We Should Read "The Paperboy"

Herewith a few notes on the newly released poster for The Paperboy which looks good enough to... read. The movie is about a reporter (Matthew McConaughey) and his troubled brother (Zac Efron) investigating a death row inmate (John Cusack) who is involved in a steamy correspondence with a femme fatale (Nicole Kidman).

Is Zac Efron sending me a personal message by working with La Pfeiffer & Nic' back to back? 

        [plugs ears] lalalalalalalala ican'thearyou

I was once a paperboy. It's true. For years! Paperboys have gone the way of the milk man but when I was a kid this was a common job for suburban boys and girls to have. Then you'd do your collecting and spend all your hard-earned quarters at the arcade.

Nicole Kidman looks trashy delishusssss. Love the lusty smirk, like she's going to eat Zac right up --  not for his pleasure (!) but just to wield her own sexual power. Billing is always an interesting matter. If you can't be first, be last. Or rather "AND..." last. So Matthew & Nic' win.

Speaking of billing... I find it kind of interesting that the poster preferences the novelist and screenwriter above the Oscar nominated Lee Daniels (Precious) like it's a subliminal reminder of how great Precious was. Implied titles  The Paperboy: Based on the Novel "The Paperboy" by Pete Dexter.

I think the color scheme is really helping. It's like the movie is summertime hot but someone left the paperback on the beach and it got all washed out. The retro craze for teaser posters is really on, isn't it? Just like the retro craze is really on onscreen (at least three of the Best Picture hopefuls). I suppose ANYTHING is better than dread contemporary poster aesthetics: big floating movie star heads or those imagination-prison horizontal stripes. This poster manages to include all the stars (if that's McConaughey out of focus but I can never recognize him with his shirt on) without resorting to the stripes at all. Well, except for that last insert of John Cusack's threatening eyeliner. But even that plays like a fun "to be continued" comic book panel.

If the movie is as good as this poster, I shall write it steamy letters from my apartment prison.

I think we should read the novel while we wait for this because you know Lee Daniels isn't a copy & paste kind of director but someone who likes to play with visuals.  Who is with me? If so, say so... we need lots of blog projects to do it up real big like for 2012 before the apocalypse.

'War Horse': Stage vs. Screen

Kurt here. I am not, by any stretch, an authority on theater, and it's only recently that I've been able to collect a good number of playbills. But I can say, without hesitation, that the Broadway production of War Horse is the best thing I've ever witnessed on stage. I saw the show last Sunday, three days before I caught Spielberg's big-screen translation. In technical terms, the play is flawless, so staggeringly well-executed that, at intermission, my partner and I just gave each other wide-eyed, open-mouthed looks. The story, as expected, is one of very typical structure, with a found-and-lost-and-found-again relationship between and adolescent boy (Albert) and an almost preternatural stallion (Joey). But the stagecraft, while clearly taking some inspiration from Julie Taymor's The Lion King (and, perhaps, the Daniel Radcliffe incarnation of Equus), feels wildly extraordinary, at once awesome and minimalistic in its design.

I've decided that what makes the play so potent, beyond its meticulously made yet intentionally haggard horse puppets, and its ripped-from-the-pages-of-history projection screen of a backdrop, is its fierce, unannounced insistence on getting in your space, nearly assaulting you when it's time for stagehands to hurriedly crisscross the performance space with barbed wire, line the aisles with pennant strings to prep for a recruitment scene, or pilot a massive, makeshift tank across an implied, strobe-lit battlefield (another highlight is an ultra-stylized, oversized bullet that's carried from the crowd and spun like a drillbit before striking a key character on stage).

And how does Spielberg's version measure up to all this? I did my best to not allow my first War Horse experience to make me biased against my second, and it's true that the two works are very different beasts. I was, however, keeping score as I basked in the orange glow of Spielberg's impossible skies, for this equine weeper's path to the screen yields a lot of pluses and minuses. Let's take a look (spoiler alert!) at how Spielberg bettered the material, and how he fell short of the merits of its past life.

