlantic in Hollywood and European productions.

Although she was born in Austria, Schneider became a French citizen early in her career and did most of her finest film work there. The actress is being remembered on the 30th anniversary of her death with a festival at the French Institute/Alliance Francaise in Manhattan that began May 1 and is running on Tuesdays through June 26.

It was 30 years ago today that Schneider died at the age of 43 in what many saw as suicide due to her despair over the death of her son the previous summer. The 14-year-old David died when he was accidentally impaled on a fence he was trying to climb over. In the ten months after her son’s death, the actress began drinking heavily and taking pills, so no one is sure if her death was intentional or accidental.

Schneider left behind an impressive body of work that is being highlighted at the FIAF for the next month.

The actress remained friends with Delon after their affair ended and a terrific 1968 thriller they did together, “The Swimming Pool” (below), is being shown on June 5.

Liz Taylor and Richard Burton might have dominated the 1960s in terms of publicity, but they didn’t hold a candle to Delon and Schneider in terms of sexual chemistry.

Schneider’s position in French cinema history is marked with a special prize that is given to promising young actresses each year — the Prix Romy Schneider.

For a complete rundown of the Manhattan film festival, go to www.fiaf.org

Happy Memorial Day 2012!

Monday, May 28, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

What a ‘Shame’ we are still so juvenile about movie sex

Sunday, May 27, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Michael Fassbender gave one of the strongest movie performances of the past few years in the late 2011 release “Shame,” but it is easy to imagine that the 35-year-old British actor might now have some regrets about appearing in the Steve McQueen-directed drama.

Because he agreed to go full frontal in this searing story of a Manhattan businessman’s sex addiction, Fassbender triggered a wave of silly and insulting commentary that shows no signs of diminishing.

On the Golden Globes, George Clooney tossed off a vulgar joke about Fassbender’s body that the star wouldn’t have dared to make about an actress.

Fassbender was stopped on a red carpet by an MTV reporter who asked him to identify penis shots of other major actors who have shown the full monty in movies (a small fraternity).

Now, in the current issue of GQ, the cover story on Fassbender runs through all of the sexual innuendos connected to “Shame” once again — even though the star was ostensibly being interviewed to hype the summer sci-fi movie “Prometheus” opening June 1.

GQ is one of my favorite magazines, but the movie star covers are generally dismal affairs by writers who like to suggest a closer than usual relationship with their interview subjects.

The Fassbender piece has a quintessential GQ lede: “If he’s going to take me home with him, Michael Fassbender first needs a moment alone.”

The actor should have been at the very least Oscar-nominated for “Shame” but the tough sexual content and the taboo NC-17 rating took its toll and he was shut out.

It would have been nice if those actors who don’t have the guts to make serious films about sex had endorsed Fassbender’s bravery with a nomination.

And the media people who continue to harp on the star’s brief exposure of his genitalia should grow up.

Will Ridley Scott’s R-rated ‘Prometheus’ gamble pay off?

Saturday, May 26, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Going against the Hollywood summer movie grain, director Ridley Scott and Twentieth Century Fox decided to bite the bullet and release June 8′s ultra-expensive science-fiction film “Prometheus” with an R rating.

Raunchy lowish-budgeted comedies like “Bridesmaids” and “The Hangover” have gone out with R-ratings in recent summers, but the $200-$300 million tentpole movies have all sported PG-13s or PGs.

With so much money at stake, the corporations that run the studios don’t like to limit their audiences for summer fare, so all of the comic book pictures and sci-fi adventures of recent vintage have been made with the knowledge that they must not contain violent and/or profane elements that would get a restricted rating.

“Prometheus” is rumored to be a prequel to Scott’s 1979 hit “Alien” which shocked audiences back then with heavy doses of gore and creepy sexually-tinged attacks by the space monster. “Alien” was rated R, so that would seem to suggest that “Prometheus” has similar crucial horrific moments that could not be trimmed down to a PG-13.

In March, the director expressed his thoughts on the R-rating in today’s marketplace in an interview with the British film magazine Empire: “Financially it makes quite a difference, or the risk makes quite a difference, and yet you also have to apply the question — if you soften it, will you financially suffer? As opposed to just going for the throat and gambling.”

Scott’s career to date is being celebrated with a retrospective sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center which started on Friday and will run through June 3.

Few big commercial directors have displayed such far-ranging interests in subject matter and setting. “Alien” and the 1982 cult film “Blade Runner” could have set Scott off on a course of nothing but special effects extravaganzas but instead he has made regular forays into lower-budgeted, character-driven pieces like “Thelma & Louise” and “A Good Year.”

