Pontiac... The Emerald City

Hey people!  I'm popping in very briefly from Michigan as I vacation. How about this for my timing:No sooner did I arrive (Saturday) than James Franco, Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz showed up to start shooting Oz, The Great and Powerful (Monday). Okay okay technically maybe they aren't all here yet -- I haven't seen the call sheets -- but production began at the new Raleigh Studios in Pontiac. The whole movie will be shot there in what used to be an old truck manufacturing plant or somesuch.

Pontiac is where we used to go to concerts as a kid... the ones that weren't in Detroit that is. Here's a handy map to show where we're all located. I'm only like an hour away from the stars.

[Note: Madonna is not in Oz The Great and Powerful but I include her on the map because every time I visit Michigan, I pretend she also just happens to be visiting, as we are (pretend) psychically bound!]

If I wasn't visiting family and friends. If I wasn't sane. If I wasn't poor. If I had all the time in the world. If I were a stalker. If I owned a paparazzi telephoto lensed camera... I would stake out the studios and share photos. Too many "if"s so I'll just keep on with the visiting.

If you haven't been following the film, it concerns the Wizard as a younger man (Franco) who is whisked away from Kansas to the magical land (people come and go so quickly there) where he attempts to establish his wizardly rep while dealing with Oz's many political problems and three doubtful witches: Theodora (Kunis) and Evanora (Weisz) who are sisters (West and East, don'cha know) and Glinda the Good (Williams). I'm actually most curious about what they'll do with Glinda. After so many gloomy indies and depressed characters, isn't this a major "against type" role for Michelle Williams? As you surmise it's a prequel to Dorothy's legendary trip and sounds as if bears at least a passing resemblance to Gregory Maguire's "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" albeit with the focus shifted away from the green skinned broom flying baddie and over to the man behind the curtain.

Glinda in 1920, 1939, 2003, and 2012

Maguire's rather R rated "Wicked" was adapted into a kid friendly behemoth musical in 2003. It's so popular that it's long since outgrossed most films in existence. That's not something you hear every day, huh, theater outgrossing the cinema? But with a billion dollars and counting, it's beyond huge. The original books by L. Frank Baum -- all dozenplus of them -- are in the public domain meaning that any writer who wants to can riff on the world and characters free of licensing fees and rights options. But this has been true since the late 1950s so the plethora of Oz pictures in the works, are obviously due to Wicked's popularity, and Wicked's popularity alone. In a weird twist of fate by the time Wicked gets to the screen (distant future? never? they've been dragging their heels for years) the public may be too exhausted by Oz to care. 

But back to Oz the Great and Powerful. Remember when Franco & Kunis played those crazy marrieds in Date Night? 

"Wet Hot American Summer" at 10!

Alex BBats here, and today is the 10th birthday of one of my all time favorite films.  

Watching a film can be a relatively light affair.  Simple plots, easy jokes, characters who follow archetypes to the tee. A.O. Scott recently proposed that more challenging and unconventional films, such as Bela Tarr’s Turin Horse, might expand a moviegoers palate and appetite for cinema.  Occasionally a film brings the viewer into a lawless land, not one filled with bandits, but a can of vegetables who happens to be a Vietnam Veteran, a boy who can create gusts, and haystacks able to block a motorcycle.  Wet Hot American Summer (2001) challenges the viewer with absurdity, its reward being pure bliss.

Wet Hot American Summer is bedazzled to the brim with details: funny posters, extras dancing, strange gestures, or that fantastic breaking glass sound effect.  I’ve seen Wet Hot American Summer over 30 times and always find, or am given, something new to smile at.  (This latest playthrough, I heard a small, impressed gasp that the talent show MC hailed from  the Catskill Mountains resort circuit and Amy Pohler whispering “This is terrible” during the Godspell number.) 

Depth is rare in film and rarer in comedy.  David Wain and the company put there all into making this film the best possible.  There's a youthful vigor to the movie, which is especially considering that twenty and thirtysomethings are playing teenagers. Every scene in Wet Hot American Summer has something unexpected. The actors don’t sell the jokes, they own and share them.  You can tell everyone had an amazing time on the set.  Eighty percent of the cast (or thereabouts) went on to become A-list actors. (Bradley Cooper gets a permapass because of this film). Even the kid that gets tossed out of the van has an amazing resume. 