Peter Mullan and David Thewlis

PLUS: Albert's Father

In the play, Albert's father, Ted Narracott is an irredeemable, profoundly hateable character (seriously, like please-shoot-him-right-now hateable). A drunk and alleged military deserter, he makes a pile of horrid choices—including impulsively selling Joey—and never considers for a moment how they will impact his son...

Fathers, Tradition, Human Animal Bonding after the jump

Click to read more ...

Link Hunters

The Guardian Ken Russell was nearly finished with a new screenplay adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, to be made as a risque musical. Will it still be made with a new director?
Nullco Preorder The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack and download a sampler
Rope of Silicon first look at Sam Worthington in Wrath of the Titans and a curious plot synopsis
Thompson on Hollywood talks to one or our favorite craftsmen, production designer Jack Fisk (of Terrence Malick and Mr Sissy Spacek fame.)
24 Frames Hugo steps up as a powerful Oscar contender.

Empire wonders if paranormal romance Smoke and Bone about an angel and a demon that fall in love will be the next big movie franchise? Have any of you read it?
Inside Movies Deliverance actor Bill McKinney has passed away. 
Wipe Your Feet "Watching Melancholia is like..." I love the movie but this is totally LOL. 
Pop Watch tries to imagine Buffy alum Michelle Trachtenberg as Bella Swan. Supposedly, it could have happened.
Hollywood News talks to Will Reiser about 50/50 and the power of Anjelica Huston. 
IndieWire Mike Leigh will head the jury at February's Berlinale. (This year's jury picked Oscar buzzing Iranian film A Separation as the best of the fest. Good luck topping that one!)

Finally, EW has released the first photo of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.

I don't want to be bitchy about it since we've seen so little -- the trailer hits next week -- but doesn't it seem like revisionist fairy tale revisions and dark leathery bad-ass costuming are getting a little, shall we say, generic these days? How will this distinguish itself?

And when will Jeremy Renner star in a drama again after all this time spent Bourne Avenging Impossible Missions With Witch Hunters ? Does he want to be Samuel L Jackson that badly? Seems like a waster after his dramatic brilliance in The Hurt Locker.

Music, Mistletoe and Michael Caine: 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'

Kurt here. If you love Christmas, odds are there's an incarnation of A Christmas Carol of which you take ownership. For me, it's a stage production performed annually at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ. For you, it might be the 1938 Joseph L. Mankiewicz classic with Reginald Owen. And for a special few, it's The Muppet Christmas Carol, a film that proves how effectively one beloved property can be used to refresh another. The worlds of Jim Henson and Charles Dickens intertwine rather beautifully in this 1992 musical dramedy, whose Muppet stars pull the Yuletide tale out of mothballs, but don't crank up the contemporary jabber so far as to brand it with a born-on date. The comedy is all about that distinct Muppet attitude, which, as the new Muppets film seems determined to emphasize, is as timeless as "Bah Humbug."

Charles Dickens is in fact a character in the film. He's played by Gonzo, who, along with Rizzo the Rat, narrates the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge (a game, sincere Michael Caine) and the spectral Christmas Eve that rids him of his jerkdom. You might think excessive hand-holding would result from having a pair of narrators guide you through a film that already sees its lead and his visitors guide you through second-act flashbacks, but that's never the case here, as Gonzo proves an entertainingly knowing voice and a funny teacher to Rizzo, who's ever-eager to listen and learn ("Why are you whispering?" Rizzo asks. "It's for dramatic emphasis," Gonzo tells him). It's a gentle form of un-dusty, all-ages comedy, and it's a far better rejuvenator than, say, a 3D shrunken-man rollercoaster. 

