This new Funny or Die bit featuring reigning Oscar king Jean Dujardin pushing a fictional brand of cigarettes in the suavest, most charming and youth-enticing way possible is pretty good (“And now in Cotton Candy and Snickers Bar!” I LOL’ed). Still, when it comes to animated/live-action smoke pushers, Dujardin and his partner in crime have pretty formidable competition in the infamous Happy Joe Lucky. Right down to the accordions! Who’s got the kid-pleasingest cigarettes around? Dujardin’s video calls for a rummage through the YouTube wilds, where we find the animated Lucky Strike mascot dueting with Your Hit Parade star Gisele MacKenzie. What an era! Smoke if you got ’em! BRB, etc. Jean Dujardin’s Cigarettes from Jean Dujardin Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Sometimes a movie demands attention more for its “How” than its “What,” and writer-director Joseph Cedar’s Footnote falls squarely in that category. A movie about feuding father-and-son Talmudic scholars isn’t a surefire way to pack ’em in at the box office. But Cedar approaches his subject with so much wit and verve that he almost – almost – makes you forget you’re watching a movie about a very small, cloistered subset of academic obsessives whose life’s work is about as visually undynamic as you can imagine. How do you get action and drama out of pages and pages filled with Hebrew lettering? Somehow Cedar – who was born in New York but who has lived in Jerusalem since the age of 5 – pulls it off. Footnote was the Israeli Academy Award nominee for 2011; it lost to Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation , which provided the bullying Iranian government with an unfortunate opportunity to declare artistic supremacy (in addition to every other kind) over Israel. But while Footnote is a very different movie – it doesn’t pack the emotional charge that A Separation does – its craftsmanship is exceptional. Cedar has made a picture about scholarly obsession that really moves, even when its characters – who spend a lot of time at their desks, surrounded by piles of papers and books adorned with wrinkled sticky-note flags – don’t. Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba) has spent years, practically a lifetime, analyzing various versions of the Talmud, getting deep into minute differences in wording and phrasing. He makes a big research breakthrough, but just as he’s about to announce it, a rival professor (played by Micah Lewensohn) scoops him. Eliezer, an uncommunicative and taciturn sort, retreats deeper into his research, hoping that one day he’ll be appreciated and awarded the coveted Israel Prize. Meanwhile his son, Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi), also a Talmudic scholar, surpasses his father in both the respect and likability departments – he’s more of a born star, and he certainly likes the limelight. When it’s announced, finally, that Eliezer has been chosen for the Israel Prize, Uriel is relieved and happy for his father – until he learns exactly what Eliezer’s achievement will cost him, both professionally and personally. Between Uriel’s outright ambition and Eliezer’s naked need for recognition and respect, the relationship between father and son – which was never, it’s suggested, particularly warm to begin with – becomes increasingly tense. Cedar has cleverly organized his movie into chapter-like sections that somehow make analyzing reams of ancient text seem like an adventure, or at least something worth devoting your life to. He uses some lively effects, most of which are quite simple: He suggests the feverishness of scholarly devotion, for example, by showing sheafs of text whizzing across the frame, accompanied by the appropriate whooshing sound effects. The picture has a surprising agility, considering it really is about two guys with furrowed brows whose heads are generally buried in books. There is still the fact, though, that scholarship is just never going to be the jazziest subject on the planet, and even Cedar seems to know it. In places, Footnote strains to delineate the tension between father and son, re-embroidering their conflicts over and over again, long after we’ve gotten the point. Cedar – who previously made the 2007 Israeli war drama Beaufort – has taken great pains to add lots of emotional dappling and texture to this story, though in the end, what we take away from the relationship between these two characters is pretty simple: They’re victims of your garden variety criss-crossing jealousy and resentment. Still, the actors keep the drama believable and engaging: Bar-Aba, in particular, pulls off the tricky feat of making an impenetrable character sympathetic, albeit in a maddening, “Would it kill you to crack a smile?” way. And both Bar-Aba and Ashkenazi comfortably navigate the dry comic touches Cedar has added to the story: We don’t know whether to wince or laugh when, early in the film, Uriel publicly praises his father with a long-winded, backhanded story that essentially makes the guy sound like an uncommunicative jerk. Then again, that’s what he is. What Cedar captures here is the way a father and son can be bound so tightly they almost choke the air out of one another. You can’t exactly call it affection; it’s that far more complicated thing we call kinship. