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The stirring 2009 documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty took us behind the scenes at Disney Animation to reveal what it’s like when good things happen to good people. But before that, there was The Sweatbox , the 2002 doc that exposed how bad things happen to good people at the notoriously demanding studio — a revelation that virtually ensured the film would never see the light of day. The crackdown worked once and may yet work in the future, but for now, YouTube has all 95 unfinished minutes available for a rare look. John-Paul Davidson and Trudie Styler were granted full access to the Disney process — the dark-arts cauldron comprising writers, directors, animators and executives — as it applied to the doomed project Kingdom of the Sun . The results featured below aren’t especially flattering (particularly to the executives), and Styler’s husband Sting walks his customary line between introspective and pretentious, but as a cautionary tale of snuffed-out Hollywood idealism alone, this one’s worth viewing. What the hell else are you doing with your Friday? [via /film ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
If you happen to live in a neighborhood with no Jehovah’s Witness ladies around to remind you that we’re living in the last days, wackadoodle director Abel Ferrara’s latest, 4:44 Last Day on Earth , is here to drive that truth home — or at least make you think about it just a little bit. Willem Dafoe plays an actor, Cisco, facing what he, and everybody else, knows is the Earth’s last day, thanks to an ozone layer that dissolved faster than anyone expected. He spends that last day writing in his journal, watching video footage of some fake-inspirational guru-dude, reaching out to his daughter and assorted pals via Skype and, most importantly, making sweet, crazy, soft-core love to his dishy, much-younger girlfriend, painter Skye (Shanyn Leigh), in the couple’s artsy, faux-ramshackle Manhattan loft. What a way to go! And yet, for an Abel Ferrara movie at least, 4:44 Last Day on Earth is surprisingly restrained. It doesn’t have the loosey-goosey dress-up-box vibe of the director’s 2007 Go Go Tales (also starring Dafoe), or the lackadaisical silliness of his 2005 Blessed Virgin thriller Mary (which featured a post- Big Fish , pre- La Vie en Rose Marion Cotillard, though I don’t remember a thing about her performance). 4:44 is, like the aforementioned movies, often laughable — watching the excessively craggy Dafoe and the excessively nubile Leigh roll around on their pre-Apocalyptic mattress was certainly good for a giggle. But the picture is also weirdly compelling, maybe most notably for the way Dafoe’s character — who is, in this respect, perhaps a stand-in for the Bronx-born Ferrara — seems to be grappling less with the idea that the world is ending than that the city is ending. Ferrara integrates lots of — perhaps too much — found TV footage of people around the world worshiping, lighting candles, and doing whatever it is people would be likely to do on the Earth’s last day. This stuff is boring and kind of dumb. But Ferrara brings some surprising gracefulness to the mix too: At one point Cisco and Skye order take-out, as any red-blooded New Yorker would do — when the world is ending, who has the energy to cook? When the Vietnamese delivery boy shows up, Cisco asks him, patronizingly, if he knows what’s going on. (He also tips the kid what might be $40 or $60, because, well, why not?) Then he asks, more kindly, if he can do anything for the boy, who responds by indicating that he’d like to contact his family back home via Skype. He speaks with them for a few minutes, but the movie’s sweetest moment comes just after he closes the lid of the MacBook: He stoops down to kiss it. Ferrara has some fun exploring both the high-tech and low-tech ways in which a human being, on the last day of mankind’s existence, might reach out to others. At one point Cisco steps out on his roof deck and lift a pair of field glasses to his eyes, the better to peep through his neighbors’ windows: He sees groups of people huddled together quietly; he also sees a man who’s just cooked a steak for himself, cutting a portion for his begging dog. In the city, looking through other