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Jeffrey Nachmanoff Discovers a Traitor
After working as a script doctor for several years, Jeffrey Nachmanoff got his first major credit as the screenwriter of the box office hit The Day After Tomorrow, which he co-wrote with director Roland Emmerich. Now he's getting a chance to show he can do it all himself with the release of Traitor, which hits theaters on August 27th. The film, which stemmed from an idea from Steve Martin (yes, Three Amigos Steve Martin), was written and directed by Nachmanoff and stars Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce. Shortly before the film's release, Nachmanoff talked with MM about the luxury of starting a screenplay with the end already in place and the challenges (and perks) of directing actors who only speak Arabic.
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Paul W.S. Anderson’s Rules Can Be Deadly
British action director Paul W.S. Anderson shares his Golden Rules for Making Movies
British action master Paul W.S. Anderson reveals his Golden Rules for Moviemaking just as his latest film, Death Race, hits theaters.
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Shakespeare on Film: Titus
In MM's 12th week of Shakespeare on Film, Julie Taymor's imagination takes viewers through Shakespeare's darkest hour
Evoking A Clockwork Orange and The Silence of the Lambs, Julie Taymor's Titus reveals that the horrors of Shakespeare's play are matched only by the play's compassion. In her feature film debut, Taymor, who based the movie on her off-Broadway production of Shakespeare's darkest play, combines ancient horrors with more recent history or cinematic fiction. The writer-director fashioned a masterpiece not from an inherently cinematic, fast-paced drama such as Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet, but a play that in the theater may seem purely horrific or excessively comic, devoid of emotional or intellectual meaning.
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Ben Stiller's Days of Thunder
Reluctant funnyman still doing his own thing with Tropic Thunder
Best-known as one of Hollywood's most bankable funnymen, Ben Stiller has always been more interested in what's going on behind the camera. His upcoming slate of films, including Tropic Thunder, which he produced, directed and stars in, is proof positive.
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Tropic Thunder Creates Storm of Controversy
When Ben Stiller was penning his latest film, Tropic Thunder, he probably never imagined the kind of controversy a subplot would create: A call to boycott the film from more than 20 disability advocacy organizations, just days before Tropic Thunder’s August 13th premiere.
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Isabel Coixet’s Cinematic Poem
Known for her strong female leads, Coixet takes on Philip Roth and misogyny with Elegy
A director best known for her strong female leads wouldn't be the first choice to adapt a novel from one of today's most misogynistic novelists. But Elegy, Isabel Coixet's adaptation of Philip Roth's The Dying Animal, just may surprise you.
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Aaron Rose : Writer, Director, Beautiful Loser
The pied piper of Manhattan's 1990s Lower East Side artist's movement, Aaron Rose breaks into film this year with his documentary, Beautiful Losers. The movie, which features interviews with the people behind the "Beautiful Losers" traveling exhibition—among them Mike Mills, (Thumbsucker) and Harmony Korine (Kids, Mister Lonely)—was six years in the making. Rose, who had previously worked in short form video, recently spoke with MM about putting together this feature project, how he struggled staying true to the art of it and what is on tap for the future.
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Enzo Castellari's Inglorious Past
Italian drive-in king gets royal treatment for cult classic
When cult moviemaker Enzo G. Castellari, hailed as the “70s Italian Drive-In God” by L.A. Weekly, embarked on his 1978 World War II adventure, Inglorious Bastards, he had little idea that, 30 years later, his film would still be loved and appreciated by a new generation of enthusiastic fans.
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Is Horror Dead?
Does a changing of the guard mean the end of a genre as we know it?
Freddy, Jason and Leatherface have packed it up—and horror legends like George Romero are having a tough time at the box office. What does the future hold for the horror genre?
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Giuseppe Tornatore Dives Into the Great Unknown
He may be best known for the beloved Cinema Paradiso, but Giuseppe Tornatore's The Unknown Woman, his first film since 2000's Malena, is a substantial departure from that bittersweet love song to cinema. The Unknown Woman stars Russian actress Xenia Rappaport as Irena, a mysterious Ukrainian woman who ingratiates herself with a prosperous Italian family, taking care of their young daughter. Is she after blackmail? Revenge? Lightning-quick flashbacks provide hints of terrible secrets from her past, andThe Unknown Woman constantly keeps us off-balance with its blend of suspense and melodrama, and its mingling of past and present into one continuous stream.
