Mr. Kaufman, the wildly inventive screenwriter of "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," has, in his first film as a director made those efforts look almost conventional. Like his protagonist, a beleaguered theater director played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, he has created a seamless and complicated alternate reality, unsettling nearly every expectation a moviegoer might have about time, psychology and narrative structure.
Todd McCarthy:"A folly." "A mess." "Great." These words came from some of the critics coming out of Steven Soderbergh's four-hour 18 minute Spanish-language Che Wednesday night. At the end there was slight applause; no boos. My own description: noble failure.
No doubt it will be back to the drawings board for "Che," Steven Soderbergh's intricately ambitious, defiantly non- dramatic four-hour eighteen-minute presentation of scenes from the life of revolutionary icon Che Guevara. If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also withheld any suggestion of why the charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became and remains such a legendary figure; if anything, Che seems diminished by the way he's portrayed
here.
And Jeff Wells has (positive) buzz to share:
The second half of Che, also known as Guerilla, just got out about a half-hour ago, and equally delighted although it's a different kind of film -- tighter, darker (naturally, given the story). But I've been arguing with some colleagues who don't like either film at all, or don't think it's commercial. Glenn Kenny and Kim Voynar feel as I do, but Anne Thompson is on the other side of the Grand Canyon. Peter Howell is in the enemy camp also.
I read here that the Road is coming out in late November. I'm currently reading the novel, and if done right, it could be a force to contend with come Oscar season. It was written by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men), and is currently being directed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition). Also, the book won a Pulitzer for Fiction. And the cast is not too shabby.
Movies.com recently posted this:
Now, I can easily see this character being switched from a looney old guy to a looney, rebellious youth. Someone like Golden-Globe nominee Kieran Culkin, brother of Macaulay, who has been notably absent from the screen since his Golden Globe nominated performance in the 2002 indie drama Igby Goes Down. Finally, in 2008, he will return to the screen in Kenneth Lonergan's ensemble drama Margaret, opposite Anna Paquin and Mark Ruffalo, among others.
Now looking at Dark Victory, it has the characters of Poison Ivy, the Scarecrow, the Riddler, and the Mad Hatter. So it's a safe bet we'll see all, if not most, of those characters in the next installment. It also has the characters of the Penguin (after Danny DeVito's portrayal, no one wants this character to reemerge on screen unless done absolutely right). It also has the characters of Mr. Freeze (Ah-nuld is likely to reject the opportunity to reprise said character), Two-Face (who is likely to return after this summer's film), and perhaps the most interesting of villains: Solomon Grundy, a large zombie super-villain, portrayed by Mark Hamill in a recent animated series. A character yet to see the light of day in a live-action adventure. A fresh character which may be what is needed to add authenticity and originality to the recent reboot of the Batman franchise.
So who could portray Mr. Grundy? I don't have a clue. Does anyone out there have an idea?
We have already discussed (click here) the controversial biopic by Oliver Stone and now EW offers the first look of NCFOM's Josh Brolin as George W. Bush.
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