One of my favorite Scott films — “Someone to Watch Over Me” (below) — is being shown on May 29 and 30. The Manhattan-set thriller about a married detective (Tom Berenger) who has an affair with a socialite murder witness (Mimi Rogers) suffered the misfortune of opening in the fall of 1987 a few weeks after “Fatal Attraction” debuted.

The sexual zeitgeist elements in “Fatal Attraction” made it one of the biggest financial hits of the period and it rolled right over Scott’s tamer examination of marital infidelity (“Fatal Attraction” cost $14 million to produce and grossed $320,000,000, “Someone to Watch Over Me” was budgeted at $17,000,000 and only earned a dismal $10 million).

The Film Society cites “Someone to Watch Over Me” as one of Scott’s most underrated films and I would agree. While the story is far from original, Scott’s presentation of New York City as a place that balances great beauty with terrible dangers is striking.

The movie is absolutely stunning as a visual experience, opening with a spectacular nighttime aerial shot of Manhattan that establishes the Chrysler Building as a symbol of the city that pops up in many other shots later in the film (even from vantage points in Queens where the detective lives).

For a full rundown of the Ridley Scott retrospective, visit www.filmlinc.com

‘Deliverance’ turns 40, but remains as unsettling as ever

Friday, May 25, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

How could it be 40 years since the John Boorman film “Deliverance” was released?

That was my first reaction when I received a Warner Home Video press release announcing that the milestone is being marked next month by a new Blu-Ray edition of the 1972 hit about four Atlanta businessmen who run into terrible trouble on a weekend outing in the country.

“Deliverance” was another of those disturbing R-rated major studio pictures (like “Chinatown”) that was released during the summer months in the early 1970s — an unthinkable strategy now for a Warner Bros. picture like this one.

The film opened to mixed reviews in July, 1972, but became a huge box office success that kept playing in first run theaters through the fall (the drama received a major publicity bump when the recording of “Dueling Banjos” became a hit single several months after “Deliverance” debuted). At the end of the year, it received Oscar nominations for best picture and director (losing to “The Godfather” and Bob Fosse for “Cabaret”).

Although the movie was first presented as a mainstream adventure story/drama, it was received by audiences as a nightmarish horror movie in the tradition of “Psycho.”

Like the Alfred Hitchcock classic of 1960, “Deliverance” featured a terrible shock about a third of the way into the movie that left audiences shaken and disoriented. One of the Atlanta men (Ned Beatty) is raped by a gun-toting backwoodsman and another of the businessmen (Jon Voight) is about to be sexually assaulted when his friend (Burt Reynold) arrives and kills the hillbilly on the spot.

For those who had not read the 1970 James Dickey novel, the rape scene was one of the most horrifying movie moments of the era. Audiences were used to extreme violence by 1972, and graphic rape scenes involving women, but moviegoers could barely believe what they were seeing when Beatty was assaulted.

The suspense in the rest of the movie was extreme as the four men disposed of the body of the rapist and then assumed that the hillbilly friend who got away was mobilizing a group to kill them.

The horror in “Deliverance” is intensified by the natural beauty of the setting — the whole film was shot by master cameraman Vilmos Zsigmond on stunning locations in Georgia. The idea of sinister people lurking in rural locales would be expanded upon after “Deliverance” in a series of shockers such as “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) and “Ride with the Devil” (1975) in which urban visitors underestimate the darker impulses of country folk.

The dynamic of the two leads in “Deliverance” is a big part of its dramatic power, too, with the intellectual (Voight) fighting to save everyone’s neck after the macho leader (Reynolds) is badly hurt in a canoe accident.

There’s an added layer of creepiness in the fact that we are told in the first scenes that the entire area the men are visiting will soon vanish under the water of the new lake that will be formed by the construction of a giant dam. Late in the film, we catch a glimpse of a cemetery where all the corpses are being exhumed to be taken to another site because the dam will wipe out the entire town.

When I watched the movie again recently, I was struck by its undiminished power and a timelessness that sets it apart from most other movies released in 1972. Because most of the story is played out away from civilization, “Deliverance” has few of the costume and set details that date a film.

Reynolds got most of the press attention when the film first came out — he was in the midst of his rise to major movie stardom and had just done a widely discussed (partial) nude centerfold for Cosmopolitan magazine, a first for an actor in his position. But, watching the movie now, Voight’s much less showy performance dominates the action; he is superb in the last few minutes where the full impact of what his character has been through begins to sink in.

Rent it now: when a fashion icon runs out of cash

Thursday, May 24, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

Fans of “Downton Abbey” and other British TV period dramas will probably enjoy the 2006 BBC dramatization of Ian Kelly’s biography of Regency era dandy and style setter Beau Brummell, available on DVD from Acorn Media.

