Posted on May 5, 2017 at 3:31 pm
They don’t share any scenes in “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2,” but they shared an entire movie together in 1989: Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell were “Tango & Cash,” one of the quintessential buddy cop movies of the 80’s. Remember this?
Posted on May 4, 2017 at 8:00 am
The cast and director of “The Godfather” got together to talk about the making of the film in honor of its 45th anniversary on the last night of the Tribeca Film Festival, founded by “Godfather 2” star Robert de Niro.
According to Coppola, he ran into roadblocks at every turn, as studio Paramount looked simply to cash in with a quickie movie based on Mario Puzo’s runaway bestselling novel.
“Without Francis, where would I be?” said Pacino, remembering how Paramount fought to cast someone else as the infamous Michael Corleone, a career-defining role for which Pacino would eventually collect two Oscar nominations.
“Once I called after he had tested six times,” Coppola remembered. “His girlfriend came on the phone and I said, ‘I just need Al to come in one more time’ and she said, ‘What are you doing to him? You’re torturing him!’ She yelled at me and berated me.”
When Pacino got the part, he considered it at length. “I used to live 90th and Broadway and used to walk to the Village and back everyday and I did it thinking about this role,” he said. “I was trying to figure out where I could go with it.”
Even casting Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone, the Godfather himself, was a headache. Executives were adamant that casting Brando wouldn’t be “commercially beneficial”, at one point even forbidding Coppola from even bringing up Brando’s name….Despite the incredible success of the two films – academy awards, status as one of the highest grossing movies in Hollywood history, a lasting cultural impact – Coppola issued a warning.
“Today it wouldn’t get a go-ahead,” he said. “The first Godfather cost $6.5m and the second cost about $11m or $12m. If you convert that, it would take a major studio (to make it), but it would never get through the process of getting an OK.
“Nothing can get a green light unless it’s a movie that they can have a whole series of, or a Marvel comic.”
Posted on April 17, 2017 at 3:35 pm
The release of the eighth “Fast and Furious” movie inspired Business Insider to come up with a list of the all-time greatest movie car chases. Some of my favorites are on the list, including the early Steven Spielberg movie, “Duel,” “Smokey and the Bandit,” “Drive,” “The French Connection,” “Bullitt,” and “Mad Max: Fury Road,” but I’d add “Children of Man.” And “Transporter” is still my favorite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xewS5I4EhoOn the other hand, Matt Singer says that movie car chases have gone, well, downhill.
These days a really good car chase is almost as rare as a Talbot Lago Grand Sport. Even the films that routinely feature car action, like the Fast and Furious series, focus much more on outlandish CGI effects (like cars fighting with tanks or falling from the sky and jumping between skyscrapers) than one car pursuing another.
That’s the biggest reason the car chase has fallen from grace, particularly in Hollywood. The studio franchise economy in 2017 is predicated almost entirely on the supernatural, the superheroic, and the fantastic, all of which are created by computers. Great car chases, in contrast, are created by real people doing real things with real cars. Big Hollywood movies these days aren’t about real people; they’re about aliens and mutants and transforming robots and boss babies and super soldiers and Vin Diesel as an immortal warlock with earthquake powers.
He gives a bad example: “From Paris With Love.” (I agree — awful movie.) He says:
It’s nonstop cutaways to multiple close-ups, multiple angles of cars spinning, cameras spinning, and the shots are all fractions of a second. Modern taste for chaotic, hyperkinetic editing does not jive with car chases. Even if there was impressive driving going on here, you can’t tell. If you can’t tell what’s going on, it’s hard to care about what’s going on….The imperfections in The French Connection remind us that what Popeye Doyle’s doing in that chase is incredibly difficult. His car is bound by the rules of physics, which will only bend so far. Superhero and fantasy movies are about effortlessly breaking those same rules. And if you can break the rules effortlessly, why bother doing it the hard way?
For more on the cars in “Fate of the Furious,” including the Lamborghini with no snow tires being chased by a submarine over the ice, check out this article from the Florida Times-Union and IndieWire’s piece on the crazy self-driving car pile-up in New York City.
Posted on March 31, 2017 at 12:00 pm
Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, is a book by Mark Harris about five of the greatest directors of all time who joined the war effort to document it and to promote morale at home. It is also about how the experienced changed them and inspired them to come home after the war and create richer, more complex, and more powerful films than they had before. George Stevens, Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Ford, and John Huston created films during and after the war that helped shape our views on the war but also on America and what kind of world we would create when the war was over.
The book is now a series on Netflix, narrated by Meryl Streep and featuring commentary from today’s top directors, including Guillermo del Toro, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg, as well as clips from films we know by heart like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Best Years of Our Lives,” and film that has been rarely seen since the war, including stunning documentary footage.
Posted on March 29, 2017 at 7:47 pm
As part of rogerebert.com’s annual Women’s Week, three critics got together to pay tribute to one of their favorite films, the ice skating classic, Ice Castles.
Christy Lemire, Sheila O’Malley, and Susan Wloszczyna shared their memories of first seeing the film and acknowledged that despite its cheesiness and some uncomfortable elements, they can’t help loving it.
Released in 1978, it has disco-era signposts aplenty: Melissa Manchester’s unbridled rendition of Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager’s magical Oscar-nominated theme song, “Through the Eyes of Love,” then-It Boy Robby Benson as the hockey hotshot romantic interest and Dorothy Hamill-inspired wedge haircuts galore….
CHRISTY LEMIRE: “Ice Castles” has a really great, gritty sense of place that also keeps it from being teenage nonsense. That town feels so real and so insular. Are there actual bowling alley/ice rink combos in the world?
SHEILA O’MALLEY: I was going to mention that! I totally agree. She really comes from somewhere. It’s very real. The snow, the bowling alley, the frozen pond. A boyfriend who plays hockey. I really hope there are such combos. I’d love to visit. Especially if Colleen Dewhurst is running the show, sipping whiskey from a flask.
CHRISTY LEMIRE: She gives this film so much weight, so much emotional heft.
SHEILA O’MALLEY: She is acting her ASS off, if you’ll pardon the expression. She’s ferocious and filled with emotion and personal regrets and smoking butts and sneaking sips of whiskey at the hockey game. She’s awesome.