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Nanette Burstein, Queen of DIY Docs
Nanette Burstein just may be the queen of do-it-yourself documentaries and American Teen can prove it. The Academy Award nominee started her career as the writer and editor of the 1998 doc In the Name of the Emperor, which detailed the brutal 1937 massacre of more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. But her real claim to fame came with the 1999 movie On the Ropes, which she produced, directed and edited. The documentary, about the injustices of life in the boxing arena, won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier that year and picked up a nomination for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards the next.
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Shakespeare on Film: My Own Private Idaho
Gus Van Sant challenges classicists with My Own Private Idaho in MM's ninth week of Shakespeare on Film
In the 1980s, Gus Van Sant was already writing a screenplay about gay hustlers in Portland, Oregon, when he saw Welles’ Chimes at Midnight and was inspired to make My Own Private Idaho double as a partial, modern-day adaptation of Henry IV. Together with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, the writer-director created a not especially engaging seventy-minute feature: Part love story, part road movie.
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The Truth Is Out There: TV Adaptations Don’t Always Succeed
For years, studio executives have followed a simple formula to cash in on certain franchises: Take a widely acclaimed television show, modernize and condense it into a 90-minute script and out comes an instant crowd-pleaser. Though a handful of TV adaptations have triumphed and achieved critical acclaim, many television-to-film adaptations fail miserably, ultimately revealing that oftentimes the jokes, drama and supernatural should be left to the small screen.
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Shooting The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan and DP Wally Pfister shed some light on their latest collaboration
Flashback: Christopher Nolan is at the 1999 Slamdance Film Festival for the premiere of Following, his first feature-length film. Though he served as the writer, director and cinematographer, Nolan wasn’t interested in pursuing a career as an auteur. At the same time, he saw The Hi-Line, which premiered at the nearby Sundance Film Festival. Maybe it was destiny calling. That film's cinematographer was Wally Pfister, ASC.
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Shakespeare on Film: The Animated Tales
Shakespeare gets the thumbs-up from the younger set in MM's eighth week of Shakespeare on Film
From 1990 - 94, Shakespeare—The Animated Tales exposed the younger set to 12 of Shakespeare's most famous plays. Adapter Leon Garfield scripted a dozen abridgments, which won three Emmy Awards and have screened in more than 50 countries. They merit collective rather than selective recognition, firstly because they provide an accessible introduction for young viewers and, secondly, because they triumphantly demonstrated to viewers of all ages that a medium too often associated solely with children’s stories could realize adult Shakespearean imagery and themes with as much imagination and poetry as live-action film.
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Recalled: Kimberly Peirce Shows the Depths of War in STOP-LOSS
In a world where every cell phone has camera capabilities, the realities of the world are brought into our homes with relative ease. And for the first time ever this means the realities of war are brought along too. Soldiers, armed not only with guns but very often small, one-chip cameras are documenting their war-torn lives.
Everyone’s a moviemaker. But while these affecting stories are making their way beyond army barracks and war zones via email and other Internet tools, rarely do they reach the masses. Sometimes it takes a skilled hand and a known face to alert the public to a greater social purpose. In her second film, STOP-LOSS, writer-director Kimberly Peirce—along with the film's stars, Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Abbie Cornish—has put a mirror to the government, asking that they see soldiers as more than numbers, but as human beings—with families—deeply and forever affected by their experiences at war.
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Warren Beatty Honored with AFI Life Achievement Award
On June 12, 2008, legendary Hollywood star Warren Beatty received the 36th AFI Life Achievement Award. The event will air on the USA Network, Tuesday, July 8th at 9 p.m. Guests including Beatty’s wife, Annette Bening, his sister Shirley MacLaine, Julie Christie, Robert Downey Jr., President Bill Clinton, Gene Hackman and old pal Jack Nicholson gathered to honor the multi-faceted moviemaker's contributions and lifetime commitment to cinema.
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Shakespeare on Film: Antony and Cleopatra
In MM's sixth week of Shakespeare on film, we examine why Charlton Heston's Antony and Cleopatra didn't fare too well.
