Steve Wozniak isn’t really selling me on the most pressing casting issue of our day : “I look at the casting agencies and directors who are experts at casting. I trust that they considered all the relevant factors and made the best selection. The fear that many might have is that Ashton was selected because he’s ‘hot’ right now. But I feel that his selection was done in the most professional manner. And I’m glad that he’s onboard. I think he’ll put a lot into it and that he cares about this particular subject. It’s almost too bad that Steve Jobs is gone. His opinions and guidance, as to the story and film crew and cast would have been invaluable.” [ TMZ ]
Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti’s films speak for introverted individual concerns at work in a group dynamic. In Dear Diary , a 40 year-old Moretti rides around Rome on his motorcycle trying to figure out just how much of a part he wants in a society where legendary poet/filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini has died and soap operas are insanely popular. Similarly, his latest film, We Have a Pope (a.k.a. Habemus Papum ), concerns a reluctant cardinal (an excellent performance by Michel Piccoli) elected to be the next pope but is too nervous to assume the role. Pope , which opens Friday in limited release, originally screened in competition at last year’s Cannes Film Festival — to which Moretti is planning his return next month as the president of this year’s competition jury. Talk about group dynamics. Moretti’s history as a competitor and juror at Cannes Film Festival (he previously served on the jury in 1997; he won the 2001 Palme d’Or for The Son’s Room ) makes him an ideal head juror. But with regard to his new film, it’s his outsider status as an atheist that Moretti feels makes his representation of the papal conclave so unique. “I don’t know what really happens in a conclave,” Moretti told Movieline last week. “But I wanted my conclave to be different from the ones we have seen in movies and TV, with cardinals that not only didn’t represent themselves as candidates but were afraid to become the pope. I’m not a believer. I have a lot of distance from the Catholic Church. So I can give, as a gift, humanity to a pope, a cardinal or a conclave.” Meanwhile, when it comes to being arguably the most influential film festival juror on the planet, Moretti says that there’s not really much you can do to prepare beyond perhaps buying some new suits, losing weight and brushing up on your English. “I won’t be able do do any of these things,” Moretti joked. “The suits, yes, but the English and the weight, no.” Still, Moretti plans to bring his specific — even unusual — philosophy to the role. To wit, he’s not looking for a unanimous vote. “I believe that’s a mistake on the part of juries,” he said. “You’re trying to give a prize because not everybody’s film is great. Every juror has to have a vote, which has to have the same importance as every other jurors’. And all of the films need to be seen and judged with the same amount of attention.” Moretti went on to add that he’s very much committed to the idea of rewarding singular excellence, no matter how divisive it may be. “It’s not the average film that should win — not the film that everyone agrees on but doesn’t make anyone happy. It should be the film that gains the majority of the votes; the film, or the actor or the actress. The jurors aren’t conditioned by the directors or the spectators or by the people running the festival. It’s just single jury members’ opinions that count.” Check back later this week for Movieline’s full, updated review of We Have a Pope. Simon Abrams is a NY-based freelance film critic whose work has been featured in outlets like The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Vulture and Esquire. Additionally, some people like his writing, which he collects at Extended Cut . [Top photo: Getty Images]
Damsels in Distress is Whit Stillman’s first film in 14 years: For those keeping track at home, that’s the equivalent of three four-year stints at an Ivy League college, plus one year of graduate school, plus one year of aimless backpacking around Europe bankrolled by daddy. How much you enjoy Damsels will depend on your tolerance for Stillman’s particular brand of duct-taped Sperry Topsider whimsy. It’s a comedy! It’s a musical! It’s a trip down memory lane to revisit the blissful confusion of our — or someone’s — college years! Damsels in Distress is all of those things and yet somehow less, as wayward as a second-semester junior who can’t yet decide on a major. The characters and the movie itself seem lost in time, which is surely part of the point. Greta Gerwig plays Violet, the leader of a snobby three-girl clique at an eminently respectable East Coast college — it goes by the name Seven Oaks, and the campus is a cozy nest of Greek Revival buildings enhanced by a great deal of exquisite, sun-dappled leafiness, the kind of place that inspires nostalgia long before graduation. (The picture was filmed in Snug Harbor, on Staten Island, a clever use of location