The narrating duo also add to a team element that seems to unfailingly manifest when it comes to the Muppets. Of course, the characters are their own traveling troupe (a factor that undoubtedly helps attract flesh-and-blood actors to work with them), but there are subsets of teams that appear within projects, and help to give the comedy that ultra-important communal feel. Jacob Marley, for instance, is given a brother, Robert (wink-wink), so the pair can be portrayed by the hysterical hecklers Statler and Waldorf, who may just offer the most enjoyable books-and-chains preliminary haunt the story has ever seen ("There's more of gravy than of grave about you," Scrooge says to the pair in his blame-it-on-the-food speech. "More of gravy than of grave?" they reply. "What a terrible pun! Where do you get these jokes?"). There's also Bob Cratchit's (Kermit the Frog) shivering team of bookkeeping colleagues, who famously initiate an impromptu Hawaiian dance when their request for more furnace coal is met with the threat of unemployment.  

Watching the film again, I was struck by just how many musical sequences it includes, and they're fine ones at that. The movie begins with the familiar marketplace bustle, through which Scrooge hurries home amid a whole town of scared and scorned onlookers. "There goes Mr. Humbug," they chant, "there goes Mr. Grim. If they gave a prize for being mean, the winner would be him." Even the Muppet-ized vegetables join in on the chorus, shaming the village grump. Later, the central cast members unite for "Thankful Heart," an ending tune that, like the others, was penned by Paul Williams (the score is credited to Miles Goodman). Off hand, I can't recall another Christmas Carol that presents itself as a musical, apart from the usual festivities at the house of Fezziwig (who, here, naturally, goes by "Fozziwig"). The story works great with the songs sprinkled in, and the music has an effect similar to the Muppet comedy: updated, but un-dated.  

What probably nets the biggest laughs is the recurring tendency of Gonzo and Rizzo to get physically involved with the story they're telling, be it by falling off an in-flashback shelf they describe as "old and decayed," or receiving a self-reflexive Christmas greeting from Scrooge himself. Gonzo, in particular, has fun with the different levels of fiction, playing an imaginary version of an author poking around in his own creation. "Great story, Mr. Dickens," Rizzo says at film's end. "You should read the book," says Gonzo.  

Alice Doesn't Link Here Anymore

The Hairpin "Our Bella Ourselves" is one of the best pieces I've read on The Twilight Saga and the communal anger over its terrible central role model.
Paper Mag cute piece on future Oscar nominee Jean Dujardin, describing his character George Valentin in The Artist.
Nick's Flick Picks has revived his top 100 project
Inquirer Christian Bale praises Tom Hardy & Anne Hathaway on their work in The Dark Knight Rises
Towleroad George Michael hospitalized for pneumonia and not doing well. 
Sunset Gun "I Am One of Your Fans" on actresses playing other actresses
Little White Lies interviews Eddie Redmayne of My Week With Marilyn. I love it when actors actually talk about the career management portion of their job:

Informally you’re part of a group of up-and-coming British actors making waves in the States right now. Is there a sense within that group of having made it?

Yeah. Well… Working and spending time in the States, it’s interesting to see the group of actors and actresses from my generation, who all started around the same time, getting so much respect. It’s wonderful, and at some point I’d love to work with some of my mates in that capacity, because it’s exciting, having started off as jokers trying to get a gig, thinking that our paths could meet.

Who are we talking about, exactly?

Dom Cooper, Andrew Garfield, Ben Whishaw, Charlie Cox… We’re not best mates, I’d say more close peers.

And what a fine group they are, right?

It's a Marty Marty Marty Marty World
THR Hugo looks to be overperforming a bit at the box office in a nice surprise.
Awards Daily Samples from the Hugo soundtrack. Do you think Howard Shore will see another nomination? 

Finally, Sons of Norway reports that Martin Scorsese may take on the adaptation of the novel The Snowman soon. But a word of caution before you race out to buy the book in the hopes of getting a jump on a future Scorsese. This is one busy busy busy 69 year old man. The IMDb, while not 100% reliable on such things as future projects, lists over a dozen projects on his current docket and since he's not as fast as Eastwood and Allen, he'll be in this 80s before we've seen them all. I respect the author Jo Nesbø's approach to a film adaptation; he wouldn't sell without director approval. Scorsese was at the top of his dream list of five.