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Unemployment is bad, but things like What’s Your Number are apparently worse: “In the overall (all countries) adjusted model, adolescents with higher exposure to alcohol use in movies were significantly more likely to have engaged in binge drinking, even after controlling for age, gender, family affluence, school performance, television screen time, sensation seeking and rebelliousness, and frequency of drinking of peers, parents, and siblings.” The most troubling part of this study might be its definition of binge drinking as five or more drinks in one sitting, which I otherwise tend to refer to as “lunch.” [ Pediatrics (PDF) via Deadline ]
I accept that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will be the sensation of winter, and not just because it looks fantastic in its new trailer. Stieg Larsson’s thrilling Millennium series is perfect for David Fincher’s dark auteurship, and I expect his protege Rooney Mara to pull off protagonist Lisbeth Salander’s Nordic grit. In the meantime, though, Lisbeth’s cartoonishly goth appearance (shown in the movie’s new photos ) is too bizarre not to mock, and I need to get some snark out of my system before the wave of great buzz sweeps through fall. Here are 20 mocking new titles.
Moneyball rose to the top of the leaderboard on Friday’s box office tally, which is no surprise. It’s baseballing time. You should be re-watching Pride of the Yankees , Fear Strikes Out , and Field of Dreams by now. Further on down the rankings, newcomers Courageous , 50/50 , Dream House , and What’s Your Number finish comparably, with the low-budget Courageous and 50/50 showing the most potential. Full listings after the jump.
Here we go again: Almost three years to the day after Sherwood Pictures — the filmmaking enterprise of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga. — uncorked its self-funded Christian drama Fireproof to a shocking $6.8 million opening weekend, along comes the church’s faith-based follow-up Courageous . And while no one should necessarily be surprised to hear that the film’s early box-office estimates are strong, its potential hardly ceases to amaze.
There are hundreds of reasons we should welcome the new trend of movies featuring women who aren’t afraid to admit they enjoy sex and who use language that isn’t always granny-approved. In theory, the Georgia O’K eefe-like flowering of the genre should speak of a newfound freedom in how we think and talk about women’s sexuality. There’s just one problem: The movies are crap.
The fall movie season is synonymous with prestige — from Moneyball to War Horse , the next four months will be filled with the Oscar nominees of tomorrow — but what if you want to continue the mindless fun of summer into the next season? Fear not! Hollywood has you covered with a bevy of big-budget popcorn films all seemingly designed to make summer truly endless. Which will be the biggest hits of the fall?
There’s been precious few sightings to date of Rooney Mara in character as Swedish punk-rock bisexu-hacker Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo . Which can only be a good thing; there’s only so much toplessness a marketing campaign can really withstand in the far-off months leading up to release. But what’s this? New Rooney? Fully clothed, hooded and pointing at a dude ? Ooh la la, let us at it. (Bonus: Daniel Craig and Christopher Plummer, also fully clothed!)
The Internet collectively recoiled when the video of Jim Carrey professing his undying love for Emma Stone was released by the Ace Ventura star, but don’t worry — it was all a joke! Except for the joke part. “Yes, my msg to Emma Stone was a comedy routine,” Carrey wrote on Twitter , “and the funniest part is that everything i said is tru.” Lolz? He continued: “People often ask me if i’m being funny or serious. The answer is ‘YES.’ ?;^]” Glad that’s cleared up. > :’P* [ @JimCarrey ]
