Fan Fare

Godfather 4? Can’t see it, says Coppola.

    Francis Ford Coppola, at the Toronto International Film Festival to present his horror film “Twixt”, is finding it hard to avoid talk of past glories.     In a 90-minute onstage interview on Sunday that was opened up to fans, the legendary director ended up speaking extensively about his early career, “Apocalypse Now” and working with Marlon Brando.     One fan was eager to know if there was any truth to speculation about a fourth Godfather picture, with Andy Garcia as the protagonist. Coppola was blunt:     “I don’t know anything about any more Godfathers. I myself don’t see it, don’t know why you would ever want to do it,” he said.     Coppola, who won Oscars for directing both “The Godfather” and “The Godfather: Part 2″, admitted he wasn’t keen to be involved with the first sequel, originally pushing for Martin Scorsese to direct. With the next one it was a different situation.     “‘Godfather 3′ was many years later and I was on the brink financial extermination. So I desperately needed the money,” he said.     Coppola said he made “Twixt” — a ghost story inspired by a raki-infused dream he had in Turkey — in a spirit of fun. But many at a press screening on Sunday were unimpressed. And the Hollywood Reporter said it was “an embarrassingly juvenile film from a once major auteur.”     Coppola himself pointed out on Sunday he is no stranger to negative press. “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now” initially got bad reviews, he said. And producers disliked his script for “Patton” at first. It went on to win an Oscar.     “The moral I want to teach all the young people here is that the same thing you get fired for is what they give you lifetime achievement awards for 30 years later.”

from Photographers Blog:

World War Z goes to Glasgow

By David Moir

The post-apocalyptic horror novel, ‘World War Z’, by Max Brooks, has been adapted into a film starring Brad Pitt and Mireille Enos and directed by Marc Forster. It has started filming in Scotland. The set is mainly on the streets in and around George Square in Glasgow, with its open space and architecture, substituting for Philadelphia.

Road signs have been put up telling you 16th Street, J F Kennedy Boulevard and Ben Franklin Bridge are just around the corner so hopefully you feel like you are in Philly, certainly some of the tourists from the U.S. I’ve spoken to seem to give it the thumbs up.

The Brangelina bandwagon (or train as it should now be known) chartered an entire train for the journey north from London over the border to Glasgow for themselves, their children and cast and crew of the film. They arrived last week in a flurry of media attention (TV crews positioned, journalists lurking and photographers roaming) and blacked out people carriers and limousines sitting near by but with security so tight you couldn’t see a thing.

With that in mind, myself and colleagues all thought the access to the actual filming was going to be super tight, how wrong could we be?

Think your family’s bad? Cannes films beg to differ

This blog was written by Nick Vinocur in Cannes:

With jealous dads, sadistic sons and abandoned children in their key roles, many films in competition for the top prize at the Cannes film festival this year are taking on the very darkest sides of family life.

Two of the movies, Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and Israeli film “Footnote”, ask what happens when jealousy or hatred take the place of love and affection in a parent-child relationship.

“Footnote”, by director Joseph Cedar, is about an academic family in which father and son, both professors of Talmudic studies, end up hating one another due to jealousy over honours in their respective careers.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” features a sadistic son who appears to hate his mother, played by Tilda Swinton, from the day he is born and does everything in his power to punish her, including a killing spree at his high school.

While “Footnote” takes a lighter tack, drawing laughs at its first screening in Cannes, neither movie gave the spectator any suggestion that in the end, love would prevail. To the contrary, in these families, the undertow of sadism or jealousy proves stronger than any filial bond — a dark view of modern family life on the filmmakers’ part.

In “The Kid With a Bike”, by Belgian filmmaking duo Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, there is a little more optimism — but not much. A 12-year-old boy moves mountains to locate a father who has abandoned him, only to be told that he is not wanted.

Critics curse Cage and “Season of the Witch”

Nicolas Cage has a reputation for dividing the critics. Some love him, others loathe him, and many love and loathe him in the same breath. No such confusion over his latest movie, however, with “Season of the Witch“, out Friday, winning almost universal scorn among critics.

The Oscar-winning actor plays a war-weary, disillusioned 14th century crusader charged with transporting a young girl to a remote monastery on the orders of the church, which believes she is a witch responsible for a devastating plague sweeping Europe. Cage is not so sure, and promises her a fair hearing when they get to their destination. Accompanied by his comrade-in-arms, played by Ron Perlman, Cage’s character Behmen faces collapsing bridges and fierce, diabolical wolves on his way through the forest, only to come up against even greater forces of evil at the abbey.

Reviewers have not been kind to Cage, with the Rotten Tomatoes critic aggregator site giving it a putrid three percent approval rating based on one positive review out of 36. And all on the actor’s 47th birthday as well.