people’s windows is sometimes voyeurism (benign or otherwise), but often it’s just a casual means of human connection, a point Ferrara makes beautifully here. And then there’s the Internet, which connects us all for better or worse. Ferrara can’t seem to get enough of Skype — but then, who among us can? After Cisco and Skye have a lover’s spat that really might be the end of the world, she rushes to her computer to Skype with mom, and what should pop up on the screen but the blessedly unfixed and unadorned face of Anita Pallenberg, who, in a voice that sounds either like the Devil or a lifetime of too many cigarettes (or both) tells her daughter how much she loves her and that she’s proud of her. She also tries to comfort her in the world’s last moments with a piece of advice that’s halfway between outright howler and sage mommy wisdom: “Just go to another sphere and it will be all right.” That’s sort of a metaphor for the act of watching Ferrara’s movies — going to another sphere is always required. At least in the case of 4:44 Last Day on Earth , it really is kind of all right. Read Movieline’s profile of 4:44 Last Day on Earth director Abel Ferrara here . Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The YouTube hits just keep coming today, with one rare Disney-defying treat giving way to another: Take a break and hear eccentric Detachment and American History X filmmaker Tony Kaye’s candid lament for John Carter and passionate appeal for a huge budget of his own. What’s not to love? “For $250 million, I could make…” Kaye expounds, eyes beaming and hands raised. “People’s minds would explode. I’m good as gold. Fucking trust me. Fucking trust me! You don’t give an animation director $250 million.” Stick around for a wealth of storytelling about Kaye’s near-miss at Disney 40 years ago and subsequent Hollywood misadventures. And maybe let’s start a Kickstarter campaign or something? [via Movie City News ]
Because it’s always good to remember that when you’re judging famous people on Twitter , they sometimes read it (and weep), Jimmy Kimmel corralled a gaggle of comedians and comic actors to read some of the meanest Tweet-critiques they’ve received for the camera. I think we can all take a few universal lessons from this video: Namely, that celebrities like Jason Bateman , Presidential candidate Roseanne , and Andy Dick really are like the rest of us little Tweeters — well okay, maybe not Andy Dick. Also: Will Ferrell reads his @ messages while on the can, too! If that can’t bring us together as a Tweeple, what will? [via Jimmy Kimmel ]
While Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer and director Gore Verbinski are working to turn Disney’s rudderless blockbuster ship around with The Lone Ranger , Hollywood megaproducer and Twitter mainstay Jerry Bruckheimer has been busy dropping clues about and glimpses at the the making of the film from behind the scenes. If you are even the least bit interested in how this one’s coming together, you could do worse than keep an eye on Bruckheimer’s tweets. Not that there’s anything especially Earth-shattering going on here, but for those wondering about how and where this thing is being shot, the era of the film or even — ahem — what Verbinski’s birthday cake looks like, then Bruckheimer is your guy! Director Gore Verbinski breaking down a scene to The Lone Ranger crew twitter.com/BRUCKHEIMERJB/… — JERRY BRUCKHEIMER (@BRUCKHEIMERJB) March 22, 2012 Here’s another classic car on set of The Lone Ranger … Anyone know what this one is? twitter.com/BRUCKHEIMERJB/… — JERRY BRUCKHEIMER (@BRUCKHEIMERJB) March 20, 2012 Some cool cars from the set twitter.com/BRUCKHEIMERJB/… — JERRY BRUCKHEIMER (@BRUCKHEIMERJB) March 19, 2012 Celebrated Gore’s birthday on set last night twitter.com/BRUCKHEIMERJB/… — JERRY BRUCKHEIMER (@BRUCKHEIMERJB) March 17, 2012 And then there’s crap like this, but it’s at a minimum so far: Shooting a cool scene today, can’t tell you any more than that! — JERRY BRUCKHEIMER (@BRUCKHEIMERJB) March 16, 2012 Anyway, now you know. [ @bruckheimerjb ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