shooting.) On the first day of the new semester, Violet and her cohorts — the judgmental, upper-crusty Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and the flaky-cute Heather (Carrie MacLemore) — spot a new girl and immediately decide to take her under their wing: Lily (Analeigh Tipton) has just transferred from another school, and though she doesn’t seem particularly lost, she does have a wide-eyed Olive Oyl innocence that inspires protectiveness. And if you’re Violet, you’ll add a soupçon of passive-aggressive condescension. “Lily failed, or was unhappy, at her last school, but we feel she’s going to adapt beautifully,” she says as she introduces Lily around to her coterie of acceptable acquaintances. The rest of Damsels in Distress follows the young women as they go about their college-life routine, which includes manning the campus “suicide center” (Violet is a firm believe that tap-dancing can cure all ills, including suicidal impulses), bat around lofty pseudophilosophical thoughts (“We’re all flawed; must that render us mute to the flaws of others?”), attend dances at the local fraternities (which go by Roman letters, not Greek ones, just to be different, I guess), and, most significantly, become depressed or at least just seriously confused by the guys in their orbit. Those include a grad student named Xavier (Hugo Becker), who sells the sexually innocent Lily one hell of a line of goods; Charlie (Adam Brody), a suave man-about-town who also hopes to put the moves on Lily; Thor (Billy Magnussen), a college student who has yet to learn his colors; and Frank (played, with a great deal of dopey charm, by newcomer Ryan Metcalf), Violet’s boyfriend, who isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but who is nonetheless possessed of the most startling blue eyes, an attribute he downplays disarmingly. (He deflects a compliment by asserting, with frat-boy earnestness, “I’m not going to go around checking out what color my eyes are!”) Stillman — who also wrote the script — allows the story to flit from here to there, lighting on one comic idea after another like a confused bee, never sticking around long enough to actually pollinate anything. Discrete events and vignettes pile up messily: When Violet becomes deeply depressed over some romantic problems with Frank, the scent of a particular soap brings her back to her senses. The male students are punished by the administration after a Dionysian campus hootenanny gets too rowdy. The editor of the campus newspaper acts like an asshole. Violet practices her tap dancing. And so on. The movie’s pleasures supposedly lie in its casual, disorganized nature, but the effect is a kind of studied dottiness, as if Stillman (whose last film was the 1998 The Last Days of Disco ) were genuinely trying to say something but has simply forgotten what it is. Damsels does look quite pretty — that Snug Harbor location, coupled with DP Doug Emmett’s restrained camera work, sure doesn’t hurt. And Stillman does seem to appreciate Gerwig’s preternaturally honest, questioning face. But he doesn’t know what to do with her gangly-graceful physical and comic timing: She’s like a cartoon ostrich ballerina, yet Stillman doesn’t give her big moments any shape or structure, leaving her to flail hither and thither. Tipton (who played the lovestruck baby-sitter in last year’s Crazy Stupid Love ) is the most appealing of the bunch — her Lily is the right combination of sensible and open-hearted, and she has a radiant tipsy moon of a smile. But the movie’s lackadisical, shuffling feel doesn’t serve her particularly well. By the time Damsels in Distress winds its way toward its closing musical number — a singing, dancing outdoor ensemble rendering of George and Ira Gershwin’s “Things Are Looking Up” — its romantic charms, meager to begin with, have worn thin, like a tweed jacket gone threadbare at the elbows. The thing has the feel of a vanity project, lacking urgency — like the work of a gentleman filmmaker who doesn’t have to work. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . 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Woody Allen continues his cinematic Eurotrip with To Rome With Love , which aims to repeat the formula of pitting navel-gazing privileged Americans against Old World locales with charming results. While it doesn’t go for the transformative magic of Midnight in Paris , will Woody’s Rome outing capture something special in Italy? Watch the first trailer below. To Rome With Love is comprised of four vignettes; one features Allen (in his first onscreen turn since 2006’s Scoop) and Judy Davis as a married couple; another stars Greta Gerwig, Jesse Eisenberg, Alec Baldwin and Ellen Page as Americans in Rome; a third features Penelope Cruz; and the fourth follows Roberto Benigni. While the trailer gives little away in terms of plot, it does provide a peek at how Allen’s brand of neurosis-comedy will play set against the streets and countryside of Italy. (Answer: Pretty much the same as it does in France, Spain, and New York.) Via Yahoo! : To Rome With Love debuts on June 22.
