In Contention

Tag: The Men Who Stare at Goats

  • TELLURIDE: Clooney takes center stage

    George Clooney has been tapped this year for one of Telluride’s three big tributes, and it’s certainly the biggest of the trio. Whether it’s press and patrons schmoozing with the star at yesterday’s Patron Brunch, whispers around town (“Did you hear George Clooney is here?” “I really hope ‘The Ides of March’ is a TBA.”) or the ecstatic response to Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants,” this mountain burgh has been taken by Clooney fever.

    It’s a curious thing to see happen here at a festival that is so smooth and cool and not at all phased by celebrity. Clooney changes all those rules, though. And most of it has to be owed to his trooper disposition and charming charisma. He’s always “on,” and just about everyone wants to just throw back a few with the guy. Men want to be him, women want to…well, you get my drift.

    I tend to stay away from the tributes and spend that time taking in a film at Telluride. But since the actor is set to be feted later this evening, I thought I’d at least dedicate some space to his still in-progress career and the highlights that have brought him to this point.

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  • Best in show: the year in superlatives

    Robert Downey Jr. in Sherlock HolmesWrapping up my perspective on the year today, a personal list of superlatives, Oscar categories and other silly nonsense.

    Swing back around on Monday for the ultimate wrap-up, my list of the best films of the decade.

    Best Picture
    “A Serious Man” (Focus Features)

    Best Director
    Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, “A Serious Man”

    Best Actor
    Sharlto Copley, “District 9”

    Best Actress
    Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”

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  • 11/25 Oscarweb Round-up

    Viggo Mortensen in The Road• “The Road” takes desolate journey from page to screen. [Wired]

    • Andrew O’Hehir talks “Bad Lieutenant” with Werner Herzog. [Beyond the Multiplex]

    • Anne Thompson says “Avatar” could debut at AICN’s Butt-Numb-A-Thon, of all places. [Thompson on Hollywood]

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: Apocalypse wow

    2012*All historical figures are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    Roland Emmerich’s still got it. And by “it,” I mean the ability to make blockbuster hits out of the same movie again and again.

    “2012” opened at the top of the box office with $65 million and the seventh-biggest opening of 2009. It’s also the 10th-biggest November opening of all time, sliding in between last year’s “Quantum of Solace” and 2002’s surprise juggernaut “8 Mile.”

    Mid-November releases have the benefit of the highly lucrative Thanksgiving holiday coming somewhere around their second or third week, so “2012” has the chance to earn three times its opening, which certainly wouldn’t be the case in the summer. I actually don’t think it will be the case here either and I think we’ll see it top out around $150 million. While that figure is less than the production budget, the film has already made $225 million worldwide after just three days, so Emmerich has free reign to make whatever disaster movie he wants next.

    Destroying the Earth four times is probably the limit for any director but luckily for Emmerich, we just discovered water on the moon, so he can go ahead and make a movie where we’ve colonized it and are living there, but for whatever reason it gets destroyed.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: Slight ‘Christmas’

    A Christmas Carol*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    The first weekend in November is considered the official kick-off of the Holiday season at the box office and so it’s appropriate that Robert Zemeckis’s yuletide digital experiment, “A Christmas Carol,” is the film leading the way. The film grossed $31 million for the weekend to easily claim the top spot and set itself up very nicely for a strong, two-month run.

    Sure, it’s nowhere near the $63.1 million that “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” claimed on this weekend last year, but “The Polar Express” started with $27 million in November 2004 before chugging along through the new year and maxing out at $187.7 million, and I expect “A Christmas Carol” to come very close to, if not match, that figure.

    Zemeckis has directed 15 features in his phenomenally successful career and only three of them have failed to reach the $100 million mark (his first two and “Beowulf”). An amazing seven of them have grossed the equivalent of over $200 million in today’s dollars. To use that success and single-handedly try and pioneer a new medium of filmmaking is admirable, even if it means millions of children will have nightmares involving Tom Hanks, Jim Carrey and their dead, soulless eyes.