As a member of the Jakarta police force, Rama (Iko Uwais) is one of dozens of SWAT agents about to be trapped within the concrete walls of a tenement building run by a nefarious slumlord, set upon by machete-wielding thugs and forced to fight his way out using knives, broken doorways, and at times, only his bare hands. The fighting style he uses to do so, leaving a trail of broken baddies in his wake, is silat — a lightning-fast, bone-crunching Southeast Asian martial art that gets its best showcase in Gareth Evans’ festival sensation The Raid: Redemption . Welsh-born writer-director Evans didn’t necessarily set out to become the world’s pre-eminent silat action filmmaker, but with his 2009 feature Merantau and now The Raid he’s created a niche for himself while introducing the Western world to the rarely-seen discipline. His fascination with the form began when he was hired to film a documentary about silat, which introduced him to future collaborator, pencak silat practitioner, and Raid star Uwais. “As a kid I had watched kung fu movies and muy thai movies and karate movies, but I’d never seen silat before,” Evans told Movieline last week at SXSW , where The Raid screened ahead of its March 23 release. “When I finally got to see silat it knocked me on my ass, and I wanted my friends back home to be able to see it. I was hungry to be able to have a movie that I could take back to the U.K. — Friday night, a couple of beers, ‘Guys, you’ve got to see silat, it looks so fucking cool!’” The Raid isn’t the first silat action film, but few predecessors found an audience on par with the classic Hong Kong action films or mainstream martial arts hits. “There were films with silat made in the ‘70s and ‘80s in Indonesia but the choreography didn’t hold up in the same way that the choreography in Hong Kong has held up,” Evans explained. “You can’t compare those films to something like Drunken Master because they’re just so different in terms of style. And they added a lot of mysticism and were great as cult movies, but beyond that, not really. So I figured if I wanted to show them silat, I’d better go out and make a film.” With an unrelenting pace and inventive, dynamic fight scenes, The Raid is a near-constant assault on the senses that showcases the physical skills of stars and choreographers Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, not to mention Doni Alamsyah, former judo champ Joe Taslim, and what seems like hundreds of well-trained extras. After the film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival to uproarious acclaim, Sony Pictures Classics picked it up for distribution and two new, unconventional composers were brought onboard to give it a different feel: Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda and TRON: Legacy orchestrator Joe Trapanese. (Screen Gems is developing an American remake with Evans executive producing; more on that here .) Evans screened the film for Shinoda and Trapanese and gave them carte blanche to create their accompanying electronic score, which they developed after settling on a few parameters – for example, no electric guitars. After watching the film, Shinoda went on tour to Asia and Trapanese headed to New York, both working from memory to create sounds that fit the version of the film and its highlights that they had in their heads. “I was working on my laptop in hotel rooms, in the car, on the plane,” Shinoda said. “I would throw these demos together, these ideas and sketches. Like, in my head I’m thinking, ‘There’s that one scene where the guys are doing this and this and this, and this is the kind of thing I remember it being like.’ Then other times it would be like, what kind of emotion don’t I have yet? What kind of theme is missing? When we came back we started laying all those things against picture and found that a good chunk of the stuff really worked.” Shinoda, who wanted to approach his work on The Raid as a score rather than a collection of songs layered over the film, contrasted writing with Trapanese to the creative process with Linkin Park. “I found it to actually be in many ways easier than writing stuff for a Linkin Park album because we tear our hair out,” he said. “When we’re writing a song for a Linkin Park album it can be very tedious, it takes a long, long time to get from a blank page to the final product, and in this case I’m working with a vision that is already realized. This is awesome — all I have to do is make sure I’m supporting in the best way.”
