Venice hails cinema’s comeback king Mickey Rourke
Eleven days of red carpet galas, 21 films in competition and countless interviews, photo calls and parties at the Venice film festival boiled down to just one man in the end — Mickey Rourke.
The festival, which unofficially kick-starts the awards season leading to the Oscars, will be remembered chiefly for Rourke’s performance in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler”, which the actor and critics agree is his best yet.
“The roar of Rourke” read the headline in the Corriere della Sera newspaper on Sunday.
The movie about an ageing wrestler who despairs as his body gives up on him and friends and family turn their backs, won the coveted Golden Lion award for best movie on Saturday.
The award seals his comeback from the Hollywood wilderness, and comments that Rourke is ready to ditch his bad-boy image and cooperate with directors suggest there is more to come.
“A guy like me changes hard, I didn’t want to change, but I had to change,” the star of 1980s hits “9-1/2 Weeks” and “Angel Heart” told Reuters in an interview in Venice.
“It’s OK for me now at this point in my life to play ball, to be a team player,” added the 51-year-old, his face marked by surgery for various boxing injuries.
- from Reuters
‘Wrestler’ takes top honors at Venice
Darren Aronofksy’s drama “The Wrestler,” starring Mickey Rourke as Randy (the Ram) Robinson, a washed out pro-wrestler in comeback mode — both on and off the screen, it turns out — has pinned down the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion, providing the Lido with a grand finale.
“I think the reason people are reacting to this film is that there is a great talent revealing his soul,” said Aronofsky.“Darren Aronofsky came here a couple of years ago and fell on his ass,” Rourke recounted in the Lido’s packed Sala Grande theatre, referring to the helmer’s “The Fountain,” which premiered in Venice in 2006 and subsequently flopped.
“I am glad he had the balls to come back,” Rourke added.
- from Variety
Screwball comedies natural for Coen brothers
Joel and Ethan Coen are analog guys in a digital world, highly amused by the absurdity of talking about big ideas amidst the frenzy of a film festival.
The sibling filmmakers are also just off the plane from the coast, having arrived for last night’s North American premiere of Burn After Reading, their spy vs. stupidity spoof at the Toronto film festival. (The movie opens wide Sept. 12.)
While chatting with the Star last night in an exclusive Canadian interview, Joel, 53, reclines in a hotel chair while Ethan, 50, paces the room. Jet-lagged and jumpy, they act as if someone – Batman’s Joker, maybe? – just filled the place with laughing gas. They do love to kid.
If the bros sound even more playful than usual, it’s forgivable in the context of “the idiocy of today,” a theme of their movie, which stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand.
Q: You worked on both Burn After Reading and No Country for Old Men at the same time …
Ethan: Sort of writing it at the same time, yeah …
Joel: (interrupting) Is that a question?
Q: It is. It’s like we’re playing Jeopardy. I actually see a link between No Country and this one.
Joel: (laughing) We did work on them at the same time …
Ethan: (interrupting) Actually, to tell you the truth, we’re laughing because Claudia (the studio publicist) told us, “He only has one question.”
Joel: You were very clever. You came in and made a statement for us to react to. So we were going to pull your leg a little bit.
But okay, to answer your question, it’s only that this one was so complicated to pull together from the point of view of all these high-profile actors all being available at a specific time. So we shot it after (No Country). It was sort of a window of opportunity when we could shoot George and Brad and John Malkovich and Fran and all that.
Ethan: (laughing hysterically) Whereas, for No Country, Josh Brolin was always available! Josh’s schedule was open!
Joel: Yes, Josh was available. I’m sure he’d be saying right now, “Thanks, guys!”
Ethan: (laughing) Can you write about that in an especially slighting way …
Joel: (laughing) … so we can send it to Josh?
- from here
‘Inside Man’ sequel moving forward
A sequel to Spike Lee’s “Inside Man” is moving forward at Universal, with Terry George in negotiations to write the screenplay and Lee coming back to direct the Brian Grazer-produced pic.
“Inside Man 2,” as the project is tentatively being called, will pick up on the characters and dynamic but not the storyline of the original. The first “Inside Man,” which was penned by Russell Gewirtz, centered on a standoff between a bank robber (Clive Owens) and a hostage negotiator (Denzel Washington) at a New York bank.
Lee says he foresees that the new film will continue the relationship between the two main characters but in a new high-tension situation. “I want the script to be even better than Russell’s, and Russell wrote a really good script,” he said.
The news cements long-floating rumors that Universal was looking to reprise the alchemy of the indie fave Lee with the studio budget and marketing apparatus of Universal.
The original “Inside Man,” also from Universal, scored Lee his biggest opening weekend, and went on to earn more than $175 million worldwide when it was released in the spring of 2006.
Grazer will produce “Inside Man 2″ via his Imagine Entertainment banner, with Lee and Daniel Rosenberg exec producing.
- from THR
Wild Things are Coming October 2009
The Spike Jonze-directed Where the Wild Things Are is back on Warner Bros.’ release schedule. The adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s book is now set for a release on Oct. 16, 2009. The pic stars Catherine Keener, Benicio Del Toro, Forest Whitaker, Lauren Ambrose, Catherine O’Hara, Tom Noonan, Michael Berry and James Gandolfini. - from Comingsoon
Tom Cruise, UA pick up ‘Monster’
Tom Cruise and United Artists have acquired rights to serial-killer thriller “The Monster of Florence,” with Cruise attached to produce and possibly to star, according to Douglas Preston, author of the bestseller.
Preston and Italo journo Mario Spezi told Corriere della Sera they have inked with UA for a big-screen adaptation of their reconstruction of eight grisly double homicides believed to have been committed single-handedly between 1968 and 1985 in and around the Italian Renaissance gem.“It’s the biggest movie deal in my life,” the leading Italo daily quoted Preston as saying in a front page story. Previous Preston tomes made into movies include thriller “The Relic.”