    “Michael Jackson’s This is It” fell a respectable 40% to $14 million and a running total of $57.9 million. Anything under 50% was going to be a huge win for Sony and will undoubtedly cause the studio to back off the “two weeks only” promise and let this one coast to around $75 million domestic and $200 million+ worldwide.

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  • 11/3 Oscarweb Round-up

    Roger Corman• Documentary filmmaker whose work inspired the book “The Men Who Stare at Goats” seeks brutal vengeance for being “airbrushed” out of the film. [The Independent]

    • Jeff Wells sings the praises of “A Single Man” actor Nicholas Hoult. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • David Poland talks to honorary Oscar recipient Roger Corman. [Movie City News]

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  • LONDON: ‘Enter the Void,’ ‘Wolfy’

    Paz de la Huerta in Enter the VoidAs if sympathetic to the fact that I’d have a pounding hangover from Wednesday’s swish opening party in Chelsea, festival organizers were kind enough to schedule a film I’d already seen, “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” for the next morning, affording me a much-needed lie-in.

    Still, George Clooney’s second go-round on the LFF red carpet in as many days was the day’s major event. I already weighed in on the film at Venice, though from conversations I’ve had with others, I’m not finding many supporters for my view that the film is big, silly fun.

    Anyway, missing this stop on the Clooney-London express afforded me the chance to catch up with two artier prospects that had been high on my festival priority list, one big (Gaspar Noé’s latest Cannes-endorsed provocation “Enter the Void”) and one small (Russian playwright Vassily Sigarev’s filmmaking debut “Wolfy”). Guess which one was the keeper.

    “Enter the Void” (**)

    Back in 2002, more column inches were spent on two isolated scenes — an agonizing rape sequence and that fire-extinguisher bludgeoning — than the whole of Gaspar Noé’s “Irréversible,” but amid the shrill cries of the moral police, the film arguably received insufficient credit for its thoughtfulness (and structural verve) in probing and evaluating the way we respond to onscreen violence. An astonishing technical feat by any measure, it was that rare film that revealed something of the viewer to himself, albeit in an unpleasant fashion.

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  • Counting down to the London fest

    Fantastic Mr. Fox(Apologies for the “Fantastic Mr. Fox” review that appeared prematurely here as a result of embargo confusion. It will be reposted later today.)

    There may have been silence on my end these past few days, but I assure you it hasn’t been for lack of activity. The days leading up to the London Film Festival — which officially kicks off tonight with the world premiere of Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” — have been crammed with press screenings and assorted admin duties.

    Yesterday, meanwhile, was given over to the film’s extraordinarily elaborate, and most enjoyable, press junket, staged across a range of picturesque locations in Roald Dahl’s home village of Great Missenden, an hour’s train ride from London. (More on that later.) Fox has spared no effort or expense in the launch for this unusual film, which culminates tonight with the LFF Opening Gala party at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea.

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  • Supporting actors, step forward

    Christoph Waltz in Inglourious BasterdsA while back, certain folks were (rather unfairly) dredging up the routine annual complaint about the supposed scarcity of viable Best Actress contenders. Dave Karger, however, has located the real weak spot of this year’s awards race, and it concerns the opposite sex for a change: where, he asks, are the Best Supporting Actor standouts?

    Pound for pound, I tend to find Best Supporting Actor the least compelling of the acting races, a haven for affectionately regarded stalwarts in bit parts that are frequently less than challenging. The last two years have raised the bar considerably, but recent wins for Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin and Michael Caine are typical of the laziness with which the Academy often treats the category.

    Even by the category’s usual standards, however, this year’s pickings look unusually lean, as Karger narrows the serious contenders so far to a scant three.

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  • ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ poster

    The Men Who Stare At Goats

    (Courtesy: Yahoo! Movies)

  • 9/11 Web Round-up

    Meryl Streep• If you’re dismissing the Oscar potential of “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” Gregory Ellwood says, “Not so fast.” [Awards Campaign]

    • Meryl Streep on why Hollywood’s men don’t trust women. [The Times]

    • Betsy Sharkey sits down with “Precious” director Lee Daniels. [The Envelope]

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  • ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ clip

  • SHORT TAKE: “The Men Who Stare at Goats” (***)

    George Clooney and Ewan McGregor in The Men Who Stare at Goats

    Venice Film Festival

    A trim, lively comedy powered by a winning quartet of personality performances and an endearingly naff drive-time rock soundtrack, Grant Heslov’s helming debut “The Men Who Stare at Goats” doesn’t make too many demands of its audience. In return, we shouldn’t make too many demands of the film.