Breaking news: The third installment of Tom Six ‘s Human Centipede saga — which the director promised would see 500 human beings stitched together… in America ! — may be in trouble. According to reports cobbled together through press releases and Twitter missives from Six and his Human Centipede star, Dieter Laser, the German actor took issue with certain script elements, causing him to walk. Six says he’ll sue. Will the script and contract issues be resolved in time to get the erstwhile Dr. Heiter on set for the shoot, commencing later this year? WILL THE PEOPLE OF EARTH GET THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE THREEQUEL THEY WANT DESERVE DREAD?? On closer examination, Laser’s statement explaining why he parted ways with Six actually seems fairly reasonable. That said, what does it mean that Laser claims to be a method actor? *Shudder* Read Laser’s statement , via Best Movies Ever Screen Read: “It’s very simple: I loved the story when it was told, got the contract and the promise to have the script in 4 to 6 weeks. When it arrived – half a year later and only after the official announcement – I didn’t like the realization at all, couldn’t identify with the character the way it was written and developed immediately and enthusiastically in a day and night marathon a version full of concrete and practical suggestions which would enable me to play the lead full throttle – same procedure as with Dr. Heiter – but this time it also would have had some unavoidable effects to the dramatic structure. That was too much for Tom and since he couldn’t live with my suggestions and I as a method actor couldn’t identify with his version, I told him that I couldn’t see any other way than that he would have to ‘change horses.’ That’s it.” Of course, there is the pesky business of legal contracts to contend with. And since Six’s vision involves both Dr. Heiter and Human Centipede 2 ‘s Martin, I can’t imagine Six will let Laser walk without a lot of trouble. This ought to make for a harmonious set. Six Tweeted the following earlier today: @tom_six Tom Six An actor who demands his own script changes which I as the THC creator didnt like. It was his way or the highway after he signed a contract! Mar 29 via web Favorite Retweet Reply Of course, it’s entirely possible, given the self-reflexive nature of The Human Centipede 2 (in which Six and HC1 star Ashlynn Yennie play themselves as the focus of an obsessed Human Centipede fan) that this is all part of some weird meta-narrative in which Six plays himself sparring with his star in real life to frame whatever shenanigans go down in The Human Centipede 3 . Method acting and Hollywood industry inside talk would fit into the U.S.-centric theme, I suppose. What do you think, Movieliners: Publicity stunt or legit creative difference? [ Bleeding Cool via The Playlist ]
Michael Dowse’s hockey comedy Goon is crude, violent and deeply enjoyable. It also offers the chance to see Liev Schreiber — a guy who’s played Hamlet, ferchrissakes — living it up as a bloodthirsty minor-league thug in the kind of ’70s eight-track-guy mustache that only hockey players, bless their hearts, still try to get away with. That, to me, is catnip in the form of a hockey puck. In Goon , Seann William Scott plays Doug Glatt, the son of a respected New England surgeon (played by the always-rad Eugene Levy) who hasn’t come close to fulfilling his family’s expectations: He’s a scrappy, bulked-up guy who works as a bouncer at a local watering hole, the only sort of job he seems suited for, until the coach of a local hockey team catches some video footage showing how, during a chance encounter, he easily beats the pants off a mouthy hockey player. Doug is invited to try out and shows up in a pair of borrowed figure skates — they’re like dainty white cupcakes barely able to support the girth of his padded uniform — and makes the team not because he can skate or pass or defend the goal, but simply because he can brawl. Before long, Doug scrambles his way onto one of the stronger minor-league teams, the Halifax Highlanders, where he’s seen as the heir to the throne that Schreiber’s rough-and-tumble Ross Rhea, who plays for a rival team, has been perched on for years. His dual assignments as a new Highlander: To bring back the mojo of one of the team’s best players – he has the too-perfect name Xavier LaFlamme, and he’s played by Marc-André Grondin — whom Rhea roundly smacked upside the head the previous season. And, of