Finally, Dr. Uwe Boll is making a movie America actually wants to see! According to The Hollywood Reporter, Boll will start filming in April on Bailout , his 27th film — a feature-length thriller that follows an everyman New Yorker “who loses everything in the wake of the 2008 Wall Street financial crisis, and who strikes back by killing investment bankers.” I don’t know about you, but I think this one’s got a shot at gaining the cultural foothold that Ollie Stone missed with Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps , nein ? [ THR ]
If Stephen Dorff’s career never soared as high as he might have liked, the fact that it’s getting more interesting all the time must be some consolation. For someone who might not be considered a big movie star, Dorff has the distinct movie-star habit of seeming to play himself, even when he’s playing a big movie star. In Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere and now in Brake , he appears to be the same flannel- and faded jeans-clad heartbreaker from the Aerosmith years. Dorff had the persona in place from the start; it’s the pictures that got small. Maybe never smaller than Brake , a claustrophobic thriller set almost entirely in a clear plastic box. But small finally feels big for Dorff, who plays a government agent named Jeremy and has both the film and its coffin-like quarters to himself. Director Gabe Torres, working from a script by first-time feature writer Timothy Mannion, opens the film with a mystery: Jeremy doesn’t know where he is, why he’s there, or what the meaning of the digital clock that keeps counting down and resetting in front of him might be. We react with Dorff, who is bathed in the deep red glow of the clock, for the first 10 minutes of the film: Is this a dream? Existential art film? Kidnapping melodrama? Elaborate torture-fetish flick? A little bit of all of those, actually, though Jeremy’s sharp distrust of a second victim he communicates with through a conveniently supplied CB radio makes it plain that he’s some kind of government agent and has become embroiled in a terrorist plot. It does not give too much away to say that he is being tortured to forfeit the location of the president’s emergency bunker, and dude is not about to crack. Within the first half hour he’s branded with a cigarette lighter (turns out he’s in the trunk of a vehicle), shot in the leg during a police stop, and swarmed by bees. Dorff, whose pug boyishness never quite wore off, is often shot from between his knees or up his nose; at times ours feels like the vantage of a trusty canine sidekick — alert but helpless, searching our hero for a sign of what will happen next. If we’re never drawn in far enough to wonder what we might do in a Plexiglass box at the end of the world, Dorff can sell stock action-hero lines (“Somebody’s fucking with us” he tells his co-victim. Why? “That’s what I’m going to find out”) with enough moody grit to hold our attention. Torres sets himself a trap with this conceit, one he only half outwits. The sense of confinement is never overwhelming but neither is it particularly well-defined. The direction is clear and assured but instead of notching upwards, once it is established the intrigue of the situation begins to wane. When Jeremy gains access to a cell phone a pattern develops: Calls are made — to his estranged wife, fellow agents, a 911 operator — and then cut off, often after a plea is made for Jeremy to just tell the terrorists what they want to know. By the time he’s shouting about having taken a government oath the central dramatic tension — will he or won’t he? — has been fully wrung out. As it becomes clear that a horrific, systematic attack is unfolding just outside of the box, the story’s organic tensions get mixed up with its allusions, which sometimes — specifically the desperate, doomed 911 conversations — feel a little cheap. A national security breach playing out like a personal security nightmare is a great premise with lots of places to go. Confining them to a Lucite casket might have concentrated the themes into a higher potency, but Mannion’s script doesn’t feel quite up to the task. Although we can practically smell Jeremy, and Dorff’s vague, faded diva vibe works well for him as the long-suffering hostage, as written the character is too distant and unresolved to make such an intimate story work — never moreso than when Jeremy’s personal life is invoked. Instead of dazzling, the twisty double ending sets the slight but ultimately critical emotional detachment of the preceding ninety minutes into greater relief. It wouldn’t go so far as to say it feels like you went through Jeremy’s ordeal for nothing, but I did wish I had come to know as much about Dorff’s character as I did about the size and shape of his nostrils. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“What you are about to witness are stunts performed by experienced professionals.” So warns the new trailer for The Three Stooges , which is here to punish you with yet more inane, terrible-looking slapstick yuks . Indeed. Weep for the careers of the “professionals” prostrating themselves herein in the name of entertainment and watch the trailer, if you dare. Perhaps a more telling warning, also from the new reel which is completely devoid of plot, because who needs that, is the line “Before Jackass … there was dumbass.” Sure, Johnny Knoxville’s band of merry pranksters also subjected themselves to idiotic stunts for comedy’s sake, but you know what? Theirs was a shared pursuit of increasing stakes, pushing the human body to its limit, testing boundaries both physical and cultural while, yes, hitting each other in the balls. The Three Stooges, at least from the looks of this forced iteration of slapstick slumming as embodied by Sean Hayes, Will Sasso, and Chris Diamantopolous (not to mention the Farrelly brothers), is just so utterly soul-crushing. I suppose there’s the possibility that the film will reveal some stroke of mad genius not apparent in these trailers, but I’m betting that’s a slim chance. Are you brave enough to find out come April 13? [ Yahoo! ]
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