After playing Marc Antony in the 1950 and 1970 Julius Caesars, Charlton Heston had become obsessed with adapting Antony and Cleopatra, which he considered Shakespeare’s finest work, but which had never previously been filmed at feature length. His love affair with character and play reached a rocky conclusion in this overlong epic.
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Jonathan Levine's Total Wackness
Lessons learned in landing one of the world's greatest actors for The Wackness
The prospect of meeting Ben Kingsley is a daunting one for any director, especially a man of such limited talent and eloquence as myself. So when I heard the news that Sir Ben had enjoyed my script for The Wackness and would like to meet me in Vancouver, my excitement was tempered by an immediate pang of terror.
I recalled the episode of “The Sopranos” in which Sir Ben attempts to blow off Christopher and his mob cohorts as they push their script onto him. Needless to say, I hoped my meeting would go a bit better than that...
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Peter Segal Gets Smart
How a decision made in college brought audiences one of this summer's most anticipated comedies
From the beginning, Peter Segal carved a niche for himself as the director of action-packed comedies. From his first feature Naked Gun 33 1/3 to the hijinks of his remake of The Longest Yard, he has managed to capture the disparate skills—pratfalls and natural comedic stylings among them—of the genre’s top players. Among his collaborators over the years, Segal has worked with Chris Farley, Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler. His latest project, Get Smart, features the newest comedian to conquer the box office: Steve Carell.
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M. Night Shyamalan Happens
After the disaster that was Lady in the Water, seems like M. Night Shyamalan's backers have got another marketing trick up their sleeve as they release his latest film, The Happening: Promote the hell out of the fact that it's the director's first R-rated movie. It's probably not enough of an incentive to outdo The Incredible Hulk as the summer season box office continues to heat up, but the reviews so far have been on Shyamalan's side. As the sci-fi auteur awaits the final tallies, MM takes a look at the roller coaster ride Shyamalan has his taken critics and audiences on since The Sixth Sense.
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Kung Fu Panda Drop Kicks the Competition
Seems like all those promos must have paid off—first at Cannes, then the TV commercial onslaught—as Kung Fu Panda kicked some serious butt at the box office over the weekend, out-grossing Adam Sandler's new film, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, by 50 percent. The animated action flick, featuring the voices of Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman and Jackie Chan, took in $60 million over the weekend—while Zohan earned $40 million.
Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull held strong in the number three position with $22.8 million, while last year's surprise topper, Michael Patrick King's Sex and the City, saw a more than 62 percent decline in ticket sales, with a weekend total of $21.3 million.
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Perfect Strangers
First-time writer-director relies on his instincts to make The Strangers
First-time writer-director Bryan Bertino recounts the scariest part of making his directorial debut with The Strangers: Action!
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Indiana Jones Whips the Competition
Indiana Jones proved he's still got what it takes—at least in box office clout—as the latest film in the George Lucas-Steven Spielberg franchise, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, whipped the competition, with a box office total on track to be the second biggest Memorial Day movie opening ever. The film, which brings Harrison Ford back in the titular role alongside Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf, brought in just over $125 million for the holiday weekend, putting it just behind Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which had a Friday-through-Monday total of $139.8 million in 2007.
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Ted Braun Discusses Darfur Now
The impact of his first big-screen documentary may not be fully appreciated for years. Even with Don Cheadle and George Clooney as principle characters in the 2007 film Darfur Now, it’s not easy to get moviegoers flooding to a flick about African genocide. That director Ted Braun even got the movie made, however, provides moviemakers everywhere with a lesson for the ages: Every solution begins with a conversation.
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Lights! Camera! Geritol!
Are audiences ready for a rickety Indiana Jones?
Today’s stars keep themselves in better shape than ever before, and audiences seem to like that. In fact, box office receipts for recent flicks featuring some of our favorite aging action heroes are so encouraging that studio execs are practically rubbing their hands together in anticipation of the new Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) and Sylvester Stallone (Rambo) vehicles. Stallone certainly didn’t hurt himself when his more famous screen persona—Rocky Balboa—earned critical acclaim and a respectable $70 million in last year’s titular blockbuster, chasing doubts that the actor-director was simply giving himself a starring role in order to slow a career slide.