The Wall Street Journal, perhaps harshly, compares it with the Ingmar Bergman classic “The Seventh Seal”, in which a knight plays chess with Death. “Mr. Cage’s knight ends up playing second banana to a digital devil. Welcome to the January dead zone,” its review concludes. The Daily Telegraph had this to say: ”The stench of plague is all around, unless that’s an aroma emanating from the script.”

Taiwan prays for redemption from “Life of Pi” movie

About the only thing Taiwanese in Yann Martel’s cultish epic novel “Life of Pi” is the captain of the ship that sinks, yet celebrated director Ang Lee has chosen Taiwan as the place to make a 3D film version of the award-winning book.

Much like the novel’s hero, a boy named Pi, Taiwan has something of a second chance  at making itself shine after years of diplomatic isolation that has kept its global economic competitiveness clinging to a life vest. It gets that chance when audiences see the movie, now scheduled for release in 2012. But Taiwan has a long way to go as China has stolen its spotlight with a rapid economic ascent since the 1990s. For long-standing political reasons, Beijing actively squelches its offshore neighbor’s international profile.

In the book, a freighter taking Indian boy Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, his family and a zoo of wild animals sinks while steaming from India across the Pacific Ocean to North America. Pi is left stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. He and the tiger survive 227 days at sea despite a natural distrust of each other as the boy gives the animal its space along with a sense of who’s boss.

About three quarters of the film will be shot on the beaches of Taiwan’s south coast and at a new studio fashioned from an old airport in the central Taiwan city Taichung, a publicist for 20th Century Fox Taiwan said. The other 25 percent takes place in India, and 17-year-old Indian-born actor Suraj Sharma, who was chosen from 3,000 applicants, will play Pi.

Lee, best known for “Brokeback Mountain” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” last shot a film in Taiwan in 1994 with “Eat Drink Man Woman.” He chose the island this time as a “beautiful place for the story,” the publicist said.

Still, things could go wrong for Lee (and Taiwan), the director hinted to reporters at a recent news conference. That’s because filming includes what Lee called three of the most unpredictable elements in making a movie: water, children and animals.

“I hope this will be a breakthrough,” the director said. “We have been through some struggles but we still have a long way ahead…I hope everyone enjoys the process.”

Sean Connery turns 80, acting days “over”

Suave Scot Sean Connery turns 80 today and tells a newspaper that his acting days are over.

The landmark anniversary has prompted a general outpouring of love and appreciation in the media for a man best known for his portrayal of super sleuth James Bond. His six official outings as 007 established him as the definitive Bond in many people’s eyes, including his closest rival for the title, Roger Moore.

“I would like to say a big ‘thank you’ to Sean for having been the best Bond and really launching the Bond phenomenon,” Moore, 82, told the Scottish edition of the Sun tabloid. “And an even bigger thank you for having left after Diamonds (“Diamonds Are Forever”), leaving me the chance to don the tuxedo, pack a Walther PPK, and romance many beautiful Bond ladies.”

Connery, an Oscar winner for his turn in “The Untouchables”, has been laying low at a time when he was likely to be hounded by the press even more than usual. He did speak to Scotland’s Daily Record, however, from his home in the Bahamas.

“I don’t think I’ll ever act again. I have so many wonderful memories but those days are over,” he was quoted as saying.

One newspaper went so far as to print 80 tidbits about the actor, beginning with the fact that his first bed was the bottom drawer of the family wardrobe and ending with: “In 1993 he appeared on U.S. TV to deny news agency reports that he was dead.”

Daytime therapist, nighttime filmmaker captures Soviet life

He’s a physiotherapist by day and a filmmaker by nights, weekends and everything in between. Semyon Pinkhasov has captured facets of Soviet life that rarely get shared beyond Russia’s borders, even after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

(For story, click on http://r.reuters.com/qac34m)

The self-taught, self-financed, award-winning amateur documentary filmmaker has seen his films shown worldwide at festivals and on Russian and English-language television channels. Focused on the arts and the sport of fencing (U.S. Olympic Team Coach in 1984), he tells stories about Grigory Fried, who has run a music appreciation club in Moscow for 45 years without taking a kopeck; Tikhon Khrennikov, the first and last secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers; and Boris Efimov, perhaps Stalin’s favorite cartoonist.

One film about German fencing legend Helene Meyer, whose half-Jewish heritage provided Adolf Hitler with political cover to stage the 1936 Olympics, won for best screenplay at the 2009 International Festival of Sports Films in Moscow. But what drives someone with no background in film, journalism or the arts to dive into movie making? Roll the video:

Photo: Documentary Filmmaker Semyon Pinkhasov is shown in his Manhattan apartment on June 21, 2010. REUTERS/Daniel Bases

Families urge boycott of suicide bomber comedy

Families of some of the 52 victims of the July, 2005 suicide attacks in London have called for a boycott of a controversial new comedy “Four Lions”, which follows a group of hapless would-be jihadis who target the London marathon. The BBC has quoted two relatives – Grahame Russell and Graham Foulkes — as criticising the movie and calling for cinemas not to show it when it is released on Friday. For Foulkes, although humour has its place in exploring serious issues, the events of five years ago are “still too raw”.