Brummell was repulsed by the wigs and the powdered faces of the prominent men of his age — as well as their absence of daily washing — and after he became a friend of the Prince Regent, the man had a revolutionary impact on fashion (and hygiene).

Brummell’s adoption of a simpler and more “manly” way of dressing caught fire and soon there was a fashion war raging between Beau’s fellow “dandies” and the “fops” who didn’t want to let go of the old ways.

One of the wisest things director Philippa Lowthorpe did was to cast James Purefoy in the title role of “Beau Brummell: This Charming Man.”

The actor who was so memorable in the HBO “Rome” series is amusing and poignant as the style setter who didn’t realize until it was too late that nearly all of his social standing came as a result of his friendship with the Prince of Wales (played with great force and humor by Hugh Bonneville, below).

Like the Manhattan fashionistas of a decade ago — who maxed out their credit cards to retain their cutting edge style (and are still paying the price) — Brummell was terrible with money and was constantly hitting up rich friends for loans.

When he had cash, he blew it on clothes and gambling. Brummell was so charming that the people around him almost always said “yes” to whatever he wanted — as long as he offered access to one of the most powerful men in the country.

“Beau Brummell” explores the thinly veiled homosexual tension between Beau and the Prince and Lord Byron (Matthew Rhys, above). Brummell is clearly crazy about the charismatic poet — we see him taking part in a sexual three-way with Byron and a woman — and it starts to drive the Prince crazy.

Finally, Brummell’s royal patron cuts the dandy off totally and it is the beginning of the end.

Purefoy’s performance shifts from total charm and confidence to pure desperation as “Beau Brummell” becomes the tragedy of a man who couldn’t read the people around him as well as he thought he could.

The 90-minute BBC film has none of the stuffy feel of a “period piece” — the music and the cutting are very jazzy — so it is easy to see the parallels with our own now-vanished “Sex & the City” age of a decade ago.

‘Mr. Hobbs’: when Jimmy Stewart turned into a spacey grouch

Wednesday, May 23, 2012 by:Joe Meyers

I like to play something I call “Netflix roulette,” adding random titles to my long list of DVD rental choices from the media giant.

Some of the movies are new-ish films I haven’t gotten around to seeing, but I also like to stock oldies that from the distant past of my moviegoing.

I never monitor the list order, so when each disc arrives in the mail it’s a surprise — sometimes pleasant (“On the Beach” was even better than I remembered), sometimes not so thrilling (Have you watched “I’ll Take Sweden” lately? Don’t!)

Last week, “Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation” landed in my mailbox, a long-forgotten family comedy starring James Stewart that was a fairly sizeable box-office hit during the summer of 1962.

Indeed, the comedy was one of the few pieces of good news for Twentieth Century Fox that year — the still-in-production “Cleopatra” was bankrupting the studio and Marilyn Monroe had just been fired from “Something’s Got to Give” a week before “Mr. Hobbs” opened.

“Mr. Hobbs” was the beginning of a change in direction for Stewart. After the Alfred Hitchcock hits of the 1950s, the big westerns and his Oscar-nominated work in “Anatomy of a Murder,” the star was beginning to show his age and fell into a new genre — family comedies — that would carry him through the first half of the 1960s.

In “Mr. Hobbs” you can see that Stewart is starting to go on auto-pilot, leaving the heavy lifting to the actors who play the rest of the family vacationing in a decrepit beach house near San Francisco (the real locations are in and around Dana Point in Southern California).

The movie was based on a popular novel by Edward Streeter who wrote “Father of the Bride” — another tale narrated by a pampered, self-pitying dad. When I saw “Mr. Hobbs” as a kid, the anger the father directs toward his teen son and daughter and two grown (and married) daughters went right over my head.

The film is told in flashback, with the St. Louis banker played by Stewart dictating a long memo to his secretary about the agonies of the month he has just spent at the beach with his wife (Maureen O’Hara) and kids (and in-laws). The first unintentional joke in the movie — seen from a 2012 vantage point — is that the harassed upper middle class dad doesn’t seem to recognize his good fortune in having a job where he can sit around all day bitching to his secretary about his family!

“Mr. Hobbs” turns out to be a weird hybrid, with then-current jokes about “Lolita” for the adults in the audience; a sop to the teens in the form of pop singer Fabian as a squeaky-clean hipster the Hobbs’ 14-year-old daughter (Lauri Peters) meets at the yacht club; and Valerie Varda (a road company Brigitte Bardot) as a beach neighbor who supplies ample portions of bikini-clad T&A.

Although the movie is ostensibly a light frothy romp, Stewart’s anger throughout the film is puzzling and, at one point, downright shocking (when he calls his grandson a “little creep” in a truly vicious tone of voice).

With a slight variation in tone, “Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation” could be remade as a movie about the collapse of the American family just before the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

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