course, to fight. If you’re looking for a bold excoriation of how ultra-violent (and dangerous) hockey has become in the past 10 or 20 years, please take yourself and your full set of natural, God-given teeth elsewhere. Goon never gets around to serving up a platitudinous “Violence is bad” message, which is one of its attributes. (The picture was written by Evan Goldberg, co-writer of Pineapple Express and Superbad , and Jay Baruchel, the latter of whom also appears in the picture as a foul-mouthed hockey aficionado. It was adapted from the novel Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into Minor League Hockey, by Adam Frattasio and Doug Smith.) Instead, the movie glides easily on Scott’s particular brand of firecracker sweetness. Scott isn’t typical leading-man material, but he carries Goon ably on his sturdy shoulders, both in the movie’s romantic subplot (in which he woos an adorable hockey nut played by Alison Pill, who in one scene is shown getting mildly turned on as a she watches a dustup in a televised game) and in the way his character stands up to the boorishness of his teammates (he takes umbrage when they make homophobic remarks, partly because his brother is gay and partly, you sense, because it’s just plain wrong). There’s an air of bewildered naiveté about Doug, which somehow offsets his desire to break his opponents’ faces open when he’s on the ice: He’s protective of his teammates, and belonging to the team gives him a sense of purpose, even though his parents, proper upstanding citizens, certainly don’t understand it. Dowse ( It’s All Gone Pete Tong , Take Me Home Tonight ) takes a great deal of cackling pleasure in showing faces being smashed into Plexiglas rinkside barriers and players being body-checked with caveman ruthlessness. He bookends his movie with two versions of the same image: Droplets of blood falling onto the ice in slow motion, followed by a single spinning tooth. Schreiber has one relatively quiet, pensive coffee-shop scene, but for the most part, he’s roughing it up on the ice with the rest of them, and he seems to be having a ball. Schreiber is a marvelous actor but sometimes a self-serious one, and this is one instance where he’s quite literally allowed to take the gloves off. Goon not only fails to sermonize about violence in sports, but maybe even glorifies it. Even so, the movie is admirable for the way it refuses to offer us the easy comfort of watching its lead character learn a valuable lesson. Doug is a nice guy — you leave the picture believing that someday he’ll get sick of beating people up and hang up his stick for good. It’s just as well that doesn’t happen on-screen. For now, all we have to do is enjoy the movie’s wicked, gap-toothed smile. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
In addition to announcing their Tribeca closing night bow , Marvel recently unveiled the full track listing for their upcoming Avengers companion album, comprised of “music from and inspired by” the May 4 superhero flick. Among the hot bands of today yesterday contributing future hits to the soundtrack? Soundgarden! Papa Roach! Bush! And the kicker: Evanescence. Now, I know these major recording artists have been around since their respective heydays in the ’90s and ’00s, but really, Avengers ? I haven’t had this kind of knee-jerk reaction to a movie soundtrack since I revisited the abomination that was the soundtrack to 1998’s Godzilla . Well, who am I kidding. I was guilty of buying that awful Godzilla album back in my misguided youth. (From BMG! It was too easy! FORGIVE ME !) Even then I knew it was terrible, and that was in the actual ’90s. I’d love to hear Joss Whedon ‘s explanation for the assemblage of rock bands and millennial metal outfits gathered here. (A standalone score will also be released with Alan Silvestri’s music from the film.) Is there a throwback sentiment at work in this selection, a parallel musical commentary on pop culture’s constant re-imagining and resuscitation of things from the past, bands we loved when we were kids? Is it simply that the ’90s are the new ’80s, or that Whedon listened to a lot of Canadian rock while making Iron Man and the Hulk and Thor and Captain America and Black Widow — oh, and you too, Hawkeye — tangle with evil spaceships ? (Fourth theory: Whedon is paying homage to the difficulties of keeping a band/team of superheroes together by bringing reunited/re-jiggered line-ups like Bush and Soundgarden onboard in a stroke of