Watching the film is certainly an uncomfortable experience. It is full of funny one-liners and farcical gags, including an ill-fated trip to a training camp in Pakistan which ends in ignominy and a failed attempt to use crows to fly bombs through windows. You find yourself laughing and then wonder whether it’s appropriate, and presumably that is one of the objectives of film maker and satirist Chris Morris.

Most of the pre-release focus has been on whether the Muslim community will find the movie offensive, but it is the relatives who have been more vocal in their criticism, at least up until now. Morris has defended the project, saying his director’s statement: “Terrorist cells have the same group dynamics as stag parties and five-a-side football teams. There is conflict, friendship, misunderstanding and rivalry. Terrorism is about ideology, but it is also about berks.”

Box office figures out next week will show whether the British public has the appetite for such a provocative movie.

Katy Perry is feeling blue as “The Smurfs” starts production in NY

Singer Katy Perry is turning blue as she continues to expand her entertainment career: she’s taking on the voice of a Smurf  in a movie of the well-loved blue characters that has started production in New York. 

Perry will play Smurfette in the hybrid live-action and animated 3D film while Anton Yelchin plays Clumsy Smurf, Jonathan Winters is Papa Smurf, Alan Cumming is Gutsy Smurf, SNL’s Fred Armisen will voice Brainy Smurf and George Lopez  plays Grouchy Smurf. The evil wizard Gargamel will be played Hank Azaria who chases the blue Smurfs out of their village and their magical world – into Central Park. Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays play an expectant couple whose lives are turned upside down when the Smurfs pop up.

Director Raja Gosnell, whose credits include ”Scooby-Doo,” “Home Alone 3,” and ”Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” will be joined by producer Jordan Kerner  in the Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures movie that is expected to be released in August 2011.

from FaithWorld:

Would Polanski get a pass if he were a paedophile priest?

It's hard to watch France's political and cultural elite rush to support filmmaker Roman Polanski against extradition to the United States on a decades-old sex charge and not wonder exactly how they interpret the national motto "liberté, égalité, fraternité." It's tempting to ask whether they're defending the liberty to break the law and skip town, respecting the equality of all before the law and championing a brotherhood of artists who can do no wrong.

Here in Paris, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared the arrest was "a bit sinister ... frankly, (arresting) a man of such talent recognised around the world, recognised in the country where he was arrested -- that's not very nice." He and his Polish counterpart have written to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the issue. Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand said "just as there is a generous America that we like, there's also an America that scares us, and that's the America that has just shown us its face." Directors, actors and intellectuals have been signing a petition demanding Polanski's immediate release.

Almost all the focus is on the argument that Polanski is a brilliant director, the charge of unlawful sex with a 13-year old dates back to 1977 and the victim herself says she wants the whole issue to be forgotten.  Almost completely ignored is the fact that he fled the U.S. to escape sentencing, which added a crime to the original crime. There is such a widespread assumption that all artists and intellectuals would automatically support Polanski that Paris papers today -- both the left-of-centre Libération and the conservative Le Figaro -- wrote with an air of surprise that Hollywood was not storming the barricades to back him.

The French Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit made headlines by bucking the trend and saying he was "ill at ease" with the rush to absolve Polanski of raping a minor and the culture minister should have been more cautious in his comments.

Across the Atlantic, by contrast, Hollywood's hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, reviewed the objections by Polanski's supporters and concluded: "Plausible or preposterous, these arguments are eclipsed by a simple fact: Polanski fled the country ... the Justice Department and L.A.'s district attorney are right to seek extradition."

And almost nobody in the media here in France asks the tough questions that Fr. Tom Reese, S.J. (photo at right) did in his Washington Post blog post entitled "Father Polanski would go to jail": "Polanski's defenders ... argue that he should not be punished. They say that the girl was willing and sexually experienced and she has forgiven him (after receiving a settlement). They even cite his tragic childhood and life as an excuse. And besides, it is ancient history. Such arguments from paedophile priests would be laughed out of court and lambasted by everyone, and rightly so...

"The Catholic Church has rightly been put under a microscope when 4 percent of its priests were involved in abuse, but what about the film industry? The world has truly changed. Entertainment is the new religion with sex, violence and money the new Trinity. The directors and stars are worshipped and quickly forgiven for any infraction as long as the PR agent is as skilled as a saintly confessor. Entertainment, not religion, is the new opiate of the people and we don't want our supply disturbed.