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Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris Go Commercial
After bursting onto the film scene with their Academy Award-winning debut feature film Little Miss Sunshine, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris decided to go back to their roots: Commercials. In doing so, the husband and wife directing duo haven’t missed a beat; their latest effort, the “There Can Only Be One” spots for the NBA playoffs, featuring a split screen of two players reciting the same speech about playoff competition, was the inspiration for a recent Time magazine cover featuring Barack and Hillary. While working hard to get their upcoming projects ready, Dayton and Faris found a few minutes to chat with MovieMaker about the commercials and their career.
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Kung Fu Panda Comes to Cannes
In the tradition of all things animated finding appreciation at Cannes (from Shrek to Persepolis), Jack Black and Angelina Jolie's new film, Kung Fu Panda, made its debut on the French Riviera.
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Lifetime Movie Networks Contest Gives Female Moviemakers a Voice
Of the three women who have been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director, not one has taken home the little golden man. Lifetime Movie Networks has always been known for prizing stories involving women and this year, it is lending its power to help advance the female moviemaker to new heights with the Every Woman’s Film Competition.
Women from all over the globe have the chance to submit their three- to five-minute short non-documentary film to be judged by a selection of powerful women in Hollywood. Last year’s panel included Angela Bassett, Jennifer Lopez, Lauren Shuler Donner, Gale Anne Hurd and Mimi Leder.
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Last Exit to Film Geekdom
Film geeks like to show off; it's in their job description. Whether it's debating the merits of Lars von Trier or discussing which Evil Dead film is the true masterpiece, it's just what they do. Well, thanks to entrepreneur Mike Ford, what they do has just gotten a bit easier to show off. Ford's UK-based company, Last Exit to Nowhere, sells T-shirts based on fictional companies and locations from films. And although the movies represented tend to skew a bit toward cult favorites (designs include the Winchester Tavern from Shaun of the Dead, the Urban Achievers from The Big Lebowski and Jaws' Amity Island), Ford says this was not deliberate.
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Doug Pray Gets Surfwise
The past few years have seen a boon in the number of documentaries that focus on senior citizens out to prove it's not age that matters but state of mind. It was Doris "Granny D." Haddock in Marlo Poras' Run Granny Run, a chorus of elderly folks who tugged at the heartstrings of Stephen Walker's Young @ Heart and a group of more than a dozen 60-plus dancers that became the NBA's first senior dance team in Gotta Dance. There are a few more that can be added to that list for sure, but few that will make you feel as invigorated and inspired as Doug Pray's Surfwise.
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Garth Jennings Channels His Inner Rambow
Director Garth Jennings and his friend and producer Nick Goldsmith, who work under the moniker Hammer & Tongs, have been toying with video cameras for a while now. They got their start in music videos, breaking onto the scene with 1999’s award-winning video for Blur’s “Coffee and TV,” a semi-tragic story of a milk carton’s search for a missing person. Now, after successfully helming one of the most anticipated film adaptations of all time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Hammer & Tongs have returned with Son of Rambow, a smaller, more personal story about the exploits of two kids in the 1980s making a movie and the highs and lows that come with even the smallest of productions.
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Harry Potter’s World Comes to a City Near You
It’s really impossible to hear something like “sorting hat” or “invisibility cloak” and not feel at least a little of the allure of Harry Potter's universe. When the films brought the J.K. Rowling books to life, it was through the costuming, set design and props. In 2009, “Harry Potter: The Exhibition” will bring 10,000 square feet of artifacts from the enchanting films to 10 or more cities around the world over a five-year period.
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Iron Man Comes Out Fighting in London
As U.S. audiences start counting down the days until Iron Man, one of this spring's most anticipated movies, is released in theaters on May 2nd, film fans across the pond got a sneak peek at hero in action when the film premiered yesterday at the Odean in London's Leicester Square.
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She’s The Boss
The rise of the actress-director
Two of last year’s more critically acclaimed films—Sarah Polley’s Away from Her and Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris—were directed by women who first gained renown for their on-screen performances. Now, a new pair of films—Helen Hunt's Then She Found Me and Jada Pinkett Smith's The Human Contract—also happen to be made by actress-turned-directors.
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