“The film will have Florence and the Chianti as protagonists: two of the locations most beloved by Americans,” said Spezi, a Florentine crime reporter and “Monster” contributor, to Corriere.
- from Variety
“Bangkok Dangerous” kicks off fall movie season
The fall box-office season gets off to a rather sedate start this weekend, with just one film opening in wide release — Lionsgate’s “Bangkok Dangerous,” starring Nicolas Cage and going out without advance screenings for the press.
A spokeswoman for Lionsgate said that as an action release, “Bangkok” was never going to be a critical darling. But the studio representative stressed that Lionsgate has high opening-weekend expectations for the film.
Tracking data appears to indicate a bow somewhere north of $10 million, which means that “Bangkok” should top the weekend’s box-office rankings.
DreamWorks/Paramount’s R-rated comedy “Tropic Thunder” turned in a three-peat performance atop the domestic box office last weekend with $14.6 million during the four-day holiday frame. But even a 15 percent drop from the $11.5 million that “Tropic” fetched last Friday through Sunday would give the leggy comedy a gross slightly less than $10 million this session and finally yield the weekend crown.
Focus Features’ “Hamlet 2″ also bears watching this weekend, not because it has a chance of topping the box office but to see if the well-reviewed comedy can salvage a decent theatrical run despite its wobbly expansion into wide release last weekend.
- from Reuters
“RocknRolla” finds Ritchie back with a vengeance
First the good news: Guy Ritchie is back. Then the even better news: Guy Ritchie is back with his most accessible and enjoyable film yet in “RocknRolla.”
After getting swept off course by Madonna (”Swept Away”) and pretension (”Revolver”), the English writer-director, who in the late ’90s invented a new form of criminally funny pulp fiction set in an exaggerated London underworld, returns to this gangland with renewed vigor. It’s all here: the ingenious, obscenity-laced language, the double-crosses that turn into triple-crosses, the swaggering characters so in love with themselves. GottaLove “RocknRolla”!
Which also is good news for Warner Bros. when the distributor releases the dark crime comedy nationally October 8. Although pitched more toward males, the film contains one deliciously duplicitous turn by Thandie Newton that might touch more than a few female viewers’ inner gangster.
The London underworld to which Ritchie returns looks very much the same but somehow different. For one thing, that skyline is changing constantly thanks to the upsurge in skyscrapers and property values, which is what Ritchie’s story revolves around. For another, a nouveau riche idea of swank has invaded the new East London commercial complexes, and the place is full of Russian and Eastern European businessmen.
“RocknRolla” throws three distinct branches of criminals against one another. Old School, with its network of on-the-take bureaucrats, crooked politicians and backdoor fixers, is represented by Tom Wilkinson’s merciless mobster and his right-hand man, Mark Strong. New School is Karel Roden’s Russian billionaire, backed by a willingness to use physical violence that makes Old School look as if Mary Poppins were its headmistress.
- from Reuters
Tarantino’s take on WWII draws fire in Germany
Seems you can’t even be nasty to Nazis anymore.
A leaked script of Quentin Tarantino’s World War II drama “Inglorious Bastards” already is stirring up controversy for scenes of vengeful Americans bashing, scalping, shooting and strangling German soldiers.
What began as an Internet murmur here went mainstream with a recent newspaper article by Tobias Kneibe, film editor of the Suddeutsche Zeitung, who predicted that the project could have an explosive effect similar to that of Tom Cruise’s World War II drama “Valkyrie,” which initially was barred from filming in certain locations and already has been savaged in the German media even though it doesn’t hit theaters until 2009.
“All the German historians and critics who were left gasping for breath by Tom Cruise and his worthy attempts will be so shocked by ‘Inglorious Bastards’ that they will savage it on the spot,” Kniebe wrote.
Even though he personally likes the script, Kneibe said that “the collision between Tarantino-style pop culture with the themes of the Holocaust and Jewish revenge (the ‘Bastards’ of the film are Jewish-American Nazi hunters) is unprecedented in Germany and its results are completely unpredictable.”
More potential fuel for the fire: Tarantino’s pulp fiction version of German history will almost certainly get German state financing. Germany’s DFFF film fund gives automatic tax breaks for local shoots, and “Bastards” is set to shoot almost entirely in Studio Babelsberg outside Berlin.
“I don’t see how it should not be eligible for DFFF money,” said Kirsten Niehuus, director of the Berlin-Brandenburg regional film fund.
- from Reuters
“Dark Knight” reigns as new Imax king
The Imax-format release of Warner Bros.’ “The Dark Knight” has blown past “The Polar Express” as the giant-screen exhibitor’s top first-run release.
Imax also touted the Batman sequel’s having passed an average tally of $400,000 per screen on the company’s 139 worldwide screens.
“The Dark Knight has shown the power of the Imax experience when partnered with a filmmaker and a studio that get it,” Imax Filmed Entertainment chief Greg Foster said.
Directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale, “Dark Knight” has rung up more than $925 million worldwide including $55 million in Imax grosses. That compares to the $45 million fetched by the Imax 3-D version of Warners/Imax’s seasonal favorite “The Polar Express,” which was distributed in both conventional and Imax 3-D formats in 2004.
That first worldwide theatrical run for “Polar” capped off at about $285 million, but the Tom Hanks-starring movie has been re-released in Imax 3-D every holiday season. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, “Polar” will unspool in about two dozen Imax 3-D venues over Thanksgiving, with its four-year cumulative box office grosses in Imax 3-D approaching $70 million.
- from Reuters