brilliant thematic confluence. Who else would know better how hard it is to balance egos and personalities for the greater good?) Now, it’s possible that “Live to Rise” by Soundgarden may put them back on the map, or that Evanescence’s “A New Way to Bleed” will do for The Avengers what that one other Evanescence song did for the Elektra soundtrack. Still, I call no fairsies: International retailers get a bonus track by Kasabian. The more that I stare at this track list, the more I’m convinced it’s just another way to bring a certain demographic in to see The Avengers . Whedon and Marvel already have the geek quotient hooked, and they’ll get a mainstream audience by default. Will this bring the former grunge girls and boys and current emo-rock listeners in droves? The Avengers is in theaters May 4; the Avengers Assemble -inspired album will be available May 1. And, look: If you can convince me that any of these above bands are actually worth listening to these days, my ears are open. [via @Avengers ] Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The first trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen ‘s The Dictator had Megan Fox and Kardashian jokes, but those pop culture touchstones have been replaced by Anna Faris and terrorism gags in the new, longer trailer. An upgrade? Eh, sure. Maybe. Or not: Faris’s brunette pixie ‘do does make her look particularly adorable, but juxtaposed with her natural poise Cohen comes off as a poor man’s Adam Sandler . Like, hammy Zohan-lite Sandler. Here’s why Cohen’s Dictator schtick hasn’t really worked thus far, from the film footage that’s been released: When Cohen is 100 percent in character — clueless, masking any hint of self-awareness, as he was best in Borat or while Kim Jong-illing Ryan Seacrest recently at the Oscars — he absolutely slays. That unapologetic ignorance is key, and that’s how The Dictator seems to start out. But throw in those rom-com cliches and the lessons in humility and/or humanity that will surely come once Admiral General Aladeen falls for Faris’s hippie love interest, redeems himself, etc. (as the trailers suggest he will) and he’s instantly less interesting. Is it too late to cut together a version of The Dictator made entirely of Obama footage, Aladeen at the Wadiya Olympics, and scenes of Cohen frightening bigoted Americans with his terrifying “otherness?” Because that’s the movie I want after seeing all this learning lessons BS. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The first trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen ‘s The Dictator had Megan Fox and Kardashian jokes, but those pop culture touchstones have been replaced by Anna Faris and terrorism gags in the new, longer trailer. An upgrade? Eh, sure. Maybe. Or not: Faris’s brunette pixie ‘do does make her look particularly adorable, but juxtaposed with her natural poise Cohen comes off as a poor man’s Adam Sandler . Like, hammy Zohan-lite Sandler. Here’s why Cohen’s Dictator schtick hasn’t really worked thus far, from the film footage that’s been released: When Cohen is 100 percent in character — clueless, masking any hint of self-awareness, as he was best in Borat or while Kim Jong-illing Ryan Seacrest recently at the Oscars — he absolutely slays. That unapologetic ignorance is key, and that’s how The Dictator seems to start out. But throw in those rom-com cliches and the lessons in humility and/or humanity that will surely come once Admiral General Aladeen falls for Faris’s hippie love interest, redeems himself, etc. (as the trailers suggest he will) and he’s instantly less interesting. Is it too late to cut together a version of The Dictator made entirely of Obama footage, Aladeen at the Wadiya Olympics, and scenes of Cohen frightening bigoted Americans with his terrifying “otherness?” Because that’s the movie I want after seeing all this learning lessons BS. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Looks like indie film financier/Tweeter Megan Ellison’s promise came true : According to a Box Office Mojo update, Paul Thomas Anderson ‘s The Master has been added to the fall 2012 release calendar, to open on October 12 — just in time for an awards run! No official word from distrib The Weinstein Co. on the date or final title for the Philip Seymour Hoffman-starrer, nor mention of if/when the pic will first debut at one of the season’s prestigious film festivals. While you await more info, mark your calendars… [ Box Office Mojo via The Playlist ]