    Anyone looking for a skewering satire of U.S. military practice might come away disappointed, even as the film opens with the cute semi-disclaimer, “More of this is true than you might imagine.”

    Based on British journalist-humorist Jon Ronson’s book of the same title, which investigated the development of outlandish psychological warfare techniques in the U.S. army and their application in the Iraq war, Heslov’s film (from a script by Peter Straughan) jettisons most of Ronson’s dark gallows humor in favor of a sunnier, sillier sort of absurdity.

    Not much has been retained but the idea of crazy psychic soldiers with telekinetic powers (the title is to be taken literally), but given the indifference of film audiences to anything remotely Iraq-related, you can hardly blame the “Goats” team for playing down the political currency of their source material.

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  • Previewing the 34th annual Toronto fest

    TorontoIn less than a week I will kiss my wife and kids goodbye and head into Toronto, about 50 miles away, for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Twelve years ago my wife and I found it makes no sense for me to attend the festival for 16 to 18 hours and then try to drive home; beyond the danger of driving exhausted, arriving home at three in the morning tends to wake them up because our stupid, stupid dog begins barking the moment anyone pulls into the driveway. So for 10 days I live in the Delta Chelsea Hotel on Gerrard Street.

    This year I am finding leaving for the festival easier. Last year my wife Sherri was diagnosed with brain cancer and dealt with the removal of part of a considerable brain tumor. We went through radiation last summer, the loss of her beautiful, lush red hair, and the constant exhaustion she had to deal with. Cancer, sadly, is a family affair, and not something anyone should go through alone.  But this year we are in a good place.  The monster seems to be at bay, for now.

    So what I am looking forward to seeing?  Well first let me state that I’m shocked “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Amelia” and a handful of other films are not here. They seemed like good fits for the festival, their filmmakers have been here before, etc.  That said, it looks like one of the best festivals in recent memory, though I am not sure anything will ever beat out 2007, which presented a bounty of great pictures.  I was leaving screening room after screening room giddy.

    This year looks like a challenge for even the toughest film fester. Choosing the films to see is the toughest part because there is no chance you’ll see everything you want to see. There are generally three of four press/industry screenings at the Varsity, Cumberland or new AMC Theatres, as well as the public screenings which the press have limited access to. Our press pass allows us access to six (I think) Gala performances in the evening, but they sell out quickly. There is also a DVD library where you can watch the films in the rooms provided on your own, but films are meant to be seen on the big screen.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Take a deep breath…

    George Clooney in Up in the AirThe calm before the storm is beginning to subside.  Can you sense it?

    By the end of the week, the Venice and Telluride fests will be underway.  A week later, Toronto will weigh in.  When the smoke settles in roughly three weeks, the season will suddenly be a lot clearer…and yet so much of it will remain a mystery as latter year hopefuls limp (or stomp) into the fray in November and December.

    Yes, the season is upon us.  And while studios continue to think over the true value of Oscar notices, especially in a widened playing field, business marches on as usual.  Venice will tell the tale for efforts like “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” “The Informant!,” and “Capitalism: A Love Story,” while Telluride could make or break the hopes of films such as “The Road” and “Up in the Air.”

    Some overlap will go down in Toronto, but the most anticipated first-look there will likely be the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man.”  Meanwhile, distributors might be looking to beef up their schedules with films like “Creation” and “Leaves of Grass” looking for buyers.  But for those with ponies primed and ready, these festivals are very much the starting gun for awards runs, as ever.

    So before the madness ensues, we get one more stab in the dark.  But given the perceived road ahead, it seems to me that films with a healthy pre-season awards profile going into the fall are in pretty good shape as it is.

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  • ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ trailer