Seriously, check out his IMDB page, Kyle Gallner

Nathaniel once described Rachel Getting Married as “Nathaniel Getting Hugged.”  I feel that Wet Hot American Summer is Alex Getting Loved Passionately.  I’ll snuggle up with Wet Hot American Summer any season.

Also, Sluts Rock.

Summertime Chills: Teeth

Robert G from Sketchy Details here with a look at a bizarre and refreshing horror film for those hot summer days.

I just have to ask: can't we get just one horror film where a trip to a large body of water doesn't spell disaster? Whether it's shark attacks, masked killers, or ancient monsters from the deep, water in a summer horror film is a bad thing. The younger the characters are, the more diastrous the events will be

Teeth is not an exception to this rule. The strange horror/dark comedy hybrid follows the story of Dawn, a high school abstinence advocate opening herself up for the first time to relationships. She meets a nice boy named Tobey who seems different from the rest. He's kind, sweet, and is not pressuring Dawn to do anything she doesn't want to do.

Of course they wind up in a big body of water. How could late summer fun like this turn bad?

Easy. 

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Why, O Why, Don't I Love "Paris"?

Hallo folks! Ester here. You might remember me from such previous forays into Film Experience as my "Reader Spotlight" and my Two Stars, One Slot tribute piece, "Waif vs. Waif: Mia Wasikowska vs. Saoirse Ronan." Today I come to you with a feminist chip on my shoulder and a spark of rage in my eye, and my target is Woody Allen -- specifically his tepid time-travel fantasy, Midnight in Paris.

It's not surprising that Hollywood, the quintessential vehicle of nostalgia, is obsessed with landmarks. Jack Nicholson has only to get up in the morning and put his shoes on the right feet four shooting days out of five to get nominated for an Oscar, because Hollywood is just so gosh darn grateful an old-school movie star like him is still gracing films with his presence. Similarly, Woody Allen has only to make a movie that is not truly godawful terrible to make every film critic in the US sigh happily about how the maestro has done it again. 

Even then, by the way, he still makes several insufferable stabs at cinema for every Vicky Cristina Barcelona (or Scoop, which I actually kind of enjoyed).  

I understand the impulse to make ourselves hoarse praising the man. After all, we're talking about Woody Allen, auteur extraordinaire, Oscar-winner, redefiner of comedy, granddaddy to a thousand less-talented copy-cat narcissists. He's so prolific he probably doesn't even remember making one of my favorites of his films, the wistful and imaginative Purple Rose of Cairo. (Such small, delightful movies are often called "gems," which confuses me as gems come in all sizes; in fact, a woman I know recently received one that may weigh more than she does. But that's neither here nor there.)

Friends, a mediocrity is a mediocrity, whether it comes from Shakespeare or Dan Brown. Why do we insist on grading Woody Allen on a curve?

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Happy Birthday Sandra Bullock, I guess...

Paolo here.

Back in 2009 I stumbled into what looked like Bullock's CAA page, and seeing a certain factoid, I posted this question on my Facebook. "What do Stanley Kubrick and Sandra Bullock have in common?" "Well neither of them have an Oscar," a friend of mine said. He spoke too soon. [Correction: Kubrick has an Oscar but not for directing. Shake fist]

Then it was time to watch the live feed of the Oscars on campus. The fedora-wearing cinema studies students were passing around this hipster German beer and I took a sip and put it down. I swore that if Bullock won the Oscar, I'd throw my beer at the screen - I didn't, no one should. The sound of angry young men and some women collectively screaming against her victory is one of the ten greatest experiences I've ever had in a movie theatre. How the powers that be hustled such a seemingly mediocre film into a Best Picture nod and a Best Actress win was like watching steel beams bend by themselves.

Anyway, to commemorate Bullock's birthday, I watched neither the movies that I remember her being good at (A Time to Kill, Crash) nor the ones I saw in high school nor college that did not age well (28 Days) or even the fun ones (Practical Magic). Instead I saw John Lee Hancock's The Blind Side, the movie that won her the said Oscar and made her, on paper, better than Kubrick. To be honest, I had two tall glasses of beer, ruining some brain cells and I was afraid that this film would do more damage.

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